chapter one

I have often thought of writing a detective story.

The authors of these works all seem to me to make the same mistake: their stories are invariably told from the angle of the detached onlooker. This may make for a good puzzle, but it certainly does not make for human interest. And in the art of fiction, even in so low a form of it as the detective story, human interest should to my mind be asine qua non.It is here, I think, that the writers of detective stories overlook a great opportunity: for however absorbing the detached onlooker’s interest may be (whether in fiction or in real life) in the detection of a crime, there is one person to whom that interest must be far more absorbing, not to say vital, and that person is the criminal himself

Another error I have noticed on the part of the detective-story authors is that they begin their narratives in almost all cases with the discovery of the crime itself. This is palpably absurd. It is the preceding circumstances which make the crime. Why not, instead of allowing these circumstances to be laboriously brought out in the body of the story, show the puppets in action before the criminal offence instead of merely after it? That, I submit, is not only more fair to the reader (which I understand is one of the main points by which these authors are judged), but is surely more likely to make a better novel

I had privately determined, then, that one day I would write such a model detective story from the point of view of the criminal himself, showing his hopes and terrors as the process of detection progresses, the painful anxiety with which he would watch to see whether this or that fact, known only to himself, would be laid bare by the trackers on his trail, and his desperate attempts to extricate himself from the closing trap by laying new, false, and exonerating evidence. In the right hands such a book might be made a really outstanding piece of work; and I saw no reason why the hands should not be mine.

Such was the academic theory I had formed at leisure. And now I have an opportunity of carrying it out in grim practice. For at the very moment while I am penning these words I am actually (it would be affectation to disguise the fact, even from myself) suspected of having murdered a fellow creature. I!

Somebody (probably Voltaire, who seems to have said most of these things) once said that the last thing a man should lose is his head. I am determined to keep mine.

In view of what I have just written this may strike the reader (assuming that this manuscript is ever given to the world) as a somewhat grim jest. That, however, is the mood in which I feel myself. For strangely enough I do not seem particularly frightened, although – again it would be affectation to deny it – I am perhaps actually facing death, and that in its most ignominious form. I am evidently braver than I imagined. (The reader will see that even still I am capable of perfectly detached self-analysis.)

One way in which I am determined to indulge this grim humour of mine is in this very manuscript.

I explained above that I had long intended to write just such an imaginary story as I am now living in deadly reality. Well, why should I boggle at it because I am the victim of the narrative instead of its master? The story is here, and I shallwrite it. In cynical detachment I mean to set down, calmly and impartially, the exact circumstances which have led to my present predicament, omitting (with one single exception, which would bring pain to another) nothing at all, exaggerating nothing, minimizing nothing. In short, I shall endeavour not merely to rise superior to my unfortunate situation but actually to employ it, in the attempt to compile a document which, should it ever be given to the world, might be regarded of real value to literature alike as to life.

I shall not offer to show my manuscript to the police. It is possible that the careful recapitulation of events and reconstruction of the last few days might prove of real value to them in their attempts to discover how Eric Scott-Davies met his death; but I can quite well guess what their attitude would be if I did so. They would look on the action, in their unimaginative way, as an attempt on my part to remove their suspicion from myself; they would realize nothing of the feeling of artistic fitness which almost compels me to pen and paper. No, I shall on the other hand take effective steps to conceal it from them altogether. Not in my bedroom, among my personal belongings. These, I know, have already been ransacked by some clumsy-fingered officer in absurd search for ‘evidence’, and doubtless they will be again. I have a better plan than that.

One last word. I am not a professional writer. I have never before attempted to tell a story on paper. I am not practised in the arts of subtle hint and delicate shades of meaning. But it is one of my maxims that, except in matters depending on mere physique, what man has done man can do; and I see no reason why I should not be able to perform this particular task as well as any other. Without self-flattery, I do not think the intelligence will be lacking: at least, such small degree of intelligence as is required.

