Enough to Kill a Horse (24 page)

‘But why should that make her want to murder him?’ Minnie demanded.

‘You’ll find that out later,’ Colin replied. ‘It may have been revenge for the dishonour done to the man she had believed was her father and whom no doubt she had loved. Or it may have been hatred because of Sir Peter’s neglect of her. There’s no need to look for an altogether sane motive.’

‘D’you think he knew that he was her father?’ Fanny asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Colin said.

‘If he did, then he did neglect her.’

‘Wouldn’t that have been the best thing to do, in the circumstances? He had a family of his own and so had Alice Forwood.’

Clare’s head stirred a little and her lips seemed to be forming one or two inaudible words, but her eyes did not open.

‘Let’s get her up to her room and put her to bed,’ Fanny said. ‘And Basil can telephone for Dr McLean. Or – or perhaps Colin would – would go and fetch him.’

He gave her a grave, unhappy look, as if he realized quite clearly that at that moment Fanny could scarcely bear to have him in the house.

‘Yes, Fanny, of course I’ll go,’ he said.

‘But what about Sir Peter’s servants?’ Minnie exclaimed. ‘We heard this afternoon that they’d been arrested.’

‘If they were,’ Colin said, as he went to the door, ‘they’ll have perfect alibis for Laura’s murder.’

He went out into the passage and out into the small garden. The dimly lit village street had a dreadful busyness, with several cars drawn up in front of The Waggoners and far too many people for that time of the evening standing about in groups. Colin was at the gate when the door behind him opened once more and Fanny came out.

‘Colin, I – I didn’t mean …’ she began.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I know how you’re feeling about me at the moment.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘no, I’m not. It’s only that this – it’s a terrible shock. Clare’s my very oldest friend. And though she’s so queer and difficult to get on with, I admire her more than anyone I know.’

‘Of course, Fanny,’ Colin said.

‘And I still only half-believe what you said is true.’

‘Then perhaps it’ll turn out I’m wrong after all.’

‘Perhaps.’ There was not much conviction in her tone. ‘But nothing will ever be the same again.’

He laid a hand on her shoulder.

‘Just wait,’ he said.

‘It won’t do any good,’ she answered miserably.

‘Everything gets forgotten, Fanny.’

‘No, nothing will ever be the same again,’ she said.

‘It’s got to be!’ He spoke with a note of passion in his voice that startled Fanny. ‘Things were too good to let them get spoilt. We’ve got to forget it all.’ As he said it, he glanced up at the lights of his home.

There was a light in the window of Jean’s little office.

‘Jean’s home,’ he said. He went through the gate and started walking towards the house.

‘Colin – aren’t you going for Dr McLean?’ Fanny called after him.

He wheeled round and started walking in the opposite direction.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I was just thinking of something else.’

Fanny stood watching him for a moment, then went indoors.

She found that Basil and Tom between them had carried Clare up to her bedroom. She was lying on the bed while Minnie bustled about the room, loosening Clare’s clothing, switching on the heater, drawing curtains.

Fanny went to the foot of the bed and stood looking down at the small blanched face on the pillow, seeing the resemblance to Sir Peter so clearly now that she wondered how she could possibly have missed it earlier.

Particularly the remarkable foreheads were alike. She remembered the two of them sitting side by side in the corner of the room, the old man, ill and exhausted by life, scarcely troubling any more to keep any hold upon it, yet still able to simulate a vivid interest in it, and the small, middle-aged woman who had withdrawn from life as fully as she was able years ago, except that her curious, brilliant mind still struggled to penetrate certain of its smaller mysteries. The old man had lost his wife and his sons. The woman had never had husband or children, and had lost parents and brothers. What might the two of them, intimately related to one another as they were, have meant to one another if death had not struck?

Fanny shivered. She wondered for how long Clare had known of her relationship to Sir Peter Poulter? She had spoken to Fanny many times of her mother’s lovers, usually in a tone more admiring than bitter, but never as if she had any doubts that Arthur Forwood was the father of her mother’s children. Clare had been deeply attached to this supposed father of hers, though she had always felt that she was of no great importance to him and that her brothers, both younger than herself, had the whole of his affection. She had had a great love for one of her brothers and an almost equal detestation for the other, but apart from these emotions, called forth at least to some extent by their qualities, had always been oppressed by a helpless jealousy of them both. They had been equally jealous of her, because of their brilliant mother’s obvious preference for her. These relationships, these jealousies and grudges and smothered miseries, had been the material of all Clare’s writing.

