Any Shape or Form (12 page)

“Perhaps it was a funny thing for me to do; rather rude, in fact. I didn't notice that time was going.” She added: “I really should have liked a game of croquet; I've played a good deal here. Mr. Redfield has had a very sporting course laid out in the orchard, and we have our local rules. And we play for money.”

“But when you got up to the tool house and got as far as getting out a mallet, you forgot about the croquet and sat down on the steps?”

“I was rather worried about my stepmother.”

Griggs looked sharply at her. “Worried?”

“I suppose you know that she said she meant to give us—meant to double the allowances we had from my father. We'd always refused the money before, but Mr. Redfield wanted us to take it; wanted us to meet her. This autumn, when we came back from the country, he wrote and said she was here, and wouldn't we take advantage of the opportunity and come up. We accepted.”

“Why this time?”

“As you get older you want money more, I suppose. But we didn't like her.” Cora glanced down at her left lapel, glanced away, and went on: “We disliked her very much. There was something very disagreeable about her, we thought, apart from her being so odd and strange. She seemed actually malicious. As if she meant to make us
pay
for the money, you know. I didn't blame her for resenting our past behavior, but why meet us at all, much less give us two thousand a year apiece, if she didn't mean to forget the past?”

Griggs, somewhat taken aback by all this candor, looked steadily at her; he said nothing.

“So when I got to the tool house,” said Cora, “I sat down and wondered whether we could take the money after all. I was trying to make up my mind to tell my brother—to say I would refuse my share.”

“Well,” said Griggs, staring at her, “it doesn't make much difference now, does it, which way you finally decided to act?”

“No. We get all the money now,” said Cora in a lifeless tone. “When Mr. Gamadge told us she'd been killed like that—I can't describe how it struck me. Like one of those dooms in the Greek tragedies; as if she deliberately
were
making us pay. But I soon realized that she wouldn't choose that means! And I realized that David's motive and mine was too obvious—everybody would know that we shouldn't have dared to kill her.”

“Well,” said Griggs, “that's a line, of course. I wouldn't say it was a very strong one. There's such a thing as a sudden temptation, following on long resentment and recent provocation. But let's stick to facts. Now I ought to say that you don't have to comment on what I'm going to present to your notice; the officer behind you there is taking notes; you don't have to say a word.”

“I'm sure I'll be quite willing to comment.”

“Well: we have a statement here by a disinterested witness, concerning a conversation you had with your brother shortly after you met your stepmother for the first time. Your brother is alleged to have said: ‘This is our big chance, Cora; but which of us will bump her off?'”

Cora moved in her chair, and then sat rigid; so still that she might have been holding her breath.

“Then,” said Griggs, “your brother is alleged to have said: ‘She's worse than I expected. How about using an ax?' To which you are alleged to have replied: ‘Sh. Do you want to ruin us?'” Griggs looked up from his notes. “Any comment on that, Miss Malcolm?”

She had relaxed. After a pause she said in a natural tone: “No fair-minded person could take any of that seriously. People wouldn't say that kind of thing if they meant to commit murder. My brother says what comes into his head; we have our jokes together, and family jokes aren't always in good taste.”

“You weren't taking him seriously when you asked him if he wanted to ruin you both?”

“Of course I didn't want Mrs. Malcolm to hear him say such things—or hear that he had said them. Mr. Redfield wouldn't have repeated my brother's nonsense—I suppose it was one of the servants. As if he'd risk being overheard if he meant to commit a murder!”

“The murder was committed when four other people were practically on the spot, and none of them in sight of anybody else.”

“We couldn't know that.”

“The murderer knew it somehow.” Griggs consulted his papers again. “You don't have to tell me this, Miss Malcolm; did you or your brother have any special need at present for that extra two thousand a year?”

She said: “You mean for my father's money.”

“Any extra money.”

“I can only say what I said before; people want things as they get older that they could do without when they were young.”

“You're pretty young yet.”

“We got on very well in Paris on four thousand dollars a year.”

