‘It may seem a curious question/ he said, ‘but I'd be very grateful if you could tell me what you know about a Mrs Wale.’
‘Mrs Wale - good gracious, what has she to do with all these things that have been happening?’
‘You do know her, do you?’
‘I can't say I exactly know her. I've made use of her occasionally.’
'She's typed some of your work for you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you recommended her to Mrs Amory when she wanted a typist?’
‘Ah!’ she exclaimed. ‘Now I begin to see what you're after. But not really. No, I don't understand where Mrs Wale comes in. Could you please explain it to me?’
The trouble for Andrew was that he had not sorted out in his mind before coming to see Mina Todhunter how much he meant to tell her of his connection with Mrs Wale.
‘Look, it's really Inspector Mayhew's doing,’ he said.
'So I supposed,’ she said, her gruff voice sardonic. ‘I didn't think you could have dug Mrs Wale out all by yourself.’
‘He'd made a slightly curious discovery,’ Andrew said.
‘He'd found an address book in the Amorys’ summerhouse which was evidently Mrs Amory's, not her husband's. And the inspector showed it to me and asked me if anything special struck me about it. But before I could start to look at it he was called away because the body of Magda Braile had been found. So I was left alone with the address book and I took my time going through it, and something curious struck me about it. There was the name and address of a typist in it - Mrs Wale, Linwood Road. What, I wondered, had Mrs Amory wanted a typist for? And as I had nothing better to do, I decided to call on Mrs Wale, because I'd a feeling that she was what the inspector had wanted my opinion on. I thought he'd wanted to see if I found it a little strange that Mrs Amory had kept Mrs Wale's address in her address book. And I was quite right, because I found, when I saw Mrs Wale, that the police had already been out to visit her that morning.’
‘Ah!’ Mina Todhunter exclaimed again. ‘I begin to see light. But go on.’
‘Well, I asked Mrs Wale if she'd ever done work for Mrs Amory/ Andrew said, ‘and she said she had.’
‘For Mrs Amory?’ she asked quickly.
‘Yes.’
‘Not for Simon?’
‘No.’
‘I see, I see. And so you leapt to the conclusion … Oh, how lucky it is that you came to see me, because I can sort this out for you. You leapt to the conclusion, didn't you, that the real writer of those books of Simon's had been his wife, and that he'd simply pirated them after her death. Isn't that what you thought?’
‘I considered it, yes.’
‘How sad, how dreadfully sad.’
That was not exactly the comment that Andrew had expected, but he wanted to understand it.
‘I'm quite wrong, am I?’
She leant her head back in her chair and for a moment closed her eyes. Opening them again, she said, ‘Yes, quite wrong, but I understand how you - and Mrs Wale - came to make the mistake you did. You see, when Simon first took to writing, his wife was already a very sick woman, and as they both knew, doomed. But she was still moderately active, and she took a great interest in Simon's attempts to write. So to give her something to think about and perhaps help her to keep her mind off her troubles, he took to dictating his works to her, instead of writing them himself. He's told me he found it extremely difficult. Dictating didn't come naturally to him. But it meant so much to her that he went on with it, and I believe it's partly why those first two books he wrote are so poor. Partly, of course, that was first because he was learning his craft, but also I'm sure the dictating had something to do with it. And then, when the first book was finished, all in her handwriting, she came to me and asked me if I could recommend a typist. And I recommended Mrs Wale. That's the true history of Simon's pirating the work of his dying wife. What he did was done out of the most perfect love. Now isn't it sad that you should ever have thought anything else?’
Andrew did not reply at once. He sat thinking over what Mina Todhunter had just told him. She was watching him with a look of curiosity on her square face as if she were trying to assess how he was reacting to the information that she had given him. At length, as he did not speak, she became impatient.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘Why did the murderer remove the manuscripts?’ he asked.
‘We don't know that he did,’ she said.
‘You mean someone else may have taken them?’
‘I mean that Rachel herself may have removed them before her death.’
‘Why?’
‘Ah, why? Because she believed they were her sister's work and she wanted to prove that Simon was a complete fraud.’
‘What makes you think so?’
