‘Edward Austin Wolfe, it is my duty to warn you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence hereafter. I now arrest you on a charge of murdering Detective-Inspector Charles Bussy by means of a knife at Sanford Angelorum on September 15, 1947.’
CHAPTER 21
OF what immediately followed, no lucid and reliable account is to be had. Fen’s own subsequent statement, that he made a gallant and single-handed attempt to fell Wolfe, has been repudiated by other witnesses, who assert unanimously that he did not so much as move. Wolfe, however, did move; by the time Humbleby’s pistol was out of his pocket he had dragged Jacqueline in front of him as a shield, and was backing away with her towards his car, which stood outside in the road. For a sufficient time the incident paralysed their common sense; though it might not be possible to shoot at Wolfe, there was still no objection to tackling him bodily; and yet by an irrational quirk of the mind they held back, feeling themselves powerless, until he was almost at the car. Humbleby was the first to regain the capacity for rational thought.
‘After him, damn you!’ he shouted; and began running.
Urged on by Captain Watkyn, from a position well to the rear, the other men followed suit. But it was too late. Wolfe flung Jacqueline savagely aside and leaped into the car. It started at a touch and in another moment was away. Humbleby fired two shots at the tyres, but without effect.
‘I never was much good with these things,’ he said resignedly. ‘Come on.’
He and Fen rushed for the car in which they had arrived. So also did the constable, but he was pushed out again with a bellowed injunction to send out a general alarm. The last Fen saw of the astonished group at the inn was Mr Judd solicitously but needlessly brushing Jacqueline’s skirt with the palm of his hand; Fen decided that Jacqueline must be devoid of nerves, for she looked as pleasantly equable and unperturbed as ever.
Wolfe had not achieved a long start, and there seemed little chance of his eluding them. He turned up the road which led to the railway station, and beyond that to Sanford Condover; evidently he was not going to risk being stopped in Sanford Morvel. The Wythendale direction would probably have suited him best of all, but his car had been facing the wrong way, and turning it had of course been out of the question. They bucketed along, momentarily losing sight of their quarry behind the bends of that winding lane, but never, since there were no side turnings, in danger of losing him altogether. The scene of Fen’s first encounter with the lunatic flashed past – and by this time it was abundantly clear to him that Humbleby’s inefficiency with a pistol was surpassed only by his inefficiency in driving an automobile; the speed at which they were travelling no doubt involved some risk, but not, surely, all this risk; most of it derived unquestionably from the fact that Humbleby was of that order of drivers who, having put the wheel over, wait until they have entirely rounded a comer before beginning to move it back again.
‘Is there much point in our chasing him like this?’ Fen demanded apprehensively. ‘He’s almost certain to be picked up somewhere.’
‘This is a personal issue,’ said Humbleby grimly. ‘He killed one of my colleagues, and I propose to do everything I possibly can towards ensuring that he’s hanged.’
‘We’ll both be dead if you go on driving like this.’
Humbleby was much astonished, but the off wheels of the car, lurching over a high grass verge, distracted his attention from whatever defensive reply he might have contemplated making. Fen sat back resignedly and thought about his sins.
Three images of Nemesis presided over Wolfe’s eventual fate, and now the first of them confronted him. The abysmal Shooter, whose fallen tree lay half across the lane near the station, had chosen this afternoon to set about removing it. Horses were there to drag its roots from the hedge; a cart was there for its ultimate removal; Shooter and his sons were there, quarrelling lengthily about ways and means. At the moment when Wolfe’s car arrived at the spot, their united efforts had so far shifted the tree as to cause it to block the lane not partially but entirely. There was no getting past it.
But by a delusive and temporary stroke of luck there was a gate into which it was possible for Wolfe to back his car. He turned, driving back, since no other course was open to him, in the direction whence he had come. Humbleby and Fen heard his approach – and since they were not yet in sight of Shooter and his barricade, it did not for an instant occur to them that it might be he. Humbleby squeezed the car in against the hedge. Fen sat bolt upright, histrionically invoking the protection of St Christopher. And Wolfe’s car, rounding the bend ahead, scraped past them within two inches.
