The Crime and the Crystal

by E. X. Ferrars

  “Did Bob know she was going to leave his father?”

  “I don’t know. Why? What difference would it have made?”

  “Only that as long as he didn’t know, he’d a motive for killing his father himself, but if he did know, it would have been worth his while to put off the murder for a little while, because then, I suppose, he’d have inherited everything.”

  Tony shook his head. “He’d an alibi anyway. He was a civil engineer in those days and he lived in Adelaide, but he was visiting the Ramsdens—that’s Jan’s family—and he was out with Jan’s sister Kay at the time of the murder. It was thought at one time that he and she were going to get married and that would have made Kay Jan’s step-daughter-in-law, which would have been a bit complicated, their being sisters. But in the event she married Denis Lightfoot, who’s Director of the Marine Biology Institute here and happens to be my boss, and Bob’s more or less engaged to a woman called Sara Massingham, who owns the craft shop I was telling you about, where Jan works. A lovely girl and a great friend of Jan’s. I think you’ll be meeting them all on Christmas Day. We’re going to have dinner with the Lightfoots.”

  “You mentioned something that stopped Jan being suspected,” Andrew said. “What was it?”

  Tony was stroking the crystal again. “It’s something no one’s ever explained. I told you Wilding was murdered in the quarry, where he was hunting for crystal. It’s an old quarry that hadn’t been in use for years and there’s a sort of billabong at the bottom of it. Pretty often it’s quite dry, only just then there’d been heavy rain recently and it was a few feet deep. And Wilding’s body was found in the pool. Yet there was clear evidence that he’d been murdered on a ledge quite high up on the rock face of the quarry. He was killed by a number of violent blows on the head with a piece of crystal that he’d just dug out that day. Quite a find. It was there on the ledge and was bloodstained, and there were other bloodstains there. And you see, while it’s just possible that Jan could have struck the blows that killed Wilding, though she’s on the small side even for that, the thing that she couldn’t possibly have done was drag his body from the ledge down to the pool. Wilding was a big, heavy chap. But even if he hadn’t been, she couldn’t have done it.”

  “I don’t know exactly what a billabong is,” Andrew said.

  “It’s a sort of backwater that forms a pool when a river’s overflowed its banks or changed its course. There’s a river near the quarry, the Orbell, a small tributary of the Murray, and some years ago it overflowed and flooded the quarry, then receded again, leaving this pond behind.”

  “But why should anyone have moved the body into it?” Andrew asked.

  “That’s the question that’s never been answered.”

  “Can you see any point in it?”

  “No one can. If the person who did it was sufficiently ignorant, he might have thought the death might be taken for drowning, but what advantage would there have been in that? It wasn’t as if it could possibly have been an accident, or if there’d been any attempt to disfigure Wilding in the hope that he wouldn’t be identified at once. Not that that would have had much sense in it. He was too well known in those parts, and so was his habit of working in the quarry, for him not to be identified as soon as he was found. On the whole it looks like a case of senseless panic on the part of the murderer.”

  “Had Wilding been robbed?”

  “No, his wallet with a fair amount of money in it was in his pocket.”

  “And they still keep questioning Jan.”

  Tony gave a deep sigh and, leaning back in his chair, gazed up at the ceiling with a look of strain on his face that suddenly added years to his age.

  “There’s a Sergeant Ross who won’t give up,” he said. “He’s made up his mind she’s guilty and he believes that sooner or later he’ll find the clue that will prove it. I tell you, sometimes I feel as if I could kill the man with my bare hands. But you can see now why she wanted me to tell you all this before she met you. She can’t bear to talk about it herself, and she thinks some friend of ours whom you may meet while you’re staying here may drop hints about it which you’ll find a bit disturbing.”

  “That doesn’t sound like the best sort of friends to have,” Andrew said.

  “No, but you know how it is. In itself, it doesn’t mean much. It just gives people something to talk about. But Jan’s very sensitive on the subject and someone’s sure to say something about it to you.”

