Chapter Fourteen
In the Last Analysis
“Here she comes; and her passion ends the play.”
SHAKESPEARE
From amongst a mass of bandages which the doctor was now unwinding, a bleak, pale blue eye glared at the assembled company. “I’m not well enough,” said a familiar voice from beneath the bandages. “I am not well enough to be unwound yet.”
“Nonsense,” said the doctor in the brisk, heartless manner of his kind. “You’re perfectly well. The swelling’s practically gone—you must have a skin like leather. And you can’t go about for weeks looking like a mummy.”
“You’re most unkind,” said Fen, feeling his restored features tenderly. “I have been gassed, bludgeoned and attacked by the third plague of Egypt. But does anyone sympathise? No. They stand about jeering.” He sat up in bed and scowled.
It was the following evening, and they were all gathered in Fen’s bedroom, which only the prolonged exercise of Flit had succeeded in clearing of insects. Geoffrey thought that the occasion had the solemnity of the unveiling of a monument. Frances, Garbin, Spitshuker, Dallow, Dutton all stood or sat about the room. Various formalities had prevented Peace’s being released yet, but he would be out shortly. And the Inspector, who as Fen told them, was superintending the final break-up of the cordon, had promised to look in a little later.
Of course they wanted an explanation, and, after a good deal of grumbling, Fen consented to give it.
“The motive for the murders of Brooks and Butler,” he said, “was obvious from the start—as was the whole of this business,” he added with some vehemence, “to anyone with even a speck of brain.”
“Control yourself,” said Geoffrey.
After a mild fit of the sulks, Fen went on:
“That motive was, of course, the wireless hidden in the Bishop’s Gallery in the cathedral—an admirable hiding-place, blamelessly public and yet easily available for use at night to anyone with access to a cathedral key. Brooks found out about it—how, and how much, we don’t know, but enough to make it necessary to put him out of the way. The first attempt, after the choir-practice, failed; the injection of atropine wasn’t fatal. So he was murdered in the hospital before he recovered sanity enough to tell what he knew. But in the meantime the cathedral had been put under guard, and it was imperatively necessary to get the transmitting set away to some spot less under the eye of the law. The only time to do it was during the hours of service. The organist was dead, and the deputy organist temporarily out of action; it would be possible to burrow discreetly through to the Bishop’s Gallery from the organ-loft, concealing the hole behind the big music cupboard which stands against the partition. Apparently they hadn’t contemplated the possibility of another deputy coming at once; so when your arrival was announced, Geoffrey, it gave them a bit of a shock. They tried to put you off with threatening letters and they tried to put you out of action. No good. Another way had to be devised.”
“Then it was Savernake,” asked Geoffrey, “who put that letter on my seat in the train?”
“Almost certainly.”
“He must have written it and had it ready in case of emergency. But I suppose it was the merest chance that I happened to get into his compartment.”
“I think so. If you hadn’t, he would have got it to you just the same. As to his writing it…” Fen’s blue eyes glanced easily round the gathering.
“Well?” Geoffrey felt a sudden, unaccountable tension in the air.
“Apparently it hasn’t occurred to any of you,” said Fen, “that if Savernake had the brains to run a spy-ring, he hadn’t the personality; and if James had the personality, he hadn’t the brains. What’s more, Savernake could not have systematically drugged Josephine, since he was out at Maverley most of the time; and for James it would have been nearly impossible.”
They were silent.
“And there’s another thing,” said Fen, “which doesn’t seem to have suggested itself to any of you. Both James and Savernake had alibis for the murder of Brooks.” Geoffrey felt a sudden sickening premonition. Nobody made any movement, or said a word.
Fen nodded slowly. “No, you’re quite right. We haven’t got them all yet.” He paused and leaned back against the pillows.
“The murder of Brooks provided no handle. Someone—one of a number of people without alibis—knew of the arrangements at the hospital, slipped into a room and rang the bell for the nurse who was bringing his medicine punctually at six o’clock. Then, evading the nurse as she came up, went down and put atropine in it. There were no fingerprints on the bell; there was no clue of any land, any more than there was in the first attack on Brooks, in the cathedral. But the death of your father, Frances, was different.”
Again Fen glanced at them. Again nobody moved or spoke.
“There were two features in that which no sane man could stomach for a moment. One was the method—the tomb-slab; and the other was the fact that Butler quite unexpectedly announced his intention of going up to the cathedral, and must have arrived there only five minutes after the police guard left.1 2 Do you see the point?”
“No,” said Geoffrey. “For God’s sake get on and tell us.” His voice sounded strained and harsh.
“We heard the slab fall at 10:15—nearly an hour and a quarter afterwards. The purpose of getting the police away was to remove the wireless. Do you suppose they’d wait an hour and a quarter to do that? Of course not. They’d get on with it at once, which would mean they must have arrived just before, or simultaneously with, or just after Butler. So what was he doing during that hour and a quarter? Looking on and giving helpful advice?”
Dallow cleared his throat, a little nervously. “Surely, my de-ear Professor, it is possible that he was himself involved?”
“I considered that. But other evidence, which I’ll come to in a moment, went against it. No, the plain fact is that he must have been killed almost as soon as he arrived in the cathedral.”
