The Crime and the Crystal

by E. X. Ferrars

  “Then I agree with Bob, be careful what you say, even to us,” Denis said. “This is the sort of situation where the police would say to you, remember that what you say may be taken down and used in evidence against you.”

  “That isn’t quite what the police actually say,” Tony said. He gently stroked Jan’s hair. “And we aren’t the police. Go on, Jan.”

  “I’d be careful, Jan,” Bob Wilding said again. “You may regret what you say.”

  “No, Bob, I’m going to tell the truth,” she said, “and if I were you I’d go before anyone thinks of stopping you.” She looked back at Andrew. “You knew it was Bob, didn’t you?”

  “I thought there was some evidence to support that view,” he answered.

  Bob sprang to his feet. “It’s a lie. You all know what a liar she is. She’s only trying to cover up for Tony. The police are right about him. I’ve known it from the first and I kept quiet about it only because I’d some sympathy with him. My father was a beast. His violence made my childhood a nightmare, and he was doing the same thing to Jan, once he’d got her in his power. And of course that sickened Tony, because, as anyone could see, he’d been in love with her all along. I don’t believe my father’s money ever came into his mind. I believe it was his bestial cruelty to Jan that settled things. But even if I was ready now to talk about what I knew, I’m not going to be made a scapegoat for anyone.”

  Tony looked at Bob sombrely. “Why don’t you let Jan tell her own story?” he said.

  “Because it’ll only be lies.”

  Jan spoke again to Andrew. “What made you think it was Bob?”

  “Kay’s murder,” he answered. “You’d told Kay the truth about what had happened to your husband, hadn’t you? And she said she and Bob were together at the time of his death. If that was true, it didn’t mean anything, but if by chance it wasn’t true, if she was supplying him with a fake alibi, then it gave her a great deal of power over him. And from what she did to Miss Massingham, we know she wasn’t above blackmail. I believe as long as she only pressed Wilding for odds and ends of money because of what she’d done for him he paid up without minding too much. But when she put the pressure on Sara Massingham when she found out about her dealings in drugs, she was going too far. Bob decided to put an end to it. And he didn’t mind that you were in the house to see what he did because he felt secure that you’d never tell the truth about his father’s murder.”

  Sam stood up. He put a hand on Bob’s shoulder.

  “Jan hasn’t told her story yet,” he said. “If I were you, I’d take her advice and go. Nobody here is going to stop you.”

  David made a small, convulsive movement as if he were about to leap up from his chair and contradict this, but then he sank back.

  Bob stood still, looking round from face to face in the room. Then suddenly, as if he thought that someone would try to stop him, he leapt towards the door. He was gone in a moment. They heard the front door slam behind him, then running feet on the gravel outside.

  Jan began to shake all over. She turned and hid her face against Tony’s chest. Then as if something that had dammed up feeling in her had broken, she began crying violently, clutching at him with both hands. He leant his cheek against her hair, holding her gently.

  “There’s no hurry now,” he said. “It can wait.”

  “No,” she said between her sobs, “I want to get it over.”

  “Then come and sit down here,” he said, guiding her towards the sofa. “Shall I get you a drink?”

  “No, not now,” she answered. “Later.”

  He sat down beside her. “I’m glad it’s come to this at last. There was always something between us, but we ought to be able to deal with it now.”

  She found a handkerchief and mopped her eyes. They were red, her face was blotchy from all the crying that she had done that day and her lips were trembling, but after a moment she drew a deep breath and said, “I don’t know where to start.”

  “The beginning is the usual place,” Tony said.

