He dropped into a chair at the table and Andrew immediately said, “Whisky? Brandy?”
“Whisky, please,” Haslam said.
Andrew went to the bar. When he returned with the drink Lyn was sitting rigidly still, her eyes on Haslam’s face with a fascinated stare of incredulity.
Abruptly she said, “No!”
“Oh yes, they found her only a little while after the police were notified that she was missing,” Haslam said. “One of the allotment holders went up to do a job of work on his patch, opened his toolshed and there she was. He bolted back to the village and phoned the police only a short time after Nicholas had been in touch with them. They’ve been at the house for some time now, asking questions. Awkward thing, you see, they’d taken Waterman in for questioning about Lucas’s death and had him all set as the murderer. He’d got motive, opportunity, everything. But he can’t have had anything to do with Gwen’s death because he was at the police station all night. Perfect alibi. No, even though he knew Lucas was coming home because of what I told him on the phone, he’d nothing to do with Gwen’s murder. Not possibly. Very awkward. Damndest thing.”
“Do they know about when she was killed?” Andrew asked, aware that he was taking this news unnaturally calmly, which was dangerous. He would have to pay for it later.
“Oh, they’re very vague about it as usual,” Haslam said. “Around one or two in the morning, they seem to think, give or take an hour or two. And it looks as if the only person with any motive to kill her is Nicholas. Everything seems to pile up against poor old Nicholas. I wouldn’t like to be in his shoes.”
Andrew became aware that Lyn was trembling, but her voice was steady as she said, “Are you suggesting he killed her because he discovered she was about to leave him with Jonathan?”
“What else?” Haslam said.
“I’ve just explained to Professor Basnett what else,” she said. “Nothing could have pleased Nicholas more than if Gwen had decided to leave him for anyone under the sun. Nicholas wanted Gwen to divorce him so that he and I could get married. And if you’re going to suggest he might have killed her because she wouldn’t agree to a divorce, I can only say you don’t live in the modern world. If she’d refused to divorce him he’d have ended up by leaving her, and he and I could have settled down together comfortably enough without benefit of clergy or registrar.”
Haslam’s mouth dropped open a little as he gazed at her. “Nicholas and you…!” he stammered.
“Yes, Nicholas and me,” she said.
Andrew was watching her uneasily, wishing that her impenetrability, which had been briefly shattered a little while ago, had not returned in so chilling a fashion.
“Didn’t you say to me that Nicholas wouldn’t leave Gwen because he couldn’t face hurting her so much?” he asked. “You did say something like that.”
“Yes, and it’s quite true,” she said. “But I don’t think I ever implied that murdering her would be a way of avoiding hurting her.”
“Then—then it’s you that has the motive!” Haslam exclaimed, still stuttering. “If Nicholas wouldn’t leave Gwen unless she agreed to it, and she wouldn’t, and you—you were here last night—if he wouldn’t go away with you… I beg your pardon, I’m getting carried away. Of course I don’t mean a word of it.”
“But you do,” she said gently. “I’m the perfect suspect for Gwen’s murder. That’s obvious. Don’t you think so, Andrew?” She turned a singularly sweet smile on him.
Hurriedly he drank some of his whisky.
“Well, perhaps, Lyn,” he said. “I suppose you might have become so exasperated with Gwen for keeping hold of Nicholas that you’d… But no, one doesn’t kill a person out of exasperation. There has to be a stronger motive than that.”
“Oh, I’ve often thought of murdering her,” she said. “I’ll admit it.”
“Let me advise you not to say that to the police,” Haslam said gravely. “Here, among friends, one can take it as it’s meant, but for your own sake, take my advice, be careful.”
Andrew marvelled at the speed with which the three of them, who had met only very recently and very briefly, were supposed to have become friends who could confide in one another.
“But I meant it just as I said,” Lyn said in the same gentle tone as before. It made Andrew more afraid of her than it had occurred to him to be till then. “I’ve lain awake and dreamt about it. I’ve picked up a heavy hammer and swung it through the air and wondered if I could ever bring myself to crash it down on her skull. I’ve felt the edge of a carving knife and wondered if it was sharp enough to cut a throat or be plunged into a heart.”
