Mystery in White (British Library Crime Classics)

by J. Jefferson Farjeon

  “Yes, please do! One day I’ll thank you,” murmured Nora, with more gratitude in her voice than her words could express. “But I must warn you of something—they’ve caught Shaw!”

  “My dear,” retorted Lydia, “do you think I’d turn a hair by this time if they’d caught the King of Zululand?”

  Back in the bedroom Nora found her father waiting for her patiently, and she felt that his patience was due to his faith that she would make no more difficulties. She helped him from the bed, and put on his boots—the only clothing that had been removed. They were warm and stiff, from having been dried before the fire.

  It was four minutes to two when they left the room. The passage was dim, but light came up from below, and as they reached the top of the stairs they heard voices. The voices ceased as they began to descend. Nora wondered what was going to be the end of that short, queer journey, and what strange expectation of her father’s would be fulfilled or disappointed. All she knew definitely was that something was going to happen. She had no idea what it was. Nor had she an idea that Mr. Maltby had been preparing for the moment before he received Lydia’s warning.

  If her father shared her ignorance, he gave no sign of it. He accepted the situation with the same uncanny obedience that had characterised his attitude when help had suddenly arrived at the stranded car to guide them on the last stage of their journey. Watching him, Nora recalled his recently spoken words: “What has happened had to happen, and what will happen must happen.” He was living his philosophy.

  It was also, apparently, the philosophy of the old man who stepped forward from the motley gathering to greet them.

  “Good-evening, Mr. Strange,” said Mr. Maltby. “I am glad you have come to join in the Christmas toast—which, of course, would have been incomplete without you.”

  “Thank you,” answered William Strange, and walked to a position near the front door.

  “That is where you were standing?” asked Mr. Maltby.

  Mr. Strange nodded gravely.

  “But your wife was by your side? Am I right?” Mr. Strange nodded again. “Miss Strange, will you stand by your father?”

  She took her place quickly, while her heart thumped.

  “There were also four others present,” went on Mr. Maltby. “Three of them—Harvey Strange, Martha Shaw—as she then was—and Dr. Wicks we need not resurrect——”

  “They were by the dining-room door,” said William Strange mechanically, as though he were reciting a lesson.

  “Will the rest of you stand by the dining-room door, then?” asked Mr. Maltby. “In this case I will not perform the unsavoury act of allotting parts. The fourth was Charles Shaw.” He paused for a moment, then turned towards the kitchen, and called, “Charles! The champagne! For a health!”

  Everybody stiffened at that call saving William Strange and the old man himself. Nora’s heart thumped harder than ever, and David, watching her from the dining-room door, fought an almost uncontrollable impulse to go to her side. Instead he performed the Christian act of patting another hand that was nearer to his. “But for that,” ran Jessie’s diary subsequently, “I should have died!” Neither William Strange nor Mr. Maltby, however, showed any nervousness. Both were smiling—the former contentedly, the latter with a kind of whimsical irony.

  The kitchen door opened, and Charles Shaw appeared with a tray. On the tray were wine-glasses and an opened bottle of champagne. More nervous than anybody, yet obeying his strange instructions as a drowning man catching at a straw, he had possessed the forethought to set the glasses well apart; otherwise, his trembling hands would have played a tune with them.

  “Thank you, Charles,” said Mr. Maltby. “Kindly fill our glasses after we have each taken one.”

  While the queer ceremony was being performed, the old man looked at the clock, moved a little nearer the painting of John Strange, and then glanced at the lamp close to his hand. His own glass was filled last. An empty one remained.

  “You, too, Charles,” he said.

  “Me, sir?” muttered the man.

  “Why not?”

  Shaw filled the empty glass. Then they all waited, while Mr. Maltby again looked at the clock whose ticking was now the only sound in the hall. One minute to the hour. The minute seemed an hour itself. When it had passed, and the clock gave its preliminary wheeze before chiming, Mr. Maltby raised his glass in his right hand, and cried:

  “A happy Christmas to you all, and a toast to——”

  The clock chimed two, and as it did so Mr. Maltby’s left hand moved swiftly to the lamp and turned it out. Immediately afterwards a ray of light, directed by the same hand, illuminated the face of the picture, seeming to transform it into a living thing. Even the voice that followed through the darkness appeared to issue not from the lips of Mr. Maltby, but from the lips of paint.

