Most Loving Mere Folly

by Ellis Peters

  ‘You’re going to that woman!’ said his mother, her voice shrilling upward in vindictive alarm.

  ‘Yes, of course I am! For God’s sake, why shouldn’t I? She’s by herself up there. Don’t you stand by your friends when they’re in trouble?’

  ‘None of our friends ever got us into a murder case, that I can remember,’ said Harold sharply.

  ‘It wouldn’t be any good their leaning on you, if they did, I know that.’ He whipped up his helmet, and flung out, and in a minute more they heard the engine of the motor-bike stutter into life. He was away along Lancelot Road in a burst of frenzied speed, wild to overtake heart, and mind, and spirit in their indignant flight to Suspiria. He was free to go to her now. The police themselves had set him free. He had to behave normally, but normality for a man who had just heard of his rival’s sudden death in threatening circumstances was precisely this headlong dash to sustain and protect the woman.

  She knew the note of his machine, and was tearing open the door before he reached it. She walked into his arms, and he held her against his heart for an instant before she drew him into the house. Apart from an intense pallor and a look of strain she was much as usual, her eyes steady, her mouth a little drawn with tiredness, but remarkably composed and assured.

  ‘It’s all right, there’s no one here. They’ll be back again and again, but they’re not here now.’ She shut the door behind them, and caught him to her heart again in the warm obscurity just within it. He kissed her, a long insatiable kiss into which all their mutual disquiet seemed to flow and mingle, burning their lips with a bitter heat. ‘You mustn’t stay,’ she said then, emerging. ‘You must go back to work, everything has to be normal. They’ve been to you already?’

  ‘They were waiting for me at home. They want a statement from me tonight. They’re in no hurry with me, I think. It’s you I’m frantic for.’

  ‘It’s no use being frantic. Listen, did you destroy my note?’

  ‘It’s burned – that’s all right. I told them what time I came and left last night. I said I came to the workshop for you, and we came back in here and talked until after half-past nine. What did we talk about? Sooner or later they’ll want to know.’

  ‘About ourselves. About our hope of having a future together. We weren’t likely to talk about anything else. Not about him – except to go on hoping he’d come to some compromise with us. Is there anything else?’

  How little there was to be said, now that they were together! So little that their lips were as often locked silent in one motionless, intent knot as speaking. There were all manner of things which could have been said, but few which needed saying, and all that was not essential was swept aside out of their minds.

  ‘Yes! Listen – if they ask you at what stage Theo found out, you don’t know. You know I told him the truth, but not exactly when. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, of course! A week isn’t much – it’s too apt. Yes, I understand! Spiri!’ he said. ‘We’re conspiring – do you know that? Just as if we were guilty!’

  ‘Yes, exactly as if we were guilty. We, or one of us. And listen – listen!’ She took him by the shoulders fiercely, and shook him hard, so that in sheer surprise he froze into the stillness of a chidden and threatened child. ‘The story I’ve told this morning is the story we’ve got to go on telling – without a single discrepancy, as often as we’re asked, no matter what they drag out to try and shock us into changing it, that is our story. Do you understand? No matter what happens, if we begin to make changes they have us! The only way we can keep them in doubt for ever and ever is by being absolutely, patiently, perfectly consistent. It may be a thin story, it may be full of gaps, but if we tell it and tell and tell it until they give up hope of getting us to change it, they cannot disprove it! If ever there comes a time when you get nervous about it, and think you could make an improvement on it, don’t do it! And, Dennis – if one of us is arrested—’

  She heard the stab of his deep indrawn breath, almost as sharp as a cry. She put up a hand, and drew his head down to hers, cheek to cheek, her palm cupped softly about his temple, the fingers threading his hair. ‘Hush, my dearest, my heart! You know it may happen. There is no one in this but the three of us. So remember, if it should be I – you have got to hold your tongue! It’s the only thing to do. Any attempt to shift the suspicion would only bring both of us into it, and discredit everything we’ve already said. But if we stick it out to the end they won’t get a conviction. There isn’t any real evidence unless we give it to them. If you try to save me, you may well kill me. If I tried to save you, I might kill you. So be quiet, at all costs! Do you understand me? Then promise me, as I promise you?’

