“I mean, I shall never have the opportunity.”
The lawyer’s voice rasped: “And what does that mean?”
“You will shortly understand. Meanwhile we are delaying the Duchess... .”
Eliot laughed with inward savagery, but he masked his fury, thinking intently how best to persuade the fellow to loan him sufficient to see the estate through. A similar thought, furtive and cunning and cheap, was in the minds of them all.
The lawyer rose to his feet—and simultaneously the light flashed out! There was a sudden clamour in that pitchy darkness; a chair went over with a soft thud; a woman shrieked, long and throaty; a man’s voice said: “My God!”
Then, not more than a minute later, the lights came on again. They found themselves in approximately the same attitudes as before; but there was a difference. The Duchess lay back in her chair, and where just now the magnificent scarf had lain something glittering and beautiful protruded, a gold hilt set with an emerald, the hilt of a small Spanish poniard that an hour ago had lain on the inlaid table at the dead woman’s side.
II
They waited in stiff, uncomfortable positions for the police to arrive. Occasionally that oppressive silence was broken by a long shuddering sob as some nerve-racked woman felt the strain too great. No one had moved or spoken since the light flashed back; covertly they eyed one another, each suspicious of his neighbor. Even the husbands and wives held one another in distrust. They were so desperate, so far lost to normal codes, that they knew any one of them might be guilty. The same dread pierced every mind. How in God’s name would it be possible to prove the innocence of the individual? They’d all hated her, all wished her dead. Morally, they were all guilty. And if nothing was ever proved they would be haunted by doubt all their lives; their very bedfellow might be a murderer!
The doctor who came with the police said she had died instantaneously. The poniard had pierced the heart through the side. The Inspector examined it carefully; all about him the dark air seemed clotted with protestations that found no voice for interpretation, with horror and fear... . The lawyer and the maid stood like images, touched by the Duchess’s scorn; only Roger Holme’s eyes, resting on that demoralised group, were dark with pity.
“Comes off this table, I suppose?” suggested the Inspector, laying the weapon down.
A subdued chorus agreed. Holme spoke unexpectedly. “It would save a great deal of time if, before you examine the separate witnesses, you would ask how many of us are prepared to say we actually saw that bauble on the table when we entered.”
The Inspector turned sharply. The confused babble rose again. “Of course it was there,” muttered Oswald, impatiently.
“You’ll go into Court and swear to that?”
“Well—I can’t actually do that. But where else should it have been?”
“Why not where it was found? One more question. How many of you will take oath that you know the Duchess was alive when we came in?”
Someone gurgled horribly. Only Holme and the inspector realised that it was Bletsoe.
“What’s all this mean?” the inspector demanded.
“That your task is almost done.” He turned back to the startled throng.
“I would remind you that as we came in the Duchess’s maid was arranging a fold in her shawl, and that from that instant no one heard the Duchess speak or saw her move. There’s only one explanation of that—that she was finished with all speech and movement for ever. Did she flicker an eyelid as we filed before her? Did her eyes turn from face to face as we heard our bequests? When I heard the lawyer’s opening speech I was morally sure, for she would never have derogated so sublime an opportunity for humiliating and tantalizing her kinsfolk to an underling. She’d have gloried in it... . But I proved my thesis by smashing that vase. She never stirred! That was indisputable proof, I expect if you look at the last will you’ll find that the chief legatees were the lawyer and the maid. That was so like her, to keep them fast to her side until the eleventh hour by such a will, and then, when her time of needing them was practically accomplished, to cheat them with her last gasp. But she laughed too long over that final jest.”
“So that was why you said you’d never touch the money?”
“Exactly. The extinguishing of the lights was a trick to foist the crime on to one of us.”
“But why,” cried Hester, whose mind moved slowly, “should she have left everything to you?”
He smiled strangely. “Her sense of humour. She got it from the devil. She knew I was the only one of you with nothing to lose, and she liked a man to carry his burden.”
Eliot, seeing that thin, controlled face, thanked the God he refused to acknowledge that he hadn’t a wife, only a house. Presently Holme turned and left them, and they watched him out of sight down that gloomy overgrown drive. Once he had gone they forgot him. The same question was beating with the pitiless insistence of a gong in all their minds:
Who gets the money now?
Curtains for Me
About a year ago I was visited by a young woman called Mrs. Hughes. She came without an appointment, but was in such a state of distress that, contrary to my custom, I saw her at once.
Her story was an extraordinary one.
She was by profession a nurse, and eighteen months earlier had been employed to look after an elderly woman with a husband some years her junior. She liked the patient, and the husband did all he could to make things pleasant for her, but in spite of all her ministrations, the patient died.
The husband seemed very much upset about it, and almost immediately afterwards closed the house and went away. She, naturally, got another post.
“But I was never happy about it, Mr. Brett,” she said earnestly. “I was sure she shouldn’t have died. I kept examining my conscience to see if I had left anything undone or made some fatal mistake, but honestly nothing occurred to me.”
Several months after his wife’s death the widower returned, and she met him by chance in the street.
