Death on Allhallowe’en (18 page)

He kept up his bantering manner.

‘You are? That will be very helpful of you. You know who killed Connor Horseman?'

‘I do.'

‘And
how
he was killed? Because that's really more puzzling.'

‘Yes.'

‘And finally
why?
You know the motive does count in these cases.'

'Because he was an enemy to all the enlightened.'

‘Do you think so? I haven't read his book, but I gather it's a harmless scissors-and-paste affair, put together for some publisher who liked the subject.'

‘I do not speak of his book.'

‘I did not care much for Horseman,' said Carolus. ‘He was too much of jolly good fellow, a funny man. But I can't see how he can have been anyone's enemy.'

‘You don't know everything about him.'

‘Certainly not. I had only a brief impression.'

She was clearly irritated at his failure to jump at her bait and eagerly cry, ‘Who?' when she stated that she knew the murderer's identity. That he still failed to take her seriously.

This was not quite true. Carolus did take certain things about this woman seriously, and was anxious to hear what she had to tell him. He also took quite seriously the aura of malignance that was around her. She wished him ill, as they say, and he was aware of it.

‘The time for scepticism is past,' said Alice Murrain. ‘What I am going to tell you I can prove. You have jibed at me, Carolus Deene, and at those who guide me, but you will be able to do so no longer.'

‘Now please, Mrs Murrain, talk sense. Those who guide you—this is some kind of perverted spiritualism, I suppose. Or do you claim Satanic inspiration?'

‘I make no claim that I cannot prove.'

‘To whose satisfaction?'

‘To yours. Even to yours, when you have heard me out.'

‘I'll certainly do that.'

‘You want to know who killed Connor Horseman?'

‘Yes. But not who you think killed him. I want a clear and logical explanation of how he came to be shot by a .38 revolver in front of a hall full of people.'

‘You shall have it. I don't make idle promises.'

Carolus said nothing. The smell had become overpowering and the heat of the fire seemed to have increased. He suddenly
felt he wanted to get out of this room and into the fresh night air. Out of this abominable house and away from these evilly disposed people. But he was still, as always, inquisitive.

After a long silence Alice Murrain seemed to despair of a show of curiosity on his part.

‘I killed Connor Horseman,' she said in a steady voice, all the more impressive for its naturalness.

Carolus brought this monstrous conversation down to earth.

‘If that is true, why are you admitting it to me? You must know the penalties for murder.'

‘Because no policeman could ever charge me, no judge could ever sentence me, and no prison could ever hold me.'

‘Very nice too. But you haven't told me how you did it.'

Mad, he decided. Stark staring mad. But he still wanted to hear more.

‘Look in that cupboard,' said Alice Murrain, and nodded towards an oak corner-cupboard set high on the walls, a piece of furniture older than the room.

Carolus did not wait to imagine what he would find, as he should have. He rose and went up to the cupboard. There was a rusty key in the lock—he turned it and opened the cupboard door, then remained quite still, examining what he saw. After his first emotions of surprise and disgust he felt disappointment. This is exactly what he should have foreseen. It was grotesque and rather horrible, but obvious and—he found the word with relief—corny. For in the cupboard was a two-foot-tall figure made of wax, not carelessly fashioned of candle-wax, but of such wax as might be used at Madame Tussaud's to represent murderers and politicians. The face, with its piggy eyes and cheerful grin, was Horseman's, but lest there should be any doubt one of the legs was made of wood. In the heart had been inserted, probably when it was heated, a long knitting-needle.

‘When did you do this?' Carolus asked.

‘At exactly midnight on the night vulgarly called Allhallowe'en.'

She was mad. There was triumph in her voice. She believed,
really
believed, that she had killed Connor Horseman. With the ancient paraphernalia of witchcraft, the nonsense of a superstitious European peasantry, she had gone through the rites and was as guilty of the intention of murder as if these had been effective.

‘And you really believe that this mumbo-jumbo was responsible for Horseman's death?'

