Was It Murder Read Online

Ellington slowly nodded.  “I not only think he is,” she said.  “I KNOW it.  It was he who killed Wilbraham Marshall.  And Robert as well.”  She buried her face in her hands and was silent for a while.

“Both of them, eh?”  Guthrie seemed hardly surprised.  “And how do you know that?”

“Because, Mr. Guthrie, he told me.”

She gathered courage now that her secret was out.  “Yes.  He told me last night.  He was terribly ill—ill in mind, I mean—and I tried to comfort him.  Then he told me.  He thought you were on his track and he felt he must tell somebody about it.  I seemed to freeze up—I didn’t know what to say to him.  Oh, what COULD I have said to him?  I believe I told him he must confess to you—and he said he would in the morning—this morning, that would have been.  I think he was quite out of his mind when he did it—he was often out of his mind for short spells.  I was sorry for him—I couldn’t help it—even after he had told me.  Was that wrong of me?  He was almost raving at first, but I calmed him and made him give his promise.  He said—they were almost his last words—‘I’ll tell Guthrie to-morrow.’  Then he went to sleep and I left him.”

She looked first at Guthrie and then at Revell as if in pathetic challenge.  It was Revell who first spoke.  “But, Mrs. Ellington,” he exclaimed, “why on earth should Lambourne have done it?”

She shook her head despairingly.  “I know—that was just the question I kept on asking him.  And his reasons were so strange.  That’s why I think he must have been out of his mind.  He said— it’s such an awful thing to have to repeat—but he said he hadn’t meant to kill the boy at all in the first place—it was my husband he wanted to kill.  And he thought my husband would have been sleeping in the dormitory that night.”

“Yes, I understand how that could have arisen.  Go on, please,” interposed Guthrie.  “Did he tell you why he had wanted to kill your husband?”

She smiled a wan half-smile.  “It was because of me, he said.  That’s what makes it so terrible for me to think of.  But for me . . .  You see, Mr. Lambourne and I have always been friendly— we have tastes in common—books, plays, music, and so on.  And because my husband doesn’t care for such things, Mr. Lambourne imagined I was unhappy.”

“And have you been unhappy, if I may ask the question?”

She returned him a glance of tranquil sadness.  “If you want a really truthful answer, Mr. Guthrie, I could not say ‘no’.  But I assure you that Mr. Lambourne exaggerated, and in any case, I never complained to him or discussed my private affairs with him at all.”

“I see.  But all the same, you think his reason for wishing to kill your husband was to free you from a partner he thought you disliked?”

“Perhaps.  It looks like it.  But he had nothing to hope for from me—I mean—I want to be quite clear about this—there was nothing whatever between us.  We were simply friends, and I had never given him the slightest encouragement to imagine anything else.”

“The trouble is, of course, that some men don’t need any encouragement.  Anyhow, what about the second murder?”

“I’m coming to that.  He said that when he found out that the person in the dormitory bed had been the boy and not my husband, he was at first overwhelmed with remorse.  And I do remember, as it happens, how ill he was at the time.  Then—so he said—his hatred of my husband grew in him until it gave him no rest at all.  And, as time went on, he began to think of an extraordinary way in which his original murder, which had been, as one might call it, a mistake, might be turned to good account.”

“Yes, I understand.  This is all very interesting, and you are putting it very clearly.”

“The motive was always, you see, the same—hatred of my husband.  And the plan that came into his head was—briefly—to murder the other brother so that suspicion should fall on the man he hated.  He reasoned that no one could have any apparent motive for murdering the two boys except my husband (who inherited their money, as you know), and that two such suspicious accidents would undoubtedly cause inquiries to be made.”

“Did he give you any details as to how each of the murders was done?”

“Yes, he told me everything.  The first one was done by letting the gas-pipe drop down on to the bed.  He had previously loosened it.  He went up into the sick-rooms above the dormitory and staged the whole thing.”

“Yes.  And the second murder?”

“He went to my husband’s room one day when he was out and took away his revolver and cartridges.  He knew that the boy used to take a swim in the evenings during the hot weather.  On that particular night he went down to the swimming-bath himself.  He found the boy already there, cursing his luck because the water had been drawn out.  Mr. Lambourne was in his dressing-gown and pyjamas, as if ready for a swim—it was his excuse, of course, for going there.  He chatted with the boy for a time, gradually leading him along the edge of the bath as far as the diving-platforms.  He waited till the boy was standing on the edge facing the empty bath with the platforms just above him; then he sprang back suddenly, whipped out his revolver, and shot up at the boy from behind.”  She trembled as she spoke the words.  “Oh, he MUST have been out of his mind to do such a thing—he MUST have been.  Don’t you think so, Mr. Guthrie?”

