Below Suspicion (22 page)

But for once Butler did not notice. It was that word 'green,' used by Dr. Fell, which had opened a chink in his mind and illuminated a dark scene. Just as he had caught at inspiration earlier this evening, but now with broader and stronger effect, he saw what he ought to have seen before. He drew himself up, conscious of a pose but not caring a curse.

"Forgive me," he said, "if I seem to ignore your question. For now

I know how your husband was really murdered, and who killed him."

"Do you, by thunder!" muttered Dr. Fell, whose eyeglasses had gone lopsided again. "You see," he added apologetically, "I've been sure all along that I knew too."

Butler was at his most lordly.

"Before I state the clinching evidence," he went on, "may I refer to one point which will clear Lucia if she should ever be charged with the murder of Mrs. Taylor? I thought of it early this evening. And I mean the question of transportation."

Dr. Fell, behind the altar, blinked at him. "Transportation?"

"Yes. No taxi would have driven her from Hampstead to Balham, or back. It wouldn't have enough petrol. If she went at all, late at night, she would have had to use a drive-hire service; and there would be a record of it. You will find no record."

"O Bacchus!" intoned Dr. Fell, his mouth falling open under the bandit's moustache. "Do you suggest this evidence—harrumph—for the defence?"

"Naturally!"

"Sir," replied Dr. Fell, "I am bound to tell you something in confidence. You have used one of Chief Inspector Soames's strongest points for the prosecution."

"What's that?"

"Perhaps you noticed, when you went to Hampstead last night," said Dr. Fell anxiously, "the Hampstead Underground Station? It's opposite the traffic-light at Hampstead High School, and close to Cannon Row?"

"Yes. I certainly recall it."

"And no doubt you've seen the Balham Underground Station? Close to Mrs. Taylor's house?"

Butler opened his mouth to speak, but shut it again.

"That's the Northern Line," said a fussed Dr. Fell. "Ordinarily, with our fine Underground maze, you'd have been whackingly right. But there's no changing, backtracking, or getting lost and infuriated at Earl's Court. It's a straight run from Hampstead to Balham in forty-five minutes. And, if you poisoned Mrs. Taylor at night at any time before 11.30, you could get the last train back."

Butler, one hand in his pocket, remained bland and smiling. He did not even blink. Many times, in court, adroit counsel tliought they had him in a corner. He would show them now, especially Lucia.

"It is of small importance," he conceded, knowing in his heart that it really was. "Though I could debate that point of the last train back." His voice rose sharply. "Now will you hear how Lucia's husband was really poisoned?"

Nobody spoke. Butler continued to smile.

" 'If Mrs. Renshaw didn't do it/ we hear, 'who else could have done it?' It seems an impossible problem. And yet it isn't." Jingling coins in his pocket, Butler allowed a pause. "The real murderer," he said, "is Kitty Owen. And the clue—which has been dangling in front of our eyes—is a large dull-green knitting-bag."

Lucia stared at him in bewilderment.

"You mean my knitting-bag?" she cried.

"I do. You told us, didn't you, that Kitty was always traipsing about the house with the knitting-bag?"

"Yes, of course!"

"You further said," Butler's finger went out in courtroom fashion despite himself, "that Kitty had the knitting-bag hung over her arm while she was using the carpet-sweeper to clean the room?"

"I ... I think I said that, yes. Why?"

"Finally, both Dr. Fell and I were present when Kitty crept in after eavesdropping. She gave you a look that I didn't like. She swept up the knitting-bag and hared out?"

"I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'a look you didn't like,' dear. But it's true about the rest."

"Just take it easy, Lucia!" urged Butler, who found the scene being recreated so pictorially that he seemed to see it on the night of the murder. He saw Kitty using the carpet-sweeper, and the water-bottle under the ivory crucifix, and all of them waiting for Dick Renshaw's return.

"You told Kitty, earlier in the evening, to 'do' the room? But she didn't actually start until past eleven o'clock?"

"That's right. Because. . . ."

"Because she knew that either you, or the tireless Miss Cannon, would be there to watch every move she made?"

"Well—I suppose so. Agnes always is under your feet, somehow."

"Now tell me, Lucia." Butler's voice grew as stealthy as a tiger. "In * any of the other bedrooms in your house, are there water-bottles and glasses just like the one in your husband's bedroom?"

