Thou Shell of Death Page 6

  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.’

  They submitted to the process. Then Bleakley said, ‘You get on with it now, George, and see if you can find a broken cufflink anywhere; the one on O’Brien’s right wrist was snapped in half—did it when he fell, I expect. You come with me, Bolter. I’ll want you to take down depositions.’

  The superintendent jumped higher in Nigel’s estimation. He might be only a country dumpling, but he noticed things.

  ‘Now first we’ve got to try to find out when the snowfall began here,’ Bleakley was saying as they went over to the house. ‘It started about midnight with us. Do you know, by any chance, sir?’

  ‘Afraid I did the same as Arthur—fell asleep on the job,’ said Nigel bitterly.

  Bleakley noticed the bitterness in his voice, and changed the subject tactfully. ‘A good lad, that George. His dad and mine worked on a farm down to Watchet. Now, sir, can you give me a line on the other people staying here, before I interview them?’

  Nigel gave a succinct account of his fellow guests, omitting all conjectures and nuances. To keep out of earshot, he led Bleakley round by the kitchen garden and the stable yard, and by the time they had reached the back door he had finished his descriptions. He was so absorbed by them, in fact, that he did not notice the face that regarde
d him and Bleakley with a forbidding expression from the kitchen window. As they entered a harsh voice said, ‘I’ll thank ye to wipe your feet and noat come sullying ma clean passage.’ Mrs Grant stood in the kitchen door, her fingers folded tightly over her apron. Nigel began to giggle uncontrollably; the anticlimax was too much for his strained nerves. Mrs Grant fixed him with a dour regard. ‘This is noat the time for unseemly murrth, with a mon lying deid oot yonder.’

  ‘And who told you your master was dead?’ asked the superintendent smoothly.

  The slightest flicker appeared in Mrs Grant’s granite-grey eyes. ‘Ah hairrd that woman screeching,’ she said.

  ‘What woman?’

  ‘Miss Thrale. It was an ill day when she set foot in this house, the painted hoor. I have always been in respaictable families before.’

  ‘Come, come, this is no way to talk with your master just dead,’ said Bleakley, genuinely shocked.

  ‘He broaght it on himself, consorrting with that hussy. It is the Lorrd’s judgement. The sinner shall perish before Him.’

  ‘Well,’ said Nigel, recovering himself, ‘we can discuss the theological aspect of the case later. What we’re concerned with at the moment is facts. Can you tell us, Mrs Grant, what time it began to snow last night?’

  ‘I dinna ken. I went to bed shairp at eleven and bolted the back door. It wasna snowing then.’

  ‘You saw, or heard no unauthorised persons about the place yesterday night, I take it?’ asked Bleakley.

  ‘That slut, Nellie, went home to the village when she’d washed up. After that, I hairrd nothing but Mr O’Brien’s friends rampaging and blaspheeming in the drawing room,’ said Mrs Grant severely. ‘And now I’ll thank ye to let me get on with my wurrk. I havna time for chattering with beesy-bodies.’

  They retired, Bleakley frankly mopping his brow. The guests were in the dining room. Georgia was trying to persuade Lucilla, who was now clothed, though scarcely in her right mind, to drink some coffee. The rest were making spasmodic efforts to eat breakfast. Their heads all turned nervously when the door opened. The superintendent seemed rather nervous himself. He was not used to high life, his professional activities having been mainly confined so far to poachers, petty thieves, drunks and errant motorists. He twisted his moustache and said:

  ‘I will not trouble you for long, ladies and gentlemen. There seems no doubt that Mr O’Brien committed suicide. But I just want to get a few details settled up, so that there will be no trouble at the inquest. Now first, can any lady or gentleman tell me what time it began to snow here last night?’

  There was a stir, a relaxation, as though everyone had been expecting some more sinister question. Starling and Knott-Sloman glanced at each other. Then the latter said:

  ‘Cavendish and I went to play billiards between eleven and half-past, I suppose it was. Starling came to look on. About five minutes after midnight—I remember because I heard the hall clock striking—Starling said, “Hallo, it’s beginning to snow.” He was standing at the window. Weren’t you, Starling?’

  ‘That seems quite satisfactory,’ said the superintendent. ‘Was it falling heavily, Mr Starling?’

  ‘A few flakes at first. It got heavier quite quickly, though.’

  ‘Did anyone happen to notice when it stopped?’

  There was rather a long pause. Georgia, Nigel noticed, was looking uncertainly at her brother. Then she seemed to make up her mind about something, and said:

  ‘About quarter to two—I can’t tell you exactly, because my travelling clock has gone funny—I went into my brother’s room and asked for some sleeping draught. He’d packed it in his luggage. He was awake and got up to get it, and I noticed then that the flakes were coming down much thinner. It probably stopped soon after that.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Cavendish. You were just going to bed then, Mr Cavendish?’

  ‘Oh, no. I went up soon after twelve. I couldn’t get to sleep, though.’

  ‘That is quite clear, I think. Now just one more question. The coroner will want to know when Mr O’Brien was last seen and whether he showed any signs of—of what he was going to do.’

