by Ellis Peters
‘But, girl, you’re crazy!’ said Neil, kindly but very firmly. ‘You yourself said it, he has nothing to do with it. What if he does shout about having no motive? It doesn’t alter the fact he really has none. He’s only here at all because he happened to be detailed to the job of flying us over by his bosses at European Charter.’
‘How do we know that? What do we know about him – him, the person, not the pilot? He was the one who rushed to elect somebody else as the criminal, on the flimsiest grounds then, you must admit it. He’s the one about whom none of us knows anything, he’s the one nobody’s watching.’
‘Except you,’ said Neil, with the tired ghost of a smile.
She was not sure that she liked that smile, or the resigned tone of his voice, the note of reserve in its disinterested kindness. ‘There could be no harm in looking into his background a little, could there?’
‘I suppose not, but how can we? We haven’t even a telephone connection with the outside world, you know that. If I could call European Charter in London I would, but I can’t. So what do you want me to do?’
She saw then how it was with him, and in her heart she couldn’t blame him. He had been thrust into accidental responsibility for all of them, and he’d carried it well, but it had given him a very nasty time, and he shrank, mind and spirit, from reopening what now seemed a closed case. Even the police must feel like that on occasion. Probably they do drag themselves out of harbour again and venture back reluctantly into the offshore currents if there seems a grain of doubt left; but then, Neil wasn’t a policeman, and he was offered, in the end, an easier kind of salvation. Two more days of this weather and the track to Bad Schwandegg would be open, and the proper authorities would be able to take the whole burden from him. No, she couldn’t blame him for being loath to put to sea again with retirement so near. All the same, she did her best.
‘You could finish what we didn’t finish last night,’ she said urgently. ‘Don’t free Laurence yet, don’t tell them what I’ve told you, let the murderer go on thinking he’s safe. Only you’ll tell Laurence, won’t you, and put his mind at rest? Tell him I’m not as bad as he thinks me – he’ll never listen to me. And you and Franz go quietly and search everyone else’s belongings as thoroughly as you did his—’
‘What, without letting them be present? Without saying a word to them? What a scandalous thing to suggest!’
‘Why? You said you were going to do it last night. If Franz does the searching I don’t see how they can complain. It was only by accident, because he made that childish challenge of his, that we began with Laurence, but after the things we found there we never looked any farther. We ought to have done. We ought to have gone through everybody’s things. The police would have done.’
‘But we’d found what we were looking for.’
‘I know. I’m not blaming you, it was an obvious mistake to make, we were all at fault. If we’d gone on there might have been other highly significant things to be found, even though we didn’t know enough to be consciously looking for them. We shouldn’t simply have assumed that we’d finished when the phial of tablets turned up. The police wouldn’t have let it go at that.’
She was not even sure that she was telling the strict truth now, but with a correct legal conscience like his he ought to find that argument impressive. He did seem to be wavering, though she could see him shrinking perceptibly from the necessity for pricking the entire party back into desperate enmity. Then as visibly he stiffened against her.
‘I think, Susan, you’re forgetting the nature of the finds we did make. They’re as nearly conclusive as anything could be, and you’ve pointed out yourself, more clearly than ever, that they couldn’t have been planted at any time after the alarm was given. I don’t believe any police force in the world would hesitate to charge him on that evidence.’
‘What, now? When I’ve proved him innocent? I’ve told you, Laurence did not do it! He didn’t, he couldn’t, I never took my eyes from him while he was in this room with Richard. That isn’t hearsay, there’s no maybe about it, it’s absolute fact. So the rest of the evidence against him must be so many lies, it can’t be anything else. It’s evidence in reverse, evidence against someone else, if we have the sense to make use of it, and try to understand what it has to tell us.’ She was shouting at him now in her desperation, shaking his hands vehemently in hers.
