Hobby of Murder

by E. X. Ferrars

  ‘That’s a fairly minor part of the trouble,’ he assured her. ‘But I think you can be glad that Roland’s in charge. He’s an intelligent man.’

  Andrew’s own interrogation came some time later. As he entered Sam Waldron’s office, the Inspector gave him a grim sort of smile and as he invited him to take one of the chairs at the table he observed, ‘It seems to be our lot, Professor, to meet under distressing circumstances. Sometimes I think we should make an arrangement to meet where crime really cannot occur, such as the middle of a Highland moor or in a boat on some very quiet lake somewhere or other.’

  ‘The Highlands have seen plenty of crime in their day,’ Andrew answered, ‘and we might find a body or two in the lake. But perhaps we might one day meet, say, for tea at the Ritz. I have a feeling we could safely develop our relationship there in peace and quiet.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ Roland said. ‘And I’m sure we should find we had a good deal of interest to tell one another. Meantime, however, we have work to do. We’ll begin, I think, with my asking you what brought you to Lower Milfrey at just this time?’

  ‘I came because I’d been invited to come by my old friends, the Davidges. I’d known them for years when they lived in London. Ian Davidge was my accountant long ago, while his first wife was still alive, and mine too. I think it was partly because the two women met and became very good friends that Davidge and I drifted into friendship. My visit had no special purpose except to spend a pleasant week with him and Mollie Davidge. The time we chose for it had no special significance.’

  Roland nodded, and the sergeant who was sitting in a corner of the room jotted something down in his notebook.

  ‘Is this your first visit here, then?’ Roland asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Andrew answered.

  ‘Had you ever met any of the other people here before this evening?’

  ‘Before this visit? No. But I met several of them a few evenings ago at a small party the Davidges gave. And I spent most of the morning with Miss Clancy, being photographed.’

  ‘Ah, you’ve had that experience. Do you know, she asked me this evening if I’d allow her to photograph me. She said I had a splendid head. However, we settled nothing, and I have a feeling she may not be as anxious to pursue the matter now—though you never know. What’s happened this evening, and the fact that I was sitting next to the victim, might add a special sense of excitement to the experience. You never know where you are with these enthusiasts. But do I understand that you know very little about the relationships among the people you met?’

  ‘Very little indeed.’

  ‘Do you know anything, for instance, about Luke Singleton’s relationship with a former Mrs Audley?’

  ‘Only what I’ve heard by way of gossip,’ Andrew said. ‘I’ve been told that she left her husband for Singleton, that there was a divorce, and that after it he deserted her. But I never met the lady, and I met Audley for the first time at the Davidges’ party the other evening. I’ve been into his home once since then for a drink, and seen his very interesting collection of butterflies, and that’s really all I know about him.’

  ‘Butterflies? He collects butterflies, does he?’ The Inspector seemed unexpectedly interested.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Andrew replied. ‘I think he told me the collection was made by his father. It’s a hobby that isn’t too well regarded these days, when there’s a feeling that we ought to protect the lovely things instead of catching and killing them. But they made a very fine show on his wall.’

  Roland gave a shake of his head. ‘A pity.’ But it was not pity for the butterflies that made him say it. ‘Here’s someone with a really sound motive for wanting Singleton dead, and he was at the far end of the table. Unless he managed to bribe one of those worthy women who were waiting on us to drop some cyanide in Singleton’s coffee, or perhaps put it in his cup before it was actually put down before him and filled, I can’t think of any possible way that he could have administered the poison. Now can you tell me if you yourself observed anything that could be useful to us that happened after Singleton had been served? I realize, of course, that I myself must be one of the chief suspects, sitting next to him as I was, and if you wish to question me, please do so. But I know you’re an observant man, and though you were sitting some way away from Singleton, it seems to me just possible you may have noticed if anything odd happened near him.’

