Minute for Murder

by Nicholas Blake

  “I didn’t do it!” shouted Billson suddenly. “Not that! I’d nothing to do with that! I swear it!”

  Harker Fortescue coldly waited for the outburst to end. Then he said, “I cannot accept responsibility for anything this little rat did after I’d told him the facts, explained why I originally asked him for the photographs. I’m terribly sorry that such things should have happened. But I’m not wasting any sympathy on Billson. A man who could try and frame Merrion Squires, as he’s confessed to doing—well, he can take what’s coming to him. It makes me sick just to think of it. As for myself—do you believe me, Nigel?”

  “I think it’s all in character. Yes,” replied Nigel non-committally. “On the other hand, Hark’ee, you’d better realise now how other people will see it. They may argue that your collection of ‘feelthy peectures’ has from the start been a cover for traitorous activities. It would be a good cover, you know. And they will ask themselves what you were doing before the war, when you travelled all over Europe, including Germany, to add to your collection. And they may doubt, not knowing your peculiar sense of humour, whether such a hobby could really be enough to explain so much expense of time and money. No, Hark’ee, I’m afraid M.I.5 will put a very large question mark to your story.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  (1) MR. STRANGEWAYS: TO SEE

  (2) MR. INGLE: TO DISCUSS

  SO, TO ALL intents and purposes, we are back where we started, thought Nigel.

  It was the afternoon following the arrest and confession of Edgar Billson: a Saturday afternoon. Most of the Ministry staff had left the building by one o’clock, to make the best they could of the short war-time week-end. Just as Nigel was himself about to leave, Brian Ingle had come into his room and, after some blushing and stammering, asked if Nigel could do him a favour. Brian, it turned out, wanted a keepsake of Nita Prince’s—a book he had once given her. He had been fond of her; and he possessed nothing by which he could remember her. It seemed a pleasant, if old-fashioned, act of piety. Nigel had accordingly rung up Blount, and asked if there was any objection to his meeting Brian in Nita’s flat that afternoon, and letting him have the book. Blount told him it would be in order. He added that the police inquiries at Nita’s bank had disclosed only a small balance of £350 odd, that she had as far as they could discover died intestate, and that her next of kin was a married sister living in New Zealand. So money was clearly not a possible motive for her murder.

  Nigel had made an appointment for Brian Ingle to meet him at the flat at 3 p.m. He himself, after picking up some sandwiches at a pub nearby, had gone straight to Dickens Street, where the slatternly caretaker let him in. She thought he was a C.I.D. man, having seen him last with Blount, and he had some difficulty in staving off her ghoulish enquiries about “Who’d done in that poor girl?” Alone at last, in the rooms from which Nita’s presence, like a ghost at the old trysting-place, seemed reluctant to vanish, Nigel ate his sandwiches and fell into uneasy speculation.

  To all intents and purposes we’re back where we started. On the face of it, of course, Billson might now seem the likeliest person to have poisoned the coffee-cup. But there’s so much to be said against it. First, the evidence all seems to show that Jimmy did not start to get worked up about the PHQ file till after the poisoning. Surely Billson wouldn’t have poisoned Nita’s cup, believing it to be Jimmy’s, unless he felt certain that Jimmy was hot on his track. Now the first sign that Jimmy was getting warm was his sending for the file. But Billson didn’t know that the file was missing, hadn’t attempted to obtain it for his own purposes, and therefore couldn’t have suspected that Jimmy was hot on the track, and therefore couldn’t have planned to poison him, till after the poisoning took place. That isn’t perfectly logical, my boy. I know it isn’t. Let’s take the hypothesis, then, that Billson did get in an unwarranted panic, before the poisoning, lest Jimmy had discovered his secret, and therefore planned to kill him. You see, my good chap, the whole conception at once collapses on the word “planned.” Billson was not invited to the party in Jimmy’s room. He’d never have been there at all if Charles Kennington had not, only a minute before coffee-time, taken it into his head to invite him. Nor, until a few minutes before the crime took place, had Billson so much as set eyes on the instrument with which it was committed. How could he plan a murder with a poison-container he had never seen? And, if the murder of Jimmy was intended, surely Billson wouldn’t be such a fool as to get the cups mixed up? All right, my boy, I grant you all that. But suppose Billson wanted to, knew he had to get rid of Jimmy double quick: suppose he then found himself in a room with his victim and a poison container. Might he not have acted impromptu? That is possible. Yes. But it’s not in character. Look at Billson’s subsequent crimes. The second attack on Jimmy, the burning of the Q files in the annexe, and the calculated attempts to throw the guilt for them on Merrion and on Harker, the alibis prepared for himself—everything cold, cautious, cut and dried, and the very opposite of the poisoning. Besides, what did he do with the poison container after he’d used it?

