A Night of Errors (21 page)

But why, then, had Geoffrey Gollifer told so strange a tale? Why had he declared, and with such a labour of circumstantial detail, that he had called Oliver Dromio from his study, quarrelled with him, and killed him there and then? He appeared not an imaginative youth, and of such an impassioned flight of fancy only one explanation seemed possible. Geoffrey Gollifer was shielding someone with whom his emotions were deeply engaged.

Appleby continued to pass the buckets. This particular amateur effort in which he had joined clearly possessed not the slightest utility. It would be altogether more sensible to stop and gather round the mobile canteen for whatever creature comforts the modern technique of fire-fighting provided. And yet perhaps this exercise had its utility. Did it not stimulate the brain?

Whom, then, was the young man Gollifer shielding? The real Sir Oliver, whom he knew to have killed a brother hitherto unknown? This was evidently impossible. Gollifer might not positively wish his enemy to the scaffold, but it was altogether unlikely that at deadly personal risk he should endeavour to save him from it. Gollifer, then, had indeed believed that it was the real and unquestioned Sir Oliver who was killed. He was shielding the person whom he believed guilty of that killing. His mother and Lucy Dromio were the likely people. But here, surely, Sebastian Dromio came in again. Sebastian had no demonstrable feeling for Mrs Gollifer. But for Lucy he had shown devotion enough. If he too, then, were shielding somebody; if he had killed Grubb because he feared some impending revelation –

Appleby paused and mopped his brow, feeling as one who has entered the last lap of a race. Lucy Dromio could have had no part in the killing; that she should, hard upon the revelation of that evening, have acted in any sense as Oliver’s accomplice was a thing wholly incredible. But if Geoffrey Gollifer was shielding her, and Sebastian was shielding her, and there was something against her which Grubb could have said; if it could by several people be believed that she had been involved, then surely in some way she must have been sufficiently close to the affair to have at least something to tell. Here was a case – almost a complete case – and perhaps there were particulars in which she could confirm it. Appleby glanced round him, wondering where she might be. And as he did so, he saw her.

But again it was with the inward eye. Perhaps his sight, dazzled with the flames, was predisposed to play him tricks. There, with almost hallucinatory vividness, and strangely carrying with her the feeling of a misgiving, of a warning, was Lucy Dromio falling into the waiting canvas, a brief vision of silk-clad legs and thighs, of billowing white draperies blown about her head. It had no meaning; it could have none; its quality as of a threatening obsession was a mere freak of the mind, a reflex of some buried interest of the sensual man… Appleby passed one more bucket and fell out of line. For some time he had been tired. Now he was depressed.

Mrs Gollifer stood immobile by the lily pond. In her long evening gown and white cloak she might have been a statue of Hera, poised to look fixedly towards the dawn. Whatever life this stately woman had contrived to build for herself upon a basis of deception and lies was now over. She was a confessed bigamist – a squalid crime, reflected Appleby, commonly associated with the lower classes. Her son, whether truly or not, was a confessed murderer. Her daughter had been in love with a man who was blackmailing her over that daughter’s existence; and this relationship had now been revealed to a girl who was wholly unprepared to make any emotional response to it. Mrs Gollifer’s position might be called tragic. In addition to which she must be feeling a fool.

Appleby grabbed a second mug of coffee and approached her. ‘I am afraid,’ he said, ‘that you must be exhausted. Try this.’

She took the mug and thanked him. ‘Mr Appleby, is it not?’ she asked. ‘Speak, if you have a mind to.’

‘It would seem that there is not much chance of saving the house.’

‘Nobody will regret it. Kate, it is true, will miss her embroidery task of the moment, and there may be difficulty in remembering the title of the novel she will want replaced. It is about a large hotel. But more than one writer, I have been told, has essayed the theme.’

Oddly, the woman spoke with something of the accent of that daughter who had grown up orphaned and unacknowledged; here was the same disguise of hard talk. ‘Is Lady Dromio, then, so unfeeling?’ Appleby asked. ‘She would seem to have taken some risk for you long ago.’

