Give a Corpse a Bad Name (16 page)

‘Ah yes.' Toby rolled the poker backwards and forwards along his fingers. ‘How long ago was this?'

‘Only about two months. Quite recently. The details are all fresh in my mind.'

Toby nodded. He tucked his upper lip between his teeth and chewed it thoughtfully.

‘Very interesting. And you're dead sure—' this came abruptly—‘that you haven't used that “prating fool” expression any other time? I mean, there are some expressions one uses all the time without being in the least aware of it.'

But she repeated firmly that she was perfectly sure.

Toby turned to George. ‘I'm beginning to feel pretty certain,' he said, ‘where that suitcase is.'

‘That's right,' said George.

‘What d'you mean?' said Lady Maxwell. ‘Do you understand it? Do you know where the paper is?'

‘Reckon it's burnt,' said George.

‘You see,' said Toby, ‘if you've really used that expression only the once, then Mrs Milne must have seen the paper on which you wrote it. If you posted it without any possibility of her having seen it before it went to South Africa, then, unless someone she knows there—'

Lady Maxwell interrupted: ‘She often told me she's completely lost touch with all her acquaintances there. I think she was glad to, you know; I don't think she was at all happy there.'

‘There's no special reason to believe everything she says,' said Toby. ‘But as I was saying, unless someone she knows there thought it worth while to write and tell her that you thought your husband a prating fool, then she must have seen the paper after it came back from South Africa.'

‘After it came
back
?'

‘It came back, I should imagine,' said Toby, ‘in the suitcase of the man who was run over. The suitcase that's missing at present. The suitcase that was collected the morning after the murder—'

‘The—?' She caught the word back with a shrill gasp. Her hands flew up to her mouth.

Toby sprang up. ‘I'm sorry, I'm awfully sorry. That's the trouble about having a sensational mind. The morning after the
accident
is of course what I meant to say.'

Her stiffened body relaxed in her chair but her face remained blanched. When Toby continued there was a look in her eyes as if she were scarcely listening to him.

‘The suitcase that was collected the morning after the
accident
,' he said, ‘by a tall, dark man with glasses. That anonymous letter Mrs Milne showed you today was trying to make us believe that the suitcase is in Mrs Milne's possession. I didn't know in the least whether or not to believe it. Now I do believe it. At least …'

He looked at her speculatively, but it was obvious that she had no idea of what he had been saying. As if his ceasing to speak, however, were a sign for her to leave, she got to her feet a little staggeringly.

‘Thank you, Mr Dyke, thank you so very much for listening to me so patiently. I hope I shall see you again. I've found the talks we've had so interesting.'

She wandered uncertainly to the door.

But suddenly she paused, and all at once was self-possessed.

‘Mr Dyke, you said murder. Is that indeed what you believe?'

He shrugged his shoulders.

She went on evenly: ‘Because, if it is, I would like you, I would beg you, to drop all investigation and go home. Leave it. Leave circumstances to work themselves out in their own way. I implore you most earnestly, go home.'

‘That's what I have been wanting him to do ever since we came here,' said George.

Toby replied: ‘I suppose you know it's a funny-sounding thing to ask.'

She nodded. ‘Yes, yes. Mr Dyke, I'm certain you're a most brilliant and intelligent man. If there has in fact been a murder, if you search for the murderer, I know you will find him. You will find him and deliver him to the law. You will offer him up helpless to the gallows. Oh, please, please, I beg you, go home. Think of it—the gallows. Yes, I understand perfectly how strange this may sound. Some people might even take serious exception to my attitude. Not that I've ever paid much attention to appearances, or to what others think of me. And, you see, I am utterly, most convincedly, with the whole strength of my mind and spirit, with the whole of me—yes, and I belong to every society that is working to that end, even to those in foreign countries—I am completely and unrelentingly against the abominable crime of capital punishment!'

‘And what,' said George, when they had had their supper, ‘does the brilliant and intelligent bloke sitting opposite me mean to do about it?'

Toby pushed back his flopping lock of black hair with a rather weary hand. ‘D'you know, I don't know that it's such a bad idea, going home,' he said.

