The Casebook of Augustus Maltravers

by Robert Richardson

  ‘I thought you said he was in London!’

  He pushed Jennifer Carrington roughly to one side as he leapt across to the doorway and tried to slam it closed but it flew open, sending him staggering backwards as Howard burst in. Jennifer Carrington ran to his side, throwing her arms round him. Seeing what he was holding, Maltravers moved to stand by Tess.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Howard demanded.

  ‘We were just having a little chat about murder,’ Maltravers replied with as much calmness as he could manage. ‘I wish I’d known you were here or I’d have been more careful.’

  ‘What’s he talking about?’ Howard asked Jennifer.

  ‘He’s guessed something somehow.’ She sobbed in terror. ‘He was just going to call the police.’

  ‘For God’s sake, I warned you we shouldn’t have come here,’ Tess murmured. ‘That thing looks real.’

  Standing next to the slight figure of Jennifer Carrington exaggerated Howard’s formidable build and the menace was heightened by the revolver in his hand. Maltravers had never been threatened with a gun before—he could not even remember ever having seen one—and he found that the blue-black end of the barrel carried a hypnotic fascination. Simply going straight to the police would have been considerably safer and more sensible. Geoffrey Howard and Jennifer Carrington had already committed one carefully planned and premeditated murder and were now in an isolated house with no witnesses, where they could kill again and run. If it had not been so terrifyingly real, it would have been a farcical recreation of a moth-eaten cliché.

  ‘How much do you know?’ Howard asked him.

  ‘Enough.’ Maltravers’s mind raced as he indicated the revolver. ‘And that won’t help you. I’ve told Malcolm and Lucinda Stapleton and they know we’ve come here tonight. If the police find two more bodies in this house you won’t be able to explain them away.’

  He waited anxiously, reflecting that it sounded like another ancient formula, as Howard remained silent. It could be an hour or more before Malcolm and Lucinda became concerned. He stiffened as Howard worked that out for himself.

  ‘We won’t be here.’ He turned to Jennifer Carrington. ‘Go and pack and we’ll catch a night flight from Manchester. We’ll be miles away before they find these two. Hurry up.’

  ‘And leave the books behind?’ Maltravers was frantically grasping at any argument he could think of. ‘That was the point of all this.’

  ‘Of course it was.’ Howard shrugged. ‘But we can’t do anything about that now can we? We’ll settle for the jewellery. That’s worth enough.’

  Maltravers felt Tess take hold of his hand and squeeze it very hard; he realised that their palms were sweating. As he tried to think, his mind was insanely screaming that both of them were within minutes of death. He was obsessed with the thought that the situation was the result of his own conceit and he had only himself to blame; but Tess, who had tried to warn him, would die as well, which was intolerable.

  ‘Think a minute,’ he said urgently. ‘You planned Charles’s murder and you can still get away with it—we’re in no position to stop you now. But do you really want to risk two more murders? You could lock us up somewhere in this place and still give yourselves time to get away.’

  Howard looked at him for what seemed a very long time, then turned to Jennifer Carrington. ‘Is there anywhere?’

  ‘They wouldn’t be able to get out of the cellar,’ she said. ‘And we could tie them up.’

  Had Maltravers been more detached, he would have had time to be fascinated that in such circumstances the mind of an agnostic could farcically throw up the name of St Barbara, patron saint of those in danger of sudden death. Waiting for Howard to decide, he put it down to some form of internal hysteria, but slipped in some sort of jumbled prayer.

  ‘All right,’ Howard said finally then turned to Jennifer Carrington. ‘But we’ll make absolutely sure. Get my stuff from upstairs.’

  ‘What stuff?’ Maltravers, who had felt a swarm of relief as Howard had agreed, had a sick feeling that he knew.

  ‘Heroin. Not enough to kill you, but you’ll be in no state to talk to anybody for a long time. Don’t worry.’ Howard smiled sourly. ‘I know what I’m doing. You’ll be all right—eventually.’

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ Tess whispered.

