The web she weaves, p.48
The Web She Weaves, page 48
It was meticulously pasted into the notebook in its chronological order and carefully annotated. Aubrey Glatt was a natural researcher; Dalgliesh couldn’t help wondering whether this passion for accuracy might not have been more rewardingly spent than in the careful documentation of murder.
The note was written in an elegant upright hand, the strokes black and very thin but unwavering.
Miss Goddard presents her compliments to Mr. Aubrey Glatt. She did not murder her grandfather and has neither the time nor the inclination to gratify his curiosity by discussing the person who did.
Aubrey Glatt said, “After that extremely disobliging note I felt there was really no point in going on with the book.”
Glatt’s passion for Edwardian England extended to more than its murders and they drove to Colebrook Croft, high above the green Hampshire lanes, in an elegant 1910 Daimler. Aubrey wore a thin tweed coat and deerstalker hat and looked, Dalgliesh thought, rather like a Sherlock Holmes, with himself as attendant Watson.
“We are only just in time, my dear Dalgliesh,” he said when they arrived. “The engines of destruction are assembled. That ball on a chain looks like the eyeball of God, ready to strike. Let us make our number with the attendant artisans. You as a guardian of the law will have no wish to trespass.”
The work of demolition had not yet begun, but the inside of the house had been stripped and plundered. The great rooms echoed to their footsteps like gaunt and deserted barracks after the final retreat. They moved from room to room, Glatt mourning the forgotten glories of an age he had been born thirty years too late to enjoy, Dalgliesh with his mind on more immediate and practical concerns.
The design of the house was simple and formalized. The second floor, on which were most of the main bedrooms, had a long corridor running the whole length of the fagade. The master bedroom was at the southern end, with two large windows giving a distant view of Winchester Cathedral tower. A communicating door led to a small dressing room.
The main corridor had a row of four identical large windows. The curtain rods and rings had been removed, but the ornate carved pelmets were still in place. Here must have hung pairs of heavy curtains giving cover to anyone who wished to slip out of view. And Dalgliesh noted with interest that one of the windows was exactly opposite the door of the main bedroom. By the time they had left Colebrook Croft and Glatt had dropped him at Winchester station, Dagliesh was beginning to formulate a theory.
His next move was to trace Marguerite Goddard if she was still alive. It took him nearly a week of weary searching, a frustrating trail along the south coast from hotel to hotel. Almost everywhere his inquiries were met with defensive hostility. It was the usual story of a very old lady who had become more demanding, arrogant and eccentric as her health and fortune had waned, an unwelcome embarrassment to manager and fellow guests alike. The hotels were all modest, a few almost sordid. What, he wondered, had become of the Goddard fortune? From the last landlady he learned that Miss Goddard had become ill, really very sick indeed, and had been removed six months previously to the local district general hospital. And it was there that he found her.
The ward sister was surprisingly young, a petite, darkhaired girl with a tired face and challenging eyes.
“Miss Goddard is very ill. We’ve put her in one of the side wards. Are you a relative? If so, you’re the first one who has bothered to call and you’re lucky to be in time. When she is delirious she seems to expect a Captain Brize-Lacey to call. You’re not he, by any chance?”
“Captain Brize-Lacey will not be calling. No, I’m not a relative. She doesn’t even know me. But I would like to visit her if she’s well enough and is willing to see me. Could you please give her this note?”
He couldn’t force himself on a defenceless and dying woman. She still had the right to say no. He was afraid she would refuse him. And if she did, he might never learn the truth. He thought for a second and then wrote four words on the back page of his diary, signed them, tore out the page, folded it and handed it to the sister.
She was back very shortly.
“She’ll see you. She’s weak, of course, and very old, but she’s perfectly lucid now. Only please don’t tire her.”
“I’ll try not to stay too long.”
The girl laughed. “Don’t worry. She’ll throw you out soon enough if she gets bored. The chaplain and the Red Cross librarian have a terrible time with her. Third door on the left. There’s a stool to sit on under the bed. We ring a bell at the end of visiting time.”
She bustled off, leaving him to find his own way. The corridor was very quiet. At the far end he could glimpse through the open door of the main ward the regimented rows of beds, each with its pale-blue coverlet; the bright glow of flowers on the over-bed tables; and the laden visitors making their way in pairs to each bedside. There was a faint buzz of welcome, the hum of conversation. But no one was visiting the side wards. Here in the silence of the aseptic corridor Dalgliesh could smell death.
The woman propped high against the pillows in the third room on the left no longer looked human. She lay rigidly, her long arms disposed like sticks on the coverlet. This was a skeleton clothed with a thin membrane of flesh, beneath whose yellow transparency the tendons and veins were plainly visible as if in an anatomist’s model. She was nearly bald, and the high-domed skull under its spare down of hair was as brittle and vulnerable as a child’s. Only the eyes still held life, burning in their deep sockets with an animal vitality. And when she spoke her voice was distinctive and unwavering, evoking as her appearance never could the memory of imperious youth.
