Reflectively I made my way down to the hall, took my hat from a peg in the lobby, and went out through the front door into the garden.
*
The fine weather of Boxing Day had not lasted. The garden was wet with a recent shower, and a dark sky, full of clouds hurrying from the north-west, promised more rain. I circled round the side of the house, and strolled for a while up and down the paths on the north-east side of the big lawn.
My thoughts were busy, but I could find no one object on which to concentrate them.
The Inspector had by now almost succeeded in making me a wholehearted ally. The murder of Dr Green had struck me with a sense of personal loss, and I was quite ready to help, if I could, to find his murderer – unless the murderer turned out to be Mrs Quisberg. But this seemed most unlikely; for I shared the Inspector’s view that very few people can entirely mislead one as to their real natures. I was prepared to admit that the murderer might be a person of great charm and even virtue – for example, Dr Green’s character, which I admired, was to my mind in no way inconsistent with murder – but I could not bring myself to associate the character of Mrs Quisberg with any kind of crime. It was different with her husband, Dixon, Clarence James, Amabel, the nurse and Edwins. Any of these might, I thought, in certain circumstances have been guilty. Mrs Quisberg, Sheila and George, the butler, I definitely ruled out.
I still found it hard to realise, despite the shadowy suspicions which had been troubling me for a long time, that we were also investigating the murder of Mrs Harley. It was possible, of course, that she and Dr Green were not killed by the same person. It was even possible that the two crimes were not connected in any way, and that the unfortunate household had been visited by two separate disasters within forty-eight hours of one another. But this was altogether too much of a coincidence to be credible. I was convinced that there must be some link between the two deaths, and that the discovery of this link was bound to provide a valuable clue.
How, then, should I set about this task? As at the time of my Aunt Catherine’s death, I was sure that any skill I might have, lay, not in collecting evidence, but in making psychological deductions. I had some talent, I felt, at guessing luckily. There might, it was true, be a few points on which I should need precise information in order to verify a theory, but it was useless for me to examine the house and garden with a microscope, or analyse the fluff in Dr Green’s waistcoat pockets. For this kind of research I had no facilities. Besides, the police were, no doubt, conducting it with great efficiency.
By way of self-discipline I began, while still strolling through the more secluded parts of the garden, to consider the whereabouts at that particular time of each member of the house-party. Mr Quisberg was probably in bed, muttering miserably to himself. Mrs Quisberg would also be in bed, or she might, poor soul, be tottering into Cyril’s room, or trying to comfort her husband. Clarence, the unaccountable, was in Bloomsbury, confined there, no doubt, till the Inspector had been to see him. Probably he was reading poetry, or discussing, somewhat nervously, with his friend the iniquity of all bourgeois institutions. Amabel was drying her eyes in the drawing-room – or she might, by now, have flounced downstairs in search of Dixon, whom I pictured as biting his nails gloomily in the terrace room. Sheila was with her mother or Cyril, or reading or writing in her bedroom. The nurse was upstairs, packing feverishly and planning new taunts with which to goad the young lady of the house. It would be interesting, I thought, to know the nurse’s movements from the time when she fainted in the hall. Presumably a housemaid had attended to her. She would revive quickly, I surmised, and excuse herself to Dr McKenzie as best she could. There was no need, she would assure him, for her to rest. Cyril was convalescent, and she could do everything that was necessary for him. She knew the household, and with Mrs Quisberg unwell it was far better that she should stay on duty. She had probably had a long talk with Dr McKenzie late on the previous night. Perhaps it had been he who had told her about the finding of Dixon’s stick. Or she might have been eavesdropping. She had, up to a point, a privileged position and sources of information which were denied to others. But why had she fainted? Was it possible that she and Dr Green . . . ? This conjecture left me rather dazed, and I passed on deliberately to Harley, that moth-eaten little sphinx whom we had all, except Mrs Quisberg, seemed to ignore. Sooner or later he would have to be told that his mother had not died a natural death. Perhaps by now he had been told, and was sitting in his bedroom thinking and suspecting. Would he, I wondered, suddenly give vent to some amazing disclosure? Apart from the uninteresting members of the staff and the sedate George, there remained Edwins, who was probably pressing Mr Quisberg’s trousers. Or doesn’t one press trousers on Sunday? Had it been Edwins I had seen on the Heath at the time of the flute playing? By fainting, the nurse had made me almost sure that she was the woman I had seen. Were there two such melodious laughers in Hampstead? If the woman had been the nurse and the man Edwins, was it possible that Dr Green had caused the lovers’ quarrel? One could then perhaps conceive the murder as the outcome of Edwins’ jealousy of the doctor. Yet Edwins, that very morning, had seemed so satisfied with himself – and, in any event, how could a row between two men over a pretty woman be connected with the death of Mrs Harley?
