The Murders of Richard III (22 page)

“Very appropriate,” Thomas said approvingly.

“How nice to find that others appreciate Gilbert and Sullivan,” said the rector. “They are rather underrated these days, I believe. Personally I find Mr. Gilbert's lyrics extremely witty. Do you know that charming song,” and at the top of his voice he caroled,

Thomas choked. Jacqueline had met her match. Characteristically, she was delighted to find a kindred spirit. She joined in.

The rector was equally delighted. The singing turned into a contest, with each of them dragging out the most obscure songs they could think of in order to stump the other. Jacqueline caught the
rector on the second verse of the sentry's song from
Iolanthe;
Thomas, who was accustomed to the trivia with which her brain was clogged, was not surprised that she should know all the words to a bass solo. Then it was the rector's point, with an obscure ditty from
The Sorcerer,
which Jacqueline did not recognize.

As a divertissement the exercise was highly successful. Even Weldon stopped arguing about Richard, and listened with a smile. Thomas was torn between amusement and embarrassment; W. S. Gilbert had a shaft for everyone. He had carefully avoided looking at Weldon when the rector chirped out his plea for the romantic rights of the rich, but that wasn't the only appropriate verse; Gilbert had much to say about overweight elderly ladies, cowardly generals, and inept practitioners of various professions. He even satirized the Women's Lib of his day, and when the rector quoted from
Princess Ida,
Jacqueline stopped singing.

As the time for the broadcast approached, a rising hubbub proclaimed the arrival and raucous discontent of members of the press. According to Weldon, they were to be shepherded straight into the Hall, but on at least two occasions Thomas thought he saw a vague form pass swiftly through the mist and drizzle without.

The nursery-school image occurred to him
again; he felt like a helpless teacher taking a group on an outing. As he rushed to head one stray back into the flock, another slipped away. He thought he had kept track of them fairly well. Weldon and Frank, at least, were present and hearty when the fun began.

Although Thomas had been watching the windows off and on, he was not looking in that direction at the crucial moment. It was Frank who saw the face. His shout alerted the others. Lady Isobel screamed. The countenance pressed against the streaming glass was dreadful enough to justify her cry. Wet, dank hair was plastered against the rounded skull, nose and lips were flattened and whitened. The eyes shone with a steady glare.

“Damn that wretched brat! I knew he'd get out!”

Frank ran toward the window. He was thrust aside by Kent, who wrestled with the fastenings. Pandemonium ensued. Lady Isobel hid under the table. After a moment of indecision Mrs. Ponsonby-Jones decided to faint. She did so, falling heavily against Philip as she collapsed. They fell to the floor, Philip swearing in a loud voice as he tried to untangle himself. Kent finally got the window up and vaulted over the low sill. He was followed, more slowly, by the doctor. The rector vibrated uncertainly on the hearthrug, like a modern dancer expressing Doubt and Insecurity;
then he bolted for the door, possibly with the idea of heading the fugitive off from the front of the house. The lights went out.

Thomas knew that the moment was upon them. Something was about to happen. He had no intention of pursuing Percy; there were enough people engaged in that futile exercise already. But he didn't know what to do. The room was a gloomy cavern through which shadowy forms moved and shouted. He could not identify any of them.

Someone grabbed his arm. Thomas recognized the perfume, the grip, and the faint gleam of coppery hair.

“Quick,” said Jacqueline. “Quick, for God's sake.”

She crossed the room like a cannonball, towing him with her and ruthlessly brushing aside interference. Someone reeled back from her outthrust arm. A voice rose in a banshee wail as they ran past the long table. Thomas deduced that Jacqueline had trodden on Lady Isobel's hand.

There were lights in the hall. Jacqueline began to run faster, the purse swinging wildly. Thomas ran after her. She passed the doors to dining room and breakfast room and flung herself at the oak panels of the library door. It was locked.

Thomas didn't offer to break it down. “Upstairs,” he said. “Through Weldon's sitting room and down the library stairs.”

Jacqueline shot him a glance of approval and took off. As they reached the central vestibule and the stairs, they saw Wilkes struggling with a determined mob. Actually, there were only a dozen people present, but they conveyed the impression of a mob. The press had broken in.

