Ellis Peters - George Felse 10 - The Knocker On Death's Door (20 page)

“That’s one thing you were wrong about, Dinah girl. This wasn’t hidden in Mother’s room, it was among my shirts, over there at the flat. I picked it up this evening. It’s loaded. And Dad and I always kept his little war souvenir in good working fettle. We used to practise at a target in the garden. It doesn’t make a very alarming sound, through these walls it wouldn’t carry far. But it kills, Dinah.”

“Yes,” she said, “we know it kills.”

Such a tiny thing, blue-black; the barrel jutting out of his fist couldn’t have been more than three inches long, and the whole small weapon scarcely six. It was hard to believe in it, harder still to be afraid of it. She might as well have been looking at a toy, and yet she had good reason to know that it could kill. And curiously, it mattered a great deal that she had never had any practice in being afraid. It cannot be learned all in a minute. In particular she had never before had any reason to be afraid of Hugh, and now that she had good reason, she found it difficult to take even this seriously. In theory she believed; in practice, however incredibly, she suddenly laughed aloud. It disconcerted and yet for a moment encouraged him. She had known him,perhaps, better than he had known her.

“Look, Dinah, all I’ve done is what I had to do, and I’m going through with it, and my God, surely you’re not the one to stop me? Hell, you think I don’t know you’ve been fond of me? And I wanted you, and I still want you. Dinah, I’m getting out of here…”

“You won’t get out,” she said. “They’ll be watching the gates. They’re not as green as you think.”

“I’ll get out. There are other ways than through the gates. The Porsche’s there in the yard at home, they’re not watching that. Dinah—
come with me
!”

For one moment she actually thought he meant it. It made no difference, she had already recoiled with so much detestation that no possible tenderness or hope in him could have survived the implications; but for one single instant she almost believed he wanted her to go with him alive. Then she knew better than that. She was the one dangerous witness now. If he forced her out of here with him, she would not last long. Now she knew exactly where she stood. If only she knew the time! How long to nine o’clock and Dave calling for her? How long to the return of Chief Inspector Felse who had left, mysteriously, before noon? He would not leave his case unvetted overnight.

“You’re coming,” said Hugh very softly, “whether you choose to or not.”

“How far?” said Dinah. “Where will you ditch me, Hugh? And how far do you think you’ll get, afterwards? How’s your passport, Hugh? Where will you get passage out? You don’t know the professional routes, do you?”

“Dinah,” he said, moving gently in upon the table that stood between me, “you used to love me—I know you loved me…”

“God!” she said, sick and furious with revulsion, “if you could only know how I despise you now! It isn’t even the killing—it’s the treachery—the
cowardice
...”

“Shut up!” he said in a muted scream that rasped his throat raw. “Shut up, or I’ll kill you here and now…”

“Kill me, then! Fetch them in running! What will that do for you?”

He came on quietly, in cold control of himself again after that brief outburst. His thigh touched the rim of the table. Without taking his eyes from her or relaxing for an instant the steadiness of his aim at her body, he lowered his free hand, took the rim of his palm and hoisted the table on one leg, wheeling it aside from between them. She moved promptly to circle with it as it swung, but he had manoeuvred her into a corner, and now she had nowhere to retreat from him.

She waited for him to move slowly round the rim towards her, and then suddenly she gripped the edge of the table with both hands and heaved it upright, aiming the coffee-pot at him. China and sugar and sandwiches went flying, the brass table-top struck him on the hip, but he stepped sharply back, hardly spattered, and the gun steadied again upon her. Hugh planted a foot deliberately in the wreckage and walked through it, crushing and breaking, his eyes never deflected from their aim.

“You’re coming with me, Dinah, love, whether you want to or not. You’re coming with me a little way…”

Her shoulders were flattened against the wall; she could not move any farther. His free hand came out, carefully, smoothly, and gripped her by the wrist.

The door opened, a small, prosaic, normal sound. Robert came quietly into the room and closed the door after him.

He looked as he always looked, pallid, colourless, calm, the very fibre of his clan, worn down to the essential substance but made to last for ever. He paused in the doorway to set his course, and after a moment of taking stock he began to move forward into the room. And everything went into slow motion and synchronised with his advancing steps.

Hugh dropped Dinah as if she counted for nothing; perhaps now she did. She squared her shoulders against the wall, and watched, helpless to do more. Everything had been taken out of her hands. Even the gun ignored her now, its minute, steely eye trained upon Robert.

