Unnatural Causes (11 page)

“Very convenient for him.”

“It’s always convenient to have an alibi, Mr. Dalgliesh. But there are some alibis I don’t intend to waste time trying to break. And that’s the kind he’s got. What’s more, unless he was acting just now, he just doesn’t know that the weapon wasn’t a knife. And he thinks that Seton died on Wednesday night. Maurice couldn’t have been in this house alive when Digby and Miss Marley arrived on Wednesday. That’s not to say that his body wasn’t here. But I can’t see Digby acting the butcher and I can’t see why he should. Even if he found the body here and panicked he’s the sort to hit the bottle then belt off back to town, not to plan an elaborate charade. And he was on the Lowestoft not the London road when he crashed. Besides, I don’t see how he could have known about Miss Calthrop’s pleasant little opening for a detective story.”

“Unless Eliza Marley told him on the way here.”

“Why should she tell Digby Seton? It’s not a likely topic for conversation on the drive home. But all right. We’ll assume that she did know and that she told Digby or that, somehow or other, he knew. He arrives here and finds his brother’s body. So he immediately decides to provide a reallife mystery by chopping off Maurice’s hands and pushing the body out to sea. Why? And what did he use for a weapon? I saw the body, remember, and I’d swear those hands were chopped off, not cut, nor sawed, chopped. So much for the kitchen knife! Seton’s chopper is still in the pantry. And your aunt’s—if that was the weapon—was stolen about three months ago.”

“So Digby Seton is out. What about the others?”

“We’ve only had time for a preliminary check. I’m taking their statements this afternoon. But it looks as if they’ve all got alibis of a sort for the time of death. All except Miss Dalgliesh. Living alone as she does, that’s not surprising.”

The flat, monotonous voice did not change. The sombre eyes still looked out to sea. But Dalgliesh was not deceived. So this was the reason for the summons to Seton House, for the Inspector’s unexpected outburst of confidence. He knew how it must look to Reckless. Here was an elderly, unmarried woman living a lonely and isolated life. She had no alibi for the time of death nor for Wednesday night when the body was launched out to sea. She had an almost private access to the beach. She knew where Sheldrake lay. She was nearly six foot tall, a strong, agile countrywoman, addicted to strenuous walking and accustomed to the night.

Admittedly she had no apparent motive. But what did that matter? Despite what he had said to his aunt that morning Dalgliesh knew perfectly well that motive was not the first concern. The detective who concentrated logically on the “where,” “when” and “how” would inevitably have the “why” revealed to him in all its pitiful inadequacy. Dalgliesh’s old chief used to say that the four L’s—love, lust, loathing and lucre—comprised all motives for murder. Superficially that was true enough. But motive was as varied and complex as human personality. He had no doubt that the Inspector’s horribly experienced mind was already busy recalling past cases where the weeds of suspicion, loneliness or irrational dislike had flowered into unexpected violence and death.

Suddenly Dalgliesh was seized with an anger so intense that for a few seconds it paralysed speech and even thought. It swept through his body like a wave of physical nausea leaving him white and shaken with self-disgust. Choked with this
anger he was luckily saved from the worst follies of speech, from sarcasm, indignation or the futile protest that his aunt would, of course, make no statement except in the presence of her solicitor. She needed no solicitor. She had him. But, God, what a holiday this was proving to be!

There was a creak of wheels and Sylvia Kedge spun her wheelchair through the French windows and manoeuvred it up beside them. She didn’t speak but gazed intently down the track towards the road. Their eyes followed hers. A post office van, brightly compact as a toy, was careering over the headland towards the house.

“It’s the post,” she said. Dalgliesh saw that her hands were clamped to the chair sides, the knuckles white. As the van drew up before the terrace he watched her body half-rise and stiffen as if seized with a sudden rigor. In the silence which followed the stopping of the engine, he could hear her heavy breathing.

The postman slammed the van door and came towards them, calling a cheerful greeting. There was no response from the girl and he glanced puzzled from her rigid face to the still figures of the two men. Then he handed Reckless the post. It was a single foolscap envelope, buff coloured and with a typewritten address.

“It’s the same kind as before, Sir,” he said. “Like the one I gave her yesterday.” He nodded towards Miss Kedge, then, still getting no response, backed awkwardly towards his van muttering, “Good morning.”

Reckless spoke to Dalgliesh: “Addressed to Maurice Seton, Esq. Posted either late on Wednesday or early on Thursday from Ipswich. Postmarked midday yesterday.”

