Swan Song (13 page)

‘Can't hear a word you're saying.'

‘Were you with Charles Shorthouse last night?'

‘Yes.' The aged Wilkes spoke more soberly, though there was still a malignant gleam in his alligator eye. ‘And with his succubus.'

‘His succubus?' Fen was startled.

‘Thorn.' Wilkes spoke emphatically and clearly, as though addressing himself to rather a slow understanding. ‘The name is Thorn. A small, hyena-like woman.'

‘Ah.'

‘We drank coffee together,' said Wilkes dreamily. ‘I imagine they arrived at half past ten. Then at eleven they suddenly made off.'

‘Made off?'

‘That's what I said,' said Wilkes. ‘Heh. They made off. In pursuance, I imagined, of some bodily necessity.' He lingered over the delicate obliquity of this statement. ‘But on reflexion,' he continued reluctantly, ‘I don't think that can have been the reason. For one thing, they weren't back until half past eleven.'

‘They left, and came back, together?'

Wilkes assented, with a regal nod.

‘And didn't they give any explanation of their absence?'

‘Now let me see.' Wilkes' gaze wandered about the lounge, seeming to seek inspiration in its mock-Tudor fireplace and leather-covered armchairs. ‘Yes. Now I remember. Shorthouse explained to me, in confidence, that he was intending to kill his brother.'

Fen moved convulsively, and upset an ash-tray into his lap.

‘Really,' he grumbled, brushing himself disjointedly, ‘that is the limit . . . I presume you didn't take this seriously?'

‘On the whole, no.' Wilkes began to display interest. ‘But
did
he, in fact . . . ?'

‘Someone did.'

‘Well, I never,' said Wilkes.

‘Charles Shorthouse and the Thorn woman,' said Adam, ‘have no alibi, then?'

‘No. Nor has Stapleton. Nor has Judith Haynes.' Fen blew his nose with a trumpeting sound. ‘Well, there's nothing to be gained from sitting here.' He got to his feet.

‘Where are you going now?' Wilkes demanded.

‘I shan't tell you,' said Fen offensively, ‘because if I did you'd come tagging along behind. You were quite enough of a nuisance during that toyshop business. You stole a bicycle,' he added reproachfully.

‘Heh,' said Wilkes, pleased. ‘So I did. For two pins I'd steal another.'

‘You stay here and get quietly drunk.'

‘By the way,' said Wilkes. ‘I found that whisky you'd hidden behind your books.'

Fen stared at him in exasperation. ‘Really, Wilkes, I hope you didn't take it. You don't seem to realize how difficult it is to get.'

‘It isn't difficult to get,' Wilkes pointed out, ‘when one has access to
your
rooms.'

‘You must put it back at once, Wilkes.'

‘Can't hear you.'

‘I said,
thief
.'

‘Yes,' said Wilkes thoughtfully, ‘the wind's bitter. I shouldn't be surprised if we had a really heavy fall of snow.'

They left him. In the entrance-hall they were met by a page-boy with a message for Adam.

‘Good Lord,' Adam exclaimed in dismay after reading it, ‘they're having a rehearsal and they want to know why I'm not there.' He looked at his watch. ‘I'm a bit late, but I suppose I can still get to some of it . . . Oh, blast.'

‘Where is your wife, one wonders?'

‘Somewhere about, I expect. I'd better try and get hold of her before I go off to the theatre.' Adam went to the reception desk. ‘The key of room 72, please.'

‘I think Mrs Langley took it, sir, about an hour ago.'

‘I imagine she's upstairs,' said Adam, rejoining Fen.

They took the lift, and walked along a passage prolific of giggling chambermaids to room 72. Adam knocked. For a moment there was no reply.

‘Odd,' he said. ‘I suppose she must have gone off somewhere with the key.' He knocked again.

Then there was a small movement on the other side of the door, and they heard Elizabeth say in a low voice:

‘Who is it?'

‘It's me, darling. Adam.'

‘Have you got someone with you?'

‘Only Professor Fen. Are you undressed, or something?'

The door opened, and Elizabeth stood in the gap. She
was pale, and breathing quickly, and she looked very young and defenceless. She said:

‘Oh . . . Adam . . .'

