‘No. By the way, that’s a possibility that hadn’t struck me. No, I mean were they friendly? Did they see much of one another? How did they get on?’
‘I shouldn’t have said they had any relationship. I don’t think Dr Green cared for Dixon at all. He hardly ever troubled to speak to him. It was a great surprise to me when, shortly after luncheon, just as Dixon was launching his attack on the youths on the wall, the butler came in and said that Dr Green wanted Dixon on the telephone.’
‘Who answered the call?’
‘Miss Thurston. She was using the telephone when I came upstairs to pay my respects to Mrs Quisberg and have a doze before going out.’
‘What time, roughly, was this telephone call announced?’
‘Soon after two. We were in the dining-room.’
The Inspector took out a notebook and a pencil.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘let’s see what kind of a time-table we can construct. How does this do for a beginning?
Telephone-call for Dixon 2–2.15 p.m.
Dr Green and Dixon start for their walk 2.45–3 p.m.
Music heard on the Heath 5–5.15 p.m.
Music stops 5.15 p.m. precisely
Warren meets Clarence James in wooded part of the Heath – what time do you think that was? This really may be important, though I don’t suppose you’ll be able to help me much. No more convenient clocks striking?’
‘I’m afraid not. Now, let me think. I didn’t go down the slope to search for the flute player immediately the music stopped. I was in meditative mood. Say I was five minutes before stirring. That takes us to 5.20. Then there’s my walk down the side of the Heath, past the gardens. I wasn’t hurrying. Still, it was very much downhill, and there was no difficulty in seeing one’s way. Say three minutes – 5.23. Then there’s my walk through the dark and wooded part. I may easily have been ten minutes over that.’
‘Could you have been fifteen?’
‘I hardly think so.’
‘Well, then, if we say that this rather vague stage of your journey took not less than eight and not more than fifteen minutes, you must have met Clarence James between 5.31 and 5.38. I shall put down 5.35 in my time-table. It can’t be far wrong. Now at what time do you suppose you found the body?’
‘Within five minutes of my meeting with James.’
‘5.40, then. And your arrival at this house?’
‘About 6.10, I should say. It’s only a ten minutes’ walk from here to the point where I struck the ride. I dare say I was about eight minutes finding the ride.’
‘That’s to say, you were probably in the immediate neighbourhood of the body between 5.40 and 5.52 – twelve minutes. However, I don’t think that’s very important. What I should like to fix, of course, is the interval between the cessation of the music and your meeting with James. We’ve done our best, but we can’t get it closer than from sixteen to twenty-three minutes. Well, much can happen in twenty minutes.’
He paused reflectively and took a drink.
‘Now,’ he said at length, ‘for a few isolated questions. Don’t ask me why I ask them, because I’m not sure if I know. Number One: What do you really know of Quisberg?’
‘Nothing – except that he’s Mrs Quisberg’s husband and a good client of my firm’s. I know, as a matter of fact, some details of a rather ambitious financial transaction in which he is involved. Do you want to hear them?’
‘Not at present, thank you. Is it, however, a life-and-death matter? If this transaction went wrong, would it ruin him?’
‘Oh, far from it. At least, I don’t think so. I even doubt whether it would make any serious difference to his way of living. My firm is a very cautious one, and before we began to act for him we naturally took up references and so on. They were entirely satisfactory, and all the time he has been our client he has never caused us the slightest uneasiness. I have often felt that his operations are more a hobby than a necessity.’
‘And Clarence James?’
‘He’s the awkward one of the family. I suppose he takes after his father, he’s so different from the other children. He doesn’t fit in with this household at all.’
‘Do you like him?’
‘Yes and no. I should like him better if he liked me better. He’s much involved with what I believe is called a very highbrow circle. I’ve been in and out of the fringe of it myself. The fact that I came to this house as a friend of his mother’s made him regard me at once as a person of no interest. Besides, being a stockbroker is not a passport to the world of art and letters – unless you are a potential buyer of pictures.’
‘He’s intolerant, I suppose?’
