Meanwhile, Clarence surveyed me with sympathy.
‘You see,’ I said, looking up, ‘it might have been you.’
He smiled.
‘Or you, for that matter. Don’t worry. I’m the only one who’s been in hell.’
‘How? You?’
‘You see,’ he said with a tragic dryness, ‘I’m the only one of the party who has had the experience of finding that the woman he loved and who, he thought, loved him, was at the same time being unfaithful with – with . . .’
He stopped and turned away.
‘But are you sure of that?’ I asked gently.
‘Yes,’ he said without looking round. ‘She almost told me so. She did tell me . . .’
For a few moments we said nothing.
*
Then, suddenly, the door opened and Quisberg came in, followed by Harley and the Inspector. I stood up and instinctively inclined my head a little. It was like the entry of the Celebrant at High Mass, or the Commanding Officer at a review. Even Clarence seemed to pull himself together, and show a respectful, almost a solicitous, attention. Quisberg was paler even than he had been when I saw him on the terrace, but his face had somehow acquired a look of calm which made its misery less complete. He went straight to an armchair and sat down. Harley, still the perfect secretary, drew up another and bowed the Inspector towards it. The Inspector bent down and whispered to Quisberg, who shook his head, and said: ‘No, no. You talk to dem first. You know what I want to say.’ The Inspector straightened himself and said, giving us a commanding glance, ‘Both Mr Quisberg and I have something very important to say to you all. Will you sit down and listen to me? It may be for rather a long time, I’m afraid.’ Then he sat down in his chair and toyed with some sheets of paper, while the rest of us brought up chairs and completed a semi-circle round the fire. Then, while we were all composing ourselves, crossing our legs and lighting cigarettes, the Inspector rose, went to the door, locked it, and returned to the circle, where he stood by his chair.
*
‘You must,’ he said, looking at us somewhat severely in turn, ‘all be prepared to suffer considerable distress while you hear what I have to tell you. You may easily feel that I am wantonly revealing secrets which have no bearing on my story. This, I assure you, I shall not do. I am bound, however, to probe some very tender places, and I ask you to forgive me – if only for the sake of the chief sufferer’ – here he inclined his head to Mr Quisberg – ‘who has asked me to tell you his story as well as mine.’
At this point he sat down. Excited and apprehensive as I was, I could not help feeling that he was rather enjoying himself. If only he had stuck to the theological college, what eloquent sermons he would have preached!
‘I was called in,’ the Inspector continued, ‘to investigate the murder of Dr Green – an apparently motiveless crime occurring in a household already mourning the sudden death of one of its Christmas guests. I say that the murder of Dr Green was apparently motiveless, but it was not long before an examination of those cross-currents which always exist where several persons of differing temperaments are gathered together, showed me that Dr Green, while living, was a thorn in the flesh of at least two of you here, and one member of the house-party who is no longer with us.’
The parsonic pause which followed was too much for Amabel, who turned her white face on the Inspector and almost shouted:
‘Where is he, Inspector? Have you arrested him? I insist on knowing.’
‘Mr Dixon,’ he replied calmly, ‘has left this house, and will not return to it.’
‘Then,’ she said defiantly, ‘I’m going too.’
‘Please, Miss Thurston, you must listen to me first. Afterwards, you can make up your mind. But if you have any gratitude or consideration at all for Mr Quisberg, you will be patient and hear me out. Perhaps I had better say now, that this public address to you all is really Mr Quisberg’s idea and not mine. Each of you, in your separate way, is deeply concerned in this tragedy, and Mr Quisberg is desirous and, to my mind, very properly desirous, that each of you shall hear the whole truth. We could, of course, have spoken to you one by one, but apart from the labour of doing so – I might even say, from Mr Quisberg’s point of view, the ordeal of doing so – it is, I think, just as well that you should hear me in one another’s presence. You will thus, each of you, be assured that there has been no concealment or misrepresentation. And it will, I hope, make your relationships with one another easier and happier.’
