“Do you think she did?”
“Don’t be silly, Standish darling. That was just a figure of speech. Scanlon killed Stella.”
“And he had no reason to hate her at all.”
“If he didn’t hate her he was unique in these parts. Everybody loves Barney but they hated her.”
“Like the Himalayas,” I said.
“What?”
“Skip it. Do you mean the local peasantry joined in the hate?”
“Don’t you understand? Barney has the aristocratic quality of being everybody’s equal. Stella couldn’t be bothered with anyone who couldn’t be useful to her.”
I started the engine and we resumed our interrupted journey towards Rossderg. “Thank you,” I said, “for being so frank about a woman that you keep telling me I was in love with.”
“Sorry, darling, but you asked for it. Were you in love with her?”
“Two days ago I told you I wasn’t. Now she’s dead and I don’t know. All I know is that there are three of us who didn’t hate her.”
“Who?” she asked.
“Barney, Frankie Marr and I.”
“About yourself you know best. Franklyn Marr really hated her.”
“Now you’re talking utter bilge.”
“I mean it, Standish. Believe me, he really did hate her. I don’t know why.”
“I can’t believe you.”
“It doesn’t matter very much — now. Does it? As for Barney — he had the best reason for hating her.”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“He was stuck with her, wasn’t he?”
It was not a line of thought that I was anxious to pursue; I dismissed it from my mind. We covered the next few miles in silence. How much truth was there in what she had told me? In the main, what she had said sounded plausible enough but slightly twisted, like truth seen from a particular point of view. For some reason I was most impressed by what she had told me about Frankie Marr, though she had advanced no evidence in support of her charge against him. I remembered noticing a particularity in his manner when we were discussing any matter in which Stella was involved; I had taken the antagonism that he had then shown to be directed towards me and protective of Stella, but perhaps I was wrong. What, in any case, did it matter? It was Scanlon who had killed Stella; the guards seemed satisfied of that, and it was Frankie Marr who kept telling me how good their detective work was. Certainly Superintendent Duffy had impressed me. There was one major flaw in Juliet’s story of the five acre field, however, or at any rate one particular in which it differed from Stella’s version; Stella had told me that Barney had given the field to a little blonde. Kinky Myles, that sallow, black-haired daughter of mystery, might be all things to all men — all things, that is, except a blonde.
“Have you much shopping to do?” I asked Juliet when we reached the outskirts of Rossderg.
“Very little, but one of the things I’ve got to fetch is Kinky’s car — Jack left it in this morning to have the exhaust pipe fixed — so you won’t be lumbered with me on the way back.”
That was good news so far as I was concerned; I still wanted to think. The first building that we came to proved to be a garage — the mustard-coloured driver of the black car was fussing about outside it — but Juliet said that it was not the one she wanted, so I dropped her in the centre of the town, a small square dominated by the court-house and the Civic Guard station. As she walked away from me I reflected that, if she had not been my cousin, I should have regarded her as a two-faced little bitch; in the light of our consanguinity, however, I decided to suspend judgment. In the meantime I thought that it might be a good idea to find out if I could have a word with Superintendent Duffy.
Before I had done more than swing my legs out of the car I spotted a vaguely familiar figure coming along the street and heading obviously towards the door of the guard station. Two things made his destination obvious: his demeanour and his company; the first was hang-dog while the second was large, determined and in uniform. I would not go so far as to say that the figure, to which I was still unable to put a name, was under arrest; I got the impression rather that he was “accompanying an officer to the station” and did not look forward with relish to what awaited him there. It was as he reached the door of the nick that he turned his head towards me, perhaps to take one last look at freedom, or to assess his chances of making a dash for it; in that moment recognition came to both of us. He was Rupert, the queen of the witches, the young man who had stuck pins into a doll called Stella and had flung it into the smoking cauldron; his face was green with fear. I swung my legs back into the car; if Duffy was about to give Rupert the works, I had no desire to deflect him from his purpose.
It was while I was searching for the sort of place that might sell the kind of cigars that Frankie Marr would smoke that I ran once more into Juliet. She, too, was peering hopefully into shop windows.
“You look rather lost,” I said.
“Oh, hallo Standish. You again.” She gave me a preoccupied smile. “I’m looking for a shop that sells magnifying glasses. Jack Myles seems to have mislaid his.”
CHAPTER X
Had I been a detective, I should no doubt have shouted whoopee, or eureka, or something, and have dashed about grilling everyone within range; as it was, all that I did was to gaze after my young cousin and try not to be distracted by the elegance of her rear-view. Was this clue, so airily discarded, merely an unconsidered trifle to her, or had she dropped it like a scented handkerchief with casual artifice? A detective would have made it his business to find out, but he would not have been involved in the tangle that he was paid to unravel; I was — and I was afraid.
It was without pleasure that I strolled about the little town and bought cigars, a bawneen sweater and — with an odd feeling of guilt — a cuddly toy for the son whose name I did not even know. I had to keep telling myself that the guards were satisfied that the murderer of Elly Scanlon and Stella had paid his debts with his own life and that the air was no longer sticky with suspicion; it was sticky with something, though, for I felt a prickle of sweat round my neck. The afternoon was still and hushed, and footfalls on the pavement sounded unnaturally loud; even here in Rossderg, unsheltered by hills and where on my arrival two days before a perceptible breeze had been blowing, not a breath stirred. A storm was on the way, and it was so slow in coming that it would probably be a whopper.
