1
There was hyoscine in the drink from which Whistler had taken a sample before any of us reached the library door. Dennis was right—he’d been right all along the line. There was enough of it to have killed every man jack in the place. Apparently Eleanor had a store of it, though we never discovered precisely how she got hold of it; Dennis said she was in touch with so many people that she could practically have demanded the Crown Jewels and been tolerably sure of getting them. And among the doctors in her power she wouldn’t have much difficulty in getting hold of poison. Anyway, she had more than she’d given Hook to put in Dennis’s cocktail, for when, at Nunn’s request, she was sent for, in order that Dennis could repeat his story and she deny it, they found her dead in her room. She must have realised the game was up, and there was no hope for her. Hook bore the brunt eventually, and no one even tried to get up a reprieve for him, which shows how strongly the public, which can be sentimental enough about criminals, felt in this particular instance.
Nunn went through the subsequent proceedings like a man of stone. He had to give evidence, answer questions, make statements; he had to clear himself of the suggestion that he and Eleanor had been partners; he had to stand for any amount of obloquy. The affair cost him a tremendous amount both in prestige and in cash. I fancy it was due to Dennis that his name was completely cleared of every imputation of scandal before the wretched affair closed. The papers, of course, were full of it. The story of the Spider’s activities became common property. Numbers of people whose relations had mysteriously made away with themselves during the past few years laid the blame at the Spider’s door. In thousands of homes people felt as if at the eleventh hour they had been granted a reprieve. It was as if they could at last dare to draw breath.
Dennis wasn’t mentioned by name in any of the newspaper reports. He looked, not triumphant, but sick and green when he had at length convinced Nunn of the facts. He told me privately that he couldn’t look the fellow in the face. He seemed afraid to meet Hilary, too, as if she might turn and rend him. In short, he behaved as if he had something to be ashamed of.
Nunn spoke to no one, except Jeremy, and that was not until we were getting ready to leave the Abbey. He had been unapproachable, and I was wondering whether it would be possible to say a word before we went. Because I knew, if he and the rest of them didn’t, that there had been another Eleanor besides the one who had lived on blackmail, and even helped to do her own husband to death (for Dennis convinced us of this also before he was through). There had been the woman who came down at five in the morning to see that a young subaltern had his breakfast before going back to France. It was odd, but that was the Eleanor I saw most clearly during those grim weeks following her death, and I had a confused notion that if I could make Nunn aware of her too, things might be more endurable for him. But, as if he sensed my intention, Jeremy said dryly, “Oh, don’t be a funny ass, Tony. What is there for such as we to say to a man like that?” As we were going, Nunn held out his hand to Jeremy, and said, “It’ll pass, Freyne. All things pass. It’s only man who’s indomitable.”
2
“Do tell me,” Jeremy said to Dennis, later on, “how did you know that drink would be poisoned?”
“It was their last chance,” Dennis explained. “I had to get them red-handed; my case against them wasn’t clear enough and this was the only way out that I saw. I don’t know whether Lady Nunn had any idea that I’d found her out, but she realised that if we could prove that Feltham left his house, not at half-past ten but at eight, all the fat would be in the fire. She meant to prepare a cast-iron alibi by being in the house all the evening, from the instant the party started, but it was essential that everyone should believe Feltham was alive at—say—half-past ten. That note in the summer-house (written, incidentally, on my paper), was a very shrewd idea, because it misled practically everyone. But she had to take another risk. It was important that Hilary shouldn’t be there to time, or the note would lose all meaning, so she had to detain her for at least ten minutes. You remember how she came to us in an agitated condition at eleven or a little earlier, saying she’d been doing her best to keep Hilary with her, but hadn’t been successful? She did everything she could, except for that slip in the confession I was supposed to have written. There are only two or three people in the house who referred to Feltham by his Christian name, and I’m not one of them. And, by the way,” he smiled deprecatingly, “I suppose it’s horribly snobbish of me, but I was wounded at the idea that anyone could believe I’d prepare anything so melodramatic as that letter.”
“Let’s get this straight,” said Jeremy, who is a single-minded young man. “You guessed it was Lady Nunn and Hook, but you couldn’t prove it. What did you do to precipitate the crisis?”