He lit a cigarette.
‘I’m going to tell you,’ he said after a short pause, ‘the whole sequence of events, as a story – not from my point of view, but the historian’s. I shall keep myself out of the picture as much as I can, and shall not bother you with the clues which led me to my discoveries. For them, I have to thank my training and a good deal of luck. Try to listen to me patiently and calmly – and with sympathetic consideration for those who have been the sufferers, whether innocent or guilty.
‘The story begins many years ago – before the war. Mr Quisberg held an important position in England and was even then a very wealthy man. The organisation with which he was working collapsed suddenly, and in the confusion which followed he committed an action of which he himself will give you an explanation when I have finished. It is enough for me now to say that this action involved his hurried flight from England to the Continent, where he changed not only his name, but even, through the surgical skill of Dr Green, his physical appearance. There was at the time a very close friendship subsisting between Mr Quisberg and the doctor – a degree of friendship, indeed, which is found more often among northern than southern nations. For a while, Mr Quisberg lived under the wing of his friend in complete obscurity, but later when the passing of time had confirmed the physical changes in his appearance, he travelled about and engaged, with success, in various business enterprises. During a holiday in Switzerland he met Mrs Quisberg – Mrs Thurston as she was then – and they married. I may perhaps be forgiven for saying that it is a rare example of a thoroughly happy marriage. And later, should Mrs Quisberg seem to need your sympathy, some of you will do well to comfort her with this.’
His eyes met Amabel’s for a moment. Then he continued:
‘At the time of his marriage, Mr Quisberg decided, as I think you all know, to return to England. He bought his wife this fine house and lived here, respected on all sides, in happiness and comfort – nor did anyone associate him with the man who had left England so hurriedly over twenty years before – until the afternoon of Christmas Eve. By the most unhappy coincidence, there arrived on that afternoon, as a guest of the house, Mrs Harley, who had before her marriage been Mr Quisberg’s secretary. I need not say that he had completely lost touch with her in the meanwhile, that he did not know she was still living or married – much less that she had a son and that this son was now his valued helper and friend.
‘Mr Quisberg met Mrs Harley in the hall, here, on Christmas Eve. They only spoke a word or two, but recognised each other at once. Mr Quisberg was on his way to an important meeting in London. He had no time, even if it would have been wise, to talk privately to Mrs Harley, or come to any kind of understanding with her. All he could do was to tell his fears to Dr Green in a few hurried whispers on the lawn in the front of the house, and hope that Mrs Harley would keep the secret to herself till he came back.
‘And now my task is more difficult; for I have to try to explain the mind of someone who can no longer explain himself – someone, moreover, whom I have never seen. I have already told you of the close devotion which existed between Mr Quisberg and the doctor. I gather that the doctor was a most able and brilliant man, bound by none of the scruples of conventional morality. He was able to form quick decisions, and relished them far more than prudence or deliberation. There was an element of the fantastic in his character, of that genius which is sometimes considered not far remote from madness. He was a man whose actions it would always be hard to understand, and still harder to
predict – a man who in every sense was a law to himself. Some of you liked him, some of you hated him. To be indifferent to him was as impossible as it is now for us to judge him.’
Again the Inspector paused and looked at us in turn. He was, I felt sure, not far from enjoying himself. Indeed, I think, he knew he was, and read my thoughts; for when his eyes met mine, his cheeks were coloured with the suspicion of a blush.
Then he continued in a deliberately quiet and unrhetorical tone:
‘I can’t tell you when Dr Green formed his plan, or what form it would have taken if events had not played into his hands. You all know of Mr Warren’s accident while you were playing a game in the drawing-room on Christmas Eve. You may also know that Dr Green, after attending very ably to Mr Warren, gave him a sleeping draught. Mrs Quisberg, meanwhile, had been showing Mrs Harley to her room, but found her in a mood of such agitation that very naturally she asked the doctor if he would prepare another sleeping draught and give it to Mrs Harley. The doctor agreed, but made, probably, a stronger mixture than he had given to Mr Warren. Then the household went to bed, except for Mr Quisberg and Mr Harley, who were in London, and Miss Thurston and Mr Dixon, who went together for a motor ride. The door of Dr Green’s bedroom faced the door of Mrs Harley’s bedroom. Soon after two o’clock – Mr Harley, would you like to go away for a few moments? This must be most harassing for you.’
