‘Thank you; sir,’ said Appleby gravely.
‘But it shows there was mischief afoot – that sort of mischief. Some precious scoundrel down there with you still. Don’t let him hit you on the head before you hand over to Hilfers.’
‘No sir.’ Appleby might have been Trumpet.
‘And you’ve still got everyone stoppered up? No remaining chance of the thing’s having been tapped after all during the excitement, I suppose?’
The Prime Minister, Appleby realized, was thorough. And he replied: ‘There were one or two false trails of that sort, sir, that took up time. But now I can see only one slight possibility that way; otherwise we’re safe.’
‘One possibility?’
‘Yes, sir. One person was in a position in which he might have secured something.’
‘I see,’ The Prime Minister’s voice was anxious again. ‘Who?’ Appleby hesitated, But the line, he knew, would be well secured. ‘Mr Gervase Crispin.’
Disconcertingly, what must have been a guffaw of laughter wafted itself over the wire from Downing Street. ‘If that’s all, Mr Appleby, you can unstopper. Gervase! – well, well. Suspect the Duke if you like; I’ve never got to the bottom of him. But Gervase, you see – though it’s a great secret – well, he drafted the document for me. Did you catch that?…drafted the document.’
‘Oh,’ said Appleby,
‘After all and come to think of it, who else could, you know, who else could? Well, get the brute who murdered Auldearn. Goodbye.’
And the Prime Minister rang off.
Appleby cursed the Prime Minister, cursed the muddle-headed Scamnum spies, and cursed in particular Gervase Crispin. His vision of Gervase as what Gervase himself had mockingly called the unscrupulous magnate had certainly been – and again in Gervase’s own words – a waste of time. And Gervase had most irresponsibly let him waste time for a mere freak of fancy; he had denied, implicitly or explicitly, any intimate knowledge of the document. But perhaps he was pledged that way; certainly, not even the Duke had known that his kinsman was privy to it. About the whole business there was something peculiarly annoying. It was annoying – basically annoying – that the world should concoct, stalk, and tremble over Pike and Perch schemes. Not a soul involved, probably, but knew that; and yet – there it was. And to one minded like Appleby it was equally annoying that nobody concerned seemed wholly efficient – everyone had muddle, as it were, round the corner.
But at least the path was now cleared to the murders. Appleby gave orders to take the men off the terraces and then turned back to the front of the hall. So far, three avenues had opened before him. There was a laborious study of the whereabouts of many people – in point both of the murders and of the messages. There was the strange path which Tucker had indicated as leading to Malloch, and which had prompted his recent conversation with Nave. And there was Bunney.
And here a new thought came to Appleby. Bunney’s contrivance, although a veil of fun had apparently been cast over it, had nevertheless been known to Scamnum as an instrument of sober, if not very fruitfully directed, science. Bunney had demonstrated it; shown people how it worked eagerly and freely. And it made particularly accurate records of the human voice. The innocent – with the exception of the clever Miss Terborg – had been slow to see the possibility of this, but it could hardly have escaped a wary sender of the sinister messages. However well one could disguise one’s voice, recording it on Bunney’s apparatus was risky. Then here again, surely, was the now familiar theme of hazard; once more – as with the shooting of Auldearn and the dragging of Bose’s body through the house – there seemed to be deliberate courting of danger. And twice the criminal had got away with it. Was it possible that on this third, and actually anterior venture he would fall down? It was not impossible. Bunney must get to work at once.
Appleby stepped back into the hall to find Nave, Gott, and Elizabeth where he had left them – the two former engaged in some sort of verbal duel; Elizabeth looking on with a pucker of amusement. But Bunney had not yet returned. Appleby looked at his watch in surprise. ‘I wonder–’
The far door burst open and Noel came breathlessly up the hall. ‘Mr Appleby, Nave – will you come? Bunney has been attacked just outside his room. I think he may be dead.’