But she was not quite forgotten, after all. Suddenly Hugh had remembered her mettle and taken her back into account. She saw that he was moving gradually aside, the gun never wavering, to work himself into a position where he could cover both of them, and no one could get behind him. Dinah moved, too, abruptly aware of the possibilities, stooping in one flashing movement to scoop up a knife from the wreckage of the table, and slide along the wall. But she had moved too late; she could not get out of his vision again, and he knew too much to shift his aim even for an instant, but still he was aware of what she did.

“Drop it, Dinah! On the tray, where I can hear!”

She could not risk the shot that would not even be fired at her. The knife tinkled back harmlessly among the fragments of china.

“Robert,” said Hugh, softly and earnestly, “it isn’t much I’m asking you for, this time. Not even to lie. Only a head start, that’s all, just time to get away. Nothing new has happened—there needn’t be any alarm. Just give me tonight, that’s all I want. Just tonight—and your silence…”

Robert had halted, only a few steps into the room, when Hugh moved to put a wall at his back. Slowly he turned to face him directly again.

“Robert, I’m not asking you to do it for me. But won’t you, for Mother’s sake…?”

It had been his trump card for years, but this time it fluttered ineffectively to the ground, and Robert’s first advancing step trod it underfoot. The pale, calm face did not change at all.

“It won’t work any more, Hugh. She’s safe enough from you now. She’s dead.”

He halted for a moment, and looked at Dinah, and the fixed lines of his long, tired features softened briefly.

“Go home, Dinah. Just walk out now and take the car, and go. Leave me with him. He won’t try to stop you.” Hugh didn’t move, didn’t make a sound; for suddenly the only weapon he had was the tiny, deadly weapon in his hand, and for all its deadliness, suddenly it was not enough. It seemed to Dinah that she could indeed have walked straight out at the door then, between the two brothers, and got into the Mini and driven away. But she didn’t move, either.

“Go, please, Dinah,” said Robert gently. “I tried to tell you yesterday that you shouldn’t so much as come near us, let alone ever think of tying yourself to one of us for life.”

Hugh drew a long, careful breath. “I don’t believe you. You’re lying to me. She isn’t dead, you’re only trying to kid me into giving up…”

“She’s dead, Hugh. Five or six minutes ago. I came down to telephone Braby. And I heard the table go over. Don’t bet on her any more, Hugh. She’s dead—it’s finished.”

He was walking forward slowly, measured step by step, and his eyes were fixed on Hugh’s face with an unwavering purpose that matched the fixity of the gun’s one minute black eye. And as he came he talked, quietly, coherently, without passion.

“Bad enough that I covered up one murder for you, and kept you fed and indulged with money ever since, so that you’d never feel the need to kill again. Bad enough that I’ve acted as your grave-digger and watchman and nurse all this time, and caused another death, all to keep her from ever knowing what you and he between you have done to her name and her life—the only two people she ever cared about in the world. That’s enough. It’s all over now,” said Robert clearly, “I can call things by their proper names now. You’re a murderer and I’m an accessory. And we’re both bastards. And she’s dead!
Thank God
!”

Only a few feet separated them now, and still Hugh had not moved. Robert held out his hand with authority for the gun.

“Give that thing to me!”

“Keep off!” said Hugh loudly and violently. “Keep off and let me by, or I’ll fire. I’m clearing out!”

“No, Hugh, you’re not going anywhere. It’s finished.”

Dinah was distantly aware of a loud knocking that seemed to be within her head, for no one else heard it. Then she knew it for the knocker on the front door. The night nurse arriving? The police returning? Dave coming to fetch her home?

“Keep off, I warn you, or I’ll kill you!”

And Robert smiled at him and came on, his hand extended. Dinah understood, a fraction of a second too late, that Robert had his own inviolable reason for moving in like this on an armed and desperate man, a proffered target closing to pointblank range. All he wanted, at least in that moment, was to be dead and done with it, all that long purgatory of horror and disgust. Out in the hall there were men entering, the front door stood open; they would have seen this one subdued light, and it was here they were coming. But Robert did not want them to arrive in time.