She took up his note and read aloud four words:
“ ‘It was the child.’ You are right, of course. The four-year-old Hubert Boxdale killed his grandfather. You sign this note ‘Adam Dalgliesh.’ There was no Dalgliesh connected with the case.”
“I am a detective of the Metropolitan Police. But I’m not here in any official capacity. I have known about this case for a number of years from a dear friend. I have a natural curiosity to learn the truth. And I have formed a theory.”
“And now, like that Aubrey Glatt, you want to write a book?”
“No. I shall tell no one. You have my promise.”
Her voice was ironic. “Thank you. I am a dying woman, Mr. Dalgliesh. I tell you that not to invite your sympathy, which it would be an impertinence for you to offer and which I neither want nor require, but to explain why it no longer matters to me what you say or do. But I, too, have a natural curiosity. Your note, cleverly, was intended to provoke it. I should like to know how you discovered the truth.”
Dalgliesh drew the visitor’s stool from under the bed and sat down beside her. She did not look at him. The skeleton hands, still holding his note, did not move.
“Everyone in Colebrook Croft who could have killed Augustus Boxdale was accounted for, except the one person whom nobody considered, the small boy. He was an intelligent, articulate and lonely child. He was almost certainly left to his own devices. His nurse did not accompany the family to Colebrook Croft and the servants who were there had the extra work of Christmas and the care of the delicate twin girls. The boy spent much time with his grandfather and the new bride. She, too, was lonely and disregarded. He could have trotted around with her as she went about her various activities. He could have watched her making her arsenical face wash and when he asked, as a child will, what it was for, could have been told: To make me young and beautiful.’ He loved his grandfather, but he must have known that the old man was neither young nor beautiful. Suppose he woke up on that Boxing Day night overfed and excited after the Christmas festivities. Suppose he went to Allegra Boxdale’s room in search of comfort and companionship and saw there the basin of gruel and the arsenical mixture together on the washstand. Suppose he decided that here was something he could do for his grandfather.”
The voice from the bed said quietly:
“And suppose someone stood unnoticed in the doorway and watched him.”
“So you were behind the window curtains on the landing, looking through the open door?”
“Of course. He knelt on the chair, two chubby hands clasping the bowl of poison, pouring it with infinite care into his grandfather’s gruel. I watched while he replaced the linen cloth over the basin, got down from his chair, replaced it with careful art against the wall and trotted out into the corridor back to the nursery. About three seconds later Allegra came out of the bathroom and I watched while she carried the gruel in to my grandfather. A second later I went into the main bedroom. The bowl of poison had been a little heavy for Hubert’s small hands to manage and I saw that a small pool had been spilt on the polished top of the wash-stand. I mopped it up with my handkerchief. Then I poured some of the water from the jug into the poison bowl to bring up the level. It only took a couple of seconds and I was ready to join Allegra and my grandfather in the bedroom and sit with him while he ate his gruel.
“I watched him die without pity and without remorse. I think I hated them both equally. The grandfather who had adored, petted and indulged me all through my childhood had deteriorated into this disgusting old lecher, unable to keep his hands off his woman even when I was in the room. He had rejected his family, jeopardized my engagement, made our name a laughingstock in the county, and for a woman my grandmother wouldn’t have employed as a kitchen maid. I wanted them both dead. And they were both going to die. But it would be by other hands than mine. I could deceive myself that it wasn’t my doing.”
Dalgliesh asked, “When did she find out?”
“She guessed that evening. When my grandfather’s agony began, she went outside for the jug of water. She wanted a cool cloth for his head. It was then that she noticed that the level of water in the jug had fallen and that a small pool of liquid on the washstand had been mopped up. I should have realized that she would have seen that pool. She had been trained to register every detail; it was almost subconscious with her. She thought at the time that Mary Huddy had spilt some of the water when she set down the tray and the gruel. But who but I could have mopped it up? And why?”
“And when did she face you with the truth?”
“Not until after the trial. Allegra had magnificent courage. She knew what was at stake. But she also knew what she stood to gain. She gambled with her life for a fortune.” And then Dalgliesh understood what had happened to the Goddard inheritance.
“So she made you pay.”
“Of course. Every penny. The Goddard fortune, the Goddard emeralds. She lived in luxury for sixty-seven years on my money. She ate and dressed on my money. When she moved with her lovers from hotel to hotel, it was on my money. She paid them with my money. And if she has left anything, which I doubt, it is my money. My grandfather left very little. He had been senile for years. Money ran through his fingers like sand.”
“And your engagement?”
“It was broken, you could say, by mutual consent. A marriage, Mr. Dalgliesh, is like any other legal contract. It is most successful when both parties are convinced they have a bargain. Captain Brize-Lacey was sufficiently discouraged by the scandal of a murder in the family. He was a proud and highly conventional man. But that alone might have been accepted with the Goddard fortune and the Goddard emeralds to deodorize the bad smell. But the marriage couldn’t have succeeded if he had discovered that he had married socially beneath him, into a family with a major scandal and no compensating fortune.”
