Thou Shell of Death

by Nicholas Blake

  ‘No, no! I couldn’t—I daren’t do that,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘“Daren’t”?’

  ‘No. You see,’ she explained hurriedly, ‘last time I got it from a chemist—a great friend of mine. I forgot it till the last minute. He gave it to me without a doctor’s prescription. It would get him into frightful trouble.’

  ‘How many people knew that you had—have the stuff?’

  ‘Most of my friends, I expect. But you’re wasting time. No one on earth knows where I keep it in the house.’ Georgia looked unbearably overstrained and wan. Nigel couldn’t play the inquisitor any longer. He said:

  ‘Please believe me. I’ve learnt that you are capable of shooting a man, and that you keep the same sort of poison that Knott-Sloman was killed with. But I believe still less than before that you killed him or O’Brien.’

  Georgia gave him a grateful smile, but her eyes were still preoccupied with some problem beyond the reach of any amateur detective’s gallantry. Nigel felt a spasm of bitterness and disappointment. He had put himself out of the running as a detector of this crime by irrationally believing everything that Georgia told him; yet his belief in her didn’t seem of any use to her at all. She divined this, and put her hand on his arm.

  ‘It does make the hell of a lot of difference, your being so good to me. But there are things I simply can’t ask you to help me about. Now, what else do you want to know?’

  ‘When did O’Brien first take up with Lucilla?’

  ‘After he’d returned to England from Cairo early this year, as far as I know. He met her in our house. She was a flame of Edward’s then.’

  ‘Why did he take up with her, do you think, really? She’s not his sort, surely?’

  ‘Well, he was a man, and Lucilla is very decidedly a woman. But I felt he was only amusing himself with her. He obviously had no tenderness for her. He was queer with women, though. Sometimes,’ she added in a low voice, ‘I felt that he didn’t care even for me—not wholeheartedly, I mean. There was always a part of him elsewhere: it made him seem just a little inhuman, even to me. A demon lover. It sounds fantastic, but he was possessed sometimes. Something deeper than I could reach seemed to be driving him. The Greeks would have thought that the Eumenides were after him, I dare say.’

  ‘How did Knott-Sloman come into the picture? I should have thought he’d be the last person O’Brien would have any use for.’

  ‘Well, Lucilla was a sort of high-class decoy for his roadhouse. She’d taken Edward there a good deal, and one day she mentioned it to Fergus. Told him Knott-Sloman was running it. Fergus said he’d like to go and have a look at one of these latest blisters on the face of civilisation. They went there once or twice this summer. But I was certainly rather surprised to find Knott-Sloman down here.’

  ‘You don’t happen to know where O’Brien got his money from, do you? He told me he was a rich man.’

  ‘That’s funny. I asked him once. He said he’d got it by blackmailing an Indian maharajah. I expect it was one of his usual tales, with a nucleus of truth in the centre. He was in India after the war, and he probably did some potentate a service. They’re stiff with gold and wouldn’t think twice about giving Fergus a few chestfuls of it. He was careful about money, too—as careful about it as he was reckless of his own life. An odd trait.’

  ‘There’s only one other thing I want to ask now. Do you think your brother knew that O’Brien was going to give up Lucilla?’ Nigel caught a glimpse of the expression on Georgia’s face and added hastily: ‘All right. I take that question back.’

  ‘Do you mind if we go back to the house now?’ Georgia’s voice was small and shaking a little. ‘I—my feet are getting so awfully wet.’

  Nigel took her arm. ‘Very well, my dear. You know, I don’t believe you’re tough at all,’ he said.

  Georgia bit her trembling lip. She tried to say something. Then Nigel found her sobbing in his arms and himself whispering over her rain-wet hair:

  ‘This case seems to have got quite out of my control now.’

