‘Good Lord!’ I said. ‘I had forgotten all about her!’
‘A fact which, in your interests, I failed to mention to her.’
‘Did you contrive to soothe that savage breast?’
‘What else do you pay me for? I’m to let her know tomorrow the doctor’s report. I said he was still with you.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘You hover between life and death, dear. It was only by convincing her of that hardly self-evident fact that I could persuade her to leave. But that is not the reason for my being here and ministering unto you with my own delicate hands.’
‘Any excuse for a session with you is as good as any other. So to what am I indebted?‘ I asked.
‘Do you know what unpardonable liberties are?’
‘I ought to.’
‘Oh, you mean when you punched a man in the eye for attempting to put his arm round Hera. I heard about that. Well, I am about to tell you of an unpardonable liberty I took because, if I don’t confess it, Sandy will tell you that it was he who took it.’
‘He has told me already, I think. He checked on Hera’s visit to Paris.’
‘As a matter of fact, I did. She did not go to Paris. I know which agents she uses for her modelling jobs and it seemed to me very strange that she should be going off to Paris just when Sandy was going to be out of London and you and I were to be left holding the fort here.’
‘So she didn’t go to Paris. She went to Scotland and did her damnedest to disable Sandy. I find that difficult to believe, you know.’
‘Suit yourself.’ She drank her tea. I pushed my cup aside.
‘It’s utterly ridiculous,’ I said, ‘and neither of you has any proof at all.’
‘With Sandy out of the way, she could have worked on you to take her into the partnership.’
‘What about you? Wouldn’t you have had something to say?’
‘I wasn’t a partner at that time. I should have chucked my job, of course. I could never work with Hera.’
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘strong-arm stuff is not her line. Whoever clocked Sandy in those woods or wherever it was made a boss shot. That’s the only reason I’m prepared to admit it could have been Hera. I still don’t believe it was.’
‘Typical of a woman who was not used to what you call strong-arm stuff. A real mugger would have made a much better job of it.’
‘What did Luella Granville Waterman want to see me about?’ (I was anxious to change the subject.)
‘That’s right. When defeated in argument, always take a different line. What she wants to change is her publisher.’
‘But because old Timothy once had an affair with her mother, Timothy’s sons have been publishing that bilge of hers for years.’
‘They haven’t lost on it, you know. She’s got her following.’
‘Heaven help them! What do I say to her tomorrow?’
‘She isn’t coming tomorrow. I have promised to let her know when you are out of danger. I have also told her we’ll try Peregrines if she likes, but that they start new authors at only seven and a half on the first five thousand. That ought to shake her. Oh, and by the way, I’m going to marry Sandy.’
‘Not me?’ I spoke jokingly, but the news took me completely by surprise.
‘No, dear, not you. My union doesn’t allow me to accept other women’s leavings,’ she said, getting up from her chair.
‘You devil!’ I said. I caught her and kissed her. ‘I hope you will be very, very happy. Good old Sandy! I had no idea!’
‘Well, you don’t have many ideas, do you, dear?’ she said. ‘You should have got a line on your Hera months ago.’
16: The Rounding-Up
« ^ »
So, all these extraneous details being settled, we were back to the murder. Hera was a late riser when she was not working, so at nine the next morning I went to her flat and pushed through her letter-box the package containing the ring. This meant that I arrived at the office earlier than usual, for Sandy and I did not show up usually until ten.
I found Elsa busy dealing with the morning’s correspondence.
‘My, my!’ she said. ‘Couldn’t we sleep? Was our conscience troubling us? That policeman has been here asking to see you. I told him to try again later.’
‘What does he want, I wonder? There is nothing I can tell him about myself that he doesn’t know already.’
A telephone call came through half an hour later. Polly answered it and put Bingley through to me. I said I would be charmed to see him whenever he wanted an interview and he replied to this that he would come round at once. Sandy had arrived before Bingley turned up, so, when I had congratulated him on his engagement to Elsa, I told him what was in the wind and prophesied (rightly, as it happened) that somebody under pressure had magnified the story of my punch-up with Carbridge at Crianiarich.
I took Bingley into my office, told Elsa to see that we were not disturbed and waited for Bingley’s opening gambit. It was what I had expected.
‘You had a serious disagreement with the deceased while you were on your Scottish tour, Mr Melrose.’
‘Disagreement, yes. Serious, no.’
‘It concerned your fiancée, Miss Camden.’
‘May I point out that you are behind the times, Detective Chief Inspector? Not my fiancée any longer, and not Miss Camden. Try Mrs Todd.’
‘Are you serious, sir?’
‘Oh, yes. The walking tour was an experiment before Mrs Todd applied for a divorce so that she could marry me. The result has told us both where we stand — apart.’
‘What you tell me lends a different aspect to the matters arising. The reports I have received may have been somewhat exaggerated, sir.’
‘A bit of luck for me, if you think so.’
‘Yes, you may say that, sir. I shall need to check this new piece of information before taking further steps. Mrs Todd, you say?’
‘Alas, yes. Love’s young dream is over, so far as I am concerned.’
He looked at me and at the flower in my buttonhole. It was a pink rosebud given me by Polly because, she said, it looked festive and so did I. Bingley must have agreed with her, for he said that I appeared to be taking my bereavement extremely well. He left soon after he had said that, and I had the impression that he was a baffled man. I wondered whether he had come to the office with a warrant for my arrest. Of one thing I was certain. If he had received an exaggerated account of the punch-up, it would have come from one of three people. It could have been from Hera herself, from Todd (with whom I had exchanged words, although not blows) or Perth. There was a possible fourth, namely James Minch, always ready with a rush of words to the mouth. Neither he nor Perth would have intended any harm, but they might have done my cause a great deal of mischief, all the same.
Whichever one of them it was, there could be no doubt that I had given Bingley something to think about and, as any respite is to be preferred to sudden death, I was grateful for it. I expected Bingley to return later in the day, but he did not do so and the next step in the solution to his problem came in the form of a telephone call to me from Dame Beatrice. She had been called upon officially in her capacity as psychiatric adviser to the Home Office, she said, and at Bingley’s request.
‘I have to question certain members of the Scottish expedition,’ she said. ‘I shall take Laura with me to record the interviews, but I need your support in reassuring my suspects.’
‘Perth would be far more useful.’
‘Laura said that you would jib.’
‘No, no, I’m not jibbing. Of course I’ll do anything you say.’
‘The police,’ said Dame Beatrice in a reminiscent tone, ‘are seldom wrong when they have very definite suspicions that they know the identity of a criminal, but sometimes there are factors which they do not take into account.’