‘But when I went to him, where he sat perpetually by the open window, not watching the empty sea but staring between his hands at the carpet, and knelt by his side to tell him, all he at last brought out rustily was: “Does it matter?”
‘I put my arms about him.
‘“We only have each other now,” I said. “We were neither of us loved for ourselves, you see, dearest.”
‘“Does it matter?” Papa repeated dully.
‘“But, dearest, don’t you see? Now we can prove your innocence to the world,” I said eagerly.
‘“Does it matter?” Papa said.
‘My poor Papa! His mind had quite gone. I had him to myself all right, he was as much mine as ever I could wish; like a baby, a great melancholy baby — wasn’t there a song called “Melancholy Baby” years ago? — well, that was Papa till he died. Happily, he did not live long. The rain blew in on him one day as he sat at his open window and he caught cold, and died because he had no will to live.’
She paused to strip a fig carefully of its shiny purple skin.
‘But your husband?’ said Mr Jones, mashing sheep cheese on to a seeded crust. ‘What happened to him?’
‘Oliver? He was brought to trial at the last Assize of the year before the Christmas recess. Poor unfortunate fellow,’ she said calmly, ‘he did not stand a chance. The jury was only away twenty minutes. Of course you must remember this was before the Criminal Evidence Act of 1898 and so he could not be examined by the Defence to give evidence in his own favour, which I daresay made it very hard for him — and very easy for the Prosecution. However, I comfort myself with the thought that it would not have made any difference in the end. Justice must be satisfied.’
‘Well, really — ’ said Mr Jones in a strangled voice, as if he had just found a sheep’s eye or a morsel of fried snake in his mouth and did not know what to do with it.
‘Of course I knew nothing of all this at the time,’ Miss Hine said reprovingly. ‘I was desperately ill for weeks with brain-fever. That was when they cut off all my heavy brown hair.’ She stroked her poll meditatively. ‘And it was so cool and agreeable that I’ve worn it like this ever since.’
‘But your husband?’ Mr Jones insisted.
The old woman sighed portentously.
‘The horror of that time is something I can still hardly bear to discuss. You see, the child was born — dead, on the day its father was hanged in the prison precincts ... It was a long while before I was strong enough to travel, but as soon as I could, I left England for ever and changed my name, so that the unhappy past would no longer pursue me. I had lost everything and must start life all over again. And I’m bound to say that I think I’ve done pretty well, considering,’ she added complacently.
Mr Jones stared at her in horror. He thrust the pretty pink salad away from him, as though the sight of it made him ill.
‘Do you mean to tell me that you deliberately allowed your husband to hang?’ he said incredulously.
‘Allowed?’ repeated the old woman with wide blue eyes as innocent as flowers. ‘I don’t know what you mean? What could I have done?’
‘You could have prevented it,’ he said in a low tense voice.
‘Even if I could — which I don’t for an instant admit — why on earth should I want to prevent him from getting his just deserts? He’d never been a particularly good husband, I think you’ll admit. And you surely cannot imagine I loved him.’
‘What has love to do with it?’ said Mr Jones outraged. ‘It was simply Justice.’
‘That’s what I say. It was Justice,’ agreed the old woman placidly. ‘But you surely haven’t finished your meal? There’s plenty of time yet. Come, you must try one of my specialities, a peach dusted with ground almonds and cinnamon.’ She called out a complicated order to a woman in the heavy black hood Mahommedan women wear before strange men and she slipped away into the shadows.
‘I cannot imagine your purpose in telling me this abominable story if you did not want me to discover the truth?’ Mr Jones said severely.
‘The truth?’ she echoed, surprised, as though she had never heard the word before. ‘What is the truth, pray?’ Confused by the barbaric heated impressions of the afternoon and the coolly remote story from the distant past, for a vain lost minute it was hard to find reality.
With an effort, Mr Jones said:
‘The truth is that you murdered Sophia yourself.’
