Portrait of a Murderer

by Martin Edwards

  “It only shows, doesn’t it, that the slovenly makeshifts of the poor, whose dressing-rooms have to be utilised as additional bedrooms for the children, have their advantages? As you remark, Sophy would certainly have been in a position to vouch for me. But surely Olivia isn’t so squeamish that she’d hesitate over a trifle like that?”

  “I really can’t tell you what Olivia will say. No doubt she can satisfy your curiosity on her return. Though as to that,” he added, on a sudden note of rage, “I fail to see what damned business it is of yours how my wife and I spend our nights.”

  “Normally, I agree it would be impertinent on my part to raise the question, but in the present position, when so much depends on where the various members of the family were at stated hours, you will admit it is important, particularly as the tide of suspicion seems to be running heavily against myself.”

  “And you’ve no one but yourself to thank for that. But about that cheque. I’ll swear you know more than you’ll say.”

  “So far as I’m aware, such a cheque was never even drawn,” said Brand earnestly, and, as it happened, with accuracy. “But perhaps he changed his mind and destroyed it later.”

  “There seems very little point in drawing it in the first place if he meant to do that. And he would certainly have cancelled the counterfoil in that case.”

  “You think of everything, don’t you? You’re right. He was a methodical man. Still, have they examined the wastepaper basket?”

  “I understand that they have. The basket, I’m told, contained some torn envelopes, and your own letter demanding assistance.”

  “That they’ll glue neatly together, no doubt. It may be useful to them. I wonder what I said.”

  “By this time you should be pretty familiar with your own demands.”

  “This was more ambitious—more outrageous, as you and Amy would say—than my previous suggestions.”

  But though he was inwardly cool, and even gave the appearance of enjoying this sparring-match, Brand’s heart jolted uncomfortably, as he was compelled to realise more and more the immense paraphernalia of the law against which he had pitted himself. His roving glance took in the whole room, so full of enemies, eager to see him condemned and put out of the way, so that they might themselves take up their own lives and forget him as soon as might be. Only Miles Amery watched him intently, and it was impossible to gauge the quality of his thoughts. Ruth, who had also returned from the grandmother’s room, stood, pale, serene, untouched, like the young Christina, against the wall. Somehow she seemed aloof from all this noisy business of scandal and greed. Probably, reflected Brand, because she had no ambitions that any of them could destroy. But Eustace, seeing the thin, keen face of the lawyer, experienced sudden, unreasoning rage, and that sense of inferiority, that he knew to be unfounded and absurd, attacked him again. This shabby fellow, whom he never met in his own more exclusive circles, never ceased to give him that impression, as though he, Eustace, were in some way insignificant, all his fine plans so much tinsel and his hopes as worthless as the paper hoop through which the clown in the circus leaps to amuse the crowd in the auditorium.

  6

  One by one the family was put through its paces by the thoroughgoing young man downstairs. At the end of the ordeal, a few significant facts emerged. Chief among these was Eustace’s inability to deny Brand’s story of seeing him on the stairs; before she realised the implications of the admission, Olivia said vaguely that her husband had left her before midnight. Later she had tried to retract that, putting the hour of his departure considerably later, but Murray would not let her off, and she left him disturbingly conscious that she had on the whole made things worse for her husband. And, being in his confidence, she realised that a very black case could be brought against him.

  One question she had failed to understand until she received his explanation. Ross had said unconcernedly, “It was a great relief to you, wasn’t it, when your husband could tell you that he had every hope your father would help him?”

  She said blankly, “I didn’t really know the position. My father had been busy all day, and I didn’t know whether he actually appreciated how we all stood.”

  “But if your husband mentioned the cheque to you…?”

  “The cheque?”

  “That your father had promised him.”

  Olivia stared; it would have been difficult to recognise in this haggard, distraught woman the beautifully manicured, waved, and sophisticated creator of Dot and Lalage.

  “I know nothing of that.”

  “I beg your pardon.” But Ross offered no explanation. Not until she had her husband to herself could Olivia say, “But, Eustace, why didn’t you tell me? How could you let me go down there unprepared?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “About the cheque.”

  “How could I? I never had the chance.”

  “You could have told me this morning before the police came. There were plenty of opportunities.”

  “I’m trying to make you understand that I’d never heard of the cheque until that fellow flung his questions at me.”

  “Then there was one?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “He says they’ve searched the room with a microscope and there’s no sign of it. But it may have been burnt, of course.”

  “By father? Why, if he’d just drawn it up?”

  “Not by your father. By that precious hangdog brother of yours.”

  “But how would Brand get hold of it?”

  “My idea is that in some way, probably dishonest, he persuaded his father to part with two thousand pounds. Then Gray, realising the inequality of the position, and the hopelessness of persisting in his attitude of stubborn refusal, came to the conclusion that the only thing to do was to face up to the position and pay out the money. Brand, I fancy, must have repented of signing that paper, and came back in the hopes of reclaiming it, only to find your father still in the room. I daresay they had hasty words, ending in a scene, during which Brand, whose temper is as violent as the devil when he’s roused, struck your father, possibly without meaning to do any serious damage, and found he’d killed him. Then he discovered the cheque made out to me, and destroyed it.”

