The Egyptian Curse Page 14

  “But why kill Alfie, of all people?” Sarah cried. “Charles and Alfie were like brothers.”

  “So were Cain and Abel,” Holmes said dryly. “I suspect that Charles loathed his brother-in-law for becoming your father’s surrogate son during Charles’s banishment from the family.”

  “No!” For the first time, the young peer showed emotion. “You think you’re so damned clever, Holmes, but that wasn’t it at all! I did it for Sarah. She deserved so much better than that buffoon Father talked her into marrying, someone who would appreciate her. Divorce was out of the question - she wouldn’t hear of it. And even with Alfie dead, Father would have forced her to marry someone else just like him. So I killed Alfie with Father’s precious dagger so that he would be blamed. You were right about that part, Holmes.”

  “And you put the dagger back in the library where you thought it would be easily found by the police,” Hale said.

  He nodded. “I did it when Sarah and I were at the townhouse the evening after I killed Alfie. But Sarah found it the next morning instead of Scotland Yard. She hid it to protect Father, and as a result the police suspected her. They just didn’t understand what they were supposed to do.” He glared at Rollins, who remained unmoved.”That’s why I had to kill the old man. If they wouldn’t hang him, there was no other way.”

  Sarah tore herself loose from Hale and started flailing at her brother. “You killed Alfie, you killed Daddy, and you tried to kill me.”

  Hale and Holmes pulled her off, while Rollins moved closer.

  Charles dabbed a handkerchief at a bloody cheek. “I would never hurt you, Sarah. I pricked you with a small amount of nicotine to keep alive the curse idea and take suspicion off of you. No one would think you were the killer if you seemed in line to be the third victim. The nicotine turned out to be tricky stuff - just preparing it made me sick, and it made you sicker than I intended. But you weren’t in any real danger. I insisted on calling the doctor when you didn’t want me to.”

  Hale held Sarah as she cried into his shoulder. “How could he, how could he,” she sobbed. Hale pulled her back from his chest and helped her to a chair by the open French windows.

  “Mr. Bridgewater,” said Rollins in his most officious voice, “I am placing you under arrest for the murders of your brother-in-law and your father.”

  Charles straighed up. “That’s Lord Sedgewood, if you please.”

  “Not for long,” Holmes said. “As a matter of fact - and law - I’m afraid you’ve no right to the title or the money that goes with it. One is legally prevented from gaining by a murder. Am I correct, Rollins?”

  “Quite correct, Mr. Holmes.” Rollins turned toward Charles. “Now, if you will come with me, sir.”

  Rollins placed his right hand on Charles’s shoulder as he spoke. For an instant Hale saw the look he’d seen a thousand times in the eyes of men in the trenches during the Great War - that instant of panic and indecision when the officer’s whistle blew and they knew they were to go over the top and face death. It was the animal instinct of fight or flight. Charles chose flight.

  As Rollins touched him, Charles’s right arm came up, clipping the Yard man under the chin. In the same instant, his leg swept from behind, catching the back of the man’s knee and sending Rollins crashing to the floor. The inspector’s head hit the hardwood with a resounding crack. The swiftness of the attack left the room stunned. Sarah and Portia were both screaming as Charles tossed a side table out of his way, rushing for the open French doors and freedom.

  Hale didn’t think; he reacted. As Charles passed Sarah’s chair, Hale straight-armed the killer in the throat. Charles crumpled to the ground gasping for air, both hands clutching his neck.

  My football coach at Yale wouldn’t be very happy with that maneuver, Hale thought, but it worked. He smiled to himself.

  Sarah jumped up from the chair and was in his arms once again, weeping as she buried her face in his chest. Hale looked over toward the fireplace where the Lyme siblings were trying to revive an unconscious Rollins. Holmes, he saw, was calmly charging his pipe. But then the detective’s gray eyes widened.

  “Behind you!, Hale!” he shouted.

