Death of a Ghost (21 page)

‘Well, I'm damned.' Oates leant back in his chair and for a moment he was silent.

‘There's no solid evidence, though,' he said at last. ‘No case – nothing we could have taken to court even if that business was reopened. As I said at the time, it was the impulsive, spontaneous nature of that knifing which licked us at the outset. The luck was all on his side. This, thank God, is premeditated. That gives us an equal chance.'

‘You agree with me, then?'

‘I? Good heavens, no. I've got an open mind. I suspect everyone and no one until I get proof.' Oates grinned as he spoke. ‘The old official attitude is a great stand-by. Got any more revelations up your sleeve?'

Campion remained serious.

‘I can't guess at the motive,' he said slowly. ‘In Max Fustian's life young Dacre and Mrs Potter were surely the most unimportant people on earth.'

‘To get back to facts,' said Oates without rudeness, ‘where was Fus … this suspect of yours between four-thirty and five o'clock last Thursday?'

‘Where he took the trouble to tell me he was,' said Campion. ‘At Seyer's Art Galley, enthusing over a Duchess's pastels. Old Seyer is by way of being a friend of mine and I dropped in to see him yesterday. He was very full of his private view and told me all I wanted to know without any prompting. Max came into the gallery about five-and-twenty to five. Seyer noticed the time because it was so late. He'd been expecting him all the afternoon. The exhibition shut at half past six, but Max stayed on chatting to Seyer until nearly seven. Then they both went out and had a drink. Seyer was very gratified but a trifle surprised by the great man's condescension, I fancy. Max does not usually behave so graciously.'

‘Miss Cunninghame left here at four-thirty,' observed the Inspector. ‘Fustian entered Seyer's at five-and-twenty to five and stayed there for a couple of hours, by which time Mrs Potter was dead, discovered, and we had arrived. That only gives him the five minutes between four-thirty and four-thirty-five to get busy in. Not long enough to do anything, my boy.'

‘Long enough to phone,' said Campion.

‘How d'you mean?'

Campion sat forward in the chair he had resumed.

‘When Miss Cunninghame left here at four-thirty she heard the phone bell ring. You traced that call and found that it came from a box in Clifford Street. Max entered Seyer's gallery at four-thirty-five. Seyer's gallery is in Clifford Street and there's a call-box twenty yards down the road … the only one in the street.'

‘That's not evidence.'

‘I know it's not, but it's suspicion. Dozens of people may have seen him in the call-box. He was looking pretty conspicuous, you remember. Besides, practically everyone round there knows him by sight. It ought not to be difficult to find witnesses.'

‘What's this leading to?' The Inspector's interest was genuinely aroused. ‘Suppose we do prove that the phone call she had came from him – which won't be easy, by the way – what then? Did he poison her over the telephone? You've been reading thrillers again.'

The pale young man in the horn-rimmed spectacles remained unusually serious.

‘This bit is pure theory,' he said, ‘but I'm open to bet anything you like it's true. Look here, we know from our own observation and from Potter himself that when Mrs Potter was suddenly confronted by a crisis she used to pour a tumblerful of neat whisky down her throat and pass out. We know that Potter thought that had happened this time. He said so. Suppose it had happened.'

‘But her usual supply of liquor had the addition of a small quantity of alkaloid nicotine?'

‘Yes.'

‘It's worth thinking about,' Oates conceded cautiously. ‘She received her shock, or whatever it was, over the phone, the telephoner relying upon her to react to it in the usual way and so fix the moment of the murder at a time when the murderer had a watertight alibi. It's not bad, Campion.'

‘I think that's how it happened.' Campion spoke softly. ‘After all, think of it. It all worked out so neatly. Mrs Potter was bound to be in at four-thirty because Miss Cunninghame was due to leave at four-fifteen and always stayed over her time by ten minutes or so. Then Potter was away – the only day in the week he was always out – so the woman could take the stuff and die alone. Of course he couldn't hope for Potter to come in early and wash out the glass, but he could expect that Fettes would diagnose heart failure or acute alcoholic poisoning.'

