And they lived happily ever after?
That is by no means certain. Deception had become a way of life for them, and as with other forms of deception, it may have lent a spice to their relationship without which they would not really be much interested in one another. On the other hand, in the watches of the night, each might wonder if the other could be a double agent. That might save their marriage.
INSTRUMENT OF JUSTICE
When Frances Liley read in the obituary column of The Times of the death of Oliver Darnell, beloved husband of Julia, suddenly at his home, she folded her arms on the table before her, put her head down on them and burst into violent tears. Anyone who had seen her then would have assumed that she was weeping at the loss of a dear friend. In fact, they were tears of relief, healing and wonderful. At last she was free. No threat hung over her any more. Or so she thought until she had had time to do a little thinking.
As soon as she had she sat back abruptly, dried her eyes roughly and sat staring before her, a dark, angularly handsome woman of forty, possessed by a new horror. For when a person died his solicitor or his executors or someone would have to go through his papers and somewhere they would find those terrible photographs. And God knew what would happen then. At least with Oliver, Frances had known where she was. Two thousand a year to him, which it had not been too difficult for her to find, and she had been relatively safe. But if someone else found the photographs and felt inclined to send them to Mark, her husband, he would immediately go ahead with the divorce that he wanted and would certainly get custody of their two children. That would be intolerable. She must think and think fast.
Luckily she had always had a quick brain. After only a few minutes she knew what to do, or at least what was worth trying. Telephoning Julia Darnell, she said, “It’s Frances, Julia. I’ve just seen the news about Oliver. I’m so terribly sorry. I can hardly believe it. It was his heart, was it? There was always something the matter with it, wasn’t there? Listen, my dear, please be quite honest with me, but would you like me to come down? I mean, if you’re alone now and I can help in any way. But don’t say you’d like me to come if you’d sooner I didn’t. Of course I’ll come to the funeral, but I could come straight away and stay on for a few days, unless you’ve some other friend with you.”
Julia was tearfully grateful. She had no relations of her own and had never liked Oliver’s, and though the neighbours, she said, had been very kind, she was virtually alone. And she and Frances were such very old friends, she could think of no one who could help so much to break the dreadful new loneliness of bereavement. Of course Julia had never known of her husband’s brief adultery with Frances, or that he had supplemented his not very large income as a painter of very abstract pictures with a sideline in blackmail, and her affection for Frances was uncomplicated and sincere. Promising to arrive that afternoon, Frances telephoned Mark in his office to tell him what had happened and that she would probably be away for a few days. The children were no problem, because they were away at their boarding school. Packing a suitcase, she set off for the Darnells’ cottage in Dorset.
By that time she had a plan of sorts in her mind. On the morning of the funeral she intended to wake up with what she would claim was a virus and say that she was feeling too ill to go out. Then, during the one time when she could be certain the cottage would be empty, she would make a swift search of it for the photographs. The probability was that they were somewhere in Oliver’s studio, a very private place in which Julia had never been allowed to touch anything, even to do a little cautious dusting. If they were not there, of course, if, for instance, Oliver had kept them in the bank, then there was nothing for Frances to do but go home and wait for the worst to happen, but with luck, she thought, she would find them.
Unfortunately her plan was wrecked by the fact that on the morning of the funeral it was Julia who woke up with a virus. She had a temperature of a hundred and two, complained of a sore throat and could only speak in a husky whisper. Frances called the doctor who gave Julia some antibiotics and said that she must certainly stay in bed and not go out into the chill of the February morning, even to attend her husband’s funeral. Julia, with bright spots of fever on her plump, naturally pale cheeks, cried bitterly and said, “But all those people coming back here to lunch, Frances – what am I to do about them? I can’t possibly put them off now.”
