Blue Murder (12 page)

Her room was in quaint contrast to the more colourless bedrooms at the other end of the house. Cheam thought he had never seen so many pieces of embroidery collected into the space of four small walls. Embroidered hair tidies, brush-and-comb bags, and slipper bags; embroidered containers for umbrellas, spills, matches; embroidered boxes of all sizes and shapes; even embroidered panels and pictures.

She went across to a large box clamped with iron bands, and lifted the lid.

“This box only I can bring from my country. If you wish, I sell you some things—all embroidered—very cheap.”

“No, thank you,” replied Cheam. “I want the morphia.”

“I get it.”

She plunged her hand beneath the many articles which it still contained, then withdrew it, looking puzzled.

“I forget. It is the other side,” she murmured, pushing her hand down again.

But again when she held her hand out, it was empty.

Cheam, who had wondered where she could have concealed the package to elude his searchers' experienced fingers, was silent.

Frieda tumbled to her knees beside the heavy box, while little beads of sweat gathered on her forehead and rolled down her face.

She took out sheets, cloths, corsets, shoes, a hat, beads, an umbrella, a pair of candlesticks, a case of spoons, and threw them in a heap on the floor, muttering in German.

At last she looked up at Cheam with terror in her eyes.

“It is gone,” she exclaimed. “She has taken it. Now I know she will kill me!”

After an intensive search had failed to produce the missing morphia, Cheam detached himself from the hysterical clutches of the weeping maid, and went downstairs. As he entered the drawing-room for his hat, a tall, dapper man, dressed in immaculate town-cut black suit, rose from one of the chairs.

“Superintendent Cheam? May I have a few words with you? I'm Stanton Hardstaffe.”

“Certainly, sir. Very pleased to have the opportunity. This must be a sad home-coming for you.”

“Yes. It's terrible about my mother. I shall never forgive myself. I ought to have known it would happen one day if she stayed in this house. When are you going to arrest him?”

“Arrest whom, sir?”

Stanton tapped an impatient foot on the carpet.

“My father, of course. You must know that he did it.”

“What makes you think that?” asked Cheam, glancing over his shoulder, and noting with satisfaction that the constable whom he had left in the room was already moving his pencil over his notebook.

“Good heavens, man!” exclaimed Stanton. “You must have been wasting your time if you haven't yet discovered that my father's whole married life has been dedicated to making my dear mother's very existence unbearable. If she'd been an American, she'd have got a divorce years ago, but you know what the laws in this country used to be like, dusty and logical, and after they were altered, she felt too old to bother. Oh, she did go to a lawyer for advice once, but all he could say was, ‘I'm sorry but I'm afraid you've got no
case
.' Perhaps you haven't found out what a hypocrite my father is. He'd have gone into the witness-box with that bland, smiling, schoolmaster manner of his, and he would have killed her evidence flat, even if she had got together enough courage to give it. Then she would have been worse off than ever because he'd have taken an even greater delight in making her suffer in private as well as humiliating her in public. The Gestapo simply wouldn't be in it!”

Cheam blinked. This was the second time within the hour that Mr. Hardstaffe had been compared with this hated organisation.

“If you realised all this, Mr. Stanton,” he said, “how is it that you were content to leave your mother here without even coming to see her?”

“Content!” said Stanton bitterly. “Of course I wasn't content, but what could I do? When I first left this house, we arranged to meet regularly at a friend's house, but of course he got to know about it and created a scene. So at last she refused to come.”

“So you never saw her alive again?”

Stanton smiled.

“That's what my father thinks,” he said. “But I loved my mother, and I'm not such a nit-wit that I couldn't think of some way of seeing her. We met every year. Doctor Macalistair was in the scheme—he used to paint the most lurid picture of what would happen if Mother didn't go abroad every year. She used to come to stay with us before getting the boat. One year, the three of us went for a cruise together, my wife, Mother, and me. I managed to get a long leave, and Mother paid for the trip. We had a heavenly time.”

