“And you don’t want me here,” Dorothea said. “It’s all right if I go next door.”
“Perfectly, perfectly. We’ll be leaving ourselves.” Roland stood up. “We’ll be in touch,” he said, a remark which Andrew found ominous.
The detectives waited until after Dorothea and Lyn had left, then followed towards the door. But just before leaving, Roland turned once more to Colin.
“Waterman, you said.”
“Yes,” Colin answered.
“You’re certain of that?”
“It’s what the landlord at the pub told me. I don’t know it of my own knowledge, if that’s the right way of putting it.”
“Interesting, all the same. I think we’ll call at The Running Man.”
“Is it true that a man called Waterman committed a murder and that Sir Lucas was the prosecuting counsel?” Colin asked.
“Could be. Have to check it up, of course. But it could be. Useful information, anyway. Thank you.”
Roland and Sergeant Porter went out into the night, which had become quite dark now that even the last flickering of the flames in the lane had been extinguished.
As the front door closed behind them, Jonathan helped himself to more sherry. Sitting down near to the fire, he observed, “There’s something they’ll be asking about soon besides that telephone call that didn’t happen.” He looked at Andrew. “You’ve thought of it already, I expect. I’ve a feeling it’s the sort of thing you would think of.”
“If you mean, where did the explosive device, as they called it, come from…” Andrew paused.
Jonathan nodded with a slight smile on his face. It was a sardonic smile which suddenly made his face look much older than it had a moment before.
“That’s it, of course,” he said. “And you realise, I’m an excellent suspect. I work for a big construction firm, and at the moment you could also call them a destruction firm, because they happen to have been blowing up a block of flats built in the fifties, which has turned out to be a death trap. So I could quite easily have laid my hands on some explosive. I wonder if it would be sensible of me to point that out to the police myself, or wait for them to find it out.”
“For God’s sake, this isn’t a joke!” Colin said harshly.
“I wasn’t joking,” Jonathan replied.
“Then you’d better not speak till you’re spoken to!”
It was an injunction that Andrew had not heard since his childhood, and even then his parents, having been very reasonable people, had never meant it seriously.
“If Waterman is the man you think he is,” he said to Colin, “he may have made many useful connections in the bomb business while he was in prison.”
“But how did he know Lucas was coming here?” Colin asked. “That’s the question we always have to come back to.”
“Yes, how he was coming and when,” Andrew said. “But I believe the Watermans of this earth have all sorts of ways of obtaining and spreading information.”
“Well, don’t start chatting to the police about explosives, Jonathan,” Colin said, “at least until you’ve thought of a motive for yourself. They won’t really be interested in you till you come up with a good motive for killing poor Lucas. If you want to feel important, I’d concentrate on that.”
“Oh, if I wanted to feel important I could do better than that.” Jonathan spoke with a cheerfulness that seemed to Andrew not quite suitable to the occasion, yet suddenly remembering Jonathan as a child, it occurred to him that it had always been there—a lively awareness of what was going on around him rather than depression during unexpected troubles. Andrew looked at him with more interest than he had felt before.
“Of course, that man Waterman has the most obvious motive,” Jonathan went on, “though there’s that problem of how he knew Lucas would be coming home when he did. Then there are other people we know nothing about, I mean people like Waterman who’ve somehow been harmed by Lucas and who wanted revenge. Perhaps, it isn’t impossible, Lucas got in touch with someone when he was in London without Henry knowing anything about it, and that person knew approximately when Lucas might be expected here. Then there’s Henry himself.”
His father gave him a thoughtful look, as if he were trying to make up his mind whether or not to take him seriously, then shook his head.
“I wish you wouldn’t talk nonsense,” he said. “What d’you mean by saying there’s Henry himself?”
“I don’t really know,” Jonathan said, “except that he’s the one person who definitely knew that Lucas was coming home.”
“But he was in London, we know that for sure, because he was there when Nicholas telephoned.” But Colin’s tone was less confident than before. “I suppose the police could be wrong and the bomb could have been planted in the car in London and not here in the lane, and it was just something going wrong with the timing device that stopped it going off till Lucas was nearly home. But what possible motive could Henry have had for murdering his father-in-law? I think he was the richer of the two, and so far as I know had never had any quarrel with him.”
