Thou Shell of Death (7 page)

‘Keep still, and don’t touch anything!’ he snapped at his companion. Cavendish was not in a state to touch anything. He was standing against the wall, mopping his brow with a handkerchief, breathing heavily, and staring at the body and the revolver as though he expected the one to leap up and the other to explode at any moment. He made some incoherent sounds, then controlled his voice and said:

‘What on earth? Why did he—?’

‘We shall find out. Close that door—we don’t want everyone looking in. No! Keep your hands off it! Use your elbow.’

Nigel made a hasty survey of the room and the adjoining cubicle. The bed had not been slept in. Nothing seemed out of place anywhere. The windows were shut and locked. The key was on the inside of the door. Nigel felt the oil stove; it was cold as O’Brien’s hand. The hut was icy, too. He looked round in a puzzled way, as though missing something.

‘I wonder where his—’

‘There’s Bellamy,’ interrupted Cavendish, standing at the window. ‘Shall I call him?’

Nigel nodded absent-mindedly. Cavendish shouted ‘Bellamy!’ at the top of his voice; but the sound seemed deadened and, though he shouted again, it had no effect. Nigel opened the door, using a handkerchief to turn the handle. Arthur Bellamy was standing on the veranda, blinking into the sun and rubbing his eyes with his huge fists.

‘Arthur!’ he called. ‘Come over here, and keep off that single trail of footprints. Didn’t you hear us shouting for you?’

‘Can’t hear much from in there when the door’s shut,’ said Arthur, lumbering over the snow like a bear. ‘The Colonel had it sound-proofed like. Says ’e can’t work with the shindy the cocks and ’ens and whatnot make round about ’ere.’

‘That’s why no one was awakened by the shot,’ thought Nigel.

‘’Ere, wot is all this, Mr Strangeways, sir?’ said Arthur, now approaching the door and suddenly realising that there was something unusual in the situation. ‘Ain’t the Colonel in there? I was coming to call him. I overslept, you might say, and—’

Nigel’s expression silenced him. ‘Yes, the Colonel is in here. But he won’t be working here any more,’ Nigel said gently, and let Arthur Bellamy come in.

The big man staggered, as though he had collided with a wall. ‘So they got him!’ he gasped finally in a high, hoarse voice.

‘Who “got him”?’ asked Cavendish, bewildered. No one paid any attention to him. Arthur, who had been bending over O’Brien, straightened himself, as it were, with a giant effort—like Atlas with the sagging sky on his shoulders. Tears were pouring down his face, but his voice was firm as he said, ‘When I gets my hands on the—wot did this, I’ll beat his—carcase into a—paste, I’ll—’

‘Hold it, Arthur. Some of the others will be coming out in a minute.’ He drew the big man aside, and whispered to him quickly. ‘
We
know this isn’t a suicide, but it’s going to be damned difficult to prove. There’ll be no harm the rest thinking we think it’s suicide, for a bit. Pull yourself together now and act up.’

Arthur acted up. ‘Strite, guv’nor? You’re sure it’s sooicide? Ar, the gun there and that scorching on his coat. I reckon you must be right.’

Cavendish, looking through the door, said, ‘Some of the others are on the veranda. They must have heard our voices. You’d better tell them to keep off those footprints. Oh, God, there’s Lucilla. She mustn’t see this.’

Nigel went to the door and hailed the guests. ‘Stay where you are a minute. Yes, all of you. Arthur, just walk round the hut and see if there’s any trail up to the back. We’d better make sure, before they all start tramping about.’

Arthur moved away. ‘But look here, Strangeways,’ Cavendish protested, ‘you can’t let those women come in here and see—’ He shuddered.

‘I can and I propose to,’ said Nigel brusquely. He did not intend to lose this golden opportunity for studying reactions. Arthur returned and informed him that there were no footprints at the back of the hut. Nigel spoke to the guests huddled on the veranda.

‘You can come out now, but keep well away from that single track of footmarks. O’Brien has met with an accident.’

There was a gasp, and Georgia Cavendish came running out ahead of the rest. They were all dressed, except for Knott-Sloman, who was wearing an overcoat over his pyjamas, and Lucilla Thrale, who had on a magnificent grey mink coat over what looked suspiciously like nothing else at all. With her silver-gold hair and white throat and frozen expression she was a veritable Snow Queen.

Nigel put his back to the far wall of the hut, and said, ‘You can come in. But stand still and don’t touch anything.’

