by Clara Benson
‘Certainly not. She’s much better off without me. Besides, I very much doubt she’d want anything to do with me now. She doesn’t know, I take it?’
‘No, and I have no intention of telling her. Just make sure you keep away from her. She doesn’t want you and I don’t trust you.’
‘I’m not especially interested in your opinion of me,’ said Valencourt.
Freddy regarded him curiously.
‘As a matter of fact, I don’t know what opinion to have of you,’ he said. ‘I ought to dislike you but instead I’m finding you something of a mystery. I can’t quite decide whether you’re good or bad.’
‘Perhaps I’m a little of both, like most people.’
‘Well, you certainly have the devil’s own luck.’
‘You wouldn’t say that if you were in my shoes,’ said Valencourt with feeling. ‘The past few months haven’t exactly been fun, and I still have rather more bullets lodged in me than I like. I’d have gone away and left Charles to it long before now if I’d been well enough. Still, at least I shall be on the spot if any new evidence does turn up.’
‘I shouldn’t get your hopes up if I were you,’ said Freddy. ‘If you really are innocent, then it’s going to be almost impossible to prove it. You know, of course, that the one big stumbling-block in this whole thing is the lack of proof, except as it relates to your likely guilt.’
‘I’m well aware of it. But I can’t help thinking that someone must know something they’re not telling.’
‘Well, the killer does, certainly,’ said Freddy. ‘By the way, if you don’t mind my saying so, your family are a strange lot. Why did they wash their hands of you? We met your brother the other day and he refused to talk about you. Your sister-in-law was slightly more forthcoming, but she didn’t seem to care what had happened to you either.’
‘Godfrey hates me,’ said Valencourt. ‘I did him a bad turn once, and he never forgave me. Victorine cares for no-one except Godfrey, whom she worships for some reason I’ve never managed to fathom. She hated Selina, who knew it perfectly well and, I’m afraid, set out deliberately to provoke her. I don’t suppose Victorine had the slightest interest in what happened to me. The important thing to her was that Selina was gone.’
‘But what about your parents? I know your father wasn’t exactly the easiest man to get along with, but surely the family honour was at stake after your arrest. Why didn’t he stand by you? Your mother, too. Everyone we’ve spoken to says you were your mother’s favourite.’
‘Father and I had a disagreement over my joining the business,’ said Valencourt. ‘I told him I wouldn’t work for him, and I expect this was his way of getting revenge.’
‘What? He would have let you hang just because you didn’t do as you were told like a good boy?’ said Freddy in surprise.
‘Oh, they’re a terribly brooding, vengeful lot, my people,’ said Valencourt. ‘It was rather tiresome. It’s not my way of doing things, but one had to live with it. If my father believed he’d been thwarted he’d move heaven and earth to get his own back. He wouldn’t let my mother visit me in gaol, and I told her not to provoke him by disobeying him. One didn’t cross my father lightly.’
Freddy said nothing in reply, but inwardly he was thanking his stars that he had not been born into such a family. They had now reached Holborn and Valencourt began to look about him for a taxi.
‘Look here,’ said Freddy. ‘If it wasn’t you who did it, have you any idea who it might have been?’
‘I know perfectly well who it was,’ said Valencourt. ‘Haven’t you worked it out for yourself?’
‘Let’s assume I haven’t,’ said Freddy. ‘Do tell.’
‘I’d like to,’ said Valencourt, ‘but the proof’s the thing, isn’t it? I don’t have that, and without it there’s still a small chance that I might be wrong. I don’t want to send you off on a wild-goose chase if I am, so if you don’t mind I’ll keep it to myself for the present.’
‘That’s hardly helpful.’
‘No, but I won’t let it be said of me that I influenced the investigation unduly. It might be important when it comes to clearing my name officially.’
This was a fair point, so Freddy let it drop.
‘Did someone put the blame on you deliberately?’ he said.
‘Why, yes, I rather think so,’ said Valencourt.
