Blue Murder Page 21

  “Sure? Of course I am,” said Arnold, laughing at her foolishness. “Why, she’s no more capable of murder than you are!”

  CHAPTER 41

  Arnold sat at the writing table in the window of his sitting-room at High Bungalow,” working on one of the last chapters of his book.

  Life had not been easy for him since he had left Leda some three weeks ago, and the one comforting thing, apart from the knowledge that Charity was willing to many him, was that he had suddenly found himself able to write again.

  He had taken up his quarters at first at the small village inn, but he had soon discovered that The Fox and Feathers, although outwardly purporting to be one of the old coaching inns, held within its walls none of those comforts which he had anticipated. There were none of the roaring fires, well-cooked meals, good wine, warm beds, excellent service, and goodly welcomes, which the travellers of an earlier century had demanded. He had found it, instead, draughty, damp, and sparsely furnished. The food was badly cooked, and served with none of the refinements of table equipment and napery to which he was accustomed. The water in the bathroom was consistently cold. The landlady, though endeavouring to do her best for him, made no secret of the fact that she had no time to attend to the needs of a permanent guest in addition to her daily work.

  Above all, there was no place in which he could write, for his bedroom was unheated, and the room in which he took his meals became a private bar during licensed hours. This was serious, because unless he could earn enough to supplement adequately his present meagre income, he would be unable to support a wife, and at many times during those unhappy weeks, he cursed himself for a fool, and wished he had never fallen captive to Charity’s charms.

  This, however, was only when he was alone. When he was in her presence, he could not blind himself to the fact that she possessed for him that indefinable and deadly attraction which makes men—and especially men of fifty—do strange and sometimes evil things.

  As usual, it was Leda who took matters into her capable hands, and smoothed out his worries for him. Within twelve hours of learning of his difficulties, she had arranged for him to take a bedroom and private sitting-room with a homely widow who lived in a bright, modern bungalow in a quiet corner of Nether Naughton. The rooms were unpretentious but comfortable. The bath water was heated by a gas geyser so that he could have his bath whenever he wanted it, provided that he took it no oftener than once a day, and always remembered to leave the water in the bath as the night’s protection against fire-bombs. The food was plain but well cooked and well served; the woman clean and obliging. And if, in her anxiety to ensure that he should be well looked after, Leda had dropped a hint that he was suffering from a broken heart on her account, she could easily be forgiven for so slight a deception.

  And now his only trouble was that he was lonely. He dare not be seen about with Charity too often, she rarely visited him at the bungalow, and she only allowed him to call on her occasionally after dark. He missed Leda’s loud, cheerful voice shouting to tell him that she was going out or coming in. He even missed the dogs.

  But the book featuring Noel Delare which had once seemed doomed to remain as unfinished as Schubert’s A Minor Symphony, was now nearly completed.

  This evening as he sat at his writing table, he felt suddenly that he was being watched, and, looking up, he saw a face staring at him through the window. Startled, he rose to his feet, and peered back through the dimming light.

  Then he smiled in relief, waved a hand, and went to open the front door.

  “Come in,” he said. “You startled me for a minute. I wondered who it could be. Why didn’t you walk in: you know we always leave the front door unlocked.”

  “I wasn’t sure whether you’d be in or not,” replied his visitor, “so I thought I’d walk round and peep into your sitting-room.”

  “Your hands are cold,” said Arnold. “Come and warm them by the fire.”

  She slipped them hastily from his.

  “They’re all right,” she said. “Is Mrs. Bright out?”

  “Very much so,” replied Arnold. “She’s gone off to visit her married daughter at some queer-sounding place, and she won’t be home till morning. I wonder you haven’t heard all about it: the whole village has been talking about it for at least a week. I believe it’s the first time she’s plucked up sufficient courage to leave Nether Naughton in ten years, but it appears that her daughter has just made her into a grandmother, so she couldn’t resist going.”

  “Yes, I did hear about that. Aren’t country folk simple at heart? Births, marriages, deaths make up their whole interest in life. They assess virtue in a woman according to the number of babies she produces.”

  “Yes,” agreed Arnold, “except that you’ve got them in the wrong order. It’s marriage first in Nether Naughton, if you please! Let me take your coat. I do hope you’re going to stay for the evening. No one will know that you’re here with me, and I’ve hardly seen a soul to speak to all day.”

  “Poor Arnold! Yes I’ll stay for a bit, thank you. I should like it. I see you so rarely these days, and I do miss you, you know. It will be all right later on when we can meet openly again, but now it’s a rare treat. By the way, how’s the book getting on? Is this it?”

  She walked across to the table and turned a few pages with the privileged hand of an old friend.

  “Oh, it’s getting on very well,” replied Arnold. “You see I work better when I’m away from your disturbing influence! But I don’t know how I’m going to write the last chapter. I can’t for the life of me think of a satisfactory ending.”

  “I should have thought that was the easiest part of the whole book. You’ve got the reader nicely tied up with clues so that he won’t be able to see the wood for trees, while you know exactly who did it.”

  Arnold shook his head.

  “That’s the trouble. I don’t,” he said.

