Murder Impossible Page 2

  Eve regarded him in consternation.

  'You don't mean the banana skin?' she cried.

  'Oh yes, I do,' said H.M., folding his arms like a prosecuting counsel.

  'But we—we only wanted to invite you to a picnic!' H.M. closed his eyes.

  'That's fine,' he said in a hollow voice. 'All the same, don't you think it'd have been a subtler kind of hint just to put mayonnaise over my head, or shove ants down the back of my neck? Oh, lord love a duck!'

  'I didn't mean that! I meant . . .'

  'Let me help you up, sir,' interposed the calm, reassuring voice of the dark-haired and blue-chinned young man who had been with Eve in the car.

  'So you want to help too, hey? And who are you?'

  'I'm awfully sorry,' said Eve. 'I should have introduced you! This is my fiance, Dr. William Sage.'

  H.M.'s face turned purple.

  'I'm glad to see,' he observed, 'you had the uncommon decency to bring along a doctor. I appreciate that, I do. And the car's there, I suppose, to assist with the examination when I take off my pants?' The hall-porter gave a gasp of horror.

  Bill Sage, either from jumpiness and nerves or from sheer inability to keep a straight face, laughed loudly. 'I keep telling Eve a dozen times a day,' he said, 'that I'm not to be called "doctor." I happen to be a surgeon'—(here H.M. really did look alarmed)—'but I don't think we need operate. Nor, in my opinion,' Bill gravely addressed the hall-porter, 'will it be necessary to remove Sir Henry's trousers in front of the Senior Conservatives' Club.'

  'Thank you very much, sir.'

  'We had an infernal nerve to come here,' the young man confessed to H.M. 'But I honesdy think, Sir Henry, you'd be more comfortable in the car. What about it? Let me give you a hand up?'

  Yet even ten minutes later, when H.M. sat glowering in the back of the car and two heads were craned round towards him, peace was not restored.

  'All right?' said Eve. Her pretty, rather stolid face was flushed; her mouth looked miserable. 'If you won't come to the picnic, you won't. But I did believe you might do it to oblige me.'

  'Well . . . now!' muttered the great man uncomfortably.

  'And I did think, too, you'd be interested in the other person who was coming with us. But Vicky's—difficult. She won't come either, if you don't.'

  'Oh? And who's this other guest?'

  'Vicky Adams.'

  H.M.'s hand, which had been lifted for an oratorical gesture, dropped to his side. 'Vicky Adams? That's not the gal who . . .'

  'Yes!' Eve nodded. 'They say it was one of the great mysteries, twenty years ago, that the police failed to solve.'

  'It was, my wench,' H.M. agreed sombrely. 'It was.'

  'And now Vicky's grown up. And we thought if you, of all people, went along, and spoke to her nicely, she'd tell us what really happened on that night.'

  H.M.'s small, sharp eyes fixed disconcertingly on Eve.

  'I say, my wench, what's your interest in all this?'

  'Oh, reasons.' Eve glanced quickly at Bill Sage, who was again punching moodily at the steering wheel, and checked herself. 'Anyway, what difference does it make now? If you won't go with us . . .'

  H.M. assumed a martyred air.

  'I never said I wasn't goin' with you, did I?' he demanded. 'Even after you practically made a cripple of me, I never said I wasn't goin'?' His manner grew flurried and hasty. 'But I've got to leave now,' he added apologetically. 'I got to get back to my office.'

  'We'll drive you there, H.M.'

  'No, no, no,' said the practical cripple, getting out of the car with surprising celerity. 'Walkin' is good for my stomach if it's not so good for my behind. I'm a forgivin' man. You pick me up at my house to-morrow morning. G'bye.'

  And he lumbered off in the direction of the Hay market.

  It needed no close observer to see that H.M. was deeply abstracted. He remained so abstracted, indeed, as to be nearly murdered by a taxi at the Admiralty Arch; and he was halfway down Whitehall before a familiar voice stopped him.

  'Afternoon, Sir Henry!'

  Burly, urbane, buttoned up in blue serge, with his bowler hat and his boiled blue eyes, stood Chief Inspector Masters.

  'Bit odd,' the Chief Inspector remarked affably, 'to see you taking a constitutional on a day like this. And how are you, sir?'

  'Awful,' said H.M. instantly. 'But that's not the point. Masters, you crawlin' snake! You're the very man I wanted to see.'

  Few things startled the Chief Inspector. This one did.

