The Hunter and the Trapped

by Josephine Bell

  Hubert joined John in front of the door.

  “You’re not leaving this room, Fawcett,” he said, harshly. “You killed that poor woman, Mrs. Morris, and you’ll answer for that if we have to use force to keep you here till the police come for you. You killed her and you know it.”

  Simon nodded gravely.

  “I killed her, yes. I meant to kill her. I rid the world of an evil pest. Now stand aside and let us pass!”

  Diana wrenched her hands away. His confession and the way he had made it shook her faith in him at last, toppled her belief in his goodness, his greatness, which had always cancelled out, for her, his ultimate egotism. She struggled to blot out the revelation of his true condition, to struggle back from the abyss into which she was reeling.

  “We can’t go,” she stammered. “Don’t you see, you must stay and face them. Prove that you didn’t do it! Swear you didn’t really do it!”

  “Come,” Simon urged. “Come. I’ll take you away as you have always wanted me to do.”

  “Never! I’ve never wanted that!”

  Her world was tottering, but she knew that what she had just said was the truth.

  “William will divorce you. I’ll take you away and marry you.”

  “No!” she shouted, more appalled by his public avowal, his disregard of his own predicament, his apparent wish to drag her into his own ruin, than by his calm acceptance of his crime. “No, no! I would never have asked for a divorce. I would never have married you!”

  She spoke from her heart in absolute sincerity and her stunned audience knew it was the truth. Simon knew it too. She was one of them – the enemy – the false friends – the pursuers. He sprang at her, his strong hands closed round her throat.

  In a second the room was in an uproar. The three men who had watched the scene between those two in amazement, in horror, woke instantly from their stupefaction to rescue Diana and overpower the murderer. His grip was so strong that she was barely conscious when released. William carried her to the sofa and laid her on it; then knelt beside her in an agony of fear and compassion.

  Meanwhile Simon fought on, but not for long. The combined efforts of Hubert and John secured him at last. He lay on the floor, eyes closed, limp, motionless.

  “It’s what he did before,” John panted, kneeling beside the prostrate form.

  “We’d better tie him up before he comes round,” Hubert said, getting to his feet.

  “No, you won’t!”

  Penelope was on her knees beside Simon, loosening his tie, feeling for his pulse. “He’s ill. He’s terribly ill!”

  Mrs. Allingham, roused from her rest by the commotion, appeared in the room at this moment. She asked no questions, but after standing for a few seconds, seemed to understand what had happened and moved quickly to the sofa.

  Diana stirred, opened her eyes and saw William’s stricken face near her own.

  “My darling,” he said, brokenly. “My poor darling.”

  She gave a little choking sob and turning from him buried her face in the cushion beside her.

  Mrs. Allingham said quickly, “Penny, fetch some water and glasses.”

  William got to his feet. Diana rejected him now, but she would never leave him. His torn heart, his deep humiliation, did not count beside that one grain of doubtful consolation.

  He put John aside and knelt and examined Simon. Hubert repeated his brutal advice. William said roughly, “Quite unnecessary. He’ll probably stay like this for a bit. If he doesn’t, I’ll give him a shot.”

  He went to the house phone first to tell Mrs. Stone to bring him up a prepared syringe of morphine. Then he called in turn a hospital, the local Mental Health officer and finally a psychiatric colleague.

  “Paranoid schiz.,” he said to the latter. “Tell you more when you get here. It’s very urgent. Hurry.”

  “What are you doing?” Hubert said, angrily. “The cops will be here any minute now. If he’s really mad they’ll cope.”

  “If? It couldn’t be a more obvious case, poor devil. Don’t tell me you aren’t convinced, yet?”

  “Probably shamming,” Hubert answered. “Shown cunning all along the line.”

  The bell rang. John went out to answer it. Hubert, expecting Chief-inspector Mont, followed. But it was only Mrs. Stone with the injection.

  She brought it to William, who told her to bring up immediately the various people he had organised for Simon’s relief. Then she took the lift down again.

  In the drawing room Simon sat upright, looked about him and began to murmur to himself. Penelope bent over him, offering a glass of water. Pity had removed her fear.

