CHAPTER NINE
Merlin’s Nephews
“Yet I must beg you to explain yourself.”
—John Gay, The Beggar’s Opera
More than interested, now that she had interviewed Richmond Aumbry and had seen his wife, Mrs. Bradley pursued her enquiries by going to Merlin’s Furlong, accompanied by the Chief Constable. There appeared to be nothing in common between the rest of Mr. Aumbry’s nephews (who seemed, in fact, thoroughly suspicious of one another) and yet there was no doubt that the statements made by Godfrey, Frederick, and Lewis indicated a refusal to believe that Richmond had killed his Uncle Aumbry.
“Of course, one can see that from the point of view of a prosecuting counsel, Richmond had a motive,” said the lawyer Godfrey, “but I assure you that he is incapable of murder. On the other hand”—he frowned thoughtfully— “somebody (who was in this house at the time when my uncle drafted this last, ridiculous and, one fears, fatal will), somebody, I repeat, knocked me on the head and ran off with my papers.”
“Indeed!” said Mrs. Bradley, as though she had not heard of this incident. “When was this?”
“Oh, three weeks ago. My uncle had invited my cousins and me to come and pay him a short visit. To me he had added that he proposed to make a will and that I might as well earn a few guineas as his own lawyer. We talked over his affairs and he told me definitely that he proposed to make me the chief beneficiary. I suggested that, if such was his intention, it would be far better to let his own man draw up the provisions. I did not want to be accused of having exerted undue influence. That would have been most distasteful. We are a united family, as families go, but people are extraordinarily unpredictable as soon as money comes into the picture.”
“Very true.” Mrs. Bradley nodded dolefully. “I wonder whether you would mind giving me some further details about the time you were knocked on the head?”
“Certainly I will. The notes of my uncle’s first will were all prepared, and my uncle, who seemed in high spirits, went out of the room to get something he treasured so that I might see it, and, I think, congratulate him upon possessing it. Scarcely had he gone, leaving me alone in the room, when somebody must have stolen in and I was knocked unconscious. When I came to…I was not, I am thankful to say, very seriously hurt…the notes of the will had disappeared. It was after this that my uncle informed me that he was going to make a will in favour of my cousin Richmond. This he actually did…”
“The will which you consider ridiculous? I think you used that word just now.”
“I did. Advisedly. It was my uncle’s own business, of course, but he did it to upset and financially embarrass poor Richmond.”
“By making him his heir?”
“By pretending to. It was a cruel and unnatural thing to do, for, having informed Richmond of the provisions, and so (he hoped), committed him to extravagances which Richmond could not have afforded on his income, he proposed to disinherit him in my favor. He told me this himself.”
“There were no witnesses to your conversation, I take it?”
“None, so far as I know. But my uncle was in some ways a perverted moral type, and one never knew what he was up to. It would have been quite in character for him to have had someone in hiding…one of the servants, for example…who could testify afterwards to what had been said. He trusted nobody.”
“Had he found the world in general unreliable?”
“I really have no idea. None of us saw very much of him. He spent most of his time in Wallchester where he became acquainted with this unfortunate Professor Havers. Then, occasionally, we would receive a summons to visit him here at Merlin’s Furlong.”
“Did all of you come every time?”
“Unless he invited me by myself…you will understand that my profession has made me rather more tactful and discreet than the others, and therefore I got on with him better than they did…we all came, even Richmond, whom he actively disliked.”
“But, in spite of this dislike, Richmond thought he might, in the end, gain something from these visits?”
“I scarcely think so.” Godfrey smiled…a tight, catlike, mirthless grimace…and added, in a lighter tone, “He came to annoy Uncle Aumbry. The dislike, one might call it hatred, was entirely mutual. They used to indulge in verbal sparring matches, and Richmond would call Uncle names. He used invariably a reflective, almost episcopal tone of delivery which used to drive Uncle insane. Uncle would have back at Richmond with taunts about allowing his wife to go out to work, and of having to send his boys to a council school. Coming here was about the only kind of holiday Richmond ever had, and Uncle would tell him that, too, and lash out on the subject of poets and poetry, and people who were too lazy or too incapable to take an honest job and support their dependents.”
