Outside it was dusk, and in the great hall more than dusk; when Gently entered by the north-east door to the gallery, he noticed with an ironical hunch of a shoulder that only the night-light by the main door had been switched on. But of course, he had to understand everything! In a case like this mere facts were the province of the Sir Dayneses and the Dysons. He, Gently, was required to relive the crime, he was the selected repository for the spiritual remains of the last of the Feverells… and wasn’t he playing the game, making his entry where Somerhayes had made it on the night of the drama? Wasn’t he pat on cue for the final, majestic scene?
He stopped behind the first pillar, nearly opposite to the door. Yes, this undoubtedly would be where Somerhayes had taken his stand. From here you could see without being seen. You would have been out of sight of Johnson, coming in by the south-east door. You would have escaped a glance from Mrs Page, crossing and recrossing the landing between the marble portal and the north-west door. But you, you could see everything. The hall, the stairs, the landing, the galleries, they were all overlooked from this lurking-place. You could, for instance, have seen Lieutenant Earle, if he had been standing in the precise centre of the top stair, where Somerhayes was standing now…
‘Quite right, Mr Gently!’
The sixth baron’s voice came softly to him down the hall, a sort of mocking commentary to his thoughts.
‘Actually, I stood a little nearer to the pillar, but not enough to make a significant difference.’
Gently grunted and made the adjustment. He wasn’t above taking stage-directions! Now, he could see rather less of the hall below, but a good deal more of the landing ahead. Without hurrying himself, he went over every detail of the view thus presented.
‘That pillar there, flanking the portico…’
‘Yes, Mr Gently?’
‘The one on the left-hand side… would you mind standing beside it for a minute?’
Somerhayes didn’t move to it directly. He seemed to be pondering over the direction. But eventually, with what may have been a shrug, he turned from the stairs and pressed himself in beside the pillar.
‘Now just stay there, will you?’
Gently plodded down to the landing, and having reached it, stood for some minutes with his back to the north-west door. Then he crossed the landing, negotiated the south gallery, and spent a similar period at the spot where Johnson had emerged. Somerhayes watched these manoeuvres without a word.
‘All right — that’s everything!’ Gently returned to the landing, hands in pockets. ‘Personally, I’d sooner talk by that library fire of yours, but I wouldn’t want to spoil a good production over a trifle like that. Whose cue is it — yours or mine?’
‘Yours, Mr Gently.’ Somerhayes sounded a little piqued.
‘Good — because I’ve got a lot to say — and I hope I’ve understood this business the way you wanted me to!’
Somerhayes made a frigid motion with his head and took up his position at the top of the stairs again. Gently, huddled in his ulster, paced up and down the twilit landing behind him.
‘In the first place it wasn’t a crime of passion — that’s what I’m supposed to know, isn’t it?’
Somerhayes said nothing, but stood looking out into the hall beneath.
‘It looks like that, and that may be the case for the prosecution — but between you and me, it’s something quite different! Because you don’t love your cousin in a possessive way, do you? It’s brotherly love, a kinsman’s love, a love that wants to see her married, not to a decadent aristocrat, but to one of the world’s creators — a man, shall we say, strong in the flow of history. She’s the last possible flame of the torch of Feverell. You want to attach her, and the Feverell blood, to an aristocrat of the new world succeeding your own. And by doing that, you want to serve this man; you want to ensure his future and the success of his genius.
‘Prompt me where I go wrong — you know the picture better than I do!’
Somerhayes didn’t move. ‘I was sure,’ he murmured, ‘I was sure I could depend on you, Mr Gently…’
‘All this you had planned when you walked out of the House of Lords. That was the old world, the Lords, the old world of privilege and greed and suppression and social injustice. Oh, it had its leavening of progressives, its top-dressing of socialism; but you had looked deeper, hadn’t you? You had seen its essential corruption. You saw it as an old soldier with a historic death-rattle in its throat, and you knew, though it could still wave its sword and utter threats, that it was doomed as surely as jingoism and the satanic mills! So you turned your back, and left the dead to bury the dead. You took your courage in both hands, you faced the situation of being of a tainted race, and you applied your energy, money and affection to the service of a prophet of the new world — Leslie Brass.
‘Out of your ruins, he could rise. From your extinction, his erection. Though you had come into this life ignobly in the eyes of history, yet in those same eyes you would leave it truly ennobled! Am I right so far? Have I got the authentic text?’
‘Yes!’ breathed Somerhayes. ‘You have the authentic text!’
