Was It Murder? (25 page)

“Oh no.”  Revell managed a dismal smile.  “Have a drink?”

“No thanks.  I don’t drink in the morning, and neither should you, by the way.  Now I come to look at you, though, you do seem a bit dickey.  Only natural, of course, after the shock of Wednesday’s little affair.”

Revell abandoned the mixing of his drink and re-established himself in the arm-chair, motioning Guthrie to take the one opposite.  The detective did so.

“As a matter of fact,” he went on, “I came chiefly to tell you that, for the present, at any rate, I don’t think we shall need your evidence.  I quite appreciate your scruples in the matter, and it’s just possible we may be able to do without you altogether, even at the Assizes.  I’ll do my best for you, anyhow.  We shan’t, of course, take up the matter of that attempted attack on you.  Too many counts on the indictment never help the prosecution.  So you needn’t fear you’re going to have a lot of limelight turned on you.”

Revell nodded.  “Thanks.  That’s good of you.”

“Oh, don’t thank me—it was all decided at the Yard, but I was very glad, of course, for your sake.”  His gaze roved round the room.  “Look here, don’t let me interrupt your breakfast.”

“You’re not doing—I didn’t intend to have any.”

“Oh, nonsense, man—you must EAT.”

“Je n’en vois pas la nécessité.”

“Oh, don’t be funny.”  Guthrie lifted the cover and peered at the neglected ham-and-eggs.  “I must admit it doesn’t look very tempting.  But Revell, you know, you mustn’t let this Oakington business upset you too much.  It IS upsetting, I know—even to a hardened old sleuth like me.  I’ve only arrested three women for murder in twenty years, and I can’t say I’ve grown used to the experience.”

“Oh, I shall be all right soon.”

“Of course you will.  Cheer up, anyhow, and don’t take gin for breakfast if you want to live to a decent old age.”  He stared at the other doubtfully for a moment and then, as if seized with a sudden idea, continued:  “Look here, come to lunch with me in town— we’ll go to some quiet little place where we can chat, if you like.  There’s a French restaurant I know near Leicester Square— you’ll have an appetite for the food there when you see it, I’m certain.  Go up and dress, and I’ll wait for you down here.”

Revell opened his mouth to decline, but the other anticipated him.  “Go along now—I won’t listen to any refusal.  Got a newspaper, by the way, that I can look at while you’re getting ready?”

Revell pointed to the newspaper on the floor.  “Thanks,” replied the detective genially, as he picked it up.  “I say, what a splash these papers are making of the affair!  By Jove, it reads well!  Run along and take your time—I shall be quite happy here.”

Over an hour later—shortly after noon, to be precise—Revell and the detective stepped out of a taxi in a narrow Soho street.  Revell’s spirits were, if anything, a shade less doleful.  To begin with, he had put on a new brown suit that his tailor had just finished for him, and he was distinctly aware that he looked well in it.  London, too, was less gloomy than Islington, and even beyond his misery there were the beginnings of hunger.

In the small ante-room to the restaurant the detective broke his rule and drank a cocktail.  Revell stood a second one, and after that the two repaired to a table and composed what Revell had to admit was a really creditable lunch.  Petite Marmite, Sole Mornay, Poulet en Casserole, Canapé Macmahon—each in turn tempted him and won.  He ate; he enjoyed.  And a large bottle of Liebfraumilch still further improved his attitude towards the world in general.

During the meal he spoke little, but Guthrie kept up an entertaining flow of talk just faintly tinged with “shop”.  Revell found him quite amusing to listen to; indeed, he was rather surprised to find him possessed of such conversational powers.

At Guthrie’s suggestion they took coffee and liqueurs in a small room at the rear of the restaurant.  They had lunched so early that they had the room to themselves; it was a sort of lounge, fitted up with tile-topped tables and deep armchairs.  There, in relaxed attitudes, they made themselves thoroughly comfortable, while good black coffee, excellent old brandy, and a cigarette, made even Revell feel that life was partially worth living.  “Good place, this,” he commented.  “I must come here again.”

Guthrie nodded.  “Yes, they give you good food and don’t worry you with trimmings.  Hang your own hat and coat up on the hooks—not an army of retainers to collect sixpences from you.  And this lounge place here I’ve always liked—you’re not the first person I’ve brought, I can assure you.  Some pretty queer secrets have been told here.”

