And So To Murder (20 page)

‘Since I met you in Tom’s office.’

‘You mean when you said my book was lousy?’

‘Angel-face, if you insist on bringing that up –’

‘Do you still think it’s lousy?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, maybe it is,’ said Monica, dreamily and comfortably. ‘I expect it is after all, you know. I don’t think I mind much now.’

Whereupon Bill, in the wildness of true love, threw principle overboard and watched it drown without a groan. ‘It’s nothing of the kind,’ he declared. ‘It’s a fine book, a thundering fine novel – I mean that! – and anyone who says it isn’t shall answer to me with broadswords. It’s great stuff, Monica. I ought to know. I’ve been doing it for the screen.’

‘Bill,
darling
. Do you honestly mean that?’

‘I do,’ he swore, and was beginning seriously to believe this himself. ‘It was simply that I got off on the wrong foot with you, that’s all, and never put myself right. I was in the wrong mood, don’t you see? It was lunch. I had a rotten lunch; some devilish concoction; lamb chops and pineap …’

He paused.

The present is always there, to pop the unpleasant thought into your head. Something, even in a haze, is always ready to remind you of the unpaid bill and the little green goblin.

Lamb chops and pineapple suggested Tilly Parsons; and Tilly Parsons suggested things he did not like to think about. Even while he held Monica tightly, he glanced towards Tilly’s office. Tilly was standing at the open door, looking at them.

‘Honey –’ said Tilly.

Her voice was hoarse. She looked as though she had been crying.

Bill felt Monica’s whole body stiffen in his arms; he felt a current of suspicion from her, as palpably as the body gives out heat. Monica jerked loose from him, moving backwards and putting up a hand to her dishevelled hair.

Tilly made a flapping sort of gesture. ‘Don’t worry, honey,’ she said, not without bitterness. ‘I’m not going to bother you. I’ve got my last sequence to finish, and then I’m through. Only – I’m out of Chesters.’ Her tone was petulant. ‘Somebody’s always swiping my Chesters. Isn’t there a stray Chester in here, some place, honey?’

‘I’m sorry. There aren’t any.’

‘But I’m always leaving them around, honey. Are you sure there isn’t?’

‘Quite sure. The only cigarettes here are the kind I smoke. You’re welcome to them, if you like.’

‘But they’re English! I can’t smoke English cigarettes. Bill – no, you only smoke a pipe.’ Tilly was almost wailing. ‘Oh Judas, I suppose they’re better than nothing. I’ve got to smoke. Do you mind if I take one, honey?’

‘Not at all. Help yourself.’

Tilly went over to the desk. She opened the red leather box and took a cigarette. Even in the midst of doubt and black uncertainty, Bill Cartwright could not help feeling a twinge of pity for her. Tilly looked old and beaten. Her flabby hands trembled on the red lid of the box.

‘Look, Bill,’ she said suddenly. ‘Monica thinks I did something. I think maybe you think so too, by the way you’re looking at me. Well, I didn’t. Wait, now! I’m not going to bust in on you.’ She put the cigarette into her mouth and lit it. ‘You two love each other. You’re swell kids, and I’m glad. That’s all.’

She left them not without dignity; she closed the door, but she did not slam it. The black doubt grew still more confused in Bill’s mind. Monica ran to him, and he put his arm around her.

‘Why did you tell Frances Fleur to tell me not to be alone with her?’ Monica demanded in a whisper.

‘Because it was her voice – oh, I’m hanged if I know whether it was!’

‘And she wrote those letters.’

He whirled round. ‘Are you sure of that?’

Monica opened the drawer of the desk. She took out the manuscript-sheet and the letter; she held them out to him; and her fingers trembled.

‘Here it is,’ Monica muttered. ‘She wrote the letters – only, as you say, I’m hanged if I know whether she did.’

It appeared to be all up now. He spread out the two sheets on the desk. Though he was no handwriting expert, the similarity could escape nobody. He felt a dull wave go over his brain.

‘Poor old Tilly!’ he said.

‘Why do you say: “Poor old Tilly”?’

‘Because it’s all wrong, somehow, my dear. Even if Tilly did write this: even if she did yell outside the window: I’ve got an obstinate idea she did it for a good reason, which wasn’t to hurt you. I can’t quite believe it even when I see the proof. Wait; I’ve got a magnifying-glass in my room. We’ll have another look.’

