Norris gave a bitter laugh. “I’ve long since stopped caring what people think of me. These papers don’t have a damned thing to do with me.”
“I see. Your disgraces are a matter of public record. But the papers you’re burning don’t have to do with you. They’re about someone who matters very much to you and who is in no position to protect himself.”
Norris cocked the revolver. “I swear to God, Page, if you try to stop me from destroying them, I’ll use this on you.”
“I don’t doubt it for a minute,” Page said easily. “Daresay I’d do the same in your shoes. So, Armstrong was blackmailing you. You and your friend spent time in military prison, but it wasn’t for desertion, was it? No, don’t get exercised, I’d be in much the same situation if I had ever gotten caught. You were put in prison and let out to fight at Normandy. But at some point, the colonel decided he needed an accomplice. He was getting too old to manage a black market steel racket all on his own. He enlisted the help of someone he knew he could control. Threatening to tell your friend’s family the true reason he was put in prison, that was the gun he had to your head. That’s bad. But I know you didn’t murder him.”
“That makes two of us, and only two of us. The police don’t give a damn about my alibi. The constable who was stationed here is out to lunch. He’ll be back in a quarter of an hour. That’s when I’ll be arrested. And I can’t face it. I can’t. It’s damned hard to kill yourself in prison. I ought to know. So I’m doing it here.”
“Fair enough,” Leo said. “Before you do that, could you tell me what the charwoman had to do with anything?”
“I didn’t kill either of them, for Christ’s sake. I have enough trouble without compounding it with murder. I did give Mrs. Hoggett the doctored gin, but I didn’t realize what Armstrong meant to do. It was only after the inquest that I understood.”
“She figured out what Armstrong was up to?”
“No. I’m not that sloppy. She found Armstrong’s father’s will, which left the estate to be split between Armstrong and his sister or sister’s issue. Well, Mrs. Hoggett knew no such thing had happened, and also knew that Mary Griffiths was the sister’s child.”
The room was silent except for the fire crackling in the hearth, so silent they could hear the sound of footsteps in the snow outside. Please be Sally, Leo prayed to any gods that might be listening. Not anybody else, above all not the police.
“All right.” He said, fishing one-handed in his valise for his passport and flinging it to the floor before Norris. “You’re Leonard Page now. Go to America. Dye your hair. Since the war, you’ve worked at an insurance firm.” He pulled out his wallet and tossed it to the floor beside the passport. “References available upon request.”
The outside door opened and a voice came from the hall. “Page! Where are you?” It was James. Of course, it was James. Leo’s heart pounded in his chest.
“Don’t—” Leo started, but James was already in the doorway.
“What in heaven’s name is going on here?” James asked, as if the situation needed any explanation. Norris had the barrel of the revolver against his own jaw. The tableau was nothing if not self-explanatory.
“James,” Leo said, his voice urgent and low, “go back outside. Get away from here.” He didn’t want to even imagine how disturbing James would find the impending scene of blood and carnage. To Norris, he said, “Run, damn it. Run.”
For a moment, Leo thought Norris would pull the trigger. Then James took a step into the room, waving off Leo’s protests. “You have a chance to start fresh—no, that’s a lie,” James said.” There’s no such thing as a fresh start, is there? I thought there was when I came here, but there’s no putting the past behind you, not really. There’s more life waiting for you, though, and you have a chance to live it.”
Norris looked about to argue. “Run,” Leo said. “For God’s sake, man. You can top yourself later if you damned well need to, but I hear tires on the gravel. Take the weapon and run, damn you!”
Norris grabbed the passport and wallet, shoving them into his coat pocket. Then he bolted for the french doors, disappearing across the terrace and the snow-covered garden, headed toward the woods. Leo hoped he was fast.
“Page, what the hell did you just do?” Sally Bright asked, coming up behind him. “I just saw Norris running pell-mell across the lawn.”