  Well, then, given that the poison was intended for Jimmy, who else had a motive? Hark’ee. But only if (a) he is in fact a traitor and was lying last night, which I don’t believe, and (b) if he knew that Jimmy had suspicions about the secret files. But when I rang up Jimmy this morning, he was absolutely definite that he’d suspected nothing fishy about the Q photographs till the PHQ file disappeared. He’d sent for it, on the morning of Nita’s death, simply to glance over the list of canned photographs which might be available for the Pacific job, if the censorship stop could be lifted. He had not imagined for a moment that there was anything more in Billson’s recalcitrance over the Q print I’d ordered than his usual official stickiness; not until the disappearance of the file began to put ideas into his head. He had not discussed his suspicions with the Deputy Director even then. And if, by some extraordinary feat of clairvoyance, Hark’ee was enabled to see into the future state of Jimmy’s mind, and therefore attempted to poison him in order to forestall the suspicions which Jimmy did not yet entertain, what did Hark’ee do with the poison container after he had used it?

  Merrion Squires, then? His only possible motive for wishing to get rid of Jimmy is that he’s deeper involved With Jimmy’s wife than he admitted. Blount will ferret that out, if there’s anything in it. But it doesn’t make sense, in any case: for Alice Lake was free to get a divorce from her husband—he had even sounded her about it. And the same holds good for Mrs. Lake herself having attempted to poison him, in order to be free to marry Merrion.

  Charles Kennington? A quixotic gesture? Murdering Jimmy because he had been unfaithful to Charles’ sister? Absurd. Because he had stolen Charles’ fiancée? Not quite so absurd, but absurd enough.

  Brian Ingle? Because he loved Nita: and, with Jimmy out of the way, she might have come to him. No. It’s too thin altogether.

  The other hypothesis, then—that there was no accident with the cups, and Nita Prince was the intended victim.

  Edgar Billson. No apparent motive. Harker Fortescue, ditto: Blount had failed to find any association between Hark’ee and Nita, except that she worked for Hark’ee’s agency some time before the war.

  Merrion Squires? He didn’t like Nita. She had rejected his advances, he told us. But Merrion makes a pass at almost anything in skirts—it’s automatic with him. And if everyone who pushed him off was to get murdered, London would be littered with dead females. No real link between him and Nita has been discovered. Count him out, for the present.

  Brian Ingle? In love with Nita. A forlorn hope for him. A good-hearted little chap. Inconceivable, after knowing Nita for several years, and therefore presumably knowing about her affair with Jimmy, he should suddenly up and poison her.

  Charles Kennington? On the face of it, he’s the best bet. We’ve only his word for it, that he was prepared to hand over his fiancée to Jimmy without a murmur. He provided the poison. His Secret Service training and experience make hi
m the most likely person to have been able to get rid of the poison-container afterwards. What did that silly old Messenger say, the morning before?— “Millions of young men, trained to kill. Proper artful, too.” It was artful enough certainly. At least it could have been: a carefully staged murder, rigged up to look like an impromptu one. Kennington has the dramatic instinct well developed, that’s obvious enough. If only these walls would tell what he really said to Nita that night. She confessed to him about her relationship with Jimmy—that’s why she asked him to come along. Did he just give it his blessing, as he told us? Or did he cut up rough? Or did he pretend to accept it quite calmly, and go away with murder in his heart? Nita was still in a state the next morning—the crumpled handkerchief, the distrait air. But there’s one gigantic obstacle to all this. Charles Kennington is not, by any sign or symptom, the jealous type. Just look at him. Think about him for a moment. Can you imagine him as an Othello?

