A Question of Proof (21 page)

‘There’s sure to be a bottle under Gadsby’s bed. I’ll fetch it down,’ muttered Wrench.

Gadsby’s face became more mottled than ever.
‘Wrench
, you little tick, can’t you ever do anything but try to be clever? If you were a gentleman, you’d know that there are occasions when one tries to show a little self restraint.’

Wrench grew red as fire and glared at him furiously. ‘When you’ve all finished blackguarding each other, perhaps we might go in,’ remarked Tiverton in a voice not quite so bored and detached as he tried to make it.

‘If you have some whisky, sir, by any chance, I think it would do none of us any harm,’ said Armstrong smoothly to Gadsby. ‘I’ll fetch it myself’

‘You’ll find a bottle in the cupboard,’ said Gadsby.

‘Empty,’ said Wrench.

An hour later. Nigel and the superintendent are sitting in the morning-room. A very stiff tot of whisky indeed is in front of the superintendent. Nigel has somehow conjured up a pot of tea, and as they talk he moves restlessly from one part of the room to another, carrying his cup and saucer with him and putting them down precariously whenever he comes to a halt.

‘Well, this fair beats me,’ groaned Armstrong, clapping his hand to his forehead. ‘The field, the tent, the pavilion, the path into the school, and the school itself; we’ve been over the whole ruddy caboodle with a fine-tooth comb, and not a smell of that bleeding dagger – nothing even that begins to look like a dagger.’

‘I have thee not, and yet I see thee still,’ quoted Nigel, ‘only we don’t see thee.’

‘Whassat?’

‘Poetry. The Bard.’

Armstrong beat his clenched fist again and again upon the table. ‘Am I going batty or am I not? A man is stabbed. Every one and everything within a hundred yards of him is searched – no one could possibly have got away – but, hey presto! the weapon is gone.’

Nigel loped over to another comer of the room and balanced his teacup on the edge of a pouffe. ‘We ought to have found out if anyone here is a sword-swallower. He may be coughing it up privily at this very moment.’

‘Ah, t’chah!’

‘Well, produce something better.’

‘Why, it’s as plain as my foot – or should be,’ the superintendent’s feet did certainly obtrude themselves upon one’s notice. ‘Mrs. Vale carries the stiletto in her clothing, waits for a moment when every one’s eyes are glued on the game, stabs him in the back. Quite easy from where she was sitting; weapon entered the body rather from the left; it all fits in. Then she gives him a push and pretends to faint. That is the signal preconcerted with Evans. He runs up, cuddles her a bit, and she passes the weapon to him. He puts it inside his coat, goes off for water, and hides it somewhere in the school. Damn it, it must be right. There must be some hiding place we’ve missed.’

‘Blood, old boy, blood. There’d be bound to be some on her clothing or his.’

Armstrong lowered an eyelid ponderously. ‘That’s all right, sir. I forgot to tell you, there was so much to do. After you’d gone in with the masters just now I took another squint at the ground by the tent. Two smears of blood on the grass, quite close where Mrs. Vale fainted. One of ’em must have wiped the blade.’

‘That’s certainly a point to you. But, look here, what was the point of Mrs. Vale’s pretending to faint? Surely she would want all eyes concentrated on Vale while she transferred the weapon to Evans. Fainting would distract some attention to herself.’

‘That’s true, sir. But there had to be some pretext for Evans going so close to her.’

‘And the motive? On your theory Evans murdered Wemyss to prevent his intrigue with Mrs. Vale coming to her husband’s ears. That seemed to me thin enough. And now Mrs. Vale murders her husband, although she knows she and Michael are under suspicion of the first crime – what for? To get a separation? She’d only to ask Vale for a divorce, hadn’t she? One might conceivably murder a person if that was the only way out, but she hadn’t even asked her husband for a divorce yet.’

‘Can you prove that?’

Nigel was taken rather aback. ‘Prove it? No. But one of them would have told me if they’d decided to take the step.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t take that as evidence. You see, I happened to be passing the drawing-room door on Sunday evening before supper, and I heard Mr. Evans ask Mrs. Vale whether she would ever be really free of her husband till he was dead. I’m afraid that will sound more convincing in court than something which one of them would have told you.’

‘ “Happened” is good.’

Armstrong shifted in his chair and said stiffly, ‘This is not a game of cricket; it’s a murder investigation. Someone’s got to do the dirty work.’

