Minute for Murder

by Nicholas Blake

  “So when he said ‘Now you’ve done it’——”

  “I think he meant the end had come, for Jimmy, and therefore in a way for Alice. I believe Charles, up to this point, had kept dumb about the containers because he genuinely disliked the idea of Jimmy’s being arrested, and he guessed that, if we knew about the containers, we’d have the missing piece of evidence which would lead to Jimmy’s arrest. Not that he cared much what happened to Jimmy: but he did care for his sister’s peace of mind—he didn’t want to help us hang Alice’s husband. But now he had to act, if only in self-defence. And at this point, I think, the other side of his personality took control—the Major Kennington who had hunted down Stultz. I think he suddenly realised he hated Jimmy—the man who had taken his sister from him, and then deserted her for another woman, and then involved her in a hideous crime. He was going to lay for Jimmy now. To reveal the truth about the containers might not clinch the case: Jimmy might wriggle out of it somehow; and besides, Charles wanted a personal revenge.”

  “So you were asked to supper?”

  “So I was asked to supper. As soon as I got there, I sensed fire and brimstone in the air. Charles was drinking heavily—no doubt, to help work himself up to the big scene. The antipathy between the two of them—well, you could have cut it with a knife. Charles had obviously been taunting Jimmy, hinting at this and that, before I arrived. Deliberately getting on his nerves. In fact, he’d taken a leaf out of my own book: but of course he did it much more effectively, because he felt he hated Jimmy and despised him, and he positively enjoyed putting the screws on him, whereas I didn’t—not one little bit. Jimmy was very cool and wary. He knew something was bound to happen; but he didn’t know what. Well, we went in to supper. I decided to start the ball rolling, so I told them just how I’d arrived at my theory about the murder-method, and then I sketched out a case against Charles and Alice on the strength of it. That set them off, as it was intended to. Charles at once launched into his speech for the prosecution against Jimmy. It was a venomous performance, I can tell you. And it presented the true interpretation of all the facts at Charles’s disposal.”

  “Just a minute,” Blount interrupted. “Did Mr. Lake know at this stage that a poison container had been found in Kennington’s suitcase?”

  “Yes, I brought that out as the climax of my case against Charles and Alice. Jimmy could not conceal his amazement. Another poison container! For he had in his pocket the one which Charles had brought to the Ministry. Well, Charles told Jimmy he’d better confess. And Jimmy of course refused the offer. So Charles went to it. He first exploded, very neatly, my own ‘case’ against Alice and himself. Then he accused Jimmy to his face of having murdered Nita. He said he’d refrained from ‘telling all he knew’ about Jimmy, from a wish to protect Alice. That decided Jimmy. He didn’t know how much Charles had to tell, but he could assume it would be deadly dangerous to him. So he at once put his plan into action.”

  “Plan? To kill Charles Kennington?”

  “Yes. I imagine it was not all done on the spur of the moment. But I doubt if he would have put the plan into action, even though it might well seem to account satisfactorily for the disappearance of his poison pill, if Charles hadn’t pressed him so hard and got his goat too. Anyway, he went to the sideboard to get his second course. Oh, it was very naturally done—he gave a wonderful performance last night, Blount: it had me foxed. But not Charles. Charles was watching him in the mirror; he didn’t trust Jimmy an inch. Jimmy pretended he heard something at the door. I went to open it. It was only his cat. Apparently his cat always comes to the door during meals, if it hasn’t been let into the dining-room already. I didn’t know that, of course. But Charles did. While I was opening the door, Jimmy broke the poison container into one of the tinted liqueur glasses. Charles saw him do it, in the mirror, but didn’t say anything. He knew that container must be the dummy one he’d brought to the Ministry. Then Jimmy sat down again, and Charles resumed the attack. The poison, as Jimmy imagined it to be, was now all ready on the sideboard, invisible in a tinted glass, to be used or not used, depending on what Charles would now reveal. Well, Charles proceeded to state a damning case against Jimmy. You’ll find it all in the full report of last night’s proceedings I’ve written out for you. Amongst other things, Nita told him the night before the murder that Jimmy had made every sort of appeal to her to release him, and finished up by threatening her, telling her he’d given her the last chance. He went on to offer an extremely offensive character sketch of Jimmy and to describe the murder method in detail. Incidentally, he put forward the suggestion that Jimmy had originally intended to make Nita’s death appear as a suicide.”

