Jack on the Gallows Tree (20 page)

It was a pity, Carolus thought afterwards, that Westmacott became aware of John Moore's presence before he could speak to Mrs Bickley. It would have been interesting to know what those first words would have been. As it was he saw and recognized Moore. He did not look startled and guilty so much as angry. A hard, set expression came over his face, which was strangely white and wet from the rain. He spoke first.

“Where's Bickley?” he asked, presumably of Mrs Bickley, though he continued to look at Moore.

Years of habit made the little woman try to answer, though she was trembling now.

“He's … he gone …”

Westmacott turned to Moore.

“May I ask whether you are here in an official capacity?”

“Yes. You can call it that. I'm going to ask you to accompany me, Mr Westmacott. There are some questions I have to ask you.”

“Accompany you? Where?”

“To the police station.”

“Are you arresting me?”

“I am asking you to come with me and answer certain questions,” said Moore stolidly.

Westmacott for the first time became aware of Carolus.

“Are you responsible for this, Deene?” he asked coldly.

“Well, in a way I am,” said Carolus.

Westmacott seemed to be recovering his poise.

“Perhaps you were expecting me to come here?”

“Yes, I was.”

“I'm sure it's all very clever, but I don't quite see what you hope to prove by it.”

“Murder, Mr Westmacott,” said Carolus quietly.

Gabriel Westmacott gave a short harsh laugh.

“Do you really?” he said. “How very interesting.”

Mrs Bickley began quietly and as it were respectfully to weep.

“It's all right,” Gabriel told her. “I shall be back in a few hours. They'll have to release me. This is simply a bluff without any proof behind it.”

Mrs Bickley was concerned with other aspects of the thing.

“It's raining outside. You haven't got your coat. Take this old one of Bickley's.”

“Thanks,” said Westmacott coolly.

When he went to pull it on he became aware of the lily in his hand. For the first time he looked startled.

“This … this … I was just going …”

“Yes, Mr Westmacott?”

“I found … I was bringing … hell, I'm not going to discuss it now.”

“Far best, because I'm just going to give you the usual warning. Anything you may say …”

The old rune came out, only remotely interrupted by some words of tense whispered dialogue from the television set.

C
AROLUS
was awakened next morning by the ringing of his bedside telephone. It was Mr Gorringer.

“A thousand congratulations, Deene. Buddington is ringing with your triumph.”

“I don't feel very triumphant at this time of the morning,” said Carolus.

“But you should. A veritable
chef d'oeuvre.
I little thought when you left me last night that it was in order to be present at the arrest.”

“I wasn't sure myself.”

“So skilfully yet so discreetly done that the police alone will publicly figure in the matter. I have already received an assurance from Detective Inspector Moore that your name need not appear. I could ask for nothing better. And now for your able analysis and exposition. When may we expect that? I am agog to know what led you through this labyrinth.”

“Sooner the better.”

“Then I shall take it upon myself to arrange the little audience which is so dear to you in these cases. Oh, I know you are entitled to your vanities. It will not be the first time that you have gathered the former suspects in a case, and all those who have been connected with it, and laid before them the facts. Who shall blame you for tasting that small triumph when the greater fruits of fame must be perforce denied to you?”

“It's really rather important in this case. There's a good deal yet to clear up.”

“Say no more. It shall be arranged. If possible for today. My wife asks me to add her congratulations to my own. She says humorously that in future we shall have to change your title at Newminster to that of the Senior Mystery
Master. We shall meet anon, then, and I look forward to your elucidation of the problems which have exercised us.”

Soon after this Priggley came into the room.

“Is this true?” he asked. “The floor waiter, whose incredible name is Napper, tells me that the police have got Gabriel Westmacott.”

“That is so.”

“So you've pulled it off again. Luck or deduction? Now, I suppose, you're pleased with yourself. But you're not going to pull the old gag of explaining the case to all the ex-suspects, are you?”

“Yes. I've got my reasons for it this time.”