  XII

  TALES FROM THE PAST

  THAT WAS NOT strictly true, Nigel said to himself later, reviewing recent events in the comparatively unemotional atmosphere of his bedroom. ‘It’s not that the case is out of my control so much as that I’ve got to shift my grip on it. I am now, I suppose, what they call an interested party. Not that Georgia’s breakdown can mean much, as far as she is concerned. The trouble is that it seems to mean the hell of a lot to me. Oh, my aunt! What an impossible detective I am, to go falling in love with my chief suspect. Or have I fallen in love with her? A question teeming with human interest; but we shall have to leave analysis till later. The point at the moment is that Georgia has to be kept out of Blount’s claws. Funny thing, I hadn’t realised before, but I don’t think I really care for Blount. It must be his bald head. But it isn’t Georgia only. There’s that infernal brother of hers. She’d be heartbroken if anything happened to him. And if one thing is clear in this case, it is that she’s deadly afraid he did the murders. She’s been giving herself away over that from the very beginning. The way she looked at him in the hut that first morning; and pretending to have heard a thump overhead yesterday evening, when Edward had said he was in the morning room, so as to give him an alibi over Knott-Sloman; and letting it be known at once that she expected to benefit under the will, thus drawing suspicion off her brother and on to herself. Does she know something? Or does she just suspect?

  ‘Well, that’s an academic point. I’ve got to clear her brother, too. But that only leaves Lucilla. I can’t go trying to pin everything on her, just because I don’t want Georgia to be hurt. Not that there isn’t a pretty good case against Lucilla. Still, I don’t want to take part in a general sauve-qui-peut. It is not, now that I come to think of it, strictly accurate to say that Georgia has a face like a monkey—a damned attractive monkey, anyway. No, not a monkey at all. To hell with monkeys. They don’t have noses that tilt agreeably upwards, or eyes that—Nigel’s unprofessional rhapsodies were cut short by the entrance of Inspector Blount. His eyes sparkled briskly behind his horn-rimmed spectacles, and even his bald head seemed to give off a complacent glow—the ruddy bloodhound, thought Nigel with gross injustice.

  ‘I saw you went for a walk with Miss Cavendish. Get anything out of her?’ said Inspector Blount.

  ‘Nothing relevant,’ answered Nigel coldly. ‘We were talking about O’Brien most of the time.’

  Blount cocked an inquisitive—and, to Nigel’s eyes, distinctly offensive—glance over his horn-rims.

  ‘I’ve been at Mrs Grant again. She swears black and blue that Bellamy was about the place till two-thirty on the day of the attack, so that lets Mr Starling out.’

  ‘It lets him out over the Bellamy incident,’ said Nigel grumpily.

  ‘Uh-huh. I’ve also had a very interesting talk with Edward Cavendish. I made it pretty clear that he was in an awkward position, and it would be advisable for him to explain certain things as soon as possible. I hinted at the motives he might have had for both crimes, and so on. He blustered for a bit. Then he caved in. Said, very reluctantly, that the reason he had been so upset and nervous lately was that he was afraid his sister might know more about the crimes than he liked to admit to himself.’

  ‘Oh, he said that, did he?’ exclaimed Nigel belligerently.

  ‘Uh-huh. He said something about an incident that had been hushed up: Miss Cavendish shooting some relation of hers out in Africa—in self-defence, she had claimed. He also said that he had been most seriously disturbed about it all when he heard that Knott-Sloman had been poisoned, because he knew that his sister had some poison in her possession. I asked him what kind of poison, and he said prussic acid. I asked him what motive his sister could have had for killing a man she loved and another man who was a comparative stranger. At that point he stiffened up again. Said he had never meant to suggest that his sister had done the murders, but was just afraid that the discovery of certai
n facts about her by the police might lead them to connect her with the crimes. As to motive, he said, not too convincingly, it was quite ridiculous to suppose she could have had any reason for killing O’Brien and Knott-Sloman; and, as the police had been so fertile in suggesting possible motives for himself, no doubt they could find an equal number for Georgia Cavendish without his assistance.’

  Had Edward Cavendish seen Nigel at that moment he would certainly have regretted the way he had caved in to the inspector. Nigel’s tow-coloured hair had fallen over his right eye, there was an angry glow on his high cheekbones, and in his eyes a merciless and eager ferocity. Edward had put himself contemptibly beyond the pale. There was no reason now why Edward should be spared, except Georgia’s own happiness; and it had now become a question of saving Georgia’s life, brother or no brother. Nigel suddenly had a clear vision of Edward running out ahead of him to the hut that morning. There was something in it crying out for explanation. Yes! By heaven! That was it. And to think that he had never noticed such an obvious point before.

  The inspector was saying, ‘After that little conversation with Cavendish I had another look at those notes you made on the case. In the light of what Cavendish has told us, your case against his sister is very convincing, Mr Strangeways. The point you made, that she was the only person intimate enough with O’Brien for him to trust her with him when he was expecting an attack—that’s a very illuminating point indeed. Yes.’

