*
It was fortunate that I knew that part of the Heath fairly well. Otherwise, despite the Great Bear and the Pole Star, which were shining overhead, it might have been a long time before I reached civilisation. As it was, I judged that my easiest route was to push on in the direction I had been taking when I found the body, in the hope of striking either West Heath Road or the by-road at right angles to it, which separates the West Heath from the public garden known as Golders Hill Park. I emerged on this by-road in about five minutes’ time and followed it to the left till it joined West Heath Road, which was brightly lit as usual. In another five minutes I reached the junction of West Heath Road and Lyon Avenue, turned to the right down the Avenue and to the right again into the drive of Beresford Lodge. I was about to ring for admittance, when the door was opened from within and I saw Dr McKenzie, with one hand on the latch, talking to the nurse, who was standing by him in the lobby. I was still breathless with nervous shock and my hurried walk home, and, making no attempt to draw the doctor aside, I blurted out, very much in the words Clarence had used to me: ‘I’ve just found Dr Green lying dead on the Heath.’ Then, as Dr McKenzie gazed at me with a look of bewilderment not unmixed with a professional disapproval which exasperated me, I added: ‘What are you going to do about it? It’s your affair, not mine!’
Before he had time to reply or turn round, the nurse tottered and fell heavily on the floor, and I, as if such fits were infectious, felt my own head swimming and reeled dizzily by the wall.
XII. Search Party
Boxing Day – 6.10 p.m.
The next hour or so lives in my memory like a nightmare. I remember leaning limply against the wall of the lobby while Dr McKenzie tried in vain to find the bell – one never can find bells in halls or passages – and finally went out on to the steps and rang that by the front door. It was answered by Edwins, to whom the doctor gave a multitude of orders. Two maids soon appeared and busied themselves with the nurse, while Edwins and the doctor piloted me upstairs to my room and put me on my bed, where they left me. I was still so stupefied that the passing of time meant nothing to me. I think I really did faint at one moment, though a self-protective instinct may have prompted me to make the most of the attack. My one desire was to be left undisturbed, and to have all responsibility taken from me.
I suppose it was about seven o’clock when Dr McKenzie came back to my room, with two policemen whose names I never learnt. He first gave me a kind of medicinal cocktail which certainly made me feel better, and then told me that I must accompany him and the two policemen to the place where I had found the body.
‘We won’t bother you with any questions yet,’ he said. ‘Just take us to the place and you shall be brought back and put to bed and given your dinner. There’s a good fellow.’
It was not unpleasant to be treated as if I were in a state of dangerous collapse. The doctor himself escorted me downstairs and into a motor which was waiting by the front door.
‘Now, sir, do your best for us, won’t you?’ said one of the policemen – a superintendent, I think. ‘Where’s the nearest point we can drive to?’
‘If you go into West Heath Road and turn to the left,’ I said feebly, ‘and then stop about three hundred yards before that other road which goes along by Golders Hill Park, I think I can take you to the place.’
‘Why, that’s quite near!’
‘We’ll have to look,’ I said, ‘for a tree with a silk muffler tied round it.’
They stared at me with amazement.
‘It’s my muffler,’ I said. ‘I tied it to mark the place.’
‘Now that was really sensible of you, Mr Warren,’ said the Superintendent, as we all got into the car, which was driven off by the other policeman.
‘I don’t mean,’ I continued wearily, ‘the place where I found the body, but the place where I began to look for it.’
This remark caused another sensation. Dr McKenzie gazed at me with apprehension, as if I were light-headed.
‘Began to look for it?’ the Superintendent asked. ‘What made you do that, now?’
‘Come, come, Superintendent,’ said the doctor. ‘You promised me you wouldn’t ask my patient any questions for at least a couple of hours.’
‘But, Doctor,’ he protested, ‘when it’s a case of something which the whole affair may hinge on – surely you can’t expect me not to clear up this one point?’