‘In accepting Lucy? It was her whim. Later she tired of it and I do not think that Lucy has been happy. And Kate would not be logical about it. She was used to me as a friend and she would not exchange me for Lucy. She must have both. Of course I ought to have lived far away and known nothing of Sherris. But the position of the Gollifer estate made that difficult, and to watch my daughter growing up was a temptation into which it was easy to fall.’

‘Had you no misgivings over your son Geoffrey?’

‘You talk idly. Remorse and horror have never left me from the first day. But Geoffrey’s danger – the danger he stood in with regard to Lucy – I became aware of only lately. It was doubtless what drove me to speak last night. We used to speak of Geoffrey and Lucy as growing up almost like brother and sister. It was a foolish irony.’

‘It was a wicked one.’

Mrs Gollifer glanced at Appleby with a flicker of surprise and what was perhaps respect. She inclined her head. ‘I could see that Lucy was very much in love with Oliver. When Oliver turned out bad – a worthless man growing middle-aged – the security there seemed to be in this was mingled with pain. But when Oliver came upon the truth of Lucy’s birth and basely proposed to make money out of it the painfulness became intolerable.’

‘I can well believe it. You would have gladly killed him, I should imagine.’

Mrs Gollifer smiled – and although a drawn smile it was genuine. ‘You have been a police-detective, have you not, Mr Appleby? I suppose that every trail must be pursued.’

‘Assuredly it must.’

‘I do not think I had any impulse to kill Oliver Dromio. Of course the impulse may have been there in what they call the subconscious mind.’

‘We won’t trouble ourselves about that.’

‘But I saw that I must in a sense kill Oliver; I must kill him in Lucy’s mind. But then where might she come to stand in regard to Geoffrey, her own half-brother who had fallen in love with her? It appeared to me that nothing would serve except the truth all round.’

‘It is an excellent maxim of conduct, in a general way. But here it would seem to have precipitated disasters enough.’

‘Did it do that? Has anything that I have done or said had influence upon the events of this horrible night?’ Mrs Gollifer glanced from the lily pond to Appleby, and there was swift intelligence in her gaze. ‘Geoffrey’s was an independent discovery; it would appear that he rummaged among papers that were no business of his and came upon the truth that way. And only coincidence – or might it be telepathy? – brought this about on the same evening that I told the truth here.’

‘And a further coincidence brought Sir Oliver and we don’t know which of his new-found brothers.’

‘There was rather more than coincidence there. It was the sense that Oliver was returning and bringing the problem of Lucy with him that made me speak when I did.’

‘I see.’ There were shouts and Appleby looked at the blazing house. Some roof or wall was about to crash and the firemen were being ordered back. ‘Does it still hold, Mrs Gollifer, that nothing will serve except the truth all round?’

‘It may be that there are matters on which I shall be silent. But I do not think I shall ever tell a lie again.’

‘If that is so,’ said Appleby gravely, ‘you will make an altogether uncommon witness, and I should be sorry to lose the opportunity of questioning you.’

‘You may question me.’

‘Do you believe that your son–’ Appleby checked himself. ‘Do you still know more about this business than you have yet told?’

For the first time Mrs Gollifer hesitated. ‘There is something,’ she said; ‘something very small – far smaller than I would wish. I had thought not to speak of it until my solicitor was with me, for it is something that might help Geoffrey in the terrible position in which he has placed himself. But now I think I will tell you, for you seem a very fair sort of man.’

There was a sudden childishness in this that was moving. ‘I certainly have no case,’ Appleby said, ‘to which I wish to twist the facts. Every possibility I take up leads me only to misgiving.’

‘What I have to tell is this: Geoffrey is confused about my own part in the events of the night. He thinks that I insisted on concealing something from him. It is not so, but he is convinced of it. That is important, is it not, Mr Appleby?’

‘It may be very important indeed.’ Appleby pitied the urgent impulse of hope in the woman’s voice. ‘Can you be more precise in the matter?’

‘When I eventually drove away from here I was still very agitated. I was still in that condition when Geoffrey overtook me and made me stop. He saw how it was – although he was agitated himself – and the first words he spoke were very strange. “It’s all right,” he said, “but we must square the fellow who grabbed you.”’

‘I see.’ Appleby tested the words on his ear, and it seemed to him that Mrs Gollifer spoke them in all sincerity. ‘That was certainly strange. And your son’s remark had no meaning for you?’