'Something I haven't told anyone. You see, she came to see me on the morning of the day she died to ask my advice about what she ought to do with them.’
Andrew nodded thoughtfully.
‘Yes, she came to you for advice, didn't she, and you gave her what she called a brush-off, I remember? And later you told me that the advice she'd wanted was about writing children's books. I didn't believe you, because straight after she'd been to see you she came to have coffee with my nephew and me and she started to ask me for the advice you hadn't given her. And no one would come to me for advice about writing children's books, or about writing of any kind. But she didn't get around to it, because my nephew dropped a remark about her sister having died intestate, and she immediately became very excited and left us. And it's seemed to me since it was because she believed that the books that have made Amory famous were written by her sister, and so should have passed to her, since her sister and Amory were never really married.’
‘What?’ Mina Todhunter exclaimed. ‘Of course they were married. Whatever makes you say a thing like that?’
‘I suppose you've seen a wedding photograph of them,’ Andrew said.
‘As a matter of fact, I have, but that isn't the only reason I have for believing it. Their whole relationship was - well, a married one. It was devoted, it was stable, it was secure.’
‘I've no doubt it was, but it's possible to achieve that without ever having signed anything, or having taken any vows. And at the time of the supposed marriage I don't believe Mrs Amory knew that her husband was married already. He'd married when he was very young a girl called Mary Baker, whom you knew as Magda Braile, but that marriage collapsed after a year or so, and they separated without bothering about a divorce.’
‘Good God, how did you pick up a story like that?’ she exclaimed.
‘From Magda Braile's second husband,’ Andrew answered, 'though there I believe there was no actual ceremony. The two of them simply told people they were married and it never occurred to anyone to check up on them. It wouldn't, you know. But I suppose Amory couldn't get the Rayne girl without offering her marriage and so he conveniently forgot the existence of Mary Baker. But at some time I think Mrs Amory must have discovered the truth. Perhaps Amory felt secure enough simply to tell her about it. And then I think she went to visit her sister in America to ask her advice about what she should do, because it's obvious that at some stage Rachel learnt what the situation was, or her sister's having died intestate wouldn't have meant anything to her.’
Mina Todhunter gave a deep sigh.
‘Well, as a matter of fact, you're right,’ she said.
‘You knew all this, did you?’ Andrew asked.
‘Yes, ever since that morning when Rachel came to see me. She told me just what you've been telling me now, and I told her I didn't believe a word of it.’
‘And didn't you?’
‘I didn't know what to think, but I didn't want to get involved in the kind of thing she was trying to stir up.’
‘Why did she come to you?’
‘Because she knew I and Lizbeth had been close friends. She thought I probably knew the truth of the matter already. She thought I'd be able to t
ell her what to do about seeing that the credit for having written Death Come Quickly was given to her sister. And then that evening she was shot. And I suppose, like everyone else, I'd be thinking Simon did it if he hadn't been sitting in that chair where you're sitting now at the time of the murder. He's the only person with an obvious motive. Almost too much of a motive. It looks to me as if he'd been set up for the crime. Only someone miscalculated, because they forgot we always play chess on Saturday afternoons, and that suggests to me someone who didn't know me very well. Like Desmond Nicholl. Or a certain Peter Dilly.’ She ended with a raucous cackle of laughter.
The sound made Andrew shiver slightly, but her face was solemn and anxious.
‘Forget I said that,’ she said in a gentler voice than he had heard from her yet. ‘Of course Peter had nothing to do with it. What I'm actually inclined to believe is that the murderer doesn't belong to these parts at all. I think he may have followed Rachel down from London and had set off home again before her body had ever been discovered.’
‘First stealing the manuscripts and pushing Magda Braile over the edge of the cliff?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Why should he steal the manuscripts?’
‘We don't know that he did. I'm inclined to believe that Rachel took them herself and hid them somewhere. That could have been quite a while before her murder. I dare say she could have got into the summerhouse some time before it and taken them and made a parcel of them and perhaps deposited it in a bank or somewhere like that.’