  Maltravers had a hideous image of Howard holding the revolver against Tess’s head as Jennifer Carrington made the first injection into his own arm. What it would be like after that was impossible to conceive but, faced with the threat of death, he discovered that you leapt at anything that offered survival. He was desperately trying to think of some argument to change Howard’s mind when the front doorbell rang.

  ‘Don’t answer it,’ Howard told Jennifer Carrington sharply. ‘They’ll go away.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Maltravers put in hastily. ‘Her car’s in the drive and there are lights on all over the place.’

  ‘They’ll go away,’ Howard repeated confidently.

  At least it bought them time; Howard would surely not shoot while there was someone outside who might hear. As they waited in silence, Maltravers moved slightly so that Tess was on his left. If he could push her to one side then dive at Howard’s feet, perhaps the bullet would go wide and he could…Howard gestured slightly with the gun, indicating they should move apart and stepped back, leaving an impossible distance between himself and Maltravers. The bell rang again.

  ‘Are you expecting anyone?’ Howard asked quietly. Jennifer Carrington shook her head. ‘All right, they’ll get fed up eventually.’

  Maltravers began to wonder how calm Howard really was. The hand holding the gun had twitched fractionally at the second ring of the bell. Would whoever it was outside hear if he shouted loudly enough? It would almost certainly mean Howard would shoot him, but in the panic that would follow Tess might somehow escape. Permutations of possible results rattled through his mind. Would Howard shoot Tess immediately then rush out to deal with the visitor in the same way? Or would he dash straight to the front door first? Howard raised the revolver and held it towards them, extended hands clasped rigidly in front of him. Suddenly he seemed chillingly controlled.

  Silence stretched through the room then it was broken by the bell again, but this time it rang endlessly. The shrill single note drilled on and on, seeming to grow louder and more insistent as it filled every corner of the house. After half a minute, Howard became agitated.

  ‘For fuck’s sake get rid of them!’ he snapped. ‘Go on!’

  Jennifer Carrington left the library and closed the door. The bell kept ringing. Howard mouthed the words ‘keep quiet’ at Maltravers then swung the gun in a slight arc towards Tess. He would shoot her first. In the hall the relentless noise abruptly stopped and there was an echoing quiet. They heard voices but the words were muffled, then a woman shouted and there was the sound of something falling as Jennifer Carrington screamed Howard’s name again.

  Maltravers tensed as Howard jerked his head round, keeping the gun raised. Almost immediately there was another shriek, this time of pain. Howard grabbed hold of the door and opened it; Jennifer Carrington was on the floor of the hall, struggling to free herself from another figure. Howard hesitated for a second then dashed towards them and Maltravers leapt through the library door after him, hurling one leg forwards to trip him up. He was half aware of the gun clattering across the parquet floor and Tess racing past as he clawed at Howard, then he was desperately trying to grab hold of the man when there was a thundering explosion and huge shards of clattering glass cascaded down from the frame of a portrait on one wall. A bullet hole piercing his neck, Sir Francis Carrington, JP stared impassively at the tableau of shocked and paralysed figures. Maltravers scrambled to his feet and ran over to Tess.

  ‘Noisy but effective,’ he grasped, glancing up at the portrait as he took the revolver from her limp and shaking hand. ‘Good shot.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid!’ Her voice was trembling. ‘The bloody thing just went off!’ />
  Maltravers whirled round and pointed the gun at Howard as he heard him start to move.

  ‘I haven’t much idea about how these things work, but at this range the odds are against you,’ he warned, fervently hoping Howard would not call his bluff. If he had to shoot, he could end up hitting anything or anybody, including himself. ‘Tess, call the police and we’ll need an ambulance as well.’

  As Tess went back into the library, Maltravers crossed to Charlotte Quinn, lying dazed just inside the front door. He stooped and removed the hunting knife from limp fingers. Jennifer Carrington groaned on the floor next to her, clasped hands trying to staunch the blood flowing from her thigh. Watching Howard carefully, Maltravers helped Charlotte to a chair. She glared at him resentfully.

  ‘Why didn’t you let me kill her? She’s going to have everything.’

  ‘No she’s not,’ he promised. ‘She’ll never get Carwelton Hall or anything in it.’