He went and brought the glass. His movements were automatic. He was still dazed with the fact that Monica was in love with him. He wanted to make some brilliant deduction. He held the glass over the words – and he was interrupted by a scream.

It was a scream, in Tilly’s rasping voice, which started out strongly but ended in a choke and a cough. There was a heavy bumping sound, as of someone jumping or tramping on the floor. A chair was knocked over. Bill Cartwright ran for the door, but Tilly clawed it open before him.

Tilly was holding out the cigarette at arm’s length, trying to look at it. But her eyes were out of focus. With her other hand she caught and pawed at the jamb of the door, so that the red nails left scratches in the paint. On her face was exactly the expression of a boy who tries to smoke his first pipe: stupid, perspiring, ill. Round her the burning tobacco was exuding an odour of which Bill caught a whiff, but only a whiff.

‘It’s
poisoned
,’ Tilly screeched at them. ‘This fag you gave me: it’s
poisoned
. You want to kill me. You –’

Frantically she flung the cigarette at Monica. It struck the desk and fell on the linoleum, scattering fiery flakes. The breath sobbed and died in Tilly’s lungs. Pressing her hands to her throat, she tried to lean up against the door, looking merely startled and scared, before she slid down in a bundle to the floor.

4

‘Get back!’ said Bill. ‘Get away, I tell you!’

He did not mean Monica’s run towards the limp figure by the door. He meant her first instinctive gesture towards the cigarette, which was sending up a curl of thick and faintly sweetish smoke. He pulled Monica out of the way, and kicked the cigarette across the room. He blew into the air, fanning it with his hands. As though a shutter had clicked open in his mind, he saw the design now.

‘But what – why –?’

‘Because it was meant for you. It was certain to get you. Tilly won’t smoke English cigarettes. I smoke only a pipe. Tom Hackett, the only other one of the gang in this building, doesn’t smoke at all. Only: Tilly did.’

‘But how do you know? And what’s in it?’

‘What’s in it is belladonna. It’s one of the few poisons that can be turned into a deadly gas without any trouble or knowledge needed, by soaking tobacco in the liquid.’ His throat was dry. He went to Tilly and bent over her.

She was dying.

‘And I know,’ he added in a frenzy, ‘because the swine has done it again. I’ve got a whole sheaf of notes on the stuff in my desk.’

1

T
HE
emergency dressing-station at Pineham opens off the big concrete hall outside the sound-stages. This hall was now nakedly lighted, and looked more than ever like the inside of an airport. The doctor came out and closed the door.

‘This is all we want to know,’ said Bill. ‘Has she got any chance at all?’

His voice went up in echoes from the roof; and, in echoes, the doctor talked back at him.

‘So little,’ said the latter, ‘that I shouldn’t hope for anything. That stuff, when it’s swallowed, is fairly slow. Unless it’s a very big dose you can catch it in time. But taken through the lungs straight into the blood in the form of a gas – well, you saw how rapidly the symptoms came on. Hope for the best; but say your prayers.’

‘What have you done?’

‘Hot coffee and injections of pilocarpine. The coffee, that is, if we can get her to drink it. She is delirious, and talking about somebody forging a cheque and some letters.’ The doctor looked very hard at Bill and Monica. ‘I suppose you know this will have to be reported to the police?’

‘To the police?’ repeated Bill. His voice thundered back at him; he cleared his throat, and controlled himself. ‘That’s the one thing I want most to see done. If only we had a capable officer here; if only we did! But no: it’ll be nothing but fool, fool, fool, until something happens again.’

Monica plucked at his sleeve. ‘But, Bill. I’ve just remembered. There is somebody here. A Scotland Yard man.’

‘A what?’

‘A Scotland Yard man. His name is’ – she searched her memory – ‘Masters, I think.’

‘Masters here? Where is he?’

‘With somebody named Mr Marshlake. And the rest of them. At least, he was here a while ago. I don’t know where he is now.’

Even now it was difficult to realize that life had been turned upside down, and that Tilly Parsons lay choking her life out with belladonna poisoning only a few feet away. They had lost as little time as possible. They had brought her up from the Old Building in Bill’s car, which he never took to town and kept conveniently parked there. How long Tilly would last depended on the amount of poison the murderer had tucked so carefully into a cigarette intended for Monica Stanton.