Despite himself, Freddy was starting to believe that Valencourt might be telling the truth. He looked worn and tired, and had the defeated air of someone who had all but given up. It was evident that he really had been injured, and Freddy could not think of any reason why he should have returned to London if not for the purpose he had stated—namely, to make one last attempt to prove his innocence. Was it really possible that someone else had murdered Selina de Lisle?
‘You’re taking a terrible risk by being here,’ he said at last. ‘You were awfully lucky to escape—and not once, but twice. You seem to have more lives than a cat.’
‘Well, I imagine I’m down to my last one now,’ said Valencourt, ‘and I intend to be careful with it—unless you’re planning on giving me away, of course.’
‘No,’ said Freddy. ‘But not for your sake. It’s Angela I’m thinking of. I don’t want her to have to go through the whole thing again, as she would if you were arrested. By the way, you’re off the hook for one murder, at least. We know who killed Davie Marchmont.’
‘Oh? Who?’
Freddy told him, and he raised his eyebrows.
‘You seem surprised,’ said Freddy. ‘Did you think Angela really had done it?’
Valencourt gave a half-smile.
‘I was almost sure she hadn’t,’ he said. ‘But I shouldn’t have blamed her in the slightest if she had.’
‘We haven’t given the evidence to the police, since it would raise all sorts of awkward questions as to why you confessed to it. Angela wanted to but I talked her out of it.’
‘Well, it would rather defeat the purpose of the whole thing if she did,’ said Valencourt.
‘Quite,’ said Freddy. ‘Still, we’ll stump up the goods if necessary so nobody will hang you for that, at any rate.’
‘I’m pleased to hear it.’
A taxi drew up and Valencourt opened the door to get in.
‘Were you sorry when Selina died?’ said Freddy suddenly.
Valencourt turned to look at him.
‘Of course I was,’ he said, as though it were obvious, and Freddy could find no reason to disbelieve him.
‘You’d better let me know where to find you,’ he said, as Valencourt got into the cab. ‘I might want to ask you some more questions.’
Valencourt hesitated.
‘Leave a message with Charles. He knows where I am,’ he said. The door shut before Freddy could hear what he said to the driver, and the taxi departed, leaving Freddy staring thoughtfully after it.
FOLLOWING HIS ENCOUNTER with Edgar Valencourt, Freddy decided that it was of the utmost importance to solve the case quickly and thus encourage Valencourt to go abroad as soon as possible. The longer things went on, the greater the risk that Angela would somehow get wind of the fact that he was still alive, which at best was bound to disturb her peace of mind, and at worst might induce her to do something rash. After her acquittal Freddy had been forced to use all his powers of persuasion to prevent her from going to the police and confessing her perjury, and he feared that if she knew Valencourt was still alive but in hiding then all the old arguments would arise once again and this time she would not be turned aside from doing it. Freddy had no wish to see his old friend put in prison for a lie which, at the time, had seemed her only means of escaping a wrongful murder conviction and certain death, and so he turned his attention back to the case and set himself to finding Oliver Harrington. After spending some time poring over the Canterbury telephone directory and making three or four calls to the wrong Harrington (at the Clarion’s expense), he was eventually put through to a woman who claimed to be Oliver Harringto
n’s sister and who, with little apparent curiosity as to why he wanted to know, gave him an address in Bloomsbury and said her brother might be there or he might not. There was no time like the present, so Freddy headed straight off under the pretence of speaking to a witness to a robbery in time for the evening edition.
The building in question was part of a dingy row of terraced houses situated in one of the shabbier streets off Gray’s Inn Road. Freddy rang the bell and the door was answered by a woman in a flowered apron.
‘That’ll be that artist fellow you want,’ she said sniffily. ‘Top floor.’
‘Will he be in?’ said Freddy.
‘I ’spect so,’ said the woman. ‘I doubt he’ll be up yet, though. Always up drinking all night, these artists.’
Freddy glanced at his watch and saw that it was eleven o’clock.
‘It can’t hurt to try,’ he said, and entered.
