The Beast Must Die

by Nicholas Blake

  ‘“A fishing-rod,”’ quoted Nigel, in a by no means inaudible voice, ‘“is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.”’

  ‘Shut up, Nigel,’ whispered Georgia. ‘I will not be a party to any rough house. Those men are dangerous. They might gaff us.’

  Lena, sitting next to Felix on a high-backed bench and leaning against him, stirred impatiently.

  ‘Let’s go out in the garden, Felix,’ she said. The invitation was obviously meant for him alone, but he replied, ‘All right. Drink up, you two, and we’ll all go and play clock-golf or something.’

  Lena bit her lip, and got up rather brusquely. Georgia shot Nigel a swift glance which he interpreted, correctly, as meaning – we’d better all go out, no use being arch with those two, but why doesn’t he want to be alone with her?

  Why indeed? thought Nigel. If Blount is right, and Lena suspects Felix of having murdered Rattery, one could understand her being a bit shy of his company – afraid of hearing her suspicions confirmed by his own lips. But in fact it is just the other way round. He is avoiding her. At dinner, even, one got the impression that he was keeping her at arm’s length. There was a sort of sharp edge on his conversation, particularly when he addressed her, that seemed to warn – come any nearer and you’ll cut yourself. It’s all very complicated but Felix is a complex character, I’m beginning to realise. I think it’s time for putting a few cards on the table – see how they react to some plain speaking.

  So, when they had finished a round of clock-golf, and were sitting on deckchairs with the river glimmering more darkly before them, Nigel began talking about the case.

  ‘The incriminating document is now in the hands of the police, you’ll be relieved to hear. Blount’s bringing it up tonight.’

  ‘Oh. Well, it’s a good thing for them to know the worst, I expect,’ said Felix lightly. There was a strange mixture of shyness and complacency in his expression. He went on, ‘I suppose I might as well shave my beard off, now that all disguise is useless. I never liked the thing – never did like hairs in my food – finicky, no doubt.’

  Georgia played with her fingers. Felix’s facetiousness jarred upon her: she was not sure yet whether she liked him.

  Lena said, ‘May a girl ask what you’re talking about? What is this “incriminating document”, anyway?’

  ‘Felix’s diary. You know,’ said Nigel quickly.

  ‘Diary? But why? – I don’t understand.’ Lena glanced helplessly towards Felix, but he avoided her eyes. She sounded entirely mystified. Of course she’s an actress, thought Nigel, and she may be putting it all on, but I’d be prepared to lay a modest bet that this is the first she’s heard of the diary. He continued to probe.

  ‘Look here, Felix, there’s no point our going on at cross-purposes. Doesn’t Miss Lawson know about your diary – and everything? Oughtn’t you to –?’

  Nigel did not know what would be the result of this angling in troubled waters. The one thing he could least have expected was what actually happened. Felix sat up in his deckchair, fixed Lena with a gaze in which familiarity, cynicism, bravado, and a certain cool brutality of contempt – whether for her or for himself – seemed to be mingled, and told her the whole story of Martie, of his own search for George, of the diary which he had kept hidden under a loose floorboard in his room at the Ratterys’, and the attempted murder on the river.

  ‘So now you know the sort of person I am,’ he said finally. ‘I did everything except kill George.’

  His voice had been quite level and objective. But Nigel could see that his whole body was trembling, jerking almost, as though he had been bathing too long in ice-cold water. The silence when he ended was interminable. The river clucked and chuckled against its banks, a moorhen came out with its hysterical cry, the radio in the hotel was repeating unemotionally the Japanese claim that their bombing of open towns in China was pure self-defence. But, between the little group on the lawn, silence was stretched like an exposed nerve. Lena’s hands gripped the wood of her chair; she had sat like this all the time Felix was talking, motionless except for her lips which opened now and then as though to guess what Felix would say next, or to help him to say it. Now at last her rigid pose relaxed, her wide mouth trembled, her whole body seemed to grow small and lost as she cried, ‘Felix! Why didn’t you tell me all this before? Oh, why didn’t you?’