The old woman stared at him in frosty amazement. He could hear his heart beating in the silence. It was perhaps unforgivable to insult one’s hostess? He waited in alarm.
At last she uttered, coolly, ironically:
‘May one venture to enquire how you arrived at that remarkable deduction?’
‘You were the one who had most reason to want her out of the way,’ said Mr Jones sulkily. ‘You were insanely jealous of her influence over your father because — let’s face it — you were in love with him yourself. However much you tried you couldn’t conceal that you hated her.’
‘I haven’t tried for a moment to conceal that I hated her; she was a very wicked character; but that doesn’t mean I killed her, you know. If one killed everybody one hated, one’s relations would hardly be safe, poor things,’ she said drily. ‘But, go on, tell me how you think I did it.’
‘You were the only one who knew how Sophia was killed. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?’
‘I think, my dear young sir, that you are being wise after the event,’ she said good-humouredly. ‘You might remember that I was an exceptionally sheltered girl of only nineteen. You might say, a child. How should I know of such things?’
‘The cyanide was there under your hand and you knew it was a deadly poison. You were just as able as your husband was to change the powder in one of Sophia’s digestive doses, and we know that you had a much stronger motive than he had.’
‘Possibly. But it happened to be found in his handkerchief, not mine,’ she pointed out, unmoved.
‘I maintain that you fudged that evidence against him. All that stuff about finding the powder in a corner of his handkerchief! You put it there yourself of course. I thought it was odd the way you twisted your report of the conversation you overheard between Oliver and Sophia when you told it to the police. It hardly corresponded with the version you told me first: then it was he who suggested running away and she who said it would only lead to scandal and ruin. Was it then that you decided to kill her, I wonder?’
‘Murder my stepmother and make my own husband the scapegoat, how could such a dreadful idea have even entered my mind?’
‘I’m not suggesting you meant your husband to hang then. I think you hoped it would be considered suicide. I don’t think you realised all the enquiry that would follow her death. You became more and more rattled as one after another of the family were involved in the scandal, though I don’t really believe you cared twopence what happened to any of them except your father. That was your obsession. And when it came to the point where he was actually in real danger as the likeliest suspect, then you had to act, and act quickly, if he was to be saved. As you admitted yourself, you would almost have given yourself up to save him. But instead you found a scapegoat to be the “real culprit”. When you went to see Mrs Falk that day at her sister’s house, I don’t believe for an instant that it was with any idea of “stopping her mouth” as you pretended, for by that time the damage was done and the exhumation ordered, so there was no longer any purpose in threatening her. No, you went there to see if she could be bribed to give you evidence of some sort against your husband. Oh, I’m not saying you asked for it bluntly like that,’ he said quickly as she started to protest. ‘But without putting it into words you managed to make it quite clear to her what you meant, with the way you stressed that Oliver couldn’t find a hundred pounds to save his life, and that Mrs Falk evidently expected you to keep her for the rest of her life, and so on. Meaning that if she pl
ayed her part properly and produced the necessary evidence she could rely on you for the money.’
‘This is sheer invention,’ she said, but her eyes watched him sharply.
‘Oh, I grant you pretended not to know what she was writing about when she offered the “Curious old papers” for sale, but you were careful to send for the papers before letting Oliver know about them, and then you sent him off on a wild goose errand to fetch them when you knew they were no longer there, because you wanted him safely out of the way when you presented your evidence to the police. Did the old lady realise, I wonder, that you were buying the letters not to protect but to betray your husband? Or did you trick her too?’
‘Mrs Falk wanted her revenge just as much as I did. You might just as well say that she used me to do her dirty and dangerous work for her.’
‘So you admit it!’ said Mr Jones in a shocked voice. ‘To protect your father, you had your husband killed! You deliberately allowed an innocent man to hang!’
‘In the circumstances, I should hardly have thought “allowed” was the mot juste,’ Miss Hine said mildly. ‘I should have said “arranged” was nearer the mark.’
‘But you are really horrible, wicked,’ muttered Mr Jones fearfully.
