The Twenty-Third Man (26 page)

‘I don’t care what you found out, or what theories you formed,’ said Caroline. ‘There’s no extradition from here.’

‘I realized that that particular fact went straight to the root of the matter. What I did not know, until I went back to England, was that there was a definite connexion between your husband and Emden, and that with Emden your brother could also claim old acquaintance.’

‘There is no need to mention Telham again! I know I’ve been a fool and a madwoman. Everything that has happened has been the result of an infatuation for which I hate and loathe myself every time I remember it! I wish I’d never
heard
of Emden! Really, really I do.’

‘Is it true that Emden lived in your flat, impersonating your brother?’

‘Well…’ Caroline looked across the semi-tropical luxuriance of the garden to a prospect of distant mountains… ‘it wasn’t impersonation in the way one thinks of that, but I
had
moved to another flat when – when I thought I couldn’t live without Karl, and I’d persuaded Telham to let Karl call himself my brother and for Telham to stay in our old flat and come to us as a visitor in Karl’s name.’

‘To hoodwink the occupants of the other flats – old Mrs Barstow, for example?’

‘So you talked to that old beast! I suppose she spied on us!’

‘She was bored and lonely. You should have chosen a bigger block of flats!’

‘What did she tell you?’

‘Approximately the truth. Now, Mrs Lockerby, why did you let it be supposed that your brother killed your husband?’

‘But I did nothing of the kind! I told you, as I’ve told everybody else, that Ian was set upon by a gang of roughs, and that poor old Telham took panic and ran off. I also told you that he went back and found Ian dead.’

‘I am afraid that won’t do any longer. And the police were not satisfied with that story, either.’

‘No, they weren’t. They talked about the bruises. There was a lot of fuss about those.’

‘Quite so. The bruises had been inflicted after death, and it was not a gang who had inflicted them, but someone who hoped to make the death look like the work of a gang. Your brother must be very fond of you. How could you bear to expose him to so much danger?’

‘I don’t know what you mean!’

‘In other words, then, I know – I am certain – it was not your brother who was with your husband that evening, but the murderer Emden. Emden it was who killed him.’

Caroline, who had been giving her answers without looking at her inquisitor, swung round. Her face was very pale and her eyes glittered.

‘What on earth are you saying?’ she cried. Then, suddenly, ‘Oh, it’s true! It’s true! But Ian was a beast and a brute and as mean as sin! It was
my
money he was spending, and he terrified me into giving him all he wanted. He didn’t care twopence about Karl! Karl could take me out, or live with me, or anything!’

‘Oh, I see,’ said the implacable little old woman whom she was facing. ‘So now it is clear. Your husband had to be killed before he ran through all your money. But whose idea was it, I wonder, that he should die?’

Caroline turned away with a sob.

‘What are you going to do about it?’ she asked. ‘So long as Emden is dead, there’s nothing that anyone can do. And I knew nothing about it, I swear I didn’t – nothing at all until he came back and told me. I was not an accessory, either before or after. Then Emden told me he already had a steamer ticket for Hombres Muertos and said I was to join him there as soon as the fuss was over. He swore it would look like the work of a gang, and I believed him. When he’d left, I told Telham. He is very fond of me, and said he’d see me through. The police questioning was terrible for him, though!’

‘So I should imagine,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘No wonder the young man was on the verge of a nervous breakdown when he left England. What does interest me is the rapid rate at which he recovered. Did he know, when we visited the cave with Mr Peterhouse, that Emden was dead? And, if so, did he know that the body had already been placed in the cave? – Not, as you say, that it matters.’

‘It’s getting too hot out here,’ said Caroline, suddenly. ‘Please let’s take our wine to your room.’

They were sipping it, and Dame Beatrice was watching the colour coming back into Caroline’s face, when there came a gentle tapping at the door. Then Pilar’s voice, loud with expostulation, came through the match-wood panels.

‘But, Señor, it is not for a
caballero
to enter the room of Dame Beatrice. Yes, your sister is with her. They drink wine together. Certainly their proceedings are amicable. What makes you to think that they are not? Wait, if you please, and I will find out what is the situation. When there is a bed in the room, gentlemen are not readily admitted unless one is ill or in love.’