Monica’s speculation as to Chief Inspector Masters’s whereabouts, however, was not long in being answered. Even as the name was spoken a figure familiar to Bill Cartwright appeared from the glass corridor to the main building, glanced left and right, and saw them. Masters had a magisterial walk. But even at a distance his eye looked wicked. Bland as a card-sharper, the grizzled hair carefully brushed to hide the bald spot, he carried his hat cradled over his arm, and advanced upon them like a galleon under full sail.

‘Ah, sir,’ he said grimly.

‘Chief Inspector,’ said Bill, ‘allow me to shake your hand. You were never, anywhere or at any time, more welcome. But what in blazes are you doing here?’

‘That’s as may be, sir,’ returned Masters, with a dark look. ‘The point is that I am here, though without any authority whatever, at the instigation of a certain party whom I will not name’ – he was in his worst magisterial mood – ‘
and
without so much as a by-your-leave of the Buckinghamshire police.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning, sir, that a few minutes ago I, and some others, heard someone run through here shouting that a lady named Miss Parsons had been murdered. Is that correct?’

‘I’m afraid it is.’

Masters compressed his lips.

‘Oh, ah. Just so. I also learn, from conversations with certain other parties upstairs, that there’s been a sort of reign of terror going on here. And that two attempts have already been made on the life of … ah … this young lady, maybe?’

‘Yes. Chief Inspector Masters: Miss Stanton.’

‘How do you do, miss?’ He turned again to Bill. ‘Now I don’t mind telling you, sir, that this is a pretty serious business. Why wasn’t it told to the police?’

‘It was.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. If you remember, I told you all about it a fortnight ago. And you said it was probably a practical joke. You said it would be criminal to bother anybody with it at a time like this.’

Masters changed colour.

‘Officially reported, sir. Very different thing. Now, will you just tell me what happened here to-night, and no funny business about it?’

Bill told him. At the end of it Masters glanced for confirmation at the doctor, who nodded.

‘Oh, ah. I see. So you think someone put this hocussed cigarette into the box on the table, knowing that sooner or later this young lady would get it, because nobody else there used her kind of tobacco?’

‘Of course. And it could have been done by anybody or at any time. The box is always there. The cigarette may have been put there days ago.’

This was the point at which Monica opened her mouth to protest. She visualized, with sharp vividness, every event of that day; she followed, in clear colours, every move she had made. But for the moment she kept it to herself.

‘And this cigarette, sir. You’ve got it?’

Bill shifted. ‘Well, no. I –’

‘You haven’t got it?’

‘To tell the truth, Chief Inspector, I forgot all about the infernal thing. The last I saw of it, it was lying on the floor where I kicked it.’

‘The cigarette, sir, is evidence. But if there’s somebody hanging about here, as seems probable, it may not be evidence much longer. Lummy, I’ve walked into a mess, and I know whose fault it is.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘At the same time, most of the people who seem to be concerned in this are safely upstairs in Mr Marshlake’s office. Hurrum! That’s to the good, anyhow.’

‘Who are up there?’ asked Bill sharply.

‘A Mr Hackett, a Mr Fisk, and a Miss Fleur.’

Something had been on Monica’s mind, nagging, for quite a while.

‘There’s something awfully queer about it, then,’ she burst out. Then she stopped, reddening.

‘Yes, miss?’ prompted Masters softly.

‘I didn’t mean that. It’s nothing.’

‘Might as well get it off your chest, miss.’ The chief inspector’s tone was insinuating. ‘We never know, do we?’

‘Well, it’s about Frances Fleur. When she left me – which was before seven o’clock – she said she was going straight into town to meet her husband. Then, at well past seven o’clock, she met Bill here in the grounds and told him some things.’ This was what rankled, though Monica hurried over it. ‘Now, at eight o’clock, you say she’s been upstairs talking to you.’

It was Bill who answered.

‘That’s all right,’ he assured her, with equal haste. ‘I left Gagern in town waiting for her. I – er – happened to run into him there. When I came back here, and my taxi was going by the door of the main building, I saw her standing on the steps. It was a quarter past seven; not quite dark even though all the windows were blacked out. I let my cab go and asked her whether she’d delivered my message to Miss Stanton.’ (He was now speaking loudly to Masters.) ‘I also told her she’d catch it from Gagern for being late. She said she’d decided not to go to town after all, and had phoned Gagern to tell him so. She also told me about a little unimportant gossip, Chief Inspector: which I never believed for a second, though I may have made some foolish joke about it afterwards.’