  “... My granddaughter, Nora Strange,” said the voice. “But before you drink I have certain observations to make. And, after all, since you have already been kept waiting twenty years, to wait a minute or two longer now will make small difference.

  “The first observation relates to my new will. This rests with me beneath my wig, and since it is now only of academic interest, perhaps it can continue to rest with me there. It was intended for you, William. From my wig it should have been transferred to your hands for safe keeping, for by its terms it left everything to you and nothing to your brother Harvey. But Harvey is now dead, the victim of his own and other people’s avarice.” The voice paused, to allow time for this news to sink in, but only one tiny gasp came through the darkness to register its reception. “Therefore, what is left of the property reverts to you, in any case, for you may be sure that if Harvey himself made any will, which is doubtful, it will never be produced in a Court of Law.

  “The second observation relates to certain other property. Wills have a distressing habit of being lost, stolen, misinterpreted or upset. To upset my own will, my eccentric habits might have been quoted to prove that I was not sane when I made it. I assure you I was quite sane. I was so sane that I converted five thousand pounds of my money into banknotes—and my intention, William, was to tell you privately where those notes were. Perhaps it was as well that I did not. Perhaps even those notes would have been cheated from you. Now they are still intact—where I originally hid them. And like my will, they are concealed by my wig. But they are not beneath the wig—they are behind it—behind the wig at which you are now staring. The wig of paint.”

  Again the voice paused. And again there was a little gasp. This time it came from Shaw. The voice continued:

  “How different you are, William, from your brother! Harvey would not have waited, as you are doing. He would have flung himself at the picture, smashed it, as he helped to smash the original, and torn at the frame!

  “I have but one other subject to mention. Charles Shaw.

  “Three people, all now dead, combined to poison me. Was Shaw a fourth, or was he an unwilling accessory before—or after—the fact? Did his sister, who poisoned me physically, poison her brother spiritually, as she poisoned her husband? And if this is so—if Shaw’s offence does not go beyond a contemptible and blackguardly weakness—is he a fit subject for forgiveness now that his evil influences are removed? Could such a man wipe out his past by service?

  “If, William, you decide that he could not, then you will let matters take their normal course. But should you decide that he could, then there might be no need to reopen the question of my murder. One murderer has died a natural death. The other two have themselves been murdered—Harvey by Martha Wick, and Martha Wick by, perhaps, the hand of Providence. We might accept that hand.... Good-night, William.... A happy Christmas.”

  The light vanished from John Strange’s face, and a prosaic old man struck a match, relit the lamp, and raised his glass.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  THE OFFICIAL VERSION

  “WELL, boy, this is the ruddiest Christmas morning I’ve ever spent!” exclaimed the inspecto
r, shoving his notebook aside. “Four murders in a dozen hours! I reckon I’ve earned my bit of turkey.”

  “Three murders, begging your pardon,” replied the sergeant. “If I hadn’t sent him over the edge he’d have knifed me.”

  “Well, we won’t hang you for yours,” grinned the inspector. “Just the same, I wish we’d got our man alive—he deserved the rope, if ever any one did!”

  “Personally, I’m all for saving trouble,” answered the sergeant, grinning back.

  “Oh, so am I. But I’d like to have heard that man talk.”

  “Jibber, you mean! He was running amok—off his nut!”

  “You can learn something even from a lunatic.”

  “But you’ve got it all straightened out, sir, haven’t you?” asked the sergeant.

  The inspector pulled the notebook towards him again and opened it.

  “Yes, I think so,” he said, turning the pages. “Yes, I expect so. Thanks to the assistance of that fellow Maltby—whose statement was of more use than all the rest put together. Clear-headed chap, that. He helped me work out Smith’s movements from A to Z. Let’s run over ‘em again, and you see if you can trip me up. I’d sooner you did it than somebody else! Now, then. Smith steals Barling’s letter-case in the train. Barling attacks him, and Smith strangles Barling. Murder No. One.”

