Portrait of a Murderer

by Martin Edwards

  Circumstances compelled him to admit that he had, despite his earlier denials, been in the library in the early morning of Christmas Day. He had come down to King’s Poplars with the intention of explaining to his father-in-law the difficult position in which they found themselves. He had been singularly unfortunate in his explanations. Gray had not shown a trace of reason, had accused him of being a common thief and embezzler, of tricking him out of his money, and had finally declared that he would himself bring an action against his son-in-law. Moore added that he had no belief in this bombast, which was simply the old man’s way of letting off steam, but he was convinced that he would obtain no financial assistance from this quarter.

  In reply to questions from the coroner, he repeated in some detail the conversation that had eventuated between them. It appeared to be violent and decisive. Racked with anxiety as to the future, seeing no one else to whom he could turn for assistance, he determined to make a second appeal the following day. In the course of a chance conversation with Richard, however, he was compelled to realise that there was no possibility of Gray changing his mind. During the day—that is, on Christmas Eve—he saw both his brothers-in-law enter the library, with the intention of tackling their father for monetary help.

  The coroner here interrupted to say that, so far as he could see, Mr. Moore had no definite proof as to this last statement. Eustace stared at him, incredulous that anyone should suppose either of Gray’s sons to be visiting at King’s Poplars for any other reason. Then he continued his story. He had heard from his sister-in-law of Brand’s suggestion that Sophy and her children should make their home at the Manor for an indefinite period; he understood that that plan had been refused consideration, but that Brand was now demanding a lump sum down, to enable him to get away, preferably abroad, and shift the responsibility of his family on to other shoulders. Amy had also spoken in furious tones of the iniquity of purchasing titles and expecting other men to pay for them (Richard winced and flushed at that); and she had followed up these comments by a long and depressing harangue on the impossibility of housekeeping (with cream and Benger’s for the old lady) on the meagre sum allowed her by her father, with details as to personal expenditure, her own fastidious habits, and the rising prices of butter, coal, and meat.

  Eustace continued that he had despaired of making any of his relatives understand the seriousness of their father’s situation. They seemed under the impression that a man could be a director of a foundering company with no more inconvenience than if his shares had depreciated slightly. He had, therefore, in desperation (and here Eustace showed traces of an overwhelming apprehension and nervousness) formulated a plan that, he admitted at once, was criminal in intent. It was obvious that he confessed to this only as the final expedient, the sole alternative that presented itself to an accusation of wilful murder.

  When the household retired for the night, he had come to no decision, and for some time had discussed the problem with his wife. She had then expressed herself as exhausted, and he had left her alone in the bedroom, going to the dressing-room, where he made no attempt to go to bed, but sat brooding over the position. He denied, of course, Brand’s story of seeing him on the stairs at midnight, but admitted that at about half-past two he remembered his father-in-law telling him that he had valuable documents in the safe. These documents were to be Gray’s standby, and in no circumstances would he allow Eustace to handle them. He, Eustace, knew the whereabouts of the safe, and he determined to try and discover the combination and remove the documents. This, he said passionately, was a final endeavour to save an intolerable situation. He had forgotten, if he had ever known, that it was Gray’s habit to lock his door when he left the library at night, and so it did not strike him as strange that it should be open when he went down. He had met no one; and the room, when he entered it, was perfectly dark. The curtain had blown across the window that was opened, and in his haste and anxiety he had not realised that it was not closed. The safe was set in a deep recess, lighted from the floor by a discreetly concealed electric bulb that flung radiance into the safe without illuminating the rest of the room. Gray, he understood, had had this fitted in, so that if he were suddenly disturbed while examining his securities, he could extinguish the light without moving, and foil the curiosity-mongers. He was always unnaturally secretive about his affairs. He, Eustace, had crossed the room in bedroom slippers, felt for and found the switch of the light, and set himself to open the safe. This, however, he was not able to do. He supposed he was in the room for the greater part of an hour. It did not occur to him that there was any way of entry except by the door. He kept a sharp look-out for the signs of a light being switched on in the hall. The recess was deep enough for a man to hide, unless anyone came directly into it. At the end of an hour he had desisted. Panic had increased in his breast, and he dared not risk being found by any member of the family. When he heard from the police that they had opened the safe and found it practically empty, he had been half distracted.

