Portrait of a Murderer Page 10

  Miles said, generously associating himself with the rest of them, though he had never asked a man for help in his life, “If Romford says that death is due to a stroke or some shock brought on by anxiety, we shall none of us be quite able to absolve ourselves. It’s not an enviable position, look at it how you will. For our own sakes, let’s keep cool about it.”

  “I think we’re all cool enough, except Brand,” remarked Olivia. “I daresay he has more on his conscience than the rest of us.”

  Eustace, however, could not summon sufficient control to save his dignity. “Do you mean you got money out of him?” he exclaimed. “But how could you? He had none.”

  Miles permitted himself for an instant to betray his disgust at this deplorable scene, and Eustace added hurriedly, “I have the honour, you see, to be in his confidence regarding his finances. And, as Olivia says, times were never worse.”

  “And I suppose that, being his adviser, you resent his making an investment without consulting you. But I daresay he was wise. He wouldn’t have liked poor law officers writing to him, or asking for assistance in keeping my wife and children.”

  Eustace said briefly and inaccurately, “No pressure could be brought to bear upon him.”

  “Perhaps not. But in a village like this, where people can find food for gossip if two bees choose the same flower at the same time, it would have been very unpleasant.”

  “And how often was this—er—grant to be renewed?”

  “It was a final payment. We had it all very formal. Really, Miles, you should have been there. We drew up the most humorous document. I doubt if you could have improved upon it. It was extremely legal for a layman. I signed like a bird. No witnesses, though. Does that invalidate it?”

  “How thankful father must be that his other children can keep their families,” sneered Olivia.

  “And I,” countered Brand politely. “If he had had to keep young Moores and young Amerys as well as young Grays he would, indeed, have been unfortunate. Though as to the Moores, I daresay he’s contributed more to their support than he is aware.”

  3

  The doctor arrived, shouldering his way through the hall as he had shouldered it through the snow outside. He had no car, and tramped over this hilly country, day and night, in all weathers.

  Richard met him in the hall, apologised formally for calling him in, and began to explain the position.

  Romford thought, “Weedy chap! Too narrow in the shoulders and the forehead. Not much room for good brain there—all cramped together like a Victorian lady’s stomach. And why apologise for bringing me out? Does he suppose that people are considerate enough to keep well on Christmas Day?” Besides, he really preferred his Christmas visits to any others; usually he was offered something to drink and picked up some titbit of local scandal, for he was an inveterate gossip. He was a large stout man, with a rough reddish-grey beard and long thick hair; his hobby was fish photography. He was a bachelor, cared for by a housekeeper whom he did not recognise when they met in the streets. He said he would have married long ago if he could be certain of recollecting his wife’s features, but it would be equally inconvenient were he to return to find a woman patient awaiting him and embrace her heartily, and find himself cited as a co-respondent, or mistake his wife for one of those patient, garrulous women whom he saw between nine and ten in the morning and six and seven at night.

  He passed into the library in front of Richard and bent over the body. He had not uttered a single word of sympathy or shock since his arrival. Richard, embarrassed and inwardly alarmed, since it seemed possible that the story of his father’s interviews with his family the previous day would be made public, stood by the table, feigning an attitude of ease. On the table lay the preposterous paper bearing Brand’s signature, and without taking it up he read it through for the first time.

  “Brand must have been able to advance a very strong case to persuade my father to help him to that extent,” he brooded. “I must see him before anyone else does.”

  Romford straightened himself and said, “Where did you find him?”

  “On the floor by the window. It was open, by the way.”

  “Why didn’t you say that before? It makes a lot of difference.”

  “Do you mean, if it hadn’t been open, he might have pulled through?”

  “No. He must have been killed, if not instantaneously, almost at once.”

  Richard said, in a dazed voice, “Been killed?”

  “Well, what did you suppose?”

  “I thought a stroke, a fall…”

  “You have seen your father, I suppose? Who found him?”

  “I did. Moulton and I lifted him on to that chair.”

  “Which way was he lying? His head towards the window?”

  “He was facing towards that wall.”

  “Then you couldn’t have missed this mark on his left temple. It’s as clear as—we’re promised—the mark of the beast shall be in the foreheads of the damned. Do you suppose a stroke accounts for that?”

  “He—he fell.”

