Nothing Venture

by Patricia Wentworth

  Jervis nodded.

  “But the wheel came off,” he said.

  “A spanner can be used for loosening nuts as well as for tightening them up.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Hasn’t it struck you that you’ve been having rather a lot of accidents lately?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Ferdinand took another grape.

  “That you’re having too many accidents. They kind of get me asking why.”

  “What accidents have I had?” said Jervis in a challenging voice.

  Ferdinand finished his grape. He pushed one of the seeds up on the rim of his plate.

  “That’s number one,” he said. He pushed up a second seed. “Two.” Then two more, and finished counting, “Three—four.”

  “What are you playing at F.F.?”

  Ferdinand prodded the first seed with the point of his fruit-knife.

  “This one’s way back in the mists of antiquity, but I reckon it’s important. You get the back of your head stove in, and you’re left drowning in a pool with the tide coming up—and Mr Robert Leonard is seen coming away from the spot.”

  Jervis flung up his head with a jerk.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about that accident you had ten years ago, when you were left to drown.”

  Nan watched them with her steady eyes.

  “Left to drown?” said Jervis.

  “By Mr Robert Leonard.”

  “What are you saying F.F.?”

  “He was seen leaving the spot.”

  “Who was?”

  “Mr Robert Leonard.”

  “Seen? By whom?”

  “By a very credible witness.”

  Jervis hit the table with his hand.

  “Witness? What witness? Where have you been getting all this balderdash?”

  Ferdinand bit another grape in half and proceeded to remove the seeds.

  “Well, I’m not giving my witness away just now, but as far as I remember Mr Robert Leonard skipped out of the country p.d.q. whilst you were still unconscious. It might be worthwhile asking yourself whether he wasn’t afraid you might have seen something before he knocked you out.”

  Jervis pushed back his chair.

  “I think everyone’s gone crazy about Leonard!” he said angrily. “I’ve no use for the man—never have had any use for him—but good Lord, F.F., why on earth should he try to murder me? If he’s a homicidal maniac, he’s kept it pretty dark—and short of being a homicidal maniac, I can’t lay my hands on any reason why he should want to murder me.”

  “Can’t you?” said Ferdinand. “Well, I guess we’ll leave that and come down to present day.”

  “What about it?”

  Ferdinand turned his bright brown eyes on Nan.

  “What about it, Mrs Jervis?” His look teased, probed, and defied the anxiety which came like a cloud across her clear gaze.

  “Oh, if you’ve been talking to Nan!” said Jervis with harsh contempt.

  “Why shouldn’t he talk to me?” said Nan quite gravely.

  Jervis laughed.

  “You’ve got an idée fixe about Leonard; but I thought F.F. had more sense. All this bores me rather, you know.”

  “I’m coming right down to present day,” said Ferdinand, “and you’ll just have to put up with being bored. How many accidents have you had this last week or so?”

  “One,” said Jervis.

  Ferdinand shook his head mournfully.

  “I’m a bit of a liar myself! You can’t get away with it—not in front of me and Mrs Jervis. You’ve had three accidents this week, and you’re darned lucky to be alive.”

  “Three?”

  “There was a taxi that knocked you down at the corner of your own square after Mrs Jervis had heard Mr Robert Leonard offering a taxi-driver five hundred pounds for a job that was going to risk landing him in prison.”

  “Why don’t you call her Nan?” said Jervis irrelevantly.

  “Well—” said Ferdinand, “I’ve got a lot of respect for her, and I wouldn’t like her to think I was getting fresh.”

  Nan had two dimples. They made her little air of dignity very attractive.

  “You may call me Nan,” she said.

  “That’s real nice of you.” He turned back to Jervis. “You’re trying to push me off the track. But there’s nothing doing—I’m not easy skidded. We’ll get back to that accident. There mayn’t be enough evidence for a jury, but there’s enough for me. And then we come to your broken bridge—”

  “Good Lord, F.F.! I can’t put that on Leonard!”

