Minute for Murder

by Nicholas Blake

  Nigel came back to the point from another angle.

  “Charles would actually do all he could to preserve your marriage?”

  “If he thought it worth preserving—yes, I suppose he would.”

  “Did he tell you, that morning, that the night before he’d given Nita a last chance to give Jimmy up? Or suggest that he had?”

  A look of fear and perplexity passed over Alice’s face, the first time she had betrayed emotion during their talk.

  “No,” she said, “no, indeed. There’s a horrible implication in that.” Then, more calmly, “After all, when he saw Nita, he would only hear her point of view. He hadn’t seen Jimmy or me yet. He could have no basis for forming a judgment about our marriage— whether it was ‘worth preserving.’”

  “You hadn’t written to him about it?”

  “No, not for a long time. He was supposed to be dead, you remember.”

  “How well did you know Merrion Squires?”

  The sudden change of front did not seem to disconcert Alice Lake. Indeed, Nigel thought she showed relief at it. She said she had gone about with Merrion a little, during the first year of her husband’s infidelity, and he had made some drawings of her.

  “I suppose I had some vague, silly idea of ‘paying Jimmy back in his own coin’”—her voice put the phrase into satirical quotation marks—“but of course nothing came of it. I’m not really that sort of woman. Perhaps Jimmy would never have left me, if I had been,” she added with a delicate shrug.

  “I’m afraid my questions get more and more impertinent,” said Nigel, smiling at her, “but an awful lot does depend on this—you used a phrase about your marriage being worth preserving—please forgive me, but do you honestly think it was? Now?”

  Alice Lake turned her face away from him, towards the window, and the trees, the flower-beds, the lake upon which it opened. There was a long silence. Nigel believed she understood perfectly the implications of his question, and not least of the tenses he had used.

  “You mean,” she said at last, “you mean, did Nita Prince die in vain? No, that’s a vulgar, hateful way to put it. I’m sorry. Well, I can’t really tell you. It’s bound to take time for Jimmy and me to get readjusted to each other.”

  “And at present you’re lost and miserable together?”

  Alice Lake’s mouth began to tremble. She plunged into her handbag and took out a handkerchief.

  “I’m sorry,” said Nigel, “but it really is very obvious. I don’t want to hurt you, but——”

  “What on earth has this got to do with the murder, with that girl’s death?” she burst out resentfully.

  “I think,” said Nigel, picking his words with infinite care, “I think you suspect your—suspect someone you love of having killed her; and your suspicions make it impossible for you to take up the threads again with Jimmy. Am I right?”

  Holding her handkerchief over her mouth, she went to the door and opened it. In a muffled voice, she said:

  “You’d better go now.”

  Nigel Strangeways descended the stairs, wrapt in thought. He did not leave the house, though, but entered Jimmy Lake’s study again.

  “I’m afraid I’ve been upsetting your wife,” he said without preamble.

  The Director looked up at him keenly, but made no comment. He was still sitting in the chair where they had left him.

  “I had to ask her some rather intimate questions.”

  “Alice isn’t a great one for intimacy,” said the Director, half to himself.

  “Questions about you.”

  “About me?”

  “About you and her. And you and Nita.”

  “She wouldn’t know a great deal about Nita and me. She’s—there are certain things she hasn’t it in her nature to be able to know, or to imagine,” said Jimmy in a brooding voice.

  “So I’m coming to you for them.” Nigel fixed Jimmy Lake with an intent gaze of his pale blue eyes. “Did your wife realise how much you wanted to get free from Nita?”

  The question seemed to fall endlessly into the silent room, like a pebble falling down a well-shaft. At last Jimmy broke the silence.

  “I shouldn’t think so. After all, I didn’t fully know that myself.”

  “Until you were free?”

  “Nigel, I could get justifiably angry about these questions. Still, I’ll assume you mean well by them. Until I was free? No. I—well, there was always a part of me trying to get back to Alice; put it like that.”

  “You hoped, perhaps, that Charles Kennington’s return would solve the problem for you? Hoped he would hold her to her engagement?”

  “Ye-es. I must confess the thought crossed my mind.”

  “So you told Nita that this was her last chance?”

