Let Him Lie (9 page)

“It was a bit of rotten bad luck Mr. Molyneux ever knew anything about it,” said the young man gloomily. “Often he didn't go to the safe for weeks on end. And Mrs. Molyneux had some dividends coming in a few days, she said. There didn't seem much harm in borrowing the money for her. She seemed in such a state, and I couldn't help her, I hadn't a bean! I was a damned fool, I soon realised that! I used to break into a sweat whenever the old man went near the safe. I dare say he noticed, and that's what made him open it! Of course, I ought to have refused to have anything to do with the idea! Only—oh well! I don't know! She seemed so upset, and—fool!” said Peter, apostrophising himself, and became silent.

“The police know you were dismissed for theft, don't they?” 

“Yes. I told them, because if I hadn't somebody else would have done.”

“But they
don't
know why you came here yesterday?”

“Well, as a member of the Handleston Field Club—”

“Oh rubbish, they wouldn't take any notice of that! They probably think you came here yesterday to threaten Mr. Molyneux into giving you a character—that he refused, and you shot him in revenge. After all, a young man who'll steal sixty pounds off a trusting employer is a pretty tough guy, they probably think.”

Peter winced.

“I didn't even
see
Mr. Molyneux!”

“Can you prove it? What
did
you do yesterday afternoon?”

“When I left the house after seeing Agnes it was about half-past three. I was in no hurry. I walked slowly over the common, intending to walk back to Handleston eventually and get a train. But I met a man waiting in the lane with a car, and he gave me a lift.”

“Oh. Who was that?”

“A friend of Mrs. Peel's. You know, Sarah's mother. She was down here yesterday, for some reason. He was waiting for her when I came across him, and when she turned up we went off.”

“How long were you talking to this man before she turned up?”

“Oh, only two or three minutes, I should think.”

“And where were you when you heard the shot?”

“I didn't hear any shot.”

“You didn't! But if the shot was fired at twenty-five to four, and it was about half-past three when you left the house, you must have—”

“I didn't hear a thing. I was—thinking about all sorts of things while I walked over the common. I dare say I shouldn't have heard an earthquake if there'd been one.”

Peter crossed his legs and stared moodily at the toe of his shoe. He looked tired beyond measure. Jeanie said gently:

“Things'll look better in the morning. What are you going to do? You can't very well stay here, I suppose.”

“I'd rather sleep in a ditch!”

“You can't do that either, it would look most suspicious.”

He smiled faintly.

“Perhaps old Fone'd give me a bed for the night. He's a good sort. He wouldn't refuse sanctuary even to a—murderer. It's against his religion, or something. I'll go to Cole Harbour.”

The night was crisp and frosty as they made their way down the drive to the lane that led through the farmyard and out on to the road near Cole Harbour House. They walked for some way in silence. Jeanie glanced at her companion and in the starlight as they swung along saw his face white and grim. Perhaps the cold air, chilling her skin, chilled her mind and spirit too, for of a sudden with a little thud of the heart she found herself thinking:

“Suppose this
is
, after all, Robert Molyneux's murderer?”

She found she must utter her thought. She could not let it rankle and fester in her mind.

“Peter,” she said gravely, “it is true, isn't it, that you—”

She stuck. He helped her out.

“That I didn't kill Robert Molyneux? Yes, it's true. But I can't prove it, Jeanie. Perhaps the inquest'll settle it all, and I shan't have to.”

“The inquest will be adjourned, I expect,” said Jeanie. “I don't think they've found the weapon yet. They hadn't, this morning.”

Peter Johnson gave her a sidelong look. His face looked ghostly pale in the starlight.

“I can't bear the thought of doing nothing,” he muttered. “Just sticking around waiting for the police.”

He broke off as the light of a car suddenly flashed in his face. It crept out of the drive of Cole Harbour House and moved off towards Handleston with gathering speed. In the back seat of the car, behind the uniformed driver, Jeanie had caught sight of the peaked cap and long saturnine face of Superintendent Finister.

