The Murder at Sissingham Hall

by Clara Benson

  I looked at Rosamund, who appeared totally unconcerned at the enormity of her words, and a curious feeling of unreality stole over me.

  ‘Suppose you tell me what happened,’ I said slowly.

  NINETEEN

  Rosamund brightened up at once.

  ‘How splendid! Where shall I start?’ she said. ‘At the very beginning, I suppose, when you went off to Africa and I married Neville. You do believe me, don’t you, when I say I did love you for a time when we were engaged? I truly did, darling. But I simply hated being poor, and then Neville came along and fell in love with me and was rich, and I thought: why not? I’d struggled for so long and thought I deserved a little happiness, so I said yes when he asked me to marry him.

  ‘It was great fun for the first year or two, as we had the house in town and there were parties and balls and lots of lovely things to do and I could see all my friends whenever I wanted. Neville was rather stuffy of course, but he didn’t stand in my way at first—he didn’t mind my going out if he wanted to stay at home, so I carried on having a gay time and was very happy.

  ‘But then things started to change. Neville began talking about taxes and expenses and stocks and all those dull things that I’ve never understood, and started frowning whenever I showed him my cheque-book. He had plenty of money—you heard Mr. Pomfrey say so yourself—but he hated to spend it on frivolous things. He began hinting that I ought to spend a little less, and soon the hints got stronger and stronger. But really, darling, how can one spend less in London when there is so much to do? I simply couldn’t live cheaply, which was what he wanted. I had a large circle of friends and acquaintances, and they all maintained a certain appearance. Why, it would have meant cutting myself off from them all, and I just couldn’t bear to do that.

  ‘Eventually Neville said that he was going to sell the London house and come to live permanently at Sissingham, in the middle of nowhere. He’d never liked London very much and I think he wanted to take me out of temptation’s reach. Now, it was all very well coming down here for weekends during the shooting season—we had large parties of people and it was just as much fun as staying in town—but it was as dull as ditch-water having to live here all the time. So many of the really important people forgot about me when I was buried in the country, and half the time we had to make do with fusty old colonels and vicars’ wives if we wanted to make up a party. Oh, I went up to London and stayed with friends sometimes, but it wasn’t the same, because I couldn’t be the hostess any more. It sounds awful of me, Charles, but I do like to be the centre of attention, and I missed seeing myself in the society pages of the newspapers.

  ‘If it hadn’t been for Bobs and Sylvia I should have gone mad very quickly. Bobs especially. But you know about that. It all started out as a bit of fun when we were living in town, but once things started to get a bit sticky with Neville, it became more serious. He started pestering me to ask Neville for a divorce. He said that as half the world knew what was going on anyway, Neville could hardly object and would do the decent thing like a gentleman. Then we could get married and I could move back to London and go back to my old life. My friends weren’t the kind of people to be particular about a divorced woman, and anyway Bobs had such a high position in society that most people would have sense enough to forget about it.

  ‘I laughed at him at first, but after a while I began to think: well, why shouldn’t I? You might think it odd, but I truly felt that Neville had deceived me when he married me. After all, he knew what sort of person he was marrying and there had been an implicit understanding that he should let me have my own way in things and enjoy myself as much as I liked. And now, after only a few years, he wanted me to stop having fun and settle down miles from everyone.

  ‘So eventually I plucked up the courage and spoke to Neville about it. Of course, he wasn’t particularly pleased, but he had seen it coming, he said, and all in all was less difficult than I’d expected. He agreed to a divorce, but said he wanted to choose his own time, as there were various difficulties in the way at present—I can’t remember what, exactly, something to do with business. It was always something to do with business.’

