‘I found it all out,’ Wyatt repeated. ‘I shook out the whole terrible story and discovered that the brains of this organization were bought, like everything else. That is to say, they had a special brain to plan the crime that other men would commit. That appalled me. There’s something revolting about mass-production anyway, but when applied to crime it’s ghastly. I felt I’d wasted my life fooling around with books and theories, while all around me, on my very doorstep, these appalling things were happening. I worked it all out up here. It seemed to me that the thing to be done was to get at those brains – to destroy them. Lodging information with the police wouldn’t be enough. What’s the good of sending brains like that to prison for a year or two when at the end of the time they can come back and start afresh? It took me a year to trace those brains and I found them in my own family, though not, thank God, in my own kin … my aunt’s husband, Gordon Coombe. I saw that there was no point in simply going down there and blowing his brains out. He was only the beginning. There were others, men who could organize the thing, men who could conceive such an abominable idea as the one which turned Dolly Lord into Joy Love, a creature not quite human, not quite animal – a machine, in fact. So I had to go warily. My uncle was in the habit of asking me to take house-parties down to Black Dudley, as you probably know, to cover his interviews with his confederates. I planned what I thought was a perfect killing, and the next time I was asked I chose my house-party carefully and went down there with every intention of putting my scheme into action.’
‘You chose your house-party?’
Abbershaw looked at him curiously as he spoke.
‘Certainly,’ said Wyatt calmly. ‘I chose each one of you deliberately. You were all people of blameless reputation. There was not one of you who could not clear himself with perfect certainty. The suspicion would therefore necessarily fall on one of my uncle’s own guests, each of whom had done, if not murder, something more than as bad. I thought Campion was of their party until we were all prisoners. Until Prenderby told me, I thought Anne Edgeware had brought him, even then.’
‘You ran an extraordinary risk,’ said Abbershaw.
Wyatt shook his head.
‘Why?’ he said. ‘I was my uncle’s benefactor, not he mine. I had nothing to gain by his death, and I should have been as free from suspicion as any of you. Of course,’ he went on, ‘I had no idea that things would turn out as they did. No one could have been more surprised than I when they concealed the murder in that extraordinary way. When I realized that they had lost something I understood, and I was desperately anxious that they should not recover what I took to be my uncle’s notes for the gang’s next coup. That is why I asked you to stay.’
‘Of course,’ said Abbershaw slowly, ‘you were wrong.’
‘In not pitching on von Faber as my first victim?’ said Wyatt.
Abbershaw shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘In setting out to fight a social evil single-handed. That is always a mad thing to do.’
Wyatt raised his eyes to meet the other’s.
‘I know,’ he said simply. ‘I think I am a little mad. It seemed to me so wicked. I loved her.’
There was silence after he had spoken, and the two men sat for some time, Abbershaw staring into the fire, Wyatt leaning back, his eyes half-closed. The thought that possessed Abbershaw’s mind was the pity of it – such a good brain, such a valuable idealistic soul. And it struck him in a sudden impersonal way that it was odd that evil should beget evil. It was as if it went on spreading in ever-widening circles, like ripples round the first splash of a stone thrown into a pond.
Wyatt recalled him from his reverie.
‘It was a perfect murder,’ he said, almost wonderingly. ‘How did you find me out?’
Abbershaw hesitated. Then he sighed. ‘I couldn’t help it,’ he said. ‘It was too perfect. It left nothing to chance. Do you know where I have spent the last week or so? In the British Museum.’
He looked at the other steadily.
‘I now know more about your family history than, I should think, any other man alive. That Ritual story would have been wonderful for your purpose, Wyatt, if it just hadn’t been for one thing. It was not true.’
Wyatt rose from his chair abruptly, and walked up and down the room. This flaw in his scheme seemed to upset him more than anything else had done.
‘But it might have been true,’ he argued. ‘Who could prove it? A family legend.’
‘But it wasn’t true,’ Abbershaw persisted. ‘It wasn’t true because from the year 1100 until the year 1603 – long past the latest date to which such a story as yours could have been feasible, Black Dudley was a monastery and not in the possession of your family at all. Your family estate was higher up the coast, in Norfolk, and I shouldn’t think the dagger came into your possession until 1650 at least, when an ancestor of yours is referred to as having returned from the Papal States laden with merchandise.’
Wyatt continued to pace up and down the room.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘I see. But otherwise it was a perfect murder. Think of it – Heaven knows how many fingerprints on the dagger handle, no one with any motive – no one who might not have committed the crime, and by the same reasoning no one who might. It had its moments of horror too, though,’ he said, pausing suddenly. ‘The moment when I came upon Miss Oliphant in the dark – I had to follow the dagger round, you see, to be in at the first alarm. I saw her pause under the window and stare at the blade, and I don’t think it was until then that I realized that there was blood on it. So I took it from her. It was an impulsive, idiotic thing to do, and when the alarm did come the thing was in my own hand. I didn’t see what they were getting at at first, and I was afraid I hadn’t quite killed him, although I’d worked out the blow with a medical chart before I went down there. I took the dagger up to my own room. You nearly found me with it, by the way.’
