Death at Hallows End (3 page)

“Of course. I see that I mustn't draw foolish inferences. His passport,
entirely
by coincidence, is with him. That afternoon he wore an old overcoat that he hadn't put on since we returned from Denmark. His passport was in the pocket.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

“My good Caplan noticed it some weeks ago. She never interferes with anything and left it there. Besides, it is nowhere to be found.”

“You have looked? Then you too must have had some idea that your husband might have gone abroad?”

Theodora looked a little confused.

“I had nothing of the sort,” she said at last. “I was merely doing what you said you were doing—clearing away the dead-wood. I
know
that Duncan would not go even to London without telling me.”

“Did he mention that he was going to see Mr. Grossiter?”

“Grossiter? Who is he?”

“A client of your husband's who had summoned him urgently to Hallows End. It was in order to sign a new will which your husband had drawn up.”

“So that was why he went! He certainly said nothing about that to me. As I told you, he never discussed business. Did he see this Grossiter?”

“Apparently not. But his car was found near the house where Grossiter was staying. As perhaps you know.”

“I know nothing except that my husband is missing. If it weren't so tragic it would be almost squalid. Like those photographs one sees in the paper.”

“I knew your husband a little, Mrs. Humby. I gathered that he took great pride in his physical fitness.”

Theodora rose to her feet dramatically.

“It was a fetish!” she said. “I told him so many times. Because he was
not
fit, really. A dickie heart, ever since he had rheumatic fever. Dr. Boyce told him so a score of times. ‘Don't overdo it,' he used to say. But Duncan was so courageous. He would never give in to that sort of advice. He drove his car,
played eighteen holes of golf and a fast game of tennis. He even
danced,
Mr. Deene. Not with me, I may say. He was a powerful man. ‘Brawny' would be a better word.”

“He could take care of himself in any trouble that might arise, you think?”

“I only saw him fight once. That was in the south of France one year. I was angry at the time because it made us so conspicuous, but he did it for me, in a way. A man was most insulting. Duncan knocked him down. But like
that,
Mr. Deene. We walked away and left him on the ground,”

“How long ago was that?”

“Not long. Duncan must have been in his fifties at the time. You may discount any thought of his having been kidnapped if you had any idea like that. Duncan would never allow it.”

“You must have something to account for his disappearance, though,” pleaded Carolus.

“I never theorise,” announced Theodora. “But I must confess to you that I begin to have the blackest forebodings. I
know
that he is not absent by his own wish. I
know
that he would never give me a moment's anxiety if he could help it. Then what remains? I ask you, Mr. Deene. What possibility remains?”

“Several,” said Carolus. “Loss of memory. An accident. Sudden illness.”

Theodora shook her head. “No! No! I have intuitions, Mr. Deene. I can see only one way of accounting for his disappearance and it is the most terrible. But how or why it can have happened is beyond my imagination. It is for you to discover that.”

“I hope it may not be. I hope we shall find some other explanation. I am going tomorrow to Hallows End and when I have even the smallest information I'll phone you or Thripp at once to tell you what I can.”

He had a most uncomfortable feeling about Theodora Humby. It was as though her habit of dramatisation demanded to be fed with more startling events, as though she would in some macabre way almost enjoy receiving news of her husband's death. This did not mean that she was indifferent to him. She might even love him in her fashion. But she was clearly a pathological case and her histrionics were a kind of outlet for her emotions.

She was very quiet now. Carolus thought there was something furtive, almost snakelike in her eyes as she looked aside at him.

“You think you will find him?” she asked.

“How can I say?”

“Exactly. How can you? We know nothing really. Do we even know that he left Newminster?”

“His car …”

“But many people can drive a car. Anyone who knew that he intended to go to Hallows End might have driven it there.”

“But who did know?” asked Carolus. He could scarcely believe that her suggestion pointed in the direction it might seem to point.

“That is for you to discover, surely. I certainly did not. But someone must have done.”

Carolus kept his eyes on her face as he asked the next question.

“Surely he told you that he would be later than usual in coming home that evening?”

“He did! Of course he did! But it was quite casually that he mentioned it. A matter of business. He had to drive out somewhere to see a client. He would get something to eat on the way back. Nothing more was said.”

“On the way back. Then you gathered that he had to go some considerable distance?”

“I gave very little thought to it at the time.”

“Is it possible that he said anything to Mrs. Caplan?”

“Ask her, Mr. Deene. Leave no stone unturned! If my good Caplan knows anything she will tell you at once. I will take you to her little sitting room. She will be watching the television now. Unless there is anything more you wish to ask me?”

Carolus was silent for a moment. He felt certain that Theodora knew things that would be valuable, but he doubted whether she herself was aware of this. He decided that until he had gone farther and could make his questions definite and explicit, it was useless to press her with vague enquiries.

“No. Nothing,” he said. “At least for the present. Yes, I should like to see Mrs. Caplan.”

“You shall. Come with me. She is so much more realistic than I am. I can only wish that I were as unimaginative as she. Imagination, in circumstances like these, is a terrible thing.”

They found Molly Caplan warming her toes before a bright coal fire. When she saw Carolus she switched off the television.

“Mr. Deene would like to ask you one or two things,” said Theodora. “I shall leave you together. You know him, don't you? If anyone can help us it is he!”

She left them in a dramatic and purposeful way, shutting the door firmly behind her.

Molly Caplan smiled.

“You're not fooled, are you?” she said. “Theodora's terribly upset, really. You mustn't think because she behaves like Ophelia that she's not suffering. I know she is.”

“I'm sure she must be. Yet I can't help feeling that in some way she enjoys that suffering.”

“Could be,” said Molly Caplan sharply. “What do you want to know from me?”

“To be frank, I can't really say. Anything you like to tell me, I suppose.”

