She Died a Lady (11 page)

‘Ah! Because I wasn’t smart enough to think of that explanation. See here, now.’

Craft’s patience, undoubtedly, was wearing thin. He and I were sitting in the front seat of the big police car, bowling out along the main road towards the Wainrights’ bungalow.

We had piled H.M. and H.M.’s wheel-chair into the tonneau: the chair placed sideways, H.M. himself on the back seat. His thick arms were folded across his barrel chest; and, with the top down, the wind blew up like horns the two tiny tufts of hair on each side of his bald head. For two miles or more he had not said a word. Superintendent Craft was doing the talking.

‘It works, don’t you see?’ he persisted, his good eye rolling towards me. ‘There’s not a single objection to it. Here are three lines of footprints’ – he illustrated – ‘going out to the edge of the cliff –’

‘Keep your hands on the wheel!’

‘Right. Theirs end on a little bit of coarse grass, maybe four feet across: the only grass on that cliff. Yours end in a kind of splosh where you crawled out on your stomach. The tracks are parallel, it’s true. Yours are six feet away from theirs, it’s also true.’

‘Good!’

‘But,’ Craft pointed out, ‘you heard what Mr Grange said. When the gun fell on the grass, you could have stuck out your arm with a cane …’

‘What cane? I don’t carry a cane. Ask anybody. What do you think I am: a desiccated old fossil tottering to the edge of the grave?’

Here I thought I heard from the back seat a distinct sniff and snort of approval. But Craft was occupied with other matters. He was intently regarding the road ahead.

‘By the way, Doctor. I’ve just remembered.’ Craft cleared his throat. ‘When our little one was so ill last January, you were in to see him for three weeks on end, nearly every night. And you never sent in a bill. What might we owe you, now? Roughly?’

This rather bewildering change of subject made me blink. I could think of nothing which interested me less in the broad world.

‘My good Craft, how the devil should I know? I haven’t time to bother with things like that. Ask Tom. Maybe he knows.’

‘Or maybe not,’ said Craft. ‘For all the way he goes on, he’s just as foggy and loony as you.
He
seldom sends in a bill either; and then, mostly, he sends ’em to the wrong people. I’m trying to do the best I can for you!’

‘Look here: I don’t need any money.’

Craft gripped the steering-wheel more tightly.

‘Maybe not; but damned if you don’t need a lot of help. This inquest – you know that – is on Wednesday. And you’re under oath when you testify. You also know that?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Are you going to tell the same story at the inquest that you’ve been telling us?’

‘Why not? I tell you it’s true!’

‘Listen,’ said Craft. ‘The jury will almost certainly bring in a verdict for a suicide-pact. He shoots her; then shoots himself. In that case, they’re bound to add a rider saying you tampered with the evidence. And in that case (
now
have you got it?) we shall have to arrest you for perjury.’

This was a beautiful thought, which I confess had not previously occurred to me.

I am not at a time of life where one enjoys being chucked into the cooler for telling truths. To younger men there seems something noble about this, though I have never quite understood why. Like Galileo, I am willing to go down on my knees and deny that the earth moves, if peace can be brought to the home thereby. But this was a personal matter.

‘You mean,’ I said, ‘that you won’t want to arrest anybody to whom you owe money?’

‘That’s about the size of it,’ Craft acknowledged. ‘If you’d only save us all a lot of trouble by telling the truth!’

‘I promise, so help me, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.’

Craft contemplated me very suspiciously. You could see he was more or less bewildered and at a dead end, because he knew I wasn’t in the habit of lying and yet here were the apparent facts to prove it. I don’t blame him. If I had been in his place, I shouldn’t have believed myself. He craned round towards the back seat.

‘What do
you
make of it, sir?’ he asked. ‘As Mr Grange said, it’s the only way the thing could have been done.’

‘Well … now,’ growled H.M. ‘It’s those very words “only way” which make me distrust the whole business.’

‘You distrust it because it
is
the only way?’

‘Yes,’ said H.M. simply. ‘I wish Masters could hear you sayin’ that.’

‘But did you ever hear of a murderer who could float in the air?’

‘Oh, my son! You don’t know my history. I’ve seen a feller who was dead, and yet who wasn’t dead. I’ve seen a man make two different sets of finger-prints with the same hands. I’ve seen a poisoner get atropine into a clean glass that nobody touched.’ He sniffed. ‘As for a murderer floating in the air, I’m expectin’ to meet one any day. It would just round out my cycle before the old man goes into the dustbin.’

