Dead Mans Quarry: A Golden Age Mystery
Page 29
“I don’t know what the water’s like,” he remarked. “I found it here, but it’ll be all right boiled. And there’s only two cups. And no milk. But there’s still a spot of brandy in my flask, and a hot drink’s an excellent thing after a dust-up.”
A dust-up! John could not but smile faintly at the inadequacy of his friend’s description. A tin kettle was already steaming gently on the little oil-stove inside the hut, and a large brown teapot and two white mugs awaited the brew.
John installed Nora on a rug on the floor with her back against the bench, and himself sat on the bench to keep it steady; and Rampson, with the serious air of a housewife performing a domestic rite, heated the teapot, counted out six spoonfuls of the shepherd’s tea and poured on the boiling water.
Isabel still stood like a wraith in the doorway. She looked fey, witch-like, with the lamp’s illumination on her pointed, thin-lipped face and the light, monotonous sky behind her.
“Do you want me to come in?” she asked in a low voice.
There was a meaning in her tone that made Felix at least look once again with a vague horror towards that patch of bracken and then quickly avert his eyes.
“You saved my life,” he said huskily.
“Ah, well!” she said. “I owed you that. You haven’t cause to thank me for anything else, Felix. But I’ll come in, and share your tea, if I may. It’ll be for the last time. And I think”—she stepped into the hut and carefully folded up her coat into a cushion, sat down on it with her small hands clasped round her knees and looked at John—”I think a touch of candour would be a good thing. Don’t you, John?”
“I suppose,” said John gravely, “it’s time.”
“You know,” said Isabel pensively, looking at the yellow flame of the oil-stove, “I thought as soon as I met you that you’d be too clever for us. I told Charles so and warned him to get out of the country while he had a chance, but he wouldn’t. That first day I met you, when you jumped on me so quickly for saying that Hufton was a thief—silly slip!—I knew he’d have to look out for you. How long have you—”
Nora interrupted, putting down her cup and staring at Isabel as if she were a ghost.
“Charles,” she said, “Charles is dead, in the quarry. But I saw him. I saw him yesterday, looking out of the window of your house as I went down the steps. And —afterwards—’’
Isabel answered her gently as one might speak to a child.
“You’ve never seen Charles Price, Nora. Charles Price is dead, he was found dead in the quarry. You’ve only seen Gavin Marshall—I’ve got into the habit of calling him Charles. And now he’s dead too. Never mind,” she added, as the look of distress deepened on Nora’s face. “You’ll understand soon. I was going to say, John, how long have you known that the man they’d all known as Charles Price was the murderer, not the victim?”
“I never guessed for a moment until to-night,” answered John. “And then I knew. I knew absolutely when I tried to put the blood-stone ring on my little finger. It wouldn’t go on.”
“Well?”
“But my own signet-ring had been too small for the dead man’s little finger. So I knew that the blood-stone ring had never belonged to the dead man. The rest followed.”
“Where did the ring turn up?”
“It was pushed down beside the cushion in Morris Price’s car.”
The girl nodded.
“It was silly of him to try to plant the murder on the old man. He’d have done better to have left things alone. But he seemed to hate the old man. I believe that was why he would stay in England, partly to read the papers and gloat over the thought of Morris Price in prison. Oh, he was a horrible creature,” said Isabel in a low voice. “A stupid creature. Stupid and malicious. Yet once I thought him a man.”
There was a pause, while the girl, with her pointed chin on her fist, stared bleakly at the fire. Suddenly she said slowly:
“It’s funny to be sitting here talking to you as if there were nothing between me and the rest of you. There is, really, you know. There are bars between us—prison bars.”
She looked slowly up and about her as if she could really see a network of iron separating the hut into two compartments, with herself alone upon one side. She shivered a little.
“You first, John. Tell us what you know. I’ll fill in the blanks afterwards. I don’t much feel like talking, after all. But let’s get it over and said.”