‘Except,' said George, ‘that you happen to have taken on a job. Don't you go spoiling the atmosphere of confidence between you and your employer. Now myself, I want to think about it.'

Toby stretched himself, blowing smoke at the ceiling. He was lying flat on his back diagonally across the flowered quilt on the double bed in his room. They had gone up there to avoid the friendly company downstairs.

‘Would you say,' said Toby, ‘that that woman was a quick thinker?'

‘Her ladyship?' said George. ‘Well, you never know, but if it turned out she was, I'll admit it'd give me a considerable turn.'

‘Yes,' said Toby, ‘but if she were … You see what a bad position that story of hers puts Mrs Milne in. It's a very neat corroboration of the flannel-trousers letter. If it's true, it suggests that our letter-writer really knows a thing or two and isn't just using his deductive powers to a somewhat imaginative end. It means Mrs Milne must have the suitcase—or must have had it, because, of course, the bonfire may have made a convenient end to a number of things. If it isn't true … But if it isn't, it means that Lady Maxwell saw the possibilities of that “prating fool” remark damn quickly, because I'll swear she started gasping her bewilderment and acting peculiarly the very moment the remark was out. Even if she didn't think of all the details on the spot, she must have seen the rough outlines like a flash of lightning. And somehow I find it difficult to believe that her mind can tick along even as fast as most other people's.'

‘I want,' said George, ‘to have a quiet little think about that suitcase.'

‘Do you? What I'm doing the quieter kind of thinking about at the moment,' said Toby, ‘is that tall, dark man with glasses. There are three tall men in this case. One's dark, but he's got a beard. The cloakroom attendant wouldn't have forgotten to mention a beard. One wears glasses, but he's red-haired. One doesn't wear glasses and hasn't got dark hair either—hasn't had it, that's to say, for a good number of years. I'm rather wondering whether the only bits of that description which would apply to that individual once he was well away from the cloakroom are the “tall” and the “man”. You can't disguise height, and it isn't usually easy to disguise sex.'

‘My quiet think,' said George, ‘is going to be really quiet. I'm going for a stroll. While I'm gone—' he put a hand inside his jacket—‘you may as well take a look at these.' And he tossed something down on the bed beside Toby.

Without sitting up Toby reached for it and held it up to examine it.

‘Christ!' he said. ‘Hey, George—'

But George had gone out, closing the door behind him.

What Toby held was a few sheets of paper, folded into a wad. At a glance it had been easy to recognize the writing on the paper as that of Shelley Maxwell. Sorting out the sheets, Toby found that there were three letters; one was the first of the two written to Lady Maxwell with Shelley's left hand, the second, to make a guess from its date, was the letter that must have immediately preceded it, the third was one that had been written about three months later. Toby sat up suddenly and carried them to the light.

He spent a long time looking at the letters. But George took even longer to have his quiet think about the suitcase. After the first hour Toby went down to see whether the thinking might be taking place in front of a dart-board or over a game of skittles. But George was not in the bar. Returning to his room, Toby smoked cigarettes without stopping, and alternated minutes spent flat on his back with minutes of furious walking around the furniture.

When at last, without the warning of any step on the stair, George slipped quietly in and sat down by the fire, Toby's nerves were so strung with impatience that he jumped as if a cracker had gone off under his feet.

‘Where the hell have you been?' he demanded.

‘Just walking and thinking,' said George. He held out chubby hands to the fire.

Toby thrust the letters out to him. ‘Where did you get these?' he rapped out.

‘Why, didn't you see?' said George. ‘I took them this morning when I was tying the packet up all nice and tidy to hand back to the old lady. You ain't very good with your eyes, are you, Tobe?'

Toby slumped down in the wicker chair opposite him.

‘Anyway, you were perfectly right about them,' he said. ‘The third one's a forgery.'

‘That's what I thought,' said George.

‘So's the second, of course. He wrote with his left hand, making up the story about having hurt his right, so's to hide the fact that he hadn't got the knack of Maxwell's writing yet. That accounts, incidentally, for the lack of any scar on his finger.'

