He pushed open the massive door in the Gothic-looking porch, which was unlocked, and led Andrew into a large, square hall. It had a high ceiling, ornamented with plaster fruits and flowers, a floor of slippery-looking cream-coloured tiles and a wide staircase covered in an aged Turkey carpet. A plump cupid, very decently draped, held up a lamp at the bottom of the stairs. As Nicholas Ryan had warned Andrew, it struck him at once that there was a disagreeable chill in the place.
“Come in here,” Nicholas said, opening a door. “It’s not as morgue-like as the other rooms.”
It was a smallish room, which Andrew thought had once been somebody’s study or office. It had one tall window with dark-green velvet curtains framing it, a mahogany desk against one wall, a remarkably small iron grate in the middle of an ornate marble mantelpiece, two leather-covered armchairs and a bookcase filled with heavy volumes of what looked like a very old-fashioned encyclopaedia. It was sombre and far from welcoming, but at least sunshine was pouring in at the window and there was a tray with bottles and glasses on the desk.
Nicholas went to the desk, asked Andrew what he would have and when he asked for whisky and soda poured out a considerably stronger one than any to which Andrew was accustomed. He did the same for himself.
“And now,” he said, indicating to Andrew that he should sit down in one of the armchairs and taking the other himself, “tell me why you really wanted to come here, because you aren’t thinking of opening any old people’s home, are you? And you aren’t interested in the house. Who could be? So what do you really want?”
As he spoke the flicker of mockery had returned to his eyes. “I’m as transparent as that, am I?” Andrew said. He sipped some whisky.
“You weren’t totally convincing, anyway,” Nicholas answered. “I wondered if perhaps it was just that you wanted to get away from Naomi. It’s odd how she affects some people. Of course I’m very fond of her myself, but I’ve an odd sort of mind, you see. I find those fantasies of hers really entertaining. I keep wondering what she’ll come up with next. What was it today? That Mike’s left her for the Himalayas to go into a Buddhist monastery, or that he’s sailing a boat single-handed round the world?”
“She did say it was confidential,” Andrew answered cautiously.
Nicholas laughed. “Then shall I guess what it was? It’s that he’s an agent for MI5. Wasn’t that it?”
“She did seem to suspect something of the sort.”
“Or perhaps it’s that he belongs to a gang of crooks in London who’ve probably murdered him. But don’t get her wrong. She’s a dear girl who’ll do absolutely anything for anyone who’s in trouble. When the Gleeson kid disappeared—I’m sure you’ve heard about that—and Leslie Gleeson’s been nearly round the bend ever since, Naomi’s been splendid. Of course, she rather enjoys playing the sympathetic friend. All the same, I sometimes think if it hadn’t been for her, Leslie might have killed Jim because of what he’d done to Colin, and then probably she’d have killed herself as well. Still, that wasn’t why you actually wanted to come round here, was it? So what was it? A pressing desire for my company?”
Andrew decided to go as near to the truth as he could.
“As a matter of fact, you aren’t so very far wrong,” he said. “I was hearing about you yesterday from Constance and Mollie and I thought it might be interesting to know you better. I’m always interested, and I admit to some degree suspicious, when I hear about people who are said to be indifferent to money. So very few people are.”
“So that’s what they said about me, is it?”
“More or less.”
“It’s completely untrue, of course. I was almost unbearably disappointed when I heard Aunt Hilda had left nearly all her money to Mollie. But I’ve never held it against Mollie herself, if that’s what’s worrying you. And I never thought of contesting the will, or anything like that. Mollie isn’t worrying that I still might try to do that, is she?”
Andrew gave a slight, ambiguous shrug of his shoulders.
“It was a perfectly good will and quite reasonable in the circumstances,” Nicholas said. “Mollie had lived with my aunt for fifteen years and they’d been close friends. She looked after her devotedly when she became almost helpless after having a stroke and she deserved all she got. There was never any question of undue influence. And the will was witnessed by David Pegler—he was my aunt’s doctor—and Lorna Grace, the district nurse you’ve just met, both of whom are very respectable citizens.”