  She gazed full into his face, which was still tense and unyielding. Nigel and Georgia might have been miles away. Felix said nothing, determined – it seemed – to withhold himself absolutely from her. She got to her feet, beginning to cry, and hurried towards the hotel. Felix made no move to follow her …

  ‘All this secret diplomacy of yours has me guessing,’ said Georgia when they were in their room an hour later. ‘Did you mean to precipitate that harrowing scene?’

  ‘I’m sorry about it. I certainly didn’t expect it to turn out just like that. Still, it pretty well proves that Lena didn’t kill Rattery. I’m certain she didn’t know about the diary, and that she’s really in love with Felix. So there were two obstacles to her poisoning George and letting Felix take the rap for it. Of course, if it was coincidence,’ he went on, half to himself, ‘that would account for the way she said “Why didn’t you tell me all this before?” I wonder –’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Georgia briskly. ‘I like that girl. She’s got spirit. Poison isn’t a woman’s weapon, as they glibly say, it’s a coward’s weapon. Lena’s got too much guts to use it. If she wanted to kill Rattery, she’d have blown his head off, stabbed him, something like that. She’d never kill except at white heat. Take it from me.’

  ‘I daresay you’re right. Now tell me something else. Why is Felix treating her so harshly? Why didn’t he tell her about the diary as soon as Rattery was murdered? And why on earth did he come out with the story in front of you and me?’

  Georgia shook her dark hair back from her forehead. She looked like an intelligent, rather worried monkey.

  ‘Safety in numbers,’ she said. ‘He’d been putting off confessing to her, because his confession would show that he’d only used her – at first, anyway – as an unconscious accessory to the murder he intended to commit. He’s a sensitive creature, which means that he must have realised how genuinely she’s in love with him, and must have shrunk from wounding her feelings by letting her realise that he’s only been using her. I should say he has that particular kind of moral cowardice which hates above all things giving offence, not so much because of the damage to the other person’s feelings as out of a desire to protect his own. He would hate embarrassing emotional scenes. That’s why he seized the chance of telling Lena the whole story in front of us. Our presence safeguarded him from its immediate consequences – from tears, reproaches, explanations, reassurances, and all the rest of it.’

  ‘You think he’s not in love with her?’

  ‘I’m not sure. He seems to be trying to persuade her, or himself, that he isn’t. I wish I didn’t rather like him,’ Georgia added inconsequentially.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Have you noticed how extraordinarily good he is with Phil? He’s really devoted to the boy, I believe, and Phil looks up to him as a sort of Great White Father. If it weren’t for that –’

  ‘– you could suspect Felix of the worst with an easy conscience,’ Nigel interrupted.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t take the words out of my mouth when they were never in it,’ she complained, ‘like a conjurer with a gold watch.’

  ‘You funny thing. You are sweet and I love you and that’s almost the first time you’re told me a cracking lie.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, not quite the first then.’

  ‘It wasn’t one.’

  ‘All right, it wasn’t one. How would it be if I were to scratch the back of your head for a bit?’

  ‘It’d be lovely. That is, if you haven’t any more urgent business to attend to.’

  ‘There’s the diary. I must read that through tonig
ht. I’ll shade the light, and read it when you’re in bed. By the way, I must arrange for you to meet old Mrs Rattery some time. She’s a hundred per cent Grand Guignol type. I should be much happier if I could find some motive for her having poisoned George.’

  ‘Matricide I’ve heard of. But filicide must be rather rare surely.’

  Nigel muttered:

  ‘“O I fear ye are poisoned, Lord Randal, my son!

  O I fear ye are poisoned, my handsome young man!” –

  “O yes! I am poisoned; mother, make my bed soon,

  For I’m sick at heart, and I fain would lie down.”’

  ‘But it was Lord Randal’s young woman who did that to him, I thought,’ Georgia said.

