Minute for Murder Read online

  “My golly!” said Charles Kennington, “I do seem to be in the toils! Now if only I’d brought my sword I could fall upon it in the noble Roman way.”

  “I hope that’s not necessary,” said Nigel. “If only you’d tell me what really passed between you and Nita that night. There can be only two reasons why you don’t—either to protect yourself or to protect someone you love. And——”

  “Jolly good reasons too, both of them. You can hardly expect me to help you adjust the noose with my own delicate fingers. Look here, Nigel——” Charles had risen, and was pacing restlessly across the room. “I say, this Bonnard of yours is a bit of all right. I wish—no, I can’t: not yet. Have you read any of Alice’s novels?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “That’s a pity. It’d enable you to see what she’s really like. How shall I put it? Can you imagine Jane Austen poisoning any one?”

  “No,” Nigel answered, smiling.

  “You see? You can’t help smiling at the idea. The Brontë girls, now—they’d poison your teacup as soon as look at you: at least, Emily or Charlotte would have. And why? Because they were passionate, banked-up, inverted, all-or-nothing girls. All for love. Now Alice simply wouldn’t understand the feeling of all-for-love. She’s madly civilised. And she’s under-sexed. She loves Jimmy, of course. But her passion is evenly distributed between him and her work. Always has been. She’s a genuine artist: it’s in her blood. Suppose she did lose Jimmy—well, she’s got her other love, which is just as much in her blood as he is. Her life wouldn’t be empty, just because Jimmy left her. You read any of her books—see how objective she is, and dispassionate: the excesses of love, the divine or satanic frenzy—she skirts them by, just as Jane Austen did, not because she disapproves of them or wants to ignore their existence, but because they don’t come within her own experience; and she’s too conscientious, too meticulous an artist—too narrow, if you like—to have a dash at them imaginatively. And another thing. Her equilibrium is a very fine one. She’s aware that, if it were violently assaulted, it might well mean the end of her as an artist. She’s always avoided, instinctively, violence and excess, and getting too much involved with other people’s feelings. There’s a natural fastidiousness—how shall I describe it?—well, she cultivates her own garden; she diverts just enough of the stream of life to run through it, fertilise it, without making a mess of it: a sort of ornamental stream it becomes, with miniature bridges and little tinkling artificial falls, and tame fish in it—all very decorative and un-strenuous. She’s a profoundly selfish woman: self-centred, anyway. Her defence against feelings and people that would trample over her little hortus conclusus is to be amused by them, to poke fun at them. You see, in so far as she had it in her to hate Nita, she could get it off her chest by making a neat little image of her and running it through with red-hot needles, in a book. She wouldn’t have to murder Nita. She’d get far more satisfaction from murdering her in fantasy. And that’s what she was doing, Nigel. She showed me some of her new novel the other day: and—well, it just takes poor Nita to pieces, undresses her—it reminds me of a certain female collaborator I saw after the Maquis had dealt with her; you can’t imagine anything more—more sexually deflated—than the spectacle of a bald, naked female walking away down a rue nationale into the middle distance, in high-heeled shoes. Believe it or not, Alice is in quite a state because, now that poor Nita’s dead, her novel seems to have lost its impetus.”

  Nigel had listened to all this most attentively, watching the vivacious, triangular face of Charles Kennington while, his affectations and flippancy laid aside, he made what amounted to a speech for the defence. One seemed to be alternatively warmed and chilled by him, attracted by his taking up of the cudgels for his sister so loyally, repelled by the way he used them.

  “And what about yourself?” asked Nigel, after a minute’s silence. “Do you revel in the downfall of Nita, as you picture your sister doing?”

  Major Kennington looked a little resentful.

  “‘Revel ’? That’s an angry word. You are on Nita’s side, I see.”

  “Yes, I suppose I am. I really prefer the people who bite off more than they can chew, the people who don’t make reservations about love. But that’s neither here nor there. What I’m asking is, how far your picture of Alice could be taken as a fair likeness of her twin-brother?”

  Charles’ face broke into its ugly, intelligent grin: one could almost see him putting on the mask again.

