‘I shouldn’t be surprised,’ said Gavin, moving out of reach of a prodding yellow forefinger. ‘ “Now lies the earth all Danae to the stars” … a fact of which we policemen, in spite of our modesty, cannot help but sometimes be aware.’
BOOK TWO
The Echoes
‘But if you talked to yourself, you did not answer yourself I am certain I heard two voices.’
Oliver Goldsmith: She Stoops to Conquer
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Echo Under the Bridge
*
‘… answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.’
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
*
MRS. BRADLEY RETIRED TO the Stone House at Wandles Parva in slightly saddened mood. In spite of her conviction that in one way or another the twin brothers were at least in part responsible for the double murders … the one at Wetwode and the other at Mede … she felt certain that some great wrong had been dealt them and that wrong had provoked one or both of them to take vengeance.
The most obvious and likely motive which they might have had for murder was that one or other of them had been blackmailed, and, to her, blackmail was one of the more inexcusable crimes. She tried to work out the possible reasons for this blackmail, beginning with the first known fact, that the boys’ parents had both been killed at the same time. She wondered whether there was any possibility that the deaths of the parents could be brought home to any negligence, cowardice or need on the part of the boys, but the fact that the twins could not, at the most, have been more than seven years old at the time of the crash seemed to rule out… in practical terms, did rule out… any question of their responsibility.
That brought the thing nearer home. What could either Francis or Derek have done since they were seven … she could put it higher … since they were sixteen at least … which would give even the most unscrupulous person sufficient hold over them for his murder to have appeared to be a solution of their difficulties?
This brought another question. Why two murders? Granted that the twins would have backed each other up through thick and thin, what two persons in districts as far apart as East Anglia and Hampshire could have been so completely in collusion as to have made life unbearable for both brothers? There was some mysterious factor in all this, and she thought that somewhere in the picture was Sir Adrian Caux. Sir Adrian had accepted the custody of the boys only to separate them at a very early age. They had been old enough to understand and to resent this separation. It had been a heartless business undoubtedly. She decided to see Sir Adrian again.
She found the squire of Mede preoccupied with boats. He was organizing his own regatta, to be rowed and sailed on the River Burwater starting from the very bungalow at which the murder of Campbell had taken place.
This particular point did not, of itself, influence Mrs. Bradley. Her spirit was anything but morbid and she saw no reason why the environs of Wetwode should be sacrosanct because a violent death had taken place there. She greeted Sir Adrian with neighbourly civility and enquired concerning the reason for, and the scope of, his activities.
He replied with what seemed to her to be rather suspicious politeness … even warmth … that he thought it only right to spend some of his money on the villagers and requested her to help him judge the races.
‘I would prefer to compete,’ said Mrs. Bradley. ‘Is there possibly a class for Canadian canoes?’
‘No,’ Sir Adrian replied. ‘They are not much in evidence on this part of the river, so I didn’t make a class for them. Perhaps, though, you could give us an exhibition.’
‘In the vulgar sense, that is what it would probably amount to. I think I will enter in the fourteen-foot International class … sailing dinghies, you know.’
‘We haven’t got one.’ Sir Adrian looked at her as though he could kill her. ‘Why don’t you suggest something sensible?’
‘I have never heard of a sailing regatta which did not have a fourteen-foot International class,’ protested Mrs. Bradley, noting the return to his natural manner.
‘Well, you have now. What about the single or double sculls? Quite enough excitement for a woman of your age.’
‘Too much effort. I must conserve my energies. Sail or nothing.’
‘There’s a class for outboard-motor boats. Dinghies, you know.’ Sir Adrian’s tone had altered again. It was quiet and conciliatory.
‘Then there ought not to be. I shall report you to the river conservancy people,’ said Mrs. Bradley firmly. ‘Who are you to ruin their soft banks?’
‘Pish! And that being settled, are you going to help me judge the races or not?’
‘Very well. I will help with the judging. I assume that there will be three of us.’
