‘Your theory is that George confided his suspicions about Felix Cairnes to his mother. You say that the murderer knew about the dinghy plan, and the poison was only a second line of attack if Felix’s attempt failed. Now, if Mrs Rattery only intended to poison her son in the event of her appeal to Carfax falling flat, she would surely have made this appeal earlier. As it was, her appeal might have succeeded, but George would have been drowning at the very moment she was making it. That doesn’t fit.’
‘You’re confusing two alternative theories of mine. I suggest that Mrs Rattery, as well as George, knew of the dinghy plan described in Felix’s diary. But I’m suggesting, too, that they discussed it together and George told his mother that he was going through with his role of victim in order to obtain absolute confirmation of Felix’s intent, but that at the crucial moment he would turn the tables on Felix by telling him that his diary was in the hands of a solicitor. In fact, George had no intention of letting himself be drowned, and his mother knew it. But she had every intention of using the poison on him, if her appeal to Carfax failed.’
‘Yes. Of course. That is certainly possible. Uh-huh. E-eh well, it’s a queer case, this. Mrs Rattery, Violet Rattery, Carfax and Cairnes – they all had opportunity and motive to murder George Rattery. Miss Lawson, too. She had opportunity, but it’s difficult to see what her motive could have been. It’s strange the way none of them have alibis. I’d feel happier with a nice, juicy alibi to get my teeth into.’
‘What about Rhoda Carfax’s then?’
‘It’s too hot. She was at Cheltenham from ten thirty a.m. to six p.m. playing in a tennis tournament. After that she went to the Plough with friends for dinner, and didn’t get back here till after nine o’clock. Of course, we’re still testing all the links, but so far there’s not the slightest evidence that she could have slipped back here any time in the afternoon. It was not a large tournament, you see, and when she wasn’t playing, she was umpiring or talking to her acquaintances.’
‘Mm. That seems to let her out. Well, where do we go from here?’
‘I have to interview old Mrs Rattery again. I was going to do it when you dropped that bottle on my head.’
‘May I sit in on this?’
‘Very well. But let me do the talking, please.’
12
IT WAS THE first time Nigel had had leisure to study George’s mother dispassionately. The other morning in Violet’s boudoir, so much mud had been stirred up that calm reflection had been impossible. Now, standing in the middle of her room and extending to him an arm from which the voluminous black draperies fell curving away, Ethel Rattery might have been a model posed for a statue of the Angel of Death. Her harsh, large features, beneath their expression of set and conventional mourning, seemed to hold neither grief nor compunction, pity nor fear. She was more like the statue than the model for it. Somewhere deep within her, thought Nigel, there is a stone core of lifelessness, an anti-life principle. He briefly noticed, as her hand touched his, a big black mole on her forearm with long hairs sprouting from it. It was a disagreeable sight, yet for that moment it seemed the one human thing about her. Then, with a bobbing inclination of her head to Blount, she walked to a chair and sat down. At once the illusion vanished; she was no longer the Angel of Death, no longer the pillar of black salt, but an ungainly old woman whose stumpy, waddling legs were grotesquely too small for the body they carried. Nigel’s wandering thoughts were brought up with a jerk, however, by Mrs Rattery’s first words. Sitting bolt upright in the high-backed chair her hands disposed palm upward on her huge lap, she said to Blount, ‘I have decided, Inspector, that this sad affair was an accident. It is the best thing for all parties concerned that this should be so. An accident. We shall, therefore, not require your services any longer. How soon can you make it convenient to withdraw your men from my house?’
Blount was a man, both by temperament and experience, not easily startled and even more seldom did he allow his features to express any surprise he might be feeling. But now, for a moment, he frankly gaped at the old lady. Nigel took out a cigarette, and hastily put it back in his case again. Mad, quite mad, crazy, he thought. Blount regained command over his tongue.
‘What makes you think it was an accident, ma’am?’ he asked politely.
‘My son had no enemies. The Ratterys do not commit suicide. Accident is the only explanation, therefore.’
