I Could Murder Her

by E. C. R. Lorac

  “Chief Inspector Macdonald? My name is Strange. My wife telephoned to me saying that you were here, and I have only just heard the circumstances which brought you here. It’s really imperative that I should give you the facts which I happen to know. If you could come downstairs a moment?”

  He spoke very quickly, evidently in considerable agitation, though also making an effort to speak clearly and calmly.

  “A civil servant, or I’ll eat my hat,” was Reeves’ reaction to the newcomer. Agitated he might be. but the precision and slight pompousness of the official still sounded through the man’s obvious excitement. He was a good-looking fellow, too, admirably tailored in a dark suit, with an immaculate white collar and wide black tie.

  “Certainly, Mr. Strange,” Macdonald was replying in his quiet, deliberate way. “I am glad you came home so promptly. It is a great help to get all the facts as quickly as possible in a case like this.” His steady voice and even speech helped Strange to recover his own aplomb, and as he preceded Macdonald down the stairs he said:

  “I realise that, and so few people are capable of being accurate. It’s a thing we’re always up against in my department; I suppose it’s not to be wondered at that everybody in this house seems to have lost their heads today. Come in here, will you?” He led the way into the same sitting room where Macdonald had already seen Anne Strange that morning. Anne herself was standing by the window, and her husband spoke to her as he entered the room.

  “I want to speak to the Chief Inspector alone, Anne. It’s much more satisfactory to make an uninterrupted statement, so I will ask you to leave us for the moment.”

  “Very well, but I have the right to say that I don’t agree with your explanation, Tony. I don’t think you’re being fair, and I’m sure you're being too hasty in forming a judgment.” Her voice was tense, her face angry, and Macdonald intervened before Tony Strange could reply.

  “I am asking everybody in the house for a statement, Mrs. Strange. The facts and the ideas will be analysed later. If you wish to put on record that you disagree with any part of your husband’s statement, you will have an opportunity to do so, but it is more satisfactory to take a statement in the first case without interruption.”

  She looked at him steadily and then replied: “All right. It’s only that it’s so easy to suggest something, and so terribly hard to disprove the suggestion.” And with that she walked out of the room.

  Tony Strange flushed angrily, and his anger increased his tendency to pompousness. Macdonald would have agreed with Reeves in placing Strange as a civil servant, a man accustomed to exerting authority, in a limited sphere, and quite unaccustomed to contradiction. He was a man in the late thirties, still good-looking and debonair, but tending to adipose, physical and mental. Strange was no sort of fool, but he was in process of getting stereotyped, losing his adaptability. Faced with a situation so far removed from normal conditions as the present one, he was liable to get angry, and anger obscured his judgment.

  Macdonald sat down deliberately and then said: “I find it simplest to ask all witnesses for a general statement to begin with, and to get down to particulars later. Now, I take it that you had no idea that Mrs. Farrington's death was caused by anything save heart failure?”

  The simple question did its work. It gave Tony Strange a definite point to start on, and bis angry flush subsided as he tackled the question.

  “That’s exactly it,” he said. “I knew my mother had a weak heart: I’d known it for years. Baring was a very sound man and had a vast fund of experience to draw on. I talked with him several times, and he stressed the fact that while the condition of her heart was obscure in some respects, he thought that with reasonable care it would last out for many years. I know it’s difficult for a doctor to be absolutely certain in these cases, and when she died in her sleep—well, it was a shock, of course, but one w>as prepared for it to some extent.” As he talked, Strange recovered his self-control and the words came more easily, as though the sound of his own voice reassured him. “When I heard that Scott had asked for a p.m. I thought he was being ultra-conscientious,” he continued. “My mother was not his patient, and Baring had said the heart condition was obscure, so the suggestion of a p.m. seemed explicable enough. I suppose I was very dense, but I thought of it as one of those medical formalities. It never occurred to me that Scott suspected something wrong, and it’s pretty plain now that Madge was not frank with me.” He paused and looked at Macdonald portentously. “You may find it incredible,” he went on, “but nobody thought of calling me when my mother’s death was discovered. The Colonel, of course, was completely overcome, and the rest of the household being still asleep in bed, Madge had everything in her own hands. The ambulance men had come and gone before I was told my mother was dead, and of course Madge gave out that the autopsy in this case was only a formality—and what reason had I to disbelieve her?”

