Enough to Kill a Horse (23 page)

Then he said, ‘By the way, I suppose Jean hasn’t been here since I left?’

‘No,’ Fanny said.

He muttered something and turned to the door.

‘Why?’ Fanny asked quickly. ‘What’s the matter, Colin?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing, I’m sure. I just thought she might be here. But since she isn’t – ’

Another knock on the door interrupted him.

Again Fanny exclaimed, ‘That’s the police now!’

But this time it was the Mordues.

They came in with Minnie for once in advance of Tom. She was filled with passion of some sort. Her bony, slack body was taut with it, so that she looked some inches taller than usual. Her eyes were ablaze.

‘Ah,’ she said, seeing Colin, ‘the man I want!’

Tom, staying in her wake, as if he half hoped to be able to remain hidden behind her, looked shrunken and scared.

‘It’s her idea, Fanny,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to make trouble of any kind.’

Minnie looked wildly round. ‘That man Colin,’ she said, ‘I went to his house and they told me he’d just come here. And it’s better like this, because I can say what I want in front of impartial witnesses.’

‘Yes, Minnie dear,’ Colin said quietly. But he edged towards the door, still in a hurry to go in search of Jean.

Minnie took a deep breath, as if she were about to plunge into a stormy sea and swim for her life. Then dropping at once into her usual mild and flustered manner of speaking, she said, ‘Well, Colin, as soon as I heard from Susan what had happened, I thought there’s something I’ve got to do at once and that’s see you. Because I knew that as soon as you heard too, you’d be sticking your nose in and interfering. For some reason, for the last week or two, you’ve done nothing but interfere in the affairs of my family.’ Her voice was rising slightly. Some of her rage was returning, though it was plain that face to face with Colin she found it difficult to go on being as angry with him as she had thought she was. ‘What I want you to understand,’ she went on, ‘is that I will not have you going to the police and remarking, in that insinuating way of yours, how strange it was that Susan should have gone to see Laura. I want to make sure that Fanny and Basil keep you here until I’ve talked to the police and told them myself why Susan went to see Laura.’

‘Don’t you think she’s capable of telling them that herself?’ Colin asked.

His voice was as quiet as before, but he looked more disturbed. He was not looking at Minnie as he spoke, however, but again at Clare, sitting stiff and still by the fire, taking no notice of the fact that several people had come into the room. But whether the concern in Colin’s eyes was because of Minnie’s words or Clare’s silence, it was impossible to tell.

Minnie went on: ‘If Susan’s left alone, without interference from you, she’ll be all right. But after the way you came out to see us, threatening Tom with all sorts of things, I don’t know what you may be capable of next.’

‘I wasn’t threatening any of you, Minnie,’ Colin said. ‘I came to find something out, that’s all.’

‘You threatened us,’ Minnie repeated stubbornly. ‘You threatened Tom and me. You made up a wonderful story about how Tom and I between us killed Sir Peter Poulter. And then you said that if anything more happened that could hurt the Lynams, you’d take this story to the police.’

‘And is that why you’re here now, Minnie?’ Colin asked. ‘Something more has happened and you think this is the time I’ll go to the police with that story?’

Tom had just gulped a drink that Basil had given him.

‘I’m not afraid,’ he said. ‘I’m not in the least afraid. It was Minnie’s idea, having things out like this. I’m all for speaking one’s mind when it’s necessary, but still I always like to avoid trouble when I can. You all know I do.’

‘Of course you do, Tom,’ Colin said. ‘You’re the most peace-loving man in the village. And I’m sorry if you think I’m threatening you. All I really wanted, as I said just now, was a small piece of information. And in a perhaps unscrupulous way, I got it.’

‘I accept the word unscrupulous,’ Tom said.

‘I got the information,’ Colin said, ‘that it was Susan who had turned Kit down and not the other way round, as most of us thought. And that meant that even you, Tom, hadn’t the shadow of a reason for a grudge against the Lynams. So one of my theories about the way that Sir Peter might have died collapsed. But I had to test it before – before I began to think too much about my other theory.’

‘Had to?’ Tom said. ‘You had to, indeed?’ The old excitable shrillness was back in his voice. It was as if Colin’s admission that his theory had collapsed had relieved Tom of the fears that had been keeping a brake on his temper. ‘You aren’t a person who recognizes many duties. The truth is – and there’s nothing I’ll say about a man behind his back that I won’t say to his face – the truth is that you hadn’t got to do anything at all. The police are capable and intelligent men, which means that there was never any sort of compulsion on you to go sticking your nose into the affairs of my family.’

