By common consent they met in the business room. Someone had arranged the chairs in a half circle around the heavy table, someone had filled the water carafe and placed it at Dalgleish's right hand.
Sitting alone at the table with Martin behind him, Dalgleish watched his suspects as they came in. Eleanor Maxie was the most composed. She took a chair facing the light and sat, detached and at peace, looking out at the lawns and the far trees.
It was as if her ordeal were already over.
Stephen Maxie strode in, threw Dalgleish a glance of mingled contempt and defiance, and sat down by his mother. Felix Hearne and Deborah Riscoe came in together but did not look at each other and sat apart.
Dalgleish felt that their relationship had subtly altered since the unsuccessful playacting of the night before. He wondered that Hearne should have lent himself to so palpable a deceit. Looking at the darkening bruise on the girl's neck, only half hidden by the knotted scarf, he wondered more at the force which Hearne had apparently found it necessary to use. Catherine Bowers came in last. She flushed as she saw their eyes on her and scurried to the only vacant chair like an anxious probationer arriving late for a lecture. As Dalgleish opened his dossier he heard the first slow notes of the church bell. The bells had been ringing when he first arrived at Martingale. They had sounded often as a background to his investigation, the mood music of murder. Now they tolled like a funeral bell and he wondered irrelevantly who in the village had died; someone for whom the bells were tolling as they had not tolled for Sally.
He looked up from his papers and began to talk in his calm deep voice.
"One -of the most unusual features of this crime was the contrast between the apparent premeditation and the actual execution. All the medical evidence pointed to a crime of impulse. This was not a slow strangulation. There were few of the classical signs of asphyxiation.
Considerable force had been used and there was a fracture of the superior cornu of the thyroid at its base. Nevertheless, death was due to vagal inhibition and was very sudden. It may well have taken place even if the strangler had used considerably less force. The picture on the face of it was of a single unpremeditated attack. This is borne out, too, by the use of hands. If a murderer intends to kill by strangulation, it is usually done with a cord, or with a scarf, or stocking, perhaps. This isn't invariable, but you can see the reason for it. Few people can be confident of their ability to kill with the bare hands. There is one person in this room who might feel that confidence, but I don't think he would have used this method. There are more effective ways of killing without a weapon and he would have known them."
Felix Hearne murmured under his breath, "But that was in another country and besides, the wench is dead." If Dalgleish heard the quotation or sensed the slight tensing of muscles as his audience controlled the impulse to look at Hearne he made no sign but went on quietly:
"In contrast to this apparent impulse in the deed we were faced with the evidence of the attempted and partial drugging of the victim which certainly indicated an intention to render the girl insensible. This could have been with the object of getting into her bedroom more easily and without waking her or of murdering her in her sleep. I dismissed the theory of two separate and different attempts on her life in the same night. No one in this room had any reason to like Sally and some of you may even have had reason to hate her. But it was straining incredulity too far seriously to consider that two people chose the same night to attempt murder."
"If we did hate her," said Deborah quietly, "we weren't the only ones."
"There was that Pullen boy," said Catherine. "You can't tell me that there was nothing between them." She saw Deborah's wince at the solecism and went on belligerently.
"And what about Miss Liddell? It's all over the village how Sally had found out something discreditable about her and was threatening to tell. If she could blackmail one she could blackmail another."
Stephen Maxie said wearily: ‹I can hardly see poor old Liddell climbing up stackpipes, or sneaking in at the back door, to face Sally alone. She wouldn't have the nerve. And you can't imagine her seriously setting out to kill Sally with her bare hands."
"She might," said Catherine, "if she knew that Sally was drugged."
"But she couldn't have known," Deborah pointed out. "And she couldn't have put the drug in Sally's beaker, either.
She and Eppy were leaving the house as Sally took the beaker up to bed. And it was my beaker she took, remember. Before that they were both in this room with Mummy."
"She took your beaker in the same way that she copied your dress," said Catherine. "But the Sommeil must have been put in it later. No. one could want to drug you."
"It couldn't have been put in later," said Deborah shortly. "What chance would there have been? I suppose one of us tiptoed in with Father's bottle of tablets, pretended to Sally that it was just a cozy social call, and then waited until she was bending over the baby and popped a tablet or two into her cocoa. It doesn't make sense."
Dalgleish's quiet voice broke in:
"None of it makes sense if the drugging and the strangling are connected. Yet, as I said, it was too great a coincidence that someone should have decided to strangle Sally Jupp on the same night as someone else set out to poison her. But there could be another explanation. What if this drugging were not an isolated incident?
Suppose someone had regularly been doping Sally's evening drink. Someone who knew that only Sally drank cocoa so that the Sommeil could safely be put into the cocoa tin. Someone who knew where the drug was kept and was experienced enough to use the right amount. Someone who wanted Sally discredited and out of the house, and could complain if she persistently overslept. Someone who had probably suffered more from Sally than the rest of the household realized and was glad of any action, however apparently ineffective, which would give her a sense of power over the girl. In a sense, you see, it was a substitute for murder."
"Martha," said Catherine involuntarily.
The Maxies sat silent. If they had known or guessed, none of them gave a sign.
Eleanor Maxie thought with compunction of the woman she had left weeping in the kitchen for her dead master. Martha had stood up at her entrance, her thick coarsegrained hands folded over her apron. She had made no sign when Mrs. Maxie told her. The tears were the more distressing for their silence. When she spoke her voice had been perfectly controlled, although the tears still ran down her face and dripped over the quiet hands. With no fuss and without explanation she had given in her notice. She would like to leave at the end of the week. There was a friend in Herefordshire to whom she could go for a time. Mrs. Maxie had neither argued nor persuaded. That was not her way. But, bending now a courteous and attentive gaze on Dalgleish, her honest mind explored the motives which had prompted her to exclude Martha from the death-bed and interested itself in this revelation that a loyalty which the family had all taken for granted had been more complicated, less acquiescent than any of them had suspected and had at last been strained too far.
