‘Still, it’s not evidence of identification,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘and we certainly don’t want to bring little George Merrow into a coroner’s court.’
‘And that’s the trouble, mam, to return to what we were saying. But you think the butler could help me?’
‘I think he might know of a valet, as I said. The coroner would accept, no doubt, the evidence of a valet?’
‘No doubt at all, mam. Come on, sergeant. Let’s go. Oh, by the way, mam, the young gentleman, Mr Hoskyn, was right to query the wrecked car. It is not the one that has lain here since the war. Some Good Friday holiday-makers found the pieces of that in the bushes and holes and so forth. We broadcast an appeal as soon as the gentleman queried the car, and weren’t long in getting a result. Holiday-makers, nuisances though they can be, aren’t a total loss.’
‘You seem to have put in an enormous amount of work,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Congratulations.’
‘Well, you see, mam, this is the second case of murder I’ve handled, and I had a bit of luck here and there over the first one—old Thomas Crooks, that was, on the other side of the county—and I got my promotion on the strength of it. So, naturally, I’m out to have a similar go at this one, especially as it’s considered a more important case, Mr Lingfield being a noted man and that.’
‘Well, you get hold of Bugle,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘He’s the man to find your valet for you.’
‘Many thanks, mam. Well, we’ll be off. Could we give you a lift to the house?’
‘No, thank you. I am going to London after lunch. I am not staying at Whiteledge now. Well, good luck, Inspector. Don’t be too hard on Mrs Denbies. Remember, she gives her recital this afternoon, and I’m afraid she is in a nervous state already.’
‘Are you going to attend the recital, mam, may I ask?’
‘I am, and I want to enjoy it.’
‘Mrs Denbies is neither here nor there, so far as we’re concerned, until we get the body identified beyond question. I shan’t be worrying her again yet. There’s nothing more I can ask her until her story is proved or disproved, and that must be done at the resumed inquest. Some funny things will come out in that, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘Have you questioned her, then, about her midnight drive?’
‘Oh, yes. She says she was disturbed in mind, and drove out into the night to be alone with her thoughts.’
‘And you find that incredible, do you?’
‘By no means, mam. I know the feeling well. But it’s awkward, from our point of view, that she had the urge on that particular night. There’s witnesses, but they don’t help her. She stopped for petrol at a garage near Junction Station. Being rather a striking-looking lady, and her picture in the Radio Times and what-not, the garage hands remember her clearly. It’s not too good on the face of it, mam. It’s too near where the engine-driver swears he saw the body on the line.’
‘Oh, dear! Yes, that is awkward.’
‘Taken in conjunction with the fact that the body was brought—presumably by car——’
‘To this copse, and therein tossed——’
‘And that Mrs Denbies refuses to identify the body as that of Mr Lingfield——’
‘But admits she quarrelled with him on the day of his death … yes,’ said Mrs Bradley, as one who adds up a list of money to be paid to various creditors and finds the amount rather startling. ‘Yes, I see your point, of course. She might almost be the victim of a conspiracy, mightn’t she? Had you thought of that?’
The inspector glanced at her sharply, but her brilliant black eyes told him nothing, and neither did her beaky little mouth, pursed now in calculation of the odds against Claudia Denbies.
‘All it wants,’ said the inspector, now laying his cards on the table, ‘is for this valet, when I find him, to identify the body as that of Mr Lingfield, in contradiction of Mrs Denbies and in support of what you’ve just mentioned about the young gentleman. If that happens, mam, I should say we’ve got the case sewn up in a parcel. Motive—the quarrel, which she owns to; opportunity—that midnight drive she took; means—it all fits in.’
‘There were no bloodstains in her car, were there? And do you really think a woman of Mrs Denbies’ age and physique could have tossed the corpse into this spinney? I thought we agreed——’
‘She strained her back doing it, mam.’
‘You have an answer for everything, Inspector. Do you also believe she had two cars? Her own—the one she had when she came to Whiteledge—is still in the garage there, intact and not bloodstained. Where did she get the means to transport the corpse from the railway line to the station? Where did she garage the wrecked car, if that was the vehicle used? Further to that particular question, how is Mr Lingfield believed to have been murdered? There are no wounds on the body, and you will not get me to believe that Mrs Denbies tied him up and deposited him alive on the rails so that the train could kill him.’
