A Night of Errors

by Michael Innes

  ‘What time was this?’

  Sebastian shook his head. ‘It would be after eleven, I should say. It wasn’t until half past eleven that I went into the drawing-room. Can’t think what I said – except that I mentioned having seen Mrs Gollifer in the garden, which was true enough. Rather imagine I gave a fancy picture of seeing Grubb too; probably I wanted to see how Lucy would take it. I just knew there were queer things happening. It wasn’t until Swindle told us that Oliver had been killed that it all came together in my mind.’

  ‘Did you at any time become aware of anybody else on the terrace or in the grounds – for instance, Geoffrey Gollifer?’

  ‘Didn’t set eyes on a soul. But I did have an irrational feeling there were other folk about.’

  ‘Now, Mr Dromio, this is very important. Apart from what you have told me, have you any other reason whatever for associating your niece Lucy with Oliver’s death?’

  ‘That’s the whole story. And bad enough, colonel. First she threatened it and then Grubb caught her. My one idea after that was to see how I could help. And now you’ve solved the problem. So bring in those witnesses quick.’

  ‘I don’t think we need hurry, Mr Dromio.’

  ‘Haven’t you told me I am going to die? In two hours, didn’t you say?’

  ‘I see now that there would be no point in your confessing.’

  Sebastian Dromio by some gigantic effort stirred his limbs. His features contorted in agony. ‘The confession!’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘I must make the confession.’

  Appleby rose. ‘I will see what can be done,’ he said, and slipped from the ambulance. As he closed the door Sebastian Dromio was making rather horrible noises in his throat.

  And almost immediately Appleby ran into Hyland, who stared at him in astonishment. ‘Good heavens!’ he cried. ‘Are you hurt? You’re as pale as a sheet.’

  Appleby laughed rather unsteadily. ‘Did you ever read of those hard-boiled detectives in America crime stories who will do any unspeakable thing to get what they want?’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Hyland spoke reluctantly. ‘I suppose I have.’

  ‘I’ve been trying it out. And I rather think I made the grade.’ Hyland shook his head. ‘I can’t think what you’re talking about. But I’m going to have a word with Sebastian Dromio. They say he’s conscious still.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that.’ And Appleby laid a hand on Hyland’s arm and led him away. ‘The poor chap is very confused in his mind. And I rather think he might confuse you too.’

  14

  The Chief Constable had arrived without his breakfast – a fact showing that the destruction of Sherris Hall was a matter of importance in the county. Hyland hurried off to him with the nervous haste of one who has a good deal to explain, and Appleby was again left to his own resources. He sought out Lucy Dromio and found her in company with Mrs Gollifer. Mother and daughter, both tall figures in white, were pacing the lawn together, and it appeared to Appleby as if confidence was establishing itself between them. But now Mrs Gollifer walked away at some call from Lady Dromio and Appleby joined Lucy.

  ‘You know,’ he asked, ‘that by a strange coincidence Mr Greengrave last night discerned the fact of your relationship? As I stood watching you both walking here I almost persuaded myself that I could have done so too. You have the same figure.’

  Lucy looked at him wearily. ‘Is that a matter of professional interest, Mr Appleby, or is it merely a compliment?’

  ‘It is very interesting to me. You have the same figure and you are both dressed in white… Did you know that two people were watching when Grubb grabbed you last night?’

  The girl caught her breath sharply. ‘Do you suspect me of really having killed someone I thought was Oliver?’

  ‘That you did so is not impossible. You loved Oliver and he had treated you badly. And so, although your love still seemed great, there might be a smouldering resentment underneath it. Then you learnt that he was a blackguard; that he had been making money out of the secret of your birth. I can hardly imagine anything more humiliating and wounding. You said that you felt like killing him. And not long afterwards you were grabbed by Grubb as you hurried, terrified, along the terrace in the dark. He said: “So it was you, was it?” Am I right?’

  ‘You are wrong. He said, “So it is you, is it?” In the circumstances there is a very great difference between these two questions.’

  ‘I agree. But what had you been doing when he came upon you?’

