Excellent Intentions

by Richard Hull

  “But what can you expect,” Miss Knox Forster read his thoughts. “The garden wall running out from my room faces due south, as you see, and the apricots and peaches are just beginning to think about getting ripe. Consequently, despite our muslin and such-like precautions, every wasp in the county comes to eat them, green though they are, and then drops in for a little marmalade for a change. They’re a perfect curse, but you can’t have everything.”

  “No.” All the same Fenby seemed to like looking out at the garden, at the great formal bed of yellow and white roses in front of the dining-room window and the corresponding bed of crimson ones on the other side that were not so easy to see unless you looked right out. “Very well then,” he said, coming apparently suddenly out of a reverie. “For that short period we can dismiss anyone but you and Raikes; very largely you clear Raikes except for the minute and a half when you picked the rose, and the short period when you went to the drawing-room.”

  “A minute and a half, once more, I suppose. And in the first case I might have been able to see in through the window; but as you see Raikes can’t clear me.”

  “Not entirely.”

  “Except that he might have heard.” Suddenly Joan Knox Forster laughed. “Mr. Fenby, do you really want me to believe that these are just routine investigations? Is as much trouble as this always taken?”

  “Well, perhaps not. All the same I expect it will prove to be nothing more than that in the end. Still, I think that we have spent quite long enough considering those few minutes. When Mr. Cargate returned, you saw him?”

  “Yes; he said that I was to finish my typing, and I got on with it until midday when he rang for me. It was his custom to be out from twelve to one if the day was at all decent, but he had not finished his letters. So he decided to do both things at once by sitting under the elm trees there and dictating to me. He was in rather a bad temper, partly because he didn’t agree with what Mr. Yockleton had been saying and partly because he had been trying to explain to Hardy Hall how to take a wasps’ nest and Hardy had cut him short. Mr. Cargate always thought that he knew more about anything than anybody else. He was, to be honest, a frightful bore when he was in one of his lordly moods, so I got him out of the house as quickly as I could and settled him under the trees and there we stayed till lunch time.”

  “So anybody could have gone into the library during that hour so far as you know.”

  “Anybody from inside but not, I think, from outside. I couldn’t actually see the front door but I could see part of the garden in front of the house and most of the path leading up to it.”

  “You went back to the house for lunch at one?”

  “Yes. Mr. Cargate said that he was hungry and we both went straight in. I was rather cross with him because he didn’t wash. I do insist on cleanliness personally, even if I don’t care much about personal appearances.”

  “You had lunch with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “During that time the door was shut and you couldn’t see into the library?”

  “Quite.”

  “So that from twelve noon until—when?—you can’t really help me?”

  “We finished lunch about 1.45. No, during that period, I can’t. Except as to my own movements.”

  “And after that?”

  “Mr. Cargate went back to the library and I don’t think that he went out of it again, except to get the stamp collection, until after tea. He gave the bottle which you seem to be interested in to Hardy Hall round about five o’clock.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because Hardy came to the window of my room and asked me to help him. He wanted to get the bottle and go and Mr. Cargate wouldn’t take any notice of him, so he thought that I might pull his chestnuts out of the fire for him, but I’m afraid that I refused. The day had been quite stormy enough as it was. So Hardy stamped up and down the lawn until Mr. Cargate did condescend to notice him. He didn’t do it very quickly because I think that he was still angry with him for cutting him short earlier in the day. In fact I think that he ended by saying that if Hardy got stung by a large number of infuriated wasps, it would serve him right for not listening to good advice when it was given to him.”

  For the moment Fenby decided, on an intuition which subsequently proved to be right, not to worry about what happened later on that day. Instead he changed the subject completely.

  “I understand that you told Dr. Gardiner that you know something about his will?”

  “Yes. By the way, from the point of view of the nation, it’s a good thing that he died.”

