He looked up at her, still smiling. ‘He’s always saying, “You chaps can’t see the wood for the trees.”’ He chuckled. ‘Like this puzzle.’
Sublimely unconscious of the effect his words had had upon his father, he returned to his labours.
But Lucia, watching her husband’s face, was concerned. She had to wait until her son had left them and gone supperwards, but the moment the door had closed behind him, she stood over Anthony and looked down at him and said:
‘What’s the matter, darling? You’ve got that look. What did Alan say?’
Anthony reached up a long arm and pulled her down on to his knees. ‘He gave me an idea—unintentionally, of course.’ He kissed her. ‘A damned nasty, uncomfortable idea. I’d like to forget about it.’
Lucia said, ‘You know you won’t. So you’d better tell me.’
Anthony said, ‘Suppose I wanted to kill someone—let’s say, your Uncle Perceval. And suppose his demise would benefit me to such an extent that I was afraid a nice straight murder would inevitably point at me. And suppose I were that most dangerous of madmen, the secret megalomaniac, and utterly ruthless to boot. So suppose I started a wave of apparently insane slayings, and got well going with three murders of middle-aged clubmen I didn’t know at all—and then killed Uncle Perceval in exactly the same way—and then killed three more middle-aged clubmen! The police would be chasing a madman with an extraordinary quirk. They wouldn’t dream of chasing me!’
‘What loathsome thoughts you do have!’ Lucia turned her head to look at his face. ‘Oh, Anthony—is that just an idea? Or do you think it’s what’s happenind in Downshire?’
‘Oh, just an idea,’ said Anthony slowly. ‘It doesn’t fit …’
She dropped a kiss on his forehead and stood up. She said, ‘I’ll get you a drink. And after that, my lad, you’ve got to change—we’re due at the Dufresnes’s by eight. White tie.’
She started to cross the room, then checked. She said:
‘What on earth did Alan say that gave you that dreadful notion?’
Anthony looked at her. ‘My dear girl!’ he said. ‘“You can’t see the wood for the trees” …’
Lucia shivered, went out of the room, came back with his drink, and very soon herded him upstairs.
Forty-five minutes later she walked into his dressing room. He was tying his tie, and he saw her in the mirror and said, ‘You know, Americans really develop the possibilities of our language. Baby, you look like a million dollars!’
She said, ‘I love you. But we’re going to be late and then I won’t.’
He put the finishing touches to the bow. ‘Get my coat, beldame,’ he said, and started to distribute keys and money and cigarette case among his pockets.
Lucia crossed toward the big wardrobe. Beside it was Anthony’s trunk, and on a nearby chair a neat pile of the clothing with which he had travelled. Something about the pile caught Lucia’s eye, and she stopped and looked down at it. She said:
‘Whatever happened to this dinner jacket?’
‘Rain last night,’ Anthony said. ‘White’ll see to it.’
She smiled. Carefully she picked something from the shoulder of the black coat. She said, ‘He ought to’ve seen to this, oughtn’t he? Before I saw it!’
She went toward him, carrying her hands in front of her, one above the other and a good two feet apart.
‘Magnificent!’ said Anthony. ‘Most impressive! But what’s the role?’
She came close to him. She moved her hands and there was a glint of light from the apparent emptiness between them.
He saw a long hair of glittering reddish-gold.
He said, ‘Not Guilty, M’lud,’ and looked at the hair again.
He said, ‘Nobody at LeFane’s had that colour. Or length …’
He said, ‘Good God!’
He jumped across the room and snatched at the telephone.
And two minutes later was being informed that, owing to storm damage, all the trunk lines to Downshire were out of order …
He began to tear off the dress clothes. He said, ‘Get them to bring round the car! Quick!’
Little Mrs Carmichael lay on the rather uncomfortable couch in the living room of Doctor Carmichael’s rather uncomfortable house. She was pretending to read but really she was listening to the thunder.
