XIV
‘AS A TALE THAT IS TOLD’
WHILE NIGEL STRANGEWAYS was dozing fitfully through South Wales, the occupants of the Dower House awoke to what the inspector had informed them would probably be their last day in it. There was a feeling of relief and irresponsibility in the air, as in a school on the last morning of the term. Even though they might not yet be free of the case, they would be glad to get away from the Dower House. It had become a prison, and there is a certain relief at walking out of a prison, even if one only entered it as a visitor—even, perhaps, if one is stepping out of it straight on to a scaffold.
No such speculations troubled the pretty head of Lily Watkins as she laid the breakfast table. She was thinking of a certain steady-going young farmer’s lad, of springtime and her new Sunday frock. She was calculating, too, the amount of tips she would get from the ladies and gentlemen, and the amount of prestige that would be hers for ever as the finder of Knott-Sloman’s body. What Mrs Grant was thinking was, as usual, clear to none but the recording angels. She bent over her frying rashers, if such a one could ever be said to bend, and eyed them with the thin-lipped and complacent regard which she would turn upon a pack of sinners sizzling in hell. Lucilla Thrale yawned and stretched her magnificent body—with a studied, practice-perfected languor, half asleep though she was. Then she came fully awake. Her muscles grew tense and her eyes on guard. Only a few more hours to keep it up. Philip Starling was stumping about his room, his shirt-tails hanging outside his trousers, his face sparkling with animation as he rolled round his tongue phrases that would finally demolish that charlatan editor of Pindar. When he had polished them to his satisfaction, he muttered, ‘Well, no one can say I don’t see life.’ Edward Cavendish was trying to shave; but the razor shook uncontrollably in his hand and the look in his bloodshot eyes would have seriously discomposed a number of shareholders if they had been there to see it. The look in his sister’s eyes was much less easy to read. Indignation, bitterness, fear, indecision, passed into some desperate resolve, and then softened beautifully into a quite different expression, as though a lover’s hand had come over her face.
Georgia Cavendish was the first person, except for the policeman at the door, that Nigel met when he entered the house just before lunch.
‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Edward—is he—?’ She could say no more.
‘I’m afraid there’s no doubt he shot O’Brien,’ said Nigel slowly, as though choosing his words to soften the blow. ‘He’s in a tough place. I—’
‘No, don’t say any more. Nigel, the inspector told me about—about the poison, and Edward telling him I had it. I asked him. I couldn’t really believe you had told him. I—it was damned decent of you.’
She took Nigel’s hand and quickly brushed her lips over it. Then she stared at him irresolutely for a second, her mouth trembling. Then she exclaimed, ‘Oh, hell and damnation!’ and spun round and fled from the room. Nigel stared stupidly at the back of his hand, smiling vaguely. After a bit he collected himself and went to find Inspector Blount. The inspector was with Bleakley, routing about at the back of the house. The three adjourned to the morning room, and Nigel told them everything of significance he had learned in Ireland. Bleakley’s eyes popped with excitement and his moustaches quivered like antennae. Blount took the news more calmly, but the eyes behind the big horn-rimmed spectacles registered every point with alert intelligence.
‘Well, Mr Strangeways,’ he said when Nigel had finished, ‘that just about clinches it. I’m glad I held my hand, though after that point you made about Edward Cavendish and the footprints it was evident that the main suspicion must lie on him and not his sister. That was a very nice little piece of work of yours.’
Nigel looked modestly down his nose. He drew out a packet of Player’s and passed it round. Then he said:
‘Before we start connecting up this new stuff with the rest of the case, I wonder would you mind if I set out all the other points which connect Edward Cavendish with the crimes. I put in some hard remembering last night on the boat and I’ve collected quite an imposing display. I don’t want to seem to boss this little conclave,’ he added, ‘but there are several things which I know and you don’t—only because I happened to be on the spot and you weren’t. I didn’t see their importance before, so I didn’t mention them.’
‘You go right ahead, Mr Strangeways,’ said Blount.
