Portrait of a Murderer

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Portrait of a Murderer Page 19

by Martin Edwards


  There was also, he reflected, the problem of the cheque made out to Eustace, that had been drawn on the morning of Christmas Day. If Brand had slain his father, that cheque must have been drawn before his (Brand’s) arrival. Had Eustace, then, visited the library before his brother-in-law? And if so, how was it his cheque had been drawn later than Brand’s?

  Between this Scylla and Charybdis of evidence Miles endeavoured to guide his craft. He came back again and again to the problem of the cheque. Brand must have received his cheque on Christmas Eve; then suppose he went up to his room before midnight, while Eustace took his place downstairs. Then imagine Brand going down for the second time. Reason instantly asserted itself, demanding “Why?” He had the cheque. So much, in the circumstances, must be allowed. He would not, Miles was convinced, even want to destroy that extraordinary document he had signed, since it strengthened his position. Without it, it might be difficult to make anyone believe that Adrian had parted voluntarily with so large a sum. Then—what excuse could he have had for his return? Moreover, there was Eustace’s own story of descending to the library at three o’clock. Since Gray could clearly never have left the room, Eustace must have examined the safe after his death. Which brought Miles wearily back to his first point.

  Had Eustace or Brand committed the crime?

  4

  His arrival at Sloane Square drove the problem for the time being from his mind. He had an entertaining and spirited evening, and returned home at midnight. He said nothing to Ruth at that stage, although the problem continued to torment himself. Two days later the second brick of the wall to be reared against Brand was slid unobtrusively into position.

  Still having taken no steps to correspond with the authorities, Miles was walking down Charing Cross Road under a sunny sky. The wind, that had been piercing the previous day, had dropped, and the afternoon was pleasantly warm and cheerful. A sense of gaiety was infused by the bright air and the eager appearance of the men and women strolling up and down the road; at every second-hand book-store stood men turning over the volumes in the shelves that stood on the pavement. In the book-lined intimate interiors an occasional figure, as indefinite as a shadow, could be spied stretching an arm to abstract a book from a high shelf or stooping nearer the door or infrequent window that the light might fall on a certain page. Miles, desire stronger than any sense of duty or expediency, paused with them. He presently bought a volume of letters, edited by Mr. L——, and, seduced by haunting coloured plates in bright purples, yellows, and dark reds, a book on French painting. In the shop, waiting to have these wrapped up, he pulled out an illustrated edition of Hans Andersen’s Fairy Tales, with entrancing coloured pictures and innumerable designs in black and white. Moira and Pat, he thought, would be crazy with delight if he took it back to them. But the price was high—half a guinea. He hesitated, turning the pages with renewed pleasure and recollection.

  He was still undecided when a cheerful voice observed in his ear, “Hullo, Miles. That looks rather jolly.”

  Lifting an astonished head, he saw Isobel smiling at him. But an Isobel transfigured. Gone were the languor, the timidity, the apathy that had characterised her for years. In their place was an assurance, a charm, a sense of health and expectancy that warmed the air and his heart.

  He said, “Hullo! Is this one of your haunts, too?” and Isobel laughed and replied, “It’s one of the many new vices I’m acquiring—virtues, you’d call them, of course. I’ve got a job now, so I can afford to indulge them.”

  He asked her what it was. She told him, “Nothing terribly important. I’m cataloguing a library for a bewildered elderly spinster who’s been left an enormous legacy of literature by a scholarly brother. Poor dear, she’s quite terrified by the weight of learning, and she’s torn between a contempt of anyone who can waste his life absorbing other people’s thoughts, and a feeling that so many books, so sombre, so heavy, and so difficult to read, must be immensely valuable. So I’m cataloguing them, and when that job’s done she’s going to take the list to an expert and see what she’d better do about them.”

  “And you like it?”

