She Died a Lady

by John Dickson Carr

  ‘I absolutely refuse,’ he said, enunciating the words carefully through stiff jaws, ‘to have an old friend of mine give any such testimony as you intend. Remember: I warned you about that yesterday.’

  ‘Confound it, Steve, isn’t there ANYBODY who wants poor Rita to get her due?’

  Steve tapped one finger into the palm of his left hand.

  ‘If this whole account is true, and I say if, I consider the woman has had her due. (Mark that, Molly.) She was deliberately deserting her husband. She was overturning the foundations of home and family life. She deserved whatever punishment Providence accorded her.’

  ‘Steve, we’re both old enough to stop talking nonsense, even for the benefit of the children. You can’t change human nature with sermons, or the clergy would have cleaned everything up ten centuries ago.’

  ‘The fact remains,’ he retorted, ‘that she shirked responsibilities and broke up a useful family. Even Johnson admits –’

  ‘What about Johnson, by the way?’ interposed Molly.

  Though Steve appeared ruffled and annoyed at being interrupted, he did not crush her.

  ‘Johnson’s getting sober, and he’s heavily repentant. He says he forgives everybody for everything.’ Steve snorted, forgiving Johnson nothing. ‘He says he even forgives Professor Wainright in the case of a garden-roller he claims Professor Wainright stole from him. He’ll go before the beak in the morning, and get fined ten shillings. There’s nothing I can do for him.’

  ‘Never mind Johnson. Can you honestly say now you believe this was still a suicide-pact?’

  Steve spoke blandly.

  ‘The important thing, my boy, is what can be proved. And they can prove it was a suicide. Legally –’

  ‘Damn the legal aspect!’

  ‘Oh, no. Never say that. That’s foolish. The point is this: those two didn’t take the diamonds. Therefore they didn’t mean to run away.’

  ‘What about the suitcase found by the fishermen? The suitcase containing women’s clothes?

  ‘Were they Rita’s? That’s the point,’ returned Steve, ‘and the only point. If they can’t be proved to be Rita’s, they might be anybody’s. And I’ll tell you something else.’ He tried to examine his finger-nails in the gloom. ‘If Rita had meant to run away to a new life, she would have taken good care not to have any of her effects marked “R.W.,” or marked in any way. They’d all be new clothes, too, unidentifiable by anybody. So I can almost assume they will never be proved to be hers in any case.’

  I put my head in my hands … .

  ‘I keep saying “Rita,”‘Steve added ‘Of course I mean “Mrs Wainright.”’

  ‘But you don’t feel like telling why it was you two quarrelled?’

  Steve hesitated.

  ‘We-el. In confidence, no. Perhaps I don’t mind. As a matter of fact, she asked me to sell some diamonds for her. I refused, and we had words.’

  ‘Why did you refuse?’

  Steve’s voice came querulously out of the gloom.

  ‘Reason one, I am not a broker. Reason two, diamonds so bestowed are considered in legal ethics as the joint property of husband and wife, like a joint bank-account. I said I might undertake the negotiation if I had Professor Wainright’s instructions as well as hers. She flew into a temper, I regret to say. She forbade me ever even to mention the matter to him. One thing led to another, and …’

  Steve lifted his well-tailored shoulders.

  ‘But that was before she met Sullivan?’

  ‘Long before. I imagine Mr Wainright must have been keeping her a little short on her personal-allowance money.’ As though finishing and underlining the whole thing, Steve slapped his knees, got up, and turned to Molly. ‘We’d better be getting along, young lady. I only want to warn you, Luke: no indiscreet words in the coroner’s court tomorrow.’

  So we went up the path between the tall blue delphiniums, with the rocks on either side painted white so that you might see them in the black-out. Belle and I went towards the back door, and Belle suddenly ran ahead of me. Though Molly and Steve started for the front, Molly returned alone to have a last word.

  It was not yet black-out time, and a bright light shone out from the uncurtained scullery windows. Inside Mrs Harping was dishing up dinner. In the light from the windows, I could see Molly clearly; it brought out the colour of her blue eyes, as shining as Belle’s own, and the fine teeth behind her half-open lips.

