by Roy Vickers
“As a result of that conversation,” said Crisp patiently, “Watlington admitted that he had letters written to you by Miss Lofting?”
“Certainly not. That was merely preparing the ground. I told him what I can’t tell you—to show I wasn’t afraid of him. I am afraid of you, because of your unfortunate duty. I had to kick him hard and show him what a fool he was, outside finance, before I got my letters out of him.”
Benscombe appeared to sneeze. Crisp leant forward in his chair.
“Are you telling me, Mr. Fenchurch, that Watlington gave you those letters?”
Fenchurch took a deep breath: his mouth twitched: he began with laboured patience:
“I told you, my dear sir, that I suspected Watlington had those letters. Clear? I told you that in the course of the afternoon I went to Watlington Lodge with that suspicion in my mind. Clear?” The shrill, exasperated whine returned. “I did not go to Watlington Lodge in the course of the afternoon in order to congratulate Watlington on stealing my letters! I did not go in order to tell him he could keep them as long as he wanted them! I went there to get my letters back or burn the house down! If Watlington had not cowered under my blackguarding and given me the letters, I see now that I would have murdered him and burnt the house down.”
This time, Crisp ignored the artistic temperament.
“Where were the letters—before he gave them to you?”
“In the safe behind him. I know what you’re going to ask next. The answer is No—they were not wrapped in brown paper. They were in a long white envelope with a printed address and sealed with wax. He ripped the sealed envelope with his thumb. Claudia’s letters were inside, in a separate and smaller envelope. When he gave me the letters I put them in my pocket. I thought he was keeping one back, but he explained that it was only his Will—”
“What did he do with the Will?”
“Put it in another envelope of the same kind and locked it in the safe.”
“Did he seal the envelope?”
“No. He wanted to, but I camouflaged the sealing wax—it takes a long time to seal things and I wanted to keep his attention on me. When you interrupted, I was going to tell you—”
“What did he do with the envelope he had ripped up with his thumb?”
“Oh, my God!” Fenchurch dropped his head in his hands. “I do not know what he did with the old envelope. What do people do with old envelopes? I have never given proper thought to that problem. I am ready to believe that he wrapped it in that piece of brown paper and put it in my pocket, if you say so. Let us look for it without delay. The two clues may cancel out, and I shall be a free man … I’m being damnably rude again, Colonel. For heaven’s sake, let’s have a drink and hang on to our sanity.”
He rushed from the room. In his absence, Crisp did not speak. Benscombe became aware that his Chief was preparing one of those pivotal questions, like the question that had driven Ralph to his abortive confession.
“Sorry I’ve no soda,” said Fenchurch returning with whisky and glasses. “The fair Glenda had her uses.”
“On the distinct understanding that I may have to run you in, I’ll be glad to drink your whisky,” said Crisp.
“I don’t suppose you’ll really run me in,” said Fenchurch. “The Times said the other day that it’s virtually impossible to hang the wrong man—though it didn’t explain whether that’s thanks to the police or the lawyers. After all, you can’t say to me: ‘If you didn’t murder Watlington, who the hell did’!”
“True! But I can say—what did you do with the letters after you left Watlington?” Crisp added: “You’ll find, Mr. Fenchurch, that it’s much the same question.”
“Thanks! Better get back to the word-weighing!”
“While you’re weighing your words, I’ll tell you that you left the house by the way you entered it.”
“Skirting the lunatic woman,” agreed Fenchurch. “And then I really did go down to the river. And I really did go to sleep under that tree near the lock. You see, getting those letters back was a great load off my mind.”
“What did you do with those letters, Mr. Fenchurch?” repeated Crisp.
“Burnt ’em, as she asked me to.”
Crisp pondered the answer. Fenchurch anticipated the next question.
“You’re going to say—‘where are the ‘ashes?’ The answer is that I’ve burnt love letters before, and I know that you can often read quite a lot from the ashes. That’s why I went down to the river. I burnt them on those landing steps, and I dropped the ashes into the river. I told you it would be impossible to prove anything. I suppose my whole yarn is trumped by that piece of brown paper?”
“I wouldn’t worry my head about ‘clueage’ if I were you,” said Crisp, rising. “I want to take away those studies of Miss Lofting under the bed in the other room.”
“They’re not for sale.”
“If they were, I couldn’t afford them. I’m taking them officially. You’ll get them back before long. Benscombe, write out a receipt.”
Chapter Thirteen
“I want you to drive,” said Crisp, when they were outside. “I don’t know the road to Kilburn. We’re calling on Mrs. Cornboise to find out whether Querk prompted her about Ralph’s car.”
Benscombe stowed the box containing the pictures of Claudia, too full of Fenchurch to feel interest in Mrs. Cornboise.
“If you had been on your own,” said Crisp, as they drew clear of the neighbourhood, “you would have detained Fenchurch on suspicion, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, sir. The weak link was where he pretended to think Mrs. Cornboise was a lunatic.”
“Wrong, boy! He may or may not have thought her a lunatic. But he couldn’t have faked the story of her swinging the stocking with a weight in it. There was an earthenware duck’s egg in her bag and three stockings, none of which needed darning. I took them. But as the report on them was negative, I returned them to her.”
