A Fête Worse Than Death

by Dolores Gordon-Smith

  ‘Ten o’clock, eh? That’d give her plenty of time to get to Gallows Hill by eleven.’

  ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But she had a puncture and that held her up so it wasn’t until twenty past or so that she arrived. She’s a bit unclear about the next bit but I gather it involved going into the barn and finding him there.’

  ‘Oh, bloody hell! Sorry, Belle. I suppose she left her fingerprints all over the place. D’you happen to know if she touched anything?’

  Isabelle shook her head. ‘She says not. Sergeant Sykes asked her that.’

  ‘Well, that’s something, at any rate. What did she do next?’

  ‘She backed out, got on her bike and was picked up along the way by the Sergeant. They arrived back together and at first she wouldn’t say anything at all. Then the policeman told us what had happened and she started saying she’d killed the Colonel and all hell broke loose. Mr Lawrence got back, you dived in and dived out again and the rest you know. She’s just staring out of the window now. I don’t think she knew we were really there. I preferred it when she was crying.’

  ‘Dear God, did you?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Isabelle. ‘It’d be easier to cope with in a way. If Mr Lawrence had any sense he’d have given the thumbs-up to their engagement, then let nature take its course. All Colonel Whitfield had going for him was his looks and she’d have got over them soon enough. She’d probably have managed it before the wedding. She’d have certainly managed it afterwards.’

  ‘This is all very cynical, Belle.’

  ‘I feel cynical. I don’t believe he ever gave tuppence for her and I could shake her for taking him so seriously. I know he did wonderful things in the war, but he was a perfect stick of a man with no conversation who drank too much. Now he’s dead I suppose she’ll live in the shadow of his memory and be thoroughly and absolutely dreary about the whole thing for the rest of her life.’

  ‘She could meet someone else,’ suggested Haldean. ‘After all, she’s quite nice-looking when she tries and will be very well off. Money answereth all things, as it says in Ecclesiastes somewhere.’

  ‘Now who’s being cynical?’ countered Isabelle.

  Haldean smiled wickedly. ‘Ah, but when I do it, it’s a mixture of realism and Holy Writ. Have a cigarette, Belle, and entertain me. I’m feeling old and stale.’

  ‘Your only problem,’ said Isabelle, accepting a cigarette and puffing blue smoke at a cloud of dancing gnats, ‘is that you’re grumpy because you haven’t solved the murder.’

  ‘Which one?’ asked Haldean, settling back against the willow. ‘I’ve got three to choose from. I don’t believe for a minute that Whitfield shot himself. That was cold-blooded murder if you like, and Maggie Vayle’s trip to the barn hasn’t half complicated things.’

  Isabelle stared at him. ‘You mean she might be accused of killing him? Really killing him, I mean?’ Haldean nodded. ‘I see.’ Isabelle put her arms round her knees and looked at the river. ‘That’s awkward, Jack. That’s very awkward indeed.’

  ‘How come you’re not leaping to her defence?’

  Isabelle didn’t answer right away. ‘To be honest, it’s not the first time I’ve thought about her in that way,’ she said eventually.

  Haldean raised an eyebrow in her direction. ‘So she strikes you like that, does she?’

  ‘I certainly wouldn’t want to be the one who stopped her from getting what she wanted,’ said Isabelle seriously. ‘After you told us she’d been blackmailed, I wondered if she would be capable of murdering Boscombe. She bottles everything up so much that it’s a bit frightening at times. Maybe she’d be different if she was happy. I’ve only known her since the Vayles died and she was heartbroken by that. Then this thing with Colonel Whitfield started. I wouldn’t be surprised if deep down inside she always knew he never really loved her, so she had to love him twice as much and a bit frantically to make up for it. But she did love him, you know. That proves she’s innocent, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Unless she finally caught on that he didn’t care.’

  Isabelle shuddered. ‘Don’t, Jack.’ She shuddered again. ‘Please don’t,’ she begged. ‘That’s horribly believable.’

  There were a few moments’ silence. ‘I did think,’ said Isabelle eventually, ‘that the Colonel was the man you were after. When he tried to ride you down I thought he’d tried to kill you. Now he’s dead, I suppose he was innocent all along. Was that an accident, Jack?’

