The Case of the Gilded Fly (28 page)

‘He'd seen Yseut enter the college,' Sir Richard prompted gently.

‘Oh, yes. Well, he entered the west courtyard by the door from the street, did his bit of shooting at the convenient moment, went out again the same way, probably deposited the silencer somewhere temporarily, then came in at the lodge and up here as we know. At an appropriate moment he went down and did the faking. You see now, Nigel, why your timetable was so revealing. Not only did it show that he was the
only
person who could have done the faking, but it also showed that his time of leaving the hotel was unconfirmed, and that it might have been as late or as early as he pleased. By itself that wouldn't have mattered, but he bungled the whole thing by trying to
make a cryptogram out of it, and faking that improbable suicide.
Anyone
– you, Helen, Rachel, Sheila, Donald or Nicholas – could have done the shooting from the west courtyard; if he'd left it at that, he'd still be as safe as houses; but as I've said, only one person could have done the faking.

‘I may say there was also some casual evidence which by itself would have been highly suggestive, though not conclusive. For one thing, there was the fact – of which you informed me, Nigel, and which I subsequently verified – that Warner had deputed Jane to understudy Yseut. Now even I know enough about repertory to realize that for very practical reasons it contains no understudying – and certainly not of parts as small as that which Yseut was to play. But his anxiety for the success of his play led him to make that elementary blunder. Again, he told us that he had to ask his way to this room at the lodge – that he had never been in the college before; yet in conversation with my wife, immediately after the murder, he suggested that the killer might have come in through the west courtyard, of whose existence, if his other assertion was true, he could not have been aware. That was another blunder resulting from a tendency to elaborate too much.

‘I confess, though, that certain things didn't seem to me at first to fit in with this simple and quite obvious statement of the facts. And one of them, Nigel, was given me by you. You emphasized a good deal the
lack of surprise
with which Donald received the news of Yseut's death. But whereas you seemed to regard this as a sort of abnormal unmotivated psychological state, I was inclined to look at it more simply. It meant either (a) that Donald had known the murder was going to be committed, or (b) that he had seen someone he knew prowling about the place prior to the discovery of the murder – and someone who hated Yseut – and on hearing the news instantly jumped to the conclusion that that person had done the killing. Now (a) was very unlikely. Robert would certainly not have confided in Donald, and the likelihood of Donald's having discovered Robert's plan (which depended in any case a good deal on chance) was so small as to be discounted altogether. That left (b). It was in the first place possible that Donald had seen
Warner himself. But in that case why should he have kept silent about it? He disliked Warner, and regarded him as a potential rival with Yseut. Having heard of the death – he was infatuated with her, remember – he would if he had seen Warner certainly have revealed the fact. Yet there was somebody he was protecting: who was it? Jean Whitelegge was the
only
person. And I assumed quite provisionally that he had seen her in the west courtyard (which was the only place she could have been) and probably while doing the black-out on that side of the room. In such circumstances I also assumed, first that he would have spoken to her, and second, that as she was there at the time she would probably have seen the murderer if not the actual murder – remember the black-out must have been put up only a very short time afterwards.

‘This, at the time, was the merest speculation. But it seemed to me to be worth while following up, for my own amusement and satisfaction if nothing else (the main facts of the case were settled already beyond all possible dispute). And I went first to Nicholas, getting out of him without much difficulty the fact that Donald had met and talked to someone that evening, though Nicholas refused to say who it had been; that didn't matter as I was already pretty certain. Even by being severe with Donald, I got nothing out of him; he was being too chivalrous for words – I think to some extent he was relieved by Yseut's death, and not inclined to let Jean, who he still imagined had committed the murder, suffer for it. Jean herself, who I tested as regards the second part of my theory, was more helpful. By dint of casting asperations on the quality of the murderer's mind, I produced a fine outburst of rage and indignation. As it seemed unlikely that she was admiring the crime
in vacuo
, it was obvious that she knew who the murderer was. And as she had at that time no idea of the facts of the case and couldn't have made the deductions I made, it was reasonable to assume that she had actually seen him. That she should have been determined to protect him, by the way, was not surprising. She had no reason to love Yseut, and as we know, she had a tremendous admiration for Warner's work; her scruples were no doubt the same as mine – a strong disinclination to deliver a great creative artist not yet in his prime into the hands
of the hangman. Hence her refusal even to admit that she was in the college that evening.

