Seeing is Believing

by E. X. Ferrars

  As usual, his accent was puzzling me. Basically, I felt, it was that of a reasonably well-educated man who had taken pains to cover this fact by a careful imitation of the local accent. It might be the other way about, of course, and that the local accent was natural to him and that he had made an effort to acquire what he thought appropriate for a man of the middle class.

  Sharon was looking at him with a shy, puzzled gaze. She was a slim, pretty girl of about twenty-three with a mass of fair, curly hair tied back from her face with a scarlet ribbon, a small, triangular face, wide at the temple, pointed at the chin, with big, earnest blue eyes, a neat little nose and a wide, delicately shaped mouth. She gave the impression of being very diffident and very serious. I wondered how she and Fred had ever become lovers and whether he was her first, or if her appearance of innocence was an illusion.

  ‘Please sit down,’ I said, and turned the Labrador firmly out of the chair that he had annexed and pushed another chair up beside it so that they could stay together.

  But as I did so, Lucille rose to her feet. After one intimidating glance at the two, she had been careful not to look at them and to act as if she were unaware of their presence.

  ‘Well, Kevin and I will be going home, Frances dear,’ she said. ‘I don't think we can be of any help to you. But if we can be, of course let me know. Avril, good night. You know you have all our sympathy.’

  With nods to Malcolm and Brian but giving no sign that she recognized the existence of Fred and Sharon, unless it was by a slight increase of the hauteur of her usual manner, she took Kevin's arm and swept him out of the room. Fred and Sharon sat down side by side on the sofa that she had abandoned and the Labrador crawled sleepily back into the chair from which I had turned him out.

  ‘You'll want to know why we've come,’ Fred said. ‘It's to straighten out one or two things that we were told by the police. Of course, they've been to see us. They came as soon as they'd been here, I believe, and had a talk with Mrs Chance.’ He gave me one of his strange looks at that point that seemed directed straight at me and yet to be looking at something far beyond me. As I had often thought before, there was something very chilling about it. I had never seen any look of warmth on his face, which had always made me feel a certain uneasiness in his presence.

  ‘Forgive me if I'm wrong, Mrs Chance,’ he went on, ‘but didn't you tell them you saw me at the gate of Mr and Mrs Loxleys’ house just a short time before the probable time of the murder?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘You said you were sure you saw me there?’

  ‘I said I was fairly sure. When they pressed the point, I admitted I had some doubts.’

  ‘Would you get up in a court of law and swear on oath that it was me you saw?’

  ‘I don't think I would — no.’

  ‘Ah, now that's what I wanted to know. Sharon, tell them where I actually was at the time.’

  I was sure it was fear that I saw in her big blue eyes, but there was no tremor in her voice as she spoke. She had a very pleasant voice, low and clear.

  ‘You were having your weekly bath and then you sat by the fire, drinking gin and tonic while I was in the kitchen, making a steak and kidney pudding.’

  ‘And we were able to show the police the remains of the steak and kidney pudding,’ Fred said with a grim smile. ‘Not that in itself it meant anything. We could have eaten it later than we claimed. But I couldn't have left the flat without Sharon knowing.’

  ‘Did the police believe that?’ Brian asked.

  ‘Who's to know what the police believe?’ Fred asked. ‘But people have a way of believing Sharon.’

  ‘Oh, I think they believed me,’ Sharon said in her low voice, but still there was a disturbing look of anxiety in her eyes. ‘So it couldn't have been Fred that you saw, Mrs Chance.’

  ‘Only someone who wanted to be taken for me,’ Fred said.

  ‘And who do you think that might have been?’ Brian asked.

  Fred gave a harsh little laugh. ‘I knew you'd ask me that, Mr Hewlett, and all I can say is that you probably know more about it than I do. Who's about my size and build? Who's got red hair?’

  ‘Or a red wig,’ Malcolm suggested.

  That brought a short silence into the room, then Avril said hesitantly, ‘There's a red wig in the cupboard in the village hall. I mean, where all the costumes we've used for our theatricals are kept. It couldn't be that, could it?’

