“Including mine?”
“Of course. But up to the moment we haven’t come up with anything to your discredit, whereas in the case of Mrs. Cavell we discovered that there’d been a son who’d given trouble since his childhood.”
“She told me she hadn’t any children and I believed her at the time.”
“Naturally she’d say that. The facts about him, so far as we could discover, were that he’d run away from home twice before he was twelve, then disappeared completely when he was fifteen and after about a year was discovered working in a travelling circus. I think he may have been happy there and if he’d been left alone, he might have stayed fairly straight, but he was sent back to school and, being a bright boy, got into Cambridge. But he didn’t stand that for long and disappeared again, after which his parents appear to have given him up. But later he took to turning up from time to time with stories of how well he was doing in films—perhaps he really did for a time; there’s a bit of the ham actor about him, isn’t there?—and so on. But at least some of that time he spent in prison. There were one or two minor offences for which he was given short sentences, but then there was the bank holdup in Croydon in which one of the clerks was badly injured and Laycock got five years for that. And it was when that happened that Mrs. Cavell came to work for Mrs. Silvester. I imagine it was because she was lonely and that the last thing she’d have dreamt of at the time was that it would end in murder. But when Laycock came out she made a desperate effort to save him. She got him the job here, where he would be under her eye. And for the time being at least, I believe he was intending to go straight.”
“But she couldn’t bring herself to trust him,” Andrew said. “That was the trouble, wasn’t it? When the diamonds were stolen she took for granted he’d taken them. She told me so.”
“She really did that?” Theobald said. “Now that’s interesting.”
“She didn’t exactly mean to do it,” Andrew said. “But after Laycock told you he’d seen Quentin take the diamonds, she was talking to me and she gave me one of the most despairing looks I’ve ever seen on a human face and told me she’d been sure Laycock had taken them. It puzzled me, because, as I said, until then she’d always done her best to defend him. And now suddenly she seemed to want him to have been the thief. And of course she did, because if he wasn’t, she need never have committed murder. She’d just discovered that she’d done something brutal and horribly unnecessary and I think it nearly drove her crazy.”
“You were in the house when she did it,” Theobald said. “Didn’t it strike you that anything unusual was going on?”
“I’m afraid I’d fallen asleep,” Andrew said. “I just dozed off in a chair by the fire and didn’t wake up till Mrs. Cavell came to tell me that someone had left the back door open.”
“Having opened the door from inside herself, of course.”
“Yes, and I ought to have thought of that much sooner than I did. She was so intrepid, going round the house. It was her own suggestion that we ought to search it, then she went from room to room without the slightest sign that she was afraid someone might jump out at her with a lethal weapon. Of course she knew there was no one there. She merely wanted to impress on me, perhaps because she saw I was still groggy from sleep, that someone had come in from outside.”
“About her being so sure Laycock had taken the diamonds,” Theobald said, “when did you come to the conclusion that protecting him from the consequences of the theft was the motive for the murder?”
“I think I was uneasy about it from the start,” Andrew said, “though I didn’t understand it. It was just that after Mrs. Silvester had gone up to bed she suddenly called Mrs. Cavell up to her and she sounded very excited. I know I expected some sort of rumpus to break out, but in fact everything was quiet. And that’s when I fell asleep. And later Mrs. Cavell told me that Mrs. Silvester had wanted her simply to assure her that she’d meant what she’d said about changing her will and that Mrs. Cavell was really going to inherit everything. I didn’t question it, though I felt there was something strange about Mrs. Silvester having sounded so excited when she called Mrs. Cavell upstairs if it was only something like that that she wanted to say. But she was altogether in a very excited state that evening, so I didn’t think much about it. Of course what she really wanted to tell Mrs. Cavell was that the diamonds had been stolen.”
“And she assumed Laycock had taken them?”
“Yes.”
“And Mrs. Cavell saw all the effort she’d put in, trying to redeem her son, going to waste, and silenced Mrs. Silvester before she could call the police. Even if her son was guilty of the theft she didn’t want him arrested again and perhaps getting an even longer sentence than before.”
“Yes, you said yourself a woman could have strangled someone as old and frail as Mrs. Silvester, and Mrs. Cavell’s quite sturdy and has good strong hands. I remember noticing that when I first shook hands with her. I suppose she stopped Mrs. Silvester crying out by putting a pillow or something over her face. Using strangulation then may have been an attempt to make it look as if it was connected with the other murder, which at first it was thought to be. Anyway, by the time it happened, I was probably asleep. I expect they talked for a time, Mrs. Cavell trying to persuade Mrs. Silvester that Laycock might not be guilty, or perhaps to give him another chance, but Felicity was a very stubborn woman and if she’d made up her mind to call the police, she’d have done it.”
“And after the murder Mrs. Cavell took the address book out of Mrs. Silvester’s handbag, hoping that she could prevent any connection between her and Laycock being traced, then opened the back door and woke you up. You know, don’t you, that the address book turned up in Mrs. Silvester’s workbox?”
