The Lord Have Mercy, page 12
Only the merest bread-and-butter things could be mentioned without rousing thoughts of the dead woman. The two women avoided one another’s eyes. Crispin was matter of fact; Naomi subdued. To watch Crispin muffled into her arid grief made her feel oddly guilty. It was dreadful not to know what she was thinking. Naomi had the silly notion that in some way Crispin held her to blame for Editha’s death and it made her cringe inside.
Had Editha’s death been natural, Crispin’s attitude might have been very different, but she could not get away from the mysterious circumstances surrounding it. She needed desperately to talk about it with someone, but not with Ryder, she could not bear to speak of it to Ryder. Yet there was one other person who must be feeling as she felt, one other person whose sense of loss was comparable to her own. Their mutual loss created, in her mind, a bond of sympathy between them. She forgot that she had always despised him; all her detestation was wiped out.
A south-westerly gale rattled the windows of the old stone house, gusts of rain trickling like tears down the panes. The house looked unspeakably dreary, as if it had been deserted for years. The trees sighed round the house, their bending branches ushering the wind first this way and then that, the leaves clattering stiffly together in protest. Roses hung dejected and sodden, scattering their petals in sudden bursts over the path. The desolation was reflected in Dr. Mansbridge’s face as he approached his home. It was the sort of day when one longs for the comfort of a leaping fire and a fat brown teapot warming on the hearth, and there would be neither for him. Wearily he let himself into the house and found Miss Crispin waiting for him in the cold drawing-room. He almost showed his surprise in his face.
She was standing in the middle of the room with a feverishly tense expression.
“Won’t you sit down?” he said politely. He rubbed his cold hands together and looked vaguely round, but the fire was unlaid.
Crispin walked over to the empty grate, turned her back on it and locked her hands behind her.
She said abruptly, “You are wondering why I have come to see you.”
“Not a professional visit, I take it.”
“I wanted to speak to you.” She stopped, as if the words baulked at being thrust out of her mouth. He watched her with his detached professional gaze. “About – Editha” she added with difficulty.
“Oh, yes?” he said pleasantly. “You were a friend of hers, I believe.”
She walked over to the window and stared out at the vext garden trees tossing in grief. It took her a moment to control her lips. She pressed her fingers against her mouth, and gazed beyond the blurred pane.
“I want to know how she died” she said at last.
“It seems that is something we shall never know” said Dr. Mansbridge.
At that she turned, angered at his quiet, complacent tone.
“And are you satisfied with that?” she cried, thrusting her shaking fists deep into her pockets. “Because I’m not.”
Dr. Mansbridge said, but quite inoffensively:
“Forgive me, but I fail to see what business it is of yours.”
She said on a note of rage and contempt:
“It is the business of every decent person to see that justice is done to the dead!”
“Justice?” he repeated wonderingly, eyeing her with one brow raised that reminded her oddly of his dead wife.
“Yes, justice,” she asserted. “Apparently you are content to leave your wife’s memory under this ugly cloud.”
“I’m afraid I am very dense, but I don’t seem to understand” he said on a frigid note.
Crispin raked her hair with her lean fingers. She was making a muck of it, with her ungovernable passion for justice – for a justice never obtainable in this world. The last thing she wanted was to put him against her. She needed his co-operation. Till now she had not supposed she would have to win his help, rather had she taken it for granted that he would welcome her support and succinct argument. She began awkwardly to apologize – always a difficult role for her.
“We must not quarrel” She made a gesture towards him with her hand. “I only want...”
“Suppose we sit down, then” he offered with a shadowy smile.
She would have preferred to continue restlessly pacing the room, but she seated herself unwillingly on the edge of an arm of one of the chairs. She leaned towards him, her strained blue eyes willing him to sincerity.
“Let us be frank with one another, Dr. Mansbridge: you must know that she could never have taken that stuff by mistake?”
He took out his cigarette-case and offered it to her. She shook her head. He lit his own cigarette and blew out a cloud of smoke before he answered.
“If it happened, it could have happened; but I admit I don’t know how it could have occurred.”
“It would have to mean that she mistook the capsules for something else, wouldn’t it? How could she? Those capsules are quite unmistakable. Aren’t they?” she pressed him.
“Suppose I agree that it couldn’t have been an accident,” Dr. Mansbridge said quietly. “Do you understand that the alternatives are suicide or murder?”
“I don’t accept the idea of suicide,” Crispin said quickly. “I am certain as I’ve ever been of anything that your wife didn’t kill herself.”
“Oh? May one ask what makes you so sure?”
“I know it,” she said, watching him.
He said lightly, “From evidence? Or merely inner conviction?”
Unsmiling, Crispin said, “Inner conviction is evidence too – evidence based on one’s knowledge of the person’s character.”
He said in the same almost jesting tone:
“And when such convictions about the character conflict, what then?”
“Meaning that you knew Editha better than I did?”
“She was my wife” he pointed out. “One can hardly live with a person for eighteen years without learning a little about them.”
Such ridiculous assurance was enough to make her smile if she had not been in such desperate earnest.
