Was It Murder? (18 page)

Yes, the affair was closed . . . and yet . . . and yet in some strange and secret way he could not let it be closed in his own thoughts.  Neither Lambourne’s confession nor Guthrie’s exposition had given that sense of finality that ought, he felt, to have been in his own mind.  Too many mysteries remained; too many questions had never been answered.  Thus, with a sort of sickening willingness, he allowed himself to be led back into the realm of doubt.

The mood persisted for several days, till one afternoon, in a moment of half-sinister idleness, he got out his notebook and glanced through the pencilled relics of those many hours he had spent over the Oakington case.  He had made copious notes of various conversations he had had with the chief actors in the Oakington drama; there were pages, for example, concerning Guthrie’s remarks.  Then he came to reports and summaries of talks he had had with Lambourne.  Queer to think that the crimes that Lambourne had discussed so abstractedly and nonchalantly had all the time been his own!

Lambourne had said (according to Revell’s scribbled memoranda):

“I suspected it from the moment the news of the first accident reached me.  But then I nearly always do suspect things.  I have a morbid mind. . . .  Nobody, however clever, should expect to get away with more than one murder.  From a technical point of view, the repetition mars the symmetry of the thing. . . .  After my years at the War, I find it hard to share the general indignation when someone tries a little unofficial slaughter on his own.”

All that, Revell had to admit, was fairly incriminating.  Along with Lambourne’s bookcase of crime literature it might be held to show him as a person capable of planning and imagining murder.

Again, Lambourne had said:

“If Ellington isn’t the murderer, there probably hasn’t been a murder at all. . . .  I didn’t want you to know too much against Ellington—it might have biased you in deciding whether the accident was faked or not.”

Yes, that was certainly corroboration of the fact that Lambourne had, very cleverly and with an appearance of judicial fairness, sought to throw suspicion on Ellington.  Revell was gratified to find that, even at such an early stage of the proceedings, he himself had written, apropos of Lambourne:  “Is he entirely trustworthy?  Is his pose of indifference sincere?”

Once again, Lambourne had said:

“Most people, if careful enough, can commit one murder safely.  The temptation is to commit a second.  Even that may be successful.  But the third time, by the law of averages, is likely to be unlucky. . . .  Once the murderer has got it into his head that he’s cleverer than the rest of mankind, he begins to think of murder quite casually.  Two successful murders very often lead to a third.”

And after saying that, Revell remembered, Lambourne had joked about the possibility of Ellington murdering some third person in due course—probably his wife.

Ah well, Revell reflected, there would be no third murder, since the murderer was now dead himself.

Suddenly, seized with a fit of inspiration, he turned to the first blank page and scribbled down:

“The beastly part of this case is the tremendous amount that depends only on what people have SAID.  The explanation of my being sent for at first depends on what Roseveare SAID, and in what he SAID Mrs. Ellington SAID.  The whole theory of Lambourne as the murderer depends again on what Lambourne SAID, and on what Mrs.  Ellington SAID he SAID.  There really seems to have been far too much SAYING and not enough discovery of independent evidence.”

Then, apparently satisfied for the time being, Revell locked the notebook in a drawer, lit another cigarette, and strolled out into the warming air.  Summer at Oakington was really rather delightful, with the clank-clank of the roller over the cricket-pitch and the songs of the birds in the high trees.  A pity the buildings were so frightful.  Revell, varying the confession of Landor, could say that art he loved, and next to art, nature.

As he passed the front entrance of Ellington’s house, he saw, emerging from the porch, Mrs. Ellington with a man whom he did not recognise.  She greeted him with a pleasant if rather wistful smile and hastened to introduce him to the stranger.  The latter, apparently, was none other than Mr. Geoffrey Lambourne, who had come to Oakington to attend to matters connected with his brother’s death.  Mrs. Ellington, after a few moments, left the two men together; she seemed glad enough to do so, and Revell could easily understand her motive.  The raking over of recent events must have been peculiarly distressing to her.