  She looked at him to see whether he was joking or not, then began to laugh.

  “You don’t mean to say that you’ve got tied up with your own clues! Oh Arnold, I can’t believe that!”

  “It’s true all the same. I’ve been so careful to invent clues incriminating everyone in the book, that I can’t decide which character to choose as the murderer. You see, it’s all quite a new technique to me, and there are a dozen and one difficulties that I never anticipated. The trouble is that nobody seems to have any motive.”

  “But surely you thought all that out to begin with. The motive’s such an important thing, isn’t it?”

  Yes,” agreed Arnold, “the most important, I should say, in any crime. But I’ve written the chapters in such fits and starts that I’ve never properly visualised the thing as a whole.”

  She looked down at the manuscript again.

  “Well, this seems to be a confession of some kind,” she remarked.

  Yes, I ve just finished that. It’s the murderer’s confession but I’ve worded it so vaguely that it might do for any character. It’s all rather worrying. You see, it’s awfully important for me to get a good press on this book. It may lay the foundation of a new career for me.”

  “Yes, I can see that,” she replied regarding him curiously. “Well, look here, they say two heads are better than one. Can’t we try to work it out together? It won’t be the first time I’ve helped you, will it?”

  “Rather not!” exclaimed Arnold. “Why you’re part of the book already. If you can suggest the motive, too, it’ll be your crime.”

  She seemed overwhelmed by his tribute.

  “I’ll do my best anyway,” she said. “It would be easy enough to slip another clue in, but the motive’s different. It ought to be woven into the plot right at the beginning. It’s there when the thought of the crime first enters the murderer’s head.”

  Arnold stared at her.

  “Good Lord!” he exclaimed. “You talk as if you know all about it. I think you ought to be writing the book instead of me.”

  “Not me!” she
said, shaking her head. “I never could write. My spelling’s atrocious, and my grammar’s worse. Well, we’d better make a start. Is that clock right?” Arnold pulled a gold hunter out of his pocket and compared the time it indicated with that of the travelling-clock on the mantelpiece.

  “Nearly eight o’clock! Good Lord yes! I thought I was feeling a bit peckish. Have you dined, or can I persuade you to share my sandwiches? Mrs. Bright has left an array of trays on the kitchen table for all my meals. She’ll be back at about eleven o’clock to-morrow to get lunch.”

  “Thanks, I’d like to. I’m all on my own at home, too, as it happens. But I’ll go and fetch it for you. I expect there’s coffee to be made, isn’t there? You do the black-out.” Without waiting for his reply, she walked out of the room.

  CHAPTER 42

  “We’d better get this story straightened out now,” said Leda. “I must get back before halfpast ten.’

  They had finished their coffee and sandwiches and were seated comfortably in two armchairs drawn close to the gas fire.

  “Are you sure you want to bother about my book?” asked Arnold. “You wouldn’t rather talk about something else?”

  “Of course not. I want to hear how you’ve worked the plot out,” she said. “I know that you killed Mother. Did you murder my father, too?”

  Arnold looked startled.

  “I—I—” he stammered.

  “In the book, I mean, Stupid!” exclaimed Leda. “You needn’t look so scared.”

  “Well—Yes, I did,” he admitted. “I described the two murders just as they happened, and I thought I’d make the murderer commit suicide in the end. That’s why I wrote that confession.”

  “Good idea. Have you put the whole family into the book?”

  No. Just your father and mother, yourself and me, and a few visitors and villagers to give local colour.”

  I see. Then it just lies between you and me.”

  Arnold looked at her in sudden suspicion.

  “What are you getting at?” he demanded.

  “The motive, I hope,’ smiled Leda. “Let’s take you first, and see why you became a murderer. You were on the premises, of course. You came here in the first place, knowing that by doing so, you would be living above your income. Therefore you must have had a reason for coming, and I should think you came as an adventurer. Your advertisement was framed to bring replies from people in a good social position. Well, when you arrived, you liked the layout of things, and saw the chance of making yourself comfortable for the rest of your life. You knew that Mother was a rich woman—you knew her fad about taking sleeping-draughts—you knew that the maid had some morphia—”

  Arnold gazed at her stupidly.

  “I—” he stammered again.

  “She told everyone about it,” she went on unhurriedly. “You must have known. You slipped into the bedroom, substituted the powders you had prepared for the real ones, and murdered her. You knew she had left her money to her husband and that it meant killing him later, but you were determined to go through with it.”

  “Leda, what are you saying?” cried Arnold. “How do you know—”

  She barely paused in her narrative.

  “It was bad luck that the doctor had given her sleeping-powders containing no morphia. You had hoped it would look like suicide. Now they knew it was murder. But you carried on with your plan. You telephoned to Stan, imitating his father’s voice, and hoping to get him hanged for the two murders. It all succeeded just as you’d hoped.”

  “The motive? What motive could I have had?”

  Arnold’s voice was unnaturally high-pitched.

  “Motive? You knew that with the parents out of the way, and the son hanged for their murder, all the money would pass to their daughter, and that she was so fond of you that she wouldn’t almost jump at the chance to marry you. There’s your motive, Arnold. Money. May I have a cigarette!”