‘I was walking in the wooded part of the Heath,’ I said in a colourless voice, ‘when I met Mr James . . .’
Out came notebook and fountain-pen.
‘Mr James?’
‘Mr Clarence James,’ put in the doctor testily. ‘Mrs Quisberg’s eldest son by her first husband. I can put you straight as to the family.’
‘Thank you, Doctor. Now, Mr Warren, you were walking in the wooded part of the Heath when you met Mr James. About what time was that?’
‘About half past five, I suppose. Mr James was running. He said: “You’ll find Dr Green’s dead body down there!” – or something like that – and ran away.’
‘And what did you do?’
‘I couldn’t catch Mr James, so I simply started to look for the body. I tied my muffler to a tree in case I got lost.’
The driver was now slowing down and looking at us for instructions. I judged that we must have gone a sufficient distance along the road, and suggested that we should stop. We got out of the car, and I led the way over the Heath, with the Superintendent holding me tightly by the left arm.
‘I can’t promise to take you straight to the spot,’ I said, ‘though this is the right direction. You see how these paths twist about among the trees.’
‘All right, sir,’ he said with bluff reassurance, ‘you take it as easy as you like. There’s no use making more haste and less speed.’
Both the policemen had electric torches, and our progress through the undergrowth was quicker than mine had been when I had to grope my way without a light. It was not long before we came to the muffler hanging where I had left it.
‘This,’ I said, ‘is where I met Mr James. I was standing – here – and he pointed down there. If you follow that little track and look into the bushes on the left, you ought to find the little clearing where the body lies.’
‘All right, sir. You stay here with the doctor, will you? and we’ll search. How far down the track do you think the place is?’
‘I should say not more than forty yards.’
At this the two policemen went forward, flashing their torches to the left. I could still see the beams of light playing among the bushes, when the junior officer shouted: ‘Look there, sir . . . Why, it’s a kind of whistle!’ A moment later they must have penetrated into the clearing and found the body; for after a short pause the junior officer came running back to us and asked the doctor to join the Superintendent.
‘Certainly,’ said Dr McKenzie. ‘I presume the Superintendent doesn’t require Mr Warren here any more.’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well, then, you must take Mr Warren back to Beresford Lodge and put him safely into the hands of the footman. Mind, Mr Warren, you must go to bed as soon as you arrive and have your dinner sent up to your room. I shouldn’t see any member of the household if I were you, except Edwins, of course, whom I’ve had to take into our confidence a little. You must say, if necessary, that you’re under my orders. I expect some member of the Force will have a great many questions to ask you later in the evening and you will need all your strength for that. So go to bed at once, and rest while you can. Otherwise you may have a serious breakdown.’
‘Serious fiddlesticks,’ I nearly said – not because I wasn’t still feeling very much shaken, but because I resented the way in which the doctor seemed to take me for granted as a patient.
‘All right, sir,’ said the policeman. ‘I’ll look after Mr Warren for you. Just let me have a word with the Superintendent first.’
‘Very well,’ the doctor answered, ‘I’ll come wi
th you,’ and, giving me a look of grave solicitude, he followed the policeman down the track. Meanwhile, I untied my muffler from the tree and put it round my neck; for a breeze was rising and I felt damp and chilly. Let them make their own landmarks, I thought. There was a faint murmur of voices in the bushes, and a continual flashing of lamps. Then my escort, the junior officer, came back, and taking my arm in imitation of his superior’s action, led me out of the wood and across the open Heath to the car.
‘I’m afraid all this is a bit of a strain on you, sir,’ he said, as he put the rug round my knees. ‘You’ll soon feel better when you’ve got a cup of something nice and warm inside you.’
It was strange, I thought, when we drove off, how both the policemen seemed to imagine that I had been through a physical ordeal. Perhaps they did not believe that a mental shock could produce such a bodily reaction. Or perhaps the doctor, in his self-important way, had exaggerated the slenderness of my hold on life. When we reached Beresford Lodge I noticed another policeman standing by the gate in the Avenue. Evidently the house was under surveillance. Leaving me in the car, the policeman who was driving me got out and rang the front door bell. It was answered very promptly by Edwins, who looked self-possessed, but pale. Then the policeman opened the door of the car and helped me to get out.
