Speedy Death (20 page)

‘You said just now that she has forgotten she ever went into Miss Clark’s room that night,’ said the inspector, wrinkling his brow. ‘Do you mean she is suffering from loss of memory?’

‘Not exactly. I think it likely that the shock resulting from her being nearly drowned has not yet worn off, and the incidents which produced
the shock are filling her mind to the exclusion of everything else.’

‘Then you mean she might have obtained aspirin since then and forgotten she did so?’ pursued the inspector.

‘I think nothing is less likely,’ pronounced Carstairs, filling his pipe. ‘To begin with, it seems that she keeps a record of her purchases in that small book which we saw her produce from her pocket, and, to go on with, as she was in bed all day yesterday, she could not have gone out and bought anything, could she? All you have to do——’

‘Thank you, sir. No need to teach me my business,’ chuckled the inspector. ‘I’ll go and find out what parcels were delivered at the house yesterday and the day before, and who went out shopping and what they bought. No, I don’t smoke when I’m in uniform, sir, thanks very much.’

Left to himself, Carstairs retired to the summerhouse for a quiet smoke, and found the little building in the possession of Mrs Bradley, who, rather to his surprise, was reading, with a frown of concentration, the best-selling novel of the month. She put the book down when she saw him, and grinned fiendishly.

‘Good morning,’ said she. ‘At what hour are we due to start for the church? You see me attempting to get my mind in tune with the great event. Dear young people! I hope they will be very, very happy together. And how hugely delighted our dear Eleanor is, isn’t she? Have you observed that fact?’

‘No,’ replied Carstairs, ‘I can’t say that I have. Rather a curious attitude on her part, if all that I suspect about her is true.’

‘On the contrary,’ contradicted Mrs Bradley, with spirit, ‘it is absolutely in line with all her behaviour throughout these curious proceedings.’

‘Expound,’ said Carstairs, ‘for, behold, we have an hour and forty minutes before we need start for the church.’

‘Of which period of time I shall require to spend the hour in donning my wedding garments,’ remarked Mrs Bradley. ‘But the forty minutes is completely at your disposal. First of all, I wish you would tell me your version of all that has occurred since last we talked together.’

‘I don’t think I have one,’ Carstairs began. ‘I thought Eleanor killed Mountjoy, and I’m sure she intended to kill Dorothy Clark. But since then somebody has certainly tried to kill Eleanor herself, and so I am forced to the conclusion either that Mountjoy’s death was an accident—which I am not prepared to believe for a single instant, in spite of what I’ve said to the inspector—or else that the murderer is a homicidal maniac who accounted for Mountjoy, attempted to kill first Dorothy Clark, and then Eleanor Bing, and, for all I know to the contrary, may be lurking at the back of the summer-house at this very moment waging to make an attempt on you and me. The only question is, who is it?’

Mrs Bradley cackled.

‘And you, brave man, sit here calmly talking about it,’ she jibed. ‘Run for your life! Run!’

‘Well, if you know a more feasible explanation, give it,’ said Carstairs, laughing. ‘But, first of all, there is just one point about the whole affair that I can’t get clear in my mind. It’s trifling, I admit, but it worries me considerably.’

‘Ah!’ said Mrs Bradley, with quiet relish. ‘I thought you’d notice the scream.’

‘You
are
a witch! I’ve always thought as much, and now I know it,’ said Carstairs. ‘What on earth gave you the clue to my thoughts?’

‘Nothing. After all, the scream
was
the extraordinary part of the business, so why shouldn’t you notice it?’

‘Passing over your quite unique habit of reading my mind,’ said Carstairs, ‘I admit at once that you are right. Why
did
Eleanor scream like that?’

‘Well, why do women usually scream?’ asked Mrs Bradley.

‘They scream because they are in agony, or because they are in danger, or because they are badly frightened.’

‘Well, let us say because they are suddenly frightened,’ corrected Mrs Bradley. ‘Very well. We can dismiss the idea that Eleanor was in agony, I think. She seemed quite remarkably healthy both before and after the scream.’