‘Three judges? Why three, dear lady?’
He was disingenuous enough to look surprised and slightly perturbed.
‘We must have a majority verdict, I feel. It will save time and tempers.’
‘Look here,’ said Sir Adrian, ‘what’s your game?’
‘To give a fair verdict.’
‘Fair to whom?’
‘To the victims. I mean, the competitors.’
‘Do you doubt my sense of fairness?’
‘And my own. One is always biassed.’
Sir Adrian opened his mouth to speak, closed it again, smiled without opening his lips, and then said with false geniality:
‘Champagne, oysters, peanuts and Gorgonzola cheese. Am I biassed or not?’
‘What could be nicer,’ said Mrs. Bradley cordially, ‘unless you had said Asti, cornflakes, green gravel and Spanish onions?’
‘Why Spanish onions?’ Sir Adrian enquired.
‘The larger lunacy, I presume,’ said Gavin, when, the regatta over and the procession of boats dispersed, he and Mrs. Bradley were walking towards the hotel where her car was parked. ‘What was behind it? Do you know?’ He was referring to the conversation, or, rather, the tilting match, which Mrs. Bradley had had with Sir Adrian, and of which she had told him, speaking more seriously than she usually did.
‘Oh, yes, of course I know. I was warning him, and he didn’t like it much.’
‘I don’t see why he shouldn’t. He couldn’t have known whether you were accusing Francis or Derek. By the way, do you think he yet knows them apart?’
‘He knows better than to give that secret away, child.’
‘What are you going to do now?’
‘In the classic phrase, I am going to wait … and (I hope) see.’
‘ “Don’t seem to know what ’e’s waiting for,” ’ said Gavin, who had picked up the reprehensible habit of quotation from his fiancée, Mrs. Bradley’s secretary.
‘Sir Adrian is a foeman worthy of my steel,’ said Mrs. Bradley complacently, ‘and one of the things I am waiting for is to find out exactly why he decided to organize his own small private regatta in a place which holds a big regatta every year.’
‘Have you any ideas on the subject? I mean, he’s given to mad projects, isn’t he? Look at his private cricket ground, and his manservants all paid for their batting and bowling and so on.’
‘I know. But I don’t think the regatta comes under the heading of a mad project. If it does, then I fancy there was method in the madness.’
‘The boathouse?’
‘Exactly … unless the rather obvious use of the boathouse was to make us think so.’
‘Expound.’
‘You mean elucidate, I think. The regatta was staged for a purpose. Sir Adrian staged it, therefore the purpose was his.’
‘Unless young Derek persuaded him into it.’
‘Yes, I agree that that must be taken into consideration and that Derek must be kept in the picture. Well, now, let us take the boathouse first.’
‘There couldn’t be any clues left there that we poor bobbies overlooked, could there?’
‘I don’t know. I should scarcely think so, except that even our skilful and gentlemanly Force often do not know what they are looking
for, and if one doesn’t know what the clues are …’
‘What the heart doesn’t grieve for, the eye doesn’t see, in fact.’
‘I could not have put that so well, but that is what I meant.’
‘Therefore there could have been something about the boathouse which a guilty mind would consider suspicious. Could Sir Adrian’s have been the guilty mind?’
‘The guilty mind, yes. He could have performed of the guilty deeds only one, though, this one here.’
‘I say, this begins to stink a bit! You think he worked upon Derek to carry out the other murder?’
‘I refuse to commit myself absolutely on that point, but I have it well in the front of my mind.’
‘But that would be devil’s work!’
‘Aptly argued. It is certain that Sir Adrian could not have committed the Mede murder. It is certain that Derek-Francis or Francis-Derek could. It is possible that Sir Adrian could have murdered Campbell, and if what I think about the regatta is true, it seems likely that he did. His choosing to come to Wetwode at all was extremely suspicious. It would have been much easier, as well as far more comfortable, to have had both boys at his own big house in Mede.’
