A Night of Errors (17 page)

‘Because I lingered here in the grounds.’ Mrs Gollifer had hesitated only for an instant. ‘I was extremely agitated, as you will presently understand. I lingered for some time before getting into my car and driving away. Geoffrey overtook me and recognized the car–’

‘Overtook you! Where, then, was he coming from?’

‘I was coming from here.’ Geoffrey Gollifer interrupted harshly. ‘I was coming from Sherris after killing Dromio.’

‘He overtook me and stopped.’ Mrs Gollifer pressed desperately on. ‘I was so distressed – almost prostrated indeed – that concealment was impossible. Moreover I knew that my secret was a secret no longer, and that Geoffrey must know of it soon. Because Lucy knew.’

‘Lucy had learnt that she was your daughter?’

Mrs Gollifer paled. She looked at Appleby with dilated eyes. ‘It is impossible!’ she said hoarsely. ‘It is impossible that you should know that.’

‘Nevertheless, we do know it. Long ago, Mrs Gollifer, you committed – what must have been as difficult as it is uncommon in your rank of society – the crime of bigamy. It is Miss Lucy, and not Mr Gollifer here, who is your legitimate child.’

‘You have discovered the truth. It was in India, and when I was a girl, that I married. The marriage was secret at the time, because certain property of my own might have been forfeited had it been made public. And then the man whom I had married proved degenerate and wholly bad. I ran away from him – and presently found that I was with child. Kate – Lady Dromio, here – befriended me; my daughter was born without the knowledge of my relatives, and adopted into this house. I regarded it as a chapter in my life wholly closed, and later I married the man whose name Geoffrey bears.’

‘You mean,’ said Hyland grimly, ‘that you went through a form of marriage with the late Mr Gollifer.’

‘That is what I do mean. But of all this Geoffrey knew nothing until I told him the story tonight – and after poor Oliver had been killed.’

‘But why tonight? What prompted this sudden confession to your son? It was news of the most serious moment to him. Quite conceivably his tenure of the Gollifer properties is invalidated by these long-concealed facts.’

‘I had lived with the deception too long.’ Mrs Gollifer was now composed. ‘And moreover I saw the possibility of a very dreadful complication approaching.’

Appleby looked up suddenly. ‘What was that?’

Mrs Gollifer hesitated; it was her first moment, it might have seemed, of real indecision. ‘That is where Sir Oliver comes in,’ she said. ‘It introduces something that Geoffrey does not even yet know. And that is very important. For this further information might indeed suggest a motive for Geoffrey’s killing Oliver.’ Mrs Gollifer paused. Then she turned to her son. ‘Geoffrey,’ she said, ‘you are frantically resolved to take this crime upon yourself. But I challenge you. There is something I know about Oliver Dromio which might almost excuse the killing of him. But you do not know it; you have had no opportunity to learn it yet. Name it to these men, if you can.’

‘Oliver Dromio was blackmailing you. He had learnt the truth about Lucy, although I cannot tell how. He had been threatening to reveal the truth, and so extorting money from you for a long time.’

Abruptly, composure left Mrs Gollifer; it was as if her face fell quite suddenly into the tragic lines of age. ‘You knew!’ she whispered. ‘Then all that living lie was in vain.’

Geoffrey Gollifer nodded sombrely. ‘I knew – but it was only an hour or so before Dromio’s death that the knowledge came to me. I went home to find my passport. Very wrongly, I rummaged among your papers–’ He paused. ‘And almost at the same hour your reserve had broken down here at Sherris and – for some reason – you had told Lucy the truth.’

There was silence in Lady Dromio’s drawing-room. Appleby, bending down, picked a single crumpled rose petal from the carpet. ‘A rose is a rose,’ he said – and looked at the petal as if it yet had some secret to reveal. ‘A rose is a rose is a rose.’

‘I told Lucy that she was my daughter. I told Kate that her son knew the story; I told her that I had been forced to pay him money.’ Mrs Gollifer spoke tonelessly now. ‘I had not intended to speak. But quite suddenly – it seemed to me that anything was better than these lived and acted and spoken lies. Lucy was horrified. I had not realized before that she loved Oliver so much.’

Geoffrey Gollifer made a sudden movement where he sat. Hyland, apprehensive of the revolver, sprang towards him. But the young man was sitting immobile and pale again. ‘It was to be expected that Lucy would be upset,’ he said quietly.