For Julia had insisted that Oliver’s relations, who were coming from a distance, and such neighbours as were kind enough to come to the funeral, must be given lunch in her house after it, and she and Frances had spent most of the day before assembling cold meats, salads, cheeses and a supply of rather inferior white wine for what Frances felt would be a gruesome little party, but the thought of which seemed to comfort Julia.
Again thinking fast, Frances said, “Don’t worry, I’ll look after them for you. I’ll go to the service, but I won’t go on to the cemetery, I’ll come straight back from the church and have everything ready for your friends when they arrive. Now just stay quiet and I’ll look after everything.”
She gave Julia the pills that the doctor had left for her and also brought her a mug of hot milk into which she had emptied two capsules of sodium amytal which she had found in the bathroom cabinet. They would almost certainly ensure that Julia would be asleep by the time that Frances returned from the church, and though she would not have as long for her search as she had hoped, she might still be fortunate.
There were not many people in the church. A man sitting next to Frances, who started a low-voiced conversation with her before the coffin had been brought in or the vicar appeared, introduced himself as Major Sowerby and said that his wife was desperately sorry not to be able to attend, but she was in bed with a virus.
“There’s a terrible lot of it around in the village,” he said. “Is it true poor Mrs. Darnell’s laid up with it too?”
“I’m afraid so,” Frances said.
“Tragic for her. Most upsetting. She and Oliver were so devoted to one another. Of course I didn’t understand his painting, but Isobel, my wife, who knows a lot more about that sort of thing than I do, says he deserved much more recognition than he ever had. Great dedication, she says, and such integrity.”
“Oh, complete,” Frances agreed with a sweet, sad smile, and thought that in its way it was true. Oliver had been dedicated to exploiting any woman who had been fool enough to be charmed by his astonishing good looks and to trust him. As soon as the service was over she hurried out of the church, leaving the other mourners to go on to the cemetery, and made her way along the lane that led to the Darnells’ cottage.
As she entered it, she stood still, listening. All was quiet. So it looked as if the sodium amytal had done its work and Julia was asleep. But just to make sure, Frances went to the foot of the stairs and called softly, “Julia!”
There was no reply. She waited a moment, then wrenched off her coat, dropped it on a chair and went swiftly along the passage to Oliver’s studio. Presently she would have to attend to the setting out of the lunch for Julia’s guests, but the search must come first. Opening the door of the studio, she went in and only then understood the reason for the quiet in the house. Julia, in her dressing-gown, was lying in the middle of the floor with her head a terrible mass of blood and with a heavy hammer on the floor beside her.
Frances was not an entirely hard-hearted person. Also, she was by nature law-abiding. Her first impulse, as she stared at the battered thing on the floor, was to call the police. But then a habit that she had of having second thoughts asserted itself. It was still of desperate importance to her to find the photographs and once the police were in the house she would have no further chance of searching for them. That made the situation exceedingly complex. For one thing, how were the police to know that it had not been Frances whom Julia, drugged and half-asleep, had heard downstairs in her husband’s studio, and coming downstairs to investigate, been killed by her for it? If Frances called the police now, she thought,
she might find herself in deep trouble.
But if she did not and searched for the photographs first, she would presently find herself with a cooling body on her hands and sooner or later would have to explain why she had failed to report it a few hours earlier. It did not help that she was almost certain that she knew who the murderer was. A virus can be a very convenient thing, and Mrs. Sowerby, who had not attended the church, would not have found out that Julia was ill and would have assumed that the house was empty. Looking round the studio, where drawers had been pulled out and papers, letters, sketches, notebooks, spilled on the floor, Frances wondered if the woman had found the photographs or letters that Oliver had presumably been holding over her before she committed murder, or if she was still in terror that someone else would find them. But even if she were, she was unlikely to come back for the present, knowing that a dozen guests would shortly be arriving. Taking the key out of the door, locking it on the outside and putting the key into the pocket of the suit that she was wearing, Frances went out to the kitchen to go on with preparing the lunch.
