Ellis Peters - George Felse 02 - Death and the Joyful Woman (14 page)

No doubt about it, Leslie had left The Jolly Barmaid that night with no intention of doing anything more reprehensible than walking home. That was what he had meant to do, and that was what he had done; the collier’s evidence proved that quite conclusively. There was no question of his having hung about outside and witnessed Kitty’s panic flight, and then returned to finish the job she had accidentally begun. He had been in Comerbourne at that moment, a mile and a quarter away from the scene. If he had killed he had gone back to kill, and the intent had been conceived as instantaneously as a flash of lightning—or, say, a cry for help. A cry from Kitty.

George had arrived at this point when it dawned upon him at last that he was thinking in terms which indicated that he no longer entertained the slightest doubt of Kitty’s innocence. Whether that was Kitty’s own doing or Dominic’s was something he couldn’t determine. But it didn’t surprise him; he was only belatedly recognising something which had been true for at least twenty-four hours.

Not Kitty. Someone else. Someone to whom she had telephoned from Wood’s End? Supposing, for the sake of the argument, that someone had found out from an agitated Kitty that Armiger was lying unconscious in the barn, and supposing that someone had, or abruptly discovered at that moment, an overwhelming reason for wanting the job finished. There was Kitty all set up ready to take the blame, and herself alerting the murderer to his unique opportunity. A chance like that comes only once in a lifetime.

It was Kitty herself who had put the idea into George’s head, without the slightest conception of the kind of seed she was sowing, merely clutching at a small satisfaction in her desolation of sadness: “If I’m convicted I can’t inherit from my victim, can I? So what becomes of the money?” And again, reassured and consoled: “Good! Then Leslie and Jean won’t have to worry any more, they’ll be loaded.”

The set-up, however accidental, was perfect. It didn’t even involve the killer in conniving at Kitty’s death, since, as she had said, this wasn’t capital murder; but the division of murder into capital and simple murder did not affect the law that a murderer cannot inherit from his victim. Kitty convicted could forfeit her inheritance and still come out of prison at the end of her term a rich and comparatively young woman. With a quarter of a million at stake he might even have been able to persuade himself that he wasn’t doing her such a terrible wrong. That much money can often drown out the voice of conscience only too effectively.

There had been, in fact, only two snags when George had set out to pay this unexpected Sunday morning visit. Leslie had no car he could have taken out that night to hurry back to the barn; and as he had so suggestively reported Kitty herself as reminding them, he wasn’t on the telephone any more. He could be reached only during working hours, at the warehouse. Insurmountable obstacles both; except that one of them had already been surmounted, for it seemed he had the use of Barney Wilson’s van whenever its owner didn’t need it. The spare key was in his charge and the van was close at hand in the yard of the depot. Now if the other obstacle should prove equally illusory?

The thing had been getting more complicated by the hour, and yet George had felt all along that in reality the truth must be one single thread that passed through the tangle as straight as a ruled line, and only by accident formed part of this proliferated web of motives and feelings. And here it was, the clear thread, the convincing motive, the irresistible temptation. A man who has a quarter of a million in his sights can afford to turn down a mere six hundred pounds.

But—Leslie wasn’t on the telephone.

DOMINIC SOUGHT out his father on Sunday evening with a face so determined that it was plain he was bent on a serious conference. Bunty had gone to church; George wouldn’t have minded having her sit in on their counsels, but in all probability Dominic would, considering that mothers should be shielded from too close consideration of such shocking things as murder. In his present mood of newly appreciated responsibility he probably blamed George for subjecting her to his confidences all these years.

“Dad, I’ve been thinking about this glove business,” he began, squaring his elbows purposefully on the table opposite George’s chair.

“Yes?” said George. It was not the precise opening he had expected, but it was apposite enough; there was no getting away from the gloves.

“You know what I mean. Those gloves of Leslie’s were O.K., but somebody must have had some pretty fouled-up gloves to dispose of after that night, mustn’t they? The bottle was plastered right to the cork. And I could tell, the way you all pounced on even the possibility of those old painting gloves being the ones, that that was what you were looking for and hoping for. I mean, anything else the murderer had on
might
be marked, but his gloves definitely
would
—and he definitely was wearing gloves. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. So?”

“Well, you never did say, but was Kitty wearing gloves that night?” He didn’t ask it with any sense that the answer was going to prove anything, he wasn’t as simple as that. But it was a necessary part of the development of his ideas.

“Not indoors,” said George at once. “But she could very well have had some in the car. When she was dressed up for the evening she’d probably wear them for driving.”