  ‘Perhaps it could,’ Malcolm said. ‘And it sounds to me as if it's one of the things we ought to tell the police.’

  ‘But you haven't answered my question,’ Fred said. ‘Who's about my size and build? Let's say the red hair could have been a wig, but no one's going to say you can get my size and build out of a cupboard.’

  ‘But they aren't so very distinctive,’ Malcolm said. ‘You're tall and pretty thin and you've got wide shoulders, but I can name several people who fit that description, and dress them up in jeans and a black leather jacket and they could easily be taken for you.’

  ‘Who, for instance?’

  That brought another silence and again it was broken by Avril.

  ‘It's a ridiculous thing to think of, because he couldn't look less like Fred, but that description fits Kevin.’

  It seemed indeed so ridiculous that I found myself giving a choking little laugh.

  ‘All the same, it happens to be true,’ Brian said. ‘Dress that young man up in the right clothes and a wig and he could just be taken for Dyer.’

  ‘Anyone else?’ Fred asked.

  ‘Well, Hugh Maskell for one,’ Malcolm said. ‘But I'm sure if we worked our way through the village we'd come up with a dozen more. Even the vicar fits the part. So once we've accepted the possibility that the man my wife saw wasn't you, Fred, we're driven back to asking the question, who had a motive to kill Peter Loxley?’

  ‘I was wondering when you'd get to that,’ Fred said. ‘No one's yet suggested a motive for me. I understand I'm not accused of having stolen anything, and I'm not in love with his wife. What remains is blackmail, and if it was the other way round, that's to say, if it was Loxley who murdered me, not me him, we might have to give it some consideration. But a man with his means isn't going to blackmail the odd-job man.’

  It seemed to me that Fred's accent was slipping. He was speaking more and more like the educated man that I was fairly convinced he was.

  ‘Blackmail needn't always be for money,’ Brian said. ‘Knowledge of another person can be used in all sorts of ways. It can be used simply to wreck a life for the sheer pleasure of doing it. Had Loxley any connections in Edgewater, by any chance?’

  A sudden look of fury darkened Fred's face. If he had been alone in the room with Brian I believe he would have assaulted him. As it was, he took one or two deep breaths, then turned to Sharon.

  ‘Come on, love,’ he said, ‘it's time we were going. We've said what we came to say. We've told Mrs Chance it wasn't me she saw at the gate. There's no point in staying here just to be insulted. Mr Hewlett believes he knows more about me than the police.’

  ‘But I don't understand,’ Sharon said, her voice shaking a little now. ‘Why does it matter if Mr Loxley had any connection in Edge water?’

  He put his arm round her shoulders and steered her towards the door.

  ‘I'll tell you when we get home. Let's go now.’

  ‘Yes, but I want to be sure Mrs Chance understands,’ Sharon said. ‘When she thinks she saw you, you were having a bath, then drinking a gin and tonic, then eating a steak and kidney pudding. It couldn't have been you that she saw.’

  In a way it was a pity that she repeated herself, because as she said it the second time it had the sound of something that had been learnt by heart, and not spontaneous, as it had the first time.

  Perhaps Fred felt the same, because he seemed all at once in a hurry to leave the room. Malcolm went after them as they went to the front door, and made sure that it was closed behind them.

  ‘So
she doesn't know about his doings in Edgewater,’ he said as he came back into the room. ‘I wonder if he'll really tell her about them when they get home.’

  ‘I wonder how they met in the first place,’ Brian said. ‘Do you know?’

  ‘No,’ Malcolm said, ‘but it could easily have been a chance meeting in the old vicarage, where she lives. If he'd been in there, doing a job of work, and she took him out a cup of tea, or something like that. Or it could have been that they picked each other up in a pub, though she doesn't strike me as the kind of girl who'd be in one of them on her own. But it might not have been on her own. She might have been in there with friends and Fred somehow got included in the party. And he'd have been looking for somewhere to stay while he was in Raneswood and might have caught on that she'd take him in if he handled things the right way.’