Abbershaw nodded.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I think it was instinct, but as you came in from the balcony I caught a glimpse of something in your hand, and although I didn’t see what it was, I couldn’t get the idea of the dagger out of my mind.’
‘Two flaws,’ said Wyatt, and was silent.
The atmosphere in the pleasant room had become curiously cold, and Abbershaw shivered. The sordid glossy photograph lay upon the floor, and the pretty childish face with the expression of innocence which had now become so sinister smiled up at him from the carpet.
‘Well, what are you going to do?’
It was Wyatt who spoke, pausing abruptly in his feverish stride.
Abbershaw did not look at him.
‘What are you going to do?’ he murmured.
Wyatt hesitated.
‘There is a Dominican Foundation in the rocky valley of El Puerto in the north of Spain,’ he said. ‘I have been in correspondence with them for some time. I have been disposing of all my books this week. I realized when von Faber passed into the hands of the police that my campaign was ended, but –’
He stopped and looked at Abbershaw; then he shrugged his shoulders.
‘What now?’ he said.
Abbershaw rose to his feet and held out his hand.
‘I don’t suppose I shall see you again before you go,’ he said. ‘Good-bye.’
Wyatt shook the outstretched hand, but after the first flicker of interest which the last words had occasioned his expression had become preoccupied. He crossed the room and picked up the photograph, and the last glimpse Abbershaw had of him was as he sat in the deep armchair, crouching over it, his eyes fixed on the sweet, foolish little face.
As the little doctor walked slowly down the staircase to the street his mind was in confusion. He was conscious of a strong feeling of relief, even although his worst fears had been realized. At the back of his head, the old problem of Law and Order as opposed to Right and Wrong worried itself into the inextricable tangle which knows no unravelling. Wyatt was both a murderer and a martyr. There was no on
e who could decide between the two, in his opinion.
And in his thoughts, too, were his own affairs: Meggie, and his love for her, and their marriage.
*
As he stepped out into the street, a round moon face, red and hot with righteous indignation, loomed down upon him out of the darkness.
‘Come at last, ’ave yet?’ inquired a thick sarcastic voice. ‘Your name and address, if you please.’
Gradually it dawned upon the still meditative doctor that he was confronted by an excessively large and unfriendly London bobby.
‘This is your car, I suppose?’ the questioner continued more mildly, as he observed Abbershaw’s blank expression, but upon receiving the assurance that it was, all his indignation returned.
‘This car’s been left ’ere over an hour to my certain personal knowledge,’ he bellowed. ‘Unattended and drawn out a foot from the kerb, which aggravates the offence. This’ll mean a summons, you know’ – he flourished his notebook. ‘Name and address.’
Abbershaw having furnished him with this information, he replaced the pencil in its sheath and, clicking the book’s elastic band smartly, continued his homily. He was clearly very much aggrieved.
‘It’s people like you,’ he explained, as Abbershaw climbed into the driving seat, ‘wot gives us officers all our work. But we’re not goin’ to have these offences, I can tell you. We’re making a clean sweep. Persons offending against the Law are not going to be tolerated.’
He paused suspiciously. The slightly dazed expression upon the face of the little red-haired man in the car had suddenly given place to a smile.
‘Splendid!’ he said, and there was unmistakable enthusiasm in his tone. ‘Really, really splendid, Officer! You don’t know how comforting that sounds. My fervent wishes for your success.’ And he drove off, leaving the policeman looking after him, wondering a little wistfully if the charge in his notebook should not perhaps have read, ‘Drunk in charge of a car.’
A Note on the Author
Margery Louise Allingham was born in Ealing, London in 1904 to a very literary family; her parents were both writers, and her aunt ran a magazine, so it was natural that Margery too would begin writing at an early age. She wrote steadily through her school days, first in Colchester and later as a boarder at the Perse School for Girls in Cambridge, where she wrote, produced, and performed in a costume play. After her return to London in 1920 she enrolled at the Regent Street Polytechnic, where she studied drama and speech training in a successful attempt to overcome a childhood stammer. There she met Phillip Youngman Carter, who would become her husband and collaborator, designing the jackets for many of her future books.
The Allingham family retained a house on Mersea Island, a few miles from Layer Breton, and it was here that Margery found the material for her first novel, the adventure story Blackkerchief Dick (1923), which was published when she was just nineteen. She went on to pen multiple novels, some of which dealt with occult themes and some with mystery, as well as writing plays and stories – her first detective story, The White Cottage Mystery, was serialized in the Daily Express in 1927.
Allingham died at the age of 62, and her final novel, A Cargo of Eagles, was finished by her husband at her request and published posthumously in 1968.
Discover books by Margery Allingham published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/MargeryAllingham
Blackkerchief Dick
The White Cottage Mystery
Dance of the Years
No Love Lost
For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been removed from this book.
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This electronic edition published in 2014 by Bloomsbury Reader
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Copyright © 1929 Margery Allingham
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eISBN: 9781448214211
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The Crime at Black Dudley Page 22