“And perhaps you picked up some nylon washing-line and thought how easy it would be to tighten it round a throat,” Andrew suggested, feeling that for the moment the easiest thing would be to fall in with her mood. “You did say Gwen was strangled, didn’t you, Haslam? What with?”
“A strong pair of hands, apparently,” Haslam said. He looked from Andrew to Lyn with a frown, as if he had just caught them making some incomprehensible jokes. “Lyn has quite small hands, I observe. I don’t think they could have done this thing.”
Lyn held up her hands in front of her, spreading out the fingers. They were long and slender and did not look very strong.
“My hands have let me down,” she said. “I shall never get into the history books. I mean those books that so often get written about brides in the bath, and Crippen, and Palmer and all those people. I’m glad we’ve sorted that out. For a little while I was worried.”
For the first time Andrew became aware of the intensity of her concern, even though it was not for herself, but for Nicholas.
“You were never the best of suspects,” he said, “unless you’ve taken some private tuition in the making of bombs. I suppose you don’t claim to have done that.”
“No, but I don’t see why you should assume that the two crimes were committed by the same person,” she said. “I think it’s obvious Waterman obtained and planted the bomb. Then someone else murdered Gwen. Perhaps an accomplice of Waterman’s, because Gwen had somehow found out too much. A man like Waterman may only have been someone else’s tool, planting the bomb to kill Lucas or Jonathan and getting well paid for it.”
“But if you’re right, don’t you think Waterman will talk as soon as the police start to put pressure on him?” Andrew said. “And that would make the murder of Gwen a bit superfluous. In fact, only adding more danger to an already very dangerous situation.”
“So you still believe it was Nicholas!” Her voice suddenly cracked, turning high and shrill, completely changing its usual pleasant, low-pitched quality. “You’ve made up your minds! You won’t listen! Well, I’ll tell them who the murderer really is, because I know! I’ve kept quiet because it seemed only the decent thing to do, but if they’re going to try and put this thing on Nicholas…” She sprang up from her chair. Her face had flamed and her eyes were burning with fury that seemed to be directed at Haslam. “I’m going to the police now and I’m going to tell them everything I know!”
Tripping over the leg of one of the chairs at the table and almost falling in her haste to be gone, she darted out of the bar.
The door slammed shut behind her. One or two people in the bar looked up at her violent departure with a show of slight curiosity, but Andrew did not think that either he or she had been recognized as people connected with the Cahills or the Deardens; there would have been far more interest taken in them.
Haslam got to his feet. “Another drink!” he proclaimed. “You too?”
He walked away to the bar without waiting for Andrew’s answer.
Returning with whisky for them both and sitting down again, he said, “What did she mean by that? Do you think she really knows anything about how these awful things happened?”
“I’ve got my doubts,” Andrew said, “but she may think she does.”
“I always liked Gwen, you know,” Haslam said. “I felt sorry for her.” He paused. “Do you think Lyn was telling the truth about her and Nicholas?”
“Well, I wondered about that, but I think it was true. She was doing her best to clear Nicholas of any suspicion that he might have wanted to get rid of Jonathan out of jealousy over an affair he was supposed to be having with Gwen. According to Lyn there was no affair, except for a rather frustrated sort of one between herself and Nicholas.”
Haslam shook his head dubiously.
“I don’t understand these young people nowadays,” he said. “They seem to think marriage is all fun and games. No sense of responsibility. I don’t like it. I may be old-fashioned, but I don’t like it. Marriage should be a very serious thing.”
“But why were you sorry for Gwen?” Andrew asked.
“Because old Lucas bullied and exploited her abominably. He’d no regard for her. I’m not sure who her parents were, and she’d no money of her own and not much in the way of brains or education, and Lucas always made it clear he thought Nicholas had married beneath him.”
“That’s rather the impression I got from reading Dearden’s memoirs,” Andrew said. “She’s barely mentioned in them.”
“You’ve read the memoirs, have you?” There was a sudden flash of interest on Haslam’s ruddy face.
“Yes,” Andrew said.
“What did you make of them?”
“One of the dullest things I’ve ever had to read.”
“Nothing to tell you why anyone should want to blow him up with a bomb?”
“Not a thing.”
