Hobby of Murder (12 page)

‘I rather think it would still be pretty poisonous,’ Andrew replied, ‘but I can’t speak with any authority. It’s a matter I never had any reason to investigate.’

They had both sat down. Mollie was in a chair by the window, where the remaining light of the early evening fell on some embroidery in a frame, on which she was working. Ian was standing with his back to the empty fireplace, his hands in his pockets.

‘I’m the prime suspect, of course,’ Audley went on. ‘I hated the bastard from the bottom of my heart and if I were to meet the murderer I’d shake him by the hand. But motive and means aren’t sufficient for an arrest. There’s got to be opportunity too. And even our brilliant Inspector Roland hasn’t managed to come up yet with any theory as to how I could have lobbed cyanide from where I was sitting near the bottom of the table to where Singleton was sitting. Have you any theories of your own, Professor, as to how it could have been done?’

‘None,’ Andrew said.

‘My own view is the simplest one,’ Audley said. ‘Generally the simpler a theory is, the more convincing it is. It’s that the Bartlett sisters aren’t what they seem. I doubt if any motive they might have had for killing Singleton would
have been sexual. Wide-ranging as his tastes were, I doubt if those worthy elderly sisters would have appealed to him. But he might have damaged someone to whom they were devoted and who was more his type. That seems to me quite probable. The damage might have been emotional, physical, economic, social. The police will certainly be looking into all that. Because it stares one in the face, doesn’t it, that it would have been the easiest thing in the world for one of the sisters to drop a little poison into Singleton’s cup while she was serving him? How she acquired any cyanide I don’t presume to guess, though I’m certain it wasn’t from me. Concerning that, however, I’ve wondered about our dear Miss Clancy. You know she photographed the sisters, don’t you? She thought the two of them, side by side, so dignified, so precise and decorous, made a splendid subject. And she had cyanide connected with her ancestor’s photographic work and they might have had a chance to help themselves to some while they were in the cottage. So there you are, a solution to the whole mystery.’

Andrew had not remembered, from his previous meetings with Audley, that he spoke with such pomposity, but a good deal of it now was assumed, Andrew thought, with a note of irony in it. Audley really made very little effort to conceal the fact that he felt a certain pleasure in the murder, and it amused him to blame the least likely persons for having committed it. There was an animation in his pale, blotchy face that was not usually there. His light blue eyes under their thick lashes gleamed.

‘I know you aren’t taking me seriously,’ he said, ‘but can any of you come up with a better solution?’

‘I don’t think you want us to,’ Ian said. ‘I think you’ll be very pleased if this murder is filed away among unsolved crimes.’

‘Perhaps, perhaps,’ Audley agreed. ‘I don’t see why anyone should be too concerned if it is, except for his publishers.
They’ll be the only people I know of who’ll have a truly sincere regret for Singleton’s death. My ex-wife will probably cry a little about it. Even after he deserted her she nursed an absurd amount of affection for him.’

‘Have you and she ever thought of joining up again?’ Ian asked. ‘Will Singleton’s death make any difference to that?’

‘Most unlikely, I should say.’ Audley said it emphatically and quickly; a little too quickly, Andrew thought, for it to sound entirely convincing. Was it possible, he wondered, that Audley’s satisfaction at Luke Singleton’s death was not wholly due to his simple hatred of the man, but had in it an element of hope that if the man was finally lost to her, his wife might return to him?

When Audley had left, which he did a few minutes later, Andrew asked Ian if he knew what sort of woman Mrs Audley had been.

‘We never met her,’ Ian said. ‘The whole affair happened before we came to live here, but I know she was a friend of Felicity’s and I think she sometimes hears from her.’

‘I wish we could work out a way Ernest could have done the murder,’ Mollie said. ‘He’s got such an excellent motive for it, and he actually likes to parade it. He’s very sure, isn’t he, that he simply can’t be suspected—’ She broke off as the telephone rang.

Ian went into the hall to answer it. The call was brief and when he came back into the room there was a very strange expression of bewilderment on his face.

‘That was Sam,’ he said. ‘Of all crazy things to happen, the Bartletts have disappeared.’