  ‘So he thought,’ said Nigel, with sinister emphasis.

  8

  ‘I WISH I could lay my hands on that bottle,’ said Inspector Blount next morning, as he and Nigel were setting out towards the garage. ‘If it was one of the household who concealed it, it can’t be far away. None of them was out of sight of the others for more than a few minutes, after Rattery was taken ill.’

  ‘What about Miss Lawson? She said she was at the telephone quite a lot of the time. Have you verified that?’

  ‘I have. I’ve worked out a chart of the movements of every member of the household from after dinner till the time the local police were called in and they were under observation, and checked each statement against that of the others. There were times when any of them could have nipped into the dining room and removed the bottle, but no one could have had time to take it far away. Colesby’s chaps have searched the house, the garden and the neighbourhood within a radius of a few hundred yards. No bottle.’

  ‘But surely – didn’t Rattery take this tonic regularly? What about his empties?’

  ‘They’d been taken away by a rag-and-bone man in the middle of last week.’

  ‘You seem to have bitten off quite a sizeable segment,’ remarked Nigel cheerfully.

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Blunt removed his homburg, mopped his glistening bald head, and replaced the hat in a severely upright position.

  ‘You’d save yourself a lot of trouble if you asked Lena point-blank where she put the ruddy bottle.’

  ‘You know I never bully witnesses,’ said Blount.

  ‘I wonder you’re not struck dead by lightning for that. A more barefaced lie—’

  ‘Did you read that diary yet?’

  ‘Yes. Several useful pointers there, didn’t you think?’

  ‘Well, ye-es, perhaps. I gathered Rattery was not too popular in the family circle, and he seems to have been playing fast and loose with the wife of this man, Carfax, we’re just going to see. But, mind you, Cairnes may have stressed all that in his diary just to divert suspicion on to somebody else.’

  ‘I don’t think “stressed” is the word. He only mentioned it en passant.’

  ‘Oh, he’s a clever wee man. He wouldn’t pile it on too thick.’

  ‘Well, his observations can be verified easily enough. In fact, we’ve got enough evidence already that Rattery was an infernal bully in his own house. He and that appalling mother of his seem to have reduced everyone but Lena Lawson to pulp.’

  ‘I grant you that. But are you suggesting he was poisoned by his wife or one of the servants?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything,’ said Nigel a little irritably, ‘except that Felix put down no more than the bare truth about the Ratterys in his diary.’

  They walked the rest of the way to the garage in silence. The streets of Severnbridge dozed in the midday sunshine. If its inhabitants, gossiping at the mouths of its picturesque, historical and squalid alleys, were aware that the prosperous businessman who trotted past them was in reality New Scotland Yard’s most formidable Chief Inspector, they concealed their curiosity with remarkable ease. Even when Nigel Strangeways began to sign, mezzo forte, the ‘Ballad of Chevy Chase’, it caused no sensation – except in the bosom of Inspector Blount, who quickened his step and began to wear a rather hunted look. Severnbridge, unlike Inspector Blount, was quite inured to discordant voices raised in song along its main thoroughfare, though not usually at so early an hour. The charabanc loads of trippers from Birmingham had seen to that, kicking up every summer weekend a shindy that Sevenbridge had not experienced since the Wars of the Roses.

  ‘I wish you’d stop making that fearful noise,’ said Blount desperately at last.

  ‘Surely you cannot refer to my rendering of the greatest ballad –’

  ‘I can.’

  ‘Oh. Well, never mind. There are only fifty-eight more stanzas.’

  ‘My God!’ exclaimed Blount, a man exceedingly sparing of profanity. Nigel resumed:

  ‘Then the wild thoro’ the woodies went

  On every sidè shear;

  Grayhounds thoro’ the grevès glent

  For to kill their deer.’

