Lomax Harder, somewhat nervously buttoning his overcoat, said in a quiet but firm and insistent tone: ‘Haven’t you got anything to say?’
John Franting stopped suddenly in front of a shop whose facade bore the sign: ‘Gontle—Gunsmith’.
‘Not in words,’ answered Franting. ‘I’m going in here.’ And he brusquely entered the small, shabby shop.
Lomax Harder hesitated half a second, and then followed his companion.
The shopman was a middle-aged gentleman wearing a black velvet coat.
‘Good-afternoon,’ he greeted Franting, with an expression and in a tone of urbane condescension which seemed to indicate that Franting was a wise as well as a fortunate man in that he knew of the excellence of Gontle’s and had the wit to come into Gontle’s.
For the name of Gontle was favourably and respectfully known wherever triggers are pressed. Not only along the whole length of the Channel coast but throughout England was Gontle’s renowned. Sportsmen would travel to Quangate from the far north, and even from London, to buy guns. To say: ‘I bought it at Gontle’s,’ or, ‘Old Gontle recommended it,’ was sufficient to silence any dispute concerning the merits of a firearm. Experts bowed the head before the unique reputation of Gontle. As for old Gontle, he was extremely and pardonably conceited. His conviction that no other gunsmith in the wide world could compare with him was absolute. He sold guns and rifles with the gesture of a monarch conferring an honour. He never argued; he stated; and the customer who contradicted him was as likely as not to be courteously and icily informed by Gontle of the geographical situation of the shop-door. Such shops exist in the English provinces, and nobody knows how they have achieved their renown. They could exist nowhere else.
‘’d-afternoon,’ said Franting gruffly, and paused.
‘What can I do for you?’ asked Mr Gontle, as if saying: ‘Now don’t be afraid. This shop is tremendous, and I am tremendous; but I shall not eat you.’
‘I want a revolver,’ Franting snapped.
‘Ah! A revolver!’ commented Mr Gontle, as if saying: ‘A gun or a rifle, yes! But a revolver—an arm without individuality, manufactured wholesale!…However, I suppose I must deign to accommodate you.’
‘I presume you know something about revolvers?’ asked Mr Gontle, as he began to produce the weapons.
‘A little.’
‘Do you know the Webley Mark III?’
‘Can’t say that I do.’
‘Ah! It is the best for all common purposes.’ And Mr Gontle’s glance said: ‘Have the goodness not to tell me it isn’t.’
Franting examined the Webley Mark III.
‘You see,’ said Mr Gontle, ‘the point about it is that until the breach is properly closed it cannot be fired. So that it can’t blow open and maim or kill the would-be murderer.’ Mr Gontle smiled archly at one of his oldest jokes.
‘What about suicides?’ Franting grimly demanded.
‘Ah!’
‘You might show me just how to load it,’ said Franting.
Mr Gontle, having found ammunition, complied with this reasonable request.
‘The barrel’s a bit scratched,’ said Franting.
Mr Gontle inspected the scratch with pain. He would have denied the scratch, but could not.
‘Here’s another one,’ said he, ‘since you’re so particular.’ He simply had to put customers in their place.
‘You might load it,’ said Franting.
Mr Gontle loaded the second revolver.
‘I’d like to try it,’ said Franting.
‘Certainly,’ said Mr Gontle, and led Franting out of the shop by the back exit and down to a cellar where revolvers could be experimented with.
Lomax Harder was now alone in the shop. He hesitated a long time and then picked up the revolver rejected by Franting, fingered it, put it down, and picked it up again. The back-door of the shop opened suddenly, and startled, Harder dropped the revolver into his overcoat pocket: a thoughtless, quite unpremeditated act. He dared not remove the revolver. The revolver was as fast in his pocket as though the pocket had been sewn up.
‘And cartridges?’ asked Mr Gontle of Franting.
‘Oh,’ said Franting, ‘I’ve only had one shot. Five’ll be more than enough for the present. What does it weigh?’
‘Let me see. Four-inch barrel? Yes. One pound four ounces.’
Franting paid for the revolver, receiving thirteen shillings in change from a five-pound note, and strode out of the shop, weapon in hand. He was gone before Lomax Harder decided upon a course of action.
