The Floating Admiral (Detection Club)

by Christie, Agatha; Detection Club, by Members of the

  “Act of God?” queried Rudge.

  “Yes. In the case of consent being required to a marriage, for instance, if the person whose consent is required dies before the marriage, then the condition is impossible of fulfilment, and the gift stands.”

  “Quite so,” said Rudge, “but what does Act of God mean precisely?”

  “Well,” said the lawyer, a little reluctantly Rudge thought, “that means—well, practically speaking, it means, under conditions which the beneficiary could not have prevented.”

  “Let us speak quite plainly,” said Rudge. “If Elma Holland should be found to have been concerned in Admiral Penistone’s murder—”

  “Of course, in that case,” said Mr. Dakers, “there would be no question of her inheriting. The law expressly forbids a criminal to profit by the fruits of the crime. But surely that question does not arise.”

  “I should hope not,” said Rudge. “Then so far as I can see, Mrs. Holland is now entitled to her inheritance?”

  “Ye-es,” said the lawyer. “I hope the Court will look upon it from that point of view. The difficulty lies in the extreme haste with which the marriage followed upon the death. I will be frank with you, Mr. Rudge. I think it would be possible to contest the case, and I think that, if that occurred, we should have to take one of two lines about it. We could, of course, say that she intended to ask the necessary consent before the marriage and that, but for the death, she would have had time to ask for it. Now, of course, she did ask for it—several times.”

  “With any reasonable expectation of ever getting it?” asked Rudge. “Mr. Dakers,” he added, as the lawyer appeared to hesitate, “I will go so far as to tell you that I have witnesses here who are prepared to say that the Admiral appeared not to approve of the marriage.”

  “Precisely,” said Mr. Dakers; “I must admit that there was—an appearance at any rate of objection. And that being the case, I do not quite know what the Court would think of a marriage so hastily concluded. It might be inferred that the Admiral was violently opposed to the marriage, and that, therefore, the marriage was undertaken with a definite intention of frustrating the object of the testator. The indecent haste attending the ceremony affords, you see, in itself a presumption that the death of the Admiral removed the only obstacle to the marriage.”

  “And that being so,” said Rudge, “an allegation might be made that the Admiral’s death was not altogether—shall we say, by Act of God.”

  “If such a monstrous allegation were made,” replied Mr. Dakers, “it would have to be refuted; in which case, the mere fact that the hastiness of the marriage might jeopardise the absolute right to the estate would constitute a very good answer to the charge.”

  “Yes,” said Rudge, seizing on the weak point of the argument, “provided the beneficiary was aware how the law stood.” He considered for a moment, and then said:

  “And your second line of defence would be?”

  “To show that the ceremony was not arranged until after death had made it impossible to obtain consent. If it were so—though I do not see how a licence could have been taken out in the time—it would be a complete answer to the contesting party. It has frequently so been held. For instance, in Collett v. Collett, the mother, whose consent was required, died in 1856. In 1865 the daughter married. The Master of the Rolls held that the gift over (that is, to the person who was to get the money in case the condition was not fulfilled, you understand) will not take effect, if the performance of the condition has become impossible through the Act of God and no default of the person who had to perform it.” (Mr. Dakers, reading these words from a note-book, glanced over his pince-nez at Rudge, who said nothing. He resumed.) “‘Here it is reasonably certain that the mother, if she had lived, would have given her consent to this marriage, one eligible in all respects.’ There, you see, Inspector, is our difficulty. The Court seems to have based its decision to some extent on what the mother might reasonably have been expected to do.”

  “I see,” said Rudge. “And in this case the Admiral’s consent could not very well be presumed with any certainty.”

  “There again,” said the lawyer, “who is to say? If the eligibility of the marriage, as such, is a factor to be taken into consideration, there seems to be no reason why Admiral Penistone should not have consented. Holland, so far as I know anything about him, seems to be a respectable man of suitable age and standing and with sufficient money of his own to take him out of the class of mere fortune-hunters. It is a very pretty case, Mr. Rudge, and if I were not personally concerned it would give me great pleasure to see it thrashed out.”

