by Roy Vickers
“That’s a different tale,” said Curwen, to Jill. “He told me, later on, that he had given her the ring and that she did accept it.”
“I think he did give her the ring and that she did accept it.”
Curwen thought it over.
“Then she lied to you and me about it? Have you any ground for saying that, Miss Aspland?”
“I have. When you made your first call on us, Inspector, you noticed, I think, that she was not wearing a wedding ring?”
“Correct.”
“After you had gone, I pointed out that it was most unfortunate that she had not been wearing the ring—that the police would wonder about it, and so on. Twice in the next hour or so—each time when she was in her bedroom—I reminded her to put the ring on and not take it off again. She made such silly excuses that I thought she had left it in her London flat. She was not wearing it when Mr. Stranack came. But a minute or so after he had gone she went into the bedroom and returned wearing the ring.”
“Impressions and Opinions of a Modern Girl!” scoffed Stranack. “All of that could have a simple explanation—that she found it in her sponge-bag, or something.”
Jill ignored him.
“She was wearing that ring, Inspector, when you came back shortly after Mr. Stranack had left.”
“That’s right! I examined it and took a note.” Curwen was being laboriously fair-minded. “You’re not suggesting that the ring I examined had been given back to her by Stranack half an hour previously?”
“Yes, I am! I know it was.”
Her tone was so positive that Curwen hesitated. “That’s a very important statement, Miss Aspland!”
Eddis tapped the table.
“I feel sure you would wish me to point out, Inspector, that Miss Aspland’s statement—even if it can be verified, which I doubt—has little bearing on the question of Stranack’s innocence. It would merely prove that he recovered the ring on the following morning. If you remember, he was swimming in the lock when you arrived.”
“You needn’t have bothered yourself!” grunted Curwen. Before working on Jill’s statement he turned to Stranack.
“If you fished out the real ring, Stranack, why didn’t you bring it to me?”
“Why indeed, Inspector!” Stranack shrugged, excessively. “It would have proved half your tale—it would have proved that Mrs. Brengast was the woman at the lockhouse.”
“That is why he did not bring you the ring,” put in Jill. “He wants to prove that he is the innocent man. But he does not want to prove that Veronica was the woman in the case. He has been doing everything he could to keep her out of it.”
Stranack laughed loudly.
“Dammit, I wish I could stammer out that Miss Aspland has guessed my secret. You see before you, Inspector, a man who has given up all to save a lady’s name. The lady being our Veronica. Or don’t you? I’m afraid you don’t. It’s very charming, Jill, but it’s awful nonsense. Here’s my answer, Inspector. I offered Mrs. Brengast a dummy ring, which she refused. And I lied to you about it—for tactical reasons.”
Curwen had already worked that out for himself.
“Have you anything to say to that, Miss Aspland?”
“There’s no need to say anything to it,” answered Jill. “He is still trying to protect Veronica. I think it is very noble of him, but it’s also a great nuisance, because it obliges him to contradict everything I say—”
“But have you any evidence? He says he offered her a dummy ring—”
“I don’t know anything about a dummy ring,” Jill revealed impatience. “But I know about Veronica’s ring—as you do—that it is engraved on the inside with an individual inscription. How could he know what the inscription is if he had never had the ring in his possession?”
“Exactly!” cried Stranack. “I haven’t the least idea what the inscription is. You see what she is doing, Inspector. Using impressions as if they were facts.”
Jill held herself in check, hoping he would say more, but it was Curwen who spoke.
“Are you sure you’re not just supposing he knows the inscription because you feel so certain about his innocence?”
“I suppose he knows the inscription, Inspector, because he repeated it to me correctly in this room yesterday.”
“It didn’t happen, Inspector,” said Stranack, quietly. “Jill, dear, I’m afraid you’re adding hallucination to impression.”
Jill looked Curwen full in the face and was amused.
“I have the hallucination that you will find that inscription noted in Mr. Stranack’s pocket book.” She added sharply: “Get that pocket book, Inspector.”
