Mr. Bateman noted the scowl and shivered, for Inspector Cockrill had an acid tongue and laid about him right lustily when upset, and his was a name to conjure with in North Kent. However, the jury must be headed off any verdict but an open one. The Coroner took a deep breath and came to Ellen.
He thought the jury would not be unduly swayed by the fact that Mrs. March had been the last to see the deceased alive. If he understood it aright, said Mr. Bateman, kindly making matters clear for those of the jury who had not yet arrived at a conclusion, their foreman had propounded a theory that the coramine might have been carried down to the lodge in the green fountain pen, and–Mr. Billock would correct him if he overstated the case–used as a syringe to inject the poison. Well, now, that was a very ingenious notion, a very ingenious notion indeed; but he felt sure the jury would ask themselves if in fact such a thing would be possible; if it would be possible to introduce the nib into the skin–by a sharp jab, perhaps, he could not help elaborating, warming a little to the theory himself, and pressing the plunger which would–er–squirt the liquid possibly into a vein. It sounded very unlikely and silly when he put it into words and he apologized for his own momentary enthusiasm but repeating that he supposed that the jury would consider it unlikely in the extreme that such a thing could have been done. And yet, medically speaking, he supposed it was just possible. He dithered and havered, and Cockrill’s brow grew steadily more black. Mr. Bateman noted it and became all at once perfectly convinced that the thing would have been impossible–impossible. He felt sure the jury would perfectly agree with him, and suddenly grew tired of the whole thing and closed his speech with a rather peremptory instruction that they should bring in a verdict of murder by person or persons unknown.
The jury, without retiring, brought in a verdict of murder–against Mrs. Ellen March.
9
IF COCKRILL’S BOWLER were really not his own, the owner was in for a shock. He stood twisting it ruthlessly between his nicotined fingers, facing the stricken family in the fast-emptying courtroom, the Coroner having apologetically scribbled out a warrant for Ellen’s arrest and bound over the witnesses. “She’ll have to appear before the magistrate’s court tomorrow or the next day,” said Cockrill. “I’ll arrange it as soon as I can. Meanwhile, I’m afraid …”
Ellen stood helplessly, staring at him. “You’re not going to take me to prison?”
“It isn’t like prison exactly,” said Cockie gruffly, looking down into the hat. “Just the police station at Heronsford. You’ll be quite comfortable. It won’t be too bad.”
They all stood looking at Ellen, speechless, dumbfounded by the suddenness of the blow. Bella said at last: “Inspector, can’t you do something? Can’t you stop this–this awful mistake? You can’t really let her be taken away. She–it’s all too horrible, it’s impossible. I can’t believe it’s happening.” She ran to Ellen and put her arms round her. “Ellen, my dear, my poor child, it’s too dreadful, it’s the most ghastly mistake …”
Ellen seemed hardly to hear. She looked over Bella’s shoulder to Philip and for a moment all her brave jauntiness was gone. Claire said into the silence: “Oh, God, this is too awful!”
Peta went to Ellen, gently disengaging Bella’s clinging arms. “Don’t worry Nell just now, Bella darling. She’d rather be left alone.” To Ellen she said: “Don’t think that we believe one word of this, not for a moment; it’s all just a stupid and fantastic mistake. But if they insist on taking you to this frightful place for a little while, look, darling, I’ll cope with Antonia for you; I’ll look after her every minute of the day, I promise you she shall be all right …”
Ellen thought of those long, fluttering, incompetent hands doing their loving best for her baby; but she summoned all her courage to smile and say, “Thank you, Peta, I know you will and I’ll try not to worry. Stick to her diet and don’t–don’t drop her in the bath, darling! She’s so slippery, it’s like trying to wash a poached egg.”
Philip had pulled himself together and was rushing between Cockrill and the departing Mr. Bateman, imploring them to see some sense, to realize the utter absurdity of this decision, to take his word for it as a doctor that such an injection could not possibly have been given, to do something, to undo something, well, for God’s sake, only to say something then. Mr. Bateman was frightened and, being frightened, became pompous and noncommittal; he could do nothing to reverse the verdict of a jury, and he regretted that important affairs, urgent affairs, impelled him to hurry away … Cockrill merely stood staring at Ellen, twisting his hat. “I’m sorry, Dr. March; there’s nothing to be done about it. Except for–for being alone, she’ll be all right.”
Except for being alone; shut up alone in a cage, put there by the stupidity of men, with the cold fear in her heart that all men might be as stupid, that a net was closing about her which all reason, all truth, all innocence could not destroy. Philip shivered. He started forward to go to her, as she stood pathetically a little apart, as though cut off from them already, by invisible bars; to go to her with comforting promises that he would look after things, that all would be well; with reassurance, with love. She saw the movement. She glanced from him to Claire, standing by watching his face, watching with agony the return, in pain, of his tenderness, and she lifted one eyebrow in her cynical way and once more was the Ellen he had come to believe in: indomitable, self-sufficient, unresponsive, cool. Claire lowered her lovely head into her hands and wept; Philip turned away with a hurt and angry frown; and Ellen nodded cheerfully to Cockrill and the two policemen who waited behind her and turned and went with them.
