“Possibly so,” agreed Stanton, “but I happen to be a truthful kind of fellow, though I don’t expect you to believe it. I mentioned my mother’s letter because I intended to say that I had done what it asked. But when he asked outright if I’d come to the house that night, my courage gave out, and I funked telling him.”
“And that’s the only other lie you’ve told us, Mr. Hardstaffe?”
“Yes.”
“H’m,” said Driver again.
There was a pause.
“Don’t you believe me?” demanded Stanton.
“Well, sir,” said the Inspector slowly. “There’s that little matter of your presence here on the night of your father’s murder. I don’t so much mind you telling lies to other people, but when it comes to telling them to me, I take it as a personal matter. And you must admit that it does look a bit more than a coincidence that you were standing outside this house on the two nights when your parents were murdered.”
“Stan! Oh Stan! What have you done?” wailed Betty. “Oh, poor little Paul. What will become of us all?”
She flung herself into a chair, and wept as wholeheartedly as her baby when bereft by a callous adult hand of some beloved toy.
“You told your wife that you would be on Home Guard duty all night,” said the relentless detective-inspector. “You put on your uniform and she believed you implicitly.”
Cue for song, thought the Sergeant, and hummed under his breath,
“Pom. Pompom. Pompompompompom. Pom. Pompompom. Pom. Pompom,
A fact that I counted upon, when I first put this uniform on!”
“And a member of the Home Guard was seen outside this house before Mr. Hardstaffe was murdered. And the local village Home Guards all have unbreakable alibis for that night. And it happened that you asked and received permission to change duty with another Guard on that particular night, saying that your father had been taken ill and had telephoned to ask you to see him!”
Leda, white with emotion, was gazing at her brother.
“Stanton! Is this true?”
It was the truth about my father,” Stanton replied, ignoring her.
Yes,” agreed the Inspector. “That was true all right. He was ill, very ill. Sick unto death!”
“No, no. I mean that he did ’phone me. Oh, I know you’ll never believe it, but it’s true, I tell you, true! He ’phoned to my office and said he was in a terrible predicament. He’d learned something about Mother’s death, he said, but he felt he couldn’t go to the police about it. He wanted me to advise him I know it sounds impossible, but it’s true. I didn’t know what to do. It was so queer for him to ring me at all that I at once thought it must be some kind of plot, and I decided not to go.”
“You must have changed your mind suddenly.”
The Inspector’s voice was charged with disbelief, but Stanton went on as if determined to finish his story in his own way.
“That’s exactly what I did do. I went eventually, not to keep the appointment, but to try and find out what was going on. I frankly thought that he wanted to frame me for my mother’s murder. Instead of that, he seems to have framed me for his. If he wasn’t dead already, he’d die with laughing at that.”
The room was silent for a minute.
“Well,” said Driver at length, “I can understand your going back without seeing your father, but I still don’t see why you didn’t try to see your mother.”
Stanton suddenly lost his suave self-possession.
“Oh God!” he cried, “Have you no pity? Have you no mothers, no wives, no children, you detectives? Can’t you understand that I’ve been tormented day and night, night and day, by the thought that while I was standing there in the darkness, my mother was slowly dying?”
He buried his face in his hands and began to cry—long, slow sobs that brought Betty to her feet.
“No one’s going to touch you, Stan,” she said. “If they don’t believe you, I do.”
She turned on Leda with the ferocity of a wild cat with young, “This is your fault, you—you vampire!” she cried. “And now I’ll tell you all about why I wanted Miss Fuller to come here. I’ll explain your old mystery. Mystery? It was nothing but fun. I—”
“It’s no use, Mrs. Hardstaffe,” Driver interrupted. “No jury would believe a word of it. They’d say you’d made it up to help your husband.”
Betty stared at him wildly.
“Jury? No—jury—” she repeated. “You can’t mean—”
“Stop it, all of you! I can’t stand it!”