  'You,' he repeated, 'wanted to see me? What about?'

  'Masters, do you remember the Victoria Adams case about twenty years ago?'

  The Chief Inspector's manner suddenly changed and grew wary.

  'Victoria Adams case?' he ruminated. 'No, sir, I can't say I do.'

  'Son, you're lyin'! You were sergeant to old Chief Inspector Rutherford in those days, and well I remember it!'

  'That's as may be, sir. But twenty years ago . . .'

  'A little girl of twelve or thirteen, the child of very wealthy parents, disappeared one night out of a country cottage with all the doors and windows locked on the inside. A week later, while everybody was havin' screaming hysterics, the child reappeared again: through the locks and bolts, tucked up in her bed as usual. And to this day nobody's ever known what really happened.'

  There was a silence, while Masters shut his jaws hard.

  'This family, the Adamses,' persisted H.M., 'owned the cottage; down Aylesbury way, on the edge of Goblin Wood, opposite the lake. Or was it?'

  'Oh, ah,' growled Masters. 'It was.'

  H.M. looked at him curiously.

  'They used the cottage as a base for bathin' in summer and ice skatin' in winter. It was black winter when the child vanished, and the place was all locked up inside against draughts. They say her old man nearly went loopy when he found her there a week later, lying asleep under the lamp. But all she'd say, when they asked her where she'd been, was "I don't know." '

  Again there was a silence, while red buses thundered through the traffic press of Whitehall.

  'You've got to admit, Masters, there was a flaming public rumpus. I say, did you ever read Barrie's "Mary Rose"?'

  'No.'

  'Well, it was a situation straight out of Barrie. Some people, y'see, said that Vicky Adams was a child of faerie who'd been spirited away by the pixies . . .'

  Masters removed his bowler hat and wiped his forehead. He made remarks about pixies in detail, which could not have been bettered by H.M. himself.

  'I know, son, I know.' H.M. was soothing. Then his big voice sharpened. 'Now, tell me. Was all this talk strictly true?'

  'What talk?'

  'Locked windows? Bolted doors? No attic-trap? No cellar? Solid walls and floor?'

  'Yes, sir,' answered Masters, regaining his dignity with a powerful effort, 'I'm bound to admit it was true.'

  'Then there wasn't any jiggery-pokery about the cottage?'

  'In your eyes there wasn't, said Masters.

  'How d'ye mean?'

  'Listen, sir.' Masters lowered his voice. 'Before the Adamses took over that place, it was a hide-out for Chuck Randall. At that time he was the swellest of the Swell mob; we lagged him a couple of years later. Do you think Chuck wouldn't have rigged up some gadget for a getaway? Just so! Only . . .'

  'Well? Hey?'

  'We couldn't find it,' grunted Masters.

  'And I'll bet that pleased old Chief Inspector Rutherford?'

  'I tell you straight: he was fair up the pole. Especially as the kid herself was a pretty kid, all big eyes and dark hair. You couldn't help trusting her.'

  'Yes,' said H.M. 'That's what worries me.'

  'Worries you?'

  'Oh, my son!' said H.M. dismally. 'Here's Vicky Adams, the spoiled daughter of dotin' parents. She's supposed to be "odd" and "fey." She's even encouraged to be. During her adolescence, the most impressionable time of her life, she gets wrapped round with the gauze of a mystery that people talk abo
ut even yet. What's that woman like now, Masters? What's that woman like now?'

  'Dear Sir Henry!' murmured Miss Vicky Adams in her softest voice.

  She said this just as William Sage's car with Bill and Eve Drayton in the front seat, and Vicky and H.M. in the back seat, turned off the main road. Behind them lay the smokey-red roofs of Aylesbury, against a brightness of late afternoon. The car turned down a side road, a damp tunnel of greenery, and into another road which was little more than a lane between hedgerows.

  H.M.—though cheered by three good-sized picnic hampers from a famous provisioner's, their wickerwork lids bulging with a feast-did not seem happy. Nobody in that car was happy, with the possible exception of Miss Adams herself.

  Vicky, unlike Eve, was small and dark and vivacious. Her large light-brown eyes, with very black lashes, could be arch and coy; or they could be dreamily intense. The late Sir James Barrie might have called her a sprite. Those of more sober views would have recognized a different quality: she had an inordinate sex-appeal, which was as palpable as a physical touch to any male within yards. And despite her smallness, Vicky had a full voice like Eve's. All these qualities she used even in so simple a matter as giving traffic directions.

