“Very kind of you and it’s all most interesting,” interposed Bobby, and thus encouraged, Mr. Goodman went on:
“Mr. Owen has told us to keep nothing back. I’m trying not to, though a lawyer’s instinct is never to speak till he is sure. But there are one or two facts I can speak of from personal knowledge. Recently Denis Kayes called to see me. Ostensibly over a question of a small interest in some house property originally belonging to his uncle, my client. Quite plainly an excuse. The amount involved was small and the claim doubtful. There was some evidence to suggest that it had in fact been acquitted. I was puzzled but I answered the questions put me to the best of my ability and I referred him for further information to the very well known, leading Midwych firm who took over my practice when I retired. I feel I left him fully convinced that I, at least, knew nothing about any possible, hypothetical hidden assets whether taking the form of gold or in any other shape. Evidently the conclusion was arrived at that since I knew nothing, it must be Brown who had obtained unlawful possession. So he was visited in an attempt to make him disgorge. Persuasion at first. The attempt failed. It would. Brown wasn’t likely to give up tamely what he had held so long. He couldn’t, without, incriminating himself. From persuasion to threats, from threats to violence, are easy steps.
I think that’s what happened. There is something else I am inclined to suggest. That the actual murder was committed by Mr. Langley Long.”
Mr. Langley Long laughed.
“While I was playing solo at Mason’s?” he asked. “With three other chaps?”
“I’ll come to that,” said Mr. Goodman equably. “I do not speak without a full sense of responsibility. I suggest that Denis Kayes, on arriving in this country from Australia, was determined to secure the hidden assets, in whose value and existence he believed. Possibly—this is only a guess—something fresh had come to light, some letter or note of some sort, previously overlooked. Probably the first thing he did was to get in touch with Langley Long, either because Mr. Long is in fact a relative or because of an accidental resemblance, which I don’t think of any high degree of likelihood. But after the murder, very probably an unpremeditated murder, they failed to find the hidden store of sovereigns. Panic may have overtaken them. I can believe that.” Mr. Goodman paused, his voice failing him as, for the first time, he showed some emotion. But he controlled it and went on in the same careful, slightly pedantic tone, a little like that of a professor expounding a thesis: “I am coming to the facts of which I was an eyewitness and that have led me to my conclusion that the actual crime was committed by Mr. Langley Long, and that Denis Kayes knew this and so had to be disposed of—on Quarry Hill!”
“Me playing solo all the time,” interposed Langley Long. “You ask Mason, ask the others.”
“On the night the murder occurred,” Mr. Goodman continued, again ignoring the interruption, “I was wakened by the sound of voices. I got up to see who it was. It was dark but I could distinguish a man and a woman. Then one of them flashed a torch and I saw it was Miss Foote in company with the young man I had previously noticed dawdling about near the house. I suppose I’m still old-fashioned enough to be slightly shocked. But I don’t pretend to be a judge of other people’s morals and I went back to bed. Besides, there was nothing to show there had been actual misconduct of any kind. But when I heard a murder had been committed that same night I was, I confess, worried. I tried not to think of it. But I was unable to prevent myself from remembering an earlier incident. I had come accidentally on Miss Foote with a box of what I believe are called ‘grease paints.’ I understand they are used by actors. I hardly noticed at the time. If I thought about it at all, I expect it was merely to reflect that amateur theatricals are highly popular. After the nocturnal incident I have just mentioned, I did remember. And I was worried, distinctly worried. I found myself wondering whether those grease paints had been used for purposes of disguise. If so, to disguise whom—and why? A lawyer does, in the course of his professional experience, gain knowledge of very strange expedients occasionally adopted and I could not wholly exclude from my mind the possibility that Langley Long had come straight from the killing and that Denis Kayes had taken his place at the solo game—remember, all the players were strangers to each other—in order to provide an apparently unshakable alibi.”
CHAPTER XXXI
THERESA TALKS
All this time while Mr. Goodman was expounding his ideas of how and why recent events had been as they had been, Theresa was looking more and more innocently astonished. Theresa in wonderland indeed, listening to such things as she had never dreamed could be.
“Well, I never,” she said now. “I never did,” she repeated with even greater emphasis. She sat still, her embroidery spread out on her lap. Very slowly she said: “It’s all so funny, isn’t it?” She paused to contemplate the ‘funniness’ of everything and the others waited in silence. She continued: “It’s quite true what he said. I mean about asking him. About killing poor Mr. Brown, I mean, but he said he didn’t, and I didn’t think he was telling a lie,” and evidently in her girlish innocence a lie to her seemed almost as inconceivable as murder.
“You mean you had become so far suspicious of Mr. Goodman that you asked him plainly if he were guilty of the murder?” Bobby said; and with an imperative gesture silenced the beginnings of an angry protest from Mr. Goodman. Bobby turned to the shorthand writer, one of the newly arrived police. “Davies,” he said, “call in Morgan to relieve you. He’s waiting just outside. You can start typing out your notes. You remember,” he added to the others, “I’m going to ask you all to read them when they are written out and sign them as correct, if you are satisfied they are. It’ll be a verbatim report.” Davies had left the room by now and the second constable had taken his place, armed equally with note-book and pencil. Bobby continued: “Miss Foote, what reason had you for asking Mr. Goodman if he were guilty?”