He took her in his arms. ‘My dear, what is it?'

She attempted to smile. ‘It's just – ignoble panic,' she said, and they realized that she was very near to tears. ‘You see – someone's been trying to poison me.'

THE ROOM WAS
as undistinguished as most hotel bedrooms, with its discreet printed injunctions, its elaborate apparatus of blinds and curtains, and its multiplicity of lights: and though Adam and Elizabeth had been there long enough to impress a certain amount of character on its blankness, it remained at bottom obstinately functional. Fen settled in an armchair, after casting his hat inaccurately at a hook on the door, and offered them cigarettes.

‘Well?' he queried.

‘Aconitine,' said Elizabeth briefly. ‘In the tea.'

They all looked at the tray. There was a full cup on it, now almost cold.

‘How do you know?' said Fen.

‘It comes of poring over these things. I held a little in my mouth, and it made my lips go numb.'

‘You must have had some reason for suspecting.'

‘Suspecting,' Elizabeth repeated wryly. Her big eyes, with their uneven, sardonic brows, were very grave. ‘Yes. I had reason enough. You see–'

She went on to narrate, in detail, the events of the afternoon.

‘So you can understand,' she concluded, ‘just why I began to have doubts about the tea.' She gestured apologetically. ‘When one's studying these things, one gets cagey – just as medical students tend to credit themselves with having the diseases they're working on. At all events, I tried the stuff and' – she shrugged – ‘that's all.
Except that I decided I wasn't going to budge from here until Adam came back.'

Adam took her hand and pressed it gently. They were neither of them demonstrative persons, and there was much that they could afford to leave unsaid.

‘Well, Gervase, what's the answer?' Adam demanded.

‘The answer' – Fen was unusually pensive – ‘would seem to be that someone is becoming very frightened indeed . . . What time did all this happen?'

‘Between half past four and five.'

‘I see.' Fen rose, crossed to the tea-tray, and picked up the cup. ‘I think I'll try this,' he said, ‘so as to be sure you're not mistaken.'

‘Be careful,' Adam warned, joining him.

‘Well, don't buffet me about,' Fen complained, ‘while I'm putting it into my mouth. I don't want to appear prematurely at the judgement seat.'

He sipped apprehensively – and almost immediately fled into the bathroom, whence he reappeared accompanied by a strong smell of disinfectant.

‘Yes, you were quite right,' he announced. ‘Of course, it
might
be veratrine, but that's rather rare. Aconite's the obvious answer. We'll have to get the tea tested, though as far as I can remember it takes several days.'

‘Stas-Otto process,' Elizabeth supplied competently.

‘Would the aconite be difficult to get?' inquired Adam, whose ideas on toxicology were primitive to the point of superstition.

‘You go out into the fields and hedgerows,' Fen condescended to explain, ‘and dig up some monkshood. Then you dry the roots and powder them . . .
Et voilà
.' He began to prowl restlessly about the room. ‘It would seem,' he said, ‘that the motive for this attack lay in your rash remarks about knowing the murderer's identity. And yet' – he stopped pacing abruptly – ‘and yet a completely unsupported assertion like that oughtn't to have caused such undue alarm.' He shook his head. ‘You know, it really doesn't constitute an adequate motive at
all. I'm wondering if there isn't some damning fact you've got hold of without being aware of it . . . No, I don't see that we can get any sort of help from the motive.' He began to walk about again, fidgeting as he went with the handles of drawers and cupboards. ‘Let me get this clear; a moment before you were attacked you heard someone knocking on the door?'

Elizabeth assented. Fen continued on his orbit.

‘I wonder who that was,' he said. ‘The probability would be that it was Joan Davis, of course. One assumes that your attacker was alarmed by the knocking and concealed him or herself somewhere while Joan came in and left the note. Then . . . what happens then?'

‘He's about to come out of his hiding-place,' said Adam, ‘when the chambermaid arrives with the tea. After she's gone, Elizabeth shuts the door and returns to the bathroom. Our X creeps from hiding, pops the aconite in the tea, lets himself out, and vanishes.'

‘Yes, I see,' said Elizabeth. ‘And that means that it certainly can't have been Joan who tried to poison me. On the other hand –'

‘On the other hand,' Fen interposed, ‘it
could
have been she who tried to strangle you. In that case the knocking may well have been due to the person who wanted to poison . . .'