Bunney had been hit on the head from behind while in a darkish stretch of corridor, He was not dead – only on the verge of death. Nave and Biddle were of the opinion that he might pull through but that his position would be critical for some hours: the toll of the Scamnum murders, as Nave grimly put it, was at the moment uncertain. And it was hard to believe that wanton murder had not been intended, for a far less severe blow would have cleared the way to the theft which seemed the criminal’s rational objective. Theft there had certainly been. In a corner of Bunney’s room stood a large suitcase, elaborately fitted with an arrangement of pigeon-holes. And in each pigeonhole was a hollow metal cylinder coated with some waxen substance; that and a little descriptive card. Only one was missing, but the corresponding card was still there. It bore simply a date and the significant words: ‘The curious message’.
They had taken Bunney into another bedroom. Appleby, pacing up and down with a set jaw, was alone with Gott. He stopped in his stride. ‘The swift, ruthless devil! Tell me, Giles, how did this come up? – before you came with Bunney to the hall, I mean. Was there a sort of public canvass of the possibility of identifying the voice?’
Gott nodded. ‘Yes. Clay brought it up at breakfast. It suddenly came into his head and he came out with it. And at that Bunney said yes, he believed he could collate the cylinder bearing the message with known recordings of our voices and so identify the perpetrator. And at that I brought him along to you.’
Appleby made a slight, uncontrollable gesture of bafflement. ‘And it gave the alarm and the murderer decided to act on the spot! I should have thought of it. I should have known that from that moment Bunney was running a risk – poor devil. Who was there, Giles? Who was at breakfast?’
‘At that moment, I should think about half the house-party. I could give you a good many names, but not a complete list. It would be another case of laborious inquiry.’
‘Yes. But it gives a control on all the other alibi-occasions we shall come to. Opportunity to send the messages, to shoot Auldearn, to stab Bose, to overhear Bunney’s plan and attack him: when I tabulate everybody on all that I shall begin to get somewhere – perhaps. And it looks the quickest road now the Bunney hope has gone.’
Briskly, Appleby made for the door. And Gott felt that he was becoming an angry man.
3
The unwanted guests – those who had been staying at Scamnum merely to be spectators at the play – were gone. In silence, or discreetly murmuring premeditated words, or mumbling whatever came into their heads, they had shaken hands with the Duke and Duchess and been bowled away to freedom and importance: once back in town they would be in the greatest demand for weeks. Pamela Hogg had departed in tears, the morning post having brought news of Armageddon that was very bad indeed. Mrs Platt-Hunter-Platt had offered to interview either the Home Secretary or the reliable foreign detective – whichever the Duke pleased. And the Dowager Duchess had returned to Horton Ladies’ without ever knowing that an American philologist, now just edging away from death’s threshold upstairs, had wanted to compare her linguistic habits with Lady Lucy Lumpkin’s as reported by the learned Odger. They were all gone and Scamnum, with less than a score of remaining guests, seemed for a time like a great school when only the holiday boarders are left.
In the green-room Appleby, Bunney’s possible short-cut having been snatched out of reach, was taking the long and laborious way. He was as yet without any eye-witness evidence; as far as the murders went no one had reported seeing a sinister thing. And, a common type of revolver apart, he was without material clues; nothing of the footprints and unique Loamshire clay variety had
turned up. What he had was an isolated motive – pitched abruptly at him by Timothy Tucker – and a number of significant places and times. On the basis of these last, he had suggested to Gott, it should be possible to elaborate a table of eliminations – to prove that this person and that could not have done all that the criminal had done. Of course it was theoretically possible – quite apart from what was almost certainly a parallel activity in the spy or spies – that many hands were involved. The two murders might be unconnected. The person responsible for the messages might not be responsible for the deaths. Each of the five known messages, even, might have a source independent of the others. But all these were fantastic hypotheses, to be neglected until the likely hypothesis had been explored. And the likely hypothesis was that in these messages and murders one hand was at work. One hand had shot Auldearn, stabbed Bose, stunned Bunney, and contrived five messages.
