A Connoisseur's Case (20 page)

If this brisk speech surprised Judith as she uttered it, there was no appearance of its correspondingly surprising Mrs Coulson. When the mistress of Scroop House spoke, it was with undiminished composure.

‘It was a shock,' she said. ‘I mean, my saying nothing. I mean, my not denying Hollywood's story on the instant. But I was silent. Or did I give an actual assent? Perhaps I did. Anyway, my conduct showed me where I had got to. It will scarcely surprise you that I had to go and lie down. And, you see, I was in great fear. Perhaps I am still, although reassurance has been given me. I don't know.'

Judith thought for a moment.

‘You felt so – so unwell,' she said, ‘that you went to see your doctor? Dr West is your doctor?'

‘Dr West is my doctor.' Mrs Coulson raised her chin. She looked straight up the nave of the little church as if confronting whatever the vista thus revealed suggested. ‘And he is my lover too.'

‘Yes, I see.' Judith had spoken quickly – for she felt that the effect of a shocked silence must definitely not succeed upon what she had just heard. But at least she was puzzled. Mrs Coulson was not terribly bright. But she was a generous sort of woman and nobody could despise her. ‘But what I
don't
see is why you haven't gone away with him.'

Mrs Coulson hesitated.

‘It has been very recent. A matter of weeks.'

‘I still don't see why you haven't gone away with him.'

‘It is not possible. It is a matter of his profession. I am Brian's patient at this moment. It would ruin him.'

‘Yes, that makes sense, of course. But doesn't that mean – well, a hopeless mess?'

‘It does.' This time Mrs Coulson spoke so very composedly that Judith realized she might at any moment abruptly break down. ‘Even without – this.'

‘This?'

‘The old man coming into the boathouse.'

‘Mrs Coulson!' Despite her previous speculations, Judith was horrified now. ‘Crabtree?'

‘Yes. And I simply fled. Through the park. Leaving Brian. It was shameful. I mean the flight. And Brian says he simply hurried away too. But I cannot be quite certain. He is a very passionate man.' Mrs Coulson paused, so that Judith had a grotesque sense that this was something that the unfortunate woman before her would have liked to be more sure of. ‘And he was in the power of this horrible intruder.'

‘But that is nonsense, surely. You might suppose so, in a mood of panic. But Dr West must be a man of the world, who can quickly assess the limits of such a disaster. He would see that, even if this intruder were unscrupulous and malign, any story he could tell would be a mere unsupported slander.'

‘I suppose so.' Mrs Coulson spoke dully now. ‘But it is very terrible. And – and disenchanting.'

Judith was silent for a moment, wondering whether there was anything she might venture to say. ‘Mrs Coulson, you won't be offended if I tell you how I see this? I see it as some sort of muddle. I think that, if Crabtree hadn't turned up and got killed, it would presently have – well, cleared itself up. Been seen, I mean, as some sort of mistake – as just no go. Not without a great deal of pain, which perhaps you'd have had to share with your husband. I can't say. But something one leaves behind, even if one doesn't forget about. Am I being very impertinent?'

‘You are being kind. And truthful. What you say, I know.' Mrs Coulson got this out with a queer dignity. When she spoke again, it was with a slight effect of changing the subject. ‘Sometimes I think there is a curse on Scroop House. Or at least on its women. Mrs Binns – and now me.'

‘I understand what you mean.' Judith remembered her Uncle Julius' flat statement that Mrs Binns had been an immoral woman; she remembered how – to his subsequent regret – he had hinted that the younger Mrs Coulson had at least the makings of one. And there could be no doubt – she decided – that something of the miserable tragicomedy just recounted had come under his observation during some ramble on the previous afternoon.

‘Mrs Binns,' she asked, ‘was rather an unsatisfactory person?'

‘It is not for me to sit in judgement on her, Lady Appleby. And I never quite understood the matter. When she went away, it was because of some scandal which Bertram must have known of. But he never explained it to me. Whatever it was, Bertram must have judged it a very terrible thing to have happened at Scroop. Because it was certainly the occasion of his asking Mr Binns to leave.'

