The Colour of Murder

by Julian Symons

  “Just wanted to say thank you. You were wonderful in the box. Mind if I sit down?”

  “It’s a free world, or so they tell me.” Her hard, assessing glance raked him from untidy grey hair to scruffy brown shoes, noting the tic, the lop-sided face, the long, twisting hands. “You’ve got nothing to thank me for. Don’t even know that I did any good.”

  “Must have taken a lot of courage. A damned shame, the way Hayley went for you. Cigarette?”

  “Thanks.” Her fingers, nicotine-stained, strong, predatory, plucked one from the pack. Across the court she was a good-looking woman, Uncle Dan thought. Close to – well, she was still good-looking, but you could see the coarse skin, and there was a sort of glaze of hardness on her. What was it she was saying now? “He had his job to do.”

  “Didn’t have to do it like that. Damned insulting.”

  She took a pull at the cigarette, and looked at him. “You’re his uncle. Why did you introduce him to that phoney doctor?”

  Uncle Dan spread out his hands placatingly. “How was I to know what he’d be like? Just met him in some club, he seemed a pretty smart feller.” He took a gulp of tea. “Thought he might introduce John to someone like yourself, woman of the world. That’s what he wanted.”

  “You think he’s guilty, don’t you?”

  “Hell, I don’t know.”

  “He didn’t do it. I can feel it here.” She put a hand on her stomach. Over at the court there was a small flurry of people. “Something’s happening. Let’s go back.”

  They walked over to the court together. Uncle Dan said nervously, “I go this way. Which way are you –”

  “I get it. Don’t worry, I won’t embarrass you. I know my place – on my back.” She laughed out loud. Uncle Dan managed a feeble smile as he scuttled away from her.

  The time was twenty minutes past twelve. The jury were back in their places, looking solemn. John Wilkins was in his place too, pale but docile still. Now the judge came in, moving like a sleep-walker. Everybody stood up. He sat down. Everybody sat down.

  The clerk, a snuffy little man sitting below the judge, said, “Members of the jury, are you agreed upon your verdict?”

  The foreman of the jury was a gentle-looking old man, with a long horsy liberal face. He said, not at all as though he were certain about it, “We are.”

  “How do you find, is the prisoner guilty or not guilty?”

  “We find the prisoner guilty.”

  Old Mrs Wilkins gave a small cry. Uncle Dan looked down at his legs. Mr Morton smirked, and bowed his head slightly. A smile quivered at the corners of May Wilkins’ mouth. Betty Prenton closed her eyes. Magnus Newton snapped a pencil in two. The prisoner, anxiously watched by the prison officers on either side of him, stayed calm as a dummy.

  The judge’s clerk placed a small square of black silk upon Mr Justice Morland’s head.

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  Uncle Dan and Mrs Wilkins hardly spoke on the way back to Clapham. In the train he read the evening papers, with their account of the summing up and verdict. Then, a little furtively, he turned to the sports pages. The furtiveness was unnecessary, for Mrs Wilkins was staring out of the window.

  Back at Baynard Road he said nervously, “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  She took off her formidable hat. “That would be very nice.”

  Uncle Dan opened the windows, made tea and brought it in, with biscuits on a plate. To his surprise she ate several biscuits, and drank two cups of tea.

  “I wondered–” he began. The tic in his cheek was very noticeable. “I wondered whether – what you want to do now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’ll be a tidy bill from that detective agency. After all, the chap did find out something. But I mean – do you want to go on?”

  She dabbed at her mouth. “What do you mean, go on? They said he was guilty.”

  “There’s the appeal, of course. Still, that’s not what I meant. Are we going to dig up fresh evidence, that kind of thing?”

  “They found out that he did it.”

  “But you believe – only a few minutes before the verdict, you said–”

  “They found out that he did it.” Her face was heavy, brooding. “There’s an end of it.”

