“Was it he who persuaded you to break off your engagement with Celandine, when her father died?”
“Certainly not. Look here, I consider it’s damned impertinence on your part to—”
“I quite agree. And now I’m going to be still more impertinent. Has it ever occurred to you that Stanford’s feelings for Rosebay might be more than a favorite uncle’s? He even got a poison-pen letter, accusing him of ‘goings-on’ with Rosebay.”
“That’s utter nonsense. Put it right out of your head.”
“You know that he and Rosebay were behind the business of the field glasses?”
“Bay told me that was your theory.”
“But didn’t admit it was true? Why not? It may have been ill-advised, but there was nothing discreditable about it, surely—an unorthodox attempt at a cure by shock treatment?”
“I’m really not in a position to judge the ethics of it,” replied Charles stiffly.
“But, if it had been successful,” Nigel persisted, “anyone would have agreed the end had justified the means, wouldn’t they?”
Charles Blick had begun to tremble uncontrollably. “God damn it! Will you leave me alone! What the hell’s it got to do with me?”
“All right, we’ll talk about something else,” said Nigel, his pale eyes regarding Charles expressionlessly. “Your hand, for instance. Healed up O.K., has it?”
For a couple of seconds Blick stared at him uncomprehendingly. Then, putting his hand in his pocket, he nodded. He was making a tremendous effort to get himself under control. Walking over to the window, he gazed out. Nigel addressed his back.
“Who do you think murdered your father?”
“I’ve no ideas about it.”
“Not interested?”
A vein in the back of Charles’s neck was violently throbbing. He made no reply.
“Not even when someone has tried to incriminate you? Unless of course you did it yourself. You had motive and opportunity, and you’ve no alibi.”
Silence.
“You’re in a jam. Fighting a lost battle. Don’t you think you’ve done enough? Why not confess? You’re only postponing the—”
“Confess?” Charles had turned round at last. There was the old anxiety on his face, the haunted look in those dark eyes; but, welling up as it were from beneath, a sort of calm despair. “What should I confess?” he asked, quite quietly.
“That you lied to Blount just now.”
“And why should I confess it, supposing I did?”
“For your own—no, I think chiefly for Miss Chantmerle’s peace of mind. She can’t stand this strain indefinitely. You’re putting too much of a load upon her, and you’ve no right to.”
“Oh, Bay’ll come through. Don’t you see?—the one thing she’d never forgive me would be if I—”
Charles broke off as the telephone started ringing.
“Damn it all, do you love her or don’t you?” asked Nigel urgently. “Surely you’ve paid off the mortgage, now?”
Looking harassed beyond endurance, Charles took up the receiver. “Hallo, Charles Blick here . . . Bay? What is it, darling? . . . God! Yes, of course, I’ll come at once.”
He turned to Nigel. “There’s been an accident. I must go straight away.” He sent for his works manager and rapped out some orders, then ran downstairs. At the door, a policeman moved forward, his hand raised; but, when he saw Nigel at Blick’s heels, he stepped back, and let them go out. They jumped into Charles’s car and set off at top speed for Prior’s Umborne.
17 The Fault Was Mine, The Fault Was Mine
HAD SUPERINTENDENT BLOUNT been present at the Little Manor during the next few hours, he would undoubtedly have been shocked by Nigel Strangeways’ activities; indeed, being both in his public and his private affairs a stickler for decorum, he would soon have put a stop to them—and as a result the case might have dragged on for days or weeks, or never have been broken open at all.
But Nigel was not bound by official rules. Etiquette and convention meant nothing to him, when a problem had arisen which could only be solved by unorthodox methods. And this problem was much more than a criminological one; there were people involved whose sanity, whose lives perhaps would be endangered if the situation dragged on much longer. Besides, Nigel was angry. His eyes burned with a cold flame, as he listened now to Charles. Rosebay had rung up to say that her sister’s wheeled chair had somehow caught fire while she was sitting in it; fortunately Mark Raynham had been on the spot and managed to put it out before Celandine was badly hurt, burning his own hands in the process. That was all they knew at present. But it was enough for Nigel. The time had come to put a stop to all this; he was going to set the cat in among the pigeons, stir up trouble with an apparently irresponsible hand, and see what happened. The criminal was sitting pretty, behind impregnable defenses, and must be somehow bluffed or tempted or forced out into the open.
