Let Him Lie

by Ianthe Jerrold

  “I see.”

  “Are you thinking Barchard might be the murderer? I shouldn’t think so, Jeanie. He’d know Molyneux couldn’t do anything to him. I should imagine he just pitched our letters into the fire and laughed.”

  ‘Old Mrs. Barchard seems to have taken the matter a bit to heart,” said Jeanie.

  “I dare say. But she’s a much more countrified sort of type. She’d be more frightened of the squire and the bobby than Hugh Barchard ever would. All the same,” added Peter thoughtfully, “I should think Barchard almost had it in him, you know. Murder, I mean. Or anything, if it comes to that. He’s a queer fellow.”

  “Is he, Peter? I should have thought he was an ordinary friendly sort of man.”

  “Oh yes, he is. But with a funny side to him, all the same. He says odd things sometimes.”

  Jeanie laughed a little.

  “He hears odd things sometimes, living with Mr. Fone, I should imagine! It isn’t surprising if he gets a bit touched with oddity himself! Still, I should hardly think he’d have murdered Mr. Molyneux just because he was in his debt.”

  Peter said slowly:

  “Then you think whoever murdered the poor chap must have had a really strong motive? But when one thinks of Molyneux and the life he lived, what strong motive can anybody have had for murdering him? One would have said a more harmless man, with fewer enemies, never existed. Aren’t practically all murders done for gain, or out of jealousy? Well, I was Mr. Molyneux’s private secretary for three years, and I never saw a hint that anybody had it in for the poor chap on either count.”

  “And yet somebody who was at Cleedons on Monday did murder him,” said Jeanie flatly. She added: “Perhaps a lunatic—”

  “Like Mr. Fone?” said Peter, swinging his murdered snipe from side to side. Jeanie was embarrassed.

  “No, I wasn’t thinking of Mr. Fone. And of course he’s not a lunatic. Only, I suppose, the queerer a person is the less you can tell what motives he might have. I was thinking of Sarah’s mother, really. She seemed awfully unbalanced. And she had a revolver.”

  “But the murder wasn’t done with a revolver,” objected Peter.

  “She might have had an adaptor. You see, Peter, it’s been proved that Mr. Molyneux must have been killed by a shot coming from the north-west. But Cleedons and the Tower stand north-east of where Mr. Molyneux was found. That means that nobody who was in or near the house at the time can have done the murder. Tamsin Wills, for instance. It can’t have been her. Nor Agnes. Nor Mr. Fone.”

  “But, Jeanie, though I’m very far from suspecting Mr. Fone, I must point out that we’ve only got Mr. Fone’s word for it that Molyneux looked over his shoulder before he was shot. That theory that the shot came from the north-west depends entirely on Mr. Fone’s own evidence. I don’t say I don’t believe him: I do. But, Jeanie, you can’t really absolve a man on his own evidence!”

  “No, I suppose not,” agreed Jeanie. “But there was another thing. There was that cigarette-end Sir Henry found in the lambing-shed. Somebody’d been in the lambing-shed. And the lambing-shed is to the northwest of where Molyneux was found. That supports Mr. Fone’s evidence, surely.”

  “For what it’s worth, yes. But the person in the lambing-shed, whoever it was, may have gone away before Mr. Molyneux was shot and may not have been the murderer at all.”

  “The cigarette-end was still smouldering when Sir Henry picked it up, more than five minutes after the murder.”

  “Then your theory, Superintendent Halliday is that the deceased was killed by a shot fired from the north-west, probably from the lambing-shed, by a mentally unstable person with an unlikely motive?”

  Jeanie laughed.

  “Well, not exactly, but—”

  Have you noticed how exactly I conform to your requirements?” asked Peter with a half-angry jocularity. “I was to the north-west of Mr. Molyneux at about the time he died. I was walking on the common admiring the water-fowl on Hatcher’s Pond. That’s what I say, but of course I might have been in the lambing-shed: who’s to say I wasn’t? I smoke gaspers, and in common with most people who have this horrid habit, I leave their ends about. I have two unlikely motives. One, revenge, for being fired without a reference. Two, guilty passion for employer’s wife. You can choose which you like. The police incline to the latter, I believe. Finally, as you must have noticed, Miss Halliday, I am mentally unstable.”