‘God damn and blast him to hell,’ said Humbleby.
His turning, though by no means so rapid and efficient as Wolfe’s, was somehow accomplished. The chase proceeded in a reverse direction, and the chattering, excited group outside ‘The Fish Inn’ – swollen, now, by an admixture of villagers – stood suddenly petrified with amazement as the two cars came in view again. Fen caught a fleeting glimpse of their stupefaction as he was swept past; then, his gaze back on the road in front, he saw that Wolfe was turning into the lane which led up past the Rectory and so along the twelve miles to Wythendale.
Here it was that the second image of Nemesis awaited him. Along the exact centre of the lane, its head bandaged but its homing instinct unimpaired, trotted the non-doing pig, making resolutely for ‘The Fish Inn’. Wolfe saw it and – the training of a lifetime triumphing unexpectedly over his desperate lust of self-preservation – swerved to avoid it. So swerving, one of the front wheels of his car jarred against the grassy bank, and the engine died. The self-starter whined long and petulantly and unavailingly. As Fen and Humbleby drove up, Wolfe scrambled out of his car and, after glancing wildly about him, ran in at the Rectory gate.
They followed. The Rector, peaceably scrutinizing his flower-beds on the way out to Sunday-school, found himself without warning precipitated to the ground. Panic-stricken, Wolfe made for the front door, ran through it, slammed it behind him. A moment more, and Humbleby had scrambled in after him through an open downstairs window.
Fen paused to help the Rector to his feet, and in a few words informed him of what was going on. From within the house they heard vehement trampling, and a sudden shriek of dismay and fury from Mrs Flitch. To add to the confusion, the Rectory poltergeist, roused by these untoward happenings from its diurnal lethargy, came suddenly into action; objects began to fly out of the upstairs windows – pebbles, a comb, a box of Nuits d’extase, books, soap, a reproduction of the Sistine Madonna, a cushion, the detachable top of a small prie-dieu, a vase of flowers, a jade elephant, and a pair of white woollen bed-socks. The powder-box came open in mid-air and showered its contents on the Rector.
‘Stop it!’ the Rector screamed in a sudden transport of rage. ‘Stop it, you bloody poltergeist!’ But his unclerical admonition was without effect. The poltergeist not only continued to throw things, but set up a mournful wailing as well; though this, Fen thought, might be not implausibly ascribed to Mrs Flitch in extremis.
‘Conjuro te!’ shrieked the Rector. ‘Conjuro te, Satanas!’ He danced hysterically about, coated with powder and smelling like a perfumery.
The situation, Fen felt, was getting out of hand. And it was not greatly improved by the arrival of the crowd from the inn, who had heard the cars stop and had come pelting breathlessly round to see what was afoot. They poured into the Rectory garden, uttering dazed, irrelevant questions and skipping about in an attempt to avoid the poltergeist’s uninterrupted stream of missiles. The dynamic level of the wailing rose abruptly from mezzo-piano to fortissimo.
‘In nomine Patris et Filii and all the rest of it,’ bawled the Rector, convulsed, ‘conjuro te, do you hear me, damn you?’
This will not do, Fen told himself; it is my job to go inside and help Humbleby. But before he could move, someone in the crowd shouted: ‘Look!’ and all eyes turned to the roof. Wolfe, dishevelled and sweating, was emerging from a skylight.
And for whatever reason – whether because it had shot its bolt or because the Rector’s exorcism had been successful – the poltergeist in this instant desisted: the howling and the showers of missiles ceased. And on the crowd below, perhaps in sympathy, a hush fell – until, like a shell from a cannon, Humbleby burst from the front door.
‘Lost him,’ he shouted; and then, observing the direction of their gaze, ran to join them.
The Rectory roof was pseudo-Gothic – a strange agglomeration of peaks and towers, and gables and florid chimney-stacks; to move about it, though in some respects risky, was by no means impracticable. And Fen saw now what Wolfe was intending to do. To the left, as you stood facing the house, the high garden wall was overhung by the sturdy branch of an ancient oak which grew in the next demesne; and this branch reached almost to the guttering of the Rectory roof. A determined man, it was clear, would have no difficulty in getting from the roof on to the branch, and by that means across the wall. And Humbleby was not slow in perceiving this; after no more than a single glance he organized a party of volunteers and despatched them to mount guard at the foot of the oak.
