Murder in Outline

by Anne Morice

  “You were, were you?”

  “I’ve just said so. And how else would she have got in?”

  There was a distinct pause before she answered and when she did it was plain that the bravado was becoming a little frayed at the edges.

  “I didn’t give it a thought. I’m quite sure Connie has keys to all these flats. I simply assumed she had given one to Pauline. It may not be very pleasant to know that they can come bursting in whenever they feel like it, but that’s the price I have to pay.”

  “Then you may be relieved to hear that Pauline doesn’t view it in quite the same light. When her mother sent her on this errand, her immediate reaction was to explain matters to you and get your permission. She couldn’t find you though. I dare say you really were at a private class at that point, but Pauline, who has an uncomplicated brain, assumed that if you weren’t at school you must be at home. Only, unfortunately, you weren’t.”

  “But you were?”

  “Yes.”

  “And, not having an uncomplicated brain, you couldn’t rest until you’d found out why the clock had stopped?”

  “Correct. If you’d been here, you’d have been able to fob her off easily enough. Found another clock or ornament; and if you had let me into your little secret I’d have done the same. Still, no use wailing about wasted chances now. The sketch is quite safe, by the way. It’s in the left-hand drawer of the desk and no one but me has seen it.”

  “So now I suppose you are waiting to be told why I lied to you and pretended I hadn’t been able to find it?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No, because I’m pretty sure I already know. So you needn’t bother. Are you going to the inquest, by the way? It’s at twelve, isn’t it?”

  “What? Oh, is it? I don’t know . . . Listen, Tessa . . .”

  “I said don’t bother.”

  “Then kindly stop saying it, will you? Obviously, we can’t leave it like this. What is it you know, or think you know?”

  “I’ve had plenty of time to study the picture since it turned up so opportunely and it wouldn’t take a genius to understand why you pinched it and then pretended it didn’t exist. I still don’t quite understand why, having brought it back here to study at leisure, you hid it in the clock instead of destroying it, but perhaps it was simply because paper of that thickness is not so easy to dispose of in a flat. Too bulky for the lavatory and bound to give rise to awkward questions if you started lighting fires in a heatwave.”

  “No, that wasn’t the reason,” Tina said. “Go on!”

  “I am also fairly certain I know what you were looking for in the vicinity of the boathouse, between three and four p.m. on the afternoon of Monday, 29th June,” I continued, facetiously adopting the pompous drone of a stage constable.

  Whether it was this that did it, or the remark itself, was not clear, but it was as well that her mug was almost empty, otherwise the contents must have splashed all over her furious, incredulous face, so fiercely did she slam it down on the table.

  “It can’t be true, Tessa? I won’t believe it.”

  “You have to believe it. How else would I have seen you there?”

  “Someone told you . . . no, you’re right, I have to believe it. I caught sight of the punt too, at one point, I remember that now, but I never dreamt there was anyone in it. I took it for one of ours, which had been left out by mistake. Well, go on! You may as well finish, now you’ve started. What was I looking for?”

  “It is my guess,” I told her, “that there came a point when you recollected your own words, while telling me about Hattie’s work routine. You said, you will remember, that she always made several sketches of everything she did and invariably kept every one of them.”

  “I remember.”

  “But then it struck you that you had only found that single drawing of the animals and fish, the one you had brought home and later hidden in the clock. So you began to wonder whether in fact there had been others and what had become of them. Am I right?”

  “Go on!”

  “Do I really need to? I should have thought it was obvious. I’d told you exactly where Hattie was when I came across her at work on this drawing, and you thought there was just a chance that she had left a rough sketch behind, that it could have dropped out of her portfolio, where anyone might find it and recognise one of the characters. So long as you couldn’t rule out that chance, you felt compelled to go and look.”

  This time when I paused Tina did not command me to go on, but sat with her arms propped on the table, staring down into her mug. Then, without warning, she jerked her chair back and went over to the stove to switch on the electric coffee-pot.

