She Died a Lady (8 page)

(Rita, Rita, Rita!)

‘But as I was saying to Sir Henry, I’m going to have a packet of trouble on my hands with this case. I want to try my hand at it. And if there’s any advice you could give me, I’d appreciate it a very great deal.

‘You see how it stands. Two persons were shot as they stood on the very edge of a cliff. The murderer couldn’t have climbed up or down that cliff. Presumably he couldn’t fly. Yet he approached them and got away without leaving a footprint on that whole expanse of soil. If we hadn’t found the weapon later, it would have been a perfect crime passing as a double suicide. It may be a perfect crime even yet. I’d be interested to hear what you think about it.’

H.M.’s cigar had gone out. He blinked at it in a displeased way, and turned the stump round in his fingers.

‘Y’know,’ he observed. ‘I once told Masters –’

‘Chief Inspector Masters?’

‘That’s right. I once told Masters he had a habit of getting tangled up in the goddamnedest cases I ever heard tell of. It seems to me the Devon County Constabulary can qualify for nearly as high marks. And yet I dunno. There’s reason in this. Cold reason,’ he brooded. ‘What I want is facts;
all
the facts. So far all I’ve had is a sketchy account from Paul Ferrars, when we thought it was suicide. What’s the rest of the story?’

‘Will you tell him about it, Dr Croxley? You’ve followed it from the beginning.’

I was only too glad.

If Rita had been murdered, I felt towards her murderer a black hatred – a personal vindictiveness – beyond anything Christian charity allows. I was thinking, too, of Alec collapsed and fainting in the hall. So I started at the beginning, and told the story pretty much as I have outlined it in this narrative.

Though it was a long recital, they did not seem to find it tedious. We were interrupted only twice. The first time was when Paul Ferrars arrived to claim his guest. He was chased away by H.M. with more lurid language than a man usually employs towards his host; but Ferrars only grinned and retired. On the second occasion, Mrs Harping, my housekeeper, came bowling down the path with a hand-bell to say that lunch was ready.

Mrs Harping is indispensable. She bosses us and doses us – there is something odd about the spectacle of two doctors meekly swallowing home-remedies – and washes our shirts and cooks our meals. It required some firmness to say I wanted two extra plates added for lunch, the meal to be served here under the apple-tree, at a time when food was just beginning to get scarce. But I got my way, and finished telling the story after the cloth was cleared.

‘Well, sir?’ prompted Craft. ‘Does anything strike you?’

H.M., who had been occupied with the steering-handle of the wheel-chair, turned his sharp little eyes sideways.

‘Oh, my son! Lots of things. The first point – but we’ll let that go, for the moment. There’s other points almost as interesting.’

He sat silent for a moment, ruffling his hands across his big bald head.

‘
Imprimis
, gents, why did somebody have to let the petrol out of the cars as well as cuttin’ the telephone-wires?’

‘Assuming,’ I said, ‘that the person who did it was the murderer?’

‘Assuming it was anybody you like. What was the purpose of it? Was he tryin’ to prevent discovery of a crime which nobody was supposed to spot as a crime? But how? You weren’t at the North Pole. You were less than half a dozen miles from a police station. Discovery couldn’t have been prevented. Why call attention to the possibility of hokey-pokey in a perfectly straightforward suicide-pact?’

‘It might have been done by Johnson.’

‘Sure. But I’ll lay you ducats to an old shoe it wasn’t.’

‘And the next point?’

‘That’s a part of the same foolishness. As our friend Craft says, this murderer has got away with a practically perfect crime. Then the silly dummy goes and chucks the gun down in a public road where it’ll probably be found. Unless –’

‘Unless what?’

H.M. brooded.

‘I could bear to hear a lot more about that gun. For instance.’ He blinked at me. ‘When you found the petrol let out of the cars, you set out and foot-slogged to Lyncombe after a telephone. You must have walked by that very same road where Mr Grange later found the automatic. Did you notice it?’

‘No; but that’s not surprising. I’d dropped and lost the Wainrights’ electric torch. That road was pretty dark.’

H.M. attacked Craft.

‘Well, then!’ he persisted. ‘You went out there with a squad of coppers, in a car. You must have had lights. You got there, you’ve been tellin’ me, about a quarter to one. Still some time before the thing was found. Did
you
see the ruddy gun?’

‘No. Nothing odd in that either, sir. We were driving in the opposite direction, on the other side of the road.’

