by Leo Bruce
“They say they didn’t see you.”
“Quite likely they didn’t.”
“How far did you go towards the shelter?”
“Not very far. Three or four shelters away. Then I turned back and met a young policeman. Then I went home.”
“I don’t quite see why you went down there at all, Mr Lobbin.”
“I didn’t want to go home straight away. Everything was shut.”
“There’s another thing I’d like to ask yo ‘about. It’s a bit personal but you’ve invited me to ask you any questions I like. During the evening did you leave here for a while and return?”
“I did, yes.”
“What was that for?”
“Well, Mr Deene, I can’t deny my wife and I have a bit of a row every once in a while. We had one that evening. When I came out I left her—well, storming, if you know what I mean. I thought I’d just run round and see if she’d got over it. It’s only a few doors away.”
“And had she?”
“No. Worse than ever. You’ve seen what she’s like. So I left her to it and came back here. When closing time was coming round I thought I wouldn’t go back there till she was asleep.”
Carolus gave him a friendly smile.
“You account for your movements very well,” he said, “but so does everyone else in this damned case.”
They had a drink together, then, as if touching on a far less solemn subject, Carolus said—“I hear you write.”
“Not really. Little bits when they come to me. I’d like to have been a writer, though. I think I might have been if I hadn’t got married. I seem to be able to imagine things.”
“Fiction?”
“I suppose you’d call it that. I just make things up out of my head and put them on paper.”
“Do you keep them afterwards?”
“Some of them I do. Other things I destroy as soon as I’ve finished them.”
“You’ve never tried to publish?”
“Well, the Selby-on-Sea Advertiser put in a little bit I wrote about the smugglers that were supposed to be here in the old days. Nothing else.”
“You’ve written nothing about the murder?”
“Oh no. These are things I imagine. I wouldn’t want to write about anything like that.”
“I gather your wife doesn’t approve much of your writing?”
“It’s not really in her line. She’s got other things to think about.”
“Haven’t we all?” said Carolus feelingly.
Indeed he decided, as he slowly undressed and got into bed that night, he had almost too much to think about.
A number of people could have killed Ernest Rafter but they were all unlikely and there did not seem, when he considered the matter dispassionately, any real motive attributable to any of them. It simply was not credible that one of the family, put out by the return of this inconvenient relative, should have gone out with a hammer and committed this particularly violent crime in order to save themselves money, even if they were aware of his survival. It simply was not credible that Lobbin, whom Carolus judged a mild and long-suffering man, should have been so overcome with rage and hatred at the sight of a man who had been ‘in with the Japs’ nearly twenty years ago that he had gone home to fetch his weapon, then guessing that Ernest had gone down to the promenade, marched up and down until he had found and slain him. It simply was not credible that Bodger, mysteriously informed about the presence of a collaborator in Selby, had gone out that night and killed him to avenge his son, however dearly he had loved the young man.
As for those with no known motive, they were even more unlikely. It was, Carolus supposed, just conceivable that Moore’s investigation into Ernest’s past would show that he had known the Bullamys in Australia, though as they had pointed out it was a continent with nine million inhabitants, and even if they were acquainted and did recognize Ernest in the bar that night, were they the sort of people to make a joint effort to kill him? Besides, how could they have become suddenly provided with the weapon when they were staying a long way from the Queen Victoria?
So far as Carolus knew, neither the Morsells nor Stringer had any motive at all, but even if one of them had, was it possible to think of them as potential murderers? The thing became more and more fantastic when one thought of it in these terms and even if Mr Biggett had formed a violent prejudice against Ernest during their train journey, or had discovered something about him which he thought quite dreadful, one could not see the little man wielding a hammer.
That was what made the case so infuriating, no one seemed to have a motive worth the smallest risk. If it was in fact robbery, as Bertrand had suggested, it must be someone who knew about that envelope full of treasury notes. But it had not the feel of a murder for the sake of robbery.
Why then, had Ernest been killed? That was the crucial question and suddenly as he thought about it Carolus caught a glimmering of a possible answer.
Suppose, his tired mind suggested, suppose there was no reason? Suppose this was simply murder for the sake of murder? All his life as an investigator Carolus had wondered what would happen if such a thing came about. Could this at last be the case of which the very idea had so long intrigued him?
If it was, it had the effect of eliminating the suspects who were there for the sake of their possible motive. What was worse, it opened the field beyond all reason. Anyone could have killed Ernest Rafter that night, for there was no reason to think that the murderer had been seen. He could have been waiting on the beach or in the gardens until someone came to the shelter.
Surely, thought Carolus, this way madness lies. Who would plan and carry out an indiscriminate murder just for the sake of it? It had been done, but by paranoiac undergraduates in America where crime was known to take the weirdest forms.
He tried to keep his head. Could he be finding his way towards the truth at last? Once before, when he first saw the shelter, the ghost of a premonition had come to him, but he had put it aside as monstrous and far-fetched. Now it seemed, as compared with the fearful non sequiturs of normal deduction in this case, at least a tenable theory.
