by Anne Morice
‘I suppose you really hated Sarah?’ I enquired, coming out of my reverie.
“Nothing of the sort. She was extremely useful to me, and I became quite attached to her in the latter years.’
‘Then how could you bear to . . . ?’
‘She got in my way, you see, just as you have, and that’s something I won’t tolerate.’
‘And did your wife get in your way too, or was that a genuine death from natural causes?’ I asked, still striving to keep it on a chatty level, which any sane person would have found somewhat inappropriate to the theme.
‘Yes, indeed it was. She was a feeble creature, you know, not unlike Julie; and always picking up every ailment that was going. In that climate, of course, it was largely a question of time. She hated the Middle East, and she was rather unhappy, for various reasons. That may have contributed to her death, I daresay.’
‘What I can’t understand,’ I said ruminatively but at the same time nice and loud for the benefit of the hidden listener, ‘is why, when you found out the truth, you didn’t simply divorce her and start afresh. Why did the canker have to go on festering until it got too big to handle, to coin a phrase or two?’
‘My dear girl, isn’t it obvious? She had humiliated me; deeply and unforgivably. But at least it remained private between ourselves. Divorce would have made it common property. A public humiliation! Besides, that family of hers would have opened their arms to her and the children in no time. It was what she wanted, and I wasn’t having it. She had to be punished, not rewarded.’
‘But Sarah was made of sterner stuff, I take it? When she discovered that you were behind the Clean Up Crusade, you couldn’t whip her into submission? She was implacable and she had to go. Is that how it was?’
‘It should never have been necessary,’ he replied with a hint of petulance. ‘It was the most shocking luck that she got on to it at all, and I tried my best to make her see that it doesn’t always pay to wear your heart on your sleeve in politics. The end justifies the means very often, and anyway I should never have got where I am if I hadn’t hedged my bets. The trouble was that she’d inherited all these high falutin notions about integrity and so on. She hated to be disloyal; I could tell that, but she’d begun to dither. I recognised all the signs, and that interview I had with Walter on Good Friday, when you’d all gone to Missendale, was the last straw. How was I to know that Sarah would leave the party and come racing home on her own?’
‘Yes, very tactless of her,’ I agreed. ‘But what about Babs? How had she managed to upset your apple cart?’
‘Oh, didn’t you know?’ he asked. ‘Funny! I thought you had all the answers.’
Knocked off guard by his change of tone, I jerked my head round and saw that he had laid a paper knife across his knee and was running his finger along its slender, hideously sharp looking blade.
‘So!’ he said, meeting my look and smiling his detestable smile. ‘After all, there are some things you will go to your grave without discovering. I find that rather heartening. And I want you to know, my dear, that I am perfectly aware of the motive behind all these questions. You have been hoping, have you not, to divert me with your chatter until the miracle arrives to save your skin? I’ve indulged you, up to a point, because it rather amuses me to watch the fish struggling on the hook; but enough is enough, and it’s beginning to bore me now.’
‘I quite agree with you,’ I said, getting up and moving as slowly as I dared towards the door. ‘My own sentiments exactly.’
He caught up with me in a flash. I could feel his presence close behind me and then the point of the knife between my shoulder blades.
‘That won’t do you any good, my poor girl, I don’t neglect details, you know, and that door is locked.’
‘Oh no, it ain’t,’ Walter said, emerging from his hiding place at last, and shooting out a nice muscular right arm.
It was really a pushover, in every sense, for one of his training on the football field. The adversary was taken completely by surprise and in a moment the knife had dropped to the floor with a thud. There followed a louder and, to my ears, still more musical thud, and when I looked round I saw that Magnus had gone the same way. He was sitting on the floor, with his legs stretched out in front of him, while Walter appeared to be tying his arms into a knot behind his back.
‘You took your time,’ I said crossly.
He looked up at me, scarlet in the face from remorse or exertion, his adam’s apple jerking convulsively.
