Give a Corpse a Bad Name (20 page)

‘I hate her,' said Adrian, ‘as I've never hated anyone in my life. It isn't only for the way she dominates Daphne, tries to keep the poor girl a child and break her of any hopes of developing a mind or a will of her own—though, my God, if you could watch her brooding over her young it'd sicken you all right!—and it isn't for her endless little sneers at me, or the way she's got her claws into my poor cousin Stuart. But she's a fundamentally coarse-grained creature. She's cheap to the very core. She's vulgar, rotten—she's one of those things that leaves a smear behind them. She's—' He stopped himself. His voice had not risen above its usual soft note, but it was vicious as the biting of acid.

Toby said: ‘I see,' and waited.

When Adrian said nothing more, but only started chewing at his thumbnail, Toby added: ‘And what d'you think happened at Riverfield, Hants, in November, 1917?'

Adrian started, withdrawing his gaze, as if with difficulty, from the fire. But he only shrugged his shoulders.

‘Odd,' said Toby, ‘that the writer should make a mistake like that.'

‘I don't understand,' said Adrian wearily, ‘I'm afraid I don't think quickly enough for you. There's been another letter … Is there anything else you want to know?'

This time Toby shook his head, and, to the plain satisfaction of Adrian, took his departure.

But if there was nothing further that Toby wanted to know, or thought he could obtain, from Adrian, it was quickly apparent that there was something he wanted to know which he believed might be told by Adrian's ash-bin.

He drove his car only a short way down the road, then left it and walked back. The window of the sitting-room looked out towards the moor and away from the road, so that it was easy for him to reach the door of the cottage without being noticed. Had Adrian emerged, Toby could probably have thought of some new question to ask. But no one saw him, and he was able to reach the ash-bin, which stood some way to the right of the kitchen door, without difficulty.

Yet though he had taken the trouble to come back, his search in the ash-bin for what he thought might be there was perfunctory. He had picked up a stick, and with this he prodded about in the top layer of ashes. It was mostly wood-ash, feathery and light, lifting in a fine dust as he stirred it. Almost at once a piece of wire was revealed. It was coiled like a slack spring, about nine inches long.

With a look of surprise on his face, as if this were positively too easy, Toby pocketed it, and, walking quickly, returned to his car.

In Chovey, Toby drove straight down the street to the police station. But another car, a small blue saloon, was just pulling up before it. As Toby stopped his behind this car, he saw Major Maxwell get out. The major stood hesitantly on the pavement for a moment, then he caught sight of Toby and came quickly towards him.

‘Dyke, I'm glad to have found you. I called at your pub, but they said you'd gone out. So I made up my mind to go to the police. That's to say—yes, I'd made up my mind, I was just going in. But if I could have a word with you … I mean, I'm not sure that there's really any point in bothering the police with this, but it's on my mind, worrying me a good deal, as a matter of fact, and—'

‘All right,' said Toby, ‘we'll go back to the pub. Don't happen to have seen George, do you?'

‘No,' said the major, walking beside the car as Toby began to back along the street, ‘no, I don't think so, though if I had I dare say I shouldn't have noticed. I've been thoroughly upset. I'm run down, you know—got shockingly out of condition. I must have a change, I think, a cruise or something, get out of this damn climate, go to Malta or somewhere like that. Ever been to Malta? Wonderful climate.' He talked on unceasingly until Toby had parked the car and taken him into the empty coffee-room of the Ring of Bells.

But even then he roved about, started irrelevant subjects, dropped them and started others. His hands, as he filled his pipe, were quivering. Suddenly he held one of them up in front of Toby.

‘Look at that. Can't keep it steady. That's the state I'm in. I need a tonic—or a change. Yes, I'll go for a cruise, I think. Some sea air and a nice, jolly atmosphere. Can't bear jolly atmospheres usually, but it does you good now and then to be taken out of yourself. I'll go for a cruise.'

‘Since I'm not a doctor, a nerve specialist or a travel agent,' said Toby, ‘why did you want to see me?'

The major drew a chair close to him and spoke in a low voice. ‘I'll tell you. Someone's taken my revolver.'

‘Your—?'