‘It's neat,' said the Inspector. ‘Very neat. And it sounds feasible. But it's too full of holes, and pure hypothesis anyway. How did he get the nicotine into the spirit, or having done so, how did he know that she wouldn't take the stuff before he rang up?'

Campion considered.

‘I think the answer to that last question is that the poisoned spirit had not been in her possession very long,' he said at last. ‘Even Max, who's the most optimistic soul on earth, wouldn't risk her taking it too soon. Therefore the answer to the first question is that he got the stuff here some time on Thursday.'

‘Was he here on Thursday?'

‘No.'

‘Or during the week?'

‘No. I admit all this, but after all she was a secretive woman. It might have come by post. He might almost have given it to her in town. There are so many possibilities here that we can't work 'em all out. That's why I join with you in feeling that our only hope is to find the container, the thing that originally held the stuff.'

The Inspector glanced round the little room.

‘We'll find it,' he said with sudden decision. ‘We'll find it. Until then I reserve judgement. But it's a glimmer, my boy, it's a definite glimmer. Come on. We'll search this darn place ourselves.'

The Inspector revealed a thoroughness which surprised Campion, although he had not the neatness of the trained police searchers. Every piece of furniture in the overcrowded room was carefully examined, every loose floorboard prised up, every conceivable corner where a hidden cupboard might have been concealed laid bare.

The living-room, the scullery, and the shed without, all went through this gruelling examination by turns. Again and again Campion found himself confronted by little domestic secrets of the Potter household, little economies, little slovenlinesses which he felt were private and which brought home unbearably the pathos of the tragedy. However unlovable a character Mrs Potter had been, her destroyer had also annihilated a home which without her became a desolate collection of rubbish.

They refused Belle's kindly offer of lunch and worked on until half past three in the afternoon, when their work ended. Hot, dishevelled, and defeated, they smoked a cigarette in the untidy room.

‘We're sunk,' said the Inspector. ‘I'm glad I made sure myself, though. You can see for yourself that Richardson and Miss Peters were right. There's nothing here.'

Regretfully Campion agreed, and they were still sitting in despairing silence when Lisa knocked at the door.

‘Mrs Lafcadio says you must have some tea,' she said, planting a tray on the table. ‘As you wouldn't come in I've brought it down.'

She stayed to pour out for them and Campion was acutely aware of her bright inquisitive eyes peering first at the disordered room and then at themselves.

Idly he went over ground already explored.

‘After Mrs Potter died and before I arrived no one but you and Mrs Lafcadio and Fred Rennie came in here at all?' he enquired.

‘I have told you, no,' said Lisa with some dignity. ‘I have also told
you
,' she added, nodding to the Inspector.

He smiled at her wearily as he returned his teacup to the tray. ‘You have, Miss Capella,' he said. ‘Until you're tired, I'm afraid.'

Campion frowned. ‘Someone must have come,' he said. ‘Someone must have come, to the door only, perhaps. That's it, Lisa. Did someone come to fetch anything at that time? Anything at all?'

‘I have told you,' the old woman began brusquely. ‘No one came except the boy from the art gallery.'

Both men sat staring at her. The Inspector's hand was half-way to his lips, the cigarette hanging from his fingers, while Campion sat up stiffly, his face completely expressionless.

Not unnaturally Lisa was taken aback by the sensation she had created. Two spots of colour appeared in her yellow cheeks.

‘It was nothing,' she said. ‘He often comes at that time. I gave him the blocks and he went. I didn't let him see inside the studio, of course. It was when Mrs Lafcadio had gone to telephone.'

The Inspector pulled himself together. His eyes were hard and concentrated on the woman's face.

‘I ought to have heard of this before,' he said. ‘But it doesn't matter. When exactly did the boy come?'

Lisa's dark eyes were frightened.

‘Mrs Lafcadio had gone to telephone,' she repeated. ‘I had just come in here and seen Mrs Potter. There was a knock. I was startled, I think. I went to the door. When I saw who it was I was glad it was only the boy. I told him to wait. I shut the door so he wouldn't see anything. Then I got the blocks. They were wrapped up in their cloth and I gave them to him and he went away. That is all.'