“I told them I’d discovered about the half-crown, and that I proposed to talk to the police about it first thing in the morning. Now, from their point of view, it was of the utmost importance that no one should discover the half-crown. I don’t say either of them had set eyes on it, but the police would jump on such a clue, and it was literally as much as their lives were worth to allow them the chance. So if they were going to act, they had to act at once. I thought of the drinks as being an ideal opportunity, so that when I said I’d have mine alone, it was simply a question of giving them plenty of rope, with the practical certainty that they’d hang themselves.”
“And that,” I exclaimed, “was why you took all the credit for discovering about the half-crown? We couldn’t think…”
Dennis laughed. “Oh, you h-heard me?” he stammered. “Well, you see, I hadn’t any choice. If Lady Nunn had realised that you and Freyne knew about the half-crown she wouldn’t have done anything conclusive, because it wouldn’t have been worth while. But, so far as she knew, I was the only person alive who could make that fact known to the police, and so I must be swept out of the way at once.”
“And you anticipated the confession?”
“Well, if I was to be poisoned, it was obviously to be a case of suicide. And if you have a suicide, you must have a motive. In my case, the only motive that would be any use to them, would be Feltham’s murder. It might have been a bit difficult for anyone to have put together a case against me, but in the face of a signed confession that would hardly count. As soon as Hook brought in the drink I tilted some of it into a phial, in case Hook got suspicious and overturned the glass, and then I waited.”
“That,” agreed Jeremy, “was very smart. But what put you on to Lady Nunn in the first place?”
“I’ve never been satisfied with the solution, if you can call it that, of the Feltham scandal, the first Feltham scandal, I mean. I know a lot of fools went about saying that Percy Feltham must be guilty because innocent men don’t shoot themselves at the first breath of suspicion, but that was all my eye and Betty Martin. Feltham had no choice. He had to take his own life or stand his trial for treason. And whether he was convicted or no, he was a ruined man. There was a man whose work was his life, and when he’d lost the one the other had no value for him. But, on the other hand, people were right in saying that Cleghorne had an ally, and an ally who knew more about the business than he did. Some of those facts could not have come from him; he didn’t know them. No one but Percy Feltham knew them, and he never told official secrets. That went against him at the time, of course; a chatterbox might have been found guilty of indiscretion but not of wilful treachery. But everyone recalled Feltham’s reputation. They didn’t remember, though, that Feltham told everything to his wife. He had done it since their marriage; he rated her intellect very high; he regarded her as his partner and ally. Really he thought of her in those capacities more than he thought of her as his wife. And she did know as much as he knew himself. He relied on her to a very great extent. So if anyone had given the facts away, it was one of these two, and for every reason I was convinced it wasn’t Feltham. So you may say that I began this business with a prejudiced mind. It might, of course, only be coincidence that in the two biggest affairs of their kind that had entered my experience she was a figure, even a central figure, but I wanted some proof of that. She was Percy Feltham’s wife and confidante, and secret information was sold. She settled with her next husband at Feltham Abbey—in itself an odd thing to do—and Feltham Abbey was tracked down as being at all events connected with this Spider scandal.”
“We thought it was Nunn,” said Jeremy, thoughtfully, “and the odd thing is, we worked along much the same lines as yourself.”
“I considered Nunn,” Dennis acknowledged, “but he didn’t really fit the bill. You pitched on Mrs. Ross as his confederate, too; I never suspected her. The woman talks too much, and she can’t help showing off. It’s part of her attraction, I know, but it would make her quite useless for this kind of work. You’ve got to have a cool head and unlimited powers of reticence. I got hold of the dossiers of about a dozen of the Spider’s victims, and tracked them all down, and in each case I found that one of the two Felthams—Lady Nunn, that is, or the Captain—was intimate with the family. I hadn’t a doubt that Ralph Feltham was in the ramp; it would be honey to the bear to him. And I knew several stories of his wartime activities. I don’t doubt he was in the Cleghorne plot, too. You’ll realise that a big gang movement like this one isn’t built up easily; it requires a tremendous amount of machinery to ensure its smooth working, and every cog and nut must be thoroughly tested before being slipped into place. Lady Nunn, as Percy Feltham’s wife, had gone pretty well where she pleased. She had unlimited opportunities for collecting just the kind of information that would be useful. And information of that sort retains its value. Of course, she had her spies and confederates. I had picked on Feltham as one, and then I examined the facts to see whether there was anyone who might be described as a bridge between the past and the present.”