‘So you’re really going to arrest them this time.’

‘We’ll have another look for that weapon tomorrow morning. If we find it, I shall arrest them. If not, I shall ask the chief constable to call in the Yard.’

‘Yes, you’d certainly have a pretty good case. But just think a minute. A woman might use that sort of weapon. But I ask you, would anyone in their senses go and commit a crime in full view of two hundred people, when there were a thousand opportunities for doing it on the quiet, and quite enough brains to think out any number of safer methods if, as you hold, they had enough brains to think out the first murder.’

‘Hmph. It took some brains to get rid of the weapon like that. It seems to me there’s a remarkable similarity between the two murders. In each case the criminals deliberately put themselves under suspicion, first by admitting that they were in the haystack and then by being in the obvious proximity to Mr. Vale when he is murdered, and in each case they arrange
it
so that there shall be no proof. I tell you, sir, it’s a double bluff. And damned clever too. Surely you’re not suggesting that there’s no connection between the two murders?’

‘Far from it. I suggest that there’s even more connection than meets your eagle eye. Hasn’t it occurred to you that there’s at least just as much likelihood of the murders having been done like this by
somebody else
in order to incriminate Evans and Mrs. Vale as of having been done by them so as to incriminate themselves?’

Armstrong started and fingered his top button uneasily.

‘And secondly,’ pursued Nigel, ‘doesn’t the highly
public
nature of both crimes suggest anything to you?’

Armstrong looked puzzled. ‘I don’t see what you mean. This last crime was public enough. But the murder of Wemyss? Well, the haystack was in rather a prominent position, I grant you. Still, I don’t see how you could call the murder itself ‘public.’ ’

‘ No… No. Of course not,’ said Nigel, looking at Armstrong quizzically.

‘Look here, sir, what is it? You’ve got something on your mind. What’s this new theory of yours? You told me you’d come across with it this afternoon, one way or another.’

‘Yes, I know. But things have happened since that. This Vale business complicates matters. Hell and damnation,’ he went on, talking almost to himself,
‘and
I could have stopped it. I had all the facts. I might have known – oh well, spilt milk and all that. I want a day more. They can’t get away, can they? Let me know, by the way, when you’re going to arrest them, and we’ll see what your humble servant can do.’ Nigel rose wearily. As he was opening the door he turned and said over his shoulder, ‘And, incidentally, Armstrong, I’m prepared to lay twenty to one that you find the weapon in Evans’ room tomorrow.’

‘Wh-wh-what?’ gurgled the superintendent, but the only reply was a squeak from the closing door. ‘For all that,’ Nigel was saying to himself on the other side, ‘I wish I knew where it is now.’

XII

Shocks All Round

THE NEXT DAY
was perhaps the busiest and most eventful in Nigel Strangeways’ life. Before twelve hours of it had elapsed, the whole structure of deceit and misrepresentation which the murderer had erected had fallen in like a house of cards. It was a terrible day for Michael and Hero. Michael, waking early after fitful sleep, felt a vague nightmare weigh upon his heart; he remembered that it was exactly a week since he had woken up in sunlight and kissed Hero in the haystack – a week since someone had tied a piece of string round a boy’s neck. But it was not this that oppressed him. Then he remembered; he had started from sleep in the middle of the night and suddenly realised the full meaning of the superintendent’s activities that evening. They suspected Hero of killing her husband, and himself of hiding the weapon. So obvious, when one came to think of it. Hero’s face, lovely and forlorn, rose up before his eyes; then the mists of fear came down, blotting out everything but the difficult and treacherous path beneath his feet – a path, he reflected grimly, so likely to end now in a
sheer
drop. Nigel said he knew – that was his last hope. Hero herself lay in bed, wan and wide-eyed. Wherever she turned she could see nothing but a body with a tiny hole in the back and a tiny ooze of blood on the grey coat. That she was free at last, free to marry Michael; that at least one person believed her to be the murderess of her husband – these things did not enter her mind. The darkness of physical horror still enveloped it too closely. It was an exciting day for Superintendent Armstrong and more than one of the staff. It was a day notable, moreover, for perhaps the only triumph in the drab life of Hugo Sims.