  Rudge was about to reply, when the sound of an approaching car was heard. A slight commotion followed at the front door. Voices and footsteps sounded and a minute after, the study door was thrown open.

  “Inspector,” said Arthur Holland as he followed his wife into the room, “we owe you an apology for running off like this, but we were in a hurry and were afraid you might delay us. Is this Mr. Dakers? How do you do, sir? My wife and I received your note, and thought we had better come and set your mind at rest.”

  “Thank you,” said Mr. Dakers, rather dryly. “Well, Elma, you have married in very great haste. I trust you will not have to repent it at leisure.”

  Elma laughed. There was a faint flush of colour in her usually pale cheeks and she looked, Rudge thought, rather a prey to some consuming excitement than radiant with the happiness of a newly married woman.

  “You have made a mistake, Mr. Dakers,” she said. “I haven’t jeopardised anything or compromised anything. Look at that.”

  She handed him a sheet of paper. Mr. Dakers settled his glasses more firmly on his nose, read it with a “Tut-tut” or two of astonishment, and handed it over to Rudge.

  “That solves our problems, I think, Inspector.”

  Rudge looked at the paper. It was typewritten, with the exception of the signature, and ran—

  “I willingly give my consent to the marriage of my niece, Elma Mary Fitzgerald, with Arthur Holland.

  “(Signed) H. L. PENISTONE.”

  It was dated the 9th August.

  Inspector Rudge looked at Holland.

  “When did this come into your possession, sir?”

  “My wife gave it to me this morning,” he said. “She had it last night from the Admiral.”

  “At what time was that, ma’am?” enquired the Inspector.

  “Just after midnight,” replied the girl, in a curious flat tone which reminded Rudge of his interview with her earlier in the day.

  “After midnight? Did you see your uncle alive after midnight?”

  “Why, of course,” interrupted Holland. “I saw him myself. Yes, I know, Inspector! I didn’t want to tell you about that because I was afraid you might stop us from going to town. But I’ll come clean now. I saw the Admiral alive here in his study at a quarter past twelve last night.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  By Ronald A. Knox

  THIRTY-NINE ARTICLES OF DOUBT

  IN THE nature of the case, a policeman’s life is bound up with surprises. A considerable part of the community is only too ready to set playful booby-traps for him, stretching wires across garden-paths or waiting in dark alleys with half a brick concealed in the foot of a stocking. Rudge had not risen to his inspectorship without some experiences of the kind, and he had come near to achieving that unwondering attitude which is (the old poet assures us) part of the stuff of happiness. But this sudden admission almost caught him off his guard. Grice’s statement that the body had been a corpse since some time before midnight had seemed so evident a point of departure; all the other features of the case had grouped themselves round it so obligingly—the possibility of a journey into Whynmouth and foul play down-stream, the visit of the strange car, the darkness, the loneliness, the set of the tides. (By the way, why had he been so certain about the tides? Oh, yes, Neddy Ware; odd that Neddy should have been so positive about it.) Too late he realised that no single pi
ece of evidence, except the misleading infallibility of the expert, had excluded the possibility of a murder well after midnight. And this, it seemed now, was what must have happened. Of course, Holland might be lying, but it was difficult to see his motive; why abandon a first-class alibi at the Lord Marshall for the honour of being the last man who saw deceased alive? It would be a fool’s game, and Holland did not look like a fool.

  In a moment, habit reasserted itself; he had drawn out the inevitable note-book, and was turning over the pages to a blank, remembering not to moisten his finger as he did so. “I think I ought to tell you, sir,” he explained, “that you are not bound to make any statement. You know well enough that you will have to be called at the inquest; and if you prefer to reserve—”

  “My defence?” interrupted Holland, with heavy raillery. “It is too kind of you. But, you see, here I am, all ready binged up with a cock-and-bull story carefully prepared to mislead you; it would be a pity not to get it off my chest while I’m word-perfect. You would like to get me in jug first, wouldn’t you, and take down my statement with no witnesses, so that you could cook it afterwards? I prefer the present occasion, if you don’t mind.”

