And So To Murder Page 10

  ‘Of course,’ said Monica. ‘Please come into my office, Mr Fisk.’

  She held open the door.

  Past her shoulder and through the door, they could see one wall of the little office. Monica was as tidy in her habits as she was untidy of thought. On a side-table against the wall were neatly ranged a little line of reference-books, an untouched ream of paper with two erasers, and her gas-mask in a leather container. Over it on the wall hung a framed photograph of Canon Stanton. This last had caused some ribaldry among those who visited the room; but to Cartwright – his senses and his imagination strung up – it brought a domestic touch, a feeling of honest things in a house of make-believe.

  The door closed behind the other two; and Tilly glowered at him.

  ‘Well,’ she said grimly, ‘you sure blurted it out. About the letters. What are you going to do now?’

  ‘Wait until Howard goes, and blurt out the rest of it.’

  ‘I thought so,’ said Tilly. ‘In that case, there’s something I’ve got to get. I’ll be back in a minute; so hold everything.’

  He did not hear her go. The image of words, written on a pinkish sheet of paper out of a sixpenny box, rose in his mind with too much unpleasant suggestion.

  All right, Bright-eyes. I’m not through with you yet.

  He had thought there might be something on the way, and he was right.

  Your Dad and your Aunt Flossie are going to get a pleasant surprise soon.

  He went back to his desk. Taking a bunch of keys out of his pocket, he unlocked the lower drawer. It contained a typewritten résumé of what had happened in the sound-stage on the afternoon of August 23rd, with accounts of where people said they were at various times. It contained a certain empty bottle. It contained a big photograph of the writing on the blackboard.

  He put the piece of pink notepaper side by side with the photograph, and took a glass to them.

  It checked. There could be no doubt whatever about that. The handwriting on the blackboard was the same as the handwriting on the letter.

  The vitriol was a wash-out; but I’ve got another little treat saved up for you.

  There was not a sound in the whole building except the faint drone of voices from Monica’s room. The lamp, in its dark conical shade, shed a bright light on the metal fittings of the typewriter. William Cartwright put down the magnifying-glass. He stared at the keys of the typewriter. He picked up a pipe at random, and chewed on the stem of it.

  Presently he pulled open the upper drawer of his desk. That drawer contained, in addition to paper and envelopes, some rough notes for a new story: they concerned a certain virulent poison, the way to procure that poison, and a diabolically ingenious way of administering it. If his mind had not been occupied with other matters, he would have had the sense to lock those notes into the lower drawer.

  But he never thought of it. He rolled a sheet of notepaper into the carriage of the typewriter, dated it, and wrote rapidly:

  Sir Henry Merrivale,

  The War Office,

  Whitehall, SWI

  Dear Sir,

  I am a friend of Chief Inspector Masters: I will not waste your time with further introductions.

  We need help and we need advice. If I were not sure that the matter concerned your department, Military Intelligence, I should not bother you. Just under three weeks ago, we had a near-murder here. I think I can tell you who is responsible –

  ‘Here you are, honey,’ said Tilly Parsons, appearing suddenly at his elbow. She banged down on the desk not only a pair of nail-scissors but a pair of long-bladed paper-cutting scissors as well.

  ‘Go away,’ said William Cartwright wildly.

  ‘Come on, honey,’ said Tilly, with sternness. ‘Take off that spinach. If the nail-scissors won’t do to start it, the big ones will.’

  To devil a man engaged in literary composition is one of the primary mistakes which can be made by the daughters of Eve.

  ‘For the love of Satan and all the thrice-accursed hosts,’ howled Cartwright, starting up, ‘will you get out of here and stay out? Aroint ye. Scram. Can’t you think of anything but beards? Are you mad on the subject of beards? I am trying to devote serious attention to a serious question, and all you can think of –’

  Tilly extended the long-bladed scissors.

  ‘For the last time, laddie, will you take off that spinach?’

  ‘For the last time, woman, I will not.’

  Tilly was a woman of action. She hesitated no longer. The big scissors were extended, and she handled them with the precision of a swordsman. With one deft chop she cut off not only the end of Cartwright’s beard but very nearly the end of his chin as well.

