Serpents in Paradise

by Martin Edwards

  “You see it’s his only hobby,” observed Harker apologetically, “and after all it’s his own house; and he’s very hospitable in other ways.”

  “I’m rather afraid,” said Fisher in a lower voice, “that it’s becoming more of a mania than a hobby. I know how it is when a man of that age begins to collect things, if it’s only collecting those rotten little river fish. You remember Talbot’s uncle with his toothpicks, and poor old Buzzy and the waste of cigar ashes. Hook has done a lot of big things in his time—the great deal in the Swedish timber trade and the Peace Conference at Chicago—but I doubt whether he cares now for any of those big things as he cares for those little fish.”

  “Oh, come, come,” protested the Attorney-General. “You’ll make Mr. March think he has come to call on a lunatic. Believe me, Hook only does it for fun like any other sport; only he’s of the kind that takes his fun sadly. But I bet if there were big news about fish all or shipping he would drop his fun and his timber right.”

  “Well, I wonder,” said Horne Fisher, looking sleepily at the island in the river.

  “By the way, is there any news of anything?” asked Harker of Harold March. “I see you’ve got an evening paper; one of those enterprising evening papers that come out in the morning.”

  “The beginning of Lord Merivale’s Birmingham speech,” replied March, handing him the paper. “It’s only a paragraph, but it seems to me rather good.”

  Harker took the paper, flapped and refolded it, and looked at the stop-press news. It was, as March had said, only a paragraph. But it was a paragraph that had a peculiar effect on Sir John Harker. His lowering brows lifted with a flicker and his eyes blinked, and for a moment his leathery jaw was loosened. He looked in some odd fashion like a very old man. Then, hardening his voice and handing the paper to Fisher without a tremor, he simply said:

  “Well, here’s a chance for the bet. You’ve got your big news to disturb the old man’s fishing.”

  Horne Fisher was looking at the paper, and over his more languid and less expressive features a change also seemed to pass. Even that little paragraph had two or three large headlines, and his eye encountered “Sensational Warning to Sweden,” and “We Shall Protest.”

  “What the devil,” he said, and his words softened first to a whisper and then a whistle.

  “We must tell old Hook at once or he’ll never forgive us,” said Harker. “He’ll probably want to see Number One instantly, though it may be too late now. I’m going across to him at once; I bet I’ll make him forget his fish, anyhow.” And turning his back he made his way hurriedly along the riverside to the causeway of flat stones.

  March was staring at Fisher in amazement at the effect his pink paper had produced.

  “What does it all mean?” he cried. “I always supposed we should protest in defence of the Danish ports, for their sakes and our own. What is all this botheration about Sir Isaac and the rest of you? Do you think it bad news?”

  “Bad news!” repeated Fisher, with a sort of soft emphasis beyond expression.

  “Is it as bad as all that?” asked his friend at last.

  “As bad as all that,” repeated Fisher. “Why, of course, it’s as good as it can be. It’s great news. It’s glorious news. That’s where the devil of it comes in, to knock us all silly. It’s admirable. It’s inestimable. It is also quite incredible.”

  He gazed again at the grey and green colours of the island and the river, and his rather dreary eye travelled slowly round to the hedges and the lawns.

  “I felt this garden was a sort of dream,” he said, “and I suppose I must be dreaming. But there is grass growing and water moving, and something impossible has happened.”

  Even as he spoke the dark figure with a stoop like a vulture appeared in the gap of the hedge just above him.

  “You have won your bet,” said Harker in a harsh and almost croaking voice. “The old fool cares for nothing but fishing. He cursed me and told me he would talk no politics.”

  “I thought it might be so,” said Fisher modestly. “What are you going to do next?”

  “I shall use the old idiot’s telephone, anyhow,” replied the lawyer. “I must find out exactly what has happened. I’ve got to speak for the Government myself to-morrow.” And he hurried away towards the house.

  In the silence that followed, a very bewildering silence so far as March was concerned, they saw the quaint figure of the Duke of Westmoreland, with his white hat and whiskers, approaching them across the garden. Fisher instantly stepped towards him with the pink paper in his hand, and with a few words pointed out the apocalyptic paragraph. The duke, who had been walking slowly, stood quite still, and for some seconds he looked like a tailor’s dummy standing and staring outside some antiquated shop. Then March heard his voice, and it was high and almost hysterical.

  “But he must see it, he must be made to understand. It cannot have been put to him properly.” Then, with a certain recovery of fullness and even pomposity in the voice: “I shall go and tell him myself.”

  Among the queer incidents of that afternoon March always remembered something almost comical about the clear picture of the old gentleman in his wonderful white hat carefully stepping from stone to stone across the river, like a figure crossing the traffic in Piccadilly. Then he disappeared behind the trees of the island, and March and Fisher turned to meet the Attorney-General, who was coming out of the house with a visage of grim assurance.

  “Everybody is saying,” he said, “that the Prime Minister has made the greatest speech of his life. Peroration and loud and prolonged cheers. Corrupt financiers and heroic peasants. We will not desert Denmark again.”

