The Twenty-Third Man (20 page)

Dame Beatrice was not in the least surprised that the police had not been over-anxious to accept Mrs Barstow’s disclosures at their face-value, but there were two points that she wanted to have cleared up.

‘What about the relationship between Caroline Lockerby and Telham?’ she inquired of Anson. ‘
Were
they brother and sister?’

‘You’ve been talking to old Mrs Barstow, ma’am. I shouldn’t place much reliance on
her
, you know.’

‘She says she looks over banisters and listens at keyholes. Could she, by such means, be one jump ahead of the police?’

Gavin laughed when he heard of this encounter.

‘The police can’t hope to emulate, much less surpass, the activities of a lonely old lady with nothing much to do except to mind her neighbours’ business. So, according to the old dear, there had been goings-on, had there?’

‘She seemed to think so, but, of course, in these disastrous days, wishful thinking is on the increase.’

‘I don’t really think we can take much notice of her. How did she strike you? – as a reliable witness, I mean.’

‘I would not call her reliable. Obviously she intends to believe what she wants to believe. All the same, I found her not uninteresting and far from unimportant.’

‘Not unimportant?’

‘Any stick does with which to beat a dog. Nothing is louder in any gate than a hog. All that glistens is not necessarily gold. Not to every policeman is unperishing truth told. Too many cooks can spoil the choicest broth. Not always with a wedding ring does a man plight his troth. If in the sunshine you choose to make your hay, there is not always much left to put by for a rainy day!’

‘Chorus,’ said Gavin, ’in which the cook and the baby joined – Yah! Boo! Sucks to you! The police will solve it before you do! Come out with me tonight and let me teach you how to rock and roll. Rock out of arms’ reach and roll with the punch. Or don’t you care about boxing?’

‘Why does Mrs Barstow keep a Boxer?’

‘Eh? Oh, you mean the dog? Yes, it doesn’t seem a typical pet for an old lady, does it, now one comes to think? I remember Anson said his mind was on the seat of his trousers all the time he was talking to the old lady.’

‘But a Boxer wouldn’t hurt a fly!’

‘If I were a fly, I wouldn’t care to bet on that!’

‘Do you think he means what he said?’

‘About the seat of his trousers? Yes, I do, and I can’t blame him, either.’

‘But, my dear Robert, this may be of the first importance.’

‘Don’t try to pull my leg.’

‘It is essential that we return to old Mrs Barstow and try to reconstruct the conversations she had with Detective Inspector Anson.’

‘But Anson was playing the wag when he said he was scared of the dog. Why, he keeps a Boxer himself. He’d know that the dog was harmless.’

‘That is just my point. He knew that the dog
wasn’t
harmless. My dear Robert, bear with me for once. This may mark the turning-point of the case. To Mrs Barstow without delay. I hear the Gytrash panting at my heels.’

‘The Gytrash?’

‘Mentioned in
Jane Eyre
. An East Coast dog-ghost renowned from Essex to Yorkshire. Brought over here by the Danes, I rather fancy, and left as a legacy, particularly to the Fenlands, on which, as you probably know, it is as well to place no foot after dark.
Flat
land is as much more sinister than mountains as the ghostly midday is than the moonless night.’

Instead of going straight to Mrs Barstow, they sought out Anson. He admitted the soft impeachment.

‘She’d set the dog at the alert,’ he said. ‘I don’t really blame her, and I don’t think it made any difference to the interrogation. One’s prepared to be a martyr in a good-cause. Of course, I didn’t take much stock in her evidence. She was convinced that Mrs Lockerby and Telham were not related, so I got Mrs Lockerby to produce the birth certificates. They were brother and sister all right, so the old lady’s suspicions went for a Burton, and I regarded the rest of her tale as unreliable.’

Dame Beatrice went back next day to Mrs Barstow.

‘I have been to the police about Mrs Lockerby,’ she announced. ‘Can you describe Mr Telham?’

‘I see him in my dreams.’ Mrs Barstow invited
her
visitor to come in. ‘I’m glad to hear the police are showing a bit of common sense at last,’ she went on, when both were seated. She proceeded to give a recognizable – indeed, an unmistakable – description of Emden.

‘And the unfortunate husband?’

