Case for Three Detectives (16 page)

“About twenty to eleven, I believe.”

“So that you knew when you went that Mrs. Thurston would soon be going to bed?”

“I might have guessed it, had I thought about it.”

“‘What had you been talking to her about? You and she were sitting alone together for some time.”

“Oh, parish matters, chiefly. She told me, I remember, that Stall, the butler, who is a chorister of mine, would be leaving her shortly.”

“Did she express any regret?”

“Oh yes. She had been very satisfied with him.”

“And had you?”

“He had a good bass voice, I believe.”

Lord Simon leaned back in his chair. I took my eyes from the pale and twitching face of the Vicar to watch his interrogator. Perhaps it was because he must now be approaching his most serious questions that Lord Simon now dropped all evidence of anger or distaste, and became his usual self-drawling and apparently effete.

“Well, Mr. Rider, you seem fond of a bit of sleuthin' yourself on the quiet. Keepin' an eye on misdemeanours, and all that. You'll appreciate the difficulties of a fellow-sleuth, won't you, and do what you can to help him out of a hole? Fact is, you can help us along quite a lot. Hope you'll do your best to answer a few more of my silly-ass questions. Here goes, anyway. When you left the house, where exactly did you go?”

It was, I was sure, this very question that the Vicar had dreaded. He swallowed as a man does who has an inflamed throat.

“I… I had decided to walk home through the orchard.”

“Let's see, that's at this end of the house, isn't it? Not overlooked by any of the windows?”

“That's right. There is a footpath across it which leads straight into the garden of the Vicarage.”

“And you took that path?”

“Yes.”

“And went home?”

I thought that no question which had been asked this evening produced quite such an expectant hush as this one. The Vicar's fingers twined and untwined and his eyes had fallen. When his answer came it was scarcely audible. “No,” he said.

“You didn't? Then where did you go?”

“Nowhere. I stayed in the orchard.”

“Picking fruit, perhaps?”

“No. No. You must not misunderstand me. I stayed in that orchard in agony of mind. I paced up and down, up and down in torment.”

“I wonder whatever was the matter? Sat on an ants' nest, or something?'.'

“Lord Simon, this is no joking matter. I was in great distress. When I told you just now that Mrs. Thurston and I had discussed parish matters, it was only half the truth. We had also spoken of the chauffeur. Mrs. Thurston had admitted that she was fond of him. It is true, she claimed that her affection was that of a mother for her son. But I knew—I felt that it was otherwise.”

“
Honi
bally well
soit”
commented Lord Simon. “So that made you march up and down the orchard for … how long?”

“I was in the orchard when I heard those heart-rending screams.”

“Oh, you were. You must have done about half an hour's pacin' about.”

“I suppose so. I lost all count of time. And then I couldn't make up my mind what I should do. It was some minutes, I believe, before I gathered courage to return to the house. But at last I did so. I went to the front door, and rang the bell. The door was opened by Stall. I asked him what those sounds had been, and he said, ‘Mrs. Thurston … up in her room. She's been murdered, sir.' I at once asked for Dr. Thurston, feeling my place was at his side.
Stall left me alone to find him, as he had to return to the maid, who had had an attack of hysterics. So I hurried up to the bedroom, and found the pitiful, terrible corpse of that poor woman. I did what I could—I knelt beside her and prayed. It was thus you found me.”

As he finished Mr. Rider did a very embarrassing thing. He buried his face in his hands, and began violently to weep. We could hear the sound quite plainly in that silent room. And again—I trust my intuitions—I did ijot believe that it was for Mary Thurston that he was weeping.

Mgr. Smith's voice interrupted him. “Where did you work before you came here, Mr. Rider?” he asked.

Evidently, I thought, he wishes to relieve the poor man by persuading him to talk of himself in a more noncommittal way. There could be no other explanation for a question so entirely irrelevant.

“I was a curate in a London parish.”

“And you came straight to this village from that work?”

“No. I had a … nervous breakdown. The work in London … I was an invalid for a time.”

“Would you mind telling us the nature of your illness?”