  Fisher nodded and turned away towards the towing-path, where he saw the duke returning with a rather dazed expression. In answer to questions he said in a husky and confidential voice:

  “I really think our poor friend cannot be himself. He refused to listen; he—ah—suggested that I might frighten the fish.”

  A keen ear might have detected a murmur from Mr. Fisher on the subject of a white hat, but Sir John Harker struck in more decisively.

  “Fisher was quite right. I didn’t believe it myself; but it’s quite clear that the old fellow is fixed on this fishing notion by now. If the house caught fire behind him he would hardly move till sunset.”

  Fisher had continued his stroll towards the higher embanked ground of the towing-path, and he now swept a long and searching gaze, not towards the island but towards the distant wooded heights that were the walls of the valley. An evening sky as clear as that of the previous day was settling down all over the dim landscape, but towards the west it was now red rather than gold; there was scarcely any sound but the monotonous music of the river. Then came the sound of a half stifled exclamation from Horne Fisher, and Harold March looked up at him in wonder.

  “You spoke of bad news,” said Fisher. “Well, there is really bad news now. I am afraid this is a bad business.”

  “What bad news do you mean?” asked his friend, conscious of something strange and sinister in his tone.

  “The sun has set,” answered Fisher.

  He went on with the air of one conscious of having said something fatal: “We must get somebody to go across whom he will really listen to. He may be mad, but there’s method in his madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It’s what drives men mad, being methodical. And he never goes on sitting there after sunset, with the whole place getting dark. Where’s his nephew? I believe he’s really fond of his nephew.”

  “Look,” cried March abruptly, “why, he’s been across already. There he is coming back.”

  And looking up the river once more they saw, dark against the sunset reflections, the figure of James Bullen stepping hastily and rather clumsily from stone to stone. Once he slipped on a stone with a slight splash. When he rejoined the group on the bank his olive face was unnatural
ly pale.

  The other four men had already gathered on the same spot and almost simultaneously were calling out to him: “What does he say now?”

  “Nothing. He says—nothing.”

  Fisher looked at the young man steadily for a moment; then he started from his immobility and, making a motion to March to follow him, himself strode down to the river crossing. In a few moments they were on the little beaten track that ran round the wooded island, to the other side of it where the fisherman sat. Then they stood and looked at him without a word.

  Sir Isaac Hook was still sitting propped up against the stump of the tree, and that for the best of reasons. A length of his own infallible fishing-line was twisted and tightened twice round his throat, and then twice round the wooden prop behind him. The leading investigator ran forward and touched the fisherman’s hand; and it was as cold as a fish.

  “The sun has set,” said Horne Fisher in the same terrible tone, “and he will never see it rise again.”

  Ten minutes afterwards the five men shaken by such a shock were again together in the garden, looking at each other with white but watchful faces. The lawyer seemed the most alert of the group; he was articulate if somewhat abrupt.

  “We must leave the body as it is and telephone for the police,” he said. “I think my own authority will stretch to examining the servants and the poor fellow’s papers, to see if there is anything that concerns them. Of course none of you gentlemen must leave this place.”

  Perhaps there was something in his rapid and rigorous legality that suggested the closing of a net or trap. Anyhow young Bullen suddenly broke down; or perhaps blew up, for his voice was like an explosion in the silent garden.

  “I never touched him,” he cried. “I swear I had nothing to do with it!”

  “Who said you had?” demanded Harker, with a hard eye. “Why do you cry out before you’re hurt?”

  “Because you all look at me like that,” cried the young man angrily. “Do you think I don’t know you’re always talking about my damned debts and expectations?”

  Rather to March’s surprise, Fisher had drawn away from this first collision, leading the duke with him to another part of the garden. When he was out of ear-shot of the others he said with a curious simplicity of manner:

  “Westmoreland, I am going straight to the point.”

  “Well?” said the other, staring at him stolidly.

  “You had a motive for killing him,” said Fisher.

  The duke continued to stare, but he seemed unable to speak.

  “I hope you had a motive for killing him,” continued Fisher mildly. “You see, it’s rather a curious situation. If you had a motive for murdering, you probably didn’t murder. But if you hadn’t any motive, why, then perhaps you did.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” demanded the duke violently.

  “It’s quite simple,” said Fisher. “When you went across he was either alive or dead. If he was alive, it might be you who killed him, or why should you have held your tongue about his death? But if he was dead, and you had a reason for killing him, you might have held your tongue for fear of being accused.”

  Then after a silence he added abstractedly:

  “Cyprus is a beautiful place, I believe. Romantic scenery and romantic people. Very intoxicating for a young man.”

  The duke suddenly clenched his hands and said thickly: “Well, I had a motive.”

  “Then you’re all right,” said Fisher, holding out his hand with an air of huge relief. “I was pretty sure you wouldn’t really do it; you had a fright when you saw it done, as was only natural. Like a bad dream come true, wasn’t it?”

  While this curious conversation was passing Harker had gone into the house, disregarding the demonstrations of the sulky nephew, and came back presently with a new air of animation and a sheaf of papers in his hand.

