Death of My Aunt, page 11
He poured himself out a little brandy and sat down.
"I see," he said, "a good deal's got to come out, that I'd prefer not to have known."
"You needn't be afraid of me. Whether the police'll have to be told, we can decide later."
"Malcolm, do you still feel at all doubtful whether I did it or not?"
"I haven't the slightest doubt left. I know you didn't. Don't ask me to say how I know. I'm only puzzled by the evidence against you. It looks almost as if someone had forged it."
"I can explain a good deal of that away. I don't much like telling you the story, especially as you're poor Catherine's nephew. . . ."
"I suppose there's a woman in it?"
"There is."
"Then you needn't mind me. I have very liberal views on these matters—very different from the views Aunt Catherine would have taken."
He got up, went to the fireplace to see if my manuscripts were completely burnt, and sat down again. He told his story with such embarrassment, with so much hesitation and prompting from me, that I do not attempt to reproduce his actual words. He spent some time explaining to me, rather unnecessarily, why he had married Aunt Catherine, and what his early relations with her were. She had been infatuated with him. He admired her money and her "class", and in a general way thought she was a "very nice lady". Very soon after the marriage, he realised his folly. His wife was less generous than he had expected, and more tyrannical. She became jealous of him, and resented his being away from her. In fact, she treated him as if he were a "lady-companion". In course of time, she lost her infatuation, and, conscious that she had been humiliated and deceived by her marriage, she began almost to hate him. A more sensible woman would have acknowledged her mistake and pensioned off the unwanted husband. Catherine was too proud and vindictive to do this. She even went so far as to try to disguise her aversion from him, so that he should not leave her, and assured him from time to time that he might hope for a big legacy under her will. No doubt it was this that kept him at Otho House. Naturally this "keeping up of appearances" which she demanded and he acquiesced in was a great strain on both, and became more and more difficult. Indeed, it seemed inevitable that one of them should give up the struggle.
So far he had told me little that I had not guessed. Then he came to the woman—Jessie Toler, who was housemaid at Otho House from October 1927 to January 1928. She was "a stupid, pretty little thing". He had caught her one day crying because her mother was ill. She accepted his sympathy eagerly and gave him hers. The mother's illness became worse, and tender scenes more frequent. After all, it was "human companionship".
At this point I asked a very direct question.
"No," he said, "I didn't, though later we went pretty far."
My aunt dismissed Jessie in January 1928, giving inefficiency as the reason. She did not then, or at any time, directly accuse her husband of having been unfaithful to her. Unfortunately for him, he met Jessie one day in the lane near the Fernley golf links. She had found a situation in a house a mile away. He stopped and gave her a lift in his sidecar. She was exceedingly "pathetic", complained of being overworked, and talked of her mother's illness, which had become very serious. He was "sorry for the poor little kid", and, of course, attracted. A fortnight later they met again, and she told him that her mother was dead. They met a third time early in May. It was her night out, and he motored her into Peterborough and gave her some supper. On the way back there was a romantic episode in a field. The fourth time they met, about the 20th May, her manner was different. She refused a lift and talked pointedly about the harm of not keeping to one's station in life. He was hurt at the change, and uneasy. He continued to go to the links by the same route, but never saw her again. This made him think that the meetings, except perhaps the first one, had not been accidents.
On the 1st of June he had an illiterate letter signed "Alf Toler, brother of the girl you've wronged", informing him that Jessie was going to have a baby. Convinced that he could not be the father, he took no notice. On the 7th another letter came, demanding a hundred and forty pounds "for nursing expenses and compensation", and suggesting that if there was no reply by return of post he would find himself in trouble. The address on the letter was a little tobacconist's in the village near the links. My uncle went to this address, intending to have it out with "Alf", but the old woman in charge would tell him nothing. He learnt at the golf club that Alf Toler had been a caddy there till he was dismissed for petty theft three years before. No one knew what had become of him since then. My uncle dared not make inquiries too openly, and did not care to write direct to Jessie. On the 11th, another letter arrived, threatening that if the money were not produced within a week a full account would be given to my aunt. The writer also mentioned my uncle's visit to the "poste restante", and said that he didn't intend to run the risk of being knocked down by such "a thumping great bully" by seeing him in person.
My uncle was by now thoroughly alarmed and distressed. It was clear that Jessie, of whom he had grown sentimentally fond, had been deceiving him. Either she had "got into trouble" (perhaps with one of the men-servants at the place where she worked), and was trying to put the blame on someone more responsible, or she was not going to have a child at all and had joined in Alf's scheme simply in order to extort money. In addition there was a sudden marked change in my aunt's behaviour towards him. She went about with an air of triumph, and took such small pains to conceal her contempt of him that he felt sure she must have some knowledge of his difficulties.