  “He fell on his right side. And, even if he hadn’t, there’s carpet right up to the window. He couldn’t have bruised his skull and actually cut the skin in any sort of fall. Even the edges of this table, had he fallen against that, are rounded. Who saw him last?”

  “My brother is the last person who admits to seeing him.” Brand’s statement and Eustace’s swift denial seemed reasonable enough now. Brand, of course, wanted to establish a later visitor than himself; Eustace didn’t want anyone to know he had been stirring in the night.

  “That young hothead who came to grief in Paris? I should ask him what explanation he can offer. I daresay he could throw a lot of light on the position. I suppose it was pretty late when he was here?”

  “A little before midnight, I think he said.”

  “Or a little after. Who’s to tell? Your father wasn’t killed before one, I should say, and the open window would account for rigor mortis setting in early. So it may have been as late as three or four o’clock. Well, I should ask him what he’s got to say, and get the police. There’s nothing I can do.”

  “The police?” There was such genuine shock in Richard’s voice that Romford felt a stab of compassion.

  “Of course. What did you suppose?”

  “But surely—it might have been an accident.”

  “Oh, quite easily. More murders are committed by accident than anyone except doctors and lawyers guess. Though the consequences are generally the same in both cases—violent death for both parties.”

  “His heart?” suggested Richard weakly. “That might account for his collapsing under very little provocation.”

  “Well, I shouldn’t call half a brick very little provocation myself. As a matter of fact, your father’s heart was sounder than mine, only, as he hadn’t got to get a living, he could afford luxuries I can’t. My heart daren’t go back on me—it knows what I should say to it if it did. Treat ’em hard, that’s the best cure for these impertinent maladies. What’s a heart to go on strike? When mine threatens me with mutiny, I work it twice as hard for forty-eight hours. I soon have the proud creature under. You’d better get the police. I shall have to give evidence, I suppose. It’s a pity you didn’t realise the facts and get them here first.”

  Richard exclaimed, “How could we imagine…? I still feel convinced there’s some explanation of this.”

  “Of course there is. Whether it’s the one you’ll get hold of eventually or not, I don’t know. As I say, it’s a pity you weren’t a shade more observant. Then the police surgeon would have had to waste his time at the inquest instead of me.”

  4

  Richard put the receiver back and leaned against the table. His face was stupid with incredulity, anger, and shock. He had for many years regarded Brand as a throw-back, one of those creatures, worthles
s and expensive, who are to be found even in families as ancient and mannered as his own. One came across them again and again; they were shipped abroad to plant rubber, tea, or coffee; they became remittance men in nameless corners of the earth, where they could soak themselves blind without any of their more fastidious relations’ friends discovering them; many of them dropped not only their caste but their nationality. They mingled with a degrading familiarity with coloured races; they were a drag and a disgrace. And all these, he considered, Brand was, with his excesses as a young student, his disreputable marriage to a woman of no virtue, his mean home and lowly employment, his periodical appearances at King’s Poplars, flushed, bitter, and resolute, to demand assistance. He had always believed that his younger brother would stop short of nothing, but in his own mind the idea that he could murder his own father had appeared incredible. Even men like Brand drew the line at that. And now it appeared that precisely such a crime had been committed, a crime that would blossom into one of those hideous affairs favoured by the evening papers and the Sunday Press. Snapshots would be taken of the family; his own history and his father’s would be raked up and presented in its most enticing form to the masses. There would be an inquest, a trial, his own position would be jeopardised; he would be the son of that fellow who was murdered down at King’s Poplars and the brother of the chap that did it. And it was Brand, the insignificant waster, who was responsible for all this.

  He went into the dining-room, where the remainder of the family was still assembled. The grandmother had gone upstairs, but Amy was here, her mouth set in a hard line, her barest gestures accusing them all of combining to slay their father. They turned with a wave of eagerness as the door opened. Richard said, holding the knob in his hand, “Brand, I want you a minute,” and Brand, suddenly icy cold, then sweating as he did when sea-sick, followed him.

  “I suppose he’s found out something. I made a blunder, after all.”

  Richard took him into a small room behind the library, and, shutting the door, said, “I’m not questioning you about the upshot of your interview with our father yesterday. As I told Eustace at breakfast, he had as much right to make provision for you and your children as for any of the rest of us. But did he let fall anything that gave you the impression he was highly nervous of any development?”

