Crooked Wreath (15 page)

“But
Stephen
,” said Peta, “that's right back where we started from. How could Ellen have put the poison in the glass. She went down to the lodge in her bathing-dress, she wasn't carrying anything except the pen, and we surely agree that it's impossible that she could have used the pen to inject the stuff. Well, that being so–how did she take the poison down?”

“Well, she may easily have
carried
it there in the pen,” said Stephen, apologetically.

Claire having won her point, tucked up the baby after a ten o'clock bottle and herself went to bed. At eleven, a siren screamed and a flying bomb droned its relentless flight between the balloon cables and made for London–there to disappear in a mushroom of mauve-grey smoke licked through with flame; with flame and destruction and sorrow and pain and death. She switched on her light and looked over at Antonia, sleeping, tight-curled as a rosebud, in her cot, and settled down to rest again. Through the open windows the summer moonlight shone pale and glimmering into the room, and outside in the corridor a board creaked.

A board creaked. And was still. And creaked again. Someone was creeping stealthily past her door.

She sat bolt upright in her bed, holding her breath, listening. Only the soft breathing of the baby, only the terrible thudding of her own heart … But now on the painted woodwork of the door came a little fluttering sound, a little scratching sound as of fingers moving there … They felt their way down the panel, softly moving in the darkness of the corridor, to the handle of the door. She knew that soon they must find the handle; that the handle would turn, the door would slowly open: and in a moment she saw the brass knob move and the almost imperceptible widening of the crack between the door and the jamb. Into her numbed brain came one thought: “Edward!” And almost as the thought was born there was a tiny whisper: “Claire!” And she knew it was his voice. It whispered again: “Claire!” With a violent effort of will she fought down her terror and, fumbling for the bedside light, clicked on the switch. Edward stood in the doorway, blinking. He said, quite naturally: “Hoi–mind the black-out!” and padded across and drew the curtains. Then he padded back.

And suddenly it was only little Edward, after all, standing blinking apologetically in the sudden lamplight, smiling at her, saying that he had a simply
brilliant
idea and he had to talk to
someone
but he'd listened at Peta's and Philip's doors and they were both snortling away like hell, and though he'd knocked and whispered, nothing woke those two up. He perched himself on the edge of her bed, curled in his gay silk dressing gown. “What I thought was this, Claire: you know about Peta's fingerprints?”

“Not being on the telephone, you mean?”

“Yes. Because that definitely means that the telephone must have been wiped. And surely to goodness it could only have been wiped by the murderer.”

“Stephen seems to have said to Peta this evening that Ellen could have wiped it before she went away, leaving the stuff in the glass for Grandfather to drink later.” She added, hastily: “Not that
I
think Ellen's guilty, and I'm sure Stephen doesn't either. He only says she could have.”

“Well, I don't see how she could; what on earth excuse would she make to Grandfather? I don't believe Ellen wiped the telephone at all, and I don't believe she put the poison in the glass, and I don't believe she took it down to the lodge in that fantastic idea of the pen. I believe something quite different: something
marvellous!
”

“I don't see what you're getting at,” said Claire.

“I'm getting at Brough,” said Edward, and kicked up his feet with triumph so that his scarlet slippers flew into the air.

There was a long silence while Claire thought it all out. She said at last, slowly: “Of course Brough never did like Grandfather. On the other hand, Teddy, you don't kill people just because you don't like them–not even if you're Brough.”

“Yes, but the will,” said Edward.

“Brough didn't lose or gain by the change of the will. Of course there was the Serafita brooch for Rosy-Posy; and he is fond of Rosy. In fact, I believe she's the only person in the world he really cares for.”

“Except Philip,” said Edward.

“Except Philip! My God, Edward–the will! Brough does care for Philip and he didn't care two hoots for Grandfather … If Grandfather was cutting Philip out of the will …”

“I know,” said Edward, hugging the bedpost, grinning all over with delight. “That's what I thought. That was my idea. I mean, it would be so lovely if it could have been Brough all the time, Claire, because it would show I wasn't a murderer and barmy after all. The only thing is, how could Brough have known about the will?”