‘I’ve an answer even to that, mam. What would you say to a revolver wound through the throat? All these people can shoot. I had that from Bugle, the butler. No, mam. I tell you it’s what the Americans call an open-and-shut case, I’m afraid. I’m as sorry about it as you are, speaking in my private capacity, mam, as a music-lover and an admirer of the sex, but, take it from me, it’s as plain as the nose on my face that Mrs Denbies is pretty squarely implicated, and I don’t really think she’ll wriggle free. Of course, this is all off the record, but I’m telling you because you’ve helped me over my biggest fence, identification, mam.’
‘You really think that a quarrel of that sort—the kind of quarrel, which, on her own admission and on the evidence of numbers of other people who must have known both of them well, she had had with Mr Lingfield a dozen times before—was sufficient inducement to Mrs Denbies to murder Mr Lingfield?’
‘Not in itself, perhaps, mam. But I’ve seen Mr Lingfield’s solicitors, and, without giving away anything which won’t very soon be public property, I can tell you that he made a new will a fortnight ago, and left more than half his property to Mrs Denbies unconditionally. She isn’t well off, mam, you know. We’ve been going into things a bit. The quarrel by itself might not have been sufficient, but with that will to back it up——!’
‘Dear, dear! It only needed that!’ observed Mrs Bradley. ‘You have built a case against her, Inspector! And even before the identity of the body was proved,’ she added reminiscently. The inspector flushed, and the sergeant grinned, at this thrust.
‘There’s not much doubt you’ve given us the clue to the identity all right, mam,’ the latter respectfully observed. ‘I knew Mr Lingfield pretty well, and I certainly concluded it was him we’d got in the mortuary.’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Well, it is all very confusing and interesting, and Mrs Denbies will feel better when her recital is over, that’s one thing.’
‘Oh, we shan’t disturb her any more, mam, until the resumed inquest,’ said the inspector. ‘Not until we pinch her for it,’ he added in low tones as he walked towards his car. The sergeant looked slightly troubled.
‘I don’t like the old lady’s attitude, sir,’ he complained, as he followed the inspector across the heath.
‘What old lady? Mrs B.? No one could be more helpful! Don’t you go getting ideas in your head about her! Why, she’s as keen to get the body identified as that of Mr Lingfield as ever we are ourselves.’
‘Is she?’ said the sergeant, not very hopefully. ‘Ask me, sir, she’s got something up her sleeve. You can see it in her eye, I reckon.’
‘Nonsense, my lad! Respectable old parties like her, with plenty of money and an interesting, poke-nose job of work, can’t afford to have anything up their sleeves! Not where the police are concerned.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t say that,’ said the sergeant. ‘I had a great aunt…. Nobody couldn’t cope. Artful as a cartload of monkeys …’ He continued to brood, and started up the car in silence. ‘Besides,’ he added, about three miles further
on along the road, ‘ask me, the whole thing’s too easy. There’s not been a single snag. I don’t trust life when it’s too easy.’
The inspector laughed.
‘And how long have you known life?’ he demanded. ‘And what’s biting you, anyway? Lost your Easter holiday? Well, that can’t be helped, for once. You’d have been on duty some of the time in any case.’
‘I don’t like holidays,’ said the sergeant. ‘I just say it’s all too easy. Murder doesn’t come open and shut like that.’
‘It does, with women. Women can’t cover their tracks. They haven’t the brains, lad. Especially passionate women, Here …’ he went on, struck by a sudden thought. ‘You haven’t gone and fallen for Mrs Denbies, like that other young idiot, have you?’
‘I don’t know who you mean,’ said the sergeant, sounding his horn with some violence at a rather rash chicken as it skipped across the road in front of his wheels.
‘Why, him that offered to punch me on the jaw if I upset Mrs Denbies any further. Him that saw what you didn’t see … that the wrecked car up here was a new one.’