  Lucy looked Appleby straight in the eyes. ‘If I had been killing Oliver, or one whom I took for Oliver, I would have told you so by this time. Do you think I would shelter behind Geoffrey’s absurd confession?’

  ‘Perhaps I shall be able to answer that question soon. Do you think, then, that Geoffrey Gollifer is endeavouring to shield you?’

  ‘No, I don’t think he is.’ Lucy shook her head. ‘It is puzzling and obscure, but somehow I feel that that is not what was in his mind.’

  ‘You are quite right. What he was thinking to do was to shield his mother.’

  ‘My mother.’

  Appleby inclined his head. ‘Your mother – who seems to me, if I may say so, rather a remarkable woman. Geoffrey Gollifer was one of two people who saw Grubb grab you. He mistook you for your mother. And when your mother naturally failed to understand a reference he made to the incident he concluded that she was not being open with him. But he was resolved to shield her – to keep her entirely out of the affair.’

  Lucy made a weary gesture. ‘That is merely to shift suspicion from Geoffrey to our mother. But at least it means that he could not himself have killed the man whose body was found.’

  ‘Not necessarily. He may simply have felt that if your mother was to be suspected the situation was intolerable and he was bound to confess what he had actually done. I may say there has been another offer of confession. And this time definitely to shield you. Did you know how devoted to you was Mr Sebastian Dromio?’

  ‘I scarcely did until his heroic attempt to rescue me.’

  ‘He heard you speak of killing Oliver. And he too saw Grubb seize you on the terrace. He saw your terror. Later he decided that Grubb held the secret of your having committed the crime. So he killed Grubb. And now, when he is dying, he wants to confess that it was he who was guilty of the first killing.’

  Lucy sat down suddenly on a low stone balustrade and buried her face in her hands. ‘It is very horrible,’ she said in a stifled voice.

  ‘And from my point of view it is very complicated.’ Appleby spoke emphatically. ‘My experience in crime is considerable. But never have I faced so complicated a case, or one so bewilderingly huddled up both in space and time. We cannot undo what has been done. I myself cannot seek other than the full truth and the subsequent action of the law. But we can perhaps prevent further error, further confusion and complication, the horror of indefinite and ramifying distrust, unresolved suspicion and doubt. But frankness is required – and among others from you. Why have you not told us of your meeting with Grubb?’

  Lucy looked up. ‘Simply because I failed – stupidly, I don’t doubt – to see it as relevant. I was pacing the terrace – in terror and horror, as you say. But that was simply because I was weak enough to feel that I could not support my personal predicament as revealed by my mother’s story. It had no connexion with anything I had either seen or suspected of a crime. I saw nothing. I suspected nothing. I was walking the terrace, wholly abstracted and absorbed, when this fellow grabbed me and asked his question. I took it for mere drunken impertinence, and even now I do not believe that it was anything else. He had been troublesome before. I shook him off and walked, or ran, on. And that seemed an end of the matter.’

  ‘You ought to have divulged these facts, nevertheless. If they are as you represent them we have arrived at a badly-needed simplification. You yourself know nothing of the crime. Sebastian Dromio knows no more than he has told. There is nothing to challenge your mother’s story that she was merely
lingering in the garden. Your brother Geoffrey’s story is hard to believe, since with anyone other than Sir Oliver it seems impossible that he should have held such a conversation as he claims.’

  ‘Then you do believe that it was the first identification that was mistaken, and that the body was not Oliver’s at all?’

  ‘I believe something a good deal odder – or rather the only satisfactory hypothesis that I can at present see is a good deal odder.’ Appleby paused. ‘The facts seem to require this: that Sir Oliver was not involved at all.’

  Lucy stared at him as if he had taken leave of his senses. ‘I don’t understand you.’