‘Well, he was talking a blue streak, and you seemed to be doing fine, so I—hey, listen! You okay, Mrs Price?’
‘I’m not sure whether I am or not,’ I replied in a voice which seemed to be coming from mid-Atlantic. ‘I feel strangely wonky. And I’m warning you, Walter, if there’s any fainting to be done, it’s me who will . . .’
At which point, as I afterwards learnt, I keeled over and joined the rest of the party on the floor.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘At least, he claims I said that,’ I explained later. ‘And it shows how far my tether had run out. Otherwise, I expect I’d have said: “It is I who shall . . .” Unless, of course, he was paraphrasing that bit. Walter is a wonderful boy in many ways but not so hot on the English grammar.’
‘It is a pity he did not reveal himself in his wonderful colours a littler earlier,’ Robin remarked. ‘It might have saved a lot of misunderstanding.’
Not for the first time, at the conclusion of an eventful period in our lives, he and I and Toby were spending the evening together, reminiscing about various matters which had stirred us up during the preceding weeks.
‘I know, Robin, but the trouble was that he was playing a lone hand and most of the time he did everything completely wrong. Just occasionally he brought off a real coup, though. I mean, imagine guessing there was something bogus about that errand of Julie’s to Missendale and then pinching her Jag! I probably owe my life to that moment of inspiration. If only I’d realised he was an ally! But my big mistake was in marking him down from the start as a natural for the Clean Up brigade. Poor Walter, he was just as much a victim of prejudice as Henry, in a way. If I hadn’t fallen into that trap I’d have got to the real reason for all the silly lies he told and we should have known where we were.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Toby said. ‘I shouldn’t have known where I was, and I still don’t. How about you, Robin?’
‘Well, I understand why he lied to Tessa about having spent the whole morning at the Potteries when she turned up there with her celebrated slow puncture. It appears that he had seized the chance to nip over and visit his girl friend in Oxford, and was too scared to own up to it, specially after racing round a bend on the wrong side and knocking down his master potter. It was then that he got the bright idea of ditching the bike and pretending that it had been stolen.’
‘Not to mention his equally misguided attempt to thwart the murderer’s intentions by removing the note from the golf club. But he started his trail of confusion long before that. It began when I was trying to find Magnus to tell him that Sarah was dead. Walter came out of the downstairs cloakroom and said he’d tried to make a telephone call, but he’d heard Magnus on the line, and that was how he knew he was upstairs in his room. A foolish blunder, because if I hadn’t been so stupefied with shock I’d have remembered that Magnus’s telephones were on separate lines, not connected to any other part of the house. By the time I caught on, it had become irrelevant.’
Robin said: ‘Not all that irrelevant, surely? It might have occurred to you that Walter had gone to the cloakroom to wash the blood off his hands?’
‘Yes, it might, but you see I was so stuck on this idea that he was operating on Magnus’s instructions, and it was inconceivable that anyone could be such a monster as to manipulate the murder of his own daughter. It was the same hang up which got in the way when everything began to point to Magnus himself being the murderer.’
‘In any case,’ Toby reminded us, ‘it was
just as Walter said. Magnus was in his room, was he not?’
‘Yes, he was. All that build up about how much he was going to enjoy the fête fooled me completely, with the result that the house was the last place where I’d thought of looking for him. So I wasted ages searching in all the wrong places, and it was time which, as you know, he was putting to good use.’
‘Disposing of the evidence, no doubt?’
‘Yes, he was over at Missendale dumping the stained overall in the kiln. I’m not sure how he got hold of it in the first place, but I expect it was quite easy. He may even have pinched it off the washing line. I happen to know the laundry was done on the premises.’
‘Tessa really does collect the most extraordinary information, doesn’t she, Robin? Not so much a mine as a jumble sale really.’
