‘Let’s not argue about that. To make Elsa a partner was a necessity if we wanted to keep her.’
‘Only marriage to one of you would make absolutely sure of that.’
‘It’s up to Sandy, then,’ I said laughingly.
‘Are you going to tell Bingley about the souvenir daggers?’
‘Not I. It is none of my business. Dame Beatrice was present and I’m sure she’ll take the necessary steps.’
When I got back to my flat, I took out what had been the engagement ring, reflected somewhat ruefully on what I had had to pay for it, packed it up very carefully and wrote a covering note.
‘Please do me the honour of keeping our ring. I don’t want any other woman to wear it. It will fit your right hand as a dress ring and Todd won’t worry that I gave it to you. I have the feeling that, as soon as this dreadful business about poor Carbridge is cleared up, you will go back to your Barney. Anyway, the very best of luck to you both.’ I ended with a quotation from John Donne which seemed appropriate under the circumstances:
‘Now thou hast lov’d me one whole day,
Tomorrow when thou leav’st, what wilt thou say?
Wilt thou then ante-date some new-made vow?
Or say that now
We are not just those persons which we were?’
‘You seem remarkably bobbish,’ said Elsa when I got to the office next day. ‘Have we had a rebate from the taxman?’
‘Not from the taxman,’ I said, ‘but I suppose I’ve had a windfall of a sort.’
‘Are we to be treated to champagne?’
‘No, only to the funeral bakemeats.’
She looked at me with mock concern and said that she was very sorry to hear it, but she asked no questions and the office routine went on much as usual until lunchtime. Sandy asked Elsa to join us at our favourite pub, for we took only a snack and a beer at midday. She refused and he said to me when we had obtained refreshment and were seated at our little table, ‘What’s eating Elsa? When I asked her to join us, she said, “Three’s a crowd and Comrie has something to tell you.” Have you something to tell me?’
‘I could tell you that Perth knows of two daggers which were bought as souvenirs in Fort William. I think Dame Beatrice will hand this bit of information to the police and leave Bingley to sort it out. The two women who bought the daggers intended to give them as presents to Todd. The point of interest now is to discover who did what with them when the tour was over.’
‘You would need to know whether one of them was the weapon which somebody stuck in Carbridge’s back, wouldn’t you? That weapon, according to the papers, has never been found, has it?’
‘No. There was an ordinary kitchen knife in the body, but the forensic chaps know it was planted after the death wound was dealt and the murder weapon pulled out.’
‘Yes. Elsa wasn’t talking about the murder when she said that three is a crowd. Come clean, Comrie. She was hinting at something.’
‘Elsa is too clever by half when it comes to reading people’s minds.’
‘Granted. That’s why she is so valuable to us, so now out with it. What has happened to make her think you are so light-hearted that you prevent yourself only with the greatest difficulty from going about the office with a song on your lips? Has Hera thought better of it and asked for the ring again?’
‘Quite the opposite. We have agreed to part company for ever and ever, amen.’
‘Thank goodness for that! Now I can tell you something which I’ve been bottling up ever since I came back from my holiday.’
‘Sweden? I should hardly have thought of that as a holiday. Did you strike lucky with a sort of young Greta Garbo?’
‘Don’t hedge! You know the holiday I’m talking about.’
‘You got mugged, you ass. At least I avoided that when I was on The Way.’
‘Yes, I got mugged. Did it never strike you as strange that I made no attempt to go to the police?’
‘No, it didn’t strike me as strange at all. Neither did I go to the police when I found that body in those ruins on Rannoch Moor.’
‘Our motives were very different, Comrie.’
‘I shouldn’t think so. Scottish law is what is different. Like me, you did not want to get mixed up with it. We are busy men and to bring in the Scottish police would have meant sacrificing a lot of valuable time and, ten to one, they wouldn’t have tracked down your assailant.’
‘Oh, I would sacrifice any amount of time to bring even one mugger, let alone a rapist, to book,’ said Sandy. ‘It would be a public duty and I should not shirk it. No, it was not that. You see, I had a pretty good idea of the identity of my attacker.’
‘Some frenzied author whose book we have been unable to place?’ (I was playing for time, although I knew that this was only a question of procrastination. I should have to hear his unwelcome views in the end. I felt that already I knew what they were going to be.)
‘I can give you a name, but not that of a disgruntled author. The person who attempted to lay me out — no, perhaps, after all, I had better not say.’
‘You mean you think it was Hera. That is impossible. She was modelling in Paris all that week,’ I said.
‘But she wasn’t, Comrie. I found that out before I ever went up to Scotland.’
‘You old fox! Whatever made you do that?’ I felt I ought to be angry with him, but it would have been nothing more than a gesture. Hera meant nothing to me any more. There was no need for me to defend her.
‘Elsa put me up to it in a way. She asked me whether you and I realised how angry Hera was when we refused to take her into partnership. I said I had a pretty good idea and that I knew how much Hera hated being thwarted. Elsa said, “Sandy, she will stop at nothing. If you were not behind him, Comrie would give in to her. Do look out for yourself.” Well, you know Elsa. She never takes panic stations, so I thought it might be just as well to find out what Hera was planning while I was safely out of the way.’
‘You surely didn’t think I would agree in your absence to anything which so closely affected us both?’
‘No, of course I didn’t think that, but, well —’
We finished our snack of a meal in silence. I knew there was more that he could tell me, but the pub was closing for the afternoon and in any case I wanted time to think. As I had received the news of Hera’s marriage to Todd, so I received this fresh view of her conduct. That is to say, I was so far from being shattered by it that all I remember feeling was intense curiosity concerning the activities of a woman I had imagined I knew well.
I even found myself trying to work out, with cold logic and in an entirely unemotional way, whether it was she who had killed Carbridge. At any rate, my cogitations reached a satisfactory conclusion on that point. If the medical evidence concerning time of death was correct even within a couple of hours — and the doctors themselves, I thought, had given rigor mortis ample scope — there was no way on earth that Hera could have had the opportunity to put a knife in the man’s back on that Saturday afternoon. As for strangling him beforehand, she had neither the physical strength nor the complete lack of squeamishness to attempt such a method of inducing death. Neither did I believe that, had she indeed been the mugger, she would have intended any more harm to Sandy than to put him out of action for a week or so.
At half-past three Elsa herself came into my office with two cups of tea, her own and mine.
‘What?’ I said. ‘The queen of Sheba waiting upon King Solomon? Has the typing pool Hebe gone on strike?’
She set down the cups and took a seat.
‘I have just dismissed Luella Granville Waterman from these sacrosanct precincts,’ she said. ‘I was sure you had forgotten that she had an appointment with you at a quarter to three, so I didn’t send her in.’
We had a habit of referring to our more difficult and obstreperous authors by names culled from Psmith, Journalist. This helped to keep us sane and good-humoured in dealing with them, and again was Elsa’s idea.