  He whispered, deeply shaken: ‘But they can’t believe it’s you!’

  ‘They’re wonderfully patient and consistent themselves. They don’t believe it’s anyone – yet. Not until they’re sure of the cause of death. I’m only looking ahead. We have to be ready. Promise!’

  ‘I promise – except that in an emergency I’ve got to be free to judge for myself. Something that hasn’t been taken into account could easily happen. It might mean both our lives.’

  ‘Promise, at least, not to change your story until you’ve asked me – for any reason. For my sake, Dennis!’

  ‘All right, I can swear to that. Oh, Spiri, oh, my lovely!’ he whispered. ‘Was it very ugly?’

  ‘It wasn’t pretty. They’ve taken him away now. The studio is sealed up. Maybe they’ll want some exhibits from there, when the inquest comes on. Did you tell them everything? About us?’

  ‘No, but he knew. He said some things – pointed things – trying to draw me. I said nothing. But some other way, I think I’d be glad to tell.’

  ‘You can,’ she said, ‘I have. Everything. I was glad, too. And it’s better told by us than by someone else, because by this time there are very few people in this town who don’t know. But you understand it will be called a motive? The only motive!’

  ‘All the more reason we should tell it our way,’ he said fiercely.

  ‘I thought so, too.’

  ‘Spiri – what did you do with the beaker?’

  ‘It’s in the kiln,’ she said. ‘Nobody will ever identify it again. I was afraid they might tell me to switch it off, but nobody took much notice of it, and now it’s too late, the glaze is already melted.’

  ‘Then – it’s a glost kiln you were loading when I came last night?’

  ‘Yes – yes! For God’s sake don’t forget!’

  ‘I shan’t forget. Spiri, isn’t there anything else I can do for you? Isn’t there anything at all?’

  ‘You can go on loving me,’ she said.

  ‘You know I shall always love you.’ And after a while he sighed, almost too softly to be heard: ‘Poor Theo!’ and she understood that he was confronted for the first time, most piteously, with the thought of the impervious isolation of the dead, who are out of the turmoil of experience for good and all, past loving or suffering. He asked, after a moment’s hesitation: ‘They didn’t tell me – perhaps they really don’t know yet – how did he die? What was it that killed him?’

  Suspiria held him off for a moment to look closely into his face, but she knew that the look would tell her nothing. There was so little time for considering anything but the mere fused urgency of their two lives. From now on they were one creature walking delicately among many dangers, directed by a single wild and frightened intelligence, and with no energy to spare for anything but the battle to remain alive. What point would there be in asking questions of which the answers would have no virtue? All creatures but those who have already renounced their lives will deny mortal guilt when they are challenged with it, and more than deny, act out the denial vehemently in every particular, even to challenging others with the same guilt. Ask if he loves you, ask if he would die for you, and you may get a pure truth in return, and know it certainly for what it is. But don’t ask him if he doesn’t already know what killed Theo, because
there is only one answer to that, truth or lie, only one. And since you know what it is, why ask the question? And since you know what it is, you know how little enlightenment there can be in it. If you ask it, and he answers, you’ll be no wiser than before.

  So all she said was: ‘It was poison – antimony oxide. The sediment was still lying in the beaker when I found him, that’s why it had to disappear. They’ll feel pretty sure I’ve tampered with the evidence, of course, but they won’t be able to prove it. And feeling sure isn’t enough.’

  ‘Where would he get hold of antimony oxide? It isn’t exactly – a household medicine, is it?’

  ‘From my workshop,’ she said. ‘It’s used for making a yellow pigment. You mixed a glaze for me once with it. Didn’t you know?’

