Was It Murder?

by James Hilton

  “If YOU go. Rather. I’ll keep a seat for you.”

  She smiled and mounted her machine, and he went back to his room in a state of curiously mingled joy and misery. She had spoken to him perhaps more intimately than ever before, yet it was all clouded over by the imminence of her departure. He had never guessed that it could matter so much to him. Just over three weeks and she would be en route with her husband for Africa. Revell perceived, with a feeling of sheer panic, that there was no time to be lost. The unmasking of Ellington would have to take place during those three weeks, or else never at all. And his own observations, though so far significant, were hardly yet of a kind to be acted upon.

  The departure was itself, of course, a suspicious thing. Why such enormous hurry to get away from Oakington? Did it not seem as if Ellington wished to put as great a distance as possible between himself and the scene of his crimes?

  Meanwhile, all the more intensely in the face of their possible separation so soon, Revell looked forward to the concert. It was a terminal affair, held in the Memorial Hall, and attended by the whole school. A few of Oakington’s most promising musicians took part, and this native talent was helped out by visiting artists from London who might or might not be worth hearing. Revell, whose appreciation of music was fastidious, would never have thought of going but for Mrs. Ellington; yet for her sake he would cheerfully endure, if not fire and water, at least Liszt’s Second Rhapsody bungled by a nervously ambitious schoolboy.

  She joined him just before the concert began and smilingly thanked him for keeping a seat for her. (Ellington, of course, was not with her; he was entirely unmusical.) During the first half of the programme, made up of various items by the boys, Revell hardly exchanged a word with her, but when the interval came they chatted a little. It had always been their habit to pretend, to themselves, at any rate, that they were only left together by some astonishing accident of fate; thus Revell, observing the convention, gave the necessary opening. “I suppose Mr. Ellington couldn’t manage to come?”

  And she answered: “No, he doesn’t care for concerts much. He’s gone to Easthampton on business and won’t be back till the last train.”

  The second half of the programme consisted simply of the Kreutzer Sonata, played by a visiting pianist and violinist of considerable talent. Revell, at any rate, with Mrs. Ellington by his side, was in a mood to be impressed. The Kreutzer had always been a favourite of his, and to hear it now gave him an extraordinary sensation of having Heaven on his side. During the tranquil adagio movement he was calmed, mellowed, made ready for the triumphant ecstasy to which the final presto movement raised him. When the last chord had been struck he was left full of speechless emotion. Only after they had fussed their way out through the crowd and were standing together in the bright star-shine did he find words, and then merely to suggest a stroll.

  She agreed.

  They set out for the conventional circuit of the Ring. There was no moon, but a sky pale with stars, and the beauty of it threw enchantment even over the architectural monstrosities of the skyline. Oakington was going to bed; ten o’clock chimed from the School clock; light after light disappeared from those rows of windows that were the dormitories. The smell of the trees and the mown grass was in the air; an owl hooted into the blue-black silence.

  He began, with the Kreutzer Sonata still dreamily in his ears: “D’you know, Rosamund, I’m beginning to find myself in a queer situation. I— I rather think—I’m falling in love with you.”

  “Are you?” She did not seem particularly surprised, but there was a tremor of something else in her voice.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. Do you mind?”

  “Why should I mind something so—so—something so—” She hesitated, and then suddenly seemed to shake herself into another mood. “Really, Colin, I don’t quite know what I’m talking about, and neither do you, I think. I don’t mind, of course—in fact, I feel rather thrilled about it—but it’s all rather futile and pointless in a way, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, but—” He tried to protest, but there was no need, for with immense astonishment he found her in his arms and her lips approaching his. “Colin,” she whispered, “Colin—just once—and then never again —just once—”

  He kissed her. It went to his head like rare wine; he began to chatter wildly in his enthusiasm. Gone now was his caution in mentioning Ellington; he spoke of him quite openly as a man whom she did not and could not love. “Oh, why DID you marry him, Rosamund? I’ve always wondered. He’s so utterly the opposite of you in every way—do you think everyone hasn’t noticed it? Rosamund, you hate him, I know—you MUST do—it’s impossible to think of you spending all the rest of your life with him. And in Kenya, of all places. Rosamund, you simply CAN’T do it!”

