Such Is Death (24 page)

“At first I knew very little about him or her. I could not guess whether he was a resident of long standing or a new arrival, whether he was one of those seen on the promenade that night or not, whether he was young or old, male or female, a respected person or a tramp; I only knew that he had probably spied out the land long before that evening and laid his plans very carefully.

“That was one of the things that had mystified me most about the murder of Ernest Rafter. It was a planned murder, that was certain. The place chosen, the weapon carried, everything suggested long and careful planning. Yet no one seemed to have known that Ernest was still alive, let alone that he was coming to Selby on a certain night and would walk on the promenade late and choose that particular shelter. The only conclusion I could draw from this was that the murder had been planned
without a particular victim in mind.

“There was one possible alternative to this—that Ernest had been murdered in mistake for someone else. But I dismissed this again on the grounds of improbability. There was enough light in the last shelter, in fact, to make it more than unlikely. So I began to sketch out a picture of an unknown murderer waiting of an evening in a special place for an unknown and unimportant victim.

“But the details of the picture entirely eluded me. If, as I conjectured, it was someone who showed no sign of
abnormality in ordinary life it could have been almost anyone we knew was on the promenade that night—Lobbin, Bodger, Biggett, Stringer, Paul or even Sitwell himself. Or it could have been one of the married people who were there in pairs, the Morsells or the Bullamys. But it could also have been someone who was not seen at all, or who was briefly seen but not recognized, like the man crossing the road. It could have been someone who came from the public garden or someone who came from the beach, it could have been someone seen walking away or someone who afterwards remained hidden in the garden or on the beach …”

“No,” interrupted John Moore. “Those were searched, of course.”

“Some time later. Indeed, so little was known of my hypothetic murderer-for-the-sake-of-it that I remember thinking he would never be discovered. He had calculated that a murder without motive was a murder for which no one would ever be hanged, and it looked as if he was right.

“Yet I believed in him, for, fantastic though the thing was, he made the very people whom I had dismissed because their motives were incredible suspects again. That Bodger would not have killed Ernest because his son had died on the Burma road seemed certain to me, but I could not be sure that Bodger was not secretly a madman determined to kill the first human being conveniently in a certain place at night. The same applied to Lobbin. And with some of the others, like Morsell, for instance, and Bullamy it actually provided—if not a motive in the strict sense of the word, at least a madman's reason for the thing. It made the whole town suspect.”

Mr Gorringer raised his hand to halt the argument. Clearly he wished to pronounce.

“It is time, I feel, that we refreshed ourselves. The ingenious Deene is apt to be carried away by his theories and we are left—high and dry, may I say? Inspector, may I suggest a drink?”

Carolus rang a bell beside him and George appeared.
While he was bringing the drinks they had ordered, Mr Gorringer expressed his approval of Carolus's wild theorizing.

“Though, as you yourself admit, my dear Deene, your notions have elements of the
fantastique,
I must say I like them. The case itself is not without fantasy and you have matched it.
No
motive, eh? That is indeed something new. It certainly seems to have rendered detection exactingly complicated. Do you argue then that if I, for example, were to walk out into the night and murder the first stranger I met I should remain undetected?”

“Probably. Unless you were caught
in flagrante delicto.”

“Curious,” said the headmaster. “Highly curious. I had not considered it before. But in this case it seems to have hard logic behind it. And what I particularly like is the fact that your theory (if you substantiate it) instantly disposes of one of the most undesirable and ridiculous features of this case—the absurd suspicions which have attached themselves to members of the Rafter family.”

“Why?” asked Carolus.

“I beg your pardon?” said Mr Gorringer, who was taken aback by this interrogative monosyllable.

“Why does it dispose of the Rafters?”

“Surely you must see, my dear Deene, that the only thing (and that in my mind an
ignis fatuus)
which could be held to connect even remotely with the crime these highly respected citizens, was that they were supposed to have something accounted a motive for wishing to dispose of Ernest. If you show that such a motive (or pretence at one) had nothing to do with the murder, you at once show that
they
had nothing to do with it. Not that such a demonstration was necessary.”

