Death Comes to Cambers (33 page)

‘Who is Mr. Norris?'

‘He is the policeman in the village; there is Sergeant Jordan and Mr. Norris.'

‘What does he know about it?' Bobby asked quickly, a good deal interested. ‘Has he any reason? Did he see Mr. Dene?'

‘He was specially watching the back of uncle's shop and the butcher's next to it, because of boys taking away the empty packing-cases for firewood. He noticed there was a light in Eddy's room, and he wondered why Eddy was up so late and if it was all right. They're so stupid about Eddy in the village, very likely he thought Eddy was taking the packing-cases himself. So he listened under the window and he heard him moving about. That was soon after the rain stopped. He kept on watching all the time he was on duty, and at three he saw the light go out and everything was quiet after that. Aunt says it was about three when Eddy told her it was better and he was going to try to get some sleep'.

‘Was Norris standing watching there all the time?' Bobby asked.

‘Oh, no. I don't think so. He had to walk about as usual, but he kept coming back and watching for a little again.'

‘He ought to have reported it,' said Bobby severely. ‘Perhaps he did, though, and I was never told. I think it comes to this: you were very much afraid Mr. Sterling might be suspected; you were even more afraid Mr. Dene might be guilty. So you made up your mind to hold your tongue and say nothing – and that,' observed Bobby bitterly, ‘is the way the public helps us.'

She let this pass without comment or attempting to defend herself, and Bobby continued: ‘Lady Cambers intended to make sure that you married Mr. Dene and that you and he entered Mr. Tyler's service. That was to get you both out of the country – two birds with one stone, in a way. She meant to put a stopper on anything between you and Mr. Sterling, and she was getting uneasy about the results and objects of Dene's work.'

‘Mr. Andrews had been talking to her,' Amy agreed. ‘Did Mr. Dene know?'

‘Oh, yes. He was very angry about it. He said how intolerable it was work like his should depend on the whims of a rich old woman and a parson's superstitions. I think Lady Cambers was a good deal upset by what Mr. Andrews said, only of course she wouldn't admit it.'

‘I gather,' Bobby commented, ‘from what people say about her, that she was never very fond of admitting she was mistaken. Plenty like that. But if Mr. Dene went abroad with Mr. Tyler, his work here would come to an end quite naturally and simply. That Sunday evening he had a long talk with Lady Cambers. Do you know what it was about?'

Amy hesitated.

‘I think he was teasing her,' she said at last.

‘Teasing her?' Bobby repeated, astonished.

‘Yes. It wasn't like him, but I think that's what it was. She seemed very quiet and worried after he left, but she wouldn't tell me what he had been saying. She seemed frightened, and I think it was because he had been telling her he had succeeded, and now he had all the material he wanted to write his book and prove he was right and all religion was superstition. I think she believed him.'

‘He told me once,' Bobby said, ‘he was intending to prove human development came through the hand first, and that mind was a by-product. He was looking for evidence of that in those “pot-holes” of his, wasn't he? You mean he was frightening her by letting her believe he had found what he wanted at last?'

‘I think it was like that perhaps,' Amy answered, though reluctantly. ‘He told me once she hadn't the least idea what his theories were or what his success would mean. He told me he had a good mind to scare her out of her life by showing her. I suppose it would have been quite easy for him to fake one of his fossils so that it looked as if it proved what he said and no one but an expert could have told. He talked about doing that some day so as to make her believe she had subsidized work that had ended by destroying the Christian Church. It would have made her understand he wasn't quite a tame cat, he said. They called him that in the village, and he hated it.'

Bobby was thinking quickly. Suppose Eddy had told Lady Cambers some such story late that Sunday night – how at last he had discovered evidence to prove his theories; that he had the fossils there; perhaps even he might have hinted obscurely that he intended to help their evidence a little to make the proof more plain. With Eddy's boasts and Mr. Andrews's warnings working together in her mind, it was at least conceivable that she had decided to go to the shed in Frost Field and secure the fossils for herself, to see that they were subjected to independent examination – or perhaps quite simply to suppress them. That would be why she had taken the empty suit-case with her – to bring them back in.

