Frequent Hearses (17 page)

Thus Humbleby meditated, while he munched sandwiches and gulped beer. And the urgent problem, he saw, was how far-reaching this vendetta was likely to be. Since it included Nicholas, thanks to the
Mercury’s
informative ways, it would presumably be bound to include Madge as well. And further than that? Well, it might prove to be a vendetta in the strict sense of the word—an indiscriminate attack on the entire family, regardless of whether they had harmed Gloria Scott or no. In that case, Humbleby reflected, it was going to be very difficult to deal with indeed. Better, on the whole, assume that the poisoners malevolence was directed against specific people until events proved otherwise… And upon this callous decision—since the “events” he contemplated would almost certainly be homicidal—Humbleby finished his viands, pushed the tray aside, and began repacking his chemicals and apparatus. The next step, anyway, was clear: he must find out what opportunity there had been for poisoning Nicholas’ medicine.

In the event, however, this enterprise was slightly delayed. Humbleby met Nicholas coming up the stairs to report a telephone call from the police at Doon Island.

“Ah, yes, I asked them to ring me back as soon as they’d made sure Miss Crane was all right,” said Humbleby.

Nicholas turned and they went down to the hall together.

“You’ve completed your tests?” Nicholas enquired.

“Yes.”

“And the result? Or mayn’t I ask?”

“Of course you may. After all, it does concern you very intimately… The bottle of medicine you gave me was in fact poisoned.”

“With this colchicine muck?”

“Yes.”

Nicholas whistled.

“Well, at least I know where I am now,” he said wryly. “What happens next?”

“I must talk to you about opportunity for poisoning the medicine. Are you nearly at the end of dinner?”

“Yes. We’ve been gobbling away in an unsociable silence. I can be with you as soon as you’ve finished talking on the phone. We’ll have some coffee in the boudoir—that’s that door there.”

Inspector Berkeley, on Doon Island, seemed disposed to be chatty.

“Yes, she’s as safe as houses,” he said in answer to Humbleby’s first query. “I interviewed her personally—luscious bit of flesh, isn’t she?”

Humbleby frowned at this familiarity; he did not, he said, want to waste time evaluating the merely aphrodisiac properties of the girl. What had happened at the interview?

“Well, I told her there was a possibility she was in danger,” pursued Berkeley, chastened, “and to be short about it, she just laughed at me.”

“Good heavens above, you can’t have been very impressive with her, can you? Had she seen the
Mercury?”

“Oh, yes. There was a copy there in the room. She was pretty brazen about it all, but I could see she was on edge.”

“With your discernment, you should have been a psychiatrist.”

“Yes, but it’s a useful gift when you’re in the Force, too,” said Berkeley, unaware of the irony. “She was on edge all right. And of course, when I say she laughed at me, I don’t mean she actually
laughed.”

“No. You just put that bit in to confuse me.”

“She wasn’t in a
jolly
mood, that’s to say. And small wonder, if you ask me.”

“Small wonder indeed,” said Humbleby heavily, “with a libidinous flatfoot like you goggling at her.”

“Hey,” said Berkeley indignantly. “That’s a slander…” A new thought struck him. “I tell you what, though. Her legs are a disappointment.”

“With your imaginings, you’d probably find any real pair of legs a disappointment… This is serious, man.
Did you manage to impress on her that she’s got to look after herself?
Since I phoned you first, new evidence has come up which makes it even more urgent. She really is in very grave danger of being killed.”

“Cripes,” said Berkeley soberly. “Well, all I can say is that I did my best.”

“You warned her about food and drink and medicines and that sort of thing?”

“Yes, I did that. I don’t think that she’s going to pay any attention, though.”

“And even if she does, we can’t just leave it at that. Our X may try a more direct approach. You must have a man stationed outside the house night and day.”

“Right,” said Berkeley briskly. “I’ll deal with that at once. Anything else?”

“Let’s see… Is the house burglar-proof?”

“Far from it. It’s only a little cottage.”

“Well, try and see to it that she locks the doors and shuts the windows when she goes to bed. You can’t force her to, of course, but with a little tact you may be able to manage it… Oh, look here, I’d better telephone her myself.”

