Thou Shell of Death (25 page)

Nigel reluctantly took leave of the old woman, promising he would send her a pound of the very best tea from London when he got back. He extracted Flanagan from a crowd of men who were staring over a wall in silent homage at an enormous black sow, and returned to Enniscorthy without mishap. When his train was just about due a terrific commotion arose in the station yard. An ass cart piled with mailbags shot in at the main entrance. It was driven by a postman, who rang a brass bell ecstatically and yelled salutations to everyone on the platform. The train was already appearing from the tunnel a hundred yards along the line when the cart hurled itself down the ramp, across the metals and up the far side. As the ass trotted along the platform, anyone who had letters to post threw them into the cart with encouraging shouts to its driver. It reached the far end of the platform a neck ahead of the mail van, and everyone congratulated themselves on the punctuality of the Irish Mail. Nigel felt that the country had given him a good send-off.

As the boat hung and swung on the huge channel swells, his mind was busy readjusting the shape of the case to fit these new and all-important revelations. Nigel was fortunate to possess an almost perfect verbal
memory
. He set himself, in the close confinement of his cabin, to recall everything that had been said from the first moment he had arrived at Chatcombe. Whenever he came to a remark that seemed of significance, he jotted it down in his notebook. So the outline of the case slowly filled in. Light filtered, like the dawn through his cabin ports, into places that had seemed irreclaimably dark. At last all but one of them were illuminated. There could be no doubt that Edward Cavendish had shot O’Brien. Everything went to confirm that. But the motives of the killings: these had to be altered and extended until they were almost unrecognisable from the point of view of his first dark gropings. Just one point remained outside the connecting lines he had drawn between all the others: an obstinate, stubborn point which irritated him disproportionately, partly because it did not seem really essential to the whole design and partly because it could so easily have been cleared up. An Irish packet-boat could scarcely be expected to carry as part of its fittings a copy of a rather obscure seventeenth-century playwright. But it was the lack of this, Nigel realised later, that—by holding him back from making a complete explanation of the case—led to the dizzy and melodramatic tragedy which finally terminated it.

XIV

‘AS A TALE THAT IS TOLD’

WHILE NIGEL STRANGEWAYS
was dozing fitfully through South Wales, the occupants of the Dower House awoke to what the inspector had informed them would probably be their last day in it. There was a feeling of relief and irresponsibility in the air, as in a school on the last morning of the term. Even though they might not yet be free of the case, they would be glad to get away from the Dower House. It had become a prison, and there is a certain relief at walking out of a prison, even if one only entered it as a visitor—even, perhaps, if one is stepping out of it straight on to a scaffold.

No such speculations troubled the pretty head of Lily Watkins as she laid the breakfast table. She was thinking of a certain steady-going young farmer’s lad, of springtime and her new Sunday frock. She was calculating, too, the amount of tips she would get from the ladies and gentlemen, and the amount of prestige that would be hers for ever as the finder of Knott-Sloman’s body. What Mrs Grant was thinking was, as usual, clear to none but the recording angels.
She
bent over her frying rashers, if such a one could ever be said to bend, and eyed them with the thin-lipped and complacent regard which she would turn upon a pack of sinners sizzling in hell. Lucilla Thrale yawned and stretched her magnificent body—with a studied, practice-perfected languor, half asleep though she was. Then she came fully awake. Her muscles grew tense and her eyes on guard. Only a few more hours to keep it up. Philip Starling was stumping about his room, his shirt-tails hanging outside his trousers, his face sparkling with animation as he rolled round his tongue phrases that would finally demolish that charlatan editor of Pindar. When he had polished them to his satisfaction, he muttered, ‘Well, no one can say I don’t see life.’ Edward Cavendish was trying to shave; but the razor shook uncontrollably in his hand and the look in his bloodshot eyes would have seriously discomposed a number of shareholders if they had been there to see it. The look in his sister’s eyes was much less easy to read. Indignation, bitterness, fear, indecision, passed into some desperate resolve, and then softened beautifully into a quite different expression, as though a lover’s hand had come over her face.

Georgia Cavendish was the first person, except for the policeman at the door, that Nigel met when he entered the house just before lunch.

‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Edward—is he—?’ She could say no more.

