Death Comes to Cambers (15 page)

‘You've never known anything of the kind before?'

‘Good Lord, no! I say, you ask lots of questions, don't you? Nearly as many as that Jones chap. Perhaps he was a detective, too?'

Bobby gave a little jump. It was a simple obvious idea that from its very simplicity had never occurred to him before.

‘Hit the bull's-eye, have I?' Eddy asked, grinning broadly.

‘There's another thing,' Bobby said, ignoring this. ‘I expect it's all over the village by now. Lady Cambers's jewellery is missing, and we think most likely it's been stolen.'

‘What? It hasn't!' Eddy almost shouted, his light indifference dropping from him like a discarded cloak. ‘Her jewellery? Good God, it hasn't!'

For some reason he seemed more affected now than ever previously.

He had become quite pale. He was evidently profoundly shocked, profoundly shaken. It seemed as if this story of the theft of the jewellery held for him some staggering significance as well as being an overwhelming surprise. Bobby watched him intently, curiously, doubtfully, but did not speak.

‘You are sure? No mistake about it?' Eddy asked, as it were snarling the words through half-closed teeth; and then, when Bobby nodded, he muttered as if to himself: ‘Some swine's pinched the stuff, then – he'll find he's pinched more than he bargained for.'

Bobby waited, patient and intent. He knew that in moments of surprise and agitation people often speak with greater frankness than they intend. But Eddy, though plainly shaken, relapsed into a silence he showed no sign of breaking. After a time Bobby asked: ‘Why do you say that? What do you think it means?'

‘Burglary,' Eddy answered, almost too promptly, as if he had had that answer ready and prepared.

Then he was silent again, and again Bobby waited, wondering very much what was in the other's mind and convinced that this news of the lost jewellery had started in Eddy a new train of thought, and one in which so obvious and so simple an idea as burglary played but a small part.

So for a time they remained, each standing there as silent as the other, and gradually Bobby grew convinced that Eddy, too, was patient and watchful as himself, waiting no what next might come. And either Eddy's patience was the greater, or else this silent waiting suited best his play, for he still showed no sign of speaking or of moving, and it was Bobby who was forced to break the silence first.

‘Mr. Dene,' he said gravely, ‘I can't help feeling you know something that would help us if you told it.'

‘Eh?' said Eddy, looking surprised. ‘Why? What makes you think that?'

Bobby did not answer – at least, not in words, but his body stiffened almost automatically, and Eddy gave a little abrupt laugh that had not much merriment in it.

‘You look just like our cat when it's getting ready to spring,' he said with more than a touch of mockery in his voice. ‘The huntsman whose quarry's man, eh?'

‘No, the truth,' Bobby answered quietly; ‘and there I think you could help.'

‘I'm afraid I don't see how, myself,' Eddy retorted. ‘When you say “truth”, you mean the facts, I suppose, though that's a different thing sometimes. Well, about the safe. The jewellery was kept in the safe, wasn't it? Has the safe been forced?'

‘No; the key was used.'

‘Well, now, then,' Eddy muttered; ‘well, that's queer.' He looked uneasy and troubled, and busied himself lighting another cigarette, offering at the same time one to Bobby, who declined it. ‘Quick work,' he said, ‘unless it was done before – was it done before?'

‘Before the murder? That has to be decided.'

‘Yes – well, no, I don't see how I can help. I don't know anything. You're sure the things have been stolen?'

‘They are not in the safe. We understand they were always kept there. The assumption is they've been stolen. That may be the motive for the murder. We can't say for certain yet.'

‘No. No, it's soon yet,' Eddy agreed. ‘I suppose you know Lady Cambers's husband claimed that legally it was all his – the jewellery, I mean? He said it all passed to him, once the entail was broken. He had raked up some old deed he said showed that. Lady Cambers told me. She said her lawyer said it was rubbish.'

‘Do you mean Sir Albert Cambers may have taken possession of the jewellery?' Bobby asked.

