Speedy Death (3 page)

At any less serious news Dorothy would have been compelled to laugh. She wanted to laugh now, but it would have been the laughter of hysteria, not of mirth. She knew her fiancé fairly well, and she realized, with a cold feeling round her heart, that this was not the way he would bring tidings of natural death.

‘Garde!’ Her voice, harsh and uncontrolled because of this terrible hysteria that she was fighting, rose shrilly upon the tense silence. ‘Garde! What do you mean? He can’t be—dead!’

‘I mean what I say,’ said the young man, turning his gloomy gaze upon Mrs Bradley. ‘And there’s been some funny work in this house tonight. Mountjoy was dead before any of us came down to dinner this evening. Got that? Before we came down to dinner.’

‘But look here——’ began Bertie Philipson feebly.

‘Can’t stop,’ replied Garde, cutting him short with brutal directness. ‘Doctor will be here any minute, I hope, and I must take him upstairs. Not that he
can do anything. Poor devil’s as dead as a doornail. Yes, he’s dead. Drowned, you know.’

As abruptly as he had entered, he took his departure, slamming the door behind him with such force that those at the table involuntarily started from their seats.

Calm as the setting sun which was glorifying the west, Eleanor ‘collected eyes’.

‘I think we might repair to the drawing-room now,’ she remarked quietly.

Even Mrs Bradley looked astonished.

‘OF COURSE, IT’S
rotten for the Bing crowd.’ It was Bertie Philipson who spoke, as he lounged gracefully against one of the wooden posts of the verandah next morning after breakfast.

Mrs Lestrange Bradley nodded. ‘And most annoying for us,’ she added succinctly.

Bertie, who had been attempting to close his eyes to this view of the matter, was compelled to agree with her.

‘Dashed annoying,’ he said. ‘Still, what can one do? It is a great pity Carstairs dragged in
that
aspect of the thing at all, especially as it is bound to be incorrect. Of course, the whole thing was the result of an accident.’

‘But was it?’ asked Mrs Bradley, with grave earnestness. Her eyes sombrely sought his, and, in spite of the young man’s obvious discomfort and embarrassment, held them implacably.

‘What—what do you mean?’ he asked.

‘This,’ said Mrs Lestrange Bradley. ‘Or rather, these. And they want explaining.’

‘Just a moment,’ said Bertie, at last managing to avert his eyes. ‘Here comes Carstairs.’

Carstairs approached them along the gravel path, and mounted the white wooden steps.

‘Ah, Philipson,’ he said, ‘you here? And Mrs Bradley?’

‘Good morning, Mr Carstairs.’

Mrs Bradley smiled a Medea-like welcome.

‘You are just in time to join in a serious intellectual discussion.’

‘Oh?’ said Carstairs politely.

‘Yes. Mr Philipson thinks that an accident took place in this house last night.’

‘Oh?’ said Carstairs again, in the same elaborately colourless tone.

‘Now I think it was a suicide,’ announced Mrs Bradley, with the air of one who indicates that it is a fine morning for a walk.

‘Oh?’ said Carstairs, for the third time.

‘Look here,’ broke in Bertie, ‘how long shall we be needed here, do you think? I want to get back to Town.’

Carstairs affected to consider the question. Finally, he said with some abruptness, ‘I can trust you two people not to act idiotically if I tell you something very unpleasant, I suppose?’

Bertie nodded, and searched the older man’s face with his eyes. Mrs Bradley showed her teeth in a mirthless grin, and smoothed the sleeve of a
jade-green jumper which shrieked defiance at her yellow skin.

‘There was murder committed in this house last evening,’ said Carstairs, with quiet authority.

‘Ah!’ sighed Mrs Bradley, abandoning the jumper to its creases. ‘Fancy that!’ But whether the ejaculation expressed surprise, apprehension, relief, or merely a serious kind of mental pleasure to think that something had happened at last, neither of her hearers could tell. She plucked a bud from a rose-bush which grew beside the steps and smelled it delicately.

Bertie was obviously very much surprised. A well-bred young man, he had been schooled to refrain from gaping or allowing his jaw to drop, but his expression was eloquent of his amazement.

‘What—what do you say?’ he bleated feebly.

‘I say murder,’ replied Carstairs solemnly. ‘And, what is more, carefully planned, deliberately executed murder.’

