Choice of Evils

by E. X. Ferrars

  ‘Ah yes, I remember now that's what she told me you'd wanted to know. But I was curious actually as to whether she'd typed anything for Mrs Amory. Perhaps I ought to explain that.’

  The big man massaged his knees with his heavy hands.

  ‘Go ahead,’ he said. T need a good many things explained to me.’

  Andrew began to expound his theory about the author-ship of the three books said to have been written by Simon Amory. In spite of his doubts of a few moments before, he found it surprisingly easy. It was as if his talk to Peter on the subject had been a rehearsal for what he had to say now. His mind had become much clearer as a result of that talk.

  The inspector was an excellent listener. He hardly interrupted and when Andrew had concluded all that he had to say and sat there silent, Mayhew waited a moment as if thinking that there might be more to come. Then he nodded his head several times and gave both of his knees a slap.

  ‘I won't say I haven't been thinking along the same lines myself,’ he said, 'though I couldn't have put it so clearly. It came to me after we'd been to see Mrs Wale. I realized suddenly we'd only asked her questions about Amory, when the address book was obviously his wife's. There's no question about that. It has her hairdresser's number in it, and a dressmaker'S, and even her sister's number in America, though that has become out of date, of course, since she's moved back to London. So it was a serious omission not to have asked Mrs Wale what contact she'd had with Mrs Amory. But I haven't had any time today to go back to see her. It's been one of those days. The removal of the manuscripts seems to me to be at the heart of the matter, and we've spent the day searching for them but so far without success.’

  ‘What do you think about the possibility that Mrs Wale can prove whether or not Amory wrote his two second books?’ Andrew asked.

  'She can hardly prove it,’ Mayhew answered, ‘unless the manuscripts are found. It's only her word against his that she typed them for Mrs Amory. Of course, if she could produce some record of her work, some evidence like, say, a payment into her bank at the relevant time, it would help.’

  ‘And what do you think about the matter of bigamy?’

  ‘We're ahead of you there. We know it happened.’

  ‘Amory was married already when he had that wedding photograph taken?’

  ‘Yes, we've checked on that. It's quite clear. He married a woman called Mary Baker when they were both nine-teen. The marriage broke up after a year and they don't seem to have thought a divorce was necessary. It's all in the records at St Catherine's House.’

  ‘What put you on to looking for them?’

  ‘It was almost routine. When events like the murder of Rachel Rayne happen, it's automatic that one starts checking on the relationships between the people concerned. We weren't expecting to stumble on bigamy, and when we did our thoughts naturally turned to blackmail. Was that the reason for the murder? We've no evidence of it, such as regular unexplained payments into Rachel Rayne's bank account, though there are regular withdrawals from Amory's. But he claims those have been simply to cover his normal running expenses. It could be true, though it indicates he lives on a pretty lavish scale. But perhaps he does. He's got lots of money, so why shouldn't he spend it?’

  ‘But all the same, you're considering blackmail as a motive for this murder. Blackmail on account of his bigamy?’

  ‘We're certainly considering it.’

  ‘Or possibly on account of his having claimed to have written books, really written by his wife, and which were her property and so ought to have gone to her sister as her nearest relative, since her marriage to Amory wasn't valid.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Or possibly on account of both.’

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘That would give someone a great deal of power over Amory. Enough to make him want to kill her.’

  ‘Yet there's that alibi which you yourself, by that telephone call, help to confirm. Professor, would you do something for me?’

  ‘Of course, if I'm capable of it.’

  ‘It's to call on Miss Todhunter-’

  ‘And try to get her to contradict herself about that alibi?’

  ‘No, I'd be inclined to leave that subject alone. But I think you told me it was she who recommended Mrs Wale to Mrs Amory. So she knows that Mrs Amory was looking for a typist before her death. Could you talk to her a bit about that? I think you might handle her more successfully than I should. Find out what sort of person she thinks Mrs Wale is. See if she shows any special reaction at being questioned on the subject. Could you do that?’