‘And for you, sir?’ said Mr Gontle, addressing the poet.
Harder suddenly comprehended that Mr Gontle had mistaken him for a separate customer, who had happened to enter the shop a moment after the first one. Harder and Franting had said not a word to one another during the purchase, and Harder well knew that in the most exclusive shops it is the custom utterly to ignore a second customer until the first one has been dealt with.
‘I want to see some foils.’ Harder spoke stammeringly the only words that came into his head.
‘Foils!’ exclaimed Mr Gontle, shocked, as if to say: ‘Is it conceivable that you should imagine that I, Gontle, gunsmith, sell such things as foils?’
After a little talk Harder apologised and departed—a thief.
‘I’ll call later and pay the fellow,’ said Harder to his restive conscience. ‘No. I can’t do that. I’ll send him some anonymous postal orders.’
He crossed the Parade and saw Franting, a small left-handed figure all alone far below on the deserted sands, pointing the revolver. He thought that his ear caught the sound of a discharge, but the distance was too great for him to be sure. He continued to watch, and at length Franting walked westward diagonally across the beach.
‘He’s going back to the Bellevue,’ thought Harder, the Bellevue being the hotel from which he had met Franting coming out half an hour earlier. He strolled slowly towards the white hotel. But Franting, who had evidently come up the face of the cliff in the penny lift, was before him. Harder, standing outside, saw Franting seated in the lounge. Then Franting rose and vanished down a long passage at the rear of the lounge. Harder entered the hotel rather guiltily. There was no hall-porter at the door, and not a soul in the lounge or in sight of the lounge. Harder went down the long passage.
3
At the end of the passage Lomax Harder found himself in a billiard-room—an extension built partly of brick and partly of wood on a sort of courtyard behind the main structure of the hotel. The roof, of iron and grimy glass, rose to a point in the middle. On two sides the high walls of the hotel obscured the light. Dusk was already closing in. A small fire burned feebly in the grate. A large radiator under the window was steel-cold, for though summer was finished, winter had not officially begun in the small economically-run hotel: so that the room was chilly; nevertheless, in deference to the English passion for fresh air and discomfort, the window was wide open.
Franting, in his overcoat and with an unlit cigarette between his lips, stood lowering with his back to the bit of fire. At sight of Harder he lifted his chin in a dangerous challenge.
‘So you’re still following me about,’ he said resentfully to Harder.
‘Yes,’ said the latter, with his curious gentle primness of manner. ‘I came down here specially to talk to you. I should have said all I had to say earlier, only you happened to be going out of the hotel just as I was coming in. You didn’t seem to want to talk in the street; but there’s some talking has to be done. I’ve a few things I must tell you.’ Harder appeared to be perfectly calm, and he felt perfectly calm. He advanced from the door towards the billiard-table.
Franting raised his hand, displaying his square-ended, brutal fingers in the twilight.
‘Now listen to me,’ he said with cold, measured ferocity. ‘You can’t te
ll me anything I don’t know. If there’s some talking to be done I’ll do it myself, and when I’ve finished you can get out. I know that my wife has taken a ticket for Copenhagen by the steamer from Harwich, and that she’s been seeing to her passport, and packing. And of course I know that you have interests in Copenhagen and spend about half your precious time there. I’m not worrying to connect the two things. All that’s got nothing to do with me. Emily has always seen a great deal of you, and I know that the last week or two she’s been seeing you more than ever. Not that I mind that. I know that she objects to my treatment of her and my conduct generally. That’s all right, but it’s a matter that only concerns her and me. I mean that it’s no concern of yours, for instance, or anybody else’s. If she objects enough she can try and divorce me. I doubt if she’d succeed, but you can never be sure—with these new laws. Anyhow she’s my wife till she does divorce me, and so she has the usual duties and responsibilities towards me—even though I was the worst husband in the world. That’s how I look at it, in my old-fashioned way. I’ve just had a letter from her—she knew I was here, and I expect that explains how you knew I was here.’
‘It does,’ said Lomax Harder quietly.
