Blue Murder Page 12

  “Pig!” she exclaimed, then started back.

  For a second, she stood rocking on her feet as if she had just received a blow between the eyes. And in that fraction of time, a kaleidoscope of shifting horrors came to her mind. Rubber truncheons, screams of pain too horrible to bear, the sickening crunch of a crushed skull, sticky jags of broken bone, coagulated clots of blood...

  But this man wasn’t a Jew.

  “You are not drunk. You are dead!” she said aloud.

  At the sound of her own voice, she screamed, dropped tantalus and tray, and ran out of the room, making grotesque gurgling noises in her throat.

  CHAPTER 23

  Chief Inspector Alan Driver of New Scotland Yard placed his note-book on the square-topped oak table in the breakfast room, as if staking a claim, and looked up as Leda entered the room.

  “Miss Hardstaffe?” he inquired, “I am chief inspector Driver. This is Lovely.”

  A look of supreme indignation spread over Leda’s face.

  “Really! I’ve no doubt that you have a certain interest in your work, Inspector,” she said coldly, “but I hardly think that is a suitable way of describing the murder of my parents to me.”

  Driver apologised profusely.

  “I’m extremely sorry, Miss Hardstaffe,” he said. “I’m not very good at introductions. I should have said that this is my assistant, detective-sergeant Lovely.”

  Lovely, completely inured to the extraordinary situations in which his surname could place him, acknowledged Leda’s frigid greeting with equanimity.

  “I don’t want to worry you with questions if it will upset you,” went on Driver, “but if you could spare me a few minutes, I should be glad of your help.”

  Leda was silent for a moment, then,

  “All this probing into things... can’t it be stopped?” she burst out. “My mother’s dead and Daddy’s dead. What does it matter who killed them, to anyone except them?”

  “There’s such a thing as Justice,” remarked the Inspector.

  “But if Daddy murdered my mother, as you all seem to think, and someone killed him for that, isn’t that justice?” Driver shook his head.

  “It might do for the Frozen North,” he said, “but it isn’t good enough for Scotland Yard. And there’s no proof yet that Mr. Hardstaffe did murder your mother. The inquiry must go on. But if you’d prefer me to interview the others in the house first, I will certainly do so. This affair has been very upsetting for you.”

  Leda was, indeed, a changed woman. She had none of the cheerful, arrogant manner so typical of her. She spoke quietly, and was not ashamed to show her grief. Her eyes were swollen with tears, and, in her dress of unrelieved black, she looked drab and lifeless, and plainer than ever.

  “Thank you, Inspector,” she replied, “but I’d rather get it over now. I believe in facing the unpleasant things in life. It isn’t so much losing both my parents in this tragic way, it’s—my father. We have always been such pals. He depended on me for everything. It’s horrible to think that he had to be killed in that way.”

  Driver nodded his sympathy. There was nothing he could say to make things better. It was a most terrible thing for any woman to have to face, and although she was not a type whom a man wanted to try and comfort, he was none the less sorry for her.

  Nevertheless he did not forget that although she had no apparent connection with the murders, she was not above suspicion, and his voice assumed a more official tone as he said, “Won’t you sit down, Miss Hardstaffe?”

  “I’d rather not, if you don’t mind,” replied Leda. “I’m not in the habit of sitting down much except for meals, and to-day I feel restless. But please don’t stand yourself. You have your notes to write, I know. I suppose you won’t smoke? Well, I will, if you don’t mind. It may steady my nerves a bit. You see, I can’t get used to the idea that Daddy isn’t here. I keep expecting him to walk in through the door, and it’s rather—upsetting.”

  She lit her cigarette, and inhaled deeply. Then, sensing the Inspector’s hesitation, she said,

  “Please don’t take any notice of this. I’m all right really. If other women can stand up to incessant bombing, I guess I can stand a few questions. Go right ahead.”

  “I understand that you witnessed your mother’s last will.”