“It won’t take me long,” said John, “to tell you all I know or guess. Gavin Marshall, I take it, met the real Charles Price at some time, out in Canada. He also, at some time in Canada, met Mrs. Clytie Price, and—and you, Isabel. Is she really your aunt, by the way?”
Isabel nodded.
“Well—cousin. Near enough.”
“Marshall must have resembled Charles fairly closely, I suppose.”
“He said so,” answered Isabel. “And of course he must have done, or nobody would have taken the dead man in the quarry for the Charles they knew. But I never saw the real Charles.”
“And when he heard—perhaps he saw advertisements —that Charles’s family wanted to trace him and that he’d been missing for thirteen years, he conceived the idea of impersonating Charles and coming into his inheritance.”
“It was Clytie who conceived the idea,” put in Isabel. “But go on.”
“It was a risky thing to attempt, but I suppose Marshall thought Charles was dead or otherwise safely out of the way.”
Isabel nodded.
“He had the best of reasons for thinking so.”
“You all came to England, Charles having managed to pass the Canadian lawyers. Of course Mrs. Price could have supplied him with a certain amount of information.”
“And he had some papers and photographs and things he’d stolen from Charles Price.”
“Well. I think you and your aunt came over first, I suppose, to find out how the land lay. You started work at the school of art in Kensington, having found out that Felix took lessons there.”
Isabel nodded, and returned Felix’s sombre glance with a faint ironic smile.
“You made friends with Nora, and through her with Felix.” John paused. “I don’t know quite what you and your aunt were to get out of all this. Unless—forgive me for speaking plainly, but of course you didn’t help Marshall out of pure friendship for him—unless you were to—”
“Marry him. Yes. I was. All right. Go on.”
Felix got up abruptly and stood at the window with his back to them, watching the sun streaking the sky with pale yellow in the east.
“Well,” went on John, “then something went wrong. I think Clytie must have decided at the last moment, when she saw Rhyllan Hall, that she was a fool to help to cheat her husband of his inheritance. For I suppose she also believed that Charles Price was dead. I think then she realized that living on Marshall’s bounty, even with a strong hold over him, might be rather precarious. I think then she conceived the idea of a reconciliation with her husband.”
Isabel nodded briefly.
“I couldn’t understand it at first,” went on John. “I thought perhaps she meant to murder Charles with Morris’s co-operation, though I couldn’t imagine that she would really hope to get her husband to consent to that. But I see now. If she could get a promise of reconciliation from Morris, she intended to—well, blow the gaff. So she asked her husband to meet her in Hereford, and he did so. But he wouldn’t consent to a reunion, and the gaff wasn’t blown. Meanwhile the real Charles had followed the impostor to England. He was more or less destitute, I take it—perhaps he was walking or lorry-jumping to Rhyllan from whatever port he landed at. Anyhow, I think it was at Hereford that he first came face to face with Marshall and realized who it was that had supplanted him.”
“Yes,” said Isabel. “The evening we arrived at Hereford I noticed that something was wrong with Gavin. But he wouldn’t tell me what it was. I still thought then that the real Charles was dead.”
“You started ea
rly the next morning. And soon after Charles Price found an opportunity of borrowing a boy’s bicycle and followed you. He didn’t, of course, know what road you’d taken. But he’d guess that you were going towards Rhyllan. He caught you up at the Tram Inn, where you stopped for tea.”
“Then—” began Nora.
“Yes, Nora. I think he was the man you saw looking in at the doorway of the Tram, waiting for an opportunity of having it out with Marshall. And he was the man Ada Watt saw going to the orchard. He was pretty well down and out, I think, or he wouldn’t have waited to see Marshall before going to Rhyllan and claiming his own. He was afraid he’d be too thoroughly disbelieved, perhaps turned out. He helped himself to Miss Watt’s eggs and apples and lay in wait for Marshall. Marshall must have seen him, I think. I think he stayed behind on purpose, perhaps intending to bribe him, perhaps to threaten him—I don’t know.
