A Question of Proof Read online

  ‘Please sit down, sir, and hear me out. I’m afraid I put it too abruptly. It is only fair that you should know the facts that have compelled me to take up this position.’

  He mentioned the will in the Vales’ favour and asserted that he could find no other possible motive for the crime. He suggested that it would be far easier for the headmaster or his wife than for anyone else to ask the boy to come to the haystack, or wherever he was murdered, without arousing his curiosity. A picnic might have been proposed, for instance, immediately after school. ‘What’s more,’ he added, ‘the movements of every one else about the school are accounted for satisfactorily with the exception – to be frank – of your own. And in your own case there is obviously no motive; to mention only one difficulty.’

  Had Michael’s brain been capable of its usual activity, he could not have failed to see the gaping holes in Armstrong’s jerry-built case. But the unexpected grouping of events into such a different and staggering pattern had taken his wits away, and he could only think what his own attitude should be to the new situation. Armstrong was relying on this, and without giving Michael time to dispose his forces, went on, looking keenly at him the while:

  ‘I am not, of course, asserting that this theory is correct; but it is the only one which fits the facts at present in our possession. The difficulty from your point of view – believing quite naturally that Mrs. Vale is innocent – is that she was alone in the hayfield during a part of the critical period. That’s why I asked you if you’d seen anyone else there. Any evidence that tended to prove that Wemyss was not in the haystack with Mrs. Vale would naturally decrease the suspicion against her, or remove it altogether. As it is –’

  The superintendent shrugged his shoulders with an admirable simulation of regret and seemed about to end the interview. Michael’s brain was running round in demented circles. Should he confess to the murder? Or was that unnecessarily quixotic? No, he’d never be able to make the details fit the facts convincingly at such short notice. If he said he’d been with Hero, that would almost certainly mean exposure and disgrace for both of them, but at least it would clear her of the more terrible suspicion. Yes, he must take the risk. The superintendent’s hand was already on the door handle; his broad back prevented Michael from seeing that the knuckles were white and tense.

  ‘Just a moment, superintendent.’

  Armstrong turned slowly, a faintly surprised expression on his face. One could not possibly have guessed that he was seeing a weak card bluff the trick.

  ‘Sir?’

  Michael was trembling uncontrollably. Even his voice seemed out of control. ‘You have told me something in confidence, and I’m going to make the same request of you. If what I am going to say turns out to have no bearing on the case, will you promise to keep it to yourself?’

  ‘Well, sir, that’s rather a difficult thing to promise. But I can assure you that if we solve this problem, we shall not bring forward any evidence without it is necessary to incriminate the murderer.’

  ‘Very well. I was with Mrs. Vale in the haystack from one to one twenty-five.’ The words tumbled out, as though eager to rescue Hero. The superintendent gaped for a moment, then pulled himself together and said:

  ‘You realise this is a very serious business, sir? You have been obstructing the police in the course of their duty – you and Mrs. Vale – by the false statements you originally made.’

  ‘Yes, I know, I know. But you must see that we couldn’t let it become known. The scandal –’

  The superintendent shaded his face with his hand, ‘I see, sir: that certainly seems to let Mrs. Vale out, though it is not too easy to credit your second story when your first is admittedly a tissue of lies.’ He paused.

  ‘You must believe me,’ said Michael frantically. ‘You said that if anyone had been with Mrs. Vale it would remove the suspicion against her.’ He commanded his voice and spoke soberly, ‘I swear to you that Mrs. Vale and I were together and that we saw nothing of her nephew.’

  Yes, you were together all right, thought Armstrong, but I think you saw more of her nephew than was good for him.

  ‘And, if you need any further explanation,’ continued Michael, ‘we were there because we love each other.’

  ‘So I gathered,’ said Armstrong dryly. Then he smiled in a more friendly way, and added, ‘Well, sir, you’ve led us a pretty dance, but I’m inclined to believe that you’re telling the truth now. I shall not let this go further unless it becomes absolutely necessary. And I’m asking you to keep our conversation – all of it – entirely to yourself; that is, with the exception of Mrs. Vale.’

