The Knocker on Death's Door gfaf-10

by Ellis Peters

  “No, don’t tell me Robert borrowed your clothes! Make up your mind which of them you want to frame, and stick to it! You took whatever you fancied of his, I can see that now, but never the other way round. Like that gold pencil you were telling me about—the cap that turned up in the cellar It hadn’t been there long, had it? Before all this began, about three weeks ago, I remember you signing for a parcel in the office with a gold pencil—that wouldn’t be the same one, would it, Hugh? The one Robert lost a long time ago? Did they let you into the cellar where they were digging, Hugh? Mightn’t they have done that purposely, just to see what turned up afterwards, where nothing was before? You’re not the only clever one! Did you ever think of that?”

  He had not. She saw the thought sharpen the brightness of his eyes into the bleak grey of steel, while his appalled, compassionate smile for her unaccountable madness remained fixed.

  “Oh, yes, all kinds of things come back to me now. Who escaped from this house and left the others holding the baby? You did! Who relied on Robert’s determination to protect your mother and keep your name clean? You did! Who landed him in this hell and left him to cope with it alone? You did! Who’s been busy planting evidence to saddle him with the murder, now that it can’t be hushed up any longer? You have! And who’s willing now to switch from his brother to his mother for scapegoat if it looks a better bet? You are!”

  “Dinah!” he said, quite softly.

  “I don’t know who that man was, or why you shot him, but I know you did,” she said with absolute finality.

  “Do you, Dinah? And the photographer, too? And that idiot of a psychic researcher on Saturday night? What, all of them, Dinah?”

  “All of them,” said Dinah.

  “Then what makes you think I’ll stick off at you?”

  She hardly saw the movement of his hand, because she was so intent on his face, which had dropped all its pretence of shock and innocence and vulnerability, and was gazing at her with steady, calculating concentration. This was more like Hugh, the Hugh she had known, who kept no rules but his own, and changed even those to suit his present convenience; Hugh bright, hard, self-centred and resolute. How often in the past she had called him awful, a devil, told him he didn’t give a damn for anyone, telling herself, at the same time, the exact truth of what she knew; but what she had always failed to do was to take these truths seriously. Now she knew better. And now he had taken one deliberate step towards the circle of light from the lamp, to let her see the gun in his hand.

  “That’s one thing you were wrong about, Dinah girl. This wasn’t hidden in Mother’s room, it was among my shirts, over there at the flat. I picked it up this evening. It’s loaded. And Dad and I always kept his little war souvenir in good working fettle. We used to practise at a target in the garden. It doesn’t make a very alarming sound, through these walls it wouldn’t carry far. But it kills, Dinah.”

  “Yes,” she said, “we know it kills.”

  Such a tiny thing, blue-black; the barrel jutting out of his fist couldn’t have been more than three inches long, and the whole small weapon scarcely six. It was hard to believe in it, harder still to be afraid of it. She might as well have been looking at a toy, and yet she had good reason to know that it could kill. And curiously, it mattered a great deal that she had never had any practice in being afraid. It cannot be learned all in a minute. In particular she had never before had any reason to be afraid of Hugh, and now that she had good reason, she found it difficult to take even this seriously. In theory she believed; in practice, however incredibly, she suddenly laughed aloud. It disconcerted and yet for a moment encouraged him. She had known him,perhaps, better than he had known her.

  “Look, Dinah, all I’ve done is what I had to do, and I’m going through with it, and my God, surely you’re not the one to stop me? Hell, you think I don’t know you’ve been fond of me? And I wanted you, and I still want you. Dinah, I’m getting out of here…”

  “You won’t get out,” she said. “They’ll be watching the gates. They’re not as green as you think.”

  “I’ll get out. There are other ways than through the gates. The Porsche’s there in the yard at home, they’re not watching that. Dinah—come with me!”

