“Oh,” said Craig. And looked at Nugent. And said suddenly, “I suppose you want me to tell you why he shot me.”
20
PETER WHIRLED AND CRIED, “He shot you!”
I said, “You knew. All the time, you knew who it was.” And Nugent said quietly, “Yes. Why did he shoot you?” Craig took a long breath. “It’s not very pleasant, you know. But I know that he didn’t mean to do it. I saw his hand, you know, with the glove on it. I suppose he-he got the gloves so his fingerprints wouldn’t appear on the gun. But I don’t think he meant to kill me; in fact, I think he believed me to be somebody else.”
“Who?” said Nugent.
“I don’t know,” said Craig slowly. “I’ve thought and thought and I don’t know who. It was dusk, you see; my father’s eyesight was failing somewhat, although he’d never admit it. I was talking to Alexia, as I told you; then she went back up to the house and I walked up and down there for a little. And I saw the gloved hand showing behind the hedge, and I was pretty sure it was my father. There was something about him-you know how it is-a familiar line even when you can’t see a person’s face. And just then the shot came. Naturally-the next day-I wasn’t going to explain it; I had sense enough even under the drugs Claud gave me, to know that. There was no reason for my father to shoot me; I knew that. So I knew there must be a mistake somewhere. That day I was too fuzzy and drugged to think clearly. But I did think I would tell Claud enough to put him on guard; he was devoted to my father and if my father told anyone, he would have told Claud. I think he did tell him; and I think he told him why he shot at me; and I think that is why Claud managed to lose the bullet that he extracted. It may have been why Claud himself was killed; he knew too much; I’ve always thought that.”
“Why do you think your father shot you?” asked Nugent.
“I tell you, it was a mistake. He thought I was somebody else.”
“Who?” said Nugent again.
And Craig said again, “But I don’t know. I had on a lightish raincoat I had taken out of the hall closet. I think it belonged to my father; but anybody might have a light raincoat; there was nothing about that that would make my father think I was somebody else. And we’re all about the same height-I mean you, Peter, and Nicky, and even Claud Chivery. We were all about the same height and in the dusk my father might have easily mistaken one of us for the other.”
“But my God,” said Peter. “Why would he shoot me? I scarcely knew him.”
“Why would he shoot anybody?” said Nugent. “Unless it was a question of shooting or being shot.”
“Yes,” said Craig. “That’s what I thought later when it was my father who was killed.”
“You mean,” said Peter, “that whoever he thought he was shooting when he shot at you was actually after your father?”
“Yes. In other words, I think it was a question of self-protection on my father’s part. Somebody was after him and he knew it and he thought he’d get him first. And he got me and-and couldn’t tell anybody but Claud what had happened and why. And then the other person, whoever it was, saw that action had to be taken at once. I mean it was-well, it was the same thing: kill or be killed.”
Nugent said nothing. Peter said, “But, my gosh, why didn’t they go to the police? I mean all your father had to do was ask for police protection. And whoever he meant to shoot…”
“That’s the point,” said Craig. “Whatever the disagreement, quarrel, whatever it was, was about something that neither the murderer nor my father wanted to tell the police about. That’s why I keep thinking the Miller checks come into the thing. I mean-well, I don’t think Miller himself is lurking around the countryside somewhere, although of course he might be-but I do think that the checks might have been used to blackmail my father. To keep him, perhaps from going to the police. My father would have hated the fact that he had given money to the Bund to come out. He’d have done anything to prevent it; he was that kind of man.”
“Murder,” said Nugent softly, “is usually done either in blind rage or from some very strong and personal motive.”
And I said suddenly, “Alexia had the checks. Alexia was in the garden just before your father shot you.”
“And Alexia,” said Nugent, “is very like Nicky and Nicky very like Alexia. How was she dressed that night, Brent? I mean she didn’t happen to be wearing, say, slacks? Women do.”
“You mean he might have seen her going to the garden, happened not to see her leave the garden and go back to the house, and thus that he mistook me for Alexia?” said Craig frowning.