“But it wasn’t drawn up by a solicitor?”
“No, I don’t believe it was. But it was all perfectly legal, though as a matter of fact there was a question… But there was nothing in that.” Nicholas frowned slightly as he looked at Andrew inquiringly. “I suppose Mollie isn’t suffering from a bad conscience about it all? I mean, about having inherited so much when all I’ve got is this white elephant of a house. She’s the kind of person who might think that was unfair. But if that’s what you were sent round here to investigate—I mean, to find out what my feelings are about the whole matter and do I think she cheated me—you can tell her to forget it. I’ve a reasonable income inherited from my father, who was a quite successful surgeon and I’m able to live in idleness. Perhaps it would be better for me if I couldn’t, but that’s how it is. And I’ve been told that sooner or later I ought to get a couple of hundred thousand for the house. And I was never a particularly good nephew to my aunt. I’d sometimes let two or three years pass without coming to see her, and then I’d only stay for a day or two. We weren’t very fond of one another. It’s true I somehow always took for granted that she’d leave me her money because of the habit one tends to have of thinking that money will stay in the family. But really I rather admire Aunt Hilda for disregarding that sort of nonsense. She left what she had to the person she cared for most.”
“Are you doing anything now?” Andrew asked, remembering what Constance had told him of how this young man drifted from one thing to another.
“Nothing at all,” Nicholas said. “As I told you, I’ve enough of my own to get by on. I’ve a quite pleasant flat in Fulham and from time to time I try my hand at a little freelance journalism, but the cheques I get for it are rather few and far between. Luckily, that doesn’t matter to me.”
“What was the question about the will that you just mentioned?”
“Oh, that. A muddle of some sort. According to Pegler and Lorna Grace, who were coming in to see my aunt almost every day at that time, they witnessed two wills, about a month apart. But they didn’t know what was in either of them, and the second will, if there really was one, was never found. Mrs. Grainger seemed to be the only person who perhaps knew something about it. Incidentally, in the will that was proved, she was left quite a generous legacy. Anyway, she claimed that my aunt, who was half paralyzed and couldn’t do much for herself, managed to tear up some papers about three days before she died and asked her to get rid of them. And when we came to look for the second will, the only one we found was the one that was made a month before. So I think my aunt just changed her mind at the last moment and destroyed the thing, because, you see, the only other person who could have destroyed it was Mollie, and I find it hard to see her doing that. Not impossible, perhaps, but hard, don’t you think so?”
Andrew nodded thoughtfully. A very disturbing idea had just occurred to him, but he did his best to keep his face expressionless.
“Of course, I could have destroyed the thing myself,” Nicholas went on, “because I was here on the spot. I was paying Aunt Hilda one of my rare visits when she took it into her head to make this new will. Actually I didn’t even know she’d done it. Pegler and Lorna Grace said nothing about it at the time. But if I’d known, and no one can prove I didn’t, and I’d found that I wasn’t even going to be left this magnificent mansion, I might have burnt the thing to make sure I got something. Or I might have burnt the wrong will by mistake. That’s a possibility you might consider. If the second will left me far more
than the first, and I thought I was burning the first when in fact I’d got hold of the second, it might be all my own fault. Not very likely, somehow, but such things can happen.”
He spoke with detachment, as if it were not of himself that he was talking.
Andrew stood up.
“I’ve taken up enough of your time,” he said. “Thanks for the drink.”
“And have you got what you came for?” Nicholas asked.
Andrew met the young man’s smile with a smile of his own.
“I’m not sure,” he answered truthfully. “About Mrs. Wakeham…”
“Yes?”
“If her stories about her husband’s disappearance are all fantasies, as you suggest, hasn’t he got very tolerant employers? The truth about them is said to be that they’re a firm of stockbrokers, isn’t it? And she claims that she’s put them off by saying Wakeham’s in hospital. But if that was the case, wouldn’t they have expected him to send a medical certificate or something? You don’t think by any chance…” He hesitated.