  “What kind of development?”

  “Well, was he particularly troubled over anything or any person? Did he say anything?”

  “He said a lot, most of it uncomplimentary.”

  “To you, or did he refer to anyone else? Or the whole family collectively?”

  “He thought of all of us as leeches. I fancy Eustace has stung him pretty badly.”

  Richard frowned. “He never would listen to reason. Speculating may be all right for the rich man on the spot, but a man with limited means should eschew it like the devil.”

  “Especially with a family like ours,” Brand agreed. “But why all these questions?”

  Richard looked away. “He didn’t give any hint of taking his own life, I suppose?”

  Thoughts fled through Brand’s mind. Was it possible? The open window, the fallen figure… But his reason rejected such a theory.

  “No. And I’m sure he wouldn’t. A man who held on to the least of his possessions, as our father did, would never, I’m convinced, throw away anything he regarded as so valuable.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Brand, be a little less cold-blooded. He’s our father, and he’s dead.”

  “I know. And for his sake, supposing his life to have been worth anything to himself, I’m sorry. I’d rather be alive than dead in any circumstances. But I can’t pretend now to an affection I never felt. These death-bed hypocrisies sicken me.”

  “Tell me one other thing,” said Richard. “I’m not asking for particulars of your conversation, as I said before. But—he gave you money, we know, and he’s literally not in a position to part with a sovereign—what inducement did you offer him?”

  “Only what I’ve told you.”

  Richard struck his hands together. “That isn’t sense, Brand. I knew my father better than you did. I know something of the position in which his faith in Eustace has placed him. He had to hold on to every penny to—well, to save himself from public disgrace.”

  “You think he may have taken his life to prevent that? But I thought first it was a stroke, and next that it was violence.”

  “That’s what Romford says.”

  “What exactly has happened?”

  “A blow—a violent blow on the temple.”

  Brand looked sceptical. “It sounds a crazy way of committing suicide. Revolvers I can understand, and poison—I suppose both of them take some getting hold of, though. Or presumably one can cut one’s throat or drop out of a window. Are there any other ways of taking one’s own life, assuming that it must be at home? Outside, of course, opportunities multiply. Taxis, trains, rivers…”

  Richard made a motion of intolerable disgust. “Brand, so long as you are in his house, I must beg of you to speak of our father with reasonable decency. Outside is your own affair. In any case, we are not likely to have mutual acquaintances.”

  “And so I can’t smudge your estimable career. I wasn’t, let me point out, speaking of our father at all. It was a quite impersonal comment on the difficulties of suicide at home.”

  “And you haven’t answered my question. I realise that I can’t, of course, compel you, but all the same—what could you say that induced him to part with so much money?”

  “Oh, I fancy that was as much on your account as his own. I told him I proposed to put into practice a plan I had been considering for a long time. That bloody office is wearing me down. I’ve got to get out from it. And I must go now before it’s too late. I can’t, of course, take Sophy or the children with me, and it’s quite probable that I shan’t for some time be able to support two establishments. I asked my father to give me a chance, to let me have some money to keep them on their feet while I was working. He refused, as I’d anticipated. He was, moreover, unnecessarily abusive. But then he had no feeling for art, and so, I suppose, he isn’t precisely to be blamed.”

  “Perhaps he felt he’d no reason to feel generous towards artists.”

  “Think of the narrowness of the intellect that can judge art by some unsatisfactory artist—and not unsatisfactory in the artistic sense, mark you, but in the material. He knows or hears of a man who paints pictures, and also keeps a mistress or drinks, and immediately he decides that art is no use. In this case, I take it you mean he might have found it a little uncomfortable to his own pocket. However, you can’t compel a man to behave intelligently about art, but I may say here that what offends you in my behaviour can’t be more distressing than our father’s attitude towards everything that seems to me to give life its value. However, we shall never meet on mutual ground there, so let it pass. When he refused, I told him my mind was made up. I was going, and I should advise Sophy to apply to the parish relieving office, telling them that her children were the nephew and nieces of the Member for H—— and grandchildren of a country gentleman. That fetched him. He realised that I meant what I said, and knew that it would get into the papers. These things do. And at your very critical stage in politics that would be nothing less than disastrous.”

