Thou Shell of Death

by Nicholas Blake

  ‘How are the other inmates reacting?’

  ‘Well, Lucilla’s standing about in a series of funeral urn poses: positively reeks of tragedy—a widow bird sat mourning for her love, “widow” being the courtesy title and “bird” the courtesan one. I really believe the girl is a bit upset about something; she never did have the talent to put up such a good act. Knott-Sloman, thank God, has been out of the house most of the time, and comparatively silent when he was in it—the atmosphere is not a favourable one for the bottom-slapping raconteur. Poor Georgia has been wandering about most of the time looking like the ghost of an organ grinder’s monkey. It’s really more than I can bear to look at her—makes me want to weep buckets. In spite of it, she’s the sheet-anchor of the party: a ministering angel to Edward, and a trained nurse for Lucilla—and that must be a pretty grinding job, considering the way Lucy groans and bays and sniffles all the time about her broken heart and her dead hero, as though Georgia’s heart wasn’t ten times as big and fifty times more broken.’

  The little don was quite flushed with his generous denunciation.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nigel, ‘the real broken heart does not advertise itself’

  ‘Is not puffed up.’

  ‘Neither vaunteth itself unseemly,’ replied Nigel antiphonally. ‘However,’ he continued, ‘there is a time to play quotation-games and a time to refrain from playing quotation-games. Will you please, Philip, instead of searching the Scriptures, apply the trained mind to another practical problem? To wit, how does a chap go fifty yards over snow an inch deep without leaving tracks?’

  ‘Faith, old boy, faith. Levitation. Fellow’s a yogi. Or possibly used stilts.’

  ‘Stilts?’ said Nigel with sudden excitement. ‘But no, that won’t do. They would leave marks, too, and Bleakley has been all over the ground; he’d have noticed them. I wonder, now, what sort of impressions snowshoes make. Visible, anyway, I should think. It must be something ludicrously simple.’

  ‘If you were to give me the context, I should have less difficulty in determining the correct reading,’ said Starling donnishly. ‘I thought there were a perfectly good set of footprints.’

  ‘Going the wrong way, unfortunately. Unless the murderer found himself all of a sudden through the looking-glass and had to walk away from the house to get to it.’

  Philip Starling’s face took on its most infuriating infant-innocence expression. ‘And that, in a sense, is just what he did. Your Greek compositions, Nigel, admirable as they often were, suffered from over-elaboration. Straining after style, you were apt to make elementary mistakes. Blind spots, you called them—’

  ‘Oh, heaven,’ Nigel interrupted, ‘I never thought I should have to undergo another tutorial.’

  Starling continued imperturbably. ‘Now if you’d not spent all your time at your private school inking your fingernails, and at Oxford drinking coffee in some low dive, you would have come across the adventures of Hercules. The little affair of the Cacus and the oxen, for instance.’

  Nigel buried his face in his hands and groaned bitterly. ‘I shall have to take to rabbit breeding,’ he moaned.

  ‘Cacus,’ the don went on mercilessly, ‘as every schoolboy knows, stole some oxen. Hercules, the Bulldog Drummond of the period, went to recover them. Cacus, showing remarkable intelligence for one of such abnormally overgrown physique, dragged the oxen backwards by their tails into a cave. Impression made on Hercules’ mind—which incidentally was about on a par with Drummond’s for low cunning, obtuseness, greed, humourlessness, cruelty and bestial arrogance—was that the oxen had gone in the opposite direction.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ groaned Nigel. ‘Don’t rub it in. I’ve made the world’s most childish howler. But, by Jove, this alters the complexion of everything. X walked backwards into the house; that’s why the toemarks were deeper than the heel. But there were no other tracks. Therefore he went out before there was enough snow to take an impression—between twelve-five and twelve-thirty, say. He’s going to get a nasty jar when he finds we know that.’