  Without looking at her Simon took the glass and drank. Then he got slowly to his feet, still murmuring to himself and walking across the room to the upright chair at Diana’s writing desk, sat down on it. His voice rose a little, so that those in the room could hear him.

  “Don’t speak to them, Simon,” the voice said. “You are above their wicked acts. Don’t listen to them. They cannot harm you, Simon. Your enemies will die. Don’t speak.”

  “God have mercy on us all,” prayed Mrs. Allingham aloud. “Protect us, oh Lord, from this present evil and deliver us from the power of evil at all times, for the sake of Thy Son our Saviour and Redeemer.”

  Hubert, at the window, exclaimed, “At last. Wonder what held them up,” and marched to the door.

  “This is my house,” said William, “and I say who comes in and who does not. I’ve told Mrs. Stone to put the police in my consulting room where I’ll speak to them when my patient is in the ambulance.”

  “Has everyone in this house gone crazy?” Hubert thundered, but nobody took any notice of him.

  William went up to Simon and spoke to him, gently.

  “You’re ill, Simon,” he said. “I’m going to send you into hospital as soon as another doctor has seen you. Can you hear me? Do you know what I’m saying?”

  Diana raised herself. She looked dazed and sick, but she took the glass that Mrs. Allingham offered her and drank.

  “Come and lie down in your own room, my dear,” the old woman said. “You are not fit to bear any more.”

  But Diana only said, “Leave me alone,” and sat forward, staring at Simon, trying to discover in the ravaged face across the room any last trace of the lover she had adored.

  For several seconds William stood beside the still figure, waiting for an answer. Then he moved away.

  “Perhaps you’d go down, Hubert,” he said. “Tell the Inspector what the position is. Tell him he must wait in the interests of the patient.”

  “The interests of a murderer! What about the interests of justice!”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake …” William was exasperated.

  “Shall I go?” John offered. “I’ve seen him in this state before.”

  Simon got to his feet in one smooth movement.

  “You’re all talking about me – discussing me as if I no longer existed. I’ve heard it before. Dr. Marshall – that was his name, tell Mont, not Gordon – He talked like that the other time. The other hell – Months and months – Never again!”

  His voice was rising all the time. William darted to the table where he had laid the syringe holding the injection and began to unscrew the cap of its container. Hubert near the door turned with his back to it. John sprang to join him.

  “What did I tell you?” Hubert cried. “You wouldn’t be warned!”

  Simon laughed. He snatched Diana up from the sofa and dragged her to the window, holding her in one arm while he flung up the lower pane with the other.

  “We’re going, my love!” he shouted. “Whether you like it or not we’re going together and to hell with them all!”

  Diana screamed. John and Penelope started forward. But William was quicker than either. He dropped the syringe, sprang forward and pulled Diana away as Simon flung himself forward. John grasped at the clutching hands as their grip on Diana loosened and was himself dragged half out of the window.
But Simon, giving a last convulsive effort, freed himself and with an exultant shout fell to the pavement sixty feet below.

  Chapter Eleven

  There was nothing that any of them could do. They were appalled, stunned, helpless: Hubert most of all, in the blinding revelation of where his pursuit had led. It was William who moved first. Laying the now fainting Diana on the sofa, with a brief direction to his mother, he dashed down the stairs.

  The instant hubbub in the street when Simon fell had come at once to the ears of Mrs. Stone, who had hurried to tell the police officers waiting in William’s consulting room at the back of the house. So when he arrived in the hall he found the front door open and a crowd on his doorstep, through which he had to force his way. By the time he got to the centre of interest, to Chief-inspector Mont and Sergeant Clay kneeling by Simon’s shattered body, an ambulance had drawn up and a private car was coming in to the kerb a few yards behind it.

  The ambulance men helped Clay to force back the crowd. The men had been told the nature of the case they had been sent to convey to a mental hospital, so they were not altogether surprised at the outcome. The doctors seemed to have slipped up: not for the first time in such cases. They were always shy of certifying on account of the danger of legal retaliation later if the patient recovered. Tricky business, these mental cases, whichever way you looked at it.