The Vicar gaped blankly at him. “It … it was nothing very serious. I was subject to certain delusions. As a matter of fact”—he made the announcement very solemnly—“I thought I was Queen Victoria. For several months I spoke exclusively in the first person plural and had an unfortunate habit of draping a scarf about my head in the form of a widow's
coiffe.
But that is all over, I am glad to say. I recovered completely seven years ago, and have never been revisited by the malady.”

Certainly, if we were waiting merely for the unexpected, Mr. Rider was no disappointment. It had needed a man with the insight and imagination of Mgr. Smith, however, to discover that he had been something more than eccentric, though as I looked at him now, with his white cheeks tearstained
and his eyes glazed by a look of absence, I knew that I ought to have guessed it long ago.

M. Picon, who had seemed at a loss during the Vicar's more hysterical moments, now returned to the practical issue. “Since you were in the orchard,
m'sieu”
he said politely, “you saw no window of the house?”

“No.”

“Not at all? During all the time that you were out there?”

“No.”

“You could not say whether any window in the front of the house was illuminated?”

“No.”

I wished that M. Picon would leave him alone. I was sure that the poor fellow was again going to break into those embarrassing sobs.

“Where
précisément
stood you when you heard the scream?”

I was right. Instead of answering, the Vicar once more covered his face. “Oh, leave me alone now,” he said. “I have done wrong. But who hasn't? Which of you is guiltless? And the wrong I have done has nothing whatever to do with you. Nothing whatever. There is nothing more I can tell you which will help you to find the murderer. So leave me alone …”

He stood up rather unsteadily, and made for the door. I saw the investigators exchange unwilling glances.

“I
CONSIDER
that man a nosey parker of a most unpleasant kind,” commented Sam Williams, when the door had closed behind Mr. Rider.

“But let me remind you,” said Mgr. Smith, “that there have been Parkers less sane and more sinister than the proverbial Nosey. There was a Thomas Parker, who was a Lord Chancellor of England and a pilferer, and a Matthew Parker, who was an Archbishop of Canterbury, and a Protestant.”

“Exactly. Well, we've heard all these ladies and gentlemen, and personally I'm for a spot of shut-eye,” said Lord Simon.

I was astounded, and disappointed at this announcement. I had never doubted, while the cross-examination had gone on, but that the investigators would have completed their theory by the end of it, and that we should see the expected arrest before we went to bed. They at least had seemed to know where their questions were leading them, and although I had no inkling I had put this down, conventionally enough, to my own inexperience and obtuseness.

“But … don't you know who is the murderer?” I asked Lord Simon rather blankly.

“Instead of tellin' you what I know,” he returned, “let me remind you of a few of the things I don't know. I don't know who Mr. Sidney Sewell may be. I don't know who is Mrs. Thurston's stepson, or if the two are the same person …”

“Nor,” I interrupted sarcastically, “do you know whether her first husband liked his eggs scrambled or boiled, nor who his great-grandmother may have been. But really, Plimsoll, if you've solved this thing, I think you might tell us.”

Lord simon gave me a long-suffering look. “Don't get agitated, old boy. I'm doin' my best, don't you know.”

“Do you know how it was done?”

“I've got some sort of an inklin'.”

“And do you know who did it?”

“I've got my suspicions, as policemen say.”

“Then why can't you tell us?” broke in Sam Williams. “This atmosphere of suspicion is most unpleasant.”

“It's just a bit of the old professional vanity stuff. I want to complete my case, and all that. Seriously, it isn't complete yet. Not by a long chalk. Suspicion's no good to anybody. What we all want is a cert. Let me have to-morrow and I'll see what I can do. Yes, Butterfield?”

Lord Simon's man had come into the room, and had been waiting for his employer to finish speaking.

“I think I have what you require, my lord,” he said, and handed over a somewhat grubby piece of paper.

Lord Simon glanced at it, whistled, and gave it to Picon. It was handed right round, and when I had it I recognized at once the rather childish calligraphy of Mary Thurston.

