Cold, Lone and Still

15: Talking Things Over

« ^ »

The warden had the address of the women students’ hall of residence and Dame Beatrice obtained it from him before she left. He would be glad, he said, to have the mystery of Carbridge’s death cleared up before the new term began, if that were possible. He added that the police were making heavy weather of their investigations and that it was very hard on those students who had done such good work in Scotland during their summer vacation that they should be under harassment when they were all completely innocent.

Privately, I think, Dame Beatrice was keeping an open mind about their guilt or innocence, but she could hardly tell this to anybody in the warden’s position. I walked round to Hera’s flat when the goodnights had been said and found her, as I had expected, awaiting me and alone. Whether Todd had been quite as good as his word I did not know, but, at any rate, he was not in her flat when I arrived.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘how did things go? Did Dame Beatrice extort a confession of guilt from anybody?’

‘As you would expect, some useful information emerged. Perth was particularly enlightening.’

‘That man has eyes and ears everywhere. I suppose both were necessary in the job he had to do on the tour. It can’t have been easy with that little horror Patsy Carlow in the party.’

‘He made two interesting disclosures which may or may not have some bearing on Carbridge’s death and he also let a few other cats out of bags which, so far as I can see, have nothing to do with murder, but which highlight what I may call the love interest.’

‘Oh, Lord!’

‘Yes, indeed.’

‘Well, out with it, if you’ve come here to make a scene.’

‘Why should I do that?’

‘Oh, that’s all right, then. What happened? What was said?’

‘It’s getting late. Let’s leave it until tomorrow. It may turn out to be a long story.’

So we arranged that I should take her out to dinner the next evening and then that we should return to her flat for our talk. When the appointed time arrived, she came straight to the point which concerned the two of us most closely.

‘I suppose Perth told you about Todd and me,’ she said.

It staggered me that she should refer to Todd so openly and in so calm a manner. I was nonplussed by her frankness and said feebly, ‘Well, yes, sort of, yes, he did.’

‘The snooping old cub-leader! What did he tell you?’

‘That Todd slept at the Inverbeg hotel on the same night as we did.’

‘Yes, he did. He pushed on ahead of the others and, although you didn’t see him, he crossed on the ferry when we did, but if Perth told you I slept with him, it’s not true.’

‘No?’

‘No. I didn’t mean for this to come out just yet, Comrie, but I would have told you all about it later, when things were settled.’

‘What about Glasgow?’

‘Perth couldn’t have told you about Glasgow. He knew nothing about what happened at the airport hotel. Oh, dear! I wish he hadn’t taken the bull by the horns, the wretched man! Anyway, he did, so I must make the best of it. You had the impression, when I met Todd on the train and again at the airport hotel, that he was a stranger to me. I tried to give you a hint that this was not the case, but you were too thick to catch on.’

‘Oh, was I? But I have a trusting nature, you see.’

‘Don’t you remember that crack of mine about people with two left feet?’

‘Vividly. I have seldom felt more embarrassed.’

‘You surely didn’t think I would say a thing like that to somebody I had only just met?’

‘It seemed out of character, I admit, but I thought you were annoyed by his attempting to pick you up.’

‘You always have been a myopic old soul where I am concerned. Don’t you remember my calling him Sweeney Todd later? That would have been another frightful liberty if we hadn’t known one another very well. Anyway, thanks to that idiotic Carbridge and your own fixations, Glasgow and Inverbeg were the only chances Barney and I had to get together and talk over our plans for a divorce.’

‘What!’

‘Yes. I married him when I was — well, a whole lot younger than I am now. It didn’t work out very well, and we separated, but nothing legal was involved. It wasn’t even a judicial separation. We agreed to go our separate ways and then, when the legal period of irreparable breakdown of the marriage was over, to arrange for a divorce.’

‘What didn’t you like about him?’

‘He was a male chauvinist pig,’ she said lightly.

‘Expound, as Dame Beatrice would say.’ (Strange to say, the shock her disclosure had given me was already dying away.)

‘You know,’ said Hera, ‘you’re taking this very calmly. I thought you would rant and roar.’

