Blue Murder (10 page)

“You never felt like murdering her yourself, Miss Hardstaffe?”

A startled look sprang into her pale, prominent eyes.

“No. Of course not. Oh, I suppose you've been listening to servants' gossip. I may have said I'd like to murder her, but I certainly never meant it. She was a very trying sort of person to live with, and got on my nerves sometimes, that's all. Do we have to go on with this?” she said suddenly. “She couldn't have been murdered. If it wasn't an accident, then it must have been suicide. It must!”

Cheam shook his head.

“I'm sorry,” he said, “but you must try to realize that there is absolutely no doubt whatever that your mother was murdered. I ask you to face up to that, and give me all the help you can. I know it's hard for you to have to answer questions when you have had such a sad loss, and I sympathise very much. But the sooner we get at the truth the better.”

“I realise that,” replied Leda, once again in complete control of herself. “And don't worry too much about my feelings. I'm not very much upset at Mother's death. I should be a hypocrite if I said I was, and even my greatest enemy would tell you that I'm not. Mother and I never did get on very well. She consistently made my life a misery. She wouldn't do a thing in the house herself, but she never approved of anything that I did. She used to drive me half crazy with all her imaginary ailments and worries, but I've never once known her ask whether I felt well. No, I can't pretend that I'm feeling much sorrow about her death, Superintendent. It's the way she died that seems so dreadful.”

“You're afraid that someone in this house killed her?”

“No. Oh no. No,” she protested. “And yet—” She walked across to her favourite corner of the mantelpiece, took a wooden spill from the container, and bent down to light it at the low fire. Then, as if she had forgotten why she had done so, she beat the flame out against the side of the grate. “And yet,” she repeated, straightening herself, and turning to face Cheam, “who else could have done it? When I saw her that morning, she was lying peacefully in bed. And burglars don't use morphia.”

“There's not much chance that it's an outside job,” agreed Cheam. “I understand that all outside doors and windows were fastened that morning.”

“Yes. The maids will confirm that. At least, Briggs will. The other one's a German Jewess and she's quite mad.”

“Mad?”

“Not certifiable, I suppose, but next door to it. I've had stupid maids to train before, but she's quite in a class of her own in that direction.”

“You don't think that she's capable of murder?”

“Oh, but I do,” replied Leda. “She has the most violent temper, and flies into hysterics over nothing. If I'd been murdered, you wouldn't be far out in arresting her. She simply hates me, and often tells me so. I shouldn't dream of keeping her if I could possibly get anyone else, but every girl is doing war work now. I should be doing it myself, but I can't leave Daddy. But if I were called up, of course I should have to go.”

Not very likely, Miss, thought Cheam. Your age group won't be reached in this little struggle—not unless it's going to be another Hundred Years War.

“Do you think she had any motive for murdering your mother?”

“Frankly I don't. But does a person of that mentality need one, do you think?”

“Everyone needs a motive for murder,” stated Cheam, “But if she's a refugee, she's hardly likely to have got hold of any morphia.”

Leda slapped her heavy thigh.

“But she
has
got some!” she exclaimed. “How stupid of me to forget. She carries a little packet of morphia about with her. She showed it to me when she first came, but I didn't believe then that it really could be the drug. I thought she was just romancing.”

Cheam did not seem impressed by this information.

“You speak German then, Miss Hardstaffe?” he asked.

“Certainly not!” was Leda's indignant reply. “I wouldn't have it spoken in the house. I consider it most unpatriotic.”

Yes, thought Cheam, you're the type of woman who thinks all foreign languages are unpatriotic. I wonder you don't breed bull-dogs!

“Yes, miss,” he said, “but if you don't understand her language and she only understands a little English, you probably misunderstood her. ‘Morphia' isn't a word she'd be likely to know in English.”

“I'm quite sure that I'm not mistaken,” said Leda in her haughtiest manner. “She dragged me into her bedroom one day, pulled a silk handkerchief from under her dress, showed me a little white packet wrapped inside it, and said, ‘Morphia. Carry it always in Germany. Here I need it not'. Then she threw it into a drawer. I hate foreigners. They're always trying to impress you by being dramatic.”