‘Oh, you mustn’t think me a monster. I was only a friendless unhappy girl trying to do what was best for all concerned. You cannot deny that Sophia was a thoroughly evil and dissolute woman who would only have brought shame and disgrace on us all if she had been let live. I can’t find it in my heart to blame myself for what I did then. Do try and feel some sympathy for that poor bewildered girl,’ Miss Hine said in reasonable tones, which yet only succeeded in affronting Mr Jones’s moral sense the more.
‘Sympathy for you!’ said Mr Jones severely. ‘Why, you have no more conscience than a cat! You betrayed everybody without the least sign of feeling, without a hint of remorse or guilt.’
‘It was they who were to blame; they were all so wicked,’ she said blandly. ‘They corrupted my innocence.’
‘If you were innocent, God help the guilty!’ exclaimed Mr Jones piously.
‘Well, really!’ said Miss Hine with a jocund laugh. ‘There’s nothing like insulting one’s hostess. Oh, bless you, I don’t mind! I’ve thoroughly enjoyed telling you about it and you’ve been a very patient listener. And an exceptionally clever one too, I’m sure not one person in a hundred would have guessed. I hope you haven’t been bored.’
But Mr Jones was not to be won by flattery — from a murderess.
‘Not bored,’ he said sharply, spooning up the last of the peach juices with its haunting almond fragrance, ‘but very decidedly appalled.’
‘Oh, my dear young man, aren’t you taking it all rather too seriously? We don’t want to be priggish, do we? After all, it happened a great while ago and it would be foolish to pretend that it mattered to anybody now. There are far too many people in the world anyway, and most of them unnecessary. Of course I felt a little uncomfortable at the time, I admit, but one can’t brood for ever and it’s wonderful how quickly unpleasant memories do fade from the mind. I think I may say I’ve had a very happy and successful life, on the whole,’ she concluded complacently.
‘You’re inhuman! I thought at least that unpunished murderers were haunted by their own consciousness of guilt,’ Mr Jones said angrily.
‘It’s a funny thing,’ said Miss Hine, ‘I’ve always noticed that it is the people who have never done anything wrong in this world who are tortured with feelings of guilt. It does seem unfair. While I thrive. Not a twinge of remorse to trouble my sleep or disturb my digestion.’ She chuckled pleasantly. ‘Perhaps we should all be more confident and healthy-minded if we had a murder or two behind us.’
But Mr Jones was extremely unamused. That the guilty should be happy and the blameless suffer gave him a feeling of vertigo, as though the ground was being cut away from under his feet. Where now was the attitude of philosophical detachment on which he prided himself?
‘You understand that I shall have to report this as soon as I return to England,’ he said stiffly.
‘I shouldn’t bother,’ said Miss Hine calmly. ‘You will only bring ridicule and contempt upon yourself, raking over the dead old rubbish of half a century ago.’
‘I assure you, it’s useless — ’ began Mr Jones, but Miss Hine cut him short by saying that if he wished to take-off before sundown it was time for him to leave.
The etiquette of taking leave of one’s hostess gracefully when she is a self-confessed murderess is uncertain. Mr Jones felt awkward. He tried to be austere, but she was so undefeatably amiable that she made him feel a fool, and a gauche young fool at that. His threat to inform against her left her curiously unperturbed. Didn’t she take him seriously then? Or had she some reason for not considering him dangerous? What reason could she have, a murderess? A murderess! What one has done once, one may do again, he realised, feeling the weakness of fear in all his joints. How insanely trusting he had been! As though she would have dared confess all that unless she had made it quite safe for herself ... Something in his food. She had been so damnably insistent that he should take supper. But then she hadn’t known he had guessed her secret? He recollected, with a lurch of terror, her calling suddenly for the peaches and ground almonds ... ground almonds! ... the taste came back into his mouth, haunting, pungent ...
From a long way away he heard the old woman saying, ‘Now, don’t forget to write and let me know you’ve arrived. I shall be so interested to learn what becomes of you. You should go a long way. Such a clever young man!’