Geoffrey Lambourne, on further examination, appeared as a short, rather stout man, round-faced and spectacled, not much like his brother and seemingly many years his senior.  Revell was interested in his mere identity, and could feel considerable sympathy with him.  They took a stroll, at Revell’s suggestion, round the Ring, and Lambourne, in a delicate, rather over-sensitive voice, told Revell that he was the representative of an English firm in Vienna and had come to England especially to wind up his brother’s affairs, interview his solicitors, and so on.  “It’s all been a little curious, his death, don’t you think?” he said.  The faintly quizzical understatement, spoken in such a quiet tone under that blazing sky, made Revell suddenly shiver.

“Very curious,” he answered, guardedly.  “But then, I think your brother was in many ways a very curious man.”

“May I ask if you knew him well, Mr. Revell?”

“Oh, not very well.  But we liked each other’s company, I think.”

Mr. Geoffrey Lambourne nodded.  “He liked yours, at any rate.

Several of his letters to me contained mentions of you.”

“Really?  I had no idea he would ever think me worth writing about.  I certainly liked him—he had a wry sense of humour that rather appealed to me.”  (Certainly, Revell reflected, he HAD had a wry sense of humour.)  “I suppose you were very much attached to him?”

“I was.”  The simplicity of the admission held its own pathetic dignity.  “We were the sole survivors of our family—both bachelors too, and likely to remain so.”  He blinked gently as he entered a patch of open sunlight.  “Max was the only human being in the world I had to care about, and I—or so I had imagined—occupied a similar place in his affections.”

Revell was quick to notice the pluperfect tense of this last remark.  “So you HAD imagined?” he echoed.

The other nodded.  “Yes, exactly.  But I had better tell you, if you are interested, just what happened when I arrived in England.”

“Yes, please do.”

“I had been wired for, you understand, by the solicitor who acts for us both.  I was not in time for the inquest, but I was able in Paris to buy English newspapers that reported it.  I am glad, by the way, that the jury returned an open verdict, for I am perfectly certain that my brother was not the sort to take his life deliberately.  The veronal habit was a surprise to me, but I can hardly blame him, poor fellow—he was, as your Headmaster said, a most tragic victim of the War.  But I must tell you what happened at my visit to the solicitor.  I had naturally expected that my brother’s possessions, small though they might be both in quantity and value, would pass to me—in fact, we had both made wills in each other’s favour some dozen years ago.  Judge of my surprise when the solicitor informed me that my brother, greatly against his persuasions, had made a later will, dated only last year, leaving everything he had to a complete stranger.”

“Indeed?”

The other coughed deprecatingly.  “Please do not suppose that the bequest itself troubles me.  I am not badly off, and in any case, my brother left nothing but his books, a few pounds in the bank, and his term’s salary payable up to the date of his death.  What does—or perhaps I had better say, DID—perturb me a little was the discovery that he knew anyone whom he cared for sufficiently to put me in, so to speak, a second place.  Or rather,” he added, with a slight smile, “no place at all.  In this second will of his, I was not even so much as mentioned.”

Revell was itching to learn the name of this mysterious beneficiary, but he felt that Geoffrey Lambourne was the kind of man who told his tale better when left alone.  He therefore contented himself with a sympathetic murmur.

“Yes,” continued Lambourne, “I was a little hurt at first, I confess.  And when I further learned that it was a woman, I was perhaps even annoyed.”

“A woman?”

“Yes.  The woman who introduced us just now.  Mrs. Ellington.”

“Good Lord, you don’t say so?”

“You are surprised, Mr. Revell?”

“Well, yes, I must admit I am.  Though really not so much, perhaps, on second thoughts.  At least, I can think of a reason for it.”

“So can I—a very obvious one.”

“You mean that your brother was in love with her?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me, having seen her.”

Revell smiled.  “Yes, she’s an exceedingly attractive woman, I admit.  Your brother certainly admired her, but I don’t imagine there was ever anything like a real affair between them.  Mrs.  Ellington sympathised with him a great deal—they had many tastes in common—far more, no doubt, than she had with her husband, who isn’t the most suitable man for her to have married.  Whenever your brother struck his bad patches she was able to help him in many ways—she had been a nurse, you know.  I really think that’s all it came to.”

“You like her, then?”

“Yes, I do.  Very much.”

“Thank you, Mr. Revell.  You have told me just what I wanted to know.  Mrs. Ellington, whom I liked, I must say, as soon as I met her, was far too modest to explain things as you have done.  I can see now exactly why my brother made his will as he did, and I’m no longer troubled about it in the least.  Mrs. Ellington I certainly don’t blame at all—she says that the bequest came as a complete surprise to her, which I can well believe.  Perhaps as an embarrassment as well, for by the look of him, Mr. Ellington is not a man to deduce a good motive when one not so good is equally handy.  I note, by the way, that YOU don’t care for him, either?”

