Markfield, apparently unimpressed, leaned across and ran some more of the liquid out of his funnel. Flamborough guessed the movement might be intended to conceal his features from easy observation.
“The next stage in the proceedings took the late Mr. Whalley by surprise, it seems,” Sir Clinton went on. “Leaving the girl where she was, young Hassendean left the room for a minute or two. When he came back, he had a pistol in his hand. This was not at all what the late Mr. Whalley had been expecting. Least of all did he expect to see young Hassendean go up to the girl, and shoot her in the head at close quarters. I’m sure you’ll appreciate the feelings of the late Mr. Whalley at this stage, Dr. Markfield.”
“Surprising,” Markfield commented abruptly.
Sir Clinton nodded in agreement.
“What must have been even more surprising was the sequel. The glass of the front window broke with a blow, and from behind the curtains a man appeared, who fell upon Hassendean. There was a struggle, a couple of shots from Hassendean’s pistol, and then Hassendean fell on the ground—dead, as Whalley supposed at the time.”
Flamborough stared hard at Markfield, but at that moment the chemist again turned in his chair, ran the remainder of the liquid from the funnel into his flask, and then refilled the funnel from the bottle on the tray. This done, he turned once more with an impassive face to Sir Clinton.
“By this time, the late Mr. Whalley seems to have seen all that he wanted. Just as he was turning away from the window, he noticed the new-comer take some small object from his waistcoat pocket and drop it on the floor. Then Mr. Whalley felt it was time to make himself scarce. He stepped back on to the path, made his way round the bungalow, hurried down the approach to the gate. There he came across a car—evidently the one in which the assailant had arrived. The late Mr. Whalley, even at this stage, was not quite free from his second idea: ‘What is there in it for me?’ He took the number of the car, and then he made himself scarce.”
Sir Clinton stopped for a moment or two and gazed across at Markfield with an inscrutable face.
“By the way, Dr. Markfield,” he added in a casual tone, “what was the pet name that Mrs. Silverdale used to call you when you were alone together—the one beginning with ‘B’?”
This time, it was evident to the Inspector, Sir Clinton had got home under Markfield’s guard. The chemist glanced up with more than a shade of apprehension on his face. He seemed to be making a mental estimate of the situation before he replied.
“H’m! You know that, do you?” he said finally. “Then there’s no use denying it, I suppose. She used to call me ‘Bear’ usually. She said I had the manners of one, at times; and perhaps there was something in that.”
Sir Clinton showed no sign that he attached much importance to Markfield’s explanation.
“You became intimate with her some time in 1925, I think, just after the Silverdales came here?”
Markfield nodded his assent.
“And very shortly after that, you and she thought it best to conceal your liaison by seeing as little of each other as possible in public, so as not to draw attention to your relations?”
“That’s true.”
“And finally she got hold of young Hassendean to serve as a blind? Advertised herself with him openly, whilst you stayed in the background?”
“You seem to know a good deal about it,” Markfield admitted coldly.
“I think I know all that matters,” the Chief Constable commented. “You’ve lost the game, Dr. Markfield.”
Markfield seemed to consider the situation rapidly before he spoke again.
“You can’t make it worse than manslaughter,” he said at last. “It’s no more than that, on the evidence you’ve given me just now. I saw him shoot Yvonne, and then, in the struggle afterwards, his pistol went off twice by accident and hit him. You couldn’t call that a case of murder. I shall plead that it was done in self-defence; and you haven’t Whalley to put into the box against me.”
Sir Clinton took no pains to conceal a sardonic smile.
“It won’t do, Dr. Markfield,” he pointed out. “You might get off on that plea if it were only the bungalow business that you were charged with. But there’s the murder of the maid at Heatherfield as well. You can’t twist that into a self-defence affair. No jury would look at it for a moment.”
“You seem to know a good deal about it,” Markfield repeated thoughtfully.
