Give a Corpse a Bad Name (19 page)

At Toby's knocking the door was opened by an elderly woman in a hat and a print overall.

‘No,' she replied to his question, ‘Mr Laws is in to Purbrook, doin' his shoppin'. Is he expectin' you?'

‘Not particularly,' said Toby, ‘but if you think he won't be long I'd like to wait.'

‘We-ell, maybe he won't be long,' she said doubtfully, ‘but with he you never can say for certain. Maybe he'll be straight back, and then again maybe he'll think of visitin' someone, or maybe that little car of his will break down and he won't be back till afternoon. But if you'd like to come in and wait …' She shrugged her shoulders.

‘I'll wait for a bit, anyway,' said Toby.

She made no objection, and allowed him through the kitchen into a small sitting-room beyond it. She apologized for the fact that she would have to be in and out of the room, because she was doing the upstairs and this was the only way to get at the staircase.

‘But make yourself comfortable,' she said, and, opening what Toby had taken to be the door of a cupboard, disappeared up the narrow stairs inside. Toby looked round him.

The room was quite pleasant though very small. It was cleanly kept and as tidy as a good charwoman, struggling with a man of more or less literary habits, could make it. Probably when Adrian had first come there he had lavished love and thought upon the little room, giving the walls their coating of light green, choosing the russet for the curtains and the covering of the one armchair. A Gauguin reproduction hung above the fireplace, bookshelves filled the recesses to right and left, an odd piece of sculpture like half of a man's head parted from the other half by an explosion, stood on the mantelpiece. There was matting on the floor, and a bowl of slightly faded chrysanthemums on the table. Also there was a telephone.

Surprise showed on Toby's face when he noticed the telephone. He sat down on the arm of the chair and stared at it. It stood on the corner of a battered but probably once beautiful walnut bureau. Toby frowned at the telephone. A slight, hissing sound came through his teeth. Then he stood up again and started looking over the bookshelves.

The heavy steps of the charwoman sounded on the stairs just then, and she emerged through the door, carrying a tin of floor-polish and a mop. Toby turned round.

‘Lonely spot out here,' he said.

‘Yes, 'tis lonely,' she agreed, ‘but I don't have far to come. I come across the fields, don't even have to take my overall off, 'cause I come across the fields. Peter Saunders don't mind. I said to he when he saw me: “I'm just goin' up over to do for Mr Laws,” I said, “goin' across your fields, Mr Saunders.” “That's all right, Mrs Rice,” he says. So that's how 'tis, ye see—I come across the fields.'

‘Yes, I see,' said Toby, ‘you come across the fields.'

She nodded. ‘In me overall,' she said, and went on into the kitchen.

On her return journey Toby started again. ‘Don't expect you get many posts out here, do you?'

‘Twice a day,' she said, ‘same as most places. But if 'tis only a postcard comes by the afternoon post and the postman sees as 'tis nothin' important, he don't bring'n till morning.'

‘Ah,' said Toby, ‘but you
do
get an afternoon post?'

‘Yes, and they say us'll get the electricity in another year or so. Us signed a petition for'n last year.'

‘But it comes—the post, I mean—after you've gone home, I expect, doesn't it?'

‘Oh yes, it don't come till five, and I'm never home later than three. I just get Mr Laws' dinner and wash up, and then I go home. I go home across the fields, you see, so I wouldn't want to wait till dark.'

‘Yes, I see, I see. I see—a certain amount.' He added: ‘But not much. It's murky.' He turned again to the bookcase, while Mrs Rice, with her dusters, went upstairs.

He had already run his eye over the titles of most of the books. Now he began rummaging on a shelf which was filled, not with books, but with periodicals. They were jammed in, some upright, some on their sides, completely filling the space between that shelf and the next. Probably it was Mrs Rice who had taken to shoving them in there when she found them on the floor. Toby pulled out one or two and glanced through them.

He had one of them open in his hands when the noise made by Adrian's three-wheeler reached him from the road outside. He replaced the paper, then pulled it out again, and was standing on the hearth-rug, reading it, when Adrian came in.

