Murder of a Snob (22 page)

“Very firm, was he!” Crisp echoed the words savagely. “Now, look here, Benscombe! Police work in a murder case is based on the assumption of a competent defence. The defence protects us as well as the accused. By the time counsel has finished with our witnesses, the public knows there's been no dirty work on our part. To insist on a plea of guilty against the wishes of the police, in order to gratify a suicidal impulse, is a form of cheating.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If that young blackguard is going to cheat us, I'm going to cheat him.”

“By pressing the attempted suicide charge instead, sir?”

“Can't do that, unfortunately, in the face of those statements by the errand boys and Querk and Mrs. Cornboise. No, I shall make use of the woman.”

“But how will Mrs. Cornboise—”

“Mrs. Cornboise, you young fathead! I mean Claudia Lofting. He's frightened sick of her. Remember the picture of Fenchurch's. Tooth and claw stuff! If I drop a tactful hint to her she'll make blue hell for everybody until there's a team of lawyers lined up behind her pet lunatic. Get her on the phone and say I'm on my way.”

First of all, reflected Crisp, Claudia would have to be told that Ralph had been arrested and charged with murder. He would tread carefully—give her just enough time to absorb the shock, then catch her on the rebound and harness her energy.

At Watlington Lodge, to his annoyance, he was ‘received' by Andrew Querk. After gracious patronage of the weather, Querk lowered his voice.

“I don't think we need anticipate any trouble.” He spoke as one slightly superior medical man to another. “She is taking it very bravely—very bravely indeed.”

“Taking what?” demanded Crisp.

“I refer, of course, to the arrest.” Querk's tone was touched with severity. “I do not pretend, Chief Constable, that the task of breaking the news to her was a light one. I explained, as was only just, that you had been driven to that course by the poor fellow's own action in running away. When I described our suspicions, centring on the movements of the car, she became, I think, resigned.”

Crisp did not want her resigned. He wanted her furious. Querk was graduating from a nuisance to a menace. Incidentally, he could only have known about the arrest through Mrs. Cornboise.

“Thank you,” said Crisp drily. “You have been most helpful. And now—”

“I ventured to tell her that it would be better for her to go home to-morrow, as we would not be likely to need her again until the trial—if then. Ah, here is Miss Lofting!”

Claudia was coming down the stairs—Claudia, thought Crisp, in another facet of herself. He could not have sworn that her clothes were different from those she had worn at their last meeting. They certainly were not black, yet they contrived to indicate bereavement. Or was it nothing to do with her clothes?

“Shall we use the morning-room?” she said with a formal brightness which forbade condolence.

Querk opened the door and bowed them in. Crisp thanked him and took unequivocal possession of the door.

“If I should be wanted,” Querk whispered, “you will find me in the drawing-room.”

By the time Claudia was seated, Crisp had abandoned the idea of a tactful approach.

“When we arrest a man we have to make a formal charge against him. Generally, we advise him to say nothing. The next step is that the accused man sees his lawyers and prepares his defence. Ralph has cut all that out. He has made a statement incriminating himself, and says he intends to plead guilty to the charge—against our advice.”

She was sitting like a schoolgirl, her hands folded in her lap. Not the hands of a schoolgirl, though. She didn't even move—just inclined her head a little to indicate that she had heard. He supposed that she had not grasped the actualities.

“That means,” he continued, “that there can be no trial in the ordinary sense of the word. No sifting of the evidence against him. He will shortly go before a judge who will sentence him to death after formalities taking only a few minutes. Are you following me, Miss Lofting?”

“Yes. I quite understand.”

That was all! A dead calm, with no wind for his sails. He waited until she looked up at him.

“I want you to persuade him to withdraw the plea of guilty.”

She shook her head.

“I couldn't do that. It would be no use trying. He doesn't even want to see me, does he?”

“I don't think he does,' admitted Crisp. “Nevertheless—”

“You could force him to see me? Then I should jib. Sorry!”

