Josephine Tey - To Love and Be Wise

'So your passport is a woman's one.

'Oh, yes. It is only in the States that I am Leslie Searle. And not all the time there.

'And all you did before going to the Westmorland was to hop over to Paris, and lay the track of Leslie Searle in case anyone proved inquisitive.

'Yes. I've been in England for some time. But I didn't actually think I'd need that track. I meant to do away with Leslie Searle too. To find some joint end for Walter and him. So that it would not be apparent that it was murder.

'Whether it was murder or just, as it turned out, leaving Whitmore in the soup, it was a pretty expensive amusement, wasn't it?

'Expensive?

'One very paying photographer's business, one complete gent's outfit in very expensive suitings, and assorted luggage from the best makers. Which reminds me, you didn't steal a glove of Liz Garrowby's, did you?

'No, I stole a pair. Out of the car pocket. I hadn't thought of gloves, but I suddenly realised how convincing women's gloves are. If there is any doubt, I mean, as to your sex. They are almost as good as lipstick. You forgot my lipstick, by the way-in the little parcel. So I took that pair of Liz's. They wouldn't go on, of course, but I meant to carry them. I grabbed them in a hurry out of my collar drawer because Walter was coming along the passage calling to know if I was ready, and later I found that I had only one. Was the other one still there in the drawer?

'It was. With the most misleading results.

'Oh! she said, and looked amused and human for the first time. She thought for a little and then said: 'Walter will never take Liz for granted again. That is one good thing I have done. It is poetic justice that it should have been a woman who did that. It was clever of you to guess that I was a woman just from the outside of a little parcel.

'You do me too much honour. It never even crossed my mind that you might be a woman. I merely thought that Leslie Searle had gone away disguised as a woman. I thought they were probably your things, and that he had gone to you. But the giving up of the whole of Searle's life and belongings puzzled me. He wouldn't do that unless he had another personality to step into. It was only then that I began to wonder whether Searle was masquerading and wasn't a man at all. It didn't seem as wild an idea as it might have, because I had so lately seen that case of arrest for theft that turned out so surprisingly. I had seen how easily it could be done. And then there was you. Staring me in the face, so to speak. A personality all ready for Searle to dissolve into. A personality who had most conveniently been painting in Scotland while Searle was fooling the intelligentsia in Orfordshire. His glance went to the art display. 'Did you hire these for the occasion, or did you paint them?

'Oh, I painted them. I spend my summers in Europe painting.

'Ever been in Scotland?

'No.

'You must go and see it sometime. It's grand. How did you know that Suilven had that "Look-at-me!" look?

'That is the way it looked on the postcard. Are you Scottish? Grant is a Scottish name, isn't it?

'A renegade Scot. My grandfather belonged to Strathspey. He looked at the serried ranks of canvas evidence and smiled. 'As fine and wholesale and convincing an alibi as ever I saw.

'I don't know, she said, doubtfully, considering them. 'I think to another painter they might be far more of a confession. They're so-arrogantly destructive. And angry. Aren't they. I would paint them all differently today now that I have known Liz, and-grown up, and Marguerite has died in my heart as well as in reality. It is very growing-up to find that someone you loved all your life never existed at all. Are you married, Inspector?

'No. Why?

'I don't know, she said vaguely. 'I just wondered how you understood so quickly about what had happened to me over Marguerite. And I suppose one expects married people to be more sympathetic to emotional vagaries. Which is quite absurd, because they are normally far too cluttered up with their own emotional problems to have spare sympathy. It is the unattached person who-who helps. Won't you have some more coffee?

'You make coffee even better than you paint.

'You haven't come to arrest me, or you wouldn't be drinking my coffee.

'Quite right. I wouldn't. I wouldn't even drink the coffee of a practical joker.

'But you don't mind drinking with a woman who planned long and elaborately to kill someone?

'And changed her mind. There are quite a few people I would willingly have killed in my time. Indeed, with prison no more penitential than a not very good public school, and the death sentence on the point of being abolished, I think I'll make a little list, a la Gilbert. Then when I grow a little aged I shall make a total sweep-ten or so for the price of one-and retire comfortably to be well cared-for for the rest of my life.

'You are very kind, she said irrelevantly. 'I haven't really committed any crime, she said presently, 'so they can't prosecute me for anything, can they?

'My dear Miss Searle, you have committed practically every known crime in the book. The worst and most unforgivable being to waste the time of the overworked police forces of this country.

'But that isn't a crime, is it? That is what the police are there for. I don't mean: to have their time wasted, but to make sure that there has been nothing fishy about a happening. There isn't any law that can punish one for what you have called a practical joke, surely?

'There is always "breach of the peace". It is quite wonderful what a variety of things can be induced to come under the heading of breach of the peace.

'And what happens when you breach the peace?

'You are treated to a little homily and fined.

'Fined!

'A quite inappropriate sum, more often than not.

'Then I shan't be sent to prison?

'Not unless you have done something that I don't yet know about. And I wouldn't put it past you, as they say in Strathspey.

'Oh, no, she said. 'No. You really do know all about me. I don't know how you know all you do, if it comes to that.

'Our policemen are wonderful. Hadn't you heard?

'You must have been pretty sure that you knew all about me before you came looking for that brown fleck in my iris.

'Yes. Your policemen are wonderful too. They looked up the births in Jobling, Conn., for me. The infant that Mr and Mrs Durfey Searle took with them when they left Jobling for points south, was, they reported, female. After that I would have been surprised to death if there had been no brown fleck.

'So you ganged up on me. Her hands had stopped shaking, he noticed. He was glad that she had reached the stage of achieving a flippancy. 'Are you going to take me away with you now?

'On the contrary. This is my farewell to you.

'Farewell? You can't have come to take farewell of someone you don't know.

'Where our mutual acquaintance is concerned I, as they say, have the advantage of you. I may be quite new to you-or practically new-but you have been in my hair for the last fourteen days, and I shall be very glad to get you out.

'Then you don't take me to a police station or anything like that?

'No. Not unless you show any signs of beating it out of the country. In which case an officer would no doubt appear at your elbow with a pressing invitation to remain.

'Oh, I'm not going to run away. I am truly sorry for what I have done. I mean, for the trouble-and I suppose the-the misery I have caused.

'Yes. Misery is the appropriate word, I feel.

'I am sorry most of all for what Liz must have suffered.

'It was gratuitously wicked of you to stage that quarrel at the Swan, wasn't it?

'Yes. Yes, it was unforgivable. But he maddened me so. He was so smug. So unconsciously smug. Everything had always been easy for him. She saw the comment in his face, and protested: 'Yes, even Marguerite's death! He went straight from that into Liz's arms. He never really knew desolation. Or fear. Or despair. Or any of the big, grinding things in life. He was quite convinced that nothing irretrievable would ever happen to him. If his «Marguerite» died there would always be a «Liz» there. I wanted him to suffer. To be caught in something that he couldn't get out of. To meet trouble and for once be stuck with it. And you can't say I wasn't right! He'll never be so smug again. Will he? Will he, then!