Frequent Hearses (8 page)

The Cranes, if he were right, did well to be apprehensive, since unless the scandal of the suicide and its motive could be stifled—and it was unlikely that Humbleby would abet this—it might not inconceivably put a full stop to all their careers…

The conference dragged on. Fen was summoned out of his brooding to put a date to
The Rape of the Lock
; the young man from the Music Department, required to specify music for a ballroom scene, suggested the
Berenice
Minuet, and fell into an unexpected fit of rage when told that the piece was too hackneyed; and Gresson—with one eye on the indistinguishable blondes, whom patently he hoped to impress—delivered himself of a dreary lecture, needlessly long, about the drinking customs of Pope’s age. But it was clear that the end was in sight: suggestions for changes in the script were few and trivial, and the discussions arising out of them wholly lacking in fervour. By a quarter to midday the conference had reached a stasis for want of matter, and it must have been at about this point that Maurice Crane got up abruptly and left the room. It seems curious that Fen, in view of the nature of his thoughts, did not pay more attention to this significant departure, but in fact he hardly noticed it. A monstrous premonition held him in trance. Someone had tried to obliterate Gloria Scott’s identity. Well—why? And there came to him, like the first stirring—
“Lass’ mich schlafen”
—of the dragon in
Siegfried,
a couplet from Pope’s ode which clamoured at his intelligence like a rune or an incantation:
“On all the line, a sudden vengeance waits, And frequent hearses shall besiege your gates…”

Maurice Crane was not away for long. He came back just as Stafford, amid universal relief, was pronouncing the meeting over. His face was white and beaded with sweat: he breathed stertorously, irregularly, painfully. His lips moved once, as he attempted to speak. Then he staggered, caught vainly at the doorpost, and fell. A single violent convulsion gripped him as he lay. When that had passed there was no further movement, and they saw that he was dead.

“You may be justified in making all this fuss,” said Humbleby. “Maurice Crane
may
have been poisoned—as you seem to imagine. But really, you ought at least to explain what it is that’s made you suspicious. The position at present is distressingly complicated and—um—irregular.”

He looked for support to Superintendent Capstick, who responded with bemused signals of assent. In the twenty minutes since his arrival at the studios Superintendent Capstick had achieved a condition of bewilderment so complete and far-reaching that it had altogether bereft him of speech. By the antiphonal narrative of Fen and Humbleby his intellect had been utterly fogged, and for the moment, and in spite of the fact that theoretically he was in charge, he was capable of nothing more constructive than sitting and staring, with his mouth ajar. It must not, however, be thought that Capstick was a stupid man. He possessed, as a matter of fact, a very fair share of natural intelligence. But he had been haled away from the Gisford Police-station with his mind full of a cherished project for reforming the town’s traffic arrangements, and this preoccupation, combined with Fen and Humbleby’s allusive habit of speech, had disastrously limited his mental reach. He had not, so far, succeeded in grasping who Gloria Scott was, why she had committed suicide, what connection she had with Maurice Crane, what Fen was doing at the studios, or why it should have been suggested that in the manner of Maurice Crane’s death there was anything at all sinister; and being slightly awed by Humbleby, and much more awed by his surroundings (for he was an assiduous film-goer), he had not cared to press for a more lucid explanation of these matters than he had received so far. At Humbleby’s demand to Fen, therefore, he leaned forward hopefully in his chair: one point at least, he told himself, was going to be cleared up.

But to his chagrin it was not. Fen grew testy at being pinned down, and spoke annoyingly of premonitions. The doctor, he said, had agreed that it might have been poison that had killed Maurice Crane; and on its being pointed out to him that the doctor had also agreed that it might not, he countered by reminding Humbleby that both Madge and Nicholas had testified to their brother s unexceptionally good health.

“All the same, natural deaths do occur now and then,” said Humbleby rather nastily. “Just once in a while someone pops off for some reason other than malice aforethought. And the mere fact that Maurice Crane
hadn’t
been ill isn’t evidence. Everyone has to make a start with illness sooner or later.”