Dalgliesh said, “Once you had begun to pay, you had no choice but to go on. I see that. But why did you pay? She could hardly have told her story. It would have meant involving the child.”
“Oh, no! That wasn’t her plan at all. She never meant to involve the child. She was a sentimental woman and she was fond of Hubert. She intended to accuse me of murder outright. Then, if I decided to tell the truth, how would it help me? How could I admit that I had watched Hubert, actually watched a child barely four years old preparing an agonizing death for his grandfather without speaking a word to stop him? I could hardly claim that I hadn’t understood the implication of what I had seen. After all, I wiped up the spilt liquid, I topped up the bowl. She had nothing to lose, remember, neither life nor reputation. They couldn’t try her twice. That’s why she waited until after the trial. It made her secure forever. But what of me? In the circles in which I moved, reputation was everything. She needed only to breathe the story in the ears of a few servants and I was finished. The truth can be remarkably tenacious. But it wasn’t only reputation. I paid because I was in dread of the gallows.”
Dalgliesh asked, “But could she ever prove it?”
Suddenly she looked at him and gave an eerie screech of laughter. It tore at her throat until he thought the taut tendons would snap.
“Of course she could! You fool! Don’t you understand? She took my handkerchief, the one I used to mop up the arsenic mixture. That was her profession, remember. Sometime during that evening, perhaps when we were all crowding around the bed, two soft plump fingers insinuated themselves between the satin of my evening dress and my flesh and extracted that stained and damning piece of linen.”
She stretched out feebly toward the bedside locker.
Dalgliesh saw what she wanted and pulled open the drawer. There on the top was a small square of very fine linen with a border of hand-stitched lace. He took it up. In the corner was her monogram, delicately embroidered. And half of the handkerchief was still stiff and stained with brown.
She said, “She left instructions with her solicitors that this was to be returned to me after her death. She always knew where I was. She made it her business to know. You see, it could be said that she had a life interest in me. But now she’s dead. And I shall soon follow. You may have the handkerchief, Mr. Dalgliesh. It can be of no further use to either of us now.”
Dalgliesh put it in his pocket without speaking. As soon as possible he would see that it was burned. But there was something else he had to say. “Is there anything you would wish me to do? Is there anyone you want told, or to tell? Would you care to see a priest?”
Again there was that uncanny screech of laughter, but it was softer now.
“There’s nothing I can say to a priest. I only regret what I did because it wasn’t successful. That is hardly the proper frame of mind for a good confession. But I bear her no ill will. No envy, malice or uncharitableness. She won; I lost. One should be a good loser. But I don’t want any priest telling me about penance. I’ve paid, Mr. Dalgliesh. For sixty-seven years I’ve paid. Great-Aunt Allie and her flypapers! She had me caught by the wings all the rest of my life.”
She lay back as if suddenly exhausted. There was silence for a moment. Then she said with sudden vigour:
“I believe your visit has done me good. I would be obliged if you would make it convenient to return each afternoon for the next three days. I shan’t trouble you after that.”
Dalgliesh extended his leave with some difficulty and stayed at a local inn. He saw her each afternoon. They never spoke again of the murder. And when he came punctually at 2 P.M. on the fourth day, it was to be told that Miss Goddard had died peacefully in the night, with apparently no trouble to anyone. She was, as she had said, a good loser.
A week later, Dalgliesh reported to the Canon.
“I was able to see a man who has made a detailed study of the case. He had already done most of the work for me. I have read the transcript of the trial and visited Colebrook Croft. And I have seen one other person closely connected with the case but who is now dead. I know you will want me to respect confidences and to say no more than I need.”
It sounded pompous and minatory, but he couldn’t help that. The Canon murmured his quiet assurance. Thank God he wasn’t a man to question. Where he trusted, he trusted absolutely. If Dalgliesh gave his word, there would be no more questioning. But he was anxious. Suspense hung around them. Dalgliesh went on quickly:
“As a result, I can give you my word that the verdict was a just verdict and that not one penny of your grandfather’s fortune is coming to you through anyone’s wrongdoing.”
He turned his face away and gazed out the vicarage window at the sweet green coolness of the summer’s day so that he did not have to watch the Canon’s happiness and relief. There was a silence. The old man was probably giving thanks in his own way. Then he was aware that his godfather was speaking. Something was being said about gratitude, about the time he had given up to the investigation.
“Please don’t misunderstand me, Adam. But when the formalities have been completed, I should like to donate something to a charity named by you, one close to your heart.”
Dalgliesh smiled. His contributions to charity were impersonal; a quarterly obligation discharged by banker’s order. The Canon obviously regarded charities as so many old clothes: all were friends, but some fitted better and were more affectionately regarded than others.
Then inspiration came.
“It’s good of you to suggest it, sir. I rather liked what I learned about Great-Aunt Allie. It would be pleasant to give something in her name. Isn’t there a society for the assistance of retired and indigent vaudeville artistes, conjurers and so on?”
The Canon, predictably, knew that there was and could name it.
Dalgliesh said, “Then I think, Canon, that Great-Aunt Allie would agree that a donation to them would be entirely appropriate.”
