A Night of Errors (29 page)

Appleby paused for a moment to light his pipe. ‘It has to be admitted,’ he said, ‘that there are some pretty complicated passages in this Gollifer affair–’

Mr Greengrave leant forward.
‘Gollifer
affair?’ he asked.

‘I think we give the matter its best emphasis by calling it that. It is on the Dromio side that much of the intricacy lies, but it was on the Gollifer side that the trigger, so to speak, was pulled. Weren’t we talking about what, in the study of dreams, is called displacement? What is secondary in the dream makes up the greater part of it, and what is primary tends to be forced into some unobtrusive corner. Not that this case has been so difficult to disentangle as a dream may be. For here we had a straightforward chronology to help us. What was actually primary
came first
. A rose is a rose is a rose.’

Hyland gave a sort of weary sigh. ‘For heaven’s sake–’ he began.

‘It wasn’t the study that saw the first big scene. It was the drawing-room. And what happened in the drawing-room led straight to matter so fraught with passion that it would clearly have been unwise to lose sight of it for a moment. I won’t say that there weren’t criminal acts anterior to, and independent of, that. One such act there certainly was, and I knew nothing of it until a few hours ago. Without it the crime would have been simpler, but there would still have been a crime. So the complex of issues touched upon in the drawing-room gives the core of the mystery. And so here is the first fact I can give you. No Dromio came to Sherris intending a crime last night.

‘But somebody else came in a state of mind that might very well lead to crime. While Mrs Gollifer was revealing to Lucy that she was her mother, and that Sir Oliver Dromio had been blackmailing her, Geoffrey Gollifer was making the same discovery a few miles away. It was a shattering discovery. He was in love with Lucy, and now Lucy proved to be his half-sister. And of his knowledge of this latter fact Oliver had taken the most dastardly advantage, while at the same time he completely commanded Lucy’s affections. Round this unfortunate young man everything had crashed at once: his mother’s honour, the hope of gaining the girl he loved, his right to his own name and his own property. He armed himself and went straight to Sherris. Later he told us two stories. The first was plainly to protect his mother and his half-sister. The second was overwhelmingly probable. He had confronted the blackguard Oliver, he had been further provoked by intolerable language, he had killed him. That there were all sorts of difficulties in accepting this story, that there were almost fantastic complications seemingly impossible to relate to it, was no reason for turning it down. Our clear line was to organize everything round it.

‘I got on the right lines, then, only when I made it a postulate that Geoffrey Gollifer had killed Oliver Dromio. Oliver Dromio – for the nature of the encounter was such that he could not have killed
another
Dromio in error. And now I could bring up the difficulties as they arose.

‘The killing had been on the terrace but the body was found in the study.
Somebody
, therefore, upon discovering the body had acted in a very abnormal manner. Who was this somebody? Almost certainly one of the long-lost brothers. Somebody had been seen by Sebastian with Oliver earlier in the day, and later Mr Greengrave had seen something like two Olivers driving down to Sherris. It was reasonable to suppose that Oliver, having found his brothers, had brought one of them home with him, after arranging with Swindle for an unobtrusive manner of doing so. There was, of course, something odd about this secrecy. It had to be borne in mind.

‘We might presume that it was the two brothers whom the footman heard talking. What happened then? Geoffrey Gollifer arrived, summoned Oliver out to the terrace, killed him, and fled. When Oliver failed to return to the room his brother would go out and find the body. And so the brother was responsible for what followed. He brought the body into the room, lit the fire and cast the body upon it so as to destroy the hands and arms. He waited for a time and then threw the tantalus, thereby summoning the household. And then he bolted. His motive for those queer proceedings was our first big problem.

‘And the second big problem was the discrepant identifications of the body. We cannot express this better than by saying that it was Oliver’s body and yet it wasn’t! On the whole, those who denied it to be so were the better accredited witnesses. And yet it was – for that was our postulate.