  They talked for nearly an hour more, until the winter evening was darkening into night and the image of buttered toast loomed large in the mind. Starling had begun to say:

  ‘By the way, Nigel, I suppose you noticed at dinner how O’Brien—’

  When he was interrupted by a commotion downstairs. A woman’s voice gave a stifled shriek; feet could be heard running fast somewhere; a long silence; then someone was calling out, ‘Mr Strangeways! Mr Strangeways!’ and footsteps were pounding up the stairs. Whatever O’Brien had said or done at dinner was not to be recounted just now. Nigel opened his door. Bolter was outside, mopping his brow, his red face working with excitement.

  ‘The super wants you, zur,’ he said. ‘Mrs Grant found un in the pantry—she went to get the victuals for tea—his skull be nearly zplit oapen. A ghaastlee zight ’e be, zur.’

  ‘Good lord, the super laid out now; not dead, is he?’

  ‘You mistake my meaning, zur. Bain’t the super. ’Tis that man of Mr O’Brien’s—what’s his name?—ar, Bellamy. Bellamy it be, zur. In a pool of blood.’

  VII

  TELLTALE

  ARTHUR BELLAMY’S RENDEZVOUS with the murderer had taken place sooner than he had expected. Not that he could have known much about it. He had been struck down from behind, in the passage that led from the main part of the house towards the kitchen and scullery. It was a dark passage, so that, even if the blow had been struck some hours earlier, he might very well not have seen his assailant. There was blood on the stone floor just on the far side of the swing-door that divided the servants’ quarters from the rest of the house; from there, smears and spots of blood pointed a clear trail along the passage to the pantry door: no attempt had been made to clean them up: they and the pool of blood on the pantry floor were still wet. Superintendent Bleakley had little difficulty in reconstructing the deed. The assailant had either followed Bellamy into the kitchen passage or been in hiding behind the swing-door which opened into it; probably the latter. He had struck him with some weapon which was yet to be found. He had then taken hold of his victim, presumably by the heels—for to take him by the shoulders would have been impossible without getting blood on to one’s clothes—dragged him along into the pantry, let the body slump on to the floor, closed the door, and—Bleakley added—congratulated himself or herself on a neat little job. The superintendent knew the body had been dragged, not carried, by the clear trail it had left on the rather dusty floor of the passage.

  Unfortunately, that seemed likely to be the sum of his knowledge for the present. The person who might have been expected to know something about it, Mrs Grant, had been taking her usual afternoon nap in her bedroom: and, as she made it quite clear, she always slept the sleep of the righteous. Nigel doubted, in fact, whether she would have curtailed her legitimate period of sleep even for the Judgement-day trumpets: she seemed more concerned with the mess that had been made in her pantry than with the fate of Arthur Bellamy. This still hung in the balance, and would hang for an indefinite time. He was still breathing when they found him. The local doctor, hastily summoned, declared that there might be a chance of saving his life. The superintendent, for obvious reasons, wanted him conveyed to the safety of a hospital; but the doctor refused to be responsible for the results of moving him so far in his present condition. After some argument, Bleakley gave in. Bellamy was taken up into his own bedroom: a policeman was stationed at the door, with orders not to admit anyone except the doctor or the superintendent, under any circumstances whatsoever, and a trained nurse sent for.

  While some of his men were searching the kitchen quarters, the outbuildings and the grounds for the weapon, Bleakley herded the guests into the dining room, preparatory to beginning his inquiry. He first asked whether any of them objected to their private rooms being searched. He would be able to obtain a search warrant, of course; but time, in a case like this, might prove important; and as none of them could possibly ha
ve anything to conceal, etc., etc. The superintendent was a different man from the homely, puzzled individual who had talked with Nigel in the hut only a few hours before. Thought removed from the sphere of action meant little to him; but now, with all the familiar detail of action about him, he showed himself to possess a mind lucid and orderly, and the personal dignity of one who is working single-mindedly towards a definite goal. Nigel had had a few words with him before the inquiry started. ‘Well, this looks like clearing things up a bit,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right, sir. I thought I’d made a fool of myself this morning, letting out that I was interested in that will. But it’s brought our man out into the open, and a darned sight sooner than I should have imagined. Only hope it’s not done for Bellamy.’

  ‘You mean, it suggests that Arthur Bellamy was one of the two witnesses to the will.’

  ‘Exactly, sir. And if he was, he’ll know who the other witness was and possibly the provisions of the will, too. The murderer took the will, knowing that its contents would prove motive against him.’