‘My revolver. My old service revolver. Sometime this morning.'

In the early dusk already beginning to darken in the coffee-room, Toby observed Major Maxwell carefully. But he was certainly sober.

‘How d'you know it was this morning?' said Toby.

‘I do know. It's only by chance I know, but as it happens I was looking at it last night. I put it back in its case at the back of the second left-hand drawer of my desk about one o'clock last night. And now it's gone.'

‘And the case?'

‘No, the case is still there.'

‘Closed?'

‘Yes, closed.'

‘Then what made you look again this morning to see if the revolver was still in it?'

The major ran one of his quivering hands over his grizzled hair.

‘I think I'll tell you the truth, Dyke. I've looked at that revolver quite a number of times during the last few days. Don't mistake me, one can look at a revolver without actually—I mean, because there's an idea in one's head, it doesn't follow that there's anything concrete about it. Because I want to look at a revolver, it doesn't follow that I actually intend to kill myself. But when there's an idea in one's head and it keeps coming back, when it sometimes almost makes one believe that one is serious about it, well, getting out a revolver, you know, and handling it—it sort of steadies you, you know, makes you realize what a long way from reality your thoughts are. As I was saying, I was looking at it last night, then I went up to bed and I'd a rotten night, rotten, and then Eggbear came out and asked me a lot of questions about where I'd been some time or other, and I didn't seem to give him the answers he wanted, and I got thoroughly jumpy, so I thought I'd drive into Wallaford and pick up some seed-catalogues. Early to be worrying about that, I know, still, I like to have them to look at. Then I came back to lunch at The Laurels and didn't go back to the cottage until about an hour ago. And the revolver was gone. I sat down at my desk, and pulled open the drawer, and took out the case, and—it was gone. Gone, Dyke! Stolen! D'you understand what it means? D'you realize—? Oh, my God, this is hell! You've got to do something about it—d'you understand, Dyke?'

‘It sounds to me,' said Toby slowly, ‘as if someone didn't realize the soothing effects of a revolver on a possible suicide, and removed it for your safety. Who knew it was there?'

‘Lots of people. But no, that isn't why it was taken. No, no, I'm quite certain it wasn't. No one knows what I've just been telling you, so why should they think of removing it? No, I'll tell you what I believe it is, and then you've
got
to do something. I believe—' his tense fingers were clutching Toby's sleeve—I believe it was Mrs Milne who took it!'

‘Why should she do that?' said Toby.

Maxwell jumped up and stood over Toby, his clenched fists pounding the air a few inches from Toby's chest.

‘Because she's afraid. Because she's terrified. Because she's being hounded to the gallows and she doesn't believe anything can save her. That's why she took it. She isn't the kind of woman who'll sit still and let things happen to her. She couldn't—it isn't the way she's made. There's an immense courage as well as a ghastly fatalism in Anna Milne. As soon as she's certain, as soon as she's convinced that there's no hope for her, she'll—she'll—'

‘But why,' said Toby, interrupting the major's choking, ‘should she become convinced that there's no hope for her, unless she's committed murder?' He paused, then added quietly: ‘You believe she did, don't you?'

‘No!' cried Stuart Maxwell. ‘No! It's the last thing on earth I'd believe. Nothing'd make me believe it—nothing! I swear it.'

‘In that case,' said Toby, ‘you want
us
to believe it. I repeat, why?'

‘I want
you
…?' The major drew away from him stood upright, suddenly sat down, and burst into a shout of laughter. He laughed with a shaking of his shoulders, a heaving of his chest. It was loud, hearty laughter, but with the sawing sound of hysteria in it.

‘One or the other,' said Toby. ‘Take your choice.'

At that moment the door of the coffee-room opened and George put his head round it. He saw the laughing major, looked questioningly at Toby, and, at Toby's slight nod, came in.

The major collected himself.

‘But listen, Dyke, you haven't told me what you're going to do about it. You've got to get it back. You understand, don't you?—it's imperative. She may do something desperate; she's that kind of person. You don't know her as I do. What are you going to do?'

