Plain Murder Page 18

  After a long, somnolent interval Mrs Morris opened the paper bags again, and they had tea – more sandwiches, more cold sausages, more bananas. As the sun sank lower Morris put on his coat lest he should catch cold. Then at last Mrs Morris began to grow restless. She began to worry about the house and the children, and after a while she began to voice her restlessness and her fears to her husband. He did not want to go home yet, although his wife timidly reminded him of the long, difficult journey that lay before them. Morris knew of one way in which to silence her arguments and make her forget her fears, and in the end he employed it. He invited his wife to join him in the cushioned seat in the bow, and thither, coyly, she came. They embraced awkwardly with difficulty, lying together in the cramped space. Motor-launches still went by occasionally, but Mrs Morris had no heed for them; with those big arms round her and those kisses on her lips she hardly heeded the passage of time. It was nearly twilight when Morris suggested returning. In the gathering darkness Morris pushed out from the shore and sculled down towards Maidenhead. It was almost dark at Boulter’s Lock. It was close on midnight before they reached home, catching the last train from Charing Cross. Mrs Morris was very, very tired. But, beset with the memory of the green countryside and of her husband’s kisses, she declared, with all sincerity, that it had been the loveliest day of her life.

  Morris, too, was well pleased. He had established a splendid precedent. It was one they acted upon repeatedly, Sunday after Sunday, for several Sundays in succession.

  21

  Oldroyd was not a man given to philosophic meditation on the strangeness of life, which, seeing the situation in which he found himself and the length of time it endured, was as well for him. But sometimes he used his brains, as on the occasion when he had braved all Morris’s wrath and won for himself a further rise in salary and a much more comfortable position in the office. These had been announced to him, grudgingly, by Braithwaite at the end of the week following the murderous attempt on Oldroyd’s life in Oldroyd’s room.

  That attempt had shaken Oldroyd badly, but it had not broken his nerve. When Morris had left him, still sitting on the floor with the rope still about his neck, he had taken some time to recover. He had sat there long; for a time the ecstatic delight of being able to breathe freely had occupied his thoughts to the exclusion of everything else, but gradually he had gathered his wits about him and thought the matter out. No matter what Morris had said there was no doubt at all but that his screams had saved his life. Morris would have killed him, have hung him up to those hooks over there, if he had not screamed. That was what Morris had entered to do. Therefore Oldroyd had balked him again, had thwarted even the cunning, powerful Morris, and this for the second time. Oldroyd felt justifiably pleased with himself even at that moment, with his throat hurting him so badly. He knew now that it was a duel to the death with Morris, that it was a question of Morris’s life or his own. He disliked the prospect heartily. Perhaps, if he had been given the choice, he would have elected for peace with Morris, but as it was he was determined not to be frightened. He staggered limply to bed, locking his bedroom door for the first time for years, but next morning found him up and weakly prepared to go to the office. A scarf round his neck instead of a collar concealed the bright red weal that the rope had made, and at the same time gave colour to his story of a sore throat, which accounted for the hoarseness of his voice. In this pitiable condition, obviously weak and ill, he appeared in the office. At the very entrance he encountered Morris, who, with his hands in his pockets, was applying his burly shoulder to the swing door. Morris glowered his hatred at Oldroyd: Oldroyd pertly smiled his lack of fear at Morris.

  ‘Remember,’ said Oldroyd, his voice hoarse and squeaky by turns, ‘remember what I asked for yesterday. I mean it.’

  Morris exploded into blasphemy, using foul words, but that morning he went into Mr Campbell and demanded still further reorganization of the office, involving the release of Oldroyd from Braithwaite’s supervision, ‘so that he could have a chance to think out some more ideas,’ Morris weakly explained, which necessitated the addition of still another man to the copy room staff. Apparently as an afterthought, Morris further suggested that Oldroyd should have another rise in salary. Mr Campbell hesitated, but Morris was solid and insistent. So excellent had been Morris’s judgment so far that Mr Campbell could not bring himself to go against it. Moreover, the office had ample funds nowadays for the payment of salaries. It could stand for a far bigger increase in the overhead charges than that.

