The Crime and the Crystal

by E. X. Ferrars

  “Are you sure,” Andrew asked, “that Kay didn’t know that Miss Massingham was handling drugs before you said anything about it to Jan?”

  “One can’t be sure about a thing like that, can one?” Dudley answered.

  “I can be bloody sure she didn’t know it,” Denis said, suddenly directing his anger at Andrew. “For one thing, can you believe that if Kay had been blackmailing Sara, she would have come to dinner with us, or that Kay would have asked her? And you’re forgetting I know Kay rather well. She wasn’t a blackmailer, she wasn’t a drug peddler, and even if she’d heard about the drugs from Jan and decided to go to the police about it, she wouldn’t have done that without talking it over with me. We loved each other, you know. And we had a way of talking most things over together if we had problems. And it’s bad enough that she’s dead without having foul insinuations made about her.”

  There was an over-emphasis in his voice which had the effect of making him sound less sure of what he was saying than he intended.

  Sam drew attention to his presence with a cough. “Just what I was thinking myself,” he said. “But you, Dudley, you said something about a tall man you saw when you were jogging. What was that all about?”

  Dudley thrust a hand through his yellow curls, pushing them back from his forehead, on which small beads of sweat were visible. He looked as if he were turning sulky.

  “I don’t suppose there’s anything in that,” he muttered.

  “But what was it you saw?” Sam asked.

  “Just a man who came down the steps from the road to the beach. Could have been anybody.”

  “But why did you notice him? What did he look like?”

  “I couldn’t see, because he’d got a towel draped over his head and shoulders. And that’s why I noticed him. The towel had the same pattern on it as the one Jan lent me. But I didn’t stop to take a look at him. No reason why I should. I was out jogging along the beach and I’d got past him before he’d got anywhere near the water.”

  “But you saw him come down the steps?”

  “Yes.”

  “So he could have been coming from here.”

  “That’s what I thought at the time. I knew the Lightfoots were having some sort of party, so I thought it was probably Tony. But that doesn’t seem likely now. I mean, with those bloodstains on it and all.”

  “Isn’t there anything you can tell us about him?” Sam asked. “You said he was tall.”

  “How tall?”

  “Oh, just tall. Tallish. Not as tall as me.”

  “Say six foot?”

  Dudley nodded. “Just about.”

  Sam turned to Andrew with a sardonic smile. “You’re just about six foot, I’d say, Andrew, and you’d access to Jan’s towels. Feel like confessing?”

  Andrew shook his head. “No, I’m not in the mood for it just now, Sam. But it’s a fact that there were several tall men here yesterday. Denis, Tony and Bob are all about six foot. Nicholl isn’t as tall as they are, but he’s well-built and if one were simply jogging past and he was on the steps above one, I think one might think he was fairly tall. But I wonder if you could be persuaded to confess yourself, Sam.”

  A little to his surprise, because he had intended his tone to match Sam’s in slightly macabre flippancy, Andrew saw an uneasy glint appear in Sam’s grey eyes.

  “I guess I’m not in the mood for it either,” he muttered.

  “I believe there’s one thing you could tell us, if only you would,” Andrew said.

  “What’s that?”

  “The real reason Jan ran away to you.”

  Andrew saw a stubborn look appear on Sam’s face and he knew that he would not get an answer to his question, or if he did, that it was unlikely to be true. Not that Sam might not believe it himself, or at most feel only faintly suspicious that Jan had lied to him. But either she or Sam or both of them had lied—Andrew felt fairly sure of it by now.

  “She told you, didn’t she?” Sam said.

  “That she’d lost her head? That she was so scared she only wanted to get away?” Andrew gave his head a slight shake. “I dare say it’s my own fault, some blind patch I’ve got, but I find it awfully difficult to believe that that’s the whole of the story.”

  The glint in Sam’s eyes brightened with anger. Andrew began to regret what he had said. He realized that he was probably going to have a quarrel with Sam and he did not want one. It was not only that he liked the man, but to let the mood in the room become destructively emotional would be less than useful. He thought of the violence that had happened there the day before and felt sickened by the sense of it that he suddenly felt in the group of them there.