“Are you going to tell me any?”

Guthrie smiled.  “I’m not sure, yet.  Are you busy this afternoon, by the way?”

Revell shook his head.  “I’ve nothing on that can’t be let go, anyhow.”  He hadn’t, as a matter of fact, anything on at all, and he felt far too drunk to think of bothering about it, even if it had existed.

“Good.  I’M quite free too, as it happens.  I thought, as we may not meet again for some time, you might care to hear a bit about the case.  Don’t hesitate to say so, though, if you’d rather not.”

“I’d like to hear about it—I think.”

“Yes, and I’d rather you did, too.  You’re a clever chap, Revell, and you’ve a clever brain, but I’m not at all sure that if you didn’t learn the truth you wouldn’t go rearing up some new gigantic theory of your own.”  He laughed.  “Joking apart, you had some ingenious ideas about this Oakington affair.  TOO ingenious, some of them, unfortunately.  Yet the real truth, when I managed to get at it, was just as extraordinary.  You’ll have a pretty good retort when I’ve finished, Revell—you’ll be able to say that nothing you imagined was really any more unlikely than what DID happen.”

Guthrie paused, puffed at his pipe for a few seconds, and then went on:  “I could easily, if I wanted to, pose as a Heaven-sent Sherlock in this affair, but I’m not going to.  I’d rather be frank— after all, I shall get quite enough credit in the newspapers.  They’ll boom me no end, which will be very gratifying, of course, but the plain truth is—and I don’t mind admitting it to you—that except for spotting the culprit I haven’t been particularly right about things.  Of course the main thing is to get your man—or woman, even—but I do feel, all the same, rather like a boy who’s got the answer right and parts of the sum wrong.  By the way, if you’re going to listen to the full yarn, I must just put through a telephone call first, if you don’t mind—shan’t be a minute.”

When he came back, after the interlude, he resumed:  “Yes, I was fairly wrong as well as fairly right.  I was wrong, for instance, about the death of the first boy.  I was wrong about Lambourne’s death, too.  Of course, when I say I was right in this and wrong in that, I only mean that my preconceived theories do or do not tally with the woman’s confession.  You can say, if you like, that there’s no earthly reason why she should be believed now any more than before, and naturally I can’t deny it.  She’s the most consummately clever liar I’ve ever come across, and quite capable of hoodwinking us to the end if she had anything to gain by it.  The point is that she hasn’t.  We’ve got her, anyhow, so I can’t see why she should stuff us up with a lot of unnecessary yarning.”

“Did she volunteer a confession, then?”  Revell’s voice trembled a little in the varying throes of brandy and memory.

“More or less.  I gave her the usual warning, of course, but she began to talk, all the same.  She seemed rather to like telling us how clever she’d been.  Not unusual, you know, with the superior sort of criminal.”

“And how was she?  I mean—how did she seem to take it all—the arrest and so on?”

“Oh, not so badly.  After the big scene she just caved in—they often do.  We took down all she said in shorthand, worked it up into a statement, had it typed, and then got her to sign it.  She was quite calm by then.  You’d have been astonished—she read it over and put her name at the end as quietly as if it had been a cheque for a new hat.”

He continued:  “Let’s clear up a few side-issues first of all.  There was Roseveare, to begin with.  I admit I began by suspecting him—not tremendously, but on general principles.  There was, and perhaps is, something just faintly fishy about him.  Sort of man who COULD be crooked, if he wanted to—you know what I mean?  He’s certainly as cunning as an old fox, but he has his charm.”

“_I_ rather liked him, anyhow.”

“So did I—so did everybody.  He WAS likeable.  Just the opposite with Ellington, of course.  You remember how thrilled we were to discover that Ellington and Roseveare were old pals, as you might say?  You, I recollect, hatched a wild theory about something sticky in Roseveare’s past that Ellington was blackmailing him about.  There wasn’t the slightest evidence of any such thing, of course, but you thought it possible—just because you didn’t like Ellington.  That was part of the whole trouble—nobody DID like Ellington, and most people were more than willing to believe the worst about him.  As a matter of fact, his feeling for Roseveare was marvellously different from what you thought.  Roseveare had befriended him in the past, and Ellington had followed him about in sheer gratitude ever since.  As faithful as an old mastiff—and about as savage, too.”

“Why on earth did his wife marry him, I wonder?”

