Sting of Death

by Shelley Smith

  “Like that!”

  “More or less. For my part, I care not at all. Also, I am very proud; a Von Bergen, you understand. But Werner can take no more, his spirit is too tired. Linda cannot understand this, the English have not suffered as we have; it is very bitter for us to have no fatherland any more, no home, no hope. And so Werner preferred to die than to struggle longer. That is all.” She gave a beautiful shrug of resignation.

  “This must be very painful to you, Mrs. Hauser; but it is a fact, isn’t it, that your husband left no message behind him?”

  Frau Hauser inclined her head.

  Trevor said: “Then why are you so sure that that is why he killed himself?”

  She gave a sad little laugh.

  “Ah, my dear friend, do you imagine I have no experience of it before? Often my poor man has told me he will kill himself. It is what you call an old story, you may believe me. Only this time he is quite quite meaning it; and we cannot find him. We look and look; in the park, in the fields, in the road and the river. We do not think to look in the house all over. We think he must be near where he has left the car. But, you see, it was not so, and so this time he is quite dead before we find him.”

  “No enemies you know of?”

  She gave him a quick startled look.

  “Enemies,” she repeated slowly. He could almost see her thoughts flying this way and that, confusedly. “I do not ask myself such a question before, but it is impossible that a man in his position should not have enemies—a foreigner, penniless, in a country at war with the country of his birth. Yes, it may be that Werner had many enemies.”

  “And so perhaps he had some other reason than the one you have thought of for killing himself? Or perhaps, after all, he did not kill himself?”

  Inexplicably Frau Hauser went scarlet.

  “That is what you think? That is why you ask me all these questions about him?”

  “My dear madam, it is not what I think, it is merely an idea put forth almost at random. I simply wondered if there might not be some connection between the one death and the other. Therefore if one was murder, so might the other be.”

  “It is not so, Mr. Trevor. You must believe me that it is not so.”

  “Just an idle speculation, Mrs. Hauser. Please do not distress yourself.”

  *

  Miss Sharpe had a fire in her room, though the weather was still warm, almost sultry indeed...an Indian summer. She sat very upright in the winged chair, her white hair brushed in a pompadour. Watching them advance without turning her head made her face appear more eagle-like than ever. She said with a dangerous sweetness, a kind of sugary acidity:

  “Well, young man, what is it this time?”

  “A few questions...”

  “Ah, I am to tell you who the perpetrator of the crime is, I suppose? You want to know how you should run your business, eh? Why should you expect me to do your work for you?”

  “Am I to understand that you are indifferent to the abrupt and cruel death of your great-niece?” the inspector said coldly.

  “Ask me the right question and you’ll get the right answer.” Her thin old hands stroked her skirt with pleasure at this gnomic retort.

  “Tell me what you were doing, Miss Sharpe, on the afternoon your niece was killed.”

  She said sharply: “I told you that the other day: I was here. I rest every afternoon. At my age one does not sleep after two or three in the morning. That afternoon, like every other, I rested.”

  “Did you sleep?” he asked.

  “I daresay I indulged in a little nap from time to time,” the old lady admitted, raising her eye brows quizzically.

  “Yet from your room you might have heard her fall.” She made no reply to this indirect question. “Were you surprised to learn that your niece had been murdered?”

  “Don’t waste my time asking damned silly questions!” she said irritably.

  “Why silly? From a remark you made to me the other afternoon it seemed as if you expected it. You said, you may remember, that that man had killed her. Evidently you anticipated something of the sort. You must have had some reason for jumping to the conclusion that it was murder. And I should like you to tell me whom you designated as that man.”

  “Answer a fool according to his folly!” She sighed impatiently. “Have you never heard of a person being driven to kill themselves? That was what I believed had happened to that poor child, Linda. Is it likely that I could know she had been murdered, my good man? Use your intelligence!”

  “Driven to suicide by whom, if you please?”

