‘I should be wearing goloshes,’ said Nigel. ‘The murderer put them on, over his shoes, at some stage before entering the room—in the lift, possibly.’
Taking a staple from his pocket, and an ebony ruler from the desk, Nigel secured the sliding window.
‘The door is locked. The window is fastened shut. Now I remove my bloodstained gloves and put on a fresh pair.’ Nigel went through the motions; then, setting the chair upright again, sat down at the typewriter.
‘There’s blood on the chair, but the duffel coat is expendable—and anyway, I’m in a hurry.’
Leaning over him, Stephen murmured, ‘Is all this gruesome detail necessary? I don’t think Basil can stand it much longer.’
Without replying, Nigel flicked the sheet of paper out of the machine, inserted another, and began typing.
‘I’m copying from the actual sheet the murderer typed to insert in his victim’s autobiography. This is where my timing may go a little wrong. I don’t know how fast he typed, but presumably he knew by heart what had to be written. We shall get a time-check in a few minutes, when the 5.30 exodus begins. Susan heard a typewriter in here as she passed by the door.’
Nigel’s dispassionate, almost pedantic tones heightened the unreality of the scene—an unreality whose focal point was the body of the woman sprawled upon her back in the corner, to which Stephen’s eyes and Basil’s kept reluctantly returning, Basil’s in horror and Stephen’s with a kind of puzzlement.
There was a confused noise of doors opening and footsteps passing. It was 5.30 p.m.
‘An unnerving moment for the murderer,’ Nigel commented. ‘But that night nearly everyone on this floor had left the office earlier … Right. I’ve finished typing this sheet. I substitute it for the relevant page in the autobiography—I dare say we shall never know what that page contained, but we can be sure it gave a clue to the murderer’s identity. O.K. But I’m still not quite happy. Some instinct tells me that my victim may unconsciously have put in another bit of evidence against me, since I last read the typescript. I leaf back through the sheets—I need only worry about the chapter describing a certain period of her younger days. I see, in the margin, a pencilled capital letter. It might be a G or a C. It gives me quite a turn. I rub it out.’
‘“G”? Gleed?’ asked Ryle in a dry, harsh whisper. ‘But she wouldn’t—’
‘It couldn’t be Gleed, or Cyprian; he wasn’t born till ten years later,’ said Nigel.
‘Try “G” for Geraldine,’ Stephen suggested.
Basil Ryle stared uncomprehendingly at him.
‘I’m satisfied there are no more marginal references to me,’ Nigel resumed. ‘Now comes rather a nasty bit. And this is where the murderer made two mistakes.’
Lifting the typewriter, he laid it on the floor beside the woman’s body. He took up her flacid fingers, wiped each of them, then, after polishing the keys of the machine, pressed her fingers upon them.
‘You see what’s wrong?’ He looked up sharply at Ryle.
‘Well—no.’
‘She was a touch typist. I’m putting her fingerprints on the wrong keys. And now I make my second mistake. I replace the typewriter on the table, so. I insert the sheet my victim was typing when I surprised her. But I don’t get it back in alignment. That’s why the police first suspected the murderer had done some typing. A fatal oversight on his part.’
Nigel proceeded to remove the staple which held the sliding-window fast. After a slow look round the room, he said:
‘Well, that’s all for here. What’s the time? Five forty-two. We’re running a little late—the murderer was seen leaving the building at 5.40. Come along.’
‘But—’
‘Oh, yes, goloshes. He probably removed them at the door and put them in the bag.’
‘But for Christ’s sake!’ exclaimed Basil Ryle, pointing at the woman lying in the corner, eyes closed, breathing equably, a tumble of black hair about her pale face. ‘Who is that?’
‘Oh, she’s my dummy.’
‘Won’t you introduce us?’ said Stephen.
‘No time. Come along.’ At the door, Nigel said, ‘Thank you very much, Clare. That will be all. See you later.’
They went down in the lift. As they passed through the swing-door, Nigel said, ‘The murderer was seen at this point, wearing black hat and duffel coat. No doubt he removed them and put them in his bag after the swing-door closed behind him.’