  Arnold looked at her in a dazed way as he offered his cigarette case, and she noticed that his hands were trembling so violently that he could not strike a match on the side of the box. She had to take it from him and light it herself.

  Then she threw back her head and laughed until tears came into her eyes.

  “Good Lord!” Arnold said rather thickly, “Good Lord, Leda, I thought you meant it. I never knew you could act like that. You’re as good as Sarah Bernhardt or somebody.”

  Leda leaned forward in her chair and regarded him searchingly.

  “Do you think it’s all right?” she asked. “Does it convince you?”

  “I think so,” said Arnold. “There are one or two details that aren’t quite right, but—”

  “If you don’t think the police would be satisfied, we’d better try the other solution,” she said.

  Arnold looked at her with a strange expression in his eyes.

  “The other?” he asked.

  “Yes. In other words, me.”

  He forced himself to smile.

  “You’re far too level-headed to commit a murder,” he said. “If you wanted money, you’d manage to get it some other way.”

  “All the more reason why I should be the murderer,” replied Leda, “because I’m less likely to be suspected.” Arnold shook his head very slowly.

  “It doesn’t sound right to me,” he said. “You’re a woman. A woman wouldn’t stand behind a defenceless old man and bash his head in.”

  “Oh, that’s what you think!” exclaimed Leda. “The trouble with you is that you don’t know the first thing about women. You think we’re all like those pale creatures in your old books who fall into a man’s arms whenever he chooses to whistle to them, and have no minds of their own. It makes me think of a piece of Shakespeare we learned at school. I know you think me almost illiterate because I don’t read many books, but I went to a good school, and I remember this:

  “I am a woman. Hath not a woman eyes? Hath not a woman hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And—”

  She paused dramatically and lowered her voice to a whisper—

  “if you wrong us, do we not avenge?”

  “Jew,” murmured Arnold, but she did not perceive his meaning.

  “I tell you a woman is just as capable of murder as a man. I am a woman and—”

  She broke off abruptly as Arnold lifted his hands and made sweeping tentacle-like movements towards her, uttering queer, deep noises in his throat.

  She jumped up from her chair and backed away from him.

  “Arnold! What are you doing?”

  Her voice rose in shrill, sharp tones.

  Arnold opened and closed his mouth like a newly- landed fish, while she gazed at him in morbid fascination.

  At length he spoke.

  “I—I feel queer,” he said in the same thick voice. “I dropped my cigarette. Can’t pick it up. My fingers— numb. Feet too. My throat—I—”

  His voice trailed into silence.

  Leda walked across to his chair, set her foot on his cigarette, and said,

  “Come. Try to stand up. I’ll help you.”

  She placed her hands under his arms, and tried to lift him, but he fell back into the chair, where he sprawled uncomfortably.

  “No. You can’t get up,” she said in matter-of-fact tones. “I was wondering how long it would take for the stuff to work. I know the dose for dogs, of course, but they don’t give instructions on the label for putting human beings out of their misery.”

  He stared up at her helplessly, and she laughed at the bewilderment in his eyes.

  “Don’t you understand?” she asked. “I’ve drugged you. You ought not to look so surprised. Arnold, you’ve seen me use the same drug before. I told you then that I usually give it with a good meal. You’re one up on the dogs, though
. You know how it works.”

  She lifted his hand up, then released it, and watched it drop back senselessly on to his knee, the fingers twitching.

  “You can’t get up now. Soon you won’t be able to move at all. Then you’ll fall asleep. But until then, your brain will be awake. You’ll be able to see and hear me, and you’ll be able to think. They do say that under such conditions, the brain and hearing are very acute. Well, you’ll soon find out whether that’s true or not, but you won’t be able to impart the knowledge to anyone else because you’ll be dead!”

  She watched closely the changing expression in his eyes.

  “Oh yes, I know that the drug won’t kill you,” she went on, smiling, “but you’re going to die all the same. No, not chloroform. I couldn’t risk the smell. Besides it would take too long, and I must get back before the servants return. But there’s something just as deadly in this room. That’s why I choose these rooms for you to live in. Look!”

  She squatted down at the hearth.

  “I’m going to turn this fire out.” She did so, then looked up at him. “When you’re asleep, I shall turn it on again, but I shan’t light it—I see by your eyes that you understand.”

  For a moment she was silent. Then she stood up, and spoke again.

  “What a fool you’ve been, Arnold! You could have had a comfortable, dignified life, with all those little luxuries you like so much, but you threw it all away just like a stupid child. You’re not a child, though, my dear, and a man who hasn’t learned sense in fifty years doesn’t deserve to live any longer.”

  Arnold lay where he had fallen. His eyes never moved away from the small figure standing in front of the cooling bars of asbestos.

  He felt held in one of those nightmares in which one senses danger, but realises with horror that one is powerless to move away from it. But this was no nightmare. It was real.

  Here he was, Arnold Smith, held immobile by a drug whose effect he recollected only too well. And there was Leda talking to him quite casually about his approaching death.