Andrew nodded. He remembered what Peter had told him of seeing Rachel come out of the summerhouse in the evening after the performance in the Pegasus Theatre. Peter had not said that she had been carrying anything, but anyway in the darkness he would probably not have been able to see whether or not she was. Then in the afternoon of the next day she had paid a visit to Edward Clarke's office. Might she not have left a parcel in his care? And if she had, had he mentioned that to the police?
‘Well, I've taken up a great deal of your time,’ he said, ‘when all that I came to ask you was what you knew about Mrs Wale. But you've given me some interesting things to think about.’
He stood up. She stood up, facing him, solid and square, yet in some way on the defensive.
‘About Magda Braile …’ she said.
'She saw what she should not,’ Andrew answered. ‘Find Rachel's murderer and you've got Magda's.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’ But she did not sound convinced. At that moment they heard the door at the bottom of the staircase open and close, and then footsteps on the stairs. Then the door of the little sitting-room opened and Simon Amory came in. He seemed not to see Andrew immediately, but went up to Mina Todhunter, put his hands on her shoulders and began to shake her. His eyes were wild.
‘Aren't you afraid of me, Mina,’ he said. ‘You ought to be, I'm a murderer, everyone knows that. So aren't you afraid of what I might do to you?’
CHAPTER 8
She showed no sign of being afraid. She looked up into his face with a melancholy smile, then withdrew from his grasp.
‘In case you hadn't noticed, we have a visitor,’ she said.
Amory swung round to look at Andrew.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, his voice suddenly low and hoarse. 'Scenes should be kept in the family.’
‘Now what makes you say a thing like that?’ Mina asked. ‘You'll give Professor Basnett quite a wrong idea of the situation if you try to make him believe we're brother and sister.’
‘Ah no, I'm only talking of the profound dependence we have on one another,’ Amory said. ‘Nothing as simple as a blood relationship. You see, Professor, I'm a little out of my mind, and Mina's the one person who can stop me going right out of it. The police believe I'm a murderer and I've just been through the worst couple of hours with them that I've ever spent in my life. They've almost made me believe that I could be capable of murder. And Mina's the one person who can convince me I'm not. Isn't that true, Mina? You don't believe I'm a murderer.’
‘Of course you're not, dear,’ she said. ‘Now sit down and calm down and I'll make you some coffee. Professor, you'd like some coffee, wouldn't you?’
But Andrew declined it and since he was quite sure that they would not talk about whatever it was that Amory really wanted to discuss with Mina Todhunter as long as he was there, he took his leave, went downstairs and left the shop. He then went to the coffee shop round the corner to which he had been with Peter and Rachel Rayne on Saturday morning and had the coffee that he had refused in the flat above the bookshop.
Sitting there, brooding on the talk that he had had with Miss Todhunter and on her explanation of how it had come about that the manuscripts typed by Mrs Wale had been written by Mrs Amory and not by her husband, he wondered how much he believed it and how much Miss Todhunter believed it herself. For a time he felt very con-fused and troubled, then he made up his mind to pay another visit to Edward Clarke, but this time, since it was not a Sunday, not at his home, but at his office. He did not know where the office was and had recourse once more to a telephone directory and having found the address, considered telephoning for an appointment, but then decided to arrive unannounced and take his chance of being able to see the man. Later he would go to the police station and tell Inspector Mayhew what Mina Todhunter had told him about Mrs Wale and the missing manuscripts. And then, he suddenly decided, he would go back to London.
He had not come to Gallmouth to become involved in a murder enquiry and provided that Peter was not in trouble, he did not believe that he had any obligation to remain. To be alone in his flat in St John's Wood, considering, now that all the work that he had had to do on Robert Hooke was definitely concluded, whether to begin another book on another noted seventeenth-century botanist, Malpighi, seemed to him attractive beyond words. He loved his flat and he always felt at home in London. He found it hard to understand now what had ever moved him to think of coming away from it.
Edward Clarke's office was in a Georgian crescent near to the centre of the town. A young woman greeted Andrew in an outer office and said she would enquire whether Mr Clarke was free. It appeared that he was, for Andrew was kept waiting for only about five minutes, then was shown into a room where Edward Clarke sprang up from behind a desk and came towards him with a hand outstretched and a smile of welcome on his face.