“I daresay I shouldn’t ask this, but is there anything particular about me in them?”
Andrew could see that the man hoped there was. If the book ever got into print and if it came into his hands, the first thing that he would do with it would be to look at the index to see if his name was mentioned there.
“A few remarks, all quite complimentary,” Andrew said. “But of course it may never be published. A curious thing, though. He’d torn out one page after giving it to a woman here to be typed, and according to her that page referred mainly to you and your wife. Her idea about it was that he’d felt it was too personal.”
Haslam frowned. “Critical of us, d’you mean? But you said it was fairly complimentary.”
“Yes, it’s probably of no importance whatever.” As he said it Andrew seemed to hear Inspector Roland affirming that the questions that he was asking were of no importance. He stood up. “Hadn’t we better be getting back? The police may be wanting to talk to us.”
“I believe they may be.” Haslam finished his drink and stood up too. “As a matter of fact, I slipped out before they realised what I was going to do. It was Nicholas who dropped a word in my ear. Now that we know about him and Lyn, I suppose it was Lyn he wanted.”
“So he knew she was coming here to talk to me. I wonder if he put her up to it.”
They made for the door. The night outside was very dark. There was neither moonlight nor starlight, only heavy clouds that moved sluggishly across the sky, blackening it. There was a feeling of moisture in the air which, though not quite rain, spread a little prickling chill on Andrew’s skin.
As he switched on the torch that he had brought with him, he wondered if he was walking back to Stillmore Lane with a double murderer. Granted that Henry Haslam could not have blown up Lucas Dearden himself. He had been in London and able to answer the telephone when Nicholas had rung him up to tell him of the horror in the lane. But according to Haslam’s own admission, he had been in touch with Waterman and had told him that Dearden was on his way home. The question was, had Haslam simply given Waterman that information, or had he given him instructions too? And had Gwen, during her visit to Erica in the London hospital, learnt more about this than was safe for her, and if she had, had she threatened Haslam with exposure? It might explain why he had remained in Upper Cullonden the night before, relying on borrowed pyjamas, razor and toothbrush. But how could he have known that she would not be going to bed at the normal time and that she would be available, as you might put it, for strangulation in the middle of the night?
Suppose, then, that she had not threatened him, but had confided in him, waiting until after Nicholas had gone upstairs to his drugged sleep to tell Haslam her troubles? But he had not trusted her to keep her knowledge to herself; and he was big and strong and could easily have crushed her slender neck and carried her small body up to a toolshed on the allotments. It all fitted rather neatly.
But do you ask for help and advice from someone who, you have recently learnt, has just murdered your father-in-law?
Perhaps if you hated that father-in-law enough yourself. To whom would you sooner turn with your difficulties than his murderer?
There was still the question of whether or not Henry Haslam had had any motive for killing Lucas Dearden. Andrew could not think of one, knowing really as little as he did about the man. He was said to have money, to have a beautiful wife and to have been on the best of terms with Dearden. A fortunate man, one would say, unlikely to be driven to dangerous violence. All the same, he had had the opportunity to commit two murders.
“Bloody unseasonable weather,” Haslam remarked as he and Andrew turned into Stillmore Lane. “We’ll pay for it later, mark my words.”
“At least it’s shortened the winter a little,” Andrew said, “even if the worst is still to come.”
“Didn’t the great freeze-up of ‘47 start only around February?” Haslam said. “Of course I was only a kid then, and I remember enjoying it immensely, tobogganing and skating and all that. It didn’t worry me that my parents were being driven nearly out of their minds by frozen pipes. Then when the thaw came we had a flood. The main pipe was burst in the roof and water came pouring down the walls and brought great chunks of the ceilings crashing down. As far as I can remember, I took it all as a great adventure. God, how I wish we hadn’t got to face the police now, but poor Gwen, it’s all we can do for her. Hell, it’s starting to rain.”
The cold moisture that Andrew had felt on his face was certainly changing to heavier drops. He and Haslam hastened their steps. By the time they reached the Cahills’ house a thin but steady rain was falling. Shivering a little, Andrew had turned up his collar against it, but felt the drops wetting his hair and sliding down his neck. His own words had been echoing in his mind as he walked along. “The worst is still to come…” Asking himself if anything could be worse than what had already come, his answer was that of course it could. In evil, it often appears, there are no limits. Muttering goodbye to Haslam as he turned in at the Cahills’ gate while Haslam went on to the Deardens’, he felt a deep dissatisfaction with himself because he understood so little about what had happened.
