The bloody dogs!’ Malcolm said. ‘Sorry, Avril, but it doesn't sound as if they're the most important thing at the moment. But come with us if you must.’ He looked at me. ‘Coming, Frances?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘I shouldn't have come rushing round like this,’ Avril said, trying to sound calmer, ‘but I couldn't stand it in there alone. And I'd a feeling he — the man — whoever it was — might still be there, though I knew he wasn't. Peter's stone cold. I think he's been dead for hours. And the man wouldn't have stayed around all that time, would he? If he went in to steal, he'd have had plenty of time to find there was nothing much worth taking. A little jewellery, a little money in Peter's wallet. He could have found those at once and got away hours ago. All the same, I was frightened.’
‘Well, let's go, shall we?’ Malcolm said. He put an arm round her shoulders. ‘Of course you were frightened. Who wouldn't be? And coming here was the obvious thing to do. I only hope we can help a bit in some way.’
He drew her back to the door. I hesitated. There were several things I wanted to say, but I was fairly sure this was not the time to say them. I looked at Brian and he gave a little shake of his head, almost as if he were telling me that now was not the time to talk, though really I think he was telling me to leave Avril to Malcolm. We went out of the house behind them, down the path to the gate and along the lane to the Loxleys’ gate, and up the path to their door. It was wide open and the noise that the dogs were making reached us while we were still in the lane.
A heap of something that I was afraid to look at was at the foot of the stairs. I had seen dead people before in my life, but they had all been calmly and decently laid out in bed, with their eyes closed and the set of their features serenely peaceful. They had not had one side of their head half blasted away, and their one remaining eye staring fiercely into nothingness. Peter looked as if he had been very angry at being killed. There was a good deal of blood on what was left of his face and on his shirt, and near him on the floor lay a revolver, with one of his hands looking as if it were reaching for it. But I did not think for a moment that it was he who had fired it, or if he had, it had not been at himself.
Avril had gone straight into the kitchen and had shut the door behind her. The barking of the dogs stopped at once. Malcolm stooped over the dead man on the floor and felt one of his hands.
‘Yes, stone cold,’ he said, ‘and rigor beginning. This happened a good while ago.’
‘I think I know when it happened,’ I said. ‘A little after twelve o'clock. I think I heard a shot.’
He turned his head quickly to look at me.
‘D'you mean that?’
‘Yes.’
‘You'll have to tell the police about it.’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, I'll phone them now.’ He looked round, saw that there was no telephone in the hall, then said, ‘What's happened to Avril?’
‘And the dogs,’ I said.
‘She's taken them out into the garden, I should think,’ Brian said. ‘Sensible thing to do.’
‘Anyway, where's the telephone?’ Malcolm asked me, as if noticing such things was more the kind of thing that I should do than could be expected of him.
He happened to be right, for not only had I been in the house far more often than him, drinking coffee and gossiping with Avril, but I do notice such things and he does not. He could have been in their drawing room, where as a matter of fact the telephone was, a dozen times and afterwards not be able to tell you what colour the curtains were, or what pictures were on their walls.
I led the way into the drawing room, a high, elegant room with tall sash windows overlooking a garden that was fading into the twilight. Brian was right about Avril. She was on the sweep of lawn that stretched from the house to a high old wall of rosy brick, half-hidden in creepers. She was throwing a ball for the dogs to chase. I was not sure if it shocked me or if I admired her. It was a way of keeping them employed and out of the way in a manner that I should certainly have admired if they had been young children whom it was important to save from understanding the horror that was in the house. But they were not young children, they were dogs, and what she was doing simply left all responsibility for what had to be done now to us.
‘Do you think we ought to get her inside, so that she knows what you say to the police?’ Brian said.
‘It looks as if she'd rather leave it to us to get on with it.’ Malcolm's tone was sardonic. ‘And the sooner we do it, the better.’
He made the call to the police in Otterswell, and after a little explaining was put through to someone whose name apparently was Detective Inspector Holroyd, who told him to stay where he was, touch nothing, and wait for the arrival of the police, which would be as prompt as possible. Malcolm put the telephone down and gave a deep sigh.
