Charlesworth turned back the pages of his memory for what George Exmouth had said: “I saw Brian Bryan look at me with a sort of alarm and astonishment when his horse began to buck about: and then I looked across at the Red Knight and—the eyes that looked back into mine were brown.” He said: ‘Of course George Exmouth now says that he was the Red Knight.’
‘That’s all nonsense,’ said Cockie, again not saying nonsense. ‘Because if he was—who was the Blue Knight?’ They replaced their tankards at the same time, and he made a twiddle over them with the hand holding the inevitable cigarette, for the same again. ‘And then,’ said Charlesworth slowly, ‘there was the matter of the cloak.’
‘The cloak?’ said Cockie.
‘The Red Knight’s cloak. Bryan says he was wearing it on the stage. But it was found lying out in the stalls somewhere: and he now says that he never went beyond the Assembly room—the Betchley met him at the door and they both turned back and came through the arch again. All right, how did the cloak get out?’
‘Oh, yes, the cloak,’ said Cockie. (He had somehow allowed that matter of the cloak to slip by.)
And so it was all done: smashed to smithereens, the neat puzzle built in round the central figure of Brian Two-Times in the armour of the Red Knight. Charlesworth said: ‘It was like a jig-saw: I had it all fitted together as neat and nice as you please…’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Cockie, politely, trying to attract the attention of the young lady behind the bar for the same again.
‘I seemed to get a few clues, and then suddenly the central figure just dropped into place. That was the odd part—that I got the murderer first, and everything seemed to be working in round that.’
‘Always fatal,’ said Cockie, severely.
At home in Kent the pubs were little and low-ceilinged and many of them dark with the uneventful history of a couple of centuries: with scrubbed wooden counters and patches on the walls where the old gas brackets had very recently hung: not neon and bakelite with a bright, clean duster polishing away every friendly, familiar sign of a ring of beer. At home in Kent, the people behind the bars were friends of getting on for half a century: Bill and George and Joe, and Mrs. Bill and Mrs. George and Joe’s nice friendly lump of a young daughter… And when Inspector Cockrill appeared, there also appeared like magic a pint of his usual, and another pint appeared when that pint was gone… None of your little bits of skirts-and-blouses sidling up opposite you and asking: ‘What was it you was having?’ ‘Bass,’ he said crossly. ‘B-a-double-s, Bass: perhaps you’ve heard of it?’
‘Sarky,’ said the barmaid, reproachfully indulgent of the impatient customer.
Charlesworth was, as usual, blissfully unaware of undercurrents. He chattered on ruefully about the fearful errors into which he had fallen, and what his Chief was going to say. Cockrill thought of another session of the conference missed, and wondered what his Chief was going to say. ‘The way I had it,’ said Charlesworth, ‘he came home bent on revenge just as he made out, with all the trimmings: fixed up the noose round the window—they were always clambering about the tower and fooling round, it needn’t have been impossible—using two bits of rope to “make it more difficult”: got the brooch and wrote the poem…’
‘No, no,’ said Cockrill. ‘Port got the brooch: and probably wrote the poem too. He knew it off by heart. I think Port’s story is probably true. He put the brooch in the tower for her to find, and…’
‘Well, all right, so it was just a bit of luck that that had happened: it caused Isabel to lean out and look down at the Mystery Knight upon the left, and so it was easier to get her neck in the noose. He’d relied upon doing it when she bowed to the audience, or some time like that. So he yanked her down and all went as he said. Only now it wasn’t that at all!’ He could not help grinning at his own discomfiture.
It was almost exactly Cockrill’s own discomfiture. He acquired an increased respect for this young man who had all this time been quietly coming to approximately his own conclusions—even though they might be wrong. He said: however; ‘My dear boy—you got the whole thing wrong way round! Take one small point—Port knew the words of the rhyme, therefore Port wrote the rhyme, but if Port wasn’t the murderer how could he have known that the Knight upon the Left wouldn’t be Earl Anderson? Unless his whole confession’s true, and the Knight upon the Left has nothing to do with the murder at all.’ His tankard was empty. Charlesworth twiddled a finger in the general direction of the two tankards and the barmaid immediately refilled them with the same again. ‘They know me here,’ he said to Cockrill, with simple pride. ‘Good lord, that girl’s probably known me for three months. It’s nice to get an established pub and stick to it, I think, don’t you?’