  “Last chance?” repeated Jimmy rather stupidly.

  “Her last chance to release you, to regularise her life, to have the marriage, the security she’d always wanted, with Charles?”

  Jimmy Lake moved his tongue against the inside of his lips in that habitual, meditative way of his.

  “I did certainly sound her, discuss with her what should be done now Charles had come back. But I didn’t talk about giving her a last chance. Why, that sounds like a threat.”

  “Are you sure you didn’t—how shall I put it?— didn’t urge her to go back to Charles?”

  “I wish you’d say straight out what you mean. Surely we know one another well enough for that?”

  “I mean exactly what I say.”

  The Director shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

  “I used no threats to her. You’re talking about the night before her death, I take it. Neither then nor on any other occasion.” He seemed to become aware that this was rather a stilted utterance, and grinned at Nigel. “And if I had threatened her, you could hardly expect me to admit it even to you.”

  “I can’t encourage you to say anything incriminating to me,” replied Nigel, attentively studying Jimmy’s pale, fine-bred face. “I’m the Gestapo just at present, and there it is. The trouble is that Blount’s new theory of how the crime was committed simply torpedoes all one’s previous assumptions about it. I’m bound to tell you that things are now very awkward for any one who possessed another supply of cyanide, particularly if he’s unable to produce it.”

  “Meaning myself. And Alice. And Charles, I suppose. And old Hark’ee—he can’t prove he got rid of his pill.”

  “But Hark’ee had no conceivable motive for killing Nita.”

  “So it boils down to us three? Quite a family party.”

  “I’m afraid it does seem to. And each of you had a very strong motive for murdering Nita.”

  The Director settled his wounded shoulder more comfortably.

  “Oh, come, Nigel. Not Alice, surely. She’d put up with my behaviour for five years.”

  “She’d put up with it, because she felt certain you’d come back to her in the end. But suppose something had recently happened which made her realise it wasn’t by any means certain. Suppose she was afraid that Nita was on the point of winning, after all.”

  “My dear chap, that’s nonsense. Alice—well, you’ve seen her and me together now; you must have seen that the returning prodigal hasn’t been welcomed with a fatted calf.”

  “I’ve realised, after talking to your wife, that she’s as much distressed about this as you are. She may be very much in love with you still.”

  “Do you really think that?” asked Jimmy, leaning forward to Nigel with an eager, boyish look which seemed to take twenty years off his face. Then, at once, his expression grew strained again. “Oh, I see. Loves me enough to have killed Nita to get me back?”

  “That’s one possibility the police will have in mind,” Nigel followed up smoothly. “And then there’s Charles. And a third possibility.”

  The Director cocked his eye at Nigel interrogatively.

  “That it was done in collusion between two of you three. What about Charles now? You must have seen quite a lot of him
lately. Does he strike you as very upset by Nita’s death?”

  “This is quite a new side of you,” said Jimmy Lake. “Positively ghoulish. And I will not provide putrid titbits of gossip about my family for you. So let that be an end of it.” Jimmy was smiling quite good-temperedly, but his voice had the finality of a slammed door.

  “Well, then, I won’t bother you any more. Except just one question. That copy of Clough you gave Nita— why did she mark one passage in Amours de Voyage?”

  “Did she? Which passage?”

  Nigel recited the first few lines of it.

  “Oh, yes. To be sure. You mean the capital A in the margin?”

  Nigel nodded. The Director looked confused, embarrassed almost.

  “It’s the sort of silly thing one does—we did. She thought the character was like me, and wrote a J against it. She was teasing me about it. And I said the woman described in the passage sounded rather like Alice, so I turned the J into an A. Poor Nita—she wasn’t really pleased about it; she couldn’t bear the thought of Alice existing, even as an initial in a book.”

  “But she didn’t rub it out, for all that.”

  “The whole thing is perfectly trivial,” said Jimmy. “You surely haven’t found a clue there, have you?”

  “You’ve explained it,” replied Nigel. “There was the possibility that you might have altered the letter J because you didn’t want the police to get a hint of your real character.”

  “Good lord! What misguided subtlety!”

  “Well, I’ll be off now. Many thanks. Is Charles about?—he’s lunching with me.”