  “So he gave you two thousand pounds? Why, it’s fantastic. You couldn’t have expected as much as five hundred.”

  “I didn’t. But he gave himself away badly. He was so shaken that I realised I was in a stronger position than I had supposed. So I increased my price. I believe if I’d asked for five thousand I’d have got it. I gave him, of course, the guarantee, that doubtless you’ve read, that this should be a final payment, and indeed a final interview. I had intended to go back this afternoon. Indeed, I see no reason why I shouldn’t.”

  “If the police allow you, we shall raise no objection.”

&nbs
p; Brand whistled. “The police? So it’s come to that.”

  “If he didn’t commit suicide and it wasn’t a stroke, what other alternative is there? Besides, as you remarked, it isn’t easy for a man to kill himself with a blow on the head. No, what was in my mind was that perhaps you had stumbled on some bit of information that let you into some secret he was anxious should not be divulged. Had that been the case, I should have asked you to let me share the story…”

  “And I should promptly have refused. The sentences for blackmail in this country of late years have been appalling. I’d rather be taken for breaking a bank—anything, in short, except murder.”

  “Murder,” repeated Richard. “Perhaps you will.”

  Brand left the edge of the table, where he had seated himself at the beginning of the conversation, and said, “Murder? I? Is that what you mean? They’ll think I did it? What a fool I am. Of course they will. I’m the last person who admits to seeing him. I’d got that money out of him. Why should I murder him if I’d got the cheque? Because I was afraid he’d try and cancel it, or that, when you heard, the rest of you would urge him to do so? Not very good reasons, surely. And if I killed him, after I got it, why didn’t I destroy the agreement? I admit there wasn’t much likelihood of my ever touching anything, but if he had mentioned me or any of my children in his will, I daresay that agreement would invalidate it. At all events, I’m sure Eustace would make as much trouble as he could. Possibly Miles would help him. As a matter of fact, I’ve never been able to gauge Miles’s attitude to Ruth’s family. I think collectively he thinks us deplorable, with nothing but our birth to commend us, and he, being the kind of fellow he is, wouldn’t give a locust for that.”

  Richard said coldly, “I must say, Brand, these asides are in the very worst possible taste.”

  “I don’t know that I should call it the best of taste to ask a man if he’s murdered his father.”

  “I merely wished to warn you of what conceivably may be suggested.”

  “So that I could think up my defence? Kind of you. As a matter of fact, I’m no author. I paint and I do draughtsman’s work and I can get drunk and make a beast of myself, but none of those qualifications would make me capable of telling a really good story, that would get me past the police.” He commenced to walk up and down the room, with long lunging strides. “I know you’re thinking all the worst possible things about me, Richard, and in a way I’m sorry. But I haven’t any unmentionable secrets that I could hold over our father’s head, and I’m not hypocritical enough to pretend that his death makes much difference to me. My thoughts of him have always been pretty hard, and I daresay they were mutual. He was, literally, in a position to make my life. And he wouldn’t. I’ve no patience with these bloody little poets, who go into all the magazines that charge the public half a crown and don’t pay the contributors a stiver, who sing the praises of poverty, queen of the saints and all that kind of thing. Poverty’s damnable; it’s bad enough when one’s alone, but when there are five or six other people anxious to share the crust that isn’t sufficient for you, then it becomes degrading. I’ve pointed that out to my father time after time; and he didn’t believe me. He didn’t care either, of course. And so I’ve been in the treadmill till I was half mad. You don’t know—and nor did he—what it is to walk up and down blank streets all night, because you daren’t go home; you’re afraid of what you might do. Oh, I don’t say you never lie awake, too, but that’s because someone may get a better job than you, or have a bigger house or create a bigger stir. But to know your work isn’t being done—it’s no use telling me there are plenty of men in the world who spend their lives unprofitably daubing canvas; the point is that it’s my job, and I’ve been out of my mind sometimes because I couldn’t get at it. You remember that torture of the ancients—how they tied up a man in the blazing sun with water out of reach? Well, we torture quite as well as that in these civilised days, and get esteemed for it. And at least that chap died comparatively quickly. He didn’t eat his heart out—there were vultures to do that, presumably, and though, no doubt, he cursed them like hell, it was merciful really—hastened things, you see…”