She took all the things that she and Julia had made the day before out of the refrigerator, spooned the various salads, the prawns with rice and peppers, the cucumbers in sour cream, the coleslaw and the rest, into cut glass bowls, arranged the slices of cold turkey, meat loaf and ham on dishes, and set them out on the table in the dining-room. She put silver and wine glasses on the table and drew the corks of several of the bottles of wine. The meal was only just ready when the first guests arrived.
They were the vicar, Arthur Craddock, and his wife. He was a slender, quiet-looking man whose voice, as he recited the psalms that Julia had chosen and described Oliver’s improbable virtues, had seemed unexpectedly vibrant and authoritative. But any authority that he might achieve when he was performing his professional duties was sadly diminished, in a mere social setting, by his wife, a large, hearty woman who looked kindly, but accustomed to domination and who upset Frances at once by saying that she would just pop upstairs to have a few words with poor Julia, tell her how splendidly everything had gone off and how much she had been missed.
“But the infection,” Frances stammered. “I believe it’s all round the village and I know she wouldn’t want you to be exposed to it here.”
“I’m never ill,” Mrs. Craddock replied. “Ask my husband. We were in India for a time, you know, and I’ve nursed patients through bubonic plague and never a whit the worse. I’m sure I could give Julia a little comfort.”
“Well, later, perhaps,” Frances said, recovering her presence of mind. “I went up to see her myself a few minutes ago and found her asleep. The doctor gave her a sedative. He said rest was what she needed, and I’m sure he’s right. I know she hasn’t slept properly for days. But she’s looking very peaceful now, so I don’t think we should disturb her.”
“Ah no, of course not,” Mrs. Craddock agreed. “Was that Dr. Bolling? Excellent man. The best type of good, old-fashioned family doctor whom you can really trust.”
She let herself and her husband be shepherded into the dining-room and they had each just accepted a glass of wine when the doorbell rang again and Frances left them to admit the next guests.
They were a brother and a cousin of Oliver’s, both of whom, he had once told Frances, he knew disliked him. The next to arrive was Major Sowerby and gradually the dining-room filled, the hushed tones in which everyone spoke on first arriving rising by degrees until the noise in the room resembled that of any ordinary cocktail party. The food on the table was eaten with appetite, the wine was drunk, and the atmosphere became one of what seemed to Frances a faintly gruesome hilarity, quelled only now and again by guilt when someone was tactless enough to remind the others that these were funeral baked meats that they were consuming.
Slightly flushed, Oliver’s brother remarked, “Julia was always a jolly good cook. Pity she can’t be with us now.”
“She must have taken a great deal of trouble over this,” Mrs. Craddock said, “but I expect it was good for her, taking her mind off her sorrow. I’d like to take a little of it up to her and tell her how we’ve all been thinking of her, because with all the noise we’ve been making I’m sure she must be awake by now. I’ll just pop up with a plateful, shall I, and perhaps a glass of wine?”
“That’s the ticket,” Major Sowerby said, “though whisky might do her more good. I took a good strong whisky up to my wife before I left for the church, and a sandwich. She said a sandwich was all she could face. Actually I had to insist on her staying in bed, she was so upset at not being able to make it to the funeral, but obviously she wasn’t fit to go out. The fact is, you know, she thought a lot of Oliver. Sat for her portrait to him once, then made me buy the thing. Well, I didn’t mind doing it really, because no one could guess it’s Isobel, it’s all squares and triangles and she says it’s good and she knows far more about that sort of thing than I do.”
Mrs. Craddock was spooning prawns and rice on to a plate, murmuring, “I wonder if she likes cucumber – it disagrees with some people,” adding a slice of turkey, a small piece of ham and reaching for a bottle of wine to fill a glass for Julia.
Frightened beyond words and desperate, Frances snatched the plate and the glass from the woman’s hands, said brusquely, “I’ll take them,” made for the door and while Mrs. Craddock was still only looking startled at her rudeness, shot up the stairs and through the open door into Julia’s bedroom.
