Wicked Uncle

Chapter XXI

The Chief Inspector continued to interview Mr. Porlock’s guests. He may have got tired of asking the same questions over and over again, but his manner did not vary. Some of the interviews were very short. Some may have seemed intolerably long to the persons concerned.

Mr. Masterman came out of his interview with something of the complexion already noticed by Ernest Pearson. On his way to his own room a bedroom door opened and his sister called to him.

“Geoffrey-I want to speak to you.”

He said, “Then you can’t,” and went on.

But before he could reach his room, let alone slam himself in, she was beside him, a hand on his arm. He could feel the tense, bony strength of it through the stuff of his sleeve. She said in an almost soundless whisper,

“If I can’t speak to you, I’ll go down and speak to them. Would you rather I did that?”

He turned and looked at her. Women are capable of any folly if you push them too far. He judged her capable of this. He said with cold self-command,

“I’m not talking over anything in this house. If you’d like to put on your coat and hat, we can go out.”

She left him without a word, and without a word came back again, the old fur coat caught round her, the shabby black felt hat pulled on. They went downstairs together, out by the front door, and through the garden to the wide green expanse of the croquet lawn. The surface was not what it had been in the days before the war when the Miss Pomeroys had given croquet parties to their elderly friends, but it had one inalienable merit, if you kept to the middle of the grass, no one could possibly hear what you said, since no one could approach within earshot without being seen.

It was not until they had reached this vantage-point that Masterman broke the silence.

“What did you want to say to me? I think we had better walk up and down. It will look more natural.”

She was clutching her coat in the same nervous grip with which she had held his arm. Without looking at him she said,

“What did those men say to you? What did you tell them? What did they want to know?”

He gave a slight shrug.

“The usual things-how long I’d known Porlock-whether this was our first visit-what sort of terms we were on. Then all about yesterday evening-the conversation at dinner-”

“What part of it?”

He threw her a sideways glance.

“If you’re too sharp you’ll cut yourself. If you want to know, he was asking about the luminous paint. Porlock had been marked with it. You must have seen the white smudge round the dagger. The police naturally want to know who put it there, and the first step is to find out who could have put it there. Unfortunately, anyone could have done it-except perhaps Tote -I don’t know about him. It’s funny no one can say for certain whether Tote came out into the hall to watch the charade. It was so dark he could have been there without anyone noticing him.”

She said rather breathlessly,

“He wasn’t there when you turned the lights on.”

“After the charade? No. But then he wouldn’t have been if he was going to stab Porlock. He could have put the mark on him in the dark, slipped out through the service door, and waited there. No one would have noticed if that door had been ajar. Then when the charade was over and the lights were on again he had only to go on waiting until Porlock moved clear of the rest of us, as he did, and then turn off the lights-there’s a set of switches by the service door. It wouldn’t take him any time to reach Porlock, stab him, and get back to the drawing-room doorway, where he was when the lights came on.”

She checked in her mechanical walk.

“Is that what happened?”

“My dear girl, how do I know? It could have happened that way.”

She drew a choking breath.

“Geoffrey-”

“Yes?”

“It wasn’t you-”

He gave a short laugh.

“Really, Agnes!”

“It wasn’t-”

He laughed again.

“No, my dear, it wasn’t. I don’t mind saying that there were moments when I could have killed him with pleasure. But I didn’t do it. Somebody saved me the trouble. The nuisance is, there’s been some eavesdropping-the lantern-jawed butler, I imagine. And that Scotland Yard Inspector seems to have got the idea that Porlock might have been blackmailing me.”

Agnes Masterman’s dry lips parted on two words.

“He was.”

“You’d better not say that to the Inspector.” His tone hardened. “Do you hear-you’re to hold your tongue! There’s no real evidence-I’m practically sure of that. Something about a missing will-not very much to go on there! He said part of my conversation with Porlock had been overheard. He said the word blackmail had been overheard, and something about a missing will. You’ve got to hold your tongue. Do you hear, Agnes? Whatever he asks you, you just stick to it that Porlock’s a business acquaintance of mine and you don’t know anything about my business. You never met him before. He was very friendly. You stick to that, and it will be quite all right.” The short, dry sentences jerked themselves to a halt.

Agnes Masterman drew a long, desperate breath. She had always been afraid of Geoffrey, always lacked the courage to face him. But she had to find it now. Or never. At that prospect of drifting on through the nightmare world which he had made for her she did find something. Words which she had rehearsed over and over through interminable hours of sleepless nights and locked away in her aching heart through interminable days now came hurrying from her lips in a torrent of shaking speecn.

“Geoffrey, I can’t go on like this-indeed I can’t. You must tell me what you did with Cousin Mabel’s will. You found it, and you took it away. She told me you had taken it away. After I’d got her quiet she told me she had got it out and was looking at it, and you came in and took it away. She was dreadfully, dreadfully frightened-I oughtn’t to have left her alone. Geoffrey, you’ve got to tell me-did you go back and frighten her again or-or anything?”

Geoffrey Masterman said, “My dear Agnes, what morbid ideas you have! Why on earth should I go back? I had the will. If Cousin Mabel hadn’t died in her sleep during the night, I should doubtless have seen her again, and I should probably have given her back the will-with some good advice. As it was, there was no need-nature intervened. If you are asking me whether I assisted nature-one may hold views on the iniquity of old ladies leaving their money away from their own flesh and blood without being a murderer, you know.”

She had stopped walking. Everything in her seemed to be concentrated in the look she bent upon his face.

“Geoffrey, will you swear you didn’t go back-didn’t frighten her-touch her?”

He said, “I will if you like. What’s the good of swearing? Let’s stick to plain facts. I didn’t go back.”

He could see that she believed him-perhaps better than if he had made any protestations. He was aware of her relaxing, letting go. Her breast lifted in a long sigh, and then another. He put a hand on her arm and said,

“We’d better walk. It looks odd our standing here talking.”

They had gone a little way before she said in a different voice, more alive, more natural,

“What was in the will? You’d better tell me.”

He laughed.

“Oh, you come off all right! You get your fifty thousand all the same- ‘To my dear cousin Agnes Masterman who has always been very kind to me!’ ” He gave that angry laugh again. “But I only get a beggarly five thousand, and no ‘dear’ in front of my name, while a solid forty-five thousand goes down the drain in charity! Do you expect me to lie down under that?”

The colour sprang into her cheeks. Just for a moment you could see what she would look like if she were happy. Her eyes brightened and her voice rang.

“But, Geoffrey-why didn’t you tell me? We can put the whole thing right. You can have the money-I don’t want it. You can take the fifty thousand and let me have what she was leaving you. You’ve only got to go to the solicitors and say you’ve found this later will. You can say it was hidden in her biscuit-box-and that’s absolutely true, because that’s where she did hide it, poor old thing. There won’t be any risk about it at all, and we’ll get rid of this nightmare which is killing me. It is, Geoffrey-it is!”

Her voice throbbed with passion though she kept it low. Her very walk had changed. It was she who had quickened the pace.

He looked at her with surprise.

“My dear Agnes-how vehement! If you really want to give forty-five thousand pounds away in charity, I don’t suppose I shall interfere. I’d no idea you had such an expensive conscience. I advise you to bridle it. Anyhow I haven’t got the will in my pocket, and Trower and Wakefield don’t live over the way, so I think the whole matter can wait until we get home. Meanwhile you’ll please to remember that if there’s any trouble over this Porlock business, any encouragement of the blackmail idea, I shan’t be in a position to produce that will. So if you want it produced you’ve got to put up a pretty good show for Scotland Yard.”