“May I ask something?” Andrew said. “Just what does Henry do? How has it come about that he’s richer than Sir Lucas, who must have been pretty well fixed?”
“Henry’s a senior partner in a notable firm of accountants, Colin answered. “The sort of people who do jobs for the government and that kind of thing. Oh, Henry isn’t short of money. He can’t be if he can afford to leave his wife in St. Raphael’s.”
“So whom else have you in mind?” Andrew asked Jonathan, genuinely curious about what the young man would say.
Jonathan seemed to take a kind of pleasure in being consulted.
“Oh, of course there’s Nicholas,” he said. “If I’d been Nicholas I’ve have got around to murdering the old man long ago.”
“I do wish you wouldn’t be flippant,” Colin said. “There’s nothing funny about what’s happened this evening.”
“But I’m not being flippant,” Jonathan assured him. “Nicholas has the best of all motives for killing Lucas. Money and hatred.”
“Hatred?” Andrew said.
“Oh yes, lots of hatred seething under that gentle surface of his,” Jonathan said. “His father was a spectacularly successful man, wasn’t he? And Nicholas hasn’t done too badly in his own line, but he’s never in his life written anything near a best seller. I suppose he earns enough to keep himself and Gwen without being actually dependent on the old man, but if they didn’t live in that rather fine old house and do a good deal of looking after him and making his life comfortable, they’d be much nearer to the bread line. By which I only mean a semi-detached in some London suburb, with a cleaning woman perhaps once a week and some kind of not very impressive secondhand car. And I wouldn’t put it past Lucas to have rubbed that in. But I’m sure when his will’s read it’ll turn out he’s left his money equally between Nicholas and Erica, which will be very nice for both of them.”
“All right, so we know Nicholas had a possible motive for murdering his father,” Colin said, “but how did he know Erica was going to be in a car smash this morning? How did he know his father would be coming home this evening? It always comes back to that. If Lyn’s right that there were no telephone calls today, how could he possibly have known when and where to plant the bomb?”
“Another question,” Andrew said. “When did he get hold of it, or construct it? It isn’t a thing you can toss off in a few minutes.”
“Oh God, I suppose I’m not being really serious after all,” Jonathan answered. “I mean, I don’t seriously think Nicholas would have murdered his father. But a possible way he could have got hold of a bomb—no, I don’t think it’s really a possibility—all the same, last summer Nicholas and Gwen went off to Spain by car, and I’ve an idea he may have had some connection with some rather shady characters there, Basque separatists and so on. He’s fond of doing what he calls research for those spy stories of his, and so… No, I’m talking absolute nonsense. Don’t take any notice of it.”
“And what about Gwen?” Colin asked. “Has she any motive?”
“The same as Nicholas’s, I suppose,” Jonathan said. “She may have got very bored looking after the old man, most of the burden of which, I imagine, used to fall on her, and she may have thought it would be nice to inherit his money. But I can’t see her planting a bomb, even if she and Nicholas managed to get hold of one in Spain. And she doesn’t seem to have had any more knowledge than he had about Lucas coming home. That’s to say, if it’s true that there were no telephone calls from London after Erica’s accident.”
“That young woman, Lyn Goddard, who said there weren’t,” Andrew said, “who is she exactly? What’s her connection with the Deardens? What does she do? Why is she here? You seem to know her.”
“I think her connection with the Deardens is simply that she’s an old school friend of Gwen’s, or something of that sort,” Jonathan said. “Anyway, she’s been coming and going to that house for as long as we’ve lived here. What does she do? Well, I think she’s something vaguely connected with the BBC, though I don’t know exactly what. Something editorial, I think. And she’s here of course for the same reason as you are, it’s Christmas. I believe she was here for Christmas last year. I don’t think she’s any family of her own, and to the best of my belief she’s never been married. She’s never mentioned it that I can remember. If there’ve been men in her life, it wouldn’t surprise me. She’s attractive in her way, wouldn’t you say? But I can’t remember her ever talking about anyone special.”