‘There was only one flaw in the plan — your cousin and Brass were unattached romantically. Mrs Page, for various reasons, was still guarding herself from contact with men, and Brass, though he may amuse himself with women, was apparently not in the market for a wife. Yet it was critically necessary for these two to come together. You would have done your duty to neither by simply splitting the inheritance between them. Brass, to succeed, needed Mrs Page’s management — and she needed him to provide a sheet-anchor! So you tried to help the matter on. You willed your estate to your cousin. Brass, cognisant of this, was supposed to open his campaign.
‘That was how the matter stood when Earle came into the reckoning. You had put your last card on the table, and you were waiting for game to be called. The affair stood at its crisis. You could afford no intervention. And then, out of the sheer perversity of fate, Earle appeared with his single trump-card!
‘What could you do? What could you possibly do? Nothing, except watch, and perhaps pray that your cousin would resist the young man. And she tried to resist him. She put up a struggle. And you watched, and waited, and pretended to see nothing.’
Gently paused in his stride to look at the slender figure silhouetted against the dimly lit hall.
‘At what point did you decide to kill him?’
‘I don’t know.’ Somerhayes’s voice was almost too low to catch.
‘Was it when you invited him here to spend Christmas?’
‘It might have been then. That might have been my idea.’
‘Well, we’ll leave it to the prosecution — they’ll love fighting that out!’ Gently stalked on, fists stuck out like rods in his pockets. ‘But the idea came to you — and it was a fascinating one too. It was nothing as simple as merely getting rid of Earle. If that had been all, you might not have done it. Or you might have done it more cleverly — a gun accident, for instance! But Earle was more than an obstacle. He was also a means to an end. As you contemplated the act you saw all its consequences — you saw the disposition of fate as clearly as though you had it in writing. Here was the great finis, the end you would have sought for yourself — here was the ultimate challenge to stamp your life with significance! Symbolically you would be the sacrifice, the old to the new. With your life, at one stroke, you could repay the debt of your family to society. And in addition to that you would die a martyr — the abolitionist would die by the hand of the hangman. And from the dock, the guilty dock, your voice would be heard. You could thunder to the four quarters of the earth the speech which fell stillborn in the House of Betrayal!
‘Am I still quoting the text? Have you nothing to add?’
‘Go on!’ panted Somerhayes. ‘Go on to the end!’
‘So we come to that particular night, when you overheard the assignation. It was near one in the morning, with everyone in bed or about to retire there. The need and the opportunity had come together. The fate you felt so strongly had provided the moment. You crept after Earle. You were not standing down there by the north-east door. Here is where you were crouching, here beside this pillar, beside the portico, beneath the panel with the truncheons — where your cousin couldn’t see you, nor, as it happened, could Johnson either! And you saw your cousin come, you heard the interview that took place, you saw Johnson come out to look, you saw your cousin return to her wing. And then you saw Earle leave the saloon — stand where you are standing now! — you plucked that truncheon from its panel, and you struck him down the stairs.
‘Why did you wipe the truncheon? Perhaps you can fill in that little item! It could be that you wanted the sensation of the slow approach of justice. In any case, you made certain that it would find you. You phoned the County Constabulary before you phoned Sir Daynes. Sir Daynes, as you knew, would try to find for accidental death, but once you’d given Dyson a smell of the scent, he’d follow you to the kill! Only it so happened that I was around too, and I was given the preference… While Sir Daynes was sidetracked by Johnson, you carefully kept me pointing in the right direction.’
Gently stopped opposite the gasping nobleman.
‘And that’s that, my lord — everything I should know!’
‘Take me!’ exclaimed Somerhayes, twisting round with outstretched hands. ‘I want you to make the arrest — I want you to do it — personally!’
Gently stood looking at him for a long, pitiless moment. Then he slowly shook his head.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s too fantastic… It’s psychologically impossible!’
‘You must arrest me — I demand it!’
Somerhayes was still holding out his hands. And Gently was still shaking his head with obstinate decision.
‘I knew you were to be the man — I appeal to you to do it!’
‘I may be the man’ — Gently shrugged — ‘but you’re not the man… there’s the contradiction!’
‘Mr Gently, you have grasped the whole case. As a magistrate, I adjure you to do your duty!’
‘I am trying to grasp it, my lord, and I shall certainly do my duty. But I repeat… you are not the man to commit a crime like this. You are a man to die — yes! But you are not a man to kill. Your whole record makes nonsense of the account I have just drawn up.’
‘How dare you make such a judgement!’
‘I dare, from the facts you have given me.’
‘In so many words, Mr Gently, I hereby confess to the murder of Lieutenant Earle!’