  “You can believe anything you bloody well want to believe,” Sam said harshly. “It’s nothing to me.”

  Denis, who had become very pale, said, “What are you trying to say, Andrew?”

  “I don’t know,” Andrew admitted. “I believe she was scared and was running away from something, but I’m not sure what. I think she may have seen the murderer.”

  “And wouldn’t that have scared you?” Sam said, his voice rising. “I thought you’d decided against asking questions. Go on with this sort of thing and you’ll get egg on your face.”

  “Quite right,” Andrew said. “I won’t go on.”

  “Why not?” Denis asked. His voice was very quiet compared with Sam’s, but had a dangerous ring in it. “If you’ve some idea in your head about what made her do what she did, it’s up to you to tell us what it is. So go on!”

  “It’s nothing as definite as an idea,” Andrew said. “It’s just a feeling that she may have seen the murderer and for some reason was afraid to go down to us on the beach and tell us what she’d seen.”

  “Afraid of what he might do to her if she did?” Denis asked.

  “Something like that.”

  “But if she’d run away from him and come down to us straight away and told us what had happened, what could he have done to her?”

  “That’s the question. But suppose he’d some way of preventing her talking. Suppose, for instance, he’d some sort of hold over her so that she couldn’t talk, and yet she couldn’t face going down to us and behaving in front of us as if nothing had happened. That might have been a very good reason for running away. At least it would have given her time to calm down. Didn’t she give you a hint of anything like that, Sam?”

  “She did not. She told me just what she told you and Tony, and that’s enough for me. A hold over her! Who the hell could have a hold over her, a kid who’d never done anyone any harm? You’ve got to harm someone or do something crooked before you give them a hold over you. I’m not staying here to listen to any more of this. I’m going along to see if Jan and Tony have got home yet. You can come along or join me there later if you want to, Andrew.”

  Without waiting to hear what Andrew wanted to do, he turned to the door and slouched out of the room.

  He left silence behind him until after a little Denis observed, “You frightened him, Andrew.”

  “I rather think I did,” Andrew said. “I didn’t mean to. I was just thinking the thing out as I talked. But perhaps I got closer to the truth than I realized.”

  Denis had got up from the chair beside the sofa where Dudley Blair still lay and began to walk about the room.

  “Of course there’s something you didn’t say,” he said after a moment. “I wonder if it’s possible…” He stared broodingly at the floor before him.

  Dudley spoke up brightly. “Professor Basnett didn’t say that Jan may actually have wanted to protect the murderer.”

  “Shut up!” Denis snarled. “Let me think. Yes, it’s possible. It’s possible, you see, that it was Sam himself who did the murder.”

  “Oh come,” Andrew said. “His own daughter.”

  “What’s wrong with that? The majority of murders are done by people who are very close to the victim—the husband, the wife, the father, the son. It’s within a family that the worst hatred i
s usually generated. And Sam never cared for Kay. We all knew that. He didn’t try to conceal it. And he’s got a violent temper. He was like Luke in that. Perhaps that’s what drew Jan to Luke, the good old father fixation. You haven’t seen it, Andrew, but I’ve seen Sam purple in the face and shaking all over with rage over a mere nothing. It’s the kind of temper that comes out of nowhere and disappears as suddenly as it comes and in a moment he’ll have forgotten it ever happened. Because it disappears so quickly people have a way of forgiving it, yet while it’s got hold of him I swear he’d be capable of anything.”

  “Even murder?”

  “Even murder.”

  “Without a motive?”

