Chapter 11

Lionel Seaton Overhears

THE SUPERINTENDENT WAS not going to take Rennell Torrance’s statement till next morning. ‘The reducing process,’ he called this. If Torrance was the guilty man, whether he intended to confess or to spin a yarn, the night’s delay would get on his nerves: if not, the apparent negligence with which Blount had treated his message would be calculated to make him all the more forthcoming tomorrow, in an effort to impress the Superintendent. Blount dispatched the long-suffering Sergeant Bower, however, to keep an eye on the Old Barn during the night, just in case Torrance should change his mind and decide to make a run for it. He asked Nigel, on the general principle of keeping every one on the jump, to let it be known at Plash Meadow, when he returned, that Torrance was making a statement next day.

‘If any of ’em have a bad conscience, it’ll stir ’em up,’ he said.

‘Let’s hope Bower stays awake then,’ remarked Nigel. ‘You’d look pretty silly if Torrance was liquidated tonight.’

‘I’ve every confidence in Sergeant Bower,’ said Blount, a little stiffly.

After he had left the Superintendent, Nigel decided to look in on Paul Willingham. He found his friend sitting, elbow-deep in paper, at the parlour table.

‘Home-work,’ said Paul. ‘Give me ten minutes. There’s some beer over there. And a bottle of Hollands; very expensive, very good for the liver.’

Nigel poured himself a glass of Hollands, borrowed a sheet of paper and set to work on a time-table. He had already spent a lot of time trying to work out the movements of people on that Thursday night, but every time-table seemed to have more gaps and question-marks than the last. However, with what he had heard from Finny Black and Mara today, a few gaps might be filled in.

Farmyard noises strayed agreeably through the open window as he worked. Presently Paul muttered:

‘Now for P.A.Y.E. Then I’ll be finished.’

He flipped through the Tax Tables and set to working out the weekly deductions for his farm-hands. When he had finished, he put down the Stylograph pen with which he had been making the entries, took out a cheque book and rummaged amongst the papers on the table.

‘What are you looking for?’ asked Nigel.

‘My dip pen.’

‘Stylo run out?’

‘No, but I want to sign a cheque.’

‘I don’t get you.’

‘Well,’ said Paul abstractedly, ‘I was going to sign a cheque with the old Stylograph at a Travel Agency last year, and the bloke asked me to use another pen. It was the Agency’s cheque book. He said the old Stylo left an impression on the cheque below the one you’re actually writing on; so a criminal type could ink in your signature on the next cheque form and draw himself a few hundred or thousand smackers as the case might be. Ah, here it is! So, seeing as you’re in the room, I thought I’d better be on the safe side.’

‘You make life very complicated for yourself.’

Paul Willingham put cheque and Deducation Cards into an envelope and sealed it up.

‘Well, how’s your murder going?’ he asked, pouring beer into his tankard.

Nigel gave him a brief synopsis, leaving out Mara Torrance’s private affairs.

‘What do you think?’ he said at the end of it.

‘Obviously the work of a gang,’ was Paul’s cheerful comment.

Nigel buried his head in his hands and groaned.

‘A gang of mysterious orientals, I suppose?’

‘No, no. I’m quite serious. I’ve been giving the matter some thought. It’s like this, Nigel. Let’s agree, for the sake of argument, that Oswald was carved up in the dairy. Now, look what had to be done. First, he had to be got into the dairy: then his throat cut: then his clothes removed: then his head had to be severed from his body: then a net-bag provided to put the head in, with the idea of carrying it away and hiding it somewhere: then the body had to be wrapped up in his mackintosh, conveyed to the river and presumably towed some way downstream by a strong swimmer: then the bundle of clothes had to be hidden in the church vault, and the dairy sluiced down. Not necessarily in that order, of course. Have I left anything out?’

‘I don’t think so. You might have been there yourself.’

‘Plus a few oddments—going through the pockets of the clothes to see there was nothing incriminating in them; cleaning the tools and putting ’em back, or hiding ’em. All took time, old man. More time than any one person could afford. Besides, who kept cave? Can you see any one going through all those motions, even at night, even if he’d planned every detail beforehand, without another chap to keep watch? The risk’d be appalling. That’s why I say it was a gang.’