Catherine was speaking. She was apparently without apprehension and was following Dalgleish's explanation as if he were expounding an interesting and atypical case history:
"Martha could always get Sommeil of course. The family were appallingly careless over Mr. Maxie's drugs. But why should she want to dope Sally on that particular night? After the scene at dinner Mrs. Maxie had more to worry about than Sally's late rising. It was too late to get rid of her that way. And why did Martha hide the bottle under Deborah's namepeg?
I always thought she was devoted to the family."
"So did the family," said Deborah dryly.
"She drugged the cocoa again that night because she didn't know about the supposed engagement," said Dalgleish.
"She wasn't in the dining-room at the time and no one told her. She went to Mr. Maxie's room and took the Sommeil and hid it in a panic because she thought she had killed Sally with the drug. If you think back you will realize that Mrs. Bultitaft was the only member of the household who didn't actually enter Sally's room. While the rest of you stood around the bed her one thought was to hide the bottle. It wasn't a reasonable thing to do but she was beyond behaving reasonably. She ran into the garden with it and hid it in the first soft earth she found.
It was meant, I think, to be a temporary hiding-place. That's why she hastily marked it with the nearest peg. It was by chance that it happened to be yours, Mrs. Riscoe. Then she went back to the kitchen, emptied the remaining cocoa powder and the lining-paper into the stove, washed out the tin and put it in the dustbin. She was the only person who had the opportunity to do these things. Then Mr. Hearne came into the kitchen to see if Mrs. Bultitaft was all right and to offer his help. This is what Mr. Hearne told me." Dalgleish turned a page of his dossier and read:
"She seemed stunned and kept repeating that Sally must have killed herself. I pointed out that that was anatomically impossible and that seemed to upset her more. She gave me one curious look… and burst into loud sobbing."
Dalgleish looked up at his audience. ‹I think we can take it," he said, "that Mrs. Bultitaft's emotion was the reaction of relief. I suspect, too, that before Miss Bowers arrived to feed the child Mr. Hearne had coached Mrs. Bultitaft for the inevitable police questioning. Mrs. Bultitaft tells me that she didn't admit to him or to any of you that she was responsible for drugging Sally. That may be true. It doesn't mean that Mr. Hearne didn't guess. He was quite ready, as he has been throughout the case, to leave well alone if it were likely to mislead the police. Towards the end of this investigation, with the faked attack on Mrs. Riscoe, he took a more positive line in attempting to deceive."
"That was my idea," said Deborah quietly. "I asked him. I made him do it."
Heane ignored the interruption and merely said: ‹I may have guessed about Martha. But she was perfectly truthful. She didn't tell me and I didn't ask. It wasn't my affair."
"No," said Dalgleish bitterly. "It wasn't your affair." His voice had lost its controlled neutrality and they looked up at him startled by his sudden vehemence.
"That has been your attitude throughout, hasn't it? Don't let's pry into each other's affairs. Don't let's be vulgarly interested. If we must have a murder let it be handled with taste. Even your efforts to hamper the police would have been more effective if you had bothered to find out a little more from each other. Mrs. Riscoe need not have persuaded Mr. Hearne to stage an attack on her while her brother was safely in London if that brother had confided in her that he had an alibi for the time of Sally Jupp's death. Derek Pullen need not have tortured himself wondering whether he ought to shield a murderer if Mr. Stephen Maxie had bothered to explain what he was doing with a ladder in the garden on Saturday night. We finally got the truth from Pullen, but it wasn't easy.
"Pullen wasn't interested in shielding me," said Stephen indifferently. "He just couldn't bear not to behave like a little gent! You should have heard him telephoning to explain just how oldschool-tie he was going to be. Your secret is safe with me, Maxie, but why not do the decent thing? Damn his insolence!"
"I suppose there's no objection to us knowing what you were doing with a ladder," inquired Deborah.
"Why should there be? I was bringing it back from outside Bocock's cottage. We used it during the afternoon to retrieve one of the balloons which got caught up in his elm. You know what Bocock is. He would have dragged it up first thing in the morning and it's too heavy for him. I suppose I was in the mood for a little masochism so I slung it over my shoulder.
I wasn't to know that I'd find Pullen lurking about in the old stables.
Apparently he made a habit of it. I wasn't to know, either, that Sally would be murdered and that Pullen would use his great mind to put two and two together and assume that I'd used the ladder to climb into her room and kill her. Why climb in anyway? I could have got through the door. And I wasn't even carrying the ladder from the right direction."
"He probably thought that you were trying to cast suspicion on an outside person," suggested Deborah. "Himself, for instance."
Felix's lazy voice broke in:
"It didn't occur to you, Maxie, that the boy might be in genuine distress and indecision?"
Stephen moved uneasily in his chair.
"I didn't lose any sleep over him. He had no right on our property and I told him so. I don't know how long he'd been waiting there but he must have watched me while I put down the ladder. Then he stepped out of the shadows like an avenging fury and accused me of deceiving Sally. He seems to have curious ideas about class distinctions. Anyone would think I had been exercising droit de seigneur. I told him to mind his own business, only less politely, and he lunged out at me. Pd had about as much as I could stand by then so I struck out and caught him on the eye, knocking off his spectacles. It was all pretty vulgar and stupid. We were too near the house to be safe so we daren't make much noise. We stood there hissing insults at each other in whispers and grovelling around in the dust to find his glasses. He's pretty blind without them so I thought I'd better see him as far as the corner of Nessingford Road. He took it that I was escorting him off the premises, but his pride would have been hurt either way so it didn't matter much. By the time we came to say good night he had obviously persuaded himself into what he imagined was an appropriate frame of mind. He even wanted to shake hands! I didn't know whether to burst out laughing or to knock him down again. I'm sorry, Deb, but he's that sort of person."
Eleanor Maxie spoke for the first time:
"It is a pity that you didn't tell us about this earlier. That poor boy should certainly have been spared a great deal of worry."