She was furious. She stood up as if to call down wrath on Carolus's head.

‘How dare you doubt it?' she cried. ‘But you don't doubt it. You are only trying to hold on to your miserable scepticism like a drowning man. I told you I would prove what I say. If that is not proof to you, you are wilfully perverse. I tell you I thrust steel into his heart and he fell dead!'

‘What about the bullet?' asked Carolus mildly. ‘They extracted a bullet, fired from a .38 revolver.'

‘The instrument is not important. A man may be killed through the scratch of a cat or the sting of a bee. It is the
will
that matters. The will to destroy him.'

‘I certainly believe you had that. I wonder why you have told me all this nonsense?'

Alice sat down again and eyed Carolus with hostile contempt.

‘To get rid of you,' she said. ‘You have described what I have told you as nonsense. I regard as greater nonsense all this so-called investigation of yours which depends on trivial phenomena and ridiculous clues. With all your spying, can
you
say how Horseman was killed “in front of a hall full of people”, as you put it?'

‘Not yet. At least, not for certain. But I will.'

She stared at him fiercely.

‘I over-estimated you. I thought that when you saw incontrovertible proof you would cease your groping about for clues and learn that truth lies in greater things.'

‘Like wax figures.'

'Silence! I could not believe that anyone could be so blind and so unbelieving as you, Carolus Deene.'

It was true. This woman had really supposed that he would be convinced, that no one could fail to be convinced
as she was herself.
That was the point. She believed that she had killed Horseman.

‘Well, there you are,' said Carolus brightly. ‘I was never one to be impressed by the wax-and-needle routine. Would you mind if I helped myself to another drink?'

‘Do. We have still some matters to discuss.'

‘Yes. To tell you the truth, I'm more interested to know that your husband has a friend named Walter Brandt.'

‘I know nothing of that. My husband has his own friends.'

As though he had been listening at the door for his name, Gerald Murrain shuffled into the room.

‘What makes you think I know someone called Brandt?' he asked.

‘You said yourself that you hadn't seen him lately.'

‘I was confused. You suddenly shot a question at me and I made the first answer that came into my head.'

‘Then you don't know Walter Brandt. Perhaps you knew his father?'

Mistaking this piece of bluff and guesswork on the part of Carolus for a means of escape, Gerald said, ‘I may have. Years ago.'

‘Let me see if I can help you. Walter Brandt—the son, that is—has been in prison.'

No help came to Gerald from Alice. She might have been silently making incantations as she sat there looking somewhere above their heads.

‘No,' said Gerald. ‘I know no one who has been in prison.'

‘He's been around here lately, under the name of Poley Grant. I don't know who invited him down—but I shall know. He'll be picked up in London at any minute.'

Gerald pulled himself together.

‘Nothing to do with me,' he said. ‘I know nothing about him.

'Very well.' said Carolus, with a smile. ‘Let's forget it—for the moment.' Then he added, with deliberate impertinence, ‘Nice old house you've got here.'

Alice returned from the distance and spoke as though she had heard nothing of the two men's earlier conversation.

‘It was my father's,' she said, ‘and his father's before him.'

‘You were brought up here, Mrs Murrain?'

‘I was. I looked after my father.'

Was there something deliberately ambiguous in this statement?

‘Until his death. In 1930,' Alice concluded. ‘It was a somewhat lonely life, but I made the best of it.'

What was the object of these confidences from a woman who had recently been trying to convince Carolus that she was responsible for a murder? He waited.

‘I learned a great deal.'

‘One learns most alone,' agreed Carolus. ‘All education is self-education,' he added sententiously.

Suddenly Alice leaned forward.

‘Carolus Deene, I am not threatening you. I do not threaten, I act. But I am warning you once again and for the last time. Go away. Leave Clibburn and forget your foolish speculations here. Go while there is time. You are a vain and foolish man who deals in little half-truths and petty guesswork. There is nothing to satisfy your curiosity here. You will never learn any more than you know already, and you are in danger. Great danger. For a time you may whistle in the dark and think your foolish belief may save you, but it won't. I tell you this, though I ought to leave you to your fate. If you remain here another three days there will be no escape for you.'