‘And Kate was, for the time, completely overthrown. I realized that I had done wrong – that once again I had done wrong. I ought to have struggled to take both secrets – of Lucy’s birth and Oliver’s blackmail – to the grave with me. Meanwhile, there was nothing to do but go home. I said goodbye and then for what seemed an eternity wandered the grounds here. Then I did go home – and was overtaken by Geoffrey, as I have said. I was constrained to tell him the truth – part of the truth – and he immediately insisted that we return to Sherris. But that he had only an hour or so before learnt everything – learnt more than I could bear to tell him now – of that I had no idea.’

‘So now it is all tolerably clear.’ Geoffrey Gollifer looked first at the clock and then at Hyland. ‘It must be very satisfactory for you to get this affair straightened out within a few hours of its happening.’

‘Straightened out!’ Hyland flared into sudden exasperation. ‘I have never met such an abominable tangle of lies and deceptions in my life. You claim to have killed Sir Oliver. Yet you say that the body–’

‘There are certainly one or two points that are a shade obscure.’ It was Appleby who interrupted. ‘But I do not see that we need seriously quarrel with Mr Gollifer’s claim to be the murderer of the dead man – of one of the dead men. He had just discovered the fact of his own illegitimacy. No doubt he had been proud of his birth and proud of his possessions, so the discovery might very well unbalance him for a time. But there was more than that. He made the simultaneous discovery that the secret of his birth was being exploited by Sir Oliver Dromio to extort money from his mother. Here, surely, is a very sufficient motive for a crime of passion. We might well rest on it. And yet there is a further fact to be considered. Mr Gollifer had made another discovery. Lucy Dromio, Lady Dromio’s adopted daughter, was his half-sister. And here there is a reasonable question to ask. Was it simply the fact of Sir Oliver’s blackmailing her that prompted Mrs Gollifer, in this room earlier tonight, to tell Lucy Dromio the truth of the matter? Here was a secret which had been kept for years – and plainly it had been the intention to keep it for ever. What prompted Mrs Gollifer to reveal to Lucy that they were mother and daughter? Mrs Gollifer, in explanation, had spoken of seeing the possibility of a very dreadful complication approaching, but she has avoided elucidating this. I think she must see that her motive leads us to a fact enormously strengthening the case against her son. She had reason to believe her son to be in love with Lucy. And the growth of a love-affair between these two children of the same mother – between
her
two children – would appear very terrible to her. All the horror of incest would attach itself to the idea. Panic seized her and she told the truth.’ Appleby paused and then turned to Geoffrey Gollifer. ‘I think,’ he asked gravely, ‘that you
had
formed such an attachment for Miss Dromio?’

‘I told you that the quarrel was over a girl.’ Geoffrey looked up with haggard eyes. ‘And it was Lucy, of course. What else should persuade me to kill the brute?’

‘Very well. Your story is so far emended that the girl becomes not somebody in a nightclub but Miss Dromio, whom you had just discovered to be your half-sister. Let us, please, have what further emendations are necessary. You arrived on the terrace and through the open study window you called upon Sir Oliver to come out and face you. What then?’

Geoffrey Gollifer passed a hand over his forehead; he knit his brows in what might have been an effort either of calculation or memory. ‘Do you want it
verbatim
?’ he asked.

‘We should like the most exact account you can give.’

‘There wasn’t much said. I went straight to the point. I said, “Dromio, you’ve been blackmailing my mother.” He said, “Then has she split?” – or not exactly that, for he applied a filthy term to her. I said, “No, I found your letter.” He cursed and then laughed. “That bungling first shot,” he said. “I knew it might bring trouble.”’

Appleby nodded. ‘I see. In fact, what you found among your mother’s things was the first letter demanding money that he wrote?’

‘Yes. There was only the one letter. After writing it he no doubt realized that it was poor technique.’

‘Uncommonly so. And what happened then?’

‘I said, “You’ve been blackmailing my mother about Lucy’s birth, and at the same time you’ve been letting Lucy fall in love with
you
. You’re not fit to live.” He said, “You’d have liked Lucy to be in love with you? Well, your precious discovery has cooked that goose. Unless you’re not too particular in such things. After all, we can all keep quiet. You can have your bride – or ought I to say your sister? I’ve done with her.”

Geoffrey Gollifer paused. There were beads of sweat on his brow. Every eye in the room was intently fixed upon him.