‘Are you suggesting, ma’am, that your son accidentally put a quantity of vermin-killer into his own bottle of medicine and then drank it? Doesn’t it strike you as rather – e-eh – improbable? How do you suppose he would come to do such an extraordinary thing?’
‘I am not a policeman, Inspector,’ the old lady replied with monstrous aplomb. ‘It is your business, I conceive, to discover the details of the accident. I am asking you to do so as quickly as possible. You will realise that it is excessively inconvenient for me to have my house full of constables.’
Georgia simply won’t believe this when I tell her, thought Nigel, it ought to be wildly funny, this dialogue, but somehow it isn’t. Blount was saying, with dangerous mildness, ‘And what makes you so eager, ma’am, to convince me – and yourself – that it was an accident?’
‘I naturally wish to protect the reputation of my family.’
‘You are more concerned with reputation than with justice?’ asked Blount, not unimpressively.
‘That is a most impertinent observation.’
‘Some might consider it an impertinence on your part to dictate to the police how they should handle this case.’
Nigel scarcely forbore to cheer. Here was the dour covenanter’s spirit coming out in Blount. Nolo Ratterari. The old lady flushed slightly at this unexpected opposition. She gazed down at the wedding ring which had grown into her fleshy finger, and said:
‘You were speaking of justice, Inspector?’
‘If I told you that we can prove your son was murdered, would you not wish the murderer to be brought to book?’
‘Murdered? You can prove it?’ said Mrs Rattery in her dull, leaden voice. Then the voice suddenly became molten lead as she came out with one word, ‘Who?’
‘That, as yet, we have not found out. With your help we may be able to arrive at the right answer.’
Blount began to take her through the events of Saturday evening again. Nigel’s wandering attention was caught by a photograph on a kidney-shaped table to his right. It was in a florid gold frame, flanked by medals, a bowl full of immortelles in front and two tall vases behind it stuffed with roses that were badly arranged and beginning to shed their petals. It was not these relics which interested Nigel, however, but the face of the man in the photograph: a young man, in military uniform, Mrs Rattery’s husband, no doubt. The fluffy moustache and the long side-whiskers did not conceal the features – delicate, indecisive, oversensitive, more like those of a Nineties’ poet than of a soldier – and their extraordinary resemblance to Phil Rattery’s. Well, Nigel silently addressed the photograph, if I’d been you and offered the choice of a bullet in South Africa or a lifetime with Ethel Rattery, I should have chosen the speedier death too. But what queer eyes you have. Insanity, they say, often skips a generation; what with you and Ethel, there’s no wonder that Phil is so highly strung. Poor kid. I think I’d like to go a bit deeper into the history of this family.
Inspector Blount was saying:
‘On Saturday afternoon you had an interview with Mr Carfax?’
The old woman’s face seemed to darken. Nigel looked up involuntarily, expecting to see a cloud across the sun, but all the blinds in the room were drawn down.
‘That is so,’ she said, ‘but it can be of no interest to you.’
‘That is for me to judge,’ said Blount implacably. ‘Do you refuse to tell me the substance of this interview?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Do you deny that you asked Mr Carfax to put a stop to the association between his wife and your son, that you accused him of connivin
g at this association, and that – when he said he proposed to divorce his wife if she wished it – you abused him in – e-eh – somewhat unmeasured terms?’
During this recital, Mrs Rattery’s florid face grew purple and began to work. Nigel thought she would burst into tears, but it was in a voice of shocked indignation that she exclaimed, ‘The man’s no better than a pimp, and I told him so. The scandal was bad enough, but deliberately to encourage it –’
‘Why didn’t you speak to your son, if you felt so strongly about it?’
‘I had spoken to him. But he was very strong-willed – he takes that from my side of the family, I’m afraid,’ she said with a kind of sly complacence.
‘Did you get the impression that Mr Carfax was concealing any enmity to your son on account of this affair?’