‘That is only done by true British sailors and even then, according to the song, they need to be on the high seas.’ To be truthful, my calmness in the face of her confession surprised nobody more than myself. I touched the pocket in which I still had her engagement ring. The little circlet seemed to have turned into some sort of talisman. I found comfort in the realisation that it was in my possession and not on her finger.

‘Well, I’m not flattered,’ she said, ‘by the way you’ve taken news which I thought would stun you. Anyway, you asked what I didn’t like about Barney. Looking back, I don’t really know. He was tall, handsome, free with his money, a most satisfactory escort and I suppose that, in a way, I liked him very much. The trouble was that I wanted a career for myself and it was because of my insistence on this that we fell out. After our honeymoon I refused to sleep with him until he gave up trying to turn me into a good wife and mother, so he picked up a girl and we parted.’

‘And I got you on the rebound.’

‘Heavens, no! You mustn’t think that, Comrie. I’m very fond of you and had you taken me into partnership —’

‘That business on the train,’ I said, cutting in before she could get into her stride. ‘Was it pre-arranged?’

‘No, it wasn’t, but the meeting at the airport hotel was. Todd had had no intention of walking The Way until I told him in the train corridor of our plans, yours and mine, to test ourselves and find out how well we could get along with one another under primitive conditions.’

‘Oh, come now! When we met him again at the Glasgow youth hostel, he was all equipped for a walking tour. He must have had it planned.’

‘Plenty of shops in Glasgow where he could have bought the gear he needed and he had all the time in the world to equip himself while you were dragging me around the main features of the city.’

I stuck to my guns and said, ‘You can’t just walk into a youth hostel and ask for accommodation.’

‘He had had a hosteller’s card for years. He wasn’t always as prosperous as he was when he married me.’

‘Suppose the hostel had been full?’

‘Well, it wasn’t, was it?’ she said impatiently. ‘I expect that, after he had shown up at the airport hotel and got his key, he went straight out again to wedge himself in at the hostel for the following night so as to coincide with our arrival there. Do you remember that I would not stay a second night at the hotel?’

‘So you slept with him at the airport hotel on the only night we were all three there!’

‘I did nothing of the kind, or at Inverbeg, either. Believe what you please, but that is the truth. I went to his room, not he to mine, and we had a business conversation, that’s all.’

‘Did you, so to speak, get anything fixed up about a divorce?’ I asked sardonically.

She replied in all seriousness, ‘Not at the time. Now tell me about Perth and the discussion in the warden’s lodgings.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were married to Todd?’

‘Do you want the truth or a nice coat of veneer?’

‘Come on! Out with it, please. I’ve a right to know.’

‘Oh, you men and your rights! I didn’t tell you at first because I wanted to marry you and I thought it might not come off if you knew too soon that I had to get a divorce before I could take you on a permanent basis, and I had no intention of getting run in for committing bigamy, I assure you. I have never lost touch with Barney, but meeting him like that on the train to Glasgow was entirely a surprise.’

‘Would you be mortally offended if I said I do not believe you?’

‘No, I shouldn’t be offended, but you must admit that coincidences do occur. You, of all people, have to accept that they do. What about your two dead bodies?’

‘I’ve thought a lot about them, naturally, and I don’t believe there was coincidence. I have come to the conclusion that the death of Carbridge was a copy-cat murder.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Ask yourself. Strangulation is a method of murdering people. Right?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Stabbing people in the back is another but a very dissimilar method.’

‘Agreed and I suppose I see what you mean.’

‘Yes. When the two methods are used on a second body within a matter of weeks, one tends to suppose either that the same murderer has repeated his method or that somebody else has copied it.’

‘You haven’t really proved your point, but I agree with you that it does provide food for thought. Would you have broken our engagement if you had known earlier about Barney and me?’

‘If I had known you were waiting for a divorce before I could marry you, I doubt whether we should ever have been engaged to one another at all.’

‘Well, that’s straight from the shoulder, anyway. Now will you tell me about Dame Beatrice and what you were told at the warden’s lodgings?’

I was at last prepared to change the subject.

‘Perth was our chief spokesman,’ I said. ‘That is why he was invited to the dinner, of course. He voiced the opinion that Carbridge was a fool.’

