Hobby of Murder (17 page)

It was at about ten o’clock that Ernest Audley came to the house. He came in apologizing for calling on them at such an hour, but said that he had thought that he would look in before leaving for his office in Rockford, because he wanted to know if they knew anything about the death of Eleanor Clancy. The red blotches on his cheekbones seemed to be particularly bright against the pallor of his thin face. The sandy hair that stood straight up from his narrow forehead looked a little as if he had forgotten to comb it that morning. Yet on the whole he looked cheerful.

‘Of course you’ve heard the Bartletts have alibis for the woman’s murder, haven’t you?’ he said. ‘And that seems to clear them of poisoning Singleton. And I’d be suspect Number One for his murder if only they could tell me how I did it. You know, if I could think of a way I could have done it, I believe I’d be telling them about it, I’d be so
proud of myself. And certainly I’d have sold my story to the popular press so that there’d be a nice hoard waiting for me when I came out of gaol. What d’you think I’d get? Life, of course, but that doesn’t mean life nowadays. Sometimes it’s a mere ten years. And I don’t know that ten years in prison would be all that much worse than ten years in a solicitor’s office in Rockford.’

‘Don’t be a fool, Ernest,’ Ian muttered. ‘You didn’t do it, so don’t give yourself airs.’

‘No, and the fact is, of course, that nobody did it,’ Audley said. ‘It couldn’t happen, so it didn’t happen. By the way, where’s Mollie?’

‘Out shopping,’ Ian lied.

‘She liked that Clancy woman quite a lot, didn’t she?’ Audley went on. ‘Is she badly upset?’

‘About as much as you’d expect,’ Ian answered.

His tenseness did not seem to quell Audley, who seemed to be in particularly good spirits that morning.

‘D’you believe she was blackmailing someone?’ he asked. ‘That’s what I heard.’

‘How?’ Ian said.

‘How was she blackmailing someone? Easy enough, I suppose, if she happened to know what nobody else does.’

‘I meant, how did you hear it?’ Ian said.

‘Oh, from my cleaning lady, whose husband’s a policeman. I’m often put into possession of interesting information through her before other people get it. For instance, before this murder of Eleanor Clancy, I heard that the police were leaning to the idea that Singleton’s death was suicide. I was ready to believe it myself. Choosing the most exhibitionist way possible of killing himself was quite in character.’

‘So that’s what you really meant when you said his murder couldn’t happen, so it didn’t happen.’

‘No, no, I meant that we’d all been hypnotized into
believing it had happened, when it simply hadn’t happened at all.’ Audley gave a pleased little chuckle. ‘Complete illusion. You know, I thought Mollie must be taking the news of Clancy to Brian. I saw your car outside his bungalow. Tell me, won’t you, if you have any bright ideas about how that Singleton murder was done?’

He gave a little wave to Andrew with one hand and let himself out.

‘Bastard,’ Ian muttered, not getting up to see him out and going on pasting photographs into his album.

About eleven o’clock he suddenly suggested, ‘D’you feel like dropping in on the Waldrons? I’d be glad to know what Sam makes of the whole situation. After all, it was at his dinner that everything started. I shouldn’t be surprised if he’s got theories about it by now, and they’ll be a little more soundly based than mass hypnotism. Are you coming?’

Andrew dropped
The Times
and stood up. He was glad to be able to do something active, rather than remaining in a house that seemed to have lost all that had given it life. He went with Ian out into the road.

‘We’ll have to walk, since Mollie’s taken the car,’ Ian said.

They set off into the village.

That it seemed so normal, that the people they saw were going about their usual business, just as if drama and tragedy had never come near them, seemed strange, though in its way it was reassuring. The morning was a grey one, with pale, level clouds covering the sky. There was no breeze, yet it felt colder than the day before. Autumn was upon them, and soon it would be winter. Winter could come with very little warning, even if it was to make only a foray of a few days of bitter cold, then to become mild again, perhaps not returning for several weeks. But Andrew knew that some of the cold that he felt had nothing to do
with the time of year, which after all was only September, but was inside himself. He was glad Ian felt inclined to walk fast. Andrew could still walk fairly fast, for which he was thankful, though catching sight of his reflection in the window of the village grocer as they passed it, it struck him that his stoop had increased markedly since he had noticed it last. Winter, his own winter, was waiting for him.

