Rehearsals for Murder (13 page)

Vanner sucked at his teeth. “Oh yes, there's something.” He drew in his lip and sucked at that as well. “Mrs Clare, on the afternoon before her death Miss Capell, we believe, had a long talk with your husband in the cottage belonging to Mr Gillett. Did you know that?”

“Not at the time.”

“But you've heard of it since.”

“Colin Gillett told me about it this morning. I advised him to tell you about it.”

“Yet he didn't.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Mrs Clare,” said Vanner, “were you surprised to hear that your husband had been seeing Miss Capell?”

“No,” she said wearily, “I'm never surprised at anyone seeing anyone—they're always doing it.”

“But in this particular instance,” said Vanner impatiently.

“Vanner,” said Toby, “if you're concentrating too hard on where Lou Capell was yesterday afternoon, you'd better realize you may be wasting your time.”

Vanner gave the noisy sigh of a sorely tried man.

Toby said: “It's a mistake to believe that the poison could have been put into Lou's handbag only during the afternoon. I know that when she came back to the house she went straight to her bedroom and had her bath and that her door was found locked, so that it looks as if no one could have got at her handbag once she was in the room. But if you'd done your job in that room thoroughly you'd have realized that Lou's door was locked from the outside, not the inside. Someone got in while Lou was in her bath and went out again, doing some neat work with a piece of wire. Come along, I'll show you.”

However, it was not only to Vanner that Toby showed the marks on the door. They picked up George in the hall, and then Charlie and Druna, whom they met coming down the stairs together. These two encountered them with a rush of questions during which both appeared to be able to convince themselves that the obvious excitation and embarrassment in their manner had not been noticed by anyone but themselves.

Looking at the marks that Toby showed him, Vanner put a thick hand to his head and said: “You're perfectly right; this changes everything.”

Suddenly at that moment George began to shout.

He was merely informing Vanner of something but he did it like a deaf person who has no means of telling how loudly he is using his voice. Both his ears were stopped up with cotton wool.

Vanner jumped and then cursed at him.

This time in a whisper they could hardly hear George began again: “Look here, this don't necessarily mean a thing. I thought it did when I first saw it but now I know it's just some piece of nonsense that don't necessarily mean a thing.”

“What's that, George?” said Toby.

Without any sign that he had heard anything, George's croaking whisper continued: “There's marks like this on the other doors.”

“Eh?” said Vanner.

“No,” said George, “it wasn't.”

“What wasn't? What d'you mean?”

George gave a vague shake of his head. “I didn't hear any bell but I don't think I can hear very well just now. I'd an abscess in my ears once and I've had trouble with 'em ever since. What I'm telling you is that there's marks like this on the other doors.”

“Come on,” said Toby, “let's go and look at the other doors and see what the hell he's getting at.”

The door nearest to Lou Capell's was the door of Charlie Widdison's room. Toby went in. Eve, who followed him, picked up from where it lay on the carpet a small pearl earring and handed it to Druna. Druna took it and coolly fastened it to the ear that lacked it. Toby exclaimed: “Yes, the marks are there all right. They're exactly like the other. Now in God's name what does that mean?”

Vanner was staring at the marks with an almost frightened look on his face. Toby saw it and grinned.

“But they don't make sense,” said Vanner with shrillness. “Who'd want to lock Doctor Widdison into his room?”

“But I haven't been locked into my room,” said Charlie.

“Well, come on,” said Toby, “let's look at the others.”

On the door of the room occupied by Druna and also on that of the room that had been occupied by the Frys there were similar marks.

They went downstairs again.

“Vanner,” said Toby, “here are some facts you'd better know as well.” And he told him of the strange, pointless mechanisms that George had discovered and shown to him.

Vanner was silent when he had finished. So were the others. It was a heavy silence, uneasy and foreboding. Suddenly Vanner exclaimed: “There's somebody in this place
practising
crime!”

“Fantastic crime, too,” said Toby. “Story-book crime.”

At that moment Eve started up from the chair into which she had flung herself. “My God, whatever's happened? Colin!”

He was running across the lawn towards the house. He was running swiftly, yet his long, loose limbs were moving with an almost drunken wildness. He stopped himself by clutching at the doorpost. Panting, he clung to it. His face was of a drawn whiteness, clownishly blotched with red.

