Frequent Hearses (16 page)

Grimacing, Medesco threw the butt of his cigar into the fire.

“And she realised, no doubt,” he observed, “that if she fought your obvious intention of gerrymandering her out of her contract, you’d see to it that she never got another. So whether she believed you or whether she thought you were bluffing, it all came to the same thing from her point of view: she was finished in films.”

“Oh, God, I hadn’t thought of that.” Nicholas closed his eyes and with his thumb and forefinger massaged their lids, like a man in the last stages of physical exhaustion. “Well, anyway, you know how it worked out,” he went on after a moment’s pause. “I—I knew she’d be upset, naturally. But I never dreamed she’d take it as badly as she did. Her reaction was so violent and horrible that I could scarcely believe she wasn’t just acting. But her face went grey, it looked pinched and frightful, and you can’t act that sort of thing. When I’d finished she didn’t say anything—anything at all. She just turned and ran out of the flat.

“And then…

“Well, then she went away and killed herself.”

For a long half-minute there was complete silence.

Nicholas’ final words had sounded thin and bloodless in that huge room, and the shadows which on three sides beleaguered the group by the fire seemed now to be darker and more pervasive. Draughts fingered the worn tapestries on the walls, and the effect of the ebb and flow of the light had become mesmeric. You could hear that now it was raining in real earnest; though you could not see it, because the window-panes were as dull and black as if they had been coated with creosote. The balustrade of the mezzanine gallery was ghostly in the upper darkness.

And the drowned girl, it seemed to Humbleby, stood among them as vividly as an actual phantom. Except perhaps for David, everyone there had her in his mind’s eye. A tag from Voltaire drifted irrelevantly into Humbleby’s mind:
“Make love like fools when you are young, and, work like devils when you are old: it is the only way to live”.
And that, it occurred to him, enabled one to diagnose accurately enough what had been the defect in Gloria Scott: while still in her teens she had been an uncompromising
arriviste,
and about such a figure there is something inevitably pathetic and incongruous. First and foremost the young should always concern themselves simply with living, with experiencing. Let them be ambitious, yes; but what is precious—Humbleby had a sentimental liking for this poem of Spender’s which Fen might not have approved—what is precious is never to forget the delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth. And
arrivisme
is always and everywhere a denial of that…

Humbleby pulled himself together. Nebulous, amateurish excursions into mysticism might be all very well, but this was not the moment for them.

“Thank you, Mr. Crane,” he said; and as if the words had been a signal, the group round the fire shifted and broke. David threw aside his magazine. Medesco heaved himself out of his chair and moved his great bulk, not without a certain feline grace, to a position in front of the hearth, where he stood with his hands clasped behind his back. Eleanor, glancing at her watch, excused herself briefly and left the room on some domestic errand. Nicholas got to his feet, replenished his glass with sherry, drank it at a gulp, and filled again. Only Cloud, subdued by what he had heard, and ruminating, perhaps, some opposition between his professional advantage and his personal sense of moral fitness—only Cloud remained motionless.

“Well, that’s that,” Nicholas said with an attempt at levity. “The confessional is now closed for the night, and the repentant sinner will direct three Government documentaries by way of expiation… Is that funny? No, I suppose in the circumstances it isn’t.”

Humbleby was regarding him speculatively.

“I think,” he said, “that I must have missed Professor Fen’s warning to you.”

“Warning?” Nicholas echoed vaguely.

“You said earlier on that on Saturday he advised you to take certain precautions.”

“Oh, that… Yes, he did. He said he thought it’d be a good thing if Madge and I didn’t eat or drink anything except what other people were eating and drinking.”

“And have you been taking his advice?”

“I have, yes. He’s got something of a reputation as a criminologist, I understand, so I thought that probably he had reason for the warning. And besides that, he said another thing which made me decide that he must be rather a perceptive sort of person.”

“What was that?”

“A plain hint that he’d guessed there was hanky-panky about Gloria’s contract. It can’t possibly have been anything
except
a guess, but it was an uncomfortably accurate one.”

“And did you pass on his warning to your sister?”

“I did. But I doubt if she’s been paying any attention to it. She’s probably reached that stage of megalomania at which you begin to fancy you’re immortal. And in any case,” Nicholas added, dropping to a more prosaic level, “she’s one of those people who quite automatically do the opposite of what they’re advised to do. If I wanted her to go to Iceland for a holiday, I should tell her that the sunshine of Italy was what she needed, and the next thing I knew she’d be at Reykjavik or the North Pole, chucking soap into geysers for the benefit of the newsreel cameras.”