“And you found Hook?”
“I found Hook. The man had apparently had an excellent job, which he threw up to become Lady Nunn’s butler, though it must have meant recalling an extremely painful period in his own life. Then came the story of Lady Nunn being herself blackmailed by Feltham. Now, to my mind that argued a recent split between the two. Feltham must have had those letters of Cleghorne’s for years, but though he’d often been hard put to it for money, he’d never tried to raise it by those means. Not because he was scrupulous—he wasn’t—but because he and Lady Nunn were on excellent terms, and it was a more paying proposition to keep in with her. But after the split, he produced the correspondence. I daresay she paid him handsomely; on the other hand, all he may have asked of her was Nunn’s consent to the marriage. Lady Nunn, I’m sure, would have refused that. Knowing Feltham as she did, she probably felt a bit sick at the prospect of Hilary becoming his wife. And I daresay those were Ralph Feltham’s terms. Once he’d married Hilary, he’d very likely have settled down, and the reformed criminal is the most dangerous person alive. So clearly he must be put out of the way. He was dangerous to Hook, too…”
“I still don’t see how you can have been sure of Hook,” Jeremy expostulated. “You might have suspected him, but it doesn’t seem to me you had any evidence.”
“I didn’t, for a long time, do more than suspect him. But he showed his hand once in a very foolish fashion. He had said, you will remember, that he didn’t speak to Baynes, but when you, Keith, were asking him about the letters, he said at once that it would be better for him to slip the question to Baynes. But if he wasn’t on speaking terms with the fellow, it would be an extremely awkward subject to open up. And then, when I was thinking about Feltham’s death, I became convinced that that note Hilary found was a forgery and that it had been waiting in the summer-house ever since someone had murdered him. You see, even I know the legend of the paper he uses, and this didn’t fit in with the legend. Then I remembered it was Lady Nunn who prevented Hilary being in time. Well, if Feltham wasn’t killed during the party, it must have been before it began. It wouldn’t be safe to let Hilary find that note, with the chance of his wandering in inopportunely. I thought it was probably the work of two people—Feltham was a big man and he hadn’t been dragged—and so I got back to the story of the unusual car in the right-of-way. I argued that a man taking that road between half-past eight and nine would have time to put Feltham out of the way, and get back to the house probably before any of the guests arrived.”
“And Eleanor was late,” I agreed. “Mrs. Ross commented on it, saying she was locked in the bathroom. It hadn’t occurred to me that you can lock a door from either side.”
“Or that a woman wrapped in an old cloak could probably slip into the house without attracting much attention. She could come up through the private gardens, and everyone would be dressing when she returned. And she could use that small private door into the house.”
“It was taking a chance,” argued Jeremy.
“All murderers take chances. It’s part of the game. Hook took a chance when he banked on people identifying the man in the evening rig as a guest and not as a servant.”
“What damned fools!” Jeremy cried. “I’d forgotten there are two sets of men who wear open-faced shirts in the evening, and the whole household knew that Hook—the careful, the meticulous Hook—had allowed his stocks to run low on an important night. The very last thing Hook would be likely to do. And in any case he wouldn’t have gone himself, he’d have sent one of the underlings. Or even have telephoned.”
“Yes, it was his candour that almost saved him,” Dennis agreed. “He didn’t attempt to hide his movements. He was a very cool, crafty, intelligent chap, the kind of man it’s worth pitting oneself against.” Again he offered us that deprecatory smile.
“Those bloodstains in the summer-house were a mistake,” Jeremy observed. “I suppose if there weren’t these accidents there’d be more undetected criminals than there are. If the car hadn’t been seen that night, I suppose we’d never have brought it home to them.”
“There’s Mrs. Ross’s Mills of God for you,” Dennis protested. “You must remember that we always play a three-handed game—Fate insists on taking a hand in all these deals, and a lot depends on how she plays it. Generally, you know, in spite of the scepticism of the time and the public, she plays it on the right side. Still, it wasn’t Hook who was the artist in this case. It was Lady Nunn.”