He found Dorothea, Colin and Jonathan in the sitting room with drinks in their hands. Colin immediately offered one to Andrew, which in spite of what he had had in The Running Man he was glad to accept. But first he wanted to go upstairs to rub his hair with a towel and change out of his muddy shoes into slippers. When presently he returned to the sitting room all three Cahills stared at him in an almost challenging way, as if they were sure that there was something he could tell them.
When he said nothing, Colin said, “You’ve heard about Gwen, of course.”
“Yes,” Andrew said.
“From Lyn?” Colin asked. “Did she know about it?”
“No,” Andrew answered. “We heard about it from Haslam, who came along to the pub to collect us. Have the police been here?”
“No, but we’ve been over at the Deardens’. Nicholas rang up at once to tell us what had happened and we went over there to see if there was anything we could do, but Roland sent us away. He said he’d be coming here later.”
“Are you sure Lyn didn’t know about it?” Jonathan asked. There was a tremor in his voice and his face was unusually drawn. “She and Henry were in the house when Gwen slipped out. They must have been. I’m not accusing anyone of anything except perhaps of knowing more than they’re letting on, but doesn’t that seem likely?”
“Possible, anyway,” Andrew said.
“If Nicholas didn’t really swallow the sleeping pills Gwen gave him, or if they had no effect on him,” Jonathan went on rapidly, “if he went out after her and they know he did, mightn’t Lyn try to cover up for him?”
“According to her, there was nothing to cover up,” Andrew said. “She says Nicholas is in love with her and nothing would have pleased him better than if Gwen had decided to go away with you.”
A dull flush covered Jonathan’s face. “That isn’t true! God, if it had been, how easy everything would have been! For one thing, I don’t suppose old Lucas would have got murdered in mistake for me.”
“Only Gwen didn’t go away with you,” Andrew said
“And now we know why, don’t we?”
“What about her handbag?” Andrew asked.
Jonathan looked puzzled and Colin said, “What’s her handbag got to do with it?”
A sense of extraordinary weariness suddenly assailed Andrew. He had noticed this happening to him increasingly lately, a feeling of exhaustion overcoming him almost as intensely as a blow. He leant back in his chair, sipped his drink and gave a deep sigh.
“Just a thought,” he said. “We’ve been told she didn’t take a suitcase with her when she disappeared, but did take her handbag. Well, of course if she was strangled in the house and carried out to the allotments, it’s obvious why she hadn’t a suitcase with her, but it would be interesting to know why she had her handbag. Did she keep tight hold of it while she was being strangled, or is our murderer a more than usually thoughtful character, doing his best to attend to details? Incidentally, was there any money in it?”
“Seven hundred and fifty pounds and some loose cash,” Colin answered.
“Quite a sum to be wandering around with in the dark. Where was it found?”
“In the shed beside her.”
“So she wasn’t attacked and robbed as she went to the garage for her car, or anything like that.”
“Obviously not,” Jonathan said impatiently. “And I tell you this story about Nicholas and Lyn is sheer fantasy.”
“Supper!” Dorothea suddenly called.
She hustled them out to the kitchen where a cold meal had been laid on the table. They were still eating some of the cold beef left over from the Christmas dinner, but the mince pies were finished and the beef was followed by the usual bread and cheese. She apologized for it a little incoherently, saying that she had meant to make a steak and kidney pie for that evening, but somehow had not been able to bring herself to concentrate on it.
“But I’ll make it tomorrow, I really will,” she said. “I’m ashamed at the way I’ve been feeding you, Andrew. You’ll never come again.”
Andrew wondered if he would in fact ever be able to brace himself for another visit to Upper Cullonden, but that was not on account of the diet that he had received there. Then as he looked at Colin’s plump, oval face with its pink, rounded cheeks and big, blue, thoughtful and observant eyes, and then at Dorothea’s fragile-looking smallness, her fine-boned features and shy, gentle eyes, he knew that if they wanted him to come again, he would come.