“You can try, but I doubt if you’ll get through. The thing rang three times while I was with her, and she didn’t answer it once. Seems to be a policy.”

“Blast the girl. Well, I can’t spare the time to come down and argue with her, so you’ll have to take complete responsibility. I’ll get the A.C. to contact your Chief Constable so that you can have all the men and facilities you need.”

“Oh, for God’s sake don’t do that,” wailed Berkeley. “I don’t want Sir Cyril hanging round the station all day. I can manage it easily on my own. It’s a slack time here.”

“All right, then… Oh, now I come to think of it, you’d better have two men at the cottage: one to follow her—in a car, if necessary—whenever she goes out.”

“She’s not going to like that, you know. What do I do if she turns nasty?”

“Stick to your guns—but politely, of course. If she makes a fuss at a higher level, I’ll shoulder the blame… Is she alone?”

“No. Got her secretary with her. Grim, hatchet-faced female. As far as I can gather, the secretary’s doing all the cooking and whatnot.”

“Mm. Get her on your side if you can. And for the Lord’s sake, Berkeley, don’t trip up on the job. There’s a murderer loose, and if he gets a chance at Madge Crane there’ll be a national uproar.”

And that, thought Humbleby as he replaced the receiver, is about as much as, I can do along those lines. Now for Nicholas.

Nicholas, it was obvious, had devoted the interregnum of Humbleby’s telephoning to putting his evidence in order. After a brief, incurious enquiry as to his sister’s safety he embarked on it.

“The first thing,” he said, “is that my flat is practically impossible to break into. And up to the time I left it this afternoon it hadn’t been broken into, I can assure you of that.”

“Good. And then?”

“Well, as you know, Thursday was the night of the wretched party, so I suppose I’d better start from there. After Gloria had gone, I locked up the flat and went to bed. And early on Friday I came on here; when I get sick of my own company I sometimes do that, and stay a night or two, and I wasn’t feeling at all fond of my own company after that ghastly business with Gloria.”

“Let me get just one thing clear: you’re not working at the moment?”

“Not apart from
The Unfortunate Lady
conferences, no. I’m between films.”

“Just so. Go on, then.”

“Well, the thing is, you see, that there are burglar alarms on the door and windows of the flat; they ring in the porter’s office on the ground floor, and there’s always a man there. The fellow who had the flat before me was a diamond merchant, and it was him had the alarms installed. I always switch them on when I go away from the flat for more than a few hours, because I’ve got one or two pictures—a Cezanne and a Picasso—that’d be quite worth stealing… Anyway, what it all amounts to is that up to the time I went back to the flat—that’s to say, Saturday afternoon, after Maurice’s death—no one could possibly have got at that medicine. And
after
that, for reasons I needn’t go into in detail, no one could have got at it till this morning.”

“This morning, then: how was it accessible this morning?”

“I told you I’ve been having my meals out, didn’t I? Yes. Well, this morning I got up early and strolled up to a sort of snack-bar place in North Row for breakfast. They do you delicious home-made sausages there, with little crisp bits of raw onion in them… However.

“The point is that I didn’t shut the front door of the flat properly. When I got back I found it was open—not wide open, mind you, but not latched. At first I imagined someone might have got hold of a duplicate key somehow, but then it struck me that if someone had, they’d certainly have been careful to close the door properly when leaving, so as not to suggest that the place had been entered; and besides, I remembered vaguely—the way one does—that the door hadn’t clicked properly when I shut it on the way out.”

“You mentioned duplicate keys. Are there any?”

“Only the one my servant has. And he’s been away on holiday for the past week, and I got his key off him before he went. Here it is, with mine.” Nicholas produced a key-ring, and displayed two elaborate, identical Yale keys. “As you can see, it’s a very special sort of lock—that’s the jewel merchant’s doing again—and I think any other keys besides these two are out of the question. What’s more, I can guarantee that these haven’t been out of my possession for a single moment.”

Humbleby nodded. “Good enough. When did you leave the flat for breakfast and how long were you away?”

“I can remember that. I left at almost exactly seven a.m. and I got back at almost exactly eight.”

“And you looked round, no doubt, to see if anything had been disturbed?”