Cheam made no reply.

“Well!” Leda's voice sounded so hearty that the Superintendent braced his shoulder muscles for the slap on the back to which her tone seemed the prelude. “What are you waiting for? I've given you all the evidence you need. Frieda's the murderer obviously.”

“Miss Hardstaffe,” said Cheam, ignoring her words, “before you remembered about this girl having morphia in her possession, you were afraid of something. What was it?”

Leda looked at him as if wondering how much he knew.

“You're mistaken,” she said. “I know it's that girl. Mother said she'd murder one of us if we kept her.” Cheam waited silently, and, as silently, Leda watched him.

“I—oh—it has nothing to do with this, nothing,” she said at length.

“Perhaps you would like me to repeat the question,” said Cheam. “Or shall I put it more plainly and ask
whom
you were afraid for?”

Leda bit her lip, then said quietly,

“My father. Ever since the inquest I've been afraid that you would suspect him. That's why I wanted you to believe it was an accident or suicide. I'm afraid you, and everyone else too, will think he did it because he has more to gain by her death than any of us. You don't understand, as I do, that he's quite incapable of killing anyone. That's all.”

Cheam nodded.

“Are you sure that really is all, Miss Hardstaffe?” he asked. “You're not trying to conceal anything from me?”

“No. No, of course not.”

“Not a little thing like a key, for instance?”

The Superintendent, who had remained seated throughout the interview while Leda was standing, as if to indicate that social etiquette was not any affair of His Majesty's uniform, rose suddenly to his feet, and opened his right hand.

“You recognise this key?” he asked.

Leda stifled unsuccessfully a little gasp as she bent forward.

“Yes, I-I think so,” she said. “It's the key to the door between Mother's and Daddy's bedrooms.”

“I found it in your father's tall-boy, pushed underneath his socks,” Cheam explained.

“I was afraid you would,” whispered Leda.

“And now,” said Cheam, after he had finished questioning Leda, “I should like to see Mr. Smith if he's in.”

Leda raised surprised eyebrows.

“Arnold? He wasn't here when Mother was—died.”

Strange, thought Cheam, how many people funk saying “murder.”

“I would like to see him if I may, and the servants afterwards.”

Leda, unused to being treated as if her opinion was of no value, turned away in some annoyance, and went out in finish cleaning the kennels.

Arnold had apparently caught a reflection of her mood, for he was frowning as he came rather fussily into the room.

“I understand that you wish to speak to me, Superintendent,” he said. “I hope you won't keep me very long. I'm very busy this morning.” 

“Just a few questions, sir, if you don't mind.”

“Well, if it's about Mrs. Hardstaffe's death,” said Arnold, “I can tell you at once that I know nothing about it. I shouldn't dream of harming any woman, so it's no use trying to pin it on to me.”

Cheam smiled.

“You seem to have some funny ideas about the police,” he said. “We should get into trouble with the Chief Constable if we tried ‘to pin' anything on to anyone. But a murder needs very careful investigation, and we need all the help we can get.”

“I realise that, of course, but as I've already told you, I know nothing about it. I wasn't here at the time. I was in London, as I believe you know, and I can prove it.”

Extraordinary! thought Cheam. A short time ago, he was doing his best to prove that he was a murderer, and almost imploring us to believe that his alibi in London was worthless. Now he's refusing to discuss the murder of Mrs. Hardstaffe, on the grounds that he was in London at the time.

“Well, sir,” he said, “I thought that as you're a bit of an expert on crime, owing to your books, you might be able to put forward some theory about the murder. You may not have been here when Mrs. Hardstaffe was murdered, but you've had a front row seat at the theatre of the crime for some time now, and you must have ideas about it. Besides, if you could plan one murder so cleverly, there's no reason to suppose that you couldn't plan another.”