‘Now,’ he said to Edwins, ‘you take the gentleman straight to bed, and don’t let anyone come bothering him. Those are the doctor’s orders – and the Superintendent’s. One of us will be back before long. Meanwhile, if you’re in any trouble, there’s Bill there in the road, looking after you. Good night to you – and to you, sir.’
He saluted, got in the car and drove off. Edwins took my coat and hung it up in the lobby, and then went upstairs with me to my bedroom.
‘I should have a stiff whisky and soda if I was you, sir,’ he said as he helped me off with my clothes and into bed. ‘Terrible goings-on they are. The master and the mistress in bed, and only Miss Amabel and Miss Sheila in. I don’t know whether I oughtn’t to speak to Miss Amabel.’
‘I should leave that to Dr McKenzie or the police,’ I said. ‘They’re in charge now, and the best we can do at this stage is to say as little as possible.’
‘Quite so, sir. Dinner was to have been at half past seven, though I expect Miss Amabel will put it off till Mr Dixon comes back. But I can get you something now, sir, if you feel faint.’
‘I haven’t any appetite at all. Just bring me something when the others have their meal. Meanwhile, I think I’ll take your advice about a glass of whisky.’
‘Certainly, sir.’
He poured one out for me, gave the fire a poke, and went out.
*
Peace – for how long? As I lay back in bed, rising on my elbow from time to time to take a sip of my drink, I began first of all to take stock of my own condition rather than the events which had produced it. Was I really ill, or unstrung? Or had I been shamming? There is no doubt that, however calm I was when I found Dr Green’s body, the responsibility thrust on me by the discovery, and the further shock caused by the sudden fainting of the nurse at the horrible moment when I was imparting my news to Dr McKenzie, produced a sensation of utter feebleness in me which had not yet worn off. ‘For God’s sake,’ I would have said if I could have uttered my thoughts aloud, ‘leave me alone! Don’t ask me any questions. Don’t expect me to help you. Let me get out of this business.’ It was this revulsion which led me, perhaps, to make the most of my physical frailty, to let policemen take me by the arm and help me in and out of the motor without demur, to follow Dr McKenzie’s dismal lead and suppress my impulse of contrariness when he talked about the danger of my having a serious breakdown.
Yet there was another and more commendable cause for such little malingering as I practised. I was most anxious not in any way to commit myself by making any statement till I had time to think carefully over the whole problem. This may sound surprising, and I can well imagine someone, with a more direct mind than mine, reproaching me with the words, ‘What have you to conceal? If you tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, you’ll be all right.’ But really, the situation was not so simple. I had had enough experience in the case of my aunt’s death to know – even if I was not aware of it before that – that the whole truth may be told in many ways. The disclosure of actual facts might be harmless enough, but even in the baldest narrative facts must be given some sort of a setting, and it was this setting that was liable to infinite misconception. That very afternoon I had transgressed a little, though very pardonably. In talking to the Superintendent I had referred to ‘the place where I had started to look for the body’, and the use of this unguarded phrase made it inevitable that I should reveal my meeting with Clarence James, which put him at once on the list of suspects. It is true that both for my own sake and in the interests of justice – and how much this abstract conception of justice really weighs with me I shall never know – I should have been bound to mention this meeting sooner or later. But there were other matters which might or might not be relevant. How was I to treat them? Should I declare, for example, that the woman I had seen on the Heath reminded me, at least when I heard her laugh, of the nurse? Should I say, on slenderer grounds still, that the man resembled Edwins? As to this, I made up my mind at once. I was quite unjustified in mentioning Edwins at all. Most probably I should find that he had been on duty all the afternoon. He was at Beresford Lodge, in his uniform, when I returned. So, for that matter, was the nurse. But the nurse had fainted. Besides, there was that characteristic laugh. And what of the weighted stick which I had seen near the body? Should I say that I had seen Dixon carrying a similar stick that very afternoon when he set out on his walk with the murdered man? If I were asked, yes. But if I were not asked?
