Rehearsals for Murder (16 page)

“I'd guessed you were Lou's lover. You made it obvious enough, you know. You were terrified. And there wasn't any other reason why you should be terrified. Besides that, you acted as if you were really suffering. You were the only one who did. And then, I thought you were much the most probable person for Lou to have—taken a liking to.”

“She didn't much. It was a rotten mistake.”

“You knew about the child?”

Again the bewildered gaze plunged into Toby's. “We were married, you know.”

Toby sat up. He looked acutely confused.

Colin gave a twitching smile. “Oh, it's all right,” he said.

“But what the hell——?” Then Toby stopped himself and sat waiting.

“About that discrepancy,” said Colin.

“Oh yes. Well, you see, Lou's murder was a pretty deliberate affair. It wasn't an unthinking, muddled business; it wasn't a case of snatching up the first poison that came to hand and bunging it into her teacup. Now, if you wanted to poison a person and you'd time to give the matter some thought what poison would you use? You've got easy access to all kinds of poisons. Surely you'd use the very commonest you could lay your hands on. You wouldn't pick on one that'd point straight to your laboratory.”

Colin picked up another twig. It was a green one this time and it bent and fought with his wrestling fingers. “Still, that's only a supposition.”

“True.”

Colin said dully: “I may as well tell you the rest of it though.”

Toby nodded.

There was a pause. Colin abandoned the breaking of the twig and instead started peeling the bark off it. “I don't know where to begin,” he said. “I don't want to launch into an autobiography, but if you're to understand why the thing… and how… I mean, I've got to go some way back to make it intelligible.”

He cleared his throat and tried to speak more naturally. “I came here about three months ago. I got to know this crowd almost at once. I'd never run into anyone of the kind before. You might say, I suppose, I'd never run into anyone much. At the R.C.S. I did nothing but work; I never got round much anywhere. At the beginning these people here, they sort of—dazzled me. Eve—I sort of fell in love with Eve straightaway. As a matter of fact, I completely lost my head about her. I couldn't get her out of my mind for a moment. I don't know if you can guess what she's like when things are normal. I mean when she isn't all to pieces like she is just now. There's a life in her, something so vivid that… Even now it gets me like that.” He cleared his throat again. “What I'm trying to get round to is that this crowd here really took me in pretty well. I thought them bright as hell. And one trouble was I didn't really distinguish between them. I thought they were all more or less the same. Eve was the only one I really
thought
about, and I took for granted, somehow, that the rest were like her, only a bit dimmer. Then there was one day … D'you want all this, Dyke?” He looked up.

Toby replied: “Tell me as much as seems to you to hang together.”

“There was a day,” said Colin, “when everything suddenly looked completely black. Partly it was because of Eve and partly, I suppose, because there just are days like that—anyway, with me. And Lou was there. Things were black with her too. I didn't know why and didn't trouble to find out but I think the reason was Roger. Generally she was ready to be the loyal and humble adjunct to his vanity—and to Eve's—but now and then it must have got into her how hopeless and meaningless the whole thing was. Things were black for us both. But, as I said, I didn't bother to find out what Lou's trouble was and I'd got this damn fool idea in my head that she was just the same as all the rest of them. We went out for the evening to try and cheer each other up. …” He gazed away at a patch of sky that showed through the interlacing green. “God, it was frightful.”

After another moment he went on: “I didn't see her again for some weeks, then she turned up and told me she was going to have a baby. She didn't seem to expect me to do anything special about it. She just seemed dazed. She hadn't any ideas about anything. I thought we'd best get married and I arranged that she could go and live with my married sister in Norfolk until the baby came. You see, we had to keep it secret. This research grant I've got, it'd stop if it came out that I was married. Of course I could have looked for a job—could have got more money that way, I daresay. But that'd have meant giving up the only kind of work I've ever cared about. Lou agreed all right. She wasn't in love with me and she seemed to feel sort of guilty about having let me fix the thing the way I had. Well…” He drew in his breath, then stuck the mangled twig between his teeth. “I think that's all.”

