Frequent Hearses (23 page)

He had, of course, no reason for supposing that Judy would be at the Maze’s centre when he got there; she might be anywhere. But the route from the entrance to the centre, once established, would provide a point of reference from which lateral excursions could be made, and prevent him from roaming about at random and getting lost himself; moreover, even his errors constituted a part of the search which had to be made. He has confessed since that he was far from liking the atmosphere of the place, and that although for obvious reasons he was not so strongly affected by the story as was Judy, Dr. James’ ill-advised jewel-hunter kept incongruous company with the egregious Harris in the literary quarters of his mind. He was, however, methodically active, and this kept his imagination in check, as also did the much more tangible danger of an assault by X. To proceed soundlessly was, he soon discovered, quite impracticable, and he therefore abandoned caution in favour of speed. This made him unpleasantly vulnerable, but there was no help for it. Often he stopped still and listened before pressing on again between the interminable high hedges; twice—in view of the fact that his presence must long ago have been perceived—he called Judy’s name. Silence alone answered him; and he grew sick with misgiving.

Though he attempted to apply it too soon, and was temporarily led astray in consequence, his guess about the second part of the Maze’s formula proved to be correct, and in due course he came to the centre. Against all expectation, the string had lasted wonderfully—there seemed to be miles of it, and Fen blessed the ironmonger who had pressed it on him with sophistries about the most expensive being always the cheapest in the end. He was, indeed, negligently blessing the ironmonger at the moment when, on the point of investigating the Maze’s centre, he was struck down by a blow on the back of the head.

He estimates that he was probably unconscious for between five and ten minutes. In retrospect his view of this episode is cool and detached, but he is not the man to suffer pain stoically, and there can be little doubt that at the time he was mightily aggrieved. When he came round, dazedly and painfully, among the soaking brambles and weeds, his first coherent thought was for his life-line, and he was not much surprised to find it gone: X had beaten a retreat and taken it with him to delay pursuit. He was not, however, excessively upset by this circumstance; it was an eventuality which he had all along considered possible, and having grasped the principle on which the Maze had been planted, he was confident of his ability to get out of it again. His torch remained, and after collecting it he got dizzily to his feet, fondling the back of his head and noting with a certain sour gratification that there was no blood. In another half-minute he had found Judy.

She was lying unconscious, her face muddy and paper-white, but as far as he could see she was not injured in any way. Presently, having sat down beside her for a minute or two in order to give his head a chance to spin itself to a standstill, Fen put her across his shoulder and tottered away with her. Before searching for her he had taken the precaution of marking, by means of a handkerchief tied to a twig, the particular alley by which he had come to the centre, and with that initial signpost there was, as he had anticipated, no serious difficulty in finding the way out. The Maze behind him, he was guided back to the drive by the headlamps of his car, which he had left burning.

And by a quarter to ten he and Judy were in sanctuary at Lanthorn House.

All that night the windows of Lanthorn House blazed with light, and there was a confused, interminable coming and going of doctors, policemen and, in the last stages, newspaper reporters. Fen, having made sure that Judy was safe and unharmed, grew irritable at the inconclusiveness of what was being done, and departed in Lily Christine shortly after midnight; his adventure had left him feeling distinctly unwell, and his interest in the case was submerged in an overwhelming desire to go home and to bed. But the routine of investigation went on until daybreak. At the start, Humbleby was in charge of it; he had been summoned from London and had driven to Aylesbury with all possible speed. Latterly, however, he was absent, since at two in the morning a distraught Inspector Berkeley telephoned through from Doon Island to tell him that Madge Crane was dead.

At five o’clock on the afternoon of the following day, which was the Wednesday, Fen sat and drank tea with Humbleby in Humbleby’s room at New Scotland Yard.

It was a small room, solidly but austerely furnished. Its windows, high up in a corner of the building, looked towards Parliament and the river. A small but vehement gas-fire warmed it. Humbleby was in the swivel-chair behind the broad oak desk, and Fen, his head bandaged in a needlessly dramatic and elaborate fashion, was in the chair reserved for visitors, his long legs resting irreverently on a corner of the desk. Fen is exigent in the matter of sympathy for his afflictions, but he knew that at the moment it was Humbleby who deserved commiseration, and he did not, therefore, as in minor discomforts he normally does, adopt the air and hollow tones of a man precariously convalescing after a severe operation. Instead, he eyed Humbleby compassionately, noting the pallor of his face, the strained lines of his mouth, the blue suffusions of sleeplessness under his eyes, the dishevelment of his usually neat grey hair and the soiled, creased condition of his clothes. Humbleby had laced their tea with rum, and he drank greedily, exhaustedly, gazing out over sooty roofs into the grey March afternoon.

