Information Received

by E. R. Punshon

  For a moment or two he stood staring. Then slowly he went across the room to them.

  ‘Oh, impossible,’ he said, ‘only it’s all impossible... impossible.’

  He tore open the door of the cupboard in which Mitchell was hidden.

  ‘Oh, oh,’ he said.

  ‘Good day, Mr Marsden,’ Mitchell said, coming forward, ‘not impossible at all, you see, but deucedly uncomfortable,’ and then as Marsden slowly, terribly recoiled, slowly staggering backwards till he was half-way across the room again, Mitchell added: ‘I’m afraid you didn’t expect to see me.’

  ‘You were there all the time?’ Marsden asked, recovering himself a little, ‘you heard... you saw... you know... it was you who moved her body... you’ve hidden it... you found her body and you’ve hidden it?’

  ‘The dead body of a woman was found in this room last night,’ Mitchell agreed. ‘It was subsequently removed. I think it will be necessary for you to explain how it is you were acquainted with that fact. You are a lawyer, Mr Marsden, so I needn’t go into explanations with you as to your rights or your position. If you wish to make a statement we are ready to hear it, but probably you prefer to wait.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll make a statement all right,’ Marsden snarled.

  ‘You think you’ve trapped me, I suppose? That spy of yours who came to see me this morning... all a put up job, eh? Oh, very clever, but not so clever as you think, perhaps, for I’ve still a card or two to play. I’ll tell you, though, I’ll tell you all right’ – his voice rose almost to a scream – ‘I knew, I knew because I did it. I did it, I did it, listen to that as much as you like, I shot her, I shot Mrs Carsley, I waited behind that door till I saw her coming up the stairs in the dark, till I saw her head show against the crack in the shutters in here... then I fired... just one shot... blew the back of her head all to bits. Are you listening? Hear that?... just one shot... then I locked the door and got out and I waited to see Carsley come and your fellow following him...

  ‘Why, it was perfect, man, not a flaw in it, superb ... his dead wife in a locked room upstairs and Carsley digging a grave in the cellar... perfect, I tell you,’ he raved, and now flecks of foam were on his lips. He wiped them away and went on more quietly: ‘What went wrong? Why didn’t you arrest him? Wasn’t the evidence good enough? It was good enough to hang a bishop on if you had arrested him then. Oh, you fools, you utter fools, I had it all arranged so well you couldn’t help but think... why didn’t you?’

  ‘It was quite good,’ Mitchell agreed. ‘Her dead upstairs and him digging in the cellar... I suppose you had been there before?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Marsden, ‘I dug a hole there like a grave and then filled it up again and told him the diamonds were hidden there so he would dig in the same place and shape and way... his own gardener’s spade, too, I had taken from their toolshed at “The Cedars”.’

  ‘No detail forgotten,’ Mitchell mused. ‘Even the walking stick by her side up here. I’m sure, very well arranged, indeed, but wasn’t it just a little hard on him?’

  ‘He deserved it,’ Marsden retorted. ‘He had murdered his father-in-law, so it was all right getting him hung for murdering his wife, even if he didn’t do that.’

  ‘You think he murdered Sir Christopher?’ Mitchell asked.

  ‘Of course I do, so do you, don’t you? Of course he did, who else?’

  ‘Well, after this performance,’ observed Mitchell, ‘some may think it was you.’

  ‘Me? Oh, nonsense,’ Marsden answered. ‘I had nothing to do with that. Why should I? It was nothing to do with me. It was Carsley shot him, of course. I’ve always been sure of that. Then he started trying to ruin me, trying to get a reputation for honesty, trying to act the honest man who can’t let fraud go by – and he a murderer! I had to stop that, I had to, it was ruin if I didn’t... why shouldn’t he hang when he was a murderer? He had earned it. I was only getting him what he deserved.’

  ‘Rather rough on Mrs Carsley, wasn’t it?’ Mitchell remarked mildly, ‘to bring her in.’

  ‘I couldn’t help that,’ Marsden answered sullenly. ‘I didn’t want to. I had to, that was all. I had to think of myself first, hadn’t I? Everyone does. Don’t you?’

