Before the Fact

FRANCIS ILES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Francis Iles was a pseudonym of Anthony Berkeley Cox, who was born in 1893 in Watford. After serving in the army during the First World War, Berkeley worked as a journalist for many years before his first foray into the crime genre with
The Layton Court Mystery
(1925).

His two primary nom-de-plumes were Francis Iles and Anthony Berkeley. As the former, he was a master of the psychological suspense genre, always with a wry humorous tenor to his writing; as the latter he acted as a trailblazer in the classic ‘Golden Age’ of crime and detective novels.

An intensely private man who always shunned public attention, Berkeley died in 1971.

This edition published in the UK by Arcturus Publishing Limited
26/27 Bickels Yard, 151–153 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3HA
Design and layout copyright © 2011 Arcturus Publishing Limited
Text copyright © 1932 by Francis Iles
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written permission
in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended).
Any person or persons who do any unauthorised act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
ISBN: 978-1-84858-362-7
Cover artwork by Duncan Smith
Typesetting by Couper Street Type Co.

Some women give birth to murderers, some go to bed with them, and some marry them. Lina Aysgarth had lived with her husband for nearly eight years before she realized that she was married to a murderer.

Suspicion is a tenuous thing, so impalpable that the exact moment of its birth is not easy to determine. But looking back over the series of little pictures which composed the memory of her married life, Lina found later that certain of them – a small incident here, its significance quite unnoticed at the time, an unimportant action there, perhaps just a chance word of her husband’s – had become illuminated by her fear so that they stood out like a row of street-lamps along a dark, straight road: a road which looks so easy in the daytime but so sinister by night.

Even her very first meeting with Johnnie seemed, in this later illumination, a red triangle of danger whose warning she had deliberately ignored.

It had been at a picnic got up by the Cotherstone girls.

The Cotherstone girls were always getting up picnics and asking the participants to bring friends: a fatal thing to do, for the friends of our friends are often so very unexpected. Lina McLaidlaw lived then in Abbot Monckford, which is a small hamlet in Dorsetshire seven miles from the nearest railway station, so that even a picnic got up by the Cotherstone girls was an event.

The objective of the picnic was a well known beauty spot in the neighbourhood, containing a View. Lina, who had seen the View a hundred times already, went because there was a chance of meeting strangers. She often felt that in the country the only thing worth living for was strangers.

On this particular picnic there was only one stranger.

“My dear,” Lina said to the elder Cotherstone girl, under cover of the View, “who is that
rather
attractive man with the Barnards?”

“
Very
attractive man,” corrected the elder Cotherstone girl with enthusiasm. “Isn’t he simply divine? It’s Johnnie Aysgarth. You know. He’s a cousin of the Middlehams.”

“I know.” Lina looked at the young man with increased interest. So that was Johnnie Aysgarth.

“You’ve heard about the Aysgarths?” said the elder Cotherstone girl disappointedly.

“Of course,” Lina nodded. Naturally she had heard about the Aysgarths. Everyone who knew the Middlehams had heard about the Aysgarths. Sir Thomas Aysgarth was Lord Middleham’s first cousin. Lord Middleham had somehow managed to retain his estates, unlike most of his brother peers, and even enough money to keep them up. Sir Thomas Aysgarth had not. He now lived partly in an upper maisonette in Hampstead, and partly with such of his relations and old friends as he could induce to invite him for long visits. Of his four sons, one had been killed in the war, one was in Australia, nominally sheep-farming, one was on the stage, and Johnnie, the youngest, was – well, no one quite knew what Johnnie was. But when the Aysgarth name was mentioned at all, Johnnie invariably came into the conversation at once.

“He’s staying at Penshaze,” Miss Cotherstone volunteered. Lord Middleham, at Penshaze, still ruled Abbot Monckford and its attendant hamlets of Abbot Tarrantington and Abbot Blansford, as firmly in fact if not in theory as his feudal ancestors had done five hundred years ago.

“But what’s he doing with the Barnards?” Lina wanted to know.

Miss Cotherstone shrugged her shoulders. “I should put it, what are the Barnards doing with him? And that’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? I don’t want to be catty, but Jessie and Alice
are
getting on, aren’t they? And the Barnards have got money and the Aysgarths haven’t. I should say it’s quite obvious.”

“Poor man,” Lina laughed, “if he’s booked for Jessie or Alice. How old is he?”

“I don’t know. But no doubt the Barnards could tell you, if you’re interested.”

“Interested!” said Lina.

But she was interested.

She was interested to know if Johnnie Aysgarth was as fascinating as he was supposed to be. She was interested to know if he was as attractive as he looked. She was interested to know why all the women who knew him spoke his name in tones of mingled rapture and guardedness. She was interested to know whether he was really just another of the horsey, doggy, shooting, fishing, hunting nincompoops with which her path seemed to be strewn, or whether for once something a little more civilized had come out of Penshaze. She was interested to know whether he resented the Barnard girls calling him “Johnnie” already. She was interested to know whether he was interested in one of the Barnard girls.

In fact, Lina told herself, Johnnie Aysgarth was a stranger and she was therefore automatically interested in him.

“At any rate, his manners are charming,” she thought, covertly watching him; and her interest grew.