“It’s what I saw,” she answered. “I mean that night, very late. It isn’t a bit true about me and Mr. Langley Long, though we are friends and I think he wants us to get married some day, but not yet, and I wouldn’t let him give me a ring, and I wouldn’t even think of meeting him late at night, and then I was so awfully ill and most likely looking a perfect sight. I was simply feeling awful and I couldn’t sleep and I hadn’t even closed my eyes when ever so late I heard someone on the stairs. At first I thought it must be Mrs. Fuller—she’s ever so nice—coming to see if I was all right. She had before. Only it was someone coming up the stairs and Mrs. Fuller’s room is next mine and besides I could hear her—she does snore just a weeny bit, though she gets so cross if you say so. So then I was frightened. I thought it might be a burglar and he might kill us all, and I jumped out of bed to put a chair against the door so he couldn’t get in. Only first I peeped out and it wasn’t a burglar at all, it was Mr. Goodman carrying a candle and he hadn’t his clothes on. At least I mean, only his underthings, so I didn’t look any more. I was most awfully glad he wasn’t a burglar and I got back in bed. I thought very likely he had been downstairs to get a drink of water or something, only it was funny he hadn’t put on his dressing-gown and he wasn’t in his pyjamas, only underthings. I thought perhaps he hadn’t liked to go downstairs just in pyjamas—I shouldn’t—and so he changed to his day things and then he couldn’t find his dressing-gown. Men are like that, aren’t they? I mean, about not being able ever to find things. But it did worry me because I remembered when Mr. Childs was going Mr. Goodman called out suddenly that he heard the phone and he must answer it, and he said ‘good night’ and Mr. Childs answered, and then the front door banged as if Mr. Goodman had shut it to hurry off to the phone. But I hadn’t heard the phone ring, and after the door closed, it was all quiet and still. I mean you couldn’t hear Mr. Goodman moving about or opening the study door where the phone is or anything. I did just wonder if the door had banged to and left Mr. Goodman locked out. But I knew he had his key so it wouldn’t really matter very much and I w
as feeling much too wretched and ill to bother. But afterwards I did think it was just like his not having come inside at all, only pretended. I tried not to think about it because it was so funny and worrying and I know I’m not very good at thinking. Then Mrs. Fuller told me Mr. Goodman had sent one of his suits away to the ‘Clothes for Occupied Europe’ fund, and she was cross because she would have liked it herself for someone she knew. It was the blue serge he had been wearing the night Mr. Childs was here and it did seem funny he hadn’t asked me to do it up and send it off, because I’m his secretary, and why did he do it himself? Besides, there was what Mrs. Cox told me. She lives in the thatched cottage down the lane. The poor old dear has rheumatism so badly she hardly ever sleeps and she told me she had seen a light in the trees at the end of the field behind the house. She was dreadfully frightened because she said it was her death light. But I told her it was most likely boys playing at being Red Indians or pirates or something, and I went to look, and I found a hole where a lot of burnt rags had been buried. It was just as if petrol had been poured on clothing to make it burn and then what was left had been buried. But I didn’t tell anyone, not even Mrs. Cox when I went to see her next time. I go sometimes, when there’s anything nice Mrs. Fuller can spare, or some of my sweet ration sometimes. She’s so grateful, poor old thing, if I give her some of mine. I just said someone had made a fire there but I didn’t know why. I was awfully frightened all the time, because it did all seem so funny and it made me quite ill and I saw Mr. Goodman noticed and one day he asked me what was the matter. So I said it was the murder at Oldfordham had got on my nerves and he hadn’t done it, had he? O-oo, he looked awful and he snatched up a great big ebony ruler of his and I was—petrified. I wasn’t exactly frightened, I just thought I was going to die of fright. Only before I had time even to scream, Mr. Owen walked in. Oh, it was such a relief I think I would have fainted or something, only it didn’t seem real, not really real, I mean. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say and Langley had told me not to, and Denis had as well. He said it might cost him his life and I didn’t think he meant it, but perhaps he did and perhaps it has.”
“You had better let me go on,” Langley Long interrupted. “Miss Foote’s had a bad time and if I had known it was going to turn out anything like this I wouldn’t have asked her to help. I should have taken jolly good care to keep her out of it. Goodman’s saying that I’m the murderer is just plain silly nonsense.