  “I do, Miles. I’ve discovered a dormant hunger for books that I believe will swell eventually to a passion. I get pleasure just from handling them. I begin to find a room empty and spiritless if books don’t form part of the furnishing. I’ve even begun to buy books of my own. Look here!” She showed him a volume she had been carrying under her arm. It was a gift edition of Chaucer’s Tales.

  “Where did you pick this up? It’s not very easy to come by this edition nowadays.”

  “This is my lucky day. Everything in the garden’s beautiful. I was actually given some primroses by my employer this morning. She had a hamper up from the country. And now this. And meeting you. Are you buying that for the children?” She nodded towards the Hans Andersen.

  “I’m striving against temptation.”

  “The temptation of buying it? Oh, Miles, give in at once. Nothing is so heavenly as an un-birthday present.”

  She was so glowing, so persuasive, so confident in her hope, that he yielded with a laugh. “And I don’t mind taking that book off you at cost price,” he added, laying a finger on the Chaucer.

  “I couldn’t, Miles. I couldn’t really. When I think of the time I’ve spent, all this week, quieting my Nonconformist conscience, the agony of indecision in which this very afternoon I walked from Oxford Street—no, I couldn’t. I’ve been waiting a whole week for enough money to buy it, and I was paid last night. I was terrified lest it should be snapped up.”

  “Why has conscience been so active in the matter? Is it against your principle to buy books?”

  “It’s a question of £ s. d. Conscience insisted that if I didn’t spend the money on handkerchiefs, I should be reduced to the sort of painting-rags that Brand pulls out of his pocket in company. Poor Brand!” Her expression sobered. “He’s had a horrible life with that woman, you know. You don’t realise how she’s kept his house all these years—it’s filthy and full of the most contemptible rubbish, everything shoddy and broken and worthless. Those handkerchiefs were typical. Though, as a matter of fact”—she smiled again—“he’d unearthed a silk one from somewhere that last night. I teased him about it.”

  Miles’s heart gave a sickening jolt. While they waited for the Hans Andersen to be wrapped up, he asked her casually which night, and, without arousing her suspicion, learned that she referred to Christmas Eve. It was clear that she had no notion whither his enquiries tended; she was too happy for the shadow of that tragedy to touch her to-day. Miles envied her; she spoke lightly of so many trivialities that pleased her, and caught him with a detaining hand when he would have gone away without his change.

  “Day-dreaming?” she accused him, laughing.

  He pulled himself together, made her some appropriate reply, and walked with her to Trafalgar Square.

  “Have some tea,” he offered her, with a sudden effort, realising that it was now five o’clock.

  She shook her head. “I’ve got to get back. Any time you want your library catalogued, Miles, ring me up, and I’ll give you special terms.”

  5

  Miles walked blindly under the Admiralty Arch into St. James’s Park. Destiny, it seemed, was determined that he should be heavily implicated in this affair. He wondered whether it would later occur to Isobel what she had said, what far-reaching results might spring from those lightly uttered words. For if Brand had a silk handkerchief on Christmas Eve, that, surely, must be the handkerchief found in Adrian Gray’s fireplace some hours later. If it hadn’t been burnt, it must have been discovered by the police among his belongings, for they had examined every pocket, drawer, and soiled-linen basket for handkerchiefs made of silk and had found none, except in Eustace’s luggage.

  “It must have been his,” argued Miles desperately. “It’s no good fighting against facts. There are too many
fools doing it all the time, as it is. Brand must have killed his father. He killed him, in the heat of passion, with the paper-weight, that he afterwards rubbed clean with a handkerchief, that he later burned in the grate. Presumably there was blood on it—must have been, when you remember the state of Gray’s face. And now we’re back at the old question—Why?”

  Round and round, like a dormouse endlessly turning its wheel, he drove his familiar arguments. Presently, like an infuriated dormouse, seeing no way out, he was striding through the London streets, repeating the same facts and phrases again and again, as though their constant repetition would give them a fresh meaning.