He kept the accusing letters in an attache case in his bedroom. As he said, he had no writing-desk for his own use. On the morning of Thursday, June the 14th, the day before my arrival, he opened the case and found that the letters were missing. He had last seen them on the previous Tuesday, when he fastened them together with a rubber band. Their disappearance could only be explained by theft. Anyone could have obtained the key of the case while he was in the bathroom, and almost anyone could have forced the case open with a suitable key or even with no key at all; for the lock was simple and insecure. He at once suspected Dace, partly because Dace's manner towards him became suddenly more insolent, and partly because there was no one else to suspect. It was unlikely that my aunt would "do her own dirty work", however ready she was to have it done for her.
The loss of the letters disturbed him very greatly indeed. Not only did it make him think himself the victim of an elaborate plot, but he exaggerated the importance which the letters might have in the divorce court. He regarded them not merely as threats, but as actual evidence. Had he consulted a solicitor, his mind might have been made easier on this point. But he had no one to consult. He had all the horror felt by the ignorant for "the law", and was specially disinclined to go to a lawyer in Macebury. The firm of Dennis and Carvel had locally such prestige that he feared his secrets would be revealed to them despite professional etiquette. He decided to go to a little man in London who had acted for him once or twice, but he was anxious to find the missing letters before he did so.
He was convinced that these letters were in my aunt's possession, and resolved to search her two most likely hiding-places, the bureau in the boudoir, and the locked drawers in the desk in the drawing-room. He knew that the key that fitted the latter, in common with other household keys, was kept in a small recess in the bureau. The key of the bureau my aunt kept with her permanently. To begin with he had no notion how he was to get possession of this key, and even thought of breaking open the bureau, so intent was he on carrying out his project. When, however, my aunt suggested asking me for the week-end, and mentioned that she wished for my advice as to her investments, he thought it might be possible to obtain access to the bureau through me. She was suddenly so eager for me to see her investment book that it was easy to persuade her (in part by seeming to oppose her) to let me have it after she had gone to bed. He hoped that she would give him the key outright, but when he found that it was to be passed on to me in an envelope he had to contrive to get it from me. As to this, my guesses in the "Case against Hannibal Cartwright" were fairly accurate, except that he had had no hand in the event which prevented me from sleeping in the spare room. Indeed he would have preferred that I should sleep there, so that there would have been less risk of my hearing him in the boudoir. My aunt was a very heavy sleeper, and he had little fear that he would awaken her. I was wrong in thinking him responsible for the scantiness of my bed-clothes, which was merely a piece of bad housekeeping, but right in supposing that he deliberately sent the telegram to my private address so as to delay my arrival at Macebury. There was, of course, the chance that my landlady would telephone the contents of the telegram to my office, but this he had to risk. Besides, he sent it as late as he dared. I was right also in my guess that Aunt Catherine had herself told him of her purchase of the bottle. "You can tell Anne," she had said on Saturday morning before our visit to the town, "that I got her that French pick-me-up at Bales' yesterday." Evidently she had not cared for him to know that she was taking it herself.
"You know the rest," he said. "I was waiting till you'd gone to sleep, but when you slipped downstairs you gave me a good opportunity. I got the key and nipped back to my room. I didn't dare to go to the boudoir till after two."
"Tell me exactly what happened then," I asked. "Did you wear gloves?"
"Of course not. I never thought the police would be dragged into it. When yer aunt found I'd taken back my own letters, she couldn't say anything, could she?"
"No. Did you find the letters?"
"The first thing I looked for was the keys of the drawing-room desk. I thought that, as you were allowed to rummage in the bureau, it wasn't likely that the letters would be lying about in a pigeon-hole. Anyhow, it was safer to search downstairs. I found the keys in a sort of ink-well—only there wasn't an ink-pot in it—underneath the blotter. I remember the bottle was there too, but I didn't pay much attention to it at the time. When I'd got the keys, I went down to the drawing-room and found the letters quite easily. They were in the second left-hand drawer of the desk. After that I put the keys back in the ink-well in the bureau, and shut the lid, without bothering much about the exact position of the bottle and blotter, etc. All I'd got to do then was to get the bureau key back to you. I managed that, as you guessed, when I came in to ask you about your bath. As to the bottle, Malcolm, I swear again that I never did any more than just move it out of the way. I never opened it, or tampered with it at all."
"And the wrapper?"
"I never thought about the wrapper."
"But I pointed it out to you in the drawing-room fender."
"If you did, I was so dazed, I didn't take it in. You see, I hadn't any idea that the wrapper was of any account at all."
"Then who took the wrapper?"
At this, my uncle was silent for a few minutes.
XV
The New Situation
(Monday. 1.30 a.m.)