And then she had discovered that she had another father who had withheld his affection from her even more completely than the one she had known.

Fanny leant forward suddenly, peering at the shrunken face. It had just occurred to her that Clare was no longer unconscious. If Minnie would leave the room, she thought, Clare would probably show signs of recovery.

‘Minnie,’ Fanny said, ‘there’s some brandy downstairs. Basil said he was going to bring it, but something must have stopped him. Could you go and find him? I think I ought to stay with Clare.’

Minnie nodded and went tiptoeing out of the room.

As soon as the door had closed Clare opened her eyes, glanced round, made sure that she and Fanny were alone, then beckoned Fanny towards her.

In a fierce whisper Clare said, ‘Listen, Fanny, you’ve got to help me. You’ve got to do something for me. Will you do it? Will you promise?’

Her eyes looked dreadfully brilliant. Though she was conscious, she was not normal.

‘Promise!’ she repeated frantically.

‘All right, Clare,’ Fanny said softly. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Keep people away from me for a little while. Give me a little time, just a little. Don’t let anyone come in.’

‘All right,’ Fanny said. ‘I’ll do my best.’

‘You too,’ Clare said, ‘I mean you too. Go away and leave me quite to myself for a little while.’

‘But, Clare – ’

‘Please!’

On the staircase there was a sound of footsteps. Fanny knew that they were Basil’s and more than anything else just then she wanted him to come in.

But Clare, hearing the footsteps, exclaimed in agony, ‘Please, Fanny, please – keep them away from me! For just a little!’

Fanny drew away from her. Softly she went to the door, opened it only just enough to let herself out, closed it behind her and went along the passage. As she did so, she heard a thump as Clare leapt out of bed, rushed to the door and locked herself in.

When Basil reached the top of the stairs, he found Fanny standing there, leaning against the wall. She was trembling violently.

He put down the tray that he had been carrying and put his arms round her. Her trembling went on and she clung to him tensely. For a moment she could not speak at all, then, as he glanced past her to the closed door of Clare’s room, she managed to say in his ear, ‘I left her alone. She begged me to, Basil. She begged it. We’re old friends, Basil. Could I have done anything else?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t think so.’

His voice was curiously unperturbed. For once his calm seemed to Fanny a shocking thing. She wondered if it was possible that he had not understood what she meant.

‘Basil, I left her
alone
– don’t you understand?’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘poor woman, I can quite understand her feelings. She really does hate people and after what she’s been through today I should think she’d find it utterly necessary to be quite alone.’

‘Basil – ’

‘My dear, if you’re thinking that she’s taking her own life at the moment,’ he said, ‘you’ve no need whatever to worry. Clare wants to go on living to write a lot more books.’

‘But when the police come – ’

‘But, darling Fanny, you don’t believe she did it, do you?’

She drew away from him. She looked searchingly into his face, a look which he returned with one of mild, innocent surprise. Then he gave her a little shake.

‘Clare would never murder anyone,’ he said. ‘You ought to know that. She’s collapsed because life has been altogether too much for her just lately. You have to remember that she really does hate people – even you, when she’s seen too much of you, though the rest of the time she loves you dearly. And she’s had to be among people for days on end. Not to mention finding a body and being accused of murder. I expect she’ll now have a mild nervous breakdown, then become her own normal peculiar self.’

‘But then,’ Fanny cried, feeling that she would have to start laughing or crying, but that it would be wrong to do either, ‘who did kill the Poulter man and Laura?’

‘Someone who didn’t come to the party,’ Basil answered.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said.

‘Think,’ he said, ‘about the phenylthiourea.’

‘No,’ she cried, as if the thought of doing such a thing maddened her. ‘No – I tell you, I don’t understand.’

‘Well, let’s go downstairs,’ he said, ‘and leave Clare in peace for a little, as she wanted, and I’ll tell you how things strike me. Not that I understand the whole situation by any means. But I think I do understand about the phenylthiourea.’