  “But what was the beginning? I suppose it was when I made the awful mistake of marrying Luke. He was handsome and he seemed so distinguished and kind. And sometimes he really was like that, except when his bad moods took him. But I needn’t go back to all that, or talk about the shock it was to find out what he could really be like. It didn’t take me long to make up my mind to leave him. I suppose, considering the kind of man he was, it would have been best just to do it, then write or telephone to say I wasn’t coming back. But I’d got it into my head the honest thing would be to tell him to his face what I was going to do, and I’d made up my mind I’d do it that morning in the quarry. He wanted me to go with him and I drove there with him in the Mercedes. I didn’t go into Preston’s shop at nine o’clock. Saying I did was just a muddled sort of attempt to give myself an alibi. I guessed he’d remember I’d been in that morning, but I thought there was a good chance he wouldn’t remember when. Luke and I went straight to the quarry, and then Luke got to work on a rock where he was sure there was a geode, and sure enough, in only a little while he found it and found a wonderful lump of crystal. And of all stupid times to choose, just when he was feeling on top of the world, that was when I began to tell him I was going to leave him.”

  Her voice had grown steadier, but at that point she gave another shiver.

  “I might have known what he’d do,” she said. “He struck me. I nearly fell off the ledge we were on and I suddenly became terrified that he was going to kill me. I saw him reaching for the pickaxe he’d been using. I wish I could say I don’t remember what happened next, but I remember it horribly clearly. I picked up the lump of crystal and I hit him with it. He fell down. There was blood on his forehead where I’d hit him, but he started cursing, so I knew I hadn’t killed him. I dropped the crystal and I was just going to run away when suddenly, appearing out of nowhere, that was how it seemed, Bob was there and had the crystal in his hand and was battering Luke’s head with it. Then I remember Bob gave a queer kind of laugh and said, ‘Who’s going to know you didn’t do that?’ ” She paused and said to Tony in a tone that had suddenly become oddly childish, “I’d like that whisky now. And a cigarette. My cigarettes are in the bedroom.”

  He got up and went to fetch them. While he was gone she sat with her elbows on her knees and her face hidden in her hands. Returning, he lighted a cigarette for her, then poured out some whisky. She drew hungrily on the cigarette, but at first looked at the glass in her hand as if she could not think how it had got there. But then she sipped a little from it, then a little more, and when she spoke again the childish note in her voice, which had threatened hysteria, had gone.

  “Just at first, you know, it didn’t seem strange to me that Bob was there. And another queer thing was that I felt as if it had really been I who had killed Luke. Then I did ask Bob why he’d come to the quarry and he told me with another frightening sort of laugh that he’d been waiting a long time for the right time and place. He said he’d known where Luke and I would be, because his father had telephoned him in Adelaide that morning and had mentioned where we were going. So then I began to understand that he hadn’t killed Luke just to protect me, as I thought at first, but that he’d come there on purpose to do it. I realized there was the same sort of violence in him that there was in Luke, only even worse, and I began to be horribly frightened. Then he said to me, ‘Of course, if you like, we can fix that. I can give you an alibi if you’ll get one for me.’ I didn’t understand what he meant, but he explained that if he dragged Luke’s body down to the pond and left it there, no one could ever think I’d been able to do it, but in return he wanted me to say we’d been together at home, or something like that.”

  “Why didn’t you do that?” Denis asked. “Why did you bring Kay into it?”

  “It was Bob’s idea. When he’d thought it over he said there wasn’t much point in our saying we’d been together, because we were the two people who’d benefit by Luke’s death, ea
ch of us inheriting a good deal under his will, so it was going to look suspicious if we said we’d been together. So I said, ‘I’ll fix it with Kay.’ He and she were seeing a lot of each other at that time, in fact people thought they were probably going to get married, so if they said they’d been out together it wouldn’t seem unlikely to anyone. And I knew she’d do what I asked when I told her what had happened. So Bob drove me back to Hartwell and dropped me off just before we got there, and I went into the town to get to a public telephone and call Kay to say, if she was asked, that she and Bob had set out together an hour or so earlier. It never occurred to me she’d use that against him when it suited her. I’d rather depended on her all my life and trusted her completely.”

  “But why did you go into Preston’s shop?” Sam asked. “You must have known you were risking drawing attention to yourself just when you didn’t want it.”

  “I did it because I saw you coming,” she said.

