Fire in the Thatch
Page 23
“Yes. I follow all you say there,” said St Cyres. “It’s all well-reasoned—particularly the fact that Vaughan did not ask people into his house. I think he had a feeling that he didn’t want everybody to talk about the work he was doing there. Anybody who saw it would have realised at once that it wasn’t for himself alone that he was taking such pains with it.”
“Well, that was my reasoning,” said Macdonald. “I assumed—for the time being—that Vaughan had gone to keep an appointment, but that appointment had been made over the telephone by someone who had a motive to kill him. There was a likelihood, to put it no more strongly, that the secret of this method of making the appointment had been learnt by someone who took a telephone message for Vaughan at Hinton Mallory itself, and that someone recognised the woman’s voice which spoke over the phone, and having recognised it, took steps to watch the woman in question and thereby learned the place of the appointment. All this was hypothetical, but it gave me grounds for further enquiry.”
Anne asked a question here: “Who told you about the phone messages? Was it Mr. Gressingham?”
“No. That’s quite a point,” said Macdonald. “It was Radcliffe. If Gressingham himself had told me about it I should have counted him out earlier. It’s obvious that if the murderer had used the phone message idea to decoy Vaughan to his death I should not have been told about it by him. Now here was the position—on hypothesis. Vaughan was meeting a woman with whom he used the ‘duck’s egg’ code to give the time of an appointment at a given place. It might be argued from this that the woman he met had need to meet him more or less secretly, and from this again came the possibility that the woman was either married or engaged to some other man, and the jealousy motive—which is a very potent one—gave rise to murder. Now having got thus far, the original question arose, who was the woman whom Vaughan hoped to marry? You both know that I saw Miss Vaughan, and she told me that she knew of only one woman in whom her brother had been interested. Later she told me that this woman was a trained nurse. It seemed fairly obvious to do a little research at the hospitals where Vaughan had been nursed, and it did not take me very long to find the woman in question, but before I tell you about that I should like to put in a word or two about Howard Brendon.”
“Yes,” said St Cyres. “I shall be interested to hear how you got information about him. You must have been very cautious, because no one seems to have had any idea you were making enquiries about him.”
“I felt need to be cautious. Brendon always struck me as the one potentially dangerous person in the case. I frequented the bars of Mallowton and the district in the evenings, and I listened. I went and talked to old Mr. Tothill. I heard enough to assume several things: first, that Brendon was trying to sell his Dulverton property privately and that he had bought another property in the Midlands. Next, that though he had only been married a short time it was believed that his wife had left him. Finally, that he was disliked by his neighbours to an extent which is unusual unless a man has some really bad traits in his character. It seemed worth while making a few enquiries about what Mr. Brendon was doing on the night of April 30th. I learnt that he had stayed in an hotel in Taunton, where he had been seen by different people at the hours of four o’clock, half-past seven, and finally between half-past eleven and midnight.”
3
Macdonald paused here a moment and gazed across the sunlit valley before he resumed: “Obviously the man I wanted had had to be free at certain hours on April 30th. He had had to be at Tiverton to phone the message purporting to come from Nurse White which Vaughan himself took on the phone at Hinton Mallory—and at the back of my mind all the time was the problem of Gressingham’s car, its errand on the night of the fire, and those petrol cans of Vaughan’s. Who could have needed the car and the petrol? Certainly nobody at the Mallorys—not in connection with the Little Thatch case. But if the murderer came from a distance he might have been desperately pressed for some extra petrol. I began to try to fit Brendon into the scheme of things: could he have been at Tiverton at five o’clock to phone? Yes, since he was not seen in his hotel between four and half-past seven. If he had committed the murder he must have had to drive best part of a hundred and fifty miles to achieve his various appearances at Taunton—but the thing was possible, as anyone can see who looks at any map of the county. The distance from Taunton to the spinney is only just over twenty miles, but it’s a very hilly road and is expensive on petrol: the return journey of forty-three miles would have taken two gallons in Brendon’s car. I tried the following assumption for purposes of argument: that, Brendon, who had booked a room in a Taunton hotel at four o’clock, could have got to Tiverton in time to phone at five, and then could have driven to a spot near the spinney, arriving before Vaughan got there at 6.15. He could have killed Vaughan with a loaded stick as the latter got out of his car, which I assumed that he parked at the roadside a little farther back—before the tar strip. Vaughan’s body was then hidden under a rug in the back of his own car, and Brendon returned to Taunton in his Sunbeam, arriving in time for dinner at his hotel. That is forty-three miles of driving and two gallons of petrol used. Brendon left his hotel again unseen after dinner, drove back to the spot near the spinney where he left his own car, got into Vaughan’s Morris, having donned Vaughan’s hat and coat, and drove to Little Thatch, hooting and waving at Corner Cottage en route. He got Vaughan’s body into the cottage and prepared the fire by means of a slow match and paraffin. Next, he had to get back to his hotel in time to be seen in the lounge before everybody was in bed, so he went down to Hinton Mallory and borrowed Gressingham’s Daimler to cover the six miles from Little Thatch to the spinney, and he took two gallons of petrol from Vaughan’s store, to refuel the Daimler and to help him out if his own tank were running low. This involved having to return yet a third time to the spinney—shortly after midnight—to return Gressingham’s Daimler to Hinton Mallory. It sounds complicated in the telling, but the whole performance was possible on account of the loneliness of the roads. At any rate, I assumed that it could have been done, especially if Brendon knew that he could get in and out of his hotel unseen, and collect his own car from its lock-up without being noticed.”
St Cyres shook his head helplessly. “What beats me is this,” he said. “Why didn’t he leave poor Vaughan’s body in the Morris where he killed him? He hadn’t been seen: there was nothing to connect him with the murder.”