Jacqueline put her head down and went through like a fullback. Thomas was on her heels. Several of the more alert reporters followed them, but Jacqueline lost them in the maze of corridors above. Thomas could hear them bellowing for a guide as he and Jacqueline entered Sir Richard's room. He was puffing like a grampus. Speed and apprehension had winded him. Jacqueline beat him to the library stairs. He had to follow her down; the stairs were too narrow for more than one person.

He had had no time to think ahead, to imagine what he might see; but his wildest imaginings could not have prepared him for the scene that met his eyes.

The heavy draperies were drawn, but the room was well lit by the chandelier overhead and by the lamp on Weldon's desk. Flames flickered on the hearth—not the blaze of a well-laid fire, but the isolated, smaller flame of something burning—something
like a piece of paper. In the center of the room Sir Richard lay on his back, his arms outstretched. His shirt had been ripped open; his chest streamed with blood from at least two wounds. Standing over him, a naked blade in his hands, was Frank.

Thomas closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the tableau had not changed. He had hoped he was having a hallucination.

Jacqueline ran forward, emitting cries of distress. Thomas thought she was wringing her hands, although he didn't see how she could, with her purse in the way; she was certainly doing everything else a frightened woman is supposed to do. She flung herself down beside Weldon's bleeding body, under the lifted blade.

Frank fell back a step before her impetuous rush. The weapon wavered. It was the huge two-handed sword that had hung on the wall, and he needed both hands to hold it. The blade was no longer clean and shining. As Thomas watched, petrified, a drop fell from its tip and made a small red stain on the back of Jacqueline's white blouse.

“Thank God you got here in time,” she exclaimed, glancing up at Frank. “Did you see him?”

“Who?” Frank looked as if he were in a state of shock—which, Thomas thought, was not surprising.

“Percy,” Jacqueline answered. She was still on
her knees; her hands, horribly stained, were moving over the unconscious man's breast. “It was Percy, wasn't it?”

“I don't know,” Frank said slowly. “I didn't see anyone. The—the damned sword was lying on the floor. I picked it up. I never really believed people did idiotic things like that.”

“Shock,” Thomas said. “Put it down, Frank.”

He spoke gently; he didn't like the young man's looks. Frank was abnormally flushed; his body shook with his quick breathing. Instead of lowering the blade, he turned it, studying it with bemused interest. Another drop fell. Jacqueline had straightened; the crimson drop struck her forearm and trickled slowly down toward her wrist.

“He burned the letter,” Frank said, indicating the fireplace.

“That doesn't matter now,” Thomas said. “Sir Richard—is he still alive?”

Jacqueline didn't answer. She didn't look at him; her eyes were glued to Frank's face. Thomas realized that the young man was perfectly dry. He had not been out in the rain. He had come directly to the library…. And the library door had been locked when Jacqueline tried it.

Thomas knew then. In spite of his habit of self-control, a gasp escaped him. It was as if an invisible tendril of thought crossed the room, from his
mind to Frank's. The younger man turned his head and looked directly at Thomas. Sir Richard stirred, moaning.

“Yes,” Frank said gently. “He's alive. You had better fetch Rawdon, Thomas.”

Thomas didn't know what to do. It was too late for pretense; Frank had read his cursed open face. He couldn't leave anyway, not with Jacqueline and the helpless man under the sword. He couldn't jump Frank; he was too far away, and the dripping blade hovered over Weldon's lifted face. The huge sword was as heavy as a sledgehammer, Frank didn't have to thrust, all he had to do was let go. Shock and nervous strain might excuse the failure of his grip. A sudden move from Thomas certainly would.

As his overtaxed brain struggled with split-second alternatives—all of them impractical—Jacqueline broke out again, wringing her hands and keening like an old lady at a wake. Trivialities assault the mind at such moments; Thomas was disproportionately vexed by the purse, whose strap kept slipping and getting entwined with Jacqueline's hands.

Then he caught a gleam of emerald as Jacqueline turned her head slightly; and he found that the expression “his heart sank” was not a poetic flight of fancy. Something inside him seemed to
drop with a thud and press agonizingly into the pit of his stomach. She was going to move. A barehanded, middle-aged woman against a husky young man armed with a six-foot sword…

“No,” he shouted. “No, don't—”

The cry helped, distracting Frank's attention for an instant. Jacqueline was already in action. Only her arm moved. Her arm—and her purse, whose strap was now wound around her fist like the cords of a sling. The massive, weighted object sailed in an accurately calculated arc, striking Frank's hands and the hilt they clasped. The impetus carried arms and sword up and back, away from Weldon's face. In a single smooth movement Jacqueline rose and took a long stride. She lifted her knee.

