Blue Murder (24 page)

“Then you went to bed and didn't know until after breakfast that your mother was dead?”

Leda nodded.

Betty grasped her husband's arm.

“Stan darling! It isn't true, is it? Leda's making it up because she hates us both so much. I've felt it ever since we came to stay in this horrible house. I won't stay here a day longer. I'd rather go somewhere to be bombed than breathe the same air as Leda. Tell the Inspector it isn't true, Stan.”

“I'm afraid I can't do that,” replied Stanton. “He knows it's nearly all true.”

Betty turned away, with a sob.

“You swore you'd never been near the house,” she said. “I never believed you'd lie to me like that.”

Stanton shrugged his shoulders.

“You're a nice one to talk about telling lies!” he replied.

“Then you admit that you were here on the night that your mother was murdered?” Driver asked him.

“Yes. I was a fool not to tell you, I suppose, but I never thought it would come to this.”

“Perhaps you'll tell me just how much of the statement you made to the Superintendent was true.”

“Yes,” Stanton agreed. “Well, it was all true except for one thing. I told the Superintendent that Mother had written a letter to me asking me to see her that night. And so she had, in spite of what my charming sister has just said. Nothing else would have induced me to come near the house, but her letter sounded so worried that I could tell she was very much upset about something. So of course I came. I came by car in the dark. I don't know whether you'll be able to verify it, but I stopped on the way at a road-house called The Golden Fleece and had dinner. I took my time over it because I knew that my father wouldn't go to bed till after the midnight news.”

“So you knew that, even though you hadn't visited the house for years?”

Stanton did not choose to explain.

“Yes,” he said.

“And what happened?”

“Nothing. I arrived at about a quarter past twelve, but couldn't see whether there were any lights on in the house, because of the black-out curtains. I waited until nearly two o'clock, then I called it a day, drove back to the inn, and spent the night there. They were expecting me, and I had no difficulty in getting in. They're used to people going in and out at all times of the day and night since the war started.”

“You didn't try to get into the house or to attract your mother's attention?”

“By throwing handfuls of gravel up at her windows?” Stanton laughed. “No, I did not. You simply can't have a ghost of an idea of the relations which existed between my mother and father if you can ask such a question. My father was always on the look-out for a new excuse for inflicting some new indignity upon Mother. If he'd known that I was outside trying to see her, he would have flung himself into one of his rages with God knows what consequences to her.”

“And you really expect me to believe that you drove away quite happily?”

“Believe it or not, Mr. Ripley,” he said, indifferently. “I knew it wouldn't be easy for Mother to get downstairs to the door without being spotted. The dogs sleep upstairs: she didn't like them, and they didn't like her: one of them was quite likely to give an alarm. I knew she daren't risk calling through her window. So I went away expecting to have another letter later.”

“H'm,” said Driver. “Now you say Miss Hardstaffe is lying when she says your mother told her that it was you who had suggested meeting her after midnight. Have you got that letter you say your mother wrote?”

“No. I put it in the salvage sack.”

“That's a pity. It would help to clear up that point,” said Driver. “I can't see, myself, why you said anything about that letter in the first place. Surely it would have been better not to mention it to the Superintendent.”

“Possibly so,” agreed Stanton, “but I happen to be a truthful kind of fellow, though I don't expect you to believe it. I mentioned my mother's letter because I intended to say that I had done what it asked. But when he asked outright if I'd come to the house that night, my courage gave out, and I funked telling him.”

“And that's the only other lie you've told us, Mr. Hardstaffe?”

“Yes.”

“H'm,” said Driver again.

There was a pause.

“Don't you believe me?” demanded Stanton.

“Well, sir,” said the Inspector slowly. “There's that little matter of your presence here on the night of your father's murder. I don't so much mind you telling lies to other people, but when it comes to telling them to me, I take it as a personal matter. And you must admit that it does look a bit more than a coincidence that you were standing outside this house on the two nights when your parents were murdered.”

