Rehearsals for Murder (5 page)

“It was you got him off!” said Vanner furiously.

“Because, guilty or not, you'd made it impossible for him to have a fair trial. You'd given away all the facts of his past life to the papers. Every man on that jury knew he'd had several convictions; they knew about his relations with those two women—everything. The whole country was screaming for his blood before the trial ever came off.”

“The man was guilty! You got the case dismissed on a technicality!”

“And you were pretty severely reprimanded, weren't you, Vanner? And I was damn glad to see it. I've sat in police courts too often and seen the inspector gently waving a piece of coloured paper to and fro; he isn't allowed to mention a man's previous convictions till after the verdict, but those bits of coloured paper are the forms on which previous convictions are recorded, and the fact that there's a bit of coloured paper being fluttered around so artlessly in the inspector's fingers tells the bench all it needs to know. I've seen that a good many times, and I don't like it. But”—and he suddenly smiled broadly—“you know, when I write this case up I'd quite like reminding the public that the inspector in charge was the same one who made such a mess of the Balder business.”

Vanner's face had flushed, and his mouth was working.

Toby held the pencil out to him as if it and the offer he was about to make went together. He said softly: “Of course, we needn't mention Balder. We needn't say anything about it at all if I'm about the place and can make sure you don't make another silly mistake like that one.”

Vanner reached for the pencil. His hand met empty air.

“What about it, Vanner?”

Vanner muttered something to himself. Then his wide shoulders relaxed dispiritedly, and he said: “All I can say is, I hope your story checks up. Well, what d'you want to know?”

“All that's happened and all you've been getting out of these
people.”

“
Give me back that pencil, damn you!
”

Toby sent it rolling across the table towards him. Vanner drew a large V on a piece of paper and, as if that had rehabilitated his self-esteem, began his account of the evening.

He began with his own arrival. He described his entry by the window. He ran over his conversation with Charlie Widdison. Toby's long legs were stretched out before him, his sharp chin dug into his chest, but his keen, black eyes never wavered from Vanner's sluggish-looking grey ones. The inspector's tone was monotonous, but his story was accurate; it left nothing out. Toby seemed satisfied and asked no questions.

But suddenly he interrupted explosively: “The letter, Vanner—let's look at the letter!”

“I was just about to explain,” said Vanner, “that as her door was locked—she'd locked it when she undressed to have her bath—and as she was carrying that bottle of Breathynne round in her handbag and as the handbag was in her room, the strychnine or whatever it was must have been substituted for the Breathynne before she went up to her room. So the question is, when was she last seen to use the Breathynne without any ill effects? The substitution must have been done after that and before she went upstairs. Mrs Clare thinks she saw her use it about four o'clock——”

“Yes, yes,” said Toby, “but let's see the letter.”

Vanner handed it across to him. “D'you know her writing, Dyke?”

“Oh yes, this is Lou's writing.” Grimness and pity were in Toby's face. “A child's scrawl. You know, Vanner, there's no point in my making a song and dance about it, but I'm probably angrier than I've ever been in my life.” With his mouth pulled crooked in a strange grimace and with his eyes clouded, he settled back to read the letter.

It ran:

Dear Eve, I know it is terribly silly of me to write to you when I am here in the same house with you, and you will say it is just childish and silly of me. I know that is what it is, but I have been trying to make myself talk to you and cannot do it. I am too much of a coward and you are rather a frightening person. I don
'
t exactly mean frightening, but I am afraid of trying to talk to you. And this is such an awful thing I have to tell you, I could not tell it even to Roger, and I know him better than I do you. But now it is better I should write to you than Roger. I daresay he will tell you why—anyway, it doesn't matter. Perhaps, too, just because I am so afraid of telling you about this it is right that you should be the person. I have done such an awful thing. I don't expect you will be able to forgive me. But I want to assure you that I am going to pay for it myself and not get any of it from you as was intended. I have collected all the money and can pay for it and I think that will make everything all right, and you will not have to worry. Only I know there is a risk that the money will not make any difference. But I don
'
t think this is really a risk; I think it will be all right.