  ‘But he never did give you a divorce,’ I said, as she paused.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘There was always one reason or another why it wasn’t the right time. He just kept putting it off and putting it off, and I began to get more and more impatient. I wanted to get away as soon as possible, and of course I couldn’t expect Bobs to wait for me forever. At any rate, a few days ago I decided to take matters into my own hands. You see, we’d agreed that Neville would do the decent thing and take the blame, but as he didn’t seem to want to do anything about it, I decided to tell him that if he was going to funk it then I was willing to admit it all and appear in court myself.’

  ‘Did you tell Bobs?’ I asked.

  ‘Of course not! He would never have agreed to it. I didn’t really expect Neville to agree to it either. I just thought it might spur him on a little. So, the other night, a few minutes after Neville had left the drawing-room, I went along to the study after him.’

  She paused again and I held my breath, waiting.

  ‘The door was locked so I knocked and said I wanted to speak to him, and he grumbled but let me in. He was in the middle of writing something or other and sat back down at his desk. I asked him when he was going to give me the divorce he promised, and said it wasn’t fair of him to keep me waiting all this time. I was about to tell him that I was prepared to take the blame, when he interrupted me and said that he had been thinking about it, and had changed his mind—he wasn’t going to give me a divorce after all. He said that he had been unwilling when I first asked him and had only agreed to it to please me, but that the more he thought about it, the less he wanted to be involved in such a scandal. He was sorry to make me unhappy, but his conscience wouldn’t allow him to go ahead with it.

  ‘Well, darling, you can imagine the shock it gave me to hear that! He had kept me waiting for years, and then just when I thought he must finally do something about it, he broke his promise. I started to protest, but immediately saw that he had made his mind up. And once Neville makes his mind up, there’s simply nothing to be done—he’s as obstinate as a mule.’

  She sighed crossly.

  ‘I don’t quite know what happened next,’ she went on, ‘but I do know that I had picked up one of those dreadful African curios that he was so fond of, as somebody had put it back in the wrong place—one of the servants, I expect, while they were dusting. I was standing just behind him, idly looking at what he had been writing, and I remember thinking that he had just succeeded in ruining my life with a word. Then I found myself wondering what would happen if I gave him just a little knock on the head. It would be such a beautifully simple way of getting rid of him. Honestly, darling, I don’t think I actually meant to do it for a second, but before I knew it there he was, slumped over the desk, quite dead! For a few minutes I hoped against hope that I had only knocked him out—which would have been bad enough—but there was a rather horrible dent in his head, and when I tried to sit him up he slipped sideways and fell out of his chair onto the floor, and then it was quite obvious that he wasn’t going to wake up again.

  ‘Of course, when I realized what I had done it threw me into quite a panic. All I could think was that I had ruined everything with Bobs, and that I should probably be hanged as a common murderess. My first instinct was to leave the study as quickly as possible and hope that nobody had noticed my absence from the drawing-room. I couldn’t bear to look at him any longer, so I put out the lamp and ran out, taking the key and locking the door behind me. I hoped that nobody would try to disturb Neville while he was working, so I should have some time to try and decide what to do. The most sensible thing to start with seemed to be to go back to the drawing-room and be as entertaining as possible so that no-one would suspect me or worry about Neville’s absence. Oh, Charles, can you imagine how I felt that evening, trying despera
tely to entertain my guests and to pretend nothing was wrong, when all the while Neville was lying dead in the study, killed by my hand! I was dreadfully afraid that Simon would want to go and get Neville to sign some papers, or that Joan would want him for something, or—or that something would go wrong and he would be discovered straightaway. Then, of course, it would be perfectly obvious that I’d done it.

  ‘Once I’d calmed down a little, however, I began to think more clearly. I knew I should have to return to the study sooner or later—I understand the police can do terribly clever things with finger-prints these days, and mine would be all over that African statue—and I started to wonder whether it would be possible to make Neville’s death look like an accident. I thought of the fireplace, and thought I might be able to drag him across the room with some difficulty, given enough time. Then I realized that if it was to look truly convincing, I should have to make it seem as though he had locked himself in the study. But how could I do that? I should have to leave the key on the inside of the study door, or it would look as though someone had got in or out that way. The only other way out was through the French windows—but the outside doors would be locked up at eleven, and I certainly wouldn’t have time to do all that I needed to do before then, or you would all wonder where I was. For a few minutes I even considered doing it in the dead of night, then locking myself out of the house with the French window key and sneaking back in early the next morning, but of course that was an absurd idea and would be bound to lead to discovery.

