‘She was brought back somehow,’ Craft went on ‘though a murderer, you’d think, would have left her lying in the mist on the moor. Not caring particularly whether she caught her death of cold or not. When she woke up, she found she was in that room above the studio. What do you say, Sir Henry?’
H.M. did not appear to be listening. He was bending forward in the chair, elbow on knee and chin on fist. If it had not been for his spectacles, he would have suggested less the Emperor Nero than the late Marcus Tullius Cicero meditating a blast in the Senate.
‘Found she was back in the studio,’ he muttered vacantly. The corners of his mouth turned down. ‘Found she was back in the … oh, my eye!’ Then he woke up. He made fussed gestures and pulled up the spectacles on his nose. ‘Excuse me, son. The old man was wool-gatherin’ a bit. What new dirty work has the doctor been up to now?’
‘I’m not saying anything. I’m not even intimating anything,’ lied Craft. ‘I’m just asking him where he was on Sunday night.’
‘Confound you, sir, I was at home!’
‘I see. What time did you go to bed, Doctor?’
‘Very early. Before nine o’clock. They said I’d been exerting myself too much the night before.’
‘Did you see anybody after that time?’
‘Well … no. I wasn’t supposed to be disturbed.’
‘So you couldn’t prove you were at home, if you had to?’
I clutched at my collar.
‘Now I’ll tell you what it is,’ Craft spoke very seriously, unfolding his arms and pointing a pencil at me. ‘I’ve tried to be reasonable about this; but you won’t give me any choice. Somebody removed that gun from the place where they’d shot themselves, and somebody got rid of that car. All to protect Mrs Wainright. I warn you, Doctor, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble at the inquest tomorrow morning. And I’m going to cause it.’
He turned to H.M.
‘Don’t you see, sir, that all I want is evidence? Just show me some evidence that those two didn’t kill themselves! You say they devised some new way of floating in the air or walking without footprints… .’
‘I still say it.’
‘Then how did they do it?’
H.M. drew a deep breath. ‘Y’know,’ he volunteered offhandedly, ‘I’ve always had a name for this.’
‘For what, sir?’
‘For this kind of situation. I call it the blinkin’ awful cussedness of things in general. And for getting us into this mess’ – H.M. blinked sourly at me – ‘you can thank your persuasive solicitor friend, Mr Stephen Grange. Of all the rare ones I ever heard for poisonin’ coppers’ minds, he’s it.’
‘If you ask me, Sir Henry, I’d say he was the only one who has talked sense,’ Craft objected. ‘And he’s got a lot of influence with the coroner.’
‘I’ll bet he has. At the ringing of the curfew, Dr Croxley is goin’ to find himself in the cooler or I’m a Dutchman. That’s why I’ve got to do some sittin’ and thinkin’.’ Inflating his chest deeply, H.M. glared round at us like a noble Roman wrestler about to enter the arena. ‘There’s nothing else for it. I’ve got to find some way of working that levitation trick!’
‘With my able assistance,’ said Ferrars. ‘And I’m going to make a suggestion. In fact, I think I can solve it for you now.’
‘You?’ said H.M., with a sneer so vast that his young friend might have been a worm made articulate.
‘Don’t be so snooty, governor. You’re not the only person in this world who enjoys funny business.’
‘No. But I wasn’t thinkin’ of your particular type of funny business. With Belle Renfrew Sullivan, or …’
To my surprise, colour came into Ferrars’ face. Though he tried to lounge back in the chair, tapping the stem of his empty pipe against his teeth, there was a curious rigidity about his muscles.
‘My dear Commodus,’ he said, ‘there never was anything between Belle and me. I must have had too many drinks late last night, and exchanged confidences over the fire. And look here. I’d rather you didn’t say anything about that to Molly Grange.’
‘So?’
‘Just a whim of mine.’
‘I can’t quite make you out,’ said H.M. ‘Sometimes you talk like the world-weariest rip that was ever bored with life. Other times you talk like a brat just down from Eton for the holidays.’
‘So far as I remember, governor, I was trying to solve your puzzle.’ Ferrars remained urbane. ‘You say our eloping friends couldn’t have climbed down the face of that cliff?’
