‘We’ll show John up,’ gloated Paul, twirling his little black moustache. One would hardly have thought that the man was turned thirty-five; he was putting himself on a level with Armorel.
Ethel and I, as apparently the only members of the gathering to retain our common sense, endeavoured to pour cold water on the idea, but to no purpose. Even John Hillyard added his weight to it.
Indeed he made things even worse. ‘Why confine the showing up to me?’ he said, in his slow way. ‘Why not show up the whole tribe? Make a party of it. Invite them all. Half a dozen at least live this side of Devonshire. I’ll ring them up, if you like; I’ve met most of ‘em’.
‘Yes!’ shrieked Armorel. ‘Tell them like this, John:“Tomorrow morning a murder will be committed in the bluebell wood at Minton Deeps. All necessary clues will be in evidence, and detectives will be admitted to the body five minutes after death. Spot the criminal.” ’
‘That’s the idea,’ grinned John, who really appeared to have taken leave of his senses.
‘Whom can we get?’
I shrugged my shoulders at Ethel with a smile. She smiled back resignedly. The children, I gathered, were to be allowed to have their games.
‘Well, there’s Alicia Dammers, near Exeter,’ John was saying. ‘She’s a distinguished authoress, but she has published a detective story. And Morton Harrogate Bradley, at Salcombe. Oh, plenty of them. Yes, and another distinguished authoress who’s gone in for detective stories as a side line, Mrs Fitzwilliam; you know, she writes under the name of Helen Asche, and – ’
‘Helen Fitzwilliam?’ said a voice from the door. ‘I know her. At least I used to at one time, dam’ well. Nice little woman. What about her?’ It was Scott-Davies, of course. No other man I know would speak of a woman like that.
Armorel told him, at the top of her voice.
Eric was good enough to approve. He swaggered into the room and leaned back against the mantelpiece, his hands in his pockets. My presence did not appear to embarrass him in the least.
‘We’ll put it over,’ he said. ‘No, we won’t show old John up; we’ll let him in on it.’ The fellow had quite taken command of the situation, and was now ordering his host about. ‘John, you’ll have to think out a story for us. Usual sort of thing. Quarrel at a house party, what? Hullo Pinkie; dried your hair?’ The man’s effrontery was incredible.
I turned in my chair and pointedly addressed a remark to Mrs de Ravel.
‘Pinkie’s not talking,’ went on the insufferable fellow. ‘Well, John, quarrel at house party. Can you manage that? Now then, who’s to be the corpse?’
‘Well, obviously, you, Eric, my lamb,’ screeched Armorel. ‘Anybody might want to murder you. And anyhow, you couldn’t play any other part, my poor soul.’
‘Right-ho, the corpse for me. And who’s to murder me?’
‘Well, just as obviously,’ sneered Paul de Ravel. ‘Pinkie.’ I never have liked De Ravel.
I was glad to notice that the others looked slightly uncomfortable at this tactless remark.
‘Wait a minute,’ John put in hurriedly. ‘Let’s see if we can’t think of a really brilliant idea for the murderer. Have a quarrel at a house party, by all means; but make that a blind. Have the real murderer someone quite outside the party. Outside the house altogether.’
‘The detective writer’s mind at work,’ breathed Armorel, in pretended awe. ‘Hush, everybody, and listen to the wheels go round.’
‘Carry on, John,’ Eric kindly encouraged his host. That’s the stuff.’
‘Well, we want someone who’s bound to be on the scene in any case,’ John said slowly, ‘so that his presence not only wouldn’t be remarked but wouldn’t even be noticed. Like the postman, in Chesterton’s story. Everybody swore that not a soul had passed, you remember, because though they all saw the postman no one consciously realized him. Can’t we think of someone on those lines? Somebody absolutely insignificant, doing a commonplace job.’
‘Pinkie, talking about his stamp collection,’ guffawed Eric foolishly. Again, I am glad to say, nobody smiled.
‘A ploughman, homeward plodding his weary way,’ suggested Ethel.
‘No-o, not quite,’ dissented her husband.
‘A gamekeeper, complete with gun, shooting rabbits,’ said Armorel. ‘The wicked squire’s made a mess of his daughter,’ she went on, with the complete disregard of the decencies of social converse which one regrets to observe in the present-day young woman, ‘so he conveniently mistakes the squire for a rabbit and pots him.’