In these circumstances as they lay before him, Appleby thought that he detected a familiar thing: almost reckless daring. The murderer had wantonly multipled the dangers he must run; and always for dramatic effect.
(i) He had shot Auldearn under the possible eye of Bose. Even if he proved to be old Max Cope he had done that. For Bose, as a simple experiment had made it clear, had only to look up at the vital moment to see enough of what was happening through the trap-door to know that the shot came from the upper stage – the upper stage of which Cope was in possession.
(ii) He had risked carrying his weapon, a revolver, with him from the rear stage. And this was a big risk in itself. Without it, he might have been detected emerging from the curtains after the shot and yet – for lack of positive evidence – been tolerably safe. But with the revolver on him, he had only to be resolutely challenged by an observer, held, and searched and his fate would be sealed. And this risk, again, he had taken for a small, but startling effect: that of secreting the little weapon in the grisliest possible place, Yorick’s skull.
(iii) He had dragged Bose’s body past a dozen tenanted rooms. And for an effect again – a sort of gesture of defiance.
(iv) He had contrived, by one means and another, five threatening or sinister messages. And in these, it seemed to Appleby, a new factor appeared. Here again was risk: five cumulative risks. Each message might conceivably be traced; and even a doubtful or inconclusive association with a given person would become formidable if made in the case of three, or even two messages. There had been cumulative risk; had there been cumulative effect? For the murderer’s eye for effect was, in its own peculiar way, excellent; it was a master of the startling and the macabre that was at work. Had not there been something superfluous in the management of the messages? Wholly effective in the light of subsequent events had been the one found by Gott in Auldearn’s car: the lines on the fatal entrance of Duncan under Macbeth’s battlements found at the very moment of Auldearn’s arrival at Scamnum. And wholly effective had been that other passage from Macbeth, ringing through the sleeping house its warning of an imminent deed of dreadful note. And effective too, if only because of the oddity and ingenuity of the method of communication, was the message delivered through what Scamnum had light-heartedly called Bunney’s black box. After that, however, there was a drop into comparative pointlessness. Noel had been sent a message through the post and Gervase had been sent a telegram. And about neither of these did there seem to be any special appropriateness or force. From the point of view of the artist – and as an artist the murderer had, strangely, to be regarded – these two messages marred a certain pleasing economy in the contriving of sensation.
But (said Appleby to himself) look at it this way: look at the method employed for each communication. And he made a list: (a) by hand, (b) by radio-gramophone, (c) by dictaphone, (d) by post, (e) by telegram. Was this not what Nave would call a manifesto; was it not the action of the boxer who, sure of his invulnerability, amuses himself by tapping systematically now here, now there? One might say that only radio proper was missing – the Black Hand could scarcely capture the air – radio proper and the telephone. And Appleby wondered if a sixth message by telephone had actually been sent to someone who chose to remain silent. Or – conceivably – if a telephone message were yet to come.
The messages, then, served two purposes. They created sensation and they were a challenge. Look – the Black Hand said in effect – at the variety of channels I can use – use and get away with. A piece of typescript through the post may be hard to get a line on; but what of a telegram, a note delivered in an eminent statesman’s car, dealings with other people’s gramophones and black boxes? Appleby felt that even if an investigation into the origins of the messages yielded nothing, the mere fact of their being so clearly a challenge was not without its light.
He decided to make this investigation his first concern. His assistant, Sergeant Mason, who had arrived from London with Captain Hilfers some time after the attack on Bunney, could meanwhile begin sifting people’s movements at the time of the two murders – a vital business to which Appleby himself would turn as soon as preliminary data had been collected. In this way he hoped to save himself time on blind-alley interviews with people who could produce clear alibis.