  ‘Well, some of us may think there are limits,’ observed Mitchell, ‘but indeed I think you had it all very well worked out, and Mr Carsley would certainly have hung, with evidence and motive all complete, since his wife’s death meant a fortune for him. Yes, I don’t think any man ever had a narrower escape from the gallows, for we should have sent him there and he would certainly have hung – but for one little, little flaw. Oh, a trifle, and yet it counted.’

  ‘What was it? I would like to know.’

  ‘Only that it wasn’t Mrs Carsley you shot, it was her half-sister, Brenda Laing.’

  Marsden stood quite still, staring stupidly.

  ‘Oh, that’s impossible,’ he said, ‘that’s quite impossible... another lie.’

  ‘What did you do to get Mrs Carsley here?’ Mitchell asked.

  ‘Two birds with one stone,’ Marsden answered. ‘I told her the stolen diamonds were here in this top room. I told her the door would be open – I had all the keys, of course. I told her she must come at once and alone. Or else the diamonds would be gone. The same tale I told Carsley over the phone, making my voice different so that he wouldn’t know it. That’s a lie, isn’t it? Another lie, another trap, that it was Brenda Laing who came?’

  ‘It’s the truth,’ Mitchell answered. ‘It was Brenda Laing who was murdered here last night.’

  ‘Then that’s why... I might have guessed... how could I, though? I never did... that’s why she asked... she knew something from the start, somehow she knew something...’ He burst into wild laughter. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter now what she knew, if you’re telling the truth, for now she’ll never tell it... never be able to tell it. Silent she always was and now silent she’ll stay for ever.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mitchell agreed, ‘she’ll tell us nothing now, but I hardly think it’s necessary... not when you’ve told so much.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve told you a lot,’ Marsden answered. ‘Do you think you’re going to have a chance to tell it to anyone else? Not you, you fool, you double fool.’ All at once a small automatic pistol showed deadly in his hand. ‘You fool,’ he said again, ‘do you think I’ve told you all this, for you to tell everyone else?’

  He swung the pistol up as he spoke. His eyes were deadly, his bare teeth snarled. Behind the features of the conventional, civilized, twentieth-century citizen glared the primeval killer. It all happened in a moment. Twice the pistol spat across the room its tongue of fire, its trail of smoke. From the cupboard behind, Bobby leaped out, flinging note-book and pencil at Marsden’s head, grabbing at his levelled arm. One bullet splashed against the wall, another brought down a shower of plaster from the ceiling. Mitchell had tripped and fallen on his hands and knees. Another shot shrilled by, missing his head by an inch or two. In the middle of the room Bobby and Marsden threshed to and fro, Bobby trying to wrench the pistol away, Marsden trying to level the muzzle at him or at Mitchell. Marsden got another shot loose, but Bobby twisted his arm, and the bullet went harmlessly through the open doorway. Mitchell was on his feet again now. Bobby wrenched his own arm free and dashed his clenched fist with all his force full into Marsden’s face, that seemed as it were to fall away beneath the force and impact of that one great blow. He went down heavily before it, with a crash that seemed to shake the whole of the rickety old building. His pistol flew from his grasp into one corner of the room. He lay unconscious.

  They noticed that blood, streaming from his face, from his mouth and nose, crawled in a little stream across the bare boards of the floor towards and to join that other dark stain left there from the night before.

  CHAPTER 32

  BRENDA BREAKS HER SILENCE

  Superintendent Mitchell, seated next morning at his desk at which he had been working long and hard, looked up when Bobby,
following instructions, appeared to report.

  ‘Sit down there,’ he said, and went on with his writing.

  It was a transcript of Bobby’s shorthand note of what had passed between Mitchell, himself, and Marsden in the top room of the old transformed mill that the Superintendent was working on, and there were one or two points he wanted cleared up. When that had presently been accomplished to his satisfaction, Mitchell observed thoughtfully:

  ‘So far as Marsden is concerned, it’s good enough. Not even Treasury Counsel can pick a hole in that evidence. It’s too strong even for them to muck up, and if they can’t get a conviction on it, they can’t on anything. I don’t believe even old Marshall Hall would have been able to get Marsden off, and he could have got Old Nick himself acquitted nine times out of ten. But the Commissioner has been in here this morning, grumbling like blazes.’