“Yes, and it was that that made me think seriously for the first time that Mrs. Cavell might be the murderer. It had not been there, I assumed, when your detective searched the room, and since he’d done that the only people who could have put the address book into the workbox were myself, Mrs. Cavell, Laycock and Patricia Neale. I knew I hadn’t done it, but I was witness to the fact that both Laycock and Patricia Neale had gone to the window and stood close to the little table with the workbox on it and might have slipped the address book in while I wasn’t looking. But why should either of them have done it? The book would have been a dangerous thing to have found in one’s possession, but returning it to the workbox was dangerous too and there was no need for either Laycock or Patricia to have done that. They’d both been out of the house and could have disposed of it anywhere. But Mrs. Cavell had been stuck at home since the time of the murder and could have found it difficult to get rid of the book. She may even have had it hidden on herself all the time your men were searching for it. And she probably thought it would look better if she appeared to find it than have it discovered by one of your men. She wasn’t afraid that Laycock would be suspected of having planted it, because she knew by then he’d got an alibi and was quite safe, but Patricia might have been a useful suspect.”
“How she must love that boy,” Theobald commented. “If only he’d been worth it!”
“I remember thinking there was a great power for loving going to waste in her,” Andrew said, “but I didn’t realize how tragically to waste.”
“What a surprise it must have been for Quentin Silvester to find that someone had committed the murder of his grandmother for him,” Theobald said. “And how fortunate for him that he failed to do it the evening before, because, d’you realize, he hasn’t gained in any way by her murder, so when he’s done his time for the murder of Margot Weldon he’ll find a nice nest egg waiting for him? He’ll quite legally inherit all his grandmother left him, with accrued interest.”
“Really?” Andrew said. “I suppose he will. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“I’m rather glad there’s something you haven’t thought of,” Theobald said, “though it’s been a pleasure talking to you.”
“I’m still not clear how your m
en happened to be on the spot when Agnes Cavell attacked me.”
“That was just luck. As I told you, we found out the probable connection between her and Laycock and a couple of men went to Ramsden House to bring them both in for questioning. We’d nothing solid against either of them yet. And my men happened to hear you yell, saw Mrs. Cavell attack you with a poker and so of course they broke into the house. Laycock was trying to hold her back. She was practically out of her mind by then, but he’s a professional. He’s economical in the use of violence.”
“It’s funny, I don’t remember yelling,” Andrew said. “I just remember darkness and silence.”
“That’s common enough when you get a blow on the head. You’ve remembered a lot more than a good many people do who’ve had concussion. And thank you for filling in a lot of details we hadn’t sorted out, even though we’d got the main outlines. But you’re looking very tired. I’d take your time before trying to leave here if I were you. Don’t hurry to get back on your feet.”
As any normally healthy person does in a hospital, Andrew determined that he would get back on to his feet at the first possible moment, but for that evening at least, when Theobald had said good night and left him, it was pleasant enough to lie still and be ministered to by a young nurse who clicked her tongue at him disapprovingly and said that at his age he should know better than to get into such trouble, but who smiled while she said it, and who presently gave him a pill to swallow, the purpose of which she did not tell him, but after taking which he sank into a deep, quiet sleep. He slept without dreaming until he was ruthlessly woken in the early hours of the morning by a woman with a cup of tea. For once he completely forgot that he liked to start the day with a piece of cheese.
He stayed in the hospital for two days and during that time he had two visitors.
The first was Mrs. Godfrey. She came, bringing him a bunch of daffodils from her garden and voluble condolences. He was not sure if it was mainly compassion or curiosity that brought her. Probably it was a mixture of the two, he thought, in which case it must have been a disappointing visit for her, for even though Andrew was glad to accept her sympathy and her flowers, he became very vague when she questioned him. After his long discussion with Theobald, when he had talked almost compulsively, he had lost all desire to talk to anyone else. He denied having any more knowledge of the case than she had herself, most of which, he gathered, she had gleaned from the newspapers. For though she had had one or two dramatic interviews with the police, just enough to make her want more, she was in general bewildered. She had an idea that something that she had told him was central to the investigation, but she did not understand what it was. Perhaps it was not kind of him, but Andrew explained, with some truth, that he still had a terrible headache and that he found it very difficult to think clearly.
His second visitor was Max Dunkerley. He was in his sweater and corduroy trousers with a leather jacket and with his scanty pinkish hair curling on the roll-collar of his sweater. He sat down in a chair by Andrew’s bed, fastening his wide-open, startled eyes on his face and saying nothing. Andrew mumbled something about it being very good of him to come, but did not know what else to say.
At last Max Dunkerley remarked, “I’m getting her pictures, you know.”
“Yes, I supposed you’d have them,” Andrew said.
“But I haven’t thought about hanging them yet.” Max said it in a tone of defiance, as if he expected to be criticized for it.
Andrew remembered the walls in Max’s flat, already covered with pictures.
“Well, there’s no hurry about it, is there?” he said.
“The fact is, they’ll remind me of the whole bloody business and I’d like to forget it.”
“That will take some doing, won’t it?”
“Oh, I don’t know. You can make yourself forget most things if you try hard enough.”
