“That’s me all over,” said the diver, staring admiringly, “always a whole-hogger. You ask me for one weapon, I find you two. All zeal, Mr. Easy!”
“Well, but,” blurted Lockyer, “if Arundale brought that with him…”
They looked at each other over the thin blade, that gleamed sullenly in the sun, and down the wind went one plausible theory. The man who had had the forethought to cancel his engagements had also taken care to provide himself with a weapon. And not even a would-be murderer needs a bludgeon in his left hand when he has a sword in his right.
CHAPTER IX
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WHY, THAT’S THE SWORD-STICK from the collection in the gallery,” said Marshall, as soon as he saw it. “It always hangs in a display pattern of curios on the wall there. The Cothercotts amassed quite a museum of these things. How could it have got into the river?” It was a silly question; he saw it as soon as he’d spoken, and wished it back again. Who knew better than the warden of Follymead where to find a killing weapon, if he wanted one?
The handsome, deadly thing lay between them on the desk, a bit of fashionable devilment from the eighteenth century, probably never meant to be used. The blade had been sheathed fully before it was thrown into the water, and its point was engraved with fine vertical grooves; it might very well preserve traces of haemoglobin still, if this was what had drawn that blood that was not Arundale’s blood. Another job for the laboratory.
“Was it in its place on Friday evening, when the party assembled and was shown round the house?” George asked.
“I can’t say I noticed particularly. Perhaps someone else may have done. I didn’t comment on it to my group, there are so many things to be seen.”
“And of course, no stranger would have the slightest idea what it was, unless he was told.”
“No, I suppose not.” That brought it still more closely home to the few who were not strangers, and did know what it was. Mr. Marshall went back to his duties a very unhappy man. He cared about this place, he cared about music, he cared passionately about the Cothercott collection of keyboard instruments. Who was going to maintain them properly, as living things for use and pleasure, if the college folded? For them a museum would be a coffin.
It was a quarter to twelve; still three quarters of an hour before the class would come bursting out from the yellow drawing-room, hungry and vociferous, heading for lunch. Better get this thing out of the house now, thought George, while everything was quiet, and let the lab. men worry about it, while he got on with some of the inevitable and tedious routine work that waited for him here in Arundale’s desk.
He rolled the sword-stick in soft paper, and took it down to Lockyer, who was smoking a cigarette in a quiet corner of the stableyard at the home farm, neatly screened from the house by a belt of trees. The tenant farmer was used to seeing overflow cars from the house parties parked here, and took no interest in them. Nor was it unusual for Midshire students, who knew the lie of the land, to go in and out by the back way, and so save themselves a mile or more on the way into Belwardine. Lockyer had his motorcycle tucked away under the stable arch. The sword-stick would be in headquarters at Comerbourne in twenty minutes.
George went back to the warden’s office, and began to turn out the drawers of the desk one by one. In all probability for nothing, but he wouldn’t be sure of that until he’d gone through everything. Extraordinary how one weapon too many could make nonsense of an otherwise perfectly sound theory. The thing could have happened exactly as Lockyer had outlined it, the wronged husband coming to confront his wife’s lover, the heavy instrument presented almost accidentally to his hand, and then the struggle in which the younger and more athletic man wrested the weapon away from him, and struck him with it; the appalled realisation that he had killed him, the disposal of the body and the latch in the river, the opportune recollection that the victim’s car was waiting and ready, and he was due to leave at this very hour, the subsequent flight to London, the abandonment of the car there, everything fitted in. Except this one grotesque thing, this Georgian whimsy that yet was not a toy, this fop’s gimmick that could kill. And this one thing threw everything out of gear.
He had still to find out whether it had been in its usual place on the wall on Friday evening; possibly Dominic could help, there. But whenever it had been taken from its place, one thing was certain, Lucien Galt had not taken it to the grotto. Felicity had been with him from the time he left the house until they parted by the riverside in exasperation and offence; if he had had any such bizarre thing with him then, she would certainly have mentioned it. Nor was there any suggestion that at that time he had been thinking in terms of danger or violence. No, it was not Lucien.
But if Arundale had taken it with him – and if he had, it was one more proof that he went with intent to kill, sanely if not calmly – then what did he want with a heavy iron latch? And if he did not take it from its place, who did? Lucien, to defend himself? Rather a clumsy defence against two and a half feet of steel, but better than nothing. But there were considerable objections to that theory. One weapon too many, and nothing fitted snugly any longer. Better, for the moment, concentrate on these personal papers. And nobody ever had them in more immaculate order.
The records of Follymead were here from its inception, press clippings, photographs, a full list of all its courses, concerts, recitals, lectures. And the total was impressive. Music is one of the fundamental beauties, consolations and inspirations of life, a world without it would be unthinkable. This crazy, perverse, slightly sinister house had never in its history served so useful and beneficent a purpose as now. And that was largely Arundale’s work, and it ought to be remembered to him. He had certainly loved it; the proof was here to be seen. For the first time George felt an impulse of personal warmth and pity for that elusive figure, now never to be better known.
He had adored his wife, too, that was to be seen everywhere. Perhaps with the possessive fervour of a husband who looked upon his wife as an extension of himself, but he wasn’t alone there, and the passion was no less real for that. The last drawer of the desk yielded a harvest of photographs of her. George worked backwards through them, and experienced the eerie phenomenon of watching Audrey grow younger and younger before his eyes, dwindling to the nervous young wife, the frozen bride, refrigerated among her trappings of ice, the blooming debutante, the schoolgirl… Here in his private drawer Edward had preserved the complete record, decently hidden from alien eyes, the entire history of a love affair, the passion of a man not given to passions.
Here she was in full evening splendour for some grand event, very beautiful, very austere. And here at some function at Bannerets, being gracious, adequate and charming with parents. Too handsome, perhaps, for a headmaster’s wife, but that air she had of being always at one remove from the world stood her in good stead. It was impossible to suppose that Audrey did not know she was considered beautiful; it was equally impossible to believe that she realised what that meant, what power it gave her, or should have given her. She looked out from her many photographs, a creature manipulated by circumstances, always filling her role well, always withdrawn from it in the spirit. And defenceless. Why should the camera be the eye to discover that quality? If ever there was a sad woman, here she walked, successful, influential, well-off, envied and admired; and always lost, anxious and alone.
He had worked his way back to her younger days now, the twenty-year-old with her new engagement ring discreetly displayed, the fiancée photograph posed specially for her distinguished in-laws. Then an even younger girl, with Arundale in some restaurant booth, the kind where souvenir pictures are taken. Somehow not quite typical of either of them. And then, almost abruptly, the school-girl. Three pictures tied together with a pink tape, the last of the collection, evidently taken during the first year of his acquaintance with her.