‘Something had happened to Oliver to make him not Oliver. It was very baffling. And for a long time I was haunted by the impression of something significant I had missed. It came back to me eventually through rather a curious association of ideas. I kept on remembering something I had seen at one particular crisis of the night’s affairs. And what I eventually arrived at, with assistance that I need not detail, was the word
buttocks
. When examining the body the police-surgeon had said that it was
odd about the buttocks
. And when I was able to question him again he confirmed the explanation that I had suspected. The body suggested that of a patient immobilized in bed for a considerable period of time.

‘This hitched up with other facts, notably the abrupt ceasing of correspondence from Oliver while in America apart from a single request for a considerable sum of money. Had he been ill? Had he been involved in an accident? It was at this point that my mind did its one decent job of work on the affair.’

There was a moment’s silence in Mr Greengrave’s dining-room. It was punctuated by Hyland’s again uttering a softly despairing noise. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘For heaven’s sake, go on.’

‘It occurred to me that the telegram to Swindle arranging that unobtrusive return might have been sent not, so to speak, in the interest of a diffident newly discovered brother, but in the interest of Oliver himself. And with this I connected a fact of character. Oliver, it appeared, was vain. That is where his niceness in the choice of ties comes in.’

Mr Greengrave drained his last drop of port. ‘Dear me,’ he said. ‘Oh, dear me!’

‘And then I saw the whole truth – or the whole truth of this particular part of the case. There had been an accident, and its physical result was such that Oliver was discomfited as to his appearance – his changed appearance. He was shy of facing those who knew him.

‘And yet by the police surgeon, as by those who had made the first identification, nothing had been remarked! What was the inference? That the accident had not been very serious, and that there had been skilful plastic surgery. It was for that that the large sum of money had been required. And so I came to the arms.’

Hyland brightened. ‘Well, I’m blessed! Was it–’ He sank again into gloom. ‘No, I can’t see it. I can’t see a thing.’

‘It was not simply that the arms, or an arm, had been damaged in that accident in America. It was rather that an arm had subsequently been used in a particular way. I expect you know something about the technique of skin-grafts. Living tissue is required. And it can be got by bringing an arm up to the face and using a flap of skin still growing from the arm. In favourable circumstances the resulting facial repair, although changing the appearance, can be almost imperceptible, but on the arm itself a scar is left. Now, we had various theories of the fire’s being lit and the arms consumed – for instance, that it was to destroy the possibility of taking fingerprints, or to destroy work-coarsened hands, or to make some sort of symbolic statement harking back to the fire at Sherris long ago. But the true explanation was this: what was being destroyed was evidence likely to draw attention to the fact that plastic surgery had been at work. In other words, when Oliver’s brother found Oliver’s body on the terrace he so acted as to destroy the evidence of plastic surgery. He wanted the body to pass as
not
Oliver’s. Inevitably it would be taken for Oliver’s at first, but then the changed features would be remarked and the conclusion would be that here was the body of a brother.

‘Here, then, was something we were going to be invited to believe: that Sir Oliver Dromio had killed his new-found brother and fled.
But why, in that case, not change the clothes?
Conceivable a mere time-element had been at work. But more probably the reason was a subtle one. We were being invited to see Sir Oliver as acting with great ingenuity; as killing his brother and doing everything to suggest that the body was his own. We were to believe that Oliver had put the body into his own clothes and had then bolted. In fact we were to believe Hyland’s story: That Oliver, anxious to get clean away to a new life, had killed a brother and endeavoured to pass off the body as his own.’

‘Amazing!’ said Mr Greengrave.

‘It may be so but what to my mind is really amazing is the fact that all this – and what followed – was pure improvisation. The brother had not himself killed Oliver. He was simply exploiting the fact of finding him suddenly murdered.

‘But to what end was this intricate deception contrived? How was the brother to benefit? My first thought was simply this: that with Oliver mysteriously murdered there on the terrace he himself was in a tight spot, and that the best way out of this was to suggest that
he
had been killed and
Oliver
was fled. But as the brother in all probability closely resembled Oliver there would be only a very tenuous security in this. We should look for a Dromio, and we might find him. It was possible that further events, rightly analysed, might reveal a more intricate design. And, of course, it had to be borne in mind that the number of the Dromio brothers was
three
, not
two
. The third brother might somehow come in.

