Police at the Funeral (35 page)

‘But,' said Campion, unable to restrain the question which had worried him from the beginning, ‘where is the satisfaction in a crime like this? He left these traps, we know, but if he were dead, what fun could he get out of their success?'

Mrs Faraday pursed up her lips. ‘It is an illustration,' she said, ‘of a certain type of mentality which you, as a healthy-minded being, may find it difficult to grasp. However, you must take it from me; Andrew had one extraordinary defect. He was so mentally short-sighted that he was not capable of foreseeing the most ordinary consequences of his actions other than the immediate effect at which he was aiming. I think his insanity lay largely in the possession of this peculiar blind spot.'

‘But he planned these murders so cleverly,' protested Mr Campion.

‘Yes,' said Mrs Faraday. ‘But if you come to consider his plan as a whole, it was extraordinarily ragged and inconclusive. He set out to devise a colossal scheme that would bring death and disaster to this whole household, and to a certain extent he was successful. Yet consider it coldly, as I am afraid I do. His own death was designed to throw suspicion on William, Julia's death upon Kitty. How ridiculous! Why should William and Kitty decide upon independent murders within a few days of one another? Each of these diabolical ingenuities of Andrew's might have succeeded alone, but taken together they weaken each other. Then this elementary death-trap for William in the bookcase. Andrew does not seem to have made up his mind whether he wished William hanged or poisoned. His whole mind was taken up with the ingenuities of his crime; that is why he was only successful in the primary stages which are unfortunately ineradicable. Moreover,' she continued, speaking slowly and gently as though Campion were a child, ‘and this, I think, is a very significant point, while Andrew was planning his crime he had the sensation of knowing that the house and everyone in it was in his power. Once the crimes were
committed he would be in danger of being hoist with his own petard.'

She paused and regarded him shrewdly.

‘Yes, I understand,' he said. ‘And yet, how nearly the whole thing failed at the beginning. His most important ingenuity miscarried, you see, the ingenuity of the gun.'

‘Of course,' said Mrs Faraday, ‘I interrupted in the middle of your story. You were telling me that Andrew's body had just fallen into the water.'

‘Yes,' said Mr Campion, jerking his mind back with an effort to the more concrete facts of the history, a feat which presented no difficulty to the remarkable old lady sitting propped up among the pillows. ‘Beveridge says that he and George rushed forward on to the bridge. They peered over the parapet and just made out Andrew's body slipping slowly down the river. They were debating what they should do, thinking that it was just an ordinary case of suicide, when George noticed something caught under the parapet on the opposite side of the narrow bridge. He picked it up and found to his astonishment that it was a heavy Service revolver, through the stock-ring of which a piece of fine cord had been knotted. He pulled in about twelve feet of this cord from the river and discovered tied on the other end a long cylindrical weight from a grandfather clock.'

‘The opposite side of the bridge?' inquired Great-aunt Caroline.

‘Yes,' said Campion. ‘Directly across the footway from the parapet on which Andrew had stood. He had hung the weight over the bridge, you see, so that after he had fired and the muscles of his hand had relaxed the gun would be jerked out of his hand and across the bridge into the river on the other side, thus preventing any chance of the gun being found with the body and giving the show away.'

‘And yet the revolver caught,' observed the old lady. ‘How?'

‘Beveridge says the cord became imprisoned between two stones,' Campion explained. ‘George seems to have taken in the situation at a glance. Beveridge says he thought there were money-making possibilities in the knowledge of such a secret. Of course, he dared not risk carrying the gun away, but if it remained where it was Andrew's death would be no secret.
George was a little drunk at the time, and recklessness seems to have been his strong point. He picked up the gun and the weight and, winding the cord round them, like a child's skipping-rope, remarked – so Beveridge says – “Always make it more difficult!” Then he whirled the bundle round his head and pitched it as far as he could up into the trees on the other side of the river. The missile was naturally extremely heavy, so that it did not go very far, but the cord became unwound in mid-air and the whole thing caught in the branches of an elm, about half a dozen yards from the bank. The weight, being the heavier, pulled the gun up into a crotched branch where it stuck, as black as the wood itself, while the weight hung down on the cord in the thick ivy which covers the trunk. Your chauffeur, Beveridge and I found it at five o'clock this morning when we went down to look for it. No wonder the police didn't spot it. It took us about half an hour when we knew where it was.'