‘Medium height, heavy build and very dark – almost swarthy, in fact.’

‘Ah, yes.’ It was certainly not a description which, by any imagination, could fit Telham. ‘Then there was a third man, or so I was told. Where did he fit in?’

‘A third man? Oh, you mean Mr Karl Emden, I suppose.’

‘Emden was the name, yes. The police are particularly interested in Mr Emden. You see, although I do not imagine the story got into the English papers, the unfortunate Mr Karl Emden has been murdered.’

‘What? Him, too? Good gracious me! Whatever next?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘But the poor, pale, soft young man! Whatever could
he
have been doing to get himself murdered? Why, he only came here visiting. Once a week he came, on Fridays, to make up a four at bridge. Whoever could have wanted to murder
him
?’

‘That is what a good many people would like to know.’

‘You said something about it not getting into the English papers. Was he murdered abroad, then? I always say you can’t trust foreigners. That’s the way
I
see it. Poor soul! Such a quiet young man, you couldn’t think he could upset anybody, not even a heathen cannibal. Where did it happen?’

‘On the island of Hombres Muertos.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘None of the party ever mentioned it in your hearing?’

‘Never, and it wasn’t for want of me listening, I assure you.’

‘What was the relationship between Mrs Lockerby and this Mr Karl Emden?’

‘Cool and polite. Quite friendly, but nothing more. No,
no.
It was what I have already told you. She was wrapped up in this fellow she called her brother.’

‘How long had they been living in this house before the husband was murdered?’

‘A matter of a year and a half.’

‘Did you ever know Mrs Lockerby to be hysterical?’

‘Only with her husband when there were quarrels. Of course, I will say he could be violent.’

‘How violent?’

‘Oh, not blows. I should have sent for the police if he had struck her. He used bad language and a lot of it. It was from him I found out that Mr Telham was not her brother.’

‘Did he ever use Telham’s name in the course of these quarrels?’

‘Not that I remember. He called him a great number of things, but never Telham.’

‘How did you know his name was Telham, then?’

‘Letters.’

‘Letters?’

‘His letters came here and she used to pick them up where I’d left them lying on the mat. I always used to get to the front door first because, by the time the post came, the men had gone off to business and my lady was still in bed.’

Dame Beatrice confided the gist of this conversation to Gavin.

‘It sounds a rum sort of set-up,’ he said. ‘The description of Telham fits Emden, you think, and Emden was clearly Telham.
Ménage à trois, et un mari complaisant, en effet, n’est-ce pas
? Well, it’s all of a queer do, but the more I know of human relationships, the less I’m prepared to put anything past anybody. The puzzle, though, far from getting itself unravelled, seems in more of a mess than ever. I mean to say, if Lockerby didn’t object to his wife’s making a love-nest with Emden, why the need for either of them to bump him off? Do you think perhaps Caroline wanted a divorce and he refused to play ball?’

‘Or did the chivalrous brother, the weekly visitor who made a fourth at bridge on Friday nights, remove the obstacle to a second and happier marriage for his sister?’

‘Goodness knows! As I say, it appears to me we’re as much in the dark as we were. Do you want me to tell Anson all this?’

‘If you think it will help him. I cannot see that it will. However, it will very likely help
me
when I get back to Hombres Muertos. The trouble there, from the beginning, has been that we have not known how to ask questions or, rather, what questions to ask and of whom to ask them.’

‘But now, you think, there are to be some interesting answers to be expected from Mrs Lockerby? What’s she like?’

‘Aged about twenty-nine and very charming. And very fond of her brother.’

‘The real Telham?’

‘The real Telham.’

‘Is the fondness genuine?’

‘Undoubtedly, I should say.’

‘Well, you would certainly know. I can’t say I envy you. You haven’t freed one of your suspects by coming back here. You’ve only been offered a lot of irrelevant details and spent a great deal of valuable time.’

‘I haven’t freed any of my suspects, it is true; but there is no doubt that on one or two of them, the searchlight of suspicion is differently focused. Before I leave London, I want to re-read my grandnephew’s notes on the trial of Mr Clun for manslaughter. And now, is it fair to ask how much longer you can spare your Laura to the island of bandits and bananas?’

