A gust of overwhelming fury smote the Inspector. ‘Now it is you,’ he cried hoarsely, ‘who are wandering from the point. The problem is not to decide how the murder was done, though that may have its importance. The problem is to decide who did it.’
‘But we know that, don’t we?’ said Fen with deliberate malice.
The Inspector paused. He appeared to be summoning up his resources for a titanic counterblast to this offensive suggestion. His lower jaw dropped and the blood rushed pinkly to his cheeks. No adequate rhetoric, however, was at his disposal, and regretfully dismissing the impulse of violent physical expression, he resorted to a heavy, subliminal irony. ‘You may know, sir,’ he said ineffectually at last.
‘I do,’ said Fen simply.
Sir Richard was at once the incarnation of bluff, hearty common sense. ‘Nonsense, Gervase!’
‘I do know.’ Fen adopted the theatrical wail of those who believe themselves to be everlastingly misunderstood by their fellows. ‘I knew three minutes after we arrived in that room.’
‘Three mi –!’ Curiosity struggled with indignation in Sir Richard’s mind, and curiosity abruptly won. ‘Who then?’
‘Ah!’
Sir Richard lifted both hands, palms outward, in the conventional mime for despair. ‘Oh Lord!’ he said. ‘Mystification again. I know: it can’t come out till the last chapter.’
‘Nothing of the sort,’ said Fen huffily. ‘The case isn’t complete yet. I cannot imagine, in the first place, why this person should do such a thing.’
‘Good heavens! Aren’t there enough motives hanging around?’
‘All sexual motives, my dear Dick. I don’t believe in the crime passionnel, particularly when the passion appears, as in this case, to be chiefly frustration. Money, vengeance, security: there are your plausible motives, and I shall look for one of them. I confess, too, that certain details, though probably inessential, still puzzle me.’
‘Well, that’s a relief, anyway,’ said the Inspector with a sudden access of unconvincing jocosity. ‘I think,’ he added cautiously, apparently fearful of opposition, ‘that we’d better see Mr Fellowes next.’ This exercise of initiative appeared to console him somewhat.
‘He’ll be up in a moment,’ said Nicholas, who had appeared opportunely on the Inspector’s words. ‘At the moment he is on my instigation engaged in being violently and repeatedly sick. He holds his liquor ill. It’s my opinion that he shouldn’t be allowed to drink at all, or only very little.’
He smiled benevolently round the gathering, seeming to see support for this suggestion. ‘May I ask how you’re getting on?’
‘Impossible to say at the moment,’ said Sir Richard. ‘We progress, but in what direction – there’s been no landmark of sufficient size yet to enable us to tell.’
‘Do you still adhere to this absurd suicide theory?’
‘You disagree then?’ By lowering his voice at the end of the sentence the Inspector converted it from a question to a statement, which he contemplated resignedly.
‘The idea is perfectly ridiculous. Yseut was rich, and had moreover just succeeded in creating a situation full of the most uncomfortable possibilities – a wide, fecund horizon of mischief-making. To abandon that would be to abandon every principle she ever possessed. Anything to give pain, as Hamlet might have said.’ He considered the paraphrase critically for a moment, prior to casting it before lesser intelligences. ‘Certainly she wouldn’t have exchanged all that potential unpleasantness for being blown with restless violence round about the pendent world. Rachel, Jean, Donald and Robert were all tied to her apron-strings – more exactly I should say to her shoulder-straps – in an undignified huddle. I fear it was murder – motive either money or sex.’
‘Fen,’ said Sir Richard, ‘has just been derogating sex as a murder motive.’
‘ “Murder’s as near to lust as flame to smoke,”’ answered Nicholas urbanely, and added: ‘A trite comparison.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir?’
‘A quotation from Pericles, Inspector: a dirty play about brothels, by Shakespeare – of whom no doubt you have heard.’
Sir Richard interrupted in some haste. ‘And money? The girl was rich?’
‘Quite tediously so. About two thousand a year, I take it. Her sister Helen inherits. And while I’m on the subject I ought perhaps to mention that Yseut told Helen at the party the other night that she proposed visiting town shortly to alter her will.’
Nigel said: ‘What the hell are you suggesting?’