“I most certainly did. But there was nothing out of place that I could discover. And in any case my policy was not to eat or drink anything that was kept in the flat, so it was just a question of carrying on with that. There was no proof, of course, that anyone had entered the flat at all.”

“Did you ask your porter about that?”

“Yes. But he was shut up in his room—they aren’t expected to hang about the entrance hall all day—and wouldn’t have seen or heard anyone go in or out. So that was no help.”

Humbleby consumed his thimbleful of black coffee, asked for more, and, having received it, lit a cheroot. “And then?”

“Well, after that our poisoner didn’t get another chance till I arrived here.”

“When was that?”

“About five this afternoon.”

“And what sort of a chance did he have then?”

“I unpacked and dozed for a bit on the bed. Then about six I came downstairs—I should think it must have been about an hour later when it suddenly occurred to me that it wasn’t very sensible to leave the medicine lying about in my bedroom for anyone to get at. So I went up and locked it away; and it stayed locked away till I got it out to give to you.”

“Then what it all adds up to,” said Humbleby slowly, “is this: colchicine could have been introduced into the medicine
either
before your party and Miss Scott’s suicide,
or
between seven and eight this morning,
or
between six and seven this evening. Is that right?”

“Perfectly. And presumably number one can be ruled out.”

“I think so, yes.”

“And number two as well? The
Mercury
didn’t appear till three this afternoon, and I take it the attempt to poison me was a result of the publication of that unfortunate letter.”

Humbleby considered acquainting him with his theory of a literal vendetta, and decided against it; it was not a contingency which he liked to contemplate himself.

“That is probable,” he agreed. “So by far our likeliest time is between six and seven this evening. Now, just what were X’s chances of getting at the medicine then and remaining unseen?”

They had been considerable, he elicited; and subsequent questioning of Eleanor, David, Medesco and the servants confirmed this. The overgrown condition of the estate made an unobtrusive approach to the house perfectly feasible; at any one of a dozen open doors and windows an outsider could have made his entry; and inside, there were innumerable places where he could have concealed himself in an emergency. A very vulnerable place, Humbleby reflected, with the vendetta theory nagging at the back of his mind; the only snag was how, without searching all the bedrooms (a perilous though not impossible course),
X
could have known where Nicholas was sleeping—for the Cranes had only occupied the house for a few months, and the location of Nicholas’ room could not have been at all widely known, except to the family and domestic staff. However, an enterprising person could have solved that problem without excessive difficulty; and the strength of those who killed for vengeance rather than gain, as well as their weakness, was that commonly they were prepared to run abnormal risks…

It was after eleven when at last Humbleby took his departure. Nicholas walked out with him to his car. The rain was temporarily holding off, and here and there a drowned star winked blearily through a gap in the clouds. The gravel was loud underfoot, and an accumulation of water gurgled and dripped in the gutters. Humbleby was by this time thoroughly exhausted—and so also, he guessed, was Nicholas, for the
tic
on his check had become more frequent and pronounced, and at each spasm his face screwed up with the pain.

“Well, that’s that,” he said. “And I hope you’re able to make sense of it, because I don’t want to go in fear of sudden death for the rest of my days… By the way, have you any idea how the
Mercury
got hold of that bloody letter?”

Humbleby told him.

“Why my idiot sister didn’t burn the thing,” he commented when the story was finished, “I simply cannot imagine. But women are like that. They can none of them ever bring themselves to destroy anything.”

Humbleby opened tire car door and climbed in. Through the window he said:

“And you’re quite certain you don’t want police protection? It can easily be arranged.”

“No, I can look after myself, thanks. I’ve got my pistol, I shall sleep with my bedroom door locked, and from now on I’ll do all my eating and drinking at pubs in Aylesbury.”

“Then you’re going to stay on here?”

“For a day or two, till I see how things turn out.”

Humbleby grunted. “Well, be careful. For the Lord’s sake, be careful.”

“Don’t worry,” said Nicholas, laughing. “I’ve no intention of dying yet awhile… Good night.”

Humbleby drove off. Once, just before trees and bushes screened the carriageway finally from the house, he looked back. Beneath the wan, fluctuating bulb outside the pedimented front door Nicholas was standing alone and motionless, his hands thrust hard into the pockets of his obtrusively well-cut dinner jacket, staring blankly after the retreating car…