I SEEM, during this visit to Otho House, several times to have been summing up the situation with an air of finality, only to find that before I had a chance of testing my theories a new set of facts confronted me. My thoughts were slower than events. On hearing my uncle's story, and being persuaded of his innocence, I should have liked at least a couple of hours with pencil and paper so as to remodel my ideas. I was, in spite of my attack of faintness, very wide awake, and fairly lucid in mind, and if left to myself might have made some progress. But my uncle was sitting miserably in my room, and I had to try to give him advice and comfort.
"You realise," I said, "the great thing we've got to decide is whether we're to tell your story to the police or not. These letters that you've been so bothered by aren't of much importance now. In any case, they weren't evidence against you, and even if they had been, there isn't any question of divorce any longer. Evidently you left finger-marks on the bureau, and the police know it. Presumably you didn't leave them on the bottle, or they'd have arrested you."
He winced, and I went on, "This must have puzzled them a lot at first. The fact that your finger-prints were found everywhere except on the bottle was a point in your favour, unless they took it for a very clever piece of bluff, and supposed that you deliberately didn't put gloves on till you
touched the bottle. Their view must have altered when I told them about the wrapper. You almost certainly left finger-prints on the wrapper, and if they find it—"
"I'm done for, you mean?"
"No. But you'll have to tell your full story."
"Which they won't believe."
"They wouldn't, perhaps—but their judgment isn't final."
"Malcolm, is there any chance of my getting away?"
"Absolutely none. It would make things look far worse, if you tried. You'd certainly be caught, and there'd be much less likelihood of a jury accepting your version. I'm sure everything will come right in the end—after all, there are probably other clues the police know of and we don't—but in the meanwhile, we must both stay here and wait. Now, I don't want to frighten you, but if you are arrested I think it will be best for you to say nothing at all till you've seen a solicitor. I'll get hold of a good one for you. If the police question you, don't make any kind of statement or admission, and simply say that you reserve your defence. After all, there's nothing so very terrible in being arrested. Very often, I believe, they arrest the innocent so as to throw the criminal off his guard."
I let my uncle digest this crumb of comfort for a few minutes, and then asked, "How much do you suppose Dace knew of your relations with Jessie?"
"Well, I should have said, nothing at all."
"Mightn't he either have spied on you—or been told by the girl?"
"I was pretty careful. I don't think he could have seen anything. And Jessie didn't like him. He tried to—make up to her once, but she wasn't having any."
"Was that before or after you—became friendly with her?"
"Soon after, I think."
"Do you know if Dace knew Jessie's family—brother Alf, for instance?"
"I don't think so. Jessie didn't speak of him as if she had known of him before they met here."
"If it is Dace who stole your letters, we ought to be able to trace his finger-marks on them, and perhaps on your attache-case too. Unless he's an ex-criminal, it's unlikely he'd have worn gloves. I think we'd better get a private detective to attend to that part of the business for us. I can't cope with finger-prints myself, can you?"
"No."
"Now the wrapper. I assume it wasn't accidentally destroyed. Who had an opportunity of taking it? Obviously I had, but I didn't. In fact I threw it into the fender myself. You had, but, unfortunately—or it may be fortunately—you didn't. Who else? Any of the indoor staff? At first sight it looks as if the person who took the wrapper must have been the murderer. We can take it, I think, that anyone who left prints on the wrapper must have left prints on the bureau—
except for people, such as the assistant at Bales', who may have touched the bottle before it came into Aunt Catherine's possession. If there are other people's prints besides ours on the bureau, we may be sure the police will be on the track. So that if the murderer took the wrapper, he will have destroyed it, unless—"
I stopped for a moment. I had been about to say, "unless the murderer is particularly brilliant and is able to remove his finger-prints and leave yours!" but I thought it better not to alarm my uncle with such a horrible possibility.
"Ten to one," I went on, "the murderer took the wrapper and destroyed it. Thus, as far as the police go, they will probably have at least three sets of prints on the bureau, and no wrapper to rule any of them out by negative evidence. This should leave you, me and the unknown equally suspect, except that I've accounted for my prints by a story which they must have found fairly credible, and you, so far from accounting for your prints told a few lies which they can disprove. But you had a pretty good reason for your lies, and when everything comes out they oughtn't to carry much weight."
"Should I make a clean breast of everything, right away?"
"I shouldn't, till you've seen a solicitor. There'll be plenty of time. Of course, we suspect Dace of having taken the wrapper, just as we suspect him of having stolen your letters. Do we suspect him of having murdered Aunt Catherine?"
"I should like to."
"So should I. But why should he do it?"
"Does he get a legacy, I wonder?"
"Yes. By the way, Uncle Hannibal, I'm going to break a vow and tell you that, according to Bob, you get about ten thousand pounds under the will. I wish it had been more. Don't say I told you."
"It's as much as I'd hoped for, if not more. I only hope— I'm spared to enjoy it."
"Of course you will be. But about Dace. He may have done the murder for his legacy, but I happen to know that if Aunt Catherine had lived, she would have made a new will, giving him a much bigger legacy. . . ."
