I found the car at the gate. Like so many rental machines it was a great deal older than its actual age. But at least it rolled and took the weight off my feet I was glad to take the weight off my feet. My left leg hurt, quite badly, as it always did when I had to walk around for any length of time. Two eminent London surgeons had more than once pointed out to me the advantage of having my left foot removed and sworn that they could replace it with an artificial one not only indistinguishable from the genuine article but guaranteed pain-free. They had been quite enthusiastic about it but it wasn't their foot and I preferred to hang on to it as long as possible.
I drove to Alfringham, spent five minutes mere talking to the manager of the local dance-hall, and reached Alfringham Farm just as dusk was falling. I turned in through the gates, stopped the car outside the first of the two cottages, got out and rang the bell. After the third attempt I gave it up and drove to the second cottage. I'd get an answer there. Lights were burning behind the windows. I leaned on the bell and after some seconds the door opened. I blinked in the sudden wash of light, then recognised the man before me.
'Bryson,' I said. 'How are you? Sorry to burst in like this but I'm afraid I've a very good reason.'
'Mr. Cavelll' Unmistakable surprise in his voice, all the more pronounced in the sudden conversational hush from the room behind him. 'Didn't expect to see you again so soon. Thought you'd left these parts, I did. How are you, sir?'
'I'd like a few words with you. And with Chipperfield. But he's not at home.'
'He's here. With his missus. Turn about in each other's house for our Saturday night get together.' He hesitated, exactly as I would have done if I'd settled down with some friends for a quiet drink and a stranger broke in. 'Delighted to have you join us, sir.'
'I'll keep you only a few minutes.' I followed Bryson into the brightly lit living-room beyond. A log fire burnt cheerfully in the fireplace and around it were a couple of small settees and a high chair or two. In the centre was a low table with some bottles and glasses. A comfortable, homely scene.
A man and two women rose as Bryson closed the door behind me. I knew all three — Chipperfield, a tall blond man, the outward antithesis in every way of the short stocky Bryson, and the two men's wives, blonde and dark to match their husbands, but otherwise was a strong similarity — small, neat and pretty with identical hazel eyes. The similarity was hardly surprising — Mrs. Bryson and Mrs. Chipperfield were sisters.
After a couple of minutes, during which civilities had been exchanged and I'd been offered a drink and accepted for my sore leg's sake, Bryson said, 'How can we help you, Mr. Cavell?'
'We're trying to clear up a mystery about Dr. Baxter,' I said quietly. 'You might be able to help. I don't know.'
'Dr. Baxter? In number one lab?' Bryson glanced at his brother-in-law. 'Ted and me — we saw him only yesterday. Quite a chat with him, we had. Nothing wrong with him, sir, I hope?'
'He was murdered last night,' I said.
Mrs. Bryson clapped her hands to her mouth and choked off a scream. Her sister made some sort of unidentifiable noise and said, 'No, oh no!' But I wasn't watching them, I was watching Bryson and Chipperfield, and I didn't have to be a detective to see that the news came as a complete shock and surprise to both of them.
I went on, 'He was killed last night, before midnight, In his lab. Someone threw a deadly virus poison over him and he must have died in minutes. And in great agony. Then that someone found Mr. Candon waiting outside the lab and disposed of him also — by cyanide poisoning.'
Mrs. Bryson rose to her feet, her face paper-white, her sister's arms around her, blindly threw her cigarette into the fireplace and left the room. I could hear the sound of someone being sick in the bathroom.
'Dr. Baxter and Mr. Clandon dead? Murdered?' Bryson's face was almost as pale as his wife's had been. 'I don t believe it.' I looked at his face again. He believed it all right. He listened to the sounds coming from the bathroom and then said with as much angry reproach as his shaken state would allow, 'You might have told us private, like Mr. Cavell. Without the girls being here, I mean.'
'I'm sorry.' I tried to look sorry. 'I'm not myself, Candon was my best friend.'
