Minute for Murder

by Nicholas Blake

  Charles Kennington broke off for a moment, took a gulp of whisky and lighted a cigarette. Nigel was fascinated and appalled: this duel in cold blood, between two antagonists so different in quality yet so equally matched, the one projecting his accusations like a series of venomous darts from a blow-pipe, the other maintaining a cold and unflinching silence, biding his time perhaps for the counter-attack—where would it end? Nigel had set the ball rolling. He felt now like a man who, having dislodged a pebble, sees a whole mountainside rolling and tumbling down.

  “Moral cowardice is an interesting thing,” resumed Charles. “Here was a man who lacked the resolution to break away from a situation in which he was deeply involved. So outraged nature rose up and did it for him. Very macabre, really. He was in the position of a man with one foot on dry land and the other stuck fast in a bog, and he thought he wanted to get back on to the dry land. The Bible recommends you to cut off your foot if it offends you, and——”

  “Could you spare us the religion and the morbid psychology, and get on to how I’m supposed to have committed the crime?” asked Jimmy Lake, in a light, wary voice.

  “Certainly. I suggest you’d been carrying that cyanide pill about with you for several days, unconsciously waiting for a crisis which would compel you to use it. You saw your opportunity when I returned. You gave Nita her last chance to release you. She refused. From that moment she was doomed. You arranged the set-up in your room very cleverly—I always said you were a good window-dresser: the photographs on the floor, the cover-designs on the bookcase—they were all there for you to focus our attention upon at the moment when you put the capsule into Nita’s cup, and the moment when you pocketed Stultz’s thing. You were considerably set back because I brought Alice along—yes, I expect Nigel noticed your consternation at that: for you’d always had a feeling of guilt about Alice, and you didn’t want her there just then, and you were afraid that she might see through your little deceptions—she always could see through you. Well, anyway, you’d urged me to bring Stultz’s thing along to show the boys. You were determined that Stultz’s thing must be demonstrably the instrument of murder, because you knew your possession of another source of the poison would otherwise be discovered. That’s where, by a strange irony, Alice so nearly paralysed your plan. You remember, Nigel, that Nita’s cup was half empty when she died, which meant she must have drunk some of the coffee before the poison pill was put into it. She drank that part of the coffee before putting her cup down on Jimmy’s desk. He then goes to his desk, takes the cover-designs out of a drawer, and holding them for an instant between us and Nita’s cup, to screen it, drops the pill into it. He intended to pick up the container at the same moment and pocket it: but something prevents him—perhaps Alice looks round—I don’t know. Now at this point he was in great danger. At any moment Nita might drink her coffee, poisoned now, and the still unbroken container be found on the desk. On the other hand, he realised that, if somebody noticed the container on the desk after he’d moved away to prop up the cover-designs on the bookcase, and if it were established that he himself had not been in reach of Nita’s cup after the container was so noticed, then it would be proved that he hadn’t poisoned the cup—poisoned it with Stultz’s thing, of course. So what he has to do is to prevent Nita drinking the rest of her coffee till he has found an opportunity to pocket the container. And that’s why he took her firmly by the elbow, and marched her over to the bookcase, and held her by the elbow while we admired the cover-designs—a rather unorthodox thing to do with Alice in the room, and incidentally the first sign of interest in Nita he’d shown since the party began. When Nita’s telephone rings, she goes to his desk to pick up her cup before answering the call at her table. Jimmy follows at once, takes his own cup and at the same moment—while we are all vaguely looking at Nita, as one does when a person begins to speak on the telephone, he picks up the container and pockets it.”