‘I merely happened to notice it hanging out to dry,’ I said huffily. ‘It coincided with the other discovery, of a corpse in the car, so it didn’t impinge at the time. And, incidentally, Magnus didn’t dispose of the weapon, along with the overall. He may have realised that metal doesn’t completely disintegrate, even at white heat and that it could have been traced to him. It was always his proud boast that he didn’t neglect details. Unfortunately for him, though, there was one detail which he did leave out of his calculations and that was Walter’s late arrival at the fête. Even the ticket seller at the gate had packed up by then, so he was able to slide in unobtrusively and while he was parking his bike on the grass he saw Magnus drive in, and he tailed him into the house. Then he heard someone coming and bolted into the cloakroom, but he came out again when he heard me shouting for Magnus, because he could tell it was urgent, and he made the first excuse he could think of for knowing where Magnus was.’
‘But why was he tailing him at all?’ Toby asked. ‘Principally because he’d guessed there was something fishy about the brick throwing episode. I gather he’d had doubts about Magnus’s sincerity for some time, but that finally did it.’
‘Did what?’
I paused for a while before answering, for we had reached a point in the narrative which called for a somewhat humbling admission on my part, and the words did not flow so smoothly. When Toby had repeated the question I said:
‘If I hadn’t been such a coward, things might have turned out differently. Unfortunately, I mistook the brick for a bomb and I had my head under a cushion at the vital period. When I did look up, Magnus was on his knees in the middle of the room. I assumed he’d crawled there, after being struck, in a gallant attempt to catch the assailant; but the point was, and Walter saw it, that he’d moved into that position before, not after the brick was slung.’
‘On purpose?’
‘Right. And mainly for Sarah’s benefit. Walter had started the rot by hinting to her about Magnus’s double identity, and she’d finally nerved herself to ask him straight out if it was true. He denied it categorically and then worked out this plan to demonstrate that the Cleaners really had got it in for him. He even ordered her to read the note aloud, so that all present would literally get the message. That didn’t quite work out though, so he carefully threw it down in a spot where anyone who was interested could pick it up and read it.’
‘But Sarah wasn’t taken in by all this fandango?’
‘Perhaps not. I think it threw her into an even worse turmoil of indecision. But Walter had seen through it, and he took action. Instead of going straight to Oxford to meet his girl friend on Good Friday, he visited Eglinton Hall on the way. Knowing that the rest of us were safely off the premises, Magnus interviewed him in the drawing room, where I don’t need to remind you there was a broken window overlooking the lawn. They had a fairly acrimonious discussion, which concluded with Walter being told that if he didn’t shut up and mind his own business his grant would be stopped and he’d be sent home. This put him in a proper fix because, apart from being dedicated to his pots, he’s also potty about this girl of his.’
‘Poor lad! What a difficult life he has.’
‘Anyway, he gave Magnus a few to get on with and then barged out of the room in such a flaming rage that he damn near bashed into Kit’s car as we were coming in. But what neither of them had realised was that every word of their quarrel had been overheard by Sarah. She left us at the Potteries because she wanted to keep an eye on Magnus, but the first thing she did was to mark out the spot where Madame Rosetta’s tent was to be put up, and that’s how she happened to be standing beside the broken window. After that, of course, Magnus hadn’t a hope of convincing her, and he had to resort to drastic measures. Incidentally, the window wasn’t broken intentionally. It was partly my fault that it happened.’
‘Only partly? Oh, Tessa, what an admission!’
‘Well, the accomplice must take some of the praise or blame.’
‘Ah yes, the accomplice!’ Robin said, breaking a long silence. ‘He fooled you, didn’t he? Perhaps he was a better actor than you ever gave him credit for?’
‘You’re talking of Kitbag?’ Toby asked in great astonishment.
‘Yes, he was another of those loonies who secretly subscribed to the Aryan aristocracy theory and all the rest of it. And he was completely under Magnus’s thumb, financially as well as ideologically. He’d been taken to My Leader and found him just the ticket.’
‘Well, you do surprise me, and I have to agree with Robin. I think he may have a great future on the stage, after all.’