“Very possibly, Mrs. Ellington.  Most murderers, at the moment of their murder, must be very near the borderline of insanity.”

“HE was, I am sure.”

Guthrie nodded.  “And I suppose, after shooting the boy he staged the affair to look like an accident?”

“Yes.”

“Did he give you any details of how he did that?”

“He took off the boy’s wrist-watch that he was wearing and climbed up to the top diving-platform with it.”

“Yes.  Anything else?”

“He . . .  Oh, it’s too terrible—he went down into the bath and

hit the boy over the head—but the boy was already dead—“

“Did he tell you what he hit the boy with?”

She looked dazed.  “No—or at least he may have done, but I don’t remember.  It’s so hard to remember every detail of it all.”

“Yes, of course.  And it isn’t, perhaps, so very important, so long as we know he hit the boy with something.  After that, I suppose, he just went back to his room and to bed?”

“No—he was flurried and took a walk to calm himself.  My husband can vouch for that, because they met.  My husband was having a stroll before going to bed.”

“Yes, I think I know about that.”  He paused thoughtfully and added:  “Perhaps, Mrs. Ellington, as you knew Lambourne rather well, you can tell us a little more about him—about the man personally, I mean?”

She responded eagerly, as if relieved to talk of less tragic matters.  “He was a charming man, Mr. Guthrie, in his ordinary moods—one of the cleverest and most interesting men I ever knew.  He was very badly hurt in the War—that’s what began the trouble, I daresay.  He had the most awful pains in his head, and sometimes deep depression would come over him like a cloud—that was how he described it.  He told me once that he hadn’t had more than a dozen happy moments during the whole of the past ten years—and all the dozen, he said, had been when he was with me.  I felt sorry for him when he spoke like that.  He had no relatives in England and he wasn’t the sort to make friends—he had too sharp a tongue.  He wasn’t very popular either with the boys or the masters—he found teaching rather hard, but it was the only way he could possibly earn a living.  Dr. Roseveare befriended him—HE understood how he suffered, too, I think.  Then his heart went wrong and he was told by the doctors that he might drop dead at any moment.  Do you wonder I pitied him?”

“Not at all.  I should have been surprised if you hadn’t.  Now don’t distress yourself, Mrs. Ellington”—she had begun to cry softly—“you have really done all that you could possibly do, I think.  It has been very good of you to come and tell me all this.” She was still crying, and Guthrie, with a little gesture of kindliness, rose from his chair and touched her lightly on the shoulder.  “Well now, I don’t think we need trouble you any more for the time being.  If I should want to ask you a few more questions later on, you won’t mind, I know—but I don’t suppose I shall.  Your statement seems to clear up an exceedingly distressing and unhappy affair.  There’s only one thing I want to ask you—and that is, not to mention to anyone else what you have just told us.”

“I won’t,” she promised.

“Have you told anyone so far?”

“No.  Not even my husband.  He would have—have misunderstood how— how Mr. Lambourne could have come to be so confidential with me.”

“Ah yes, I understand.  Well, remember, now—not a word to anyone.

Good-bye for the time being, and once again—many thanks.”

She gave him a sad farewell smile as he held open the door for her to escape.  “Escape” was indeed the word that occurred to Revell; it was as if she were some wild thing that had been trapped in a cage and was now, by gracious permission of the snarer, allowed to fly stumblingly away.

“Whew!” exclaimed Guthrie, after she had gone.  “That puts the lid on it, doesn’t it?  Revell, without asking me any questions (though I know you are bursting to), will you kindly go downstairs and make an appointment for me to see Dr. Roseveare as soon as possible?  And then, after that, unless he can see me immediately, you might go down to the tobacconist’s shop in the lane and get me an ounce of shag.  Yes, shag, my boy—it’s what I feel like.”

Revell obeyed.  There was really nothing else to be done.

CHAPTER VIII

THE DETECTIVE GIVES IT UP

The body of Max Lambourne had been taken to the local Drill Hall, and there the inquest was held a couple of days later.  It was a far more public affair than the two previous ones; the accommodation for the Press was much larger, since the newspapers had featured the third Oakington tragedy on the grandest scale.

Revell sat in the public gallery, an interested watcher of the proceedings; he had been informed beforehand that he would not be wanted to give evidence.

Everyone seemed to have learned a lesson from the two earlier inquests, and to have made up their minds that this one, at any rate, should stand out as a model of correct inquest procedure in every possible way.  The Coroner was careful to the point of being punctilious, and even the merely formal matter of identification was treated as if there might be some doubt about it.