  “Oh, he’d have had a motive of sorts. Just for the moment. Suppose it happened like this. Suppose he came down from Hartwell by plane. When he comes to visit us, which isn’t a thing he does very often, he generally comes by plane because he’s got poor eyesight and doesn’t care for driving so far. So suppose he came down by plane because he suddenly got it into his head it would be nice to visit us on Christmas Day, then got to Adelaide, took a taxi from the airport and walked in on Kay while Jan was in the bedroom, changing. He may have been full of the Christmas spirit, goodwill and alcohol combined, and instead of welcoming him Kay may have said something, done something. To tell the truth, she wasn’t the most tactful of people. But it could have been something as trivial as telling him he’d been drinking too much on the plane, or perhaps not saying thank you with enough enthusiasm for some present he’d brought her. And he lost that foul temper of his, picked up that damned lump of crystal and banged her on the head.”

  “Just a minute,” Andrew said. “Do planes go on Christmas Day?”

  “Oh yes,” Denis answered. “Cheapest day of the whole year to travel. Sam wouldn’t have been thinking of murder and probably didn’t mean to hit as hard as he did, but he’s very strong, and for the moment he’d have been blind to what he was doing. And then Jan came in and found him with the crystal in his hand and Kay dead at his feet and him just beginning to come to his senses. So it’s obvious what she did then, isn’t it?”

  “If any of this is true, yes,” Andrew said. “I suppose he’d be in a pretty dazed condition at what he’d done and she’d just have led him home, packed him into the Volvo and driven off to Hartwell. It certainly accounts for her behaviour. But there’s one thing that doesn’t fit in.”

  “The towel!” Dudley Blair cried. “How did that bloodstained towel get down to the beach?”

  “Shut up!” Denis snarled at him again. “You’ve done enough damage already.”

  “But it’s just what I was going to say,” Andrew said.

  Denis thought it over, then gave a brief nod, as if he had arrived at a conclusion that was convincing, at least to himself.

  “Of course it was Jan who took it down before going home,” he said, “just to create confusion.”

  “But it was a man I saw, a tall man,” Dudley protested. “I swear it was.”

  “You were jogging past,” Denis said. “I’ve watched joggers and they seem to be quite unaware of anything that’s going on around them. They’re completely wrapped up in themselves. You just think that you saw a tall man. Perhaps you didn’t even really think it. It may be something you thought up when the police started putting pressure on you because you’re fond of Jan and didn’t want to cast suspicion on her.”

  “It was a tall man,” Dudley said stubbornly. “I’ll swear to that in court.”

  “Then there’s only one other possibility,” Denis said. “Tony came into the house, I suppose to find out why Kay and Jan hadn’t come down to join us, found out what had happened, and to help Jan and Sam took the towel down to the beach, as I said, to confuse things. It was Tony who pointed out the towel to us there, wasn’t it, and who brought it in to show to the police? He could have been making sure it didn’t get overlooked.”

  “On the other hand…” Andrew said and paused.

  “Yes?” Denis said.

  “I don’t really believe in this theory of yours at all. I don’t think Sam was here yesterday. I think when the police start making inquiries in Hartwell, as I’m sure they will, because naturally they’ll have thought of this possibility for themselves, they’ll find someone who saw him there and can give him an alibi.”

  “Perhaps,” Denis said. “Perhaps. I’ll tell you something else, though. I can’t say I’ve evidence for it, it’s just something I’ve always felt. I believe Sam knows a lot more about Luke Wilding’s murder than he’s ever admitted.”

  “That would mean Jan knows more about it than she’s ever admitted,” Andrew said.

  “Suppose she does.”

  “Then I grant you she may have told Sam about it. But I thought it was generally accepted that she couldn’t have done the murder herself, because she couldn’t have moved the body down to the pool.”

  “She could have had an accomplice.”

  “Who, for instance? Her father himself, or Tony? And even if she had one, it still doesn’t explain the reason why the body was moved.”

  “There’s a theory it was done to get it to a car and drive it off into the bush and bury it,” Denis said, “but that someone else appeared on the scene and the murderer, or the accomplice, or whoever it was, had to drop the body in a hurry and bolt.”

  “I’ve heard that theory,” Andrew said, “but I don’t much like it, though I admit I can’t think of a better one.”

