The Casebook of Jonas P. Jonas and Other Mysteries

by E. X. Ferrars

  Bertram was her long-dead husband. It was from him that she had inherited her wealth. He had died of viral pneumonia about thirty years ago.

  “Does it matter if they do find out?” I asked. “They’ll take care of you. You aren’t frightened they’ll try to put you into a mental home or something like that, are you? People can’t do that sort of thing nowadays. It’s extremely difficult to have a person put into one of those places, if they don’t want to go, even when they’re truly crazy. And you know no one could say that about you. Anyway, Marion and Charles have always been very good to you, haven’t they?”

  “But there’s the money, you see.”

  I did not see at once, though I recognised that most things in the end come down to money.

  She withdrew her hand from mine and crossed it with the other on the hump her knees made in the bed.

  “What I want, Dorothy, is to give you power of attorney over my affairs,” she said. “Will you see to that for me?”

  I was very puzzled.

  “Of course,” I said, “but wouldn’t it be better to give it to Charles and Marion?”

  “I don’t think you understand,” she said. “You can’t give power of attorney to anyone unless it’s evident that you’re in your right mind and you know what you’re doing. And I’m afraid if I wait, perhaps – perhaps – well, I told you, I get frightened sometimes that I’m not quite sane anymore and that perhaps I’m going to get worse. You know, I really wish that stroke had finished me off. It would have made everything so much simpler. But if I don’t give power of attorney soon to someone there may be a terrible muddle to clear up when I get really peculiar, and then, even if Charles and Marion don’t put me into a mental home, they’ll be able to do what they like with me. They’ll put me into a home of some sort and everyone will say how wonderfully good they’ve always been to me. But they won’t be able to afford a really nice home where I’d be comfortable and well looked after unless they’ve got control of my money, and so I want to be sure that the person who’s got it is someone I trust. So I want to be sure it’s you.”

  I took a moment to answer. Then I said, “Why don’t you trust Charles and Marion?”

  “Well, Marion doesn’t like me, you know,” she replied. “She never has. She only came here because it was a way of giving Charles the sort of good home he likes that doesn’t cost him anything. But she’s very bored and she’d love to be back in her old job.”

  Marion had been a librarian in St. Botolph’s College for several years before she married Charles and in those days had had a nice little cottage of her own in Cumnor.

  Aunt Emma continued: “She thinks she could get the job back if she hadn’t got me to look after, so she’s going to pop me into a home the first moment she can. But even if they have control of my money and could arrange to move me into somewhere nice, it would actually be into the cheapest thing they could find, and the last years of my life, or months, or weeks, whatever it turns out to be, would be pretty wretched.”

  I think I was frowning.

  “Then just what is it you want me to do?” I asked.

  “First of all, fix up the power of attorney,” she said. “You’ll have to get in touch with Mr. Baybridge. He’s my solicitor. Of course, he won’t be in his office on a Saturday morning, but if you ring his home this evening and tell him it’s urgent, I’m sure he’ll come to see me tomorrow. Then as soon as that’s been sorted out and you’re in charge, I want you to tell Charles and Marion that they aren’t needed here any more because you’re going to get in a woman from an agency to look after me. I’ve the address of a good agency who’ll send someone who’ll do the shopping and the cooking and everything. It’s very expensive but, after all, I can afford it – particularly as it may not be for long – and meanwhile I’ll feel...” She paused, then continued softly: “I’ll feel safe.”

  That was the first time I started to wonder if she was in her right mind and fit to give me power of attorney. Whereas it should have been the time when I began to take her seriously....

  “Very well,” I said, “if you’re sure it’s what you want. It’ll be a little hard on Charles and Marion, suddenly being turned out, but I suppose they’ll be able to find lodgings till they can buy a place of their own. And the first step you want me to take is to ring up Mr. Baybridge this evening and ask him to call on you here to fix up this power of attorney thing.”

  She nodded. “And please don’t tell Charles and Marion about any of this. I know you think I’m being ungrateful, but really... really, Dorothy...”

  She did not finish the sentence and it was only later that I guessed what she had nearly said.

  The telephone was on a table in the hall at the bottom of the stairs. I found Mr. Baybridge’s number in a notebook beside the telephone, rang him up and arranged with him that he should call on my aunt next morning at eleven o’clock. I did not say anything about why she wanted to see him, but only that she would be very grateful if he would come. But the door of the drawing room where Marion and Charles were sitting was open and as I joined them Charles said, “So she’s going to change her will.”

  “Change her will?” I said. “She hasn’t said anything about that to me.”

  “Isn’t that why she wants Baybridge to come round?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  Aunt Emma’s will, to the best of my knowledge, left everything she had divided equally between Marion and me. It seemed to me very unlikely that she should think of changing it.

  “Of course, if she did we could contest it,” Charles went on. “I think Dr. Summers would be willing to say that the balance of her mind wasn’t all that it should be at the time she did it. Then we might add – ” He paused and gave me one of the odd brilliant smiles that could transform his rather nondescript face into one which, at least to me, had always been surprisingly exciting. “We could talk about undue influence, couldn’t we? I mean, in view of the time you’ve spent with her this evening.”

