Rehearsals for Murder (10 page)

“My question's this,” said Toby: “Is there anything in that flat of yours in town that might be worth, say twenty-five or thirty pounds?”

Alert, but puzzled, and then suspicious, she twisted her head on one side.

“Anything,” said Toby, “like a picture or an ornament or perhaps a piece of jewellery—but most likely something like a picture or an ornament.”

The lovely, cool face expressed astonishment. “Whatever made you ask that?”

“Then there
is
something?”

She nodded. “But we only found out a fortnight or so ago. Someone, a man I know, came to the flat, and he saw them and said——”

“Them?” said Toby.

“It's a pair of vases—Chinese. Lou picked them up for a few shillings in some grubby market or other. I don't know anything about them, but they're rather nice. And this man told us they were worth about thirty pounds. He said there was something special about them—I forget what. Lou started talking of selling them, but I said she wasn't to. I liked them. I told her to hang on to them.”

“Druna,” said Toby, “is there anyone you know who's got a way of getting into that flat, anyone you could ask to go there as fast as possible and look to see if those vases are still there?”

“But——”

“Is there?”

“Ye-es, I suppose so, but——”

“Can you get them on the telephone?”

She stared at him in uneasy interrogation. “What's it all about? They wouldn't have been stolen. I simply don't understand.”

“Run along, run along!” said Max Potter with explosive vehemence. “Do what he tells you and stop asking damn fool questions.”

She answered viciously: “Don't speak to me like that. I'm not one of your students.”

“Just about as ignorant as most of them,” he retorted. “Run along. Don't you understand, girl, his question's so ridiculous there's quite possibly something behind it?”

“Please,” said Toby, “try and find out for me. It may be important.”

Reluctantly she rose to her feet. “But I don't understand. Lou wasn't murdered for the sake of a couple of vases. It's absurd.”

“My God, my God!” shouted Max Potter.

At that Druna faded away.

Max Potter tossed a packet of Woodbines to Toby.

“Don't ask me questions,” he said. “I shan't answer them.”

“O.K.” Toby stuck a cigarette into his mouth, tossed back the packet and set off across the lawn towards Mr and Mrs Fry. Max Potter's babyish eyes opened wide in an expression of surprise and chagrin.

The Frys were in the middle of a discussion when Toby strolled up to them.

“If we could be of any use to Eve,” Mrs Fry was saying, “I should of course say: ‘Let us remain.' But seriously, my dear Dolphie, what can we do for her? Good morning, Mr Dyke. Tell me, can you think of any usefulness in our staying on at Wilmer's End? It seems to me we're probably only in the way.”

“Eve hasn't said we're in the way,” said Mr Fry peevishly.

Mrs Fry answered sharply: “Neither has she said we're welcome.”

“But it isn't Eve's way to say things of that kind anyway,” said the old man. “I've no doubt myself, Nelia, that she's relying on you a great deal at the present moment and that to go home would be very selfish of us.”

Mrs Fry laughed a mellow, mocking laugh. “You've never had the slightest understanding of Eve, Dolphie.” She turned to Toby. “I brought Eve up, Mr Dyke, for much the same reason that I'm bringing up her daughter. She's almost a daughter to me, though perhaps it's I who have awareness of that fact rather than Eve herself. Not that I'm blaming her. We're all of us made the way we are, and the way that Eve's made is almost exactly the same way as her poor mother. Eugenie was a very beautiful but very foolish woman. She had talents, as Eve has, but she wasted them. She was younger than I, yet when I was only in my first year at Girton she was already married. She had deep emotional potentialities but she ruined them by cheapness and frivolity and cynicism. Eve, I think, has a naturally harder temperament than her mother's, yet at times she brings Eugenie back to me so vividly that I could weep with regret for the way that waste can repeat itself. And when I think of Vanessa…”

Her husband broke in impatiently: “Well, are we going home or are we not?”

She gave him a thoughtful glance. “You think we ought to stay, do you, Dolphie?”

“Oh, I know it makes no difference what I say,” he answered on the same shrill note of irritation, “but in my opinion it would be selfish to——”

“Vanessa!” Mrs Fry suddenly called out.

Toby looked over his shoulder and saw that Vanessa and George, hand in hand, had appeared in the doorway of the dining room.

“Vanessa!” called Mrs Fry.