With these few words of introduction, then, so that the reader may understand the particularly piquantcircumstances in which this ‘story’ is written, I will, as the professional writers put it, set out the facts.

Candidly, I had been a little surprised when I got Mrs Hillyard’s letter asking me for a fortnight down to Minton Deeps. Ethel Hillyard is an old friend of mine – that is to say, I have known her since childhood – but I had always had an idea that her husband did not care for me much. Certainly I did not care much for him. He is an uncouth sort of fellow, and I have always considered Ethel wasted on him. Still, Minton Deeps is Minton Deeps, John Hillyard or no, the most charming farm in the whole of Devonshire; and Minton Deeps in June, for those who have eyes to see, is incomparable. I accepted by return.

If I was surprised at having been asked, it was nothing to my astonishment on learning, at my arrival ten days later, who else had been asked too. Minton Deeps Farm is in a remote part of Devonshire, in the heart of the country, ten miles from the nearest market town, and the Hillyards do not entertain much. But on this occasion they had collected something approaching a regular house party. I had expected to be the only guest; there were actually five others.

They were at tea in the little low-ceilinged sitting room when I arrived, and for some reason saw fit to greet my appearance with a series of long, shrill howls. I smiled, of course, as one does at the ill-mannered jest of a spoilt child in the presence of its mother, but I was annoyed. In a flash my visions disappeared of long, lazy days in the sun on the steep slopes of Minton Valley among the bracken and gorse, with a rug and a book and a case full of cigarettes, and Ethel occasionally perhaps to listen to me if I felt in the mood for talking. These people would be wanting all the time to dothings, and they would expect me to do them too.

My heart sank as I accepted a cup of tea from my hostess and dropped into a chair, though still with the same smile of civilized politeness on my lips; for I take pride in being able to conceal my feelings at all times from the oafs and the herd. And here were the oafs and the herd. Eric Scott-Davies was there, a man I particularly disliked, a large, loud-voiced, cocksure fellow, a waster and a chaser after other men’s wives, with all the insufferable superiority of Eton and the self-confident assertiveness of Cambridge (my own school was Fernhurst, and my university Oxford). Beside him John Hillyard, with his pale sandy hair and his large, red, rather vacant face, the typical gentleman farmer, redolent of the manure heap, showed up to positive advantage.

Then there were Paul de Ravel and his wife, a couple for whom I had never much cared, though she at any rate was a joy to look on, a tall, slender wand of a woman with flaming auburn hair and slumberous green eyes which she normally kept half closed but which could flash sparks of passionate green fire when anything roused her. She was English and had at one time been a professional actress; now she was a natural one, and her immediate surroundings were her invariable stage. Her husband, little Paul de Ravel, had married her four years ago while she was still on the stage, and was said to be still as madly in love with her as he had been then. It had always been curious to me that he had never seen through her poses and her affectations. Paul de Ravel is French by birth and English by upbringing and education, and though his English had no sign of an accent the French in him decidedly predominated, both in appearance and characteristics. Personally I have never cared for the French. He was half-a-head shorter than his wife, and followed her about like a pet poodle. Sexual attraction is a very odd thing. Whenever I think of Paul de Ravel I thank Heaven that I have escaped it.

The leader of the howls had been Armorel Scott-Davies, Eric’s cousin and almost sister and a most offensive young woman. It had always seemed to me that she comprised in her person every single thing that the newspapers have to say about the modern girl.

Out of the whole roomful in fact there was, besides Ethel, only one person whom I was really glad to see. This was a young girl whose name, I remembered, was Elsa Verity, a charmingly pretty little thing with soft fair hair and shy blue eyes. I had met her for a short time in London the previous winter, also under Ethel’s auspices. She was, indeed, I had gathered, rather a protégée of Ethel’s, and I seemed to recall vaguely some story of her being exceedingly rich and an orphan, and something about Ethel’s fears of her falling prey to some fortune hunter. I adjusted my pince-nez and smiled at her, and she smiled back with delicious confusion. A more pleasing contrast to the unpleasant Armorel, with her cropped black hair and her foolish aping of the masculine in her clothes, it would have been hard to find.