  “Well,” Fenby assented cautiously, “Mr. Ley did tell me something about it. But I gather that that was not the motive which prompted Mr. Cargate.”

  “It certainly was not. You should have heard him on economics! He used to produce some quite remarkable paradoxes, with which I, as an intellectual woman of the left-centre with a definite anti-war bias, strongly disagreed. He used, for instance, to say that the tax which bore most hardly on the poor was the sur-tax.”

  “But why? They don’t pay it.”

  “No, but making the rich pay it throws the poor out of work or prevents them getting decent wages, so he said. The objection to the theory seems to be that I have never heard that wages were higher before the introduction of the sur-tax. Another thing Mr. Cargate always held was that until you made the rich not only rich but oppressively and disgustingly rich, you had no hope of producing anything other than poverty for the poor. I asked him why once and his reply was: ‘Because we are all parasites in one way or another. I, in a big way; you, in a smaller way.’ I am bound to say that it was not one of his more tactful remarks.”

  “It doesn’t sound it.”

  “I suppose it was because he was so innately selfish and entirely self-centred that he was almost invariably tactless, because I don’t think that he meant to be. However, to go back to his economic ideas; he used to say that the one thing that did no good to the nation was spending by the Government and that direct taxation was the root of all evil. There was some simile about taking the water away from the source of the river instead of letting it first turn the mills farther downstream, but I think that that is not only far-fetched, but false. Anyhow, it’s eighty years old because I found it in Allison’s History of Europe.”

  Never having read that long and ponderous work Fenby did not attempt to argue.

  “I can understand,” he said, “your not agreeing with him if you are left-centre minded, so to speak, but what’s an anti-war bias got to do with it?”

  “Well, he supported rearmament.”

  “I shouldn’t have thought that he would from what you tell me, since it involves Government expenditure. And, even so, rearmament has got nothing to do with war.”

  “Oh, hasn’t it? Let me tell you that nothing would permit me ever to go to war again. It’s nothing but licensed murder.”

  “A great many people feel like that now, I know, and other people feel that by so thinking they will produce the exact opposite result to what they desire. There’s a great deal to be said on both sides—or at any rate a great deal is said—but to go back, why should he approve of rearmament?”

  “He said that it was completely useless and therefore very valuable.” Joan Knox Forster shook her head. “Beyond me. I suppose he wasn’t mad, was he?”

  “It’s the first time that I have heard the suggestion and as I never met him, I am hardly the person to ask.”

  “No. I just wondered.”

  “A nasty business, Raikes, and one which I dare say you do not like talking over.”

  “Very nasty, sir. No doubt you have been told that I couldn’t bring myself to touch the—the door on which he was.”

  “I had heard something about it. You had been in his service for some time, hadn’t you?”

  “Yes, and despite his little trick
s and a lot of funny ways that he had, I had a considerable respect for him. He had a way of saying, so to speak: ‘Take it or leave it,’ so that you knew where you were with him which made it easy to handle him if you knew how.”

  “And you did know how to handle him?”

  “I venture to think so, sir.” There was a quiet confidence about the elderly butler which was totally removed from conceit. “I suppose,” he went on unexpectedly, “that it was his heart that made him funny.”

  “Funny?” Fenby echoed.

  “Well, sir, if you knew that you might die at any moment, you’d look at things differently. When you saw other people fussing and getting into a state about things that upset them, and all the time you knew that you had got one thing real to worry about, you’d rather despise them and not worry much if you trod on their corns. In fact you would rather like to give them something to think about. At any rate that’s what I think that he did, and then people would say that he was tactless, and hard, and inconsiderate, and ought to do this and ought not to have done the other. The village people round here, for instance. They’re stupid and they didn’t understand him, and that vicar, he would keep on interfering and making things worse. Miss Knox Forster, she didn’t understand him either and she’s got very strong views, and just to annoy her he used to take the opposite view and then they’d start arguing about politics and things and she never knew that he was pulling her leg.”

