The Ka of Gifford Hillary (27 page)

It was still only a little after six o’clock when he collected his car from the garage and we set out. Our journey was uneventful and we reached Longshot just before nine.

When we arrived Silvers was already carrying extra chairs into the dining-room in preparation for the inquest. Shortly afterwards Inspector Mallet and Sergeant Haines put in an appearance. Then Bill Wiltshire came downstairs and handed the Inspector some folded sheets of foolscap.

‘This is a signed statement by my daughter,’ he said. ‘Dr. Culver came again yesterday evening and gave it as his opinion that if she were made to attend the inquest a complete breakdown might result; so in his presence I wrote this out at her dictation. If you wish to question her after you’ve read it, she’ll see you. But I hope that won’t be necessary.’

With a word of thanks Mallet took the statement into the drawing-room and sat down to read it. Anxiously I peered over his shoulder while he did so, and was greatly relieved to see that Ankaret had made no dangerous elaborations to her story, but given it briefly point by point exactly as it had already been established by the forged letter.

After reading it the Inspector handed it to Haines, and told Bill that, at the present stage, he did not think it would be necessary for him to trouble Ankaret.

By this time a number of reporters had gathered in the hall and, standing a little apart from them, an elderly couple of not very prosperous appearance. The woman was in rusty black and the man wearing a black tie with an obviously ready-made suit. As they looked a little nervously about them Silvers came over to my father-in-law and told him in a low voice that they were Mr. and Mrs. Evans, Owen’s parents.

Bill at once went up to them, condoled with them on their loss and, on learning that they had travelled from Wales through the night in order to attend the inquest, offered them breakfast. They said they had already had a meal at Southampton station, so he led them through to my library where
they could wait instead of among the crowd, and insisted on providing Mr. Evans with a stiff whisky and soda.

Naturally they were much distressed by the death of their son; and as they believed him to have risen to a position of some importance and even greater promise, the cutting short of his career had proved an added blow to them. Mrs. Evans was peevishly resentful, and although her husband did his best to check her, frankly expressed her opinion that ‘it all came of poor Owen coming to live in a big house like this and getting hisself mixed up with rich people who were no better than they should be’.

Bill might well have informed her that it all came of her son having made immoral advances to his daughter; but, with the good manners natural to him, he confined himself to remarking that, wherever the fault might lie, the tragedy had also robbed him, if not of a son, of a son-in-law for whom he had had a great affection.

The sense of
noblesse oblige
which had led him to take special care of the bereaved couple was not put to further strain, for while they were talking the jurymen had arrived and soon afterwards Silvers came in to announce that the Coroner was about to open the proceedings.

They proved much less sensational than I had expected. Johnny gave evidence of the finding of the bodies. Silvers followed and told of the letter, which was believed to have been written by myself, that he had found among the post in the letter-box and passed on to Johnny. It was produced and its contents naturally led to an increased tempo in the scribbling of the journalists, but the little flutter it caused subsided again when Dr. Culver gave particulars of the causes of death in dry medical terms. The police surgeon confirmed his findings and Inspector Mallet made a brief statement to the effect that the police had been called in without delay, had made a full investigation and were satisfied with the evidence given.

The Coroner then informed the jury that Lady Ankaret was still suffering too severely from shock to attend but that he had received a statement from her in which, while she maintained that her friendship with Evans had been entirely innocent, she substantiated that having had to confess to her husband that Evans was so violently in love with her that he
had assaulted her had been the cause of the quarrel that had led to the death of both. He added that in the circumstances he felt it unnecessary to call further evidence.

The jury was then taken to the laboratory and the beach pavilion for formal inspection of the bodies. On their return they retired to consider their verdicts. They remained closeted for barely ten minutes and when the public were re-admitted the verdicts, now a foregone conclusion, were given: in Evans’s case that he had died of severe injuries inflicted by myself, and in mine that I had taken my own life by an over-dose of a dangerous drug while the balance of my mind was disturbed.