John Hillyard was talking to Sylvia de Ravel about his turkeys, or some equally uninteresting birds, and I am sure the conversation was boring her as much as it would have me in her place. John has always puzzled me a little; he is, in fact, one of the very few people who do, for I must confess that I have not found it necessary to make a study of my fellow creatures in order to see through most of them as plainly as if they had been made of plate glass; the average human being is wearisomely transparent. John, however, must be slightly more opaque. He looks the typical farmer; his heart is in farming, and farming only; he seldom talks anything but farming, or the scientific slaughter of wild creatures; one would imagine he never thought of anything else. Yet, unable like any other typical farmer to make farming pay, he has turned what should have been his profession into a hobby and makes his living – and a very comfortable living, I understand, too – by writing, of all things, detective stories. And Ethel tells me that he enjoys very large sales, particularly in America. Perhaps I had John in mind when I hinted above that my own intelligence would hardly be inadequate for a similar task; for certainly if John Hillyard can write them successfully, then one would say that anybody can.

Such, then, was the company gathered in Ethel Hillyards’s Devonshire sitting room that afternoon; and it was not until I was halfway through my second cup of tea that I realized, with quite a start, what a very strangely assorted company it was. Scandal has never held the faintest interest for me, I am glad to say, so that the secret history of my companions of the moment is always the last thing to enter my mind.

In the case of Eric Scott-Davies, however, scandal is far too inflated to remain secret; and though one hears, in the circles in which he moves, a new and disgraceful story about him almost every day, one such story had been so persistent a little time ago as to force itself into permanent lodgment even in my mind. For the last year Eric’s name had been coupled unceasingly with that of Sylvia de Ravel, until it was openly said that the whole world knew of the affair except only De Ravel himself. Nor did it need anybody else’s knowledge of De Ravel to inform me that when at last that deluded man did hear of it, something violent would happen. And here Ethel, with sublime tactlessness, had asked the trio to share the same roof for the next fortnight!

No wonder I was unable to repress a slight start. The little panelled sitting room had suddenly taken on for me the aspect of a powder mine, with De Ravel himself as the torch only waiting to be kindled into firing it!

Not a pleasant prospect. And that poor child Elsa there, to have her innocent eyes opened to the sordidness of the world. It really was most reprehensible of Ethel, and I determined to tell her so on the first opportunity. Meantime I endeavoured to extract what consolation I could from the situation by hoping that the explosion, when it occurred, would blow Armorel away as well as her cousin. How pleasant if it did, and left myself and Elsa as the only remnant of the party.

My opportunity with Ethel came sooner than I expected, and it was she who made it. Immediately after tea she remarked casually to me that she believed there were still a few bluebells left in the woods down by the stream, and if I liked she would come with me and show me where they were. Naturally bluebells meant less than nothing to any of the others (except perhaps Elsa, whose eyes lighted at the mention of them but who was fortunately too shy to suggest accompanying us), so that no one offered to spoil our tête-à-tête. It was typical of Ethel’s admirable methods to have separated us from the others so simply and yet so effectively.

I did not mention the subject in my mind as we strolled down through the fields, whose turf had been cropped into springiness by John’s sheep. There is a time and a place for everything, and I did not wish to sadden Ethel with my reproaches until we had exchanged the usual greetings of two old and intimate friends. I was really glad to see Ethel again, and told her so frankly (I always believe in giving pleasure when I conscientiously can), and she was good enough to say that she was pleased to see me too, as indeed I have no doubt that she was; for a woman, Ethel is quite intelligent, and it must be a treat for her, buried away as she is, to come into contact with a sympathetic intellect such as my own, after an uninterrupted course of John, his manure-heap and his detective stories. And yet she seems really genuinely fond of the fellow.