‘Why no—’ Mrs Rattery broke off short. The sly look came into her eyes again. ‘At least, I didn’t notice anything. But of course I was very agitated. It’s certainly very strange – the attitude he affected to take up.’
Old poison-tongue, thought Nigel.
‘After this interview, I understand that Mr Carfax went straight out of the house.’ Just as when he had talked to Carfax, Blount put the same faint emphasis on ‘straight’.
Almost a leading question. Naughty, thought Nigel.
Mrs Rattery said, ‘Yes, I suppose so. No, now that I come to think of it, he couldn’t have gone straight out. I happened to be at the window here, and it was a minute or two after he left me before I saw him walking up the drive.’
‘Your son told you about Felix Lane’s diary, of course?’ Blount had employed the old trick of popping a vital question when the victim’s attention is concentrated in another direction. His tactic had no visible effect, unless there could be something suspicious about the stony hauteur with which Mrs Rattery received it.
‘Mr Lane’s diary? I fear I do not follow you.’
‘But surely your son told you he had discovered that Mr Lane planned to make an attempt upon his life?’
‘Do not snap at me, Inspector, please. I am not accustomed to being snapped at. As for this fairy story –’
‘It is the truth, ma’am.’
‘In that case, had you not better conclude this interview, which I find excessively distasteful, and arrest Mr Lane?’
‘One thing at a time, ma’am,’ said Blount with equal frigidity. ‘Did you ever notice any hostility between your son and Mr Lane? Were you at all puzzled as to Mr Lane’s position in the household?’
‘I knew perfectly well that he was here on account of that abominable creature, Lena. It’s a matter I do not much care to discuss.’
You thought the friction between George and Felix was on account of Lena, Nigel interpreted to himself. He said out loud, staring down his nose, ‘Just what did Violet say when she was quarrelling with her husband last week?’
‘Really, Mr Strangeways! Is every little domestic incident to be dragged up like this? I consider it most undignified and unnecessary.’
‘Incident? Unnecessary? If you think it so trivial, why did you say to Phil the other morning, “Your mother will want all our help. You see, the police may find out how she quarrelled with your father last week, and what she said, and that might make them think –”? Make them think what?’
‘You had better ask my daughter-in-law about that.’ The old lady would not commit herself further. After a few more questions, Blount rose to go.
Absent-mindedly Nigel strolled over to the kidney-shaped table and, running his finger along the top of the photograph there, said, ‘This is your husband, I suppose, Mrs Rattery? He fell in South Africa, didn’t he? What action was it?’
The effect of this harmless remark was electrifying. Mrs Rattery was on her feet and coming with a horrible insect kind of rapidity – as though she had fifty legs, not two – across the room. In a waft of camphor, she thrust her body between Nigel and the photograph.
‘Take your hands off, young man! Will you never be done poking and prying about my house?’ Breathing hard, her fists clenched, she listened to Nigel’s apologies. Then she turned to Blount. ‘The bell is beside you, Inspector. Will you kindly ring, and the maid will show you out.’
‘I think I can find my own way, ma’am, thank you.’
Nigel followed him downstairs and out into the garden. Blount puffed out his lips and mopped his brow. ‘Phew, that’s a thrawn old body. She gives me a fair scunner, I don’t mind telling you.’
‘Never mind. You faced her with the utmost intrepidity. Dare to be a Daniel. And now what?’
‘We’re no further. No further at all. She wanted us to call it an accident. Then she fell in – a bit too obviously, I thought – with my suggestion that Carfax might have done it. She took the bait about Carfax going straight out of the house – we’ll have to find out which of them is wrong about that, but likely there’ll be some quite innocent explanation. On the other hand, she wouldn’t be drawn into any talk about Felix Cairnes or Violet Rattery. She genuinely didn’t know about Cairnes’ diary – at least that was my impression; and that’s a bit of a slap in the eye for your theory. She’s daft about the family prestige, but we knew that before. Her insinuations against Carfax may very well have been prompted purely by her dislike for him. No. If she murdered George, she didn’t tell us anything about it just now. We’re back where we started. And that’s with Felix Cairnes, whether you like it or not.’
