Patricia Wentworth: Wicked Uncle

It was when he was wondering what the record number of flowers to a stem might be that the door opened and Chief Inspector Lamb came in followed by the little lady who had fetched Mrs. Tote, and by Sergeant Abbott who you could pick out anywhere for a Londoner and la-di-da at that. Pretty well see your face in his hair, you could, and a pretty penny it must run him in for hair-oil-posh stuff too… His thoughts broke off. He got to his feet automatically as the Chief Inspector came in.

Everyone had started to attention. Mrs. Tote had opened her eyes. Mr. Oakley had just reached the far end of the room and turned. He stood where he was like a stock. Everyone waited.

Lamb walked straight across the room and tapped Martin Oakley on the shoulder.

“I must ask you to accompany me to the station. I have a witness to the fact that subsequent to your telephone conversation with Mr. Carroll, in the course of which you said you were coming over to see him, someone came into the courtyard and threw gravel up at Carroll’s bedroom window. He opened it and called out, ‘Is that you, Oakley?’ The reply was, ‘It might be worth your while to keep a still tongue. Suppose you come down and talk it over.’ You can make a statement if you like, but I’m warning you that anything you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you.”

Martin Oakley stared at him. In the past three days he had become a haggard caricature of his former self. He stared, and said, “Are you arresting me? My God-you can’t! I didn’t do it!. It will kill my wife!”

With everyone else in the room Miss Masterman had turned and was looking at the two men, leaning with her right arm upon the back of the sofa, clutching at the neck of her dressing-gown with her other hand. At the word arrest Miss Silver saw her start. When Martin Oakley said, ‘It will kill my wife!’ she said something under her breath and stood up, jerking herself to her feet all in one piece like a figure made of wood.

Miss Silver thought that the murmured words were “Oh, no -I can’t!” If this was so, she repeated them-before Lamb had time to speak, and this time in so loud and harsh a voice as to divert everyone’s attention to herself.

“Oh, no! Oh, no! I can’t!”

She had taken a step forward, the arm which had lain along the back of the sofa outstretched as if she were feeling her way in the dark.

Geoffrey Masterman said, “She’s ill!”

He got to his feet, but before he could take a forward step there was someone in his way-Frank Abbott, with a hand on his arm and a quiet, drawled “Do you think so?”

Miss Masterman walked past them. She looked once at her brother and said,

“It’s no good.”

If he made a movement, the hand on his arm checked it. He said,

“She’s always been a bit unbalanced, you know. I’ve been afraid of this for years. You’d better let me get her up to her room quietly.”

No one took any notice. It came home to him then that he was separated from the people round him-not as yet by bolts and bars, by prison walls, or by the sentence of the law, but by the intangible barriers which have separated the murderer from his kind ever since the mark was set on Cain. Nobody listened to him or regarded his words. Only Jackson, catching Sergeant Abbott’s eye, moved up on his other side.

Miss Masterman came to a standstill midway between the fireplace and the window. In that harsh, strained voice she spoke to Lamb.

“You mustn’t arrest him! He didn’t do it!”

He seemed very solid and safe, standing there. Law and order. Thou shalt not kill. All the barriers that have been built up through slow ages to keep out the unnameable things of the jungle. If you let them in, too many people pay the price.

She heard him say, “Do you want to make a statement, Miss Masterman?” Her breath lifted in a long sigh. She said, “Yes-”

Agnes Masterman’s statement:

“I am making this statement because there is nothing else I can do. Mr. Porlock and Mr. Carroll were bad men. Perhaps they deserved to die-I don’t know. My old cousin never did anyone any harm. You can’t kill people just because they are bad, or because they are in your way. You can’t let innocent people suffer. I can’t let Mr. Oakley be arrested, because I know that he is innocent. There are things you can do, and things you can’t. I can’t let him be arrested.

“We went upstairs at about ten minutes to ten. I didn’t know what to do. I had to talk to my brother, but I was afraid-I was very much afraid. I had been thinking about the money-my old cousin’s money. She didn’t mean us to have it-at least she didn’t mean Geoffrey to have it-and she made another will, but he kept it back. I ought to have gone to the lawyer at once, and all the time I couldn’t be sure whether he had frightened her-or something worse. She was old and frail, and very easily frightened. I couldn’t get it out of my head. I don’t know how Mr. Porlock got to know anything about it, but he did. He made us come down here because he wanted to get money out of Geoffrey. When he was stabbed like that I was afraid, but I didn’t think it was Geoffrey. I thought it was Mr. Carroll. I think most of us did. But Geoffrey said he thought it was Mr. Tote. He really did make me feel that he hadn’t anything to do with it himself. And he gave in about the money and said he would produce the will. He told me she’d left fifty thousand to me, and I said he could have it. I thought I would make sure that he didn’t change his mind, so I wrote to the lawyer and said we had found a later will, and I walked down to the village and posted the letter on Sunday evening. After that I didn’t feel I minded about anything else. I was just waiting for the answer.

“Then tonight something happened. It was like waking up, only instead of waking out of a nightmare it was like waking into one. It happened when Mr. Carroll was talking. I think he was bad and cruel. He was trying to make us believe that he knew who had murdered Mr. Porlock. He kept hinting that he had seen something when the lights came on. I don’t know whether he really did or not. I looked across at Geoffrey, and I saw his thumbs twitching. That was when I woke up. He’d done it all his life when he was very much afraid. My father was very severe with him. I’ve seen his thumbs jerk like that when he went in to be caned. I saw them jerk and twitch when my old cousin died. He doesn’t know it’s happening. When I looked across and saw it this evening I knew what it meant. I couldn’t help knowing. I had to talk to him and tell him that I knew, but I was very much afraid.

“As we came through the hall, Mr. Carroll said, ‘I’ve got a call to put through.’ He went into the study. Geoffrey looked dreadful. He left me and went upstairs. The others had gone already. I went to my room, but I felt I had to speak to him. I came out again and went round the gallery and down the other passage to his room, but he wasn’t there. I thought perhaps he had gone to the bathroom, and I waited. I left the door half open. Presently I heard a door open and I looked out. It was the door of Mr. Porlock’s room, and Geoffrey was coming out of it. I didn’t want him to see me watching him, so I drew back. He didn’t see me. He went past his own room and down the back stairs. I waited a little, and then I went down too. I thought perhaps it would be better if we had our talk downstairs where no one could hear us and wonder why we were talking. When I got down the billiard-room door was open and there was a cold draught blowing. It was all dark, but I felt my way in, and the window on the left was open. I stood there for quite a little time. I thought something bad was happening, but I didn’t know what it was. I was afraid to go on, and I was afraid to go back. Then all at once I heard footsteps outside in the court, and a pattering sound. One or two pebbles came in through the window. Then I heard Mr. Carroll open his window upstairs. He called out, ‘Is that you, Oakley?’ and I wondered what Mr. Oakley was doing there. I went behind a curtain and looked out. I could just see someone in the middle of the court. He said, ‘It might be worth your while to keep a still tongue. Suppose you come down and talk it over.’