The Moving Toyshop (23 page)

Cadogan drew a deep breath. “I suppose it isn’t wholly impossible—but in heaven’s name,
who
?
Rosseter? Sharman?”

“What about the woman? You said he knew her.”

“Yes, but if you’d
seen
her… And, anyway, the only time she was ever alone was while Rosseter was in with Miss Tardy. How could she have done it?”

They may all have been lying about that.”

“But again, why? The point is that if you’re going to cover up a murder, your own or someone else’s, you don’t deliberately make the thing look impossible—”

“But don’t you see—they may have arranged that story after they knew I was there?”

“Oh.” Cadogan was momentarily pulled up short. It certainly appeared possible. But then the salient objection occurred to him. “In that case, they wouldn’t have tried to get rid of you.”

“Yes, because it was safer that you should never hear anything about it at all than that they should have to fall back on this story of me having done it.”

“I see that, but I still think Havering was telling the truth—”

He had been so carried away by dialectic that he had not realized that he was methodically destroying her defence. Now a tearful voice from the darkness brought him to a sense of what he was doing.

“Golly,” said Sally. “I
am
in a mess.”

“Nonsense,” said Cadogan, quite wild with apology. “you’re not in any kind of mess. We know you didn’t do it, and it’s only a matter of time till we find out who did.” He put his hand comfortingly on her leg, and then, recollecting himself, hastily withdrew it.

“It’s all right, you ass,” Sally gasped, half laughing and half crying. “You’re old enough to be my father.”

“I am
not.”
They both laughed. That’s better,” he said.

“Oh, I’m behaving like a baby. don’t take any notice. I hate women who cry, anyway.”

“Well, you’re not going to improve matters by powdering your nose in the dark.”

“Can’t help that. If I look as though I’ve been through a flour-bin when I get outside, you will tell me, won’t you.”

Cadogan promised.

“I ought to be going home, you know,” she said. “Mummy will be wondering what on earth’s become of me.”

“No, don’t go yet. Ring her up and stay the evening with us. Anyway, by the time we get inside, Gervase will have found out who the murderer is.”

“Golly, I wish I thought so. He’s a strange man, isn’t he?”

“I suppose he is if you’re prepared for the ordinary kind of don. But underneath—well, I shouldn’t like to have him as an enemy. There’s something one can only describe as formidable about him—not on the surface, of course. There he’s engagingly naïve. But if anyone can get to the bottom of this business, he can.”

“But he doesn’t know any more about it than you do.”

“He can put it together better. These problems aren’t for my weak intellect.”

“Still, who do
you
think did it?”

He considered, recalling faces rather than facts. Rosseter, yellow and Asiatic, with his prominent jaw and professional ease; Sharman, rabbity, muffled, drunk, and contemptible; Miss Winkworth, with her moustache and pig-like eyes; Havering, neurotic, thin, rigid, frightened. A lawyer, a schoolmaster, a fake medium, and a doctor. It was into their hands that a foolish old woman had put her affairs, and with them, the life of her niece. But, of course, there was another—the enigmatic West. Had he ever claimed his inheritance? Was he, perhaps, the controlling force behind the whole affair? Cadogan shook his head.

“A lot of it’s clear,” he said aloud. “There are three threads to it: the plan to intimidate Miss Tardy; Rosseter’s plan to kill her; and someone else’s plan to do the same thing. The first two came to nothing, and there’s nothing you can get a grip on in the third. Honestly, I haven’t the faintest idea. It seems to lie between Havering, Sharman, and the woman, as there was no possibility of anyone else getting into the shop. But beyond that, I simply don’t know. And as you say, it’s always possible they’re all lying, in which case it looks quite hopeless and we might as well give up.”

In the silence which followed, they became aware that the rain had stopped.

“Well,” Sally said, “let’s go back and see if anything’s happened.”

Without speaking again, they walked across the wet lawn to the college and the lighted window of Fen’s room.

However, they were not destined to arrive there without interruption. In the passage which leads from the gardens to the back quadrangle, and which is lit by a single electric light sunk in the groined roof, they encountered Mr. Spode’s plump little form, moving in the same direction as themselves. His face cleared when he saw Cadogan.

“Oh, there you are, my dear fellow,” he greeted them. “This is luck.”

