Spider's Web

by Agatha Christie

  ‘All ready, sir,’ Constable Jones replied.

  ‘Good. Now, Mrs Hailsham-Brown,’ the Inspector began. ‘Do you say that you had no idea there was a body concealed in that recess?’

  The Constable began his note-taking as Clarissa answered, wide-eyed, ‘No, of course not. It’s horrible.’ She shivered. ‘Quite horrible.’

  The Inspector looked at her enquiringly. ‘When we were searching this room,’ he asked, ‘why didn’t you call our attention to that recess?’

  Clarissa met his gaze with a look of wide-eyed innocence. ‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘the thought never struck me. You see, we never use the recess, so it just didn’t come into my head.’

  The Inspector pounced. ‘But you said,’ he reminded her, ‘that you had just been through there into the library.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Clarissa exclaimed quickly. ‘You must have misunderstood me.’ She pointed to the library door. ‘What I meant was that we had gone through that door into the library.’

  ‘Yes, I certainly must have misunderstood you,’ the Inspector observed grimly. ‘Now, let me at least be clear about this. You say you have no idea when Mr Costello came back to this house, or what he might have come for?’

  ‘No, I simply can’t imagine,’ Clarissa replied, her voice dripping with innocent candour.

  ‘But the fact remains that he did come back,’ the Inspector persisted.

  ‘Yes, of course. We know that now.’

  ‘Well, he must have had some reason,’ the Inspector pointed out.

  ‘I suppose so,’ Clarissa agreed. ‘But I’ve no idea what it could have been.’

  The Inspector thought for a moment, and then tried another line of approach. ‘Do you think that perhaps he wanted to see your husband?’ he suggested.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Clarissa replied quickly, ‘I’m quite sure he didn’t. Henry and he never liked each other.’

  ‘Oh!’ the Inspector exclaimed. ‘They never liked each other. I didn’t realize that. Had there been a quarrel between them?’

  Again Clarissa spoke quickly to forestall a new and potentially dangerous line of enquiry. ‘Oh no,’ she assured the Inspector, ‘no, they hadn’t quarrelled. Henry just thought he wore the wrong shoes.’ She smiled engagingly. ‘You know how odd men can be.’

  The Inspector’s look suggested that this was something of which he was personally ignorant. ‘You’re absolutely certain that Costello wouldn’t have come back here to see you?’ he asked again.

  ‘Me?’ Clarissa echoed innocently. ‘Oh no, I’m sure he didn’t. What reason could he possibly have?’

  The Inspector took a deep breath. Then, speaking slowly and deliberately, he asked her, ‘Is there anybody else in the house he might have wanted to see? Now please think carefully before you answer.’

  Again, Clarissa gave him her look of bland innocence. ‘I can’t think who,’ she insisted. ‘I mean, who else is there?’

  The Inspector rose, turned his chair around and put it back against the bridge table. Then, pacing slowly about the room, he began to muse. ‘Mr Costello comes here,’ he began slowly, ‘and returns the articles which the first Mrs Hailsham-Brown had taken from your husband by mistake. Then he says good-bye. But then he comes back to the house.’

  He went across to the French windows. ‘Presumably he effects an entrance through these windows,’ he continued, gesturing at them. ‘He is killed–and his body is pushed into that recess–all in a space of about ten to twenty minutes.’

  He turned back to face Clarissa. ‘And nobody hears anything?’ he ended, on a rising inflection. ‘I find that very difficult to believe.’

  ‘I know,’ Clarissa agreed. ‘I find it just as difficult to believe. It’s really extraordinary, isn’t it?’

  ‘It certainly is,’ the Inspector agreed, his tone distinctly ironical. He tried one last time. ‘Mrs Hailsham-Brown, are you absolutely sure that you didn’t hear anything?’ he asked her pointedly.

  ‘I heard nothing at all,’ she answered. ‘It really is fantastic.’

  ‘Almost too fantastic,’ the Inspector commented grimly. He paused, then went over to the hall door and held it open. ‘Well, that’s all for the present, Mrs Hailsham-Brown.’

  Clarissa rose and walked rather quickly towards the library door, only to be intercepted by the Inspector. ‘Not that way, please,’ he instructed her, and led her over to the hall door.

  ‘But I think, really, I’d rather join the others,’ she protested.

