“Indeed. And where do I come in, sir?”
“The coins are now in the bank in a box lodged by your late sister.”
Doane was on his feet again.
“This is ridiculous...”
He hung over Littlejohn like a bird of prey.
“You’re trying to trap me...I won’t have it. I know nothing about the stolen coins...”
“Yet you sold several of them to Earp, the jeweller, until Superintendent Simpole found out what you were doing. He had previously encountered you and met your sister in connection with your unlicensed vivisection. He fell in love with Mrs. Crake and lost his sense of proportion. She persuaded him to keep quiet about the coins although he discovered that you held the stolen Toledo collection.”
“It was...it would...”
Doane seemed to be choking.
“Go on, sir.”
“It would only have fallen in the hands of the republicans...those anti-royalists I hated. I was justified in taking it.”
“You simply stole them, ran out on your accomplice with the booty, left him to take the medicine of twenty years in gaol...And then you came here and hid from justice and Casado. You made up your mind that nobody was going to make you leave here. You made your sister into a drug addict, broke down her resistance every time she tried to cure herself, undermined her morals and health, and made a wreck of her. You broke up Nicholas Crake’s home and happiness...”
“Dulcie was never stable. It didn’t need me to assist her. You know, of course, who was Alec’s father. You seem to know far too much. I didn’t cause that...”
“They were living happily...as happily as two such incompatibles could live. You were responsible for all the tragedy of Beyle, and you did it to save your own beastly skin and for your own crazy comfort.”
“The coins were Dulcie’s...”
“I wouldn’t lie any more if I were you. You sold the coins to your sister. After Simpole found out about them, you sought ways to be rid of them. How did you persuade her to buy them? Did you talk economics to her? Did you tell her that gold was better than depreciating paper money; that the best way to invest the cash she wrung from her other crazy lover, Kent, was to put it in gold in the bank?”
“The cash she got from Kent was her own by rights. What business had Nicholas Crake hoarding money to leave away from his wife? What did Nita ever do to deserve such a fortune? When Kent told Dulcie of it, she never rested until she got it for herself. It was hers by right. She was his wife, wasn’t she?”
“Is that the way you put it to your sister? Whenever you wanted anything, you drugged her until she couldn’t think for herself and then forced your will on her...”
“I always looked after her. Even when she was a child...”
“Please, don’t let us have any more sentimental scenes, Mr. Doane. I only wish I could arrest you for the murders in this house. They all lie at your door and are your doing, indirectly. As it is, I have seen to it that the Spanish government are informed where the Toledo treasure is hidden. That, I’m afraid, is now a matter for diplomats. Extradition is a bit difficult in present circumstances, but I hope you end in some foul Spanish gaol or other for all you’ve done. Meanwhile, I’m going to hold you on a charge of receiving stolen goods. That sounds funny, but I’m stretching my technical conscience a bit. You will not leave this house until I say you may.”
Doane, limp and dishevelled, had listened to all this and then, in a sudden spasm of energy, began to flail his arms about like drumsticks.
“This is outrageous! It’s all lies and fantastic nonsense, just to implicate me. My sister needed a helper and adviser...”
“Her husband was eminently qualified for that role. Had you not arrived here and started your devilry, the victims of these foul attacks would have been alive now. After your sister died, how did you get the letters Simpole wrote to her?”
“I didn’t...I never saw the letters...”
“I don’t believe you. Kent stole them from Mrs. Crake’s desk. You knew that, with your sister dead, Simpole’s promise of silence to her was finished. You had to find another way of keeping him quiet. You got another promise from him by dangling the letters which you got from Kent. Did you threaten Kent as well? Threaten to make known the fact that he’d embezzled the trust monies invested by Crake for Nita?”
“All lies...You’re trying to implicate me in...!”
“You know it’s the truth. You knew of the money Kent gave your sister. He gave you the letters for your promise of silence and you, in turn, handed them to poor Simpole in exchange for his promise. Simpole was a gallant officer, torn between duty and disgrace. He broke down and took his own life. Another score against you...”