  ‘But – Strangeways –’

  ‘Oh, yes, I was forgetting him. Yes,’ the superintendent seemed oddly disconcerted, ‘I think you’d better let me tell him as much as I think necessary first. Then you can, if you wish, communicate to him more fully the position between yourself and Mrs. Vale. Now there are just two more questions. What did you do when you left Mrs. Vale?’

  ‘I went into the wood, and stayed there, as I told you, till two-fifteen.’ ‘And secondly, what were your movements between the end of the sports and the roll-call?’ ‘I was in the common room. We were all there for tea, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Well, I stayed there reading till seven o’clock. Tiverton was on duty, so he was in and out all the time. And Griffin went out after tea to see if Mould tidied up the ground properly. The rest of us remained in the common room.’

  ‘Till seven? You’re sure of that?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Armstrong declared himself satisfied and rose. Michael went back to his classroom feeling a vast relief. The balloon had gone up certainly, but that was almost bound to happen. It might be kept dark for a bit even now, and Hero was safe; that was all that really mattered. That superintendent was not such a bad stick at all. Michael would have had cause to reverse his opinion if he could have heard what Armstrong was saying to himself, as he went to have his few words with Hero. ‘The motive! And out of his own mouth!’ he exulted, clenching his right fist hard in his pocket. That the superintendent was a brilliant, if unscrupulous, tactician, is sufficiently obvious by now. But he lacked the comprehensive view of the strategist, or he might have asked himself why a man who had committed murder to keep the secret of his guilty love should so easily be induced to betray his motive.

  Oblivious of the suspicions they were leaving behind them, Michael and Hero drove towards Staverton. It was the first occasion they had been alone together for any time since their mad half-hour in the haystack. Michael’s hand was on her knee. They felt much older since then; happy, but exhausted, as though the shore lights were in sight after a stormy passage. Hero’s driving was an index of her character; cool and efficient up to a point, but she was apt to grow impatient with the process, and then it became a headlong one. In an emergency she sometimes lost her head for a fraction of a second. The luck of the careless carried her through this blind moment, and after it she got her grip again very quickly and was cool and efficient till the next one. She turned the car up a lane out of the main road and drove bumping through a gate. Here, where they were hidden by the hedge, she took Michael’s hand and leaned back on his shoulder.

  ‘Darling, I’m glad it’s all out. I am, really. But what made you change your plan and tell the superintendent?’

  ‘My hand was forced. You see, he thought –’ even now Michael could scarcely get the words out –’he thought you might have done it yourself.’

  ‘Me? Are you sure? Why, I was told that it was you he suspected. My dear, it was terrible. Percy said this morning that they had found your pencil in the haystack, and I thought of them putting you in prison and tying a rope round your neck.’ Hero’s body shook and she began to cry.

  ‘Hero, my beautiful, please don’t cry. I shall start in a minute. It makes me feel as if my inside had all collapsed.’

  She laughed tremulously and wiped her eyes on his sleev
e, ‘You know, I’m much softer than I thought I was.’ Then she told him what the superintendent had said to her: Mr. Evans had altered his evidence and would she corroborate his new story. ‘So of course I did. Michael, it’s a shaming thing to have to tell you, but I must. I thought at first you’d done it because you’d lost your nerve. Please forgive me.’

  Michael forgave her with many kisses, ‘Well, I suppose I did,’ he said, ‘it broke me up altogether when he said that he believed you’d done the deed. I could have killed him.’

  ‘I wish you would, Michael. I don’t like him at all; his horrid pig’s eyes and his smarmy manners. I believe he’s capable of anything – he’s probably ordering ropes for both of us now,’ she added, laughing.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think he’s as bad as all that. After all, he might have made a nasty fuss about the lies we told him. And he did give me every chance to prove his theory wrong.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t trust him an inch. You know, Michael,’ she went on irrelevantly, ‘I feel as if I’d just been reprieved and let out of prison. The grass is extra green and the sky extra blue and the birds singing specially for us. I feel good. I think we ought to be good. I think we ought to tell Percy.’

  ‘Get in our word before it all comes out in the general washing of dirty linen. Your psychological motives are highly questionable.’