‘Well then, starting at the highly correct place, the beginning. The morning we found O’Brien. It is significant that when I got downstairs I found Cavendish on the veranda. Jaded businessman taking a breath of fresh country air. All proper and correct. But a nasty-minded, suspicious person might say that he was waiting there for someone to come out, so that he might tactfully keep this someone away from the footprints in the snow. Item, when I said that I was going out to the hut to see if O’Brien was awake yet, Cavendish slipped up badly, and quite failed to produce the correct reaction—any reaction at all, in fact.’
Bleakley looked puzzled. The inspector did too: then he suddenly smacked his bald head in excitement.
‘You mean, he should never have known that O’Brien was sleeping in the hut?’
‘Exactly. He ought to have registered surprise. He should have assumed that O’Brien was in his bedroom in the house. The fact that he didn’t suggests that he knew O’Brien was in the hut, and how would he know that unless he had seen him there that night? Point number two: not only did he keep me off the footprints, but also, when the rest of the party appeared on the veranda, Cavendish was very fussy about my seeing that they shouldn’t tread on the footprints either. Singular presence of mind in a layman who was still dithering under the spectacle of his host’s corpse. Then there was the matter of the shoes. Cavendish was wearing an overcoat and therefore able to bring them out again to the hut underneath it. Moreover, he had far more time than the rest to plant them there. He was mopping his brow with a handkerchief and no doubt he used it to handle the shoes without leaving fingerprints. I suggest that he meant to plant them at once but couldn’t find a favourable moment: I’m pretty sure they weren’t in position when I had my look round. Then the others came out. My attention was concentrated on them to see how they were taking it and to make sure they didn’t touch anything. He could easily have dumped the shoes then—probably when Lucilla threw her swooning act. That’s all my contribution for the moment.’
There was a short silence. Then the superintendent slapped his knee. ‘By gum, sir, I’ve just thought of something else. You talking about Cavendish puts me in mind of it. Do you remember Bellamy saying as how he had overslept that morning? He’d meant to go out the night before and watch the hut, but he felt so sleepy he dozed off and didn’t even wake at his usual time in the morning? Well now, what was the evidence given by Miss Cavendish?’ He licked his thumb and turned over the pages of a notebook. ‘“I went into my brother’s room,” ’ he recited in official monotone, ‘“and asked for some sleeping draught: he’d packed it in his luggage. He was awake and got up to get it.” Now, gentlemen’—he leant back triumphantly—‘what does that suggest to your minds?’
‘I think I can do that one,’ replied Blount dryly. ‘It suggests that Cavendish gave Bellamy some of the sleeping draught so that there should be no interference with what he proposed to do in the hut.’
‘He might have given me some too. I’d intended to stay on guard, but I dropped off and slept rather late. It might have been put in my coffee cup as they were passed along after dinner,’ said Nigel.
‘That means he must have found out somehow that you were down here to investigate at O’Brien’s request,’ said the inspector. ‘Will you lend me those notes a minute, sir?’
Bleakley handed the notebook over.
‘I see that after this statement by Miss Cavendish, her brother deposed that he went to bed soon after twelve but couldn’t get to sleep. He was still awake when Miss Cavendish went into his room at quarter to two. A man doesn’t carry sleepi
ng draught about with him for ornament. If he wasn’t able to go to sleep, why didn’t he take some of it? It suggests that he had not been back in his bedroom long before his sister came in.’
All three sat back as if by common consent. The first stage of the case against Edward Cavendish seemed to be satisfactorily erected. Inspector Blount lit another cigarette and took up the tale.
‘Those points of yours are very valuable to us, Mr Strangeways, but they will carry little weight in a court of law. Let us turn to the question of motive. It seems to me that, in the light of the fresh evidence you have given us, we shall have to discard Mr O’Brien’s will as a factor of primary importance in the crime. We do not know whether Cavendish was a beneficiary under the will. If he knew he was, and committed murder to get the money, he would not be likely to pretend ignorance of the contents of the will, for, when it comes to light, the fact that he feigned ignorance would at once cast suspicion on him. On the other hand, he would surely never destroy the will if he had committed murder in order to profit by it. It may be, of course, that—knowing his sister to be a legatee, and knowing that she would give him as much money as he needed out of her share—he planned to kill O’Brien. But, however that may turn out, I think we will all agree it was a subsidiary motive, if one at all.