They filed in and stood fidgeting in a row, like a company of amateur actors with bad stage fright. For a second they did not know where to look. Then Georgia pointed a trembling finger, bit her lip hard, said in a small solemn voice, ‘Fergus. Oh, Fergus!’ and fell deathly silent. Knott-Sloman’s face grew taut and his pale blue eyes seemed to turn to stone. ‘Good God! Dead! Is he dead? Who—did he do it himself?’ Philip Starling pursed up his lips and gave a long whistle.

‘He
is
dead,’ said Nigel, ‘and everything points to suicide.’

Lucilla Thrale’s frozen expression suddenly broke up like a landslide. Her scarlet mouth dropped open; and with a violence that appalled everyone she screamed out: ‘Fergus? Fergus! You can’t! It’s not true! Fergus!’ Then she reeled and fell back into
Knott-Sloman’s
arms. The little group split up. Nigel glanced at Georgia. She was gazing at her brother now with an indecipherable look. Suddenly aware of Nigel’s scrutiny, she dropped her eyes and walked out, bending and just touching O’Brien’s hair on the way.

‘Look here, Strangeways,’ Knott-Sloman exclaimed angrily. ‘What the devil do you mean by letting these ladies come in and—it’s outrageous.’

‘You can all go out now,’ said Nigel impassively. ‘Stay in the house, please. You will be needed for the formality of questioning. I am just going to ring the police.’

Knott-Sloman’s face grew purple, and knotted veins stood out. ‘Who the hell are you to give orders here?’ he roared. ‘I’ve stood just about enough of your buck.’ He broke off. Nigel was looking at him, a very different proposition from the mild, bespectacled, amiable creature of the day before. His tow-coloured hair stood on end berserk fashion, his boyish expression had been left behind with the jokes and crackers of last night, his eyes looked dangerous as the muzzles of machine guns. Knott-Sloman capitulated, and retired to the house grumbling. The others followed. Lucille Thrale, who was getting full emotional value out of the occasion and behaving like a tragedy queen, was being supported into the house by Georgia and Philip Starling. Nigel told Arthur to stay on guard in the hut and to see if he could find anything missing there or out of place. He himself went into the house and phoned
up
Taviston. He was put through to Superintendent Bleakley, who promised to come at once with a police doctor and other accessories. Taviston was a good fifteen miles distant, and Nigel spent the intervening time putting through a trunk call to his uncle in London. Sir John Strangeways’ reception of the news was typical of the man.

‘Shot …? Suicide to all appearances …? You don’t think so …? Well, go to it … I’ll send Tommy Blount down if they call in the Yard … No, don’t blame yourself, boy; I know you did your best. He didn’t give us a chance … Going to be a rumpus about this, though. I’ll have to see what we can do about nobbling the Press … So long. Let me know if you want anything … Oh, right. Who? Cyril Knott-Sloman, Lucilla Thrale, Edward and Georgia Cavendish, Philip Starling. Right, I’ll have ’em looked up … So long. Be good to yourself.’

Ten minutes later the police car arrived. Superintendent Bleakley was a man of middle height. His straight back and waxed moustache suggested military service; a brick-red face, the faint Somerset burr in his voice, and something unwieldy in his gait, pointed to the blood of many yeomen ancestors in his veins. The martinet quality of his training and the deep inherited
laissezfaire
of the countryman were always at odds within him. He was followed out of the car by a sergeant, a constable and the doctor. Nigel met them.

‘My name is Strangeways. My uncle’s Assistant Commissioner. I’ve done a certain amount of work as a private inquiry agent, and I was staying down here with O’Brien in that capacity. I’ll give you details later. We found O’Brien at nine forty-five in that hut over there: he had been shot. Nothing has been touched. There was this single trail of footprints leading to the hut. No others.’

‘What’s all this, then?’ asked Bleakley, pointing to the tracks that had been made by the other guests. ‘Seems to have been a proper stampede.’

‘There are several other visitors. They
would
come out here. I kept them off the important prints,’ said Nigel mendaciously.

They entered the hut. Bleakley looked at Arthur suspiciously, Arthur at Bleakley belligerently. The body was photographed from several angles. Then the doctor got to work on it. He was a taciturn man, but agreeably unprofessional both in his clothes and his manner. After a bit, straightening up on his knees, he said:

‘Looks like a clear case of suicide. See the powder burning here? Shot fired into the heart from a few inches range. Here’s the bullet. You’ll find it checks up with that revolver, Bleakley, or I shall be very surprised. Only point against suicide is that he isn’t holding the revolver. Suicides generally grip on the weapon they’ve used—cadaveric spasms, it’s called. Still, it’s not invariable. There are no other injuries except these bruises on the right wrist. He would
be
killed instantaneously.’ The doctor looked at his wristwatch. ‘M’m. I should say death took place between ten last night and three this morning. The post-mortem may narrow it down. The ambulance will be along here directly, I suppose.’

