‘They aren’t here,’ said Rudolph in an offended voice. ‘Of course, if salted almonds are more important to you than my –’
‘No, but I distinctly remember getting some,’ said Antonia. ‘And if we’ve got some, it seems a pity – However, it doesn’t really matter. Go on about the forgery.’
“There is no forgery. Though God knows I’ve been through such a hell of anxiety about money that it’s a wonder I’m not a forger!’
‘Bad luck!’ said Antonia, with polite but damping sympathy.
Mesurier said in a more natural voice: ‘They’ve found out something. Not that it can harm me. What I mean is, it doesn’t prove I murdered Arnold, though it naturally makes the police suspicious. I – you see Tony, I’ve been in a devil of a jam. Had to raise some cash somehow or other, and raise it quick, so I – sort of borrowed a spot from the firm – Arnold’s firm, you know. Of course, I need hardly tell you it was nothing but a loan, to tide me over, and as a matter of fact I’ve been steadily paying it back. You do understand, don’t you, darling?’
‘Yes, absolutely,’ replied Antonia. ‘You cooked the accounts and Arnold found out. I’ve often wondered how that’s done, by the way. How do you do it, Rudolph?’
He flushed. ‘Please – ! It – this isn’t very pleasant for me, Tony. I ought not to have done it, but I thought I could pay it all back before the next audit. I never dreamed Arnold had his eye on me. Then he sprang it on me – actually on Saturday morning. He was filthily offensive – you know what he could be like! We – we had a bit of a row, and he threatened to take the whole thing into court, largely, I’m afraid, because you’d told him of our engagement, darling. Not that I’m blaming you, but it was rather unfortunate, all things considered. And the devil of it is that we were heard – well – quarrelling – by that foul Miller girl, and, of course, she pitched in a highly exaggerated story to the Superintendent. And on top of that –’ He paused, and studied his well-manicured nails for a moment, a pucker between his brows. ‘The most extraordinary thing,’ he said slowly. ‘I confess I don’t understand it. Some idiot of a village Constable imagines he saw my car ten miles from Hanborough on Saturday night. It’s utterly absurd, of course, but you can see what an ugly complexion it puts on things.’
She sat up suddenly. ‘Rudolph, how did you know which day Arnold was murdered?’
He blinked at her. ‘I don’t understand what you mean.’
‘Yes, you do. On Sunday, when you came here for supper, you said you’d quarrelled with Arnold on the very day he was murdered.’
‘Did I? I expect you’d told me, then. I don’t know how else I could have known.’
‘I wish you’d stop being guarded,’ Antonia complained. ‘If you killed Arnold you might just as well say so, because Kenneth and I don’t mind a bit about that, and we shouldn’t dream of giving you away.’
‘I didn’t kill him. For God’s sake don’t go about talking like that!’
‘Well, what’s all this about your car being seen near Hanborough?’
‘It wasn’t! I mean, I don’t know whether it was or not, but I wasn’t in it. I was in my digs all evening. I can’t prove that, but if they’re going to take one sleepy bobby’s word against mine –’
‘The fact of the matter is none of us can prove anything,’ said Antonia cheerfully. ‘You’ve merely joined the noble army of suspects. Kenneth’ll be rather fed-up if you become chief suspect. He thinks he’s being awfully clever, and I daresay he is. He can be when he likes.’
Rudolph let himself sink down into one of the big armchairs and dropped his head in his hands. ‘You can treat it like a joke, but I tell you it’s damned serious,’ he said, his voice a little unsteady. ‘That Superintendent thinks I did it. He doesn’t believe anything I say. I can see he doesn’t. I don’t know what the hell to do, Tony!’
He sounded helpless, frightened, and although such a mood of panic was alien to her nature she responded at once as well as she could. ‘I shouldn’t worry,’ she said, patting his knee. ‘I’ll ask Giles what he thinks. He’s coming here this evening to talk business with Kenneth. You don’t mind, do you?’
He seemed undecided. ‘He knows anyway,’ he said. ‘Arnold wrote a letter about me to his uncle, and the Superintendent got it. Of course your cousin must have seen it. I don’t know that I exactly mind consulting him, because I haven’t anything to conceal. I mean –’
At this moment the studio door opened, and Giles Carrington came in, accompanied by Kenneth. Antonia greeted him with a friendly smile, but desired her brother to tell her what he had done with Miss Rivers.
