Blue Murder (6 page)

He leaned over the wide, carved balustrade outside the door of his room.

The hall was in darkness. He could hear no sound.

Strange that, in a house full of dogs, there should be this silence, if there were indeed burglars below, he thought. But here, of course, the dogs were always in the wrong place: barking round your ankles during the day, and sleeping in the bedrooms at night.

Arnold descended the wide stairs, and halted outside the study door, holding his breath and the mashie, and wishing, for some inexplicable reason, that it was a Number 2 Iron.

No sound issued from the study, and he had just convinced himself that someone had accidentally left the light on, when an enraged voice bellowed through the door, “Sign, damn you, sign!”

Then came an ominous sound. Crack! Crack!

My God! He's shot him! thought Smith, with no idea of the persons whom the pronouns implied.

Well, he'd been endeavouring for weeks to feel the atmosphere which he hoped to create in his book: he was now being plunged into one so unbelievably like that of an old-time melodrama, that he would have some hesitation in describing it.

His instinct was to open the door, and bash the first head he could see with the mashie. He had, however, sufficient presence of mind to reflect that such a procedure might result in bashing the wrong person, and, as he paused, he tried to imagine what that gay, dashing, debonair, imperturbable, devil-may-care, amateur detective, Noel Delare (who, as yet, existed only in his imagination) would do. But he was able only to think of what that elegant theme-detective would not do, and this, as it happened, he found helpful. For Noel Delare made it a point of honour never to enter any room by means of the door.

There remained, then, the window.

Smith walked softly along to the front door, which he was not surprised to find unlocked, and made his way along the grassy edge of the herbaceous border flanking the house, to the study window. He peered in, cautiously, then quickly jerked himself back.

It needed only one glance to explain the whole pitiful story.

Seated at the opened roll-top desk at the far corner of the room was Mrs. Hardstaffe, holding a pen in her hand which trembled over the paper in front of her, while someone menaced her with a knotted horse-whip, cracking it expertly within a few inches of her cowering shoulders.

Unseen, the watcher walked softly back to bed, feeling a coward, and convinced that Noel Delare would most certainly have plunged through the closed window.

But how could Smith intervene between husband and wife? He had no right to do so, and, from what he knew of Hardstaffe, any intervention would serve only to increase his cruelty.

Hardstaffe!

For, of course, it was that man—bully and wife-beater— who was the only other occupant of the study.

That settles it, thought Smith savagely. He shall be murdered, even if I have to do it myself!

The following morning, Smith's fears that breakfast might prove to be an awkward meal were soon dispelled. It was, in fact, far less awkward than usual, for Mr. Hardstaffe, one of the wide circle of men who are not usually in control of their tempers before ten o'clock in the morning, was almost exuberant, and did not even glance at his watch when his guest came downstairs and found the others already eating porridge.

Mrs. Hardstaffe was unsmiling and monosyllabic, but this was not strange, since she commenced each day with the grievance that her husband would not allow her to have breakfast in bed.

As for Leda, she was her usual, imperturbable, cheerful self.

Really, no one can help admiring her, he thought. She takes everything in her stride. And a pretty hefty stride, too, he added, rather ruefully, as he remembered the pace she set for their walks together.

“Sorry to be late,” he murmured. “I've been packing my case.”

Mr. Hardstaffe looked up.

“You're not leaving us, are you?” he asked hopefully.

“Oh, no. I'm going to London for a few days on business.”

“But I thought you were afraid of bombs,” remarked Mrs. Hardstaffe.

“Mother!” protested Leda, turning to Arnold with a look which seemed to say, “What else can you expect from
her
!”

“Well, I'm sure your father told me...”

“Rubbish!” snapped her husband. “Besides there haven't been any in London for months. You'd better get back by Saturday,” he went on, putting his porridge plate on to the floor for the dogs to fight over. “We have a charming young guest coming to dinner.”