Nicholas waved him aside. ‘These mistaken impulses of chivalry, Nigel – originally, as the Inspector no doubt is aware, denoting an affection for horses – are wildly out of place.’
The Inspector gazed at him with distaste. ‘You’re prepared to swear to that, sir?’ It was, Nigel thought, a perfectly unreflecting action which could be brought about by any particularly outrageous statement, like the salivating of Pavlov’s dogs at the sound of the dinner-bell.
‘Unlike yourself, Inspector,’ said Nicholas with mock severity, ‘I make no distinction between ordinary truth and truth under oath. And besides, I have an agnostic’s mind. There’s nothing I could sincerely swear by.’
‘No primary philosophical principle?’ put in Nigel sarcastically.
‘Apart from the primary philosophical principle that there is no primary philosophical principle,’ replied Nicholas unruffled, ‘no. However: we’re confusing the good inspector. You may take it, Inspector, that I did in fact overhear this conversation.’
‘Was anyone else present, sir?’
‘Innumerable other people were present, Inspector. Whether any of them heard what I heard I’m sure I couldn’t say.’
At this point, Fen, who had been gazing critically at his features in a mirror at the other end of the room, turned and strode purposefully towards them. ‘You are being imbecile and jejune,’ he said offensively to Nicholas. ‘Answer me a question: what were you and Fellowes doing this evening in a room not belonging to either of you?’
Nicholas’ bland command of the situation vanished abruptly. ‘We were listening to the wireless,’ he replied lamely. ‘Donald has none, and the owner of the room was out, so we took possession.’
‘Did either of you leave the room at any time?’ Fen’s manner had become thunderously official, a forbidding parody of the Inspector’s.
Nicholas scratched his nose apologetically. ‘No,’ he said with surprising brevity.
‘Did you hear the shot?’
‘Dimly. Heldenleben was going on at the time. Even though the windows were open it wasn’t startling.’
‘Good heavens, boy. Do you mean to say that you were playing that thing with all the windows open?’
‘Well,’ said Nicholas ruefully, ‘it was hot.’
‘You were playing the wireless with the windows open,’ said Fen. ‘Oh my ears and whiskers!’ he added, abandoning the official manner. The Inspector gazed at him with polite astonishment. ‘We have it at last. And what was on before Heldenleben, may I ask?’ he inquired, adopting a tone of oily courtesy.
Nicholas looked surprised. ‘The Meistersinger overture, I think.’
‘The Meistersinger overture. Splendid, splendid!’ Fen rubbed his hands, looking suddenly pedagogic. ‘An admirable work, admirable, admirable.’
‘Really, sir, I hardly think – ’ began the Inspector, but Fen interrupted him.
‘I suspected it all along,’ he said. ‘No, no, my dear man, not your powers of reasoning. The method, the method! We have it at last!’ He collapsed into a chair in a state of subdued ecstasy and appeared to go to sleep.
‘I think,’ said the Inspector, ‘that if Mr Fellowes has recovered –’ Nicholas moved obediently to the door.
‘Just a minute!’ Fen twisted uncomfortably round in his chair and meditated for a moment. ‘What time did you do the blackout?’
‘Shortly before we heard the shot, I think.’
‘Did you do it, or did Fellowe
s?’
‘I did the windows on this side, and Donald did those on the courtyard side.’
‘Did you notice anything unusual at the time?’
‘No. It was getting pretty dark by then.’
‘Where did you sit?’
‘In a couple of armchairs by the fireplace.’
Fen grunted. The information appeared to give him some obscure satisfaction. ‘Who do you think is the murderer?’ he asked.
Nicholas was taken aback. ‘Robert or Rachel or Jean, I imagine; or Sheila McGaw or –’
‘Or who?’
‘Sheila McGaw.’
‘This is a new one, Inspector,’ said Fen with ill-concealed glee. ‘Tell us about her,’ he added to Nicholas.