  Howard had moved next to Jennifer, cradling her head in one arm, vivid crimson spreading through the handkerchief he was holding against her wound. Tess came back into the hall.

  ‘See if you can find some bandages,’ Maltravers told her. ‘Try in the bathroom.’ Howard looked up at him with loathing as Tess went upstairs.

  ‘All right, you clever bastard. How did you get on to us?’

  ‘Just two little mistakes,’ Maltravers told him. ‘And you made both of them. Sherlock Holmes helped me see them.’

  ‘I’m not in the mood for jokes,’ Howard snapped.

  ‘None of us is,’ said Maltravers feelingly. ‘However, I’m not joking. It happened after dinner the other evening, although I didn’t spot anything at the time. When you walked in front of me through that library door, you didn’t bang your head like I did, and you’re taller than I am. How did you know you had to duck if you hadn’t been here before? Charles can’t have warned you or he’d have called the same thing to me. Then, as you were leaving, you went left out of the gates instead of right towards the motorway. You can learn a lot during ten years in Nigeria, but not the safest way to turn out of Carwelton Hall because of the bend.

  ‘The door was like the dog in Conan Doyle’s story Silver Blaze, where Holmes makes the famous observation that it failed to bark in the night—something that should have happened but didn’t. When you left, you did it in reverse. Something you shouldn’t have done, you did.’

  Tess came downstairs with a roll of bandages and gave it to Howard who tore open Jennifer Carrington’s skirt from the gash the knife had made and began to wind the material round the cut. She had fainted. Tess crossed the hall and put her arm around Charlotte Quinn. Howard ripped the end of the bandage apart and tied it before raising his face to Maltravers defiantly.

  ‘Is that all you’ve got?’ he asked scornfully. ‘Accusing me of murder because I didn’t bang my head and how I drove out of the gate? You’re out of your mind.’

  ‘Believe that if you want,’ Maltravers replied indifferently. ‘You’ll find out how much more I know eventually. In the meantime you’d better start thinking up an explanation both for threatening to kill us just now and that heroin you’ve got upstairs.’

  He turned to Charlotte Quinn. ‘You shouldn’t have come here tonight. Would it have made things any better?’

  ‘It would for her,’ Tess told him sharply. ‘I’ve done the wrong thing for the right reasons before now. Anyway, she saved our lives. We shouldn’t have come either.’

  ‘I know,’ Maltravers agreed. ‘But Howard might have killed her if we hadn’t done.’

  12

  Alan Morris had discovered that, planted in forgotten childhood, some deep-rooted personal belief in what constituted sin denied him the final shield of untruth. Whatever else he could do, he was finally unable to lie. Lambert’s professional instincts had recognised the weakness and relentlessly exploited it, cutting off each avenue of prevarication and escape until defeat was wearily accepted. As the whole story poured out with increasing willingness and a perverse sense of relief, the room had turned into a confessional.

  Once the barriers were breached, Morris appeared compelled to confess everything. Eyes glittering with increasing excitement, he began with the four horses backed in an accumulator bet on the afternoon of the murder, the winnings from one passing on to the next. First a winner at 100-8, then another at evens, followed by a terrifyingly close 15-4 by half a length. Then the 20-1 outsider, agonisingly trailing in fifth as Morris had listened to the commentary in a betting shop. Five thousand desperate pounds, multiplying with ecstatic promise of deliverance until it vanished in the mud of Doncaster. The all-consuming thrill had possessed Morris again as he talked, the compulsion to re-taste the intoxication of what might have been growing irresistible. For another hour he went back over years secretly filled with alternate elation of victory and growing despair of loss. He had stopped abruptly, staring at Lambert in disbelief as though unable to grasp what had happened. It had taken the suspicion of being a murderer to drive him to admit that he was a compulsive gambler, that the respectable, correct vicar was the helpless victim of a terrible sickness. His façade had crumbled and Lambert was left facing a bewildered man stripped of his reputation, withered by his weakness. The vicar had looked at his confessor in supplication, but there could be no absolution.

  ‘Whose money was it, Mr Morris?’