Dinah saw the slight convulsion pass through Hugh’s forearm and hand. She shrieked: “Hugh—
no
!” And perhaps it was her scream that diverted his attention at the very instant of firing, or perhaps in this face-to-face confrontation his hand shook in superstitious dread, and some last instinct in him tried subconsciously to turn the shot aside, for after all, this was his brother. The report of the shot closed with the echo of Dinah’s scream, and Robert’s tall body jerked a little backwards, folded slowly at the knees, and collapsed in an angular heap. And suddenly the room was full of men, Chief Inspector Felse and Sergeant Moon and half a dozen others, and Dave hard on their heels.

George Felse said afterwards that there was one moment when he gave Dinah Cressett up for dead, because she launched herself like fury straight between the police and the gun, which had still five serviceable rounds of .25 ACP ammunition in its eight-round magazine, as they afterwards confirmed. Dinah was not thinking of herself or the police, or the nearness or remoteness of her own death, but only intent on reaching Robert’s body and feeling for the pulse and heartbeat that were still alive in him.

But the moment passed without another tragedy; for Hugh, seeing the hopelessness of resistance, did the only thing left for him to do, and turned his little plaything upon himself.

This time he felt no superstitious terror, and his hand did not tremble. This time he made no mistake.

THEY rushed Robert to hospital at emergency speed, siren blaring, and Comerbourne’s chief surgeon spent most of the night getting the bullet out of the wreckage of his left shoulder and putting the pieces back together, which was rather like assembling a jigsaw puzzle. For so small a calibre it had done a lot of damage; if he got off without a long stay in an orthopaedic ward later, he’d be lucky, but there was a good chance of an eighty per cent recovery eventually.

“Lucky for him,” said George to Sergeant Moon later, “that his father only brought back a Walther 8 from North Africa with him, instead of one of those 9 millimetre Lugers or something even bigger. A lot of the ranking officers in the German army carried those little fellows as auxiliary arms in the last war. I wonder how many of them are still running round loose in this country?”

They had the report from ballistics by then, and knew that the bullet recovered from Thomas Claybourne’s skull had been fired from this particular Walther 8, as had the companion bullet extracted from the cellar door. They had the coat, and the button from Dinah’s cardigan; they had a firm identification of the body of Thomas Claybourne, and understandable motive, everything necessary to a clear, satisfactory case. Except someone to charge.

“Ah, and so much the better,” said Sergeant Moon. “Saves the country’s money, makes sure he never does it again, and obviates any resultant harm and distress to innocent parties, which couldn’t do anybody any good, not even the great British public.”

“Innocent?” murmured George. They were sitting side by side in a settle at the “Duck”, in the quiet late morning hours when they had the place to themselves.

Diplomatically, Sergeant Moon did not answer. Mrs. Macsen-Martel was dead, the vicar himself was taking charge of her funeral arrangements, and the village had become a kind of closed shop, deceptively talkative except when strangers presumed to join in or even listen to the talk, when it was found to be designed only to avoid imparting information, to derail questions before they ever got asked, and to deploy a smoke-screen in which the more persistent could smother or withdraw.

“There isn’t going to be any trial, only a statement closing the case,” mused the sergeant, “and they won’t get much out of that. So technically we can hardly plead that anything’s
sub judice
—unless you’re contemplating other charges?”

“And if they start pumping you like that in here tonight,” George asked with interest, “what do you say?”

“We say we can’t discuss it, it’s
sub judice
,” said the sergeant without hesitation. “By the time they realise those possible other charges aren’t going to materialise, they’ve lost interest anyhow, and gone off after some new horror. Five hundred miles away, let’s hope!”

“All right, that’s my answer, too. It’s going to be days, in any case, before I can even question him. I’m certainly not going to rush the doctors on this one. And if he’s going to be a hospital case for weeks, maybe months, afterwards, time is hardly of the essence.”

“And will you be needing a shorthand writer when you do see him, George?”

“Now you come to mention it, Jack, I don’t believe I shall. A short written statement later, perhaps, just to round out my report.”

“Ah, that’s the spirit,” said Sergeant Moon with a gratified sigh. “If you want any help with the editing, I’ll be glad to come along and lend a hand.”