She opened the door, entered the room, closed the door behind her, and stood with her plump back pressed determinedly against it.

‘If that is the Señor Telham, I wish him to join us,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Kindly admit him, bring another wineglass, then take your departure and please do not listen at the door.’

‘I put it to you, Mrs Angel,’ said Dame Beatrice, ‘that you are the mother of Ricardo Ruiz.’

The bird-watcher stared at her.

‘Yes. What of it?’ she demanded. ‘How do you know?’

‘Your reaction when, in flippant vein at our first meeting, I mentioned that David watched Bathsheba – we were talking about bird-watching and binoculars at the time, if you remember…’

‘Oh, that!’ Again the bird-watcher gazed at the beak-
lipped
witch. ‘I don’t see why that gave the game away.’

‘Oh, but it didn’t. I merely filed it for reference. And the South American connexion also defeated me for a time.’

‘That girl Pilar! I wish someone would put a muzzle on her, the lying little gossip!’

‘Precisely. Therefore, as Pilar uses imagination rather than reality in her daily dealings with the guests here, I wondered what the truth was. When I saw you and Don Ricardo together, there was not much doubt.’

‘My husband is alive. There were, and are, no grounds for a divorce. …’

‘Desertion?’

‘Scarcely, since he lives in the same hotel.’

‘Not…?’

‘The man who calls himself Peterhouse, of course. How else do you think he lives here free of charge? In any case, Ruiz is a Catholic and would not marry a divorced woman. We had our fling – then Ricardo. That is my story. I am a fairly wealthy woman. Ricardo had his education in Madrid, and I started him in a good business in Buenos Aires. He’s repaid me. I have no regrets at all for what I did.’

‘Why should you entertain regrets if you have done no harm?’

‘I wouldn’t say I’d done no harm, and, even if
I
thought that, Peterhouse wouldn’t agree. He’s been playing the martyred husband for more than twenty years!’

‘It is curious and interesting that, in this case – I have to call it that, although the police are not involved – we have two wives with money and two condoning husbands.’

‘Peterhouse doesn’t condone what I did. He’s never forgiven it. He never will. Not that he wanted me back, but he’s made me – or, rather, poor Ruiz – pay for our midsummer madness.’

‘Literally, or so it seems. A strange tangle of events. I wonder whether you will answer a question?’

‘I can’t tell until you ask it.’

‘Have you ever been to the cave of the dead men?’

‘Why, yes, of course. I went with Peterhouse when we first came here. We came for a holiday, you know! It seems something to laugh at now.’

‘Do you remember what you saw?’

‘Oh, that is not the only time I’ve been. Peterhouse sometimes accompanies the hotel guests and sometimes I do, and sometimes there is merely the guide.’

‘When did you go there last?’

‘About a fortnight before you came. This murdered man, Emden, went with me, and the American gentleman from Boston and his daughter. Emden tried to kiss the daughter or something. She complained to me about it, so I told Ruiz, and Ruiz told him he’d throw him out of the hotel if he had any more complaints.’

‘Well, he did have more complaints. What about Luisa Ruiz?’

‘She did not complain until after Emden had left the hotel – to go and live with the troglodytes, as we thought.’

‘Oh, I see. And Pilar. Did
she
complain?’

‘I doubt it. Not officially, I mean. I have not much doubt, though, that she told all the visitors on her corridor what sort of man this Emden was.’

‘Would you be surprised to hear that one of the dead kings was a good deal taller than the rest?’

‘Well, no, because
he
would be Emden.’

‘There was no such discrepancy in their heights when you yourself visited the cave?’

‘No, no. They all appeared to be more or less the same height. Besides, they may have shrunk, you know, whereas his corpse would have been comparatively fresh.’

‘
Rigor mortis
would have passed off,’ said Dame Beatrice thoughtfully.

‘
Rigor mortis?
Oh, you mean the fact that the corpse had been made to sit down? Well, he had to, if the murderer wanted to make him look like one of the dead kings. It’s all very puzzling, isn’t it?’

‘Not if one remembers that everything that has happened
is
part of a logical sequence. There was only one flaw, so far as I am aware, in the self-proposed murderer’s programme.’

‘Oh? What was that?’

‘He himself was murdered.’