‘I’m sorry, my lord, but your character prevents me from accepting your word in the matter.’
Somerhayes’s hands fell to his sides, and he seemed to shrink back insensibly from the sudden, dramatic pose he had assumed. In the dim light it was impossible to distinguish the expression of his features or his eyes. He was merely a black-etched shape against the impoverished illumination below.
‘Mr Gently, I beseech you’ — his voice had sunk again to its lowest tone — ‘I beseech you to think well what you are doing before you take an irrevocable step. I can count on your understanding. I can count on yours alone. Do not press too far for the ultimate fact, when it may not be in the service of the ultimate truth. Consider, Mr Gently — I beseech you to consider!’
‘Mmn.’ Gently stood planted like a brooding statue.
‘Think again what manner of man I am. Be fearless, be favourless in your summing-up. You know I see myself truly. I am a spiritual man of straw, a decadent, an anachronism, one without value. My only good is to die well, my only excuse to have served an ideal. Before you interrupt what is wholly the course of justice, think — think!’
Gently nodded from his shadowy silence.
‘If men have purpose, and I believe they have, then the worthless have value when they accept the dispositions of providence. And this disposition is mine. By this I fulfil what would appear a useless destiny. Have you the right to withhold your assistance from me at this moment, or to tamper with a disposal bearing the stamp of higher purpose? I say you have not, Mr Gently, and I insist that you acknowledge it!’
Gently hunched his shapeless shoulders, looked away, and looked back again.
‘You can die, my lord,’ he said, ‘but you can’t kill. That’s all I acknowledge just now! And if you didn’t kill Lieutenant Earle, then you are proposing to die for another — and who else can that other be but Leslie Edward Brass?’
‘No!’ cried Somerhayes. ‘Be reasonable, Mr Gently!’
‘Brass,’ repeated Gently, his voice beginning to rise. ‘I say again — who else, my lord? Who else but the man you would turn into an idol? You have sacrificed your career to him — your money — your cousin’s love. And now you want to make the great sacrifice — don’t you? — to lay down your life!’
‘I am nothing!’ exclaimed Somerhayes. ‘Remember — I am nothing.’
‘On the contrary,’ snapped Gently. ‘You are the most profound egotist I have ever had to deal with!’
The nobleman reeled as though he had been struck in the face. The half-light below, catching him in profile, showed the white of his eye in a shocked dilation.
‘You shouldn’t have said that!’ he stammered. ‘Mr Gently, you shouldn’t have said it!’
‘No, I shouldn’t — should I?’ demanded Gently. ‘It wasn’t in the compact! My business was to stop short where you were still a heroic figure. Unfortunately I am not a hero-worshipper, my lord. You mistook your man when you cast me for the part. In the course of a long connection with the criminal character, I’ve been driven to the conclusion that the biggest heroes are the greatest criminals — they are psychopaths, my lord, people who have failed, like you, to reach a working compromise with life.’
Somerhayes caught hold of the balustrade and hung to it, gasping. ‘You are killing me!’ he cried. ‘Every word is like a dagger!’
‘The truth won’t kill!’ Gently pressed on mercilessly. ‘You’re going to face it this time, unlike all the other occasions, when you only played at facing it. Because you never have faced it yet, have you? From Jepson down to the House of Lords and Janice it’s been one long retreat — a retreat to preserve the myth — a retreat to keep intact the vision of Lord Somerhayes the Great. This is what I’ve come to understand. This is where the focus starts getting sharp. You care nothing for your cousin. You care nothing for society. To keep the myth unblemished you would sacrifice the love of the one and bequeath the other a killer — and step on the scaffold in an intoxication of self-love and imaginary grandeur. Where is the hero here, my lord? Where is the nobility I have been summoned to admire? All I can see is a gigantic selfishness, and an egotism so voracious that only tragedy can glut it!’
‘I have served art!’ cried Somerhayes. ‘Give me that at least — creation absolves the greatest of crimes!’
‘You serve yourself,’ retorted Gently. ‘You have never served anything else. And as for crime, it has no absolution but punishment.’
‘Personally,’ said a third voice behind them, ‘I prefer his lordship’s version, Inspector!’ And Leslie Brass stepped suddenly out of the unlit saloon.
‘Keep your voices down, children… I’m getting to be somewhat de trop around here.’
Brass had a gun in his hand, a small automatic that Gently recognized as a. 22 Unique of French manufacture.