“I don’t even possess a pocket book,” said Stranack.
It was Jill’s lack of anxiety that convinced Curwen.
“Turn out your pockets anyway.”
Stranack scowled.
“I have no wish to have the contents of my pockets examined. Don’t you have to have a warrant before you can search a respectable citizen?”
“Yes, but I’m going to break the rules. There’s Benjoy here and three men outside who’ll probably help me if I ask ’em.”
“All right!” Stranack glared at Jill. “It isn’t a pocket book—it’s a diary.” He took it out, found the place and handed over the diary.
Curwen produced his note book, placed the open diary beside it.
“My note of that inscription reads ‘Vevey-stroke-Piggy sixth of the sixth five-six’. And the note in your diary reads—‘Vevey stroke-Piggy sixth of the sixth five-six’. This proves half your statement—that Mrs. Brengast was at this lockhouse. And you proved most of the rest with your demonstration—to say nothing of your dabs on the bottles! Good enough to go into court!”
He nodded to Benjoy, then spoke to the others.
“Canvey, Eddis—I’m arresting you both. You can pack a suitcase. Benjoy and I will come with you.”
“No comment!” said Eddis.
Canvey was looking at Jill.
“I thought you believed—”
“I did,” interrupted Jill and walked out of the room.
Chapter Fifteen
Jill was fleeing from Lyle Canvey, from Stranack and even from Inspector Curwen also. Actually she was walking very slowly and absently, as if in a dream—for the first time the cliché took meaning for her. There was the sense of walking towards the weir, to avoid complications with the guard—practical and realistic. Added was the dreamlike feeling of moving outside time and space—particularly time. She was living in the moment before she had taken the decision to proclaim Stranack as the innocent man, which, strangely, came after the moment when Lyle Canvey had reproached her.
Added was the sense of being pursued by the Furies—the slow-footed ones, not the ones on horseback. The waking part of her translated this into human footsteps behind her.
She turned and faced Stranack. He was frowning at her, looking like a schoolboy who wanted to start a fight.
“You dirty little crook, Jill!”
The illusion of the waking dream vanished
“For proving your innocence for you?” When he merely repeated his charge, she added: “Why are those two men helping Eddis—and Canvey—to do their packing? It’s to see they don’t commit suicide, isn’t it?”
He was puzzled and suspicious.
“What are you getting at now?” he demanded.
“You! And I’m not going to stop. Question number one, Arthur. Did you creep up behind WillyBee and bash him to death?”
Stranack stared down at his feet.
“I gave you a hint that it was some ghastly kind of accident. I’m damned if I know exactly how it did happen.”
“Nor does Canvey, does he? But Eddis knows. Do you think he will let Canvey go for trial? Out of loyalty to you?”
“There’ll be millions of questions like that, even if you don’t ask them. How can Eddis prevent Canvey from going for trial?”
“By denouncing you, of course!”
He looked along the river, then at Jill as if he intended to throw her in.
“You’re the methodical, planning kind of woman. You think everybody will fall in with your plans, and they won’t. Eddis has been denouncing me ever since he first asserted that he was alone in the lockhouse that night, with or without a woman. If he was alone here, I could not have been.”
“But if he admits he was in Renchester and that you were with him?”
“Another thing is that you think you know such a lot. You don’t even know that a man’s confession is evidence only against himself.”
“It ought to be evidence in his favour.”
He turned his back on her and sat on the upstream bollard. The three bollards were spaced out the length of the lock. His childish petulance made Jill hopeful.
He swivelled round.
“Eddis and I didn’t work out this balance of law and evidence by which everybody’s statement cancels out everybody else’s—which you have upset. We floated into it. All we did was to hang on.”
“You hung on!” echoed Jill. “And you enjoyed every minute of a gorgeous game of robbers-and-cops. It helped you to forget about—WillyBee. And now you are ashamed and frightened because you have won the game and Canvey has to pay forfeit.”