He held the envelope delicately by one corner as if anxious not to impose more fingerprints. With his right thumb he edged it open. Inside there was a single sheet of foolscap paper covered with double-spaced typescript. Reckless began to read aloud:
“The corpse without hands lay in the bottom of a small sailing dinghy drifting just within sight of the Suffolk coast. It was the body of a middle-aged man, a dapper little cadaver, its shroud a dark pin-striped suit which fitted the narrow body as elegantly in death as it had in life …”

Suddenly Sylvia Kedge held out her hand. “Let me see.”

Reckless hesitated, then held the sheet before her eyes. “He wrote it,” she said hoarsely. “He wrote it. And that’s his typewriting.”

“Maybe,” said Reckless. “But he couldn’t have posted it. Even if this went into the box late on Wednesday night he couldn’t have put it there. He was dead by then.”

She cried out: “He typed it! I know his work, I tell you. He typed it! And he hadn’t any hands!”

She burst into peal upon peal of hysterical laughter. It rang over the headland like a wild echo, so startling a flock of gulls that shrieking their alarm they whirled from the cliff edge in a single white cloud.

Reckless looked at the rigid body, the screaming mouth, with speculative unconcern, making no move to comfort or control her. Suddenly Digby Seton appeared in the French windows, his face white under the ridiculous bandage.

“What the hell …?”

Reckless looked at him, expressionless, and said in his flat voice: “We’ve just heard from your brother, Mr. Seton. Now isn’t that nice?”

It took some time to pacify Miss Kedge. Dalgliesh had no doubt that her hysteria was genuine; this was no play-acting. He was only surprised that she should be so upset. Of all the little community at Monksmere Sylvia Kedge alone seemed to be genuinely shocked and distressed at Seton’s death. And, certainly, the shock was real enough. She had looked and behaved like a woman maintaining a precarious self-control which had snapped at last. But she made visible efforts to pull herself together and was at last well enough to be escorted back to Tanner’s Cottage by Courtney, who had succumbed entirely to the pathos of her drawn face and pleading eyes and who pushed her wheelchair down the lane like a mother displaying her fragile newborn to the glares of a potentially hostile world. Dalgliesh was relieved to see her go. He had discovered that he did not like her and was the more ashamed of the emotion because he knew that its roots were unreasonable and ignoble. He found her physically repellent. Most of her neighbours used Sylvia Kedge to gratify, at small expense, an easy impulse to pity while ensuring that they got their money’s worth. Like so
many of the disabled she was at once patronised and exploited. Dalgliesh wondered what she thought of them all. He wished he could feel more sorry for her but it was difficult not to watch, with a kind of contempt, the way in which she made use of her disability. But then what other weapons had she? Despising the young constable for his easy capitulation and himself for lack of feeling, Dalgliesh set off back to Pentlands for lunch. He walked back by the road. It took longer and was less interesting but he had always disliked retracing his footsteps.

The route took him past Bryce’s cottage. As he reached it an upstairs window was opened and the owner shot his long neck out and called: “Come in, Adam, dear boy. I’ve been watching out for you. I know you’ve been spying for that dreary little friend of yours but I don’t hold it against you. Just leave your rhino whip outside and help yourself to whatever drink you prefer. I’ll be down in a jiffy.”

Dalgliesh hesitated then pushed open the cottage door. The little sitting room was as untidy as always, a repository of bric-a-brac which could not appropriately be housed in his London flat. Deciding to wait for his drink, Dalgliesh called up the stairs: “He’s not my dreary little friend. He’s a highly competent police officer.”

“Oh no doubt!” Bryce’s voice was muffled. Apparently he was pulling clothes over his head. “Competent enough to nab me if I’m not cunning. I was stopped for speeding on the A13 about six weeks ago and the officer concerned—a beefy brute with one of those metamorphic glares—was most uncivil. I wrote to the Chief Constable about it. It was a fatal thing to do, of course. I see that now. They’ve got it in for me all right. My name’s on a little list somewhere, you may be sure.”

He had padded into the room by now and Dalgliesh saw with surprise that he did indeed look concerned. Murmuring
reassurance he accepted sherry—Bryce’s drinks were always excellent—and settled himself in the latest acquisition, a charming Victorian high-backed chair.

“Well, Adam. Give, as they say. What has Reckless discovered? Such an inappropriate name!”

“I’m not altogether in his confidence. But another instalment of manuscript has arrived. It’s rather better written this time. A description of a handless body in a boat and typed apparently by Seton himself.”

