Wicked Uncle (19 page)

A bright, crooked glance zig-zagged from one to the other of the group which faced him. This group was, in point of fact, a half circle fanning out from where Mr. Masterman leaned against the mantelpiece. Leonard Carroll stood in the open side of the half circle and let his malicious glance run to and fro, flicking over the hands with which Miss Masterman held up her newspaper screen, over the congested face of Mr. Tote, who had dropped the Times across his knees, over Miss Silver and her knitting, over Mrs. Tote with her reddened eyelids, past Mr. Masterman’s frown, to where Justin Leigh was leaning back with an abstracted air between a girl who had flushed and a girl who was pale.

Dorinda looked sideways and saw that Justin was angry. When he looked like that it meant that he was very angry indeed. It meant that he was holding himself in. The foolish, useless wish came into her mind that the evening might be over and everyone safe in bed. And all this just a dream to wake up from next day, and say, “How silly!” and say, “It doesn’t matter how silly it is, as long as it isn’t true.”

Leonard Carroll’s flickering glance came home again. He repeated his last words in a meditative tone.

“A damned good view. Leigh was so very quick, wasn’t he? He may have been a thought too quick for someone. It’s just possible—well, isn’t it? And Leonard Carroll on that third step from the top of the stairs would have such a damned good view. If there was anything to see, he could hardly have missed it—well, could he?”

Mr. Tote lifted his heavy bulk, flinging round in the padded chair to fix small angry eyes upon Carroll’s face. It was a look which might have given some men pause.

“What’s all this hinting? Why don’t you come and sit down and behave yourself? If you’ve got anything to say, why don’t you say it and have done? And if you haven’t, what’s the good of hinting that you have?”

Carroll laughed.

“Oh, you mustn’t be too hard on my poor entertainment. A little mystery—a little conjecture—a sprinkle of what you call hints—I’m afraid we can’t do without them. For instance, take your own case. I’m not saying what I saw, or what I didn’t see, but—now who was it was telling me you threw a pretty dart?… Oh, yes—it was your wife.”

Mr. Tote’s neck became quite alarmingly red.

“What’s that to you?”

Carroll’s lips twisted in a smile.

“To me? Oh, nothing. To Gregory Porlock perhaps a great deal. That dagger could have been thrown—well, I mean, couldn’t it? And I’m still not saying what I saw or didn’t see from my balcony stall.”

“Look here—” Mr. Tote’s voice choked with fury on the second word.

Miss Silver glanced brightly across her clicking needles and said,

“Dear me—how extremely interesting! Such an original entertainment! But quite impersonal of course—is it not, Mr. Carroll?”

He returned her look with one of light contempt. It changed to sparkling malice as he shifted it to Geoffrey Masterman.

“How very fortunate to have a balcony stall—isn’t it? So pleasantly removed from the struggling herd in the pit. You know, that light really did come on a bit sooner than it was meant to—just a bit sooner. Just a bit too soon for somebody.” His glance moved on, touching Dorinda, passing Justin, settling on Moira Lane. “Odd how you see things when the lights come on suddenly like that. Extraordinary sharp and clear. Pitch dark one minute, and then biff—everything hits you in the eye. Quite an odd experience, and—yes, that’s the word—unforgettable. Quite, quite unforgettable.” He walked over to the tray and set down his coffee-cup. “And now, as you are all so pressing, I will entertain you upon the piano. Our lamented Gregory having engaged me for that purpose, I imagine that I shall have a claim upon his estate for my fee.”

There certainly was a slight drag in his step as he walked over to the grand piano and opened it. The silence which had followed what might be called the first part of his entertainment persisted. Nobody moved, nobody spoke. More than one person must have been thinking furiously.

Carroll had a charming touch on the piano. A few chords came into the silence, followed by a light malicious voice in the words and the tune of an old nursery rhyme:

“Who killed Cock Robin?

I said the Sparrow,

With my bow and arrow,

I killed Cock Robin.”

Before ten o’clock the party had separated for the night. An evening of profound discomfort was now something to look back upon with feelings of interest, doubt, suspicion, uncertainty, fear, or derisive amusement. Whichever of these feelings predominated in Mr. and Mrs. Tote, Mr. Carroll, Mr. and Miss Masterman, Moira Lane, Dorinda, and Justin, there is no doubt that Miss Silver had been very much interested. She had been in her room for some twenty minutes, but she had not so much as unfastened her bog-oak brooch, when a light tap sounded on her door. Opening it, she beheld Pearson, with an air of meek mystery and a finger at his lips.