In the confined space, Nigel jostled the other two as he took his mackintosh from the bag and exchanged it for the duffel coat. Stephen Protheroe looked worried but interested; Basil Ryle seemed to be in a daze. They went out into Angel Street, joining the stream of city workers which flowed towards Embankment Gardens like a tributary winding to the Thames. They passed through Charing Cross underground station and climbed the steps up to the northern end of Hungerford Bridge. Nigel’s companions had some difficulty in keeping up with his long stride; he moved in an abstraction which they found formidable. Basil Ryle, however, broke the silence:
‘Do you mean to say that Cyprian Gleed just walked into the office, in his usual clothes, and—and did all that?’
‘Usual clothes’? Would you expect the murderer to wear fancy dress?’ Nigel harshly answered.
‘I’d never have thought he’d have the nerve.’
Nigel stopped abruptly—they were now half-way across the bridge—and gazed meditatively at his companions.
‘Perfect hatred casteth out fear,’ he said.
Stephen Protheroe’s fine eyes held Nigel’s for a moment, as the three moved closer to the rail of the bridge to let the hurrying commuters pass.
‘Why did you ask us to watch this reconstruction?’ Stephen’s fish-like mouth nibbled for words. ‘I mean, you could have worked out the timing by yourself.’
‘I thought you’d be interested,’ was Nigel’s stony reply. He turned towards the river, with the arc-lamps of the bridge behind him. Lights from the Embankment scribbled hieroglyphs on the restless water below. The Shell-Mex Building and the Festival Hall blazed at each other across the Thames. A train rumbled on to the bridge, with a long-drawn clattering reverberation. As it passed, Nigel released the grip-bag which he had been holding over the rail, out of sight.
‘You see? Nobody noticed anything.’
‘Noticed what?’ Basil asked, almost shouting.
‘You didn’t even notice yourself. A murderer dropping into the Thames a weighted bag containing a duffel coat, a large black hat, some gloves, a pair of goloshes, a razor, and one thing more.’ Nigel gradually lowered his voice, as the thunder of the electric train receded.
‘One thing more?’ Ryle shook his head as if to clear it of bewilderment.
Nigel turned to Stephen. ‘Can’t you tell him?’
There was a little silence, then Stephen said with a frown, ‘But you told us that Cyprian Gleed had been arrested.’
‘I never said he’d been arrested for murder.’
‘What is all this?’ Ryle edgily asked. ‘I can’t make head or tail of—’
‘In that case’—Stephen Protheroe’s resonant voice was clearly audible through the shuffle and clatter of the passers-by—‘The “one thing more” could have been a false beard.’
‘Correct.’
‘Then the murderer disguised himself to look like Cyprian Gleed?’ Basil’s face changed from consternation to a kind of timid hopefulness.
‘Come on. We’re wasting time.’ Nigel led them past the Festival Hall. Four minutes later they were passing through the main booking office of Waterloo Station. The clock hands stood at 5.57, as the three men emerged into the great space filled with a rush-hour crowd hurrying towards the departure platforms.
‘You see,’ said Nigel, ‘in spite of my lecture en route, there’s still time.’
‘Time for what?’ Stephen Protheroe’s face was working like a disturbed ant-hill.
Nigel looked full into his eyes, saying sadly, almost remorsefully, ‘Time
for you to pick up your bag—your weekend bag—at the Left Luggage office and catch the 6.5.’
Involuntarily, Stephen’s eyes switched towards the Left Luggage Office. Inspector Wright and Detective-Sergeant Fenton were standing at the Withdrawal counter. Stephen gave a little nightmare whimper, then darted away, running diagonally left towards the open gate of a departure platform which was sucking in its last few belated travellers like a drain.
Nigel started after him. Wright and the sergeant moved to cut him off. But to get through the solid stream of travellers hurrying from right to left across Nigel’s path was like swimming at right-angles to an irresistible current. Bumping and tripping he was carried off course and lost sight of the quarry he could not, in any case, quite whole-heartedly pursue. When he set eyes on Stephen again, the little man was not where he had expected him to be. Under cover of the crowds, he had doubled sharply right like a coursed hare, and was now at the barrier of an arrival platform some thirty yards away.
Nigel waved frantically to Inspector Wright, who came breasting up the stream of passengers towards him. He turned again, making for the barrier, to see—with a stab of anguished compunction—that Stephen Protheroe was getting a platform ticket from the slot-machine there. At the same moment he became aware of a sound like the first drum-roll of distant thunder, a vibration in the air which was felt rather than heard above all the confused din of the station.
