Ashley’s face expressed polite incredulity. ‘You wanted to walk? In this weather?’
‘I had my umbrella. I thought a walk would be nice. And then when I got back in I heard the terrible news and I can’t bear it!’ The handkerchief was pressed into service once more, but Ashley wasn’t being fobbed off.
‘Mrs Strachan, you can’t honestly expect me to believe that you fancied a stroll in the worst thunderstorm we’ve had in months. You were going to meet someone, weren’t you? Who was it? Lord Lyvenden?’
‘No, no, it wasn’t. I’d rather not say, officer. Why won’t you believe me?’
‘Because I . . .’
There was a noise in the corridor outside and he heard one of the constables say, ‘Miss! Stop, miss! You can’t go in there!’ The door was flung open and Isabelle Rivers, followed by two other girls and Jack Haldean, came into the room. Malcolm Smith-Fennimore brought up the rear like a blond and gloomy sheepdog.
Haldean gave Ashley an apologetic glance and shrugged. If he had said, ‘It would take more than me to stop her,’ his meaning couldn’t have been clearer.
‘Mr Ashley!’ proclaimed Isabelle in ringing tones. ‘You’ve got this all wrong. Dad says you think Arthur killed him, but he didn’t. I know he didn’t!’
Superintendent Ashley had risen to his feet. ‘Miss Rivers, please –’
She brushed her hair back from her face impatiently. ‘But can’t you see, Superintendent? You’ve got to believe that Arthur’s innocent. He couldn’t have committed a murder, he just couldn’t. You’ve got it all wrong!’
Chapter Eight
Superintendent Ashley pulled out a chair for Isabelle, but she waved it aside. ‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ she repeated. ‘Tell him, Jack. Tell him Arthur couldn’t have done it. He’ll believe you. Mr Ashley, you’ll believe Jack, won’t you? You’ve got to.’ She glanced at Haldean impatiently. ‘Tell him, Jack.’
Haldean felt and looked wretchedly indecisive. ‘I’m sorry, Belle. I don’t know if I can.’
She rounded on him furiously. ‘I thought he was your friend!’
Haldean flinched. ‘Isabelle! For heaven’s sake.’ He looked at Ashley with a lift of his eyebrows. ‘Hello. Nice to see you again, even if this isn’t the meeting I had in mind.’
‘Jack,’ broke in Isabelle, ‘will you please tell Mr Ashley how wrong everyone is? Arthur’s not guilty. He can’t be.’
Haldean remained silent. Isabelle bridled with impatience and turned to Bubble and Squeak Robiceux for support. ‘You’ll tell him, won’t you? It doesn’t matter what we saw. It doesn’t mean anything. You don’t believe Arthur’s guilty, do you?’
Bubble Robiceux shook her head. ‘It was horrible, absolutely horrible, but I don’t believe Arthur killed Lord Lyvenden. He couldn’t be a murderer.’
Isabelle looked at her with gratitude. ‘Thanks, Bubble.’ She gave the Superintendent a defiant glare. ‘You see, that’s two of us who believe he’s innocent.’
‘Unfortunately, Miss Rivers, we don’t find out if someone’s guilty by taking votes. Unless you’re on a jury,’ he amended, conscientiously. ‘You know how we work. We take statements, examine the evidence, and come to a conclusion that way.’
‘Then take my statement,’ said Isabelle, forcefully. ‘Please, Mr Ashley.’
Ashley looked at her thoughtfully. He remembered Isabelle Rivers perfectly well and had seen her worried and anxious before now, but he had never seen her quite as strung up as she was at the moment. She was crackling with tension. He made a mental note to refer the puzzle to Haldean but for the moment he had Isabelle herself to deal with. ‘Don’t you want to go and get changed, miss?’ he asked. ‘In fact,’ he added, looking at the little group, ‘doesn’t everyone want to go and get changed? That was a pretty nasty bit of weather to be out in.’
‘I want you to take my statement,’ repeated Isabelle vehemently. ‘And Bubble and Squeak’s.’ She flicked her wet hair out of her eyes with a nervous twitch of her hand. ‘The sooner we can convince you of the truth, the better.’
Ashley glanced round the crowded room. ‘We usually take statements singly. I was going to ask you to make a statement of what you’d seen, but –’
‘Do it now!’ demanded Isabelle.