‘Yes, the thought of two people being involved had occurred to me.’

‘And then,’ said Paul, warming to his work, ‘have you considered the significance of the blood trail?’

‘But there wasn’t a blood trail.’

‘That’s what is so significant, old boy. I don’t believe one man could dart a recently decapitated corpse from the dairy to the river without leaving blood-spots, even granted that the top of the mac was well buttoned over the neck.’

‘The thunder rain might have washed the blood-spots away, you know. And anyway, the corpse wouldn’t have been bleeding any more by then. But I agree, it’d have been much simpler if there had been two people to carry the body.’

‘Good-o! I’m glad you’ve come round to my way of thinking.’

‘But what two people?’ asked Nigel, a worried look on his face. ‘There aren’t many possible permutations and combinations at Plash Meadow. I can’t conceive any two of them planning such an elaborate affair. Robert and Janet? Lionel and Mara? Rennell and Robert? Lionel and Janet? Mara and Rennell? And so on. Take your pick: but none of the possible partnerships makes sense to me.’

‘You’re obsessed by the number two, old boy,’ said Paul, waving his pipe-stem airily at Nigel. ‘Why shouldn’t the whole lot of them have organised it? This Oswald was a menace to ’em all, in various degrees, wasn’t he?’

Nigel nodded.

‘Well, then? The whole squadron was laid on for Operation Oswald. And a very good job they seem to have made of it—or would have, if Finny hadn’t gone skirmishing out into the middle of it. And very sorry I’d be to see any of ’em taken up for the job.’

‘No, no, Paul. Don’t let’s make the thing more fantastic than we need. People don’t commit murder in a shoal. Other crimes, yes. But not murder.’

‘I expect you’re right,’ said Paul, a far-away look in his eyes. ‘But isn’t murder always unreal? You remember Robert talking about the flash-point, that day we went to tea? Well, either you’ve planned your murder in phantasy, brooded over every detail beforehand, thought of your alibi and so on, or else it’s unpremeditated—a moment of madness. But, in a way, they’re both the same. There can’t be degrees of murder, because there’s no such thing as a cold-blooded murderer. There’s only a different flash-point. The chap who plans a murder never really believes he’ll commit it. Generally he never gets farther than the planning: there must be thousands of murders committed in phantasy every year. But just now and then the point is reached where the phantasies take charge and push the bloke over the edge. What I say is, this bloke is no more responsible for his action than if he’d struck down a total stranger in a moment of blind rage. Do I talk cock?’

‘I don’t agree with you. But it’s very interesting.’

‘That’s why I say all murder is unreal. Or put it like this—every murder is a case of possession: instantaneous or gradual doesn’t matter. The murderer is possessed by something not himself—by a stranger within—which compels him to do violence to himself no less than he does it to his victim. And afterwards—do you know, I can imagine myself having murdered someone and a year later genuinely not being sure whether it was a dream or a reality. Once the wound caused to myself by the self-violence had healed over—and nature’d do that quickly enough—I’d go about my affairs as carefree as any other citizen.’

Nigel was pondering Paul Willingham’s words as he walked back to Ferry Lacey. He had had supper at the farm and arranged that Paul should invite Vanessa Seaton to stay there if affairs at Plash Meadow took the ugly turn which Nigel feared. Paul had been talking through his hat, of course, he reflected now. But he had indirectly put his finger, once again, on a crucial point.

Premeditation or not? Assume that Oswald Seaton’s murder was premeditated. What follows? First, the killer must know some little time before that Oswald is alive and back in England. Second, if the killer knows about the Oswald-Mara affair, he can be sure that Oswald will conceal his own identity out of self-protection. Now the only people at Plash Meadow who did not know about that affair were Finny Black, Vanessa and perhaps Lionel. Vanessa could be eliminated: Finny would be mentally incapable of planning a murder: Lionel would have no motive for it unless he had discovered the Oswald-Mara secret. Thirdly, a killer acquainted with this secret would have, so to speak, the ideal victim—a man believed to be dead years ago, a man who dare not reveal his own identity. Then why, it struck Nigel now with irresistible force, why murder him at Plash Meadow, the one place in the world where there would be a danger of the ‘body of the unknown man’ being associated with the Oswald Seaton of ten years ago? It seemed to follow, with the most unassailable logic, that because Oswald was murdered at Plash Meadow, his murder could not have been premeditated.

