Trial and Error

by Anthony Berkeley

  “Yes,” said Mr Todhunter, who privately thought that Miss Norwood was overdoing it a bit.

  They were getting near the theatre now, and Mr Todhunter was becoming alarmed at the frequent admiring glances, and even salutes, to which his companion was becoming subjected. Indeed their walk was becoming something of a distinguished progress, and though Miss Norwood was evidently accustomed to this, Mr Todhunter was not. To all the glances she responded with a charming little bow, containing just the right mixture of friendliness and condescension, and for the salutes she added an exquisite smile.

  Mr Todhunter gave way to panic.

  “I’m sorry,” he said abruptly. “I—er—just forgotten, most important appointment. Er—deal involving millions—that is, thousands. Must apologise, Er—next Sunday, I hope. Goodbye.” And, turning suddenly on his heel, he left the most surprised lady in London on the pavement staring after his shambling retreat.

  As he went Mr Todhunter became aware of a difference in the air around him. It was some moments before he realised that this was due to its freedom from the cloud of perfume in which Miss Norwood was apparently accustomed to envelope herself.

  “Phew!” thought Mr Todhunter in high disgust. “The woman stinks.”

  2

  Mr Todhunter had never been given very much to the habit of self-analysis, but in the next few days he did scrutinise quite closely the state of his feelings, firstly towards Miss Norwood and secondly towards the idea of killing her.

  Rather to his surprise, he found that he seemed to have no natural objection to this course. His objection, when it appeared, was a civilised one and concerned murder in general. The application of reason at once showed him that the elimination of Miss Norwood from a world in which she was such an infernal nuisance to so many people was an act for which there could be, philosophically, nothing but approval. Of course this elimination must be painless. It would have been very much against Mr Todhunter’s principles to inflict pain on any living creature, even Miss Norwood. But death was not pain. Mr Todhunter had no views on the afterlife, contenting himself only with the hope that there might be one and that it might prove less unpleasant than this one so often seemed to one afflicted with bad health; and he therefore was unable to pronounce any opinion as to whether he might be despatching Miss Norwood to a plane on which she might have to expiate her sins committed on this one or just into blank nothingness. Nor, in fact, did he care.

  His meditations showed him, however, that much though he might commend the removal of Miss Norwood as an academically admirable deed, he would certainly never have undertaken it himself, absolutely never, had not he felt that to stand aside would be so dangerous as to be quite unjustified, Indeed Mr Todhunter resented not a little the ill fortune which had caught him up into this net of circumstance so that this time he could hardly help himself. For it seemed to him more than likely that, if he did not get in and murder Miss Norwood first, either Farroway or Mrs Farroway would do it instead; and though Mrs Farroway seemed no fool, Farroway undoubtedly was and would give himself away as sure as fate, thus bringing further sorrow on his unhappy family.

  “Damn the fool!” bitterly observed Mr Todhunter to himself, not once but many times.

  For though Mr Todhunter saw no moral or ethical objections to the forcible removal of Miss Norwood, he did not at all like the idea of performing the removal himself.

  Nevertheless, impelled by those twin furies, duty and a relentless conscience, he got down the new revolver from its nest in his bedroom door and, handling it with some revulsion, oiled its exterior carefully all over, Mr Todhunter did not quite know why he oiled it, but felt it the right thing to do.

  He did not, however, make arrangements to hire a punt for the following Sunday evening. Mr Todhunter was not such a fool as that.

  3

  What he did do was to find a lane which ran down to the river just two gardens away from that of Miss Norwood and with infinite precaution, both against being seen and to preserve his aneurism intact for another ten minutes (after that of course it did not matter), scale the fence which bounded it. Climbing another fence and yet another and pushing through a thick hedge, Mr Todhunter thus found himself, at exactly a quarter past nine on Sunday evening, in Miss Norwood’s garden. His heart was thumping horribly, his mouth was dry and he was loathing his task as he had never loathed anything in his life.