‘That’s right.’
‘No; but suppose they came down by parachute?’ H.M. regarded him austerely.
‘Don’t gibber, son. I hate gibberin’. Besides’ – he rubbed his nose – ‘I already thought of that.’
‘Is it gibbering?’ Ferrars asked softly. ‘Is it? We’ve seen some amazing things done with parachutes recently. I’m not sure whether you can make one of ’em open enough to hold you in a relatively short drop like seventy feet; but why is it impossible?’
‘Because I say so!’ bellowed H.M., tapping himself on the chest. ‘It might remotely be possible for a trained paratroop, with a special ‘chute and a whole lot of experience at landing on a reasonably smooth surface. What chance would there be for those two, without experience and without ‘chutes as far as we know, jumpin’ down on to rocks in the dark of a windy night? No, son. It won’t do.’
‘Then how in blazes was it done?’
‘That’s what we’re goin’ to find out. Come on.’
‘Not in those clothes you don’t!’
‘What’s wrong with these clothes? Hey? You wanted to paint me in ’em, though I got a deep suspicion it was your idea of bein’ funny. And if it was …’
‘They’re all right in my studio. But I don’t want you to go parading round the country in ’em. Hang it all, what would old man Grange say if he heard I had a guest who ran around dressed up as an ancient Roman?’
‘So that’s it. Hey?’
Ferrars merely pointed to the clothes.
It was twenty minutes later when we stood, in the pallor of the late afternoon light, staring at the last footprints made on earth by Rita Wainright and Barry Sullivan.
They were framed in the path outlined by the tiny white-painted pebbles. Their very simplicity made them so maddening. Superintendent Craft stood at one side, stroking his chin with the indulgent air of a man who has a winning hand. Ferrars, frankly beaten, sat on the back steps. H.M. – now much less offensive to the eye in ordinary attire except for one carpet slipper – bent as far over as his corporation would permit to peer at the tracks.
‘Yes, sir?’ promoted Craft, with a high and lofty air of amusement.
H.M. lifted his head.
‘There are times,’ he said, ‘when you remind me so much of Masters that my gorge rises. Oh, lord love a duck! These are perfectly honest footprints. There’s no flummery about ’em.’
‘That’s what I kept telling you, you know.’
H.M. put his fists on his hips.
‘You noticed,’ he suggested, ‘that the toes are indented? As though they’d been running?’
Craft’s tone was dry. ‘Yes. We noticed it. They were running, as you can tell by the length of the stride. But not running very fast. Just hurrying, as you might say.’
H.M. shook his head dismally from side to side.
‘I say, son, do you mind if I walk on top of ’em? I notice they’re the only part of this stretch that hasn’t been messed up.’
‘Go ahead and walk all you like. As I told you, we’ve got plaster casts at the police-station.’
H.M. started down the path. Even with no rain since Saturday night, his own footsteps sank heavily. Using great caution with his injured toe, he limped down towards Lovers’ Leap. Here, stepping on the little semi-circle of humped, coarse grass, he deliberately peered over the edge. It was a sight which made my stomach turn over, even at that distance; a head for heights must be a fine
thing, and it did not seem to bother him in the least.
‘Find anything?’ called Craft.
H.M. turned round, his fists on his hips, against the skyline. The breeze from behind belled out his linen coat. His eye moved first right, and then left, over the rest of the expanse – now scored with many footprints, including all our own and the track of his wheel-chair. He looked long at the geometrical designs in white-painted pebbles. Then his voice came loudly down-wind.
‘Oi!’
‘Yes, sir?’
He pointed with a big flipper.
‘This place was kept pretty neat and smooth before people started gallopin’ all over it. Those pebbly bits, like Euclid having some fun at the seaside. And the pebble-edged path. Could they be used for any hocus-pocus?’
‘You mean could anybody walk on them? Just try a few and see.’
With the heel of his right foot, gingerly, H.M. tested them; and they sank into the ground. That was no good either.
‘But see here, son. Haven’t they got any purpose?’
‘Nothing will grow here,’ Craft pointed out. ‘They’re ornamental. Also,’ he grinned sepulchrally, ‘you can see them in the dark.’
