Murder of a Snob

by Roy Vickers

  Someone had told her. Not Querk. There was only one other likely source.

  He waited while Benscombe finished typing the statement about Ralph Cornboise’s car. Mrs. Cornboise, forewarned by Querk that this would be required of her, signed without protest.

  “Now, Mrs. Cornboise. You have seen Ralph Cornboise since he disappeared from Watlington Lodge.”

  Mrs. Cornboise showed neither surprise nor alarm.

  “Why shouldn’t I!” she challenged. “It’s a free country, who you speak to. Or it would be if it wasn’t for the police.”

  “It’s no use talking to us like that, Mrs. Cornboise.” Crisp was in some doubt as to how to proceed. “You don’t seem to understand that if Ralph Cornboise were charged with the murder of Lord Watlington—as he well may be—you would be in a very awkward and humiliating position. What you have done is called harbouring and succouring—”

  “Well, it didn’t ought to be! I never did any such thing! And I’m surprised at your saying it!” She glared at him, scandalised and indignant.

  “It’s only law language,” cut in Benscombe. “It means you might be put in prison for being friendly with a man who is hiding from the police.”

  “Oh well! It’s a pity that wasn’t made clear in the first place.” Mrs. Cornboise was mollified. “He isn’t hiding from the police. He’s hiding from that girl. And I promised I wouldn’t do anything to help her find him.”

  “If he is not hiding from us, there is no harm in our knowing where he is,” pleaded Crisp.

  “That girl would worm it out of you and I’d never forgive myself.” Mrs. Cornboise was weakening. “Besides, you’re bound to find him as soon as they listen to the wireless. And with his photo in the papers and all. If you hadn’t said that about his wandering and losing his memory they’d have seen it was him before now.”

  “If you feel you can’t tell us,” said Crisp, “we shall have to see whether Mr. Querk will.”

  “I don’t want him dragged into it. Apart from that, he doesn’t know.” The threat was effective—Mrs. Cornboise betrayed anxiety. “If I tell you, I don’t suppose you’ll believe me unless I tell you how I found him. Well, if you must know, it was like this. I asked myself what you do when you’re worried and unhappy.” She paused and looked round her own room. “You go back to where you started from! I reckoned, if he was like me, he’d go back to where he was before Samuel started him on all that nonsense of being gentry. I happened to know where his father used to work and where the family lived. His father was potman at the Goat-in-Flames—”

  “And Ralph Cornboise is there?” interrupted Crisp.

  “He’s got the best bedroom in the hotel where his father used to be potman. There’s only four bedrooms, it being a commercial connection. And if you’re going there to see him, you might mention that it’s as well to be careful with the drink, though he wouldn’t have told me about the girl if he hadn’t had a drop too much.”

  The lift was out of order. As they walked down the stairs Crisp said informally:

  “Funny old girl. What did you think of her?”

  “All on the surface, I should say, sir.”

  “Hm! P’raps you’re right. Remember Fenchurch’s little yarn about a lunatic woman swinging a stocking? Here, put this in your pocket, will you. Can’t get it into mine—they’re full.”

  Benscombe received from the Chief Constable a large earthenware duck’s egg.

  “If you charge her with murder,” said Benscombe, “she’ll only say: ‘Why shouldn’t I? He did me wrong!’”

  “A jest that contains a truth, boy.” Crisp blinked. “Is that a bit of Shakespeare?”

  “No, sir. A bit of Querk.”

  “So it is! Hm! Dangerous man, Querk. If we find young Cornboise waiting for us, we’ll have a smack at that hallucination of his before we do anything drastic.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  They arrived at the Goat-in-Flames substantially before opening time. At an apologetic side door labelled ‘Hotel Entrance,’ Crisp spoke to a potman in shirt-sleeves, disturbed at his work of cleaning the bar.

  “There’s a young man staying here—I’ve forgotten his name—”

  “That’ll be Mr. Carr. There’s only one room booked.”

  “Take me to him, please.”