“That yarn about Denis getting himself up to look like me and taking my place playing solo and none of the other chaps noticing—well, I ask you. Laughable. And my proper legal name is Langley Long. There’s my birth certificate, anyone can see for themselves if they want to, and it says my father was Langley Long, master baker. He had three shops till he drank himself out of them. He was a swine. You needn’t take my word for it. They all know where he lived and he was run in more than once. Drunk and disorderly. He died before I was born and he wasn’t really my father, either. Thank God. Mother had an awful time with him and Mr. Stephen Kayes—he was the youngest of the three Kayes brothers—was sorry for her and tried to help her and one thing led to another and that was me. I’m not ashamed of it. I would rather my mother had me outside marriage than inside marriage by such a drunken brute as the man the law chooses to call my father, though he isn’t. Everyone knew. Father—my real father, Mr. Kayes, tried to have me made legitimate when the drunken swine they called my father died. The lawyers wouldn’t. Some dirty trick they worked. But he did leave me everything in his will. Not that it was much. A bit of money and the house and furniture with a mortgage on it. Denis and his father knew all about it, too, and when Denis came to England, the first thing he did was to look me up and tell me he thought there had been crooked work in the way the estate of his uncle, Mr. Alfred Kayes, had been dealt with. I thought so, too, but I couldn’t say anything. In law, I was a perfect stranger and had no standing. Denis said there were letters. He said his uncle had been worrying a lot about invasion and all that and about the Fascists and what they might do if they got control and so on and there were hints about his investing in what would always be valuable and how if England had gone off the gold standard, he hadn’t. Denis seemed to think there was something in it. His idea was even if there hadn’t been any funny work, gold or something might still be hidden somewhere. He asked me to help and of course I said I would.”
“In what way, help?” Bobby asked.
“Help to make them cough up if they had been pinching the best part of the old man’s estate, which is what I told Denis was most likely,” Langley Long answered. “We knew Goodman had retired on a fortune soon after. You couldn’t help putting two and two together when you knew that.”
“I shall know how to deal with that slander,” Goodman interposed; and again Bobby made him a stem gesture to keep silence.
Langley Long went on unheeding:
“Denis promised I should have a share of anything we recovered. A good scout, Denis. I think he had a sort of presentiment. He told me once he might be giving up flying, though he wasn’t sure it would be because of Jerry. I didn’t catch on at first to what he meant. He meant he might have to give up flying because of being done in, but he wasn’t sure it would be enemy action. It is a bit dangerous sometimes, if you try to rake up things and get your own back. I told poor old Denis he might get done in. I told him no one like Goodman was going to give up his loot so easily as all that, not if he knew it, not after having had a good time with it so long. I said he had better watch his step all the time and all the way, and he said he would; and he said if I liked to come in and help he would go shares, only to think about it because it might be a bit risky for me, too. And he said if anything happened to him and I pulled through, then I was to have all he owned in Australia, because we had rather palled up and I was the only one left he knew of with Kayes blood in him, even if it hadn’t all come the way it should. I don’t know whether he ever put anything in writing. I don’t expect so. That’s O.K. by me. I don’t think what’s in Australia amounts to more than a few pounds anyhow.”
“Could that be the paper he asked Mr. Goodman and me to witness that first time he was here?” interposed Theresa; and the fierce denial Goodman began, was once more checked by Bobby’s stern and swift gesture.
“Later, you’ll have your chance later,” Bobby told him. “Just now I want to listen to Mr. Langley Long. I find it most interesting and enlightening.”
Langley Long looked relieved. The last word—enlightening—was the very one he would have wished to hear. Theresa still wore that air of innocent inquiry and surprise with which she had made her suggestion the moment before. But Bobby knew that behind that air of innocent inquiry lay challenge and defiance and despair, for plainly she perceived, as Langley Long did not, that ‘enlightening’ might imply enlightenment in many ways. Now, he thought, the long duel between himself and her had reached its term and climax and he watched her warily, for he did not know, nor could he guess, what her next move might be. Yet until matters were further advanced and made more clear and certain—not so much to himself but to those to whom he was responsible—there were no overt steps he could take without risk of leaving loopholes for escape.
Langley Long went on:
“Poor old Denis told me about his visit to Goodman. He didn’t say anything about getting anything signed, though. He seemed to think Goodman was all right. He said Goodman put things in a new light. All the same, if you ask me, it must have been a shock to Goodman. Like one rising from the dead.”
“That would be a shock to anyone,” agreed Bobby. “Yes, a great shock,” he repeated.
“Wouldn’t it?” agreed Langley Long, pleased again to find Bobby still so acquiescent. “Goodman stuck it out all right. Swore he knew nothing about his old managing clerk, being in Oldfordham. He said if there had been any funny work over old Mr. Kayes’s estate, then it was Brown who had worked it, but he didn’t see how it was possible. Executors have to
account for everything. If you ask me, Brown only came into it, because he tumbled to there being crooked work going on, and Goodman paid him to keep quiet. But Denis didn’t see it that way. He went to talk to Brown and what he told me was that he thought Brown’s conscience was troubling him. He talked in a religious sort of way but Denis said you weren’t sure he meant it. He stalled all the time. If you ask me, my guess is Goodman wasn’t paying him enough and he was beginning to think it might be better to stand in with Denis.”
“No,” Duke Dell interrupted suddenly, speaking for the first time. “His spirit was greatly troubled. When he spoke so, he meant it. How could he help, or anyone help, meaning what alone has meaning? But though he knew his sin, and feared his sin and endured much because of it, yet he clung still to its fruit. Nor could he bear to part from it, though it was terrible to him. The sinner’s folly is the greatest folly of them all.”
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