  ‘Then suddenly I remembered that Neville kept a spare set of keys to the house locked in his desk drawer, and that the key to the drawer was in his pocket. Of course! That meant I could go downstairs long after everybody else had gone to bed, arrange things to look like an accident, leave through the French windows and come back into the house through the side door. I would have to replace the keys in the drawer later, in case somebody remembered there was a spare set, but I was sure I could manage that without too much trouble. Once I’d thought of that, I began to breathe more easily—in fact I began to preen myself rather, on being so clever. Could you have believed, Charles, that throughout that game of Consequences, I was racking my brains, planning the best way to disguise a murder? But once I’d remembered the keys, I believe I enjoyed it as much as anyone. It was a very silly game, wasn’t it?

  ‘Of course, Joan almost ruined everything then by suggesting that we fetch Neville. For a moment I didn’t know what to do. Then it occurred to me that this was the perfect opportunity to throw everybody off the scent even further. Why, all I had to do was go along to the study with a witness and pretend to speak to Neville through the door, and everybody would think he had still been alive and well at a quarter to eleven. As long as I didn’t leave the drawing-room until the house was locked up, that would give me an alibi if anybody started looking too closely at the accident story. It was a risk, but one worth taking, I thought, as long as I was sure of convincing my witness.’

  ‘And you picked me as the witness, as you thought I would be the easiest one to fool,’ I said bitterly. ‘Does everybody really think me such an idiot?’

  She looked at me kindly.

  ‘You’re not an idiot at all, Charles,’ she replied. ‘But you do have the most beautifully unsuspecting nature. I knew it would be easy enough to make you believe that Neville really had spoken to me.’

  She was right, of course. She knew that I had been so blinded and dizzied by her that she could have told me an elephant was trumpeting through the study door at us and I should have believed her. I felt sick.

  ‘Go on,’ I said, for want of anything else to say.

  ‘Well, you know what happened next. I spoke to Neville and pretended that he had replied, then we returned to the drawing-room, bumping into Hugh on the way. Damn Hugh!’ she exclaimed suddenly. ‘Why on earth did he choose that time to go running around on the terrace, drawing attention to himself and raising suspicions about the time of death? If he hadn’t done that, then the police would have eventually come to the conclusion that it must have been an accident after all, or that it was a mysterious intruder who did it. Instead they came up with all these clever theories about Hugh pretending to be Neville and then arrested him.’

  ‘I should have thought you would have been pleased,’ I said.

  ‘Of course I wasn’t pleased! Do you really think I’m such a monster as all that? The whole point was to avoid throwing suspicion onto anybody. When the inspector told me what he thought had happened I was horrified, but I couldn’t see any way out of it short of confessing to the thing myself. There was simply nothing I could do.’

  ‘You mean you left him to his fate,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, he would have got off, I’m sure,’ she said. ‘In fact, you said yourself that the police have admitted they have no evidence to back up their suspicions. Anyway, where was I?’

  ‘We had just returned to the drawing-room with MacMurray,’ I said, feeling more and more as though I were stumbling blindly through the most appalling nightmare.

  ‘Oh yes. Well, we all went to bed, but I didn’t go to sleep, of course. I sat up, waiting, until after two o’clock. Then when I judged that all was safe, I crept quietly downstairs and into the study. I had been half-hoping that I had imagined it all, but no, there he was, still lying on the floor by the desk. Thank goodness there wasn’t any blood. The first thing I did was to drag him over to the fireplace. He was so awfully heavy that I felt as though my arms would be pulled out of their sockets. Then I knocked over the fire-irons to make it look as though Neville had done it when he fell, and filled a whisky glass and laid it down carefully on its side next to the body, holding it carefully with my handkerchief as I did so.

