Mr. Maltby gave a little shrug.
“In the minute sense, perhaps I did run the show. Perhaps I even enjoyed it. It amused my analytical sense—especially the final scene last night—or, rather, early this morning—and the entertaining interviews with the police. Probably I like showing off, in my particular way, as much as you do in your particular way.... But it was only in the minute sense. How can I explain what I mean by the larger sense in a way that will leave you any wiser?” He paused. “Have you ever wondered how two butterflies, fields apart, can find each other? How thousands of bees, lacking our alleged intelligence, return in the evening to the same hive without any map or clock to guide them? How trees grow in all sorts of shapes, but always with balance? How separate drops of water merge into communal obedience to a mass of dead matter called the moon, and go for six hours one way and then for six hours another? Have you ever wondered how the Inevitable You came about? ... You cannot explain these things. You can only become conscious, at rare moments, of the working of some vast Arrangement, and that consciousness may be due to your own intensive vision, or to the simplicity of the view you happen to be travelling through. The view we have just been travelling through was so simple and neat and orderly that one almost felt the vast Arrangement was tired, or on holiday, and wanted a little easy recreation.”
“I suppose you know what you’re talking about?”
“It is clear you don’t.”
“I don’t!” admitted Mr. Hopkins. “But I’ll risk one more question all the same!” He stopped abruptly as the kitchen door opened, and Charles Shaw carried a tray into the dining-room. “Him!” whispered Mr. Hopkins. “Why all the white-washing stuff?”
Mr. Maltby waited till the servant had passed back to the kitchen.
“If there is any white-washing of Charles Shaw, he will have to do that himself,” he replied. “My remarks last night concerning him were made in deference to my reading of William Strange’s desire. William is growing old, and he is a sentimentalist. He will be far happier forgiving Shaw than imprisoning him. Moreover, quite a lot of soiled linen need not now be made public. William Strange and his daughter deserve a little peace, don’t you think? And Shaw’s curse is weakness—cowardice—not deliberate wrong.... Or do you think Shaw murdered John Strange?”
“No, certainly not,” answered Mr. Hopkins.
“Or Harvey Strange?”
“No.”
“Or his sister Martha?”
For an instant Mr. Hopkins’s eyes popped. He stared at Mr. Maltby.
“I hadn’t thought of that!” he exclaimed.
“I had,” replied Mr. Maltby. “We only have Shaw’s word for that incident. He could have done the murder himself—given the pluck and the motive.”
Mr. Hopkins shook his head.
“Can’t see him having either,” he answered. “No, I don’t think he did it.”
“And I am sure he didn’t. So all we have to worry about is the adding of Harvey’s murder to Smith’s score, instead of to Martha’s. Both now dead themselves. To descend to an expressive vulgarism, I should worry! ... ”
On the landing above two other people were not worrying. David had deliberately lingered after Mr. Hopkins had left him, and was standing in the passage when Nora came out of her room. She smiled when she saw him, but did not pause until she found him standing in her way.
“Don’t go down for a moment,” he said.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because I’ve been standing here for six and a half minutes especially to talk to you, and I should hate to have wasted all that time for nothing.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“I’ve forgotten, though I knew all the while I was waiting.”
“Perhaps it was to say a merry Christmas?”
“We’ve said that dozens of times.”
“Well, you’ll think of it later. I want to go and see how father is.”
“Your father’s all right,” he retorted. “He’s got five nice, crisp thousand-pound notes, and a daughter, so you needn’t worry about him any more. Try thinking about somebody else for a change. Of course, you wouldn’t have the kindness to ask ‘Who?’ would you?”
“If you like!” she laughed. “Who?”
“The Man in the Moon,” he laughed back. “It’s a damn good thing for you we couldn’t find any mistletoe. Come downstairs, and I’ll show you some string tricks.”
“You are ridiculous! I’ve got to help your sister in the kitchen!”
“No, you’re ridiculous! First you say you’ve got to go and see your father, and then you say you’ve got to help my sister in the kitchen. Well, I say you’ve got to see my string tricks!”