  Hero flushed and stiffened a little. ‘You have rather a mean mind sometimes. I hate this talk about psychological motives. What’s the point in rooting out all the bad reasons that one does a good thing for?’

  ‘I didn’t say “bad reasons”.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly. You know that whenever you say “psychological motives” you mean to imply the worst. Presumably there are psychological motives behind our loving each other, but you don’t talk about them. No doubt you’ll start to when you get tired of it.’

  ‘Hero, don’t turn away from me like that. We mustn’t start quarreling now. It’s this damned murder business which is upsetting me. You can’t imagine what it’s like in the common room. Every one seems on the point of flying at every one else’s throat. Gadsby and Wrench have had a dustup already, and Tiverton simply snaps every one’s head off. Griffin seems the only one of us left who is not qualifying for the loony-bin. But I think you’re right. We ought to tell Percy.’

  ‘I’m so glad. My sweet, you know I didn’t mean it – about your having a mean mind. Let’s wait a few days, though, till he’s got over this shock.’

  ‘Is he taking it badly?’

  ‘Oh, just what you’d expect. The school will be ruined, and so on. He’s forgotten all about Algernon, I think. But one oughtn’t to talk about him like that. Poor dear, the school is the only thing he can see.’

  ‘L’école, c’est moi. Well, let’s hope that Nigel finds the murderer outside it.’

  ‘Tell me about Nigel. We’d better start off again. You can tell me on the way.’

  ‘Nigel? Oh, he’s a very good stick indeed. Up at Oxford with me – for goodness’ sake keep your eye on the road and not me; you nearly ditched us then –’

  ‘You look so nice, I can’t take my eyes off you.’

  ‘Up at Oxford with me, I repeat. Could not stick two years of the place, the spectacle of so many quite decent youths being got at and ruined for life was too much for him. Heard that at Cambridge the hearties were still heartier and the intelligentsia even less intelligent, so decided to dispense with any further education. So he answered all his examinations in limericks – very good answers, I believe – he’s a first-rate brain, but it alienated the dons, they have no taste for modem poetry, and he got sent down. Travelled about for a bit, learning languages. Then settled down to investigate crime; said it was the only career left which offered scope to good manners and scientific curiosity. He’s been very successful; made pots of money. He did all the stuff in the Duchess of Esk’s diamonds affair and several high-hat blackmail cases which have figured less prominently in the press.’

  ‘But what’s he like?’

  ‘Like? Oh, like one of the less successful busts of T.E. Shaw. A Nordic type. He’s rather faddy, by the way; his protective mechanism developed them, I daresay. But you must have water perpetually on the boil; he drinks tea at all hours of the day. And he can’t sleep unless he has an enormous weight on his bed. If you don’t give him enough blankets for three, you’ll find that he has torn the carpets up or the curtains down.’

  ‘Sounds crazy to me.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll like him all right. He’s a simple soul, really…’

  The figure that emerged from a first-class carriage and advanced towards them with rather ostrich-like strides did not, Hero thought, live up to Michael’s lurid description. Nigel Strangeways blinked at her shortsightedly and bowed over her hand with a courtliness a little spoilt by the angularity of his movement. He made one or two flat remarks, which his loud and exuberant voice somehow redeemed from banality, then they moved down the platform and got into the car. Hero hoped to improve the acquaintance over lunch, but, as it happened, lunch had to be postponed. Her husband had given her a note to take to James Urquhart. She stopped behind the solicitor’s Daimler, which was standing outside his house. But as she was on the point of ringing, the door opened suddenly and a small, pouchy-faced man emerged, carrying a suitcase. ‘Why, James –’ said Hero, but the man leapt down the steps, collided with a nondescript-looking individual who suddenly rose up in his path, sent him staggering away into the road, and flung himself and his suitcase into the front of the Daimler. Heavy footsteps could be heard thundering down the stairs, but by the time the superintendent and the sergeant were out of the house, Urquhart had started his car, thrust off the nondescript man who had picked himself up and was trying to get his hands on the steering wheel, and was twenty yards down the street. Armstrong glanced at Hero and Michael, hesitated a second, then rapped out a few orders to his sergeant and jumped into Hero’s car. Michael had moved into the driving seat, anticipating action.