Inside, despite the presence of the charwoman, he had the impression of grubby paint-work and general dilapidation. The stairs were carpeted only to the second floor, and as he mounted the creaky third flight he looked up and saw a skylight set into the roof which was so encrusted with grime that it barely relieved the gloom. He reached the top landing and saw a door to which someone had affixed, perhaps with glue, a scrap of paper bearing the name ‘Harrington’ in faded, handwritten letters. Remembering the charwoman’s supposition that the occupant of the flat would still be asleep, Freddy rapped smartly and listened at the door. There was no reply, but he thought he could distinguish a rustling noise from within so knocked again, more loudly this time. At length, he heard the sound of someone approaching the door and fumbling with the latch, then a man appeared. He was perhaps thirty-five, short and stocky, with dark hair and a chin which had evidently not encountered a razor for some days. He was yawning and buttoning up a shirt that gave every impression of having spent the night on the floor.
‘I’m looking for Oliver Harrington,’ said Freddy.
The man eyed him suspiciously, as though fearing a debt-collector.
‘Who wants him?’ he said.
‘The name’s Pilkington-Soames,’ said Freddy. ‘I’m from the Clarion. I’d like to speak to Mr. Harrington about the murder of Selina de Lisle, if I may.’
The man’s eyebrows twitched briefly but his wary expression did not change.
‘Selina?’ he said. ‘Why? What’s happened?’
‘Nothing, yet,’ said Freddy. ‘But I’m looking into the case. You’re Harrington, I take it?’
‘Yes,’ said the man. He hesitated for a moment, as though considering. ‘I suppose you’d better come in.’
Freddy looked about him as he entered, and saw that Oliver Harrington lived and worked in a single, small attic room, for in the corner was a rumpled camp-bed which looked as though it had been recently occupied. The room was a mess, with clothes, old packing-cases, discarded tubes of paint, cigarette-ends and empty whisky bottles strewn all over the place. It was so untidy that it was almost impossible to see the floor, but those few square inches of it which could be glimpsed under it all were bare, grey boards. In the roof was another skylight, this one kept scrupulously clean—presumably by Harrington himself. Directly under the skylight stood an easel on which rested a painting in oils. Freddy picked his way across to it. It was in its early stages, but as far as he could tell it seemed to depict a foreign landscape. On the distant horizon was a dark shape which could not be clearly distinguished, but which looked to Freddy as though it might represent an advancing army, although there was something about it which did not seem quite human. There was a large patch of bare canvas in the foreground with a few pencil strokes on it, but Freddy was unable to tell what it was intended to be.
‘It’s just an exercise,’ said Harrington, at his shoulder. ‘I don’t know whether it’ll be any good when it’s finished.’
‘Do you always do this sort of stuff?’ said Freddy.
‘I used to paint portraits,’ said Harrington. ‘That’s where the money is, of course. All it takes is for one or two of the fashionable crowd to decide you’re the latest thing and tell all their friends, and then you’re set. I thought I could do it—got a bit of a knack for capturing a likeness, you see. But I can’t flatter. I paint what I see, and people don’t want that, so I had to give it up.’
He went across and picked out a canvas from a pile which stood against the wall, and brought it to show Freddy. It was a portrait of a young woman who in real life must have been very pretty. Harrington had captured her beauty and her youth to perfection—but he had also captured something else, for the longer Freddy looked at it, the more he began to notice that there was a sly, knowing look in her eyes which added a hard edge to her prettiness and made her appear much less innocent than one would have supposed from her age and her looks.
‘Uncomfortable, isn’t it?’ said Harrington. ‘I try not to do it, but it will show.’
‘Do you exhibit?’ said Freddy.
‘Not lately,’ said Harrington. ‘As a matter of fact, I’m thinking of giving up. It doesn’t pay and I’m tired. I’m not getting any younger and I don’t want to be still struggling when I’m forty.’
‘I have a friend who takes an interest in this sort of thing,’ said Freddy. ‘Do you know Marguerite Harrison?’
‘I’ve heard of her, I think. She’s a sculptor, isn’t she?’
‘Yes. She’s helped quite a few artists find their feet. I might be able to introduce you.’
‘Would you?’ said Harrington, and his expression became slightly less wary.
‘I can’t promise she’ll be interested,’ said Freddy, ‘but there’s no harm in trying, is there?’
