Greg surveyed him thoughtfully, and then turned to look at Em. ‘That your opinion too, Em?’
‘No, of course not,’ said Em crossly. ‘I’m no fool. Or at least, not so big a fool as Hector is making himself out to be. Lawyers! Bah! The only useful advice that any lawyer could give any of us is to speak the truth and stop behaving as though we had something to hide.’
‘If that is to my address,’ flared Hector, ‘I have nothing to hide! Nothing! But I still say——’
‘Be quiet, Hector.’ Mabel had not raised her voice, but the three softly spoken words were drops of ice, and they froze Hector’s torrent of words as ice will freeze Niagara.
No one had ever heard Mabel use that tone before; or had believed her capable of it. And Hector’s instant and instinctive reaction to it was equally surprising. He stood for a moment with his mouth open, looking like some large and foolish fish, and then he shut it hurriedly and sat down, and thereafter only spoke when he was spoken to.
Mabel said composedly: ‘You must forgive us, Greg. We are all a little upset. Of course we will answer any questions that we can. We all know that you are only here to help, and that it cannot be any less unpleasant for you than it is for us. I suppose you want to know all about the picnic? Why we went and how we went, and when. And what we ate, and things like that.’
Greg shook his head. ‘I know that already. I heard it last night from both Drew and Eden. No. I want to know about the knife. And about the bottle of iodine. Em, you used the knife on Markham’s arm, didn’t you? Whose was it?’
Em met his gaze squarely and with composure, and replied without the least hesitation. ‘My own.’
The two words were as coldly and quietly spoken as Mabel’s had been, but they produced an even more startling effect. There was an audible and almost simultaneous gasp from several throats: a sound that might have been relief or apprehension or shock, and Eden spoke for the first time since they had entered the drawing-room:
‘Gran, are you sure?’
‘Of what?’ enquired Em, continuing to look blandly at Greg Gilbert. ‘That it was my knife, or that I know what I’m doing? The answer to both is “yes”.’
For the first time that morning Mr Gilbert lost his calm. A flush of colour showed red in his tanned cheeks and his mouth and eyes opened in angry astonishment. ‘Then why,’ he demanded dangerously, ‘did you say yesterday that you didn’t know whose it was?’
‘Did I?’ enquired Em blandly. ‘I can’t have been thinking. We were all a bit——’
‘Upset!’ interrupted Greg savagely. ‘So I have already heard. Now look here, Em, I’m not going to have any of this nonsense. That wasn’t your knife, and you know it. Whose was it? You won’t do any good to anyone by playing the heroine and telling lies to cover up for someone else.’
‘You mean for Eden,’ said Em calmly. ‘But he never carries a knife. Only a silly little gold penknife arrangement on a chain that Alice gave him one Christmas. And I doubt if you’ll find any bloodstains or arrow poison on that.’
For a moment it looked as though Mr Gilbert were about to lose his temper as explosively as Hector Brandon had done, but he controlled himself with a visible effort, and said quite quietly: ‘I am not going to warn you of the consequences of deliberately obstructing the police, because you must be well aware of them. You also don’t give a damn for the police or anyone else, do you? You’re like too many of the Old Guard in that. You think that you can be a law unto yourselves. But that’s where you’re wrong. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.’
He looked round at the ring of strained faces and added grimly: ‘And that goes for all of you. You cannot let a murderer escape justice just because you happen to know him, or he is a relative or a friend. I do not believe that knife belonged to Lady Emily. The way I heard it, she asked for a knife and was handed one. Quite possibly she did not notice at the time who handed it to her, and she certainly told Stratton yesterday that she did not know whose it was. She has now, for reasons of her own, decided that it was hers. But there were half a dozen of you watching her, and one of you must remember where she was standing and who was next to her; and if the knife was not her own, one of you must have given it to her. That person had better speak up at once.’
No one spoke, and the silence lengthened out and filled with sullenness and strain and taut emotions, until suddenly and unexpectedly Eden laughed. It was an entirely genuine laugh and therefore the more startling. He leant back in his chair with his hands in his pockets, and said lightly:
‘“Hands up the boy who broke that window!” It’s no use Greg. This isn’t the Fifth Form at St Custards, and you can’t gate the entire class for a month if the culprit won’t own up. Maybe that knife really was Gran’s.’