He disengaged himself gently, drawing back from her. The troubled mask of doubt and reserve had come down over his face and shut him out of reach. She had been too insistent, not nearly clever enough. If she had laid the load of choice on him squarely, and had the restraint to leave him to resolve it for himself he would surely have driven himself into action. Now she had said too much too fiercely. He was looking at a woman in a purposeful rage, not after justice, but after some female interest of her own; and it was too late to tread gently now and try to undo what she had done.
‘Laurence isn’t charged yet,’ he said with careful calm. ‘He’s not in custody. He’s perfectly safe where he is, and nothing can possibly be done in the matter, one way or the other, until the police get here. A matter of two days, three at the most, if this weather holds.’
‘In two days,’ she said, ‘vital evidence that we might have found last night will have been disposed of.’
‘It’s too late to worry about that, I’m afraid. Already several hours have passed since we stopped our search, that’s time enough for things to have been disposed of already. You may very well be right in saying we ought to have gone ahead then, and I wish to God we had, but we didn’t. What’s the point of resuming now? No, I see nothing further we can usefully do. In a few days we shall hand over everything to the police, and you will of course tell them exactly what you’ve just told me. Then it will be up to them. You can be sure Laurence will get the benefit of any doubt there may be.’
‘Doubt?’ For a moment she could hardly believe she had heard him correctly. She put up her hands dazedly and felt at her temples, staring at him between her compressing fingers in fascination and terror. ‘I’m telling you there isn’t any doubt. Can’t you understand? I’m not saying he may not have done it, I’m telling you he didn’t do it. Doubt is what doesn’t exist. This is certainty.’
He looked back at her unhappily, and said only: ‘You must tell that to the police. It will be up to them, of course, whether they believe you.’
‘Believe me?’ she whispered.’ You mean you don’t?’
‘I don’t say that! But, Susan, for God’s sake try to see it from my point of view. You did say the flat opposite at first, you know. Here’s the same person telling two opposing stories on two consecutive days, one of them has to be a lie. When somebody who’s lied once picks out one of the stories and says: “This is the true one,” how do we know whether it is or not? How can we tell. You say you lied yesterday for a good reason, to try to trap the real murderer, but somebody else might wonder if you weren’t telling the truth yesterday, when this was sprung on you without warning, and lying today, when you’ve had a night to think things over. You – well, you’re – interested in Laurence, aren’t you? At least, I did think there were signs of it. You’re sorry for him, maybe you’re even persuading your own memory to hedge about details because you feel it was you who got him into this. I – forgive me, I’m not saying this is what I think, I’m trying to show you what could be argued. People might reason that you’d been considering that you and Laurence both stood to inherit about sixty thousand pounds of Mrs Byrne’s money – more, if one of the others is convicted of Richard’s murder—’
Susan closed her eyes, for the room was revolving slowly and drunkenly about her. She had never fainted in her life, but then, she had never before been suspected of being an accessory after the fact in a murder case, on top of a sleepless night and an agonised examination of her own disastrous actions. She was aware of arms snatching her up as she fell, and stiffened at the touch, her rebellious senses springing back into quivering
life. She opened her eyes again to see Dr Randall’s face bending over her.
Someone had lifted her into a chair; that must have been Neil. But it was the doctor’s hand that was holding a glass to her lips. He had made a very apt entrance, and a very quiet one, unless her ears had ceased to function for longer than she had supposed. How much had he heard of those last exchanges? People who walk as softly as that, even on bare wooden floors, sometimes arrive at doors quite unheard, and may well be sufficiently interested in the conversation within to linger for a few minutes before silencing it with the full stop of the door opening. You never can tell, when there’s a murderer in the house.
‘Your turn this time,’ Dr Randall was saying resignedly. ‘As if I haven’t got enough on my hands witn the one upstairs. Go on, girl, drink it, it isn’t poisoned. I always have a day off on Christmas Day.’
