by J F Straker
The opening of the window behind her made her jump. Desmond was staring straight ahead of him, a new expression on his face. She turned her head to see what it was that thus held his attention and there, only a few feet away, was Sergeant Watkins, his red hair glinting in the weak sunlight.
Startled out of the mental and physical torpor into which she had gradually sunk, Elizabeth scrambled to her knees with a little cry of thankfulness, heedless of the presence of Desmond beside her. All the hopes which she had thought were dead were suddenly revived and centred on the miracle that had happened. It seemed to her, in her ecstasy of relief, that an angel had materialised out of thin air to summon her to freedom.
He was a very solid angel. He clung to a tall ladder, and there was nothing angelic about his expression; it was grimly purposeful. She could not bear to look at him on his precarious perch, yet dared not take her eyes away lest, when she looked again, he might have vanished. A quick glance downward showed her that the ladder sprang from a red fire-engine around which a little group of people were clustered, all of them gazing upward, their faces white in the shadow thrown by the hotel. Then her eyes returned to the ladder to feast themselves once more on the man who clung there. On him alone her life seemed to depend.
‘Good morning.’ Desmond opened the window wide. ‘Chilly out there, isn’t it? I envy your head for heights, Sergeant.’
His voice sounded hoarse but cheerful. The Sergeant’s was equally hoarse, but not at all cheerful. ‘I want to take your wife down with me, Farrel,’ he said. ‘How about it?’
Desmond was so long in answering that Elizabeth had to force her knuckles into her mouth to prevent herself from screaming. She feared that any sound from her might affect his decision adversely.
‘Wouldn’t it be simpler,’ he said at last, ‘if I were to open the door and let down the ladder?’
‘Much simpler,’ Watkins agreed. ‘Will you do that?’
Again the dreadful suspense. Then, ‘No,’ Desmond said. ‘It would be an anticlimax. I should hate to deprive you of the fruits of your heroism. Go ahead and rescue her, Sergeant. I won’t interfere.’
For a moment Watkins studied him; then he made a brief signal to the watchers below. Elizabeth waited, her body tense.
‘Stand over against the far wall, Farrel,’ Watkins said. ‘I’ll handle this my way.’
For an agonizing moment the girl thought Desmond was going to refuse. Then he withdrew his head from the window and got to his feet. The smile had left his face. He looked grey and tired and considerably older.
‘We’re not likely to meet again, Elizabeth,’ he said, forcing a smile. ‘We won’t be moving in the same company. Goodbye and good luck — and a safe journey down.’
He walked slowly round the table and leant against the cupboard. But Elizabeth had eyes only for the Sergeant. He was at the window now, his bulk filling it, a hand on the sill.
‘Get up here, miss,’ he said gently, patting it. ‘I’ll see you don’t fall.’
Only for a brief moment did she hesitate; the thought of climbing out of the window was unnerving, but the fear of her husband was greater. Gingerly she clambered on to the sill, losing her slippers as she did so.
‘Don’t look down,’ Watkins said. He gave a quick glance at Desmond and then bent to put an arm around her. ‘I’m taking you down on my shoulder. Once I’ve got you just close your eyes and relax. Don’t worry, I’ve done this before. I used to be a stunt man on the films before I joined the Force.’
Despite his injunction, she gave a quick glance down; the ground seemed a long way off, and she closed her eyes. She felt herself lifted and borne outward, and clutched desperately at the Sergeant’s jacket. The feel of it reassured her slightly, and she opened her eyes for a last glimpse into the room. Desmond had not moved; he was staring at her with that fixed grey smile of his. Then the ladder seemed to sway and move, and after one swift and frightened look at the unstable earth below she shut her eyes tightly and tried to obey the Sergeant’s order to relax.
‘I’ll be back for you,’ she heard him say to Desmond. ‘Or you may prefer to leave by the door. You’ll find some one waiting.’
If Desmond answered she did not hear him. Her ears were buzzing and she felt dizzy. A jerk at her legs (he was hitching her more snugly to his shoulder) and then they were descending the ladder, the blood singing in her head.