Leo drew his pistol and aimed it at a spot to the side of the french door. “I must be losing my knack,” Leo said, firing the weapon. “I didn’t fire in time. A masked man, no doubt a double murderer, got clean away, never to be heard from again. I very much fear he killed Norris. Oh well.” He put the weapon back in its holster.
He hadn’t played by the rules. But there weren’t any rules, there never had been, and Leo knew that all too well. Theirs was a world of fear and chaos, with tiny islands of goodness and hope. A man could go his entire life without encountering one of those islands, as Leo very nearly had until he met James. He wanted to be that, he wanted to be a source of goodness and... mercy, or whatever it was. He could do that for a man who hadn’t done anything worse—in a world where values of worse could be calculated with any precision—than Leo had himself.
“What the hell, Page. What the actual hell am I supposed to tell the police?” Sally asked, shaking her head and staring out the still-open door. “What the hell am I supposed to tell the boss?”
“You can tell him I quit.”
THE HOUSEMAID—WHO APPARENTLY wasn’t a housemaid, but a colleague of Page’s—stayed behind to give a statement to the police.
“Dr. Sommers has had an ordeal and Mr. Page has an acute case of tonsillitis. Unless you want to be responsible for what happens to them, you’ll question them later. I saw with my own eyes what happened in that room, and you don’t need any information from them until they’ve recovered,” she told the inspector.
As far as James saw it, the local police had been grossly irresponsible in leaving Wych Hall unguarded, and they could very well continue to be irresponsible by letting him and Leo leave. He put his hand between Leo’s shoulder blades and walked him out the door before the policeman could respond. “Come along,” he said firmly. “You belong in bed.”
“Where are we going?” Leo asked when they got outside. The snow was still falling and both of them had arrived on foot.
“Well, I suppose I ought to find Mary. Griffiths said she took the car, so I suppose she can give us a lift back to the village.”
“Mrs. Griffiths is here?”
“We think she came because Wendy telephoned her.” He began to walk toward the old chapel.
“Wendy is here too? Of course, she is. Whenever there’s mischief, that girl is knee deep.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” James said dourly. They approached one of the ruined walls of the chapel, behind which they found Mary and Wendy, both highly disheveled, kneeling beside an enormous sow and a vast number of piglets. The remainder of the pigs nosed at the contents of a trough on one side of the makeshift pen that had been built from fallen stones.
“Oh, hello James and Mr. Page,” Wendy called. “You’re just who we need. We’d like to coax this lady into the old tack room, but she’s not budging. Piglets die if they get cold, you see.”
“And you think Mr. Page and I can lift that pig. I’m flattered, but I’m afraid hauling sows around isn’t in my line of expertise. How about you, Mr. Page?”
“I’m afraid not,” Leo rasped. James really needed to get him indoors and dose him with elderberry cordial. But he knew better than to reason with Wendy.
“Don’t be daft,” Mary cut in, her voice equally weak. “We need you to help carry the piglets. The mother will follow.”
“Or she might try to trample us,” Wendy added.
“The book was unclear,” said Mary.
They were both extremely dirty and unkempt, and both wore clothing that could have been stolen from a scarecrow. If James hadn’t noticed the family resembla
nce before, he would have now. “All right, Page, let’s grab a pair of piglets each. Today really has been full of surprises.” James suspected that at some point the shock was going to hit him, but for now, he felt oddly energetic. They managed to get all eleven piglets into the abandoned tack room, then coax the mother in, while the other pigs looked on in a bewilderment James found all too relatable. Finally, when they were all thoroughly dirty, they made their way to the Griffiths’ ancient car, which Mary had parked behind the stable.
“I’m so glad you had the sense not to walk,” James said. “You’re still quite ill.”
“Oh, I used Daniel’s old car because I didn’t know whether I was going to need to bring home any pigs.” Wendy, climbing into the passenger seat, dissolved into uproarious laughter. “What?” Mary asked. “I had visions of bottle feeding a dozen piglets by the fire.”
“And you came anyway?” Wendy asked.
“The children would have been delighted, and I daresay Daniel wouldn’t have noticed.”
James opened one of the back doors for Leo, who shot him a surprised look. “I can walk,” Leo said.