‘You begin to convince me that Sir Adrian is the villain of the piece. Tell me all about the regatta, for I feel that thereby hangs a tale.’
‘Maybe there does, and maybe there does not. I wish you would tell me something first. What were the details of the deaths of Sir Adrian’s son and his wife?’
‘Funny you should ask that. We decided to check up on the Caux family, and it seems that there was nothing in the least suspicious about that crash. Caux had a bad reputation, as I expect you’ve heard, but he died, and his wife with him, in a very nasty accident on the Great North Road when he was driving his father’s car. They swerved into a lorry, and simply didn’t stand a chance. It wasn’t the lorry driver’s fault. A theory was that a wasp had stung Caux just over the eye and he lost control of his vehicle for just a split second, that’s all. The wife was sitting in front, beside Caux, and Francis, then a boy of seven, was in the back seat and escaped serious injury. We’ve combed all the reports, and that’s every single thing we can find. It was just one of those things. The Caux car was completely smashed, and afforded no evidence.’
‘Who was the lorry driver?’
‘A fellow named Spitov … a Pole. Repatriated later, and killed in the war. Completely exonerated from blame by the coroner and had had a clean record as a driver.’
‘Where was Derek Caux at the time?’
‘In bed with measles. That’s why he wasn’t with them. We’ve managed to rout out his old nurse, quite a decent, respectable body now living up North. There’s nothing more to be got there, I’m afraid.’
‘I bow in honour of the hard work of the police. I didn’t think there was anything to be got from the facts of that accident, but they needed airing if only to show us where not to look for a motive for these two murders. We are where we began, and that is always one kind of progress.’
‘Your turn now: the regatta. How come, and what did it learn you?’
‘Sir Adrian said that he wanted to spend some money on the villagers. I must say that he gave good prizes … five pounds for a win, three for second place and a pound for third. There were five races, two of which, the double sculls and the coxwainless fours, had to be timed instead of rowed off as races. There were too many entrants to make a massed start sufficiently safe.’
‘And were there too many? What did you yourself think? … You said you helped with the judging.’
‘I agreed that there were too many. But an interesting point occurred. According to George, my man, on the previous evening a man came into the hotel public bar … you know, the one round at the side of the house through the big gates … and offered ten shillings to everybody who proposed to enter for the double sculls and the coxwainless fours. He said he was doing it for a bet, as people in his village had been saying that Wetwode men were effete, effeminate, (those were not the words he used but they give the general sense of his adjectives and substantives), and were lacking in local pride, civic sense and even the most rudimentary kind of courage.’
‘Lord! I hope he didn’t wait until they were all boozed up before he began!’
‘He did. George, of course, was not present. He was at my Hampshire house as I had returned there. But I got him to drive me to Wetwode when I decided to see Sir Adrian again, and he went in on the morning of the regatta for his eleven o’clock glass of beer, which he likes very much when we are staying in villages, although he drinks nothing at all in London, and found the public bar humming with the news of the previous night. It transpired, George told me, that Sir Adrian had deposited money with the barman so that the villagers could drink the health of himself and his grandsons, and so, by the time the stranger arrived, the party was already somewhat livelier than is usual in that very respectable house.
‘The stranger’s remarks, therefore, provoked a response which must have delighted him. Men signed his list who might well have thought better of it next morning, received their ten shillings each on the spot, and, of course, could scarcely withdraw for fear of what would be thought of them by these (I fancy fictitious) villagers pictured by Sir Adrian’s agent-provocateur.’
‘Oh, you go as far as that, do you? Well, on the strength of George’s report, yes, I think I do, too. This is extraordinarily interesting. Proceed, moon. Tell me what you deduce from all this subversive ratiocination.’
‘Something nasty in the woodshed. I wish we could have obtained a description of the man who offered the ten shilling notes.’
‘Probably one of Sir Adrian’s servants, you think. Well, I can dimly perceive a way round that, but, of course, if Sir Adrian really was at the bottom of it, his motive might merely be that he wanted a record entry for his races.’