  'First right,' she would say, leaning forward to put her hands on Bill Sage's shoulders. 'Then straight on until the next traffic light. Ah, clever boy!'

  'Not at all, not at all!' Bill would disclaim, with red ears and rather an erratic style of driving.

  'Oh yes, you are!' And Vicky would twist the lobe of his ear, playfully, before sitting back again.

  (Eve Drayton did not say anything. She did not even turn round. Yet the atmosphere, even of that quiet English picnic-party, had already become a trifle hysterical).

  'Dear Sir Henry!' murmured Vicky, as they turned down into the deep lane between the hedgerows. 'I do wish you wouldn't be so materialistic! I do, really. Haven't you the tiniest bit of spirituality in your nature?'

  'Me?' said H.M. in astonishment. 'I've got a very lofty spiritual nature. But what I want just now, my wench, is grub—Oi!'

  Bill Sage glanced round.

  'By that speedometer'—H.M. pointed—'we've now come forty-six miles and a bit. We didn't even leave Town until people of decency and sanity were having their tea. Where are we goin’?'

  'But didn't you know?' asked Vicky, with wide-open eyes. 'We're going to the cottage where I had such a dreadful experience when I was a child.'

  'Was it such a dreadful experience, Vicky dear?' inquired Eve. Vicky's eyes seemed far away.

  'I don't remember, really. I was only a child, you see. I didn't understand. I hadn't developed the power for myself then.'

  'What power?' H.M. asked sharply.

  'To dematerialize,' said Vicky. 'Of course.'

  In that warm sun-dusted lane, between the hawthorn hedges, the car jolted over a rut. Crockery rattled.

  'Oh yes. I see,' observed H.M. without inflection. 'And where do you go, my wench, when you dematerialize?'

  'Into a strange country. Through a little door. You wouldn't understand. Oh, you are such Philistines!' moaned Vicky. Then, with a sudden change of mood, she leaned forward and her whole physical allurement flowed again towards Bill Sage. ' You wouldn't like me to disappear, would you, Bill?'

  (Easy! Easy!)

  'Only,' said Bill, with a sort of wild gallantry, 'if you promised to reappear again straightaway.'

  'Oh, I should have to do that.' Vicky sat back. She was trembling. 'The power wouldn't be strong enough. But even a poor little thing like me might be able to teach you a lesson. Look there!'

  And she pointed ahead.

  On their left, as the lane widened, stretched the ten-acre gloom of what is fancifully known as Goblin Wood. On their right lay a small lake, on private property and therefore deserted.

  The cottage—set well back into a clearing of the wood so as to face the road, screened from it by a line of beeches—was in fact a bungalow of rough-hewn stone, with a slate roof. Across the front of it ran a wooden porch. It had a seedy air, like the long yellow-green grass of its front lawn. Bill parked the car at the side of the road, since there was no driveway.

  'It's a bit lonely, ain't it?' demanded H.M. His voice boomed out against that utter stillness, under the hot sun.

  'Oh yes!' breathed Vicky. She jumped out of the car in a whirl of skirts.

  'That's why they were able to come and take me. When I was a child.'

  'They?'

  'Dear Sir Henry! Do I need to explain?'

  Then Vicky looked at Bill.

  'I must apologise,' she said, 'for the state the house is in. I haven't been out here for months and months. There's a modern bathroom I'm glad to say. Only paraffin lamps, of course. But then,' a dreamy smile flashed across her face, 'you won't need lamps, will you? Unless . . .'

  'You mean,' said Bill, who was taking a black case out of the car, 'unless you disappear again?'

  'Yes, Bill. And promise me you won't be frightened when I do.'

  The young man uttered a ringing oath which was shushed austerely by Sir Henry Merrivale. Eve Drayton was very quiet.

  'But in the meantime,' Vicky said wistfully, 'let's forget it all, shall we? Let's laugh and dance and sing and pretend we're children! And surely our guest must be even more hungry by this time?'

  It was in this emotional state that they sat down to their picnic.

  H.M., if the truth must be told, did not fare too badly. Instead of sitting on some hummock of ground, they dragged a table and chairs to the shaded porch. All spoke in strained voices. But no word of controversy was said. It was only afterwards, when the cloth was cleared, the furniture and hampers pushed indoors, the empty bottles flung away, that danger tapped a warning.