But perhaps his presence would remind them of what they would need to forget quite as badly as he would, and there would be no invitation. Next Christmas might find them in the West Indies or California or somewhere far away. But if so, would Jonathan be with them? What was going to become of him now? It was probable, Andrew thought, that the construction firm in Rockford would not have him on their books much longer. He was in the state of mind when a job abroad might have a certain appeal. Something well-paid, even if possibly dangerous, in, say, the Middle East. Anyway, something a long, long way from Upper Cullonden and the parents to whom he had hitherto been so happy to cling.
Supper was finished and the washing-up done by the time Detective Inspector Roland and Sergeant Porter arrived. Both men looked tired, and they did not refuse the whisky that Colin offered them. They sank into comfortable chairs with looks of relief, as if they both felt that they had been on their feet for far too long and could do with a rest.
Roland looked at Andrew and observed, “Told you there was a depression coming, didn’t I? They got it right for once. And now the forecast is frost. So if this rain goes on we’ll all be sliding around tomorrow on the ice. That’s something I’ve never liked driving on. Don’t trust myself not to get into a skid. Luckily Bob here’s an excellent driver.”
The sergeant looked even more pleased than he usually did. Though tired, he gave the impression of having had a happy day.
Roland, however, once he had made the obligatory remarks about the weather, looked irritable.
“Mr. Cahill,” he said, addressing not Colin, but Jonathan, “I’d be grateful if you’d bring your mind to bear on the question of any enemies who might be after your blood. Could you mention one or two?”
Before Jonathan could answer, Andrew said, “If you’re thinking of Mr. Dearden, I don’t believe he had any motive for killing Jonathan Cahill.”
“Ah, you’ve been listening to Miss Goddard,” Roland said. “She’s been telling us Mr. Dearden had nothing against him. There was nothing between him and Mrs. Dearden, so she says, and if there had been, Mr. Dearden wouldn’t have cared. All right, suppose that’s true; what I was really asking young Mr. Cahill is if he’s got any suspicions of anybody else?”
“No,” Jonathan said.
“No one at all?”
“No.” Jonathan sounded surly.
“What were your relations with Mr. Haslam?” Roland asked.
“Henry!” Jonathan made a curious noise in his throat which might have been a smothered laugh. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking Henry could be a murderer. He’s virtue itself.”
“We’ve got to think of everyone,” Roland said, “and he’s the one person we know of who had the opportunity to commit both murders. He’d Waterman to do the one job for him, and he was here last night himself and could have done the other.”
“But if he was using Waterman,” Andrew said, “wouldn’t it suggest his target was Sir Lucas, not Jonathan Cahill?”
“That’s right, it would,” Roland said as if this fact had been too obvious for him to mention it. “All the same, we’re short of a motive there. Naturally Haslam’s financial standing will be investigated, but unless he’s got himself into trouble that none of you know of and needed money, it’s difficult to see what he had to gain by Sir Lucas’s death. From the look of things, they were on good terms with one another. Sir Lucas was going to spend Christmas with Mr. and Mrs. Haslam and would have done it if she hadn’t had her accident. That looks as if they got on all right. But what about you, Mr. Cahill?” He surveyed Jonathan, his thick eyelids drooping so that his wide-spaced eyes looked as if he wanted to conceal the glitter in them. “I’d like to know more about your relations with Mr. Haslam. But going back to Mr. Dearden, we know you waited at Heathrow, presumably for Mrs. Dearden. That’s been checked. But she didn’t join you, although that’s what you say you’d arranged, for the simple reason, we know now, that she’d been murdered. It wasn’t that she was stringing you along, never intending to join you, as has been suggested to me. And there isn’t much mystery about why she didn’t pack a suitcase, though that’s been thought strange. She was probably killed before she got around to doing it. So it looks as if it must have been someone in the house who did it, and we’re back to Mr. Dearden, aren’t we? Wouldn’t you call him an enemy of yours, Mr. Cahill?”
“I don’t think I’m going to answer that,” Jonathan said.
Colin nodded his head in approval.
“In case you’re interested, we’ve taken him in for questioning,” Roland told them. “We may call on you for a statement about your relations with Mrs. Dearden.”