  He was about to say: ‘No!’ when he realised that it would mean nothing if he did say it. And then, hard on the heels of this shock of knowledge, he recognised how little the question itself had meant, and turned back all the more wildly from making any answer. It was not as if it mattered now. There was virtually only one problem for either of them, and that was to preserve their two threatened lives. Nothing existed in the world but their love and their danger; there was no room anywhere for guilt or innocence.

  CHAPTER SIX:

  The Several Faces of Truth

  1

  ‘There are just five possibilities,’ said Inspector Tarrant, hunched over his desk with the analyst’s preliminary report before him. ‘One, he took the stuff by accident; two, he took it deliberately, with the intention of killing himself, and putting an end to an intolerable situation; three, the wife and the boy fixed it up between them to get rid of him; four, the boy gave him the stuff without the wife knowing about it; and five, the wife did it by herself. There’s nobody else in the affair at all. There never was a stage with fewer players on it.’

  ‘Not a lot of cover,’ admitted Sergeant Grayne, regarding him thoughtfully across the neat folder of papers. ‘Take a bold person or a desperate one to plan a murder in those conditions.’

  ‘Or a cool and able one, willing to make do with a near shave and the benefit of the doubt. Because, let’s face it, if there’s not much cover, there’s hardly more material to hide. Never was a stage with fewer entrances, exits, or props, either.’

  ‘You haven’t got the surgeon’s full report yet?’

  ‘No, only the analysis of the vomited matter, but it doesn’t leave much doubt. A high content of antimony oxide, more than enough to produce acute antimonial poisoning. The stuff acts rather like arsenic, with violent gastric symptoms. The attack may come on as early as ten minutes after taking, but more likely from an hour to two or three hours. Until we get a full report on this particular case we can’t begin to consider the time element. What we can do is to have another look round for the stuff, and take a quick glance at our five possibilities – taking into consideration the nature of the death. Supposing you wanted to do away with yourself, Grayne, would you swallow something that was going to inflame your inside in an extremely painful way, and send you into convulsions?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said the sergeant, without any surprise. ‘I’ve often thought, in a quite academic way, as you might say, that the only thing I could face would be a nice, quiet-flowing river. And then only in the warm weather. And then, you see, a man who wanted to get his wife back from another fellow, even if he had to be dead to do it, would take care to look a bit more romantic and dignified when found – if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I doubt if they really think like that. To reach the point where you could consider getting out, I should think you’d have to pass the point where you cared how you looked. But I might be wrong, at that. And this was the artist. The proper presentation of form and proportion would mean more to him than it would to me. Maybe he wanted to make things worse for her by the offensive manner of his exit – she being an artist, too.’

  ‘But she won’t have it that he was a possible suicide. Very strong views on the matter she has. If genuine!’ He looked very thoughtful for a moment, remembering the exact and scrupulous calm of the voice which had informed him that Theo was on the side of life. It had taken his fancy, because it was a means of classifying mankind which had never yet occurred to him, and he had caught himself trying to fit his superiors into these two simple categories, and achieving some curious results.

  ‘That’s a large question. But let’s look at our five possibilities, and see what points can be made against them. One, the accident theory. Against that is the fact that so far we’ve found nothing in the studio which could possibly be the source of the antimony oxide. I gather it could be slipped in the sugar, or anything of that kind – but nothing he had consumable in the studio resembled it or would hide it. It is largely insoluble. The whisky and the soda are as innocent as they look. Not only is there no sign of the stuff itself, but there’s no sign of any vessel in which he may have taken it. He’d nothing but drinks in there. And according to the map he left us in flake-white he must have spent several hours in the studio before he fell and died, without once going near the door. Traces of a murder may vanish, traces of a suicide, too, if a tidy or a vindictive mind planned it. But traces of an accident don’t get cleared away by themselves, like that. His stove seems to have been burning until about three in the morning, but there’s no sign of anything suspicious having been burned in it. Supposing he’d had some of this stuff there in a paper packet, and tossed it off in a toddy by mistake for sugar, he might conceivably have thrown the paper into the stove, and there wouldn’t be any traces. But then there’d be the sediment of the stuff itself in his glass. And there wasn’t.