  Before Hale could turn around, he felt a hand grab his shoulder. As he spun to the right, a fist was laid on his chin, which sent him sprawling across the overstuffed chair and onto the floor.

  Charles had recovered his feet while Hale had been taking his self-congratulatory bows. With fists still clenched, Charles turned again to the French doors and escape.

  But there had been one more man in the room. Dr. John Watson now stood blocking the exit, service revolver in hand, the hammer cocked to the rear. Charles hesitated.

  “I would suggest that you stop where you are.” Watson’s hand was steady. “I may be a little old, but I can still hit a target as large as you at eight paces. And if you are wondering, yes, it is loaded.”

  By now both Rollins and Hale had picked themselves up from the floor. Hale rubbed his chin and Rollins the back of his head. The unhappy inspector now scrambled to get his prisoner in handcuffs. There was no more of the burning energy in Charles’s eyes now, thought Hale. No, now they were the sad, pitiful eyes of a captured animal.

  The Widow

  “The course of true love never did run smooth.”

  – William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1595

  “I still can’t believe that he did it for me,” Sarah said a couple of weeks later. Hale thought she looked stunningly attractive in her black widow’s weeds.

  “Don’t be so sure that he did. Holmes was probably right about the motives. He usually is. But let’s face it” - Hale shrugged his shoulders - “who really knows? Maybe not even Charles. He may have talked himself into believing that his reason was a lot less selfish than it was. I guess it would take an alienist like, what’s his name, Sigmund Freud to sort all that out.”

  Sarah wore an odd smile as Hale talked.

  “Yes, Charles was a bit weak-minded at times,” she mused.

  They sat over cups of coffee at Simpson’s in the Strand, their beef and pudding cleared away. It was the first time Hale had talked with Sarah since the day Rollins had dragged her brother out of Carlton House Terrace. She’d told him earlier that she had decided to sell the townhouse to the Union Club and live at Bedford Place for the time being. “The memories are better there,” she’d said. “Not good, but better.”

  They had avoided talking directly about the murders over dinner, but the subject had lurked in the background until Sarah brought it out into the open as they drank coffee.

  “Even if Charles did act out of some misplaced care for you, that’s not your fault,” Hale assured her. “No one is responsible for Charles except Charles. You might as well blame Dorothy Sayers on the grounds that he might never have conceived such a convoluted murder plot if he hadn’t come in contact with her devious mind while working with her at Benson’s.”

  Sarah smiled oddly again. “Well, I wouldn’t want to do that. I quite liked Miss Sayers’s book.”

  Hale shook his head in wonderment. “I never even suspected Charles, and I should have. Right after Alfie’s murder, he said that your father was upset about Alfie hanging around with that decadent Bloomsbury Group, but that ‘even the governor wouldn’t kill a man for the company he keeps.’ It’s clear now that he was planting the seed for the idea that Lord Sedgewood did just that. And who would have wanted His Lordship to take the fall for Alfie’s murder? The killer!

  “Leonard Woolf gave me another clue when he said that Charles lived a fast life. I thought he was talking about ancient history, but Dr. Watson found out otherwise when he visited the Tankerville and Constitutional Clubs under the name of Burton Hill.”

  The Dr. Watson of Hale’s imagination bore little resemblance to the gray-haired, thick-set gentleman who he had f
irst met coming out of Linwood Baines’s house. His image of the man, based on Frederic Door Steele illustrations of his writings in Collier’s Weekly, was frozen in time.

  “I think it will come out in the trial that Charles had a greater need of money than you knew about,” Hale added. “I suppose that’s another indication of his primary motive.”

  He decided that the subject needed changing. “What will you do now - return to the Alhambra as Sadie Briggs?”

  “Not at the Alhambra, no.” She looked at him and her eyes narrowed. “I’m going on a tour of the Continent, Australia, and the States. It’s already booked. Has been for months. In fact, I leave tonight.”

  Hale was stunned. Even though Sarah had been somewhat reserved this evening, he had continued to hope that all they had been through together would lead her back into his arms. But that wasn’t the only thing that jarred him.