(Butler had noted, out of the corner of his eye, that Dr. Fell was

listening with interest and ferocious approval. Now the good doctor listened intently for Lucia's reply.)

"Yes! In all the rooms! Dick," and the hatred in Lucia's face was almost frightening. "Dick thought his habit was good for people."

"Now think about Kitty. In the interval before she cleaned the room, Kitty would have plenty of time to dissolve a dose of antimony into another water-bottle? And conceal this second bottle in the knitting-bag?"

Again a pause.

Lucia seemed shaken as though by physical hands. Her mouth was loose. Dim comprehension began to glimmer in the blue eyes.

"Pat, what on earth are you—?"

"Don't try to reason. Let me do that. Just shut your eyes and remember!"

"A-aU right. I'll try."

"Kitty went in to clean the room. She picked up the water-bottle from the bedside table. She walked into the bathroom, emptied the bottle into the wash-basin, rinsed the bottle, and filled it again. Was she carrying the knitting-bag at this time?"

"Yes!"

"You—and Miss Cannon too, I think—were watching her from the middle of the bedroom? Good! I noticed," Butler closed his own eyes, visualising, "I noticed that the wash-basin in that bathroom is just opposite the door to the bedroom?"

"Just opposite, Pat. You can—"

"So you could see Kitty's back as she stood at the wash-basin?"

"Yes, of course!"

"Where was Kitty carrying the knitting-bag then? Was she carrying it at one side, or in front of her?"

"In—in front of her, I think. Yes! Like an apron."

"So that you couldn't actually see what she was doing?"

"Not exactly, no."

"You heard, in fact, the very obvious sound of her pouring out, rinsing, and filling the old bottle. And that's all you can testify?"

"Yes."

The black candles burned steadily, without a breath of air. Butler straightened up. He did not question; he stated.

"What she did, we now see, was very simple. She slipped the old bottle, full of clean water, into her knitting-bag. From this knitting-bag

she took out the new bottle aheady hidden there: the poisoned bottle. This second bottle she carried back to the bedside table, put it down, and inverted the tumbler over it to complete the picture."

Sweat was heating at Butler's temples, but he appeared as cool as a judge as he slowly turned to Dr. Fell.

"The miracle explained," he said, "What do you think of it?"

DR. FELL, making no sound on that carpet despite his bulk and his stumping cane, slowly moved round the altar and came down to face Butler. While he stood in front of that vicious tapestry, his solid English presence drained effect from it like the presence of Old King Cole.

But, as he left it, there now seemed to be a poison in the air. They were again aware of the bloodshot eye in the roof, the dimness of even fourteen candles, the odour of Satanism itself.

Dr. Fell, as though a little appalled and less red in the face, looked Butler up and down.

"Sir, you amaze me," he said.

"Pleasantly, I hope."

"Yes. And with considerable admiration."

"I've got the truth, of course?"

"Well... not exactly. Wait!" urged Dr. Fell, before the other could snap with protest. Dr. Fell squeezed his eyes shut, and ruffled at his temples under the heavy mop of hair.

"Never have I known a man," he declared, looking at Butler, "who stood so face to face with truth. With the simple but very ugly truth you stand forehead to forehead, eye to eye, nose to nose, pressed together. Archons of Athens! You have reasoned closely and accurately. Move your head one inch from that minor-stare against truth, and you will see it. Not otherwise."

"Kitty Owen, I tell you, is as guilty—"

"Ah, yes. Kitty. Put her under severe police-examination, as I shall tell Hadley to do, and you may well break her down. You may not learn the name of the murderer-cum-head-of-witch-cult, though you have a sixty-forty chance in your favour. But you will probably clear Mrs. Ren-shaw of any charge of murder."

"Pat," Lucia whispered, "I still can't understand any of this. But I do think you're rather wonderful."

Again, for once in his life, Butler did not tut-tut a compliment while quietly preening himself about it.

"Look herel" he said. "Did Kitty put poison in that bottle?"

"No."

"Then what in hell are we talking about?"

"Hell," Dr. Fell answered simply.

"If you know so much about all this," Butler shouted, "why don't you tell me?"