Claire slept in Ellen’s room that night, with the baby, Philip having moved temporarily into hers. Peta had protested violently against this arrangement. “I promised Ellen that I would look after Antonia; I promised her, I promised her … Bella, do tell Claire that I can have the baby tonight, do tell her not to butt in …” To Claire she said viciously that anyway it was jolly indecent, considering about her and Philip, and the last thing Ellen would have wanted. “Philip, I think you ought to put a stop to this. You know Ellen wouldn’t want Claire to be the one to sleep in her room with the baby, considering everything …”
Philip sat wearily at the dinner table, his head in his hands. “Oh, do shut up, Peta; what does it matter who sleeps with the kid as long as it’s someone responsible? Ellen wouldn’t care two hoots.”
Bella could see that Claire was working up for a scene; it had been a terrible day and she felt she could bear no more. “Peta, dear, let it be as we’ve arranged it. Claire’s a very light sleeper, and you know, darling, that nothing will wake you once you’ve gone off …”
“I’d wake if the baby cried.”
“You wouldn’t,” said Claire.
“I would.”
“The thing is, really,” said Edward, speaking in his slow, half-pitiful, half-humourous way, “that Claire’s room is nearer mine than yours, Peta, and Philip has to be near me in case I go barmy in the night and come and try and kill any of you. I mean, it’s quite true what Philip said to the Coroner about me today, but we’re not sure yet that I’m always acting. I may really be quite batty for all we know.”
Bella gave Peta a miserable half-nod. “Well, all right,” said Peta, ungraciously. To Stephen, as they stood together on the front terrace after his evening visit, she repeated: “All the same, I think Ellen’ll be furious when she comes back. Fortunately I don’t think that can be long, Stephen; do you?”
“Well, I can’t promise that,” said Stephen. “She’s been committed on a Coroner’s warrant, you see.”
“Yes, but, Stephen, surely you … I mean, surely it’s just a question of the magistrates or whoever it is next, saying that it’s all too silly and letting her go!”
“Not quite,” said Stephen.
“But, good Lord, you think it’s silly, don’t you? You don’t think anyone could give an injection with a fountain pen? Though I must admit that Philip says it could just possibly
be possible.”
“And there was some ink on your grandfather’s desk, Peta; the pen could have been brought down there with anything in it, and refilled with ink afterwards.”
“Yes, but …”
“You see, there’s no witness to what Ellen did, is there? You had Bella there with you, but Ellen didn’t. No, I don’t say for a minute that she did kill your grandfather, but it isn’t all so utterly fantastic as you want to think, and I’m looking ahead to what the magistrates may say–and beyond that. You see it is true that Ellen could have got the glass down for your grandfather, from the shelf; she could have polished off her fingermarks in the sitting-room behind his back, or even gone into the bathroom and done it there; she could have polished the telephone for some reason–which would account for your fingerprints not being on it, though you were the last to use it. I don’t say that Ellen did it, but I have to face the fact that she could have done it. She was admittedly the last to see Sir Richard alive.”
Peta looked at him, biting her lip. “I just want not to believe it. I just want Ellen to be free!” She took his arm, walking down the broad, shallow front steps with him and along the curving drive; leaning her weight a little against him, confidingly, more nearly loving and friendly than she had been since that ugly moment when he had insisted upon sending for Cockrill–a hundred aeons of hell ago. The lodge lay before them, small and pretty and white in the gentle evening sun. And suddenly she stopped, clutching at his arm. “She couldn’t! Ellen couldn’t have killed Grandfather! Someone was in the lodge after her; when Ellen left the lodge the curtain was pulled across the window–but when Claire saw it in the morning, it had been pulled back! Who pulled that curtain back?”
Stephen looked at her, miserable at having to prick the bubble of her naïve triumph. “Well, I suppose your grandfather pulled it back.”
“But then he couldn’t have been injected with coramine from the green fountain pen, because he pulled it back after Ellen left the lodge.”
“Nobody supposes for a moment that he was injected with poison from the pen,” said Stephen, “except that old fool, Billock, I suppose, and his chums. But Ellen could have put the poison in the glass, Peta; she could have left the glass beside your grandfather–possibly he asked her to get it for him; we don’t know. And after she left the lodge, hours afterwards, if you like, he may have drunk from the glass and died. Death from over-stimulation of the heart isn’t a violent affair, it seems. He could have a little spasm or two perhaps, but it would be largely a matter of coma, gradually coming on. He might easily have just sat on at his desk, simply falling against it as he lost consciousness. He may have been all by himself when he died.”
“But Stephen,” said Peta, “that’s right back where we started from. How could Ellen have put the poison in the glass. She went down to the lodge in her bathing-dress, she wasn’t carrying anything except the pen, and we surely agree that it’s impossible that she could have used the pen to inject the stuff. Well, that being so–how did she take the poison down?”
“Well, she may easily have carried it there in the pen,” said Stephen, apologetically.