  “Well, I’m afraid I can’t. But I knew a man called Eisenthal who invented stuff that could turn wood rotten in anything from six to twenty-four hours—it went on looking all right until you put a weight on it, and then it crumbled and splintered away like an old stump that’s been left rotting in the ground. Eisenthal’s dead. Last I heard of him he was back of the Madalena with an Englishman, and by and by the Englishman came down the river alone. I never met him. He called himself Brown. He had a chin that stuck out, and a head some few sizes too big for the ordinary hat—and that’s just about all I could rake together about him. It’s not very much, but that’s none of it that don’t fit Mr Robert Leonard. That’s as far as I’ve got up to date, but if you were looking at Robert when I was talking about Eisenthal at lunch, you may have tumbled to it that he wasn’t deriving any very keen pleasure from my remarks.”

  “What an imagination you’ve got, F.F.!”

  Ferdinand shook his head.

  “Imagination nix!” he said.

  “So Leonard put your friend Eisenthal’s stuff on the bridge, and then—did you happen to think out how he was going to arrange that it was Nan and I who would cross the bridge at the psychological moment?”

  “It didn’t take much arranging. You brought Nan down here on a pouring wet evening. It was a dead cert that you weren’t going to wander round and show her the sights in the rain. It was pretty much a dead cert that the rain wouldn’t last for ever, and that as soon as it stopped you’d be showing her around, and one of the first things you’d show her would be the waterfall. And what does everyone do when they’re being shown the fall? Don’t they stand plumb in the middle of that bridge and look down into the pool? Mr Robert Leonard is liable to know that just as well as I know it, and I figure it out that he’d only got to slip over to the bridge any time in the night to fix things so that the next person who walked over that bridge or stood there to point out the view would be likely to give an exhibition of high diving. That’s the way I figure it out.”

  “You only want that convenient witness of yours! Can’t you produce him? He ought to have seen Leonard at the fatal spot.”

  “I did see him,” said Nan. “I told you I did.”

  Jervis laughed.

  “Oh, yes—I forgot—Nan saw him! The case is complete! She looked out of her window in the middle of the night, and she saw him by a flash of lightning! He must have been the best part of a couple of hundred yards away—but what is that to the eye of faith? We couldn’t have an accident without Leonard, so somebody’s bound to have seen him hanging round! Come on, F.F.! It’s going to be a bit of a job to saddle him with the wheel coming off my car, but I suppose you’re going to have a sporting try.” He tilted his black head and looked at them both. His frown was gone. His look had a surface brilliance of amusement, but under it Nan, at least, was aware of something fiercely challenging.

  She thought, “He hates me. I can’t help him.”

  And then Ferdinand was speaking.

  “Well,” he said, “if Robert wanted to monkey with your car, you made it real easy for him.”

  “Attaboy!” murmured Jervis.

  “Well, didn’t you? After you’d put us down at the front door you ran way back into the shade. I located the place after I’d cleaned up. Your oil had dripped some. Well, there you were, half way down to the garage with the
near front wheel bung up against one of the best lot of bushes for cover that anyone could find in a day’s journey. And where was Robert till about the middle of lunch? Messing about with his car in the garage, wasn’t he? And what was to prevent him stepping into the bushes on his way up to the house and operating on that wheel of yours with a spanner? A spanner’s a fine thing to carry in your pocket—handy without being compromising. An archbishop might carry a spanner. I’ve got a hunch that Robert carries one. He was going to be late for lunch anyhow, so he wouldn’t be in a hurry. As a matter of fact he wasn’t in a hurry.”

  “Go on, F.F., you’re doing it awfully well.”

  “I am going on. I’m going to tell you how I know he wasn’t in a hurry. I stepped down to the garage and I had a look at his car. There were a couple of chauffeurs there, and they hadn’t much opinion of her—about due for the scrap-heap was what they opined. I’m a good mixer, and we got chatty—conversation flowed. I wanted to find out just how long Robert had really wasted over his old wreck. Well, I guess I got what I wanted. He didn’t waste so very long. He left that garage at one-fifteen precisely. The second chauffeur happened to notice the time, because he’d got a date with a girl—at least that’s what I guessed from the way he looked when the other one chaffed him about being so sure of the time. So you see Robert didn’t hurry.”