Emerging, Miss Silver looked the enquiry she forbore to speak, and was beckoned farther along the passage. They passed Dorinda’s room on the right, and that occupied by Miss Masterman on the left, descended three of those unreasonable and quite dangerous steps so frequent in old houses, turned the corner, and came into an irregularly shaped room where an overhead light shone down upon bookshelves, a large globe on a mahogany stand, a battered upright piano, and what had obviously been a schoolroom table. Hovering midway between the butler and the fellow detective, Pearson hoped that Miss Silver didn’t mind his disturbing her—“but I thought you ought to know.”

“Certainly, Mr. Pearson. What is it?”

“You don’t find it cold here?”

Since she had not removed that old and well-tried friend her black velvet coatee, Miss Silver was able to reply,

“Not in the least. Pray tell me what has happened.”

It must be admitted that Pearson had been feeling a little out of it. Not that he wanted to be involved in a murder case—very far from it. But to be, as it were, unavoidably in the midst of one, and yet not to know what was going on was bound to put a strain on him. He had rather leapt at the first opportunity of relieving this strain. He was now hoping that his leap was not going to be considered precipitate. Like so many well-meaning people, he was given to doubts when they could no longer serve any useful purpose. Miss Silver was an unknown quantity. Her manner was gracious, but from a certain distance, and without quite knowing why, it daunted him; She saw his eyes shift like those of a nervous horse.

Quite unexpectedly she smiled. It was the smile with which in her distant governessing days it had been her wont to encourage a diffident or backward pupil. It encouraged Pearson to the point of speech.

“Seeing Mr. Carroll go into the study and shut the door, it came into my mind in what I might call rather a forcible manner that possibly it was his intention to use the telephone, and if such was the case, I thought it might be a good thing, as it were, if I was to—” He stuck, and Miss Silver helped him out.

“To listen in on the pantry extension?”

“Yes, Miss Silver. And when I heard the number—”

“You recognized it?”

“It was the Mill House number, and he asked straight away for Mrs. Oakley. Well, of course that was no go, because she never comes to the telephone, not if it was ever so. But he got Mr. Oakley, and directly he started in I could see he was going to be nasty. It’s my opinion he’d had a good bit more to drink than he could carry, as I dare say you may have noticed yourself when he came into the drawing-room. Not to say drunk, he wasn’t, but pretty far on with feeling he was cock of the walk, and not minding whether he got across anyone else or not.”

Miss Silver coughed appreciatively.

“A very graphic description, Mr. Pearson.”

“Well, I thought you must have noticed him, same as I did, the first minute he started talking to Mr. Oakley. ‘That you, Oakley?’ he said—very offhand, if you take my meaning. ‘Not dragged you from your slumbers, I hope. Or perhaps you’re not sleeping so much these nights. I shouldn’t if I was you. But that’s the advantage of single blessedness, one hasn’t got these complications to cope with.’ Mr. Oakley said very stiff, ‘I don’t know what you are talking about, but if you have anything to say, perhaps you’ll say it.’ ”

Pearson broke off and looked in a deprecating manner at Miss Silver. “I don’t know whether you happened to notice, but Mr. Carroll has got a way of laughing. Not at all what I should call the thing—more like what you might call a snigger, if you know what I mean.”

Miss Silver knew exactly what he meant. She gathered that Carroll had sniggered at Mr. Oakley, and that Mr. Oakley’s reactions had been exactly what might have been expected, whereupon Mr. Carroll had not only repeated the offence, but had said in what Pearson could only describe as a nasty voice, “Oh, well, I thought you might be interested. The looker-on sees most of the game, you know. That’s what I’ve been telling the others. Of course I may have bored them, but I don’t somehow think that I did. No—I’m almost sure I didn’t. What a pity you and your wife weren’t there. You’d have been deeply interested, because, you see, I really did have a very good view of the hall when the lights came on, and a particularly good view of your wife. But of course, ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense.’ ”

Pearson’s pronunciation of the famous Garter motto was patriotic in the extreme. It is safe to say that the country of its origin would have made very little of it. Miss Silver, herself addicted to a British pronunciation of the French tongue, understood him perfectly.

“Pray continue, Mr. Pearson.”

“Well, there wasn’t much more. Mr. Oakley said, ‘Hold your tongue!’ and Mr. Carroll said, ‘Well, I’ve held it up to now, but that’s not to say I shall go on holding it!’ and he slammed down the receiver.”