  “You saw me!” Sam exclaimed.

  “Yes, the phone’s just outside Preston’s shop,” Jan said, “and I was just going to it when I saw you, and I knew if you saw me you’d stop and talk and probably insist on driving me home, and there was so little time to spare. Bob would be picking Kay up in only a little while and I wanted to speak to her and ask her to do just what Bob said without any arguing. Of course there wasn’t time for me to go home to make the call. But just as I was going to do it I saw you coming, and I dodged into Preston’s shop so that you shouldn’t see me. I didn’t think for a moment he’d remember my coming in, and anyway he’s such a muddled old fool I felt sure my word would be accepted rather than his if I stuck to it that I’d been in the shop much earlier in the morning than he said. And so it was officially, until Mrs. Mayhew turned up with her evidence, though I know Sergeant Ross never believed me.”

  “And so Kay agreed to help you,” Denis said bitterly. “But then she decided it would suit her better to blackmail a murderer than to marry him. And so she married me. That’s how it happened, isn’t it, Jan?”

  “I suppose it was, Denis,” she agreed.

  “And she never cared much for either of us.”

  Sam spoke brusquely. “Kay never cared for anyone in her life but herself. You’ll get over it, Denis, when you get used to thinking of her as the person she really was.”

  “But that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Denis said. His neat, self-contained face looked blank and lifeless, as if something in him had died. “To have your whole world stood on its head in twenty-four hours or so. Because I loved the woman, you know. She was lovely. She was gay. She was everything to me. And now I’ve somehow got to get accustomed to the idea that she wasn’t worth it. But why did she have to be killed, Jan? I don’t understand that.”

  “As Andrew said, because she started to blackmail Sara,” Jan answered. “I don’t believe she did it for the money. It was for the sweet sense of power. But Bob’s really in love with Sara and he was ready to do anything she told him. And that meant what her brother wanted. So he came back to the house when you were all down on the beach, and for all I know all he meant to do was argue with her and tell her she’d got to lay off Sara. But Kay laughed at him, and that was a dangerous thing to do with Bob, just as it was with Luke. I was in the bedroom at the time, changing, so I didn’t see how it actually happened, but I heard the laugh turn into a scream and I came running out and there was Bob standing over Kay and battering her head in with that lump of crystal, just as he did when he killed Luke. And that’s when I began to scream myself and he dropped the crystal and put his hand over my mouth and told me to be quiet, or he could still get me convicted for Luke’s death, and now Kay’s as well. Nobody knew I hadn’t been alone with her in the house, he said. I couldn’t think properly and I believed him, so all I wanted was to get away. But I didn’t think of joining the rest of you because I thought if I told you what had happened it would only drive Bob into saying he’d found Luke dead already when he arrived in the quarry and that everything I’d said about that was a lie. And I knew I wasn’t capable of joining you and pretending I hadn’t seen anything. So that’s why I ran away home and got the Volvo and drove up to Dad. It seemed the natural thing to do. But I didn’t tell him any of this. I only told him that I’d found Kay dead and didn’t know who’d done it.”

  “So we’ve let the murderer escape,” Tony said. “Perhaps that wasn’t very clever of us.”

  Andrew did not feel sure of that. He thought of what might have happened there if they had not let Bob Wilding go. A nasty scene, at the very least. But he wondered what they were going to do about Jan, because, like it or not, she had concealed evidence against two crimes. That was a serious offence, though perhaps the fact that she had been intimidated might help her.

  She leant her head against Tony’s shoulder. She looked relaxed, with an air almost of contentment about her.

  “I think I want to tell the whole thing to the police,” she said. “I don’t think I can live with secrets any longer. I’m not naturally a liar, you know. It’s felt worse and worse as time went by. I don’t think I could have borne it much longer. And if we were all to keep all this to ourselves, one day that man Ross would pounce on Tony and then I’d have to tell the truth anyway.” She turned to Andrew. “I suppose he gave you a hint that that was what he was going to do and you followed it up, as he wanted you to.”

