John Carr - The Reader Is Warned Страница 27

'And there we'll leave Mrs Constable. She wasn't a murderer. She was a decent woman tryin' to save her Own skin. After the accident she'd hidden the wet, blown-out electric heater in the wardrobe; and the next day she exchanged it for a good one among the hundred heaters in that house. She hid the scrap-book after she saw Sanders lookin' at it, after the time Sanders didn't see any heater in the bathroom. She passes on. And we consider the not-too-appetizin' figure of the murderer - the real murderer - the only murderer in this case.

'I mean Hilary Keen, whose stepmother had only a life-interest in Joe Keen's fortune, which would have reverted to Hilary at her death.'

Chief Inspector Masters grunted, looking up from his notebook. Behind the broad desk, whose goose-neck lamp was pushed nearly flat down to its surface, H. M. leaned back in his swivel-chair. He shaded his eyes and spectacles with one hand. The corners of his mouth were turned down; and he still drew noisily at the empty pipe. But Sanders had a feeling that a small, sharp eye was being turned towards him from under the shadow of that hand.

H. M. spoke.

'No,' he said, 'I didn't like her. And she was clever enough to see it. I knew her father. And she's bad stock, son; though I couldn't very well have told you that, or you'd have jumped down my throat for persecutin' a poor chivalrous gal. You didn't fall for her, though she tried her damnedest to make you do it, because you could 'a' been useful. I'm a bit glad you didn't fall for her, too, since it's ducats to an old shoe that she's goin' to hang.'

(That was the first word that really hurt.)

'No need to jump, son. It's not pleasant, but then neither was she. If I were you I'd put this down to experience, and not say much about it to Marcia Blystone when she gets home in June. You heard Joe. Keen's daughter talkin' when she was off-guard, so I don't need to say much more about her character: strong practical intelligence plus arrested emotional development. She was on to things fast enough. Here was Herman Pennik ridin' high and wide, utterly convinced he'd killed Sam Constable; utterly convinced he wielded a power so strong that it scared even Pennik. That was Pennik's state of mind. She saw how he could be used.'

H. M.'s face resumed its malevolent scowl.

'Ah! But now lemme tell you about my side of it. You two dragged me into this case on Sunday afternoon. I go down there for a peaceful afternoon, worried as blazes, with the House of Lords gibberin' at me from every bench; and what do I find ? I find a ruddy loony-bin. All you can do is gabble about people killing other people by thought-waves. Mrs Constable begs me, on bended knees and with tears in her eyes, to unmask Pennik - and at the same time she tells me a pack of lies.

'Well, what did I think? What would anybody think? I agreed with Masters that, if there had been any murderin' done, Mrs Constable had done it herself. I said she was in no danger; I said she was as safe as though she was packed in cotton wool in the middle of the Bank of England; and I still maintain I had a right to say it.

'But Pennik worried me. And if Mrs Constable had killed her husband, I couldn't think, for the life of me, how she had done it. All I knew was that that bathroom was mixed up in it somehow. All trails led to the bathroom. The candle-grease spots led there. Mrs Constable had lied about the time her husband took his bath. Sanders had given a careful description of the bathroom just after Constable's death, and said there was ho electric heater in it; but I could see for myself on Sunday afternoon a biggish bronze-painted heater there large as life, and it didn't seem reasonable that a man who felt the cold like that would have failed to keep a heater in the one room where he was most likely to need it.

'I was awful dense, Masters. But then I was worried; and I had to get over that hurdle of a doctor swearin' Constable had died in the hall. It wasn't until late Sunday night, when I was back at home sittin' and thinkin', that it occurred to me somebody needed to burn candles in that bathroom because the ordinary lights, were blown out; and the ordinary lights were blown out because somebody had dropped a (missing) electric fire into the bath. It'd explain the revived corpse. It was the only thing that'd explain the dilated eye-pupils.

'That looked as though Pennik must be in cahoots with Mrs Constable; Pennik to star-gaze with Teleforce, Mrs Constable for the real work. I went to sleep happily dreamin' of what I'd do to 'em - and woke up to find Mrs Constable polished off, and Pennik again with an alibi.

'Then I got mad.

'The Teleforce issue was raisin' blue blazes. I was so tied up with business that I didn't get a full report on Mrs Constable's death until Tuesday at lunch. Then I heard what both of you had to say. That tore it. I knew I was right because (a) the candles had been burnin' again, and (b) Sanders, sittin' in the dining-room almost directly under that bathroom upstairs, had noticed a vibrating, continued sound of running water which didn't come from the fountain in the conservatory.'

There was a silence. Sanders nodded glumly.