We sat down on a fallen trunk in the bluebell wood and feasted our eyes on the spread of colour in silence. There are few women who can remain silent in the face of the beauties of nature; Ethel is exceptional in that, as in other ways. If I had ever contemplated linking my life with that of a member of the opposite sex, I might have married Ethel although she is a year or two older than myself.

‘I want to talk to you, Cyril,’ she said abruptly, breaking into our silence at last.

‘Exactly,’ I agreed. ‘And I think I know what you wish to say, Ethel. You realize what a blunder you made in inviting — ’

‘Nothing of the kind,’ Ethel interrupted, perhaps with unnecessary tartness. ‘You haven’t heard what I want to say yet. It’s about Eric Scott-Davies.’

‘As I surmised,’ I murmured, with a little smile.

I let her tell her story in her own way. And I may say at once (for above all things I pride myself on intellectual honesty) that it was a very different one from what I expected to hear. According to what Ethel had to say, the inclusion of Elsa Verity in a party which already contained Eric Scott-Davies and the De Ravels was not a blunder at all but a piece of very carefully thought-out diplomacy. Indeed it appeared that Ethel was becoming positively Machiavellian in her manoeuvres, and though the situation was serious enough in all conscience I could not altogether repress a smile at the notion of dear Ethel in such an unaccustomed r?le.

Divested of its feminine embroidery and circumlocution, the state of affairs seemed to be briefly this: Eric Scott-Davies, whom both Ethel and myself had long ago agreed to be a cad of the first water, was making a serious onslaught on Elsa Verity – not with design upon her virtue but with the, to me, much more sinister intention of marriage. The poor child, innocent in the ways of the world and dazzled by his superficial good looks and the tremendous self-confidence of the man, already imagined herself half in love with him; without desperate measures the tragedy of marriage would eventuate. Eric Scott-Davies’ own object was obvious: he did not care a rap for Elsa herself, her childlike innocence was not to his taste in women by any means; what he wanted was her money. Having squandered the very respectable fortune into which he had come on the death of his father half a dozen years ago, and with rumours already about that he was contemplating that last resource of all men of family and sensibility, the selling of his family portraits, the fellow was plainly in a desperate position; and when the position was desperate Eric Scott-Davies was not the man to shrink from desperate measures to retrieve it.

So much I gathered from Ethel, and the tears came into her eyes as she spoke of the possibility of Elsa being swept off her feet by such a man, and the inevitable tragic disillusionment afterwards. ‘He really has such a terribly compelling way with him, Cyril,’ she told me earnestly. ‘An inexperienced girl would stand no chance at all with him if he was concentrating on her seriously.’

‘Do you mean that he is actually – h’m! – physically attractive to your sex?’ I asked delicately, for I very much dislike referring to the sexual relations between man and woman in the presence of one of the latter. I am glad to say that the modern habit of discussing in mixed company matters more related to the garbage heap than to the drawing room has never infected me, at any rate.

‘I should think he is,’ Ethel replied. ‘It isn’t flattering my own sex to tell you, but a man of that type, with the veneer covering the brute considerably thinner than usual, appeals directly to every primitive instinct we women have; and we’ ve a good deal more, my dear Cyril, than men of your type ever realize.’

‘I see,’ I said rather uncomfortably.

‘That’s exactly the trouble. It’s men of Eric’s type who dosweep us off our feet, not the more civilized kind like you. For instance you, Cyril, could never sweep a woman off her feet if you tried for a thousand years.’

‘I trust I should never try for a single minute,’ I said, somewhat stiffly. If dear Ethel has a fault (and being a woman she can hardly escape that), it is a tendency at times to unnecessary outspokenness.

‘Eric, you see,’ she went on, ‘appeals to instincts in Elsa that the poor child doesn’t know she’s got and would be horrified no doubt to learn that she had; but they respond all right to his sort of treatment. And of course he’s an absolute master in love-making, of the forceful, caveman, won’t-take-modesty-for-an-answer kind, which we unfortunate women find so devastatingly irresistible. A master.’