‘Very clever,' said Great-aunt Caroline. ‘Of Andrew, I mean. That clock weight fell down in the middle of dinner on the Saturday before he disappeared. He must have taken it immediately. I remember he went out late that night.' She was silent for some moments, staring in front of her, her eyes narrowed, her hands folded peacefully on the coverlet. ‘I suppose you wonder why I kept Andrew in the house after disinheriting him?' she remarked suddenly. ‘But I think I was justified. I had one distressing relative who was liable to blackmail me for small sums at any moment in George. I did not wish to create another in Andrew. Although he had no hold of any kind over me, you understand,' she remarked. ‘I wished to be spared the possibility of unpleasant scenes. Besides,' she added, fixing Campion sternly, ‘you may have noticed that I have a certain amount of authority over everyone under my roof. I was wrong about Andrew. I should have realized he was mad.'

She stirred restlessly among her embroidered pillows.

‘Tell me,' she murmured pathetically, ‘is ‘it really necessary for me to leave this house while the place is ransacked by inquisitive policemen? Poor Hugh Featherstone will do me the honour of inviting me to his home, I know that; but I am old
and do not want to leave my beautiful bedroom, which gives me a sense of well-being every time I look at it.'

Campion glanced round the magnificent period apartment. It was a wonderful room.

‘I am sorry,' he said regretfully. ‘But a thorough search must be made. You never know in a case like this; consider the unfortunate George. That was a sheer accident.'

‘Yes,' said Great-aunt Caroline, suddenly grave, ‘he was poisoned with cyanide, wasn't he? That must have been just wanton wickedness on Andrew's part.'

‘That was ingenious too,' said Mr Campion. ‘We were amazed at first, because, you know, cyanide has such a very distinctive smell. In the ordinary way you would think no man in his senses would get as far as putting it into his mouth by mistake. Cyanide, or prussic acid, is one of the most deadly poisons. People have died from the fumes of it, I believe. Fortunately, however, in George's case, the explanation was quite obvious. There was a pipe-rack on Andrew's dressing-table. I noticed it myself when Joyce and I were examining the room. It contained five extremely filthy blackened pipes and very good new one, a temptation to any man. I don't know if you have noticed,' he added, ‘the way a man picks up a pipe and sucks it vigorously to make sure the stem is clear? It's a sort of involuntary movement.'

‘I have,' said Great-aunt Faraday. ‘A very disgusting habit. I dislike tobacco in any form and in a pipe particularly.

‘Well,' said Mr Campion apologetically, ‘a pipe is practically the only thing a man puts straight into his mouth. This new pipe in Andrew's rack had a vulcanite mouthpiece which unscrewed. The wooden part of the stem of the pipe was practically filled with finely powdered cyanide. The Inspector thinks there was probably some piece of easily removable fluff or wool sticking out of the actual mouthpiece, which a man would naturally flick out with his fingers. This obstruction was sufficient to keep the smell of the cyanide in the pipe. A few charred fragments of tobacco in the bowl served the same purpose. After removing the wool, or whatever it was, and knocking out the ash, the natural impulse would be to put the pipe in the mouth and suck vigorously. George must have fallen
straight into the trap. I don't know who Andrew intended it for, but I fancy he thought of the idea – another ingenuity – and could not resist trying it. He does not seem to have liked anyone, though it is certainly to his credit that, as far as we know, he made no attempt upon you or Joyce.'

‘How could he hurt us more than by leaving us with this chaos?' Great-aunt Caroline said acidly. ‘Andrew was not clever, but he had intuitions. If Marcus had been of my generation – delightful boy though he is – he might have thought twice about marrying a girl who had been involved in such a public scandal, however innocently. But times are changing rapidly. I don't think Andrew realized that.'