*
Coming to a halt in my unprofitable survey, I found I had absentmindedly walked along the path at the bottom of the terrace to the sheds and greenhouses behind the garage. As I approached, a young gardener, who had been stoking the fire of the vinery, walked, rather ostentatiously I thought, to the shed in which I had found the packet of fireworks. It occurred to me to wonder if the fireworks were still there, and if they could have any possible bearing on the mystery which I was trying to fathom. I would look later, I decided, when the coast was clear. But as I turned away I saw such an expression of disappointment on the gardener’s face that I felt bound to speak to him. (Oh dear, did he expect a Christmas box?)
‘Good morning,’ I said. ‘A great change in the weather from yesterday, isn’t it?’
The remark was more than usually flat; for at that very moment the sun began to shine through the clouds, and the whole garden regained much of the spring-like air it had worn on Boxing Day.
‘Yes, sir,’ he replied without interest. Then, his eyes brightening, he added, ‘You didn’t take a spade from here yesterday, by any chance, sir, I suppose?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Why? Are you missing one?’
‘Yes, sir. There’s four spades kept in that shed as a rule, and there’s only three now.’
‘When did you last see all four?’ I asked.
He hesitated a moment before answering.
‘I suppose it would be Christmas Eve, sir, or maybe the day before that. You see, it’s been holiday lately, and in any case there isn’t much digging to be done at this time of year.’
‘And when did you first notice that a spade was missing?’
Again he hesitated.
‘This morning, sir. Mr Smith, the head gardener here, said all the gardening tools should be kept together in the tool shed over there, and I was tidying out this shed, like, when I found we was one short.’
He shifted his feet uncomfortably, and I felt sure he was trying to deceive me.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I expect you’ll find it somewhere about. It isn’t the kind of thing that’s any use to most people, is it? I seem to be spending a good deal of my time in the garden. If I see a spade lying about, I’ll let you know.’
‘Thank you, sir. Mr Smith’s a terror if there’s anything missing.’
I smiled, gave him a nod, and walked away, past the greenhouses towards the rock-garden. So, a spade was missing from a shed at Beresford Lodge. And a spade, the Inspector had told me, had been found in the newly dug trench in the clearing on the Heath by Dr Green’s body. No doubt the Inspector had questioned the gardeners, and the man I had just spoken to was trying to do a little detective work on his own. This sinister misplacement of a
spade seemed definitely to link Dr Green’s death with the household of Beresford Lodge. Also it implied a degree of premeditation in the crime, which did much to demolish my fanciful notion of a quarrel between Dr Green and another man (possibly Edwins), for the favours of the nurse. The shadowy figure I had seen on the Heath, talking to the woman with the melodious laugh, was certainly not carrying a spade. I had little doubt that the trench in the clearing had been dug some time previously, for the concealment of the body. Perhaps the experts could tell from the state of the excavated earth exactly when the spade was used. Such accuracy was naturally beyond my powers, and I had only the gardener’s vague statement to guide me as to the period in which the trench could have been dug.