  ‘The only slightly odd thing I saw is something I believe you’ve been told about already,’ Andrew said. ‘Just before Singleton gave that awful cry, I saw Brian Singleton, who was sitting opposite him, reach out and pluck a flower out of that elaborate affair on the table and turn to Mrs Davidge and persuade her to wear it. But I don’t see how that can have anything to do with putting poison in his brother’s coffee. It isn’t as if he’d reached far across the table.’

  Roland nodded. ‘Yes, that agrees with what Mrs Davidge told us. There’s just a possibility, I suppose, that when he reached out, for the flower, he did it to hide the fact that he was throwing a capsule of the poison into the coffee cup opposite. But he’d have been taking a fearful risk of being observed. I myself might have looked at him at just the wrong moment. However, he’d a motive, or probably he had. Luke Singleton was a rich man, and his brother very likely inherits what he had to leave. We shan’t know that till tomorrow, when we’ve had a chance to talk to his solicitor, but it’s at least worth investigating. Then Miss Clancy told me she’d known Singleton slightly a number of years ago. She’d told me that at the dinner, before the murder happened. She seemed very proud of it, but when she talked to him across me, he seemed very vague about recognizing her. He didn’t quite say that he hadn’t the least idea who she was, but he gave the impression of simply being too polite to say that, though it was the fact.’

  ‘You’re sure it was murder, not suicide?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘Don’t you think so yourself?’

  ‘Well, yes, I do. It would have been a singularly exhibitionist way of committing suicide. But if you rule that out, you’re back to the problem of how the cyanide got into Singleton’s coffee, and nobody else’s.’

  ‘Of course, it might have been to some extent a mistake. I mean, that it was given to the wrong man. It just possibly might have been meant for me. There I was, right beside him, and there are plenty of people, I think, who wouldn’t mind seeing the last of me.’

  ‘But even then, you’d still be left with the problem of how the poison got into just that one cup of coffee.’

  ‘Yes, and I’ve a feeling that when we’ve found that out, we’ll know who did it. Good night, Professor. Thank you for your help.’

  That was the end of the questioning of Andrew, and he was told that if he and the Davidges wanted to go home, they were free to do so.

  He joined them in the room where they were waiting for him and the three of them went out to the Davidges’ car. When they arrived home, Mollie said that she was going to make some cocoa, but Ian and Andrew both said that they would prefer the brandy that they had refused in the Waldrons’ house. They were all very tired, and though they remained in the sitting-room for some time, they spoke very little. All of them, Andrew thought, were almost afraid of going to bed, because they would only have to face the torment of sleeplessness.

  However, all of a sudden Ian exclaimed, ‘Of course it’s impossible! It couldn’t have happened.’

  ‘But it did,’ Mollie muttered. ‘It did.’

  ‘But the only people who could have done it are the Bartlett sisters, and that’s nonsense.’

  ‘I wonder if it is such nonsense,’ Mollie said.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ he asked sharply.

  ‘Well, what do we really know about them?’ she asked.

  ‘That they’re two very respectable women who’ve lived in Lower Milfrey all their lives, and have worked for the Waldrons ever since they came here, about six years ago.’

  ‘I wonder who they worked for before that. Why w
ere they free to go to the Waldrons? Were there any mysterious deaths in the family who employed them?’

  ‘Mollie, I think it’s time we went to bed. You’re beginning to wander in your mind.’

  ‘Not really,’ she insisted. ‘Actually I’m only trying to eliminate the Bartletts. At the same time, I think we should face facts. They could have done the murder.’

  ‘Thank God it isn’t our job to face facts,’ Ian said. ‘We can leave that to the estimable Inspector Roland.’

  ‘He had a rather interesting idea,’ Andrew said. ‘It was that the poison was intended for him and not for Luke Singleton and that it was put in the coffee cup in front of Singleton by mistake.’