‘Oh, him!’ said the sergeant. ‘No. Though I know his sort. He’d sock you … or, as it might be, me … as soon as look at you if he felt like it. He’s a ruddy poet, too,’ he added, glowering.
‘Now, look here, Ambrose Bierce,’ observed the inspector, ‘he may be a ruddy poet, but you’re a ruddy police officer, and if you’re going to work with me …’
‘All right, sir,’ answered the sergeant, calming down. ‘But I still say that this Mrs Bradley can bear a lot of watching. Scalp the very hair off your head, and then argue you into thinking you’d look better, anyway, in a wig, she would,’ he concluded, ‘if it suited her book to do it. I don’t trust brains in ladies. I wouldn’t actually put it past her to do a murder herself if she felt it was needed.’
The inspector stared at the sergeant’s youthful neck, bull-like, brick-red, and did not continue his homily. His opinion was, however, that the sergeant could also bear watching.
‘Needed!’ he said. ‘What the devil do you mean—needed?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ said the sergeant, keeping his eyes on the road.
Mrs Bradley arrived at the concert hall a quarter of an hour before Claudia’s recital was timed to begin. She was not at all surprised to see Roger Hoskyn and Dorothy Woodcote there, but she was far more interested (although equally prepared) to encounter the Clandons, brother and sister, and Mary Leith.
She took her seat and studied the programme of music. Claudia was sharing the concert with a young Welsh tenor named ap Gwilym who was due to appear first.
He sang well. After his second song there was an expectant hush when the applause was over, then Claudia came on with her pianist. She played two Czech dances and a Kreisler lullaby.
The audience, made up for the most part, Mrs Bradley suspected, of Claudia’s admiring but largely non-critical following, applauded with that almost hysterical generosity bestowed only at concerts, operas and performances of the ballet. Mrs Bradley joined in politely, admired the Welsh tenor’s next songs, and awaited with great interest Claudia’s second appearance.
She played flawlessly, but without enthusiasm, Busoni’s Elégie, and followed this by the Bach Partita in E Minor. It was like hearing a dhombie perform, and it gave Mrs Bradley a feeling of horror, as though she were present at a dance of death in which mummies writhed free of their wrappings and skeletons provided the rhythm. During the applause she left her seat and went to the back of the stage.
She heard the beginning of the new burst of clapping which greeted young Mr ap Gwilym, and then the close-fitting door closed softly behind her, and she found herself unexpectedly in the presence of the inspector and his sergeant.
‘Good heavens, Inspector! she exclaimed. ‘You haven’t made up your mind already?’
‘No, mam,’ the inspector replied, treating this enquiry as a thirst for information and not an attempt to tease and annoy him. ‘The inquest is still adjourned as arranged. I am here to ask Mrs Denbies a question or two, failing the answers to which we can hardly proceed to give her the benefit of the doubt that her evidence of identification was genuinely mistaken.’
‘Indeed?’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘You’ve found your valet, then? Does Mrs Denbies know that you are here?’
‘I trust not, mam, for I have no wish to interfere with her recital, that being contrary to my conception of the treatment due to an artist and a gentlewoman. We have held up the enquiry until now——’
At this moment, a man in evening dress, whom Mrs Bradley took to be the lessee of the concert hall, came by and asked whether he could be of any assistance.
‘I particularly want to see Mrs Denbies,’ replied Mrs Bradley at once, before the inspector could speak. ‘I am afraid she is not feeling well.’
‘Are you a doctor, by any chance?’
‘Yes, I am. I also know her quite well.’
‘I am most relieved. Mrs Denbies is anything but well. She complains of her back, and says she does not think she can go on again this afternoon. Perhaps you would come this way. You say she knows you?’
‘I think I said I know her. It is not, perhaps, quite the same thing. My name is Lestrange Bradley.’
Claudia was half-sitting and half-lying on a divan bed. She put her feet to the ground when Mrs Bradley was announced.
‘Don’t move,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Where is the pain?’
