Hobby of Murder

by E. X. Ferrars

‘The red Mini’s their own, is it?’ Andrew asked.

  Roland nodded and told them the number of the car.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry, but we’ve seen nothing of them,’ Ian said. ‘But we were all sleeping it off ourselves yesterday afternoon, and wouldn’t have seen them even if they’d passed.’

  ‘Well, no doubt they’ll be found soon enough,’ Roland said. ‘I doubt if women like that will really know how to conceal themselves, even in London. They may even have second thoughts and come home of their own accord. Meanwhile, it’s just making a bit of extra trouble for us.’ He gave Andrew a long look. ‘You haven’t had any special ideas about what’s happened, have you, Professor?’

  Andrew shook his head.

  ‘You had some good ideas the last time we met,’ Roland persisted.

  ‘If I have any this time, you shall be the first to hear them,’ Andrew promised.

  ‘Good. Well, good morning. Sorry to have troubled you.’

  Roland and the sergeant took their leave.

  When they had gone, Ian said that he felt like making some of that coffee that the detectives had refused and went out to the kitchen to do it. Mollie sat down at her embroidery frame.

  ‘You’ve really met that man before, have you, Andrew?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, I was on the spot when an unfortunate man called Sir Lucas Dearden was blown up by a bomb,’ Andrew answered, ‘and I think Roland rather overestimates the help I gave him. That’s a very lovely piece of embroidery you’re doing, Mollie.’

  ‘Would you like it?’ she said. ‘I could get it framed for you or made into a cushion.’

  ‘Would you really do that?’

  ‘Of course, if you truly like it. Which shall it be?’

  Andrew thought of his sitting-room and of how the embroidery would look in it.

  ‘A cushion, I think,’ he said.

  ‘You shall have it. But, Andrew …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘This isn’t your first experience of murder?’ ‘Not quite.’

  ‘And do you believe either of the Bartletts could have done it?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Have you any suspicions of anyone who was at that dinner?’

  ‘Probably no more than you have. Do you suspect anyone in particular?’

  ‘I do, as a matter of fact, only it doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Ernest Audley?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then who?’

  She bent her head over her work, apparently concentrating on it and thinking of nothing else. Then after a moment she said, ‘No, I don’t think I’ll say. It isn’t really serious, and it might just make trouble.’

  ‘You’re probably wise.’

  That seemed to spur her into wanting to tell him more.

  ‘All the same, if the Bartletts had anything to do with it, then that makes it possible, doesn’t it, that just about anyone who was at that dinner might have been at the back of it? As you said, it’s Sam who looks the most probable, but what about Eleanor, for instance? She’s admitted she used to know Luke Singleton, and whether that was just a bit of boasting and exaggerating, or whether she really knew him very well and was playing it down, we don’t know, do we? And she probably had cyanide and might have arranged to pay a Bartlett to do the job for her. Then there’s Felicity.’

  ‘Is she the person you really suspect?’ Andrew asked.

  But before she answered, Ian came in with coffee for the three of them and as he poured it out, silence fell on them. Mollie resumed her embroidery and except for muttering something about it being impossible that the Bartletts could have had anything to do with it, Ian withdrew into himself, looking ill-tempered, as if he found the events of the morning particularly outrageous.

  Andrew was grateful not to be expected to talk. He had an uneasy feeling that Mollie at least might have started to think of him as an expert on murder, when he happened for the present to be feeling entirely uninspired. Wondering what to do, he thought of making the call that he had abandoned the evening before on Eleanor Clancy, asking to be shown some of her treasured old photographs, because an idea concerning them had begun to form in his mind. He needed an occupation, now that his work on Robert Hooke was done. As his nephew, Peter Dilly, had said, he needed a hobby. And might it not be possible, if Eleanor would give him access to the letters and the negatives that her great-grandfather had left behind him, to write his life? Might it not be quite interesting? It was true that she had seemed to be thinking of doing this herself, but Andrew felt that this was one of the projects that was unlikely ever to be more than a project. Yes, he thought, he would call on her.