  Uncle Dan fairly gaped at her. She spoke very slowly, her jaws working as though she were still eating. “My son is a murderer, Dan. He killed that woman. They found it out. Now I have a headache, and I am going upstairs to lie down.”

  When she had gone Uncle Dan sat, with his legs stuck out in front of him, looking at the teacups.

  Chapter Two

  “Come to us when it’s all over,” the Edwards had said to May. “You won’t feel like going back to that flat, or at any rate not yet.” Mr Edwards was waiting with the car at Victoria, and there was high tea when they got back to the neat little semi-detached house.

  “They were bound to find him guilty,” Stella Edwards said with a glint in her eye. “All that about washing his bloodstained hands in the basin, I mean to say, you must have been terrified.”

  “Not at the time,” May said. They were sitting in the garden, which was as neat as the house.

  “If you ask my opinion, that girl led him on. I mean to say, I’m not excusing John or anything, but some of those girls really ask for it. Going down on the beach at night, I mean to say.”

  May did not reply. Mr Edwards nudged his wife, who said, “May, darling, Harry and I felt – we thought you ought to get away from it all. Why don’t you come down next week to Devon? You know, to the Restawhile Guest House. It’s awfully quiet, and they’re such nice people. We’d simply love to have you. And stay with us till we go down, you know the guest-room’s always ready.”

  “Thank you very much, I should love to.” May gave a slight titter. “I wanted to go with you in the first place. I shall be getting my holiday in Devon after all.”

  “Why, yes,” her friend said, a little disconcerted. Harry Edwards pulled his moustache and thought, half admiringly, My word, she’s a cool one.

  Chapter Three

  Mr Morton got back home feeling just a little deflated after the excitement of the trial, which had kept him buoyed up, on top of his form. The daily woman, Mrs Kipler, had kept the place clean and tidy, but he was positively faced with the necessity of getting his own supper. That had, however, its compensations, as he felt ready to acknowledge while he put on an apron that had belonged to Sheila, and melted fat in the pan.

  Two pieces of fried bread, two large rashers of bacon – what else? He broke two eggs into the pan, and after a moment’s hesitation added a third. The fat sizzled merrily. This was better than the slops and fruit juice Sheila had made him take for supper every night. Humming under his breath Mr Morton put it all on a large plate and sat down in the kitchen to eat it. While he ate he hurriedly skimmed over the apologetic letter from young Bill Lonergan, that had awaited his return: “…sorry that I could not stay…afraid you may have thought me rude…under great stress, as we all were at the time…distressed by the verdict, hoped against hope that the jury would…anything at all that I can do to help…a housekeeper…”

  Mr Morton pushed a piece of fried bread round the plate to collect the last pieces of yolk. A good fellow, Bill, but dull. A housekeeper? Perhaps, but what a bore that would be. He belched, sighed, shifted wearily. He was beginning to feel rather ill.

  Chapter Four

  “No dice,” said Mr Moody to Mr Likeness, who was back in the office reading the morning paper.

  “No dice.”

  “Newton good?”

  “So so. Not really. Anything much doing?”

  “Nothing to worry you. Routine stuff on your desk. Have a good time at Lewes?”

  “Took a few shillings off Pinkney playing snooker.”

  Mr Moody left him. Mr Likeness picked out the winners of the two-thirty and the four-fifteen, rang up and placed bets for rather more than he could afford, and then
turned to the accumulation of papers on his desk.

  Chapter Five

  “Come along now, here’s your visitor,” the warder said. John Wilkins rose obediently, followed the warder down the corridor into a small room, and stared at the woman on the other side of the grille.

  “It’s me,” Betty Prenton said. In this dough-faced man with dull button eyes she hardly recognised John Wilkins. “You remember me, Betty Prenton.”

  “Of course,” he said politely.

  She felt at a loss. “They asked you – told you I should be coming, didn’t they?” He did not answer. “Is there anything at all you want, anything I can do for you?”

  “I don’t think so, thank you.”