‘Maybe,’ said Greg sceptically. ‘Very well, then. If it was, let’s have a description of it.’
‘Certainly,’ said Em briskly. ‘It was a three-bladed knife that once belonged to Kendall. It had a horn handle with his initials cut on it, and the small blade had been broken off short. I often take it with me when I go picnicking or shooting. It’s very useful. I had it in my pocket.’
‘I see,’ said Greg through shut teeth. ‘Can you confirm that, Eden?’
Eden had been looking at his grandmother with an expression that was something between doubt and the effort to recall an elusive memory, and he started slightly on being addressed, and said hurriedly: ‘Yes. Yes of course I can. It generally stays in the hall drawer. I’ve seen it a hundred times.’
‘And it was the knife your grandmother cut Markham’s arm with?’
Eden’s face changed as though a mask had dropped over it, and he said in an entirely expressionless voice: ‘I’m afraid I don’t remember. If she says it was, then presumably it was. We were all looking at Gilly at the time.’
‘Were you!’ said Mr Gilbert grimly. And he turned again to Em: ‘What did you do with it after that?’
‘I put it down – or else I threw it on one side. I’m not sure.’
‘And poured iodine on the wound? I’d like to hear about that.’
Em described the incident in some detail, but professed not to remember what she had done with the bottle.
‘Then you didn’t hand it back to Mrs Brandon?’
‘I don’t think so. I probably just dropped it too. It was empty.’
Mabel Brandon dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief and blew her nose with determination, and looking across at Em she smiled a little tremulously and said, ‘Thank you, Em. I – I know you do remember, and that you’re only saying that to keep me out of it. But I’m not going to hide behind you. She did give it back to me, Greg. I took it from her and put it down somewhere, and I didn’t think of it again until Drew asked me what I’d done with it.’
Greg turned slowly and looked at Em, and it was noticeable that she returned his look with less assurance.
‘Well, Em?’ said Greg softly.
Em’s mouth twisted into a wry and somewhat shamefaced smile.
‘I’m sorry Greg. Yes, I knew Mabel had taken it. But I also know that she didn’t kill Gilly, and I can’t see that she need get mixed up in this horrible business just because she always carries around a bottle of iodine in case of accidents.’
‘That,’ said Greg, still softly, ‘is the point. She always carries one, and everyone knows it. And that is why this may be a Mau Mau killing after all.’
‘What!’ The exclamation came loudly and simultaneously from half a dozen throats, and in a flash the atmosphere in the room changed as though a current of electricity had been switched off, and muscles that had been tense with strain and apprehension relaxed in sudden relief.
‘I knew it!’ cried Lisa; and began to sob loudly. ‘I knew it would be all right!’
Em turned to gaze at her in disapproval, and observed coldly that she was glad that Lisa considered that everything was now all right: it was at least an original view of the case.
‘I didn’t mean
Gilly being dead,’ sobbed Lisa. ‘Of course that’s awful. It’s just that I thought Greg might find out——’
‘Lisa!’ said Drew sharply and compellingly.
He had not spoken before, and his intervention checked Lisa, who gulped and turned to look at him.
‘Whatever you were going to say – don’t,’ said Drew; and grinned at Greg Gilbert’s furious face. ‘Sorry, Greg, but I’m against shooting sitting birds. And in any case, from your last remark I gather we may all be out of the red, though I don’t quite see how you can involve the Mau Mau in this one.’
Mr Gilbert said ominously: ‘If you prompt anyone, or interrupt anyone again, Stratton, I shall get you ten days in the cells, if I get the sack for it!’
‘And I’ll go quiet,’ promised Drew equably. ‘What is this Mau Mau angle?’
‘I should have thought it was obvious enough,’ said Greg coldly. ‘Hector is still doing a lot of useful interrogation work, and someone may have been laying for him – or for his wife or son. It would have been easy enough to substitute a solution of arrow poison for the iodine, and the next time any of them had a cut or a scratch Mabel would have doctored it from that bottle, and that would have been that. It’s a possibility that we can’t ignore.’