‘No! Don’t do it! Don’t!’ Nigel silently cried. The ticket-collector, still oblivious to Wright’s shouts and waving, punched Stephen Protheroe’s ticket. The thunderous vibration swelled. Side by side now, Wright and Nigel tore through the gate. Twenty yards ahead of them, running away up the platform, Stephen looked round once, dodged a porter who tried to intercept him, and raced on to meet the great locomotive which drew its train, gradual as lava, towards the buffers—raced to meet it, as if it were his salvation, not his doom, and threw himself under the iron wheels.
‘When did you first suspect it was Stephen?’ Basil Ryle asked.
‘“When did you first begin to love me?” Who can answer that?’ There was exhaustion and bitterness in Nigel’s voice. Clare put her hand over his. The three were in Clare’s studio, late that same night. Nigel turned to Ryle: ‘Sorry. I’m feeling foul. I liked him.’
‘Let’s skip it, then.’ The colour was back in Ryle’s cheeks; he had been looking round the studio, relishing like a convalescent after a dangerous illness the mere existence of everyday objects. Nigel began to answer his original question.
‘It was an entry in Miss Miles’s diary for the day she was murdered. “Thorsday?!” What could that mean except a show-down about General Thoresby’s book? Cyprian Gleed told me he’d seen his mother, alone in Stephen’s room, bending over the proof copy the morning it went back to the printers. If it was she who had tampered with it, and Stephen who had presented an ultimatum, she’d never have written that word in her diary, and with an exclamation mark. Therefore, the position was vice-versa. Even the pun told its story. She hated puns. Stephen made them, just to annoy her. So, in her childishly vindictive way, she made a pun of the time when her ultimatum was due to expire.’
‘But the motive seems so feeble,’ said Ryle. ‘Do you mean to say he killed her just because she threatened to expose him to the partners for mucking about with that proof?’
Clare said, ‘It’d only have been her word against his, anyway. Why should the partners have believed her?’
‘His job, his security were at stake. So he thought. It was her threat that lit the train. But the train itself—a long history of brooding hatred—it hardly bears thinking about.’ Nigel broke off for a little. ‘What you don’t realise is that Stephen had been living for months with nothing but a thin wall and a sliding-window between himself and the woman who had drained the meaning out of his life. Their child—’
‘What’s this? Whose child?’ Ryle exclaimed.
Nigel told him the story of Paul Protheroe. ‘Stephen inserted that fake page in the autobiography because the original page would have shown us a connection between him and Millicent, shown they had had a child, and given us his reason for tampering with the proof—as soon as we’d discovered that a Paul Protheroe was killed at Ulombo.’
‘I thought you believed his story that his brother had been the child’s father,’ said Clare.
‘I did at first.’ Nigel explained to Ryle where Peter Protheroe came in. ‘You see, Stephen had two lines of defence. The first was to prevent us finding out about his son at all. When I broke through this, he fell back upon the second. It was at lunch in his flat. He then said that Millicent had had the child by his brother, Peter, a student for Holy Orders, and that he himself had taken the responsibility for it to prevent Peter’s career being ruined at the start. It was ingeniously done. The new story couldn’t be disproved, since Peter had died a year or two later in the mission field.’
‘What made you doubt it?’
‘Stephen’s poem. And his failure to write any more.’
‘I don’t get it,’ said Ryle.
Rising to his feet, Nigel prowled restlessly about the studio. ‘Fire and Ash is the key to the whole wretched business,’ he said at last. ‘Stephen told me the Peter tale with extraordinary conviction. He made me feel the horror of the ordeal, from seduction to heartless repudiation, through which Millicent had dragged an idealistic young man. Fire and Ash was written, he said, out of his brother’s experience, which he himself had observed. All right. But then I discovered he had tried later, again and again, to write poems, and they were all failures. If Fire and Ash had been the product of mere second-hand experience, why on earth should Stephen’s faculty of imagination and poetic sympathy have utterly failed him over the subjects he attempted afterwards? The fact he did so fail made me more and more certain that Fire and Ash must have come from first-hand experience—from a personal agony which had blasted his talent as well as disrupting his life. Poets are very tough inside, you know. They don’t give up the ghost because of anyone else’s sufferings. But occasionally a poet’s talent is killed by some traumatic experience of his own. I believe that, after what he went through with Millicent as a young man, he determined never to be vulnerable again; he retired into himself, scorching the earth behind him—and the poetic seed got burnt up in the process.’