‘Not convincing enough,’ sniggered De Ravel. ‘Nobody could mistake Eric for a rabbit. But of course if you switched the rôles round and made Pinkie the corpse – ’
‘Oh, shut up, Paul,’ Armorel snapped.
‘Yes, that’s pretty good, Armorel,’ said John hastily, ‘but I’d like to go one better if possible. They might suspect a gamekeeper. Think of that postman.’
‘I fancy I have an idea,’ drawled Sylvia de Ravel, and she opened her eyes wide and paused to let us prepare our minds for its reception. ‘Not quite on the lines of the postman, perhaps, but on parallel ones. Keep the motif of the wicked young man and the daughter, but make the avenging father not a gamekeeper but the local policeman. He, presumably, would have discovered the body: not murdered it. His presence would certainly be unquestioned.’
‘Magnificent, Sylvia,’ applauded John. ‘The very thing. Yes, that’s the secret motive, and the quarrel among the house party is all eyewash. Why, none of our distinguished victims will ever dream of a hostile cross-examination of the policeman in charge of the body.’
‘Yes, that’s great, Sylvia,’ roared Eric. ‘And by Jove, old Pinkie shall play the policeman. Pinkie as a policeman! Can’t you just see him, eh?’
‘Certainly,’ I smiled quietly. ‘Certainly I’ll play the policeman, if it will amuse anyone.’ For after all, if the thing were decided it would have been spoiling sport on my part to refuse to take part in it; and in any case, I was not going to allow Eric Scott-Davies to put me out of countenance like that.
There was quite a little round of applause at my words, and I gathered that I was unanimously elected to play the star rôle of the policeman. Again it may have been foolish of me, but I experienced quite a little thrill of pleasure, childlike though I knew it to be, at the absurd honour. And incidentally Eric Scott-Davies looked rather foolish at the way his words had been turned against him by the others.
Elsa Verity too, who had not spoken a word since her reappearance with Eric, smiled and nodded her encouragement.
‘Go on, John,’ Armorel was urging. ‘Go and ring up now. Spend pounds while the iron’s hot. You’ll be thinking better of it tomorrow. We’ll do your real work for you in here.’
John rose. ‘Very well, perhaps I’d better. Cyril, you might come along with me and look up the numbers.’
I followed him out of the room. John has never been notorious for tact, but his manoeuvre to separate me from Eric Scott-Davies, though obvious, was well enough meant, and I was by no means sorry to take advantage of it.
We must have been absent from the room nearly three quarters of an hour. During that time John seemed to me to be talking to most of the authors in Devonshire, but only three were able to come the next day. In a hurried preliminary conversation John and I agreed that we could hardly be ready in the morning, and the little farce must be played in the afternoon. We were therefore able to return to the drawing room with the information that Mr Morton Harrogate Bradley, the well known detective-story novelist, Professor Johnson of Bolberry University, who wrote under the name of ‘A W Henry’, and Helen Asche (or Mrs Fitzwilliam), were coming to lunch on the following day, prepared to make sport for us. Ethel of course threw up her hands and objected that it was impossible to lunch three extra people at such short notice, but the others, including John, made light of her protests.
It was now past eleven o’clock, but the discussion was still in full swing. Whatever happened
, it seemed, a story must be decided upon before anyone went to bed.
‘Come on, John,’ Eric commanded. ‘We don’t seem to be getting any further. Set the machinery to work.’
‘We must have a really convincing quarrel, you see,’ Armorel amplified. They’re sure to question us about it, and we ought to have our answers pat.’
‘Ought to act it really, as I said,’ put in De Ravel. ‘Get the details then. It’s details that make a thing sound convincing, isn’t it, John?’
‘Yes, but how on earth does one invent a quarrel to bring in – what is it? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven people, John?’ Armorel demanded.
John helped himself to another whisky-and-soda, leaned back in his chair, and looked his most authorish. ‘Well-l-l-l,’ he debated. To everyone’s surprise Mrs de Ravel leaned forward. ‘If I might make a suggestion?’ she said slowly. ‘Of course,’ John said. ‘Good gracious, yes, do. You’ve already solved our main problem for us. Can you solve this one too?’ Mrs de Ravel made her usual long pause. ‘I think so,’ she said, more slowly still.
