Death in the House

by Anthony Berkeley

  Lord Arthur knew all about Barghiala and its Maharajah. Of all the Indian native rulers, he was possibly the only one who would be unmitigatedly glad to see the end of the British sovereignty. He was a backward, lazy man, with medieval ideas about divine rights, and he had several times to be pulled up with varying degrees of sharpness of overstepping the bounds of what Britain considered correct in the matter of good government. He was, indeed, just the sort of man who would be delighted to strike a bargain of the kind indicated, and the information bore out exactly what Mr Mansel had hinted on the previous evening when he had referred, frankly enough, to the foothold which he was trying to obtain in the other camp.

  Lord Arthur rang up the Treasury and thanked his informant, adding that the details were news to him, but the general idea had already been divulged by Mr Mansel himself.

  ‘I suppose it would be a pretty big thing, if it came off?’ he added.

  ‘Big? It’d be tremendous. I told you SP probably had an arrow or two in his quiver yet. This would put him right on his feet again, bigger and better than ever.’

  ‘And what are the chances of it coming off?’

  ‘Well, we’ve no information about that. We don’t even know how far negotiations have gone. But, of course, as he told you, it would only be in the event of this separatist agitation being successful – or at any rate, successful enough to get this Bill shelved.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course,’ Lord Arthur concurred. ‘I quite understand that.’

  Arrived back in his flat, Lord Arthur found the Leader of the Opposition waiting for him.

  Mr Dickson was long and lean and cadaverous, and he uncoiled a sinuous length from an armchair in the sitting-room as Lord Arthur entered. He was an academic Socialist, with a brilliant University career behind him, and was credited with little initiative. Certainly it had seemed as much of a surprise to Mr Dickson as to everyone else when the Labour Party, unable to decide between two Trade Union bosses, had suddenly cut the knot by offering its leadership to a semi-obscure Professor of Economics at a northern university, the author of several pugnacious books, it was true, but with small experience of the Machiavellian powers needed to hold a heterogeneous political party together.

  ‘I – um – have just been seeing the Prime Minister,’ he began. ‘I wanted to give him my personal assurance, if indeed it were needed, that the Opposition will do nothing to embarrass the Government at the present unhappy juncture – um – nothing at all of course. We reserve the right to criticise, of course, but anything else…’

  ‘That’s very good of you,’ said Lord Arthur, as the other showed signs of tailing off. The Prime Minister will be grateful.’ His voice conveyed a question as to what Mr Dickson could want with a mere Under-Secretary.

  ‘Yes, yes. I further intimated that the whole Opposition front bench puts itself unreservedly at the command of the – um – the police, and so forth. I did in fact spend an hour last night with one of the Scotland Yard Superintendents, giving such information as I could: which was, I am afraid, very little. However, the Prime Minister suggested that I might have a further talk with you. And I am here for – um – that purpose.’

  Lord Arthur was a little nonplussed. He gathered that the Prime Minister’s suggestion might have been somewhat in the nature of a hint to speed a long-winded guest; and though he appreciated the other’s obvious wish to help, there seemed nothing specific to ask him.

  ‘Well,’ he hesitated, ‘I’ve already had a talk with your man Perry, but nothing very much emerged. I don’t know whether… oh, yes, we discussed Dr Ghaijana. It’s a beastly thing, but every Indian must be suspect to some extent, especially those with strong Nationalist views. I should be very much obliged if you’d tell me quite frankly whether you think there’s any possibility of Dr Ghaijana being mixed up in the business.’

  ‘The police asked me that, too,’ replied Mr Dickson, a little stiffly. ‘I told them, as I can only tell you, that so far as my own personal opinion goes, such a thing is impossible. Im-possible!’

  ‘Ah!’ said Lord Arthur. ‘That’s my own opinion, too. Thank you.’ The conversation seemed to have reached a dead end.

  A sudden thought occurred to Lord Arthur. ‘Tell me, if you were called upon to form a Government in the very near future, Mr Dickson (and the possibility’s not so remote), who would be your Secretary for India?’