  “I can. I shall just have to.”

  “Not if you were to run away from him.”

  “But I couldn’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  And he had a swift vision of Rosamund and himself sharing some art- and-crafty studio in Chelsea, himself writing high-brow novels and Rosamund painting futurist pictures or making terra-cotta statuettes or casting horoscopes or keeping a hat shop or employing her time in some such task that possessed the conventional amount of unconventionality. His own four or five pounds a week plus, say, half as much from her, would easily permit them to sustain an idyllic existence on love, art, gin, and tinned sardines. Delightful prospect! Was he game for it? He believed he was, and with rising enthusiasm in his voice, rapidly sketched out to her the bare outlines of such a future.

  “You’re a dear boy,” she said, when he had finished. “I believe I should be perfectly happy with you like that, too. But of course you don’t really mean it. It’s the Kreutzer Sonata gone to your head, that’s all. What a pity I’m not a designing woman, or I might take you at your word!”

  “DO!” he cried, eagerly. “I only wish you would!”

  She laughed. “Suppose I do, then? When shall we go to your little Chelsea studio? To-night? There’s the last train to town at eleven, you know. Or perhaps to-morrow would give us more time to pack. And I could leave the conventional note on the dressing-table for Tom… Ah, I can see from your eyes that you don’t really mean what you’ve been saying. Never mind— I’m not offended. I love you for your romantic impulsiveness.”

  “But I DO mean it,” he retorted, stung a little. “I mean every word of it. And at the end of the Term—”

  “Why wait till then?”

  “I—I don’t know—except that it would give us time to —to prepare things. And there would be less scandal here, too. After all, there’s been enough lately.”

  That seemed to bring a cloud within sight of them both. “True,” she admitted. “It’s been the most dreadful of years—when I look back on it all—” She shivered a little. “The only bright spot was when you came here. You’re such an unlikely sort of person to be a headmaster’s secretary. Whatever made you give up that wonderful life in London to come to Oakington?”

  “Just a change of atmosphere.”

  “Yes, I should think so.” She was silent for a while, and then added, in a different voice: “No, Colin, on second thoughts I don’t know that I’d want to go away with you. You wouldn’t treat me as I’d want to be treated. You’d think me too small—too scatter-brained, I suppose—to be trusted with your intimate secrets. You don’t REALLY trust me, do you?”

  “Trust you? Why, of course I do!”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me the truth about why you came here? Do you think I really believe you only came for a change of atmosphere? Besides, you don’t do an hour’s secretarial work in a week. No, my dear Colin, you’re a clever boy, and you’re having some clever game of some kind, though I’m not quite certain what it is. And I shouldn’t wonder if you’ve only been making love to me with some hidden purpose.”

  “Rosamund, that’s not true!” He was sincerely indignant that she should think him capable of such a thing. �
�I assure you—”

  “You assure me that you came here from London merely for a change of atmosphere, and that the Head lets you stay here as his secretary and do no work?” She suddenly began to cry. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “but I can’t help it. I believed you for a moment—just while you were kissing me —but—but now—”

  “No, really—” He tried to take her in his arms again, but she eluded him. “Really, you mustn’t do that… Rosamund… It isn’t that I’ve been really deceiving you—it’s—oh, dash it all, if there’s no other way of convincing you, I’ll tell you everything—”

  “Not if you’d rather not. Not unless you’re sure you thoroughly trust me.”

  “Of course I trust you. It never had anything to do with that. It was merely—oh, Rosamund, didn’t you say yourself how dreadful the past year had been? Well, I knew that, and I wanted to save you from being dragged into any more of it.”

