Portrait of a Murderer

by Martin Edwards

  6

  After some inward debate Miles took his wife into his confidence, describing the position as he at present envisioned it. Ruth was aghast.

  “Miles, you’re not going to try and hunt down Brand? When he’s got so many enemies as it is?”

  “My dear, I can’t stand by and see an innocent man convicted. It’s no question of personalities. It’s just a job, like any other.”

  “But—your job, Miles?”

  “It seems so. I didn’t seek it out. I didn’t want it. The first hint I got, I evaded. But I can’t hide my head under a furze-bush any longer. There are too many discrepancies in this case for an honest man to feel easy in his mind.”

  “Of course, your explanation is possible,” Ruth admitted reluctantly. “I remember the fearful row there was years ago when Brand wrote a whole letter in father’s writing and no one detected the forgery. We found out by pure chance. So I don’t suppose a cheque—or do you think he forged both cheques?—would be very difficult.”

  Miles had suddenly swivelled round, and the pipe he was filling fell through his fingers.

  “Two cheques,” he repeated softly. “Two. You’ve put your finger on it, Ruth. What a dunderhead I was not to see it before. That’s how Brand got hold of his money, of course. I’ve been puzzling and puzzling to understand how it was done; what inducements he had offered your father; above all, how he could have got that amount from a man who knew himself bankrupt. So far as I can gather, no one except his lawyer knew quite how deeply dipped he was. Even Eustace didn’t know, Richard didn’t know. And if he didn’t mind making a fool of Brand, though even that seems to me unlikely, he wouldn’t attempt to play the same trick on Eustace. Let’s piece this together, shall we?”

  He left his chair and, coming to the writing-table, took up a silver pencil and began to jot down notes.

  “Eleven o’clock. Brand goes down to the library.

  “Two o’clock. He’s seen returning to his room.

  “Eleven to two. Mr. Gray is murdered. According to the doctor, that couldn’t have taken place this side of midnight, and was more likely between one and two. What on earth did those two do from eleven till one?”

  “Quarrelled,” answered Ruth unhappily.

  “I’d be inclined to say Brand didn’t go down till getting on for midnight. I don’t know whether there’s any possibility of proving that. I should say not, as no one’s queried the evidence so far. They might easily argue for an hour, and they’d get pretty violent. At about one o’clock or a little later, Brand loses his head completely—it’s a bad time for even the most temperate man to be arguing—and strikes your father with the paper-weight. I don’t suppose at the time he realised what he was doing, but that cuts no ice with juries. All they’ll look at is the fact that he actually killed the old man. Then see him with the body, realising what he’s done. I daresay, at first, he doesn’t even think of the consequences; the mere fact of the death is enough for him. But presently he sees the position as it is. He’s killed a man, and he’ll probably hang for it. I don’t know what put him on to the cheque-book, unless it was his desperate need. His imagination might be fired at the thought of escaping, not only from the consequences of his crime, but also from the damnable life he was spending with Sophy and the children. And, of course, having forged one cheque, it would be simple enough to forge the next. And he must have written out the document as well. It was a bold stroke, but a clever one. It showed a strong knowledge of your father’s temperament. I can just see him drawing up a ridiculous paper like that. Well, what do we do now?”

  “Do you go to the police?” asked Ruth apprehensively.

  Miles considered. “I don’t see how we can, at the moment. We’ve nothing to show, nothing but theorising, and rather romantic theorising at that. We ought to get some foundation for our case. At present, it’s too weak to stand much investigation.”

  Precisely how weak it was he forced himself to realise later, when he was alone. All it boiled down to was a maid-servant’s story, with nothing to support it, and a casual remark from Isobel about a handkerchief. She, he shrewdly suspected, would deny that story if by so doing she could absolve her brother. Though they met seldom, there existed between them a curious, almost a subterranean relationship that was intimate and deep. Probably it was rooted in some early memory forgotten by both, but it involved loyalty to the individual (on Isobel’s part, at least), without regard to that wider loyalty a man owes to the community as a whole, and that is the basis of civilisation. And, with Isobel’s evidence dissipated, what remained? A servant’s tale, a servant, moreover, anxious to prove an alibi for her own advantage. And for the rest—mere supposition, daydreaming, theorising.

