‘From that point onwards everything was clear. If you can lip-read, and if you have a pair of field-glasses, you can “overhear” conversations going on many hundreds of yards beyond earshot. The inn’s guest-rooms look out on the slope where Bussy and I arranged our rendezvous. And Jane was probably in one of them, and standing by the window at the relevant time.
‘Now, she didn’t kill Bussy, since she was unconscious at the time. She must therefore have communicated my conversation with Bussy to some other person or persons. And she had precious little time in which to do this, since less than ten minutes later she was knocked down by the lorry, remaining unconscious for nearly four days thereafter. All of that narrowed the field decisively. The only persons Jane Persimmons went near during the brief space of time between the fatal conversation and her accident were Myra, Jacqueline, and Wolfe; and there was no time for her to have committed anything to paper. Myra and Jacqueline I could easily exonerate, on four separate counts. They were: (i) the blackmailer of Mrs Lambert was almost certainly a man, an old client of hers; (ii) both Myra and Jacqueline had an unshakeable alibi for the time of Bussy’s murder; (iii) ordinary common sense made it inconceivable that they were guilty accomplices of the murderer; and (iv) if they were innocent, and Jane had informed them of my conversation with Bussy, then they had no possible reason for keeping quiet about it subsequently. It was not in them, then, that Jane Persimmons had confided. And since unquestionably she confided in somebody, that somebody can only have been Wolfe.’
Fen paused, and Mr Judd said:
‘All that is amply clear, I think. And it is corroborated beyond all possible doubt by the attempt to kill Jane Persimmons. That, I take it, became necessary as soon as it was obvious that the scheme of implicating Elphinstone had failed.’
‘Quite so,’ said Fen. ‘At first it seemed that Jane might die of her own accord, but as soon as it became likely that she would recover, Wolfe was impelled to silence her; for if she recovered, she would be in a position to publish the utterly damning fact that he knew of my rendezvous with Bussy.’
‘And the field-glasses,’ said Mr Judd. ‘I presume that she picked them up when she was out that day and brought them back here with her, intending to return them to the Rector.’
‘Exactly. And Wolfe removed them from her room when he visited it on the evening of the accident.’
Myra said: ‘Then it was him, my dear, who wiped them and put them back in the Rector’s study?’
‘Yes. He wouldn’t want to give us any chance of suspecting that Jane was deaf, and therefore in a position to know of the golf-course rendezvous and to hand on the information to him.’
‘There’s only one thing I don’t understand,’ said Mr Judd. ‘I can visualize Jane, out of idle curiosity, “overhearing” your conversation with Bussy. But I can’t see why she should tell Wolfe about it.’
Fen smiled. ‘You must remember that to her I was at that time an unknown quantity, while Bussy was patently not what he pretended to be. She couldn’t know that in our grotesque fashion we represented the Law; on the contrary, we must have seemed to her decidedly suspicious characters. And up to the moment when, the church clock striking six, Myra interrupted her, this is what she heard – or rather, saw:
‘“I hadn’t hoped to find you so easily. Fen, I need help. You must help me. There’s a small element of risk, I’m afraid, but you won’t mind that.”
‘“No, I shan’t mind that.”
‘“Good. It’s to do with this Lambert affair, of course. Something I can’t manage single-handed. I can’t give you the details now, I’m afraid, because I’ve got to catch a train.”
‘“You’re leaving?”
‘“To all appearances, yes. I want it to be thought that I’ve returned to London. But after dark I shall sneak back again, and you must meet me. I can explain the position then.”
‘“And where do you propose to spend the night?”
‘“In the open.”
‘“That will be cold and disagreeable. You ought to find a shelter of some kind – if you’re proposing to sleep, that is.”
‘“All right. No doubt a haystack or a barn —”
‘“Or you might try one of the huts on the golf-course.”
‘“Whatever you say. That would certainly have the advantage of providing a locus in quo for our meeting.”
‘“And the time?”
‘“Let’s say midnight. I shall almost certainly be back by then, but if I’m not, wait for me.”
‘“Yes. I suggest the hut at the fourth green. It’s reasonably commodious.”
‘“That will do.”
‘Well, at best it was an equivocal sounding interchange; we might have been planning to commit a burglary; and it’s not therefore surprising that when, on emerging from the inn, Jane saw a police-officer tinkering with his car, she should feel it her duty to tell him about it.
‘The case against Wolfe, then, was conclusive; no other explanation would cover all the facts. And thereafter it was easy to visualize how events looked from his angle. He came to this district about two months ago; he recognized Mrs Lambert; he wanted money (who doesn’t?); he decided to blackmail the woman, thinking that after so brief and professional contact with her so many years before she would never remember him. His first demand was met; he sent a second. And then the whole scheme collapsed when she visited the police-station to inform the law of what was going on.
‘Undoubtedly he himself interviewed her on that occasion; she recognized him – and must have hurriedly fabricated a false pretext for her presence there. But such recognition is not easily disguised, and such fabrications ring hollow. He knew that she knew him; he knew why she had come to the police; he knew he must silence her in order to escape gaol. Secure in the knowledge that she would take no action till her husband returned, he sent her the poisoned chocolates. She died – and he, “investigating” the case, had ample opportunity to destroy any evidence against him which might remain.