  Charles Kennington paused again, to refill his glass. Then he continued:

  “So he’d brought it off. He goes to sit on Nita’s table, in full view of everyone, so we can all see him very definitely not slipping anything into her cup. He gives us good measure by beating the wretched girl on the shoulders when she is choking with the poison, and telling her to cough it up—a masterpiece of filthy improvisation, that. And later Alice bears witness that she’d seen the unbroken container on his desk, thereby cosily clearing him of suspicion. All he has to do is to get rid of the container now. But you, Nigel, warn him off when he moves towards a window—I fancy he meant to flip it out then. So he has to adopt Plan B and stick it in his back teeth for the police search. You remember how white and shaken he looked when he came out from behind the screen?—I don’t wonder—and how he pulled out his silk handkerchief to mop his face?—no doubt he spat the container out into the handkerchief then. It’s really rather funny, that.” A quirk of some cryptic amusement passed over Charles’s face. “However, I think it quite possible that Jimmy had intended to rig the whole thing as suicide: in which case he’d have broken the container into Nita’s cup, after she’d died, taking advantage of some moment when our attention was distracted, and dropping the empty container on the floor somewhere near her. But, if this was so, two things prevented it. Her cup being only half full implied that she could not have poisoned it till just before she took her last draught of the coffee. And therefore she could only have poisoned it after she’d gone to her table to answer the telephone. But Brian Ingle piped up to say he’d been looking at her all the time she was at her table, and she hadn’t done it. So suicide was out.” Charles Kennington sighed. “I’m sorry to be so tedious and long and dotting all the i’s; but I’ve thought about the business a good deal, in my dim-witted way, and I’m compelled to believe this is what happened. The facts won’t bear any other interpretation.”

  “It’s a pity,” said Jimmy Lake at once, “that you shouldn’t have remembered one rather important fact, as you are being so conscientious about the facts.”

  “Namely?”

  “That Stultz’s thing has been found in your locked suitcase. Or is your theory that I—what’s the word?— ‘planted’ it there?”

  “No, I don’t suggest you did. We’ll return to that presently: after you’ve had your say. Go on. I’m interested to know how our moral Houdini will try and wriggle out of it.”

  The positions were now reversed. Into Charles’s eyes there had come a wary, calculating look: he seemed to be measuring up his antagonist, trying to anticipate the direction of Jimmy’s first thrust. The Director, who had listened with a certain humouring contempt to Charles’ attack, now visibly gathered force and indignation. His fine, pale face still showed a bitter distaste for these proceedings, but also a new resolution to carry them through to the bitter end. He smiled, rather sadly, at Nigel.

  “I’ve been hamstrung, you see,” he began. “I’ve known all along that it would kill Alice if—if the truth about Charles and Nita came out. She loves Charles, she’s bound up with him, always has been, more deeply than with me. I suppose it’s natural Charles should try to save his skin by making up a case against me: I dare say I might have done the same in his place——”

  “This is rich!” exclaimed Charles, his voice crackling with contempt. “This is the prime, peach-fed ham of hypocrisy! Well, go on.”

  “Your mistake, Nigel, is to have assumed that Alice had anything to do with it. Your theory that she and Charles planned it together, because she couldn’t get me back from Nita any other way—well, it’s awfully weak, really: surely she would have asked Charles to have a talk with me, try and persuade me, first? No, for some reason, old boy, you’ve entirely ignored Charles’ own, personal motive. It’s very odd you should—I suppose he’s thrown too much dust in your eyes. Charles killed Nita, for the good and simple reason that she had been unfaithful to him. I know this. I’ll tell you how I know it in a minute.”

  “We can hardly wait,” murmured Charles Kennington.

&n
bsp; “I haven’t worked out Charles’ method with such attention to detail as he showed in his rigmarole against me. But a liar has to be extremely plausible, and a murderer always protests too much when he’s trying to incriminate someone else.”

  “Hear, hear!” exclaimed Charles.

  “You’ll alter this schoolboyish attitude soon,” replied Jimmy stiffly. “As far as I can see, it was perfectly practicable for Charles to have poisoned Nita’s coffee in the way he ascribed to me. At any rate, he could have put poison into the cup while it was lying on my desk, couldn’t he? There was an opportunity?”

  Nigel nodded silently.