“I’ve just been to see the A.C.,” he said. “He was extremely pleasant, but now Madge Crane has been murdered the case will be front-page news until it’s solved”—he nodded towards the heap of evening papers in front of him—“and in those circumstances I quite realised they’d have to take it away from me. Nothing less than a Chief Inspector will do now. Chichley. Do you know him?”

Fen shook his head.

“A nice fellow, and very able. Still, it’s disappointing. The A.C. made it clear that the transfer didn’t constitute any criticism of me; as he said, I simply haven’t had the time to get down to anything yet. But just the same—”

“Dispiriting, yes,” said Fen; he was fond of Humbleby and thought it a great pity that because of Madge Crane’s stardom he should have to be elbowed out. “How long have you got?”

“Before Chichley takes over? A few hours, I dare say. I really can’t discuss the details with him till I’ve had some sleep.”

“It might,” said Fen, “be possible to wind up the case today.”

“I wish I could believe that, but I’m afraid you’re too optimistic.”

“Perhaps. But shall we make the attempt? Or are you too tired to discuss things for half an hour or so?”

“No. I’m not too tired. We’ll do that. And if you can throw any light on this business, I’ll be eternally grateful. It’s not a question of promotion—I could have had that years ago if I’d wanted it. It’s just that I
detest
leaving any job half-done.”

Fen nodded. “Understandable,” he said briskly. “Let me get my information up to date, then. Nicholas first, and then Madge.”

“Right.” Humbleby finished his tea, leaned back and lit a cheroot. “As far as I can see, I’ve uncovered all the really important facts. I left Doon Island at midday today, you understand, and called in at Lanthorn House before coming back here.”

“And you talked to the girl?”

“To Miss Flecker, you mean? Yes, I did.”

“How is she?”

“Quite recovered, I’m glad to say. And very anxious to see you and thank you for rescuing her. She’s gone back to her flat, and a woman friend is going to sleep with her for a few nights, until she’s recovered from the shock.”

“Her unconsciousness
was
just a faint, I take it.”

“Yes. She must have been horribly overwrought, so it’s not surprising. Brave of her to chase after this fellow, but scarcely sensible. However… she hasn’t, I’m afraid, the smallest notion who it was.”

“And Eleanor Crane—did you talk to her?”

“Not a chance of it. The doctors were—um—adamant. Extraordinary, the way she collapsed when she heard Nicholas was dead.”

“She was very fond of him, then?”

“Doted on him, it seems, though she took care never to show it. And the consequence is that now she’s a dangerous hysteric.”

“Yes,” said Fen. “Let’s get down to business, then. I gather that Nicholas returned to Lanthorn House shortly after eight. Where had he been?”

“Getting an early dinner in Aylesbury. Apparently he travelled there and back by bus. Eating out, you realise, was one of the precautions he was taking against poison.”

“Quite so. And now, the murder and the business in the Maze. Alibis, to start with. How about the people at Lanthorn House?”

“Except for the servants, they’re none of them exempt. Eleanor Crane is assumed to have been indoors all the time, but there’s no proof of it, or, rather, so little that it’s almost valueless. Medesco left at half-past seven to drive back to London, and—”

“Medesco?”

Humbleby explained Medesco’s status in the household, a status of which Fen had not hitherto been aware. “It seems,” he said in conclusion, “that the fellow wasn’t actually staying there, but he’d developed the habit of travelling down quite often and spending the day… I don’t know where these people get all their petrol from.” Humbleby sighed. “Or, rather, I do.”

“And David?”

“He left the house, on foot, shortly after Medesco, at about twenty to eight. According to his own incoherent account, he jumped idiotically to the conclusion that as Miss Flecker hadn’t turned up punctually she wasn’t coming at all—had deliberately stood him up, in fact. So he went out for a walk in the rain, ostensibly to nurse his wounded pride, and didn’t get back from it, as you know, till just before ten. Not at all a reasonable way to carry on, but then, he strikes me as being an exceptionally stupid person.”