  For one moment she actually thought he meant it. It made no difference, she had already recoiled with so much detestation that no possible tenderness or hope in him could have survived the implications; but for one single instant she almost believed he wanted her to go with him alive. Then she knew better than that. She was the one dangerous witness now. If he forced her out of here with him, she would not last long. Now she knew exactly where she stood. If only she knew the time! How long to nine o’clock and Dave calling for her? How long to the return of Chief Inspector Felse who had left, mysteriously, before noon? He would not leave his case unvetted overnight.

  “You’re coming,” said Hugh very softly, “whether you choose to or not.”

  “How far?” said Dinah. “Where will you ditch me, Hugh? And how far do you think you’ll get, afterwards? How’s your passport, Hugh? Where will you get passage out? You don’t know the professional routes, do you?”

  “Dinah,” he said, moving gently in upon the table that stood between me, “you used to love me—I know you loved me…”

  “God!” she said, sick and furious with revulsion, “if you could only know how I despise you now! It isn’t even the killing—it’s the treachery—the cowardice...”

  “Shut up!” he said in a muted scream that rasped his throat raw. “Shut up, or I’ll kill you here and now…”

  “Kill me, then! Fetch them in running! What will that do for you?”

  He came on quietly, in cold control of himself again after that brief outburst. His thigh touched the rim of the table. Without taking his eyes from her or relaxing for an instant the steadiness of his aim at her body, he lowered his free hand, took the rim of his palm and hoisted the table on one leg, wheeling it aside from between them. She moved promptly to circle with it as it swung, but he had manoeuvred her into a corner, and now she had nowhere to retreat from him.

  She waited for him to move slowly round the rim towards her, and then suddenly she gripped the edge of the table with both hands and heaved it upright, aiming the coffee-pot at him. China and sugar and sandwiches went flying, the brass table-top struck him on the hip, but he stepped sharply back, hardly spattered, and the gun steadied again upon her. Hugh planted a foot deliberately in the wreckage and walked through it, crushing and breaking, his eyes never deflected from their aim.

  “You’re coming with me, Dinah, love, whether you want to or not. You’re coming with me a little way…”

  Her shoulders were flattened against the wall; she could not move any farther. His free hand came out, carefully, smoothly, and gripped her by the wrist.

  The door opened, a small, prosaic, normal sound. Robert came quietly into the room and closed the door after him.

  He looked as he always looked, pallid, colourless, calm, the very fibre of his clan, worn down to the essential substance but made to last for ever. He paused in the doorway to set his course, and after a moment of taking stock he began to move forward into the room. And everything went into slow motion and synchronised with his advancing steps.

  Hugh dropped Dinah as if she counted for nothing; perhaps now she did. She squared her shoulders against the wall, and watched, helpless to do more. Everything had been taken out of her hands. Even the gun ignored her now, its minute, steely eye trained upon Robert.

  But she was not quite forgotten, after all. Suddenly Hugh had remembered her mettle and taken her back into account. She saw that he was moving gradually aside, the gun never wavering, to work himself into a position where he could cover both of them, and no one could get behind him. Dinah moved, too, abruptly aware of the possibilities, stooping in one flashing movement to scoop up a knife from the wreckage of the table, and slide along the wall. But she had moved too late; she could not get out of his vision again,
and he knew too much to shift his aim even for an instant, but still he was aware of what she did.

  “Drop it, Dinah! On the tray, where I can hear!”

  She could not risk the shot that would not even be fired at her. The knife tinkled back harmlessly among the fragments of china.

  “Robert,” said Hugh, softly and earnestly, “it isn’t much I’m asking you for, this time. Not even to lie. Only a head start, that’s all, just time to get away. Nothing new has happened—there needn’t be any alarm. Just give me tonight, that’s all I want. Just tonight—and your silence…”

  Robert had halted, only a few steps into the room, when Hugh moved to put a wall at his back. Slowly he turned to face him directly again.

  “Robert, I’m not asking you to do it for me. But won’t you, for Mother’s sake…?”