“What about her handbag?” Andrew asked.
He was conscious that he had asked the question not long before and must seem to have handbags on the brain, as a little while ago he had had passports. But he had not received any answer that had satisfied him.
“Ah, the handbag,” Roland said. “Interesting you should have thought of that. Curious point. She’s going to start packing, or perhaps she’s actually started, when she’s taken hold of from behind—we know it was from behind—and the life’s squeezed out of her. And then, if she’s started packing, her murderer carefully unpacks her case and hangs up her things as usual and carries her out to the allotments. And he takes her handbag with him and leaves it beside her in the shed, with a fair amount of money in it. It seems that money was mostly her husband’s. She’d helped herself to all he had in his wallet, which he was in the habit of keeping pretty well stocked. But why did he take the handbag out with her? Ask me another! He must have known her body would be found pretty soon, so the fact that her handbag was missing from the house wouldn’t have signified anything much. My own guess is it was one of those pointless little bits of elaboration that sometimes give criminals away. He was used to seeing her with a handbag. It almost seemed a part of her. So when he carried her out he just took her handbag along as a matter of course. Naturally it’s been tested for fingerprints, and that’s interesting. There are her husband’s prints on it as well as Mrs. Dearden’s.”
Dorothea produced one of her sudden explosions into speech. “That doesn’t mean anything! If you tested my handbag for fingerprints, you’d find mine and my husband’s and my son’s on it. Everyone in the house just helps themselves from it when they feel like it.”
Roland smiled. “I believe it’s the same in my own home. My wife has more time to go to the bank and cash a cheque than I have, and the money stays in her handbag till I want some.”
“So you’re married, Inspector,” Dorothea said, almost as if she did not believe it.
“Yes,” he said.
“Have you any children?”
“Just the two.”
“How old are they?”
“Hugh’s seven, Eileen’s five.”
He looked a little bemused by her rapid-fire questions; but plainly did not want to be discourteous.
“Does Hugh want to go into the police when he grows up?”
“An airline pilot is his ambition at present,” he said, “but Eileen wants to go into the police.”
“And is your wife interested in your work?”
“I suppose so. She’s got her own interests.”
“And what are they?”
The turn that the interrogation had taken seemed suddenly to overcome Sergeant Porter with a desire to giggle. He controlled it, but a broad grin spread over his wide, bland face.
Roland stood up. “We must be going. I’m sorry to have kept you so long. Thank you for your help.”
“But what does your wife do while you’re working?” Dorothea insisted. “I mean, you haven’t a nine to five job, have you? It must be very difficult for her, for instance, to arrange good meals for you.”
“She manages,” he said.
“Has she a job? Please forgive my questions. I’m always so interested in the way other people manage their lives. You know, years ago I took a degree in sociology. That’s when I met my husband, when we were both students. But I never tried to get a job in it because I didn’t think I’d ever manage to keep a job and look after my home as well. Has your wife a job?”
“She does part-time in a café,” he answered, beginning to look a little desperate and edging towards the door. “Professor, I wouldn’t worry about that handbag. It probably isn’t important. Come along, Bob.”
Roland’s remark that the handbag was not important made Andrew immediately sure, not only that it was, but that Roland was sure of this too. As Colin saw the two detectives out of the house, Andrew turned to Dorothea.
“You did that very nicely,” he said. “You’d had enough of them, had you?”
She looked surprised. “I don’t know what you mean, Andrew. I’m always interested in other people’s work and I’ve often wondered about policemen and what goes on in their private lives. They’re so important to us, yet most of us know hardly anything about them.”
“You might ask Hugh and Eileen to tea, then you’d find out a lot about their father,” Andrew said.
“Now you’re laughing at me,” she said reproachfully, “but I’m serious. I’m always interested in the work people do. Take Nicholas, for instance. Those spy stories he writes. They’re very clever and they’re simply overflowing with sex and violence, yet I never felt there was much sex in his relationship with Gwen and he always seemed so gentle; so I said to myself that he only wrote about things that were a bit lacking in his makeup, things he somehow needed to handle in his imagination because they weren’t there in reality. And look how wrong I seem to have been. I’m afraid I’m very often wrong about people, though I think about them so much.”