‘She’s a young woman of arty proclivities who regularly produces at the repertory.’ He pronounced the word deliberately, preciously avoiding the abbreviation. ‘At the time of Yseut’s short-lived excursus on the West End stage, she was to be offered the job of producing the play in which Yseut was to appear. That amiable young woman used her influence to lose Sheila the job, chiefly by publishing the fact that the woman’s sexual reactions were not entirely normal.’ Here the Watch Committee assumed a shocked, slightly cross-eyed stare. ‘Sheila discovered about this, and not unnaturally took offence. You see, Professor’ – he threw Fen a tentative offer of reconciliation – ‘I know all the scandal, am in fact a latterday Aubrey. What more could the police want?’
‘Apart from the fact that Aubrey could write,’ said Fen frigidly, ‘that he got tight when he drank a lot, and that he had a spontaneous and delightful sense of humour, no doubt there may be something in the comparison. Probably your information is quite as inaccurate as his. If I remember rightly, he went so far as to insist that it was Ben Jonson who killed Marlowe.’ From the expression on his face it was apparent that he regarded the imputation as in the highest degree offensive.
Donald Fellowes, when he appeared, proved to be only partially recovered from the evening’s carouse. The process of being sick had relieved the anaesthesia of his nerves, but the alcohol still crawled and sang and buzzed in his veins, and as a consequence he was feeling not only depressed but actively ill.
‘Now, you sheepshead,’ said Fen, who had completely taken charge of the situation, ‘what have you got to say for yourself?’
This unorthodox question had the effect of rattling Donald. He mumbled to himself.
‘Are you sorry Yseut is dead?’ Fen continued, and added in a painfully audible aside to Nigel: ‘This is the psychological method of detection.’
Donald was roused. ‘Psychological nonsense,’ he said. ‘If you want to know, I feel only relieved, not sorry. You needn’t suppose I killed her because of that. I have an alibi,’ he concluded, with something of the pride of a small child showing a favourite picture-book to a recalcitrant adult visitor.
‘You think you have an alibi,’ said Fen cautiously. ‘But if one supposes collusion between yourself and Nicholas Barclay, you have nothing of the sort.’
‘You can’t prove collusion,’ said Donald indignantly.
Fen abruptly abandoned this unprofitable topic. ‘Did you practise the organ yesterday morning?’ he inquired. ‘And did you have a drink in the “Mace and Sceptre” beforehand?’
‘Yes to both questions,’ said Donald, who was recovering slightly. ‘I’m playing a very difficult Respighi Prelude as a voluntary on Sunday.’
‘And you took your music to the bar with you?’ Nigel was puzzled at the turn the questioning had taken.
‘As it happens, I did.’
‘Lots of it?’
‘A small pile,’ Donald answered with dignity.
‘Ah,’ said Fen. ‘Your witness, Inspector. My interest in the proceedings is at an end.’
And apparently it was. The Inspector asked a number of questions about Donald’s movements that evening, about the episode of the gun, and about his relationship with Yseut, but they learned nothing new. Nigel had the impression that the Inspector was battering dutifully but ineffectually against a brick wall, that he was asking questions at random simply in the hope that something would emerge, and that having for the moment abandoned the idea of suicide he had been able to evolve no concrete line of inquiry to set in its place. With this state of mind Nigel profoundly sympathized. He himself was beginning to feel very tired, and, like Fen, inclined to lose interest in the proceedings altogether. His earlier reaction to the murder he felt had been sentimental, and he was now inclined to believe that Yseut’s death might from many points of view not have been at all a bad thing; if she had been run over by a bus, the effect would have been the same, so why be disturbed by moral considerations? The Fiji Islanders, he reflected, murder their old men and women from the most admirable motives of social evolution. This was in his conscious mind; in the unconscious there lived and grew still a superstitious terror of death by violence, impervious to the niceties of rational calculation, and which the consciousness was attempting to suppress by refusing further speculation on the problem. The superstitious fear was there, no doubt, because the agency was mysterious – an atavistic throw-back to a belief in the powers of the spirits of earth and air. If he had seen Yseut struck down, if he had known the murderer, it would never have come into being.
Towards the end of the interview, Fen’s interest, apparently a very volatile affair, was roused again.
‘What do you think of Jean Whitelegge?’ he asked, with an elaborate simulation of disinterested scientific curiosity.
‘She’s in love with me, I believe.’
‘My dear man, we know that. Don’t be so complacent about it. Do you think she can have killed Yseut?’