  That was the substance of his story, and most people who heard it found it quite inadequate. They argued that on so cold and windy a night a man must have become aware of the open window; that it would be impossible to spend so long in a room where a man lay dead without seeing the body; that it was absurd to suppose the police could with little difficulty open a safe that had defied his efforts; that the whole explanation, in short, was lame and improbable.

  The jury, and even Moore’s own lawyer, took the same view. The former were away for about forty minutes, during which a number of people in the court stirred and came outside into the pale sunlight to discuss various aspects of this most exciting mystery.

  2

  The jury discussed the position with animation.

  “We take it for granted that the doctor’s right in saying the slab of brass was the implement used?”

  “It seems likely, seeing it was bright and polished like nothing else was. Besides, two people—Miss Amy and a servant—remember it being on top of a pile of loose papers, and it was not on any papers at all when they found it.”

  There was general agreement with that. The foreman continued, “I’ll tell you how I see it. I believe he did come down, as he says, and began tinkering with the safe. I daresay he didn’t notice about the window. When all your mind’s set on one thing you’re absorbed. Heat and cold don’t seem to strike you in the same way. Well, there he was, trying to help himself to Mr. Gray’s papers, when through the open window comes Mr. Gray himself. There’s a wide verandah outside, as happen you know, and he might have slipped out there when he heard footsteps, not wanting to be disturbed by anyone else that night. Then he watched, and found this fellow trying the safe. Mind you, I don’t for a minute believe he stood there for an hour, but this chap wants to make out the best story he can. I daresay the old man watched him for some time; then he came in and took his son-in-law by surprise. Terrified and taken unawares, the fellow hit out…”

  “What about the cheque?” interrupted a more far-seeing juryman. “That wasn’t drawn till the morning.”

  “That’s true. We shall have to alter that story. Look here. Suppose Mr. Moore made Mr. Gray understand how bad things were, and persuaded him to give him a cheque? Or p’raps he threatened him, standing over him while he wrote it out. And then Mr. Gray told him in that sarcastic way of his that it wasn’t worth the form it was written on. He’d be glad enough to have the last laugh. And then Mr. Moore, wild at being cheated, and not seeing any hope anywhere, hit out, just to make him stop talking, perhaps, and not meaning to kill him at all. When he saw what had happened he put the cheque on the fire and wiped the paper-weight and came upstairs again. He didn’t think about finger-prints on the safe. How does that fit?”

  At the end of forty minutes the jury returned, with a verdict of wilful murder against Eustace Moore.

  3

  There was little surprise though much excitement in the court w
hen this verdict was announced. It had been obvious from the trend of examination and argument in which direction the tide of suspicion had turned. Yet it seemed, for a moment, as though, of all present, Eustace himself had not anticipated this consummation. For a minute his control broke utterly. He glared wildly round the court, rose to speak, could not command his voice, clutched at a chair with both hands, and trembled violently from head to foot. There was something so repulsive, so divorced from normal human dignity in the spectacle of this pale, middle-aged man in impeccable morning garb, clinging to a chair-back and shivering with fear, that even his lawyer could scarcely conceal his disgust. But when he was taken away by the police a little later, his expression had changed already. Now it was that of a man who is accustomed to bathing among sharks, and, instead of expending time and energy bemoaning his present humiliation, he was even now laying new schemes for regaining his liberty. The long, sallow face, with its flat cheeks, resolute nose, and keen, prying eyes, all these were expressive of his invincible determination to extricate himself from this extremity, as he had done from others.

