Macdonald went carefully through all the drawers of the desk, noting the exquisite neatness with which Keston had kept his books and papers relating to current expenditure, but found nothing save the account books, papers, bills and receipts of everyday affairs.
The kneehole table by the window contained quantities of manuscript, typescript, notes, letters and a few books. A large cabinet fitted with drawers contained various specimens of interest to the anthropologist and archeologist, and there was a large number of books on the built-in shelves. Everything was orderly, scholarly and peaceful—a room in which a scholar and philosopher had evidently delighted, but also a room which contained nothing to assist a detective. That the professor had been murdered Macdonald was convinced, but his study threw no light on the matter unless the absence of the diamonds proved to be germane to the case.
* * *
It was nearly seven o’clock when Macdonald left the professor’s study and went back to the entrance hall, where he found Eve Merrion talking to a tall, dark young man.
Mrs. Merrion came toward Macdonald at once.
“I have been wondering if you would dine with us, Chief Inspector. You have been working hard for such a long time.”
Macdonald smiled down at her. “That is very kind of you, Mrs. Merrion. A lot of people seem to think that policemen are superhuman and live without meals. Thank you very much for the kind thought but I have to go and see Inspector Turner in the village, and I can get supper at the inn.”
“As you will, of course, whichever is more convenient to you, but I should have been glad, quite honestly, if you could have stayed, and we could have talked about things again. You have been so considerate to us, and I’m honestly grateful.”
“I think it would probably be more profitable if we discussed matters later, when I have finished the preliminary spade work,” said Macdonald, “but there are a few additional questions I should like to ask, if you can spare a minute.”
“Of course. I’ll come outside with you. I’ll just tell Mr. Rhodian to go along upstairs. He has come to collect his suitcase which he left here.”
“I see. He was staying with you last week, wasn’t he?”
“Yes. He wanted to meet my father.”
Eve turned toward the young man, raising her voice slightly, and Bruce Rhodian came forward and she said:
“The chief inspector wants to talk to me for a minute. Do you mind going up, you know the way.”
“Of course. Don’t bother about me, Mrs. Merrion.”
Macdonald stepped forward also. “Mr. Rhodian, I wish you would spare me a minute or two a little later. I understand that you were in the Hermit’s Cave with Mr. Keston and Mr. Lockersley one evening, and I wanted to ask you about a small incident which occurred there.”
“Ask anything you like, though I don’t remember anything worth calling an incident.” The bright, dark eyes regarded Macdonald with a curiosity to which he was not unaccustomed. Many people looked on a C.I.D. man with just that lively interest. “In about fifteen minutes, outside there?”
“Thanks very much,” replied Macdonald, and turned back to Mrs. Merrion. They walked out through the open front doors onto the sunlit terrace, and when they were out of earshot of the house Macdonald asked:
“Did your father give you any reason for his change of plan in coming back here on Wednesday instead of on Thursday?”
“No. He said that London was rather hot and wearing, and that the thought of Valehead seemed very delectable. He had got very fond of the place. There was no reason for him to stay longer in London. He had given his lecture, and his old friend, Professor Evans, had had to leave London a day earlier than he expected. He was returning to the States, and had to go when he was told as people do these days.”
“I see. Now for the other point. Had your father mentioned to you that he had purchased some diamonds early in the war?”
“No. He never told me about it. My sister, Mrs. Stamford, mentioned it to me today. Father said something to her about it, rather jokingly, and she remembered about it and asked me if he’d ever said anything about diamonds to me. She wasn’t sure if he was in earnest when he spoke or whether it were a joke.”
“No, it wasn’t a joke. He invested a considerable sum in diamonds, as a sort of portable security. I wondered where he kept them.”
“At his bank, surely, where one always keeps such things,” replied Eve. “Poor darling! Fancy him buying diamonds! He could have had mine if he had wanted any. I hate them.” She turned to Macdonald in her impetuous way. “Oh, dear. . . . Is this another bother? I can’t imagine Father worrying about diamonds. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll find they are at his bank. He was very sensible about such things.”
“The bank manager will soon settle that point for us,” replied Macdonald. “I just wanted to make sure whether you and Mrs. Stamford knew anything about them. Now, if I may borrow Mr. Rhodian for a short time, I want him to come to the cave with me.”
7
A few minutes later Macdonald was walking down the drive with Bruce Rhodian. The latter was talkative, and chattered on as they made their way under the beech trees.
“I’m so darned sorry for Mrs. Merrion over all this,” he said. “So far as the old man was concerned, he had a very peaceful end, and I don’t think he’d have wished a better, but it seems uncommonly rough luck for Mrs. Merrion to have to face all this racket.” He looked at Macdonald in his lively, interrogating way. “I know it’s a cool nerve to express opinions when I don’t know all the facts, but it does seem so utterly improbable that anyone would have gone out of their way to murder the professor, and to do it in that particular way.”
Macdonald looked at Rhodian with a half-smile.
