Choice of Evils (16 page)

‘Do they know just when that's supposed to have happened?’ Andrew asked.

‘They're not committing themselves on that. They've that much sense. But they seem to think it was some-where around four, or five o'clock. Personally, I don't think it can have been much later than four. She'd gone out for what she said would be a short walk and by four o'clock I was already beginning to wonder why she hadn't come back yet. I'd expected her by then, so it seems to me she must have been stopped before that.’

‘Rachel Rayne was seen alive about three o'clock. She'd been into Edward Clarke's office to consult him about something to do with her sister, and my nephew, Peter Dilly, saw her come out of it.’

'So she can't have been killed much before three-thirty, and if I'm right that Magda met the murderer escaping from the scene only a little later, then we can put her murder down as having happened somewhere between three-thirty and four. Of course, it isn't important except for Amory's alibi. But I'm not the only one who thinks that Todhunter would sell her soul to help him and providing a fake alibi certainly shouldn't be beyond her. But I believe Mayhew will crack the thing in at least a day or two. He sees further to the side than most people. I've considerable faith in him.’

Andrew nodded, though just then he was wishing that he had not agreed to help the inspector by calling on Mina Todhunter and trying to extract from her some information about Mrs Wale. Even though the inspector had advised him to leave the subject of the alibi alone, it was inevitable that they should talk of it, and he would have to try to make up his mind whether Mina Todhunter was an honest woman or a shameless liar. He wanted to find her honest because of his memories of Mr Thinkum, and all the reading aloud of her works to the little Peter, which had probably laid the foundation of the very good relation-ship that had developed between them. Meanwhile, Andrew had to decide when to try to see Miss Todhunter. Should he telephone her when he had had dinner and ask if he could call in on her that evening, or should he leave it till the morning?

His decision in the end was to leave it till the morning and after the very silent meal that he shared with Desmond Nicholl who suddenly showed that he would much have preferred to be left quite alone he went back to his room, picked up
Death Come Quickly
and settled down to read. But he had not realized how tired he was. After a few minutes the print began to blur, his head sank back against the cushions, the book slid on to the floor, and Andrew found himself sailing in a ship at sea. The cabin
he was in was a luxurious one, strangely filled with exotic flowers, and an open porthole gave him a colourful view of a desert shore, dotted here and there with palm trees. Then an exceedingly loud voice suddenly shouted at him, 'Rum-ti-Foo - All change!’

Andrew woke out of his dream with a start. It is a curious feeling to be wakened out of sleep by something in your own dream and it took him a moment to realize where he was and that his bed would be a more comfortable place than the chair for someone as tired as he was. He got up and began to undress and at last managed to get to bed and to switch off the light, all of which felt a great labour/Sleep came almost at once, and this time was dreamless.

It was at ten o'clock the next morning that Andrew entered Todhunter's Bookshop and asked the woman who was in charge of it at the time if it was possible for him to see Miss Todhunter. The woman disappeared through a door behind the counter and after a minute or two reappeared, telling him that Miss Todhunter would be glad if he would go up to her flat. He went through the door and climbed up the flight of stairs beyond it, arriving in a small hall with three doors opening out of it. One of the doors was open and he heard Mina Todhunter call through it, ‘Come in, come in. Professor. So glad to see you.’

He went in at the door and found Mina Todhunter heaving herself out of an easy chair to come and greet him. She was in loose black trousers, a floppy yellow sweater and red bedroom slippers. She had apparently just finished her breakfast, for a tray with a coffee pot and a cup and the remains of toast and marmalade were on a table beside the chair in which she had been sitting. She gave Andrew one of the smiles that seemed to open right across her square face, showing her gleaming false teeth.

‘I'll just clear this away,’ she said, picking up the tray. ‘As you can see, I'm not an early riser.’

Walking heavily, as she always did, she carried the tray out of the room into what he presumed was her kitchen, then returned and told Andrew to sit down and tell her what she could do for him.

‘Because this isn't a social visit, is it? Not as early as ten o'clock.’ She dropped back into her chair. ‘You want something, and I hope I can be of use. Tell me, what is it?’