  It was the other’s turn to be taken aback, but he answered without hesitation. ‘Lacy.’

  ‘Lacy?’ Lord Arthur turned over the name. ‘Yes… well, I should imagine he’d make a very good one. But does he know a great deal about India?’

  ‘Yes, he does. A great deal more than one would think. He feels – um – quite strongly about India, too. One might almost say, passionately.’

  ‘Really? I had no idea.’ Lord Arthur was interested. ‘Let’s see, is he a separatist?’

  Mr Dickson smiled. ‘It’s a little difficult to pin him down on that point, but I should say… yes, Lacy and Dr Ghaijana undoubtedly have many views in common. But the man is well informed. Perhaps you didn’t know he spent several months in India last year? And that was not his first visit by any means. But he doesn’t advertise them. I’m sure I don’t know why. But, yes, if you were thinking of having a word with him, I’m sure you’d find him as helpful as anyone. Not that he approves of this terrorist campaign, of course, any more than Dr Ghaijana does. But it’s quite possible that he may have his ideas, better than anyone else, who may be responsible for the London end of it.’

  ‘I’d like to have a talk with him.’

  ‘Of course. He’d be delighted. I’ll ring him up at once, and ask him to come round here, shall I?’

  While Mr Dickson was telephoning, Lord Arthur wondered why he should be regarded as running a kind of inquiry more or less supplementary to the official police investigations; but it seemed that he was being edged somehow or other into doing so. He did not mind, though he entertained not the faintest hope of success. Any action, even of the most futile description, was preferable to waiting with folded hands for the next tragedy, as most other people appeared content to do.

  Mr Dickson obtained from the telephone the information that Mr Reginald Lacy would be enchanted to help in any way, and might be expected within half an hour at the most. Mr Dickson then, with many expressions of civility and helpful noises, took his leave.

  Lord Arthur took advantage of the interval to ring up Scotland Yard. Sir Hubert was out on the job; the Assistant Commissioner to whom Lord Arthur spoke intimated in guarded terms that there was as yet no news, but developments could be expected at almost any moment. To an equally guarded inquiry as to whether anything useful had been extracted from Mr Lloyd-Evans, the reply was that Sir Hubert, after an interrogation extending until past midnight, was finally satisfied that nothing could be expected from that quarter.

  Lord Arthur’s expression, however, as he hung up the receiver was anything but satisfied. He even wondered, for an insane moment, whether some species of third-degree method could not be employed on the President of the Board of Trade. For that Mr Lloyd-Evans knew something, Lord Arthur was still convinced.

  He glanced at his watch. It was just past twelve o’clock. He rang for the sherry to be brought in. Lacy would expect a drink. A drink would make things easier, too.

  Lord Arthur did not like Reginald Lacy. Indeed, he privately considered him as one of the major blots on the political landscape. Not that there was any doubt about his ability. To reach a seat on a front bench, even the Opposition front bench, at the age of twenty-eight, was an achievement which could not be denied.

  It may have been his complete inability to understand Mr Lacy which accounted for some of Lord Arthur’s dislike. Lord Arthur knew himself to be a simple man, with simple ideals; sometimes he wondered uneasily whether he might not be a bit of a prig. Reginald Lacy was anything but simple. He also belonged to that disconcerting type which is able to conceal its likes and dislikes as well as its tho
ughts. No one was ever quite sure whether Lacy liked or disliked him, just as no one was ever quite sure whether Lacy was really a bit of an obsequious time-server or a man of truculence and pugnacity, with as rough an edge to his tongue as could be heard in a twelve-month; for one day Mr Lacy would be the one to the life, and the next day he would switch to the other. A disconcerting man, considered Lord Arthur, who did not like being disconcerted.

  In point of fact, Lacy had an interesting history. He came of an excellent family, and his father, Colonel Lacy, had held an important administrative post in India at the time of his son’s birth. Neither he nor the mother, however, survived that birth by many months for both were killed in a railway accident while on a journey in connection with the Colonel’s official duties. Curiously enough, these two had been the only persons on the train to lose their lives. The ayah, travelling in another carriage, had escaped unhurt; and so had the infant Reginald.