  ‘I could try. I don't promise results.’

  ‘It wouldn't surprise me if you get some all the same.’

  ‘Very well.’

  The inspector left soon after that, leaving Andrew uncertain as to whether he ought to call on Miss Todhunter that evening, or could leave it to the morning. On consideration he decided to leave it till the morning and went upstairs to his room with the firm determination in his mind to make at least a beginning on reading Death Come Quickly.

  He sat down with it by the window. His expectation was that he would fairly soon find that it was meretricious, pretentious, competent perhaps in a slick way, but unap-pealing to him. What else could anything be that had had the kind of success that it had had? Not that he set himself up as a literary critic and he soon found that he had been profoundly mistaken. The thing gripped him from its beginning, first with its skilled simplicity of style, then with the way its story was developed, then with its under-standing of the strange collection of characters assembled in it. They were not a very nice set of people, and it was plain that the author did not think that they were, yet he had a kind of tenderness towards them which might almost have slipped into sentimentality, yet just managed to avoid it. The puzzle to Andrew as he read on was how this book, absorbing, moving, at times more than a little frightening, could have been written by Simon Amory. But if it had not been written by him, but by his dead wife, what kind of woman had she been? Someone it would have been fascinating to know, if she had ever allowed it. Yet possibly in meeting her the qualities that made the book outstanding would have been carefully hidden. If it was Simon Amory who in truth had written it, they certainly were. That aloof, rather grim man who seemed deliberately to avoid intimacy and friendship and who puzzled people by his apparent dislike of them did not reveal any of the qualities that Andrew would have imagined the writer of this book to possess.

  He had read about a third of it before it occurred to him that if he wanted dinner that evening it was time for him to go downstairs. He laid the book aside and went down, going first to the bar for a drink. There was only one person in it. It was Desmond Nicholl.

  Seeing Andrew come in, he turned away, as if he had no wish to speak to him or even to be recognized by him, but after a moment he turned towards him and with a smile that seemed to Andrew quite ghastly, as it would if a skeleton had succeeded in producing a smile, said, 'So you're still here, are you, Professor? I wonder what keeps you.’

  T wish I could tell you, but I don't know,’ Andrew answered, ‘except that I seem to have got involved with the police.’ He ordered sherry, then carried it to where the other was sitting. ‘It's not much use saying how horrified and how sorry I am- ’

  ‘No sympathy!’ Desmond Nicholl broke in on him with a snarl. 'That's just one thing I can't take. I've been answering sympathetic questions all the afternoon. All I had to say to them could be said in one short sentence, but I've had to say that sentence over and over again till I've nearly been ill. If you've anything useful to say, say it, but otherwise stick to the weather. I've been watching the weather forecast and it seems we're in for some rain. And a depression is coming up from somewhere. And an isobar is doing something. Do you know what an isobar is?’

  It was plain that the man had been crying. His eyes, sunk in the sockets of his skull-like head, were red and their lids were swollen. It was also plain that he was drunk.

  An
drew shook his head without saying anything. He knew the terror of sympathy himself. He had been through it when Nell had died. But Nicholl was not prepared to leave the subject at that.

  ‘Well, what is it?’ he demanded. ‘Don't you know what an isobar is?’

  ‘A curly line drawn over a map of the Atlantic Ocean,’ Andrew said.

  ‘And that's all you know about it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you're an educated man?’

  'So I like to think.’

  ‘Well, I know more about it than you do, even if I don't know anything. It's a line on a weather map joining places with equal atmospheric pressure. Iso in the Greek means equal, and bar in the Greek means weight.’

  ‘That's very interesting,’ Andrew said.

  ‘Fool!’ Nicholl hissed at him. ‘Don't you know I know you think I'm drunk. I am drunk. I shall remain drunk for as much of the time as I can organize it for at least a week. Magda and I weren't married, you know, though it suited us to say we were. But she'd been married when she was a kid and the fools had never bothered to have a divorce, they just drifted apart. And then when I suggested she might get ahead with one, even after such a long time, she said she couldn't because the bastard had got married again and she couldn't do it without his being convicted of bigamy, and perhaps ruining his second wife's life. She'd a heart of gold, Basnett. Would you have done a thing like that in her place?’