It was not until next morning that the Davidges and Andrew heard how the disappearance of the sisters had happened. They heard it from Inspector Roland, who called in on them at about ten o’clock, accompanied by a young man whom he introduced as Sergeant Giles. Mollie once
more offered them coffee, but it was again refused. The two men did not even sit down. They seemed in a hurry.

‘I don’t expect you to be able to help us,’ Roland said, ‘but we’re asking everyone along this road, as it’s the road to London, if they saw anything of the two women in an old red Mini drive past some time between two and four yesterday afternoon. That’s when they must have left the Waldrons’ house. Mrs Waldron had been in bed all day, and only saw Enid Bartlett, the older of the two sisters, when she brought up a tray with her lunch. Mr Waldron had his lunch served to him in the dining-room, then went to lie down for a rest, and says he heard the sisters moving about—there was a lot of clearing up to do after the trouble the night before—until he fell asleep, which he thinks happened about two o’clock. He woke up about four and presently went downstairs to make sure some tea would be taken up to his wife, but there was no sign of the Bartletts. He was surprised, because it was unlike them simply to go out without making sure beforehand that it was convenient, and even though it was a Sunday, and their usual afternoon off, he’d assumed that after the events the night before they wouldn’t have gone. However, he didn’t worry much about it until about six o’clock when a married sister of theirs who lives in the village rang up to ask if they were all right, because they hadn’t gone to see her as they usually did on their Sundays off. She’d heard about the murder, of course—who hasn’t?—and she thought their not coming to her must have something to do with that. But they didn’t come back to the Waldrons at all that evening, and about eleven o’clock Mr Waldron got in touch with us about it. And they still haven’t appeared. We’re to blame, of course, for having made it possible for the women to have got away like that without being stopped, but it’s too late now to worry about that, the main thing is to find them.’

‘Why do you think they went to London?’ Ian asked.

‘Their sister seemed to think it was probable,’ Roland replied. ‘They’ve another sister there, a widow, who runs a boarding-house in Finchley, and she thought that they might have gone to her. But inquiries in London haven’t led to anything. Apparently they haven’t been in touch with that sister, or she swears they haven’t. However, London’s an obvious place to go to if you want to disappear.’

‘But why should they want to disappear?’ Mollie asked.

‘I think they must have been scared that they’d come under suspicion,’ Roland answered. ‘They must have realized they were the only people who could easily have given the poison to Singleton.’

‘But did you suspect them?’

Roland gave a slight shrug. ‘We couldn’t say it wasn’t possible they’d done it, could we? As long as we can’t find any other way that the poison could have been administered to Singleton, we’ve got to think about them.’

‘But if you do,’ Andrew observed, ‘then isn’t Mr Waldron the most likely person to have arranged for them to do it?’

‘And no one is more aware of that than he is himself,’ Roland said. ‘He’s very anxious for us to find them.’

‘The red Mini’s their own, is it?’ Andrew asked.

Roland nodded and told them the number of the car.

‘Well, I’m sorry, but we’ve seen nothing of them,’ Ian said. ‘But we were all sleeping it off ourselves yesterday afternoon, and wouldn’t have seen them even if they’d passed.’

‘Well, no doubt they’ll be found soon enough,’ Roland said. ‘I doubt if women like that will really know how to conceal themselves, even in London. They may even have second thoughts and come home of their own accord. Meanwhile, it’s just making a bit of extra trouble for us.’ He gave Andrew a long look. ‘You haven’t had any special ideas about what’s happened, have you, Professor?’

Andrew shook his head.

‘You had some good ideas the last time we met,’ Roland persisted.

‘If I have any this time, you shall be the first to hear them,’ Andrew promised.

‘Good. Well, good morning. Sorry to have troubled you.’

Roland and the sergeant took their leave.

When they had gone, Ian said that he felt like making some of that coffee that the detectives had refused and went out to the kitchen to do it. Mollie sat down at her embroidery frame.

‘You’ve really met that man before, have you, Andrew?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I was on the spot when an unfortunate man called Sir Lucas Dearden was blown up by a bomb,’ Andrew answered, ‘and I think Roland rather overestimates the help I gave him. That’s a very lovely piece of embroidery you’re doing, Mollie.’