  In fact it is open to question whether Mr Todhunter was altogether in possession of his full faculties as he crept through the garden, mechanically following the directions that had been given him. His mind seemed to him, later, to have gone temporarily blank. He could remember continually feeling the revolver in his pocket to make sure that he had not dropped it and wishing desperately that the route to the old barn would go on prolonging itself indefinitely, to prevent him from ever getting there. He could remember, too, the look of the garden in the summer dusk, darker this evening than usual because of a great bank of cloud that had just come up, and listening with tense, indeed, almost distraught attention, every few steps, to make sure that no one else was about. And he remembered arriving at the long, open-fronted building, with roses clambering up its wooden beams, which he knew must be the fatal barn. And lastly he could remember, more dimly, his first glimpse of Miss Norwood lying back in a chair—alone, just as she had promised.

  After that he preferred to remember nothing.

  4

  Mr Todhunter put the revolver back in his pocket. He looked round. Would anyone have heard the shot? The long, low building of the barn stood on a levelled platform halfway down the slope to the river. Behind it, dimly glimmering in the dusk, rose a bank planted with some kind of flowering shrub, thick and high. The house was not visible. Mr Todhunter stood holding his breath. There was not a sound. Even the usual noises on the river could not be heard. He was sure the shot could not have been heard.

  He looked at Jean Norwood. She was still lying back in her elaborate swing chair, just inside the confines of the barn. Her face was turned sideways, both arms hung down limp from the shoulders. On the bosom of her too-elaborate white satin gown was a red stain, already big and still spreading.

  Mr Todhunter forced himself forward and touched her forehead, then her chest. There was no doubt she was dead. With a feeling of nausea he peered at the scarlet stain. It had been a good shot—more luck, perhaps, than marksmanship?—it must have gone right through her heart. He wondered about the bullet.

  With an effort he controlled his nerves and lifted the inert form a little forward. In the bare, smooth back was a horrible red hole which almost made Mr Todhunter faint on his feet. But he did not faint; for his eye had caught sight of a piece of dull metal actually lodged in the stuffed fabric of the chair. He drew it out and let the body slump back. It was the bullet, right enough, and scarcely misshapen for all that it was of lead and nothing harder. It must have gone clean through her without touching a bone. Mr Todhunter dropped it into his coat pocket.

  He stood for a moment looking down at the dead woman. On her left. wrist was a bracelet, a costly affair of diamonds and pearls with a tiny oblong watch set in it. As if fascinated, Mr Todhunter slipped it over the unresisting hand and dropped it into his pocket along with the bullet. It would sound fantastic to say that he wanted a souvenir of the occasion, yet something uncommonly like that must have actuated the almost mechanical action.

  He paused irresolutely. His mind was working again now, and he felt that there must be all sorts of things that ought to be done: safeguards to be taken, evidence to be suppressed, vital precautions of some sort or another.

  He stood by the body, looking round. On a table close at hand was a tray with a decanter of brandy and two glasses. If ever Mr Todhunter had wanted a drink in his abstemious life it was now, but he dared not. To drop down dead here, beside Miss Norwood, would look very bad. The family would never get over such a scandal.

  He picked one of the glasses up and wiped it carefully with his handkerchief. Glas
ses, he remembered with a touch of grim humour, always were wiped clean of fingerprints in detective stories. It would give the police something to puzzle over too.

  He put the glass down, holding it carefully in his handkerchief, and was about to pick up the other when a noise outside startled him so severely as nearly to burst his aneurism there and then. It was only an owl hooting, but to Mr Todhunter it sounded like the siren of a police car.

  “My nerves won’t stand this,” he muttered and fled, his heart thumping.

  There was nothing more he could do by remaining, so far as he knew; and yet as he flitted, a gaunt shadow, through the dewy garden, he felt as if he must be leaving behind him the name of Miss Norwood’s killer blazoned across the floor in letters of blood.

  In the little lane he turned to the right and went down to the river. Taking the bullet from his pocket, he threw it out into the water as far as he could. Mr Todhunter’s reading had taught him just how eloquent a bullet can become in the hands of a ballistics expert.

  CHAPTER IX

  Mr Todhunter slept badly that night. The vision of two dangling arms and a red stain across a white satin bosom haunted his vision as persistently as that of Miss Norwood in life had ever haunted Farroway’s.

