Death and the Joyful Woman gfaf-2 Page 16

  “I’ve put it every way I can think of.” The words that visited his lips when he thought of Kitty came spurting out of him in breathless bursts of indignation and anxiety, impossible to disguise however he muffled them by nuzzling in Bunty’s hair. He could never deceive Bunty worth a damn, anyhow, he gave up trying. “All along she’s simply ignored questions about that telephone call. She knows we know she did ring somebody. But still she, no, she doesn’t deny it, she just pretends not to understand, or else she doesn’t even pretend, she just sits there and shuts her mouth and isn’t with us any more. I’ve tried, and Duckett’s tried. Nobody can get anything out of her. Of course I’ve told her whoever she called may very well be the murderer. I’ve urged her, I’ve threatened her, I’ve bullied her, it’s only made it worse. She’s more determined than ever not to give him away.”

  “Because she doesn’t believe he had anything to do with it,” said Bunty.

  “No, she doesn’t believe it. There’s no talking to her.”

  “So she thinks she’d only be shifting her own trouble on to someone else just as innocent.”

  “And that we’d be just as dead set on getting a conviction against him as we must have seemed to be against her,” said George bitterly. Suddenly abjectly grateful for Bunty’s presence and her oneness with him, that sturdily refused to be changed by any outer pressures or even by the helpless convulsions of his overburdened heart, he turned and wound his arms about her, burying his face in the warm hollow of her neck. She shifted her position gently to make him more comfortable, hugging him to her heart.

  “And Chris Duckett still thinks she did it?”

  He mumbled assent, too tired to free his mouth. The slight movement was like the beginning of a kiss; he turned it into one.

  “So between the chief hell-bent on getting a conviction against her, and you just as hell-bent on getting one against someone she’s certain is equally blameless, and who’d be equally helpless if she once dragged him into it, no wonder the poor girl’s just giving up the fight and refusing to say a word.”

  George came out of ambush to protest indignantly that he wasn’t hell-bent on any such thing, that nobody was trying to convict for the sake of a conviction, that there was a logical case for investigating X’s movements very carefully. He outlined it, and in the quietness there in the small hours it sounded even more impressive than it had when Dominic had propounded it on Sunday evening, in terms that might have been conjured out of George’s own mind as a direct challenge to him.

  “If it’s like that,” said Bunty at last, “and she won’t talk for you, why don’t you turn somebody loose on her for whom she will talk? I don’t know Kitty as you do, , , ” Her hand caressed George’s cheek; he hoped she wasn’t comforting him for the undignified pain of which she couldn’t possibly know anything, but he was dreadfully afraid she was.”, , , But I can’t help feeling that if you got Leslie Armiger to question her she might break down and tell everything. I may be wrong,” said Bunty kindly, well aware that she was not wrong, “but they almost grew up together, and I gather they’re fond of each other.”

  “But that’s just what I can’t do,” said George.

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s the one! Because in spite of one snag I can’t get round I’m almost sure it was Leslie.” He felt her stiffen in disbelief, her fingers stilling in his hair. “I know! He isn’t on the telephone! He remembered to remind me of that. I know, but look what he has to gain, he and nobody else.” He poured out the whole of it, physically half asleep on her shoulder, but mentally, agonisingly wide awake, sensitive to every breath she drew, almost to every implication she was reading into his words.

  “Still, I don’t see how it could have been Leslie,” said Bunty firmly when he had done.

  “I know, I told you, I don’t, either. No telephone, there’s no getting past it.”

  “No, I didn’t mean that. I meant I don’t see how it could have been Leslie, because even if she could have called him, I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t.” She told him why. When she ended he was asleep, his mouth against her cheek. She kissed him, and he didn’t wake up. “Poor old darling!” she said, and went to sleep embracing him.

  But when he awoke before dawn he remembered everything she had told him, and sat up in bed abruptly. The whole thing to be re-thought from the beginning, a new cast to be made. He lay down very softly, to avoid disturbing Bunty, and began to go over the ground yet again in his mind, inch by painful inch.

