She Died a Lady (10 page)

‘I can’t say. Not to identify it, certainly. You noticed that the registration number was filed off?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Frankly, Superindent, and speaking subject to correction: I doubt if you’ll ever trace that gun. In the old days, when anybody who bought ammunition had to show his firearms licence, it must have been easy to check up. But nowadays? With ammunition being issued to nearly anybody who wants it?’

Steve’s disapproval grew. He set his elbows on the arms of the chair, put his finger-tips together, and half-closed his eyes. I have always thought of this as a conscious mannerism, designed to impress; but Steve has done it for so long that he forgets how pompous it looks.

‘Army officers, I notice, have a deplorable habit,’ he said. ‘When they go into restaurants or clubs or theatres, they very often take off their holster-belts and leave them hanging openly in cloak-rooms or anywhere else. Nowadays officers carry what pattern and calibre they like. Why more guns aren’t stolen …’

‘You think that may have happened?’

‘I don’t know. I only threw out the idea.’ Steve turned his head slightly. ‘And this, I believe,’ he added in an agreeable tone, ‘is the famous Sir Henry Merrivale?’

‘Uh-huh,’ agreed H.M., who was staring in a singularly cross-eyed fashion at the crutch propped up in front of him.

‘Happy to have you in my home, Sir Henry. I’ve heard a great deal about you from a mutual friend of ours.’

‘Oh? Who’s that?’

‘Lord Blacklock. A client of mine.’ Steve said this not without self-consciousness.

‘Old Blackie?’ said H.M. with interest. ‘How is he these days?’

Steve settled back for a cosy chat about the great.

‘Not in very good health, I’m afraid. No.’

‘I’ll bet he ain’t,’ agreed H.M., warming to the human touch. ‘He’s never been the same since he went out to New York and started drinkin’ Sterno out of alcohol lamps.’

‘Indeed?’ said Steve, after a slight pause. ‘I can’t say I’ve ever seen him exactly – well! the worse for liquor.’

‘It’s his wife,’ volunteered H.M., and explained this to Craft and me. ‘She’s the worst old bitch west of the Bristol Channel, but she really does keep Blackie under control.’

Steve looked as though he wished he hadn’t brought the subject up.

‘Anyway,’ he said manfully, ‘Lord Blacklock seems very much annoyed with you.’

‘Old Blackie annoyed with me? Why?’

Steve smiled. ‘I believe he invited you to spend a part of the summer at his country seat. And instead, he says, you chose to go and stay with this fellow … what’s his name?’

(Steve knew perfectly well what it was, though he snapped his fingers casually and pretended he didn’t.)

‘Paul Ferrars?’

‘That’s it,’ said Steve. ‘The artist.’

‘I don’t see why in blazes I shouldn’t go to see the young feller,’ said H.M. ‘He’s paintin’ my picture.’

In the silence that followed this, a deep suspicion seemed to strike H.M. Adjusting his spectacles, he peered slowly round our group, studying each face in turn with a concentrated effort to find any lack of gravity there.

‘Is there anybody here,’ he rumbled challengingly, ‘who can tell me any reason why I
shouldn’t
have my picture painted? Is there any reason why I
oughtn’t
to get my picture painted? Hey?’

(I could think of one reason, an aesthetic one, but it seemed more tactful not to mention this.)

‘That young feller,’ pursued H.M., ‘is a friend of my younger daughter. He wrote me just about the most insulting letter I’ve ever had, and I’ve had plenty. He said I had the funniest face he’d ever run across, even including his student days in Paris, and would I come down here so he could preserve it for posterity? It was so insultin’, gents, that I came down out of curiosity.’

‘And stayed?’

‘Sure. I will say this for the bloke: he’s doing me justice. It’s a fine picture, and I’m going to buy it. It’s not quite finished, because some low-hearted hound made me do this.’ H.M. thrust out his foot under the rug. ‘And I wanted to pose standing up, and I’m only allowed a short time each day on my feet.’ H.M. sniffed, and added modestly: ‘He’s paintin’ me as a Roman Senator.’

Even Superintendent Craft was jarred by this.

‘As a
what
, sir?’

‘As a Roman Senator,’ repeated H.M. After looking at Craft very suspiciously for a moment, he illustrated by drawing himself up with immense dignity and throwing the end of an imaginary toga over his shoulder.

‘I see.’ Steve Grange spoke without inflexion. ‘Mr Ferrars has had some success, I believe.’