Picking up the tray with the bottle of brandy on it, he started down the stairs.

Tom and Minnie were still in the sitting room and had been joined by Susan. Tom’s arm was round her, looking a little inexperienced and uncomfortable in that position, and he was patting her gently and saying, ‘Never mind, dear, never mind – we’ll go home now and Mummy will put you to bed. You’ll soon get over it.’

Susan did not look in the least as if she wanted to be put to bed. She had got over the worst of the shock of discovering Laura, and though her small, square face was sombre, it was no longer abnormally pale. Her eyes were alert.

‘Fanny, please, there’s something I want to know,’ she said, as soon as Fanny and Basil came into the room. ‘Can you tell me …?

But Fanny, glancing round the room, interrupted her. ‘Where’s Kit? Didn’t you see him, Susan?’

‘He’s with the police,’ Susan said. ‘They’re asking him an awful lot of questions. But listen, can you tell me – ?’

‘Will he be back soon?’ Fanny asked.

‘I don’t know. Please, Fanny, do tell me, do you know anything about where Jean’s money came from?’

Fanny frowned at the question, while Tom said, ‘Well, I’m damned!’ and Minnie said, ‘Good gracious me!’ No one made any attempt to answer the question.

Susan clenched her hands in a gesture of extreme impatience.

‘Please!’ she exclaimed. ‘Doesn’t anybody know?’

‘You know, Kit asked me that this afternoon,’ Fanny said, ‘but he didn’t tell me why he wanted to know. Has he told you, Susan?’

‘Yes,’ Susan said, ‘and put together with what I know it sounds completely crazy. You see, when he took Laura to The Waggoners this morning, she happened to look out of the window and she saw Jean. And she got awfully excited at seeing her and wanted to know who she was. And when Kit said that she was Jean Gregory, who lived next door to you, Laura got more excited still, and said, ‘She’s rich, isn’t she? She’s rich!’ And Kit says that all through the afternoon Laura kept asking him questions about Jean, about how rich she was and how the Gregorys lived – that’s to say, was she really
rich,
or just a little better off than most of us. And all the time, Kit says, it was as if Laura knew something awfully important about Jean, which she wouldn’t tell him. She was queer and excitable all the afternoon, so that he got worried and actually rather scared. And then she insisted on his going away and leaving her to have a rest.’

Fanny nodded. ‘That’s when he came back here. And I told him I didn’t know anything at all about Jean’s money, except that of course she has rather more of it than most of us, and that she’s got a fantastically bad conscience about having it. But I’ve always taken for granted that that was just because she’s such a puritanical, self-torturing sort of person, not because there was anything in the least discreditable about the way she got it. And surely –
surely
Laura wasn’t suggesting anything like that.’

‘I don’t know,’ Susan said. ‘I haven’t any idea what was going on in her mind. Kit hasn’t either. But you see, this is what seems to have happened, when Laura sent Kit away. She seems straight away to have made two telephone calls. One was to me. Mummy took it, because I wasn’t home yet – ’

‘We’ve told them about that,’ Minnie said. ‘Fanny and Basil know all about that.’

‘Well, the second,’ Susan went on, ‘seems to have been to Jean. But I’ll tell you about that in a minute. About that call to me – ’ She gave an embarrassed laugh. ‘I got on my bicycle at once and went to ask Laura what on earth she meant by it. And just outside The Waggoners I saw Jean. She was – well, I don’t know how to describe it and I don’t want to give you a wrong impression, but there was something awfully odd about the way she was standing there, just as if she didn’t want to be seen. And I think she was quite put out at seeing me. And then when I asked her if she was going to see Laura too, she said no, she was looking for Colin. But the fact is, she
was
going to see Laura!’

‘How d’you know?’ Fanny asked. ‘Did she say so later?’

‘No,’ Susan said, ‘She came in with me, and then when I started screaming and behaving like a silly child when I found Laura dead, Jean went very calm and competent, saying she was a nurse and so on, but she still didn’t say anything about having to see Laura. All the same, I know she did. You see, I found this – I found it in that cupboard where the telephone is.’