“After you’d all coasted down the hill, Marshall went back into the inn for some Dutch courage, and then took his bicycle—he took Lethe’s bicycle, as it happened, but that, I imagine, was a mistake—and walked slowly into the quarry field, knowing that Charles would follow. I don’t imagine that he contemplated murder, yet. He chose the quarry field for the sake of privacy and loneliness. Charles followed, with the bicycle he had stolen from young Smiler in Hereford. They walked together towards the quarry. I don’t know what happened then. Perhaps they quarrelled. Marshall, I take it, was always fairly ready with his gun. Anyhow, it wasn’t long before Marshall, either in a rage, or with some wild hope of keeping what he had stolen, shot Charles in the head and killed him. It was a foolish thing to do. And I think he realized, when he stood there with the man lying dead at his feet, that he had not only made himself a murderer, but lost the very thing he had murdered to keep. He dared not return to Rhyllan as Sir Charles Price.”
“Why not?” asked Felix in a muffled voice.
“For one thing the dead man was tattooed on the leg with Charles Price’s initials. Marshall might, of course, have shot him in the leg or otherwise obliterated those tell-tale initials. But there were bound to be pretty close investigations. No doubt Charles had talked of his wrongs pretty freely during his journey. There would be awkward witnesses to a tale of imposture, and awkward questions asked. And Marshall’s own credentials and his own tattoo-marks would not have born too close a scrutiny. Oh, yes, he also was tattooed with the initials of Charles Price. He did it himself, with Lion’s red ink and a darning needle, that night you stopped at Highbury Down and he insisted on taking the single room. The tattoo-mark was a thing Clytie Price hadn’t known about. He heard of it for the first time when you sat in that shed on the first day after he joined you at Worcester and exchanged reminiscences. He must have thanked his lucky stars at the time that you were led to mention it. Otherwise he might have joined your river-bathing parties and shown a tell-tale undecorated leg.” Isabel gave the faint shadow of a smile.
“He made an awful mess of it,” she said pensively. “It was horribly inflamed for a day or two. Clytie thought we’d have to call in a doctor, which would indeed have been awkward. But it got better.”
“I think,” went on John, “the murderer must have had a dreadful moment when he stood there with Charles’s body at his feet, and realized that he had all to lose and nothing to gain; realized that Charles Price was dead for ever, and that Gavin Marshall must come to life again, as a hunted murderer. There was only one thing to be done. To make it as sure as possible that no question of identity should be raised. So he crouched under the hedge and dressed the dead man in his tweeds, and himself put on poor Charles’s clothes. He felt in the pockets, I think, and found little there except a couple of apples stolen from the Tram Inn orchard, which he pitched over the quarry edge. There was no money. So he took about fifteen pounds from the wallet that had been his own a moment ago—enough for emergencies. He was a Canadian, and it did not perhaps occur to him at first that five-pound notes are dangerous things. He took two five-pound notes.”
Isabel nodded.
“Yes. And then afterwards he remembered some yarn he’d read in a magazine about tracing criminals through the numbers on notes. And he hid them in a field. We didn’t know this until yesterday. And meanwhile Clytie had been in possession of the notes, all unknowing. She was furious,” said Isabel meditatively, “and they had the very devil of a row yesterday evening.”
“The other contents of the pockets,” went on John, “he left undisturbed. He even remembered to take off his blood-stone ring. But that defeated him. It wouldn’t go on the dead man’s finger.”
“I wonder,” said Rampson thoughtfully, “why he didn’t leave the raincoat with the body.”