“Eve——”

He stopped. He swallowed. He turned his head towards Toby.

“Roger Clare—he's in my cottage—he's dead.”

Then he lurched suddenly and was violently sick.

S
itting limply in a chair, with Eve, grown suddenly cool and still, standing over him, Colin said the rest of what he had to say. His head was hanging forward, his eyes were on the ground.

“You'd better be careful,” he said. “Don't go in there yet. It's HCN. I knew the beastly stuff the moment I opened the door. I've left everything open. It ought to be all right soon.”

“Dyke,” said Vanner, “I'm going down there at once. You bring him along as soon as he's able to come.”

“Don't,” said Colin. “Don't go in yet. I'm all right—I'll come with you. But you've got to give it time to clear.”

“Come on, boy, drink this,” said Eve, “then we'll all go down together.” Her voice did not sound like her own, barely audible yet quite impersonal.

Colin drank.

“If you don't mind, Mrs Clare,” said Vanner, “I'd sooner you stayed here. And I want to use the telephone.”

She nodded. She sat down.

Charlie Widdison suddenly put an arm round her shoulders.

Colin started again: “I went down to the cottage and opened the door, and there he was on the floor, and that foul smell coming at me. I haven't touched anything except the windows. I shoved a handkerchief over my face and opened the windows. And then I left the door open as well and came up here.”

“Then you didn't make certain he was dead?” said Vanner swiftly.

Colin's mouth twitched. “No need to when that stuff's about. That's how it gets you.”

Charlie Widdison walked to the open window. “Well,” he said, “are we going?”

It took only a few minutes to reach Colin's cottage. When Vanner had had a few words of conversation on the telephone with Sergeant Gurr they set off. The path ran through the wood and along the edge of a meadow, bringing them to a stile into a narrow lane. The lane was shaded with hazel, hawthorn and a few tall hollies. Opposite the stile was the gate of Colin's garden. The cottage was an undistinguished box of red brick with a painted wooden porch, the garden a neglected place where madonna lilies reared gracious heads out of tangled weeds, field poppies blazed amongst the withered foliage of daffodils and roses sprawled over sagging trellises.

In the lane outside was a car.

“That's Clare's car,” said Toby.

They went up the path towards the wide-open door of the cottage.

“Were you expecting Mr Clare to visit you?” said Vanner to Colin.

“No,” said Colin. “Wait a minute, let me go in—I'll see if it's all right.”

But Vanner kept close behind him.

The open door led straight into a small sitting room. Windows on two sides of it were wide open. A breeze passed lightly through. A few red poppy petals had been blown in from the garden and were lying on the floor, a scrap of thistledown was sliding hither and thither on the current of air. The room was the untidy room of a young man who lives by himself, whose char has been browbeaten into regarding every crumpled scrap of paper as sacred. Slumped against the wall under a print of Van Gogh's Sunflowers was the body of Roger Clare. A crumpled heap of limbs with the head sunk between the shoulders, it was like a grotesque imitation of a man who has fallen asleep in a railway carriage.

Toby looked at the picture while Vanner stooped over the dead man.

“Doctor Widdison,” said Vanner, and he motioned Charlie towards the body.

“Dead as cold mutton,” said Charlie.

“Vanner,” said Toby, “that picture. It's remarkably crooked.”

Vanner straightened up. He put out his hand to the picture.

“Don't touch it!”

“What the hell——”

Toby came forward. “Roger Clare was the man who couldn't bear crooked pictures, wasn't he?”

Vanner gave a sort of laugh. “Roger Clare was the father of Lou Capell's child.”

Toby's black eyebrows shot upwards. He stopped dead.

“That's right.” Vanner sighed. “I'll tell you all about it presently.”

“I'm going to be sick again,” said Colin Gillett. He dived for the window and hung his head out. Nothing happened.