‘Very, of the things most people tolerate. I dare say in other ways he might shock us by his broad-mindedness.’
‘Free love, and so on?’
‘Oh, I expect so. He’s also extremely sensitive and highly strung. His mood changes from hour to hour.’
‘I wonder if you could give me a kind of temperature chart of these moods of his? Not now, but when I’ve ceased to torment you, perhaps you would think over his behaviour during this Christmas gathering and jot down for me the periods of his different moods.’
‘That’s rather a responsibility, isn’t it?’
‘Not too great for you, I think. You’re so clearly a person of perception. And now disjointed question Number Three. This may startle you. Do you, or do you not, think there is any connection between the death of Dr Green and the death of Mrs Harley?’
He smiled half at me and half to himself and lit a cigarette. For a time words failed me. His question had so suddenly probed a sore place in my mind from which I had been suffering long before the death of Dr Green. To suppose any connection between the two deaths could only imply that Mrs Harley’s death was not an accident. But what grounds had I for thinking that it was not? As in my previous meditations, I did all I could to curb the melodramatic instinct which raised a doubt over such a point. Mrs Harley’s death was so easily explained by natural causes. Why should I have been disquieted about it? I could think of two reasons only. My first was that, ever since my aunt’s death, I had been prone to regard all apparent accidents in a sinister light, just as the valetudinarian regards every stomach-ache as an attack of appendicitis, every cough as the onset of consumption. My second reason, the more legitimate of the two, was the atmosphere of suppressed turmoil which had prevailed at Beresford Lodge since my arrival. How was I to reply?
‘I have no grounds – no real grounds,’ I began.
‘None the less,’ he said, interrupting me, ‘you have considered the possibility?’
‘Yes, in a sense. If two people caught measles within a few hours of each other you would say that the source of infection was the same.’
‘But did you diagnose the first as a case of measles before the second case occurred?’
He was clearly pleased at the use he had made of my simile, and looked at me almost as if hoping for applause.
‘Not exactly as measles,’ I answered. ‘As German measles, perhaps!’
At this point any further attempt at repartee was prevented by Edwins, who came in to say that a constable wished urgently to have a word with the Inspector.
‘That means good night, I fear,’ he said when Edwins had gone out. ‘It has been, as far as I’m concerned, a most pleasant conversation. I wish I could think that all the interviews I’m going to have will be so lucid and harmonious. I should like to see you to-morrow morning if I may. Will you breakfast in bed?’
‘Yes, I think I shall.’
‘Then I’ll visit you again at half past nine, here, if that’s not too early. One irksome little piece of routine. I have to ask all of you not to leave the house or garden without permission from the constable at the gate.’
‘And what about taking my finger-prints?’
He laughed loudly and put out his hand.
‘Oh, if I wanted those I should take them without your knowing it. Quite a technique has been developed
for that. Now, good night. You don’t want to see the doctor – I mean, Dr McKenzie – again, do you?’
‘Not in the least.’
‘I thought not. I told him I’d let him know if he was needed. Good night again, and I do hope you’ll sleep well.’
He gave me another smile, and a little bow, went out and shut the door.
XIV. Nocturne
Boxing Day – 10 p.m.
Then began a long and painful night. My ‘interrogation’ was over – at least, the first instalment was – but there were many things I had not confessed to the Inspector. I had made no mention of the two figures on the Heath, Dr Green’s errand to the purlieus of Baker Street that morning, Mr Quisberg’s interview with the stranger on the evening of Christmas Day, his fainting fit when he heard the news of Mrs Harley’s death, and his agitated conversation with Dr Green at the moment of my arrival on Christmas Eve, which now seemed to have been a sinister prelude to the whole of my miserable visit. No doubt, in due time these things would be revealed, but I trembled for the manner and the consequences of their revelation.