“Don’t be afraid of expressing your opinions,” he said. “I often get useful sidelights on a case when people give voice to ideas which may seem unhelpful on their face value. You speak about the method employed. The whole point about it, to my way of thinking, is that it might well have passed as accident. It still may, if I can’t get any conclusive evidence. Most methods of murder can’t be mistaken for accident.” He paused a moment and then added, “Put yourself in the murderer’s place; it’s a useful exercise. Can you suggest any method of achieving the end in view neater than the one employed?”
“Funny you should have asked that,” replied Rhodian equably. “It’s a question I’ve been asking myself. Put yourself in the murderer’s place and worry out a foolproof method. I suppose there isn’t one, but I should have thought that throwing him in the lake or engineering a fall of rock would have met the case.” He broke off.
“I sound pretty cold-blooded,” he added apologetically, “but you asked me to view the thing as a problem.”
“Quite right,” replied Macdonald. “That is obviously the detective’s method, as objective as a problem in algebra, or assessing margins of error by calculus. Now for your methods: You can’t throw a big, reasonably powerful man into a lake and expect him to drown quietly in order to oblige. You would have to hold him under, and things might not go the way you expected. Also, if you used violence you would leave marks, and those marks would militate against an accident theory. As for the fall of rock, so far as I can judge from appearances—and I have done a bit of rock-climbing and know treacherous rock when I see it—you could only cause a rock-fall in that cave by detonation, the use of explosives, and that method could hardly pass as accidental. Even though the murderer were optimistic enough to hope that the explosion were accepted as a stray bomb from a stray bomber, investigation would soon disprove that theory.”
They had arrived at the end of the drive, and Rhodian paused before turning toward the entrance to the cave.
“Yes, I suppose you’re right, both times,” he admitted. “As a potential murderer I don’t seem to be a success. The fall of rock theory occurred to me because when I was in the cave, I had a horrible feeling that the roof was going to fall in on me and bury me, maybe the result of hav
ing worked in a rescue squad during the blitz, and dug out poor devils who had been buried. It gave me the jitters.”
He walked to the cave’s entrance, saying, “Beastly hole, isn’t it? I always loathe caves. What was it you wanted to know?”
“When you were in here with Mr. Keston and Mr. Lockersley, on the evening before you left, do you remember anything about a match being dropped on the ground?”
“Yes. Now you mention it, I do. Lockersley—no, Keston lighted a cigarette and threw the match down while it was still burning. It caught some leaves—I remember the little spiral of blue smoke—but Lockersley put his foot on it after a few seconds. Anyway, it was put out before we left the cave. No chance of it having flared up again, at least I don’t think so.”
“Did you notice anything in particular about the behavior of the smoke?”
“Not a thing. A few leaves smoldered, that was all. I hardly noticed it. I was pondering over Keston and Lockersley, and their attitude to one another.”
“What about it?”
“Oh, just a queer feeling that I had that they might fly at one another’s throats. I explained it away afterwards by putting it down to the cave. I don’t mean spooks, or supernatural influence, or anything bats of that kind, but just that the cave has a bad effect on me. I don’t like it—the beastly green light and the shut-in feeling—it makes me irritable as a cat, and I think Lockersley felt the same, although he wouldn’t own it.”
“I understand that Mr. Lockersley suggested that you should go with him to see the cave?”
“Yes. I’d said I wanted to see it, and he offered to do showman.”
“And Mr. Keston. Did he accompany you?”
“No. He must have followed us a little later. I was standing with my back to the entrance, and was suddenly conscious of someone behind me. It was Keston. He’d come in as quietly as a cat and was watching us.”
“He was watching you,” repeated Macdonald thoughtfully. “I don’t want to lead you as a witness, but could you enlarge on that remark?”
Rhodian rubbed his dark hair until it stood up in a rumpled mass, making him look more than ever boyish. Before he answered he lighted a cigarette and threw the match down on the ground, where the flame licked against some dead leaves, and a trail of blue smoke went up.
“Look—it was like that,” he said, and Macdonald nodded. The smoke from Rhodian’s cigarette joined the rising coil from the floor, and two blue spirals floated out of the entrance space. Macdonald, leaning back against the wall, lighted a cigarette himself. Rhodian stood by the entrance and looked outside.
“You were asking me what I meant by saying that Keston was watching us,” he said. “The funny thing is that I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if he were prowling about somewhere now. He’s a rum chap. I don’t want to give an unfair impression, but when he butted in when Lockersley and I were talking in here, I felt he was watching out on us, seeing that we didn’t interfere. I wondered afterwards if his anthropology had turned him a bit crackers. I know of one chap who performs some sacred rites with a totem pole for deity, or something of the kind. Anyway, Keston gave me the feeling that he resented us being here, but again, that might be exaggeration.”
“You didn’t ask him why he’d followed you?”
“Lord, no. I was only a guest here. It’s more his cave than mine.”