Adrian's face looked nipped by cold, his hair was windblown. The Sunbeam outside had warned him of Toby's presence, and he was smiling. But the smile was ironic, not friendly.

‘Hullo, Dyke, sleuthing?' He pushed the armchair close to the fire and sat down. ‘Damn cold. Rotten in an open car, but at any rate the old woman's kept the fire up. What can I do for you, or is this pure friendship?'

Toby turned over a page.

‘Quite interesting, this,' he remarked. ‘I haven't run across it before.'

‘That? Oh, it's not much good,' said Adrian. ‘I don't often buy it. But they took a story of mine. Is that the number?' He looked to see which number it was that Toby was examining. ‘No, that's the October. It was in the next. They don't pay one, of course; the thing's an utter failure commercially. But just now and then it does publish something quite passable. It's not really much good, though—nothing like it might be.'

‘I'd like to see the one with your story in it,' said Toby.

Adrian gave his ironic smile, but he reached out towards the shelf and started a search amongst the papers there for the November number of the small monthly they were discussing. It was called
New Voices
. Short stories, poems, two or three pages of politics, some book and play reviews, made it the same as most literary monthlies, only its preciousness was unusually blatant. It was printed in a curious, defiant-looking type, with an irregular right-hand margin, its cover had an all-over design of green on white, a pattern of cockle shells, and the pages were bound together with a spiral spring.

After searching for a moment, Adrian let his hand drop. ‘No, I don't know where it's got to,' he said. ‘I expect Mrs Rice has put it somewhere. What is it you want, Dyke, apart from a chance to pull my work to pieces?'

Toby turned sideways, leaning an elbow on the mantelpiece. He looked down at Adrian.

‘Where were you a week ago this morning?'

The question startled Adrian. He at once looked defensive. He leant back in the chair, folding his hands behind his tawny head.

‘A week ago … last Wednesday morning? The moment you ask me my mind goes absolutely blank. Can't you remind me of something else that happened then? Perhaps it'll make me remember.'

‘It was the morning after Mrs Milne had her accident.'

‘Ah, of course.' He frowned. ‘Wednesday …'

‘The morning after the badminton game in Purbrook,' Toby prompted. ‘Were you there, by the way?'

‘Good Lord, no. I joined the club when I first came here, for the amusement of the thing, but once I'd soaked up the atmosphere of local gossip, I couldn't stand it. For gossip give me a pub, not a genteel collection of women with their knitting, and retired majors and colonels. Even Anna Milne used to take her knitting there.'

‘Wednesday,' said Toby.

A faint smile crossed Adrian's face. ‘All right, I'll get there in time.'

‘On Wednesday
evening
,' said Toby, ‘you dined at Chovey Place, in company with Mrs Milne and Major Maxwell. After it the three of you came into the Ring of Bells for a drink. That was the first time we met. Does that help at all to remind you what you did in the morning?'

‘It does,' said Adrian immediately, ‘I've just remembered the whole thing. On Wednesday morning I went for a walk.'

‘Alone?'

‘Yes.'

‘Anyone see you?'

‘I shouldn't think so. I walked across the moor. Took a couple of sandwiches in my pocket, and didn't get back till the afternoon. I'm afraid'—and he smiled again more openly—‘that isn't the sort of answer you were wanting.'

‘I could have done with something a bit tidier,' Toby admitted.

‘Something easier to corroborate or easier to disprove—I know. But that's the way things happen. But why does it matter where I was on Wednesday morning? What was going on then that disturbed your sense of the fair and square, the normal and insignificant?'

Toby was looking down into the fire. With one hand at his mouth he tugged at his lower lip. Suddenly he looked up.

‘May I use your telephone?'

‘Go ahead,' said Adrian.

‘What's Mrs Milne's number?'

‘Chovey 79.'

‘Thanks,' said Toby, and picked up the instrument from its corner of the walnut bureau.

While he was giving the number and waiting, he was watched by Adrian with a steady gaze in which wariness and curiosity were quite unconcealed. As Toby began to speak, Adrian lit a cigarette, but his eyes did not leave Toby's face. The firelight lit little tongues of flame on his spectacles.

‘Can I speak to Mrs Milne?' said Toby.