‘I don’t want to raise my bag unnecessarily, but you see how I’m placed, my chickens. As I take it, his lordship is just about to rat on me — you used the right weapon, Inspector. Flattery would have got you nowhere!’
Gently shrugged expressionlessly. ‘I was wondering when you’d come out…’
‘Of course you were, my son.’ Brass waved the gun deprecatingly. ‘It’s your business to notice things, isn’t it? If X was listening in on two consecutive occasions, the odds are pretty bright that he would be there the third time. And here he is, toying with his lordship’s gun… What does that suggest to the trained police mind?’
‘You’d never get away with it.’
‘I might, you know, all things considered.’
‘At the moment, Brass, you could get off with manslaughter… It’ll be a different tale if you fool around with that thing.’
‘You visualize the whole plot I take it, my maestro?’
‘You’re thinking you could shoot the pair of us and leave the gun in his lordship’s hand.’
‘Distinctly workable, y’know.’
‘The police aren’t fools.’
‘But they’re thinking along certain lines, Inspector. They would rush to jump at the wrong conclusion. What could be more natural than for his lordship, being taxed, to draw his gun and shoot you — and then to put an end to things? There’s only my conscience really to worry about… and it’s a pretty elastic article. The first job is the worst, sonny. After that it gets to be routine.’
Gently grunted and turned to Somerhayes. ‘You see?’ he said. ‘You see what you’re protecting? This is crime, not creation. Art doesn’t kill, but greed does.’
Brass gave his cynical laugh. ‘Too true, Professor, too true. I thought you might have been harbouring the idea that I killed Earle for Janice… I did, of course, but only in an incidental way. It’s filthy lucre that makes the world go round.’
‘Don’t say that!’ gasped Somerhayes, still supporting himself by the balustrade. ‘I won’t hear it from you — it’s nothing but your way of talking.’
‘And as I talk I am — just get that into your befuddled brain!’
‘The spirit is there… you cannot blaspheme the spirit!’
‘The spirit my backside — I killed him for the cash!’
Gently never had a chance to stop it. Without warning Somerhayes came flying off the balustrade like a galvanized frog. The inevitable had to happen. He went spinning sideways to the crash and blaze of the gun. At the same second Gently hurled himself on the artist and sent the gun flying over the rail…
‘Traitor!’ cried Somerhayes, clutching his bloody shoulder on the floor. ‘You should have killed me — why didn’t you kill me?’
‘I would have done, you stupid bastard!’ shouted Brass, dodging Gently. ‘Take it as an omen — your number was on that bullet!’
He dived through the north-west door, slamming it in Gently’s face. When the Central Office man got it open it was to see the door to the staircase slamming a few yards ahead. He burst it open with his shoulder. Brass was tearing up the spiral stairs. A couple of turns behind, Gently panted up after him.
‘Come back!’ he bawled. ‘You’re cornered, Brass. You’ll never get off the roof!’
The artist wasted no breath in reply, but continued his flight down the attic corridors.
Along there it was black as the inside of a hat. Gently could hear his quarry stumbling and bumping up ahead as he plunged after him, similarly handicapped. The door to the hatch slammed, and then the door of the hatch itself. Out in the whining gale that cut over the leads he could just make out Brass sliding and slipping towards the south-east wing. At the angle he must get him — there was no way back from there! But then, at the angle, Brass went over the coping like a monkey, and when he got to it Gently found a fire-ladder leading down to the wing-roof below. He went down the ladder. Brass was already on the far side of the wing. Another ladder took them down to the coach-house roof, and then another one to the garage-yard…
Outdistanced, Gently came to the last ladder just as Brass was reaching the bottom. With a mental prayer he lowered himself over, hung poised, and let himself go… He got Brass all right. He bowled him over like a nine-pin. But unfortunately he got himself as well, and it was some few moments before his wind came back and he was able to renew an intelligent interest in events.
When at last he was able to scramble to his feet, a dazzling beam of light stabbed at him and made him throw up his arm defensively.
‘Waal, waal!’ exclaimed a well-remembered voice. ‘If it isn’t the chief inspector doing gymnastics off the roof! And who is this other athlete, Inspector — would he be somebody who I ought to know?’
The torch beam lowered and reversed. It revealed Colonel Rynacker, USAF. It also revealed a couple of snowdrops supporting a sick-looking Brass, a Brass who had patently had most of the bounce knocked out of him.
‘Guess I brought these boys along to give a hand to your cops… When we ran across this guy he seemed to think we were hostile. But what goes, Chief Inspector? How come the schemozzle?’
Gently grimaced and felt himself over tenderly. ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘It’s just my night for these things…’