Murder Is Easy (Superintendent Battle 4)

He had strolled out to the door of the inn. A figure in black hurrying down the street stopped suddenly when she saw him.

“Mr. Fitzwilliam.”

“Mrs. Humbleby.”

He came forward and shook hands.

She said:

“I thought you had left?”

“No—only changed my quarters. I’m staying here now.”

“And Bridget? I heard she had left Ashe Manor?”

“Yes, she has.”

Mrs. Humbleby sighed.

“I am so glad—so very glad she has gone right away from Wychwood.”

“Oh, she’s still here. As a matter of fact, she’s staying with Miss Waynflete.”

Mrs. Humbleby moved back a step. Her face, Luke noted with surprise, looked extraordinarily distressed.

“Staying with Honoria Waynflete? Oh, but why?”

“Miss Waynflete very kindly asked her to stay for a few days.”

Mrs. Humbleby gave a little shiver. She came close to Luke and laid a hand on his arm.

“Mr. Fitzwilliam, I know I have no right to say anything—anything at all. I have had a lot of sorrow and grief lately and—perhaps—it makes me fanciful! These feelings of mine may be only sick fancies.”

Luke said gently:

“What feelings?”

“This conviction I have of—of evil!”

She looked timidly at Luke. Seeing that he merely bowed his head gravely and did not appear to question her statement, she went on:

“So much wickedness—that is the thought that is always with me—wickedness here in Wychwood. And that woman is at the bottom of it all. I am sure of it!”

Luke was mystified.

“What woman?”

Mrs. Humbleby said:

“Honoria Waynflete is, I am sure, a very wicked woman! Oh, I see, you don’t believe me! No one believed Lavinia Pinkerton either. But we both felt it. She, I think, knew more than I did…Remember, Mr. Fitzwilliam, if a woman is not happy she is capable of terrible things.”

Luke said gently:

“That may be—yes.”

Mrs. Humbleby said quickly:

“You don’t believe me? Well, why should you? But I can’t forget the day when John came home with his hand bound up from her house, though he pooh-poohed it and said it was only a scratch.”

She turned.

“Good-bye. Please forget what I have just said. I—I don’t feel quite myself these days.”

Luke watched her go. He wondered why Mrs. Humbleby called Honoria Waynflete a wicked woman. Had Dr. Humbleby and Honoria Waynflete been friends, and was the doctor’s wife jealous?

What had she said? “Nobody believed Lavinia Pinkerton either.” Then Lavinia Pinkerton must have confided some of her suspicions to Mrs. Humbleby.

With a rush the memory of the railway carriage came back, and the worried face of a nice old lady. He heard again an earnest voice saying, “The look on a person’s face.” And the way her own face had changed as though she were seeing something very clearly in her mind. Just for a moment, he thought, her face had been quite different, the lips drawn back from the teeth and a queer, almost gloating look in her eyes.

He suddenly thought: But I’ve seen someone look just like that—that same expression…Quite lately—when? This morning! Of course! Miss Waynflete, when she was looking at Bridget in the drawing room at the Manor.

And quite suddenly another memory assailed him. One of many years ago. His Aunt Mildred saying, “She looked, you know, my dear, quite half-witted!” and just for a minute her own sane comfortable face had borne an imbecile, mindless expression….

Lavinia Pinkerton had been speaking of the look she had seen on a man’s—no, a person’s face. Was it possible that, just for a second, her vivid imagination had reproduced the look that she saw—the look of a murderer looking at his next victim….

Half unaware of what he was doing, Luke quickened his pace towards Miss Waynflete’s house.

A voice in his brain was saying over and over again:

“Not a man—she never mentioned a man—you assumed it was a man because you were thinking of a man—but she never said so…Oh, God, am I quite mad? It isn’t possible what I’m thinking…surely it isn’t possible—it wouldn’t make sense…But I must get to Bridget. I must know she’s all right…Those eyes—those queer, light amber eyes. Oh, I’m mad! I must be mad! Whitfield’s the criminal! He must be. He practically said so!”

And still, like a nightmare, he saw Miss Pinkerton’s face in its momentary impersonation of something horrible and not quite sane.

The stunted little maid opened the door to him. A little startled by his vehemence, she said:

“The lady’s gone out. Miss Waynflete told me so. I’ll see if Miss Waynflete’s in.”

He pushed past her, went into the drawing room. Emily ran upstairs. She came down breathless.

“The mistress is out too.”

Luke took her by the shoulder.

“Which way? Where did they go?”

She gaped at him.

“They must have gone out by the back. I’d have seen them if they’d gone out frontways because the kitchen looks out there.”

She followed him as he raced out through the door into the tiny garden and out beyond. There was a man clipping a hedge. Luke went up to him and asked a question, striving to keep his voice normal.

The man said slowly:

“Two ladies? Yes. Some while since. I was having my dinner under the hedge. Reckon they didn’t notice me.”

“Which way did they go?”

He strove desperately to make his voice normal. Yet the other’s eyes opened a little wider as he replied slowly:

“Across them fields…Over that way. I don’t know where after that.”

Luke thanked him and began to run. His strong feeling o

f urgency was deepened. He must catch up with them—he must! He might be quite mad. In all probability they were just taking an amicable stroll, but something in him clamoured for haste. More haste!

He crossed the two fields, stood hesitating in a country lane. Which way now?

And then he heard the call—faint, far away, but unmistakable….

“Luke, help.” And again, “Luke…”

Unerringly he plunged into the wood and ran in the direction from which the cry had come. There were more sounds now—scuffling—panting—a low gurgling cry.

He came through the trees in time to tear a mad woman’s hands from her victim’s throat, to hold her, struggling, foaming, cursing, till at last she gave a convulsive shudder and turned rigid in his grasp.

Twenty-three

NEW BEGINNING

“But I don’t understand,” said Lord Whitfield. “I don’t understand.”

He strove to maintain his dignity, but beneath the pompous exterior a rather pitiable bewilderment was evident. He could hardly credit the extraordinary things that were being told him.

“It’s like this, Lord Whitfield,” said Battle patiently. “To begin with there is a touch of insanity in the family. We’ve found that out now. Often the way with these old families. I should say she had a predisposition that way. And then she was an ambitious lady—and she was thwarted. First her career and then her love affair.” He coughed. “I understand it was you who jilted her?”

Lord Whitfield said stiffly:

“I don’t like the term jilt.”

Superintendent Battle amended the phrase.

“It was you who terminated the engagement?”

“Well—yes.”

“Tell us why, Gordon,” said Bridget.

Lord Whitfield got rather red. He said:

“Oh, very well, if I must. Honoria had a canary. She was very fond of it. It used to take sugar from her lips. One day it pecked her violently instead. She was angry and picked it up—and—wrung its neck! I—I couldn’t feel the same after that. I told her I thought we’d both made a mistake.”