“M’mm, roughly,” said Nugent. “You are sure it was Alexia you talked to?”
“Yes,” said Craig. “And she wasn’t wearing slacks. She had on a dinner dress, I’m sure; a black dress she wore at dinner, and a long coat.”
There was another silence during which I thought back somewhat confusedly to the times I’d seen Nicky and the times I’d seen Alexia and wondered whom I’d really seen-Alexia in a checked coat and slacks, or Nicky. I could fancy Alexia in Nicky’s clothes and, at a distance, even a short distance, so like him that one would think it was Nicky. But I couldn’t somehow see Nicky in Alexia’s trailing feminine clothes. And then I saw what I suppose Nugent had seen from the beginning and that was that the whole question of alibis was threatened, at least, so far as the twins’ alibis went. Was it Nicky Beevens had seen coming from the meadow the previous afternoon or Alexia? “Why, that means,” I burst out suddenly, “that it may have been Alexia in the meadow last night. It may have been…”
“Exactly,” said Nugent. “And of course there might have been another reason for your father thinking you were someone else, Brent. That’s pretty obvious. If he was jealous of her and had reason to believe that she liked some other man and had gone to the garden that evening to meet him…”
Peter had been swelling a little around the cheeks and getting very pink. He cried, “Look here, Nugent, if you mean me, she doesn’t. I mean I didn’t. I mean-oh, look here. I may as well make a clean breast. I-well, I think she’s terribly attractive; who wouldn’t? But I-I-” he faltered, and Nugent said, “You what?”
“Well, I-oh, gosh. I didn’t murder Mr. Brent. And I-there’s something I did get into that I tried to stop and couldn’t and I didn’t want to tell…” he faltered again, scarlet to his blond hair.
“If you mean Alexia,” began Craig, “say so…”
“I don’t mean Alexia,” said Peter. “I mean Mrs. Chivery.”
“Maud!” cried Craig sitting up. “My God, you’ve not fallen in love with her, have you?”
“Maud-oh, shut up! That’s not it. Mrs. Chivery-oh, for God’s sake…”
“What do you mean?” asked Nugent. “If you’ve got anything to say, get it out.”
“All right,” said Peter swallowing hard. “But it' not easy. It-I didn’t mean to. You see, well, it’s the Spanish jewels.”
The Spanish jewels again. And Maud’s talk of investment. Peter had got stuck again, and I said crisply, “You wanted her to invest in Spanish jewels.”
“Spanish…” began Craig incredulously, and Peter interrupted.
“Yes,” he said defiantly, but rather miserably, too, “Spanish jewels. It was this way. I was talking-too much; you know the way one gets carried away. Anyway, I was telling about a chap I know who was in the Spanish war, and he told me about taking a truck-oh, I know it sounds utterly ridiculous, but that’s what he said and what I told Mrs. Chivery about-he said he was taking a truck full of jewelry and silver that had been donated by various Loyalists from one place to another when the war was over. He was caught en route, so to speak. So he didn’t know what to do with his truck load of stuff and he hid it somewhere behind an old church. He knew the exact location, and he said it would take some money for-oh, greasing palms and that kind of thing, but he insisted that sometime he was going to get the money and go back and bring out the jewelry. I don’t think he really meant it; anyway the chances were all against his being able to do it, even if the stuff hasn’t been found months ago. But Mrs. Chivery-well, she kept talking to me about it; said she had some money and wouldn’t I get in touch with the fellow who told me about it and all that. She said her husband would be against her putting up the money and that Mr. Brent would be against it, so I wasn’t to tell them. I couldn’t believe that she was in earnest about it; then, when I began to think she was I-my God, I did everything I could think of to discourage it. Told her how absurd it was, the whole story. But she didn’t think it was absurd at all; and I suppose things like that did happen. I mean, I remember reading stories of how the Loyalists gave up everything in the way of jewelry that they could get their hands on. I suppose some things were caught like that, in the process of delivery, so to speak, when the Spanish war ended. But as an investment it was the bunk,” said Peter simply. “And I told her so. But the more I said against it the keener she was.”