Hobby of Murder

by E. X. Ferrars

  ‘Suits me!’ Ian suddenly shouted. ‘You think I want to keep a place where I’ve been made an utter fool of! A place where I’ve been reduced to misery and self-pity while I was trying to convince myself that my insane behaviour was what people insist on calling civilized! I want to get rid of the damned place as soon as I can.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know that’s how you feel now,’ Mollie said, beginning to sound as if her tears might be returning. ‘But I never meant to make a fool of you. I’m the one who’s a fool. The trouble was I was so fond of both of you. I couldn’t bear it that either of you should be hurt. But what was I to do? Well, we’ve settled that, haven’t we? I’m going to pack a suitcase and I’ll go home with Brian. But Ian, I’ll always love you. You do understand that, don’t you?’

  ‘I wish to God you hated my guts!’ he cried. ‘Then I could hate yours and Brian’s. It’s an abominable frustration, not being able to hate as you want to. Some good, honest hatred is what the three of us need.’

  ‘Oh, don’t say that,’ Mollie begged. ‘I believe I should go out of my mind if I found that I really hated somebody. It would frighten me horribly.’

  ‘Because you could see yourself dropping cyanide in his coffee?’ Ian said.

  There was suddenly silence in the room.

  Then Brian stood up and put an arm round Mollie.

  ‘Come on, we’d better go,’ he said. ‘Go and pack that suitcase and we’ll push off. Ian knows I didn’t put cyanide into Luke’s coffee, and you didn’t either. We’ll probably never know who did. Professor, I’m sorry you’ve been involved in all this, but as Mollie said, the worst is over. By which she meant, I think, that we’ve all made up our minds and we’ve just got to get adjusted to the new state of affairs. None of us likes what we’ve been doing to one another, but it couldn’t be helped. And it’s got nothing to do with cyanide, or people getting murdered on the common.’

  Mollie got up and shot out of the room. They could hear her running up the stairs, then the sound of footsteps in the room overhead.

  Ian reached for the teapot and poured himself out a second cup of tea.

  ‘Of course, Brian’s right,’ he said quite calmly. ‘But we’ll sell this house as soon as possible. I assume Mollie won’t actually object to that—or does she want it as a bolt-hole in case things don’t work out as well as she hoped?’

  For the first time Andrew saw anger in Brian’s eyes.

  ‘If they don’t, I don’t imagine she’d want to come back here,’ he said. ‘But it’s sometimes sensible not to take important decisions when emotions are running high. Why not wait a little before you make up your mind?’

  ‘I’m tired of waiting,’ Ian said. ‘It’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of years. You can wait and hope, and then you wait without hoping, and then waiting itself becomes a bit too much for you. No, I’m sorry, Brian, I’m tired of bloody everything. You’d like me to take it better than I’m doing, but I can’t oblige. And the sooner you and Mollie are out of the house, the better.’

  They were gone in about a quarter of an hour. They left in Brian’s car. Mollie had brought the BMW back. Ian put it away in the garage, then took the tea-tray out to the kitchen and stacked the cups and saucers in the dishwasher, all in silence. When he returned to the sitting-room he stayed silent for a while, sitting down in the chair where he had sat before and staring broodingly before him. But after a while he spoke.

  ‘I wish I felt more certain than I do that Brian had nothing to do with Luke’s murder.’

  ‘Because you don’t like the idea of handing Mollie over to a murderer?’ Andrew said.

  ‘That’s it, more or less.’

  ‘Well, I don’t think you need worry about that.’

  ‘You don’t think he’d anything to do with it?’

  ‘No.’

  Ian turned his head a little to look at Andrew. ‘Does that mean you think you know who did it?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but I think so.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll say anything about that just yet,’ Andrew answered. ‘I may have gone quite off the rails. At the moment I’m waiting for some information which may help to make sense of things. Till I get it, I think I’ll keep my ideas to myself.’

  ‘Was that what you were telephoning about?’

  ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t hear what you said. I just heard the tinkle of the telephone when you picked it up, then your voice. But I was half asleep at the time, and anyway I couldn’t have heard what you were saying from my room upstairs.’