Alan was the first to greet her as the Sergeant deposited her gently on her feet; he put his arms round her and held her close while she burst into a flood of tears. The small crowd of people left them alone, watching sympathetically. But Elizabeth had no eyes for them. She felt desperately tired and sleepy, drained of all energy and purpose. She did not even want Alan. She wanted only to lie in bed and close her eyes, to drift away into a dreamless sleep that would blot out all the terrors of the past night.
There was a cry from the people around her, and she looked up quickly, terror returning at the sound. Sergeant Watkins was once more on the ladder, climbing slowly. But the staring faces were looking beyond him, and Elizabeth followed their gaze.
Desmond was crouched on the window sill; he looked small and lonely and pathetic. Slowly he raised himself to his feet, his hands clutching the window frame. There was a shout from Sergeant Watkins, a horrified gasp from the watching crowd; then his arms shot out and he sprang for the ladder. His fingers touched it lightly, failed to hold — and he fell, arms flailing and legs bicycling, the slight cry that he uttered swept away on the breeze.
Alan caught her to him, burying her face against his raincoat. But her ears were not muffled. She heard the thud as the body hit the ground, and then she fainted.
* * *
‘Did you know it was Desmond who killed Aunt Charlotte?’ Alan asked curiously.
Inspector Pitt shook his head.
‘You and your friends confused the issue. So did Miss Messager — Mrs Farrel, I should say — by concealing her marriage. But even without that confusion we might not have pinned him down if he hadn’t overplayed his hand. Suspicion isn’t enough. There’s more than one man at liberty today whom the police know to be a murderer. They just lack the evidence to convict.’
‘I don’t see how my marriage made all that difference,’ Elizabeth said.
She had had her sleep. The police had been impatient to question her on what had transpired in the tower, but the doctor had held them off. She was suffering from severe strain and shock, he said; rest and sleep were essential. He had given her a sedative, and she had slept for over twelve hours. Now it was evening; the doctor had seen her and had given permission for the police to interview her, and she had told them all she could recall of the previous night. Parts of it were vague, as a nightmare is vague in detail the next morning. Yet she had thought that every moment of it would be imprinted indelibly on her memory!
She had been anxious to see them in order to thank Sergeant Watkins for her rescue. Outwardly the Sergeant had been embarrassed by her gratitude, his face as red as his hair. Yet secretly he had been delighted at the praise showered on him by Alan Torreck and others, and would have felt cheated had not Elizabeth added her thanks to theirs.
‘It made suspicion stronger, miss,’ Pitt told her. ‘Your husband knew the terms of your aunt’s will, that you would not inherit if you married before her death. Your marriage to Mr Farrel on Friday, however secret, automatically excluded you from inheriting — provided your aunt was alive on that day. Didn’t you appreciate that?’
Elizabeth shook her head. She looked very young and pathetic and appealing, Alan thought. He wondered how long it would take her to learn to laugh again.
‘I’m afraid I didn’t,’ she said.
‘No? Your husband did. That was why he chose Friday for the wedding; not because it was the day after Mrs Lane was due to leave (which was no doubt the reason he gave you), but because he knew that by then she would be dead and the money as good as yours. Or his,’ he added.
‘How did
you know we were married, Inspector? Who told you?’
‘The registrar. We had a talk with the manager of the Speckled Trout after seeing you yesterday, and he mentioned that Mr Farrel had booked a room for you both for next weekend. That didn’t confirm a wedding, but it implied it. The Tanbury police got the rest from the registrar.’
Elizabeth sighed. She recalled Desmond’s gay mood of the previous afternoon, his suggestion at tea-time that they should take a belated honeymoon. Up to then, at least, he could have had no thought of killing her.
When she put this to the Inspector he seemed puzzled.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Mr Farrel booked that room last Saturday, not yesterday.’
‘Oh, but he didn’t, Inspector. It was while we were having tea, after I’d told him about the will, that the idea occurred to him. I think — thought’ — how could she think it now, after what had happened since? — ‘that he wanted to prove to me that the loss of Aunt Charlotte’s money made no difference to his — his love for me.’