  It had been his trump card for years, but this time it fluttered ineffectively to the ground, and Robert’s first advancing step trod it underfoot. The pale, calm face did not change at all.

  “It won’t work any more, Hugh. She’s safe enough from you now. She’s dead.”

  He halted for a moment, and looked at Dinah, and the fixed lines of his long, tired features softened briefly.

  “Go home, Dinah. Just walk out now and take the car, and go. Leave me with him. He won’t try to stop you.” Hugh didn’t move, didn’t make a sound; for suddenly the only weapon he had was the tiny, deadly weapon in his hand, and for all its deadliness, suddenly it was not enough. It seemed to Dinah that she could indeed have walked straight out at the door then, between the two brothers, and got into the Mini and driven away. But she didn’t move, either.

  “Go, please, Dinah,” said Robert gently. “I tried to tell you yesterday that you shouldn’t so much as come near us, let alone ever think of tying yourself to one of us for life.”

  Hugh drew a long, careful breath. “I don’t believe you. You’re lying to me. She isn’t dead, you’re only trying to kid me into giving up…”

  “She’s dead, Hugh. Five or six minutes ago. I came down to telephone Braby. And I heard the table go over. Don’t bet on her any more, Hugh. She’s dead—it’s finished.”

  He was walking forward slowly, measured step by step, and his eyes were fixed on Hugh’s face with an unwavering purpose that matched the fixity of the gun’s one minute black eye. And as he came he talked, quietly, coherently, without passion.

  “Bad enough that I covered up one murder for you, and kept you fed and indulged with money ever since, so that you’d never feel the need to kill again. Bad enough that I’ve acted as your grave-digger and watchman and nurse all this time, and caused another death, all to keep her from ever knowing what you and he between you have done to her name and her life—the only two people she ever cared about in the world. That’s enough. It’s all over now,” said Robert clearly, “I can call things by their proper names now. You’re a murderer and I’m an accessory. And we’re both bastards. And she’s dead! Thank God!”

  Only a few feet separated them now, and still Hugh had not moved. Robert held out his hand with authority for the gun.

  “Give that thing to me!”

  “Keep off!” said Hugh loudly and violently. “Keep off and let me by, or I’ll fire. I’m clearing out!”

  “No, Hugh, you’re not going anywhere. It’s finished.”

  Dinah was distantly aware of a loud knocking that seemed to be within her head, for no one else heard it. Then she knew it for the knocker on the front door. The night nurse arriving? The police returning? Dave coming to fetch her home?

  “Keep off, I warn you, or I’ll kill you!”

  And Robert smiled at him and came on, his hand extended. Dinah understood, a fraction of a second too late, that Robert had his own inviolable reason for moving in like this on an armed and desperate man, a proffered target closing to pointblank range. All he wanted, at least in that moment, was to be dead and done with it, all that long purgatory of horror and disgust. Out in the hall there were men entering, the front door stood open; they would have seen this one subdued light, and it was here they were coming. But Robert did not want them to arrive in time.

  Dinah saw the slight convulsion pass through Hugh’s forearm and hand. She shrieked: “Hugh—no!” And perhaps it was her scream that diverted his attention at the very instant of firing, or perhaps in this face-to-face confrontation his hand shook in superstitious dread, and some last instinct in him tried subconsciously to turn the shot aside, for after all, this was his brother. The report of the shot closed with the echo of Dinah’s scream, and Robert’s tall body jerked a little backwards, folded slowly at the knees, and collapsed in an angular heap. And suddenly the room was full of men, Chief Inspector Felse and Sergeant Moon and half a dozen others, and Dave hard on their heels.

  George Felse said afterwards that there was one moment when he gave Dinah Cressett up for dead, because she launched herself like fury straight between the police and the gun, which had still five serviceable rounds of .25 ACP ammunition in its eight-round magazine, as they afterwards confirmed. Dinah was not thinking of herself or the police, or the nearness or remoteness of her own death, but only intent on reaching Robert’s body and feeling for the pulse and heartbeat that were still alive in him.

