Eight Murders In the Suburbs (6 page)

The remark seemed out of focus. Also, Aunt Agnes looked amused, instead of impressed. He reminded himself that he was to be firm as well as fair.

“I have to live near London, of course. That puts Madge in a terrible position. I would not for one moment dispute your claim to a sacrifice on her part—”

“‘Sacrifice'!” Mrs. Blagrove laughed somewhat loudly. “Let's see if I've got it the right way round. It would be a sacrifice on
her
part to leave
you
and resume her life with
me
? Sacrifice of what, Arthur?”

While he was groping for a retort, she added:

“There are some things that women cannot conceal from each other, however hard they try.”

“What has Madge to conceal from you?” he blustered. “Do I stint her allowance? Do I ask too much of her in return?”

“You ask too little. So that the little you do ask becomes a soul-destroying chore!”

Within him was rising a strange kind of fear, which he did not know to be fear of himself.

“To me, that doesn't make sense. But perhaps it's my fault. Perhaps I have some blind spot—some—taint—of which I am unaware.”

“It's nothing so interesting as a taint, Arthur.” She was leaning forward on the settee. Her elbows were bent, quivering a little. She seemed to him like a spider about to pounce. “Poor boy!” She was smiling now. “Your egotism protects you from all unpleasant truths—protects you, even, from the hunger for companionship and shared emotion. I'm afraid I must tell you something about yourself—something that's not a bit mystical or dramatic.”

“Don't!”

There was an antecedent state of mind, unsuspected by the judge, which made Penfold see in her smile the sneer which he had dreaded to see on the face of his friends, the sneer at the man who cannot hold his woman.

“Your first marriage—” she was saying, though her words now were lost to him “—like your second, failed because you don't want a wife—you want a puppet that can only say ‘yes.'”

He had no purpose except that of compelling her to silence, lest she shatter that little world in which he lived so happily with a wife who mirrored his picture of himself. He seized her by the throat—his grip grew in strength while his mind's eye was re-reading Julie's letter:
‘I am terribly sorry and utterly ashamed of myself, but I can't stick it any longer.'
Madge would leave him, too—and again he would be pitied as the man without a woman of his own. If he had been of a different social type, he might have described his ecstasy as ‘seeing red and then getting a blackout.' He certainly went through a process comparable with that of regaining consciousness, though he was unsurprised when he found that Mrs. Blagrove was dead.

He lurched into the chintz-covered armchair.

“Look what you've done to us
now
, Aunt Agnes!” He whimpered like a child. He was too profoundly shocked to feel fear for himself. This would be the biggest scandal Crosswater had ever known. There was little he could do to avert it, but that little must be done.

With his handkerchief he wiped the chintz of the armchair. In the hall he wiped the hatstand and the peg on which he had hung his coat. He put on his coat and hat—and his gloves—unlatched the front door, stepped outside and shut it behind him.

He waited a minute or more, listening. He walked down the path to the gate—.

“The Best of Wilcox!”
he muttered. “There'll be my fingerprints on that glossy jacket.”

He took off his right glove, found his penknife, opened it, then put the glove on again. With some difficulty he raised the latch of the french windows, slithered round the curtain.

He had left the light burning. In this mild-mannered suburbanite there was no emotion at sight of the woman he had killed—some seven or eight minutes ago. He was concentrated on reclaiming the book—and it was not beside the body, where he had expected it to be. It was not on the seat of the settee nor on the arms nor on the floor.

He was beginning to get flustered, but only because he was always a duffer at finding things. He went down on his knees, looked under the settee—if it had fallen, he might have kicked it there himself. He crawled round to the back of the settee. He stood up, exasperated. The book simply must be in the room somewhere! He took a couple of steps backwards, bumped against the open flap of the escritoire. He wheeled as if a hand had touched him—and stared down at the cupids dancing in the moonbeams.

While he was picking up the book, his eye measured the distance from the back of the settee to the open flap of the escritoire—a good six feet.

How did the book get there, he wondered. She had it in her hand when she sat down, and he could not remember her leaving the settee. Could someone have entered the room, while he was outside the house? He hurried into the hall, intending to search the house—then abandoned the idea as useless. Anyway, it was much more likely that she had moved while they were talking, without his noticing it. Mustn't start imagining things and giving way to nerves!

He put the book in his overcoat pocket and, leaving the light burning, again left the house by the front door, forgetting to refasten the french window. The fog was being thinned out by a rising wind: with the light rain, visibility was still very poor.

He turned up his collar and adopted a slouch—he would be safe from recognition unless he came face to face with an acquaintance. He reached the gate of Oakleigh more than half an hour before his usual time. He observed that the lights were on in the kitchen but nowhere else. Madge, evidently, was still at the vicarage. He must get in without the cook and housemaid hearing him.

He used his latchkey silently, hung up his coat and hat and crept into the drawing-room. He switched on the stove and put
The Best of Wilcox
on an occasional table where Madge would be sure to see it—it would serve as a diversion. Now and again he chuckled to himself, as if he were taking rather sly measures to prevent the club secretary from learning that a friend had broken one of the rules.

He was still alone at five to six when, straining his cars, he could hear the train coming in, then rumbling away. Dangerously soon, he heard Madge's latchkey.

“Why, Arthur! You've beaten me! You must have galloped from the station!”

“I caught the earlier train—miserable day and not much doing at the office. I was dozing off when I heard your latchkey.”

She was facing the occasional table—staring at the moonbeams and cupids. She looked disappointed—held the book as if she resented its presence in the house.

“It's not for you!” he laughed. “It's a Wilcox anthology. Out today! I thought Aunt Agnes might like to have it.”

“Oh, Arthur, how kind of you!” Her voice was unsteady. With unwonted impulsiveness, she threw her arms round his neck. He was unaware that this was the first time she had volunteered a caress. “Let me take it to her tomorrow morning—please—I want to tell her how you thought of it for her.”

Almost reverently, she replaced the book on the little table.

“As you like, dear!” The daily help would arrive at Dalehurst about eight in the morning. The alarm would come, probably, while they were having breakfast.

After dinner Madge slipped away, to reappear in gum boots and mackintosh.

“I promised the vicar I'd take some things to Mrs. Gershaw. I shan't be long.”

“It's a filthy night—let me go for you.”

“No, thanks! There's a lot of explanation and—and their telephone is out of order.”

As soon as his wife had left the house, Penfold became uneasy. It would be all right, he kept telling himself, provided she did not ‘run round' to Dalehurst with that wretched book. Presently he remembered that she had put it back on the occasional table. He swung round in his chair. The book was no longer on the table.

Gershaw lived less than a hundred yards away. In half an hour Penfold's nerve began to fail. He had endured an hour and five minutes before Margaret returned.

“What's the matter, Madge?”

“Aunt Agnes is dead. Someone has killed her!”

“Nonsense! How d'you know? Have you been to Dalehurst?”

He had to repeat the question.

“Dr. Delmore saw me from his car and stopped. Just now!”

That was all right, then! Sympathy for a bereavement was indicated. He made a suitable exclamation, would have taken her in his arms.

“I want to be alone, Arthur.”

She walked past him, up the stairs to her room. She had never behaved like that before. The house suddenly seemed stiflingly hot. He opened the front door and stood in the porch—was there when the police came.

It was soon obvious that they had found nothing that need disturb him. They did not insist on seeing Madge, were content with his account of her movements and his own. They were even chatty, told him that Dr. Delmore, passing in his car, had seen the light in the drawing-room of Dalehurst and the french window swinging in the wind and had gone in to investigate. He had telephoned the police and, on the way home, had spotted Mrs. Penfold in the road and told her. There was, Penfold assured himself, nothing to worry about.

At the inquest, Dr. Delmore testified that death had taken place between five and six o'clock and was due to heart failure caused by partial asphyxia resulting from strangulation. Margaret Penfold stated that she had lunched at Dalehurst, leaving at a quarter to three to go to the vicarage. Mrs. Blagrove had seemed to be in normal health, was expecting no visitor. She was confident that deceased had no personal enemy. Arthur Penfold was not called.