‘When he said that’ – Hyland’s voice was pitched low – ‘did you understand him to mean–’

‘Yes, I did. He meant that Lucy had been his mistress. I don’t believe it now. It is just the sort of foul lie that the brute would tell. But at the time I believed it. He saw I did, and he turned away with a laugh. That laugh did it. I brought out my revolver. But I realized I mustn’t make a row. So I hit him on the back of the head as he was about to step back into the study. And the blow killed him, as I meant it to do.’

Hyland stood up. ‘And that is the whole truth, at last?’

‘It is the whole truth.’

‘It is a lie!’

They all swung round. Standing in the doorway, pale as the long white gown she wore, was Lucy Dromio. Hyland moved towards her. ‘Miss Dromio, I think it would be better–’

‘It cannot be other than a lie. Mr Gollifer can have had no such conversation with Oliver and then killed him. It is impossible.’

Lady Dromio too had risen. ‘Lucy, Lucy,’ she cried ‘–it is all too horribly true. Oliver was wicked. He was a wicked, wicked son. If only the others had come back to me! Oliver was wicked, and poor Mary’s son was tried and taunted by him beyond endurance. But we can do nothing to help Geoffrey now. To deny the truth is useless. All we can do is to try to comfort your – your mother, my dear.’

‘This is idle talk, mama.’ Lucy’s voice was at once hard and full of indefinable emotion. ‘I repeat that Mr Gollifer’s story is a lie – though told to what purpose, I do not know. I stood here –you none of you saw me – and heard him tell his story. Out on the terrace, he says, he quarrelled with Oliver and killed him. It is impossible.’

There was a moment’s silence – the girl’s words carrying a queer, bewildered conviction through the room. And it was Geoffrey Gollifer who spoke. ‘Lucy,’ he cried, ‘this is useless! Nothing can come of it but trouble to yourself. As for me, let them hang me if they will. I quarrelled with him, as any decent man would have done. I killed him with a rash blow–’

‘You did neither – or I would kill you now.’ Suddenly Lucy Dromio’s voice was simply passionate. ‘Who were you – queer half-brother though you are – to say what should stand between Oliver and me? And why must you now tell these meaningless lies?’

Appleby stepped forward. ‘Miss Dromio,’ he said quietly, ‘it is time to speak out. You declare that Mr Gollifer here cannot have quarrelled with and killed Sir Oliver. Why not?’

For a moment Lucy Dromio hesitated. She made a gesture that was at once helpless, baffled and strangely joyful. ‘Because,’ she said, ‘it is not Oliver who has been killed. It is a man strangely like him – but Oliver himself it is not.’

With a low moan, Lady Dromio dropped insensible to the floor. And at the same moment Geoffrey Gollifer, with a cry which might have been either rage or despair, leapt for the window and vanished into the night.

‘And just when we had it all taped!’ Hyland angrily paced the library to which he and Appleby had retired; he gave a vicious shove with his foot at certain mouldering folios of patristic learning which protruded from a lower shelf.

‘Well, you know, there
had
been triplets.’ Appleby was mildly reasonable. ‘And there
was
some evidence that one at least of them had been about. So perhaps we ought to have thought that the body was not really Sir Oliver’s at all.’ Appleby stared at the ranged books, obviously a man profoundly dissatisfied.

‘It’s almost incredible.’ Hyland came to a halt before the fireplace. ‘Dash it all, the corpse is in Sir Oliver’s clothes – the very clothes he sailed in.’

Appleby smiled. ‘Come, come, my dear chap. Corpses have been found in other people’s clothes before now. The question is – how long had this fellow been in Sir Oliver’s shoes?’

‘In his shoes?’ The small hours were making Hyland heavywitted.

‘Is this a brother who travelled back from America as Sir Oliver? Or did he only become Sir Oliver, so to speak, after he was killed out there on the terrace, or in the study? You know, Hyland, there are a great many possibilities in this.’

‘I don’t deny it. Too many possibilities by a long way. But at least that young fellow Gollifer–’ Hyland broke off and groaned. ‘They haven’t found him. He’s got clean away. Lord, lord, if there won’t be a row about that!’

‘Nonsense. The Chief Constable thinks the world of you, my dear fellow. But you were saying?’

‘At least that young fellow Gollifer is a shocking liar. It is impossible that he should have killed the wrong brother by mistake. The conversation he reports himself as engaging in could not conceivably have taken place with a stranger from America – and one who would have, presumably, an unmistakable American accent.’