“Now, look here, Erwin,” said Cadogan severely. “I don’t know what devilry you’re up to in Oxford, but I consider it very hard that when I come away for a holiday you should follow me about like some ghastly spectre plaguing me to go and lecture the Americans on a subject in which obviously they have no interest.”

The spectre blinked and coughed. “It would be a very good tour,” it murmured. “Yale, Harvard, Bryn Mawr… Did you know America was full of beautiful women?”

“What in heaven’s name has that got to do with it?
I will not go and lecture in America
… For the Lord’s sake, either go up those stairs or get out of the way and allow us to pass.”

“Are you going to see Professor Fen?”

“Where did you think I was going—the Regent’s Park Zoo?”

“I have the proofs of your new book on me.”

“And about time, too. Full of misprints, I don’t doubt. Come along up, Erwin. Come and have a drink. We’re on the point of solving an important criminal case.”

Mr. Spode, protesting faintly at the social implications of such an intrusion, was hustled up the stairs. They found Fen on the telephone (he made motions requiring silence as they came in), and Wilkes and Mr. Hoskins, markedly the better for whisky, lounging in two of the armchairs. A tall standard lamp, glowing softly near the fireplace, was the only illumination. Fen’s pistol lay on the desk, the light falling like a streak of mercury along its short barrel. The atmosphere was subtly different, with a sort of combined tension and satiety, and Cadogan noticed with a shock of astonishment that everyone looked quickly and curiously at Mr. Spode as he came in.

“Yes,” Fen was saying to the telephone. “Yes, Mr. Barnaby, as many as you can get. Drunk, are they? Well, provided they haven’t lost the use of their legs, that’s all right. Have you got the address? Yes; all correct. And for the love of God don’t allow them to kick up a great rumpus about it. It’s not likely to be a game. Yes, we’ll be along, and I promise it’s the last time. All right. Good-bye.”

He turned to greet the newcomers. “Well,” he said amiably. It’s very pleasant to see you all again. You’re just in time for the last act.”

“I want my dinner,” Cadogan said.

“He which hath no stomach to this fight,” Fen chanted, “let him depart. That includes you.”

“I suppose,” said Cadogan ungraciously, “that you think you know who the murderer is.”

“It’s very simple,” said Fen.
“Sancta simplicitas.
Your Mr. Spode—”

But this was too much for Cadogan. “Erwin!” he exclaimed. “Erwin the murderer! Don’t talk nonsense.” He turned to Mr. Spode and saw that he was goggling.

“If you only let me finish,” said Fen waspishly, “you might learn something. I was going to say that your Mr. Spode is quite evidently the fifth legatee. The Old Man of the West, you will recall, wore a pale, plum-coloured vest.” He indicated Mr. Spode’s petunia waistcoat.

“The Missing Link!” Cadogan shouted excitedly. “Erwin is the Missing Link!”

Mr. Spode coughed. “Hardly very funny, is that, Cadogan?” he said with dignity. “I haven’t the least idea what you people are doing, but when it comes to personal insults—”

“Mr. Spode,” Fen interrupted him. “You are in intellectual darkness. Your firm was situated in Oxford, wasn’t it, until about a year ago?”

“Yes,” Mr. Spode replied blankly. That’s so.”

“Did you at any time have dealings with a Miss Snaith, of ‘Valhalla’, Boar’s Hill?”

“Oh.” Mr. Spode went pale. ‘Yes—yes, I did.”

“Professional dealings?”

“Yes. She wanted us to publish a book she’d written. About spiritualism. It was a very bad book.”

“Did
you publish it?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Spode helplessly. “We did. We never meant to. As a matter of fact, I lost it almost as soon as it arrived.”

“Publishers’ offices,” Cadogan muttered explanatorily to the others. “Always losing things. Continual shambles.”

“We couldn’t find it anywhere,” Mr. Spode went on. “You see, we hadn’t even
read
it at the time, and no one dared to write and tell her what had happened. She kept ringing up to ask how we liked it, and we had to put her off with all manner of excuses. Then eventually someone found it mixed up with a lot of American correspondence which was never looked at, and we felt we’d simply
got
to do it after keeping it a year.”

“Moral courage in the publishing trade,” Cadogan observed benevolently.

“And she was very grateful,” Fen said. “And sent you an envelope and asked you to look in the personal column of the
Oxford Mail—”

Mr. Spode gaped at him absurdly. “How did you know?”