‘True. But there is more. Sir Adrian acted as starter, left me at the boathouse with a stop-watch, and he and a twin, in a small launch, accompanied every race to see fair play.’
‘I can’t see very much in that. I suppose the course was unmarked?’
‘Yes. It was from the boathouse entrance … the river-end of the staithe, in fact … to the Broad and back. The boats had to enter the Broad at its first opening, cross one corner of the Broad, come out at its second opening, and so home.’
‘Sounds quite a good arrangement.’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘What’s the matter, then?’
‘At one point there was an avoidable, totally unnecessary accident.’
‘Oh, Lord! You don’t mean …?’
‘Engineered? I’m afraid so. What happened was this. The double sculls all went off first, and then the coxwainless fours. When it came to the first heat of the fours Sir Adrian became fussy. We had to wait for twenty minutes, for no apparent reason, whilst he inspected the starters, altered the position of the stake boat and argued with Derek (Francis is keeping up the fiction of being deaf and dumb) about the nice conduct of a blank-shot gun. When he at last allowed matters to proceed, one of the older men pointed out that the proposed course would soon be closed to them because the pleasure launches … enormous things which can carry a hundred people … would be returning up-river and there would not be room for the crews to pass without getting far too much wash to make the timing fair. He argued that as the course would not be of the same difficulty for all, it would be advisable to put off the fours and run off some of the land sports which were being held for the children. Yachts and motor-cruisers he held to be reasonable hazards and merely a matter of luck. River steamers, which ran to time, could and should be avoided.
‘Sir Adrian refused to accept this view, which he apostrophized as being nonsense.
‘He sent off the first of the boats. This was manned by four young fellows, one of whom was my diver.’
‘Your what?’
‘My diver. When it seemed likely that Francis Caux with his clay-modelling had
given us details of the disposal of Campbell’s body at the bottom of that dinghy …’
‘Oh, yes, of course. I remember.’
‘Yes, well, Sir Adrian’s questionable means of obtaining entrants for his regatta, together with his unreasonable waste of time and equally unreasonable refusal to listen to reason, convinced me that, in the vulgar and grammatically meaningless phrase, he could bear watching. To this end I handed the stop-watch to George, who was beside me, and slipped into what had been the back garden of my bungalow. There I had my canoe lying in a little stream too narrow to be called a dyke, and yet fulfilling the function of one.’
‘You mean it leads into the Broad?’
‘And by a very short cut, for the river winds and bends, whilst my stream, man-made to drain the ground at the backs of the bungalows which otherwise would be an impassable swamp, runs as straight as a ruler to a reed-bank behind which I expected to be able to shelter whilst I watched the march of events.
‘The big public launches go out by way of the Broad, but return all the way by river. My plan was to wait until the rowers and Sir Adrian’s small launch had passed my hiding-place, and then to follow them up and find out what happened when they met one of the public launches, which, at that time, they were almost bound to do. I did not think that the twin who was steering would turn his head and see me, still less that Sir Adrian, who had a megaphone in order to assist him to keep the course clear, would look round either.
‘Fortune favoured me in this. On to the Broad up the first short dyke came the rowing boat, a clumsy tub of a thing let out usually to fishermen holiday-makers. The four young men were sweating and straining, Sir Adrian, a couple of lengths behind them, was exhorting them through the megaphone, and I, paddling vigorously out from behind my reed-bed on to the open Broad, was at once in pursuit, and, of course, in my light craft and on that calm water, had no need to worry lest I should be left behind.
‘At the exit from the Broad it happened. A yacht was close in to the bank, and Sir Adrian gave tongue through the megaphone. There was room for the rowers to pull by, but only just. Sir Adrian’s launch got round easily and so did I. I could hear nothing but the chug-chugging of Sir Adrian’s engine. It blotted out, even to my ears, which, as you probably know, are sharp, the easier, quieter throbbing of the engines of the public launch.
The Echoing Strangers (Mrs Bradley) Page 14
