The Dinner Club Page 18

  And still she said nothing, while he backed the car on to the grass beside the road, and turned it the way they had come. A jumble of strange thoughts were in her mind; a jumble out of which there stuck one dominant thing – the brown tanned face of the man beside her. And when he stopped the car by his own farm and left her without a word of apology, she sat quite motionless staring at the white streak of road in front. At last she heard his footsteps coming back along the drive, and suddenly a warm wriggling bundle was placed in her lap – a bundle which slobbered joyfully and then fell on the floor with an indignant yelp.

  “The puppy,” he said quietly. “Please take him.” And very softly under his breath he added: “The best to the best.”

  But she heard him, and even as she stooped to lift the puppy on to her knees, her heart began to beat madly. She knew: at last, she knew.

  “I’ll take you back to the dance,” he was saying, “and afterwards I’ll deposit that young rascal at Mrs Laverton’s house.”

  And then for the first time she spoke.

  “Please go to Ada’s house first. Afterwards we’ll see about the dance.”

  He bowed and swung the car left-handed through the lodge gates.

  “Will you wait for me?” she said, as he pulled up at the front door.

  “As long as you like,” he answered courteously.

  “Because I may be some time,” she continued a little unevenly. “And don’t wait for me here: wait for me where the drive runs through that little copse, halfway down to the lodge.”

  The next instant she had disappeared into the house, with the puppy in her arms. Why by the little copse? wondered the man as he slowly drove the car down the drive. The butler had seen them already, so what did it matter? He pulled up the car in the shadow of a big oak tree, and lit a cigarette. Then, with his arms resting on the steering wheel, he sat staring in front of him. He had done a mad thing, and she’d taken it wonderfully well. He always had done mad things all his life; he was made that way. But this was the maddest he had ever done. With a grim smile he pictured her infuriated partners, waiting in serried rows by the door, cursing him by all their gods. And then the smile faded, and he sighed, while his knuckles gleamed white on the wheel. If only she wasn’t so gloriously pretty; if only she wasn’t so utterly alive and wonderful. Well – it was the penalty of playing with fire; and it had been worth it. Yes; it had been worth it – even if the wound never quite healed.

  “A fool there was, and he made his prayer…”

  He pitched his cigarette away, and suddenly he stiffened and sat motionless, while something seemed to rise in his throat and choke him, and the blood hammered hotly at his temples. A girl in white was standing not five feet from him on the fringe of the little wood: a girl holding a puppy in her arms. And then he heard her speaking.

  “It’s not the same frock – but it’s the nearest I can do.”

  She came up to the car, and once again over the head of the puppy their eyes met.

  “I’ve been looking,” she said steadily, “for the real thing. I don’t think I’ve found it – I know I have.”

  “My dear!” he stammered hoarsely. “Oh! my dear dream girl.”

  “Take me back to the cliff, Desmond,” she whispered. “Take me back to our cliff.”

  And an outraged puppy, bouncing off the running board on to a stray fir cone, viewed the proceedings of the next five minutes with silent displeasure.

  Chapter 11

  A Glass of Whisky

  “It’s as easy as shelling peas to be a detective in fiction,” grunted the Barrister. “He’s merely the author of the yarn disguised as a character, and he knows the solution before he starts.”

  “But the reader doesn’t, if the story is told well,” objected the Doctor. “And that’s all that matters.”

  “Oh! I grant you that,” said the Barrister, lighting a cigar. “I’m not inveighing against the detective story – I love ’em. All I’m saying is that in life a detective’s job is a very different matter to – well, take the illustrious example – to that of Sherlock Holmes. He’s got to make the crime fit to the clues, not the clues fit into the crime. It’s not so terribly difficult to reconstruct the murder of the Prime Minister from a piece of charred paper discovered in the railway refreshment room at Bath – in fiction; it’s altogether a different matter in reality.”

  The Soldier thoughtfully filled his pipe.

  “And yet there have been many cases when the reconstruction has been made on some clue almost equally ‘flimsy’,” he murmured.

  “A few,” conceded the Barrister. “But nine out of ten are built up with laborious care. The structure does not rest on any one fact – but on a whole lot of apparently unimportant and trivial ones. Of course it’s more spectacular to bring a man to the gallows because half a brick was found lying on the front doorstep, but in practice it doesn’t happen.”

  “It does – sometimes,” remarked a quiet, sandy-haired man who was helping himself to a whisky-and-soda. “It does sometimes, you man of law. Your remarks coupled with my present occupation remind me of just such a case.”

  “Your present occupation appears to be drinking whisky,” said the Doctor, curiously.

  “Precisely,” returned the other. “Almost as prosaic a thing as our legal luminary’s half-brick.” He settled himself comfortably in a chair, and the others leaned forward expectantly. “And yet on that very ordinary pastime hinged an extremely interesting case: one in which I was lucky enough to play a principal part.”

  “The night is yet young, old man,” said the Barrister. “It’s up to you to prove your words, and duly confound me.”

  The sandy-haired man took a sip of his drink: then he put the glass on the table beside him and began.