‘Would you like it?’ she said. ‘I could get it framed for you or made into a cushion.’

‘Would you really do that?’

‘Of course, if you truly like it. Which shall it be?’

Andrew thought of his sitting-room and of how the embroidery would look in it.

‘A cushion, I think,’ he said.

‘You shall have it. But, Andrew …’

‘Yes?’

‘This isn’t your first experience of murder?’ ‘Not quite.’

‘And do you believe either of the Bartletts could have done it?’

‘Not really.’

‘Have you any suspicions of anyone who was at that dinner?’

‘Probably no more than you have. Do you suspect anyone in particular?’

‘I do, as a matter of fact, only it doesn’t make sense.’

‘Ernest Audley?’

‘No.’

‘Then who?’

She bent her head over her work, apparently concentrating on it and thinking of nothing else. Then after a moment she said, ‘No, I don’t think I’ll say. It isn’t really serious, and it might just make trouble.’

‘You’re probably wise.’

That seemed to spur her into wanting to tell him more.

‘All the same, if the Bartletts had anything to do with it, then that makes it possible, doesn’t it, that just about anyone who was at that dinner might have been at the back of it? As you said, it’s Sam who looks the most probable, but what about Eleanor, for instance? She’s admitted she used to know Luke Singleton, and whether that was just a bit of boasting and exaggerating, or whether she really knew him very well and was playing it down, we don’t know, do we? And she probably had cyanide and might have arranged to pay a Bartlett to do the job for her. Then there’s Felicity.’

‘Is she the person you really suspect?’ Andrew asked.

But before she answered, Ian came in with coffee for the three of them and as he poured it out, silence fell on them. Mollie resumed her embroidery and except for muttering something about it being impossible that the Bartletts could have had anything to do with it, Ian withdrew into himself, looking ill-tempered, as if he found the events of the morning particularly outrageous.

Andrew was grateful not to be expected to talk. He had an uneasy feeling that Mollie at least might have started to think of him as an expert on murder, when he happened for the present to be feeling entirely uninspired. Wondering what to do, he thought of making the call that he had abandoned the evening before on Eleanor Clancy, asking
to be shown some of her treasured old photographs, because an idea concerning them had begun to form in his mind. He needed an occupation, now that his work on Robert Hooke was done. As his nephew, Peter Dilly, had said, he needed a hobby. And might it not be possible, if Eleanor would give him access to the letters and the negatives that her great-grandfather had left behind him, to write his life? Might it not be quite interesting? It was true that she had seemed to be thinking of doing this herself, but Andrew felt that this was one of the projects that was unlikely ever to be more than a project. Yes, he thought, he would call on her.

Without telling the Davidges what he actually had in mind, but only saying that was going out for a breath of air, he let himself out into the road and started along it.

But he did not stop at Eleanor Clancy’s cottage. The fresh, bright morning gave him the feeling that what he needed was simply a walk, and passing the cottage, he went straight on. His idea of writing the life of a long ago Clancy began to feel quite unrealistic. For one thing, it would almost certainly mean having to have a fair amount of contact with Eleanor herself, and he had not really taken much of a liking to her. It would also mean spending a good deal of time in Lower Milfrey, and that was a thing he thought that he would never be able to contemplate with pleasure. Quite apart from the murder and its consequences, his relationship with the Davidges had been most unhappily damaged; Mollie’s confidences to him about her feelings for Brian Singleton had made it almost impossible for him to maintain his old relationship with Ian. He did not know whether to be sorry for him, or critical of him, or even contemptuous of him. The one thing that seemed impossible, unless Ian should choose to confide in him too, was to be simple and honest with him.

Just then, perhaps because he had been thinking of Ian,
he noticed that the sky seemed to be full of swallows. They were swooping in every direction in swift, beautiful curves. Were they preparing for their journey south, he wondered. He stood still, watching them, and as he did so a car that had been coming towards him stopped near him and Felicity Mace leant out.

‘Good morning, Professor,’ she called out. ‘Are you going anywhere special? Can I give you a lift?’

He was about to reply that he was merely out for a short walk, when a sudden idea occurred to him.