  “Yes. I and the German maid, Frieda.”

  “Did you know the terms of that will at the time of witnessing it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did you ever mention them to your father?”

  “Certainly not. I should never be guilty of such a breach of confidence,” she replied indignantly.

  Driver nodded his approval.

  It was, he thought, just what you’d expect from Miss Hardstaffe.

  “Did it occur to you as strange that she should make a will in which you and your brother were not mentioned?”

  “I can’t say that it did,” said Leda. “She was always making new wills and cutting one of us out.”

  “Then you will be surprised to learn that, as far as we know, she made only that will and one other over a period of many years?”

  Leda shrugged her shoulders.

  “I’m afraid I ceased to be surprised at anything Mother did, years ago,” she replied. “She certainly told us all enough times that she was making new wills, but I’m not surprised that she didn’t. She told us all that there was morphia in her sleeping-draughts, and it wasn’t true.”

  “Do you think it likely that your father murdered his wife, to get her money?”

  “No. I don’t believe he knew about it.”

  “I see,” said Driver. “Then you believe he got rid of her, thinking it would never be found out, so that he would be free to marry Charity Fuller.”

  Leda gasped.

  “I didn’t say that. I don’t know—”

  “But that’s what you think?”

  She looked at him in sudden admiration.

  “Yes. Now I understand why they sent you from Scotland Yard,” she said. “Yes, that’s what I do believe. I didn’t realise that there was anything between them until the night she dined here when Daddy—” She broke off as if unable to pronounce the words, and looked at him appealingly. “It came as rather a shock to me. There was no mistaking the—the intimacy between them. Daddy seemed to be parading it for my benefit, and though I had no sympathy with Mother’s behaviour when she was alive, I didn’t like this. Daddy was too old for that kind of thing, but I suppose that’s just when you begin to feel that way.”

  Driver paused for a moment.

  “Do you know whether your father made a will?” he asked.

  “No. I shouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t,” she replied. “He was very rigid about school affairs, but rather careless over personal matters. Mother was far more business-like about money, though few people would believe it.”

  “I see,” said Driver. “Now I must ask you about your father’s murder. When did you first learn that he was dead?”

  Leda put her hand over her eyes for a moment, as though she wished to blot out the memory of the last sight of her father, which Driver’s words had revived.

  “Before breakfast. I was just coming down stairs into the hall when Frieda ran out of the drawing-room and proceeded to have hysterics all over the house. I followed her into the kitchen, but she gabbled at me in German, and I couldn’t make sense of what she was saying, so I went back to see if I could find out what had frightened her. I—found—him.”

  She described the scene accurately in a voice little louder than a whisper, while the Inspector listened, ignoring the several signs of her distress.

  “Do you know of anyone who could have had a motive for murdering your father?” he asked.

  “Yes, I—well, no, not exactly,” she faltered. “That is, I know of several people who have threatened to murder him. He was a man whom you either liked or disliked very much, and he rather prided himself on this. There was a certain amount of jealousy at the school fr
om the Staff. Then, he was a great disciplinarian, and the parents didn’t like him for that. And, one way and another, people were always threatening to get even with him for some real or imaginary grievance.”

  She told him about Ramsbottom’s threat in some detail. “Yes, we must certainly look into all that,” agreed Driver. “But personal antipathy is scarcely enough motive for murder, and most people utter threats without any intention of carrying them out, I’m glad to say: otherwise we should be a much-overworked department at the Yard. There must have been a much stronger motive that induced someone to murder him so brutally. Something that affected the murderer deeply.

  “If you, for instance, had been very fond of your mother, and believed that your father had killed her, you might have decided to take matters into your own hands and administer justice yourself. Especially if you knew that, as your father had left no will, both his money and that he’d inherited from your mother would be divided between your brother and yourself—”

  Leda turned pale, and, forsaking the hearth in front of which she had been standing, stumbled to the chair she had previously refused, and rocked herself backwards and forwards, her face covered.