At once the whole complicated and unsatisfactory mosaic of the case showed a different pattern to Nigel. A premeditated crime had been unthinkable, unless motivated by the desire either for security or for revenge on the murderer’s part. But an unpremeditated one opened up new possibilities—a sudden quarrel, for instance, or an accident; or even, it strangely occurred to Nigel, sheer fright—the shock of seeing, on that lurid, storming night, one whom the killer might have every reason for believing a ghost. . . .

At ten o’clock the next morning, Nigel strolled across to the Old Barn. He had awoken early, to find a certain phrase ringing in his head almost as if it had just been spoken into his sleeping ear. ‘We all had Oswald on our minds just then.’ Rennell Torrance had given this as an explanation for the horror he had shown when confronted by Mara’s clay head of Robert. As Nigel had pointed out, much to Rennell’s discomfiture, this statement did not make sense, because it had not been known at the time, except presumably to the murderer, that the murdered man was Oswald. Now, if it turned out that Rennell had seen Oswald on the fatal night, his alarm at the likeness of the portrait-head would be explained. But, ‘we all had Oswald on our minds just then’—was that ‘all’ merely a defensive turn of phrase, or could it by any chance be truth, supporting Paul Willingham’s absurd suggestion that every one at Plash Meadow had been in a conspiracy to remove Oswald?

No, thought Nigel, this won’t do: I convinced myself last night that Oswald’s murder was unpremeditated. Well, the murder might have been, but the elaborate effort to conceal it could still have been a communal one. Lack of premeditation does not imply that there was no conspiracy. How many of them, then, were accomplices after the fact? It must have been pretty soon after the fact, too. ‘Oh, bosh, it’s fantastic,’ he muttered to himself, remembering the pleasant family breakfast he had taken only an hour ago—Lionel and Vanessa mildly chaffing each other; Janet Seaton discussing plans for the day, for a picnic up the river; her husband, at the head of the table, smiling at his children, talking to Nigel about Paul Willingham, then leaving his coffee half finished to slip upstairs and resume work on the poem which impatiently awaited him. None of them seemed apprehensive, or even curious, about the statement which, as Nigel had told them the previous night, Rennell Torrance was to make this morning. Their only worry appeared to be the weather, which was clouding over and threatening the projected picnic. As Nigel entered the old barn, a few drops of rain began to fall.

Superintendent Blount was already there, with one of Inspector Gates’ men who had come to relieve Sergeant Bower. Blount had cleared a space on one of the littered tables in the studio. Rennell Torrance, slumped in a basket-chair, pointedly ignored Nigel as he entered. The sound of a vacuum cleaner could be heard from upstairs; Rennell’s flamboyant and shoddy canvases blushed hotly on the walls, relics of a misspent life.

‘We’d better begin,’ said Blount, and administered the official caution.

It was like a major operation, thought Nigel, so masked and impersonal was Blount’s method, so tense the atmosphere, so like an anaesthetised patient’s the flaccid, dead-white face of Rennell Torrance. A surgical operation to extract a piece of truth which had been poisoning the patient’s system. ‘On the night of Thursday the—’ The “statement” proceeded, question and answer, question and answer, with infuriating deliberateness.

Rennell Torrance had been sitting up late that night, Mara having gone to bed. About ten minutes after midnight he heard a light tap on the french windows: they were not locked: they opened and a man came in. For a moment he did not recognise him—Rennell admitted he’d been a bit fuddled with drunk, and besides, he’d never seen Oswald Seaton without a beard before. No, he’d not been expecting Oswald: why, damn it, how could he, when to the best of every one’s knowledge, Oswald had been dead these ten years? No, he had not been in communication with him. You could have knocked him down with a feather when Oswald had appeared.

‘Yes, it’s me,’ were Oswald’s opening words. ‘Back from the dead. Quite a nuisance for every one, I reckon. What about a drink? I’ve had a long walk.’