Was that, then, the simple trap into which she had fallen that fatal night, and had Eddy Dene been waiting there in the darkness, a noosed cord in his hand? Her death would have meant for him security for the continuance of his work; the avenging of the insult that was to have turned a scientific genius into a rich man's valet; safety for Amy, the one person he had ever expressed any feeling for, threatened with disaster to her husband if her secret became known.

It might be like that, Bobby thought, a tangle not wholly hid, yet leading through arrogance and egotism to a coldblooded murder. He sighed a little, and said presently: ‘This idea of taking on a job with Mr. Tyler as a kind of valet-secretary-maid-of-all-work, did that appeal to him at all?'

It was a question at which she smiled with a mingled tenderness and sadness, as of one sorry about something that she could yet well understand.

‘You can't think how furious he was,' she said gently. ‘He was too angry even to show it – it was like being insulted in his most tender spot. He really is very, very clever, and he has worked tremendously, and then to be told all he was fit for was to be a rich man's servant, and that was what he was to be in the future, upset him terribly. Lady Cambers never quite understood Eddy. I told her Eddy wouldn't want to go as a valet like that, but she only said, “Why not?” She said it would be such a good opening for him, and Mr. Tyler was interested in the same sort of thing. That made Eddy more cross than ever; he said it was like supposing that playing the violin and playing bridge were the same sort of thing. Going out to Central America would have meant his giving up all work here – all his ambitions, everything – in order to become a rich man's valet. And he thought Mr. Tyler rather an ignoramus.'

‘Lady Cambers didn't understand that?'

‘Oh, no; she thought she was doing it for Eddy's good; she always thought anything she did was for your good, and she had always been interested in Eddy. When he was leaving school, she offered to pay for him to stop on and perhaps go to the university afterwards. But Uncle and Aunt wanted him to help in the shop. They thought he had all the education necessary, and a university is only waste of time when you're going to be a grocer. They always hoped he would keep on the shop after them. They are very proud of it. Aunt told him how much they depended on him, and he let her refuse. It meant a lot to him then. It meant more later on, when he came to understand better what he had missed. He didn't blame Aunt or Uncle; he thought Lady Cambers ought to have insisted.'

‘I suppose help offered and withdrawn is worse than no help at all,' Bobby observed. ‘And there's a saying, too, that everything can be forgiven – except a too great benefit. That counted afterwards.' 

‘I think perhaps,' she mused. ‘Eddy might feel like that.'

‘You and he were engaged, weren't you?'

‘Aunt and Uncle wanted us to be.'

‘Didn't you?'

‘I wanted anything that pleased them,' she answered. She turned again her full gaze upon him with that effect of shock her sudden glance seemed always capable of giving. ‘They took me from the workhouse when I was a child,' she said. ‘The workhouse,' she repeated; and, more clearly than ever before, she showed the full force of her rich and passionate nature in the terrible emotion with which she pronounced that word. ‘If they had wanted, I would have married the first tramp passing in the street,' she said simply; and then, her look intent like fire: ‘And you expected me to tell you things that might have sent their son to be hanged. Why, I would not have said one word if I had known that he had murdered half the village.'

‘You would have been wrong,' he said, ‘wrong legally and morally.'

With a gesture of her lifted hand, she swept that consideration aside as immaterial.

‘But, in spite of that, you married someone else,' Bobby added.

She considered the point gravely.

