After the tinny crash of the armour—silence: silence but for the throbbing of the rain on the roof. The thunder and lightning had ceased: no sound now but the beat, beat, beat of the rain. And into the silence, suddenly, shrilling, the young voice of George Exmouth cried: ‘But I saw his eyes! There was someone on the white horse! You saw his eyes, his blue eyes, you said so yourself; and I saw them, just before the horse bolted; turned to me with a look of—sort of alarm and astonishment…’
‘Well—not his blue eyes,’ said Cockrill.
‘Not his eyes? Then…?’
And so the central figure of Cockie’s jigsaw puzzle was established finally in its place—the figure that had turned out not to be Brian Two-Times after all: not exactly. Cockrill said: ‘How do you think Earl Anderson looked that night—when his kind friend, carrying him gaily off to the Golden Golliwog suddenly turned out to be—not so kind? I should think alarm and astonishment would be putting it mildly.
‘You mean…?’
‘I mean that there was nobody—no body—on the horse,” said Cockrill. To Brian he said: ‘It was somehow out of character that you should have cut off the man’s head for no reason: or just for the ugly pleasure of sending it to the girl.’
‘That was a red herring,’ agreed Brian, pleasantly. ‘I had to carry attention away from my real reason for possessing myself of the head. I wanted the late Earl to be my alibi on the horse: but you can’t lug around an eleven stone body. A habit of carrying a black hat in one hand, however, and draping a mackintosh over one’s arm, whatever the weather—so foreign!—covers a multitude of-—heads. And for the rest…’ He paused. And there rose up in all their minds, a vision of the hour after murder had been done: of the empty armour hanging in the Assembly room with the empty helmet on the peg above it: of Brian Bryan fretting and fuming in Mr. Port’s little office, the golden hair, the blue eyes shining, the pillar of the throat rising out of the round rigid neck of the armour—the helmet tucked away nonchalantly, under one arm…
Silence again. Under the bright lights, they made three almost concentric circles—the police on the fringes of the shadow, the knights in their silly tin armour, rather hurriedly shifting their helmets from under their arms: the little central ring of the principals, gathered here together for the very last time—Cockrill and Charlesworth and Mr. Port and Miss Betchley and Perpetua and Motherdear… Two dozen people in three concentric rings—held at bay and helpless by the little black ring of the muzzle of a revolver: twenty-four pairs of eyes looking desperately into the single roving round black eye, the ‘evil eye’ whose glance was death. Charlesworth did not quite see what was to happen next: and he was afraid. He was responsible for what happened to twenty-four people—and to a murderer—and he was afraid. He said to Brian Bryan: ‘What now?’
‘Now “good-bye”,’ said Brian, pleasantly. ‘In a moment I shall be outside this door and down this corridor and if anybody tries to stop me, I shall shoot. I’m not afraid to die for this—I think that perhaps it’s true that I am mad—that there is in my whole family a tendency to madness—that Johnny and I, as well as my poor brother, had all the seed of madness in us—because I don’t care about dying: I’d hang by the neck till I was dead, and I wouldn’t care a jot—now that the job is done. But I’m not going to ask for it. I’ve got everything laid on, for escape out of England—I’ve had it laid on from the beginning. I only waited to see justice done to this girl.’ He waved the gun towards Perpetua. ‘I thought Inspector Cockrill had spotted me when he said so significantly earlier this evening that I had cut off Earl Anderson’s head: and soon after when he said that I did not always pronounce the name “Jessabel”. So I sent on the empty armour in the last “run-through” and I was going to slip away then—only then he accused the girl.’ He grinned at Cockrill. ‘So your mistake has had some good effect, Inspector—for here I still am and with my confession all set.’
‘And with your revolver all set,’ said Charlesworth, sourly.
‘Yes,’ said Brian. And he pointed it slowly, with a sort of gay menace, all round the inner circle of them, and said: ‘And so—good-bye.’ He began to sidle back towards the door.
Charlesworth stood irresolute. He said to Cockie, savagely: ‘I had the men all ready for him to bolt: they’d have caught him up outside. And now this. A pretty muck you’ve made of it for me!’
‘Yes,’ said Cockie humbly. And he raised his grey head and said with a quiet determination: ‘We shall have to do something about it,’ and with quiet determination and as steadily began to move forward. To Brian he said in his grumbling old voice: ‘It’s all up, son. You may as well give me the gun.’
Brian steadied the revolver. ‘One more movement and I’ll shoot. Have no illusions: I like you, Inspector, I always have, all along—but this is my life. Don’t think I shall have any beautiful inhibitions about your charms or your inoffensiveness or your grey hairs—because I shan’t! One step more and I give you my word—I shoot.’ He pointed the revolver at the little man’s heart at blank range: and Cockrill continued quietly on his course: and Brian Two-Times fired.
Click, click, click went the chambers of the revolver, turning round upon nothingness: and in the brief interlude, Charlesworth and George Exmouth were at Brian’s throat and pulling him down. The golden head submerged in a sea of knights in armour, of uniformed police: the blue eyes drowned beneath the battering of fists and elbows. He emerged from the mêlée and there were handcuffs upon his wrists—but his eyes were bright as stars. Charlesworth gave an order: and without a backward glance he allowed himself to be dragged away down the long, dark corridor—blue eyes shining, golden head held high, an executioner going to his own execution. And they who watched him knew that he would be hanged by the neck till he was dead, as he had said: and that, as he had said, he would not care a jot!
And in the middle of the Assembly room, Inspector Cockrill sat quietly on the floor where the scrimmage had landed him, and broke open Brian Bryan’s revolver for the second time that day. ‘Wise before the event, you see,’ he said with ineffable sweetness to Inspector Charlesworth: and scrambled to his feet and slung his old mackintosh over his shoulder and slammed his shabby hat on his head. ‘Got to get home to bed now,’ he said. ‘Early start to-morrow. I’m going home to Kent.’ He added: ‘I’m afraid they’re going to think I made rather a muck of that conference.’
And with a satisfied twinkle in his eye, he stumped off into the night.
THE END
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Copyright © 1948 by Christianna Brand
cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
ISBN 978-1-4532-9048-4
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Death of Jezebel Page 20