“And what was her relationship with Sir Lucas?” Andrew asked.
Jonathan gave him a startled look. He did not seem inclined to answer the question, and actually it was only at this reluctance that Andrew began to wonder if the question related to something more important than he had realised.
After a moment Jonathan remarked, “You ask the damndest questions, Andrew. I don’t think she had any special relationship with Lucas. Though I wonder… No, it isn’t possible.”
“What do you mean?” his father asked irritably. “What isn’t possible?”
Jonathan shook his head. “No, it was just a fantastic thought that came into my head when Andrew asked that fantastic question. What was her relationship with Lucas? Was there ever anything between them, that’s what he wanted to know. After all, Lucas can’t have been all that old when she was first intimate with the family, and suppose he’s the reason she never settled down to living with any other man. I know I’m talking like a fool. Andrew shouldn’t have got me started on it. But if there was a time a few years ago when she thought she and Lucas were going to get married, and if it happened she knew she’d been remembered in his will, then the revenge motive because he’d got out of the marriage, and then her hoping to benefit… I’m sorry, Andrew, you really shouldn’t have started asking impossible questions. She’s a very nice girl. If you like, I’ll think of a motive why you might have murdered Lucas yourself.”
“I can only think of one,” Andrew said. “The fact is, I have never committed a murder. But I have been involved, much against my will, in helping the police with problems that have arisen out of one or two. And yet I have never even begun to understand the feelings of a murderer. Well, is this a serious failure on my part? I am old, I am retired, I have been engaged for years in writing a book which I shall probably never finish, even though I have a contract for it, and I am sure some misguided people think that I am a very wise old man. Yet I am utterly at sea when I try to comprehend what leads a person to the act of killing another. So if it would enlarge my understanding of mankind before I die, I might try to find out what it’s really like. But I can assure you that if I ever do commit a murder it would not be with a bomb. For one thing, I intensely dislike loud noises. I find even the friendliest of parties, where everyone by degrees talks louder and louder in order to be heard at all, a fearful strain. And I am not mechanically minded. Even if I had all the explosive in the world on hand, I would not know how to construct a bomb. And I suspect the same might be said of Miss Goddard. Can you really see her constructing a bomb in secret, then carrying it around in her handbag, one doesn’t know for how long, until she found a suitable opportunity for blowing up Sir Lucas? It’s true I don’t understand the young of the present day, but does it seem probable?”
Jonathan grinned at him.
“You didn’t really need to convince us, you know,” he said. “Nobody is going to think either you or Lyn are murderers.”
“I’m afraid I may have sounded rather pompous,” Andrew said.
“You did, just a bit,” Jonathan said, “but we know that attitude is one of your many disguises. You’re so afraid someone might start thinking you really are quite wise that you make it sound absurd on purpose. I wish I knew what you really think about what’s happened.”
“So do I,” Andrew said. “So do I.”
They heard the sound of the front door being opened and a moment later Dorothea came into the room. Somehow she looked even smaller than usual, shrunken and chilled. She went straight to Colin and put her arms round his neck, hiding her face against him. He held her in his arms, clasping her to him until she wanted to speak.
After a moment she raised her head. “You know, Gwen thinks Nicholas did it,” she said. “Can you imagine it? Suddenly making up your mind your husband’s a murderer?”
“It’s shock,” Colin said. “She’ll have second thoughts tomorrow.”
“You don’t…” She paused, and still holding tightly to Colin, looked round the room. “You don’t think she could be right?”
“Look, how long have we known Nicholas?” Colin asked. “Ten years, twelve years? Have you ever wondered if he could be capable of a peculiarly atrocious kind of murder?”
She did not answer at first, then shook her head.
“Has it ever occurred to you that I might be?” he said.
The quiet common sense in his tone seemed to have an effect on her.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.
“But shock can do extraordinary things to people,” he said. “You know, by tomorrow she may have forgotten everything she said tonight.”
“Suppose she hasn’t,” Jonathan said.
