Murder of a Snob (21 page)

“Much better talk straight to us, Cornboise, and then we may get somewhere,” said Crisp. “The letters written by Miss Lofting to Fenchurch. The letters enclosed with your uncle's Will. The letters which you're afraid Miss Lofting took out of the safe, after jiggering about with the envelope.”

Again there was a long silence. Benscombe noted the titles of three heavy volumes on the sofa beside him. All three were medical works on insanity.

“I'm afraid I'm not rising, Colonel. You're waiting for me to ask questions about the letters. But I'm not frightfully interested.”

“The police are satisfied that Miss Lofting did not take those letters. We are satisfied that someone else did. Now you're waking up, aren't you?”

“Thank you for giving me that information,” he said ironically. “You might just as well have said that Fenchurch himself took them!”

So the revelation was a flop, thought Crisp. Ralph, obviously, regarded it as a police trap. Crisp ploughed on:

“Fenchurch has admitted doing so.”

“He would!” Ralph laughed as if with genuine amusement. “And he'd enjoy every minute of admitting it. But I bet your microscopes and whatnots don't bear it out. I don't suppose you believe it any more than I do.”

That was unanswerable. Ralph was warming to his theme.

“I'm not running Fenchurch down. In spite of what you may think, I've no grievance against him. He's a good chap, but he simply can't keep out of the limelight. If there were a fire in his neighbourhood he'd pretend he had caused it or that he had rescued everybody. I might have guessed that he world horn in on this horror.”

Ralph's restrained tone carried the conviction that at least he believed what he was saying. Crisp observed that he was steadier than he had been at Watlington Lodge. There were fewer obvious symptoms of neurasthenia.

“So you brush us aside and stick to your belief that Miss Lofting took those letters?”

“I don't stick to any belief about it, because I don't care whether she took them or not. At one time, I thought she must have taken them, and that it was terribly important to know. But that was because she and Querk were persuading me that I had hallucinations—that I was more or less insane, which I was not.”

“Then why have you bolted away and used a false name, after raising all the cash you could?”

“Because I no longer wished to marry Miss Lofting, but found it impossible to give any reason she would accept.”

As Crisp shrugged, Ralph explained: “Oh, I could give a reason
you
would accept—if you'll try to stop believing I'm a lunatic. On Saturday, when I signed that confession, I reckoned that my life was at an end. I was content. I did not wish to go on living. All the same, I had to screw myself up a bit to—well, to face the gallows. Next, you reject my confession because it seems to conflict with your evidence. You compel me to go on living, I dare not destroy myself lest some innocent person be involved in the murder. That meant that I had to screw myself up all over again—on a different screw. At any time, you may find out something that will make you believe my confession—you may not. Would any sane man want to get married in such circumstances?”

“That's understandable,” admitted Crisp. “But I still don't see why you had to bolt?”

“I tried to put that understandable point of view to Miss Lofting. She did not find it understandable. She said, in effect, ‘My poor boy, marry me and you will soon be cured of your various obsessions.' Now, Miss Lofting has been extremely kind to me—literally too kind! I see now that she has always treated me as a poor creature who needs mothering. It may be true, but it's not attractive. Since Saturday it became clear that she thought me practically insane and believed that she alone could restore me to sanity.

“When someone honestly and sympathetically believes you're insane, it shakes you up, even if you know you're not. To put it crudely, I could not endure another moment of her society—or I might indeed go mad. You'll say that's unreasonable. I don't claim to be any more reasonable than anyone else whose feelings for a woman have taken the wrong turning.

“It was not enough to run away. I had to change my whole background. That's why I came to this particular spot. I was born within a hundred yards of this place. My father used to work here as potman. I felt I must get back to it, to clear my head. In the last few days I've not only read a bit about my psychological condition. I've also consulted three doctors independently. They agreed that I'm not insane, but that I have inherited certain nervous disabilities, and that I must avoid any special excitement for a bit. They did not explain how I'm to avoid special excitement. I just have to do my best.”

