A Mysterious Affair Of Style Part 16

'But, Eustace, you're contradicting yourself. If, as you say, our five suspects all responded calmly, then logically that suggests we shouldn't trust any of them.'

'That's exactly what I do say. We should and we shouldn't.'

'Explain.'

'As far as Cora's murder is concerned, we should trust them. It was, I repeat, as though the question "Did you murder Cora Rutherford?" a question, I grant you, we never did actually ask, but they all knew that it was implied in well-nigh every question we did ask it was as though such a question was just too foolish to be dignified with a serious answer, as the saying goes, like asking them if they'd poisoned Hitler in his bunker. But we shouldn't trust them further than that, for the very simple reason that, when they started talking freely about Alastair Farjeon, and none of them could resist talking about him, they all revealed something about themselves that made me realise just what slippery customers they potentially were. One of them, at any rate.'

'And what was it they revealed?'

The Chief-Inspector held himself back for a few seconds in order for his response to make the greatest possible impact on his listener.

'That, if none of them had a motive for murdering Cora Rutherford, all of them did have a motive for murdering Alastair Farjeon.'

'Alastair Farjeon?! But Farjeon wasn't murdered.'

'Oh, Evie,' said Trubshawe, unable to resist a smile of condescension, 'you disappoint me. Don't you ever read your own books?'

'No, of course I don't. Why should I? I know who did it!' she petulantly snapped back at him, slamming the statement shut with an audible exclamation mark.

'Just let me remind you, though,' she went on. 'Your young protege Tom Calvert "the most promising newcomer to the Force I ever came across", if I may quote your own a.s.sessment of his quality as a police officer issued a statement to the press that categorically excluded any suspicion of foul play in the Cookham fire. And, by the way, what have my books got to do with the price of potatoes?'

'Come now, Evie, you're being unfair. Prior to Cora's murder, young Tom had no reason to suppose that there might have been foul play. And, as far as your books are concerned, I'd just like to remind you that, if this were one of your whodunits, the so-called accidental death of a character like Farjeon would certainly be regarded as suspicious by the reader. By Alexis Baddeley, too, if not, of course, by dependable, doddery old Inspector Plodder, Plodder of the Yard.'

'Sorry, Eustace,' said Evadne, 'but this is not one of my books. It's a case of real b.l.o.o.d.y murder, the murder, you seem to forget, of a very dear friend of mine. A human heart has ceased to beat, and I can't help feeling it's tasteless of you to compare Cora's murder with the sort I write about in whodunits whose sole ambition is to entertain my readers.'

'If you would just listen to me, instead of flying off in a rage,' a fl.u.s.tered Trubshawe replied, 'you'd realise that what I'm saying might actually help us apprehend Cora's murderer.'

'Oh, very well,' said the novelist ungraciously, 'continue with your exposition.'

'What I deduced, then, is that all five suspects did indeed have a motive for murder, except that it was for the murder not of Cora but of Alastair Farjeon, a man few of them took the trouble to deny that they cordially detested. And, just before we left Elstree, I went off to the Gents and scribbled down a quick list so that you'd be able to see at one fell swoop what I was getting at.'

He pulled from his pocket a neatly folded sheet of lined writing-paper and handed it over to Evadne Mount.

This is what she read: POSSIBLE SUSPECTS IN THE MURDER OF.

ALASTAIR FARJEON.

AND THEIR POTENTIAL MOTIVES.

Rex Hanway. Farjeon's death meant that he was free at last to make a picture on his own, an ambition he himself admitted he had waited many years to satisfy.

Philippe Francaix. Farjeon plagiarised his script of If Ever They Find Me Dead.

Lettice Morley. Farjeon attempted to ravish her in his Cookham villa.

Gareth Knight. Farjeon threatened to peach on him about his having served a sentence in the Scrubs for making indecent overtures to a young policeman in a public lavatory.

Leolia Drake. She knew that only if Farjeon were out of the way would she have a chance of playing the leading role in If Ever They Find Me Dead. (Or could she have been merely Hanway's accomplice?) Evadne laid the sheet of paper down on the table between them and was about to speak, except that Trubshawe, who would have been less than human if he hadn't experienced a certain smug satisfaction in having managed to give her a taste of her own medicine, got in first by raising his hand to silence her.

'Before you answer,' he said, 'let me just add one crucial point. If, as I believe, Alastair Farjeon was murdered, then it finally gives us something which we have all been seeking in vain from the very beginning of this case.'

'What?'

'A motive for murdering Cora.'

They both spoke at the same time.

'Because Cora had found out who murdered Farjeon!'