I have betrayed your confidence.

Those last five words came at the bottom of the page. The full stop at the end of them was extraordinarily large and dark, as if at that point Lou had sat staring at what she had written—staring and thinking and delaying and inking—the same full stop over and over again.

Watching Toby as he sat with his head bent over the letter, Vanner said: “The way I look at it is this: she'd come to the point in the letter where she'd got to start on the actual confession of whatever it was. And so, to clear her head and maybe put the job off a minute or two, she thought she'd dose her nose with that stuff.”

“And she did it and died.” Toby handed the letter back to the inspector. “I expect you're right. Has Mrs Clare seen it?”

“I was just going to show it her when you and Clare burst in.”

“Well, suppose you show it to her now. Wait!”—as Vanner's hand went out to the bell. “Suppose you show it to her and Clare together. People aren't usually as good at lying in front of someone they know as they are when they're by themselves.”

“You're expecting her to lie, are you?”

“Well, Lou says she'd betrayed Mrs Clare's confidence. Seems likely she won't want to betray it to us herself.”

Vanner tilted his chair back, giving Toby a curious look. “You know, there are several ways of interpreting that letter.”

“Of course there are,” said Toby. “All the same”—impatiently he reached across Vanner and pushed the bell himself—“let's have our Eve and Roger in together.”

Together, a few minutes later, Eve and Roger Clare appeared. Together they seated themselves, together regarded the face worn at that moment by the law that had taken command of their house. Together they waited for whatever the law desired of them. But their separateness was like a sign on their brows.

Eve had a cigarette in her mouth; she was almost gobbling it up. In strong contrast to the nervous alertness of her whole body was the composure of Roger's. Her nervousness, his composure, they seemed to share nothing with one another, neither to draw support nor to be frayed, stirred or thrown off balance by one another.

Without any comment Vanner handed Lou's letter to Eve. When, after a swift reading of it, she looked up he gestured that she should pass it to Roger. Roger took it, read it, frowned, reread it. Eve sat bolt upright, the cigarette gripped by her tense, scarlet lips.

Roger made a motion to hand the letter on to Toby, but Toby said: “I've read it.”

Vanner took it. “That letter,” he said, “that first half of a letter, was found in Miss Capell's bedroom on the writing table there. Mr Dyke confirms that the writing is Miss Capell's.”

Roger Clare nodded. Eve stared past Vanner at an open window.

Roger Clare raised a hand to finger his firm chin. “Is there no second half to this letter?”

“No,” said Vanner.

“It's possible,” said Roger Clare, “that it might be best not to take it too seriously.” He looked up at Toby who was standing behind Vanner, one shoulder propped against a window frame. “You knew Lou, didn't you, Dyke? You'll bear me out, I think, when I say that although she was honest as the day, as utterly sincere a creature as you could find anywhere, she'd a very naїve and unrealistic view of things.”

“Suppose,” said Toby, “we put that on her tombstone.”

Roger Clare frowned. It was the slight frown of a man who is accustomed to having the slightest of frowns taken earnestly to heart. “I was going to say——”

“In marble, I think,” said Toby, “surmounted by a hand pointing upward.”

“I was going to say,” said Clare in a cold voice, “that Lou may have had an altogether exaggerated view of something she'd done. This intended confession may have been about something like—like borrowing a couple of three-halfpenny stamps without permission or—or something like that. Something, that's to say, that no one else has any knowledge of at all.”

Vanner was chewing his pencil. “All I can say is, Miss Capell's couple of three-halfpenny stamps cost Mr Dyke here fifteen pounds.”

