[Title here]

by Deadly Duo (epub)

  Sir Kit bent his head. "That is quite right," he said. "Agree, Victor?"

  Soubise looked up with an effort. "Yes," he said dully.

  "So between two and twenty-five past, as far as we can be certain," said Lee, "These two men were alone. Soubise admits he was in the house. Sir Christopher says he was in the garden. Neither of them admits seeing anyone else during that vital time."

  "I saw no one, sir," said Kit stolidly.

  "And you did not move from the greenhouse?"

  "No."

  "Very well." Lee appeared satisfied.

  The tension in the room had become painful. Genevieve's black eyes moved to Margot's and held them.

  "You see?" The words were not spoken, but the girl caught them as clearly as if they had been shouted. "You see? It will be as I said. A time comes when there is no one else. There are no miracles in these affairs."

  Lee gave them no breathing space.

  "So far," he pressed on, "I have not mentioned the motive. After all, no one commits an act like that, soaks a pad and forces it over the face of a poor old woman who so little expects it that she puts up no fight at all. No one does that unless he has a reason, you know. However, there are motives in this family. Most of you know all about them."

  For the first time he appeared to hesitate, or rather to wait for something which did not come.

  "I think we all know that Sir Christopher here had a motive for wanting his old friend out of the way and no more expense to him. Some might think it a very good motive," he announced loudly, while the superintendent winced.

  But Kit did not explode. He shook his head gently. He said nothing, but the silent negation was very impressive. It was pitying, almost regretful.

  Lee did not press it. His small eyes travelled to Felix, who huddled further down in his chair.

  "Felix Monet had sufficient motive," said Lee, "or at least he evidently thought he had. He was so incensed against his employer that he smashed one of her most precious possessions and left his fingerprints all over it. Afterwards, when he remembered he had handled the chloroform bottle on discovering it, he jumped to the conclusion that the police, who were either mentally defective or dishonest, would link the crimes and convict him. He was so sure of this that he tried, not very hard, to hang himself."

  "Monsieur-" Felix had struggled to his feet.

  Lee waved him down, and the watchful Skinner completed the operation by jerking him back into his chair, where he subsided, his eyes bulging.

  "Then there's Denis Cotton," said Lee. "Well, we've heard plenty about his motives and we won't go over them again. But he had them, all right, and so had Miss Robert, even if she was carefully out of the way during the actual moment of the attack."

  He was speaking quietly and casually, but this time there was genuine speculation in his expression. The other two he had dismissed without real consideration, but now he was eager, and under the thin film of conversationalism the brisk voice had an edge.

  "When my man surprised them in Dower Street they were in each other's arms," he said.

  The protest came unexpectedly from Genevieve.

  "If I could believe that, I could believe anything," she said spitefully. "Mademoiselle is affianced to Monsieur Victor."

  Lee relaxed. He had had a long time to wait, but the ice was breaking now.

  "I was told that," he said easily. "That provides more sources of strain, doesn't it? Makes us think, all of us officials."

  With a gesture he made them aware of the audience of policemen, whose faces remained blank apart from the irrepressible curiosity and excitement in their eyes.

  "That gives Victor Soubise two motives," said Lee. "One against Madame Zoffany, one against Denis Cotton. But perhaps the particular difficulties experienced by Mr. Soubise are not so well known as they might be. It's true, isn't it, Mr. Soubise, that you lost your Brazilian fortune last year, and that you needed either Madame Zoffany's help or your inheritance from her estate? I haven't all the details yet, but the reports which have come to hand make it obvious to me that you had to get a very large sum of money very soon if you were going to save anything at all from the South American wreck. You were going to tackle Madame Zoffany about it this week end, weren't you? At any rate, that's what you told Messrs. Ribbon and Slater of London Wall yesterday."

  Sir Kit made a curious little noise in his throat, and Margot turned to find him looking helplessly at Victor, now slowly straightening himself in his chair.

  "I don't know, Sir Christopher," Lee said pointedly, "but I suggest Soubise told you some of his difficulties over lunch today."

  "In confidence," said Kit stoutly.

  "Of course, in confidence." The inspector was not exactly mimicking, but his tone was a smug repetition of Kit's own. "And then," he went on with huge satisfaction, "he left you for twenty minutes to go and have it out with the old lady. After that he came back and went for a walk with you, and when you both returned Madame Zoffany was dead and suspicion had fallen, mysteriously enough, on the man who had pinched his girl. How does that strike you?"

  Kit's opinion, whatever it might have been, was never given. No one in the room was prepared for Victor's reaction. He sat stiffly in his chair, his eyes prominent, his face grey, and began to scream. No other description could fit the stream of denials which poured from his thin lips.

  "Liar! Liar! It is not true. You are prevaricating. You are deceiving. I did not kill her. I did not kill her. Never! Never in my life. I did not see her. It is not true."

  He was speaking in French and the rolling phrases were shouted at the top of his voice. The man was wild with terror. Fear started out of every pore. As an exhibition it was unnerving, and for the first time the inspector seemed in danger of losing his grip.

