The Affair of the Bloodstained Egg Cosy (26 page)

The ghost of a smile crossed Jane's features. 'Oh, that. I couldn't get the thread gripped properly in the breakfast room door: it kept slipping out. I wanted something to fix on the end to stop it - something soft and light which wouldn't make any noise landing. That was the first thing that came to hand. But it was so white I thought that even in dim light it might show up against the dark wood outside. So I rubbed it in the pot plant to darken it. It was still fastened to the end when I put the thread in my pocket. I was nervous we might all be searched, however, and I wanted to get rid of it - it wouldn't be so easy to explain as just a length of thread on its own. So before I raised the barrel, prior to firing the cannon, I reached inside and tried to push the thing into Batchev's pocket. That must have been when it got the blood on it. I thought if it were found there, it would definitely connect him with the breakfast room and might remove any doubt that it had been he who went through the window - and in addition it would be a good red herring. But I was doing everything so hurriedly I couldn't have put it in the pocket properly. Obviously it fell out as the body flew towards the lake, and landed on that bush.'

Wilkins looked at Deveraux. 'Simple when you know, isn't it?'

Jane stood up. 'And now I suppose you'll want me to come with you, Mr. Wilkins.'

* * *

Ten minutes later Jane walked down the grand staircase. She had changed out of her evening dress. She was accompanied by Sergeant Leather, carrying her case. Deveraux and Wilkins were in the hall. Deveraux came forward.

'They want to know in the drawing room if you'd like to see anybody.'

Jane hesitated. 'No, I don't think — ' She broke off and her chin went up. 'Yes. Would you ask Gerry and Richard to come out, please?'

Deveraux nodded and went away. A few moments later Richard and Gerry came into the hall. There was an awkward silence for three or four seconds. Then Jane gave Gerry a grin. 'Cheer up, darling. You look like death. Don't you realise I won't have to worry about job-hunting now?'

Gerry looked at her. Her lips trembled. Then she flung herself on Jane, threw her arms round her for a second, and turned away, sobbing.

Jane bit her lip sharply, then swung suddenly round on Richard and held out her hand. 'Goodbye, Richard.'

He took her hand in both of his. 'Au revoir, Jane. Don't worry about the practical side. You'll have the best Counsel in England, never fear.'

'That's sweet of you, Richard, but there's no need, really. I'll plead guilty, of course. Listen, I'm sorry to have put you all through such a ghastly business. Tell the Earl and Countess, will you? Say good bye and thanks for me, and tell them I'll write if I'm allowed.'

'You didn't put us through any ghastly business, my dear. It would have been even worse but for you. You stopped him getting away.'

'Thanks. It was purely personal, though. Say good bye to everybody else for me - the Peabodys and Mr. Adler and Algy.' She turned to Deveraux, who was standing a few feet away. 'Did you think I'd confess when Mr. Wilkins accused Thornton?'

'We thought you might - rather than let him be falsely charged.'

'I would have, of course. I was just plucking up the courage - when he acted himself.' She paused. 'Are you coming now?'

'Not now.'

'Then good bye. This morning I rather slyly apologised for hindering you when the imaginary man went through the window. I'd just like you to know that the other apologies and thanks were genuine.'

'I know that.'

'I don't really know why I'm saying this. I knew you spelt trouble for me from that first moment when you practically drowned me through driving like a lunatic up the drive -knocking down footbound pheasants right, left and centre. Very well, Mr. Leather, I'm ready.'

Wilkins opened the front door, and Jane walked through the doorway and down the steps to the waiting car, Leather and another policeman a few paces behind. 'Like a princess and her courtiers,' Richard murmured.

They watched the car drive off into the darkness. Then Wilkins shut the door and went back into the drawing room.

Very quietly, Richard said: 'I wonder why she asked to see me.'

There was a pause before Gerry said. 'Why shouldn't she?'

'She's always seemed rather stiff with me. I got the impression years ago that she didn't like me very much.'

Gerry looked at him sharply, opened her mouth, then seemed to change her mind. Instead, in a voice that shook a little, she said: 'They - they won't hang her, will they?'

Richard put his arm round her shoulder. 'Of course not. Not when they learn of the provocation. Not when they learn what sort of monster she prevented escaping - a murderer, kidnapper, spy, and blackmailer. And they'll learn the truth of that from me - whatever it does to my reputation.'

'She couldn't get off, though, could she?'