Charity’s voice cut across the emotionally-charged atmosphere of the room. She sprang to her feet, her eyes feverishly a-glitter, and for a moment her tall figure dominated them all.
“You’re driving me mad; I can’t stand it any longer!” she cried. “I did it, if you want to know. He pestered me with his attentions and I couldn’t stand it any longer. I wanted to be free, and he wouldn’t let me go. So I killed him! And now, for God’s sake, let me go home!”
CHAPTER 38
Arnold was beginning to think that, as far as he was concerned, the murders of Mr. and Mrs. Hardstaffe had been so much waste of time.
Any writer worthy of a crime club would, he felt sure, have completed his book while the murders were still front page news, would have cashed in on the publicity, and would have been well on the way to solving the crimes, over the Inspector’s head.
Instead of that, he had been unable to write a word in the three weeks which followed Charity’s dramatic confession, and the recollection of the primitive emotions exhibited that same morning still caused him the acutest embarrassment. To describe any of them in his book was unthinkable.
And so page after page of manuscript paper was filled, not with Noel Delare’s picturesque appearances on the scene of the crime, nor his careless perception of carefully dropped clues, but with scribbled calculations upon the state of Arnold’s dwindling bank balance.
One afternoon, after yet another fruitless attempt to complete Chapter Twenty, he threw down his fountain pen and faced the fact that he must either starve or marry Leda.
Neither of these alternatives held any attraction for him.
He did not doubt that Leda would marry him if he asked her. She might laugh at him and call him a silly old fool, but she would accept. He had little to offer her except the honest name of Smith, which had earned as much respect in London town as that of Brown, and was many hundreds of years older than the more elaborate surnames of those who professed to despise it. But Leda was in need of a husband, not of money, home, or position, and although she might insist on being known as Hardstaffe-Smith, she would not refuse him.
If he could have dismissed from his mind the romantic episode with Charity Fuller which seemed each day to assume a more colourful place in his life, he would have proposed to Leda that very day. But the thought of Charity wearing the black evening frock which so cleverly concealed her figure, and the even sharper thought of her wearing the night attire which as carelessly revealed it, made him hesitate to commit himself to an alliance with Leda whose figure promised no such delights.
A silly old fool? Perhaps so. But surely it was no unusual thing for a man to fall in love at fifty, particularly if he had had no previous sexual experience. No one could call him a roué and that should count for something with a woman nowadays.
It wasn’t as if he were over sixty, like old Hardstaffe, he thought. There had been something indecent in the idea of his possessing a young girl like Charity. But if old age were a second childhood, then, at fifty, a man was back again in his twenties!
But, even if she would consider his advances, Charity had no money. And Leda was now a rich woman—
Having thus worked himself into a Hamlet-like mood of indecision, Arnold decided to give up all pretense at work, and go out in the hazy sunshine to think things over again. Leda, he knew, was presiding at the monthly meeting of The Women’s Rustic Arts and Crafts Society, so that he was absolved from the polite
necessity of asking her to accompany him.
With some idea of imposing a little self-discipline upon himself, he avoided walking towards the house where Charity lodged, and turned in the opposite direction. As far as he could see, the road was deserted, but when he turned along the narrow lane leading to the path through the woods, he caught sight of Charity’s tall figure ahead, and invested the chance encounter with all the romantic significance he might have given to it, had he indeed been twenty instead of fifty.
Charity walked quickly, and she was deep in the woods before he caught up with her.
“Miss Fuller!” he exclaimed. “What a pleasant surprise! I heard that you were coming back again this week. Are you sure you’re strong enough to walk as far as this?”
“Oh, I’m all right now,” replied Charity. “Walking is good for nervous complaints, you know, and I’ve been told to get out-of-doors as much as possible.”
Her voice was impersonal. It chilled Arnold, and seemed to be telling him to mind his own business.
“Forgive me if I seem curious,” he said. “It isn’t the curiosity of the villagers, I assure you. I’ve felt anxious about you ever since they took you away.”
