Murder by Numbers

by Eric Brown

  ‘Crispin?’ Hermione Goudge said. ‘What on earth are you doing here? I had no idea you knew Fenton.’

  ‘Hermione, George,’ Proudfoot said, beaming at the couple. ‘How pleasant to see you both. Yes, I knew him for a time a few years ago.’ He introduced the older man. ‘This is Doctor Bryce. I was tootling along the lane,’ he went on, ‘when I saw the doctor and offered him a lift.’

  ‘I live in the village,’ the doctor explained in mordant tones.

  Holly Beckwith said, ‘I take it you were invited here, Mr Proudfoot?’

  The poet blushed as if unaccustomed to being addressed by beautiful women. ‘Yes. That is, I received this.’ He fumbled the card from the breast pocket of his jacket.

  ‘May I?’ Langham asked.

  He examined the proffered card. The numeral in the top right-hand corner read ‘5’.

  Langham turned to the doctor. ‘And yours, if I may?’

  Dr Bryce regarded him suspiciously. ‘Why the interest?’

  ‘Curiosity, let’s say,’ Langham smiled. ‘Maxwell Fenton’s invitation is rather … odd, I think you’ll agree.’

  Hermione Goudge said, ‘Odd it might be – but what gives you the right to question us like this? Answer me that, my man!’

  ‘My husband,’ Maria said, staring at the woman, ‘happens to be a private detective.’

  ‘Off-duty, I assure you,’ Langham said, ‘although my professional curiosity is piqued, I must admit.’ He turned to Dr Bryce and held out his hand. ‘If I might see your invitation card?’

  The doctor looked uneasy as he fished his card from a threadbare wallet and passed it to Langham. Its numeral was ‘1’.

  Langham regarded the two men. ‘I wonder if I might ask how you know Maxwell Fenton?’

  ‘He took me under his wing, rather,’ Proudfoot said. ‘He admired my verse and introduced me to a few influential figures.’

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘Oh, perhaps five or six years ago.’

  Going on a hunch, Langham asked the young man, ‘I take it that your parting was … acrimonious?’

  Proudfoot blinked. ‘Why, no. Nothing of the kind. We parted on the most amicable of terms; it’s merely that for the past few years I’ve been living in Paris.’

  Langham turned to Dr Bryce. ‘And you?’

  The doctor looked away. ‘What about me?’ he muttered.

  ‘When did you last see Fenton, and what is your relationship with him?’

  The doctor brought his shifty gaze to bear on Langham. ‘I saw Maxwell just a couple of weeks ago, as it happens. I’m his personal physician.’

  ‘You are?’ Holly Beckwith said. ‘Then you should know if it’s true: is Maxwell dying, Doctor Bryce?’

  The nervous physician was saved from replying by the sudden report of bolts being shot on the great oak door of the manor house.

  ‘Ah,’ Hermione Goudge declared, ‘a quorum has been achieved, and we are at last allowed entry – and not before time, I say!’

  The vast door swung open and Hermione sallied forth, her husband dancing attendance at her side.

  Langham took Maria’s hand, hung back for a second or two, then followed the others inside.

  THREE

  As they filed into a mahogany-panelled hallway, a po-faced butler asked to see the invitation card of each guest in turn.

  Hermione Goudge proffered her card and peered at the butler through her lorgnette. ‘And where is Fenton, my man?’

  ‘My instructions, ma’am, are to show you to the sitting room.’

  He examined Maria’s invitation, then held out his hand for Langham’s.

  ‘I’m with my wife,’ he said.

  ‘I am under express instructions,’ said the butler, ‘to allow entry only to those with invitation cards.’

  Langham held the man’s gaze. ‘In that case,’ he said, taking Maria’s arm, ‘I’m afraid the evening can proceed without us.’

  His words had the desired effect. The butler murmured that he would endeavour to ascertain if an exception might be made in this case, and disappeared along the corridor.

  He returned a minute later. ‘I have been instructed to make you welcome,’ he said without allowing his neutral expression to slip. ‘If you would care to follow me.’

  Maria gave Langham’s hand a quick, victorious squeeze.