Ashley gave an almost imperceptible gesture in Haldean’s direction. ‘I suppose now’s as good a time as any.’
Haldean got the hint. ‘We’d all better push off. We’ll be close at hand should you want us.’
‘Bubble, you stay,’ said Isabelle, quickly. ‘And you, Squeak. Now I know who Arthur’s real friends are,’ she added meaningfully, glaring at her cousin.
‘Shall I stay, Isabelle?’ asked Smith-Fennimore.
Isabelle gave him a withering look. ‘You!’ It was like a whip crack.
Smith-Fennimore shrugged in a depressed way and held the door open for the still sniffing Mrs Strachan to leave.
‘Now,’ said Ashley, when they had the room to themselves. ‘Perhaps you ladies can tell me what you know. When did you get back from playing golf?’
Haldean stood in the open doorway looking across the terrace to where the distant line of trees shielded the river. The fury of the storm had subsided into low, far-off grumbles of thunder and the rain had lost its slashing, tropical force. Arthur was out there, somewhere. He leaned his forehead on the cool stone of the door frame, absorbing the smell of hot, wet earth. He was aware that Smith-Fennimore was near by but couldn’t think of anything to say.
There was a movement by his elbow. ‘Cigarette?’
He half turned. Smith-Fennimore was offering him his open case. ‘Thanks.’ He glanced at the man’s face and felt a twist of compassion. He was about to speak when Smith-Fennimore broke in.
‘I can’t understand it! Why the hell has Isabelle reacted like this? Can you tell me what I’m supposed to have done?’
The obvious answer was probably the best. ‘Shot Arthur.’
‘But . . .’ He drew heavily on his cigarette. ‘I didn’t shoot him. Not as she means. I was trying to stop him. You saw that. What is it about Stanton? I know everyone assumed he cared about Isabelle but he did damn all about it if he did. I’ve done everything by the book. Everything.’
And Smith-Fennimore had done everything by the book, thought Haldean. He had courted Isabelle – the word ‘courted’ was exactly right – openly and . . . well, courteously. He’d met Aunt Alice and Uncle Philip, he’d been respectful, polite and touchingly tender. Yes, the man had a mistress, but so what? He was rich, handsome and a man of the world. It was almost inevitable he’d have a mistress, for God’s sake. Smith-Fennimore had assured him that Countess Whatnot was a thing of the past and he believed him. There wasn’t any doubt about Smith-Fennimore’s feelings for Isabelle. As for Arthur . . .
Haldean sighed inwardly. How on earth could he think of Arthur without seeing once again the scene in Lord Lyvenden’s room? And yet this was Arthur he was thinking about, his oldest friend whom he’d known, trusted and liked for years. He’d wanted him to marry Isabelle, for heaven’s sake. If the man had a fault, it was his slowness in getting off the mark, the way he goofed around looking like a lost sheep, not going off the deep end and knifing some wretched munitions manufacturer, no matter how appalling he’d been. The whole thing was nuts. Was Arthur nuts too? He’d had shell shock, yes, but that had left him shaken and ill. Diffident, if anything. That was why he’d taken so much time to come to the point with Isabelle. All that made sense. What didn’t make sense was that Arthur should suddenly turn into a homicidal maniac. Yes, he’d been angry, really angry when he’d found out Lyvenden was Victor Todd, Isabelle had begged him not to do anything. Maybe the effort of keeping his feelings bottled up had got too much. Maybe Lyvenden had taunted him. Maybe . . .
Smith-Fennimore smoked his cigarette down to the butt, threw the end out of the door and tried to light another one. He swore under his breath as his lighter failed to work.
‘Here,’ said Hald
ean, throwing him a box of matches. Smith-Fennimore tried to catch them in his bandaged hand, fumbled it, and swore again. ‘Sorry,’ said Haldean, picking up the matches and giving them to him. ‘Here you are. Keep them.’ He was a bit ham-fisted with his left hand, thought Haldean, struck by his uncharacteristically clumsy movements. He noticed how Smith-Fennimore’s fingers holding his cigarette trembled. Perhaps it wasn’t just his hand that was making him clumsy.
‘Haldean, you saw what happened. Isabelle seems to think Stanton’s innocent, that it’s all a ghastly mistake. Can she possibly be right? I’m racking my brains to try and come up with some other explanation for what we saw.’