  “Don’t you wash your hands when you’ve been tinkering with a car, F.F.?”

  “That’s where Robert has me cold. I’ve a good deal of respect for Robert as an organizer. No one’s ever going to be able to prove anything about Robert. He’s methodical—he don’t leave proofs lying about to be picked up. I can’t prove that he stood in the bushes and loosened the nuts on that wheel, but I’m pretty well sure that’s what he did.”

  “Well played!” said Jervis. “That’s a very good effort, but I’m afraid it’s not quite good enough. If Leonard had been up to any hanky-panky with the wheel, the last thing he’d do would be to ask for a lift in a car that might go to glory at any moment.”

  “Say first instead of last, and I’m with you.”

  Jervis gave a short laugh.

  “So he’s suicidal as well as homicidal?”

  Ferdinand sat back in his chair and put his hands in his pockets.

  “We’ve got to take some risks in this world. That was his risk, and he took it. It wasn’t a very big risk anyway. He’d have fixed that wheel so that it wouldn’t come off at once. There wouldn’t be anything to make it come off down that smooth stretch of road between the Tetterleys’ house and where you shed him. What did he want with a lift anyway? It wasn’t going to save him more than five minutes. I don’t know a thing about incubators, but you’re not going to make me believe that five minutes one way or another is going to make them lie down and die—and if it was, why didn’t he make tracks just as soon as you set him down? He didn’t—he just stood there and mopped his brow and watched us out of sight. In my opinion he didn’t think it very likely that he was going to see any of us again. It’s my opinion he was bidding us a lingering farewell. If there is a place in this countryside where a loose wheel is liable to come off, I should say that piece of hill with the potholes has it every time—and if you hadn’t braked when you did and pulled her round a bit, well, I don’t think Robert ever would have seen any of us again. No—Robert hasn’t had any luck, and I reckon he’s beginning to feel a bit sour about it. Three real good accidents, leaving out the one ten years ago, and nobody a cent the worse. It’s real discouraging. But is he going to be discouraged? Is he downhearted? Is he going to give it up as a bad job? Or is he one of those strong, persevering, painstaking guys that just keep on until they get where they want to? It looks to me as if that was the sort he was, because if he had his first try ten years ago and he’s still going strong, it kind of looks to me as if it would take a good deal to make him quit.”

  Jervis turned his eyes upon Ferdinand with a searching directness.

  “Can you give me a single reason why he should have had a try at all, either now or ten years back?” The banter had gone out of his voice; it was quiet and level.

  Ferdinand shot a glance at Nan; but Nan was looking down into her lap.

  “Come, F.F.—have you got a single reason why Leonard should want me out of the way—why he should ever have wanted me out of the way? Motive and opportunity—that’s what you’ve got to prove against any criminal. Well—you’re alleging opportunity. But you can’t run on one leg. Where’s your motive—or rather, where’s Leonard’s motive?”

  Ferdinand Fazackerley pushed his chair a little farther from the table. He still had his hands in his pockets. He contemplated the pattern of the carpet—rather a lively blue and green pattern upon a crimson ground. Mr Ambrose Weare had liked bright colours, and plenty of them. The wall-paper was sealing-wax red after the fashion of thirty years ago. Perhaps it was all these bright colours that made the room feel so hot.

  Jervis spoke again.

  “You must have a motive, unless you’re going to fall back on his being a homicidal maniac. Are you going to do that?”

  “Well—no,” said Ferdinand slowly. “I’m of the opinion that folks don’t plan murder unless they’ve got a kink—but I’m not going to say that Robert isn’t accountable for his actions in the ordinary sense of the word.”

  “Then, on your own showing, what’s his motive?”

  Ferdinand took his right hand out of his pocket and hitched the arm carelessly over the back of his chair.