‘Why not twenty-four hours?' asked Carolus insolently. ‘Does it take three days to work? I've told you I don't go for wax and needles. But I do believe in coincidence such as the one on Allhallowe'en when you were busy with them, just at the moment when someone took a pot at the man you wanted to kill. There seems to me to be a lot more sanity in a belief in
coincidence than a belief in what is called magic, black or white. And by the way, where did you have your session with the wax figure? I saw you at the dance, very becomingly dressed as one of the ladies of Portsmouth, New England.'

Alice became a twentieth-century woman, concerned with details, as she answered briefly, ‘I came home early. My husband left with me—it must have been soon after ten o'clock. Now if I can't offer you another whisky…'

‘But you can,' said Carolus. ‘It will have to be the last though, because I'm expected at the rectory. Good health to you, Mrs Murrain.'

He nearly added, ‘Happy hunting!' but felt he had been guilty of enough bad taste for one night.

When he got home John Stainer told him that Mavis Horseman had phoned him.

‘Mavis Horseman? Oh, yes.'

‘She wants you to phone her in the morning. She says she has remembered something. How did you get on with the Murrains?'

How did he? It was difficult to say.

‘I expect to be turned into a cockroach at any moment.'

John did not think this funny.

‘Do you think she's a really malicious woman?'

‘That is the most remarkable understatement I have heard in years. She
is
malice. If those powers of hers had any reality we should all be in hell. But cheer up, John. We don't believe in witchcraft, do we?'

John did not seem so sure. But then Clibburn was obviously getting on his nerves.

The prospect of talking with Mavis Horseman after dramatic Alice Murrain was almost a relief to Carolus. That self-centred and conventional little woman who had shown such sang-froid about the death of her husband and the loss of his papers, and such concern about her mink coat, would be an antidote to Alice.

He telephoned her as she had asked and found that she was as chirpily commonplace on the telephone as she had been in person.

‘Oh, Mr Deene. How are you?'

That question, the conventional opening to so many meaningless conversations, repeated at intervals when the dialogue languished, was not one to be answered, for no one who asked it cared or noticed what the reply might be.

‘You wanted me to phone you?'

‘Yes. I don't know if I'm doing right in troubling you, only you remember when you were asking me about Connor?'

‘I do indeed.'

‘There was this about my finding a note he had made, six, six six.'

‘Oh, yes.'

‘I was thinking yesterday when I was over at the bank in Chilbury.' Chilbury was the nearest town to Clibburn, a dozen miles away on the Kentish mainland. ‘Everything's been cleared up about the will and that, as I was the executor and sole beneficiary. The solicitors were very helpful and I was
really quite surprised that Connor left as much as he did. But I shan't come back to Clibburn. I have decided to buy a little place here, in Rye. There are such nice people and a cinema with very good films …'

‘You were telling me about the number.'

‘Oh, yes. Well, that's what I noticed when I went to the bank. It's number sixty-six High Street, Chilbury. Funny, wasn't it? I thought of you at once and when I got home I telephoned. I wanted a chat with Margaret Lark and I thought I'd mention it, anyway.'

Carolus did not wind up this talk in exasperation. On the contrary, as he had told Mrs Murrain, he knew the value of coincidence which so often turned out not to be coincidence at all.

‘That was your husband's bank?'

^‘
Yes. Of course he had his account in London, but he used this locally. Funny, wasn't it, it's being sixty-six and his writing down three sixes that day?'

An idea had occurred to Carolus—one of his more farfetched ones, perhaps.

‘Mrs Horseman, could you possibly meet me in Chilbury?'

‘Meet you? Well, I really don't know. Wouldn't it look rather odd to people? I mean, we only just met over Connor's death.'

This time Carolus did feel some exasperation, but he managed to suppress it.