  “O.K.,” nodded the sergeant.

  “Not for Barling,” commented the inspector grimly. “K.O. for him. Right. Smith bunks, gets to Valley House, loses the letter-case there, plays hide-and-seek and ducks-and-drakes and God knows what, is suspected by the company—also off that same train, of course—and finally, when challenged, does another bunk. Meets Harvey Strange on his way to Valley House——”

  “What was Harvey going there for?”

  “To spend Christmas there, of course! What else? Smith has another rough-house——”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “No more do you, sir.”

  “Quite correct. Now you see why I wish Smith were alive, so we could make him speak. But it’s a fairly easy guess how that second tussle started. What condition was Smith in when you met him? You said he was off his nut yourself.”

  “So he was.”

  “All right, then! He bumps into Harvey Strange, Strange says, ‘Hallo, what’s the hurry?’ or something of that sort, and Smith doesn’t wait to explain. Don’t forget, they saw him go off with the knife and the hammer, and they heard a scream——”

  “Yes, and we’ve got the knife, but where’s the hammer?”

  “Buried in the snow somewhere, I expect. We’ll find it.”

  “I’ve thought of another idea, sir,” said the sergeant.

  “What is it?”

  “Smith had lost his letter-case, so he needed more cash for his getaway. With one murder against him, he might have risked a second for another wad of notes. You can only hang a man once.”

  “That’s a good theory of yours,” said the inspector. “We’ll note it. It could fit Murder No. Two. But it doesn’t fit Murder No. Three, though.”

  “We don’t need it for No. Three, sir, do we?”

  “No, we don’t. By that time Smith was completely dippy. You can keep steady after one murder, but a couple’s a bunch. After Murder No. Two he hurries on. He passes William Strange and Miss Strange in their stranded car——”

  “Why doesn’t he go for them?”

  “Let him rest occasionally!”

  “Yes, p’r’aps his arm was tired.”

  “And there were two of them. Seriously speaking, I don’t see any flaw there. Miss Strange asks him for help, and he says he’ll fetch it. But, of course, he doesn’t. And the next glimpse we get of him is on the way to Hemmersby, where we’ve been notified of the murder of Barling—Murder No. One—and are on the look out for the wanted man. Police-Constable Lake spots him, challenges him, chases him, and loses him. Smith turns back the way he came, hides in the car—we found his cap there afterwards, you remember—and stays there till Martha Wick passes by and becomes too inquisitive.”

  “Or p’r’aps he dived in the car when he saw her coming,” interposed the sergeant, “and she hadn’t the sense to leave it at that.”

  “Sergeant,” said the inspector solemnly, “if you’re not very careful, you will become intelligent, like me! That is probably what did happen—though, frankly, all this ‘probably’ and ‘possibly’ is getting on my nerves. Anyway, Smith knifes the poor woman in a fresh panic, and commits Murder No. Three.”

  “What was Martha Wick doing out so late?” asked the sergeant.

  “Martha Wick was the sister of the manservant at Valley House,” answered the inspector; “and she was on her way to help cook the Christmas dinner.... Finally, Smith had the bad luck to meet you on the edge of Webber’s Dip, and you refused to become his fourth victim. Quite rightly. But you can be ready for a nice little spot of bother over that.” He rose and stretched. “So that’s that—for the moment—and now for the next. Strictly speaking, sergeant, it’s not our job to phone up relatives and make other people’s excuses for ‘em, but as there’s no telephone at Valley House and Christmas comes but once a year—thank God!—I suppose we must allow this exception, eh? Where are those four telephone numbers?”

  CHAPTER XXVII

  JESSIE WINDS IT UP

  AT half-past seven on Christmas night Mr. Hopkins descended from the bedroom he had been allotted jointly with David, and reached the hall just as Mr. Maltby was coming out of the drawing-room.