“Yes—but you’ve never found any stained gloves among her things.” He didn’t ask, he asserted, waiting with sharp eyes levelled for a reaction, and whatever he got satisfied him. “Well, bearing this glove question in mind, I’ve been thinking exactly what happened that evening. If I’ve got it right, she dashed out of the barn to run home, and in a few hundred yards she ran out of petrol. There she is in a panic, she thinks she’s done something dreadful, injured him badly, maybe even fatally, she’s got to get away, she daren’t call a garage or anything. She runs to the telephone box and calls up some friend she can trust, says where she is, says come and bring me some petrol, a can, or even a tube to siphon it, anything, just to get me home. Don’t say a word to anyone, she says, and come quickly. I’ve done something terrible. And she blurts out all about it; she’d be in such a state she wouldn’t be able to help it. Now suppose this person she calls has good reason to want Armiger dead. He might not ever have thought of doing anything about it until now, but now it suddenly strikes him, this is it, this is for me! There’s Armiger knocked cold in the barn, a sitting target if only he stays out until I can get round there, and there’s somebody else all lined up to take the blame. I don’t say he’s absolutely made up his mind to kill him, but it’s just too good to miss having a close look at the set-up. Obviously there are risks, he may only have been knocked out for a few minutes, he may be conscious by the time this fellow gets there, he may even have gone. But what is there lost if he is? If he’s gone, that’s it. If he’s up off the floor and hugging his headache all you need do is fake concern, help him to his car, and go off and reassure Kitty. And if Armiger’s still lying where Kitty left him, and still dead to the world—well, there you are, a chance in a million.

“So he goes all right, he goes like a shot off a shovel, not to Kitty but to the barn. And sure enough, there’s Armiger still out cold, and the chance in a million has come off.”

“Go on,” said George quietly, studying the intent face that stared back at him across the table. However hotly they both denied it, there must be something in this likeness Bunty was always finding between them, especially when they annoyed her. It was like having a mirror held up to his own mind. Often enough before, when the same interest had preoccupied them both, he had found Dominic hard on his heels at every check, like an echo; but now he was no longer sure who was the echo and who the initiator. “Go on, let’s see what you can do with the details.”

“I can fit them in,” said Dominic. “All of them. This fellow’s all keyed up for action, but he hasn’t really believed in it until then. No weapon, you see, no real preparations. That would be like tempting providence. He’s wearing gloves simply because he’s been driving on a coldish night. Now he takes the chance that’s really been offered to him at last. The minute he comes in at the door and sees Armiger still lying there, he grabs at the nearest weapon he sees—the plaster statuette from the alcove just on the right of the door. I heard you say what they were like, and how surprisingly light and hollow they turned out to be. He snatches it up to brain Armiger with that, but heaves it away again in disgust on the spot because it’s such a silly, light thing it couldn’t brain a mouse. It smashes against the wall, and he rushes up the stairs and grabs the bottle instead, and lets fly with that again and again until it smashes, too. And then he comes to his senses with Armiger pretty obviously dead, and he’s got to get rid of the traces. Especially the gloves. And quickly, that’s the point. Within a few hundred yards of where he is he’s got to jettison those gloves. Because, you see, he’s got to go on to Kitty and get her off the scene as he promised, otherwise whoever doesn’t connect him with it when the murder comes out,
she will
. The whole beauty of the set-up is that
nobody
shall know. He can afford to let the police find their own way to Kitty. He can’t afford to leave her or her car where they are, and have her picked up in circumstances so tight that she’ll have to come out with the whole story, and say: ‘I called so-and-so to come and help me, and he swore he would, but he never came.’ Because even if that didn’t give her ideas, it would certainly give them to you people, wouldn’t it?”

“We shouldn’t be likely to miss the implications,” agreed George.

“He may not actually have planned on forcing Kitty to take the blame. If the chips fell that way, there she was. But probably he hadn’t anything against her, and rather preferred that she should get away with it, too—as long as he was all right, of course. Anyhow, he had to go through with the rescue part of it as though he’d rushed straight to her. This part in the barn can’t have taken many minutes, he wasn’t long delayed. So he’d got to get rid of the gloves. He’d got to meet Kitty, talk to her, handle the petrol can. He couldn’t afford to leave blood about in the wrong places, or let Kitty see it and take alarm. He daren’t put the gloves in his pocket or anywhere in his own car, they’d be certain to leave marks. So you see, what it boils down to is that he’d got to jettison them or hide them somewhere
before he met Kitty
.”

“You have thought it out, haven’t you?” said George. “Go on, how does he get rid of them?”