A new thought struck me. “How did she make the appointment with Hilary?”
“Got you to drive her into Munford for the purpose. Mrs. Ross said she practically sacked that girl; she had to have some good excuse for getting out of the neighbourhood that afternoon. She managed very well; she couldn’t have allowed for Mrs. Ross coming, but she got round that difficulty by saying openly that she must telephone the house about her failure to find a parlour-maid. And she did telephone the house, and Hook, who was waiting, answered the call. She told him whatever was necessary, and then asked to be put on to Hilary. You’ve noticed, of course, that she has a fairly deep voice at all times, and it wouldn’t be difficult to pitch it a tone lower for the occasion. Besides, no one expects a voice to sound quite normal on the telephone, and these country wires, in particular, distort quite familiar voices. And then Hilary said the voice sounded strange and fierce.”
“And she wrote the letter to Ralph making the appointment that ended in his death?”
“I should say, unquestionably. Peters, by the way, was a most valuable witness. He can’t tell us what the letter contained; I don’t suppose we shall ever know that, but it must have been pretty strong to have had much effect on the fellow. I daresay Hilary offered to elope with him; otherwise, why pitch the meeting so early? But Peters did tell us something supremely important. He said that in the course of his conversation with Baynes, the latter said he’d be thankful when it was time for Feltham to go out, as he’d been indoors the whole blessed day. Well, if that were true, he couldn’t have telephoned Hilary, because there wasn’t an instrument on the premises. That’s why I asked you,” he nodded towards me, “to be as detailed as possible, because it’s in trifles like that that men give themselves away.”
3
Jeremy got up and said he must go. He had a lot of things to see to. He had accepted an invitation to join a party of deep-sea diving—trust Jeremy to get in touch with something unusual and, probably, unprofitable. He stood by the windows for a minute, looking out on the lighted street, where the taxis, little beetles in orange and black, ran to and fro among the moving crowds. It was, I saw, going to be all right about Jeremy, though Hilary was going to marry Dennis, and he had to go back to his wandering life. He lived for the adventure of the moment and the anticipation of to-morrow. A settled life wouldn’t really suit him at all. He had loved Hilary, but she wasn’t the one thing in his life that mattered beyond everything else. Deeper than his feeling for her was the sense of the perpetual challenge of existence and his need to answer it. Already he seemed hardly one of our company. He was reaching out towards the unknown, the inexperienced, the so far unattainable. Rooted in life though he was, he was possessed of no local roots. One place was as much home to him as another. Part of him, indeed, seemed already to have sped away; he himself was already drawing the door of this last experience close behind him, turning his feet towards the future.
He turned to Dennis. “Good luck,” he murmured. “You deserve it. I’ll drink your health on the 19th.”
Dennis, looking shy and becoming loquacious, stammered, “There’s no such thing as deserving good luck, really, you know. Sometimes for s-some reason the heavens open and s-shower gifts on to men. It’s all very s-strange. I haven’t really got accustomed to Hilary preferring me to the r-rest of the world. I daresay I shall, though,” he added philosophically. “I hope you’re going to enjoy things.”
“I expect so,” Jeremy reassured him. “What would you like for a wedding present? A nice little octopus or one of those jolly fish with mouths like dust-chutes? Either would probably act as a Hoover. Next time you see me I shall probably be a travelling showman. It’s more aristocratic than going on the movies these days.”
He went out, and I was left with a bleak sense of loss. It wasn’t Jeremy so much as Eleanor. She was wrapped up with the roots of my life; and I’d seen her lying dead. She had looked like a stranger, and it had almost knocked me off my balance.
Dennis said, “A nice chap, isn’t he? I’d almost sooner have cut out anyone else. But that’s how these things are. You know, I d-didn’t think I had a hope when he appeared in the field. But the gods are more fair-minded than we ever allow. They even up the balances in an amazing way. He’s everything I’ve always wanted to be, and yet Hilary d-doesn’t want to marry him. It’s very strange.”
But as I came out into the brilliance, the mystery and the enchantment of the London night, leaving Dennis standing at his window, it didn’t seem to me so strange after all.