  And the same applies to his sister. They are both highly civilised creatures. Why should Alice Lake, after accepting her husband’s mistress for years, turn round and kill her? If she was a neurotic or a wildly passionate woman, if she was madly in love with Jimmy still—well then, something might have happened just before Nita’s death to explode her accumulated resentment. But surely she isn’t? Think of her, sitting equably at Jimmy’s bedside, holding his hand as if she were a nurse feeling his pulse. I ask you! Nevertheless, I must get to know her better before I can be sure. And Charles.

  Jimmy Lake himself? His only possible motive, since his wife knew about his relations with Nita and was apparently complacent, is that he wanted to free himself from Nita but could not do so in any other way. Don’t underestimate that motive, my boy. Under certain conditions, it could be immensely strong. What conditions? First, that Nita should be an insinuating, clinging, tenacious character: well, we have fair evidence that she was. Second, that Jimmy was tired of her: no proof at all; one or two very shadowy suggestions, which might be interpreted quite differently. Third, that there was no other way of releasing himself from her grip: on the face of it, preposterous; why shouldn’t he just walk out? Pay her off? Psychologically, though, not so preposterous; a weak character, a morally unrobust character might be incapable of freeing himself except by such violent means. But is Jimmy a weak character? What is Jimmy really like? The fact is, you don’t know. Find out, then. And find out, incidentally, if he’s the sort of man who, having poisoned his girl, would publicly slap her on the back and tell her to cough it up, ducky. It seems impossibly macabre, utterly incredible, that any one—and besides, how did he get rid of the poison container?

  To that insoluble question, again and again, the problem reduced itself? And it applied equally to all the suspects except Brian Ingle. Brian could have thrown it out into the street when he opened the window. It could then have been carried away on someone’s boot-sole or the tyre of a car. But Brian was the one person who seemed to have no adequate motive for murdering either Nita or Jimmy. Charles Kennington’s experience put him next on the list in this respect. But how could even the capturer of Stultz convey a broken container out of that room? Blount had dealt very severely with Sergeant Messer. But in fact, Nigel now knew, the Sergeant had been at fault only in one point of his search. He had examined the suspects’ clothes most thoroughly, after they had stripped behind the screen; then searched the possible hiding-places on their bodies, although none of them had had an opportunity to secrete the thing in that way. The only point where he could possibly have slipped up was in his examination of their mouths. He had glanced into their mouths, but not run his finger round their teeth. The poison container might, theoretically, have been concealed from him in a gap between the back teeth—in the very place where, as Charles Kennington had told them earlier that morning, the Nazis kept these containers lodged if danger seemed imminent.

  But there were two crushing objections to this possibility. First, who but a lunatic would have tried to hide the container thus, knowing there was going to be a rigorous search by the police, and when he only had to drop it anywhere in the room, after wiping it with his handkerchief in his pocket, for his association with it to be entirely sponged out? And secondly, supposing someone had been lunatic enough to hide the thing in his mouth, he would inevitably have betrayed himself: for the container must have been broken to decant the poison into Nita’s cup, and there were bound to be traces enough of the poison left in the container to cause at least a severe fit of choking, from the fumes, when it was put in the mouth. It was the certainty of this, in fact, which had led the too-intelligent Sergeant Messer to his slight carelessness over the examination of the suspects’ mouths.

  Nigel, now lighting another cigarette, set himself to grapple once again with this problem. It faced him as two blindingly enigmatic questions. How was the container hidden from the police and conveyed out of the room? Why was it necessary to the murderer to convey it out of the room? The first of these questions he had run his head against, hard and often, and it yielded nothing. Maybe if he could find the right answer—no, if he could get as far as imagining a possible answer—to the second question, it would throw some light on the first.