No breath of suspicion about the dark doings that had really taken place at Longshot Hall the previous Friday night had fallen on Ankaret, and that cheered me greatly. Now, apart from my own still-veiled future, my only worry was over Johnny’s quarrel with Sue, but soon after the Coroner’s court rose, that too showed signs of being disposed of.

Bill had just been making arrangements for the Evans’ to have their son’s body removed to the mortuary in Southampton that afternoon, and as I watched him escort them out to their taxi the telephone rang. Johnny went to answer it and when he realised who the caller was I saw his face light up. His ‘Hello, darling!’ told me that it must be Sue, and evidently she had decided to have a further explanation with him. Moving nearer, I heard him arrange to pick her up at a cross-roads near her home that evening, and then try to persuade her to let him give her dinner at The Master Builder’s at Buckler’s Hard.

The sitting of the court had occupied most of the morning and the last of the people who had come to attend it were now moving off. Inspector Mallet told Bill and Johnny that he hoped not to have to trouble them further, then he and his men took their departure. Bill went upstairs to tell Ankaret the findings of the court, then joined Johnny in my room for a drink. By the time they had finished it Silvers announced lunch.

Over the meal they talked about the morning’s doings for a while, then Johnny asked when Ankaret would be fit to leave her room.

‘The poor gel’s still pretty low,’ her father replied, so I
don’t think she’ll be up to coming down this evening; but she told me that she means to attend the funeral tomorrow morning.’

‘I see,’ said Johnny. ‘Well, immediately after the funeral I’ll have to get back to London, so if she’s set on remaining up in her room I’d be glad if you’d ask her to let me have Giff’s keys. As one of his executors I’ve naturally got to go into his affairs, so I want to collect the papers that are in his desk.’

‘Right,’ Bill responded cheerfully, ‘I’ll go up and ask her for them directly we’ve finished lunch.’

‘It’s two o’clock already,’ Johnny demurred, ‘and by then she may have settled down for a nap. I don’t want you to disturb her unnecessarily, and as I was up at crack of dawn this morning I mean to have a sleep myself this afternoon. But I shall be going out about six and it’s quite on the cards that I won’t be back until late, so I’d like to have them by five o’clock. If you ask her for them when her tea is taken up that will be quite time enough.’

Bill shook his sandy head. ‘No; to kick my heels in this place now for the rest of the day would give me the willies. When we’ve had our glass of port I mean to drive over to old Frothy Massingham’s and as you’re going to be out I’ll probably stay to dinner; so I’ll see her before I go.’

Some twenty minutes later he went up to Ankaret, but returned almost at once to report that the police had asked for my keys on Sunday; so she had sent them down by Mildred, and they had not yet been returned.

When I had heard Johnny ask Bill to get my keys for him I had felt no uneasiness, as I had taken it for granted that Ankaret would have slipped downstairs at the first reasonably safe opportunity to remove those incriminating trial forgeries from my desk, or at the latest have collected them some time during the previous night. But it looked now as if she had neglected to do so. Why otherwise had she lied about the police having my keys. And I felt sure she had. I could think of no point during their investigation at which they might have needed them, and had they been there they would have asked Bill or Johnny to ask Ankaret for them, not sent a message up to her by a young servant girl.

Had I had any blood to chill, the thought of those damnable
papers still being in my desk would have chilled it; and had I had arms I could have shaken Ankaret till her teeth rattled for her incredible folly in having failed to destroy the one thing which might yet bring her to the gallows. The cause of her remissness I could only guess at, but I had little doubt that it was another manifestation of that peculiarly female refusal to play for safety by prompt action which had so infuriated Evans when she could not be hurried into helping him dispose of my body.

As the last time she was supposed to have seen me was when I had left her to go to the lab with Evans, and Johnny had come upon her at my desk hours later, she could not deny having had my keys; so this story that she had passed them on to the police was simply an expedient to gain a little time. But it must soon be blown. Johnny had only to telephone Mallet and he would learn that she had lied to him. Anxiously I watched his face, on tenterhooks to learn his reaction; but it seemed that he was, at the moment, too tired immediately to pick up the implications.