  “No. He went for a walk in the Park.”

  Riding back on the top of a bus, Nigel was glad of the respite. The interviews had been exhausting, and he needed to revive his wits before the third, and perhaps the crucial and most difficult interview. He had to admit that he’d got very little further. Both Alice and Jimmy had given the impression of an almost pedantic adherence to the truth, as they saw it: Alice especially. There had been an under-current of uneasiness, certainly; but no greater than one might expect in a couple still rather at odds with one another, each perhaps unable to throw off the fear that the other was responsible for Nita Prince’s death. If one of these two was indeed the culprit, then Nigel could only salute the formidable skill with which the culprit had played his hand, everything apparently so natural and above-board, yet refusing to be driven or enticed into the open. Nevertheless, Nigel believed that, while one of them had sincerely told the truth, the other had concentrated only on giving the impression of truthfulness.

  Nigel had been at the Club for ten minutes when Major Kennington arrived, in uniform and tearing high spirits.

  “I thought you would like me to come in full regimentals, my dear,” was his first remark, delivered with much empressement in the full face of Nigel’s fellow-members lining up at the bar for their pre-prandial drinks.

  “Sherry? Gin? Or what?” asked Nigel hurriedly.

  “Dubonnet, please, if they have it. Full regimentals,” continued Charles, “for I know it’s going to be a court-martial. I should have brought my sword, but I’ve mislaid it. Now what can I have done with that sword? It’s too vexing. I distinctly remember brandishing it as I led my men in our famous charge across the Rhine. But afterwards? No, it’s no good, my mind is a blank. Well, cheers, ducky.”

  Charles Kennington took a gulp of his Dubonnet, oblivious to the murmurs of the serried clubmen.

  “And how is the murder going?” he asked. “Any spicy revelations to dish up? Who’s making the running for the gallows-tree?”

  “Jimmy, Alice and yourself seem to have drawn clear of the field,” answered Nigel amiably. “But let’s not talk about it till after lunch.”

  “Whatever you say. But not Alice. I can’t have that. My sister must be above reproach. And how are things at the dear old Min.? Shocking goings on the other night, I hear. The Reverend Billson caught in flagrante delicto, touching off incendiaries all over the place. Archdeacon Fortescue up to some dirty work in camera. I seem to miss all the fun. In my day the Min. was a very different sort of place.”

  A crusted and vinous-looking clubman muttered audibly to his companion, “Disgraceful. An office-wallah, of course. Can’t think where he got all those medal ribbons. Looks damn fishy to me.”

  “Bought them, my dear sir,” said Charles brightly to him. “In the Caledonian Market. A very fine range they have there, I can assure you, if you’re looking for a good buy. And quite reasonable. This little white and purple one I can particularly recommend—so amusing, don’t you think? Just like a pansy.”

  The crusted clubman glared and snorted, struggling for speech.

  “I think we’d better go up to lunch,” said Charles to Nigel, “before the mot juste dawns upon our gallant friend.”

  Nigel was fortunate enough to secure a separate table for his guest and himself, out of earshot of his fellow-members. At lunch they talked on indifferent subjects, and it was not till they were sitting in Nigel’s room that the “court-martial,” as Charles had called it, began. Nigel told him that suspicion was now narrowed down to Jimmy, his wife and Charles himself, and that Blount’s new theory invalidated Mrs. Lake’s evidence of having noticed the container on Jimmy’s desk, intact, only a minute before the murder.

  “Meaning that it was not used for the murder?”

  Nigel nodded.

  “Somehow I never thought it was.”

  “Oh? Why?” asked Nigel, rather surprised.

  “Well, for one thing, if I’d used it, I’d have taken jolly good care to drop it quietly on the floor when no one was looking; and then it’d have been found.”

  “I see,” said Nigel, who had received a clear impression that Charles was telling the truth but not the whole truth. “Well, then, suppose you had poisoned Nita— with some other supply of poison, I mean—why would you want to remove Stultz’s thing from the room? Why would you take the enormous risk of having it discovered on your person, in order to remove it?”

  Major Kennington answered quite readily.

  “In order to keep the eyes of the police fixed on it: to make sure they wouldn’t go sniffing around after some other source of poison.”