“Well?” Nicholas said.
“Oh, that one at least of those fantasies is the truth. I mean that he’s working for people who know quite well where he is.”
“MI5, indeed!” Nicholas laughed. “My own belief, if you want to know what it is, is that he isn’t working for anyone at all. I believe he was sacked some time ago when he first decided to go off for some time on his own, and he’s only been putting on a show of having a job in London while in fact he’s been fairly frantically trying to find another. And I think Naomi knows it and that’s why she’s so desperately worried about money. Because that at least I think is true. She’s really worried. But whether or not she knows where Mike is I haven’t the faintest idea. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s just been lucky enough to find a rich woman to keep him. He may be living luxuriously in the South of France, or some such place, by now.”
He stood up and opened the door for Andrew.
“I believe Mollie and Constance are old friends of yours,” he said.
“Yes,” Andrew replied.
“You’re someone they’d turn to if they were in trouble of any kind.”
“Perhaps. What kind of trouble had you in mind?”
“Nothing special. Anyway, now you can reassure Mollie, can’t you, that I don’t harbour any resentment against her because she inherited what I thought was coming to me? I was a fool to think I could rely on family feeling without working at it and I deserved what I got.”
“How long are you staying here?” Andrew asked.
“I’m not sure. A week or two. I want to stir up the house agents in Maddingleigh about this house and see to a few things. I’m sorry you didn’t really want to buy it.”
He saw Andrew to the front door. As he started down the drive he was aware that the young man remained in the doorway for some time, looking after him.
A number of thoughts were churning round in Andrew’s mind, and if in themselves they were disturbing, they at least had the merit of keeping brave Horatius at bay. He had not given a thought to him all that morning.
All the same, Andrew did not like the idea which Nicholas had indirectly suggested to him that Mollie might be the person who had disposed of Hilda Ryan’s second will. Yet she could have been. In the first place, she had been on the spot and could easily have done it. Also she had benefitted greatly by the first will and might perhaps have done far less well by the second. Nicholas Ryan had visited his grandaunt just before her death and perhaps had been at his most attractive and affectionate and had roused in her the feeling that after all he was her only living relative and that money should be kept in the family. Besides that, Andrew felt fairly sure that Nicholas himself believed that Mollie had destroyed the will.
But if he did, then there could be two reasons for his doing so. One of them was simply that she had had both motive and opportunity. The other was far more complicated. It was that Nicholas was the person who had received the letter that had been meant for Mollie, a letter that threatened to expose her for having destroyed the will and so confirmed his already existing suspicions that she had done this. But if that was so, then it almost certainly meant another important thing. It meant that the letter that Mollie had received, accusing her of murder, had been intended for Nicholas Ryan. And that probably meant that Andrew had spent the morning drinking and chatting with a murderer. A very charming one, but nevertheless, a murderer.
Chapter Three
But if Nicholas Ryan was a murderer, the next question was: whom had he murdered?
Mike Wakeham, because Nicholas was in love with his wife? He had not spoken of her as if he was in love with her.
An old man who was said to have gone to Australia? Why should Nicholas have done that? To oblige the old man’s daughters, who had not had quite the nerve to do the deed themselves? It seemed unlikely.
The wife of Dr. Pegler? But as the letter had referred to a male corpse being buried, she seemed to be out of it.
An eleven-year-old boy? Why do people kill children? A lot of people do it for all sorts of reasons, most of them peculiarly horrible. But did Nicholas Ryan seem to be the sort of person who would feel impelled to commit the more perverse sort of crime? He gave the impression of being fairly normal. But what murderer is normal? So who could tell?
Suddenly it occurred to Andrew that even if Nicholas seemed to know what might have been in the letter that ought to have gone to Mollie, it did not necessarily mean that he was a murderer. It might be simply that he had written it himself. He might be the blackmailer.