He and Ian were silent for a while, then Ian remarked, ‘Audley’s a queer chap, isn’t he? I don’t believe I could ever work up the state of hatred he seems to live in. He’s really glad, you know, that Luke Singleton was murdered, and he doesn’t seem much concerned that one of the results of it was that poor woman getting killed.’

‘You’re sorry for her even if it turns out she’s a blackmailer?’

‘Of course I am. I hate violence of all kinds.’

‘Isn’t blackmail a kind of violence?’

‘You don’t have to give in to it, do you?’

‘It must be very difficult sometimes not to.’

‘Anyway, I’m not altogether convinced she was a blackmailer. Mollie may be right about her.’

‘I gather you don’t have any very violent feelings against Brian.’

‘No. I don’t even really dislike him. What’s happened isn’t his fault, or Mollie’s either, or even mine. It was just something that was going to happen sooner or later, and it might as well be with Brian as anyone else.’

‘How long ago did you realize it was going to happen?’

‘Well, it’s easy to be wise after the event, but I’ve an idea it was about from the start. I knew quite soon, so it seems to me now, that Mollie would leave me sooner or later.’

‘And I suppose that makes things easier now.’

‘Oh yes, as I told you yesterday, it’s a kind of relief.’

After that they were silent again for some time.

About a quarter of a mile beyond the end of the village they reached the gates that opened on to the drive that led up to the Waldrons’ house. Seeing it in daylight, Andrew thought what a pleasantly dignified place it was, without any ostentation or pretension, though standing on a slight rise, as it did, it seemed to overlook the village. He could see now the park stretching around it, with some fine old chestnuts near the house, just beginning to show the first faint tints of autumn. When Ian rang the doorbell it was some time before the door was opened by Anna Waldron. Andrew was struck at once, as he had been when he saw her first, by her air of diffidence, yet at the same time by the grace of her movements. She was wearing well-cut dark blue jeans and a sweater of emerald green. Her dark hair was tied back from her face with a bright green ribbon.

‘Oh, Ian, how nice to see you—and Professor, how good of you to come!’ she exclaimed. ‘The only other people we’ve seen for the last day or two have been the police. And of course, the Bartletts have left us. You know that, do you? And how we’ll ever manage to replace them I don’t know. How do you find people who’ll come and work in a place where there’s been an unsolved murder? Yet I can’t possibly cope with things by myself. Of course, Sam and I can manage for the moment, but as everything begins to get dusty and horrible we’ll just have to move out. Go abroad perhaps to somewhere like Portugal, where I believe you can still get servants. Oh, why am I talking like this? Do come in. Sam will be so glad to see you.’

She was chattering in the way of a shy person who is afraid that if she stops for a moment she may be quite unable to get started again, and who is really very much afraid of the people to whom she is chattering.

Sam Waldron’s voice was heard coming from a room inside. ‘Who’s there, Anna? What are you doing out there? Bring them in, bring them in.’

Then he appeared in the doorway of the room where his guests had had drinks before his dinner. He was wearing the brown corduroy trousers and white sweater in which Andrew had seen him first, but checked bedroom slippers instead of gum boots, and if he did not look quite as impressive as he had on the night of the dinner, when he had been swathed in a long white apron and had been made to appear even taller than he was by the chef’s hat that he had had on his head, he had lost none of his air of distinction.

‘We aren’t managing very well, I’m afraid, now that the Bartletts have left us,’ he said. ‘But we can offer you drinks. Come in here and please forgive the mess we’re in. We’ve been so dependent for so long on those two good women that we hardly know how to fry bacon and eggs. We don’t really know why they took off as they did. Panic, I suppose. Fear that they were going to be suspected of poisoning Singleton. Crazy, but I don’t suppose they realized how utterly virtuous they appeared to other people. Of course, none of us knows how we appear to other people. Now what’ll you have, whisky, vodka, sherry?’

The room into which he had taken Ian and Andrew was not really in a mess. A newspaper lay on the floor. Cushions in the easy chairs had not been plumped up. Ashes in the fireplace had not been swept up. That was all.

Ian and Andrew chose whisky, Sam Waldron vodka, and Anna sherry. She had come into the room behind the others, and now perched on the arm of an easy chair in one of the graceful poses that seemed to come to her naturally.

‘You’ve read the papers, of course,’ Sam said, when he had poured out drinks for the four of them and they were all sitting down.

‘And you have too,’ Ian said.