‘What dustbin?’

‘Never mind,’ glowered H.M. He looked at me. ‘See here, Doctor. Let’s assume for the moment you’re telling the truth.’

‘Thanks.’

‘When you went out to the edge of that cliff on Saturday night, did you notice any gun lyin’ there?’

‘No.’

‘Suppose there’d been one, though. Would you have noticed it?’

‘I don’t know.’ Images rose again in their vividness and pain. ‘I was too upset to notice anything much. My impression is that there wasn’t a gun there, but I couldn’t swear to it.’

‘Well, take something else.’ Unfolding his arms, H.M. pointed at Craft. ‘An automatic ejects its spent cartridge-cases. Did the coppers find any spent cartridge-cases there?’

‘No. But, you see –’

‘I know, I know! Another lesson in elementary criminology. Spent shells don’t just roll out of the magazine when they’re fired. They’re thrown out with a snap, high and to the right. They’d probably have popped over into the sea. Did you have a look at the foot of the cliff?’

‘No, sir. It was high tide when we got there, thirty feet up, and I knew the bodies would have been washed away. As for finding two little brass cartridge-cases …’

‘All the same, did you
look
?’

‘No, sir.’ Craft hesitated. ‘Speaking of elementary criminology, what did you make of the Granges?’

‘I like the gal quite a lot. Though, d’ye see, I generally distrust these wenches who fire up and say they’ve got no interest at all in the opposite sex. It generally means they’ve got a whole lot of interest tucked away somewhere. Just as –’

H.M. shut his eyes briefly. The corners of his mouth turned down. Folding his thick arms again, he sat back in the tonneau and fixed his eyes on the road ahead. When he spoke again, it was more mildly.

‘I say, son. Are we anywhere near this Baker’s Bridge road? I’ve got an awful yen to have a look at that studio where Mrs Wainright was carryin’ on.’

Craft was surprised.

‘It’s only a little way ahead,’ he replied. ‘We can easily stop by there if you’d like to.’

‘Then do it. Mind!’ H.M.’s voice was querulous. ‘I haven’t got the ghostiest idea what we’re goin’ to find there, or see there, or do there. Probably nothing. But the urge remains.’

The road to Baker’s Bridge, which winds across country to join the main Barnstaple road by a short-cut, is little more than a narrow lane. From here, too, you can take another track out towards the wastes of Exmoor. It was six o’clock in the afternoon when we turned into the lane, on a dirt track between highish banks. The tall, thin trunks of the trees, patched with moss, stood up against filtered sunshine which made a hazy and softened light. The road swallowed us up. Something ran with a scurry across dead leaves. And some fifty yards along the winding lane, Craft braked the car abruptly.

‘Ho?’ he muttered.

A little elderly man was coming towards us under the arching trees. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and a rusty suit; a grimy shirt was fastened, without necktie, at his throat. His white moustache, luxuriant and drooping, had turned partly brown as though singed with the tar of cigarettes. It stood out against his complexion. As he plodded along, he appeared to be addressing some lengthy if inaudible speech to the trees.

‘Very good customer to meet,’ said Craft. ‘That’s Willie Johnson.’

‘Oh? You mean the gardener that the Wainrights sacked? Better stop him, son, and have a word.’

This was unnecessary. Mr Johnson stopped, saw us, and stood transfixed. Then he came towards us with dignity, swinging – as a mark of the gentleman and even the dandy – a malacca stick. Also, he was full of beer. Not drunk: just thoroughly and oozily full of beer, which appeared to flow along his veins and get out at his eyes. He drew up his thin neck out of the collar and addressed Craft.

‘I ’ave a complaint to make, I ’ave,’ he said.

Craft was patient but weary.

‘Now listen, Willie. The sergeant at Lynton says he’s getting tired of your complaints.’

‘Not of this one, ’e won’t. It’s –’ Mr Johnson searched his mind – ‘it’s larceny. Yes, sir. Larceny. ’E stole it.’

‘He stole what?’

‘Ah!’ breathed Mr Johnson, as though this were the most darkly sinister part of the business. He lifted the stick and attempted to tap his nose with it: an unsuccessful move, which annoyed him. ‘Four foot long it were, and ’e stole it. That gentleman’ll find out, ’
e
will!’

‘Who will?’

‘That Mr Wainright, that’s lost as nice a lady as you’d ever want to see. Some people pities ’im. But I say no. I say ’e’s got a nasty sly look about ’im, when ’e thinks you don’t see it.’