  “Wait a minute, Sarah. You’ve had a tour scheduled for months? Then you must have decided to leave Alfie before he died!” She had never hinted at such a thing in their previous conversations. “When? How?” His voice cracked with the confusion he was feeling.

  As Sarah regarded him, her eyes had a coldness he had never seen before.

  “You’re getting your tie in the coffee, Enoch.” Sarah sat back and took a sip of her own. “Really, is it all that hard to understand?” She put down the cup and waited for him to gather his thoughts.

  “You really don’t know what’s happened, do you?” she said after a few moments. “I can understand that pompous Rollins not catching on, and Holmes is clearly past it, but I thought that you would have seen the whole picture by now. Well, you would have figured it out some day, I’m sure. It was just a matter of time.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” Hale was starting to think that all the terror of the last few weeks had affected Sarah’s mind.

  Sarah leaned close to Hale across the table. Her eyes had become wild and her breathing quick. “Do you honestly think I could suffer to be married to that fool Alfie for any longer than necessary?” She looked around the restaurant to see that there were no other occupied tables near them and the waiters were at the service station before she continued. “And my licentious father - oh, sleeping around with any redheaded whore was fine for him, but I couldn’t even sing on a stage, the family might be shamed!”

  She leaned back a bit from Hale, an unsettling grin on her lips. “Don’t look so stunned, Enoch. Do you think Charles was so hard to manipulate? He is now and always has been a loveable blockhead. He has no idea how the notion to kill Alfie and Daddy ever entered his head.” She laughed. “It wasn’t really hard, you know. Charles wanted to be rich and important. A suggestion here, a comment there, and he saw how to get there. With Daddy gone he would have money, he would have the title, and he would have Portia back. Simplicity itself. So he did just what I wanted and thought it was his own idea. I meant it when I said I still can’t believe that Charles did it for me - but not in the sense that he thinks. How could I not adore him?”

  “But he tried to kill you, too!”

  “No, I’m sure he was telling the truth when he said he was just trying to make me ill to take suspicion off of me. Though, I must admit I didn’t expect him, of all people, to have an original idea. But it didn’t impress Rollins much, did it?”She finished her coffee.

  His world turned upside down, Hale tried to make some sense out of what he was slowly accepting as a new reality. “Why did you bury the knife? You implicated yourself by doing so.”

  “Charles was entirely too subtle - the influence of that Sayers woman, I suppose. He wanted to merely frame Daddy and let the hangman take care of him permanently. That would never do; it was too uncertain. I knew that if I spoiled that plan, Charles would be forced to take a more direct approach. But I didn’t expect the knife to be dug up from my garden.” Sarah smiled. “I’m new at this, you know.”

  She stood up. “And now if you will excuse me.”

  Hale stood with her. Mad as it seemed, Sarah had just confessed to masterminding three murders - two by her brother and one by the Crown. He had to stop her.

  “Oh, I know what you’re thinking, Enoch. But it won’t work, you know. There’s no point in telling anyone else. I have done nothing against the king’s law. It’s not my fault that dear Charles got a crazy idea from a few casual comments of mine. But as I said, I must go. I’m catching the boat train at eleven tonight.”

  Hale watched as she picked up her wrap and purse. Opening the purse she removed a compact and lipstick. Using the mirror, she relined her lips and then slowly put the items back. Coming over to him she kissed him gently on the cheek.

  “I couldn’t have done it without your help, Enoch. Remember that before you get any ideas about going to the Yard. We would never hang, but bad publicity could be quite damaging to my career.”

  Turning, she started toward the door.

  “Did you ever care for me at all?” Hale called after her.

  She jerked around. “Of course I did, you ninny. I wanted you. You were part of my plan originally. But watching you play the sleuth, I saw that you’re too good a reporter to be deceived permanently. And when you figured it out, you wouldn’t have been happy with me, would you?”