Now, I thought daringly, I will try to reconstruct the crime. By this I meant the second crime, for the first crime, the murder of Mrs Harley, still seemed to me so motiveless and purposeless that I felt my only approach to it lay through investigation of Dr Green’s murder. In my eagerness to gain complete seclusion for my thoughts, I had walked down the south-west side of the garden and taken the path which lay on the far side of the shrubbery behind the rock-garden, where the ill-omened bulk of Paragon House frowned at me through the bare trees. As my gaze wandered over its dilapidated surface, my former feeling of repulsion for the building returned to me, and I was about to walk on to a less depressing spot when I noticed a man standing inside one of the upper windows, rubbing the glass with a sponge. From the opaque look of some of the panes on which he was working, I judged him to be applying a kind of whitewash. Evidently he saw me staring at him, for he pulled up the lower half of the window and leaned out. He was a big fellow with a large, square head, a sallow complexion and features so devoid of any expression that I was reminded of an Oriental. Yet at the same time I had the impression that I had seen him before, not so long ago. Before I could study him further, he startled me by shouting, ‘Come to see the job done, have you?’ His loud voice, echoing suddenly across the quiet garden, so amazed me that I continued to stare at him in surprise. Then, although I had an impulse to retreat, I shouted back: ‘What job? Do you mean the whitewashing?’
‘What else should I mean?’ he replied. ‘Well, you can tell the guv’nor that I’m carrying out instructions all right!’
‘What guv’nor?’ I asked stupidly.
‘You know all right,’ he said, jerking his thumb towards Beresford Lodge. ‘Him that owns the property you’re on now – the foreign gent. You can tell him from me that I know it ain’t nice to be overlooked, and that if he’ll stump up for the whitewash we’ll call it quits.’
‘I don’t quite understand,’ I said. ‘Do you want me to give Mr Quisberg a message?’
‘Ain’t I just told you so?’ he said, and then as if exasperated by my slowness, he quickly jerked his head and shoulders back through the window and disappeared from view.
*
So that, I thought, as I walked back towards Beresford Lodge, is the caretaker of Paragon House. Not a very prepossessing person! No wonder, if heads like his were liable to pop out of the window at any moment, that Mr Quisberg disliked being overlooked, and in default of buying the building and pulling it down had arranged for the windows to be whitewashed. Meanwhile, I had achieved nothing at all in the way of constructive thought during my stroll in the garden. It was essential for me to have privacy and free use of pencil and paper if I was to make any real headway as detective. I wondered very much how we should manage to exist during the remainder of the day, unless we all stayed in our separate rooms. There was not one of us, except Sheila and the little patient upstairs, whose nerves would not be strained almost to danger-point. I pictured interviews with Mr Quisberg, with his wife, with Amabel, with Clarence – had he yet returned? – with Dixon, with Harley and with the nurse, and foresaw in each of them possibilities of a hideous emotional tension. It should be a well-recognised convention, I thought, that when a house is afflicted with murder, the members of the household should be segregated from one another. I had already had two interviews in the garden which had disturbed the systematic working of my thoughts. Henceforth, I decided, I would cling to my bedroom like an oyster to its shell. I little dreamt as I made my way down the path on the north-east side of the garden that a third interview was at hand, in comparison with which the other two would seem colourless indeed.
XVI. The Dropped Pipe
Sunday – 11.45 a.m.
I mounted the terrace by the north-east wing of the Louis Quinze staircase, and was surprised to see Mr Quisberg, wrapped up in rugs and sitting in a chair outside the terrace room. His back was set at a slight angle to me, but I had a good view of his profile, the long forehead, the strange nose which was both arched and snub, the bulging cheeks, and the slit of his tormented mouth, which moved now and again with a nervous twitch. What strange caprice, I wondered, had brought him downstairs? He was indeed a pitiable figure as he sat there this wintry noon, shrunken, ill and miserable. Yet, as I stood by the French window of the dining-room and surveyed him more closely, I was surprised at the essential fineness of his features, and felt that somehow there were about them the elements of nobility, and even – despite their superficial ugliness – of a kind of beauty.
My impulse, naturally, was to creep away unseen, but recollecting the caretaker’s message I resolved to approach him. After all, he was my host, and little though he might wish to talk to me, it seemed hardly right to disappear without a word. Accordingly, I walked slowly and quietly towards him – with a most astonishing result; for my coming so startled him that he jerked backwards in his chair and dropped the pipe, with which he had been fiddling, on to the stone floor. And at the same moment as he turned round and stared at me with frightened eyes, I had a vision which blotted out, for a few seconds, Mr Quisberg, Beresford Lodge, and six and a half years of my life.