“The whole point was that he tried to guard against the word ‘murder’ ever arising,” said Macdonald. “He was convinced he was clever enough to stage an accident—and he very nearly got away with it. Unfortunately for him, he over-acted his part. Since it was obvious that Vaughan’s death was to be labelled ‘accident’ I was particularly on the lookout for someone who emphasised that aspect of the matter: that’s why I was interested to note that Gressingham did nothing of the kind.”
Anne St Cyres lifted her head and asked a question here. “Do you think Mr. Gressingham suspected who had done it?”
“Yes. I think eventually he did—and, unhappily for himself, he did not tell his suspicions to me. Gressingham was very astute, and he had a lot of information to ponder over. He knew that Brendon had taken to coming over to Hinton Mallory frequently after he had heard something about the tenant at Little Thatch. He knew about Brendon’s marriage and its break-up. He knew that Brendon had answered the phone at Hinton Mallory on at least one occasion—Radcliffe knew that, too. He knew that the name ‘Henry Heythwaite’ had been mentioned at Brendon’s home. He knew that Brendon could drive his Daimler. I think Gressingham thought it all out for himself—and then made the mistake of trying to do a little extra detecting on his own account by ringing up Brendon and suggesting a meeting. That was fatal for him. Brendon guessed, too, and arranged to meet Gressingham at a spot where a car accident could be staged only too easily—as happened. Brendon killed Gressingham, put the car in neutral and released the hand-brake—”
“Yes, I think he was. He was of the megalomaniac type. I never saw a more ruthless face. He was a man who was utterly self-centred and self-satisfied. When things went against him his ingenuity and determination seemed to curdle his brain. He had worked out some fantastic scheme to get rid of me in a manner which involved my body and Radcliffe’s being found together. To that end he got Radcliffe to come to his house and drugged him—to be ready for the final dénouement. Undoubtedly Brendon was mad then—but I always thought him capable of violence. Any psychologist could have told that he was abnormal by his eyes.”
4
“Let us have the whole story in perspective,” said Macdonald at length. “Nicholas Vaughan fell in love with a girl named Molly White up at Lannerdale, but was too slow to tell her so. This girl, having come to the conclusion that she would never have a chance of marrying Vaughan, married Howard Brendon—for security and a home. She soon found out that her husband was a sadist, a cruel, unprincipled man. She also had reason to suspect that he was a bigamist. She left him and went back to hospital work. Here she met Vaughan again as a patient, and they fell in love. She told Vaughan the truth about her husband, and he said: ‘Whether he is a bigamist or not, you’re never going back to him. You are going to marry me when we have got things straightened out.’ Vaughan took Little Thatch for two reasons: one was that Brendon was selling his Dulverton home and going to a place in the Midlands: two, was that he could not take Molly White home to Lannerdale for a few years, because people up there knew that she had recently married another man. So Nicholas Vaughan took Little Thatch, and Nurse White went to the hospital near Tiverton. From this place she used to phone the code message to Vaughan telling him the hour she could meet him at the spinney. Unhappily, Brendon heard her voice over the phone sending a message—about duck’s eggs—to Nicholas Vaughan. He began to think—for he was a desperately jealous man—and he also knew that he was in a dangerous position if his wife suspected his own past doings. Brendon undoubtedly spied on his wife, and at length learnt the place of her meeting with Vaughan. When any one person goes frequently to a given spot, like the spinney, it’s not very difficult to trace them, if you have a car and plenty of patience. Brendon decided that an accident should end Vaughan’s life—and I have no doubt if the ‘accident’ verdict had been accepted another accident would have happened to Nurse White.”
“You put a stop to that,” said St Cyres gruffly, for Anne was incapable of saying anything at all.
“Yes. The story has been pretty horrible, but think out the few good points which can be said to emerge,” said Macdonald. “I hold it as a good point that Brendon eliminated himself. He was a menace to the community. For Vaughan—I can only say what I have said before: he was very happy during the last months of his life, and he would have died without knowing it. Brendon wasn’t the man who would have fumbled his blow. And for Molly White—she at least had the joy of Vaughan’s devotion to make up to her a little for her disastrous marriage.” He broke off and spoke to Anne: “I am so sorry about the distress you have suffered over all this…and about Little Thatch. I know you loved it.”
Anne wiped her eyes vigorously. “I still do,” she said. “I’m not going to leave it like that. I’m going to rebuild and re-thatch it, and keep that garden cultivated—as Nicholas Vaughan would have done…and one day I’ll ask Nurse White to come and stay there and see if she’d like to have the home that was being got ready for her. It ought to be hers…”
Colonel St Cyres put in one final question: “I wonder what will happen to that place…Lannerdale, wasn’t it? Somehow I sympathised with Miss Vaughan: she did care about that place, and I’m afraid it will have gone to those shipbuilding cousins who didn’t care about the land.”
“‘The awful Hawkinses,’” said Macdonald, and he smiled as he spoke. “They weren’t so awful after all: they renounced all claim to Lannerdale and said that Elizabeth Vaughan could have it and welcome. Farming isn’t everybody’s notion of bliss.”
“Quite true,” said St Cyres, “but if you are born in the country and learn to love the land—well, you’re as happy as young Vaughan was, digging away in that garden.”
Macdonald got up and held out his hand to the old man and then to Anne: “You stick to your idea and rebuild Little Thatch,” he said as he shook hands. “One day I’ll come here again, and I shall hope to see that cottage looking as it did when Vaughan asked you to tea there at Easter.”
Anne gripped his hand and smiled back at him, though her eyes were still misty: “I’ll write and ask you to come and see it,” she said. “I’m going to get busy on the garden straight away. It’s the best way of making me forget all the waste…”
“Yes, and Vaughan would have said so, too,” agreed Macdonald.
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