  4

  The affair involved all the family in very disagreeable publicity. The papers made a good deal of it, and shortly after Eustace’s arrest a number of little paragraphs appeared, chiefly in local and evening papers, with melodramatic headlines, such as son finds father hanging; found in the river; wife’s terrible discovery in barn, and so forth. Most of Eustace’s victims were small men who had put their life’s savings into what appeared to them a safe and remunerative market, and when these little men of Highgate and Peckham and Barnet were forced to realise that nothing would ever be recovered, numbers of insignificant anonymous tragedies were reported in little towns and suburbs and the remoter districts of London. Isobel and Laura said candidly that what Eustace was known to have done was worse than any murder, but Richard told them bitterly to stop that folly. It did no good to anyone, and it blackened the case against their brother-in-law.

  Richard was paying his share of the general expense and it was proving a heavy one. The appointment for which he had run such risks and schemed so dearly went to Pollenfex after all. (In point of fact, though Richard never knew this, he would have been defeated in any case, the history of Eustace’s defalcations not affecting F——’s decision. Ironically enough, it was the very expense and luxury into which he had plunged that had destroyed Richard’s chances, F—— shrewdly observing that a man so reckless with his own money would be even less temperate when he had control of public funds.) Laura took the affair far more phlegmatically than he, but then she had nothing to lose—except her lover, who retired completely after the débâcle, leaving her to put the pieces of her life together in what proved to be a quite satisfactory pattern. Anyway, she was happier after this than she had been since her marriage. One or two people, including Miles Amery, were privileged to hear a point of view so unconventional and so much at variance with her husband’s interests that the majority would have been shocked at her heartlessness and lack of co-operation with Richard’s ambitions.

  “All these years, Miles,” she said, “I’ve never had any life of my own. Richard’s friends have come crowding in, claiming my attention and my hospitality and my brain-force. There’s never been anything left over for my own enjoyment or profit. Now all that crowd will disappear; we’re pretty sure to be more or less ostracised in the fashionable and influential circles Richard loves. I doubt if he’s ever able to climb back. Besides, it’s been such a blow to him, I think it will be a long time before he recovers his second wind. And this is my turn. Now, at last, I shall have my house to myself, where my friends can come in, and where I can be alone.” (But she didn’t, of course, refer here to any house made with hands.) “It’s what I’ve dreamed of, hoped for, prayed for, for years.”

  Olivia made the Manor House intolerable by her hysterics and the numberless scenes in which she insisted on implicating every member of the family. She fainted, she cried, she raved about traitors and plots and snares. She called perpetually for her sons to come to her, but they were spending their holiday in Switzerland and could not be reached at a moment’s notice. When she was not fainting or screaming, she went about like a madwoman, silent for long stretches of time, and then suddenly bursting into wild and unfounded accusations against each member of the household in turn, even abusing the servants, to the effect that he or she was responsible for a diabolical trap into which her innocent and unsuspecting husband had been enticed.

  Amy was too much enraged at her own position to pay much heed to anyone else. Blind with passion at the cruel trick her father had played upon her, she demanded ferociously whether she was expected to find some remunerative employment at her age, she who was trained for no particular work, and who had, naturally, expected to be left provided for.

  “What am I supposed to do?” she cried in turn to each of her embarrassed relatives. “I’m a woman of forty and I haven’t been taught to earn a living. It’s all very well for young girls; their position’s quite different. I suppose you all expect me to take a post as a working housekeeper somewhere, doing floors and emptying slops and peeling potatoes.”

  In due course, she addressed this rhetorical question to old Mrs. Gray, who replied in a remote and tranquil voice, “I’m sure I don’t know why you should expect anything so foolish, Amy. You will live with me, of course. Mr. Frobisher says he can find just enough to pay the rent of a little flat somewhere—at the seaside. I’ve always hoped I should die by the sea—Felixstowe, perhaps, or Worthing, or Bournemouth, but that’s rather expensive. I’m sure we shall manage quite well. We’re accustomed to one another, and at my age I should have to have some kind of companion.”

