Thou Shell of Death

by Nicholas Blake

  ‘But your own argument still holds. Why didn’t he burn the note?’

  ‘Everything had to be done very quickly. He was supposed to have gone out of the billiard room to get the right time. He slipped the note back into his pocket. Now Lucilla told us that she handed over Cavendish’s letters to Sloman after lunch on that day. He very likely had them in his pocket. It’s surely not too imaginative to suppose that the note he had taken from Bellamy got slipped into one of the envelopes as he put it in his pocket. As soon as the game of billiards with Cavendish is over, he goes into the morning room and packs up these letters into a parcel and buzzes off to the village to post them. After that he finds that he’s lost the note. Hard cheese on old Sloman.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said the inspector meditatively, ‘that might well have been it. But it’s going to be the devil to prove.’

  ‘Don’t you worry.’ Nigel was looking very grim. ‘Bleakley, will you ask Miss Thrale to step this way. The one advantage we amateurs have over you chaps is that there are no rules to stop us hitting below the belt.’ He added to Blount, ‘You’d better pretend afterwards that you didn’t hear what is about to transpire.’

  Lucilla Thrale swayed in, beautiful and wary and sleek as a panther. Nigel took up a sheet of paper that lay in front of him.

  ‘Before Knott-Sloman was so unfortunately taken from our midst,’ he said, ‘he left a confession. He says, amongst other things, that it was you who originated the plan for the attack on Arthur Bellamy. Is this—?’

  He had no need to continue. Lucilla’s lovely face flushed darkly. Her upper lip rose in a snarl.

  ‘The swine!’ she exclaimed shrilly. ‘It was his idea from beginning to—’ She stopped suddenly and clapped her hand to her mouth. But it was too late by then. Blount rushed into the breach that Nigel had made, and Lucilla had to capitulate altogether. Before long they had a signed statement from her. Her part in the assault on Bellamy had been very much as Nigel had conjectured. Knott-Sloman had assured her, so she said, that they were both in danger as long as Bellamy had possession of the note: because the police would say, what Bellamy had already hinted to him earlier in the day, that they had conspired to kill O’Brien through fear of their blackmailing attempts being exposed by him. Bellamy, Knott-Sloman told her, had threatened in a very ugly way what he would do to him if he obtained further proof of his suspicions. But Knott-Sloman had assured her that he was only going to knock Bellamy out and get the note from him. After that it would be their word against his. She had been horrified to hear that the man had been nearly killed. Nigel and the inspector, however, came independently to the conclusion that Knott-Sloman had been so alarmed by Bellamy’s threats of violence that he had determined to get in his blow first—and a decisive one. The one point over which Lucilla stood firm was that she had no notion the murderer of O’Brien was being blackmailed by Knott-Sloman.

  After this Lucilla was dismissed. Blount wagged his head solemnly at Nigel and his left eyelid dropped the fraction of an inch. ‘Your methods are awful unconventional, Mr Strangeways,’ he said. ‘Well, it’s a good thing we’ve got that Bellamy business cleared up. It was clever of Knott-Sloman to admit, when we confronted him with his note, that he had been looking for it in the hut and failed to find it. It took our attention away from the connection there might be between it and the attack on Bellamy. There can’t be much question that Cavendish killed Knott-Sloman because he was threatening to tell us he’d seen him in the hut. I doubt Sloman wouldn’t let Lucilla in on that; he wouldn’t want to share the hush money with anyone else. Well now. Yes. We have motive and opportunity against Cavendish for both the crimes, though, of course, the motive for the second depends on his having committed the first. We shall have to do a good deal more inquiry and investigation, particularly at the Cavendishes’ house in London. But we’ve got enough against him, I doubt, to ask for a warrant. What do you think, Mr Strangeways?’

  Nigel started a little, and said dreamily, ‘Sorry; I’ve been lost in admiration of your narrative powers.’

  ‘Come now, Mr Strangeways. Are you trying to pull my leg?’

  ‘Heaven forbid! No. I think you’ve made out your case admirably. But I believe I can get you certain evidence at once that will make any further investigation unnecessary. It’s in a book, by the way. I expect O’Brien had a copy in the hut; if you’ll just lend me the key I’ll go and fetch it. The name of the book, you’ll not be surprised to hear, is The Revenger’s Tragedy.’