“It’s very kind of you, Mr. Smith,” she said, still in the same cold tones. “I must thank you, too, for inquiring about me when I was in the nursing-home. The flowers you sent were lovely, but you shouldn’t have bothered about me.” She paused, then added, “I’m not worth it.” Arnold’s impulse was to raise his cap and walk away in the opposite direction, but suddenly he grasped her arm, and turned her towards him.
“Why, you’re crying!” he said. “Whatever is the matter? If I’ve said anything to upset you—”
Womanlike, she cried more bitterly at his evident sympathy, and he put an arm round her shoulders and waited for her to stop.
“Here. Let’s sit down,” said Arnold.
He drew her towards a tiny clearing which might have provided a faery bower for Titania, and they sat down together on a felled tree, their feet rustling among dead leaves and beech mast.
“Now tell me all about it,” he said gently. “I know that you couldn’t have killed old Hardstaffe, though I’ll admit you scared me a bit when you confessed that you had.”
“Of course I didn’t!” she said indignantly. “It was just nerves. I’m not usually given to making scenes, but all that sob-stuff from Stanton and his wife fairly finished me after the awful time I’d had that morning. I felt I must do something to stop all those questions and arguments or I should go mad.”
“Yes, I can understand that,” replied Arnold. “It was lucky that the Inspector had the sense to send for the doctor. When he arrived he couldn’t tell us whether you’d recover or not. He just bundled you into his car and insisted on taking you to a nursing-home, and said he’d have to keep you doped for a few days to give your brain a chance to recover from the shock. I wonder he let you out so soon really.”
“Oh, I’m as strong as a horse,” said Charity. “I feel that I owe you all an apology, though, for making an exhibition of myself.”
“You didn’t,” Arnold smiled. “You looked—magnificent. Really, I mean it. We ought to do the apologising, not you. We ought to have had more sense than to subject you to such an interview after the shock you’d had. So, if that’s all you were crying about—”
“No, it isn’t.” She sat quite still for a minute, then looked at him in that heart-piercing way of hers. “Mr. Smith, you’ve always been kind and understanding to me,” she said. “I’m so alone in the world, and everyone in the village dislikes me. I suppose it’s because I never mix with them, and they think I’m a snob.”
“They probably envy you,” returned Smith. “They’re none of ’em noted for their looks, and you are beautiful.”
“No!” cried Charity. “They’ve no reason to envy me. They say that good looks are the snares of the devil. If I have any, that’s what they are. If I’d been ugly, I shouldn’t have attracted him, and I shouldn’t need to feel so wretchedly miserable now.”
Arnold stared at her in amazement.
“You mean—you’re still in love with Leda’s father?” he asked.
Charity’s laugh was full of bitterness.
“In love? No! I hated him! I’m glad he’s dead, though it was my fault, I know, that he died. All those rumours about us were quite true. He was in love with me—at least he was crazy about me, if that’s the same thing. He wanted to marry me. No, that’s not the truth. He wanted to make me his mistress.” Arnold winced at the word. “When I refused, he said he would marry me even if he had to kill his wife first. I don’t know whether he did it or not, but I think he was capable of it.
“But it isn’t that. It’s my own part in it that makes me feel so unhappy. He flattered me, and gave me lovely presents. I ought not to have accepted them, but I did. I was so lonely here and he was unhappy at home, and I thought I was in love with him. It all seemed so natural at the time, then I suddenly came to my senses, and realised that I didn’t love him and never had. I knew that he was just a dirty old man and I was pandering to him. Oh, I’m not shirking ugly words,” she went on. “It was just like that. It must have been a kind of Svengali attraction, for, until then, I’d seen it as a great romance. That night when I came to dinner and met you, he tried to kiss me when he took me home. I told him how I felt, and I’d have killed him if he’d tried to touch me again.”
Arnold did not perceive her reason for telling him all this, and said with some diffidence, “But you found it all out in time. I don’t see why you’re letting it worry you so much.”