Franting pulled a letter from his inner pocket and unfolded it. ‘Yes,’ he said, glancing at it, and read some sentences aloud:
‘I have absolutely decided to leave you, and I won’t hide from you that I know you know who is doing what he can to help me. I can’t live with you any longer. You may be very fond of me, as you say, but I find your way of showing your fondness too humiliating and painful. I’ve said this to you before, and now I’m saying it for the last time.
And so on and so on.’
Franting tore the letter in two, dropped one half on the floor, twisted the other half into a spill, turned to the fire, and lit his cigarette.
‘That’s what I think of her letter,’ he proceeded, the cigarette between his teeth. ‘You’re helping her, are you? Very well. I don’t say you’re in love with her, or she with you. I’ll make no wild statements. But if you aren’t in love with her I wonder why you’re taking all this trouble over her. Do you go about the world helping ladies who say they’re unhappy just for the pure sake of helping? Never mind. Emily isn’t going to leave me. Get that into your head. I shan’t let her leave me. She has money, and I haven’t. I’ve been living on her, and it would be infernally awkward for me if she left me for good. That’s a reason for keeping her, isn’t it? But you may believe me or not—it isn’t my reason. She’s right enough when she says I’m very fond of her. That’s a reason for keeping her too. But it isn’t my reason. My reason is that a wife’s a wife, and she can’t break her word just because everything isn’t lovely in the garden. I’ve heard it said I’m unmoral. I’m not all unmoral. And I feel particularly strongly about what’s called the marriage tie.’ He drew the revolver from his overcoat pocket, and held it up to view. ‘You see this thing. You saw me buy it. Now you needn’t be afraid. I’m not threatening you; and it’s no part of my game to shoot you. I’ve nothing to do with your goings-on. What I have to do with is the goings-on of my wife. If she deserts me—for you or for anybody or for nobody—I shall follow her, whether it’s to Copenhagen or Bangkok or the North Pole, and I shall kill her—with just this very revolver that you saw me buy. And now you can get out.’
Franting replaced the revolver, and began to consume the cigarette with fierce and larger puffs.
Lomax Harder looked at the grim, set, brutal, scowling, bitter face, and knew that Franting meant what he had said. Nothing would stop him from carrying out his threat. The fellow was not an argufier; he could not reason; but he had unmistakable grit and would never recoil from the fear of consequences. If Emily left him, Emily was a dead woman; nothing in the end could protect her from the execution of her husband’s menace. On the other hand, nothing would persuade her to remain with her husband. She had decided to go, and she would go. And indeed the mere thought of this lady to whom he, Harder, was utterly devoted, staying with her husband and continuing to suffer the tortures and humiliations which she had been suffering for years—this thought revolted him. He could not think it.
He stepped forward along the side of the billiard-table, and simultaneously Franting stepped forward to meet him. Lomax Harder snatched the revolver which was in his pocket, aimed and pulled the trigger.
Franting collapsed, with the upper half of his body somehow balanced on the edge of the billiard-table. He was dead. The sound of the report echoed in Harder’s ear like the sound of a violin string loudly twanged by a finger. He saw a little reddish hole in Franting’s bronzed right temple.
‘Well,’ he thought, ‘somebody had to die. And it’s better him than Emily.’ He felt that he had performed a righteous act. Also he felt a little sorry for Franting.
Then he was afraid. He was afraid for himself, because he wanted not to die, especially on the scaffold; but also for Emily Franting, who would be friendless and helpless without him; he could not bear to think of her alone in the world—the central point of a terrific scandal. He must get away instantly…
Not down the corridor back into the hotel-lounge! No! That would be fatal! The window. He glanced at the corpse. It was more odd, curious, than affrighting. He had made the corpse. Strange! He could not unmake it. He had accomplished the irrevocable. Impressive! He saw Franting’s cigarette glowing on the linoleum in the deepening dusk, and picked it up and threw it into the fender.
Lace curtains hung across the whole width of the window. He drew one aside, and looked forth. The light was much stronger in the courtyard than within the room. He put his gloves on. He gave a last look at the corpse, straddled the window-sill, and was on the brick pavement of the courtyard. He saw that the curtain had fallen back into the perpendicular.