Claire having won her point, tucked up the baby after a ten o’clock bottle and herself went to bed. At eleven, a siren screamed and a flying bomb droned its relentless flight between the balloon cables and made for London–there to disappear in a mushroom of mauve-grey smoke licked through with flame; with flame and destruction and sorrow and pain and death. She switched on her light and looked over at Antonia, sleeping, tight-curled as a rosebud, in her cot, and settled down to rest again. Through the open windows the summer moonlight shone pale and glimmering into the room, and outside in the corridor a board creaked.
A board creaked. And was still. And creaked again. Someone was creeping stealthily past her door.
She sat bolt upright in her bed, holding her breath, listening. Only the soft breathing of the baby, only the terrible thudding of her own heart … But now on the painted woodwork of the door came a little fluttering sound, a little scratching sound as of fingers moving there … They felt their way down the panel, softly moving in the darkness of the corridor, to the handle of the door. She knew that soon they must find the handle; that the handle would turn, the door would slowly open: and in a moment she saw the brass knob move and the almost imperceptible widening of the crack between the door and the jamb. Into her numbed brain came one thought: “Edward!” And almost as the thought was born there was a tiny whisper: “Claire!” And she knew it was his voice. It whispered again: “Claire!” With a violent effort of will she fought down her terror and, fumbling for the bedside light, clicked on the switch. Edward stood in the doorway, blinking. He said, quite naturally: “Hoi–mind the black-out!” and padded across and drew the curtains. Then he padded back.
And suddenly it was only little Edward, after all, standing blinking apologetically in the sudden lamplight, smiling at her, saying that he had a simply brilliant idea and he had to talk to someone but he’d listened at Peta’s and Philip’s doors and they were both snortling away like hell, and though he’d knocked and whispered, nothing woke those two up. He perched himself on the edge of her bed, curled in his gay silk dressing gown. “What I thought was this, Claire: you know about Peta’s fingerprints?”
“Not being on the telephone, you mean?”
“Yes. Because that definitely means that the telephone must have been wiped. And surely to goodness it could only have been wiped by the murderer.”
“Stephen seems to have said to Peta this evening that Ellen could have wiped it before she went away, leaving the stuff in the glass for Grandfather to drink later.” She added, hastily: “Not that I think Ellen’s guilty, and I’m sure Stephen doesn’t either. He only says she could have.”
“Well, I don’t see how she could; what on earth excuse would she make to Grandfather? I don’t believe Ellen wiped the telephone at all, and I don’t believe she put the poison in the glass, and I don’t believe she took it down to the lodge in that fantastic idea of the pen. I believe something quite different: something marvellous!”
“I don’t see what you’re getting at,” said Claire.
“I’m getting at Brough,” said Edward, and kicked up his feet with triumph so that his scarlet slippers flew into the air.
There was a long silence while Claire thought it all out. She said at last, slowly: “Of course Brough never did like Grandfather. On the other hand, Teddy, you don’t kill people just because you don’t like them–not even if you’re Brough.”
“Yes, but the will,” said Edward.
“Brough didn’t lose or gain by the change of the will. Of course there was the Serafita brooch for Rosy-Posy; and he is fond of Rosy. In fact, I believe she’s the only person in the world he really cares for.”
“Except Philip,” said Edward.
“Except Philip! My God, Edward–the will! Brough does care for Philip and he didn’t care two hoots for Grandfather … If Grandfather was cutting Philip out of the will …”
“I know,” said Edward, hugging the bedpost, grinning all over with delight. “That’s what I thought. That was my idea. I mean, it would be so lovely if it could have been Brough all the time, Claire, because it would show I wasn’t a murderer and barmy after all. The only thing is, how could Brough have known about the will?”
“Oh, I don’t know, but he could easily have found out. At any rate, he knew all about giving Grandfather injections of coramine, because Dr. Brown showed him and Mrs. Brough in case Grandfather was taken ill in the grounds; and when you passed out that day and Philip gave you the injection and afterwards showed us the syringe and the coramine, Brough was just outside on the terrace, doing the geraniums. I remember Philip saying he was sorry, because he nearly squirted water on Brough.” She added: “I daresay the Turtle was listening at the door afterwards at lunch, and heard Grandfather shouting at the top of his voice that he was going to disinherit us all, and she’s sure to have told Mrs. Brough.
”
But Edward was still nursing the heart of his great discovery. “I think it’s more likely that Grandfather told Brough himself!”
“Grandfather told Brough he was changing his will? Why on earth should he? And anyway, when?”
“When he called Brough in to witness the signature,” said Edward, and sat up expectantly regarding her with shining eyes.
The sirens wailed on and off all night, but nobody cared. They all got up and crowded into the kitchen and made cups of cocoa, rejoicing at Edward’s discovery, and afterwards went back to bed, excited and relieved. Just before dawn another siren howled, and the All Clear did not go till half past six. This time Philip got out of bed and dressed and went to the telephone. “I say, I’m frightfully sorry to be so early, Inspector; I hope I didn’t wake you up?”
Crooked Wreath Page 11