‘Help yourself. But where the devil did you spring from?’

Rennell noticed that Oswald did not take off his gloves as he poured out the drink.

‘As you know very well, I did not commit suicide,’ Oswald had proceeded. ‘I knocked around the world a bit, changed my name, was working in Malaya when the Japs came in. Prison camp for three years. I’m not all that afraid of prison now, Torrance. I suggest you and I let bygones be bygones. You won’t find me less charitable than my dear brother. I’ll rely on you to keep—what’s her name?—Mara quiet.’

Nigel noticed that by an eerie coincidence, the sound of the vacuum cleaner overhead stopped at this instant. Gazing through the french windows, he saw that the rain had begun in earnest: Janet Seaton, in a long dark-blue mackintosh, was walking down the drive away from the house. Nigel turned his eyes back to Rennell Torrance.

‘I realised,’ he was saying, ‘that Oswald was convinced I’d known all along his suicide was phony, and believed I’d been blackmailing Robert ever since.’

‘Was there any truth in that?’ asked Blount.

‘Good Lord, no. Ask Robert if you don’t believe me. Mara told me last night she’d talked about Oswald to Strangeways. So you know why he left the country?’

‘What happened next?’

‘I told him he’d a bloody nerve to come in here, and he’d better get out double quick before I gave him the soundest thrashing of his life. I said he’d ruined my daughter’s life and I’d a good mind to hand him over to the police straight away?’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘Well, I didn’t like the way he put his right hand in his mackintosh pocket at that point. I was afraid he had a gun in it.’ The painter’s heavy body shifted uneasily.

‘Did he actually threaten you?’

‘No. Not exactly. But—’

‘But he pointed out, perhaps,’ Nigel put in, ‘that his return—even if you did inform the police about what had happened to Mara—would kill the goose that laid your golden eggs? Robert would lose the estate.’

‘Well, he hinted something of the sort,’ muttered Rennell at last, with very bad grace.

It dawned upon Nigel that Oswald had come first to the Old Barn in order to have a witness of his existence. He might also have hoped to strike a bargain with Rennell Torrance: but the main point of his visit was that he should be able to say in effect, if he ran into bad trouble later at Plash Meadow, ‘Keep your hands off me, don’t think you’ve got the perfect victim for a murder, somebody else knows I was here, alive, at twelve-fifteen tonight.’ He had preferred the risk of being exposed by Rennell, whom he obviously despised, to the risk he might incur from—from whom? Who was the X at Plash Meadow that this dangerous and desperate man so feared? Or was it just in Oswald’s nature to mistrust every one?

‘Did he suggest to you why he’d come back to England at all?’ Blount was asking. ‘Did he say who’d invited him?’

‘No, but he seemed cocky enough. I couldn’t make it out. As though he was sitting pretty, somehow.’

‘What gave you that impression?’

‘Well, after I’d ordered him out, he said, “O.K. But I’ll be seeing a lot of you from now on, if things go right.” Then he paused a moment, and then he said, “Robert always was a bit soft: he’ll be glad to see me, even if you aren’t. Blood’s thicker than water.”’

Superintendent Blount now took Torrance back over the ground, trying to discover fragments of information he had overlooked. But the result seemed entirely negative. Oswald had said nothing more to Torrance about where he’d come from, or why he’d returned to England when he did. The painter had obviously been three-quarters croaked, what with drunk and fright; and Oswald had only stayed in the studio, he reckoned, seven to ten minutes.

As Blount plugged away, Nigel’s attention wandered again. Framed in the french windows, the west corner of Plash Meadow looked—there was only the French word for it—morne. The slanting rain, the tattered clouds drifting low overhead, the wind nagging at leaves and roses; summer was going, the garden wept inconsolably. The fairy-tale house, so unreal when first he had seen it, was still less real today: then it had been the fabulous exuberance of its roses, the trance of high summer; now it was as if Plash Meadow, having drunk too deep of horrors, suffered from a blighting hangover.