‘Well, that wasn’t a very original thought. Everybody knew Carbridge was a fool and a tiresomely boring fool at that. Even Tansy and Rhoda thought so.’

‘Perth gave me the impression that Carbridge was killed because he was a fool.’

‘I suppose there have been less valid reasons for killing people. One aspect of Carbridge’s foolishness was that one couldn’t trust him not to babble, but I suppose the same could be said of young James Minch. What else was there?’

‘Oh, that people bought souvenirs in Fort William.’

‘People do buy souvenirs when they’re on holiday, so there’s nothing surprising in that.’

‘Two of the souvenirs appear to have been of a lethal nature. They were daggers. One was bought by Tansy and the other by Patsy.’

‘Has anybody told that to Bingley?’

‘I have no idea. The trouble is that the people who bought them didn’t keep them. As far as we know, one was given to Todd and young Freddie Brown won the other in a raffle. It, too, was meant as a gift to Todd, but Patsy changed her mind when she heard about Tansy’s present. I don’t suppose Todd wanted to accept a gift from either of the women.’

‘Thank goodness for that! I shouldn’t like to think I was married to a murderer.’

I ignored what I thought was a flippant remark.

‘Is our engagement off for good?’ I asked.

‘You made that very clear a short while ago, didn’t you?’

‘It was you who broke things up in the first place.’

‘Oh, my dear Comrie, I’ve been doubtful about us for a long time. The tour only crystallised my ideas.’

‘We got on all right on the tour.’

‘When you were rabbit enough to accept my rulings? No intimacy for a fortnight? I want a man, not a mouse.’

‘Well, I’m damned!’

‘Yes, with faint praise for behaving like a gentleman when what I wanted was to see the wolf emerge from the sheep’s clothing. Do you remember the gypsy at Inverarnan?’

‘You wouldn’t tell me what she said.’

‘I couldn’t, at the time, because I had not finally made up my mind about you, but I can tell you now. She said that the man I was with was not the man for me. She was right, Comrie. I have no use for a man I can dominate.’

‘You might have seen a different side of me when we were married. You did not get your own way about joining my firm.’

‘Oh, that was Sandy, not you. I could have overruled you easily enough if there had been nobody else to contend with. Anyway, neither of you need have insulted me by taking that woman Elsa Moore into partnership.’

‘Let’s not argue about that. To make Elsa a partner was a necessity if we wanted to keep her.’

‘Only marriage to one of you would make absolutely sure of that.’

‘It’s up to Sandy, then,’ I said laughingly.

‘Are you going to tell Bingley about the souvenir daggers?’

‘Not I. It is none of my business. Dame Beatrice was present and I’m sure she’ll take the necessary steps.’

When I got back to my flat, I took out what had been the engagement ring, reflected somewhat ruefully on what I had had to pay for it, packed it up very carefully and wrote a covering note.

‘Please do me the honour of keeping our ring. I don’t want any other woman to wear it. It will fit your right hand as a dress ring and Todd won’t worry that I gave it to you. I have the feeling that, as soon as this dreadful business about poor Carbridge is cleared up, you will go back to your Barney. Anyway, the very best of luck to you both.’ I ended with a quotation from John Donne which seemed appropriate under the circumstances:

‘Now thou hast lov’d me one whole day,

Tomorrow when thou leav’st, what wilt thou say?

Wilt thou then ante-date some new-made vow?

Or say that now

We are not just those persons which we were?’

‘You seem remarkably bobbish,’ said Elsa when I got to the office next day. ‘Have we had a rebate from the taxman?’

‘Not from the taxman,’ I said, ‘but I suppose I’ve had a windfall of a sort.’

‘Are we to be treated to champagne?’

‘No, only to the funeral bakemeats.’

She looked at me with mock concern and said that she was very sorry to hear it, but she asked no questions and the office routine went on much as usual until lunchtime. Sandy asked Elsa to join us at our favourite pub, for we took only a snack and a beer at midday. She refused and he said to me when we had obtained refreshment and were seated at our little table, ‘What’s eating Elsa? When I asked her to join us, she said, “Three’s a crowd and Comrie has something to tell you.” Have you something to tell me?’