Meanwhile, there was nothing to be done, except to sleep. But this was not easy. I turned out my light and tried desperately to calm myself. Busy thoughts raced round my head incessantly, while my heart beat an excited accompaniment. In vain I counted sheep, imagined myself carried over a mountain landscape in a sedan-chair, played an imaginary harmonium, and recited to myself fragments of poetry – among which I remember the following couplet echoing for a long time in my mind:
Alma quies, optata, veni! Nam sic sine vita
Vivere, quam suave est, sic sine morte mori!
and my attempt to translate it into English:
Come, kindly sleep! How sweet thy mystery –
Lifeless to live, and deathlessly to die!
Needless to say, I was far from satisfied with my version, and strove so hard to mould it into better shape that I became even more wakeful than before. This is too awful, I thought. Even if I am destined not to sleep at all to-night, I shall survive somehow. Enough of this!
I sat up in bed and turned on the light. A quarter to twelve. What should I do? Then I remembered that the Inspector had asked me to jot down the varying moods of Clarence James, and to make, if I could, a chart of his emotional temperature. The task was less wretched than my undirected reverie, and it was with some relief that I took a pencil and piece of paper from the table beside my bed, and made these notes:
Christmas Eve. C. J. at dinner. Bored with the party. Deliberately irritating to Miss Thurston. Played bridge as if to oblige, but not entirely without pleasure.
Christmas Day. Comes in shortly before luncheon radiant from a long walk on the Heath. Full of noble sentiments and altruism. Almost the little friend of all the world. Disappears after luncheon and not home for dinner.
Boxing Day. Tragic in the morning. (‘With a face like a dry toadstool’ – Dr G.) Bored and miserable when I talk to him by the rock-garden. Unbends a little towards the end. Says he has a special reason for not wanting to leave the house that morning. Harmless at luncheon, but expresses disgust with Dixon’s brutal attitude towards the boys on the wall. Disappears. Next seen by me, tragic again and scared, on the Heath. Directs me vaguely to the body and runs away. Not seen by me since then.
Once more I turned out the light and lay down. My nerves were less on edge, but sleep was still far away. Had I, perhaps, yielded a little too readily to the Inspector’s blandishments? Was it quite fair of me to make so free with the spiritual vagaries of Clarence James? At least, I had suppressed all mention of the poem, which seemed to be a sore point with him. The poem could not possibly be relevant. Or was it? . . .
Oh, for sleep and peace from these worries! Had the nightmare no end? Would the day ever come when I could (as in my imagination on the Heath that very afternoon) refer to the whole tangle in the past tense? Why could I not be a passive spectator, like George the butler, or Edwins. Edwins! Had I really seen him on the Heath that afternoon? Was it my duty to drag him in, too? How could I bear to see him bringing up my breakfast, if it was I who gathered him into the net?
I am being carried in a sedan-chair, I thought, over the mountains of Thibet. Enormous peaks of bluish-white snow are towering above me. Here is one, and there, on the left, cut in half by a cotton-wool cloud, is another. There is a sound of water rushing downward over the rocks. The torrent strikes the stones on the mountain side and the air is filled with a fresh, bubbling spray. Up in the air, almost as high as the highest peak, is a hawk. It has seen a brightly coloured bird hopping among the primulas in the valley ten miles below. It swoops, falling and falling, one mile, then another mile, with the cold air whistling between its outer feathers . . .
*
There was a muffled knock on my door, and almost before I was roused from the dream in which I was at last losing myself, the door opened and shut, and a husky voice beside me said: ‘It’s Dixon. I’ve got to have a talk with you.’
I switched on the light. He was standing beside me, with a cut on his cheek and a black eye, scared, pale and enormous.
‘Sit down, then,’ I said resentfully. ‘When did you come in?’
‘About two hours ago. I’ve just been put through it by that Inspector bloke.’
‘I hope you made yourself pleasant.’
He looked at me angrily, then no doubt realising that he must be conciliatory, sat down in the chair by the fire and began to talk. At first, with incredible perversity, I felt so sleepy that I hardly listened to what he was saying. I remember phrases such as ‘pulling together’, ‘all in the same boat’, ‘rotten affair’, ‘sake of Amabel’, ‘sake of Mrs Q.’, ‘sake of the family’, appearing and reappearing in his monologue, till finally I interrupted him impatiently with the words:
‘Look here, what exactly can I do for you?’