  The man who simply could not understand the affair at all was Braithwaite, who vented much ill-temper upon Oldroyd when he announced to Oldroyd that, despite all his, Braithwaite’s, recriminations and bad reports, Oldroyd had been promoted, with a rise of salary, to an anomalous position in the office which would take him from under Braithwaite’s supervision and make him practically his own master, with no obvious duties whatever. But Oldroyd only smiled at Braithwaite’s protestations; he was entering upon the harvest of victory, and he found it very enjoyable.

  Later, Mr Campbell saw his bandaged throat and heard his hoarse voice, and sent him home promptly to recover. Mr Campbell forced himself to admit that there must be some good in a young man who would come to the office when he was obviously ill. Oldroyd’s bravado had stood him in good stead.

  It is hard to describe in writing the effect of all this on Morris. Some people might say Morris was insane; he answered to that description quite aptly in so far as his ideas differed from other people’s. His vanity had grown so great now that his two failures to eliminate Oldroyd were quite forgotten as failures. He was determined to destroy him; he had experimented to see whether it was possible without circumstances being in his favour, and had found it impossible. So that all that remained to do was to wait and watch until favourable circumstances arose. In favourable circumstances Harrison had been destroyed; so had Reddy; so, soon, would be his wife. Oldroyd could not hope to stand up long against a man like Morris. That conclusion once reached, Morris regained much of his composure. His intense white-hot hatred of Oldroyd only displayed itself now and again, when Oldroyd was particularly impertinent. Yet he could do nothing, absolutely nothing, without Oldroyd pondering the action and wondering how Morris intended to do him harm by it. And perhaps it is indicative of the fact that Oldroyd was not too sure of his hold over Morris that he should have been saving desperately hard, accumulating quite a respectable balance in his account in readiness for a period of unemployment. And no one in the whole office eyed the burly dark-visaged figure of Morris as he went about the office half as anxiously as Oldroyd did.

  For once in a way luck was to turn against Morris. He had had as much good fortune as any criminal could possibly hope for. The killing of Harrison and the killing of Reddy had been achieved in perfectly ideal conditions; every single point had been in favour of him. Now he was to experience misfortune; and, to accentuate the unluckiness of the incident, the misfortune was to be directly due to an attempt on Morris’s part to make the preliminaries of his next great scheme as perfect as possible.

  Mary Morris had been bewailing the limitations of her wardrobe.

  ‘I’ve worn that light frock, you know, the one with the blue trimming, for the last three Sundays now. They’ll know it when they see it at Boulter’s again. And it’s the only one that fits me now. It does make me feel awkward among all those smart women at Maidenhead. And I haven’t got a proper summer hat.’

  ‘Well, go and get yourself what you want,’ said Morris. That showed how fixed was his determination to appear the complete doting husband. ‘How much d’you want for a new rig-out?’

  ‘Ooh!’ said Mary, much impressed. It was the first time she had known Morris volunteer money for her clothing. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Morris; ‘out with it.’

  ‘It seems rather a waste,’ said Mary, relenting and apologetic. ‘A new frock wouldn’t fit me very
long, and—’

  ‘You could alter it,’ said Morris.

  ‘Yes, and I do want a new hat. That would last, anyway.’

  ‘Oh, here you are,’ said Morris. He pulled out his pocket-book and extracted an astonishing number of pound notes. ‘Go and get yourself what you want.’

  Mary contemplated the huge sum with astonished eyes.

  ‘That is lovely, darling,’ she said. ‘But – but – are you sure you can afford it?’

  ‘No,’ grinned Morris, ‘of course I can’t with an extravagant wife like you. Here, take it.’

  ‘I could buy a nice frock and hat up West with this,’ marvelled Mary.

  ‘Well, why don’t you?’

  ‘I think I will. And shall I come into the office for you afterwards?’

  ‘No,’ said Morris sharply. That had taken him by surprise. He did not want Miss Campbell to see his wife, especially in her present condition.

  Mary may have noticed the sharpness of his tone, for she swallowed her disappointment and said no more. But it may have influenced her future actions.