“I suppose what you really wanted at Heatherfield was a packet of your love-letters to Mrs. Silverdale?” Sir Clinton asked.
Markfield confirmed this with a nod.
“That’s all you have against me, I suppose?” he demanded after a pause.
Sir Clinton shook his head.
“No,” he said, “there’s the affair of the late Mr. Whalley as well.”
Markfield’s face betrayed neither surprise nor chagrin at this fresh charge.
“That’s all, then?” he questioned again, with apparent unconcern.
“All that’s of importance,” Sir Clinton admitted. “Of course, in the guise of our friend Mr. Justice, you did your best to throw suspicion on Silverdale. That’s a minor point, so far as you’re concerned now. It’s curious how you murderers can’t leave well alone. If you hadn’t played the fool there, you’d have given us ever so much more trouble.”
Markfield made no answer at the moment. He seemed to be reviewing the whole situation in his mind, thinking hard before he broke the silence.
“Good thing, a scientific training,” he said at length, rather unexpectedly. “It teaches one to realise the bearing of plain facts. My game seems to be up. You’ve been too smart for me.”
He paused, and a grim smile crossed his face, as though he found something humorous in the situation.
“You seem to have enough stuff there to pitch a tale to a jury,” he continued, “and I daresay you’ve more in reserve. I’m not inclined to be dragged squalling to the gallows—too undignified for my taste. I’ll tell you the facts.”
Flamborough, eager that things should be done in proper form, interposed the usual official cautionary statement.
“That’s all right,” Markfield answered carelessly. “You’ll find paper over yonder on my desk, beside the typewriter. You can take down what I say, and I’ll sign it afterwards if you think that necessary when I’ve finished.”
The Inspector crossed the room, picked up a number of sheets of typewriting paper, and returned to the table. He pulled out his fountain-pen and prepared to take notes.
“Mind if I light my pipe?” Markfield inquired.
As the chemist put his hand to his pocket, Flamborough half-rose from his seat; but he sank back again into his chair when a tobacco-pouch appeared instead of the pistol which he had been afraid might be produced. Markfield threw him a glance which showed he had fathomed the meaning of the Inspector’s start.
“Don’t get nervous,” he said contemptuously. “There’ll be no shooting. This isn’t a film, you know.”
He reached up to the mantelpiece for his pipe, charged it deliberately, lighted it, and then turned to Sir Clinton.
“You’ve got a warrant for my arrest, I suppose?” he asked in a tone which sounded almost indifferent.
Sir Clinton’s affirmative reply did not seem to disturb him. He settled himself comfortably in his chair and appeared interested chiefly in getting his pipe to burn well.
“I’ll speak slowly,” he said at last, turning to the Inspector. “If I go too fast, just let me know.”
Flamborough nodded and sat, pen in hand, waiting for the opening of the narrative.
Chapter Eighteen
THE CONNECTING THREAD
“I don’t see how you did it,” Markfield began, “but you got to the root of things when you traced a connection between me and Yvonne Silverdale. I’d never expected that. And considering how we’d kept our affairs quiet for years, I thought I’d be safe at the end of it all.
“It was in 1925, as you said
, that the thing began—just after Silverdale came to the Croft-Thornton. There was a sort of amateur dramatic show afoot then, and both Yvonne and I joined it. That brought us together first. The rest didn’t take long. I suppose it was a case of the attraction of opposites. One can’t explain that sort of thing on any rational basis. It just happened.”
He hesitated for a moment, as though casting his mind back to these earlier times; then he continued:
“Once it had happened, I did the thinking for the pair of us. Clearly enough, the thing was to avoid suspicion. That meant that people mustn’t couple our names even casually. And the way to prevent that was to see as little of each other as possible in public. I dropped out of things, cut dances, left the theatrical affair, and posed as being engrossed in work. She advertised herself as dance-mad. It suited her well enough. Result: we hardly ever were seen in the same room. No one thought of linking our names in the remotest way. I gave her no presents. . . .”
