The Murder of My Aunt

by Richard Hull

  However, the immediate thing was to stop Williams from talking – a bit of a problem, for Williams is not exactly a silent gentleman at any time, and as for market-day – And how to put it I did not know, for clearly Williams had his suspicions and I did not want to seem to agree with them. At the same time, if I seemed too blind he might go on brooding over it, and then he might go talking to goodness knows whom and the fat might be properly in the fire. Fortunately he talked so long, and repeated himself so much, that I was able to think out a plan.

  ‘Look, Mr Williams, I think I can guess what’s in your mind; and, in fact, since you’ve told me this I see the whole thing. Poor Mr Edward has been hinting to me that a new trick he was teaching So-so was responsible for my accident. Of course it wasn’t really, it was the brakes of the car, and that’ (I managed to giggle) ‘was nothing to do with So-so. But Mr Edward has been most frightfully worried about it, and I’ve only just managed to reassure him, so I want the whole thing forgotten now. Besides, Dr Spencer says it’s better for my health that no more should be said about it. So, just as a favour, Mr Williams, thank you very much for telling me, very much indeed, but would you, now I know, forget it and not talk to anyone about it?’

  It was obviously difficult for Williams to do it, and eventually I had to agree that he might talk to Dr Spencer about it if he wanted to. Clearly Williams felt I had to be more on my guard and found the ‘accident’ a bit hard to swallow; but finally I got him to agree that I knew best, or at any rate that Dr Spencer and I together knew best, and he went off perplexed and I think not quite sure that he had done his duty, but, on the whole, reluctantly convinced. I felt I could rely on him unless anything unforeseen stirred him up. But I had to suppress firmly Edward’s ghastly tombstone for So-so. If Williams had heard of it he’d have blown up. And for that matter So-so, a dog with a certain amount of taste and, I really believe, a sense of humour – at least no Pekingese will consent to be made a fool of – would certainly have turned in his grave and probably haunted the place till we had it removed.

  But after that, even I found it harder to keep up my belief in Edward’s entire innocence.

  Naturally I told Dr Spencer all about it, and unfortunately some chance words came to the ears of Mrs Spencer and Jack. On the whole it was a relief to let these old friends into my confidence; I don’t know why telling someone else about one’s troubles helps, but it does. We were discussing it on the night they all came to dinner, before Edward, late as usual, came down. I must admit that his arrival caused a certain restraint, and Violet Spencer is no actress! I’m not surprised that even Edward noticed her frantic and terrified expression when he began to ask at dinner how you set fire to things.

  I must own that I was a little slower than the rest of them in realizing the object in Edward’s remarks. Once more poor Edward thought he was being so clever, and once more he gave himself away hopelessly. Violet, I think, spotted it first, but all three of them got there in a very short time, and then everyone had to do some very quick thinking as to how to act. Violet, as I say, knowing she was no actress, simply retired into her shell and looked so miserable that she nearly gave the show away. Jack, who had to answer, at first passed the thing off quite neatly; in fact, if nobody had wanted him to, Edward would never have got his information as to how to light his little bonfire.

  But then, to the amazement of Violet, Jack, and myself, Dr Spencer suddenly gave him a hand. I could hardly believe my ears when he suddenly chipped in, revived the flagging conversation, and threw an obvious cue to Jack to give Edward the information he wanted.

  ‘But why did you do it?’ I asked him afterwards. ‘If you’re afraid of Edward having some design which involves this fire, why tell him how to do it?’

  ‘Because, my dear lady, forewarned is forearmed. Because if we know what Edward’s plans are – that is assuming he has any, and I hope he hasn’t – we can defeat them. Because, if you won’t do what I once more implore you to do and tackle Edward direct, or let me tackle him for you, we must use our brains to keep one move in front of him. That’s why I threw that cue bid, slam invitation as the contract players would say, to Jack. Don’t you think he picked it up neatly?’