Andrew sat down. The room was a small square one which looked cosy and comfortable. There were easy chairs and a sofa covered in soft grey velvet, dark green wall-to-wall carpeting, no fireplace but a radiator that gave off a pleasant warmth, a table pushed away into one corner with a chessboard inlaid on its top, and pale green curtains at the one sash window. A newspaper was on the floor beside Mina Todhunter's chair, which she had evidently been reading over her breakfast.

She picked it up as Andrew seated himself and held it out to him.

‘Have you seen this?’ she asked. ‘It's inevitable, of course, that they should make a lot of fuss about the death of poor Magda Braile, but they've linked it to Rachel's murder and really gone to town on it.’

‘Yes, I've seen it,’ Andrew said. He too had read the same newspaper over his breakfast. T believe, if it weren't for Miss Rayne's murder, they'd be inclined to think Miss Braile's death might be suicide. But it's a bit much of a coincidence, isn't it, the two things coming so close together?’

There was a quizzical look in her slightly bulging, pale blue eyes under their thick grey eyebrows as she studied Andrew.

‘A bit much of a coincidence, yes,’ she said. ‘Now tell me what I can do for you.’

‘It may seem a curious question/ he said, ‘but I'd be very grateful if you could tell me what you know about a Mrs Wale.’

‘Mrs Wale - good gracious, what has she to do with all these things that have been happening?’

‘You do know her, do you?’

‘I can't say I exactly
know
her. I've made use of her occasionally.’

'She's typed some of your work for you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you recommended her to Mrs Amory when she wanted a typist?’

‘Ah!’ she exclaimed. ‘Now I begin to see what you're after. But not really. No, I don't understand where Mrs Wale comes in. Could you please explain it to me?’

The trouble for Andrew was that he had not sorted out in his mind before coming to see Mina Todhunter how much he meant to tell her of his connection with Mrs Wale.

‘Look, it's really Inspector Mayhew's doing,’ he said.

'So I supposed,’ she said, her gruff voice sardonic. ‘I didn't think you could have dug Mrs Wale out all by yourself.’

‘He'd made a slightly curious discovery,’ Andrew said.

‘He'd found an address book in the Amorys’ summerhouse which was evidently Mrs Amory's, not her husband's. And the inspector showed it to me and asked me if anything special struck me about it. But before I could start to look at it he was called away because the body of Magda Braile had been found. So I was left alone with the address book and I took my time going through it, and something curious struck me about it. There was the name and address of a typist in it - Mrs Wale, Linwood Road. What, I wondered, had Mrs Amory wanted a typist for? And as I had nothing better to do, I decided to call on Mrs Wale, because I'd a feeling that she was what the inspector had wanted my opinion on. I thought he'd wanted to see if I
found it a little strange that Mrs Amory had kept Mrs Wale's address in her address book. And I was quite right, because I found, when I saw Mrs Wale, that the police had already been out to visit her that morning.’

‘Ah!’ Mina Todhunter exclaimed again. ‘I begin to see light. But go on.’

‘Well, I asked Mrs Wale if she'd ever done work for Mrs Amory/ Andrew said, ‘and she said she had.’

‘For
Mrs
Amory?’ she asked quickly.

‘Yes.’

‘Not for Simon?’

‘No.’

‘I see, I see. And so you leapt to the conclusion … Oh, how lucky it is that you came to see me, because I can sort this out for you. You leapt to the conclusion, didn't you, that the real writer of those books of Simon's had been his wife, and that he'd simply pirated them after her death. Isn't that what you thought?’

‘I considered it, yes.’

‘How sad, how dreadfully sad.’

That was not exactly the comment that Andrew had expected, but he wanted to understand it.

‘I'm quite wrong, am I?’

She leant her head back in her chair and for a moment closed her eyes. Opening them again, she said, ‘Yes, quite wrong, but I understand how you - and Mrs Wale - came to make the mistake you did. You see, when Simon first took to writing, his wife was already a very sick woman, and as they both knew, doomed. But she was still moderately active, and she took a great interest in Simon's attempts to write. So to give her something to think about and perhaps help her to keep her mind off her troubles, he took to dictating his works to her, instead of writing them himself. He's told me he found it extremely difficult. Dictating didn't come naturally to him. But it meant so much to her that he went on with it, and I believe it's
partly why those first two books he wrote are so poor. Partly, of course, that was first because he was learning his craft, but also I'm sure the dictating had something to do with it. And then, when the first book was finished, all in her handwriting, she came to me and asked me if I could recommend a typist. And I recommended Mrs Wale. That's the true history of Simon's pirating the work of his dying wife. What he did was done out of the most perfect love. Now isn't it sad that you should ever have thought anything else?’