Only he hadn’t loved her; it had been the money, not love, that had prompted him to marry her. Dulcie had had his love.
‘More likely he hoped to lull you into a sense of false security,’ Pitt said. ‘He booked that room after you’d had lunch there on Saturday — before your aunt’s body had been found, before either of you should have known that she was dead. No doubt about that. I checked it carefully, knowing its significance.’
Alan too saw the significance.
‘Aunt Charlotte would never have allowed you to go off for a weekend, no matter what reason you gave her,’ he said slowly. ‘Desmond knew that. So either it was an empty gesture, or he also knew that Aunt Charlotte was dead, that she couldn’t interfere.’
‘That’s about it, Mr Torreck,’ Watkins agreed. ‘And he couldn’t tell Miss Messager — beg pardon, ma’am, Mrs Farrel — what he had done because she might realise its implication. Not then, of course — but later.’
Elizabeth wondered why she had been so eager to believe that Desmond’s decision to kill her had been sudden, not planned from the start. He himself had said that Dulcie had driven him to it. How true was that?
‘I don’t know, miss,’ Pitt said when she asked him. ‘Perhaps he wasn’t thinking that far ahead when he killed your aunt. He gave me the impression, however, that he was trying to shift his guilt on to you. Right from the start he went out of his way to stress the dissension that had existed between you and your aunt; he was at it even yesterday. When he saw I wasn’t buying that one I suppose he looked for another solution; or maybe he found circumstances going his way and just let them ride.’
‘What circumstances?’
‘Well, those sleeping tablets, for a start; I doubt if he meant to implicate his father, but he must have felt reasonably sure you would sleep soundly that night. Then Michael Lane, already under suspicion for your aunt’s death, was in the hotel and available as a suspect. And finally there was Mr Poulton’s body to provide mute evidence of his own innocence. It all added up to a first-class opportunity, from his point of view.’
‘A nice touch, that, about the body,’ Jim Watkins said, a trace of admiration in his voice. ‘The snag with most murders is the disposal of the body. Farrel didn’t try to hide it, he flaunted it — and to his own advantage.’
‘Was it?’ Alan said doubtfully. ‘I know I was taken in. Were you, Inspector?’
‘I had my doubts, sir. The position of the body didn’t look quite right to me. Nor did those head wounds; they weren’t what I’d have expected from a fall. But I wasn’t sticking my neck out on that until I’d had medical opinion.’
‘And no marks on the windowsill,’ Watkins added.
‘So if he’d held his hand after killing Aunt Charlotte he might have got away with it?’ Alan said.
‘He might.’ Pitt sounded cautious. ‘I’m not saying he would, but he might. The Speckled Trout isn’t cheap, you know, and yesterday he was able to lend Mr Lane fifty pounds. Where did the money come from, if only the week before he had been hard up? He had no alibi, and the fact that he had invented one told against him. He knew that. That was why he had to prevent Mr Poulton from supplying us with the additional and extremely damning evidence of the car. Then there was motive; his marriage couldn’t have been kept secret for long. And don’t forget that the field was limited; just the five of you, with your relatives as rank outsiders. Yes, I think we’d have got around to him, Mr Torreck. But whether we would have arrested him is another matter.’
Elizabeth was feeling sleepy again, and she had not followed this very closely. But she had heard enough to say, ‘Last night, in the tower, he told me you knew. Did you? He said something about a pillow, I remember.’
‘I knew — or shall I say I was ninety per cent. sure? — that he’d tried to smother you. You see, while the others were looking for Michael Lane I went into his room; under his bed was a pillow with lipstick on it.’ The Inspector smiled wryly. ‘Lipstick on a man’s pillow doesn’t necessarily imply murder, of course. But why hide it under the bed?’
Jim Watkins repressed with regret the retort that immediately sprang to his mind. In the presence of the girl it was better left unsaid.
‘So that was what you were getting at with your little homily on pillows,’ Alan said. ‘But couldn’t Desmond have claimed that he knew nothing about it, that some one else must have put it there?’
‘Not after he had just told us he had locked his door. It wouldn’t have worked, would it?’