Harley, whom as usual we had all forgotten, shook his head and murmured something that I could not catch.
‘Are you quite sure?’ the Inspector asked anxiously. ‘Very well. You know what’s coming. You must try not to listen to this part . . . Soon after two o’clock, I was saying, Dr Green crept across the landing to Mrs Harley’s room. He took with him a bottle of some anaesthetic, ether or chloroform, we don’t know which. Mrs Harley was already sleeping very heavily under the influence of the draught. It was thus quite easy for the doctor to render her completely insensible with the anaesthetic. When he had done this, he killed her by breaking her neck. He was a very strong man, you must remember, and had an expert knowledge of anatomy. Then he opened the French window and threw out the body, expecting no doubt that it would fall right down to the terrace. Now it happened that at this very moment, Miss Thurston and Mr Dixon came back from their motor ride and let off a firework, a kind of star-shell, which flew over the house, illuminating all the far side, and revealed, to anyone who was watching, the doctor standing by the window of Mrs Harley’s room, with her body in his arms.
‘Someone was watching – the caretaker in Paragon House. It seems that the regular caretaker had fallen ill suddenly, and the agents had to engage a new man at short notice without inquiring very deeply into his character. The man they engaged was, as a matter of fact, a criminal, and had served sentences for burglary and assault and probably other offences. The fact that he was watching this house from an upper window in Paragon House is not so extraordinary as it may seem at first sight. In the first place, he had hardly anything to do, and it was partly idle curiosity which made him keep his eyes fixed on the chinks of light which appeared and disappeared in the big wall opposite. Probably he saw your game in the drawing-room through an uncurtained window and felt an improper interest in the ‘goings-on’. Probably, also – though this is a guess on my part – he was spending his time planning a new ‘coup’. Beresford Lodge, if I may say so, is a house worth robbing, and any clever thief tries to find out how the land lies before coming to the attack. At all events, his watch was not unrewarded; for he saw something which gave him a great opportunity – not this time for theft, but for blackmail. In a short time you will hear of him again.
‘Mrs Harley’s body was found, as I think you all know, by Mr Warren, on the balcony outside his bedroom. Most naturally, he sent at once for Dr Green, who in turn sent for Dr McKenzie. Dr McKenzie saw nothing suspicious in the injuries which the body had sustained, and I think most probably that if there had been no further developments, the inquest to-morrow would have resulted in a verdict of accidental death.
‘Christmas Day passed without much incident. Mr Quisberg and Mr Harley returned in due course from London, and it was naturally a very great shock to both of them to hear the sad tidings. Dr Green, we may be sure, did not burden Mr Quisberg with any confession of guilt. Mr Quisberg was also, I may mention, much disturbed by a domestic matter about which he had asked Dr Green to make some inquiries, and it is not surprising that the strain of his many anxieties was almost more than he could bear.
