Margot Bennett - The Man Who Didn't Fly

Lewis looked at Marryatt as though he was measuring him for the gallows.

“She’s told you everything she knows. She can’t add to it.”

“I don’t accept your authority,” Lewis snapped. “I’m prepared to see you later. I don’t want to see you now.”

“Oh, come,” Marryatt said gently. “I’m the man who put you on to this. I knew there was something about that chapel. I guessed things might have worked out that way.”

“What way?”

“I thought maybe Morgan might have won the battle with Harry.”

“So that’s your opinion. Morgan. I might have supposed you’d jump to the easy conclusion.”

Marryatt’s manner of careless arrogance didn’t change. “He was the man who’d hidden the diamonds. He was the man who went to the chapel on Thursday morning, quarrelled with Harry, threatened him. Harry brought out the gun then: he knew about the gun. He was the man who was in such a state of despair on Friday morning that he frightened even Prudence. He told her, didn’t he, that the plane was his only chance?”

“Mr Marryatt, I can do my own guessing. Your views are of no importance. You hadn’t even met Morgan Price.”

Marryatt made a quick step forward. His dark brows were drawn together, and his eyes were very bright. He was a bigger man than the inspector, and he looked for a moment as though he was going to ignore the immunity of office. Then he drew back again and smiled with the maximum of unfriendliness.

“I’m asking you to get this straight before you see Miss Wade, or her father. They’ve had enough. They’ve lived a sheltered life for five hundred years. Now, you listen to me. As I see it, Morgan, who’d been dithering about all night, finally came down, to this room, and found the gun lying on the table where I left it. Then he went out, found Harry in the vault, and shot him.”

“Throwing a rose on the body for remembrance?” Lewis suggested coldly. “Thank you, Mr Marryatt. Now I want to see Miss Wade.”

Marryatt, scowling, sat down on the arm of a chair. “I have no way of stopping you.”

“It won’t be necessary for you to be present, Mr Marryatt. You may wait in another room, if you wish.”

Marryatt’s wishes showed clearly enough in his face, but he stood up and walked out of the room.

He met Hester in the hall.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t stop it.”

She passed him without listening, and went into the room where the police waited. She sat down, ignoring them entirely, maintaining the appearance of a woman who had her own reality, and would admit no other.

“Miss Wade, I’ve asked you to come because you are the only person concerned who can be relied on to tell us what we want to know.”

She nodded, still examining her own thoughts, not interested in the police and their questions.

“Was Morgan Price wearing a rose in his button-hole, that Thursday night?”

“No.”

“Could you think carefully about that?”

She closed her eyes, calling up a vision of Morgan’s tortured face. She had seen him before dinner, she had seen him again when Maurice lay unconscious and she thought he was dead.

“No, he wasn’t wearing a rose.”

“Was he the kind of man who would wear a button-hole? Had he ever, to your knowledge, worn one?”

“Never.”

“Was Harry wearing a button-hole that night?”

Her face twitched a little at the mention of Harry’s name. “No. But you had better ask Mrs Ferguson, hadn’t you?” she said with sudden passion. “He saw her last, didn’t he?”

“And your father didn’t wear a button-hole? No, I thought not. Now Maurice Reid wore the rose you gave him in the morning in the garden, when you appealed to him not to take your father’s money. He was still wearing it, when you left him here, in this room, late on Thursday night. You said so, didn’t you?”

“Yes, he was still wearing it.”

“And there was this scene in this room here, when Harry fixed the roses on Jackie’s shirt?”

“Yes, I remember that,” she said, her voice quivering. “Please, need we go on?”

“I’m afraid we must. Would you say that Jackie resented being made the butt of Harry’s humour?”

“I didn’t notice.”

“Then Mr Ferguson drew your attention to the special type of rose he was wearing in his button-hole?”

“Yes.”

“So three people, Joseph Ferguson, Maurice Reid, and this Jackie, all wore roses that night.” He made the statement flatly. “This Marryatt, what about him?”

Hester looked up. “Marryatt? I can’t remember. I don’t think so, but I can’t remember. What are you trying to find out? What have roses to do with this?”

“There were petals, quite a lot of petals, in the vault,” Inspector Lewis said harshly. “I want you to try to remember if Marryatt wore a rose.”

“I’ve had enough of this,” Hester said on a note of repugnance. “I can’t go on. Why should Marryatt wear a rose, just to oblige you in your search for a victim? You sit there, destroying us all, because you want to have your case tidied up, and put away in a box file. I didn’t know the police were like this! And you,” she said, turning on Sergeant Young, “pretending to be a pianist, to like Bach, to be a human being like everyone else. It’s a lie.”

“Please keep calm, Miss Wade. That’s all we wish to ask you. Your sister has supplied the rest of the evidence. I’m afraid it may be necessary to see her again and to take a statement from her. If she confirms what she has already told us,” he added in a kinder voice, “the case will be settled, beyond any reasonable doubt.”

Hester stood up to go, her glance resting pitifully on the roses.

“Prudence is only sixteen. I can’t agree that she should be left alone with you, to make a statement on murder,” she said, her voice wincing away from the final word.

“You would like your father to be present?”

“Father is not well. He’s suffering from shock. I’ll stay.”

“As you wish,” Inspector Lewis said indifferently. He wasn’t in any way interested in the limits of her endurance. For the present he was concerned with only one problem, and until that had been settled, no others existed for him.

Prudence came in. Her hair was still wet from swimming, and there were two damp channels on her cheeks. She looked in terror, not at the detectives, but at her sister.

“Oh, Hester, I’m sorry I said all those things. I liked him so much. I did, truly. I’m so sorry. What can I do?”

Hester walked quickly over to the table where the roses languished, and stood, fingering the fallen petals, picking them up one by one, crushing them, until her fingers were wet.

“There’s nothing you can do,” she said, still standing with her back to the room. “Tell them what they want to know.”

“We want you to describe, in your own words, what this man Jackie, Jackie Daw, if that’s what he called himself, looked like when you saw him on Friday morning. I want you to think very carefully, because it’s possible your words may be used as evidence. In fact, we want to take them down.”

“All right,” Prudence said. She looked guiltily at Hester’s back. “I didn’t see Jackie on Friday morning when I went into the kitchen. So I came in here, to the sitting-room, and he was sort of standing around, with a duster. He was wearing that dreadful flowered shirt. I don’t know if you heard about it before, but it looked as though he’d bought it at a jumble sale on the Gold Coast. It was all colours of flowers, and he still had two rosebuds pushed in it, that Harry put in the night before. You know. And he was looking kind of pale and underprivileged and underfed, the way he always did. I don’t know about his trousers. I don’t remember what they looked like. Then I saw him again at breakfast, and he said:”