The traffic demanded Benscombe’s full attention. In the next clear stretch Crisp resumed:
“Your line on the pencil is washed out by his admission that he saw Watlington on Saturday afternoon. That’s bad luck on you—you were right to follow it up.”
“Doesn’t the registered wrapper tie down the time, sir?”
“Not by itself. You must always distinguish clearly between evidence, corroborative evidence, and what he calls ‘clueage.’ His statement to Glenda that he was going to the Lodge was a clue—it wasn’t evidence of anything. The pencil was a second clue. Both point to a truth without establishing it. The brown paper would be corroborative evidence if there were any direct evidence that he was in Watlington Lodge after five o’clock. It is not itself direct evidence, because there are many possible ways in which it might have reached his flat between five on Saturday and six today, when you found it—nearly forty-eight hours later. By itself, the brown paper is little more than a clue.”
When the Chief became academic, Benscombe knew that it was better to pipe down.
“Aylesbury Mansions, Marydale Road,” Crisp told him as they reached Kilburn.
Turning the corner of Marydale Road, Benscombe braked hard.
“That’s Querk’s car, sir—parked about eighty yards ahead on the left there.”
“Get back around the corner.”
Crisp drew a macintosh from the boot to conceal his uniform, then himself kept unobtrusive watch on Querk’s car.
Within five minutes he was back in his car.
“Going that way! Catch him and hang on to him. Mrs. Cornboise got in with him.”
The chase was short. A double turn brought Querk’s car into the high road. A quarter of a mile on, he turned into a garage.
“Get out and tail them,” ordered Crisp, glad that Benscombe was still in plain clothes.
Crisp waited. Obviously they were going to some local address, or Querk would not have garaged. In less than ten minutes, Benscombe re-appeared, wearing a grin.
“Charlie Chaplin, sir.
Two three-and-sixpenny seats. In the foyer, I heard the lady giggle. I gather the gentleman had said something arch.”
“Well, I’m damned!” exploded Crisp. “Boy meets girl, eh! You drive back while I think this out.”
The Chief Constable thought it out all the way back. There was the fantastic hypothesis that Querk was spontaneously attracted to a rather formidable woman in advanced middle age. Alternatively, he was seeking some material advantage. Not her money, because she would not benefit under her husband’s Will: her annuity, to him, would be negligible.
Was he flattering her in order to suborn her as a witness? If so, where did his material interest lie? Again, Querk’s objective was indiscernible.
“We’ll have those pictures in my room,” said Crisp as they reached headquarters. When the cardboard dress box had been placed on the table, he asked:
“Do you know anything about art, Benscombe?”
“Not a thing, sir.”
“Nor do I. So we can’t tell whether Fenchurch is only a glib scoundrel, who is clever with paint brushes. Or whether he’s a born artist, who sees life mainly in terms of line and colour—who is genuinely puzzled and exasperated when I ask him what the time was and what became of an old envelope. I shall get some men who understand art to come and look at these pictures.”
“As to the head-in-the-clouds stuff, sir—did you notice that he knew we could deal with ashes? He had his feet firmly planted, that time.”
Crisp grunted and took out a canvas. Claudia sitting on the bench in the cemetery. He set it on a long empty shelf, upright against the wall, and looked at it.
“That bears out what he said about his not being a photographer,” remarked Benscombe. “By the outline it might be almost any girl of that type. But if you look at it as a whole, it’s Claudia and no one else in the world.”
Claudia gazing at her lover came out of the box and was set up, leaning against the wall, beside the other.
“That one certainly has a quality of its own you can’t miss,” muttered Crisp.
Both men were paying unconscious tribute to the artist. At police headquarters, at an anxious stage in a murder investigation, they were pre-occupied with the problem of his art.
“If Fenchurch is lying, he may be the murderer.” Grisp was thinking aloud. “The strongest indication that he is lying is that he accounts for too much. He states that Watlington retained his Will. Now, whatever Watlington did with the old envelope, he would have sealed up the Will himself in a new one—or left the Will unsealed. Then why should someone remove his signet ring after death—and put it back?
“If Fenchurch is telling the truth, the only value of his account is that it may affect Ralph Cornboise.”
“Even if we can’t fix the time, sir?”
“Nothing to do with the time! Ralph’s hallucinations—or his lying confession, if you like—is inspired by the fear that Claudia removed the letters. If Ralph is convinced that she did not, the hallucination ought to be scuppered. Ring up and ask if he has come back, will you?”
While Benscombe was telephoning, Crisp brought out the remainder of the pictures, set them in a long row on the shelf, glancing from one to another, trying to form his own opinion.
“Not back yet, sir.”
“A pity. He’s hanging us up.”
Crisp, mentally reviewing the details in Fenchurch’s account, presently added:
“We must check the statement that those fellows are wine merchants in Casa Flavia. If you don’t get a letter from the consulate tomorrow, answering your query, go and see them.”
Benscombe failed to acknowledge the order. His attention was concentrated on the nude study. When he spoke, it was not as a disciplined junior to his Chief.
