“No, but he told me. Try and keep to facts, please, if you can.”
“All right. So he told you about that, did he?” She seemed to be surprised. “Well, of course I got round to feeling suspicious of Perry, myself. It was absurd, and yet there were lots of little things to point towards him. He had walked away from me on the hill pretending not to see me. And what was he doing there at that time of day anyhow, when he should have been working? Remembering silly little practical jokes of his, things that he’d said and the way he said them, I began to think of him as rather a ruthless and sinister little man. Then he’s the only one of us here who has much contact with the outside world, and the dead girl came from London. Idiotic as it sounds, I frightened myself so much that, though I’d left Moore Court meaning to go straight round to Perry’s, I was afraid to stop there. I had meant to ask him if we both should tell you that we’d seen each other and also to get his moral support against my mother-in-law in another matter, but I just drove straight on past his house and went to Cynthia’s instead. I went away when I saw that you were in the boat, that’s true enough, but I didn’t have a swim–at least not there.”
“So I gathered,” said Duffy. He remained patient; it seemed that the story had at least reached the end of its beginning.
“On the way back I did nearly collide with Jamesy Flynn’s car at the corner by the boat-house, but it was after five. You see, I just stopped by the roadside to think–a little about the murder but mainly about my own relations with my family–and while I thought I sat staring out over the water without seeing it. I hadn’t reached the boat-house, but the stretch of water opposite to it was in sight from where I was, and I noticed a dinghy going out from there. I had a look at it through Cynthia’s field-glasses–I’d forgotten to return them, you know–and saw that Perry was aboard. He launched one of those inflatable rubber mattress affairs over the side and then did the extraordinarily bad sort of dive that one does from a small boat. I know how difficult it is; I used to do quite a bit of diving before I was married. He looked so small and silly in his little swimming trunks that I suddenly realised how absurd it was to suspect him of being a murderer and I began to think of all his good points. I must seem an awful nit-wit but that, I’m afraid, is how my mind works. Anyhow I decided to go and talk to Perry when he came out of the water. I drove on, had my near-collision with James Flynn, and stopped the car again about a hundred yards on the other side of the boat-house and just about level with where Perry was trying to climb onto his floating mattress. He succeeded, just as I got out of the car, and stretched himself out on his back to bask in the days last bit of sun. He hadn’t seen me, and I was going to call out to him when something happened to make me change my mind.” With a wan smile that asked permission and gave thanks she took another of Duffy’s cigarettes and accepted a light. “For about half an hour I had been hearing a motor-boat engine off and on–well, two of them actually but one kept starting and stopping and making extraordinary noises, really a frightful racket. Was it yours?”
“No,” said Duffy. “It was a ship-load of wet and rather discouraged reporters.”
“Oh! How unfortunate for them.” Even as she approached the climax of her narrative she seemed to find the thought of their predicament amusing. “They won’t find much copy in the middle of the bay. Anyhow it was they who discouraged me from calling out to Perry. I was afraid the boat might be yours, you see, and I didn’t want my talk with Perry to be interrupted by a detective any more than my talk with Cynthia. Sorry–but that’s how I felt. The engine had been silent for quite a few minutes and then, just when I was going to shout, it started rocketing again much nearer than before. I couldn’t make up my mind what the hell to do, so I just got back into the car. Then it happened.” She fixed Duffy with a steady eye.
“Yes,” murmured the detective encouragingly. He hoped that on this occasion the candour of her expression would be matched by a truthful tongue; but there was a small matter that needed to be settled.
“By the way, just to set the scene before you go on, was there anything moving on the water?–anything apart from Dr. Walton who was presumably floating with the tide?”
“Anything moving,” she repeated slowly. Her eyes assumed the glazed look that is often to be noticed when someone tries to visualise a remembered scene. “Before I got back into the car I had a jolly good view, and there was nothing–except a bird perhaps.”
“What sort of a bird?” Duffy asked.
“A cormorant–I think.”
“But you didn’t see it after you got back into the car?”
“No.” Not unnaturally she seemed puzzled. “I didn’t notice it, but I didn’t have a clear field of vision.”
“All right. Sorry to have interrupted. Please go on with your story.”
“I could just see Perry through a little gap in the bushes between the road and the water,” she resumed, watching Duffy uneasily. “He seemed to have fallen asleep, but I knew he was probably only brooding about some point in the book he was writing. Anyhow he suddenly gave a little kick with his heels, as if he’d just solved his problem perhaps, and slid off the rubber mattress.”
“You mean that he meant to slide off?” Duffy asked.
“Well, that’s the way it looked to me. Yes, I’m sure he did. It was only when I saw the rubber thing going down too, that I began to think of an accident. I got out and watched the water, but Perry didn’t come up. Even then I felt that he was probably up to one of his horrid practical jokes, that he knew I was there and that he was lurking under the bank somewhere, waiting for me to jump in to the rescue so that he could come up behind me and frighten the wits out of me with a frightful yell of triumph. That’s the sort of sense of humour he had. He’s never grown up, you know. It was the sort of thing that made me think he might be a murderer. But, of course, I had to be sure he was all right.”