They were waiting in the drawing room when Nigel and Charles hurried in—the vicar, his hands roughly bandaged, his mouth firmly set against the pain; Celandine Chantmerle, propped up on the sofa, hectic spots of color glowing through the delicate make-up on her cheekbones; Rosebay, pale with exhaustion, bright hair disordered, nervously chewing the red lacquer off her fingernails. Charles Blick strode over to her at once. His voice was shaky:
“Are you all right, darling? Are you sure you’re all right? How did it happen?”
Something dawned, flickered and went out in her eyes as she looked up at him. Then she gave a sort of childish whimper and turned her face away from him.
“It’s I who had the accident, Charles,” said Celandine coolly. “But I’m getting quite used to being in the wars. Do please persuade Bay not to fuss about me any more—she takes everything so tragically. Bay, darling, I swear to you I’m really not hurt. Just lightly toasted on one side. Honestly. It’s poor Mark ought to get the sympathy, and a medal. When will that wretched doctor come?”
“Don’t worry about me, Dinny. Bit of luck I happened to be here,” said the vicar, a gruff, embarrassed note in his voice. He held up his bandaged hands. “Everything I have is yours, if you want it. You know that.”
Celandine gave him a dancing, glancing look. “You’re very sweet, Mark. But I don’t want you charred.”
“Well, now we’ve all taken our hair down,” said Charles, gazing at Rosebay’s averted face, “what did happen?”
“Oh, thank goodness, here he is at last,” said Celandine as the doorbell rang. “You must let him see you first, Mark. . . . No, please do what I say,” she added imperiously, as the vicar began to demur.
While the doctor was examining him in another room, she told the story. Early in the afternoon, two of Blount’s assistants had unexpectedly come to search the house. She had made no objection to this. But when, after a couple of hours, they asked to see the locked room on the top floor—her father’s room—she was at first unwilling. “I couldn’t bear the idea of them tramping about there, sticking their noses into everything. It’s absurd of me, I dare say, but—well, that room is a sort of shrine to me. I keep my memories there. Or do you think piety is very sentimental and old-fashioned?” she said, with a serious, proud look at Nigel.
“No, I’ve nothing against piety.”
“Of course, I knew they could get a search warrant. I didn’t want to be obstructive. Whatever could they find there, anyway? It was just routine, they said. Wonderful formula! So I asked if they’d mind my being there when they made the search. It evidently didn’t quite suit their notions of official propriety; but they agreed after a bit.”
One policeman had carried Celandine upstairs, the other brought her wheel chair. She unlocked the door, but then remembered that the keys to her father’s desk, wardrobe and chest of drawers were in her bureau downstairs.
“I sent one of the policemen to fetch them; and then I had to send the other after him with the key of the bureau, which was in my bag. I suppose they must have thought it rather sinister, my getti
ng them both out of the room, but they were very gentlemanly about it. Not that I could have done much destroying of evidence during the minute they were away.”
They had asked her to unlock the wardrobe for them first. This she did; and then the other articles of furniture in turn, wheeling herself from one to another. It must have been a bizarre scene, reflected Nigel, this painstaking examination of the effects of a man dead twenty years ago; he could imagine the stolid, impersonal faces of the plain-clothes men, and Celandine’s beauty shining in the dusty room; being Celandine, she would not try very hard to conceal her sense of outrage at this desecration of the shrine.
“They took away one of my father’s overcoats. It was horrible. Especially when they gave me a receipt for it. I wish I knew what it was all about.”
“But the accident,” Charles blurted out impatiently. “Did they set fire to you before leaving?”
“Oh, don’t, Charles,” Rosebay exclaimed. “It’s not funny.”
“I thought it might have been another practical joke. Like the binoculars,” said Charles.