  He paused, and as Macdonald made no comment, he went on: “I just mention these points to explain why I went to my office as usual yesterday and today. And when my wife telephoned to me that you were here and I heard the result of the p.m., I was simply staggered. And then at last I began to think.” He leant forward towards Macdonald and lowered his voice. “It’s an appalling thing to have to say, but the explanation is plain,” he said. “I can practically give you every fact. My half-sister, Madge Farrington, is not responsible for her actions. My mother really knew it, but she refused to take any steps because she said she could manage Madge. Of course it was Madge who killed her.”

  “You realise that that is a very grave statement to make, Mr. Strange? I can hardly believe you would commit yourself to it without unimpeachable evidence.” Macdonald’s voice expressed a warning, but Anthony Strange hurried on:

  “Of course I realise the gravity of what I am saying. I also realise the gravity of the fact that my mother was deliberately done to death, and in my judgment I can tell you who was responsible.” '

  “Let’s get this clear right away,” said Macdonald. “It is your duty to put forward every item of evidence you have, and that evidence will be duly examined. It is generally wiser to leave the matter of accusation to those whose business it is to analyse the evidence. I say this because I have often heard such accusations made on insufficient or conflicting evidence. Now, sir, tor your facts.”

  Strange paused a moment or so, considering his form of words, and then began: “Some years ago Madge, who is Colonel Farrington’s daughter, incidentally ... or do you know the relationships in this household?”

  “Yes. I think I know them all, so go straight ahead with your facts,” said Macdonald.

  “Very good. In 1944 Madge had a severe nervous breakdown. She was under restraint for some months. She was eventually allowed to return home here because my mother undertook to keep her under observation and to consult with the doctors if it seemed advisable.”

  “Just a moment, before you go on,” said Macdonald. “I shall, of course, get full information from the clinic where Miss Farrington was treated, but my present information suggests that she was discharged as cured. Do you wish to testify that she was not so discharged? It is a very important point.”

  “My mother told me that she herself undertook to keep Madge under observation—”

  “Then what you are telling me is a report of your mother’s words, not firsthand information from the doctors at the Stand Barton clinic?”

  Strange looked nonplussed for a moment, then he went on: “Yes, I suppose that is correct, but my mother was a most truthful woman and a very conscientious one. I have no hesitation in quoting her as a reliable informant. As I have said, she was most conscientious, and devoted to Madge. My mother kept a confidential report book, in which she entered notes about Madge’s condition, mentioning any departure from the normal, any undue excitability, and so forth. She did this because she was too conscientious to trust her own memory. She confided in me about this matter because she felt the burden of responsibility ver
y deeply, but did not wish to distress her husband. Colonel Farrington, being an optimist by nature, believed that Madge was perfectly normal.”

  Macdonald was wondering whether any well-educated man could be quite as obtuse as Tony Strange appeared to be, or was it the mother-complex over again? Perfectly evenly the C.I.D. man inquired:

  “Can you tell me if the notebook of your mother’s was sent at regular intervals to the psychiatrists who had treated Miss Farrington?”

  “I believe my mother sent reports based on her notes, and she showed the latter to Dr. Baring, who was an old family friend as well as physician.”

  “I shall be getting the psychiatrist’s report on the whole matter,” said Macdonald, “but to alter the angle of the inquiry for a moment. Did you, from your own observation of her, believe that Miss Madge Farrington was mentally deranged—prior, that is, to your mother’s death?”

  “I hardly ever saw her,” replied Strange. “She was certainly peculiar in avoiding ordinary family contacts. She preferred to stay in the kitchen. If I met her on the stairs, she frequently passed me without a word. As I knew she was irritable and excitable, I let it go at that.”

  “Then how did you know she was irritable and excitable? Because your mother told you so?”

  “Everyone in the house told me so. Even my wife, who is the kindest of women, said Madge was intolerable. Everyone agreed on that point and kept out of her way.”