  There is a game played in childhood, particularly among the Boy Scouts of the last generation, that consists in changing a word, a letter at a time, into a totally dissimilar one. Thus

  CAT

  COT

  COG

  DOG

  though the examples are never so simple as that, and the words never of fewer than five letters. But some such game Miles was playing to himself now. He began with the position as it was known to the public, and strove to change it, a fact at a time, into a proven case against Brand.

  “Of course, Eustace’s cheque is the problem,” he told himself. “If we could put Eustace out of the affair, things would be a lot easier. Brand gets his cheque, quarrels with his father, murders him, no doubt accidentally, and slips off to bed, presumably removing any clues there may be against himself.”

  But this version seemed to him woefully unsatisfactory. He was by no means intimate with Brand; nevertheless, he was convinced that, having obtained his money, nothing Adrian Gray said, no matter how bitter or insulting, would arouse in his son any appreciable feeling, certainly not to the extent of murder.

  “There’s something else,” he decided, turning into a Tube station, and holding out his season-ticket for the benefit of the man at the barrier, “something he destroyed or something he’s hidden. The point is, what? And what has it got to do with the two cheques?”

  The following day he determined to sift the matter as far as he was able, and he went, therefore, to a newspaper office, where he read through the detailed accounts of Gray’s death and the subsequent reports. He examined each detail minutely, and presently a fresh consideration occurred to him.

  “Whoever burnt the handkerchief burnt the blotting-paper,” he decided. “A man doesn’t burn blotting-paper, when there’s an empty basket at his elbow, unless he’s got some specific reason. I don’t suppose Gray had written anything he wanted destroyed. There was too little paper ash—an infinitesimal quantity, according to the police; certainly not enough to account for letters or anything damaging of that kind. Besides, if it had been incriminating letters, they wouldn’t have been written and blotted in that room; they mightn’t even have been in Gray’s handwriting. So I should say the blotting-paper was burnt by someone else. And was that other man Brand? And if so, why? What record did that blotting-paper contain? We know the cheques were blotted, and Brand’s document was blotted, but no one ever saw that sheet of blotting-paper. Now, why should it be burnt unless it contained some other record that it was dangerous for anyone else to see? It must have been something brief, too, because the paper-ash is so small.”

  It then occurred to him that the damaging paper might have been carried off by the murderer, although no ash had been found in any other room.

  “And there’s one more point, while I think of it, and that is the matches. Eustace has a patent cigarette-lighter; only Brand uses those horrible cheap splinters. The police don’t seem to have made much of that.”

  Presently he turned from that line of enquiry to another problem that had troubled him from the first. How had Brand compelled his father to draw a cheque for that amount? The only answer that occurred to him was blackmail, but the question at once arose: what hold could Brand conceivably have over a man like Adrian Gray? No one would be likely to listen to anything he said. Moreover, Gray had no particular stake to lose, and Brand didn’t know enough reputable people for his word to carry any weight. And then, look at that paper. It’s ludicrous, thought Miles, sucking fiercely at a pipe. It’s just the kind of fulsome, pompous affair Gray might have conceived—but who would be likely to part with two thousand pounds on so vague an assurance? Then, too, it must have been obvious to him that if Brand disappeared, as certainly with that amount of money in hand he would, he’d be morally if not legally responsible for those children, if it came to any question of State support. And since Brand had no legal claim on him at all, he wouldn’t have given him money. It wasn’t as if it would help his own position later. And as there were no obligations, that gift absolved him from nothing. Then what inducement had Brand offered?

  Be melodramatic for a minute, and suppose Brand had been violent. It was quite probable, if the younger man saw any prospect of personal advantage that he wouldn’t hesitate at any threat. But what threat could he use? Holding a pistol—literally, a pistol—to his father’s head? Nonsense. Brand hadn’t got a pistol, and wouldn’t know how to handle one, in any case. Then had he threatened the old man with the block of brass?