She might have been a fond aunt saying good-bye to a favourite nephew if it had not been for the irony of her tone.
The gate clanged shut behind him. He was alone beneath the great hollow sky. In the afterglow the village looked like blocks of pink ice-cream. The airplane was a small black cross in the distance. He wondered how long the poison would take to work. The cold wind that blew off the desert at sunset made him shiver with a sudden fever. He began to hurry over the rough ground. He wanted to get to Ras Ali before he died ... to tell him ... His temples were throbbing louder and louder ... till he realised the throbbing was not in his head but in the waiting aircraft ... He stumbled on.
Ras Ali saluted, once again competent, cheery, intrepid.
‘Ras Ali, I’m ill,’ gasped Mr Jones. And was. Exceedingly.
The relief of having got the poison out of his system was enormous. He climbed into the rickety little machine almost jauntily, he was surprised to find it felt quite like home to him. The plane shook all over and raced forward bumpily.
‘Good-bye, Madam Borgia!’ said Mr Jones aloud with sardonic triumph.
And presently, from the ground, only its steady track distinguished the plane’s crimson tail-light from the fireflies darting boldly through the gathering dusk.
EPILOGUE OR COD-PIECE
Lancelot Jones did arrive safely at Bandrapore, the little Indian State governed by Mahmoud Kahn, and found it all very quaint and agreeable. Mahmoud Kahn’s palace was fantastically gorgeous and incredibly primitive. The Court Officials looked as if they were dressed for close-ups in a Cecil B. de Mille epic of the East, with jewelled turbans and glittering orders on their brocaded coats, and bare feet and legs. On the other hand, although Mr Jones turned over his food suspiciously, to his relief he was given kedgeree for breakfast and not fried snakes.
If one cannot take out one’s impressions and air them in conversation, the next best thing is to write a letter to describe what one thinks and feels and observes. There was no one for Mr Jones to talk to, so he devoted one morning to writing a really amusing account (deft and witty) of his experiences to an Oxford friend.
He described the elephant-porch on the palace, of fretted pink marble forty feet high; he described a bird that perched on his balcony and whistled to him maddeningly in the moonlight; he described his eight-year-old charge, a fierce little
huntsman, delicate as a Persian miniature, undisciplined, courteous, weeping with love for a Ranee in a neighbouring State, to whom he wrote overwrought and yearning love-poems; and he described his journey over in the rickety little plane and touched airily on his adventure mid-way.
‘Came down in the desert, apparently miles from any human habitation. But luckily found a minute village with one decent house in it, wherein I encountered a curious old character who called herself Alva Hine, but whose name was really Blanche Sheridan. A very odd story there! I wonder if you have ever come across the name in your pursuit of paper-criminology? If you have, I’ll tell you more; not at all what you would expect from your readings.’
In the course of time his friend answered him, and halfway down the second page wrote:
‘Of course I’ve heard of Alva Hine, my dear chap. Who hasn’t? Fancy running into her in that god-forsaken spot! How really odd! It must have been a most entertaining experience for you. I wish you had told me more about her. It is really rather maddening of you! Do be sure and tell me more when next you write.’
But by that time the experience had already become the past and it would have been a colossal bore to have to write about it. He never answered the letter. Instead he had become deeply absorbed in the pleasures of pig-sticking — he, who had always so despised hunting for its futility and meaningless savagery! Oh, he could have written a poem himself (for it was beginning to dawn on him now what poetry was for) on the exultation of riding into the fresh delicious morning, so full of well-being that it made him bellow like an opera-singer with delight.
He never troubled to write to Miss Hine, though for the first week he did think out one or two crisp letters, but it was too much bother to put them down on paper, and besides, he was no longer so sure she had tried to kill him, it might have been only the upsetting combination of excitement, excessive heat, and rich exotic food. He had no wish to make a fool of himself. He put it out of his mind.
An Afternoon to Kill Page 15