  ‘Dr Luke, you were talking about human nature.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘If human nature told you to do something, and yet all your training and traditions were against it, would you do it?’

  ‘Is it anything that would be on your conscience afterwards?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Then I should say do it.’

  ‘Thanks. I believe I will,’ said Molly. Then she ran.

  Dinner that night was pretty gruelling. I didn’t say anything to Tom about my plans for the next day, because he would have had a fit; and, as it was, I got a lecture for missing tea. I also cautioned Belle against saying anything.

  I don’t know whether I have conveyed that I am very proud of that boy, since you can’t say such things and it seems poor taste even to write them. But he had now been doing ten men’s work instead of five, and looked it, and I lectured him in return. Tom, however, was full of an interesting if non-lethal case of carbolic-acid poisoning at Elm Hill. I was left to my own thoughts while he gave a minute description of it to Belle, firmly under the impression that the subject enthralled her.

  ‘The first thing to do,’ I remember him saying, as he helped himself to steak-and-kidney pie, ‘is to wash out the stomach with lukewarm water.’

  ‘Oh, Tom!’

  ‘Yes. In that you want to dissolve a little magnesium sulphate – or you can use saccharated lime if you prefer –’

  ‘Speaking personally, big boy,’ said Belle, ‘I always use saccharated lime myself. But don’t let it influence you, please.’

  ‘So that the phenols combine and form a harmless ether-sulphate, to … look here, you little swine, I don’t believe you know a damn thing about it.’

  ‘What a sense of humour we’ve got! You take that saltcellar and cram it down your throat.’

  (But Belle was watching me nevertheless.)

  How to prove that Rita and Sullivan had been murdered? How in Satan’s name to prove it before ten o’clock the next morning?

  ‘See here, governor, you’re not eating anything!’

  ‘I’m not hungry, Tom.’

  ‘But you’ve got to eat! You couldn’t stow away less these days if you were on a diet or in jail.’

  ‘Let him alone, Tom!’

  How to prove that? How? How? How?

  ‘And I think, if you don’t mind, I’ll not stay for the sweet either. Excuse me.’

  I got up and left the table. I had a glimpse of them as the dining-room door closed: Tom large and freckled and hollow-eyed, and Belle with her shining curls and fresh-red finger-nails, under the mosaic-glass dome of lights which has hung over that table for thirty years.

  Mrs Harping came out of the kitchen to expostulate, and I think I spoke to her irritably. I went into the sitting-room. Presently I turned on the news, heard a depressing bulletin, and switched off. This brought my thoughts to Alec, lying out at ‘Mon Repos’.

  After that I switched out the light in the hall, opened the front door, and took a look outside. There was a bright moon over the pitch-black village, making the windows gleam. From across the road, faint noises of jollification issued from the ‘Coach and Horses’. Someone was walking along the road, with the hollow clop-clop which footfalls make at night, and whistling Over the Rainbow. We were all whistling Over the Rainbow in that summer, perhaps the most tragic summer in our history.

  I noticed I had left my car in the street, but I could not be bothered to put it away now. I didn’t want company and couldn’t stand company. I went up to my bedroom, shut the door, and turned on the
light.

  There were the familiar things, the old Morris chair and the picture of Laura, Tom’s mother, over the bed. Tom and Belle now had the radio on downstairs; and, curse the BBC, they were playing If You Were the Only Girl in the World.

  There were the shelves of familiar books, but I did not touch them tonight. I undressed, and put on nightshirt, slippers, and dressing-gown.

  ‘Luke Croxley,’ said a voice inside my head, ‘this situation is nonsense. It’s so intolerable that it’s got to be dealt with.’

  ‘Oh? And how am I going to deal with it?’

  ‘You are going to work out,’ said that voice, ‘from the evidence in front of you, how those two managed to disappear like soap-bubbles on the edge of the cliff, and how they were murdered.’

  ‘Is it likely I can do that, when Sir Henry Merrivale himself so far admits he can’t?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter whether you can do it,’ said the voice. ‘But it’s got to be done. Now begin with the admitted facts …’

  I sat down in the Morris chair, filled my solitary permitted pipe of the day, and smoked it. When that was finished, I deliberately filled and lit another one. This gave me a sense of guilt, but also an exhilarating sense of freedom or ‘going the whole hog’.