'You did it on purpose,' Chipperfield said tightly. He was normally a likeable and affable young man, but there was nothing affable about him right then. He said shrewdly, 'You wanted to see how we all took it. You wanted to know if
'Between eleven o'clock and midnight last night,' I said precisely, 'you and your brother-in-law here were up for exactly five dances at the Friday night hop in Alfringham. You've been going there practically every Friday night for years. I could even tell you the names of the dances, but I won't bother. The point is that neither of you — nor your wives — left the hall for an instant during that hour. Afterwards you went straight into your Land-Rover and arrived back here shortly after twelve-twenty. We have established beyond all doubt that both murders took place between 11.15 and 11.45 p.m. So let's have no more of your silly accusations, Chipperfield. There can be no shadow of suspicion about you two. If there was, you'd be in a police cell, not seeing me here drinking your whisky. Speaking of whisky—'
'Sorry, Mr. Cavell. Damned silly of me. Saying what I did, I mean.' Chipperfield's relief showed in his face as he rose to his feet and poured more whisky into my glass. Some of it spilled on to the carpet, but he didn't seem to notice.
'But if you know we've nothing to do with it, what can we do to help?'
'You can tell me everything that happened when you were in 'E' block yesterday,' I said. 'Everything. What you did, what you saw, what Dr. Baxter said to you and you to him. Don't miss out a thing, the tiniest detail.'
So they told me, taking it in turns, and I sat there looking at them with unwavering attention and not bothering to listen to a word they said. As they talked, the two women came in, Mrs. Bryson giving me a pale, shame-faced half-smile, but I didn't notice it, I was too busy doing my close listening act. As soon as the first decent opportunity came I finished my whisky, rose and made to leave. Mrs. Bryson said something apologetic about her silliness, I said something suitably apologetic in return and Bryson said, 'Sorry we haven't been able to be of any real help, Mr. Cavell.'
'You have helped,' I said. 'Police work is largely confined to the confirming and eliminating of possibilities. You've eliminated more than you would think. I'm sorry I caused such an upset, I realise this must be quite a shock to both your families, being so closely associated with Mordon. Speaking of families, where are the kids to- night?'
'Not here, thank goodness,' Mr. Chipperfield said. 'With their grandmother in Kent — the October holidays, you know, and they always go there then.'
'Best place for them, right now.' I agreed. I made my apologies again, cut the leave-taking short and left.
It was quite dark outside now. I made my way back down to the hired car, climbed in, drove out through the farm gates and turned left for the town of Alfringham. Four hundred yards beyond the gates I pulled into a convenient lay-by switched off engine and lights.
My leg was aching badly, now, and it took me almost fifteen minutes to get back to Bryson's cottage. The living-room curtains were drawn, but carelessly. I could see all I wanted to, without trouble. Mrs. Bryson was sitting on a settee, sobbing bitterly, with her husband's free arm round her: the other held a tumbler of whisky and the tumbler was more than half full. Chipperfield, a similar glass in his band, was staring into the fire, his face dark and sombre. Mrs. Chipperfield, on the settee, was facing me. I couldn't see her face, only the fair hair shining in the lamplight as she bent over something held in her hand. I couldn't see what it was but I didn't have to. I could guess with the certainty of complete knowledge. I walked quietly away and took my time in making my way back to the car. I still had twenty-five minutes before the London train was due in Alfringham. The train — and Mary.
Mary Cavell was all my life. Two months, only, I'd been married to her, but I knew it would be that way till the end of my days. All my life. An easy thing for any man to say, easy and trite and meaningless and perhaps a little cheap. Until you saw her, that was. Then you would believe anything.
She was small and blonde and beautiful, with amazing green eyes. But it wasn't that that made her special, you could reach out your arms in the streets of London in the evening rush hour and pick up half a dozen girls without really trying, all of them small and blonde and beautiful. Nor was it just the infectious happiness that left no one untouched, her irrepressible gaiety, her obvious delight in a life that she lived with the intensity of a tropical hummingbird. There was something else. There was a shining quality about her, in her face, in her eyes, in her voice, in everything she said and did, that made her the only person I'd ever known who'd never had an enemy, male or female. There is only one word to describe this quality — the old-fashioned and much maligned term
