The Inspector stood slowly pulling off his driving gloves, his eyes, with the hint of a frown in them, fixed on the butler's face. Then, just as Finch, rendered slightly nervous by this hard, unseeing stare, was about to ask if anything were wrong, he turned away, and laid his hat and gloves down on the table. "Is Miss Fawcett in?" he asked abruptly.
"I believe so, sir. I will go and see."
"Ask her if she can spare me a moment in the morning room, will you?" said Harding. He went up to the study door and opened it.
The Sergeant coughed. "I take it you won't be needing me, sir?"
"No," replied Harding, "I shan't. What I want you to do, Sergeant, is to take a stroll in the garden and have a chat with the under-gardener if you can find him. Ludlow we know to have spent Monday morning in the kitchen garden, but the other man seems to have been pottering about all over the place. Try and get out of him whether he was in sight of the front drive any time between twelve and one, and find out if he saw anyone either approaching or leaving the house during that time. If it was only the butcher's boy I want to know of it."
Miss Fawcett, entering the morning-room, ten minutes later, found it empty, and was conscious of disappointment. Since she had sought refuge from Camilla Halliday's conversation in the spinney at the bottom of the garden it had taken Finch some time to find her. Apparently Inspector Harding had lost patience and departed.
"Damn!" murmured Miss Fawcett, wandering aimlessly towards the fireplace. Looking up, she caught sight of her own disconsolate face in the mirror. She regarded it with some severity." Look here, my girl," she said sternly, "you're getting maudlin about this policeman. Pull yourself together!"
"Which policeman?" inquired an interested voice behind her.
She spun round to find Harding standing in the long window, watching her. For once the redoubtable Miss Fawcett was clearly at a disadvantage. "I've — I've lost my heart to the Sergeant!" she said wildly.
"I'm sorry. I hoped it was to the Inspector," returned Harding with simple directness.
Miss Fawcett, blushing furiously, retreated to the door. Harding stepped into the room. "Please don't go!" he said. "I ought not to have listened to you, or to have said that. I apologise."
Miss Fawcett, who wanted to make a calm and sensible reply, said something quite incoherent and subsided.
Inspector Harding said haltingly: "When I see you I keep forgetting I'm here — purely professionally. I've no right to — I ought to know better than to -" He broke off evidently feeling that he had embarked on a hopeless sentence.
Miss Fawcett, observing his flounderings, recovered the use of her tongue and was understood to say, though in a very small voice, that she quite understood.
"Do you?" said Inspector Harding, grasping the edge of the table. "Do you, Dinah?"
Miss Fawcett nodded, and began to trace invisible patterns on the table with one forefinger. "Well, I — well, I think I do," she replied carefully. "When you aren't being professional — I mean — well, anyway, I quite understand."
"As soon as I've done with this case," said Inspector Harding, "there's something I'm going to ask you. I've been wanting to ever since I set eyes on you."
"More — more cross-examinations?" inquired Miss Fawcett, with a noble attempt at lightness.
"No. A very simple question requiring just "Yes", or — or "No", for an answer."
"Oh!" said Miss Fawcett, sketching another and more complicated pattern on the table. "I don't think I should dare say "No" to a policeman."
There was a moment's silence. Inspector Harding let go of the table-edge. "It's no use!" he said, advancing upon Miss Fawcett. "I have tried, but there are limits to what can be expected of one!"
Sergeant Nethersole, whose search for the under gardener led him up the path at the side of the house, passed the morning-room window, and, not sharing Mrs. Chudleigh's scruples, looked in. The sight that met his eyes had the effect of bringing him up short, staring. Then, for he was a tactful man, he withdrew his gaze from the spectacle of Miss Fawcett locked in Inspector Harding's arms, and tiptoed cautiously away.
For quite twenty minutes after he had gone the conversation between Miss Fawcett and Inspector Harding had no bearing at all upon the problems that might have been supposed to engross the Inspector's attention, and was not remarkable for any very noticeable degree of intelligence or originality. It seemed, however, to be an eminently satisfactory conversation from their point of view, and might have been continued for an unspecified length of time, had not Miss Fawcett chanced to ask Inspector Harding if he realised that if no one had murdered the General they might never have met.