  “But didn’t destroy the paper he had come to fetch?”

  “That’s easily explained. If you suddenly kill a man and realise you are likely to swing for it, you’re likely enough to overlook something.”

  “On the other hand, one might think such a man would be more likely than usual to be careful, since so much depended on it.”

  “The history of criminal law tends to support my argument,” snapped Eustace.

  “Did you make that suggestion to the police?”

  “I didn’t say that I thought Brand was guilty. I told them I thought probably your father had drawn the cheque intending to give it me this morning.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He asked sarcastically if I thought it was intended as a Christmas present. Of course, the fact that this is Christmas Day is pure chance. The fact is, these people have much too much licence, and are only too apt to abuse it. It’s a scandal, the amount of rope given to coroners and policemen these days.”

  7

  In the privacy of their room, Richard said uneasily to his wife, “Frobisher’s coming down first thing in the morning. It’s unfortunate, this affair occurring at Christmas-time. It would have been much better if we could have got him in the house to-day, before we were cross-examined by the police.”

  Laura looked astonished. “But you’re perfectly safe, Richard. Half a dozen lawyers couldn’t have altered your replies, any more than they could have altered mine.”

  He said testily, stripping off his collar and wrenching the links out of his shirt, “My dear Laura, you seem quite unable to differentiate bet
ween truth and discretion. Of course, one doesn’t wish to conceal essential facts, but the truth remains that we are in the hands of the law, as represented by this sergeant and any assistants he may have—the coroner, for instance—men chosen quite haphazard to deal with this particular case, and quite liable to over-estimate the importance of certain admissions or to lay undue weight on what other members of the family see fit to tell them. Frobisher, with all the facts before him, might have been of considerable value to us. We have, after all, our position to consider.”

  “I thought we were agreed that we hadn’t one any longer. I assure you, I find it a relief to feel myself a free agent.”

  She was, indeed, conscious of a certain sense of excitement. She had at one time employed a lady’s-maid, a girl very apt with her needle, quick, tactful, and charming. At the end of a year the girl gave notice.

  “But why, Lessing?” Laura wanted to know. “Aren’t you comfortable here? Is it anything to do with the other servants? Have you been offered better wages or an easier situation?”

  No, said Lessing, it was none of those things. It was (though she did not phrase it precisely in this fashion) a fear of developing roots, becoming so much a part of her environment that her personality became blurred, insensible to the shock of change, until at length it ceased to desire change, became afraid of it. All her interest, she explained, quickened at the thought of new contacts and new experiences. She was not alarmed by hard work, even by what her contemporaries would think derogatory work. She felt, she said, a great sense of excitement and anticipation while she waited for news of a fresh post; she enjoyed answering advertisements, picturing to herself the type of people with whom she would find her new life, the countryside, the conditions, all the novel and unknown circumstances into which life might be about to lead her. Talking that day, Laura realised for the first time the source of that peculiar charm whose radiance had touched her during the first weeks of the girl’s service. It lay in the sense of surprise and of hope in the atmosphere wherein she lived. She was not, like the majority of human creatures, moulded by her circumstances. She adapted them to her own needs, grew rich, and absorbed. Nothing, thought Laura, could wholly defeat or dismay her. She remembered her to-night, as she looked into the pinched and woeful face of her husband. How quickly, she thought, he has crumbled under this blow, realising that the primary wound he endured was to his own esteem. If you peered into his mind you might find in the second chamber the body of his father, for whom he had cherished a certain affection; but in the first room of all would be the image of a ruined man, hurriedly scanning the newspapers to see how much could be salved from the wreckage, and it was that ruined man whom she loathed.

  “A free agent?” he retorted bitterly. “Sometimes, Laura, I think you’re out of your mind, don’t realise what you’re saying. My work is my life; you may be capable of building up another out of the things that matter to you. I’ve never been able to discover precisely what these are, but if they are things that won’t be touched by this débâcle I must congratulate you.”

  Laura, smiling in that strange, aloof fashion that had always angered him, said, “No, I don’t think they’ll be touched.” She felt completely apart from this man with whom her life had been shared for thirteen years; endeavouring to feel sympathy for him, she could discover only distaste, and in her interior consciousness she had visions of a life in which he played no part, a life of different values that would enrich and satisfy her own hungry personality. Thus, leagues apart in their outlook on life and on this situation, they prepared themselves for sleep.

  8

  Frobisher arrived next morning. Ross had departed the previous day without voicing any suspicions, but everyone realised that he was waiting for the result of the finger-print experiment. Not, said Richard impatiently, that it proved much, those marks on the safe; they might have been there for days. He had asked the sergeant whether anything had been removed from it. Ross had replied blandly, “I don’t know what was originally in it, Sir Richard. I was hoping you might be able to help me.”