  ‘There you are!’ Mollie exclaimed. ‘The Bartletts may never have met Luke Singleton in their lives and so just couldn’t have had any reason to kill him. But it isn’t at all unlikely that they’ve sometime encountered Roland. Perhaps one of them had a lover once and Roland got him put in gaol, and that dinner was the first opportunity they’ve had since then to have their revenge. They’d have known he was coming to it and could have laid in the cyanide somehow, in preparation for it, and simply relied on their reputation for virtue not to be suspected.’

  ‘How did they get the cyanide?’ Ian asked.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure there are all sorts of ways of getting it, if you’re determined enough. And knowing who was coming to the dinner, they’d have had time to do it.’

  ‘You don’t actually believe a word you’re saying, do you?’

  She sighed. ‘I suppose I don’t. But there’s one thing I’m sure of and that is that the Inspector isn’t going to take their innocence for granted. He’ll have thought of all the things I’ve just been saying to you and he’ll investigate those two good women very thoroughly, just as he’s going to investigate all of us, and Felicity too, who was sitting beside Luke, and Eleanor, who was sitting beside Roland. After all, when Roland was talking to Luke, with his head turned away from Eleanor, she might have reached out and slipped something into Luke’s cup. And she used to know Luke, when they were both teachers.’

  ‘Do you think she’d really have paraded that, as she did, if she’d been intending to kill him?’

  ‘And how could she know beforehand that she’d be sitting near him?’ Andrew asked. ‘We all sat down pretty much at random, and she might easily have found herself with a helping of cyanide in her handbag, but no chance of getting near him.’ ‘I wonder if Felicity ever had an affair with Luke,’ Mollie said thoughtfully.

  That seemed to bring the discussion to a close. For a little while they remained there, silent, Ian helping himself to more brandy, but both Mollie and Andrew refusing it, and Andrew then standing up and saying that he was going to bed.

  ‘We’re going to be so tired of the whole subject before we’re finished,’ he said. ‘There’s no point in exhausting all its possibilities now. Good night. Sleep well.’ He left them and went up to his room.

  In bed, he turned out the light on his bedside table, but as he had expected, sleep did not come with the darkness. But it was restful to be stretched out and still. It was strange that he did not find himself thinking much of the scene in the Waldrons’ dining-room. It was as if a curtain had come down in his mind, concealing it from him. Instead he began to think of other occasions when he had been away from home, on holidays with Nell. There was one that he remembered which they had spent in a small fishing village near Marseilles, almost as soon as it had been possible to go abroad after the end of the war. The amount of foreign currency they had been allowed to take with them had been minute, and they had had to consider carefully the cost of every cup of coffee that they had, every bottle of the cheap vin du pays.

  But they had been young, the weather had been perfect, the swimming in the little bay delightful, and Nell’s excellent French had made a firm friend of their landlady who had had a way of slipping little delicacies to them that did not appear on the bill. Andrew remembered that there had been a small Greek staying in the village, who went about naked except for a faded and tattered pair of shorts, and who had tried very hard, though without success, to persuade them to buy a variety of goods from him on the black market. He was ready to let them take the goods home with them without payment, if they would agree to deposit a cheque for what they owed him in a certain London bank. ‘I trust you, you see,’ he said. ‘I do business like an Englishman.’

  Then the following year they had gone to Italy. The amount of foreign currency they had been able to take with them was twenty-five pounds each, but on that they had managed to stay in a little hotel near Sorrento, swimming and revelling in sunshine for three weeks, counting every lira that they spent and refusing to be tempted into buying any of the pretty things they saw in the way of corals and inlaid boxes.