He did not answer. Presently he got up, gripped her by both arms and sat her on the bollard.
She was confident now that he would take her lead.
“That’s all slop,” he said. “I know what you want. You want me to confess. Because you’ve fallen for Canvey.”
“Yes, I want you to confess for his sake—and a little bit for your own. Also for Veronica’s—she will go to prison if they have to drag her in.”
He nodded—he had forgotten Veronica as a person.
“I can’t understand a man wanting to marry you. I think you’re a loathsome type. You do much more damage than do people like Veronica.”
Jill smiled up at him.
“Hate me, if it helps you. You need a spot of help just now. I don’t hate you. I shall howl when you are convicted.”
He turned and looked at the house as if he thought the packing was taking a long time.
“I wish you would go away.” His voice was almost a whimper. “I hate the sound of your voice.”
“I’ll go away, then,” said Jill, rising from the bollard. “But be very careful, or you’ll hear my voice every day of your life —sneering at your honesty, your courage, your manhood. You will put dreadful words in my mouth—and in time you will come to believe them.”
“All right, then!” He took a deep breath, then shouted at the top of his voice.
“Cur—wen!”
He grabbed Jill by the hand.
“You’re going to be in on this, my girl! See that I do it properly. And then I’m going to break your blasted little neck and Canvey can rub along without you.”
Curwen appeared at the door of the lockhouse. “What are you up to now?”
“Come inside!” He dragged Jill after him into the sitting-room followed by Curwen. “Drop Mrs. Brengast out of this case and I’ll confess to the murder.”
“Very kind of you, I’m sure!” said Curwen. “If you try any more stunts on me, Mr. Stranack, I’ll charge you with obstruction.”
“My good man, I’m telling you it was I who killed WillyBee.”
“I heard you,” Curwen moved to the door. “Try it on the Sunday papers.”
“Inspector, it was all my fault,” said Jill. “I was terribly wrong. Won’t you please give him a hearing?”
“I suppose I’ve no choice!” Curwen was rather overdoing it. “If I don’t listen to some tomfool confession of his, he’ll write a book about it. I’ll bring the others in on this and we’ll see what the new game is.”
“There’s no game this time, Inspector,” Jill assured him.
Curwen registered disbelief and turned to Stranack.
“Which of them was with you on the job?”
“Nothing doing, Inspector! I’m confessing what I did. I’m not accusing anybody.”
“Here we go round the mulberry bush!” He was appealing to Jill for sympathy. “The whole three of ’em will confess and we start again the other way up.”
When Curwen had left the room Stranack resumed his tirade.
“Look at the mess you’ve made, Jill! Curwen believes that bilge of yours about me being in love with Veronica. He won’t take me seriously. Nobody will. I shall be laughed out of court. And if I go on telling the truth, they’ll put me in the looney bin.”
“Not if I confess too!” said Jill.
Eddis and Canvey came in, with Benjoy and Curwen in the rear. They bunched in the doorway, getting in each other’s way. Eddis took charge.
“There seems to be some uncertainty as to the agenda,” he intoned, resuming his seat at the head of the packing-case table.
“I’ve told Curwen I killed WillyBee and he’s taking it as a personal insult.”
From Canvey there came a mild explosive sound and he caught Jill’s eye.
“Quite so!” she said aloud and smiled.
“Mr. Stranack,” said Curwen, “can sign a formal statement at headquarters—if it gets as far as that. Would you two like to say anything at this stage?”
“No comment!” said Eddis.
“I don’t quite see how Stranack’s confession helps us,” said Canvey. “It tells you only that neither Eddis nor myself literally killed Brengast. It doesn’t tell you which of us was at the lockhouse.”
“Now then, none o’ that!” barked Curwen. “If you two start ringing the changes on the second man—”
“The second man was myself,” said Eddis.
