And Death Came Too

by Hull, Richard

  “You know best,” was the equable answer.

  “I do. But ‘a man you hardly knew’. Are you sure of that?”

  “Only as a pedagogue. One hardly counts that.”

  “You hadn’t seen him since?”

  “I had a note from him—that’s all.”

  “Sure?”

  “Why, yes.”

  “But no! That note was delivered by hand. In any case, that was Mr Yeldham’s intention, but as chance would have it, he met you in the street. I rather suspect that when Miss Westbury sent him a photograph of you, knowing that you had been at Finchingfield and wondering if you were a distant relation of his, that it occurred to him that it was a portrait of the man to whom he was writing. So he went round”—Scoresby brushed aside his unnecessary and unusual verbosity and returned to the point—“and as I say, it happened that you were able to take him, as you thought, unobserved into your sitting-room without your landlady knowing. But she did know someone was there and that precautions were being taken to prevent her from listening. It took her an unexpectedly long while to come to me, because she had to confess to eavesdropping; but she did it in the end.”

  “As I said at the start, I don’t want to spoil your fun; but I must point out that, according even to your own cock-and-bull story, she knew nothing. No doubt her inventive genius is still engaged in fabricating new details, but they will become less and less convincing, you know. By the way, how am I supposed to have done this murder, and why? Not that you need answer, sergeant. Allow me to administer approximately the same warning to you as you obliged me with.”

  “I presume you made up your mind directly you knew that Mr Yeldham had found out who you were and was going to tell Miss Westbury where you were, and that you were engaged to Miss Hands.”

  “I see. I forget if that was broken off before or after.”

  “After. Sometime after. Having made up your mind, you next stole the knife from Mr Hands. Then there was no difficulty in slipping away from the dance—”

  “Stole the knife from me!” Martin broke out. “But that is exactly what incriminated me, and at that time, as you have just said, he was in process of becoming my brother-in-law.”

  “Precisely, sir. That’s exactly why he took it—in order to implicate you.”

  “I don’t believe it.” Martin, despite everything, was determined to be honest and, if possible, loyal to a man whom he had thought to be his friend.

  “You forget, sir,” Scoresby answered, “that his profession was matrimony. Old Mr Westbury was popularly supposed to have saved a good deal. Hence his first marriage, when he induced Miss Westbury to leave the people with whom Mr Yeldham had put her in the south of France, and persuaded them to keep quiet by alleging a romantic elopement. But even then he had his doubts, and anyhow she was to be only the first step; so he uses the passport he has stolen because he was lazy and it was handy, and he really did think that he had made the marriage invalid.”

  “You ought to write scenarios for the films, sergeant. Do go on.”

  “I shall—go on, I mean.” Scoresby brushed Lansley’s remark aside and went on, addressing himself to Hands, “You see, she was only to be a start. Your sister was to be the next, and she would be a richer woman if you were dead. It would save him the trouble of killing you if he could get you hanged, and so he started to plant the crime on you; but when Miss Hands and he quarrelled, he began to wonder if he had not better try for Miss Carmichael. After that he did not worry so much about you and made his next two mistakes. He admitted that he had heard the name Westbury—a small point, but it made me look in his direction—and then he said that he had seen her.”

  “So I did.”

  “Certainly you did—on your way to Somerset House.”

  “So you were trying to find out which of us was the richer!” Despite a feeling that she was kicking a man when he was down, Patricia found herself quite unable to keep quiet. After all, she had had a good deal of provocation.

  “Not a bit!” Lansley answered unconcernedly as he lit a cigarette. “It’s true I saw Yeldham on the morning that he died, and that he then convinced me of what I had never believed before—namely, that I was really married to Maud—at least that perhaps I might be, though I still think as my name and her age were incorrect, we were not. But, assuming that my childish freak, for she knew well enough that I only intended to make her my mistress, had unexpectedly some substance in it, then I wanted to know what had happened to her money. In short, I was looking into her father’s will of which Yeldham had been trustee—and a nasty, dirty, embezzling trustee at that. Of course, it would have been easier to get the money back from him when he was alive, but as he was dead, there was still his estate. I did look at that too.”

  “Was that all?” Scoresby asked with apparent innocence.

  “Oh, as I was there, and just to see what I had lost, I did look into Patricia’s affairs. The amount of her parent’s will and so on. It wasn’t really very helpful.”

  “Oh, no!” Scoresby deliberately sneered. “But you did look, just in case you might change your mind again, I suppose. And you found that if Mr Hands were out of the way, Miss Hands would have to have all the money including the shares in the company that employed you.”

  “I wouldn’t have let it be run by him, anyhow,” Patricia stated firmly. “Calling Mr Yeldham an embezzler without any grounds.”