  Without telling the Davidges what he actually had in mind, but only saying that was going out for a breath of air, he let himself out into the road and started along it.

  But he did not stop at Eleanor Clancy’s cottage. The fresh, bright morning gave him the feeling that what he needed was simply a walk, and passing the cottage, he went straight on. His idea of writing the life of a long ago Clancy began to feel quite unrealistic. For one thing, it would almost certainly mean having to have a fair amount of contact with Eleanor herself, and he had not really taken much of a liking to her. It would also mean spending a good deal of time in Lower Milfrey, and that was a thing he thought that he would never be able to contemplate with pleasure. Quite apart from the murder and its consequences, his relationship with the Davidges had been most unhappily damaged; Mollie’s confidences to him about her feelings for Brian Singleton had made it almost impossible for him to maintain his old relationship with Ian. He did not know whether to be sorry for him, or critical of him, or even contemptuous of him. The one thing that seemed impossible, unless Ian should choose to confide in him too, was to be simple and honest with him.

  Just then, perhaps because he had been thinking of Ian, he noticed that the sky seemed to be full of swallows. They were swooping in every direction in swift, beautiful curves. Were they preparing for their journey south, he wondered. He stood still, watching them, and as he did so a car that had been coming towards him stopped near him and Felicity Mace leant out.

  ‘Good morning, Professor,’ she called out. ‘Are you going anywhere special? Can I give you a lift?’

  He was about to reply that he was merely out for a short walk, when a sudden idea occurred to him.

  ‘I was thinking of a walk,’ he said, ‘but if you feel like driving me to the nearest pleasant pub and coming in for a drink with me, I’d very happily give up the idea of the walk.’

  ‘Let me think,’ she said. ‘The nicest pub, I think, is the Wheatsheaf, and it won’t take us more than a few minutes to get there. Get in.’ She leant across the car and opened the door for Andrew to climb into the seat beside her. She then turned the car and drove off in the direction from which she had come. ‘I’ve just been to see a patient out this way,’ she said, ‘and was going home for my lunch, but that can wait for a little while.’

  ‘I’d like to suggest we have lunch in the Wheatsheaf,’ Andrew said, ‘but Mollie and Ian will be expecting me.’

  ‘It’s all right, I’ve an excellent Marks & Spencer lunch waiting to go into my microwave,’ she said. She had a friendly smile on her lively oval face and seemed really glad to have met him. ‘My microwave has revolutionized my life. It’s the perfect answer for busy people who live alone. Have you got one?’

  ‘No, but then I’m not a truly busy person,’ Andrew answered.

  ‘All the same, you should try it.’

  They chatted about microwaves and the problems of cooking for yourself if you lived alone until they came to a building that stood by itself at a crossroads which turned out to be the Wheatsheaf. It was a solid-looking, square brick building with a slate roof and a large car park beside it, in which there were a surprising number of cars, considering that the pub appeared to have no village near it. It was plainly popular enough for people to come to it from some distance away. Inside, it was cheerfully comfortable in an
unpretentious way, and had a fair number of customers in it already. Felicity and Andrew went to a small table by the window and Andrew went to the bar to order their drinks. They each had a half pint of lager.

  As he sat down at the table facing her, she gave him her friendly smile again and said, ‘Well, what is it you really want to ask me?’

  ‘It’s as obvious as that, is it?’ he asked.

  ‘It certainly seemed probable. Not that I don’t enjoy being picked up by distinguished visitors. But I thought there might be strings attached to it.’

  ‘You make me wish there weren’t,’ he said. ‘I’d really like you to talk about things like the holiday you had this year, and the one you’re planning for next year, and anything that has nothing to do with the murder. I keep telling myself that the one thing I want is to stop thinking about it, but of course, that isn’t true. It’s going to obsess me until it’s solved.’