  “Yes,” said Blount, “he has admitted that in his confession.”

  “Well, when Charles had finished, Jimmy first pointed out that the finding of Stultz’s thing in Charles’ suitcase seemed to make nonsense of Charles’ recent accusations. Then he got down to business. It was a masterly piece of acting. He hadn’t dared to bring out the truth before, he said, because he knew it would break Alice’s heart if her brother was convicted of murder. But now, more in sorrow than in anger, he must speak.”

  “Masterly acting? Damned hypocrisy, you mean!” growled Blount.

  “Yes. I know. I can’t get over my old affection and admiration for Jimmy, though. And he put up such a staggering fight. I knew he was the guilty man; yet I had to pinch myself not to be lulled into a conviction that he was innocent, that it was Charles who——Anyway, the nub of Jimmy’s accusation was that he’d returned to Nita’s flat that night and listened at the door and heard Charles threaten to do her in if she didn’t leave Jimmy and come back to him. He presented a picture of Charles as a crypto-jealous-he-man in fact.”

  “But he couldn’t have——”

  “No, of course he didn’t really go back to her flat. It was all one flaming but not unconvincing lie.”

  “The dog,” began Blount.

  “Exactly. The dog always barked when any one came in, and the caretaker was quite definite that the dog had only four paroxysms of barking that night—Jimmy’s real arrival and departure, and Charles’s. Jimmy slipped up there. I now knew for certain he was lying.”

  “But how did he account for Charles having Stultz’s thing in his possession?”

  “Quite ingenious. He agreed Charles couldn’t have pocketed it before Nita died—the evidence had proved that: he suggested Charles had done it during the confusion just after her death. Of course, he had to skate pretty fast over that; and still faster over the question, where had Charles got the cyanide with which her coffee actually was poisoned. He couldn’t suggest Charles had used the poison pill out of his own drawer, because the evidence proved that Charles could not have got this pill, without Alice’s help, before the murder. And anyway, he needed the pill to be in existence still, so to speak, because Charles had got to ‘commit suicide’ with it. So he suggested vaguely that Charles must have had some other source of poison; and he accused Charles of taking his poison pill, after the murder, to throw suspicion on him. He even said that Charles had asked him where he kept it. This was another lie, I imagine. Charles protested it was, anyway. But Jimmy could afford to leave parts of his accusation pretty vague and thin, because (a) this gave it more verisimilitude, and (b) Charles’s ‘suicide’ was to vindicate it. And for the same reason Jimmy could afford to admit now that he would have seized the chance of breaking with Nita if Charles insisted on holding her to her engagement. It was a brilliantly-timed admission. But he had realised all along how dangerous it would be for him to conceal his motive for killing Nita.”

  Nigel paused. His hand went out automatically towards his glass of whisky, but he put it down again untasted.

  “Well, Jimmy then moved to the kill. Charles of course knew just what was in Jimmy’s mind, and played up to him. He pretended to be floored by Jimmy’s accusation. Jimmy now had to get him before he made his come-back, because he obviously couldn’t expect Charl
es to lie down indefinitely under what they both knew to be a false accusation. So Jimmy went to the sideboard, absently poured out some peach brandy for himself, then apologised and offered some to me. The other glass—the one into which he’d previously poured the liquid from the container—he put beside Charles. He did all this very openly. I should have been able to swear to it afterwards that he hadn’t done any monkey business with Charles’s glass then.”

  “Peach brandy, eh?”

  “Yes, same sort of smell as cyanide. He’d got it all planned. Presently Jimmy said to Charles, ‘There’s only one thing to be done now.’ Charles still looked rather stunned, and repeated the phrase dully. He was acting up too, for all he was worth.”

  “I don’t understand how Lake didn’t suspect that,” said Blount. “Surely he must have felt it was vairy queer for Kennington to be fitting in so neatly and tamely with his plan?”