  As he said it, however, Andrew felt that he had missed the point of something. Something had been said in the last few minutes the point of which he had failed to understand. Perhaps he had even said it himself. This was not altogether an unusual experience for him. His mind had never moved swiftly, which had always been a disadvantage to him in his work. He was slow at making points in an argument. It might be hours after the argument had closed that he would think of the retort that he ought so obviously to have made. On committees he had usually been one of the silent members, because he would generally find himself trying to disentangle what had seemed wrong to him about something that had been said five minutes before when a new controversy was already raging round him. The feeling came to him now that if only he could force his mind to hurry up a little, he might be able to add something significant to what Denis had been saying.

  But besides his normal slowness, he was suffering acutely from fatigue. He thought that it might really be best if he took his leave of Denis and followed Sam to the Gardiners’ bungalow, hoping that there would be someone there by now to let him in. If there were, he thought, he would go straight to bed. He was not in the least hungry. He could do without a meal, but he yearned, as he had after the flight from Heathrow, to get out of the clothes that he had been wearing for far too long and fall asleep.

  Getting up, he began to say, “I think I’ll be off, Denis,” when the front doorbell rang again.

  This time it was Tony. He was looking very tired also, though with an air of nervous tension about him which suggested that even if he went to bed he had not much hope of sleep. Denis offered him beer and he accepted it absently and seemed to feel no need for a moment to explain what had brought him, but sinking down into a chair, sipped a little beer and closed his eyes.

  When he opened them again, they settled on Dudley and looked startled, as if he had only just become aware of the fact that the young man was there.

  “What are you doing here, Dud?” he asked.

  “Let’s not go into that now,” Denis said. “I’ll tell you about that later. You look just about finished, Tony. What have they been doing to you?”

  “The police?” Tony said. “Questions, questions, questions. Then tea and sandwiches, then more questions.”

  “Where’s Jan?” Denis asked.

  “At home. Feeling crook. Gone to bed. Dad came in soon after we got there and told us you were here, Andrew, so I thought I’d better come along and collect you.”

  “I was just coming,” Andrew sa
id.

  “I’m sorry we’ve got you into all this,” Tony said.

  “Not exactly your fault.”

  “Well, I don’t know. I needn’t have taken you up to Hartwell. If it comes to that, I needn’t have gone myself. Shouldn’t have gone, in fact. Sam was right, when we drove off the police followed us and caught up with Jan before she’d had time to get hold of herself. She’s in a real mess now, contradicting herself every time she opens her mouth. It was just that I was so bloody scared the murderer had got her. But I’ve never seen her cry so much as she has today, and that damned man Ross kept offering her tea. More and more tea. She wasn’t much use to him when she was crying. It was mostly for Kay, of course. They were very fond of one another. But also it was from shock and fear. I can’t help feeling she knows more than she’ll tell even me, though she may have told it to Dad. She keeps talking about Luke, almost as if he was alive, and once she called Dad Luke by mistake and didn’t even realize she’d done it.”

  “Perhaps you should call a doctor,” Denis said.

  “I thought I’d see how she is tomorrow,” Tony answered.

  “He could give her a sedative tonight. But I expect you’re right to wait, though you look as if you could do with a sedative yourself.”

  Tony finished his drink at a gulp. “I’m all right.” He stood up. “Coming, Andrew?”

  The front doorbell rang yet again. Reluctantly Denis went out into the hall.

  When he opened the door a shouting voice greeted him, a harsh, wildly excited voice.

  “Have you heard what they’ve done?” it shouted. “You won’t believe it. They’ve arrested Sara. Sara! Has everyone gone mad?”

  His blue eyes blazing and his handsome, hollow-cheeked face feverishly patched with red, Bob Wilding burst into the room.

  “For trafficking in drugs…” he was beginning when his gaze fell on Dudley Blair, who had stood up and was facing him across the room.

  Bob Wilding stood still, rigid, just inside the doorway. A look almost of disbelief appeared on his face.