“But you
can't,
sir. It's positively nineteenth-century, that sort of thing. It belongs to the detective story world of growlers and deer-stalkers.”

“The headmaster will arrange it.”

“Oh, God! It's small wonder you're not among Julian Symons's hundred best detectives.”

“If it's of any consolation to you it will be rather different this time. I've got to ask some questions as well as answer them. There's quite a lot I'm not clear about myself.”

“Who will you question?”

“The headmaster, for one. Ben Johnson for another.”

“Evasive again. When is this function to be?”

“This evening, probably. Meanwhile I shall stay in this room. I don't want to have to talk about the thing.”

During the day Mr Gorringer kept in touch with Carolus. He seemed full of the importance of the occasion. He had found it possible to arrange for the ‘little gathering' that same day and a room at the Royal Hydro, ‘normally reserved for banquets' the headmaster explained, was to be, in his word, the
venue.
By lunch time Carolus knew that those described by Mr Gorringer as ‘the principals' had accepted his ambiguous invitation, and Raydell was cooperating by bringing ‘the Lilbourne contingent'.

“I think there will be no absentees from our muster,” said
Mr Gorringer, “except, of course, that ill-mannered elderly woman who cast reflections on one of our Board of Governors.”

“Miss Tissot? Won't she come?”

“I could not bring myself to ask her. If her presence is desirable that must be left to you. Colonel and Mrs Baxeter will be there. I see no means of inducing the person who purchased gold to attend.”

“No. I suppose not. That may be just as well. But Charles Carew? Gilling? Wright, the chauffeur?”

“All due. You will have no reason to complain of the size of your audience. I am allowing the boy Priggley to act as a messenger. Are there any others you particularly require?”

“Yes. Two women who will not be kept away when they hear of this, a Mrs Gosport and a Mrs Plummer.” Carolus gave the addresses. “Then you say Raydell is bringing in Dante Westmacott and his wife? I hope he includes Mrs Goggs in his party and that you send Priggley for Thickett and, of course, the Bickleys. I'll phone John Moore.”

He found Moore rather uncommunicative. Nothing was said about Gabriel Westmacott, but Moore agreed to come to the Royal Hydro at six.

“There's a small thing I want you to do for me, John. Arrange for a letter to be handed in to me a few minutes after I mention that it's coming.”

“What letter?”

“Any letter. Addressed to me in typescript. Can it be done?”

“I suppose so. How you love your amateur theatricals, don't you?”

At lunch time Rupert Priggley gave him astonishing news. Miss Shapely would attend. She had informed Priggley that Carolus had been guilty of deceiving her, but in the circumstances she had forgiven him and arranged to leave her bar to Fred for an hour or so.

Carolus heard this without apparent interest.

“You seem frightfully blah about all this,” said Rupert. “You're usually straining at the leash when it comes to the final disposal of evidence.”

“I know. But this case is rather different.”

“Expecting more fireworks?”

“I've told you there's a lot to clear up. I don't know quite how much.”

“Well, don't produce any bangs. You'll upset Maurice Richardson. He calls you ‘soothing'.”

Carolus looked anything but soothing when he faced his heterogeneous audience at six o'clock that evening. He showed none of his flippant and easy-going manner, but appeared to be suffering from a strain of some kind. His face was set and rather drawn. Even the beaming pride with which Mr Gorringer greeted him failed to draw from Carolus a responsive smile, and he spoke to Mr Gorringer briefly and formally. He glanced for a moment at the small assembly as though to make sure that certain faces were among those present, then looked at his notes.

“To your text, Mr Deene,” said Mrs Gorringer misquoting Queen Elizabeth I by only two vowels.

“One of the first things I realized about this case was that it was upside down. Usually the motive for a murder is clear enough and the investigator has the task of deciding who is to be considered a suspect. Here the suspects, several of them, were obvious enough, it was the motive which was baffling. What motive could there be for murdering
both
these women? If it had been possible to regard them as separate and unrelated crimes, it would have been easy enough. Several people had motives for murdering Miss Carew and several other people for murdering Mrs Westmacott. No one appeared to have a motive for murdering both.