‘In fact, Mrs Coulson, poor Mr Binns lost his house because he had lost his wife?'

‘It sounds very absurd. But then, as you have seen, my husband is a little absurd about Scroop. He would like it all to be as in the former Mrs Coulson's time. He keeps everything about the place, you know, precisely as it was then – and, no doubt, he would like me to be a Sara Coulson myself. So anything like a bad kind of life there was something he couldn't bear the thought of. And the result was that out the Binnses went and in we came. I had no say in the matter. Only I did insist that the Binns children should come to us whenever they wanted to.'

‘Do you know whether Mrs Binns is still alive?'

‘I am almost sure that she is dead. But, you see, nobody ever mentions her.'

‘Not even her children in the most casual way?'

‘Not even her children. All I have heard is hints dropped among the local people. And, even there, of course, I have never encouraged gossip. What I seem to have gathered is that Mrs Binns had many affairs – but had one particularly disgraceful one of quite long standing. Her husband discovered about it and she vanished. Perhaps she joined the – the guilty party.'

‘I see.' The subject didn't seem to Judith one which, in the circumstances, could decently be carried further.

‘Of course,' Mrs Coulson said, ‘Hollywood must know.'

‘Hollywood?' Judith was startled – partly, perhaps, because she was aware of Tarbox's description of his
confrère
at Scroop.

‘As I said, Hollywood is like Crabtree. And he has been in a position to know everything. I keep wondering – haven't I said this? – if perhaps he knows something so dangerous that he is in danger himself.'

 

 

Mrs Coulson, it seemed, had a car in the village, and the two women parted at the gate of the churchyard. Judith walked back to the inn. Of what she had learnt in this strange interview, some part was not entirely new – or at least not entirely unsuspected. Of the assignation in the boathouse, and of Crabtree's coming upon it, John had already built up a conjectural picture. Perhaps, too, John had guessed at Dr West as the man involved. And – with equal accuracy, no doubt – John had provided Uncle Julius with his place in the margin of the episode.

That Uncle Julius had himself stepped out of that margin to take an indignant and fatal swipe at Crabtree was plainly absurd. If it was this unfortunate discovery in the boathouse that had led to the old man's death, then it could only be West himself who was the murderer. And West would have a real motive. Mrs Coulson was his patient. If the fact of the liaison got abroad, the result would not be scandal merely but professional ruin as well.

In theory, of course, the murder might have been committed by Mrs Coulson upon the identical motive. The detected lovers appeared to have fled severally and in confusion; neither could be certain of the other's subsequent conduct; each could only reassure the other with protestations of innocence. At least, it must be called a very miserable state of affairs.

Mrs Coulson had said a number of unaccountable things – so many, that Judith felt she ought to count them over in her head now, as an insurance against omitting something important when she presently made a report to John. But when she did run over the conversation in this way, the result was curiously unsatisfactory. She seemed to have taken account of everything, yet there was something she hadn't got round to. Some one thing that Mrs Coulson had said was incompatible with some other thing that Judith positively knew. That was it. Perhaps the point was important, and perhaps it was not. But to grope vainly for it was infuriating. And, in the circumstances, there was only one safe course to adopt. She must try to give John not a synopsis but a verbatim account of the interview. Which meant doing the job at once, while Mrs Coulson's words were fresh in her memory.

But John was not to be found. Nor, for that matter, was Alfred Binns. The little lounge of the Jolly Leggers was deserted. Judith went out again and strolled to the canal. There was nobody in sight on the towpath. John, she decided, must have made some foray of his own into Nether Scroop, and she had missed him. Her best plan was now to wait for him where she was.

She walked towards the tunnel, feeling that its entrance was worth taking another look at. She studied the stonework. She peered inside – but the sun was now in the west and gave no help in distinguishing more than a couple of yards of the interior. She was just about to turn away, when a voice spoke seemingly from the depths of the earth.

‘Oh, good. Just take a look round – will you? – for Channing-Kennedy.'

It was John's voice, sounding peculiarly hollow. And it so sounded, of course, because it came from the recesses of the tunnel.