“Then Richmond is a poet?” asked Mrs. Bradley as though she had not heard of this before.
“So he says.”
“Published?”
“Two slim volumes, I believe. I haven’t read them.”
“Have you any idea who the somebody was who hit you and took your papers?”
“It wouldn’t be fair to say.”
“You mean it was Frederick Aumbry?”
“You say that. I do not.”
“Fair enough. I won’t interrupt your work any longer. I wonder where I can find Mr. Lewis Aumbry?”
“I’ll send for him.”
“No, no. All your papers are here, and I don’t intend to disturb you. I’ll find him for myself.”
“Well, he’s bound to be about somewhere,” said Godfrey, settling himself at his desk, “and if I can be of any further assistance, you know that you can call upon me.” Upon second thoughts, he got up and opened the door for her. Mrs. Bradley ran into Lewis in the passage.
“Yes, I did listen,” he said, before she could speak to him. “So would you if that caddish person in there was doing his best to put a rope round your brother’s neck! Richmond didn’t do it. He couldn’t have done it. It isn’t in him, and that’s that.”
“But that is exactly what your cousin Godfrey has just told me,” Mrs. Bradley protested. Lewis snorted and did not reply. “I very much want to talk to you,” she added, “and, since you have overheard the conversation between Mr. Godfrey and myself, perhaps you will be good enough to give me your own interpretation of the facts.”
“Certainly. May I ask how you come into the affair?”
Mrs. Bradley, accompanying him to a grim small chamber whose mullioned window looked out on to the courtyard, seated herself and told, with satirical humour, the story of her three intrepid, misguided undergraduates.
“Young fools!” said Lewis. “And, because of them, my brother is landed in this ghastly mess!”
“An unfair observation!” Mrs. Bradley retorted. “Whoever killed your uncle, your brother, who had so much to gain by your uncle’s death, was bound to come under suspicion.”
“Do you suspect him?”
“I don’t know enough facts yet to suspect anybody, but I have had a talk with your brother.”
“Yes?”
“He is not, I would say…I am speaking now as a psychiatrist…”
“You’re not…good heavens! Of course! You must be! Mrs. Lestrange Bradley, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Then my brother,” said Lewis, with complete conviction, “is safe. You’ll have decided already that it isn’t in Richmond’s nature to kill anybody.”
“I was about to say that he did not seem to me a criminal type. Murder, of course, is a different matter entirely. It is a sin, rather than a crime, and it is a point of view rather than either. I should hesitate to say that your brother would commit murder for gain, but I would not say that under no circumstances would he kill, and your uncle appears to have tried him very high.”
“Yes, he did. Richmond has the best brains of the lot of us, and as a boy he was Uncle Aumbry’s favourite. Uncle took it badly when Richmond declined to partner him in
his business and took to literature. He took it very badly indeed.”
“What was your uncle’s business?”
“I think he was a receiver of stolen goods,” said Lewis calmly. “But I’ve no proof, of course.” Mrs. Bradley thought of the story told her by the three students and reserved judgment.
“This attack on Mr. Godfrey,” she remarked. “Have you any theories?”
“None, except that neither Richmond nor I could have made it.”
“That leaves Mr. Frederick, then.”
“Richmond and I were together. He was telling me what he would do to Uncle Aumbry if there were no law against it.”
“And what would he have done to Uncle Aumbry?”
“Killed him, of course,” said Lewis, looking surprised.
“And you think that is proof that he did not kill him, I suppose.”
“Well, what do you think? Besides, when could he have done it?”
“Surely that is what we have to find out?” She deserted Lewis and went in search of his cousin Frederick. Frederick was in his own room, a chamber in that tower which the three undergraduates, according to their own account, had not explored.
“Mr. Frederick Aumbry?” she asked, admitting herself without invitation. Frederick Aumbry was testy.