  ‘I was telephoning my nephew, Peter Dilly. He’s going to try to get me the information I want. I’m sorry, Ian, I’d rather like to talk the whole thing over with you, but if I’m quite wrong I don’t want to start up crazy ideas about a quite innocent person. All the same, what I don’t mind saying is that I believe someone wanted us all to think in a particular way, and that’s just what we’ve been doing. We’ve been thinking exactly as he wanted us to think. And what we’ve got to do now is to turn the whole thing upside down and start from there. Or do I mean back to front? Anyway, get off the track he laid down for us. Try that, and see if you don’t come to the same conclusion as me. You know all the facts that I know.’

  ‘But I’ve never thought of myself as having half as ingenious a mind as you’ve got. Now what about a drink?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Whisky?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Ian went to get the drinks and while he was gone Andrew got up and went to the window. It was not yet dusk and he could see across the common, and see the children playing on their swings and slides. They would soon be fetched in, he supposed, and darkness would presently blot out what had been the scene of murder. A murder which it was generally assumed had happened because Eleanor Clancy knew who had killed Luke Singleton. But turn that upside down, or back to front, or whatever you like to call it. Anyway, get off that track that the murderer had laid for them all, and why should that be the explanation of anything? One by one, Andrew started going over the facts, or what should more properly be called the ideas, that had filled his mind for the last two or three hours, putting them in order, thinking out how he should explain them to anyone when the time came to do so.

  Then the clink of bottle and glasses interrupted him and he turned away from the window. Ian poured out the drinks.

  ‘Did I behave very badly this afternoon?’ he asked. ‘I mean, losing my temper suddenly. I’d absolutely made up my mind to keep it.’

  ‘I’ve no standard to go by,’ Andrew said. ‘You had my sympathy.’

  ‘But probably they had it too.’

  ‘Well, yes, if you like to put it like that.’

  ‘I’d be glad if we never had to meet again, but Mollie will have to get her things. That suitcase she took won’t last long. But I can try to be out of the way when she comes to do her serious packing. And I’m inclined to think that the best thing to do about the furniture and so on is to get in one of those clearance firms and tell them to take the lot—’

  He broke off as the front doorbell rang.

  It was Felicity Mace. She came into the room looking strangely unlike her usual poised and practical self. Her face was white, her eyes seemed to glitter unnaturally. Ian followed her in with perplexity on his face. She had said nothing to him at the door, but had thrust straight in past him, then abruptly stood still in the middle of the room.

  ‘You haven’t heard!’ she said in a shrill, sharp voice.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ian said. ‘Haven’t we?’

  ‘About Anna Waldron.’

  ‘We saw her this morning—’

  ‘No, no,’ she broke in. ‘This afternoon. Only about an hour ago. She threw herself out of a top-floor window. She killed herself. She’s dead.’

  Ian guided her to a chair. She sank into it and for a moment covered her face with her hands. When she dropped them it was as if wha
t she had been doing was putting her normal face back in place. It was still white, but the wildness had gone. Her eyes looked dull and tired rather than glittering.

  ‘Sam called me instead of the police,’ she said in a weary voice. ‘I had to tell him over and over again that he mustn’t touch her and had got to get them. In the end, I phoned them myself. They’re in charge there and thank God, Winslow’s there.’ Winslow, Andrew had gathered from Roland, was the police surgeon. ‘Sam’s simply sitting perfectly still in his study, staring at nothing. I thought you might go to him, Ian. He likes you.’

  ‘We were there this morning,’ Ian said. ‘Anna was in a queer mood. Quite hysterical really. But I never dreamt she was anywhere near doing a thing like this. It almost seems …’ He stopped.

  ‘She talked about the murders,’ Andrew explained, ‘only she didn’t believe, or said she didn’t, that Luke Singleton’s death was murder. She claimed it was suicide. And she didn’t believe Eleanor Clancy was killed because she was blackmailing anyone, but by a pervert who failed to rape her and killed her instead.’

  ‘But none of that has anything to do with her suicide,’ Felicity said.