'I see. It was the water running into the bath-tub.'

'No, son.'

'What do you mean, " no"?'

'It was the water runnin' out of the tub,' answered H. M. 'Y'see, it's easy to fill a bath practically in silence, as the murderer wanted to do. Just fill it slowly. It isn't likely that through those thick walls you would have heard the bath bein' filled. But what can't be stopped, what does produce that vibratin' noise you heard,, is the water goin' with an unchecked rush down the drain-pipe when it's emptied. And that's why you heard it at all. The water was goin' down; down a pipe past the dining-room, to drain away. And so you heard it. And so it seemed pretty plain that Hilary Keen was the murderer.'

Chief Inspector Masters sat up. 'Hold on, sir! I don't follow that.'

'No ?' said H. M. 'Look at the other evidence. What does Sanders tell us about Sunday night at Fourways? He gave Mrs Constable her morphia tablet, tucked her into bed, and came downstairs from her room at about twenty minutes past ten. At shortly before half-past eleven he heard that sound of runnin’ water, and he looked round, and he saw Pennik's "astral projection" (hoi) looking at him from the conservatory. He searched the conservatory - without result -and then tore upstairs to make sure Mrs Constable was: all right She was apparently right as rain, sleepin' peacefully.

'But in that case when did she die? For fifteen minutes after that, Sanders sat down on the steps not eight feet away from the door in a dead quiet house. If you're goin' to tell me that durin' those fifteen minutes the murderer went through all the motions: draggin' an only half-drugged! woman, who'd be certain to wake up partially: splashin' her into the bath: droppin' the heater, which makes a very loud flash and crackle: dressin' her, draggin' her back, putting her to bed again with all the trimmings: if you're goin' to tell me all that happened then, and a man eight feet away from the door didn't hear a single solitary sound ... Masters, I'll just make an impolite noise like this. Likewise if you tell me it all happened durin' the two minutes Sanders was downstairs answering the phone. No. Allied with the fact that water was running out of the bathtub shortly before eleven-thirty, it means only one thing.

'Mina Constable was dead before eleven-thirty. But Sanders found a livin', breathin' woman tucked into that bed at eleven-thirty. It's true, as he told us, that he didn't turn on the light when he went in. It's true he left Mina Constable with her head buried under a pillow. It's true he left her wearin' a heavy padded dressing-gown too big; for her. But that living woman in the dark couldn't have been Mina Constable. And if it wasn't Mina Constable, just focus your wits for half a second and ask yourself who it must have been.'

It was the creepiest part of the business Sanders remembered. He and Masters looked at each other, and H. M, nodded.

'Sure, son. Joe Keen's daughter. She only pretended she was goin' to take that train when we dropped her off at the station. She knew as early as Saturday that sooner or later

Mrs Constable was goin' to challenge Pennik; she knew when it would happen; and she had it impressed on Pennik's gullible brain just when he should fire the next bolt of Tele-force. She walked quietly back to Fourways: she had all the time in the world. She knew Sanders was alone in the house; and if by any chance he caught her, she firmly believed in her somewhat conceited soul that she could persuade him to cover her up.

'She got into the house by way of that outside staircase leadin' up to Sam Constable's room. All she had to do was snaffle another of the omnipresent electric fires from that unused top floor of the house, hide there, and wait for the proper time. It wasn't likely Sanders would sit up all night with Mrs Constable; and he didn't.

'Mrs Constable was only half drugged, and put up some-thin' of a struggle. But Joe Keen's daughter knew how to deal with that: you saw what she was goin' to do with her stepmother. Everything went slick as goose-grease until just after the murder. She'd got her victim out of the tub; dried her. and put on her nightgown; when all of a sudden she realized something. Up to then she hadn't made a sound to betray herself - but what about that water runnin' out, in a downstairs pipe that somebody on the floor below was almost certain to hear?

'She had to know. She went down the main staircase, into the kitchen by the hall door without touching the dining-room, through the kitchen door to the conservatory, and looked into the dining-room as Pennik's astral projection. Never mind that astral bit now I' said H. M., raising his hand. 'She didn't mean the picture of Pennik to be seen -not then.

'But it was seen; Sanders didn't pay much attention to the runnin' water, but he did jump when he caught a flash of Pennik's face. And she knew she .had to act quick. It was certain Sanders would go up straightaway to see whether Mrs Constable was all right If he found Mrs Constable dead then, the whole game was up. It wasn't a question of explaining her own presence in the house, for which she

might have found some coy excuse. But she'd left her properties all over the place: the candles in the bathroom, the extra electric fire hooked in to do the dirty; the tub still damp and the fuse still blown. If the body were discovered before she could dispose of the evidence, die whole myth of Teleforce would be exploded then and there.