  “Well, if it won’t bore you, I’m agreeable. I’ll tell you the whole thing exactly as it took place, only altering the names of the people involved. It happened before the war – in that hot summer of 1911, to be exact. I’d been working pretty hard in London, and about the end of July I got an invitation to go down and stop with some people in Devonshire. I will call them the Marleys, and they lived just outside a small village on the north coast. The family consisted of old Marley, who was a man rising sixty, and his two daughters, Joan and Hilda. There was also Jack Fairfax, through whom, as a matter of fact, I had first got to know them.

  “Jack was about my own age – thirty odd, and we’d been up at Cambridge together. He was no relation to old Marley, but he was an orphan, and Marley was his guardian, or had been when Jack was a youngster. And from the very first Jack and the old man had not got on.

  “Marley was not everybody’s meat, by a long way – rather a queer-tempered, secretive blighter; and Jack Fairfax had the devil of a temper at times. When he was a boy he had no alternative except to do as his guardian told him, but even in those early days, as I gathered subsequently, there had been frequent storms. And, when he came down from Cambridge there were two or three most unholy rows which culminated in Jack leaving the house for good.

  “It was apparently this severance from the two girls, whom he had more or less regarded as sisters, which caused the next bust-up. And this one, according to Jack, was in the nature of a volcanic eruption. The two girls had come up to London to go through the season with some aunt, and Jack had seen a good deal of them with the net result that he and Joan had fallen in love with each other. Then the fat was in the fire. Jack straightway had gone down to Devonshire to ask old Marley’s consent: old Marley had replied in terms which, judging from Jack’s account of the interview, had contained a positive profusion of un-Parliamentary epithets. Jack had lost his temper properly – and, well, you know, the usual thing. At any rate, the long and the short of it was that old Marley had recalled both his daughters from London, and had sworn that if he ever saw Jack near the house again he’d pep
per him with a shotgun. To which Jack had replied that only his grey hairs and his gout saved Mr Marley from the biggest hiding he’d ever had in his life – even if not the biggest he deserved. With which genial exchange of playful badinage I gathered the interview ended. And that was how matters stood when I went down in July, 1911.

  “For some peculiar reason the old man liked me, even though I was a friend of Jack’s. And in many ways I quite liked him, though there was always something about him which defeated me. Of course, he had a foul temper – but it wasn’t altogether that. He seemed to me at times to be in fear of something or somebody; and yet, though I say that now, I don’t know that I went as far as thinking so at the time. It was an almost indefinable impression – vague and yet very real.

  “The two girls were perfectly charming, though they were both a little afraid of their father. How long it would have taken Joan to overcome this timidity, and go to Jack without her father’s consent, I don’t know. And incidentally, as our legislators say, the question did not arise. Fate held the ace of trumps, and proceeded to deal it during my visit.”

  The sandy-haired man leant back in his chair and crossed his legs deliberately.

  “I think it was about the fourth day after I arrived (he went on, after a while) that the tragedy happened. We were sitting in the drawing room after dinner – a couple of men whose names I forget, and a girlfriend of Hilda’s. Hilda herself was there, and Joan, who seemed very preoccupied, had come in about a quarter of an hour previously. I had noticed that Hilda had looked at her sister inquiringly as she entered, and that Joan had shrugged her shoulders. But nothing had been said, and naturally I asked no questions with the others there, though from the air of suppressed excitement on Joan’s face I knew there was something in the wind.

  “Old Marley himself was not with us: he was in his study at the other end of the house. The fact was not at all unusual: he frequently retired to his own den after dinner, sometimes joining the rest of the party for a few minutes before going to bed, more often not appearing again till the following morning. And so we all sat there talking idly, with the windows wide open and the light shining out on to the lawn. It must have been somewhere about ten to a quarter past when suddenly Hilda gave a little scream.

  “‘What do you want?’ she cried. ‘Who are you?’

  “I swung round in my chair, to find a man standing on the lawn outside, in the centre of the light. He was facing us, and as we stared at him he came nearer till he was almost in the room. And the first thing that struck me was that he looked a little agitated.

  “‘You will excuse me appearing like this,’ he said, ‘but–’ He broke off and looked at me. ‘Might I have a word with you alone, sir?’

  “I glanced at the others: obviously he was a stranger. No trace of recognition appeared on anyone’s face, and I began to feel a little suspicious.

  “‘What is it?’ I cried. ‘What can you possibly want to speak to me about that you can’t say now?’

  “He shrugged his shoulders slightly. ‘As you will,’ he answered. ‘My idea was to avoid frightening the ladies. In the room at the other end of the house a man has been murdered.’

  “For a moment everyone was too thunderstruck to reply; then Hilda gave a choking cry.

  “‘What sort of a man?’ she said, breathlessly.

  “‘An elderly man of, I should think, about sixty,’ returned the other, gravely, and Hilda buried her face in her hands.

  “‘I will come with you at once, sir,’ I said, hurriedly, and the two other men rose. Instinctively, I think, we all knew it must be old Marley: there was no one else it could be. But the sudden shock of it had dazed us all. I glanced at Joan. She was staring at the man like a girl bereft of her senses, and I put my hand reassuringly on her shoulder. And then she looked up at me, and the expression in her eyes pulled me together. It was like a cold douche, and it acted instantaneously. Because it wasn’t horror or dazed stupefaction that I read on her face: it was terror – agonised terror. And suddenly I remembered her air of suppressed excitement earlier in the evening.”

