The Case of the Abominable Snowman

by Nicholas Blake

  ‘I see. Well then, without infringing professional etiquette, perhaps you can tell us more exactly about your patient’s suicidal tendencies.’

  ‘Suicide only takes place, as I believe, when the will to live has temporarily lost – how shall I say? – its margin of power over the death-will.’

  ‘The obvious. Decorations by Sigmund Freud,’ murmured Andrew, but not softly enough to escape Dr Bogan’s ears.

  ‘It will sound obvious only to a superficial mind, Restorick. There is neither a suicidal type nor a suicidal tendency. There is nothing but the predestinated and unremitting war between life-will and death-will – a war which must always end in victory for death, but where sometimes the positive forces desert to the enemy before the battle is half over.’

  Dr Bogan, more by his vibrant voice and presence than by his actual words, was holding the attention of all. Even Andrew Restorick regarded him with a look of wary respect.

  ‘Elizabeth,’ continued the doctor, ‘was a woman of strong impulses. As you all know, she was apt to disconcert folk sometimes by taking them at their own word. She took herself at her own word, too. Last night, when I went to see her just before dinner, she said something which ought to have warned me what she had in mind.’

  ‘That’s what we – Strangeways is trying to get at,’ interrupted Hereward Restorick. ‘She was depressed, you mean? Hinted at –’

  ‘She hinted at suicide, yes – I realize that now. But she wasn’t depressed. She was, you might almost say, excited. Lit up. She said, “Dennis, I expect you’ll be glad to have one hysterical woman off your hands.” I thought then that she was referring to the success of my treatment. That was my mistake.’

  ‘Your treatment was showing good results?’ asked Nigel.

  ‘I believed so. Physically. But I didn’t realize the strength of the death-will in her. The old cliché about having nothing left to live for means more than we often think.’

  ‘But if she was going to marry –?’

  Dr Bogan’s almost imperceptible shrug dismissed Charlotte’s argument. ‘She lived, forgive me, at a white heat. When the fire showed the first signs of sinking, she was ready to depart. Her nervous condition, if you like, predisposed her to the act. But it was the emptiness of life stretching before her, the sense that experience could now be only a series of stale repetitions, which allowed the death-will to enter the citadel.’

  ‘No!’ came an anguished cry from Will Dykes. ‘No! That isn’t true! She had something to look forward to, something different, a better life. You won’t catch me with all this high-flown talk about life-wills and death-wills. I tell you, she –’

  Dr Bogan had raised a soothing, deprecating hand. But it was the butler’s entrance which made Will Dykes break off short. The man approached Hereward, inclined his head solemnly, and whispered something to his master.

  ‘The Chief Constable’s here,’ said Hereward, rising. ‘Afraid we must – er – postpone the rest of this discussion. I expect he’ll want a word with you, Bogan. And will you come along too, Strangeways?’

  The Chief Constable, Major Dixon, was accompanied by a superintendent of police – a large, raw-boned man called Phillips, who looked as if he had been born and bred on a farm. Both men treated Hereward Restorick with a deference that indicated his influence in the district. Introductions being made, the party went upstairs. The policeman on guard outside Elizabeth’s room saluted and opened the door for them.

  ‘Good God!’ exclaimed Major Dixon, his hard-bitten countenance flushing furiously when he saw what the room contained. ‘Good God, she’s –! This is a shocking business, Restorick. Shocking.’

  Shocking, for him, in more senses than one, thought Nigel. Well, Elizabeth contrived to be as sensational in her death as in her life. The red lips of the girl hanging there seemed to be touched with the faintest smile of mockery.

  ‘Andrew said we oughtn’t to touch anything,’ Hereward was saying apologetically, ‘so we didn’t – er – cut her down. Bogan, of course, made sure there was no hope.’

  ‘She must have been dead for at least five hours when she was found,’ said the doctor.

  ‘I see. Yes. H’m.’ Major Dixon looked at a loss. ‘Well, Phillips, you’d better call Robins in and get on with it.’

  While the two policemen set to work, the Chief Constable began to ask routine questions, his eyes obviously restrained by an effort from the challenging lifeless body. Had Miss Restorick left no message for them? Had she given any indication of contemplating suicide? Who had found the body, and when? Who had last seen her alive?