Jeanie meant to refuse William Fone's invitation to come into the house with Peter and take some refreshment, but her curiosity to see the inside of Cole Harbour House was too much for her. Mr. Fone led them slowly, jerking on his two sticks, into a long spacious room lined with books. Four tall uncurtained windows almost filled the front wall, and with their arched heads and elaborately enlaced glazing bars in the manner of the Gothic revival, gave something of the air of a chapel to the place. A great log fire burned in the wide hearth, and near it stood a wooden settle and some easy chairs.

Mr. Fone set comfortable chairs for his guests and subsided himself slowly on to the high settle seat. Seated, he was a fine, rugged-looking man whose natural background would seem to be the outdoors. He had the broad shoulders, muscular hands, finely-set head and jutting nose and chin of a strong man. But his dull skin and encircled eyes told of a life spent much indoors. He had been crippled from infancy, Jeanie had heard. Most of his forty-five years had been spent in overcoming his disabilities. He was a poet with a name in that small world in which modern poetry is read. He had written also a book on Ancient Britain which had been an unexpected success in a wider sphere, much to the amusement of Molyneux and Fone's other neighbours, who had continued to think him mildly crazy.

“Are you comfortable, Miss Halliday?” asked Fone, settling his sticks beside him. “I haven't given you the chair with the damp cushions, have I? As you can see, we've been having trouble with the roof of this room, and the rain the day before yesterday came through and soaked one of these chairs.”

He pointed to a damp patch in the high ceiling above their heads.

“There is a flat leaded roof over this room, and we find it a good deal of expense and trouble.”

Jeanie smiled.

“Can it be worse than stone tiles?”

“Yes, I think so, because it's not so easily repaired. However, Barchard patches it up and saves me the expense of a builder.”

“May I stay the night, Mr. Fone?” asked Peter abruptly.

“Of course,” replied Mr. Fone, with an equal lack of ceremony.

“Perhaps I ought to say the police suspect me of being a murderer.”

“That's excellent. They suspect me too,” said Fone, smiling. Meeting Jeanie's wide and inquiring eye, he went on: “The worthy superintendent from Handleston can't understand how it was that I left the party at Cleedons yesterday and went home before tea was served. I told him, I don't like tea. But tea, it seems, is a sacrament in these isles and in this age. Only one thing puzzled poor Finister more than this heathenness of mine in neglecting holy tea; and this was the problem of why I should have gone to the Tower to rest while the others were looking at the medieval kitchen. I explained that modern buildings don't interest me and also that I wanted to be alone, as I had been a good deal troubled in mind. Instantly, with the air of a man who has really thought astutely for once, he asked why I should have chosen to be solitary in the highest room in the Tower? I reminded him that when a man feels troubled, it's his instinct to climb high and look down on the world. The worthy superintendent glanced at my two sticks. I said, even a cripple is not immune from man's ancientest impulses. He looked a little ashamed, but recovered himself, for shame, you know, Miss Halliday, has no place in the soul of a superintendent of police.”

Jeanie smiled acquiescently. Mr. Fone's sonorous narrative style made her feel, lying back in her luxuriously cushioned chair while he perched before her on the settle, a little like the Sultan Shahriar in thrall to the interminable stories of his crafty bride. She glanced at Peter. Peter's eyes were on Mr. Fone's face. Peter had something of the look of a frightened child trying, at the moment of danger, to read the face of the almost omnipotent grown-up. Perhaps he had never outgrown the child's early fear of the policeman. Fone, it would appear, had never felt it. He chuckled a little at Jeanie's sympathetic smile, and went on:

“He recovered himself and asked what it was that troubled me so. I replied, the proposed desecration of Grim's Grave. Finister smiled the foolish empty smile of the man of the world, and said: ‘Of course you believe in all that stuff, sir!' I replied that certainly I believed in the sacredness of the grave. He said, still with that vacant smile: ‘I wouldn't believe it
was
a grave, just on hearsay.' I explained that I do not hold my beliefs on hearsay. I hold them with the marrow of my bones. When I walk upon Grim's Grave, I do not need tradition to tell me that it is a sacred spot. The bones buried there speak to me through the soles of my feet. He said nothing for a while. He gave me a look as if he doubted my sanity, which made me laugh. At this he said, like the automaton he is—I heard the words before he uttered them—‘It's no laughing matter, sir!' ‘True,' I replied. ‘Robert Molyneux's death is no laughing matter. But I wasn't laughing at Robert Molyneux's death. I didn't laugh when I saw him fall from the tree he was mutilating, and I don't laugh now.' Superintendent Finister quite surprised me by the energy with which he bounded out of the chair you are now sitting in. He cried: ‘You saw him fall!' I replied that certainly I saw him fall.”

