Fen Country Read online

  “Here is this Joshua, then, thirty years old, unmarried, and of a rather somber and savage temperament. He is looked after by his sister Cicely, who shows no particular fondness for him and would in any case prefer to be looking after a husband, but who remains unwooed and, having no fortune of her own, housekeeps for Joshua as a respectable substitute for earning a living.

  “Joshua, meanwhile, is courting, the object of his fancy being a heavily-built girl called Vashti Winterbourne. He has a rival, by name Arthur Penge, by vocation the local ironmonger; and it is clear that Vashti will soon have to make up her mind which of these suitors she is going to marry.

  “In the meantime, relations between the two men degenerate into something like open hostility, the situation being complicated latterly by the fact that Joshua’s sister Cicely has fallen in love with Penge, thereby converting the original triangle into a sort of—um—quadrangle. So there you have all the ingredients for a thoroughly explosive mixture—and in due course it does in fact explode.

  “With that much preliminary I can go on to describe what happened last Saturday and Sunday. What happened on Saturday was a public quarrel, of epic proportions, between Joshua, Cicely and Penge. This enormous row took place in the entrance-hall of a pub called The Jolly Ploughboy, and consisted of (a) Penge telling Joshua to lay off Vashti, (b) Cicely telling Penge to lay off Vashti and take her, Cicely, to wife instead, (c) Penge telling Cicely that no man not demonstrably insane would ever dream of marrying her and (d) Joshua telling Penge that if he didn’t keep away from Vashti in future, he, Joshua, would have much pleasure in slitting his, Penge’s, throat for him.

  “Note, please, that this quarrel was quite certainly genuine. I mention the point because Bolsover and I wasted a good deal of energy investigating the possibility that Penge and Cicely were somehow in cahoots together—that the quarrel.so far as they were concerned was a fake. However, the witnesses we questioned weren’t having any of that; they told us roundly that if Cicely was acting they were Dutchmen, and we were forced to believe them.

  “No chance of collusion in that department, then. Mind you, I’m not saying that if Penge had visited Cicely afterward and abased himself and asked her to marry him, she mightn’t have forgiven him. But the established fact is that between the quarrel and the murder next day he definitely didn’t visit her or communicate with her in any way. With the exception of a single interlude of one hour (and of the half-hour during which he must have been committing the crime), his movements are completely accounted for from the moment of the quarrel up to midnight on the Sunday; and during that one hour, when he might (for all we know) have gone to make his apologies to the woman, she was occupied with entertaining two visitors who can swear that he never came near her.

  The next event of any consequence was on Sunday morning, when Cicely broke her ankle. The effect of this accident was, of course, to immobilize her rnd hence, in the event, to free her from any possible suspicion of having herself murdered her brother Joshua, since his body was found some considerable distance away from their cottage.

  “The crime was discovered at about ten o’clock that evening, by several people in a party; the scene being a little-frequented footpath on the direct route between Joshua’s cottage and the center of Cassibury.

  “There was only one substantial clue; I mean the revolver, which Bolsover found shoved into the hedge a little distance away with a fine set of prints on it. Working along the usual lines, we soon uncovered the existence of the Penge-Joshua-Vashti triangle. And so it didn’t take us long to ascertain that the prints on the gun were the prints of Arthur Penge.

  “When eventually he was asked to explain this circumstance, he told a demonstrable lie: saying that he’d handled the gun three days previously when Joshua (of all people) had brought it into his iron-monger’s shop to ask if a crack,in the butt could be repaired. On its being pointed out to him that Joshua had quite certainly been in Dorchester during the whole of the day mentioned, and so couldn’t possibly have visited the Cassibury ironmonger’s, he wavered and started contradicting himself and eventually shut up altogether, in which oyster-like condition he’s been ever since—and very wise of him, too.

  “However, I’m anticipating; we didn’t ask him about the gun until after we’d gone into the problem of the time of Joshua’s death. The medical verdict was too vague to be helpful. But then two women came forward to tell us that they’d seen Joshua alive at seven, when they’d visited the cottage to condole with Cicely. So clearly the next thing to do was to talk to Cicely herself.