‘I’d be awfully grateful,’ said Harrington. ‘I say, have a cigarette. You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?’
Freddy accepted the home-made gasper offered him and, judging that he had softened Harrington up nicely, returned to the purpose of his visit.
‘Oh, Selina,’ said the other. ‘I don’t mind admitting I was a bit cut up about it all. I hadn’t seen her for a long time before she married, but I was very fond of her. We were sort of sweethearts as children—nothing serious, of course, but I was at school with her brother, and so knew her very well. But why do you want to know about her? And what has it to do with you? I thought you said you were a reporter.’
‘I am,’ said Freddy, ‘but I’m by way of being a friend of the family, and they want me to look into it. There’s just a possibility that the wrong person was arrested, you see.’
‘Good Lord! Are you sure?’ said Harrington.
‘Does that surprise you? I take it you thought he was guilty.’
‘Why, I don’t know. I suppose I assumed the police had got the right man. It all seemed to happen very fast, you see. Selina went missing, and there was the search, and then they found her, and de Lisle was arrested shortly afterwards.’
‘Did the police question everybody else? Did they question you?’
‘Yes, but there wasn’t much I could tell them. I’d spent the evening she went missing playing the dutiful guest and trying to pretend I wasn’t finding the whole thing deadly dull. I think Henry and I slipped off at some point to play billiards, but neither of us saw anything, and the police didn’t press the question.’ He frowned. ‘I haven’t thought about it in years,’ he said. ‘But it’s odd, when you think about it.’
‘What’s odd?’
‘The way they all behaved when it happened. Edgar de Lisle put on a show of being shocked, as one would expect, but the others all seemed to close up, almost. Oh, they said what was proper, right enough, but there was something cold—almost false—about it, I think.’
‘You mean they didn’t care that Selina was dead?’
‘I shouldn’t say that, exactly. I should rather say they knew they ought to care and were doing their best to pretend they did. I can’t think of any better way of putting it.’
‘What about your pal, Henry Lacey?’ said Fred
dy. ‘How did he take it?’
‘That was rather queer too. He was certainly horrified, but he seemed almost to blame her for it.’
‘Blame her? What do you mean?’
‘Oh, it was just something he said. He said she was an idiot and ought to have been more careful. At the time I thought it was just because he was upset. People talk wildly when they’ve had a shock, and it doesn’t mean anything. But afterwards, I thought he must have seen it coming. Perhaps he’d heard the two of them having a row, or something.’
‘I understand he’s dead now,’ said Freddy.
‘Yes,’ said Harrington. ‘He is. He died not long after Selina, as a matter of fact. I was the one who found him.’ He saw Freddy’s questioning gaze and explained, ‘We shared lodgings here in London for a while. I didn’t particularly want to, but Henry had found a place and needed someone to move into the other room, so I agreed to it.’
‘Why didn’t you want to?’ said Freddy. He was curious to find out more about Henry Lacey, about whom he had heard little so far.
Harrington hesitated.
‘Because he wasn’t the same chap I’d grown up with,’ he said. ‘People change all the time, of course, but in this case he turned into something I didn’t particularly like.’
‘In what way?’
‘He’d always been the type who enjoyed secrets. Even when we were kids he liked to find out what people wanted to hide. Then he’d boast that he knew things and could tell if he liked. Half the time it was pure invention, but now and again he’d find out a secret of mine and tease me with it. I didn’t like it, but he was a decent enough fellow otherwise, and so we got along and were by way of being good friends. We saw one another less and less as we grew older, and then we both went off to fight—he to France and I to Belgium. Then in early nineteen eighteen I got a nasty shrapnel wound to the leg and was sent home to recover. I was waiting for my orders to go out again when I bumped into Henry in Canterbury, and we had a fine old morning reminiscing about old times. I noticed then that he seemed to have changed. He said a couple of things I didn’t quite like, but I put it down to the war. He’d been shot badly in the arm and never fully recovered the use of it, so I could hardly blame him for being sardonic. They’d given him morphine in hospital and he was still taking it, as I found out later.