  Tom went clumping up to bed at a little past eleven. I was uneasy in case he should notice the amount of smoke in the room, but he only said good night through the door, and went on. A few minutes later Belle tapped at the door, and came in carrying a smoking cup in a saucer.

  ‘Look, Doc.’ She held up the cup and saucer. ‘I’ve made you some hot Ovaltine. Will you promise to drink it before you turn in?’

  ‘Yes, if you insist.’

  ‘Yes,’ persisted Belle, ‘but will you promise to drink it before it gets cold? You say you will, but will you?’

  ‘I promise.’

  She came over to put down the cup on the little table beside my chair.

  ‘Look, Doc.’ The small dark-red mouth twisted. ‘I was all full of fight and ginger this afternoon, but it’s no good. The cards are stacked against you. Why not give it up? Say what they want you to say tomorrow.’

  ‘Go to bed, please.’

  ‘Honest, if you had any chance against that set-up –’

  ‘Go to bed, please!’

  ‘All right, old-timer. By the way, about our friend Molly Grange.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘I guess you must have noticed she’s wild, blind crazy about Paul Ferrars?’

  ‘I more than half noticed it, yes. Go to bed.’

  Belle eyed me curiously. ‘Well, I hope she has better luck with her boy-friends than I’ve had with mine. G’night.’

  I waved her out; she went as though she still had something to say. She was the one who needed consolation, no doubt, and yet I was too infernally selfish to do more than grunt. I regretted this when she had gone, but nothing could be done about it by that time.

  And, as you will imagine, I let the Ovaltine get cold. I lit still another pipe, and let the evidence unreel as though on a moving screen, while the clock went on chiming against deepening quiet.

  Beginning with the bungalow, and a glimmering path leading to Lovers’ Leap, I let my mind wander out across roads and valleys and cliffs and waters and caves of this countryside, to Exmoor and the Baker’s Bridge road: bringing back a residue of facts and persons to the bungalow again. I thought of the tantalizing footprints, closing my eyes to see them first on a rainy night and then on a brilliant afternoon. I thought of Alec and Rita and Sullivan and Ferrars and Molly and Steve and Johnson and Belle …

  Even if you explained so many of the events that happened at ‘Mon Repos’ on Sunday night, others had not even been touched in H.M.’s reconstruction that afternoon. There were facts which remained not only puzzling, but meaningless.

  The cut telephone-wires and the petrol let out of the cars, for instance. Why had the murderer done that?

  It must be a part of the design, unless it had in fact been done by Johnson. H.M. himself had remarked on it forcibly yesterday. Nothing was proved. Nothing was gained. It could not possibly have prevented discovery of the crime. A dangerous risk would be run by any outsider, for instance, who crept in to cut the wires and stick them back into the box again. Severing communication with the outside world would only have prevented the arrival of the police until –

  Out in the hall, the clock struck half-past twelve.

  I had to put down my pipe carefully in the glass ash-tray, since now my hand was shaking.

  I saw the explanation of the whole thing.

  EIGHTEEN

  AND, once you grasped the essential clue, it was frightening in its simplicity.

  I stood up in the smoke-filled room. I could feel my heart beating, but that’s not a cardiac sign: when you feel your heart heavily, it’s nearly always your stomach.

  I knew where to look now. Unless the murderer had been phenomenally careful, it might be possible to prove my case tonight. But was it sensible, or even possible, to go tonight?

  If any of the household caught me sneaking out, I should be due for a lecture from Tom that would last a fortnight. But why not? The biggest difficulty in getting away from any house unheard is in starting up a car. But my car wasn’t in the garage; it was standing at the front gate. I could coast down the High Street, which has a slope; then turn round and come back again.

  As I got dressed again very hurriedly, there moved in front of me an image of Paul Ferrars’ face, and a recollection of Ferrars saying he could see Dr Luke going out in the middle of the night to do some fool thing. Evidently, they knew my character better than I knew it myself. But this had to be done.