It was gratified.

Before they had settled down for lunch Mrs. Barnard (an obviously reluctant Mrs. Barnard, Lina saw with hidden amusement) appeared at her side, Mr. Aysgarth in tow.

“Oh, Lina dear, may I introduce ... Mr. Aysgarth, Miss McLaidlaw. Mr. Aysgarth is staying at Penshaze.”

“Oh, yes?” Lina said brightly. “You know the Middlehams, then, Mr. Aysgarth?” What a ridiculous thing to say, she thought. Of course he knows the Middlehams if he’s staying there. And of course he knows perfectly well that I know he’s a cousin.

Johnnie Aysgarth was still holding her hand in its pigskin gauntlet. “Yes,” he smiled, “I know the Middlehams. In fact, Charlie Middleham’s some sort of a cousin of mine. But they evidently don’t know me, or I shouldn’t be staying there.”

“Now, where ...?” said Mrs. Barnard, and wandered distrustfully away.

Johnnie Aysgarth was still smiling at Lina. It was an infectious, intimate smile, which seemed to imply that out of all the people there only they two really had the right to smile at each other. And his eyes did twinkle.

Lina smiled back. He
was
fascinating.

She withdrew her hand. Nobody had ever retained it so long on an introduction before.

She saw now that Johnnie was shorter than she had thought, not more than five feet eight at most; but his chest was broad, and he was evidently well muscled and athletic. His hair was very dark, with little tight curls over the temples, and his eyes a light gray. Lina thought his face the merriest she had ever seen.

“I had an awful job to get the old girl to introduce me to you,” he said. “She didn’t want to one little bit.”

“Oh?” said Lina, a little taken aback. “Why?” she added feebly.

Johnnie laughed. “Oh, she’s got me booked in her mind for one of her comic daughters, of course,” he said, without self-consciousness. “She didn’t want me to meet the opposition.”

If Johnnie Aysgarth was not self-conscious, Lina was. “Opposition?” she said, as frigidly as she could.

“Local opposition,” he replied with another smile. “Who’d look at the Barnards when you’re on the same picnic?”

Lina felt herself colouring and was correspondingly annoyed. She was not used to these direct methods. This Johnnie Aysgarth needed putting in his place.

“What,” she said, as deliberately as she could, “do you think of our View, Mr. Aysgarth?” It was a question she had thought out the moment she saw Johnnie at her side. It was to be said with a little smile, which would convey that this was the stereotyped question that every other girl in the county would put to him in similar circumstances, and that he was going to be judged on his answer to it. If he had any intelligence he would interpret the smile rightly; if not ...

But she now forgot to smile.

“Damn the view,” replied Mr. Aysgarth simply. “It’s you I want to look at, not the view.”

Lina’s colour deepened.

Then she laughed. It was really impossible to take the man seriously. What idiots other women were. She realized suddenly of what Johnnie’s expression had reminded her. It was that of a small boy participating in some joyful, small-boyish crime, smiling at his accomplice.

He must be met on his own ground.

“If you’re trying to tell me I’m pretty, I’m afraid you’re wasting your time. I’ve had it far too well rubbed into me by my family that I’m nothing of the sort. Ask Mrs. Barnard, if you want an unprejudiced opinion.”

Johnnie Aysgarth’s eyes began to twinkle again. “Oh, Mrs. Barnard said something quite different about you.”

“What?”

“That you were clever.”

Lina made a grimace. “Anybody would be clever by the Barnard standard.”

“So you see, I thought if you were clever you’d like to be told you were pretty; whereas, of course, if you’d only been pretty I should have told you you were clever.”

“Oh,” Lina laughed. “Those are your methods, are they? But why bother to tell me anything at all?”

Johnnie suddenly looked serious. “Because I’d decided as soon as I saw you that you were the only person in this outfit worth talking to for more than two minutes at a time.”

“Had you?” Lina said feebly. Aysgarth’s sudden earnestness had again robbed her of confidence.

“Yes,” he said with conviction. “And aren’t you? Of course, you know perfectly well you are.”

He smiled at her once more, the same intimate, knowledgeable smile. But this time it made Lina uneasy.

She thought: he looks as if he knows me down to the most secret detail. And I believe he does.

She felt stripped.

Johnnie hardly left her side for the rest of the afternoon.

Lina went up to her bedroom in a temper of resentment. She had been cold, she had been actually rude, but she had been unable to shake Johnnie off until they reached her own front door. She had refused to ask him in.

She pulled off her hat and stared at her face in the mirror. Her cheeks were still flushed with annoyance.

She was angry that at first she had enjoyed Johnnie’s company. She was angry at the realization that for a moment she had really believed that he did think her pretty, and at the pleasure the belief had given her. She had known that she was looking her best when Mrs. Barnard brought him up to her. The wind had whipped some colour into her usually rather pale cheeks, and the cocky little blue hat which exactly matched her eyes, dipping its brim over one and lifting over the other, was the prettiest she had. She had been delighted that someone found her good to look at.

And he had just been playing with her: experimenting, as he apparently did with every woman or girl he met: saying the things he thought she would like to hear, with his tongue in his cheek and a mocking twinkle in his eye that all the others were too foolish to read.