  “I’ll smash your skull if you don’t give me that money?” Was that the kind of thing that had gone on in the library on Christmas Eve? Miles shook his head again. That wasn’t Brand’s line. Besides, cui bono? Gray had only to refuse to surrender the cheque and Brand was powerless. A murder with no adequate reward was a form of activity that even men of Brand’s erratic genius did not pursue. Besides, there were two arguments against this remote possibility. One was the presence, under the ledge of Gray’s table, of a concealed electric bell; that would have aroused comment and enquiry, ringing at such an hour. The second was Gray’s blatant betrayal of his son the next morning in the presence of the whole family, when he would unquestionably narrate the history of Brand’s hold-up the previous night and recover his cheque.

  “Brand had nothing important to sell him,” concluded Miles, “because it would have been found among his papers. And even if he had compelled Gray to give him a cheque, and then murdered him because it was his only hope of keeping the money, still that doesn’t account for Eustace’s cheque. I’m damned if I see how we can work that in. Unless, of course, Eustace forged the thing himself. Yes, that’s an idea. I wonder if there’s any remote possibility of that being true. It’s the precise sum he wanted; he was bound to be gaoled if he couldn’t raise it, and I daresay he thought he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. Then where does Gray come in? Of course, it’s possible to sit at that table in a bad light and draw a cheque without seeing the body under the curtains—possible though not very likely. But surely he’d glance at the most recent counterfoil and then he’d see Brand’s name down for two thousand pounds. But I’ll swear it came as much of a shock to him as to anyone on Christmas morning, when he heard about it. He didn’t know. I’m convinced of that. But, on the other hand, now I recall the scene more particularly, Brand was pretty certain Eustace hadn’t got a penny. He taunted him with it. But if Eustace had got that cheque, why didn’t he mention it at the time? That would be the obvious thing to do. And why didn’t he mention it to the police? He must, if he wasn’t completely imbecile, realise it would be impossible to conceal the existence of the cheque, and, anyway, what reason would he have for wishing to do so? And what had happened to it? If it had to be known that it had been drawn, where was the motive for destroying it?”

  Try another thesis. Eustace hadn’t destroyed the cheque. He hadn’t destroyed it because he had never had it. It had been drawn, but had never reached him. Then who? Gray? He’d have cancelled the counterfoil. Brand? Why? And how did he know it had been drawn? He saw it, perhaps. But if Eustace had been unable to move his father-in-law and co-director, what conceivable argument could Brand have produced to account for this amazing volte-face? And would Gray have drawn the cheque in Brand’s presence? Moreover, some time had elapsed between
the drawing of the two cheques. It was far more reasonable to suppose that Gray would wait to find himself alone before drawing the cheque for Eustace. Indeed, he would probably wait until Eustace was with him. But if Eustace had drawn the cheque himself—well, he wouldn’t have destroyed it. As things stood, it was simply Brand’s alibi…

  Brand’s alibi! How damned fortunate for him. But—if he’d killed the old man, what time had Gray had to draw a second cheque at all? The answer was, of course, he hadn’t had any time. Picture it. Here’s Brand, with his father dead at his feet. In his hand is the cheque that proves he was the last person to see Gray alive. That’s Christmas Eve. Think of the irony of the position. Probably for the first time in his life he has money on which he can draw; and through his own criminal folly it’s going to be absolutely useless to him. Useless, that is, unless he can somehow escape the consequences of his crime. And the one way to divert suspicion is to show that someone was in the library with Gray later than he was. It won’t be an easy thing to prove, because somehow this imaginary later visitor must be induced to leave traces of his presence in the room, something the police can get hold of, something that will nail him as the criminal. How’s this going to be done? The cheque in his hand had probably given Brand the idea. Make out a second cheque—it’s through a cheque that he’ll be condemned, if he fails; it’s through a cheque they shall take this other man. There’s the answer for you. Neat, too. It had taken a long time to get to that solution. It answered all the points—the disappearance of the second cheque, and the riddle of its existence in the first place. Of course, Eustace hadn’t got it. Eustace had never seen it. There’d never been a cheque for him or anyone else to see. The blank form probably accounted for the fragment of ash in the fireplace. But the illusion had been perfect.

 

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