Haines sat tense as a coiled spring, listening to the rapid approach of footsteps along the corridor. The door opened and Cardew came in, looking flushed, with Ogilvie at his heels.
“Sorry I had to send the runners out after you, Mr. Cardew,” said Haines. “Not too inconvenient, I hope?”
“Not at all,” said Cardew. “I was only at my flat.”
Haines nodded. “Take a seat, won’t you? I expect you’ve heard the good news about Mr. Ede?”
“Yes—I’d just phoned the hospital when Inspector Ogilvie rang me.” The young man seemed to be making an effort to speak calmly. “It’s been an appalling shock.”
“It’s been a great shock to all of us,” said Haines. “However, all’s well that ends well, Mr. Cardew. Have a cigarette.”
“Thank you.” Cardew helped himself from the inspector’s case and flicked on his lighter. He inhaled deeply and relaxed.
The spring uncoiled. Leaning forward in his chair, Haines said harshly, “Why did you go into Mr. Ede’s room at six o’clock this evening?”
Cardew’s mouth opened and shut soundlessly. He was knocked completely off balance.
“Well, Mr. Cardew, why was it?”
Cardew’s face had gone white. “I—I’m sorry, Inspector,” he stammered, as if groping desperately for an answer that would bear investigation. “I—I just don’t remember …”
“You don’t remember! Less than three hours ago, and your mind’s a blank! Let me try to refresh your memory about the incident. You went to Mr. Ede’s room by his private door just before six o’clock. You stayed there for a few minutes only, and you left the room just before he returned. You must have gone there with some purpose in mind. What was it?”
Cardew was breathing hard. The strain of the past few days, ending in this frightful attack on Ede, had been almost more than he could bear, and his brain was anything but clear. “Let me think, Inspector—just let me think. This awful business has driven everything out of my head. It must have been something to do with work, I suppose …”
In a voice full of menace, Haines said, “I suggest that you went there to spread cyanide on the floor of his shower room—to kill him, Mr. Cardew.”
Cardew sprang to his feet, his eyes blazing. “How dare you say that, you swine?” White and shaking, he stood glaring at the inspector. Ogilvie had risen too, ready for trouble.
Haines sat quite still. “Unless you can give me a proper explanation of what you were doing there,” he said sternly, “I’ve no alternative but to consider that possibility. Sit down, Mr. Cardew, and control yourself. You must realise that you’re in a very serious position, and blustering won’t help you. As far as we’ve been able to discover, you were the only person to spend any time alone in Mr. Ede’s room during the day. You appear unable to produce on the spur of the moment an explanation of what you were doing there. If ever I’ve seen guilty hesitation on anyone’s face, I saw it just now.”
“I didn’t do it, I tell you—it’s a monstrous accusation. Why should I?
“What are your relations with Mrs. Ede?” asked Haines quietly.
Cardew looked as though he were about to leap across the desk. “Leave her out of it, damn you, do you hear?”
Haines sighed. “Mr. Cardew, you are evidently under great emotional stress. Now if you’ll just try to calm down, I’ll give you a little advice. If you think it wiser, you can refuse to answer any more of my questions until you’ve got in touch with your lawyer. In that case, I shall assume that the information I have about you and Mrs. Ede is correct, and I shall direct my investigations accordingly. You may be sure that we shall soon be in possession of all the facts. Alternatively, you can tell me the truth yourself, in which case I may at some stage have to warn you that anything you say may be used in evidence.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” cried Cardew. “If you’ve heard anything, it’s just filthy gossip … Oh, God!” He buried his head in his hands.
Haines waited. Ogilvie was sitting back impassively, watching with secret admiration his chief’s ponderous but devastatingly effective technique.
Presently Cardew looked up, his sensitive face distorted with the effort to reach a decision. “Very well,” he said in a steadier manner, “I suppose I’ll have to tell you everything.” He hesitated a moment longer, and then plunged. “When I went to Ede’s room tonight, it was to tell him that I wanted to resign from the paper.”
“So soon after your new appointment?”
“I had to. The—the fact is, I’m in love with Mrs. Ede.”
“And she with you?”
“No, no. Everything’s been on my side. God, this is humiliating!”
No one helped him out, and presently he took a deep breath and went on. “I’ve been friendly with Nicholas Ede and—and Rosemary Ede, for some time. He’s been frightfully decent to me, and so has she. She—she’s very attractive. He asked me along to his home soon after I joined the paper, and I got used to dropping in quite often. I became a sort of friend of the family, and I took her about a good deal. Ede’s job takes up most of his time, you see, and he seemed pleased that his wife was being looked after. Everything was all right until about a week or two ago. Then I suddenly realised that I’d fallen in love with her. I knew I was being a crass idiot, but I couldn’t help it. God knows what came over me—I lost my head completely. A few days ago I—I told her I was in love with her …” He groaned. “I even asked her to come away with me. I must have been mad.”
“What did she say to that?” asked Haines, his face expressionless.