“I’d sooner not suppose anything of the kind,” Colin said. “And I don’t think it would be a bad idea if we all went to bed. We’ll probably have the police here again tomorrow. I foresee a busy day.”
He propelled Dorothea firmly out of the room and upstairs to their bedroom.
Jonathan lingered, looking at Andrew with the same smile that a short while before he had thought sardonic.
“I wonder what life is like if you haven’t got such understanding parents as I have,” Jonathan said. “I’m very lucky, I suppose.”
“Don’t you think so yourself?” Andrew asked.
“Oh yes. Yes, certainly. Sometimes I think too lucky.”
“Why d’you think that?”
Jonathan stood up, stretching and yawning deeply.
“Of course I don’t really. It just seems to me sometimes that life’s been made almost too easy for me. When something appalling happens, I don’t know how to behave. Would you say I’m normally mature for my age? I’ve never yet had to cope with any responsibility.”
“Perhaps immaturity is one of your many disguises,” Andrew said.
“Oh God, I might have known I wouldn’t get a real answer from you. You’re the most evasive man I ever met. Goodnight. Will you turn the lights out and so on?”
“Goodnight,” Andrew said as Jonathan went out of the room.
Andrew soon followed him, after switching off the electric fire and turning off the lights in the room, but it was some time before he went to bed. He had brought a Rex Stout with him, and after getting into his pyjamas and dressing gown he settled down to read for a while before thinking of trying to sleep.
But what happened to him was that almost at once he fell asleep in his chair; when later he woke with a start, he found that it was nearly half past one—at least two hours later than his normal time for going to bed. His book had fallen to the floor and his mind was in a bemused state, actually uncertain for a few minutes of where he was and how he had managed to arrive in this pleasant but unfamiliar room.
Then, as memory of the evening came back to him, a feeling that there was something about it still eluding his memory began to disturb him. It was something to do with Lyn Goddard. He did his best to close his mind to it, got into bed and switched off the bedside lamp. But immediately the darkness of the room seemed to be lit by the lurid flames of the fire in the lane, a horror that he would never forget, and closing his eyes against it did not help.
He wondered if anyone else in the house was asleep. For a while he tossed and turned, only to find himself presently at King’s Cross Station, attempting to travel he could not remember where. He had a ticket which should have told him where he intended to go, but it appeared to be written in a foreign language, possibly Chinese. He started asking people where they thought he ought to go, but they only looked at him superciliously and hurried on their way. He wandered about for a little, finding himself among strange buildings, totally lost and in a mood of frenzied frustration, while smoke filled the streets though there was no sign of anything being on fire. It was a great relief when he suddenly woke to find daylight at the window and Dorothea at his bedside with a breakfast tray in her hands.
“This is really very good of you,” he said, “but you shouldn’t have troubled.”
“I’m sure you like breakfast in bed,” she said, “and it’s no trouble at all.”
“Is it very late?” he asked. “Have I overslept very badly?”
“No, it’s only eight o’clock,” she answered. “And I’ve given you that little bit of cheese with your breakfast, as well as the coffee and toast. That’s right, isn’t it?”
He raised himself against the pillows, giving a self-conscious smile.
“I’m sure it’s only a superstition,” he said, “and by now really only a habit, but for a time I was convinced that it did one good to start the day with some protein, and cheese seemed the easiest way to do that. I’m too lazy to boil myself an egg. But I think it’s time I cured myself of it.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t do that,” she said. “A little superstition is good for all of us, otherwise we become too intellectually austere. I believe in a lot of ridiculous things myself which I wouldn’t dream of trying to justify to a scientist like you, but which somehow satisfy me. I hope you slept well.”
“Excellently,” Andrew replied untruthfully. As she left the room he started nibbling the small piece of Cheddar cheese that he found on the tray.
It was nearly ten o’clock when he came downstairs. He could hear the clicking of Colin’s typewriter and Dorothea busy in the kitchen. There was no sign of Jonathan, who presumably had left long ago for work. It all seemed a little strangely normal. And the day happened to be December the twenty-fourth, Christmas Eve.