“Living together?” She nodded. “I understand your brother's married; isn't living with his wife now. Paying alimony?”

“A separation allowance, I think they call it.”

“We'll have him in now.” Griggs rose.

Cora got up stiffly. “Lieutenant Griggs—I want to say again that you mustn't take everything my brother says too seriously. I don't know whether you know exactly what I mean, but he's a talker; he likes talk for its own sake, and sometimes his tongue runs away with him. He's extremely clever. I don't want you to be prejudiced against him if he says ridiculous things—he'd say them if he were dying.”

“All right, Miss Malcolm.”

When she had gone, and her brother had been sent for, Griggs returned to his chair looking incensed.

“Well,” he said, “we've got our orders. We're not to pay any attention to what Malcolm says, because he'll say anything, and he's so bright we couldn't understand him anyway.”

“I wonder whether she thinks that kind of thing is likely to do him much good,” said Mosson. “I feel prejudice welling up in me already. Are you conscious of any bias against this paragon, Gamadge, or has he dazzled you?”

“We squared up in a refined way,” admitted Gamadge, “and jabbed each other's vanity. But the pokes we exchanged didn't amount to much, and I don't think either of us felt resentment.”

Malcolm came in a good deal as if he were entering a room in a museum; hands sunk in the pockets of his coat, expression mildly receptive, eyes wandering. He saw Gamadge.

“Ah,” he said, “the collaborationist.”

Gamadge smiled at him.

“Your place, sir,” he continued, “is with us Partisans in the next room. We can't talk privately, we are under the benevolent but watchful eye of Officer Stromer, who won't join us in a drink.” He eyed the bottle in front of Mosson. “Glad you are less doctrinaire in here.”

“If you'll just come and sit where I can talk to you, Mr. Malcolm,” said Griggs.

Malcolm went over to the row of chairs, and turned the farthest of them so that he faced everybody except Officer Ames. He sat down, placed his right ankle on his left knee, and clasped the ankle with a strong, smooth hand.

“I should tell you,” he went on, “that we Partisans are committed to the Outsider theory. But our ranks are divided—we represent two schools of thought on the subject of the Outsider. Miss Ryder, Mrs. Drummond, and Mr. Drummond incline to the heresy of the Homicidal Maniac. My sister and I, more orthodox, prefer the thesis of the Avenger From The Past. Mrs. Malcolm's past. Both creeds are fantastic, we admit; but so was this crime. We don't know what Mr. Redfield thinks—he only joined us a few minutes ago, and is fussing about our comfort. He's been upstairs communing with functionaries.”

Mosson said: “Perhaps the crime would seem less fantastic if we considered it as having been committed by somebody known to be present this afternoon.”

“You must of course, not being Partisans but persons in authority, take that possibility into consideration,” said Malcolm. “But we Partisans, not being allowed to talk privately, as I said, must in common decency to one another seem to accept the Outsider theory to the exclusion of all others.

“But even you, I suppose, don't consider Miss Ryder for a moment as a possible murderer. Nor Mr. Redfield—for more than two moments, say. Nor the Drummonds, who don't go about slaying strangers at cocktail parties. Nor my sister, if you're capable of judging character at all. No, I'm the person who interests you. But there's a flaw in the case against me. May I smoke a cigarette?”

Nobody voicing an objection, he took out his case and lighter, got a cigarette going, and went on:

“The gloves. Why should I have worn gloves? My hands were already stained, perhaps they still are. My prints were on the rifle. All I needed to do was—or would have been—to smudge those prints as they would have been smudged by a person wearing gloves. Much quicker than getting those gloves and putting them on.”

Griggs, who had been listening to this flow of talk with a kind of disgusted fascination, now used a phrase which he had no doubt heard in courtrooms. “It may surprise you to learn, Mr. Malcolm, that we thought of that. But a murderer is nervous, and he wouldn't like to risk leaving a print somewhere that ought to have been smudged and missed being smudged. It's not such a quick job, thinking out the right places on a rifle to wipe off.”