‘You’re drunk, Willie. Come round and see me when you get sober. I want to ask you some questions.’

Mr Johnson protested vehemently that he was not drunk. It was H.M. who intervened.

‘Look here, son. You must have lived a pretty long time in this district?’

Our informant’s local pride was touched. He announced that he had lived here first twenty, then thirty, then fifty years.

‘You know the studio a little way on along this road? Uh-huh. Who does that place belong to?’

‘Belonged to old Mr Jim Wetherstone,’ Mr Johnson replied promptly, ‘that died eight, ten years ago. ’
E
let it to an artist-chap that killed hisself there, like they do.’

‘Yes; but who does it belong to now?’

‘Estate’s got it, lawyers and all. ’Oo’d live there anyway? When there’s no drains and an artist killed ’isself and all?’ Mr Johnson spat into the road. ‘Cost an ’undred pound to put that place in repair, and ’oo’d live there anyway?’

H.M. fished in his pockets for silver as a largesse; but he could find only a ten-shilling note. And this, to the dismay of Craft and the incredulous astonishment of Johnson, he tossed over.

‘You can buy a lot of beer with ten bob, Willie,’ Craft said warningly.

‘Beer?’ inquired the other, with real dignity. ‘I’m a-going to the pictures.’ (We had a film down at Lynton once a week.) ‘’Tis a educational film, about the Romans that burnt Christians to a stake and all. And the girls ’adn’t got no clothes on,’ he added. He was so grateful that the beer came out of his eyes. ‘Good day, Mr Craft. And a very good day to
you
, sir. I ’ope your stay in our district will be both long and pleasant.’

‘You be careful!’ Craft shouted after him. ‘One of these days you’ll be seeing pink rabbits; and then watch out!’ Willie did not deign to turn round. ‘He’ll be all right,’ the superintendent said, ‘when he’s dried out a little. I wish you hadn’t given him that money, though. The studio isn’t much further on.’

It stood, in fact, about two hundred yards from the entrance to the main road. Though this lane is not much used, I had passed the house on many occasions at one time or another, and it had seemed dismal enough. But it had never seemed more dismal than now, at the first vague onset of twilight.

There was no wall round it. It stood a short distance back from the road, a barnlike stone place once whitewashed, but now a dirty grey. A peaked, sloping roof had a north side once made of glass-panes; but few of these had been left, amid splinters and gapings, and those which remained were so dirty as to seem blacked-out.

Heavy double-doors, almost big enough to drive a lorry through, faced the road. Round at the side there was a little door, with two steps leading up to it from a rank-grown path. This must have been where Molly had seen Rita Wainright, in a red sweater, standing with her arms round somebody while the spring dusk deepened.

There were no downstairs windows. And the two upstairs windows – at least, on the sides we could see – were boarded up. At the right, beyond us, was a heavy stone chimney. Behind this studio rose up the pine trees, of that sombre green which seems black. If you were fanciful, you might have thought Rita’s ghost was here. Near the double doors facing the road, I remember, there was a little patch of bluebells.

Craft raced the motor and then cut it off, so that damp warm stillness crept in around us.

And that was when we heard a woman screaming.

They were not loud screams. That, in a way, was what made them frightening; from physical exhaustion, or terror draining the nerves, they could barely be forced through a dry throat. They gave the old studio no pleasant voice in that dusk. They wrung pain out of it, and fear certainly. They were accompanied by a weak, faint, despairing hammering at what we identified as one of the boarded-up windows upstairs: the left as you faced the studio.

We had to leave H.M. behind, despite his bellowings. There was no time to move him. Craft waited only long enough to get an electric torch out of the side pocket of his car.

‘Front doors,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Unlocked, I think.’

And we went for them.

The front doors, of rather handsome seasoned oak,
were
unlocked. Though some vandal had fastened hasps and a padlock to the outside of them, the lock hung loose. We pushed them open – they were set flush with the ground – and went in.

The place was damp and mouldy. But, owing to that big skylight, we could see pretty well; and the plan of the house emerged out of shadows. It consisted of one big room, the studio, with kitchen and storeroom built out at the rear. Over the front doors had been built a kind of gallery inside, for the floor of a room within a room. Thus there was no proper upstairs, but only this partitioned room against the front wall, hung over our heads. A (once) white-painted staircase along the right-hand wall led up to its closed door.