I fancy everyone had something of the same feeling as myself, namely that Mrs de Ravel’s manner was ominous. Even discounting her invariable attempt to produce an impression, I had an uncomfortable impression of something really sinister pending as she leaned forward in her chair and looked round at each of us with her glinting green eyes.
‘After all,’ she went on, in a more normal voice (though Mrs de Ravel’s voice can never be called quite normal), ‘after all, why bother to invent a fresh set of characters? Why not just impersonate ourselves, so to speak?’
‘Impersonate ourselves?’ said Ethel placidly. ‘What an odd idea!’
‘But so simple,’ smiled Mrs de Ravel in her silkiest tones, like black satin. ‘Then all we need do is to invent the situation. Now let me see: what is the most improbable situation for us six? Detective-story quarrels always involve such an improbable situation, don’t they, John? Well, what about something like this?’
She paused again, and looked round at us. And now there was quite definitely in her eyes that look of malicious gloating I fancied I had detected there before. I began to feel more and more uncomfortable. Something quite unfortunate was coming, I made no doubt.
I was right. It came.
‘Suppose that Eric has been my lover.’
I don’t know what the others did, but I know that I caught my own breath with something like a gasp. The calm way in which the woman spoke these terrible words simply left me breathless.
‘Suppose that Eric has been my lover,’ she repeated, her eyes fixed now on John. ‘And suppose that he still loves me, and I him, but that for financial reasons he has decided that he must give me up, and marry for money – marry, we’ll say, some silly, empty-headed, bread-and-butter miss, for his bread and butter. Could you act that part, do think?’ she said suddenly, almost fiercely, turning upon Miss Verity.
‘I – I think so,’ Elsa Verity stammered, as if taken aback (and certainly she had good cause to be so). ‘I’ll – try, if you like.’
‘Good!’ said Mrs de Ravel, and it seemed to my alarmed imagination that the way she spoke the word was like a cry of malignant triumph. ‘But you, Miss Verity, are the ward of John and Ethel, and they don’t at all want you to marry a man like Eric – ’
‘Oh, I’m to be your ward, John,’ interrupted Elsa, in sheer nervousness. ‘How nice!’
‘ – a man like Eric,’ pursued Mrs de Ravel implacably, ‘whom they consider a wastrel and a rotter. Wrongly, no doubt, but they do. You don’t mind, Eric,’ she drawled, ‘being considered a wastrel and a rotter for the sake of my plot?’
‘Only too charmed,’ Eric tried to grin, but his attempt was feeble and I could see that the man’s alarm was little less than my own. And as for myself, my discomfort was by now so acute that the sensation was almost physical.
But Mrs de Ravel would spare none of us. ‘Unfortunately, however, Paul has discovered the truth about me and Eric, through overhearing a scene between us in which I tax my lover with intending to give me up for mere money, and threaten that if I cannot have him no woman shall. That, you see, dearest,’ she added to her husband, ‘gives you a motive for killing Eric, too.’ I had never heard Mrs de Ravel use an endearment to her husband before, nor did I ever again; and it seemed, as she said it, the most terrible thing I had ever heard.
It was almost incredible that the numbskull had perceived no hidden meaning in his wife’s words, but apparently he had not. ‘That’s right,’ he nodded, stroking his little black moustache with a complacent air and completely oblivious of the electricity with which the room seemed filled. ‘That’s right. I could shoot you like a dog, eh, Eric?’
‘Like a definition bow-wow,’ Eric agreed, but his usual blatant laugh failed to ring out. I noticed him casting uneasy glances at John as if imploring help. Even Eric’s thick hide had been riddled.
John did speak, but he gave Eric no help. To my astonishment he was just as cool as ever. My opinion of John rose very rapidly at that moment. I had done him an injustice. ‘That’s very good, Sylvia,’ he said, in quite his normal tones. ‘I should think that ought to do very well. It gives, as you say, Paul a motive, and myself a motive because I’m so fond of Elsa that I’d rather run the risk of hanging than see her married to such a low fellow as Eric. No, I’m afraid Sylvia’s plot doesn’t leave you with much of a character, Eric.’
‘Doesn’t seem to,’ Scott-Davies mumbled. He was not a good prevaricator.
‘And of course it gives you a motive too, Sylvia,’ John pursued tranquilly.
‘Oh, yes,’ nodded Mrs de Ravel. ‘Oh, yes. It gives me a motive too.’
