“Well, with two murders extant, it does seem as though he had something on his mind, but I do think he might have hinted to us beforehand that he suspected he might have included a joker in his pack. Owen, I mean.”
“He would have known that I should have refused his invitation if I had suspected that it had—”
“Strings tied to it? Oh, would you have turned it down?”
“Oh, yes. It would have been quite unethical of me to have accepted such a commission. To be asked to enact the part of a wolf in lamb’s clothing in order that I might devour some unsuspecting, unnamed, and possibly innocent biped is unthinkable.”
“I think Owen soon realised that you weren’t prepared to play ball and so he invented that peculiar version of the Truth Game to give you a hint of his real purpose in inviting you to join his party.”
“Blinkers may suit some horses, but I prefer an all-round view of the course. If you have your shorthand version with you, perhaps you will read to me again Professor Owen’s own answers to his quiz.”
“They didn’t convey anything to me when I took them down, and I remember that you made no comment when I read them aloud to you before. He wrote:
“ ‘I came on this tour because, as its organiser and leader, it seemed inevitable that I should. If I had not organised the tour I should have been making other and perhaps more fruitful contacts. My secret fear is of making a shot in the dark and missing my target, and my favourite superstition is that witches have lost their power to work black or any other form of magic.’
“So that’s Owen’s contribution and I take back all I said,” remarked Laura.
“In what connection?”
“That his answers don’t convey anything to me. They do now. I can see that he intended a clear hint to you to get busy and begin doing your stuff.”
“As usual, your imagination is running away with you.”
“Imagination has certainly played its part on this trip. I refer to young Capella and her dead bodies enclosed in rectangles.”
“The sack at the Rollright Stones was not enclosed in a rectangle, but within a circle of iron railings.”
“Are you going to take any further steps?”
“It might be interesting to make a few tentative enquiries. Perhaps I may be of some service after all, although not in the way that Professor Owen anticipated. We will begin with Lionel and Clarissa as, except for the murderer, they appear to have been the last people to see poor Catherine alive.”
CHAPTER 13
PROFESSOR OWEN
“Which is the longer, the future still to come, or the past that has gone by?”
2 Esdras 4 v. 45 (New English Bible; Apocrypha)
“The only way to track down Lionel and Clarissa is through Owen,” said Laura. “He will have the home addresses of all our party, and we have his. He must be back by now.”
“Not necessarily, but call his home on the telephone by all means.”
It turned out that Laura was right. Owen was back and professed himself delighted to be in touch with Dame Beatrice and Laura again, but said that he was devastated by the news of his cousin’s death.
“Of course I got in touch with the police as soon as I had the news,” he said, “but that was rather late in the day—the day before yesterday, as a matter of fact, for I had heard nothing until I arrived home and my housekeeper gave me the details. I have been to see Lionel and Clarissa, but they know nothing, of course. I had to give the police their address. It seemed the only thing to do, since Catherine travelled home with them. They assumed that she had gone off to the United States, as was reasonable enough, I suppose, and were a little hurt that she had neither written nor telephoned before she set off. Give you their address? Oh, certainly. Hold on just a minute while I look it up. Do come and see me when you can spare the time.”
“I think we will spare the time,” said Dame Beatrice, when Laura gave her the address and the message. “There may be one or two points which he can clear up for us and which he has not told the police, who are sure to have been in touch with him by now.”
“Why wouldn’t he have told the police what he knows?”
“Oh, only because they did not question him about certain matters and it would not occur to him to offer the information.”
“I thought for a moment you meant that he had been withholding information deliberately.”
“Well, that is always a possibility, of course, although in this case it seems unlikely. Ring him again and say that we hope to be with him at three tomorrow afternoon if he can see us then.”
Owen’s residence turned out to be a set of rooms above an antique-dealer’s shop in Exeter, but he had his own front door at the side of the shop and opened it himself, explaining that his manservant was on holiday. He ushered them up a steep flight of well-carpeted stairs and into a room which did duty both as a drawing-room and a study, for it contained not only bookcases and a large desk but also a three-piece suite of furniture comprising two deep armchairs upholstered in velvet and a matching settee long enough to hold three people comfortably. There was a good modern reproduction of a small Chippendale mahogany table with a hinged “pie-crust” top, the characteristic cabriole legs, and ball-and-claw feet. It gave an impression both of elegance and sturdiness. Professor Owen, with his tall, broad-shouldered figure, silvered hair, youthful face, and fine hands, conveyed, Dame Beatrice thought, the same impression.
He seated his visitors and then stood in front of the fireplace with his hands clasped behind him and looked enquiringly at Dame Beatrice.
“First,” she said, “our sympathy. You must have had a great shock.”
Owen released his right hand to finger the black tie he was wearing.
“Yes, indeed,” he said. “Catherine and I were very close, but it was not by my wish, but was due only to her own persistence, that she came on the tour at all.”
“Oh, really? We understood that, like ourselves, she was invited to join the group.”