  So it came to pass that Oldroyd, wandering one afternoon into the teashop near the office for a cup of tea, heard a voice call his name just as he was about to descend the stairs to the smoke-room. Mrs Morris, encumbered with parcels, was sitting at a table beside the stairs.

  ‘It’s Mr Oldroyd, isn’t it?’ she said. It seems quite certain that she had chosen that particular teashop for her tea in the hope or fear of seeing her husband there.

  ‘Yes, why you’re Mrs Morris, aren’t you?’ said Oldroyd.

  ‘Oh, you ought to know me,’ replied Mrs Morris playfully; ‘we’ve seen each other often enough before.’

  So they had, in the old days, when Morris and Oldroyd were friends.

  ‘Won’t you sit here, or are you expecting anyone?’ said Mrs Morris. That was one good service her husband’s new attentions had done her; they had given her a self-assurance and poise which she had lacked before in her encounters with the opposite sex.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Oldroyd, and sat down.

  He looked at Mrs Morris in rather puzzled fashion. He was wondering whether this chance encounter was part of some new deep scheme on the part of Morris. But he decided that it was not. Not even Morris could find a use for Mrs Morris in any criminal plan.

  ‘Dreadfully hot, isn’t it?’ said Mrs Morris. ‘And it’s been so tiring shopping in town.’

  She indicated all the numerous parcels beside her.

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Oldroyd.

  ‘I’ve had to buy such a lot of new things for the river,’ said Mrs Morris.

  ‘For the river?’ Oldroyd’s eyebrows went up a little; his attention was caught.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Morris.

  She took much pleasure in telling everyone she met about her frequent trips on the river with her adoring husband, which was just what her adoring husband wanted her to do.

  ‘We go on the river every week now,’ went on Mrs Morris. ‘Charlie used to go such a lot before he was married, and now the children are old enough to be left with a maid it’s so nice for him to go again.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Oldroyd. This was all intensely interesting, because he had known Morris quite well before he was married, and this was the first he had heard about a passion for going on the river.

  ‘Every Sunday we go,’ said Mary proudly. ‘Of course, it’s rather a long way, but it’s so nice when we get there.’

  ‘I suppose it is,’ said Oldroyd. ‘Where do you go?’

  ‘Maidenhead,’ replied Mrs Morris. It was lovely to talk about ‘Maidenhead’ in this casual, opulent fashion. ‘Charlie loves Cliveden Reach so much. We catch the 9.55 at Paddington, and we have our dinner and tea on the water. It’s quite late – in fact, it’s nearly dark – before we come back again.’

  ‘That must be nice,’ said Oldroyd.

  Clearly there was nothing in all this which meant danger to him as long as he was not invited to be one of the party. But – but – there was danger to someone else, or he did not know Morris as well as he thought he did. He was puzzled. He had formed the egotistical habit of thinking that he alone formed the important part of Morris’s small world.

  ‘I suppose you two go alone every time?’ he asked casually.

  ‘Of course,’ said Mrs Morris, as if that was the only possible way for them to go.

  That ‘of course’ opened Oldroyd’s eyes still wider, and when they opened wider Mrs Morris actually blushed. So Morris was making love to his wife. That was a strange thing for him to do. Oldroyd’s suspicions grew stronger and stronger. It was astonishing, too, how keen his danger and suspicions were making his wits.

  ‘It must be jolly nice,’ said Oldroyd again. His conversational powers were not specially distinguished.

  Yet he would have liked to go on talking had he not been interrupted by Mrs Morris looking at the clock and rising to go.

  ‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘You must come round and see us some time. I don’t know why you’ve left off coming.’

  Then she turned to go, and in that instant Oldroyd noticed something else. He was not a very domesticated young man, nor was he used to women, but there was that about Mrs Morris which not even Oldroyd could help noticing when she stood up. He had more now to think about than ever.