“I never force anybody!” snapped Crisp. “There is a routine which enables you to be in the same room with him, with myself and others present. That would at least give you a chance to persuade him to apply for a personal interview with you. Then you could talk to him.”

“But I've nothing to say to him.”

For the moment, Crisp was beaten. He paced the little room, while her words echoed in his brain. She had nothing to say to Ralph! Then what the devil had been happening?

“I seem to have got the wrong end of this stick!” he exclaimed. “The other night at headquarters you were in a hurry to find him. To tell him that it was Fenchurch who had reclaimed those letters. You said you thought it might dispel the hallucination—”

“That was before I knew that Ralph had stopped his car in the drive.”

Crisp broke his stride, to stand by her chair.

“You are not telling me that the evidence about the car has suddenly made you think him guilty?”

“N-no.” The hesitation vanished as she went on: “It has made me see that it was possible for him to be guilty. It seemed impossible before.”

Suspicions were crowding upon Crisp. She was changing sides! She could not gain a penny by Ralph's conviction. But she could punish him for jilting her. Oh nonsense!— that was gun-moll morality!

“Admitting that it is physically possible for him to be guilty—do you therefore believe that he
is
guilty?”

He read the answer in her face before her words drove it home.

“Yes.” She added: “Nothing that I say can harm him now.”

Then she
had
changed sides! But whose side had she taken instead?

“Questions and answers can make anything look lopsided,” she was saying. “By Monday I had the moral certainty that he was guilty. But I clung to Querk's evidence to prove that I must be wrong. I simply had to squash the moral certainty—to try to pretend it wasn't nagging away at the back of my mind.”

“But why did you have that moral certainty?” demanded Crisp. “I have a moral certainty that he's innocent—backed up by something just short of proof.” He dared not tell her about the wig, but he was ready to go a long way. “Listen to this! Suppose Querk had not been in the house. Without any Querk, I would still not believe Ralph guilty, because I have certain objective information about that murder which only the police possess.”

He seemed to be holding her attention. With all the force he could muster, he went on:

“That information would be given to the defence. Able lawyers on both sides, umpired by the judge, would extract the truth from that evidence. They would convince not only the jury but also you and me—convince us of his innocence or his guilt. To me it does not matter which. Without that process, what guarantee have I, as a policeman, that I am not procuring the conviction of an innocent man? I—I'm asking you to help me.”

He had revealed his secret dread, had said more than he intended. No doubt she would laugh at him for his indiscretion. Not that he cared, provided she would help.

“I can understand how you feel!” There was no laugh. She was looking at him with quickened interest. “If it makes you feel any better, I am in a worse position. I ought not to have left him for a moment that afternoon. If I had gone with him to the Three Witches, as he asked me, it wouldn't have happened.”

“It!”
The word was rapped out in a shouted whisper. “How can you permit yourself to speak like that! I tell you that I have strong reasons for believing he may not be guilty. You continue to take his guilt for granted.” Perceiving that his indignation was wasted, he shifted ground. “Do you know something that the police do not know?”

“Of course I do!”

He glared at her, challenging her to justify her words.

“It isn't what you would accept as evidence,” she said. “I've told you everything that can be of any use to you in your official capacity. Have you forgotten that you made a rather personal appeal to me to help you?”

That was true enough, confound her! His whole handling of her had been spoilt by Querk's interference.

“I doubt whether I can help you. But I will try.” She paused. “Won't you sit down, Colonel?”

Yes, he would sit down, because she told him to. She had the air of not knowing she had scored off him, of not caring whether she scored or not. Her eyes were preoccupied. There was gentleness in the set of her mouth. One could never be unaware of her physicality, which could create the illusion of speaking to the mind.

“On Saturday I went to bed, shortly after midnight. I was then convinced by Querk's evidence that Ralph's brain had played him some trick, though I didn't fully adopt the hallucination theory until after Turvey had seen him the next morning.