  “It turned out that by a great stroke of luck she hadn’t heard of the murder yet; the reasons for this being (a) the fact that Joshua had planned to be away from home that night in any case, so that his absence had not alarmed her, and (b) the fact that the local sergeant, a temperamentally secretive person, had sworn everyone who knew of the murder to silence. Consequently, Bolsover was able to put his most important questions to Cicely before telling her his reason for asking them—and a good thing, too, because she had a fit of the horrors as soon as she heard her brother was dead, and the doctor’s refused to allow her to talk to anyone since.

  “Anyway, her testimony was that Joshua left the cottage at about eight-fifteen on the Sunday evening (a quarter of an hour or so after her own visitors had gone), with a view to walking into Cassibury and catching a bus to Dorchester. And that meant that he could hardly have reached the spot where he was killed much earlier than a quarter to nine.

  “So the next thing was to find out where Penge had been all the evening. And what it amounted to was that there were two periods of his time not vouched for by independent witnesses—the period from seven to eight (which didn’t concern us) and the period from eight-thirty to nine. Well, the latter, of course, fitted beautifully; and when we heard that he’d actually been seen, at about a quarter to nine, close to the place where the murder was committed, we started getting the warrant out.

  “And that was the point at which the entire case fell to pieces.

  “Penge had lied about his whereabouts between eight-thirty and nine; we knew that. What we didn’t know was that from eight-twenty onward two couples were making love no more than a few feet away from the place of the murder, and that not one of those four people heard a shot.

  “And so that, as they say, was that. Penge certainly shot Joshua. But he didn’t do it between eight-thirty and nine. And unless Cicely was lying in order to help him—which is inconceivable—he didn’t do it between seven and eight, either.”

  There was a long silence when Humbleby finished speaking. Presently Fen said: “Well then, the situation, as I understand it, must be that it isn’t Penge who has the alibi. It’s the corpse.”

  “The corpse?”

  “Why not? If Cicely was lying about the time Joshua left the cottage—if, in fact, he left much earlier—then Penge could have killed him between seven and eight.”

  “But I’ve already explained—”

  ‘That it’s inconceivable she’d lie on Penge’s behalf. I quite agree. But mightn’t she lie on her brother’s? Suppose that Joshua, with a revolver in his pocket, is setting out to commit a crime. And suppose he tells Cicely, if any questions are asked, to swear he left her much later than, in fact, he did. And suppose that a policeman questions Cicely on this point before she learns that it’s her brother, and not the man he set out to kill, who is dead. Wouldn’t that account for it all?”

  “You mean—”

  “I mean that Joshua intended to murder Penge, his rival in this young woman’s affections; that he arranged for his sister (whom Penge had just humiliated publicly) to give him, if necessary, a simple alibi; and that in the event Penge struggled with Joshua, got hold of the gun and killed his assailant in self-defense. Behold him, then, with a water-tight alibi created—charming irony—by his enemy.”

  Shatteringly, the telephone rang, and Humbleby snatched it from the cradle. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, put him on… Bo
lsover?” A long pause. “Oh, you’ve seen that, have you? So have I—though only just… Allowed to talk to people again, yes, so you—WHAT?” And with this squeak of mingled rage and astonishment Humbleby fell abruptly silent, listening while the telephone crackled despairingly at his ear. When at last he rang off, his round face was a painter’s allegory of gloom.

  “Bolsover thought of it, too,” he said somberly. “But not soon enough. By the time he got to Cicely’s bedside, Penge had been there for hours. They’re going to get married: Cicely and Penge, I mean. She’s forgiven him about the quarrel. And, of course, she’s sticking to her story about the time Joshua left the house. Very definite about it, Bolsover says. In the interests of justice—”

  “Justice?” Fen reached for his hat. “I shouldn’t worry too much about that, if I were you. A marriage based on mistrust and evasion will be a worse punishment, in the long run, than anything the Old Bailey could do. The mills of God, you know: where Penge and Cicely are concerned I should imagine they’ll grind very, very small indeed…”

  The Mischief Done

  “People are superstitious about diamonds,” said Detective Inspector Humbleby. “They believe all sorts of extraordinary things. And of course diamonds do give us a lot of trouble at the Yard, one way and another.”