‘Yes, capable and intelligent men,’ Minnie said, sounding proud of Tom for having produced the phrase. ‘And let me tell you, too, that Tom and I have been at home together all day – until that telephone call came from Susan. So you can’t even begin to make out a case that either of us had anything to do with that poor woman’s death. And as for Susan herself …’

‘Yes,’ Colin said, ‘while we’re at it, what about Susan?’

‘She went to see Mrs Greenslade,’ Minnie said, ‘because Mrs Greenslade rang up and said she had come to the conclusion that Kit was really in love with Susan and she thought Susan was in love with Kit, and she herself would never want to stand between two people who were in love with each other, so she was going to give him up and go back to London.’

‘Laura
said that?’ Fanny exclaimed incredulously.
‘Laura
did?’

Minnie gave a solemn nod. ‘She said it to me myself. Susan wasn’t home yet, so she said it to me and asked me to tell Susan. I think she must have been a very fine young woman. I wish we’d had the chance to become friends with her. Still, Susan felt, of course, that that wasn’t the kind of thing one could settle just like that on the telephone, so she jumped on her bicycle and went to see her. And she found her dead – murdered!’

‘She spoke to you, Minnie?’ Fanny said thoughtfully.

‘She did,’ Minnie said, ‘and I can remember every word she said.’

‘And that’s the only time you’ve heard her speak, isn’t it?’ Fanny asked.

‘Yes, I’m sorry to say it is.’

‘Then,’ Fanny said excitedly, ‘at least we know one thing. One thing only. Laura’s murderer was a woman.’

Tom and Minnie exchanged glances, then Tom said, ‘How d’you make that out, Fanny?’

‘Because of the voice, the woman’s voice on the telephone,’ Fanny said. ‘Because it’s obvious it wasn’t Laura who spoke to Minnie. Laura would never have said a thing like that. Never in this world. She wasn’t the person to give up anyone or anything. The whole idea’s preposterous. No, it’s perfectly clear that the person who rang Minnie up, saying she was Laura, wasn’t Laura at all, but the person who’d just murdered Laura, and knowing that Susan would be an easy person to shift suspicion on to, made sure that she should arrive on the spot. Of course that’s what happened …’ The hurried, confident sentences stopped. Fanny took one swift, horrified glance round the room, careful not to let her eyes rest on anyone, least of all that stiff and silent figure by the fire. Then she turned to Basil and clutched at his arm. Under her breath, she said, ‘But why? … No, it can’t be. There isn’t any reason.’

Colin said, ‘There’s a very good reason, Fanny.’

She started and gazed at him disbelievingly.

He gave a sigh that sounded terribly tired and discouraged. Then he walked to the window, where Laura’s photograph still stood, and for a moment looked down in silence into the beautiful, empty face.

‘There’s a very good reason,’ he said in a low voice, ‘but we’ll come to that in a minute. First let’s talk about phenylthiourea.’

There was a stir of surprise in the room, as if the complete change in Colin’s tone had affected everyone unexpectedly. Basil particularly looked startled, and an expression of intense curiosity, as if he could not quite believe in what was happening, appeared on his thin, dark face.

Colin went on without any sound of enthusiasm for what he had to say, while he slid one fingernail along the frame that contained the photograph.

‘The strange bitter taste of the lobster and the extraordinary fact that there were two people here who couldn’t taste certain bitter things have been the real red herrings in the case,’ he said. ‘The word phenylthiourea has been dragged across the trail again and again. The suggestion is that somebody knew that either Mrs Greenslade or Sir Peter couldn’t taste phenylthiourea, and therefore, when presented with lobster that was heavily flavoured with it, and spiced with enough arsenic to kill a horse, would eat it without any misgivings, though no one else would touch the terrible stuff. Well …’ He drawled the word a little. ‘I suppose it
could
happen like that. Someone could think of doing a murder in that way. But I should have said there’d have been just about ninety-nine chances in a hundred against its success. Think of all the things that could have gone wrong with the scheme. First, as appears to have been the case here, there might have been more than one person who couldn’t taste phenylthiourea, so that more than one person might have died. I don’t say that that would necessarily have distressed our murderer …’

‘May I say,’ Basil interrupted, ‘that that was a highly unlikely thing to happen. It did happen, as unlikely things sometimes do. But the murderer might almost have been justified, I think, in calculating that it would not happen.’

