Аврам Дэвидсон - Ellery Queen’s Double Dozen

There was evidence that clues of time and place had been faked but no evidence of the identity of the faker. There was no evidence that death had been inflicted before Finchmoor left the house on Tuesday evening — nor that his account of his subsequent movements was untrue in any particular.

Moreover, it would have been physically impossible for the same person — say, Finchmoor — to have committed the murder, obtained the use of a car, transported the body fifteen miles and hidden it, and then returned to Thaleham in time to catch the 6:20 train to London.

By the end of a month every line of inquiry had been followed to its end. The dossier was sent to the Department of Dead Ends, together with the Victorian bell-rope and the laboratory report stating that glandular deposits had been present on the rope which would be consistent with the theory that the rope had been used for strangulation.

Detective Inspector Rason was fascinated by the bell-rope, considered as a murder weapon. Some liked a gun, a knife, or a cosh, but this one liked a nice bit o’ bell-rope. It looked more like a woman’s trick.

The dossier lent little support to the suggestion that Lorna Brendwright had strangled her uncle and removed the body. Rason thought no more about the case until a five-line paragraph appeared seven months later in an evening paper. It was headed Thaleham Mystery Echo and stated that the restoration of Rose Cottage had been interrupted by Mr. Harry Finchmoor, who had ordered its immediate demolition. The echo may have been faint, but Rason — as not infrequently happened — heard it as a bellow...

In those seven months there had been no hitch in what we may call the business side of the murder. The financial company had allotted 50,000 one-pound shares to Finchmoor, of which he had assigned 12,000 to Lorna Brendwright — effected through lawyers, with no personal acknowledgment by Lorna. The separate sale of the mortgaged manor house — to be used as a clubhouse in the housing development — brought Lorna next to nothing. Rose Cottage, which the developing company did not want, since it was on an isolated site on the other side of the village, remained Finchmoor’s property.

As murders go, this one had turned out very well. Finchmoor congratulated himself on — roughly — everything. There was now no reason why he should not proceed to have a good time.

But there was no good time. Instead, there was Lorna — though she never deliberately did him any harm. In the sense in which Brendwright had provoked his own death, Finchmoor groomed Lorna as “the fatal woman” — a role for which she was singularly unsuited.

The self-congratulation soon staled, if only because he did not value success as a criminal. He was not deeply in love with Lorna and could easily have kept his distance. It would seem that he regarded Lorna’s company at a restaurant or theater as a passport to the civilization he had never wished to repudiate.

Even so, her intelligent chatter had a bitter-sweet quality. She was apt to speak suddenly of the death of her uncle, as if it were always at the back of her thoughts.

“Uncle John actually paid that fifty pounds to start restoring Rose Cottage. I feel I have the duty to him to go on with it Will you sell me the cottage, Harry?”

“Certainly not!” He said it with a smile. “I will restore it to your specifications. I’ll be your landlord, and your rent will be a real peppercorn placed in my hand in the presence of witnesses — it’s probably never been done before.”

At the back of his mind was the thought that they would marry and use it on week-ends. Similar thoughts about her were always at the back of his mind. He now rather liked her slight bossiness. Physically she attracted him, though he was not yet ready to make love — he was waiting for something which he failed to define.

“As you please, Harry.” There was a polite smile at his little joke about the peppercorn. Nothing about preferring to have it on a proper business footing. In a month she sent him a surveyor’s report and specifications. Nothing — not one word — about his kindness. Some weeks later, in a pause following discussion of a film, she remarked, “Mrs. Harbutt says that when she came in with the tea tray that day, Uncle was telling you about George III.”

“Quite right! And very glad I was to see her.” So far, his finesse had always succeeded and he tried it again. “I was amused by the way she instructed him to warm up some food she had prepared for the next day.”

“She told the police that somebody — not Uncle John — had warmed up the pie and pretended to eat it.”

There was no follow-up, nor did she expect him to make any answer. He wondered why she would blurt out that sort of thing, like a feather-head, when she was in fact an uncommonly self-possessed woman. He was not afraid of her. All her blurting could be done in the presence of the police without the possibility of their learning anything dangerous.

The climax came in the eighth month — in a theater, of all inappropriate places. The play was a successful light comedy and both responded to it. As the lights were lowered after the second act, she leaned toward him.

“I drove down to the Wey Valley last Saturday. You said there were at least two hundred outworked gravel pits. There is only one. And it’s our gravel pit.”

He sat through the last act, not hearing a word of it. But he did hear her laughing. She was attending to the play and she smiled and applauded when the cast took their curtain calls.

He gave the taximan his own address. As they entered the flat together, he had the impression that she knew what he was about to say.

“Lorna, dear. Will you please tell me whether or not you believe I killed your uncle?”

“I do not believe that you killed Uncle John,” she answered without hesitation. “Wait, please, Harry. I do have the feeling sometimes — like a sort of waking dream — that you might have, even that you did. I hoped the feeling would pass if we went out together—”

“—While you drop in little bits like that bit about the gravel pit? To see how the puppet dances on the string?”

“That’s unworthy of you. It’s — petty.”

“I know it is, but I can’t help it. You’ve known me from childhood but you’re able to believe that I might turn out to be the kind of uncivilized brute we both despise.”

“It’s not as clear-cut as that — it’s a sort of nervous twitch. Doesn’t it count that I want us to be friends?” She was almost pleading. “Can’t we go on as we are?”

“I don’t think so,” he said carefully. “I can never drive out that — waking dream — of yours, because I am an ordinary man, the ordinary mixture of good and evil. Capable, no doubt, of all sorts of abominations, but not very likely to put them into action. But that’s not good enough, is it?”

“I never guessed it would seem to you like that.” She was grave and unhappy. “Do you want us not to meet again?”

Her words suddenly fanned a passionate desire — as if he demanded her body to prove to himself that he had not forfeited his civilization. Now or never.

“Wrong side up, Lorna. I want us to come closer. I want us to cut out haverings and daytime nightmares. You know that I love you and have been waiting for you to give me a chance to say so.” He dropped onto the settee beside her. “Yes? No?... You don’t know? In a minute we’ll both know.”

As once before, in an outworked gravel pit, he made a scuffle of it. She remained inert while he engaged himself in the unrewarding business of kissing her. Then she stood up and in that moment he knew that it was fear of her contempt that had stampeded him into the murder. Puppet.