  Nigel levered himself to his feet. He was just taking the key from the inspector when a scream rang out, another scream, and then they heard something bumping down the staircase. Nigel was out of the door first. It was Georgia’s voice they had heard. A pang of utter despair wrenched his heart. The three arrived at the foot of the staircase in a bunch. The constable who had been on guard at the front door was already there, bending over Georgia’s body. Nigel thrust him away and knelt down beside her.

  ‘Georgia! Darling! For God’s sake! Are you all right? What’s happened?’

  The eyelid he could see fluttered in a movement absurdly like a wink. Then closed. Then her head turned and both eyes fluttered open.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Georgia said dazedly, ‘I didn’t half come down the hell of a crack.’

  It was at this moment that they heard through the open hall door the roar of a powerful engine accelerating away. Blount and Bleakley rushed out. They saw the back of O’Brien’s Lagonda swaying down the curving drive. At the wheel was Edward Cavendish. Bleakley was blowing his whistle like mad. A police car swerved round out of the back yard. ‘Telephone!’ Blount snapped to the superintendent. ‘Get the net out. You know the car’s number.’

  Georgia gave Nigel’s hand a squeeze. ‘Go along,’ she said. ‘Do what you can. I’m all right. I had to give him a chance.’

  Nigel bent down swiftly, kissed her, tweaked her smooth brown cheek, and ran out of the house, leaving Georgia sitting against the stair-foot, her legs spread out in an unladylike fashion, but smiling with peculiar contentment. Nigel just had time to swing himself into the back of the police car as it leapt forward. Blount leaned over from the front seat.

  ‘Damned convenient for him his sister fell down the stairs just at that moment, blast her!’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nigel, looking down his nose. ‘I suppose he happened to be in the lavatory by the front door, and took the opportunity of the policeman leaving his post to slip out and do a bunk. A brilliant piece of opportunism by old Edward.’

  Blount looked at him irritably. ‘Well, he hasn’t an earthly chance of getting away. A confession of guilt, that’s all it is.’

  The tyres screamed. They were at the end of the drive and the gates were shut. Blount leapt out and shook them. They were locked too. The chauffeur blew Wagnerian blasts on his horn. The lodgekeeper emerged, in very slow motion.

  ‘Unlock the gates! Get a move on! Police.’

  ‘Gennulman told me his lordship had given orders for the gates to be locked,’ mumbled the man uncertainly.

  ‘If you don’t open those — gates this instant I’ll have you gaoled for obstruction. That’s better. Which way did he go?’

  The lodgekeeper pointed. They flung into motion again. A minute had been lost. That meant a mile, when one was chasing a Lagonda. The high, narrow hedges tearing past made Nigel feel as if he was being shot out of the mouth of a cannon. No, not a cannon, he thought as a sudden bend sent him sprawling into the other corner of the back seat, emphatically not a cannon; something more tortuous. One of those involved brass instruments that Thomas Hardy delighted in: a serpent!

  ‘“There is a place provided in hell

  To sit upon a serpent’s knee,” ’

  he sang dolefully. But was silenced by a branch that flicked out at him like a wet towel. Everything was blurred and rackety and disintegrating: it might have been a dream out of which he had just awoken. Only he was still in it. What were they doing, chasing a respectable financier
down a Somerset lane? Wild West stuff! What’s the hurry? He can’t get away. We may only drive him into doing something desperate, and that would be a fatal error. Nigel became aware that his teeth were gritted together and his knees trembling. He was excited, enjoying the hunt. Blood sports in Somerset. Faugh!

  They had stopped at a fork. Blount was out, scanning the road surface for tyre marks. He found what he wanted in a muddy patch a few yards down the left-hand road. They bucketed off again. ‘Keeping to the lanes,’ shouted Blount. ‘Looks as if he was making for Bridgewest.’ They were whirring like a swarm of hornets up a long incline. At the top the road fell away, and they swooped and swerved down the hillside for three miles. In the distance they could see the telegraph poles of a main road. Cavendish could twist and double in the lanes, but once he was on the main road he’d have to go straight for a bit, and the police patrols would be out. They took a blind corner at fifty. The main road was only a hundred yards ahead. Unfortunately there was a cow, too, and it was only twenty yards ahead. The chauffeur trod hard on his brake, but they were still doing thirty when they hit the cow. It was like hitting a man in the stomach with one’s fist. The cow was carted up on to the radiator and dropped aside. They jumped out. There was glass everywhere. The headlights were twisted askew. The chauffeur opened the bonnet. One of the vanes of the fan had been broken clean off.

