Death and the Visiting Fireman

by H. R. F. Keating

  ‘I don’t think we are in quite as much danger as it would appear,’ Smithers said.

  ‘Come now, why not?’ the major said. ‘Here we have this dastardly attack on one of our party. We can’t tell where the fellow will strike next...’

  ‘If fellow is the word,’ said Schlemberger.

  ‘Come, you don’t think this is the work of a woman, do you?’

  ‘It could be. Nothing that has been done could not have been carried out by a female hand, and if we go by suspicious circumstances, well, I don’t want to pick out names, but the women in our party are in just as bad a case as many of us men.’

  ‘Well, sir, I won’t argue. It would be invidious in the present circumstances, and in any case it doesn’t alter my point. The simple fact is we are faced with someone who has just struck again and is very likely to strike once more. We’d all of us be better off in the open. It’s merely a matter of a united front before the inspector.’

  ‘Only I think you are wrong about this person having just struck again,’ said Smithers.

  ‘What do you mean? You’re meant to have seen the boy. Was he attacked, or wasn’t he?’ said the major.

  ‘He was attacked ...’

  ‘Well then, let’s get on with the matter in hand. The fellow will be here at any moment.’

  ‘He was attacked,’ Smithers repeated, ‘but not with the intention of inflicting any serious harm.’

  ‘That was certainly not the impression I got from the inspector,’ said Schlemberger. ‘He described the attack to me very graphically as the kid had told him. Whoever did it seemed to have pressed that pillow down pretty hard. By the way, I understand the pillow came from your room.’

  ‘It did,’ said Smithers. ‘I rather think I was singled out for that honour. But tell me, did the inspector say anything about the attacker holding the boy’s wrist?’

  ‘Why, yes, he did in a way. It was a kind of trick question, I guess. He asked me something or other and I said it didn’t make sense to me and then he said the boy’s wrist had been held. I didn’t get it at the time.’

  There was a murmur of agreement.

  ‘He did the same to me,’ said Daisy. ‘Only I thought it was just another of those things I don’t understand, like cross-sections and ju-jitsu.’

  ‘It seems, then, most of you know,’ said Smithers. ‘Peter’s attacker shortly before the boy lost consciousness grasped his wrist. Not tightly to hold him down, there’s not much need to use a lot of force with a boy of Peter’s age, but lightly. Isn’t it obvious why?’

  ‘Not, naturally enough, to me,’ said Daisy, ‘unless he was feeling Peter’s pulse or something.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Smithers. ‘Feeling the pulse, making sure he didn’t go too far.’

  ‘Are you implying the attack was a fake?’ said the major.

  ‘Yes,’ Smithers said.

  The door opened, and Inspector Parker came in.

  ‘I sent a message up to you all,’ he said, ‘because I am not satisfied with the answers I got to my first questions about this attack on Peter Dagg, or so-called attack.’

  ‘But that’s what Mr Smithers ...’ said Kristen.

  Inspector Parker looked at Smithers.

  ‘Evidently, inspector,’ he said, ‘the same point struck us both. The attacker felt the boy’s wrist because he wanted to make sure he didn’t kill him.’

  ‘Just so,’ said Parker. ‘So the matter appears in rather a different light and further questioning becomes necessary. Mr Smithers, I’ll see you first if I may.’

  The inspector took Smithers into the hotel office where the now familiar constable was ready with his notebook.

  ‘That was a curious thing to have done,’ he said.

  ‘What was?’ Smithers asked.

  ‘Faking an attack.’

  ‘Have you any idea who did it?’

  ‘Meaning you resent any implication it could have been you. This is not the first time I’ve had to point out to you that we are dealing with something more serious than the second bootboy’s kleptomania.’

  ‘And yet the two cases, if I may say so, have something in common.’

  ‘Oh yes, I’m not here to discuss it all in a nice quiet way with you, but I grant you that. Mania. It begins to look a bit like it. The bootboy collects the head’s mortarboard, two gross of mixed chalks, and Jones minor’s white mouse: our criminal goes in for mock murder. But I’m concerned at this moment with such details as times, locks on doors, and the carrying power of sound.’

