Hangmans Holiday (24 page)

It seemed to Mrs. Digby that there was a slightly strained atmosphere about dinner, though Betty, pretty as a picture and very much in love with Ronald Proudfoot, made a perfectly charming little hostess. The jarring note was sounded by Mr. Gooch. He ate too noisily, drank far too freely, got on Proudfoot’s nerves and behaved to Mr. Spiller with a kind of veiled insolence which was embarrassing and disagreeable to listen to. She wondered again where he had come from, and why Mr. Spiller put up with him. She knew little about him, except that from time to time he turned up on a visit to “The Pleasaunce,” usually staying there about a month and being, apparently, well supplied with cash. She had an idea that he was some kind of commission agent, though she could not recall any distinct statement on this point. Mr. Spiller had settled down in the village about three years previously, and she had always liked him. Though not, in any sense of the word, a cultivated man, he was kind, generous and unassuming, and his devotion to Betty had something very lovable about it. Mr. Gooch had started coming about a year later. Mrs. Digby said to herself that if ever she was in a position to lay down the law at “The Pleasaunce”—and she had begun to think matters were tending that way—her influence would be directed to getting rid of Mr Gooch.

“How about a spot of bridge?” suggested Ronald Proudfoot, when coffee had been served. It was nice, reflected Mrs. Digby, to have coffee brought in by the manservant. Masters was really a very well-trained butler, though he did combine the office with that of chauffeur. One would be comfortable at “The Pleasaunce.” From the dining-room window she could see the neat garage housing the Wolseley saloon on the ground floor, with a room for the chauffeur above it, and topped off by a handsome gilded weather-vane a-glitter in the last rays of the sun. A good cook, a smart parlourmaid and everything done exactly as one could wish—if she were to marry Mr. Spiller she would be able, for the first time in her life, to afford a personal maid as well. There would be plenty of room in the house, and of course, when Betty was married—

Betty, she thought, was not over-pleased that Ronald had suggested bridge. Bridge is not a game that lends itself to the expression of tender feeling, and it would perhaps have looked better if Ronald had enticed Betty out to sit in the lilac-scented dusk under the yew-hedge by the fountain. Mrs. Digby was sometimes afraid that Betty was the more in love of the two. But if Ronald wanted anything he had to have it, of course, and personally, Mrs. Digby enjoyed nothing better than a quiet rubber. Besides, the arrangement had the advantage that it got rid of Mr. Gooch. “Don’t play bridge,” Mr. Gooch was wont to say. “Never had time to learn. We didn’t play bridge where I was brought up.” He repeated the remark now, and followed it up with a contemptuous snort directed at Mr. Spiller.

“Never too late to begin,” said the latter pacifically.

“Not me!” retorted Mr. Gooch. “I’m going to have a turn in the garden. Where’s that fellow Masters? Tell him to take the whisky and soda down to the fountain. The decanter, mind—one drink’s no good to yours truly.” He plunged a thick hand into the box of Coronas on the side-table, took out a handful of cigars and passed out through the French window of the library on to the terrace. Mr. Spiller rang the bell and gave the order without comment, and presently they saw Masters pad down the long crazy path between the rose-beds and the herbaceous borders, bearing the whisky and soda on a tray.

The other four played on till 10:30, when, a rubber coming to an end, Mrs. Digby rose and said it was time she went home. Her host gallantly offered to accompany her. “These two young people can look after themselves for a moment,” he added, with a conspiratorial smile.

“The young can look after themselves better than the old, these days.” She laughed a little shyly, and raised no objection when Mr. Spiller drew her hand into his arm as they walked the couple of hundred yards to her cottage. She hesitated a moment whether to ask him in, but decided that a sweet decorum suited her style best. She stretched out a soft, beringed hand to him over the top of the little white gate. His pressure lingered—he would have kissed the hand, so insidious was the scent of the red and white hawthorns in her trim garden, but before he had summoned up courage, she had withdrawn it from his clasp and was gone.

Mr. Spiller, opening his own front door in an agreeable dream, encountered Masters.

“Where is everybody, Masters?”

“Mr. Proudfoot left five or ten minutes since, sir, and Miss Elizabeth has retired.”

“Oh!” Mr. Spiller was a little startled. The new generation, he thought sadly, did not make love like the old. He hoped there was nothing wrong. Another irritating thought presented itself.

“Has Mr. Gooch come in?”

“I could not say, sir. Shall I go and see?”