While he was talking Rhodian had been standing half sideways to Macdonald, looking out at the sunlit lake. Macdonald had moved a step or two, and stood for perhaps half a minute with his back against the lancet slit of the window. It took him no longer than a few seconds to observe the difference made in the atmosphere of the cave when the current of air was blocked at one end. The smoke from his cigarette no longer drifted out toward the entrance: it went straight up and hung in a cloud by the roof. He moved away and crossed the cave and stood by Rhodian. The latter spoke again impetuously.
“Look here, it’s a hell of a business suspecting people. The more I think of it, the more impossible it seems that murder is the answer to this business. No one knew the old man was coming to sleep here that night. It was just chance that he did. Then there’s this to it. The professor came along here late in the evening, so Mrs. Merrion says—well after eleven o’clock, anyway.”
“Did Mrs. Merrion say that she knew when her father left the house?”
“No. Of course not. She didn’t know, but they were talking till about eleven in the drawing room, so it must have been close on midnight before he left the house. It would have been dark under these trees. How could anyone have been certain that the person who came down the drive was the professor? It would have been too dark to see him.”
“No, I don’t think it would,” replied Macdonald. “With the double hour of summertime, plus the moon, I think there would have been enough light to recognize the professor by—his white hair would have made that easier, as well as his height. However, it’s all very much surmise at this stage. Now you will be wanting to get back to dinner, and I have various jobs to do, so I’ll leave you now, with many thanks for answering all my questions.”
“Damn it, he is there, snooping around,” put in Rhodian suddenly, and Macdonald looked over the other’s shoulder toward the narrow end of the lake, where a bridge crossed the water. Keston stood there in the golden sunlight, gazing in the direction of the house, straight up the valley.
“Snooping doesn’t seem a fair word to use,” replied Macdonald mildly. “He’s probably only taking a little exercise to get an appetite for dinner, now that I am safely out of the house. Don’t let suspicion upset your judgment.”
Rhodian grinned, his bright dark eyes twinkling.
“I’m being a dime fool,” he said. “It’s this cave. I told you it makes me unreasonable. Maybe it affects other people that way, too.”
He nodded to Macdonald and swung off down the drive, moving with a swift, springy step, youthful and buoyant.
* * *
Macdonald had told Reeves to park his car just outside the drive, Reeves himself having been given instructions to wander about and enjoy himself while he had the chance, and also to observe what he could and make himself familiar with the lie of the land. Macdonald got in the car and started driving leisurely toward the village, reflecting for about the twentieth time that day that this rich valley was one of the loveliest localities he had ever seen. Heron and moorhens played lazily above the river; the water meadows were intensely green, jeweled with flowers, and the fine Devon cattle stood placidly in their rich pastures. A rich and green and pleasant land, peaceful with the peace of solitude and sunshine and plenteousness—a strange setting for a murder. The roadway was so narrow that bracken brushed the sides of the car, and wild roses tossed delicate petals over it. Macdonald, always a considerate driver, pulled up when he saw a pedestrian coming toward him, before he realized that it was David Lockersley. The latter stopped as he made his way between the car and the hedge.
“Hallo. All over bar the shouting?”
“Hardly. I’ve just been noticing things,” replied Macdonald, “but there’s a lot more that I want to notice. Do you feel disposed to do a bit of cooperation?”
“Provided I’m not asked to do anything outrageously lowdown, yes,” replied Lockersley, and Macdonald answered:
“I don’t think it’s anything likely to hurt your sensitive conscience, though it may rattle your nerves, if they’re given to rattling, as I suspect they are.”
Lockersley grinned, a slow, rather twisted grin which lightened his sullen face.
“My nerves are shockproof. What about it?”
“I want to find out what sort of visibility there is in the drive about midnight, just outside the Hermit’s Cave. It would be helpful if you would impersonate the professor, walking into the cave. You’re not much short of his height, and you’re fair-headed, about the nearest approach to his appearance around here.”
“Good Lord!” Lockersley stared. “I wish I knew what was in your mind. I’m
not sure that I like this idea.”
“If you don’t, you can say no, thank you. There’s no compulsion to assist.”
“Oh, I’ll do it, all right. I only wondered. . . . Where do you want me to meet you?”
“I want you, if you will, to set out from the house at eleven-thirty and walk quietly down the drive. Go into the cave and sit down or lie down. I want you to listen, and tell me if you hear or notice anything. Fifteen minutes after you have gone in there, I shall come and thank you for your kind assistance, and you may then go home to bed.”
“Hell! What a part to play! I am the victim, and you?”
“The murderer, obviously, only I shall take care that you come to no harm.”
“Thanks for the assurance. I wonder . . . if I had done the old man in, should I have the nerve to do just what you ask, knowing you were there, watching for me to give myself away? In your experience, do most murderers break down when they’re faced with a recapitulation of their crime?”
“Murderers can’t be classed in a group. They vary. Some break down when they realize they have been bowled out, others don’t. One can’t generalize.”
“As a matter of general information, tell me this. If you really suspected me of this crime, would you be justified in asking me to do what you have just detailed?”
Death Came Softly Page 10