‘Didn't you say you came to Raneswood for peace and quiet?’ he said to Brian.
‘It's usually one of its attractions,’ Brian answered.
Malcolm threw himself down on a sofa. I had sat down in one of the deep armchairs near the fireplace and Brian had gone to one of the windows and was gazing out, as if the sight of Avril throwing the ball and the dogs happily chasing it had a sort of fascination for him.
‘About the shot you heard,’ Malcolm said to me, ‘how did that happen?’
‘I'd been down to the village,’ I said, ‘to do some shopping, and I met Jane there and we had a coffee together in the Green Man. Then I came home and the reason I know it was just about twelve o'clock when I got here is that Mrs Henderson was coming out of their house, and you know how punctual she is. She arrives on the dot of nine and leaves exactly at twelve. But as it happened, Fred Dyer was arriving just then, and he went up to the house and in at the side door, which was a bit odd for several reasons.’
Brian turned quickly when he heard the name.
‘Fred Dyer? He was here?’
‘Yes. But as I said, it was a bit odd. I wouldn't say that he's normally the most friendly of human beings, but when we meet he generally greets me and says a thing or two about the weather, but this morning he did neither. He literally turned his back on me, so that as I remember it, I didn't even see his face. And it was the same when he met Mrs Henderson halfway up the path. He looked away, as if he didn't want to see her
‘Just a minute,’ Malcolm interrupted. ‘You're sure of all this, are you?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Because you'll have to tell it all to the police.’
‘Of course.’
‘And wasn't it a bit peculiar, his coming here at twelve o'clock? He usually works for the Loxleys in the afternoon.’
‘That's one of the things I was going to say,’ I said. ‘But he might have dropped in to change some arrangement he'd made with them, or something like that. The other thing that I thought was really odd was that he'd come on foot, not in his van. He always comes in his van when he comes up here, but this morning he walked.’
‘Suppose that girlfriend of his had wanted the van for some reason.’
‘She's got her own car.’
‘Hm. Yes. It is a bit strange. But what happened next? I mean, about the shot you heard.’
‘Well, I went home and started on a bit of cooking, and suddenly I heard what sounded like a shot. It would have been about a quarter of an hour after I got in.’
‘And naturally you took no notice of it.’
‘No, I thought it was someone shooting at rooks or rabbits, or it could even have been a back-fire on the road. I didn't give it a thought until — well, until Avril came in this evening.’
‘And you could have been right about the rooks and rabbits. It may not have been the shot that killed Peter that you heard.’
‘I see one's got to take that into consideration,’ I said, ‘but it would have been a bit of a coincidence if it wasn't.’
‘Fred Dyer,’ Brian said. ‘Jack Benyon. If he shot Loxley, then he's changed his modus operandi. No plastic bag and strangling this t
ime. Unusual in murderers, I believe, but I suppose not unheard of. I wonder what he had against Loxley?’
‘Now let's not jump to conclusions,’ Malcolm said. ‘That's strictly for the police. Ah, Avril…’ For she had just appeared at the drawing room door. ‘I've phoned the police. They'll be here as soon as possible.’
‘I've shut the dogs up in the kitchen again,’ she said, as if that was the most important thing she had to tell us. ‘And I've given them their supper. They'll be quiet now that they know I'm back.’
‘Frances, don't you think you should tell Avril what you've just been telling us?’ Malcolm said.
I could see myself having to tell the story a number of times before the evening was out. I would have to tell it to Detective Inspector Holroyd, and perhaps to some other policemen, and now there was no question that I would have to tell it to Avril. But she seemed hardly interested. Her haggard face was blank and empty. She was in a state of shock, I thought, and it might be a good idea to look for some brandy. I remembered having been told that the right treatment for shock was hot, very sweet tea, but to make tea I should have to go into the kitchen and deal with the three dogs, probably upsetting them and starting them barking again. I should also have had to go towards the hall, passing close to that tragic thing that lay on the floor at the foot of the stairs. I asked Avril whether there was any brandy in the house.