‘For pity's sake, John!' Judith took a careful glance around as she spoke. ‘No Channing-Kennedy. No sign of anybody.'

‘Splendid. Only don't let your modesty be offended. I've left my clothes behind that gate.' In the murk of the tunnel a dimly luminous figure appeared, almost waist-deep in the stagnant water. And it was certainly John. He scrambled blithely to the bank – stark naked, as far as she could see, and very muddy indeed. ‘I don't think,' he said, ‘that I can get much of it off. But probably it's healthy. It will dry on under my clothes as we walk home. Very similar things are endured in a medicinal way.'

‘And just what prompted you to plunge in there? ‘Judith watched her husband seek the exiguous shelter of a ragged hedge and there begin shaking himself like a spaniel. ‘Have you made away with poor Mr Binns, and have you been concealing a body?'

‘It wouldn't be a bad place for such a purpose. As a matter of fact, the tunnel is stuffing with bodies. They put them in there to petrify. But perhaps they're very old ones. Leggers, probably. I noticed they had well developed legs.'

‘Don't be so idiotic. John. I've just had a most painful interview with that wretched Mrs Coulson, who's been making a frightfully bad job of adultery or near-adultery. And then you must fool like this.'

‘Well, well! With that fellow West, I suppose? You can look now. I've put on my trousers.'

‘You're quite intolerable. And due for a frightful chill. Don't you know that you're a man in late middle age?'

‘Middle middle age. How difficult wet flies are.'

‘And now there's a village maiden coming – which serves you right.' Suddenly Judith's voice changed. ‘John, it's not a village maiden. It's Daphne Binns. She must know her father's here.'

‘But not that we are. We can have a very timely little talk.'

 

‘I had a telephone message,' Daphne Binns said. ‘It seems my father is here.' She frankly stared at Appleby, whose person still bore some evidence of his recent exploit – and who, even in open air, probably smelt of something like ditchwater. ‘Have you been diving for more corpses?'

‘Something of that sort, Miss Binns. And I've persuaded your father to go for a walk. He's been worrying a good deal. I thought you and I might clear the air a little.'

Daphne wrinkled her nose.

‘You might well do that,' she said.

‘I'm sorry about that. And I promise to have a good scrubbing before our meeting tonight.'

‘Our meeting? I don't know anything about a meeting.'

‘There has been no general announcement of it yet. But I somehow think that everybody will be able to attend. It will be at Scroop after dinner. And we shall clear up this unfortunate affair for good. In fact, we shall clear up quite a lot. To my mind, everybody will be the better for it.'

‘I don't in the least know what you mean. But I think you are a terribly interfering person.'

Appleby gave a decided nod.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘That's true. But – this time at least – it's been a matter of fate casting me for the role. I'm the unexpected turn in the story, Miss Binns.'

Judith had climbed up on a gate. It was her favourite rural posture.

‘What they call the
deus ex machina
,' she interjected with mild malice. ‘Or
ex
whatever the Latin is for a canal.'

Daphne turned towards the tunnel and stared at it.

‘Are we going to have a preliminary chat here?' she asked. ‘I always disliked this place. I used to dream of having to swim through that tunnel.'

‘We can go into the inn, if you like,' Appleby said.

‘Go ahead here. I don't mind.' Daphne found a stump and sat down on it. ‘But if everything is going to be cleared up' – she hesitated – ‘does that mean that you know who killed the – the old man?'

‘No, I don't.'

‘Then I can't see–'

‘But I can make a good many eliminations. You see, I know
why
he was killed. As you may imagine, that helps a good deal.'

‘Well, then – why
was
he killed?' Daphne spoke almost pertly, but Appleby saw that she was trembling.

‘It's a perfectly reasonable question, and I'm very sorry that I don't think I should say anything more at the moment, Miss Binns. There are several points that require some thinking about.'

‘You seem to have been doing plenty of that.'

‘So has everybody else, I imagine. It's almost certain that everybody – everybody who
didn't
kill Crabtree, that is – has by now a pretty fixed notion of who
did
.'