Mr Splitfoot (Dr Basil Willing)

by Helen McCloy

  Lucinda took a deep breath. “Doesn’t that make it worse? Much worse . . .?”

  “Mrs. Swayne, did you hear anything last night before you were fully awake and joined the others?”

  “No, I slept like a top until I heard the raised voices of the men when they discovered the body.”

  “Then you didn’t hear a bell ring?”

  “No.”

  “And you didn’t hear the men talking when they were settling Crowe for the night in the room where he died?”

  “No. I dare say they were keeping their voices low so as not to disturb the rest of us.”

  “Mrs. Swayne, I’d like you to look at part of a letter we found on the hearth.”

  Vanya and Lucinda exchanged glances again. This time their eyes were bright with irrepressible mischief.

  “When did you find this?” For the first time Folly’s voice lacked assurance.

  “Just now. It was lying on the hearth rug. It looked as if someone had tried to burn it. Someone who was interrupted and had to leave it in the grate hoping it would burn up. Only it didn’t. At least this one page didn’t. I guess the rest of it did. It must’ve been some time late this morning, because we went through the ashes on the hearth early this morning and it wasn’t there then.”

  “How could it get on the hearth rug if someone was trying to burn it?”

  “When the wind got high enough to blow the fog away, a draught could have come down the chimney and blown it out onto the hearth rug with some ashes. I wish you’d read the letter and tell us what you make of it.”

  Silence stretched. If Folly had not spoken when she did, Lucinda could not have borne it another moment.

  “Obviously a love letter, but I have no idea who wrote it or for whom it was intended. Have you?”

  “We were hoping you might be able to guess from something in the letter itself.”

  “I don’t like to guess. I might get some innocent person into trouble.”

  “I’d understand that feeling in ordinary circumstances, but these circumstances aren’t ordinary. We’re looking for a murderer.”

  “How could a silly letter like this help you to find a murderer?”

  “It might give us a motive.”

  “I see.” Folly’s usually smooth voice faltered. It was apparent to the listeners that she was fighting for self-control. When she spoke again, she had achieved it. “This puts me in a difficult position.”

  “Why?”

  “I have some reason to believe that the letter may have been intended for me.”

  “What reason?”

  “David Crowe was not happy in his marriage. I’ve told you already that he came here frequently without his wife, but I didn’t tell you that there were several occasions when I . . . Well, let’s just say that sometimes I found his attentions embarrassing.”

  “Did you mention this to your husband?”

  “Oh, no. And I hope you won’t do so. The fewer people who know, the less disturbing for everybody. I’d like Frank to go on remembering David as an old and trusted friend and thinking of me as a wife whom no other man would dare approach. Don’t you understand? If Frank knew about this, he would always wonder if I had done anything to encourage David, and I don’t want that. Divorces are caused by husbands or wives who insist on easing their consciences by telling all—a frightful mistake. If they’d just kept their mouths shut, everything would have been all right, but once the slightest doubt arises in a marriage, nothing is ever the same again. It’s bad enough to wreck your marriage for the sake of a man you love, but just think how intolerable it would be to wreck your marriage for the sake of a man you didn’t love. I didn’t love poor David so . . . the less you say to anyone else about this, the better.”

  “I’m sorry I have to ask these questions, but I must.”

  “I understand all that and that’s why I’m answering you so frankly.”

  “Do you think that Crowe might have written you a letter like that?”

  “It does sound preposterous, but he might. He was awfully persistent.”

  Lucinda winced as she caught the note of complacent sexual vanity in Folly’s voice.

  “Did he write you other letters like this?”

  “Never.”

  “Then your only reason for thinking he may have written this to you is your awareness of his . . . er . . . romantic interest in you?”