She pointed at a fine old cabinet between the windows, and dropped into a chair. Brian went to the cabinet and took out brandy and four glasses. He filled them and brought them to Malcolm and me, keeping one for himself when he had given one to Avril.
‘What is it Frances ought to tell me?’ she asked. Her voice had lost its shrillness and was merely flat and dead.
I told her the story that I had told the others.
‘Fred Dyer,’ she muttered, as if it was not a matter of much importance. ‘I don't know what he was doing here. He wasn't coming here to work today.’
‘You weren't expecting him for any reason?’ Malcolm asked.
She shook her head wearily. It was then that I noticed that tears were trickling out of her eyes and down her cheeks. She sipped her brandy.
‘Perhaps Peter had thought of some job he wanted him to do,’ she said. ‘Our shower keeps going wrong. It's the hard water. It gets choked up. He might have rung Fred up and asked him to come and see to it.’
‘Hardly a reason for murder,’ Brian said.
‘And wouldn't Dyer have come in his van with his tools, instead of on foot?’ Malcolm said.
‘I don't know. Perhaps he would.’ Her thoughts seemed to be a long way off.
‘What were the relations between your husband and Dyer?’ Brian asked.
‘Relations?’ she said. ‘There weren't any that I know of. I mean, when Fred came here to work in the garden or do odd jobs for us, it was always I who coped with him. I told him what we wanted done and paid him.’
‘Did he know that you were going to London today?’ Brian went on.
‘I don't know. Perhaps. Yes. I think he did. I think I told him when he was working here yesterday that I was going to London to meet my cousin, Lynne Denison. I've been telling everybody. I'm such a fool. And he knew who she was, and he was thrilled about it. He asked if she'd be coming here and if she did, would he have a chance to see her. I told him I didn't know.’
‘You're thinking he knew Peter would be here alone,’ Malcolm said to Brian.
‘Well, that might be important, mightn't it?’ Brian answered.
‘But why should he come when he was almost certain to run into Mrs Henderson?’ Malcolm asked. ‘He must have known the ways of the house, that she'd be leaving at twelve. He'd only to wait ten minutes and she wouldn't have seen him. As it is, she'll be able to corroborate Frances's story.’
‘Be quiet, be quiet!’ Avril suddenly shouted at him. ‘Can't you see you're driving me mad?’ And gulping down her brandy, she broke into violent sobbing. Her whole body shook as her voice went up almost into a shriek.
The two men looked a little ashamed of themselves, as if they had only just recognized what a strain she was under. As if the dogs could hear her and were scared and angry at what was happening, they began to bark. I put my arms round Avril and she clung to me like a child.
‘We'd better stop this,’ Malcolm muttered. ‘It's not our job to try to work things out.’
With her head against my breast, Avril spoke in a voice thick with her sobs. ‘Fred didn't do it. Why should he?’
‘Yes, why?’ Brian said. ‘And why is he here in Ranes-wood? And where did that gun come from?’
‘Let's leave all that to the police,’ Malcolm said, drinking up his brandy. ‘They won't thank us for interfering.’
This turned out to be true. When the police arrived, they seemed only to want us to get out of the way. As Detective Inspector Holroyd, to whom Malcolm had spoken on the telephone, asked where we had come from and how it happened that we were there on the spot, and when we told him that we lived next door and that Mrs Loxley had come to us for help, he asked us to return to our home and wait for him there. He would be over soon and would have a great many questions to ask us, but for the present he would like a chance to view the scene of the crime without our company.
He was a tall, burly man with a square, heavy face in which a pair of small, very bright brown eyes were sunk deep under brows that tilted at their ends in a way that gave him an oddly pixie-like look. Indeed, if he could have been shrunk down to a foot or so, instead of being the six foot two that he certainly was, he would not have been unlike a garden gnome. Although he could not have been much over forty, his thick hair was almost white, merely streaked with tufts of grey. He was courteous and calm, taking murder, or, as he pointed out, perhaps suicide or misadventure — it was too early to come to any conclusion — as something about which he was not inclined to make too much of a fuss.