  It was a very different hall from the hall the stranded party had entered some twenty-eight hours earlier. After the most disturbed night any of them had ever spent, and a morning almost equally disturbed by a succession of snow-covered police officials—the great snowstorm had ended, but the aftermath would remain for many a day till the peaceful white mantle changed to brown slush and the brown slush oozed unpicturesquely away—Lydia had gripped the situation once more and organised a decorating expedition. Death lay around the house, but Life had to fight it, and in this case Life had the advantage of being no poorer by the Death. So the afternoon had been spent in clearing the front door and in making short excursions into the woods, from which holly had been wrested and cleared of its white covering. The house was now bright with red berries and glistening, prickly leaves. The brightest berries and the best leaves had been reserved for the frame of John Strange’s picture.

  Then the guests, no longer uninvited, had retired to their allotted rooms to make what toilets they could; and Mr. Maltby and Mr. Hopkins had been the first to descend.

  “Going along well?” inquired the latter, as the old man closed the drawing-room door.

  “Mr. Thomson will soon be fit to continue his broken journey to his aunt,” replied Mr. Maltby, “who will complete his return to depressed normality.”

  “Well, we’ve all had broken journeys, come to that,” commented Mr. Hopkins.

  “And shall continue to have them,” answered Mr. Maltby. “There is no such thing as a destination.”

  Mr. Hopkins cleared his throat. Pity this old man couldn’t talk rationally, like an ordinary human being. Nasty habit of making you feel inferior and uncomfortable. Still, Mr. Hopkins was not likely to see much more of him, and meantime there were one or two points that might be cleared up while the opportunity remained.

  “Cigar?” said Mr. Hopkins.

  “I am allowed my pipe,” said Mr. Maltby.

  They lit up. Suddenly Mr. Hopkins shot his first question.

  “How did you know those notes were stowed away behind that picture?”

  “It was an easy guess,” answered Mr. Maltby.

  “Nobody else guessed it!”

  “No. The spectator sees most of the game. The players are often blinded by its details.”

  “Can’t see the wood for the trees, you mean?”

  “Precisely.”

  Mr. Hopkins replaced his cigar between his lips, then took it out again and r
egarded the ash.

  “And there was nothing else, eh? Just that, eh?”

  “What else do you mean?”

  “I mean—well, the whole thing was so damn queer. It—it was you speaking, wasn’t it? I mean, damn it, of course it was! But it was, wasn’t it?”

  “If I told you that it wasn’t,” answered the old man, “if I told you that I did not say a single word through my own initiative, but that my lips moved in obedience to the spirit of John Strange, would you again say, ‘Bosh’?”

  “I—I don’t know!” murmured Mr. Hopkins, uncomfortably.

  “Then why should I take the risk of inviting your contempt?”

  “Oh! Yes, I get you. Well, no, I—well, no, I wouldn’t.”

  “You now believe, then, in ghosts?”

  “Come, I haven’t said that!”

  “But you are ready to believe in them?”

  “Ah, that’s different! I might be.”

  “Bosh, Mr. Hopkins,” smiled Mr. Maltby. “And it is a pleasure to make the remark to one who has exploded the rope trick. You recall certain observations of mine in the train? Probably you were not listening. I have a respect for those who believe in ghosts, and one of my best friends is convinced that he is on excellent terms with a man who looks once a month for his head. But that is not my personal way of explaining the apparently unexplainable, and certainly the ghost of John Strange has not been here this Christmas—fortunately for John Strange. We hatch ghosts in our own minds, out of the logic that is beyond us. Logic, through science, may one day recapture the sounds of the Battle of Hastings, but this will not mean that the battle is still going on. Believe me, Mr. Hopkins, there are quite enough astounding, uncanny, mind-shattering experiences within the boundaries of sheer logic to eliminate the necessity of ghosts for our explanations or our thrills. We are only touching the fringe of these things. We have only touched the fringe of them in this house. There has been no ghostly hand to guide me.”

  “Then what the devil did you mean when you took me up about ‘running the show’?” demanded Mr. Hopkins. “I said you were doing it, but you gassed about—about something bigger!”