Abruptly Nigel checked his thoughts. Ridiculous. That damned house seemed able to impose its moods upon one. But the real truth of the matter was that, like the poet working away now under its roof, it had the knack of intensifying, of illuminating whatever mood one happened to be in, of adapting itself to each different personality. Which of its Protean selves had it offered to Oswald Seaton that night, Nigel wondered. But Oswald himself was still a hopelessly unreal figure; nor did Rennell Torrance’s statement help in the least to bring him alive. It was likely enough that Rennell was telling the truth now: but the truth was not enough—not his kind of truth, anyway, thought Nigel, scrutinising the painter’s flabby, defeated face, the body slumped in the chair like a sack from which all meaning had leaked out long ago.

Something was fidgeting at Nigel’s mind, like the wind teasing the tarnished roses outside. Through the web of question and answer, question and answer that Blount and Torrance were interminably spinning, Nigel became aware of a silence. Somewhere in the background, like an attentive eavesdropper holding his breath, stood this silence. Well, of course, the vacuum cleaner stopped some time ago. But surely Mara had not finished her housework then? Surely one ought to be able to hear her moving about overhead? Or, if she has finished upstairs, why has she not come down?—there is only this one staircase, leading down from the minstrel gallery. Well, thought Nigel, she’s probably up there, listening to what we’re saying: no great harm in that.

‘So then he left this room.’ Blount prompted. ‘Did you see him out?’

‘Not exactly. I didn’t like to go too near him. But, when he’d stepped outside, I went to the french window. I shut it behind him and stayed looking out for a few moments.’

‘Did you see where he went?’

‘He must have walked over to the house. At least, I saw him once again. There was a long shake of sheet lightning, and I noticed him quite near the courtyard door over there.’

‘Did you see who let him in?’

‘No. But I assumed he must have got into the house somehow, because when the next flash of lightning came, he wasn’t visible any more.’

‘“Not visible any more,”’ muttered the constable who was taking it all down.

‘Very well. What did you do then?’ asked Blount, keeping his stride like a tireless runner. Rennell Torrance mopped his forehead: his head rolled wearily and jerked upright again, as if he’d been on the verge of sleep.

‘I locked the windows, sat down again, and had some more drink. Felt I couldn’t go to bed yet. I was uneasy. I wanted to puzzle things out. To tell you the truth,’ he went on in a sleep-walking kind of voice, ‘I began to wonder after a bit if I hadn’t dreamt it all. I simply couldn’t get used to the idea of Oswald being alive.’

‘And then?’

‘Well, after a bit I went to bed,’ Torrance replied lamely.

‘How do you account, then, for Finny Black’s statement that he saw you standing outside the french windows at’—Blount deliberately thumbed through a sheaf of papers—‘at about two o’clock?’

Torrance seemed too exhausted even for a spurt of righteous indignation. Wearily he said:

‘I went to bed after that. I just wanted a breath of fresh air. That’s all.’

‘Did you go for a walk?’

‘No. I stood outside the window for a few minutes. I told you all this last time.’

‘Just so. But you didn’t tell me last time I questioned you that Oswald Seaton had paid you a visit.’ There was a slight edge on Blount’s voice. ‘Have you—e-eh—remembered anything else since? Anything you forgot to tell me then?’

‘No.’

It was the first time that Nigel got the impression Rennell was keeping something back. His denial came too pat—a trace of defiance in it. The same idea must have occurred to Blount, for he treated Rennell to a prolonged, steady stare and a silence that positively bristled with incredulity. As he waited for this treatment to take effect upon the painter, Nigel, lying back in his chair, idly cast his eyes upwards.

He was sitting just below the edge of the gallery. His eyes caught a dark metal object protruding from between two of the banisters which supported the rail of the gallery, at its far end. It took Nigel three full seconds to realise that this object was the muzzle of a revolver. During that space, Rennell Torrance burst out in weak exasperation, ‘What d’you want me to say?’—and the muzzle up there tilted down so that it seemed to be pointing at the back of the painter’s head.

‘I just want you to tell the truth. Did you not see any one moving about as you stood outside the french windows? Did you see Mr and Mrs Seaton, for instance, searching for Finny Black?’

‘Well, as you ask me—’

‘Stop!’

‘Stop!’