  ‘I do, but where are we? We know now that somewhere, sometime Edward intends to burn something. What? When?’

  ‘When’s clear enough. Obviously if he wants a delayed fire it’s to give himself time to get away. Therefore “when” is the next time or the next time but one that he spends a week-end, or even a night, elsewhere. Edward’s not very subtle, and if we watch him we shall see his preparations. I haven’t the least doubt. But as to what he wants to burn, I’m afraid we know that too. Oh, don’t start to deny it –’

  ‘But I will. I can’t believe it of him.’

  ‘You’re incorrigible. Once more, do let me tackle him; I don’t like all the suspense and worry there is for you. Let alone the danger, and even if we do keep our wits about us, there is danger. Now, mayn’t I?’

  ‘No. If anyone talks to him, I do. And I’m going to see if I can’t control him without that. After all, life here is going to be pretty odd after that talk, whether he admits it or not, isn’t it? Besides, while Edward doesn’t realize how much we know, he’ll go on giving himself away as he did last night. Let him know we’re suspicious and he’ll be more careful. Let me try my own way for a bit longer.’

  ‘You’re a brave woman; but,’ Dr Spencer smiled sadly, ‘I think you’re a foolish one, you know.’

  I suppose he was right, really; but I had made up my mind to watch Edward carefully and see if our suspicions were proved. If they were wrong, no one would be more glad than I. If they were right, I would make his second plan fail completely, drop a threat of ‘taking action’ – at that time I had not made the decision I subsequently made as to what that action was to be – and hope that would frighten him off the idea altogether. Perhaps the shock of a second failure would sober him down completely, and that was what I passionately wanted. I wanted no scandal to come near the Powells of Brynmawr – his father had done all too much in that way already – and I wanted Edward to settle down and carry on the family traditions – even, as Edward would have said, to the extent of keeping the window-sills painted anchovy pink. Such a nice colour really.

  The next incident was positively comic.

  So far as I could make out at the time, Edward came down to dinner looking portentiously solemn – his face always gives him away, and I always knew when he was concealing anything – drank no more than usual at dinner so far as I could see, but by the end was apparently so intoxicated that he very nearly slipped under the table. When he went off to bed almost immediately after he started his coffee, yawning prodigiously and nodding helplessly in his chair, I thought he had had the good sense to tumble to the fact that his conversation for the last half-hour had been utterly and ludicrously incoherent, and had decided to sleep it off.

  But I couldn’t think how on earth the boy had got so drunk. It certainly wasn’t during dinner, so I presumed he had taken to drinking secretly before dinner. A fine old time I had trying to rack my brains as to what had disappeared out of what decanters during the previous day. Finally I came to the conclusion that nothing very much had, so I was forced to think that he must have some store of his own, and that was a thing I was not going to allow.

  Accordingly I hunted round, and the first thing I found was a bottle of absinthe, and naturally I thought I had got to the bottom of the trouble. I confiscated the bottle, of course, and I must say I was surprised that Edward made no fuss about it. Really, to this day, I don’t know why. I suppose he was a little ashamed of it, and that, coupled with the fact that he didn’t really like it, made him say nothing. But at the time I merely took it to mean that he had some more somewhere else, and so I redoubled my search.

  I am aware that it is not a very ladylike thing to search someone else’s possessions thoroughly for concealed bottles of spirits, and I blush a little to write i
t, but I really think it was excusable. It was a fixed idea of mine that Edward had to be controlled and, with the example of Edward’s grandfather known to me, excessive drinking had to be stopped. But I went on to do a far less ladylike thing. I did, in fact, possess a key of Edward’s safe. I examined the safe and found therein Edward’s diary, and not only did I read it then and there, but from that time onwards I continued to read it regularly. Of course, the first thing I found out was that Edward’s trouble was not absinthe, but a Somnoquube. What a word! After a time I really began almost to look forward to reading it, to seeing what new and amazing perversions Edward could put on my motives. But during all the fire incident the chief effect was to give me a feeling of terrific power and security.