‘Jean?’ There was a fractional pause. Then Donald looked shocked. ‘No: I certainly don’t think so.’
‘Ah,’ said Fen. ‘What service are we having at Evensong on Sunday?’
‘Dyson in D.’
‘Nice,’ commented Fen, ‘theatrical, but nice. You must come, Nigel. Musically, it’s a battle of religion and romance, of Eros and Agape.’ Nigel nodded bewildered at these gnomic utterances. Donald Fellowes departed to bed in one of the guest chambers, first procuring some things from his bedroom under the eye of a policeman.
A soporific atmosphere descended on Fen, Nigel, Sir Richard and the Inspector. Even the two latter appeared now to be sustaining their interest with difficulty. And besides that, it was by now close on midnight. The Inspector, returning with an heroic effort to the matter in hand, made a short attempt at condensation and summary.
‘Certain specific things remain to be investigated,’ he concluded. ‘The alibis of the other people concerned; the question of whether the bullet came from the gun we found (though I’ve no doubt myself that it did); the question of the young lady’s will; the ownership of the ring; and one or two other lesser matters.’
Sir Richard hurled a match, which for some moments he had been applying without noticeable effect to the bowl of his pipe, inaccurately at the fireplace. ‘It remains a mystery to me,’ he said, his face expressing suitable if momentary mystification, ‘how the girl was murdered. Could she have been shot from outside, do you suppose, and the window – ?’ He indicated his lack of confidence in the suggestion by resorting to aposiopesis.
‘Even apart from the fact of the powder burns,’ said the Inspector, ‘I can’t see how it could have been done. If anyone had shot her from the passageway, Williams would have seen them. If Mr Fellowes and Mr Barclay are telling the truth, she wasn’t shot from the room opposite. With due deference sir,’ – he gazed at Fen without so much as a hint of deference in his manner – ‘I don’t see how it can have been anything but suicide. Of course I shall keep an open mind on the subject’ – he nodded, apparently in approval of this generous and eclectic disposition – ‘but it seems to me there’s really very little doubt about it.’
‘I’m sure we can leave matters safely in your hands, Inspector,’ said Sir Richard, with something of an effor
t. ‘And now perhaps – bed?’
The sense of relief caused by this suggestion engendered surprisingly a tendency to linger in amiable chatter. Eventually Sir Richard and the Inspector departed, Nigel remaining behind a few moments. Fen had abandoned equally his theatrical gloom and his unnatural exuberance, and was looking impressively grave. ‘Talk to me,’ he said, ‘about abstract justice.’
‘Abstract justice?’ murmured Nigel.
‘Pascal says that human justice is entirely relative,’ said Fen, ‘and that there is no crime which has not at one time or another been considered as a virtuous action. He confuses, of course, universal moral law with actions valuable through temporary expediency. Even so, I believe incest belies him; it has been universally condemned.’ He sighed. ‘The question is: is it worth while for anyone to hang for murder of that young woman? It seems she used her sex in the most debased manner possible – as a means to power, like Merteuil.’
‘She was to some extent a sensualist,’ said Nigel.
Gervase Fen contemplated the apolaustic proclivities of Yseut without satisfaction; a Cornelian struggle appeared to be going on within him. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘I don’t like it at all.’
‘You think you know who killed her?’
‘Oh, yes. Perhaps I should have said that the conditions are such that they can only be fulfilled by one person, and that it will be easy enough to find out who that one person is. There are admittedly complications which will have to be looked into. It’s possible I’m wrong.’ His voice betrayed a certain lack of conviction on this last point. ‘This McGaw woman –’ He interrupted himself to say: ‘Are you in love with Helen?’
Nigel pondered on the possibly unpleasant implications of the question. ‘I hardly know her,’ he said, hoping by evasion to draw Fen further. But Fen merely shook his head. ‘I’ll walk with you to the gate,’ he said.
A half-moon hung lopsidedly over the great tower. The air was warm with a warmth that at once sapped physical energy and presaged a tremendous imminent change. They trudged across the quadrangle beneath the delicate finical gaiety of Inigo Jones, transformed by the darkness to a rather sinister, empty lecherousness. Nigel was reminded of Wilkes’ ghost story.
The Case of the Gilded Fly Page 12