There was a knock on the door and Elspeth entered bearing a tray.
“Here’s your tea,” she said with a baleful glare at Bernard Doane.” I’m leaving to-morrow...”
She had avenged herself as best she could against the man she always hated. The tray bore a shrivelled chop, a couple of greasy potatoes, a hunk of bread, and a glass of water.
“I haven’t time to do a sweet. I’m packin’ for Miss Nita.”
And she left the room.
Uncle Bernard regarded the contents of the tray critically and then, with an angry gesture, swept the lot in the fireplace. There was a crash of glass and crockery and the water began to hiss on the tiles.
“If my sister had been alive, this wouldn’t have happened!”
“And now, sir, would you mind telling me what size you take in hats?”
Cromwell looked anxiously at Littlejohn, wondering if the scene just passed had unhinged him a bit.
“My what?”
Uncle Bernard couldn’t believe his ears either.
“Your size in hats...”
“Six and a half...”
Littlejohn looked at the small head on top of the thin, sloping shoulders. He wondered what the anthropometric men at Scotland Yard would make of it!
“Cromwell, do you mind going down and asking for one of Mr. Nicholas Crake’s hats and also ask Alec what size he takes?”
Cromwell gave Littlejohn another queer look and slowly went on his business.
“Will you be all right?” he asked his chief as he turned at the door.
“Why not?”
Uncle Bernard’s eyes glinted.
“What is this new idea...? Hats, hats, hats...What are you doing? Trying to drive me mad?”
“Mr. Alec takes six and seven-eighths...And here’s one of Mr. Crake’s...”
He handed over an old fishing hat with flies still stuck through the band. There was no ticket in it.
“Try it, Cromwell...”
Cromwell dubiously put on the hat. It fitted him exactly and gave him a raffish look. Littlejohn could not resist a grin. Cromwell, faithful under any strain and stress, returned a sickly smile.
“What size do you take, Cromwell?”
“Sevens...”
“Quite a variety of sizes. Now, who would take, say, seven and a quarter?”
“What is all this?”
Littlejohn turned angrily on Uncle Bernard.
“You know what it’s all about! On the night Kent was killed, as I saw you off to your temporary lodgings, I handed you a soft homburg hat. It fell over your ears. It was neither yours, nor Crake’s, nor Alec’s. It belonged to whoever was hiding in the hole under the stairs. It belonged to somebody who killed Kent, or else saw who killed him. It belonged, unless I’m very much mistaken, to Mr. Trotman!”
“It’s a lie! I don’t remember anything about a hat. How did Trotman get away if he was hidden there? The place was full of police!”
“Patience, Mr. Doane. Just patience. He just needed to sit and wait until the constable went off to make some tea, say, and then he bolted through the front door. It was dark then. Why did Trotman kill Kent? Do you know?”
“How should I know? I don’t believe he did. I believe it was Simpole did it. I believe he kill
ed my sister, too.”
“Why?”
“She said ‘Police’ with her last breath. She didn’t want me to call the police. She knew I’d do that. She tried to convey with her last breath that the police had killed her...”
“Rubbish! You know as well as I that the wound she got killed her outright. She never spoke at all. You knew who killed her. You saw him. But you didn’t tell me because you wanted someone with influence in the family on your side; someone you could blackmail by your knowledge into seeing you kept your nice comfortable little hide-out here. You’re a low-down swine, Mr. Doane, and nothing would please me better than to hand you over to the hangman, or better still, the Spanish police. They aren’t so humane.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I shall report this bullying to the proper quarter. You’ve no right...”
“But, unluckily for you, Kent was murdered in turn. So you got Trotman. What is Trotman going to do for you? Buy you this house; cheat Miss Nita out of it; settle it on you; become your new protector? Because I’ll see that he doesn’t. We’re going to have a thorough cleaning up at Lepers’ Hollow if it’s the last thing I do.”
