She Died a Lady

by John Dickson Carr

  ‘Speaking personally,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing I admire more than a sea-view. This is a very fine one, I admit. But I can’t help feelin’ that after the first forty-eight hours it’s goin’ to pall a little, and what if I have to go to the lavatory? Burn it all, why can’t you pull me back?’

  We all went out to the stranded wheel-chair. H.M. had even lost the steering-handle, which projected straight out ahead of him over the gulf.

  ‘Well, sir,’ said Craft, ‘you’re bogged pretty nearly to the axles in that soil. We can’t just pull you out. We’ll have to lay hold and give you a yank. But, if we give a yank, I’m afraid it might jerk you right out over the edge.’ Craft considered deeply. ‘Couldn’t you sort of ooze round and get out yourself?’

  ‘“Ooze round,”’ repeated H.M. ‘That’s fine. That’s very helpful. What do you think I am: a goddam snake? Can’t you two stop drivellin’ and think up something practical for a change?’

  ‘After all,’ Craft consoled him, ‘it might be a whole lot worse, even if you did slip. It’s nearly high-tide now and you’d only fall in the water.’

  The back of H.M.’s neck turned purple.

  ‘I’ll tell you something we could do, though,’ Ferrars suggested.

  Very slowly, and with infinite caution, H.M. craned his neck and a part of his body round so that he could get a glimpse of us. The laurel-wreath was now inclined rakishly over one ear, and the cigar was gripped in one corner of his mouth. The look he directed at Ferrars was one of the deepest suspicion.

  Despite himself, Ferrars’ lips were twitching; he had difficulty keeping a straight face. The wind blew flat his light hair, and his greenish eyes were not exactly innocent. Still holding H.M.’s trousers by the braces, he slapped idly at the ground with them.

  ‘I’ll tell you what we could do,’ he amplified. ‘We could get some clothes-line and tie him to the chair.’

  Craft nodded. ‘That’s not a bad idea, sir!’

  ‘Then, of course, we could yank as much as we liked. And he wouldn’t necessarily fall over.’

  ‘What I like,’ said H.M., ‘is that word “necessarily.” It’s so comfortin’. Believe it or not, and strange as it may seem to you, I prefer to do my swimming when not attached to a two-hundred-pound motor wheel-chair. Y’know, you fellers can think up games that would embarrass Houdini.’

  ‘We won’t let you slip,’ Craft assured him. ‘If we don’t do that, what else can you suggest?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ yelled the noble Roman, and began to whack his fist on the arm of the chair. ‘I’m only askin’ you to use a little of the sense that the Lord gave Assyrian monkeys, and –’

  ‘Look out, sir!’ shouted Craft, as the chair tilted about two inches.

  H.M. spat out the cigar, a good effort which carried it high into the air and over the brink. Then, craning cautiously round again, he caught sight of me.

  ‘If that’s Dr Croxley, will you just tell the old man why that feller was chuckin’ bottles at me? Hey? If I remember rightly, it’s the same chap I gave ten bob to yesterday. Oh, my eye. You give a man ten bob, and he goes and buys whisky with it, and then comes back and slings the bottle straight in your face. If that’s not gratitude, son, I never heard of it.’

  ‘Johnson must have thought you were the Emperor Nero.’

  ‘He thought I was who?’

  ‘He saw a film last night, “Quo Vadis?” or something of the sort, and he’s got Nero on the brain. You must admit you were fairly paralysing when you came tearing round that corner.’

  To my astonishment, H.M. looked considerably mollified.

  ‘Well … now. Maybe there is some resemblance, at that,’ he conceded. ‘I told you, didn’t I, that Ferrars here was painting my picture as a Roman Senator?

  ‘Yes,’ said Ferrars, ‘and that’s another thing. If we get you out of this –’

  ‘If you get me out of this?’

  ‘That’s what I said. If we get you out of this, you’re going to promise to put on your clothes like a civilized human being. You’re also going to get out of that infernal wheel-chair for good. Otherwise, so help me, we’ll leave you stuck just where you are until you turn into a statue.’

  ‘How in Satan’s name can I get out of my chair? I’m an invalid.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ retorted Ferrars. ‘The doctor took off that splint this morning. He said it was quite all right to walk on it if you went gently.’