Under the influence of the third pint they became more genuinely friendly: and under the influence of the sixth decided that the only thing to do was to charter the horses for the evening, recall the knights, and lay on the whole pageant again, after hours to-night, and go through it inch by inch with a toothcomb; and by comparing and checking and questioning and timing surely, surely sift out some discrepancy. ‘And if this were a detective novel,’ said Charlesworth, buoyantly, ‘probably confront the criminal at the moment critique!’
‘This is not a detective novel,’ said Cockrill. ‘In real life the police don’t “reconstruct the crime” so as to confront the criminal. These writer people never get their police procedure right.’
‘It would be so deadly dull if they did,’ said Charlesworth. ‘I suppose they reckon that their job is to entertain and not to worry too much about what could or would or couldn’t or wouldn’t have happened… After all, their books are just fun to read—not treatises on the law. However, the idea of putting our lot through their paces tonight is not so much to unearth the criminal as to eliminate the impossible…’
‘They’re all impossible,’ said Cockrill, shaking his head, staring down at the upturned end of his burning cigarette. ‘Let’s face it. Susan Betchley was sitting on a stool outside a bolted door, whistling: Peppi Kirk heard her whistling, and it’s wishful thinking to pretend that she didn’t, to suit our own theories—your theories,’ he corrected hurriedly.
‘And old Port had definitely an alibi for the time of Anderson’s decoyment to his death, so his story about playing a jolly trick on darling Isabel may be quite true.’
‘And Brian Twice was on the white horse in full sight of the audience and never touched the girl at all.’
‘And Motherdear was on a black horse in full view of the audience and ditto,’ said Charlesworth.
‘And Peppi Kirk was lying trussed up in a locked room, and Earl Anderson was lying under some bushes minus his head, and if Port’s story is true there are two nooses to account for, and a spare suit of armour to be taken into consideration…’
And click, click, click, click, the pieces of the puzzle were tumbling over themselves to settle into place again… Cockrill turned to Charlesworth and his beady eyes were bright with excitement. ‘I’ve got it! The central figure—your central figure and my central figure—that wasn’t this Brian Twice (Brian Twice indeed!)—that was—’
A bunch of Charlesworth’s police pals were elbowing their way over to them in a state of friendly jollity. As far as Inspector Cockrill could make out, they were all called George. ‘This is old George, Inspector. And here, Inspector, this is dear old George. Oh, I seem to have left out George, Inspector. And this,’ said Charlesworth to his friends, ‘is Cockrill, Kent police. You remember he made a bit of a nonsense over that military hospital case down at Heron’s Park…’
Click, click, click went the pieces of the puzzle, neatly dovetailing themselves until every space was filled and the picture laid out clearly in every detail before him. But when Charlesworth dismissed his jolly pals and turned to him, politely asking what he had been saying just before they turned up—Detective Inspector Cockrill, who had made such a nonsense of that case down at Heron’s Park—simply couldn’t remember.
The crowds had melted away. At ten o’clock, not relying upon the Clock of Flowers, the loudspeakers blared forth God Save the King, and on the stands the languid figures of the demonstrators tensed themselves into an attitude all ready to spring at the split second that the last note sounded: hooking down canvas covers, lugging great shutters from the narrow cupboards, packing away merchandise into drawers and boxes, spreading dust sheets, sweeping and polishing in readiness for opening time to-morrow. The lights died one by one, and footsore men and women in their resuscitated tropical kit, and their cheap cotton dresses, crept with their last ounce of energy down the stifling aisles for the final battle for the bus and home: there to argue feebly over their wilting salad and a glass of water with Eno’s in it to counteract its sluggish tepidity, the merits of Flee-flea Insect Powder and Bowels-work Barley Sugar and the very last word in can-openers and screwdrivers combined. ‘My order book…’ ‘Commission on two pounds ten…’ ‘Walked right over and chipped in with my customer, my dear, and I’d been working on him for half an hour…’
Soon the stage was an island of light in the dim hall. Nobody remained but Charlesworth with his men, and Cockrill, and the five poor suspects and the nine supporting knights. Bill Clever, the groom, was minding the horses out in the stalls. One or two caretakers and commissionaires hung about—and that was all.