‘There was another letter written with his left hand some time later,' said George.

‘Yes, I imagine he was wanting extra money to get back to England. The last time he said he was hurt he got a remittance rather above the usual, so he probably just tried it on again. And it worked.'

George nodded. ‘And what are you going to do about it?'

Toby turned to the earliest of the letters, the one whose genuineness he had not questioned.

‘I'm going to cable,' he said, ‘to the police in the place where this letter was written from, to ask whether anyone called Maxwell died at this address some time between these two dates, May the nineteenth and June the eleventh—and if so, who were the friends that buried him.'

George was looking meditatively at the fire. ‘Are you by any chance expecting,' he asked, ‘that the name will be Milne?'

‘I am not,' said Toby, ‘any more than I expect it to be Bartlemy.'

A log crashed out of the fire. George's feet shot out of the way, but he picked the log up with his hands and jerked it back on to the flames.

‘Well,' he said, ‘I've worked out about that suitcase.'

‘You've what?'

‘Worked out where the suitcase is. Mrs Milne's got it.'

‘Indeed. Mrs Milne's got it. You've worked it out.'

‘Yes,' said George, with a hint of defensiveness in his manner, as Toby, leaning back in the wicker chair, regarded him with irony, ‘I reasoned it out to my own satisfaction. If you ain't satisfied, you ain't. But me, I shall go on on the supposition that Mrs Milne is in possession of that suitcase.'

‘George,' said Toby, ‘quit telling lies. How did you get in?'

George chuckled. ‘French window round at the side. The catch was a crime; I could've forced it with my eyelashes. All the same, Tobe, I did reason it out: I reasoned it out that if Mrs Milne had ever had the suitcase she'd probably got it still, because it was a leather suitcase, you see, Tobe. You can get a pair of trousers destroyed in a bonfire, and papers are easy if there aren't too many of 'em, but a leather suitcase'd be pretty near impossible. So I says to myself that if it isn't all someone's imagination the suitcase is probably still in the house, and the least suspicious place for a suitcase in a house is the box-room, if there is one. So I went along out and—'

‘George,' said Toby seriously, ‘I know this is all in the cause of science, but another time no housebreaking without my permission. I don't feel certain that you'll always choose your occasions so—justifiably.'

‘Sure, Tobe, I know just how you feel. Well, I got in by the side, and went upstairs. The daughter was playing the piano, so I hardly had to trouble about walking quiet. I just went up to the top floor and started opening doors till I found the right one. Sort of an attic with a skylight. There was trunks and hatboxes and Gladstone bags and quite a number of leather suitcases, but the stuff on top didn't have to be worried about; I went straight for the stuff in behind. And there it was in a corner, behind a Saratoga trunk and a couple of picnic hampers. A leather suitcase with the initials SM.'

Sunday was a day of rest. Very little happened. Eggbear let Toby know that he had discovered that his wife knew Lucy Langman, and believed she had an inkling of what the quarrel between Mrs Milne and her cook had been about. At any rate, Mrs Eggbear was going over to Purbrook today to visit her mother, and would look in on the Langmans and see if she could get the whole story out of them.

Toby and George themselves went into Wallaford. They dispatched a cable, had lunched at the Palace Hotel and went to the pictures. Wallaford, subsisting largely on holiday-makers, was naturally a centre of Sabbath-breaking; from one o'clock on there were seven cinemas to choose amongst. They returned to dinner at the Ring of Bells, and afterwards George beat everyone who would play with him at skittles. Adrian Laws and Daphne Milne dropped into the bar for a short time and had a couple of drinks on Toby. Daphne was silent, making unnecessary little nervous gestures with her hands and avoiding Toby's gaze; no matter how constantly or how admiringly he kept it upon her, she would not respond to it. Adrian was full of gossip, sufficiently amusing, but there was nothing in it to interest Toby.

Only, as they were going, Daphne suddenly came back from the door to say: ‘Mr Dyke, will you be coming to see my mother tomorrow?'