  “It is your own evidence I am asking for, Mr. Strange. I suggest you keep to those things you have observed yourself and to those facts told you by Mrs. Farrington. The other members of the household must speak for themselves.”

  “Very well,” replied Strange; “but you must realise that I had no opportunity of observing the main facts myself. I wasn’t even in the house when the real cause of this tragedy happened. I had the report from my mother, and if I had given it the attention it deserved, this ghastly thing might have been prevented. It was on the Monday morning. My mother went down to the kitchen to speak to Madge. She had already sent Madge a message asking her to come upstairs—my mother found the basement stairs a great effort.”

  “One moment,” put in Macdonald. “I gather that you are reporting a conversation you had with your mother. When did this take place?”

  “Between half-past five and six on Monday evening, when I came in. I often went in to see Mother at that time. I met Colonel Farrington in the hall, and he told me he was telephoning to Baring again and that Mother was in bed. I was only with her for a few moments, because talking obviously exhausted her, but she said that Madge had been quite unbalanced. She had told some extraordinary story of a lucrative post she had obtained in America, and my mother had told Madge, very gently and firmly, that it was out of the question for her to go to America. And then Madge threatened her—threatened her quite explicitly.”

  “Did Mrs. Farrington tell you the nature of the threat, the words used?” asked Macdonald.

  “No. My father came back into the room at that moment, and Mother never discussed Madge in his presence. She just added, ‘I have written it all down, Tony. You shall see it later,’ and Colonel Farrington said it was better for her not to talk any longer. It was clearly exhausting her. So I left her and went upstairs.”

  “Did you mention this conversation to anybody?”

  “Yes. I told my wife about it. She said that she thought it probable my mother had exaggerated, as invalids are apt to do, getting things cut of proportion when their judgment is obscured by the pain they are suffering. My own feeling was that I ought to see Madge immediately and decide for myself what steps should be taken, but my wife begged me to do nothing that evening. She stressed the fact that my mother was in bed and her husband was looking after her, and Madge was never difficult when her father was present. I allowed myself to be persuaded, and I cannot blame myself enough. If I had followed my own judgment, this tragedy would never have happened.”

  ‘‘Don't you think it’s possible that you are jumping to conclusions?” put in Macdonald. “Several people saw Miss Madge during the course of the evening, but none of them suggested that her behaviour was that of a deranged person. Mrs. Pinks, the charwoman, saw Miss Madge, who, according to her account, was perfectly normal.”

  Tony Strange gave a snort of exasperation. “And do you regard Mrs. Pinks as an unbiased witness?” he demanded. “Further, do you know' what disease her husband is suffering from?”

  “Yes. I do. Mrs. Pinks told me without hesitation that her husband was diabetic. That matter will be inquired into. But would you tell me how you knew this last fact?”

  “Because Mrs. Pinks told me. I had reason to speak to her on my mother’s behalf one day. I asked the woman if she could not do some evening work to save my mother exertion, and she refused on account of her husband’s health. If you make inquiries, you will find that Madge quite frequently went to the woman’s lodgings. But to get to my last point, which to my judgment clinches the matter. Madge was seen coming out of my mother’s bedroom between two and three o’clock on the morning she died.”

  “Who saw her?”

  “My wife did. Anne is very unwilling to give evidence on this point, but I have told her that it is her duty to do so, no matter how repugnant it is to her. I will fetch my wife, and you can interrogate her.”

  2

  As Tony Strange went out of the room, Macdonald asked himself the inevitable question: “How much of this evidence do I believe, how much is objective, ascertainable fact?” The Chief Inspector did believe the story of Mrs. Farrington’s notebook, with its record of Madge’s behaviour. It struck Macdonald as so fantastic that no sensible man would have made it up, and Tony Strange, for all his limitations, was a sensible person in the ordinary meaning of the word. At the same time Macdonald remembered Madge’s steady bearing when he had questioned her, her resolute voice and steady hands. He remembered Dr. Scott’s words, “When I said I couldn’t sign the certificate she never batted an eyelid.’’ In Macdonald’s judgment Madge showed no sign whatever of mental derangement or instability, but she had the most potent of motives for killing Mrs. Farrington if the latter were trying to establish that Madge was mentally unsound. The latter could have left home and got a job, but there would always have hung over her the fear that Mrs. Farrington might approach an employer with veiled hints that her stepdaughter was of unsound mind, and Macdonald knew well enough how' such a hint could jeopardise any hope of regular employment.