Fantastically, Nigel’s warning shout had echoed a fierce command from the gallery above. Superintendent Blount was on his feet. Nigel sprang into the middle of the studio and stood between Rennell Torrance and the long-barrelled Mauser pistol which Lionel Seaton, lying flat on the gallery floor, his face visible between the bars, was sighting at the group below.

‘Don’t be a young fool!’ said Blount sharply. ‘Put that gun down at once!’

Lionel ignored him. ‘I’m talking to you, Torrance. You’ve said enough. D’you understand me? Quite enough. I’ve been listening. If you say a word more, now or at any time, I’ll come back and knock you off.’

Involuntarily Nigel had moved a little away from Rennell’s chair. The painter, grey-faced and shaking, had screwed his head round when Lionel began to speak: now he had slid off the chair and was grovelling behind it. Lionel Seaton’s eyes blazed at him from between the bars. He spoke again:

‘You see that bloody awful picture over there?’

Four pairs of eyes switched in the direction pointed by a wave of the Mauser in Lionel’s hand—a self-portrait of Rennell Torrance, hanging on the wall to the left of the french windows.

‘Now look, Torrance. This is what will happen to you if—’

There was a stunning explosion. Lionel Seaton had hardly seemed to take aim at all; but a black hole appeared in the dead centre of the greenish-white forehead of the self-portrait. Rennell Torrance whimpered.

‘Now!’ exclaimed Blount, and dashed heroically for the foot of the staircase, followed by the constable. Nigel, hard on their heels, suddenly checked himself. Whipping round, he saw Mara Torrance at the french windows. Before he could get there, she had opened them, withdrew the key and locked them from outside. Nigel ran out of the studio, catching a glimpse as he went of Blount falling over a heavy chair which Lionel had bowled down the staircase at him. The front door of the old barn had been locked from the outside too. The pair had planned it pretty well. Mara had, no doubt, climbed out of her bedroom window down a ladder, locked the front door, then waited for Lionel’s signal—the revolver shot—to lock the french windows while the attention of those in the studio was concentrated on Lionel.

‘Silly young asses!’ muttered Nigel as he went upstairs. ‘Are there any duplicate keys?’ he called to Rennell over his shoulder.

‘No. Afraid not. Look here, what on earth is Mara up to? You’ve got to stop her.’

Upstairs, Blount and the constable charged Mara’s door. The lock splintered and they tumbled into the bedroom. The window was open. A ladder lay on the ground below. Lionel could hardly have had time to climb down it. He must have jumped, and then pulled the ladder away from beneath. But Lionel had been trained to this sort of thing as an officer in the Airborne: neither Blount nor the constable could risk a twenty-foot jump.

They ran out, colliding with Nigel in the doorway. As they got to the french windows, a car whirled past down the drive. Lionel Seaton waved gaily. Mara Torrance was beside him. By the time Blount had smashed through the glass and got outside, they were well away.

‘They won’t get far,’ said Blount grimly. ‘I’m going across to telephone. Wait here for me.’

Five minutes later, he was back. ‘Now then, Mr Torrance,’ he said, ‘we’ll go on from the point where we were—e-eh—interrupted.’ He cocked an eye at the constable, who turned to his notebook and unemotionally recited.

‘“Did you see Mr and Mrs Seaton, for instance, searching for Finny Black?” . . . “Well, as you ask me” . . .’

In the interval, Rennell Torrance had put down a couple of strong whiskies, and his nerve was somewhat restored. He began to bluster.

‘Look here, Superintendent, this is outrageous! I’m threatened by a young lunatic with a pistol; and the best you can do is to—’

‘One thing at a time, Mr Torrance. You were about to tell us that you saw suspicious movements at two a.m., were you?’

A look of bleary cunning came over the painter’s face.

‘You’re trying to catch me out, eh? Don’t care for your methods. It was at one o’clock, wasn’t it, that Robert and Janet went out to look for Finny? So how could I have seen them at two o’clock?’

‘Whom did you see then?’

Rennell’s eyes wandered to the self-portrait on the wall, with the hole in its forehead.

‘I didn’t see any one. I can’t see in the dark, you know. The lightning had stopped by then.’

