Patricia Wentworth - The Key

Garth whistled because he didn’t particularly want to think. He wanted to see Janice and hear what she had to say before he set his mind working upon such things as the glass on the Rectory stair, the glass on Evan Madoc’s shoe, and the odd behaviour of Aunt Sophy’s key. It is much easier to make up your mind not to think than it is to stop thinking. Behind the silly jingling words suggested by the tune he was whistling there came and went a crowd of shadowy, half-conscious speculations. It was a relief when something moved behind the hedge on the far side of the field and a moment later Janice came into view at the stile. He jumped down and went to meet her.

She had hurried a little, and there was colour in her cheeks. She wore the white frock which she had worn at the inquest, but she had taken off the hat with the black ribbon. The sun picked up the gold threads in the short brown curls. He thought again how little she had changed. The very bright eyes of no particular colour – they could look grey, or brown, or green – the little brown pointed face, the short bright curls, and the short white frock belonged as much to Janice at ten years old as to Janice at twenty-two.

He laughed, and said, ‘You haven’t grown a bit.’

The colour brightened against the brown of her skin. She stuck her chin in the air.

‘Why should I have grown? Last time you saw me I was nineteen. People don’t grow after they’re nineteen.’

His eyes teased her.

‘I did – I grew two inches.’

‘Well, I call that extravagant! You were six foot already – another two inches was just swank. And everybody doesn’t want to be yards high anyhow.’

Garth laughed. It was really very difficult to disentangle her from the little girl who had passionately wanted to be tall, and who had coloured up just like this when he teased her. Then all of a sudden the past shut down. The old safe, easy world was gone – its rules, its pattern, its way of life. The violence which was shaking the world had reached out and shaken Bourne, for whether Michael Harsch had shot himself or had been murdered, he had most certainly died because an Austrian house-painter aspired to an empire beyond the dreams of the Caesars. He said abruptly, ‘I want to talk to you, Janice. Where shall we go – up over the downs?’

‘Yes, if you like.’

‘Or we can stay here, if you don’t want to get hot.’ Her colour had failed, and he noticed how tired she looked – quite suddenly. ‘Lots of good places to sit, if you’d rather do that.’

‘Yes – I think so-’

They found a place where tumbled heaps of stone would screen them from the lane. Garth felt again how far away the past had gone. The little girl Janice had tagged about at his heels all day with as little thought of fatigue as a rabbit. He frowned and said, ‘You look all in. What’s the matter? Is it this Harsch business?’

She said, ‘Yes. I don’t mean just because he’s dead.’ She leaned forward, her hands locked about her knees. ‘Garth – he didn’t shoot himself – I know he didn’t.’

He was looking at her hard.

‘If you know anything, you ought to have said it at the inquest.’

‘But I did-’

‘You mean you just think he didn’t shoot himself. You don’t really know anything at all.’

This was the old superior Garth, talking down over a five years gap. She reacted at once.

‘Don’t be stupid – facts aren’t the only things you can know. You can know people – you can know a person so well that you can be quite sure he wouldn’t do that sort of thing.’

‘Meaning it would be out of character for Harsch to have committed suicide?’

Her ‘Yes’ was very emphatic.

‘But, Janice, don’t you see that when something pushes a man off his balance, that’s just what he does do – he acts out of character. It isn’t normal for a man to pitch on his head or go down on his hands and knees, but if his physical balance is upset, it may happen. And when it comes to mental balance, well, it’s the same thing, isn’t it? Normal motives and restraints cease to operate, and he does the last thing he would dream of doing if he were himself.’

Janice looked at him with those very bright eyes.

‘He didn’t do it, Garth.’

‘You’re just being obstinate. You’ve got nothing to go on.’

‘But I have. You haven’t listened to me yet. I want you to listen.’

‘All right – go ahead.’

She set her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand and went on looking at him.

‘Well then – it’s five years since Mr Harsch came over here. That’s to say it’s more than five years since his wife and daughter – died. That would have been the time to kill himself if he were going to do it. The Nazis had stripped him of everything. He hadn’t got anything left except his mind, and they couldn’t touch that. If they didn’t break it then, why should it break suddenly now? I don’t care how dreadful a tragedy has been, it can’t be quite the same after five years as it was at first. He told me himself that last day that in the beginning he kept going because he wanted punishment and revenge, and he thought this stuff he was working on would give it to him.’

‘Harschite – yes.’

Her face changed.

‘You know about that?’

‘Yes – that’s why I’m here. Don’t tell anyone, Jan.’

The colour came brightly to her face. She nodded and went on with what she had been saying.

‘But now, he said, all that had gone. He said the desire for revenge wasn’t civilised. He only wanted to stop the dreadful things that were being done, and to set people free. And he spoke of working with Mr Madoc, and asked if I would help him. You see, none of that is like a man who is off his balance. He wasn’t like that at all – I lived in the house with him for a year, and I know. He was gentle, and considerate, and very patient. He was always thinking of other people. I know he wouldn’t have made that appointment with-’ she stopped suddenly.

Garth supplied the name she had bitten off.

‘With Sir George Rendal.’

‘Oh, you know that too?’

‘I’m acting for him – but that’s not to be known. Go on.’

‘I was going to say that he would never have made that appointment and failed to keep it. I know he wouldn’t.’

Garth leaned back and looked at her. No doubt about it at all, she most passionately believed what she had said. Her eyes, her lips, the colour in her cheeks, made up a picture of absolute conviction. He was, if not himself convinced, a good deal impressed. The impression was definite enough to make him give a little more weight to such things as two pieces of glass and a key. He said, ‘All right, you’ve got that on the record. Now it’s my turn. I want you to answer some questions. Will you?’

‘If I can.’

‘You think Michael Harsch was murdered?’

She brought her hands together in a way he remembered. Her colour was all gone.

‘I didn’t say that.’

He gave his old impatient jerk of the shoulder.

‘What else? If he didn’t commit suicide, he was murdered, wasn’t he? What else have you been saying, except that he was murdered?’

She looked down at her hands and said, ‘Yes.’ And then, in a childish, almost inaudible voice, ‘It sounds so dreadful.’

It touched him in an odd kind of way, like a child saying ‘I don’t like it’ in the middle of a thunderstorm or a bombardment. He said in a tone that was grim just because he had been moved, ‘Well, murder is dreadful.’

She said, ‘I know-’

‘And the murderer, if it were murder, is still at large. Now let’s go back to my questions. I want to know a lot of things that the coroner didn’t ask. I want to know whether you suspect anyone.’