They seemed to have forgotten the presence of Dalgleish, but now he spoke:
"Mr. Maxie had a reason for his silence. He realized that it was important for you all that the police should think that a ladder had been available within easy reach of Sally's window. He knew the approximate time of death and he wasn't anxious for the police to know that the ladder hadn't been returned to the old stable before twenty past twelve. With luck we should assume that it had been there all night. For much the same reason he was vague about the time he left Bocock's cottage and lied about the time he got to bed. If Sally was killed at midnight by someone under this roof he was anxious that there should be no lack of suspects. He realized that most crimes are solved by a process of elimination. On the other hand I think he was telling the truth about the time he locked the south door. That was at about twelve thirtythree and we know now that at twelve thirty-three Sally Jupp had been dead for over half an hour. She died before Mr. Maxie left Bocock's cottage and about the same time as Mr. Wilson of the village store got out of bed to shut a creaking window and saw Derek Pullen walking quickly past, head bent, towards Martingale. Pullen was hoping, perhaps, to see Sally and to hear her explanation.
But he only reached the cover of the old stables before Mr. Maxie arrived, carrying the ladder. And by then Sally Jupp was dead.
"So it wasn't Pullen?" said Catherine.
"How could it have been," said
Stephen roughly. "He certainly hadn't killed her when he spoke to me and he was in no condition to turn back and kill her after I had left him. He could hardly see his way to his own front gate."
"And if Sally was dead before Stephen got back from visiting Bocock, it couldn't have been him either," pointed out TO Catherine. It was, Dalgleish noticed, the first time that any of them had specifically referred to the possible guilt or innocence of a member of the family.
Stephen Maxie said:
"How do you know that she was dead then? She was alive at ten-thirty p.m. and dead by the morning. That's as much as anyone knows."
"Not really," replied Dalgleish. "Two people can put the time of death closer than that. One is the murderer, but there is someone else who can help too."
There was a knock on the door and Martha stood there, capped and aproned, stolid as always. Her hair was strained back beneath her curiously high oldfashioned cap, her ankles bulged above the barred black shoes. If the Maxies were seeing in their mind's eye a desperate woman, clutching to herself that incriminating bottle and homing to her familiar kitchen like a frightened animal. She looked as she had always looked and if she had become a stranger she was less alien than they now were to each other. She gave no explanation of her presence except to announce "Mr. Proctor for the Inspector." Then she was gone again and the shadowy figure behind her stepped forward into the light. Proctor was too angry to be disconcerted at being shown thus summarily into a roomful of people obviously occupied with their private concerns. He seemed to notice no one but Dalgleish and advanced towards him belligerently.
"Look here, Inspector, I've got to have protection. It isn't good enough. I've been trying to get you at the station. They wouldn't tell me where you were, if you please, but I wasn't going to be fobbed off with that station sergeant. I thought I'd find you here. Something's got to be done about it."
Dalgleish considered him in silence for a minute.
"What isn't good enough, Mr. Proctor?" he inquired.
"That young fellow. Sally's husband.
He's been round home threatening me. He was drunk if you ask me. It's not my fault if she got herself murdered and I told him so. I won't have him upsetting my wife.
And there are the neighbours. You could hear him shouting his insults right down the avenue. My daughter was there, too.
It's not nice in front of a child. I'm innocent of this murder as you very well know, and I want protection."
He looked indeed as if he could have done with protection against more than James Ritchie. He was a scrawny redfaced little man with the look of an angry hen and a trick of jerking his head as he talked. He was neatly but cheaply dressed.
The grey raincoat was clean and the trilby hat, held stiffly in his gloved hands, had recently acquired a new band. Catherine said suddenly, "You were in this house on the day of the murder, weren't you? We saw you on the stairs. You must have been coming from Sally's room."
Stephen glanced at his mother and said:
"You'd better come in and join the prayer meeting, Mr. Proctor. Public confessions are said to be good for the soul. Actually you've timed your entrance rather well. You are, I assume, interested in hearing who killed your niece?"
"No!" said Hearne suddenly and violently. "Don't be a fool, Maxie. Keep him out of it."
His voice recalled Proctor to a sense of his surroundings. He focused his attention on Felix and seemed to dislike what he saw. "So I'm not to stay! Suppose I choose to stay. I've a right to know what's going on." He glared round at the watchful, unwelcoming faces. "You'd like it to be me, wouldn't you? All of you.
Don't think I don't know. You'd like to pin it on me all right if you could. I'd have been in queer street if she'd been poisoned or knocked on the head. Pity one of you couldn't keep your hands off her, wasn't it? But there's one thing you can't pin on me and that's a strangling.
And why? That's why!"
He gave a sudden convulsive movement, there was a click and a moment of sheer unbelievable comedy as his artificial right hand fell with a thud on the desk in front of Dalgleish. They gazed at it fascinated f0f\ while it lay like some obscene relic, its rubber fingers curved in impotent supplication. Breathing heavily, Proctor hitched a chair beneath himself with a deft twist of his left hand and sat there triumphantly, while Catherine turned her pale eyes on him reproachfully as if he were a difficult patient who had behaved with more than customary petulance.
Dalgleish picked up the hand.
"We knew about this, of course, although I'm glad to say that my own attention was first brought to it less spectacularly. Mr. Proctor lost his right hand in a bombing incident. This ingenious substitute is made of moulded linen and glue. It's light and strong and has three articulated fingers with knuckle joints like a real hand. By flexing his left shoulder and slightly moving his arm away from his body, the wearer can tighten a control cord which runs from the shoulder to the thumb. This opens the thumb against the pressure of a spring. Once the tension on the shoulder is released the spring automatically closes the thumb against the firm fixed index finger. It is, as you can see, a clever contraption, and Mr. Proctor can do a great deal with it.
He can get through his work, ride a bicycle and present an almost normal appearance to the world. But there's one thing he can't do, and that is to kill by manual strangulation.' ' "He could be left-handed."