‘I suggested to her that she should come and tell me privately what she knew, and when Donald was killed she did in fact do that. It appears that she followed Warner into the courtyard and actually saw him commit the crime. As with most of us, her first instinct was to hide, and she slipped into an archway and waited until he had gone. It was when she came out that Donald saw her and talked to her. In the circumstances the conversation on her side must have been pretty strained, and no doubt that gave him additional grounds for suspecting that she was the killer.'

‘I imagine,' said Sir Richard slowly, ‘that after the death of Donald Fellowes she wanted to go straight to the police and tell them what she knew. How did you stop her? I hear that she and Fellowes had been reconciled and were intending to marry.'

Fen groaned. ‘Lord, yes,' he said. ‘She was practically demented with grief, poor child. But at the same time,' he added rather irritably, ‘I seemed to be the only person who had the slightest idea of what was going on, and I wasn't going to have my plans interfered with. I intended the first night of
Metromania
to go through without a hitch – as, in fact, it did.'

Sir Richard grunted. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘that was your condition for making us privy to the secrets of your remarkable brain.'

Fen scowled at him suspiciously. ‘Anyway,' he said, ‘I lied to the girl for all I was worth, and invented the most fantastic tales to prove that the murders had been committed by different persons. I half convinced her – enough to keep her quiet for a while; but only half. She realized in the end, with the result – ' He made a gesture. He was disinclined to remember what had happened.

‘And now for heaven's sake,' said Nigel, ‘what about the
motive?
Surely he didn't kill her just because she was making a nuisance of herself and sending Rachel into temporary tantrums? You've been liable to gnomic utterances on the subject of motive. Explain yourself.'

‘My gnomic utterances,' said Fen severely, ‘reduce themselves to three: that I do not believe in the
crime passionnel;
that the motive for murder is almost always either money,
vengeance or security, and that none the less it is sex which is at the root of this business. I'll explain just how those assertions are justified.

‘The
immediate
motive was without any question that mysterious something for which both Yseut and the murderer were searching. And my first clue to its identity came from the admirably lucid account which you, Nigel, gave me of the morning after the party. In it, you described without any apparent sense of incongruity two people behaving in odd and inconsequent ways, and attributed their antics to the probability that Yseut had slept with Warner the previous night and was intending to make a song and dance about it. Let me capitulate what happened – you must correct me if I go astray –

(1) Yseut came into the bar, carrying her handbag and a thin red notebook, which she threw down somewhere.

(2) Robert, on seeing her, appeared first angry and then uncomfortable.

(3) Yseut regarded him with “triumph and defiance”.

(4) She chattered to him about “blackmail” and “revelations”.

(5) Donald picked up his music and left, while

(6) Yseut went with you to the bar, keeping her eyes on Robert all the time.

(7) Her attention was diverted by you emptying a glass of brandy over her.

(8) She returned with you to the table, “stiffened and flushed” suddenly, and flounced out.

(9) Robert gazed after her with “genuine bewilderment”.

‘Now all this, I thought to myself, is extremely odd, and indeed only explicable at all on the assumption that it's the red notebook which is the centre of the furore. You had seen Yseut come out of Warner's room with it earlier that morning; on the strength of (2) and (4) I assumed that it was something of great importance to Warner and probably something which seriously incriminated him. The rest then fell into place, Yseut's attitude, her talk about blackmail (doubtless blackmail for West End jobs rather than money), the watch she kept on him; while the last two items in my summary were particularly revealing. They obviously meant, first, that Yseut had turned back from her
diversion to find that the notebook had gone, and second, that it was not Warner who had taken it.