“Doubtless there are many things you can do, but I will personally beat you unconscious and throw you into the boot of this car if you so much as make an attempt,” James said firmly. “I have had a day, Leo. Do not try me.” Leo got into the car.
“I’m not entirely certain what happened in the library with Norris, but I see that you helped him escape,” James said softly once they were both in the back seat, his words drowned out by Wendy’s chatter.
“He would have been arrested otherwise. There was enough evidence to convict him, and helping him run seemed a better thing than letting him kill himself.”
“So you just...let a murderer go?”
“No, I let the accomplice to a black market steel racket go free. It was Armstrong who killed Mrs. Hoggett. But I ought to tell you, I fully intend to let Armstrong’s killer go free. I’m not telling anyone. Not Sally, not my agency head.” Leo set his jaw as if he expected James to argue with him. “I’ll be out of your hair in a few hours.”
“I hope not.” James cleared his throat. “I find I don’t care who killed Armstrong. I mean, I’m curious, but I don’t think it matters in any ethical sense.”
“Armstrong was blackmailing Norris for liking men,” Wendy called from the front seat. “Did you know that?”
Leo shook his head. “That’s not exactly—”
“Mr. Norris likes men?” Mary asked.
“Sweetheart,” Wendy said gently. “Surely you noticed his flirtation with you was a bit, well, performative.”
“Well, how lowering. I would have flirted back if I had known we were putting on a show. We could have had all the gossips from here to Cheltenham foaming at the mouth.”
“In any event,” Leo said, “Armstrong doctored the war record of one of Norris’s friends, and threatened to tell the friend’s family if Norris didn’t help him do various criminal acts.”
“I really do think that if somebody goes around doing blackmail, they know perfectly well they might get murdered,” Mary said. “I can’t get too exercised about it. But that only explains the colonel. What does Mrs. Hoggett have to do with it?”
“Oh, she was a blackmailer too,” Wendy continued, in tones of one stating the obvious. “She tried to blackmail Armstrong about cutting us out of our grandfather’s will.”
At this, Mary nearly drove off the road.
“You knew?” Mary stared at Wendy. “You can’t have remembered me. You were a baby when I left.”
“Please pay attention to the road,” James begged. Just what this day needed was a road accident.
“Mother had photographs of you,” Wendy said. “You haven’t changed that much.”
“I ought to have been upfront,” Mary said, thankfully turning her attention toward the snow-covered high street, “but I was off my head, and I was convinced that if I did things properly, somebody would come to take you away. I’m so sorry.”
“No, no. You were kind.” Wendy touched her sister’s arm. “And it was good to know that you wanted me here. I didn’t realize that you knew about Colonel Armstrong being our uncle. It took me ages to put it all together, based on sly little hints Mrs. Hoggett tried to drop.”
The car stopped in front of Little Briars. Wendy leaned over to kiss Mary’s forehead. “Promise you’ll go to bed now,” she said.
“Do you really not mind?” Leo asked James as Mary pulled away and Wendy preceded them up the walk.
“That there’s been an explosion in local crime? I mind. I strongly suspect tonight will not see me sleeping soundly.”
“No. Well, that too. But I mean do you mind that I’m covering it up?”
“I should damn well think you would cover it up.”
“So you’ve figured it out, then?”
James thought about how Wendy had carried on yesterday about mysterious men on bicycles. He thought of the contents of the locked trunk in his spare room. He remembered that Leo had accused someone of being a spy. “I’m afraid so.” But he gave Leo’s arm a squeeze, and together they walked toward Little Briars.
Chapter 17
Leo had worked under worse conditions. He knew, logically, that tonsillitis was a minor illness that a man who had persevered despite bullet wounds surely ought to be able to carry on with a bit of a sore throat. But when he walked into the parlor at Little Briars, he was struck with the thought that a man could have a damn fine nap on that hearthrug. Instead, he cleared his throat.