“Tck, tck,” clucked Arnold, “I hope you're not going to bring that foolish confession of mine against me. Of course it was all pure invention. I was still suffering from the effect of that bit of concussion, and I imagined things.”

“Quite so, sir. But I hope that you won't mind if I ask you a few questions. Anyone as experienced as you in writing detective stories must have a good eye for details, and I'm sure your evidence will be most helpful.” '

Arnold, flattered against his will by references to his writing which he knew to be undeserved, became less pugnacious.

“I'll certainly help you all I can, Superintendent,” he replied. Whoever killed that poor lady deserves to be hanged.”

“Amen,” said Cheam. “Now there is one point on which I particularly need your help, Mr. Smith. I know all about your visit to London, of course, and have had the details checked as a matter of routine. And I may as well tell you that I'm satisfied about your alibi during that time. What I want you to do is to give me as many details as you can about the scene you witnessed through the study window on the night before you left for London.” Arnold's apprehensive glance towards the door did not escape the Superintendent's notice. He interpreted it correctly.

“Don't worry, sir,” he went on in reassuring tones, “if we have to inquire into that little affair from other sources, I promise that your name will not be mentioned. Now! When you looked through the window, you saw Mrs. Hardstaffe sitting at the desk?”

“Yes. It was impossible to mistake her for anyone, in spite of her unfamiliar attire.”

“And you saw Mr. Hardstaffe standing behind her with a whip in his hand?”

Arnold hesitated.

“Er—no. Now you ask me, I can't say that I
saw
him,” he said. “There's a short screen between the window and the fireplace which concealed half the room from me. The desk is on the farther side of the room so I saw that clearly. I could see the lash of the whip cracking over Mrs. Hardstaffe's head, but I never saw who was holding it.”

“Why didn't you go and look through the other part of the window?” asked Cheam.

“I—I assumed that it was Hardstaffe. It's just the sort of thing he'd do. Oh, it's very much in character.”

Cheam sighed.

“It may be,” he remarked, “but it's evidence I want, not a character study. Let's try again. When you heard someone inside the room shout ‘Sign, damn you, sign!' did you recognise the voice as Mr. Hardstaffe's?”

“N-no, not exactly,” Arnold admitted. “It sounded like a man's voice, and as he was the only man in the house except myself, I assumed that it must be his.”

“You told us that the front door was open, so presumably anyone could have walked into the house, and it might have been a stranger's voice?”

“I suppose so,” replied Arnold with reluctance, “but I'm perfectly sure in my own mind that it was Hardstaffe. The words themselves have the genuine Hardstaffe ring about them.”

“Could you swear on oath that it was Hardstaffe?”

“No.”

“I see,” said Cheam, with great restraint. “There's one other question. Do you know who benefits under Mrs. Hardstaffe's will? You probably know that she was a very rich woman, and anything you may have heard about her will may be important.”

“Oh!” Arnold's exclamation expressed the utmost consternation. “Oh dear! This is very awkward,” he said. “But I don't really know.” He brightened at the thought. “No, I don't know any facts about it. I'm afraid I can't help you.”

“I'm not asking you for facts,” said Cheam patiently. “Has her will ever been mentioned to you?”

“It's extremely awkward,” said Arnold again. “But—well—it's this way. Miss Hardstaffe, while not saying directly that she would benefit under her mother's will, gave me to understand that it's usual in the Hardstaffe family for the mother's money to be left to the daughters, and the father's money to the sons.”

“A bit hard on the son, in this instance,” remarked Cheam.

“Well—I'm not sure that it is,” rejoined Arnold, still with the same reluctance. “I rather gathered from what Mrs. Hardstaffe remarked one day, that she intended to cut Leda out of her will. But I don't
know.
”

“Thank you,” said Cheam. “I hope that when you write that new book, Mr. Smith, you won't make your witnesses too glib at swearing to this and that. It's a rare thing to find a witness who can truthfully say anything except that they know a certain thing
must
be so, but no! they didn't see or hear it. You can see how difficult it is to piece evidence together that will stand the strain of cross-questioning.”