  ‘I scarcely understand myself. It would appear overwhelmingly likely that the first flurried identification was the mistaken one, and that when the body is recovered from the ruins of this fire the dental evidence will prove it to be not Sir Oliver’s. But already I possess evidence that Sir Oliver was not, in fact, the murderer. And the inference from these things is, I say, odd. Somebody it seems, has killed one of the long-lost Dromio brothers and endeavoured to pass off the body as Oliver’s. That somebody, I believe, was not himself Sir Oliver. But as Mr Greengrave did almost certainly see two brothers there is a presumption that the somebody was himself a brother. In other words, one long-lost brother killed the other and dressed up the body as Sir Oliver’s. And Sir Oliver does not appear in the affair at all. Or he appears only as a voice overheard by a servant, and in that there may very well have been some error. Sir Oliver may be in America still.’

  ‘But it’s nonsense!’ Lucy spoke between irritation and despair. ‘There’s just no sense in it at all. It’s all horror and no sense. And that makes it insupportable.’

  ‘It is certainly bewildering. I wish I had not settled to my own satisfaction that Sir Oliver cannot be the criminal. For in that lies what would be far the easiest line to take. Sir Oliver wanted a get-away into a new life, and no questions asked. So he took advantage of having discovered an identical brother, killed him, passed the body off as his own, and then fired the house before the impersonation or substitution was likely to be discovered. That is the only clear road one can see; abandon it and everything becomes mere bewilderment. But it has to be abandoned. Because Sir Oliver did not fire the house.’

  ‘However can you tell?’

  ‘It is very simple. The person who started the fire needed a lot of petrol. If he had been familiar with the house, and had known of Grubb’s habit with a certain key, he could have had it in no time from a little shed not twenty yards from the study. But he actually got his petrol from much farther away and from where a stranger would look for it – in a little store, clearly marked “Inflammable”, round by the motor house.’

  ‘I see.’ Lucy was silent for a moment. ‘It certainly seems a point conclusive as far as it goes. I just wish I could believe you. I wish I could believe that Oliver was not – or is not – here, and involved. But somehow I can’t do it. My heart – my instinct – tells me that – that he is lost. How lost, I don’t know. But I have no doubt of the fact of it.’ Again she was silent. ‘You are right about the truth. The only thing now is to find it, whatever ruin it brings upon us. Is there any way that I can help you, Mr Appleby?’

  ‘Just at present, I don’t think there is. Unless you can tell me what it was that stirred queerly in my mind when you came tumbling out of your window… By the way, why did you insist on returning to your room?’

  Lucy hesitated. ‘It was extremely foolish. I ought to have reflected that it might endanger other people. I wanted my diary.’

  ‘I see.’ Appleby glanced curiously at the girl. ‘Well, a diary is something one may do a lot to preserve.’

  ‘It was not so in this case. I wanted to destroy it.’

  ‘To destroy it! But surely the fire would have done that in any case?’

  ‘I wanted to destroy it myself.’ Lucy was silent for a moment. ‘Why should something stir in your mind when I tumbled out of the window?’

  ‘You shot down, all legs and streaming draperies, and the sight touched off some association in my mind that ought to have led me somewhere. Only the association just didn’t establish itself in consciousness and now I can’t get command of it.’

  ‘How very odd. And if you got the association it would help you with the mystery? Then we must certainly find it.’ Lucy raised her head and looked absently at the burning house. The flames, although less intense than formerly, cast a glow like a faint blush on her pale, finely-cut features. ‘Would it be a falling stone, a missile, a weapon?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A sack, a bundle, a body?’

  ‘Not that either.’

  ‘You speak of streaming draperies. What about a parachute, a soldier, a weapon?’

  ‘No.’

  Lucy frowned. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I am all in white. What about The Woman in White? That’s a mystery. Perhaps there is something relevant there.’

  Appleby shook his head. ‘Your suggestion is ingenious, but I think not.’

  ‘It must have been a very upside-down sort of spectacle. Ankles, legs?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And I came down on that canvas with a bump and a bounce. What about that? Bounce, ball, bullet?’

  Appleby hesitated. ‘Bullet…bullet?’ He shook his head. ‘It sets up an echo, so to speak. But it’s not right.’