  ‘Ah, here we are,’ said Blount, scurrying into the garage. Two mechanics were sparring with each other, lighted cigarettes in their mouths, under a notice which proclaimed that Smoking was Strictly Forbidden. Blount enquired for the boss, and he and Nigel were shown into the office. While the Inspector made a little preliminary conversation, Nigel was studying Carfax; a small man, neatly dressed, quite nondescript in general appearance, his smooth, tanned face had that suggestion of subdued playfulness and open good humour which one sees on the faces of professional cricketers. He is a man with energy without ambition, thought Nigel – the kind that is happy to be a nonentity, is popular but has a deep fund of reserve, is mad-keen on some hobby, may very well be an unacknowledged expert in some unlikely branch of knowledge, makes an excellent husband and father. One would not for a moment connect him with violent passions. But that sort is deceptive, very deceptive. The ‘Little Man’, when roused, has the cool furious courage of the mongoose; the Little Man’s home is, traditionally, his castle – in defence of it he will show the most startling tenacity and initiative. This Rhoda, now. I wonder …

  ‘You see,’ Inspector Blount was saying, ‘we’ve made inquiries at all chemists in the district, and it is now – e-eh – established that no member of the deceased’s household has made purchases of strychnia in any form. Of course, whoever did it may have gone further afield. We shall continue to make inquiries on those lines, but provisionally we must assume that the murderer took some of the vermin-killer you keep here.’

  ‘Murderer? You have excluded the possibility of suicide or accident, then?’ asked Carfax.

  ‘Do you know any reason why your partner should have committed suicide?’

  ‘No. Oh no. I just wondered.’

  ‘There were no financial difficulties, for instance?’

  ‘No, the garage is doing reasonably well. In any case, I’d stand to lose a great deal more than Rattery if it failed. I put up the whole of the purchase price, you know, when we took it over.’

  ‘Indeed? Just so.’

  Staring rather foolishly at the end of his cigarette, Nigel asked suddenly, ‘Did you like Rattery?’

  Inspector Blount made a deprecatory movement with his hand, as though dissociating himself from so unorthodox a question. Carfax seemed less perturbed.

  ‘You’re wondering why I came in with him?’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact he saved my life during the war, and when I came across him again – oh, about seven years ago – he was, well, in difficulties. His mother had lost her money and – well, you see, the least I could do was to help him out.’

  Without replying directly to Nigel’s question, Carfax had made it quite clear that his association with Rattery had been the repayment of a debt and not friendship. Blount got into his stride again. It was the usual routine question, of course, but he had to ask Mr Carfax about his movements on Saturday afternoon last.

  Carfax, a subdued derisive twinkle in his eye, said, ‘Yes, of course. Routine enquiry. Well, about quarter to three I went over to the Ratterys’ house.’

  Nigel’s cigarette dropped out of his mo
uth. He bent down hastily and picked it up. Blount went on, as suavely as though this was not the first he’d heard of any such visit.

  ‘Just a private call?’

  ‘Yes. I went to see old Mrs Rattery.’

  ‘Dear me,’ said Blount mildly, ‘I didn’t know of this. The servants – we questioned them – didn’t say anything about your visiting the house that afternoon.’

  Carfax’s eyes were bright, unwinking, non-committal as a lizard’s. He said:

  ‘No. They wouldn’t. I went straight up to Mrs Rattery’s room – she had asked me to do so when she made the appointment.’

  ‘Appointment? It was – e-eh – in the nature of a business discussion you had with her then?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Carfax, a trifle more grimly.

  ‘Was it relevant at all to the case I am handling?’

  ‘No. Some might think it was, though.’

  ‘It is for me to decide that, Mr Carfax. You would do much better to be quite—’

  ‘Oh, I know, I know,’ said Carfax impatiently. ‘The trouble is, it involves a third person.’ He pondered for a moment, then said, ‘Look here, this won’t go past you two, will it? – if you find it’s nothing to do with—’

  Nigel cut in, ‘Don’t worry. It’s all down in Felix Lane’s diary, anyway.’ He watched Carfax closely. The man was thoroughly puzzled – or else was giving a masterly imitation of a man thoroughly puzzled.