“Think again,” Sir Clinton interrupted. “You gave her at least one present.”
Markfield reflected for some moments; then his face showed more than a trace of discomfiture.
“You mean a signet-ring? Good Lord! I forgot all about it, that night at the bungalow! So that’s where you got your story about the initial ‘B.’ from? I never thought of that.”
Sir Clinton made no comment, and after a few seconds Markfield continued.
“In the early days, we wrote letters to each other—just a few. Later on, I urged her to burn them, for safety’s sake. But she treasured them, apparently; and she wouldn’t do it. She said they were quite safe in a locked drawer in her bedroom. Silverdale never entered her room, you know. It seemed safe enough. It was these damned letters that landed me in the end.
“Yvonne and I hadn’t any reason to worry about Silverdale. He’d lost all interest in her and gone off after Avice Deepcar. Oh, that was all quite respectable and above-board. She’s a decent girl—nothing against her. We’d have been quite glad to see him marry her, except that it wouldn’t have suited our book. My screw was good enough for a single man. It wouldn’t have kept two of us—not on the basis we needed, anyhow. And a divorce case might have got me chucked out of the Croft-Thornton. Where would we have been then? So you see that alley was barred.
“By and by, young Hassendean turned up. When I found he was getting keen on Yvonne, I encouraged her to keep him on her string. She had no use for the boy except as a dancing-partner; but we used him as a blind to cover the real state of affairs. So long as people could talk about him and her, they weren’t likely to think of her and me. So she led him on until the brat thought he was indispensable. I suppose he fell in love with her, in a way. We never imagined he might be dangerous.
“That was the state of things up to ten days before the affair at the bungalow. There seemed to be no reason why it shouldn’t have lasted for years. But just then Yvonne got news of this money that had been left her—about £12,000. That put a new light on the affair. It gave her an income of her own. We could afford to let Silverdale divorce her; then I could have chucked the Croft-Thornton, married her, and set up in private practice somewhere. Her money would have kept us going until I had scraped a business together; and no one cares a damn about the matrimonial affairs of a chemical expert in private practice.
“We talked it over, and we practically made up our minds to take that course. It seemed a bit too good to be true. Anyhow it would have got us out of all the hole-and-corner business. After three years of that, we were getting a bit sick of it. Another week or two, and Westerhaven would have had all the scandal it needed, if it was inclined that way. We’d have got each other. And Silverdale could have married his girl with all the sympathy of the town. Ideal, eh?”
He puffed savagely at his pipe for a moment or two before speaking again.
“Then that young skunk Hassendean. . . . He must needs get above himself and ruin the whole scheme, damn him! I can only guess what happened. He got to know about the properties of hyoscine. There was plenty of it at the Croft-Thornton. He must have stolen some of it and used it to drug Yvonne that night. However, that’s going a bit fast. I’ll tell you what happened, as it seemed to me.”
Markfield paused and glanced inquiringly at the Inspector.
“It’s all right,” Flamborough reassured him. “If you don’t speak quicker than that, I can take it down easily.”
Markfield leaned over and gave the contents of his flask a gentle shake before continuing his narrative.
“That night, I’d been out late at the Research Station on a piece of work. I mean I’d gone there after dinner for a few minutes. When I finished, I came in by the Lizardbridge Road in my car. It was a bit foggy, and I was driving slowly. Just after I’d passed the bungalow, I met an open car. We were both crawling, owing to the fog; and I had a good look at the people in the other car. One was young Hassendean. The other was Yvonne; and even as I passed them, I could see there was something queer about the business. Besides, what would she be doing With that young whelp away out of town? I knew her far too well to think she was up to any hanky-panky with him.
“It looked queer. So as soon as I was past them, I turned my car, meaning to follow them and stand by. Unfortunately in the fog, I almost ditched my car in turning; and it gave me some trouble to swing round—one wheel got into the trench at the edge of the road. It was a minute or so before I got clear again. Then I went off after them.