“Oh, I don't know, but he could easily have found out. At any rate, he knew all about giving Grandfather injections of coramine, because Dr. Brown showed him and Mrs. Brough in case Grandfather was taken ill in the grounds; and when you passed out that day and Philip gave you the injection and afterwards showed us the syringe and the coramine, Brough was just outside on the terrace, doing the geraniums. I remember Philip saying he was sorry, because he nearly squirted water on Brough.” She added: “I daresay the Turtle was listening at the door afterwards at lunch, and heard Grandfather shouting at the top of his voice that he was going to disinherit us all, and she's sure to have told Mrs. Brough.”

But Edward was still nursing the heart of his great discovery. “I think it's more likely that Grandfather told Brough himself!”

“Grandfather told Brough he was changing his will? Why on earth should he? And anyway, when?”

“When he called Brough in to witness the signature,” said Edward, and sat up expectantly regarding her with shining eyes.

The sirens wailed on and off all night, but nobody cared. They all got up and crowded into the kitchen and made cups of cocoa, rejoicing at Edward's discovery, and afterwards went back to bed, excited and relieved. Just before dawn another siren howled, and the All Clear did not go till half past six. This time Philip got out of bed and dressed and went to the telephone. “I say, I'm frightfully sorry to be so early, Inspector; I hope I didn't wake you up?”

“I'm up and dressed long ago,” said Cockie, austerely, standing in his pajamas still warm from his bed.

“Only my cousin has had the most brilliant idea during the night, he's absolutely discovered how the whole thing was done, and I was terribly anxious to let you know so that you could tell my wife and ease her of her misery; of course, it wasn't her at
all.
It was Brough!”

“Oh, was it?” said Cockrill, sourly.

“It's extraordinary how it's never been thought of yet. After all, one of the oddest things has been–where was the draft of the will? It'd been hidden or destroyed; but, as Edward says, why, if it hadn't been signed? So it must have been signed. Are you there, Inspector? Are you listening?”

“Intently,” said Cockrill, holding the receiver against his hunched shoulder with his chin and groping in his pockets for the first cigarette of the morning.

“Well then, the thing was, if it had been signed, who witnessed it? No one in the house, because we were all involved; but Brough and his wife were just across the drive from the lodge, and just before eight o'clock Brough was rolling that path outside the lodge. So what do you think of this, Inspector–Grandfather called him in and told him to fetch Mrs. Brough, and made them both witness his signature, before she came up to the house for her work at eight o'clock. And because Brough thought it was wrong and unfair and because, for some idiotic reason, he happens to be particularly devoted to me, we think that when she'd gone he killed our Grandfather, and drew back the curtain, and all that, and then backed away from the lodge, scattering sand over his own footmarks as he went.” He waited, breathless, to hear what Cockie had to say to
that.

Cockrill had contrived to roll and light the cigarette; he took the first deep puff of the morning and suddenly was galvanized into action. “Well, all right, all right, all right, Doctor March … Now, look here–you get your family up and dressed and I'll be along in twenty minutes. I dare say Lady March will give me some breakfast when you all have yours. Meanwhile, I don't want a word of this, not one word, to anyone outside the house …” He had long ago taken the precaution of putting one of his own men at that centre of rumour, the telephone exchange. “Above all, of course, not a hint to that old servant woman, or the Broughs. Nobody is to leave the house, and, above all, nobody is to go near the lodges. Got that? Good-bye.”

Philip rattled wildly at the telephone hook. “Here, Inspector, Inspector, don't go! What about my wife? Can you get a message to her? Can somebody let her know? You won't leave her in suspense a moment longer than you must? You will tell her right away, won't you? Tell her that it was Brough all the time.”

“I told her last night,” said Cockrill; and rang off with a click.