  ‘I didn’t think so at the time, I must say. He nearly saw me off and came as near as a toucher to getting Ashley as well.’

  ‘So why did he do it?’

  Haldean rolled over on his stomach and frowned at the grass. ‘Fear. He was frightened, Belle. The Chief Constable told him we were looking for a blackmailer and I put the wind up him that night at Mrs Verrity’s. He started laying eggs after that. From what I can gather he hit the bottle pretty badly.’

  ‘From which we infer, Sherlock, that he was being blackmailed, yes?’

  ‘I wish we could infer that. I’m stuck. But I’m certain Whitfield was murdered.’

  ‘What about Mr Lawrence? I don’t like the idea but he was there just as much as Marguerite and he loathed Whitfield. Or what about Mrs Verrity?’

  Haldean grinned. ‘You’ve got a bee in your bonnet about her.’

  ‘Buzzing frantically,’ said Isabelle, stubbing out her cigarette. ‘She was nuts about the Colonel and she might have known he intended to patch things with up with Maggie. I bet she couldn’t bear to see him go to someone else. She lives next door to the barn. Couldn’t she have nipped in and shot Colonel Whitfield?’

  ‘Hardly. The curtain went up at eleven o’clock and at eleven o’clock she was drinking coffee in her morning room. And I was on the spot immediately afterwards, you know. I’m sure I would have seen her or anyone else if they’d tried to get away.’

  ‘Could she have hidden in the barn?’

  ‘She could, if she’d disguised herself as an old sheaf-binder or a whipple-tree or something. Besides that, I know unrequited love takes people in funny ways, but it’d hardly make her start knocking seven bells out of Mr Lawrence, no matter how stuck on Colonel Whitfield she was. Not only that, she simply couldn’t have beaten Lawrence and myself back to the house. We took the most direct route to Thackenhurst just as soon as he was fit to walk.’

  ‘It’s Whitfield then,’ said Isabelle in a dissatisfied voice. ‘It has to be. After all, it might have been suicide. He shot the other two and tried to kill Mr Lawrence before shooting himself.’

  ‘Not only couldn’t he have shot Boscombe, it’d be a sight more to the point if he’d shot Lawrence.’ He raised his head as a car crunched up the drive and over the bridge. ‘I wonder who that is?’

  Isabelle ran to the top of the bank, Haldean joining her at a more leisurely pace. ‘We’re not expecting any visitors . . . I say, Jack, isn’t that Superintendent Ashley getting out of the car?’

  ‘He doesn’t usually arrive in state like this,’ said Haldean in a dried-up voice. ‘He knows something.’

  Isabelle caught at his arm. ‘Come on, Jack. It might not be as bad you think.’

  Ashley was standing in the hall with Mr Lawrence when they arrived. He was flanked by Constable Hawley and Sergeant Sykes and he looked, Haldean thought, unusually grim. From the end of the hall appeared Aunt Alice, Uncle Philip and Mr Lawrence, drawn by the instinct that Something was undoubtedly Up. Marguerite was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Did you want me, Mr Ashley?’ asked Sir Philip.

  ‘No, sir. I need to speak to Mr Lawrence here. Mr Lawrence, you stated this morning that you were unaware that Colonel Whitfield’s body was in the barn. Is that correct?’

  ‘Why yes, Superintendent,’ said Lawrence with a puzzled frown. ‘I told you so earlier. Until Major Haldean pointed it out to me I didn’t know anything about it.’

  ‘And at no time did you touch either the body or the gun?’

  ‘That’s
right. I wanted to cover him up but the Major said we had to leave everything as it was. I wish now I’d insisted on it as it might have saved poor Marguerite a dreadful shock.’

  ‘In that case . . .’ Ashley took a deep breath. ‘Hugh Douglas Lawrence, I arrest you for the murder of Richard Theodore Whitfield. You do not have to say anything but anything you do say may be used in evidence at your trial.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Lawrence, seriously alarmed. ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Ashley. ‘I just have.’

  Haldean looked at the gun on Ashley’s desk. ‘Can I touch it?’ he asked.

  ‘Help yourself,’ said Ashley, agreeably. He picked up the gun and passed it over to Haldean. ‘We’ve got all the photographs we need, and I’ve handled it already. There were six bullets left in the chamber so I unloaded it. The last thing we need is an accident. Neat, isn’t it?’