  “Then you don’t think that he always meant what he said?”

  “Not he. If you come to think of it, it was a plucky thing the way that he kept up all his hobbies—making money and collecting stamps like a kid and so on. All the same his tricks were trying if you didn’t know how to meet them. That is when he was in the mood.”

  “What sort of tricks? Do you mean just the way he went on in general or have you got something particular in your mind?”

  “One particular little game that he was always playing. He used to have days when he liked to pretend that people were trying to steal things from him. When that mood was on him, he would do it all day to everyone who came near him, and a great nuisance it was too. I suppose he went a bit funny sometimes. Personally I always knew when it was coming on and so I took precautions, but those who didn’t know it, used to find it troublesome, because he was clever about it. It wasn’t exactly conjuring but he would put things where you didn’t expect them to be, and it wasn’t easy to prove that he had done it. And last Thursday, the day you want to know about, was one of those days. I saw it coming on.”

  “Oh!” This was a new development to Fenby. “What were the signs?”

  “He sent for me first thing after breakfast and told me to clean the snuffbox. Now it was a gold one and it didn’t really want cleaning and so I looked at it a bit surprised, which he noticed. So he says something about the inside which, if you will pardon my saying so, was pure poppycock. However, I took it away and pretended, and then I saw that the big emerald on the lid was loose and I says to myself ‘Alfred, my lad, somebody is going to be accused of stealing that, but it isn’t going to be you. Or, if it is, you are going to be able to prove that it wasn’t.’ So when I brought it back, I put it down on the table by his left hand where both he and Miss Knox Forster could see it clearly. In fact I pushed that emerald under both their noses, and furthermore I made up my mind that I was going to be able to prove that from that time on I hadn’t been in that room by myself for the whole of the rest of the day.”

  “By his left hand?” Fenby looked at his notes.

  “Yes. Let me show you.” Raikes started to lead the way from the dining-room across to the library and then politely asked Fenby to go first. “Just here.”

  “I see.” Fenby made a note. “Go on.”

  “The next time that I came in was to show the vicar in. Miss Knox Forster left when he arrived. Then I went on with my duties. First of all cleaning the silver and then laying the table for lunch.”

  “You were still doing that when the vicar left?”

  “I was in the dining-room then and he called me out and spoke to me sharp-like about the clock. All nonsense it was but that was a bit awkward because the library door was left open when they went out and I didn’t see how I could prove that I hadn’t been in and I could see from Mr. Cargate’s face that I was right. He was in one of his moods. However, luck was with me because Miss Knox Forster was in the hall. I talked to her too for a bit about the clock. I should have liked to have gone on but she didn’t seem to want to. She was just putting those roses right. Beautiful sweet-scented ones, aren’t they, sir? Étoile d’Hollande, they call them.”

  “Yes, but go on.” Fenby refused to be side-tracked into horticultural details. Moreover Raikes’s pronunciation of the name was such as to convey at most, nothing to him. “Miss Knox Forster was in the hall?”

  “Yes, sir. So I had only to stay in the dining-room and she would be able to say that I had not gone out. At least so I thought, but as a matter of fact when I did leave, just as Mr. Cargate came back, she was in the drawing-room, so perhaps it wouldn’t have been so good an alibi as I thought. Of course it didn’t matter as he never did try to say that I had tried to take the emerald at that time. Only, of course, I didn’t know that then, so that though it isn’t of any importance, it did worry me at the time. Especially in view of what happened later.”

  “Just a minute. Let me see. I forget if Miss Knox Forster says that she went out once before that or not. Did you hear her?”

  “No, sir. At least she didn’t pass the door of the dining-room while I was in it. I should not have seen her but I think that I must have heard her.”

  Fenby thought a minute. It was possible of course that her movements had been so quiet as not to attract attention, but he would like to try an experiment or two before he was certain that it was probable. Before, however, he said anything, Raikes went on:

  “Of course putting down spoons and forks does make a little noise, though I do not bang these about and scratch like some young people do nowadays.”