Duffy’s interest could not be said to have flagged at any point in the story but it was now at its most keen; what was to follow must, he felt, contain the nub of the matter.
“Just in case, I got out of my coat and skirt and shoes,” she explained, “and tried to edge my way out along the branch of a tree, so that I could get a look at the bank on either side. I needn’t tell you that before I had seen anything the blasted branch bent so much that I couldn’t hold on to it and just slithered down into the water with all the grace of a sack of potatoes; I managed to miss falling plop into the mud, though, which was something. Well, nobody was lurking anywhere to jump on me, but somebody was doing a fast crawl down from the direction of the boat-slip–it couldn’t have been Perry; the distance was too great. But just then I did catch a glimpse of Perry; he was on one of the little islands–hiding, of course, the silly ass.” She gave a little gasp of irritation. “Oh God! I shouldn’t talk like that about him. It’s so hard to remember that he’s–Why are brilliant people so often childish? Poor silly Perry. I only spotted him for a second on the island. He must have climbed on at the other side. I saw the movement of a bare arm and something red and blue that I realised must be the rubber mattress and then he got down out of sight.”
“Was that the nearest island?” Duffy asked, bearing in mind the marks of occupation that had been found there.
“Yes, it was. After that I didn’t see any point in waiting. It looked as though Perry’s joke had been for the benefit of someone else, not me. I was only an incidental casualty. I managed to climb back onto the bank without being noticed by whoever was swimming towards the spot where Perry went down. The branch I’d slipped from had acquired a permanent bend and it helped to get me ashore; and I was jolly grateful to it when I recognised Flynn. I didn’t want him, of all people, to see me with next to nothing on. Well, that’s all there is to it, except that I was in a blazing temper.” She stubbed out her cigarette and leaned back in her chair. “I drove straight to Moycarrick and had a bath as well as a meal–I didn’t want to have to explain everything here; I felt such an ass. The
rest you know.”
Duffy wondered if he did know the rest. Much of what Ivy O’Brien Moore had said was supported by irrefutable evidence, but the detective felt that somehow, somewhere in her story, an essential truth was lacking.
“I didn’t know that Dr. Walton possessed such a Roman sense of humour,” he observed.
“Really he was a menace.” The young woman accepted a final Sweet Afton with a more leisured grace. “Cynthia tells frightful stories of the things he used to do when they were children; he gave her a ghastly life, but she dotes on him. Isn’t it odd? Lua Kennedy, too–the poor girl’s been the victim of the most infuriating pranks in the few years she’s been with him. But, of course, Lua puts up with him because––” Ivy gave a weak smile. “Well–just because. Oh God! I can’t believe he’s dead, the victim of one of his own jokes. He was more alive than any of us.” She tittered slightly, hysterically, perhaps at some recollection of Peregrine. “And I suppose those unfortunate reporters are still adrift, unconscious of all the new dramas going on round them?”
“As a matter of fact they’re not,” said Duffy, getting up to go. “Your husband towed them in to Newtown Moore about an hour or so ago. They had a pretty rotten day, but by a sort of poetic justice it was they who found the–who picked up Dr. Walton.”
“Oh!” She shivered. The evenings had not yet got the warmth of summer. “I suppose it’s too early for you to know how he died?”
“We have a pretty fair idea of the cause.”
“Then you can tell me? Was it just drowning, or a heart attack?”
“Actually it appears to have been neither. He was shot in the back,” said the detective gravely.
CHAPTER VIII
INSTEAD OF going directly to the Civic Guard Station at New-town Moore, Duffy and O’Callaghan continued on to the road that ran round the upper reaches of the bay, arriving shortly after eight o’clock at the house that had belonged to Peregrine Walton. During the journey the superintendent talked more than was his wont; for the most part the sergeant listened, murmuring frequently in agreement and once or twice exclaiming in surprise.
They were not the first visitors to the bereaved household. Three cars stood before the door: Flynn’s Hillman, the O’Brien Moores’ old Daintier, and an even older Ford covered with the dust of travel. Leaving Sergeant O’Callaghan for the moment to his own devices, Duffy presented himself at the door and was admitted to the study by the housekeeper whose bleak face was unexpectedly marked by tears. She informed him that Miss Kennedy was broken up entirely, God help her, and that Mrs. O’Brien Moore, herself, was with her at the moment; everyone else was in the study. In her last statement, however, the good woman proved to be wrong; no other men were present when the detective entered die room.
The deepest gloom of the day comes when daylight is fading but has not quite given up its battle with the dark, when all colour has gone and shapes have lost their definition, when lamplight is no more than a yellow stain on the pervading greyness. Beyond the study’s uncurtained windows the formless bulk of trees seemed to be closing in on the house to shut off from it the last dim reflection of the sunset; a reading lamp illuminated only the pages of a book and the white joyless faces of Michael and Mary. The two women who sat just outside of the circle of light were identifiable only by their monstrous shadows.
“ ’Tis himself,” said one of them, as soon as Duffy had advanced sufficiently far into the room to be recognised. “And isn’t it time for him?” The voice could have belonged to no one but Mrs. Scully.