Smothering a yawn he said: ‘Oh well, it doesn’t matter. Later I’ll phone Mallet and ask him to put them in the post. They’ll get here in the morning and I’ll have ample time to collect the stuff in Giff’s desk before the funeral.’

Then, turning, he crossed the hall and went down the passage under the laboratory to his room.

My mind, too, was again fagged out; so as Bill left the house, to go off in my car presumably, I went into the little library and settled myself there.

Later I learned that my mind had been blacked out for close on an hour, when a slight sound roused me. As my consciousness flooded back I saw that Ankaret was within a yard of me and just about to unlock my desk.

There were dark shadows under her big eyes and her face looked drawn, but her fine features, serene brow and the aureole of Titian hair curling down on to the shoulders of her turquoise blue dressing-gown still made her the most beautiful living thing that I had ever seen. That she had unwittingly brought about my death through indulging in a stupid peccadillo weighed nothing with me. I felt only relief and joy that this lovely being, whose faults I so well understood, should at last have seen the red light. Evidently she
had learnt from her father that he was going out, and that Johnny meant to sleep, so had determined to take this last opportunity to destroy those damning examples of her skilful penmanship.

As she unlocked the desk and rolled up its top the door, which she had closed behind her, was suddenly thrown open. Johnny stood there carrying the brown leather suit-case in his right hand.

He smiled at her, but his smile was by no means a friendly one as he said: ‘Then you did lie about having given those keys to the police. I thought as much; so I decided to put off my sleep for a while in the hope of catching you out. And by jove I have—red-handed!’

Taken by surprise as she was, Ankaret did not lose her nerve; and no one who knew the desparate stakes for which she was now forced to play could have failed to admire the way she met Johnny’s challenge.

After a first faint start she remained quite still for a moment, then slowly turned towards him, and said quietly: ‘Aren’t you being quite unnecessarily offensive?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Johnny retorted, closing the door behind him and setting down the suit-case. ‘The fact that you told a deliberate lie about these keys when I asked for them frees me from the obligation to mince my words with you. Why did you lie about them?’

‘Because I did not wish to part with them, of course.’

‘But you must have known that as one of Giff’s executors I have a legal right to them.’

She gave him a faintly mocking smile. ‘Certainly I knew that; but you should be old enough by now, Johnny, to know that women don’t set the same value as men on technicalities of that kind, and seldom allow them to interfere with their own wishes.’

‘No doubt you are right there. But why did you try to fool me into the belief that you had not got them? And what are you doing here now, while you believed me to be asleep. That’s what I want to know.’

‘Then you must continue to want. My actions are my own private affair and nothing to do with you.’

‘Oh yes they are!’ Johnny countered quickly. ‘Quite apart from my being one of Giff’s executors I was closer to him
than his own son. The fact that on the night he died you came down from your room at near midnight to rummage in his desk gave me the idea that you know more about how he met his death than you have told any of us yet; and catching you here in such circumstances again this afternoon has convinced me of it. I never have subscribed to this belief that Giff committed suicide. He wasn’t that sort of chap. And I am determined to find out the real facts about his death.’

Ankaret shrugged her slim shoulders a shade disdainfully. ‘My dear Johnny, no one would doubt your capabilities as an airman but by assuming the role of a detective you make yourself ridiculous.’

‘There is nothing ridiculous about trying to find out the truth.’

‘The professionals have already investigated everything there is to investigate about this frightful business, and pronounced themselves satisfied. No one is better qualified than I am to sympathise with your … our awful loss; but you really must not let yourself get carried away with wild ideas about it, and act like a small boy who has been reading too many shockers late at night.’

Johnny lit a cigarette and said quietly: ‘Listen, Ankaret; nothing will ever convince me that Giff took his own life. Some time on Friday night he went out for some definite purpose; probably to meet somebody who was trying to blackmail either him or you. Anyhow your behaviour has given me very good reason to believe that you knew that he was going, why he went, and who he was going to meet. Come clean with me and, providing you are no more responsible for his death than you would have us believe at the moment, I promise I’ll do my utmost to protect you.’