‘Clearly Cavendish’s chief motive was revenge. That fits both the tone of the threatening letters and what we now know about his earlier days in Ireland. He falls in love with this girl, Judith Fear. The strength of his attachment is proved by the way he, a man of substance and reputation, consented to the rather childish and undignified expedient of sending letters to her through a girlfriend of hers.’
‘His sister told me, too,’ Nigel put in, ‘that she thought he had been very hard hit by a love affair in Ireland, and that’s why he had never married.’
The inspector looked at Nigel with a kind of paternal severity. ‘That is further confirmation,’ he said dryly. ‘In due course Cavendish finds that Miss Fear’s letters are becoming less and less affectionate, and in the end a letter comes from her old nurse to say that she has fallen in love with a gardener. That would be a severe blow, both to his affection and his pride. The nurse implores him to come over to Ireland and straighten things out, but he cannot get over, and has to content himself with writing to Judith Fear, urging her, no doubt, to cease from her madness and come back to her old lover. He presses his claims hard. Judith calls him “cruel”; the weight of his pleading, added to the predicament she is in, is too much for a young, inexperienced girl.’
‘What do you mean, “predicament”?’ asked Nigel, breaking into the inspector’s flowery discourse.
‘Well, there can’t be much doubt that she was going to have a baby. Her pallor, her change of manner, and what she finally did, all point to it. She told the nurse she wasn’t maybe, but a sensitive girl like that might well be afraid to confess it even to her old nurse. At any rate, the next thing Cavendish hears is that she has drowned herself. Imagine his state of mind. This young scapegrace has not only taken the girl away from him but has deserted her when she most needed him and as good as killed her. Cavendish can do nothing. Jack Lambert has disappeared, and there is nothing to connect him with Fergus O’Brien. But the desire for revenge is not extinguished by twenty years. O’Brien is brought one day to the house by Georgia Cavendish. Somehow or other Cavendish learns that he is Jack Lambert. We shall have to establish that link before we can bring a really sound case into court, and it may be very difficult unless we can trap Cavendish into giving himself away over it. It is quite possible that, when he first heard of Judith’s suicide, he asked for a detailed description of Jack Lambert, and he would be able to recognise him from that in spite of the changes time had made in his features.
‘Then comes the final provocation. The man who has taken Judith Fear away from him twenty years ago now robs him again. Lucilla Thrale, who is his mistress, leaves him for O’Brien. His mind is made up now, if it wasn’t before, that he will kill O’Brien. He writes the threatening letters. Very melodramatic, no doubt, but the whole case is melodramatic and the man is half mad with his hatred of O’Brien. He was a frequent visitor at Knott-Sloman’s roadhouse, and wrote the notes on the typewriter there so that there could be no possibility of their being traced back to him. His opportunity comes when he is invited to the Christmas party down here. He sends off the third note and makes his preparations. He knows that his sister has some poison, and prepares the nut as a second line of attack. His first line is to shoot O’Brien and stage it as a suicide: it is partly with that end in view that he wrote the threatening letters, to ensure that O’Brien should be armed.
‘When he arrives at Chatcombe he finds that the hut is the ideal place for a murder; away from the house, and soundproof. The next business is to get O’Brien there. No doubt he would have got him out into the hut on some other pretext, but it wasn’t necessary, O’Brien having planned to sleep there already. Perhaps Cavendish had guessed he would do so for safety. He dopes you and Bellamy to make sure there shall be no interference that night, should his opportunity arise. Then he watches.’
‘Where from?’ interrupted Nigel.
‘The veranda, most probably.’
