Speedy Death (11 page)

‘What?’

‘I’m sure it wasn’t. Mountjoy’s voice was low-pitched and rather harsh. But this voice was high and rather shrill. An absolute woman’s voice, if you understand me. Scared, you know. I’ve heard women in an air-raid during the war speak like it. Quite unlike a man in a funk.’

‘Well,’ interpolated Mrs Bradley, ‘that is quite comprehensible, I think. You startled Mountjoy badly, I expect, and so, in her terror lest you should enter and discover the secret that she had successfully kept for so many years, she shrieked at you in her normal instead of in her disguised voice.’

‘By Jove!’ cried Bertie, ‘I never thought of that! That would explain it, of course. Yes, that must be it. Jolly brainy of you to have thought that out, Mrs Bradley.’

‘Opinions differ,’ said Mrs Bradley dryly.

Some instinct prompted Carstairs to ask a question.

‘Philipson,’ he said; and then he hesitated, as if uncertain whether to continue or not.

‘Yes?’ said Bertie.

Thus prompted, Carstairs went on.

‘When you heard that voice from the bathroom—a woman’s voice, when you were expecting to hear the voice of Mountjoy—did it sound to you like the voice of anyone you know?’

Bertie frowned thoughtfully.

‘Under the circumstances, Mr Carstairs, I don’t know whether I am justified in answering that question,’ he said slowly.

‘Then you
have
answered it,’ Carstairs pointed out.

‘Oh, damn! Oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs Bradley!’ the young man exclaimed. ‘But so I have. Well, then, having gone so far——’

‘Just one moment, Mr Philipson,’ interrupted Mrs Bradley. ‘Would you mind keeping the rest of that sentence until after tea?’

Carstairs and Bertie Philipson looked at her in mild surprise.

‘I have my reasons,’ she smiled. ‘Do you mind, Mr Philipson?’

‘Why, no, of course not. Not a bit,’ Bertie hastened to assure her. ‘Do you think I ought to tell the police after all, then?’

‘Well, if you will be advised by me,’ said Mrs Bradley, carefully choosing her words, ‘I should say—not yet. It cannot help them, and might possibly even hinder them in the present state of the inquiry.’

‘You know best, of course,’ said Bertie, with his charming smile. ‘I’ll keep mum, then.’

‘Do,’ said Mrs Bradley approvingly. ‘Don’t mention it to anybody at all at present. You haven’t done so, have you?’

‘Rather not,’ replied Bertie truthfully. ‘Righto. Thanks very much.’

Then he left them, and walked towards the house.

‘And now for our walk,’ said Mrs Bradley, with such peculiar satisfaction in her tones that Carstairs felt compelled to ask:

‘Has that young man’s information any special bearing on the case?’

Mrs Bradley smiled horribly, and they passed out of the garden into the road.

For a quarter of an hour or so neither spoke. Then Carstairs said: ‘Over this stile.’

They surmounted it, walked on over short grass for a hundred yards or so, and then found themselves on the top of cliffs facing the sea.

‘Very charming,’ said Mrs Bradley, with gracious appreciation of the view. ‘Let us descend to the shore.’

A fairly precipitous but perfectly safe path brought them to sea-level, and, the tide being well out, although it had turned, they walked along the level sands.

‘Delightful,’ said Mrs Bradley, inhaling the fresh sea breezes as she walked by Carstairs’ side.

‘Very delightful,’ he answered. ‘But you didn’t bring me all this way just to enjoy the sea air, did you? Come, talk to me, for my mind is enveloped in a thick fog. I do wish Alastair had said nothing to Sir Joseph about the wretched business. I am afraid now of what will be discovered.’

‘So am I,’ said Mrs Bradley, pausing in her stride.

‘Queer about that voice young Philipson heard,’ said Carstairs thoughtfully. ‘I wonder if there is anything in it. Personally, I incline to the opinion that it must have been Mountjoy’s own voice, as you first suggested.’

‘Impossible,’ said Mrs Bradley seriously, as she
dived into her capacious skirt-pocket and produced a tiny loose-leaf note-book. A tug at a silver chain which she wore around her neck brought into view a little silver pencil. ‘Impossible,’ she repeated, turning away from Carstairs and writing very rapidly on one of the dainty pages. ‘He did not hear poor Mountjoy’s voice, for the simple reason that she must have been dead by that time.’