Again he repressed a movement of hostility.
‘Well, in the first place,’ he said, ‘you might ask me how I got my face in such a mess.’
‘I was wondering.’
‘That was thanks to those damned hooligans on the wall this afternoon. There were about twenty of them. One hit me in the eye with a stone from his catapult. Of course, they’d no idea of fighting fair. Oh, I got rid of them all right, though it took me some time. Then I came back to the house and found that Green had rung up for me, asking me if I’d be ready to go for a walk with him when he got back here. He was telephoning from somewhere near Marble Arch, Amabel said – she took the message. I thought this a bit queer. However, he said it was urgent and all that sort of thing, and I hung about downstairs till he came back, which was about three, when we started our walk together.’
‘Which way did you go?’
‘Over the Heath. Not the part near here, but the other side, more in the Highgate direction – along Spaniards Road, you know, and down to the right. Well, I oughtn’t to tell you what we were talking about, but I suppose I’ve got to. It seems that the doctor had got up some kind of a syndicate that was interested in tea-planting. You know, I did a bit in Ceylon a couple of years ago. He began by asking me a lot of questions about my work and the fellows I was working with, and I’m afraid I told him things I oughtn’t to have – details of costs and profits and so on, which I shouldn’t have given away, because the other fellows are still out there working the estate and I hadn’t really any right to give the game away like that. Of course, he’s no fool, and I didn’t see what he was up to. Well, we sat down on a seat, and he took down everything I told him on a piece of paper and put it in his notecase. Then he went on asking me for more details, figures and so on, that I couldn’t remember offhand. So I told him I had a pal in Finchley who used to work with me, except that he was more on the clerical side, and that this fellow would be much more use to him than I was. Then he asked me if I would go at once and see this friend and bring back some special information to-night. He gave me half a promise that he would let us in this syndicate of his, and promi
sed to pay us both well in any case. Well, we’ve none of us got too much of this world’s goods, have we, and in any case I knew my friend – his name is Charlesworth – was in pretty low water. So I thought it would be a decent thing to do, to give him the chance of making a bit, and agreed with the doctor to go and visit him there and then. After all, it isn’t so far from Highgate to Finchley. The doctor was awfully bucked at the idea, and promised to tell Amabel where I’d gone, when he got back, in case I was late. I hadn’t seen Charlesworth for some time, and I thought it might mean staying to supper with him. Some fellows are rather touchy, you know, about things like that. So off I went. Oh, one rather queer thing happened when I left the doc. He asked me to lend him my stick. He said he was going to walk back right round the Heath, and didn’t care to be out there after dark without a stick. Evidently the old fellow was a bit jumpy, and as I didn’t want the damned thing I said he was welcome to it.’
‘What time was that?’ I asked.
‘Fourish. By the way, the doc said at the beginning of our talk that it was to be absolutely confidential. He made me promise not to let on to old Q., who, it seems, doesn’t take to tea as readily as he takes to cobalt, and wouldn’t have anything to do with the doc’s syndicate. Well, I gave the doc my stick and went off to Finchley. It took me some time, as I went to the wrong part first. Finchley’s a huge place, you know, and the Charlesworths live right at the north end. I found quite a beano going on – Bobby Charlesworth, my pal, his mother, and two cousins and an aunt. Of course, they asked me to stay to supper, and I had to, as otherwise I shouldn’t have been able to get my pal alone. We had a bit of a talk afterwards, but he didn’t take it quite as I expected. In fact, he got quite ratty, and said I’d no business to give the firm’s secrets away without making sure what use the information would be put to. He suggested he should see Green himself and find out how the land lay. I felt rather nettled at first, specially as I’d hoped to do Charlesworth a good turn, but in the end I’m bound to say I saw he was right and wished I hadn’t spoken so freely myself. So I said I’d fix things up, and got back here about two hours ago – finding all this business going on, with a policeman on sentry-go by the gate.’
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