“Then the slab was a decoy!” Geoffrey exclaimed. “No, wait, you can’t counterfeit a noise like that. And, anyway, how was it got to move? There was no one in the cathedral, and no one except Peace could have got out. How was it toppled on top of Butler?”
“I will interrupt the classic perfection of my narrative,” said Fen severely, “to digress on that point. It’s more or less guesswork, and it has no relevance to the identity of the… person with whom we’re concerned. But you should have realised, Geoffrey. What was the one part of the cathedral we paid no attention to, thinking it could have nothing to do with the affair?”
“The organ loft,” Garbin put in. His deep voice momentarily startled them.
“Precisely. And you remember there’s a thirty-two-foot stop on the pedals which literally shakes the cathedral…” 3
“Good God!” Geoffrey exclaimed.
“You remember how delicately that stone was poised once the padlocks were out. Two notes played together at the bottom of the pedal-board would topple it out in a moment. You remember, too, that you noticed a difference between the crash we heard and the Inspector’s experiment. The first crash was preceded by a marked vibration, the second by absolute silence. 4 5 That alone made me pretty certain I was on the right track. And you must recall how little attention we paid to the organ loft. It would have been perfectly possible in the general confusion for anyone to get out that particular door.
“But that didn’t really matter.” Fen waved the point indifferently aside. “What did matter was why this elaborate business had ever been contrived. Butler was dead a long time ago, you understand. Probably he was thrown over the edge of the gallery immediately over the tomb, and the idea was improvised on account of his position. To move him about would leave dangerous traces. Some pretty quick thinking was done. But why?
“It was not to falsify the manner of death, since the autopsy found no trace of weapons or poison. So it must have been to falsify the time of death. The slab had three advantages: (a) it produced the same physical results—crushed and broken bones—as the fall from the gallery; (b) it made medical assessment of the time of death impossible; and (c) it made the devil of a noise. The plan must have been improvised at lightning speed—that was why I emphasised all along that it was never intended. But still—why?
“It might have been to create an alibi; it might have been to incriminate someone else; or both. Before long it became plain that it was the second possibility that mattered. To supply a personal motive for the murder might still divert attention from the spying (they knew nothing about the C.I.D. radio van). So I hunted about for likely personal motives, and, of course, the most glaring was Peace’s money.
“Now I began to understand things—with a vengeance. I remembered that a number of people knew that Peace was going to the cathedral to meet Butler at 9:20. But in fact he didn’t go then; he went at 10. Now imagine the mental processes of the criminals. Butler is dead. They have removed the wireless and locked the cathedral, throwing the key away somewhere, to be found later and used as evidence against Peace. But no Peace appears. Rigor is setting in, and if he does not come up to the cathedral soon it will be impossible to connect him with the crime, on medical evidence alone. Someone returns to the clergy-house and finds he has an infallible alibi, talking to Spitshuker here. What they decided to do, you know. They decided to drop out the slab and create a false impression of the time of death.”
Fen paused, and lit a cigarette. Geoffrey saw that Frances, crying a little, had crept out of the room. He felt a pang of pity, but worlds would not have moved him from the spot.
“So far I got,” Fen was saying; “And then for a long time—like a fool—no further. Even when Dutton told me that he hadn’t heard the crash of the slab from the clergy-house—right on the edge of the cathedral grounds—I didn’t properly realise its importance. Even when I learned that those grounds were locked at night, so there would be no casual wanderers, I didn’t see what it meant. And then, suddenly, I realised.
“Someone had to hear the slab fall.”
Fen glanced quizzically around. “Someone had to be got up to the cathedral at about the right time—when Peace was up there. Some reliable person—you, Geoffrey, or myself, or Fielding, or even the Inspector. Perhaps all four of us… The crash wouldn’t be heard outside the grounds, and there would be no lovers to listen, since the grounds were locked…
“Do you remember who we saw, when we came back from the ‘Whale and Coffin’? Spitshuker, of course, but he had an alibi for almost the whole evening. And Fielding—but if he was involved, why did he prevent you, Geoffrey from being put out of action at a time when it was essential you should be? There was only one other person to decoy us to the cathedral. That person expressed great anxiety about Butler, and asked us to see that he was safe. That person learned that we were going up to the cathedral on business of our own—very satisfactory information…”
“Stop!” Geoffrey almost shouted the word.
Fen turned to him. “I’m sorry, Geoffrey,” he said quietly. “Yes, I’m very sorry. Of course it was Frances.”
What Geoffrey thought in that moment he never afterwards remembered. It was too turbulent and too vilely painful. But he left the room at once and went downstairs and out of the house. There he saw Frances again.
She was walking rapidly towards a car which stood in the drive, a small attache case clutched tightly in her hand. She swung round as she heard him, and a small automatic was in her other hand.
“Don’t interfere with me,” she said briefly. “Our sentimental relationship is now at an end. A one-sided affair, I’m afraid, but I enjoyed my little piece of acting. If you make the slightest attempt to move, to stop me, or to shout, I shall shoot you without hesitation. One more fool dead will be no loss to me or to anyone else.”
She got into the car. He stood silent, watching her drive off. There was no movement from inside the house.
Of course the cordon had not been removed. She drove into the barrier on the Exeter road at seventy miles an hour. They said afterwards that there was no point in even attempting to shoot. A piece of jagged metal tore open the carotid artery in the left side of her neck, and before they could get her out of the wreckage she had bled to death.