  “I’ll have to ask—” The potman took another look at Crisp. “This way, sir.” On the first floor he thumped a door and shouted:

  “Couple o’ gentlemen to see you, Mr. Carr.”

  The potman hurried back to his work. Crisp was about to try the door when it was opened by Ralph Cornboise.

  “I guessed it must be you.”

  With something approaching pride, Ralph invited them into a large bed-sitting room. He fussed them, like a houseproud host, until Crisp was settled in a saddlebag armchair and Benscombe on a horsehair sofa.

  “Would you fellers like a drink?”

  “A bit too early, thanks!” answered Crisp. “We’ve brought a spot of news. About those letters!”

  Crisp went through the business of lighting a cigarette while he watched the effect of the last words. Ralph sat down very slowly on the edge of the bed and waited. Crisp waited the longer.

  “You were about to tell me something about some letters?” prompted Ralph. “What letters?”

  “Much better talk straight to us, Cornboise, and then we may get somewhere,” said Crisp. “The letters written by Miss Lofting to Fenchurch. The letters enclosed with your uncle’s Will. The letters which you’re afraid Miss Lofting took out of the safe, after jiggering about with the envelope.”

  Again there was a long silence. Benscombe noted the titles of three heavy volumes on the sofa beside him. All three were medical works on insanity.

  “I’m afraid I’m not rising, Colonel. You’re waiting for me to ask questions about the letters. But I’m not frightfully interested.”

  “The police are satisfied that Miss Lofting did not take those letters. We are satisfied that someone else did. Now you’re waking up, aren’t you?”

  “Thank you for giving me that information,” he said ironically. “You might just as well have said that Fenchurch himself took them!”

  So the revelation was a flop, thought Crisp. Ralph, obviously, regarded it as a police trap. Crisp ploughed on:

  “Fenchurch has admitted doing so.”

  “He would!” Ralph laughed as if with genuine amusement. “And he’d enjoy every minute of admitting it. But I bet your microscopes and whatnots don’t bear it out. I don’t suppose you believe it any more than I do.”

  That was unanswerable. Ralph was warming to his theme.

  “I’m not running Fenchurch down. In spite of what you may think, I’ve no grievance against him. He’s a good chap, but he simply can’t keep out of the limelight. If there were a fire in his neighbourhood he’d pretend he had caused it or that he had rescued everybody. I might have guessed that he world horn in on this horror.”

  Ralph’s restrained tone carried the conviction that at least he believed what he was saying. Crisp observed that he was steadier than he had been at Watlington Lodge. There were fewer obvious symptoms of neurasthenia.

  “So you brush us aside and stick to your belief that Miss Lofting took those letters?”

  “I don’t stick to any belief about it, because I don’t care whether she took them or not. At one time, I thought she must have taken them, and that it was terribly important to know. But that was because she and Querk were persuading me that I had hallucinations—that I was more or less insane, which I was not.”

  “Then why have you bolted away and used a false name, after raising all the cash you could?”

  “Because I no longer wished to marry Miss Lofting, but found it impossible to give any reason she would accept.”

  As Crisp shrugged, Ralph explained: “Oh, I could give a reason you would accept—if you’ll try to stop believing I’m a lunatic. On Saturday, when I signed that confession, I reckoned that my life
was at an end. I was content. I did not wish to go on living. All the same, I had to screw myself up a bit to—well, to face the gallows. Next, you reject my confession because it seems to conflict with your evidence. You compel me to go on living, I dare not destroy myself lest some innocent person be involved in the murder. That meant that I had to screw myself up all over again—on a different screw. At any time, you may find out something that will make you believe my confession—you may not. Would any sane man want to get married in such circumstances?”

  “That’s understandable,” admitted Crisp. “But I still don’t see why you had to bolt?”

  “I tried to put that understandable point of view to Miss Lofting. She did not find it understandable. She said, in effect, ‘My poor boy, marry me and you will soon be cured of your various obsessions.’ Now, Miss Lofting has been extremely kind to me—literally too kind! I see now that she has always treated me as a poor creature who needs mothering. It may be true, but it’s not attractive. Since Saturday it became clear that she thought me practically insane and believed that she alone could restore me to sanity.