  “But how did he get hold of the container—Stultz’s thing? I know that’s a snag. Alice’s evidence is supposed to have cleared him. Well, frankly, I don’t know the answer. It’s possible that Alice may have lied about the container’s being on the desk a minute before Nita’s death: lied to shield Charles: she may even have noticed him pocketing it. But I think not. Alice simply can’t prevent herself telling the truth. I—oh, my God, what a fool I am!” The Director’s face lit up with intelligence. “I’ve been assuming that the container must have been removed from my desk before Nita died. We all assumed this at the time, simply because we assumed that it was this container which had been used to poison her coffee. But as it wasn’t, then—yes, no doubt Charles quietly went and pocketed it during the confusion when she—when she was dying: or soon afterwards. Isn’t that possible?”

  Once again Nigel silently nodded.

  “That’s a very ingenious thought of yours, Jimmy. I couldn’t be more impressed,” said Charles. “But the fact still remains that I was not in a position to pinch the poison capsule out of your dressing-table drawer. So you’re stymied again.”

  “I presume you had some other source of poison.”

  “Oh, I had a little lethal tablet, for my private convenience, in Germany. But I handed it in at H.Q. there before I left. Didn’t I, Nigel?”

  Nigel Strangeways nodded. He had nothing to do, at present, but to watch and to nod from time to time, and let things rip. Sooner or later, one of them would make a mistake.

  “Well, I dare say Charles had other ways of getting hold of cyanide. Maybe he had other trophies of the chase, so to speak. It’s not my job to do the police’s work for them over that. I can only say that it was he who was so keen on bringing Stultz’s thing to the party and show it off—which was rather like an Arms Instructor handing round a live Mills bomb to a number of civilians —careless, to say the least. And one more thing. I admit it doesn’t seem likely that Charles could have used my poison pill for the murder. But he could easily have got hold of it, after the murder, when he’d come to stay with us here, and removed it in order to incriminate me. It’s very interesting that the pill should have disappeared just when the police had changed their views about how the murder was done, just when they decided to look for another source of poison than the Stultz container.”

  “Have you any evidence to support this?” asked Nigel.

  “Charles had always known I possessed a poison pill. The other day he asked me if I still had it, asked me where I kept it.”

  “That’s a damned lie, and you know it!” Charles Kennington’s voice almost broke. His small, triangular face seemed to have dwindled and wizened, like the face of a dead man.

  “Oh, you made your inquiry in a very tactful way. But——”

  “Did any one else hear this conversation? Your wife?” put in Nigel.

  “No, Charles and I were alone.”

  Nigel relaxed again in his chair. “So it’s your word against his once more.”

  “I’m afraid so. And my word against his over his threat to Nita.”

  “His threat to Nita?”

  “Yes. It’s got to come out now. I dare say you noticed that a certain amount of feeling crept into Charles’s words just now when he was talking about his engagement to Nita. Oh, yes, Charles may pretend—he has pretended all along—that his feelings for Nita had evaporated, that he wasn’t really interested in her any more. He even removed from Nita’s flat the letters he’d written to her—yes, Alice told me about that—it would have been unpleasantly revealing if the police had read them, I dare say; might have put ideas into their head. You’d hardly believe what virile passion burned behind that— that rather misleading exterior of his.”

  “This is most gratifying,” said Charles. “I wouldn’t have missed it for worlds.”

  “Nita was frightened, poor love, that morning. You see, Charles had cut up very rough when he visited her the night before. Oh, yes, he’d given her a last chance to honour her engagement: he had asked her to give me up; but for his own sake, not for Alice’s. He told her, ‘If you don’t leave my fascinating brother-in-law at once, if you don’t announce to-morrow morning that you and I are to be married shortly, I shall make quite sure that he won’t have the use of you any more.’ Those were his very words.”

  “Did she tell you this herself?”

  “No. I heard him.”

  Charles Kennington said in a startled voice:

  “You heard me? What the devil do you mean?”