  For now I could let Edward do what he liked. I could lead him straight up the garden path and let him down the other end with an almighty bump.

  I read with great amusement how well Edward thought he had got out of Dr Spencer’s question about the time and the clock on the car; in fact, his too ready explanation only made the doctor more suspicious, and if he did make me wince a bit occasionally in the things he said about me, I forgot it all in the fun I had watching his preparations. But let me, though I anticipate, say once and for all that I never read any of the dirty passages in Edward’s French books. I wouldn’t do such a thing. Edward’s diary was perhaps the worst thing I ever read. For that suggestion I made up my mind he should pay, and on the whole I thought the most appropriate way that he could pay was by his own fire burning his own books.

  Unfortunately, Edward thought of that too. Of course his little plan involved burning them all as an unfortunate incident in the burning of me, and my little plan was more modest. Still, he did defeat me by taking them away, nominally, to be rebound – and I am sure he took the worst. By the way, he didn’t bring them all back, and I should like to know where they are, for they really oughtn’t to remain undestroyed, I gather.

  Of course, any fool would have smelt a rat when Edward made all those stupendous preparations to go away. By the time he’d taken his clothes to be pressed and cleaned (and insulted Mary and me in the process) and packed up a few things to dazzle the friends of the well-dressed Guy Innes, there was practically nothing left in his bedroom. Indeed, Mary began to wonder what on earth was happening.

  As a matter of fact Edward was making himself much more objectionable to the unfortunate girl than you would imagine from what he says. So much so, that seeing all the packing, she got a confused idea in her head that he wanted her to run away with him forever, which was a thing she was not going to do under any circumstances. I don’t quite remember when it was she came and complained to me of Edward’s behaviour, but it was a very circumstantial story and I had no hesitation in believing it. That matter I did speak to Edward about, but his account leaves a good deal out.

  Once, indeed, I nearly gave myself away. Edward’s experiments, of course, were rather a scream, and his miscellaneous purchases in Shrewsbury distinctly amused me; but it was rather a nuisance when, instead of crawling many miles from the house and trying to work it out in a gravel pit or wherever he did go, he started to do things in Brynmawr. All the same I oughtn’t to have said so bluntly that he had fused all the lights – I ought to have made out I was deceived by his very inferior pretence of finding out that the lights wouldn’t work. As a matter of fact I was a little rattled by his hypocritical solicitude for my ‘old eyes’. Old, indeed! I can see as well as any young person, and, moreover, I am not so very old.

  4

  However, so things went on until Edward set out for his visit to that horrible Guy Innes – really I think Edward’s description is quite damning enough without further words from me – and I was left to be burnt alive; though really, as a matter of fact, I’d never thought of it that way. I was much too much enjoying the whole comedy to feel in the least worried.

  As Edward disappeared down the drive I watched him and laughed heartily at the awful state I knew him to be in. I was going to have lots of fun during the ensuing night, and I felt quite safe, having just got in a new, large, and splendid supply of fire-extinguishers all unknown to Edward, but specially for his benefit.

  Of course the first thing to do was to see where his infernal machine was. It wasn’t very hard to find, as Edward’s room was nearly empty except for the furniture. That in itself was not surprising, for it had been almost impossible to see him for the luggage piled up in his car. Really it only had the effect of making my search easier, and a very few minutes’ rummaging in half-empty drawers brought me to the wardrobe. That gave me a little problem. I could find a duplicate key in all probability, but was it worthwhile looking for it? Supposing I found it and opened it, was I going to alter Edward’s arrangements, or should I leave them? You see, I had made up my mind to have the fire, both to burn what books were left and also for realism; but if I made no alteration, it might mean that I had got to sit up half the night, because, while I did not know what time Edward had fixed on for his party, it was certain to be pretty late, so that I (and everyone else) should be soundly asleep.