'I think she could - with a clever lawyer and a sympathetic jury. She could change her story, claim she was under stress tonight, not responsible for what she was saying, that really she shot Batchev in self-defence - something like that.'

'She won't do that. She'll tell the absolute truth.'

'And in this country we don't approve of people taking the law into their own hands,' Richard said. 'However great a villain the victim. She planned Batchev's murder and carried it out with great efficiency. She'll show no remorse. She's bound to go to prison for a long time.'

'It's not right,' Gerry said in a choking voice, 'for ridding the world of a man like that.'

'Perhaps—' Deveraux said, then broke off.

'Perhaps what?' Richard asked.

'Nothing,' said Deveraux.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Inspector Wilkins Explains

In the drawing room ten minutes later, 'Deveraux,' said Peabody, 'how in tarnation did you get at the truth?'

'I didn't, sir. Wilkins did. I was blundering in the right direction, but I was a long way from the truth when he gave me his list of pointers.'

'Then,' said the Earl, 'I insist that before he leaves he explains his deductive process.'

'Hear, hear,' said Adler.

Looking awkward and embarrassed, Wilkins shuffled forward. He coughed. 'Well, my lord, if your lordship insists. Let me say first that Mr. Deveraux is being far too modest: it was he who spotted Evans as the Wraith. I can't say much about my own deductive process, but I can tell you a few things I thought were rum. And I may add that when I came in here this evening I didn't know everything. I had theories, but not the full picture, and no proof.

'I decided quite early on that nearly everybody was hiding something. It seemed to me the first problem to solve was the matter of the pistols, and when I learned of the rivalry over the matter of the Bergman Bayards, I suspected that perhaps something a little, er, unconventional might have been going on. When we discovered the gun in the collection room was a replica, I decided that Mr. Peabody was the most likely, um—'

'Crook,' said Carrie Peabody drily.

'Let's say culprit, ma'am. Then, my lord, after saying that the gun in the collection room was not yours, but a replica, you added, "And it's not mine either." When questioned you claimed to have meant that it was not your Bergman. But, as we'd already established that fact, the remark didn't make sense, and I decided that what you had meant was that that replica wasn't your replica. As there were a pair of originals, it wasn't unlikely there were also a pair of copies; and if your lordship had one of each, it was on the cards Mr. Peabody had one of each, too. Next, when Mr. Peabody discovered that his pistol was missing from its case your lordship's involuntary exclamation was, "Don't say the case is empty?" - indicating you were extremely surprised not to find something in it. Your reaction, sir' - he turned to Peabody - 'both to being told of the theft of Lord Burford's gun, and to the theory I put forward at that time, seemed somewhat unnatural.

'Then there was the matter of the scream on the stairs: both Lady Geraldine and Miss Clifton were upstairs at the time and, once it appeared that the Baroness was by then already dead, barring servants, either her ladyship or Mrs. Peabody had to be the one responsible. And it seemed that Mrs. Peabody, a visitor in a strange house, would be the more likely to be nervous. Considering all these factors, I evolved a tentative theory to account for the matter of the four pistols. Then I played a couple of long shots. First I searched Mr. Peabody's luggage. Your unwillingness to allow it, Mr. Peabody, and your readiness, ma'am - followed by your genuine amazement when I discovered the pistol - supported my theory that Mr. Peabody had hidden one gun in the room, and you'd taken another one away - the one put there by his lordship. In fact, you started to say something like "He must have brought it back again". I had a good idea you'd want to plant it in a room that was specifically Lord Burford's - which probably meant the collection room or the study. I had another look in the collection room myself, then got Mr. Deveraux to search the study. Fortunately, this paid off and my theory was virtually confirmed.'

'Well, I'm exceedingly sorry to have made your job more difficult,' Lord Burford said gruffly.

'That goes for me too,' said Peabody.

'Please don't mention it. It really made the case more interesting - more of a challenge, as it were.'

'I guess I fouled things up for you a bit, didn't I?' said Adler.

'Not really, sir. It always seemed most likely that you were one of the fighters in Batchev's room and the man who had incarcerated Lady Geraldine. Your exact motives were not clear, but you've explained those yourself. The matter of your antagonist was more tricky, but once we'd eliminated Batchev himself - who was already dead - and picked on Evans as the Wraith - who has always been purely a jewel thief and who wouldn't have had occasion to enter Batchev's room - well, then the man you fought had to be either Thornton or Mr. Fotheringay here. I'm sorry to say, Mr. Fotheringay, sir, that I did wonder if you were the Wraith and the drug had been self-administered, but - Mr. Fotheringay?'