  ‘Now will you take ’em off?’ she asked.

  Some weeks ago, Monica Stanton had been merely stupefied – past speech – by a lack of tact which seemed to her to be beyond human comprehension. It was now William Cartwright’s turn to feel the same emotion. He merely stared at Tilly. He saw red. A more easy-going man did not exist, but for a moment he quite seriously considered picking up the chair and hitting her over the head with it.

  Cold rage ensued. He took the scissors from Tilly, who was really alarmed now. He walked quietly into the cloakroom. He switched on the light. He ran hot water into the wash-bowl. He arranged shaving-tackle on the glass shelf above it.

  In ten minutes the beard was no more.

  ‘Judas!’ said Tilly wonderingly. ‘I wouldn’t have believed it could make so much improvement. It makes you look ten years younger. It makes you not bad-looking, even. Are you going to take off the moustache, too?’

  He looked at her for a second, and then turned back to the wash-bowl.

  ‘Now, you whey-faced witch,’ shouted the impolite Mr Cartwright, turning round in conclusion and hurling the towel over the gas-ring, ‘is there anything further I can do for you? Would you care to see me have my appendix out? Would it amuse you if I shaved my head and painted it green? If so –’

  ‘Don’t get sore, honey. You’ve cut your chin. Stick some stuff on it.’

  ‘Good night, everybody!’ cried Howard Fisk’s voice, distinctly. ‘If you people don’t want your dinner, I do. Good night.’

  A door slammed.

  ‘Now’s your chance,’ hissed Tilly. ‘Go on in and do your stuff. I’ll be waiting in my room. You look fine. You don’t look like Mr William Cartwright. You look like Bill.’

  It seemed to the newly christened Bill, as she impelled him across the room, that both he and Tilly were behaving in a somewhat ridiculous manner.

  If he could not put his finger on the way in which they were behaving foolishly, he at least knew why. Tilly behaved so because she was nervous. He behaved so because he was in love with Monica Stanton, and didn’t give a damn.

  Yet, as he lifted his hand to knock, he experienced certain qualms. His face, still tingling, felt very bare. Hitherto that beard had been his defence in encounters; he had marched, so to speak, behind brush, like Macduff against Dunsinane. The beard had given him (he thought) an appearance of mature years and sober wisdom. That was why he had grown it. His ideal, so far as appearances went, would have been to attain the age of about forty-five and stay there.

  He knocked.

  ‘Monica –’

  She did not turn round.

  She was sitting at her desk in the middle of the room, with her back to him, bent over the typewriter. The light, brilliant and unshaded, showed the side of a flushed face. He felt that she was angry. What he did not know was that the girl was very near to tears.

  ‘Monica –’

  ‘So it was you,’ she said, still without turning round, ‘who stole it.’

  His mind, momentarily diverted, was brought up against this with a bump. A cloud of cigarette-smoke hung in the room.

  ‘Stole what?’

  ‘You know what. That letter.’

  Comprehension returned; and, with it, determination. ‘Monica, look here. You’ve got to listen to me. I didn’t
steal your letter, but I ruddy well would have if I’d known anything about it. I want to help you. Curse it all, I lo –’

  ‘Oh!’ gasped Monica.

  This was where she turned round.

  It was an all-too-natural reaction: she laughed in his face. She leaned back, kicking her heels on the floor, and whooped with mirth until the tears came.

  After a frozen silence he looked round. He saw the flushed, lovely face distorted with merriment; he saw even the photograph of Canon Stanton smiling indulgently at him from the wall. But something can here be said to the credit of the new Bill Cartwright. He did not, as his first impulse was, turn round and walk out of the room. He advanced to the desk.

  ‘Then that is settled,’ he said grimly. ‘If you insist, it is funny. I will agree, without a struggle, that it is the funniest spectacle since the hanging of Larry O’Halloran. We will sit right down here and split our sides over it. But you are going to listen to me just the same. I am not going to have you go about any longer in danger of being attacked by that swine. I think too much of you for that. Here is the plain fact. I lo –’

  ‘Old Building! Lights!’