  The Mental Health officer who had arrived in the car was admitted to the circle round the dead man. He too, took in the situation at a glance and asked at once for Dr. Allingham.

  “I am Dr. Allingham,” said William. “I sent for you, but as you see there is nothing now to be done.”

  Mont looked up. He had identified Simon by his wallet, which had fallen from him as he hurtled down, together with other small objects, coins and a pen, a pocket comb, a diary. Mont had noticed too, the six five-pound notes, the thirty pounds of untouched currency. The money was sufficient proof to him of Simon’s guilt. There would now be no need to prove it in a court of law. Only to convince them at the Yard and sort out the details of the suicide.

  “I’d like to speak to you directly, sir,” he said to William.

  “Of course.”

  The ambulance men brought their stretcher, covered Simon, took him away to the mortuary. Mont went back into the house with Clay, William and the Mental Health officer. The crowd lingered, looking alternately upward at the now closed top window of the house and downward at the blood stains on the pavement.

  Above in the Allinghams’ drawing room the stricken silence continued. Only now Penelope had drawn close to John and he had an arm about her, and Diana, having recovered from her faint, was sitting up in a corner of the sofa, her head resting against the back of it, her eyes closed, her face white and unmoving. Mrs. Allingham knelt beside her, her lips moving in fervent, terrified prayer. Only Hubert, though he did not speak, moved restlessly about the room, often going abruptly to the window and leaving it again as abruptly.

  When William came back into the room they all, except Diana, exclaimed aloud and moved towards him.

  He said, quickly, “There was nothing to be done for him, as you must all have realised.”

  John said, “He’s dead, then?”

  “Yes.”

  Diana gave a little moan, swaying her head from side to side. William went up to her.

  “It must have been instantaneous, my darling. He can’t have suffered at all. In his state of mind at the time, I doubt if he appreciated what he was doing or what would happen to him.”

  Diana opened her eyes. Behind the despairing grief there was a gleam of contempt.

  “I was close to him before you pulled me away. I saw the look in his eyes. I shall never stop seeing it, God help me – never! He knew everything. What he had done and what he was going to do.”

  She flung out her hands.

  “You should have let me go with him! You should have let me die, too! How am I to live with that memory?”

  “I ought to have given him a shot when he collapsed. At once,” William said, hoarsely. “It was my fault from the beginning. I wouldn’t let myself make the obvious diagnosis. A mild schizophrenic, I often thought. Unimportant. God forgive me, I wanted him always to be unimportant.”

  He turned away, shaken by his failure as a doctor, by his failure as a husband, by his refusal to accept reality.

  “That’s beside the point,” Hubert told him. “Your only responsibility was in not letting the police up here when they arrived. You bear a heavy responsibility for that.”

  “Are you disappointed because you didn’t see him arrested?” Penelope cried, in a fury of sorrow and disgust. “Are you feeling baulked of the handcuffs and the publicity and the disgrace? Baulked of your revolting revenge?”

  Hubert put a hand up to his eyes. He was no sadist. His cruelty came from a blunt vision, a rigid code and great legal integrity. His daughter’s contempt hurt him bitterly, confused as he was by the shock of Simon’s death.

  “The man was a murderer,” was all he could find to say.

  “He was a child,” Penelope sobbed, remembering her lover’s charm, his wit, his delight in easy pleasures. She turned to John for comfort. “A poor lost child!”

  “I ought to have seen it earlier,” John murmured over her bowed head, holding her close. “But he seemed so normal most of the time.”

  He grieved for Penny’s grief, but knew that Simon’s death had brought him her truer love.

  “It was God’s will,” Mrs. Allingham said, in a shaky voice. “He was an embodiment of evil and he did evil. He has destroyed himself as evil is meant to be destroyed.”

  “If I were your God,” said John, outraged by this, “I would call that blasphemy!”

  Diana spoke, slowly and with difficulty.

  “You are all making excuses. For yourselves. I make no excuses. I am the only one who loved him, truly loved him. And I am guilty, too. But I make no excuse. I loved him.”

  A call came through on the house telephone. Chief-inspector Mont and the Mental Health officer would like to say a few words to them all.