Charlesworth made them a speech. ‘This all looks very sensational and what-not, but I assure you it isn’t. I just want to run through that pageant again, a couple of times and see that we haven’t missed anything: I don’t propose to expose anybody or arrest anybody or any nonsense like that. And I’d rather, if you wouldn’t mind, that you didn’t talk about it to the press boys. They go making a Thing of it and the public get excited and begin expecting results, and we all look silly.’ He looked very nice, standing up there, tall and slim, with his young face smiling rather deprecatingly and the caretakers and commissionaires felt quite fatherly towards him and vowed in their hearts to say not a word about it, not even to their old mothers, not even to their mistresses in bed that night. Not so the nine knights, who said to each other in well aspirated Oxford accents that they might sneak a nice little puff out of this, and each secretly determined to rush straight to the telephone the minute they were set free, and ring up Associated Press and try if they couldn’t make a couple of guineas. They had no wives: and if any of them had mothers they had long ago forgotten them in the bitter glory of being On the Stage and having had rather too little to eat for so long a time.
Though it was long after sundown, the air was stifling still. It seemed as if soon there must be a storm. So it was in the brightly-lit centre of the vast hall. The knights waited listlessly about, the horses stamped bored hooves with a tinny jangling of harness, the cloaks and standards hung their heads, a flowerbed of colour, wilting in the sun. Outside it was hot, it was dusty, it was leaden and dull: within it was dusty and hot and dull as well. Inside and outside, they awaited the storm.
There was a crash of thunder: a rumbling cannon crash of thunder that jolted them all to alertness once again. And Charlesworth said, briskly: ‘Let’s just run through the whole thing…’
Too tarsome, said the knights. Several of them had missed important meetings with Micky Balcon, to be here. Charlesworth took George Exmouth by the wrist. ‘You claim to have been the Red Knight. All right—this time you are: let’s see how it goes.’
He wrenched his hand away. ‘I take it all back now. I was just—making it up. I wanted to be—well, all right, I wanted to be important. I was just the Blue Knight on the other side of the archway: I sat there, I never moved…’
‘So you say now.’
He looked a little desperate. ‘But, look—I tell you, I saw their eyes. I couldn’t have done that if I hadn’t been there, if I hadn’t been the Blue Knight. I saw their eyes, just before she fell. The White Knight had blue eyes. I saw them turn to me in alarm when the horse bolted, and I saw the Red Knight’s eyes across the arch—brown eyes…’
‘It’s easy to say that now,’ said Charlesworth. He took the red cloak and chucked it to the boy. ‘Here, put that on: for this run through, you’re the Red Knight. I’ll be the Blue.’ He had had the horses brought down for the occasion, and now marshalled the knights into their old formation. Sergeant Bedd played the part of Isabel, the blue chiffon veil flowing from the tall hat, perched on his grizzled head. He ran skittishly through the crowd to the tower, and disappeared within. Brian Bryan on his white horse rode through the arch, and led his line through the evolutions of the pageant. They ended up in their tableau beneath the tower. Sergeant Bedd threw over a pillow to represent the departed Jezebel. The white horse trotted through the arch into the Assembly room: the knights were still. Charlesworth said to the Red Knight: ‘Dismount: and go to the body.’
Motherdear sat his horse defiantly. ‘I never went near the body.’
‘Well, go near it now.’ The boy dismounted reluctantly and went and knelt over the pillow. The red cloak spread itself about him like a velvet tent. ‘Now get up and walk away through the arch.’
Miss Betchley and Brian Bryan came through the arch on to the stage, George Exmouth crept back after them. He had taken off his helmet and he looked deathly white. Charlesworth said: ‘Well?’
‘I’ve told you, I—I made it all up. I wanted to be important. I…’He broke off and then said passionately: ‘I just didn’t seem to be anybody. I wasn’t even suspected. I was only a kid that couldn’t possibly murder anybody, let alone be in love, properly in love, enough to do murder… And then I—I made a fool of myself, yesterday, I accused Miss Betchley of being a man, and—well, I know I made a fool of myself… So I thought—I wanted Perpetua to think…’ He stared wretchedly at the ground. ‘But I didn’t do it. When I saw that I might really be accused I—I—changed my mind.’ To Perpetua, watching in her sort of vague pity, he said: ‘I thought I was in love with you: but I know now that even that wasn’t true. I—it was just stupid calf love. And now—I can’t even keep up the lies I told. I’m just a coward, I suppose, that’s all…’
Perpetua put out her thin hand to him. She said: ‘I always think it’s so brave of people to admit to not being brave,’ and looked about her, with a little smile, as though for applause. Brian Two-Times said: ‘I also.’ Blah, blah, blah, thought Inspector Cockrill to himself.