“No, never mind.” If Gooch had been sozzling himself up with whisky since dinner-time, it was just as well Masters should keep away from him. You never knew. Masters was one of these soft-spoken beggars, but he might take advantage. Better not to trust servants, anyhow.

“You can cut along to bed. I’ll lock up.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Oh, by the way, is the fountain turned off?”

“Yes, sir. I turned it off myself, sir, at half-past ten, seeing that you were engaged, sir.”

“Quite right. Good-night, Masters.”

“Good-night, sir.”

He heard the man go out by the back and cross the paved court to the garage. Thoughtfully he bolted both entrances, and returned to the library. The whisky decanter was not in its usual place—no doubt it was still with Gooch in the garden—but he mixed himself a small brandy and soda, and drank it. He supposed he must now face the tiresome business of getting Gooch up to bed. Then, suddenly, he realised that the encounter would take place here and not in the garden. Gooch was coming in through the French window. He was drunk, but not, Mr. Spiller observed with relief, incapably so.

“Well?” said Gooch.

“Well?” retorted Mr. Spiller.

“Had a good time with the accommodating widow, eh? Enjoyed yourself? Lucky old hound, aren’t you? Fallen soft in your old age, eh?”

“There, that’ll do,” said Mr. Spiller.

“Oh, will it? That’s good. That’s rich. That’ll do, eh? Think I’m Masters, talking to me like that?” Mr. Gooch gave a thick chuckle. “Well, I’m not Masters, I’m master here. Get that into your head. I’m master and you damn well know it.”

“All right,” replied Mr. Spiller meekly, “but buzz off to bed now, there’s a good fellow. It’s getting late and I’m tired.”

“You’ll be tireder before I’ve done with you.” Mr. Gooch thrust both hands into his pockets and stood—a bulky and threatening figure—swaying rather dangerously. “I’m short of cash,” he added. “Had a bad week—cleaned me out. Time you stumped up a bit more.”

“Nonsense,” said Mr. Spiller, with some spirit. “I pay you your allowance as we agreed, and let you come and stay here whenever you like, and that’s all you get from me.”

“Oh, is it? Getting a bit above yourself, aren’t you, Number Bleeding 4132?”

“Hush! said Mr. Spiller, glancing hastily round as though the furniture had ears and tongues.

“Hush! hush!” repeated Mr. Gooch mockingly. “You’re in a good position to dictate terms, aren’t you, 4132? Hush! The servants might hear! Betty might hear! Betty’s young man might hear. Hah! Betty’s young man—he’d be particularly pleased to know her father was an escaped jail-bird, wouldn’t he? Liable at any moment to be hauled back to work out his ten years’ hard for forgery? And when I think,” added Mr. Gooch, “that a man like me, that was only in for a short stretch and worked it out good and proper, is dependent on the charity—ha, ha!—of my dear friend 4132, while he’s rolling in wealth—”

“I’m not rolling in wealth, Sam,” said Mr. Spiller, “and you know darn well I’m not. But I don’t want any trouble. I’ll do what I can, if you’ll promise faithfully this time that you won’t ask for any more of these big sums, because my income won’t stand it.”

“Oh, I’ll promise that all right,” agreed Mr. Gooch cheerfully. “You give me five thousand down—”

Mr. Spiller uttered a strangled exclamation.

“Five thousand? How do you suppose I’m to lay hands on five thousand all at once? Don’t be an idiot, Sam. I’ll give you a cheque for five hundred—”

“Five thousand,” insisted Mr. Gooch, “or up goes the monkey.”

“But I haven’t got it,” objected Mr. Spiller.

“Then you’d bloody well better find it,” returned Mr. Gooch.

“How do you expect me to find all that?”

“That’s your look-out. You oughtn’t to be so damned extravagant. Spending good money, that you ought to be giving
me,
on fountains and stuff. Now, it’s no good kicking, Mr. Respectable 4132—I’m the man on top and you’re for it, my lad, if you don’t look after me properly. See?”

Mr. Spiller saw only too clearly. He saw, as he had seen indeed for some time, that his friend Gooch had him by the short hairs. He expostulated again feebly, and Gooch replied with a laugh and an offensive reference to Mrs. Digby.

Mr. Spiller did not realise that he had struck very hard. He hardly realised that he had struck at all. He thought he had aimed a blow, and that Gooch had dodged it and tripped over the leg of the occasional table. But he was not very clear in his mind, except on one point. Gooch was dead.