  “‘O Diamond! Diamond!’” his host said.

  “Is that a quotation? No, no, don’t bother, leave it. Among the many delusions people have about diamonds—”

  “‘O Diamond! Diamond! Thou little knowest the mischief done!’” Out of the depths of the armchair in his rooms in St. Christopher’s, Gervase Fen, University Professor of English Language and Literature, reached across with the decanter to pour more sherry into his guest’s glass. “Allegedly said by Isaac Newton,” he explained. “His dog Diamond knocked over a candle and incinerated ‘the almost finished labors of some years.’”

  “Mathematicians oughtn’t to keep dogs,” said Humbleby. “And historians oughtn’t to lend their manuscripts to John Stuart Mill.” He presumably meant Carlyle, part of whose French Revolution was used as kindling by Mill’s housemaid. “Rubies are more valuable than diamonds,” Humbleby obstinately went on. “And contrary to popular supposition, diamonds are very brittle. You can lose hundreds of pounds by just dropping one on a carpet.”

  “Humbleby, what is all this about?”

  And Humbleby, deflated, sighed. “I’ve been made a fool of,” he said, “Somebody went and stole an enormous great valuable diamond literally from under my nose, when I was supposed to be helping to protect it.”

  “That’s bad.”

  “Not that the owner’s lost it, mind.”

  “That’s good.”

  “He’s just hidden it somewhere, or rather, his brother has. The whole thing’s an insurance fraud,” said Humbleby aggrievedly. “We know it’s that, but unfortunately we can’t begin to prove it… I don’t enjoy being made a fool of.”

  “No one does.”

  “I should like somehow to get a bit of my own back.”

  “Naturally, naturally.”

  “So can you help me, do you think?”

  “I very much doubt it,” said Fen. “But tell me what happened, and I’ll try.”

  “The diamond’s owner,” said Humbleby, “was—and if I’m right about the business, still effectually is—a Soho jeweler called Asa Braham. Years ago he had a robbery, a genuine one, and I was put in charge of the investigation, and it went on for rather a long time, so I got to know Asa quite well. He’s a wiry little man with frizzy black hair, fiftyish, very lively, very active; a charmer, and sharp-witted with it. I never exactly trusted him, but I did get to like him—and that was why I stupidly allowed myself to get involved in this business of the Reine des Odalisques.”

  “Who on earth is she?”

  “That’s what the diamond’s called. Its first owner, who christened it, was a Frenchman—apparently,” said Humbleby waspishly, “a man of very little judgment, taste or even ordinary good sense. Anyway, it was from him that Asa Braham bought the thing, about six weeks ago now, for well over £100,000.”

  “Good grief.”

  “Yes, it was a lot, but although it was only mined quite recently it’s become one of the famous diamonds. And Asa wanted it like mad, though he couldn’t really afford it. You see, he’s one of those jewelers who get obsessed with stones for their own sake—not at all a good thing from the commercial point of view (and in fact, Asa, though he’s done adequately well, has never really flourished), but I suppose it has its satisfactions, even if I can’t begin to imagine them myself. Asa passionately wanted that diamond; he had to have it; and he mortgaged himself to the hilt to pay the price. God alone knows what, apart from crime, he expected to do next. There he was with the Reine, doting on it, and nothing, psychologically, would have suited him better than to spend hours staring at the wretched bauble every day for the rest of his natural life. Yet if he’d actually settled down to that, he’d have been made bankrupt in a year or less. What I mean is that he just couldn’t afford to keep the thing. Considered simply as a buy, the whole transaction was crazy: it isn’t at all easy to dispose of hugely valuable stones even for what they cost, let alone at a profit; you may have to wait for years.”

  “Fairly clear so far,” said Fen. “You seem to have deviated, though. What about this earlier robbery? Genuine, you say?”

  “Oh yes, definitely. We got the villains eventually, and put them away. Also, we got back some of the stones. On the rest, the insurance company paid—reluctantly.”

