Anthony Berkeley

“ Mr. Priestley snapped back. “In here.”
Laura looked at him with wide eyes. “Don’t be absurd, please. That’s out of the question.”
“Anything else is out of the question,” Mr. Priestley said angrily. “It’s you who are being absurd. What you don’t seem to understand is that this is a question of life or death.”
Once again Laura was up against a brick wall. “Well, anyhow, you’re not going to sleep in here. Kindly get that out of your head once and for all. As soon as you’ve gone I shall lock the door.”
“In that case,” said Mr. Priestley grimly, “I shall break it in.” ”

“ Roger, it was almost unbearable! I don’t know how I sat it out without dashing through the curtains and getting my hands into Stanworth’s throat; but I had the sense to see that anything like that would only make matters very much worse. Have you ever seen a woman in agony? My God, it was absolutely heart-rending. I could never have imagined that a man could be such an indescribable brute.”
He paused, shivering slightly, and Roger watched him sympathetically. He was beginning to realise just how terrible that scene must have been, if it could move the stoical Alec to such a display of emotion. ”

“ Thinking things over in bed last night, away from your magnetic influence, I was suddenly struck by this bright thought: why does Inspector Moresby go to such pains to plant in my mind the idea that both murders were committed by the same person, and to give me the impression that this is what he himself thinks? He’s a reticent sort of devil; he’s never volunteered any ideas of his own worth speaking of before; he knows that in a way we’re rivals here; the last person he’d want to help toward a solution is Roger Sheringham—why? ”

“ In one minute his wife returned, an unmistakable file in her hand.
“There you are, sir,” she beamed. “It’s the only one. Will it do?”
Mr. Priestley took it in a quivering grasp. “Oh, yes,” he said. “It’ll do. Thank you.”
As they vanished hastily from her sight the landlady contrived to throw another understanding smile at Laura. This smile said, as eloquently as a smile may: “We have to humour them, don’t we? You and I know better than to go playing with files, but if they like it—well, bless their funny old hearts! Let them enjoy themselves.” It was a very eloquent smile indeed. ”

“ Roger’s complacency was unshaken.
“If the case were an ordinary one, no doubt,” he replied. “But you’ve got to remember that this isn’t. Stanworth was a blackmailer, and that alters everything. You may murder an ordinary man, but you execute a blackmailer. That is, if you don’t kill him on the spur of the moment, carried away by madness or exasperation. You’d do that sort of thing on your own account, wouldn’t you? Well, how much more so are you going to do it on behalf of a woman, and that a woman with whom you’re in love? I tell you, Alec, the whole thing is as plain as a pikestaff.” ”

“ Margaret racked them obediently and for some minutes there was silence, broken only by the cries of the swooping gulls and the splash of the waves against the rocks at the bottom of the cliffs.
“There’s only one person I can think of who had cause for hating Elsie,” she said slowly at last. “Or rather, did hate her, I’m quite certain—whether with cause or without, I don’t know. Mrs. Russell!”
Roger popped up on his elbow. “Mrs. Russell?” he repeated eagerly. “Why did she hate Mrs. Vane?”
“She had an idea that Elsie and Mr. Russell were a little too friendly. ”

“ Barker never did anything quite so vulgar as exactly to walk, nor did he precisely glide, chassis or slither; he just progressed. The sound of Mr. Priestley attacking his quite admirable fire stopped him. He retrogressed.
“Permit me, sir,” said Barker, neatly twitching the poker out of Mr. Priestley’s grasp. He dropped on one knee on the hearthrug as if about to breathe a prayer up the chimney, and lightly tapped three pieces of blazing coal. The fire was as perfect as a fire in this world can be, and Barker was not going to demean himself by pretending that he thought it anything else. ”

“ Roger glanced at him curiously. It was a strange position, this sort of armed and forced friendliness between Jefferson and himself. If the former had heard much of that conversation by the lattice window, he must know Roger for his enemy; and in any case the disappearance of the footprint showed that he was thoroughly on his guard. Yet not the faintest trace of this appeared in his manner. He behaved towards both of them exactly as he always had done; no more and no less. Roger could not help admiring the man’s nerve. ”

“ The inspector smiled. “Well, if you must know, sir, I’m going to make a few enquiries about this shoe.”
“Ah!” Roger observed maliciously. “Well, it can’t do any harm, can it?”
They laughed.
“Inspector,” said Roger softly, “can’t you forget for once that you’re a member of an official body and be human? I found that shoe for you. Isn’t it up to you to let me know what the result of the few enquiries is? Not for publication, of course, unless you say the word.”
The inspector struggled for a moment with his official reticence. “Very well, Mr. Sheringham,” he said. “That’s fair enough.” ”