  He still had the feeling, too, that certain things ought to be done.

  Well, there was the revolver, for one thing. . . .

  What Mr Todhunter actually did about the revolver was to pay a visit, very early the next morning, to Farroway. His idea was to find out whether Farroway had a revolver of his own and if so to substitute this one for it. Mr Todhunter did not consider that he would be involving Farroway himself in any risk by doing this. There were always alibis, and without doubt Farroway would have one. If not, Mr Todhunter was prepared to give him one.

  Farroway, however, was in a state so distraught as to be of small use. He had had a visit from the police already, although the hour was not yet ten o’clock; and this, added to the lurid story in the paper, had almost put him off his balance. He wept openly, and Mr Todhunter, who was full of public-school traditions, felt exceedingly ashamed of him. However it did come out, in answer to Mr Todhunter’s determined questioning, that Farroway had no revolver of his own and was in possession of an unimpeachable alibi, having spent the whole evening in a local pub till closing time, discoursing in a very maudlin state upon the popular taste in fiction. This interesting piece of news was, however, of little importance to Mr Todhunter without a revolver, and he therefore prepared to take his leave.

  “Who could have done it, Todhunter?” weepingly implored Farroway in the doorway. “Who? And why? It’s inexplicable . . . dreadful . . . poor little Jean.”

  “You were talking of doing it yourself only a few days ago,” sternly reminded Mr Todhunter.

  “Talking! Yes, we all talk. But that’s as far as most of us get. But who could actually have done such a thing?”

  Mr Todhunter escaped with some difficulty. If he had ever felt any regrets about Miss Norwood’s sudden death, the sight and no less the sound of Farroway would have hardened him. Farroway must have been a decent, ordinarily self-reliant fellow once. It was pitiable that any woman should have reduced him to such a state as he was in now; deliberately, in order to get hold of his money. Yes, Miss Norwood had deserved death.

  Mr Todhunter drove to Maida Vale.

  Here he was ahead of the police.

  Mrs Farroway opened the door to him. She said that Felicity was prostrated and unable to get up; they had read the news in their morning paper, and Felicity had instantly collapsed. She was, explained Mrs Farroway, very sensitive.

  In the little sitting room the tall woman and her visitor exchanged a long, cautious look.

  “Mr Todhunter,” said Mrs Farroway, speaking slowly and deliberately, “I think I had better speak openly to you. It may be the only chance. I think—no, I’m sure you know who shot Miss Norwood. And . . . I’m afraid I know too.”

  Mr Todhunter felt his heart leap painfully. To his disgust his voice, when he spoke, was a harsh croak,

  “What are you going to do about it.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No. All I know, officially, is that Felicity and I spent yesterday evening together here and we were, most fortunately,” said Mrs Farroway with grim irony, “never out of each other’s sight until we went to bed, at about half past eleven. And that’s all I know.”

  “That,” said Mr Todhunter with equal deliberation, “is all you need to know. Thank you. And. . .”

  “Yes?”

  Mr Todhunter turned away and stared out of the window. “Whoever did it, and why—don’t presume to judge him, Mrs Farroway.”

  Mrs Farroway looked for a moment a little surprised. Then she nodded. “No, I don’t. Who in any case,” she added in a low voice, “am I to judge?”

  Mr Todhunter, fearing that the scene might be in danger of becoming emotional, turned briskly round.

  “Oh yes,” he said, trying to speak as casually as possible. “There’s one other thing. I wonder if you have a revolver here?”

  Mrs Farroway started. “A—revolver? Yes, there is one here at the moment, as it happens. Vincent’s. He brought it round—”

  “May I see it?” interrupted Mr Todhunter. “The police may be here at any moment, and . . .”

  “I’ll get it,” Mrs Farroway agreed. She had turned rather white, but her voice was unchanged.

  She went unhurriedly out of the room, to return three minutes later with the weapon. Mr Todhunter took it gingerly, but it was not loaded. He drew his own out of his pocket and compared the two. They were of the ordinary Freeman and Starling army pattern and were identical. Mr Todhunter drew a big breath of relief.