'Because Cora had found out who murdered Farjeon!'

'Snap!'

'Snap!'

'Now,' said Trubshawe, taking triumphant note of what he imagined was the novelist's belated conversion to the cause, 'it's time for you to tell me what you think.'

He sat comfortably back in his chair, his gla.s.s of whisky in his hand, waiting for the inevitable accolade.

But Evadne's voice, when she spoke again, was not as encouraging as he had expected.

'We-ll ...'

'Yes?'

'What? What is it you're trying to say?'

'Nothing, nothing at all. That is, I ...'

'Out with it, Evie.'

'Well, Eustace, frankly I don't know.'

'What in Heaven's name is the problem?'

'The problem,' she said, 'is that my bottom itches.'

Trubshawe gaped at her in disbelief.

'Your bottom itches!' he cried out so loudly that not a few of those customers who were seated at nearby tables turned their heads to stare at them both.

'Yes,' she repeated in a half-whisper, 'my bottom itches. And I have to tell you, Eustace, my bottom has never let me down.'

'What the ' he spluttered incontinently. Then: 'Even from you, Evie,' he said in a low hiss, 'this is going too far.'

'No, no, let me explain,' she replied with dignity. 'Whenever I read a whodunit by one of my rivals, my so-called rivals, and I encounter some device I don't know, a motive, a clue, an alibi, whatever a device I simply don't trust, even if I can't immediately articulate to myself why I don't trust it, I long ago noticed that my bottom started to itch. I repeat, it's infallible. If my bottom ever once steered me wrong, why, the universe would be meaningless.'

'How is it you never mentioned this at ffolkes Manor?'

'Really, Eustace, my bottom is scarcely something I care to bring up in mixed company. Besides, we had only just met.'

'So you're telling me, are you, that you'd put your trust in your in your bottom before you'd ever put it in me, and I'm not just a friend, a close friend, I hope, but also a police officer who spent his professional life investigating crimes of this nature?'

'Yes, Eustace, I know how odd it must sound. Yet, close friend as you a.s.suredly are, I'm closer still to my own bottom, after all, and I've known it far longer than I've known you.

'It works even when I'm writing my own books. It'll sometimes happen that I'm dog-tired, I desperately want to finish a chapter and I botch it by lazily employing some whiskery, second-hand plot device. Then, sure as Fate, my bottom starts itching and I realise that I've just got to go back to the drawing-board and replace it with something cleverer and more original. Which, I may say, I invariably do.'

'You could have fooled me,' muttered a sullen Trubshawe.

'I find I usually do,' she countered airily.

His face crimsoned.

'I see. Now you're being nasty nasty and gratuitous. Have a care, Evie, have a care. Two can play at that game.'

'Look,' she said, 'I readily admit that your theory is attractive, really very attractive, and for the moment I can't quite explain except, of course, for the itch in my bottom why I'm ill-at-ease with it.'

'You certainly seemed to share my excitement when I proposed that it at least provided us with a clue as to why Cora had been murdered.'

'True enough. Even now, that strikes me as by far the best argument that can be made for it. It's just that, where those five suspects are concerned, well ...'

'What?'

'Yes, they do all appear to have had motives for wanting to murder Farjeon, I grant you that. I just can't help feeling that some of those motives are a little let's say weak.'

'Oh. Which ones?'

'Leolia Drake's, for example. She's a putrid little minx, to be sure, but do you really believe she'd be ready to murder Farjeon and not only Farjeon, remember, but poor Patsy Sloots along with him just because, in the first place, she knew, or merely expected, that Hanway would consequently be a.s.signed to direct If Ever They Find Me Dead and, in the second place, because she had total confidence in his authority to cast her in the leading role? I have to say I do find that a strain on my credulity.'

'We-ell,' the Chief-Inspector defensively replied, aware as he was that, with this particular suspect, he was on shaky ground, 'I did add a rider to the effect that she might merely have acted as Hanway's accomplice.'

'Even so, Eustace, even so. And Lettice. Now, I agree, she is, as the Yanks say, a tough little cookie. But, after all, Farjeon didn't actually succeed in having his evil way with her.'

'I can't see as that makes a ha'p'orth of difference. Don't forget that, if it was Lettice, she may not actually have meant to kill Farjeon. It may just have been her intention to give him the fright of his life. I wouldn't be too surprised if we were talking of manslaughter here.'

'And Philippe? A French film critic committing murder? I mean, literally. Difficult to swallow.'