  Haldean took the gun thoughtfully in the palm of his hand. A Smith and Wesson seven-shot hand-ejector revolver – a few years old now, by the look of it. It could quite easily be carried in a man’s pocket as it only measured six inches or so and didn’t weigh much more than half a pound. ‘A .22?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s right. And although there’s no way of actually proving that it’s the same gun that was used on Boscombe and Morton, the bullets are the same type. We haven’t had the post-mortem on Colonel Whitfield yet, but it has to be the gun that killed him.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Haldean, putting the gun back on the desk. ‘And you’re convinced, beyond the teeniest, most exiguous shadow of the scintilla of a doubt, that our Mr Lawrence is the man?’

  Ashley sighed and leaned back in his chair, then got up and walked to the window, hitching himself comfortably on to the sill. ‘How certain do you want me to be?’ he said after a pause. ‘The evidence is there all right. You can’t get round that. The footprints in the barn were too scuffed and confused to make anything of, but Lawrence’s fingerprints are on the gun and on the spade too, despite his statement that he hadn’t touched them. To be honest, it’s the very strength of the evidence which did make me think a bit. If he wanted us to believe Whitfield committed suicide, why on earth didn’t he make a better fist of it?’

  Haldean drummed a tattoo on the desk. ‘It’s damned odd, isn’t it? However, don’t forget I wasn’t meant to be there. It might have looked a jolly sight more convincing if I hadn’t been on the spot.’

  ‘You mean Lawrence was expecting to have more time to fake the evidence?’

  ‘Yes.’ Haldean frowned. ‘He can’t have expected to be roughed up the way he was. Maybe he was having a breather before going back into the barn.’

  Ashley rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘How about this for an idea? The two men meet, have words and take a swing at each other. Lawrence gets hold of the spade handle and thumps Whitfield with it. Both had obviously been in a fight, so that accounts for that. Lawrence or Whitfield pulls a gun . . . Wait a minute. It’d actually have to be Lawrence’s gun, if it’s the same one that was used on Boscombe, because we know Whitfield didn’t kill Boscombe. Then Lawrence shoots him. Panic-stricken, and in a pretty bad way himself, he quickly makes it look like suicide and lights out to find you waiting for him. He could have been going to clean himself up or stage an accident, maybe a car crash, to account for his injuries. All he’d have to do then is deny ever having been there. But running into you scuppers that option. He wants to stop you finding the body so he invents that thin story about Whitfield making an unprovoked attack and scarpering in the hope you’ll take his word for it that Whitfield’s not there. Having told you as much, he’s got to stick to it, even after you’ve found the body. He had to risk the fingerprints and it didn’t come off. What d’you think of that?’

  Haldean shrugged. ‘I don’t know. If he’d had time to set up a car crash to make it appear that he’d had an accident on the way to the barn instead of on the way back, it might be quite convincing. At the moment his story’s got as many holes in it as a Swiss cheese.’

  ‘Agreed. He’d have been better off, once he had seen you, to admit to plugging Whitfield and telling you they’d had a fight.’

  ‘Unless, of course, he was telling me the truth.’

  Ashley favoured him with a very long, old-fashioned look. ‘Come off it. He’s got his fingerprints on the gun and the spade, no one else was in or near the barn, he’s very much the worse for wear and Whitfield’s dead body is stuck behind the plough. The only alternative to murder, as he sees it, is suicide, so he makes it look as much like suicide as he can in the hope he’ll get away with it.’

  ‘What does he say happened? Now you’ve arrested him, I mean.’

  ‘He says he was telling the unvarnished truth and that’s all we’re getting. What’s eating you?’

  ‘Nothing, apart from the fact I like him. Having said that, he’s a formidable type. I wouldn’t like to cross him. By the way, it’s a bit irrelevant now, but Marguerite Vayle’s story adds up as far as I can tell. Her bike has a new patch on the front wheel which conceals a genuine hole. I know because I took it off. However, there’s nothing to say when the patch was applied. “Recently” is a bit too vague in this sort of game.’