  “No.” He could barely hear himself. His fists clenched without instruction from him.

  “Do have a good life, Enoch,” Sarah said as she threw her wrap over her shoulder. “I will.”

  As Hale watched the woman he had thought he had known disappear through the front door of the restaurant, two elderly gentlemen sat on the porch of a villa on the Sussex Downs looking out at the night sea. A three-quarter moon lit the cloudless sky. They watched the running lights of three or four steamers plying the white caps as they sipped sherry in the warm breeze. The decanter sat on the small table between them. Now and then each would add a bit to his glass. It had been an hour or more since either had spoken. Finally the shorter of the two men spoke as he charged his pipe.

  “It doesn’t seem right that she should get away with this, Holmes. Surely Rollins can charge her with something.”

  “With what - wishing someone dead? If that were a crime we should have all of England in prison.” Holmes took another sip of the sherry before he continued. “No, wishing is not a crime.”

  “But she put the idea into her brother’s head,” responded Watson. “Or so you believe.”

  “She didn’t do the deed, nor did she ask him to do it, nor did she conspire with him to do it. If she had, he would have turned against her at the end. And,” - he tapped the dottle from his pipe onto the porch flooring - “she was almost Charles’s victim also. I do not believe that he meant to kill her, but it was a near thing. No, Rollins has no case against her that will play to a jury, even if he knows what she has done, and I doubt he does.”

  The two friends sat silent a while longer watching the running lights pass out of sight. Watson broke the silence again.

  “And your friend Hale, do you think he knows?”

  “Oh, no. He is a clever man, but love is indeed blind. I am quite sure he does not suspect at all. It will be interesting to find out what she tells him before she departs tonight on her world tour as Sadie the music hall singer. She isn’t even waiting for her brother to hang.”

  “Sad, Holmes, very sad. I feel bad for the boy. If she doesn’t tell him, should we?”

  “The only way he would believe it is if it comes from her, Watson.”

  “Still, there must be something we can do.”

  “Oh, there is, old fellow, there is. We can catch her the next time around.”

  “The next time?”

  “Oh, yes, Watson. We shall undoubtedly see her again.”

  The two friends returned to their silent thoughts and watched as the moon continued on its course across the dar
kened sky.

  Notes for the Curious

  This is an historical mystery novel, and as such blends facts and fancy, as in the two previous Enoch Hale novels. Once again, the locations are real and accurately described except for the Diogenes Club, the Drones Club, and the offices of the fictional Central Press Syndicate. The Drones Club was the creation of P.G. Wodehouse in his Jeeves stories. Some of the characters portrayed here have been historical, while the others existed only in the imaginations of the writers. For the curious, we present a few facts on the real life people who were involved.

  Agatha Christie, DBE: Born Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller on 15 September 1890, Dame Agatha was an English crime novelist, short story writer, and playwright. She wrote sixty-six detective novels and fourteen short story collections, most of which revolve around the investigations of such characters as Hercule Poirot, Miss Jane Marple, and Tommy and Tuppence. Born in Torquay, Devon, she served in a hospital during the First World War, before marrying Archibald Christie, an RFC pilot, and starting a family in London. In 1920, The Bodley Head published her novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles, featuring Poirot. This launched her literary career. After her divorce from Christie, she later married Max Mallowan, an archeologist to whom she would remain married for the rest of her life. Christie’s stage play The Mousetrap holds the record for the longest initial run: It opened in London on 25 November 1952 and is still running after more than 25,000 performances. In 1955, Christie was the first recipient of the Mystery Writers of America’s highest honor, the Grand Master Award, and in the same year Witness for the Prosecution was given an Edgar Award by the MWA for Best Play. In 1971, she was made a Dame by Queen Elizabeth II. In 2013, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was voted the best crime novel ever by 600 fellow writers of the Crime Writers’ Association. Most of her books and short stories have been adapted for television, radio, video games, or comics, and more than thirty feature films have been made based on her work. She died 12 January 1976.