After the jury had viewed the body (which naturally conveyed very little to them), witnesses were called.  The first was the School House butler, Brownley.  He described how and when he had found Lambourne dead.  The Coroner questioned him a little, mainly (so far as Revell could judge) to give the court an impression of his own shrewdness.

“It was your usual time for calling him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you touch him at all?”

“I shook him a little to try to wake him, sir, but not really enough to move him in any way.”

“What did you do after that?”

“I went to fetch help, sir.  The first person I saw was Captain Daggat—he was just leaving his bath, sir.  He told me to fetch the Headmaster, while he telephoned for Dr. Murchiston.”

“So you went to the Headmaster’s house?”

“Yes, sir, and the Head came at once.”

Brownley was then permitted to stand down.  Daggat gave evidence next, merely amplifying the butler’s account of the discovery.  The third witness was Murchiston, who made as usual a somewhat striking figure in his frock-coat and cravat.  He testified to having been summoned by telephone, to arriving at the School, and to making a cursory examination of Lambourne’s body.

“What do you mean by a cursory examination?”

“A rapid one—such as could be made on the spot.”

“Very well.  Please tell us what opinions you came to.”

Murchiston had evidently prepared a careful answer to such a question.  He replied, slowly and with deliberation:  “My examination was not such as enabled me to come to any definite opinions, especially as it was several months since I had last attended Mr. Lambourne professionally.  His condition seemed consistent with a sudden heart attack, to which I knew him to be liable, but in the circumstances, I thought it best to leave the matter to be decided by a post-mortem.”

“You did not perform the post-mortem?”

“No, but I was in consultation with the doctor who did.”

“Do you agree with his findings?”

“Certainly.”

The next witness, obviously, was the doctor who HAD performed the post-mortem.  He was Hanslake, the police-surgeon.  A brisk, brusque, younger man, he had no time for the old-fashioned niceties of a Murchiston.  With commendable brevity he testified to his examination of the body and to the cause of death, which he declared outright and without any emotion whatever to have been an overdose of veronal.

This, as might have been expected, caused something of a sensation in the court.  When it had subsided, the Coroner turned to Murchiston again.

“Was Mr. Lambourne, to your knowledge, in the habit of taking veronal?”

“I knew that he had done so on some occasions.  He took it for sleeplessness and headaches, I believe.  I warned him strongly against it, but he told me that it was the only thing that gave him peace.”

“What exactly was the matter with him, Dr. Murchiston?”

“It would almost be easier to say what wasn’t the matter with him.

He had been gassed and blown up during the War, I understand.  Apart from a bad heart, there was nothing organically very wrong, perhaps, but the whole state of his mind and body was extremely low.”

“Would you call him a neurasthenic?”

“The term was not invented when I studied medicine, but so far as I know the meaning of it, I should say he was one.”

“Would such a condition be likely to give him suicidal impulses?”

“Possibly.  I could not say more than that.”

The Coroner returned to Hanslake.

“You said it was an overdose of veronal.  Was it a heavy overdose?”

“Heavy enough for anyone who wasn’t an out-and-out addict.”

“Is there, then, any possibility that it could have been taken accidentally?  I mean—supposing the deceased had felt particularly unwell, might he have taken so much without suicidal intent?”

“It is possible, of course.”

“Is it possible that anyone could have taken a similar amount and not have died?”

“My experience, I’m afraid, isn’t wide enough to give a definite answer.”

“You see what I am trying to get at?”

“Oh yes, you want to know whether it could have been an accidental overdose and not suicide.  I think in a case of this sort there is always the possibility.”

“You said just now that the dose was heavy enough for anyone who wasn’t an out-and-out addict.  Did you mean that such an addict might take it harmlessly?”

“Not necessarily.  Most addicts die from an overdose.”

“But the deceased was not what you would call an addict?”

“I should say not.”

“Thank you.”

Mrs. Ellington was next called.  She gave her evidence in a calm clear voice and answered all questions unhesitatingly.  She had been friendly with the deceased, she said, for some years, and had sympathised with him a great deal in his afflictions.  She was a trained nurse and had sometimes visited him when he had been ill.  She had visited him on the night before he died, and had found him then in a very troubled condition.

“What was the cause of his trouble?”

“Nothing very definite.  I think it was just one of his periodic attacks of depression.”

“What time did you leave him?”

“Soon after eleven.  I waited till he was asleep.”

“Did you know he took veronal?”

“I had guessed that he sometimes took something.  I did not know it was veronal or anything dangerous.”

“Did you see him take anything while you were with him?”

“No.”