  “Is the food all right? Do you get enough exercise? I know what prison’s like, you know, been in myself, though it was only for a day or two.”

  “Everything is all right.” He sat with what seemed to her an unnatural stillness.

  She said desperately, “I’ve moved from Brighton, you know. Couldn’t really stay after what happened. I’m in London now. Better in some ways, though I liked it by the sea.”

  Now he showed interest, leaned forward, put his face to the grille. “Have you brought any message?”

  “Message?”

  “From Sheila.” The fat, dough-coloured face trembled, tears showed in the dull eyes. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Sheila? Oh, my God.” Betty Prenton put her face in her hands. John Wilkins began to talk quickly.

  “I know it’s been difficult. And I don’t mind waiting, tell her that, won’t you, but it’s hard without some word. Just a word. I don’t understand why she can’t write to me. Is it that father of hers? Got to look after him, but all the same – do you suppose they’re keeping the letters here so that I don’t get them?” A little saliva began to dribble from his mouth.

  “I’ll see if I can get in touch.” Betty Prenton began to back away from the grille. “Goodbye.”

  “Please don’t go.” Tears ran down his face. “I’ve got to talk to somebody about her. You – I don’t remember you, but I know you’ll understand.”

  “Come along,” the warder said, “it’s time.” John Wilkins turned towards him an agonised face. Betty Prenton fled, but not so soon that she was unable to hear his animal cry.

  Chapter Six

  Betty Prenton paid her visit to John Wilkins at the end of August. It was on a golden autumn evening at the end of September that Magnus Newton visited Doctor Max Andreadis, and they sat sipping sherry in the small paved garden of the psychiatrist’s house in St John’s Wood.

  “Wilkins is in Broadmoor,” Newton said abruptly. “You know that, I expect. Transferred a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps we should have pled insanity.”

  Doctor Andreadis smiled. “But under those rules of yours – did we not discuss them at our first meeting–”

  “He was sane. I know. Damn.” He had knocked over his sherry. There was a little confusion, his glass was refilled.

  “Prison life,” the doctor said, “makes psychopaths of us all.”

  “Perhaps. Do you think he did it? None of your damned generalisations, either.”

  “Are you dissatisfied with the verdict?” Andreadis was looking at Newton curiously.

  “I’ll tell you a story, Doctor. Early this month I took my wife and young daughter – you remember she was ill at the time of the trial – for a holiday. We went touring through France and Italy with the car. We stopped one night at a little village called Previso, on the Adriatic coast, stayed in one of the two hotels. Next day I went for a walk, while my wife and daughter stayed on the beach. Sat down on a hill overlooking the sea, dozed off. I’d had a lot of driving to do the previous day and for some reason hadn’t slept well. I was wakened by the most frightful noise. It was a moment or two before I identified it as a very queer sort of laugh.” He paused. “Do you remember one of the witnesses in the case, a stupid old man named Fanum? Remember the laugh he said he’d heard? It was like that, nothing earthly, a kind of wail.”

  Andreadis simply looked at him. Newton went on.

  “I was shivering, felt suddenly cold. I crawled to the edge of the hill, looked over. Below was a little cove, sandy beach, only one person on it – did I say this was a rather desolate bit of the coast? This one person, a man, was lying on the beach reading a newspaper. He was in a paroxysm of laughter. Writhing on the beach there as if he were in a kind of fit. At one point he stuffed a handkerchief into his mouth to stop the noise, but then he took it out, and the noise started again.” Newton shuddered. “The cause of it all seemed to be this paper. I couldn’t, of course, see the date of it, or the item that amused him, but when we got back to Previso I looked up the English papers, which are on sale there a couple of days after publication. I found a report that old Morton, Sheila’s father, had died of a heart attack. Apparently the old man had been eating all sorts of unsuitable foods, and his doctor wasn’t surprised.”

  “And the man you saw on the beach?”

