‘I’ve come to tell you—to tell you—’
Her voice was low and rich. Mr Satterthwaite was so entranced with the dramatic value of the scene that he had forgotten its reality.
‘Please, Lady Dwighton—’ Melrose had an arm round her, supporting her. He took her across the hall into a small anteroom, its walls hung with faded silk. Quin and Satterthwaite followed. She sank down on the low settee, her head resting back on a rust-coloured cushion, her eyelids closed. The three men watched her. Suddenly she opened her eyes and sat up. She spoke very quietly.
‘I killed him,’ she said. ‘That’s what I came to tell you. I killed him!’
There was a moment’s agonized silence. Mr Satterthwaite’s heart missed a beat.
‘Lady Dwighton,’ said Melrose. ‘You’ve had a great shock—you’re unstrung. I don’t think you quite know what you’re saying.’
Would she draw back now—while there was yet time?
‘I know perfectly what I’m saying. It was I who shot him.’
Two of the men in the room gasped, the other made no sound. Laura Dwighton leaned still farther forward.
‘Don’t you understand? I came down and shot him. I admit it.’
The book she had been holding in her hand clattered to the floor. There was a paper cutter in it, a thing shaped like a dagger with a jewelled hilt. Mr Satterthwaite picked it up mechanically and placed it on the table. As he did so he thought, That’s a dangerous toy. You could kill a man with that.
‘Well—’ Laura Dwighton’s voice was impatient. ‘—what are you going to do about it? Arrest me? Take me away?’
Colonel Melrose found his voice with difficulty.
‘What you have told me is very serious, Lady Dwighton. I must ask you to go to your room till I have—er—made arrangements.’
She nodded and rose to her feet. She was quite composed now, grave and cold.
As she turned toward the door, Mr Quin spoke. ‘What did you do with the revolver, Lady Dwighton?’
A flicker of uncertainty passed across her face. ‘I—I dropped it there on the floor. No, I think I threw it out of the window—oh! I can’t remember now. What does it matter? I hardly knew what I was doing. It doesn’t matter, does it?’
‘No,’ said Mr Quin. ‘I hardly think it matters.’
She looked at him in perplexity with a shade of something that might have been alarm. Then she flung back her head and went imperiously out of the room. Mr Satterthwaite hastened after her. She might, he felt, collapse at any minute. But she was already halfway up the staircase, displaying no sign of her earlier weakness. The scared-looking maid was standing at the foot of the stairway, and Mr Satterthwaite spoke to her authoritatively.
‘Look after your mistress,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir.’ The girl prepared to ascend after the blue-robed figure. ‘Oh, please, sir, they don’t suspect him, do they?’
‘Suspect whom?’
‘Jennings, sir. Oh! Indeed, sir, he wouldn’t hurt a fly.’
‘Jennings? No, of course not. Go and look after your mistress.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The girl ran quickly up the staircase. Mr Satterthwaite returned to the room he had just vacated.
Colonel Melrose was saying heavily, ‘Well, I’m jiggered. There’s more in this than meets the eye. It—it’s like those dashed silly things heroines do in many novels.’
‘It’s unreal,’ agreed Mr Satterthwaite. ‘It’s like something on the stage.’
Mr Quin nodded. ‘Yes, you admire the drama, do you not? You are a man who appreciates good acting when you see it.’
Mr Satterthwaite looked hard at him.
In the silence that followed a far-off sound came to their ears.
‘Sounds like a shot,’ said Colonel Melrose. ‘One of the keepers, I daresay. That’s probably what she heard. Perhaps she went down to see. She wouldn’t go close or examine the body. She’d leap at once to the conclusion—’
‘Mr Delangua, sir.’ It was the old butler who spoke, standing apologetically in the doorway.
‘Eh?’ said Melrose. ‘What’s that?’
‘Mr Delangua is here, sir, and would like to speak to you if he may.’
Colonel Melrose leaned back in his chair. ‘Show him in,’ he said grimly.
A moment later Paul Delangua stood in the doorway. As Colonel Melrose had hinted, there was something un-English about him—the easy grace of his movements, the dark, handsome face, the eyes set a little too near together. There hung about him the air of the Renaissance. He and Laura Dwighton suggested the same atmosphere.
‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ said Delangua. He made a little theatrical bow.
‘I don’t know what your business may be, Mr Delangua,’ said Colonel Melrose sharply, ‘but if it is nothing to do with the matter at hand—’
Delangua interrupted him with a laugh. ‘On the contrary,’ he said, ‘it has everything to do with it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean,’ said Delangua quietly, ‘that I have come to give myself up for the murder of Sir James Dwighton.’
‘You know what you are saying?’ said Melrose gravely.
‘Perfectly.’
The young man’s eyes were riveted to the table.
‘I don’t understand—’
‘Why I give myself up? Call it remorse—call it anything you please. I stabbed him, right enough—you may be quite sure of that.’ He nodded toward the table. ‘You’ve got the weapon there, I see. A very handy little tool. Lady Dwighton unfortunately left it lying around in a book, and I happened to snatch it up.’
‘One minute,’ said Colonel Melrose. ‘Am I to understand that you admit stabbing Sir James with this?’ He held the dagger aloft.
‘Quite right. I stole in through the window, you know. He had his back to me. It was quite easy. I left the same way.’
‘Through the window?’
‘Through the window, of course.’
‘And what time was this?’
Delangua hesitated. ‘Let me see—I was talking to the keeper fellow—that was at a quarter past six. I heard the church tower chime. It must have been—well, say somewhere about half past.’
A grim smile came to the colonel’s lips.
‘Quite right, young man,’ he said. ‘Half past six was the time. Perhaps you’ve heard that already? But this is altogether a most peculiar murder!’
‘Why?’
‘So many people confess to it,’ said Colonel Melrose.
They heard the sharp intake of the other’s breath.
‘Who else has confessed to it?’ he asked in a voice that he vainly strove to render steady.
‘Lady Dwighton.’
Delangua threw back his head and laughed in rather a forced manner. ‘Lady Dwighton is apt to be hysterical,’ he said lightly. ‘I shouldn’t pay any attention to what she says if I were you.’
‘I don’t think I shall,’ said Melrose. ‘But there’s another odd thing about this murder.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Well,’ said Melrose, ‘Lady Dwighton has confessed to having shot Sir James, and you have confessed to having stabbed him. But luckily for both of you, he wasn’t shot or stabbed, you see. His skull was smashed in.’
‘My God!’ cried Delangua. ‘But a woman couldn’t possibly do that—’
He stopped, biting his lip. Melrose nodded with the ghost of a smile.
‘Often read of it,’ he volunteered. ‘Never seen it happen.’
‘What?’
‘Couple of young idiots each accusing themselves because they thought the other had done it,’ said Melrose. ‘Now we’ve got to begin at the beginning.’
‘The valet,’ cried Mr Satterthwaite. ‘That girl just now—I wasn’t paying any attention at the time.’ He paused, striving for coherence. ‘She was afraid of our suspecting him. There must be some motive that he had and which we don’t know, but she does.’
Colonel Melro
se frowned, then he rang the bell. When it was answered, he said, ‘Please ask Lady Dwighton if she will be good enough to come down again.’
They waited in silence until she came. At sight of Delangua she started and stretched out a hand to save herself from falling. Colonel Melrose came quickly to the rescue.
‘It’s quite all right, Lady Dwighton. Please don’t be alarmed.’
‘I don’t understand. What is Mr Delangua doing here?’
Delangua came over to her, ‘Laura—Laura—why did you do it?’
‘Do it?’
‘I know. It was for me—because you thought that—After all, it was natural, I suppose. But, oh! You angel!’
Colonel Melrose cleared his throat. He was a man who disliked emotion and had a horror of anything approaching a ‘scene’.
‘If you’ll allow me to say so, Lady Dwighton, both you and Mr Delangua have had a lucky escape. He had just arrived in his turn to “confess” to the murder—oh, it’s quite all right, he didn’t do it! But what we want to know is the truth. No more shillyshallying. The butler says you went into the library at half past six—is that so?’
Laura looked at Delangua. He nodded.
‘The truth, Laura,’ he said. ‘That is what we want now.’