"He could be, Miss Bowers, but he isn't, and the evidence shows that, Sally was killed by a strong righthanded grip." He turned the hand over and pushed it across the table to Proctor.
"This of course, was the hand which a certain small boy saw opening the trapdoor of Bocock's stables. There could only be one person connected with this case who would be wearing leather gloves on a hot summer day and at a garden fete.
This was one clue to his identity and there were others. Miss Bowers is quite right.
Mr. Proctor was in Martingale that afternoon."
"What if I was? Sally asked me to come. She was my niece, wasn't she?"
"Oh, come now, Proctor," said Felix. "You aren't going to tell us that this zoi was a dutiful social call, that you were just dropping in to inquire after the baby's health! How much was she asking?"
"Thirty pounds," said Proctor. "Thirty pounds she was after and much good they would do her now."
"And being in need of thirty pounds," went on Felix remorselessly, "she naturally turned to her next of kin who might be expected to help. It's a touching story."
Before Proctor could answer Dalgleish broke in:
"She was asking for thirty pounds because she wanted to have some money ready for the return of her husband. It had been arranged that she should go on working and save what she could. Sally meant to keep that bargain to the last pound, baby or no baby. She intended to get this money from her uncle by a not uncommon method. She told him that she was shortly to get married, she didn't say to whom, and that she and her husband would make his treatment of her public unless he bought her silence. She threatened to expose him to his employers and the respectable neighbours of Canningbury. She talked about being done out of her rights. On the other hand, if he chose to pay up, neither she nor her husband would ever see or worry the Proctors again."
"But that was blackmail," cried Catherine. "He should have told her to go ahead and say what she liked. No one would have believed her. She wouldn't have got a penny out of me!" Proctor sat silent. The others seemed to have forgotten his presence. Dalgleish continued. ‹I think Mr. Proctor would have been very willing to take your advice, Miss Bowers, if his niece hadn't made use of one particular phrase. She talked about being done out of her rights. She probably meant no more than that a difference was made in the treatment of herself and her cousin, although Mrs. Proctor would deny that this was so. She may have known more than we realize. But for reasons which we needn't discuss here that phrase struck uncomfortably on her uncle's ear. His reaction must have been interesting and Sally was intelligent enough to take the clue. Mr. Proctor is no actor. He tried to find out how much his niece knew and the more he probed the more he gave away. By the time they parted Sally knew that those thirty pounds, and perhaps more, were well within her grasp."
Proctor's grating voice broke in: ‹I said I'd want a receipt from her, mind you. I knew what she was up to. I said I was willing to help her this once as she was getting married and there was bound to be expense. But that would be the end. If she tried it on again I'd go to the police, and I'd have the receipt to prove it."
"She wouldn't have tried it on again," said Deborah quietly. The men's eyes swung round to her. "Not Sally. She was only playing with you, pulling the strings for the fun of watching you dance. If she could get thirty pounds as well as her fun so much the better, but the real attraction was seeing you sweat. But she wouldn't have bothered to go on with it.
The entertainment palled after a time. Sally liked to eat her victims fresh."
"Oh no, no." Eleanor Maxie opened her hands in a little gesture of protest.
"She wasn't really like that. We never really knew her." Proctor ignored her and suddenly and surprisingly smiled across at Deborah as if accepting an ally.
'That's true enough. You knew what she was like. I was on a string all right.
She had it all worked out. I was to get the thirty pounds that night and bring it to her.
She made me follow her into the house and up to her room. That was bad enough, the sneaking in and out. That's when I met you on the stairs. She showed me the back door and said that she would open it for me at midnight. I was to stay in the trees at the back of the lawn until she switched her bedroom light on and off. That was to be the signal."
Felix gave a shout of laughter.
"Poor Sally. What an exhibitionist! She had to have drama if it killed her."
"In the end it did," said Dalgleish. "If she hadn't played with people Sally would be alive today."
"She was in a funny mood that day," remembered Deborah. "There was a kind of madness about her. I don't only mean copying my dress or pretending to accept Stephen. She was as full of mischief as a child. I suppose it could have been her kind of happiness."
"She went to bed happy," said Stephen.
And suddenly they were all quiet, remembering. Somewhere a clock struck sweetly and clearly but there was no other sound except the thin rasp of paper as Dalgleish turned over a page. Outside, rising into coolness and silence, was the staircase up which Sally had carried that last bedtime drink. As they listened it was almost possible to imagine the sound of a soft footfall, the brush of wool against the stairs, the echo of a laugh. Outside in the darkness the edge of the lawn was a faint blur and the desk light reflected above it like a row of Chinese lanterns hung in the scented night. Was there the suspicion of a white dress floating between them, a swirl of hair? Somewhere above them was the nursery, empty now, white and aseptic as a morgue. Could any of them face that staircase and open that nursery door without the fear that the bed might not be empty? Deborah shivered and spoke for them all. "Please," she said. "Please tell us what happened!"
Dalgleish lifted his eyes and looked at her. Then the deep level voice went on.
"I think the killer went to Miss Jupp's room driven by an uncontrollable impulse to find out exactly what the girl felt, what she intended, the extent of the danger from her. Perhaps there was some idea of pleading with her - although I don't think that is very likely. It is more probable that the intention was to try to arrange some kind of a bargain. The visitor went to Sally's room and either walked in or knocked and was let in. It was a person, you see, from whom nothing was feared.
Sally would be undressed and in bed. She must have been sleepy but she had only taken a little of the cocoa and was not drugged, only too tired to be bothered with finesse or rational argument. She didn't trouble to get up from her bed nor to put on her dressing-gown. You may think, in view of what we have learned about her character, that she would have done so had her visitor been a man. But that is hardly the kind of evidence which is worth very much.