“You can’t be sure you’ve been wrong about Nicholas,” Andrew said.
“But if they’ve taken him in for questioning!”
“That isn’t the same as charging him. And charging him isn’t the same as finding him guilty. He’s innocent till he’s proved guilty, remember.”
“But they wouldn’t make a mistake like that. Or would they?” She turned her head and looked at Jonathan. “What do you really believe, darling?”
Instead of answering, he suddenly strode from the room, slamming the door behind him. They could hear his steps as he sprang up the stairs, then the slam of his bedroom door. Dorothea gave a little shudder. “It’s terrible for him,” she said. “He blames himself, I can tell. If it hadn’t been for that affair with Gwen none of it would have happened.”
“If there ever was an affair with Gwen,” Andrew said.
“Oh, there was,” she said. “Lyn’s only trying to cover up for
Nicholas. You don’t mean to say you believe her, do you?” “Don’t you?”
“Not for a moment. I told you about Jonathan and Gwen the other day, didn’t I? I’ve known about that for some time. And I don’t believe there’s ever been anything between Lyn and Nicholas. Perhaps on her side, but not on his.”
“In The Running Man she said she knew who’d done the murder,” Andrew said, “and I don’t think she meant Nicholas. But she sounded rather convincing.”
Dorothea shook her head. “She isn’t a person I feel inclined to believe. That icy sort of self-control she has… I think she’d say whatever she thought was most useful.”
“You don’t like her?”
“Well, I prefer people who are more spontaneous, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say I don’t like her. I don’t often really dislike people, because, as I told you, I’m so interested in them, and nearly always, if you try, you can find something that’s worth while—” She broke off as the door opened and Colin and Lyn Goddard came into the room.
Dorothea stood up quickly and said, “Lyn!” It sounded as if there could be no one whom she would be more pleased to see.
Lyn was in an overcoat and was carrying a plastic shopping bag.
“I’m afraid this is a fearful intrusion,” she said, “and if you want me to go away, please say so. But Colin said I could stay.”
“Of course she can,” Colin said. “She’ll have to put up with the little room in the attic, but we can easily make up the bed for her there.”
“You’re staying the night?” Dorothea asked. She did not seem at all put out by the prospect, in spite of what she had been saying. “Of course we can put you up.”
Lyn held up the shopping bag. “I only brought a few things, just for the night. It’s because that awful house frightens me, now that I’m alone in it. I won’t mind it in the morning. They’ve taken Nicholas away, as I expect you know, and Henry’s gone back to London to see how Erica’s getting on, and the whole place is empty. I’m not usually like this. I’m hardly ever afraid of being alone. Really I rather like it. But there’s something about that house now…” She shivered.
“Of course, of course,” Dorothea said. “Take your coat off and come and have a drink and I’ll go up and make up the bed for you. I’m so glad you decided to come. If I’d thought of your being alone there I’d have come over to ask you to spend the night with us, and to stay on, if that would help. But the police have only just left us and I haven’t got around to thinking about anything very clearly.”
Andrew believed that the warmth of her welcome was not hypocritical. Lyn might not be one of the people she liked best, but still she was someone in trouble—and with problems about which it might be very intriguing to speculate.
Lyn took off her coat and Colin took it from her. Then she came to the fire and sat down beside it while Colin once more started pouring out drinks. Dorothea shot out of the room and went running up the stairs, presumably to the attic to make up the bed there. Andrew wondered if it would be a courtesy on his part to offer Lyn the good spare bedroom on the first floor, which he had been occupying, but thought that changing rooms would only make more work for everyone than letting things remain as they were.
“We were talking about you just before you arrived,” he said. “I told Dorothea what you said in the pub, that you knew who’d done the murders. And didn’t you say you were going to tell the police what you knew? Did you do that?”
She gave a small, sardonic smile. “What do you think?”
“Then you didn’t?”
“And I don’t know who did the murders either,” she said. “It was just hysteria. You and Henry seemed so sure of yourselves, I couldn’t stand it.”
“I’m sorry,” Andrew said. “Actually I’m not sure of anything.”
“But Henry’s sure, isn’t he? He’s written Nicholas off.”
“Perhaps he has.”
