Thou Shell of Death

by Nicholas Blake

  ‘You mean that Cavendish found O’Brien already dead when he entered the hut?’ asked Sir John.

  ‘In a sense,’ replied Nigel obliquely. ‘Now Blount, quite correctly, I thought, judged that O’Brien’s will could only represent a secondary motive, if any at all. Revenge, he decided, must have been Cavendish’s chief incentive; which fitted in with the tone of the threatening letters. That was his first error: a cardinal one. Philip, you knew Cavendish. An able, conventional, pompous, rather unhumorous business man. Can you for a moment imagine him composing these letters?’

  Nigel handed them across, and prowled restlessly about the room while Philip Starling read them.

  ‘No. Scarcely poor old Edward’s style, are they? I can’t imagine him indulging in all this melodrama. And the witticism about O’Brien going out on the Feast of Stephen, like King Wenceslas—that would be quite beyond the old boy’s power. On internal evidence, Cavendish couldn’t have written these, I agree.’

  ‘There you are,’ said Nigel triumphantly, ‘and Philip is an authority on stylistic evidence. But if Cavendish didn’t write them, he couldn’t have planned the murder. It’s altogether too much of a coincidence, for two separate people to have planned to kill O’Brien on the same day. Now for the psychological possibilities. Blount’s theory was that Cavendish first put O’Brien on his guard by means of the threatening letters. Then followed him into the hut after midnight, knowing that O’Brien would be armed and quite apt to take a potshot at any intruder. He then held O’Brien in light conversation until he saw a chance to jump on him and turn the revolver against him in the struggle. Now I ask you, who on earth, knowing O’Brien’s reputation as a fighter, would be crazy enough to make an attempt like that? Yet Blount had the nerve to suggest that Cavendish would. Cavendish! A man who was shivering with apprehension from the moment O’Brien’s body was discovered: a man whose nerve cracked so badly that he began to make panicky and criminal insinuations against his sister as soon as Blount pressed him hard: a man who ran away before he had been accused. And the inspector had the almighty neck to claim that a jelly of a man like this would put his head right inside a lion’s mouth—which was just about what he would have been doing if he’d carried out the murder plan as reconstructed by Blount. I must say, I was disappointed in old Blount over that.’

  ‘But the inspector was quite prepared to believe that Cavendish had got O’Brien out into the hut on some apparently innocent pretext: lulled his suspicions somehow or other,’ objected Sir John.

  ‘Making an appointment with a bloke after midnight in a lonely hut is a damned curious way to lull his suspicions. After those letters, O’Brien was bound to be on the qui vive against everyone, and if Cavendish wrote them he’d know that. Anyway, if you really think Cavendish was capable of a plan of which the cornerstone was the snatching of a loaded revolver from a dangerous man, then I’ll resign.’

  ‘I don’t like your metaphor, but I think you’ve made out your case so far, Nigel.’

  ‘Good. Then there’s the matter of the sleeping draught. Blount was right in deducing that Cavendish must have gone into his bedroom not long before Georgia came in to ask him for the stuff, and in pointing out that this strengthened the theory that he had been in the hut. One could understand him doping Bellamy. But why me? How could he have known that I was a danger to him? I’ve never allowed my name to get into the papers in connection with the cases I’ve worked on. Only my intimate friends know that I go in for this kind of thing.’

  ‘Still, he might have found out,’ said Philip. ‘It’s difficult to touch blood and not be defiled with a certain measure of vulgar notoriety.’

  ‘Now, now, Philip, don’t get truculent. Well, we’ll pass over that and turn to a nut which is very much harder to crack, though Knott-Sloman didn’t find it so. Blount’s idea was that Cavendish brought the poisoned nut with him as an alternative should his first plan fall down. But O’Brien didn’t crack nuts with his teeth. And if Cavendish used the nut simply as a receptacle, why go to all the bother of sandpapering it so thin that it would probably burst in his pocket, anyhow? It seemed clear to me at once that the nut couldn’t have been intended for O’Brien. For Knott-Sloman, then? Now if Cavendish wanted to get rid of him because he was blackmailing him over O’Brien’s murder, he would scarcely doctor up a nut days before he had done the murder, merely on the off-chance that somebody might butt in on him when he was doing it and blackmail him later. That means he must have been carrying the poison about with him, and carpentered the nut after Sloman threatened to expose him to the police. And Blount and I had agreed that would be difficult at the Dower House, with police strolling in and out all the time. Besides, if he intended to kill Knott-Sloman to prevent himself being exposed to the police, why adopt such a chancy delayed-action method? He couldn’t possibly be certain that Knott-Sloman would eat that particular nut in time to prevent him giving his information to the authorities. The only possible solution on these lines was that Cavendish proposed to do away with Sloman because he was blackmailing him over Lucilla. Theoretically that was possible. But I’ve already shown that Cavendish was psychologically n.b.g. as the murderer of O’Brien. So it implied there were two murderers in our merry little house-party—“you in your small corner, and I in mine,” as the hymn puts it—quite separate and unconnected. Well, I couldn’t quite swallow that.’