  "What's he saying?" he demanded. "What is it, somebody? Quick!"

  "Menteur! Jamais!" Victor was beginning again when Kit intervened.

  "My dear fellow," he protested, the mild address contrasting vividly with the impassioned spate, "gently speak in a tongue the man understands. Take yourself in hand. Really, Soubise!"

  The admonition had its effect. Victor subsided and began to speak more soberly.

  "It is not true. I did not kill her."

  "That was what I imagined you said." Lee was sardonic. "Anything to add?"

  "Yes." Victor was sulky now and his lids were drawn down so low that only two narrow slits of his eyes remained.

  "I did mean to tell Zoff about my difficulties, and on Kit's advice I did go up to see her, but I didn't go into the room because Denis was there."

  "You listened at the door, I suppose?"

  "Yes."

  "Exactly." A contemptuous smile spread over the inspector's heavy face. "And then you came quietly away, I suppose, and went back to the garden? That it?"

  "No." The thin lips made a circle on the word. "No, I went on up the stairs to my own room on the next floor."

  "How long did you stay there?" Lee was frowning.

  "About ten minutes, until I heard Denis come up to his room. I watched him through the crack of the door. He was carrying the green bag and he went into his own room to collect his suitcase. I saw him come out with it and go down again."

  "One minute." Lee put up his hand and turned to Denis enquiringly. "You didn't tell me that."

  "I'd forgotten it." Denis looked dazed. "It's true," he said at last. "I'd forgotten. I did go up to get my own week-end case. That's right. I just looked in and picked it up before-"

  "Wait." Lee turned back to Victor, who, though still trembling, was calmer and more coherent. "What happened then?"

  "I crept out of my room and looked over the banisters, and I watched Denis go down to the hall."

  "You what!" Lee roared, forgetting himself as his theory tottered. "You-Oh, I see." He was smiling again. "Then you came down and opened the old lady's door and found her-"

  "No." Victor could be contemptuous also. "No. I did not go in a second time either, because
I heard her talking to someone."

  The words dropped quietly into a pool of silence. Lee opened his mouth and closed it again without a sound, and the little echoes which Victor's statement made went reverberating gently round the room.

  Oddly, it was the old superintendent, who hitherto had been perfectly quiet, who first took hold of the situation.

  "To whom was she speaking, Mr. Soubise?"

  "I don't know." Victor was hesitating, but his own bewilderment lent the words conviction. "I don't know. But it was someone she knew very well."

  "How could you tell that?" Lee was back on the job again, mystified but intent and on the track like a hound.

  "Because she said such an extraordinary thing. I didn't wait long because I heard Genevieve and Felix talking in the hall. They'd seen Denis go out with the bag and were discussing him. I listened to them for a bit while they chattered, but at last they went to the front door, presumably to look after him, and I saw my opportunity and slid down the stairs to the kitchen exit and hurried back to Sir Kit, who was where I had left him in the greenhouse."

  His voice died away and Genevieve looked at Felix.

  "That is so. We did not go up immediately."

  "Non. Not for some few minutes. We went to the gate and watched Monsieur Denis disappear down the road. We were there quite a long time. I had forgotten."

  "There seems to have been a lot of forgetting." Lee grumbled, but there was no suspicion in his voice. The two incidents were typical of the kind which in his experience were often forgotten by innocent people. Both were natural, ordinary movements, easily overlooked amid more sensational happenings.

  He returned to Victor with savagery.

  "You swear you heard Madame Zoffany talking to somebody she knew well, after you had seen Denis Cotton leave the house? You stick to that, even though you must realise that the statement puts you in an even more questionable position than you are in already?"

  For a second it looked as though Victor were about to burst out again into another fit of hysterical denials, but he controlled himself.

  "I am telling the truth," he said, moistening his dry lips. "I heard her distinctly."

  "What was she saying?"

  Victor hesitated. "It was so extraordinary," he said at last. "She was speaking so gently, but with such passion, if you understand. I only heard it through the door, but it was it was pathetic and so quiet. She said-I heard her clearly."

  "Tu penseras a moi quelquefois, n'est-ce pas? Et tu diras Eh bien, apres tout, c'etait une bonne fille."

  "That was all." His own voice softened on the words and took on a strange quality of regret.

  "Oh my God!" It was Margot The strangled words escaped her, and at the same moment Genevieve, her face a crumpled mask, stumbled to her feet.

  "Angelo!" she said thickly.

  Sir Kit raised his head, an expression of horrified recognition in his eyes.

  "La Tisbe!" he whispered. "Victor, didn't you know?"

  "Translate! Translate! Good heavens, what the hell is all this? Translate, someone can't you?" Lee was beside himself, but the members of the household took no notice of him. They were looking at each other in frightened comprehension, and in the end it was the wretched Skinner, of all people, who came to the rescue.

  "I was in France in the Army, sir," he mumbled, "and I picked up some of the lingo. I think what Mr. Soubise quoted means this, sir, roughly. You that's the familiar form of address, sir, only used in the family or among lovers, like; it's familiar you will think of me sometime, won't you? And you'll say, Oh well, after all, she was a good kid. That's about it, sir, something after that style."