Wouldn’t you know, thought Susan, shivering at the bitter astringent taste on her tongue, that when life finally exasperated Dr Randall into making a joke it would be that kind of joke? She drank, and pushed the hand away from her. Neil’s arm was round her shoulders, and his face, hovering over her doubtfully, was concerned and kind and deeply troubled. She felt almost as sorry for him as for herself.
‘I’m all right,’ she said resolutely.
‘You can’t miss your night’s sleep and take it in your stride, you young people. It’s only the old who’re tough enough to stand up to this kind of thing. What’s Everard been doing to you? No, sit still! I don’t doubt you’re all right, but don’t be in too big a hurry to prove it, you’ve got all day.’ He put down the glass, and stood frowning down at her from under his bushy brows. ‘You’d be well advised to go out and get a breath of air, while the sun’s out, if you feel up to it. You’re going to see more than enough of the inside of this house before today’s over.’
It seemed to her a good idea. She had to get away from them all, and think what was to be done next, since Neil wasn’t to be budged from his position, and had enlightened her only too successfully about the untenable nature of hers. She got to her feet experimentally, and her legs bore her up steadily; the lapse was over.
‘Thanks, I think I will. I’m quite all right now, it was nothing.’
At the door, feeling their eyes following her, she turned. Both the watching faces were wary and intent; their constraint was for each other as well as for her.
‘You’ll bear in mind what I’ve said, won’t you, Neil?’
‘Yes, I promise you I will. I shouldn’t discuss it with anyone else, if I were you,’ said Neil in a carefully casual voice. ‘Anyone outside, I mean.’
‘No, naturally I won’t.’ She went out and closed the door, her heart beating a little more hopefully. Even if he wouldn’t take action, maybe he was still thinking it over, maybe he’d come round to believing her in the end. Why should he agree to become even so far her confederate unless he was making some reassessments in his own mind?
When she let herself out by the front door she stepped into flooding sunshine, and her heart lurched upward into her throat. Under the lee of the terrace room, beneath the glass wall, McHugh was reclining on his skis, basking with closed eyes and a contented smile, and occasionally whistling very softly to prove that he was not asleep. Two days of this, and he would have acquired that peculiar golden-yellow tan mountain sunshine and snow provide between them; he was sure to tan with the same combination of efficiency and luck with which he did everything else. Above his head the façade of glass rose, perforated at the top by the grid of an extractor fan. She wondered, even before he opened one eye and trained it smilingly upon her, how long he had been there; she was mortally afraid that it was too long. Neil had been late in warning her; they should have looked out of the window before they raised their voices.
CHAPTER X
’Tis sport for brazen rogues like you.
Act 1
Neil couldn’t be blamed, she had brought it on herself. Or rather, and that was the most terrible thing about it, she had brought it not on herself but on Laurence. But how could she have dreamed that when she did tell the truth she wouldn’t be believed, she who had never before in her life told a really successful lie? How could she ever have supposed that the lifeline she had held in reserve with such absolute confidence would break and let Laurence fall to his death? She had created this awful situation, it was more than ever up to her to resolve it successfully. If Neil would not help her she must go ahead alone. There were two things, at least, she could try to do; get a message to Laurence, not to justify herself but to do what could be done to reassure him; and search McHugh’s belongings, the only present means she had of investigating the man himself.
She sought out Liesl after lunch, and spent some time working up to the suggestion that Liesl should make use of the house keys to let her into Laurence’s room; and when that was gently but firmly refused, that Liesl should carry Laurence a note when she took in his dinner tray. But it seemed that Franz was taking care of the prisoner’s needs in person, and had forbidden his daughter to enter the room; a natural enough view for a father to take of murderers, when she came to think of it, and what else could Laurence be to him? After that she let the Mehlerts alone, and tried slipping a note under the locked door in a quiet moment around the tea hour, when everyone else was downstairs, but she got no acknowledgement for it, and knew in her heart that he would toss it into the wastebasket as soon as he saw her handwriting. Before she went downstairs again she tried McHugh’s door. His room was next to hers on the balcony that clung to the front of the house, and like hers had a long window on this wooden platform under the wide eaves, but both door and window were secured. The door looked very like her own; if the locks matched, a little private practice in her own room might enable her to break into his. But not yet, not while the house was wide awake and populous.
