Late, Late in the Evening

The consequence was that Doctor Tassall had asked her to release him. Amabel must have known of the engagement, since she and Merle moved in the same circles in London where, you will remember, the Conyers have a flat, and young Patterson says that it was to save herself the embarrassment of a meeting and perhaps an acrimonious confrontation that Amabel had not invited his sister to the party.

What Merle wanted, it appears, was to talk face to face with Doctor Tassall, presumably either to plead with him or to point out the error of his ways. Well, it was a simple matter to get another young master to telephone that Patterson had been struck on the knee at cricket and to suggest that his sister should transport the three girls in his stead. His parents, of course, had no reason to disbelieve the story about his injured knee, so that his sister achieved her objective in the simplest possible way, by virtue of her brother's help.

She knew that Doctor Tassall was to attend the gathering, as Mrs Kempson had included a list of guests with each invitation, a fact of which Patterson had apprised his sister. What neither of them realised was that when Doctor Tassall received his own guest-list he probably took fright when he saw the name of his jilted fiancee's brother on it and, deeming discretion the better part of valour in a possibly embarrassing situation, had invented (I think) a fictitious maternity case which would give him the opportunity to leave the party at an early hour and not to return until he expected it to be over and the guests dispersed to their homes.

What he felt when not the brother but the ex-fiancee turned up, I do not suppose he would tell me, even if I asked him. His disappearance from the scene, however, does seem to explain why Merle Patterson haunted the grounds that night. Undoubtedly her intention was to waylay him on his return and discuss matters (whether amicably or otherwise) with him where they would neither be overlooked nor overheard.

This, I know, puts some suspicion on Doctor Tassall of having caused Merle's death, but this only holds good if Doctor Tassall knew that it was Merle out there in the grounds. If the murderer (whoever he was) mistook Merle in her disguise for Lionel Kempson-Conyers, then, to my mind, that murderer would not have been Tassall, but somebody who wanted to get Lionel out of the way. As this 'somebody' is most unlikely to have been the child's grandmother or either of his parents, as I believe I indicated in one of my earlier letters, that now leaves us either with Nigel Kempson or with somebody the cricketing lists call A. N. Other, who is most unlikely to be Doctor Tassall.

So these are the problems as I see them, and in an effort to solve them I have followed my visits to Merle's parents and her brother by attempting to discover whether Doctor Tassall had been called out on a genuine case that evening and whether Nigel Kempson had made any real attempt to pick up the photographer. Up to that point I had met neither of them and had been able to form no opinion of their characters or dispositions. Not that that, in itself, means much. It is said that every person has it in his power to write at least one book and that we all hold the life of at least one other person in our hands. Both are terrifying thoughts and I do not know which is the more alarming!

I decided to tackle the young men on what I felt was my home ground as well as theirs; that is, I planned to hold both interviews in Hill village, but to give myself a slight advantage in the case of Doctor Tassall by conducting his at my newly acquired lodgings at Mrs Landgrave's and to yield a similar slight advantage to Nigel Kempson by seeing him at Hill House, where Mrs Kempson was expecting him for the weekend.

To my pleasure, (for, having no pretensions to good looks of my own, I appreciate them the more in others) both turned out to be personable young men, Kempson bright-haired and with the kind of blue eyes I have learned to mistrust, Tassall with dark hair and grey eyes and a look of recklessness which I would not normally associate with the possessor of a medical degree, whether or not he plays Rugby football. Nigel Kempson, I understand, is thirty years of age; Tassall is twenty-six and has been assistant to Doctor Matters here for nearly a year.

His association with Amabel Kempson-Conyers dates, he tells me, from a meeting he had with her in Paris early in her year at a finishing school, when he was instrumental in rescuing her from the amorous advances of two apaches in a quarter of the city into which she should not have strayed. What he himself was doing in such an unsavoury neighbourhood I did not ask.

Having heard from the Clifton children of the (obviously) clandestine correspondence which had gone on between himself and Amabel, mostly before she arrived at Hill House, I mentioned this to him.

'Oh, damn!' he said. 'Has that old Maltese woman been talking? Anyway, it wasn't by my wish that she was made a go-between. It was Amabel's idea. Young girls are always romantic in that sort of silly way.'

My experience of modern young women did not incline me to agree with him, but I did not say so. I suggested that with one letter at least he had not acceded to Miss Kempson-Conyers' wishes.

'You gave it to the Clifton children to post,' I said. He laughed.

'Everybody seems to split on me,' he said, 'same as young Lionel splits on everybody, poor kid. Anyway, that particular letter was merely to tell Amabel that I intended to accept her grandmother's invitation to the birthday party, but not to count on me because, ten to one, I should be called out on a case.'

'Ah, yes, to avoid meeting your ex-fiancee's brother,' I thought, 'and you were even more thankful that you had planned an escape route when it was the young woman herself who turned up!'

I thought this, but did not say it, and my silence seemed to put him out of countenance. After a pause, during which we continued to sum each other up, he went on:

'Well, quite early in the evening I was called out. Mrs Collins was having her first and, although I guessed it was a false alarm, I excused myself to Mrs Kempson and hopped off. When I got back, there was all this fuss about Miss Patterson having gone missing.'

'Your ex-fiancee,' I said, deciding at this point to bring my knowledge of his affairs into the open.

'Oh, well, yes,' he said. 'Yes, that's right. It was only a boy and girl affair, you know. Once I had found Amabel it blew itself out.'

'Not, perhaps, from Miss Patterson's point of view.

'Oh, well!'

'But it wasn't well, was it? Miss Patterson took it badly. You had managed to elude her in London, but when her brother received his invitation to Miss Kempson-Conyers' birthday party it included a list of guests with your name on it. Miss Patterson then got her brother to yield up his place to her, knowing that, when she arrived as the chauffeuse of her brother's car, Mrs Kempson would feel bound to ask her to stay. I imagine that a very disgruntled young woman stood about in corners and watched you dancing with Amabel Kempson-Conyers until you thought it best to execute a strategic retreat.'

'No, no! Honestly! I was called out.'