“You may be right; still, I think defense counsel might make something of my point.”

“What would he make of the fact that you were heard to talk to your sister about bumping Mrs. Malcolm off, and using an ax?”

“Oh dear me,” said Malcolm, after a short pause, “is that why Cora came away from the interrogation just now looking so dejected? Well, I think I can promise you one thing; if I'm ever tried for this murder, and those remarks of mine come out in cross-examination, the audience will laugh their heads off.”

“You don't seem to worry much about the future.”

“Oh, no.”

Gamadge spoke in a tone of detachment: “Quote:
Mend your speech a little, Lest it may mar your fortunes.
Unquote.”

Malcolm looked over at him smilingly. “Perhaps it
might
be as well for me to remember,” he said cheerfully, “that Cordelia was hanged.” He added, “The trouble is that I'm so used to tribunals. Europe in 1940, you know; Bureaux de Something or Other. Pale Frenchmen, and then rosy Germans, and then busy Portuguese. One ends by adopting an airy pose.”

Griggs said: “We might go back to nineteen forty now. You were living in Paris with your sister, I think, when war broke out?”

“Yes.”

“Until the Germans came?”

“Yes. Until just before the Germans came.”

“You had lived there some years?”

“About five. After we left our schools in England. Our schooling had been paid for out of the estate. No provision had been made for a university education for us.”

“Any occupation in Paris, Mr. Malcolm?”

“None. We were rentiers—living on our incomes. The French don't consider that a serious blot on one's character, you know—to live on one's income.”

“Did I understand that you and Miss Malcolm are writers?”

“At that time we put marks on paper; but we were of the vanishing school of perfectionists—we didn't intend to publish until we felt that we were ready. We were, as you must gather,” he added, smiling, “literary snobs of the first class.”

“You don't write now?”

“No.” He put his hand to the back of his head with what seemed an automatic gesture, took it away again, and said: “We aren't perfectionists any more, and we probably never shall try to write again. As that Russian says, in that preposterous play I always liked, the rhythm of our lives has been broken. What I mean is, we're out of our literary element.”

Griggs, after a stolid look at him, went on: “You decided to quit before the Germans came?”

“Yes. It took us some time to make up our minds to go—Paris was our home. But I finally decided that I didn't want Cora there after the invasion.”

“You weren't married at that time, Mr. Malcolm?”

“No, that came later; it's part of the story of our exodus.”

“Let's hear about it.”

“Well, it wasn't easy. We hadn't much money, and no political pull; unfortunately such friends of ours as did have it were already friends with the Germans. I wonder what on earth is to become of those gifted beings now.” He seemed to ruminate. “Nothing much physically, I suppose, and they're all so conceited that they won't mind anything else. Where was I? Oh: we ran like rabbits, and our gas gave out, and we were stuck on the route, and I'm sure you've heard variations on our story until you're sick of them. Pretty soon the war arrived—overhead, you know; we were machine-gunned from the air, and not very high up either. I woke in a ditch, with a head wound and a broken leg. Cora and a blond girl were dragging me out. Next thing I knew I was in a hospital in Bordeaux, with no sheets on the bed; and the blond girl—in nurse's uniform—was looking after me. She
was
a nurse; she'd been staying on in Paris with a rich American patient till the patient died.”

“American herself?”

“Oh, yes. If it hadn't been for her I never should have come through alive; and I'm not so sure that Cora would have made it either. She had all her nurse's papers, and I was supposed to be her patient—the rich American, you know.” He smiled. “And she got us priorities on transportation and food and so on; I never saw such drive. She got us through to Lisbon. Small, her name was; Frederica Small.

“Well, I was laid up in Lisbon a long time; couldn't have stood the trip to America.” His pronunciation of the name, English with a touch of France, made him sound definitely a foreigner. “I wasn't walking yet,” he went on, “and my head still bothered me a good deal. Freddy being a nurse, with a uniform, well! You've no idea what it did for us.”