‘I’m afraid there’s no doubt he shot O’Brien,’ said Nigel slowly, as though choosing his words to soften the blow. ‘He’s in a tough place. I—’

‘No, don’t say any more. Nigel, the inspector told me about—about the poison, and Edward telling him I had it. I asked him. I couldn’t really believe you had told him. I—it was damned decent of you.’

She took Nigel’s hand and quickly brushed her lips over it. Then she stared at him irresolutely for a second, her mouth trembling. Then she exclaimed, ‘Oh, hell and damnation!’ and spun round and fled from the room. Nigel stared stupidly at the back of his hand, smiling vaguely. After a bit he collected himself and went to find Inspector Blount. The inspector was with Bleakley, routing about at the back of the house. The three adjourned to the morning room, and Nigel told them everything of significance he had learned in Ireland. Bleakley’s eyes popped with excitement and his moustaches quivered like antennae. Blount took the news more calmly, but the eyes behind the big horn-rimmed spectacles registered every point with alert intelligence.

‘Well, Mr Strangeways,’ he said when Nigel had finished, ‘that just about clinches it. I’m glad I held my hand, though after that point you made about Edward Cavendish and the footprints it was evident that the main suspicion must lie on him and not his sister. That was a very nice little piece of work of yours.’

Nigel looked modestly down his nose. He drew out a packet of Player’s and passed it round. Then he said:

‘Before we start connecting up this new stuff with the rest of the case, I wonder would you mind if I set out all the other points which connect Edward Cavendish with the crimes. I put in some hard remembering last night on the boat and I’ve collected quite an imposing display. I don’t want to seem to boss this little conclave,’ he added, ‘but there are several things which I know and you don’t—only because I happened to be on the spot and you weren’t. I didn’t see their importance before, so I didn’t mention them.’

‘You go right ahead, Mr Strangeways,’ said Blount.

‘Well then, starting at the highly correct place, the beginning. The morning we found O’Brien. It is significant that when I got downstairs I found Cavendish on the veranda. Jaded businessman taking a breath of fresh country air. All proper and correct. But a nasty-minded, suspicious person might say that he was waiting there for someone to come out, so that he might tactfully keep this someone away from the footprints in the snow. Item, when I said that I was going out to the hut to see if O’Brien was awake yet, Cavendish slipped up badly, and quite failed to produce the correct reaction—any reaction at all, in fact.’

Bleakley looked puzzled. The inspector did too: then he suddenly smacked his bald head in excitement.

‘You mean, he should never have known that O’Brien was sleeping in the hut?’

‘Exactly. He ought to have registered surprise. He should have assumed that O’Brien was in his bedroom in the house. The fact that he didn’t suggests that he knew O’Brien was in the hut, and how would he know that unless he had seen him there that night? Point number two: not only did he keep me off the footprints, but also, when the rest of the party appeared on the veranda, Cavendish was very fussy about my seeing that they shouldn’t tread on the footprints either. Singular presence of mind in a layman who was still dithering under the spectacle of his host’s corpse. Then there was the matter of the shoes. Cavendish was wearing an overcoat and therefore able to bring them out again to the hut underneath it. Moreover, he had far more time than the rest to plant them there. He was mopping his brow with a handkerchief and no doubt he used it to handle the shoes without leaving fingerprints. I suggest that he meant to plant them at once but couldn’t find a favourable moment: I’m pretty sure they weren’t in position when I had my look round. Then the others came out. My attention was concentrated on them to see how they were taking it and to make sure they didn’t touch anything. He could easily have dumped the shoes then—probably when Lucilla threw her swooning act. That’s all my contribution for the moment.’

There was a short silence. Then the superintendent slapped his knee. ‘By gum, sir, I’ve just thought of
something
else. You talking about Cavendish puts me in mind of it. Do you remember Bellamy saying as how he had overslept that morning? He’d meant to go out the night before and watch the hut, but he felt so sleepy he dozed off and didn’t even wake at his usual time in the morning? Well now, what was the evidence given by Miss Cavendish?’ He licked his thumb and turned over the pages of a notebook. ‘“I went into my brother’s room,” ’ he recited in official monotone, ‘“and asked for some sleeping draught: he’d packed it in his luggage. He was awake and got up to get it.” Now, gentlemen’—he leant back triumphantly—‘what does that suggest to your minds?’