“Are you going to tell me,” said Toby, “what happened yesterday afternoon?”

Colin gave a kind of laugh. “Don't see why I shouldn't, now that I've told you the rest. What happened was simply that Roger turned up about half-past two. He said he wanted to talk to Lou but didn't want to go up to the house in case he ran into Eve. He asked me if I minded going up and asking Lou to come down. I tried to get out of it; I wanted to work and didn't want to run into Lou. I don't mean I was avoiding her, but she didn't seem keen about seeing me. However, I went. Roger'd asked me to be careful not to let anyone else know he was there. But when I got up there they were all in the garden together, and I couldn't get hold of Lou by herself. And then Eve pushed me into a game of tennis. It must have been pretty well four o'clock by the time I managed to give Lou the message.”

“And the moment she heard that Clare wanted to see her,” said Toby, “she turned all radiant?”

“Yes, and then Eve said something about wanting drinks and she sent Lou in to get them. Lou dashed into the house for them and as soon as she'd brought them out and handed them round she went off to the cottage.” He looked down. “I didn't see her again.”

“But why,” said Toby, “didn't you simply tell us this this morning? You could have told it without giving away any of the rest of it.”

Colin was silent. Then he repeated the sound that vaguely resembled a laugh. “I thought it was Clare who'd killed her.”

“And you wanted to shield him?” Toby sounded puzzled.

“My God, no, I didn't want to shield him! But don't you see? Suppose it
had
been Clare who'd done it—it was so blatant, I mean the way he'd used me. He'd come to my cottage, made me arrange for Lou to go down there, been so insistent that no one else must know he was there, without, apparently, caring how much I knew. I thought that could only mean he knew about Lou and me and was ready to use that against me if I gave him away. So I made up my mind that until I'd found out from him what he'd told the police himself I wasn't going to say anything.” His voice took on a note of exaggerated self-mockery. “Justice, revenge—they meant nothing to me compared with the claims of pure, pure science.”

“And that,” said Toby gravely, “is probably just about the truth of it.”

“Oh,” said Colin, “I can guess how it looks to you. The fact that I was all wrong about Roger doesn't alter the reasons for my own actions. But if you knew what it would have meant, losing this chance I've got…” He made a tired gesture. “Well, is there anything else you want to know?”

“Yes. How much of all this does Widdison know?”

“Charlie? At lunch time, the way he looked at me, I thought he must know something. But I don't know.”

“Well, Gillett,” said Toby, “I shouldn't say any of this to old man Vanner. I don't know if you happen to have noticed it, but you fit rather nicely yourself as a suspect.”

“Who, me?”

“You've been so busy thinking of protecting your grant,” said Toby, “that you don't seem to have noticed a noose dangling nicely within reach. You see, you'd an obvious motive for murdering Lou, and if Clare had had the knowledge you thought he had you'd have had a pretty good motive for murdering him. Time, means and opportunity all conspire. You could have rigged up that trap for Roger before lunch and if Eve hadn't asked you to take me to the V.H. after lunch you could have found some other reason for not going back to your cottage. I'd be pretty careful, Gillett; I'd say very little indeed to Vanner.”

“But what about Eve? Are you going to let him go on thinking that Roger was the father of the child? His whole case rests on that.”

“It can rest equally well on Eve's having
thought
that Roger was the father of the child.”

“Oh God!”

“And she did, you know, Gillett.”

Colin's lips moved. He said nothing. He stood there slouched, his gaze going emptily before him.

Suddenly he turned and started towards the house.

He was almost out of sight near the top of the path when from the direction of the house came the sound of shouting, and Toby and George saw Colin's slack body jerk into tautness as he started to run. Scrambling to their feet, they ran after him.

The shouting took on the definition of words.

“‘Woe is me, for my hurt—my wound—is grievous, but I said truly this is a grief and I must bear it; my tabernacle is spoiled and all my cords are broken; my children are gone forth of me and they are not…'”

On the terrace stood Mr Fry.

He stood in the centre of an excited group of people, his hands raised to heaven. There was blood on his hands.