“Do I think he's left her, for example. No, I don't. It was a strange relationship, but they were fond of each other. He was a bore with all his health and fitness and she as you know is a tragedy queen, but somehow it worked. He would have said he made allowances for her, but really she did for him. A man in his sixties who did physical jerks before a window every morning and threatened to take up yoga can't have been easy to live with. I've been in the house five years and I'd describe them, without hesitation, as a happily married couple.”

“You think he confided in her?”

“There was nothing much to confide. He never talked about his business, if that's what you mean.”

“Never? Did
you
know for instance that Thripp wanted to sell their practice and Duncan Humby wouldn't hear of it?”

“As a matter of fact I did. Lionel Thripp is an old friend of mine. It was through him I came to look after Theodora and Duncan. But I think it's perfectly possible that Theodora didn't know that. Duncan made a point of not talking shop.”

“So she would not have any idea where he was going that day?”

“None, I should say. Not an inkling.”

“Had you?”

“What?”

“An inkling?”

For the first time Molly Caplan looked a little uncomfortable.

“I don't see why you should ask. How can it possibly help your enquiries?”

“It may not. But someone must have known, apart from Thripp.”

“Yes. I knew. But not from Duncan Humby. I think we won't go into that any farther.”

“All right. Just tell me how long you had known?”

“Well, since the previous evening. Now …”

“What's your theory, Mrs. Caplan?”

“Don't have one. But it looks pretty ugly to me. Duncan's an obstinate man. Someone might have to kill him before he'd give in.”

“Unless he could be fooled or persuaded into something incautious,”

“Most unlikely,”

“You have a car, Mrs. Caplan?”

She stared at him.

“What on
earth …”

“Nothing, really,” said Carolus, smiling. “It's a question I may have to ask several people in Newminster. Call it a formality.”

“I have a car, yes,” said Molly Caplan sulkily.

“Did you use it that Monday?”

“This is absurd, you know. Mondays are my days off. Naturally I used my car.”

“But you don't feel like telling me where you went?”

“I certainly don't. I find your questions impertinent and foolish.”

“They must seem so. I'm sorry. Will you at least tell me at what time you took your car out?”

“Immediately after lunch, of course.”

“And you returned?”

“Before midnight. Now that's enough.”

“Your car is a …”

“Ford Consul. Blue,” snapped Molly Caplan and stood up as though to dismiss him.

Carolus left the house after going back to say goodbye to Theodora. He had a pretty shrewd idea of the two women, if nothing else.

He decided to go over to Hallows End next day, and was irritated to find thick fog. Last Monday, the day on which Duncan Humby had left his partner in order to go to Hallows End, had been a clear September afternoon, he remembered, and later as he walked home from a friend's house, Carolus had noted a bright sky with the stars unhidden by clouds. Wherever Humby had been that evening, his movement had not been concealed by the weather, unless it was very different at Hallows End.

He reached his comfortable little house to find Mrs. Stick, his housekeeper, in some agitation.

“Wherever have you been, sir?” she asked. “I've phoned everywhere likely and couldn't get word of you anywhere. The Headmaster's been ringing up every half hour or so. He sounds as if he's in a state.”

Carolus, whose position as Senior History Master at the Queen's School, Newminster, had never yet prevented him from undertaking an investigation, nodded calmly.

“If he phones again, tell him I've come in.”

“There it goes now,” said Mrs. Stick, a small resolute-looking woman with steel-rimmed glasses and a thin mouth. “That's him, for certain.” She hurried to the receiver. “Yes, sir. He's just come in. No, I'm sure he'd be pleased. Five minutes? All right. I'll tell him.” She turned to Carolus. “He's coming round at once,” she said as though she was announcing Nemesis herself.

C
AROLUS
D
EENE WAS AN
odd kind of schoolmaster and it was his conscience, or something very like it, which kept him to the grindstone. A commando officer during the war, he had lost his young wife in an air raid and had returned to what at first seemed a lonely and meaningless existence. He had inherited a large private income, but he did not attempt to live on it idly. He decided to teach, thus filling his empty days with timetables and textbooks, tiresome pupils and breaks in the common room, a routine which he varied only when a chance came to exploit his flair for the investigation of crime.

He had discovered this flair in himself by writing a book called
Who Killed William Rufus? And Other Mysteries of History,
in which he applied the methods of modern criminal investigation to certain historical events with lucid and sometimes startling results. From this academic diversion he had been drawn to look into a local murder which a friendly CID officer was investigating, and from there he had never looked back. Slight, taut, rather good-looking and elegantly turned out, he was a well-known figure in Newminster. As a schoolmaster he was more popular with the boys than with other members of the staff who were inclined to resent his wealth and the Bentley Continental he drove.

The Headmaster, a large portly man named Hugh Gorringer, appreciated Carolus's ability as a teacher but was frequently alarmed by his involvement in sordid crime that he feared would bring Carolus's name unpleasantly into newspapers and “smirch,” as he put it, “the good name of the Queen's School.” Mr. Gorringer's own redundant and cliche-ridden speech had become familiar to Carolus who found it, if anything, rather endearing. He treasured many of Mr. Gorringer's more resounding pomposities.

This evening Mr. Gorringer was breathless as he entered Carolus's sitting-room, and his large hairy ears were crimson with cold or dyspepsia, Carolus frequently wondered which. His protuberant eyes were wide.

“Ah, Deene,” he said. “I am relieved to find you have returned. Alarming news, my dear fellow, alarming news. Duncan Humby has not been seen for four days.”

“Three,” said Carolus.

“You know, then? It is more than distressing. He was not only the father of one of our Old Boys, but had recently joined the Board of Governors. Any scandal that touches him touches the school.”

“Do sit down, Headmaster. What will you drink?”