  ‘I should have thought it would apply equally well to Lucilla Thrale. She had been intimate enough with him. And, by the way, Miss Cavendish told me about that poison this morning. She takes it with her on her expeditions, in case the worst comes to the worst. She was quite open about it.’

  Blount scratched his chin and looked at Nigel shrewdly. ‘You seem to have altered your mind recently. Well, there’s no law against that. But I shall have to have a serious talk with Miss Cavendish. Perhaps she will tell me more than she told you,’ he added with ponderous irony. It fell rather flat on Nigel, whose mind was busy piecing together the rest of the evidence round that incredible glimpse of Edward running out ahead of him to the hut. More than ever now, it was necessary to dig out some more knowledge about O’Brien. He remembered the retired officer, Jimmy Hope, to whom Knott-Sloman had recommended him. Where did he live? Oh, yes, Staynton, near Bridgewest.

  ‘I want to borrow that car of O’Brien’s,’ he said. ‘Will it be all right?’

  ‘Certainly. What’s in your mind now?’

  ‘I hope to be able to tell you a pretty staggering story when I get back. Hold yourself in till then. And for God’s sake don’t go arresting Georgia Cavendish. It’ll only make you look silly when you have to release her again …’

  An hour later Nigel was sitting in the untidy living room of a bungalow. Jimmy Hope was boiling water on a primus, hospitably insisting that he always made tea at four o’clock if any of the troops popped in. Jimmy Hope was a tall, bronzed man, active but nervous in his movements, and a little gone to seed. He was wearing a collarless shirt, a pullover, a pair of stained khaki riding breeches and thick woollen socks. He gave Nigel tea and some stale scones, pouring out a whisky for himself.

  ‘Rotguts,’ he said sardonically. ‘We had to take it in the War after a bit to get us off the ground, and now we’ve got the habit. The extraordinary thing about poor old Slip-Slop was that he never seemed to need it. Well, now, what d’you want to know? Whoever did him in deserves all that’s coming to him—and a sight more. He was the sort of fellow you simply can’t imagine dead. Though he did look pretty washed-out when I saw him last.’

  ‘Oh, you’ve met him lately, have you?’

  ‘Rather. He asked me over last August, just after he’d settled in at Chatcombe. Looked like death, I thought, but he was in rare good form. Said he was just making a will and was giving half his money to the foundation of a fund for the painless extinction of staff officers. ’S a matter of fact, he asked me to witness the will.’

  ‘Did he really? There’s been quite a to-do about that will. You and Bellamy were the witnesses, then?’

  ‘No, not Bellamy. A sour-faced woman: his cook, I think she was.’

  Nigel digested this intractable morsel in silence. It eliminated the obvious reason for the attack on Bellamy: they should have realised before, though, that O’Brien would almost certainly leave him a legacy and therefore he would not witness the will. Then the murder of O’Brien very likely had nothing to do with the will either. Moreover, there was the singular fact that, although Bleakley had presumably asked her, Mrs Grant had not mentioned that she had been a witness.

  ‘I suppose O’Brien didn’t tell you what he was going to do with the will? Send it to his solicitors, or what?’

  ‘No, he didn’t. How are you fellows getting on? Hot on the trail? Or oughtn’t one to ask?’

  ‘Well, we’re making progress of a sort. The trouble at the moment is that we can’t fmd out anything about O’Brien before he joined up.’

  ‘You’ll be lucky if you ever do. We never did. He and a young chap called Fear were posted to the flight I was in, late ’15, if I remember right. Absolute David and Jonathan they were. I suspect they both joined up under age. Fear was an Irishman, too—came from Wexford—good family, and all that. Used to tell us all about his parents and the Big House, and so on. The only thing he wouldn’t say a word about was O’Brien. We asked him often enough, because O’Brien never gave us any change, but he wasn’t saying anything. In the end we gave up trying to find out. Someone started the usual rumour that O’Brien had had to leave the country in a hurry—taken a potshot at some bloke he didn’t like from behind a hedge, in the good old Hibernian way, and we left it at that. Wouldn’t be surprised myself if it was true, judging from the way he used to lay for the Huns. A holy terror he was—didn’t care two hoots what happened to himself as long as he brought his man down.’

