She did not need to think long. She was an efficient housekeeper, and it was the kind of question a woman living alone for the last year in a house of this size had automatically considered. ‘Both Mr Craven’s children, of course. I expect Walter Miller still has one, though I don’t think he’s been here since Mr Craven died. He certainly had one, because he often used to come to see Edmund on my day off. And of course the estate agents who have been handling the sale of the site have two keys—’
‘And no doubt your son also has one,’ said Lambert quietly.
‘Yes,’ she said; she thought of trying to make a little joke of it, but she was not sure that she could trust her voice so far. The idea of a son coming at dead of night to plant evidence which might incriminate his mother had a tinge of black farce, but they did not rule it out: they had seen stranger and crueller things than that. And the mind which had planned and executed the murder of a defenceless elderly man over a period of many weeks might take up any subterfuge when it felt the strands of the police net beginning to close…
Margaret Lewis was very near to exhaustion now. The smart grey suit and white blouse seemed to emphasise the paleness of the face above. There was little colour even in the lips, and they were still not relaxed. Lambert, watching the small white teeth pulling nervously at the lower one, realised that she had more to tell them yet. He prompted gently, ‘I asked you when last we met to think of anything that might possibly bear on Mr Craven’s death. Have you come up with anything?’
She nodded, bringing herself to speak. ‘Walter Miller,’ she said abruptly at last. ‘It’s probably nothing.’ It was the qualification nearly everyone made when giving what they thought was incriminating information: it was surprising how many still talked of ‘putting the noose round somebody’s neck’, even though they must know that was now thirty years out of date.
‘Probably not. But you’d much better let us be the judge of that.’ Sometimes you had to counter one cliché with another to offer comfort; Lambert gave her an encouraging smile.
‘You said that the easiest way to give arsenic was by means of strongly flavoured food or drink. Would that include chocolate?’ She did not need his nod of confirmation: it was merely to convince herself that she should be saying this that she asked. ‘Mr Craven had a sweet tooth. I never touch chocolate, so it was rarely around in the house. Mr Miller took to bringing Edmund a small box of chocolates each week when he came to play chess.’
‘When did this begin to happen?’
‘I think Walter had brought them just occasionally—probably on special occasions for years. But he began to do it every week when Edmund became virtually housebound: I couldn’t be precise, but say about a year ago.’
‘Did they eat them together?’
‘No. Walter Miller doesn’t eat chocolates either. At least he says he doesn’t: sometimes I used to think he was just being kind and leaving them all for Edmund when he was lonely.’ She stopped then, aghast at the macabre interpretation that could now be put upon simple actions.
‘So the chocolates were usually in Mr Craven’s room for the best part of a week?
‘No. Much less than that. I should say they were normally gone within a day. Edmund meant to make them last, but he had too sweet a tooth for that.’ Her face was suddenly lit by a wave of affection as she remembered the old man and his small weakness.
‘So that anyone who administered poison by means of the chocolates would be pretty certain that no one else would be affected?’
She nodded. ‘Edmund kept them in his bedside cabinet. They were the little treat he permitted himself in the long hours when he was alone. But you’re making me say that Walter—’
‘I’m doing nothing more than establishing the facts,’ said Lambert hastily, trying to forestall another round of clichés. ‘As you were acute enough to notice, those chocolates are a possible medium for poison, and I’m exploring the possibilities. I should perhaps point out that these include the opportunity for people other than Mr Miller to doctor the chocolates, once they were in the room.’
There was silence while Margaret Lewis digested the idea and found it unwelcome. All three of them were thinking now of the syringe found in the adjoining bathroom, the ideal method of injecting poison into chocolates without detection; perhaps after all it had more bearing than they had allowed.
Then the extension phone by the bed rang, startling in the silence of the high-ceilinged room. Margaret Lewis picked it up reluctantly, then passed it across in relief to Lambert. It was a woman’s voice, one that at first he could not recognise. ‘Superintendent Lambert? Inspector Rushton told me I might get you on this number.’ Lambert wondered at the determination she must have shown to get past the diligent Inspector. ‘This is Mrs Miller: we met just briefly when you came to see Walter.’
‘I remember. What can I do for you?’
‘I need to speak to you. Can you come here now? My husband is out. It—it’s about Ed Craven.’
17
The killer of Edmund Craven had always had a cool brain. The planning of the murder had given that brain an intellectual pleasure, which was quite detached from any considerations of morality. As it planned the detail, the brain was not at all sure whether the murder would ever be carried out, for such things depended on qualities of will and determination which were wholly divorced from the cerebral activity which had thrown up the possibility of the killing.
Qualities which had not been previously explored in the murderer; this extension of self-knowledge had been wholly intriguing. The execution of the murder, with its meticulously planned stages, its careful observation of those around the victim to note any evidence in them of suspicion, had brought both excitement and satisfaction. The killing had been so smoothly achieved, so little suspected by those who might have been expected to be most on guard, that it had added immeasurably to the confidence of the executioner.