Toby was staring at Vanner. “Yes,” he said, “you'd better tell me all about it presently. A nice bedtime story it 'll make. Now we'll look at this picture. You see, Clare wouldn't have pushed it crooked like that himself; he couldn't stand a crooked picture. In fact, he couldn't have stood being in a room with a picture hanging like that for more than a moment. I think as soon as he came into this room and saw it he'd have walked across to it and——” Toby reached up, took hold of the picture frame by the edges and pulled. Then he took his hands away. With a jerk the picture sprang back into the same position as before. “We begin to see,” said Toby, and, pulling the picture forward, he looked behind it.

There was a simple, ugly ingenuity in what he found there. This trap to catch Roger Clare consisted first of a spring placed diagonally, with the higher end attached to the wall, the lower to the picture. It was this spring, contracted, that held the picture crooked. Then from the lower end of this spring a fine string went up to and was threaded through one of the eyelets by which the picture was suspended. This string went in at the neck of an open bottle which was attached to and hanging close under the eyelet. Inside the bottle, to the end of the string, was tied a small test tube or, rather, the remnant of a small test tube, for the test tube had been shattered to pieces. Plainly, when the picture was pulled straight the test tube would have been lowered inside the bottle, then, as soon as the picture was released and the spring contracted as it jerked the picture back into the crooked position the test tube would have swung up against the eyelet and been broken.

“Yes,” said Vanner, “but…” And he waited for someone to explain it.

Colin Gillett did so. “You see, there was potassium cyanide in the bottle and sulphuric acid in the test tube. Mix 'em and you get hydrocyanic acid gas. That's all there is to it.”

“Well, I'm glad that's all,” said Vanner.

“Gillett,” said Toby, “when were you in here last? I mean, before you came here and found this.”

“This morning,” said Colin, “just before lunch.”

“Was the picture straight or crooked?”

“Straight,” said Colin.

“If you'd come into this room and seen that picture like that, would you have done anything about it?”

Colin moistened dry lips. “Would I have bothered to straighten it, you mean? I don't know. I don't think I worry about things like that much. I don't know. But why did Clare come here? Why was a trap set for him here?” He let his gaze slide down to the dead thing on the floor.

“And why,” said Vanner suddenly, stepping up close to him, “did Roger Clare come here yesterday afternoon? And why did you try to see him at The Dolphin this morning? And why is it surprising that he should be here?”

But if what Vanner had intended by the intimidation he put into his tone was the cracking of the young man's shuddering nerves, the effect was almost the opposite. Simple truculence took the place of the strain on Colin's face.

Toby put in: “Did you go to see Roger Clare this morning?”

“I tried to. He was busy.”

“You'd no sooner left the police station,” said Vanner, “than you went running off to talk to Roger Clare.”

“Well, what about it?”

“What did you want to talk to him about?”

Colin Gillett turned contemptuously away. He muttered: “Oh, my God, what a filthy, horrible business.” He looked again at Vanner. “I'm not answering any questions.” He went and stood in the doorway with his back to the room.

With a grunt and a frown Vanner once more bent his back over the body.

“Doctor Widdison,” he said, “will you and Mr Gillett please return to the house? Probably you'll find Sergeant Gurr there. I want everyone to remain until I come.”

“All right,” said Charlie. He slipped an arm through Colin's. “Come on.” They walked away.

Vanner went to the doorway and spat vigorously into a patch of weeds. “This stuff leaves a foul stink behind it,” he said.

“Vanner,” said Toby, “what's all this about Roger Clare being Lou's lover?”

Vanner turned back into the room. “That's the way it was,” he said. He pulled a chair round and seated himself astride it. “Sorry if you don't like it.”

“You've got reasons, I suppose, for saying so?”

“Plenty of 'em.”

Toby sat down on the doorstep. The afternoon sun fell pleasantly on his face. “Well?” he said.

Vanner looked dubiously from him to George. “Reckon you'd best get up to the house before the chief constable arrives here, Dyke.”

“We will,” said Toby. He did not move. George stepped past him into the garden and squatted on the lower doorstep.

“Would it surprise you, Dyke,” said Vanner, “to hear that Miss Capell wasn't going to spend her summer holiday in Okehampton?”

“Not a great deal,” said Toby.

“It wouldn't?”

Toby shook his head. “No. I've been wondering about it, and if you say it's so, I'm not really surprised at all. Where
was
she going to spend it?”

“With Roger Clare in the south of France.”

