She Died a Lady (9 page)

H.M. intervened here by clearing his throat with a hideous violence and thrust of the head which suggested a dragon in a Disney film. It startled Molly into jangling a discord from the piano keys.

‘As the superintendent says,’ H.M. remarked more mildly, ‘we’ve got a beauty of an impossible situation. There’s a friend of mine in London, named Masters. If
he
was here, he’d be havin’ a fit. I’m glad the local people take it more sensibly.’

‘But how do you
know
they were murdered?’ persisted Molly. ‘Isn’t that an impossible assumption in itself?’

‘It’s a long story, my wench, and it can wait. Since we’re getting no further with the mechanics, we thought we’d have a look at another side of it. Now tell me. You knew Mrs Wainright fairly well?’

‘Yes. Fairly well.’

‘Did you like her?’

Molly smiled wryly at me.

‘No. Not very much. Please don’t misunderstand me. I didn’t
dislike
her. I thought some of her poses were rather silly. I thought she made eyes at the men too much –’

‘And you disapproved of that?’

‘I have better ways of employing my time,’ said Molly primly.

‘So?’

Molly spoke hastily. ‘Please don’t misunderstand that either. I didn’t in the least disapprove of Rita. It just seemed silly to be thinking about it
all
the time.’

‘Thinkin’ about what all the time?’

Molly’s face slowly turned pink. ‘Love affairs, of course. What on earth else could I mean?’

‘Oh, I dunno. People have different words for different shades of what they mean. But what I was really getting at was this. Did she ever have a serious extra-marital affair before Sullivan? We’re not askin’ out of idle curiosity.’

For a long time Molly considered this, ruffling the back of her hand along the piano keyboard.

‘I suppose you want an honest answer to that?’ she asked in a troubled voice. Then she looked up. ‘The honest answer is: I don’t know. You see, when I say she made eyes at the men I don’t mean she ran after them. She didn’t. And there’s a difference. I always thought she was perfectly faithful to Mr Wainright. What exactly are you looking for?’

Craft intervened.

‘We’re looking for a motive, miss. We’re wondering if there was anybody who cared enough about Mrs Wainright to go off his rocker and kill both of ’em when she fell for somebody else.’

Molly stared at us.

‘But surely,’ she burst out, ‘surely you’re not thinking anything about poor Mr Wainright?’

Up to this time, I can honestly say, the thought of Alec’s being in any way connected with the affair had never once entered my head. Such is your blindness when you are so close to a person that you can’t see him. However logical, any such conception remains hidden behind the screen of your preconceived ideas. But, after one glance at the superintendent and H.M., it became clear that they had never suffered from this form of blindness.

Superintendent Craft smiled rather like Hamlet’s father’s ghost.

‘Well, no,’ he answered. ‘We don’t think anything like that, miss. Because we can’t. That’s the trouble.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘When a wife gets herself killed, especially in a business like this,’ Craft went on, ‘naturally the first person you want to hear all about is the husband.’

‘
That
nice little man?’ cried Molly.

‘Any husband,’ said Craft, comprising the tribe within the sweep of his arm. ‘But, according to Dr Croxley – and we believe him – Mr Wainright was in Dr Croxley’s presence every second of the time between nine and nine-thirty on Saturday night.

‘And even supposing,’ Craft added, turning the faraway grin towards me, ‘there’d been any funny business after nine-thirty. Concealing evidence, or cleaning up, or the like. Still Dr Croxley was with him, until he collapsed. After he collapsed, if the doctor’s given us a correct account of his condition, he couldn’t very well have left his bed for anything at all.’

‘He certainly couldn’t have left his bed,’ I agreed. ‘I’ll take my Bible oath on that.’

‘You see how it is,’ Craft explained. ‘We’ve got to look in another direction. This wasn’t a crime for money, or anything of that sort. We’ve got to find somebody who hated them both enough to want to kill them
together
. That’s a private thing, a personal thing. And as we see it, miss, the answer will be somewhere in Mrs Wainright’s affairs.

‘You said a while ago that you always “thought” she was faithful to her husband, but as though you weren’t quite sure yourself. If there’s anything you can tell us, miss, I might remind you it’s your plain duty to go ahead and speak out. Can you tell us anything?’

Molly made a face of distaste. Looking down in front of her, she touched a few chords on the piano; but very lightly, as though she were half-afraid to touch them. Hesitation, uneasiness, and doubt were all to be seen in her expression.