  ‘The times I have already given you,’ Smithers said. ‘Thinking them over I see no reason to amend them. As to locks, yes, my room was locked, but the key was hanging on the board in the hall where it could easily be taken unobserved and the window was wide open. You remember I told you someone had come into the room that way once before and taken the gun you later found in the river. The same person could easily have done it again.’

  ‘And, since you are so prompt with your answers, what about the carrying power of sound?’

  ‘Both the lounge and Peter’s room look out over the yard there,’ Smithers said, ‘and both windows were open. But you will have to check all that in the morning when Peter can scream for you.’

  ‘You don’t wish to change your statement on that point.

  Perhaps you had left the lounge for a moment and had gone upstairs?’

  ‘But I hadn’t. I sat there reading from the moment everybody went after tea till I heard the screams.’

  ‘All right. Would you ask Mr Wemyss to step in?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘Oh, by the way, did you get yourself another pillow?’

  ‘I haven’t bothered, why?’

  ‘Because we will need that one for several days possibly. The forensic people seem to think there could be something in the nature of minute particles or a faint odour left from the very firm contact of the hands in pressing down like that.’

  ‘I hope they succeed.’

  ‘Nothing more to add?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘No details you would like to correct?’

  ‘No, none at all.’

  ‘Thank you. Then I’ll see Mr Wemyss.’

  ‘I’ll let him know.’

  Smithers went back to the lounge and delivered his message. He then picked up his book and made for the door.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said the constable standing just outside, ‘would you mind staying in there for a bit? Inspector Parker’s instructions.’

  ‘Not at all. I quite understand,’ Smithers said.

  He went back and joined the group sitting where they had been having coffee.

  ‘Perhaps you’ll find something for us to talk about,’ Daisy said to him. ‘You’re generally so good at that. Our friend in blue out there has rather put the damper on us, I’m afraid.’

  Smithers looked round the party. With the exception of Kristen, who was fidgeting with the clasp of her bag and smoking a cigarette in quick vigorous puffs, everybody was sitting sombrely inactive.

  ‘I don’t think this is an occasion for polite conversation,’ he said. ‘There comes a time when even the vagaries of the weather are eclipsed in interest.’

  ‘Though it is extraordinarily hot,’ Fremitt said. ‘I don’t like it. Frankly, I don’t.’

  ‘Even the heat has some bearing on the matter,’ Smithers said. ‘Windows are left open; it is easy to get in and out of locked bedrooms.’

  ‘It’s certainly an unpleasant thought,’ said Schlemberger. ‘I don’t mind admitting I feel a mite uneasy.’

  ‘Then it’s time the whole stupid affair was cleared up,’ Kristen said.

  She stubbed out a half-smoked cigarette in an ashtray beside her, already nearly full of butts, broken, red-smeared.

  ‘I wish it was. I really wish it was,’ Daisy said.

  ‘Do you?’ asked Kristen.

  She jumped up and moved across till she was standing looking down at Daisy.

  �
��If you knew what a struggle it was to keep even moderately cheerful, dear,’ said Daisy.

  ‘I would have thought you might be pretty cheerful,’ Kristen said. ‘You know, I’ve been doing a bit of thinking recently. Up till a little while ago I didn’t much care, to tell the honest truth, who had killed poor old George. He deserved it if ever anyone did. But then I began to see that, whoever did it, the innocent were going to suffer.’

  ‘Poor little Peter,’ Daisy said.

  ‘I didn’t mean that,’ Kristen said. T meant us. The people who are suddenly going to find themselves arrested, put in prison, up at the Old Bailey, and all for nothing. For something they hadn’t done. For someone else. No, it’s certainly time someone spoke the truth. Isn’t it, Daisy?’

  ‘Are you suggesting that Miss Miller hasn’t been doing that and doing it damn’ gallantly?’ asked the major.

  ‘Plainly she is,’ said Smithers. ‘I would like to hear more.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t. It’s filthy. To hear a lady attacked in this manner and not to do one’s utmost to put a stop to it,’ the major said.