“I had left my door open. I had been in bed a few minutes when I heard Ralph in the corridor. I caught him at the top of the stairs. I don't know whether he was sleep-walking or half awake, resisting the sleeping draught. He knew who I was, but in a muddled sort of way—as if he were very drunk.

“I piloted him back to bed. I didn't return to my room. I sat in the chair in the dark and dozed. When it was beginning to get light, Ralph got up again. He was in much the same condition, though the drug was wearing off.

“While I was coping with him he said: ‘I must go and see if he is dead.' I begged him not to. In the same drunken sort of way, he agreed not to go downstairs. He said: ‘Tell you what! We'll work it out together. You be uncle, and I'll be me.'

“It was a bit thick for me, but we went through with it. The awful part was that it was convincing. It made me certain that he was describing what had actually happened. Absolutely certain!

“Eventually, I'd got him back to bed and he fell asleep. I'm afraid I blubbered like a child. Then I stopped crying and nearly laughed out loud. Absurd though it sounds, Ralph had made me forget Querk's evidence. But now I told myself, that, however certain I might be that Ralph had killed his uncle, the fact remained that he hadn't. I was so relieved that I went to sleep in the chair. But I woke up suddenly with a new fear. Suppose the whole thing had happened at a different time and Ralph had simply muddled the times? Suppose he had gone back to the library?

“Fortunately, Querk gets up early. I button-holed him at the bathroom door. Then he told me that Ralph was known to have left in the Reindert a few minutes after Querk entered the library. So that put me at ease again. But the ease did not last long. The feeling that Ralph had been reconstructing a reality remained just as strong. With all that talk about hallucination, I was beginning to suspect myself. Part of me was believing something which had been proved to be impossible.

“And now it has been proved possible,” she concluded. “So I believe it.”

Once again Crisp found himself unwillingly impressed with her honesty. Yet the fact remained that she was trying to convince him of Ralph's guilt. Out of kindness to himself?

“But you wish you didn't feel obliged to believe in Ralph's guilt?” he asked.

“My attitude to him is unchanged. I don't feel any horror of him for what he did. I only feel that I've failed him—as I have. If I could save him from the consequences I would. But I can't. If I were to ask him to plead not guilty it would make him the more determined to refuse.

“You see, he used to jump at the chance of doing anything to please me. I made use of that—to get him to steady up in his habits. But he stopped wanting me, quite suddenly, and rather to my surprise. For a few minutes at a time—when he momentarily accepted the hallucination theory—he may have suspected me of murder, though I doubt it. But he did suspect me of what I had actually done—that is, of using whatever appeal I had for him to get him to do things for his own good. And I believe men hate that, more than they hate being fooled and cheated by a woman.”

That was fairly close to what Ralph himself had said about her. She had observed Ralph very thoroughly, almost clinically. Obviously, she had never been romantically in love with him.

With something of a shock he realised that she was convincing him—pushing him into the fallacy that, because she was reasonable, she must be right.

“I don't see how you could have taken a different line,” he conceded. “The weak spot is that you cannot check whether Ralph was telling you the truth in that bedroom.

Your belief in his guilt pre-supposes that he was reporting and not imagining.”

“He was reporting,” she replied. “I can remember everything he said and did—I shall never be able to forget.”

Urged by Crisp, she told him—reproducing the substance of the statement made by Ralph in his original confession. Crisp let her words slide through his consciousness, waiting for the essential item.

“Then he showed me how the wig was cut and knocked out of shape. At the sides. Sticking out behind like bat's wings, he said. He lifted my hair behind my ears—like this—to show me.”

But the wig had
not
been cut and had
not
stuck out at the sides like a bat's wings, nor like anything else. Ralph was inventing. Or Claudia was lying—a pointless lie, unless she knew the significance of that wig.

He let her continue with details of Ralph dropping the die-stamp on the floor—after striking through the wig!—and going out by the window.