Then she drew a deep breath and looked up.

‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘I’m afraid I can.’

‘I
DON’T
like to tell it,’ Molly complained, lifting one shoulder higher than the other, ‘because it sounds uncomfortably like sneaking. But it wasn’t. I couldn’t help it. And you can repeat it if you like.’

‘Yes, miss?’

‘It happened in the spring. April or thereabouts: I’m not sure. It was on a Sunday, and I was out walking. Do you know the little lane that leads off the main road to Baker’s Bridge three miles or more from here?’

Superintendent Craft opened his mouth to comment, and shut it again. He merely nodded.

‘I’d turned into that lane, intending to walk as far as Baker’s Bridge and return to Lyncombe by the back way. I was walking rather fast, because it was getting towards twilight. It was a damp day, with the trees just turning green. About two hundred yards along that lane, there’s a little stone house: a kind of studio. Some artist or other used it years ago, but it’s been vacant for a long time. Do you know the one I mean?’

‘Yes, miss.’

‘When I was maybe thirty yards from the house, first I noticed a car pulled in beside it. An S.S. Jaguar: Rita’s car, though I didn’t identify it at the time. The house had gone to rack and ruin; what used to be the glass roof of the studio was all broken and messy. Two persons were standing in the doorway, partly in and partly out. One was a woman in a bright red jumper – that was the only reason I noticed her at all, against the dusk. The other was a man. I can’t tell you who he was or even what he looked like; he was back in the doorway.

‘The woman had her arms round him. I can’t help it, but that’s what I saw.’ Molly looked defiant and angry. ‘The woman tore away from him. Even then I couldn’t tell who she was. She hurried out through the mud to the car, and got in. The car started up with a whir among the dead leaves. It swung round and came towards me. That was when I recognized Rita at the wheel.

‘She didn’t see me. I doubt if she noticed anything. She looked … well, all tousled and mad, with a martyred expression, as though she hadn’t been enjoying herself at all. The car went tearing past me, before I could call out to her. Not that I should have called out anyway. I wondered whether to walk on or turn back, but I decided it would look conspicuous if I didn’t go on. I didn’t see anything more of the man.

‘And that’s all I can tell you. It isn’t much. I doubt if it proves anything. But you asked me whether there was somebody in her life whom we haven’t heard about. There is – or was.’

Craft took out his notebook, which seemed to disturb Molly, and wrote half a dozen words in it.

‘I see, miss.’ He spoke in a colourless voice. ‘That was on the Baker’s Bridge road, you say? About half a mile, maybe, from the Wainrights’ own house?’

‘That’s right.’

‘You couldn’t describe the man, by any chance?’

‘No. He was only a shape and a pair of hands.’

‘Tall or short? Young or old? Fat or thin? Anything like that?’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Molly. ‘That’s all I can tell you.’

‘You never heard – yes, maybe we’ve got to go as far as this. You never heard any gossip connecting Mrs Wainright with anyone in this neighbourhood?’

Molly shook her head. ‘No, I never did.’

For several minutes H.M. had sat motionless, his eyes closed and an expression of Gargantuan sourness turning down the corners of his mouth.

‘Looky here,’ he said. ‘We’ve heard a lot about Mrs Wainright. Could you tell us anything about Sullivan? Could you tell us, for instance, what his real name was?’

This time he succeeded in startling Craft and me as much as he startled Molly.

‘His real name?’ repeated Molly. ‘His real name is Barry Sullivan, isn’t it?’

‘The theatrical ignorance of this generation,’ said H.M., ‘would be enough to turn my hair grey if I had any. Oh, my wench! What would you think of an actor nowadays who had the nerve to call himself David Garrick or Edmund Kean?’

‘I should think,’ Molly answered very thoughtfully, ‘it was a stage-name.’

‘Uh-huh. And the real Barry Sullivan was one of the best-known romantic actors of the nineteenth century. Mind: it
may
be a coincidence. There may be a real Mrs Sullivan who called her handsome son Barry. But, takin’ it in connexion with the stage, it’s interestin’ enough to be investigated.’

H.M. brooded.

‘If you think there’s anything in it,’ he went on, ‘you could always find out through the American Consulate in London. Or through the Actors’ Equity, maybe. Or even through the place where he worked sellin’ motor cars.’

Craft nodded.