* * *
It seemed to give him some comfort to talk about her, and after that first meeting they went out together several times; he took her to tea or a cinema in her free time, and one afternoon told her he had decided to sell his house and go to another district. He said he simply couldn’t stand all the associations of fifteen years of married life.
“I thought I knew what he meant,” my client told me. “She had had most of the money and, as I say, she was older than he. He was very popular and good at sports, and since her health was so poor she seldom went with him. The result was; of course, the gossips got busy whispering among themselves.
“When he was a widower rumour’s flew faster than ever.”
“And then, Mr. Brett,” she continued, “he asked me if I would go with him as his wife.”
“How long was this after the lady’s death?” I inquired.
“Rather less than a year. I hesitated at first, but eventually I agreed.”
* * *
Well, the long and the short of it was they were married, but it was a failure almost from the start.
“I very early got the feeling he didn’t trust me,” Mrs. Hughes said. “He was always watching me, examining my letters, even listening-in to my telephone conversations.” I wondered why on earth he had married me, and then one night everything was made clear.”
Normally she was a deep sleeper, going off, as she put it, the moment her head touched the pillow, but one night for some reason she woke in the small hours to hear her husband talking to her, but a moment later she got the shock of her life. He was speaking to the dead woman. Mary Hughes.
“I’ve brought you your medicine, Mary. No, of course it’s not bitter. Drink it up quickly. Now you can sleep.”
She said there was something in his tone that filled her with horror. After he had dropped off again—well, he’d not really been awake but I knew what she meant—she lay staring at the ceiling, puzzling over his words.
“Because, you see, Mr. Br
ett, he shouldn’t have been giving her her medicine. He never did. It was my job. So why?—why? The question throbbed in my mind all night.”
“Was it of such importance?” I asked. “Perhaps you were off duty or something.”
“You don’t understand,” she told me. “Mrs. Hughes was found dead the next morning.”
Well, here was a problem. There was only the second wife’s evidence that the husband had said anything at all, and it was going to be precious difficult to get confirmation of his words.
I asked if he had ever repeated them, since that first time, and she said. “Oh yes, again and again. It’s on his mind.” Once the previous night, and this was why she had come to consult me—he had suspected her of being awake, and he had clutched her arm—there was a bruise where he had held her—and accused her of spying.
* * *
“Does he know he talks in his sleep?” I asked.
“I don’t know. But if he ever did he might be afraid of betraying himself now, and if he ever does, or if I make a single mistake and let him guess I’ve overheard—that will be my zero hour.”
I asked her what she meant by that, and she said. “Of course, once he realises I know what he did, it’ll be curtains for me, too.”
As a lawyer I always prefer to hear both sides of a case, and I took the precaution to make some inquiries in the district in which the first Mrs. Hughes had died.
I had asked my client why she supposed Hughes had married her, and she said: “Oh, surely that’s clear. When I spoke of not being satisfied about his wife’s death he was afraid I might start fresh inquiries, and he would know that a wife can’t give evidence against her husband. I feel certain his proposal was an insurance—policy, and nothing more romantic. It’s a blow to my vanity, but I’m afraid that’s the truth.”
There was something very candid and outspoken about her that appealed to me.
“I feel as if I’m walking on a knife-edge, as it is,” she confessed. “I can’t afford to put a foot wrong.”
But she must have blundered somewhere, for not long afterwards the neighbourhood was shocked to hear that Hughes, that good-looking, dashing, obviously well-off chap with the pretty wife and the new Monitor car had committed suicide.
Of course, there was an inquest, and his wife had to give evidence. She said she knew nothing of the source of the drug that had killed him, and the police could find no trace of any in the house; she admitted he had been strange and worried about the death of his first wife. He thought people were talking, and it preyed on his mind.
“I think he felt he had made a mistake in marrying me within the year,” she acknowledged. “We had moved from the neighbourhood, but the day he took the stuff he had met an old acquaintance who must have said something, because that evening he said: ‘People are like vultures; no, they’re not even as decent as vultures, who at least wait for death. Human beings dig their beaks into the bodies and hearts of living men.’”
After the funeral—there was a verdict of suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed—I saw Mrs. Hughes several times. She asked me to act for her.
* * *
Under her husband’s will she inherited a considerable sum of money, and I told her that, though she didn’t believe it now, she would eventually get over this tragedy and would. I hoped, be happy in the years ahead. Above all she mustn’t blame herself for her husband’s death.
She looked me straight in the face. “Of course, Mr. Brett, you realise it was all a mistake. I was meant to drink the cup with the poison in it—and by the merest chance I changed the cups while he was out of the room. When I tasted mine it was sweet, and since I never take sugar in my coffee I thought, naturally, he’d handed me the wrong cup. If I hadn’t done that ...”
And then for the first time she broke down.
All this happened, as I said, rather more than a year ago. Last month I asked Mabel Hughes to marry me, and she agreed. We had a very quiet wedding almost at once and last night we returned from our honeymoon.
I found a good deal of letters had accumulated, so it was rather late when I came up to bed. Mabel had gone up some time before. As I went into the dressing-room I thought I heard her call, so I pushed open our bedroom door. She was sitting bolt upright in bed, talking in a clear, brisk voice.