  ‘Or they might simply have fallen in love with one another,’ I said. ‘I don't see why you have to assume he was in it for what he could get. Now I'm going to make up the bed for Avril. I'm sorry you're going to be in a very poky little room, Avril, but our one decent spare room is occupied by Brian.’

  Of course, Brian immediately offered to move out of it into the poky little room, and of course, Avril refused to let him do it. She came with me when I went upstairs to get the sheets and towels for her, and we made up the bed together in the little room which Malcolm used as a study. It had a divan in it, and an easy-chair, besides the table on which the manuscript of his autobiography was heaped, as well as a typewriter, but there was no dressing table in the room, or any mirror, so I showed her where the bathroom was, with its mirror in a cabinet on the wall. We brought up the suitcase that Brian and I had packed in the house next door, and she assured me that she would be perfectly comfortable.

  ‘It's a pity about the play,’ she said. ‘She'd have made a charming Juliet.’

  We went to bed soon afterwards, though I was not sure how sleepy any of us was. But if we had stayed downstairs together we should only have found ourselves talking endlessly about the events of the day, and I thought that we had all had enough of that. But though I was glad to get into bed, I could not sleep, and after about an hour, realizing that Malcolm was as wakeful as I was, I said, ‘Well, is she a liar?’

  ‘Sharon?’ he said. ‘Yes, I should think so.’

  ‘You don't believe Fred was with her all day?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I don't know. What worries me about her is that she's so frightened of something. It could be just of telling a lie. Or it could be that she's frightened of Fred. I believe I could easily get frightened of him without having any real reason for it. There's something so coldly dominating about him. But that doesn't make her necessarily a liar.’

  Tell me something,’ he said. ‘How long does it take to make a steak and kidney pudding?’

  I was so surprised at the question that I did not answer at once. I wished that I could see Malcolm's face, but it was dark in the room, the faint light of the moon coming through the window showing only the forms of furniture there, and the pallid shape on the pillow that was his face, but not its expression.

  ‘About four hours,’ I said.

  ‘Then isn't it possible that during that time he slipped out for a little while without her knowing it?’

  ‘Oh no, because for most of those four hours the pudding is simply steaming quietly and doesn't need any attention paid to it. Actually making it, that's to say making the pastry and lining the bowl with it, and filling it up with the steak and kidney and fixing a cover over it and putting it in a pan to steam takes only a short time. No, she knows what he was doing while she was doing that. Either he was sitting by the fire with his gin and tonic, as she said, or he'd gone out and she knows it.’

  ‘And he's frightened her into lying about it.’

  ‘But was it a lie? Aren't we back to the question of whether or not the man I saw at the Loxleys’ gate was Fred? If it was only someone got up to look like him, she could be telling the truth.’

  After that I was silent again, worrying at the question that had troubled me all day. After a little while, I said, ‘Why should anyone try to look like Fred in particular, instead of anyone else?’

  ‘He's someone none of us knows anything much about, isn't he?’ Malcolm said. ‘We're ready to be suspicious of him. And we know from Brian that if whoever it was had done a little digging into his past, they'd have come upon the unpleasant business in Edgewater. They'd have found that even if it couldn't be proved that he'd anything to do with the murders there, he isn't a very reputable character. For instance, he's not very faithful to his girlfriends, is he? There was one there who gave him an alibi, whom he appears to have abandoned, and now there's Sharon giving him another.’

  ‘But what could he have had against Peter? Could Peter have had some sort of power over him? For instance, could he have had some proof that Fred really was guilty of those murders?’

  ‘I don't think it's very likely.’

  ‘But what other motive could he have had?’

  ‘What motive could anyone have had? Peter always seemed a fairly harmless person, didn't he?’

  ‘Do you think they could have had some connection before Fred came here. You know the story around the village that Fred's a poet, don't you? And Peter was a publisher. Suppose that somehow brought them into contact?’

  I heard Malcolm give what sounded like a chuckle.

  ‘I daresay plenty of poets have felt like murdering plenty of publishers,’ he said, ‘but I've never heard of one who actually did it.’

  ‘Well then, think of the other people who might have done it. They've got to be tall and thin and broad shouldered, because even if the red hair was a wig, those other things couldn't have been faked.’

  ‘You're absolutely sure of them?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Then it might have been me you saw, mightn't it? I fit the description.’

  ‘Oh, Malcolm, do be serious. Anyway, you've got an alibi. You were with Brian, somewhere on the Downs.’

  ‘You're more willing to believe Brian than you are Sharon?’

  ‘Yes, naturally.’

  ‘I suppose it is natural. Poor Sharon. Now whom else have we got? Hugh Maskell is tall and thin and broad shouldered, and so, in his drooping way, is Kevin Bird.’

  ‘If Kevin got suspected, his mother wouldn't hesitate to give him an alibi. But then there are all the other people in the village whom Peter knew, even if we didn't. You might be able to stir up a witch's broth of motives among them. And that's what the police will probably do in the end. But there's something I wanted to say about Hugh …’

  As I paused again, Malcolm said, ‘Well?’

  ‘I know I've asked you this before, but do you think it's possible that Hugh's in love with Avril?’

  It was Malcolm who paused now. I could see that he turned on his side in the bed and that he moved a hand to cover his forehead, a trick he had when he was thinking intensely of anything.

  ‘You mean,’ he said at last, ‘that if that's so, it would give him a motive for murdering Peter?’

  ‘I don't really think so,’ I said, ‘but it's something that's crossed my mind. Do you think I'm wrong about his feelings for Avril?’

  ‘What do you think hers are for him?’

  ‘She's never given any sign that I've noticed that she had any.’

  ‘You don't think she'd have been ready to go ahead with a tidy little divorce?’

  ‘Would Peter have been ready for it? Even if she wanted it, he might have been absolutely against it. But, Malcolm, I know there's probably nothing whatever in this idea of mine, and talking about it is just the way rumours with no foundation get started. I wouldn't ever have said anything about it to anyone but you.’

  ‘I think that's wise of you.’

  ‘But I just can't help thinking there might be something in it.’

  ‘All the same, I shouldn't drop a hint of it to the police.’

 
; ‘Good Lord, what do you take me for?’

  ‘Someone who's a little dangerously perceptive. I wouldn't be at all surprised if you're right.’

  ‘That Hugh's in love with Avril and to get Peter out of the way when he wouldn't agree to a divorce, he disguised himself as Fred and went in and shot Peter.’ I also turned on my side and curled up comfortably, ‘I'm glad I talked about it, it's made it sound so absurd. I feel better now. I think I'll get some sleep. Good night, Malcolm.’

  ‘Good night.’

  I was asleep in a few minutes. Whether or not Malcolm also fell asleep then I did not know.

  Next morning, the house and the garden next door were crawling with policemen. They moved, stooping, in an arc across the lawn and seemed to be examining every particle of dust on the paved path from the gate to the front door. Our telephone rang, and that was a police message that we would be welcome at the police station in Otterswell to sign the statements that we had made the day before. But when Avril said that she would drive into Otterswell in her car, taking the dogs with her, it turned out that the police in charge of her home had no intention of allowing her to remove the car from it, even though it was on police business. So we arranged that she should be driven in with Malcolm and Brian, and that I would remain at home to keep the dogs company, and drive in by myself when the others returned.

  Avril was in a strange mood that morning. She had a dishevelled look, almost as if she had been to sleep in her clothes, instead of in what Brian and I had collected for her the evening before. She had not bothered to brush back her smooth fair hair but let it tumble on her shoulders. Her face was haggard and pinched. She drank three cups of coffee, but would eat nothing. When anyone spoke to her, she appeared not to hear it, and then, after an interval in which it seemed natural to suppose that she actually had not heard what had been said, she would make a brief, jerky reply. The dogs seemed to sense that there was something amiss, for they stayed close to her, rubbing themselves against her in what had almost the look of an attempt to console her in a sorrow that they felt themselves.