Nothing Like Blood (20 page)

“No. She said nothing to that effect.”

“Did she seem nervous?”

“Not really. She had, we had often noticed, a rather smirking way with her, as though she was continually getting the better of someone else.”

“That, I think, was what she was trying to do, poor girl.”

As though he was suggesting something eccentric, almost unheard-of, the Major said: “It is probably too late to offer you a drink, Deene?”

“Not in the least,” replied Carolus. “A very happy thought. Just the time for my nightcap.”

“What
is
your nightcap?” the Major asked apprehensively.

“Three fingers of Scotch and up to the brim with soda,” said Carolus cheerfully and turned to the sideboard to assist the operation.

“Dora?” asked the Major, on safer ground now.

“We don't usually drink so late at night,” Mrs Natterley said to Carolus, “but after the shock you have given us we should have something, I think. A brandy please, dear.”

In the face of this the Major himself could scarcely refrain and with a whisky in his hand said rather lugubriously: “Cheerio!”

“Cheers! “retorted Carolus and tossed back his drink with hearty abandon. “Do you know,” he said gaily, “I think I'll have another of those? “The Major scarcely entered into this festive spirit. “I shall sleep like a top now,” said Carolus cheerfully as he was about to leave them. “By the way, would you phone me tomorrow when you've seen the police? I should just like to feel that's settled.”

As he was on his way to bed he met Steve Lawson. He now understood those descriptions he had received from Mallister and Jerrison. Lawson was not drunk. Impossible to say that. But equally impossible not to know that he had been drinking.

“Good night,” called Carolus, but he received no reply.

After breakfast next morning he found Christine
Derosse. “I owe you an apology,” he said. “I did a thing I hope I don't often do—jumped to a conclusion. I know now that Sonia Reid didn't ask a favour of you that night.”

“But she did!” said Christine, smiling. “At least she wanted to. She met me in the hall and asked if she could talk to me about something. I said no. There was quite enough mystery about already without her adding to it with secret confidences. I never liked her, anyway.”

“Do you still resent my trying to investigate this thing, Christine?”

“Not if you're getting anywhere.” She looked at him squarely, “Are you?”

“I think so. At last. But I've had to let the key information go to the police.”

“Bad luck! Why don't you tell me about it? After all, I can't very well be on your list of suspects, however much you keep an open mind; I wasn't here when Lydia Mallister died and hadn't been for months.”

“You're not,” said Carolus. Then added with a smile: “It goes against the grain to take anyone into one's confidence, though. Force of habit, I suppose.”

Christine looked attractive that morning and, in spite of the anxiety she felt, she had not lost her gaiety. “You might try, Carolus.”

Before he realized fully what he was doing, Carolus found himself deep in the story of his researches—what he had learned from his interview with the Grimburns; then his meeting with Mrs Tukes.

“I thought it was something like that,” said Christine of Sonia's past history. “It's rather natural for a girl brought up in an orphanage and with that sort of foster-mother to put her own interests first all the time, isn't it? I meant to have a chat with Mrs Tukes when she came down for the funeral but missed her, afterwards. Go on.”

Of Steve Lawson, Christine said: “Yes. That sounds right. He certainly had money once and he's pretty desperate for it now.”

When he described his interview with Mrs Cremoine Rose, Christine said: “I could have saved you the trouble of that. We knew her.”

“Not quite,” said Carolus. “She told me there was madness in the family, as well as hereditary heart disease. She was thankful she was ‘untouched by both'. But she maintained firmly that Lydia was very far from mentally normal when she died. What do you say about that?”

“May be true, in a way. She had quite an obsessional hatred of James.”

Carolus went on to give Mr Cracknell's account of Bishop Grissell's past.

“We knew there was something of the sort, but a man who claimed to know the circumstances maintained that the bishop was only shielding his sister, who was really to blame.”

At his account of Mr Topham of Conway Towers Preparatory School, Christine laughed outright. “That was absurd of you,” she said. “Surely you could
see
that the Jerrisons are angels?”

They smiled over Esmée Welton having ‘set her cap' at the bishop, but Christine said that, according to her aunt, there might be some truth in it. Finally, diffidently and under a particular promise of secrecy, Carolus told Christine of the Gees-Gees and their listening-post.

Christine was interested by his account of Mrs Jerrison's footsteps and Jerrison's footmarks, but made no comment. When he told her of Sonia's visit to the Natterleys she exclaimed at once: “So that's where she went with her confidence that night! It's very surprising.”

“Is it?”

“She'd had a row with the Natterleys.”

“I know. But where else could she go?”

“Mrs Gort.”

“She had tried her.”

“I see. Dora Natterley was the last chance. She must have been desperate.”

“She was,” said Carolus and told her about the two sealed envelopes.

Christine thought for a long time, then said: “But do you see
no
way of clearing this up, Carolus?”

“It may be that, when the police open that envelope, they will have the truth of it.”

“And make an arrest?”

“Perhaps.”

“When?”

“They won't move in a hurry. We don't know what facts they've already got. But it should be within forty-eight hours.”

“By tomorrow evening?”

“I should think so.”

“Then let me tell you, if they haven't done anything by then,” Christine spoke with suppressed excitement, “I'm going to step in. I've got a plan, Carolus, which can't fail.”

“I dare say you have, my dear girl, but I don't think you quite realize the dangers. If I am right in this case—and I've got little more than guesswork to support me—we have here the most dangerous of all kinds of murderer, one who is fighting for survival. One who will stop at absolutely nothing. One who can't stop now. I tell you solemnly, your life wouldn't be worth a light if you stuck your neck out in the way I guess you are proposing to do.”

“I can look after myself,” said Christine.

“That's what Sonia Reid thought.”