  ‘Follow that car,’ shouted the superintendent, ‘he can’t get away for long, but the sooner we catch him, the better.’

  Hero bundled into the back seat, where Strangeways took her arm in the most friendly and reassuring way, remarking, ‘I seem to have plunged in medias res, as you might say.’ Michael jumped the car forward in second, skidded neatly between a bus and a sandwich man at the corner, and hurled them in a series of swoops and jerks through the traffic of the High Street. ‘O death,’ sang Strangeways, in a raucous baritone, ‘how bitter art thou to him that liveth in peace, to him that hath joy in his possessions and liveth free from trouble.’ The broad back of the Daimler slipped coyly round a corner, fifty yards ahead, its red rear lamp winking an offensive challenge. Michael changed down at forty, the car swayed and seemed to hang like a lift at the bottom of its descent, then he accelerated into the side street and was confronted by a level crossing, with the gates just beginning to close. Michael in control of a fast car was a person in whom one would scarcely recognise the decorous, slightly neurotic schoolmaster of Sudeley Hall. He put his car at the gates like a seasoned huntsman. Nigel murmured to Hero:

  ‘Does your vehicle jump?’ Then gently closed his eyes as they rocked over the metals with the gates scraping and jarring at their rear wings. The superintendent shot an apprehensive glance at Michael, but he was staring ahead, smiling serenely, apparently not contemplating further addition to his tale of victims.

  They were out in the country now, drumming in third up a long incline. Trees pounced at them and withdrew, hedges moved endlessly past like conveyor belts, the tyres purred on a different road surface, and the Daimler kept its distance. They bucketed over the top and a steep hill fell away at their feet. Michael went down it like an airplane diving. The speedometer needle surged up from fifty to sixty, to seventy, to seventy-five. Armstrong, putting his head outside, found his eyelids fluttered up and down by the wind’s pressure. The Daimler looked bigger now, and they could see the fig
ure inside bumping up and down hunched over the wheel. Strangeways held Hero closer, remarked that this was better than the movies and began singing an aria from ‘Israel in Egypt.’ Hero’s golden hair was floating above her head as though she were sitting over an electric fan, her eyes were sparkling and her mouth curved ecstatically. Even the superintendent forgot his fright in the general excitement, and to the astonishment of the company began to deliver hunting cries in a high tenor.

  A red triangle flicked past; a blind crossroads ahead. The Daimler was over them. A baby Austin nosed out from behind a barn on the right; the owner gave a startled glance at the projectile leaping at him down the hill, flurried with his hands, and stopped almost in the middle of the crossroads. Michael’s left hand dropped on the brake and his right forced the wheel steadily over to the right. They swung behind the tail of the Austin, then Michael jerked the wheel to the left and braked hard. The tires screamed, a wall sprang at the right side of the car, seemed to halt in midspring as Michael put the wheel right over again, was snatched away. They were through.

  ‘Michael darling!’ said Hero.

  ‘God’s truth!’ said Nigel.

  ‘Well done, sir,’ said the superintendent, opening his eyes again, then pointed ahead. The Daimler was lurching from side to side of the road like a maddened bull. Urquhart must have fatally glanced back, expecting his pursuers to be smashed at the crossroads. A tyre burst. The Daimler went off at a tangent into the ditch. Her huge body pirouetted on its front wheels, was tossed up into the air like a toy, twirled over the hedge, and fell devastatingly into the field beyond, jerking clear a small black figure, a suitcase and several cushions, which came to earth scattered and severally, as though vomited out of a volcano. They all listened, expecting to hear the dreadful thump of the body, though even the Daimler’s crash had been scarcely audible through the roar of their own engine. When the body dropped out of sight behind the hedge, they winced and felt as if they were going to be hit hard in the wind. Michael pulled up and scrambled with the superintendent into the field. The Daimler looked like a scrap-heap. Urquhart, too, was in a sorry mess, but a bush had broken his fall and he was not dead. They got him quickly into the nearest village, where a doctor attended him till the ambulance came from Staverton.