  It blattered out, on dead silence, in the same familiar way. It made them both jump and turn towards the windows. The usual guardian was making his rounds outside the windows at the usual time.

  ‘Old Building! Lights showing!’ bawled the voice.

  Monica was looking at Bill Cartwright.

  ‘Wh-what did you say?’ she asked.

  ‘Miss Stanton! Middle room! Lights!’

  ‘Wh-what did you say?’

  ‘Miss Stanton! Middle room! Top of black-out curtain! Chink showing!’

  An invisible hand hammered on the glass of one window.

  ‘Miss Stanton! Lights!’

  Monica went to the window – it would be fair to say that she flew at it – as the voice faded away. She pulled back the heavy inner curtains to their full width, and raised her hands to the black curtains underneath.

  Bill watched her go. In an abstract way he saw the details of the room, lit by a naked glare of electricity. He saw the black-out curtains, smoothly drawn together without a chink down their length. He saw Monica squarely facing the oblong of the windows, her arms raised and her fingers fumbling with the top of the curtain-rod. He saw her shadow, blacker still on the black sateen. He saw –

  This time you won’t be able to jump back.

  It was the wrong voice.

  ‘DOWN!’ he yelled, ‘DOWN!’

  He was just too late. The crash of the explosion shook the window-pane as he ran for her.

  The bullet had been fired at Monica’s face. It drilled a hole in the window-pane without shattering the glass, and left another hole in the curtain at about the height of her ear.

  3

  When he considered it afterwards, it always seemed that these things took a very long time, though in point of fact it was a matter of seconds.

  Monica, still at the window, made a gesture. There was a very faint reddish patch on her left temple by the edge of her hair, like a slight abrasion before it begins to bleed. That was where the bullet had grazed, before it smashed the picture of Canon Stanton against the opposite wall.

  The door communicating with Tilly Parsons’ room was flung open. Tilly stood in the doorway, her jaw-muscles loose and the lipstick standing out vividly against her face. Behind her, the office was a drift of crumpled papers; a cup of coffee smoked on Tilly’s desk, and a cigarette smouldered on the edge of the standing ash-tray.

  Her voice was so hoarse as to be barely audible.

  ‘Was it –?’ she said.

  ‘I’m quite all right,’ said Monica. ‘He missed again.’

  ‘You’re hurt, dearie. I can see it! You’re –’

  ‘I’m quite all right,’ said Monica.

  But she went over and sat down on the sofa. Bill Cartwright managed to speak.

  ‘Got a torch, Tilly?’

  Tilly turned blazing eyes. ‘You going out after the so-and-so?’

  ‘Yes. He’s got to run along the edge of the lake. He can’t get across it. Give me a torch, quick!’

  Tilly ran into her office and waddled back with a flashlight.

  ‘I know that voice,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard that voice: I mean the so-and-so who pretended to be the ground-keeper yelling “Lights”. Where have I heard that voice? Where – ?’

  But Bill was already out of the room, the door banging. For a time there was no sound in Monica’s office except that of hard breathing. Tilly took out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes; she seemed as much excited as moved.

  ‘Let me bathe your head, honey. Come on! Let me put some stuff on your head.’

  ‘No. Not just for a minute, please.’

  ‘Would you like a little drink, honey?’ wheedled Tilly. ‘I’ve got one, if you’d like it.’

  ‘Not for a minute.’

  Monica sat on the sofa, her hand shading her eyes. Then she got up and went over to the photograph of her father. Canon Stanton continued to smile. The bullet had smashed the glass, making a hole in the Canon’s collar to bury itself in the wall behind; the picture hung sideways.

  Taking down the picture, Monica looked at the splintered abrasion in the wall. She carried the broken picture over to her desk. Here, in the ordered neatness of things, she put it down beside a Victorian needlework box in red leather: a present from Miss Flossie Stanton, which Monica now kept full of cigarettes.

  Tilly regarded her rather grimly.