She breathed a deep sigh. ‘I will tell you.’
She sank down on a chair that Mr Satterthwaite had hurriedly pushed forward.
‘I did come down. I opened the library door and I saw—’
She stopped and swallowed. Mr Satterthwaite leaned forward and patted her hand encouragingly.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes. You saw?’
‘My husband was lying across the writing table. I saw his head—the blood—oh!’
She put her hands to her face. The chief constable leaned forward.
‘Excuse me, Lady Dwighton. You thought Mr Delangua had shot him?’
She nodded. ‘Forgive me, Paul,’ she pleaded. ‘But you said—you said—’
‘That I’d shoot him like a dog,’ said Delangua grimly. ‘I remember. That was the day I discovered he’d been ill-treating you.’
The chief constable kept sternly to the matter in hand.
‘Then I am to understand, Lady Dwighton, that you went upstairs again and—er—said nothing. We needn’t go into your reason. You didn’t touch the body or go near the writing table?’
She shuddered.
‘No, no. I ran straight out of the room.’
‘I see, I see. And what time was this exactly? Do you know?’
‘It was just half past six when I got back to my bedroom.’
‘Then at—say five-and-twenty past six, Sir James was already dead.’ The chief constable looked at the others. ‘That clock—it was faked, eh? We suspected that all along. Nothing easier than to move the hands to whatever time you wished, but they made a mistake to lay it down on its side like that. Well, that seems to narrow it down to the butler or the valet, and I can’t believe it’s the butler. Tell me, Lady Dwighton, did this man Jennings have any grudge against your husband?’
Laura lifted her face from her hands. ‘Not exactly a grudge, but—well, James told me only this morning that he’d dismissed him. He’d found him pilfering.’
‘Ah! Now we’re getting at it. Jennings would have been dismissed without a character. A serious matter for him.’
‘You said something about a clock,’ said Laura Dwighton. ‘There’s just a chance—if you want to fix the time—James would have been sure to have his little golf watch on him. Mightn’t that have been smashed, too, when he fell forward?’
‘It’s an idea,’ said the colonel slowly. ‘But I’m afraid—Curtis!’
The inspector nodded in quick comprehension and left the room. He returned a minute later. On the palm of his hand was a silver watch marked like a golf ball, the kind that are sold for golfers to carry loose in a pocket with balls.
‘Here it is, sir,’ he said, ‘but I doubt if it will be any good. They’re tough, these watches.’
The colonel took it from him and held it to his ear.
‘It seems to have stopped, anyway,’ he observed.
He pressed with his thumb, and the lid of the watch flew open. Inside the glass was cracked across.
‘Ah!’ he said exultantly.
The hand pointed to exactly a quarter past six.
‘A very good glass of port, Colonel Melrose,’ said Mr Quin.
It was half past nine, and the three men had just finished a belated dinner at Colonel Melrose’s house. Mr Satterthwaite was particularly jubilant.
‘I was quite right,’ he chuckled. ‘You can’t deny it, Mr Quin. You turned up tonight to save two absurd young people who were both bent on putting their heads into a noose.’
‘Did I?’ said Mr Quin. ‘Surely not. I did nothing at all.’
‘As it turned out, it was not necessary,’ agreed Mr Satterthwaite. ‘But it might have been. It was touch and go, you know. I shall never forget the moment when Lady Dwighton said, “I killed him.” I’ve never seen anything on the stage half as dramatic.’
‘I’m inclined to agree with you,’ said Mr Quin.
‘Wouldn’t have believed such a thing could happen outside a novel,’ declared the colonel, for perhaps the twentieth time that night.
‘Does it?’ asked Mr Quin.
The colonel stared at him, ‘Damn it, it happened tonight.’
‘Mind you,’ interposed Mr Satterthwaite, leaning back and sipping his port, ‘Lady Dwighton was magnificent, quite magnificent, but she made one mistake. She shouldn’t have leaped to the conclusion that her husband had been shot. In the same way Delangua was a fool to assume that he had been stabbed just because the dagger happened to be lying on the table in front of us. It was a mere coincidence that Lady Dwighton should have brought it down with her.’
‘Was it?’ asked Mr Quin.