There was a hush of shock, as if a ghost, as if Edric Chantmerle himself had suddenly materialized in the pretty, faded drawing room. Charles seems to be doing my work for me, thought Nigel. Celandine slowly turned her cornflower eyes to him, with a deep look of complicity.
“I’m afraid it was no more successful than the binoculars, Nigel,” she said. Her significant tone told him that she had guessed the truth of the baited field glasses. Or perhaps Rosebay had confessed to her? No, a glance at the girl’s agonized expression told him she could not have done so.
“I bear no malice, as they say, about that,” Celandine remarked. Her exquisite face gleamed with humor as she added, “It was neither kill nor cure, was it?”
Rosebay flushed painfully, unable to answer or to meet her sister’s eyes.
“But this time it was a pure accident. Really.” Celandine gave her delicious giggle. “Spontaneous combustion.”
When the policemen left, she had stayed up in her father’s room. She wanted to “disinfect it” from their activities, though they had meticulously replaced everything which they had disturbed during their search. She had heard Mark Raynham arriving just before, and knew he could carry her downstairs presently. So she locked the door behind the policemen, to ensure solitude for a while, lit a cigarette, and began to think about her father, the old happy days with him. She had some relics of him, unwrapped from their tissue paper, on her lap.
“I don’t know if I dozed off. I don’t think so. But there was a sudden fuff—the box of matches had exploded.”
“Good God! Yes, it does happen,” said Charles. “I had a box went off in my pocket one day, at a cricket match.”
The blazing matchbox on her lap set fire instantly to the tissue paper. She made a convulsive movement to brush it off, but only succeeded in pushing down the burning paper between herself and the side of the chair, where it set fire to the Paisley shawl over her knees.
“I yelled out like fury—afraid my dress was beginning to catch; and I couldn’t get out of the chair. It all happened so quickly, I lost my head altogether. I heard Mark tearing up the stairs. But of course the damned door was locked, and I couldn’t wheel myself toward it because the left side of the chair was on fire and I couldn’t get my hand onto that wheel. I was just going round in circles.”
“We heard her screaming the door was locked,” said Rosebay, “so Mark hurled himself at it and broke it in. There was Dinny, helpless in the chair, with smoke and flame going up. Mark dragged her out of it, and put out the fire with his hands.”
“Good for old Mark,” said Charles. “But you must have got burnt a bit, Dinny—aren’t you in pain?”
“It’s nice of you to be so solicitous, Charles. I won’t pretend the patient is altogether comfortable. But one advantage of my unfortunate limbs is that I don’t have much sensation in them. No doubt God was taking a long-term view when He afflicted me with them.” She glanced round at the others, with that look of excitement bubbling up irrepressibly into her eyes. “I really do seem to bear a charmed life, don’t I?” she said.
“I wouldn’t bank too much on that,” remarked Charles, and at the same moment Rosebay was agitatedly saying, “Don’t, Dinny! Don’t say that! It’s tempting providence.”
“Bay darling, when will you get over your extraordinary suspicions—superstitions, I mean. Oh lord! That was a prime old Freudian error, wasn’t it? One has suspicion so very much on one’s mind just now.”
“You’ve no need to worry about that anyway,” said Charles harshly. “It’s me the police are after. They found a handkerchief of mine, bloodstained into the bargain, near what they call the scene of the crime.”
“Oh, Charles!” Rosebay, her own handkerchief pressed to her mouth, stared at him with affrighted eyes. “It was yours they found?”
“Pas possible,” breathed Celandine. “There must be some explanation. I mean—”
“You’re damned right there must be. Someone put it there to get me into trouble.”
“Charles told the police he had no idea who could have got hold of a handkerchief of his,” said Nigel levelly.
At that moment the door opened to admit Mark Raynham and the doctor. Nigel became aware of Rosebay’s eyes fastened upon Charles in a brooding look, both anxious and puzzled. The doctor said he would examine Celandine where she was, upon the sofa. The others started to go out.
“Will you stay and help me, Rosebay?” said the doctor.