My dear one,
(it read)

I am sorry about yesterday. I must speak to you this evening at the usual time. You must not be angry with me. I would do anything in my power to make you happy. You know I love you. Don't let anything prevent this evening.

M. T.

“From the
chambre
of Stall, of course?” said M. Picon.

“Yes, sir.”

I was infected by all this reasoning and drawing of conclusions. “But,” I said, “if Mary Thurston had already arranged with Fellowes by means of her rat-trap instructions, why should she send this note?”

Lord Simon's reply was good-natured, but crushing. “In the first place, how do you know that this note was addressed
to Fellowes? In the second place, what makes you think it was sent last night?”

I glanced at the grubby piece of paper. “No. I suppose it is older than that.”

Butterfield coughed. “I have applied the usual tests, my lord,” he said, “and I find that the ink is at least a month old.”

He was still speaking when he noticed that Lord Simon had allowed the ash from his cigar to fall on his jacket. Without hesitation he produced a large clothes-brush from his pocket and whisked it away.

“This,
en tout cas”
said M. Picon, holding the paper up to the light, “was the instrument of blackmail.”

“Looks like it,” yawned Lord Simon. “Well, I'm going to get some sleep. May have to go a long way to-morrow.”

“Really? What for?” I asked, doing my part as questioner readily enough.

“To find Sidney Sewell,” he replied.

“Do you think that means going a long way?” I asked, for I already had my own ideas on the subject.

“Quite likely. Well, good night, everyone.” He stalked away, followed at a respectful distance by Butterfield.

“And I, too, may have to be absent a little,” said M. Picon.

I was beginning to enjoy this. “You too? And where will you go, M. Picon?”

“I,
mon ami?
Who knows? Perhaps to Morton Scone, to see whether the flag is still what you call at half-mast.”

He smiled happily at his droll announcement. From the hall I heard Lord Simon offer him a lift to the village, which he accepted.

“Have you thought,” murmured Mgr. Smith, “how strange it was that Mr. Rider supposed himself to be Queen Victoria? I should have imagined it would have been Elizabeth. For when a man believes that he is a queen,
one would think he would choose the queen who believed herself a man.”

I ignored this obvious irrelevance, and turned to Williams.

“What do you think?” I asked wearily. “Are we getting any further?”

“I'm certainly not. And sometimes I wonder whether anybody else is. If we only knew one fact for certain! If there was one witness on whose word we could absolutely rely. But what happens? The servants turn out to be gaolbirds, Strickland is in debt, Rider has been off his head, if he isn't so still, Stall is a blackmailer, and as for Norris—the fellow's a writer and a neurotic, and I wouldn't trust him an inch. What is one to think?”

“We can only fall back on what we saw for ourselves.”

“And that was Mary Thurston, lying murdered in a locked room, from which no one could have escaped by the window because there was no time, or by any other way, because there was no place.”

“Yet time and place are a murderer's tools,” said Mgr. Smith, “that is—if he's a clever murderer.”

Once more I ignored him. “We've got no fact to go on. If we only knew who took out the electric light bulb, we should be progressing.”

“Do you think so?” chirruped Mgr. Smith. “Because there was practised a crime on the light, I don't see why it should necessarily be a light on the crime.”

“Really!” I said, for this was beginning to exasperate me.

Sergeant Beef, I noticed, was fumbling with his unnecessarily large note-book. He coughed impartially. “Now that those amateur gentlemen's gone,” he said at last, “there's one or two questions as I should like to ask.”

Williams smiled kindly. “Really, Beef? And of whom would you like to ask them?”

“Of you, sir. And of this gentleman.” He indicated me.

“Fire away, then” said Williams. “Only do remember it's nearly midnight.”

“Well, sir, it's not me as ‘as kept you here till this hour, talking about flags and ‘arf-mast, and son-in-laws, and ‘eaven knows what else that's got nothing to do with the murder. I've ‘ad to wait to ask my questions. First of all—“ he licked his pencil, “first of all, I understand you was talking about murder mysteries before dinner last night. Do you ‘appen to remember 'oo started that conversation?”