  “Not good enough,” decided Miles. “Then what?”

  Part VII

  The Answer

  1

  It was a theory of Miles’s that, when bewildered and even dismayed by a position, it is wise to thrust the whole matter from the mind for forty-eight hours, concentrating rigidly on something else, so that, after the interval, the intelligence returns to the conflict, refreshed and sharpened by the delay. It chanced that a question regarding a disputed will came into his office within a few hours of his conversation with Ruth, and into this absorbing affair he threw himself heart and soul for some days. Then he returned with a clear and (so far as possible) unprejudiced mind to the King’s Poplars murder.

  Being a man whose mind worked more eagerly in a crowd, he went out of his office and walked down to Charing Cross, turning eventually into St. James’s Park. It was a very pleasant day early in February, with a clear blue sky and silver-white clouds, very light and airy above the pointed leafless trees. There were a great many blue pigeons about, their feathers ruffled into boas round their necks because of the wind. A number of people were walking in the Park, and he was struck with a sense of their energy and their pleasure in life. Some children bowled hoops and played games, and fell over their own feet, and down by the ornamental water were the pelicans and ducks. It was all very gay and cheerful, and the general spectre of destitution that spoils a man’s pleasure so often in a London scene was absent. Some idlers there were, of course, but even the poorest had his paper and his pipe and was enjoying the mild weather. The general air of zest and well-being all about him quickened Miles’s thought. He was tranquilly convinced that he would reach the solution, even before he knew where it lay. A sense of competence swept away his hesitations and doubts, as, having walked through the Park, he left it by the Buckingham Palace Gate. He went down to Victoria Station, that was a bustle of energy and excitement. A bevy of young students was setting off for the Continent, and they hummed round the bookstall, buying literature for the journey, bananas and sandwiches, and packets of raisins, settling their sensible berets more firmly on their foreheads, chattering, arguing, debating. It was intensely stimulating; Miles stood on one side watching them. Now he had a familiar sensation that his mind had actually seized on the missing clue, and it only required his concentration to identify it. He liked thinking in a crowd. Those who want their temples of quiet, he was wont to say, are welcome to them, but for himself he sympathised with the novelist who, when he wanted to write, went to an A.B.C. shop. He loved the sound of cars, lorries, buses, carts, and drays going by under his window; the noise of bells and hooters, of shouts, exclamations, warnings, the barking of dogs and neighing of horses, all the bustle and colour and excitement of daily life, delighted and cheered him. Which was why he had chosen the noisiest room in their suite for his own office, and given his children a nursery on the traffic side of the house.

  At the bookstall the students bought detective novels with blood-curdling covers—skeletons, hanging bodies, creeping shadows, knives, poison-bottles, and huge impressions of mysterious feet. He wondered if any of the problems within those garish covers was as difficult of solution as his own; no doubt they were all more fantasti
c. A domestic murder can be made to sound very tame to those not intimately concerned.

  A young woman went past in a blue beret, talking to an equally young man in a Fair Isle sweater and a black beret. Both carried cameras. The young man observed with a laugh, “God bless the chap who invented finger-prints. What would these fellows do without them?”

  Miles didn’t hear what the young woman replied. He had got his clue, and he walked away at once.

  This, then, was his case. Brand Gray had murdered his father, forged two cheques and the amazing document, and got away with it. Eustace had been arrested, partly on account of the cheque made out to him, but chiefly because of his finger-prints on the safe. But what of the finger-prints on the document? No one, it seemed, had thought of that. It had been taken for granted that that was authentic. But if, as he now suspected, Brand was its originator, then, whose-ever finger-prints did appear upon it, Adrian Gray’s certainly would not. Here, it seemed, was an obvious way of testing his theory.