  “More of it?” Her voice was incredulous. “But surely—surely it’s all over now? I had hoped—”

  “Yes, I know. So had I—so had everybody. But I’m rather afraid it isn’t—or at any rate, may not be—QUITE over yet.”

  “I don’t think I understand at all,” she said, in a slow, chilled voice. “Tell me the whole truth, Colin, however terrible it is.”

  But that, of course, was just what he could not do; he could not tell her how he suspected her husband. So he told her merely that in his opinion the murderer had not been Lambourne. She was astonished, bewildered—the revelation disturbed, he could see, the whole foundations of her recent life. “Not Mr. Lambourne?” she echoed. “But, Colin, he confessed to me!”

  “I know he did, but it wasn’t true.”

  “Then why—why should he confess?”

  “He might have wanted to save someone else.”

  She was bewildered for a long time. He could not be too explicit with her lest he made it clear who, in his opinion, HAD committed the murders. In fact, his whole story was far less convincing than it ought to have been, by reason of the large suppressions he had perforce to make. Yet, in the end, she seemed dubiously persuaded. Woman-like, she went straight to the crux of the matter. “But, Colin, if Mr. Lambourne didn’t do it, then who did?”

  “Yes, of course. And that’s just what I don’t know for certain, though I’ve got suspicions.”

  “Won’t you tell me?”

  “It wouldn’t be fair. They may be quite unfounded. Far better not talk about it till the suspicions become certainties.”

  “But supposing they never do?”

  “They probably will. Criminals always give themselves away if you watch them long enough.”

  “Do you really think that?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “But—how horrible it all is—it may be somebody we all know —somebody we meet every day—”

  “Quite possibly.” He nodded gravely. He felt that years hence, when he came to write his reminiscences as a crime-investigator, he would begin a chapter with the sentence: “Of all the mysteries that it has fallen to my lot to unravel, that of the Oakington murders was undoubtedly the most horrible…”

  She clung to his arm with a timid gesture that made him feel superbly protective. “Colin, let’s go in now—I think I’m a little scared after all this. It’s getting late, too—Tom will soon be back.”

  From the way she spoke her husband’s name he knew that he had avoided giving her the slightest inkling as to where his suspicions lay.

  On the way back to the School they talked in a new mood of seriousness. “So you see,” he explained, “what it all means. There were only three people in the world who knew that Lambourne had confessed to you—Detective Guthrie, me, and yourself. But there are only two—yourself and me —who know that Lambourne’s confession was false.”

  “And there is only ONE who knows—or has an idea—who really is the murderer.”

  He half-smiled. “Perhaps.”

  “Mr. Guthrie believed that Mr. Lambourne had done it?”

  “Oh yes. As he was so often careful to tell me, it was facts HE was bothered about, not theories. The fact that Lambourne had confessed to you was enough for him. Perhaps it ought to have been enough for me, too, but —well, it wasn’t.”

  “So you’re doing this altogether on your own?”

  “Altogether.” He felt a strong pride rising in him. “I believe that somewhere on these premises there is a person who has committed the most devilish crimes, and if the police are satisfied to give the matter up as a bad job, then I am not.”

  “You’re brave, Colin.”

  “No, it isn’t that. It’s more, to be quite frank, a sort of damnable conceit that I’ve got.”

  “You think you’ll get the murderer, then, in the end?”

  “Yes, I do. I’ve certain evidence already, and I hope to get more very soon.”

  She shuddered. “It all sounds so terribly ruthless. Oh, let’s hurry —I seem to see people hiding behind every tree.”

  He left her at the door of her house and climbed to his own room in a state of strange excitement. He had kissed her, and she was the first married woman he had ever kissed. He perceived that he had passed a definite milestone in life.