‘And perhaps you'd better take the dogs with you,’ he said to Avril, once he had discovered to whom they belonged. ‘Natural they shouldn't care for all of us tramping around.’
By then there were a number of men in the house, and several cars in the lane.
Avril, who had grown oddly calm with their coming, collected the dogs and the four of us left the house and went along the lane and in at our gate.
It was dark by then. When we entered the house, the first thing that had to be done was to deal with the dogs. Avril had put them all on leads, and though the unfamiliar men and cars as we walked along the lane had made them nervous, they seemed tired and ready to settle down anywhere that was sufficiently comfortable. The retriever stretched himself out on our sofa, the Labrador in an easy-chair and the Belgian shepherd on the hearthrug. Avril seemed inclined to make the ones that had annexed our chairs get out of them, but Malcolm told her not to bother, and to leave them in peace. In a few minutes, the retriever was snoring.
It was Avril who suddenly said, ‘The rehearsal!’
‘Yes,’ Malcolm said, ‘we'll have to put it off. We'll have to phone round and tell people not to come.’ He looked at me. ‘Could you do that?’
‘I suppose so,’ I said, ‘but what do we tell them? I don't feel like breaking the news a dozen times or so that we've had a murder.’
‘Say that Peter's been taken ill and it's no use our trying to go ahead without Mercutio.’
‘Anyway, the news will be all round the place almost at once,’ Brian said. ‘All those police cars in the lane won't have gone unnoticed.’
‘I imagine we're going to cancel the whole thing,’ I said. ‘I can't see our going ahead with it in the circumstances.’
‘Oh, you mustn't do that!’ Avril cried. ‘Peter wouldn't have wanted it. But of course, I'll step out of it and you can get someone else to take my part. Jane Kerwood, for instance.’
‘No, I think everyone will want to call it off,’ Malcolm said. ‘It would be difficult to put on a cheerful sort of show when one of the cast has only recently been kill
ed.’
‘But Romeo and Juliet isn't a cheerful sort of show,’ Avril protested. ‘It's very tragic.’
‘Of course, of course, but in our hands, at the best of times, the tragedy might not have been too successful. And we don't want to find ourselves playing to an audience that's come mostly out of morbid curiosity.’
‘But Lynne said she'd come,’ Avril said. ‘I told her all about it, and she was quite interested, and she promised to come down sometime soon to see if she could help us. And I'm sure she meant it. And everyone will be so disappointed if we put her off.’
‘She can come if she wants to, even if we aren't going ahead with our play.’ Malcolm turned to me. ‘What about that telephoning?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but I'm just thinking that we must arrange what Avril's going to do tonight. She can't go back to that house. You'll stay here with us, won't you, Avril?’
‘That's very good of you,’ she said. ‘It's true that nothing would make me spend the night over there, but I could go to the Green Man. I don't want to put you out.’
‘It won't be putting us out at all,’ I said. ‘That's settled, you're staying here. One of us can go over later and fetch the things you'll need, if you'll tell us where they are, or you can borrow from me if those men are still there and don't want to let anyone in to take anything away.’
‘Have we got the numbers of all the people you'll have to phone?’ Malcolm asked.
‘I think so,’ I said. ‘I've got the numbers of everyone in the society.’
‘Then let's get ahead with the job.’
Our telephone was on a table in the hall, with a chair beside it, and a book on the table that contained all the numbers that we most frequently used. I had just sat down in the chair and opened the book when the telephone rang.
I picked it up and said, ‘Frances Chance speaking.’
‘This is Hugh,’ he said, which was unnecessary, as I knew his voice. ‘Frances, what's happened? All those police cars at the Loxleys’ house and the ambulance and all the men! Has there been an accident or something?’
‘It looks as if it's something worse than an accident,’ I said. I thought that his call was only the first that we should be having. The other people who lived along the lane must have seen what he had, and I saw no point in telling him anything but the truth. ‘Peter's dead,’ I said. ‘He's been shot and it's almost certainly murder. Incidentally, I was just going to ring you up to tell you that we've decided the rehearsal will have to be cancelled.’
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