She said harshly:
“And you think she killed herself?”
He said coldly, “All that was gone into at the inquest. I do not propose to go over it again.” But she fancied that his hand shook as he pressed out his cigarette.
“I shall never believe it” she cried, knotting her bony hands together. “Never!”
“Then let us leave it at that, shall we?” he said with an air of relief, getting to his feet.
Crispin stood up too, but not to take her leave.
“No” she said. “I won’t leave it at that. I can’t. I must know.” She looked at him boldly. “Why don’t you want to discuss it with me? What are you afraid of finding out?”
“Afraid?” he said, astonished. “Has it not occurred to you that the subject is painful to me? It is particularly distasteful to talk of with a stranger. I’m sorry,” he added in a dismissive manner.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said, “that you should regard me as merely prying and impertinent. I too find it painful... It is only because I was so fond of your wife...” she turned abruptly away and went over to the window, biting her lip. “Surely it is more painful still not to know the truth?” she said after a while.
“The truth?” he said wryly.
She turned, and their eyes met in a long steady glance like wrestlers struggling for supremacy.
“You would prefer to believe that she committed suicide,” Crispin said incredulously. “Well, I will swear before God she never did. Only the day before she was making plans for the future.”
He went so far as to say, “Many suicides do the same. It is a well-known psychological projection.”
“Oh, my God, is it possible that you really believe such nonsense yourself?” she cried contemptuously. “Are you telling me that after you had left her quietly lying down, she got up again and went to the bathroom, took six capsules (and why then didn’t she take the whole lot? That’s what suicides generally do, isn’t it? They want to be sure of taking enough to make a good job of it, so at least I’ve always understood. However, she didn’t. She took only six), and then carefully put the other three back in the box and the box into the cupboard, and then went back to her room, lay down on the bed again and went on reading her book and eating sweets as though nothing had happened? Was that just psychological projection too?” she scornfully asked.
He said flatly, “It is simply a possibility that cannot be dismissed without further evidence. If it had not been so, doubtless a different verdict would have been returned.”
Crispin said, “What is conclusive evidence? I had a letter from her written on the day she died.” She cast a quick defiant glance sideways at him. “I wouldn’t betray her confidence even now if I didn’t feel obliged to show you that she couldn’t have been contemplating suicide. She wrote asking me to lend her some money.”
“Yes?” Dr. Mansbridge said politely towards the austere profile silhouetted against the window. “She wanted to borrow a hundred pounds, I suppose?”
This time it was Crispin who was taken aback.
“Then you knew?”
Dr. Mansbridge regarded the nails on his left hand.
“Did she happen to mention why she wanted it?” he asked in a carefully indifferent voice.
Crispin shook her head.
“No. But that’s neither here nor there. What it does show is that death couldn’t have been in her thoughts, or why ask for money? If I had refused her...? But she was dead before I received the letter. So it wasn’t despair, was it?”
Dr. Mansbridge drummed his fingers impatiently against the side of his chair.
“But, my dear lady, to what is all this leading?”
She said in surprise, “Why, just this: if she didn’t take an overdose of the barbiturate deliberately, and she didn’t take it by mistake... what is left?”
“Only murder,” he said in an even tone.
“Only murder,” she gravely repeated.
With a tired attempt at irony Dr. Mansbridge said, “You regard that as a preferable alternative?”
“No. But I happen to believe it is the truth.”
He said sharply, “Very well. Now I will ask you a question. Why should anyone have wanted to murder my wife?”
Crispin made a small helpless gesture.
“If we knew the answer to that there would be no problem.”
“Who is there” he persisted, “in this quiet little village full of the most ordinary and respectable people, who could possibly have wanted her out of the way?” He got up and fumbled along the chimney shelf for the matches. He stood there, leaning one elbow on the shelf, and rocked the fender slightly with his foot: “Can’t you see how utterly incredible the idea is?”
“Disagreeable, but not incredible.”
“Editha hadn’t an enemy in the world.” The match flickered in his fingers and he bent his head to meet it.
“That’s not true. We all of us have enemies, even the saints among us. There were many people who disliked Editha.”
“Oh, come, Miss Crispin!” he said with a faint laugh. “Now you are talking like a schoolgirl. Backbiting and ill-nature, you know, don’t lead to murder.”
She flushed.
“You are being wilfully obtuse. I suppose because you are trying to shirk your responsibility.”
“What do you want me to do?” he said, carefully knocking his ash into the empty grate.
“Find the murderer.”
He looked up startled, to meet her stony blue eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“Find the murderer,” she repeated, watching him.
He was caught between irritation and an insensate desire to laugh. He rubbed a hand across his face. The woman was fantastic!
“But, my dear Miss Crispin, really, you talk as if this was some fatuous detective story in which I am to be the prancing amateur nosing behind the scenes. In real life such people do not exist, I assure you.”
“You consider it a matter for mockery?” she coldly said.
“If I took your suggestion seriously I’m afraid it would make me angry.”
“Why should it?” she said in the same icy tone.