  “I believe your policemen have an old-fashioned dictum: cherchez la femme. Apply it, apply it! It surprises me that you people never think of reversing it – so much more applicable to women, I should have thought.”

  “If you know his name, why can’t you tell it to me? What are you afraid of?”

  Miss Sharpe smiled delicately and prodded a flaming coal with her stick.

  “On the contrary, Mr. Trevor. It seemed so obvious that I thought it was superfluous to say more. However, if you cannot read the riddle, allow me to make it plain: the husband. Who else but the husband?”

  “I am interested to know your reasons,” said Trevor coolly.

  The old lady let out a brisk cackle at this riposte.

  “Have it your own way! The men and women today have no stamina. They can’t come to terms with life – or marriage, as the case may be – as it is. He is out of England for four years and when he comes home is surprised to find things changed. Expected life was like the fairy stories, and his castle and his princess had been fast asleep during the waiting years. While as for the child herself, she ran hither and thither like a frantic mouse, never knowing what she should do, and then doing it wrong.”

  “Where can I find him?” asked Trevor gently, fitting the wire round the grate obediently.

  She opened one eye like a parrot, and said with a parrot’s raucous dreaminess:

  “Where he is, I suppose.”

  *

  Another conversation that was not without significance was with the child, Priscilla, a brittle little fair girl with long straight hair and greenish-gray eyes.

  He said: “Hullo? Where are you off to?”

  “Oh! Nowhere in particular,” she said nervously.

  “Good! Not busy for ten minutes?”

  “Well, yes, I am rather,” she said, sensing danger.

  “Oh, a pity! I hoped you would show me round the grounds. I have to get the hang of things, and I expect you know I am a stranger to these parts.” He gave her his mild confiding smile.

  She swung one foot.

  “We-el!...” She looked at him uncertainly.

  “It would help me very much,” he said, and watched her look of uncertainty flash to eagerness, and knew that he had found the right chord to play, her desire to be of use, to be wanted. “Tell me about yourself,” he said, as they walked away from the house. “How long have you been here?”

  “Nearly two years,” she said. “Ever since Daddy died.”

  “I’m sorry. In the war, was it?”

  “He was shot down bombing the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau. He had the D.S.O. and a posthumous V.C.” She looked at Trevor with a kind of fierce pride, and added: “I had nowhere else to go, so Auntie Linda took me in.”

  “Is your mother dead, too?”

  “Mother left us, when I was six. I don’t even know where she is now, so – ” the child shrugged her head.

  “It’s a pity this should have happened just when you were getting used to your new home.”

  “Yes, it is. It frightens me. I hope I’m not going to be a doomed sort of person, like saints, you know, who always have to have a lot of awful things happen to them, to tempt them and all that.”

  “Still, in spite of being doomed you’ve been happy enough here, haven’t you, with your aunt and your little cousins? I wonder if you can tell me what
you did on the day she died. You understand that she was murdered, don’t you? And that now we have to find who did it?”

  “Of course I do. I’m not a child. And I can tell you exactly what happened that day, because I remember. It was the day I lost my bicycle. It was the day Nanny goes to see her married sister, and Aunt Linda asked me particularly after lunch if I’d mind looking after the children because she had a headache and wanted to lie down for a bit. I was pushing Janey round in a barrow—oh, because she’d had a screaming fit over something or other. And then while I was looking for my bicycle you all came up and I thought it was because you knew it had been stolen. I wish you’d find it for me. The others won’t believe it was stolen; they say it serves me right for being untidy and careless with my things; they say I’m always losing things. But I didn’t lose it, because I know perfectly well where I left it.”

  “You shall give the particulars to my sergeant and we’ll look into it,” he promised.

  “Thank you,” she said, intensely. “Thank you.”

  “Not at all, my dear child, not at all. I can see it means a lot to you; in a way, I imagine more than your aunt’s death.”