  2

  Nevertheless, this discovery brought him no joy. Hitherto the zest of the affair itself had sustained him. But now he saw himself as Brand’s chief enemy, the relentless pursuer who without motive was hounding down the man he had stayed at King’s Poplars to help. It was an ironical situation, and to him a desperate one. Brand’s personality, powerful and creative, appeared to him as a thing of value and even of beauty; for Eustace, he had no more compassion than he would have for the slug that destroyed his roses or the earwig that crawled on his table. And yet—

  In an agony of indecision he returned home. Ruth met him in the hall.

  “Monty’s here,” she said. “Eustace’s boy.”

  “What does he want with me?” demanded Miles, outraged.

  “I suppose he wants you to help.”

  “Well, I shan’t do it. It’s sheer nepotism. Aren’t there enough men in this country eager to be paid to wash Moore’s dirty linen in public, without his coming here? Hasn’t the fellow any sense of decency?”

  But when he saw Montague, his rage evaporated. The lad was personable enough and held himself with a certain dignity that, in the circumstances, was moving.

  He said, “I hope you don’t mind my coming here, Uncle Miles. I haven’t come professionally or anything like that. Father’s got a lawyer who’s doing what he can. But I thought I’d like to see you.”

  Miles, puzzled but beginning to be impressed, offered him a cigarette and a chair.

  “I don’t know that there’s anything I can do,” he remarked uneasily, with a quite unexpected sense of guilt.

  “I daresay you wouldn’t be very much inclined to do it, if there were,” was Montague’s surprising retort. “It would only mean involving someone else, whom perhaps you prefer to father.”

  “My dear boy,” expostulated Miles, professional dignity outraged by the suggestion of personal preference. And stopped. Because that, he saw, was precisely what he contemplated.

  Montague went on, “Being in the house at the time, I thought you might remember if anything odd had happened. But I suppose if it had, and if you did, you’d have told the police already. No, I didn’t really come to you because I thought you could do anything, only—it is pretty ghastly, you know. Mother’s all to pieces, and Arnold—there isn’t much I can say to him. And every post brings the most vituperative letters from people who’re ruined by father’s concerns. Of course, they put all the blame on him. People never blame themselves for being fools. Or else friends write saying how dreadful it is for her—mother, I mean—and they quite understand. Which is all damn rot. She’s afraid to go out alone now, for fear of being insulted or pitied.”

  Miles thought of her, bone-selfish, terrified, incapable of any generous emotion, of any delicacy of thought, sitting trembling in her beautiful, absurd drawing-room, with its hand-painted walls and silver panels, seeing her life a ruin, and her death—at the hands of hooligans who booed and shouted and wrote her abusive letters—imminent as soon as she put her head out of doors. Yet, though he was by nature a kindly man, he could not kindle within his breast a spark of compassion for a spirit so despicable.

  “Have you seen your father?” he asked Montague suddenly.

  ‘I’ve just come from seeing him. That’s why…” He left the sentence unfinished.

  “I see,” murmured Miles, and after a moment’s silence forced himself to ask. “How’s he taking things?”

  “Pretty badly.” Montague’s tone was laconic, but a certain nervous clenching of the fingers he’d inherited from the Grays spoke more eloquently than words. “You know, it must be awful to be boxed in there and know that during the next two or three weeks you’re going to be dragged into court and accused of something you haven’t done, without an iota of proof that you didn’t do it. Father knows he can’t prove his innocence, and that everyone wants him to be found guilty. It’s enough to drive a man mad. Just waiting—waiting—and seeing no way out.”

  He jumped up and began to lunge up and down the room; but even these movements were graceful. He was his father’s son, thought Miles, ashamed at his own surprise in discovering in any human being affection for such a man. After all, there were at least two personalities in every individual, and the domestic one might function in a man who was a shark, a murderer, and a coward.