  “Oh, I’m not an artist like Alice. No sublimation for me: not that I usedn’t to make some of my sitters look rather foolish, in my photographer days. But, by and large, I’m a vindictive little chap, you know: a whirlpool of seething repressions; not really a very nice character. On the other hand, I do sometimes bite off more than I can chew—I did get engaged to Nita, after all.”

  “But you still won’t tell me what you and she talked about, that night?”

  “The situation. I can’t tell you more than that. Not yet. You see, I don’t trust any one, not even you.”

  “What, to interpret the evidence correctly?”

  “You’re an astute old thing. Yes. And I’m rather hemmed in just now by—you know, can’t see the grass for the snakes.”

  There was a knock at the door. A Club servant entered, and handed Nigel a note on a tray. The Superintendent’s writing. He tore open the envelope.

  “Object A,” he read, “found amongst Major Kennington’s belongings. Object B, possible remains of found in ash-bucket, taken for analysis.

  “Ring me at once.

  “D. BLOUNT (Superintendent, C.I.D.).”

  “And talking of snakes in the grass,” said Charles, “you look as if you’d found a viper in your bosom.”

  “It’s not what I have found. The Superintendent has been searching the Lakes’ house. He has found a poison container, identical with the one you took off Stultz.”

  Major Kennington’s eyes blazed. His voice was suddenly very cold and dangerous indeed.

  “So you had me along here to get me out of the way while the police searched——”

  “Yes,” Nigel broke in, “it was found amongst your belongings.”

  Charles Kennington was out of his chair and at the door, moving with the fluency of a cat. Nigel made no attempt to stop him. At the door Charles paused for a moment.

  “Now you’ve done it,” he said. “Now you have done it.”

  Then he was gone.

  CHAPTER X

  MAJOR KENNINGTON: MOST SECRET

  NIGEL WAS THINKING of those last words of Charles Kennington’s a couple of hours later. Charles was speaking truer than he knew when he said, “Now you’ve done it.” Nigel felt the exasperation of a man who has put together a whole jig-saw puzzle but for one piece, only to find that the one piece left does not fit the remaining gap.

  He had got in touch with Blount immediately after Charles’s departure, to be told that the poison container had been discovered in a locked suitcase of Charles’, and the lock showed no signs of having been tampered with. Blount was still at the Lakes’ house, awaiting Major Kennington’s return and explanation. He had said nothing to the other members of the household about his find, and agreed to keep silent about it for the present. What he and Nigel knew as “Object B” was the PHQ file which had disappeared on the day of the murder. Certain remains had been discovered in an ash-bucket and were now under analysis at New Scotland Yard: the stove had been cleaned out by Alice Lake two days before, since Jimmy’s injury prevented his doing this customary chore of his, but the ash-bucket had not yet been called for by the dustman.

  An hour later, Blount had rung up again. Major Kennington, he said, had recognised the poison container as the one he had taken from Stultz, but would give no explanation of how it came to be in his suitcase. The key of the suitcase, he admitted, had never left his possession. He insisted most firmly that the container could not have been planted there by someone else. Though Blount had threate
ned him with a charge of obstructing the police in their investigations, and had made clear to him that his possession of the container put him in a very awkward situation, Kennington had remained adamant. Blount could, in fact, carry things no further at the moment. For a signal had come back from Major Kennington’s Headquarters in Germany to say that he had handed in his own cyanide capsule, with which he was provided for his dangerous counter-Nazi work, before leaving the country: and at the same time Alice Lake’s evidence seemed to make it impossible that Charles could have taken Jimmy’s capsule out of the drawer in his dressing-room before the murder.

  Leaving motive out of the reckoning altogether, Blount was faced by two questions to which he had no answers at the moment at all. If Kennington poisoned the girl, where did the poison come from? If he did not, what was Stultz’s poison container doing in his suitcase, and why does he refuse to give any explanation of it? For Nigel’s theory of the murder method, provisionally accepted by Blount, involved the murderer’s having removed “Stultz’s thing” from the room in the Ministry where Nita had died.