'Oh, please, let's have no truck with such tired old generalisations. Put yourself in his position. All his adult life he had lived and breathed Alastair Farjeon. Farjeon was his life, the only life, in a sense, he'd ever known. And now here he was, instead of having to wors.h.i.+p him from afar, finally at his side, not just as an admirer but, so he hoped, as a colleague. He had written a script he believed would be ideal for his favourite film director. And it was ideal if it hadn't been, Farjeon would never have stolen it in the first place. He does steal it, though, and all of Francaix's dreams crumble to dust. Can't you imagine how he must have felt when it dawned on him that he had wasted his whole life on someone totally unworthy of his admiration. People have killed for less, much less, in my experience.'

'Possibly so ... Yet, you know, Eustace, as you yourself pointed out, they tended to speak quite freely and openly of their loathing of Farjeon. Why would they have done that if they suspected that they themselves were, well, suspected of having murdered him?'

'But that's just it!' Trubshawe practically shouted at her. 'They didn't suspect! Nor were they suspected! It was Cora's murder we were investigating. Not for a second did they have any cause to wonder whether it might be advisable for them to hold their tongues about their relations.h.i.+p with Farjeon. Anyway, as you of all people, the Dowager d.u.c.h.ess of Crime, must know, the subtlest way of insinuating that you didn't kill somebody is to claim that you wished you had.'

Evadne Mount reflected on this for a moment, then said simply: 'I'm not sure, Eustace, I'm not sure.'

'Why not? Mine is the only theory which even begins to explain why one of the five might have poisoned Cora. We have nothing else to go on.'

'Not quite nothing. What about my sc.r.a.p of paper?'

'Oh yes? One of those obliging sc.r.a.ps of paper that your whodunits are littered with? Let's be serious, Evie. It hardly stands up against what I have to offer. You recall what Sherlock Holmes said? "When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."'

At this she released a sharp e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n.

'Pshaw, Trubshawe, pshaw! Devotee as I am of Conan Doyle, I've always thought that particular apothegm to be complete drivel. There exist lots of things in the world that are theoretically not impossible but extremely unlikely ever to be "the truth". Playing a perfect round of golf, for instance, by scoring eighteen successive holes-in-one. The fact that yours is, there's no denying it, the only theory so far so far, Eustace which adequately accounts for Cora's murder doesn't mean it's true.

'Actually,' she added, 'the more I think about it, the more offensive I find it. So put that in your pipe and smoke it. If you ever do actually get round to smoking that filthy old pipe of yours.'

Trubshawe ignored this unwarranted calumny on his beloved meerschaum.

'Offensive?' he queried. 'You find it offensive? Now there, Evie, you've lost me.'

'Well, just consider. What you appear to be implying is not only that one of the five suspects murdered Farjeon but that Cora subsequently discovered the ident.i.ty of that murderer and threatened him or her with the prospect of taking what she knew to the police. In other words, she set about blackmailing the murderer and got murdered herself for her sins.'

'No, no, no! Now you're extrapolating, wildly extrapolating. All I said was that Cora had acquired what would turn out to be a very dangerous piece of knowledge. Just knowing that she knew may have been enough for the murderer. I never once suggested that she sought to exploit the secret.'

'Not in so many words.'

'Remember how gleeful she was when she announced to us that she'd somehow contrived to have her part "b.u.mped up"? Remember how cagey she then became when you asked her how she'd pulled it off?'

'There you are!' cried the novelist, who visibly did remember her friend's crowing complacency. 'What is it you're implying if not blackmail? Well, I won't have it, Eustace. I won't hear a word against poor dear dead Cora. I insist that you retract these scurrilous insinuations of yours.'

'I say, dash it all, Evie, we aren't going to fight, are we?'

'That's entirely up to you. I simply won't have you trampling over Cora's memory with your flatfoot's hob-nailed boots.'

Trubshawe, however, instead of beating a retreat, as he would once have done, elected to pursue what he saw as his advantage.

'I'm sorry. I understand how sensitive you are about Cora's death, but I wonder if you aren't letting your friends.h.i.+p cloud your judgement. I, on the other hand, am free to speak my mind.'

'That shouldn't take long.'

'Now listen, Evie,' said Trubshawe with steely determination, 'I know you well enough to know how you can't tolerate being upstaged, to use Gareth Knight's word. Obviously, it goes against the grain for you to acknowledge that somebody else might be right for once or simply have got there first. In your books, you make d**ned sure Alexis Baddeley always defeats poor old Inspector Plodder and you've deluded yourself that it must happen like that in life. If this were one of your whodunits '

'I wish you wouldn't keep saying that,' the novelist testily interjected. 'It's my line, not yours.'