“I can assure you, it will be the last thing you do. When I’ve finished with you, you’ll wish you’d never been born. I’ll...I’ll...I have powers beyond the law and the police...I have read and experimented and dug into the records of the past...I have secret drugs, powders, and potions that will make you die in torment. And you’ll never know when the food you eat or the beer you drink holds your doom. I have...I have . . .”
He rose and pointed a skinny hand at Littlejohn, foam flecked his lips, and his hair grew more dishevelled without his even touching it. Like Hitler raving over his secret weapons!
“You cannot conceive the power I have over those who try to do me ill...I have secret...”
The door opened and anti-climax entered in the shape of Elspeth again. This time she carried a piece of solid, soggy Bakewell tart, with a streak of cold yellow custard slopped over it.
“I found this in the refrigidator...It’s still fit to eat. If you want it, you can have it...Well! I never did!! Oo’s thrown that chop in the ’earth and broke the pots? Was it you?”
Uncle Bernard descended from his pedestal of supreme power, gazed at her as if he’d never seen her before.
Elspeth’s patience was at an end. She deliberately laid the tart and custard on the table, placed her hands on her hips, and faced the old man.
“You threw my good food on the fire. Well, you can starve for what I care, now. Yore a wicked old man, if ever there was one. Wicked and devlish and crool...You ruined Mrs. Crake, but what’s worse, you made my pore Mr. Nick’s life into one long ’ell. You deserve to rot in hell, you blasted ole sinner, and rot you will. Well...you can stop in this ’ouse all yourself after to-morrow. You can sit an’ brood an’ get cold and starve. Nobody’s goin’ to raise a hand to help you...Thief, liar, devil, ’ypocrite, murderer...”
She cast around for other epithets to fling at his head and finding none, looked for other means of damaging him. Her eyes fell on the Bakewell tart. With aim quite deadly for one so old, she swept it from its plate, palmed it, and swung it at Uncle Bernard, who took it full in the face and collapsed.
Seventeen – The Sorrows of Mr Skrike
MR. CALEB SKRIKE was a qualified solicitor who, in his early days, had shown great promise. Then he took to drink. This may have been due to the fact that he got little peace at home, for almost as soon as he had settled down to married life, his wife had started to present him with children. Boy, girl, boy, girl; until there were seven of them. Life became monotonous, so the father of this little flock took to staying at the club until late; sometimes he slept on the couch in the billiards-room. His wife had a professed preference for infants; after they reached the age of one she lost interest in them and wanted another suckling. At the seventh accouchement, Providence seemed to intervene, there were no more to follow and the ordeal came to an end. But not Mr. Skrike’s drinking. He was too far in the toils.
After thirty years with the firm of Trotman, this little lawyer with the misty eyes, the little grey beard, and suits which always seemed a size too large for him, and who, by the way, conducted a ladies’ choir when he was not drinking or doing his children’s homework, turned awkward. He handed Mr. Trotman his resignation from the blue. Trotman spent a few sleepless nights as a result. Arthur Kent was a good court-man, but someone always had to prepare his briefs; Trotman made a song of specializing in common law and conveyancing but Skrike did the work. It looked as if the firm would have to shut up shop! Skrike then said he would stay on as a partner. and in spite of all the tut-tutting of Kent and Trotman, he stuck to his guns. When he felt himself weakening, he crossed to the club and got drunk.
“I’ve got my family to think of,” he kept repeating.
At last he won the day, his name went on the plate and notepaper, and he received one-fifth of the net profits of the partnership. Having done this, he drank himself under the billiards-table at the club and slept the night on the front lawn of his house. Fortunately it was midsummer! The Skrikes lived in a semi-detached house not far from the centre of the town. On leaving Beyle, Littlejohn called there and found Mr. Skrike just about to go out to choir practice.
“I haven’t much time,” he told Littlejohn.” But come inside for a minute.”