  “You don’t know of one?” he said.

  “It’s not up to me to produce that motive, F.F.; but I may mention that if I’d gone over the cliff this afternoon, Leonard wouldn’t have stood to gain a halfpenny.”

  “Who would?” said Ferdinand.

  Jervis smiled with sudden sweetness.

  “You, if you’d been a survivor. Did you have a spanner in your pocket this afternoon? You’re down for two thousand pounds in my will. Did you have a go at those wheel-nuts by any chance? There’s about as much evidence against you as against Leonard, it seems to me. You did know the compromising chemist in Mexico, and that’s more than you can prove that Leonard did. You might have come down here stealthily and sprayed the bridge. You were in town when I was knocked down by that taxi. And you were certainly knocking around on Croyston beach ten years ago. I believe I could get you hanged if I was the public prosecutor, but I’m pretty sure I couldn’t get a verdict against Leonard.”

  “I’ll give you Robert’s motive if you want it,” said Ferdinand. “You say you’ve left me two thousand pounds. It’s mighty nice of you, and I hope I never get it. But if you’d been a casualty any time this week, who comes next for King’s Weare? Isn’t it Miss Carew?”

  Jervis nodded.

  “Under my grandfather’s will—yes.”

  “You can’t make a will and cut her out?”

  “Not unless I have children of my own.”

  “And if you’d been a casualty ten years ago?”

  “Rosamund would have come in.”

  “And hasn’t it ever occurred to you that Robert takes a romantic interest in Miss Rosamund Carew?”

  “Nonsense! They’re cousins.”

  “There’s nothing to stop cousins marrying each other—is there?”

  “That’s pure imagination.”

  “No!” said Ferdinand. He swung round in his chair and addressed Nan. “What do you say? Haven’t I given him his motive?”

  Nan stood up. She stood with one hand just touching the table and looked across the grapes and oranges at the two men.

  “Jervis won’t listen to either of us,” she said. “Perhaps he wants Robert Leonard to kill him. He doesn’t want to hear anything against him. Perhaps he thinks that you loosened the wheel, so that we might all go over the cliff together—or perhaps he thinks that I did. Do you think that I had a spanner in my pocket this afternoon, Jervis? Perhaps you do.” She leaned a little on her hand, and a brilliant rose burned in her cheeks. �
��Someone is trying to kill you. If it isn’t Robert Leonard, who is it? Is it F.F.? Or is it I? It’s one of us, you know. You say Robert Leonard hasn’t got a motive. Don’t you know that there’s something between him and Rosamund? I don’t know what it is, but there’s something. I knew it the very first moment I saw them together at the Luxe. If Rosamund were to get King’s Weare, Robert Leonard would get it too. Why didn’t Rosamund marry you? Has she ever told you that? You asked her—didn’t you? That was waste of time—you ought to have asked Robert Leonard.” She stopped speaking, but for a moment she still leaned on her hand, while Jervis looked at her, and she at him.

  Suddenly he flung out of his chair, strode to the door, and opened it. Then he stood back, holding it conventionally.

  Nan went out with her head up, and the burning rose in her cheeks.

  XXVIII

  When he had shut the door on Nan, Jervis came back to the table.

  “We’d better shift out of here, or Monk will be coming in. Come into the study.”

  He did not speak until they were shut in together. Then he walked to the window, which was open towards the sunset, frowned at the blue and golden sky without seeing it, turned round, and said,

  “What’s behind all this?”

  Ferdinand sat on the arm of a shabby leather chair.

  “Robert,” he replied succinctly.

  “Damn Robert!”

  “Well, that’s not my business.”

  “Look here, F.F.—” He broke off. “There are things I can’t say, even to you.” He walked to the end of the room and back again. “That business ten years ago—you say Leonard was seen coming from the place where I’d fallen?”

  “Well, I didn’t say fallen. It’s my belief he laid you out.”

  “And left me to drown?”

  “You’ve said it.”

  “What grounds have you—”