“That's the first I've heard of it,” said Leda. “I think you might have asked me first. The food's difficult enough without anyone extra, what with a ration book and a pink ration book and a yellow ration book. Who is it?”

“Miss Fuller.”

“Miss—?” Leda stared. “I thought you didn't like having any of the teachers here. What's the idea?”

“Don't ask me,” replied her father. “Your mother invited her.”

“Mother! You?”

Mrs. Hardstaffe moistened her dry, colourless lips.

“Yes. Your father—that is—I thought that as she is leaving soon...”

Leda smiled.

“Oh, if she's leaving...” she said, and left the sentence to hang in mid-air. “If you want to catch that train, Arnold,” she went on, pushing back her chair, and moving from the table, “you'd better get a move on.”

“Are you driving Mr. Smith to the station?” asked Mrs. Hardstaffe. “Can I do anything for you while you're away?”

“No, no,” replied Leda hastily. “I'll see to everything when I get back. You know you always upset them in the kitchen.”

“I hope I'm not taking you away from anything important by deciding to go so suddenly,” said Arnold, when he was sitting beside Leda in his car, some minutes later. “I could easily have left the car at the station for you to pick up later.”

“Nonsense!” laughed Leda. “You mustn't take any notice of Mother. Her one ambition is to go into the kitchen and tell the maids to stop doing one thing and go and do something else. She doesn't like to feel that I have the ordering of everything, but she's too bone-idle to do it herself. They simply dread her going into the kitchen. And anyway, I should be an ungrateful wretch if I couldn't spare half-an-hour with you. You're always doing things for me.”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Arnold, in his turn. “I shall miss you when I get up to Town.”

“Splendid!” was Leda's gay reply. “There's no danger of your forgetting to come back to us, then.”

“Rather not. Besides, I've got to finish my book, and you're my inspiration, you know.”

Leda looked straight ahead without speaking, for a few seconds.

At length she said, quietly.

“I think that's quite the nicest thing any man has ever said to me.”

“Oh, rot!” exclaimed Arnold in some embarrassment, for he had made the remark as a joke. “You must know dozens of people who pay you better compliments than that.”

“I'm afraid I don't,” she said, still serious. “Women don't like me, and I scarcely know a dozen men. It's quite true,” she went on, cutting short his polite protest. “My people are so difficult. Daddy scowls if a man looks at me —he'd be so lost without me to look after him. And Mother! Well, you can see for yourself how helpless she is. I haven't had much chance to make many friends. You simply can't realise what it has meant to me to have you to go walks with, and talk to. Oh, I'm not being sloppy, or anything like that. You know I'm not that kind of girl. I've thought, once or twice, that your own life must have been almost as quiet, that is, unless you're married and want to keep it quiet for a bit.”

Arnold laughed.

“No, I haven't got a wife up my sleeve,” he said. “And, in a way, you're right about my life. I've certainly never met a woman I wanted to marry, and I'm afraid it's a bit too late now. For one thing, she'd have to have plenty of money, and rich women are a bit difficult to find nowadays.”

Leda glanced at him quickly to see whether he was joking.

“You never know your luck,” she said. “As for being too late—well, you know what the song says, ‘When you fancy you are past love, it is then you meet your last love.”

“‘And you love her as you've never loved before! H'm, I wonder.”

“Well, here we are!” exclaimed Leda, as she brought the car to a standstill outside the station. “No time to wonder now: you'll only just catch that train. You don't expect me to come onto the platform, I hope. I can't bear waving and shouting sweet nothings while the engine blows off steam. Good-bye. Take care of yourself, and come back soon.”

She turned the car and drove off, leaving Arnold to wonder whether he had imagined that her eyes were wet.

He chose a compartment, and, having settled in a corner seat, glanced in desultory fashion at the morning paper.

But he soon grew tired of this.

Reading the papers wasn't much good nowadays, he thought. Once you'd listened to the wireless news, the printed words were just so much repetition, and the less official columns were given up to speculations about what Hitler might do next. As if everyone wasn't so sick of the little house-painter that they'd ceased to care what he did!