‘I could tell you that Perth knows of two daggers which were bought as souvenirs in Fort William. I think Dame Beatrice will hand this bit of information to the police and leave Bingley to sort it out. The two women who bought the daggers intended to give them as presents to Todd. The point of interest now is to discover who did what with them when the tour was over.’

‘You would need to know whether one of them was the weapon which somebody stuck in Carbridge’s back, wouldn’t you? That weapon, according to the papers, has never been found, has it?’

‘No. There was an ordinary kitchen knife in the body, but the forensic chaps know it was planted after the death wound was dealt and the murder weapon pulled out.’

‘Yes. Elsa wasn’t talking about the murder when she said that three is a crowd. Come clean, Comrie. She was hinting at something.’

‘Elsa is too clever by half when it comes to reading people’s minds.’

‘Granted. That’s why she is so valuable to us, so now out with it. What has happened to make her think you are so light-hearted that you prevent yourself only with the greatest difficulty from going about the office with a song on your lips? Has Hera thought better of it and asked for the ring again?’

‘Quite the opposite. We have agreed to part company for ever and ever, amen.’

‘Thank goodness for that! Now I can tell you something which I’ve been bottling up ever since I came back from my holiday.’

‘Sweden? I should hardly have thought of that as a holiday. Did you strike lucky with a sort of young Greta Garbo?’

‘Don’t hedge! You know the holiday I’m talking about.’

‘You got mugged, you ass. At least I avoided that when I was on The Way.’

‘Yes, I got mugged. Did it never strike you as strange that I made no attempt to go to the police?’

‘No, it didn’t strike me as strange at all. Neither did I go to the police when I found that body in those ruins on Rannoch Moor.’

‘Our motives were very different, Comrie.’

‘I shouldn’t think so. Scottish law is what is different. Like me, you did not want to get mixed up with it. We are busy men and to bring in the Scottish police would have meant sacrificing a lot of valuable time and, ten to one, they wouldn’t have tracked down your assailant.’

‘Oh, I would sacrifice any amount of time to bring even one mugger, let alone a rapist, to book,’ said Sandy. ‘It would be a public duty and I should not shirk it. No, it was not that. You see, I had a pretty good idea of the identity of my attacker.’

‘Some frenzied author whose book we have been unable to place?’ (I was playing for time, although I knew that this was only a question of procrastination. I should have to hear his unwelcome views in the end. I felt that already I knew what they were going to be.)

‘I can give you a name, but not that of a disgruntled author. The person who attempted to lay me out — no, perhaps, after all, I had better not say.’

‘You mean you think it was Hera. That is impossible. She was modelling in Paris all that week,’ I said.

‘But she wasn’t, Comrie. I found that out before I ever went up to Scotland.’

‘You old fox! Whatever made you do that?’ I felt I ought to be angry with him, but it would have been nothing more than a gesture. Hera meant nothing to me any more. There was no need for me to defend her.

‘Elsa put me up to it in a way. She asked me whether you and I realised how angry Hera was when we refused to take her into partnership. I said I had a pretty good idea and that I knew how much Hera hated being thwarted. Elsa said, “Sandy, she will stop at nothing. If you were not behind him, Comrie would give in to her. Do look out for yourself.” Well, you know Elsa. She never takes panic stations, so I thought it might be just as well to find out what Hera was planning while I was safely out of the way.’

‘You surely didn’t think I would agree in your absence to anything which so closely affected us both?’

‘No, of course I didn’t think that, but, well —’

We finished our snack of a meal in silence. I knew there was more that he could tell me, but the pub was closing for the afternoon and in any case I wanted time to think. As I had received the news of Hera’s marriage to Todd, so I received this fresh view of her conduct. That is to say, I was so far from being shattered by it that all I remember feeling was intense curiosity concerning the activities of a woman I had imagined I knew well.