  “I don’t wonder she doesn’t like it. And I don’t wonder that she doesn’t seem to like having this crystal here in the room. If I were in a position like hers, I know I’d lock it away.”

  “But that’s where the complication comes in, don’t you see? She feels if she did that it would look almost like an admission of guilt. She wants it understood that a chunk of crystal hasn’t any special meaning for her.” Tony suddenly stood up. “Now we’ve been talking long enough. I’m sure you’d like to go and have a rest. Don’t get up till you feel like it. I’m going to the lab, but I’ll be back by lunchtime and so will Jan, but we can eat when you want to.”

  Andrew was glad to stand up too and go back to his bedroom.

  He did not think of unpacking. Simply to take off the clothes that he had been wearing for about thirty-six hours felt a wonderful luxury. He was only half aware of what he was doing as he stripped them off, leaving them in a pile on the floor, and tumbled into bed. The room was very hot, with sunshine pouring in past the slats of the Venetian blinds and stripes of the brilliant blue sky to be seen between them, and after only a moment or two he thrust back the bedclothes and lay naked where he had dropped. Almost at once he fell into a deep sleep.

  He was usually a light sleeper, subject to dreams, but now he was engulfed in a dark nothingness and when he woke he had no sense of how many hours had passed. It dawned on him, even in his drowsy state, that although it was still daylight and the room was as hot as ever and his body felt damp with sweat, the sunshine had gone and the room was in shadow. So he had certainly been asleep for a fair time. But when he looked at his watch he remembered that he had not adjusted it when he arrived in Adelaide and he felt too muddle-headed to sort out what the local time probably was. Australian time was about ten hours or thereabouts ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, wasn’t it? But what did that matter? The thing to do was to get up and go looking for a clock.

  All the same, for a while he lay still, feeling a strong inclination to stay where he was. But it occurred to him that Tony and Jan might have prepared a meal for him, might be waiting for him, and there might besides be a virtue in following Tony’s advice and forcing himself to accept the Adelaide clock immediately, instead of remaining for the next few days in a timeless limbo. Yet the effort of moving felt almost too much for him. A small bathroom opened out of the bedroom, and he thought that he would have a shower, then unpack a few things and get dressed. But even when he had decided to do this, he did not move.

  Recollection of the talk that he had had with Tony before going to sleep gradually came back to him. A curious talk. And now one of the odd things about it that came back to Andrew was merely an echo of the way that Tony had spoken. He knew that Australians had a way of letting their voices lift slightly at the end of a sentence and that that sometimes gave the sentence the sound almost of being a question. A feeling that all the time that the two of them had been talking Tony had been asking a question began to worry Andrew.

  It worried him because he did not know what the question had been, though he supposed that it signified a need for some kind of reassurance. When Tony had been a student he had had a way from time to time of coming to Andrew for reassurance and encouragement. Sometimes it had been about his work, sometimes about problems that he had encountered in the English way of life, sometimes about his not infrequent love affairs. It had been out of the trust that he had shown Andrew in those days, together with the fact that Andrew had never been forward in offering reassurance and encouragement when they di
d not really happen to be needed, that their friendship had developed in spite of their great difference in age. And now the sense of something familiar in that questioning voice, of some demand being made on him, lingered disturbingly in Andrew’s mind.

  At last he got up and crossed the room to the shower. It was as he stepped under the spray of water that he asked himself the question of how completely Tony Gardiner believed in the innocence of his wife.

  Chapter Two

  When Andrew emerged from his bedroom he saw on a grandfather clock in the passage that the time was five minutes past five. That meant that he had slept for even longer than he had thought. But the shower had done him good. After it he had opened his suitcase and extracted some cool clothing, a pair of cotton trousers, a short-sleeved shirt and canvas shoes, and dressed in these. After a shave, he had ventured out into the passage to see if there was anyone else in the bungalow.