  Vanya’s lips formed the word “romantic” and he rolled his eyes to Heaven. Lucinda knew how he felt. How could men well over forty like David Crowe have romantic feelings for anyone? Wasn’t that the age when they were supposed to concentrate on careers and children? In Japan, didn’t men that age start reading the Holy Sutras to prepare themselves for their descent into the Land of Yomi? As the Japanese chronicles said: To be old and wise is well, but some men are old and foolish . . . . Apparently David Crowe fell into this unfortunate category.

  “Who else in this household might have written such a letter?” That was Marriott’s voice once more.

  “I don’t believe there is anyone else who would. Bradford Alcott is old and ill. I do not see him in the role of an adventurous or ardent lover. And of course my husband wouldn’t write such a letter to anyone but me, and the wording of this letter doesn’t fit our relationship. We’re never separated, or ‘parted,’ as the letter puts it.”

  “Could Mr. Crowe have written the letter to some other woman?”

  Folly was astonished. “You mean to his wife?”

  “No, it doesn’t sound like a letter from a husband to his wife. What about Mrs. Alcott?”

  “Oh . . . Well, of course, Mrs. Alcott does have a rather superficial attraction for some men . . . if they care for Irish blarney and a rather disheveled appearance, but she wasn’t David Crowe’s type at all and she must be years older than he was.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Swayne. I don’t believe we need question you any further at the moment.”

  A chair scraped. “I do hope you won’t have to tell anyone else about this. I mean about David’s letter to me.”

  “There’s no reason to tell anyone else about that unless we discover that the letter has something to do with Crowe’s death.”

  “How could it?”

  “Don’t you realize that you have given your husband a classically traditional motive for murdering Crowe?”

  “Oh, but that’s ridiculous. Frank might knock another man down in hot blood, but he’d never concoct an elaborate plot, building up a Gothic atmosphere to make it look as if the man he’d killed had been frightened to death.”

  “If this was murder, it may not have been an elaborate plot. The murderer may have been an opportunist who saw his chance and took it on the spur of the moment after the Gothic atmosphere had been built up largely by Crowe himself and your stepdaughter. What about the Mr. Splitfoot bit? Has it occurred to you that someone else may have prompted Lucinda to play a prank on the assembled company?”

  “She wouldn’t need prompting, but I can’t imagine how she could manage to make those raps respond to her voice when we were all watching her.”

  “But if she could she would?”

  “Oh, yes. She’s a mischievous child. Perhaps it’s my fault.”

  “How could it be your fault?”

  “I don’t like her. Don’t look so shocked! You want the truth, don’t you? I know children need to be loved, and when I married Frank I was resolved to love Lucinda, but I couldn’t. Love is not something you can turn on and off like a spigot. I’ve been generous to her with my money and time and things like that, but I cannot make myself love her. It’s unfortunate, because children can always tell. Old men are the only people who can be made to accept counterfeit love as the real thing. The poor dears are easy to deceive because they do so want to be deceived. They’re desperate. But children don’t want to be deceived. They want the real thing or nothing.”

  This time it was Vanya’s hand that crept out in search of Lucinda’s. He found hers cold and sha
ky.

  “Have you any idea why you feel this way about your stepdaughter?”

  “She’ll never answer that!” whispered Vanya.

  But she did. Perhaps it was a relief to speak so unreservedly for once to men she would probably never see again when this was over.

  Her clear, cool voice was defiant. “The role of a second wife isn’t easy, especially if the first wife is dead. Who can compete with the dead? I’ve always been jealous of Frank’s first wife and everything that belonged to her, including Lucinda. I have no children of my own to make it easier. So I smile and smile and I’m a villain still in my heart. I can’t help it. On the surface everything is smiling, but underneath there’s been a cold war between me and that girl ever since I married her father. Perhaps I didn’t try hard enough . . . Is there anything else, Captain Marriott?”

  “That’s about it, Mrs. Swayne. Thank you. Will you please ask Mrs. Crowe if she can see us now?”

  The staccato tap of high heels came up the stairs and faded down the corridor. A door closed softly.