“M’m… Well now, the murder itself. What about the knife?”

“An oversized boy-scout affair, not specially uncommon. It had been ground razor-sharp. No fingerprints.”

“Nicholas fired a shot. Do you think he wounded his man?”

“I’m certain he didn’t. We found the bullet in a tree-trunk.”

“A pity. The footprints?”

“Size nine in men’s—a very popular size, unluckily. I’m still waiting for the detailed report to come in, and it’s our best bet at present, because it will certainly give us height and weight, and that will mean only a few hundred thousand suspects instead of several million.”

“Come, come,” said Fen. “That’s surely far too gloomy a view. One can assume, I imagine, that it was someone Nicholas knew.”

Humbleby gave him Judy’s account of the incident, and ended by saying:

“Yes, I suppose Nicholas’s shout of ‘So
you’re
the—’ does suggest someone he knew.”

“And his casual ‘Hello! Enjoying the weather?’ must mean it was someone he wasn’t surprised at finding in the grounds.”

“Well, no, there’s a snag there, I’m afraid. According to Miss Flecker those words weren’t spoken casually. They were spoken
nastily,
as if Nicholas knew straight off why the person was waiting there. So if you think about it you’ll realise that it needn’t necessarily have been someone who had a right in the grounds.”

“Yes, I see,” said Fen slowly. “Do you think it was a man?”

“There’s no conclusive proof—unless you count the footprints, which after all
might
have been made by a woman wearing a man’s shoes—but in view of the head-on way Nicholas was knifed I can’t believe any woman did it.”

“I quite agree. We do make progress, then. A man whom Nicholas knew, of the height and weight the footprints report will specify.”

“It’s a start,” Humbleby admitted without enthusiasm.

“And now,” said Fen, “tell me about Madge.”

Humbleby’s narrative was clear and to the point. Like Maurice, Madge had been killed by colchicine, but in her case the poison had been introduced into a decanter of gin, some of which she had drunk at about nine o’clock the previous evening; and she had died at one-thirty a.m. It seemed that in spite of her protests she had secretly been glad of the surveillance organised by Inspector Berkeley; and the strictness of that surveillance made it quite certain that after nine p.m. on the Monday, when the watch was inaugurated, there had been no opportunity whatever for poisoning the gin. Moreover, at lunch-time on the Monday it was certainly innocuous, since some of it had been drunk without ill-effect. That left some eight hours of the afternoon and early evening to be accounted for. For most of the period Madge Crane had herself been in the sitting-room where the gin was kept, but between six and seven she had gone out for a walk, leaving her secretary, Miss Oughtred, in charge.

“The Oughtred woman,” said Humbleby, “is a sad case. I’m tolerably certain Madge Crane bullied her abominably, but in spite of that she’s horribly upset by the girl’s death. And since in a way she was
responsible
for that death, you see—”

“I don’t see at all,” Fen interposed. “How was she responsible?”

“Well, she gave Madge to understand that the cottage hadn’t been left unguarded for a second, when in fact it had been—and for very much more than a second. And Madge, as I’ve told you, was a great deal more nervous of being poisoned than she pretended: Maurice’s death must have shaken her up. So if the Oughtred woman hadn’t lied to her, stating that she’d never left the cottage, Madge would probably never have touched the gin,
or
any other food and drink that could have been tampered with while the cottage was empty. She fooled Berkeley into thinking that she didn’t believe in the possibility of an attempt to murder her, but from what the Oughtred woman says, she was really rather frightened.”

“But why,” Fen asked, “did Miss Oughtred lie to her?”

Humbleby groaned. “Believe it or not, Miss Oughtred was having an affair with the Doon Island butcher… If you’d
seen
the poor plain creature—she must be forty at least—you’d find that barely credible; but I’ve checked it and it’s true. So as soon as Madge went off for her walk, Miss Oughtred slipped out, met her butcher and stayed with him at least half an hour. She was supposed to be getting the dinner, but apparently it was the sort that doesn’t need watching while it cooks. She got back to the cottage ahead of Madge, and not unnaturally didn’t mention her rendezvous; she knew Madge would not only sneer at her pathetic liaison, but also put a stop to it. Madge was that sort of person. So she kept silent. And now Madge is dead, of course, and as Miss Oughtred realises that the colchicine must have been put in the gin while she was away spooning between six and seven on Monday evening, the poor wretch is in a terrible state about it.”