“I don’t see what all the fuss is about,” he growled. “Uncle Aumbry had been asking for it for years. Neither my cousins nor I killed him. I except Godfrey. A graceless ass, if you ask me, and much too sure of himself.”
“I am asking you,” Mrs. Bradley responded. “Do you really think your cousin Godfrey killed your uncle?”
“Since you ask me,” Frederick replied ungraciously, “actually I don’t. But what the hell is it to do with you?”
Mrs. Bradley patiently pointed out that she was vouched for by the Chief Constable.
“Well, I don’t see it,” said Frederick, without attempting to explain what he meant. Mrs. Bradley did not press him; she merely remarked:
“And who hit your cousin Godfrey and rendered him unconscious?”
“Whoever it was has my blessing,” said Frederick, sweeping back his honey-colored hair.
“But you must surely have a theory,” Mrs. Bradley persisted. “You yourself, for instance. What were you doing at the time?”
“No idea. Wait a minute, though! Yes, I have! I was writing a letter to the papers. I remember, because Uncle Aumbry put his head in at the door, made a rude noise, and went away again. I didn’t finish the letter because I wanted a reference. I went down to the library, but the door must have been locked. At any rate, I twisted the handle, but nothing budged, so I came back in here, and the next thing was all this hullabaloo about Godfrey. Then came dinner, and a general row in which we were all involved except Godfrey, and then I went off to the village pub, as was my custom after one of Uncle’s dinners, and spent most of the evening there.”
“I notice that your first statements are incapable of proof.”
“I know. They’re the truth, though.” His attitude of belligerence was gone. “Look here, who did kill Uncle Aumbry? I wish I knew. It’s abominable to suspect poor old Richmond!”
“I might hazard a guess,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Was there any reason why the library door was ever locked?”
“Perhaps there was. Uncle kept his safe in there, built into the wall.”
“What was kept in the safe? Money?”
“I’ve no idea. I never thought about it, and Uncle certainly never confided in me.”
“Mr. Aumbry, suppose it were put to you directly that your cousin Richmond killed your uncle in order to benefit from a will which he felt was bound to be altered if your uncle lived, what would you say?”
“Same as I’ve said all along. I don’t understand Richmond much. I think he’s an ass. Anybody who thinks he can live by writing poetry is an ass. Why don’t he take up a profession like Godfrey and Lewis, or follow the winners, like me? There’s sense in that. But poetry! Who wants poetry, anyway, except it’s something for brats to learn at school? But to suspect him of murder, whatever his reason might be, is just plain out-and-out cuckoo!”
“One more question, Mr. Aumbry, if you will be so good. This last will that your uncle made: did you think he intended to let it stand?”
“Oh, no, certainly not! He was always trying to take a rise out of Richmond. Not that he got much change out of it! Richmond knew he had no expectations, so he used to say what he liked to Uncle, and, having the gift of words, so to speak, could get under the old boy’s skin and drive him nearly crazy. Why, Richmond himself knew perfectly well that the new will wouldn’t stand.”
“It must have been a great temptation, then, to make certain that it did,” said Mrs. Bradley. Frederick’s eyes protruded indignantly.
“Nothing of the sort!” he declared. “I’ve told you the truth because I’m not over-blessed with brains and it takes brains to be a good liar, but Richmond is absolutely out of it. Too few guts and too much imagination for a murderer. No question about it. If he told me himself he’d done it I shouldn’t believe him.”
“Can you throw any light on this strange business of your cousin Mr. Godfrey having been knocked on the head and his papers taken?”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about that,” said Frederick slowly, “and I’ve come to the conclusion that it was either Uncle Aumbry’s murderer or the old man himself. He was a queer old codger, you know. Not a single moral instinct except he was a monk about women. Never knew him to look at a skirt, except my late aunt. But in all other directions Fagin could have learnt a lot from him.”
“And you think he may have been the person who hit Mr. Godfrey on the head?”
“More than likely. If he had a suspicion that Godfrey had put down a few things off the record he’d have had no scruples about getting to know what those few things were. Or he may have thought Godfrey would do a bit of private snooping while he was out of the room.”