  There was a very long silence.

  ‘I think I would like to make a statement.’

  With its immediate comprehension of the situation, Lambert’s quietly-spoken question had torn away the last shreds of Alan Morris’s spurious self-delusion; the tired reply had acknowledged his own destruction.

  He had been released with a warning that there would be further police enquiries and Lambert’s incredulity had been mixed with an overwhelming relief that Duggie Lydden was still his man. As he learned about the events at Carwelton Hall, he began to rumble like a volcano. Jennifer Carrington had been taken to hospital where the police were waiting until she could be questioned. The others were giving their statements and the spectre of wrongful arrest reappeared.

  ‘That bugger again?’ he exploded when he heard Maltravers’s name. ‘First he tells us about seeing Lydden’s car and then comes up with the story of the safe combination. Now this. Is he a private detective or something?’

  ‘No, sir. He’s a writer,’ Moore told him.

  ‘What of? Bloody fairy-tales?’ Lambert’s giant goblin features, never attractive, twisted into hideous fury. ‘Where is he?’

  He rolled tank-like through the corridors to the interview room where Maltravers had just completed his statement. The gargantuan detective picked it up and read it for himself then looked at him with distaste.

  ‘You’ve been putting yourself about a bit haven’t you?’ he said. ‘How did you find all this out?’

  ‘Inspiration, guesswork and luck,’ Maltravers replied. ‘Some of the details you’ll have to get from Geoffrey Howard and Jennifer Carrington, but I’ve filled in as much as I can.’

  ‘And you’re saying they killed Charles Carrington?’ Lambert’s tone defied him to agree.

  ‘Yes. And they fitted up Lydden as what our American friends call a patsy beforehand. I inadvertently helped strengthen the case against him by seeing the connection between the safe combination and the Sherlock Holmes book.’

  Lambert sank into a chair like a half-set jelly. ‘You’ve got a gift for theories, my friend. Just go over this little lot for me. We’ve got all night if necessary.’

  ‘It won’t take that long,’ Maltravers assured him. ‘It began when Howard met Gillian Carrington in Manchester. Probably he was her supplier. She must have told him about the Conan Doyle books and the safe combination. After she died, Howard decided to get those books.

  ‘I don’t know how long he’d known Jennifer, but he was certainly her boyfriend before she became a secretary at Carrington’s firm. Obviously the first part of their plan was that she should marry him i
f possible, which turned out to be easier than they expected. She then started the affair with Lydden because he was stupid enough for what they wanted.’

  Lambert sat with the stillness of a soporific gorilla, but needle sharp eyes burned as he listened.

  ‘The murder was very intricate,’ Maltravers went on. ‘Jennifer set off for Manchester all right, but returned shortly afterwards. She may have driven to Forton services on the M6 where Howard could have picked her up and brought her back in his car in case anyone spotted her red Fiesta. He’d spent the first part of the morning in the city buying things at busy shops and using her cash card at the bank to start building up her story that she’d been there all day.

  ‘When Lydden arrived at Carwelton Hall at lunchtime she was there just as he said and they went to bed. That would have given Howard time to go to Lydden’s house—Jennifer obviously lied about losing the key he gave her—and steal his shotgun. At the same time, he could have hidden the Conan Doyle books there.’

  ‘Just a minute,’ Lambert interrupted. ‘How do you know where the police found the books? We haven’t revealed that.’

  ‘Jennifer Carrington told me. When she came to Brook Cottage after you released her, all sorts of things came out, almost certainly aimed at putting her in the clear and making things difficult for Lydden.’

  Lambert grunted, temporarily retreating as Maltravers continued.

  ‘After Lydden left Carwelton Hall, Howard took Jennifer Carrington back to wherever her car was and she really went to Manchester. On her way to Timperley she called at Sherratt & Hughes and bought the book for Charles, using her credit card. She claimed that she went straight there after drawing the money from the bank in the morning, didn’t she? I was in that shop today and it’s so busy that the chances of the staff being able to remember if any one customer called in during the morning or afternoon can’t be very great. It was a risk, but have you been able to confirm exactly what time she was actually there?’