‘Nevertheless, there’s one thing that will bear looking into.’
‘You mean this quarrel between George and his wife?’
‘No. I have a feeling you’ll find there’s nothing to that. Violet may have made some hysterical threat or other, but a woman who has bowed under her husband’s rod for fifteen years doesn’t suddenly up and murder him. It’s simply not in character. No, I’m referring to what old Watson would have described as “the Singular Episode of the Old Lady and the Photograph”.’
13
NIGEL LEFT BLOUNT, who wished to interview Violet Rattery, and returned to the hotel. Georgia and Felix Cairnes were having tea in the garden when he arrived.
‘Where’s Phil?’ asked Felix at once.
‘Down at the house. His mother’ll bring him up later, I expect. There’ve been some goings-on.’ Nigel gave an account of Phil’s exploits on the roof and his attempt to destroy the evidence of the bottle. While he was talking, Felix grew more and more fidgety, and at last could contain himself no longer.
‘Damn it all,’ he exclaimed, ‘can’t you keep Phil out of this. It’s absolutely sickening – a boy like that being chivvied about. I don’t mean you. But this man Blount, he can’t understand what damage it may do to a highly strung child.’
Nigel had not realised before how Felix Cairnes’ nerves were on edge. He had seen him strolling around the garden, reading with Phil, talking to Georgia about politics; a quiet, amiable man whose natural reserve alternated with sudden confidences and flicks of sardonic humour. An uncomfortable man to live with, perhaps, but likeable even in his prickliest, most unapproachable moods. Nigel was reminded by this outburst of Felix’s how heavily the cloud of suspicion must be weighing upon him.
He said gently, ‘Blount’s all right. He’s quite human, at least, fairly. I’m afraid it was my fault that Phil had to go through this. It’s extraordinarily difficult at times to remember how young he is. One starts treating him as a contemporary, almost. And he pretty well dragged me on to that roof.’
There was an easy silence. Georgia took a cigarette out of the box of fifty which she always carried about with her. The bees hummed amongst the dahlias in the round bed opposite. In the distance they could hear a prolonged, mournful hoot from a barge warning the lock-keeper of its approach.
‘The last I saw of George Rattery,’ said Felix, half to himself, ‘he was walking through the lock garden over there, trampling on the flowers. He was in a very bad temper. He’d trample on anything that got in his way.’
‘Something ou
ght to be done about people like that,’ said Georgia sympathetically.
‘Something was done about him.’ Felix’s mouth set in a grim line.
‘How are things going, Nigel?’ asked Georgia. The pallor of her husband’s face, the puckered frown on the brow over which a lock of hair hung childishly, the childish, obstinate jut of his underlip – all moved her unbearably. He was tired out, he should never have taken this case. She wished Blount, the Ratterys, Lena, Felix, even Phil, at the bottom of the sea. But she kept her voice cool and impersonal. Nigel did not like being mothered, and there was Felix Cairnes, who had lost his wife and then his only son – Georgia felt she could not allow him to hear in her voice the kind of affection which was not for him any longer.
‘Going? Not too well. This seems to be one of those nasty, straightforward cases, where no one has an alibi and everyone could have done it. Still, we’ll sort it, as Blount would say. By the way, Felix, do you realise that George Rattery was not subject to vertigo at all?’
Felix Cairnes blinked. His head cocked to one side, like the head of a thrush considering some movement it has seen out of the corner of its eye.
‘Not subject to vertigo? But who said he was? Oh Lord, I’d forgotten. Yes. That quarry business. But why did he say so, then? I don’t understand. Are you sure?’
‘Quite sure. You see the implication?’
‘The implication is, I suppose, that I told a naughty lie in my diary,’ said Felix, gazing at Nigel with a kind of wary, timorous candour.
‘There’s another possibility – that George already suspected your intentions, or began to suspect them then, and said he had no head for heights so as to keep out of your reach without letting you suspect that he suspected you.’
The Beast Must Die Page 17