  “She never mentioned her will all the time I was with her and neither did I,” I answered truthfully.

  “Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with the balance of her mind,” Marion said. “She’s old, that’s all, and it happens she doesn’t like you and me, Charles. I don’t know why, but it’s her right, isn’t it? I hope no one thinks my mind is unhinged simply because I dislike some of the people I do.”

  I said something I was later to regret.

  “I don’t think her mind is unhinged, but she’s afraid it’s going to be.”

  Charles gave me a sombre look. “Is that really true? It hadn’t occurred to me.”

  I remembered that Aunt Emma had said that she did not think that Charles and Marion had noticed her blackouts and other peculiarities.

  Trying to make amends to her, I said, “Oh, I don’t know. I expect it’s just the after-effects of her stroke. She’s more helpless than she’s ever been in her life and she can’t come to terms with it.”

  “All the same, you think she’s afraid – ” He checked himself, and exchanged a long look with Marion which made me wonder if, in spite of his having said otherwise, the two of them might not already have discussed it.

  Feeling guilty, as if I had somehow let Aunt Emma down, I said good night to them and went to bed.

  Next morning I was awakened by Marion who came into my room with a pot of tea on a tray. As she put it down on the table by my bed, I said, “This is very nice of you. You shouldn’t have bothered.”

  “It’s no bother. I always do it for Aunt Emma,” she replied. “Come down when you feel like it. You’ll probably find me in the kitchen.”

  “I think I’d like a bath,” I said. “Does anyone else want the bathroom?”

  “No, go ahead when you like.” She turned to the door.

  Sitting up, reaching for the tray and balancing it on my knees, I said, “Marion, last night before I went to sleep I started thinking about the things we’d been talking about. Honestly, Aunt E
mma never said anything to me about changing her will. I’d a feeling you and Charles didn’t believe me when I told you that.”

  She gave a shrug of her shoulders. I was sure I saw disbelief in her eyes. But she said, “It wouldn’t break my heart if she did change it. What I want is to get back to my job. I don’t think I’m cut out to be a nurse, any more than you are. But you’ve been lucky, no one’s ever suggested you ought to give up that job of yours to do the sort of things I’ve had to do recently. You’ve always got away with everything you wanted.”

  Except, I thought, marrying Charles, which was something that at one time I had wanted very badly.

  “But you’re fond of Aunt Emma, aren’t you?” I said. “She’s always been very good to us both.”

  “Oh yes, of course,” she answered indifferently. “But I’m no more domesticated than you are, you know. I can’t cook and I’m not nearly as good as you are at entertaining people, which is something Charles would like me to do, and doing the shopping and being shut up half the time in this great house bores me beyond words. However, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to start grumbling so early in the morning. It’s usually something that works up gradually through the day, if I’ve got a sympathetic listener. I’ll give you a dose of it later!”

  She went out and I heard her go downstairs.

  I drank my tea, then got out of bed, put on my dressing-gown, collected my sponge and toothbrush and went to the bathroom.

  I ran a deep bath, washed lazily and lay comfortably back in the warm water, thinking how strange it was to discover that Marion’s life, which I had always to some extent envied, should apparently to her be a kind of trap. I did not believe that Aunt Emma’s money was unimportant to her and Charles. If it were, why had they not moved out long ago and left Aunt Emma to find herself a good housekeeper? The truth was, I thought, that Marion was one of those people who want to have everything without giving up anything to achieve it. She wanted marriage, and her job, and more money than she could earn at it, and a luxurious home to live in....

  It was at that point that I heard the shout, or the scream, or whatever the dreadful noise was, and Marion’s voice crying out distinctly, “Don’t! Don’t!”

  Then I heard a shot.

  I jumped out of the bath, grabbed my dressing-gown and still struggling into it ran out on to the landing. A draught from an open window sent a chill over my wet body. The door of Aunt Emma’s bedroom was open. I entered.

  What I saw gave me the worst shock of my life. Aunt Emma was lying in her bed with half of her head blown away. Her pillows were a mass of blood. One of her eyes seemed to have come adrift and was hanging half out of its socket. There was a strange smell in the room which I did not recognise, because I had never before been on the spot when a gun had just gone off. A revolver, or an automatic pistol, or whatever it was, was lying on the floor just beside the bed and one of her hands hung down over the edge of the bed, almost touching the gun. Marion was in the middle of the room, shrieking.

  Perhaps the right thing to have done would have been to slap her face. One reads that that is the thing to do with a case of hysterics. But I was very near shrieking myself so, without even knowing what I was doing, I wasted a moment fumbling with the zip of my dressing-gown – though even when I had dragged it shut, I found myself shivering inside it. However, when I was no longer half-naked I felt more able to cope with things and I took hold of Marion by the shoulders and shook her. Actually by then she had stopped shrieking and was simply standing there, shaking.

  “What happened?” I yelled at her. “For God’s sake, what happened?”

  “I couldn’t stop her,” she answered frantically. “I shouted at her not to do it, but I was too late. I shouted ‘Don’t!’ but she went ahead and pulled the trigger. I saw her do it, Dorothy, I saw her. I came in, bringing her the tea, and there she was, holding the gun to her head. And it was as if she didn’t know I was there. She didn’t even look at me. She just pulled the trigger... Oh... Oh...!”

