House That Berry Built (4 page)

As I lighted a cigarette—

“Hullo,” said Jonah, “there’s Shapely. He looks as though he has heard.”

I looked up, to see the fellow whom I had seen in Lally by the side of his caravan. But now he was well turned out. His suit was grey, and I saw that his tie was black. He was standing still on the other side of the
Place
, as though he had just come out of the Hôtel de France. His underlip caught in his teeth, he gave the impression of a man confronted with duties he does not like, who is seeking to make up his mind how best to begin.

“D’you think we should speak to him?”

“Not unless he sees us,” said Jonah. “We hardly know the man – and we like him less.”

Here Shapely looked up and saw us.

As he crossed the
Place
, we stood up.

“Hullo,” he said. “Thank God for a face I know. Can I sit down with you?”

“Of course,” said Jonah. “Is beer all right for you?”

“Please,” said Shapely. And then, “I assume you know.”

“Saw it in
The Times
,” said Jonah. “We’re all most awfully sorry. I take it you’ve only just heard.”

“Last night,” said Shapely. “At Argéles. I’m roving, you know, with a van. I was going on up the Tourmalet. But I happened to pick up a paper, and there it was.”

“You were called on the wireless,” I said.

“I know. I never heard it. I drove into Pau this morning, shoved the van in a garage and went to the Bank. A sheaf of wires there, of course, and a letter from Joan, my sister, telling me all she knows. Funeral’s today, at Woking.”

“Yes, I saw that,” said Jonah. “Not your fault you’re not there.”

Shapely shrugged his shoulders.

“I can’t get away even now. There isn’t a train till six.”

“You’ve missed,” said I, “a lot of unpleasantness.”

“That’s very true,” said Shapely. “All the same, I ought to be there – as a matter of form.” He drank and set down his glass. “I’m not knocked out, you know. Old R was – well, nothing to me. In fact, we didn’t get on, or I shouldn’t be here. But he had no relatives, and so it’s up to me to do what I can.”

“What can you do?” said Jonah.

Shapely crossed and uncrossed his legs.

“I really don’t know,” he said. “But the murder was done in my home, and Old R was my stepfather.”

“And you were in France. You can do nothing, Shapely. Even if you had been there, you couldn’t have done very much. The matter’s out of your hands. You may, of course, have some suggestion to make.”

“Regarding the identity of the murderer?”

“Yes.”

Shapely shook his head.

“You may know more than I do. I haven’t seen a paper, except the one last night. But as soon as I read the news, I assumed it was a crime of revenge. Old R was ‘a hanging judge’, and he fairly weighed out time. There must have been plenty of felons who wanted to do him in.”

“He was always just,” said my cousin. “It is the unjust judge that gets under the criminal’s skin. But we know nothing at all. The police are holding their tongues.”

Shapely pulled out a letter and found a place in its text.

“This is what Joan says,” he said, and began to read.

“…
Old R was found by Still
– that’s the butler –
at seven a.m. Still had come in, as usual, to open the room. The French windows were still wide open, and the reading-lamp was burning beside his chair. Poor Old R was in the chair, dead and cold – with a length of flexible cord tied round his neck. The cord had been cut from the other standard lamp. The doctor says he knew nothing, because he had been chloroformed first. The pad of gauze and wool had been burned on the hearth. As far as I know, they found no finger-prints. When the brute had done it, he went to the coach-house and took the family car. You know, the Humber Snipe. Nobody heard him. The car was found at Hampstead that morning at eight o’clock. Abandoned, of course. We can place the time of the murder, more or less, for I said good night to Old R at half-past ten, and you know he always goes up at a quarter to twelve. Always. So it must have been between those times. One Chief Inspector Falcon has taken charge of the case. He is a gentleman and extremely nice. I should say he was very efficient, but he gives nothing away. The crime was clearly studied. I mean the man must have watched and have got to know his ways – how he sat with the windows open and all alone. And he knew how to pick a lock, for the coach-house door wasn’t forced. D’you think it could have been, say, a burglar, whom he had sent down? I mean, he had no enemies, and nothing at all was touched.

“Not very logical, that; but you see what she means.”

Shapely folded the letter and put it away.