During the pause that followed he heard Adrian begin to hum very softly under his breath.

A click in the receiver and a voice said in Toby's ear: ‘Mrs Milne speaking.'

Toby grinned at Adrian. ‘I've only just learnt,' he said, ‘that Adrian Laws has a telephone.'

She answered: ‘Why do I need to know that?'

‘But you know that he has one?'

‘Of course,' she said.

Adrian blew a thin stream of smoke before him.

Toby went on: ‘When you wanted him to come and see you, why did you write to him? I mean the time when your daughter was in London, and you wanted to discuss her with him. Why didn't you ring him up?'

‘Because when I first thought of it I didn't think of asking him to come and see me. I went to see him. But he wasn't in. So I scribbled a note and pushed it under the door, saying I'd be in that evening until half-past six.'

‘A note,' said Toby, ‘yes, that's the word that stuck in my mind. You said “note” each time, and he replied as if you'd said “letter”.'

‘He replied,' she said, ‘as he, for some reason, saw fit.'

‘Yet it gave you considerable pleasure.'

There was silence.

‘Isn't that so?' said Toby.

‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘I can't hear you.'

‘His reply,' said Toby, ‘—it gave you considerable pleasure.'

‘There's an awful buzzing,' she said. ‘Try hitting your instrument. That clears it sometimes.'

‘I've no grudge against this instrument,' said Toby, ‘it hasn't done me any harm. See if you can hear this. Last night I got another anonymous letter.'

In his chair by the fire Adrian stirred. His gaze on Toby was suddenly concentrated. His lips parted as if he were about to interrupt.

At her end of the wire Anna Milne said: ‘Yes?'

‘Whoever it is that sends them,' said Toby, ‘has made a serious blunder this time.'

‘Well,' she said impatiently, ‘what was it, what did it say?'

‘It said simply: “
RIVERFIELD HANTS NOVEMBER 1917
”.'

There was another short silence. ‘And you say,' she resumed hesitantly, ‘that there's a serious blunder in that?'

‘You don't see it?' said Toby. ‘Think it over. You're good at spotting the implications of this fellow's style. And goodbye for the present—I'm neglecting my host.' He hung up the receiver before she could say any more.

Adrian was regarding him very strangely. His look was positively shrinking.

‘D'you know, you're a cruel devil, Dyke,' he murmured in his soft voice. ‘You've got a cat-and-mouse mind.'

‘So has someone else around the place,' said Toby, coming to stand on the hearthrug close above the young man. ‘And returning to the affair of the note, what about it?'

‘Well, what about it?' said Adrian. ‘I don't understand.'

‘Yesterday morning,' said Toby, ‘Mrs Milne made the statement that the man she had been expecting on the Tuesday evening was you. She said she'd written a note, asking you to come and see her. Now either she was telling the truth or she wasn't—'

‘Logic,' said Adrian.

‘Yes. Well, if she was telling the truth, you weren't.'

Adrian nodded.

‘If she
wasn't
telling the truth,' Toby went on, ‘she was relying on you to back her up. You didn't.'

Adrian nodded again.

‘You said,' said Toby, ‘that the fact that she'd never written to you could too easily be traced for the story to be any good. Your charwoman, you said, handles all your post. But Mrs Milne says that she never wrote to you by post. I'd wondered why she should have as soon as I saw you'd a telephone. She says she came out to see you, didn't find you, and pushed a note under the door. But even if that weren't true, your Mrs Rice informs me that you get an afternoon post here about five o'clock, but that she never stays later than three. No, Laws, even if Mrs Milne's story isn't any good, yours isn't either. You could easily have backed her up without being caught out. Your reason for not backing up your Daphne's mother was one that you didn't divulge. So, as I said, what about it?'

Adrian's lips had closed into a hard line. He gave no answer for a while. At length he said: ‘All right, I'll tell you why I didn't back up her story. I hate that woman. I loathe her from the bottom of my soul. Is that good enough?'

‘Yes,' said Toby, ‘always supposing that what she said about your being expected wasn't true. Though,' he added thoughtfully, ‘even if it was true, the same answer might reasonably cover it.'