An expression of vast bewilderment overspread H.M.’s face. Still shaking his head, he lumbered back up the four-foot path towards us. Once again he stopped to peer at the footprints.
‘It’s a bit rummy,’ he said, ‘how those two kept step in their runnin’. Almost as though —’ He paused, massaging his chin, and he did not continue.
‘Now come on.’ The abrupt sharpness of Craft’s voice startled me. ‘Let’s not waste any more time. In the name of sense, Dr Croxley, why don’t you admit you stole that gun out there, and let’s all go home to tea?’
‘You’re making an awful mistake, son,’ H.M. said quietly.
‘Very well, sir.’ Craft spoke from deep in his throat. ‘I’m making a mistake. Let’s leave it at that, until tomorrow morning at the inquest. Shall we?’
‘But listen, man! This suicide-pact business is all eyewash! You say they made all these elaborate plans to run away. Then, on the spur of the moment, while listenin’ to Romeo and Juliet, they suddenly changed their minds and rushed out to glory. If they did that, where did they suddenly pick up the gun – which nobody’s been able to identify since?’
Craft shook his head.
‘I don’t say that’s what they did, Sir Henry.’
‘Then what do you say?’
‘As I see it, they first intended to go, just as you showed. But before then, maybe several days before, Mrs Wainright had a change of heart. She persuaded Sullivan to join her in the suicide-pact. They had a last fling at listening to the Romeo and Juliet play, and then they did it. Remember: there’s no sign that they took any clothes with them. Not a suitcase or bag or anything. And they must have had clothes ready, if they meant to bolt.’
(This, I had to admit, was true enough.)
For a moment H.M. stared straight ahead of him. Then he snapped his fingers.
‘Diamonds!’ he muttered. ‘I was almost forgetting the diamonds!’
‘What about them?’
‘The diamonds they took with ’em!’
‘But we don’t know they did take any diamonds. That’s a deduction of yours. We haven’t looked in this famous ivory box, because the nurse wouldn’t let us in. Consequently –’
H.M. stopped him.
‘But if the diamonds are gone, or there’re imitations substituted for real ones, ain’t that good enough evidence those two meant to do a bunk? Rita Wainright wouldn’t rush away with thousands of pounds’ worth of jewellery if she meant to commit suicide?’
Craft pondered this.
‘Yes, sir, that sounds reasonable enough. Unless, of course, she’d converted them into cash beforehand.’
‘We’d better get up to that bedroom, Doctor,’ H.M. said to me. ‘That is, if it can be managed?’
‘It can be managed.’
Here, at last, was hope. Nobody comprehended better than your obedient servant that I was in both an awkward and a dangerous position. Craft was in no pleasant frame of mind. He meant business. If they were going to press this charge of taking a very expensive motor-car, in order to sink it in Exmoor quicksand, I failed to see what I could do about it. The mere grotesqueness of the charge made me boggle and splutter, as though I had been accused of holding up a bank or dynamiting a railway line. But it was no less serious for all that.
When we went into the house, I am ashamed to confess, there was one time when I had tears of wrath in my eyes.
I explained the situation to Mrs Grover, the day nurse, who stood aside disapprovingly as we went in. Alec was still asleep. The room was dim now, its furniture making shadowy outlines against the whitish blinds.
H.M. went over and gently took the key out of Alec’s limp hand.
‘Please!’ said Mrs Grover.
Her voice seemed to rap out harshly, too loud a noise. Ferrars, who lurked outside the door and would not come in, merely pointed to the dressing-table. Craft went over and raised a blind, again to the disapproval of the nurse. Opening the drawer of the dressing-table, H.M. lifted out the heavy ivory box. Into its lock he fitted the key with the engraved word and the true-love knot.
When he opened the lid, we saw that the box was lined first with steel and then with dark-blue velvet. Cases were piled inside: cases long, cases round, cases square, cases oval: all of the same dark-blue velvet, with white satin inside. I counted sixteen of them as H.M. put them out on the dressing-table. Only one of them, a bracelet-case, was empty. The only stone represented was a diamond.