"We don't know yet what happened between Sally and her visitor. We only know that, when that visitor left and closed the door, Sally was dead. If we assume that this was an unpremeditated killing we can make a guess at what happened. We know now that Sally was married, was in love with her husband, was waiting for him to come to fetch her, was even expecting him daily. We can guess from her attitude to Derek Pullen and from the careful way in which she kept her secret, that she enjoyed the feeling of power that this hidden knowledge gave her. Pullen has said, 'She liked things to be secret.' A woman I interviewed for whom Sally had worked said,*She was a secretive little thing. She was with me for three years and I knew no more about her at the end of them than when she first came.' Sally Jupp kept the news of her marriage secret under very difficult circumstances. Her behavior wasn't reasonable. Her husband was overseas and doing well. The firm would hardly have sent him home. The firm need not even have known. If Sally had told the truth someone could have been found to help her. I think she kept her secret partly because she wanted to prove her loyalty and trustworthiness and partly because she was the kind of person to whom secrecy made its appeal. It gave her an opportunity of hurting her uncle and aunt for whom she had no affection, and it provided her with considerable entertainment. It also gave her a free home for seven months.
Her husband has told me,* Sally always did say that the unmarried mothers had the best of it.' I don't suppose anyone here agrees with that, but Sally Ritchie obviously believed that we live in a society which salves its conscience more by helping the interestingly unfortunate than the dull deserving and was in the position to put her theory to the test. I think she enjoyed herself at St. Mary's Refuge. I think she sustained herself by the knowledge that she was different from the others. I imagine that she relished in advance the look on Miss Liddell's face when she knew the truth and the fun that she would have mimicking the inmates of St. Mary's to her husband. You know the sort of thing. 'Let Sal tell you about the time she was an unmarried mother.' I think, too, that she enjoyed the feeling of power which her hidden knowledge gave her. She enjoyed watching the consternation of the Maxies at a danger which only she knew had no reality."
Deborah moved uncomfortably in her chair.
"You seem to know a great deal about her. If she knew the engagement had no reality why did she consent to it. She would have saved everyone a great deal of trouble by telling Stephen the truth."
Dalgleish looked across at her.
"She would have saved her own life.
But was it in character for her to tell?
There was not much longer to wait. Her husband would be flying home, perhaps in the next day or two. Dr. Maxie's proposal was merely one additional complication, adding its own stimulus of excitement and amusement to the total situation.
Remember, she never overtly accepted the proposal. No, I would have expected her to act as she did. She obviously disliked Mrs.
Riscoe and was becoming more audacious in showing it as the time for her husband's return drew nearer. This proposal offered new chances of private amusement. I think that, when her visitor came to her, she was lying back on her bed in sleepy, happy, amused confidence, feeling perhaps, that she held the Maxie family, the whole situation, the world itself in the hollow of her hand. Not one of the dozens of people I have interviewed have described her as kind. I don't think she was kind to her visitor. She underestimated the force of the anger and desperation which were confronting her. Perhaps she laughed. And when she did that the strong fingers closed around her throat."
There was a silence. Felix Hearne broke in by saying roughly:
"You've mistaken your profession, Inspector. That dramatic histrionic was worthy of a larger audience."
"Don't be a fool, Hearne." Stephen Maxie lifted a face drained of color and etched with weariness. "Can't you see that he's satisfied enough with the reactions we're providing." He turned to Dalgleish with a sudden spurt of anger. "Whose hands?" he demanded. "Why go on with this farce? Whose hands?"
Dalgleish ignored him.
"Our killer goes to the door and turns out the light. This is to be the moment of escape. And then, perhaps, there comes a doubt. It may be the need to make certain just once more that Sally Jupp is dead. It may be that the child turns in his sleep and there is the natural and human wish not to leave him crying and alone with his dead mother. It may be the more selfish concern that his cries will awaken the household before the killer can make good his escape.
Whatever the reason, the light is momentarily switched on again. On and then off. Waiting at the edge of the lawn and in the shelter of the trees Sydney Proctor sees what he thinks is the awaited signal. He has no watch. He must depend on the flashing light. He makes his way along the edge of the lawn towards the back door still keeping in the shadow of the trees and the shrubs."
As Dalgleish paused his audience looked towards Proctor. He was more selfpossessed now and seemed, indeed, to have lost both his earlier nervousness and his defensive truculence. He took up the story simply and calmly as if the recollection of that dreadful night and the intense and concentrated interest of his audience had released him from self-consciousness and guilt. Now that he was beyond noisy selfjustification they found him easier to tolerate. Like them he had been in some sense a victim of Sally. Listening, they shared the desperation and fear which had driven him forward to her door.
"I thought I must have missed the first flash. She'd said two flashes so I waited for a bit and watched. Then I thought I'd better take a chance. There wasn't any sense in messing about. I'd come so far and I might as well go on with it. She'd see that I did, anyway. It hadn't been easy to raise the thirty quid. I'd got what I could from my Post Office account, but that was only ten. I hadn't much at home, only what I'd put by for the installments on the telly. I took that and pawned my watch at a shop in Canningbury. The chap could see I was pretty desperate I suppose, and didn't give me what it was worth. Still, I had enough to keep her quiet. I'd written out a receipt for her to sign, too. I wasn't taking any chances with her after that scene in the stables. I thought I'd just hand over the cash, make her sign the receipt and get off home. If she tried any more funny business I could threaten to charge her with blackmail. The receipt would be useful if it came to that, but I didn't think it would.
She just wanted the money and afterwards she'd leave me in peace. Well, there wouldn't be much sense in trying it on again, would there? I can't raise money to order and Sally knew that well enough. She was no fool was our Sally.
"The heavy outside door was open just as she said. I had my torch and it was easy to find the stairs and get up to her room.
She'd shown me the way that afternoon. It was a piece of cake. The house was dead quiet. You'd have thought it was empty.
Sally's door was shut and there was no light showing through the keyhole or under the door. That struck me as queer. I wondered whether to knock, but I wasn't keen on making a sound. The whole place was so quiet it was eerie. In the end I opened the door and called to her quietly.
She didn't answer. I shone the light of the torch across the room and on to the bed.