Colin’s voice was sardonic. ‘That’s from the man who’s used to handling statistics in a scientific fashion. In my own earthier way, I think the murderer was taking a hell of a risk of committing wholesale slaughter. However, he was taking one even greater risk, from his point of view, which was that the poisoned lobster wouldn’t be eaten at all. If a lot of people around one start saying that something tastes bad, it’s a quite natural thing to get apprehensive, even if one can’t taste anything bad oneself. So, as you probably realize by now, I’m perfectly convinced that that was not the method used by our murderer. In fact, I don’t believe that there was any phenylthiourea or any arsenic in the lobster.’

There was a murmur in the room. It had a sound of doubt, almost of consternation in it. At the same time, it had an undertone of assent.

Minnie said, ‘But why do you keep on talking as if we weren’t sure still which of those two was meant to be murdered?’

‘But are we sure?’ Colin asked.

‘Of course we are,’ she said. ‘It was poor Mrs Greenslade. He – or is it really she, like Fanny said? – missed the first time, so made sure of it, the monster, this afternoon.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Colin said. ‘I really don’t think so. But I think that’s just what we were meant to think.’

He paused, turning his back on the photograph, looking round at them all.

No one spoke, so he went on, picking his words carefully: ‘I mean that Laura’s murder, like Laura’s queer inability to taste phenylthiourea, was an enormous red herring. She died because she insisted on thrusting herself forward as a victim. All the murderer had to do, when Laura herself had prepared the scene for him so well, was to go ahead and kill her. Then he could be almost certain that the highly successful murder of Sir Peter Poulter would always be looked on as a mistake and the real method and the real murder never discovered.’

For the first time for many minutes Clare Forwood stirred. Lifting her head, she looked directly, but with a stunned, blank gaze, at Colin.

His next words were addressed to her. He spoke quietly and gently.

‘That’s true, isn’t it, Miss Forwood? There wasn’t any arsenic in the lobster. You wouldn’t have risked harming your old friends. You went into the kitchen, and added something bitter to the lobster, because you knew of Sir Peter’s inability to taste certain things and you thought that if he ate a few of the patties which were refused by other people, no one would even think about the cocktail which really contained the poison. I wasn’t here myself, but I’ve been told by two or three people that you spent a good deal of the evening talking to Sir Peter. So it was easy for you, wasn’t it? Quite easy and simple and practical, not like all this fantastic messing about with phenylthiourea.’

Stiffly Clare started to stand up. From the way she stared at Colin, it might have been thought that she was seeing not merely one man, but a whole army of the law closing in upon her. Her face was grey and the skin of it seemed to have shrunk close to the skull, so that it looked all jutting, heavy forehead and small, fierce jawbone.

In a low, precise voice, as penetrating as that of an experienced governess quelling a troublesome class, she said, ‘
I hate people!
’

Then she collapsed in a dead faint.

Fanny ran to Clare, but as she knelt beside her, became suddenly uncertain what to do. She did not feel sure that it would be either wise or kind to bring Clare back to consciousness at that moment.

Colin’s face was drawn. He seemed to be finding it harder to bear the results of what he had done than he expected.

‘The resemblance,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t you all see the resemblance?’

Basil said, ‘Yes, it shows now, doesn’t it? The forehead, the eyebrows … She’s very like him. It was clever of you to notice that, Colin. Or had you anything else to go on?’

‘No,’ Colin said. ‘But I noticed the resemblance at once when I saw a photograph of Sir Peter in a newspaper after his death. It could easily have been a photograph of Miss Forwood.’

‘I never noticed it,’ Fanny said. ‘I never noticed any resemblance.’

‘You know her too well,’ Colin said.

‘And you mean,’ she said shakily, ‘that Clare was related to him?’

‘I think he was her father,’ Colin said. ‘Remember, Fanny, it was you who always said that Clare wasn’t really interested in anyone but the members of her own family, and that she never wrote about anyone but the members of her own family. So it was easy to argue from that that if she took a strong and surprising interest in someone, that person was in some way connected with her family. And then there was the resemblance.’