‘Your duty,’ my imaginary monitor will say, ‘is to tell the police everything you think relevant.’ I was not – and still am not – so sure. There is, to my mind, no guarantee that suspicion will not fall upon the innocent, and even if the truth triumphs in the end, the unfortunate suspect may have to suffer great misery in the meanwhile. Besides, there is always the risk that by indiscriminate probing one will drag to light some secret which were better unrevealed. Most of us have our secrets. Suppose, for example, I told the police that Dixon and Amabel had come in very late on the night of Christmas Day, it might easily come out that their friendship was unpardonably close. Such a disclosure might do them and their relations incalculable harm.
But even granting that my duty is to practise no discretion or reticence at all, how should I know, how should the police know, what is relevant and what is not? In order to acquaint them with all the facts in my possession, should I not have to go back to the death of Mrs Harley – even further, perhaps, to my very arrival at Beresford Lodge on Christmas Eve, telling them in detail my whole story up to date in a dozen chapters? Indeed it might well be that in some of the dullest passages of my narrative – accounts of my rising and my going to bed, my movements about the house, the openings and shuttings of doors – the most important clues would be contained.
My ideas on this subject – my duty to the police and my duty to the innocent – were no doubt the result of instinctive feeling rather than of any rational process. In as far as I came to any decision, it was to speak the truth, to answer ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ with as little embroidery as possible. My experience, however, had taught me that ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ did not always satisfy the questioner.
I remembered the superintendent with whom I had had dealings after the death of my Aunt Catherine. I know I quickly rubbed him up the wrong way, but the fault was largely his for exasperating me by his continued scepticism as to the facts.
‘What!’ he or one of his kidney might have said. ‘You saw Mr A. give his nephew a pound?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Did it not strike you as very strange that he should make so large a gift to such a small boy?’ ‘No.’ ‘Yet Mr A. is not at all well off?’ ‘No.’ ‘While the boy’s parents are known to be very
rich?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Are you sure, then, that it was a pound note which passed between uncle and nephew? Might it not have been a cigarette picture?’ And so on.
This is an imaginary conversation, but it illustrates the kind of interrogation which the ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ system of answering produces. It also illustrates the psychological narrowness with which I had had to contend, as exemplified by the questioner’s inability to believe that a poor uncle would give a rich nephew a pound note. What kind of a man would my questioner prove to be in this instance, I wondered? The Superintendent whom I had taken to the body on the Heath was quite a pleasant fellow, but it would not be easy to steer him through the cross-currents at Beresford Lodge. If only I were able to consult someone first, both for my own guidance and for my peace of mind! If only Dr Green were still living and able to come to my aid! And now for the first time since my discovery, I thought of him not as a corpse, but as a man, as a friend whom I had lost. Who was there now, in that household, to whom I could turn in my distress? Who else would massage my wrist with such gentleness and sureness? With these selfish regrets were mingled others of a more generous nature. I had only known him for forty-eight hours, but his strange and lively personality, the intuitive sympathy which underlay his rudest remarks, had even in that short time made it seem unbearable that he should be taken from us, without a word of warning or farewell. I shut my eyes as I thought of him to keep back my tears, and a feeling of such wretchedness came over me that when Edwins brought me up my dinner I could hardly touch it, and pushed the tray aside after swallowing a few mouthfuls.
*
A few minutes after I had abandoned my dinner, there was a knock at the door and to my great surprise Amabel came in. She was pale and most agitated.
‘You must excuse this intrusion, Malcolm,’ she said, assuming her drawl to begin with. ‘I haven’t come to vamp you . . .’
Crime at Christmas Page 11