“No,” she muttered. “I’m no good at—I’ll send Charity.”
The young doctor raised his eyebrows disapprovingly, but said no more. Whether it was that Rosebay wanted to be alone with Charles, or not to be alone with her sister, Nigel was determined not to let her out of his sight. The pot must be kept boiling. He drew Mark Raynham aside, and whispered to him for a few moments, while Rosebay was telling Charity that she was needed in the drawing room. Then she found Nigel firmly walking her toward the garden, Charles and Mark Raynham following.
“I saw you leaving the Hall this afternoon, just as we arrived. Did Stanford tell you about his dream?” asked Nigel.
“What is this about a dream?” said Charles irritably.
“Dream? Yes, he did. It frightened me.”
“When you got back here, you told your sister about it?”
“Yes,” the girl muttered. “Was there anything wrong about that?”
“Did she have any comments?”
“Oh well, how extraordinary it was. You know. That sort of thing.”
“Did Stanford tell you when he had it? What time he woke up from it?”
“Yes. About ten past eleven, he said. It was an extraordinary coincidence, wasn’t it?”
“What was?”
“His dreaming it just—” Rosebay’s eyes suddenly flinched, and her hand flew to her mouth—“I mean, his having had the dream that night.”
“You were going to say ‘his dreaming it just then.’ I call that the very opposite of a coincidence. You told the police Sir Archibald was alive at eleven-twenty; you heard him leave the house.”
“You’re twisting my words.”
“You know very well I’m not. I suggest you never heard him leave. You were in your room, fast asleep. Or were you by any chance waiting for him outside?”
“Charles!” the girl cried faintly. “Stop him! He’s accusing me of—”
“Look here, Strangeways!” Charles Blick thrust himself between them. “If you say a word more to Rosebay, I’ll hit you for six. Who the hell d’you think—?”
“That’s better. At last we have a human reaction. Now let’s see if someone can’t tell the truth for a change. Come on, let’s sit down.” Nigel set out the deck chairs. There was a purposefulness about him now which the others found they could not resist.
“Within the last hour,” he outrageously continued, “I’ve heard stunning lies from you two. Let’s see what the vicar can do
in that line.”
Mark Raynham made an embarrassed sound, between a laugh and a throat-clearing.
“Do you still say, Vicar, you remember nothing about that long walk you took, the night Sir Archibald was murdered?”
Nigel was facing the open French windows of the drawing room. Ever since they had come out in the garden, his voice had been loud and aggressive, and unconsciously the others were raising their voices too.
“I don’t remember anything to the point,” replied Mark Raynham, the eyes watchful now in his haggard face.
“Surely you have some idea where you went?”
“Oh well, I do remember vaguely finding myself at Fenny Cross. I sat on a stile there for a bit.”
“And then?”
“Then I started for home. It was after eleven—later than I’d thought.”
“By which road?”
“The one that goes past the end of this garden.”
“So you’d pass here about eleven-forty?”
“About that.”
“And you met no one on the way?”
“I told you that, when all this first arose. If you’re looking for an alibi, I haven’t got one. You don’t meet people on these country roads late at night.”
“Apparently not. But you ought to have. You see, Blick here told the police he set off on that road, toward Fenny Cross, at eleven-ten or a little before. You should have met. So which of you is lying?”
Mark and Charles, looking sheepish, avoided each other’s eyes.
“Well—hah—I suppose we just missed each other somehow,” said the vicar, with his nervous, hearty laugh.
Upon the distant hills, the mist hung low. Uneasy puffs of wind from the southwest stirred the daffodils into macabre little dances. The fruit blossoms, thick and oppressive, were losing their color as the daylight drained away, pink and white changing alike into a dingy gray. Presently the doctor came out. Miss Chantmerle, he said, must have had a remarkable escape; there were inflamed patches on her left side and flank, but no serious burns; he had dressed them and given her a penicillin injection. He would call again early tomorrow, to make sure no infection had set in, but there was very little danger of that. She refused to go to bed yet, so her sister must see that she at least stayed on the sofa and avoided excitement.