‘She said she had neuralgia,’ Carstairs interpolated.

‘Yes, she
said
so,’ Mrs Bradley agreed, ‘but, even if that were true, people don’t usually give one loud, terrifying scream that wakes the whole household
when they have neuralgia. Besides, if she did scream with pain, she could have said so. There was no reason against saying so.’

‘That leaves us with the alternatives of danger and sudden fright,’ said Carstairs.

‘Exactly. Let us examine them. The view that she was in danger in that bedroom must not be lost sight of, and the view that something in the bedroom frightened her is undoubtedly true. She admitted it herself, but her explanation of what caused her sudden fright is amazingly thin. She said that when she turned on the light she saw that dummy figure in the bed, when she had expected to see Dorothy Clark. Now I contend that Eleanor was not telling the truth. To begin with, a glance should have sufficed to tell her what the dummy was. To go on with, although I grant it may have startled her, I very seriously doubt whether it would have startled anyone except an extremely hysterical person into screaming at that pitch. Now, Eleanor is not an hysterical subject, for, if she were, the probabilities are that she would have gone on screaming, aren’t they?’

Carstairs nodded.

‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Like Portia’s, your exposition is sound. The sight of the dummy figure did not cause her to scream. The question is, what did?’

‘Let me conclude my argument about the dummy figure,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘I think Eleanor told a lie when she said she turned on the light. Her fingerprints were on that poker. The head of the dummy was staved in by a heavy blow. The inference is that
Eleanor struck that blow. The poker is a particularly weighty one, which is, or rather was, used and kept in the dining-room. What was Eleanor doing with it in the middle of the night? She must have intended to kill Dorothy Clark with it. Would she have risked turning lights on, if she had had this purpose in her mind? No! no! The moonlight, she judged, was sufficient to guide her aim. She struck the blow, and then——’

‘Screamed,’ said Carstairs. ‘But why?’

‘Because somebody was hiding in Dorothy’s room that night,’ said Mrs Bradley, quietly, ‘and this person sprang out and confronted Eleanor immediately she struck that heavy blow. It was this person who switched on the light. It was at sight of this person, it was at this sudden, utterly unexpected appearance, and his fierce, almost murderous attitude and expression, that Eleanor emitted that fearful scream. Not only did she realize that someone had seen her kill Dorothy, but she thought her own life was in danger from the eye-witness.’

‘But she
didn’t
kill Dorothy,’ said Carstairs feebly.

‘No, but she thought she had. It was not until the unknown person pointed to the bed that Eleanor realized her own life was safe.’

‘But—but I’m hanged if I see where you are getting your facts from,’ said Carstairs. ‘It’s all out of my depth.’

‘These are not facts. This is only my reconstruction of what must have happened that night. You admit
that it accounts for Eleanor’s dreadful scream as no mere sight of a dummy figure could do, don’t you?’

‘I admit that it is a clever reconstruction,’ said Carstairs, smiling.

‘Yes, but don’t you see that it also accounts for the attempt made on Eleanor’s life? If Eleanor had struck Dorothy instead of the dummy figure that night, she herself would never have left that room alive. But because Dorothy was safe the unknown witness allowed Eleanor to go. Later on, however, he thought better of allowing her to escape scot-free and remain at liberty to injure Dorothy on some future occasion, so he entered the bathroom next morning, and, as he thought, drowned Eleanor in the bath.’

Mrs Bradley broke off, and emitted another of her hideous yelps of laughter.

‘I expect he worked tremendously hard yesterday morning trying to bring her round,’ she observed. ‘It must have been a staggering shock to him when she recovered, and he realized that he had taken all that trouble and run all that risk in vain.’

Carstairs frowned.

‘You say “him,” and that means you are certain you know the identity of this unknown person,’ he said.

‘I am not certain of his identity, although I could make a guess at it,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘But I am sure he is a man and not a woman, because we can all account for Eleanor, and Dorothy and I can account for one another, because we slept in the
same bedroom, and, as I don’t think it was one of the maids,’ she added, cackling, ‘that leaves, besides the menservants, yourself, Alastair, Garde, and Bertie Philipson. Come along. Take your choice. Which one will you have?’