  Well, then, why does any murderer remove the weapon from the scene of the crime? Because it might be identified, and incriminate him. But in this case we had all seen the weapon: it was positively on display a few minutes before the murder. Therefore it was unnecessary for the murderer to remove it. But the murderer did remove it. It’s a vicious circle, absolutely unbroken, no way to break out of it. . . . Oh, my sainted ancestors down to the seventy-seventh generation! I’ve got it! I see how to break out of the circle!

  Nigel floundered up from the arm-chair and began pacing the room excitedly, his mind full of the image which an idle phrase had presented to him. A clear, visual image: absurdly simple, yet revolutionising his whole conception of the case. What it implied was perfectly logical—the only logical answer to his second question; and with mounting excitement he realised it also gave a rational answer to the first. What it did not give, he soon ruefully admitted, was any definite clue to the identity of the murderer. Still, that could wait. He took up the telephone and got through to Superintendent Blount at New Scotland Yard.

  “Blount? Strangeways here. A most extraordinary idea has come into my head . . . Yes, about the poisoning . of Nita Prince. I think I know why and how the murderer spirited that poison container away . . . No, I don’t know who it is yet. . . . No, blast you, I haven’t got any evidence for it yet—I did it by an exercise of pure reason. . . . Don’t be offensive, Blount old boy. Getting the evidence is the job of the plodding policeman, meaning you. May I suggest this for a start—find out which of the suspects had access to poison. . . . Yes, I know they all did, I’m not a half-wit; I mean access to some other supply of cyanide . . . What? . . . Yes, on the whole no harm at all in letting them know that you’re looking for it. It’ll shake X to the wick, whoever he is, and he may do something silly. . . . No, not just a bluff; it is essential to find out if any of them had another supply. The point is this——” but Nigel had not time to start unfolding his theory, for the doorbell rang, and Brian Ingle was shown in, and Nigel had to ring off.

  Brian sat down gingerly in the arm-chair Nigel had vacated. His eyes flickered about the room, screwed up as if the light, or what he saw, hurt them.

  “You’ve not been here before? ”asked Nigel at a venture.

  “Oh, no. No. I couldn’t, could I? Feeling as I did for Nita, I mean.”

  After a pause, Nigel said, “I wish you’d talk to me about her.”

  “Yes, I’ve been meaning to. But you were busy. And—I s-say, Nigel, have the police—I mean, do they suspect any one particularly yet? Was it Billson? I see Merrion’s back at work this morning, so it can’t be him.”

  “Funny. You’re almost the first person to ask me about that. The self-control of our colleagues is remarkable.”

  “It’s n-not self-control,” burst
out the little man. “It’s sheer callousness! What do they care? One more death. We’ve had so much death these last years, our reaction to it is atrophied. We’re not interested.”

  “Including Jimmy?”

  Brian Ingle went into one of his trance-like silences. Nigel knew well enough not to break it, or try to hurry him. It was like watching a mouse bring forth a mountain.

  “I don’t know,” said Brian at last. “He used to love her, of course. But—I wish I knew.”

  “‘But,’” prompted Nigel.

  After another protracted silence, Brian came out with, “She was very unhappy, latterly.”

  “Did she confide in you much about it?”

  Brian Ingle’s eyes roved round the room, more boldly now. “He was good to her. Yes, I must admit that.” Long pause. “You know, Nigel, I simply couldn’t bear to talk to that Superintendent much. Oh, he’s a very decent fellow, I’m sure. But it all seemed so irrelevant. She was dead. What did it matter who killed her? And—well:

  “‘The sweeping up the heart

  And putting love away

  We shall not want to use again

  Until eternity.’

  I had an awful lot of sweeping up to do. And all this police investigation—questions, questions, questions—it was like being interrupted by lawyers and telephone calls and letters of condolence when one ”—his voice choked a little—“ when one is trying to tidy up.”

  “Yes, I know. But there’s this to be said: perhaps the happiest part of her life was over, anyway.”

  “I could have made her happy,” replied Brian, with affecting simplicity. “You see,” he smiled crookedly, “I could take any amount of domesticity.”