  The thin face colouring slowly, stormily.

  ‘No, let’s hear,’ said Daisy. ‘It’s only fair.’

  Kristen backed away from her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘I should think not,’ said the major. ‘Now listen here, my girl, I shall expect an apology from you in due course. For the present we’re confined to this room so you can’t leave us, as I think you ought, but you can remain silent and you will.’

  ‘She has said too much already,’ Smithers said.

  He too got up from his chair.

  ‘Now, Miss Kett,’ he said, ‘your duty is to finish what you began. If you know the truth, it must be spoken.’

  Not an order. A statement of the inescapable.

  ‘All right,’ said Kristen, ‘I will.’

  She took another cigarette from the open case next to the ashtray and lit it for herself with an unsteady hand.

  ‘All right. I’m not afraid. You killed George, Daisy, you know you did.’

  Fourteen

  ‘Well, of course, I didn’t do it,’ said Daisy.

  ‘You think you can get away with it,’ Kristen said. ‘And I’m not surprised. You thought it all out so carefully.’

  She was suddenly much calmer. She went to stub out her cigarette, saw her ashtray was full, looked round, spotted another, and carefully ground the lighted end into it. Then she turned and half leaned and half sat on the edge of the open window facing the group.

  ‘I suppose you all believe I’m pretty stupid,’ she said. ‘Oh, don’t think I haven’t noticed your attitude towards me. And come to that, I may not have appeared so bright these last few days, I’ve been feeling too rotten one way and another. But just now I suddenly realized that that damned policeman wasn’t asking me all those silly questions just because he liked to put the screws on a pretty girl. I suddenly realized he actually thought I killed George.’

  ‘I don’t think he necessarily did, dear,’ said Daisy. ‘He kept on at me in the most extraordinary way, too. He can’t think we both did it. I’m sure it’s just his manner. Though it is upsetting.’

  Kristen smiled.

  The smile at once made the reason for her comparative success in the film world obvious. It was not warm and left her eyes hard, but it transformed her face into something alive. Animal and seductive.

  ‘Keep it up,’ she said. ‘Keep it up to the end. The star. Always a kindly hand. You know what it all really is?’

  She turned from Daisy to the rest.

  ‘It’s pure bloody Number One from start to finish. But how the big act has taken you all in. You were a matinée audience if ever I saw one.’

  ‘Now then,’ said Daisy, ‘be as rude as you like about me, dear. But you shouldn’t say things like that to the others.’

  Kristen ignored her.

  ‘Of course she had to have you eating out of her hand if what she had planned for so long was to come off,’ she went on. ‘And especially the major. The dear old major. How long before the trip started had she got to work on you, major?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Major Mortenson said. ‘You should be made to hold your tongue. It’s damn ‘disgusting.’

  ‘That’s right, major, gallant to the last,’ said Kristen. ‘Do you know, now I’ve begun on this, I feel better than I’ve done for weeks. Funny isn’t it? But let’s get on. Between the two of them they cooked up all that stupid business with the pistols. Then there was the beard trick. You all fell for it. The major’s confession. And Daisy going on and on about it being a fairy-story, and no one cottoning on. Don’t you see? The bit about the beard was just put in to make everybody convinced that the murder was done on the spur of the moment. Of course, Daisy knew Georgie was going to shave it off, and she warned the major to look surprised when he saw it had gone. You poor clucks, hasn’t it dawned on you that she’d been planning to kill him for years?’

  ‘This is perfectly fantastic,’ Major Mortenson said. ‘We can’t go on sitting here listening to a lady being insulted to her face in this manner. Is the girl non compos, or what?’

  ‘I suppose you mean looney, major,’ said Kristen. ‘Well I’m not, I’m far from it. I’m the only one with the guts to see through all this flapdoodle and fog you and your precious Daisy have been putting up between you.’

  White. White fingers with muscles gripping the arm of the chair. Every muscle in the major’s body taut.