  ‘I was going to say,’ Ian said hesitantly, ‘that one might take it in its way as a confession of guilt. I mean, that she’d got involved in the murders somehow and couldn’t bear it, and what she said about them was what she wished had happened, not what she knew really had. Only I suppose I’m talking nonsense.’

  ‘She couldn’t have had anything to do with the murder of Luke,’ Felicity said. ‘She was in the kitchen, like Sam, at the time it happened. It’s not so impossible that she had something to do with the murder of Eleanor, if she had any kind of motive. It’s been a puzzle, hasn’t it, how anyone could persuade Eleanor to meet them out there on the common at dusk and all alone. But if Anna wanted to meet her, she’d probably have gone. She’d have trusted her as a matter of course. And although Anna was small and slight, she was very strong. She was extremely athletic when she was younger. I believe she might have been able to strangle Eleanor. But what are we doing, talking like this? We’ve no reason to think she killed herself because she couldn’t stand the burden of guilt. We’re obsessed with the subject, that’s the trouble.’

  ‘Has anyone told you about the state of Eleanor’s cottage?’ Ian asked.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘You tell her, Andrew. You’re the one who saw it.’

  He described it as well as he could, ending up with what had affected him most, the destruction of the negatives. Felicity listened intently, and when he finished gave a little sigh.

  ‘That really tells one quite a lot, doesn’t it?’ she said. ‘Madness. It has to be madness. And I suppose that means it might have been Anna. I’ve heard of other cases where someone committed suicide because they realized they were going mad. It’s usually happened when the person has gone through a period of insanity before and is supposed to have recovered from it, then when the symptoms start again they realize what’s happening to them and they can’t face it. But that’s supposing it was Anna whom Eleanor went to meet on the common. If it was, it might have had nothing to do with Luke’s murder, though that just might have triggered it off in some way. I mean, that happening in her home, at the dinner that was supposed to be such fun for all of us. It might have tipped her over the brink.’

  Andrew was remembering how he and Ian had discussed the possibility that it had been Felicity whom Eleanor had gone to meet on the common.

  ‘Has anyone told you about Eleanor’s handbag being found in the lake, with a thousand pounds in it?’ he asked.

  Felicity shook her head.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that thousand pounds,’ Andrew said. ‘The bank that cashed them may be able to tell by whom they were cashed and when.’

  She nodded this time, but there was no change on her face.

  ‘By the way,’ she said, ‘where’s Mollie?’

  For a moment it looked as if Ian did not intend to answer, and Andrew wondered if he was expected to do it. Then Ian moved away to the window, standing with his back to the room.

  ‘She’s left me,’ he said abruptly.

  Felicity turned her head quickly to look at him, but she could not see his face.

  After a moment she said, ‘Oh.’ Then after another moment she said, ‘I knew it would happen sometime. I’m very sorry, Ian.

  ‘No need to be,’ he said. ‘It’s painful, but I’m glad it’s over. Better than the sort of pretence we’ve been putting on for a good while now.’

  ‘She’s gone to Brian, has she?’ Felicity asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And if he’s involved in Luke’s murder?’

  ‘Andrew and I have been discussing that,’ Ian said. ‘Andrew’s sure that he isn’t. I’m not certain myself. I wish I were. Now, about your suggestion, Felicity, that I should go along to Sam. I think I’ll go. No …’ He had turned and seen that she was getting up from her chair, as if she too would leave when he did. ‘Don’t go. Stay and keep Andrew company. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Perhaps straight away. Sam may not want me. On the other hand, I might be gone some time. Andrew, get Felicity a drink, will you? I’m sure she’d like one.’

  He left them, and two or three minutes later they heard the BMW drive away.

  Felicity had said that a drink would be very welcome and Andrew had supplied her with whisky. He was thinking that Mollie’s hope that Ian might turn from her to Felicity had not been realistic. He had seen no sign of anything between them but an almost casual kind of friendliness.

  She sipped her drink in silence for a moment, then looked at Andrew with a sad sort of smile.

  ‘Were you expecting this too?’ she said.