  A moment later Anne Strange came into the room, her husband following her. Macdonald stood up, saying: “Mrs. Strange, I asked you about the events of last Monday. I did not ask you if you had any evidence to give concerning Monday night. That was an omission which I am now correcting. Did you hear or see any movement in the house on Monday night when you came up here again after talking to Colonel Farrington in the drawing room?”

  Anne crossed over to the fireplace and remained standing, ignoring the chair which her husband moved forward for her.

  “I could hear the twins and their party when I went to bed.” she said, “but I didn’t think the noise would be heard downstairs. I heard Madge come up to bed just after eleven. Her room is over ours, but she’s always very quiet. I must have gone to sleep just about twelve o’clock. I woke again at five minutes to two. I have a clock with a luminous dial and I always look at it if I wake up in the night. I heard a sound on the stairs and I got up and opened my bedroom door. I guessed it was the twins and their party and I thought I would watch to make sure they didn’t make any noise. They came down very quietly, without turning the light on. Paula had a torch, and she went first. I couldn’t really see the others, not to recognise them again, but I saw them pass, because Paula stood with her torch on the landing to light the next flight.”

  “Do you remember how many people went downstairs?” asked Macdonald.

  “Six,” she replied. “Paula went first and Peter was last. I only knew :t was him because of his light corduroy trousers. The
two other boys were in dark suits. They went down very quietly—they were actually carrying their shoes—and I heard the front door open. I think Paula and Peter went outside with them for a minute or two, but I couldn’t hear a sound. I remember hoping that Paula wouldn’t stay out in the cold too long, because she had a low frock on and no wrap—”

  “Is all this necessary?” interpolated Tony Strange irritably, and Anne turned on him.

  “Yes. It is. You’ve let me in for this and I’m going through with it, every bit of it. You’re trying to put it on to Madge, and I don’t believe it. I loathe Madge, but I don’t believe she’d murder anybody.”

  Before Tony could reply, Macdonald spoke trenchantly. “If you could both only realise that what you believe is of no importance to anybody at the present juncture, we should save both time and tempers. It is facts that matter, nothing else. Mrs. Strange is perfectly correct in giving me every detail of fact concerning Monday night; so please go on.”

  Tony grunted irritably, and Anne went and sat down in a chair by the window' before she continued.

  “The twins seemed to be down there a long time,” she went on. “They didn’t make a sound. I didn’t even hear them come in, and then I began to wonder if they’d somehow got shut out. It would have been so like them; they’re both as mad as hatters.”

  Macdonald intervened here. “You say that Paula had a torch when she went downstairs. Did she put it out when she opened the front door?”

  “I think she must have done,” said Anne. “There’s a street lamp just outside the house; it would have been quite light on the front steps. I could see the light from outside shine across the hall when Paula opened the front door, but she must have pulled the door to again almost immediately.”

  ‘‘Where were you standing?”

  “By our bedroom door. I couldn’t see right into the hall, only across to the far side of it. I was just going downstairs to see if they’d got shut out when I heard someone on the stairs above our floor. It was the least tiny sound, just the shuffle of a dressing gown or something dragging on the carpet. I knew it must be Madge. She is the only person in this house who ever moves as quietly as that. It couldn’t have been Joyce, because she wears mules, not soft bedroom slippers, and the mules always flip-flop on the stairs. And Joyce has a silk dressing gown which rustles, while Madge wears a tailored woollen dressing gown with a long zip fastener. I heard her go on down the stairs, and I thought she was going down to see what the twins were doing, but she didn't go near the front door. I heard the tiniest sound of a door opening— I think it was Mrs. Farrington’s bedroom door; it was from that side of the hall—and then just as I was going to go back to bed I heard the twins creep upstairs again. There was a noise of some kind, as though somebody had slipped a tiny bit, and I heard Paula whisper, ‘Shut up, Peter—’ ”