  “If I could go ahead with something, even if it led us into a blind alley,” Montague broke out. “It’s worse, I think, when you know you didn’t do it. You feel cheated into the bargain.”

  No satisfaction out of actually committing the murder, reflected Miles, instantly nauseated. You couldn’t, it seemed, overcome the fellow’s commercial instincts, even in a situation so grave as this one. Yes, Miles could imagine him raving because he was being called upon to settle an account for which he was not responsible. Fear there would be, too, horror, the desperate twisting of the panic-stricken beast.

  He let Montague go without any sort of assurance, but when he was alone again he faced the new situation his nephew’s visit had created. Hitherto, he had contemplated the position mainly from Brand’s point of view, seeing that strange, savage, yet not wholly ignoble figure, living by its own fierce conventions, shaping itself in a mould unfamiliar to the rest of them, tasting at last the liberty of which it had been deprived for so long. And in his eager espousal of this brother-in-law’s case he had spared little thought for Eustace’s suffering. Honesty compelled him to admit that, although the creature might be contemptible, yet it had nerves and desires, and, by the bare fact of a common humanity, merited consideration. It had rights; it had a point of view; it had sensitive places like any other living organism. And it could claim justice and relief from the purely mental torture that now racked Eustace day and night.

  “I shall have to go through with this,” he decided abruptly. “I’ve no right to force this kind of hell on any man. Eustace may deserve practically everything that could happen to him, but I’m not his judge. In a sense, I’m responsible for what he’s enduring now.”

  3

  The document, signed by Brand, had been examined. It held a variety of finger-prints. Brand’s, Richard’s, Amy’s—but not Gray’s. No trace of Gray’s anywhere, and his were decisive hands, with square, forceful tips—no, he hadn’t touched that sheet of paper. And to Miles that spelt Brand’s death-warrant.

  There was not very much time. Somehow Brand must be warned; Miles couldn’t stand the notion of his being taken like some beast in a trap, stepping carelessly over the scattered brush and undergrowth and stumbling suddenly into the spiked pit prepared for him. One fact above all others was clear. Brand couldn’t escape the consequences of his deed. If necessary, he must be forced to exonerate Eustace. But at least give him the opportunity to take his own way out.

  Tracking him down was not an easy task. Miles enquired of Isobel, of Sophy, and of Richard, but none of them knew where he was. Sophy, indeed, ma
de it abundantly clear that she had no desire to know. His successor, though irregular, was, in her opinion, a great improvement; he was less critical, less fastidious, less caustic, made fewer demands, and satisfied her with a simple savagery that was the utmost she could appreciate. She had never understood that the root of Brand’s brutality towards her lay in her own crudity, her inability to experience the finer shades of feeling, of any response, indeed, that was not instinctive or sensual. The children also preferred the newcomer; he was more generous, more friendly, did not abash them by mature comments they could not understand, and prevented Sophy from beating them. On the other hand, he gave them sweets and pence and absolved them from the tedium of homework.

  As Miles was leaving the house, a pale, fierce little girl caught at his hand with sticky fingers and said in a hoarse whisper. “He did it. I heard him tell mother so. He said she wouldn’t care, and she didn’t. And he laughed. I heard him.”

  Having delivered herself breathlessly of this information, she folded her lips in a hard line and stared at her unknown uncle. Miles thought, “My God, the tragedy of it! What Brand’s pitched away in that child. She’s making a frantic bid for revenge, for the wrongs he’s done her, for her instinctive realisation that she’s been cheated, in telling me that.” And his heart ached, and he felt fierce and bitter himself, as he remembered his own pretty children, in their innocence, their gaiety, and their faith.

  When all his efforts at tracing his brother-in-law had ended in failure, Miles determined to employ a private detective. It was not a method he much cared about, nor was he anxious to help the other side, who must be almost as keen to find Brand as he was himself. But time pressed, and he dared not run further risks. In the present circumstances, pure chance might reveal Brand’s whereabouts, and he had no reason to suppose that he would be more fortunate than the defence.