  22

  During the rest of the week, up to the week-end, Oldroyd’s slow mind was working on a certain limited amount of data, and endeavouring to discover more. Morris had suddenly adopted a new and unusual habit. That in itself was suspicious. Certain of the details of the habit were also suspicious – the going always to the same place and the staying unusually late. If Morris’s new love for the river was genuine, why did he always choose Cliveden Reach when there were plenty of places more accessible? It was quite a while before Oldroyd decided that it must be because he wanted to form a series of precedents, so that on some special day in the future there would be no comment made. But what was he meditating to do on that special day? Even Oldroyd’s slow mind jumped to the conclusion that he intended murdering his wife; but that seemed at first so motiveless that Oldroyd could not bring himself to believe it. But conviction came slowly. There was enough whispered office gossip about Morris’s passion for Miss Campbell to make it seem likely. Then – then – Oldroyd knew that Mrs Morris’s condition might supply quite a deal of additional motive; in the old days Morris had often expressed himself forcibly to Oldroyd on the subject of ‘kids’. Oldroyd was not a man of acute psychological insight; quite the contrary. But his recent adventures and his deadly fear and hatred of Morris were a sufficient spur to goad him into achieving a neat piece of deduction; he pierced Morris’s design almost completely.

  But it was not enough to have done so much, to treat it as a purely academic problem. For thirty-six hours Oldroyd was haunted by indecision as to what he ought to do next. He shrank with repulsion from the possibility that he could wash his hands of the whole business and leave Morris a free hand to accomplish his design. Oldroyd had a prejudice (which Morris might have thought odd) against murder, even when he was not the destined victim. He hated the thought of little Mrs Morris being done to death by her hairy brute of a husband. Yet, as he asked himself persistently, what was there he could do? The police would hoot with laughter if he went to them and said that his fellow-clerk had taken to going on the river with his wife and therefore was plotting her murder. They would listen with more attention if he went on to say what else he knew of Morris, but that he could not do without betraying himself. Despite his bold words to Morris and his comforting repetition to himself of the convenient phrase ‘King’s Evidence’, he did not want to involve himself in such a fashion.

  The little Yorkshireman gnawed at his nails and worried his silly little moustache as he tried to reach a decision. It is saying much for him that he eventually decided that he would make t
he sacrifice and go to the police if he could not think of any other method of saving Mrs Morris’s life. All the same, before doing so, he started to probe all the other possibilities open to him.

  There was something else he could do, after all, he decided. It would mean pitting his wits and his strength against Morris’s, and possibly entangling himself in an unsavoury business. But the entanglement would be nothing compared with the alternative of going to the police, and so could not be ruled out. It was far harder to decide to face Morris in all his wrath and his strength. Morris inspired his enemies with very definite feelings of fear and repulsion. Oldroyd’s eventual decision to match himself against Morris in the fashion he foresaw was nothing short of heroic, whatever the arguments to the contrary which might be advanced. Two successful encounters with Morris might have given him self-confidence. He might be spoiling for a fight with the enemy who sought his death so ruthlessly. But for all that, little Oldroyd, when he left off biting his nails and shut his fists instead, and when he announced to his vacant bedroom, ‘I’ll do it, too, by gum!’ was being brave enough to justify quite a large amount of pride in his own conduct. He felt none at all, of course. He set himself, instead, to the unusually difficult task, for him, of trying to plan out all his actions for the morrow (which was Sunday) and to visualize those of Morris and his wife.

  And such was his care and prevision that everything went off without a hitch. Early the next morning found him at Paddington Station, where he was the first person through the barriers and on to the platform where the 9.55 to Maidenhead was waiting. He did not enter the train immediately. He hurried down to the very farthest end of the platform and hid himself inconspicuously behind a mass of baggage. There he waited patiently until he saw Morris and his wife coming down the platform towards him. There was no mistaking Morris’s big body and rapid walk. Oldroyd, as he watched him, marvelled at his assurance of bearing. He quite dwarfed Mrs Morris, who trotted along at his side, with feelings of mingled delight in her new frock and shame at the conspicuousness of her figure. Morris opened a carriage door, and the two climbed in. Oldroyd in his turn waited until the train was almost due to start before he walked back and entered a carriage near the engine, so that he would not have to pass Morris’s carriage door.