“I see… What precautions have you yourself taken?”

“Well, I’ve been having all my meals and drinks out, at restaurants and bars, that’s really what it amounts to. And even before you found out that Maurice’s tonic had been poisoned, I gave up taking my own medicine… Look here, Inspector, was Maurice’s death an act of revenge?”

“I can’t say more than I said before, sir, and that is that there’s a fifty-fifty chance it was.”

Nicholas considered this. “Then let’s suppose that thanks to the
Mercury
the poisoner wants to get at me as well. He can’t put his stuff in the drinks at my flat without breaking open the sideboard, because the woman who cleans for me is slightly dipso, and I have to keep them locked up. He
can
put it in the odds and ends of food and drink I keep there, and he
can
put it in my medicine—provided, of course, that he can get into the flat… As a matter of fact, I’ve got the medicine with me… No, no, I’m not intending to
take
it, my dear chap. But I’ve got a chemist friend in Aylesbury and it occurred to me to ask him to test it for me. One does like to know where one stands. I forgot to take it to him on the way down here, but I can drop it in tomorrow morning.”

“If you care to let me have it, sir, I can test it for colchicine straight away.”

“Test it for
what?”

“Colchicine. That’s what killed your brother.”

“Damned if I’ve ever heard of it.”

“It’s rare, certainly. And even if your medicine has been poisoned, that particular toxin may not have been used—though poisoners usually tend to stick to their formula.”

“It’s like a dream, isn’t it?” said Nicholas a little dazedly. “Dispassionate, civilised chat about whether someone is trying to kill one or not… Well, I’ll get you the medicine. When you say you can test it straight away do you mean here and now?”

“If you can give me a room to work in.”

“Yes, of course we can. I’ll consult Mamma about it. Oh, here she is now. Mother, the Inspector wants a room to do chemical experiments in.”

“Good heavens.” Eleanor Crane’s astonishment was pleasantly artificial. “Not trying to isolate bloodstains, surely?”

Nicholas explained the position to her and she nodded. “Yes,” she said, “that can certainly be managed. There’s a sort of box-room that might do, with a table and a chair and a washbasin and a gas fire that works. You must have a look at it, Inspector, and see if it suits you.”

“I’ll fetch the stuff and bring it back here,” said Nicholas, and departed.

“But first, how about dinner?” said Eleanor. “We usually dine at eight, and it’s after nine, and our cook pretends to take pride in the food she serves up, revolting though it generally is, and she’s muttering about giving notice. Inspector, you’ll dine with us, I hope?”

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Humbleby urbanely. “It’s kind of you to ask me, but I’d rather go ahead with this job. Perhaps, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, a sandwich…”

“By all means. Mr. Cloud, you’ll stay, of course?”

The lawyer stood up slowly. His face had a strained, vacant look.

“Thank you, Mrs. Crane, but I should prefer not to,” he said. “In the usual way I don’t allow my personal feelings to intrude upon my business, but in this instance—in this case…”

The little man’s struggle to express himself at once honestly and tactfully was not without dignity. After a fractional hesitation he went on:

“I’m sorry to say that after what I’ve heard I shall never again be able to devote myself wholeheartedly to Mr. Crane’s affairs. And I think, therefore, that it would be best for him to have some other legal adviser. I—if you will pardon me, I’ll leave now, and write to him about it in the morning.”

“I can see your point of view, Mr. Cloud,” said Eleanor gravely, “and I quite sympathise with it.”

“You’re very kind, Mrs. Crane. Very kind… No, please don’t ring. I can let myself out. Good evening, Mrs. Crane. Good evening to you all…”

He bowed himself through the door. And by the time Nicholas returned, David, too, had left—in order, as he was at pains to inform them, to wash his hands in readiness for the impending meal. The medicine proved to be a milky fluid in the usual graded bottle; about a third of it had been used.

“What is it prescribed for?” Humbleby asked.

Nicholas grinned. “What they call nervous dyspepsia—though when I look at poor old Evan George, with all his bellyaches, I feel quite ashamed of making a fuss about it… I imagine it’s mostly bicarbonate. That’s what it tastes like, anyway.