  ‘Later, if you don’t mind,’ said the Inspector tersely.

  Very reluctantly, Clarissa went out through the hall door.

  Chapter 14

  The Inspector closed the hall door behind Clarissa, then went over to Constable Jones who was still writing in his notebook. ‘Where’s the other woman? The gardener. Miss–er–Peake?’ the Inspector asked.

  ‘I put her on the bed in the spare room,’ the Constable told his superior. ‘After she came out of the hysterics, that is. A terrible time I had with her, laughing and crying something terrible, she was.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter if Mrs Hailsham-Brown goes and talks to her,’ the Inspector told him. ‘But she’s not to talk to those three men. We’ll have no comparing of stories, and no prompting. I hope you locked the door from the library to the hall?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the Constable assured him. ‘I’ve got the key here.’

  ‘I don’t know what to make of them at all,’ the Inspector confessed to his colleague. ‘They’re all highly respectable people. Hailsham-Brown’s a Foreign Office diplomat, Hugo Birch is a JP whom we know, and Hailsham-Brown’s other two guests seem decent upper-class types–well, you know what I mean…But there’s something funny going on. None of them are being straightforward with us–and that includes Mrs Hailsham-Brown. They’re hiding something, and I’m determined to find out what it is, whether it’s got anything to do with this murder or not.’

  He stretched his arms above his head as though seeking inspiration from on high, and then addressed the Constable again. ‘Well, we’d better get on with it,’ he said. ‘Let’s take them one at a time.’

  As the Constable got to his feet, the Inspector changed his mind. ‘No. Just a moment. First I’ll have a word with that butler chap,’ he decided.

  ‘Elgin?’

  ‘Yes, Elgin. Call him in. I’ve got an idea he knows something.’

  ‘Certainly, sir,’ the Constable replied.

  Leaving the room, he found Elgin hovering near the sitting-room door. The butler made a tentative pretence of heading for the stairs, but stopped when the Constable called him and came into the room rather nervously.

  The Constable closed the hall door and resumed his place for note-taking, while the Inspector indicated the chair near the bridge table.

  Elgin sat down, and the Inspector began his interrogation. ‘Now, you started off for the pictures this evening,’ he reminded the butler, ‘but you came back. Why was that?’

  ‘I’ve told you, sir,’ Elgin replied. ‘My wife wasn’t feeling well.’

  The Inspector regarded him steadily. ‘It was you who let Mr Costello into the house when he called here this evening, was it not?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The Inspector took a few paces away from Elgin, and then turned back suddenly. ‘Why didn’t you tell us at once that it was Mr Costello’s car outside?’ he asked.

  ‘I didn’t know whose car it was, sir. Mr Costello didn’t drive up to the front door. I didn’t even know he’d come in a car.’

  ‘Wasn’t that rather peculiar? Leaving his car around by the stables?’ the Inspector suggested.

  ‘Well, yes, sir, I suppose it was,’ the butler replied. ‘But I expect he had his reasons.’

  ‘Just what do you mean by that?’ the Inspector asked quickly.

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ Elgin answered. He sounded almost smug. ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘Had you ever seen Mr Costello before?’ The Inspector’s voice w
as sharp as he asked this.

  ‘Never, sir,’ Elgin assured him.

  The Inspector adopted a meaning tone to enquire, ‘It wasn’t because of Mr Costello that you came back this evening?’

  ‘I’ve told you, sir,’ said Elgin. ‘My wife–’

  ‘I don’t want to hear any more about your wife,’ the Inspector interrupted. Moving away from Elgin, he continued, ‘How long have you been with Mrs Hailsham-Brown?’

  ‘Six weeks, sir,’ was the reply.

  The Inspector turned back to face Elgin. ‘And before that?’

  ‘I’d–I’d been having a little rest,’ the butler replied uneasily.

  ‘A rest?’ the Inspector echoed, in a tone of suspicion. He paused and then added, ‘You do realize that, in a case like this, your references will have to be looked into very carefully.’

  Elgin began to get to his feet. ‘Will that be all–’ he started to say, and then stopped and resumed his seat. ‘I–I wouldn’t wish to deceive you, sir,’ he continued. ‘It wasn’t anything really wrong. What I mean is–the original reference having got torn–I couldn’t quite remember the wording–’

  ‘So you wrote your own references,’ the Inspector interrupted. ‘That’s what it comes to, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I didn’t mean any harm,’ Elgin protested. ‘I’ve got my living to earn–’

  The Inspector interrupted him again. ‘At the moment, I’m not interested in fake references,’ he told the butler. ‘I want to know what happened here tonight, and what you know about Mr Costello.’