“Why did he marry her, for that matter?  She wasn’t too much good, even in those days.  There was a scandal over her at the hospital where she was a nurse—I soon found THAT out.  She wasn’t even technically faithful to Ellington, and it was THAT, I think—some affair that she had with someone—that made him come back to England and ask Roseveare for a job.”

“Decent of Roseveare to give him one.”

“Oh yes.  And it increased, of course, Ellington’s gratitude.  Mrs.  Ellington, too, was pleased, and the first thing she did at Oakington was what more than one woman had done before her—she fell in love with the Head.”

“Seriously?”

“The only serious affair she’s ever had in her life—so she says.  She seems rather proud of it.  And I daresay Roseveare, behind his coy and innocent manner, wasn’t wholly unsusceptible—in fact, I rather think he was just a little bit of a fool over her.  Not much, mind you—and only for a time.  He thought she was rather a tragic figure—the poor little colonial girl married to a man who didn’t understand her and had brought her back from the great open spaces—all that sort of thing.  Ellington hadn’t told Roseveare anything against her—he was a man of honour to that extent.  So the friendship prospered, and while everything was going on so nicely, Robert Marshall met his death by the accidental fall of a gas-fitting in the dormitory.”

“ACCIDENTAL?”

“Yes.  SHE says it was, and I always rather thought so myself.  There was never any definite evidence to the contrary, and the murder theory was very far-fetched.  Incidentally, I found after careful inquiry amongst some of the boys that there HAD been horseplay in the dormitory—swinging on the gas-brackets and so on, though of course after the boy’s death they were all very terrified about admitting it.  Yes, I think we’ll agree that it was an accident, though a deuced queer one, in view of what it led up to.”

He went on, leaning forward a little:  “We come now to Lambourne.  I needn’t say much about him except that he must have the credit or discredit of laying the spark to the train of gunpowder.  Really, I’m getting quite eloquent—you must stop me if I fly too high.  Anyhow, to return to sober fact, Lambourne, in the course of conversation with Mrs. Ellington shortly after the accident, remarked upon the cleverness of such a method of committing murder.  He treated her, indeed, to a complete lecture on murder as a fine art—you can imagine him doing it, I daresay.  And thus the great idea was born in her mind.

“It certainly WAS great, from her standpoint.  She wanted three things—first, to be rid of her husband—second, to have money—and third, to marry Roseveare.  Doubtless she assumed that if she managed the first two, the third would follow pretty easily.  And after a good deal of careful thought she hit on a plan of campaign which was so diabolically unusual that I excuse you all the theories you ever had in your life, since the real thing was as astounding as any of them.  Lambourne, as I said, put murder into her mind, but the elaboration of the idea was wholly hers.  And briefly, it was as follows.  She would kill the second brother in such a way that guilt would inevitably fall on her husband.  But first of all, before doing that, she had another little scheme in hand.  About a week after the accident she went to Roseveare and pretended—she was a superb actress, remember—to be upset and hysterical.  When Roseveare asked her what was the matter, she began to talk wildly and hysterically about the accident and her husband’s connexion with it—hinting that he had been up in the disused sick-rooms a good deal of late, that there was more in the accident than had happened, and so on.  Roseveare naturally pooh-poohed the matter, which of course she had expected him to.  She knew that as things stood then, the idea was absurd, but she also knew (and this was the diabolical cleverness of her) that if the second brother died by another apparent accident, those wild hints of hers about her husband’s connexion with the first affair would recur to Roseveare with terrible significance.

“Here, however, we come to the first example of the lady’s weak spot—and that was a tendency to have moments of sheer panic.  Roseveare, it seems, had after all been slightly impressed by her hysterical suspicions (she must have acted too well), and had sent for a young man named Colin Revell to look into the matter unofficially.  The whole explanation he gave you, by the way, is probably the exact truth.  But Mrs. Ellington for some reason had one of her panicky moments when Lambourne told her that someone was already on the track—so she immediately went to Roseveare and told him that she’d been a very naughty and hysterical woman to think such horrid things about her husband, that she hadn’t really meant any of them, and that she was very, very sorry!  Roseveare believed her only too willingly and dismissed his young inquiry agent at the earliest possible moment.  Extraordinary, really, that she should have worried about you at all, Revell.  What HAD she to fear?  Nothing—yet for all that, your arrival upset her nerve for the time being.  I should think you ought to feel rather proud of that.”