‘You do things you never meant to do,' she said after a time. ‘It is more strong than you. Eddy didn't want to marry me. I told him he ought to because Uncle and Aunt wanted it so. He said they had let him down once when they did him out of school and university, and he would take care they didn't again, tying a wife on his back. He said he had no time for women anyhow. I said whenever he had half an hour to spare, if he would let me know beforehand, I would see to the banns and everything; and he said not much, he wouldn't. But after that it wasn't very comfortable at home, because Aunt and Uncle thought it was my fault, and I came here to work when Lady Cambers asked me. I thought perhaps I could help about Eddy, because I knew sometimes he was difficult – she thought he ought to be more grateful and he thought she was lucky to have the chance of helping his work. And then I met Mr. Sterling. I don't mean for the first time. Only it was the first time because it was so different. We had seen each other several times, and I had waited on him at tea and so on. That day a telegram came for him, and I took it to him in the room where he was. It was on a tray, and I held it out to him, and we looked at each other, and it was like a great light shining all around. It was as if all the world were new again. I never even thought of Eddy or of Uncle and Aunt. I was still holding out the tray. I said: “This is for you, sir.” He said: “I am going to marry you.” It sounded quite natural, like, “I want you to put this letter in the post.” He said again: “I shall marry you.” I said: “I shall be ready when you want me. Will you please take your telegram?” He took it and I went away. He didn't try to stop me and he never opened the telegram. I found it next day, unopened. I have it still, still unopened.' She paused and flashed her fiery and tremendous glance at Bobby. ‘And do you think,' she asked, ‘if my man had murdered half the village, I would have said a word to help you?'

‘You have your own notion of morality,' Bobby mumbled.

She did not answer this. She had flung, as it were, her whole personality open to him in the reaction from the secret doubts and fears she had experienced, and already he fancied he could see her beginning again to fold her reserve once more about her. She went to the window, and over her shoulder she said to him: ‘Sergeant Jordan and Mr. Norris are coming up the drive. What for? Have they come to take Sir Albert away?'

‘If they have, you can do nothing,' Bobby warned her,  

for her tone had seemed to suggest she contemplated some sort of action. He added: ‘I don't suppose so; it may be nothing. Or they may be here to make sure he doesn't try to get away.'

‘Well, he's in bed, isn't he?' she said with impatience. ‘Most likely Colonel Lawson will come himself when he's ready,' Bobby said. ‘I must thank you for what you've told me. You've helped a good deal to making things clear. I'm afraid poor Lady Cambers was playing with fire between the two of you – the three of you, rather.'

‘It was when I heard about Eddy's pen being found near her body, I was most troubled,' she said. ‘But I suppose Sir Albert might easily have picked it up and kept it. He was angry over her giving him such a present. I hope he didn't leave it there to make people think it was Eddy.'

‘I don't think so,' Bobby said. ‘The important thing about that pen is not the pen but the ink it was filled with.'

‘Why? What does the ink matter?' she asked.

‘All details have their importance,' Bobby explained. ‘Details of fact and details of character, they all confirm or contradict each other. If they contradict, you know there's something wrong. If they confirm, you may be right – or not. Did Mr. Dene know you were communicating with Mr. Sterling in cipher through the
Announcer
?'

‘Yes, I told him.'

‘Could he read the cipher?'

‘No; he told me he had tried and couldn't. He asked me what it was, but I didn't tell him. I said he must ask Mr. Sterling.'

‘If Mr. Sterling had inherited all Lady Cambers's money by the will she made after the breach with her husband, you would have been a rich man's wife. You would have been the mistress here. And you would have asked your husband to continue the help Lady Cambers had been giving Mr. Dene?'

‘I suppose so. Yes. Why?' she asked hesitatingly. 

‘Only an idea,' he answered. ‘The statement Jones made about what he says he saw on Sunday left a good many points a bit doubtful. I think after what you've told me I see my way to clear them up.'

He rose to his feet as he spoke, and she came back from the window and faced him. Without speaking, she bent on him the full force of her fiery and challenging gaze, and he met it with one as deep and strange as her own. For an appreciable moment they remained so, staring, silent, gazing into each other's eyes, matching their wills like two duellists of the old days trying and measuring their swords.

‘I think I'm afraid of you,' she said at last.

‘There has been the life of a man between us,' he said, and went away quickly.

As speedily as he might, Bobby, leaving Cambers, made his way to the headquarters of the county police in Hirlpool, where, when he entered, he found himself the centre of interested, excited, and somewhat scared glances.