“That, I saw at once, was the key to the whole thing. Find someone who would benefit by both deaths and all that
would be necessary would be to dig up those bits of evidence which all murderers leave behind them.

“Detective Inspector John Moore, with far more experience and knowledge of criminals and their ways than I had, very wisely looked for a mercenary motive. For if there was a motive at all, if the murders were not the work of a homicidal maniac, it must be mercenary. Revenge, passion, jealousy, hatred, fear, all could be dismissed from any reasonable consideration. Yet here one was thwarted. Unless it was for a few hundred pounds believed to be missing from Mrs Westmacott's room, there had been no robbery and no one beneficiary was common to the two wills.

“So there we stuck and might remain stuck for ever if the murderer could not be induced by some means to reveal himself. It was most frustrating, because there was a singular lack of clues on which to attempt a more simple and practical solution. I saw no future in looking for fingerprints or footprints or those convenient little traces which are so often left. In any case I knew that if a conclusion was to be reached through these the police would reach it long before I should. They are experts in that field.

“Nor did I believe in the maniac theory. We know that a maniac may be enormously clever and cunning. We know that a homicidal maniac or a schizophrenic may pass for years as a normal person. But in this case I had reason to believe that the murders had been planned at least six months before they took place. There was a
kind
of calculation about them which was not the calculation of a madman. The very things that suggested madness, the lilies on the corpses and so on, were too deliberately bizarre to be credible as the work of a lunatic.

“Realizing that gave me my first illusory step forward. Whoever had murdered these women wanted his acts to appear those of a madman. He had gone to great lengths
to achieve that. And great risks, too. Admittedly he had stolen the lilies before killing either of his victims so that if he were caught in the theft he would be guilty only of stealing flowers. Yet it was a risk and all for something which merely gave a macabre touch to the crimes. A madman might have thrown over a corpse any flowers found handy—only someone wanting to appear mad would prepare for the murder by stealing special flowers for it.

“Yet that still didn't show me his motive. I was still baffled by that and I had the feeling that I should never solve the case unless I could find it. I ask you, if you will, to consider that. You may have guessed long before yesterday who the murderer was, but it could be nothing more than a guess if you did not know his motive. Guessing is easy, particularly easy in this case, but it has got to be backed by something more cogent. So that although some of you may be congratulating yourselves on having guessed correctly, I say that you have no reason to do so unless you see why he did it. I believe there are only two people in the world who know that.

“It was a real puzzler and I almost gave it up. Mrs Westmacott and Miss Carew did not know one another, indeed had never met to our knowledge. There were certain tenuous links between them, but only such as must always exist between two residents in a small town like this. Both Mrs Westmacott's sons had met Miss Carew; both women had sold old gold to the same bullion dealer on the same day. But what significance could there be in that? It brought me no nearer to finding a common motive.

“I did not take seriously the possibility of the murders having been done by two different people working independently. It would mean the fantastic improbability that one of them stole a lily, murdered Miss Carew and disappeared for the rest of the evening while the other
chanced
to pass the stone quarry,
chanced
to enter it,
chanced
to find the corpse, and thereupon went off, stole another lily from the same garden and murdered Mrs Westmacott in the belief that whoever murdered Miss Carew would be blamed for it. That of course makes nonsense.

“Nor for a number of reasons which will emerge later, did I like the notion of two murderers working in co-operation. This is an old gambit and stories and films have been made from it. In this case it would mean that someone who might be suspected of wanting to kill Miss Carew but not Mrs Westmacott had made an agreement with someone who might arouse the opposite suspicions, and each had killed the other's victim, so that neither could be suspected of the murder he had committed. It sounds ingenious but it simply does not work out. In this case each would have made quite sure of an alibi for the murder of which he could be suspected and there was a notable absence of alibis among the suspects.