“But I
can,
I know what I'm doing.”

“Will you promise me one thing?”

“I doubt it. What?”

“That you'll tell me before you do anything?

“Christine considered. “Yes,” she said. “I'll promise you that.”

T
HE
weather broke at last and it seemed that winter came almost in a night. When the household of Cat's Cradle went to bed that evening it was dark and gusty, and on the following morning there was steady rain with a leaden sky. There was something grim and final about this, as though, now that the long freakish spell of fine weather was over, there would be no more sunshine till the spring.

Carolus was called to the phone at eleven o'clock to hear Major Natterley's voice, elaborately casual, operating from Belstock.

“As it happened, Deene, it was a good thing you mentioned that little matter. The police were most grateful to us.”

“They made no comment about not having heard earlier?”

“They did just remark that it could have been formally reported to the Coroner, but we explained that it had never occurred to us that it could be important.”

“They gave you no idea of the contents of the envelope, of course? “Carolus asked, glad the telephone at Cat's Cradle was in a small sound-proof compartment.

“None whatever. Naturally we made no inquiry. We had no wish to associate ourselves …”

“This line's so bad,” said Carolus and put the receiver down.

It was time he went to the police himself. It was his very firm conviction that, when he was in possession of facts which might aid them in their inquiries, it was his duty to reveal these. His theories were his own concern.

This had sometimes led to embarrassment when the C.I.D. man in charge of a case resented being told anything which Carolus might have discovered, but on the other occasions, especially when his friend John Moore was in charge, Carolus had found the police receptive; even, at times, in a cagey way, co-operative.

In this case, by persuading the Natterleys to hand over the envelope themselves, he had lost any chance of winning the interest of the police in his own efforts, and he had little concrete to offer them in the way of facts or discoveries. All the same, he decided to see Detective Inspector Brizzard, who was in charge. Nothing could be lost by it and perhaps he might gain, even by negative means, some inkling of what was in the envelope.

But when he rang up for an appointment he was warned at once of what to expect. “Have you some facts connected with these matters which you wish to communicate?” asked a cold and business-like voice.

“I don't know whether you would call them facts. There are certain things you ought to know.”

“I can give you half an hour at four o'clock today,” said Brizzard.

“I'll come down.”

He parked the Bentley Continental outside the police station and was amused to note the prompt, probably prearranged, arrival of a constable, who told him quite civilly that it should be in a neighbouring car park. When
at last, after waiting ten minutes, he was admitted into Brizzard's office, he found that they were not to be alone. Another plain-clothes man sat at a desk in the corner, apparently busy with papers.

Brizzard himself was a thin, sharp-faced man, intent on being business-like and maintaining a strictly official manner. “Sit down,” he said. “You have some information for me?”

“Mind if I smoke?” asked Carolus, before lighting a cigarette. “No, I'm not sure I have now. I sent it you this morning.”

“You … I don't understand, Mr Deene.”

“I persuaded the Natterleys to bring you that envelope. They did so, I hope? They tell me they did.”

Brizzard looked at him fixedly. Carolus was sure that the Inspector knew his reputation but did not intend to admit it.

“How do you come into this, Mr Deene?” he asked.

Two can play at that game, Carolus thought.

“I'm a guest in the house. Mrs Gort is a very old friend of mine.”

“You mentioned an envelope.”

“Yes. One of the two Sonia Reid had prepared on the night of her death.”

“Two? “
It was quite involuntary. A score to Carolus.

“Yes. Didn't you know that? Early in the evening she had two identical sealed envelopes in her bag. At least, they appeared identical, but she must have had some way of distinguishing them.”

Carolus was delighted. He had learned one thing he wanted to know. For the second envelope, he reflected, might have remained in Sonia's handbag and so now be in the possession of the police. In that case Brizzard would never have let out his surprised and (Carolus was sure) quite spontaneous “Two? “Or it might, as he had
long suspected and now believed, have been on her when she fell.

Brizzard did not know what he had done, evidently. “How do you know there were two?” he asked.

“My spies are everywhere,” grinned Carolus infuriatingly.

“I am asking you a question, Mr Deene.”

“I realize that. I have given you the information in my possession. How I came by it is my own affair. Sonia had two envelopes, one containing whatever it is you found this morning, the other, I imagine, blank. But that's only a guess. We know what happened to the important one. The thing is, what happened to the other?”

Brizzard fell back on his official position. “Is that all you have to tell me?” he asked.

Carolus ignored this and went on: “Because, you see, if Sonia was murdered for the contents of that envelope, and if the murderer only found the other and literally drew a blank, we're dealing with a still very dangerous killer, don't you think? I mean
I
was able to find out where those contents were—why shouldn't he or she?”

“I am interested in any facts you may have to give me, Mr Deene, not in speculations.”

“Then here are some more for you. Lydia Mallister had two quarrels on the night she died, one minor one with Miss Grissell, and a real up-and-downer with Mrs Derosse. Her sister informs me that there is insanity in the family.”

“For a casual guest in the house, Mr Deene, you seem to have made an unusually close study of its inmates.”

“I have. It's the sort of thing that interests me intensely. I was born inquisitive.”

“So I observe. I should like to know just what brought you to me this afternoon.”

“It was a long chance,” admitted Carolus. “I hadn't much hope that you'd play ball. But there
are
C.I.D. men who would have appreciated my resisting the temptation to open that envelope and my sending it to you intact, instead. There
are
C.I.D. men who would have told me what was in it.”

“Oh, are there?” said Brizzard more truculently. “Then they would be guilty of a serious breach. I may tell you, Mr Deene, straight away, that I have no intention of discussing this case with you. So far as I am concerned, you are a guest in the house who has come to me with information. Its value is small, because you don't wish to tell me its source.”