  Well, I don’t like staying up frightfully late as a rule, but I don’t mind occasionally, and I happened to have a book I wanted to read and a Women’s Institute report to write, so I decided to do it. Besides, even if I did find the key, I wanted the time-machine to work – I wasn’t just going to put a match to it, it mightn’t have burnt the right way – and I didn’t know how to alter his clock so that it went off, so to speak, at a different and earlier hour. So I just re-read the directions for using the fire-extinguishers and put the subject clean out of my mind. Really, I couldn’t be bothered to let Edward occupy the whole of my existence; I’d plenty of other things to do.

  As a matter of fact I nearly forgot the silly boy too completely, only fortunately I noticed that the first gulp of my coffee tasted a little odd, and remembered his beastly cubes just in time. As it was, I had a terrific struggle, even with the little I had taken, to fight sleep off. For a couple of hours I really wasn’t quite sure what I was doing, the objects in the room seemed either to come towards me vastly enlarged in size, or to recede into the infinite distance. I just had sufficient sense to pour the rest of the coffee out of the window, where, curiously enough, I found afterwards that several of the Salpiglossis died – but that may have been a coincidence – and to keep going until it began to pass off. By that time the maids had gone to bed, and I went out and made myself some fresh and very strong coffee and went up to Edward’s room.

  I had plenty of time to select exactly what should be burnt, and originally I intended to make a careful choice, but unfortunately I couldn’t do that. It was impossible to make a selective fire without Edward knowing I had arranged it, and I couldn’t yet bring myself to an open declaration. Besides, he would want to claim from the Insurance Company, and that would mean inquiries, rather awkward inquiries possibly, apart from the question of common honesty. I felt quite bad enough about the car as it was. No, on the whole, there must be no fire claim. I must just grin and bear the loss of the wardrobe and the bookcase and the damage to the wallpaper (anyhow, Edward’s room wanted repapering) and prevent any claim being made somehow. Reluctantly I returned to their drawer some particularly offensive crimson shirts, and a pair of mauve and lemon pyjamas, and waited.

  But I had a shockingly long time to wait. I finished my report and grew tired of reading, and still the mine hadn’t gone up. Supposing Edward’s mechanics were so incompetent that the thing never started? In that case I couldn’t go to bed until Edward chose to return! And that might be a week! I pulled myself together and decided that if something didn’t happen in half an hour I would open the wardrobe door somehow. Meanwhile, I turned spiteful and worked out my plans for the next day with the object of giving the maximum pain to Edward. On the whole, I think, after reading his account of it, that I was successful in that. It was then, too, that I decided on my final plans.

  All this took time and my
half-hour was long past, and my mind was far away in the future, when I realized with a start that there was crackling coming from inside the wardrobe and a little smoke coming out. It took a little nerve to let it go on. Very soon I was able to poke the flames through the side and guide the fire up to the bookcase with some firewood I had brought for the purpose, and so cause traces of fire on the wall and all over the bookcase. By that time I thought I had risked enough, and in, I must admit, a slight panic, worked my fire-extinguishers until I had got the fire completely out. As a matter of fact, I was only just in time to save a real fire, but, to my annoyance, rather too early for the efficient burning of Edward’s beastly books. However, I completed that job at the remains of the kitchen fire and retired to bed very weary, but quite happy.

  The next morning I took breakfast in bed – a thing I almost never do, and generally dislike – telling Mary that I had been kept awake by the fire which I pooh-poohed as a slight accident. I had some difficulty, as a matter of fact, in preventing both her and Cook from getting excited about it. However, I managed it in the end and rested placidly most of the morning. I suppose the drug had made me a bit lazy, but in any case it was very definitely part of the spite that Edward should have a little suspense. For the same reason, too, I made Dr Spencer send a deliberately mysterious telegram. Composing that wire was a rather delicate business.