First Colin, then Toby and George came running up.

“‘For,'” cried Mr Fry, “‘the land is full of adulterers; for because of swearing the land mourneth, the pleasant places of the wilderness are dried up and their course is evil and their force is not right. …'”

“Charlie, Max, Aunt Nelia!” cried Eve distractedly.

Blood splashed from one of the old man's hands onto the ground.

“Somebody make him stop it, make him stop it!” cried Eve. “I can't stand any more!”

The ground round Mr Fry was strewn with broken glass. There was an overturned tray near him; bottles and decanters were in smithereens round him.

Lisbeth Gask explained hurriedly to Toby: “He dashed out suddenly and smashed all the glasses and things onto the ground and cut his hand on one and then started declaiming Jeremiah.”

Reginald Sand whispered: “The poor old boy's quite off his top.”

More Jeremiah poured forth into the summer evening. More drops of blood fell from the deep cut on Mr Fry's hand. His declamation was met by exclamations, persuasions, protests. Finally it was Charlie Widdison, assisted by Toby, who got the old man indoors and upstairs to one of the bedrooms. Charlie attended to the bleeding, Toby to the prophecies. Gradually both left off.

Utter dejection took the place of exaltation. Adolphus Fry sat on the edge of the bed, his shoulders bowed, his head drooping, complying in complete listlessness with everything he was asked to do. Tears swam in his eyes and now and then, while Charlie was busy with the bandage, he muttered incoherently.

George had come into the room, and so had Eve, but Mrs Fry had not followed them; she had sat down in the sitting room, holding her head in her hands.

“Blood on my hands,” muttered Mr Fry, “blood—I've always hated the sight of blood. It's my own blood, isn't it, Doctor Widdison?”

“Of course it's your own blood, Mr Fry,” said Charlie cheerily. “It's a nasty cut, too, but nothing to worry about.”

“How d'you know?”

“Well, I can assure you it's nothing to worry about. What you want to do now is lie down and——”

“No, no, no, how d'you know it's my own blood? All blood looks alike.”

“Uncle Dolphie, Uncle Dolphie,” said Eve, “you don't want to worry so. Everything 'll be all right; Vanessa 'll come back. …” There was unusual tenderness in her voice. She whispered to Charlie: “Can't we give him something to make him sleep?”

Mr Fry said hopelessly: “‘My children are gone forth of me. …'”

In the end they doped him with some sleeping tablets of Eve's and induced him to lie down. Still talking cloudedly of blood, of sin, of punishment, he drifted into sleep. Eve sat beside him, holding his uninjured hand in hers. He had shown no recognition of her concern, had been uninterested in her presence.

Looking up, Eve saw Toby's gaze upon her.

She seemed to feel she must explain herself. “I'm really very fond of Uncle Dolphie,” she said.

“Why not?” said Toby.

“I am,” she said, as if he had contradicted her. “He's kind, extraordinarily kind. Very, very stupid, poor old man, but then he's never had a chance. Like me. He's never had a chance. And this is just his nerves, you know. He isn't really insane. He isn't, he isn't.”

They left her there sitting beside him.

Outside the door Toby said to Charlie: “Ever had any experience of this sort of thing, Widdison?”

“A bit. Not much.”

“Can you tell if it's genuine or not?”

Charlie stood still. “It hadn't occurred to me,” he said soberly, “that it might not be.”

“Well, it might be a convenient state of mind to get into.”

“Of course, he's had these attacks before,” said Charlie, “so he's got what you might call inside information on what they're like. He could probably ape his own characteristic symptoms accurately, and, unless one could keep him under observation for some time, one wouldn't have much chance of catching him out.”

“I see,” said Toby, “I just wanted to know if you'd got any doubts about the thing. By the way——” He started feeling in his pockets. “You wrote this prescription for Mrs Clare, didn't you?”

Charlie took the piece of paper Toby held out to him.

“What the hell's this?” Suddenly his pleasing, rather egotistically good-natured face was hard and sharp with suspicion.