  Rudge just checked himself in time from reminding the unseasonable jester that he wouldn’t do himself any good by this kind of thing. After all, Holland evidently belonged to the opulent classes, who get the benefit of the doubt. “Certainly, sir,” he amended, with some frigidity of manner. “But I think perhaps if Mrs. Holland—”

  “You mean you want to be certain that we both pitch the same yarn? Well, it’s bad luck, for a man on his honeymoon. But perhaps, Elma, if you wouldn’t mind—” A rapid look passed between them; on his side, it registered adoring confidence; on hers, was it a frown over his reckless demeanour? Or was there not, after all, a faint suspicion of disgust? Mr. Dakers saved the situation, by indicating that nothing would suit him better than a turn in the garden with—in short, with Mrs. Holland; there was much that needed discussion, he felt. And Rudge was left alone with his chief witness.

  “Now, sir,” he opened briskly, “when we last met you told a tale which was, you will admit, in contradiction with what you said just now?”

  “These giant intellects! Yes, I told you I was in bed at Whynmouth. Actually I was here. A discrepancy.”

  “Excuse me, sir, but what I’m getting at is this—was it all untrue, what you told me? For instance, I have it down here that you were not seen by anybody after eleven o’clock. Do you still stick to that? It doesn’t seem quite so likely, does it? Perhaps you would try to remember anybody you passed on your way out here—you will have walked, I suppose? Or did you come by the omnibus?”

  “The last ’bus, my dear Rudge, as you and I know very well, leaves at half-past ten. No, I walked; and I passed some of the gentlemen who had recently left the Lord Marshall, but they did not look as if they were likely to preserve a clear memory of their impressions. There were some lovers about, but I am afraid I cannot swear to their features, and I doubt if they could to mine. I had no speech with anybody.”

  “Didn’t meet one of our men, for example?”

  There was a fraction of a pause, almost as if a ready invention were suddenly at fault.

  “No, I think not,” was the answer given. “Once I looked up a side-street, and thought I saw a policeman’s lantern being flashed, but it might have been somebody lighting a bicycle lamp. I can’t remember which street it was, now.”

  “And you would be coming straight along the main road?”

  “All the way.”

  “Now, then, sir, let’s get at this, if you don’t mind. Were you meaning to pay this rather late visit all the time? Or were you delayed on the road? Or did the idea just come to you suddenly, when it was already closing-time or close on it?”

  “My dear Inspector, you are a little elementary. I have no doubt the Boots told you that he saw my shoes out in the passage. And therefore the story I have decided to tell you is that I was already in process of going to bed when an accident made me alter my purpose. Looking out from my window, I saw a man turning away from the front door whom I seemed to recognise by the set of his shoulders. Then I told myself I was a fool; something about the hat convinced me that he was a clergyman. Then reflection told me that clergymen are not thrown out of pubs at closing-time. And I felt convinced, I don’t know how, that it was poor old Penistone. I wanted to see him, as you know; I threw on the rest of my clothes hastily and went out into the street. There was no sign of him then, of course, but I hurried down the road I supposed he would be taking; and in the end—well, in the end I came all the way here.”

  “On the off-chance of finding him still awake, late at night like that?”

  “Inspector, I do not know whether you are a married man, or whether your bosom has always been impervious to the softer emotions. But if you will ask anyone who has been violently in love, he will tell you that a lover thinks nothing of walking a mile or two merely to stand outside a window and sentimentalise among the rhododendrons. That is all I would have done, if I had not found the lights going strong in the poor old Admiral’s study.”

  “You saw them as you came along?”

  “Do you know, you would get much more information if you didn’t try to catch a fellow out all the time. Of course, I didn’t see them from the road. I had come round into the lawn, and saw them from there. I went up and knocked, and the Admiral let me in through the french window. He told me I had come just in time, ‘quite dramatic,’ he said—he was in the act of making out for his niece the document we had been waiting for these weeks past, his consent to our marriage. And, sure enough, it was on the table when we came into the drawing-room.”