‘But your own perfectly plausible explanation of the matter!’ cried Carstairs, surprised and bewildered.

‘Merely given to put young Philipson off the scent,’ smiled Mrs Bradley, as she removed the page from her note-book, carefully folded it, and handed it to Carstairs. ‘When you began asking that question, I thought the fat was in the fire. You see, whatever happens, the guilty person must never know that anybody suspects anything. It would be fatal. And when I say fatal, I mean it. If my deductions are correct—and, as they are based on pure psychology, I do not suppose they will turn out to be at fault—we have to deal with a person who values life so little that she will stick at nothing——’

‘She?’ cried Carstairs in amazement. ‘But surely this was not a woman’s crime?’

‘I think so. No, I will not deceive you, my friend. I am sure of it.’

‘But the climb from balcony to window——’

‘Not at all difficult. Young Philipson has done it; I could do it if I were an inch longer in the leg. You could do it; so could the two girls, who are
both a couple to three inches taller than I am; the maids, with the exception of cook, who suffers with rheumatism, and Mary Peters, who is a trifle shorter than I am, could all have managed it.’

‘Yes, but the amount of nerve required,’ Carstairs began.

‘We are thinking about a murderer, remember,’ Mrs Bradley reminded him. ‘I imagine that a person with nerve enough to commit a murder has nerve enough to climb from a balcony in order to do it.’

‘Not always, I fancy,’ Carstairs demurred. ‘But allowing that your assumption is correct, how do you think the actual murder was committed? I have my own theory, of course,’ he added, ‘but I can’t quite see the murderer as a woman, now that I am convinced you yourself are not——’ He laughed and left the sentence unfinished. ‘I’m certain now that it was a man’s crime,’ he concluded lamely.

‘Well, I may be mistaken,’ Mrs Bradley admitted. ‘But I don’t think I am. Look here. Who knew that Mountjoy was a woman?’

‘Before her death?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why—no one.’

‘Are you sure no one knew?’

Carstairs shrugged his shoulders.

‘I don’t want to think it out,’ he confessed, smiling wryly at Mrs Bradley’s triumphantly grinning face. ‘But now, supposing it
was
a woman, how exactly did she commit the murder?’

‘Quite simply. To begin with, I’ll say this: I don’t
believe she intended to murder Mountjoy when she climbed in at the bathroom window, although I do believe she regarded him—her with deadly hatred.’

‘Hated Mountjoy? But Mountjoy was the most inoffensive person I have ever met,’ cried Carstairs. ‘I am sure you are following a false trail.’

‘Am I?’ Mrs Bradley smiled her saurian smile. ‘I don’t think I am. Surely you can put your finger on the person in the house who hated Mountjoy with the intense, bitter and never-ending hatred of one whose finest feelings, whose noblest emotions had been played with, mocked at, scorned, derided, lacerated?’

Mrs Bradley’s voice rose high with excitement until it reached the last word. Then she drew a deep breath, and gazed expectantly at Carstairs. She chuckled ghoulishly as a great light suddenly dawned in his expression.

‘Good God!’ he almost whispered, in his intense interest and excitement. ‘Of course! I see the point, now, of all that you hinted before. Do you know, that had never occurred to me for one single instant until you hinted at it before. And I don’t believe it ever would,’ he added honestly, ‘if it had not been for you.’

‘Let us go back to the house,’ said Mrs Bradley abruptly.

They turned and retraced their steps in silence until they came within sight of the tall chimneys of Chayning Place.

Carstairs pointed to the beautiful old house.
‘And you have been able to live under that roof, knowing what you have known all this time, and have spoken naturally and unaffectedly with everybody, and have sat at the same table with the murderer——’

He paused, and then shook his head. ‘I couldn’t have done it. I don’t know what I shall do or say, as it is, when we encounter them all again in there.’

‘You won’t have to bear the burden of our knowledge for long,’ Mrs Bradley said calmly. ‘I think that what we know will soon be perfectly obvious to every member of that household. Poor, poor girl,’ she added, with genuine sorrow and pity in her tones.