  “So you know it all, do you?” she asked, with her back to me. “I don’t have to fill in any last detail?”

  “No, it’s all clear to me now. As I explained to you before, when I first saw the picture I hadn’t set eyes on any of the Waterside gang for years. There’d been some changes, naturally, and my own memories were pretty hazy too. I remembered people more by quirks of character than by appearance. Patsy, for instance, was immediately associated in my mind with the squirrel and its pile of nuts; whereas I can see now that the face is nothing like hers. And then there was the cat on the ladder. That fits Madam all right, I thought to myself as soon as I met her, but no; wrong again. The features there belong to Belinda Jameson, depicted as leaping up the ladder of success, no doubt. Poor Madam actually appears as the hyena, which is not very kind, but one had the impression that Hattie didn’t particularly care for her. There is just one thing you can tell me though, Tina. How long have you been aware that Connie had diabetes?”

  “Oh . . . six, seven months.”

  “Patsy told you, I suppose?”

  “Yes, and swore me to secrecy, which I had no intention of breaking.”

  “Which is why you played along so prettily with the neat little theory of alcoholism? Why, in fact, after your first fine fury had cooled and you’d begun to think straight, you actually encouraged me in it and helped to build it up? You knew it couldn’t do much harm and it suited you to let me go bumbling along this false trail, confident that it would put me right off the scent?”

  “That’s about it.”

  “You’re very clever,” I told her, “and the galling thing is that you’d probably have succeeded, if it hadn’t been for the accident of Pauline leaving her trug behind, which led to my little chat with Billy.”

  “Who told you that Connie was diabetic?”

  “Also swearing me to secrecy, in his own special way, although he didn’t extract any promises; probably saw no need for them. No doubt, he expected I’d be leaving here in a few days and that it might be years before I dropped in again. Also, not having seen Hattie’s picture, he didn’t realise just how much he was telling me. But I had been looking at it before he came and as soon as he mentioned diabetes I had the key. I knew then exactly what species of bird that was in the top left-hand corner and why it was raining down syringes and little bottles from its bow, instead of arrows. And so, of course, did you.”

  “Although I doubt if that would have been enough, on its own. I knew that she had quite a hand in Connie’s treatment and medication and I’d had some nasty doubts for some time . . .”

  “That Patsy, dear, reliable, kind old Patsy, was switching antihistamine or whatever for the insulin tablets and putting water in the hypodermic?”

  “Something on those lines.”

  “Why? I mean, if it wasn’t the picture that put the idea into your head, what did?”

  “Two quite small incidents, really. There was one occasion when I caught her off guard. I’d gone in to ask her something, I forget now, and she was standing by the window, apparently pasting a label on to a bottle of pills. I did knock, but she can’t have heard me, because I’ve never seen anyone so flustered and horrified as when she looked up and saw me watching her. All the same, I probably wouldn’t have given it
another thought if she hadn’t torn fifteen strips off me for bursting in without permission. And that’s so unlike Patsy, isn’t it? The nearest she can usually get to a reprimand is to tell you you’re a bad girl and then give you a peppermint cream to take the sting off.”

  “What was the other incident?”

  “Even more negative. In fact, it was the lack of incident which chiefly worried me. You see, the point about Patsy, in this connection, is that she lives permanently at The Lodge. It’s her home and so, to some extent, her routine doesn’t vary from holidays to term. So far as the Blands are concerned, she’s always on hand. But there was one occasion, right at the beginning of this term, when she had to go into hospital for a few days. Only a very minor operation, but it shook her badly, and when she came out Billy, who’s always thoughtful and kind, insisted on her taking a proper rest. He issued instructions to all the rest of us to wait on her hand and foot and see that she didn’t stir from her room. So, one way and another, she was out of action for over a week.”

  “In the course of which Connie was as bright as a button and never had a single setback?”

  “That more or less sums it up,” Tina admitted. “It may have been coincidence; I tried to persuade myself it was, but I never wholly succeeded.”