  “I didn’t know, either. Perhaps Mr. Moore…”

  Eustace, recalled, said, “I always understood he had documents of some value in it. I’ve often seen papers in the safe when it was opened, though I’ve never actually handled any of them, any more than I have ever been allowed to open the safe.”

  Then he asked what had actually been found there, but Ross did not satisfy his curiosity. Eustace came upstairs and sought out Miles, in a fine rage and anxiety.

  “It’s infamous,” he exclaimed. “How do we know how far these men are to be trusted? Oh, yes, our splendid police force, the high morale of the service and all that—I daresay in ninety per cent of their activities they’re reliable enough, but they are subject to temptations like other men, and the fact remains that you do every now and again hear of policemen who have taken advantage of their circumstances, and themselves figure in the dock. We know nothing about this fellow, and we—at least, I—do know that my father-in-law had a number of valuable certificates and so forth in the safe.”

  His connection by marriage remarked mildly that if they were in Gray’s name they wouldn’t be much use to the sergeant, and anyway he didn’t suppose the fellow wanted to encompass his own ruin. “Moreover,” he added, “we’re all in his hands now. Oh, I grant you it’s illogical enough, but it’s the law of life, so far as we can tell. The innocent suffering for the guilty.”

  Eustace cried fiercely, “We know well enough who’s guilty.”

  Miles stopped him with a sharp, “Take care! There are such things as slander actions, and we don’t want to increase the scandal. It’ll be bad enough in any case.”

  Richard saw Frobisher alone. He was by this time trembling with anticipation, and did not make a good impression upon his man of affairs. Frobisher said, “Well, this is a mess. I suppose it’ll be all over the town to-morrow.”

  Richard agreed bitterly that no doubt it would, and that they’d be inundated with reporters.

  “Well, there’s no need to see them. Give instructions that you’ve nothing to say and no interviews are being given. As a matter of fact, in a case of this kind it’s very important that there should be no leakage. Can you trust your servants?”

  Richard said weakly that he wasn’t sure. He mentioned Amy.

  “Is she on good terms with them? Do they like her?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Then presumably they don’t. Well, if you take my advice, you’ll forbid them to speak to anyone. Things are going to be quite unpleasant enough without that. How do they stand at present?”

  Richard began to explain, but his habit of public speaking, that was apt to be oratorical and ponderous, irritated the lawyer, who interrupted him with a testy, “Yes, yes. But have you any idea whom they suspect? Whom, for instance, do you suspect?”

  “My brother seems the most likely person to have done it—temperamentally, I mean. He holds to his story of seeing Eustace Moore on the stairs as he himself left the room, but I don’t know that that’s been substantiated. I suppose, in the circumstances, it isn’t likely that it can be.”

  “He admits to seeing your father, then?”

  “Yes.” Richard continued his explanations more briefly. “I suppose,” he concluded, “there’s bound to be a good deal of publicity about the case.”

  “I don’t see how you can avoid it. Not so much on your father’s account, or your own, as on Moore’s. His name’s going to be very much on everyone’s lips in the next few days.”

  Richard turned white. “It’s true, then? He’s in for a smash?”

  “A criminal smash, or I’m mightily mistaken,” returned Frobisher grimly.

  “Would my father have been involved?”

  “I should imagine that all Moore’s dupes would be. The long and the short of the matter is that he’s been running a ramp
and the facts have come out. If you ask me, I should say he was safe for a good five years.”

  “Everyone knows, then?”

  “Anyone who doesn’t will know very soon. And it won’t be possible to keep your father’s name out of that. There’ll be a lot of ugly suspicions voiced. Brand won’t be the only man to stand the racket, particularly in view of his story.”

  “I daresay his wife can vouch for Moore.”

  “And I daresay there’ll be a good many people to whisper collusion, if she does. I don’t think a wife’s unsupported word will help our financier this time, particularly when it comes out that he’s had every penny of your father’s capital.”

  Richard started. “Every penny? But, Frobisher, it’s only a few months since my father was discussing his position with me. He distinctly mentioned a sum of fifteen thousand pounds that he didn’t propose to let Eustace get into his hands.”

  “Man proposes and financiers dispose,” Frobisher assured him gloomily. “Moore got hold of a lot of that. In fact, the position got so bad that your father was raising mortgages, and not always paying the interest involved. I had to speak to him very gravely on the subject this summer. To my certain knowledge he’s mortgaged every security he possesses. We shall be lucky if we can pull anything out of the mess for his mother. She has practically no means. And I doubt if we can satisfy all the creditors. I don’t know about your financial position?”

  Richard spoke hoarsely. “Is that the truth? Are things really at that pitch?”

  “I don’t see how they could be worse. And now that he’s involved with Moore it seems to me it will be impossible to avoid a scandal. If it had been some other means, I should have been inclined to suggest suicide. But that appears to be out of the question.”

  “I’d never imagined anything like this,” said Richard, too much appalled to be discreet. “What a scoundrel that fellow is! If they don’t take him for the murder, I hope to God they get him on this count.”

  Frobisher regarded him piercingly. “About your own financial position…” he insinuated.