Thomas stood frozen, not with fear but with consternation. The brutal, effective blow and Jacqueline's white-clad elegance made a rather horrid combination.

Jacqueline herself seemed surprised. Looking down at the moaning form at her feet she remarked, in a wondering voice,

“Amazing. It really works!”

“Y
OU NEVER STUDIED KARATE,” SAID
T
HOMAS.
I
T
was not a question.

“I read a book.”

“You cannot learn karate from a book,” said Thomas. His voice vibrated with passion. “It is impossible to learn karate from a book. No one has ever learned—”

“Well, I saw it on television, too,” Jacqueline said calmly. “I'm not even sure that particular move is karate. Judo, perhaps? Or that other thing, the Chinese—”

“Where I come from, it's plain dirty fighting,” said Strangways, grinning. “I wish I'd seen you in action, Jacqueline. Not that Thomas's description lacked verve…”

They were barricaded in the drawing room while Wilkes and the other servants searched out and expelled lurking reporters. The meeting had been canceled; the roars of trucks and the expletives of frustrated media men reached
them faintly, even through the closed and bolted windows. It had stopped raining.

“Someone will have to give them a statement,” Kent said, as a particularly outraged expletive echoed along the hall.

“Inspector Whatever-his-name will handle that,” Jacqueline said. She looked apologetically at the new member of the group who stood, in formal rigidity, by the door. “I'm afraid I don't know your name either, Sergeant…Lieutenant…”

“Constable Stewart, miss,” said the young man, moving only his mouth. A wave of color ran up his thin face, from his tight collar to the roots of his sandy hair. Thomas had noticed that he blushed every time someone spoke to him. He wondered if the young fellow was really cut out for his profession.

“Thank you.” Jacqueline smiled. “You don't mind if we talk, do you?”

“I have had no instructions as to that, miss.”

“I'm going to talk whether it's allowed or not,” said Philip decidedly. “I'm confused. What the hell has been going on?”

“Weldon will live,” Thomas said. “He was stabbed three times and lost a lot of blood, but none of the wounds was fatal. The fourth—or fifth, or sixth—would have been.”

“But why not dispatch him at once?” Mr. Ellis looked lost without his usual companion. Rawdon was still upstairs with the wounded man. “The unnecessary brutality…the cruelty…”

“Richard was killed by a dozen blows,” said another voice. “They hacked at his body after he had fallen.”

They had forgotten about Liz, who sat quietly in a corner of the sofa. Thomas stirred uncomfortably as she turned her pale face toward them. She was pale, but composed. Weldon's survival was the only thing that really mattered to her; the mad events of the day had clarified her feelings.

His candid, sympathetic face gave his thoughts away. Liz smiled at him.

“I'm quite all right, Thomas. Mother is still having hysterics upstairs, but that's simply habit. She never liked Frank.” A touch of bitterness cooled the girl's voice, but it disappeared as she went on. “Isn't it strange, how the most frightful things can have positive results? Percy has been absolutely marvelous. He's with Mother now. Perhaps all he needs is responsibility. She's coddled him too long.”

“There's nothing seriously wrong with Percy,” Jacqueline said. “He's pampered, frustrated, and overweight. He needs a few good hard kicks in the rear, and the chance to do his own thing.”

She looked as smug as a copper-furred cat, curled up in a leather armchair and smoking like a chimney. For once Thomas didn't resent her arrogance. It occurred to him that perhaps Jacqueline sometimes sounded overconfident and autocratic because that was what people wanted from her. Certainty can be reassuring.

Liz's face relaxed visibly; and Thomas, unable to resist a small dig, remarked, “Is that how you raise your children, Jacqueline? By God! That's how you learned karate! From David.”

“He lets me practice on him,” admitted Jacqueline.