  ‘Perhaps I can help you more than you’d expect,’ she said. ‘That’s to say, I can tell you a little about my summer holiday, and just connect it up a little with our murder. My holiday was in Russia, a trip by ship on the inland waterways from Moscow to St Petersburg, and very wonderful it was, and I’d love to go on talking about it. But what you’ll want to hear, I think, is a little about the friend I went with. It was Jane Audley.’

  He showed his surprise. ‘Ernest Audley’s wife?’

  ‘His ex-wife.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. And actually, she was one of the people I wanted to ask you about. Someone told me you’d known her.’

  ‘We’re very close friends. We met when I first settled here and we’ve kept in touch ever since she left. We generally go on holiday together.’

  ‘So you’d have some idea if there’s any possibility, now that Luke Singleton’s dead, that she’d return to Audley. I know Singleton deserted her after the divorce, but it seemed to me possible that she might have nursed a hope that he’d come back to her in the end, and now that that most certainly can’t happen, she might see if she could return to Audley.’

  She shook her head. ‘Not a chance of it. The marriage was pretty well on the rocks before Luke showed up. If it hadn’t been Luke, it’d have been someone else. She told me once she regarded the years she’d spent with Ernest as utterly wasted. He’s a terrible old bore, you know, and very demanding, and she married him for all the wrong reasons. She was very young for one thing, and very eager to get married and have a home of her own and a position in our society here. And then, of course, children. Having lived nearly all her life in Lower Milfrey, she thought of him as a man of distinction and consequence, you see, and it took her a little while to find out that he isn’t exactly either. And the children didn’t come. So Luke was the escape she’d been looking for, and I’m not sure that she was passionately devoted to him or that it mattered to her too much when he left her. There’ve been one or two other men in her life since he did, but what really keeps her going is a job she’s got as assistant editor on a women’s magazine. She’s very talented in her way and very hard-working.’

  ‘So even if Audley had an idea that with Singleton dead she might come back to him, you’d say he was quite wrong.’

  ‘Oh, utterly.’

  ‘But do you think he might have such an idea himself?’

  She gave him a quizzical look, then drank some of her lager.

  ‘So you want to make out that he’s the murderer, even though it’s completely impossible that he could have done it, sitting where he was?’

  ‘You’ve heard, of course, that the Bartlett sisters have disappeared?’

  She nodded. ‘And if they were the instrument that administered the poison, then Ernest, or almost anyone in that room could have been the real culprit. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t even have to have been someone in that room. It could have been pretty well anyone in the wide world. That’s an idea that ought to keep you occupied for a nice long time.’

  But it did not keep Andrew occupied for very long, for that evening the Bartletts were discovered. They were staying with their widowed sister in Finchley after all. They had been there when the police had gone to her house to inquire for them, but had insisted on remaining in hiding, and she had denied that they were with her when they were upstairs in her attic. But not long afterwards their red Mini had been discovered in a car park only a few streets away from her home, and the police had then returned to it and been a good deal more insistent in their questioning. The widowed sister by then had been working on the two Bartletts to let the police know their whereabouts. With a houseful of lodgers it was hardly practical for her to keep a couple of strange women concealed from them all, particularly as the newspapers had made a good deal of their disappearance, even hinting that a reward might be given for information leading to their discovery. However, they did not return to Lower Milfrey, but for the time being remained in Finchley. They would have to return for the inquest, they were told, but for the moment were left in peace. Inspector Roland, who told all this to the Davidges and Andrew, whom he called in on again later that evening, said that the women had truly been afraid that they were suspected of the poisoning of Luke Singleton and had had a wild idea of borrowing money from their sister and escaping to South America. They had very little knowledge of such matters as passports and visas and had simply been in a state of hopeless panic.

  Nevertheless, their attempt at escape did them good service. The next morning, when without any doubt they were in a room that happened to be vacant in a boarding-house in Finchley, Ian, as he so often did, set out in the early morning with his binoculars to see if anything interesting in the way of waders recently arrived from the north had appeared in the mud around the lake on the common, but what he saw for once put all thoughts of birds out of his mind. For tucked among the reeds near the little bridge that crossed the stream that made its placid way out of the lake, he happened to catch sight of a pair of shoes. And the shoes were on a pair of feet. And the feet were those of Eleanor Clancy, floating in deathly stillness in the water.