‘You should take no account of Lionel Seaton’s threats. If it proves necessary, we shall give you protection.’ Blount loomed formidably over the painter. ‘And I must warn you that you’re already in a very awkward position for having withheld this evidence about Oswald Seaton. I should strongly recommend you to conceal nothing more.’

‘But I’m not concealing anything,’ Rennell answered in the tones of a pettish child. ‘I was going to tell you, when we were interrupted, that I heard something. I heard footsteps crossing the courtyard away to my left, from the direction of the orchard; then I heard the door of the servants’ quarters open and shut. Presumably it was Finny Black I heard.’

Rennell Torrance stuck on this, and nothing Blount could do would shift him. Nigel found it impossible to decide whether he had told the truth or not.

Presently Nigel and Blount were chatting in the shelter of the summerhouse.

‘I’d like to know what that young fool is playing at,’ the Superintendent growled. ‘He’s scared the daylights out of Torrance, anyway, blast him!’

‘What are your ideas?’

‘Well, I suppose he silenced Torrance at that point either to protect himself or somebody else. And the exhibitionistic way he chose to do it could only draw suspicion on him. No, I fancy he thought Torrance was just going to let out something about Mr and Mrs Seaton. Maybe he was, too.’

‘There’s a third possibility. All that play-acting—if Lionel wanted Torrance to keep his mouth shut, he could surely have found an opportunity to threaten him, on the quiet, last night or early this morning. What I think is that he’s playing for time: he wants to divert your mind from—’

‘Damn it!’ exploded Blount. ‘Is this what you were hinting at yesterday afternoon? “Another crop of mysterious occurrences?” Nothing mysterious about young Seaton’s holding us up with a pistol. Time for what, anyway?’

‘Time for verse, Blount.’

‘Now look here, Strangeways, this case is crazy enough already without your—’

‘I’m quite serious. The most important thing in this household is Robert Seaton’s poetry. Recently he has begun writing something which, for all we know, may be his masterpiece. We’ve got to think in terms of values utterly different from the normal man’s, while we’re dealing with this case. The Seatons—and Mara too, I believe—are people for whom art is infinitely more important than any police investigation. More real, if you like. For Robert’s poetry, they will go to any lengths and be prepared to sacrifice anything.’

‘You’re not telling me Oswald Seaton was murdered for the sake of his brother’s poetry? I can’t swallow that.’

‘It’s not impossible. But my point is this: young Lionel may or may not have reason to suspect that his father was involved in the murder; but he knows that, sooner or later, there’ll be a showdown, and he wants to postpone it as long as possible, so that his father may finish the work he’s engaged on. So Lionel stages this diversion in force. He wants you to waste time and suspicion on him. That’s why he told us it was he who’d hidden Finny Black in the vault and kept him supplied with food.’

‘All I can say is, if you seriously believe that, you’d believe anything. People don’t behave like that in real life. Why, it’d be the vairy lunacy of quixotism!’

‘The young are quixotic, sometimes, to the point of lunacy. And it’s not pure quixotism on Lionel’s part. Mara’s whole attitude towards him changed when she began to suspect he was putting himself in danger on Robert’s behalf: and she’d do anything for Robert herself. Incidentally, Blount, if you want to find them quickly, I suggest you warn all Registry Offices.’ Nigel’s eyes strayed over the entrancing lines of Plash Meadow. ‘You talk of real life, Blount. Look at that house. Don’t you wonder sometimes if it won’t vanish, like a dream, between one moment and the next?’

‘No,’ said Blount. ‘Frankly, the notion has never occurred to me. But I’ll bear your other suggestions in mind.’

‘Hurrah for bonny Scotland!’

Blount’s mouth twitched with faint amusement. ‘Will you hold the fort here? You’ll have to tell Mr Seaton about his son. I must away to Redcote to see Gates. Then I may go down to Bristol for a night. I’ll be leaving Bower here.’

‘So you’re not going to chase Lionel and Mara all over the countryside in a fast car?’

‘Och, there’ll be no trouble pulling them in,’ said the Superintendent—a prediction which was to prove curiously wide of the mark.