But deep in conversation, Vanessa and George wandered away round the corner of the house.

Mrs Fry looked annoyed. In a tone that was noticeably stiffer than that of a moment before she said: “I hope, Mr Dyke, that that friend of yours is suitable company for a child.”

“Oh, rather,” said Toby, “kids always take to George.”

“Children sometimes take to things that are not particularly good for them.”

“Who doesn't?” said Toby.

“You mustn't be offended,” she said gravely. “I've nothing against your friend. Only Vanessa has had such a——” She hesitated. In a tone that was obviously intended to be recognized as understatement she added: “Vanessa has had an unfortunate start in life.”

“Now, Nelia, for goodness' sake,” said Dolphie Fry, “will you fix your mind for a moment on this not unimportant point of whether we're going home or remaining here? Because if we
are
remaining——”

“If you're sure that we ought to remain, Dolphie,” she said, “then, of course, we will.”

He looked at her as if he could hardly believe his ears.

“I was going to say,” he said, “that if we
are
remaining, then there are a few odd jobs about the house that I'll get on with. There are various little things I promised Eve I'd do for her. There's a switch that's gone wrong and a cupboard that won't shut and a few little things like that. I could quite well get on with them now. But, of course, if I've got to go and pack…”

“You haven't got to do anything, Dolphie.” She spoke in an extraordinarily tired voice. “Why don't you ever make up your own mind about something?”

“Very well,” he said in a decisive tone, “we shall stay. I'm certain we're doing right, Nelia.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Where Eve's concerned we seem so seldom to have done right.” Her eyes, as he rose and set off towards the house, followed his thin and unimpressive figure with a weariness that gave her strong face pathos. In a soft and expressionless voice she remarked to Toby: “We were talking of waste, weren't we, Mr Dyke? Probably among your own acquaintances, among those you love, there are cases of pitiful waste. They're unbelievably common. That man was once considered an engineer of great promise.”

Toby inquired: “What made him give it up?”

“Lack of ambition, I suppose. And I happened to have a little money, enough for the two of us to live on in reasonable comfort. Great riches have often been recognized as a curse, Mr Dyke, but even three hundred and fifty pounds a year can operate in that particular way. But now tell me, have you formed any opinions on this terrible thing that's happened amongst us?”

“Several,” said Toby, “but they're only opinions.”

“Ah, you're wise. If more people realized that opinions are only opinions this world would be a quieter place. They tell me you used to know poor Lou quite well.”

Toby nodded. At that moment he saw Druna come out of the house and stand on the terrace, looking round for him.

“So did I,” said Mrs Fry. “She was a great favourite of ours, such a simple and sincere girl, so different from—so different from some of her friends. She had such a candid quality. Good morning, Druna, what a pretty dress that is you're wearing.”

Druna said to Toby: “Mrs Fry was complaining yesterday that there were too many trousers about. So I've gone womanly today just to please her.” She smiled insolently at Mrs Fry. “You're wanted on the telephone, Mr Dyke.”

“The inspector?” said Toby. He got to his feet, excused himself to Mrs Fry and ran into the house. He was just turning away from a telephone which he had found uncommunicatively upon its stand when Druna came up to him.

“You weren't really wanted,” she said. She said it in a hard, angry voice. There was anxiety in her eyes, and nervous restlessness had taken the place of her rather statuesque composure. “I wanted to get you away from that old bitch to tell you that you were right. The vases are gone. But I don't understand how you could guess they were. You weren't even certain of their existence. How did you know?” She gazed at him resentfully and repeated: “How?”

“How did you find out they were gone?” asked Toby.

“The woman who sometimes cleans up the flat for us has a key. She lives in the basement. I just telephoned her to go up and look round. Incidentally, she told me the police have been there this morning.”

“Listen,” said Toby, “don't tell anyone about this.”

“But how did you know——?”

“Hullo!” Toby interrupted her abruptly as a figure went past the window. “That's Gillett. Where's he off to again? Is that the direction of his cottage?”

She said shrilly: “But how did you know?”

“Where's his cottage?” said Toby impatiently. “Is that the way he's going?”

“Why, no,” she said, “his cottage is out behind. But, for heaven's sake, will you tell me how you knew that——?”

But Toby had snatched up the telephone and was demanding the police station.