She was silent for some moments, and Mr Campion began to wonder if his audience was at an end, but presently he became aware that she was looking at him speculatively.

‘Mr Campion,' she said, ‘— I have grown used to that name, I quite like it – I have said that George blackmailed me. I think enough of you not to want you to believe that I have anything in my family of which I am ashamed. I shall tell you about George.'

There was something in her tone which told Mr Campion that he was being greatly honoured.

‘George,' said Great-aunt Caroline, ‘was the son of my husband's brother Joseph.' The little black eyes grew hard. ‘A despicable character, and a disgrace to his family. This person was shipped off to the colonies many years ago. He returned with a certain amount of money and a wife. They lived in Newmarket, quite near us, you see. She was a peculiar-looking woman and of a very definite type, which we in those days chose to ignore. They had a child, a girl, and when that child was born the rumours that had been rife about the mother, were proved beyond a doubt. By some horrible machination of heredity the stain in the woman's blood had come out.' She lowered her voice. ‘The child was a blackmoor.'

Mr Campion had a vision of the painful stir in a society of sixty years before.

Great-aunt Caroline stiffened. ‘They left, of course, and the disgraceful business was hushed up. But to my own and to my husband's horror, although the first child died, these criminal
people had a second. That child was George. You may consider,' she went on after a pause, ‘that I am foolish in remembering, in feeling it so strongly, but George bears our name and he is always threatening to reveal his half-caste blood, of which he is not in the least ashamed. I admit there is no stain in our side of the family, but people are malicious and notoriously careless in working out relationships, and – a touch of the tar-brush! It is unthinkable.'

As she sat up stiffly, her high lace bonnet adding to her dignity, Mr Campion understood what it was that she considered worse than murder. He said nothing. He felt very honoured by her confidence.

Presently she went on. ‘That is why I am afraid poor Joyce may have given a strange impression by her attitude towards George. You see, she knows this story. Considering her to be by far the most intelligent person of my household, I explained the matter to her in case, in event of my death, the story should come as a shock to her. There, young man, you have the whole explanation.'

Campion hesitated. There was still one point which was bothering him.

‘Mrs Faraday,' he said, ‘you told me a week ago that you were sure that William was innocent. But you couldn't have known about Mrs Finch at the time. Forgive me, but how were you sure?'

He feared for one terrible moment that she might be offended, but she looked up at him, a half-humorous smile playing about her mouth.

‘Since you have done so much deduction yourself, young man,' she said, ‘my reasoning should appeal to you, simple as it is. You may have noticed hanging in the hall downstairs an old panama hat with a turned-up brim. That hat belonged to Andrew. Since you know William, it will not strike you as absurd that this hat was a bone of contention between him and Andrew. Little things may please little minds; they also annoy them. I have known Andrew sulk for a whole day because he had seen William pottering in the garden in that old hat, and William insisted upon wearing it whenever he could get hold of it simply because he liked to be contrary. Andrew did not
like the panama worn in the garden, so William always put it on to go out there. Now, when Andrew disappeared, and during the ten days in which he was still missing, William wore this hat in the garden every day. I could see him from my window pottering among the flower-beds, where he does a great deal of damage, they tell me. But after Andrew's body was discovered, although I have seen William several times in the garden, he has never worn the old panama, but has appeared in his own grey trilby, a thing I have never seen him wear in the garden before in my life. I understood the repugnance he felt for the panama. There is a primitive strain in us all, which makes us a little afraid of the clothes of the dead. So you see, I knew that Andrew's death had come as a surprise to William.'

Campion looked at her admiringly. ‘I think you're the cleverest woman I've ever met,' he said.

The old lady gave him her hand. ‘You are a very good boy,' she said. ‘I don't want you to desert me for a little while yet. I shall be very much out of my element in Hugh Featherstone's great barn of a house. You never knew his wife, did you? Such an unyielding, academic soul. I always felt her beds might be hard. Then there'll be the reporters again. There'll have to be an inquest on George.'

Her appeal was gracious and ineffably feminine.