  Conveyed back to India, Reginald had been brought up first by his paternal grandparents and, after their deaths, by a sister of his father’s. The family traditions were strong, and one might have expected Reginald to have imbibed them in the usual satisfactory manner. This, however, had not been the case. Up till the age of twenty-one or thereabouts Reginald had appeared the perfectly conventional Lacy, if a good deal more intelligent and rather more good-looking. Both his brain and his swarthy good looks, in such contrast to the normal bleak blondness of the Lacys, were debited by his paternal relatives to the account of his mother, who was known to have some rather dubious Italian blood in her; they deplored this break away from tradition, particularly in the matter of intelligence, but they could not justly condemn Reginald.

  In other respects, too, the boy showed great promise. In the important matter of games, for instance, he was really brilliant, with a cricket blue in his first year at Cambridge and a golf blue before he went down. Up till this time it had been taken for granted by all concerned, and apparently by Reginald himself, that he would follow in his father’s footsteps and enter the Army, via the University. Round about his twenty-first birthday, however, some very odd change came over the young man. As others get religion, Reginald suddenly got politics. He took to addressing uninterested wayfarers in public streets from the summit of a soapbox, and joined the Fascists.

  The relatives could survive that; but when a year or two later Reginald, treading in his Leader’s footsteps, but as it were backwards, left the Fascists and joined the Communists, his outraged family washed their hands of him. Reginald did not seem to mind. He had plenty of money in his own right (to be a successful Communist one must have plenty of money) and all he did by way of mourning for his lost shepherds was to give up all games as too bourgeois to contemplate, and grow definitely stout.

  The Communist fit seldom lasts long with the modern young intelligentsia. By the age of twenty-five Reginald had gently detached himself from the party. In three more years, by methods which no one could quite determine, he had reached the Opposition front bench, a thoroughly respectable and now almost portly Socialist and representing a constituency that was neither quite East London nor West Essex, but combined the most unfortunate features of both.

  It was news to Lord Arthur that Lacy had specialised in Indian affairs. He knew that the man was vaguely interested in India, but the interest had never been obtrusive in the House. As he was shown in, sleek and well-groomed almost to the point of foppishness in spite of his girth, Lord Arthur needed all his training to offer his guest a glass of sherry with just the right amount of friendly welcome.

  The contrast between the two men was certainly an interesting one. So far as birth was concerned there was little to choose between them; in appearance and manner they might have come from different hemispheres. Lord Arthur, after all, in spite of his attributes, belonged at heart to the type of Simple Britisher, as good a type as any in the world when at its best. As for Lacy…

  ‘Damn it all,’ thought the Simple Britisher, with the Simple Britisher’s instant reaction which he could not quell, ‘the fellow looks like a Dago. Might almost be an Indian himself, with that sallow skin and black hair.’ (The reaction is worth noting, since for real Indians who looked like Indians Lord Arthur had nothing but respect and liking; it was only Englishmen who looked like Indians that lifted his hackles.)

  There were indeed other regrettable things about young Mr Lacy which upset Lord Arthur’s strictly British soul, and confirmed his secret despair of the generation immediately below his own. For one thing, the man undoubtedly used scent; another equally heinous crime was that he wore side-whiskers. Lord Arthur had been brought up to believe that side-whiskers were unmanly, and he could not help believing it still. While finally…

  ‘Hang it all,’ Lord Arthur groaned in spirit, ‘the fellow actually paints his fingernails.’

  It was true. Mr Lacy’s beautifully-shaped, oval nails were enamelled prettily with a mother-of-pearl finish. It seemed impossible that such a person could play any effective part in the grim affair of life and death which had brought these two opposites into contact.

  But it was so.

  ‘You want to know if I can be of any help, Lord Arthur?’ he said, with a smile which matched the obsequiousness of his tone. It seemed that Lacy had deliberately elected to turn on his obsequious tap, and of all things Lord Arthur detested obsequiousness. ‘Well, I think I can.’