“I think,” said John, “that he feared that before he got clean away he might meet with somebody who knew him as Sir Charles Price. And the clothes he had changed into were dirty and disreputable and quite different from the tweed suit he had been wearing. He thought it best to stick to the raincoat for a while. So long as he wore it his appearance was hardly changed, and he could, if necessary, be Sir Charles Price. Well, having made sure that he had missed nothing, he pushed the dead Charles over the quarry edge and after him he pushed the bicycle he thought was his own, but which happened to be Letbe’s. Lord, it must have been nerve-wracking to do all that in daylight! But, as the coroner remarked at the inquest, this is wild, thinly populated country. Nobody saw him. He picked up young Smiler’s bicycle and the revolver and walked back towards the road. He must have been startled when Morris Price appeared on the scene. But then it appeared providential. Had not the murder been committed with Morris Price’s initialled revolver? For Marshall, being one of those men who never feel safe unless they are carrying weapons, had borrowed the revolver out of the library to take on this peaceful cycling tour. His own, as I discovered to-night, was out of action. In a moment the scheme had formed itself in his mind of planting the murder on Morris Price. Motive, opportunity, publicity—all were ready-made for such a course. He slipped the superfluous ring unobserved among the cushions in Morris’s car. He conveyed the impression to Morris that you had all gone through the quarry fields; he led him through; he walked with him as far as the quarry; he let him return alone.
“When he had seen him depart in his car, he buried the revolver in a fairly obvious place, disguised his appearance as much as he could, walked over on to the Wensley road and cycled off. I don’t know what he did then. I fancy he hid on the Forest that night. I fancy he hid in this very hut, and left the incriminating raincoat here among the bracken. I imagine that young Smiler’s bicycle is waiting here in some bracken patch to be discovered. It’s a strange thought. Morris Price and he may have passed close to one another that night on the loneliness of the Forest. Suppose they had met.”
There was a silence. Nora, Rampson and John sat looking at the light of the oil-stove, white and feeble now in the strengthening daylight. Felix at the window gave a long sigh. Suddenly Isabel began to speak in a cold, unemotional voice:
“My father was a portrait-painter. He was very successful—for a time. When I was a schoolgirl he was making five thousand a year and spending seven thousand.”
Perceiving a faint surprise in her listeners’ faces, she smiled a little and said:
“You’re wondering what that’s got to do with it. It hasn’t anything. It’s—perhaps—an attempt to excuse my part in this. But why excuse it?” She sat with her chin on her hands and looked sombrely at the ground. “One is—what one is.”
“No, Isabel, that’s a counsel of despair!”
It was Nora who spoke and stretched out an uncertain hand. Isabel looked at her gravely from under her heavy lids and ignored her gesture.
“No, it’s not that,” she said. “Despair . . . I’ve never known despair, but only discontent. He was a jolly soul, my father, and a fairish painter, and a marvellous spender. How he enjoyed, how he adored, his success! He thought it was going on for ever, I suppose, but of course it didn’t. Grea
t artists can go on for ever, perhaps, but not the clever ones exploiting an amusing trick. There are too many of them waiting in the wings. He lost his vogue and he lost his money. He put down the first to the machinations of fellow-painters and critics”—Isabel smiled a faint, ironic smile—”and the second to my mother’s extravagance. As for me, he had brought me up to think myself a genius and to despise work. I wasn’t much use to him. Do you know”—she paused and stared out through the doorway into the cold light of the morning—”still, at the bottom of my heart, there lives that childish me that nothing’ll teach, that childish phantom of superior gifts and cleverness. Still, at the bottom of my heart, I despise the industrious journeymen of art, like you, Nora. Despise you, envy you, and—fear you. So ordinary, so slow, so—yes, even stupid you seem to me, but you take everything I ought to have. Success, money, everything you get in the end, with your maddening patience and your stupid good-temper. You get it, and you don’t know what to do with it. And if you don’t get it, you’re just as good-tempered, just as placidly happy, being somebody’s wife or teaching in a school. The itch for success, for recognition, for a proud place in the world—you don’t know what it is! All the same,” said Isabel, with a sudden change to a lighter, cooler tone, “I like you, Nora. Well, that’s all about me. I deserted the sinking ship—I was only helping it to go down faster, anyhow, and went with my cousin Clytie to America. America didn’t want us particularly. I got one or two jobs fashion designing, rotten jobs, and I was a mannequin for a little while, and then I joined a touring company, which failed. And then another touring company, which chucked me out. And all the time we hadn’t enough money.