"I can tell you," retorted Dr. Fell, "and tomorrow moming I will. But it will lead, I fear, to one of my eternal wanderings round Robin Hood's barn. Confound it, sir, we came here to find the records of the witch-cult! We must find them or we can get nowherel We...."

Here his eye fell on Dr. Arthur Bierce. All three of them had forgotten Bierce. Bierce, his cap pushed to the back of his freckled skull, his sandy eyebrows drawn down, had never left off staring at the tapestry behind the altar.

"I am sorry," he spoke in a normal voice, swallowing a large Adam's apple, "I've been so little and so dismal a help in this investigation "

"Little help?" exclaimed Dr. Fell. "My good sir, next to Mr. Butler's reconstruction, you have made the most helpful remark that has been made tonight."

"Thank you," said the physician, who either did not believe him or did not even hear him. "But I can help with the search. Tear down the hangings and rip up the cushions! Destroy the altar! Look there!"

His bony finger quivered as he pointed.

"It's a luxurious prie-dieu," he said. "I don't like a prie-dieu; it smells of Popery—but even Popery should not be defiled. Burn it!"

"Take it easy, man!" Dr. Fell thundered in vague alarm. "This place must be kept intact for the police. And cushions are no good, or chairs; we want a large mass of papers. Shall we begin?"

And they plunged into the search.

It was just on midnight, by Butler's watch, when they began. The black candles, first in a veil so light that it was scarcely perceptible, had already begun to diffuse some scented mist which had an odd effect on the brain if you went close; but they needed those candles for extra light in the thick red gloom of the chapel.

The walls and floor were of heavy concrete under hangings and car-

pet, excluding a secret hiding-place. The pillows, after examination, they kicked to a heap which left clear a good deal of floorspace. In a cupboard set into concrete, to the left of the apse, Bierce found priestly vestments of the finest quality: several chasubles, one sewn with occult characters in silver, another embroidered with a pig and a woman in flesh-tint.

On a shelf there was one of the prized 'missals' of the Black Mass, red characters on vellum. Bierce translated one sentence from the Latin, "We shall be saved through the flesh," then he flung the missal across the room.

"Easy!" said Dr. Fell out of a thin-scented haze.

But, on another shelf where it could be moved to the altar for worship, there was a heavy statuette of Satan in the form of a black goat. Bierce tried to smash it by flinging it down on the floor. It only rebounded and rolled to lie face upwards, grinning, under the staring eye-light.

Wilder and wilder grew the scenes in the red gloom. Lucia, she said, was convinced the records must be in some pouch or bag fastened behind one of the hangings. The hangings swayed out and rippled as she hurried behind them, emerging from them with startling effect, and going back again.

"For my choice," said Butler, "it's one of these confessional boxes."

"My dear sir," protested Dr. Fell, who was examining the ebony pillars which supported the roof, "you couldn't hide—"

And evidently you couldn't. Butler stood before one of them, against the middle of the right-hand side-wall. This grotesque parody reminded him, for some reason, of two high magician's cabinets set side by side. Their two doors, in open carving twined with designs of Satanic triumph, opened outwards. On one side sat the leader of the cult, in black goat-mask to the shoulders, head inclined towards the other compartment: where a woman whispered of....

But the floors were too thin, the carved roofs too narrow, for any concealment.

There were two dull crashes as Lucia deliberately knocked over metal braziers in comers, as though she hated them for some disservice. Dr. Fell, who had somehow managed to stand on a chair, was studying the heavy carved roof-beams. Dr. Bierce, with a surgical knife—no action now seemed fantastic—carefully ripped up the hard altar-couch to find concealed papers. Half-past twelve. Ten minutes to one....

"No," Dr. Fell said dully. "It's no good."

At one o'clock they gathered, four begrimed searchers not quite in their right minds, near the front of the altar.

Bierce still held the surgical knife, with which he had been trying experiments on cushions and carpet. Lucia had lost her scarf; her old black gown, as well as her bare arms and shoulders, were smeared with dust. The haze from the flames of the black candles, burning down, drifted out past them through the chapel.

"The records aren't here," said Dr. Fell in the same heavy voice. "They ought to be, but they aren't. I regret to tell you that I am beaten. They may be hidden away, perhaps at some bank...."

Lucia whipped round. "Whose shadow was that?" she asked.