‘It suits you to say all this now,’ said Charlesworth, coldly.
George looked about him desperately, all his newfound courage burned to ashes in this new flame of terror rising up out of a past that already seemed not his own. ‘All right, then—if I was the Red Knight: who was the Blue?’
Outside a thunder-clap shook the cardboard tower and swayed the cardboard wall and made the dusty floorboards tremble: and Charlesworth walked over to the black horse which still stood wonderingly with its forefeet poised on the wooden block, and said: ‘Well—tell us who you are!’
There was no answer: out of the blank shadows of the empty helmet, nothingness stared balefully out at them. There was no Blue Knight at all.
George took to his heels and ran.
Inspector Cockrill met him at the Assembly room door. ‘I thought you’d do that, my boy. Come along back with me.’ He led him, already spent and unprotesting, back to the stage. ‘You’re a man now: you said so yourself. You must act like a man just a bit more consistently. The whole thing’s hooey: nothing to be afraid of. Come on back.’ As they crossed the room he said: ‘The Inspector’s only testing things: and he’s tested this. You didn’t walk off the stage that night: you were there when I climbed up. And if you’d gone off and somehow unobtrusively crept back, trusting that nobody would notice one more knight more or less—well, what about that empty armour? That wasn’t on the stage when I arrived, and it didn’t get taken away after I arrived, because the place was guarded. Come along now, and put a good face upon it. And be a man.’ He dropped his arm and strolled through the arch with the boy at his elbow an
d said off-handedly to Charlesworth: ‘Well—that wouldn’t have worked, would it?’
‘No getting rid of the armour,’ agreed Charlesworth at once. He gave George’s shoulder a pat. ‘Hope I didn’t put the wind up you?’
‘Good lord, no,’ said George. He admitted: ‘Well—it did actually. I’m afraid I lost my head and behaved like a kid.’ But honestly, honestly, it would be the last time!
A crackle of lightening lit for a moment the glass in the roof of the hall: thunder crashed overhead. Charlesworth said: ‘So it wasn’t our George!’ and he looked at the others, at Mr. Port and Brian Bryan and Susan Betchley and said: ‘Which of you?’
Charlesworth might not be expecting to make an arrest, but there were policemen posted all round the circle of light. And at something in his tone, they began to close in: imperceptibly, cautiously, with an unconscious menace tightening the ring round the bag. Charlesworth said: ‘One o you!’
Mr. Port looked back at him steadily. He said: ‘You have been over and over and over all this. Not me, because I couldn’t have killed Anderson. Not Bryan because he could not have killed Isabel. Not Miss Betchley because… because…’
‘Because she had just failed to kill Perpetua,’ suggested Charlesworth pleasantly. And the ring closed in.
Cockrill took Perpetua’s arm, gently, and stood beside her, holding her. As though for comfort, George Exmouth moved closer to them. It left Mr. Port and Brian and Miss Betchley alone together. Brown eyes and blue eyes and brown eyes again looked steadily at Charlesworth. He said: ‘All for one: and one for all!’
‘And all for Johnny,’ said Brian softly.
The lightning flashed again: thunder rumbled away into nothingness. In the bright light the nine knights stood staring, in the shadows the police stood close. Charlesworth repeated: ‘And all for Johnny!’ He started to speak, very quietly. He said:
‘Johnny Wise had a father and a mother and two brothers and a sister. He had a twin. Whether the twin was a brother or sister, we don’t know. But he left them all to come to England; and in England he died. The Japanese net closed in about his family and they could not come home to avenge him. But they waited the day. When at last they were free, their plans were all made. Johnny’s father: and Johnny’s brother: and Johnny’s sister. Johnny’s mother was broken in her mind by all that she had been through—and by the death of her “golden boy” and this also was to be revenged. Her illness delayed matters, perhaps: but finally they got her home, a poor, sick creature with no memory of the past—and the day came.
Death of Jezebel Page 18