Sergeant Troot came round for him in the police car. “They've tumbled to it up at the house,” said Cockie, settling himself next to the driving seat, holding the white panama hat in his lap. “I shall have to move now. However, it doesn't matter; I was more or less ready. As long as it didn't all come wooshing out at the inquest, that was all I cared; and if only that fat fool Bateman hadn't lost his head and let them bring in that absurd verdict against poor Ellen March, all would have been well. It's rough luck on the girl, but I shall be able to get her out now, I think; once I've brought Brough in; and anyway, the Assizes are next week. I gave her a pretty broad hint last night that she had nothing to worry about; but I didn't dare tell the family in case they should give it away before I was ready for him.”

“I never did like that beggar Brough,” said Troot, who had often been driven from a favourite pub corner by the loquaciousness of Brough.

“This may not be a bad thing after all,” mused Inspector Cockrill, nursing the hat as they sped along the dusty country road. “It might just be possible to force an admission out of him, if he thinks Ellen March is suffering for his crime. After all, she is Philip's wife, and that's where Brough's devotion appears to lie; not that I think for a moment there was much philanthropy behind all this. Anyway, I'll have a shot at it; let him see that his own chance is hopeless and then get him to own up to the whole thing and set the girl free. There's nothing like a nice, neat, written confession to plank before a jury!”

It was a nice, neat, written confession, but it would never be planked before a jury for it was written in dust. Brough lay beside it on the floor of the sitting-room in the little lodge, the room where Sir Richard, also, had died. His body had fallen from the dreadful, convulsive arch, but his face was cyanosed, his eyes wide open and protruberant, his hands and feet like claws, and in his left arm the needle of a hypodermic syringe had broken off. On the dusty tiles of the little hall, close to his right hand, was written in printed characters: I KILLED SIR R. And underneath, like a signature, his initials, J.B.

The police seal had been carefully pried from the doorpost, and with Brough's own key–his bunch still hung in the lock. Inside the lodge, nothing appeared to have been disturbed. The windows were securely fastened from inside, as was the back door, with the outside police seals intact. Brough lay across the doorway leading from the little hall to the sitting-room–his footprints made a straight line between the two doors, a distance of perhaps six or seven feet. He wore pajamas and a dressing gown; his heel-less slippers had apparently been kicked off during his paroxysms and were tumbled at his feet. One hand lay just through the doorway, on the tiled floor of the hall, and near it were the printed letters, firm, small characters, evidently made with a broken matchstick which lay beside them: I KILLED SIR R. and the initials, J.B. For the rest, the dust was undisturbed as it had been on the day on which Sir Richard had died, when Bella had bundled the vacuum cleaner into the hall, out of the way. It still stood propped in its corner, just inside the door, and but for it the hall was entirely bare. At Brough's left hand was a phial of crushed glass that had once held strychnine; he had been dead since dawn.

10

M
RS
. B
ROUGH
stood gaunt and tearless beside the sofa in her stuffy little parlour. Ugly lace curtains kept out the brave morning sunshine, and everywhere were fringes and bobbles and hideous china plates. From beneath the merciful covering protruded a stiffened hand. She took it and held it in her own warm live one; and so holding it, faced her questioners.

“When did you last see Brough alive?”

“I 'aven't seen him since last night,” said Mrs. Brough, sullenly. “He went off to bed same as usual; I don't have him in my room no more–I've done with all that. He usually got up and made himself a cuppa tea and went out to his work and came in again for his breakfast at half past seven or eight; he slept badly, and he liked to get the work done while it was cool. I'd be up and have breakfast ready for him, when he come in. I didn't hear him go out this morning, but I often don't. I sleep 'eavy,” said Mrs. Brough, eyeing Inspector Cockrill as though about to add that he could put that in his pipe and smoke it.

Cockrill considered. “He looks to me as if he'd been dead some time; an hour at least, perhaps two.” He stood watching her, his short legs apart, a cigarette, as always, pinched between thumb and forefinger, and suddenly changed his tack. “Mrs. Brough–when I asked your husband for an account of his movements on the night of Sir Richard's death, he told me you had gone up to the house at eight o'clock; he said, ‘I came in from the …' and he hesitated a minute before he said ‘the garden.' He had been going to say ‘from the lodge.' Hadn't he?”