In its silence she first began to feel the real horror of the situation. Here she was with food and wine in her hands for a woman who lay in a room downstairs with her body cooling and her head battered in. Her gaze held hypnotized by the sight of the empty bed with its dented pillows and its blankets thrown back, Frances gulped down the wine, wishing that it was something stronger, then went downstairs again and put down the plate of untouched food on the dining-table.
“She drank the wine, but she wouldn’t eat anything,” she said to Mrs. Craddock. “I gave her another of the pills the doctor left for her. She’s very sleepy. I really think it’s best to leave her alone.”
Frustrated in her desire to do good, the vicar’s wife soon left, sweeping her husband along with her, and after that, one by one, the other guests departed. At last the house was empty and quiet again.
Too quiet, too desolate. The last hour had been the worst nightmare that Frances had ever lived through, but at least the crowd of chattering people had been a defence against thought. Now she could not escape from it any longer. There was the problem of the photographs and the problem of the corpse in the studio. Looking at the table littered with china, wine glasses and left-overs, she had an absurd idea that she might do the washing-up before trying to cope with the murder, but recognizing this for the idiocy that it was, and that her motive was only to put off doing what she must, she poured out a glass of whisky, sat down at the head of the table and tried to concentrate.
The photographs came first. She must nerve herself to go back into the studio and search for them. What she did next would depend to some extent on whether or not she found them. She could hardly bear to face the possibility that she might not. With the dreadful things in his hands, Mark would certainly be able to obtain custody of the children when he went ahead with the divorce that he wanted, and she would never submit to that. For apart from the pleasure that she took in the two dear girls, it would be intolerable to let Mark triumph over her.
She thought of the photographs, of which Oliver had only once allowed her a glimpse, of how appallingly revealing they were, and of the bitter amusement with which Mark would view them. They were, in their way, superb photographs. Oliver might not have been an outstanding painter, but as a photographer he had been highly skilled, as well as incredibly ingenious. She had had no suspicion of the presence of the camera in the room at the time when he had taken the pictures, and when he had told her how he had done it, she had almost had to laugh, it had been so clever. But now she must get them back. That was what
she must do before she thought of anything else.
She went back into the studio. It was easier than she had thought that it would be to disregard Julia’s body, the darkening blood and the murderous hammer. Locking the door in case anyone, that well-meaning busybody, Mrs. Craddock, for instance, should think of coming back, she began on a methodical search of the drawers and cupboards. To her surprise, she found the photographs almost at once, not merely prints, but the negatives too, in a box in a cupboard which she thought had not yet been opened by the previous searcher.
She found several other photographs of a similar character. Feeling dizzy with relief, close to bursting into tears as she had when she had first read of Oliver’s death, she studied these, which were of three women, and wondered which of them was of Isobel Sowerby. Frances knew nothing about her except that her husband did not think that she looked as if she consisted of squares and triangles. But none of the women did. They all had more curves than angles. And two of them looked rather young to be married to Major Sowerby, though that was not the sort of thing about which it was ever possible to be sure. Men of sixty sometimes married girls in their teens. However, Frances thought that Julia’s murderess was probably the third woman, who was about her own age, big, heavy-breasted, rather plump, with a look of passion and violence about her. In fact, a formidable-looking woman, surely capable of murder. After studying her face for some minutes, Frances put her photographs, the prints and the negatives, back into the cupboard, took those of herself and the two younger women to the sitting-room, put them down on the hearth and set fire to them.
The negatives spat, blazed briefly and disappeared, making a pungent smell in the room. The prints curled at the edges and caught fire more slowly, but as she prodded them with the poker, they flared up, then smouldered into ash. Watching them, sitting on her heels, she waited until there was not a spark left, then stood up and went to the telephone.
The Casebook of Jonas P. Jonas and Other Mysteries Page 14