All day I had wanted to be alone to think yet, now that I had the opportunity, I found myself shying away from ordered thought. Instead of driving to some deserted part of the shore — and heaven knows that there were places enough to choose from — I clung to the distractions of shop windows and of a beach alive with bathers and children armed with spades and buckets; indeed with such new-found interest did I examine the smallest boys that I began to fear that their mothers might think that I was contemplating a snatch. It was only when I began to make in my mind pictures of my son that I began to feel at peace; I saw him as a sturdy little fellow with my face and Grace’s hair and, of course, far bigger than any child has a right to be at the age of one month. Thus harmlessly I occupied myself till it was time to return to Hazard Point.
A black car was still standing outside the wayside garage but the mustard fellow — even if indeed the car were his — was not to be seen. I toyed with the idea that he was a plain-clothes dick assigned to tailing me but dismissed it; no one in his senses would cast in the role of a shadow a man garbed in gorgeous Technicolor. In any case, to the local guards I was now a hero; that was something I had for the moment forgotten.
At Hazard Point there was good news, or as good as any news could be in the context: a local doctor had called to see Barney and had told him that there was no medical objection to the theory that Scanlon had shot himself; the most likely time for the man’s death had now been estimated to be about two hours after Stella’s. The issue therefore appeared to be clear-cut; Barney had lost a wife, I a mistress, and Frankie Marr a friend perh
aps; we had nothing to do now but to mourn. Certainly Scanlon provided a convenient whipping-boy, for he had already been whipped — by his own hand. It seemed little enough to raise our spirits but it did — it was horrible but it did. We drank pink gins in Barney’s study before dinner almost with pleasure.
Barney had eaten little since his wife’s death; he had kept going, I suppose, on alcohol — and God knows that we had all had enough and too much of that. To-night Mrs. Kealey, in an attempt to coax back his appetite, had produced the favourite dishes of Barney’s boyhood; it was a gallant effort but, through its obviousness, it failed lamentably. It made Barney think, and that was the last thing that any of us should have tried to do; we were thrown back on the bottle — and to-night drink went sour on us.
“Murder is a terrible thing,” observed Barney over the third or fourth brandy. We were back in the study with all the lights on and the blinds up, perhaps because officially none of us had anything to hide any more. “I don’t mean in its direct consequences — they’re obvious — but indirectly it does terrible things to people’s minds. One begins to suspect one’s best friends.”
“Thank you,” I said. The brandy was not sitting comfortably on my stomach and I was in the mood to take things to myself. “I suppose that’s meant for me.”
“Damn it all, Standish, you’ve known me long enough to be sure that I’d never say a thing like that if I meant it personally. But that shows what I do mean. When one thinks there’s a murderer loose in the place one begins to wonder if one really knows anyone. One looks at a face, a familiar face, a face one has grown fond of, like old Perrot’s — and he came to work here the year that I was born — one looks and one says: do I really know what’s going on behind that mask? One can’t help it; it’s the way the mind works.”
“I agree.” I was already more than ashamed of what I had said. “The mind builds up a case in spite of itself against the one person whom one most wants to absolve from suspicion. It’s not just with one person either; think of anyone, try to prove that he didn’t do it — and you’ll find yourself going a long way towards proving the opposite.”
“Or suspecting the opposite,” Frankie Marr amended.
“We can’t do more than suspect, of course,” I admitted. “We can’t rush round asking questions and testing alibis. Perhaps we’d be happier if we could.”
Marr examined critically the ash on one of the cigars that I had brought from Rossderg. “I have always believed,” he said, “that one can recognise a man who lives in hell. Anyone who has killed in cold blood must live in a hell of his own making.” He added — “Scanlon has proved that.”
“No, Frank, no.” Barney was so positive in his dissent that he refilled our glasses to underline what he had to say. “Scanlon proves nothing — he was mad. But any sane man capable of killing as he killed in cold blood must be spiritually dead to start with; he wouldn’t know the difference between hell and heaven.”
“You mean that nothing will show in his eyes because there’s nothing in his soul.”
“No guilt will show, anyhow; he wouldn’t feel any.”
“That must make things a bit difficult for detectives,” I suggested. “They may interview a killer who feels no guilt followed by a fellow with a different code of morals who feels guilty as sin because he’s smuggled a couple of bottles of booze through the customs.”
“The detective’s approach is practical, through material things,” Marr said. “They are concerned with bodies, where they were at any particular time, what their physical powers are, what each particular one stood to gain from the crime — that sort of thing. It gets them there in the end.”
“No psychology?”
“Oh yes — looking at the mind as a physical thing. They’re not concerned with the real psyche — the soul.”
“I wonder if Duffy speculated about our souls when he was talking to us?” Like an ass, I could not leave us out of it.
Barney sighed. “He must have speculated about my soul first of all,” he said. “I was Stella’s husband.”