Inside, in the badly lighted hall, it looked like a boarding-school. A lot of little hats and school-caps hanging on pegs in the lobby, appropriate top-coats under them, and a heap of school-bags on the floor. It was the hour of homework and the silent brood were working hard in the dining-room at anything from illustrating nursery rhymes in coloured chalks to differential calculus. They were extremely well brought up, the lot of them, for Mr. Skrike did not hesitate to administer corporal punishment when necessary. This he invariably did with a cane on bending and tight hindquarters and when they were all good, he chastised the worst of them, nevertheless, to keep up morale. When he was absent, his wife took on the task of monitor. The children dreaded her punishments more than their father’s, for these consisted of smacks on the head which almost rendered their recipients unconscious; she used her left hand, on the finger of which a large wedding-ring, symbol of their legitimacy, acted as a knuckle-duster.
Upstairs, in the nursery, two little girls who had finished their exercises were quietly playing with dolls. They were putting them to bed and singing soft little lullabies.
Mr. Skrike was a well-bred man in spite of his short-comings.
“Pray, step in, Inspector,” he said, and opened the door of the parlour. A blast of cold damp air rushed from the little-used room and Mr. Skrike hastened to dispel it by lighting a large old-fashioned gas-fire, which roared and plopped throughout the interview. A solitary electric lamp, with a shade made of little beads, strung together by the eldest daughter, illuminated the room. Mr. Skrike’s law books and a lot of cheap editions of the classics stood in rows on shelves on each side of the fireplace, over which hung a framed photograph of the Skrike family, Mrs. Skrike sitting with two children on each side of her, a child in arms on her knee, two sitting, tailor-wise, at her feet, and Mr. Skrike behind, with a protective hand on her shoulder. Other photographs on the walls and mantelpiece showed the children in various stages of development, from naked and lying on their bellies, to prize-winning at fancy-dress balls as Chinamen, geishas, pirates, page-boys, pierrots, pierrettes and admirals. Splendid and outshining the rest, a large picture of Mr. Skrike sitting among forty women, with a label on the frame: “Tilsey Festival Choir. Winners 1946.”
“Please sit down.”
Mr. Skrike indicated an old-fashioned armchair, the springs of which were visible and uninviting through the plush. He didn’t ask Littlejohn if he would drink. He half-filled two tumblers with whisky, added the same amount of soda, and handed one to the Inspector.
“Your very good health, Inspector, and success to your cau
se.”
“Thank you, sir. Good health. I came to ask you a few questions about the case.”
“Fire away...”
The gas-fire thereupon exploded, put itself out, and Mr. Skrike had to fiddle with the air vent and relight it. The room grew heavy with the smell of gas.
“May I ask you what you think, sir, of the murders at Beyle House? Your firm were the family lawyers and one of your partners was a victim. Have you formed any views?”
Mr. Skrike took out a large, curved pipe, lit it, and seemed to derive great comfort from puffing it. He invited Littlejohn to take a pipeful of shag from his pouch.
“This is a bit awkward,” he said at length, rubbing his fingers in his short beard. “Private views of a case like this are dangerous, especially when one’s own colleagues are concerned.”
“I don’t need to tell you, sir, I shall use with the greatest discretion any information you may care to give.”
“I don’t doubt it for a moment, Inspector. I’ve watched you at work, I like you, and I wish you success. Good health and good luck!”
He drank off his whisky with the skill of long practice. Then he laid down his glass and put the tips of his fingers together.
“We have here a case of very tangled family relations. That old reprobate, Doane, has brought nothing but unhappiness to that house. In fact, I don’t think I exaggerate when I say he’s brought about its downfall.”
“I agree.”
“I thought you would. Now, as far as I can see, the untimely death of Mr. Crake brought to a head a lot of very dangerous situations. I suppose you know the relations which once existed between the late Kent and Mrs. Crake...I needn’t dwell on it.”
“Yes, I know, sir.”
“I have seen her in the office...not long ago, at that...and I knew that she either still loved him or else, as he cooled off, womanlike, she refused to be scorned. And I have not worked with the firm of Trotman & Co. for over thirty-five years without knowing my principal partner’s secret, which, unless you know it, I shall not divulge.”
Crime In Leper's Hollow Page 21