“He was sick.” Capstick, who was becoming unnerved at his own inanition, plunged headlong in with what appeared to be one of the few incontrovertible features of the affair. “That was why he went out of the room. To be sick.”

Both Fen and Humbleby ignored this—not because they wished to be rude but because it was so negative as to defy answering. And Capstick, brought once again to a stand, slumped back in his chair and wiped a large handkerchief across his mottled, sweating brow.

“No, my point is this,” Humbleby went on. “Unless Crane’s death has some significant relation to the suicide of Gloria Scott, I’m trespassing on officially forbidden territory, and I must get off it, quick. But when I ask you to
establish
a significant relation, it turns out that all you can do is mutter about some reasonless foreboding or other…”

“Damn it,” said Fen, nettled, “Crane was a material witness in the Gloria Scott affair, wasn’t he? You shouldn’t fret so much about red tape, Humbleby: it’s not as if there were any question of your taking charge of the case. All you’re doing is asking Capstick for his co-operation in dealing with a matter which may possibly be connected with it. Isn’t that so, Capstick?”

“Ah,” said Capstick hurriedly. “Ah.”

“All right,” said Humbleby, with the air of one compelled against his will to abandon all responsibility. “All
right.
But for heaven’s sake, why murder?”

“Because someone tried to prevent you from finding out who Gloria Scott really was.”

“Now, that’s an interesting thing,” said Capstick. “I remember once when we were rounding up a gang of racecourse touts—”

“I fail altogether,” said Humbleby, “to see the connection.”

Capstick was abashed. “I only thought,” he said submissively, “that it might be interesting for you to hear how—”

“No, no. I mean the connection between the obliteration of Gloria Scott’s identity and the notion that Maurice Crane was murdered.”

“Really, Humbleby, you’re unenviably dense.” And Fen stared at that officer in some suspicion. “You’d agree, I suppose, that the motive of the person who ransacked the girl’s rooms wasn’t to conceal her identity as
‘Gloria Scott’?”

“I’ll grant you that, yes. Since she’s been in a film or two, that was bound to come to light pretty rapidly.”

“The idea, then, was to conceal her
real
identity.”

“Yes.”

“And since the motive for her suicide was almost certainly something recent—that’s to say, something that had happened to her while she was calling herself Gloria Scott—then X’s purpose in turning her rooms upside down can’t very well have been to hide that motive.”

“You mean,” Capstick interposed cautiously, “that if some chap was introduced to her as Gloria Scott and did her a mischief, and she killed herself because of it, then he couldn’t hope to avoid being tied up with the business just by cutting the laundry-marks out of her clothes and so forth?”

“Exactly. You see, Humbleby, how readily Capstick has grasped the essentials of the situation.” And upon this unwitting irony Fen paused for breath. “Therefore X’s purpose in visiting her rooms was something quite different.”

“There are a lot of loopholes in this exposition,” Humbleby complained. “Not to say—um—paralogisms. But go on. What was X’s purpose?”

“As far as I can see, we’re bound to assume that his purpose was to keep secret a connection between himself and her
which existed before she took the name of Gloria Scott and which ceased to exist—so far as anyone could, know—as soon as she took that name.”

“Not bad,” Humbleby conceded. “Not bad at all… And we can trace her back for about two years in the identity of Gloria Scott…”

“Can you?”

“Yes. I’ve rung up Charles again, and in the last hour or two he’s had a good many telephone calls from people who’ve seen the photograph, including two from Menenford, one from the producer at the repertory theatre and one from a woman who keeps a boarding-house where the girl lived while she was working there. It seems that no one at Menenford realised that her name
wasn’t
Gloria Scott. In fact, no one we’ve heard from knew her under any other name.”

“Perhaps,” said Capstick warily, “that actually
was
her
real name.”

“We’ve no definite proof that it wasn’t,” Humbleby agreed. “But on the other hand, no one so far has admitted to knowing her prior to two years ago, when she turned up as ‘Gloria Scott’ at Menenford.”

“That’s a paralogism, if you like,” said Fen; and was on the point of explaining why when Capstick, in hungry pursuit of his momentary advantage, forestalled him.