‘We now pass to the point at which it appears to be discovered that the body is not Oliver’s. There follows a period
at which the body is not guarded, Sergeant Morris having been called to the library. And upon that there follows the fire
.

‘A stranger contrived the fire – one to whom the easiest way of getting petrol to the study was unknown. The fire, too, then, was almost certainly the brother’s doing. It destroyed – or appeared to destroy – the body hard upon the decision that it was not Oliver’s. But it
was
Oliver’s – in the first instance, that is to say – and when the fire was over, dental evidence would eventually have proved it so. Hence the necessity of a
substitution
before the fire. The brother had marked down the tramp. He went back to him, killed him, brought the body to Sherris. And then it turned out that the tramp wouldn’t do. He had fingers missing. The whole scheme was in peril. It was at this moment that he met Geoffrey Gollifer, bolting from our interview with him in the drawing-room. He leapt on him at once and killed him with a smashing blow on the back of the head. Oddly enough, it was a sort of wild justice, for it was the murderer who was killed.’

Mr Greengrave put his head between his hands. ‘My brain reels,’ he said.

‘He substituted Geoffrey Gollifer’s body for Oliver’s and fired the place. He bundled Oliver’s into the car, and the tramp’s too. He drove off to some hiding place nearby. Later he appeared at the crisis of the fire, behaved like a madman, and made off after giving Oliver’s characteristic wave – something he had noted, maybe, when the two sailed from America together. His plan was now half-way through.’

‘Half-way!’ Hyland was staring at Appleby, as inert as a sack.

‘Just about that. And we still don’t know what he is really up to.’

Appleby paused to take breath. His power of exposition, he was thinking, was not what it had been. Still, he was getting through with it.

‘The brother drives away with his two bodies and dumps the tramp’s where he found it. He has no further use for it. But Oliver’s body is vital. He has to give the impression that Oliver has committed a crime of calculation, has gone mad – and finally that he commits suicide. One fact greatly complicates his task. Oliver’s body has its head smashed in and its arms burnt. It is necessary, therefore, that the apparent suicide should involve both a general smashing of bones and a complete incineration. The latter, of course, is nicely in the picture, for the mad and pyromaniac Oliver may be expected to make an end to himself this way. So he needs a height and he needs a blaze.’

Hyland nodded sombrely. ‘Fire down below.’

‘Precisely. And the quarry gives it to him. He has his car and the body cached near the top; he sets the gorse ablaze; he appears and yells and prances like a madman. Then when the smoke grows thick he pitches the body down into the fire and makes his final bolt. When the body is recovered the teeth will be Oliver’s – just as when the body at Sherris is recovered the teeth will not be Oliver’s. He has finished his crime, and now all he has to do is to get back to America as fast as he can. Perhaps it will please him to reflect that he has carried off one of the most brilliant impostures in criminal history – and all on the spur of the moment.’

Mr Greengrave looked up. ‘But he hasn’t,’ he said. ‘You’ve detected him.’

‘I’ve caught him, too. He’s in gaol now. They got him when he applied for a place on a plane. Didn’t I say it was lucky there would be few colds in the head. You can’t play with fire through a night and day and not smell of smoke.’

Hyland nodded; he was a little recovering from stupor. ‘But what was it all
about
?’ he asked. ‘Did your information from America tell you?’

‘Eked out with a little inference it told a good deal – and enough to persuade the criminal to confess. When he sees that he is really caught – as this fellow does – a man who has nearly brought off a brilliant crime generally will confess. He naturally likes you to know how smart he’s been. What the American police got hold of in quick time was the plastic surgeon. And that, of course, substantiates the general lie of the affair.

‘There is a number of subsidiary matters which I needn’t rehearse. We have seen why Sebastian Dromio killed Grubb; it was a complication as irrelevant to the main story as is the fantasy of the incombustible Swindle. But now for the criminal’s motive. It goes back to another crime – one which occurred in America some months ago.