  “Are you quite sure that Miss Knox Forster was in the drawing-room when you left? She seems to think that you had gone some few minutes earlier.”

  “Quite certain. Actually I heard Mrs. Perriman, that is the cook, sir, come to the door leading from the kitchen to the hall a few minutes before and call softly to me—I rather wonder at her doing that with Miss Knox Forster about but I suppose she was at the end of the table near the staircase, and Cook didn’t see her because of the door itself. I didn’t answer until I saw that Mr. Cargate was just on back and then I went out and I distinctly saw Miss Knox Forster in the drawing-room. Some dead flowers had left a stain at the bottom of a glass bowl, I suppose, because she was trying to clean out the bottom of it. I can show you the scratch there is on it.”

  “We’ll look at it later, but go on now.” Fenby had no doubt that when Raikes left finally Miss Knox Forster had been in the drawing-room. Also it was possible that she had assumed that the door closing behind Mrs. Perriman had been closing behind Raikes and that, immersed in looking at the bowl in the drawing-room, she had not heard Raikes go. If that was so, it rather strengthened the possibility of her admitted movement to fetch the rose having been inaudible to Raikes. Still, it was a matter to be considered further and it would be interesting to see what Mrs. Perriman would say. He tried a few more questions to Raikes but without any further information.

  “So at some time between 11.35 and 11.40 you went back to the kitchen?”

  “That’s right, sir. Now, sir, I got a bit of a shock when I found that Miss Knox Forster hadn’t been in the hall all the time, because you see I wanted to be able to prove to Mr. Cargate that I hadn’t been near the snuffbox. So when I went back I says to Mrs. Perriman that he’s in one of his moods. ‘Now,’ I says, ‘he’s as regular as clockwork. He won’t stir out of that library until twelve o’clock and that’s the time that
we have our dinner. So I want you to take very careful note that I don’t go out of here from now on until we’ve finished our dinner.’ ‘Why, whatever for?’ says Mrs. Perriman. So then I explains to her carefully and she says ‘Very well, Mr. Raikes, I will, and when you go to ring the gong for lunch’ (we had a gong so that Mr. Cargate could hear if he was in the garden) ‘I’ll go with you and watch you, so that I can say that you haven’t been in that library.’ You can always trust Mrs. Perriman to play up properly and help you. A real good sort she is.”

  Fenby, sincerely hoping that Mrs. Perriman’s loyalty confined itself to the limits of the truth, assented politely to the flattering description of the cook.

  “So she watched you ring the gong?”

  “Yes. Mr. Cargate and Miss Knox Forster were on the lawn at the side of the house and they came round to the front door. Lunch was cold that day and Mr. Cargate preferred, if possible, to have everything on the table and not to be waited on, so I didn’t have to be there until he rang to bring the sweet in.”

  “I should have thought that he was the sort of man who would have wanted you dancing attendance on him all the time.”

  “Some days he would and some days he wouldn’t. This was a day when it was ‘wouldn’t’, I could see. So I stayed away. Well, anyhow, I gave them a few minutes to wash and settle down and then I said to Mrs. Perriman—”

  “Just a minute. They were pretty quick, weren’t they?”

  “Oh, just the ordinary time. Where was I? Oh, yes, I said to Mrs. Perriman: ‘Now, you can’t be watching me all the time that they are having lunch, there being a hot chocolate soufflé to follow, so directly they’re in, you come along with me and we’ll turn the key in the library door and you can keep it until they’re due to come out. Just before that, we’ll unlock it together. Then I can’t have been in there and he can’t accuse you and anyhow, Dolly’ (that’s the kitchen-maid, sir), ‘will have been with you, so that will be all right. And after we’ve opened it again, we’ll keep in each other’s sight until he’s gone back to the library.’ So we did that.”