  Lee regarded his subordinate with grudging approval.

  "Repeat that," he commanded.

  Skinner obliged, growing even more roseate in the process.

  "Is he right?" Lee appealed to Denis, who, with Victor, alone seemed unenlightened.

  "Yes, I think so. A very fair translation. 'She was a good girl,' perhaps. But I still don't see what it conveys."

  "Nor do I." The inspector made the words sound like an expletive. "Miss Robert, you cried out when you heard it What does it mean to you? What do the words signify?"

  She turned helplessly to Sir Kit.

  "Oh, not me, Kit," she said simply. "I can't bear it."

  "By the lord," Lee was beginning when the old man took a step forward. He was obviously very shaken, but his voice was gentle and steady.

  "Those words are a quotation from a play, Inspector. They occur at the end of the last act of Victor Hugo's tragedy of Angelo. It is not one of the great pieces, but many years ago Madame Zoffany scored a great personal success as the heroine and was always very fond of the part." He paused to take a deep breath while the whole room watched him in fascinated silence. "The passage comes," he went on slowly, "when the heroine is dying after forcing her lover to kill her. After, in fact, she has committed suicide-"

  "Suicide!" Lee pounced on the word and flung it back at him. "That woman never committed suicide. You all said yourselves it was the last thing she would consider."

  "No." The little word crept out softly, and Margot stood looking at him directly, her vivid blue eyes wet with tears. "No," she repeated. "Don't you see, Inspector? Don't you all see what happened? Zoff didn't mean to die."

  Her statement melted into the silence. Lee was frowning, his round brown eyes peering out under puzzled brows.

  "How do you make that?"

  The girl swallowed painfully.

  "It's that clause in the law of inheritance, Inspector," she said huskily. "If you'll reread it you'll see it's not only the heir who actually kills who is debarred from inheriting, but also the one who is convicted of attempting to kill. Zoff knew all about that, and I'm horribly afraid that she-"

  Her voice wavered and died, but she took hold of herself. "She had made too attempts to convince everyone that the heir she didn't like had tried to kill her, but no one had taken her seriously. On this last occasion I'm afraid she meant to make it very plain."

  The young voice paused and then went on very steadily:

  "This afternoon, the third time Zoff tried to convince us, she must have put too much chloroform on the towel. Genevieve was some time going up there, and when she found her, apparently dead, she replaced the cloth on her face."

  TEN

  It took inspector lee some minutes to comprehend and afterward a much longer time to assemble the proofs and become convinced. But no one of Zoff's close associates doubted the truth after that first dazzling revelation. For them it was as if curtains had parted and swung upward in rustling festoons, to reveal Zoff's last tableau, the last scene in her final act.

  From that moment it was she who dominated the drama of her death as completely as she had dominated all the many tragic-comedies which had made up her life. Once again she moved among them, as vital and compelling as ever, and her personality permeated the old house and coloured all their thoughts.

  They were shocked and heartbroken but not mystified any longer. Zoff had sprung her last sensational surprise.

  Lee had the play brought to him and the faded cuttings from the press book, flowery with praises for her interpretation of the part. The relevant passages were translated for him not only by Denis but also by Skinner, whose return to official favour was one of the minor miracles of the night.

  Finally he sent for the Code Civil and read once more the important passage in the law governing inheritance, whose full significance he had not grasped that afternoon when the point had come up at the police station. The evidence was simple and irrefutable. When he had digested it he called them together again. He was still startled, but no longer on the chase, and the fire had gone out of him.

  "I'll own I'm staggered," he said. "What an amazing woman!"

  "She was amazing." Kit made it clear that he considered the description complimentary. "She was a great artist and a great woman. That was the explanation, Inspector. Above all, she was always f
eminine. That explains her. And," he added gently, "I think it excuses her. At least it does to me."

  "Excuses?" Lee conveyed astonishment, but he had lost his anger and his protest was without violence. "She might have got young Cotton hanged."

  "But she didn't mean to die." It was typical of their reaction that it was Denis himself who put forward the extenuating circumstance. Even in death Zoff was finding champions among those she had most ill-used.

  Kit, who had seen it happen so many times in her life, recognised the phenomenon.

  "No," he said. "Poor, poor girl, she didn't mean to die. And she didn't trust you with her real diamonds, either, Denis. That was a cruelly typical little touch. That ought to have told us." He turned to Lee. "She planned to be found unconscious, with poor Denis running away with her diamonds," he said, "but even so, she couldn't trust herself to part with the real ones. That was Zoff all over."

  Lee gaped at him. "It was a deliberately engineered attempt to get Cotton disgraced, arrested and disinherited," he said. "I really don't see how you can find that forgiveable."

  They were silent until Margot sighed.

  "You didn't know her," she said slowly. "If you'd only known her, Inspector, you'd have been furious with her but you'd have forgiven her. She wouldn't have let it happen quite like that, you see. She'd have done something else to make it all right."