Death in the Stocks: Merely Murder

by Georgette Heyer

  ‘What do you suppose I’m likely to answer?’ retorted Kenneth.

  ‘Quite so,’ said Roger. ‘Silly of me. What I mean is, it’s a nuisance for you if you did, now I’ve come home. Waste of time.’

  ‘Unless I murder you too,’ said Kenneth thoughtfully.

  ‘Now, don’t start talking like that,’ said Roger. ‘Before you know where you are, you’ll be doing it. I never could stand impulsive people, never.’

  Kenneth eyed him speculatively. ‘The best thing, of course, would be to foist Arnold’s murder on to you,’ he said. ‘I don’t quite see how, at the moment, but I may think of something.’

  ‘That’s not a bad idea,’ remarked Antonia. ‘You wouldn’t have to make up a motive, either, because he’s got one.’

  ‘Well, I don’t like it,’ said Roger, a shade of uneasiness in his voice. ‘And it’s no use going on with it, because I’ve already told you I only landed yesterday.’

  ‘Moreover,’ continued Antonia, brightening, ‘the knife was a foreign dagger or stiletto (I forget which), common in Spain and South America. They said so at the Inquest.’

  ‘You never told me that,’ Kenneth reproached her.

  ‘It’s very important. Naturally, that’s just the sort of thing Roger would use.’

  ‘Now there you’re wrong,’ said Roger. ‘If there’s one thing that I wouldn’t use it’s that. I don’t believe in knifing people. You see a lot of it in some of the places I’ve been in, but that isn’t to say you get into the way of doing it yourself. At least, I don’t. Besides, I didn’t know anything about the murder till you told me. As a matter of fact, now I come to think of it, I don’t know much about it now. I don’t even approve of it.’

  However, Kenneth was not easily to be diverted from his chosen train of thought, and he continued to pursue it until dinner was brought in. Murgatroyd waited on them in silence, and only occasionally threw Roger a hostile look. She confided to Antonia, later, that it might be as well to keep in with Roger. ‘For, whatever his faults, Miss Tony – and it would take me till to-morrow to tell you them – he’s not mean. That I will say for him.’

  ‘You needn’t think I’m going to sponge on Roger,’ replied Antonia.

  ‘You never know what you may do till you come to it,’ said Murgatroyd.

  It was not until after nine o’clock that Giles Carrington entered the flat, and when she admitted him, and recognised his companion, Murgatroyd gave a disparaging sniff, and remarked that it never rained but what it poured.

  The small party gathered together in the studio was not being a success, in spite of all Violet’s efforts to make it one. She had managed to stop Kenneth trying to evolve some method by which Roger might have contrived the murder and yet appear to have been on the high seas at the time, but she could not induce him either to take part in the sort of general conversation she was trying to promote, or to be polite to his half-brother. She had taken pains to draw Roger out on the subject of his travels, but Kenneth, who was invariably made irritable when she bestowed her attention on another man, blighted most of Roger’s reminiscences by interpolating now and then the remark that he didn’t believe a word of it. He sat slouched in the largest armchair, with an expression of brooding anger in his eyes; and the only interest he displayed during Roger’s rambling narration was in the story of the beautiful Spaniard who had twice tried to kill him.

  Antonia, frankly bored, had curled herself up on the divan with two of her dogs at her feet, and was reading a novel. She put it down when the door opened to admit her cousin, and greeted him with relief. ‘Oh, good!’ she said. ‘Now you can come and tell us how to get rid of him! Hullo! What have you brought the police for?’

  Kenneth’s scowl vanished. He sprang up, exclaiming: ‘You see how right my theory is, Roger! They’ve come for you already!’

  Roger, too, had risen, and was looking greatly disturbed. ‘If policemen are going to infest the place I shall have to go,’ he said. ‘It isn’t that I’m afraid I shan’t be comfortable, because I’ve tried the camp-bed and it isn’t bad. What I mean is, I’ve slept in many worse. But I don’t like policemen. Some people feel the same about cats. Always know the instant one comes into the room, and begin to get creepy. Not that I’ve any objection to cats, mind you. Far from it. In fact, if I had to be bothered with any sort of animal, I think I should choose a cat.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t,’ said Antonia, who had happened to listen to this. ‘They’re inhuman things – though I suppose there are cats and cats.’