“Would that be in character?”
“In Godfrey’s character, you mean? Oh, yes. If Godfrey thought there was anything worth finding out, it wouldn’t stay hidden very long.”
“Yet Mr. Godfrey was your uncle’s favourite nephew, was he not?”
“I was never altogether sure,” said Frederick thoughtfully. “They were birds of a feather, in a way, but I always thought that if Richmond had played his cards right he could have been the apple of the old man’s eye. When we were boys there was no doubt about which of us Uncle Aumbry liked the best. But Richmond’s poetry, and then his marriage, ditched his chances of the money. The old man was only ribbing him when he made that new will, as I’ve already made plain.”
“What do you know about the Isaurian diptych, Mr. Aumbry?”
Frederick gaped at her.
“How did you get on to that?” he asked. Mrs. Bradley told him the story of the three undergraduates.
“Silly young fools,” said Frederick. “Why, if Uncle Aumbry had been alive when they came here, they’d have had a twelve-bore loosed off at their heads!”
“You do not disapprove of the actual fact that they broke in, then, apart from the danger to themselves?”
“Certainly not. The old boy was a jackdaw, to put it mildly. Anything he saw that he fancied, well, his hooks were on it in no time.”
“So you think he did steal the diptych from Professor Havers?”
“Think? I know he did! At least, that he’d stolen it from somebody. It definitely wasn’t his own.”
“How is that, Mr. Aumbry?”
“Well, I’d backed a few losers and I wondered whether Uncle Aumbry was good for a touch. No! I’ll be truthful. I knew he wasn’t, but I thought I might be able to sneak something I could pawn. The old man had such a vast collection of odds and ends that I felt pretty sure I could hook on to something which would see me through until I could recoup. Of course, I intended to get the whatever-it-was out of pawn when I was in a position to do so, and shoot it back where it belonged. Nothing w
rong, you see. Just temporary accommodation.”
“I see. And…?”
“I descended upon Uncle just before the Grand National…not that I ever bet on steeplechases…much too chancy. No, I stick to the flat, don’t you?”
Mrs. Bradley, who never betted on horse races, agreed that it was a wise plan.
“So much easier to estimate form,” she added, hoping that this comment would pass muster.
“Exactly,” said Frederick. “Well, you’ve realised what sort of a place this is. Apart from a couple of Chinese houseboys and a Kanaka cook…all of whom seem to have made themselves scarce, incidentally, so we’ve had to get help from Merlin’s Ell…there was nobody to study the comings and goings of visitors. I just breezed into the courtyard, gave the Chinks a couple of bob each and the Kanaka a pretty hot tip for the Oaks…sporting chap, that Kanaka, always a pal of mine, really…so that they got the idea to stay put and let me announce myself to Uncle, and then I went up to the other tower where he kept the bulk of the loot.”
“The three undergraduates did not find your uncle’s collection,” Mrs. Bradley pointed out.
“Simple. Trapdoor under the floor of the Queen’s Bedroom. Covered by a strip of nailed-down carpet. Only—the nails are screws. Well, in I crept, but there was Uncle, with the carpet up and the trapdoor open, so pleased with what he was handling that he didn’t even hear me come in. I was wearing sneakers, of course, as a precaution against sound, but he was pretty well absorbed.”
“The diptych, of course.”
“The diptych. I greeted him breezily and he jumped a couple of furlongs and let out some pretty frenzied comments. I soothed him down, and, perceiving that a snatch was out of the question, I asked him for a temporary loan. He cursed me and told me where I could go, so I told him where he could go, too, if I described to the police the little treasure he was crooning over so tenderly. So, of course, we made a deal.”
“And on this you base the assumption that the diptych was not, in fact, your uncle’s property?”
“What would you have assumed?” asked Frederick with the broad smile of a man who has taken fortune at the flood. “I asked him for a hundred pounds, and I got it. Not a loan. A free gift, the old scoundrel. Unluckily, I lost the lot at Goodwood.”
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