Before sleeping he decided to return to it in the cold light of day and perhaps try it out on Bertrand, who struck him as having a cool and steady brain. Then he would know better if it was more than fantasy.
Of one thing Carolus felt certain before he slept. If this was the truth, the murderer was almost certain to escape. No detective force on earth could discover him. For the perfect murder was the murder without motive.
15
ON Christmas morning Carolus went into the bar with a present each for Doris and Vivienne. He had half an hour to pass before going to lunch at Bertrand Rafter’s.
Doris was ecstatic.
“Oh, isn’t that lovely!” she said. “I do think it’s kind of you. I’ve always wanted one like that. I’m sure I never dreamt of any such thing. I don’t know how to thank you. I shall show my mother that when I get home. Fancy
you thinking of it! It’s very extravagant of you, too, and I oughtn’t really to have let you do it. I never guessed for a moment you were going to do anything like that. Thank you ever so much.”
Carolus was waiting for a grateful mmmm from Vivienne, but he had a surprise.
“Thank you very much, Mr Deene,” she said quite clearly. “It’s very kind of you and I like it ever so much.”
“Let me see,” said Doris. “Oh, isn’t it pretty! It will go lovely with your eau-de-nil, won’t it, Vivienne?”
“Mmmm,” said Vivienne, but with animation.
“Now you’ve got to have one with me,” said Doris to Carolus. “Yes you have. A nice large Scotch, how you like it, with lots of soda. Here’s a very happy Christmas to you, I’m sure. You’re not bothering your head about that old murder today, are you?”
“No,” said Carolus smiling.
He drove to Marine Square. The door of Bertrand’s house was opened by Molly, who looked fresh and handsome. She led him
to the large ground-floor sitting-room, where there was a sensible display of bottles. Bertrand was jovial and welcoming and they sat down to wait for lunch.
“Molly’s bribed our crone to come in for the morning,” said Bertrand, when Molly French had left the room, “so we’re having lunch sharp at one, to let her wash up and get home to do her own family’s dinner. Do you understand these mysteries?”
“I’m very lucky,” Carolus said; “I’ve a married couple who have been with me for years.”
“Oh yes. My sister told me. They don’t approve of you investigating murders, I gather. And talking of murders are you making any progress with ours?”
“No practical progress,” said Carolus. “But last night I had a new and very extraordinary idea.”
“Am I going to hear it?”
“In confidence, yes. It’s too fanciful and too macabre to be anything but an idea at the moment, but I’d like to try it out, as it were, by telling you about it. It is, briefly, this. We’ve spent a lot of time in this case trying to discover who had a motive for murdering Ernest Rafter, or trying to see how someone with a motive could have been anywhere near the last shelter at the time. It has led us into such absurdities as to think of your sisters as possible suspects or to suppose that someone like Bodger or Lobbin might have done it out of hatred for a collaborator. But suppose, for a moment, we forget the motive or go a step further and imagine that there was no motive. What then?”
“The act of a maniac, you mean?”
“Some kind of maniac, I suppose, yes. Suppose someone with no motive at all for killing your brother was waiting down in that shelter for the first victim who came along …”
“Oh come now, Deene. This is fantastic.”
“Yes,” said Carolus sadly, “I suppose it is. Now I come to express it in words it is far-fetched. But so is every other theory in this damned case. I rather liked this one when I thought of it last night.”
Bertrand smiled.
“I rather like it, too,” he said. “The trouble is that nothing could make me believe it. It’s a pretty idea and it would put a stop to all this nonsense about my family and Lobbin and Bodger, but it has a fictional taste about it, hasn’t it?”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“Anyway, if it were true, how would you go about finding your man? It might be absolutely anyone.”
“Yes. That’s the thing. Unless by any chance he was seen.”
“Seen? But wouldn’t you know by now?”
“There were several people about on the promenade that night,” said Carolus. “and one was seen crossing the road, by some strangers to the place. It’s possible that if we could get any sort of lead on him they would be able to identify him and for the police the rest would be easy. They’ve probably got technical stuff from the shelter with their microscopes and whatnot. But that is supposing a great deal. My notion may be nonsense and even if it isn’t, how are we ever going to know who to put up for these people to identify?”
“I see that.”
“Even if we presuppose this monster who kills for pleasure, we don’t know whether it’s a man or woman. Those blows on the head of a half-drunk man could have been dealt by a woman as well as a man.”
“What about the man crossing the road?”
“I suppose that could have been a woman, too, dressed as a man. But there is no absolute reason to suppose that was the murderer. The murderer could have got away by the beach or the garden.”
“It’s damned interesting,” said Bertrand. “I can only wish you luck with it. How did you get on with my brother Locksley?”
“A bit monosyllabic, isn’t he? But he answered every question I put to him. He seemed almost anxious to show that so far as circumstances went he could have committed the crime.”
Bertrand laughed.
“That’s rather like him,” he said. “He looks for a challenge. I wonder what he would think of this new theory of yours.”
