The Twenty-Third Man (28 page)

‘How did you get the corpse to the cave of dead men, to disguise it as one of the kings?’ Dame Beatrice demanded.

‘Ah, that,’ said Peterhouse, shaking his head, ‘that I cannot remember.’

‘How long were you with him on the island of Tiene?’

‘An hour or two each time. I was not missed. We are here, there, everywhere, we of the Hotel Sombrero, are we not? The beach, the town, the mountains, the bull-ring – nobody attempts to account for where we shall be at any particular time, and I went in the afternoons when many take a siesta. In the very early morning I went to bring the body from Tiene. Ah, I remember now! My friends the bandits helped me. Tio Caballo and José el Lupe have been my friends since I promised to pray for them.’

‘And they helped you to dress the body in the robes of one of the kings?’

‘Exactly, exactly, dear lady. We bore him to the cave of dead men and made him one of the kings. Believe me, I have no compunction at all about what I did. I have rid the world of a scoundrel. You are silent. Pray tell me your thoughts.’

‘I have been counting the waves,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘The seventy and seventh is just about to come in.’

‘Old Peterhouse?’ exclaimed Laura. ‘I can’t believe it! What are you going to do now?’

‘I am going to put it about that Peterhouse has told all. I shall give no details, but I want to make certain that the Drashleighs, Clun, Caroline Lockerby, Telham – oh, and Señor Ruiz – of course – all receive the same impression.’

‘That Peterhouse has come clean?’

‘Thank you. An old expression and not one that would figure in the vocabulary of a high court judge, but it expresses, no doubt, what I mean.’

‘And what do you expect will happen then?’

‘I expect violent repercussions.’

‘Do I take it that one of the people you mentioned was actually engaged, with old Peterhouse, in a plot to murder Emden? But it happened so quickly after you got here! There wouldn’t have been
time
to make such a plot with a perfect stranger and get it carried out and the body togged up like one of the dead kings, would there?’

‘Yes, there would. Consider the time-sequence. Emden disappeared almost immediately we arrived. He was expecting Caroline and Telham, therefore it was not the sight of them which drove him from the hotel. As we said before, and as Peterhouse himself pointed out, it must have been the sight of Clun and myself in what, to Emden’s guilty mind, was a partnership. Very well; Emden would have had previous knowledge of the little island of Tiene. A garrulous man such as Peterhouse would have told him about it long before we arrived.’

‘Yes, I suppose he would. Anyhow, can we take it for granted that he did.’

‘The next important move depended on Pilar. We may assume that Pilar gossiped as freely to Caroline Lockerby as she did to me. Pilar never wastes time.’

‘That girl will trip over her own tongue one of these days!’

‘We can take it that, as soon as the news of Emden’s disappearance from the hotel was bruited, Pilar regaled Caroline with the stories, some true, some, no doubt, apochryphal, of his love affairs on this island.’

‘Oh, I begin to see! Caroline didn’t realize that Emden was scramming because of you and Clun and, as he thought, because of the shadow of deportation. She assumed, quite naturally, that he’d sent for her to come to Hombres Muertos just to humiliate her. She came to the conclusion that he didn’t care twopence about her any more. She saw red, and told her devoted brother, I suppose.’

‘That is how I see it. Telham did not know what course to take. He had seen his sister’s unhappiness in her marriage and then he found her scorned and abandoned, as he thought, by a conscienceless libertine. He offered a reward, I imagine, for news of Emden. This was rather out of character, I feel, for he is as much of a procrastinator and often in as great a state of miserable indecision as his prototype Hamlet. This offer of a reward must have tempted Peterhouse into telling him where Emden was hiding. Then, I think, he bribed Peterhouse to murder Emden.’

‘You mean that Peterhouse was so short of money that he could be used as an assassin? It doesn’t seem credible!’

‘Most murders are incredible to the people who do not commit them. You see, it would have taken at least two persons to get the body up to the cave of dead men and into the robes of the mummified king. I am inclined to think it took three.’

‘Caroline Lockerby?’

‘I think so. It would account for her curious outburst in the cave that day and for her brother’s equally curious calm.
He
had released himself from the burden of indecision, and
she
began to realize the full horror of what had been done.’

‘But what about Peterhouse’s story that the bandits helped him?’

‘I give it no credence. I fully believed Ruiz when he
told
me that no islander would have dressed the body in the robes and mask of one of the dead kings. Besides, had you seen the timorous way in which the bandits approached the body when I was with them, you would think, as I do, that they are entirely innocent of any complicity whatever.’

‘I see. What I really can’t understand is that Peterhouse, knowing what he knew and what he’d done, took that party of you to visit the cave after Emden’s body was there. You’d think ‘that at all costs he’d want to keep people away.’

‘There are two possible explanations. He may have weighed up the chances and decided that, as we new arrivals would be certain to want to visit the cave, it might be as well to get our visit over before the corpse decomposed and began to smell; or it may be that he had forgotten the body was there. Some of his traumatic states are genuinely psychopathic.’

‘But, apart from the money, which, no doubt, he needed, how could he bring himself to do it?’

‘There are no penalties here for murder, and Peterhouse has lived here a good many years. Most of his English inhibitions will have worked themselves out of his system, so to speak, by this time.’