  ‘Has he, sir?’ said Bobby, alarmed, for when the Commissioner grumbles, the sun itself stands still at noon – or ought to.

  ‘Because,’ explained Mitchell, ‘we haven’t got whoever it was did in Sir Christopher Clarke. He asked me what we were doing about it, and I said we were taking all possible steps to follow up the clues in our possession, and he said, didn’t I know any better than to hand out that sort of official tripe to him, and what were we Doing? And I said we were up against a blank wall, and he said he supposed when thick heads came up against blank walls, nothing much did happen. So I said, no, nothing much except headaches, and then he said it looked to him like Marsden, and anyhow if Marsden was going to be hanged for one thing he might as well be hanged for the other as well. And of course there is that, but Marsden declared he had nothing to do with Sir Christopher’s death, and I am inclined to believe him, because I think in the state he was in just then, he was too excited and upset to lie. Hysterical he was, and couldn’t think of anything but the truth. Besides, if he stole the diamonds and bonds from the safe in the study, how could he have shot at the same time poor old Clarke at the other end of the house?’

  ‘Seems difficult,’ agreed Bobby.

  ‘Only someone did it,’ Mitchell went on, ‘and the funniest thing about it all is that before last night’s happenings, I was fairly sure it really was Carsley. If only Marsden had known enough to keep quiet, Carsley would have been under arrest by now most likely – it’s really Marsden who saved him in trying to destroy him. Funny that, you know, Owen. For things were working out just exactly as Marsden wanted and we were well on the way to rid him of Carsley all right – a bit ironic all that, makes one almost believe there is some power after all that does look after things in this dull old muddle of a world. Of course, logically speaking, what happened last night has nothing whatever to do with the strength of the evidence against Carsley, and doesn’t in the least affect the fact that he has been identified as doing a bolt from the scene of the murder immediately after it was committed. But you can imagine how defending counsel would let himself go, and how he would put it to the jury that the police themselves admitted that evidence had been faked to make them believe Carsley guilty of the second murder, and who was to say the same thing hadn’t happened before? No sense or reason to the argument, but any K.C. would get a verdict from any jury every time by taking that line. Do you think it was Carsley?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Because you saw him once run straight the whole length of the field at Cardiff?’

  ‘No, sir,’ answered Bobby, flushing a little and wishing to goodness he had never made that unlucky reference, of which it seemed Mitchell never tired of reminding him. ‘But when you have got the truth, everything fits. I think that’s the main test of truth. It fits, it makes a harmony, one pattern all through. But there’s only a good case against Carsley if you leave a whole lot out – unexplained.’

  ‘If it was explained, if we knew the explanation, it might point the same way, too,’ Mitchell observed. ‘There’s a cable from New York confirming that Sir Christopher was in possession there of a pistol of the same make as that found by his body. That suggests who ever shot him was an inmate of the house, or had access to it, and somehow got possession of his own pistol, as Carsley might have done through the Jennie girl.’

  ‘Do you think it was Marsden sent the anonymous letter telling us about that?’ Bobby asked.

  ‘I’m sure of it,’ Mitchell asserted. ‘But there’s other things I would like to know more about. Those theatre tickets – the stalls for the Regency. Where do they come in? Let me see, the play was – Hamlet, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ answered Bobby, surprised at the question, for he was quite sure Mitchell knew that well enough.

  ‘The Assistant Commissioner and I went to see it,’ Mitchell went on musingly. ‘Rather a jolly evening, too, even if I did get told I had too much imagination for a policeman, whose business is facts. By the way, there’s a note from the administrator of the Clarke estate – you knew Carsley declined to have anything to do with that and another firm is acting? Apparently he’s found trace of another sum of about five hundred lent to Dr Gregory and nothing to show it was ever repaid. But Gregory sticks to it he repaid it all right and he has the torn I.O.U. to show. But he can’t show any cancelled cheque or any other trace of the transaction. He accounts for that by saying he paid in cash, mostly in notes he won racing. Everyone who has money he can’t account for always says he won it racing – that’s classic. We can’t disprove that, anyhow, but it is possible that when he found Sir Christopher dead, he thought of his debt, and saw a chance to get hold of the I.O.U. from the dead man’s pocket-book. If it happened like that, it would account for his delay you noticed and reported. But it wouldn’t prove or even suggest that the doctor did the shooting.’