“Miss Crispin, I am a very hard-worked doctor. What time do you suppose I have for such nonsense? You really expect me to go out looking for a murderer in whose existence I scarcely believe? I’m afraid I wouldn’t have a clue how to go about it, in any sense of the word.”
“You jump ahead of me, I never suggested you should search for the murderer yourself. That would be foolish indeed” she said with a sarcastic smile.
“What do you mean then?”
“You could go to the police and tell them that you are not satisfied.”
“So far as the police are concerned the case is closed.”
“Tell them to open it again. If they won’t, go over their heads to Scotland Yard.”
He stared at her. With a feeling of exhaustion, he thought, But this woman is dangerous!
“Of course I shall do no such thing,” he assured her decisively. “If you knew my wife as well as you say, you would know that there could be nothing she would more bitterly resent than a squalid inquiry built round her name. She would not care to have her memory perpetuated like that, believe me, as a sordid subject for investigation in the criminal courts with all its malicious interpretation of past acts.”
“I think it is yourself you are considering,” Crispin said slyly.
“Yes, that too,” he agreed. “It has all been quite painful enough for me. It does a doctor no good to be talked about... All this conjecture,” he made a gesture. “Nothing anyone can discover will make any difference. It will not bring Editha back.”
“We see it differently. Perhaps that’s inevitable,” she said, buttoning her jacket.
“Yes.” He held the door open for her, and as she passed through it, he said, “If you propose to make amateur investigations yourself, you might begin at home.”
She halted and said stiffly:
“What do you mean?”
With a cool little bow, Dr. Mansbridge said, “Ask the friend you live with what she was doing here on the morning my wife died.”
“I don’t understand. What could she have been doing?”
“I’ve no idea,” he said pleasantly. “Only, I saw her face as she left, and it was not the face of a woman who had merely been paying a friendly call.”
*
Each time that Ryder became aware of Crispin’s puzzled gaze resting on her she found herself looking away uneasily: an apprehension that communicated itself to Crispin; it did seem almost as though Ryder had something to conceal.
Ryder, fidgeting in her chair, at last looked up from the book of silver marks she was studying to ask: “Is anything the matter?”
Crispin said casually, “No. What should be?”
“You keep staring at me.”
“Do I?” said Crispin, intent on piercing the end of a cigar. “I suppose I must have been wondering,” she said, with a rapid glance from the corner of her eye at the other woman, “why you never mentioned that you went to see Editha before she died.”
She watched the colour drain out of Ryder’s face leaving it like old parchment.
“Why should I have?” she muttered, looking down at her book, marking the place with her finger.
“I really can’t see why not. It would seem the normal thing to have spoken of it.”
“There was nothing to say.”
“Then, all the more reason. If there was nothing to hide.”
“Since you made it perfectly plain that you did not want to discuss Editha with me, the opportunity never arose, I simply avoided speaking of it.”
Crispin gave a dry laugh.
“I fancy there must have been rather more to it than that.”
Naomi closed her book and gripped it tightly.
“Exactly what do you mean?”
“It does strike me as excessively curious that you should have gone there on that day when you had never been there before. That in itself is surely odd enough, without concealing it from me and” – she carefully broke the ash of her cigar into the lacquer bowl – “the police.”
Naomi sprang from her chair.
“Now what are you hinting at?” she cried. “Why on earth should I have told the police?”
“You can’t really be so stupid,” Crispin said, observing her agitation. “It must be perfectly obvious that everything which occurred on that day would be of importance to those who were concerned in finding out the truth.”
“You would like to think... How utterly...” Naomi stuttered incoherently, “No, I really can’t...”
“How you jump to conclusions! It’s quite laughable.”
“It is you who are jumping to conclusions,” Naomi interrupted fiercely.
“My dear, I only want to help. Don’t you see?”
“No.”
Crispin said, “Don’t you understand, if I can learn about it quite by chance, so may other people? If I think your secrecy strange, what are other people going to think?” She slipped the great cornelian over her knuckle and stared at the light through it. “Can’t you see, my poor child, the very real danger you are in?”
“You are trying to frighten me,” Naomi said in a flat voice, leaning her shaking hands on the table. She stared across at Crispin, trying to decipher her expression through the column of light which rose through the top of the lampshade. Crispin’s hair gleamed in the shadows beyond the lamp’s mellow circle as she turned her head. “It’s quite senseless, because I have nothing to be afraid of. Nothing at all. You are letting your imagination run away with you.”
“Yes,” agreed the other, “that is what I am afraid of: other people’s imaginations. We should at least,” she went on smoothly, “concoct a feasible story to tell. Why, for instance, did you go there in the first place?”
“You know why,” Naomi said in a low tone, “you must know very well. It was about you, because you were leaving me you said.” She averted eyes dazzled to tears from that luminous golden shaft and stared blindly down at the polished table top, cool against her damp hands. Naomi swallowed. “I wanted at all costs to stop her...to stop her going away with you... That’s all,” she added after a moment, affected by the utter stillness of the other woman.