‘I’ve already wired the C.I.D. there,’ he replied. ‘Tell you about that part of it later.’ To my surprise, Craft’s normally calm face was suffused with blood, and he kept clearing his throat. He did not even seem interested in the subject of Barry Sullivan.

‘Tell me, miss. You’re sure it was the Baker’s Bridge road?’

Molly opened her eyes. ‘Good heavens, of course I’m sure! I’ve lived here all my life.’

‘Didn’t your father say anything to you yesterday or today?’

Molly blinked at him. ‘My father?’ she repeated.

‘Didn’t he tell you it was on the main road, not ten feet from the entrance to the Baker’s Bridge road, that he found an automatic pistol late Saturday night?’

This time it was Craft’s surprise to all of us. H.M. used words of violence and obscenity, which I am old-fashioned enough to think should not be used in front of a girl like Molly. But Molly hardly heard him. She was clearly so astonished that Craft went on to explain.

‘No, he certainly didn’t say anything here at home. But then – I don’t suppose he would. He never tells much to mother and me.’

‘He’d no reason to suppose there was anything wrong, miss,’ the superintendent pointed out. ‘We didn’t know ourselves, until late this morning, it was the gun that killed those two.’

‘Father’s going to be awfully cross about this,’ Molly burst out.

‘Cross? Why should he be?’

‘Because he hates being mixed up in anything like this, even as The Man Who Found the Gun,’ she retorted. ‘He says there’s practically nothing that isn’t bad for a solicitor’s practice. And when he learns I’ve been talking about poor Rita, even after she’s dead …’

The trim maid tapped at the door and put her head in.

‘Shall I serve tea, Miss Molly?’ she inquired. ‘Mr Grange has just come home.’

Steve Grange was – I suppose I should say
is
, but let the tense remain – a lean, wiry man in his middle fifties. Very straight in the back, very springy in his walk, he had precision and a dry assurance of manner. His bony facial structure, of the sort called clean-cut, was not unhandsome; his black hair was just turning grey against rather withered skin; and he had a narrow line of greyish moustache; and he was always well-dressed to the point of dandyism. He came in carrying the evening paper, and Craft let him have the news straight in the face.

‘Good God!’ he said. ‘Good God!’

He stood for a time staring at us, his dark grey eyes incredulous, and he kept slapping the folded newspaper into the palm of his left hand.

Then he turned briskly to Molly.

‘Where’s your mother, my dear?’

‘In the back garden. She …’

‘You’d better go and join her, then. Tell Gladys not to serve tea just yet.’

‘If you don’t mind, Daddy, I’d rather …’

‘Better go and join her, my dear. I want to talk to these gentlemen.’

Molly’s face showed no mutiny when she left. Steve continued to slap the newspaper against the palm of his left hand, a wiry and vital figure with sharply intelligent eyes. He took a turn up and down the room before he sat down, with decision, in a chair opposite us. A frown gathered between his eyebrows.

‘This is an awkward business,’ he declared. His bony hand made a slight outward gesture. ‘Unpleasant, yes. But awkward as well. It’s a wonder you ever found the bodies.’

Craft nodded.

‘I’ve been thinking the same thing, sir. What with the currents along this coast, and all. But we did find the bodies, and we did find the gun. Thanks to you.’

Steve’s frown deepened.

‘Yes. Frankly,’ he said with energy, ‘if I had had any idea what it was, I’m not sure I should have turned it over to you. That may be bad citizenship; but there it is.’

He drummed with his well-manicured fingers on the padded arm of the chair.

‘Trouble!’ he added. ‘Trouble, trouble for everybody now.’

‘I was just wondering, sir. You can’t tell us anything about that pistol, can you?’

‘See here, Superindent,’ observed Steve. His dry tone had its usual effect. ‘You don’t imagine
I’m
mixed up in this affair, do you?’

‘No, no, sir! I only –’

‘Glad to hear it. Very glad to hear it.’ Steve even achieved a wintry sort of smile. ‘You recovered the bodies. Well! Without any firearm, you would still have believed it a suicide-pact. You only found differently when you got your hands on a gun with a distinctive backfire. If
I
had had anything to do with killing those two, do you think I should helpfully have handed over the gun to you?’

Craft chuckled.

‘Not exactly. What I meant was that you’re the local head of the L.D.V.’ – this was what we then called the Home Guard – ‘and you might have seen it somewhere before.’