  “Oh!” she cried. She began to stammer, her eyes filled with tears and her face took on a badgered expression. “You’re against me, too, then! It isn’t fair! I did care! I was awfully fond of her, I cried all that night, and I couldn’t eat a thing yesterday. But the bicycle is my very own, it belongs to me.” She flushed. “It was the last thing Daddy gave me... Anyway, she wasn’t as good as you think. I know things – ” She looked flustered, and stopped provokingly. “I won’t tell you anymore,” she said, and ran off on her long spindly legs.

  Inspector Trevor watched her with a puzzled frown; something about her reference to the child, Janey, having a crying fit troubled the back of his mind. He filed the query away in a corner of his brain and strolled back to the house to see if either of the men in the house had returned.

  *

  Though Trevor was not to know it, Mr. Marriot had radically altered in appearance since his daughter’s death. The vigorous, vain old man had become really old, shaky, and grey in the face. Not only his clothes, but his very skin, seemed too large for him; his bones appeared to have shrunk within the flesh. He was almost exaggeratedly pathetic.

  “I’m just a useless, old man,” was his constant burden.

  “I’ve not yet had an opportunity, sir, of asking you for an account of your movements on that Wednesday afternoon,” Trevor was saying.

  “My head,” said the old man apologetically, touching his forehead with palsied fingers. “My memory isn’t what it was. But I’ll do my best to help you. We must do all in our power to catch this murderous rogue. Yes, yes. What were you saying, sir? You wanted to know what I had been doing with myself that afternoon. Nothing very particular, that I can recall. A little constitutional, don’t you know, down to the village and back.”

  “Can you remember the times, by any chance? Just as a guide, you know.”

  “Mmm! Let me see now. I went out about three, I think, and returned just before five. I recollect that I waited in the paper shop, for the evening papers to arrive, and they come in on the four-thirty-eight like clockwork.”

  “Did you come in the front entrance?”

  “Naturally,” said Mr. Marriot, looking blank.

  “I see. Can anyone confirm those times, do you know? Did anyone see you go or come?”

  “I – I – Probably not,” said the old man, passing his hand over his scalp with a flurried movement.

  “What did you do in the village all that time? See anyone you knew?”

  “I may have spoken to one or two people... I – I’m afraid it’s all gone now. Wiped away by my tragedy. It’s been a terrible blow to me, you know. My little daughter! Really all I had to live for. My dear wife, you know, and my son, both gone before. I am left, a very lonely, very useless old man.”

  “I deeply sympathize,” said Trevor. “Never mind it now. Perhaps you will recall something later. You can’t have spent two hours in the village just walking up and down its one street, after all.”

  “No,” said the old man, looking down at his knees, turning over his hands resting on his knees. “No, I suppose not.”

  “Tell me a little about your daughter, will you? You will have understood her better than anyone else in the house, I am sure.”

  “What sort of things do you want to know?” asked the old man, without looking up.

  “Whether she was happy. Whether she had any worries. Any enemies. Why all these people were living in the house. Why her husband was not living here. Why – but those will do for a start.”

  Mr. Marriot rubbed his palms together with nervous briskness.

  “We helped, you see, we helped with the upkeep of the house, made our little contributions, that was why we were here. I speak now of my wife’s sister, Miss Sharpe, and myself. Er – even that Austrian couple paid something into the kitty – very little, I imagine – Linda would never tell me how much. The little girl – that was a different thing of course; my boy’s child.”

  “Yes?” said the inspector encouragingly. Sergeant Drake in his corner turned over a fresh leaf in his notebook and waited.