‘You speak as if you had actual experience,’ I retorted, perhaps unkindly, but I was still feeling a little ruffled.

‘Oh, he’s tried it on me, of course,’ Ethel said with a short laugh. ‘You needn’t look so surprised, Cyril. I’m not positively ugly, and I’m still a year or two on the right side of forty. If it will relieve you, I’ll say I gave him no encouragement at all – in fact I was really very rude to him indeed; but it was an effort. Even while I was saying the nastiest things I could think of, I should just have loved to droop gracefully into his arms.’

What a confession! I passed over it in silence. ‘But do you mean that even after an incident of such unpleasantness he would still accept an invitation to stay under your roof?’

‘Oh, Eric’s got a hide like a rhinoceros. A little thing like that wouldn’t worry him. Besides, no doubt he thinks there’s still hope. After he’s successfully married Elsa’s money, he’ll probably try again.’ I had never heard Ethel so bitter. Usually she is the kindest of creatures.

I took the conversation back to matter of more immediate importance. ‘Of course you’ve warned Miss Verity of the kind of man he is?’

‘Of course I’ve done nothing of the kind,’ Ethel retorted. ‘I’m not a complete and utter fool, Cyril. Even you should know enough to realize that that would be the surest way of pushing her straight into his arms.’

‘But surely she’s old enough to use her reason?’ I protested.

‘She’s twenty-one. And a girl of twenty-one is a bigger idiot in matters of that kind, my dear Cyril, than a girl of seventeen; and I can’t say more than that. Besides, no woman’s ever old enough to use her reason when it’s a question of love.’ One of the many things that Ethel and I have in common is the profound scorn in which she holds her own sex. Indeed, I have noticed that nearly all nice women despise their sex as a whole. Perhaps that is what makes them nice. ‘No,’ she went on, ‘I’ve done the only possible thing: I’ve pretended gently to encourage it. Elsa is quite under the impression that this party has been arranged solely for the benefit of herself and Eric.’

‘Whereas in reality – ’

‘Exactly. As I said just now, there’s only one possible hope and that is to shock her out of this infatuation before it get too deep a hold. And hence, my dear Cyril, the De Ravels.’

I swung my pince-nez meditatively on their cord. The bluebells were quite forgotten by now. In front of us the little stream was tumbling over its rocky bed in a way in which I, straight from London, would normally have found most refreshing; as things were, I scarcely heard it.

‘Rather playing with fire, isn’t it, Ethel?’

‘Deliberately. I’m banking entirely on the fire bursting out and consuming Eric with it.’

‘And if it doesn’t?’

‘Then we must take still sterner measures,’ Ethel replied with positive grimness. ‘I tell you, Cyril, I’d stick at nothing to save Elsa from that man, although I’ve no direct responsibility for her, only a moral one. She’s the daughter of the greatest friend I ever had (you never knew her, she was at school with me); both her parents are dead, and she has no near relatives; legally, the child’s now her own mistress; I’ve simply installed myself in loco parentis.I may have usurped the position, but even if I wasn’t so fond of Elsa herself I should feel it my duty to her mother to hang onto it like death. And I don’t mind telling you in confidence, Cyril, that I’d rather strangle Eric with my own hands if I could than see him trap Elsa into a sordid marriage.’ Prophetic words, which afterwards I had only too good cause to remember.

‘Exactly; precisely,’ I soothed, for Ethel had been getting uncomfortably dramatic, and I detest the introduction of drama into any situation with which I am concerned. ‘So Mrs de Ravel, smitten with jealousy of Eric’s attentions to Miss Verity, is to draw back the sheep into her own fold again so effectually that Miss Verity’s eyes will be opened and she will be able to throw off these beginnings of infatuation?’

‘Something like that,’ Ethel agreed, more calmly. ‘As you can imagine if you know anything about her at all, Sylvia de Ravel isn’t the sort of woman ever to let anything go, human or otherwise, of which she’s once established possession. In my opinion Eric made a mistake there. Sylvia isn’t a person who can be picked up, toyed with for a time, and then dropped, according to Eric’s usual charming ways. He caught her, and she was probably difficult to catch; but he caught a Tartar when he did so. Well, now he’s going to pay with Elsa for his mistake.’