‘Now if they’d only confined themselves to saying that they’d killed Sir James, without particularizing how—’ went on Mr Satterthwaite—‘what would have been the result?’
‘They might have been believed,’ said Mr Quin with an odd smile.
‘The whole thing was exactly like a novel,’ said the colonel.
‘That’s where they got the idea from, I daresay,’ said Mr Quin.
‘Possibly,’ agreed Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Things one has read do come back to one in the oddest way.’ He looked across at Mr Quin. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘the clock really looked suspicious from the first. One ought never to forget how easy it is to put the hands of a clock or watch forward or back.’
Mr Quin nodded and repeated the words. ‘Forward,’ he said, and paused. ‘Or back.’
There was something encouraging in his voice. His bright, dark eyes were fixed on Mr Satterthwaite.
‘The hands of the clock were put forward,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘We know that.’
‘Were they?’ asked Mr Quin.
Mr Satterthwaite stared at him. ‘Do you mean,’ he said slowly, ‘that it was the watch which was put back? But that doesn’t make sense. It’s impossible.’
‘Not impossible,’ murmured Mr Quin.
‘Well—absurd. To whose advantage could that be?’
‘Only, I suppose, to someone who had an alibi for that time.’
‘By gad!’ cried the colonel. ‘That’s the time young Delangua said he was talking to the keeper.’
‘He told us that very particularly,’ said Mr Satterthwaite.
They looked at each other. They had an uneasy feeling as of solid ground failing beneath their feet. Facts went spinning round, turning new and unexpected faces. And in the centre of the kaleidoscope was the dark, smiling face of Mr Quin.
‘But in that case—’ began Melrose ‘—in that case—’
Mr Satterthwaite, nimble-witted, finished his sentence for him. ‘It’s all the other way round. A plant just the same—but a plant against the valet. Oh, but it can’t be! It’s impossible. Why each of them accused themselves o
f the crime.’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Quin. ‘Up till then you suspected them, didn’t you?’ His voice went on, placid and dreamy. ‘Just like something out of a book, you said, colonel. They got the idea there. It’s what the innocent hero and heroine do. Of course it made you think them innocent—there was the force of tradition behind them. Mr Satterthwaite has been saying all along it was like something on the stage. You were both right. It wasn’t real. You’ve been saying so all along without knowing what you were saying. They’d have told a much better story than that if they’d wanted to be believed.’
The two men looked at him helplessly.
‘It would be clever,’ said Mr Satterthwaite slowly. ‘It would be diabolically clever. And I’ve thought of something else. The butler said he went in at seven to shut the windows—so he must have expected them to be open.’
‘That’s the way Delangua came in,’ said Mr Quin. ‘He killed Sir James with one blow, and he and she together did what they had to do—’
He looked at Mr Satterthwaite, encouraging him to reconstruct the scene. He did so, hesitatingly.
‘They smashed the clock and put it on its side. Yes. They altered the watch and smashed it. Then he went out of the window, and she fastened it after him. But there’s one thing I don’t see. Why bother with the watch at all? Why not simply put back the hands of the clock?’
‘The clock was always a little obvious,’ said Mr Quin. ‘Anyone might have seen through a rather transparent device like that.’
‘But surely the watch was too far-fetched. Why, it was pure chance that we ever thought of the watch.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Mr Quin. ‘It was the lady’s suggestion, remember.’
Mr Satterthwaite stared at him, fascinated.
‘And yet, you know,’ said Mr Quin dreamily, ‘the one person who wouldn’t be likely to overlook the watch would be the valet. Valets know better than anyone what their masters carry in their pockets. If he altered the clock, the valet would have altered the watch, too. They don’t understand human nature, those two. They are not like Mr Satterthwaite.’
Mr Satterthwaite shook his head.
‘I was all wrong,’ he murmured humbly. ‘I thought that you had come to save them.’
‘So I did,’ said Mr Quin. ‘Oh! Not those two—the others. Perhaps you didn’t notice the lady’s maid? She wasn’t wearing blue brocade, or acting a dramatic part. But she’s really a very pretty girl, and I think she loves that man Jennings very much. I think that between you you’ll be able to save her man from getting hanged.’
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