“Dear me!” said Miss Silver.

Pearson looked complacent.

“That’s what I thought, madam. And it seemed to me that it would be a good thing to tell you—the Chief Inspector and Sergeant Abbott not being available, and not wishing to have it said that I kept anything back that might be useful to the police.”

“You did perfectly right,” said Miss Silver briskly. “How long ago did this conversation take place?”

“A matter of maybe five minutes or so. I had the locking-up to see to. By the time I got round to the front door Mr. Carroll was coming out of the study and going up to his room.”

He was thanked and dismissed.

About five minutes later Sergeant Abbott was told that he was wanted on the telephone, an instrument very inconveniently situated in the narrow entrance-hall of the Ram, to which hostelry he had accompanied his Chief with misgivings already abundantly justified. The Ram had four bedrooms, and all the beds were lumpy and smelt of beer, the food exemplified every sin of omission and commission which a cook can perpetrate, the beer was bad, and the telephone was in the hall. He had to disentangle the receiver from somebody else’s coat which reeked of shag.

Miss Silver’s voice came incongruously to his ear. First her slight cough, and then a prim “Hullo!” He said,

“Frank speaking.”

The primness persisted.

“I am extremely sorry to disturb you. I hope that you had not retired?”

“I’m putting it off as long as possible. I don’t know what they’ve used in the mattress. It’s not sharp enough for road-metal—I rather suspect mangelwurzels. I am covered with bucolic bruises.”

Miss Silver’s cough was hortatory.

“I am exceedingly uneasy.”

She had slipped into her British French.

“What’s up?”

“That very foolish young man Mr. Carroll is giving everyone to understand that he is in possession of some knowledge— evidence—I do not know what to call it. He pretends—” the word in French bears a more respectable meaning than in English—“he pretends to have seen something of an incriminating nature at the moment when the lights came on. I do not know if it is possible. He was certainly in occupation of a vantage-point— he may have seen something, or he may not. What troubles me is the possible consequence of this foolish boasting. It does not really signify whether there is any truth behind it. What does signify is that the murderer may believe that there is, and that he may act upon his belief. I am extremely uneasy.”

There was a slight pause. After which Frank said,

“What do you want me to do?”

“It would relieve my mind very much to have you in the house. I feel sure that Miss Brown would offer no objection.”

Sergeant Abbott said gravely,

“You know, this is bribery and corruption—Vi-springs instead of mangolds, and everything else to match. Well, I can put it up to the Chief—I don’t suppose he’ll mind. Will you hold on?”

Miss Silver held the line and meditated upon human nature— more particularly upon Mr. Carroll’s nature. She found it a far from pleasant subject. Considering the motives which might have prompted him in his folly, she dealt with such qualities as a sense of inferiority to be compensated by aggression, jealousy of others more fortunately placed—in which connection she recalled her favourite Lord Tennyson’s dictum, “Envy is the fume of little minds”—and, lastly and with great seriousness, the possibility that this cloud of words was in effect a smokescreen to cover his own guilt and blacken others with suspicion.

She was still occupied with these thoughts when Frank Abbott came back upon the line.

“All right—he hasn’t any objection. Just murmured a few sweet nothings about mountains out of mole-hills, and suggested that I was after the fleshpots. Well, it won’t take me more than five or six minutes. I’ll be right along.”

It was to take longer than that. Not because of the distance, since the Grange lay on the outskirts of the village, with no more than a quarter of a mile between its pillared gateway and the creaking sign which displayed a gold ram, rather tarnished, on a green field a good deal the worse for wear. Frank Abbott, walking briskly, passed the corner where the church with its squat Saxon tower crouched behind a row of monumental yews so black and solid that they might have been a wall, except that they were darker than any masonry could be. A hundred yards down the lane was the entrance to the Grange. He had a flashlight in the pocket of his overcoat, but he preferred not to use it. He had been country-reared, and knew how quickly the eye accommodates itself—after a few moments of blindness the skyline becomes evident, hedgerows can be discerned.

The grey pillars which marked the gateway to the Grange caught some of the diffused light from a cloud-covered moon. He passed between them, the gate being open, and heard, a long way off up the drive, the sound of running footsteps. He heard them, but no sooner had he done so than they ceased. It was as quick as that. He was left with the certainty that he had heard someone running. He shifted his suit-case to his left hand, got hold of his torch, and proceeded up the drive. It was a long drive, leafless trees overhead and dead flat fields on either side. There was a sharp double bend like an S, with a pond catching the light in one curve, and a mass of what looked like old holly-bushes in the other.