  ‘I was standing by the door and had just started to wipe my finger-prints off the key when the most awful thing happened. There was a knock at the door, and someone tried the handle. I swear, darling, I almost died of fright. I simply froze and waited, thanking my stars that I had remembered to lock myself in. Whoever it was knocked again and said “Neville” in a low voice, so I assumed that meant I hadn’t been seen, and that the person thought the light under the door meant Neville was working late.’

  ‘That must have been MacMurray,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, Simon saw him, didn’t he? At the time I had no idea who it was, but I was terrified. I held my breath and listened, and after a few moments heard footsteps walking away. Even then I waited for what seemed like an age before I dared breathe again and get on with it.

  ‘I had meant to do everything carefully and calmly, but the fright I had just had made me lose my head, I think. Otherwise I’m sure I wouldn’t have made so many mistakes. For instance, I was suddenly seized by the idea that one spilt glass of whisky wouldn’t be nearly enough to convince anybody that Neville had fallen over because he’d been drinking, so in my panic I simply threw the stuff all over the place instead of picking up the decanter with a handkerchief, taking it outside and pouring it out carefully on the grass to make it look as though a lot had been drunk. I’m not sure what made me do it—I think I just had a mad idea that the place ought to reek of whisky. And it was very stupid of me to polish the decanter afterwards, I realize that now.

  ‘What else? Oh yes, I had to clean the African statue. I picked it up and saw there were a few hairs clinging to it, so I scraped it carefully on the edge of the mantelpiece, to make it look as though Neville had hit his head there. Of course, Angela says that he was lying in the wrong position anyway, and couldn’t possibly have fallen accidentally, but I didn’t know that. I shall be much more careful next time.

  ‘Once I was certain I had arranged everything as convincingly as possible, I got the desk key out of Neville’s pocket, took the house keys from the drawer and locked the drawer again, in case anybody remembered the spare keys before I had had the chance to replace them. Then I unlocked and unbolted the French windows and left that way, wiping the handle as I went. I crept along the terrace and came
back in quietly through the side door, locking it behind me. It wasn’t until I was safely back in my room that I realized I hadn’t locked the French windows, but it didn’t worry me too much—I was sure nobody would notice, and I could always do it the next morning when I put the keys back.

  ‘I didn’t sleep a wink that night, as you can imagine. I lay awake, expecting that at any moment somebody would discover what had happened and raise the alarm, although of course that was absurd. It wasn’t until morning that the hullabaloo started and I had to steel myself to play my part. Mr. Pomfrey broke the news to me. He was very kind, but I couldn’t afford to feel bad about that—the important thing was not to raise any suspicion. I pretended to allow the news to sink in, and then I was very calm and dignified, and told him that I should like to see Neville alone before the doctor arrived. He was unwilling, but as there was no question then that it had been anything other than an accident, he was forced to give in.

  ‘As soon as I got in there I ran over to the desk, unlocked the drawer and replaced the keys, which had been wrapped in my handkerchief, then locked it up again and put the drawer key back into Neville’s pocket. I see now that was a mistake to wipe them—just as it was a mistake to wipe the decanter, but as nobody ever suspected that that was how it had been done, it doesn’t matter now. There was one terrible moment when the inspector started asking about the second set of keys and my heart leapt into my mouth, but he didn’t pursue the question, to my relief.

  ‘I was just about to run over and lock and bolt the French windows when Joan came in, in a great state, so I couldn’t do it. At first I was scared, but once I’d had time to think about it I reflected that if the worst came to the worst and somebody noticed they were unlocked, it would be assumed either that they had been left open by accident, or that somebody had come in from outside. Nobody would ever think that it was someone in the house, because everything had been locked up at eleven.’