“Stan! Oh Stan! What have you done?” wailed Betty. “Oh, poor little Paul. What will become of us all?”

She flung herself into a chair, and wept as wholeheartedly as her baby when bereft by a callous adult hand of some beloved toy.

“You told your wife that you would be on Home Guard duty all night,” said the relentless detective-inspector. “You put on your uniform and she believed you implicitly.”

Cue for song, thought the Sergeant, and hummed under his breath,

“Pom. Pompom. Pompompompompom. Pom. Pompompom. Pom. Pompom,

A fact that I counted upon, when I first put this uniform on!”

“
And
a member of the Home Guard was seen outside this house before Mr. Hardstaffe was murdered.
And
the local village Home Guards all have unbreakable alibis for that night.
And
it happened that you asked and received permission to change duty with another Guard on that particular night, saying that your father had been taken ill and had telephoned to ask you to see him!”

Leda, white with emotion, was gazing at her brother.

“Stanton! Is this true?”

It was the truth about my father,” Stanton replied, ignoring her.

Yes,” agreed the Inspector. “That was true all right. He was ill, very ill. Sick unto death!”

“No, no. I mean that he did 'phone me. Oh, I know you'll never believe it, but it's true, I tell you, true! He 'phoned to my office and said he was in a terrible predicament. He'd learned something about Mother's death, he said, but he felt he couldn't go to the police about it. He wanted me to advise him I know it sounds impossible, but it's true. I didn't know what to do. It was so queer for him to ring me at all that I at once thought it must be some kind of plot, and I decided not to go.”

“You must have changed your mind suddenly.”

The Inspector's voice was charged with disbelief, but Stanton went on as if determined to finish his story in his own way.

“That's exactly what I did do. I went eventually, not to keep the appointment, but to try and find out what was going on. I frankly thought that he wanted to frame me for my mother's murder. Instead of that, he seems to have framed me for his. If he wasn't dead already, he'd die with laughing at that.”

The room was silent for a minute.

“Well,” said Driver at length, “I can understand your going back without seeing your father, but I still don't see why you didn't try to see your mother.”

Stanton suddenly lost his suave self-possession.

“Oh God!” he cried, “Have you no pity? Have you no mothers, no wives, no children, you detectives? Can't you understand that I've been tormented day and night, night and day, by the thought that while I was standing there in the darkness, my mother was slowly dying?”

He buried his face in his hands and began to cry—long, slow sobs that brought Betty to her feet.

“No one's going to touch you, Stan,” she said. “If they don't believe you, I do.”

She turned on Leda with the ferocity of a wild cat with young, “This is your fault, you—you vampire!” she cried. “And now I'll tell you all about why I wanted Miss Fuller to come here. I'll explain your old mystery. Mystery? It was nothing but fun. I—”

“It's no use, Mrs. Hardstaffe,” Driver interrupted. “No jury would believe a word of it. They'd say you'd made it up to help your husband.”

Betty stared at him wildly.

“Jury? No—jury—” she repeated. “You can't mean—”

“Stop it, all of you! I can't stand it!”

Charity's voice cut across the emotionally-charged atmosphere of the room. She sprang to her feet, her eyes feverishly a-glitter, and for a moment her tall figure dominated them all.

“You're driving me mad; I can't stand it any longer!” she cried. “
I
did it, if you want to know. He pestered me with his attentions and I couldn't stand it any longer. I wanted to be free, and he wouldn't let me go. So I killed him! And now, for God's sake, let me go home!”

Arnold was beginning to think that, as far as he was concerned, the murders of Mr. and Mrs. Hardstaffe had been so much waste of time.

Any writer worthy of a crime club would, he felt sure, have completed his book while the murders were still front page news, would have cashed in on the publicity, and would have been well on the way to solving the crimes, over the Inspector's head.