“But it’s her
face
you’ve asked people to identify,” said Capstick. “And even if she changed her name, she can’t have changed her
face.
The fact that no one’s come forward who knew her earlier than two years ago probably means that up to two years ago she just wasn’t in England.”

“Just so,” said Fen.

“Ah, yes. Stupid of me,” said Humbleby with aggravating cheerfulness. “I ought to have seen that. So perhaps her real name
was
Gloria Scott. She may simply have said it wasn’t in order to make an impression by being mysterious.”

But Fen shook his head. “In that case the destruction in her rooms becomes
totally
inexplicable.”

“Oh, yes, so it does,” said Capstick after a moment’s cogitation; and thereupon he retired from the field—though not, he felt, wholly without honour—and reverted to mopping his brow.

And Humbleby gestured assent. “So getting back to X’s purpose in trying to conceal an at least two-year-old connection with the girl…” He hesitated, considering. “I grant that it wouldn’t be reasonable to look as far back as that for a motive for her suicide—though now I come to think of it”—and here he unexpectedly changed his tack—“I suppose it’s not inconceivable that something or someone cropping up out of her past drove her to it. Blackmail, for instance.”

“I think, you know,” said Fen, “that we shall probably find the motive for her suicide very much nearer at hand. And if that’s so—if it’s something which concerns Gloria Scott and not Aggie Thistleton, or whatever her real name was—then as far as I can see there’s only one explanation of X’s invading her rooms and doing what he did.”

“And that is?”

“Vengeance,” said Fen.

The word has ordinarily a distinct flavour of melodrama about it; but at its use in this context neither Humbleby nor Capstick felt much inclined to smile. Perhaps this was because the proximity of Maurice Crane’s body, lying covered with a dust-sheet where it had fallen, had a sobering effect even on men professionally inured to death. Apart from it, and from themselves, the room was now empty. The scattered scribbling paper on the table, the loaded ash-trays and the jettisoned scripts of
The Unfortunate Lady
bore mute witness to the conference which an hour ago had been so catastrophically broken up. The trolley stood loaded with half-empty coffee-cups, their contents cold, grey and unappetising, and other cups had been put down in other places about the room. The hand of the electric clock above the door jolted forward audibly in the silence; beyond the windows the breeze was freshening in the trees, tossing the buds like a juggler’s balls, so that their tender green glistened in the sunlight. And Humbleby, very pensive, said:

“‘On all the line a sudden vengeance waits.
..’ Is that what you have in mind?”

“It was that which first suggested the possibility.”

“A sudden vengeance waits,” said Capstick bemusedly. “A sudden—” With an effort he pulled himself together. “What are you talking about
now?”
he demanded.

They explained what they were talking about and failed to impress him with it.

“But that’s nothing but a poem,” he said rather indignantly. “Poems haven’t got anything to do with what happens in real life. I tell you frankly, I don’t at all see what you’re getting at.”

“What I’m getting at is this,” said Fen. “If a man wanted to revenge Gloria Scott’s suicide by killing the people who drove her to it, and if that man was known to be connected with her only under her real identity, then effacing that identity would be a step towards ensuring his own safety. Suppose that you’re her brother, Capstick. She’s run away from home and you haven’t seen her or heard of her for three years. Then one evening, quite accidentally, you meet her somewhere in London. She explains that she is in great trouble and tells you who is responsible. She kills herself, and you, witnessing the suicide or hearing of it, decide to take vengeance. But you know that the police will visit her rooms and will find, pretty certainly, evidence that her name is really Jane Capstick. And that means that as soon as the people who wronged her start dying off, the police are going to start investigating you with some care. But if you can hide the fact that your sister was called Capstick, then you’ve got a much better chance of getting away with your murders undetected, since the police won’t know in what direction to look. So you go to her rooms and obliterate that name from all her belongings. And then you make a start on your victim or victims.”

“It’s a very fine fantasy,” said Humbleby. “But nothing more than that.”

“It’s at least a possible hypothesis,” said Fen defensively. “And if Maurice Crane proves to have been poisoned I shall consider it a probable one. He has good qualifications for the role of First Victim, you know, since it’s tolerably certain that he got the girl with child.”