‘She pushed off homewards,’ answered Kenneth. ‘Cigarette, Giles? – if there are any, which I doubt.’
‘Oh, well, in that case we can talk!’ said Antonia briskly. ‘Giles, do you know about Rudolph cooking the firm’s accounts, or not?’
‘What?’ ejaculated Kenneth, pausing in his search for the cigarettes, and turning to stare at Mesurier. ‘Actually embezzling funds? Did you really?’
His manner was partly interested, partly critical, and it goaded Rudolph, deeply flushed, to defend himself. His explanation was met with so derisive a laugh that Antonia at once took up the cudgels, and told her brother he needn’t be offensive, because for one reason she wouldn’t put it above him to cook accounts, and for another it had nothing to do with him.
‘Oh yes, it has!’ objected Kenneth. ‘You seem to forget I’m the heir. I daresay I could prosecute, if I wanted to. Not that I do, of course, though I do rather draw the line at embezzling. It’s one thing to bump a man off, but quite another to monkey with his accounts. However, don’t think I’m being captious. I expect it seemed good to you at the time, Rudolph.’
Mesurier said angrily: ‘I don’t care for your tone! I’m willing to admit I shouldn’t have borrowed the money, but when you accuse me of –’
‘My bonny lad, I haven’t accused you of anything,’ said Kenneth, beginning to fill a pipe. ‘Tony said you’d been cooking the firm’s accounts; I merely displayed the proper amount of surprise, interest and disapproval.’
Antonia had drawn her cousin over to the window, and stood there facing him, with one hand lightly grasping his sleeve. She looked gravely up at him and asked quietly: ‘He’s in a mess, isn’t he?’
‘I don’t know, Tony.’
‘Well, I think he is. You will help him, won’t you, Giles?’ He did not answer immediately, and she added after a moment: ‘You see, I’m engaged to be married to him.’
‘That isn’t an inducement to me, Tony.’
Her candid eyes were a trifle puzzled; they searched his unavailingly. ‘Isn’t it?’ she asked, seeking enlightenment.
‘No.’
‘Oh! Well – well – will you do it for me, Giles?’
He looked down at her, and at her hand, still clasping his sleeve. ‘I suppose so, Tony,’ he said in his level way, and glanced across the big room to where Mesurier and Kenneth were arguing. ‘Shut up, Kenneth,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Yes, I know about the letter my cousin wrote before his death, Mesurier. It doesn’t prove, you know, that you had anything to do with his murder.’
‘No,’ agreed Antonia, ‘but the bit about the car is not so good. Tell my cousin, Rudolph; he really is quite helpful.’
Mesurier gave a shrug of his shoulders. ‘Oh, that’s nothing but a ridiculous mistake on the part of the police. Some local bobby imagines he saw my car near Hanborough on the night of the murder, Carrington.’
‘Policemen haven’t got imaginations,’ said Kenneth, who had stretched himself along the sofa, his pipe between his teeth.
Giles was frowning slightly. ‘Where was your car?’ he asked.
‘In the garage, I suppose. I mean, I spent the evening at home.’
‘I see. Can you produce anyone to corroborate that statement?’
‘No, as a matter of fact, I can’t,’ said Mesurier, with a slight uncomfortable laugh. ‘Seems silly, but the truth is I had a ba
d headache and I went to bed early.’
‘You are a rotten liar,’ observed Kenneth lazily. ‘Why bother? We won’t give you away. I might even bestow a suitable reward on you. Or would that be indelicate?’
Giles said rather sternly: ‘Your own story is just as thin, Kenneth.’
‘Admittedly, but I tell it with a much better grace.’
Kenneth pointed out. ‘What do you think, Tony? Did he do it? I don’t believe he had the nerve.’
‘Of course he had the nerve!’ said Antonia indignantly. ‘The trouble with you is that you’re so taken up with admiring your own cleverness in baffling the police that you don’t think anyone else is capable of doing anything.’
Giles, who had ignored this interchange, was looking steadily at Mesurier. ‘When you say that a bobby saw your car on the night of the murder, do you mean that he saw a car of the same make as yours, or that he actually read your number on its plate?’
‘My number,’ Mesurier answered, ‘or so he thinks. But he could easily have muddled it up with another, which is, of course, what he did do.’