‘Here, at the back of my neck and shoulder, and down my right arm. I hardly know how to hold my bow,’ replied the sufferer. ‘I’ve told Montague that I don’t think I can play any more this afternoon. I’m afraid the audience won’t like it, but what can I do? If I can’t play with this shoulder, well, I can’t.’
‘I thought it was your back,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I thought you said you had strained it.’
‘It is my back,’ said Claudia wildly. ‘But surely you see that I can’t admit that now!’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Because there is too much against me already. That inspector is here! I saw him just before I went on to the platform, although he tried to keep out of sight. He’s only waiting for my concert to be over to arrest me! He thinks I did it, and nothing I can say will help me! I was a fool to tell him the truth! I see that now. I shan’t tell the truth any more! If I’d never confessed we’d quarrelled I’d never have been suspected! I see that now! It’s too bad I wasn’t warned not to speak! Somebody should have told me! I know nothing at all about the law!’
The man in evening dress put his head round the door.
‘What about it, Claudia?’ he said. ‘Or shall I go in front and explain?’
‘Yes, you’d better,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Mrs Denbies isn’t fit to go on. She has very severe—you’d better call it neuralgia. Everybody understands that, and it ought to shut the critics’ mouths. Refer to her heroism in consenting to appear at all this afternoon. And then, if you want a stop-gap—and you will want one, I suppose—go and have a word with a tall thin youth in Row C. He’s sitting with a very pretty girl dressed in cornflower blue. There are three other young people, a girl in dusty pink, a young woman in tweeds, and a boy in a dark suit, all seated in the same row. The tall boy is wearing a grey suit. He’s the one you want.’
‘What can he do?’
‘Recite his own poetry. It ought to go well with this audience.’
‘Thank you. Er—is he known?’
‘Of course he’s known!’ said Claudia Denbies vigorously. ‘He’s Roger Hoskyn, you ignorant lump!’
‘Oh, really? I’ll go and get him, then. Roger Hoskyn.’ He scribbled it on his cuff. ‘He won’t refuse, I imagine?’
‘Of course not. Tell him Mrs Denbies sends him an S.O.S. to take over for her,’ said Mrs Bradley, with a cackle. ‘Meanwhile,’ she added, ‘although in no sense a virtuoso, I can, at a pinch, render Ave Maria on the ‘cello. Lend me yours, Claudia, and I’ll go and relieve the tension which must already be
gathering in front.’
She was right about the tension. Mr ap Gwilym had been off the stage for some minutes, and even the polite, non-critical audience was becoming slightly restless. Mrs Bradley, followed by the pianist carrying the ‘cello, went to the front of the platform, and observed, in her beautiful voice:
‘Interlude. Ave Maria.’
This seemingly impious observation passed unremarked except by Roger, who suddenly guffawed. The rest of the audience dutifully applauded, and Mrs Bradley, seating herself, took the ‘cello, shot the startled pianist a leer which made him choke, gave the impression that she was feeling the pulse of the instrument and then drew her bow experimentally across the strings.
It was not the worst interpretation ever suffered by Schubert’s little sugar-plum, and the audience was pleased with it. Mrs Bradley, smirking like a satisfied boa-constrictor, applied herself again to her instrument and rendered a Spanish dance. Then, with a bow to the accompanist and a leer at the audience, she resigned the ‘cello to the pianist, who carried it off the stage as though it were a large, unwieldy but infinitely impressive bouquet, and retired back-stage and so to the auditorium.
The audience then greeted Roger, who was introduced briefly and with a certain degree of not disagreeable effrontery by the lessee as ‘our youngest and most reputable poet, whose major work is known to you all.’
Roger, whose mouth felt full of sand, and whose knees were knocking together, stumbled against the edge of the piano, and, in the agony of so doing, suddenly retrieved his nerve, and was able, at least, to speak.
‘It is good of you to welcome me,’ he said, in a voice rather loud and high-pitched, but otherwise under control. ‘We are all most disappointed about the concert, and perhaps you would like it best if I first gave you my new sonnet, which is, as a matter of fact, to Claudia Denbies herself, whose courage, in appearing at all when she felt so ill is—well, you all understand and appreciate it, I’m quite sure.’
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