In due course Colonel Grace and Superintendent Hancock drove away, and the party began to drift towards its respective bedrooms.
‘Don’t go up for a minute or two, Pinkertons,’ Sheringham remarked carelessly. ‘Come and keep me company on a moonlit stroll. I shan’t be able to sleep after all that tensity without a little soothing moonlight.’
I was by no means reluctant, and though I suggested that the night air might be chilly for Armorel, for it was now long past midnight, she pooh-poohed the idea and insisted on coming with us.
Sheringham led the way along the lane, and in a few minutes we were out of sight, as well as out of sound, of the house. I perceived that Sheringham was making for a rough bench which John had erected under a clump of beech trees a few hundred yards away, from which in the daytime a fine view was obtainable over the valley and the distant sea. We reached it and seated ourselves.
On the way I had been turning over in my mind a few fitting phrases of thanks to Sheringham for the magnificent manner in which he had rescued us both from our terrible predicament, and I was beginning to deliver these when he cut me abruptly short.
‘Yes, yes, Tapers,’ he said, quite impatiently. ‘That’s all right. Now listen, you two. I’ve brought you here for a purpose, because I think you ought to know the truth. I’m telling it to no one else, not even Hillyard, but in a way I do think it’s owed to you, considering that you laid down the conditions under which I’ve worked and under which I propose to keep silent. Not that I want you to share the responsibility for silence; I’m quite prepared to take all of that, and after tonight you can forget entirely what I’m going to tell you now.’
‘The – the truth?’ I repeated in astonishment. ‘What truth?’
‘Who shot Scott-Davies,’ Sheringham replied shortly.
‘But – I thought you’d proved it was an accident?’
‘So I did – on faked evidence.’
I must have uttered an exclamation of dismay, for Sheringham laughed. ‘Yes, I faked that evidence of the smoke-blackened twig. I shot at it myself, yesterday. It was half-broken already, and the leaves withered, so there won’t be a fresh-looking break to give me away. And as for the track on the grass, I invented it completely.’
‘But – why?’ I stammered.
Sheringham’s voice became serious. ‘Because if ever a man deserved shooting, Scott-Davies did – though he was your cousin, Armorel. And I for one am not going to give away the person who very rightly did it. What’s more, I’m prepared to fake evidence and commit perjury tomorrow to ensure that no suspicion ever so much as touches her.’
‘Her!’ I repeated.
‘Yes, of course,’ Sheringham said, quite testily. ‘Isn’t it obvious, after what I told you before dinner? Scott-Davies and Elsa Verity got engaged, I said, not that morning at all, but the evening before.’
‘You don’t mean that – that Elsa shot him?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘But – but – ’
‘Be quiet, dear, and let Roger tell us,’ Armorel said gently, but she gave my hand, which she was holding, a tight squeeze which said more than her words.
‘There’s very little to tell,’ Sheringham said moodily. ‘And it’s not a nice story. Somehow or other Scott-Davies must have persuaded her that evening that he had acted only from the best intentions, Tapers, in throwing you into the pool, and got her promise to marry him. She admitted that to me, but didn’t seem to realize its importance. And she told me as well that he seemed very anxious to keep the engagement secret for a few days. She hadn’t told anyone else these two facts, she said, because she didn’t want to talk about the thing at all and anyhow they didn’t matter. I agreed, of course, but added that having concealed them so far she had better continue to do so, which she said she would. I couldn’t make too much of a point of secrecy in case she realized that I’d seen the truth, but I don’t think she will tell anyone else.
‘Well, the reason for Scott-Davies’ insistence of keeping the engagement secret is clear enough, isn’t it? He was afraid of what Mrs de Ravel might do. He was sure she had something up her sleeve for him, but didn’t know what; he wanted to find that out before the engagement could be announced. And that same evening Mrs de Ravel obligingly informed him. She was going to stage that extremely awkward scene in front of her husband.
‘Your cousin was no fool, Armorel. He knew that Elsa’s eyes would infallibly be opened both to the sort of man he really was and to the fact that he wanted to marry her merely for her money. He had one night in which to ensure that however wide the girl’s eyes were opened, marriage would be inevitable; her feelings of course didn’t matter. And he took the obvious method. Mrs de Ravel, who had developed almost a sixth sense where Scott-Davies was concerned, heard a board creak in the passage that night. She got out of bed and opened her door a fraction – and saw Scott-Davies disappearing into Elsa’s room.’
‘Oh!’ said Armorel, in a low tone of distress. ‘But why didn’t she stop him, or go and tell Ethel, or something?’
‘I don’t think Mrs de Ravel is a very nice person,’ Sheringham replied levelly. ‘She had a rod in pickle for Eric, which she was certain would bring him to heel, and she hated Elsa. It amused her own brand of cat-and-mouse cruelty to use Scott-Davies in order to achieve that particularly horrible revenge on her rival, even though it meant her lover’s own temporary amusement. She must have suffered agonies of jealousy that night, but she bore them because her reason told her that it was the most effective revenge she could have on Elsa. Like most self-centred people, however, she underestimated both her opponents. Eric did not come to heel the next day; instead he threw his engagement slap in her face. And Elsa Verity did not give him up in distressed disgust when she realized the truth about the man; she exacted the value which she very properly put upon herself, and shot him.’