Recalled to a sense of his duties, Inspector Harding put Miss Fawcett firmly away from him. "Sit down in that chair, Dinah, and pretend I'm the Superintendent, or the sub-human detective who came about the plated entree dishes," he said, and resolutely retired to a chair on the other side of the table.
"Oh, do you remember that?" asked Dinah idiotically.
"I rem — No!" said Harding with emphasis. "You must help me. I'm here strictly on business. There are things I want to ask you." He eyed Miss Fawcett across the table.
"It isn't helping to look at me like that," he said uncertainly. "It only makes me want to kiss you again."
"Pretend I'm Camilla," suggested Dinah. "Oh, and do you know, she thinks I'm making a dead set at you? Shc told me so at lunch. I didn't, did I?"
Inspector Harding cleared his throat. "Miss Fawcett," he said severely, "I want you to carry your mind back to the morning of July first, please."
"All right," said Dinah, willing to oblige, "but if you go and fasten the murder on to someone I don't want you to, I shan't marry you. I don't mind you arresting the Hallidays, or the gardener, or Lola — though I'm developing quite an affection for her, as a matter of fact — but -"
"You are wasting my time, Miss Fawcett."
"Sorry!" said Dinah hastily. She folded her hands in her lap. "Go on, what have I got to remember? I'll do what I can for you, but I seem to have gone addled in the head all at once."
"It's important, Dinah, so do try! Did Mrs. Twining come to lunch on Monday by chance, or by invitation, or what?"
"All three," replied Dinah. "Pseudo-chance, so that Arthur shouldn't think it was a put-up job, and invitation because I invited her; and what, because of the row about Lola. She was at the fatal dinner-party on Saturday, and so she'd seen what was likely to happen. She rang up on Monday to hear the latest news, and when I told her that it was all pretty grim, she said that she thought she'd come over and see what she could do with Arthur."
"Did she seem to be worried about the situation?"
"N-no, I don't think so. Rather amused. To tell you the truth, I've never been able to make her out, quite. She's always cool and cynical, the sort of person you wouldn't expect to care two pins for anybody, but she really has taken a lot of trouble on Geoffrey's behalf. Of course, I know he's the sort of youth who appeals to sentimental matrons, but she isn't sentimental in the least. You can understand people like Mrs. Chudleigh falling for him, but not Mrs. Twining. She's too caustic."
"Does she give you the impression of being very fond of him?"
"Well, she does and she doesn't. Funnily enough I asked her that very question on Monday — I mean, whether she was very fond of him. She said she wasn't, but that she'd known him for so long she took an interest in him, or something. She and I had gone to find Fay — it was when she first arrived — and I was asking her what Geoffrey's mother was like."
"Were you? What did she say?"
"Nothing much, except that whatever she — Geoffrey's mother — had done that was rotten she'd had to pay for. Which rather snubbed me, because I'd said I thought it was rotten of his mother to have deserted him."
"She said that, did she? Do you know anything about the General's first wife, Dinah?"
"No, that was why I asked Mrs. Twining. Even Fay never dared mention her to Arthur. Skeleton in the cupboard, you
know. There isn't even a snapshot of her that I've ever discovered."
"You don't by any chance know what her name was?"
"No, of course not. Arthur expunged her from the records, so to speak. Why do you want to know?"
Harding held up an admonitory finger. "I'm asking the questions, not you," he said.
"Ha!" said Miss Fawcett, kindling. "Well, make the most of this interview, Detective-Inspector Harding."
"You can take it out of me as soon as I'm through with this case," promised Harding. "Let's come back to Mrs. Twining. When she went to the General's study how long was she away?"
"I don't know exactly. Quite a few minutes — somewhere between five and ten, I should think, because when she came back and told us Arthur had been murdered, I wondered why on earth she hadn't come back at once. Though, when I came to think it over, I saw it was much more like her to pull herself together first. I wish I knew what you were driving at. Kindly note the way I've phrased that. Not by any means a question, you perceive. Just a remark thrown out at random."