When Andrew was a child Christmas Eve had always been a day of great tension and expectation. In the evening the Christmas tree would be lit up, but it was what happened next day that counted. He had not been brought up to believe in Santa Claus and had never hung a stocking up in the sitting room fireplace in the hope of gifts; but he had assumed nonetheless that when he came down to breakfast next morning there would be a splendid collection of presents for him, done up in colourful wrappings, around the base of the Christmas tree. The morning then could be happily spent unwrapping them until it was time to prepare himself for turkey and plum pudding.
Usually this would be followed by a very small glass of port, his first taste of alcohol, which it happened that he heartily disliked, though he had pretended to enjoy it. And by then perhaps the thought would have inserted itself into his consciousness that, delightful as several of the presents were, he would be compelled during the next day or two to write letters of thanks to the people who had been so kind as to send them. This would be dreadfully hard work, even though the letters would always be the same. He would state that he hoped the recipient was very well, that he himself was very well, that his mother and father were very well, and that he was very grateful for the present he had just received and which happened to be just what he wanted, and that he was their affectionate grandchild, or nephew, or friend, as the case might be, Andrew. After that life would return to normal.
Sometimes the presents had really been what he had wanted, such as those that came yearly from the great-aunt who, in addition to providing cucumber sandwiches, had saved herself the trouble of trying to imagine what a young boy might really like by sending him a one-pound note, usually enclosed in a Christmas card depicting the Holy Family arriving in poverty at their stable. With the increase of inflation, or perhaps in recognition of his advancing years, the one pound had gradually risen to five, but his letters to the good old lady, perhaps increasing a little in warmth as he became more literate, had not substantially altered. She was of course long since dead, yet as he went into the Cahills’ sitting room and saw the sprays of holly stuck behind the picture frames, reaffirming to him that this was Christmas Eve, it occurred to him that his letters of thanks, which even now he occasionally had to write, were really no great advance on what he had written long ago.
He had sat down by the fire and was looking with an interest that he did not quite understand at Dorothea’s improvised Christmas tree, hung with Christmas cards, when the doorbell rang and he heard Dorothea go to answer it. In a moment she came into the sitting room bringing Detective Chief Inspector Roland and Detective Sergeant Porter with her. Andrew rose to greet them and she assured them hurriedly that she would fetch her husband.
The inspector said, “I’m not sure if that’s necessary, Mrs. Cahill. It’s Professor Basnett we really want a word with.”
“But I’ll fetch my husband,” she said, and went scuttling out of the room. Andrew heard her running up the stairs, and a moment later the sound of Colin’s typewriter ceased.
“Nice day,” Roland said, accepting Andrew’s invitation that he should be seated. “Surprisingly warm for the time of year. But it was on the news last night that there’s a depression on its way.”
Andrew had not yet taken in anything about the weather, but looking out of a window now he saw a patch of blue sky, bordered by bustling clouds; there was enough wind to make the leafless beeches at the edge of the garden bend and sway a little.
“A depression? Well, of course they could be wrong,” he said.
“Have you ever wondered what it feels like to be a weatherman?” Roland asked. “I mean, to speak with all that authority and all those diagrams to back you up, and then at least fifty percent of the time being wrong.”
“Fifty percent?” Andrew said. “Is it really as often as that?”
“Well, I couldn’t swear to it, but that’s how it feels. If I was wrong as often in my job—but then, perhaps I am. I’d be the last person to know, wouldn’t I?” Then, the ice between the two Englishmen having been broken by some remarks about the weather, he turned to the sergeant who was carrying a briefcase and said, “Bob, the photographs.”
Sergeant Porter opened the briefcase, extracted a large envelope and handed it to the inspector. He drew a photograph out of it and handed it to Andrew.
“Mean anything to you?” he asked.
Andrew looked at the long face with its long, thin nose, the almost lipless mouth and the small eyes that were not quite on the same level.
“It’s the man who came here yesterday morning, asking for Sir Lucas,” he said. “That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it?”
“Sure of that?”
“Absolutely.” Andrew handed the photograph back to Roland, who slid it into its envelope and returned it to Porter. “Is he Thomas Waterman?”