For that surely is what the killer was: an agent of justice more sublime and more secure than the clumsy and unreliable processes of mortal laws. A justice which demanded the death of Edmund Craven so clearly that there was not that crisis of conscience which the killer had feared might cloud resolution as the successive crises of Craven’s death by stages approached and passed. There was in the end no moral dilemma about this murder, none of the interference of emotion with judgement which had at the outset appeared a problem. There had been nothing more than a mounting excitement, an increasing awareness of a superior will and force, a satisfaction in the achievement which set a successful murderer apart from other men.
It had sometimes been difficult to savour the success in silence: that was one thing the killer had not anticipated. As the days after the funeral had become weeks, and the weeks had stretched into months, it had seemed at times almost impossible not to speak, to reveal to someone close the delicious completeness of the deception, the daring and capacity of one who could manipulate even that fell sergeant Death to serve a particular purpose. When the months had stretched beyond a year, the murderer had sometimes had to sit in a room alone, arms clasped across the chest in the security of isolation, rocking in silent glee with the clever completeness of it all.
The news of the exhumation had been a shock, but it had brought with it initially a sort of pleasure that at last the ingenuity, the wonderful ruthlessness of the despatch of the old man, could be revealed and appreciated. There was, too, a revival of that sense of danger, in which it seemed almost impossible to distinguish fear from pleasure, which the killer had felt during the slow execution which had been the lot of Edmund Craven: almost like the exultation that came from driving a fast car beyond the limits of normal safety, and coming through. One’s reflexes had to be faster and quicker than those of ordinary men, and how exultant one became when it proved that they were. At first, the revelation of the death as murder brought with it a sick excitement which was almost wholly pleasurable; here were a new set of problems, a new set of people to be outwitted by a kille
r whose vision was so superior to theirs.
That feeling had not lasted long. The people now involved were professionals. For a few moments only, the killer had enjoyed the contest of wits with the Superintendent who probed so quietly and the assistant who was so much less bovine than he at first appeared. Then reality had taken hold: these professional men were dangerous, totally unlike the amateurs that had been so easy to deceive because they found murder inconceivable. These men accepted it because they had seen so much of it. They were like physicians conducting exploratory operations, expecting to find the worst wherever they looked, prepared to cut out evil as dispassionately as surgeons.
The killer became watchful and realistic. Calm decisions and incisive actions are perfectly possible even after the borders of sanity have been crossed.
Murder was now established. Two alternatives, then: either its perpetrator must remain undiscovered, or someone else must seem to be the killer. A murderer must be both vigilant and opportunist, using whatever advantages remained open as the police net drew tight around the inner circle of suspects. Suspicion brought its effects; the people involved in the interviews became more of a group. It was easy to follow the course of the police investigation by discreet conversations with those involved after they had been interviewed. The murderer took the pulse of the inquiry through the reactions to Lambert’s probings of those involved.
It was difficult to be certain when one had no means of comparison, but the killer’s own interview seemed to go well, with suspicion pleasingly diverted to the areas previously planned. The signs were that police suspicion was centring where the murderer thought it should. But it was irritatingly difficult to be sure. And that Superintendent Lambert was an enigmatic figure to content with. Latterly, he seemed to be asking questions which indicated that the killer was not yet clear of suspicion.
No one else suspected: the murderer was sure of that. It might yet be necessary to do something about Superintendent Lambert.
18
A crisp winter morning should bring a lightening of the spirits. For David Craven, there was no such relief.
Solitude brought its own problems, as the police probed ever more deeply into the circumstances in which his father had died. After a night when he seemed scarcely to have slept at all, it was a relief to come in to his office and surround himself with people who were not directly involved with the investigation. His secretary had even time to be concerned about his gaunt looks, without speculating about the reasons for them—openly at least. He sipped the coffee she brought him and stared at the landscape print above the marble statue on the half-empty bookcase. It was an alpine scene; at the moment he was prepared to give his attention to anything far removed from Oldford and the Cotswolds.
This interlude of uneasy escapism did not last long for him, There was a sound of raised voices beyond the frosted glass: an angry male one and his secretary’s, shrill with annoyance as the instinct to protect her employer from unauthorised disturbance was ignored. ‘What next?’ he muttered wearily to himself as he swivelled his chair towards the source of this disturbance.
The door burst open as he turned. The young, tousled head which dominated the entrance was alive with venom. The secretary’s appalled face seemed even whiter beneath her carefully cut dark hair. ‘I told him you were engaged and couldn’t see him,’ she said. Then, as she saw how patently unengaged he was, she added, The police will be here for your nine-thirty appointment in a few minutes—’
‘Engaged, is he?’ said the young man. He looked with triumphant contempt at the deserted office and the empty desk. ‘Well, I’m sure he isn’t too busy to see me!’ Andrew Lewis flung himself into the expensive armchair beside the desk in a movement which managed to retain aggression even as he subsided. He said to the secretary, ‘You can go now. Mr Craven won’t wish to have our discussion overheard.’ He had been carried into the inner sanctum of Craven’s office on the tide of his fury; like many men who nerve themselves to action which is not natural to them, he was now in danger of carrying his attitude into caricature.