“I don't see why your father should have needed any persuasion to let her go abroad. If what you say is true, I should have thought he'd have been glad to get rid of her for a bit,” remarked Cheam.

“He just didn't like her spending so much money.”

“But it was her own money.”

Stanton laughed.

“He didn't look at it like that. He'd married her, so he regarded her worldly goods as his.”

“That's twisting the marriage service a bit, isn't it?” asked Cheam.

“He'd twist anything.”

“H'm,” said Cheam. “Then I can't understand why she left all her money to him.”

“Oh, she didn't,” returned Stanton. “She wasn't quite as simple as he thought. Those quiet women never are. She made a will in my favour, and my solicitor has the will, so that there's no chance of anyone having destroyed it.”

Cheam sat up, and took notice.

“Really? When was it signed?”

Stanton looked mildly surprised.

“About three years ago, I think,” he said. “It's all in order, I assure you. She told me she wanted me to inherit everything. She said Leda and my father had succeeded in making her life hell, and she'd make sure that neither of them had a penny of hers.”

“H'm,” said Cheam again. “I'm afraid that will isn't valid, sir,” he said.

“Isn't valid? Rot! Why, I tell you...”

Cheam waved his hand in the air.

“Oh, I don't question that it was drawn up quite legally,” he said. “But she made a later one a few days before she died. In it, she left everything unconditionally to your father.”

Stanton's face grew fiendish in expression. He clenched his fists, and beat them against his temples.

“No,” he shouted. “No, no, no!”

“Very disappointing for you, sir, I know.”

Cheam sounded almost apologetic.

“It isn't that,” said Stanton, when he had recovered himself a little. “It's the thought of what he must have done to her to force her to sign it. I tell you she wanted me to have that money. She didn't change her mind about that, I'm quite sure.” He struck a clenched fist against the open palm of his other hand. “That's what she wanted to see me about, of course. And I failed her!”

“I don't understand, sir.”

Stanton turned to him again, and spoke earnestly.

“She wrote to me—oh, I don't know whether she got the letter out of the house unnoticed, or whether someone read it first—asking me to come to the house on Saturday night.”

“That was the night she was murdered.”

“Do you think I don't remember that, Superintendent!” he returned savagely. “Don't you see that I might have saved her life if—if I'd come? She told me to wait outside, and she would come down to let me in.”

“So you didn't come?”

“No!”

He flung himself into a chair, and shielded his face with his arm.

“I'm sorry,” said Cheam, “but the only thing to be done now is to find her murderer and bring him to justice.”

“It's up to you, Superintendent.” Stanton passed a spotless handkerchief over his forehead, then stood up again. “It couldn't be anyone but my father. I'd give something to know what deviltry he used to make her sign that will.”

Suddenly he moved forward and thrust a forefinger towards Cheam's astonished face.

“I know. Of course. The horse-whip!”

“Horse-whip?” gasped Cheam. “Why, what do you know about that?”

Stanton appeared not to have heard him.

“I ought to have guessed at once,” he said. “You know I left home years ago owing to a serious quarrel with my father? It happened like this. I heard screams coming from their bedroom, and went in to find him thrashing her with a horsewhip. She was crouching on the bed with her clothes torn and her back lashed and bleeding. I'm a Hardstaffe, so I have a temper, too, and somehow I wrenched the damned thing out of his hand and gave him a dose of his own medicine. Like all bullies, he's a coward at heart, and I thrashed him till he crouched in a corner of the room blubbering for mercy. I moved Mother's things into the adjoining bedroom, locked the door, and took the key away, and I told him then that if he ever dared to lift a horsewhip to her again, I'd kill him.

“And, by God, I will!”

Superintendent Cheam, accompanied by a constable, crossed the ashphalt playground flanking the village school. They entered the front door, and saw on their right a green-painted door with the words “Head Master” stencilled in cream. Cheam knocked, and thinking that he heard a reply through the confused babel of voices issuing from the five separate classrooms, turned the knob and entered the study. Mr. Hardstaffe's arm slipped from Charity Fuller's slim waist as he swung round to face the intruders.