  Lucinda snatched her hand away from Vanya. “We’ll have to tell the police we wrote that letter now! Folly’s using the letter to make it sound as if Daddy had a motive for killing David Crowe. Is that just vanity or stupidity or—”

  “Sh-sh!” Vanya laid a hand over her mouth.

  Cyril Jones was speaking. “Suppose Mrs. Swayne left her bedroom during the night. Would the stepdaughter sleeping in that same room hear her in spite of the sedative?”

  “That’s something we’ll have to ask the young lady when we find her.”

  Vanya looked inquiringly at Lucinda. She shook her head violently and opened her lips to speak, but Vanya stopped her with an almost inaudible whisper: “Here comes someone else.”

  The step that reached the listeners in the attic suggested a slow shuffle in flat slippers.

  “Sorry to disturb you, Mrs. Crowe, but it’s nearly noon.” This was Marriott.

  “I know.” The answering voice was furred with drowsiness. “I know. I was awake in the night. I took something I had with me to make me sleep afterward. I’m still sleepy.” There was a sound of yawning.

  “Would you like coffee?”

  “That would be wonderful.”

  “I’ll see to it . . .” Footsteps receding. They must have been Jones’ steps, for Marriott’s voice went on:

  “Try the sofa. Make yourself comfortable.”

  “Thanks. I must apologize for the way I look. I didn’t even brush my hair. I feel awful.”

  “We’ll try not to keep you too long. . . . Oh, here’s coffee.”

  As soon as the clatter of cups and saucers had subsided, Marriott said: “Mrs. Crowe, can you suggest any reason why anyone might want to kill your husband?”

  “I thought it was a natural death.”

  “We can’t be sure until we get a medical report, and we have to consider every possibility.”

  “I can’t imagine anyone wanting to kill him. He didn’t lead the sort of life where you make that kind of enemy.”

  “Did you see or talk to anyone after you went upstairs to your bedroom last night?”

  “Not really. I said good night to Folly and Ginevra in the upper hall and closed my door and went straight to bed. I thought David would be up in a little while. I even left a light for him. It was still burning when they woke me in the middle of the night to tell me that he was dead.”

  “Did you hear any sounds during the night?”

  “Oh, no. The last thing I heard as I dropped off to sleep was the murmur of men’s voices downstairs. I suppose they were making their silly plan to trap the ghost or the trickster or whatever they thought it was. After that I slept right through until they woke me.”

  “Have you any explanation of the Mr. Splitfoot business?”

  “You mean when the girl clapped her hands three times and there were three raps in response? No, I haven’t. I suppose it was a trick, but I can’t see how it was worked.”

  “Who do you think worked the trick?”

  “The girl, of course. Who else? She’s a sly little thing and obviously bored up here with no companions her own age except that awful Russian boy down the road.”

  Vanya winked at Lucinda and she winked back.

  “How well do you know the Swaynes?”

  “Not too well. David saw more of them than I did.”

  “Mrs. Crowe, we’d like you to look at this letter we found on the hearth rug. It breaks off in the middle of a sentence and there’s no signature. Can you suggest who might have written it?”

  Silence. A rattle of paper.

  “It reads like a love letter, but I have no idea who would write a letter like that or whom it would be meant for.”

  “Liar!” whispered Vanya. “How can she be involved in a whatchamacallit—sordid intrigue—and not admit that the letter might be addressed to her?”

  Captain Marriott seemed to have a similar idea. “You don’t think it may have been written to you?”

  “Of course not! David and I had an ideal relationship. Perfect love and trust. Everyone knew that. No one would even think of addressing such a letter to me.”

  Vanya shook his head in silent disgust.

  “Then you can’t even guess who wrote the letter? Or whom it was meant for?”

  “I suppose it must have been meant for Folly. Poor, dear Ginevra is too old for that sort of thing and Lucinda’s too young. But Folly’s about the right age.”

  “And the man who wrote it? According to the letter, he is someone here now.”