‘Come down, Wolfe,’ he shouted. ‘You can’t get away.’
But Wolfe made no answer; it was, indeed, as if he had not heard. He continued to pick his way carefully across the leads, and in the afternoon sunlight they could see the rain of perspiration gleaming on his ruddy skin. With a short exclamation of impatience, Humbleby beckoned to the constable, and together they disappeared into the house.
And that was when Nemesis played its third and last card.
Wolfe was moving slowly along the very margin of the roof-along a narrow ledge between the lowest tiles and the gutter – when from behind a nearby chimney-stack a bizarre and striking figure emerged. It wore black suède shoes, cotton underpants, a Canadian lumber-jacket, and a rather small cricket-cap; it appeared to be eating a sandwich; and it stood champing its jaws and contemplating Wolfe’s laborious progress with avuncular interest.
‘It’s him,’ said a voice at Fen’s elbow; and the crowd muttered recognition. Turning, Fen saw that Myra was beside him, the non-doing pig crouched in untarnished fidelity at her feet. ‘It’s the lunatic,’ she said, breathless with excitement.
Fen agreed that it was.
‘And just think, my dear, he must have been camping there on the roof ever since he escaped. No wonder they didn’t find him.’
Fen concurred. ‘But the question now,’ he said, ‘is what he’s going to do about Wolfe.’
That was, indeed!, the question. Wolfe had at last perceived the lunatic, and was standing stock-still. The lunatic examined him thoughtfully and then nodded with great affability. Wolfe nodded back – and his relief was clearly perceptible to those who stood below. He resumed his progress. He came opposite to where, non-chalantly leaning against the chimney-stack, Elphinstone stood. On all the watchers there fell a sudden, inexplicable silence.
Then it happened.
Elphinstone lurched forward; from his mouth issued, with foghorn stridency, the sound ‘Boo!’. Opinions differ as to whether he actually intended to attack Wolfe, and the matter is not now susceptible of investigation. But the effect of his unexpected pounce on the raw nerves of the fugitive was decisive. Wolfe’s left foot slipped on the gutter; with a crack like a gunshot it gave way beneath his weight; he staggered, swayed, his hands clutched at vacancy. With a feeble, high-pitched cry he fell.
The crowd sighed, with the hollow reverberation of many indrawn breaths. Faintly, a woman screamed, and then again there was silence. Fen strode to where Wolfe lay, bent over him, and then stripped off his own jacket and laid it on the vacant, unseeing face.
‘His neck’s broken,’ he announced briefly. ‘There’s nothing that can be done for him.’
Humbleby and the constable had appeared through the skylight just in time to witness the accident. Their original mission abolished, they devoted their energies to persuading Elphinstone to descend. He consented to this with such readiness as to make their cajolings superfluous, and the constable and a farm labourer were deputed to restore him to Dr Boysenberry’s care. As they passed through the lingering, bemused crowd Fen heard him say:
‘Damn it all, the man was criminal; and we’re always being told that it’s the duty of every citizen to prevent criminals from escaping from justice; and I warn you that if my fourteen points are not adopted, Western Europe will be at war again within a decade.’
Still chatting sociably, he was led away.
CHAPTER 22
‘JANE PERSIMMONS has been deaf from birth,’ said Fen. ‘And once one realized that, it became painfully obvious who had killed Bussy.’
He scrutinized his audience without pleasure. The process of explaining his cases was not as a rule at all disagreeable to him, but on this occasion his personal disgust at being a member of the Mother of Parliaments deprived his recital of all zest. Moreover, his listeners struck him as being irritatingly unaware of the disaster he had suffered; their complacency offended him. They seemed to imagine that God was in His Heaven and all was well with the world – and from their point of view, no doubt, such optimism was justified. . . . Fen’s expression of disapproval deepened to a scowl.