Carstairs pondered.

‘Garde Bing is the likeliest,’ he said slowly, ‘but you won’t persuade me that he was the unknown witness if you try from now until my dying day!’

He spoke with some heat. Mrs Bradley shook her head. ‘A fair guess,’ she said, ‘but, I think, a mistake. Try Bertie Philipson.’

‘BERTIE PHILIPSON?’

Carstairs laughed heartily.

‘That is where your excellent reconstruction falls flat,’ he said.

‘Very well,’ agreed Mrs Bradley, quite unruffled. ‘Then perhaps you’ll tell me why, of all the members of the household, servants included, Bertie was the only person who did not join the rest upon the landing outside Dorothy’s room.’

‘Wasn’t Bertie there?’ asked Carstairs slowly, although his own retentive memory had answered the question almost before the words had left his lips.

‘You know he was not. Don’t you remember at breakfast next morning Garde teased him about his non-appearance? Besides, I counted up, and I know he was not there. He was hiding still in Dorothy’s room. Naturally he could not step out and advertise his whereabouts. Young men don’t
usually spend the night crouching behind the head of someone else’s bed, especially that of a young unmarried woman. Besides, there was the heavy poker and the dented mask to be accounted for. So Bertie, when he heard the pandemonium following on Eleanor’s startled scream, went to earth again. And small blame to him,’ added Mrs Bradley, chuckling. ‘I could wager that he spent a remarkably uncomfortable half-hour, too; for, besides the discomfort of his crouching position, he could not be sure that some one of us would not spot him. He wondered, also, whether Eleanor would give him away.’

‘Yes, if what you say is true, why didn’t she?’ asked Carstairs. ‘She would not have needed to alter a word of her own story, and it would have made her screaming appear the most natural thing under the circumstances. Even the fingerprints on the poker need not have proved an insurmountable difficulty, for she could have said that Bertie used some sort of a holder for it and that she had handled the poker last—snatched it away from him, or something, after he had struck the blow.’

Mrs Bradley shook her head at him playfully.

‘There is a master of sensational fiction lost in you,’ she said.

‘I like that,’ said Carstairs warmly. ‘Who devised this whole remarkable account of the proceedings on that interesting night, pray?’

‘Not guilty, my lord,’ responded Mrs Bradley. ‘This is not of my devising. It is the simple truth.
Test it in any way you choose, and see how well it all hangs together. There is not a flaw that I can detect.’

‘You pointed one out to me only a minute ago,’ said Carstairs dryly. ‘Why didn’t Eleanor give Bertie away?’

‘She is in love with him,’ said Mrs Bradley simply; and she recounted to the astonished Carstairs the story Bertie himself had told her; the story which had begun two years before, and which was now moving to its astounding conclusion.

‘Well,’ said Carstairs, when she had finished, ‘I should like to think the whole affair out again in the light of what you have told me——’

‘Exactly,’ agreed Mrs Bradley complacently. ‘One increasing purpose runs through the whole of these unhappy but interesting affairs, and the theme is Eleanor’s desire for Bertie Philipson. Forgive me, but I really must go and dress. Who did you say the other bridesmaid was to be?’

‘A girl named Pamela Storbin,’ Carstairs answered. ‘A nice girl. Her guardian is a friend of mine, and I have known Pamela since she was three.’

‘Is she coming here first?’ asked Mrs Bradley keenly.

‘I believe not. The arrangements for the wedding have been fixed up at such very short notice that I fancy Pamela is to meet the others at the church, and will come back here to lunch.’

‘I—see,’ said Mrs Bradley, in such a thoughtful tone that Carstairs was moved to ask:

‘There is no reason why she shouldn’t, is there?’

‘It is almost a pity that Bertie is such a charming squire of dames,’ was Mrs Bradley’s cryptic, and therefore disquieting, reply. ‘And that, by the way, brings us back to the beginning of our conversation. You said you had not noticed how pleased Eleanor is at the news of this wedding.’