  “Then it just has to be Bradford Alcott, doesn’t it? If Folly was the woman, it couldn’t have been Frank, because this is not a husband’s letter to a wife, and it couldn’t have been my David because he was so utterly devoted to me. He used to become quite ridiculously jealous if I even looked at another man.”

  Again a note of complacent sexual vanity made Lucinda wince.

  “David and I had a rather special relationship,” went on Serena. “Ten years ago when we were just married he was driving when I told him that he shouldn’t because he’d had too much to drink. But he would drive and he crashed and I went through the windshield. I nearly died. I was in the hospital for months. My face was . . . chopped meat. You can see all the little scars now in bright sunlight where they fixed me up and made me presentable, but they couldn’t make me what I had been before it happened. I don’t look much like a professional model now, do I? But I was once. My face was my fortune. David felt simply horrible. He never got over it. Now are you beginning to understand that our relationship was sort of special?”

  “Yes, I can see what you mean,” Marriott answered her. “That would be quite a special sort of hold on a husband. I believe that—”

  There was a crash of falling china. “Oh, dear!” A gasp. “Excuse me, please . . . I must . . . the bathroom. . . .”

  Footsteps hurrying away.

  “Let me help.” More footsteps. A dreadful retching sound. A door closing. Footsteps returning slowly.

  “Is she sick?” There was wonder in Marriott’s voice.

  “Very. All over the downstairs bathroom.” That was Jones. “I’ve asked the cook to look after her. No one else was handy.”

  “Maybe that sleeping pill she had last night upset her stomach?”

  “Or one of our questions?”

  “They were pretty mild questions. I can’t understand such a violent reaction.”

  Footsteps were running down the stairs. A door opened.

  “What have you been doing to poor Mrs. Crowe?” Ginevra Alcott seemed furious.

  “Not our fault, Mrs. Alcott. We were questioning her quietly enough when suddenly she vomited. We’re still wondering why.”

  “Perhaps your questions were more important to her than you realized.”

  “That’s one of the things we’re beginning to suspect.”

  “Are you going to question me now?”

  “You’re next on the
list.”

  “Then please get it over with. What do you want to know?”

  “For one thing: can you explain this letter we found on the hearth rug this morning? Apparently someone tried to burn it. We don’t know who wrote it or to whom it was addressed.”

  “Let me put on my glasses. . . . Did you show this to Serena Crowe just before she collapsed?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “Her husband wrote it. She must have guessed.”

  “What makes you think her husband wrote it? Have you seen the letter before?”

  “No, but . . . I suppose I’ll have to tell you now. I hope it won’t be necessary for you to tell anyone else. David Crowe was in love with me. I thought I’d convinced him that it was hopeless, but apparently I hadn’t. If Serena saw this letter last night . . . if she realized that David was still in love with me . . .”

  “Are you suggesting that she was jealous enough to kill her husband?”

  “I won’t go that far. We’re not even sure he was killed yet, are we? But this letter does give her a rather obvious motive, doesn’t it?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  LUCINDA, ALL ATTENTION concentrated in her ears, caught the note of assurance in Ginevra’s voice. The voice made it easy to recall the serene arrogance of the haggard, once-beautiful face and still-beautiful eyes. Lucinda spared a moment to consider the harsh inequalities of adult life.

  Like a card game. At birth you were dealt a hand. That, far more than skill in playing, determined your fate. Ginevra had had such a splendid hand. Beauty, health, wealth, position, brains, education, even charm. What did she lack? There must be something. No one player could hold all the court cards. That was against the rules of the game, or the law of probability, or something.

  It came to Lucinda with sudden conviction that Ginevra had missed the most important card of all—a heart. Some people might argue that the heart is more a liability than an asset, but is it really? The experiences of the heartless are so limited. It is hate that is blind. Love may miss a flaw here and there, but hate misses beauty everywhere.

  Ginevra was trying to explain what she had said about David Crowe and herself. “This sort of happens because my husband is so much older than I am. . . .”