Michael got out of bed and studied his face curiously in the glass. It looked exactly the same as it had looked a week ago. No pallor, no dark pouches, none of the conventional imprints of mental anguish. He felt vaguely resentful; one might at least have something to show for it. He dressed and opened the door to go downstairs. As he closed it behind him another memory started up out of his unconscious. Sometime last night, in the shadowy gulf between waking and sleeping, he had heard that same sound, seeming to come from a great distance. It couldn’t really have come from a great distance, of course, or he wouldn’t have heard it. It was probably part of a dream, anyway. He dismissed it from his mind.

Michael took out pencil and paper, and wrote a little note. ‘Darling Hero, I love you. Remember, I shall love you always and whatever happens. When you want me, I will come. Be brave. Michael.’ He
folded
it up, knocked on Hero’s door and slipped it underneath. Then he went down to breakfast. They were all there, Nigel too. He saw Nigel’s lips moving, ‘It’ll be all right, don’t worry,’ he seemed to be saying. The masters treated him with a strange blend of awe and pity and embarrassment, as though he were dying of a plague. Of course, they had seen him and Hero. Every one must know about that now, and every one must be thinking the same as the superintendent. Only Griffin remained constant in friendship. Michael felt nothing but love and fidelity in his attitude. Having paid their respects to the dying man, so to speak, the masters returned to the topic they had been discussing before his entry.

‘No, no,’ Tiverton was saying, ‘even supposing any of us had the money to buy the place, we’d not get the boys. Do you suppose the parents will send their children to a place where two murders have been committed?’

‘Good-bye to our little bread-and-butters, eh, Tiverton?’ said Gadsby. ‘I think you are taking too pessimistic a view of things. We don’t know, of course,’ – here he lowered his voice discreetly and gave a wary glance in Michael’s direction, a perfect example of tactless tact – ‘what Mrs. Vale’s plans are, but I imagine she would be only too glad to get rid of the school. My advice to you, Tiverton, is to sound the parents and see how many would continue to send their boys to us if we moved to some other part of the country. There’s nothing like trying, is there?’

Sims leaned across to Tiverton with a worried expression. ‘I agree with Gadsby. I mean, it’s very awkward for some of us. There are so few jobs going nowadays, especially for older men. I’m sure the parents would be sympathetic. After all, it’s not our fault that all this has happened.’

‘Not
our
fault,’ said Wrench, ‘but the fault of one of us. Or do you attribute these murders to some outside agency?’

There was a frozen and scandalised silence; the kind of silence that obtained in the common room when someone had the bad taste to bring Russia or religion into the conversation, Michael noticed. He glanced across at Nigel. His friend was sitting quite still, staring noncommittally down his nose and listening far harder than anyone would have supposed. He looked just like a junior master, listening respectfully to his seniors. Griffin broke the silence. ‘I’m all for the idea. Let things calm down a bit, and then start off somewhere else. I rather fancy you as a head beak, Tiverton.’

‘Yes,’ said Wrench enthusiastically, ‘we could have something like a school. Do away with all these ridiculous petty restrictions and teach boys to think in English instead of Latin.’

Wrench was going down badly this morning. His last remark was an implied criticism, not only of the late headmaster, but of the whole school. And the first thing a schoolmaster must learn is to venture no criticism of a school till he has been there at least
two
years. However much masters may dislike each other or the system under which they are working, the fact of working together in a group unites them in opposition to the criticisms of any newcomer. It was Sims this time who broke the hostile silence. ‘I know. We could do an awful lot, couldn’t we?’ he said, his eyes shining. Every one was taken rather aback. Then Tiverton remarked, in the encouraging, slightly patronising tones which every one seemed to use towards Sims when they were not snubbing or ignoring him, ‘Well, what would you suggest?’

Blushing and stuttering, the little man proceeded to give a lecture on how he would run a school. It was really very good, Michael said to himself. Sims had evidently given a great deal of thought to the subject; it was a pity he was such a failure in practice. Sims suddenly realised the attention which was being given to his remarks, and trailed off into silence, blushing more furiously than ever. Wrench was looking sulky at this stealing of his thunder. Gadsby patted Sims on the back. ‘Well done, old man,’ he said effusively; then, collecting eyes and showing Sims, as it were, like an infant prodigy, ‘He’s got quite a lot under his bald patch, has old Simmie. Ought to be a headmaster. I always say, you never know what there is in a fullah till –’