  Driver jumped to his feet.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “I forgot—I didn’t mean—”

  Leda shuddered, then looked up at him with frightened eyes.

  “My brother,” she whispered. “That’s who you mean, isn’t it? My brother! Oh no, I can’t believe it!”

  CHAPTER 24

  Inspector Driver’s chief fault was an inclination to sum up people at a first meeting. He was well aware of this tendency, however, and although he could not prevent his mind from receiving and storing such impressions, he could and did avoid placing too much credence in them.

  He thought Stanton Hardstaffe too suave in manner and in dress. There was too much accent on the accessories of his clothes, which made Driver over-conscious of the creased roll across his own waistcoat. Stanton’s trousers were exquisitely creased, the bottom button of his coat carefully left undone, his handkerchief arranged with precision, his tie correctly askew. In Mr. Hardstaffe Senior’s young days, he would have been dubbed a masher or la-di-da boy.

  A bit of a wax-work, thought the Inspector, looking down at his own baggy-kneed trousers. Still, a man may be a man for a’ that. Ay, and a murderer, too!

  “This is a bad business, Mr. Hardstaffe,” he said.

  “A pretty bad show,” agreed Stanton.

  “I’m sorry to have to intrude my questions on you at this time, but you’ll understand that it has to be done. Won’t you sit down?”

  “Thanks.”

  Stanton took each exquisite crease of his trousers in turn between a delicate thumb and finger, and sank back gracefully into the chair indicated.

  Driver restrained a boyish impulse to shake his fountain pen over him, and said hastily,

  “You’ll appreciate that the sooner I can get together full details about your father’s murder—”

  Stanton raised a well-manicured hand.

  “Don’t apologise, please,” he said, “I’ll answer anything you like to ask. It won’t upset me in the least, if that’s what you’re thinking, but why can’t you drop the whole inquiry, and let murdering dogs lie?”

  So both the brother and the sister want the case to be dropped, thought Driver. Queer! Now I wonder if—?

  “You think that Mr. Hardstaffe murdered your mother?” he asked.

  “Think? I’m sure of it, the damned swine! I told the Superintendent so, but he took no notice. He made my mother’s life hell, and did all he could to try and break her spirit. When he found that he couldn’t do that, he murdered her instead. If you’d known him as well as I did, you wouldn’t doubt it for a minute.”

  “I believe you left home years ago because of your father.”

  “That’s quite true. I knew I should kill him one day if I stayed in the same house. I was young and impetuous then, of course. I don’t suppose anyone would have blamed me for putting him away. Everyone hated the sight of him.”

  “Miss Hardstaffe seems very fond of him.”

  “Oh—Leda!”

  Stanton dismissed her idiosyncrasy with a shrug of his well-padded shoulders.

  “You left home because he ill-treated your mother. When you did return, you found that he had killed her,” remarked Driver, striving to keep his dislike of this witness out of his voice. “Didn’t you want to take matters into your own hands and kill him, too?”

  “I’ll say I did!” exclaimed Stanton. “It was as much as I could do to restrain myself from throttling the swine when I saw him strutting about the house with that sanctimonious, it-hurts-me-more-than-it-hurts-you expression on his face.”

  “Are you quite sure that you did in fact restrain yourself?” asked Driver. “Isn’t it true that you lost control of yourself, and did murder your father?”

  Stanton clenched his hands.

  “No, it is not true!” he retorted. “I should have a greater respect for myself if I had bumped him off. If I’d seen him that night, I might have done it, but I didn’t. Someone beat me to it. I tell you I’m sorry I hadn’t the pluck to avenge my mother.”

  A strange affair, thought Driver. Both he and his sister feel upset about the murders, but for different reasons. Both are convinced that their father murdered their mother. The brother adored his mother; the sister loved her father. This, according to age-old beliefs was as it should be. Yet might there not be some Oedipus complex twining through these natural cross-currents of affection? He dismissed the idea at once.