“Wha-at?” Toby's head jerked round. “How did you get hold of that?”

“I've been busy.”

Toby's emphatic nod conveyed ironic agreement.

“Last night,” said Vanner, “I got on the telephone to those relations of hers in Okehampton. Well, she was going down there all right, taking the kid with her. But they weren't expecting her to stay more than a night. She was just going to leave the kid and come away again. They didn't even know she'd told anyone she'd be staying there. They said she was going to Norfolk with a couple of girl friends.”

Toby said: “When a girl's got a baby coming it isn't usually the time she goes and puts herself in the bosom of her aunts and uncles and cousins.”

“That's quite true,” said Vanner. “I made one pretty big mistake, though. I've been reckoning till this afternoon it was her lover who'd killed her.” Somberly his gaze dwelt on Roger Clare. “Poor devil.”

“Poor devil,” Toby echoed, “and he wasn't even her lover.”

“Wasn't he? You listen. Last night I got thinking. That story of his—I thought: ‘That's a very nice story, my lad, and just made to fit the situation, but suppose you've left out your own side of it?' And I had some investigations made, and what was found in a drawer of the desk in his flat was a couple of first-class tickets to Nice for next Tuesday. And there's a letter from some hotel there, reserving him a double room.”

Sourly Toby commented: “All sorts of people go to Nice.”

“But not with Roger Clare. He's had nothing to do with any woman but Miss Capell since he separated from his wife. I've had inquiries made; he's been damn careful all along; no asking for the discretion of the court for him. But he wasn't quite careful enough. Last Easter—the porter of those flats was ready to swear it was Easter; he remembered it because it
was
Easter, Easter Monday, and he thought: ‘What-ho, my lad, you're the same as everyone else, are you?'—well, last Easter Miss Capell turns up at Clare's flat about seven in the evening. She's in an excited state, got no hat on——”

“She hardly ever wore a hat,” said Toby.

“Well, anyway, she was excited and upset looking. After a bit she and Clare come down and go out and in a couple of hours they come back, and the girl stays the whole night. She doesn't leave till about ten next morning.”

“She spent Friday night in my flat,” said Toby. “I know just how little that can mean.”

“Maybe,” said Vanner, “but
one
night somewhere or other must have meant something, eh? And Easter is just ten weeks ago, and Doctor Syme tells me that that child of hers was ten weeks gone.”

“Hell,” said Toby.

“Hell,” he repeated, and, placing one hand over the other, cracked his knuckles loudly. It seemed to give him satisfaction. “Vanner,” he said, “you may be right, and I may be wrong, but what I think is this. If Clare had been Lou's lover and if they were still on good enough terms to be going to Nice together next Tuesday Lou wouldn't have come to me for money when she needed it. She'd have gone to him. But she came to me in tears begging for fifteen pounds because the two Chinese vases she'd just sold hadn't brought her in as much as she needed. You've rather been forgetting about that money, haven't you, Vanner?”

“That fifteen pounds?”

“That thirty pounds,” said Toby. “I gave Lou a cheque about midnight on Friday. She left early next morning, getting down to Wilmer's End about ten o'clock. Banks don't open until ten, so she couldn't have cashed my cheque on her way. Also, on Saturdays banks shut at twelve, yet she spent the whole day until about half-past four, when she disappeared, at Wilmer's End. That cheque was never cashed, Vanner. You can verify it at my bank. And I don't expect it 'll ever be presented. I realize, of course, that one of those people at Wilmer's End may have cashed it for her but I think it's reasonable to believe that whoever it was that rang me up yesterday evening had removed it, as he or she said.”

“And what about the Chinese vases?”

“They were a bit of a shot in the dark. If the fifteen pounds in her bag hadn't come from my cheque they must have come from somewhere. I started remembering then that she'd been dead scared at the idea of going back to her flat and meeting Druna Merton. So I wondered if she'd taken something from the flat and sold it. I made some inquiries from Druna; I asked her if there was anything missing from the flat worth about thirty pounds. I put it at thirty because I reckoned that if Lou sold something she'd never have got more than about half its value. Well, Druna found out for me that there are two Chinese vases missing, valued at thirty pounds.”