Instead of that, he had been unable to write a word in the three weeks which followed Charity's dramatic confession, and the recollection of the primitive emotions exhibited that same morning still caused him the acutest embarrassment. To describe any of them in his book was unthinkable.

And so page after page of manuscript paper was filled, not with Noel Delare's picturesque appearances on the scene of the crime, nor his careless perception of carefully dropped clues, but with scribbled calculations upon the state of Arnold's dwindling bank balance.

One afternoon, after yet another fruitless attempt to complete Chapter Twenty, he threw down his fountain pen and faced the fact that he must either starve or marry Leda.

Neither of these alternatives held any attraction for him.

He did not doubt that Leda would marry him if he asked her. She might laugh at him and call him a silly old fool, but she would accept. He had little to offer her except the honest name of Smith, which had earned as much respect in London town as that of Brown, and was many hundreds of years older than the more elaborate surnames of those who professed to despise it. But Leda was in need of a husband, not of money, home, or position, and although she might insist on being known as Hardstaffe-Smith, she would not refuse him.

If he could have dismissed from his mind the romantic episode with Charity Fuller which seemed each day to assume a more colourful place in his life, he would have proposed to Leda that very day. But the thought of Charity wearing the black evening frock which so cleverly concealed her figure, and the even sharper thought of her wearing the night attire which as carelessly revealed it, made him hesitate to commit himself to an alliance with Leda whose figure promised no such delights.

A silly old fool? Perhaps so. But surely it was no unusual thing for a man to fall in love at fifty, particularly if he had had no previous sexual experience. No one could call him a
roué
and that should count for something with a woman nowadays.

It wasn't as if he were over sixty, like old Hardstaffe, he thought. There had been something indecent in the idea of
his
possessing a young girl like Charity. But if old age were a second childhood, then, at fifty, a man was back again in his twenties!

But, even if she would consider his advances, Charity had no money. And Leda was now a rich woman—

Having thus worked himself into a Hamlet-like mood of indecision, Arnold decided to give up all pretense at work, and go out in the hazy sunshine to think things over again. Leda, he knew, was presiding at the monthly meeting of The Women's Rustic Arts and Crafts Society, so that he was absolved from the polite necessity of asking her to accompany him.

With some idea of imposing a little self-discipline upon himself, he avoided walking towards the house where Charity lodged, and turned in the opposite direction. As far as he could see, the road was deserted, but when he turned along the narrow lane leading to the path through the woods, he caught sight of Charity's tall figure ahead, and invested the chance encounter with all the romantic significance he might have given to it, had he indeed been twenty instead of fifty.

Charity walked quickly, and she was deep in the woods before he caught up with her.

“Miss Fuller!” he exclaimed. “What a pleasant surprise! I heard that you were coming back again this week. Are you sure you're strong enough to walk as far as this?”

“Oh, I'm all right now,” replied Charity. “Walking is good for nervous complaints, you know, and I've been told to get out-of-doors as much as possible.”

Her voice was impersonal. It chilled Arnold, and seemed to be telling him to mind his own business.

“Forgive me if I seem curious,” he said. “It isn't the curiosity of the villagers, I assure you. I've felt anxious about you ever since they took you away.”

“It's very kind of you, Mr. Smith,” she said, still in the same cold tones. “I must thank you, too, for inquiring about me when I was in the nursing-home. The flowers you sent were lovely, but you shouldn't have bothered about me.” She paused, then added, “I'm not worth it.” Arnold's impulse was to raise his cap and walk away in the opposite direction, but suddenly he grasped her arm, and turned her towards him.

“Why, you're crying!” he said. “Whatever is the matter? If I've said anything to upset you—”

Womanlike, she cried more bitterly at his evident sympathy, and he put an arm round her shoulders and waited for her to stop.

“Here. Let's sit down,” said Arnold.

He drew her towards a tiny clearing which might have provided a faery bower for Titania, and they sat down together on a felled tree, their feet rustling among dead leaves and beech mast.