She was lying there. At first I thought she was asleep and - well, it was like a reprieve. I wondered whether I ought to leave the cash on her pillow and then I thought, 'Why the hell should I?' She had asked me to come. It was up to her to stay awake. Besides, I wanted to get out of the house. I don't know when I first realized that she wasn't asleep. I went up to the bed. It was then that I knew that she was dead. Funny how you can't mistake it. I knew that she wasn't ill or unconscious.
Sally was dead. One eye was closed but the other was half open. It seemed to be looking at me, so I put out my left hand and drew down the lid. I don't know what made me touch her. Damn silly thing to do really. It was just that I had to close that staring eye. The sheet was folded down under her chin just as if someone had made her comfortable. I drew it down and then I saw the bruise on her neck. Until then I don't think the word 'murder' had come into my mind. When it did, well I suppose I lost my head. I ought to have known that it was a right-handed job and that no one could suspect me, but you don't think like that when you're frightened. I still held my torch and I was shaking so that it made little circles of light round her head. I couldn't hold it steady. I was trying to think straight, wondering what to do. Then it came over me that she was dead and I was in her room and with the money on me. You could see what people would think. I knew I'd got to get away. I don't remember reaching the door but I was too late. I could hear footsteps coming along the passage. They were only faint. I suppose I wouldn't have heard them in the ordinary way. But I was keyed up so that I could hear my own heart beating. In a second I drew the bolt across the door and leaned back against it, holding my breath. It was a woman on the other side of the door. She knocked very quietly and called out, 'Sally. Are you asleep. Sally?' She called quite softly.
I don't see how she expected to be heard.
Perhaps she didn't really care. I've thought about it a good deal since but, at the time, I didn't wait to see what she would do. She might have knocked louder and set the kid bawling or she might have realized that something was wrong and fetched the family. I had to get away. Luckily I keep myself fit and heights don't worry me. Not that there was much in it. I got out of the side window, the one sheltered by the trees, and the stack-pipe was handy enough. I couldn't hurt my hands and my soft cycling shoes gave me a grip. I fell the last few feet and turned my ankle, but I didn't feel it at the time. I ran into the shelter of the trees before I looked back.
Sally's room was still in darkness and I began to feel safe.
"I'd hidden my cycle in the hedge at the side of the lane and I was glad to see it again, I can tell you. It wasn't until I got on that I realized about my foot. I couldn't grasp the pedal with it. Still, I got on all right. I was beginning to think out a plan, too. I had to have an alibi. When I got to Finchworthy I staged my accident. It wasn't difficult. It's a quiet road and a high wall runs on the left of it. I drove the cycle hard against it until the front wheel buckled. Then I slashed the front tyre with my pocket-knife. I didn't need to worry about myself. I looked the part all right.
My ankle was swelling by now and I felt sick. It must have started raining some time in the night because I was wet and cold, although I don't remember the rain. It took some doing to drag myself and the bike into Canningbury and it was well after one before I got home. I had to be pretty quiet so I left the bike in the front garden and let myself in. It was important not to wake Mrs. Proctor before I had a chance to alter the two downstairs clocks. We haven't a clock or watch in the bedroom. I used to wind the gold one every night and keep it by the bed. If I could only get in without waking the wife I reckoned I should be all right. I thought I was going to be unlucky. She must have been awake and listening for the door because she came to the top of the stairs and called out. I'd had about as much as I could take by then, so I shouted at her to get back to bed and I'd be up. She did what she was told - she usually does - but I knew she'd be down before long. Still, it gave me my chance. By the time she'd got on her dressing-gown and come pussy-footing down I'd got the clocks put back to midnight. She fussed about getting me a cup of tea. I was in a sweat to get her back into bed before any of the town clocks struck two. It was the sort of thing she might notice. Anyway, I did get her back upstairs eventually and she went off to sleep quickly enough. It was different with me, I can tell you. My God, I never want to live through another night like that! You can say what you like about us and the way we treated Sally. She didn't do so badly out of us to my way of thinking. But if she felt hard done by, well, the little bitch got her own back that night."
He spat the shocking word at them and then, in the silence, muttered something which might have been an apology and covered his face with that grotesque right hand. No one spoke for a moment and then Catherine said:
"You didn't come to the inquest, did you? We wondered about that at the time, but there was some talk that you were ill.
Was that because you were afraid of being recognized? But you must have known by then how Sally died and that no one could possibly suspect you."
Under the stress of emotion Proctor had told his story with unselfconscious fluency.
Now the need for self-justification reasserted itself and brought a return of his former truculence.
"Why should I go? I wasn't in a fit state for it anyway. I knew how she had died all right. The police told us that when they sent someone round on Sunday morning.
He didn't take long before he was asking when I'd last seen her, but I had my story ready. I suppose you all think that I ought to have told them what I knew. Well, I didn't! Sally had caused enough trouble while she was alive and she wasn't going to add to it now she was dead if I could help it. I didn't see why my private affairs should have to come out in court. It isn't easy to explain these things. People might get the wrong ideas."
"Worse still, they might understand only too well," said Felix dryly.
Proctor's thin face flushed. Getting to his feet he deliberately turned his back on Felix and spoke to Eleanor Maxie.
"If you'll excuse me now I'll be on my way. I didn't mean to intrude. It was just that I had to see the inspector. I'm sure I hope this all turns out satisfactorily, but you don't want me here."
"He talks as if we're about to give birth," thought Stephen. The wish to assert an independence of Dalgleish and to show that at least one of the family still considered himself a free agent made him ask:
"Can I drive you home? The last bus went at eight."
Proctor made a gesture of refusal but did not look at him.
"No. No thank you. I have my bicycle outside. They've made a good job of it, all things considered. Please don't bother to see me out."
He stood there, his gloved hands hanging loosely, an unlikeable and pathetic figure but not without dignity.
"At least," thought Felix. "He has the
Alt grace to know when he's not wanted."
Suddenly, and with a stiff little gesture, Proctor held out his left hand to Eleanor Maxie and she took it.