“I still say: ‘Why? ‘. Why are the Rafters not as suspect as anyone else?”

“I find the question little short of obtuse,” said the headmaster huffily. “Are you going to suggest that one of them would have carried this morbid craving for
causing death to the length of murdering his own brother?”

“Or uncle,” added Carolus. “But I didn't say that. I asked why you thought they were excluded from suspicion. You seem to forget that if, as they all claim, they did not know that Ernest was in Selby that night and had not seen him for twenty years, they would not have known who it was sitting in that corner of the shelter. They are no more exempt from suspicion than anyone else.”

“Fiddlesticks,” said Mr Gorringer.

“As a matter of fact,” continued Carolus unshaken, “if I am proved right it was one of the family who murdered Ernest.”

“I take it this is more of your ill-chosen facetiousness,” said the headmaster severely.” or are you going to tell me that Mrs Dalbinney stalked along the promenade with a coal-hammer with which to murder the first person she might meet?”

“No. It was Bertrand,” said Carolus.

M
R
G
ORRINGER
affected to laugh.

“So you ask the Inspector and me to suppose that Lieutenant-Colonel Bertrand Rafter, who was awarded the M
BE
during the last war, a man of the highest integrity, was responsible for the murder of his brother?”

He smiled towards John Moore as if to draw him into his own attitude of disdain for such silliness, but saw that Moore was listening attentively.

“Responsible is not the word I should have chosen,” said Carolus. “Part of him at least is barking mad.”

“I see. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.”

“Not so clear-cut. But something of the sort.”

“Let's have it, Carolus,” said Moore.

“I first suspected Bertrand when he knew that Ernest had been robbed. Who else could know that except the
murderer? The police had no idea of it. I knew from Doris that Ernest had this money on him but my reliable little Doris had told no one else. And even if she had, even if it was known that he had money, nothing had been said at the Inquest about it. The only person at all likely to know that it had been taken was the man who took it. Yet ‘Ernest was probably robbed of a good sum' Bertrand told me. He was annoyed, I think, that the theft had not been discovered. He had never thought (and who would?) of the pocket-case remaining in Ernest's hip pocket, which had convinced the police that Ernest had not been robbed. ‘Find out what he had on him that night', he suggested, ‘surely you or the police can do that'. Having removed and probably destroyed Ernest's roll he was peeved to find that this providing of a false motive had gone for nothing.”

“That seems highly conjectural,” said Mr Gorringer.

“I've told you, the whole thing is. But that wasn't my only reason for thinking that Bertrand robbed the corpse to suggest robbery as a motive. Ernest's money was from Emma and remained in an envelope ‘with writing on it' as Doris said. When I asked Emma Rafter whether the family knew,
after
the murder, that she had been secretly in touch with her brother, she said, ‘I think they guessed it. Or rather Bertrand did'. And when I asked her whether she eventually told the family she had sent money to Ernest she said, ‘Bertrand seemed to know'. How could he have ‘guessed' or ‘seemed to know' if he had not seen that envelope addressed in her hand?

“Also he lied. He said distinctly that he was ‘in the house alone from tea-time onward'. ‘Fortunately I did not go out at all that evening'. Yet when Ernest phoned him there was no reply. Ernest told Mrs Locksley Rafter he had tried ‘the others' but there was no reply. He also told Doris when she asked him. ‘No. No reply from any of them', he said.”

“Again, highly conjectural,” said Mr Gorringer. “Ernest Rafter may not have tried his brother's number.”

“Why not? It was in the book with the rest of them.”

“Or he may actually have spoken to Colonel Rafter.”

“If he did, Bertrand's lies are manifold. He said he was not even aware that Ernest had survived Burma until after the murder and in that I believe him. However, I'm not trying to prove my case. I'm admitting that it never could have been proved on the evidence in the first murder.”