“We’re rather different types, I’m afraid.”

They had completed the first round of the Ring, and it was Lambourne this time who suggested a second circuit.  Revell agreed, offering the other a cigarette.  “It’s very decent of you to tell me all this,” he said, lighting one for himself.  “I haven’t been here long enough to have become really intimate with your brother, but perhaps I knew him as well as any of the others did.”

“Better, I am sure.  You knew, of course, about his War experiences?”

“You mean about his—er—his court-martial and all that?”

Lambourne, however, showed by a sudden clouding over his normally benignant countenance that he had not meant any such thing.  When he replied there was even a mild ring of indignation in his tones.  “Good heavens, Mr. Revell, am I to understand that the story of his one single lapse followed him here?  I am sorry to hear it—I had no idea of it all.  I still do not believe that he committed suicide, but if ever there could have been a reason for his doing so, it would have been the raking up of that sad affair.”

“It didn’t follow him here,” Revell answered, with a feeling of having badly put his foot in it.  “So far as I know, not a soul at Oakington knew about it except me.  I’ll be frank with you and tell you how I got to know.  You’ve heard, of course, of the two boys whose deaths here during the past year have caused such a sensation in the papers?”  The other nodded.  “Well, a detective from Scotland Yard was here recently looking up all our pasts and so on.  He took me into his confidence a bit and told me of the affair.”

“He had no business to,” was the quick response.  “It was a thing that ought to have been forgotten long ago.  And in any case, after all these years, I don’t feel that the slightest real disgrace attaches to my brother.  He was, behind that attitude of cynicism that so many people misunderstood, one of the bravest and sincerest men who ever lived.  He was among the first to enlist when the War broke out, and for two years he waged a constant battle, not so much against the Germans, as against a far more terrible foe—his own nerves.  You may think this is high-flown language—but I assure you I’m only telling the simple truth.  My brother fought a long and terrible battle, till at last his nerve gave way.  He was court-martialled.  He would doubtless have been shot but for the pleading of an officer who understood him a little.  And afterwards he went back to the trenches and never gave way again till a particularly bad head-smash caused him to be sent home.  In all, he fought for nearly three years, was wounded four times, and also badly gassed.  I defy anyone to call that the record of a coward!”

And Mr. Geoffrey Lambourne looked, for the moment, as if he really were capable of defiance.

“I should say not!” Revell answered.  “I think it’s one of the pluckiest records I ever heard of.”

The other warmed to his sympathy.  “I knew you would think so.  My brother wrote to me that he felt you as a kindred spirit.  The trouble with him was always that he was too imaginative, too sensitive to things that other people hardly felt at all.  He often worried over other people’s troubles far more than they did themselves.  They never knew it, of course.  He hid everything behind that mask of cynicism.  But Mrs. Ellington saw beneath it, apparently.  Perhaps you did, also.  Was he comfortable here—in his work, I mean?”

“I think so.  Oh yes, I’m pretty sure he was.”  For a moment Revell had a wild idea that he would tell Geoffrey Lambourne the whole amazing story of his confession.  Nothing but vague caution prevented him; it would be safer, he felt, on second thoughts, to let the whole unpleasant business remain as it was.  There was no knowing what Geoffrey would do if he were told, and whatever he might choose to do could hardly lead to anything but further trouble.

Lambourne, still with quietly smouldering indignation, was continuing.  “You know I rather wonder if this other business—the deaths of the two boys—was worrying him at all.  I see one of the jurymen at the inquest suggested it, too.  It was just the sort of thing that WOULD have worried Max.  Since the War he had always been deeply interested in crime—often, in fact, I’ve told him frankly that he was getting morbid about it.  He once told me that there wasn’t a crime I could think of in which he couldn’t to some extent sympathise with the criminal.  I remember inventing the most horrible and ruffianly affair, more out of amusement than anything else, but when I had finished he replied quite seriously:  ‘Yes, I can quite conceive circumstances in which a good man might be driven to do a thing like that.’  Over-imaginativeness again, of course.”