‘The blow fell after dinner. By this time, the news of Mrs Harley’s supposed accident was common property in the neighbourhood. We can easily imagine it reaching the caretaker of Paragon House through the milk boy or a baker’s boy, or gossip with the servants of a house in the same road. It seems that he came round to this house during the afternoon, but for some reason – perhaps because he had not fully decided what he was going to do – went away again without seeking admittance. After dinner, however, as a result it may be of further thought, or some confirmation of his suspicions, he walked round once more and demanded an interview with Mr Quisberg, who saw him in the study. Mr Quisberg was naturally so horrified by the caretaker’s disclosure that he hardly grasped its threatening nature. Dr Green, whom he quickly sent for, was better prepared. No doubt Dr Green had not overlooked the importance of that sudden flash of light which occurred at the very moment of his crime, and was already turning his fertile mind to meet the danger. As soon as he saw the intruder, he took command of the situation and asked Mr Quisberg to withdraw. Of what happened then between Dr Green and the caretaker, we have only Mr Quisberg’s account of what Dr Green afterwards told him. According to this story – which there is no reason whatever to doubt – the caretaker demanded a passage to Australia and five thousand pounds as the price of silence. Dr Green temporised with him, and arranged to meet him on the Heath, presumably for further discussion, on the afternoon of Boxing Day. The doctor was to make his whereabouts known by playing an air on the musical instrument which was afterwards found near his body. But the same night – and I need hardly tell you that Mr Quisberg did not know this – when he had temporarily got rid of the unwelcome visitor, he took a spade and a couple of planks from the potting shed here, made his way to a secluded spot at the far end of the West Heath, and dug a grave which he covered over with the planks, a little loose earth and leaves. I have no doubt at all that this grave was intended for the caretaker’s dead body.
‘Next morning, Dr Green, despite the ordeal before him, found time to go down to London and get the information which Mr Quisberg had asked him to get concerning what I have called ‘the domestic matter’. He came back about three, and went for a walk with Mr Dixon who, I may as well say, without beating about the bush any further, was the subject of the doctor’s inquiries in London. Dixon was carrying a short but heavy stick weighted with lead. The discussion between the two men during their walk was far from amicable – we will suppose that the doctor presented Dixon with a definite and humiliating ultimatum – and ended in a violent quarrel, the outcome of which was that the doctor knocked Dixon down, took his stick and walked away, leaving him lying on the Heath somewhere near the Spaniards. Dixon, after a time, continued his walk alone through the northern suburbs, and called both at a doctor’s, where he obtained some attention to his injuries, and later at the house of some friends in North Finchley, where he had supper. These visits have been satisfactorily checked to-day.
‘Meanwhile – long before Dixon had reached North Finchley – the doctor walked back to the West Heath and disappeared into the thicket. Had he known it, three acquaintances of his were also on or near the Heath that evening. One was Mr Warren, who was watching the sunset from Spaniards’ Row. The other two were Mr James and Nurse Moon, who were having a disagreement while walking together in West Heath Road. The cause of the disagreement, it is only right for me to tell you, was Nurse Moon’s infatuation for the doctor which, in a mood of pique or devilry, she made no attem
pt to hide. Indeed, when the silence was suddenly broken by the doctor playing on his little flute, she recognised the music and the player, and made as if to join him then and there. From this, however, she was fortunately dissuaded by Mr James’s protests. She knew also that she was due to be on duty here in a short time, when Dr McKenzie was expected to pay an evening visit. Instead, therefore, of plunging across the Heath and possibly playing a part in the grim struggle that must have been occurring at the same moment, she hurried back to Beresford Lodge and changed into her uniform. Mr James, whom she had left behind, spent a few minutes walking up and down West Heath Road in a mood of great bitterness. He then resolved, desperately, to meet Dr Green face to face, and set out in the direction from which the music had come. It does not seem to me that it would have been very easy to find the doctor, with no other clue to guide one, but the fact remains – and it is a fact which I have no hesitation in accepting – that Mr James did come across him, or rather his dead body, in quite a short time. Like Mr Warren, a few seconds later, his eye was first caught by the metallic glint of the flute. As a policeman, I am, of course, bound to blame Mr James severely for not immediately reporting his discovery. Humanly speaking, and knowing what I do of his state of mind at the time, I cannot be surprised that when he ran across Mr Warren (whose innocent walk was leading him towards the same spot), he considered himself absolved from further responsibility, and sought relief from his nervous tension in a complete change of scene and the companionship of a sympathetic friend.
Crime at Christmas Page 19