  ‘I’d never set eyes on him before,’ Elgin insisted. Looking around at the hall door, he continued, ‘But I’ve got a good idea of why he came here.’

  ‘Oh, and what is that?’ the Inspector wanted to know.

  ‘Blackmail,’ Elgin told him. ‘He had something on her.’

  ‘By “her”,’ said the Inspector, ‘I assume you mean Mrs Hailsham-Brown.’

  ‘Yes,’ Elgin continued eagerly. ‘I came in to ask if there was anything more she wanted, and I heard them talking.’

  ‘What did you hear exactly?’

  ‘I heard her say “But that’s blackmail. I won’t submit to it”.’ Elgin adopted a highly dramatic tone as he quoted Clarissa’s words.

  ‘Hm!’ the Inspector responded a little doubtfully. ‘Anything more?’

  ‘No,’ Elgin admitted. ‘They stopped when I came in, and when I went out they dropped their voices.’

  ‘I see,’ the Inspector commented. He looked intently at the butler, waiting for him to speak again.

  Elgin got up from his chair. His voice was almost a whine as he pleaded, ‘You won’t be hard on me, sir, will you? I’ve had a lot of trouble one way and another.’

  The Inspector regarded him for a moment longer, and then said dismissively, ‘Oh, that will do. Get out.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,’ Elgin responded quickly as he made a hasty exit into the hall.

  The Inspector watched him go, and then turned to the Constable. ‘Blackmail, eh?’ he murmured, exchanging glances with his colleague.

  ‘And Mrs Hailsham-Brown such a nice seeming lady,’ Constable Jones observed with a somewhat prim look.

  ‘Yes, well one never can tell,’ the Inspector observed. He paused, and then ordered curtly, ‘I’ll see Mr Birch now.’ The Constable went to the library door. ‘Mr Birch, please.’

  Hugo came through the library door, looking dogged and rather defiant. The Constable closed the door behind him and took a seat at the table, while the Inspector greeted Hugo pleasantly. ‘Come in, Mr Birch,’ he invited. ‘Sit down here, please.’

  Hugo sat, and the Inspector continued, ‘This is a very unpleasant business, I’m afraid, sir. What have you to tell us about it?’

  Slapping his spectacle case on the table, Hugo replied defiantly, ‘Absolutely nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’ queried the Inspector, sounding surprised.

  ‘What do you expect me to say?’ Hugo expostulated. ‘The blinking woman snaps open the blinking cupboard, and out falls a blinking corpse.’ He gave a snort of impatience. ‘Took my breath away,’ he declared. ‘I’ve not got over it yet.’ He glared at the Inspector. ‘It’s no good asking me anything,’ he said firmly, ‘because I don’t know anything about it.’

  The Inspector regarded Hugo steadily for a moment before asking, ‘That’s your statement, is it? Just that you know nothing at all about it?’

  ‘I’m telling you,’ Hugo repeated. ‘I didn’t kill the fellow.’ Again he glared defiantly. ‘I didn’t even know him.’

  ‘You didn’t know him,’ the Inspector repeated. ‘Very well. I’m not suggesting that you did know him. I’m certainly not suggesting that you murdered him. But I can’t believe that you “know nothing”, as you put it. So let’s collaborate to find out what you do know. To begin with, you’d heard of him, hadn’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ snapped Hugo, ‘and I’d heard he was a nasty bit of goods.’

  ‘In what way?’ the Inspector asked calmly.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Hugo blustered. ‘He was the sort of fellow that women liked and men had no use for. That sort of thing.’

  The Inspector paused before asking carefully, ‘You’ve no idea why he should come back to this house a second time this evening?’

  ‘Not a clue,’ replied Hugo dismissively.

  The Inspector took a few steps around the room, then turned abruptly to face Hugo. ‘Was there anything between him and the present Mrs Hailsham-Brown, do you think?’ he asked.

  Hugo looked shocked. ‘Clarissa? Good Lord, no! Nice girl, Clarissa. Got a lot of sense. She wouldn’t look twice at a fellow like that.’