It was when he was opposite the hollies that, standing still to listen, he heard a twig snap and saw something move. In a moment his hand swung up with the torch. The beam picked out a man’s face—an arm thrown up to screen it. But not quite quickly enough. Frank Abbott called out “Oakley!” and Martin Oakley stood his ground.

“Who’s that?”

There was something in his voice—something curious, desperate.

Frank said, “Abbott,” and crossed the space between them.

“What’s up?”

Something very odd here. The man was breathing as if he had been running for his life. It was all he could do to get enough of that hard-caught breath to speak with, and then it was only a single word—a name.

“Carroll—”

“What about him?”

“Dead—”

“Do you mean that?”

Martin Oakley had him by the arm. There was a frightful tension about his grip.

“He’s dead—”

“Where?”

“Up by the house.” He had his breath now. The words came pouring out. “I didn’t do it—I swear I didn’t! I came to see him, but he was dead when I got there. He rang up. I tell you he hinted the foulest things. What sort of mind has a man got to do a thing like that? I don’t know if it was blackmail he was after.”

Abbott had been holding the torch so that the beam slanted downwards. He turned it sharply now to let the light shine upon Martin Oakley’s face. He blinked and threw up a hand. The tumbling words checked. Frank said,

“I wouldn’t talk if I were you—unless you want to make a confession.”

“I never touched him. Take that light away!” He stepped back out of its range, his hand still up to shield his face.

Abbott said dispassionately,

“Well, just bear in mind that anything you say is liable to be used in evidence against you.”

“I tell you I never touched him!”

“All right. You’d better come along and show me where he is.”

The drive wound back to skirt a peace of woodland. Frank Abbott thought the man who planned it had gone out of his way to make it as long as possible. Chesterton’s “rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road,” just slid into his mind and out again. Of course that was why he had heard Oakley when he began to run. He had been actually nearer the house then than for most of the rest of the way. Half the lanes in England were like that—you went away from the place you were going to, and then came back to it again.

They were coming back to it now. The drive came out on a gravel sweep— “That’s where I heard him run. He must have been scared crazy to run on the gravel.” He said aloud,

“Which way?” And Martin Oakley said, “Round here to the left.”

There was a belt of shrubbery, not very thick—light leafless tracery of lilac and syringa, with a dense blackness here and there of holly and yew, a path threading it to come out upon a small paved court at the side of the house. Huddled on the paving stones, Leonard Carroll lying crookedly with the back of his head smashed in.

Martin Oakley said, “He’s dead. I didn’t touch him.”

“Somebody did,” said Frank Abbott coolly.

He stepped forward, felt the dead man’s wrist, and found it warm. He stepped back again. Then he sent the beam of the torch travelling here and there. The flags lay damp and furred with moss. Where they met the wall of the house there was a withered growth of fern, the old fronds brown and broken, the new ones curled hard upon themselves like fossils, sheltering against the January frosts. There was no sign of a weapon. The beam slid up the walls and showed rows of casement windows closed and curtained. On the ground floor all the windows shut. No light anywhere to answer the wandering beam.

Abbott said sharply, “Who sleeps this side?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“Then how did you come here?”

“I came to see him.”

“But why here? What brought you here?”

Oakley fetched one of those hard breaths.

“My God, Abbott—you can’t put it on me! I tell you I was coming to see him.”

“What brought you here—round to the side of the house?”

“I came up to the front door. It was only just after ten when he telephoned. I made up my mind to see him, to find out what he meant. I came up to the front door. I thought I heard voices away over here on the left. The front of the house was all dark. I stepped back to listen. I thought I heard my own name. I came this way. My feet made a noise on the gravel. I suppose that’s why I didn’t hear any more. I had a torch. I did stop to listen once. I thought I heard someone. I called out, ‘Carroll, is that you?’ There wasn’t any answer. I went on, and found him lying here the way he is now. I didn’t touch him—I swear I didn’t!”

“You didn’t think of giving the alarm?”

“I only thought about getting away. I’m afraid I lost my head a bit. I’d come over to see him, and there he was—dead. My one idea was to get away. I started to run, but when I got on to the gravel I realized what a row I was making and stopped. I tried not to make any more noise. Then I bumped into you. That’s the absolute truth.”

Frank Abbott wondered. He said,

“We’d better go up to the house.”