Blue Murder (28 page)

She lifted his hand up, then released it, and watched it drop back senselessly on to his knee, the fingers twitching.

“You can't get up now. Soon you won't be able to move at all. Then you'll fall asleep. But until then, your brain will be awake. You'll be able to see and hear me, and you'll be able to think. They do say that under such conditions, the brain and hearing are very acute. Well, you'll soon find out whether that's true or not, but you won't be able to impart the knowledge to anyone else because you'll be dead!”

She watched closely the changing expression in his eyes.

“Oh yes, I know that the drug won't kill you,” she went on, smiling, “but you're going to die all the same. No, not chloroform. I couldn't risk the smell. Besides it would take too long, and I must get back before the servants return. But there's something just as deadly in this room. That's why I choose these rooms for you to live in. Look!”

She squatted down at the hearth.

“I'm going to turn this fire out.” She did so, then looked up at him. “When you're asleep, I shall turn it on again, but I shan't light it—I see by your eyes that you understand.”

For a moment she was silent. Then she stood up, and spoke again. 

“What a fool you've been, Arnold! You could have had a comfortable, dignified life, with all those little luxuries you like so much, but you threw it all away just like a stupid child. You're not a child, though, my dear, and a man who hasn't learned sense in fifty years doesn't deserve to live any longer.”

Arnold lay where he had fallen. His eyes never moved away from the small figure standing in front of the cooling bars of asbestos.

He felt held in one of those nightmares in which one senses danger, but realises with horror that one is powerless to move away from it. But this was no nightmare. It was real.

Here he was, Arnold Smith, held immobile by a drug whose effect he recollected only too well. And there was Leda talking to him quite casually about his approaching death.

Never before, he felt, had he appreciated the nicety of the adjective in that line from Keats:

“So the two brothers and their murder'd man, rode on—” For, like that man, he too, though still alive, was as good as murdered. Strange that he should think of poetry at such a time. But it was as she had said: his brain was acutely aware of the situation.

Just so, he thought, a man in a condemned cell must feel on the night before his execution.

No, the simile was not a good one, for he had fewer hours than a legally condemned man to live.

But why?

“Why?” asked Leda, repeating the word he could not articulate, so that he would have jumped with surprise, if his limbs had not been paralysed. “I can't think however you came to be a writer at all. You know so little about people.

“Why? I'll tell you. You'll remember asking me whether I had fallen in love, when you broke off our engagement? Well, I promised myself then that one day I would tell you that I had. Shall I tell you the man's name? Do I need to? It was you, Arnold.

“Strange that you should look surprised at that. I suppose you have always looked on me as a woman with no soft feelings. Yet you've seen me often enough with my dogs, and you know I love them. Perhaps you thought I preferred them to men. You are quite wrong. But until you came, I had no chance to become fond of any man. That's why I loved you so much. That's why I became a murderess!

“For of course you know now that I killed my father and mother. You never thought of me as a murderess, did you?

“‘Leda is so
sensible
, such a
capable
 girl, such a Good Sort.'

“Oh I've heard things like that said about me for years and years. It was true, of course, but why? Because God made me like that so that I could be a comfort to my parents? Such nonsense! It was because I never had a chance to be anything else. What has my life been like in this petty little village, do you suppose, chained down to look after a complaining, snivelling, old woman and an unreliable, bad-tempered, old man?

“Even the war has made no difference. Other districts have their anti-aircraft guns and searchlight batteries, but not Nether Naughton. Oh no!

“Why did you think I replied so quickly to your advertisement? Because we needed the money? Because I wanted to help an evacuee? Not on your life! Because it was the only chance I could see of meeting a man who might marry me, so that I could get out of this rut before I'm an old woman.

“Oh, it was so splendid when you came! We were such good friends, and you really liked me for myself, and didn't pretend to like me because you wanted me to open a bazaar, or get up a dance, or give a donation. It was so many years since anyone had liked me just for myself.”

Was she insane? wondered Arnold.

She didn't look it. Her voice was pitched in its usual conversational key. She might have been giving a lecture on rug-making to the Arts and Crafts Association for all the emotion she expressed.

“Yes, we were friends, Arnold,” she went on, “but I always knew that it meant more to me than it did to you. I know I'm not attractive like some women. I could only hold your interest by being cheerful and helpful all the time. But if I wanted you to marry me, I knew I must find some better way of attracting you. I knew you found it difficult to pay what I asked for your board here. I saw you economising in the little ways in which most men of property are careless. I knew your future depended on the success of your new book, and I knew that it wouldn't be a success. I don't know much about books, but I know enough of you and of your writing to realise that you could never write that type of thing. You had a flair for one particular kind of book that was fashionable for a short period, and will never be popular again. So I knew you would soon need money, and I knew that if I were rich, you would find me an attractive business proposition.”

Arnold was annoyed about her opinion of him as an author, and amazed at her perspicacity. It would all have turned out exactly as she had planned if it had not been for Charity.

Charity!

He had not thought of her once during the evening.

How could he bear never to see her again, never to hold her in his arms? Would she weep for him? He had never felt sure of her love for him, and his mania to possess her was so strong that he had not cared. All that he desired was to make her his wife, since only after marriage, he knew, would she yield herself to him.

Why had Leda chosen to attack him and not Charity? Did she intend to have her arrested for his murder, thus getting rid of them both?

Oh God! To feel such mental torture, and yet be helpless!

“The rest of the story is obvious,” Leda went on. “Mother had the money, and she hated me and loved my brother. She never gave me a farthing more than she had to when she was alive. I knew she would never leave me any in her will unless she was forced to do so. So I decided to murder her.”

