‘I do not think so,’ I said. ‘I believe, and these letters afford strong evidence to my mind, that my father was cruelly and deliberately murdered by Lathom at Margaret Harrison’s instigation. And I mean to prove it.’
‘Murdered?’ he cried. ‘Good God, you can’t mean that! That’s absolutely impossible. Lathom may be a bit of a rotter in some ways, but he’s not a murderer. I’ll swear he isn’t that. You’re absolutely mistaken.’
‘Will you read the letters?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Look here. You’re a man of the world. If things have got to this point, I don’t mind admitting that Lathom did have some sort of an affair with Mrs Harrison. I did what I could to make him drop it, but, after all, these things will sometimes happen. I told him it was a poor sort of game to play, and when I got the opportunity — over that Milsom affair — I told him I’d shut up about it on condition he cleared out. He assured me afterwards, in the most solemn way, that it was all finished with. Why, damn it, I asked him about it the very day we went down to Manaton, and he repeated that the whole affair was absolutely over and done with.’
‘He was wise,’ I said dryly, ‘since he was taking you down there to view my father’s dead body. Even you might have suspected something if you had gone to “The Shack” in the knowledge that it was to Lathom’s interest to find what he did find.’
His face changed. I had touched him on the raw somewhere.
‘Did you, as a matter of fact, believe Lathom?’
‘I believed him — yes.’ He turned his pipe thoughtfully over between his fingers. ‘I believed that the affair had been put an end to. But I was not altogether sure that Lathom’s affection for Mrs Harrison had ceased.’
‘And when you found that my father had died so opportunely — did no suspicion enter your mind?’
‘Well — I admit it did just pass through my mind that Harrison might have done it himself. I–I didn’t want to believe it. I don’t know that I did really believe it. But it did occur to me as a possibility.’
‘Nothing more?’
‘Absolutely nothing more.’
‘Will you read the letters, and tell me if, after that, you still think there was nothing more?’
He hesitated.
‘If you are so sure that Lathom is innocent, you may be able to prove his innocence.’
He looked at me doubtfully, and slowly put out his hand for the letters. He read the endorsement by the solicitor, and looked sharply at me again, but said nothing. I waited while he read the documents through — first quickly, then for a second time slowly and with greater attention.
‘You will notice,’ I said, ‘that, shortly before the time when he told you the affair was over, Margaret Harrison had written him a letter clearly indicating that she believed herself to be about to have a child by him.’
‘Yes, I see that.’
‘And that he was not informed that this belief was erroneous till after my father’s death.’
‘No.’
‘Plenty of motive for murder there.’
‘Plenty of motive, certainly. But motive by itself is nothing. Good heavens, man, if everybody committed murder because they had a motive, precious few of us would die natural deaths.’
‘But you will admit that murder was being urged upon him, in various ways, in all these letters.’
‘I wouldn’t necessarily go so far as to admit that. Mrs Harrison is an emotional, imaginative woman. She picks up phrases out of books. Plenty of people talk in this vague way about love — about its being supreme, and justifying itself, and sweeping obstacles aside and so on, without ever intending to put their words into action. I’ve written that kind of thing myself — in books.’
‘Very likely. As a modern novelist you need not be expected to uphold a high standard of morals. But in practice, I take it, you would not wish to excuse or justify murder.’
‘No. I confess to an old-fashioned prejudice against murder. It may be inconsistent of me, but I do. And so, I am sure, would Lathom.’
‘Lathom is obviously very much under the influence of Margaret Harrison.’
‘I should have said it was the other way round.’
‘In some things. In theory, no doubt. But when it comes to doing things, I should say she was infinitely more practical — and more unscrupulous. But say, if you like, he is only under the influence of a strong passion — don’t you think that might lead him to do things which conflicted with his principles, or prejudices, or whatever you like to call them? Come now, you have called me a man of the world. Murders are done every day, for much less motive than Lathom had.’
He drummed on the table.
‘Well,’ he burst out at last. ‘I’ll admit that. I’ll admit — for the sake of argument — that Lathom might have murdered your father, though I don’t believe it for a moment. But it was physically impossible. How could he? He was here in London all the time.’
‘That’s where you can help me. Why was it impossible? How do you know it was impossible? Can you prove that it was impossible?’
‘I’m sure I can.’
‘Will you let me have all the facts you know about the whole thing from the beginning?’
‘Of course I will. Damn it all, if Lathom did do it, he deserves everything that’s coming to him. He’d have to be an absolute swine. Mind you, Lathom and I didn’t always get on together, but — it’s absurd. He can’t have done it. But we’ve got to kill the possibility.’
He began to walk up and down, visibly perturbed. I waited. We were interrupted by a servant announcing dinner.
‘You’ll stay?’ said Munting. ‘You must meet my wife. She has a very clear head for this kind of thing.’
I accepted, not wishing to lose a day in getting to the bottom of the matter. We did not, of course, talk about the subject while the maid was in the room, but after dinner we all went into the library, and there outlined the story to Mrs Munting. I mention her, not because she was able to contribute anything of great value to the discussion (though, being a woman, she was more willing than her husband to allow that a young man might murder an older one for a woman’s sake), but because she fetched out the letters which Munting had written to her during his period of residence at Whittington Terrace, in order to verify facts and dates. In the end, she handed the letters over to me in case I might find in them any clue or suggestion which we had overlooked. Munting rather naturally objected to having his love-letters (if one can call these rambling effusions by that name) put into the hands of a comparative stranger, but his wife, with that curious lack of delicacy which virtuous women often display, laughed, and said she was sure I should not pay any attention to the personal passages.
‘Mr Harrison is not proposing to publish your Life and Letters, you know,’ she said.
This childish remark seemed to amuse Munting. He said: ‘No; I fancy I’m safe with him,’ and raised no further objection. Probably his vanity was sufficient to assure him that the exposure of his intimate feelings was bound to leave a favourable impression. Indeed, it is obvious that, even in writing to his fiancée, he was writing for effect half the time and quite possibly with an eye to future publication. With young men like Beverley Nichols and Robert Graves prattling in public about their domestic affairs, we need hardly expect to find any decent reticence among the smart novelists of today.
Taking the question of Motive as settled for the moment, we proceeded to discuss the subjects Means and Opportunity. Under these heads, the Muntings put forward a number of objections to the murder theory, and I was bound to recognise that they looked sufficiently formidable. Here is the schedule which I drew up immediately after this conversation.