  Again H.M. laid violent hands on his laurel-wreath.

  ‘Some people,’ he observed off-handedly, ‘might think that the proper place to hold elegant and witty converse was the edge of a nice cosy cliff while stickin’ half-way over. Maybe you might. Maybe G. B. Shaw might. But burn me if I do. I tell you straight, son: I feel more like the third episode of the Perils of Pauline, and it’s underminin’ the old man’s composure. Are you goin’ to drag me away from here, or aren’t you?’

  ‘Will you promise to put on your clothes?’

  ‘All right! All right! Only –’

  ‘Look out. sir!’ shouted Craft.

  ‘What we need now,’ said H.M., ‘is a good spectacular landslide. I feel this thing movin’ under me, I tell you! People who could do what you’re doin’ to me would poison babies’ milk and steal the pennies from a blind man.’

  Ferrars nodded as though satisfied. He took one last slap at the ground with H.M.’s trousers, dislodging some money and a key-ring. Then he piled all the clothes on the ground, and turned to me.

  ‘Come along, Doctor,’ he said. ‘There ought to be some clothes-line in the kitchen.’

  Though Martha was not there, we found the clothes-line in one of the lower cupboards. We bound H.M.’s body securely to the back of the chair. Then, with infinite care, we yanked and dragged while a flood of vituperation and obscenity directed us. There was one bad moment when the chair lurched. But we got him back safely. We were all feeling a little queasy when we untied him.

  The only one unaffected now was the noble Roman himself. Majestically, he arose from his chair. Exaggerating the limp in his right foot, he took a few turns up and down. He made a striking figure against the skyline, his toga stirred by the breeze, and had an electrifying effect on two fishermen passing in a boat below. He was just gathering up his clothes, after an evil glance at Ferrars, when Martha came down from the back door.

  Nothing, I think, could ever startle Martha. Even H.M.’s appearance failed to shake her. But there was awe in her voice when she delivered her message.

  ‘If you please,’ she said. ‘Scotland Yard is calling Superintendent Craft on the telephone.’

  There was dead silence on the sunlit cliff. Your skin seemed to crawl with it. I spoke merely from lack of something to say.

  ‘The telephone’s been repaired, then?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ growled H.M. ‘And now maybe we’re goin’ to get some news about the little joker who cut it. Come along, all of you.’

  Ferrars handed him his crutch, and we went to the house. We went through kitchen and dining-room, and into the sitting-room. There, not far from the radio round which four persons had listened to Romeo and Juliet on Saturday night, was the telephone. The sun was on the opposite side of the bungalow, and this room remained gloomy. While we all sat down – I had almost said crouched – Craft picked up the receiver.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Speaking.’ The telephone seemed to be chortling in deep amusement. Craft’s good eye moved over towards H.M. ‘Yes. Yes, he’s here now. Sitting beside me.’

  H.M. sat up with some violence. ‘Who’s that speaking?’ he demanded.

  ‘Chief Inspector Masters.’ Craft put his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone. ‘Have you got any message for him?’

  ‘Yes. Tell the dirty dog I hope he chokes.’

  ‘Sir Henry says to give you his kindest regards, Chief Inspector … What’s that? Yes, certainly I’m sober! … Yes, his toe is much better … Well, no. No, I can’t say he’s enjoying himself.’

 
; ‘Enjoying myself,’ said H.M. ‘Twice on successive days I nearly get killed, and then they ask if I’m enjoying myself. Here, let me talk to the blighter!’

  Again Craft put his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.

  ‘You’re too mad, sir,’ he insisted. ‘And besides – they’ve got it.’

  The telephone talked at great length, though we could distinguish no word. Nobody else spoke. Ferrars was leaning back in a padded chair, his legs crossed in their paint-stained flannels, and his hands thrust deep into the pockets of a grey sweater. His shirt was open at the neck, so that you could see his Adam’s apple move. His eyes rested on his own portrait of Rita, above the fireplace; there was pity in his look, I thought, and also regret. Then he closed his eyes.

  Superintendent Craft’s whole expression grew as fixed as the one glass eye. Fumblingly, he reached into his inside pocket, manipulating notebook and pencil with one hand while he listened. He dropped the notebook on the telephone table and started to write rapidly. At length he drew a deep breath, said a word of thanks – and – and replaced the receiver. His face was even more sepulchrally gloomy when he swung round.