Without taking his cigar from his mouth Marr snorted angry disagreement.
“That’s all they had against Scanlon, you know,” Barney pursued, “that he was Elly’s husband. He was notoriously jealous, admittedly, but might not a stranger like Duffy believe that I could have had cause for jealousy?”
“Up to the seventeenth century jealousy may have been an adequate motive for killing,” Marr said scornfully. “In a sophisticated walk of life it certainly isn’t now. Scanlon’s case was a different matter; he was an inbred, barely literate rustic — and he was mad.”
Barney took a meditative drink of his brandy; it was a good deal more than a sip, though he was not gulping it as he had done yesterday. “I’ve often wondered about those chaps in the middle ages,” he said, “the fellas who killed or mutilated unfaithful wives. It seems to me that, if a property has been tampered with, one is not revenged by destroying the property; that’s just biting one’s nose to spite one’s face. The tamperer is the one who should suffer. Don’t you think so, Standish?”
“It seems logical,” I said.
“Of course, nowadays, the husband and the seducer just go on a binge together to show there’s no ill-feeling, and the wife officially changes beds. Saves a lot of trouble.”
“Scanlon didn’t see it like that.”
“Scanlon was mad. Of course, Superintendent Duffy wasn’t to know that I’m not mad.”
“Oh Barney, Barney — can’t we get away from this?” Marr reached for the bottle and refilled our glasses; it was a mistake. “Duffy must build his theories on evidence, not on imagination; there could be no evidence against you, therefore you would not be considered. Now, for Christ’s sake let’s talk about something else. What do you fancy for the big race at Longchamps to-morrow?”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Frank. There’s lots of evidence.” Barney was not to be deflected. “One, I was the husband; two, I didn’t get on with my wife — everyone knew that. You knew that, didn’t you, Standish?”
“I — wondered.”
“That’s a damned polite understatement.”
“I watched my own marriage go to pieces. If you’d had children ——”
“If we’d had children.” Barney threw back his brandy in one swallow and banged the glass on the table. “You say that to me. You have the face to sit there and suggest that we might have had children.”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“I met her at your house, didn’t I? Don’t tell me you didn’t know.”
“Know what, man?”
“That she was unable to bear children.”
For a moment I had a vision of Stella almost as I had last seen her; she was standing dishevelled in the hay-field; she was gazing after Barney and muttering — “Mother to dozens and nobody’s pop.” So she had been mocking herself rather than at him. I looked at Barney. What a cloddish, insensitive husband he must have been, I thought. My anger grew cold, but all the keener for its chill.
“Do you expect a certificate of child-bearing ability with every girl you meet?” I asked.
Barney looked down at his glass; he refilled it. He refilled mine too, though I had no recollection of having emptied it. He spoke in a quiet, reasonable voice. “My ancestors were with Red Hugh when they chased the English from Tyrconnell to Kinsale; a Hazard was killed at the Boyne, another with Sarsfield at Limerick. I am the last of the Hazards. Can you blame me for wanting a son to keep the name alive?”
“A man wants a son for his own sake,” I said.
“I should have liked a child as something of my wife that I could look at and talk to,” Marr said. He emptied his glass. Quietly Barney refilled it.
“You know — what hurts me is being deceived,” Barney pursued in the same tone of gentle persistency.
“How were you deceived?”
“Stella knew that she could never have a child.”
“She ma
y have known but kept on hoping — women do, you know.”
He raised his eyes from the table and looked at me. “She was your mistress, wasn’t she? Before we were married?”
“I don’t think either of us ever tried to hide that from you.”
“Yet you didn’t know that she had been operated on so that she could live with you without any danger of having a child, without danger of interruption to her career — or yours.”
“No.” I could have wept for Stella but that every moment I was hating Barney more and more deeply. “I did not know.”
“This is the second half of the twentieth century, you know; we can talk of these things frankly.”
“Oh Barney, will you stop it,” Marr protested, but we ignored him.
“We are not talking trivialities, Barney,” I said. “Much as I dislike the conversation, I am not aware of any social convention that would justify a lie. I did not know.”
“Then you can take my word for it that it’s true. I suppose the fact will have come out at the p.m. So, you see, even if I wanted to be free to marry someone else — and that’s the third piece of evidence against me — I could have been free quite simply.”
“I’m not sure that I follow you,” I said.
“Stella’s marriage and mine was not a marriage in the eyes of the law or in the eyes of the Church. I could have had it annulled; there would have been no need for a divorce. I could have been more free than I am now to marry again.”
He was probably right — as far as the Church was concerned anyhow. Stella’s concealment of her self-imposed inability to conceive might well have provided sufficient grounds for annulment; but his bringing it up did not make me like Barney any better. I stared at the little man across the table; it seemed impossible to believe that he could ever have been my friend. “So that’s it,” I said. “All you’ve been trying to do is to clear yourself in your own eyes of a beastly crime that has already been wished on to someone else. You make me wonder if it hasn’t been very convenient for everyone to have Scanlon dead and unable to talk. No one in Ireland would want to see a Hazard in the dock for murder.”
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