“There’s not too much scope and not too much time, is there? He hadn’t time to go far from the road, he had to stay out of sight of Kitty. He lets himself out of the barn carefully, closing the door with his left hand, because that glove wouldn’t be so saturated, it might only be splashed here and there. I don’t think he’d leave the gloves anywhere inside, even if there was a hiding-place, because of the door handle. Better smears of blood on it than fingerprints. Then he peels off the gloves, letting them turn inside-out as he pulls them off, and probably rolling the right one inside the left, to get the cleanest outer surface he can. I’ve been over the ground, there’s a drain grid close to the back of the barn, that’s tempting, but too obvious, because unless there was a strong flow of water going down, and there wasn’t, gloves would lodge under the grid, and anyhow it’s the first place the police would look—”

“The first place they did look. After the barn itself, of course. Go on.”

“Then there’s just the road, the hedge-banks and ditches, and the hanging wood opposite. Seems obvious, but I should think it takes an awful lot of men an awful long time to search the whole of a wood that size, or even just the strip alongside the road—because he hadn’t time to go very far inside. And all the ground there is so covered with generations of leaf-mould, they could hunt and hunt, and still might miss what they were looking for. Anyhow, that’s what I should have done, rushed up into the wood and shoved them somewhere down among the mould. And then he goes on to Kitty’s rescue, arriving all steamed up and concerned for her, dumps the petrol in her tank for her, and tells her to go home and not worry, she’s making a fuss about nothing, the old fool’s sure to be all right. And Kitty—you said she was wearing a dress with a wide skirt—she’s so relieved to see him she keeps close to him all the time they’re there together, and her skirt brushes against his trouser legs, where the blood’s splashed—and a drop falls from his sleeve on her shoe. In the dark there neither of them would know. And that’s it, all your evidence. Have I missed anything out?”

George had to own that he had not; he had accounted for everything.

“You’re quite sure he must have killed Armiger before he sent Kitty home, and not after?”

“Well, of course! He wouldn’t stay unconscious for ever. If this chap had gone first to Kitty I doubt if he’d ever have had the impetus or the nerve left to go back and look if opportunity was still waiting for him.”

He had seemed utterly sure of himself until he came to the end, but when George sat thoughtfully silent he couldn’t stand the strain. He’d poured out all his hopes into that exposition, and he was trembling when it was done. His eyes, covertly hanging upon George’s face, pleaded for a sign of encouragement, and the brief silence unnerved him. If he’d only known it, George was still staring into a mirror.

“Well, say something!” burst out Dominic, his voice quaking with tension. “Damn you, you just
sit
there! You don’t care if they send Kitty to prison for life, as long as you get a conviction. You don’t care whether she did it or not, that doesn’t matter. You’re not doing
anything
!”

George, coming out of his abstraction with a start, took his son by the scruff of the neck and shook him, gently enough to permit them both to pretend that the gesture was a playful one, hard enough to indicate that it wasn’t. The flow stopped with a gasp; in any case the onslaught had shocked Dominic a good deal more than it had George.

“That’s enough of that. You hold your horses, my boy.”

“Well, I know, I’m sorry! But you
do
just sit there! Aren’t you going to give me
anything
back for all that?”

“Yes, a thick ear,” said George, “if you start needling me. If you’d been anywhere near that wood of yours since noon to-day you’d have found it about as full of policemen as it’ll hold, all looking for your gloves—as they’ve been doing in various places, more or less intensively, ever since we were sure there must have been gloves involved. Maybe we’re not as sure as you that they’ll be in a logical place, but we’re just as keen as you are to find them. We even have open minds, believe it or not, on such minor points as whether a few small smears of blood on the hem of a dress are really adequate—in the circumstances. You’re not the only one who can connect, my lad. We’d even like to know
who
it was she called that night. You be working on that one, and let me know when you’ve got the answer.”

He was aware, by the sharpness and intelligence of the silence that followed, that if he had not said too much he had been understood too well. Dominic resettled his collar with great dignity, studying his father intently from the ambush of a composed and inscrutable face.

So it’s like that, said the bright, assuaged eyes. I
see
!
They
may be looking for the gloves to clinch their case, but
you
’re not, you’re looking for them to break it. You don’t believe she did it! What did I tell you? I knew you’d come round to my way of thinking in the end. He was understandably elated by the knowledge, comforted by not being alone any longer in his faith, but there was something else going on behind the carefully sustained calm of that freckled forehead, something less foreseeable and a good deal more disturbing. He was glad to have an ally, and yet he fixed upon him a look that was far from welcoming. He saw too much, recognised his own sickness with too sharp a sensitivity in someone else, and most penetratingly of all in his father. He’d longed for an ally, but he didn’t want a rival.

“I am working on it,” said Dominic deliberately. “What’s more, I think I’m on to the answer.” But he did not say that he was going to share it, with his father or anyone. Saint George had sighted another banner on the horizon. It was going to be a race for the dragon.