“I imagine he’d say ‘tenable’ or ‘untenable’ and that is all we should know.”
Molly came to call them to lunch and over the turkey and champagne the talk grew reminiscential.
“Locksley is the eldest of us,” said Bertrand. “He seemed almost grown-up to me, though there are only five years between us. Isobel came between us; she’s a year older than I. Then after two or three years came Emma and Ernest with one year between them.
“I’m afraid Ernest was always the outcast. As the youngest boy he should have had the most fuss made of him but as a small child he was horribly petulant and selfish and never really changed. He was such a sneak too. Locksley and I would do some devilry and Ernest would tell my father at once.
“But Emma stood up for him. They had nothing in common that I could see, for Emma loved animals and Ernest showed no interest in them, Emma was straight as a die and Ernest inclined to be dishonest, yet she always tried to protect him from our ragging. Even when we began to hear those fearful stories about Ernest during the war Emma refused to believe them for a long time. I daresay she would like to think the best of him now.”
“So your sister Emma is the one with whom Ernest would have got in touch, if he got in touch with anyone?”
“Yes. And she is the one who would have given him money.”
“Is it possible, do you think, that Ernest was in touch with your sister? That she never told you about this, and afterwards was afraid to admit it because she thought it might involve her whole family?”
Bertrand looked up shrewdly.
“You put me in a difficult position,” he said. “I can only say you must ask her.”
“Yes of course. Thank you. I will.”
“But all that won’t do much to advance your new theory.”
“Nothing will do much to advance that, I fear. The detective inspector in charge of the case is a friend of mine but he is apt to think I’m too imaginative. If I were to go to him and say I thought that the murder was committed without a motive and ask him to hold an all-embracing identity parade so that the couple who saw someone crossing the road that night could pick out their man or woman he would laugh, I’m afraid.”
“I suppose he might. But it’s worth a chance, surely. Even if you had to drag in half the population of Selby.”
They chattered on rather aimlessly until Carolus was about to leave them.
“I wonder if you’d mind dropping me at my parents’ place,” said Molly. “I must go and see them. I always have to spend Christmas evening with them, which is a bore for Bertrand. It’s not very far from you, in Prince Albert Mansions.”
Carolus said he would be delighted and Molly climbed in beside him.
“I wish you could get this thing cleared up,” she said. “It’s wretched for them all. Isobel particularly. And I think Locksley feels it more than he shows.”
“I should have thought the harm was done,” said Carolus. “I don’t see that finding the murderer is going to make it much easier for them.”
“I do. It’s the doubt. They don’t know the police are not going to do something silly.”
“John Moore, who is in charge of the case, is a very sound man. The last person to try to fake up evidence or charge anyone till he is sure where he stands.”
“All the same,” said Molly charmingly, “it’s you we’re counting on.”
“I’ll do my best,” promised Carolus.
That evening he was delighted to see Emma Rafter coming into the bar leading her Boxer. He did not hesitate or prevaricate but opened the matter straight away.
“Miss Rafter,” he said. “I think you knew of your brother Ernest’s presence in England before the night he was murdered.”
She paled a little but said nothing.
“Looking back on our conversation,” went on Carolus, “I realize that you never said in so many words that this was not so. But I would ask you to tell me the whole truth of the matter now.”
She looked Carolus straight in the face.
&
nbsp; “I will,” she said. “I have never been out of touch with Ernest. I have had to write to him under many names and in several countries, but ever since he first went to Australia after the war he has kept in touch with me.”
“Have you kept his letters?”
“Unfortunately, no. I was afraid someone would find them. You see no one else knew he was alive. I never mentioned it to my brothers or to my sister or to anyone else in the world. It was far best for them to think him dead. The only difficulty was the money my father left. When he was to be ‘presumed dead’ I wondered what I ought to do. I thought he could never admit his identity and turn up, but I did not want to benefit from his share. So I sent him at once the amount by which the distribution of his share among us had increased my own. Since my father’s will benefited us all equally, his fifth had been divided between the remaining four. So I could see by how much mine was increased and sent it to him. Then when my mother died and left a much larger sum of money, I was able to make up to Ernest all that he had lost by being presumed dead when my father died. None of the others knew anything about this. None of them dreamt for a moment he was still alive.”
“Until?”
“Until after he had been found murdered.”
“But you knew he was in England?
“Emma Rafter hesitated then very quietly said, “Yes. I knew.”
“He wrote to you from his hotel in King’s Cross?”
“Yes.”
“And you sent him some more money?”
“Yes. He promised to go away. I did not want my brothers and sister to know. He promised faithfully that he would leave at once. But as you know, he did not keep his promise. His word was never worth much, but that time I did believe he’d keep it.”
“It cost him his life, that broken promise.”
“Yes.”
“He did not tell you he was coming down to Selby?”
“No. I thought he had left for Australia. I heard nothing at all.”
“So what you told me was true, Miss Rafter? You were in this bar with him without knowing it?”