At that point Eve Clare snatched the cigarette away from her lips, stabbed with it at an ash tray and exclaimed: “I don't know, I don't know anything about it at all!” Under her fierce fingers the cigarette was ground into a twist of tobacco shreds and mangled paper. Then she put one finger tip against her lip where the cigarette had rested and made a wry face; in wrenching the cigarette away from her dry lips she had torn away some skin. “Damn!” she said, and went on: “I can't think of anything Lou could have done that'd make this sort of letter necessary. She was a silly girl, silly and ignorant; I've already told you so. I expect Mr Clare's quite right; she'd exaggerated something she'd done into—into——Oh, in God's name,” cried Eve, jumping to her feet, “d'you think I murdered her to revenge myself because she didn't return a book she borrowed or broke one of my Danish glasses or something like that?”

“Or to stop her revealing something about you,” said Vanner.

“But the letter suggests,” said Roger Clare, “that she'd already revealed it.”

Eve sat down again. She was breathing fast. Her hands gripped the steel rods that made the arms of her chair. She barked at Vanner: “Are you accusing me of murder?”

“Certainly not.”

“Then——”

“Mrs Clare,” said Vanner, “we want your help. This girl was in the middle of writing a letter to you when she died. Can you—I ask you to consider very carefully indeed—can you tell us anything that may help us to understand?”

“No,” she answered. “No, no, no! I tell you, I haven't the faintest idea what it's all about.”

Vanner hesitated uncertainly. He snatched a glance behind him at Toby. Toby had seated himself on the window sill and was scowling down at the toes of his shoes.

Eve demanded: “Is there anything else you want to ask me?”

“No, Mrs Clare,” said Vanner, “not at the moment. But I want to ask your husband——”

She rose. “If you don't mind, then, I'll go and see how my aunt's managing with Vanessa. You can question Mr Clare without me.”

She went swiftly from the room.

Toby raised his head. “Well, Clare, what's your story?”

But Roger Clare, rocking himself very slightly backwards and forwards on his heels, was regarding the door through which Eve had just passed with an expression of puzzled uncertainty. Raising a hand, he carefully smoothed the hair on the top of his head. Then the hand travelled a second time over the sleek hair.

“Inspector——” He drew his breath in sharply. “Inspector, I think I know what you want to ask me. …”

“I want to go into the allegation made by Miss Merton,” said Vanner, “concerning the disguising of your voice on the telephone.”

“Yes, yes, the telephone.” Clare cleared his throat. “I hadn't realized it could appear important. I—I'll explain, of course. I'd hoped it wouldn't be necessary. I'm afraid I didn't speak the truth about it before.”

“I'm sorry to hear it.”

With slow strides Clare crossed the room and sat down.

“I've known Lou Capell a long time,” he said. “Some years. Four years, I think—ever since I took this house, in fact. I thought her charming. A direct and generous nature. I don't want you to think, in view of what I'm going to tell you, that I ever underestimated her remarkably fine qualities. We were good friends; she trusted me, often came to me for advice, confided in me. I appreciated it very much.”

Here Toby gave a groan.

“I beg your pardon?” said Clare.

“Go on,” said Toby.

“One of the things I liked best about her was her fondness for children. She had a natural understanding of them. She and Vanessa, my daughter, had a great affection for one another. It gave me the greatest pleasure. When I removed altogether from this house and settled into my London flat she sometimes used to bring the child up to town to visit me.”

Vanner put in: “Ever visit you without the child?”

“I was coming to that. Yes, occasionally I took her to the theatre.”

“Shakespeare or revue?” said Toby.

Anger blazed up in Clare's face.

“Sorry,” said Toby, “I just wanted to get the atmosphere of the emotional interchange. Which was it?”

“I generally picked something pleasant and entertaining which I thought she would enjoy. Why I'm telling you this is that I want you to understand the relationship that existed between us—as I myself understood it. Well, a short while ago she and I came to an arrangement about a summer holiday for Vanessa. Miss Capell had some relations who own a farm near Okehampton; the arrangement was that Vanessa should spend about a month with them. They have several children, and the companionship of other children has been a serious lack in my daughter's life. Her aunt and uncle are devoted to her but they're elderly and somewhat eccentric, so altogether I thought the change an excellent idea. Yesterday afternoon Miss Capell came to tea with me in order to——”