‘Do you really mean that?’ asked Carstairs, interested. ‘I don’t think I could ever sincerely pity a murderer.’

‘We are all murderers, my friend,’ said Mrs Bradley lugubriously. ‘Some in deed and some in thought. That’s the only difference, though.’

‘Rather a considerable difference,’ said Carstairs, putting into his tone a lightness which he was very far from feeling.

‘Morally, there is no difference at all,’ said Mrs Bradley more briskly. ‘Some have the courage of their convictions. Others have not. That’s all. This one saw her opportunity and took it. A person occupying that bath normally has his back to the window, his face to the door. The murderer entered by the window, talked softly but quite naturally to Mountjoy, descended on to the floor by means
of the bathroom stool, upon which she left some mark from the green paint she had kicked over on the balcony, and which was later cleaned off, went on talking, perhaps in a chiding tone, perhaps not, and then, having lulled the unfortunate Mountjoy into false security, strolled to the end of the bath, turned on the taps full, jerked out the plug, and, before Mountjoy could so much as protest, caught her by the throat or the feet and so pulled her head under the rapidly rising water. Have you ever noticed how slippery the bottom of that bath is?’ Mrs Bradley added, with surprising suddenness, turning to Carstairs.

‘Yes,’ he replied.

‘I know it too,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I used it once—before this affair—and I slid along the bottom of it in a most terrifying manner when I went to immerse myself. Anybody taken by surprise from above——’

She left the sentence significantly unfinished, and Carstairs nodded.

‘Yes, I demonstrated the same thing to Bing,’ he said.

As they turned in at the big gates, Mrs Bradley observed:

‘Say nothing to Bertie Philipson this evening when he tells you that name—if he does tell it to you. Perhaps he will not.’

‘He will probably forget,’ said Carstairs.

‘Yes, I think I lulled his suspicions,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘A charming boy. Do you want to look at that piece of paper I gave you?’

‘There is no need,’ said Carstairs moodily. ‘I suppose the name of the—her name is on it. I don’t want to see it.’

‘No, I suppose not,’ returned Mrs Bradley, with a little sigh. ‘Hallo! Here’s Eleanor come to find us. I expect we are late for tea.’

‘For once I can sympathize with the ladies who love their cup of tea,’ Carstairs confessed, with a rueful smile. ‘Why did the murderer pull the plug out?’ he added inconsequently. ‘Oh, of course! To drown the noise if Mountjoy cried out or struggled,’ he went on, answering his own question.

‘I’m so sorry I’ve kept him out late, Eleanor,’ said Mrs Bradley, ignoring Carstairs’ last remark. ‘It was entirely my fault.’

‘Tea is served on the balcony, but you can have it inside if you like,’ was Eleanor’s prim rejoinder.

‘Verandah,’ said Carstairs under his breath, as he followed her up the wooden steps, but nobody heard him.

DINNER, BY TACIT
consent, was a cheerful meal. No one appeared preoccupied with the exception of Bertie Philipson, who occasionally glanced to his left with a hunted expression in his eyes, and then hastily turned his attention to the food on his plate, as though he were obsessed by a secret fear, and was afraid someone might notice his obsession.

When the meal was over, Mrs Bradley took him aside immediately the men joined the women in the drawing-room and, under cover of a general and rather noisy discussion which had followed a remark of Carstairs’, said to him:

‘Tell me about it. It is important that I should know.’

Bertie seemed disinclined at first to confide in her, but she urged him the more.

‘You had better tell me, Mr Philipson. Something is worrying you,’ she said. ‘I may be able to help.
Old women like me can often help young men like you.’

‘Yes,’ Bertie acknowledged. ‘You got old Garde out of a nasty hole with that tobacconist’s young woman. He told me about it. But this is—well, it’s rather different, you see. I don’t think I can tell you about it. Forgive me. And thanks—er—for offering——’

‘Oh, rubbish!’ interrupted Mrs Bradley briskly. ‘Besides’—she looked at him keenly—‘is it so very different a case?’

Bertie resorted to a mode of expressing uneasiness which he had not adopted since he was in the fourth form at school. He shuffled his feet and flushed.