‘Not very much longer,’ said Gavin, ‘sun-bathing and Señores notwithstanding. In other words, keep her as long as you want her, of course. That, by this time, goes without saying.’

‘And now to retrace our steps. What was all that about Mr Clun?’ said Dame Beatrice. She looked up her notes.

INTO THE CROWN
Court of Assize came the judge’s chaplain, the sheriff, then the judge, importantly dressed in red, followed by his marshal. The court stood. The judge bowed to counsel, who bowed in return, and to the jury.

Clun, immaculately dressed, stood in the dock and was flanked by two warders. The jury looked expectant, the witnesses stopped fidgeting, the Press poised their pencils. The judge’s clerk, a thin man in spectacles, traditionally and unnecessarily called the court to attention, and the assize clerk read the indictment. The prisoner pleaded not guilty, but only as a matter of form. He knew he stood no chance of being acquitted, but his counsel had insisted on the plea.

He was given the opportunity to object to the jury or to any individual member of it. Then the jury, eight men and four women, were sworn, and the trial began.

‘Members of the jury …’ the assize clerk opened the proceedings in a thin, clear voice – ‘Clun stands before you, charged with the manslaughter of Ernest Everard in the foyer of the
Crown
Hotel, Pawsey, at 10.45 p.m. in the evening of 18 March. Upon this indictment he has been arraigned, and, upon this arraignment, he has pleaded Not Guilty. Your charge, therefore, is to say whether he be guilty or no, and to hear the evidence.’

At a signal from the warder nearest him, Clun seated himself, and counsel for the prosecution stood up to address the judge and then the jury. He put his case plainly and straightforwardly, in a dry and non-committal voice. Clun had been one of a party of men who had had dinner together at the hotel. It was a stag party, the tie between the diners being that of belonging to a local political club.

‘It is not contested, members of the jury, that the parties had both been drinking heavily. It is not contested that the dead man had used insulting and intemperate language. You will hear from eye-witnesses that a scuffle took place, between him and the accused, at the top of a staircase leading from the dining-room to the foyer. You will hear that the accused acted under strong provocation; nevertheless, I submit that no provocation could be strong enough to justify the action of the accused in bringing about the death of Ernest Everard in the way you will hear described.’

Here counsel produced plans and diagrams for the inspection of judge and jury, and then called his first witness. This turned out to be Ian Lockerby.

‘Your name is Ian Lockerby?’

‘Yes.’

‘You live in flat number fifteen, in Temple Mansions?’

‘Yes.’

‘You were the convener of this dinner-party?’

‘Well, I’m the secretary, so, of course, I sent out the invitations.’

‘So you sent an invitation to Clun and another to a Mr Ernest Everard?’

‘No, I didn’t. Clun was a member, but Everard came in place of one of the members who couldn’t turn up.’

‘Was that in order?’

‘Well, no, not really, I suppose.’

‘Will you clarify that answer, if you please.’

‘What I mean is that we didn’t usually admit non-members, but the member who couldn’t turn up had paid for the dinner in advance and we couldn’t refund him the money because the restaurant had it, and these chaps will never disgorge …’

‘Keep to the point, please.’

‘I thought I was.’ (Here Dame Beatrice’s grand-nephew had noted in his report that it seemed, according to the newspapers, that Lockerby had flushed up and looked annoyed.) ‘The point is that the fellow who should
have
come didn’t want to have paid for nothing, so he’d arranged with Everard to settle for it. He thought we wouldn’t mind, as we knew he was pretty hard up. He’d dropped a packet that week at …’

‘Please spare us these unnecessary details. What happened after dinner?’

‘We were slung out.’

‘That is not what I mean. When the dinner was over, and your party were about to descend to the foyer to go home, did you see Clun strike Everard?

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Did you hear him say anything to him before, or as he struck him?’

‘Yes, I did,’ said the witness, with an apologetic glance at the prisoner, who gave an ironic smile. ‘He said he would – am I to repeat his actual words, my lord?’

‘Certainly,’ replied the judge.

‘Well, he said he would knock him cock-eyed and he hoped he’d break his bloody neck.’

‘Fair enough,’ muttered someone from the back of the court.

‘What opinion did you form when you heard those words spoken?’

‘I had no time to form an opinion. As he spoke, he up and did it.’