‘Poor Eric!’ laughed Elsa, still somewhat nervously. I think she saw that something curious was happening, but did not understand what. ‘Poor Eric! Everybody seems to want to kill him except me. Never mind, Eric. I don’t, you know.’
‘No,’ John agreed. ‘I’m afraid nobody could find a motive for you, Elsa. You’ll have to be content with being the cause of all the trouble.’
‘I feel terribly important,’ tremulously smiled the dear child.
‘And if Cyril plays the policeman he’s out of it too,’ continued John, who had now placidly taken things into his own hands. ‘And so is Ethel. As a model hostess she’s far too busy housekeeping for the party to have time for killing any of it. But Armorel – ’
‘Hullo?’ said Armorel. She tried to speak naturally, but I noticed a little quiver in her voice. She of course had missed nothing of what had passed. ‘Don’t say you’re going to give me a motive for wiping out Eric too?’
‘Oh, yes; we must have you in. What do you suggest, Sylvia? Couldn’t Armorel be violently in love with Eric too?’
‘Oh, my God,’ said Armorel coarsely.
‘We mustn’t strain the probabilities too far,’ glinted Mrs de Ravel.
‘Anyhow, what’s the idea, John?’ Armorel demanded. ‘Am I one of those trying females who devour their mates? Like the spider, or whatever they used to teach us.’
‘No, I think something like this. You love Eric, and in spite of his entanglements you think he loves you, so being a romantic young woman you’re all for a suicide pact, and – ’
‘One minute, John,’ drawled Mrs de Ravel. ‘We mustn’t have too much of the same kind of motive, surely. Why not give Armorel a different one? If Eric dies, let us say, she inherits Stukeleigh and whatever is left of the family fortunes that Eric has not squandered. You’ll have to be a squanderer as well as a cad, Eric, for my plot.’
This time Eric was able only to grunt. I looked at Armorel. She had gone as white as the white dress she was wearing.
But Mrs de Ravel would have no mercy. ‘There’s been some talk of Eric selling Stukeleigh, you see,’ she continued deftly, her eyes fixed on Armorel. ‘You, a person of far more delicate sensibilities than Eric, are naturally horrified at the idea. Besides, you want it for yourself. Wouldn’t that be
better, John?’
‘Perhaps it would,’ said John, but he spoke a little doubtfully.
I was still looking at Armorel. In spite of desperate attempts to control herself the girl was visibly shaken. Had my imagination been unkindly stimulated by Mrs de Ravel’s words, or was there really only too sound a basis for this new insinuation? In any case, the woman was a devil.
Armorel bit her lip. ‘V – very well,’ she said uncertainly. ‘That’s all right for me.’ I had never seen Armorel Scott-Davies lose her self-possession before.
Again John took charge. He began to tell us what we should do, setting out the closest details: how I was to follow Eric down to the stream, where he was to go and where I was to catch him up, how I was to get from him the gun he had under his arm, and all the rest of it. Mrs de Ravel took up the discussion with him about the quarrel in the house party. She insisted that her husband’s suggestion of acting it, in order to be pat with convincing answers on its details, should be adopted. John was not sure we need bother to do that. They argued, and eventually, backed by De Ravel himself, Mrs de Ravel carried the point.
It may all have been most interesting and amusing. No doubt it was. But I found myself unable to pay the least attention to it. There is a trite metaphor about sitting on the edge of a volcano. If ever I have felt myself to be on the edge of a metaphorical volcano it was in Ethel’s drawing room that evening.
When at last, well past one o’clock, we finally did disperse to bed, I made an opportunity for a word alone with Ethel. I told her frankly that the thing should be stopped. ‘Believe me,’ I said earnestly, ‘Mrs de Ravel is dangerous. I’m certain she has some plan of her own in mind.’
To my astonishment I perceived that Ethel’s eyes were sparkling with excitement. ‘I know,’ she said rapidly. ‘I know she has. She’s going to strike at last, in her own way. Don’t interfere, Cyril, please. Things are going better than anything I could possibly have arranged myself.’
‘But the danger is over,’ I protested. ‘After this evening, I should hardly imagine that Miss Verity could fail to see Eric in his true colours. There will be no more thought of an engagement. So why let Mrs de Ravel play with fire in this way?’
The Second Shot Page 5