‘Phooey!’ said H.M., puffing out his cheeks in a richly sinister way, and sitting back to contemplate us fishily. He folded his hands across his corporation and twiddled his thumbs. ‘I don’t say there’s anything rummy in it, you understand. All I want, burn me, is information! Next, that alleged suicide-note. Have you got it?’

From between the leaves of his notebook Craft took out the paper. It was only, as I have said, a little slip torn from the kitchen memorandum-pad and scrawled on with the pencil that went with it. It said:

Juliet died a lady. No recriminations. No putting it off. I love everybody. Good-bye
.

H.M. read the words aloud, and I had to put up a hand to shade my eyes. He regarded me sombrely.

‘Dr Croxley, have you seen this?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it in Mrs Wainwright’s handwriting?’

‘It is and it isn’t. I should say yes: that it’s her handwriting under very strong emotion.’

‘Looky here, Doctor.’ H.M. was powerfully embarrassed. ‘I can see you were fond of this gal. I’m not askin’ these things out of idle curiosity. Do you think Mrs Wainright meant to kill herself?’

‘Yes.’

‘If you’ll excuse me, sir,’ burst out Superintendent Craft, whacking his fist down on his knee, ‘that’s just it. That’s the real puzzler. That’s what gets me. If those two were going to kill themselves anyway, why murder ’em?’

This was a point I had been trying to put clearly myself. But H.M. shook his head.

‘Nothing much to that, son. Not necessarily, I mean. They could have meant to kill themselves, and lost their nerve. The same thing has happened lots of times. Then a certain person, who’s determined to see ’em both dead, steps in and shoots. Only …’

He continued to scowl, ticking his thumb and second finger against the note, as some obscure thought bothered him like dyspepsia.

‘Let’s face it,’ he said. ‘This is what is humorously known to the press as a crime of passion. There’s no need to go star-gazin’ after motives. Somebody either (a) hated Mrs Wainright so much because she was carrying on with Sullivan, or (b) hated Sullivan so much because he was carrying on with Mrs Wainright, that both of ’em had to be knocked off.’

‘Looks like it, sir,’ agreed Craft.

‘Therefore we got to rake up scandal whether we like it or not. Speakin’ personally,’ observed H.M., with great candour, ‘I got a low mind and a great taste for scandal myself. According to what the doctor tells us, this Alec Wainright believed his wife had been carrying on with somebody long before she met the late lamented Sullivan.’

‘She swore to me –’ I began.

H.M. was apologetic.

‘Sure. I know. All the same, I’d like a bit of testimony that’s not quite so dewy-eyed and prejudiced as hers. When can we have a word with the husband?’

‘You’ll have to ask Tom about that. Not immediately, I should say, and possibly not for some time.’

‘In the meantime, did you ever hear anything about swoonin’ love-affairs?’

‘Never.’

H.M. blinked at Craft. ‘What about you, son?’

‘That’s not much in my line.’ The superintendent hesitated. ‘But I’m bound to admit I never heard anything against the lady. And things do get about, you know, in little places like this.’

‘What we want,’ said H.M., handing the suicide-note back to Craft, ‘is a woman’s touch in this, and a woman’s fine serene unconsciousness of the laws of slander. It’d interest me strangely to have a word with that gal there.’ He nodded his head in the direction of Molly Grange’s house. ‘She strikes me as bein’ a sensible bit of goods, with her eyes open. What’s more, a little
causerie
with her father –’

‘We could go over there now,’ Craft suggested. He consulted his watch. ‘It’s pretty late in the afternoon, and Mr Grange ought to be home before long.’

H.M. fumbled at the side of the wheel-chair. The whirl of the motor throbbed out against stillness, growing to its steady
pop-pop-pop
which carried as far as the High Street. It had an instant response. Ears were on the alert, tails quivered, bodies grew tense. A distant din of barking rose in challenge. H.M. squinted round evilly.

‘Grr, you little blighters!’ he said. Then his sense of grievance bubbled up. ‘Looky here, son: I got a protest to make. Can’t you for the flamin’ love of Esau do something about those ruddy
DOGS
?’

It was evident that Superintendent Craft found the great man sometimes difficult to deal with.