“ It is you who are the stumbling-block, Laura.”
“Oh!” squeaked Laura, aghast at the implication of his words. “You’re not—you’re not going to shoot me too?”
Mr. Priestley hurriedly turned his face away. His shoulders quivered slightly. When he turned round again he had recovered his composure.
“No, Laura,” he said, neither sternly nor gently but with a curious blend of the two. “No, that is not what I meant. Fortunately there is no need to go to such extremes. It suits our case well enough to remember that a wife cannot give evidence against her husband, nor a husband against his wife.” ”

“ Suicide had smoothed all difficulties away; suicide had explained both deaths in the simplest possible terms, reduced them to a common denominator; in spite of superficial appearances surely in some way it must be suicide. Not until the inspector had patiently, and for half-a-dozen times in succession, pointed out that the very last place in which a voluntary consumer of aconitine would put the poison was among the contents of his tobacco-jar, and the very last way he would choose of imbibing it was through the stem of his pipe, did Roger reluctantly admit that, hang it! ”

“ Roger asked with enthusiasm.
“Oh, most,” said Mrs. Plant in a curiously flat voice.
Roger glanced at her shrewdly. “You don’t agree with me, Mrs. Plant?” he said suddenly.
Mrs. Plant started.
“I?” she said hurriedly. “Why, of course I do. I thought Mr. Stanworth a—a very nice man indeed. Charming! Of course I agree with you.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought for the moment that you didn’t seem very enthusiastic about him. No earthly reason why you should be, of course. Everybody has their likes and dislikes, don’t they?”
Mrs. Plant glanced quickly at Roger, and then looked out of the window. ”

“ Had not George been permitted to be the humble instrument for bringing about Guy’s marriage with the only woman in this world remotely approaching worthiness, and had he not been rewarded beyond rubies by being allowed to be the great one’s best man—an honour he valued far more than the note from his captain announcing that he had been awarded a blue for rugger? Yet, after all that, here he was, red in the face and not unconscious of his epoch-making action, saying gruffly that he was getting fed up with all that chat about murder! Murder has turned people into revolutionaries before George. ”

“ Roger found himself returning Dr. Vane’s liking almost with interest. The big, burly man was so genuine, so sincere, and (as Roger felt) so transparently honest. His predilections he did not attempt to disguise, and where he hated Roger was sure he would be no less candid. Summing up his impressions on their rather silent walk home, Roger found himself convinced that, whatever his feelings may have been once, the doctor had very little affection for his wife at the time of her death. Equally certainly his attitude toward Miss Williamson was one merely of rather impersonal camaraderie. ”

“ Roger was roaming restlessly about the room. At Alec’s last words he paused in his stride and looked at his companion with some irritation.
“Oh, don’t be childish, Alec,” he said sharply. “Money and jewels aren’t the only things that can be robbed. The motive still holds perfectly good if we’ve got to have a motive. It was robbery of something else; that’s all. But why stick to robbery? Make it revenge, hatred, self-protection, anything you like, but take it from me that Stanworth was murdered. The evidence is not equally consistent with suicide. ”

“ I owed my landlady, who seized all my belongings for her rent and turned me out into the street. I was homeless, without a roof to shelter me, a rag to my back, or a penny in my purse.”
“But—but what about that car of yours,” stammered Mr. Priestley, whose eyes were nearly starting out of his head.
“Oh!” said Laura, who had been far too carried away by her sense of drama to remember such unimportant items as speedy two-seater cars. “The car, yes. The car,” she went on, pulling herself together, “belongs to the man himself.” ”

“ Anthony stared at her in dismay. It was bad enough that she should have burst into tears at all, without the terrible significance of her last words. He was certain that Margaret Cross was not the sort of person to give way to tears unless matters had reached an acute crisis; the fact that she had done so impressed him with the seriousness of the situation even more than had her decision to confide in himself, a complete stranger. She must be not only utterly alone in the world ”

“ Alec said slowly. “Do you think I ought to tell Barbara?”
“Good heavens above, no!” Roger shouted, staring at his companion in dismay. “What on earth would you want to tell her for? She’d only be overcome with shame that you knew anything about her mother’s shortcomings; and the fact that you’d killed a man more or less on account of her would simply make her wretchedly miserable. Of course you mustn’t dream of telling her, you goop!”
“I think you’re probably right,” Alec said, gazing out of the window. ”

“ The result was that Laura’s cocoa plunged hastily into her lap, where it mingled with the water that had already found its billet there. She drank Mr. Priestley’s cocoa instead, on that gentleman’s firm insistence, but it did not really appease her.
When they had finished they steamed gloomily in front of the fire for a space. Their garments hung clammily upon them.
There is nothing like clamminess to bring out the worst in a man or woman. Mr. Priestley felt clamminess invading his very soul, and the more clammy his outer person became the more sore he felt inside. ”