‘And Sylvia told you all this?’ asked Armorel.
‘She admitted, under pressure,’ Sheringham replied carefully, ‘that she saw Scott-Davies going into Elsa’s room. I asked her why she took no steps immediately, and she shrugged her shoulders and yawned and said why should she have done, it wasn’t any business of hers, she saw no reason to interfere in other people’s amusements. Her real reason, of course, was plain.’
‘But it never occurred to her that Elsa – ’
‘Shot him? Oh, no. She had begun by underestimating her, and she went on. She was quite sure that her husband had shot Scott-Davies in a fit of Latin exuberance.’
‘And how do you imagine Elsa went about it?’ Armorel asked calmly.
‘Isn’t it obvious? Elsa was the person Scott-Davies was waiting to meet; Elsa knew where the rifle had been left; and it was Elsa, Tapers, who stood at that bend in the path, as you very acutely suggested, and waited. Did you know about those footprints, Armorel?’
‘Yes.’
‘I admit that I suspected at one time that they were yours. Your shoes fitted my outline exactly. Then I found that Elsa’s do too.’
‘Yes, we take the same size,’ Armorel nodded.
‘Armorel,’ I said suddenly, ‘I don’t think – ’
‘What?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ I said feebly. Armorel had squeezed my hand so hard that I could not mistake her meaning. I was not to interrupt.
‘So that’s that, is it?’ Armorel said slowly. ‘And now all three of us forget all about it, and not another soul ever knows?’
‘Yes. And tomorrow a verdict of accidental death is returned, and that will be the end.’
‘Yes.’ Dimly I could see Armorel’s profile as she stared ahead into the darkness. ‘Oh, Roger,’ she said softly, ‘thank God he’s dead. Such men ought not to be allowed to go on living. I think it’s wonderful that anyone should have the courage to accept that and – act on it.’
‘Yes,’ said Sheringham. ‘I agree.’
We sat for a few moments in silence. In the woods below us where Scott-Davies had met his well deserved d
eath, an owl was hooting mournfully. A glimmer in the far distance showed where the moonlight struck on the sea.
‘Poor Elsa!’ Armorel whispered.
epilogue
I have finished my manuscript at last.
It is now nearly three years since I began to write it, working so feverishly on it that hot afternoon in my bedroom at Minton Deeps. The reasons that have caused me to bring it to an end are very different from that which prompted its inauguration. I can say now that this latter, too, was not by any means the one with which I so carefully prefaced my story.
Briefly, I began the writing of this narrative for the sole benefit of the police.
When I realized, three years ago, that the police suspicion in connection with the death of Eric Scott-Davies was becoming more and more dangerously crystallized on myself, I tried not to give way to panic or lose my head; I knew that something must be done, and I set about doing it. It was obvious that Superintendent Hancock’s feeling about me was due to two suppositions, both erroneous: firstly, that I had had the best opportunity of shooting Scott-Davies as I was the only person known to have been down by the stream when the second shot was fired, and secondly, that I had the only motive. With the first of these I could deal only by reiterating the plain truth, that it could not possibly have been the second shot which had killed him; for the second I had to adopt more subtle methods.
When the police inquiry first began I was anxious that nothing reflecting upon anyone else should reach their ears. I soon realized that this attitude was unnecessarily quixotic. It could not after all be unfair to the others that the police should realize the plain fact that so far from my being the only one with a motive, every single person in our little party (except, so far as I knew then, Elsa Verity) had a motive, and in all cases a far stronger one than mine. If it had been a matter of one other person only, my decision might have been different. But if ever there was safety in numbers, it was in this case. With everyone shown as having an interest in Eric’s death, how could one person be singled out more than another? Where one alone was not safe, all together were. The trail would become confused, complicated, impossible to decipher, incapable of proof.
The police, then, I decided, must be informed of the exact circumstances leading up to Scott-Davies’ death, with all the hidden intrigue and byplay that would reveal these different motives. But how?
It was useless for me to tell them verbally. Any statement I might make would be sniffed at immediately as tainted, a mere subterfuge to remove suspicion from myself; it could carry no real conviction. The only way was to introduce the knowledge to them in such a way as to lead them to believe that they were discovering it for themselves, almost against the will of the narrator. But once more, how?
And so I conceived the idea of writing it all up in detail in the form of fiction, reconstructing the conversations, setting down every incident as it actually happened. I knew that every action of mine would be watched. If I made a great show of concealing the manuscript, it would certainly be removed and read. It amused me to write down plainly in my story that I was at some pains, when I hid the box containing it among the roots of that gorse bush, to ascertain whether I had been followed or not. I did make sure of exactly that thing, and I had been followed. It was simple to arrange the lid of the box in such a way that I should know instantly whether it had been opened. It had been, of course.