He gazed around. Nobody! Not a light in any window! He saw a green wooden gate, pushed it; it yielded; then a sort of entry-passage…In a moment, after two half-turns, he was on the Marine Parade again. He was a fugitive. Should he fly to the right, to the left? Then he had an inspiration. An idea of genius for baffling pursuers. He would go into the hotel by the main-entrance. He went slowly and deliberately into the portico, where a middle-aged hall-porter was standing in the gloom.
‘Good-evening, sir.’
‘Good-evening. Have you got any rooms?’
‘I think so, sir. The housekeeper is out, but she’ll be back in a moment—if you’d like a seat. The manager’s away in London.’
The hall-porter suddenly illuminated the lounge, and Lomax Harder, blinking, entered and sat down.
‘I might have a cocktail while I’m waiting,’ the murderer suggested with a bright and friendly smile. ‘A Bronx.’
‘Certainly, sir. The page is off duty. He sees to orders in the lounge, but I’ll attend to you myself.’
‘What a hotel!’ thought the murderer, solitary in the chilly lounge, and gave a glance down the long passage. ‘Is the whole place run by the hall-porter? But of course it’s the dead season.’
Was it conceivable that nobody had heard the sound of the shot?
Harder had a strong impulse to run away. But no! To do so would be highly dangerous. He restrained himself.
‘How much?’ he asked of the hall-porter, who had arrived with surprising quickness, tray in hand and glass on tray.
‘A shilling, sir.’
The murderer gave him eighteenpence, and drank off the cocktail.
‘Thank you very much, sir.’ The hall-porter took the glass.
‘See here!’ said the murderer. ‘I’ll look in again. I’ve got one or two little errands to do.’
And he went, slowly, into the obscurity of the Marine Parade.
4
Lomax Harder leant over the left arm of the sea-wall of the man-made port of Quangate. Not another soul was there. Night had fallen. The lighthouse at the extremity of the right
arm was occulting. The lights—some red, some green, many white—of ships at sea passed in both directions in endless processions. Waves plashed gently against the vast masonry of the wall. The wind, blowing steadily from the north-west, was not cold. Harder, looking about—though he knew he was absolutely alone, took his revolver from his overcoat pocket and stealthily dropped it into the sea. Then he turned round and gazed across the small harbour at the mysterious amphitheatre of the lighted town, and heard public clocks and religious clocks striking the hour.
He was a murderer, but why should he not successfully escape detection? Other murderers had done so. He had all his wits. He was not excited. He was not morbid. His perspective of things was not askew. The hall-porter had not seen his first entrance into the hotel, nor his exit after the crime. Nobody had seen them. He had left nothing behind in the billiard-room. No fingermarks on the window-sill. (The putting-on of his gloves was in itself a clear demonstration that he had fully kept his presence of mind.) No footmarks on the hard, dry pavement of the courtyard.
Of course there was the possibility that some person unseen had seen him getting out of the window. Slight: but still a possibility! And there was also the possibility that someone who knew Franting by sight had noted him walking by Franting’s side in the streets. If such a person informed the police and gave a description of him, enquiries might be made…No! Nothing in it. His appearance offered nothing remarkable to the eye of a casual observer—except his forehead, of which he was rather proud, but which was hidden by his hat.
It was generally believed that criminals always did something silly. But so far he had done nothing silly, and he was convinced that, in regard to the crime, he never would do anything silly. He had none of the desire, supposed to be common among murderers, to revisit the scene of the crime or to look upon the corpse once more. Although he regretted the necessity for his act, he felt no slightest twinge of conscience. Somebody had to die, and surely it was better that a brute should die than the heavenly, enchanting, martyrised creature whom his act had rescued for ever from the brute! He was aware within himself of an ecstasy of devotion to Emily Franting—now a widow and free. She was a unique woman. Strange that a woman of such gifts should have come under the sway of so obvious a scoundrel as Franting. But she was very young at the time, and such freaks of sex had happened before and would happen again; they were a widespread phenomenon in the history of the relations of men and women. He would have killed a hundred men if a hundred men had threatened her felicity. His heart was pure; he wanted nothing from Emily in exchange for what he had done in her defence. He was passionate in her defence. When he reflected upon the coarseness and cruelty of the gesture by which Franting had used Emily’s letter to light his cigarette, Harder’s cheeks grew hot with burning resentment.
Resorting to Murder: Holiday Mysteries Page 7