  “After I left Nita that night—yes, we did have a terrible scene—that’s why I went back to the flat, I felt I couldn’t leave it like that. I’d gone to the Ministry and tried to do some work. But I couldn’t. So I rang her up and said I was sorry, said I’d come straight back. She seemed to get into a sort of panic at the idea. I couldn’t understand why. But it made me suspicious. I began to wonder if—well, if I’d been deceived by her all along. Anyway, I told her I wouldn’t return, but I made up my mind that I would. I’m rather ashamed about all this. Of course, Charles is right in a way: I would probably have seized the chance of breaking with Nita; I’m afraid that was in my mind when I went back to the flat—hoping to catch her with a man. Hoping to, and fearing to. I let myself in with my own key, went quietly up the stairs, crept into the hall and listened at the door of her sitting-room. It was Charles’s voice I heard. I didn’t know what to make of it at first. I listened for a bit. I heard what I’ve just told you. And other things. He was prepared to forgive her unfaithfulness, if——”

  Jimmy broke off abruptly, closing his eyes as if trying to shut out some imagined scene. His face was strained, and full of anguish. When he spoke again, it was almost a whisper.

  “The next morning—oh, Christ! I shall never forget it. Nita was in a terrible state. She didn’t dare tell me that Charles had visited her. She felt she couldn’t trust me, I suppose—couldn’t trust me now not to use Charles as a pretext for ending our affair. ‘Affair’—gah, what a word! I mean, if she told me that Charles insisted on her marrying him, was threatening I don’t know what if she didn’t, well, you can see what a graceful let-out it’d be for me. She couldn’t turn to me for protection any longer: she’d no one to turn to. But if I’d had the remotest idea that Charles’s threat was serious ”—Jimmy’s white knuckles ground into his forehead—“no, I ought to have known, I ought never to have let—but it seemed incredible that Charles should try and do anything with all of us in the room there, after showing us all the poison container itself.”

  He rose abruptly and began to pace the room. The other two were silent. Nigel was thinking hard. Charles Kennington, huddled in his chair, seemed to have shrunk into himself, a figure almost as tiny as its own reflection in the convex mirror at the end of the room. Jimmy paused at the sideboard to pour himself out a liqueur.

  “Sorry,” he said. “You like one, Nigel? Peach brandy of some kind.”

  He moved back to the table, held out two glasses, their stems between his fingers. Nigel took one. The other, Jimmy put down beside Charles Kennington. There was a feeling of intense embarrassment in the room —the sort of social embarrassment that might be felt if a member of a club were convicted before his fellow-members of cheating at cards.

  “I couldn’t come out with this before,” Jimmy spoke to Charles as if they’d made a taci
t agreement to ignore Nigel’s presence altogether. “But you can’t expect me to sit here and do nothing about it. Can you?” There was almost a pleading note in his voice. “I’m sorry. Charles. But you drove me to it.”

  Major Kennington’s face looked small and sick. He said nothing at all.

  “Nigel, I suppose it’s no use asking you to forget everything you’ve heard this evening?” asked Jimmy.

  Nigel shook his head. He was still waiting. It was not all over yet, his instinct told him.

  “I’ll look after Alice. I promise you. She’ll be all right.” Jimmy was speaking to Charles again. “Why don’t you say something?”

  From the figure of Major Kennington, sitting listlessly as if foundered and saturated in defeat, words at last came.

  “I was very, very fond of Nita.”

  The words were spaced out: the intonation was high and clear, almost a mimicry of Alice Lake’s voice.

  “There’s only one thing to be done now, Charles,” Jimmy Lake spoke with a kind of veiled urgency.

  “Yes,” said Charles, “only one thing to be done.” His fingers groped out, like an automaton’s, towards his liqueur glass.

  “I think—oh, damn this sling! Nigel, could you loosen it a bit; it’s hurting my shoulder: this knot here—I can’t get at it properly.”