  “Exactly. So when the police do find another source —Jimmy’s cyanide capsule, to which you three had access, and nobody else—and find this capsule is missing——”

  “Then things look black for the old firm of Lake and Kennington,” said Charles, grinning cheerfully.

  “But don’t you think it rather odd that, if Jimmy did use this pill of his, he should have no story prepared, to account for its disappearance?”

  “I see your Socratic method is going to have me cornered in a minute. However, my dear Socrates, I will admit that indeed of a truth it does appear to me rather odd.”

  “You yourself did not go to the Lake’s house till the morning of the crime. You only stayed there ten minutes. And, apart from your sister’s evidence that you were with her all that time, it doesn’t seem possible you could have taken Jimmy’s capsule out of a locked drawer and left no signs of breaking into it.”

  “It wasn’t possible for a better reason,” said Charles, a little pettishly. “I didn’t know the thing was there at all.”

  “You mean, this is the first you’ve heard of the capsule?”

  Charles Kennington wagged his forefinger coyly at Nigel.

  “Now, now! You’ll not catch out a hardened old poisoner like myself as easily as that. I knew years ago that Jimmy had bought himself a pill. I didn’t know till a couple of days after the murder that he still had it—was supposed to have it still—and where it was kept.”

  “Did Jimmy tell you?”

  “No, Alice did, as a matter of fact. It just came out, en passant.”

  “She didn’t tell me she’d told you. Still, the point is this. You did not know of the whereabouts of this capsule till after the murder. Jimmy has attempted no explanation for its disappearance,
as he surely would have if he’d used it himself. Which leaves Alice.”

  Charles Kennington’s hands clasped over his breast in that strange little dramatic gesture of his, then went out to Nigel; but there was nothing of the poseur in him now.

  “Look, Nigel, fun’s fun, but——”

  “And the Superintendent told me that your sister was distinctly rattled when he asked about the capsule. I don’t think this is fun at all. Of course, the police might well consider a third possibility—that you and she were in collusion over it. That might explain a lot.”

  “I must say, this is the most cold-blooded conversation I’ve ever taken part in.”

  “The trouble with you three is that none of you ever tells an unnecessary lie.”

  Charles Kennington’s eyes were veiled a moment by their long girlish lashes.

  “Alice never tells a lie of any sort,” he replied. “She’s a regular old Bloomsbury blue-stocking; a positive glutton for truth.”

  “She was telling the truth, then, when she told me that you and she had discussed the question of divorce, that morning you came to fetch her?”

  “Perfectly true.”

  “And that you had discussed it with Nita the night before?”

  Major Kennington did not reply to this. Nigel persisted.

  “You see, when you and your sister came to Nita’s flat the day after the murder, you categorically stated that you had not discussed the question of divorce with Nita. It surprised me at the time: you were so very forthcoming about everything else, but so very monosyllabic about that.”

  “What a memory you have! It’s too unnerving.”

  “Yes. And I remember you also said ‘I think I put her mind at rest, poor sweet.’ And yet, the next morning, the morning she was murdered, the poor sweet was in a terrible state: she’d been crying; she told Brian Ingle she was frightened, and said she had been given ‘one last chance’ to release Jimmy.”

  “What ho, what ho!” exclaimed Charles. “This is turning on the heat all right!”

  “The police,” continued Nigel, gazing non-committally at the end of his cigarette, “could make a good case, out of all this, for collusion between Alice and yourself. Supposing you’d got in touch with her as soon as you returned to England—she tells you about Jimmy and Nita. You go and see Nita that night: you tell Nita she must give up Jimmy, or——Nita refuses. You return to Claridge’s and ring Alice, who is alone in the house. Nita won’t play, you say. You concoct your plan together. Or perhaps you just ask Alice to take that poison capsule of Jimmy’s and be ready to hand it over to you next morning. You are devoted to your sister; you’d do anything to advance, or restore, her happiness. And of course, if the police do by any chance tumble to the real murder method, you’ve got a personal line of defence to fall back upon—it’s Jimmy’s poison pill that’s missing, and suspicion inevitably falls upon Jimmy himself.”