  Blount set off running towards the main road, Nigel after him. They reached it. Almost opposite them, drawn up to the side of the road, was the Lagonda. But no sign of Edward Cavendish. Then they saw the placard, on a hoarding in a long broad meadow to their left.

  AEROPLANE FLIGHTS.

  FIVE SHILLINGS, FIVE MINUTES.

  They ran into the meadow. There seemed to be nothing there but a hut, a windsleeve, and a small, brown-faced man in overalls. He was as laconic as the advertisement. When Blount asked had he seen a man get out of that Lagonda over there, he jerked his thumb at the sky. High and far away, Blount saw a little dot in the air. ‘Police,’ he panted: ‘we’ve got to get after him. Have you another plane? Or a telephone?’

  ‘No telephone,’ said the brown-faced man, chewing expressionlessly on a piece of gum. ‘Here’s Bert, though.’

  Another plane drifted silently over their heads, kissed the earth beyond, and ran down the field. They sprinted after it. Blount fired out orders like a machine-gun. Two passengers descended bemusedly from the plane. The mechanic was sent to ring up the nearest R.A.F. depot from the AA box and give them the number of the first plane.

  ‘Got enough petrol?’ snapped Blount.

  The pilot jerked his head. They tumbled into the open cockpit. The plane taxied to the other end of the field, then turned into the wind and rushed at the horizon with a giant crescendo of engine. Would they never rise, thought Nigel, and looked down to find the earth already dropping and streaming away from them like green rapids. They banked steeply, with the lovely slow gesture of a dancer’s hand. The speck in the sky was gone, but it was a cloudless day and they might pick it up again before long. What was happening out of sight up there? What would Cavendish do when his five shillings’ worth was up? Or had he chartered the pilot for a longer journey? The sky gazed back at them blankly. The answer was not very important anyhow.

  After ten minutes the speck was in sight again. They were heading for the sea. Perhaps Cavendish had hoped to escape to France or Spain.

  ‘“If to France or far-off Spain,

  You’d cross the watery main,

  To see your face again the seas I’d brave,” ’

  sang Nigel raucously. His voice was drowned by the engine and torn away in tatters by the racing wind. Blount bellowed in the pilot’s ear:

  ‘Are we gaining?’

  The pilot nodded taciturnly. Blount fumed and fidgeted. The whole of the heavens seemed to stretch between them and that little black dot to the south. He looked down. They were hardly moving at all. The patchwork earth crawled past beneath reluctantly. He gazed forward again. By Jove, they were catching them. The speck was now a two-winged insect. Imperceptibly and remorselessly as the minute hand pursues the hour hand, they were creeping up on their quarry over the blank white face of heaven. He turned and gesticulated to Nigel. Cursing his short-sightedness, Nigel leant out from the shelter of the cockpit. The wind fluttered his eyelids madly, and he hastily drew in his head before they were blown right off. The pilot, turning, shouted:

  ‘Fred’s seen us! He’s holding her back!’

  Yes, they were moving up fast now, high above the other plane and to her right. But when they were within quarter of a mile, their quarry seemed to lengthen her stride again. They soon knew why. The pilot put down his nose and dropped towards her, every wire screaming. Now they were near enough to see the two figures in the cockpit. Now nearer; so near that Blount could see the revolver which Cavendish was pressing into the back of his pilot. Their long dive brought their wheels within fifty feet of Cavendish’s head. He looked up. Nigel was not to forget for a lifetime the look on his face. Then Nigel suddenly shouted words which the wind whirled away before Blount could catch them, and waved a handkerchief as though for a flag of truce. For Cavendish, still pointing the revolver at the pilot, was clambering desperately out of the cockpit. He stood, swayed, tilted, hung an eternity so, and then fell. He fell with arms and legs sprawling, like a dummy figure. Down and down and down. For years he seemed to be falling. They had lost sight of him altogether a few seconds before there appeared on the sea’s face a tiny white splash, as though someone had thrown a very small pebble …

  XV

  THE TALE RETOLD

  ‘SO SHE WAS avenged at last,’ said Nigel.