“Listen, Druna,” he said hurriedly as, with the instrument to his ear, he waited for Vanner's reply. “Don't tell anyone about those vases. See? Not even the person you want to talk to most. Anyway, not until I tell you. Hullo, Vanner! Look here, young Gillett's on his way into Larking—just left here.”

“Where's here?” asked Vanner from the other end.

“Wilmer's End.”

“What are you doing there?”

“I was asked to stay.”

“Some folk don't care whom they have in their houses.”

“Listen,” said Toby, “Gillett will probably arrive in Larking in about twenty minutes. I should think he's on his way to whatever pub Roger Clare's put up at. If you want to question him get him before he and Clare see one another. But listen, Vanner, I'm on my way into Larking too. Don't start on him till I get there. … No, I tell you, don't start on him till I arrive.”

He put down the telephone.

Druna, standing near the door, was watching him with the same look of anxious and resentful speculation. As he crossed to the door she stepped in front of it.

“How did you know those vases existed? How did you know they'd be gone? What else do you know?”

Toby took her by the arms and moved her firmly out of his way.

“I might tell you,” he said, “if you could tell me why Lou needed thirty pounds.”

Thrusting past her, he set off walking fast towards the town.

L
arking is a town of one street and a market square. It has a church and a couple of chapels, also two cinemas, a small and far from flourishing repertory theatre, a few slums and a few suburbs. Its police station is rather impressive. Seven wide steps lead up to its entrance, and it has a stone portico carved with serpents and satyrs' heads.

Toby found Vanner seated at a desk with a flushed Colin Gillett facing him across it.

That Vanner as well as Gillett was in a bad temper was easily explained by the things that Gillett was saying to him. In a clear and biting tone, with a fluency acquired, probably, by hours of discussion over tables in the cheaper restaurants of Soho, Gillett was informing Vanner that his action in bringing him here was merely another proof that Fascism was already dominant in England.

Toby sat down and waited.

After a while Vanner turned to him. “I only asked him where he went last night,” he said, “and he goes and brings a lot of politics into it. Tell him I've never had anything to do with politics, they're not my line. When election time comes round I vote for Sir Archibald and that's good enough for me.”

“Thought I told you, Vanner,” said Toby, “not to start on him till I turned up.”

“Orders?” said Vanner with heavy irony.

“Just good advice. And you, Gillett,” said Toby, “stop being a damn fool. You and I may agree that dear old Vanner here would have the time of his life in the Gestapo, but that's got nothing to do with the murder of Lou Capell.”

“Neither has where I was last night,” said Colin Gillett.

“You were at the Victor Hildebrand Institute last night?”

“Yes, in my laboratory.”

“The real point of interest, however,” said Toby, “is where you were yesterday afternoon.”

“Yesterday afternoon?” A change came over the young man. Suddenly it became apparent that his face was an uncommonly intelligent one, acute and thoughtful. But when he replied it was to Vanner that he spoke, not Toby. “A dozen people can tell you where I was yesterday afternoon.”

“Where?” said Toby.

Still to Vanner Gillett replied: “At Wilmer's End.”

“From when until when?” said Toby.

“And what made you go there, eh?” said Vanner.

Gillett looked amused. “Honestly, I don't know why I go there. They're a dull crowd without a handful of brains among them.”

“Does that apply to Max Potter?” said Toby.

Colin Gillett shrugged. “One-track brilliance,” he said. “Old Potter
is
brilliant in his way, but on the personal side he's completely undeveloped. Odd, though—he plays the piano extraordinarily well, particularly when he's tight. You should hear him playing Schumann when he's tight.”

Vanner broke in, blustering: “I didn't ask to be told why you
go
to Wilmer's End, whether it's to play the piano or to play the fool. I asked you why you
went
there—why you went there yesterday afternoon.”

“And when?” said Toby. “Don't forget when.”

Colin Gillett looked from one to the other. Slowly, with the effect of picking his words, he replied: “I went up sometime after lunch, I'm not sure when. My clock at the cottage is hardly ever right.”

“Well, roughly then,” said Toby.

“Roughly, half-past two, quarter to three.”

“And why?” said Vanner.

“My God, why does one go anywhere?” said Gillett. “I like my own company quite well, but now and then one wants a change, even if the only change one can get is the sort of crowd they collect at Wilmer's End.”

“You'd no special object in going there yesterday afternoon?” said Toby.