  ‘A lucid and convincing piece of ratiocination,’ declared Philip Starling.

  ‘The pleasure is mine,’ said Nigel. ‘There were other minor objections, too. For instance, Blount’s theory necessitated Cavendish’s having recognised O’Brien, though he had never set eyes on him before, from a twenty-year-old description of Jack Lambert. Pretty cute of him. Also, in a long talk I had with Georgia Cavendish she made no mention of her brother’s having shown any particular interest in O’Brien. Of course she wouldn’t, because she was deadly afraid her brother had killed him and she wouldn’t care to give him away. But the impression I got from her was that O’Brien was interested in her brother and wanted to meet him. Now surely O’Brien wouldn’t want to meet him if he had taken Judith away from him in the past and then deserted her? Judith must have told him about Cavendish after they’d fallen in love, and Georgia told him that her brother used to stay at Meynart House; so he must have identified Judith’s first lover with Georgia’s brother. That being so, if O’Brien had wronged Judith and Cavendish in the past, he would surely have been particularly on his guard against Edward.’

  Sir John Strangeways wrinkled his brows. ‘I see that. But are you going to make out that the Judith Fear business had nothing to do with the murder at all?’

  ‘No, indeed. It had everything to do with it. Let’s take that point next. Blount’s theory was that Jack Lambert—O’Brien—had taken Judith from Cavendish, put the comether on her, given her a baby, left her, and by refusing to come back when she wrote to him for help, driven her to suicide. Now that gives Cavendish a very good motive. But the facts are susceptible of an entirely different interpretation. In the first place, we knew O’Brien; and knowing him, one can be pretty sure he wouldn’t treat a girl in that way: he was a wild enough spark in his young days, no doubt, but never what the feuilletons call a cad. Besides, there’s good evidence that he deeply loved the girl.’

  ‘The nurse didn’t seem to think so,’ said Sir John.

  ‘She was biased, though. A dear old snob. Cavendish was “quality” and Jack Lambert wasn’t. But she placed the same false interpretation on what happened as Inspector Blount did, and even she believed Judith when she said she wasn’t going to have a baby. Jack Lambert didn’t “desert” the girl: he went away to become an officer so that he’d have a better right to ask her father for her hand. The nurse said herself that Judith was “spry enough” at first after he left. Then she got pale and silent and distracted. Not because she was going to have a baby: “she’d never tell a lie”, the old nurse said, and I believe her—she knew more about Judith Fear than Blo
unt does: not because Lambert had deserted her—he hadn’t. What was the one other thing we know happened between his departure and her death? She received letters from Cavendish. The nurse found her crying over one. “What am I to do?” Judith said. “It wasn’t my fault. What did I do to him that he’s so cruel. If daddy finds out—” The nurse thought she was talking about O’Brien. I am certain she was talking about Cavendish. The nurse had written to Cavendish, telling him what was going on. I submit that he wrote to Judith and said that if she didn’t give up Jack Lambert and come back to him he’d expose her affair with Lambert to her father. I submit that such action would be entirely consonant with what we know of Cavendish’s character, and that it explains perfectly Judith’s outcry to the nurse. Her father was a stern man and she was a little frightened of him at the best of times. No wonder she cried, “If daddy finds out—” And I’ll go one further. We know that Judith wrote letters to Cavendish when she thought she was in love with him. She was an innocent, madcap, inexperienced, wildly romantic schoolgirl then. I wouldn’t put it past Edward Cavendish to have threatened in addition that he would send those letters to her father if she didn’t give up Jack Lambert.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sir John slowly, ‘I think that’s sound enough. But you haven’t yet proved that O’Brien really did love this girl. Why didn’t he come back to help her when she wrote to him?’