'Well, she managed it. She made no sound: you've seen how light on her feet she is, and it's ducats to an old shoe she was in her stocking feet then. When Sanders saw her through the conservatory door, she nipped across the room, opened the conservatory window from inside, got out, and went back upstairs again by the outside balcony - while he was searching the conservatory. She pushed Mina Constable's body under the bed, put on the dressing-gown, and crawled into bed with her head under a pillow in the way Mina always slept.

'He couldn't have turned on the light if he'd wanted to, because the fuse was blown. In the very huge relief of findin' a woman alive, he wouldn't be likely to investigate close; and he wouldn't be likely to look past the closed door of the bathroom. He didn't.

'The interval while he was on the stairs she spent quietly playin' possum. She enjoyed all this, y'know: it was excitin': it stimulated her excess of thyroid. When she heard him go downstairs she put Mina Constable asprawl on the bed, and repaired the lights with one of the extra fuses: a matter of a couple of minutes. She opened the bathroom door, which he'd locked on the inside, slipped into the bathroom, closed the door as though it were still locked, and gathered up her properties.

'Afterwards was the real audacity of the business. I didn't work this out for myself: you'll have gathered it from the screamin’ she did at us when we walked in on her at her stepmother's-'

'Never mind,' said Sanders quickly.

'Go on, sir,’ grunted Masters. 'I think I know what you mean.'

'The wench actually stayed in that house all night. In the

general confusion after findin' Mrs Constable dead, Sanders couldn't be everywhere at once. He was only one man. He had to telephone. He had to get the police; and it was unlikely the police would get there before morning. He even had to sleep at one time or another. So she repaired all her little omissions. At one point she nipped back into the now-open room and locked the bathroom door again on the bedroom side. At another she returned the burnt-out heater to an unused room on the top floor. It was a game of hide-and-seek; and she liked it. At half-past five in the cool dawn she slipped out of the house carryin' her trim little suitcase, walked along the road, caught the early bus to Guildford and the early train to town; after which she appeared fresh-, eyed and dignified at the office, a cat back from the tiles and a saint in its niche again. That's all.

'So that was my dawnin' conviction about her and her character on Tuesday. But Pennik was still in the background, elusive and perplexin'. Was she working with Pennik? There seemed to be evidence for it. And yet I couldn't believe it. Havin' seen Pennik on Monday night, I was gatherin' a few cloudy ideas about him while I sat at the Corinthian grill room. There's such a thing as psychological truth, gents; and, burn me, I could not see him as anything but a feller who believed in what he said. You've felt that, Masters. So have you, son. I defy anybody to talk to Pennik for five minutes and still think he's party to any plot. I told you over and over he was the lone wolf. I told you that, within his limits, he was a perfectly honest man.

'Before I'd even met him, I'd got a bit of a notion about the African ancestry, from makin' an excuse to get a look at those little blue half-moons at the base of his finger-nails. Which was all the more reason for wantin' to find out what made him tick. I had to break him down. There was only one way to do that: Mrs Constable suggested it to me on Sunday. If I could get him locked up for a month or two? Yes. And the only way to do that was to start such a roar of publicity that the plain Briton would arise in all his majesty, saying: "To hell with common sense; stick him in clink." So the old wangler,' explained H. M., suddenly rubbing his hands together with a ghoulish expression of pleasure; 'started' wanglin' again. I wasn't really loopy, Masters. Honest I wasn't.

'For the truth of everything shone out at that lunch-table on Tuesday, when we three sat there with Hilary Keen and Pennik. I'd just gone through a spiritual abyss of wantin' to know why. I was sure Joe Keen's daughter was up to games. I was sure Pennik wasn't up to games in the practical sense. But whether they worked together or whether they didn't, why, why should Joe Keen's daughter kill Mrs Constable?" Surely not just to bolster up a belief in Teleforce?

'You know the answer. Mrs Constable could have exposed Pennik. What's more, she would have. Several times ‘ she'd already been within an ace of breakin' down and blurtin' out everything; you saw that. If it had happened again, if someone else died and Pennik claimed the, credit for the second time, Mina Constable would have blown the whole sham higher than Boney's kite. So Hilary had to kill her before Pennik's triumphal progress could go on. The name of the real victim, the intended victim, Mrs. Cynthia Keen, was as plain as though somebody had said it aloud over the table. Do you remember how curtly and finally Hilary cut off the conversation when Masters started asking questions about the possible victim and Pennik, in expansive mood, was within two steps and a whisde of telling ,him? I had got it. I had found Frau Frankenstein.