“Are they good?”
“I don’t know—I’ve never done any yet....”
“I heard them laugh as they went downstairs,” ran Jessie’s diary, “and I said to myself, ‘There goes your little romance, Jessie,’ of course it was silly, because there never was any romance, I mean only in one’s mind, but if there had been I’d have said good-bye to it because I knew how things were turning out.
“Then I thought I’d go and see how Mr. Strange was myself, as Nora hadn’t gone. Of course I didn’t listen to their conversation, but I heard it as I was just coming out of my room myself, only I waited so as not to interrupt them. It gave me a funny feeling when I knocked on Mr. Strange’s door, because that was the room I had had first, with the four-poster bed, he’d wanted me to go back to it, but I said I wouldn’t dream of it, and I wouldn’t!
“I called out to know how he was, and he asked me to come in, so I did, and we had rather a funny two or three minutes not quite knowing what to say, but somehow it was quite friendly. I could never be really at home with a man like that, though, as he lives in another world or seems to. Then suddenly he said, ‘Well, shall we be getting down?’ And then I said, ‘Yes, let’s,’ I’ve come to the conclusion that real conversation isn’t half as clever as you find in books or plays, anyhow mine isn’t, and then we went down.
“Lydia was in the kitchen, and David and Nora were off somewhere or other, I don’t know where, and as the three other men didn’t need me, or if Mr. Hopkins did I wasn’t looking to see, I thought I’d go in and have a word with poor Mr. Thomson, who one felt rather sorry for, being out of it all, though there was some of it he was well out of!
“I was glad I went in as soon as I got in, because he looked so very white, though better, and pleased to see me.
“ ‘How are you?’ I said.
“ ‘Getting along fine,’ he said. ‘How’s your foot?’
“ ‘Oh, that’s almost mended,’ I said, ‘I don’t think it was ever as bad as I thought it was.’
“ ‘I bet it was,’ he said, ‘people often crick their ankles badly at the time, but get better quickly, it’s the difference between a strain and a sprain, I’ve a cousin who’s a chemist.’ Then suddenly he went red and asked out of a clear sky, ‘I say, you know you’re really awfully decent, you don’t mind my saying that, do you, it doesn’t mean anything, but may I ask you something?’
“I began to feel a bit red myself, all I’d done was to pop in and give him a cheery word now and then, knowing it was what I’d have liked in his place.
“ ‘Yes, of course,’ I said, hoping it wasn’t what I thought, though I don’t know how one could have thought it with Mr. Thomson.
“ ‘Have I made a fool of myself?’ he asked.
“ ‘Gracious, what makes you think that?’ I exclaimed.
“ ‘I don’t know,’ he replied, ‘but have I?’
“ ‘Of course you haven’t,’ I said, ‘you’ve been ill, no one can prevent that, but if you’d been well you’d have helped as much as anybody, I remember, you began doing everything.’
“There was something quite pathetic about him, and I expect that’s what made me say, almost before I knew it, ‘Shall I have my Christmas dinner in here with you?’ His was to
be brought in, and it seemed rather a shame he should be all by himself. He didn’t believe I meant it first, I hadn’t, but when he saw I did he almost blubbed, and I had to pretend I didn’t notice. Of course, he wasn’t well.
“And then the gong went, and so that’s what happened.
“I stayed with him till dinner was over—he wasn’t allowed much of it, poor fellow! And I could see him falling in love with me, it’s awful, I get all the wrong people. I mean, he’s all right, but goodness! ... Anyway, I couldn’t help it, could I, I was only trying to be kind—as David had been to me. And then I joined the others, leaving the door open so he could hear, and we drank healths to everybody under the sun. I can’t stand much wine, which I expect was why I ended up by proposing the health of the police inspector! I can’t stand much—oh, I wrote that.
“Well, anyhow, we’d been through hell and it was Christmas, so if one or two of us did get a bit funny, well, who could blame anybody?”
THE END
Mystery in White (British Library Crime Classics) Page 21