The Layton Court Mystery

by Anthony Berkeley

  ‘I did my best to put you off that track,’ said Alec with a slight smile.

  ‘Oh, you did. It wasn’t your fault that I clung to him so persistently.’

  ‘I tried hard to stop you putting your foot in it, if you remember.’

  ‘I know. And I daresay it’s lucky you did. I might have put things a good deal more plainly to him, with extremely awkward results, if you hadn’t dinned it into me so hard.’

  ‘Well,’ Alec said slowly, ‘what are you going to do about it, now you’ve presumably got at the truth at last?’

  ‘Do about it? Forget it, of course. I told you my views just now, when I said the man who killed Stanworth ought to be acclaimed as a public benefactor. As that is unfortunately out of the question, the next best thing is to forget as diligently as possible that Stanworth did not after all shoot himself, as everybody else believes.’

  ‘Humph!’ said Alec, gazing out of the window. ‘I wonder! You’re really sure of that?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Roger with decision. ‘Anything else would be ludicrous under the circumstances. We won’t discuss that side of it again.’

  There was a little pause.

  ‘The – the second woman,’ Alec said tentatively. ‘How were you able to identify her so positively?’

  Roger drew the envelope out of his breast pocket, opened it, and carefully extracted the hair. He laid it across his knee for the moment and contemplated it in silence. Then with a sudden movement he picked it up and threw it through the open window.

  ‘There goes a vital piece of evidence,’ he said with a smile. ‘Well, for one thing, there was nobody else in the house with just that particular shade of hair, was there?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ Alec replied.

  There was another silence, rather longer this time.

  Then Roger, glancing curiously across at his companion, remarked very airily:

  ‘Just to satisfy my natural curiosity, Alec, why exactly did you kill Stanworth?’

  chapter twenty – eight

  What Really Did Happen

  Alec contemplated the tips of his shoes for a moment. Then he looked up suddenly. ‘It wasn’t exactly murder, you know,’ he said abruptly.

  ‘Certainly not,’ Roger agreed. ‘It was a well-merited execution.’

  ‘No, I don’t mean that. I mean, if I hadn’t killed Stanworth, he would probably have killed me. It was partly self-defence. I’ll tell you the whole story in a minute.’

  ‘Yes, I should like to hear what really happened. That is, if you feel yourself at liberty to tell me, of course. I don’t want to force confidences about – well, about the second lady in the case.’

  ‘About Barbara? Oh, there’s nothing that reflects on her, and I think you ought to hear the truth. I always meant to tell you the whole thing if you found out that I did it, and of course, if you were intending to take any drastic step, such as telling the police or trying to get Jefferson arrested. That’s why I made you promise to tell me before you did anything like that.’

  ‘Quite so,’ Roger nodded understandingly. ‘A good many things are plain to me now. Why you hung back so much and were so unenthusiastic and threw cold water on everything and pretended to be so dull and refused to believe that a murder had been committed at all, although I’d proved it to you beyond any shadow of doubt.’

  ‘I was trying to keep you off the right track all the time. I really never thought you’d find out.’

  ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have done if the significance of that hair hadn’t dawned on me at last. After that everything seemed to come in a series of flashes. Even then I might not have hit on the truth with such certainty if two particular photographs hadn’t suddenly developed themselves in my mind.’

  ‘Tell me all your side of it, then I’ll tell you mine.’

  ‘Very well. As I said, that hair was the clue to the whole thing. I’d taken it quite idly out of my pocket out there in the garden and was having a look at it, when it suddenly struck me that whose ever it might be it was certainly not one of Mrs Plant’s. I stared at it hard enough then, I can tell you, and the second realization occurred to me that, from the colour at any rate, it looked uncommonly like one of Barbara’s. Then the first of the pictures flashed across my mind. It was of Graves sorting the post just before lunch yesterday. He had only three letters, and they were all of exactly the same appearance; same shaped envelopes and typewritten addresses. One was for Mrs Plant, one for Jefferson – and one for Barbara. The first two I’d already accounted for, now I seemed to be accounting for the third. Add to all that Barbara’s ill-concealed agitation the next morning and the fact that, for no apparent cause whatever, she broke off her engagement to you at the same time, and the thing was as plain as daylight – Barbara was also in the library that night and for some reason or other the poor kid had got into Stanworth’s clutches.’