"Was she wearing gloves?"
"Yes, frightfully expensive ones," replied Dinah. "People of her generation nearly always do, only hers aren't the fat-white-woman-whom-nobody-loves kind at all."
Harding sat back in his chair. "What on earth are you talking about?" he asked patiently.
"You know!" said Dinah. "Why do you walk in the fields in gloves, missing so much and so much?" Mrs. Chudleigh wears that kind of glove. Mrs. Twining's are just part of the general ensemble, not glovey at all. And they were ruined, too, because she'd touched Arthur's body, and one of her hands was all stained with blood. It was beastly."
"Which one?" Harding asked.
Dinah screwed up her eyes, as though trying to focus something. "The right one," she replied, and suddenly stiffened. "John!"
"Well?"
"You must be mad!" gasped Dinah. "It isn't possible!"
"Someone did it, Dinah."
"Yes, but — but it's too fantastic! I see what you're driving at, but -"
He got up. "I can't discuss it with you, darling. Will you sit tight and say nothing to anyone? I may be on a wrong track altogether." He looked at his wrist-watch. "I must go now," he said. "I shall see you tomorrow, I hope — lateish."
When he stepped out into the porch presently he found the Sergeant seated in the car, reading a folded newspaper with the air of one who expects to be obliged to kick his heels indefinitely. He said briefly: "Sorry to have been so long, Sergeant. Did you find out anything from the gardener?"
"No, sir, not a thing." The Sergeant stowed his newspaper away, and coughed. "I ought to mention, sir, that happening on Captain Billington-Smith, and him questioning me, I took the liberty of informing him that he was pretty well cleared."
"I'd forgotten about him," said Harding, getting into the car and pressing the self-starter. "Quite right, Sergeant."
"Yes," said the Sergeant. "I had a notion it might have slipped your memory, sir."
Harding glanced at him suspiciously, but the Sergeant was looking more wooden than ever. "You having other things to think about, sir, as you might say," he added.
Harding changed the subject. "I'm dropping you in Ralton, Sergeant, and going on up to London as soon as I've picked up my suitcase," he said.
The Sergeant was betrayed into an unguarded exclamation. "Lor', sir, you're never throwing the case up?"
"No, of course I'm not. I shall be back tomorrow, sometime. I'm going to find out what was the name of the General's first wife, and what became of her."
"Ah!" said the Sergeant deeply. "I was wondering what was in your mind, sir. But what about Mr. Billington-Smith and his alibi?"
"I'll attend to that tomorrow," replied Harding.
It was late that evening when he reached London, and after garaging his car he went straight to the small flat he owned overlooking the river. His man, warned by telephone of his arrival, had prepared a meal for him, and he sat down to this at once, and while he ate, read over the precis he had written of the case. Then he studied the notes he had jotted down that day, and made an alteration in the original time-table. His man, coming into the room with the coffee-tray, found him staring straight ahead of him, an unlit cigarette between his lips and his lighter held in one motionless hand.
Jarvis set the tray down on the table and began to remove the remains of supper. "A difficult case, sir?" he inquired.
Harding looked at him. "I'm a fool," he said.
"Oh, I wouldn't say that, sir," replied Jarvis encouragingly.
"Not only a fool, but a damned fool," said Harding. "The thing's been staring at me in the face, and I've only just realised it."
"Ah well, sir, better late than never," said Jarvis. "Will you be wanting me any more tonight?"
Shortly after five o'clock on the following afternoon, Inspector Harding's car drew up once more before Lyndhurst Vicarage, and the Inspector and Sergeant Nethersole got out. The Sergeant, who had been lost in thought all the way from Ralton, said slowly: "I wonder if she saw Mr. Billington-Smith at all?"
Harding rang the front-door bell. "Yes, I think so, undoubtedly."
The Sergeant sighed, and shook his head. "In my opinion," he said, "it's a bad business. A very bad business, and I don't mind admitting to you, sir, that I don't half like it."
"No, I don't like it myself," replied Harding. He turned, as the parlourmaid opened the door. "Mrs. Chudleigh?"