The village knew, but the village, which knew so well how to disseminate information, knew also how to keep its own counsel. The reporters came with cameras, loitered, questioned, even extracted answers, which were only later seen to be either useless or mutually destructive. There was a large and impressive funeral, to which the whole valley came as a gesture of solidarity, not with the Macsen-Martel clan as such, but with its own people. Later, when the inquest was over and permission was given, there would be another and quieter funeral, which those whose official duty it was would attend, and from which the rest would turn their eyes decently away, out of a discretion which nobody had to dictate. Even the inquest would not bring the newsmen very much joy, only the eyewitnesses’ evidence and the bald fact of a verdict of suicide. And the case would be closed. No trial, no conviction; never, officially, a murderer.

“She was a game old girl,” said Saul Trimble, when the regulars mustered in the bar of the “Duck” after the burial, still black-clad and sombre and exclusive, so like a private wake that all those who were not in the inner circle took one look within, and retired to the garden bar. “A game old girl, and never owed a penny.”

The valley had a gift for epitaphs. But it was Sam Crouch who found the only possible one for Hugh, late in the evening when the clock was ticking its way round to closing-time.

“Ah, well, he was his father’s son,” said Sam, wagging his round, simple, good-natured head.

Eb Jennings swivelled a rapid glance from Sam to Ellie, who had just dropped a glass into the washing-up bowl with an almighty splash that swamped the floor behind the bar. “You can say
that
again!”

“Nice-looking, though, you got to admit,” said Nobbie regretfully, mentally reviewing the revised list of interesting males. “Seems awful now, but you know, there were times when I rather fancied Hugh!”

There was, thought Ellie, industriously mopping up the spilled water, always a bright side to everything.

It was a week before Robert was allowed to fill in what gaps were left in the story. He had offered earlier, and his offer had been first vetoed by the doctors, and then courteously deprecated by the police, whose behavior throughout had been so considerate as almost to offend against his standards. When George finally came to sit beside his bed in the private ward borrowed for the occasion, Robert was propped up on carefully stacked pillows, his left shoulder completely encased in plaster and bandages. He had lost weight he could not afford to lose, and his pallor was so fine-drawn as to make him practically translucent, but his eyes were peaceful and resigned.

“I’m only sorry,” said George, “that I was rather later than I intended getting back that night. But I wasn’t expecting anything to break, and if Miss Cressett hadn’t dropped her bombshell, nothing would have.”

Robert’s face kept its guarded stillness at the mention of Dinah’s name. “I don’t know that I was too grateful to you, at first, for turning up at all,” he said frankly.

“Never mind, you may have good reason to be grateful later,” said George equably. “I knew by then it was your brother we wanted. He was a shade too clever about worming his way into the cellar, so I thought, well, all right, let him, let’s see what happens. He dropped his evidence against you in the only place he could get at easily, covering the action with his handkerchief. He couldn’t know that we’d been sifting cleared soil back into that pit for more than an hour then, so if there was anything new to be found by going through that layer again, it was plain he must have put it there. If he could have dropped it into the heap of soil on the far side of the cellar, which hadn’t been sieved, then he’d have had a better chance of getting away with it. Though even then probably thinner than he realised. He was just that little bit too anxious. Before I went north I told Brice to go carefully over the floor of the trench again. And when he confronted you with the pencil, and you owned it for yours at once—well, we knew then who was our man. I’m afraid that piece of cold-blooded treachery hit you harder than anything.”

Robert’s fastidious face had tightened into extreme pain even at the recollection, he flinched at every accusatory word levelled against Hugh, but he did not protest.

“So I came back prepared to stick my neck out and charge him, and worry afterward about all the supporting details. But Miss Cressett beat us to it. And now suppose you tell your side of the story.”

It was what Robert had been bracing himself to do for days. “Shouldn’t there be someone to record what I say?”

“No, there should not. I haven’t cautioned you, and at present there’s no question of doing anything of the kind. Just talk, if you feel like talking. Tonight you don’t need a solicitor.”

And Robert talked.

“It was five years ago, a day early in March, I think, when this man Claybourne came to the Abbey asking for me. He knew about the family my father had left from the obituary, I suppose. My mother happened to be away for a week-end, which was luck, because it didn’t happen very often. The man had taken a bus straight from the station at Comberbourne, and got off at the end of our lane, so hardly anyone can even have seen him. He had his luggage with him, and he had a copy of his mother’s wedding group and certificate, his birth certificate, everything he needed to prove his legitimacy. What he wanted was money. He wasn’t an offensive type, really, rather anxious and harassed, he didn’t want me to think of his demands as blackmail, and he didn’t want to press his claims to the issue, all he was after was as much cash as possible. The last thing he wanted was anything to do with law or the police. I got the impression that he was in a hurry to get away somewhere for reasons of his own.