  After some discussion, the following points emerged. O’Brien had been with Lucilla and Georgia in the drawing room for a quarter of an hour after the Marlinworths had left. Then, about eleven-fifteen, the ladies had gone up to bed. O’Brien had looked in at the billiard players after this. He had stayed there for twenty minutes or so, and then said he was sleepy and going upstairs to bed.

  ‘So Mr O’Brien was last seen somewhere round about eleven forty-five,’ Bleakley summed up.

  As to the other question, there was more difference of opinion. Cavendish and Knott-Sloman had noticed nothing about O’Brien, but that he seemed in exceptionally good form. Philip Starling thought he had looked ‘rather weird and worked-up’. Georgia agreed that he had been at the top of his form, but insisted that he had looked more than usually white and ill, and that she had felt some great strain under his gaiety. Lucilla, being asked her opinion, threatened to go off into another fit of hysterics, and cried out: ‘Why do you torture me? Can’t you see that I—I—Ioved him?’ And then, as though shocked into sanity by the admission, she said, with unnatural calmness: ‘The hut? What was he doing in the hut?’

  Nigel interposed quickly: ‘Well, I think that’s all we want, isn’t it, Bleakley?’

  The superintendent took the cue, and after informing them that they might be required not to leave Chatcombe for a day or two, went out with Nigel and Bolter to the hut again. There they found the sergeant very pleased with himself. He had found the bit of broken cufflink lurking behind one of the legs of the big table. He had also discovered four distinct sets of fingerprints. One on the handle of the revolver, on the safe, and in other parts of the room, presumably O’Brien’s. There were no prints on the shoes. Bleakley had no doubt that two of the other sets would prove, on expert examination, to be Nigel’s and Bellamy’s. Whose was the fourth? Those prints on the shiny window-sill and the cigarette box on the bookcase? Nigel’s heart leaped up. Here was the X, the unknown whose existence he had yet to prove. Then, as suddenly, it sank again. Edward Cavendish had come into the hut with him; he had been standing by the bookcase and later had moved over to the window. Almost certainly they would be his. He suggested this to the superintendent. They went back to the house, detached Cavendish from his sister and Lucilla, and asked him to let them have his prints, for comparison with those on the window-sill and cigarette box. He made no demur, though he seemed nervous and flustered at the suggestion. Back in the hut again, Bleakley shook his head sadly at Nigel.

  ‘No, sir,’ he said, ‘it’s no manner of good. They say dead men tell no tales, but it isn’t true here. The story is clear enough for a babby to see. I don’t like to think of a fine gentleman like Mr O’Brien taking his own life, but you can’t go against the evidence.’

  ‘The evidence,’ said Nigel slowly. ‘I believe I could make this dead man tell a very different tale, just on the evidence we’ve got so far.’

  V

  A TWISTED TALE

  THE SUPERINTENDENT TWIRLED his moustache indecisively. There was something compelling about this young Mr Strangeways’ quiet confidence. His army training had given him a possibly misplaced belief in the superior wisdom of what he would never have thought of calling ‘the officer class’. And what a case this would be if—Bleakley decided to listen. It was perhaps the wisest decision he ever made in his life. He sent George off post-haste to Taviston with his prints, and Bolter into the house to fetch some breakfast for Nigel.

  Gesturing, now with an impaled sausage, now with a marmalade spoon, Nigel took up his parable. ‘I’m going to take as my hypothesis that O’Brien was murdered, and see how the evidence fits in with that. You can be the advocate for felo-de-se. Pull me up whenever I seem to misinterpret or contradict the facts. Between us we ought to thrash out the situation pretty thoroughly. Now first, the psychological evidence.’

 
Bleakley twirled his moustache importantly. He was gratified that Mr Strangeways took for granted his knowledge of the meaning of these scientific terms.

  ‘Anyone who knew O’Brien well would tell you that he was the last person to put an end to himself. Even my short acquaintance with him convinced me of that. He was a remarkable character—an eccentric one, you might say; but not unbalanced. He had the physical courage to shoot himself, I’ll admit; but he had equally the moral courage to refrain from shooting himself. I don’t believe he would have any qualms about taking life—we know that in the air he was quite ruthless, and I can imagine him even murdering a man in cold blood if he had sufficient incentive—for revenge, for instance. He must have had a terrific will-to-live for him to have come through all he did, and you are asking me to believe that a man with such survival power could just go quietly into a corner and shoot himself.’

  ‘It wasn’t so quietly, sir. Several of them said he seemed all worked up like and excitable last night.’

  Nigel’s eyes glinted behind his spectacles and he waved a sausage forcefully in the air.

  ‘Ah, that’s just it. If O’Brien had been going to shoot himself, one would have expected him to be distrait, reserved, the stiff upper lip with an occasional outburst of semi-hysterical hilarity. But he wasn’t anything of the sort. He was uniformly gay. It was high spirits, not hysteria. The excitement beneath the surface, plus that fey look about him, are just what one would have expected from a man of almost reckless courage before going into battle. Which is exactly what he was doing. X’s ultimatum expired at midnight. Unfortunately O’Brien must have underestimated his adversary’s power this time.’