“There you are, Curwen! You’ve nothing to be afraid of!” Paradoxically, Stranack had recovered his spirits. “It’s a perfectly straightforward case. We went to that office to remove the papers and models of our latest invention, intending to sell it elsewhere, as WillyBee was refusing us royalties. And I may as well tell you that there’s no doubt we could have sold it very easily!
“WillyBee himself walked in while we were packing the stuff. I told him what we were doing and why we were doing it. He and I got pretty hot under the collar—he was a quick-tempered man. And then—it was all so damned stupid!—I picked up a crowbar the men had left behind, to emphasise something about leverage. I think I said: ‘I can lever the three of us out of your measley contract.’ Then he pulled out that revolver you found, and I dotted him one with the crowbar. I meant to discourage the use of that revolver, not to kill him, but I don’t expect you to believe that. When we were both sure he was dead, I asked Eddis to help me to hide the body. He’s—what do you call it?—compassionate accessory. You can dress that up for my formal statement.”
Curwen grunted.
“I take it, Mr. Eddis, you have no comment.”
“On the contrary, Inspector!” To Jill it was a surprise that Eddis was capable of feeling and showing anger. “Stranack’s statement is grossly unfair to myself.”
“That’s what we want!” Curwen was eager. “Let’s have it, Mr. Eddis.”
“From Stranack’s account I emerge as a timid onlooker, coerced by a man of superior initiative. Nothing could be further from the truth. In point of fact—I dislike saying it, but it is true—Stranack lost his head. He even wanted to telephone the local police and invite their sympathetic understanding. It was I who had to point out the obvious absurdity of such a course.”
“It wasn’t absurd,” said Curwen. “It was the sensible thing to do.”
“My dear Inspector! Surely you must know what local police are like?”
“I know now what industrial scientists are like,” Curwen indicated that the lesson had been painful. “What has all that education and special training done for you? It’s made you clever in the wrong places. Uncivilised, you might say! Why, you don’t even know a murder when you see it! As it is, we shall have to reduce the charge to manslaughter and unlawfully concealing a dead body.”
“How much will they get for that?” asked Jill.
“I don’t know, Miss Aspland.” Curwen’s tone was bitter. “They ought to get ten years apiece. But some of the judges are very unreliable nowadays. If Eddis’s evidence stands up, Stranack may get away with self-defence. That’ll leave concealment of the body. In the special circumstances that ought to be worth something—personally I’d make it a couple of years. But you can’t tell. If the worst comes to the worst the judge might let ’ em off with six months.”
Jill waited on the weir for Lyle Canvey, soothed by the rush of the water beneath her feet. He would not have to give evidence, and Veronica would escape scot free. Women like Veronica generally did escape scot free—to defeat themselves by the inane use they made of their freedom. Being rich was not a whole time occupation. It would be gorgeous at first, but it would soon grow monotonous.
The waters of the weir were growing monotonous, now she came to think of it. She must have been waiting for him for something approaching an hour. More than long enough for him to get over the shock of being rescued. She could trust him not to make a fuss about what she had done. One of the facets of him that she admired was his sense of human values. He would be anxious about the fate of the two men who had been his colleagues. But the anxiety would be lodged in a niche of its own.
When she walked into the sitting-room he was huddled up in the armchair.
“I thought you had gone!” he cried, springing up. As if regretting his enthusiasm, he added tonelessly: “Why haven’t you gone?”
In silence she settled herself on the settee—which was answer enough.
“Thank God!” He sat beside her. “When you were here the other day, I knew you believed that I had not killed WillyBee. But I could feel you hoping that I had not made love to Veronica.”
“Why rub it in?”
“What’s that gag of Kipling’s?—‘I learnt about women from her.’ I mean, but for her, I would have thought that it was the shape of you I love—but it isn’t.”
“What a pity!” sighed Jill.
“What a bit of luck! In twenty years, you won’t be as lovely as you are now—and I don’t care a damn! Are you going to be fool enough to marry me? My financial prospects are virtually nil.”