Thomas hadn't seen Jacqueline's son for five years. He had been a dirty, freckled urchin then; he was about eighteen now, and if he was Jacqueline's son he would be a match for her in everything but experience—neatly built and mentally agile. He had a vision of Jacqueline heaving her tall son over her shoulder in her cool pastel living room. It was a delightful thought.

The rector was still struggling with the incredible truth.

“Then it was King Richard's death the—the criminal was attempting to reproduce—as he had reproduced the deaths of the others?”

“Only this was to be a fatal accident,” Jacqueline said. “Sir Richard's death was the point of
the whole bag of worms. The list of the people who died violent deaths during the reign of Richard the Third is incomplete unless you add Richard himself. If you follow the pro-Richard line, Richard was not a murderer; rather, he was a victim of the treachery and self-interest that doomed the other victims. The real villains were kings like Edward the Fourth and Henry the Seventh—your favorite candidate for the murderer of the princes. Henry was also responsible for Richard's death, although he didn't strike a blow himself. ‘He led his regiment from behind….' ”

Thomas looked sharply at her. After a moment of silence Strangways spoke.

“And that is how you deduced what was going to happen?” he inquired skeptically. “Because the logical victim of the series was Richard himself?”

Jacqueline raised cool green eyes to his face and he threw his arm up in a mock gesture of defense.

“I'm not arguing. You lucked out—I mean, you were right and apparently I was wrong. I'm just asking.”

“Ah,” said Jacqueline, with satisfaction. “In that case, I will explain.

“The idea that the comedian's ultimate victim might be Sir Richard wasn't deduction; it was a crazy hunch. Thomas, do you remember our discussion
in the conservatory? We were both groggy with wine and lack of sleep and we talked a lot of nonsense; and yet everything we discussed, from grammar to detective fiction, had bearing on the problem of the final victim. We debated about pronouns and adverbs; but when I spoke of ‘the murders of Richard the Third' I realized that two other grammatical points were pertinent—the plural and the possessive preposition. If I say ‘the murder of Henry the Sixth' you understand that I am describing Henry the Sixth's violent death. But if I say ‘the murders—plural—of Richard' you assume I am accusing Richard of committing the murders, not of being killed more than once. ‘Of' has two different meanings. In the first case, the possessor has suffered violence; in the second, he has committed it. There is a classic detective story called
The Murder of My Aunt
…. Think about it.

“Of course in ordinary speech the plural word ‘murders' restricts the meaning of the possessive to the active form. Ordinarily people aren't murdered several times. But here in this house, Clarence, Henry the Sixth, and the others
were
‘murdered' a second time. So, I thought to myself, what about King Richard the Third? According to the York records, he was ‘piteously slain and
murdered,
to the great heaviness of this city….' An
unusual epitaph for a tyrant, and a better one than Henry Tudor ever got….

“In the view of the pro-Richard school, Richard was a victim, not a villain; a murderee, not a murderer. What if he, like the others, was due to be ‘murdered' again? Sir Richard Weldon was King Richard. I had already figured out that the comedian was Frank—”

“Wait a minute here. You're skipping. How did you know that?” Strangways demanded.

“The heads,” Jacqueline said. “Frank was the only one who had a car.”

There was a damp silence. Strangways was the first to catch on. He swore. “Ditto,” said Thomas. Jacqueline looked from one disappointed face to the next, and lifted the corner of her lip in a silent snarl.

“I know how Holmes felt after he explained his deductions and Watson told him how obvious they were,” she said.

“But it is obvious,” Thomas said. “I expected—”

“A pseudopsychological mishmash of Ricardian data? Oh, I suspected Frank before that; but I could have made out a plausible case against most of the people here. When will you get it through your academic head that possibilities are not proof?

“The plaster heads were the clincher. You yourself
complained about the lack of privacy in well-staffed houses—the servants always unpacking for guests. The criminal knew this; he would have taken an awful risk trying to smuggle the heads into the house without their being seen. It might not have attracted comment or attention initially, but after the heads made their public appearance, a servant might have remembered them. Even if the criminal could count on sneaking his luggage in and unpacking it himself, where would he hide the things? A bureau drawer? A closet shelf? Under the bed?”

“What about secreting the heads somewhere in the grounds?” Thomas asked.