  In his long experience, he had found that murder usually had a more tangible motive—the acquisition of someone or something. Money, in most cases. Or a woman.

  “Where were you, Mr. Hardstaffe, on the night of your father’s murder?” he asked.

  “At home. I live a good many miles away from here.”

  “So I understand. You are not in the Army or anything?”

  Stanton looked at him coolly.

  “No. I’m in a reserved occupation. Any objection?”

  “Certainly not, sir. It all amounts, then, to this. You lacked the opportunity to kill your father that night, but admit motive and intention?”

  Stanton looked a little perturbed.

  “It sounds rather bad if you put it like that,” he said, “but—well, that about expresses it.”

  The Inspector tapped his pencil on the table in front of him.

  “You know, of course, that, so far as we can ascertain, Mr. Hardstaffe left no will, so that it is extremely probable that the money from him and your mother will be divided between you and your sister?”

  “Yes.” He laughed. “The old devil would be livid if he knew I should get any of it.”

  “I understand that you were disagreeably surprised to hear that your mother had cut you out of her will?”

  “Surprised? I was dumbfounded!” exclaimed Stanton. “She meant me to have that money. I was the only one she cared about, and I know she would never have cut me out of her own free will. Oh, I say, that’s rather good!” he said. “Of her own free will, do you see?”

  The Inspector ignored the joke which he considered to be out of place.

  “You had presumed, then, that her death would make you a rich man?”

  The smile faded from Stanton’s lips. He rose to his feet.

  “If that remark is intended to mean what it suggests,” he said savagely, “it’s an insult, and I don’t take insults well. I may be like my mother in looks, but I warn you that my temper is pure Hardstaffe. You’d better be careful.”

  “You’ve no need to adopt that tone with me,” Driver replied calmly. “Even if you and Miss Hardstaffe aren’t interested in finding out the truth about the murders, Scotland Yard is. You’ll lose nothing by being civil, sir.”

  Stanton passed a hand over his shining brown hair.

  “I’m sorry, Inspector,” he said, “but I’m a bit on edge. First the sor
row of losing Mother, and now having to come over here at a minute’s notice—People talk, and it’s all most unpleasant.”

  Driver nodded.

  “If I may say so, sir,” he remarked, “you people never seem to realise that it’s just as unpleasant for us to be prying into your private affairs, and if you’d only give us your full confidence straight away without holding anything back in the hope that we shan’t find it out, we should get at the truth with less trouble.”

  “Look here!” Stanton thrust his head forward in a manner which, Driver thought, must have been characteristic of the murdered schoolmaster also. “Are you trying to hint that I’m not telling the truth?”

  But the Inspector was spared the necessity of replying. At that moment, there came the sound of angry voices in the hall, and a knock on the door. A police constable entered, propelling an unwilling figure before him by means of a gruelling grip on his arm.

  “Caught him in the shrubbery, sir,” he explained in response to the Inspector’s question. “He said he was looking for the instrument of murder.”

  “Have you all gone mad?” demanded Stanton. “That’s our guest, Arnold Smith!”

  CHAPTER 25

  “I must apologize, Mr. Smith,” said Driver after he had dismissed Stanton Hardstaffe and the misguided constable. “You have a perfect right to go anywhere in the house or grounds as long as you don’t object to our men keeping you in view. I’m afraid the constable’s enthusiasm exceeded his discretion. I’ll see that it doesn’t occur again.”

  “Oh, don’t be too hard on him,” replied Arnold. “He was only doing what he considered to be his duty. I suppose it must have looked suspicious.” He rubbed his arm. “What a grip the fellow has!” he exclaimed.

  The Inspector indicated the chair vacated by Stanton.

  “Will you sit down,” he said. “As you are here, I should like to ask you a few questions. First of all, do you mind telling me what kind of ‘instrument’ you were looking for?”