David Craven nodded at her. He said quietly, ‘All right, June,’ and tried to draw support from his calmness. He had spent most of the small hours of this day convincing himself that Andrew Lewis was the most likely murderer of his father: this arrival just before the scheduled appointment with the police seemed suddenly providential.
The logic of his reasoning in the darkest hour before the dawn had seemed impeccable. Despite his antipathy to her, he could not really see Margaret Lewis as ruthless enough to kill off the man she had served so faithfully. His sister was even more unthinkable. She had remained close to her father even through his harsh treatment of the husband she loved and his shameful cutting-off of his grandchildren. And when she could have thrown suspicion on to her brother, she had withheld from the police the knowledge she had revealed to him of her father’s revision of his will to disinherit his son. And Angela was keeping in touch with him, advising him of developments, when all the others involved seemed to have concluded that he was guilty: no murderess would spurn the ready chance of a scapegoat.
Walter Miller he had considered seriously as a suspect for some time; it would have been the least of possible evils to have as killer someone less closely involved with his father by ties of blood or physical proximity. Perhaps, too, the American was for him an alien presence even after all these years, and thus psychologically more acceptable as a suspect than others for that reason alone. But of all those close to his father, Walter Miller had had least to gain by the death. There was that old, half-remembered tension between his mother and the Millers which he had never understood at the time, but that could surely not survive for all those years after his mother’s death.
No, the obvious candidate must be the unstable young man with a history of violence and a deep, possessive attachment to his mother and her interests. At four in the morning he had been certain of it. Now, when the man he had selected as murderer was quivering with anger in his office, conviction drained away.
Andrew Lewis watched the slim form of Craven’s secretary dimming behind the frosted glass until he could no longer see it. Then he whirled on Craven and snarled. ‘Why the hell don’t you own up and have done with it?’
‘Why the hell should I?’ Craven was shaken by the younger man’s boldness.
‘God knows I’d no reason to love your father, but I wouldn’t have wished him dead. Now you’ve tried to implicate my mother and I won’t have it.’ His anger gave a kind of gravity to an assertion which might have been merely ridiculous.
‘So you’ve heard about the jar and the syringe the police found at Tall Timbers.’ Angela had told Craven of the confrontation between Margaret Lewis and the police over these things; he had foolishly forgotten that Margaret might have spoken to her son.
‘Of course I’ve heard. The CID have been there and practically accused my mother of the murder.’
‘And can you blame them?’
He regretted the easy riposte as soon as he had made it, for the young man shot out of his chair so violently that he was sure he was coming straight across the desk at him. He stopped, with his face quivering with rage, no more than eighteen inches from Craven’s. The older man stared into eyes which were the exact blue of those eyes of Margaret Lewis which he had found such critical observers of his actions in his father’s house. The mother’s pupils had gleamed with a sardonic stillness; the son’s now were full of hatred. The eyes of a man capable of murder.
Lewis said through clenched teeth, ‘I can blame you, when I know you planted those things!’
‘But I didn’t.’
‘Come off it. You killed your father because he had seen through you at last. And you almost got away with it. Well, I’m glad you’re going to be caught. We’ll see how you like being banged up in a cell night after night.’
Craven sneered, ‘You’d be something of an authority on that, wouldn’t you?’
Andrew Lewis mig
ht have hit him then. His breathing lurched into a wild gasp and his fists clenched. He told himself to keep control. He must not have one of his attacks: not now, of all times. Then, as though he recognised weakness in the other’s desperation, he sank back into his chair and said quietly, ‘I was never in prison, much as it pleased you and your father to say so.’
David Craven had actually pleaded for the young man in the face of his father’s bitterness in those months after the boy’s release from the young offenders’ institution, but it seemed useless to say so now. And indeed, preoccupied as he had been with his own deepening financial problems, his protests had been feeble. His whole life seemed in his miserable retrospect of it to be a story of efforts made too little and too late. Lewis in his mention of the prison cell had hit upon the very nightmare which beset him when his confidence seeped away during the long hours of the night. He said hopelessly, ‘I didn’t turn him against you. Perhaps I could have helped a little more, but—’
‘You stopped me getting jobs when I most needed them. You even told your father to stop me using the old studio at the back of the house to repair motorcycles. Now you’re trying to frame me for murder. Why else plant a syringe? The pigs were bound to think of drugs, and people of my age…’ In his anger, he fell back on the language his mother had persuaded him it was politic to abandon. The tirade of hate poured out, threatening in its release to engulf a man who had not even been aware of it before. Lewis was careless now of the danger of his illness, driven beyond the bounds of prudence by his wrath.
Craven had spent most of his life trying to avoid the well-merited consequences of dubious actions: to find himself now accused of things he had not done was a new and disturbing experience for the spoilt child who had never matured far enough to accept responsibility for his own deeds. He reeled before the onslaught, wanting to protest but unable to, clinging to the idea that at least this wild fury confirmed this shouting maniac as a murderer. He wondered when the words would stop; Lewis was relentless, scarcely needing to pause for breath. Now he was saying, ‘If you knew I used that medicine cupboard for my medicines, why didn’t you say something at the time? Instead of storing it up and waiting to tell the pigs—’
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