“Drink up your medicine, Mrs. Hughes,” she commanded. “No, of course it’s not bitter. It’s what the doctor ordered. That’s right, Mrs. Hughes. Now you can sleep.”
* * *
You see what my problem is? There can’t be any doubt of the truth. It would be too much of a coincidence for her and Hughes to talk in their sleep.
Poor devil, what a shock he must have had when he first heard her! No wonder he watched her night and day, but even so he wasn’t vigilant enough. Somehow she found the opportunity to slip a fatal dose into his coffee, and then ran round to me with a story that pulled the wool right over my eyes.
What do I do? What reason have I to suppose that having got away with two successful and profitable murders, she’ll stop at a third when it suits her book?
My profession is to give advice to troubled men and women. This is one of the occasions when I want it myself—and quickly, before it’s Curtains for Me.
Point of No Return
When the telephone rang that evening, for a moment neither of us stirred. The instrument lives in the hall, and we answer it strictly by rote. After a minute Vanessa looked up from her exquisite petit point and said in that voice that would have launched more than a thousand ships, “Your turn, Ursie.”
“Couldn’t you, this once?” I suggested, though I knew it wasn’t fair. “I have a problem.” Whether to introduce a streak of blue into the rose and purple heraldic blossom in my tapestry frame. Vanessa waited another moment, then she laid her work aside.
“I can see you mean me to answer it,” she said. “I wonder why.”
As she reached the door I murmured something vague about it probably
being Caro, and at once a kind of delicate ice settled on the atmosphere—as it always does these days when that name is mentioned. It’s my fault, I know,
but I can’t help it. I’ll never forgive her, not so long as I live.
When the door had closed I moved over to the window seat. Any minute now the evening star would come piercing through the dusk. I didn’t really
believe it would be Caro on the line, but if by some thousand-to-one chance it was, it wouldn’t be me she’d be calling.
Caro Wellsley, soon to be Caro Marshall, is Vanessa’s niece, the daughter of a much older sister, now dead. We don’t see much of Caro in the ordinary
way. She made a spectacular marriage when she was nineteen, carrying off Sir Miles Wellsley, a legal tycoon whose boast is that everything he touches turns to gold.
“Very uncomfortable,” said Vanessa when she first heard. “I hope Caro knows what she’s doing.” Miles was twice Caro’s age, and had pursued her ever since she was seventeen. After the marriage we saw her mostly in the society glossies, driving her Silver Cloud, or wearing a halter of pearls and a platinum mink. It was only when she was in trouble that she appeared in the flesh.
We were both teaching in the Midlands in those days—Van was a college professor and I was languages mistress at the local High School. I’d never wanted to teach—the stage would have been my choice; but I had a widowed mother and no capital and what St. Paul calls the gift of tongues, so teaching seemed the obvious solution. Until I met Vanessa Freeman at a party six years before, I’d had no prospects but trying to drum foreign languages into the minds of a succession of couldn’t-care-less girls until I finally drew my pension.
But Vanessa changed all that. It still astounds me. She, who could have had anyone, to pick on me, who couldn’t provide a greater contrast. She is exquisitely made, fragile, elegant, like some small beautiful enameled bird. I’d never be surprised to see her take off on wings.
I’m the shaggy dog kind of spinster, and
I suppose it’s fortunate for me that there’s someone who likes shaggy dogs.
If you saw Vanessa and Caro together you might mistake them for mother and daughter. They both have that unforgettable air. It’s more than just beauty, it’s something that won’t die even when beauty fades. But there the resemblance ends.
Caro was born believing the world owes her a luxurious living. Vanessa knows that anything you take must be paid for, and for all her delicate appearance she’s the working partner. If the car breaks down I phone the garage, and if one of our electrical gadgets goes out of order I send for a repairman. But Vanessa flings up the hood, or goes to work with a screwdriver. I shouldn’t care to be the Archangel on the Gate at the last day when Vanessa Freeman comes up for judgment. She won’t give even him best.
The only person who has been able to defeat her—and I’m not sure defeat is the right word—is Caro. It happened that autumn more than two years earlier when our Great Dream became the Great Illusion. The dream was something only Van could have visualized. Out of the blue, as it were, she inherited The Cottage, where we now live, and a slice, admittedly an economical slice, of capital, and we decided to take a chance, burn our boats, throw in the jobs of which we were both weary, and start on a life of independence.
“Not a private teaching establishment,” Van insisted. “That won’t be the shape of things to come. But with your languages and my qualifications we’ll open a language school with a Travel Bureau on the side.”
Our pupils would be girls who wanted to specialize in foreign languages, and we would arrange careful tours for small numbers of them, and we should be the directors. Luckily for me Vanessa had an itching foot—there was hardly a city in Europe where she wouldn’t find herself at home. And it didn’t have to stop at Europe. See the world and he paid for doing it, I gloated. Imagine—Egypt, where you walk in the golden light, and the wild thymy hills of Greece! Too good to be true, I said—and of course it was.
Sequel to Murder: The Cases of Arthur Crook and Other Mysteries Page 20