“You are not seriously suggesting, my good Deene, that Colonel Rafter not only disposed of his brother but subsequently chose to murder the wife of a local newsagent by the same repulsive method?”

“Of course. What else could he do? His original scheme had broken down. He had planned to kill someone without a motive, believing that he would thus be free of discovery, and by the worst possible bad luck he had chanced on his own brother, providing himself with a motive against all his intentions. He knew, both from their questioning of him and from me, that the police had each member of the family on their list of suspects. Above all, he knew from me that the Bullamys had seen him crossing the road that evening and believed they would know him again. That wouldn't have mattered if the murder had been of a stranger but, since it was of someone connected with himself and he was already something of a suspect, he felt his position becoming precarious.

“There was only one thing to be done—another murder for which he could not conceivably have a motive and for which Lobbin, already, as Bertrand knew from me, suspected of the first murder, would have a very strong motive.

“Let's suppose all this and watch Bertrand's movements from the start. He is, we will agree, a psychopath with a very conventional external character and appearance. He realizes the value of this in the circumstances. He decides on his crime and its venue. He does not go too often to the promenade at night but ‘sometimes as he told me. He had decided to wait for an occasion on
which the promenade has few visitors and one of them is alone in the last shelter. He does not need an occasion on which Molly is away, but when she does go up to town for the night, he probably thinks it's a specially auspicious occasion and perhaps spends longer than usual down there waiting for his chance, so that there is no reply from his telephone when Ernest Rafter rings at about 7.15.

“He has provided himself with the weapon. Where this came from we may never know, but it certainly was not in ordinary use in his house, for he has no coal and the only hammer there is a lighter one kept in the tool chest. I daresay he had the idea of murder in his mind for years and kept this hammer concealed somewhere, perhaps since he moved to the town from some coal-heated home. At all events it was a weapon through which he could not be traced.

“He found what he had awaited for a long time, a man, probably half-drunk, huddled in a corner of the last shelter. He did his job and began walking smartly away. Having earlier joined the promenade at the point nearest to Marine Square, that is where the road forked away from the tarmac, he had met no one on his way to the shelter and expected to meet no one as he returned. But as he was approaching the fork, the first point at which he could leave the promenade, he saw coming towards him a man and woman whom he did not recognize—Mr and Mrs Bullamy taking their (still somewhat inexplicable) evening stroll.

“This did not alarm him in the least. But since they appeared to be strangers who would not in any case recognize him it would be better, he thought, to leave the promenade at the fork and cross the road so that he would not pass them. In this he rather misjudged the distance—or the striding power of the mannish Mrs Bullamy—for they were uncomfortably close to him before he could wheel left and he had to hurry to avoid coming face to face with them.

“However, all had gone as he anticipated and he could
congratulate himself when he reached his house, unnoticed so far as he knew or we know. The couple he had passed could not be sure of recognizing him again and even if they were able to, what possible connection could there be between Lieutenant-Colonel Rafter and the murder of some wretched unknown man in a shelter?

“Imagine his feelings when he learned who that unknown man was. The very structure of his plan was knocked away, for as everyone quickly knew he had a motive for killing Ernest. Perhaps he had congratulated himself, when he formulated his plan, on having found one which no coincidence or bad luck could possibly disturb, perhaps he realized now that there can be no such plan. Coincidence, bad luck, destiny, or if you like the Will of God cannot be flouted by even the cleverest schemer.

“I think at first he almost expected the police to arrive to arrest him. But as time passed and he was asked only a few almost formal questions about his whereabouts and he realized that there were other suspects—one far more likely than himself—he grew easier. He had taken the precaution of robbing the corpse and destroying the notes he found and stressed robbery as a possible motive when he discussed the matter with me. He was settling down to wait for the arrest of Lobbin or for the whole thing to be forgotten when on Christmas day I told him my theory and said that the Bullamys would recognize the road-crosser. That really frightened him, and he decided to make sure Lobbin took the blame.