“You know, I’m glad he’s gone home,” she said. “Even if I had to spend the night alone in that house, I’d prefer it to spending it there with Henry.”
“But why?” Colin asked. “I always thought he was a good sort of chap.”
“That’s what everyone thinks, isn’t it?” she said.
“Well, isn’t it true?” he said. “You aren’t frightened of good old Henry, are you?”
“Good old Henry, I believe, is a very violent sort of man,” she said. “Does that surprise you?”
“What’s given you that idea?” he asked.
Her smile reappeared. It was not at all a friendly smile. But she answered in a quiet voice, “Just hysteria again, I expect. Letting my intuitions run away with me. Except for reading me a lecture after the police left with Nicholas about everything being my fault and how he despised women like me who had no regard for the sanctity of marriage, he’s never been anything but very pleasant to me. But actually I believe he’s the sort of man who probably has daydreams of rape. He’s just a mass of frustration and aggression, dressed up as that image of being good old Henry—” She broke off. “No, don’t listen to me. I don’t mean it. He got on my nerves, that’s all. He’s the sort of man who thinks that having a good bank account will cover everything. If you’ve got that you don’t need to have imagination, or sympathy, or understanding. How Erica’s put up with him all this time I can’t even guess.”
“Perhaps she likes money too,” Andrew suggested.
“Well, I like it myself,” she said. “I’d like to have a lot of it. Lots and lots. But I’d be sorry if it was ever thought that it was the only virtue I had.”
“I wonder what you think your virtues are,” Andrew said.
Her smile this time looked less ironic. “That was a jab! I really sound so self-satisfied, do I?”
He did not think that she was at all self-satisfied. Her trouble, he thought, was that she was deeply dissatisfied with herself. What she wanted to appear and what she was were very different, and she knew it. She suffered from her knowledge of herself.
She went to bed early after apologizing several times to Dorothea for the trouble she was causing, and thanking her and Colin for their kindness to her. Andrew went to bed soon after her. He felt extremely tired, so tired that it would not be surprising, he thought, if the feeling should never abate. It seemed to him something that he might be doomed to endure for the rest of his days, of which, after all, there might not be very many left.
In bed he turned on the lamp beside him and settled down once more to his Rex Stout. He expected to fall asleep over it almost at once, but instead he found himself uncomfortably wakeful. He went on reading for more than an hour, thankful to be alone in the quiet room with no one asking questions to which he felt that he ought to know the answer, even if they were not addressed to him. He had reached the point in the story when Rex Stout’s arch-detective, Nero Wolfe, had begun to suck his lips in and out, showing that his mind was very actively at work, before it seemed reasonable to turn the light out and see if sleep would come.
It did not come. In the darkness Andrew felt more wide awake than ever, and found it difficult even to close his eyes. Though tonight he did not see flames flickering around him or hear the explosion of a bomb, he found it all too easy to imagine a scene in the house next door in which a strong pair of hands closed around the throat of helpless Gwen Dearden, and then strong arms carried her limp body out to the shed on the allotments.
Whose hands? Whose arms?
It seemed imperative to answer those questions if he wanted to sleep. He wanted sleep very badly. But to want it too much, he knew, was always a mistake, and since he had never found counting sheep a very satisfactory sedative, he let his mind stray over the events of the last few days, only to find himself presently muttering to himself:
Heap on more wood!—the wind is chill,
But let it whistle as it will,
We’ll keep our Christmas merry still…
There was something infuriating about that. Why, after the terrible experiences of this Christmas, should he be plagued by lines of such complete unimportance? However, he knew that they would go round and round in his head unless he escaped into sleep or drove himself to think of some others instead.
Sleep, after a little while, felt as if it might be coming. He was experiencing the pleasant sense of vacancy which comes just before unconsciousness takes over, when he was annoyed by the same nonsensical lines that had plagued him once before beginning to hammer at his brain.
I gotta phone,
You gotta phone,
All God’s chillun got phones.
When I get to Heaven goin’ to phone all my friends—
He suddenly sat bolt upright in his bed.
“All God’s chillun got phones…”
With his eyes once more open wide, he stared before him into the darkness. Then, after a time, he lay back again. But not to sleep. Not this night.