Again a speculative look preceded carefully chosen words. “I don't know how special an object has to be for you to call it a special object.”

“Special, say, in the way of wanting to give a message to some particular person.”

“What the hell's at the back of your mind?” said Colin Gillett. “Why can't you say it straight out?”

“We're asking you perfectly straight questions,” said Toby.

Vanner thrust his face towards Gillett. “You aren't doing yourself any good, young man, by all this evasiveness. Why did you clear out last night? You still haven't given me a satisfactory answer to that.”

An expression of disdain, masquerading as an almost superhuman restraint and tolerance, took the place of the frown on the young man's face. “Listen,” he said in
a
precise, cold voice, “I am, by profession, a plant physiologist. I have a grant of a hundred and fifty pounds a year at the Victor Hildebrand Institute. I am a research worker.” He paused and inquired: “Have you understood me so far?”

Vanner nodded.

“Very well, then. For the last two years I have been working on the diurnal rhythm of stomatal aperture and the external factors to which this rhythm is related. Last night I was following the drift of stomatal aperture in the dark as it was affected by the interaction of temperature and atmospheric humidity. I was making these observations with a resistance porometer on which the readings for stomatal aperture are made on a manometer which is placed in the resistance circuit of the porometer.”

“Just so, just so,” said Vanner hastily, “but what I want to know is——”

The cold, precise, lecture-room tone bore him down. “Throughout the dark period I had to observe the differences in level of the fluid in the two limbs of the manometer at intervals of ten minutes.” By now there was discreet triumph in Colin Gillett's eyes. “You understand fully, I hope, Inspector, why I spent the night in the laboratory?”

Vanner's gaze was glassy. Without waiting for the storm that was gathering there to burst, Toby drawled: “What
I
don't understand is why it happened to be just last night you had to spend there.”

“Last night happened to be the night I'd decided on.”

Toby turned to Vanner. “Scientific detachment,” he said. “You now know everything.”

“Everything there is to know,” said Colin Gillett.

“Except what a porometer and manometer get up to in the dark. You know, Vanner, this is turning out a waste of time.”

Vanner turned weary eyes upon him. “Good at wasting my time, aren't you, Dyke? Suppose you leave me to do my own work next time. Mr Gillett…” He paused. His tone, when he resumed, was wonderfully casual. “Mr Gillett, do you at any time in your work use brucine?”

Toby turned his head sharply to stare at the impersonal face of the inspector.

Gillett, with a simple, grave interest, replied: “Yes, I do.”

“What d'you use it for?”

“Oh, you'd find it in most physiological laboratories. It's used in the detection of nitrates. It's not very common.”

“Same sort of thing as strychnine, isn't it?”

“Well, I should think it'd produce the same sort of symptoms.”

“Comes from the same plant, doesn't it?—Strychnos nux-vomica?”

Colin Gillett nodded.

“Thank you, Mr Gillett. That's all for the present.”

The young man rose. There was hesitation in his movements as he went to the door. It looked as if he might be about to stop, come back and tell the inspector something that was on his mind. But he did not stop, and Toby was left alone with Vanner.

In the silence that followed Vanner wore a self-conscious air. He tapped with his pencil on the desk in front of him and then, as Toby did not speak, started to draw a large V on the blotting paper.

At length: “Well,” said Toby, “it was brucine.”

“That's right,” said Vanner.

“Go on,” said Toby. “What are you keeping back?”

“I've been keeping back a pack of bloody journalists half the morning. And the chief constable.”

“That's part of your natural functions.”

Vanner grinned. “You know, Dyke, this is quite a simple case, now that we know the motive. Not your style.”

“You know the motive?”

“That's right. And it's quite a straightforward business, not your kind of thing at all.”

“Thanks very much. Now go ahead and tell me what you know.”

Vanner sighed. “Well, for one thing she was last seen to use that Breathynne stuff—I've had this from several people—about four o'clock. Then she went indoors to get some drinks, and then she disappeared, presumably to meet Clare at the cottage. And those same people all say she was clutching that bag as if she'd a fortune in it; they swear she never put it down for a moment.”

“Go on.”

“For another thing,” said Vanner, “there are no fingerprints but her own on the bottle.”

“Go on.”

“For a third thing, she was going to have a baby.”

He waited.

Toby looked out of the window.

Vanner supplemented what he had said: “About ten weeks gone. And I think I see my way right through this case, Dyke—right through it.”