That accounted for his new steadiness. He spoke with such clarity that Crisp accepted his words at their face value.

“Didn't it strike you as foolish to hide when you knew the police were searching for you?”

“It may have been. But making an ass of yourself has nothing to do with being insane. Anyway, with what I'm going through, I claim a bit of discount.”

“You're quite right there, Cornboise,” agreed Crisp. “You have enough on your plate to upset most men. But you seem to me sane and steady. So you will realise that the next questions are very important indeed. Benscombe, give me that note of those times.” He glanced at the note and continued: “Carry your mind back to five fifteen on Saturday afternoon, when you left the library by the window, got into your car and drove yourself out of the garage.”

“As I told you, I went to the swimming pool at the Three Witches.”

“Did you go straight from the garage to the Three Witches?”

“Yes.”

Crisp glanced at Benscombe. That answer would mean an arrest on the charge of murder. He tried again.

“Did you stop at all on the way?”

“Not on the way out. I had a clear run, with very little traffic. I stopped on the way back, for petrol.”

One more effort.

“When did you discover you were short of petrol?”

“When I brought Miss Lofting up from Wiltshire in the morning. I was running on my reserve for the last few miles. As I started for the Three Witches I remembered. So I stopped in the drive and filled up from the can, if that's what you mean.”

“So you did stop!” ejaculated Crisp. “At what point in the drive?”

“Close to the gates.”

“That would have been, at latest, about five twenty?” As Ralph nodded, Crisp added: “How long did it take you to fill up?”

“I don't know. Rather a long time. I'd never used the can before, and I got bogged with the anchorage.”

That was what Mrs. Corboise had suggested. Why didn't she say that Ralph had given her that explanation—if he had.

“Did you, at any point, walk away from the car?”

“No.”

“Your car was seen by two witnesses who were loitering by the gates of the Lodge for some minutes, ending at five thirty. You yourself were not seen. Can you explain why you were not seen by those witnesses?”

“No—unless I was bending down over the tank, or sitting on the near-side running board, resting. I can't see why it's important.”

“This is why it's important! Querk was talking to your uncle at five twenty-eight. By five thirty-four your uncle was dead. How do you combat the suggestion that, around five-thirty—entering through the dining-room window on the east side—you went back to the house and killed him? Take time over your answer, Cornboise.”

“I don't need time. Because I don't combat the suggestion.”

Crisp turned to Benscombe.

“See if you can make him understand what he's saying.”

“Rather lost my way over ‘combatting suggestions'!” said Benscombe, with forced breeziness. “The point is, Cornboise, did you leave that car and go back to the house?”

“As a matter of fact, I didn't. But if it's suggested that I did, I'm not going to deny it.”

“Now look here, old man. A few minutes ago you convinced us you're sane. Don't go and spoil the good work. I mean—you put up a confession the other day that you killed Watlington before five fifteen. You aren't offering another confession that you killed him all over again a quarter of an hour later?”

“You choose to joke about my sanity!” Ralph essayed the grand manner. “Is it so very difficult for you to understand my position? Insane or not, I killed my uncle. Insane or not, I did not wish to escape the penalty. After a short period of animal fear, I confessed. By some freak of circumstance, my confession was disbelieved. By a counteracting freak of circumstance, you are now ready to believe that I did kill him. Can it make any difference to me that you fix the time some fifteen minutes later?”

Benscombe wanted to carry on, but Crisp intervened.

“I was wrong, Benscombe—he does understand what he's saying. Cornboise! I'll put my question in another form, and it'll be my last attempt. Can you give me a simple explanation of what you were doing between five fifteen and five thirty-five?”

“So, it has to be simple!” Ralph laughed, but the laugh was free from the high-pitched note of hysteria. “Right-ho! My belief that I spent all that time putting two gallons into the tank is hallucination, the fact being, no doubt, that I was murdering my uncle. You can't have anything simpler than an hallucination—it always explains away everything.”