‘You’ll be all right, sir, if you just take it slowly! I told you yesterday, when you were cutting figure-eights on Mr Ferrars’ lawn –’

‘I’m a mild-mannered bloke,’ said H.M., ‘known far and wide for the urbanity of my temper and the ease of my bearing. I love animals like St Francis of Assisi, blast their ears. But fair’s fair and enough’s enough. Those faithful friends of man out there nearly made me break my neck this morning. If I got to go through this business like a Russian grand duke in a sleigh pursued by wolves, I say it’s a goddam persecution.’

‘I’ll go ahead of you, and keep them off.’

‘Then there’s another thing,’ said H.M. very quietly. ‘When we see the gal down there’ – again he nodded towards Molly’s – ‘what are we going to tell her? People still think the thing was a suicide-pact. Do we let on it’s murder yet, or do we keep it up our sleeves?’

Craft rubbed his chin.

‘I don’t very well see how we can keep it back, he decided. ‘There’ll be the inquest on Wednesday anyway. And if we want to learn anything beforehand –’

‘Let her have it straight, then?’

‘I should say so, yes.’

H.M. bumped up the garden path like a man on a pogo-stick, and navigated the distance pretty well. The Granges – father, mother, and daughter – live in a modest house, very trim and tidy. The long bay windows of the sitting-room stood open; somebody was playing a piano inside.

When we had hoisted H.M. up the front step, a trim maid admitted us to the hall and then the sitting-room. The furnishing of that white room showed means and taste. In Steve Grange’s house, nothing was ever untidy or out of place. Molly, looking surprised to see us, got up from the grand piano in the bay windows.

All three of us, I think, were a little uncertain and inclined to clear our throats. Eventually, I was the goat who spoke.

‘Molly,’ I said, ‘you told me this morning you had some ideas about this unfortunate business. Rita Wainright and Barry Sullivan, I mean. You had something you wanted to show me.

‘Oh, that!’ said Molly, without interest. She reached down with one finger and plinked at a treble key on the piano. ‘I was wrong about that, Dr Luke. I – I’m rather glad I was wrong. It was beastly.’

‘But what was it you wanted to show me?’

‘Nothing,’ replied Molly. ‘Only an old puzzle-book.’

‘Wow!’ said H.M., with such lively interest that we all turned towards him. Molly flashed him a quick glance, and then fell to tapping at the piano keys again. ‘I wonder if we were thinking of the same puzzle? But it won’t work, my gal. It’s too easy. Burn me, if only it
were
as easy as that!’ H.M. groaned and shook his fist. ‘All the same, I wonder if we were thinking of the same puzzle?’

Somewhere at the back of my mind, hazy and tantalizing, drifted a recollection that someone else in this affair had once mentioned puzzles in some way. I could not place it.

‘I wonder too,’ smiled Molly. ‘But please sit down! I’ll go and call mother. She’s only in the garden.’

‘We’d rather you didn’t do that, miss,’ said Superintendent Craft in a sepulchral voice. ‘Our business is with you alone.’

Molly laughed a little.

‘Well!’ she said rather breathlessly, and plumped down on the piano-bench. ‘Do sit down anyway! What was it you wanted?’

‘Do you mind if I close the doors, miss?’

‘No, not at all. What on earth … ?’

Craft performed the ritual. When he did take a chair, balancing his long body on the edge of it, he spoke with the same sepulchral earnestness.

‘Miss, I want you to prepare yourself for a good bit of a shock.’

‘Yes?’

‘Mrs Wainright and Mr Sullivan didn’t commit suicide. They weren’t even drowned. They were both deliberately murdered.’

Silence. A clock on the mantelpiece ticked faintly.

It was more than a shock to the girl: you could see that. Her lips opened. Her hands fell, without sound, on the piano keys. The blue eyes moved towards me for confirmation, and I nodded my head. When Molly spoke, it was in a low and husky voice.

‘Where?’ she asked.

‘On the edge of the cliff.’

‘They were
murdered
,’ Molly repeated incredulously, ‘on the edge of the
cliff
?’

As she said the word ‘murdered’, Molly craned round to glance at the net-curtained windows, as though afraid she might be overheard in the street.

‘That’s right, miss.’

‘But that’s impossible! They were alone. There weren’t any footprints except theirs. Or at least that’s what I was told.’

Craft remained patient. ‘We know that right enough, miss. But it’s true. They were killed by somebody who seems to be able to float in the air. I’ll ask you to keep that strictly private and confidential for the moment. Still, there it is. And we thought you might be able to help us.’

‘How were they – killed?’

‘They were shot. Didn’t you hear about the .32 automatic that … ?’