  But the moment passed without another tragedy; for Hugh, seeing the hopelessness of resistance, did the only thing left for him to do, and turned his little plaything upon himself.

  This time he felt no superstitious terror, and his hand did not tremble. This time he made no mistake.

  CHAPTER 14

  « ^

  THEY rushed Robert to hospital at emergency speed, siren blaring, and Comerbourne’s chief surgeon spent most of the night getting the bullet out of the wreckage of his left shoulder and putting the pieces back together, which was rather like assembling a jigsaw puzzle. For so small a calibre it had done a lot of damage; if he got off without a long stay in an orthopaedic ward later, he’d be lucky, but there was a good chance of an eighty per cent recovery eventually.

  “Lucky for him,” said George to Sergeant Moon later, “that his father only brought back a Walther 8 from North Africa with him, instead of one of those 9 millimetre Lugers or something even bigger. A lot of the ranking officers in the German army carried those little fellows as auxiliary arms in the last war. I wonder how many of them are still running round loose in this country?”

  They had the report from ballistics by then, and knew that the bullet recovered from Thomas Claybourne’s skull had been fired from this particular Walther 8, as had the companion bullet extracted from the cellar door. They had the coat, and the button from Dinah’s cardigan; they had a firm identification of the body of Thomas Claybourne, and understandable motive, everything necessary to a clear, satisfactory case. Except someone to charge.

  “Ah, and so much the better,” said Sergeant Moon. “Saves the country’s money, makes sure he never does it again, and obviates any resultant harm and distress to innocent parties, which couldn’t do anybody any good, not even the great British public.”

  “Innocent?” murmured George. They were sitting side by side in a settle at the “Duck”, in the quiet late morning hours when they had the place to themselves.

  Diplomatically, Sergeant Moon did not answer. Mrs. Macsen-Martel was dead, the vicar himself was taking charge of her funeral arrangements, and the village had become a kind of closed shop, deceptively talkative except when strangers presumed to join in or even listen to the talk, when it was found to be designed only to avoid imparting information, to derail questions before they ever got asked, and to deploy a smoke-screen in which the more persistent could smother or withdraw.

  “There isn’t going to be any trial, only a statement closing the case,” mused the sergeant, “and they won’t get much out of that. So technically we can hardly plead that anything’s sub judice—unless you’re contemplating other charges?”

  “And if they start pumping you like that in here tonight,” George asked
with interest, “what do you say?”

  “We say we can’t discuss it, it’s sub judice,” said the sergeant without hesitation. “By the time they realise those possible other charges aren’t going to materialise, they’ve lost interest anyhow, and gone off after some new horror. Five hundred miles away, let’s hope!”

  “All right, that’s my answer, too. It’s going to be days, in any case, before I can even question him. I’m certainly not going to rush the doctors on this one. And if he’s going to be a hospital case for weeks, maybe months, afterwards, time is hardly of the essence.”

  “And will you be needing a shorthand writer when you do see him, George?”

  “Now you come to mention it, Jack, I don’t believe I shall. A short written statement later, perhaps, just to round out my report.”

  “Ah, that’s the spirit,” said Sergeant Moon with a gratified sigh. “If you want any help with the editing, I’ll be glad to come along and lend a hand.”

  The village knew, but the village, which knew so well how to disseminate information, knew also how to keep its own counsel. The reporters came with cameras, loitered, questioned, even extracted answers, which were only later seen to be either useless or mutually destructive. There was a large and impressive funeral, to which the whole valley came as a gesture of solidarity, not with the Macsen-Martel clan as such, but with its own people. Later, when the inquest was over and permission was given, there would be another and quieter funeral, which those whose official duty it was would attend, and from which the rest would turn their eyes decently away, out of a discretion which nobody had to dictate. Even the inquest would not bring the newsmen very much joy, only the eyewitnesses’ evidence and the bald fact of a verdict of suicide. And the case would be closed. No trial, no conviction; never, officially, a murderer.