  Mrs Farroway looked on in surprise. “Where did you get the other?” she asked.

  “That,” said Mr Todhunter soberly, “is mine.”

  Mrs Farroway turned aside to stand by the window. There was an atmosphere of tenseness in the room which Mr Todhunter found most uncomfortable.

  “Vincent says that the best defence,” she said in a low voice, “is to know nothing; to have seen nothing, to have heard nothing, to remember nothing.”

  “Vincent?” repeated Mr Todhunter. “Oh, he rang you up.”

  “No. He came round here. An hour ago or more. Didn’t I tell you? He was infatuated with her, too, as you know; though it will wear off now, of course, thank heaven. Naturally he was very much agitated. He kept saying that he was responsible for—for her death.”

  “Responsible?” Mr Todhunter frowned.

  “I suppose he meant morally responsible. If he hadn’t been mixed up with it, she’d never have been killed—that kind of idea.”

  “But he doesn’t know who . . . um . . . shot her?” asked Mr Todhunter anxiously.

  Mrs Farroway hesitated. “He may guess,” she said slowly.

  “Better if he didn’t know for certain,” Mr Todhunter mumbled. “In the circumstances.”

  Mrs Farroway nodded. “Much better.”

  Mr Todhunter had the feeling that all sorts of things were being said without being spoken. He pulled out his handkerchief and polished the top of his head. The situation was not an easy one. But after all, if one goes out to commit murder one can hardly expect easy situations afterwards.

  A ring at the bell put an end to a silence which was becoming painful.

  The two exchanged a frankly worried look, the thought of the police in the minds of both. Mrs Farroway hurried to open the door. Mr Todhunter, with a vague instinct of concealment, pushed both revolvers into his pockets, where they bulged quite obviously, and tried to look innocent

  Voices could be heard in the hall. Then the sitting-room door opened again.

  “It’s Vincent,” said Mrs Farroway.

  Vincent Palmer, large and self-confident as ever but now plainly upset, strode into the room behind her. His eye fell upon the shrinking Mr Todhunter.

  “Who’s this man?” he d
emanded abruptly.

  Mrs Farroway explained that Mr Todhunter was a friend of her husband’s.

  “I met you once,” added Mr Todhunter, “if you remember, at . . .” His voice died away to a mumble as he realised the tactlessness of the reference.

  “I remember. What are you doing here now?”

  “Vincent, don’t be silly, please,” interposed Mrs Farroway calmly. “Mr Todhunter has come round to see if he can help us in any way.”

  “Well, he can’t. We’ve got to manage this thing by ourselves. I’m sorry, Mr Todhunter, but. . .”

  “That will do, Vincent.” Mrs Farroway spoke with a calm authority which made Mr Todhunter glance at her in admiration. So, no doubt, had she been accustomed to handle unruly committees, “In any case, what have you come round again for so soon?”

  The young man, quelled but not subdued, glanced in a hostile way at Mr Todhunter. “I came—for—for—”

  “Your revolver? Mr Todhunter has it.” Mrs Farroway hastened to deal with the thundercloud that leapt instantly to her son-in-law’s brow. “Now, Vincent, please! Mr Todhunter thought it best to. . .”

  The storm broke, muffled but alarming, “I don’t care a damn what Mr Todhunter thought. Mr Todhunter will kindly keep his thoughts, and himself, out of the way. Give me back my revolver, please.”

  “Certainly, certainly,” agreed Mr Todhunter without hesitation. He remembered that he had put his own revolver in the right pocket of his coat . . . or was it the left? No, the right, and the other in the left. He drew out the one from the right pocket.

  Then he remembered that Vincent, too, must have an alibi before the exchange of revolvers could be made with safety.

  “Please tell me this first,” he said, disregarding the menacing hand already stretched out towards him. “It’s important. Where were you between nine and ten last night?”

  “It says in the papers,” interposed Mrs Farroway, “that death is supposed to have occurred between a quarter to nine and a quarter past.”

  “Very well,” amended Mr Todhunter. “Between eight-thirty and nine-thirty then?”