The very man I wanted to see,’ he said, ‘but when I rang your hotel they said you were out and had left no information as to when you were likely to be back. But sit down, sit down, my dear fellow, and tell me what brings you.’
He piloted Andrew to a leather armchair that faced across the desk the chair where he had been sitting when Andrew entered, then he returned to that chair, rested an elbow on the desk and a plump cheek on one of his small, short-fingered hands and said, ‘Fire away, now, fire away.’ Andrew wondered if he repeated everything twice to all his clients, and if he was capable of drafting a legal document without doing so.
‘I've come to ask you a very simple question,’ Andrew said. ‘It concerns the visit that I believe Miss Rayne paid to you on Saturday afternoon.’
‘Ah, that visit - yes, yes, I believe I've told the police absolutely everything that occurred,’ Clarke said, ‘but who knows, perhaps I didn't. You may be able to jog my memory about something. I find my memory becoming more and more treacherous. And the worst of it is, I still trust it. You see, when I was young it used to be almost infallible and so I got into a habit of relying on it. I hardly ever made notes of anything. I just trusted to that jolly old memory of mine. And now it lets me down at every turn and I still don't make notes. A bad habit, a very bad habit, that's what it is. The mistakes I've made because of it! But still, I think I can remember everything that happened on Saturday afternoon.’
‘I don't think you'll have any difficulty remembering what I'm going to ask you about,’ Andrew said. ‘It's only whether Miss Rayne was carrying a package of any sort when she arrived here, and whether
she left it in your charge.’
‘I see, I see,’ Clarke said, frowning as if even that question taxed his memory, and beginning to chew a thumb. Then he shook his head. 'She was carrying something, but she didn't leave it here. Now what was it? Oh, of course, it was just her handbag. A rather large one that was on what I believe is called a shoulder-strap. Would that be what you mean? But I can say quite definitely that she didn't leave it behind when she left.’
‘Then I don't think it can be what I'm looking for,’ Andrew said. ‘And I don't think a handbag, however large, would be big enough to contain the things that have got lost.’
‘Ah, you mean the missing manuscripts!’ Clarke exclaimed. 'The police told me about them. They seemed to think that they may in some way provide a motive for her murder, that she was murdered to obtain possession of them. I can't see it myself. They can't have been valuable. But you think she had them in her possession, do you, but that she deposited them somewhere? Well, if she did, it must have been before she came to see me. But it's an interesting idea, very interesting. Of course, if she'd done anything like leaving them with me, I'd have told the police about it and handed the package over. I'm sorry if that's upsetting a theory of yours, but I really can't help you.’
‘Well, perhaps since I'm here now, you can tell me why you tried to telephone me at the hotel this morning,’ Andrew said.
‘Ah, yes, indeed. Yes, indeed. That was because of a little theory of mine,’ Clarke said. ‘And first, can you tell me why our Simon invited your nephew down here to stay with him. I've gathered that they don't know each other well.’
‘They'd met once when Peter was invited down here/ Andrew said.
‘That was my impression. And of course that wouldn't be at all surprising if Simon was an impulsive sort of person, or just a sociable sort of person. But I think I'm safe in saying that normally he's neither. And as a matter of fact, our committee was rather upset about it. I don't mean that they were upset at finding that Peter Dilly was coming. Indeed not. They were delighted. But they were upset that the invitation had been given without their having been consulted. Very touchy, some of them are. But of course, they weren't going to upset the arrangement, and an official invitation went off quite promptly. After all, Simon is Simon Amory. And once they'd settled down to the idea, they recognized that Dilly was a great acquisition. Then we heard, when the question of booking accommodation for him came up, that he was going to be staying with Simon, so naturally we assumed they were good friends, knew each other well, and so on. And it was Dilly himself who happened to tell me that that wasn't so, that they'd just met once at some literary luncheon. To tell you the truth, I think he was distinctly puzzled himself at Simon's invitation. He seemed to feel that Simon actually disliked him.’
Choice of Evils Page 13