I even found myself trying to work out, with cold logic and in an entirely unemotional way, whether it was she who had killed Carbridge. At any rate, my cogitations reached a satisfactory conclusion on that point. If the medical evidence concerning time of death was correct even within a couple of hours — and the doctors themselves, I thought, had given rigor mortis ample scope — there was no way on earth that Hera could have had the opportunity to put a knife in the man’s back on that Saturday afternoon. As for strangling him beforehand, she had neither the physical strength nor the complete lack of squeamishness to attempt such a method of inducing death. Neither did I believe that, had she indeed been the mugger, she would have intended any more harm to Sandy than to put him out of action for a week or so.

At half-past three Elsa herself came into my office with two cups of tea, her own and mine.

‘What?’ I said. ‘The queen of Sheba waiting upon King Solomon? Has the typing pool Hebe gone on strike?’

She set down the cups and took a seat.

‘I have just dismissed Luella Granville Waterman from these sacrosanct precincts,’ she said. ‘I was sure you had forgotten that she had an appointment with you at a quarter to three, so I didn’t send her in.’

We had a habit of referring to our more difficult and obstreperous authors by names culled from Psmith, Journalist. This helped to keep us sane and good-humoured in dealing with them, and again was Elsa’s idea.

‘Good Lord!’ I said. ‘I had forgotten all about her!’

‘A fact which, in your interests, I failed to mention to her.’

‘Did you contrive to soothe that savage breast?’

‘What else do you pay me for? I’m to let her know tomorrow the doctor’s report. I said he was still with you.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘You hover between life and death, dear. It was only by convincing her of that hardly self-evident fact that I could persuade her to leave. But that is not the reason for my being here and ministering unto you with my own delicate hands.’

‘Any excuse for a session with you is as good as any other. So to what am I indebted?‘ I asked.

‘Do you know what unpardonable liberties are?’

‘I ought to.’

‘Oh, you mean when you punched a man in the eye for attempting to put his arm round Hera. I heard about that. Well, I am about to tell you of an unpardonable liberty I took because, if I don’t confess it, Sandy will tell you that it was he who took it.’

‘He has told me already, I think. He checked on Hera’s visit to Paris.’

‘As a matter of fact, I did. She did not go to Paris. I know which agents she uses for her modelling jobs and it seemed to me very strange that she should be going off to Paris just when Sandy was going to be out of London and you and I were to be left holding the fort here.’

‘So she didn’t go to Paris. She went to Scotland and did her damnedest to disable Sandy. I find that difficult to believe, you know.’

‘Suit yourself.’ She drank her tea. I pushed my cup aside.

‘It’s utterly ridiculous,’ I said, ‘and neither of you has any proof at all.’

‘With Sandy out of the way, she could have worked on you to take her into the partnership.’

‘What about you? Wouldn’t you have had something to say?’

‘I wasn’t a partner at that time. I should have chucked my job, of course. I could never work with Hera.’

‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘strong-arm stuff is not her line. Whoever clocked Sandy in those woods or wherever it was made a boss shot. That’s the only reason I’m prepared to admit it could have been Hera. I still don’t believe it was.’

‘Typical of a woman who was not used to what you call strong-arm stuff. A real mugger would have made a much better job of it.’

‘What did Luella Granville Waterman want to see me about?’ (I was anxious to change the subject.)

‘That’s right. When defeated in argument, always take a different line. What she wants to change is her publisher.’

‘But because old Timothy once had an affair with her mother, Timothy’s sons have been publishing that bilge of hers for years.’

‘They haven’t lost on it, you know. She’s got her following.’

‘Heaven help them! What do I say to her tomorrow?’

‘She isn’t coming tomorrow. I have promised to let her know when you are out of danger. I have also told her we’ll try Peregrines if she likes, but that they start new authors at only seven and a half on the first five thousand. That ought to shake her. Oh, and by the way, I’m going to marry Sandy.’

‘Not me?’ I spoke jokingly, but the news took me completely by surprise.

‘No, dear, not you. My union doesn’t allow me to accept other women’s leavings,’ she said, getting up from her chair.

‘You devil!’ I said. I caught her and kissed her. ‘I hope you will be very, very happy. Good old Sandy! I had no idea!’

‘Well, you don’t have many ideas, do you, dear?’ she said. ‘You should have got a line on your Hera months ago.’