‘He must have thought himself completely safe; the shock of learning that Bussy was on his tail must have been severe. How he learned it we don’t know, but learn it he undeniably did. Murder breeds murder; Bussy constituted a second and graver threat to his security, so Bussy, too, had to die. When Jane Persimmons told him of my conversation with Bussy, of the golf-course meeting-place, he saw his opportunity. The knife was stolen that evening from Judd’s house, with trimmings to suggest that Elphinstone had stolen it (the details of Elphinstone’s lunacy, remember, were given to the police at the time of his escape). At the golf-course hut, the scene was set. As regards the pince-nez, I imagine that Etphinstone dropped them somewhere and that Wolfe subsequently picked them up, but the point isn’t important. It was a clever idea, this attempt to shift the responsibility on to the lunatic; and but for the unavoidable mistake of the fire it would, the way things were going, have almost certainly succeeded. So Bussy died, and Wolfe escaped to his home in time to be called out to “investigate” the second of his murders.
‘But my discovery of Boysenberry’s reticence about Elphinstone’s phobia reopened the case. It was now Jane who was the danger. For a day or two it seemed that she was going to die as a result of the accident, but on Wednesday the news was abroad that she was better. That night he made his attempt on her life – an attempt so framed as to make it appear that death had been natural. It failed, and he found himself in the ironic position of having to organize precautions against himself. No doubt he intended ultimately to evade those precautions and finish the job. But by yesterday morning the main outlines of the affair were clear to me. I needed time in which to tidy up the loose ends, so I went to Wolfe and spun him a long and circumstantial tale about Myra having killed Bussy – sorry, Myra – with the idea of lulling him into a false sense of security. Whether it did or not I haven’t the slightest idea, but in any event I got my breathing-space. When he was confronted by the warrant, his nerve failed him, and then’ – Fen shrugged
– ‘well, the rest you know.’
CHAPTER 23
THERE was a prolonged silence when he had finished speaking. It was growing dark. The crescent light of a moon just past the full was chasing the last red streaks of the sunset down over the western horizon. The birds, their nightly valedictions completed, were silent. A silver mantle began to take shape on the tree-tops. All colour drained away, leaving only the black and white of a harlequinade. In a nearby coppice Philomela, deliquescent in grief, mourned the infidelity of Tereus and the unshareable joys of Procne.
A little stiffly, Myra got to her feet. ‘Time, gentlemen, please,’ she called. ‘Time, gentlemen, please.’
With deliberation the villagers finished their drinks and departed, their voices receding along the road.
‘I’m tellin’ ’ee, Fred, that ketch, ’er’s luffin’.’
‘Danged if oi think Bert knows what luffin’ is.’
‘Ah, Tell us what ’tis, Bert.’
‘Why, luffin’, ’tis when a yacht goes zigzag to catch the wind.’
‘Tackin’, ’e means.’
‘When oi means bloody tackin’, oi’ll say bloody tackin’.’
‘Now, see ’ere, that brig . . .’
The voices were annihilated in distance. On the lawn of the inn the group surrounding Fen alone remained, lulled by the nascent magic of the summer night into oblivion of such squalid enactments as the Licensing Laws. Groaning slightly with the effort, Mr Judd rose and crossed to the window of the bar to talk to Jacqueline; his interest in politics, Fen thought, seemed to have evaporated as quickly as it had begun; he had reverted, by a Circean metamorphosis, to the mild and diffident little man whose unpromising exterior enshrined the lurid imagination of Annette de la Tour.
Clearing his throat uneasily, Captain Watkyn said:
‘It’s just as well the affair ended as it did. Saved a lot of trouble and expense. And you never know what’ll happen when these things come into the courts. A court of law’s not much better than a den of iniquity, in my opinion.’
‘Or a din of inequity, of course,’ said Fen. ‘Myra, have you any champagne?’
‘There’s half a dozen bottles of Heidsieck in the cellar, my dear.’
‘Then let’s empty them. I need cheering up.’
‘Well, it’s appropriate really, isn’t it?’ said Myra. ‘What with Diana and Lord Sanford getting engaged, and now Mr Judd and Jacqueline.’
‘Mr Judd and Jacqueline?’ Fen was startled.
‘Oh, yes, my dear. Didn’t you know? He asked her this afternoon, and she accepted.’
‘What a waste of Jacqueline,’ said Fen, disgusted.
‘Well, my dear, most marriages are a waste one way or another, aren’t they?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Fen rather drearily. ‘What has happened about Samuel, Myra? Did you succumb to that evil-smelling chicken?’
‘I did not.’ Myra was firm. ‘And poor old Samuel’s met his Waterloo since then.’
‘His Waterloo?’
‘His wife,’ Myra explained, ‘has broken his jaw for him.’