‘All right,' said Oates soothingly. ‘All right. What were the blocks?'

‘Wood blocks – wood engravings.' Lisa found the Inspector's ignorance very disconcerting. She began to speak very clearly as though to a foreigner, which indeed he was. ‘Big heavy squares of wood. She cleaned and printed them for him.'

‘For whom?'

‘For Mr Max. I am telling you. His boy came for them. I gave them to him.'

The Inspector looked at Campion, his face twisted into a travesty of a smile.

‘She gave them to him,' he said.

^fn1
Tardieu records a case in which Count Bocarme and his wife were convicted of murdering M. Fougnies by administering the alkaloid which Bocarme manufactured himself. Vide ‘
L'Étude. Med. Lég. sur l'Empoisonnement.
'

–

‘S
EBASTIANO
Q
UIRINI
? Why, my dear, his engravings were quite lovely.'

Belle looked up as she spoke and for a moment her eyes lost the dull, weary expression which Campion had grown to dread in them.

They were in the drawing-room again, sitting by the fire, whose comfort had become a necessity since the second tragedy, although the spring was not a cold one.

Campion and the Inspector, having decided that Mr Potter was better not disturbed unless it became absolutely necessary, had come to Belle for information.

‘I believe it was a sort of secret,' she said, ‘so you mustn't let anyone know. Max discovered nearly fifty of Quirini's old wood blocks in Paris, when the
Société des Arts Anciens
was sold up. It was a very old business, you know. They dealt in antiques as well as pictures, and their warehouse in the Centre had not been cleared for years. When they started to turn it out before the building was pulled down they found all sorts of things, I believe. Anyway, there was quite a sensation at the time. It's very long ago.

‘However, that's all beside the point. Max picked up these Quirinis all quite black and clotted with ink, some of them nearly ruined. He had one or two cleaned and found out what they were.'

Oates was still looking puzzled and Campion explained.

‘They're the solid chunks of boxwood on which the artist engraved the picture,' he said. ‘They vary in size and thickness considerably. The picture was made by pressing a piece of fine paper, or silk sometimes, on the inky surface of the engraved wood. Mrs Potter melted the old ink out and reprinted them, I suppose, Belle?'

The old lady nodded. ‘Claire was very clever at that sort of thing,' she said, her eyes softening. ‘Very patient and painstaking. Wood engraving is not difficult to print, you know, but it takes time and a lot of care. Max will miss poor Claire.'

The Inspector's eyelids flickered.

‘Did she do much for him, ma'am?'

‘Oh, so many things.' Belle shook her head at the recollection of Claire Potter's many activities. ‘She worked much too hard. There are quite a number of little confidential jobs in the picture world,' she went on, smiling faintly at the Inspector. ‘Little things like this that require absolute integrity as well as skill. You see, Max wanted to get the Quirinis all ready at once so that he could have a show of them all together and perhaps start a little fashion for them. So much depends on fashion: it seems very silly, but there it is.

‘Claire had nearly finished them. She had been at work for two years.'

‘Two years?' The Inspector was startled.

‘Oh, yes. It was a long job, you know, and some of the blocks were in very bad condition. She did so many other things too.'

Oates glanced at Campion.

‘She didn't keep these things in the studio, then?'

‘All of them?' said Belle. ‘Oh dear, no. They were much too bulky and too precious. A boy used to fetch one lot and bring another. I remember seeing him often – such a funny little grown-up boy. I wish children never had to work. The blocks were always wrapped up in a green cloth. Claire always had the second lot waiting for him, all packed and ready. She was most particular about them. No one was allowed to touch them except herself. I remember once being in the studio when they arrived and I offered to unpack them for her, but she quite snapped at me. Poor Claire! It was so unlike her that I was quite surprised. She was most conscientious. The blocks were always kept packed up. They used to stand on the bookshelf in their cloth. Max paid her very badly, I'm afraid, but she never complained.'

She sighed and looked down at her plump little hands.

‘She was very kind to me always,' she said, and added unexpectedly, ‘that poor helpless silly man too. No one to look after him now. She took care of him. The pity of it! The dreadful, wasteful pity of it.'