‘Just on the off-chance that O’Brien would get out of bed and go for a stroll into the hut? Very sanguine of Cavendish.’
‘Well,’ said the inspector, rather nettled, ‘Cavendish may have made an appointment with O’Brien to meet him in the hut: or he may have discovered that Miss Thrale had asked O’Brien to meet her there. I can check up on that when we start asking Miss Thrale a few questions about one of the other developments of the case. The point is that O’Brien did go to the hut, and you’ve as good as proved that Cavendish did too. Surely you’re not going back on that, are you, Mr Strangeways?’
‘No, no. Certainly not. Pardon the interruption.’
‘Cavendish may have given O’Brien some very plausible reason for his coming to the hut, but I don’t think O’Brien would have been right off his guard at first. They talk for a bit, and then Cavendish pounces on him, and there’s a struggle in the course of which Cavendish turns the revolver against O’Brien and shoots him. The struggle was the first point at which his plans went wrong, because it left clues—the bruises on the wrist and the broken cufflink—which aroused your suspicions of the apparent suicide. Cavendish must have relied on lulling O’Brien’s watchfulness to the extent of being able to get at his gun without a struggle. He failed in that, but he had a bit of luck in finding in O’Brien’s pocket or on the table the note written by Miss Thra1e asking O’Brien to meet her in the hut. He keeps it for future use, to draw suspicion on to Miss Thrale should the suicide fake be exposed. He tidies up the mess, and prepares to leave. Then he discovers to his horror that the ground is thick with snow. He sits down to find a way out of the trap. Finally he puts on O’Brien’s shoes, walks backwards to the house, and everything is apparently OK.’
‘But Knott-Sloman has seen him enter the hut,’ put in the superintendent.
‘Uh-huh. And he may have seen a lot more. Anyway, the next morning Cavendish gets the shoes back into the hut and thinks he’s sitting pretty. He is soon disillusioned. The police suspect murder. He plants Lucilla Thrale’s note in O’Brien’s room for the police to find. But worse is to come. Knott-Sloman tells him he has seen him in the hut last night and demands a large sum for his silence. Cavendish is in desperation. His finances are in a precarious state and to buy off Knott-Sloman would ruin him. He temporises, but is determined that Knott-Sloman will have to go. So he puts the poisoned nut among the plateful by Sloman’s bedside. His anxiety and distraction of manner were due to the uncertainty whether Knott-Sloman might not go to the police with his story before he came to the fatal nut. On top of all this Lucilla has weighed in with another piece of blackmail. She will tell the police what motives Cavendish had for murdering O’Brien, unless he buys her silence. It may have been after this that Cavendish planted her note
in O’Brien’s room. At any rate, he is in a fearful predicament, and he very cleverly takes the first opportunity of spiking Lucilla’s guns by admitting to the police the motives he had for killing O’Brien.’
‘What about the other note?’ asked Nigel. ‘The one written by Knott-Sloman threatening action if O’Brien did not recompense Lucilla for deserting her?’
‘I should say Sloman did find it in the hut, in spite of his denial, and sent it off in the package of letters to be rid of it.’
‘But why on earth not burn it at once? It wasn’t of potential value, like Cavendish’s letters. Now suppose Arthur Bellamy had found it.’
Nigel’s supposition made both police officers lift up their heads in surprise. He continued:
‘Soon after I’d discovered O’Brien’s body I asked Arthur to look round the hut to see if anything was missing. He might easily have found that note. Now he was absolutely devoted to his master and was quite capable of taking justice into his own hands. He finds the note and it arouses vague suspicions in his mind. Later in the morning he confronts Knott-Sloman with it. Sloman sees the danger of this note getting into the hands of the police, and plays for time. He plans with Lucilla to lay out Bellamy and take the note from him. After lunch Lucilla, sitting in the lounge, rings the bell. Bellamy comes. Meanwhile Sloman gets the poker, hides behind the swing door. He cracks Bellamy on his way back to the kitchen, takes the note and hides the body and the poker.’