‘You don't really mean' – Elizabeth was plaintive – ‘that you think
two
people were trying to finish me off?'

‘I agree,' said Fen, ‘that it is rather an
embarras de richesses.
But then' – he became aggrieved – ‘this bedroom seems to have been about as populous as Piccadilly tube station, and there is just the possibility –'

Adam interrupted. ‘I think,' he said, ‘that our first reconstruction must be the right one. When all's said and done it's very unlikely that Joan killed Edwin Shorthouse. I admit she disliked him in a general way – who didn't? – but he wasn't
specifically
a nuisance to
her.
And if, as one imagines, Edwin's death and this business this afternoon are connected –'

It was Fen's turn to interrupt. ‘If they're connected. I'm not saying they aren't, mind you. But it is, I suppose, possible that Joan Davis had some entirely independent grudge against Elizabeth.'

Adam snorted. ‘No, no, that's absurd.'

‘She wasn't, for example, in love with you, Adam?'

‘Good God, no.'

‘You mightn't yourself have perceived the fact.'

‘No,' said Elizabeth. ‘But
I
certainly should have done. You can really count that out, Professor Fen.'

Fen paused to gaze gloomily out of the window at the uncompromising brick façade of the New Theatre. ‘Did you happen to notice,' he asked, ‘if the person who attacked you was wearing gloves?'

‘Yes,' said Elizabeth promptly. ‘Quite definitely, yes.'

Fen went to the wardrobe and peered cautiously inside. He then disappeared into it, closing the door behind him. After a few moments he reappeared, awkwardly disentangling himself from Elizabeth's dresses and swearing quietly to himself. He made as if to examine the floor of the wardrobe, and then lost heart and abandoned the attempt. He gazed perfunctorily under the beds.

‘A friend of mine,' he said thoughtfully, ‘has his chamberpots fitted with musical boxes which come into operation when they're lifted from the floor. It embarrasses his guests greatly . . . As to what we do now' – he scratched his head, by no means improving the natural unruliness of his hair – ‘I think really that we'd better find out whether any of these comings and goings were observed. And we
must
see Joan Davis. If it was she who knocked on the door, she may well have had a glimpse of anyone who came along here in front of her.'

‘She'll be at the rehearsal by now,' said Adam. ‘And that's where I ought to be, too.'

Fen lit another cigarette; plainly he was worried.

‘Look here, Elizabeth,' he said, ‘until this business is cleared up you mustn't be alone – at any time. We'd better all go along to the rehearsal together.'

They began wrapping themselves up against the cold.

‘By the way,' said Elizabeth, ‘you never told me what came of your visit to Amersham.'

‘Nothing to speak of.' Fen acquainted her with the indefinite results of their interviews with Charles Shorthouse and with Wilkes. ‘It's simply a question,' he concluded, ‘of whether, in this respect, Shorthouse is genuinely eccentric, or whether it's just a bluff.'

‘He's eccentric normally,' Adam pointed out.

‘Yes. But no doubt he's aware of the fact, and he may be trading on it. After all, his tale's so unlikely that
on the face of it
no one but a dolt would have invented it in self-defence . . . Well, are we all ready?'

They locked the door, and in the corridor outside Fen pounced on a passing chambermaid.

‘And where have you been all afternoon, my girl?' he demanded with Rhadamanthine severity.

‘Ooh,' said the chambermaid, alarmed. She was young, with popping eyes and straight, straw-coloured hair. ‘I ‘aven't done nothing, sir.'

‘I didn't ask you whether you'd
done
anything,' said Fen, peeved. ‘I simply want to know if you were anywhere about here between half past four and five this afternoon.'

‘Nothing's bin took, ‘as it, sir?' The girl was open-mouthed with dismay.

‘Took?' Fen applied himself laboriously to the elucidation of this remark, and then, finding the effort too much, abruptly abandoned it. ‘Did you or did you not see anyone go into or come out of room 72 between those times?'

‘Because if it ‘as, you ought to tell the manager.'

‘If it ‘as what?' said Fen, disconcerted. ‘The girl's a half-wit.'