  I thought the shrieking was going to start again, but she only took a few steps away from the bed, dropped into a chair and hid her face in her hands.

  I saw the tea-tray where she had put it down on the table next to the bed.

  “Where did the gun come from?” I asked. “Do you know?”

  “I think it must be one Uncle Bertram brought back from the war,” Marion answered. “I’ve heard her speak of it, though I don’t know where she kept it.”

  “But why – why should she do it? When we talked yesterday evening, she – well – she had other plans.”

  Marion dropped her hands. “Wasn’t she afraid of going mad? That’s what you said yourself. And isn’t that a good reason for killing oneself?”

  At that moment Charles came into the room.

  When he saw Aunt Marion and the blood and the gun and the dreadful displaced eye, he exclaimed something that sounded like, “Oh, my Christ!” but it was in a hoarse, muffled tone and might have been anything. His face had gone a strange grey-white. Turning to Marion, he asked her almost exactly the same questions as I had just asked her and she gave him the same answer, though her voice was steadier now. But she kept her eyes shut, as if she could not bear to look at the thing on the bed.

  “You really saw her do it?” he asked. “You’ll swear to that?”

  “Of course I will – but why should I have to?” she asked.

  “Because there’ll be an inquest and you’ll have to do it then,” he answered. “I’m going to ’phone Summers now, and then – there’s no point in putting it off – I’ll ’phone the police.”

  Dr. Summers had been Aunt Emma’s doctor for about the last ten years. She had regarded him with some distrust as a not very responsible young man, though he was well into his fifties and had several grown-up children. She used to talk wistfully of a Dr. Charters, who had been nearly as old as she was. But young and irresponsible or not, Dr. Summers would not have much difficulty in diagnosing the cause of her death.

  Marion stood up. She looked at me.

  “Why don’t you go and get dressed?” she said, and it was astonishing how calm she sounded. “We’re going to have plenty of company presently and it may not be convenient to do it then.”

  It seemed good sense so I went to my bedroom.

  I heard Charles go downstairs and the tinkle of the telephone bell as he started dialling, first, I supposed, the doctor, and then the police. Presently, as I was combing my hair in front of the mirror, I smelt coffee and realised that Marion must have gone downstairs too, and I felt very glad that she had thought of it. Coffee was just what I wanted then. Yet I did not go down immediately.

  Something was nagging at my mind, something about that room where Aunt Emma lay dead, something that was trying to surface in my thoughts, something that did not make sense.

  I found the door of her bedroom closed and I opened it softly, as if I were afraid of disturbing her, or perhaps someone else who might be in there. But of course there was no one and everything was just as it had been when I had been in the room before. But was it really just the same? Why did I feel that something had altered?

  I am not sure how long I stood there, gazing at the desolate room that already had the smell of blood in it, before I realised what had changed. It was the tea-tray. When I had first burst into the room to find Marion in the middle of it, screaming, the tea-tray had been on the table beside the bed. But now the tray was no longer there. Apparently Marion had taken it down to the kitchen to wash the tea-pot. It seemed an odd thing to have done at a time like this, but then it is just at such times that people do do very odd things, dictated simply by habit. Probably Marion had not even been aware of what she was doing.

  Then I saw that she had not taken the tray downstairs. It was on a chest of drawers, just inside the door.

  So far as I could tell, nothing else in the room had been moved. The gun still lay on the carpet beside the bed. Aunt Emma’s dead hand dangled above it. But
the tray, with a small silver tea-pot on it, a milk-jug, a cup and saucer and a plate with two biscuits on it, had mysteriously been moved from the bedside table to the chest of drawers by the door.

  I solved the mystery of why it had happened quite soon, though it seemed to me a long time that I stood there, thinking about it. But when I went downstairs the coffee was only just ready, so I could not have stayed in Aunt Emma’s room for more than a few minutes. We drank the coffee in the kitchen, waiting for the doctor’s ring at the doorbell. It came after about a quarter of an hour and when he had taken one look at Aunt Emma’s body, the only thing he said was, “You’ve ’phoned the police, of course.”

  “Of course,” Charles answered.

  We all went downstairs again and Marion gave Dr. Summers some coffee.

  Sipping it, he said thoughtfully, “I suppose we ought to have expected something like this. She seemed to get over that stroke very well, but I’ve realised she was depressed, not at all the high-spirited person she used to be. But I’m surprised that she shot herself. I’d have expected an overdose of the pills I’ve been giving her. They’re fairly harmless, but if you took enough of them they might do the job. Did you know she’d a gun?”

  “Yes, I was telling my sister about it,” Marion said. “I think it was a souvenir my granduncle brought back from the war. I’ve heard my aunt speak of it. But I didn’t know where she kept it or that she’d any ammunition for it. The reason she did it – well, something my sister told us yesterday evening makes us fairly sure she’d a belief she might be going insane. And perhaps she was, though my husband and I hadn’t noticed anything particularly strange about her. Some depression, yes, but she always seemed to be completely on the spot when one talked to her.”