A remaining question that Andrew asked himself as he walked back to Mollie’s house was how much of all these matters that were going through his mind he should discuss with Constance. Sooner or later he would of course have to do this, but should he do it now?
A chance saved him from having to make up his mind about this immediately, for as he turned in at the gate he saw that someone had arrived at the house just before him and was now hammering on the door with the knocker.
It was a young woman, probably in her late twenties, slim, red-haired, very pale and very distraught. She might have been good-looking if her eyelids had not been swollen by recent tears and her face set in a grimace of misery. She was in the uniform of the day, soiled jeans and a loose shirt. She did not seem to be aware of Andrew walking up the path after her.
The door was opened after a moment by Mollie.
The girl threw herself into her arms, hid her face against Mollie’s shoulder and burst into more tears.
“It’s happened again, Mollie,” she sobbed. “Again! I can’t bear it, Mollie, truly I can’t bear it!”
Mollie drew her into the house. At the same time, having seen Andrew standing on the path behind the girl, she gave him a little signal with her head that he should come in too. He followed them in and closed the door behind him.
Mollie took the girl into the sitting room. Andrew, unsure whether or not to leave them alone together, lingered in the hall, but Constance, emerging from the kitchen, touched him on the arm, nodding towards the sitting room, and the two of them went together into the room.
Mollie and the girl had sat down side by side on the sofa.
“Tell me about it, Leslie,” Mollie said.
“The police came, just as they’ve done before,” the girl said. “They said—they said they thought they’d found him. They wanted Jim and me to go and identify him. And, oh God, Mollie, it was so horrible. The poor little boy.”
“But it wasn’t Colin.”
“No.”
“Leslie, this is our friend Professor Basnett, who’s staying with us,” Mollie said. “Andrew, this is Leslie Gleeson, whose little boy has vanished. You remember, we told you about it. Leslie dear, would you like a drink? Perhaps some brandy. I think you ought to have something.”
Leslie Gleeson gulped, gave Andrew a watery stare, mopped her face with a sodden handkerchief and muttered, “Thank you.”
Cons
tance saw to the pouring out of a glass of brandy for the girl and brought it to her. She also poured out whisky for Andrew and sherry for Mollie and herself.
“Go on, tell us what happened,” Mollie said. “The police wanted you to identify a dead child, was that it?”
“Yes, they came this morning and told me—oh, they were very nice about it, they tried to be as gentle as they could, I realized that, but still, it was so terrible.” Leslie swallowed some of her brandy as if she was not aware of what she was doing and gave a shudder as the alcohol went through her. She went on: “They said they’d found the child over in the river beyond Maddingleigh. They didn’t know how long he’d been there. His body was caught under the roots of a tree and might have been there two or three weeks anyway. And he was about Colin’s age, they said, and had fair hair like his, but they couldn’t tell anything by his clothes because he was naked, and—oh, Mollie, they didn’t exactly tell me so, but I realized they meant he’d been raped, and when we saw him we could tell he’d been battered horribly. His nose and one of his arms were broken. And they said he’d been held under the water and drowned. The utter wickedness of it! How is it possible to do things like that to a little boy? I know one’s always hearing of horrors like that on television, but one doesn’t think one’s ever going to have to see it for oneself.”
“But it wasn’t Colin,” Mollie said, her arm still round the girl.
“No, but you see, it could have been. Something just like that could have happened to him. And I believe it has. Now that I’ve seen what it can be like, I believe it has. I’m sure he’s dead and perhaps awful things were done to him first. If he isn’t dead, where is he? It’s a month since he disappeared and they’ve shown his picture on television and all, but no one’s come forward to say they’ve had a glimpse of him. So I’m sure he’s dead. But if the police want me to look at another body after what I saw today, I don’t think—oh, I know I’ll go, because it might be Colin—but I don’t know how I’m going to bear it.”
The Other Devil's Name Page 5