  At first he thought that there was not. It was quite silent, and all the doors that opened on to the passage were standing open. So Tony and Jan had not yet come home from their work, he thought. Then he heard a faint plop and realized that it was the sound of a gas stove being lit. Walking towards the door from which the sound had come, he saw that it opened into a kitchen and that the person who had just lighted the oven there was a young woman, undoubtedly Jan.

  Her back was towards him and she had plainly not heard him come to the door. He stood there for a moment, then said a diffident “Good evening.”

  She started and turned.

  She was about twenty-five, he thought, small, slender and fine-boned, with a small, pointed face with delicate features which would have been very pretty if her grey eyes had not been almost too large. They seemed to take up more than their fair share of her face and gave her a staring yet remote expression, as if they were not really focussed on Andrew. Her hair was straight and very fair and was brushed back from her face and tied in a ponytail with a scarlet ribbon. She was wearing a short, straight dress of red-and-white flowered cotton and scarlet sandals. Somehow she was not the kind of woman whom Andrew had expected Tony to marry. He had expected someone more robust, less fragile.

  “I’m sorry if I startled you,” he said. “You’re Jan, of course.”

  She came forward and held out her hand. It felt like a strange little bundle of bones in Andrew’s grasp.

  “Have you had a good sleep?” she asked. Her voice was soft but high-pitched, so that if he had not been able to see her he might have taken it for the voice of a child.

  “Splendid,” he said. “I’m beginning to feel almost human.”

  “It’s a terrible journey, of course.” She turned back to the stove, opened the oven door and thrust a casserole into it. “Some day I’ll try it myself. We’ve been talking recently of a trip to Britain, but it doesn’t seem quite the right time for it. We’ve a lot of things to think about, apart from our just having got married.”

  Among the other things that they had to think about, Andrew reflected, was murder, but seeing her he found it difficult to imagine her lifting up a great chunk of crystal and beating her husband’s brains out with it.

  “Tony hasn’t come home yet?” he asked.

  “No, but he’s due any time now.” She closed the oven door. “Would you like a drink, or shall we wait till he comes?”

  “Shall we wait?”

  “If that’s what you’d like. But let’s go through to the lounge. It’s cooler.”

  He stood aside to let her pass through the door then lead the way to the room where he and Tony had had their talk that morning. It was a good deal cooler than Andrew’s bedroom had been, for the air conditioner was still whirring there and the roof of the verandah outside the windows shaded it. Wisteria climbed up the supports of the verandah in a dense green curtain.

  Jan threw herself down in a chair and gestured to Andrew to take another.

  “You’ve known Tony a long time,” she said.

  “I think it’s about twelve years,” Andrew answered.

  “I’ve known him all my life. D’you smoke?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Mind if I do?”

  “Of course not.”

  She reached for a box of cigarettes on a table near her. There was a jerky nervousness about her movements which made Andrew wonder if she had something on her mind or was simply very shy.

  “Tony’s trying to break me of the habit,” she said as she lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “I don’t know how often I’ve given it up, but I’ve no willpower. Tony has ever so much. You know that about him, do you? Once he’s decided to do a thing, nothing can stop him.”

  “Except that you still smoke, so something’s stopped him there.”

  “That’s right, but that’s different, isn’t it? His strength against my weakness. When you get that sort of situation, weakness nearly always wins.”

  “You’ve known him all your life, you said?”

  “Yes, we both grew up in a place called Hartwell,” she answered. “I can’t remember a time when he wasn’t there. He’s ten years older than I am, you see, so by the time I began to take notice of things he was always in and out of my home because he hadn’t any brothers or sisters of his own and it amused him to play with my sister and me. He did it so nicely that I made up my mind to marry him when I was three. I don’t think I changed my mind about that till I was nearly grown up, when it slowly dawned on me that I wasn’t quite as important in his life as he was in mine. He was always in love with two or three girls at a time, but never with me, so I gave him up and in the end got married to somebody else.” She gave a soft little laugh, but as she did so Andrew found that her great eyes were searching his with no trace of amusement in them.