The parlourmaid, who, in spite of his quite innocuous behaviour on the occasion of his first visit, seemed still to regard him with trepidation, stood back to let him enter the house, and said in a gasp that she would tell the mistress he wished to see her.
Inspector Harding, however, had no intention of being left in the hall again, and followed the maid to the drawing-room at the back of the house.
She opened the door. "It's the police, m'm!" she announced breathlessly.
Mrs. Chudleigh, who was seated at the writing-table in the window, looked sharply round. When she saw the Inspector she rose, but she did not come forward to meet him. "That will do, Lilian," she said, dismissing the servant. "Good afternoon, Inspector. Dear me, Sergeant Nethersole as well? May I ask what you want with me now?"
"Mrs. Chudleigh, I am here on a very unpleasant errand," Harding said gently. "I have a warrant for your arrest for the murder of your first husband, General Sir Arthur Billington-Smith. I must warn you that anything you say now may be taken down in writing and used in evidence."
A queer, twisted smile curled her lips. "I have been expecting you," she said. "I was warned. I've written it all out. It's in that drawer. You'll find it."
Her hand was in the pocket of the cardigan she wore; she withdrew it, and raised it quickly to her mouth. "Look out, sir!" cried the Sergeant, plunging forward.
He was too late; as he seized her wrist he saw her face convulsed. She fell forward, and a little bottle dropped to the ground, and rolled a few inches across the flowered carpet.
The Sergeant dropped on his knee beside her, and felt for her heart. He raised his eyes to the Inspector's face. "She's dead, sir."
Harding nodded. "I know." He came forward, and picked up the empty bottle, and sniffed it. "Cyanide of potassium," he said, and looked down at the dead woman. "It's better like this, Sergeant."
The Sergeant, who had been staring at him with something approaching a frown in his eyes, suddenly lowered his gaze. "Maybe you're right, sir," he said. "I hadn't properly thought of it, but I don't know but what I agree with you." He paused, and got up from his knees. "She was too quick for us, sir," he said deliberately. "That's how it was."
Chapter Eighteen
This is the full confession of me, Theresa Emmeline Chudleigh. I am perfectly sane, and what I shall write now is the truth, nor am I ashamed of it.
"I killed Arthur Billington-Smith with the dagger that was lying on his desk. I did not set out to do it, but now that it is done I know that I would do it again. I am not sorry. H
e was a cruel and a wicked tyrant. He ruined my life, and he would have ruined my son's life. What I did I did for Geoffrey's sake. It is the only thing I have ever been able to do for him, and I am proud of it.
"I have been warned that a piece of paper has been found with the start of my name scribbled on it in Arthur's handwriting. That is why I am setting down this confession, for if the police come to arrest me I have made up my mind to take poison.
"When I left Arthur Billington-Smith twenty years ago, I ran away with a man whose name I shall keep back, since he is dead now, and it cannot have any bearing on what I am going to write. He had promised that we should be married as soon as Arthur had divorced me, but there was another woman, and no doubt she was more attractive than I was. I do not think there is anything to be gained by my going into that. Even now, as I write, all that I went through at that time comes back to me and makes me almost glad that I have not much longer to live in this world. My family disowned me, and I am sure I do not blame them, for there was a dreadful scandal. I was very ill, and when I grew better I went right away where no one would know me. I called myself Miss Emily Lamb. Lamb was my maiden name; I thought it was common enough to attract no attention, and so indeed it proved. That enabled me to make enough to live on. It was through my work, when I was secretary to a charitable institution in the East End of London, that I met Hilary. I should like to say that whatever I had suffered was made up to me by him, and though he will say that in the eyes of God we were not married, I hope no one will deny that I have been a good wife to him. On that point my conscience is quite clear.
"I have been married — I say married, for I have never shared Hilary's prejudice against the remarriage of divorced persons — for ten years, the happiest years of my life. I was neither young nor pretty when we first met, for mine was the type of prettiness that fades quickly. I was pretty once, though that is neither here nor there. But he was not the sort of man to want mere beauty in his wife, and when we had known one another for just a year, he asked me to marry him.
The Unfinished Clue Page 24