  ‘Was he like that from the beginning?’ asked Nigel.

  ‘Funny you should ask that. He wasn’t. Mind you, he was a genius in the air from the beginning. But quite reasonably careful at first. Then, after he’d been out a week or so, he suddenly asked for leave. Never seen anyone in such a stew. Moved heaven and earth to get it. But it was no good. Fritz was all over us in the air just then, and all leave had been stopped. O’Brien went about like a lost soul for a fortnight. Then one morning I came into the mess. He and young Fear were reading a letter. They both looked as if they had hit the side of a mountain. It was after this that O’Brien went crazy. He’d attack anything. Trying to get himself killed, none of us had the least doubt about it. But he was such a bloody wonder with a plane that he simply couldn’t bring it off. It was the other fellow that went down every time. Honestly, we got a bit afraid of him. He went about with a look in his eyes like a ghost out of hell.’

  ‘What happened to Fear?’

  ‘He was a damned good flyer, too. But he wouldn’t have survived as long as he did without O’Brien. O’Brien used to look after him like a mother up in the air. Fear got quite peeved with him at times about it; said he could look after himself. But when they were separated he was killed soon enough.’

  ‘How was that?’

  ‘They both got flights. I’d come home with a blighty by then, and only heard about it later. Fear was shot down leading his flight in a ground-strafe, late in ’seventeen, I think it was. O’Brien lost the whole of his flight the same week, in the same sector, I believe. Ruddy murder it was. They say that after Fear got his packet O’Brien spent all his spare time dropping out of the clouds on the wretched Huns. They thought he was possessed by seven devils.’

  ‘Well, I must be getting along. Thanks awfully for the information,’ Nigel said.

  ‘Afraid I’ve not been much use. Once I get yarning away I can’t stop. Have a spot before you go. No? Well, cheerio. Look me up some time when you’ve finished your sleuthing. A fellow gets pretty lonely with nothing but hens to talk to.’

  Nigel drove back
very fast to Chatcombe. The interview with Jimmy Hope had thrown little new light on O’Brien, but it had cleared away most of the complications about the will. Nigel tried to fit in this discovery with the framework of the case that was slowly growing up in his mind. Yes, it unquestionably did fit. He pressed exultantly on the accelerator and scattered a flock of geese. Then the word ‘Wexford’ came into his mind. O’Brien had joined up in company with a young man from Wexford—a young man whose parents lived in a Big House. Edward Cavendish had visited some big house in Wexford every summer before the War, Georgia had said. He had fallen in love, she thought, with a girl there. So there was a link between the prewar O’Brien and the prewar Cavendish. Was it purely a geographical one? Neither Cavendish nor O’Brien admitted having met each other before they were introduced by Georgia. He must go over to that place—what was it called?—Meynart House, at once. If it proved that Cavendish and O’Brien had not met there, it would be a wild-goose chase. If they had—well, he might get down to some rock-bottom motive for O’Brien’s murder; and, even if he didn’t, the fact that Cavendish had pretended not to have met O’Brien before would be suspicious enough.

  Arrived back at Chatcombe, he found Inspector Blount and a telephone message awaiting him. The latter said that Lady Marlinworth would be glad if he would step over to the Towers as soon as he found it convenient, since she had an important piece of news for him. The inspector said that the post-mortem report had come in: Knott-Sloman had been killed by swallowing sixty grains of the anhydrous hydrocyanic acid. He had probably died in ten to fifteen minutes—but that had now become irrelevant. It was perhaps a little strange that so neat and tidy a murderer, Blount said grimly, should have apparently made no attempt to remove the pieces of the doctored nut. Still, the risk was probably not worth his while. Nigel told Blount what he had discovered about the will. Bleakley had just been having a conference with the inspector, so they routed him out and asked him had Mrs Grant ever been interrogated on this subject. She had, he said, and had told him she knew nothing whatever about the will. Blount at once went off to ginger up her memory. Nigel said he was going over to his uncle’s house. Bleakley asked if he might go over with him. He was a shade disgruntled, because Blount had hinted that there might have been more interrogation of Lord and Lady Marlinworth, considering that they had been at dinner with O’Brien only a few hours before he was murdered. The superintendent took this amiss, not so much as an insinuation against his own efficiency as a lack of respect—amounting almost to blasphemy—for the landed gentry.