  From under the porch Vicky fished out two half-rotted deck-chairs, which she set up in the long grass of the lawn. These were to be occupied by Eve and H.M., while Vicky took Bill Sage to inspect a plum tree of some remarkable quality she did not specify.

  Eve sat down without comment. H.M., who was smoking a black cigar opposite her, waited some time before he spoke.

  'Y'know,' he said, taking the cigar out of his mouth, 'you're behaving remarkably well.'

  'Yes.' Eve laughed. 'Aren't I?'

  'Are you pretty well acquainted with this Adams gal?'

  'I'm her first cousin,' Eve answered simply. 'Now that her parents are dead, I'm the only relative she's got. I know all about her.'

  From far across the lawn floated two voices saying something about wild strawberries. Eve, her fair hair and fair complexion, vivid against the dark line of Goblin Wood, clenched her hands on her knees.

  'You see, H.M.,' she hesitated, 'there was another reason why I invited you here. I—I don't quite know how to approach it.'

  'I'm the old man,' said H.M., tapping himself impressively on the chest. 'You tell me.'

  'Eve, darling!' interposed Vicky's voice, crying across the ragged lawn. 'Coo-ee! Eve!'

  'Yes, dear?'

  'I've just remembered,' cried Vicky, 'that I haven't shown Bill over the cottage! You don't mind if I steal him away from you for a little while?'

  'No, dear! Of course not!'

  It was H.M., sitting so as to face the cottage, who saw Vicky and Bill go in. He saw Vicky's wistful smile as she closed the door after them. Eve did not even look round. The sun was declining, making fiery chinks through the thickness of Goblin Wood behind the cottage.

  'I won't let her have him,' Eve suddenly cried. 'I won't! I won't! I won't!'

  'Does she want him, my wench? Or, what is more to the point, does he want her?'

  'He never has,' Eve said with emphasis. 'Not really. And he never will.'

  H.M., motionless, puffed out cigar smoke.

  'Vicky's a faker,' said Eve. 'Does that sound catty?'

  'Not necessarily. I was just thinkin' the same thing myself.'

  'I'm patient,' said Eve. Her blue eyes were fixed. 'I'm terribly, terribly patient. I can wait yea
rs for what I want. Bill's not making much money now, and I haven't got a bean. But Bill's got great talent under that easy-going manner of his. He must have the right girl to help him. If only . . .'

  'If only the elfin sprite would let him alone. Hey?'

  'Vicky acts like that,' said Eve, 'towards practically every man she ever meets. That's why she's never married. She says it leaves her soul free to commune with other souls. This occultism—'

  Then it all poured out, the family story of the Adamses. This repressed girl spoke at length, spoke as perhaps she had never spoken before. Vicky Adams, the child who wanted to attract attention, her father, Uncle Fred, and her mother, Aunt Margaret, seemed to walk in vividness as the shadows gathered.

  'I was too young to know her at the time of the "disappearance," of course. But, oh, I knew her afterwards! And I thought . . .'

  'Well?'

  'If I could get you here,' said Eve, 'I thought she'd try to show off with some game. And then you'd expose her. And Bill would see what an awful faker she is. But it's hopeless!'

  'Looky here,' observed H.M., who was smoking his third cigar. He sat up. 'Doesn't it strike you those two are being a rummy-awful long time just in lookin' through a little bungalow?'

  Eve roused out of a dream, stared back at him. She sprang to her feet. She was not now, you could guess, thinking of any disappearance. 'Excuse me a moment,' she said curtly.

  Eve hurried across to the cottage, went up on the porch, and opened the front door. H.M. heard her heels rap down the length of the small passage inside. She marched straight back again, closed the front door, and rejoined H.M.

  'All the doors of the rooms are shut,' she announced in a high voice. 'I really don't think I ought to disturb them.'

  'Easy, my wench!'

  'I have absolutely no interest,' declared Eve, with the tears coming into her eyes, 'in what happens to either of them now. Shall we take the car and go back to Town without them?'

  H.M. threw away his cigar, got up, and seized her by the shoulders.

  'I'm the old man,' he said, with a leer like an ogre. 'Will you listen to me?'

  'No!'

  'If I'm any reader of the human dial,' persisted H.M., 'that young fellar's no more gone on Vicky Adams than I am. He was scared, my wench. Scared.' Doubt, indecision crossed H.M.'s face. 'I dunno what he's scared of. Burn me, I don't! But . . .'