‘I suppose not. But why broadcast the information? It meant nothing to the rest of us, of course, but Desmond must have known what you were getting at.’
‘I hoped he would,’ Pitt agreed. ‘I hoped to panic him into making a false move. And in a way I succeeded — though not quite as intended,’ he added, with an apologetic look at the girl.
‘So you knew he was guilty, and yet you didn’t arrest him.’ Alan’s tone was accusing. ‘You left him in the room with Elizabeth, knowing that he’d already made one attempt to kill her. Wasn’t that an almighty risk to take, Inspector?’
A darkening of the pallor on Pitt’s gaunt cheeks indicated that the shaft had struck home.
‘I’m a cautious man, Mr Torreck. Many years ago I made the mistake of arresting a man too soon; I was young and eager, and I thought I’d got him on toast. But I was wrong, and he got away with it. Maybe that’s made me over-cautious. But remember that the lipstick was not necessarily Mrs Farrel’s — it needed an analyst to determine that — and I had yet to refute the evidence of that dead body under the window. Nor did I see any risk in leaving him with Mrs Farrel; if he had tried to kill her he had planned it carefully, taking every possible precaution to avoid detection. He was hardly likely to make a second attempt while the hunt was on, and in full view of Constable Williams.’ His expression grew grimmer. ‘My final instructions to Williams were explicit; under no circumstances was he to let Mrs Farrel out of his sight. I’ve had a few words with that young man since; I don’t think he’ll again disobey orders so lightly.’
For a while there was silence in the room. Elizabeth found her thoughts turning to George Farrel; she had not seen him or Dulcie since the previous night. Alan had told her that he had not seen them either; there was a rumour, he said, gleaned from the barman, that Dulcie was leaving the hotel — had perhaps already left. Elizabeth could find no sympathy in her heart for Dulcie Rivers; everything that had happened the previous night had been due, directly or indirectly, to Dulcie. But for George Farrel she had nothing but pity.
Vaguely to her mind came the thought that she and her father-in-law could perhaps help each other. They had both suffered, he more than she. He had grown to like her, she was sure of that; so long as his son’s death, or the knowledge that she had deceived him over the wedding, had not poisoned his mind against her, she might be able to comfort him a little. That might be . . .
Alan cut into her thoughts. He said, ‘I wonder wha
t Desmond wanted the money for? Didn’t he tell you, Elizabeth?’
She shook her head. ‘But it could have been for the hotel; he was always talking about the improvements he intended making. Or perhaps he just wanted it to spend on Dulcie,’ she added, without bitterness.
‘And Michael?’ Alan asked the Inspector. ‘What will happen to him?’
‘That’s for a court of law to decide, sir. He was brought before a magistrate this morning and released on bail.’
‘Poor Michael.’ Elizabeth could not even now entirely avoid the sense of responsibility she had always felt for her cousin. ‘Alan says he has confessed to attacking me on the common on Sunday.’
‘That’s so, miss.’
‘But why did he try to run away last night? He had nothing to do with what happened here.’
‘Just panic, Mrs Farrel. He’d had a tough afternoon and evening, his father had turned against him (though it was his father who put up the bail for him this morning), and with his conscience still nagging him over the lies he’d told he was in no condition to stand any more. Your scream just about finished him off. He didn’t know what had happened, but instinct told him to beat it before he was accused of whatever it was. He was cowering in the attic when we found him; I’ve seldom seen a more frightened man. That was when he volunteered the information, without any prompting from us, that he’d snatched your bag on Sunday.’
‘Once he discovered he wasn’t wanted for murder he was positively anxious to be arrested,’ the Sergeant said. ‘He lacks guts, does Mr Lane.’
Desmond hadn’t lacked guts, Elizabeth reflected. At times when he had been talking to her in the tower he had shown signs of being afraid, but always he had mastered his fear. And at the end — had that been an accident, or had he fallen deliberately? They would never know. But Desmond was a gambler, and it seemed to her that that was how he had died — in a last despairing gamble with death, knowing that the ladder was probably out of his reach, that the odds were against him.