  “With every grounds. And I should run that business a great deal better than the mess your brother makes of it, anyhow, with all his airs and superiority.”

  “I think not.” Patricia’s voice was full of contempt. “And, though I never knew Mr Yeldham, I think it’s a dirty trick to say things about him now he’s dead. I’m quite sure he never stole a farthing.”

  Unexpectedly Salter agreed.

  “People like Yeldham are crashing bores, but on the whole they’re too stupid to steal money.”

  “And some people,” Lansley snapped back, “are too clever to see the obvious. Why, even Maud, who doted on him, knew that. In fact, she admitted it, and if she said so I suppose you will begin to listen. You seem, all of you, to set a lot of store by Maud.”

  “And when did she say so?” Scoresby asked quickly.

  “In this very room.”

  Lansley stopped abruptly. The faces that had surrounded him had not had a friendly expression on them for some time as he had had to admit to his relations with Maud Westbury, and as his conduct to Patricia had been more clearly exposed. Hands alone had been inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, at least so far as to putting the blame on himself was concerned. But now he, as well as all the rest, had a shrinking look in his eyes; and suddenly Lansley saw how completely impossible it was going to be to explain away his last remark. For a moment he thought that he would try one more bluff on the lines that he had met her there during the afternoon of the day Yeldham died, but the words would not come, and after a pause of thirty seconds or so that seemed an age, it was clear that he had been too slow. He had been so quick before, in his own opinion, though even he saw how damning the appearances would have been against him. Still, he had been proud to have produced his answers so glibly, and prouder still of how he had tricked Maud when he had met her in the room where he now was, and suddenly he decided that even if he could produce no further defence, they should know how superlatively able he had been then.

  “Poor Maud,” he began. “I could always do what I liked with her. With any woman, for that matter.” He glanced contemptuously at Patricia and barely even paid Barbara that sarcastic tribute, and then went on:

  “It was just as I was turning on the fire with that old hypocrite’s head that she must have arrived. Anyhow, I didn’t hear her, and so I walked out of the room straight into her. I hadn’t seen her for four years, but I had known it was possible that she would turn up—she always did when she wasn’t wanted—and I was ready for any emergency. I had some ideas in my mind, but with a flash of genius I discarded them a
nd said quite simply, ‘I’ve just killed Yeldham—for your sake.’

  “She just said, ‘Mine?’ in that stupid way she had, and it took me a little while to explain to her that he had stolen her father’s money, and that now it would be easier to get it back.”

  Hands straightened in his chair and began to point out that only a few minutes before Lansley had said that he had had more chance of doing that if Yeldham had remained alive, but Lansley brushed the criticism aside.

  “Circumstances alter explanations, and whichever is true, I was convincing Maud. And I did. She was a fool, was Maud, but she was always fond of me, and I persuaded her not only that Yeldham had taken the money, but that the best chance for both of us was for her to keep quiet; that if she did not, she would get no money and I should be hanged. To this day, I don’t know how I made her believe it all; but I did, and it would have been all right if she had done what I told her.”

  “Which was?” Salter asked.

  “To go away at once. Unfortunately, she was slow, and I daren’t stay, and once somebody else arrived, her only idea of what to do was to stay here and keep absolutely silent. Then, having called as much attention to herself as she could, she brightly left as dramatically as possible. She did get away, though, and if she had had the sense to lie quiet in London or some big town instead of a small village, it might still have worked; but, really, from the moment she stayed she was always a danger. Do any of you know why she stayed?”

  “Yes,” Salter answered. “At least I think so. When I came back into the hall and found the knife—”

  “Oh, you did, did you?” Lansley put in quietly.

  “Yes. You’ll have to ask the sergeant about that. I can’t repeat it all. When I came back I must have made a little noise, and I think she bolted into here, and then her curiosity overcame her, I suppose, and I’m practically certain she watched me through the keyhole, and then she lost her head and didn’t go. So she was still here when you came back.”

  “And that was a nice shock for me, which I think you will all agree I carried off magnificently. Really, it was my ingenuity and will-power which made her go then. It was too late, as it turns out, but only just. I could always make—Maud—do just as I wanted.”

  The slight pause before and after the name and the glance that accompanied it made Patricia know that he was still mentally including her in those whom he thought he could dominate, and her temper rose sharply:

  “But not in the end. She revolted, didn’t she, and tried to blackmail you? Otherwise you wouldn’t have had—”

  Lansley jumped up in a passion.

  “Are you determined to leave me nothing? Not even my self-respect?” he shouted.