‘And the knife?’ enquired Em crisply.
‘Same thing. Except – if it was your knife – it might conceivably have been a trap laid for either you or Eden.’
‘No. Not for us,’ said Em thoughtfully. ‘The dogs. I have often used it to cauterize sores on the dogs, and it would have got one of them. Like – like Simba.’
Mabel said: ‘So Gilly was killed by mistake. It should have been Hector or Ken – or me! Or one of Em’s dogs.’
‘Or the first person you happened to doctor with iodine or who happened to cut themselves on my knife – and who might just as well have been an African,’ pointed out Em dryly. ‘It sounds very far-fetched to me, and it still doesn’t explain the disappearance of the knife and the bottle. Where does that fit in?’
‘It doesn’t,’ confessed Greg. ‘It doesn’t even fit in with my own theory of the crime.’
‘And what is your theory? Or do you prefer to keep us in the dark?’ enquired Em acidly.
Greg looked meditatively at the carpet for a minute or two without speaking, and then allowed his gaze to travel with deliberation along the half circle of intent faces that watched him so anxiously. And it is doubtful if he missed even the smallest change in any one of them.
He said slowly: ‘No. There is no reason why I should not tell you, for although I believe that I am right, I can’t prove it. I think that Gilly Markham died from the effects of arrow poison, and that his murder was carefully planned in advance. Everyone here, and everyone in the Rift for that matter, knew that he drank too much and could be trusted to drink too much even at a picnic, provided the drink was there; which it was. I believe that someone took a dead puff adder to Crater Lake yesterday, and sometime during the afternoon, while Gilly was asleep, placed it beside him and gave him a jab in the arm with some sort of pronged instrument that had been liberally coated with arrow poison. Something that would leave a wound similar to the mark of a snake’s fangs.’
Lisa was the first person to speak. She said in a strained voice that was barely a whisper: ‘But – why that way? The snake?’
‘Because although arrow poison is not detectable in an autopsy, there might well have been some of it left outside the wound. Enough to prove that it had been used. But the first thing anyone does when dealing with a snake-bite is to make a deep cut on or just above it. That’s why it had to be a snake; because the murderer could count on someone removing the evidence in double quick time. It would not matter who did it as long as it was done – and of course it was done. That disposed of any superfluous poison, and the snake was an equally easy bet. No one stops to see if a snake is alive if it is found lying curled up in a life-like attitude beside a sleeping person. They take a bash at it with the first thing that comes handy, and the blows would have made it appear to be moving. Also, no one is going to pay very close attention to it when there is a dying man to attend to. So you see, it would have been fairly foolproof.’
‘But you said it could have been the knife,’ whispered Lisa. ‘Or the iodine. You said so!’
‘It could have been. Because those two things have inexplicably disappeared. But it is far more likely that the poison was administered at least half an hour before either of those things were used. Acocanthera frequently produces vomiting, and your husband had been sick. He was also found in a state of coma just after three-thirty.’
Mabel’s hands twisted together against the skirt of her crumpled cotton frock, and she said distressfully: ‘Oh no! – Oh, I do hope not! I mean – I heard him. Being sick. If I had gone to him at once I might have been able to do something. But I thought – well, he had had too much to drink, and I thought it would be better to keep away. If only I had gone!’
‘It wouldn’t have done any good. Not if my theory is correct. There’s no antidote.’
‘But you can’t be right!’ said Mabel, suddenly sitting bolt upright. ‘No, of course you can’t be. You can’t jab someone in the arm without waking them up. He would have cried out. I should have heard him. And,’ she concluded triumphantly, ‘I didn’t! I didn’t hear a sound, and neither did Em. Did you, Em?’
‘I’m afraid I was asleep,’ confessed Em reluctantly. ‘I didn’t even hear him being sick, and I certainly wouldn’t have gone to him if I had.’
Greg said: ‘Markham was sleeping off a fairly outsize dose of alcohol; and before the discovery of anaesthetics it was the accepted thing to give a man half a bottle of whisky to drink before an operation or an amputation – to deaden the pain. If the jab was a quick one it might have done no more than jerk him awake for a few seconds, and the chances are that he would have dozed off again at once. What is it, Miss Caryll?’