*
I have often wondered what it is that provokes those sudden memories which arise for no apparent reason in the least imaginative of us. Why is it, for example, that a musical phrase, perhaps from a piece learned in childhood and long since forgotten, should leap into one’s brain during a game of bridge? Or why, to take another example, should I suddenly be reminded, when walking in the park, of a day twenty years before when my mother took me and my two sisters to have tea in Dinard, by ferry from St Malo? Nothing very memorable had happened on that afternoon. It was only one of many such little excursions, an afternoon without elation or catastrophe. Yet, for some reason, my mind had chosen to store up this most unimportant episode and have it ready to flash upon me, perhaps once in every eighteen months. No doubt psychologists have their theories and might, if they took the trouble to examine one’s reactions, discover some association of impressions – the tint, perhaps, of a stone wall or the peculiar barking of a dog – to account for the purposeless invasion of the present by the remote past. Or is it, as the new school of physicists seem sometimes to hint, that past, present and future are all equally real, and that on occasion we have the gift (or disability) of slipping backwards or forwards through the time-dimension?
The episode which Mr Quisberg’s dropped pipe brought suddenly to my mind was, in itself, less remarkable even than our family tea in Dinard, though dating back, as I have said, only six and a half years, it was less deeply buried in the past. It had taken place on a stifling afternoon in July. (Was it the contrast in weathers which helped to suggest it to me? My mind is largely moved by contraries. Were I a poet I should write odes to spring in late October.) The day, I remember, had been so hot that even the little walk from my office to the Stock Exchange (which I had then newly joined) seemed hardly bearable. Business had almost been at a complete standstill, not only because it was the slack season, but also because we were in the backwash of a big financial failure which for a few days paralysed all the markets. The ‘crash’, as it was called, was my first experience of anything of the kind. I had felt as if the end of my little world were at hand and – such is a novice’s enthu
siasm – could talk of nothing else. When Jack Slicer, the then junior partner in my firm, suggested that we should leave the office early and take a taxi to Hampstead Heath so as to get a breath of fresh air, I was surprised at his composure. However, I was glad enough to escape from the exhausting heat of the City and much enjoyed sitting on the top of the hill by the flagstaff (it was my first visit to Hampstead), watching the people and trying to imagine that there was a faint breeze blowing towards us from the Harrow ridge.
As was too much my habit in those days, I quickly brought the conversation round to ‘shop’, and in the end, I think, my companion must have found me rather tedious. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘this affair’s nothing new. You’ll get used to these panics in time. Look at the Cabal crash. Though I don’t suppose it was quite so big as this one, it made much more of a scare at the time.’
‘The Cabal crash?’ I asked. ‘When was that?’
‘It was in 1904. I know a good deal about it, because my father lost thirty thousand pounds in it, and if my unmarried uncle hadn’t come to the rescue, I should probably have been taken away from my bad but expensive preparatory school.’
‘Do tell me about it,’ I asked him, ‘if it doesn’t bore you. I know the name, of course, but it means rather less to me even than the South Sea Bubble.’
‘The Cabal Trust,’ he said, ‘was a progressive finance company – something rather new in those days, I believe. I don’t know when it was formed or what it specialised in – as a matter of fact it had a go at nearly everything – but it was, or seemed to be, astonishingly successful. The preference shares were considered a first-class investment for the widow and the orphan. The ordinary shares were nearly all privately held, though a few of them were doled out from time to time at a big premium in return for services rendered. My father got hold of a few – I think he paid four pounds ten per pound share – and he put a good deal of money into a subsidiary company managed by the Cabal. For a while everything went well. The Cabal paid thirty or forty per cent. and enlarged its scope about twice a year by the issue of debentures at a low rate of interest, and people used to say that it was only a matter of time before it bought up the Bank of England. Then, quite suddenly, in 1904, the crash came during the Easter holidays. On the Thursday before Good Friday markets were oddly depressed. There were never any dealings on the Stock Exchange in Cabal ordinary shares but the preference shares, of which there were about three million, used to change hands very freely. They had been weak for two or three days, but the usual story of liquidation of a deceased account was put about, and nobody thought very much of it. Then quite suddenly, about midday on the Thursday, they became unsaleable. Even then most people only thought that a large holder must have got into difficulties, and went away for their holidays without feeling uneasy. The real news didn’t come out till the Saturday morning.’
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