  Phillips and Robins had cut the body down, laid it on the bed and covered it with a sheet. They were about to untie the rope, knotted under the side of the jaw, when Nigel said,

  ‘Excuse me. Just a minute. Before you go any further, I would like a word with Major Dixon.’

  The Chief Constable looked startled, but there was a compelling note in Nigel’s voice which overruled any objections he might have been going to make. Nigel motioned him outside. As he closed the door, he saw the two policemen straightening up from the bed, staring at him in undisguised amazement. Hereward and Dr Bogan looked equally surprised. That group in the room was to be repeated again many times during the next few weeks, with its air of suspended activity, of waiting uneasily and ineffectually for some new circumstance over which it could have no control.

  Taking Major Dixon a little way down the passage, Nigel repeated briefly the statement he had made to Charlotte Restorick.

  ‘So you see,’ he concluded, ‘there’s strong evidence that this is not suicide. I don’t want to butt in, but I suggest a post-mortem is justified – and a good look at that rope through a microscope.’

  ‘The rope?’

  ‘Yes. You noticed it was twined double round her neck. Of course, she might have done it that way herself. But equally a murderer might have done it, so as to overlay with the marks of the double ligature any bruises he made while throttling her into unconsciousness. If the body was hauled up by laying the rope over that hook in the beam, a microscopic examination of the rope will show the fibres lying upward, in the opposite direction of the pulling. You noticed a certain amount of slack had been wound round the hook. Then the knots at the hook or the girl’s neck may tell us something. That’s why I weighed in when I saw your Super was just going to untie the knot. The object of cutting down the body would have been quite defeated if he’d done that.’

  Nigel had reeled this off in his most dispassionate, incisive voice, while Major Dixon’s eyes regarded him with increasing consternation.

  ‘Afraid I didn’t catch your name,’ said the Chief Constable when he had found his tongue. It was – Nigel realized with secret amusement – a polite variant of ‘Who the devil are you, sir, to interfere like this?’ – a variant adapted to the Chief Constable’s deference for anyone staying at Easterham Manor.

  ‘Strangeways. My uncle, Sir John, is Assistant-Commissioner at New Scotland Yard. I’ve done a fair amount of this sort of work. Mrs Restorick asked me to take a look at things.’

  ‘Jiminy, this is going to kick up a dust,’ said Major Dixon presently. ‘Suicide was bad enough. But murder! What Restorick’ll say, I hate to think.’ He gazed at Nigel for a moment with an appealing, bothered look which seemed to say, ‘Couldn’t we just forget the last two minutes?’ Then he took a grip on himself, paused in front of the bedroom door as if on the brink of an icy bath, and plunged into the room.

  ‘Phillips, don’t untie that rope, cut it. Then wrap it up carefully for examination. Restorick, I’d like a word with you. But first, may we use your telephone?’

  ‘Certainly. But –’

  ‘Robins. Ring Dr Anstruther and ask him to come over at once.’

  ‘Anstruther?’ Hereward Restorick stiffened. His voice took on an autocratic tone which showed Nigel another side of him – the influential landowner, not the rather colourless husband of Charlotte Restorick whom he had seen so far. ‘I ass
ure you, Dixon, Dr Bogan here is fully qualified to do what is necessary – death certificate and so on. My sister was his patient. I fail to see –’

  ‘Sorry, Restorick, but one or two complications have arisen.’ Major Dixon held his ground against the formidably mounting anger in Hereward’s eye. ‘You were treating her, Dr Bogan? What was the nature of her illness?’

  ‘She was suffering from a nervous disorder, which I had some difficulty in diagnosing. I am not at liberty to reveal its cause,’ said the doctor stiffly.

  ‘You may be asked to do so at the inquest.’

  ‘Then I shall have to consider the position afresh.’

  Neither of them was giving an inch. Nigel, standing by the window, suddenly turned and asked:

  ‘Would you be willing to tell us the nature of your treatment?’

  ‘By all means. I was giving her sedative drugs to alleviate the attacks, and a course of hypnosis to try and eradicate the –’

  ‘You were what?’ exclaimed Hereward Restorick. ‘D’you stand there and tell me you were mesmerizing my sister?’