  ‘Well, sir,’ he admitted, with another deep breath, ‘it seems you were right after all.’

  ‘Sure I was right, son.’

  ‘And maybe’ – Craft looked at me – ‘the doctor was right too.’

  ‘Right about what?’ inquired Ferrars, opening his eyes.

  ‘Go on, son!’ H.M. urged impatiently. ‘I’m staying at that feller’s house. I know him. He won’t blab.’

  Craft consulted his notebook.

  ‘Have you ever heard,’ he asked, ‘of a theatrical publication called Spotlight?’

  ‘Sure. It’s a kind of advertising medium for actors. What about it?’

  ‘They couldn’t find a photograph of Barry Sullivan anywhere else. But they eventually ran one down at the Spotlight office: an old one. This morning they took it round to the American Consulate in Grosvenor Square.’

  Craft examined the point of his pencil. His mouth was worried and grim. It was only after a long pause that he continued.

  ‘There’s no “Barry Sullivan” on the records at the Consulate. But, when they saw the photograph, one of the girls in the American passport department recognized it like a shot. They’ve got both his photograph and his right thumbprint there – it’s a new war-time measure – so we can check it easily enough.

  ‘“Barry Sullivan’s” real name was Jacob McNutt. He was born in 1915 at Little Rock, Arkansas. I’ve got all the details.’ Craft tapped the notebook. Then he raised his eyes. ‘Maybe you saw in the papers recently that the American liner Washington would be calling at Galway this week?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Alec Wainright mentioned it.’

  ‘To take Americans and their families who wanted to get back to the United States?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Jacob McNutt, alias Barry Sullivan,’ Craft spoke slowly, ‘together with his wife, booked passage to sail aboard the Washington some time ago.’

  A dim glimmering of the truth, a foreshadowing that came gradually into focus, stirred at the back of my head.

  ‘His wife?’ Ferrars echoed.

  Craft made a slow and portentous nod.

  ‘We couldn’t get a photograph of Mrs Wainright,’ the superintendent explained. ‘But one of the gentlemen at the American Consulate recognized her from the description. The “wife” was Rita Wainright. And he ought to know, because he gave her a visa for the United States.’

  I got up from my chair, but sat down again.

  ‘She carried a British passport, made out in the name of Rita Dulane McNutt. Across the bottom was the official notation, “wife of an American citizen.” That’s the law, you see. An Englishwoman who marries an American doesn’t – by American law – assume her husband’s nationality. She carries her own passport.’

  ‘But Rita,’ I protested, ‘didn’t marry Sullivan?’

  Craft snorted.

  ‘She went through a form of marriage with him, though. Because she had to have that passport.’

  ‘Rita’s got a passport! I saw it upstairs in the dressing-table drawer!’

  ‘Which,’ said Craft, ‘would have been no earthly good to her. You see, Doctor, this ship was sent to take only Americans and their dependants. Also, if she meant to disappear and start a new life, she had to have a new identity. So she had to get a new passport under false pretences.’

  It was H.M., twiddling his thumbs, who explained.

  ‘Looky here, Doctor,’ he said patiently. ‘You saw the whole thing unroll in front of you. But you never noticed what was happening. These two, Rita Wainright and Barry Sullivan, never had the least idea of killin’ themselves. The whole “suicide-pact” was a fake, carefully planned, carefully designed; and acted out, burn me, in a way that rouses my admiration! It was intended to deceive not only Alec Wainright, but the rest of England too.

  ‘That woman (don’t you see?) thought it was her only way out. She really was fond of her husband. She couldn’t bear to hurt him. But she couldn’t give up her boy-friend either. So that hysterical, romantic nature of hers thought of a plan that she imagined suited the case. She wouldn’t just up and run away with Sullivan. But if the husband, and the rest of the world, thought she and Sullivan were dead, they wouldn’t bother any longer.

  ‘Charmin’ idea. Also characteristic. Dodgin’ the responsibility. Don’t you follow it even yet?’

  FOURTEEN

  ‘AND if you don’t,’ added H.M., ‘think back!’

  Automatically he reached for the pocket that should have held his cigar-case, but found only a toga. He regarded this dismally, and then forgot it.