  She actually smiled as she spoke. Amy had become something very remote in her imagination, of little more consequence, really, than the furniture among which she moved. Miles was astounded at the eagerness and warmth in the old voice. He had, like everyone else, taken it for granted that the old cease to experience desire, that their passion is spent, their feeling, even, numbed. They become, in fact, like the chairs and cupboards among which their days are passed. The old lady was the one redeeming feature in this sordid case. No one but herself genuinely grieved for the dead man. To her, he had been primarily the son she had borne nearly seventy years ago. And he remained at once the child for whom she had dreamed, and the disappointed, embittered creature he had become. She had watched him change, lose his first fine ideals, seen him gradually sink, lose hope, go down and down. And her affection for him had remained stable; it was rooted in no fineness of his, no achievement, not even in the qualities he possessed. It lay in their common blood and heritage. And now he had gone, and she preserved an attitude dignified and remote. Yet, despite her years, her sorrow, and the cumulative experience of her days, she still retained sufficient vitality to have desires and hopes, and at length to achieve them. They were little things, perhaps, but desires are comparative, after all. And it was to such things that the attention of old people instinctively turned, thought Miles, when they were at too great a remove from the fierce ambitions of their youth to be stirred by them any longer.

  There was in these bleak days something beautiful about her, as she spoke, listened, and suggested in the midst of her kinspeople, herself tranquil and unattainable. Into that secret chamber where the spirit sits alone she admitted no one. But, above all, beauty remained. It was not, in essence, any beauty of feature or even of bone or expression; springing from a certain graciousness in her own nature, and the courage the old will often display, it held the attention of all the more thoughtful of the household—the Amerys, Laura, Isobel, Brand.

  Isobel had reacted oddly to the position. Since her father’s death she had changed, awakened, begun to glow; as a piece of silver that has not been polished for years, suddenly receiving attention, catches the light in a dozen places, reflects, burns, almost illuminates the room where it is placed, so Isobel flashed w
ith an ardour that had been typical of her early years, but that had been quenched for so long that few recognised its return. She said to Brand, shortly before their separation, “You’re right, my dear. It’s a terrible warning. It would be frightful to come to death with no more to show or to carry with you than he had.” She left the house before her grandmother and sister departed to the Worthing flat, and found herself work in London. Brand, hearing of it, thought, “That alone would be justification for what I did. She was a prisoner so long as he was alive. And whereas his life held neither promise nor hope, hers is chock-a-block with both.”

  5

  Brand returned in due course to his wife in Fulham. Walking up the dreary road, carrying his shabby case, his senses exulted at the prospect of leaving this behind for ever. Since Eustace’s arrest he had put the whole affair of the murder out of his mind; he no longer identified himself with the man who had cringed and scraped and quarrelled with Sophy for so many years. It was as though a new personality, purged by his ordeal and the weight of knowledge that still lay upon him, had risen in the dark library on Christmas morning, its face set towards the dawn, its being cleansed from fear.

  The house presented its usual ramshackle, slovenly appearance. It was one of a long terrace, each house separated from its neighbour by a thin, dingy wall; a long flight of cracked steps led to the front door, whose dirty paint was peeling. Some of the houses had inartistic little excrescences bulging from the ground floor, square green or brown painted boxes, ludicrously christened conservatories, with panes of blue and red glass, alternating with the opaque oblongs found in bath- and waiting-rooms. The houses were Victorian, heavy and ungraceful, inconvenient and ugly, displaying none of the beauty of antiquity or the brisk cheerfulness of good housekeeping. Brand mounted the steps, noting that it was several days since they had been washed, and stood for a moment under the pretentious, hideous portico. Trails of ivy coiled over the windows, soiled yellow blinds hung awry on the further side of the glass, that was further obscured by long lace curtains. The whole aspect was one of a cheap and sordid poverty.