  ‘Getting it out of the safe how?’ Nigel interrupted.

  ‘Must have known the combination, sir; means it was one of Mr O’Brien’s intimate friends, and that fits in with everything we’ve got so far.’

  ‘H’m. It would not be impossible to pick holes in that. Still, go on.’

  ‘Well, assuming the murderer does not want the contents of this will’—at the word ‘this’ Nigel nodded vigorously with sudden comprehension—‘divulged yet, or ever maybe, it would be natural for him to try and finish off Bellamy. His knowing that Bellamy was one of the witnesses suggests that he was the other.’

  ‘But does not necessarily imply it. We must remember, too, that a witness to a will cannot benefit by it. Therefore, if this murder was done in order to obtain money under the will, the murderer cannot have been a witness.’

  ‘Well, sir, if the murderer was not one of the witnesses but knows who the other was—and there’d be no use his killing Bellamy if he didn’t—then that other witness is going to be for it in the near future, if we don’t look out.’

  ‘By Jove, yes, you’ll have to keep your eyes open. Though it’s not impossible that this second witness might be in league with the murderer.’

  ‘You don’t often find conspiracy to murder, sir. Very few people would trust anyone else with a secret like that.’

  ‘Macbeth and his wife. Thompson and Bywaters. It’s not uncommon in cases when sexual passion is involved. And there’s a hell of a lot of sexual passion lying about in this party.’

  Bleakley was pondering the sinister significance of this idea as he went into the dining room to confront his guests. No sign of it, however, appeared on his brick-red, deceptively bucolic face. No one raised any objection to a search of their bedrooms. Bleakley accordingly sent up the sergeant, who had returned from Taviston, to carry out this task; and retired with Nigel and Bolter to the little study, leaving a constable at the dining-room door to send in the guests one by one and also to pick up any illuminating bits of conversation that might be dropped there. Philip Starling was disposed of first. Mrs Grant had already deposed that Bellamy had been in and about the kitchen premises till about two-thirty, when she knocked off work for her afternoon sleep. Starling had been talking with Nigel upstairs from two-twenty till the alarm was given, and he was therefore out of it. He repeated his assertion that he knew nothing of any will: nor did he know who were O’Brien’s solicitors.

  Lucilla Thrale was sent for next. She swept in and took the chair offered her at the end of the table like a queen. Bolter emitted an audible gasp of admiration, and Nigel felt that even the superintendent could scarce forbear to cheer. Lucilla met this more or less silent applause with that almost imperceptible lift of the head, that faint arrogant awareness of lip and eyebrow which are the beautiful woman’s acknowledgement of admiration. Bleakley fingered his stiletto-like moustache and settled his tie. He first asked the formal questions as to her age, address, etc. Then, with a rasping cough, he set to work.

  ‘Now, Miss Thrale, I’m sure you will not mind answering a few other questions. Bolter there’ (Bolter puffed out his already very adequate chest) ‘will take down what you say, and later you will be given a copy of the deposition and asked to sign it, if you find it correct.’

  Lucilla inclined her head graciously.

  ‘First of all, Miss Thrale, do you wish to amplify the statement you made this morning about Mr O’Brien’s will?’

  ‘Amplify it? How can I?’ she said in her cool, husky, slightly insolent voice. ‘Fergus—Mr O’Brien—never spoke to me about a will.’

  ‘Put it this way, do you think you are likely to benefit by it?’

  ‘I dare say,’ she replied indifferently.

  Slightly nettled, the superintendent leant forward and said:

  ‘What was your relationship with the deceased?’

  Lucilla flushed: then threw back her magnificent head, and, looking through Bleakley rather than at him, replied:

  ‘I was his mistress.’

  A half-strangled sound, suspiciously like ‘Cor!’ proceeded from Bolter.

  ‘Hrrm, hrrumph. Just so. Well now, to revert to the occurrences of last night, ma’am. You heard no suspicious sounds after you had gone to bed?’

  ‘I went to sleep at once. What suspicious sounds would there be?’