  ‘You can? Good man,’ Lord Arthur returned, with heartiness.

  ‘Yes. As a matter of fact, I’ve been working on the affair myself, so far as I could in a humble, extra-official way. I’ve had luck of course, but – well, I think I’m in a position now to tell you actually who murdered Wellacombe and Middleton.’

  ‘Eh? What’s that? Who was it, then?’

  Lacy showed his white teeth in another smile. ‘It was Dr Ghaijana,’ he said.

  ‘Can you prove that?’

  ‘I think I can.’

  ‘Sit down,’ said Lord Arthur briefly. ‘We’ve got to go into this.’

  chapter twelve

  Thorny Problem

  Lacy’s story was brief, and, privately, Lord Arthur did not find it very convincing.

  ‘It was none of my business, I know,’ Lacy began, ‘but for some reason or other I took this murderous business very much to heart – I might almost say, personally.’

  Lord Arthur could understand that. The murder of the Secretary of State for India would naturally perturb anyone who might be called upon to take over that office himself one day. Lacy could hardly explain that he had every reason to take a personal interest in the matter, but Mr Dickson’s remarks had already made that interest clear, Lord Arthur nodded.

  ‘Even on our side of the House,’ Lacy went on with a slight smile, ‘we’re agreed that things must not be done that way. And as I was convinced from the beginning who was responsible, and the police seemed so stupid about it, I took it on myself to see what I could do.’

  ‘You mean – Ghaijana?’ Lord Arthur put in.

  ‘Of course. Why look elsewhere when the obvious is staring you in the face? Ghaijana is a fervent Separatist. Not only that, but he’s the only Separatist in or anywhere near the House of Commons.’

  ‘I thought you were rather by way of being a Separatist yourself?’ Lord Arthur interrupted again.

  Lacy waved this rather obvious feeler away with a smile.

  ‘Oh, we all know that India will revert to the Indians one day. Some of us think that the sooner the Hindus, the Buddhists and the Mahometans get it fought out between themselves, the better. As for me, if you were to say that I think India’s already become rather more of a liability than an asset to the Empire, you’d represent my own personal feeling fairly well. But all that’s beside the point. Let’s stick to Ghaijana.’

  ‘By all means,’ Lord Arthur murmured.

  ‘Well, to begin with, the man’s technically a traitor. He preaches high treason in and out of the House itself. In any other country but this he’d have been
arrested long ago, and probably executed by now. Mind you, the fellow’s absolutely sincere. I know him pretty well, and he’s one of the most upright of men. And to anyone who says, “Oh, but Dr Ghaijana would never do a thing like that,” I’d answer, “My dear sir, you don’t know fanatics; where their own particular pet prejudice is concerned a fanatic would stick at nothing.”’ Young Mr Lacy flicked his enamelled fingernails in the air with a gesture so un-English as to make Lord Arthur blink. That’s what I’d say to ‘em, Lord Arthur. And I’d be right.’

  ‘Oh, undoubtedly. But all this is very theoretical…’

  ‘Wait!’ Mr Lacy stood the fingernails upright under Lord Arthur’s fascinated gaze. ‘I told you I know Ghaijana pretty well. I know him well enough at any rate to be sure that if Ghaijana didn’t want the police to find a certain article, they wouldn’t find it. And they didn’t. Did they?’

  ‘What article?’

  Mr Lacy’s eyebrows expressed, with the utmost respect, his surprise at Lord Arthur’s obtuseness. ‘The box of thorns. Remember, his flat was searched before Middleton’s death. If I’m right, the box of thorns was there then. Mind you, it might have been in the possession of one of his subordinates, a man quite possibly unknown to the police. But I doubt it. Ghaijana’s a man of strong character; he has to trust others, of course; but he’d keep all the main threads in his own hands. I think that box of thorns was in his flat when the police searched it. Or wait!’ The enamelled fingernails waved excitedly in the air. ‘He’s clever, you know. Infernally clever. I wonder if he had it concealed somewhere in the House itself. Yes, that’s more likely. Well, no wonder the police didn’t find it.’