  “I wonder if withholding treatment from someone who needs it rates as murder?”

  “Not unless someone dies.”

  “Yes, you’re right. I keep forgetting that we’ve got the wrong corpse. You see where it leads us, though?”

  “Oh no, you don’t,” Tina shouted, turning angry again all at once. “I’ve been waiting for this and I knew you’d get around to it sooner or later.”

  “Waiting for what?”

  “The moment when you start accusing Patsy of Hattie’s murder and I’m not having it, do you hear me, Tessa? There’s simply no connection at all.”

  “You can’t prove that.”

  “Oh yes, I can. The proof is lying in that desk drawer, where you put it. I’ve told you over and over again that if someone had killed Hattie to prevent her passing on some damaging information, then the murderer would have lost no time in destroying the evidence. Patsy had every opportunity to do so, but she handed over the drawing with all the others.”

  “Did she actually see you take it?”

  “No . . . I . . . that is, she wasn’t in the room the whole time. There was some confusion about one of the girls’ trunks and she had to go and sort it out.”

  “So she could have torn up all the preliminary sketches and overlooked this one? After all, we’ve established that it was unusual for Hattie to make only one, so it’s a contingency you can’t rule out.”

  “Yes, I can and I rule it out absolutely. Patsy may have gone slightly bonkers on the subject of Connie and the way she runs the place; she’s had provocation, heaven knows. She may even have persuaded herself that God in his wisdom has called Connie’s number and shouldn’t be opposed. But actually to murder someone, one of her own girls, is a very different matter. She’s the gentlest, most softhearted woman ever born and the first person in my whole life to show me genuine kindness and affection, and I’m not having her called a murderess, so that’s flat.”

  “Okay,” I agreed.

  “Besides,” she went on less truculently, and somewhat shaken by my easy capitulation, “you have to face the fact that she’s either a cruel, cunning murderer, who kills to save her own skin, or else she’s a doddering old fool, who hasn’t even got the wits to destroy the evidence which could convict her, but hands it over on request. You can’t have it both ways.”

  “I’ve said okay, haven’t I? No need to go on about it. But listen, Tina, what in fact do you intend to do? Patsy may only be a misguided old halfwit and you may have deep-rooted sentimental feelings towards her, but you still have to face the unpleasant facts. Or do you mean to sit tight and let it ride until one day Connie just slips into a coma and never comes out of it?”

  “No, of course not, I’m not as barmy as all that, but no action needs to be taken just yet. Patsy’s in a state of collapse, as you know, and she can’t do any harm while she’s confined to her own quarters.”

  “And after that?”

  “It may still be unnecessary. She’s had a bad shock, you know. I realise it was Hattie’s death which caused it, but it may have brought her up sharp and given her a new slant on her own behavior. I’m hoping so, anyway.”

  “I hope so too.”

  “No need to be sneery. I’m not relying on that alone. The Blands always go to their house in France as soon as the summer term ends. If Connie comes home in fighting trim, after a month or two there, and then things start going wrong again, we shall know for certain who’s to blame and I shall confront her with it. That’s why I kept the drawing. If she denies it, I shall point to herself as ‘The Sparrow, with My Bow and Arrow,’ to prove I’m not the only one who’d discovered what she was up to. I should think that would scare her pretty effectively.”

  “Yes, I should think it might. Unless, of course, it proves so effective that she retaliates by sprinkling arsenic on your cornflakes. So that’s why you kept the drawing?”

  “Yes, nothing to do with its being difficult to get rid of. I could have dumped it in the school incinerator, nothing easier. I suppose the clock was a silly hiding place, but it was only intended as a temporary one. I was looking round for somewhere suitable, where you . . .”

  “Wouldn’t be likely to go snooping around, in my unorthodox fashion?”