Miranda did not appear all day, which at an ordinary time Susan would have esteemed as a merciful dispensation; but now her absence weighed even more heavily than her presence would have done. Dr Randall reported her as calmer, and not really ill, but Laurence wasn’t his son, and maybe he was taking altogether too detached a view.
McHugh came indoors when the afternoon sun thinned and grew pale. Susan saw him cruise down vigorously from the meadows, laughing at his own shaken security when he ran from the untrodden planes on to the beaten and frozen snow of the roadway. Frau Agathe was beside him, keeping his speed with ease, checking and turning to correct his errors, and guiding him with advice and encouragement like a young mother helping her baby with his first steps. In dark-brown ski trousers and a thick corn-yellow sweater, with a woollen cap pulled down over her fair hair, she looked like the most leisured and lovely of the winter tourists who never found their way up here to Obershwandegg. She brought him safely to the doorway, slapped from his seat the snow of his last fall, and flashed away homewards still laughing; and presently, having lodged his skis in the rack in the porch, he came in glowing and crashed up the stairs to change, whistling softly to himself and looking sleek and fed like a cat full of cream.
An hour later Frau Agathe came in to begin her evening’s work, sedate and feminine and clearly of local growth in her loden cloak and full skirts. Susan sat in the corner of the bar, after dinner, and watched McHugh’s indoor technique, which was as impressive as his outdoor one. He had reached the point at which he could stroll behind the bar and lift down bottles for himself without being obtrusive about it. Had he advanced so far last night? No one had mentioned it, but his gift was for doing that kind of thing without exciting comment. Was he on the near side of the bar or behind it when Agathe poured out the cognac? And how much would Agathe do for him? Take his word for something and pledge it as her own? Lie for him? Or even—No, beyond that nothing. She was lighthearted and gay, and liked being liked, and she was as ready for a diversion as he was, but there was nothing about her dishonest or corruptible. But there are more ways than one of making use of a woman.
The brandy must have been poisoned as it stood at Richard’s elbow, Neil had said: there was no other possibility. But Neil could be wrong, must be wrong. She was sure of her man. Why should McHugh have dropped the first tentative, flimsy seed of suspicion against Laurence, unless he was covering up for himself? And how could he have pounced unerringly upon the twist of blackened paper in the ashtray, if he had not known where to look for it, and exactly what he would find written on it? No, she could not be wrong. Even his extraordinary and misdirected energy could hardly account for that brief and mischievous career of his as a detective. He knew where to find the burned will because it was he who had burned it and left it there to be found. Only when Franz had passed it by with no more than a glance had McHugh taken charge. If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.
‘At least one person seems to be enjoying himself in Oberschwandegg,’ said Trevor, coming to her side with a glass of white vermouth in his hand. ‘One wonders if Herr Klostermann has disturbed dreams, down there in the valley.’
‘He might have those, in the circumstances,’ said Susan, ‘even if there was no such person as McHugh. She’s a very attractive girl.’
‘She is. He’s probably spending the nights praying for fair weather, and the days digging. Odd he should be a policeman,’ he said with a grimace. ‘There’ll be a welcome for him when he does get through, if not from his wife. He can’t get here too soon for me.’
Susan had no wish for company, and no energy to spare from watching McHugh. She was wondering for how long he might be regarded as immobilised here, and how soon the corridors upstairs would be deserted enough for her to risk an attempt on his door. She was, in fact, reaching the moment when she felt encouraged to say good night and withdraw, when McHugh rose in his place, stretching and hiding a yawn, and took the words clean out of her mouth.