“In a few hours, the police will take my statement,” Leo said. “I’m going to tell them that Norris witnessed Armstrong murder Mrs. Hoggett by putting Veronal in her flask, asking her to step upstairs, and then pushing her down. I’ll also explain that today Norris and I were held up by a masked man who confessed to murdering Armstrong for possession of confidential documents. This unknown assailant entered Armstrong’s library through the french doors, shot him with a small pistol, and left through the same door with Norris as his hostage.” He regarded the faces around him.
“Is this when Poirot gathers the witnesses?” Wendy asked. “I’m on tenterhooks.”
“No, it’s when the witnesses gather to pervert the course of justice,” Leo retorted.
“How exciting,” Cora said placidly. Edith attacked a ball of mauve yarn with a pair of lethal-looking needles.
“If this is going to take more than five minutes,” James said. “I’m going to insist that you sit,” and with that, he steered Leo to sit beside Wendy on the sofa.
“So,” Leo continued, feeling rather less authoritative on the sofa than he had standing, “that’s the story I’m giving the police. The only other person who will be required to corroborate it is Wendy when she gives evidence of the redheaded bicyclist. No doubt that’s the same man who held Norris and me up today.” He took a sip of the tea he found he was now holding. “There is, however, another explanation for the colonel’s murder that perhaps the people in this room might like to hear, fanciful though it is. Mr. Marston thought he heard Wendy’s bicycle pass his cottage. In fact, Wendy had ridden her bicycle along that path to Wych Hall several nights in a row, so Marston could be forgiven for thinking it was her.”
“I was checking on the sow,” Wendy said. “I didn’t want the piglets to freeze overnight.”
“And you’ve also been bartering,” James said.
“I start with eggs or vegetables or some of Mr. Marston’s honey, and then trade it for firewood or milk.”
“Or ration coupons,” Leo murmured.
“Only sometimes! Then I keep trading, so people get what they need. It’s not strictly black market,” she insisted. “It started when I saw that the children at the vicarage didn’t have milk, and Mr. Marston was only eating tinned beans, and one of the tenant farmers hadn’t any way to heat his cottage. So I just sort of shuffled around coupons and goods until everyone had what they required. It’s not strictly black mar
ket,” she repeated.
“Good heavens. I wondered how you always had milk and cheese,” Edith said.
“And I wondered what you were doing with all those potatoes,” James remarked.
“I suggest Marston did indeed hear a bicycle, but Wendy wasn’t riding it. In this entirely fictitious scenario, Colonel Armstrong’s killer was extremely careful about making sure Norris and Wendy—the most likely suspects—had alibis. They waited until Wendy was accompanied by Miss Pickering and Mr. Norris was away in London. Then they rode a bicycle along the footpath to Wych Hall and straight onto the terrace. There, they opened the french doors, took one step into the room, and shot the colonel.”
“From the door?” Wendy asked. “That has to be four yards from his desk.”
“From just inside the door. We can tell because the drips of water only went so far into the room.”
Edith cleared her throat. “What an interesting story you’ve been telling us, Mr. Page. Now, I think Cora and Wendy could both use some rest.”
“No,” Cora said. “I’d like to know why Mr. Page thinks this fictitious person murdered Colonel Armstrong.”
“Ah, that’s where things get a bit strange. My hypothesis is that Mildred Hoggett found out more than she realized while snooping at Wych Hall. Perhaps she told her findings to someone, not understanding their full import. But the person she told understood that Colonel Armstrong was not only blackmailing his secretary and selling black market steel, but that he was attempting to sell information about British steel production to various interested parties overseas.”
“He was always a bad one,” Edith said, stabbing her wool with especial vindictiveness, “ever since he was a boy.”
“Perhaps,” Leo went on, “this person strongly suspected Armstrong had killed Mrs. Hoggett, but also knew there wasn’t enough evidence to do anything about it. I suppose that this person, who had killed before when duty and necessity demanded it, thought that she might as well play the hangman one last time. It’s an unfortunate truth that people seldom stop at one murder, so perhaps she worried that the colonel’s next victim would be someone she cared about.”
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