Toby's gesture with his hands expressed complete ignorance. Maxwell's face lost its animation; it looked tired and frail. He got up and said: ‘Ah well, think about it, there's a good chap. Don't know what to do myself.' Nodding to George, he went out. Toby leant back, stretched out his legs, and thrust his hands deep into his pockets. He whistled a note or two, then rolled his head round, regarded George and said: ‘Well?'

George sat down in the chair that the major had left.

‘Sorry to've been so long, Tobe. I got talking to that girl, Ruby. She's not bad.'

‘The flask?'

‘Gone, Tobe.'

Toby cursed, but with indifference.

‘Yes, I'd a good look,' said George, ‘but nothing doing. I searched the car and one or two other places, but it's been snitched. Not in the ordinary way of domestic tidiness, I may add, because I made sure of that from Ruby. She hadn't been washing it or polishing it, or anything like that.'

‘Well, it was only a try-on, anyway,' said Toby. ‘I dare say it wouldn't have told us anything.'

‘I've got something for you, though,' said George. ‘I got an idea in my head, see, while I was chatting to Ruby. I said to her, did she happen to remember the night of the accident by any chance. She said of course she did. I said to her, did she remember when Mrs Milne left the house in her car. She said yes. I said did she happen to remember any noise soon after it. She said: “Noise?” I said: “Yes, noise.” She said: “What sort of noise?” So I went to the kitchen tap and turned it on, because I'd noticed, see, that when she turned that tap on just a certain amount it started to make a rattling noise as if it was going to shake the whole house down. You know the noise taps make. Well, then I took a couple of saucepan lids and started banging them together. First, Ruby looks at me as if I've gone off my nut, but then all of a sudden she gives a scream of laughter and says isn't that clever? I'm inclined to think that myself, and I keep it up, saying does she remember hearing it any time Tuesday evening. She goes on giggling for a bit, then she says come to think of it, she did, and just then Martha comes in and tells her she'll burn in hell-fire for having a man in the kitchen. But Ruby just says: “Martha, d'you remember Tuesday evening, when you said: ‘There's Mr Laws arrivin' '? You did, didn't you Martha?” And Martha says: “Yes, I heard his car in the road. And I didn't know what he was comin' for, seein' as Miss Daphne was up to London. But he didn't come in. He just stopped a bit and drove away again.” And then she turned me out of the kitchen with good wishes for my journey below.'

‘Where we'll go together, George,' cried Toby excitedly, jumping to his feet, ‘because I don't know what I'd do without you!'

In the police station later that afternoon Inspector Whitear greeted Toby and George with a flashing of his violet eyes and the friendliest of smiles. His squeaky voice was enthusiastic.

‘We're getting somewhere, Mr Dyke—yes, indeed. Eh, Eggbear? We've got something, eh?'

Eggbear nodded. His face was dour. He was not responsive to Whitear's charm.

Whitear tilted his chair back at a rakish angle.

‘Yes—yes, indeed. Riverfield's told us all we need to know. Nice little place, Riverfield.'

‘You aren't forgetting,' said Toby, ‘that somebody told you about Riverfield?'

Whitear chuckled. ‘Ha, ha, we know better than that. We know our jobs, Mr Dyke. But that's a secondary matter. Poison pens are nasty things, but murder's worse.'

Toby said nothing. Whitear tilted his chair delicately backwards and forwards.

‘And we've rounded up that sports car,' he observed.

‘But it ain't told us nothin',' said Eggbear quickly, ‘nothin' us didn't know already.'

‘We-ll,' said Whitear, ‘perhaps not. Perhaps—perhaps not.'

‘Who was it?' said Toby.

‘A young fellow and his girl from Plymouth. Roving the lanes a bit, you know. He's the son of a builder, and she's a receptionist in a café. We've been having a notice about the car every night on the wireless, and they've only just heard it, or only just decided to come forward. They corroborate the statement that Mrs Milne's car was pulled up to let them go over the bridge. But they didn't see anyone on the road. They're quite sure of it. They didn't know that bit of country, so those twists and turns and bridges took them by surprise, and he was driving with all his mind on them. So he says, anyway, and considering the cold weather, I dare say it's true.'

‘And what was it that Riverfield told you?' said Toby.