'He's just gone to sleep again,' said the Countess.

Then I can say that Mr. Deveraux assured me that unless Mr. Fotheringay was the most brilliant actor imaginable, he couldn't conceivably be the Wraith. That left Mr. Thornton. There seemed no reason why he should have hidden in Batchev's room, but then I asked the Yard to make some enquiries about him, and they turned up a deposit of ten thousand pounds in £1 notes in his bank account. That brought him right into the centre of the picture. But there was still no way of proving anything. So I decided to try my ruse of frightening him into speaking the truth by accusing him of the murder.'

There was silence for a few moments. Then Richard said quietly: 'And what about the murders?'

'I must admit, sir, that you were the problem there. From the point of view of motive, you were the strongest suspect. Yet I was quite unable to work out a coherent sequence of events with you cast as the murderer. So I changed my approach and decided to assume, at least as an experiment, that you were telling the complete truth. Taking your evidence then in conjunction with Lady Geraldine's - and I could think of no reason why, as she wasn't the killer herself, she should be lying—'

'How did you know I wasn't the killer?' Gerry asked.

'If you were, why should you have admitted being near the Baroness's room? You could have claimed to have been in your room right up to the time you went to investigate the rumpus. Where was I?'

'Comparing my evidence with Geraldine's,' Richard said.

'Ah yes. Assuming you were both telling the truth, Batchev himself was clearly indicated as the murderer of the Baroness. And when I learnt that Lady Geraldine had been able to see only his feet, then I realised how the Baroness's body had left her room. That explained one murder, but left me as much in the dark as ever about the death of Batchev himself. Of the people present, Mr. Felman (as we then thought he was) had the best opportunity and motive, and when we learned he was really Adler after all, he was a very strong suspect.

'But all the time the main question worrying me was why Batchev had tried to break out at all - and with only a pair of wire cutters to put the alarm out of action. He knew it was an elaborate and virtually foolproof system; he must have known that such an attempt was almost certain to set off the alarm. Having concealed the Baroness's body, with virtually no possibility of it being found during the night, why hadn't he waited until the alarm was switched off at six-thirty, then left quietly by a side door? To try to break out like that was the act of a madman. I just couldn't believe in it, and I started to hunt round for another explanation.

'I told myself that of course he hadn't been meaning to go through the window just then - all he'd actually been doing was work on the alarm. To that end he'd fetched the step ladder to stand on. Then I asked myself why? To be sure, Batchev was not a tall man. But neither am I. Yet I could reach the wire quite comfortably by standing on a chair.'

'Inspector Wilkins' height,' Adler murmured.

'Precisely, sir. Or rather lack of it. So Batchev could have reached it, too. Why, then, go to all the trouble of fetching a tall, heavy step ladder? What other use could he have possibly had for it? All the thing had done, apparently, was fall over. That pulled me up short. Was that all it had been meant to do? If Batchev had been standing on the chair, and not on the ladder, was it the ladder and not the chair which had smashed the window? The window had broken almost exactly as the door opened. Could it have been the actual opening of the door which had caused it? Had we been intended to think Batchev had gone through the window, when in fact he hadn't? No. Because he had gone through the window: Miss Clifton had seen him; and we'd found his body outside.

'Then, after the discovery of the Baroness's body, Mr. Deveraux informed me that Miss Clifton had told him she had smelt the Baroness's scent in the linen room. That struck me as highly unlikely. I couldn't imagine the Baroness using a powerful perfume, and when I asked Mr. Deveraux he agreed it had been a subtle and elusive scent. I didn't believe that a scent like that would have seeped through an oak panel. That meant that if Miss Clifton were telling the truth, she had smelt a trace left from the Baroness's body being carried through a fairly large room approximately fifteen minutes before. That seemed to me impossible - in view of the fact that Lady Geraldine, who has a good sense of smell (she identified the scent of lavender on the egg cosy), did not identify the Baroness's scent when the body passed within a few feet of her as she stood in the recess. It seemed Miss Clifton had lied. And if she'd lied about that, had she also lied about the incident of the broken window? I checked with Mr. Deveraux and learned that only Miss Clifton claimed to have seen the man -and that he himself had not even heard the supposed sound in the breakfast room.'