  ‘The break-up between Ian and Mollie?’ he said. ‘No, I’d never have come if I had been. These things don’t really need an audience.’

  ‘No, I suppose not. You haven’t exactly had a happy visit, have you?’

  ‘One certainly couldn’t call it that.’

  ‘Well, I’ve only been wondering how long it could be before Mollie did something definite about the situation. I’ve got to know her rather well during the last couple of years, and I’ve known Brian longer than that. I saw it happen almost at once. But Mollie tried very hard to be loyal to Ian, and Brian never tried to put any pressure on her. And Ian didn’t force the issue. I’m glad it’s sorted itself out at last, even if it took a murder to do it.’

  Andrew gave her a puzzled glance. She nodded her head thoughtfully.

  ‘Oh yes, I’m sure it’s that that did it,’ she said. ‘There’s been a lot of explosive emotion in the air, which brought Mollie’s feelings into the open. And when it turned out that there was a risk that Brian might be suspected of killing his brother, she felt she had to show her feelings at once.’

  ‘She’s sure of his innocence, is she?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say for certain that she is.’

  ‘So you think she could go to live with a man who she knows just might be a murderer?’

  ‘Don’t a lot of the worst murderers have loving families. But you’ve said you’re fairly sure of his innocence yourself. Is that because you think you know who did it?’

  ‘I believe I do.’

  She gave him another of her appealing smiles.

  ‘You don’t feel like telling me in the strictest confidence …?’

  ‘I’d very much like to. I’m sure a discussion with you would be very helpful. But I’ve made up my mind that until I get certain information I’m going to keep my cogitations to myself.’

  ‘You haven’t even told Ian what they are?’

  ‘No, not even Ian.’

  ‘But he knows you’ve thought of some sort of solution for the whole problem?’

  ‘I suppose he does.’

  She finished her drink and stood up. A little colour had returned to her face, though it still showed lines of strain.

  ‘Well, I must get home. I hope
Ian doesn’t stay away too long.’

  ‘Let me see you home,’ Andrew said.

  ‘Thank you, but I have my car.’ She turned to the door, but paused as she reached it. ‘I was sitting next to Luke Singleton, Professor. Have your cogitations anything to do with me?’ She waited a moment for him to answer, but when he said nothing, said, ‘I see, you really won’t talk. And I suppose you’re right to stick to that. But I understand that I’m an excellent suspect. Goodbye.’

  He saw her out to her car, then returned to the house, a heavy frown gathering on his forehead. Going into the sitting-room, he poured out some more whisky for himself.

  ‘I’m a bloody fool,’ he muttered. ‘Why did I have to say anything about it at all to anyone?’

  CHAPTER 9

  Sinking into a chair, he began thinking about what he and Ian should have for supper. There was some cold chicken in the refrigerator and the makings of a salad. He prepared these, leaving them ready in the kitchen for when Ian came in, then returned to the sitting-room, helped himself to another drink and sat down again.

  Almost at once he found himself beginning to brood on the question of whether the idea he had had that there might be some interest in writing the life of Eleanor Clancy’s great-grandfather was not after all a possibility. It was a question really of what there was in the letters that he had written home and which she had said that she had kept. If she had, they were probably still somewhere in that cottage that had been so badly wrecked. They might be among the wreckage, crumpled and torn, and if that had happened to them, Andrew would have to abandon his idea straight away. Anyway, perhaps it was not really a very good idea.

  In case it was, however, he thought that he ought to go to the cottage next day and see if he could find the letters and if he did, find out if they stirred his imagination at all. He supposed that he would be able to get into the cottage. The lock on the front door was broken, and unless the police had put some kind of seal on it, there should be no difficulty about getting in. All the same, before doing much about it at all, he would have to discover to whom the letters belonged. He could not remember that he had heard anyone say anything about Eleanor’s next of kin, and she might not have left her belongings to her next of kin, even if she had any, but to some friend, if it happened that she had made a will. And in either case there would have to be discussions on the matter, and probably a contract, and perhaps other complications. So it looked as if the idea was not really a good one after all.