  ‘This is all very well,’ said Hermione Goudge as they crossed the hall, ‘but we were expecting Fenton himself.’

  ‘I understand that he will see you presently, ma’am.’

  After the chill of the evening, the warmth of the sitting room was a welcome relief. George Goudge assisted his wife to an armchair beside the blazing fire and settled her into it as if she were an invalid.

  Crispin Proudfoot marched up to the flames and warmed his hands. Holly Beckwith made a beeline to the drinks trolley and fixed herself a Martini, calling over her shoulder, ‘Anyone else? I presume,’ she went on, addressing the butler, ‘we can help ourselves?’

  ‘My instructions were that I should do everything within my power to make you feel at home,’ the butler said, then slipped from the room.

  Dr Bryce joined the actress and poured himself a stiff Scotch, then carried it across to the window and stared out. His hand trembled as he lifted the glass to his liverish lips and took a long drink.

  ‘Anyone else?’ Beckwith asked.

  ‘A vodka and orange for my wife,’ George Goudge said as he approached the drinks trolley.

  Langham looked at Maria, who shook her head and murmured, ‘Just a tonic water for me, Donald.’

  He poured two tonic waters and joined Maria beside the hearth.

  From her armchair by the fire, which she occupied as if it were a throne, Hermione Goudge cleared her throat. ‘Someone amongst us, if you don’t mind my saying, must know what all this might be about.’ Her thickly powdered face turned to scan everyone in turn. ‘You, Doctor,’ she almost shouted. ‘Surely you, as Fenton’s physician, must know what the deuce the man is planning.’

  The doctor started at the sound of his name. He swung his portly bulk to face the woman, his lugubrious expression resembling that of a dyspeptic bloodhound.

  ‘I assure you that I know as much – or as little – as anyone,’ he said, and moved to the trolley where he refilled his glass. He returned to his station by the mullioned window, his back to the gathering.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Holly Beckwith ventured playfully, ‘Maxwell is planning to exhibit his very last work of art—’

  ‘What do you mean by that, girl?’ Hermione Goudge snapped.

  ‘He was always an exhibitionist,’ the actress said, ‘and it would be just like him to shock us all by publicly staging his death.’

  ‘Our invitations stated “a death”,’ George piped up. ‘That doesn’t necessarily mean it will be his own.’

  The little man had voiced what Langham himself had refrained from mentioning. He cleared his throat and said, ‘It struck me that several of you gathered here this evening have in some way incurred Maxwell Fenton’s displeasure. I know that’s true in four instances out of six.’

  ‘As I said,’ Proudfoot stammered, ‘we were on the best of terms at our last meeting.’

  ‘Doctor?’ Langham said.

  Bryce sighed and swung round to face them. ‘Ours is the perfect doctor–patient relationship,’ he said, his face like thunder.

  Langham watched the man. He gripped his glass in his right fist, his fingers white with the pressure he exerted.

  ‘You didn’t answer the girl’s earlier question, Doctor,’ Hermione Goudge said. ‘Perhaps you might care to do so now? Is Fenton terminally ill?’

  Bryce’s slab face gave nothing away. He stared at the art critic. ‘What passes between my patient and me is strictly confidential. I am sure you understand that, Mrs Goudge?’

  Hermione muttered something under her breath and held out her glass for her husband to refill. He scurried to the drinks trolley and dutifully
mixed a second vodka and orange. There was something nauseating, Langham thought, in his slavish devotion to the woman.

  The door to the hallway opened and the butler appeared. ‘If you would care to proceed to the library, ladies and gentlemen; this way, please.’

  Maria found Langham’s hand and gripped it. As before, Langham allowed the others to precede him. ‘This is it, girl,’ he whispered as they left the room. ‘This is when we find out what it’s all about.’

  Maria leaned towards him. ‘I have a terrible feeling, Donald.’

  He squeezed her hand in reassurance.

  The guests crossed the hall and filed down a corridor towards a door at the far end. The butler opened it, and Hermione Goudge was the first to cross the threshold.

  She halted in her tracks and muttered something, although Langham failed to catch her exact words. The others crowded behind her, eagerly peering over the small woman’s head and murmuring in surprise.