Andrew thought of how he had been pursued throughout his life by trivial verses, memorized in his childhood, which he would have loved, though without success, to forget.
“Perhaps I’ve never tried hard enough,” he said.
“For instance, I can forget nearly all the time that I ever asked that woman Agnes to marry me,” Max said. “What a mercy she wouldn’t have me, though I was very put out at the time. But just think what it would have been like finding oneself lumbered with a stepson like Edward Laycock.”
“I suppose it would have been unfortunate.”
“Apart from other disadvantages there might have been.” Max sat musing for a little while. Then he added, “Poor woman.”
Andrew was not certain if he was referring to Agnes or Felicity, but did not inquire.
Max fell silent again, his gaze now bypassing Andrew’s face and fixing itself on a spot on the wall of the ward.
“I’m thinking of selling the pictures,” he said. “Do you think there would be anything wrong about doing that?”
“I should say it’s entirely up to you,” Andrew replied.
“The fact is, I can’t help feeling guilty when I realize I’m benefiting by Felicity’s death. I wanted those pictures so much, you see. I used to think sometimes I wished she’d hurry up and die so that I could have them. And that seems terrible now.”
“If you sell them, you’ll still have the money you get for them, unless you give it to a charity,” Andrew said. Somehow he could not see Max giving the money to charity.
“But there’s something abstract about money,” Max said. “It isn’t tangible, like a lot of pictures you’re looking at every day.”
Andrew had heard money called a great many different things at different times, from a “good servant” to the “sinews of war,” not to mention the “root of all evil,” but he thought it was the first time that he had heard it called “abstract.”
Max explained, “It gets lost so easily in the housekeeping, doesn’t it? When I drink a bottle of whisky, I shan’t think I’m drinking Felicity’s lifeblood.”
“I’d wait and see how you feel about it in six months’ time,” Andrew said.
“Yes—yes, I’m sure that would be wise. Well, I hope you make a good recovery. Perhaps if I’m in London one day we might have lunch together.”
Andrew said that that would give him great pleasure, though he felt fairly sure that the invitation would never be issued. If Max went to work as hard as he had said at forgetting everything that had happened that Easter, he would quickly forget Andrew.
He discharged himself from the hospital next day though he still had a very sore patch on his head and felt somewhat shaky. He had been told that he would be required to attend both inquests, but he thought that he would sooner spend the time before them at home than at the Ring of Bells. He had to return once to Ramsden House, into which he was taken by a constable, to retrieve the few belongings he had left there, and the sense of desolation it gave him made him want to leave it again as quickly as he could. At the railway station of Bradenon-Thames he bought a copy of the Financial Times and settled down to read it on the short journey home. But he could not concentrate on it. Closing his eyes, he fell into a half-doze till he reached Paddington.
When he reached home the April sun was in a kindly mood, the sky was blue and the almond trees along the sides of the street were in gay and delicate blossom. Letting himself into his flat, he kicked off his shoes, left them lying in the middle of the room, padded across it in his socks and switched on the electric fire. As he did so he caught himself chanting a rhyme to himself. He chanted it aloud, as there was no one there to hear him.
“Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king,
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting,
the pretty birds do sing...”
He welcomed it because it was so completely divorced from the grim Easter that he had just endured. He knew that by the time it had hammered away in his head for two or three days, as it probably would, he would be deadly bored wi
th it, but at least for the moment it charmed him. He was not sure who had written it. Not Shakespeare, but certainly one of the Elizabethans, not one of the more banal Victorians, and that, he thought, gave it a certain status. Pouring out a glass of whisky, he settled down once more to the Financial Times.
Are you a fan of traditional British mystery? Say hello to Patricia Moyes and Inspector Henry Tibbett of Scotland Yard, and find out why the Chicago Tribune called Moyes “the writer who put the ‘who’ back in the whodunit.” Dead Men Don’t Ski (Henry Tibbett #1) and the entire Tibbett series are available from Felony & Mayhem, and wherever books are sold.
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Dead Men Don’t Ski
Chapter One
It was just nine o’clock on a cold and clammy January morning when Chief Inspector Henry Tibbett’s taxi drew up outside the uninviting cavern of Victoria Station. From the suburban lines the Saturday morning hordes of office-bound workers streamed anxiously through the barriers to bus and underground—pale, strained faces, perpetually in a hurry, perpetually late: but here, at this side-entrance that led into a sort of warehouse fitted with an imposing array of weighing-platforms, were assembled a group of people who looked as paradoxical at that hour and place as a troupe of Nautch girls at the Athenæum. They were not all young, Henry noted with relief, though the average age was certainly under thirty: but young or middle-aged, male or female, all were unanimous in their defiant sartorial abandon—the tightest trousers, the gaudiest sweaters, the heaviest boots, the silliest knitted hats that ever burst from the over-charged imagination of a Winter Sports Department. The faces were pale, true, but—Henry noted with a sinking heart—aggressively merry and free from any sign of stress: the voices were unnaturally loud and friendly. The whole, dingy place had the air of a monstrous end-of-term party.
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