She wished Jim hadn’t had to go out on a call, especially on a night like this. She thought about Jim and how wonderful he was. Although it was two years now since they’d been married, she was happier than she had been on her honeymoon. Happy—and proud. Proud of Jim, and proud of herself, too; proud that she didn’t mind uncomfortable sofas and cups with chips in them and a gas fire in the bedroom. Proud of her cleverness—her really heaven-inspired cleverness—in realizing right at the start, even before they were married, that a man of Jim’s calibre couldn’t possibly bear living on his wife’s money …
The thunder was far away now, and almost casual. Little Mrs Carmichael dozed …
She was wakened by the sound of a key in the front door—Jim’s key. She heard Jim’s step in the hall and jumped up off the sofa and went to the door to meet him—and then was shocked by his appearance as he threw it open just before she reached it. He had his hat on still, and his raincoat. They were both dark and dripping with water. He was frowning, and his face was very white; there was a look in his eyes she’d never seen before.
She said, ‘Jim! What is it, dearest? What’s happened?’
‘Accident,’ he said. ‘I ran over someone …’ He pulled the back of a hand across his forehead so that his hat was pushed back and she noticed, with utter irrelevance, the little red line which the brim had made across the skin.
He said, ‘Come and help me, will you? Put on a coat and run out to the car. He’s in the back seat.’ He turned away and strode across the hall to the surgery door. ‘With you in a minute,’ he said.
She ran to the hall cupboard and dragged out a raincoat. She tugged open the front door and hurried down the path, the uneven brick slippery under her feet.
The gate was open and through the rain she could see the dark shape of Jim’s car. She stumbled toward it and pulled open the door and the little light in the roof came on.
There was nothing in the back seat.
Bewildered, she turned—and there was Jim, close to her.
She started to say something—and then she saw Jim’s face—
It was Jim’s face—but she almost didn’t recognize it. And there was something bright in his hand, something bright and sharp and terrifying.
She screamed—and suddenly everything went very fast in front of her eyes, the way things used to go fast in films when she was a child, and there was a shouting of men’s voices, and something heavy like a stone swished through the air past her and hit Jim on the head, and he fell down and the bright steel thing dropped out of his hand, and two men ran up, and one of them was Colonel Gethryn and the other knelt over Jim, and Colonel Gethryn put his arm around her as she swayed on her feet, and the black wet world spun dizzily …
‘But there isn’t anything complex about it,’ said Anthony. ‘I started when my son gave me the “can’t-see-the-wood-for-the-trees” idea. And then Lucia found that long, magnificent, red-gold hair on my dinner jacket. And that’s all there was to it …’
The others said a lot of things, together and separately.
He waited for them to finish, and then shook his head sadly.
He said, ‘My dear people, that hair was tantamount to a confession by Doctor James Carmichael, duly signed, attested and registered at Somerset House. I might never have realised it, of course, if Alan hadn’t handed me “wood-for-the-trees.” But as I’d evolved the notion of hiding one murder with a lot of other murders—well, it was completely obvious. Carmichael, whose wife was rich and plain and overloving, fitted everything. He was a doctor. He could travel about. He—’
‘But why did the hair necessarily point to him?’
‘Be
cause it must have come from the third body. Because no one at LeFane’s had hair even remotely red. Of course, it was caked with mud and colourless when it got on to my coat, but by the time it dried—’
‘Hold it! Hold it! I still don’t see how it pointed to the doctor!’
‘I’m surprised at you!’ Anthony surveyed the speaker with real astonishment.
‘After all, you were there at LeFane’s. You heard Carmichael arguing with that horn-rimmed intellect from the Foreign Office. Don’t you remember him talking about titian hair on troglodytes?’
‘Why, yes … But—’
‘Don’t you realize he talked too soon? He said that nearly two hours before they found the third murderee. And the third murderee was a brute-faced redhead!’
THE END
Footnotes
Introduction
fn1 Not only a euphemism; an understatement verging on the classic.
fn2 If labels must be used, I stubbornly prefer the old ones, unless I happen to invent them myself.
fn3 Quite a while (!) after it was written, Ellery Queen did me the honour of including it in his definitive list of the ‘Cornerstone’ detective stories.
fn4 In 1947, in a critical essay (the same as that from which I quoted him before) Mr John Dickson Carr actually included Murder Gone Mad as one of the all-time ten best detective stories.
Reel Two
fn1It is not necessary to give copies of all the purely routine and merely repetitive reports, etc., attached to D.-I. Wellesley’s report. The plans, however, as being of use to the reader, are given at the end of the report.
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The Rynox Mystery Page 18
