The Murder at Sissingham Hall (27 page)

Angela bowed her head.

‘Then you have no reason to condemn yourself. All this has been Rosamund’s doing. But you—you have been responsible for saving a life.
Two
lives, in fact,’ I said. ‘You saved mine, too. I am more ashamed and embarrassed than I can say at what I nearly allowed her to persuade me to, but I can never thank you enough for arriving in time to prevent it.’

Before she could reply, Inspector Jameson entered the room.

‘Ah, Mr. Knox, I see you have recovered. Would you and Mrs. Marchmont care to join me in the morning-room for a few minutes? I have a few questions that I should like to ask, and it will be better, perhaps, to get this over with before your friends return, given the events of yesterday.’

His manner was not unsympathetic.

‘Certainly,’ replied Angela. She had quite recovered her composure.

‘Now, Mrs. Marchmont,’ said the inspector once we were seated, ‘we owe Lady Strickland’s arrest and Mr. Knox owes his life to your quick thinking, so if you please I should like to hear your story.’

‘Very well,’ said Angela, who had clearly been expecting a question of the sort. ‘What exactly do you wish to know, Inspector?’

‘First of all, what made you suspect Lady Strickland?’

Angela sighed.

‘It was such a small thing—something that Hugh said when you were questioning him about what he was doing out on the terrace that night. He said he had looked through the window but the study was in darkness. Now, if he were the murderer, we could safely disregard anything he said as a lie, but what if he were telling the truth? We all assumed that Neville was alive at that time, but in that case why should he be sitting in the dark? The only reason I could think of was that he was already dead and the murderer had put out the lamp—presumably to hide the body from view should anybody take it into his head to peer through the French windows. But if he were dead, then how could Rosamund and Charles possibly have heard him speaking through the study door at a quarter to eleven? Naturally they couldn’t. The obvious conclusion, therefore, was that they were lying in order to make us think that Neville had died later on. And why should they do that? The inference was clear.’

‘You suspected that we were in league together, then?’ I asked.

‘I’m afraid I did at first,’ replied Angela. ‘Not for long, though, as I remembered what you said that afternoon when we were all in the study. You were so very keen to call the police that it seemed unlikely that you had had a hand in it. It could have been a clever bluff, of course, but from what I had seen of you I thought you lacked—how can I put it? I thought you lacked the low cunning necessary for that.’

‘I shall take that as a compliment,’ I said.

‘Do,’ she assured me. ‘At any rate, I had never been convinced of Hugh’s guilt myself—and was doubly sure he was innocent once I heard about his attempt to get into the study in the middle of the night—so his insistence that the study was in darkness forced me to conclude reluctantly that Rosamund must have done it, or at least must have been the driving force behind it.

‘You may be surprised to hear that I suspected my own cousin, to whom I had been so attached when we were young, but I know Rosamund, you see, and much as I love her I have never been blind to her faults. As a child she was beautiful and brilliant but she had a selfish, ruthless streak that was normally kept well-hidden, provided that she was not thwarted in any way. But sometimes her darker side would emerge. I remember once that, enraged at its refusal to obey her, she beat her own darling pet dog so hard that it had to be destroyed.’

‘I remember you telling that story,’ I said. ‘But you said it had happened in New York and I had no idea you were referring to Rosamund.’

‘Yes, I disguised the place but she was the child in the story,’ Angela said. ‘So you can see that to me, at least, the possibility of her having killed Neville was not as far-fetched as it might seem. And there was one other piece of evidence that pointed to her. Neville was a large, heavy man, and it would have been no easy task to drag his body across the room. Sure enough, when I thought back I remembered hearing Rosamund complain of stiffness and aching the next day. It was only a small thing, but suggestive. You may imagine that my thoughts on the matter were far from pleasant, but I could see no other solution.

‘There were difficulties in the way of my theory, however, not least the fact that I couldn’t see when exactly the crime could have been committed. I racked my brains, trying to remember what we had all been doing that evening. As far as I could recall, apart from the famous few minutes in which she went to the study with you, Charles, Rosamund had been absent from the room only once, shortly after dinner, but not for long enough to kill Neville and stage the scene. And I don’t believe
you
left the room for long at all, which was another point that went in your favour. For some time I thought I must have got it all wrong, because I simply couldn’t understand how she could have done it, but then I started thinking about the study being left in darkness and suddenly realized what it most likely meant.’

‘I don’t quite follow you,’ said the inspector, as Angela paused.

‘Why, it meant that the thing had taken place in two stages: the killing itself and the arrangement of things in the study to make it look like an accident. The more I thought about it, the more certain I became that no-one could possibly have done the whole thing in the early part of the evening before we all went to bed. But assuming for the moment that Rosamund was the guilty party, then she could have killed Neville during the short time she was out of the drawing-room just after dinner, turned out the light to make sure the crime was not discovered too early, and then returned later after we had all gone to bed, when she would have plenty of time to stage the scene.

‘The difficulty with that is the problem we have all been puzzling over for days: how did Rosamund get back into the house afterwards? I still haven’t solved that. I know there is a second set of keys in Neville’s desk and it would have been easy enough for Rosamund to take the desk key from Neville’s pocket and get them out of the drawer, which would solve the mystery of how she had got back into the house. But the keys were still in the drawer when the police searched the study, so perhaps there was another set we know nothing about.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘She took the keys from Sir Neville’s desk as you said. The next morning, when his body was discovered, she insisted on seeing him alone and replaced them quickly in the drawer. She had planned to lock the French windows too, since she had forgotten to do it the night before, but Joan came rushing in at that moment so they had to be left as they were.’