Stephen went with him to the door.
While he was away no one spoke. Felix felt the heightening of tension and his nostrils twitched at the remembered smell of fear.
They must know now. They had been told everything except the actual name. But how far were they letting themselves recognize the truth? From under lowered eyelids he watched them. Deborah was curiously tranquil as if the end of lying and deceit had brought their own peace. He did not believe that Deborah knew what was coming. Eleanor Maxie's face was grey, but the folded hands lay relaxed in her lap. He could almost believe that her thoughts were elsewhere. Catherine Bowers sat stiffly, her lips pursed as if in disapproval. Earlier Felix had thought that she was enjoying herself. Now he was not so sure. He noticed with sardonic satisfaction the clenching of her hands, the nervous twitching at the corner of her eyes. Suddenly Stephen was back with them and Felix spoke.
"Hasn't this gone on long enough?
We've heard the evidence. That back door was opened until Maxie locked it at twelve-thirty-three a.m. Some time before then someone got in and killed Sally. The police haven't found out who and they aren't likely to find out. It could have been anyone. I suggest that we none of us say anything more." He looked round at them.
The warning was unmistakable. Dalgleish said mildly:
"'You are suggesting that a perfect stranger entered the house, made no attempt to steal, went unerringly to Miss Jupp's room and strangled her while, with no attempt of raising the alarm, she lay back obligingly on the bed?"
"She could have invited him to come, whoever he was," said Catherine.
Dalgleish turned to her.
"But she was expecting Proctor. We can't imagine that she wanted to make a party of that little transaction. And whom would she invite? We have checked on everyone who knew her."
Tor God's sake stop discussing it," cried Felix. "Can't you see that's what he wants you to do! There's no proof!"
"Isn't there?" said Dalgleish softly. "I wonder."
"We know who didn't do it, anyway," said Catherine. "It wasn't Stephen or Derek Pullen because they've got alibis and it wasn't Mr. Proctor because of his hand. Sally couldn't have been killed by her uncle."
"No," said Dalgleish. "Nor by Martha
Bultitaft who didn't know how the girl had died until Mr. Hearne told her. Nor by you, Miss Bowers, who knocked at her door and tried to speak to her after she was dead. Nor by Mrs. Riscoe, whose fingernails would inevitably have left scratches.
No one can grow nails that length overnight and the murderer didn't wear gloves. Nor by Mr. Hearne, whatever he might like me to think. Mr. Hearne didn't know which room Sally slept in. He had to ask Mr. Maxie where he should carry the ladder."
"Only a fool would have shown that he knew. I could have pretended."
"Only you weren't pretending," said
Stephen roughly. "You can keep your bloody patronage to yourself. You were the last person to want Sally dead. Once Sally was installed here Deborah might have married you. Believe me, you wouldn't have got her on any other terms. She'll never marry you now and you know it."
Eleanor Maxie looked up and said quietly:
"I went to her room to talk to her. It seemed that the marriage might not be so bad a thing if she were really fond of my son. I wanted to find out what she felt. I was tired and I should have waited till the morning. She was lying there on her bed and singing to herself. It would have been all right if she hadn't done two things. She laughed at me. And she told me, Stephen, that she was going to have your child. It was so very quick. One second she was alive and laughing. The next she was a dead thing in my hands."
"Then it was you!" said Catherine in a whisper. "It was you."
"Of course," said Eleanor Maxie gently.
"Think it out for yourself. Who else could it have been?"
The Maxies thought going to prison must be rather like going to hospital, except that it was even more involuntary. Both were abnormal and rather frightening experiences to which the victim reacted with a clinical detachment and the onlookers with a determined cheerfulness which was intended to create confidence without giving the suspicion of callousness.
Eleanor Maxie, accompanied by a calm and tactful woman police sergeant, went to enjoy the comfort of a last bath in her own house. She had insisted on this and, as with the final preparations for hospital, no one liked to point out that bathing was the first procedure inflicted on admission. Or was there, perhaps, a difference between prisoners in custody and those convicted?
Felix might have known but no one cared to ask. The police car driver waited in the background, watchful and unobtrusive as an ambulance attendant. There were the last instructions, the messages for friends, the telephone calls and the hurried packing.
Mr. Hinks arrived from the vicarage, breathless and unsurprised, steeling himself to give advice and comfort but looking so desperately in need of them himself that Felix took him firmly by the arm and walked with him back to the vicarage.
From a window Deborah watched them talking together as they passed out of sight and wondered briefly what they were saying. As she was mounting the stairs to her mother Dalgleish was telephoning from the hall. Their eyes met and held. For a second she thought he was going to speak, but his head bent again to the receiver and she passed on her way, recognizing suddenly and without surprise that, had things been different, here was the man to whom she would have instinctively turned for reassurance and advice.
Stephen, left alone, recognized his misery for what it was, an overmastering pain which had nothing in common with the dissatisfaction and ennui which he had previously thought of as unhappiness. He had taken two drinks but realized in time that drinking wasn't helping. What he needed was someone to minister to his misery and assure him of its essential unfairness. He went in search of Catherine.
He found her kneeling before a small case in his mother's room wrapping jars and bottles in tissue paper. When she looked up at him he saw that she had been crying. He was shocked and irritated.
There was no room in the house for a lesser grief. Catherine had never mastered the art of crying appealingly. Perhaps that was one reason why she had learnt early to be stoical in grief as in other things.
Stephen decided to ignore this intrusion on his own misery.
"Cathy," he said. "Why on earth did she confess? Hearne was perfectly right.
They would never have proved it if she'd only kept quiet."
He had only called her Cathy once before and then, too he had wanted something from her. Even in the moment of physical love it had struck her as an affectation. She looked up at him. "You don't know her every well, do you? She was only waiting for your father to die before she confessed. She didn't want to leave him and she promised him that he wouldn't be sent away. That was the only reason why she kept silent. She told Mr. Hinks about Sally when she walked back to the vicarage with him earlier tonight."