  Since receiving Blount’s second call, Nigel had been scribbling on a number of pieces of paper. It was as though, the jig-saw puzzle having failed at the very last moment to work out, he was dispersing the pieces and starting again from the beginning. He arranged his bits of paper on the floor in four groups, A, B, C and D, lay down on his stomach, and began to pore over them, from time to time shifting one into another column and studying the effect. Here are the groups with which he started:

  A 1: Nita’s dismay at seeing letter in Charles’s handwriting, the day before the murder. Nita’s insistence (evidence: C.K.) that his visit to her that night should be secret.

  A 2: Nita’s words to Jimmy, afternoon before murder (evidence: M.S.), “It’s too late to back out now. You can’t do it. Everyone knows, or guesses. There’s no use trying to pretend you’re not in love with me.” Nita doesn’t wish to be at J.’s party for C.K. next morning (evidence: M.S.) J. says she must. Nita’s general flap over C.’s return.

  A 3: Both C. and J. visit Nita night before murder.

  A 4: Nita upset next morning. “The last chance” (evidence: B.I.) Who gave it to her? Last chance to do what?

  A 5: Nita’s words that morning, “Jimmy is practising being hard-hearted. But it doesn’t work” (evidence: self and M.S.).

  A 6: Nita’s playing-up to Charles when he arrived in J.’s room:? directed at Jimmy. Why?

  A 7: Nita’s apparent determination not to give up Jimmy (evidence: Miss Sproule, Brian and others).

  A 8: Brian’s analysis of Nita’s temperament and state of mind. Extremely convincing.

  A 9: Nita’s words to B.I. “It startled me so when I saw him. I knew he’d be like that. But it was horrible, Brian. You wouldn’t understand, though.” “He” presumably Charles K. Was it this “he” who gave her the “last chance” to give up Jimmy?

  B 1: Jimmy’s general losing of grip, irritability, etc., during last few weeks. His behaviour to Nita day before murder: his refusal to give her the morning off on the next day.

  B 2: Jimmy’s outburst against Merrion, morning of murder.

  B 3: Jimmy’s consternation (?) when C. brought Alice to the party.

  B 4: Jimmy’s behaviour after being searched by Sergeant Messer.

  B 5: Slight discrepancy of evidence between J. and C. as to whose plan it was that C. should bring “Stultz’s thing” to the party.

  B 6: Jimmy’s preoccupation with PHQ file afternoon after murder.

  B 7: Jimmy’s line about divorce (evidence: Alice L. “I’d say he dashed straight along here and told her he couldn’t press a divorce on me, it would break my heart.”? Sound psychological comment).

  B 8: Jimmy’s remark on recovering consciousness after being stabbed. “Alice. She won’t let me go, darling.” His determination not to be taken off to hospital.

  B 9: Merrion’s remark on Jimmy. “It’s Alice his emotional capital has always been sunk in.” M.’s analysis of the Jimmy-Nita-Alice relationships: probably sound as far as J.’s share in them is concerned. (See also A 8.)

  B 10: The initial A in the Clough poems, and Jimmy’s explanation of it.

  B 11: J.’s volunteering information about his own poison capsule.

  B 12: Alice to Jimmy. “You’ve taken the poor girl’s death so calmly,” etc. Jimmy on Alice. “There are certain things she hasn’t it in her nature to be able to know, or to imagine.”

  B 13: J. to me. “There was always a part of me trying to get back to Alice.”

  C 1: Alice’s evidence about “Stultz’s thing” being on the desk a minute before the murder.

  C 2: Alice—a last-minute addition to the party in J.’s room (but of course she might have been intending to come all along, uninvited). See also B 3.

  C 3: The search of Alice by the woman policeman was thorough. She could not have had the poison container then. But. . .

  C 4: See B 10: the remote possibility that initial J. was turned into A by Nita and/or Jimmy as ironic comment on Alice’s character, she having been in reality extremely jealous.

  But C 5: Charles’s analysis of A. this morning: even if not disinterested (wish to protect her), still rings true.

  C 6: See B 8 and B 12.

  C 7: Alice and Merrion. A damp squib.

  C 8: Alice evidently wounded because J. had not acquired a cyanide pill for her in case of Nazi occupation.

  C 9: The whole situation between Alice and J. now. A.’s genuine sorrow that she and J. unadjusted: my sense of the gulf between them.

  C 10: A.’s evidence about J.’s capsule. Her being rattled when Blount first inquired about it.