  He hesitated about what to say. His inclination was just to nod his head, perhaps to say, “Ah yes,” and let her go on if she wanted to, to tell him about her marriage and its frightening ending, or else just to change the subject. But then he said, “Tony’s told me your story. I believe you wanted him to.”

  She tipped some cigarette ash into an ashtray and seemed to relax, as if he had said what she wanted.

  “Yes, but let’s not talk about it now,” she said. “Tony’ll have told you all there is to know. I wanted him to do that so that if other people made what struck you as strange remarks, you wouldn’t be puzzled. It isn’t that we talk about it much ourselves. We’ve put it behind us—or tried to. Now tell me about your book. You’re writing one, aren’t you?”

  “Let’s not talk about that either,” Andrew said. “It wouldn’t interest you. Anyway, there isn’t much yet to talk about and perhaps there never will be. Tell me about your job. Tony said you work in a craft shop.”

  “That’s right. It’s in the city. We sell pottery and jewellery and a few paintings. You know the sort of thing. Most of the stuff is by local people and some of it is really nice. You must come in and look round one day. One or two of the people we deal with are really talented.”

  Andrew said that he would love to go in and look round, thinking it sounded as if he might be able to buy two or three things to take home as presents for the few people who would expect it of him. He and Jan were still talking about the shop and she was describing with a gentle sort of mockery some of the really very odd people whose work they tried to sell in it—charming people, she said, because odd people, after all, were so much more attractive than the abysmally normal, weren’t they?—when a car was driven past the windows to a garage beside the house and Tony joined them.

  They had drinks then and presently Jan left them to prepare the meal they called tea. They ate it at one end of the kitchen. It was a long, narrow room which at one time, Andrew thought, had probably been two rooms, but the partition between them had been taken away, giving a pleasant feeling of space to it. Tea consisted of a dish of crayfish, a casserole of lamb, and mangoes. There was a white wine with the first course and a red wine with the lamb, both of which had flavours that were strange to Andr
ew, but that he soon decided were very agreeable. His appetite had returned since his sleep, and he was surprised at how well recovered from the journey he felt.

  Tomorrow, he thought, he would swim while Tony and Jan were out at work. That was something to look forward to. He had been athletic when he was young, but now swimming and walking were the only forms of physical activity that he could enjoy, and there was something particularly alluring about the thought of swimming in a warm blue sea in late December.

  He was telling Jan that the mango was the most delicious thing that he had eaten for years when the door from the kitchen into the garden was suddenly opened and a very tall young man came in. He came in as if it were something that he was accustomed to doing without ringing or announcing himself beforehand, and Jan and Tony showed no surprise at seeing him. Yet to Andrew he was a surprising sight. It was not only that he was very tall and very thin, with a mop of yellow curls, a pale face with a long, pointed chin, a long, sharp nose and singularly bright blue eyes that had a nervous, almost frightened gleam in them, but he was dressed in rags. It was the only word for them. He wore blue jeans that were more than usually dirty, a shirt that might once have been white, with a badly frayed collar open to his chest, and a grey pullover that had great holes through which his elbows protruded and the knitting of which had the general appearance of coming slowly undone. He was barefooted and had red varnish on his toenails. He looked about twenty-two.

  Muttering “Hallo,” he started across the kitchen towards the door that led into the passage.

  “On the chair by the clock, Dud,” Jan called after him.

  “Okay,” he mumbled and disappeared through the door. After a moment he reappeared carrying a bright green bundle under one arm.

  “Thanks, Jan,” he said, and was about to return to the door through which he had entered the kitchen when she checked him.

  “Come and meet Professor Basnett, Dud,” she said. “He’s a very old friend of Tony’s who’s arrived from England today.”