‘I’m blowed if I can think of one.’ Haldean broke off as, down the corridor, the door to the gun room opened. Isabelle, Bubble and Squeak came into the hall.
‘Superintendent Ashley wants to see you now, Jack,’ said Isabelle, coldly. ‘Off you go. I just hope you remember who your friends are. I’m going to my room.’
‘Damn that,’ broke in Smith-Fennimore quickly. ‘I need to talk to you, Isabelle. We’re engaged, remember?’
Isabelle drew herself up. ‘Jack, I would be obliged if you would inform Commander Smith-Fennimore that I have no desire to speak to him.’
‘Inform him yourself, Belle,’ said Haldean. ‘Don’t drag me into it.’ He was stung by her attitude and moved by the emotion on Smith-Fennimore’s face. ‘I think you’re being rotten. And get off your high horse. It doesn’t suit you.’
‘Isabelle,’ said Smith-Fennimore firmly. ‘You’re going to speak to me. I couldn’t care less about Stanton.’
‘I could!’
‘Well, I don’t! I don’t care if Stanton murdered fifty Lord Lyvendens. What I care about is us.’ He caught hold of her hand. ‘Us, do you understand? We’re engaged.’
She shook her hand free. ‘We were engaged. If I thought Arthur had . . .’ She swallowed and for a moment looked close to tears.
Smith-Fennimore looked earnestly into her face. ‘Do you love him? Is that it?’
Haldean suddenly arrived at the point where he couldn’t take any more. ‘I’m off.’ He pushed past Bubble and Squeak Robiceux who were gazing at Isabelle and Smith-Fennimore and went into the gun room, slamming the door behind him.
Ashley looked up, startled. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Isabelle,’ said Haldean succinctly. He flung himself into an armchair.
Ashley turned to his sergeant. ‘I know Major Haldean. He’ll make a proper statement later. You take yourself off for the time being, my lad. Now then,’ he said when the sergeant had gathered up his notebook and gone, ‘what’s the problem with Miss Rivers?’
‘Miss Rivers,’ said Haldean, ‘bit my head off and is in the middle of a huge scene with Smith-Fennimore. Anyone who says a word against Arthur is in the doghouse. Smith-Fennimore’s getting the worst of it with me as reserve.’
‘But why?’ asked Ashley. ‘I don’t really like saying this, but from the way Miss Rivers is reacting, you’d think it was Captain Stanton she was engaged to, not the Commander.’
‘You’re telling me,’ said Haldean with feeling. ‘I knew she liked Arthur but when he asked her to marry him, she turned him down. God knows how this is all going to end up. Although I could shake her at the moment, I think the world of Isabelle and I’ve known Arthur for years. As for that poor devil Smith-Fennimore, she’s putting him through the wringer and no mistake.’
He stood up and walked to the mantelpiece and rested his hands against it, stretching his arms. ‘I don’t know if I’m going to be much use to you, Ashley,’ he said eventually. ‘I’m too involved. I can’t get my ideas straight and I don’t know if I ever will.’ He stared into the empty fireplace. ‘If only it wasn’t Arthur.’
‘Well, it is,’ said Ashley practically.
Haldean didn’t react for a couple of moments, then he turned, leaning his back against the mantelpiece. Ashley was pleased to see the ghost of a smile. ‘And that being the case, old fruit, I’d better stop having forty thousand fits and get on with it, eh?’
‘That’s about the size of it,’ agreed Ashley.
Haldean was very still for a moment, then he relaxed and laughed. ‘Okay. Fit over. So, Superintendent Ashley, sir, what do you think?’
‘I think,’ said Ashley, aware that Haldean’s mood was still fragile, ‘that there’s a dickens of a case against your friend, Arthur Stanton. I think that on the facts alone it looks as clear a case of caught in the act that I’ve ever come across. There really doesn’t seem to be any doubt about it. Just let me run through the facts with you. Lord Lyvenden ruined Captain Stanton’s family. Is that right?’
‘That’s what Arthur said. He’s certain his father and mother died as a result.’
Ashley nodded. ‘So that’s a motive. Captain Stanton mysteriously found a knife in his drawer. Yes?’
‘Actually, I found the knife. Arthur seemed bewildered by it.’