“When you and I looked out of that window on Saturday night, we saw Fenchurch and Claudia talking. Why didn’t he tell her he had rescued the letters? Because he hadn’t? He was lying to us. Look at those five gorgeous pictures. All true! And look at this horrible one! It’s as true as the others. That man can see into her mind. And he saw that she had killed Watlington. He’s not such a cissie as he looks. He’s still in love with her, and he’s going to save her if he can. So he put on an act for us!”
“That makes two of ’em anxious to be hanged instead of the lady!” Crisp’s tone was discouraging.
“I can’t help it, sir. If you hadn’t arranged those pictures I wouldn’t have seen it like that. But I do see it like that, even if I’m talking through my hat.”
Crisp looked from the pictures to Benscombe.
“I’m beginning to believe that fellow must be a big artist. I admit that I get a reaction from that work which I’ve never had from pictures before. Now, look here, Benscombe. What you’re saying may turn out to be true, for all I know at present. But when you make a wild guess like that—in this office—on the strength of your reaction to a picture, it means that you should have a meal and get a good night’s rest.”
Benscombe flushed. Crisp went on:
“I’ll see Ralph Cornboise myself when he gets back. I shall be here until midnight anyway, but I shan’t need you. You’ve done a good day’s work and you can take delivery of a pat on the back. But go home now, my boy. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, sir. I’m sorry I said too much.”
After a modest meal at a nearby hotel, Crisp returned to his desk to cope with a fresh pile of reports.
Shortly after nine, the house telephone rang from the charge-room on the ground floor.
“Miss Lofting is here, sir, and asks to see you.”
“Show her up right away.”
Not until Claudia was being shown in did Crisp remember that Fenchurch’s pictures were still on the shelf, upright against the wall.
From the doorway her eyes sought him. She came directly to his desk, not noticing the pictures, a letter in her hand. She was in a state of tension: if she had been any other woman he would have suspected that she had been crying.
“This came by the evening post. It’s from Ralph. Will you read it, please?”
He placed a chair for her, so that her back was towards the pictures. From the envelope he took a single sheet.
‘Goodbye, Claudia. You were wonderful while you were alive and I loved you with all my strength. As you are dead, I cannot live with you. And it is still true that I cannot live without you. Ralph.’
There was no address. The letter had been posted in West Central London early that afternoon.
“I must ask you to let me keep this,” said Crisp. “The handwriting is steady, though the words are maniacal.”
“The words are self-conscious and slushy. But the meaning is unpleasantly clear. He is not insane, Colonel. But I don’t think he is well enough to be roaming about by himself. That threat of suicide—”
“Such threats are very common.”
“But he did try to kill himself once. And he may try again.”
“The meaning doesn’t seem very sensible to me—that was written within three hours of his going with you to the Registrar.”
“That was my fault. I practically dragged him along. Because I was afraid of his suicidal impulse.”
“Is he sane enough to realise that if he doesn’t tell us where he is by to-morrow morning, we shall have to take measures?”
“He is perfectly sane!” she asserted doggedly. “But everything to do with the murder is out of proportion in his mind. It’s as if he felt that, after offering a confession and having it rejected, you and he washed your hands of each other. That’s stupid, but it isn’t insane, when you remember how the hallucination distorts everything.”
While she was speaking he was watching her face—unconsciously trying to see it as the artist saw it. ‘I paint the spirit, not the flesh.’ Studio jargon, meaning one must not be misled by appearances. The disturbing thing about this girl was that her appearance always bore out whatever she was putting over. Her voice, her muscles, her very features seemed to dress the part. At the moment, she looke
d almost plain, hard-up, stranded through no fault of her own, but courageously determined to ask nothing for herself.
“When someone makes a statement to us,” said Crisp, “we try to prove that the statement must be true—or must be false. Sometimes a statement, proved to be false, has been made in good faith—you can call such a statement an hallucination if you like—we don’t care.” He dropped the dogmatic tone as he continued: “I wish you would tell me—does Ralph honestly believe he killed his uncle—as and when he says he did?”
“I think there are moments when he doubts it,” she answered thoughtfully. “When you say something you’re sure of and everyone says you’re mistaken, you begin to have doubt of yourself. But, of course, he wobbles between the two extremes. That letter to me is a wobble.”
Crisp glanced down at the letter. The moment he took his eyes off her he felt that she was leading him. Let her go on leading him until she tripped!
“Why does he pretend in this letter that you are dead?”
“Dead to him, he means. It’s a wobble over the hallucination. The sense of it is—if he didn’t kill his uncle, I did, and he doesn’t want to see me again.”
“But we don’t take that line. Why should he?”
“Because he believes I stole those wretched letters from the safe. If you could only prove that I didn’t, I believe we could dispel the hallucination.”
Crisp held his breath as she put to him the very case he had intended to put to her. There came to him, too, the reflection that the two men who had loved this woman both believed her capable of murder.
“Couldn’t you have settled his doubts about those letters?”
“No, because my own good faith was in question. To begin with, Ralph thought I was lying when I said I didn’t notice that Watlington put them in the envelope with the Will. I made it worse when I said later that I did remember it—after Querk had reminded me of exactly what happened.”