  “Oh, I don’t know!” said Jeanie cheerfully. “Extreme egotism may sometimes amount to mental instability, I suppose, but I don’t think yours quite reaches that point.”

  She was irritated, and meant to show it. There was a pause. Peter kicked thoughtfully at a tussock of grass, frowning. Jeanie, a little breathless, began to repent her unkindness.

  “I’m sorry,” said Peter coolly at last. “But I suppose the star of the piece is liable to get a rather egotistic point of view. You notice it with leading actors.”

  “Oh yes, Peter,” said Jeanie more conciliatingly. “But I don’t see why you should think you’re the star.”

  “Ask Superintendent Finister,” said Peter. “He cast this act. Would you like this snipe, Jeanie? A small token of my esteem?”

  “What should I do with it? No, thank you.”

  “People eat them,” said Peter, holding up the pathetic little bird before her.

  “I’d as soon eat a sparrow.”

  “I was a fool to shoot it. Do you think Grim would mind if I buried it with him?”

  “Why do you shoot, if you don’t want the thing when you’ve shot it?”

  Jumping down the bank and up the side of the mound, Peter replied:

  “Well, you see, I’m a good shot, Jeanie, and when one can do a thing well, one has a kind of hankering to go on doing it.” He put the little corpse down an old rabbit- hole and carefully placed a sod of damp earth over the hole. “Requiescat in pace. Give my love to Sarah. It was sweet of her to write to me. Good-bye.”

  Chapter Eleven

  IN THE STABLE

  Jeanie came upon Sarah in the sloping meadow below the Cleedons garden, sitting on a sheep-trough, her chin in her hands, apparently deep in thought. At Jeanie’s suggestion, she rose and went with her towards the stables. Jeanie thought that in the child’s present despairing mood the silent, innocent company of horses and kittens might be more healing than that of human kind.

  But when they entered the stable, with its dim light shining off time-polished silvery wood, its sweet scent of hay and pungent scent of horse-dung, they heard beside the stamping, breathing, rustling sounds of horses in a stable, a sound unmistakably human, the sound of sobbing.

  Jeanie did not at first recognise who it was who stood, in a blue uniform like a policewoman’s, her arm around the neck of Molyneux’s bay mare, her head of shingled fair hair pressed against the great sterno-mastoid muscle, sobbing quietly and broken-heartedly to herself. Then she recognised the uniform as that of a captain of Girl Guides and the woman as Marjorie Dasent. The mare stood quietly, nuzzling as if in fellow-feeling at the hand that stroked her long nose.

  Sarah stiffened and stepped back, and the sound she made aroused Miss Dasent from her sorrow. She looked up. Her long, high-cheek-boned face, with its odd faint resemblance to the creatures she so loved, was blotched, her small blue eyes drowned. She met the situation, however, with a simplicity which Jeanie could not but admire. Drying her face with a large handkerchief and coming towards them, she said in the thick voice of recent weeping:

  “I—I just came over to see how poor Gipsy was, and when I saw her I—I couldn’t help—well, I’m afraid I made a fool of myself.”

  She looked ready to make a fool of herself again. However, she blinked the new tears back and added, with a sort of shamefaced bluffness which Jeanie found touching:

  “Hullo, young Sarah. What’s all this about resigning? Once a Guide always a Guide, you know.”

  Sarah said nothing. Her arm within Jeanie’s seemed positively to have shrunk to a stick
, so stiff it was with some inner tension. Her lips made a thin line, she seemed scarcely to breathe. Good Heavens, thought Jeanie, glancing at her in astonishment, what’s the matter now? To Miss Dasent she said gently:

  “Gipsy almost seems to know what’s happened.”

  “Almost! She does now.”

  Marjorie Dasent was a large-built fair young woman of about thirty, already so early putting on weight and acquiring the set, unpliable look of middle age. The only child of a local doctor, she had been born in Handleston and lived all her life here. She bade fair to live out the rest of it, when her father died, in ladylike poverty and an ever-lessening struggle against spinsterhood, loneliness and her obvious destiny, which was to join the ranks of the genteel old Handleston gossips whom now, at thirty, she was still able to deride.