Jeanie, if she did not bound out of her comfortable chair, certainly sat up straighter.

“Do you mean, Mr. Fone, you actually
saw
—?”

“As I sat in the Tower room,” replied William Fone, “looking out of the window, I saw Robert Molyneux mount a ladder into one of the apple-trees; I thought of the thing he was about to do in opening Grim's Grave, and the horror he was about to loose upon the countryside. I tried, as you may remember doing yourself in childhood, Miss Halliday, to influence him from afar, to will him, as children say, to put the sacrilege out of his thoughts. I felt all my spirit concentrate in a beam of invisible heat towards that tree, until Molyneux turned his head as if in answer to a summons. There was a sharp crack! and in a moment he was tumbling to the ground. It was as if the beam of my will had caused an explosion in that tree and sent Molyneux to his death. I descended the Tower stair and went home across the fields.” 

Jeanie gasped:

“But, Mr. Fone! Didn't you go to see what had happened?”

“I follow my impulses, Miss Halliday. They are a man's safest guide. As for poor Molyneux, I knew that he was dead.”

“But—how?”

“A man has other vehicles of knowledge beside his faulty eyes and ears. It is the tragedy of this modern life we live that he has forgotten how to use them. I knew that Molyneux was dead as surely as I knew that my prayer was answered.
How
it happened was not for me to inquire.”

Jeanie stared fascinated at this extraordinary man. He said gently:

“You think it callous of me to speak like this. But then, you think nothing of the dangers from which poor Molyneux's death has delivered us.”

Jeanie glanced uneasily at Peter. As if he read her thought, Fone went on:

“I am not mad, Miss Halliday, but I fear I can't do anything to prove myself sane to you. We see with different eyes. What is life to me is the merest elaboration of cobweb work to you, and what is reality to you is a thin veil to me.”

The door opened, and Hugh Barchard came in quietly, carrying a tray which he put on the table. He smiled and was about to withdraw again when Fone gestured him to a seat on the settle.

“Sit down, Hugh. We're discussing the death of Mr. Molyneux.”

“There won't be much else talked about in Handleston for weeks, I expect,” said Barchard, with his odd accent that was the West-country burr sharpened by long familiarity with Canadian speech.

“Tell me, Mr. Fone,” said Jeanie, more at ease again, for the presence of Barchard seemed to put Fone's eccentricities into perspective as the fancies of an invalid, “tell me: did you say to Superintendent Finister all you've said to us?”

Fone smiled and poured out from the jug on the table a glass of pale golden liquid.

“You're thinking that the worthy superintendent must have thought my story very suspicious. No doubt. But it was not for me to forestall and counter suspicion, but to tell the truth. No doubt the perplexed Finister is even now at Cleedons searching all the weapons in the Tower for my finger-prints. He will not find them. I did not kill Robert Molyneux. Will you take a glass of metheglin, Miss Halliday?”

Sipping the strange, sweet drink, Jeanie had a sudden inspiration. She put the glass down.

“Mr. Fone: you say you
saw
the thing happen. You saw Mr. Molyneux fall out of the tree?”

“Yes.”

“Then you can say which way he was facing when he was hit. And that means you can say what direction the shot came from. Isn't that very important?”

Fone smiled faintly.

“Superintendent Finister seemed to think so. Though, as I pointed out to him, if I committed the murder myself, as he seemed to think, my evidence on that or any other point would be unreliable, to say the least. He was rather annoyed. He seemed to think that he had carefully disguised his suspicions from me.”

“What way was Mr. Molyneux facing?”

“I'll tell you what I told the superintendent. All the while I was watching Molyneux he had his back towards me. My eyes converged, as it were, on the back of his head.”