‘These bruises, doctor, how do you account for them?’ said Nigel, bending over the body and looking at the two faint purple marks on the underside of the wrist.

‘Hit himself against the edge of this table falling, I should think.’

Bleakley was staring in a ruminative way at O’Brien’s feet. ‘Surely he didn’t walk out here in carpet slippers,’ he said, and began rummaging around the hut. In a minute he discovered, behind one of the armchairs by the left-hand wall, a pair of patent-leather evening shoes. ‘These belong to the deceased?’ he enquired sharply of Arthur Bellamy.

‘The Colonel’s shoes those are,’ said Arthur dully, looking inside them.

‘The Colonel’s? What Colonel?’

‘He means O’Brien,’ said Nigel.

‘Well, we’d best see if they fit those footprints outside before the sun melts ’em away altogether.’

Bleakley took the shoes up gingerly, using his handkerchief. Nigel put his fingers on the soles. They were quite dry. They went outside. The shoes fitted accurately into the footprints. It was true that the snow falling after the prints had been made had obliterated any peculiar features of the tread, except that the
indentation
of the toes seemed deeper than that of the heels; but to the superintendent the identification seemed decisive.

‘That clinches it,’ he said.

‘Just a minute, before you make up your mind,’ said Nigel, drawing out of his pocketbook the threatening letters and O’Brien’s covering note. ‘Read those.’

Bleakley took out, rather surprisingly, a pair of pince-nez, rustled the papers formidably and began to read. When he had finished, officialdom and human interest struggled for a moment in his expression. ‘Why weren’t we informed about this? Well, that’ll keep. This is a mighty queer set-out, sir. Did Mr O’Brien take these threats seriously?’

‘I think he did.’

‘He did? Well I never. You know, sir, this’d be a thundering big case, Mr O’Brien bein’ who he was, if—But no, it’s impossible; you can’t get round the evidence of them footprints. Still, just to make sure. Doctor Stephens, will you look out particularly carefully for any evidence at the post-mortem that might point to—something else than suicide.’ The doctor smiled sardonically and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Oh, there’s the ambulance. You can take his prints now, George, and then they can take him away. See you later, Doctor. Thanks. Now, George’—he turned to the sergeant again—‘go over the hut for fingerprints—the gun, the shoes and that safe especially: not that it’s going to be much help if all those people have
been
in here since,’ he added, the martinet coming uppermost.

‘I told them to touch nothing,’ said Nigel. ‘I was watching them hard, and I’m pretty sure they didn’t.’

‘Well, that’s something. Now you, what’s your name?’ He spun round abruptly to Arthur, who had been standing in the background.

‘Arthur Bellamy, late aircraftman, discharged 1930, heavyweight champion of the R.A.F.,’ the big man reeled off. Bleakley’s parade-ground rasp had made him involuntarily stand to attention.

‘What is your position here?’

‘I was the Colonel’s personal servant, sir.’

‘What do you know about all this?’

‘Wot do I know about all this? I know the Colonel was expecting trouble. I was going to watch this ’ut all last night, though he
did
tell me ’e’d ’ave my blood if I came anywhere near it, only I got so blasted sleepy I couldn’t keep my eyes open. So sleepy I forgot to bolt the front door. Next thing I knew it was nearly nine o’clock this morning. That’s all I know, except that when I lays my hands on the—who did it, I’ll twist his guts round his—earhole.’

‘So you don’t think the Col—Mr O’Brien committed suicide?’

‘Suicide my—,’ replied Arthur coarsely. ‘’E’d no more do it than—than ’e’d ’ave killed one of them little birds ’e used to feed with bread crumbs every morning.’ Arthur’s voice shook at the remembrance.

‘Very well. Is this Mr O’Brien’s revolver?’

‘Yus. No doubt about that.’

‘Now who would be likely to come into this hut?’

‘The Colonel was very particular not to let anyone in. He always locked it when there was company about. I came in to clean it most days, but no one else but ’im and Mr Strangeways will have been in here.’

‘Then any other fingerprints we found would be a bit suspicious. We’ve got Mr O’Brien’s, and I’ll take yours now, Bellamy, and yours, Mr Strangeways, if you’ve no objection. Not that I think there’s anything in it. Still, we might as well do the thing properly.’