“Thanks very much,” said Jonah. “And Falcon’s a very good man. Quite the best at the Yard, at the moment.” He wrinkled his nose. “There doesn’t seem much to go on, except the theft of the car.”

“How does that help?” said Shapely.

“It goes to suggest that the murderer knew his way round. I don’t believe it’s a felon. You see, if it was, the police would have got him by now. The very first thing they would do would be to check up on all men whom poor Old Rowley had sentenced, who had been lately released. And that would be too easy. Every one would be placed in twenty-four hours. It looks much more like some servant who’d been dismissed, or—”

“Good God!” said Shapely.

Both of us looked at him.

“Got a line?” said Jonah.

Shapley frowned.

“Yes and no,” he said. “If you’ll forgive me, I’d like to leave it there.”

“Of course,” said Jonah, rising. “And we must be getting along. We’re staying up in the mountains, and we’ve got to get back to lunch.”

“Where’s that?” said Shapely.

“Just outside Lally,” said I. “A lovely spot.”

“You’re telling me,” said Shapely. “I passed through Lally on Tuesday,
en route
for the Col de Fer.” He glanced at the Pyrénées. “My God, I hate leaving it all.”

“You’ll have to come back,” said I, “to collect your van.”

“One day, I suppose.”

“Well,
au revoir
,” said I. “Sorry we can’t do more than say how sorry we are.”

“You have done more. Being able to talk like this has done me a lot of good. See you again some day.”

We took our leave.

As we ran out of Pau—

“He’s got his eye on someone,” said Jonah.

“A dismissed servant,” said I. “You rang that bell.”

“Looks like it,” said Jonah. “And I’m going to write to Falcon. I’m not so sure that Shapely will spill the beans. He didn’t like Old Rowley – he says as much: and he may have liked some servant Old Rowley fired.”

“In which case, he may decide to hold his tongue?”

“Exactly. And that’s all wrong. Likes and dislikes shouldn’t enter a show like this. It was a barbarous crime. Old Rowley was a great public servant and, begging Shapely’s pardon, a very nice man.”

There was a little silence, which I presently broke.

“I didn’t know you knew Falcon.”

“You know him, too,” said Jonah. “Ascot two years ago. We brought him back to Cock Feathers.”

“My God, was that Falcon?” said I. “You said he was at the Bar.”

“I know,” said my cousin. “But that was Falcon all right. And he was a barrister, before he went to the police.” He addressed the back of the car. “He’s a good man, isn’t he, Carson?”

“A very good man, sir,” said Carson.

“You remember Sir Steuart Rowley?”

“Perfectly, sir. At White Ladies, more than once.”

“That was his stepson, Mr Shapely. He’s only just heard the news.”

“Was it indeed, sir? The one they were asking for?”

“That’s right. Remember this road?”

“Indeed I do, sir. A bend a mile ahead and under a bridge.”

“Good for you,” said Jonah, and lifted his foot. “Eighty-six. There’s not much wrong with this car.”

As we took our seats for lunch—

“Did Jill show you the site?” I said.

My brother-in-law nodded.

“Very delectable,” he said. “You’d want five thousand slaves to prepare the ground and another five thousand to haul the materials there. It’s the sort of venture that would have appealed to Cheops. Now the field on the left—”

“Commands the graveyard,” said I.

“What if it does?” said Berry. “I rather believe in the contemplation of death. You’re – well, more prepared then.”

Jill began to shake with laughter, and Daphne covered her mouth.

Returning to Berry, I noticed that he had changed his coat – and tie.

When I looked at Jonah, I saw him close his left eye.

“And how,” said I, “is the Columbine?”

Berry accepted a piece of toast.