“What the devil do you mean by walking in without knocking?” he blazed.

“Good morning, Mr. Hardstaffe,” was Cheam's affable reply. “I did knock, and thought I heard you say ‘Come in', but I can see that I was mistaken. I'm sorry, sir, but there's a lot of noise outside in the corridor.” 

“Oh dear!” exclaimed Charity. “It must be my class. I'd better go back to them, that is, if you've quite finished with these papers, Mr. Hardstaffe.”

“Yes, yes, go along. I'll see them some other time. I can't attend to figures while the Superintendent's here.” No, that you can't, my lad, thought Cheam. Not to the kind of figure you've got your eyes on now, anyway. She's a good-looker this red head: plenty of “It”, or whatever they call it nowadays. But it fair beats me what a girl like that can see in a wizened little fellow like you.

“Miss Fuller?” he asked aloud, as he opened the door for her. “I'm Superintendent Cheam. I'm investigating the murder of Mr. Hardstaffe's wife, and I should like to ask you a few questions.”

Charity went very pale, and for a few seconds looked as if she were going to faint.

Hardstaffe lost his temper again.

“What's all this about?” he demanded. “I won't have this high-handed behaviour. Forcing your way into my private rooms, and throwing your weight about like this... What is it supposed to be—a hold-up?”

“It did look a bit like that, sir,” returned Cheam gazing pointedly at Charity's waist. “Now there's no need to get nasty about it, sir. It's my duty to ask questions, and my time's limited. The inquest was only adjourned for a few weeks, and I've a lot of ground to cover.”

“You're quite right, Superintendent,” put in Charity, now fully recovered. “It's the duty of everyone to help the police, as I'm always telling my class.”

“Thank you, Miss,” said Cheam, opening the door significantly. “I won't detain you now, but you won't object if I see you later, I hope.”

Charity flashed a smile at him: she had lovely teeth and knew it.

“Of course not. I've nothing to hide.”

I'm not so sure of that, young lady, thought Cheam as he closed the door behind her. You're a bit of a dark filly if I know aught about women. And what policeman doesn't?

He turned to face the head master who, as he surmised, was getting “proper worked up.”

“What's the idea, Cheam? What induced you to come here to ask your damned questions? Why couldn't you wait until I got home or ask for an appointment decently instead of butting in during school hours? You know what a place this village is for rumours and scandal, yet you deliberately march in without so much as a by-your-leave. I never heard of such damned impertinence in my life!”

“I knocked,” said Cheam coolly. “If you were so busy that you didn't hear me, that's not my fault. And if I may be permitted to give you a little advice, Mr. Hardstaffe, I'll warn you that you'll do no good to yourself or to anyone else by shouting at me. I'm only doing my duty. I have to ask you and Miss Fuller a few routine questions, and as the school is on my way back home, I thought there'd be no harm in dropping in on you.”

Hardstaffe fingered the heavy-linked, gold chain which he wore fastened across his waistcoat like a coronation decoration round a small bow window, and said more quietly.

“Yes, yes. I was perhaps a bit over-hasty, but you startled me. This affair of my wife's death has been a great shock, and no doubt I ought not to be at work so soon, but the school goes to the dogs when I don't put in an appearance. I once returned unexpectedly after a bout of 'flu and found my Chief Assistant telling the class a funny story. That sort of thing lowers the tone of the whole school. It's discipline that children need—discipline.”

“Yes, sir. No doubt your wife's death upset you more than you realised at the time.”

“That's it. That's it. Of course I always knew that her mind was unbalanced—all that nonsense about her health was a sign of that—but I never believed that she'd take her own life, or I should have taken steps to place her under some kind of restraint. All this publicity is very distasteful to me. I'm a man who is much in the public eye in Nether Naughton, and I've always kept my name away from scandal...”

That's what
you
think! said Cheam to himself.

“To have it dragged into a case of suicide is a very distasteful and bitter experience to me. And I must say I never thought she'd have the guts to do such a thing!”