  It was a week after Edward Cavendish had chartered the pilot for that long joumey—a longer journey than he had anticipated. Nigel and his uncle and Philip Starling were sitting in Nigel’s town flat. They were sipping sherry as an appetiser for the story which Nigel had promised to tell them. Philip knew nothing of the recent developments: Sir John Strangeways had received the documents and an outline of the case from Inspector Blount, but he hoped to have a number of points cleared up by his nephew this evening. Blount also had received an invitation but had pleaded an accumulation of business, and Nigel had not pressed him, which was unusual in one of his hospitable nature. Philip Starling was gazing with satisfaction into his glass of sherry: he tilted it, pursed his mouth and said, ‘A-ah. Some very tolerable liquor. Oxford taught you one thing at any rate, old boy.’ Sir John looked more like a wire-haired terrier than ever. He had the extraordinary faculty of sitting in a deep armchair and still looking alert. You expected him any minute to jump down and go trotting busily off, his ears cocked and his nose twitching. As Nigel spoke, Sir John was raising a glass to his lips. It stopped in mid-air. He cocked his head and said:

  ‘“Avenged at last”? O’Brien was murdered a fortnight ago.’

  ‘Well, he had a long time to wait. Over twenty years. I should have thought “at last” was in order,’ Nigel replied teasingly.

  His uncle gave him a long, appraising stare. ‘No,’ he said finally, ‘you can’t get away with that. You’re just working up to one of those exhibitionist dramatic disclosures of yours. I know you. Showing off. Pah! Well, go ahead. Not bad sherry this.’

  ‘No,’ said Nigel, ‘nor is it meant to gargle with. Well, I suppose I’d better begin. You know the facts of the case; I’ve told Philip a certain amount and he is quite capable of making up the rest, especially if he goes on drinking my sherry at this rate. Besides, he gave me the solution. So you both start level.’

  ‘Gave you the solution? What the devil do you mean? Are you referring to that elementary point about Hercules and Cacus—a story which any—’

  ‘Schoolboy would be able to tell you,’ interrupted Nigel. ‘No. I am not. What did you think of Blount’s statement of the case, Uncle John?’ he asked with apparent irrelevance.

  ‘Me? Well, a bit fanciful in places, but there were some pretty big gaps in the evid
ence to bridge. Seemed the best possible explanation of all the facts. Cavendish’s flight clinched it, anyway; and Blount’s finding the poison gone from the place his sister had hidden it in, afterwards. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Only that, academically speaking, of course, I thought Blount’s interpretation was damned awful,’ said Nigel, staring dreamily at the ceiling. Sir John started up in his chair, exclaiming:

  ‘But, good Lord, I thought you agreed with him. Now you’ve made me spill my sherry. All this infernal exhibitionism.’

  ‘I agree with him over a number of points: all the unessential ones, in fact. But the main outlines, the blood and bone of the case—far from it. I was just going to set up my own idea of its anatomy, so to speak, when Edward Cavendish did his ill-considered escaping trick.’

  ‘But, hang it all,’ said Sir John irritably, ‘Blount told me that you agreed with him about Cavendish having shot O’Brien.’

  ‘Oh, I did. I still do.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said his uncle with elaborate sarcasm, ‘that you are going to tell me that Cavendish shot O’Brien but was not the murderer.’

  ‘You are coming on very nicely,’ declared Nigel encouragingly, ‘that is just what I am going to tell you.’

  Philip Starling groaned. ‘Oh, God. Riddles. Just like our chaplain after a gaudy. I’m going.’

  He lay back and poured himself another glass of sherry. Sir John was staring at Nigel with painful intentness, as though his nephew were changing into a sea-serpent before his eyes.

  ‘I’ll just run through the weak points in Blount’s case,’ said Nigel. ‘Now I never doubted that Cavendish went to the hut that night and made the footprints to bear out the suicide he had faked; after all, it was my idea. I’m also still quite prepared to believe that Knott-Sloman saw him enter the hut, and later blackmailed him, though there’s no real evidence for that at all. But Cavendish as a murderer, or rather as capable of this particular kind of murder—no, I simply couldn’t take it.’