Cardew gave a mirthless laugh. “She was kind. She treated me like a small boy who’d been asking for too many sweets. It was the most mortifying experience I’d ever known. After I left her I felt like hell. I knew I’d behaved like a swine towards Ede, and I knew I’d made myself ridiculous in her eyes. I felt I never wanted to see her again. I wondered what explanation I could give Ede for not going there any more. I was still thinking about it when he told me he wanted me to be Foreign Editor. I said I would, but only because I hadn’t made up my mind what to do. Then to-day I decided that the only thing I could possibly do was to leave the Morning Call altogether. I determined to clear right out and make a fresh start. As you said. it was about six o’clock when I looked into his room to see if he was there. I was going to tell him that I was tired of newspaper work and wanted a change. I’d forgotten he was going out to dinner until I saw his dress clothes laid out. There wasn’t any point in my trying to talk to him when he was in a hurry, so I went out. I was going to tell him to-morrow. Then about ten minutes later there was a frightful flap in the office and I heard that he’d been poisoned.” Cardew looked unutterably miserable. “That’s the whole story. Now you know everything.”
“I hope so,” said Haines. “Am I to understand, then, that Mrs. Ede gave you no encouragement?”
“None at all,” said Cardew. “I tell you, I was just a complete bloody fool.”
“H’m.” In Haines’s somewhat limited experience, a woman could usually prevent such a situation arising if she wanted to. He sat quietly for a while, digesting the story. “Well, Mr. Cardew,” he said at last, “all this seems to add up to a pretty powerful motive for murder.”
“Do you suppose I haven’t realised that? God only knows what Rosemary may be thinking. It’s bad enough that she should despise me for an idiot, but if she should imagine … Oh, God, I couldn’t bear it. I didn’t do this ghastly thing, Inspector—I swear I didn’t. I like and admire Ede. That’s what’s so damnable about it all. I know things look black for me, but he’s one of the last people in the world I’d have dreamed of harming …” Despair seemed to engulf the young man.
“Take it easy, Mr. Cardew. You might just as well save your breath, you know. Pleas of innocence on their own won’t get us anywhere.”
“I’m sorry,” said Cardew. “I suppose I’m making things worse.” He raised miserable eyes to Haines.
“What is going to get us anywhere? I can’t prove I didn’t do it—I only know the idea is fantastic. I hadn’t the means, if that’s any use to you. I wouldn’t know how to get hold of cyanide if I wanted it.”
“The situation would certainly be much blacker,” said Haines, “if that weren’t the case.”
“Well, it is. And anyway, surely the person who tried to kill Ede was the same one who killed Hind? It stands to reason. You can’t pin a motive for that on to me.”
“There is, I admit, an absence of known motive at the moment,” agreed Haines cautiously, “but all sorts of things seem to be coming to light, don’t they? What are you keeping back about Hind?”
“Nothing.”
Haines looked searchingly at him. “Even if that’s true, there’s such a thing as taking advantage of someone else’s murder—and method. It’s often been done. A murders B; C, who has long wanted to murder D, realises that he has been shown the way and that, with luck, A will be blamed for D’s murder too. There seems to be a great deal of cyanide about, and more than one person may have had access to it.”
“It’s much more likely that there’s a lunatic around the office who did both jobs.”
“That’s also a possibility. The problem is to recognise a lunatic when you see one. Emotional instability, now, is much easier to detect!” Haines gave Cardew a rather grim smile. “Well, we’ll let the matter rest there for a while, and I’ll make some more inquiries. In the meantime, you’ll oblige me by not going anywhere without letting me know. Is that understood?”
“I seem to have no option,” said Cardew. He got up and went painfully out, as though he had been scourged. Ogilvie made a tut-tutting noise as the door closed behind him. “When I was seventeen,” he remarked, “I remember feeling like that about a girl. At his age, he ought to know better. What do you make of it, Chief?”
Haines hesitated. “I’ll know better when I’ve seen the lady in the case. I think I ought to have a talk with her right away.”
“Do you suppose they might be in it together?”
“If they had been, I can’t imagine that Cardew would have given so much away. They’d have worked things out beforehand—he’d never have been in that hysterical condition.” Haines slowly shook his head. “No, I’m inclined to think that his story about Mrs. Ede is true. He could easily have come away from her feeling frustrated and desperate, and have killed Ede out of jealousy. Then he probably would have behaved as he did to-day. Still, we’re a long way from proving it. Cardew was the obvious man to go for first, but he may not be the only one in the picture, and for the time being we’d better assume that he isn’t.” Haines mentally reviewed the most urgent tasks. “Look, Ogilvie, will you find out where Sarge Vickers lives and go and see him now. Get to know all you can about the keys and what’s been happening to them lately. See if anyone else had a chance to get into Ede’s room at any time. Oh, and find out if the cleaners went into the shower-room this morning. If you get any lead at all, follow it up. And I’ll see Mrs. Ede. Okay?”
Ogilvie nodded, pleased at the prospect of getting off on his own for a bit.
“Right,” said Haines. “I’ll see you here in the morning.”