‘So I’ve heard. That’s his means. Then, complete with knife, he goes to Lord Lyvenden’s room while everyone else is at lunch. That’s his opportunity. The next thing we know is that Arthur Stanton is discovered in Lord Lyvenden’s room beside the dead body of Lord Lyvenden who now has the knife in his chest. So far from offering any explanation, Stanton ups and crashes through the french windows and scarpers. It doesn’t look good.’
‘It looks bloody awful, Ashley,’ said Haldean. ‘I couldn’t agree more. On the one hand I don’t see how he can be guilty, on the other I don’t see how he can’t be. Not only can’t I see it, I can’t make any guesses, either.’
Ashley raised his eyebrows. ‘Now, that is a first. To be honest, Haldean, I haven’t much doubt, but Miss Rivers was so very positive, to say nothing of the two Robiceux ladies, that I caught myself wondering if there was any other explanation.’
Haldean shrugged. ‘If you think of one, let me know, won’t you?’ He shook his head. ‘We’ve had a really peculiar few days, what with Tim Preston and those Russian blokes . . .’
‘Blokes?’ asked Ashley. ‘I’ve only heard about one.’
‘No, there were two. I don’t know why either of them came here. Perhaps,’ he said, seeing Ashley’s inquisitive face, ‘I’d better wise you up, as the Yanks say.’ He perched himself on the arm of a chair and, as quickly as he could, ran through the events of the past few days.
Ashley listened intently. ‘So there’s not one Russian but two?’ he said when Haldean had finished. ‘One on the night of the ball and the one who visited Lord Lyvenden.’ He scratched the side of his chin thoughtfully. ‘And it was Captain Stanton who discovered that the cigarette packet was missing from the grate in Lord Lyvenden’s bedroom?’
Haldean nodded. ‘Nobody but Arthur saw it, so you may think that particular cigarette packet has a Cheshire Cat quality about it, but it had been there, Ashley. The depression in the soot was perfectly visible. And that means that somebody was fixing up an alibi and that means, O Sleuth, that poor old Tim didn’t top himself as we were expected to believe.’
Ashley sucked his cheeks in. ‘Can we stick to Lord Lyvenden’s murder for the time being? At least we know for certain that was murder. Miss Rivers tried to tell me that Captain Stanton simply walked in on Lord Lyvenden after he was dead.’
‘In that case, why didn’t the idiot walk straight out again?’ Haldean put his hands wide in frustration. ‘The door wasn’t locked. All we had to do was turn the handle and it opened. He could have got out any time. Say he did walk into the room. You’d think the first thing anyone would do when finding themselves with a punctured corpse would be to mention it to someone. I know I would. And you’ve seen the remains. I’ve never seen such a punctured corpse in all my born days. There was gubbins all over the place. You pointed that out to Belle, I suppose?’
‘Yes, and she says he must have been overwhelmed by horror and didn’t know what to do. I understand he suffered from shell shock,’ added Ashley tentatively.
Haldean
clicked his tongue irritably. ‘Yes, he did. He had a perfectly foul time in the war and if he’s caught and sent for trial that’ll probably be his best defence. But damn it, Ashley, you know and I know that even if the sight of Lyvenden pushed him over the edge, he’d crumple. He’d be wiped out, unable to move. He’d be hiding in a corner, not standing there bellowing the house down and kicking the furniture.’
‘So what was his reaction when he saw you all? I mean, was he insane?’
Haldean thought for a moment, tapping his fingers on the arm of the chair. ‘He obviously wasn’t himself, so to speak. He was very upset and I’d say he was a bit hysterical. Having said that, I didn’t think he’d lost his marbles. He wasn’t very coherent, but I doubt many people would be very coherent in those circumstances.’ Haldean leaned forward and took a cigarette from the box on the table. ‘But I keep coming back to the fact that this is my old friend Arthur I’m talking about.’ He tapped the cigarette on the back of his hand before lighting it. ‘If you knew him, you’d understand how simply incredible it all seems. Did you check the knife for fingerprints, by the way?’
‘Yes, I did, but the results were inconclusive. It looked as if the killer had been wearing gloves.’
Haldean frowned. ‘Arthur certainly wasn’t wearing gloves. Not when we saw him, anyway.’ He glanced up. ‘Ashley, I don’t like those gloves. I mean, why on earth should he wear gloves and then hang about in the room, unless he really has gone doolally tap? Were there any other prints on the knife?’
‘Some, but they were smudged by the glove marks.’
Mad About the Boy? Page 15