“I’m glad you’ve come, Superintendent,” said Mrs. Flynn from the other side of the children. “We’re none of us very happy here, though the young one’s been doing her best to entertain us.” A crackling sound suggested the unwrapping of chocolates. “James and Mr. Scully have walked up to the pub on the main road.”
Mary held up the book from which she had been reading aloud. “De Quincy’s The Avenger,” she announced with somewhat forced brightness. “The only thing I could find that seemed in any way appropriate to the occasion. I’m glad you’re here, too.”
“And me,” Michael observed, snuggling closer up to his sister in the big chair. “Women aren’t much good when murderers are peering in through the window, and I’m not really big enough to look after them. And, I don’t like this story; it’s too creepy.”
“Ah, God bless the child,” muttered Mrs. Scully. “Isn’t he in the right of it?”
Duffy found a low stool that brought him into the same circle of fight with the children; when he was sitting down his face was on a level with Michael’s. He grinned amiably at the little boy.
“It’s time you were in bed,” he said.
Mary took it on herself to answer for her brother. “Have a heart, Superintendent. Nobody wants to be left at home alone.”
“Is your father here, too?”
“No. He’s gone over to Shantubber to see Mummy. Why?”
“I was just wondering.” He picked up the volume of de Quincy, remembering vividly how he had frightened himself with The Avenger at his prep school; he had read it in the dead of night by the light of a torch under the bedclothes. “I quite agree with Michael about this,” he said, “but it’s the mystery that gives one the creeps. As soon as we know who the avenger is we don’t feel frightened any more, only rather sorry for him. That’s what I want you to understand; I know who the murderer is, here at Newtown Moore, and I give you my word that there’s no need for you to be frightened. Never again will the murderer get the chance to lift a hand against any of you. That’s a promise.”
Michael looked vastly relieved, but Mary’s face remained a white, expressionless mask in the lamplight. “There’s no more need to be frightened of the murderer,” she said, staring at Duffy, “but are you sorry for–for him?”
Duffy looked into the child’s eyes; they were as unfathomable as his own. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose I am.” He went over to the doorway and found a panel of switches. “We can do with a bit more light. There! That’s more cheerful. Where’s your cousin Hector?”
“He had to carry Lua upstairs,” answered Michael brightly. “She passed out as soon as we got here.”
Mrs. Flynn made haste to amplify the information. “The poor girl must have seen in Mrs. O’Brien Moore’s face what she was going to tell her,” she explained. The estate agent’s wife filled Peregrine’s sofa as completely as she had filled her own; it still came as a surprise to see the doll-like, golden-haired head above her vast frame. Stealthily she pushed what appeared to be a box of chocolates under a cushion to hide it from the sudden onslaught of light. “The Scullys and ourselves had come for news, but none of us knew anything till the family got here.” Like everyone else in the district she referred to the occupants of Moore Court as the family with a probably unconscious deference. “Anyway she fainted dead in her tracks–poor tiling. We ought to be going, only we can’t without our menfolk. Is the pub on the phone, I wonder? We might give them a ring.”
Mrs. Scully ignored the question which had been addressed to her. She had put on a hat and coat to grace the formal occasion and she looked very round and compact on a straight-backed chair the height of which kept her booted feet a good three inches above the floor. Her fat right hand clutched a glass containing an amber liquid. It was apparent that her mind was still on Lua Kennedy.
“Well, she flopped,” said the old woman. “The creature! And who’ll blame her? ’Tis a terrible thing to hear of a good man’s unnatural end–and the creature was more than just a secretary to him.” Mrs. Scully glanced in haste at the children and sought for an euphemism. “She was more like–like one of the family,” she pronounced.
“You’re quite right,” Mrs. Flynn agreed. “She was that.”
Mary’s voice cut through the topic; she seemed to have no intention of being rude, but the finality in her tone left nothing more to be said. “Your tenses are wrong,” she pronounced. “Lua is a member of the family.”
> “The saints preserve us,” was Mrs. Scully’s only comment.
Whatever might be the present or future state of relations between Lua Kennedy and the O’Brien Moores, Duffy hoped that the girl had by now recovered from her “flop.” He had come out of his way to see her and he felt that the conclusion of his case waited only on what she had to say. In the meantime there was another matter to be taken up with the children. The brighter light had made Peregrine’s study look more cheerful, but there had been no corresponding lightening of the mood of its occupants. A change of conversation to something less obviously associated with the subject of murder might have better results.
“When you were playing Indians earlier to-day, Michael, you nearly skewered my sergeant with an arrow. Remember?” tire detective asked.
Michael remembered. “Your deputy, you mean,” he said seriously. “The U. S. Cavalry wear uniform. You’re not ‘yellow-legs’ so you’re not sojers. So you’re the sheriff–and I nearly creased your deputy.”
Mary was unable to leave alone even such a straight-forward statement. “The sheriff is a local man,” she objected, “and Mr. Duffy isn’t. He’s from out-of-State, and so is Sergeant O’Callaghan If you’re playing a game, you may as well play it properly. They’re Government men.”
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