  He came home that night late and on edge after a day of furious but so far unproductive activity, and it was no pleasure, the mood he was in, to have Dominic spring out of the living-room at him before he could so much as drop his briefcase and hang up his hat. The mirror had just presented him with the image of his forty-one-year-old face, fretted and drawn with tiredness, with straight brown hair greying at the temples, and he was afraid receding a little too, when there erupted into the glass, beside it the sixteen-year-old copy, fresh as new milk, just-formed, with lashes like ferns and a thatch as thick as gorse, a face as yet so young and unused that all the anxiety and trouble in the world couldn’t take the springy freshness out of it. The contrast wasn’t comforting; neither was the look Dominic fixed on him, waiting with held breath for the news he’d almost given up expecting.

  “Sorry, boy,” said George, “we haven’t found them yet.”

  Dominic didn’t move. The anxious eyes followed every motion with a hopeless concentration as George hung up his coat and made for the stairs. In his own mind he had given them until this evening; if they hadn’t found the gloves by now it was no use relying on it that they ever would, no use waiting any longer for the turn of luck it didn’t seem as if they were going to get. Luck’s hand would have to be forced. When logs coming down a river jam, somebody has to set off a charge to release them and start them flowing again. Dominic did not particularly fancy himself as a charge of dynamite, but extreme measures were called for. And this time it was in any case impossible to confide in George, because the kind of shock tactics Dominic had in mind would not, and could not, be countenanced by the police. One word to George, and the whole thing would be knocked on the head. No, he had to do this alone, or if he had to ask for help it mustn’t be from his father. And before he ventured he had to make sure he hadn’t left any loopholes for want of sufficient briefing. There were still things he didn’t know; by the terms of their toleration agreement he couldn’t go to his father for them, but what he wanted to know Leslie Armiger could tell him.

  “I’m going out, Mummy,” said Dominic, following Bunty into the kitchen. It was already well past eight o’clock, and she was surprised, but she didn’t ask him where or why, she merely said: “All right, darling, don’t be too late.” She was a nice mother, he was suddenly moved to engulf her in a bear’s hug before he fled, but she was holding a hot iron, so he didn’t do it. She hadn’t even said: “But you haven’t finished your homework!” though he hadn’t. Any other mother would have been all too liable to nag, the way he was skimping his work these days.

  He got out his bike and rode into Comerbourne, and let himself into Mrs. Harkness’s front garden by the low iron gate. There was an outside bell for the Armigers, but they didn’t always hear it, you had to walk in at the front door and climb the stairs and tap on the door of their room.

  Leslie was sitting over a pile of books at the table, in his shirt-sleeves and a cloud of cigarette smoke. Dominic might not be doing his homework, but Leslie was, with dedicated concentration. He’d come down from Oxford without a degree, having behaved there as his father had fully intended him to behave, tossing his liberal allowance about gaily, playing with zest, painting with passion, cutting an engaging figure socially and working only just enough to keep him out of trouble, and perhaps a little over to appease his tutor after every grieved lecture, purely out of liking for the old boy, and as a concession to his conservative ideas of what universities were for. That left him with a lot
of leeway to make up now, when marriage and responsibility had put a sharp end to his prolonged adolescence.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Dominic, dismayed. “I’d better not butt in on you if you’re working.”

  “No, come in, it’s all right.” Leslie closed his book and pushed the whole pile aside, stretching his cramped shoulders. “I’m glad to have an excuse to stop. There’s nothing new, is there? About Kitty?”

  Dominic shook his head. “You haven’t been to see her again, have you?”

  “Not yet, it’s no use asking too often, you know, they wouldn’t let me. Is there something else I can help with?”

  “Well, there is, as a matter of fact. You’ll probably think it a funny thing to ask, but it’s about this picture of yours. If you wouldn’t mind telling me all that stuff about how somebody tried to get it back, I think it might help me. Because I’ve got a sort of theory, but I don’t know enough about the details to know yet if it makes sense.”