  “When someone honestly and sympathetically believes you’re insane, it shakes you up, even if you know you’re not. To put it crudely, I could not endure another moment of her society—or I might indeed go mad. You’ll say that’s unreasonable. I don’t claim to be any more reasonable than anyone else whose feelings for a woman have taken the wrong turning.

  “It was not enough to run away. I had to change my whole background. That’s why I came to this particular spot. I was born within a hundred yards of this place. My father used to work here as potman. I felt I must get back to it, to clear my head. In the last few days I’ve not only read a bit about my psychological condition. I’ve also consulted three doctors independently. They agreed that I’m not insane, but that I have inherited certain nervous disabilities, and that I must avoid any special excitement for a bit. They did not explain how I’m to avoid special excitement. I just have to do my best.”

  That accounted for his new steadiness. He spoke with such clarity that Crisp accepted his words at their face value.

  “Didn’t it strike you as foolish to hide when you knew the police were searching for you?”

  “It may have been. But making an ass of yourself has nothing to do with being insane. Anyway, with what I’m going through, I claim a bit of discount.”

  “You’re quite right there, Cornboise,” agreed Crisp. “You have enough on your plate to upset most men. But you seem to me sane and steady. So you will realise that the next questions are very important indeed. Benscombe, give me that note of those times.” He glanced at the note and continued: “Carry your mind back to five fifteen on Saturday afternoon, when you left the library by the window, got into your car and drove yourself out of the garage.”

  “As I told you, I went to the swimming pool at the Three Witches.”

  “Did you go straight from the garage to the Three Witches?”

  “Yes.”

  Crisp glanced at Benscombe. That answer would mean an arrest on the charge of murder. He tried again.

  “Did you stop at all on the way?”

  “Not on the way out. I had a clear run, with very little traffic. I stopped on the way back, for petrol.”

  One more effort.

  “When did you discover you were short of petrol?”

  “When I brought Miss Lofting up from Wiltshire in the morning. I was running on my reserve for the last few miles. As I started for the Three Witches I remembered. So I stopped in the drive and filled up from the can, if that’s what you mean.”

  “So you did stop!” ejaculated Crisp. “At what point in the drive?”

  “Close to the gates.”

  “That would have been, at latest, about five twenty?” As Ralph nodded, Crisp added: “How long did it take you to fill up?”

  “I don’t know. Rather a long time. I’d never used the can before, and I got bogged with the anchorage.”

  That was what Mrs. Corboise had suggested. Why didn’t she say that Ralph had given her that explanation—if he had.

  “Did you, at any point, walk away from the car?”

  “No.”

  “Your car was seen by two witnesses who were loitering by the gates of the Lodge for some minutes, ending at five thirty. You yourself were not seen. Can you explain why you were not seen by those witnesses?”

  “No—unless I was bending down over the tank, or sitting on the near-side running board, resting. I can’t see why it’s important.”

  “This is why it’s important! Querk was talking to your uncle at five twenty-eight. By five thirty-four your uncle was dead. How do you combat the suggestion that, around five-thirty—entering through the dining-room window on the east side—you went back to the house and killed him? Take time over your answer, Cornboise.”

  “I don’t need time. Because I don’t combat the suggestion.”

  Crisp turned to Benscombe.

  “See if you can make him understand what he’s saying.”

  “Rather lost my way over ‘combatting suggestions’!” said Benscombe, with forced breeziness. “The point is, Cornboise, did you leave that car and go back to the house?”

  “As a matter of fact, I didn’t. But if it’s suggested that I did, I’m not going to deny it.”

  “Now look here, old man. A few minutes ago you convinced us you’re sane. Don’t go and spoil the good work. I mean—you put up a confession the other day that you killed Watlington before five fifteen. You aren’t offering another confession that you killed him all over again a quarter of an hour later?”