  Left-Handed Death

  Richard Hull

  Chapter One

  “I tell it you for the strange coolness which the young fellow … expressed as he was writing his confession. ‘I murd—’ he stopped and asked ‘How do you spell murdered?’”

  Horace Walpole. Letter 863.

  Arthur Shergold walked into his office on the first floor and shut the door behind him with exaggerated care. Then he went across to the window and closed that too, despite the hottest April sun that he could remember. There was a look of pleasure in his eyes as he noiselessly shut out the last breath of air.

  It was gone, however, as he turned round to face young Guy Reeves who was sitting negligently in the chair by a writing desk, with one leg thrown over the arm. There was a sleepy, far away expression on the young man’s face, and he appeared to be pleased with himself.

  Shergold leant over him and peered closely into the half-shut black eyes. In a half whisper he asked a question that was almost a statement. “So you have done it?”

  For a moment there was silence while Reeves looked a little petulantly at the window. “Isn’t it rather hot?” he suggested.

  Shergold’s thin lips met determinedly above his heavy chin, but he did not try to avoid the evasion. “We haven’t got the fire alight. And anyhow you can’t be too careful when you’re talking about such things as—such things as we are going to talk about.” He paused and then went on. “We are going to talk about it, you know.”

  But Reeves hardly seemed to be listening. His eyelids kept on half-closing and concealing his big dark eyes. His left arm was stretched out on the desk showing that three fingers of it had gone, leaving nothing beyond the knuckles while as well the thumb and the first finger still remained. He was in a queer way rather proud of that hand; it was both his proof that he had fought—in Tunis as it happened—and his means of getting his own way by playing on this disability. It was almost more a convenience to him than a handicap, and he had no intention of concealing it. He looked down on it now as he spoke. “We may talk—since you insist. But I don’t see why I should be stifled while I do it.”

  “Oh! Security!” Shergold tried to laugh it off, but there was a hint of determination behind his apparently careless tone.

  “Security be blowed. It nearly always was nonsense. You’ll be telling me next that Cynthia Trent is listening at the keyhole.”

  “The key—” Shergold moved rapidly to the door and flung it open. The few yards of passage that led to the top of the staircase were empty, nor was there anyone, a quick glance told him, in Reeves room or in the room next door, once (when such things had been necessary) a fire-watchers’ room and still fitted up though rather simply as a bedroom. There was another door at the top of the stairs which could be used to shut off the three rooms from the rest of the offices of the Shergold Engineering Company Ltd and make of them almost a self-contained flat. With a gesture of impatience, as if he was cross with himself for not having thought of it before, the founder and chairman of the Company shut the outer door and locked it. Again he shut the office door with unnecessary care. “Better be safe than sorry,” he remarked with a feeble giggle that seemed out of character with his determined appearance.

  The giggle was apparently the last straw. Reeves got up very slowly and drew himself up to his full six foot two. He was an inch or two taller than Shergold and he made what use he could of that. “Are you having the impertinence,” he asked, “to take my remarks about Cynthia seriously? To suggest that she could really listen at a keyhole?”

  “Hullo! This is a new—no, of course I am not. Last person in the world. But there’s no point in running risks. You’ve avoided them so far, haven’t you?”

  “Of course I have. What do you take me for? A blithering idiot?” Reeves seemed mollified and once more he sank back into the revolving writing chair and yawned. Shergold looked at him keenly and wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. “Perhaps it is a bit hot,” he admitted grudgingly and with a swift change of idea he flung open the two windows top and bottom. “Have it just as you like,” he said. “Oh, never mind if the papers do blow about.”

  “But I do mind. I simply cannot be bothered to go on picking them up all the time. Those are Foster’s last figures that nearly went out of the window then. Can’t you keep a sense of proportion? Shut ’em all if you like.”

  “Thanks. Really I think it is best. You can never be sure of April. Not even in 1945. And we must not lose anything of Foster’s. Not now.”

  “No, certainly not now.” There was a pause and then almost irrelevantly he went on, “Was there anything of interest in those figures?”

  “Not really. Further demands that we repay money to the Government. With every contract finished and closed down and no sign of any new ones coming! How he hopes we can refund money, I’ve no idea.”

  “Why haven’t we got any more contracts?”

  “I don’t know. Foster’s fault, I think. All this prying into our accounts. He—or rather the Government—is entitled to, I suppose—in fact, I know they are, or I wouldn’t have let him—but all the same, it’s more than a darned nuisance and I think he’s put the Ministry against us. These components for instance.” He picked up a steel tube with a heavy end to it most delicately machined.
“I hoped we were going to get a decent contract for them which would have kept us going nicely. But apparently there’s nothing doing. So I repeat, I’m almost sure that he has put the Ministry against us.”

  “Well, he won’t do that anymore.”

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