‘Well, I don’t, because ultimately he ruins the effect by overacting and that’s very difficult to eradicate. I was puzzled all along by how excessively drunk he got that evening. Normally he could put away several quarts without turning a hair, and it wasn’t as though he’d been at it all day. Yet by half past nine he was completely stoned. It was all according to instructions, but he laid it on far too thick.’
‘What instructions?’
‘That everyone should see how drunk he was and find it quite natural for him to stumble out into the night air. His job was then to grab the brick, which had been planted in a convenient spot and, on a signal from Magnus, to toss it through the open window. Later, he was to come bursting in, all dishevelled and emotional, with the news that he’d seen a bunch of desperados making off towards the meadow, but hadn’t been steady enough to give chase. But it didn’t go according to the script. He overdid the act and it ended with my escorting him into the garden. He did his best to shake me off, and eventually I went indoors again, but shut the window behind me, which gummed up the works considerably. Throwing the brick through glass made it doubly tricky, and in fact I don’t think it struck Magnus at all. I believe he picked up a sliver of glass in his handkerchief and dug it into his forehead to get the blood flowing. Anyway, the scar looked much more like a cut of that type, because there were no bruises or swelling, as Dr Simmons confirmed when I put it to him.’
‘And you mean that Walter saw all this at the time?’
‘Not exactly. He’s impulsive, as they all kept telling me, and it was a natural reflex for him to go flying off in pursuit. There was no one there, of course, except Kit, who had flung himself down on the grass, and Walter put two and two together and weighed in with the left hook. He’s inclined to act first and think later.’
‘But surely Sarah must also have realised that the cut hadn’t been made by a brick?’
‘I expect so; and that’s why Magnus had to pile it on with fake headaches and loss of appetite and so on. Though, mind you, he had a different version for his loyal public. He pretended to us that it was necessary to hush up the affair, but in fact he went dancing about in full view of several hundred people, including press photographers, with a wodge of totally unnecessary surgical dressings on his head. And that, I believe, is what led to Babs’ downfall.’
‘Oh? Had she seen through it too?’
‘No, but I think she found this lump of lint and sticking plaster inside the tent. Presumably it fell off when he attacked Sarah and Babs automatically scooped it up and popped it in her bag. Later o
n, she may have found that Magnus had no intention of leading her to the altar, so either she decided to go for some money instead, or maybe she just enjoyed having some kind of hold over him. The plaster was a perfect weapon for blackmail because he’d been so busy pressing it back into place all the afternoon that it must have been covered with his fingerprints.’
‘I rather fancied Babs as the murderer at one time,’ Toby remarked wistfully. ‘And I rather wish she had been.’
‘Me too; specially as she had the best opportunity for shoving Henry’s overall in the kiln. And, having been married to a doctor, she probably knew a lot about how to kill people. Furthermore, I’d worked out a splendid motive for her. She longed for Sarah to get married and leave the field clear for herself and when she found that the marriage wouldn’t change the set up, everything seemed to fall into place. I’d discounted Magnus at that time because I didn’t know all the facts and I was bogged down by the idea that no man could be such a monster as to kill his own daughter.’
‘According to his statement,’ Robin said, ‘he put his head through the back of the tent and asked Sarah to make some excuse to leave her crystal ball for five minutes, as he had something urgent to discuss with her. He then withdrew and waited outside, meaning to strike her down as she came out; but he had a stroke of luck in that the next client was Babs and he heard Sarah telling her to keep everyone at bay while she went to the bathroom. That gave Magnus a marvellous opportunity to step inside and do the job on the spot.’
‘Poor old Babs!’ I said. ‘If only she’d left well alone she’d have been in no danger, but she had to go and complicate things by trying to cash in. Magnus no doubt tried every trick there was to con her into believing that he’d dropped the sticking plaster at some other time, but all the same you’d have expected her to be a bit wary of him. Instead of which, when he pretended that his car wasn’t ready, and suggested their lunching together at Missendale, she not only agreed, but took good care that her husband shouldn’t be present.’