  ‘Then try again.’ Lucy was both determined and excited. ‘Bounce, bump, come down with a bump – what about the associations there? They are mildly indelicate but may be vital nevertheless. For instance–’

  ‘Good lord!’ Appleby, who had sat down beside Lucy, sprang to his feet. ‘I knew that young doctor – Ferris, isn’t it? – came in. Something he said that I just didn’t catch on to.’

  ‘Have I helped, after all?’

  Appleby paid no attention. He was pacing up and down so excitedly, that Hyland, who came up at this moment, stared at him in astonishment. ‘And I believe I know what he meant!’ he cried. ‘And the arms?’ He stopped short and stared back at Hyland as if thunderstruck. ‘Is it possible–’ He turned to Lucy. ‘Would you substantiate the statement that – that Sir Oliver probably bought his ties in the Burlington Arcade?’

  Hyland made a sound eloquent of despair. But Lucy considered the question quite seriously. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But he certainly has a great many of them – or had.’

  ‘Are we to understand’ – Hyland was heavily sarcastic – ‘that this fire has been contrived in order to destroy Sir Oliver Dromio’s stock of sartorial accessories?’

  Appleby shook his head soberly. ‘Nothing of the sort,’ he said. ‘But that fellow Ferris – do you think he can be found? For that’s the next thing to do. And then we must get on the trans-Atlantic telephone – and be quick about it if we are to finish up today.’

  ‘Finish up today!’ Hyland, smoke-blackened and irritated, exploded once more. ‘Are you telling us that you have this fantastic work of confusion in the bag?’

  Appleby smiled. ‘I don’t know about that. But I do see one correspondingly fantastic explanation, and I very much doubt whether any other is possible – although it upsets almost every thought I’ve had so far… Have you missed any bodies round about this district lately?’

  ‘Have we what?’

  ‘Mislaid a corpse.’

  ‘Certainly not. Such a thing is unheard of.’

  ‘So much the worse.’

  ‘Mystery-mongering,’ said Hyland, ‘sheer mystery-mongering.’ Lack of breakfast – as also perhaps the conversation of the Chief Constable – was fraying what remained of his nerves. ‘Chatter out of a melodrama. But at least the melodramatic part of this affair is behind us, praise God.’

  ‘Look out, there!’

  ‘Stand back!’

  A sudden sharp burst of voices made them turn round. A section of the rustic crowd which had pressed almost up to the terrace was being hastily shepherded farther off, and a group of firemen were trundli
ng away a ladder. For a series of ominous cracks and a fresh leap of flame told that the crisis of the fire had come, and even as they looked some vital beam went and a great part of what remained of the roof began to move. As it did so the ground trembled, from the back of the house came a crash and rumble of falling brick, and some fresh draught of air thus released upon the blaze sent great tongues of flame leaping once more about the ruin. Through every gaping aperture the incandescence could be seen to grow; for a moment all Sherris Hall glowed like a vast transparent crucible filled with a molten and intolerable gold. Blast upon blast of searing air beat across the lawn, as if the great house like a creature in its death agony were panting out its fiery and infernal life. Then the roof came down, sucked in as by a tortured and terminal respiration, and everywhere great sections of retaining wall were tumbling. A pall of smoke rose like a last inky excretion and hung over the house. The noises of combustion were cut off. The crowd was mute. It was like a sudden silent sequence in a rackety film.

  The silence was broken by laughter. Somebody was hysterical. The sound was disconcerting, uncomfortable; the sound grew menacing, unnatural, mad; it was an insane and pealing mirth, an exultant threnody over the ashes of Sherris Hall.

  They turned. On a little hill beyond the lily pond, intermittently obscured by drifts of smoke like some theatrical figure risen through a trap from the infernal regions, stood a tall man wildly posed with arms above his head. The arms waved in crazy ecstasy, the man’s head was flung triumphantly back, his laughter rang out again like a paroxysm.

  There were cries of astonishment, indignation, recognition. Hyland shouted. A couple of constables ran forward. The laughing man stopped, gave a queer wave of the left hand, turned and fled.

  Lucy Dromio swayed on her feet. ‘Oliver!’ she cried, and fainted in Hyland’s arms.