‘Good God!’ This brutal intelligence momentarily roused Fen. ‘I suppose he deserved it, but still . . . She didn’t try to attack you, did she?’
‘Oh, no, my dear. She wasn’t annoyed with me. She came round and talked to me about it, friendly like. “I don’t mind ’im rolling in the bushes with the village girls,” she said, “but I’m not going to have him pestering respectable women like you, Mrs Herbert”.’
‘Very proper,’ Fen murmured. ‘Very proper indeed.’
‘Well, I’ll get the champagne then,’ said Myra, and departed.
Fen relapsed into brooding. It appeared to his peevish imagination that everyone had come well out of the week’s events except himself. Humbleby, by now on his way back to London, could feel nothing but satisfaction at so conclusive a finish to the case. Diana and Lord Sanford were united at last. Jane Persimmons – whom they had seen that afternoon – was much better, and would almost certainly be persuaded to settle down with them. Mr Judd was to have the freedom of Jacqueline (Fen found himself unable to conceive the affair in terms more elevated than these) and Jacqueline had presumably some arcane justification for being satisfied with this arrangement. Captain Watkyn had achieved a professional triumph in the face of considerable odds. Boysenberry’s reputation was more or less salvaged. Elphinstone would again be receiving such treatment as his egregious condition required. Mr Beaver had largely succeeded in his object of destroying his own inn.
Olive and Harry Hitchin would be mollocking in some secluded spot, their enjoyment impaired only by the remote possibility of Olive’s father coming at them with a knife. Myra was neither better nor worse off than she had been before. The Rector’s poltergeist was now public property, and the Psychical Research Society would be after him at any moment, but that was no more than he deserved for deceiving Mrs Flitch. Constable Sly had been slightly wounded, but that was on account of his own stupidity, and in any case he would be about again in a day or two. . . . Fen gazed at the stars, and inquired of them wordlessly why he alone should be afflicted with such condign and unmerited punishment.
Captain Watkyn looked up at him.
‘Look here, old boy, there’s something I’ve got to tell you,’ said Captain Watkyn.
‘If it’s about the election,’ said Fen, ‘I don’t want to hear it.’
‘Well, yes, it is, but you’ve just got to hear it, d’you see? . . .
You know the law only allows you to spend a certain amount of money on election expenses?’
‘Yes, I’m aware of that, thank you.’
‘Well, I forgot to carry nineteen pounds.’
‘Watkyn, what are you talking about?’
‘I forgot,’ Captain Watkyn repeated stoically, ‘to carry nineteen pounds from the units to the tens. So we’ve spent seven pounds more than we ought to have done, and the Returning Officer’s pounced on it. I’m sorry, old boy, but I’m afraid you’re disqualified. And the other two tied, so the Returning Officer has the casting vote, and he’s a Conservative, and that’s why he’s being so nasty about what after all is only a ruddy silly little technical error. . . . You might,’ Captain Watkyn suggested gloomily, ‘go to law about it.’
Fen shook him warmly by the hand. ‘Have a drink, Watkyn,’ he said.
‘You mean you don’t mind?’ said Captain Watkyn dazedly.
‘Your mathematical incompetence has probably saved my reason.’
‘I don’t understand it,’ said Captain Watkyn with pathos. ‘I just don’t understand a single thing about the whole extraordinary business.’
The champagne was brought. The glasses were filled. ‘A toast,’ said Fen, ‘to those who are to be married.’ They drank.
‘And now’ – Fen’s eye lit upon the despondent and taciturn figure of Mr Beaver – ‘a toast to the rejuvenation of “The Fish Inn”.’
In the moonlight Mr Beaver wanly smiled.
They raised their glasses.
‘To the rejuvenation of “The Fish Inn”.’ they said.
The ground trembled under them. In the back wall of the inn a crack appeared, widened, gaped. There was a sound of smashing glass. The chimney pots toppled and the tiles fell like rain. With an earthquake roar, in an enveloping mushroom of dust, the walls of ‘The Fish Inn’ bulged and collapsed.
Upon the wreck of his hopes Mr Beaver stood staring with incredulous horror.
‘This damned Government,’ he whispered. ‘Oh, this damned Government.’
The villagers assembled to view the prodigy; but in an hour or two, tiring of the spectacle, they returned to their beds. Like looters in a devasted city, Fen’s party wandered among the ruins in the moonlight, their champagne glasses still in their hands. Then Diana and Lord Sanford melted away into the night, and Mr Judd and Jacqueline followed them, and the simultaneous disappearance of Myra and Captain Watkyn suggested that they, too, had resolved to make much of time.
Fen was left alone with Mr Beaver, who sat on the iron roller at the edge of the lawn with his head buried in his hands, and who in this emergency would not, Fen thought, be very congenial company. . . . He went to see if his car was undamaged. It was. A jagged lump of stone, he observed, had given the non-doing pig its quietus, but he did not feel impelled to mourn; the non-doing pig’s fidelity had, in his opinion, never adequately compensated for its basic lack of charm. Fen climbed into the car and drove to Sanford Morvel to look for a room for the night.
Buried for Pleasure Page 20