  By the time Langham and Maria reached the doorway, the guests had entered the room. At the far end of the book-lined chamber, illuminated in the flickering orange light of an open fire, stood a large, elaborately carved dining chair with a high back and arms terminating in lions’ heads – and sitting in the chair was the lank, skeletal form of an old man.

  Langham turned to Maria. ‘Fenton?’

  She was staring at the seated figure with a horrified expression. ‘Oui, but … but he is almost … unrecognizable.’

  As Langham followed the others into the room, he wondered whether the cause of the earlier murmurs of surprise had been Maxwell Fenton’s physical condition or the fact that his seat was cordoned off from the rest of the room by a maroon rope, as if the man considered himself an exhibit in an art gallery.

  Six chairs were ranged in a semicircle on this side of the rope, facing the seated figure. The butler fetched a seventh chair and placed it for Langham at the end of the row. To the backs of the original chairs, he noticed, were taped slips of paper numbered one to six.

  The guests were shown to their respective chairs by the butler, who then departed and closed the door silently behind him.

  Maxwell Fenton gripped the lions’ heads with hands like claws, his gaunt face expressionless. His corduroy trousers and artist’s smock hung loosely on the fleshless bones.

  Maria took the penultimate seat, and Langham sat down beside her. He peered along the row at the guests.

  Dr Bryce was staring at the floor, his large face pocked with sweat, his beefy hands screwed into fists on his lap. Beside him, George Goudge was gazing down at his fingernails as if embarrassed. His wife was staring at Fenton with an expression of pure loathing, while Holly Beckwith regarded the old artist with wide-eyed wonderment as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was looking at. Crispin Proudfoot blinked nervously at the old man. Maria, Langham noticed, could not bring herself to look at Fenton and was staring beyond him at the shelves of calf-bound books.

  A strange hush settled over the gathering, broken only by the occasional crackle from the fire.

  At last, Maxwell Fenton spoke. In a frail voice, that nevertheless carried well in the quiet room, he said, ‘So here we all are … Men and women I once held in high regard.’

  He fell silent, his head turning minimally as he took in each guest in turn.

  It was hard to determine his age; the silvery skin stretched around his skull appeared ancient, and yet there was a certain vitality in his bright blue eyes which, along with a full head of grey hair, belied the notion that this was a man who stood on the threshold of death.

  Only then did Langham noticed the long silver scar that marked his left temple.

  It was Hermione Goudge who broke the silence. ‘If you would be so kind as to cease your little game and state the reason you dragged us here tonight, Fenton.’

  The artist smiled, the expression terrible on his skull-like face. ‘All in good time, Hermione. You always were impatient.’ His gaze turned to regard the first guest seated at the opposite end of the row from Langham.

  ‘Doctor Bryce, we go back so many years. You have no doubt come to know me well – as I have you. I never considered you a true friend, but I did, once, trust you – before I came to know you better. You are, sir, a fool with a weak will and a penchant for the bottle, whose sins against me cannot go unpunished.’

  Maria reached out surreptitiously and gripped Langham’s hand. He glanced along the row at the doctor, whose puce-coloured face had turned a shade darker.

  ‘And Mr Goudge …’ Fenton said. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I have known George for almost forty years. Hard to believe that, just after the Great War, we were good friends for more than a decade. And then came the great betrayal.’ He shook his head. ‘But there is no need to go into details here. You know what you did, George; you know how much you hurt me.’

  The tubby little man stared at Fenton with pop-eyes, his face for a second resembling that of a bloated koi carp.

  ‘What a wonderful irony that it was I who introduced you to what was to become your life’s work,’ Fenton went on. ‘I refer, of course, to Hermione. You deserve surcease, sir, and I guarantee that it will come to you, sooner rather than later.’

  George Goudge gave a strangled gasp, but Fenton was already eyeing Hermione. ‘Speaking of betrayal, my dear … There can be none greater than that which the esteemed critic, Hermione Goudge, saw fit to visit upon me and so wreck my once great career.’

  ‘I said only what was self-evidently true, Fenton! That you were a second-rate dilettante and a first-rate self-publicist!’