  I had finished dressing, all except my shoes, and put an electric torch in my pocket, when I noticed the cup of Ovaltine standing neglected on the table. It was stone cold, but a promise is a promise. I swallowed most of it at a gulp, switched out the light, and opened the door.

  The great thing was to get downstairs without being heard. Yet I knew every creaky board in the house; I learned them years ago, when I tried to get in from night calls without waking Laura. A clock ticked asthmatically in the dark hall. Carrying my shoes, I tiptoed downstairs and only once made a board squeak. I was at the front door when something else occurred to me.

  A witness.

  I must have a witness for what I hoped to find, else they might not believe me even when I found it. So I tiptoed back to the surgery and softly opened the door. It wasn’t necessary to turn on any light. Surgery, nine paces long. Against the opposite wall, the bookcase with calf-leather volumes and the skull on top of it. In line with that, take four paces forward – find the desk – then the chair – sit down – reach the telephone.

  And ring Ferrars’ number at Ridd Farm.

  A sleepy exchange rang that number for a long time. I could hear the two little ghostly buzzes, pealing insistently in the dark, far away out there on Exmoor. Then it was answered.

  ‘Uh-huh? What in blazes do you want, wakin’ people up at this time of the night?’

  ‘Is that you, Sir Henry?’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you, but this is so important there wasn’t any choice. I’ve got it.’

  The voice sharpened. ‘Got what?’

  ‘The solution. I know how it was done.’

  Again a pause.

  ‘Well … now,’ said the voice. ‘I wondered if you would.’

  ‘You mean you’ve got it too?’ (He seemed oddly evasive.) ‘Then listen. Could you possibly meet me at the corner of the main road and the Baker’s Bridge road?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes now. Tomorrow may be too late. I know it’s an imposition to ask you, but we may be able to prove a case. Sir Henry, I know exactly where those murders were committed.’

  There was another curious thing. It was so dark that I could not even see the telephone. This darkness, unaccountably, appeared to have a cotton-wool quality
which padded round my head and even partly obscured the tiny voice at the other end of the line.

  ‘Son, I can’t!’ muttered the voice, coming from far away. ‘I’ve been walkin’ on this toe of mine all day.’

  ‘Get Ferrars to drive you.’

  ‘Ferrars isn’t here.’

  ‘Not there? At half-past twelve? Where is he?’

  ‘I dunno. But he’s out, and he’s got the car with him.’

  ‘Then come in your wheel-chair! Come somehow! Come anyhow!’ I was whispering to the phone with fierce urgency, yet my voice sounded distant to my own ears. The cotton-wool padding thickened round; there was a faint prickling at my scalp, extending to the ear-drums. ‘I shouldn’t have asked it except that it means preventing a miscarriage of justice! Will you come?’

  ‘I’m a loony, I am. All right. Main road and Baker’s Bridge road. When?’

  ‘As soon as you can make it!’

  When I put back the telephone receiver and started to get up, two things happened.

  A vertical line of dim light appeared on the wall facing me. The door behind my back was slowly opening and someone had switched on one bulb in the passage. The dim yellow light broadened and fanned out as the door opened. Someone’s shadow appeared on the opposite wall, where stood the bookcase with the skull on top of it. To me there came a fancy – I could always say a dazed fancy – that the head of the shadow rested exactly on the face of the skull opposite, and blotted it out.

  Belle Sullivan’s voice whispered:

  ‘What’s the idea, Doc? What are you doing?’

  Then, as I got to my feet, a wave of dizziness flowed up into my head and made it spin. It was only momentary; but for a second I felt I was rocking back on my heels and about to fall.

  ‘Be quiet!’ I remember whispering.

  I got hold of the back of the desk-chair, which creaked slightly, and the dizziness passed. It left only a cotton-wool feeling in the head and a dry taste in the mouth.

  ‘What’s the idea, Doc? Why are you dressed?’

  She was wearing a pair of Tom’s blue-and-white striped pyjamas, which overflowed her small body even though they were turned up many inches at the wrists and trouser-edges. She was also wearing a pair of my slippers. I remember her silhouetted figure, and the dim light touching the worn brown linoleum on the floor.