  But the incident was not repeated. Indeed, there came no suitable opportunity. When first they met again after the night of the concert, she warned him that they must be more discreet. “Because I have an idea Tom guesses how I feel towards you,” she explained, and the confession helped to soften the restrictions it foreshadowed. Revell, too, now that the Kreutzer Sonata mood had worn off, was less inclined to be reckless; he saw at any rate that to have Ellington jealous of him would only complicate the final and more important issue.

  The matter, however, led to a short but rather revealing conversation. He agreed that the very last thing he desired was to make things more difficult for her than they were.

  “It isn’t that,” she answered. “I’m not thinking of myself at all— so far as I’m concerned I wouldn’t much care what happened. I’m thinking of you.”

  “ME?”

  “Yes.”

  “But _I_ don’t care, either—not personally. A writer isn’t supposed to have much of a reputation, you know.”

  She smiled. “I wasn’t thinking of your reputation. It’s more a matter of your personal safety. Oh, I know you’ll think that’s absurd and melodramatic, but it isn’t. You don’t know Tom as I do.”

  The obvious corollary that neither did she know Tom as he did, struck at him with sinister intensity. “But surely you don’t mean to say that I should be in actual physical danger from him?”

  “You might be,” she answered. “It’s a frightful thing to have to confess about one’s husband, but it’s true. He’d do nearly anything in a fit of jealousy. And I think—already—he’s a little jealous of you. That’s why we must be careful.”

  So they saw far less of each other during that final fortnight of the Term. It was just as well, Revell admitted to himself, for there had been more than a whisper of talk among the masters, and even the Head had come to know that his secretary and the wife of one of his housemasters had struck up a rather close friendship. As end of Term approached, however, the scandal-mongers were baffled, for Revell and Mrs. Ellington entirely ceased their habit of openly chatting for half an hour on the edge of the quadrangle within sight of all Oakington. Once or twice she called on him in his room in the evening, but stayed only for a moment or so, finding him busy on what he had already come to think of as “the case”. He had never, in fact, been so intent upon anything in his life. So much, he knew, depended on whether, during the few days that still intervened before the departure of the Ellingtons, he could manage to discover some last fragment of conclusive evidence. It was maddening to be so morally certain of Ellington’s guilt and to have collected such a mass of suspicious probabilities against him, yet to lack just the one single thread of hard fact that would knit the whole into a presentable indictm
ent. As each day passed and still that fact eluded his most strenuous search, Revell became fidgety to the point of panic. Hour after hour in his room in School House he sat at his desk before the window pondering over the pencilled entries in his notebook in the hope that somehow or other an avenue of swift investigation might suggest itself. He even sent to his Islington lodgings for his portable typewriter and laboriously typed out the contents of his notebook on quarto sheets; he thought that their added clarity in such a form might well reward him for his trouble.

  End of Term came; Oakington dispersed to its homes; the School itself took on that air of dreary desolation that always hangs about deserted buildings. On the last evening before the break-up, Ellington, in the presence of the whole school assembled in the Hall, had been presented with a large and opulent-looking cowhide valise. Dr. Roseveare’s speech had naturally been a perfect model for such occasions. He had mentioned Ellington’s years of faithful service, had hinted vaguely at recent ill-health and at a decision to assist recovery by living the freer, more invigorating life of the Colonies. “And so, remembering what a lot of good wishes he will have to take with him, we thought we would give him this bag to carry them in!” Oh, very pretty—VERY pretty, Revell had murmured to himself.

  Revell’s position at the School, now that Term was over, was becoming somewhat anomalous, but Roseveare eased it considerably by suggesting that he should stay on a few days if it convenienced him at all. Revell accepted the offer with relief, and in his own room that night addressed himself to a last, frenzied attempt at solving the Oakington problem. First of all he typed out, in concise form, the sum-total of his reasons for suspecting Ellington. They were as follows:

  (1) He had strong motive for both crimes.

  (2) He has no alibi for the time when the second murder was committed, and probably none for the time of the first, either.

  (3) The revolver with which the second murder was committed belonged to him.