“Ah. Well, I’ll get my bag out of my car, and then, if you’d be so kind as to show me to this room…”

Ten minutes later he was alone there. It was small, bare and inhospitable, high up among the attics, but quite suitable for his purpose. Beyond its uncurtained windows, in a darkness unrelieved by moon or stars, the tops of tall trees sighed and whispered in the steady downpour. The aged but mercurial butler brought him substantial quantities of sandwiches and beer.

“Some scandal, eh?” he said affably. “Driving poor honest working girls to suicide. But that’s the boss class all over.”

“Miss Scott worked only spasmodically,” said Humbleby, “and there is no evidence that she was honest.”

The butler ignored this. “But Mr. Maurice, ’e got what was coming to ‘im,” he observed. “Seduced er, ’e did. Droy de saygnur, that’s what they called it in the bad old days of laysez-feer—I dare say you don’t know French, so I’ll translate that for you. It means working girls being forced by law to go to bed with the upper classes, see?”

“You know what you’re like?” said Humbleby. “You’re like some ghastly relic left over from the earliest origins of the Fabian Movement.”

The butler ignored this, too.

“So I can tell what you’re saying to yourself, he pursued. “You’re saying to yourself: ‘Now, ’ow does it come about that a straightforward chap like old Syd Primrose
works
for a lot of degenerate capitalists like the Cranes?’ You’re saying to yourself—”

“I’m saying to myself that I shouldn’t be surprised to find you licking the boots of people who torture little children for the fun of it.”

The butler took this observation in very bad part. His face became suffused with senile fury.

‘You shut yer trap,” he snarled, transported.
“And
keep it shut. Don’t think you can malinger me,” he shouted, “and get away with it. Just you wait till we ’ave the revolution. Just you—”

“You said earlier,” Humbleby pointed out, “that we weren’t going to have a revolution.”

“Never you mind what I said, Mr. Bossy. Castin’ a man’s words in ’is teeth. Spittin’ in a poor old chap’s eye. Why—”

“I’ll boot a poor old chap hard in the backside,” said Humbleby, “if he doesn’t get out of here and leave me alone. For God’s sake, go away and read
The New Statesman
or something. I’m busy.”

The ancient Primrose summoned up his energies for an annihilating blast of invective. None, however, came. It was not that he had thought better of it; rather it was as if he had suddenly lost all recollection of what was being talked about. His face smoothed itself out, and he nodded agreeably.

“So that’s settled, then,” he remarked inconsequently. “Got all you want, ’ave you? You’ve only got to ring if you need anything.” He made for the door and paused there. “About torturing children,” he said earnestly. “I don’t ’old with it.” He adopted a lecture-room posture, one finger upraised. “Now—”

“Get,” said Humbleby, “out.”

Primrose went.

Thereupon Humbleby settled down to work. He enjoyed playing with chemicals, and applied himself single-mindedly to the task in hand. From his case he took test-tubes, nitric acid, sulphuric acid and caustic potash, and for ten minutes was pleasantly occupied with them. Then he sat back and pensively considered the results.

To both the tests he had applied the reaction had been positive. One needed a control experiment, of course, using medicine that was known to be unadulterated; but it was very unlikely that a prescription for dyspepsia would contain any substance capable of provoking the same chemical reactions as colchicine—unlikely, indeed, that any such substance existed. Zeisel’s reaction (which was rather too complicated for Humbleby to perform at the moment) would clinch the matter, but even without that there was no doubt in his mind that Nicholas Crane’s medicine contained colchicine.

It looked, then, as if Fen’s original reading of the case—his interpretation of it as an act of vengeance—might well be correct. But there were two other possibilities—the first, that a murderer unconnected with Gloria Scott had reason for killing Nicholas as well as Maurice; and the second, that Nicholas had killed Maurice from a motive yet to be discovered, and was now attempting to disarm suspicion by simulating a scheme for murdering himself. Neither of these alternatives, however, struck Humbleby as being particularly convincing, since neither accounted for the obliteration of Gloria Scott’s true identity by the ransacking of her rooms in Stamford Street. The girl’s motive for committing suicide was now plain; on no conceivable hypothesis could the invasion of her rooms have helped to keep that motive secret; therefore the Stamford Street affair—unless it were wholly irrelevant and accidental, which Humbleby simply refused to believe—must be connected with the murders. And the only connection which Humbleby could imagine was precisely that which Fen had adumbrated in the first instance—the theory of an avenging murderer, associated with Gloria Scott at the time when she was using her proper name, and anxious (naturally enough) to occlude that connection before initiating his ghastly vendetta.