Blue Murder (16 page)

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 sorrow 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!”

“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?” 

“The knobkerri, of course,” Arnold replied, sitting down. The Inspector stared at him for a few seconds.

“And would you mind explaining how you knew that Mr. Hardstaffe had been killed by a blow from a knobkerri? I understand that this fact has not been mentioned by Superintendent Cheam, and that no one else in the house has so far thought of it.”

“They must be blind then,” retorted Arnold. “It was the first thing I noticed when Leda—that is, when Miss Hardstaffe called me into the drawing-room. I saw at once that it wasn't in its usual place on the wall near the window.”

“‘There it was, gone,' in fact,” remarked Driver with an unbelieving air. “Surely the fact that you could no longer see the knobkerri in the room did not in itself prove that it had been used to murder Mr. Hardstaffe?”

“No, perhaps not,” admitted Arnold, “but it just had to be.”

“Psychic?”

“No.” Arnold looked down at his shoes, apparently intent on examining the polish on their toes—or lack of it, since it was one of Frieda's daily tasks to clean them. Then he looked up at the Inspector, and said frankly, “It's this way. When I heard that Mrs. Hardstaffe had been murdered, I rushed along to the police station and gave myself up for murdering her husband.”

“Extraordinary,” murmured Driver.

“What? Oh, I see. Well, of course I didn't know at the time that she had been murdered. I concluded that it must be him, and as I'd had a crack on the head and was wandering a bit—”

“Excuse, Mr. Smith,” Driver interrupted, “aren't you wandering a bit now?”

“It's a little difficult to explain,” said Arnold.

“Perhaps it will help you if I say that although I've not yet had time to read the full statement you made on that occasion, I do know that you confessed to a murder which had not then been committed, but which has since actually happened in every detail.”

“Yes, that's it. As all the other details have been exactly as I described them, I thought I'd see whether I could find the knobkerri in the shrubbery, too. It
was
the knobkerri, wasn't it?”

“Yes,” Driver said gravely. “It was the knobkerri which bashed his head in. We found it in the shrubbery, with no finger prints on it, as you'd said, but plenty of other signs of the purpose for which it had been used. And doesn't it strike you as being strange that Mr. Hardstaffe's murder should have been carried out in exactly the way you had planned it?”

“Strange? Of course it's strange,” retorted Arnold. “It's more than that. It's uncanny. It's—why damn it, Inspector, it's getting on my nerves.”

“You're sure that it wasn't Mr. Hardstaffe who was getting on your nerves?” Driver persisted. “Mr. Hardstaffe whom you hated, whom you had planned to murder weeks before? You're sure that the blow on the head hadn't left you with any permanent injury, so that in a sudden fit of hatred, you crept downstairs from your room, entered the drawing-room through the window, and murdered Hardstaffe?”

Arnold looked startled, and sat blinking at him for a moment.

“Why, of course I'm sure!” he exclaimed at length, in a voice which expressed innocent astonishment. “I didn't murder him. I swear I didn't. Why, as soon as I thought there was even a possibility that I'd done it before, I went straight to the police constable.”

“That might have been nothing more or less than a clever feint,” replied Driver. “You might have staged the whole thing—yes, even to that blow on the head that seems to figure so largely in your conversation—in order to provide yourself with a kind of moral alibi, intending to murder Hardstaffe at a later date.”

“But—but—” stammered Arnold. “What about Mrs. Hardstaffe's murder then?”

“I see no reason to suppose that you didn't commit that murder also.”

“M-murder Mrs. Hardstaffe, me? Oh no!” exclaimed Arnold. “You must be joking. Mrs. Hardstaffe was a nice woman. I liked her immensely. Whatever motive could I have had?”

Driver stroked a reflective chin.

“I have always found that most crimes are committed for the sake of material gain of some sort or other. Shall we say you might have murdered her for her money?”

“But that's absurd,” protested Arnold. “I haven't got any of her money—or any of his, for that matter.”

“It might come to you less directly,” said the Inspector.

Arnold gave a little jump in his chair, opened his mouth as if about to protest again, thought better of it, and relapsed into silence.

To his relief, Driver did not pursue the subject.

“Let's accumulate a few facts about your movements, Mr. Smith,” he said. “Have you any idea at what time Mr. Hardstaffe was murdered?”

“Not really,” replied Arnold, “but according to my imaginary plan, it should have been at about twelve minutes past midnight.”

“That is the doctor's estimate approximately,” confirmed Driver.

“Where were you at that time?”

“In bed.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, of course.”

Arnold looked shocked.

“That's very commendable from the moral point of view,” remarked the Inspector, “but is much to be deprecated under the circumstances.”

Arnold at last lost his temper.

“I strongly object to your tone, Inspector,” he said, springing to his feet. “I refuse to sit here any longer and listen to your outrageous hints and flippancies. You're treating me as though I were a confirmed criminal. I demand an apology.”

To his surprise, the Inspector gave it, and Arnold sat down again, feeling slightly mollified and very foolish.

“You really have only yourself to blame, Mr. Smith,” remarked Driver. “You did tell the police you were a murderer. You can't blame us if we check up on you in any way which seems necessary. Now, let us assume for a moment that you are not guilty of murdering Hardstaffe. What is your explanation of the strange coincidence that in every detail the murder was carried out in the way which you yourself, on your own confession, had planned?”

“The only thing I can think of is that someone else copied my idea. I've thought about it till I'm dizzy, and that's the only explanation I can find,” said Arnold.