‘And ruined Andrew’s own life. Yes. He admitted to us that he thought he’d recognized Bogan as the marijuana-peddler. He was very adroit all the way along in not attempting to conceal his suspicion and dislike of Bogan. He emphasized this hatred, simply because he knew it would be impossible for him to conceal it. I’m convinced in my own mind that he recognized Bogan as soon as they met. You don’t ever forget a man you’ve fought with, a man who has done you a mortal injury. Andrew’s by-play with Scribbles, and during the Babes-in-the-Wood charade, was partly an attempt to find out what Bogan’s game was with Betty, and partly just to unnerve Bogan. Then, when Betty died, it gave Andrew both an opportunity and a justification to be revenged on Bogan for the injuries he had done them both.’
‘It was Andrew who made her death look like murder?’ said Will Dykes.
‘Yes. He arranged the set-up. He took down her body, and then pulled it up by the rope so that, when we examined the rope, we should believe her murderer had hauled her up that way. He probably rearranged the room a little – remember, his aim was to make it look like a murder which the criminal had tried to fake as a suicide. The most brilliant and macabre touch he gave to this picture was done by making up her face.’
‘Good God!’ exclaimed Hereward.
‘Yes. Pretty grim, that. I noticed that her mouth was not made up quite perfectly. Even Andrew’s nerve failed a little there; but at the time this didn’t mean anything to me. He locked the door from outside by the pencil-and-string method – another neat indication that it had been murder, and came away with the suicide note. After that, he remained quietly, but not altogether inactive, in the background. It was he who planted the burnt paper in Bogan’s grate, of course. But the police still failed to arrest Bogan. And Bogan himself, who must have had a pretty shrewd idea of what was going on and who was behind it, decided to take a hand. He planted a cord of Dykes’ dressing-gown tassel in the room. He had to deflect suspicion from himself, but he dared not hint to us that Andrew was trying to frame him, because that would have started letting all his own cats out of the bag. Andrew, in the meanwhile, came out with a theory of the relationship between Bogan and Elizabeth which was very near to the truth. Unobtrusively he handed us a motive for Bogan’s having killed her. And still we didn’t arrest Bogan. So Andrew arranged that rather clumsy business of the poisoned milk. He hoped we would interpret it as an attempt by Bogan to silence him too. But it didn’t come off at all as he’d meant it. In fact, it turned the attention of the police towards Mr and Mrs Restorick.’
‘Eh? You mean they actually –?’ began Hereward, outraged.
‘Of course they did, my dear,’ said Charlotte. ‘Go on, Nigel.’
‘Bogan was on his guard against Andrew by now. So he answered this stroke by pouring some of the poisoned milk into the milk jug. It was a pretty intense duel that was going on behind the scenes, believe me – Bogan trying to anticipate what Andrew’s next move would be, Andrew circling round Bogan looking for another weak spot, and both of them at the same time covering up from the police. Andrew enjoyed himself, I’m sure. But he’d made a mistake. He was far too clever to overdo the incrimination of Bogan: and, as a result, he underplayed it. After a bit, he began to realize that he’d not given us enough evidence against Bogan, and by that time it was too late to manufacture more. The trouble was, of course, that – if Bogan had intended to kill Betty – he’d have means to his hand, as a doctor, far safer than the one Andrew wished us to believe he’d adopted. It was this that stuck in our throats all along.’
‘Just a minute,’ said Will Dykes. ‘You told Andrew and myself at your flat how the police were getting on to Bogan’s illegal activities – the blackmail and drugs and so on. I wonder Andrew didn’t let it go at that. Bogan was almost certain to get a long sentence and have his whole career ruined anyway, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes. But that wasn’t enough for Andrew. He wanted the snake killed, not scotched. It was partly his personal hatred for the man, and partly a genuine and probably well-justified fear that, if Bogan was left alive, he’d take his revenge sooner or later – and take it on John and Priscilla, as well as on Andrew himself. So, when it became evident that Bogan was not going to be arrested for the murder, Andrew decided he’d take the law into his own hands. No doubt the pretended arrest of Dykes hurried on the process. But, since there was nothing about it in the papers, Andrew must have soon realized it was a fake. By now, however, he was too much in love with the thought of a personal revenge, of killing Bogan with his own hands, to retract. As Clarissa said to me, Andrew was a man driven by the Furies.’
There was a long silence, like the exhausted silence of convalescence. They would all recover, thought Nigel: even Will Dykes; perhaps Will Dykes most assuredly, for he had the creative principle strongest inside him. They could hear the snow slurring and pattering off the roof, melting away into musical rivulets. Gazing out of the french windows, Nigel looked over the terrace towards the low-lying countryside beyond, the woods and fields where two children had once roved, inseparable. The world had come between them, but in death they had returned to each other. He was humming to himself the air of ‘The Enniskilling Dragoon’:
‘And light was her laugh like the sun on the sea
Till the weight of the world came between her and me.’
How did it go on? The second stanza?
Oh what can man do when the world is his foe,
And the looks of her people fall on him like snow,
But bend the brow boldly and fare away far
To follow good fortune and get fame in the war?’
As if continuing his thoughts, Will Dykes spoke in a whisper. ‘I’m glad, somehow, that it wasn’t murder. That Betty wasn’t murdered. I don’t know why. Yes, I do know. To kill herself – it was a voluntary act, even if the poor darling was half-crazed when she did it. But to be murdered, to be pushed out of life – no, it wouldn’t have been a right end for her. She – it’d have been all wrong – like evicting a princess from her palace. Not that I take much stock in palaces. Oh well, it’s over and done with.’
‘Not for Andrew,’ said Clarissa. ‘What will happen to Andrew?’
‘We shan’t hear,’ said Hereward, with unexpected warmth. ‘He’ll be too clever for them. Old Andrew always had the brains.’
‘Yes, I dare say he’s got away. He gave himself plenty of time, while the police were chasing after Bogan. And, the way he’s knocked around the world, he’ll have means of getting out of a country, even in wartime. But we shall hear from him. He’s not the sort to let anyone else be put on trial for Bogan’s murder.’
And so, indeed, it turned out. A few days later, Blount received a letter from Andrew with a Spanish postmark, containing a full account of Betty’s suicide and the murder of Bogan. Nigel had reconstructed those events with extreme accuracy, as even the chief-inspector admitted.
‘It was a bad blunder we both made at the start, though,’ he said. ‘After all, there were no marks of violence on the body, except for that rope-mark round the neck. We shouldn’t have let him bounce us out of the suicide theory so easily.’
Nigel looked up from the last paragraph of Andrew’s letter, nodding absently. Then he read it again.
‘It’s queer how revenge has an instinct for the melodramatic. I suppose it’s rather cheap and obvious, but I can’t help feeling a lively satisfaction that that devil, with his ice-cold heart and his “snow”, should have ended up in a snowman, though I admit it was for expediency and not as an artistic gesture that I put him there … Good-bye to everyone. I shall not “give myself up to justice”, preferring a more productive end to a sadly unproductive life. By the time you get this, I shall be in Germany – I know quite a few ways of getting in. There, I shall do as much damage as I can before they find me out. I have friends who will be working with me. Salud.’
THE END
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Copyright © Nicholas Blake 1941
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First published in Great Britain in 1941 by Collins (The Crime Club)
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Nicholas Blake, The Case of the Abominable Snowman
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