He had not fainted; he was not stunned. He was dead. He must have caught the brass curb of the fender as he fell. There was no blood, but Mr. Spiller, exploring the inert head with anxious fingers, found a spot above the temple where the bone yielded to pressure like a cracked eggshell. The noise of the fall had been thunderous. Kneeling on the library floor, Mr. Spiller waited for the inevitable cry and footsteps from upstairs.

Nothing happened. He remembered—with difficulty, for his mind seemed to be working slowly and stiffly—that above the library there was only the long drawing-room, and over that the spare-room and bathrooms. No inhabited bedroom looked out on that side of the house.

A slow, grinding, grating noise startled him. He whisked round hastily. The old-fashioned grandfather clock, wheezing as the hammer rose into action, struck eleven. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, got up and poured himself out another, and a stiffer, brandy.

The drink did him good. It seemed to take the brake off his mind, and the wheels span energetically. An extraordinary clarity took the place of his previous confusion.

He had murdered Gooch. He had not exactly intended to do so, but he had done it. It had not felt to him like murder, but there was not the slightest doubt what the police would think about it. And once he was in the hands of the police—Mr. Spiller shuddered. They would almost certainly want to take his fingerprints, and would be surprised to recognise a bunch of old friends.

Masters had heard him say that he would wait up for Gooch. Masters knew that everybody else had gone to bed. Masters would undoubtedly guess something. But stop!

Could Masters prove that he himself had gone to bed? Yes, probably he could. Somebody would have heard him cross the court and seen the light go up over the garage. One could not hope to throw suspicion on Masters—besides, the man hardly deserved that. But the mere idea had started Mr. Spiller’s brain on a new and attractive line of thought.

What he really wanted was an alibi. If he could only confuse the police as to the time at which Gooch had died. If Gooch could be made to seem alive after he was dead … somehow …

He cast his thoughts back over stories he had read on holiday, dealing with this very matter. You dressed up as the dead man and impersonated him. You telephoned in his name. In the hearing of the butler, you spoke to the dead as though he were alive. You made a gramophone record of his voice and played it. You hid the body, and thereafter sent a forged letter from some distant place—

He paused for a moment. Forgery—but he did not want to start that old game over again. And all these things were too elaborate, or else impracticable at that time of night.

And then it came to him suddenly that he was a fool. Gooch must not be made to live later, but to die earlier. He should die before 10:30, at the time when Mr. Spiller, under the eyes of three observers, had been playing bridge.

So far, the idea was sound and even, in its broad outline, obvious. But now one had to come down to detail. How could he establish the time? Was there anything that had happened at 10:30?

He helped himself to another drink, and then, quite suddenly, as though lit by a floodlight, he saw his whole plan, picked out vividly complete, with every join and angle clear-cut.

He glanced at his watch; the hands stood at twenty minutes past eleven. He had the night before him.

He fetched an electric torch from the hall and stepped boldly out of the French window. Close beside it, against the wall of the house, were two taps, one ending in a nozzle for the garden hose, the other controlling the fountain at the bottom of the garden. This latter he turned on, and then, without troubling to muffle his footsteps, followed the crazy-paved path down to the lilac hedge, and round by the bed of cotoneasters. The sky, despite the beauty of the early evening, had now turned very dark, and he could scarcely see the tall column of pale water above the dark shrubbery, but he heard its comforting splash and ripple, and as he stepped upon the surrounding grass, he felt the blown spray upon his face. The beam of the torch showed him the garden seat beneath the yews, and the tray, as he had expected, standing upon it. The whisky decanter was about half full. He emptied the greater part of its contents into the basin, wrapping the neck of the decanter in his handkerchief, so as to leave no fingerprints. Then, returning to the other side of the lilacs, he satisfied himself that the spray of the fountain was invisible from house or garden.

The next part of the performance he did not care about. It was risky; it might be heard; in fact, he wanted it to be heard if necessary—but it was a risk. He licked his dry lips and called the dead man by name:

“Gooch! Gooch!”

No answer, except the splash of the fountain, sounding to his anxious ear abnormally loud in the stillness. He glanced round, almost as though he expected the corpse to stalk awfully out upon him from the darkness, its head hanging and its dark mouth dropping open to show the pale gleam of its dentures. Then, pulling himself together, he walked briskly back up the path and, when he reached the house again, listened. There was no movement, no sound but the ticking of the clocks. He shut the library door gently. From now on there must be no noise.