  C 11: Alice either suspects, or is pretending to suspect her husband of having poisoned N. Which?

  D 1: Charles Kennington bringing “Stultz’s thing” to the party: either criminal, or criminally careless. His odd little phrase about it, in Nita’s flat. “How was I to know that publicising it would lead to——” His look of amazement when Nita fell dead (or could I have misinterpreted that look?).

  D 2: See B 5. C. and J. the only ones who could have known the day before that there would be poison on tap at J.’s party for C.

  D 3: Charles’s interview with Nita the previous night: his refusal to say more about it or explain why he originally told us he had not discussed the question of J.-A. divorce with N. “I think I put her mind at rest, poor sweet”—very queer, and he hadn’t—see A 4.

  D4: “There are other causes than jealousy Superintendent, for crimes passionels”—was C. shooting in the dark when he said this? cf. Hark’ee’s remarks to me in the canteen just before attack on Jimmy.

  D 5: Charles took away his letters to N. but left the ribbon behind, because magenta would be “death to my complexion”: well, perhaps.

  D 6: Charles’s dramatic instinct. But it was not he who laid out the photographs on the floor and propped Merrion’s cover-designs on the bookcase.

  D 7: See A 9. N.B. that Nita also said to Brian, “I wish I could trust him. There’s no one I can trust now.”

  D 8: Alice’s statement, “I thought he (C.) was sounding me about the divorce, for his own interest.” Her statement that C. would do anything to preserve her marriage, if he thought it worth preserving. Her great discomposure at my asking if C. had told her he’d given Nita a last chance to release Jimmy.

  D 9: But, unless A. was lying, Charles could not have got possession of J.’s poison capsule before the murder (? or after). But Stultz’s thing has been found in Charles’s luggage.

  D 10: Charles’s extraordinary alternation of frankness and evasiveness during our talk this afternoon. His insistence that Alice always tells the truth. His parting remark, “Now you have done it”: curious: why “you”?

  Nigel was still sorting these pieces, fitting them into place, and still finding the same one left over at the end, obstinately refusing to complete the pattern, when he was called to the telephone. It was Jimmy Lake
, inviting him to supper. Yes, Charles would be there, but not Alice—Alice was taking the evening off, as Jimmy put it.

  Nigel’s first feeling was of positive apprehension. This, he felt in the pit of his stomach, this is it. Not that Jimmy’s invitation was unexpected: after all the poking and prodding he had done to-day, it would be surprising if the criminal were not, somehow or other, forced out into the open. But Nigel could hardly look forward with any pleasure to the last act of what seemed to him a lamentable and a wasted tragedy. Nor could he be certain yet, with that last obstinate piece refusing to fit his pattern, how the tragedy would turn out.

  As he sipped his sherry in Jimmy’s study a couple of hours later, Nigel became aware of two things: first, that Charles Kennington was in a state of extreme nervous tension, and second, that there was a strained atmosphere between him and his brother-in-law—an air of antagonism little the less perceptible for being at present subdued to the polite conventions. Major Kennington was drinking heavily. Nigel had noticed at lunch that he was greedy, gobbling his food and gulping his wine unashamedly. The whisky decanter at his elbow, he knocked back three stiff glasses in ten minutes. One might almost have thought he was nerving himself for some ordeal, or some dangerous enterprise; yet it was not to be supposed that there could be much wrong with the nerves of the man who had captured Stultz. Nigel had not seen Charles and Jimmy together since the fatal party in the Director’s room. How much the two had discussed the crime with one another, he did not know. But he could not fail to notice that each of them now addressed his conversation to Nigel alone and that they avoided each other’s eyes, like two men who have recently had a quarrel and not yet made it up. It was impossible for Jimmy Lake to he discourteous—his good manners were bred in the bone, as it were, a kind of innate and natural grace: but the strain upon them just now was evident from his distrait air, from the rather forced attention he gave to Nigel’s remarks. As for Charles Kennington, one could only say that he was impudent. The usual charm and brio of his conversation, which took the edge off its impropriety, was lacking: he was now, as he gave Nigel a wildly satirical account of Jimmy in his pre-war Public Relations job, outrageous; he could not have been more savagely offensive if he had been trying to provoke Jimmy into some physical retaliation.