‘N-nothing,’ stammered Victoria, startled. ‘I d-didn’t say anything.’
‘But you thought of something, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. I – it was nothing, really. It was only that while I was standing by the lake yesterday I heard someone snoring, and then they made a noise as though they had been woken up suddenly. You know. A – a sort of snort. I thought it was Gil – Mr Markham. But after a bit the snoring started again.’
‘Hmm,’ said Greg. ‘What time was that?’
‘I’ve no idea. Somewhere between half-past two and three I suppose.’
Greg turned to Mabel and asked her if she had also heard such a sound, and Mabel, looking a trifle conscience-striken, admitted to having dozed, though she had been woken later by hearing Gilly retching. ‘But I didn’t do anything about it. I remember thinking “Really! Poor Lisa.” Or something like that, and the next thing I remember was Hector telling me to wake up because it was time we were going.’
‘Hmm,’ said Greg again, and was silent for so long that the tension became too much for Ken Brandon. His control cracked under the strain of that silence and his voice cracked with it:
‘It’s no good looking at me! I didn’t go near him. I swear I didn’t! I didn’t even touch him. None of us did – only Stratton and Lady Emily. I’m not going to sit here and be accused of – of things, just because I threw away a dead snake! Dad was quite right. You haven’t any right to do this. We aren’t under arrest, and I’m going!’
He stood up clenching and unclenching his hands, and looking, for all his nineteen years, less like an Angry Young Man than a small boy who has flown into a temper to hide his fright.
‘Oh no, Kennie darling!’ moaned Mabel, wringing her hands. ‘Don’t talk like that. Of course you didn’t go near Gilly, darling. Greg knows that. We all know it. Stay here, darling. Please!’
Greg said patiently: ‘Sit down, Ken. You’re only making an ass of yourself, and I haven’t accused anyone of anything.’
‘Yet!’ mimicked Ken savagely. ‘That’s what you said before,
isn’t it? “Yet!” But you will, won’t you? Even though you haven’t a shred of evidence! Even though you admit yourself that Gilly may have died of a heart attack. And what do you base your precious theory on? The fact that a knife and an empty bottle have been lost or mislaid. Why, they’re probably both still there, trodden into the grass by your flat-footed, bone-headed askaris!’
‘Oh no, Kennie. Don’t, dear,’ sobbed Mabel in a monotonous moaning whisper. But Ken Brandon was beyond listening to reason or his mother’s pleas, and the words poured out of him in a childish spate of nervous rage:
‘What the hell does it matter if they aren’t found? You’ve as good as admitted that there’s nothing wrong with either of them, haven’t you? Haven’t you? And that if Gilly was poisoned, it was done half an hour before anyone used the knife or the iodine on him, which means that it doesn’t matter a damn if they’re found or not. And yet you can produce a footling thing like that and call it evidence of murder! If that’s all the evidence you’ve got, then you haven’t got a case at all. Not a shadow of a case! – and no right in the world to haul us in here and talk like this to us.’
He paused for breath, and Greg said mildly:
‘I told you that the disappearance of those two things didn’t square with any theory. But that is why I am interested in them: or rather, in why someone thought fit to remove them, and is now lying about it. There must be a reason for that, and it is my guess that whoever made away with them suspected murder – and the murderer – and having a shrewd idea as to how it had been done, jumped to the same conclusion that both Stratton and Lady Emily arrived at: that if it was Acocanthera, it was either on the knife or in the iodine bottle – and therefore hid them. But if it was murder, then the one person who would not have done that is the murderer; because such an action could only lead to suspicion of murder in what might possibly have passed as death from snake-bite, or, if questions were asked and an autopsy performed, from a heart attack due to heavy drinking. I am quite sure in my own mind that there was nothing wrong with either the knife or the iodine, and when we eventually find them we shall be able to prove it. That is why I am asking whoever made away with them to own up to it now. It must be one of you, and as it cannot possibly be the murderer, all that you are being asked to do is to clear yourself. And at the same time to help clear whoever it was that you suspected of doctoring either of those two things.’