A Rich Full Death (5 page)

On our way from the bridge I had mentioned to Browning that there seemed to be no word of Isabel’s death in the news-sheet, and asked if he knew what conclusions the police had arrived at concerning her death. He said that he had no idea, beyond the fact that they were trying to trace the mysterious woman who had called at the villa at four o’clock, on the theory that her visit might in some way have occasioned this tragic and unnecessary act of self-destruction.

As soon as we were seated and had been served I pressed my companion more closely. What of his questioning by the police, for example?

‘Bah! A formality,’ replied Browning dismissively. ‘I quickly explained the situation to the official, who apologised profusely for having detained me. The whole incident was an absurd misunderstanding and nothing more.’

I could not help feeling that the presence of the police spy rather gave the lie to these bland assurances, but I merely asked my companion how this ‘misunderstanding’ had arisen.

He gave me a pained look.

‘The authorities have accepted my explanation, Mr Booth,’ he replied in a distinctly frosty tone. ‘I must beg you please to do the same.’

‘I shall be happy to,’ I cried, expectantly.

But Mr Browning did not continue. After a long moment’s silence, he added: ‘I mean, to accept that the explanation I gave the police last night was accepted by them.’ Another silence, longer than the last, fell. Then, relenting slightly, he went on: ‘I can assure you, however, that what Mrs Eakin’s maid said was utterly and completely untrue. No relations of any nature ever existed between her mistress and me. You have my word for that.’

‘I never doubted it for an instant,’ I hastened to affirm. ‘But that being so, have you any idea why the girl should have made such an absurd claim?’

It seemed that I had once again unwittingly touched a raw nerve.

‘Mr Booth, I hoped that I had already made it clear that I do not wish to be subjected to a second interrogation on this matter, which I can assure you has no bearing whatsoever on the principal issue at stake here: namely, the murder of Isabel Eakin.’

So curious had I been to learn why any reference to the maid’s testimony should embarrass Mr Robert Browning to such a very marked degree, that it was not for a moment that I realised exactly what he had just said. When I did, I repeated the word in a cry of anguish.

‘Murder?’

Browning hissed urgently to silence me, and looked anxiously around the room. But none of the other people there, being Italian, had taken the slightest notice of the word.

‘Please forgive me!’ he said. ‘I had not meant to tell you so brutally. But the fact remains, I fear, that Isabel Eakin did not take her own life. She was killed—cold-bloodedly murdered.’

It cost me a long and bitter effort to master the waves of horror that threatened to overwhelm me at the repetition of that ghastly word! Isabel’s death was still a fresh wound; to have it dressed thus!

‘But how on earth can you know that?’ I demanded, when I could at length express myself with some degree of equanimity.

Browning looked at me with keen appreciation.

‘An interesting question, Mr Booth. You go straight to the heart of the matter, I see. The answer is simple. I am a collector of life’s ephemera—an amateur of the odd. I am interested in exceptions, not because they prove a rule, but for themselves; because they exist, and sometimes—more often than you might think!—they disprove one. In a word, I notice. Always have, nothing to be done—the thing’s a disease with me. Now last night, up at the villa, I happened to notice some very odd things. And instead of pushing them to one side, as so many tiresome irregularities, I let them tell me their tale. What they told me was—that Mrs Eakin did not take her own life.’

I lit a cigar in an attempt to calm my nerves.

‘“Things”? What things?’ I demanded somewhat testily.

Browning drank his coffee off in a single gulp and settled back at his ease.

‘It is difficult to know where to start,’ he said. ‘From the very beginning, the whole business seemed wrong, and the closer I looked the more wrong it seemed. Why should an elegant young lady choose to hang herself in the depths of a cold and windy garden when she has an entire house and more convenient methods of self-destruction at her disposal? Or, if that question seems frivolous, where did she get the rope, and what became of the knife that was used to cut it? How is it that this rope is green with damp mould, so that it marks the hands of anyone who touches it, but the victim’s hands are spotless? These and other oddities worried me; I felt the thing was impossible. And when I saw the feet of the table Mrs Eakin is supposed to have jumped from I knew I was right—it
was
impossible.’

I recalled the strange scene I had observed the night before: Mr Browning crouching down beneath the swinging corpse to examine the clawed feet of the garden table. I also recalled that he did not know that I had been there.

‘The feet of the table?’ I queried cautiously. ‘Why—what was so odd about them, then?’

‘Nothing—apart from the fact that I could see them. Just think for a moment! That table was standing on soft earth, yet the feet had not sunk into it to even the smallest degree. That makes nonsense of the idea that Mrs Eakin had ever climbed up on it, tied one end of the rope round her neck, the other to the tree, and then jumped off the table to hang herself. That is what we are expected to believe, but it is patent nonsense.’

‘Then what
did
happen?’ I burst out impatiently.

‘This is what I set myself to reason out last night in the garden. Let us work back from what we know. Mrs Eakin is found dead, hanging from a tree. If she did not hang herself then plainly someone else must have hanged her there, and used some support such as the table to do so. Now just imagine for a moment that you were standing on a table to attach a heavy weight to the branch of a tree, Mr Booth. Would you position the table directly underneath, or to one side?’

‘Directly underneath, evidently.’

‘Which is precisely what our murderer did. But then he realised that if the table were left there it would give the game away, for he wanted to disguise his crime as suicide—and you cannot very well hang yourself with your feet resting on a table. So he moved it back clear of the body—
setting it down lightly on the ground
. To have thought to force the feet down into the ground would have been an act of genius.’