That, then, was the urgent reason which brought perhaps the first hundred pages of this story into being; and when the necessity was past, and Armorel and I had left Minton Deeps for our delayed honeymoon, I put the thing aside, as I thought, for good. But it is a characteristic of mine never to leave any task to which I have put my hand half-finished. Coming across the manuscript some months afterwards, I added a few chapters just for my own amusement and as a form of mental exercise; and so it has gone on. I am still, however, in doubt whether to send it to a publisher or not, although I have altered all the names so that (now Eric Scott-Davies and his unexpected death have been almost forgotten) the persons and incidents would hardly be recognized.
If I do, however, this epilogue will not go with it. That is written for my own amusement solely. I shall destroy it as soon as it is finished, for such things are dangerous; but just the mere act of setting down on paper what I intend is strangely exciting. If things had not turned out as they did…
These three years have been very happy ones. Working together at and for Stukeleigh and its tenantry, Armorel and I have developed into a deep affection that first impulse, based no doubt upon a combination of fear and gratitude, which brought us together. I cannot in honesty say that all my schemes for Armorel’s regeneration have worked out exactly as I planned them. Indeed, some of those who knew us both before and since our marriage affirm that I have altered more than she. That may be, for certainly Armorel seems to have altered very little, while I – well, it may sound paradoxical but it is perfectly true that the older I get the younger I feel. I can only hope that with Armorel’s stimulating companionship the process will continue indefinitely.
It seems strange to remember now that once I stood on the very threshold of the gallows.
Is it only thanks to Sheringham that I never stood actually upon them? One cannot say. Personally, I do not think now that on the meagre case the police had against me, things would ever have come to the point of arrest; nor, if they had, is it conceivable that on such very indefinite evidence I could ever have been convicted. Still, I am thankful that it never came to the test.
Stranger still is it to reflect that, but for that ill-timed shot of John Hillyard’s, no suspicion would ever have fallen on me at all. No doubt it is just some such unfortunate coincidence which wrecks the most carefully thought-out crimes. Certainly when I laid my plans for killing Scott-Davies I omitted to take any such thing into account; the possibility never even occurred to me.
I see now that it was officious of me to shoot Eric. But in those days I must have been officious. I really did fancy that I had some sort of an appointment to set the world to rights. Secure in the conviction of my own infallibility, it did not merely distress me when people refused to share my opinions; I felt it a duty incumbent on my own rectitude to correct their mistaken notions. I can realize now that this was priggishness, but priggishness may often involve a highly conscientious sense of duty; that it did in my case I set forth not only in extenuation but as an interesting phenomenon. I knew that Eric Scott-Davies had in his short life brought nothing but distress upon those with whom he came in contact; it did not need John to tell me that his life was not only of no manner of use to the community but a positive menace to it; I knew that his continued existence meant to a great number of people far more than distress, it meant disaster. Obviously for the greater good of the greater number, Eric should be eliminated. And as certainly no one else would undertake the task, I conceived it nothing less than my own duty to do so.
I did not shoot Eric on Armorel’s behalf, on Elsa Verity’s behalf, on Ethel’s behalf, on Paul de Ravel’s behalf, or on anyone’s behalf; certainly not on my own; I shot him out of a sincere, if as I say officious, conviction that as the only one with the moral courage to recognize that nothing short of a bullet would meet Eric’s case, I should be betraying my own superior responsibility by not following up this recognition with action. A curious form of conceit indeed, as I see it now; but even now I cannot think that my conclusion was wrong, by whatever strange method I arrived at it. How many people have not slept more peacefully since Eric Scott-Davies died?
I remember writing at the beginning of this book that I intended to set down everything that had happened with one sole exception, the revelation of which might bring pain to another. I think I have kept my promise. That it was my finger which pulled the fatal trigger will hardly come as a surprise, for I have scarcely troubled to disguise that fact; indeed, I actually prefaced my story with the plain statement that it was to be told from the ‘criminal’s’ point of view.
Only over the method I employed have I thrown a cloak, for to have shown that would have been to show also Armorel as an accessory after the fact, a revelation which would naturally have caused her distress. It satisfies my orderly mind to write that method down here so that my book shall at any rate have been tidily rounded off, even if it must go out into the world shorn of this neat appendage.
The fact then on which I based my whole plan was the notoriously defective power of observation of the normal person.
The average man sees only what he expects to see. If you tell him that he is looking at a rabbit, it is a rabbit that he sees; and the piece of dead bracken at which you are pointing becomes invested by his imagination with ears and a shred of white tail. So, I made no doubt, if half a dozen pairs of eyes expected to see a live Eric it would be a live Eric that they would see, for all that they were looking at a dead one.
And so it turned out. They saw Eric (and were ready in all good faith to swear to the fact afterwards), laughing, gesticulating, and for all I know moving his very ears; one or two even heard him speak, and were prepared to testify to his actual words, when all the time he had been dead for minutes – had died, indeed, under those completely unsuspecting eyes of theirs. For I shot Eric in our little scene together with a ball cartridge which I substituted before all those onlookers for the blank one with which John had loaded the rifle.
The Second Shot Page 25
