“I came to say that I-in fact my plans have undergone an alteration.”
Emmeline gazed at him. It was impossible for her to look unkindly at anyone, and she felt a real concern.
“Yes, Arnold?”
“I hope I did not cause you any distress. My plans are changed. I felt that I should set your mind at rest. About the house.”
The tears came into her eyes.
“Dear Arnold -how kind-”
He stared past her at his brother’s portrait on the wall. How comfortable to be dead and buried, with your virtues proclaimed upon the headstone of a nicely tended grave and all your faults forgotten. Jonathan had had faults enough, but he had been loved, and Emmeline always spoke of him as if he were a saint. His thoughts pressed as heavily upon him as if they had indeed been churchyard clay. He said,
“I wanted to set your mind at rest. I was afraid you might have been upset.”
“But I never thought you really meant it. I thought it was just the cats-and Edward. Susan says I must find homes for Amina’s kittens. And please don’t go on minding about Edward. It is such a pity to have quarrels in a family, instead of all being happy together.”
He got up with a jerk and reached for his hat. One of his gloves fell and he bent to pick it up again, his sight blurred by a sudden moisture. Emmeline made everything sound so easy. But it was too late-too late. He found himself saying the words aloud as he went past her and out through the porch with its shallow step. The kittens were still at their game, but he didn’t see them. He said, “It’s too late, my dear,” and went away up the avenue to the Hall.
Edward came home early. When they had finished tea, during which he listened in silence to Emmeline’s recital of his Uncle Arnold’s kindness, he announced that he and Susan would wash up, and carried out the tray.
The sink was in the kitchen. When he had set the tray down upon the draining-board he shut the door, leaned against it, and said,
“If they don’t arrest me tonight, they will tomorrow. I thought you had better know.”
Susan stood in a white mist that smelled of fish and said to herself, “This is the sort of thing that can’t possibly be true- it just can’t.”
The smell of fish was because of the cats, who had cod heads and other horrible remnants boiled down for them. The kitchen was always full of it, but it had never been full of tragedy before. The two things made a horrid clash in her mind, like a collision in a nightmare. She did not know that all her rosy colour had drained away, but she heard herself say, “No-” in what she thought was a whisper.
The next thing she knew was that Edward had both his hands on her shoulders and was shaking her.
“Hold up, can’t you! Good God, Susan, you can’t faint here!”
She stared at him and said,
“I can if I want to.”
“Then come off wanting to! Here, put your head down! I’ve got to talk to you!”
He sounded so angry, and was so entirely Edward in a temper, that the nightmare feeling receded. She said,
“I’m sorry. It-it was the fish. I’m all right now. Let’s go into the back room and talk there.”
“No-we’re going to wash up. You can dry. You don’t expect me to believe you are such a ninny as to faint because there’s a smell of fish.”
Susan took a tea-cloth and leaned against the drip-board.
“It just didn’t mix-with what you said.”
He gave a sudden short laugh.
“About my being arrested? No, I suppose it didn’t. Anyhow I think we had better talk about it. I don’t want Emmeline to get any more hurt than she must.”
She said in rather a surprised voice,
“Emmeline doesn’t get hurt. She gets away from things.”
“Yes, I know. But this-”
“She will be quite sure you are all right, because she will be quite sure you haven’t done anything to be arrested for.”
He handed her a hot, dripping plate.
“And you?”
She hadn’t got anything to say. If Edward was arrested, she couldn’t get away from it. It would hurt too much. All she could manage was,
“I’m not like Emmeline.”
He gave her two more plates and a saucer.
“Don’t let them get cold, or they’ll dry with smears on them. Do you mind telling me why you are not like Emmeline? Do you really think I knocked two people on the head and drowned them in the splash?”
“No, of course I don’t. Why should the police-why should anyone?”
He was swishing out the teapot.
“Because someone wrote Clarice just the sort of note I might have written her. It was dropped in at the Miss Blakes’ letterbox some time before two o’clock on Friday. I walked past at two, and I could have dropped it in. It was typed, and it said, ‘All right, let’s have it out. I’ll be coming back late tonight. Meet me at the same place. Say half past nine. I can’t make it before that.’ ”
“You didn’t write it!”
“No, but I might have done. Don’t you see, she was bothering my head off to go into a huddle and talk about Uncle James’ will. I hadn’t the slightest intention of doing it, but suppose she had worn me down to the point where I felt it would be better to see her and get it over, that is exactly the kind of letter I might have written.”
“When did you see the police?”
“They came out to old Barr’s this afternoon-the Embank man and a chap called Abbott from Scotland Yard. One of the cool, polished Police College kind-very much on the spot. He had found out that the note was typed on that old machine up at the Church Room, which used to belong to Uncle James. Of course I knew that as soon as Bury showed it to me. Why, I learned to type on it-but I didn’t tell them that.”
“But anyone, absolutely anyone, could get in and use that typewriter.”
“As you say-and me amongst them. Very especially and particularly me. You see, I was there on Friday morning.”
“Oh-”
He nodded.
“Emmeline went up to do the flowers, and I went with her. Miss Sims was there. Perhaps she had just been typing the note. After she went away I looked up a point about the Old Close at Littleton. Barr and I were having an argument, and I knew there was something about it in your grandfather’s history of the county. It’s still there, at the end of the bottom shelf, just as it used to be when we went to Sunday School. By the time I’d finished with it the Vicar dropped in. He didn’t stay, but he’ll remember that he saw me there. It wouldn’t have taken me more than three minutes to type that note, and I could have done it either before he came or after he went. Emmeline was over at the church, and Miss Sims had departed. I went on dipping into your grandfather’s book, but I could just as easily have been typing that note. I went away in the end because Miss Mildred came along to collect some of the hymn books that wanted mending. And I could very easily have dropped the note in her letter-box on the way back, or after lunch on my way to Mr. Barr’s”
Susan bit her lip.
“How was it signed-or wasn’t it?”
“Two typed initials. And here’s something that’s odd-the note has been creased right across them and partly torn. It was found crumpled up and dirty with soot under the grate in Clarice’s room. The letters might be an E or an R, but nobody is very dogmatic about it. You know, I can’t see why Clarice should have thrown the note away under the grate. It seems to me she would either have destroyed it or taken it with her.”
Susan said,
“I don’t know-people do all sorts of things. She was the careless sort, and she wouldn’t know that someone was going to -murder her.”
“No-she wouldn’t know.” His tone was dark. “If she thought the note was from me-well, I simply hadn’t got a motive. You don’t kill a girl because she bothers you.” He gave a mirthless laugh. “Do you remember, when we were coming home on Thursday night after the scene outside Mrs. Stone’s, I said I should probably murder her some day. We were just coming through the gate. I hope nobody heard me.”