  ‘Now, now,’ said Kristen, ‘don’t get in a bate. You’ve got worse to come.’

  She paused. Leant back put of the window rocking slightly on her hips.

  ‘All right, on we go. Get this. Ever since George Hamyadis walked out on Daisy Miller years and years ago she has had it in for him. And she just waited till he thought they were friends again. She deceived him like she deceived the rest of you. He even thought it all was forgotten and invited her for this coach trip for old times’ sake. Then she knew her chance had come at last. She heard about the major and got to work on him. The only thing she overdid was answering the questions about how long she’d known George. I wasn’t feeling too good but even I noticed her changing the story.’

  Kristen jumped back into the room, pirouetted round, and stood looking at them all.

  ‘Haven’t you forgotten one thing, dear?’ Daisy said.

  ‘Now we’re coming to it,’ Kristen said.

  She glanced once round the room.

  ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘Prove me wrong. I’d be glad to hear it.’ ‘Prove you wrong,’ said Daisy. ‘Not my line. I was just wondering about my famous call from America. Couldn’t you work that in?’

  Kristen laughed. A deep relaxed animal laugh.

  ‘Game to the last,’ she said. ‘All right, that fits in too. She hadn’t reckoned on all this talk about the States and when it began she suddenly thought that the one thing which would really put suspicion on her might be dug up. She was trying to make sure it wasn’t.’

  ‘One moment,’ Daisy said.

  Her hands fumbled on her lap knocking her handbag on to the floor.

  The major jumped to his feet and picked it up. He held it out to Daisy. She waved it away.

  ‘Listen, dear,’ she said to Kristen. ‘I don’t mind all this other business. It isn’t true and it can’t hurt me. But be careful now. If you have really found out something, just ask yourself what it would be like to be in my place.’

  ‘Hasn’t she gone far enough?’ said the major. ‘There ought to be something that can be done to someone who does a thing like this.’

  ‘Go on, Miss Kett,’ Smithers said.

  ‘So we’re getting near at last,’ said Kristen.

  All the vitality that a minute before had ebbed away flooded back again. She stood over Daisy poised like a racing swimmer.

  ‘You know,’ she said,’ it’s all going to come out whatever you feel like. I noticed how you would
n’t let Georgie kiss you the first time. But tell me, when you pointed his own gun at him after he had just kissed you the second time, did you look back to the days when you and he were married?’

  ‘Married,’ Daisy said.

  She plunged her face into her hands. Her body shook uncontrollably. Sobs, gusts of laughter.

  With an effort she looked up at them.

  ‘I shall never be able to explain,’ she said. ‘She’s so wrong.’

  Kristen, a runner checked in full stride. She slowly sat down on the arm of a chair.

  The door opened and Wemyss came in.

  ‘Nosey Parker’s having a field day,’ he said.

  There was silence. Daisy was quiet now. Slowly she looked up at them and shook her head.

  Utter negative.

  ‘I got quite a gruelling,’ Wemyss said.

  Daisy turned to him. Blinked.

  ‘Did you?’ she said. ‘That must have been nice.’

  Her voice a clear small stream after the floods.

  ‘Nice? You’ve got an odd idea of what’s nice. But you’ll see.

  He wants you next.’

  Daisy sat still.

  ‘Your turn,’ said Wemyss. ‘The inspector wants to interview the celebrated Daisy Miller.’

  ‘Oh, me,’ said Daisy. ‘The inspector. At the police station, I suppose.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ said Wemyss. ‘In the office here. Remember? He’s seeing us each in turn. Do you want me to show you the way?’

  ‘Thank you, that would be very kind,’ Daisy said.

  She looked from side to side, saw her handbag, took it from the table where the major had put it down, fished a handkerchief out, and dabbed at her eyes.

  Wemyss held the door open for her. With overdone courtesy.

  When she got to it she turned and said:

  ‘You know there won’t be any explanation when I come back. I’m sorry. But you’ll just have to think that about me, or work out what it all means. I’ve nothing to say. Nothing. And now, I think perhaps I can find my own way to that little office.