  “You’d think so. But I suppose Jimmy was too preoccupied in putting over the suicide illusion on me to notice much how the victim was behaving. He’d ascribe Charles’s behaviour to his being stunned by his own comeback; and partly no doubt to his being drunk—Charles had been drinking heavily all the evening. At any rate, having given Charles the cue-line for suicide, Jimmy again distracted my attention: he asked me to adjust his sling, and he manœuvred it so that my back was turned to Charles for a minute. During that minute, Charles was supposed to have popped the cyanide pill into his liqueur.”

  “And you fell for all this?”

  “Well, yes and no. I was convinced that Jimmy was working up to something. He was obviously setting the scene for a suicide. But I admit I’d no idea it was to take place the next moment, in front of my own eyes.”

  “That’s how Miss Prince was killed. In front of witnesses.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Nigel. “I’ve no excuses. Jimmy’d got me hypnotised, I confess it. A very macabre thing happened next. Charles raised his glass and asked Jimmy to drink to the shade of Nita. Charles was enjoying his little act no end. Jimmy didn’t like that at all. Well, Charles took a gulp—he’s a greedy chap; I’d noticed it before—fancy swigging a liqueur like beer! Then he proceeded to give a revoltingly accurate imitation of a man who has just taken a gulp of cyanide. I was absolutely knocked cold. I hadn’t expected anything so soon, as I told him. And Jimmy got a firm grip on me, to stop me running to Charles’s help—I expect he had some bad moments then, wondering if Charles wouldn’t gasp out an accusation against him of poisoning the liqueur. And he said, ‘It’s better this way,’ to reinforce in my mind the impression that Charles had preferred to take that way out. And when Charles was ‘dead’ Jimmy confessed he’d done the sling trick on me to give Charles that chance ‘hoping that he’d still have my poison pill on him.’ I then went to the telephone; and I’d just asked Jimmy for his doctor’s number—we’d both got our backs to the table—when we heard the voice of the man who had just died of cyanide poisoning calmly announce that it was only the police we needed. That broke Jimmy’s nerve, as Charles had all along intended it to. We searched him and found the dummy poison container in his pocket, broken. It was absolutely damning evidence. Poor old Jimmy.”

  “I’m not wasting any of my pity on him,” said Blount.

  “You’re right, I know. But I can’t help it when I think of Jimmy’s tragedy—the way Nemesis hit back at him through the very woman—”

  “Aye, the vairy woman. It’s Nita Prince you should be sorry for.”

  “Oh, I am. I’d never have got embroiled in this filthy case if I hadn’t had a great feeling for her. But I don’t mean Nita. Jimmy did it all for Alice: and it was Alice who quite unwittingly became the instrument of the Furies. It was Alice who wrecked his original plan to make Nita’s death appear as a suicide, by preventing him from pocketing the poison container soon enough. It was Alice who, simply by turning up unexpectedly at the party that morning, shaped all the events to come: for her presence there, with the motive she had for hating Nita, was bound to put her under suspicion; and if she hadn’t been in danger, I doubt if Charles would ever have troubled to bring the murder home to Jimmy. It was Alice for whose sake Jimmy committed the murder; only to find that Nita’s death widened the gulf between them instead of bridging it. Jimmy had gradually built up a phantasy figure of Alice during the years when she was more or less estranged from him by the affair with Nita—a figure which seemed to offer the one thing Nita couldn’t give him: peace of mind. But, when he’d released himself and gone back to Alice, he saw her again as she really was—a self-possessed, self-absorbed, thin-blooded creature; an amusing companion, pleasant enough, to be sure; but fundamentally an un-loving, un-tender woman. And Jimmy had discovered in Nita what a really loving woman was like. Nita had been too much for him, I know—too loving, too exacting, too possessive. But, when she was dead, he found out that her sort of love, with all its scenes and torments, was what he really wanted. He’d destroyed it, destroyed her, because he hadn’t been a strong enough character to sustain it. But it was still what he wanted. The mere memory of it turned Alice into a ghost for him.”

  “Aye,” said Blount, “a classical case of Nemesis.”

  THE END

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  Malice in Wonderland

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  GLADYS MITCHELL

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  The Longer Bodies

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  Death and the Opera

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  St Peter’s Finger

  Brazen tongue

  Hangman’s Curfew

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  Watson’s Choice

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  Late, Late in the Evening

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  Copyright © Nicholas Blake 1947

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  First published in Great Britain in 1947 by Collins Clear-type Press

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