‘You don’t like him, do you?’

‘I’m afraid, Sir Henry, I don’t know him well enough either to like or dislike him. I may be an old-fashioned family man, but I dislike what used to be known as Bohemian ways. That’s all.’

‘How did you feel about Mrs Wainright?’

Steve got up from his chair. He walked across to the bay-window behind the piano, held back one of the lace curtains, and looked out into the street. On the way, I noticed, he eyed his reflexion in a mirror on the wall; for Steve, like most of us, had his own share of human vanity.

‘Mrs Wainright and I,’ he answered, ‘had a rather serious quarrel more than a year ago. Anybody will tell you that. We haven’t spoken since.’

Then he turned round from the window and spoke decisively.

‘The nature of that quarrel must remain a secret. Mrs Wainright wanted me to do something for her, in a professional way, which I considered unethical. That’s as much explanation as I can give you.

‘I’ve discouraged Molly from going out there as much as possible. Understand me: Molly is her own mistress. She makes her own living and is entitled, within reason, to her own life. But the Wainright set, and the Bohemian set, don’t appeal particularly to me. I’m very careful about the people who come here to see Molly. And I tell her so.’

This was where I felt called on to register a protest.

‘Now look here,’ I said with some vehemence. ‘What exactly do you mean by the “Wainright set”? You don’t call playing bridge or hearts on Saturday night a very Bohemian sort of life, do you? Damn it all, I do that myself!’

Steve smiled.

‘By the “Wainright set”, Dr Luke, I meant Mrs Wainright herself and any of her younger male admirers.’

Superintendent Craft coughed. ‘That’s just it, sir. We’re looking for the man in the case. The man that your daughter saw with Mrs Wainright out at the old stone studio on the Baker’s Bridge road.’

The skin tightened across Steve’s cheeks and jaws, as though the high-boned ascetic framework of the face had hardened inside. But he spoke mildly.

‘Molly should never have told you that. It was indiscreet and perhaps even actionable.’

‘You don’t doubt your daughter’s word?’

‘Not at all. Though I often think she’s too imaginative.’ Steve rubbed the side of his jaw. ‘As for this studio business, maybe some more or less innocent flirtation … !’

‘Leadin’ to murder?’ inquired H.M.

‘Speaking as a lawyer, gentleman, let me tell you something.’

Returning to his chair, Steve sat down comfortably.

‘You’ll never prove there was any man in the case,’ he stated, tapping his finger-tips together. ‘I’ll tell you something more. You’re wasting your time in trying to show it was murder. It was a suicide-pact, and any coroner’s jury is certain to bring it in as such.’

Though Craft started to protest, Steve silenced him with a lifted hand. There was a slight smile under Steve’s thin edge of moustache, but it did not extend up to his eyes. His face was serious, earnest, and thoughtful. I could have sworn he believed every word he said.

‘The more I think it over, gentleman, the more
I’m
convinced it was a suicide-pact,’ he affirmed. ‘On what evidence do you base your assumption of murder? On two things. First, the absence of powder-speckling on the hand of either victim. Second, the finding of the gun some distance away. Yes?’

‘Yes, sir. And that’s good enough for me.’

‘Well, let’s see.’ Steve leaned his head against the back of the chair. ‘Let’s state a hypothetical case. Mrs Wainright and Mr Sullivan decide to kill themselves. Sullivan procures an automatic. They walk out to the edge of the cliff. Sullivan first shoots her and them himself. On his right hand he’s wearing … what? A glove?’

It was very quiet in the white sitting-room, except for the ticking of the clock.

I started to say: ‘A glove on his own hand to shoot himself?’ But, at the very moment I said it, certain cases in medical jurisprudence as well as in my own experience returned with unnerving distinctness. Steve Grange continued:

‘Let’s remember the habits of suicides. A suicide will take the most elaborate precautions not to “hurt” or “pain” himself. If he hangs himself, he’ll often pad the rope. He seldom or never shoots himself through the eye, though that’s the one certain method. He puts a cushion in the gas-oven to make his head comfortable.

‘Now this particular gun had a bad backfire. Backfire means a very painful powder-speckling; perhaps a bad burn. Sullivan has to shoot Mrs Wainright even before he shoots himself. Isn’t it natural … in fact, isn’t it inevitable … that he’ll wear a glove?’

Neither H.M. nor Craft said anything, though I could detect a startled look on the latter’s face and he gave a barely perceptible nod.