  After a pause Mr. Marriot said: “Of course there were money troubles. Bound to be nowadays in a place this size. Can’t afford the upkeep, you know; we’re all in the same boat. Matter of fact, I’ve said all along it’ll be a damn good thing when they sell the place, it’s simply pouring good money down the drain – and all to no purpose, as I tell ’em. But of course Campion can’t face the idea. He’ll drag ’em all down, sooner than give it up. Wants the place for his sons, and all that sort of rot; when he can’t even afford to send them to a decent school. Ah well, I’m only an old man, I can’t keep up with things nowadays, but to my way of thinking it was asking too much of a young girl like Linda to expect her to keep a place like this going. It was killing her.” His eyes watered at the words, “Brave little soul,” he muttered. “The pity of it is that it was put on the market not long ago and she’d managed to sell it, and by a bit of cursed bad luck his lordship came home just before the deal went through, and not, I daresay, understanding the lay of the land, broke off negotiations at once. Bad show, that. Very bad show.” He began to fill a pipe.

  “Is that what they quarrelled about?”

  “I daresay it would have been,” said Mr. Marriot disingenuously.

  “Can you think of any reason why your daughter should have been murdered? Do you know of anyone who might have done it?”

  “Now look here, I’m not accusing anybody,” he said uneasily. “I know very little about my daughter’s private affairs. I never interfered. I should prefer to say nothing.”

  “What about these Hausers, Mr. Marriot? I understand that Mrs. Campion had asked them to leave – at rather short notice. And from what Mrs. Hauser said, I gather it was somewhat resented.”

  “Heaven’s, you’re not imagining that she was killed because she told the refugees she couldn’t keep them any longer.”

  “But Mrs. Hauser tells me that that is why her husband killed himself.”

  “Does she, indeed?” commented Mr. Marriot, pressing his hands together earnestly and looking solemn. “Does she...? And are you suggesting that that little woman could have cruelly murdered my little girl by way of revenge, or – or to prevent herself from being thrown out?”

  Trevor said nothing.

  “It’s preposterous! Surely you can see how silly and improbable it is, Inspector,” he said fretfully. “Murders have been committed before now for very trifling causes. Murder is often silly and improbable – as well as vile.

  “But in this instance... You see, Linda had asked us all to go. And I suppose her own family, on the face of it, had more reason to be aggrieved than an outsider. We none of us had anywhere to go, if it comes to that; it would not have been exactly convenient for us, either.
However – ” He sighed and fell silent.

  “Did she give any reason for wanting your sudden departure?”

  “I gathered that she believed and hoped that if she had the place to herself, Campion would return.”

  “Then there had been a quarrel? Had he left for good?”

  “She thought not. She thought he meant to come back. She said he would never leave Hawkswood and the children, even if he didn’t love her any more. Only, she said, there were too many people hanging about, interfering, causing friction. If she had him alone she could explain everything. She told me it wouldn’t be for long. Just a few weeks, she said. She said she’d find a way of helping me if necessary. You understand it was not only a question of finding accommodation, though heaven knows that is hard enough these days by all accounts, but also the rising cost of living. I am already reduced to subsisting on my capital. It is not pleasant at my age. And the position was no better for Victoria – Miss Sharpe, that is. She has only a small annuity, I believe. And Priscilla, poor child, has nothing. So you see, we were none of us any better off than the Hausers.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Priscilla’s bicycle was discovered hidden in a clump of gorse bushes that dotted the common land on either side of the road for a mile or two beyond Hawkswood. This particular cluster of gorse bushes was about twenty yards back from the road and roughly a quarter of a mile distant from Hawkswood house following the road and the drive, but less cutting through the little wood at the edge of the estate.

  The bicycle was muddy and scratched, but there were no fingerprints on it other than a few blurred ones of its owner’s and other small ones that could only belong to one of the children.

  Priscilla flushed with pleasure when Trevor restored it to her, even though its shining beauty was marred. She was perfectly positive that she had not taken the machine onto the Common and that, since Lionel had been more or less under her eye all that afternoon, and he was the only one of the children who could ride it, Lionel could not have left it there either. Yes, and she was equally positive that it was on the day of her aunt’s death that the bicycle was lost – or stolen, as she preferred to call it.