“Had he ever said anything to you about taking his own life?”

“No.  He was often despondent about things, but that was all.”

“Thank you.”

The last witness was Dr. Roseveare.  In suave and mellow tones he testified to Lambourne’s unhappy existence.  “He worked hard, he was conscientious, and we all felt very sorry for him.  He was as much and as clearly a victim of the War as if he had died on the battlefield, except that his suffering had been infinitely more protracted.”  And Dr. Roseveare paused, aware that his words would be headlined throughout England the following day, and would probably be the theme for articles in all the next Sunday’s papers.

“You visited him on the night before he died?”

“Yes.  Like Mrs. Ellington, I tried to cheer him, but, I fear, with less success.”

“Do you know if he had anything to worry about?”

“Nothing at all connected with his work here, I am quite certain.

I was perfectly satisfied with him.”

“Did you know that he took veronal?”

“I had not the slightest idea.”

“Did he ever talk to you about taking his life?”

“Never.”

“Thank you.  I think that will be all, unless any of the jury would care to put a question?”

One of the jurymen, a local saddler, stood up and said:  “Can Dr.  Roseveare tell us if the deceased was at all worrited by the Marshall affair?”

The Coroner glared furiously at the questioner, as if he had committed the grossest of blunders, to say nothing of the most deplorable breach of good taste.  But Dr. Roseveare was perfectly unperturbed.  “I am afraid,” he answered, “that the Marshall affair, as you call it, has been a worrying thing for all of us at Oakington recently, but I cannot see any reason why it should have affected Mr. Lambourne any more than the rest of us.”

The juryman wriggled as he stood.  “I was only meanin’, sir, that if the deceased was in a low state of mind, like what the doctor said, it was the sort of thing ‘e might ‘ave worrited about.”

“Oh, quite—quite.”  The Head was most affable.  “I see your point, and in a general way, I think it very possible.”

But everyone somehow knew that the saddler had made a fool of himself.

The Coroner, before the jury retired, said it was one of the saddest cases he had ever come across.  The deceased, as Dr.  Roseveare had said, had died a soldier’s death in the sense that the real cause, undoubtedly, had been the injuries honourably received in the service of his country.  (Roseveare had not said anything of the kind, but there was no one to contradict.) Unfortunately, perhaps, it was their task, as a court, to inquire into the more immediate cause of death, which two medical men had agreed was an overdose of veronal.  There seemed no doubt that the deceased had acquired the habit of taking the drug to relieve his sufferings, both physical and mental.  The dose that killed him was heavy, but there was nothing at all to show that he had taken it with the intention of ending his life.

After that, of course, an open verdict was almost inevitable.  The jury deliberated for less than five minutes before deciding upon it; in less than ten the court had dispersed, the newspaper-men were hurrying to the local post office, the Head was entering a taxi on his way back to the School, and the Coroner was enjoying a smutty story with the police-surgeon.  The third Oakington tragedy had been accounted for.

It was during lunch with Roseveare at the School that Revell learned where Guthrie had been.  “He said there was no need for him to attend the inquest, so he spent the morning packing.  He’s going back to town this afternoon.  I suppose you know that he’s giving up the case?”

“REALLY?”

“I had a long talk with him yesterday about it.  He was frank enough to admit that he had no evidence against anyone, so there was nothing for it but to accept the situation.  A likeable man, Revell, apart from his detestable occupation.”

Revell smiled, though he was rather bewildered by Roseveare’s information.  He had guessed that Lambourne’s confession must inevitably end the matter, but he had not quite realised that the end would come so soon and so tamely.

Roseveare continued:  “By the way, Revell, what exactly are your intentions, now that this unhappy business seems to have worked itself out?  Do you particularly wish to go back to London?”

Revell hesitated, and the other went on:  “Because, if you aren’t keen to return, you are very welcome to stay on here until the end of Term, which is only four weeks away.  As a matter of fact, I would rather you did so.  I don’t think your real position here has yet been guessed by anyone, and that, you will agree, is a good thing.”  (Lambourne had guessed it, though, Revell remembered.)  “I fear that if you were now suddenly to disappear, the circumstance might only add another to the monstrous cloud of suspicions that we are now hoping to disperse.  My staff, I trust, feel that so far I have done my best to protect them and their interests, but their attitude might change were they to discover that I had imported an Old Boy of this School to act as amateur detective and spy on them.”

“The description of my job isn’t exactly flattering,” replied Revell with a laugh, “but still, I see your point.”  He was thinking, as a matter of fact, of sunny afternoons with Mrs.  Ellington by his side as the two of them cycled along country lanes, of cool tea-times with Mrs.