  “Change your mind, young Sarah, and come to the rally this afternoon. It’ll do you good. We’ll talk about this resignation business later.”

  With a grown-up wink at Jeanie, Miss Dasent stretched a large hand affectionately towards Sarah’s shoulder.

  Like lightning, Sarah moved away, taking her arm from Jeanie’s.

  “Don’t! Don’t!” she uttered in a cracked little voice, and turned and fled from the stable, leaving her two elders to gaze after her in dismay.

  “What’s the matter with the kid? What have I done?”

  Jeanie sighed.

  “She’s taking this business badly. Better leave her alone.”

  ‘‘But it’s good for the kid to be taken out of herself!”

  “Not if she doesn’t think so.”

  “Well, I’ve always thought, myself,” said Miss Dasent, evidently somewhat hurt at Sarah’s rejection of her well-meant caress, “that Sarah needs discipline more than most kids.”

  “I should leave her alone.”

  “Oh, I shan’t interfere! I’m sorry she’s having a tough time.”

  “We’re all having a tough time,” sighed Jeanie.

  Marjorie swallowed and uttered huskily:

  “He was—he was a good sort if ever there was one.”

  The words were commonplace, but there was a wild, agonised look in the poor girl’s eyes, and Jeanie knew a sudden fear that Miss Dasent was about to repose in her a confidence which they would both probably afterwards regret. She took the young woman by the arm and walked her, half-unwilling, out of the dim stable into the day where the cold grey light and the chilly wind could be trusted to discourage all displays of tender emotion. Marjorie blinked and turned her tear-marred face away. Then, not without a touch of the histrionic, she squared her shoulders, sighed deeply and took a cigarette-case from her pocket.

  “Gasper?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Hope you don’t mind these. I always smoke them.”

  “Oh, Honeybines!”

  “These are just the right size, I find, if one wants a rest and smoke when one’s out shooting.”

  Jeanie remembered how Sir Henry Blundell had picked the stub of a Honeybine cigarette up from the earthen floor of the lambing-shed in the orchard where Molyneux had met his death. A sort of tension came upon her right hand that held the little cigarette. To put it back, to put it in her pocket, to put it to her lips, to drop it: conflicting impulses held her hand poised six inches from her face. With a start as she saw the flame approaching Miss Dasent’s purplish fingers, she put the Honeybine between her lips and stooped her head. Over the little flame their glances met. Jeanie’s glance was guarded, but not guarded well enough, it seemed. She saw the sudden distrust spring into the blurred blue eyes so close to her own, as if her own had fired a spark there. The match dropped between them.

  “I say!” said Marjorie, looking at her wrist-watch. She spoke thickly. “I shall be late! I must be off! I’m lunching early, because of this rally, you see. I’m walking back. My bike’s got a puncture.”

  Jeanie said nothing.

  Miss Dasent shot her a quick glance, distrustful, appealing, observant, all in one, and uttering again:

  “I must go! Good-bye!” the turned and swung away with the long loping stride that she affected, leaving Jeanie with a scorched, unlighted cigarette between her lips.

  Jennie took the cigarette from her lips and dropped it, and walked thoughtfully towards Cleedons. Her thoughts jerked disconnectedly along. Many people smoked Honeybines, after all. But not many people saw anything in this to frighten them. And Marjorie Dasent, Jeanie could swear, had been frightened just now. Many people smoke Honeybines. And one of these people had been present in the orchard at Robert Molyneux’s death.

  Chapter Twelve

  TREASURE TROVE

  “Can’t we give you a lift?”

  The offer was not very graciously made, but Jeanie, walking from the bus-stop, carrying in one hand a large bucket with a collection of ironmongery packed inside it, and in the other a shopping-basket overflowing with groceries, was not disposed to quarrel with a tone of voice. And when she found that the voice belonged to Myfanwy Peel, she was all the more ready to forgive it, for she was interested in Myfanwy Peel.

  Mr. Agatos, with a smile more amiable than his companion’s, got out and opened the door of the car.

  “You would like to go—?”

  “Oh, home, please, to Yew Tree Cottage. I’ve been shopping in Handleston, and these things are rather heavy.”

  “We have just been to Cleedons to see the little Sally, but she was not to be found.”