  “That was more or less how it was,” he admitted, “though we didn’t actually discuss it.”

  “I don’t know what will happen to me when I tell them the truth,” she said, “but at least some day I’ll be clear of it all, instead of living all the time with a deadly fear at the back of my mind.” She picked up one of Tony’s hands and held it against her cheek. “Our marriage hasn’t been much good to you, has it, Tony darling? You must have been very unhappy.”

  “Not unhappy,” he answered. “Just worried, puzzled, wondering when our difficulties would solve themselves. But sure that they would in the end.”

  “Where d’you think Bob’s gone?” Sam asked abruptly.

  Nobody answered. There was silence for a time.

  Then Denis observed, “He must have known that once Jan decided to talk in front of all of us here, there was no way out for him.”

  “But what does a person do when there’s no way out?” Sam went on.

  “Depends on the person,” Tony said.

  Andrew wondered what he himself would do if he found himself in a situation from which there was no way out. Shoot himself, perhaps, if he had a gun? Poison himself, if the right sort of pills were available? Swim out to sea till he met a shark? Or perhaps just present himself at police headquarters and make a confession?

  The truth was, he thought that the last was by far the most likely course for him to pursue. Shrinking in revulsion from violence in all its forms, he knew that that would include violence against himself. But then, feeling as he did, he recognized that it was next door to impossible that he should ever find himself in Bob Wilding’s situation, with two murders to his credit.

  “Well, what are you going to do, love?” Sam asked after a pause. “I don’t think there’s anyone in this room who won’t keep quiet, if that’s what you want.”

  Jan shook her head. “No, I told you, I want to tell the truth. But I’m not sure how to go about it. Tony, perhaps you would drive me in to police headquarters.”

  “What, right away?” he said, recoiling sharply.

  “Yes, I think so,” she answered. “Yes, please, right away.”

  Andrew saw Sergeant Ross once more before he left for Tasmania, and that was by chance.

  By then Jan had been remanded on bail and was at home, waiting for the inquest into Luke Wilding’s death, the date of which had at last been fixed, and into that of her sister. From the time of Jan’s return home from a brief spell of custody there had been a change in the atmosphere of the Gardiner household which had made Andrew certain that it was time for him to leave. Tony, as before, had
pressed him to stay on, but this time Andrew had resisted and he had felt fairly sure that in fact this was greeted by relief. Tony and Jan were in the process of forging a new relationship, and however hospitable their instincts might be, it seemed clear to Andrew that they would be better able to do this without an audience.

  He was glad to see what seemed to be happening to them. The tension between them that had disturbed him, the barrier of distrust that had seemed to be there in spite of their obvious love for one another, was gone. They clung to one another in a new way, peaceful in spite of the uncertainty of the future.

  So it was time for him, Andrew thought, to be moving on.

  However, before he left he had a day with the Nicholls. They had invited him to go for a picnic with them to one of the nature reserves near the city. It occurred to him, when they suggested this, that on this visit he had not seen a single kangaroo, which seemed a pity, and in accepting their invitation he hoped that he would see one or two, bounding about in the scrub.

  In fact, he saw a tribe of them, as interested in studying him, it appeared, as he was in observing them. He wished that he had thought of bringing a camera with him, though he had never been much of a photographer. David, however, had one, and went as close to the animals as they would permit to take several pictures of them, promising Andrew that he would send him prints once he knew that Andrew had reached home.

  They had settled for their picnic on the shore of a lake where there were a few tables and benches in the shade of some tall gums. There were pelicans on the lake, sailing along with almost the majesty of swans, and when Andrew and the Nicholls had sat down at one of the tables and Clare had unpacked the picnic basket that she and David had brought with them, some small, pretty, pale brown birds came round their feet, hoping for crumbs. They were beguilingly free of all fear of humans. The water was a dull, greenish colour with some pale, dead skeletons of trees along its brink, killed by a change in its level.