The first point about the messages, he reflected, was that out of all five there survived the physical vehicle of only two. The note tossed into Auldearn’s car, the note posted to Noel Gylby, the telegraph form received by Gervase – all these had been destroyed. At the time of their reception they had been no more than imbecile anonymous communications and they had passed by way of the wastepaper basket to limbo. The dictaphone cylinder which had so signally failed to offer up the Lord’s Prayer had been successfully stolen – it was a hard thought – from under the very nose of the police. What survived was two gramophone records and – possibly – the original of the telegram sent to Gervase. Even if the telegraph message had been telephoned to the post office at Scamnum Ducis, so that no written original existed, a date and hour of transmission would still be on the post-office files.
As well begin with Auldearn’s message. Appleby got hold of Gott, one of the available witnesses, and went with him to find the other, Auldearn’s chauffeur. The man was grimly polishing his dead employer’s car; he was bewildered, angry, and anxious to help.
The message, Gott said, had been in typescript on a quarto page of common paper. He had noticed it, a crumpled ball, in a corner of the car a few minutes after getting in and just before drawing up at Scamnum. The chauffeur, Williams, who had looked at the clock on his dashboard on arrival in order to time the run, could name the minute: four-twenty-two. By about four-twenty on the Friday afternoon, then, the message had been in the car. What of an anterior limit? When had it certainly not been in the car? It had not been in the car, Williams could swear, when Lord Auldearn got in outside his London house; had it been there he, Williams, would have spotted it when arranging the rugs. And that had been at two-five. But it might have been tossed in within the next five minutes, when he had gone to his place at the wheel and they were waiting for a stray suitcase to be brought out. Would Lord Auldearn not have noticed it himself if it had been in the car throughout the journey? And would he not have been likely to notice its being tossed in? No, said Williams; his Lordship was distinctly short-sighted and often failed to notice more conspicuous things than a ball of paper. If they had not picked up Mr Gott he would certainly have found it himself sooner or later; probably on handing out to the footmen on arrival. And, of course, he would have given it to his lordship; he would not take the responsibility of destroying what might be of consequence. When one was with a Lord Chancellor – Quite so, said Appleby – and turned to the next point. After starting from town what opportunities would there have been? Williams looked doubtful. Anywhere until clear of London, perhaps, when going slow or in a block; but how could the fellow know just where to reckon on that? From another car it might be possible – with skill. But once they had got clear of London he doubted if it could
have been managed.
‘And when you got to Scamnum?’
‘Well, I went very slowly up the drive, as Mr Gott knows. Gentlemen who have deer are sometimes very touchy about pace through their parks.’
‘I see. But was there anyone on the drive?’
‘There was Macdonald, the head gardener,’ Gott struck in. ‘I remember him touching his cap to us as we went past.’
‘Macdonald?’ Appleby was about to mention that curious behaviour of Macdonald as reported by Trumpet but checked himself before the chauffeur. ‘You would have noticed if anyone had thrown the message in while you were in the car, Giles?’
‘Probably. But not certainly,’ said Gott cautiously. Then a thought struck him. ‘You came by the south lodge?’ he asked Williams.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘That’s a possibility.’ Gott turned to Appleby. ‘There are twin lodges there, joined by a sort of mock-battlemented bridge you drive under. And there’s an outside staircase and anyone is allowed up. There’s a view.’
‘I was going very slow there,’ said Williams.
And that was all that was to be discovered. Two-five to two-ten in town was a likely time; two-ten to four-ten on the route was possible but not probable; four-ten at the south lodge was likely again. A suspected person would have to be cleared in relation to these times. Going back to the house, Appleby tried another line. Gott didn’t remember anything special about the text of the message – any sign, say, of its having been taken from a particular edition? Gott smiled at the ingenuity of this, but remembered nothing of the sort. The message had been in modern spelling, as most Shakespeares so deplorably were, and might have come, say, from the old Cambridge text – of which there was a copy in every fifth house in England.
Hamlet Revenge! Page 22