“That’s right,” Roland said. “A man who got life for murdering his wife and did about eight years in prison. He came out about three months ago.”
“Is it true that Sir Lucas was the prosecuting counsel who got him convicted?” Andrew asked.
“Yes, that’s true. And Waterman threatened him and the judge from the dock. But that doesn’t mean anything. A good many people do that, but have time to forget all about it during the years of their sentence.”
“What were the circumstances of the murder?”
Roland gave a slight shrug. “Jealousy, well justified. The woman used to bring her customers into their home when her husband was at work. Then he came home unexpectedly and caught her with the current client, who gave Waterman a beating before bolting. And Waterman fell on his wife and beat her to death. It was doubtful if he even knew what he was doing. The circumstances were why the sentence wasn’t more severe. Anyway, as I remember the case and what I’ve been able to dig up about him since last night, he was always a pretty unstable character. He made a very bad impression on the jury by a mixture of arrogance and dead silence until he shouted his threats. But there’s something I particularly want to ask you, Professor. Did you give Waterman any suggestion, even the faintest hint, that Sir Lucas was expected home in the afternoon?”
Andrew shook his head. “I couldn’t have, because I didn’t know it myself. I did say Sir Lucas was in London.”
“And you didn’t add anything, even by accident, which Waterman could have construed as meaning that he was coming home?”
“I’m quite certain I didn’t.”
“I see. Thanks.”
The inspector stood up and seemed ready to leave the room when Colin and Dorothea came hurrying in. Roland hesitated for a moment, then reached out his hand to the sergeant for the photograph. He handed it to Colin.
“Have you ever seen that man anywhere?” he asked.
Colin looked at it thoughtfully. “No,” he said. “No, I’m quite sure… Yes, I am sure, and yet there’s a certain familiarity… No, I don’t mean that. I’m sure I’ve never seen him. Who is it?”
“A man called Thomas Waterman.”
“Who’s staying at The Running Man? But I didn’t see him there.”
Dorothea had taken the photograph from Colin.
“I know what it is,” she said. “You’re remembering photographs of him in the newspapers at the time of his trial.”
“Yes, that must be it, though it’s so long ago,” Colin said to Roland. “It’s a very long time ago, isn’t it?”
“Longish.” Roland took the photograph and handed it back to Porter.
“But hasn’t anybody seen him here?” Colin asked. “I mean, besides Professor Basnett?”
“Yes, several people. The fact is, he’s still at The Running Man. He’s under observation. Probably we’ll have to take him in for questioning. Well, we mustn’t keep you. Thank you for your help.”
The two detectives were just about to leave when the doorbell rang again.
This time it was Nicholas. With his hair combed and his face recently shaved, he looked neat in his corduroy trousers and cardigan, but he had the appearance of someone who had not had much sleep the night before. His eyes were hollow, his cheeks sagged. His shaggy eyebrows twitched into a frown when he saw the two policemen.
“I’m sorry, am I interrupting anything?” he asked. “I can come back later.”
“Not at all. We were just leaving,” Roland said. “In fact we were coming round to see you. Perhaps you could save us some trouble.”
He held out his hand to the sergeant, who once more handed him the envelope with the photograph in it. Roland took the photograph and showed it to Nicholas.
“Have you ever seen this man?” Roland asked.
Nicholas’s eyebrows lifted suddenly as if he had just received a shock. He went on looking at it without saying anything.
“You have seen him,” Roland said.
“Not for a very long time,” Nicholas answered. “It’s Waterman, isn’t it?”
“So you know him,” Roland said.
“Not exactly. I remember his name, of course, from the time of the murder. But I can’t have met him more than once or twice, and that only very briefly.”
“How did that happen?”
Dorothea suddenly interrupted to beg them all to sit down, and asked if they would like coffee. The coffee was refused, but all of them except Andrew sat down. Andrew went to a window and stood looking out at the garden, which still had brown leaves from the beeches scattered across the lawn. Some winter jasmine was in bloom, its delicate, fresh-looking yellow flowers seeming strangely gone astray in the wintry scene.