Andrew did not reply at once. He sat thinking over what Mina Todhunter had just told him. She was watching him with a look of curiosity on her square face as if she were trying to assess how he was reacting to the information that she had given him. At length, as he did not speak, she became impatient.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘Why did the murderer remove the manuscripts?’ he asked.

‘We don't know that he did,’ she said.

‘You mean someone else may have taken them?’

‘I mean that Rachel herself may have removed them before her death.’

‘Why?’

‘Ah, why? Because she believed they were her sister's work and she wanted to prove that Simon was a complete fraud.’

‘What makes you think so?’

'Something I haven't told anyone. You see, she came to see me on the morning of the day she died to ask my advice about what she ought to do with them.’

Andrew nodded thoughtfully.

‘Yes, she came to you for advice, didn't she, and you gave her what she called a brush-off, I remember? And later you told me that the advice she'd wanted was about writing children's books. I didn't believe you, because
straight after she'd been to see you she came to have coffee with my nephew and me and she started to ask me for the advice you hadn't given her. And no one would come to me for advice about writing children's books, or about writing of any kind. But she didn't get around to it, because my nephew dropped a remark about her sister having died intestate, and she immediately became very excited and left us. And it's seemed to me since it was because she believed that the books that have made Amory famous were written by her sister, and so should have passed to her, since her sister and Amory were never really married.’

‘What?’ Mina Todhunter exclaimed. ‘Of course they were married. Whatever makes you say a thing like that?’

‘I suppose you've seen a wedding photograph of them,’ Andrew said.

‘As a matter of fact, I have, but that isn't the only reason I have for believing it. Their whole relationship was - well, a married one. It was devoted, it was stable, it was secure.’

‘I've no doubt it was, but it's possible to achieve that without ever having signed anything, or having taken any vows. And at the time of the supposed marriage I don't believe Mrs Amory knew that her husband was married already. He'd married when he was very young a girl called Mary Baker, whom you knew as Magda Braile, but that marriage collapsed after a year or so, and they separated without bothering about a divorce.’

‘Good God, how did you pick up a story like that?’ she exclaimed.

‘From Magda Braile's second husband,’ Andrew answered, 'though there I believe there was no actual ceremony. The two of them simply told people they were married and it never occurred to anyone to check up on them. It wouldn't, you know. But I suppose Amory couldn't get the Rayne girl without offering her marriage and so he conveniently forgot the existence of Mary
Baker. But at some time I think Mrs Amory must have discovered the truth. Perhaps Amory felt secure enough simply to tell her about it. And then I think she went to visit her sister in America to ask her advice about what she should do, because it's obvious that at some stage Rachel learnt what the situation was, or her sister's having died intestate wouldn't have meant anything to her.’

Mina Todhunter gave a deep sigh.

‘Well, as a matter of fact, you're right,’ she said.

‘You knew all this, did you?’ Andrew asked.

‘Yes, ever since that morning when Rachel came to see me. She told me just what you've been telling me now, and I told her I didn't believe a word of it.’

‘And didn't you?’

‘I didn't know what to think, but I didn't want to get involved in the kind of thing she was trying to stir up.’

‘Why did she come to you?’

‘Because she knew I and Lizbeth had been close friends. She thought I probably knew the truth of the matter already. She thought I'd be able to tell her what to do about seeing that the credit for having written
Death Come Quickly
was given to her sister. And then that evening she was shot. And I suppose, like everyone else, I'd be thinking Simon did it if he hadn't been sitting in that chair where you're sitting now at the time of the murder. He's the only person with an obvious motive. Almost too much of a motive. It looks to me as if he'd been set up for the crime. Only someone miscalculated, because they forgot we always play chess on Saturday afternoons, and that suggests to me someone who didn't know me very well. Like Desmond Nicholl. Or a certain Peter Dilly.’ She ended with a raucous cackle of laughter.