  “The man on the beach was old Morton’s next-of-kin, his nephew, William Lonergan.”

  “And Lonergan inherited?”

  “No, he only got a couple of thousand pounds. The old man had made a new will and left most of his money to some home for old people.”

  “What then?” Andreadis was looking at Newton very carefully now.

  “Don’t you see,” Newton asked now, in a burst of speech that seemed as painful to him as the lancing of a boil, “don’t you see how it all fits in? We thought nobody else had a motive for killing Sheila. But consider Lonergan. Old Morton was thought to be certain to die, the doctor said so himself. Sheila would get the money. Lonergan had been more or less engaged to her, remember. He would have come down from Birmingham with the idea of proposing again, to become the husband of a rich woman. What does he find? She has suddenly become engaged, no doubt she will marry soon after her father dies. Think what a shock it is to him. And besides, he has been engaged to her himself, he doesn’t want to see her married to another man. Think how angry Wilkins’ insinuations made him. When Sheila comes out for her walk he meets her – perhaps it really was by accident. He is a man she knows and trusts, her cousin. They go down on the beach together. He kills her. Now the money is Lonergan’s, as next-of-kin, as soon as the old man dies. But the old man doesn’t die. Lonergan doesn’t dare to kill him, because that would certainly cause suspicion. As it is, he goes quite free of suspicion, and is able by his evidence to make Wilkins’ guilt seem more certain. If he was really a friend of Wilkins he had no need at all to make that little conversation so damning.” Newton stopped abruptly. “Could I have some whisky?”

  “Of course.” While Newton splashed whisky in his glass Andreadis said, “In the end Lonergan didn’t get the money, or only got a little of it.”

  “Yes. But he couldn’t tell the old man would make a new will. What do you think?”

  “I think that the holiday did you little good.”

  “No, man. About Lonergan.”

  Andreadis sipped his sherry. “You have become hysterical about this case. I saw the seeds of it at Lewes.”

  “Lonergan, what about Lonergan?” Newton’s face was red, the veins standing out on it. “Don’t you believe he did it?”

  “No. Do you imply that he murdered his uncle from Italy?”

  “Of course not. Simply waited for him to die. He knew he wouldn’t have to wait long, couldn’t tell about the will. You said yourself that you weren’t sure whether Wilkins was guilty.”

  “Did I say that? If so, it was merely to avoid an argument.”

  “Then you think he did it?”

  “Certainly. And so do you. All this is merely a justification of what you feel to have been your own uncertain handling of the case.”

  “Lonergan had the motive, an overwhelming motive, once you see it. He had the opportunity. Nobody ever checked on him, why should they?”

  “You must face reality.” Andreadis st
ood now, tall, commanding, for a moment austere. “This fantasy has been evolved by you out of a laugh you heard on a beach, when you woke from sleep. That is its only connection with what happened at Brighton. The rest is in your own mind.”

  The sun melted below the rooftops in a mess of red and gold. “If I cannot convince you I shall convince nobody,” Newton said. He stood, a head below Andreadis, and drained his whisky. “But you were not on that hillside, Doctor, you didn’t hear that laugh as I did. I tell you I know now what that old man meant by saying it was a murderer’s laugh. I know what he meant, I tell you, by saying that the laugh had in it the colour of murder.”

  The sun suddenly died. The two men stood looking at each other in the twilight.

  Symons' Series Bibliography

  Inspector Bland Titles

  (in order of first publication)

  These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

  The Immaterial Murder Case (1945)

  A Man Called Jones (1947)

  Bland Beginning (1949)

  Inspector Crambo Titles

  (in order of first publication)

  These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

  The Narrowing Circle (1954)

  The Gigantic Shadow (The Pipe Dream) (1958)

  Joan Kahn-Harper Titles

  (in order of first publication)

  These titles can be read as a series, or randomly as standalone novels

  The Man Who Killed Himself (1967)

  The Man Who Lost His Wife (1967)