“I saw the car at the door of the bungalow, and some lights on in the place which hadn’t been there when I’d passed it on my way down. So I stopped my car at the gate and walked up to the bungalow door. It was locked.
“I didn’t care about hammering on the door. That would only have put Hassendean on the alert and left me still on the wrong side of the door. So I walked round to the lighted window and managed to get a glimpse of the room through the curtains. Yvonne was lying back in an armchair, facing me. I thought she’d fainted or something like that. The whole affair puzzled me a bit, you see. That young skunk Hassendean was wandering about the room, evidently in a devil of a state of nerves about something or other.
“Just as I was making up my mind to break the window, he bolted out of the room; and I thought he meant to clear off from the house, leaving Yvonne there—ill, perhaps. That made me pretty mad; and I kept my eye on the front door to see that he didn’t get away without my catching him. That prevented me from breaking the window and climbing into the room.
“Then, a bit to my surprise, the young swine came back again with something in his hand—I couldn’t see what it was then. He walked over to where Yvonne was, in the chair, lifted his arm, and shot her in the head. Deliberately. Nothing like an accident, remember. And there, before my eyes, I saw the whole of our dreams collapsing, just when we thought they were going to come true. Pretty stiff, wasn’t it?”
He bent forward and made a pretence of knocking the ashes from his pipe. When he looked up again, his face was set once more.
“I’m no psychologist to spin you a yarn about how I felt just then,” he continued. “In fact, I doubt if I felt anything except that I wanted to down that young hound. Anyhow, I broke the glass, got my hand inside, undid the catch, and was through the curtain before he knew what was happening. I don’t know what he thought when he saw me. His face was almost worth it—sheer amazement and terror. He was just bringing up his pistol when I dropped on him and got his wrist. Then there was a bit of a struggle; but he hadn’t a chance against me. I shot him twice in the body and when he dropped, with blood coming from his mouth, I knew I’d got him in the lung, and I didn’t bother further about him. He seemed done for. I hoped he was.”
Markfield’s voice in the last few sentences had expressed the bitterness of his emotions; but when he continued, he made a successful effort to keep his tone level.
“One thinks quick enough in a tight corner. First thing I did was to look at Yvonne.”
He shrugged his shoulder
s to express what he seemed unable to put into words.
“That dream was done for. The only thing to do was to clear myself. I had another look at Hassendean. He seemed to have had his gruel. I’d a notion of shooting him again, just to make sure, but it didn’t seem worth while. Besides, there had been row enough already. A fourth shot might draw some passer-by. So I left him. I picked up the pistol and cleaned my fingermarks off it before putting it on the floor again. Then I did the same for the window-hasp. These were the only two things I’d touched, so I wasn’t leaving traces.
“Then I remembered something. Silverdale was always leaving his cigarette holder lying about the lab. He’d put it down on a bench or a desk and wander off, leaving the cigarette smouldering. That happened continually. That very afternoon, he’d left the thing in my room and I’d pocketed it, meaning to give it back to him when I saw him again. There it was, in my vest-pocket.
“In this world, it’s a case of every man for himself. My business was to get out of the hole I was in. If Silverdale got into a hole himself, it was his affair to get out of it. Besides, he’d probably have an alibi, whereas I hadn’t. In any case, the more tangled the business was, the better chance you fellows had of getting off my scent. If the whole story came out, I didn’t see how I was to persuade a jury it had been pure self-defence when I knew myself that it wasn’t that really. Besides, there were these infernal love-letters waiting at Yvonne’s house, all ready for the police and pointing straight to me as a factor in the affair. I’d have had awkward questions to answer about the contents of them.
“The net result was that I cleaned Silverdale’s cigarette-holder with my handkerchief to take off any finger-prints; and I dropped it on the floor to amuse you people. It had that fly in the amber—absolutely unique and easily identifiable.
The Case With Nine Solutions (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 22