  ‘No, sir,’ agreed Bobby.

  ‘It might be – oh, lots of theories and “might be’s”,’ Mitchell went on, drumming on his desk with his fingertips. ‘Looks to me we shall never know – not now, not now Brenda Laing will never tell us what she knew.’

  ‘You think she knew something?’ Bobby asked.

  ‘You heard Marsden say so. Marsden’s a good steady liar, but last night I think it was the truth came out. Yes, I think she knew something but what she knew she’ll never tell. Silent she was all the days of her life, and silent she’ll stay now she’s in her grave – silent in life and death, too.’

  There was a knock at the door and Inspector Gibbons entered. He was carrying a large sealed envelope he handed to Mitchell.

  ‘I thought I had better let you have this at once, sir,’ he said. ‘A young lady brought it. She is here still, if you would like to see her. I asked her to wait. She says she knew Miss Brenda Laing, but hadn’t seen or heard from her for some time. The day before yesterday she got that envelope from Miss Laing, with a note asking her to keep it by her unless anything happened to make her think she ought to bring it to us. So when she read the paper this morning and what had happened to Miss Laing, she supposed that was what was meant, and she took the first train up and brought it here.’

  When he had finished Mitchell was silent for a moment, looking thoughtfully at the packet in his hand. Bobby rose to his feet, his intense excitement making it impossible for him to keep still. Mitchell said slowly, half to himself:

  ‘Has she spoken at last, has she broken her silence at last now she is dead?’

  He broke the seal of the packet and settling himself in his chair began to read.

  CHAPTER 33

  BRENDA BREAKS HER SILENCE

  ‘“I am writing this because I want to tell you how it is I came to shoot dead my stepfather, Sir Christopher Clarke.

  ‘“When I did it I thought it was my duty and my right.

  ‘“But now I am not sure.

  ‘“I was five, exactly five, it was my fifth birthday, when I first understood that there was something wrong between my own father and my mother.

  ‘“I can remember it as clearly and as vividly as anything that happened half an hour ago, that day when I was five
.

  ‘“I was standing at the top of the stairs that led to the nursery. They were very narrow stairs and they were covered with a kind of oilcloth, not carpeting. There was a stain on the wall near the top, shaped like a bear, that used to terrify me, because the nurse told me that if I were not good it would come alive and eat me all up. So I used to try very hard to be good, only it is difficult to tell what is being good when one is only five – and when one is older, then it is more difficult still.

  ‘“Father was standing just a little way down the stairs. He was holding out a marvellous new doll. It had blue eyes and fair hair, I remember, and the fair hair was tied up with pink ribbon, and if you pressed it, it said ‘pa-pa’, and ‘mama’. I have that bit of pink ribbon still somewhere, I believe.

  ‘“Mother was standing behind father, and I knew she was angry, and did not want me to have the doll.

  ‘“But father passed it to me over her head, and I took it, and ran as fast as I could into the nursery, into a corner there, for fear mother would come and take it from me. I heard her say:

  ‘“‘You said it was too expensive when I asked you, you said it cost too much. Then you go and buy it yourself.’

  ‘“I did not hear what father answered, but I understood very well. I could not have put it into words but I knew as clearly as any grown-up could have done that father was bidding against my mother for my love.

  ‘“And I knew why.

  ‘“It was because he knew he was losing hers.

  ‘“He was losing his wife and so he was trying to bribe his child that he should not lose her, too.

  ‘“I think there were two little five-year-olds in the nursery that day. There was the happy babe, absorbed in an ecstasy of rare joy because of this great wonder miraculously issued from the shop window to become a part and portion of every day existence. There was another child who knew that the joint life which should have been her protection and her stay had been torn asunder.