  ‘Rita Wainright came to your surgery, in a terrible stew, on the twenty-second of May. She wanted you to do something for her. What were the first words she said to you? I’ll tell you. She said: “I’ve quarrelled with my solicitor. No clergyman would do it, naturally. And I don’t know any J.P.s. You’ve got to …” And then she stopped. Is that true?’

  I could not stop nodding.

  ‘Yes. It’s true.’

  ‘Sure. And what is it you apply for,’ said H.M., ‘where you’ve got to be recommended and vouched for on personal knowledge by a physician, a lawyer, a clergyman, or a justice of the peace?’

  It was Ferrars who answered, sitting up straight.

  ‘A passport,’ he said.

  The image of Rita in my office, with her red finger-nails and her harassed eyes, looking at corners of the ceiling, always stumbling and drawing back on the edge of telling me something, returned in cruel vividness. ‘It’s all such a mess,’ I could hear her saying. ‘If only Alec would die, or something like that.’ And then a quick, furtive look at me, to see how I took it.

  But still I protested.

  ‘It’s fantastic, I tell you! What would they have used for money? Sullivan had practically none, and Rita certainly hadn’t any.’

  ‘If you remember,’ grunted H.M., ‘you asked her the same question. And it didn’t bother her at all. Not the least little bit in the world, son! Because, d’ye see, she had an answer for it – What about diamonds?’

  His eyes travelled up to the portrait of Rita over the fireplace. Only then did I stop concentrating on the face of the portrait; the tantalizing half-smiling face, to remember what I have indicated in this record: that Ferrars had painted her in diamonds. Diamond necklace at the throat, diamond bracelets on her wrists. As the centre of interest shifted, those painted diamonds seemed to wink with sly reminder.

  ‘You yourself,’ pursued H.M., ‘kept telling me how Professor Wainright loved hangin’ her with diamonds. There’ll be a rule soon that jewellery can’t be taken out of the country; but in the meantime they’re awful negotiable.’

  ‘But Alec Wainright,’ I said, ‘is practically broke. Those diamonds must be all he has left. Rita would never have taken the diamonds and left him without …’

  ‘Pract
ically broke,’ murmured H.M. ‘Uh-huh. Did she know he was broke?’

  (Truth is a dizzying thing.)

  ‘Well – no. Come to think of it, she didn’t. Alec told me so himself.’

  ‘He kept his business affairs strictly under his hat?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And she still thought he was a wealthy man?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Let’s clear up the question while we’re at it,’ said H.M. ‘Does anybody know where those diamonds were kept?’

  ‘I can tell you that,’ interposed Ferrars. ‘In fact, I told you last night. She keeps ’em – or used to keep ’em, anyway – in a biggish ivory box lined with steel, up in her bedroom. You open the box with a little key, like a Yale key only smaller, that’s got “Margarita” and a true-love knot engraved on it.’

  H.M. contemplated me, continuing to twiddle his thumbs. His expression remained sour.

  ‘The husband guessed, of course,’ he said. ‘Every word you quote him as sayin’ on Saturday night proves that. “Kill me? I can see you don’t know my wife. They aren’t planning to kill me. But I can tell you what they are planning to do.” Only, d’ye see, he had it slightly wrong. He didn’t bargain on any fancy fake suicide-pact. He thought they were just goin’ to run away.

  ‘For what happened? You came in and told him those two had thrown themselves over Lovers’ Leap. And it hit him like a mule’s kick. It dazed him. He screamed out that he didn’t believe it. Then what did he do? He ran upstairs to see if her clothes were there. “Her clothes are still there,” he said when he came down; “but –” and that’s where he held up the little key. Meanin’, my fatheads, that the diamonds were gone.’

  There was a silence.

  Ferrars, slowly shaking his head from side to side, kept his gaze mainly on the carpet. Once he glanced up at the portrait, and muscles tightened down his lean jaws.

  ‘Are you saying,’ Ferrars interposed, ‘that Mr Wainright was going to let them take the diamonds?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Even though he’d have not very much money left?’

  ‘There are people like that, son.’ H.M.’s voice was apologetic. ‘The evidence shows Alec Wainright was one of ’em. But can you wonder he’s feelin’ a bit tired and sick and disgusted with the world?’