‘That, you see, fitted perfectly. It explained why Yseut was searching Fellowes' room; and it explained why she was killed. Despite the fact that the actual proof was out of her hands, she knew too much to be left alive. (There is your motive: security.) It was obvious to me, as later it became obvious to her and as it was almost immediately obvious to Warner, that it was Fellowes who had gone off with the notebook, gathering it up carelessly with his music (he could not have taken it on purpose, since he could not have known what it contained). It was at that point, however, that my logic went entirely to the winds, and I made the fatal mistake of assuming that Warner had found the book among Donald's music, unlooked-at, when he killed Yseut – or rather when he went to fake the suicide. In fact, he did nothing of the sort. He had no time to make a search when he faked the suicide, and after that the room was under guard until 4.30 on Sunday. Then he looked round, failed to find it (as I failed to find it when I looked earlier, and thought he already had it) and went on up to the organ loft. There's little doubt, I think, that by that time Fellowes had discovered the thing, looked at it, and realized its implications – apart from anything else, it provided the only real motive for the killing of Yseut. And as a matter of fact there were a few faint red stains on one of his pieces of music, where the cover had smeared against it. What his feelings were when he saw Warner, God only knows. But Warner realized he knew – had gone up prepared for that, in fact – and took the only possible course. Before he died, Donald left us the identity of the murderer in the only way he knew, hoping against hope that someone would notice it. You remember my remarking on the curious mixture of stops he'd left out? The Inspector thought that some tedious musical irrelevancy, but it was not. On the right-hand stop-jamb, the stops were out in the following order: Rohrflote, Oboe, Bourdon, Euphonium, another Rohrflote (on the Choir), and Tierce. They haven't been touched since, so you can go and look for your-self.'

‘But I don't quite see,' said Nigel, ‘where the music, and the notebook, were, if not in Donald's room.'

‘They were in the organ loft, of course; the obvious place. As to the contents of the notebook, I could only guess. But I remembered Warner had been in South America several times before the war, and I thought it just possible that he might be remotely connected with the industry for which that part of the globe is notorious – procuring. I rang up a friend on the secretariat of the League, and learned from him that Warner had in fact been suspected of complicity in the matter, but that nothing could be proved against him. That was before the war, naturally; nothing of that sort can be carried on now. But I claim no credit for that part of it; it was the merest fluke. But that was what I meant when I said that the questing beast was in fact, at the root of this business, though the actual motive was security. I'm afraid I wasn't able to whip up much indignation about Warner's goings-on. It's always seemed to me that unless these girls are actually shanghaied, they're less sinned against than sinning. It seems an extraordinary sideline for a great playwright, but there was a sort of ironic twist in Warner's character, a kind of deep fatalism, which forbade him to take anything seriously. Even the murders he didn't take seriously; they were both brilliant, chancy affairs.'

There was a long silence. Then Helen said slowly:

‘I'm glad the play couldn't go on after that one performance, even if Rachel could have done it. It – it seems somehow
right
that there should have been just one – and a perfect one.'

Fen nodded. ‘A magnificent final exit, I agree,' he said. ‘But a final exit, none the less. The world is the poorer for it.'

‘What has happened to Rachel, by the way?' Nigel asked.

‘She's gone off to the country. And Jean has been sent home to her parents. In the circumstances we couldn't possibly have proceeded against her, as she was “helping to apprehend an escaping murderer”. Not that he ever had any chance to escape – and least of all when that thing crushed him.' Fen's voice was hard.

They all looked at him. As he smoothed back his unruly hair, he seemed suddenly old and tired. ‘It has been an abominable business,' he said, ‘and we are all the worse as a result. There will be no more
Metromanias
. And I for one cannot thank God for it.'