“You've thought that before, Vanner, and landed in a mess. Tell me what's behind this brucine business.”

It sounded as if Vanner were trying not to laugh as he replied: “Oh, it was brucine did it. You heard what sort of stuff brucine is; there's nothing I can add.”

“Oh no, nothing. After all, there's a research institute in the neighbourhood, and the place is simply crawling with scientists, and even the publisher in the case is one who runs a strong line in popular science and may know something about it—there are lots of people, simply lots of 'em, who may know all about brucine, so there's no reason why I should bother you about it. But, all the same, why does a man like your sergeant happen to know all about it?”

“How d'you mean?”

“That chap Widdison,” said Toby, “heard your sergeant Gurr suggesting to you and the doctor that the poison might be brucine. Well, why did that happen? What had put brucine right in the forefront of the good sergeant's thinking processes?”

Vanner shook his head. “I don't see why he shouldn't have heard of brucine. Gurr's a pretty intelligent fellow. He's a great hand at wireless; made sets for dozens of people in Larking.”

“Vanner,” said Toby wearily, “one doesn't go detecting nitrates in the middle of a wireless set. How was it Gurr had heard of brucine?”

Vanner snapped peevishly back at him: “Why the hell shouldn't he? We aren't completely uneducated in the force, whatever the high and mighty Mr Dyke thinks of us.”

With a swift movement Toby was on his feet.

“All right,” he said, “that's enough, that's enough. You're a fool, Vanner, and you're going to make a bigger one out of yourself than you are already. I know how you're looking at this case, and you're wrong. I'd some things to tell you, but…” With a shrug he turned to the door.

Vanner jumped to his feet. “Hey, Dyke, wait a minute! If you're holding back evidence——”

“You've all the evidence I've got—well, nearly all—but you aren't doing so much thinking about it.”

“If you've found out anything it's your duty to tell me of it.”

“Ah, but if I've
thought
out anything I can keep it to myself till you've got both your big feet right in the middle of a beautiful mess. Good-bye, Vanner.”

When Toby came out of the police station he stood still for a moment on the edge of the pavement. Almost next door to the police station was The Red Lion. Straight across the road was The Dolphin. Thirty yards or so away was The Fair Maid of Larking. Lines of indecision creased Toby's brow. His gaze went this way and that.

However, since The Dolphin looked expensive and pretentious and The Fair Maid was relatively distant there was really not much of a problem. Toby turned in at the swing doors of The Red Lion.

But he took those sharp creases on his forehead inside with him.

There were several men playing darts and two or three engaged in conversation with the grave, elderly barmaid. Toby ordered his pint, bought cigarettes and settled himself in one corner. His eyes followed the whang of the darts. Presently he gulped down two thirds of his drink, felt in his pockets, brought out a pencil and a tattered envelope and began to write. He wrote:

“Why is Eve in a bad temper? Why did Eve want me to stay? Why wasn't she interested in that contraption in her bedroom? Whom was she going away with? Why are her nerves so bad? Why is Colin Gillett terrified? Why did Lou take so long to go down to the cottage? Why was my cheque removed from Lou's bag? Why…?”

His pencil hovered above that last word for a moment, and his gaze lost its concentration. Then he finished the sentence: “Why should any woman fall in love with Max Potter?”

He looked at this with an owlish but inattentive seriousness while his pencil slowly elaborated the last question mark into a heart pierced with an arrow.

But suddenly he put a heavy, impatient stroke through the sentence, pocketed the envelope, swallowed the rest of his drink and went out. The men round the darts board called out good morning. Toby answered good morning, but it was already in the street that the words sounded.

Like Jeptha's daughter hastening to be the first to greet her father George came dashing out of the house as Toby returned to it. A car had been left square across the gateway; it had been there when Toby left and belonged, presumably, to Max Potter. It was a car in the ultimate stage of decay.

“Tobe,” said George, “I've found another of 'em.”

Toby circled the body of the ancient car. “Another what?”

“Murder trap that don't work. Come up and look at it.”

“This house,” said Toby, “wants putting in an asylum. I mean the house itself. I'm beginning to think this sort of insanity must crop out of the bricks and mortar.”

They went upstairs. It was to Toby's own bedroom that George led him. George crossed to the dressing table and put his hand on the knob of a drawer.