He gave the paper to a rather forlorn-looking man opposite, who received it avidly. Then he folded his arms and began to think about Leda.

The stay-at-home daughter was not so common now as in his younger days, and this, he felt, was as it should be. It was a shame that a young, capable girl like Leda should have so few chances. Young? Well, she must be about thirty-two, he supposed, but that was considered the most attractive age for a woman in these enlightened times. Women no longer lived in Quality Street.

Yes, he might have considered marrying Leda if she had had money of her own: they were good friends, and what with his books and her dogs, they might make a great success of life together. He might have considered it, even, if she had been in the least attractive physically. But, after all, he hadn't remained a bachelor for fifty years for the sake of a woman who hadn't a jot of feminine charm, or what was known in the language of to-day as “oomph.” He wouldn't mind making a fool of himself over one of those “devastating redheads” about whom he heard a lot, but had as yet never seen. But... Leda...! She wasn't the sloppy kind, as she often declared, but she would at least expect him to kiss her....

No. Leda would have to have a good deal of money, he decided....

His thoughts turned to the murder of Mr. Hardstaffe.

He smiled as he wondered how the other occupants of the railway carriage would have received the information that he was plotting to exterminate one of their fellow creatures.

“Impossible!” they would say. “Why, he's fifty if he's a day, and such a mild inoffensive-looking little man. I don't believe it!”

Oh, well! He was not the first mild little man of fifty to turn his hand to murder. There had been one, not so very long ago, named Dr. Crippen.

He had been studying the history of Crippen's crime for some weeks now, and Lord Birkenhead's words had seemed particularly applicable to himself.

“It seemed incredible,” he had written, “that the little insignificant man should have been capable of such an unusually callous, calculated and cold-blooded murder.”

For, allowing for the alliterative choice of words which he, as a writer, could fully appreciate, no better sentence could be composed to describe the murder which Arnold had planned in the early hours of this morning.

When the train drew slowly into Paddington Station, he had worked out the full details of that plan. It was so simple that he laughed aloud in the taxi which took him to his modest club.

But he was not the only man who planned murder that night.

He heard the sinister wail of sirens as he stepped into his bath, but with the deliberate bravado befitting a potential murderer, he continued his toilet as if unmoved by the sound. Then came the barrage of guns.

He was knotting his tie in front of the bedroom mirror when he heard the whistle of the first bomb, and was in the bathroom when he heard the second, with no recollection of how he had got there. He flung up his arms in an instinctive movement to shield his head, and yelled aloud as the third bomb struck the building with a devastating cataclysm of noise.

He felt himself lifted up and dashed against the hideously shuddering walls, and knew no more.

Ten days later, Arnold Smith found himself returning to Nether Naughton in a first-class carriage filled with third- class passengers.

This time he was not thinking of murder. He was entirely absorbed in wishing that the other people in the compartment would stop talking, especially the sailor in the corner who appeared to be determined to indulge in Careless Talk.

Arnold leaned back in the corner seat which an exorbitant tip had procured for him, and closed his eyes. His head ached, and he still felt rather dazed and unsure of himself.

He had only a vague recollection of his experience in Town. He had been in a building which was hit by a bomb, he knew, but after that, he had seemed to be living in a dream, in which things were not quite real.

But somewhere in his mind he was conscious of something which he could not remember, although he felt that it was important for him to do so.

As the journey lengthened, the crowd in the carriage thinned, until he was left alone for a blissful half-hour, and dozed until the train drew up at the tiny station of Nether Naughton.

He had telephoned to Leda the previous evening, to tell her of his expected arrival, but she had been out, and he had left a message with a maid. He gave up his ticket, and walked out through the station gates, expecting to see her at the wheel of his car. There was no sign of her or of anyone who might have brought a message. The thought of walking was distasteful to him, for the station was situated a mile away from the village, presumably so that its inhabitants should not be disturbed by the noise of the main-line trains.