  But that in its way had been a mistake, though they had learnt something from it, for on returning home and having their luggage examined at Customs, their statement that they had nothing to declare had simply not been believed, and their suitcases had been searched from top to bottom. His inability to discover anything on which duty would have to be paid had intensely irritated the Customs officer who was dealing with them and he had looked at them with deepening dislike and suspicion, until at the bottom of Nell’s suitcase he had at last found a paper bag containing something that he instantly found suspicious. He had glanced at her with an air of triumph. But all the paper bag had contained was some knitting wool that she had taken abroad with her but had never got around to using. The official’s look at her had been venomous. And ever after that, when they went abroad, they had always made a point of buying and declaring something, a thing that became easier to do as currency restrictions were relaxed, and which had generally led to their suitcases being passed through Customs without being opened. Innocence, they had realized, was a very suspicious thing. People found it very hard to believe in it. And there he was, after all, back to what had happened at the Waldrons’, because soon, like Mollie, people were going to start questioning the innocence of the Bartlett sisters. They might even start questioning the innocence of Sam and Anna Waldron, though both had been in the kitchen and could not possibly have had anything to do with giving Luke Singleton poisoned coffee unless they had somehow used the Bartletts to do it for them. Knowingly or unknowingly.

  By the time that he had reached that point, drowsiness had descended on Andrew and with a confused conviction in his mind that Sam, Anna and the Bartletts might soon be in need of protection, he drifted into sleep.

  Next morning Mollie brought him his breakfast tray as she had every morning since his arrival, though rather later than she had done it before. He wondered, looking at her, if she had had any sleep at all. There were blue shadows under her eyes and they had the reddened look of weariness. But the coffee, the orange juice, the cornflakes, the toast and marmalade and the cube of cheese were all as usual. She asked him if he had slept well, but did not seem to listen for his answer, and left him quickly, as if there were things that she had to see to. But when he went downstairs presently he found her sitting idly in the sitting-room with the Sunday paper open on her knees, but her gaze fixed absently on the window. Ian was at a table, mounting photographs of birds in an album.

  When Andrew came into the room, Mollie gave a deep sigh, as if his presence was one thing more than she could bear and which made him feel that if only the police would agree to his going home, it would be an excellent thing for him to do. Actually, that was something about which he had been thinking while he had been getting shaved and dressed. It would be so very pleasant to return to his flat in St John’s Wood, to be alone there, quiet and free from the sense of violence near him. But until he had had a chance to discuss this with Inspector Roland, he could hardly raise it with Ian and Mollie.

  She held the newspaper out to him.

  ‘They’ve got it here already,’ she said, ‘and it was on the news at nine—only a brief item as something that had just come in, but of cour
se the press will be down in hordes now. It’ll be frightful.’

  ‘There’s no special reason why they should bother us,’ Ian said, looking up from what he was doing. ‘We’re not involved with any of the people concerned. Look at that.’ He held out a photograph to Andrew. ‘Isn’t it a beauty? It’s a golden plover. I took it last year, but I never seem to have had time to cope with the job of mounting these things.’

  Andrew glanced at it, but was more anxious to read what was in the newspaper that Mollie was holding out to him. He found that there was only a brief paragraph about the sudden death of a famous writer, but it did not call it murder. All the same, it implied that there was certainly more to come, that the death was suspicious and that the police were on the scene.

  While he was reading, the doorbell rang.

  Ian went to answer it and brought in the Inspector. He also had the look of having had a sleepless night, but of being better able to bear it than any of the others in the room. He must have to face them more often than they did, Andrew guessed. He refused the coffee that Mollie offered him, but was ready to drop wearily into a chair by the empty fireplace and cover his mouth with his hand as he gave a great yawn.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you at this time of day,’ he said, ‘but there’s something I want to ask you. A small thing. I believe you’re fairly close friends of Brian Singleton.’

  Ian looked at Mollie as if he expected her to answer, and she said shortly, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then can you confirm something that I’ve been told,’ Roland went on. ‘I’ve been told he’s an expert conjuror.’

  ‘Magicians, they seem to like to call themselves nowadays,’ Ian said. ‘It’s a bit of a hobby of Singleton’s, but I don’t think he’s very expert. He only took it up a year or two ago.’

  ‘Expert enough though, perhaps, for a little sleight of hand?’ Roland suggested.

  Mollie jumped up from her chair. Her blue eyes were blazing.