How does the song run? thought Arnold,

“So I
murdered
her one morning—”

It was as casual as that.

“First I made her make that will, not without some persuasion, as you can guess. But I can crack a whip as well as anyone, and she hated the whip.

“No, you didn't see me doing that, Arnold,” she said in reply to a flickering question in his eyes. “You surely don't imagine that I should have been careless enough to leave the light on and the curtains drawn back? It was Daddy you saw, and I can only guess that he was using the same persuasion to induce her to write that invitation to Charity. She didn't sign the will until the Friday before she died, and that was what made her write to Stanton, though I don't how she managed to get the letter posted without my seeing it.

“Of course I pre-dated the will after she signed it. It was sheer good luck that made the date coincide with that little scene with the horsewhip that you saw. It was easy to get Frieda's signature as witness. I told her it was a new police form and if she didn't sign, they'd send her back to Germany.

“I got her to leave her money to Daddy so that no one would suspect me. I knew they couldn't prove anything against him, and I knew that he would give me a share in it so that it was as good as mine. Then I discovered that that little gold-digger had got her fingers on him, and that I might not get any of the money after all. I hadn't realised until she dined with us that night how much he doted on her, and I knew then that he must never have another chance to see her again.”

“So I
murdered
him one evening—”

The song still rang in Arnold's ears, although this time, it seemed a little more distant.

His mouth suddenly jarred open, and he could not close it again. His lids dropped heavily over his eyes, and all his will-power could not raise them again.

The next moment he found himself staring into Leda's face, which had assumed gigantic proportions, as if she had eaten a piece of the Caterpillar's mushroom.

He realised that she had raised his eyelids with her fingers so that she could look at his eyes.

“So you can still hear and understand,” she said. “But I must be quick. Well, there's not much more to tell you.

“I jumped you into making a pretended proposal of marriage, hoping you'd never have the strength of mind to try and get out of it. If that—let's say bitch, though the word doesn't mean much to me in that sense—hadn't started her gold-digging on you, we might have been married by now and you would still have a few more years of life in front of you. I have Betty to thank for it all. It was her idea of fun to ask her to the house that night. She knew that Charity wouldn't be able to resist making eyes at you. She as good as told me that beforehand, and when she suggested that Charity should stay, I thought it would be a good opportunity to scare the wits out of her. So I put on Daddy's overcoat and hat and went into her bedroom, thinking I could make her believe that his ghost was haunting her, and frighten her away from the district altogether. It would have succeeded, too, if that fool Frieda hadn't gone prying round afterwards. I'd had to leave the clothes in Mother's bedroom in case I saw anyone on my way back to my room, (I locked the communicating door again when I fetched Charity's dressing gown), and she found them there and put them on herself.

“Well, of course, I can't let you get away with your romantic little plan, Arnold. If you won't marry me, I'll take care that you don't marry her. You haven't turned me into a murderess for nothing!”

What will she do next? panicked Arnold's thoughts. 

If only someone would come to the bungalow. The door was never locked. Perhaps Cook and Frieda would return unexpectedly and phone to give her an urgent message. They'd be sure to ask if she had come here.

Sure? No, not likely to. She never came to see him. Everyone knew that they had quarrelled. But there must be some way out!

If only Noel Delare had been investigating the murders, he would have ferretted out the murderer by now. But Inspector Driver lacked the imagination to solve such a case as this.

Wait a minute, though; the Inspector had always thought the motive was woven around the greed for money. Wasn't it possible that he was at this moment on his way with a warrant for Leda's arrest? The murders weren't very difficult to solve, once you saw the motive. As soon as Leda had told him that, he had clearly realised the whole sordid thing. And Driver was trained in the strange ways of criminals.

Yes, there was still a chance for him. But Driver must hurry—hurry—

“What a fool you were, Arnold,” repeated Leda. “You gave up the gold for dross. Charity will get over your death within a week, and will be off looking for another man. If she'd realised that you had so little money, she would never have wasted her time on you, but she thinks, poor fool, that anyone who has published eight novels or so must be rich! Well, it needn't worry you. It will all be forgotten in a few days' time, and we shall all say it was for the rest.

“For this won't be murder, Arnold, but suicide.

“You're here alone, and you know Mrs. Briggs won't be back till tomorrow morning. This is your opportunity, and you're going to take it. The police will find that no one else has been in the house. I shall take my cup and plate and wash them in the kitchen. But there won't be any finger prints of mine on anything. You see, I've not taken off my gloves since I came in. They're made of flesh-coloured rubber, and you didn't notice them. I didn't overlook any detail in the other murders. I shan't make any mistake in this.

“Yes, Arnold. You're going to commit suicide while of unsound mind owing to grief due to my having jilted you. Plenty of people in the village will be prepared to swear that you were heart-broken: Mrs. Briggs for one. They 11 take into account the fact that you confessed to the murders of my father and mother. Oh yes, you were writing the confession when I called this evening. Vague, as you said. It would do for any murder.

“Well, goodbye, Arnold. You'll soon be asleep.”

There must be a way out, throbbed Arnold's brain. There must be
some
way out.

He fought to keep away the cloak of sleep which threatened to smother his senses.

You must get out of this. You must get out of it, throbbed his brain.

He snatched himself back from the black abyss which yawned before him.

“Good-bye, Arnold,” said Leda again, and this time her words were accompanied by the soft sound of swinging bells.

He heard in the distance the metallic click of the gas tap.

And he realised, as he fell head long into the darkness, that he wasn't going to get out of it!

Harriet Rutland was the pen-name of Olive Shimwell. She was born Olive Seers in 1901, the daughter of a prosperous Birmingham builder and decorator.