  Mrs. Stone, pale, shaken, but competent as ever, brought the two men to the flat and left again discreetly. It occurred to William for the first time to wonder what she had thought of Simon, how much she had guessed of his place in the lives of those assembled. He would never know. Mont, grave-faced and upright, looking as solemn as if he were in church, would have learned nothing from her, either. This was entirely obvious when the Chief-inspector began to speak.

  “I thought it might be helpful to you all if I told you, at this stage, as much as I can about the – er – deceased,” he began.

  He glanced round his audience, so quiet, so self-contained. The one on the sofa, who seemed to have suffered the most shock, would be Mrs. Allingham. The old lady perhaps her mother or his.

  “I discovered certain things in the course of my investigations into the murder of Mrs. Morris that led me to conclude that Mr. Fawcett was responsible. But also that his act was due to mental unbalance. This is confirmed by Dr. Allingham’s diagnosis, made here this afternoon, when Fawcett finally broke down and showed that he was indeed insane.”

  He paused. The faces turned towards him gave him no help. These people, he thought bitterly, would never have helped him. They were strong in their quick intelligence, their habit of individual thought, their tradition of command, their unassailable self-confidence. He could see that they were suffering, but in front of strangers, such as himself, they were in control of that, too. Their facade was perfect, unbreakable.

  “Mr. Fawcett,” he went on quietly and deliberately, “suffered from schizophrenia from the age of eighteen. He had always been a shy, withdrawn child. At eighteen he killed a little boy of twelve in his first paranoiac attack.”

  That shocked them. There were cries from the women, gasps from the men, stammered questions, denials. He had broken through, temporarily at any rate.

  “There is absolute proof of it,�
�� he told them and gave them the evidence he had discovered. “Following that incident, which no one suspected at the time, he was acutely ill for a number of years, his true condition being most unwisely kept secret by his parents. Or as secret as possible. I think the village where they lived knew pretty well what was the matter, but they loved and respected his father, the vicar. As Dr. Allingham has told me, the disease may become quiescent for years, perhaps for the whole life-time. This was so in Mr. Fawcett’s case, for many years. I have no absolute proof of his motive for killing Mrs. Morris, but motive is hard to pin down in the case of the insane. It need not be adequate from a common sense point of view.”

  He paused again. The thirty pounds in Fawcett’s wallet had convinced him that attempted blackmail by Mrs. Morris was the motive, the missing cheque the object to be bought. Its absence had triggered off the violence. But he had no absolute proof here and thanked his stars he need never find it.

  “In any case,” he went on, “Dr. Allingham tells me he confessed to the murder. Taken with the clear diagnosis and in the absence of other suspects …”

  “There was a Mr. Nelson …” began Diana, coldly. But she stopped, seeing how pointless was any argument, how fruitless, now that Simon was dead.

  “The weight of evidence points to Mr. Fawcett, madam,” said Mont, politely. “I am quite satisfied and I am sure my superiors will be, too.”

  “There will be an inquest, of course,” said Hubert. “How much of what you have told us will come out, then?”

  “It depends on the coroner, sir,” answered Mont. “The earlier murder case is closed. I don’t think it need be mentioned. There is sufficient evidence of the onset of the disease without that. Schizophrenia being fully established, the rest follows.”

  “You will want some of us to give evidence at the inquest, won’t you?” Hubert asked.

  “Just Dr. Allingham, I should think sir. But the coroner …”

  “Jardine,” said Hubert to William. “I’ll have a word with him.” The latter nodded.

  “There’s just one thing more I think you’d all like to know,” Mont said, anxious to end this uncomfortable interview. “I got in touch on the phone downstairs with a Mr. George Clark, a friend of the deceased. He was a close friend – in fact, as far as I know, the only intimate friend Mr. Fawcett had. Mr. Clark was naturally most upset, but he agreed at once to act in the matter, arrange burial, get in touch with the college, any relatives that can be found, wind up affairs and so on. I’m telling you this because you might feel in some way responsible, seeing that – well, that it happened here. And being, to some extent, acquainted with Mr. Fawcett.”