It was half past nine on the Sunday evening, and they were on the lawn of ‘The Fish Inn’. The bar was no longer habitable but, in view of the continuing splendour of the weather, to drink outside was a pleasure rather than an inconvenience. A window of the bar was being used as a serving-hatch, and Jacqueline was behind it. Sitting or lying on the grass in a circle round Fen were Diana, Lord Sanford, Myra, and Mr Judd. On the outskirts of the group lurked two other figures, Mr Beaver and Captain Watkyn, both of them oppressed, it seemed, by some testing intellectual or moral quandary. Beyond them, a few villagers stood drinking and arguing about the events of the afternoon.
‘The case was a simple one,’ Fen resumed, ‘and needn’t take long to explain. I can’t regard it as one of my successes, because I was so unconscionably slow in seeing the truth. However . . .
‘My first clue came from Bussy’s account of the murder of Mrs Lambert; it lay in that special oddity of the affair which both Bussy and I observed. Suppose I am blackmailing you, Judd; and suppose I become aware that you have recognized me as an individual having special knowledge of your seamy past; and suppose that in view of this I decide you must be killed before you can betray me to the police. What is the one thing, in those circumstances, that I am not likely to do? The answer is obvious: I am not likely to devise a method of murder – such as sending poisoned chocolates through the post – which will leave you a comfortable twelve hours beforehand in which to give me away. If I am to kill you at all, the job must obviously be done as quickly as possible – or the reason for doing it will cease to exist.
‘But the blackmailer of Mrs Lambert chose the poisoned chocolates method. And from that it was possible provisionally to infer that he was not afraid of being betrayed to the police before his device could take effect. And why not? Mrs Lambert’s husband was away from home, but on a previous occasion she had gone to the police alone – in order to inform them of the blackmail – and there was nothing to stop her doing so again. The only thing I could think of that would stop her was the fact that the blackmailer, the revenant from her past, was actually a member of the local police, and in all probability the head of the organization. Mrs Lambert would then have no one in whom she could confide except her husband – who was away; blackmail, on account of a prostitute’s career, is not, after all, the sort of thing one communicates even to one’s closest friends. And although you may say that she could have gone with her story to the police in some other district, you have only to picture yourself telling one police superintendent that another is guilty of blackmail to realize that it isn’t the sort of task one undertakes lightly. Mrs Lambert then decided to wait for the return of her husband before taking any action; and on just such a decision Wolfe, posting the poisoned chocolates, could perf
ectly rely. So she died, and her information died with her.
‘I don’t say, of course, that the reasoning I’ve outlined was by any means conclusive. But it was confirmed by the fact that, as he told me, Bussy had collected or was about to collect substantial evidence tending to the same verdict. And that was why he, too, had to die. What his evidence was, and what he intended by his overt departure and surreptitious return, we shall never know; but Wolfe clearly regarded it as quite sufficient to make his death a crying necessity.
‘You’ll remember that when the evidence in connexion with Bussy’s murder had been sifted, and it had been established that all the rigmarole which pointed to Elphinstone was faked, we were left with one crucial problem: how had the murderer known that Bussy was going to turn up at the golf-course hut at all? How had he known to set his stage, and lay his ambush, in such an unlikely place? The rendezvous had not been conceived until my chance meeting with Bussy, and I myself had suggested it quite out of the blue; so the murderer could not have been aware of it prior to that moment. And afterwards – well, I said nothing about it, it was wholly unreasonable to suppose that Bussy did, and there was no possibility of our having been overheard. What, then, had happened?
‘It took the attempt on Jane Persimmons’ life to enlighten me; and it took the incident of the lost field-glasses, and their secret return, wiped clean of finger-prints, to complete that enlightenment. At long last I realized that Jane Persimmons was deaf. That was why she had walked straight into a particularly noisy lorry; that was why, lip-reading, she watched one attentively whenever one spoke; that was why her accent seemed to us slightly foreign – for consonants of the same group look the same when one’s pronouncing them, and if you have to learn to speak entirely by lip-reading you’re liable to blur and confuse them.
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