Charity looked at him, her lips trembling, and he saw that her lovely green eyes were filled with tears.
“Can’t you understand how ashamed I feel?” she asked earnestly. “I felt ashamed that you should have seen Mr. Hardstaffe treating me as though I belonged to him. I still feel dreadful when I think of it.”
Arnold took her hand in his.
“My dear, you have no cause to feel like that,” he said. “However foolish you may have been, that’s all over. I don’t believe all the awful things you’ve been saying about yourself. To me, you are quite lovely.”
Charity squeezed his hand.
“You do say the sweetest things,” she said, smiling through her tears. “I’ve wanted so much to be friends with you, but I felt that I couldn’t until I’d told you the truth about him.”
One of the woodcutters passed them, his footsteps deadened by the soft mossy ground. He whistled as he went on his way, hoping to convince them, perhaps, that they had not been observed.
First old Mr. Hardstaffe and now old Mr. Smith, he thought. Well, they do say Charity always begins at home!
Charity withdrew her hand and got up hurriedly.
“It’s getting late. I must go,” she said in the old, impersonal voice.
Arnold, finding the sudden change in her manner disconcerting, got up, and turned to accompany her.
“No, don’t come with me,” she said, “You’d better go back the short way. Your fiancée will be waiting for you,” and, waving a slender hand, she walked quickly away through the wood.
Arnold turned back thoughtfully.
Before he had reached the house, he had resolved to break his non-existent engagement with Leda.
CHAPTER 39
He heard Leda’s voice calling to him as soon as he entered the hall, and, disturbed by its unfamiliar urgency, he hastened forward.
The hall, like many others in old houses, lacked adequate windows, and he could see her indistinctly among die shadows.
“Oh Arnold, I’m so glad you’ve come!” she exclaimed. “I’m in such trouble.”
He stretched out a hand, but she drew back.
“Don’t touch me,” she said quickly. “I’m—wet.”
"Wet?” repeated Arnold. “On a lovely evening like this? What on earth have you been doing? Falling into the river?”
He switched on the light.
&nbs
p; “Good Lord!” he exclaimed. “What have you done? What is it—oil?”
He streaked a finger across the front of her coat, then looked at it, and gasped.
“It’s blood,” he said. “Blood!” He looked at the wide smears on the sleeves of her coat, at the great, spreading blotch across the waist and breast, at her bloody hands, and his voice grew urgent.
“Has there been an accident? Are you hurt?”
“No. I’m all right, Arnold.”
He gazed at her agitated face and frightened eyes.
“Then, what is it? You don’t mean—?”
Leda gulped.
“It’s Cherub,” she said, “my little darling Cherub. I was coming back from the meeting and she must have heard my step. She ran right across the road. A motor-bike—the man couldn’t help it. No one could have avoided her. It caught her with some sharp part. She’s—terribly injured, Arnold. Oh, why didn’t I come home five minutes earlier? Why did it have to be Cherub?”
“I’m sorry, Leda. Is there anything I can do?”
In his relief, Arnold found it difficult to express his sympathy, though he knew that the puppy was as dear to Leda’s heart as Paul was to Betty’s. But, standing there motionless, her hands stained with blood, and that look of horror in her eyes, she had looked a veritable Lady Macbeth, and he had imagined a tragedy much greater.
“Yes. Ring up the vet for me—you’ll find his number on the telephone pad. I’ve put her in one of the kennels. She’s bleeding so terribly.”
“Right,” replied Arnold. “Vincent’s the name, isn’t it? Perhaps it isn’t as bad as it looks. It isn’t always a bad thing for a wound to bleed at first.”
“You haven’t seen it,” Leda replied in dull tones. “I want him to put her to sleep at once. She’s in no pain yet, but there’s absolutely no hope of saving her.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I know how you feel. You can’t do anything for a few minutes, though, so how about mixing yourself a drink and then taking that coat off? You must be sensible, dear.”
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