How Dame Beatrice did it, even Laura, who knew her well, could not have said, but the news that all was known, and that Peterhouse had confessed to having been bribed to murder Emden, was allowed to seep into the consciousness of those most nearly concerned. One morning neither Caroline nor Telham appeared at breakfast. At lunch-time they were still missing and Laura cocked a warily-inquiring eye at Dame Beatrice. At four in the afternoon, when lunch was over and the town was taking its siesta, came José el Lupe sneaking up to the hotel. Dame Beatrice was in the garden, full in the sun, watching the lizards disporting themselves on the warm stones of an ornamental rockery.

The Wolf stopped short and bowed.

‘You should, perhaps, pay another visit to the cave of dead men, Señora.’

‘Very well, Señor. Thank you for your information. How is the backbone of our friend Caballo?’

‘It has no ill-feeling now.’

Dame Beatrice strolled towards the house and met Clement.

‘I don’t want to live with Laura, after all,’ he said. ‘She is very inquisitive. She makes me tell her my secrets.’

‘Very well, child. Of course, during the Middle Ages small boys acted as messengers of love. Where is she?’

‘On the raft.’

‘Go and find her. Tell her to bring Mr Clun.’

‘What for?’

‘Fun.’

‘Can I join in?’

‘No.’

‘I had more fun running errands to Emden’s women.’

Clement sauntered away and Dame Beatrice took her seat at the top of the cliff path. At the end of half an hour, Laura, Clun, and Clement appeared.

‘Will you give me two shillings for a ride in a cart?’ asked Clement. Dame Beatrice, espying the Drashleighs as their heads appeared above the top of the cliff at the last bend in the path, canvassed their opinion.

‘It is very kind of you,’ said Theodora Drashleigh.

‘Yes, yes,’ agreed Pentland. They sounded dejected. Dame Beatrice handed over the money and Clement strolled off towards the hotel gate. ‘He says he wants to stay with us,’ said Pentland Drashleigh. They continued on their way to the terrace. Laura gazed after them and smiled.

‘Gavin would never have stood for Clement, anyway,’ she said. ‘My life-work has taken the only possible course and has included itself out.’

The cave presented the spectacle to which Dame Beatrice and Laura were accustomed, except that it contained two extra bodies.

‘We did not know where to put them,’ said Tio Caballo, materializing, a swarthy, unshaven, slightly Falstaffian ghost, from the back of the cave. Dame Beatrice had little need to examine the bodies. From the appearance of the injuries the brother and sister must have thrown themselves over the cliff.

‘This presents a problem,’ said Clun. ‘It’s either a double suicide or a murder and a suicide. It will complicate the funeral arrangements.’

‘If those are the only things it will complicate, nobody will be unduly put out,’ said Dame Beatrice. ‘Personally, I see no reason why it should not be made to appear a mountaineering accident.’

‘I wonder how much the bandits saw?’ suggested Laura. She put the question to Tio Caballo. He shrugged and answered:

‘I am a bandit, not a witness on oath. They died in any way you please, Señora. What was their sin, that they added a greater one to it?’

‘They were accessories to the murder of the Señor Emden.’

‘So?’ He gazed fixedly at the broken bodies and crossed himself devoutly. ‘“Take what you will,” says God, “and pay for it.” They took what they would, Señora, and have paid.’

MARGERY ALLINGHAM

Mystery Mile

Police at the Funeral

Sweet Danger

Flowers for the Judge

The Case of the Late Pig

Dancers in Mourning

The Fashion in Shrouds

Traitor's Purse

Coroner's Pidgin

More Work for the Undertaker

The Tiger in the Smoke

The Beckoning Lady

Hide My Eyes

The China Governess

The Mind Readers

Cargo of Eagles

E.F. BENSON

The Blotting Book

The Luck of the Vails

NICHOLAS BLAKE

A Question of Proof

Thou Shell of Death

There's Trouble Brewing

The Beast must Die

The Smiler with the Knife

Malice in Wonderland

The Case of the Abominable Snowman

Minute for Murder

Head of a Traveller

The Dreadful Hollow

The Whisper in the Gloom

End of Chapter

The Widow's Cruise

The Worm of Death

The Sad Variety

The Morning After Death

EDMUND CRISPIN

Buried for Pleasure

The Case of the Gilded Fly

Holy Disorders

Love Lies Bleeding

The Moving Toyshop

Swan Song

A.A. MILNE

The Red House Mystery

GLADYS MITCHELL

Speedy Death

The Mystery of a Butcher's Shop

The Longer Bodies

The Saltmarsh Murders

Death and the Opera

The Devil at Saxon Wall

Dead Men's Morris

Come Away, Death

St Peter's Finger

Brazen tongue

Hangman's Curfew

When Last I Died

Laurels are Poison

Here Comes a Chopper

Death and the Maiden

Tom Brown's Body

Groaning Spinney

The Devil's Elbow

The Echoing Strangers

Watson's Choice

The Twenty-Third Man

Spotted Hemlock

My Bones Will Keep

Three Quick and Five Dead

Dance to your Daddy

A Hearse on May-Day

Late, Late in the Evening

Faults in the Structure

Nest of Vipers

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Copyright © the Executors of the Estate of Gladys Mitchell 1957

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