  “Yes, they’re always reluctant.”

  “In this case, they were specially so. They didn’t think Asa’s precautions were good enough. But, God, jewelers,” said Humbleby with some feeling. ‘I’ll tell you what jewelers do: they roam about in dark alleys, at dead of night, with small fortunes rattling loose in their waistcoat pockets… For the stones Asa didn’t recover, as I said, the company paid. But the word went round that he was slack, and after that his insurance contracts were much stiffer, not just in terms of premiums but in terms of security too. So—he bought the Reine, and naturally he insured it, but there were a great many specific conditions. I’ve seen that contract—after the theft of the Reine, of course I was working in with the insurance company—and it’s very tightly drawn indeed, as regards how the stone was looked after.

  “So there you have it: the diamond bought about six weeks ago, and first carefully stowed away in the vault of Asa’s shop, and then when four weeks ago Asa had to go off to Brazil on business, it was transferred to the safe deposit at Pratt’s Bank in Portland Square.”

  “Was that so very much safer, then?”

  “The insurance company, Krafft International, certainly thought it was, at any rate for as long as Asa was out of the country. So Asa dutifully took it along there, with a Safeguard, the day before he left.”

  “What safeguard?”

  “Not what, who: a man from the Safeguard security corps. It was a condition of Asa’s insurance contract that a Safeguard man had to be with the Reine whenever it wasn’t actually under lock and key.”

  Humbleby wriggled back into his chair and sipped his drink. “So far, so good,” he presently went on. “And what happened next was that a week ago Asa arrived back at London Docks on the Luis Pizarro—like me, he’s terrified of airplanes, so he traveled both ways by sea—and rang me up the moment he got on shore, and asked me if I was free to come along with him and his precious diamond and the contractual Safeguard man on a trip to his cottage in Dorset, where he was scheduled to show the diamond off to a possible purchaser. Well, I didn’t all that much want to go, but on the other hand the Yard’s a terrible place nowadays, full of great grinning oafs who’ve never read a book for pleasure in their lives, and I get away from it whenever I possibly can. So here was an excuse of sorts, and I took it.”

  “Yes, I can understand that all right,” said Fen. “But what did he want you for? I mean, what did he say?”
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  “He said it’d be nice to see me again, and he was sure I’d like to have a look at the diamond.”

  “And you believed that?”

  “Well, not entirely,” said Humbleby. “I thought there was probably something a bit funny going on. But that, you see, was all the more reason why I should be there. Only unfortunately, as it turned out, I wasn’t quite suspicious enough. Anyway, I went.

  “I went, and we met at Pratt’s Bank. Asa came there direct from the docks—and by the way, there’s absolutely no doubt about that: since the thing happened, we’ve checked and double-checked all of his movements, backwards, forwards and inside out, and he certainly had no time for any tricky business between getting off the boat and meeting me. I was the first to get to Pratt’s. Then the Safeguard man arrived, a menacing figure called Shirtcliff. Last came Asa, full of the joys of spring. And I didn’t like that. He was too cheerful altogether, for a man besotted with a diamond who’s on the way to losing it to a customer after only a few weeks’ ownership. He needed a customer, yes, and he was lucky to get one. Even so, he ought to have been just a bit glum about it, not completely cock-a-hoop.

  “Asa went down into the vaults, and Shirtcliff and I went with him as far as the system allowed, which wasn’t, of course, the whole way. However, he was out again in a couple of minutes or less, waving a quite large black velvet jewel-box; and he handed this to Shirtcliff; and Shirtcliff took a look inside it, and grunted affirmatively, and shut the box up again, and put it in his briefcase; and we all went upstairs again, and out of the bank, and round the corner to where a self-drive hired car was waiting; and in that Asa drove us down to Stickwater in Dorset, me sitting beside him in the front passenger seat, and Shirtcliff in the back glowering and clutching his briefcase with the diamond in it.

  “Our next consideration must be Asa’s brother Ben.”

  “Isn’t this narrative becoming rather mannered, Humbleby?” said Fen restively. “And by the way, is it going to turn out that there’s some question of paste’s having been substituted for the real thing?”