‘And De Ravel? I understand he’s the only person who still remains ignorant of that affair. Supposing he gets wind of it?’

Ethel looked at me squarely. ‘Cyril, I don’t care if he does. And I don’t care what happens afterwards, either. All I care about is getting Elsa away from Eric.’ It has been well said that women are the unscrupulous sex. In this matter I judged that Ethel had absolutely no scruples at all.

‘I see. And Miss Scott-Davies? What part is she to play in this Machiavellian scheme?’

‘Armorel? Oh, I just asked her to balance the numbers. Though I thought it would do no harm to show Elsa what sort of a family she’d be marrying into. Besides, there’s no love lost between Armorel and Eric, you know.’

‘Really? I understood they were brought up together, since Armorel’s parents died when she was a small child. I thought they looked on each other as brother and sister.’

‘Exactly,’ said Ethel, with unusual cynicism. ‘Anyhow, you can take it from me that there isn’t any love lost between them. It’s a matter of money, I think,’ she added indifferently.

‘Armorel’s parents hadn’t any, and though Mr Scott-Davies practically adopted her he didn’t mention her in his will, with the vague idea that Eric would provide. I believe Armorel’s feeling is that Eric doesn’t provide enough.’

‘So you merely asked her to make the numbers even. In other words, presumably, to balance me. Am I to assume that I have any part in the plot, then, besides that of your advisor?’

‘Yes, Cyril, you are,’ Ethel smiled. ‘You’re cast for the part of second walking gentleman.’

‘At Minton Deeps I usually prefer to be a lying gentleman,’ I replied humorously, for I usually try to season even the most serious conversation with such small quips. ‘When I think of the sun on your bracken…Still, on this occasion perhaps I’ll forego my rug and laziness. So what do you require of your second walking gentleman?’

‘I want you to do your best to distract Elsa’s attention from Eric,’ Ethel replied more earnestly. ‘Show a preference for her company, get her to go out for walks with you, take her out in your car, show her little attentions; she’ll appreciate them from a man so much older than herself.’

‘Come, Ethel,’ I had to protest. ‘Only sixteen years older, when all’s said; and just as young, perhaps, in spirit.’

‘Anyhow, she’ll appreciate them. In fact, Cyril,’ Ethel added with another smile, ‘while my chief plot is simmering up to boiling-point, you’ve got to fill up the time in cutting Eric out of Elsa’s affections. After all, you shouldn’t find it so difficult. There’s no doubt which is the better man of the two, if only the poor girl’s eyes can be made to see it.’

‘You mean,’ I said dubiously, ‘that I’m to encourage Miss Verity to entertain expectations of affection from me and then, as soon as Scott-Davies has been removed from her horizon, disappoint her?’

‘Oh,’ said Ethel carelessly, ‘till Eric really has been removed from it, we can leave the horizon to look after itself. In the meantime we’ve got to save the child from herself; and I appeal to you, Cyril, not only as one of my oldest and dearest friends, but as one of the few men I can rely on with enough understanding and sympathy to rescue Elsa from as horrible a danger as ever threatened an unsuspecting girl.’

‘You make me feel just like a knight-errant, Ethel,’ I said lightly, for in her earnestness she was again showing signs of becoming distressingly dramatic.

My little jest had the effect of checking her symptoms. ‘Well, you’ll be doing a better job of work than any of those old things ever did,’ she laughed.

‘A Paladin in Pince-nez,’ I said gaily. ‘Very well, Ethel, you may count on me to help you to the full extent of my powers of deceiving innocent girlhood.’ I maintained my light tone while I gave my promise, for to tell the truth I was feeling more than a little touched both by the peril in which Miss Verity stood and the fidelity of Ethel in her resolute attempts to avert it; and I feared that she might divine it.