  The Inspector paused again, and then said, finally, ‘So you can’t help us.’

  ‘Sorry. But there it is,’ replied Hugo with an attempt at nonchalance.

  Making one last effort to extract at least a crumb of information from Hugo, the Inspector asked, ‘Had you really no idea that the body was in that recess?’

  ‘Of course not,’ replied Hugo, now sounding offended.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said the Inspector, turning away from him.

  ‘What?’ queried Hugo vaguely.

  ‘That’s all, thank you, sir,’ the Inspector repeated. He went to the desk and picked up a red book that lay on it.

  Hugo rose, picked up his spectacle case, and was about to go across to the library door when the Constable got up and barred his way. Hugo then turned towards the French windows, but the Constable said, ‘This way, Mr Birch, please,’ and opened the hall door. Giving up, Hugo went out and the policeman closed the door behind him.

  The Inspector carried his huge red book over to the bridge table, and sat consulting it, as Constable Jones commented satirically, ‘Mr Birch was a mine of information, wasn’t he? Mind you, it’s not very nice for a JP to be mixed up in a murder.’

  The Inspector began to read aloud. ‘“Delahaye, Sir Rowland Edward Mark, KCB, MVO–”’

  ‘What have you got there?’ the Constable asked. He peered over the Inspector’s shoulder. ‘Oh, Who’s Who.’

  The Inspector went on reading. ‘“Educated Eton–Trinity College–” Um! “Attached Foreign Office–second Secretary–Madrid–Plenipotentiary”.’

  ‘Ooh!’ the Constable exclaimed at this last word.

  The Inspector gave him an exasperated look, and continued, ‘“Constantinople, Foreign Office–special commission rendered–Clubs–Boodles–Whites”.’

  ‘Do you want him next, sir?’ the Constable asked.

  The Inspector thought for a moment. ‘No,’ he decided. ‘He’s the most interesting of the lot, so I’ll leave him till the last. Let’s have young Warrender in now.’

  Chapter 15

  Constable Jones, standing at the library door, called, ‘Mr Warrender, please.’

  Jeremy came in, attempting rather unsuccessfully to look completely at his ease. The Constable closed the door and resumed his seat at the table, w
hile the Inspector half rose and pulled out a chair from the bridge table for Jeremy.

  ‘Sit down,’ he ordered somewhat brusquely as he resumed his seat. Jeremy sat, and the Inspector asked formally, ‘Your name?’

  ‘Jeremy Warrender.’

  ‘Address?’

  ‘Three hundred and forty, Broad Street, and thirty-four Grosvenor Square,’ Jeremy told him, trying to sound nonchalant. He glanced across at the Constable who was writing all this down, and added, ‘Country address, Hepplestone, Wiltshire.’

  ‘That sounds as though you’re a gentleman of independent means,’ the Inspector commented.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Jeremy admitted, with a smile. ‘I’m private secretary to Sir Kenneth Thomson, the Chairman of Saxon-Arabian Oil. Those are his addresses.’

  The Inspector nodded. ‘I see. How long have you been with him?’

  ‘About a year. Before that, I was personal assistant to Mr Scott Agius for four years.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said the Inspector. ‘He’s that wealthy businessman in the City, isn’t he?’ He thought for a moment before going on to ask, ‘Did you know this man, Oliver Costello?’

  ‘No, I’d never heard of him till tonight,’ Jeremy told him.

  ‘And you didn’t see him when he came to the house earlier this evening?’ the Inspector continued.

  ‘No,’ Jeremy replied. ‘I’d gone over to the golf club with the others. We were dining there, you see. It was the servants’ night out, and Mr Birch had asked us to dine with him at the club.’

  The Inspector nodded his head. After a pause, he asked, ‘Was Mrs Hailsham-Brown invited, too?’

  ‘No, she wasn’t,’ said Jeremy.

  The Inspector raised his eyebrows, and Jeremy hurried on. ‘That is,’ he explained, ‘she could have come if she’d liked.’

  ‘Do you mean,’ the Inspector asked him, ‘that she was asked, then? And she refused?’

  ‘No, no,’ Jeremy replied hurriedly, sounding as though he was getting rattled. ‘What I mean is–well, Hailsham-Brown is usually quite tired by the time he gets down here, and Clarissa said they’d just have a scratch meal here, as usual.’