  ‘There you are, then,’ Roger pointed out. ‘But it’s no use telling me there are policemen and policemen, because it wouldn’t be true. It’s always puzzled me what anyone ever wanted policemen for except to stand about at cross-roads, sticking out their hands, and even that seems to me the kind of job anyone else could do as well, if not better.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t talk such drivel,’ said Antonia. ‘Anybody would think you were going to have one as a pet. And if other people directed traffic instead they’d be police-men, so I don’t see that it would make much difference.’

  Roger followed this argument carefully. ‘There’s a fallacy in that,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure where it is, and I’m not going to work it out, but the thing doesn’t sound right to me, somehow.’

  Any faint hope Hannasyde might have cherished of finding in Roger one normal member of the Vereker family vanished. He sighed, and transferred his attention to Kenneth.

  Giles interposed before Antonia could continue the argument. ‘Shut up, Tony. Well, Roger, how are you? When did you arrive?’

  ‘I’m getting tired of answering that question,’ replied Roger, shaking hands. ‘I keep on telling everyone I landed yesterday – I’m glad you’ve come round, because it’s a very awkward predicament, mine. I’ve run out of cash. They tell me you’re one of Arnold’s executors, so you’ll be able to advance me some of the money. How much have you brought?’

  ‘I haven’t brought any,’ answered Giles. ‘I can’t advance you money in that haphazard fashion.’

  The interest which had gleamed for a few moments in Roger’s eye was effectually banished by this pronouncement. He relapsed into his usual quiescence, merely remarking in a discouraged way that if that was so, he couldn’t see why Giles had troubled to come. ‘Not that I don’t want to see you,’ he added. ‘But there doesn’t seem to me to be much point in it.’

  ‘If he succeeds in ridding us of you there’ll be a great deal of point in it,’ said Kenneth savagely. ‘Sit down, my friend-the-Superintendent, sit down! What can I offer you? Whisky? Lager?’

  The Superintendent declined any refreshment. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt a – a family party,’ he said, ‘but –’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Kenneth. ‘We’re charmed to see you. At least, my half-brother isn’t, but that’s probably because his conscience isn’t clear. But the rest of us are delighted. Aren’t we, Violet? By the way I don’t think you’ve met our friend-the-Superintendent, darling. This is he. Superintendent, my fiancée – Miss Williams.’

  Violet bowed slightly, and bestowed on Hannasyde the small mechanical smile she reserved for her social inferiors. Turning from him, she suggested to Kenneth in a low voice that she should go. He instantly quashed this, so she compromised by withdrawing tactfully to the other end of the room under the pretence of opening a window.

  Meanwhile Giles had introduced the Superintendent to Roger, and Hannasyde, in his good-humoured way, was explaining the ostensible reason for his visit. ‘As I expect you have been told, Mr Vereker, your brother, Mr Arnold Vereker, was stabbed at Ashleigh Green last Saturday,’ he began, ‘so I’m sure you will –’

  ‘Yes, I’ve been told that,’ replied Roger, ‘but it has nothing to do with me. Naturally I was shocked to hear it. In fact, I didn’t at first believe it.’

  ‘It must have been a terrible shock,’ agreed Hannasyde sympathetically.

  ‘Well, it was. If they’d said he’d been shot,
or been found with his head stuck in a gas-oven, it would have been another matter, because there’s nothing surprising about that in these days. But a knife in the back is a very unusual thing in England. Took me back to Colombia in a flash.’

  ‘Really,’ said Hannasyde. ‘Have you just come back from Colombia?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Roger vaguely. ‘But I was there for a spell once. Didn’t care for it, but you’d be surprised at the amount of quiet knifing that goes on. At least, it did in my day, but of course it may have changed by now.’

  ‘I’ve always understood that those parts were somewhat uncivilised,’ said Hannasyde. ‘Though they say South America is the country of the future.’

  ‘They’ll say anything,’ replied Roger dampingly.

  Hannasyde persevered. ‘Which part have you come from?’ he inquired.

  ‘BA,’ said Roger. ‘But it’s no use making a lot of inquiries about me there, because I’ve been living under another name. More convenient,’ he added, in explanation.

  ‘I see,’ said Hannasyde. ‘And so you’re just back. When did you land?’

  ‘Yesterday,’ said Roger, eyeing him suspiciously.