‘Imitations,’ growled H.M., as little heaps and curves of glittering stones built up into a kind of fiery scrap-heap. He was rapidly opening one case after another, and flinging it aside. ‘Imi …’
But he did not go on. Instead he rested his hands for a moment on the dressing-table, as though supporting his own heavy weight. He picked up one of the cases – it contained a diamond pendant, I remember – and limped over to the light of the window.
There he studied it, hitching up his spectacles firmly, and turning down the corners of his mouth. I remember the slate-blue sea behind him, the red horizon, and the shifting glitter against his hands. Each one of those articles he scrutinized with a fiendish care, taking each to the window. When he had finished, and closed his eyes as though to rest them, his face had taken on a poker-playing impassiveness; it might have been made of wood.
‘Well?’ I said.
‘Slight miscalculation.’ His tone was without inflexion. ‘They’re not imitations. They’re real diamonds.’
On the bed, Alec Wainright opened his eyes. Though it was difficult to tell, I think he smiled.
And softly, just behind us, Superintendent Craft was laughing.
SIXTEEN
MOLLY GRANGE and Belle Sullivan were standing at the gate when I got back to Lyncombe.
They made an attractive picture. Molly was taller than Belle, perhaps less well developed in what Tom would portentously call the mammary and gluteal regions. Belle’s grey eyes were intensified by thin black pencilling, her mouth was dark red and even her brown curls seemed to shine, whereas Molly had none of these things. Yet, despite the charm of our visitor, my money is and always will be on Molly.
Instead of driving into the garage, I left my car at the front door and got out into the half-dusk. It was Molly who spoke.
‘Dr Luke, where on earth have you been? You look tired to death.’
‘Out at the Wainrights’. I’m all right.’
‘Do you realize this is the second time you’ve missed your tea in two days? Tom’s furious.’
‘Then Tom will just have to be furious, my dear.’
‘You’re a prodigal parent, that’s what you are,’ said Belle, who was smoking a cigarette and getting lipstick all over the end of it. ‘Who were with you? That big fat guy with the wheel-chair? The one who called me a liar when I said I was mar
ried?’
‘Yes. And Superintendent Craft and Paul Ferrars.’
Molly’s blue eyes narrowed. ‘What’s Sir Henry up to now, Dr Luke?’
‘To tell you the truth, he was dressed up like a Roman Senator.’
Both girls stared back at me, with slowly dawning enlightenment. Then they turned to each other and spoke together.
‘The Emperor Nero,’ they said.
‘Have you heard about him too?’
‘Have we heard about him?’ echoed Belle. ‘Jesus H. Christ!’ She took a quick puff at her cigarette before removing it to make an excited gesture with it. ‘Have we heard about anything else?’
‘It was Harry Pierce,’ Molly explained, ‘and that man Willie Johnson.’
‘And I was right in the middle of it,’ amplified Belle.
‘Johnson! Where is he now?’
‘He’s in the can.’
‘What can?’
‘The hoosegow,’ Belle said impatiently. ‘They arrested him.’
‘I can’t say I’m exactly surprised. But –’
‘Boy,’ said Belle, ‘you should have seen what happened! I was standing here at the gate, like this, talking to that fellow Pierce. He’d been over here about six times. It wasn’t more than twenty minutes after two, not closing-time yet.
‘This Pierce was just saying to me, “And I ’ope, ma’am, we’ll ’ave no more of what I might term the reign of terror in these parts,” when I looked up and saw a guy on a bicycle, just coming like a bat out of hell. Boy, was he travelling!
‘Pierce’s eyes start to pop out, and he runs out in the road and waves his arms and yells, “You keep away from my house, Willie Johnson, you keep away from my house.” And I guess that must have scared the guy on the bicycle. Because he skids, and turns clean over, and goes bicycle and all straight like a bat out of hell through the doors of Pierce’s saloon-bar.’
‘Not again?’
‘Yes, again,’ returned Molly. ‘It was the most dreadful crash you ever heard. Much worse than yesterday.’
‘But that wasn’t the worst of it,’ Belle assured me. ‘Up comes the cop, and up comes everybody. He started – I mean Johnson started – telling a story we could hear clear across the street.’
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