‘Better ask him,' Eddy retorted. ‘I don't mean anything because I don't know anything. If the things are missing, someone's got them.' He stared and frowned and flung down his unsmoked cigarette. ‘Well, there you are,' he said. ‘I don't know. I suppose there's just the chance it may turn up. She might have sent it to the bank for safety?'

‘She didn't say anything about the jewellery to you last night?'

‘Good Lord, no. She wouldn't have been likely to, would she? We talked about how the work was getting on, and about the fuss Andrews was making, and that's all.'

‘She said nothing about going out?'

‘That night? Good Lord, no; not at that time of night.'

‘You can't suggest any reason – any possibility...?'

‘No. At least...'

‘Yes?'

‘Well, it's nothing much, only I do remember... you know what sort of a woman Lady Cambers was?'

‘I knew her very slightly. I thought she seemed very pleasant and friendly.'

Eddy grinned again – so wide a grin it seemed he became little else but grin incarnate.

‘Some people would tell you she always was – to good looking, presentable young men like you and me.' He paused to let his grin grow wider still, little possible as that had seemed before. ‘Not that I claim to be in the Public Attraction No. 1 class and don't go and imagine I mean anything more than I say. I don't. If anyone tells you anything of the sort, you can wash it out. She was always ready to take an interest in any deserving cause, and if the deserving cause happened to be young and male, with bright blue eyes and a damask cheek, she didn't object. But it never went beyond friendly interest. I'm telling you because some people may drop you hints that was why she spent rather a lot of coin on helping me establish my theories – not that there's much bright blue eye or damask cheek about me, but you see the idea? Well, perhaps if I had had a beard a foot long and a bald head, the old girl mightn't have been so willing to part. But that's all.'

Bobby wondered if that was all or if this confidence meant more than appeared on the surface. But all he said was: ‘You were saying you thought there might be some reason why she wanted to go out.'

‘Not quite that. Only there is this. You know she always thought you ought to do just what she said. Of course, always because it was best for you. But she knew, and she let you know she knew. That's why hubby got out.'

‘Sir Albert?'

‘Yes, I expect he found it a bit trying to be with someone who was always right – especially when she wasn't. And not only right for herself, but for you, too. She always – knew. For your own good, of course. Why, she would even start in to tell me things about my work! Well, one of her pet fads was about traps for rabbits – she thought the sort that are used about here are cruel. She was right enough there. She often was – right, I mean. I hate the things myself. They are worse even than those new mouse-traps – break-back, they call them. All right when they work, but sometimes they catch the poor little beast by one paw or the tail or something. It's all right to keep mice and rabbits down. I know that. But I always use the old-fashioned trap that catches them alive, and then you can give them a whiff of gas that does them in without their knowing it. Lady Cambers was rather keen about all that; she was a big subscriber to the Anti-trap Society or whatever they call it, and she wanted all the tenants on the estate to use the new trap. Well, they all promised all right, but promising's one thing and doing's another, and I know she wasn't too sure they all kept to it. The parson – Andrews, you know – was as keen about it as she was, and he told her things he had heard. I heard her say once she would see for herself one night, and it's just possible that's what she was after, and that she took the suit-case with her to bring back any of the steel traps she happened to find. Of course, that's only an idea of my own. Very likely there's nothing in it. I don't suppose I should ever have thought of it, if you hadn't worried on about my being able to tell you something to help. Well, if that's a help, there it is.'

‘It's an idea that may be worth following up,' Bobby agreed. ‘Only it's murder that's happened, and it seems a long way from a steel trap for rabbits to – murder.'

‘Yes, I know,' agreed Eddy. ‘Wash it out, then.'

Bobby asked one or two more questions. But Eddy seemed to have exhausted all he had to say, and Bobby asked presently: ‘If Mr. Andrews supported Lady Cambers about this and talked to her about it, they were on good terms except...'

‘Except about me,' interposed Eddy. ‘That's right. They backed each other up in lots of ways. She was quite bucked when he preached that divorce was a mortal sin. Not that she believed it herself. But she wanted everyone else to, because what she wanted was to get Sir Albert back. And she would have, too, in the long run.'

‘How?'