‘None whatever. And the thing was so urgently said! Remember what had happened so far. I had revealed to Lucy that I was her mother, and to both Lucy and Kate that Oliver had been blackmailing me. I saw that those two revelations should not have been made together; that the shock of them had overthrown Lucy entirely. I was filled with remorse and for a time, as you know, I wandered about the gardens here. But nothing else occurred. And so, you see, the unaccountability of Geoffrey’s words frightened me.’

‘Mrs Gollifer, let us be very careful. You say those words were these:
It’s all right, but we must square the fellow who grabbed you
. Now, you were agitated, and you may have a little twisted your recollection. I put it to you that what your son said may have been something like this:
It’s all right, for I have settled the fellow who had you in his clutches
.’

Mrs Gollifer drew in her breath sharply and there was a second’s silence. ‘No!’ she said – and her voice held a quiet intelligence which was impressive. ‘That would be an altogether unnatural turn of phrase. But you are very ingenious.’

‘Only as a barrister would be ingenious with you in the witness box. He would certainly endeavour to twist the thing into some such sense.’

‘It is unnatural. He would have said:
I have settled Oliver
. And my recollection, I assure you, Mr Appleby, is wholly accurate.’

‘Very well. And you are sure the words do not now – as they did not then – convey anything to you? There was no sense in which any fellow
had
grabbed you?’

‘None whatever. I was immediately at a loss. I told Geoffrey that I had no idea what he meant. And from that moment confidence disappeared between us. He seems to have felt that I was concealing something, and that I was in danger? Mrs Gollifer paused. ‘Nothing has been heard of Geoffrey since he – since he escaped?’

‘Nothing at all. But the police have been rather preoccupied, as you see… Do you know anything about Grubb, the dead gardener here?’

‘About Grubb?’ Mrs Gollifer looked startled. ‘I knew him by sight very well, but I don’t think I ever spoke to him.’

‘I wonder if there is anybody who was in his confidence, or particularly well acquainted with him?’

‘There are always several other gardeners. But it is the red-faced lad over there – I believe his name is William – who was commonly to be seen working with him.’

‘Then I think it is to William that I must go and talk now.’

At first William was not conversable. He stood looking at Appleby open-mouthed – and so very red was his face that it was possible to wonder whether his words were simply vaporizing as they left his lips. But it was clear that William enjoyed the fire. He enjoyed seeing his employers’ house utterly destroyed; he also enjoyed his own unsparing efforts to extinguish the blaze. ‘You’d better come and have a mug of cocoa,’ Appleby said. William’s mouth opened wider; he mopped his sweaty brow with an equally sweaty forearm and looked at Appleby with mingled wonder and distrust. That anyone should approach him with this affable proposition was obvious cause for suspicion. Nevertheless William did throw down his bucket and accompany Appleby to the canteen.

‘I suppose,’ said Appleby, ‘that you would know a good deal about Grubb and his ways?’

‘Old Grubb,’ said William.

This was encouraging. It could not perhaps be called very communicative, but plainly there was considerable achievement in having brought William to the point of articulate speech. ‘Did he,’ Appleby asked, ‘drink much as a regular thing?’

‘Old Grubb,’ said William.

Just as William was enjoying the fire, so had William enjoyed Grubb. This much was clear from his tone, which was of connoisseurship rather than of affection or admiration. So might a man speak of a vintage, characterful but unendearing, of which the last bottle has recently disappeared from the cellar. There was silence while William swilled cocoa. It was as if, by some act of retrospective gustation possible to the initiate, he was recalling the tang of that bottle to his palate. ‘Old Grubb,’ he presently repeated once more. He knit his brows – bunching them much as he might bunch his muscles to propel a heavy barrow up a bank. Some supreme effort, Appleby could feel, was being made to snare the well-nigh indefinable in words. ‘Old Grubb,’ said William, coming down with decision on a much deeper note. ‘’E were a one.’

‘And drank?’

‘When ’e weren’t drinking ’e were thieving. Thieving liquor yesterday, thieving terbaccer today. And tomorrow? Thieving worms, most like, from his neighbour’s winding-sheet.’

‘I see. And was he a friendly man?’