  ‘She hadn’t,’ Alec put in. ‘It was – ’

  ‘All right, Alec; you can tell me all that in the proper place. Let me finish my story first. Well, having got so far, of course I asked myself – What light does this throw on Stanworth’s death? Does it give a definite pointer to any person? The answer was obvious. Mr Alexander Grierson! I gasped at first, I can assure you, but when I got rather more used to the idea, daylight simply flooded in. First of all, there was your hanging back all the time; that began to take on a very significant aspect. Then there was your height and your strength, which fitted in very nicely, and I knew that your place in Worcestershire, where you must have spent most of your boyhood, is liberally supplied with lattice windows, so that you might be expected to be up to all the tricks of the trade regarding them. So far, in fact, so good.’

  ‘But what about that footprint? I thought I’d managed that rather neatly. By Jove, I remember the shock you gave me when you discovered that and the way I got out of the library that night. I’d thought that was absolutely untraceable.’

  ‘Yes, that did give me an awkward couple of minutes, until I remembered that you’d run back to get your pipe while I was talking to the chauffeur! And that’s where the second of my little pictures comes in. The scene flashed across my mind on that flower bed just after you had stepped on to the path when we were trying to find out who had been in the library and before you smoothed out the fresh footprints you’d made. The old and the new prints were absolutely identical, you see. I suppose I must have noted it subconsciously at the time without realizing its significance.’

  ‘I noticed it all right,’ Alec said grimly. ‘It gave me a bad turn for the moment.’

  ‘After that all sorts of little things occurred to me,’ Roger continued. ‘I began to test each of the facts I’d collected, and in each case the explanation was now obvious. Those letters, for instance. I knew they must have been posted between five and eight-thirty that morning; and at eight o’clock behold you coming back from the village and actually saying you’d been down there to post a letter!’

  ‘Couldn’t think of any other explanation on the spur of the moment,’ Alec grinned ruefully.

  ‘Yes, and curiously enough I questioned the bookmaker motif at the time, didn’t I? Then there was your quite genuine anxiety to stop me from assuming complicity on the part of Mrs Plant. I suppose you knew all the time about her and Stanworth, didn’t you?’

  Alec nodded. ‘I was present at the interview between them,’ he said briefly.

  ‘The devil you were!’ Roger exclaimed in surprise. ‘I never gathered that. She didn’t say anything about it.’

  ‘She didn’t know. I’ll tell you all about that. Anything else on your side?’

  Roger considered. ‘No, I don’t think so. I gathered that you had somehow got to know that Stanworth was blackmailing Barbara, and had simply waded in and shot him, as any other decent chap would have done in your place. That’s the gist of it.’

  ‘Well,’ Alec said slowly, ‘there’s a little more in it than that. I’d better begin right at the beginning, I think. As you k
now, Barbara and I had got engaged that afternoon. Well, I suppose you can imagine that a thing like that rather unsettles a chap. Anyhow, the upshot was that when I got to bed that night I found I couldn’t sleep. I tried for some time, and then I gave it up as hopeless and looked round the room for a book. There was nothing I particularly wanted to read there, so I thought I’d slip down to the library and get one. Of course I had no idea that everyone wouldn’t be in bed, so I didn’t trouble to put on a dressing-gown but just went down as I was, in pyjamas. There were no lights on the landing or in the hall, but to my surprise when I got there I found all the lights in the library full on. However, there wasn’t anyone inside and the door was open, so I went in and began to look round the shelves. Then I heard unmistakably feminine footsteps approaching and, hardly wishing to be caught like that, I nipped behind those thick curtains in front of the sash window and sat down on the seat to wait till the person, whoever it might be, had gone. I thought it was someone come down like me for a book, and probably also more or less in a state of undress. Not that I really thought much about it at all. I just didn’t want to be mixed up in a rather embarrassing situation.’