“But there wasn’t any money to give him. My father’s—
our
father’s—debts weren’t yet cleared, and there was never much cash to spare. I couldn’t see anything for it but to go with him to our solicitor and tell the whole story, and get his advice about how to arrange things as justly as possible, and with the least shock to my mother.
He
wanted money and no fuss,
I
wanted my mother’s peace of mind let alone. I thought maybe we could find some way of raising a loan, since that was what he preferred, too.

“Only in the middle of all this, Hugh came home.”

He paused to moisten his lips. In a sense this was the most terrible moment of all, for if Hugh had not come in at that point there need never have been any crime, or any long and hideous purgatory after it.

“I had to let him into it, too, he wanted to know who this person was. And he was furious. He wouldn’t hear of paying, wouldn’t let the solicitor into it or promise to keep the police out, to him it was plain blackmail. And yet he saw the proofs just as I did, and he knew they must be genuine. After all, what was surprising in it, except the fact that he found it necessary to marry her? We’d known many other cases, only different in that one particular. But that was the one that mattered. Maybe we hadn’t got much left to boast about, or to spend, but what there was Hugh was going to keep, and his name was his and was going to stay his.

“Claybourne was frightened. He couldn’t afford delay or inquiry, he was desperately anxious to placate us, he swore he hadn’t told a soul where he was coming, he hadn’t any intention of ever asserting his right to the name, and nothing could ever possibly leak out, because no one else knew. All he wanted was money. And Hugh laughed with relief— genuine relief, you understand—and said that made everything simple. He went off into the old library—we were standing in the hall—as though he’d thought of something helpful. But what he came back with was the gun.

“You’ve seen it. You know all about that. My father brought it home after the war, and he and Hugh used to practise at a target with it sometimes. Hugh was quite good. I haven’t good enough vision, and anyhow, I wasn’t interested. Even then I was slow to realise what was happening, or I might have prevented it. Claybourne was quicker. He simply took one look, and cast round for somewhere to run to. Hugh was coming down the stairs, between him and the door. He did what I suppose one would naturally do, ran towards that big window at the back of the hall, that looks as if it ought to have a door in it. But it hasn’t, when you get close you see how the ground slopes away outside. He looked round for some way of escape, and saw the light falling through the high window in the cellar, just at the foot of the stairs. You know it. It looks as if there must be a way out there.”

“But there isn’t any way out. Yes, I know.”

“And even the cellar door was locked—not that it would have made any difference, he couldn’t get away. I blame myself,” he said, “for being so slow to believe what I was seeing. But when you’ve lived all your life with someone— one of your family—and always thought of him as a normal human being… By the time I realised this was in earnest, Hugh was past me, I ran after him, but he was half way down the cellar steps, and all that happened when I caught hold of his arm was that the gun went off and the shot went wide—into the door. And Hugh turned round and hit me in the face. I was off-balance, and I went down sprawling on the stairs. And Hugh walked on down, not even hurrying, and fired again at close range. In the head. Just like throwing a dart in a pub match.

“When I got there, the man was dead. Stone dead. Nobody was ever going to bring him back again. And Hugh was saying, what the hell are you fussing about, it’s
all right
, nobody knows he ever came here, there’s nothing to worry about, everything’s fine. Everything’s fine. And Hugh was always her favourite son. And anyhow, it was done. How do you make amends?

“So I buried him. Him and all his belongings, all but the documents he’d brought with him, his wallet—all those things Hugh took and burned. My mother never knew anything. Never! Thank God!

“And I’ve been in hell ever since.”

It was a simple statement, made in the interests of accuracy, not at all a complaint, much less an appeal for sympathy.

“Not Hugh, of course. He got a bit restive about being in the same house, afterwards, so he shrugged the whole thing off and went somewhere else, got himself a home and a job, even fell a little in love, I think—as much as he could with anyone but himself. As far as I know he was quite happy. Maybe there was just something vital left out of him. He even levered money out of me from time to time, in return for his discretion and good behaviour. I thought if I kept him content, nothing else might happen, never again. But of course it did. I thought maybe it was only a monstrous aberration, something he’d never really registered properly, and he’d grow out of it…” Robert’s long, sensitive lips curled in the most rueful of smiles. He heaved a long sigh, and was silent for a moment.