Sam gave a deep sigh. ‘Yes. But it doesn’t tell one much, except that the woman’s dead. One supposes it’s because
she knew too much about Singleton’s death, but it doesn’t say so. D’you know any more about it?’

‘A certain amount,’ Ian answered. ‘I found her in the lake, you know. And the police have found her handbag in the lake, with a thousand pounds in it. The theory is that she was attacked from behind and the handbag flew out of her hand and landed in the water.’

‘That sounds very strange to me,’ Sam said, thoughtfully rubbing a finger slowly down his aquiline nose. ‘What was she doing, wandering about with a thousand pounds in her handbag? That doesn’t sound like her.’

‘They’re considering the possibility of blackmail,’ Ian said.

‘That she was being blackmailed, d’you mean? No, of course you mean she was blackmailing someone and had just been paid. Well, well, what extraordinary things one learns about people—if it’s true, that’s to say. But it ought not to surprise me too much. Take the case of dear old Parson Woodforde. Respectability itself. Yet he took it for granted that he should buy his tea and his brandy from someone he called the Smuggler. According to his view, that was perfectly acceptable behaviour in a quiet country parson. So perhaps Miss Clancy found a touch of blackmail acceptable too. It was on a surprisingly small scale, wasn’t it, if it was only a thousand pounds?’

‘There’s a suggestion that it was just a first instalment,’ Ian said.

Sam nodded. ‘That makes sense. So she knew who murdered Singleton, and how it was done. Extraordinary. She must have been a much cleverer woman in her way than I’d ever have given her credit for—oh, darling!’ He had turned with a look of great distress to his wife, for her slight body had suddenly become shaken with sobs and tears were pouring down her face. ‘Darling, don’t cry! We couldn’t have done anything to help her.’

She mopped at the tears with a handkerchief but went on shuddering. Sam sat down abruptly in the chair on the arm of which she was sitting and put his arms around her.

‘Don’t!’ he repeated. ‘I know you cared for her very much once, but that was years ago. And I know everything’s horrible now, but it’ll pass. They’ll find out who did those things, and we’ll get back to normal.’

‘No, we won’t!’ she snuffled into her handkerchief. ‘Nothing’s ever going to be the same again. We were so happy and everything was going so well, but now it’s all spoilt, and the only way to get over it will be to go away. And I don’t want to go away. I just want none of it to have happened.’

‘Well, that’s something I’m afraid I can’t arrange for you,’ Sam said. ‘I’d do anything else on earth, but putting the clock back’s something I can’t do.’

‘If only we’d never given that awful dinner,’ she moaned. ‘Then if it was going to happen anyhow, it wouldn’t have been here in our house. It wouldn’t have been anything to do with us.’

Sam looked at Ian and Andrew.

‘I’m sorry about this,’ he said. ‘She’s usually so controlled. But she’s gone to pieces since the dinner and now the news about the Clancy woman is just too much for her.’

‘Andrew hasn’t told you about the state of Eleanor’s cottage,’ Ian said. ‘He was taken into it by Roland. They’re old friends, you see, and Roland seems to have a great regard for Andrew’s perspicacity.’

‘Her cottage, you say?’ Sam said. ‘But I thought you said her body was found in the lake.’

‘Yes, but someone got loose in her cottage after killing her. Andrew, tell Sam what you saw in the cottage.’

Andrew gave a brief description of what he had seen. Anna’s sobbing gradually grew less as she listened, her reddened eyes fixed incredulously on Andrew’s face. Once
or twice she shook her head, as if she could not bring herself to believe what he was saying.

‘And I believe the prevailing theory at the moment,’ Andrew concluded, ‘is that Miss Clancy thought she could protect herself from her victim by telling him that she’d written an account of what she knew which would be found if anything happened to her, but that she was killed all the same and her murderer went to the cottage to find what she’d written, and when he didn’t find it smashed the place up in a rage.’

‘And do you believe that?’ Sam asked.

‘I’ve no other theory to offer,’ Andrew answered. ‘On the whole, it seems to me quite probable.’

‘I don’t believe any of it,’ Anna cried. ‘I don’t believe Luke was murdered, I think he committed suicide, and I don’t think my dear Clancy was killed by someone she was blackmailing, but just by one of those horrible perverts one’s always hearing about, who found a lonely woman out for an evening walk and wanted to rape her, only she fought him off and ail he managed to do was kill her and throw her body in the lake. And then he went and wrecked her cottage because he was one of those awful vandals who love to smash things.’