  Fenton waved this away. ‘But just desserts come to those who most deserve them, Hermione. You have earned the end that awaits you. And now,’ he swept on, leaving Hermione red-faced and spluttering, ‘we come to the delectable Miss Holly Beckwith, or as I called you, back in the first flush of our romance, “Holly Hock” because of your resemblance to that tall and rather vulgar bloom. We shared a delightful six months, my dear, until your wanton act of vandalism showed me what a selfish, cruel creature you really were. No matter,’ he said, waving an airy hand, ‘the years pass, and you, too, will suffer the fate you fear most of all.’

  Holly Beckwith pressed a fist to her lips and stared at Fenton with a stricken gaze. Langham slipped a hand into his jacket pocket and gripped his revolver.

  Fenton moved on to Crispin Proudfoot. ‘Ah, Crispin, Crispin.’ The artist sighed. ‘I saw great promise in you, my boy. I really did. I assisted you in every way I could; I coached you, nurtured your emerging talent, spoke of you to all the right people. And you flew, you prospered, thanks to me – and then …’ He paused, staring at the young man with barely suppressed rage. ‘I know every detail of your theft – and be in no doubt that you, too, will pay for your misdeed.’

  The poet hung his head and stared down at his trembling hands.

  Fenton gazed at Maria. Her grip on Langham’s hand tightened.

  ‘Maria, sweet Maria,’ Fenton said, ‘one of the most beautiful women I have ever known, and certainly the most beautiful I have ever dared to love. And how did you repay me?’ He smiled and reached up with a dithering finger to touch the silver cicatrice at his temple. ‘You scarred me for life, my dear – but the physical reminder of your perfidy was nothing beside the scar you left upon my soul. But you shall, as they say, reap what you sowed.’

  He fell silent. The fire crackled. Holly Beckwith sobbed quietly. Dr Bryce’s breathing was stertorous. Hermione Goudge was muttering to herself. Langham could hear the thud of his heart, and at that moment it seemed the loudest thing in the room. Maria’s grip on his hand was vice-like.

  ‘My friends, my old friends … please remember my words, my avowal of revenge when I am dead and gone.’ He stared along the row, one by one, at the guests. ‘But first, perhaps, you would like the opportunity to explain yourselves, to excuse your conduct. Doctor Bryce, you first?’

  Langham stared along the row at the doctor, who merely hung his head and stared at
his lap in silence.

  Fenton transferred his gaze to George Goudge.

  ‘George?’ he said.

  ‘I, I … that is …’ The little man was red-faced and almost incoherent. ‘I did nothing wrong. I followed my heart. You would have done the same in my position!’

  ‘That, my friend, is a moot point; we shall never know. Hermione?’

  The art critic stared at Fenton as if he were an insect. ‘Your egomania appals me, Fenton, and I refuse to take any further part in your little game.’

  The artist ignored her and stared at Holly Beckwith. ‘Holly, my Holly Hock?’

  She shook her head, choking back the sobs. ‘You took my innocence and defiled it, Fenton! And … and when I found out what a two-faced manipulator you were, I did what I had to do!’ She relapsed into sobs, and Fenton moved his gaze to his next victim.

  ‘Proudfoot?’ he drawled, as if bored.

  The young man stammered. ‘I … I never meant that you should know. I always intended to pay you back, as God is my witness.’

  ‘Pay me back?’ Fenton laughed. ‘Oh, you shall, Proudfoot. You shall!’

  Langham’s grip tightened around the butt of the revolver as Fenton’s gaze settled on Maria.

  ‘And last, but not least, Maria. Perhaps you, being the literary type you are, might be a little more articulate in your own defence.’

  Langham stared at her, and never had he seen such an expression of pure, undiluted hatred on her face than at that second. ‘You are a despicable human being, Fenton, and you deserve to rot in hell!’

  The artist laughed at this. ‘Oh, I think I might, my dear – I verily think I might!’

  His frail, claw-like right hand moved from the lion’s head and slid beneath the material of his artist’s smock. He withdrew something hitherto concealed there. Langham rose to his feet, fully expecting him to fire the revealed handgun at the assembled guests, one by one.

  Instead, Maxwell Fenton raised the revolver, placed its barrel to his skull, and pulled the trigger.