  CHAPTER 6

  Ian came running across the common, through the turnstile and into the house where Mollie was just taking Andrew’s breakfast tray in to him. Andrew heard Ian shouting for Mollie. She dumped the tray on his knees more abruptly than usual, went out on to the landing and called, ‘What is it?’

  Andrew heard Ian call back, ‘The police! I’ve got to phone them! I found—I found—’

  But there he seemed to gag. There was silence for a moment, then there came the tinkle of the bell on the telephone as it was lifted. Andrew put his tray aside, got out of bed, put on his dressing-gown and went out on to the landing.

  He overheard Ian say, ‘Yes, by the bridge … Oh yes, dead, no question of it. I wouldn’t have left her if there’d been any doubt, would I?… Yes, straight away, and you’ll meet me there … Yes, I understand … In the reeds by the bridge, you’re sure you know where I mean?… All right, but come as quickly as you can.’

  He slammed the telephone down and seemed about to go straight out of the front door again when Andrew called out, ‘What’s happened, Ian?’

  Ian paused in the doorway, looking up at him on the stairs.

  ‘It’s Eleanor,’ he said. ‘Lying in the lake, dead. Drowned, I suppose. I was out early, looking for some waders, but what I saw was Eleanor. I don’t know how long she’s been there, but I’m going straight back. The police are coming. Will you come with me?’

  ‘I will, if you’ll wait a moment till I get into some clothes,’ Andrew answered.

  That morning the coffee on his tray, the toast and marmalade and the cheese were left untouched. It was only a few minutes before he was downstairs with Ian, unwashed, unshaved, but at least decent in trousers, a shirt and a pullover. They went out together while Mollie stayed in the doorway, watching them go.

  They strode across the common towards the lake as fast as they could. There was no one else about. The morning felt colder than the day be
fore, and there were low-hanging dark clouds in the sky, as if it might rain soon. Ian began to mutter something about the bridge and the reeds, but then gave up the attempt to speak, and led the way up to the little hump-backed bridge and pointed down.

  There, almost under it, with reeds bowing over her, was the still body of Eleanor Clancy. She was on her back, with her small deep-set eyes staring strangely at the sky. Her clothes were only a sodden shroud, but it looked as if she was wearing her black jeans and tartan shirt. Her cap of brown hair swam in the water like a dark halo round her head. Her face was blue-white. Ian had certainly been right. She was dead and probably had been dead for hours.

  Andrew wondered if the cold of the morning came from those threatening clouds and a feeling of moisture in the air, or mostly from the stiff figure below them. He looked around him. He looked at the narrow lane that curved off to the right on the far side of the bridge. There were hedges on either side of the lane, so that he could not see where it led, but he thought that it ran about parallel to the main road behind most of the houses of the village. On the morning when he had walked as far as the bridge, then round the lake and back to the children’s playground, he had not paid much attention to the lane, but now he found himself gazing up it, wondering if it had been along it that death had come.

  Ian was leaning on the brick coping of the bridge.

  ‘Could it have been an accident?’ he asked, not sounding hopeful.

  ‘I suppose it’s possible,’ Andrew said. ‘Accidents have a queer way of happening. But she was athletic. She’s certain to have been a good swimmer. If she’d somehow fallen into the water she’d surely have been able to save herself. Anyway, the water doesn’t look very deep.’

  Though there was mud along the rim of the lake, where the stream flowed out the water was so clear that he could see pebbles on the bottom of it.

  ‘So she was unconscious when she fell in,’ Ian said.

  ‘Or dead already.’

  ‘You’ve made up your mind it was murder?’

  ‘Thank God, it isn’t for me to do that. That’s a job for Inspector Roland.’