  ‘Quite natural,’ Roger murmured. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Through the chink in the curtains I could see that it was Mrs Plant. She was still in evening dress, and I saw at once that she looked rather worried. Very worried, in fact. She began to wander aimlessly about the room, twisting her handkerchief about in her hands and it looked rather as if she’d been crying. Then Stanworth came in.’

  ‘Ah!’

  Alec hesitated. ‘I don’t want to exaggerate or turn on the pathetic tap too much,’ he resumed a little awkwardly, ‘but I hope to God I never have to see anything again like the scene that followed. Roger, it was almost unbearable! I don’t know how I sat it out without dashing through the curtains and getting my hands into Stanworth’s throat; but I had the sense to see that anything like that would only make matters very much worse. Have you ever seen a woman in agony? My God, it was absolutely heart-rending. I could never have imagined that a man could be such an indescribable brute.’

  He paused, shivering slightly, and Roger watched him sympathetically. He was beginning to realise just how terrible that scene must have been, if it could move the stoical Alec to such a display of emotion.

  ‘You know the main lines of what happened, don’t you?’ Alec went on, rather more calmly. ‘So I needn’t go into details. The wretched woman begged and wept, but it had no more effect upon Stanworth than if he had been a stone image. He just went on smiling that infernal, cynical smile and told her not to make such an unnecessary fuss. Then he made that suggestion to her that you told me about, and for the moment I very nearly saw red. As for her, it finished her off completely. She just crumpled up on the chesterfield and didn’t say another word. A few minutes later she got up and tottered out of the room. Then I came out of my hiding place.’

  ‘Good man,’ Roger murmured.

  ‘Well, of course I knew by this time just how the land lay. I knew what Stanworth was, and I knew where he kept his evidence against these people. I didn’t quite know what I was going to do, but it was pretty clear that something had got to be done. Well, he was a bit startled at first, but recovered himself wonderfully and began to be infernally sarcastic and cynical. I told him that I wasn’t going to stand the sort of thing I’d just seen; and unless he stopped the whole thing and let me burn all the evidence he’d been talking about, I’d go straight to the police and tell them all about it. That seemed to amuse him quite a lot; and he pointed out that if I did that, everything would come to light which all these people had been paying money to keep concealed, and they’d all be very much worse off than before. That had never occurred to me, and I was rather taken aback for the minute; then I told him that if that was the case I’d unlock the safe myself, even if I had to lay him out to get the key. He simply laughed and tossed his keys on the table. “That’s the one for the safe,” he said. “I don’t quite know how you’re going to open it as you happen to be ignorant of the combination, but doubtless you have provided for that contingency.” Of course that took me in the wind again, but before I could answer him I heard somebody coming down the stairs.

  ‘ “Ah!” he said. “I was quite forgetting. I’ve got another visitor coming to see me tonight. As you seem to have mixed yourself up in my affairs, the least I can do is to invite you to be present at this interview also. Get behind that curtain again, and I think I can promise you an interesting quarter of an hour.”

  ‘Well, I hesitated, while the footsteps began to cross the hall, till he caught me by the arm and sort of snarled, “Get out of sight, you fool. Can’t you see you’ll make it ten times worse for her by letting her see you?”

  ‘Even then I didn’t realise what he meant, but I saw that there was something in what he said, and just managed to get behind the curtain in time. You can imagine what I felt like when the door opened and I saw Barbara come into the room.’

  ‘Ghastly!’ Roger exclaimed with feeling.