For some reason he had started to think about the dream that he had had in the night, and how in it he had gone wandering, lost along smoke-filled streets where there was no fire to be seen, and how that had been peculiarly frightening. There had been a fierce fire in the lane the night before and that no doubt had been why in his dream, with memories in his conscious mind of the fire in the King’s Cross Underground, he had found himself at King’s Cross Station, trying to read a ticket written in an unintelligible script. But why should he be thinking of it now? Normally he never remembered his dreams for more than a few minutes after waking.
“He was a clerk in my brother-in-law’s office,” Nicholas said. “Not that Henry was my brother-in-law at the time. He and my sister weren’t even engaged. If they had been I don’t suppose my father could have taken the case. I mean, if there had been even a fairly remote family connection it wouldn’t have been ethical for him to do it. In those days Henry Haslam was my accountant and a not very intimate friend. I don’t think he and my sister even met till two or three years later. But I did call in on him in his office two or three times, and I remembered that clerk when his photograph started appearing in the papers, mostly because of his strange eyes and the thin, bitter face, the air of suspiciousness and a sort of contained anger. Or perhaps that’s just what I thought when I knew about his crime. It’s very difficult to be sure of a thing like that after such a long time.”
“But you’re sure he had a connection with your brother-in-law, are you?” Roland said.
“Oh yes, I’m sure of that,” Nicholas answered. “We discussed it all once or twice, though on the whole he seemed rather naturally to prefer not to talk about it.”
“And it happens that Mr. Haslam is the one person we know of who definitely knew Sir Lucas was coming home yesterday afternoon.”
“Yes, but… You don’t mean you think there’s still some connection between them.”
“Perhaps not. But it’s the sort of possibility one has to take into consideration.”
“I don’t understand,” Nicholas said. “Henry was in London yesterday. He couldn’t have planted the bomb. That’s certain. And… Oh, I see! You think he somehow got in touch with Waterman and Waterman planted it for him. That’s ludicrous.”
“I daresay it is. But I come back to the fact that Mr. Haslam knew Sir Lucas was on his way home.”
“Yes, that’s quite true,” Nicholas agreed. “I’ve been talking to him on the telephone this morning and he pointed out himself that he seemed to be the only person who knew of my father’s change of plan. But apart from the fact that I can’t see him getting in touch with Waterman to arrange that explosion for him, he’d nothing whatever to gain by my father’s death. He’s a wealthy man himself. He doesn’t need money. And to the best of my knowledge he and my father liked each other. I think they were good friends.”
“Suppose we turn things round the other way,” Roland said. “Suppose it was Waterman who got in touch with Mr. Haslam. Suppose—this is just a suggestion—Waterman has some kind of hold over Mr. Haslam. As a clerk in his office he might possibly be a fairly skilled accountant himself. Suppose at some time he’d spotted some irregularity, possibly simply some mistake, in the work of the firm and managed to keep a record of it over all these years. And suppose when he heard from Professor Basnett that Sir Lucas was in London, mightn’t he have deduced that he’d be staying, or at least spending some of his time with his daughter and son-in-law, and demanded information about his probable movements? It might not have occurred to Waterman at that stage of things that Sir Lucas would actually be coming home and so be vulnerable here. He might have planned to go to London and somehow track Sir Lucas down there.”
Andrew had turned and was watching the two men with interest. Roland’s thick eyelids were lifted higher than usual, and his eyes were concentrated intently on Nicholas’s tired face, which looked blank with incredulity.
“You don’t know my brother-in-law!” he exclaimed. “Waterman have some hold on him for misdoings in his past! Henry is the most upright man who ever lived. He’s a pillar of righteousness. No, if Waterman did get in touch with him, it’s possible Henry might have given him a helping hand out of compassion, and I suppose it’s just conceivable he might accidentally have let slip that my father was on his way home, but I’d be surprised if he’d have done even that. He’d have remembered that my father had prosecuted Waterman and that Waterman, long ago as it was, might not have forgotten the threat he shouted from the dock. No, if you pursue that line, Inspector, I’m sure you’ll only be wasting your time.”