  It ought to have been ludicrous. But the temper flashing in Hereward’s blue eyes, the aggressive pose of his body which quite visibly shook with rage, brought Superintendent Phillips up to his shoulder ready to intervene. Dr Bogan, however, showed no sign of being rattled.

  ‘Hypnosis is not an uncommon form of treatment nowadays,’ he said with quiet assurance. ‘There’s no black magic about it.’

  ‘It’s criminal!’ stormed Restorick. ‘If I’d known this was going on, you’d have been packed out of my house double quick.’

  ‘Miss Restorick agreed to the treatment. She was a free agent.’

  Hereward glared about him. He seized the Chief Constable’s arm in a grip that made him wince.

  ‘Hypnotizing her! That’s the way you get hold of somebody body and soul. How do we know the fellow didn’t put her to sleep and then tell her to – to hang herself? Eh?’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘O Rose, thou art sick!’

  BLAKE

  THAT SCENE BETWEEN Hereward and Dr Bogan was one of many which made Easterham Manor resemble a battlefield. Even before Elizabeth’s death, on the previous night, Nigel had heard the premonitory rumblings of conflict. Now, war was openly joined. But, like the war that was convulsing Europe, it would be an affair of long boredoms, broken by sudden brief spasms of violent action.

  Nigel and Georgia were walking back to the Dower House through the snow. Andrew Restorick, who wanted to buy tobacco in the village, accompanied them. Georgia had been delighted by the Restorick children, John and Priscilla, who had entertained her most of the morning, quite ignorant of what was happening in the house around them.

  ‘I think Mrs Restorick is very sensible, not letting them know,’ she said. ‘Children have an instinct for smelling out trouble, of course, and they realize something has happened. But they won’t take it too hard if the knowledge comes to them gradually. Some modern mothers, who have this absurd theory about treating children as grown-ups and equals, would have put the whole business before them in black and white. Taking your children into your confidence. I don’t believe in it: it puts too much of a load on them, too much responsibility.’

  ‘I wonder,’ said Andrew after a pause. ‘Making everything easy for the young. Does it come off?’ He kicked his feet through the snow, his mind going off on a personal tangent. ‘Look at us. We had an ideal childhood. Parents who were kind and sympathetic without being over-indulgent. A beautiful home. A tradition. Good schools. A free country life in the holidays. Then travel. My father was appointed to the Embassy at Washington and took us all with him. We had everything a child could want. And look at us now. Hereward running to seed in the country, fiddling about on war agricultural committees, and half-demented because they won’t let him back in his old regiment yet. Myself, a sort of amateur beachcomber, the family ne’er-do-weel who’s never even attained the romantic notoriety of being an outright black sheep. And Betty –’ his voice wavered for an instant – ‘Betty hanging up there like dead mutton.’

  ‘You were very fond of her, weren’t you?’ asked Georgia gently.

  Andrew’s voice was savage with pain. ‘Betty was the most arrant little bitch and the most glorious creature I ever – Oh, God damn it, she was my sister – I can’t think of her in words; they don’t mean anything; you couldn’t describe her – she ought to have had a poet, Shakespeare, to do it, or Donne. And I did nothing for her. I let her do this.’

  His slight, wiry body was trembling uncontrollably. Georgia, saying nothing, took his arm. He didn’t seem even to notice the contact.

  ‘Do you really think she killed herself?’ said Nigel flatly. His words did not penetrate for a moment. Then Andrew stopped dead in his tracks, staring at Nigel.

  ‘Say that again.’

  ‘Do you really think she killed herself?’

  ‘Explain that,’ demanded Andrew, with an extraordinary, controlled kind of ferocity.

  ‘I believe she was murdered,’ said Nigel. ‘And the murderer rigged it up to look like suicide.’

  He felt Andrew’s eyes, the whole ferocious attentiveness of his body, almost like a scorching wind on his own flesh. Frozen reeds around a pond beside which they had halted, stirring in the wind, brushed harshly against the absolute silence.

  Nigel outlined, once again, the points he had made to Charlotte Restorick. ‘Surely you felt there was something wrong with the suicide tableau?’ he concluded. ‘Or why did you impress upon everyone that they mustn’t touch anything?’