“He saw it in a crystal, Erwin,” said Cadogan. “Or it was communicated to him by spirits. Anyway, did you do what the old woman told you?”

“No,” said Mr. Spode, distracted. “I didn’t. I put the envelope away, meaning to look at it later, and then forgot about it for a time, and when I remembered it—it had got lost,” he concluded feebly.

“Well, you’d better find it again,” said Cadogan, “because it’s worth about a hundred thousand pounds to you.”

“W—what?” Mr. Spode looked as if he were ready to faint. As briefly as possible, they explained the whole situation to him. To their annoyance, he kept saying “don’t be silly; don’t be silly” all the time; but in the end they managed to convince him. For Cadogan, the tale gained nothing in the telling, and how Fen was able to deduce from it the name of the murderer he could not think. Sharman, of course, had behaved suspiciously.

“As a matter of interest,” Fen asked in conclusion, “what did induce you to come to Oxford last night?”

“It was business,” said Mr. Spode. “Nutling is living here, and he wanted me to run over the proofs of Staveling’s new novel with him. It’s libellous,” Mr. Spode complained.

“What time did you get here?”

“About one in the morning, I think. I had a breakdown near Thame, and it took hours to fix. You can check that,” Mr. Spode added anxiously.

“And why did you leave the tea-party so suddenly this afternoon? When Rosseter was killed, I was exceedingly suspicious of you.”

“Oh… oh… Well, the fact is, I’m shy,” said Mr. Spode with pathos. They all gazed at him, and he went red. “Shy,” he repeated aggressively. “I didn’t know anyone, and I felt I wasn’t wanted.”

“Of course you were wanted,” said Sally, touched.

“So Erwin isn’t the murderer after all.” There was a hint of disappointment in Cadogan’s voice.

“No,” said Fen; and added gnomically: “Though if everyone had their rights he would be.” He regarded Mr. Spode judicially, like a cannibal considering the culinary merits of a Christian mission.

“Only a Red Herring,” said Cadogan offensively. “A Red Herring and the Missing Link, and a wicked niggardly exploiter of divine-genius-as-represented-by-me. And now he’s got more money than he’ll ever know what to do with, just because he lost a manuscript and hadn’t the courage to say so. I could do with some of that money.”

“So could I,” said Fen aggrievedly, momentarily distracted from his high purpose by the injustice and enormity of the economic situation. “No one ever leaves me any money.” Then, glancing hastily at his watch: “Good heavens, we must go.”

“You haven’t told us who the murderer is.”

“Oh? haven’t I?” said Fen. “Well, who do you think it is? Use what little ingenuity Heaven has provided you with.”

“Well…” Cadogan hesitated. “Sharman, I should say.”

“Why?”

“Well, for one thing, you remember the Winkworth woman said that when she and Havering and Rosseter were together they shut the door of the room? He could have gone in to Miss Tardy and killed her then.”

Fen beamed at him. “But you seem to forget that Rosseter joined Havering and the woman at 11:25. At 11:30, according to the woman, Sharman joined them, and Miss Tardy couldn’t have died before 11:35.”

“Havering must have invented that story about the time of death.”

“What for? To protect Sharman, when he was in deadly fear for his own neck?”

“Then he was mistaken.”

“Practically impossible, I should say, as he got to the body so soon after death. The signs of the early stages are fairly definite.”

“Couldn’t Sharman have done it when he went in to Miss Tardy with the gun? You remember he talked some nonsense about the light bulb being out, to excuse the delay.”

“My dear Richard, Havering would have known if the woman had only just that minute been killed. That would point straight to Sharman; and again, there’s no earthly reason why Havering should protect him once the whole business had come out. Every reason why he shouldn’t, in fact. And the correspondence of all the stories is so exact, and containing so much that can be checked, that it’s pretty certain they’re true. Your theory faces this difficulty, you see: that although Sharman could have strangled the woman between 11:25 and 11:30, or at 11:50, she actually died between 11:35 and 11:45.”

“Oh, very well,” said Cadogan, disgusted. “Sharman didn’t kill her, then. Who did?”

“Sharman, of course,” said Fen, striding across to the door of the room in which Havering was incarcerated.

“W—what?” Cadogan stammered, outraged.

Fen had unlocked the door. “Do you know, Havering’s actually asleep,” he said, peering inside. “Asleep with a towel round his head and the weight of his crimes upon him.” He re-locked the door.