‘It is surely no less an act of genius to have read the whole story from such obscure indications, as clearly as though you had been present when it happened!’ I cried in unfeigned admiration.

To my surprise, Mr Browning betrayed the pleasure my praise had given him by blushing.

‘That is not all,’ he continued. ‘By dint of exploring the surface of the soil with my fingers I soon found—directly underneath the body, as I expected—the deep impressions left by the table when it bore the weight of both Mrs Eakin and the person who killed her, thus confirming my theory as to the manner in which she met her death. I might well have discovered some further clues, but unfortunately the policemen arrived and that was the end of that.’

I repeated my compliments.

‘But I cannot by any means understand how the police can persist in viewing the case as one of suicide, as they apparently do, in the face of such overwhelming evidence to the contrary,’ I commented. ‘How did they refute your arguments?’

‘They are not aware of them.’

‘But do you mean to tell me …’

‘I gave them every chance! I did not change or falsify the record in any way. They saw what I saw—or had their chance to, at least. Is it my fault they looked the other way? Am I to be blamed for their limitations? Why should I do their thinking for them?’

I said nothing, stunned by this outburst.

‘Let them do their worse—or their best!’ Browning continued. ‘As a free-born Englishman, I thank heaven that I have no more reason to be afraid of such petty Dogberrys than I have of the tuppenny-ha’penny tyrant who pays their wages.’

‘But if Mrs Eakin has been murdered …’ I protested, allowing this reference to the Grand-Duke Leopold I {to pass without comment.}

‘There is no “if about it, Mr Booth. She
was
murdered—and I intend to make every effort to identify the person responsible.’

‘You? Alone?’

‘If need be!’

Then an idea seemed to strike him.

That is, unless you would be prepared to assist me. Clearly I cannot drag anyone else into this business, but as fate has already made us confederates …’

As I set all this down now I see clearly for the first time what he meant by this. The reason Mr Browning does not want to involve anyone else in the matter can only be because it is connected—in some way I do not as yet understand—to various private concerns of his which he does not want known. I am thus his ‘confederate’ in the sense that I am aware, however vaguely, of the existence of this secret. Might not his appeal for my assistance have been prompted at least in part by his need to assure himself that I could be trusted to keep it?

My first thought, however, was that to take matters into our own hands in the way Mr Browning appeared to be proposing was to risk putting ourselves in the wrong not only morally but also legally. If he believed that murder had been done, his clear duty was to communicate this belief—together with his reasons for holding it—to the proper authorities, who could achieve far more than two private individuals such as ourselves.

‘Ah, but that is just the point, don’t you see?
Could
they? In my London, Mr Booth, or your Boston, there would be no question. But here the matter is very different. Crime is rare in Tuscany, violent crime almost unknown. The police here are recruited, trained and employed for purposes of simple repression. Breaking heads is their style, not teasing out the truth. They don’t want the truth; it’s the very last thing they want, for their government is a lie, built of lies, and dependent on force for its survival.

‘But even leaving that out of account, let us not forget that it is a hundred to one that the criminal, like the victim, is a foreigner. Now, where does that leave the police? You know how it is here in Florence: the English and Italian communities are like oil and water; there is no friction, but neither do they mix. What do the Tuscan police know of us exiles? Consider what happened last night, for instance—the official became suspicious of me over a trifle, whilst remaining blissfully ignorant that you were lying to him.’

‘What?’ I bleated weakly.

‘Why, your story of having come up to the villa to visit Mr Eakin, when all their friends knew that Mr Eakin had gone to Siena. Besides, even if he had been at home, in our little community one does not pay social calls at that hour of the evening. But how is a Tuscan police officer to know that, you see? How can he judge what people like us say or conceal, do or leave undone? How can he spot the revelatory fact, the inconsistent detail? In a word, how can he discriminate? Where all is strange nothing is remarkable. No, if I have not informed the Grand-Duke’s constables of my suspicions, it is precisely because I believe that the best hope of catching Mrs Eakin’s murderer lies not with them but with us. At present he thinks that his attempt to mask his crime has been successful: the authorities have given out that Mrs Eakin died by her own hand. Let him go on thinking that no crime is suspected; he will be off his guard and so easier to take. What
were
you doing there, by the way?’

Once again I was caught completely unawares, and would no doubt have had to admit to Browning that I had been following him, had not our colloquy been interrupted at that moment by the appearance of the police agent. Having observed us enter Doney’s, the spy had presumably set down to mark the entrance and await our reappearance; after some time he had become suspicious, and had determined to search the premises to ensure that we had not given him the slip.

As soon as he caught sight of us the man wished for nothing better than to beat a hasty retreat. But he was not so lucky. Mr Browning rose to his feet and in stentorian tones bade him approach. With a reluctance almost comically marked, the fellow obeyed.

‘Return to your masters,’ Browning pronounced in the most icily correct Italian, ‘and inform them that in the event of this harassment not ceasing instantly I shall contact Her Majesty’s Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Tuscany and ask him to raise the matter with the Grand Duke in person. Is that clear?’

The man muttered something inaudible, and went.

‘I begin to despair of the Italians, Mr Booth,’ Browning commented. ‘What has become of the flame that once burned so bright? Speak to them like dogs and like dogs they obey.’

It seemed to me to be very convenient for Mr Browning that this was the case, and that the English diplomatic corps in Florence are all friends of his—but I said nothing. Instead I enquired what action we were to take to identify Isabel’s murderer, if the police were not to be informed.

There is one suspect whose guilt or innocence must of course be established before we waste time looking elsewhere,’ Browning told me. ‘I refer of course to Mr Joseph Eakin.’