  He got into the driver’s seat beside Myfanwy. Jeanie, sitting in the back, wrapped round like a queen in a fur-lined rug, surrounded, unlike a queen, with ironmongery and packets of soap and candles, murmured in some embarrassment:

  “Oh, she’s never where you look for her. She wanders about...”

  Without turning her head Myfanwy said bitterly:

  “That’s their idea of looking after a child! What’s that repulsive governess-creature for. I’d like to know? Education indeed! She’ll be a little savage! She is a little savage, so far as I can see!”

  Jeanie inquired:

  “Did you see Agnes?”

  ‘No, I didn’t!”

  Agatos shot Jeanie a deprecating, half-humorous look over his shoulder as the car slid forward. Myfanwy, evidently half regretting her own rudeness, added with an unpleasing sneer:

  “Her ladyship was far too busy to see me. I saw the governess.”

  “Poor little Sarah’s fearfully upset over her uncle’s death and everything. I expect they think it better not to force lessons on her just now.”

  “Upset, is she?” muttered Myfanwy harshly. “Well, I know somebody else who’s going to be upset quite soon.”

  “My dear,” said Agatos pacifically, “this sounds very alarming. Let us hope we are not going to be upset in this very wet road.”

  “Oh, don’t be an ass.”

  “I cannot help it. God made me an ass for His purposes.”

  “You can help continually talking rot!” said Myfanwy. Jeanie saw her profile turned for an instant towards her companion, and it looked both haggard and furious. Jeanie hoped that Agatos would abstain from further persiflage, for she was convinced that it would take very little to make his virago strike him. But in the next moment these apprehensions of a road accident fled away as a new thought struck Jeanie into a kind of dismay. What of the child Sarah’s future? Must she return to the care of this neurotic woman? Jeanie wondered whether Robert Molyneux had made any provision for his niece. She was soon enlightened.

  “Of course, I’m nobody! A child’s mother is nobody when there’s anybody else that wants her! But when she’s not wanted any longer, then it’s, ‘Oh, you’re her mother, aren’t you? You take her back, you ought to be pleased to have her!’ Well, if Saint Agnes thinks I’m going to be made a convenience of in that way, she’s mistaken. And you can tell her so, Miss Halliday! You’re a friend of hers, aren’t you?”

  “My dear, Miss Halliday will not know what you are talking about,” murmured Eustace Agatos, crawli
ng at a snail’s pace through a herd of milch cows. He added gravely: “Miffie is cross, you see, because the governess has told her that in the poor uncle’s will there is no fortune left to the little Sally.”

  “Not a penny!” exclaimed Mrs. Peel. “Not a farthing! Not that I care for money! But what gets my goat is that that’s the man who pretended to think that the child’s mother wasn’t responsible enough to look after her! That’s what he calls responsible!”

  “Is there no provision made for Sarah at all?” inquired Jeanie in a casual voice that did not altogether match her feelings.

  “Agnes is left her guardian. Agnes! And not a penny, not a penny to the child, after all his cant about responsibility!”

  Jeanie’s heart sank. Robert had had more confidence in his wife than Jeanie had, that was evident.

  “You are a strange woman, Miffie,” Agatos remarked sadly. “Only a very clever man, like me, would understand you. A week ago you wanted nothing but your child. You could not have her, and you were not pleased. Now, you can very likely have your child, and still you are not pleased. Not exactly pleased, it seems to me.”

  As he spoke, they drew up before Yew Tree Cottage.

  “That’s a nice little place,” said Mr. Agatos. Standing back from the road behind a long and rather neglected garden, with the old tree from which it took its name humped darkly behind the stone roof, Yew Tree Cottage certainly presented an inviting picture. Agatos evidently had an eye for an old cottage, for he added: “There are plenty of pretty little places round this part of the country, but this is the prettiest yet I’ve seen.”

  “Oh, then, won’t you—?”

  Jeanie was about to invite them in when, to her surprise, Myfanwy Peel forestalled her. Myfanwy was still flushed with temper, but she spoke in those peculiar, insincere and honeyed tones which an ill-tempered person adopts when he feels that he has, for once, perhaps gone too far and wishes to make amends. She smiled in a stiff grimacing fashion, showing her teeth. She held the door open and one slender leg stretched to the footboard.