“Possible, but equally risky. Also inconvenient. If the heads were found, by one of the outside staff, they might not be traced to the person who brought them, but they would be unavailable thereafter, and he needed them. He had to be able to get at them in a hurry when the opportunity arose. If it would rain, he would get wet and muddy, which might arouse suspicion…. But there was one hiding place that was practically foolproof. The locked trunk of a car. You call it the boot, I believe,” Jacqueline explained to Mr. Ellis, who nodded dumbly.

“When did you first suspect Frank?” Thomas asked.

“Let's begin at the beginning,” Jacqueline said, with infuriating patience. “At first we didn't have a criminal; we had a comedian with a strange sense of humor. As soon as the pattern of the tricks became clear, I asked myself the obvious question: Were the incidents simply sick jokes, or were they camouflage, to mask a serious purpose? I really couldn't believe the first interpretation. Only a madman would perpetrate such tricks. I hope you don't mind my using that word. It isn't approved these days, but it takes too long to say ‘mentally disturbed individual.' ”

“Call him a Bedlamite if you like,” Thomas said impatiently. “Only get on with it.”

“Now madness, though its acts may seem irrational to normal people, has its own rationale. The acts become explicable when one comprehends the underlying obsession. A paranoidal schizophrenic attacks strangers because he believes they are members of a conspiracy aimed at his life. A religious fanatic may murder prostitutes. If we were dealing with a man of this type, the rationale could only be hatred of the society, or of Richard the Third—as you know, he still inspires strong emotions. Your members are all dedicated Ricardians. If any of you developed a monomania—which I could well believe—it would hardly take the form of a plot based on vicious
slanders of your hero, or one that mocked the organization formed to defend him.”

“Do forgive me,” the rector said in his gentle voice, “but I believe there is a contradiction. You said, a few moments ago, that Sir Richard was the ultimate victim of this dreadful plot. By killing King Richard's alter ego, the criminal made him a martyr, not a murderer. Of course I cannot agree that any of us would be capable of such atrocities, under any circumstances, but in a perverse sense Sir Richard's death might suggest a pro-Ricardian bias, rather than the reverse.”

“I see what you mean,” Jacqueline said, smiling at him. “But I think you are being a little too subtle, Mr. Ellis. However, I had other reasons for believing that the tricks were not the work of a monomaniac. Although they imitated the deaths of Richard's purported victims, they deviated from the known facts in several ways. The accepted Tudor legend accuses Richard of stabbing Henry the Sixth with a sword or dagger. Yet the trick played on the doctor was meant to imply poison.

“Even more significant was the change in the chronological sequence. It is impossible that the young princes should have been murdered before Lord Hastings was beheaded; the younger boy did not leave sanctuary until after Hastings was
dead. Now a monomaniac is usually consistent in his aberration. He will take the most appalling risks in order to stick to his self-determined rules. But our joker attacked Percy before he struck at Philip, who ought to have been the next victim. To me, these deviations suggested expediency rather than madness. It was much easier to slip some substance into the doctor's special food than to lure him away to a spot where he could be safely ‘stabbed.' Philip is young and strong—a dangerous man to attack. By appearing to skip him, the comedian put him off guard.

“It was clear that the comedian was a member of the house party. The mysterious figure who lured Frank into the cellar—”

“That's when you began to suspect Frank,” Thomas interrupted.

“I didn't suspect him then; I didn't suspect anyone until the pattern of the tricks made it evident that there was need for suspicion. But when I looked back on Frank's ‘accident,' I found some grounds for doubt. Anyone in the house could have put on a raincoat and hat. And blows on the head often do induce mild amnesia. But it was singularly convenient for the attacker that Frank should suffer such amnesia. Remember, there were marks on his
face.
At some point he must have confronted his attacker. His injuries could
have been self-inflicted; as he himself insisted, they were superficial. Any schoolboy who is lucky enough to suffer from a propensity to nosebleed soon learns how to induce that phenomenon at will. It's useful for getting out of exams and other embarrassing situations.

“The attack on Philip and the appearance of the plaster heads confirmed my suspicions of Frank, but I still didn't know what the point of the whole business could be. It was the reverse of the normal detective-novel situation, where the sleuth must deduce the identity of the criminal after he has committed a crime. I knew the criminal; but I didn't know what crime he planned to commit, or the identity of the victim, if any. So I went at the problem from another angle.