  ‘Ghastly! That’s putting it mildly. Well, I’m not going to tell you the details of what happened then, because there’s really no need to and it’s only giving people away unnecessarily. All I need say is that Stanworth had got hold of some information about – well, about Mrs Shannon. I don’t even know what it was. He ostentatiously pulled a revolver out of his desk, opened the safe, and showed her two or three pieces of paper, holding them so that she could read them without taking them into her hands. Then he told her to sit down on the settee to talk things over, keeping the revolver in front of him on the desk all the time. Well, Barbara sat down, looking very white and frightened, poor kid, but still not knowing in the least what Stanworth was getting at. He didn’t keep her in ignorance long. He just leaned back in his chair, informed her calmly that if she didn’t fall in with his wishes he’d make the information he’s just shown her public property and calmly proceeded to state his terms.

  ‘Lord, Roger, old man, I had some difficulty in holding myself in. What do you think he wanted? He told her absolutely plainly that what he was after was money, and went on to say that he knew quite well that she herself hadn’t got enough to satisfy him. Therefore she’d got to marry me within a month, so that she would be able to pay the very moderate sums which he would from time to time require. She could either tell me or not, as she saw fit; it didn’t matter to him in the least. If she refused, he was very much afraid she and her mother would have to take the consequences.

  ‘Of course you see what he was getting at. Me! He was practically saying to me that if I didn’t marry her and pay his blackmail, he would disgrace and ruin the mother of the girl I loved. Very neat sort of trap, wasn’t it? Incidentally, he went on to point out, also for my benefit, that it wasn’t the least use trying to do him any sort of bodily harm, because that would only bring things to a head in the way you know, and he never opened the safe without a loaded revolver in his hand, which he wouldn’t hesitate for a second to use if it became necessary.

  ‘Well, Barbara behaved like an absolute thoroughbred. In fact, she told him, in so many words, to go to the devil; she wouldn’t dream of involving me in the affair, and as for her and her mother, they’d have to take what was coming to them if he chose to behave in such a damnable way, but they’d take it alone. Great Scott, she was wonderful! She practically defied him to do his worst, and said that she was going to break off her engagement to me the very next morning. Then she sailed out of the room with her head in the air, leaving him sitting there. No tears, no entreaties; simply the most overwhelming contempt. Roger, she was just marvellous!’

  ‘I can believe you,’ Roger said simply. ‘What happened then?’

  ‘I came out again. I think I meant to kill Stanworth then if I got a chance to do so without making a worse mess of things. Remember, I knew already to what lengths he was ready to push the wretched women that he had in his clutches, and though Barbara would certainly n
ever give way to him an inch, I wasn’t so sure about Mrs Shannon. Well, there was the safe still open, and there was Stanworth sitting in his chair with the revolver in his hand. He looked at me with a grin as I appeared, and said he hoped I hadn’t been too bored. I walked straight up to him without a word (I was beyond talking by then), and I suppose he could see from my face what I had in mind. Anyhow, when I was only a few feet away he whipped up the revolver and fired. Luckily he missed, and I heard the vase shatter behind me. I lunged forward, grabbed his wrist and used all my strength to twist it round till the muzzle was pointing straight at his own forehead. Then I simply tightened my finger over his on the trigger and shot him.

  ‘I didn’t stop to think what I was doing, or anything like that; I hardly imagine I was capable of thought at the moment. I just knew that Stanworth had got to be killed, in the same way that one knows that a mad dog or a rat or any other vermin has got to be killed. In fact, once he was dead, I hardly paid any more attention to him at all. He was a filthy thing wiped out, and that’s all there was about it. I never felt, nor have felt since, a single moment’s compunction. I suppose it’s curious in a way.’

  ‘You’d have been a sentimental fool if you had,’ Roger said with decision.

  ‘Well, I suppose I’m not a sentimental fool then,’ Alec replied with a slight smile; ‘for I most certainly haven’t. Well, as soon as the man was dead I became as cool as ice. I knew exactly, almost without thinking about it, what had got to be done. First of all, and in case I was interrupted, the evidence in the safe had got to be destroyed, and then I had to make my escape. It didn’t take long to burn the documents in the safe. There was one shelf full of them, all done up in envelopes inscribed with various addresses; about sixteen or seventeen altogether, I suppose. I burnt them in the hearth without opening them, and just ran through the contents of the other shelves to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything.