Enough to Kill a Horse (15 page)

‘Listen,’ he said in her ear, ‘you’ve given me an idea and it isn’t a nice one.’

Though her laughter had stopped, Fanny was still breathless.

‘You mean,’ she said, ‘that she could plot … that she could actually …’

‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s nothing to do with Laura.’

‘That’s because you didn’t meet her,’ she said. ‘The moment I saw her, I thought – ‘

‘No,’ he said with some impatience, ‘don’t you see that if the girl had really plotted anything of the sort, she’d never have had that headache you think was phoney. She’d have been careful to be one of the victims herself.’

‘Except that her courage might have failed her.’

‘But then her whole scheme would have collapsed, because she’d have had to convince the police that you and Basil, having plotted to kill her in this extraordinarily elaborate way, and finding that your victim wasn’t even going to touch the poisoned lobster, could still have given the stuff to your other guests. That just won’t do, you know.’

‘But …’

‘No,’ he said, ‘come down to earth. Your first suggestion really opens up a lot more possibilities – that you were meant to be hurt and humiliated, and that’s all.’

Fanny gave a sigh. ‘The scheme worked then, didn’t it?’ she said. ‘The only trouble is – well, to be absolutely honest, I don’t quite see what Laura had to gain by doing that. The other scheme would have had a sensible object in its way. I mean, it would have given her something to blackmail me with. But just humiliating me … After all, Kit wasn’t likely to care for me less because I made a fool of myself at a party and cooked a rotten lobster.’

‘No, you’re quite right,’ Colin said.

‘Well then …?’

He did not answer. An absent look had settled on his face and although his eyes were again looking into hers, Fanny felt that this time he was hardly even seeing her.

The look disturbed her because in the mood that she was in, anything that she did not understand seemed capable of holding some menace for her. She stood up.

‘Anyway, thanks for listening,’ she said.

‘Oh, I’m a great listener.’

He stood up too and as she went to the door, followed her.

Out in the dark street, he went on, ‘I wonder if you’d listen now to a word of advice, Fanny. Don’t tell these ideas of yours to everyone you meet.’

‘Why, what d’you take me for?’ she said. Then after a moment she smiled. ‘Yes, I know, I do chatter, don’t I?’

‘Just a bit.’

‘And you think it might be libellous or something?’

He hesitated, then said cautiously, ‘Just possibly.’

‘All right,’ she said, ‘I won’t tell anyone but Basil. But you haven’t told me yet what your idea is, Colin.’

‘I haven’t got it thought out,’ he answered.

They walked along together. The wind had grown stronger and the tops of the elms were stirring and the boughs creaking over their heads. As they reached Fanny’s gate, Colin put a hand on her shoulder and gave it an encouraging squeeze, then went on to his own gate. As soon as he had separated from her, the look of absence and uncertainty on his face became one of hurried purpose. Going quickly up the path to the house, he let himself in and went in search of Jean.

He found her in the small, bare room that she used as an office. There was a pile of correspondence on the desk in front of her. She was looking tired but when he came in, she leant back in her chair, raised her face to him and smiled.

The smile vanished as soon as she saw his expression.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘Jean,’ he said, ‘how dangerous a man is Tom Mordue?’

She merely looked blank at the question.

‘Tom Mordue,’ he repeated impatiently, as if he had expected her to know instantly what he was talking about. ‘Is he simply a crank with a streak of spite in him, or is he a really dangerous man?’

She frowned, trying to find the answer that he wanted.

‘I’ve always thought he was just a rather unhappy sort of crank,’ she said.

‘So have I,’ Colin said grimly, ‘but I’ve just been having a talk with Fanny and she’s put a new and unpleasant idea into my head.’

‘About Tom?’

‘She didn’t mean it to be about Tom. She was thinking of Laura Greenslade. But if someone suggested to you that Poulter’s death was the more or less accidental result of a piece of spite against Fanny, whom would you think of at once as the most spiteful person you know?’

‘But how could it have been – accidental?’ Jean asked.

‘If his death hadn’t been intended. If no one’s death had been intended. If all that was meant to happen was that Fanny’s guests should get sick and think that she’d given them some bad lobster.’

‘But that would mean …’ She stopped and her tired face looked drawn. ‘No,’ she said in a low voice, ‘no, you don’t think that seriously.’

‘It’s a possibility, isn’t it?’

‘That Tom should put arsenic into the lobster as a sort of revenge on the Lynams because of Kit’s engagement and then calmly watch while one man ate the lot?’

‘That’s why I asked you,
is
Tom a really dangerous man?’

‘A dangerous lunatic?’

‘If you like,’ he said.

She started to say something, checked it and went on looking at him intently, while Colin returned the look, still with that touch of impatience, as if he were waiting for some response from her that she had failed to give.

After a moment she said reluctantly, ‘I suppose he could have got into the Lynams’ kitchen without being seen.’

‘Easily,’ Colin said.

‘And he was here that afternoon. If he’d gone straight round there when he left us …’

‘Yes.’

‘And his state wasn’t normal. But …’ She was still trying to feel her way towards the answer that she could feel him demanding from her. ‘But the bitter taste, Colin. Why poison the food and then put in something to stop people eating it?’

‘Suppose,’ he said, ‘someone else added the bitter taste – having followed Tom and slipped into the kitchen as soon as he left.’

‘But who?’ she asked incredulously, yet with a feeling of horrified understanding.

‘Minnie would go through anything to protect Tom,’ Colin said. ‘If she’d known what he meant to do and couldn’t stop him – and she can never stop him doing anything he’s set his mind on – what might she think of doing to protect Fanny and in a way Tom himself, which, if it had worked out as she intended, wouldn’t have given him away to anyone?’

‘But that would have meant that Minnie as well as Tom knew what Sir Peter was eating, and that’s something I can’t believe.’

‘Can’t you?’ Colin said. ‘The odd thing is, I can. I can believe it easily, because I think all Minnie’s feelings are concentrated so completely on Tom that when she saw her scheme hadn’t worked – in fact, by some horrible accident had made things much worse than if she hadn’t interfered, actually turning Tom into a sort of murderer – she’d never have done anything to give him away. She’d have sat still like a fascinated rabbit, watching Poulter get all the poison. Come to think of it, what else could she have done?’

‘The horrible accident,’ Jean said, ‘being Sir Peter’s inability to taste whatever it was she used?’

‘Yes. There are people who can’t taste certain bitter things. I’ve just been hearing about it from Fanny, who’s been told about it by Basil. And it happens that Laura is one of those people, so she’s probably going to the police to tell them that Fanny and Basil tried to poison her, while Fanny’s trying to make out a case that Laura faked the whole thing herself, just in order to be able to do that.’

‘And couldn’t that – Fanny’s idea, I mean – possibly be true?’

‘I don’t think so. I think if it were, Laura would have taken care to get some of the arsenic herself.’

Jean nodded hesitantly, then turned away from him to look out of the window. To fit with the general bareness of the room, it was uncurtained and now, with the darkness beyond it, Jean could see herself clearly reflected in it, and, almost as clearly, Colin, as he stood, unusually tense and eager, near the door.

Addressing his reflection, she said, ‘You’ve been doing a lot of thinking about all this, haven’t you?’

‘Yes,’ he said in a rather flat tone.

‘And I thought you were being extraordinarily indifferent to Fanny’s troubles.’

‘For such a loving wife, you often get me wrong,’ he said.

‘I do,’ she said. ‘It’s true. What are you going to do now?’

‘Do?’ he said.

‘I thought you looked somehow as if you were going to do something or other.’

‘What do you think I ought to do?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know. Perhaps it would be a good idea to talk it all over with Basil.’

He shook his head. ‘D’you know something? One never gets anywhere by talking things over with Basil. He’s taken the art of helpfully saying nothing further than anyone else I know.’

‘Clare, then.’

‘She terrifies me.’

‘But you aren’t just going to sit back now and do nothing!’

‘You don’t trust the police to do their own jobs?’

‘Yes, I suppose I do. But all the same …’

He gave a laugh and at the sound of it Jean flushed and grew rigid. She said nothing and after a moment Colin went on, ‘You just want me to do
something,
don’t you, whether it’ll really be useful or not? Well, as a matter of fact, I was meaning to, though I’m not quite clear about its wisdom. If you’d suggested the same thing to me, I’d have felt a lot better about it.’

His hand went out to the door.

Jean turned her head quickly.

‘What are you going to do, Colin?’

‘Go and see the Mordues.’

‘What, now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will that really do any good?’

‘For all I know,’ he said as he went out, ‘it may do harm.’

Letting himself out of the house, Colin walked towards the garage which was at some distance from the house. Before he reached it, he changed his mind and decided to go on foot to the Mordues’ cottage.

Though he did not hurry, for Colin hardly ever hurried, he did not notice the cold of the evening. Walking in the darkness was something that he always enjoyed. But usually, on an evening walk, he would have been alert for any twittering of birds in the trees or rustle in the undergrowth or the scents of the early spring, whereas tonight his mind was wholly occupied with his own thoughts.

The Mordues’ cottage was a small, square box of Victorian brick. It was not old enough to be attractive but only old enough to have every form of inconvenience. It had an earth-closet, thirty yards from the house, down a path that for three-quarters of the year was either muddy or ice-covered. Its water supply was from a pump in a stone-flagged scullery. It had tiny, pseudo-gothic windows and there were rats in the wainscot.

Tom had always refused to spend anything at all on modernizing the cottage. He claimed that as it was it had character and said that he had no intention of turning it into a suburban villa. Its garden, however, was relentlessly suburban, a rectangular lawn in front and weary-looking rows of brussels sprouts at the back. Its small rooms were neatly drab and overcrowded.

Minnie opened the door to Colin. When she saw him she looked scared.

‘Oh!’ she said in an astonished voice and went on looking at him with her mouth a little open, too startled to invite him in, too nervous to tell him to go away.

‘Tom in?’ he said cheerfully.

‘Oh yes,’ she said.

From the sitting room, Tom’s shrill voice called out, ‘Who’s there, Minnie?’

She was too petrified to answer.

Colin said softly, ‘Better let me tackle him, Minnie. He can’t really go around avoiding me in a place like this. The strain’s too great.’

She looked more scared than ever. ‘But he’ll never forgive you, Colin. And after all, interfering like that about Susan – it wasn’t right, you know.’

‘I meant well,’ he answered.

‘But it was like criticizing Tom,’ she said in a shocked voice.

‘You know, I never thought of that,’ he said. ‘Believe it or not, I was just thinking about Susan.’

‘But you know what Tom’s like.’

‘I do indeed.’

‘So don’t you think it might be better now – ?’

She could not bring herself to go on, so Colin finished her sentence for her. ‘If I just went away again? No, Minnie, I want to come in and talk to Tom. And you. And Susan, if she’s here.’

Again Tom called out, ‘Why the hell don’t you answer, Minnie? Who’s there?’

She made a weak gesture and stood aside. Colin gave her a reassuring smile and stepped into the little hall.

Tom was sitting close to a smoky fire in a small black iron grate. He sprang to his feet when he saw Colin, but he was taken too much by surprise to have any line of attack or defence prepared, and for a moment he simply stood there, holding his mouth tightly shut with the lips sucked in between his dentures, so that they were quite invisible.

During that moment Minnie plucked up her courage to say, ‘Now, Tom … Now just a minute, Tom … I think it’s very nice of Colin to have called so that you and he can talk things over reasonably and I’ll just go and make some tea …’

Tom let his breath out with a little whistling sound.

‘Talk things over – bloody nonsense! What have you come for?’ he demanded.

Colin spoke deliberately. ‘There’s been a certain amount of talk locally about a murder. I came to find out whether perhaps you mightn’t have done it.’

He heard a little gasp from the corner of the room. Turning his head, he saw Susan, who had been half-hidden by the high back of her chair. She stood up now, putting aside some sewing on which she had been working close to an old-fashioned paraffin lamp, the smell of which was strong in the small room. Her cheeks were warmly coloured from the heat of the lamp, but her eyes were cold.

‘I’ll make the tea,’ she said.

‘Stay where you are,’ Tom said. ‘I told you, Gregory, and you should know by now I mean what I say, I and my family want nothing further to do with you. I’ve always restrained myself with you before, on account of your wife, whom I very much respect, but since you took it on yourself to take unwarrantable liberties – ’