  Once again the sandy-haired man paused while the others waited in silence for him to continue.

  “It was old Marley right enough (he went on quietly). We walked round the front of the house until we came to the window of his study, and there instinctively we paused. The window was open, and he was sitting at his desk quite motionless. His head had fallen forward, and on his face was a look of dreadful fear.

  “For a while none of us moved. Then, with an effort, I threw my leg over the window sill and entered.

  “‘He’s quite dead,’ I said, and I felt my voice was shaking. ‘We’d better send for the police.’

  “The others nodded, and in silence I picked up the telephone.

  “‘Mr Marley’s been killed,’ I heard myself saying. ‘Will you send someone up at once?’

  “And then for the first time I noticed the poker lying beside the chair, and saw the back of the old man’s head. It wasn’t a pretty sight, and one of the other men staying in the house – a youngster – turned very white, and went to the window.

  “‘Pretty obvious how it was done,’ said the stranger, quietly. ‘Well, gentlemen, nothing ought to be touched in this room until the police arrive. I suggest that we should draw the curtains and go somewhere else to wait for them.’

  “I don’t think any of us were sorry to fall in with his suggestion. I also don’t think I’ve ever drunk such a large whisky-and-soda as I did a few minutes later. Discovering the body had been bad enough: breaking the news to the two girls was going to be worse.

  “It was Joan who met me in the hall – and we stared at one another in silence. Then I nodded my head stupidly.

  “‘It’s father,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, my God!’

  “I put out my hand to steady her, and she was looking at me with a fixed stare.

  “‘Don’t you understand?’ she muttered, hoarsely, and swallowing all the time. ‘Don’t you understand? Jack has been here tonight.’

  “‘Jack!’ I looked at her foolishly. ‘Jack!’

  “And then her full meaning struck me.

  “‘How did that man find out?’ she whispered. ‘And who is he?’

  “‘I don’t know. I’ll go and ask him.’ I was still trying to adjust to this new development – and her next words seemed to come from a great distance.

  “‘Do something. For God’s sake – do something.’

  “Then she turned and left me, and I watched her go up the stairs, walking stiffly and clinging to the banisters.

  “So Jack had been there! And old Marley was dead! Murdered! Hit on the head with a poker. And Jack had been there. It’s only in romantic fiction that the reader is expected to assume the impossibility of the hero committing a crime, owing to the extreme beauty of his nature. And this wasn’t romantic fiction. It was hard, brutal reality. The two facts stood there, side by side, in all their dazzling simplicity. Jack’s nature was not supremely beautiful. He was an ordinary man, with the devil of a temper when it was roused.

  “Mechanically I started to walk back to the room where I had left the other three men. They were sitting in silence when I entered, and after a while the stranger got up.

  “‘A dreadful thing to happen,’ he said, gravely.

  “‘May I ask, sir,’ I began, ‘how you came to discover it?’

  “‘Very simply,’ he answered. ‘I was strolling along the road, going back to the village inn where I have been stopping for two or three nights, when I saw the window of the room through the trees. The light was shining out, and I could see someone sitting at the desk. More out of idle curiosity than anything else, I paused for a moment or two, and then something began to arouse my suspicions. The man at the desk seemed so motionless. I thought perhaps he had fainted, or was ill, and aft
er a little hesitation I went in at the gate and looked through the window. To my horror I saw he was dead – and I at once came round to the other room from which the light was shining, and where I found you.’

  “‘There is a point which may have some bearing on the crime,’ he continued, after a pause. ‘On my way up from the inn a man passed me. He was coming from this direction, and seemed to me to be in a very excited condition. It was his obvious agitation that made me notice him at the time, though in the dim light I couldn’t see his face very clearly. But he was swinging his stick in the air, and muttering to himself. At the moment I didn’t think much about it. But now–’ He shrugged his shoulders slightly. ‘Of course, I may be completely wrong, but I think it is a thing worth mentioning to the police.’

  “‘Would you know the man again?’ I asked, trying to speak quite normally.

  “‘Well, he was tall – six feet at least – and broad. And he was clean-shaven.’ He spoke thoughtfully, weighing his words. ‘I might know him again – but I wouldn’t swear to it. One has to be doubly careful if a man’s life is at stake.’

  “I turned away abruptly. Jack was tall and broad and clean-shaven. Strive as I would, the deadly suspicion was beginning to grip me that Jack, in a fit of ungovernable passion, had killed the old man. And at such moments, whatever may be the legal aspect of the matter, one’s main idea is how best to help a pal. If Jack had indeed done it, what was the best thing to do?

  “I rang the bell, and told the scared-looking maid to bring the whisky and some glasses. Then, with a muttered apology, I left the room. I felt I wanted to talk to Joan about it. I found her dry-eyed and quite composed, though she was evidently holding herself under control with a great effort. And briefly I told her what the stranger had said.