  Hannasyde smiled. ‘That sounds to me like a remarkably good alibi,’ he said lightly. ‘What was your ship?’

  ‘Well, I’ve forgotten,’ said Roger, ‘if I ever knew, which I rather doubt. To tell you the truth, I don’t take much interest in ships. There are some people who no sooner get on board than they start making friends with the Chief Engineer, so that they can go down and have a look at the engine-room, which, as a matter of fact, is a nasty, smelly place. I’m not like that at all.’

  Giles, who had been inquiring of Antonia half-laughingly, half-anxiously, whether she was reconciled to Mesurier, turned his head, and said: ‘You must remember the name of the ship, surely?’

  ‘There’s no must about it,’ replied Roger. ‘I can forget much more important things than that. Though I don’t say it won’t come back to me. Very often things do, and, what’s more, things that happened years and years ago.’

  ‘That’ll be useful,’ remarked Kenneth, lighting a cigarette. ‘What a fool you were to tell us what your assumed name was! You could have forgotten that, too.’

  ‘Oh no, I couldn’t,’ Roger contradicted with sudden bitterness. ‘If you’d ever been called Fisher for years on end, you wouldn’t forget it either.’

  ‘I’ve just had a horrible thought,’ said Antonia suddenly. ‘Are you married?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter if he is,’ snapped Kenneth. ‘The mere fact of his being alive has ditched the whole thing.’

  ‘Not absolutely,’ Antonia answered. ‘After all, he’s bound to die ages before you, because he’s nearly forty now. Only if he’s got hordes of children it all becomes a complete washout.’

  ‘You needn’t worry about that,’ said Roger, ‘because I’m not married. I’ve done a lot of silly things in my time, but I never let anyone marry me.’

  ‘Wonderful!’ mocked Kenneth. ‘One can so readily picture the eager queue of maidens –’

  ‘Now, don’t try to be witty,’ besought Roger. ‘It’s a very unrestful habit. All I want is a quiet life, but how I’m going to get it with you being clever and policemen dancing in and out like –’

  ‘And all I wanted,’ Kenneth struck in savagely, ‘was for you to remain decently interred!’

  ‘Antipathy, Mr Vereker? Or are you making the discovery that the acquisition of a large fortune is not a matter of such indifference as you would have had us believe?’

  There was a note of irony in the Superintendent’s level voice, and at the sound of it Kenneth turned, not put out of countenance, but alert, and with his sullen ill-humour gone in a flash. His eyes held a challenge, his elf-smile reappeared. ‘“A hit, a very palpable hit!” And yet, my friend-the-Superintendent, you would suspect me more if I didn’t seem to care whether I inherited Arnold’s fortune or not.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Hannasyde acknowledged. ‘But you should consider whether perhaps I may not suspect you of assuming a greater degree of annoyance than you really feel, on purpose to throw dust in my eyes.’ He paused, and then, as Kenneth did not immediately answer him, added gently: ‘“Another hit. What say you?”’

  Kenneth laughed, and said with a good deal of delight: ‘“A touch, a touch, I do confess.” You know, I’m beginning to like you quite a lot.’

  ‘I might return that compliment, if it occurs to you to stop trying to hoodwink me. You are fond of quoting from Hamlet (though not always sure of your source), so I will give you one more line to digest: “Take care that you don’t become as a woodcock to your own springe”.’

  ‘Ah, “justly kill’d with mine own treachery!” I’ll take such care – Osric – that I won’t let this conversation alter my attitude by so much as a hair’s-breath.’

  Roger leaned sideways in his chair to say confidentially to Giles: ‘It’s getting a bit too high-brow for me. Is his name Osric? I thought you said it was Harrington.’

  ‘There is such a thing as being too clever, Mr Vereker.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it. But I am only being honest. Didn’t you come here tonight to see how I was reacting to the prodigal’s return?’

  Hannasyde smiled faintly. Antonia, watching him, said dispassionately: ‘“They bleed on both sides.” I hoped I’d be able to get that one off sooner or later.’

  This sally seemed to complete Roger’s bewilderment. He had been trying to follow the dialogue, but he gave it up at that point, and shut his eyes.

  ‘You’re not being exactly helpful, Kenneth,’ said his cousin.