  Nigel, crushing out his cigarette, said mildly to the superintendent, ‘I don’t think Miss Thrale realises that O’Brien was murdered.’

  Lucilla’s hand flew to her mouth. She gasped. Her pale face grew paler still and seemed to shrink.

  ‘Murdered? Oh, God! Fergus—who?’

  ‘We don’t know yet. Perhaps you can tell us if he had any enemies.’

  ‘Enemies?’ Lucilla’s eyelids dropped: their long lashes swept down; her previous repose of attitude seemed to have tightened to a nervous immobility. ‘Such a man will always have enemies. I cannot tell you more.’

  Bleakley was silent for a moment. Then he said briskly, ‘Now if you will just tell us, as a matter of form, your movements this afternoon.’

  ‘I was in the lounge till about three o’clock. Then I went up to my room to rest. I did not come down again till I heard the noise downstairs. It is terrible, terrible! No one is safe in this house! Who will it be next?’

  ‘Don’t you worry yourself, ma’am. We have the matter well in hand. Anyone with you in the lounge?’

  ‘Miss Cavendish sat with me for a bit after lunch. She went out before I did—about a quarter of an hour before. I don’t know where she went,’ Lucilla said coldly, ‘and I think Mr. Knott-Sloman looked in once. Yes, it was ten to three. He came to compare his watch with the clock.’

  ‘Now, just one more question, Miss Thrale, and I hope you will understand that it is merely a formal matter of cross-checking all movements. Have you any means of corroborating that you were in your room from’ (he glanced at his notes) ‘three o’clock till you heard the alarm?’

  ‘No, I have not,’ she said quickly and decisively—a little too quickly, as if she had anticipated the question and decided on the answer beforehand. ‘I do not have witnesses of all my movements.’

  ‘The loss is ours,’ murmured Nigel with impudent gallantry. Lucilla gave him a freezing look, and swept out. Knott-Sloman was summoned next. He entered jauntily, smoking a cigar, and wearing the expression half-hearty, half-ingratiating with which he welcomed visitors to his roadhouse.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ he said, rubbing his hands. ‘So this is the inquisition. Not so alarming as I always imagined this sort of thing to be. What we always found out at the Front—the worst part of a show was waiting for it to begin.’

  He declared himself to be Cyril Knott-Sloman, age fifty-one (‘But a man’s no older than he feels, what?’), bachelor, proprietor of the Fizz-and-Frolic Club, near Kingston. He knew nothing of O’Brien’s testamentary dispositions. He did not fancy his chances as an heir (‘Put my money on
Lucilla for the inheritance stakes; a fast mover, that filly.’). When asked whether he had heard anything during the night, he looked hard at Bleakley, then said:

  ‘Aha, I thought so. You gave yourself away this morning, superintendent. So you don’t think O’Brien did it himself. Well, I don’t either. He was not the fellow to take the easy way out. Poor old Slip-Slop. It’s hard to believe that he’s gone west. One of the best, he was. I wish I could help you, but I slept like a log all night long.’

  ‘Can you tell us any possible motive there might have been for killing O’Brien? Was he the sort of man to make enemies?’

  ‘Well, anyone who’s got a packet of money like that is a bit liable to dirty work, what? Damn it, I shouldn’t have said that—sounds as if I was trying to get one in at Lucilla—ridiculous, of course, the girl couldn’t kill a wasp. Forget it. Apart from that I can’t imagine anyone wanting to do him in. Everyone liked him; you couldn’t help it. Though I thought he’d got a bit queer in his ways since I met him last.’

  ‘Where was that?’

  ‘Out in France. Hadn’t seen him since ’eighteen. Turned up suddenly one night last summer at my club with Lucilla.’

  ‘Very well, sir; now if you’ll just inform us of your movements from lunchtime today.’

  Knott-Sloman’s eyes narrowed. ‘Darned difficult to remember everything, y’know. I’ll try, though. Let me see. Cavendish and I played billiards after lunch; that would be from about two o’clock till a little after three.’

  ‘You two were in the billiard room the whole of that period, I take it?’

  ‘Rather. Had to keep an eye on each other to see there was no monkeying with the score,’ said Knott-Sloman facetiously.