‘Yet he found himself vulnerable to Millicent still, after all those years?’ asked Clare, musing.
‘Yes. His son, Paul, was the one thing he had saved from the wreck. Poetry failing him, he had transferred all his hopes and aspirations to the boy—centered all his affection upon him. Then Paul was killed. Stephen had nothing left. You can see how irresistible was the temptation to expose the Governor whose bungling had caused the boy’s death.’
‘But Millicent—?’ Ryle began.
Nigel turned full towards him. ‘Doesn’t it occur to you that one of Stephen’s motives for killing her was to prevent her destroying you? Prevent her making the havoc of your life she had made, thirty years ago, of his own?’
‘Oh lord, oh lord’ muttered Ryle, unable to meet Nigel’s eyes.
‘One motive—a minor one, though. Then there was his literary integrity; he would not be blackmailed into withdrawing his opposition to the firm’s publishing her trashy novels.’
Basil Ryle flushed to the roots of his red hair.
‘But that was a subsidiary motive, too,’ Nigel continued. ‘There he was, living for months cheek by jowl with a woman who had struck one great poem out of him and finished him in the process. Oh, the wound began to bleed again, all right. I’ve no doubt she opened it wider and wider. I heard her say to him once, “I do write anyway.” She had plenty of opportunity to taunt him privately, through that sliding-window. Jean heard her say to him, “You’re just impotent.” I’m sorry, Basil, but she was a bird of prey. She’d peck at him till he was a tangle of raw nerves, just as she did thirty years before, and a good deal more skilfully.’
‘Yes. Sh
e was skilful enough at that.’ Basil Ryle’s voice was almost inaudible.
‘She’d used her pregnancy once as a weapon against him, and I dare say he’d been near killing her then. Now she had another weapon, another way of exercising power over him—two stet marks on a proof copy. And this time he did kill her. She’d asked for it several times too often.’
‘I see all that,’ said Ryle presently. ‘But I’m surprised he tried to involve Cyprian Gleed. It doesn’t seem in character.’
‘It may have been an improvisation on his original plan. Not that he would have felt much compunction about it, when he compared that worthless young man with Millicent’s other son—his own. Anyway, he’d planned to kill her on a Friday, when the staff would all have left the office soon after 5.30. He’d fixed up to stay the weekend with friends in Hampshire; he had a standing invitation to visit them; yet, as he himself told me, he seldom went out of London; and he’d never stayed with them before. That alone should have roused our suspicion—in a murder investigation one always looks for the unhabitual, the non-routine action. He’d worked out a fairly neat alibi—impressive without being blatantly watertight. Then, the day before, he overheard Millicent talking to her son on the telephone: she was going along to Cyprian’s flat, after she’d had her show-down with Stephen the next evening: Cyprian would be awaiting her there, alone. Cyprian would have no alibi for the time of the murder. This may have given him the idea of dressing up as Cyprian; or it may have been part of his plan all along—we’ll never know. Stephen had already pinched the spare key of the side-door—in order to confuse the issue generally, I should think; but its disappearance would point the finger at Cyprian in particular. Stephen bought a duffel coat and a large black hat. Unfortunately he couldn’t grow a beard overnight, so he had to buy a false one.’
‘Unfortunately?’
‘Susan, when she described the man she’d seen leaving the office, used an odd form of words. “He’d got sort of hair at the side of his face,” she said—she only saw his back view, remember. I was alerted by that. How peculiar that she shouldn’t just say, “he had a beard”. Unconsciously she had registered it as a pseudo-beard. So the idea came to me of the murderer disguising himself as Cyprian Gleed just in case by ill luck he met anyone on his way to or from Miss Miles’s room. Why should he not have taken off the bloodstained duffel coat before leaving her room? Because, if he were to be seen, he had to be seen wearing it. The one suspect who couldn’t afford to be recognised in the office at that time was Stephen, who had been seen by Miriam Sanders leaving the building at 5.20 with a “weekend bag”. He had to do the murder when he did because (a) Millicent would not wait for him much longer to keep his appointment with her, and (b) because his alibi partly depended upon Miss Sanders’s seeing him go out of the building; and she herself would be leaving it at 5.30. Mind you, he never expected the time of the murder to be fixed so accurately by the police.’