Zen there was Murder

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Zen there was Murder Page 23

by H. R. F. Keating


  ‘Ah, I begin to see,’ said the superintendent. ‘It was you who found the girl dead and put two and two together.’

  ‘I knew Honor was the only one with any reason to kill her,’ said Gerry. ‘She cottoned on to the fact that when she stopped me seeing Flaveen in the office I brought her down here. And naturally enough when I saw what Honor had done I started thinking pretty fast, and I cooked up my little game with the tweeter. I had a hell of a time finding Honor and persuading her not just to wait to be arrested. Seems a waste now.’

  ‘So you see, superintendent,’ said Mr Utamaro,’ there was no question of the murder taking place while Mr Henderson was actually in the room. There was no question of this Zen business performing any black mischief.’

  ‘All right,’ said the superintendent, ‘I admit Zen isn’t what I thought it was. But what about this business of the girl being known to Mr Manvers? I take it you were on to that.’

  ‘I knew she was here under false colours because she told us so,’ said Mr Utamaro. ‘She told us all the first afternoon she was here.’

  From the dining table Jim spoke.

  ‘Nothing she said told me anything about her,’ he said.

  Mr Utamaro looked across at him.

  ‘You were not listening to the actual words she used,’ he said. ‘You were adding your own impressions to them. When she said she understood what Zen was, that it was a riddle game, like “when is someone in this house and not in this house”, you thought she was just being a bit stupid. But her riddle was an ordinary one with a simple answer. When is someone in the house and not in the house? When they are in the house under a false name.’

  ‘You’re sure of this?’ said Superintendent Padbourne. ‘The possibility of a false name had occurred to me, naturally enough, but why should she change her name to come on an outing like this?’

  ‘Outing,’ said Alasdair.

  ‘Because her real name was the only thing about her that Mrs Manvers knew,’ said Mr Utamaro.

  ‘It was Doreen Miles,’ said Gerry.

  The quiet voice.

  ‘Mrs Manvers told us,’ said Mr Utamaro, ‘that she had insisted that her husband came here because she was jealous of a red-haired girl at his office,’ Mr Utamaro went on. ‘She used the words “Your beastly little Carrots at the office”.’

  ‘But Flaveen’s hair wasn’t carroty at all,’ said Miss Rohan.

  ‘I remember thinking to myself what a wonderful soft red it was and that it was a pity she didn’t pay more attention to it.’

  ‘I called her Carrots,’ said Gerry. ‘It was a joke.’

  Flat. Washed out.

  ‘Mrs Manvers had found out what she had about this affair by using a detective,’ Mr Utamaro said.’ So she knew the name Doreen Miles and she knew she was red-headed. That was all. It was clever of Mr Manvers to think he could cheat by sending a girl with pale reddish hair called Flaveen Mills on the course at the same time as himself. Only she tried to be too clever and Mrs Manvers guessed.’

  ‘She did guess and she didn’t,’ Gerry said. ‘That was my final trump. She couldn’t be quite sure. I told Flaveen to remember that. But when Honor went for her in her room on Monday she let herself be tricked into admitting it. That was when she told Honor I was going to run away with her and Honor picked up the sword and killed her.’

  Mr Applecheek sitting quietly at his place at the dining table said:

  ‘I have a link to fit in here. Miss Mills, if we are to call her that, did not take the sword from Mr Utamaro. I was the one who did that. Miss Mills simply found it where I had hidden it in the big cedar tree.’

  ‘She must have seen it when she climbed the tree to drop the sugar over me on Sunday night,’ said Jim. ‘She was a bit subdued afterwards. I wondered why.’

  ‘It was all there to be seen,’ said Mr Utamaro. ‘When I told you all that the sword had disappeared Miss Mills was the first to speak. She said “But it’s – “ and then she was interrupted. If you hadn’t all been worrying about the sword you would have remembered her words and known that she could tell you where the sword was. And later she said in answer to Mr Applecheek that she knew the cedar was easy to climb, but you were all so busy indulging in fears for Mrs Manvers’ safety up the tree that you heard but did not hear.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Applecheek, ‘we are having a Zen lesson indeed.’

  ‘There was a long and twisted chain of fears and hopes,’ Mr Utamaro went on. ‘Miss Mills made Mr Manvers jealous by paying attention to Mr Henderson. So Mr Manvers tried, as he put it, to gum up the works by telling Miss Mills that Mr Henderson had stolen the sword. This made her take it from the place where she had seen it so that she could restore it. And so it came to be in her room.’

  ‘There’s something I don’t understand,’ said Alasdair. ‘Why did Mrs Manvers feel it necessary to attack me? She must have been in a terrible state, but it doesn’t seem to me to add up.’

  ‘More fears,’ said Mr Utamaro. ‘She feared I knew more than I did. She tried to deceive me with a false chain of reasoning. But the man who has abandoned reason is the one to see through false reasoning. All these lies you have all told, what good do you think they do? Ever since you came here you all have told them in your different ways. It has been a saga of lies.’

  Mr Applecheek stood up. The tall, rusty black figure, stooping.

  ‘We know you are right,’ he said. ‘Zen is certainly a wonderful thing. You have shown us that in no uncertain way.’

  He shook his head.

  Sadly.

  ‘Such a pity,’he said, ‘that it is only one of the fancier products of the human mind. Such a pity that its main effect is to cut us off from the truth.’

  *

  ‘Oh, they are so dull,’ said the blonde girl.

  ‘Who is dull?’ the dark one said.

  ‘Who is dull? Who is dull? You are so dreamy nowadays.

  You never know what a person is talking about. This course is so dull. The “Shakespeare, his Mind and Art” crowd are so dull. And if you weren’t so silly now you would know it.’

  ‘They are just another lot of students,’ said the dark girl.

  ‘It is a good thing there are so many of them, they do not leave you time to think.’

  ‘Well, they leave me time to think. And you know what I think about?’

  No answer.

  ‘AH right, since you insist on knowing, I will tell you. I think about the Zen course. I think about it most of the time. We shall never see such days again.’

  ‘Never?’ said the dark one.

  ‘Never. Oh, Mr Gerry. Mr Gerry.’

  A deep sigh.

  The dark girl went steadily on chopping up a huge cabbage. She paid no attention to the fact that the blonde was no longer helping her.

  ‘Mr Gerry,’ said the blonde. ‘And you left me nothing to remember you by.’

  The dark one dropped the knife in her hand. She said almost to herself:

  ‘He left me something.’

  The blonde looked at her. Sudden realization.

  ‘Oh, Trudi,’ said the dark one, ‘how shall I ever tell my parents?’

  This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

  Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

  Copyright © H. R. F. Keating, 1960

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

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; ISBN: 9781448201105

  ISBN: 9781448202423

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