Steve Grange nodded towards a wall of books at the back of the room.

‘We’re great crime-readers here,’ he told us with faint apology. ‘So I’ll go on. Isn’t it true, Superintendent, that bodies washed up out of water always have some of their clothing – and sometimes nearly all of it – torn away?’

Craft grunted.

His glass eye had acquired, if possible, an even more unnatural appearance. He peered up and down from his notebook.

‘It’s true enough,’ the superindent admitted. I’ve known one or two of ’em washed up stark naked except for their shoes. Shoes never go, because the leather shrinks. Mrs Wainright and Mr Sullivan were pretty fully clothed, though most of it was rags. But what you mean is – the first thing to go would be an open glove?’

‘That’s exactly what I mean.’

Here Steve hesitated, trying to gnaw at the edges of his small moustache.

‘Excuse me,’ he said in his dry voice. ‘The next part isn’t pleasant for me. It’s going to offend an old friend. But I can’t help it.’

He looked straight at me, and spoke gently.

‘Dr Luke, let’s be fair. Yours were the only other footprints there. We all know how much you liked Mrs Wainright. You’d have hated (admit this!), you’d have hated the idea of having it known she committed suicide because she couldn’t be faithful to her husband.

‘The gun must have fallen on that tiny little semicircular patch of scrub grass on the edge of Lovers’ Leap. While you were lying at full length, looking over the edge, you could have reached out with a cane and hooked the gun towards you. Confound it, you
must
have! Then you took it back with you, and dropped it in the road on your way home to get the police.’

Again Steve gave me an earnest look, of disapproval mingled with commiseration, before turning to the others. He was bending forward, palms upturned, and forehead furrowed with apologetic horizontal wrinkles.

‘Say what you like, gentleman. That’s the only possible explanation,’ he declared.

(Here H.M. looked at him very curiously.)

‘It’s the only one a coroner’s jury will accept. You see that? Also, it’s the true one. The suicide-note confirms it. The facts confirm it. We all like Dr Luke –’

Craft grunted.

‘– And we appreciate his good intentions. But the danger of it!’ said Steve. ‘The unfairness of it! A whole mess of scandal and unpleasantness, a whole trial and badgering of perfectly innocent people, can be avoided if Dr Luke will just admit he told a white lie.’

Once more there was a silence. Craft unfolded his long length from the chair and peered down at me. All three of them were looking at me with a significance and speculation it was impossible to mistake.

‘B
UT I DIDN’T DO THAT
!’ I found myself shouting at them.

How to explain? How to explain that I only wished it had been like that? That I should cheerfully have lied if any good purpose could be gained by it? But that this was murder, the murder of a friend, and such things are to be avenged.

‘No, sir?’ intoned Superintendent Craft, in a very odd tone.

‘No!’

‘Luke, my dear old chap!’ remonstrated Steve. ‘Remember the state of your health!’

‘Damn and blast the state of my health! I hope I may drop dead this minute’ – here Steve put out a protesting hand – ‘if every word I’ve told you hasn’t been the gospel truth. I don’t want to hound anybody. I don’t want to rake up scandal; I hate scandal. But truth is truth, and we can’t tamper with it.’

Craft touched my shoulder.

‘All right, Doctor,’ he said in a friendly voice which sounded even more ominous. ‘If you say so, that’s that. Let’s just go outside and talk it over, shall we?’

‘I tell you –’

‘Unless Mr Grange has got anything more to tell us?

‘No, I’m afraid not.’ Steve got up. ‘You’ll stay to tea?’

But, when we declined this invitation, he was clearly relieved.

‘Well, perhaps you’re right. I do think the doctor here ought to go over and lie down. When is the inquest?’

‘Day after tomorrow,’ said Craft, ‘at Lynton.’

‘Ah!’ Steve nodded and consulted his watch. ‘I’ll have a word with Mr Raikes. He’s the coroner, isn’t he? A great friend of mine. I’ll tell him one or two of our ideas, and I’m sure he can persuade the jury to see the truth. Good afternoon, gentlemen; a very good afternoon. There’ll be a great load off my mind this night.’

And he stood in the front door, almost jauntily, his hands in his pockets and a breeze smoothing his hair, as we pushed H.M. down the path to the street.

‘F
OR
the fiftieth and last time, Superintendent Craft, I did
not
.’

‘But you hear what Mr Grange said, Doctor. That’s the only way it could have happened!’

‘You thought it was murder, this morning.’