He passed into the library in front of Richard and bent over the body. He had not uttered a single word of sympathy or shock since his arrival. Richard, embarrassed and inwardly alarmed, since it seemed possible that the story of his father’s interviews with his family the previous day would be made public, stood by the table, feigning an attitude of ease. On the table lay the preposterous paper bearing Brand’s signature, and without taking it up he read it through for the first time.
“Brand must have been able to advance a very strong case to persuade my father to help him to that extent,” he brooded. “I must see him before anyone else does.”
Romford straightened himself and said, “Where did you find him?”
“On the floor by the window. It was open, by the way.”
“Why didn’t you say that before? It makes a lot of difference.”
“Do you mean, if it hadn’t been open, he might have pulled through?”
“No. He must have been killed, if not instantaneously, almost at once.”
Richard said, in a dazed voice, “Been killed?”
“Well, what did you suppose?”
“I thought a stroke, a fall…”
“You have seen your father, I suppose? Who found him?”
“I did. Moulton and I lifted him on to that chair.”
“Which way was he lying? His head towards the window?”
“He was facing towards that wall.”
“Then you couldn’t have missed this mark on his left temple. It’s as clear as—we’re promised—the mark of the beast shall be in the foreheads of the damned. Do you suppose a stroke accounts for that?”
“He—he fell.”
“He fell on his right side. And, even if he hadn’t, there’s carpet right up to the window. He couldn’t have bruised his skull and actually cut the skin in any sort of fall. Even the edges of this table, had he fallen against that, are rounded. Who saw him last?”
“My brother is the last person who admits to seeing him.” Brand’s statement and Eustace’s swift denial seemed reasonable enough now. Brand, of course, wanted to establish a later visitor than himself; Eustace didn’t want anyone to know he had been stirring in the night.
“That young hothead who came to grief in Paris? I should ask him what explanation he can offer. I daresay he could throw a lot of light on the position. I suppose it was pretty late when he was here?”
“A little before midnight, I think he said.”
“Or a little after. Who’s to tell? Your father wasn’t killed before one, I should say, and the open window would account for rigor mortis setting in early. So it may have been as late as three or four o’clock. Well, I should ask him what he’s got to say, and get the police. There’s nothing I can do.”
“The police?” There was such genuine shock in Richard’s voice that Romford felt a stab of compassion.
“Of course. What did you suppose?”
“But surely—it might have been an accident.”
“Oh, quite easily. More murders are committed by accident than anyone except doctors and lawyers guess. Though the consequences are generally the same in both cases—violent death for both parties.”
“His heart?” suggested Richard weakly. “That might account for his collapsing under very little provocation.”
“Well, I shouldn’t call half a brick very little provocation myself. As a matter of fact, your father’s heart was sounder than mine, only, as he hadn’t got to get a living, he could afford luxuries I can’t. My heart daren’t go back on me—it knows what I should say to it if it did. Treat ’em hard, that’s the best cure for these impertinent maladies. What’s a heart to go on strike? When mine threatens me with mutiny, I work it twice as hard for forty-eight hours. I soon have the proud creature under. You’d better get the police. I shall have to give evidence, I suppose. It’s a pity you didn’t realise the facts and get them here first.”
Richard exclaimed, “How could we imagine…? I still feel convinced there’s some explanation of this.”
“Of course there is. Whether it’s the one you’ll get hold of eventually or not, I don’t know. As I say, it’s a pity you weren’t a shade more observant. Then the police surgeon would have had to waste his time at the inquest instead of me.”
4
Richard put the receiver back and leaned against the table. His face was stupid with incredulity, anger, and shock. He had for many years regarded Brand as a throw-back, one of those creatures, worthless and expensive, who are to be found even in families as ancient and mannered as his own. One came across them again and again; they were shipped abroad to plant rubber, tea, or coffee; they became remittance men in nameless corners of the earth, where they could soak themselves blind without any of their more fastidious relations’ friends discovering them; many of them dropped not only their caste but their nationality. They mingled with a degrading familiarity with coloured races; they were a drag and a disgrace. And all these, he considered, Brand was, with his excesses as a young student, his disreputable marriage to a woman of no virtue, his mean home and lowly employment, his periodical appearances at King’s Poplars, flushed, bitter, and resolute, to demand assistance. He had always believed that his younger brother would stop short of nothing, but in his own mind the idea that he could murder his own father had appeared incredible. Even men like Brand drew the line at that. And now it appeared that precisely such a crime had
