Fallen Into the Pit

somebody pretty clever monkeying with the machines, only they couldn’t get any real proof. You didn’t listen much, I didn’t much believe it myself, really, just because Wilf’s an awful old liar. He is an awful old liar, only sometimes he tells the truth.”

Chad, staring down constrainedly at the notebook in his hand, asked: “You don’t think—Charles was in on that deal, too?”

“No, I’m sure he couldn’t have been. He might have backed up his old man in all the usual sorts of monkey business, you know, the legal ones. But I don’t think his father would ever have let him in on anything like that, because he was—sort of honest. Even if he’d wanted to help, I don’t believe he could have put it over.”

Chad’s face warmed into a singularly sweet smile. He looked up at Dominic, and then beyond his shoulder to where Io sat on a hassock by the fire, with Pussy on the rug at her feet, coiled up and purring, the domestic pussy for once. “Thanks, Dom! No, I don’t believe he could.”

“But according to this business of the stick,” said Jim Tugg abruptly, “you’re going to prove that Blunden killed Schauffler. How does that fit in, if he’d put Schauffler in a position where he wanted him for his own purposes? He was doing the job all right, wasn’t he? Then why kill him?”

“Yes, I know it does seem all wrong, until you think a bit further. You think what sort of a person Helmut was. And then, the pheasants, you see, they gave the show away. You know,” said Dominic earnestly, turning his brilliant eyes on Jim, “how it was with Helmut when he came to your place. First he was always as meek as milk, but as soon as he found his feet, and someone treated him well, he began to take advantage. Everybody who was decent to him he thought could easily be afraid of him, because he thought people were only decent because they were too feeble to be beastly.”

“That’s hellish true!” said Jim. “It was him to the life.”

“Well, of course, it was a bit different with old Blunden, because he knew from the start what Blunden wanted with him, and he wasn’t being decent, particularly, he was just getting value for money. But if he hadn’t got that hold over him, he thought he’d got a better. Just think how a man like Helmut would love it if he thought he’d got a local bigwig like Blunden just where he wanted him! It wasn’t only the birds he could poach, or the money he could get out of him, but the pleasure of being able to swagger about Blunden’s land as he liked, and if the old man tackled him about it, well, he’d only got to sneer in his face, and say, one word out of you, and I’ll give the whole show away. Because Blunden had a lot more to lose than Helmut had, if it came out.”

“That’s all good sense,” agreed George. “But now you come to the real snag. Helmut wasn’t trespassing on Blunden land when he was killed, and he hadn’t got the pheasants on him, he’d been careful to dispose of them.”

“Yes, I know that’s what we thought. But when I began to sort everything out today, and got to thinking all this I’ve told you about, of course that didn’t make sense anymore. Because if Helmut was just getting to the stage of being ready to spit in Blunden’s eye, then of course he wouldn’t bother to hide the birds. He wouldn’t need to, and he wouldn’t want to. He’d want to wave them up and down in front of his boss’s nose, and say, want to make something of it? So then for a minute I thought, it’s just coincidence, they can’t have been Helmut’s pheasants, but we know they were, they’d been in the lining of his tunic. So then I thought, of course, we’ve got it the wrong way round, the one who didn’t want them connected with Helmut wasn’t Helmut himself, it was the murderer. And why should the murderer care about giving Blunden a bit of a motive, unless he was Blunden? And I worked it all out that way. I think they met down beyond the well that evening, some time after Hollins had left the Harrow, and before Charles came home—between half-past nine and about half-past ten it would be, wouldn’t it? I think Helmut had got the pheasants on him, and either Blunden knew he had, or Helmut boasted about it to him. Whoever started it, I think Helmut bragged how he could do as he liked, because he had the whip hand, and there was nothing the old man could do to stop him. Only, you see, they’d both picked the wrong man, but Helmut was even wronger about Blunden than Blunden had been about him. People couldn’t threaten Blunden and get away with it. There was one thing he could do to stop it, and he saw he’d have to, sooner or later, and so he did it on the spot. When Helmut turned away from him he bashed him on the head with that walking-stick, just like he tried to bash me, and put him in the brook, and the stick in the outflow of the well, and the pheasants in the pit—so that no one should think his poaching had anything to do with his death.”

He paused, rather for breath than for words, and looked round the circle of attentive faces. “And, of course, it hadn’t, really. It wasn’t for them he was killed, they were only a sign of the way things were going. You can’t have two bosses in a partnership like that. They’d both mistaken their man, but Blunden was the first to see his mistake, and see he had to go all the way to get out of it. And you have to admit he could make up his mind fast, and act on it, too.”

“Oh, yes,” allowed George somberly, “he could do all that.”

“Well, and then things went on, and nobody connected him with the murder; and everything went his way, even the appeal, so he had everything beautifully arranged as he wanted it. Only Charles had to go and tip it all up again. He started to look at the whole question again as soon as he’d got his own way—though it was really his father’s way. And he went out with his dog and his gun, and thought it all out again by himself in the wood, and decided to hand the land over, after all. And going back toward the house he met his father, and told him so. The old man couldn’t know, could he, that Charles had already told me? I mean, why should he? So he’d naturally think no one knew but himself, and it couldn’t appear as a motive. He had to think very quickly that time, too, because Charles said he was going to tell them his decision first thing in the morning. He wasn’t expecting any trouble with the old man, and when you come to think of it, the old man couldn’t make any, because if he did it might all have to come out, the murder, too, and he couldn’t trust Charles to feel the way he did about it. He could try to persuade him to change his mind again, but supposing he wouldn’t? They were both pigheaded, and supposing he finally absolutely wouldn’t? And after the next morning it would be done, too late to do anything about it at all. So he had to choose at once, and he did, and he took the gun from Charles on some excuse or other, to carry it, or to try a shot with it, or something, and he shot him dead.”

Everybody exclaimed at this, except George, who sat frowning into the bowl of his pipe, and Jim Tugg, who looked on darkly and said no word.

“But, his own son!” whispered Io. “Oh, Dom, you must be mistaken there, surely. How could he?”

“Well, I don’t know how he could, but I’m absolutely sure he did. Maybe it was done all in a minute, because he was in a rage—only he had to take the gun from him to do it, so I honestly don’t think so. Anyhow, he did do it,” maintained Dominic definitely.

“But, just over a few acres of land and a little defeat?” Chad shook his head helplessly, though Chad had known people kill for less. “It doesn’t seem enough motive for wiping out his own family. It can’t be true.” But he was shaken by the revelation of Charles’s change of heart, and had to remind himself over and over that Charles and his father were two different human creatures. He remembered, too, Selwyn Blunden’s fixed, competent, unmistakably sane face in the glow of Dominic’s torch, in the instant when the stick was raised for a third murder. There wasn’t much, after all, which could not be true.