  “You think The Joyful Woman may be mixed up in the business?” asked Leslie, studying him curiously through the haze of smoke. The queer thing about the kid was that there was nothing queer about him; tallish, pleasant-looking, reasonably extrovert, healthily certain of himself, taking himself a bit seriously at this stage, but then he’d be odd if he didn’t. You could drop him among his kind in any public school, and he’d fall on his nice large feet and wriggle a place for himself on the spot. You could imagine him keeping well in the swim at whatever he touched, perhaps one notch ahead of average at games and two or three notches ahead at his books, with enough energy left over for a couple of reasonably intelligent hobbies, say climbing at one extreme and amateur theatricals at the other, and perhaps one amiable lunacy like an immoderate passion for fast motorbikes or a weakness for blonde bits on the side. Wonderfully ordinary, and yet here he was taking a proprietorial hold on a murder case, and bringing all his down-to-earth qualities to bear on a situation so unordinary that the result was pure fantasy. For a moment Leslie looked at him and couldn’t believe he had his focus right, the components tended so strongly to fall apart into different dimensions. I suppose, he thought, in this setting we all look a bit out of drawing; it’s only his being so young that makes it more marked in his case.

  He sat down with him and told him the whole history of The Joyful Woman over again from the beginning, while Dominic followed with quick questions and hopeful eyes. Jean came in halfway through the story and brought him a mug of chocolate and some biscuits; she had grown up with three young brothers, and was used to feeding boys on principle at frequent intervals.

  “So the idea is that this dealer, this Cranmer, had dropped the hint to your father that the thing was valuable.” Warmth and eagerness had come back into Dominic’s eyes, and a calculating gleam; it was working out as he’d thought it might. “But it was Mr. Shelley who came to see you.”

  “On my father’s behalf, of course.”

  “But why of course? You only know that because he told you so. Look, suppose it happened this way. Cranmer sees some definite possibility in the picture, he knows your father must have thrown it out as worthless, and he knows it may be worth a great deal. He decides it would pay him to keep in with your father, so he telephones the office to warn him. But just by chance he misses him. They put him on to Mr. Shelley, and he tells him what he thinks, that his boss should think again, he’s giving away a small fortune. But instead of passing on the message Mr. Shelley does a bit of quick thinking. He’s sure by then that you and your father are never likely to heal the breach, so you won’t be comparing notes. And he sees a better use to make of this stroke of luck. You sit on it and keep quiet, he says to Cranmer, and you and I can do a deal and share the proceeds between us, never mind Armiger. And he comes to you with that story about your father having thought better of his mean joke, and sent him to offer you the five hundred pounds instead of the picture. You said he had the money in cash. Didn’t that strike you as odd?”

  “Not particularly. My father would think nothing of shuffling that much about in cash. But I agree it makes your version possible. I agree it might have seemed quite an easy way of getting hold of the sign too. But surely if the old boy had been in it for himself he wouldn’t have dared to take it any farther after I turned him down? It was too risky.”

  “But if the stake was big enough? You refuse him, so he comes back and steals your father’s letter, which is the only actual proof of ownership. He’s banking on it that you won’t touch your father in any way, having seen how you feel, not to take anything from him, not to see him, not to talk to him, but also surely not to make a public accusation against him over this business. He’s betting you’ll just write it off in disgust, and not do anything about it at all, because of course you’re not going to be told the picture has any value, Cranmer will see to that end of it. Just commonplace rubbish! So you were supposed to think, what’s the point, the joke will be on him, let him have it and much good may it do him! The silly old fool jumped to conclusions just because it leaked out to him that we’d consulted a dealer, and now he’s made himself just about as big an ass as he is a rogue, so let him hang the thing on the wall to remind him how he got too sharp and cut himself.”