“Only a man who is insane would make childish jokes when he knows he is about to be charged with murder!” snapped Crisp.

“You mean only a foolish man—not an insane man!” corrected Ralph. “And am I so foolish? What happens to murderers who try to lie their way out, once the police have got hold of them? One lie is no good. You have to cook up a hundred in support, ninety-nine of which are knocked down by the police and the lawyers. For weeks, you cling to that one little lie, hoping that it will do the trick with the jury—then that it may have a technical twist that will get you off on appeal. Hoping and despairing a dozen times a day for weeks on end! Am I a fool to cut out all that?”

“You'll be a fool if you don't shut your mouth,” said Crisp. “I'm going to arrest you and give you the official warning.” Crisp gave it with dramatic emphasis.

Ralph listened with every sign of satisfaction.

“That's a great relief—no innocent person will suffer. Do you think I'm mad to say that?” Receiving no answer he went on:

“I shall be sorry to leave this place! Have I to be handcuffed, or may I pack? I have only one suitcase here.”

Crisp himself went over to the chest of drawers, opened each one, to satisfy himself that there was no gun hidden in the clothing, then returned to his chair.

Ralph Cornboise emptied the drawers on to the bed. From under the bed he pulled his suitcase. From the suitcase he took a revolver.

Crisp, who was nearer than Benscombe, was some dozen feet away. Ralph, aware that the police do not carry firearms, calculated that he had plenty of time.

“Cheerio!” he called. He had turned the muzzle on himself—his mouth was half open to receive it before pressing the trigger—when Mrs. Cornboise's earthenware duck's egg whistled across the room, landing full in his face.

As Ralph fell, the revolver went off. The bullet brought a shower of plaster from the ceiling, most of which fell on the Chief Constable, who was on the spot before Benscombe.

“Good boy!” muttered Crisp. “Take the gun while I mop him up. And don't forget that egg. It's rolled under the bed.”

Presently, Ralph sat up, bleeding and dishevelled but in full possession of his faculties. He turned his head to Benscombe.

“No ill feeling!' he said, with a wan grin. “But you'll wish you hadn't been such a good shot!”

Within a few minutes, Ralph was able to clean himself up and walk downstairs to the car.

Arrived at police headquarters, Crisp drove straight into the courtyard, to avoid giving the arrest premature publicity. Then he went to his room, leaving Benscombe to make the formal charge.

He had completed his own notes of the interview with Ralph Cornboise before Benscombe appeared.

“You did a thundering good job with that duck's egg, Benscombe. I'm putting it in the record.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I've some notes here which you can work up into a report. Personally I'm convinced that Cornboise was telling the truth when he said he did not leave the car. After fiddling about with the can, I expect he sat on the running board and mooned about until something reminded him that he meant to go to that swimming pool. Remember the finger prints on that die-stamp? Querk's. Very clear too. Made
after
Cornboise handled the die-stamp—if he did handle it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“His lawyers will find their way through that, even if we don't produce something concrete. But, of course, we shall produce something before he goes for trial.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We'll borrow that Reindert from the people who've bought it and have an on-the-spot test of visibility from the road.”

“Yes, sir.”

Crisp scowled. What was the matter with young Benscombe saying ‘yes, sir' like a parrot? The next moment, he knew.

“When I made the formal charge, sir, Cornboise said he intended to plead guilty.”

Crisp swung round in his swivel chair.

“Sergeant Willocks went through the routine. When he asked whether Cornboise wished to make any statement, I jumped in and splashed about, but it was no good. Cornboise said: ‘To save time I will state now that I killed Lord Watlington. The Chief Constable has a signed confession in which I made a mistake about the time. If you will produce a corrected copy, I will sign it.”

“So there'll be no trial!” Perhaps for the first time in his life Crisp looked afraid.

“I put in a bit of propaganda,” added Benscombe. “But he was very firm.”