Police evidence revealed that the latch of the french window had been lifted with a penknife, and so clumsily that the woodwork had been chipped. The ground had been too wet to yield footprints of any value. The Coroner was encouraged to believe that an unpractised crook had assaulted deceased intending to make her disclose the whereabouts of valuables, and had then taken fright—there had been no robbery. The jury returned the obvious verdict and expressed gratification that the local police had been prompt in asking the aid of Scotland Yard.

On taking over, Chief Inspector Karslake ordered an intensive search of the drawing-room for some personal trace of the killer.

“She was on that settee when he attacked her. He must have been leaning well over. Try the folds of the upholstery—between the seat and the back.”

The result was disappointing. Between the folds of the upholstery were found three thimbles, two pairs of scissors, nine handkerchiefs and a book in its dust jacket:
The Best of Wilcox
.

“That's too thick to have slipped down, sir—must've been pushed down.”

Karslake examined the book. A new copy—and there was nothing to distinguish it from any other copy in the edition. He opened it in the middle.

“Poetry!” He glanced back at the moonbeams and cupids. “Love stuff. And she was 64! Didn't want to be caught at it. Check on the local booksellers—she probably bought it herself. Try those curtains.”

Karslake collected relevant gossip from the local superintendent, then set about eliminating the Penfolds. Margaret was easily disposed of because her movements were checkable up to six o'clock, when the cook and housemaid heard her talking to her husband in the drawing-room.

Penfold's statement that he had arrived at Crosswater station at five three was confirmed by the ticket collector. His servants had not heard him come home, so could not deny that he might have come straight home from the station. This was a negative alibi which left the theoretical possibility that Penfold might have behaved as, in fact, he did behave, but there was no single item of evidence in support. Innocent persons, in the orbit of a murder, often had no alibi.

Moreover motive, in Penfold's case, was apparently lacking. There was no known quarrel, nor conflict of interest. The Penfolds were financially comfortable. Mrs. Blagrove's income had been derived from an annuity. To Mrs. Penfold she had left a sum in cash, her furniture and her house. But the house had been bought on mortgage and the whole estate would doubtfully yield fifteen hundred pounds.

After the inquest, the feeling of tension passed from Penfold. In so far as he thought clearly about his crime, he reasoned that the police would find evidence against him at once or not at all. For the rest, he had not planned to kill a fellow creature. He had been the unwitting instrument of fate, in whose hand he was soon able to detect a measure of poetic justice.

Madge's general demeanour caused him no unease, though she cut short his not infrequent attempts to express condolence. She spoke hardly at all. However, ten days after the murder—on the evening of the day when Scotland Yard abandoned further work in the locality—she shook off her lethargy.

“I shall not go into mourning for Aunt Agnes,” she said, in the drawing-room after dinner. “It wouldn't express anything to me.”

“As you please, dear.” His voice was low and a little funereal. “I think people will understand—you have been so brave!”

“Oh no! But I have woken up! The shock did it—the shock of learning that some frightened lout who wasn't even a proper criminal had killed that dear, inoffensive woman. But the worst shock was finding that I myself—that I—instead of feeling grief-stricken, I felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

“The feeling of relief didn't go away after a few minutes, as I thought it would. It stayed—it grew. For a few days I thought myself a fow kind of beast with no proper human feelings. Then I began to understand. I had let Aunt Agnes down for years—and myself—by always being so terrifically grateful.”

“But my dear!” protested Penfold. “That was a very charming trait in your character.”

“It wasn't!” The blunt contradiction made him sure that she was still suffering from shock. She went on: “I let it turn me spiritually into a poor relation, incessantly grateful and ever so anxious to please. Something the vicar had said to me three or four years ago put me on the right track. I loved Aunt Agnes very deeply. I shall love her all my life and shall go on wishing she were alive so that I could tell her I wasn't fair to her nor to myself—nor to my husband!”