  ‘Because he couldn’t. Remember the evidence of Jimmy Hope, who was in the flight O’Brien got assigned to. A week after O’Brien arrived in France, he suddenly asked for leave—moved heaven and earth to get it—Hope said he was absolutely desperate. He couldn’t get it; all leave had been stopped. Obviously he had received Judith’s S.O.S. and was doing his best to go back and help her. A fortnight later Judith’s brother receives a letter to say that she has drowned herself. It was after this that O’Brien went mad in the air—chucked his life away every day, only inscrutable Providence refused to accept it. And he kept on trying to kill himself for years. Do you still say he didn’t really love her?—kept on until when?’

  Sir John worried at his thick, sandy moustache. ‘Till when? I dunno. Till he gave up flying, I suppose. That was—’

  ‘Yes,’ interrupted Nigel. ‘O’Brien kept on trying to kill himself until he met Georgia Cavendish.’

  ‘Well. What then? He fell in love with her. Gave him a new interest: something to live for. Can’t see it has much to do with the case.’

  ‘Yes. It certainly gave him a new interest in life,’ said Nigel, with a grimness that startled the other two. ‘But he didn’t fall in love with Georgia. He was fond of her. They were lovers for a little. But it wasn’t the same thing as with Judith Fear. Georgia said to me that time, “I felt that he didn’t care even for me—not wholeheartedly. There was always a part of him elsewhere.” ’ Nigel paused a moment. ‘Come along, Philip, you’re fond of riddles. Why should meeting Georgia Cavendish alter O’Brien’s whole manner of life?’

  ‘Search me,’ the little don replied. ‘Perhaps she’s a member of the Oxford Group.’

  Sir John Strangeways was sitting stone-still, his lips moving like the lips of a child trying to form some new and formidable word, almost comic expressions of bewilderment and incredulity and stupefaction passing over his face. Nigel glanced at him and went swiftly off at a tangent.

  ‘Well then, Philip. As your excesses with my sherry seem to have obfuscated your usually brilliant intelligence, I’ll ask you a simpler one. At the Dower House on December the twenty-fifth, there were nine persons. O’Brien, Arthur Bellamy, Mrs Grant, Lucilla, Georgia, Edward Cavendish, Knott-Sloman, Philip Starling, Nigel Strangeways. Now which one of those fits best the following recipe for the murderer of O’Brien and Sloman? A person of steely courage and terrific ingenuity, possessing the type of humour that produced those threatening letters and daring enough to have carried out the threat; ingenious enough to have planned the nut-murder and with time enough to wait without showing any impatience till the nut took effect; a person with a very long memory, having access to Georgia’s poison and to Knott-Sloman’s typewriter; a person of sufficient literary attainments to be familiar with Tourneur’s Revenger’s Tragedy.’

  Philip Starling took a gulp of his sherry. His boyish, arrogant, appealing, brilliantly clever face wore an expression of unusual bewilderment and indecision. Finally he said:

  ‘Well, old boy, I should say your conditions apply most accurately to myself.’

  Nigel moved swiftly over to the mantelpiece, and crammed a handful of salted almonds into his mouth. There was a short silence. Then Sir John Strangeways, articulating with the elaborate and unnatural caution of a drunken motorist before a police doctor, said:

  ‘I think I am dreaming. But there’s no shadow of doubt that your description, Nigel, applies to one and only one of those nine. I presume you have gone mad. But the one person who answers that description accurately in every detail is Fergus O’Brien.’

  ‘Slow but sure,’ Nigel enunciated thickly through a barrage of salted almonds. ‘I was wondering when you’d get it.’

  Sir John spoke in quiet, humouring tones. ‘Your suggestion is, I take it, that O’Brien murdered himself?’

  ‘’Snot a suggestion. It’s a fact.’

  ‘That, at the same time as he murdered himself, he was shot by Edward Cavendish?’

  ‘Uh-huh, to quote Inspector Blount.’

  ‘And that, after he’d simultaneously murdered himself and been shot by Edward Cavendish, he poisoned Knott-Sloman?’

  ‘Laboriously expressed, but true.’