‘I can so readily picture our friend the Superintendent lapping that story up,’ remarked Kenneth. ‘Tony, your young man promised well at one time, but he begins to bore me now.’
Giles took out his cigarette-case and opened it. ‘It isn’t for me to question your story, Mesurier. I can only say that if it’s true I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry?’ Rudolph ejaculated. ‘I don’t understand you!’
Giles lit a cigarette and pitched the dead match into the grate. ‘For your sake, very. You had an excellent alibi there, Mesurier.’
‘Alibi? Where?’
‘In the car,’ replied Giles. ‘For if you had been driving your car back to London from Hanborough that night I don’t think you could very well have been the murderer.’
Ten
The effect of this calm pronouncement was slightly ludicrous. Rudolph Mesurier blinked at him in a bewildered manner and said: ‘Then – then I might just as well have admitted I was out? But I don’t understand what you’re driving at!’
‘It is always better to speak the truth,’ said Kenneth smugly. ‘Witness my own masterly conduct of this highly intricate case.’
‘I daresay,’ responded his sister. ‘But did you speak the truth?’
‘That, my love,’ said Kenneth, ‘is for the police to find out.’
‘Oh, I wish you’d shut up!’ Mesurier said, exasperated. ‘It’s all very well for you to lie there and sneer, but I’m in a damned awkward position.’
‘So are we all,’ replied Kenneth, quite unmoved. ‘Moreover, this new development gives Tony a nice, pure motive for murdering Arnold. Tell me, Tony, would you really murder Arnold to protect Rudolph’s fair name?’
‘Yes, of course I would!’ said Antonia bristling. ‘I don’t mean that I approve of him embezzling funds, because, as a matter of fact, I think it’s a poor show, but I wouldn’t let Arnold prosecute him if I could stop it. If it comes to that, wouldn’t you have murdered him for Violet’s sake?’
‘Don’t confuse the motives. I murdered him for the sake of his money. You’ve got the noble motives: and Rudolph’s is the sordid one.’
‘No more sordid than yours!’
‘Oh yes, darling! Comes under the same heading as card-sharping and shop-lifting.’
Giles interposed. ‘Shut up, Kenneth. None of this leads anywhere, and it isn’t particularly pleasant for Mesurier. Were you out in your car on the night of the murder, Mesurier?’
Rudolph looked uncertainly from one to the other. ‘Don’t be coy,’ recommended Kenneth. ‘We all know you were by this time.’
‘Well, as a matter of fact, I was,’ Rudolph said, taking the plunge. ‘That’s what makes it so frightful.’ He began to walk jerkily up and down the studio. ‘When that detective asked me, I denied it. I mean, what else could I do? They can’t prove I was out. It would be absolutely circumstantial evidence, and it seemed to me my best plan was to stick to it that I was at home. Only now you –’ he looked at Giles – ‘say if I was out in my car, I couldn’t have done the murder, so…’ He stopped and gave a nervous little laugh. ‘So now I don’t know what to do.’
‘With any luck,’ remarked Kenneth, ‘we’ll foist this murder on to Rudolph.’
‘I don’t call that funny,’ said Mesurier stiffly.
‘Depends on the point of view. It would be much funnier than having you as a brother-in-law.’
Antonia bounced up out of her chair. ‘Damn, you, shut up!’ she said fiercely. ‘If if comes to that I’d a lot sooner foist the murder on to Violet than have her as a sister-in-law! I don’t see that Rudolph’s any worse than she is.’
‘Thank you, dear,’ said a smooth voice from the doorway. ‘How sweet of you! And what am I supposed to have done?’
Kenneth sat up and swung his legs off the sofa. ‘Darling!’ he said. ‘Come right in and join the party. A good time is being had by all.’
Violet Williams still held the door-knob in one gloved hand. She was charmingly dressed in a flowered frock and a becoming picture hat, and carried a sunshade. She raised her plucked eyebrows and said: ‘Are you sure I shan’t be de trop?’
‘You couldn’t be. Tony was only retaliating in kind. You know Giles, don’t you? Come and sit down, ducky, and listen to the new revelations.’
Mesurier made a movement as of protest, but Antonia very sensibly pointed out to him that Kenneth was bound to tell Violet all about it anyway, so he might as well get it over. As Kenneth’s attention seemed for the moment to be engaged by Violet, who had gone over to the sofa, and was speaking to him in a low voice, Mesurier seized the opportunity to ask Giles why his car should be supposed to constitute an alibi.