‘Don't know, so can't say. But she would have managed it somehow. She was that sort. Fair means or foul, she would have had him again, and, if you ask me, Sir Albert knew it and was dead-scared. That's my idea.'

‘She seems to have been a woman of strong character.'

‘She meant to go her way. If it was your way, too, well and good and all O.K. If it wasn't, then there were squalls. Mind you, it was always your own good she was thinking of, only she knew it such a darn sight better than you did. I had some myself, but not much, because she backed me up all right in what really mattered. She spent a lot to help what I'm doing here, and she told me she had put aside enough to see me through three years. That was what I put as the outside limit. Now I suppose all that's washed out. Sir Albert won't take any bally notice of what she said – nor would anyone else, I suppose. She never put anything in writing – and then there'll be Andrews doing his best to double-cross me.'

‘What is it exactly you're doing?' Bobby asked. ‘I've heard some vague sort of talk about the Missing Link, and that's all.'

‘They've all got hold of the Missing Link,' observed Eddy. ‘They have no idea what it means, though, and it happens that's just exactly what I'm not after.'

‘Not?'

‘No. I mean to prove there never was a link, missing or not. People seem to think evolution means inch by inch and little by little, like Eric.'

‘Eric?' repeated Bobby, into whose ambit that masterpiece had never penetrated.

‘School prize,' explained Eddy briefly. ‘Most people think evolution means a slow, gradual change of fish into land animal, for instance. It doesn't. It just happens – sudden, dramatic, a jump. A fish is hatched with gills that don't function properly – in water. Probably it suffocates, can't breathe. But one freak fish of that kind discovers through some accident that it can breathe all right in air. In other words, it's got lungs instead of gills. But there was never a link, never a gill changing slowly into a lung. A link would have meant equally faulty functioning in both air and water, and why quit uncomfortable water for equally unsuitable air? Why give up accustomed water for unaccustomed air unless there was some advantage? There had to be something dramatic, something forcible and sudden, to chuck the fish, quite content in the water, out on dry land that must have been uncomfortable and difficult at first. Think of leaving cool, flowing water you could dodge about in, up or down, any way you wanted, for dry ground you could only crawl on slowly and painfully. No fish in its senses would have dreamed of it unless it had been obliged to. Same with man. Man was originally one of the apes, one of the less successful species. That's plain enough. Well, you know what the difference is now between ape and man?'

‘A good many, aren't there?'

‘I mean the fundamental difference. It isn't the tail. Man has that, or the rudiments of it. It isn't mind. The ape has the rudiments of that all right. It's the hand. Man can turn it, pronate it, grasp with it, as the ape can't. There's the difference. Man is the creature, not of his mind, but of his hand.'

‘Do you mean that Mr. Andrews...?'

‘Yes. That's what it's all about. That's why he shouts blasphemy. That's why he does all he jolly well can to stop me going on with my work. He wants us to believe man is all mind. I mean to show that man is all hand. Man is just an ape who has learnt to use his hand, that's all. So Andrews bawls blasphemy – because he's afraid. He daren't face the truth. He knows he would have to change all his ways of thinking, all his beliefs and so on, and he just can't face up to it. And when you're afraid like that, well, you're capable of anything, aren't you?'

Bobby looked at his watch. He knew he ought to be getting back to Cambers House, where his shorthand notes were awaiting transcription, and yet he felt this conversation was throwing a certain amount of light on the psychological outlook of at least some of the actors in the tragedy. Eddy, talking eagerly and excitedly, as if he wished Bobby to understand his position, went on quickly.

‘That's my theory. Man was just an ape, like others of the species. Then one day a little ape was born with the ability to turn his hand right round. We've still a slight difficulty about that. We don't pronate our hands quite easily. But this special little ape, half a million years ago, found he could use tools better than the others could. All apes use elementary tools – a stone or a stick. But this ability to turn the hand gave this one little ape an advantage. He became the boss of the tribe. He chose the females he fancied; he founded a family; he handed on his special ability to his offspring; and there starts Man, no more an ape, beginning his long career that leads to Shakespeare and to our own time.'