He paused. His hearers neither spoke nor moved. Then Mrs Bradley smelled the rose again.

‘Come into the summer-house,’ he said abruptly. ‘I must talk it over with someone.’

‘A member of the family?’ suggested Bertie hesitatingly.

Carstairs shook his head.

‘In their different ways they are all knocked out by the tragedy,’ he said. ‘Bing is not young, and he loved this friend very dearly. Garde—well, he’s had a shock, like the rest of us, and, besides, I did give him a hint of what I thought last night. Of
course, poor Eleanor was engaged to Mountjoy, as I expect you know—although, I remember, the engagement was supposed to be a secret—so I can scarcely consult her.’

‘I knew they were engaged,’ said Bertie, somewhat inadequately.

‘So did I,’ Mrs Bradley gravely agreed; and they followed Carstairs across the lawn to the small but pleasantly situated wooden summer-house.

‘We can be in private here, I think,’ said Carstairs. ‘Well, now.’

They settled themselves comfortably, and Bertie, with a lift of the eyebrows towards Mrs Lestrange Bradley, which brought smiling permission from the lady, took out cigarettes. Carstairs waved aside the proffered silver case, and began.

‘The first thing I ought to make clear to you both is that you may regard yourselves as absolutely free to leave this house whenever you like. I must repeat, however, what I said last night. Whether this death proves to have been an accident, as you suggest’—he looked at Bertie Philipson—‘or a suicide—Mrs Bradley’s opinion, or’—he lowered his voice—‘a murder, as I solemnly believe and intend to prove, the fact remains that the whole affair is very mysterious. Think over the points with me, and I think you will see what I mean.’

He checked off the points on his fingers with a solemn earnestness which at any other time would have diverted both his hearers.

‘First, there is the queer fact that, although a man, known to the scientists of two continents as
Everard Mountjoy, went into that bathroom, we found drowned in that same bathroom an unknown woman, and no trace of our friend except his dressing-gown.’

If Carstairs’ intention had been to startle his hearers, he had certainly achieved his aim.

‘A woman!’ cried Bertie Philipson amazedly. ‘But who on earth was she? And how the deuce did she get drowned in Mountjoy’s bath? And—and—I mean, dash it! Where’s Mountjoy? He can’t have disappeared! I mean, I took it—we all took it that the dead person—Garde said it was Mountjoy!’

‘Yes,’ said Carstairs, gazing across the lawn at a fine bed of standard roses.

‘You mean,’ asked Mrs Bradley precisely, ‘that Mountjoy went into the bathroom, locked the door, flung off his dressing-gown, and turned into a woman? It seems incredible.’

‘It does,’ Carstairs admitted, ‘but it must be the truth. Besides’—he knitted his brows—‘he did
not
lock the door.’

‘Didn’t lock the door!’ cried Bertie. ‘Why, man, what do you mean?—didn’t lock the door?’

‘No,’ said Carstairs. ‘It is true that they began breaking one of the panels, but then I myself tried the handle, for I hate to see property damaged, and the door opened.’

‘Extraordinary!’ said Mrs Bradley.

‘Yes, rather,’ cried Bertie. ‘Especially as——’ He paused and Carstairs continued for him.

‘Exactly. One would have thought that Mountjoy would have been very certain to secure himself
against intrusion if he were—as we now think he must have been—a woman masquerading as a man. Then there is another thing.’

Bertie leaned forward, deeply interested in these revelations.

‘The bathroom window was wide open at the bottom.’

‘Well, but——’ Bertie frowned with the unusual effort of concentrated thinking. ‘Might not that show that the real Mountjoy—the
man
Mountjoy—left the bathroom by the window, and that the woman—whoever she was—then entered the bathroom the same way, or by the door, which she forgot to lock after herself?’