“You will oblige me,” he said, “by not naming that open sewer.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“I always thought—”

“I can think of nothing,” said Berry, violently, “of less value or interest than any of your rooted beliefs. I have described that treacherous torrent as an open sewer. It’s one of those things that should be heard, but not seen, and never, never approached. As a matter of fact, it ought to be filled up.” He sat back and looked round malevolently. “This morning I declared my intuition that we should stick to the roads. Was my faithful instinct honoured? No. Instead I was persuaded to take what was called a path… Of course I was brought up on the Bible. When they say ‘a path’ there, they mean a path – a small, but decent way for the sole of the foot. Just because half a dozen drunks have staggered the same way down a mountainside, that doesn’t make a path. It was in the course of my efforts to remain upright that I found the souvenir. One moment, it wasn’t there: the next, the toe-cap of one of the finest shoes I have ever put on was enshrined in a sardine tin, which appeared to have been opened less in sorrow than in anger, by means of a cross-cut saw… Of course, the shoe is finished. Damned well done in. Years of boning and polishing just chucked away – because we didn’t keep to the road. I might have been playing soccer with a ball of barbed wire. By the time I’d got the tin off, the toe-cap was fringed.” He covered his eyes. “Well, it was no good going back: the damage was done. I screamed whenever I saw it. So we came to the brink of the water which was our goal. Having attained our end, I proposed to rest a little, as well to fortify myself for the return journey as to recover from the shock which the devastation of a museum-piece is apt to provoke. Had I had a harp with me, I should have hung it up in a tree. But that grey-eyed siren said ‘No.’ Possessed of some evil spirit, she determined to cross the flood.”

“Be fair,” said Jill. “The path led down to a row of stepping-stones. And another path ran up from the other side. I naturally—”

“It all depends,” said Berry, “on the definition of a stepping-stone. Personally, I should define it as a stone so stablished, either by nature or art, that whoso sets foot upon it may do so in the confidence that it will not only receive and maintain his weight, but will neither rock, sway, shudder or otherwise betray him. Today such confidence would have been – was misplaced. From some filthy and misshapen conception of gallantry, I insisted on proving the uninviting series of boulders before she crossed. I can’t say that I relished the prospect. The water was clearly excited – not to say, vexed. The stepping-stones (
sic
) were, of course, opposing its will, and the fury with which it squeezed between them argued an intolerance which would have made a lumber-jack think. On the right-hand side was a pool of which an offensive-looking trout and the remains of what appeared to be a blood-pudding were the only occupants.

“Apparently you shouldn’t use the third stepping-stone… I mean, the habitués don’t. At least, that was what the peasant who helped me out said. Out of the pool, I mean. He said that the third stepping-stone was not too good. ‘Not too good.’ If he’d said that it was so poised that the slightest pressure upon it would cause it to tilt like a balance, he’d have been nearer the mark. And there you have this country. The approach of a
soi-disant
path from either side issues a direct invitation to step upon those stones. That invitation is a vile and treacherous snare, for anyone who sets foot upon the third stone must inevitably be cast into the draught. There’s hospitality for you! There’s Cretian charity!”

“What happened to the trout?” said Jonah.

With starting eyes—

“That,” said Berry, “is what worries me. I brought up quite a lot of the blood-pudding, which, of course, was all to the good, but I couldn’t find the trout anywhere. I do so hope he’s all right. I mean, I don’t mind my suit being ruined, I didn’t mind tripping two and a half miles uphill, carrying top weight and soaked to the skin, or having to explain my condition to every peasant I met – they’re a dull lot about here. If I meet a man who has obviously been submerged, I don’t ask him if he’s wet.” He turned upon Jill. “Yes, you’ll never get over that, will you? Every time they asked me, you screamed and yelled with laughter until the sheep looked round.”

Jill was clinging to my shoulder.

“Boy, I nearly died. We met eight altogether, and everyone asked the same. They asked if he was wet. And he said no, it was sweat – that all his life he’d perspired very freely indeed and that walking uphill was apt to open his pores. And all the t-time the water was dripping out of his coat. If you could have seen their faces!”

“As a matter of fact,” said Berry, “the exercise saved my life. The chill of that snow-broth has to be felt to be believed. By the time I got back I was sweating. But that’s by the way. I’m through with these country strolls. They’re too exacting. And expensive. That coat I had on—”

“Therèse will save it,” said Daphne. “So long as you haven’t caught cold… But you must be more careful next time.”

“‘Careful’?” screamed Berry. “I tell you, I was betrayed. And I never wanted to do it. I was badgered into approaching the – The Leper’s Delight. Badgered, betrayed and b-bitched – that’s the poisonous order of my undoing. That’s how I spend my first morning in the lap of the Pyrénées. Any suggestions for this afternoon?”

“Sleep for you,” said his wife. “I want to see this site.”