  “I’ve telephoned for the police,” he said, stopping to speak to Fisher, “but I think I’ve done most of their work for them. I believe I’ve found out the truth. There’s a paper here— ”

  He stopped, for Fisher was looking at him with a singular expression, and it was Fisher who spoke next:

  “Are there any papers that are not there, I wonder. I mean that are not there now.”

  After a pause he added: “Let us have the cards on the table. When you went through his papers in such a hurry, Harker, weren’t you looking for something to—to make sure it shouldn’t be found?”

  Harker did not turn a red hair on his hard head, but he looked at the other out of the corners of his eyes.

  “And I suppose,” went on Fisher smoothly, “that is why you told us lies about having found Hook alive. You knew there was something to show that you might have killed him, and you didn’t dare tell us he was killed. But believe me, it’s much better to be honest now.”

  Harker’s haggard face suddenly lit up as if with infernal flames.

  “Honest!” he cried, “it’s not so damned fine of you fellows to be honest! You’re all born with silver spoons in your mouths, and then you swagger about with everlasting virtue because you haven’t got other people’s spoons in your pockets. But I was born in a Pimlico lodging-house and I had to make my spoon, and there’d be plenty to say I only spoilt a horn or an honest man. And if a struggling man staggers a bit over the line in his youth in the lower parts of the law, which are pretty dingy, anyhow, there’s always some old vampire to hang on to him all his life for it.”

  “Guatemalan Golcondas, wasn’t it?” said Fisher sym-

  pathetically.

  Harker suddenly shuddered. Then he said:

  “I believe you must know everything, like God Almighty.”

  “I know too much,” said Horne Fisher, “and all the wrong things.”

  The other three men were drawing nearer to them, but before they came too near Harker said in a voice that had recovered all its firmness:

  “Yes, I did destroy a paper, but I really did find a paper, too, and I believe that it clears us all.”

  “Very well,” said Fisher in a louder and more cheerful tone, “let us all have the benefit of it.”

  “On the very top of Sir Isaac’s papers,” explained Harker, “there was a threatening letter from a man named Hugo. It threatens to kill our unfortunate friend very much in the way that he was actually killed. It is a wild letter, full of taunts—you can see it for yourselves—but it makes a particular point of poor Hook’s habit of fishing from the island. Above all the man professes to be writing from a boat. And since we alone went across to him”—and he smiled in a rather ugly fashion—“the crime must have been committed by a man passing in a boat.”

  “Why, dear me,” cried the duke, with something almost amounting to animation. “Why, I remember the man called Hugo quite well. He was a sort of body-servant and bodyguard of Sir Isaac; you see, Sir Isaac was in some fear of assault. He was—he was not very popular with several people. Hugo was discharged after some row or other; but I remember him well. He was a great big Hungarian fellow with great moustaches that stood out on each side of his face— ”

  A door opened in the darkness of Harold March’s memory, or rather oblivion, and showed a shining landscape like that of a lost dream. It was rather a waterscape than a landscape, a thing of flooded meadows and low trees and the dark archway of a bridge. And for one instant he saw again the man with moustaches like dark horns leap up on to the bridge and disappear.

  “Good heavens,” he cried, “why, I met the murderer this morning.”

  Horne Fisher and Harold March had their day on the river after all, for the little group broke up when the police arrived. They declared that the coincidence of March’s evidence had cleared the whole company and clinched the case against the flying Hugo. Whether that Hungarian fugitive would ever be caught appeared to Horne Fisher to be highly doubtful nor can it be pretende
d that he displayed any very demoniac detective energy in the matter, as he leaned back in the boat cushions smoking and watching the swaying reeds slide past.

  “It was a very good notion to hop up on to the bridge,” he said. “An empty boat means very little; he hasn’t been seen to land on either bank, and he’s walked off the bridge without walking on to it, so to speak. He’s got twenty-four hours start, his moustaches will disappear, and then he will disappear. I think there is every hope of his escape.”

  “Hope?” repeated March, and stopped sculling for an instant.

  “Yes, hope,” repeated the other. “To begin with, I’m not going to be exactly consumed with Corsican revenge because somebody has killed Hook. Perhaps you may guess by this time what Hook was. A damned blood-sucking blackmailer was that simple, strenuous, self-made captain of industry. He had secrets against nearly everybody; one against poor old Westmoreland about an early marriage in Cyprus that might have put the duchess in a queer position, and one against Harker about some flutter with his client’s money when he was a young lawyer. That’s why they went to pieces when they found him murdered, of course. They felt as if they’d done it in a dream. But I admit I have another reason for not wanting our Hungarian friend actually hanged for the murder.”

  “And what is that?” asked his friend.

  “Only that he didn’t commit the murder,” answered Fisher.

  Harold March laid down the oars and let the boat drift for a moment.

  “Do you know, I was half expecting something like that,” he said. “It was quite irrational, but it was hanging about in the atmosphere like thunder in the air.”

  “On the contrary, it’s finding Hugo guilty that’s irrational,” replied Fisher. “Don’t you see that they’re condemning him for the very reason for which they acquit everybody else? Harker and Westmoreland were silent because they found him murdered, and knew there were papers that made them look like the murderers. Well, so did Hugo find him murdered, and so did Hugo know there was a paper that would make him look like the murderer. He had written it himself the day before.”