‘And upset the whole household by fainting in the bath, and so getting drowned,’ concluded Carstairs, with a faint but kindly smile. ‘No, I’m afraid it won’t wash, Philipson. I wish it would, but there are too many objections. First, where did the woman leave her clothes? We found none that could not be accounted for by Eleanor, Dorothy, and Mrs Bradley. Secondly, why should Mountjoy take the trouble to climb out of the bathroom window when he could have walked out of the front door far more easily and much less conspicuously? Thirdly, why should a strange woman break into a house and have a bath? It’s not usual, to say the least, is it? Fourthly, supposing that the spirit did indeed so move her, would she really have forgotten to lock the door?—in a strange house? And would she have left the window wide open at the bottom? Open at the top, conceivably … but pushed right up at
the bottom? Why, she couldn’t even have stood up in the bath to climb out of it without being seen by any casual person walking in the garden on that side of the house. No, no! Mountjoy was the lady, and the lady was Mountjoy.’ He paused. ‘But that does not alter the fact that I liked him,’ he added, ‘and that I intend to avenge his death, for I firmly believe that he—or, rather, she—was foully murdered.’

There was a pregnant silence. Then words issued from Mrs Lestrange Bradley, words practical and sane. ‘How do you intend to begin?’ she asked. ‘Have you any proof?’

‘I have a clue, but I cannot locate its present whereabouts,’ was Carstairs’ cryptic answer. ‘As to beginning, with Mr Bing’s permission, I have arranged to turn myself into a private enquiry agent, and stay down here longer than I had intended in order to look into things. Later there may be a case for the police. But a policeman wants enough evidence to hang his hat on before he will do anything, and, frankly, I haven’t got it. I could no more prove at this moment what I know to be the truth—namely, that Everard Mountjoy was foully and wilfully murdered—than I could reach the moon. But I
shall
prove it. Let us go into the house.’

Half-way across the lawn they encountered the butler, fluttering a telegram.

‘For me? Thank you, Mander.’ Carstairs took the orange envelope and tore it open.

‘No answer,’ he said.

The perfect servant departed, while Carstairs, watched by the young man and the reptilian woman, re-read the flimsy form.

‘Good! My people have found someone to take over my work for the time being,’ he said. ‘I must go and tell Bing.’

Left to themselves, Mrs Bradley and Bertie Philipson strolled the whole length of the splendid Chaynings lawn in silence. As they turned to retrace their steps, Mrs Bradley said:

‘Have you ever had any desire to commit murder? Don’t answer unless you like, of course.’

Bertie laughed.

‘As a kid,’ he replied, ‘I loathed my father. Funny, because he was never really unkind or harsh, you know. In fact, when I grew up a bit, I discovered what a very decent old bird he was, and we became rather pally, especially after my mother died.’

Mrs Bradley nodded her head slowly two or three times.

‘Of course, somebody in this house did it,’ she observed sadly. ‘You realize that fact, don’t you?’

Bertie stopped and stared at her.

‘You don’t mean to say that you really believe all that tosh Carstairs has been talking, do you?’ he exclaimed.

Mrs Bradley grimaced.

‘I do believe it,’ she affirmed, ‘and it was not tosh, young man. And I should advise you to think carefully where you were and what you were doing between seven and seven-thirty last night. And,
if possible, get hold of someone who can support your alibi. We are all in deadly danger of getting ourselves hanged for last night’s work!’

‘But, look here,’ said Bertie, ‘you are not suggesting that I murdered the poor devil, are you?’

‘By no means,’ Mrs Bradley hastened to assure him. ‘But, still, you know, stranger things than that have been true. And you have homicidal tendencies. So have they all—or nearly all. I should except Mr Carstairs. He has none, so far as I am able to judge.’

‘Here, I say!’ exclaimed Bertie, in mingled amusement and disgust. ‘Whom
are
you accusing of being the murderer?’

‘I accuse no one,’ Mrs Bradley replied coolly. ‘I know what I know, and I deduce what I deduce. But accusation—that is not my business. I am a psychologist, not a policewoman. Some are killers, and some are not. But you, young man——’

She paused, and Bertie broke into happy laughter.

Mrs Bradley shook her head at him like a playful alligator.

‘All very well to be amused,’ she said. ‘But you wait and see! Just you wait and see!’

‘No, but speaking seriously,’ protested Bertie, ‘I am not a scrap amused, I can assure you. Now, honestly, do you, as a responsible woman, tell me, as a responsible man, that Mr Carstairs is sane, and is not going about on this beautiful summer
morning with a complete buzzing bee in his bonnet? Do you tell me, and expect me to believe, that one of these quite ordinary, well-bred, decent, civilized people committed a beastly and unreasonable and unnecessary and illogical crime last night? It isn’t within the bounds of possibility, and I simply cannot believe it.’