  ‘Two, the suicide theory. The same points are against it. He didn’t leave the room to fetch the antimony. If he had it by him, and decided to use it, once again how did he take it? Empty it into his mouth, and swill it down with whisky, then burn the paper he had it in? It could happen, I’m not saying it couldn’t. But there wasn’t so much as the smear of anything odd on the lip of that broken glass, and I can’t help feeling there would have been. Still, leave that in – it may not be probable, but it is possible.

  ‘Third, the conspiracy theory.’

  He hesitated, and sighed, watching his subordinate’s face: ‘What did you think of the young man?’

  ‘My impression was that he was on the level. There was nothing that didn’t ring right, nothing at all. Usually there’s something, if it’s only a word, that makes your hackles rise, and says: “Look out, you’re being got at!” One thing I’m sure of, there’s no lie about their being in love. Both of ’em! Poor devils!’ he said. ‘What can they expect to get out of it, even if they get over this business? Fourteen years, as near as need be, in between them, and as different as chalk and cheese. What sort of a set-up would that be in twenty years time? They’d better have poured poison into each other, if you ask me. It may come to that, in the finish!’

  ‘Ordinarily one would say the most likely thing was they should both be in it. Look at all the cases that have worked out that way, two sides of a triangle getting rid of the third side so they could lie together. But there’s a difference here. It gets in the way however you look at it. Do you know there’s hardly a soul in Great Leddington, barring the ones who never follow the local gossip, who didn’t know or guess that this boy was her lover? They went about fairly shining with it, so I’m told. They had it, and they meant keeping it. He knew – the husband knew. What had they got to gain by removing him? They weren’t afraid of him, or of public opinion, as far as I can see. Marriage? Well, it might have been nice to have, but I can’t see that either of them was much bothered about it. As she said, she felt pretty solidly married to the boy already. No, nobody was likely to remove Freeland so that they could get married – unless the boy had a lingering hankering after respectability. I’m pretty sure she had none.’

  ‘Jointly,’ agreed Sergeant Grayne diffidently, ‘there wasn’t much inducement. But I think, sir, that for her there
might be something to gain – for her, personally. She was being torn in two between these two. A dead husband might be quite a relief, after one that was always there, and always a reproach to her. It wasn’t that she wouldn’t have done what she wanted, but she might not have been able to rest when she’d done it. With the other one gone it was a problem solved.’

  ‘But did she really have any conscience towards her husband? Was she really being pulled two ways?’

  ‘Oh, yes, sir – I think you needn’t doubt that. They’ve lived here a long time, you see. There’s never been a word before, and never a quarrel between them. It isn’t a matter of a promiscuous woman, you can take my word for that. Apart from him she’s been married only to her art, as you might say. They didn’t live like most of the townspeople, of course, it was a loose sort of attachment. But up to now there’s never been more than two people in it.’

  ‘So you think she might have killed him, in the end, to be rid of the extreme problem of choosing between them?’

  ‘To be rid of the reproach of having chosen the other one, more – because she had,’ said Sergeant Grayne positively, and lowered his mournful gaze deprecatingly into the crown of his hat.

  ‘So the motive would be a great deal stronger in her case than in the boy’s?’

  ‘Well, given a woman like that, that wouldn’t be held by conventions, and knowing what young men are at about twenty-two or – three, I’d rather expect him to think it a pretty simple matter. Come away with me, and let him divorce you, and we’ll start a beautiful new life together! It wouldn’t be him that would see the complications. And there’s another thing, sir, that points more to her, besides the fact that she was in the house alone with Freeland all night. The boy was home before ten, there’s not much doubt of that. No, it’s this – she being a potter by profession, I took the opportunity of borrowing a book or two on the subject. I’d need to refer to them again, but I believe this antimony oxide is mentioned among the colouring agents they use. She might have some in her workshop. I was thinking, if it meets with your ideas, I could go up there and have another look round this evening.’