“By no means. However, that is immaterial now.”
“Is it? I am not so sure. If she was so anxious to be with you, why did she leave the tour so early?”
“She had begun to find young Stewart’s attentions embarrassing.”
“I thought his attentions were reserved for Miss Babbacombe-Starr.”
“I am afraid not. Catherine complained to me that he had made an attempt at Ardrossan to invade her bedroom. He was at her side the whole time, if you remember, at Kilmartin, when he could have gone with Miss Starr to Arran had he chosen to do so, and he could also have accompanied the young lady to Stornoway. Did you enjoy your trip to Lewis?”
“Very much. As a fillip to our experiences there, there was the very strange affair of the vanishing corpse.”
“A vanishing—?”
“Corpse. Have you heard nothing about that? Oh, well, I daresay you do not look at the more sensational items in the newspaper. Yes, at night we paid our second visit to the fascinating stones at Callanish on the west side of the island, and came upon a newly dead woman of early middle age. We informed the authorities, but when they reached the spot the body had vanished, only to turn up again, it seems, off the shores of Loch Roag.”
“What an extraordinary thing! Is it known who the woman was?”
“The police may have found out by now. When they contacted us she had not been identified. I hope I have served a useful purpose in what I was able to tell them.”
“What information did you give them?”
“Only that the woman had been dead only a very short time when we found her.”
“Oh, of course, you are a doctor. You would know things like that, I suppose.”
“I know enough to determine whether rigor mortis has set in, unreliable guide though it is.”
“But does it not pass off again in the course of time?”
“Yes, it does, but it leaves such tell-tale stainings and other evidence behind it that no medical prac
titioner, especially one armed with as powerful an electric torch as the one Laura carries in the car, could possibly be deceived. I certainly was not, cursory though my inspection had to be.”
“What do the police suspect? An islanders’ vendetta?”
“I hardly think they connect the murder with one of their own people, and neither do I.”
“Oh? You have some reason for saying that, no doubt.”
“Yes, I have, but whether my reason will interest the Scottish authorities I have yet to find out.”
“May one ask . . . ?”
“I am afraid my lips are sealed unless or until the police themselves release the information. I have revealed to them that I have official standing with our Home Office, you see.”
“Really? I had no idea of that, or had I? Naturally, you must be discretion itself. You mean that nobody is in your confidence?”
“My dear professor, one of the things my dabblings in criminology have taught me is that there is nothing more dangerous than the possession of exclusive information. I meant that I have no idea what use the Scottish authorities will make of such clues as I was able to give them; I did not mean that I had not passed on such information as I had.”
“Oh, I see. Yes, I did misunderstand you. But surely the fact that the woman had been dead only a short while could not help the police very much.”
“Professor, you are fishing. Let me come to the reason for my paying you this visit. At risk of offending you, I must repeat my question, since I am convinced that your answer to it may well have been the truth, but feminine intuition, or whatever the male sex may choose to call it, urges me to suspect that it was not the whole truth.”
Owen smiled and seated himself opposite her.
“I would not put it down to feminine intuition,” he said, “but to experience gained in the practice of your profession as a psychiatrist. I suppose your patients, even the voluntary ones, do attempt to keep things from you.”
“Almost invariably, especially at the beginning of the treatment. I want to know the real reason for your cousin’s having given up the tour at so comparatively early a date. Surely a woman of her age and experience could manage an unruly young lover.”
“I don’t believe Catherine had had that kind of experience, Dame Beatrice. Well, you have challenged me, so, as the saying is, I’ll come clean. She and I had fallen out a little on account of that foolish game we played at Penrith.”
“I had guessed at something of the kind. Well, as another saying goes, I have stuck my neck out, so I will take the risk of sticking it out still further. Which of our party, in your opinion, is the likeliest to have invaded my hotel room and stolen your cousin’s paper of answers?”
“What! Are you serious, Dame Beatrice?”
“Oh, yes. Fortunately Laura had everybody’s answers down in shorthand, so it was no great matter in one sense that another set of answers was substituted for Miss Catherine’s.”
“You amaze me! A substitute set of answers? A joke, do you suppose?”
“I suppose nothing. I merely state a fact.”
“But—if I may turn inquisitor for a change—what caused you to have copies made of the answers?”
“Cast your mind back. I have answered that question before.”
“I think I must hoist you with your own petard. Your previous answer, that the envelope I had provided was over-large to be accommodated in your handbag, was the truth, up to a point, but I do not think it was the whole truth. Am I right, ma’am?” He smiled disarmingly and wagged a playful finger at her. Dame Beatrice cackled.
“Touché,” she said, “and a well-deserved tit for tat. I was greatly intrigued by your novel method of playing the Truth Game; so much so, in fact, that I decided some hidden purpose was behind it. If such a thought had occurred to me, I considered that it might well have occurred to others, so I left my door ajar deliberately in order to test my theory and somebody was naive enough to fall into the trap. My interest in the matter was not, at that time, to discover who the intruder was, but which of the papers was important to him or her.”
“I see. Well, I think you will have anticipated my answer to the question you asked some short time ago and which we have sidetracked. The only person in the party who would have been sufficiently interested in Catherine’s answers to steal them would be young Stewart, I suppose.”
“Stewart? Ah, the ardent lover, of course.”
“I imagine he hoped to find out something which, up to that point, Catherine and I had kept to ourselves.”
“Had you known him before he came on the tour with us?”
“Oh, yes. He had been one of my students. Catherine was interested in him and I believe she helped him financially from time to time, and, in fact, she paid his expenses on the tour.”
“May I ask whether Stewart is his first name?”
“Oh, yes, it is. He is half-French and his surname is Lesmains. We never use it, and he himself has taken Stewart as his only name. It has not been changed by deed poll, but most people take Stewart to be his surname. I don’t know why he doesn’t like the other, except that he says it is a disadvantage in England to have a foreign name. I hardly think that is so, but people must be allowed their little prejudices and fancies. To save you the trouble of asking—that is, if you have any curiosity upon the matter—Owen is my first name and my surname. I am Owen Q.X. Owen.”
“Oh, I did not need to question you about your own name,” said Dame Beatrice, leering at him in what he hoped was a friendly fashion. “Be assured that I remembered you when I accepted the invitation to join your party.”
“I suppose you guessed there was a reason?”
“For inviting me? I had no idea of it until others began to speculate upon the reason for my inclusion.”
“I looked forward, of course, to the pleasure of your company on the tour, but I realised, very early on, that you had no suspicion of my other reason for inviting you. The Truth Game was—forgive me!—to give you a hint. I expected that the answers on one of the papers might cause you to come to certain conclusions regarding the mental stability or otherwise of one of the party.”
“I see.”
“Did it ever occur to you, Dame Beatrice, that Catherine herself may have slipped into your room that evening at Penrith and removed her own set of answers? It has only just occurred to me, but now it seems the most likely thing in the world. She objected to my way of playing the Truth Game, you know.”
“So you have told me. You said, Professor, that you and your cousin were close. What did you mean by that?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, we were affianced just before her death.”
“I must again offer you my sympathy.”
“It isn’t necessary. I knew she was suffering from a terminal illness. The doctors deemed it right that I should know. I offered her marriage so that I had the right to look after her at the end, but she did not know that was my reason.”
“Who else knew that she had not very long to live?”
“Nobody. I was told in confidence and I respected that confidence. It would hardly have been suitable for Stewart to know. He was her heir.”
“You think he did not know that, either?”
“Catherine was secretive. She would not have disclosed such a matter.”
“I wonder.” said Dame Beatrice thoughtfully. “She might have relished the gratitude of a handsome young man.”
“I noticed you didn’t point out to him that if Catherine had such strong objections to his version of the Truth Game she need not have played it,” said Laura. “You know, I am prepared to hazard a guess that that man is a villain.”
“Dear me! On what, ignoring feminine intuition, do you base that conjecture?”
“As usual, by the pricking of my thumbs.”
“An unreliable guide, surely?”
“No,” said Laura, “I have never found it so.”
“You terrify me.”
“It’s all very
well to laugh, but somebody killed that poor woman.”
“Of which poor woman do we speak?”
“Catherine. I couldn’t stick her, but she didn’t deserve to be murdered.”
“What of the unknown woman at Callanish?”
“Well, she was certainly known to somebody and that somebody didn’t like her.”
“Murder is more often a matter of expediency than of dislike. It is more often a case of cherchez l’argent than anything more picturesque and romantic.”
“What did you make of Owen?”
“Of little that I had not made of him already.”
“Ask a silly question and you get the Delphic oracle. Do you think he’s a villain?”
“We all have the seeds of villainy in us. Original sin is not only religious doctrine; it is an unescapable fact.”
“I’ll take it as read. So now, I suppose, we tackle Lionel and Clarissa. The inquest must have been adjourned, I suppose. It usually is in cases of murder, unless the police have actually got somebody on the hook. I suppose the finger of the law points straight to those two unless they’ve got an unbreakable alibi, and that will depend largely upon when and where Catherine was actually killed.”
“As usual, you have nicked the matter. It may go hard with the couple if it is proved that Catherine died while they were still accompaying her southwards.”
“The point, as I see it, is that it would have taken two people to heave the body in that sack over those four-foot railings.”
“Where, had we not followed Miss Starr’s lead and gone to visit the Rollright Stones, the body might have remained until the olfactory sense in other and later visitors to the Whispering Knights was sufficiently offended to cause an investigation into the contents of the sack to become imperative.”
“A gruesome thought. Glad I’m not a doctor or a policeman. Funny, though, that young Capella was responsible, in a sense, for our finding both bodies.”
The Whispering Knights (Mrs. Bradley) Page 15