‘Ah! Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘I should have thought of that. So there you have it. After Hugh was arrested I spent a bad night facing the very unwelcome fact that my own cousin was probably a murderer. The next morning we found Gwen had been taken ill, and I knew I had to act. That’s when I telephoned you, Inspector.’

‘Yes, and it appears we arrived just in time to catch Lady Strickland preparing for a final flourish. Mr. Knox has much to thank you for.’

‘I know it,’ I said. ‘Did you guess she was planning something then?’

‘Not at all,’ said Angela. ‘It was pure chance that when the inspector arrived we decided to have our consultation in the library. When I opened the door we were confronted with the most extraordinary scene. One or two moments were enough to make it evident that there was not an instant to be lost. You know what happened next.’

I felt myself reddening. Could I ever live down the events of the past few days? I experienced a strong urge to leave the country for a long holiday as soon as possible.

My companions tactfully forbore to dwell on the subject.

‘I am very sorry about what has happened,’ said the inspector, ‘but you must see that I had no choice but to arrest your cousin.’

‘Oh, quite,’ said Angela. ‘One can’t simply let someone off a murder, however much it might upset her family. I only wish I hadn’t been quite so slow to reach my conclusions, as then poor Gwen might have been spared her ordeal.’

‘You were quicker than I was,’ replied the inspector. ‘I feel I have failed rather on this case. But I should far rather be shown up by an amateur than hang the wrong man, so please accept my thanks.’

‘Has she admitted it, then?’

‘Yes, she spoke at length yesterday afternoon, and confessed to the whole thing. The solicitor, Mr. Pomfrey, was there, and I thought he should have an apoplectic fit.’

‘How—how was she?’ asked Angela.

Jameson thought a moment.

‘Rueful and charming is how I should describe it,’ he said. ‘She accepted that the game was up, but was inclined to hope that a jury would take the romantic view and treat her sympathetically given her youth and beauty and her unhappiness in marriage.’

‘I hope she doesn’t intend to paint Neville as a cruel husband,’ said Angela. ‘She may not have loved him but he was never less than a gentleman and after all, she knew what he was when she married him.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s only too true.’

Poor Sir Neville. I doubted that his character would emerge stainless following the trial. If Rosamund wanted to escape the hangman’s noose her only hope now was to depict him as far worse than he was. Even then it was difficult to see how she could explain her attempt to put Gwen out of the way. And then there was her final effort to pin the whole thing on me. There was no doubt that she had intended my death too: on dressing that morning I had found a small bottle of Veronal in my bag, which she must have put there before following me down to the library. Had she been unable to persuade me to take my own life, I was perfectly sure that she would have taken matters into her own hands and used the gun on me herself. I shuddered, and once again hated myself for my stupidity.

‘Still,’ went on Angela. ‘At least Hugh has been completely exonerated now and Gwen is recovering nicely by all accounts. Did you really believe he was guilty, inspector?’

‘The evidence certainly pointed that way,’ said Jameson. ‘My personal feeling based on many years’ experience was that he didn’t seem the type, but one can’t let personal feelings get in the way of the facts. If I did that I wouldn’t get far in my job. No, he had a strong motive and was near the study at the time we originally thought the murder had been committed. Then there was the evidence of the hand-print, which suggested he had tried to enter the study through the French windows. One point in his favour, as you say, was the fact that he tried to get into the study in the middle of the night, but I didn’t know about that until yesterday. I don’t know what a jury would have made of it, either. Sneaking around in the dead of night rarely creates a good impression and a ruthless prosecution would undoubtedly make the most of it. And then there was his association with Clem Myerson, whose name is feared all over London. That was bound to come out. Yes,’ he said, ‘I think Mr. MacMurray can congratulate himself on a very lucky escape.’

And so can Bobs, I thought, but did not say it. I did not know whether Angela or the inspector knew about their affair, and had no wish to get my friend into further trouble.

‘Silly, silly Rosamund,’ said Angela sadly. ‘Why did she have to do it?’

I was at a loss to explain it myself. Why had she been unable to be contented with her lot when she had drawn such a lucky hand in life? From whence had sprung the belief that whatever she wished for must be hers even if it meant removing people who stood in her way? The only person who could answer that was Rosamund herself, and she was at present under lock and key, discovering—perhaps for the first time—what it was to reap the consequences of her actions.

‘I think after all this I should like to go away for a while to reflect upon my sins,’ Angela said. ‘I hear the Côte d’Azur is very pleasant in the winter. I believe there is a train.’

‘So I understand,’ said the inspector. ‘But I should hate for you to think that you have any sins to reflect upon in this case. But for you two people might have died and an innocent man might have been hanged.’

‘That may be so, but I can’t help feeling that I ought to have stayed well out of it and resisted the urge to snoop. Had I done that, then perhaps the doctor and Mr. Pomfrey would have come to the conclusion eventually that there was no evidence that it was anything other than an accident.’

‘But then Rosamund would have got away with murder,’ I said.

Angela opened her mouth to say something but decided against it. I wondered if she had been going to say what I was thinking: would it have mattered? What if Rosamund
had
got away with it? If no suspicions had been raised, then presumably she would have married Bobs after a decent interval, thus attaining her heart’s desire and presenting no further threat to anyone. Hugh and Gwen would have inherited the money they wanted, Angela would have been spared the knowledge that her cousin was a murderer and I—I should have retired discreetly to lick my wounds, illusions unshattered.

I shook myself. Murder could not go unpunished simply for everyone’s convenience. The forces of the law were not to be subject to the whims of a murderer’s family and friends, but were set in motion in order to right a dreadful wrong. And what if, having achieved what she wanted, Rosamund had one day decided that someone else was preventing her from having what she saw as rightfully hers? The events of the past few days had shown that she had no respect for the lives of others. Would she have killed again? We should never know.