  ‘Probably not,’ Andrew said. It was a matter to which he had never given a thought.

  ‘Heart of gold,’ Nicholl repeated, with tears in his voice. ‘Not that it made any difference to us. Tell people you're married, they believe you. And in this blessed age in which we live, it doesn't even matter if they find you out. But I'd have liked to be married, I really should. I'd have liked the feeling of committing myself. But I don't think Magda worried about it much. Only when she met Amory the other evening, she couldn't resist giving him a fright. He didn't know if she was going to let the cat out of the bag there and then.’

  ‘Have you told all this to the police?’

  ‘They told it to me/ Nicholl answered. 'That man Mayhew's got a brain trapped away inside that great head of his. I don't know what made him think of it. I think it was something somebody said to him about intestacy. If Amory and his wife hadn't been really married the law worked one way, and a different way if they had. So he got that checked as quickly as he could, and checked up on Magda and me while he was at it. Not that that of itself is of much importance. What's important is that Amory had a very good motive for pushing Magda over the edge of the cliff.’

  ‘Have they decided that is what happened?’ Andrew asked. ‘It couldn't have been an accident?’

  ‘I ask you, how could it have been? D'you know that bit of the cliffs? They took me up there when the news first came in that she'd been found. The main road goes up a pretty steep hill from just outside this hotel and curves around the edge of the town, passing that blasted Barnfield House on its way, and there's a strip of woodland along the other side of the road. Then beyond that you come out on the cliff proper, a wide strip of turf with a path going up the middle of it. Well, it was still daylight, wasn't it, when Magda was there? Suppose she wanted to walk on the cliff, she'd have stuck to the path, wouldn't she? She wouldn't have gone creeping along the very edge of the cliff. She wasn't like that. What she wanted when she went out was a brisk walk in the fresh air to get herself stimulated for the show she'd got to lay on that evening. She'd have stuck to the path unless someone pushed her off it.’

  ‘You think she met Amory on his way down to play chess with Miss Todhunter?’

  ‘Chess be blowed!’ Nicholl broke in. ‘He'd just done a murder, hadn't he? And he went down into the town by that path beyond the trees because it's not much used and he thought he wouldn't meet anyone. And whom does he meet coming up that path but his own wife? She's going to be able to blow that nice alibi he's got waiting for him with Todhunter to pieces. So it's over the edge of the cliff with her. D'you remember how she said she was going to die in the winter? Nonsense, of course, and this isn't winter, but she didn't get it far wrong.’

  ‘Do they know just when that's supposed to have happened?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘They're not committing themselves on that. They've that much sense. But they seem to think it was some-where around four, or five o'clock. Personally, I don't think it can have been much later than four. She'd gone out for what she said would be a short walk and by four o'clock I was already beginning to wonder why she hadn't come back yet. I'd expected her by then, so it seems to me she must have been stopped before that.’

  ‘Rachel Rayne was seen alive about three o'clock. She'd been into Edward Clarke's office to consult him about something to do with her sister, and my nephew, Peter Dilly, saw her come out of it.’

  'So she can't have been killed much before three-thirty, and if I'm right that Magda met the murderer escaping from the scene only a little later, then we can put her murder down as having happened somewhere between three-thirty and four. Of course, it isn't important except for Amory's alibi. But I'm not the only one who thinks that Todhunter would sell her soul to help him and providing a fake alibi certainly shouldn't be beyond her. But I believe Mayhew will crack the thing in at least a day or two. He sees further to the side than most people. I've considerable faith in him.’