  “You choose to joke about my sanity!” Ralph essayed the grand manner. “Is it so very difficult for you to understand my position? Insane or not, I killed my uncle. Insane or not, I did not wish to escape the penalty. After a short period of animal fear, I confessed. By some freak of circumstance, my confession was disbelieved. By a counteracting freak of circumstance, you are now ready to believe that I did kill him. Can it make any difference to me that you fix the time some fifteen minutes later?”

  Benscombe wanted to carry on, but Crisp intervened.

  “I was wrong, Benscombe—he does understand what he’s saying. Cornboise! I’ll put my question in another form, and it’ll be my last attempt. Can you give me a simple explanation of what you were doing between five fifteen and five thirty-five?”

  “So, it has to be simple!” Ralph laughed, but the laugh was free from the high-pitched note of hysteria. “Right-ho! My belief that I spent all that time putting two gallons into the tank is hallucination, the fact being, no doubt, that I was murdering my uncle. You can’t have anything simpler than an hallucination—it always explains away everything.”

  “Only a man who is insane would make childish jokes when he knows he is about to be charged with murder!” snapped Crisp.

  “You mean only a foolish man—not an insane man!” corrected Ralph. “And am I so foolish? What happens to murderers who try to lie their way out, once the police have got hold of them? One lie is no good. You have to cook up a hundred in support, ninety-nine of which are knocked down by the police and the lawyers. For weeks, you cling to that one little lie, hoping that it will do the trick with the jury—then that it may have a technical twist that will get you off on appeal. Hoping and despairing a dozen times a day for weeks on end! Am I a fool to cut out all that?”

  “You’ll be a fool if you don’t shut your mouth,” said Crisp. “I’m going to arrest you and give you the official warning.” Crisp gave it with dramatic emphasis.

  Ralph listened with every sign of satisfaction.

  “That’s a great relief—no innocent person will suffer. Do you think I’m mad to say that?” Receiving no answer he went on:

  “I shall be sorry to leave this place! Have I to be handcuffed, or may I pack? I have only one suitcase here.”

  Crisp himself went over to the chest of drawers, opened each one, to satisfy himself that th
ere was no gun hidden in the clothing, then returned to his chair.

  Ralph Cornboise emptied the drawers on to the bed. From under the bed he pulled his suitcase. From the suitcase he took a revolver.

  Crisp, who was nearer than Benscombe, was some dozen feet away. Ralph, aware that the police do not carry firearms, calculated that he had plenty of time.

  “Cheerio!” he called. He had turned the muzzle on himself—his mouth was half open to receive it before pressing the trigger—when Mrs. Cornboise’s earthenware duck’s egg whistled across the room, landing full in his face.

  As Ralph fell, the revolver went off. The bullet brought a shower of plaster from the ceiling, most of which fell on the Chief Constable, who was on the spot before Benscombe.

  “Good boy!” muttered Crisp. “Take the gun while I mop him up. And don’t forget that egg. It’s rolled under the bed.”

  Presently, Ralph sat up, bleeding and dishevelled but in full possession of his faculties. He turned his head to Benscombe.

  “No ill feeling!’ he said, with a wan grin. “But you’ll wish you hadn’t been such a good shot!”

  Within a few minutes, Ralph was able to clean himself up and walk downstairs to the car.

  Arrived at police headquarters, Crisp drove straight into the courtyard, to avoid giving the arrest premature publicity. Then he went to his room, leaving Benscombe to make the formal charge.

  He had completed his own notes of the interview with Ralph Cornboise before Benscombe appeared.

  “You did a thundering good job with that duck’s egg, Benscombe. I’m putting it in the record.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I’ve some notes here which you can work up into a report. Personally I’m convinced that Cornboise was telling the truth when he said he did not leave the car. After fiddling about with the can, I expect he sat on the running board and mooned about until something reminded him that he meant to go to that swimming pool. Remember the finger prints on that die-stamp? Querk’s. Very clear too. Made after Cornboise handled the die-stamp—if he did handle it.”