  ‘Are you going to give it up now, honey?’

  ‘Give what up?’

  ‘Are you going to get away from this place, like he wants you to?’

  ‘I – I don’t know. No, I’m not!’

  ‘Easy, honey.’

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘Have a Chester,’ urged Tilly, dragging out the packet as though inspired. ‘English cigarettes are muck, dearie. I wouldn’t smoke one on a bet. Dearie, look.’ She paused. ‘He didn’t swipe your letter. I did.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  ‘Then why did you say – ?’

  ‘Oh, never mind.’

  ‘It was for your own good,’ said Tilly. ‘Honestly it was. He didn’t know anything about it until to-night. I told him; I told him everything. You trust him. He thinks he knows who’s been doing this: he’s been watching somebody. Why do you want to be so uppish? I told him you’d fallen for him.’

  Monica gasped.

  ‘You told him –’

  ‘Ah, why deny it, dearie? It’s true. You know it’s true.’

  ‘It’s not true!’

  ‘It’s as true as gospel. Why, you even talk about it in your sleep. I remember the other night. I thought I heard somebody muttering, and I got up and put my head in your room. And it was you. It was something about his being a Roman, or your being a Roman, or your both being a Roman; but anyway, honey, it was something, I can tell you.’

  Monica stared at her with widening eyes, and a widening flush which made her cheeks bright pink. She seemed to have difficulty in getting her breath.

  ‘That settles it,’ she breathed, after a long pause. ‘I was trying to make up my mind, but that settles it. That beast!’

  ‘But he didn’t do anything, honey. Don’t blame him just because he knows. Blame me. I told him. He didn’t do anything except shave off his beard because he thought it would please you.’

  ‘I hope a lion bites him,’ said Monica. ‘If he comes anywhere near me, I’ll bite him. I never want to have anything more to do with him as long as I live.’

  ‘Sh-h!’ whispered Tilly, jerking up her head.

  Both of them whirled round towards the window. Outside, clear on the night air, came what sounded like a view-halloo bellow from Bill Cartwright. A noise of running feet burst out, dodged, and grew more distant; there was a terrific splash from the lake, a thrashing, a triumphant howl from Cartwright, and more footsteps pounding away along the bank.

  V
III

  The Sad Fate of a Writer’s Theory

  1

  THAT was Monday night. On the afternoon of Wednesday, September 13th, Bill Cartwright was entering the courtyard of the War Office.

  He had not really expected a reply to the letter he had ultimately finished on Monday night and put into the eleven o’clock post. At least, he had not expected more than an acknowledgement of receipt. But an answer, on Wednesday morning, came with such promptness as to startle him and make him wonder.

  The reply gave no information. It merely stated that if he would come to the enquiry-office of the War Office, entrance in Horse Guards Avenue, if he would present this letter and ask for Captain Blake, the messenger would do the rest.

  Meaning – ?

  Craftily, as he thought, he persuaded Monica to go with him to London.

  ‘Like to come along to the War Office? After all, it concerns you.’

  ‘No, thank you. In any case, I’ve told you I would rather you didn’t trouble yourself about me.’

  ‘Just as you like. But it’s an interesting sight in itself. The War Office, shrine of Military Intelligence! Generals and pukka sahibs. Decorations galore. Marble halls and deep carpets. King’s Messengers dashing away on secret missions to the East. In Desire you sent Captain Royce to the place a dozen times, and so I thought perhaps –’

  ‘We-el,’ said Monica. …

  But the journey to town, in a train which stopped to take a nap five or six times in fourteen miles, was not a conspicuous success. Monica sat primly in one corner of the carriage, and refused to talk about anything except detective stories. It appeared that in her three weeks at Pineham she had read hundreds of them. He himself had once been foolish enough to introduce the character of a clergyman into one of his books; and what Monica did with this was nobody’s business. Judging by the number of ecclesiastical errors he had committed, it seemed to him that it was only by a miracle he had escaped being burnt at the stake.

  He could not make the girl out. At one time, just before that shot was fired through the window, he could have sworn he saw in her face something he wanted most to see there.