‘Emden? He intended to murder someone else?’

Dame Beatrice shrugged.

‘It is a matter of opinion,’ she said.

‘What did you get out of Telham?’ demanded Laura, when lunch was over.

‘Nothing at all. He came to make certain that I was not bullying his sister.’

‘They’re very thick, those two. What happened then?’

‘He came, as you know; he listened, and he preserved silence. Fortunately I had asked all the necessary questions before he arrived. There was nothing more that I wanted from Mrs Lockerby. They are not fond of one another; the fondness, I fancy, is entirely on Telham’s side. The young man appears to prize his sister’s happiness not only above rubies but above his own life and safety.’

‘What did Mrs Angel have to say?’

‘Those things which we knew already, but it was as well to get her to confirm them. She seemed surprised when I told her that I thought Emden was murdered before he had an opportunity of murdering.’

‘Murdering Telham and Caroline, who must know, I suppose, that he murdered Lockerby? But surely neither of them killed him? They’re not at all the type. Caroline is definitely squeamish and Telham is a born procrastinator, wouldn’t you say?’

‘It may well be so. I shall know more, perhaps, when I have spoken to Mr Peterhouse. And now there is something which you can do for me, if you will. You remember that Clement claimed to have seen twenty-four bodies in the cave?’

‘Oh, but we know that was a lie! He took it back afterwards, you know.’

‘I wonder who persuaded him to say it? You see, he went there the first time with a guide, was not molested by the bandits, and came back with this curious tale. The next time he went he was captured and, when rescued, said that the bodies were reduced to twenty-three.’

‘Then you had your bit of fun with Jose el Lupe and his men, and disclosed the body of Emden with the knife in its back. I remember. Right. I’ll bounce the truth out of that kid. There’s one thing: it would hardly have been the murderer who persuaded him to tell a lie like that.’

‘It depends upon which murderer you mean.’

Laura stared at her employer distrustfully.

‘And I suppose you’ll tell me next that there’s nothing up your sleeve,’ she said.

‘I don’t think there is, dear child. I have no intention of misleading you. One certainly needs to understand the psychology of the child Clement, but I think you understand him very well. I did tell you, did I not, that he went out of his way to inform me that, whoever had killed Emden, his father certainly had not?’

‘Yes, you did. I thought it a normal reaction on the kid’s part.’

‘Did you? I did not.’

‘Oh, really? You mean he loathes old Drashleigh enough to wish him hanged? Oh, no of course! It wouldn’t come to that here, so there wouldn’t be
that
motive. So you think this black-hearted lad had method in this madness of defending his father? No, I don’t get it. Explain.’

‘Oh, nonsense!’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Don’t you remember the reason he gave for rallying to his father’s defence?’

‘Yes, I do. He told you that Emden had punched him, and that his father did not know. But what was the object of telling you all that?’

‘Although he is basically intelligent, he is, of course, still very young and, for that reason, still simple-minded. His intention was to mislead me into believing that Emden was his enemy. The opposite, I fancy, was the case.
Emden
was using and bribing the boy, but with what evil purpose it is not possible to say until you persuade Clement to talk. There is nothing for him to fear, and he is greatly attached to you, so you stand some chance, I feel, of obtaining the truth.’

‘I’ll do my best.’

Dame Beatrice, sleuthing diligently some time later, found Peterhouse pottering round the grotto of the hotel. The grotto was of natural origin and had been added to with more imagination than good taste. It consisted of a series of uneven caverns which had been deepened from the natural fissures to form cool, dim summer-houses in which were wooden benches of so-called rustic type, possibly picturesque but very uncomfortable as seats. These natural-cum-artificial arbours formed three sides of a square and in the middle of the square there was a pool (the one, incidentally, into which Clement had untimely thrust Caroline at an early stage in their acquaintanceship) and in the middle of the pool a fountain. Peterhouse was attracting the fish in the pool by scattering crumbs of cake for them. It was mid afternoon and the grotto was the coolest outdoor part of the hotel.

‘“The Compleat Angler,”’ remarked Dame Beatrice, stopping to watch. ‘Have you ever tickled trout, Mr Peterhouse?’

‘Not I,’ replied the horticulturalist, straightening up. ‘Why, dear lady, do you ask?’