  “That would be—about a quarter past twelve, you say?”

  “I didn’t notice the time exactly. But I had started from the Lord Marshall soon after eleven, which is closing-time. I walked slowly after I had got out of Whynmouth, so I can’t have been here till twelve or so; that’s how I worked it out.”

  “Yes, I see. Now, was it your impression that Admiral Penistone was just meaning to turn in when you came? Was he in his dressing-gown, for example? Was he smoking, or drinking a whisky and soda or anything? You see what I mean, sir—I want to find out if he went outside after you had left, and if so, why.”

  “Well, I can’t help you much there. He had a pipe in his mouth part of the time, to be sure. The only thing which made me feel he had not thought of bed-time yet was the litter on that desk; papers lying there, you know, taken out of their pigeon-holes. The Admiral wasn’t the kind of man to go to bed without putting his papers to bed first.”

  “Ah, that’s very interesting. And you haven’t any idea, I suppose, what papers?”

  “Not the least, I’m afraid. I dare say in your job you sometimes have to look over a man’s shoulder to see what he is reading, but we have a stricter code in the jute trade.”

  Rudge felt the offensiveness of the reflection, but he achieved a passable smile. “You didn’t stay long, then? Just thanked him, maybe, and said you’d be getting back to Whynmouth?”

  “Hardly more than that. He let me out at the french window again, and I went back to the Lord Marshall in that frame of mind in which a man finds himself, my dear Inspector, when he realises that the greatest dream of his life has come true. That is to say, walking on air, and not noticing much that went on round me.”

  “Not even how you unlocked the front door of the hotel?”

  “Why, I am afraid I had taken my precautions about that. I knew that Boots is fond of going to bed as early as he can, and does not like to have his sleep disturbed. So I was careful to leave the back-yard door on the latch—you will find that it has no bolts on it—and Mrs. Davis, I am afraid, was none the wiser. I thought best not; she talks.”

  “You’re right there, sir. All the same, I wish you had been a little less quiet in your comings and goings; they’ll put you through it properly at the inquest. But, of course, you’d leav
e your boots outside the door, so we’ll have evidence that you were in before the front door was opened?”

  “My dear Inspector, you think of everything. You want me to say that I was wearing, at a quarter-past eleven on the way to Rundel Croft, the same pair of boots which were outside my door at half-past. Believe me, your technique is improving. But the sad truth is that when I got up and followed my phantom Admiral, I put on another pair—suède shoes, which one does not have cleaned, if one is wise, at the Lord Marshall.”

  “Ah, that explains it. I suppose you did not by any chance bring a copy of the Evening Gazette with you to Rundel Croft?”

  “I never read it. Its politics nauseate me.”

  Rudge held his note-book at arm’s length, as if studying an artistic effect.

  “Well, that gives a clear account of your movements, Mr. Holland. Now, there are one or two questions I would like to ask; but, as they don’t bear directly on what happened last night, I shan’t be surprised if you won’t tell me. The first is just this: Why was it that Admiral Penistone at first didn’t want to see you marry his niece, and then changed his mind?”

  “I think you must be very busy looking for mysteries if you make a mystery out of that. If you come to think of it, I have only known the family a matter of three or four weeks. I first met my wife, since you are kind enough to be so interested in our private affairs, at Sir Wilfrid Denny’s, just after she came here; and it was love at first sight with both of us. The Admiral—well, he was a man of circumspection, and he wanted to see more of me, I suppose. When his niece wrote telling me to come down to Whynmouth again, because she had good news for me, I only just dared to hope it was this. (That was when I got the licence.) But it seems my respectability was more self-evident to him than it is to you.”

  “Oh, come now, no offence taken, I hope. And then there’s this second question, which sounds impolite, but I must ask it. Why were you in such a hurry to get married, Mr. Holland?”