  “Precisely. It was the afternoon you went on the river and I was standing with the damn thing in my hand, wondering where to put it, when your friend, the Sergeant, came to call. So I shoved it inside the clock before I went to let him in. I nearly died when I realised he meant to sit it out until you got back because, knowing you, I felt certain the first thing you’d say when you walked in was that the clock had stopped. But you didn’t.”

  “Mechanical objects don’t rivet me so much as people. All my attention was on you and Sergeant Dexter and the charming picture you made, chatting away so merrily over the teacups.”

  “Thank you so much; but the fact remains that you didn’t notice it, neither then nor after we got back from the cinema. So it seemed as good a place as any and I left it there.”

  “Well, we appear to have cleared up a few mysteries and misunderstandings,” I told her, “but the big puzzle still remains.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Who did kill Hattie?”

  “And what became of your lovely theory about Vera being the Mata Hari of the Cromwell Road?”

  “Still very much alive, but it’s turning out to be more complicated than I had thought. To be honest with you, I am torn between conflicting loyalties. Perhaps it would be best to wait for the inquest before taking the next step.”

  “Then let’s hope no more steps will be needed,” Tina said. “Personally, I’m hoping for a verdict of suicide, with all the trimmings, and then we can try and put the whole rotten business behind us.”

  “Some with more success than others,” I remarked.

  NINETEEN

  (1)

  Tina’s hopes were amply fulfilled and her cup must have been running over, for the verdict was Death by Misadventure. Perhaps this was inevitable since, in the absence of Vera, there was no one to testify that Hattie had been in any way depressed or out of sorts, still less that she had reason to be. Moreover, coroners are probably no more immune than most people from a reluctance to tread too heavily on the toes of the mighty. Mrs. Bland was rather mighty, in her own way, Charles McGrath, K.C.M.G., even more so.

  Apart from formally identifying the remains as those of his daughter and of receiving the sympathy of the court, he was not required to take any active part in the proceedings, but during the brief period when attention was focused on him he established himself as a highly dignified and imposing personage. I was interested to notice too that his mouth, although tending that way, was not
so small and mean, nor the squint nearly so pronounced as Hattie had depicted them, confirming my view that there had been little mercy in her keen, perceptive eye. However, I still considered it wrong that she should have been killed for it and said as much to Robin when I returned to London that evening.

  “So you’re not giving up?” he asked. “Coroners and juries may do their worst, but you go on regardless?”

  “Certainly, so far as my opinions are concerned; though, as for giving up, I’m not so confident. My hands are tied and I don’t see how even you could help to untie them.”

  “That’s bad! Are you sure?”

  “Well, I doubt if Scotland Yard would put two men on to trailing Vera day and night for an unlimited period, simply on the grounds that I believe she might be a spy, do you?”

  “So Vera remains the number one suspect?”

  “Yes, although I haven’t ruled out Madam and I’m a long way from ruling out Patsy, whatever Tina may say. The trouble is that it would be just as hard to get positive evidence of their guilt as of Vera’s. I scarcely know Madam and our relationship so far hasn’t been quite cordial enough to invite her out for lunch and a nice long chat about hyenas and dolphins. And Patsy is equally inaccessible just now. The minute I showed my face in Waterside Tina would guess what I was up to and she’d throw a cordon round Patsy which would take me months to hack through.”

  “I can see how frustrated you must feel.”

  “And that’s not the worst of it, Robin. The real problem is that I haven’t much enthusiasm for embarking on a programme which would harm and upset the Blands and I’d simply hate to have it proved that Patsy were guilty.”

  “But at least there are no conflicts of that kind with Vera?”

  “Not Vera for herself, no, but the trouble there is that, although I’m pretty sure Toby was pulling my leg when he said that, if Vera is a spy, Eddie must be in the game too, I’m stuck with the idea now and I simply don’t want to know.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re becoming squeamish?”

  “No, my motives are purely selfish. I’ve always looked on Eddie as a truly good and kind man and I’d hate it to be otherwise. In some odd way, I feel it would be as diminishing for me as for him, if that doesn’t sound pompous?”