  Andrew nodded, though just then he was wishing that he had not agreed to help the inspector by calling on Mina Todhunter and trying to extract from her some information about Mrs Wale. Even though the inspector had advised him to leave the subject of the alibi alone, it was inevitable that they should talk of it, and he would have to try to make up his mind whether Mina Todhunter was an honest woman or a shameless liar. He wanted to find her honest because of his memories of Mr Thinkum, and all the reading aloud of her works to the little Peter, which had probably laid the foundation of the very good relation-ship that had developed between them. Meanwhile, Andrew had to decide when to try to see Miss Todhunter. Should he telephone her when he had had dinner and ask if he could call in on her that evening, or should he leave it till the morning?

  His decision in the end was to leave it till the morning and after the very silent meal that he shared with Desmond Nicholl who suddenly showed that he would much have preferred to be left quite alone he went back to his room, picked up Death Come Quickly and settled down to read. But he had not realized how tired he was. After a few minutes the print began to blur, his head sank back against the cushions, the book slid on to the floor, and Andrew found himself sailing in a ship at sea. The cabin he was in was a luxurious one, strangely filled with exotic flowers, and an open porthole gave him a colourful view of a desert shore, dotted here and there with palm trees. Then an exceedingly loud voice suddenly shouted at him, 'Rum-ti-Foo - All change!’

  Andrew woke out of his dream with a start. It is a curious feeling to be wakened out of sleep by something in your own dream and it took him a moment to realize where he was and that his bed would be a more comfortable place than the chair for someone as tired as he was. He got up and began to undress and at last managed to get to bed and to switch off the light, all of which felt a great labour/Sleep came almost at once, and this time was dreamless.

  It was at ten o'clock the next morning that Andrew entered Todhunter's Bookshop and asked the woman who was in charge of it at the time if it was possible for him to see Miss Todhunter. The woman disappeared through a door behind the counter and after a minute or two reappeared, telling him that Miss Todhunter would be glad if he would go up to her flat. He went through the door and climbed up the flight of stairs beyond it, arriving in a small hall with three doors opening out of it. One of the doors was open and he heard Mina Todhunter call through it, ‘Come in, come in. Professor. So glad to see you.’

  He went in at the door and found Mina Todhunter heaving herself out of an easy chair to come and greet him. She was in loose black trousers, a floppy yellow sweater and red b
edroom slippers. She had apparently just finished her breakfast, for a tray with a coffee pot and a cup and the remains of toast and marmalade were on a table beside the chair in which she had been sitting. She gave Andrew one of the smiles that seemed to open right across her square face, showing her gleaming false teeth.

  ‘I'll just clear this away,’ she said, picking up the tray. ‘As you can see, I'm not an early riser.’

  Walking heavily, as she always did, she carried the tray out of the room into what he presumed was her kitchen, then returned and told Andrew to sit down and tell her what she could do for him.

  ‘Because this isn't a social visit, is it? Not as early as ten o'clock.’ She dropped back into her chair. ‘You want something, and I hope I can be of use. Tell me, what is it?’

  Andrew sat down. The room was a small square one which looked cosy and comfortable. There were easy chairs and a sofa covered in soft grey velvet, dark green wall-to-wall carpeting, no fireplace but a radiator that gave off a pleasant warmth, a table pushed away into one corner with a chessboard inlaid on its top, and pale green curtains at the one sash window. A newspaper was on the floor beside Mina Todhunter's chair, which she had evidently been reading over her breakfast.

  She picked it up as Andrew seated himself and held it out to him.

  ‘Have you seen this?’ she asked. ‘It's inevitable, of course, that they should make a lot of fuss about the death of poor Magda Braile, but they've linked it to Rachel's murder and really gone to town on it.’

  ‘Yes, I've seen it,’ Andrew said. He too had read the same newspaper over his breakfast. T believe, if it weren't for Miss Rayne's murder, they'd be inclined to think Miss Braile's death might be suicide. But it's a bit much of a coincidence, isn't it, the two things coming so close together?’

  There was a quizzical look in her slightly bulging, pale blue eyes under their thick grey eyebrows as she studied Andrew.

  ‘A bit much of a coincidence, yes,’ she said. ‘Now tell me what I can do for you.’