  ‘Oh, that was a sort of automatic reaction. Drummed into one by detective novels, I suppose. Hereward and the rest were knocked right over. Somebody had to take charge. But it didn’t occur to me it could be anything but suicide. Not at first.’ He gave them one of his speculative, sidelong glances. ‘Well, my reaction when first I saw her was – No, it’s not possible, Betty wouldn’t do it, she’d never take that way out. Which amounts to the same thing, I suppose.’

  ‘Weren’t you expecting something to happen, then?’

  ‘How d’you mean? Let’s move on. It’s infernally cold, standing over this Stygian marsh. I wonder why the Christian tradition makes Hell hot, it ought to be cold – cold as this foul countryside, cold as malice and all uncharitableness.’

  Nigel led him firmly back to the point. ‘You all seemed thoroughly on edge last night at dinner. That’s why I ask weren’t you expecting something to happen.’

  ‘You didn’t know Betty. She’d been ill and edgy ever since she came down this time. And when she was like that, everybody felt the vibrations. You see, she was a person who simply radiated life, not a blood-sucker draining the life out of everyone else: the delicate instrument goes out of order, and you all feel seized-up.’ His voice died down to a whisper harsh as the rustle of the reeds they had passed. ‘O Rose, thou art sick! I wonder who it was that found out her bed of crimson joy.’

  ‘You weren’t expecting anything particular, then?’

  Andrew whirled round upon him. ‘Do you suppose, if I’d had the faintest suspicion that so much as a hair of her head was in danger, I’d not have –’

  ‘Well, who were you talking about? At dinner? Did you just make up that purely evil person – the person who revelled in evil, as you put it?’

  ‘Oh, I was just pulling their legs,’ replied Andrew, a little too negligently. ‘Many a true word spoken in jest.’

  ‘I’m afraid the police will go into that jest pretty thoroughly, Restorick.’

  ‘Let them. I’ve lived too rackety a life to be afraid of a blue uniform any longer.’

  ‘Have it your own way.’ Nigel poked his walking-stick at a snow-furred signpost on the edge of the village, which they were now entering. ‘Lovely place-names Essex has. Why do you hate Dr Bogan so much?’

  Andrew Restorick laughed, with the sort of spontaneous gaiety which might possess a skilled duellist at the first flick and jar of his
opponent’s weapon.

  ‘No, no, Strangeways. You can’t jump me like that. I dislike Bogan very much, certainly, because I believe he’s a pretentious fake, and I believed he was doing Betty no good, but I am not therefore assuming he killed her.’

  He tipped his hat to Nigel, grinned saucily at Georgia, and stepped aside into the tobacconist’s.

  ‘Well, what d’you think of him?’ Nigel asked.

  His wife paused to consider. ‘I think, if he finds out who killed his sister before the police do, there’ll be a second murder at Easterham Manor,’ she replied soberly.

  ‘He’s like that, is he?’ said Nigel, who accepted implicitly Georgia’s judgements on human character.

  ‘Yes. Upbringing, temperament, and the kind of life he’s lived – they’d all incline him towards taking the law into his own hands.’

  ‘Hereward’s got a touch of that temper, too.’

  ‘Yes. But respectability and the family tradition are his mainsprings of action. By the way, he’s a devoted father, a little too exacting with the boy, but both the children worship him, and he treats them very sensibly.’

  ‘What about Charlotte?’

  ‘She puzzles me a little. That grande-dame, hostessy façade. A simple, shrewd, realistic mind beneath it, I’d say. I don’t know how well her two selves run in harness, though. Hereward, I fancy, married her partly for her money – it needs a good deal to keep up a place that size nowadays, and his farms must be subsidized. I’d say she and Hereward got on pretty well, he’s not the type to want an intense emotional relationship – each of them has his own province and sticks to it.’

  ‘He can’t much like the sort of people she fills her house with. Proletarian novelists, hypnotists, Eunice Ainsleys.’

  ‘Hypnotists?’

  ‘Dr Bogan uses hypnosis in his treatments.’ Nigel described the scene that had taken place between Hereward and the doctor. ‘Hereward’s very naïf. He connects hypnotism with shady practices in back streets, or Doctor Mabuses – a black art to get possession of one’s victim, soul and body. Body particularly in Elizabeth’s case.’