“I see. Thank you.” Roland stood up once more. “I’m very grateful to you for this discussion. It’s very useful to have explored these odd ideas of mine even if they don’t seem important. That’s beautiful holly you’ve got for your decorations, Mrs. Cahill. All we’ve got at home are plastic, not at all the same thing. Good morning.”
Colin saw him and the sergeant to the door.
Nicholas let out a deep breath, as if he were relieved at their going.
“Now what did he mean by that?” he asked, as he appeared to relax.
“That real holly’s nicer than plastic holly?” Dorothea said. “Well, of course it is.”
“No, that our talk has been useful,” Nicholas said. “All I did was tell him that his ideas were no good.”
“That may have been very useful,” Andrew said. “When you want to tidy up your thoughts, the first thing to do is to get the useless rubbish out of the way.”
“You think that’s all it was? I didn’t say something…?” Nicholas paused, then shook his head. “No, I didn’t. How could I? But I ought to tell you why I really came over this morning. It was just to ask you if you’ll forgive us if we call that Christmas dinner off. It’s a pity. We were really looking forward to it. But Gwen isn’t in a state to cope. I expect you can understand that.”
“Of course,” Dorothea said. “We weren’t expecting it to go ahead. Please tell her not to worry about it.”
“I’ll bring you the turkey as a present, if you like,” Nicholas said with a sad smile. “I expect we’ll be having something out of the freezer.”
“Put the turkey in the freezer too,” she said, “and have it when the first of the shock’s worn off. Of course it’ll spoil it, but you can’t help that. It may have spent a good deal of its life in a freezer already, or do I mean its death? Oh dear, I ought not to have said that, I mean, this isn’t a time to be flippant about death, even a poor turkey’s. Nicholas, we’re all of us really terribly sorry for you and Gwen. I suppose you haven’t got around to thinking of what you’ll probably do. I mean, will you stay on in that house, or move away? We’d hate to have new neighbours.”
“You might find them better value than us,” Nicholas said. “But we haven’t started to think about the future. The funny thing is, Gwen started talking of moving away only a little while ago. My father wasn’t the easiest of men in the world to live with, and he was getting more difficult as he got older. Gwen got the worst of it and wanted to leave. She sometimes talked of going abroad. Yet now that my father’s been killed I get the impression that she’s been hit even harder than I’d have expected. I suppose it’s more because of the horrible circumstances than out of grief. And besides that…” He stopped again.
“It’s just shock, isn’t it?” Dorothea said. “She doesn’t actually believe you planted the bomb.”
He gave her an astonished look. “What made you think of that?”
“It was just the way she was talking when I went over to see her yesterday evening,” Dorothea said. “She seemed to have become frightened of you.”
“Yes. Well, I know what you mean. No, I don’t think she meant it, or anyway the fear’s worn off by now. It was upsetting while it lasted, of course. It made everything feel just that little bit worse than it was already. But you know how—well, how highly strung she is. I didn’t really take it very seriously. She does tend to dramatize things.”
“I’d have thought you’d had enough drama yesterday without that,” Colin said.
“I suppose it’s possible she was feeling guilty because of the sort of things she’s been saying about my father recently,” Nicholas replied. “Perhaps she’s really been hoping something would happen to him. Of course we’re going to benefit a good deal financially and that rather increases one’s sense of guilt. That house, for instance. As I said, we haven’t started thinking about the future, but I suppose the fact is we shall sell it. I believe the way my father left his money is half and half between Erica and me, and if that’s so the place will have to be valued—it must be worth an enormous amount these days—and keeping it might eat up a big part of our share, so it’ll be simplest to sell it and split the proceeds with Erica. But I just don’t know.” He stood up. “You really think I convinced that detective with what I said about Henry? I didn’t say anything he could have misunderstood?”
“I’m sure you couldn’t have,” Colin said. “You told him Henry had admitted he knew Lucas was coming home and also that he knew Waterman, who couldn’t possibly have had any hold over him, as Henry was what I think you called a pillar of righteousness. And I think that was about all.”
“Good, good.” Nicholas made for the door and Colin saw him out.