  Ashley sucked in his cheeks. ‘So you’re still on that tack, are you? To be honest, I think you can stop worrying. I can hardly see her cracking Lawrence over the head, shooting Whitfield, then vanishing into the background while you looked round the barn. That is . . . I take it you could see the barn while you were attending to Lawrence?’

  ‘Oh yes. I’d parked at the bottom of the lane, which, as you know, is out of sight of the barn, but when I heard the shot I ran as fast as I could up to where Lawrence had appeared. No one ran across the road or even out of the door and round the corner of the building. I’m certain of that. Besides, if they had, Lawrence himself would have noticed them. He’d have said if he’d seen anyone. Unless . . .’

  ‘Unless what?’

  ‘Unless, perhaps, that someone was Marguerite Vayle,’ said Haldean.

  Ashley looked at him. ‘What’s brought this on? After all, when you thought Miss Vayle was involved you hated the idea. What’s the problem?’

  Haldean twitched irritably. ‘It’s times. From the time of hearing the shot to Lawrence appearing was awfully quick. He’d have had to move like the dickens to put the gun in Whitfield’s hand. I don’t think he was up to moving that fast.’

  ‘That’s probably why he made such a mess of it. So you think Lawrence could be protecting Miss Vayle?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Haldean shook himself. ‘He cares an awful lot about her, that’s obvious. This caper’s rotten. You start looking at the ordinary, normal people and paw over their actions and their motives until you can’t think straight any more. It’s perfectly reasonable that Marguerite should want to hear what Lawrence and Whitfield were saying. It’s all too believable that she should have a puncture and be late for their meeting. It’s only too easy to say “Prove it.” She can’t, of course. We can’t prove most of what we say. We simply take it on trust because most people tell the truth, but who the devil knows what that is in a case like this?’

  ‘I think I’ve got the truth.’ Ashley steepled his fingers, taking in Haldean’s strained face. ‘This is getting to you, isn’t it? When I spoke to Inspector Rackham about you, he said that if you had a fault, you got too involved. You can’t afford to be involved, Haldean. You’d prefer it to be like one of your stories, wouldn’t you?’ Haldean nodded reluctantly. ‘But it isn’t. The victim, the villain – they were figures on a chessboard. And now the figures have come to life and you want to walk away because you don’t want to be responsible for hurting one of them.’

  ‘You’re right, damn you.’ Haldean got up and moved restlessly about the room. ‘It’s a rum thing that I’ve thoroughly liked all the possible suspects and cordially detested all the victims. I went off Whitfield in a big way after he called me a tame dago. Trying to murder m
e didn’t help, either. I suppose I should make an exception of Morton, but that’s only because I didn’t know him. He doesn’t seem to have been an endearing sort of soul.’

  ‘And the little group of suspects that we’ve assembled contains one who can’t be such an endearing sort either. Not if they’re prepared to take three lives for their own purposes. But I will say this for Miss Vayle. It seems crazy to drag her in when we’ve got Lawrence on the spot with fingerprints to prove it.’

  ‘Maybe. Not that, as far as my lacerated feelings are concerned, I’m any happier pinning it on Lawrence. And what about the motive, Ashley? Admittedly he loathed Whitfield, but if he killed him then he must have killed Boscombe and Morton as well. It was the same gun, after all, or the same sort of bullets at least.’

  ‘Well, surely the motive’s obvious. If he cares about Miss Vayle as much as you say he does, then he murdered them because they were blackmailing her.’

  ‘But he didn’t know.’

  ‘He says he didn’t know. He might have guessed what was going on.’

  Haldean shook himself in frustration. ‘He might. Oh, to hell with it. Why the blazes didn’t I pay more attention to Boscombe that day at the fête? He was full of himself, the little creep, bubbling over with “I know something you don’t know” and horribly smug. I suppose that’s why I got rid of him as fast as I could, that and him being offensively drunk. Back in the war, you know, he used to adore getting one up on someone. He’d nurse little snippets of scandal to himself and drip them out bit by bit and quite frankly, my heart used to sink when I saw him in that venomous mood. When I saw him at the fête, so damn pleased with himself as if he had something up his sleeve and so –’ Haldean broke off and stared blankly at the opposite wall.

  ‘So what?’ prompted Ashley, but Haldean didn’t hear him.