  ‘Why should I be? I don’t want the murderer to be unmasked – unless it was Roger, of course. I approve of him.’

  Roger opened his eyes again. ‘Now, that’s a very sensible remark,’ he said. ‘I don’t mean the bit about me, but the rest of it. I don’t want to know either, and if we don’t, what’s it got to do with anyone else? That’s what I complain about in policemen. Always poking their noses into other people’s business.’

  ‘You can’t blame them for that,’ said Antonia reasonably. ‘They pretty well have to. But it does seem to me much more important at the moment to decide what’s to be done about you. It’s all very well for you to say you can’t advance any money, Giles, but you needn’t think we’re going to let Roger wear all Kenneth’s clothes while you sit on the cash.’

  ‘No,’ Roger said, his interest reviving. ‘Because I don’t like any of his shirts, for one thing.’

  Antonia at once took up the cudgels on behalf of her brother’s taste, and since the argument showed signs of developing swiftly into an abstract discussion on sartorial matters, Hannasyde apparently judged it wisest to go away. The Verekers paid very little attention to his departure, but Giles escorted him to the front door, and said that he had all his sympathy.

  ‘Thanks,’ returned Hannasyde. ‘Was Roger Vereker deported, by any chance?’

  ‘Probably,’ said Giles, with perfect equanimity. ‘At all events, he’s been cast up penniless on our hands.’

  Hannasyde looked at him under his brows. ‘Are you acting for him, Mr Carrington?’

  ‘Not if I know it,’ answered Giles.

  A few moments later, having sped the Superintendent on his way, he returned to the studio to find that the argument had been interrupted by Violet, who throughout Hannasyde’s visit had sat quietly at the other end of the room, turning over the leaves of a magazine. ‘I held my tongue while that man was here,’ she was saying. ‘But I really was shocked at the way you went on, Kenneth. It’s so silly of you, and childish. We know you didn’t kill your half-brother, but you’re simply asking for trouble, talking as you did. And I must say I don’t think it’s particularly nice of you, or sporting, to be so unkind to Mr Vereker.’

  ‘Don’t bother about me,’ said Roger. ‘I don’t mind him, as long as he doesn’t start sticking knives into me.’

  ‘I think that’s extremel
y generous of you, Mr Vereker,’ said Violet. ‘And whatever Kenneth may say, I hope you’ll believe that I at least don’t share his feelings.’ She picked up her hat and gloves and held out her hand. ‘I’m going now. Good-bye – and please don’t pay any attention to Kenneth or Tony.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to kiss him?’ inquired Antonia ruthlessly.

  ‘Shut up!’ said Kenneth, an edge to his voice. ‘I’ll see you home, Violet.’

  They had barely left the studio when Roger remarked with sudden and unexpected shrewdness: ‘I’ll tell you what she is: she’s a gold-digger. I’ve met lots of them. He’d better not marry her.’

  Antonia regarded him for the first time with a friendly eye. ‘Yes, she is a gold-digger, and I’ll bet anything she’s trying to vamp you so that you’ll do something handsome for Kenneth.’

  ‘Well, I shan’t,’ said Roger simply. ‘Not,’ he added, ‘that I’ve got much chance to do anything for anybody so far, even myself. When can I have some money, Giles?’

  ‘I’ll get on to Gordon Truelove to-morrow,’ replied Giles. ‘He’s the other executor. I don’t think you ever knew him.’

  ‘No, and I don’t want to,’ said Roger. ‘All I want is some money, and I don’t see why I can’t have it.’

  ‘You can,’ said Giles. ‘I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve had a word with Truelove.’

  ‘Come and have tea,’ invited Antonia. ‘Kenneth’s taking Violet out to a matinée.’

  ‘He needn’t do that,’ said Roger. ‘Just ring me up.’

  Giles paid no heed to this somewhat tactless suggestion. He was looking at Antonia. ‘Do you want me to, Tony?’

  She raised her candid eyes to his face. ‘Yes, I do,’ she answered.

  So Giles Carrington, making vague excuses to his suspicious and somewhat incensed parent, left the office shortly after half past three next day, drove himself to Chelsea, and arrived at his cousin’s flat just as Superintendent Hannasyde was preparing to mount the stairs to the front door. ‘Hullo, what brings you here again so soon?’ he inquired. ‘Have you discovered a startling new development?’