"But she sat so calmly through all the disclosures!"
"I suppose she wanted to know just what happened. None of you told her anything. I think she worried most thinking that it was you who had visited Sally and locked the door."
"I know. She tried to ask me. I thought she was asking me if I was the murderer. They'll have to reduce the charge. It wasn't premeditated after all. Why doesn't Jephson hurry up and come. We've telephoned for him."
Catherine was sorting a few books she had taken from the bedside table, considering whether to pack them. Stephen went on:
"They'll send her to prison either way. Mother in prison! Cathy, I don't think I can bear it!"
And Catherine, who had grown to like and respect Eleanor Maxie very much, A 1 f\ was not sure that she could bear it either and lost her patience.
"You can't bear it! I like that! You don't have to bear it. She does. And it's you that put her there, remember."
Catherine, once started, found it hard to stop and her irritation found a more personal expression.
"And there's another thing, Stephen. I don't know what you feel about us… about me if you like. I don't want to talk about this again so I'm just saying now that it's all over. Oh, for heaven's sake get your feet out of that tissue paper! I'm trying to pack."
She was crying in earnest now like an animal or a child. The words were thickened so that he could only just hear them.
"I was in love with you, but not any more. I don't know what you expect now, but it doesn't matter. It's all off."
And Stephen, who had never for one moment intended that it should be on, looked down on the blotched face, the swollen protuberant eyes and felt, irrationally, a spasm of chagrin and regret.
One month after Eleanor Maxie had been found guilty on the lesser charge of manslaughter Dalgleish, on one of his rare off-duty days, drove through Chadfleet on his way back to London from the Essex estuary where he had laid up his 30foot sailing-boat. It was not much out of his way, but he did not choose to analyse too precisely the motives which had prompted him to these three additional miles of winding, tree-shadowed roads. He passed the Pullens" cottage. There was a light in the front room and the plaster Alsatian dog stood darkly outlined against the curtains.
And now came St. Mary's Refuge. The house looked empty with only a lone pram at the front door steps to hint at the life inside. The village itself was deserted, somnolent in its tea-time five o'clock calm.
As he was passing Wilson's General Stores the front door blinds were being drawn and the last customer was leaving. It was Deborah Riscoe. There was a heavylooking shopping-basket on her arm and he stopped the car instinctively. There was no time for indecision or awkwardness and he had taken the basket from her and she had slid into the seat beside him before it had struck him to wonder at his boldness or her compliance. Stealing a quick glance at her calm uplifted profile, He saw that the look of strain had gone. She had lost none of her beauty but there was a serenity about her which reminded him of her mother.
As the car turned into the drive of Martingale he hesitated but she gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head and he drove on. The beeches were golden now but the twilight was draining them of color. The first fallen leaves crackled into dust beneath the tyres. The house came into view as he had first seen it, but greyer now and slightly sinister in the fading light.
In the hall Deborah slipped off her leather jacket and unwound her scarf.
"Thank you. I was glad of that. Stephen has the car in town this week and Wilson's can only deliver on Wednesdays. I'm always running out of things I've forgotten. Would you like a drink, or tea or something?" She gave him a quick mocking smile. "You aren't on duty now.
Or are you?"
"No," he said. "I'm not on duty now.
Just indulging myself."
She did not ask for an explanation and he followed her into the drawing-room. It was dustier than he remembered, and somehow more bare but his trained eye saw that there was no real change, only the naked look of a room from which the small personal change of living has been tidied away.
As if she guessed what he was thinking, she said:
"There's only me here most of the time.
Martha has left and I've replaced her by a couple of dailies from the new town. At least, they call themselves dailies but I can never be sure they'll turn up. It adds spice to our relationship. Stephen is home most week-ends, of course, and that helps. There will be plenty of time for a good cleanup before mummy comes home. It's mostly paper work at present, Daddy's will and death duties and lawyers fussing."
"Ought you to be here alone?" asked Dalgleish.
"Oh, I don't mind. One of the family has to stay. Sir Reynold did offer me one of his dogs but they're a little too bitehappy for me. Besides, they aren't trained to exorcise ghosts."
Dalgleish took the drink she handed him and asked after Catherine Bowers. She seemed the safest person to mention. He had little interest in Stephen Maxie and too much interest in Felix Hearne. To ask after the child was to evoke that golden-haired wraith whose shadow was already between them.
"I see Catherine sometimes. Jimmy is still at St. Mary's for the present and Catherine comes down with his father quite often to take him out. She and James Ritchie will get married, I think."
"That's rather sudden, isn't it?"
She laughed.
"Oh, I don't think Ritchie knows it yet.
It will be rather a good thing really. She loves the child, really cares about him, and I think Ritchie will be lucky. I don't think there's anyone else to tell you about.
Mummy's very well really and not too unhappy. Felix Hearne is in Canada. My brother is at hospital most of the time and terribly busy. Everyone's been very kind though, he says."
"They would be," thought Dalgleish.
His mother was serving her sentence and his sister was coping unaided with death duties, housework and the hostility or -and she would hate this worse - the sympathy of the village. But Stephen Maxie was back at hospital with everyone being very kind. Something of what he felt must have shown in his face for she said quickly:
"I'm glad he's busy. It was worse for him than for me."
They sat together in silence for a little time. Despite their apparent easy companionship Dalgleish was morbidly sensitive to every word. He longed to say something of comfort or reassurance but rejected each of the half formulated sentences before they reached his lips. "I'm sorry I had to do it." Only he wasn't sorry and she was intelligent and honest enough to know it. He had never yet apologized for his job and wouldn't insult her by pretending to now. ‹I know you must dislike me for what I had to do."
Mawkish, sentimental, insincere and with an arrogant presumption that she could feel about him one way or the other. They walked to the door in silence and she stood to watch him out of sight. As he turned his head and saw the lonely figure, outlined momentarily against the light from the hall, he knew with sudden and heart-lifting certainty that they would meet again. And when that happened the right words would be found.