‘Well,’ Giles answered, ‘if you murdered Arnold and drove back to Town in your own car, who disposed of Arnold’s car?’
This unfortunately caught Kenneth’s ear, and he instantly said: ‘Accomplice.’
‘I hadn’t got an accom – I mean – Oh, for God’s sake, stop shoving your oar in!’
‘An accomplice, if you like,’ said Giles. ‘But who?’
‘Tony, of course.’
‘Kenneth, dear, you really oughtn’t to say things like that, even in fun,’ Violet reproved him gently.
Antonia, however, was inclined to regard her brother’s suggestion with interest. ‘You mean we hatched the plot between us, and I lured Arnold to the stocks while Rudolph followed in his own car and did him in? That’s no use, because I spent the night at the cottage, and I shouldn’t think I’d have had time to burst up to town again with Arnold’s car and have motored back. Anyway, I didn’t, so that’s out. I knew Giles would think of something.’
Mesurier drew a long breath. ‘What a fool I was not to think of that myself ! Thanks a lot. Of course it absolutely lets me out!’
‘Oh no, it doesn’t!’ said Kenneth. ‘You might have had another accomplice, or tacked your own number-plate on to Arnold’s car.’
‘Too clever,’ objected Antonia. ‘Rudolph would never have thought of anything as wily as that, would you, Rudolph?’
‘That’s the worst of these people who set out to commit a murder and leave everything to chance,’ said Kenneth.
Mesurier decided to ignore this, and, turning to Giles, asked him if he was sure the alibi was good enough. Giles rather damped his optimism by replying that he was not sure of anything.
Violet, who had been playing idly with the clasp of her hand-bag, raised her large, unfathomable eyes to Mesurier’s face, and asked in her well-modulated voice why he had been at Hanborough that night. ‘Please don’t think I’m being impertinent!’ she said. ‘But I couldn’t help wondering. It seems so funny of you, somehow.’
It was plain that her question took him aback, quite plain enough for Kenneth, who mounted on to the back of the sofa and said: ‘Now, infidel, I have you on the hip!’
Mesurier cast him a look of goaded hatred and answered: ??
?I can’t see what that has to do with it.’
This somewhat weak rejoinder had the effect of setting his betrothed against him. Antonia said severely: ‘Giles can’t possibly help you if you’re going to behave like an idiot. You must have had some reason for going to Hanborough that night, and it merely makes you look very fishy if you won’t say what it was.’
‘Very well, then!’ said Mesurier. ‘If you will have it, I went down with a mad idea of throwing myself on Vereker’s generosity, but I thought better of it, and came back again.’
‘The only thing I have to say is that I must have another drink,’ said Kenneth, getting up off the sofa and strolling over to the sideboard. ‘The more I hear of Rudolph’s story the more convinced I am that we can push all the blood-guilt on to him with very little trouble.’ He measured out a whisky-and-soda. ‘Anyone else have a drink?’ As no one answered, he raised his own glass to his lips, drank half the whisky, and came back to the sofa. ‘The theory I’m working on at the moment is that Arnold’s car never left London,’ he said.
Antonia frowned. ‘Yes, but that means he must have motored down with Rudolph, and he wouldn’t have.’
‘Of course he wouldn’t, and, considering all things, who shall blame him? The point is that Rudolph murdered him first.’
‘Oh, how ghastly!’ shuddered Violet. ‘Please don’t!’
Mesurier was looking rather pale and very angry.
‘Very clever!’ he said. ‘And pray, how do you account for the fact that there are no bloodstains in my car?’
Kenneth took another drink. ‘You wrapped the body in an old mackintosh,’ he replied.
‘Which he afterwards burned in his bedroom grate,’ interpolated Giles dryly.
‘Oh, no, he didn’t! He cut the maker’s name out of it, tied it round a boulder and dropped it into the Hammer-pond at Huxley Heath,’ said Kenneth.
‘That’s good,’ approved Antonia. ‘But you haven’t told us how he managed to murder Arnold without being seen, and get his body into the car.’
‘When you have quite finished amusing yourselves at my expense,’ said Rudolph furiously, ‘perhaps you will allow me to tell you that I very much resent your attitude!’