Dalgliesh saw no reason why Bryce should be denied this bit of information. Sylvia Kedge was hardly likely to keep it to herself.

“Posted when?”

“Before lunch yesterday. From Ipswich.”

Bryce wailed his dismay. “Oh no! Not Ipswich! One was in Ipswich on Thursday. One often is. Shopping, you know. One hasn’t an alibi.”

“You’re probably not the only one,” Dalgliesh pointed out consolingly. “Miss Calthrop was out in her car. So was Latham. So was I, come to that. Even that woman from Priory House was out in the buggy. I saw her as I drove over the headland.”

“That would be Alice Kerrison, Sinclair’s housekeeper. I don’t suppose she went any farther than Southwold. Probably fetching the groceries.”

“On Thursday afternoon. Isn’t it early closing?”

“Oh, Adam dear, what does it matter? I expect she was just out for a drive. She’d hardly drive the buggy as far as Ipswich just to post an incriminating document. She hated Seton, though. She was housekeeper at Seton House before his wife died. Sinclair took her on after Dorothy killed herself and she’s been there ever since. It was a most extraordinary thing! Alice stayed with Seton until after the inquest,
then, without a word to him, she packed her bags and walked up to Priory House to ask Sinclair if he had a job for her. Apparently Sinclair had reached the point when the urge for self-sufficiency didn’t extend to the washing-up and he took her on. As far as I know neither has regretted it.”

“Tell me about Dorothy Seton,” invited Dalgliesh.

“Oh, she was lovely, Adam! I’ve got a photograph of her somewhere which I must show you. She was madly neurotic, of course, but really beautiful. Manic depressive is the correct jargon, I believe. Exhaustingly gay one minute and so down the next that one felt positively contaminated with gloom. It was very bad for me, of course. I have enough trouble living with my own neurosis without coping with other people’s. She led Seton a terrible life, I believe. One could almost pity him if it weren’t for poor Arabella.”

“How did she die?” enquired Dalgliesh.

“It was the most appalling thing! Seton strung her up from that meat hook in the beam of my kitchen. I shall never forget the sight of that darling furry body hanging there elongated like a dead rabbit. She was still warm when we cut her down. Look, I’ll show you.”

Dalgliesh had been half-dragged into the kitchen before he grasped that Bryce was talking about his cat. He successfully fought down the first impulse to nervous laughter and followed Bryce. The man was shaking with anger, grasping Dalgliesh’s forearm in a surprisingly powerful grip and gesticulating at the hook in impotent fury as if it shared Seton’s guilt. There seemed no immediate chance of getting any information about Dorothy Seton’s death now that Arabella’s end was so vividly recalled. Dalgliesh sympathised with Bryce. His own love of cats was as great if less vocal. If Seton had indeed wantonly destroyed a beautiful animal out of malice
and revenge it was difficult to regret him. More to the point, such a man must have made his share of enemies.

Dalgliesh enquired who had found Arabella. “Sylvia Kedge. She had come up to take some dictation for me and I was delayed arriving from London. I got here about five minutes later. She had phoned Celia to come and cut Arabella down. She couldn’t reach the body herself. Naturally both of them were terribly upset. Sylvia was physically sick. We had to push the wheelchair to the sink and she threw up all over my washing-up. I won’t dwell on my own sufferings. But I thought you knew all the details. I asked Miss Dalgliesh to write. I hoped you might have come down to prove Seton did it. The local police were quite hopeless. Now, if it had been a human being, think of the fuss and nonsense! Just like Seton. It’s so ridiculous. I’m not one of those sentimentalists who think that human beings are more important than any other form of life. There are too many of us anyway and most of us neither know how to be happy ourselves nor make anyone else happy. And we’re ugly. Ugly! You knew Arabella, Adam. Wasn’t she the most beautiful creature? Didn’t you feel it was a privilege to watch her? She was life enhancing.”

Dalgliesh, wincing at Bryce’s choice of words, said the appropriate complimentary things about Arabella who had indeed been a beautiful cat with every appearance of knowing it. His aunt had told him of the incident in one of her fortnightly letters but not surprisingly had made no mention of Bryce’s request that he should come down and take over the investigation. Dalgliesh forebore to point out that no actual evidence had been produced against Seton. There had been a great deal of anger, ill-feeling and suspicion but remarkably little rational thought applied to the problem. But he had no stomach for solving it now. He induced Bryce
to return to the sitting room and asked again how Dorothy Seton had died.