  Sir John cast a pitying glance at his nephew, and said to Starling:

  ‘Just ring up Colefax, will you? I believe he’s the best alienist in London. You’d better send for two male attendants and an ambulance as well.’

  ‘I’ll admit,’ Nigel continued imperturbably, ‘that it took me a little time to accustom myself to the idea. It’s paradoxical, but, like all paradoxes, based on simplicity. I’ll tell you the stages by which I arrived at it. First, there was Cavendish’s demeanour. From the moment O’Brien’s body was found I noticed that he looked, not merely nervous, but puzzled—bewildered, beat to the wide. Now if you’ve just murdered a chap, pur et simple, you don’t look puzzled: there’s no conundrum about it—merely a corpse. I called Blount’s attention to Cavendish’s demeanour, but it failed to ring the bell. I couldn’t understand myself why he looked so puzzled until that conversation I had with Georgia. The one thing which emerged clearly from it was that O’Brien seemed from the first peculiarly interested in her brother. There she was, in extremis, just rescued by him from certain death in the desert, and he starts plying her with questions about herself and her family. Later he went out of his way to cultivate Edward’s acquaintance, although Edward was the last person you’d expect to be of any interest to him.

  ‘Then I went over to Ireland. And it at once became apparent that, so far from Edward having reason to want O’Brien’s blood, it was just the other way round. Cavendish had as good as forced Judith Fear into suicide, by threatening to expose her love affairs to her father. And she’d told O’Brien this in her last letter to him. Knowing O’Brien, that Irish temper which can remember wrongs for centuries—you yourself, uncle, said you thought he would have a long memory; knowing his ruthlessness, his grim humour, his passionate love for Judith Fear, I knew suddenly beyond all question that he was capable of waiting years for revenge, and then taking it.

  ‘Once I’d got that clear I began to work out how the facts of the case fitted the theory of O’Brien as revenger. Somehow, evidently, he must have got Cavendish into a position in which Cavendish had to shoot him and then couldn’t escape from the meshes. He wanted Cavendish to be tortured with the same agonies as Judith, the agonies of the trapped animal. His own life he didn’t care two pins about—the doctors had said he was a dying man anyway. It seemed an insuperable problem—the mechanical side of it, I mean. I tried to imagine myself into the position of O’Brien,
and start with the simplest point. How could he get Cavendish into the hut? Suddenly I remembered that note Lucilla wrote to O’Brien. ‘I must see you tonight,’ it ran. ‘Can’t we forget what has happened since—Meet me in the hut after the others have gone to bed’, etc. Now supposing O’Brien, after receiving it from her, had slipped it on to Cavendish’s dressing table or somewhere. Lucilla had been Cavendish’s mistress, so the second sentence would have a perfectly good meaning for him: O’Brien’s name wasn’t anywhere on the note, so Cavendish would have no reason to imagine it wasn’t addressed to him. That was my first break. You see, the note was one way in which O’Brien could get Cavendish into the hut and be sure he wouldn’t tell anyone else he was going.

  ‘Well then, Cavendish and O’Brien are in the hut. In due course O’Brien suddenly threatens him with the revolver, acts as if he’d gone crazy-homicidal. He moves menacingly right up to Cavendish. But he doesn’t mean to kill him—it would be letting him off too easily. He gets near enough to let Cavendish make a grab at the gun, struggles convincingly, presses Cavendish’s finger on to the trigger as the revolver is pointing at him—and that was the end of Fergus O’Brien, and the beginning of his revenge. Of course, he was taking a risk. The risk that Cavendish would simply walk straight back to the house and tell everyone exactly what had happened. He was banking on Cavendish’s psychological makeup—and he’d been studying that for months with all the deadly penetration of hate. He was banking on Cavendish’s not having the nerve to tell the truth. And he won. Of course, he’d already taken steps to make it very difficult for Cavendish to tell the truth. He’d deliberately constructed two reasons why Cavendish should wish to murder him. He’d gone off with Lucilla; and he’d left Georgia a lot of money, knowing that Edward was financially in the soup. Those were the two motives, in fact, which made us first suspect Edward. The business of Judith Fear, I imagine, he did not want to be turned up; at any rate, he laid no train towards it: it’s ironical that it was just this business which finally convinced the police that Cavendish was the murderer.