‘I think I can do that one,’ replied Blount dryly. ‘It suggests that Cavendish gave Bellamy some of the sleeping draught so that there should be no interference with what he proposed to do in the hut.’

‘He might have given me some too. I’d intended to stay on guard, but I dropped off and slept rather late. It might have been put in my coffee cup as they were passed along after dinner,’ said Nigel.

‘That means he must have found out somehow that you were down here to investigate at O’Brien’s request,’ said the inspector. ‘Will you lend me those notes a minute, sir?’

Bleakley handed the notebook over.

‘I see that after this statement by Miss Cavendish, her brother deposed that he went to bed soon after twelve but couldn’t get to sleep. He was still awake when Miss Cavendish went into his room at quarter to
two
. A man doesn’t carry sleeping draught about with him for ornament. If he wasn’t able to go to sleep, why didn’t he take some of it? It suggests that he had not been back in his bedroom long before his sister came in.’

All three sat back as if by common consent. The first stage of the case against Edward Cavendish seemed to be satisfactorily erected. Inspector Blount lit another cigarette and took up the tale.

‘Those points of yours are very valuable to
us
, Mr Strangeways, but they will carry little weight in a court of law. Let us turn to the question of motive. It seems to me that, in the light of the fresh evidence you have given us, we shall have to discard Mr O’Brien’s will as a factor of primary importance in the crime. We do not know whether Cavendish was a beneficiary under the will. If he knew he was, and committed murder to get the money, he would not be likely to pretend ignorance of the contents of the will, for, when it comes to light, the fact that he feigned ignorance would at once cast suspicion on him. On the other hand, he would surely never destroy the will if he had committed murder in order to profit by it. It may be, of course, that—knowing his sister to be a legatee, and knowing that she would give him as much money as he needed out of her share—he planned to kill O’Brien. But, however that may turn out, I think we will all agree it was a subsidiary motive, if one at all.

‘Clearly Cavendish’s chief motive was revenge. That fits both the tone of the threatening letters and
what
we now know about his earlier days in Ireland. He falls in love with this girl, Judith Fear. The strength of his attachment is proved by the way he, a man of substance and reputation, consented to the rather childish and undignified expedient of sending letters to her through a girlfriend of hers.’

‘His sister told me, too,’ Nigel put in, ‘that she thought he had been very hard hit by a love affair in Ireland, and that’s why he had never married.’

The inspector looked at Nigel with a kind of paternal severity. ‘That is further confirmation,’ he said dryly. ‘In due course Cavendish finds that Miss Fear’s letters are becoming less and less affectionate, and in the end a letter comes from her old nurse to say that she has fallen in love with a gardener. That would be a severe blow, both to his affection and his pride. The nurse implores him to come over to Ireland and straighten things out, but he cannot get over, and has to content himself with writing to Judith Fear, urging her, no doubt, to cease from her madness and come back to her old lover. He presses his claims hard. Judith calls him “cruel”; the weight of his pleading, added to the predicament she is in, is too much for a young, inexperienced girl.’

‘What do you mean, “predicament”?’ asked Nigel, breaking into the inspector’s flowery discourse.

‘Well, there can’t be much doubt that she
was
going to have a baby. Her pallor, her change of manner, and what she finally did, all point to it. She told the nurse she wasn’t maybe, but a sensitive girl like that might
well
be afraid to confess it even to her old nurse. At any rate, the next thing Cavendish hears is that she has drowned herself. Imagine his state of mind. This young scapegrace has not only taken the girl away from him but has deserted her when she most needed him and as good as killed her. Cavendish can do nothing. Jack Lambert has disappeared, and there is nothing to connect him with Fergus O’Brien. But the desire for revenge is not extinguished by twenty years. O’Brien is brought one day to the house by Georgia Cavendish. Somehow or other Cavendish learns that he is Jack Lambert. We shall have to establish that link before we can bring a really sound case into court, and it may be very difficult unless we can trap Cavendish into giving himself away over it. It is quite possible that, when he first heard of Judith’s suicide, he asked for a detailed description of Jack Lambert, and he would be able to recognise him from that in spite of the changes time had made in his features.