  Carried away by his own eloquence, Dominic had lapsed into language which he suddenly realised might by conventional standards be thought offensive in the circumstances. Even if you thought about the dead like that you weren’t supposed to say it, and even if Leslie had no reason whatever to love his late father he was supposed to observe certain rules and maintain certain attitudes. And you never know how conventional unconventional people may be just beneath the skin. He paled to the lips, and then flushed bright red to the hair. “I say, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be shooting off my mouth like this, it’s terrible cheek. I really am sorry! I should have remembered he was your father, and all that, , , “

  “That’s all right,” said Leslie with a rueful grin. “I might very well have taken it just like that. I probably should have, if I hadn’t happened to reach my limit just about then. Don’t mind calling my dad names, that’s the last thing he’d have kicked about. One of the better things about him was that he didn’t snivel about his virtue while he pulled off his sharp deals, he just slapped them down gleefully and said in effect: Go on, beat that! Carry on, you’re doing all right.”

  “You really didn’t mind? It was a hell of a cheek. But you see how important it could be if Shelley actually could have reasoned like that. There he is, sure you won’t bother to claim the picture once Cranmer says your father’s disputing its ownership, but just let the whole thing go, and put all the dirty work down to your father. So Shelley and Cranmer can quietly dispose of the goods and share the proceeds. And then suddenly out of the blue, when he’s home after getting back from the pub that night, Kitty rings him up.

  “You said he was one person she might very well turn to in her trouble. She blurts out everything to him, and asks him to come and get her away. She doesn’t realise she’s telling him anything very terrible when she says that you’ve been there in the barn with your father, because you know he told her it was you he was going out to see, but just think what it would mean to Shelley! The very thing he was sure wouldn’t happen had happened. Instead of letting the whole thing drop you’d gone rushing off to your father, to pitch into him about the dirty trick he’d played you. Then of course he wouldn’t know what you were talking about, and he’d say so, and the whole business would come out. And finish for Shelley! He’d been with your father, how many years? Just think what it would mean to him to be kicked out now and have to start afresh with your father against him, maybe even to be disgraced publicly and have a charge laid against him. But there’s Kitty on the phone, babbling that she’s pushed your father down the stairs and he’s lying there in the barn unconscious. It’s now or never if Shelley wants to shut down on the scandal for good, and keep hold of his share in the picture deal. So he tells Kitty yes, don’t worry, just stay
there, he’s on his way. And he gets out the car and drives like hell back to the barn. And kills your father.”

  They were both gazing at him with wide and wary eyes, in wonder and doubt. Leslie said in a tight, quiet voice: “It could have happened, I suppose. It would certainly seem like the end of the world to him if Dad turned against him. And I’m not saying he wouldn’t have gone the limit against him in the circumstances. He didn’t mind a little sharp practice, he expected it and he could deal with it, but if there was a lot of money involved, , , And then, his vanity would be desperately hurt if he found out that for once he hadn’t been the smartest operator around.”

  “And when you pitched into him about pinching his own letter, he did deny all knowledge of it, didn’t he?”

  “He did,” agreed Leslie dubiously, “but he could just as well have been lying like a trooper, I took it he was. Still, I suppose it could have happened like that.”

  Jean had sat silent and intent throughout this exchange, her eyes turning from one face to the other as they talked, her chin on her fists. She made a sudden movement of protest. “No, it couldn’t,” she said, “it didn’t. I’m sorry, boys, there’s just one thing wrong with it, but it makes it all wrong. Oh, I’m not saying it couldn’t be Mr. Shelley who did it, but if so, it didn’t happen like that.”

  They had both turned to stare at her. “Why not?” they asked together.

  With the gentle reasonableness and absolute authority of a kindergarten teacher instructing her brighter charges, Jean told them.

  CHAPTER XIII.

  OCTOBER CAME IN cold and gusty, with squally days and ground frosts at night; the grass in front of the main offices of Armiger’s Ales stopped growing and shrank into its winter sleep, and the leaves began suddenly to fall from the trees thicker than rain, until the pure, slender skeletons showed through the thinning, yellowing foliage against a blown and blustery sky. Inside, the full heating system was put into use for the first time that season. Ruth Hamilton, coming down the stairs at five o’clock on Thursday evening, listened to the moaning of the wind outside the long staircase window and hunched her shoulders. It was going to be a stormy night; the last fine spell had broken, and the last traces of summer had blown away in a day.