A Night of Errors Read online

  The question was unprepared for; in the little silence succeeding it Mrs Gollifer could be heard catching her breath. ‘I was afraid–’ she began.

  ‘Better ask me why I came back.’ Geoffrey Gollifer spoke without taking his eyes from the floor – but commandingly nevertheless. ‘And I’ll tell you at once.’

  Hyland shook his head. ‘You misunderstand me, Mr Gollifer. Your mother is here for the second time tonight. It is about that that I inquire.’

  ‘So am I.’

  ‘Geoffrey!’ Mrs Gollifer had sprung to her feet – and there was, Appleby judged, nothing theatrical in the action. This woman had heard something which dumbfounded her. Whatever conference had been going on a few minutes before had not comprehended this signal fact.

  ‘Do I understand you to mean, Mr Gollifer–’

  ‘Yes, you do, man. Don’t beat about the bush. I was here, and I was seen – otherwise I would keep quiet about it, no doubt.’

  Hyland had produced a notebook. ‘May I ask upon whom you called?’

  Geoffrey Gollifer laughed harshly. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I may tell you later on. But you may take it that I was here, and that I cleared out hastily, and that – for good or ill – somebody who knows me saw me doing so…I suppose you have a pretty good notion of the hour at which Sir Oliver died?’

  Hyland was silent. But Appleby spoke. ‘Between eleven and eleven-thirty, Mr Gollifer.’

  Geoffrey Gollifer nodded. ‘Poor devil,’ he said. ‘Didn’t expect him to come to quite that end. Sudden too, I suppose. Hardly knew it was happening, so to speak.’

  ‘Quite so.’ Appleby, despite a protesting mutter from Hyland, was disposed to be conversational. ‘He was hit hard on the head from behind.’

  ‘Was he, indeed?’ The young man’s tone was heavily ironical. ‘Well, he deserved it, I dare say.’

  ‘Geoffrey, how can you?’ Mrs Gollifer advanced towards her son. ‘How can you speak so before Oliver’s mother? And what madness has come over you? Of course you were not here earlier tonight? Didn’t you tell me–’

  ‘Be quiet, Mother.’ Geoffrey Gollifer turned back to Appleby. ‘We might as well have the truth, mightn’t we?’

  ‘Most certainly – if we can get it.’ Appleby paused. ‘And you assert part of it to be this: that you were here earlier tonight and were then unfortunately observed and identified as you hurried away from what may be called the scene of the crime?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Did you commit the crime?’

  Geoffrey Gollifer hesitated. ‘There wouldn’t appear to be much motive, would there?’ he asked.

  ‘None at all, that I can see.’ Appleby spoke with matter-of-fact conviction. ‘But there well may have been.’

  ‘Exactly – there well may have been.’ An obscurely growing excitement was in Geoffrey Gollifer’s tone. ‘Anyway, I was seen here. Begin with that.’

  ‘Perhaps you will tell us who this witness is? Then we can call him in.’

  ‘Certainly. Send for him right away. It was Sir Oliver’s gardener – a fellow of the name of Grubb.’

  Hyland, who had been listening to all this in silence, dropped his notebook wearily on a table. ‘Mr Gollifer,’ he said, ‘do you, or do you not, know that this man Grubb is dead?’

  ‘Dead?’ Geoffrey Gollifer raised his eyebrows with every appearance of amazement. ‘How the deuce can he be dead?’

  ‘Lady Dromio here appears not to be apprised of it, and I am sorry to shock her. But the fact must already be pretty widely known in the household, and I think it possible that you are already aware of it. Only a little time ago Mr Sebastian Dromio – with what motive or justification we need not now inquire – shot Grubb dead.’

  With a little cry Lady Dromio fell back in her chair. But Geoffrey Gollifer took no notice. ‘Heavens!’ he cried, ‘–then I might have kept quiet and got away with it.’

  Mrs Gollifer had crossed to Lady Dromio and was holding her hands in hers. But now she turned to her son and made as if to take him by the shoulders. ‘Geoffrey, are you crazy? You could not possibly–’

  ‘I killed him.’ Geoffrey Gollifer’s voice was suddenly strident. ‘I killed Oliver Dromio. And I now confess the crime, being troubled in my conscience.’

  There was a moment’s stupefied silence. Then Hyland took a step forward. ‘Geoffrey Gollifer,’ he began seriously. ‘I arrest–’

  ‘And now – stand back!’ As he spoke the young man whipped a revolver from his pocket, vaulted a sofa, threw open a French window with a crash, and disappeared into darkness. ‘Keep still!’ His voice came again, quiet and full of menace. ‘I have you covered. I killed Oliver Dromio. I shall pay for it in my own way.’

  ‘Mr Gollifer, this is folly.’ Appleby spoke, and as he did so walked quietly to the sofa and sat down on it. ‘But if you must shoot yourself I would suggest that you retire to some remote corner of the grounds – so much consideration your mother surely deserves. Not that you propose to shoot yourself yet – nor us either, I hope. You want to tell us the story – the story of why you killed Sir Oliver Dromio. Why not come in and sit down?’

  ‘I killed him because of a girl. I heard that he had probably come home and I motored over. There was a light in the study. I called to him from the terrace just on eleven o’clock. We quarrelled. Finally he turned away from me contemptuously and I struck at him from behind with the butt-end of this revolver. As I came away I was seen by the man Grubb, who appeared to be spying or skulking on the terrace.’

  ‘You say all this was over a girl?’

  ‘She was my mistress – a girl in a London nightclub. Dromio took her from me. Have you got that down? It’s the whole story.’

  ‘Mr Gollifer, please listen.’ Appleby’s voice was very much in earnest. ‘You may have killed Sir Oliver. I cannot tell. But you altogether miscalculate the consequences of what you now propose to do. Shooting yourself now, with this abrupt confession on your lips, will not cut short a single inquiry: No magistrate and no officer of police would rest on your story. And the girl of whom you speak is a transparent fiction. The truth – the real truth – will have to come out. Your mother – and everybody concerned – will have to face it. It will be manly in you to face it too. So please come back and talk sense. And put away that gun. There has been enough folly with such things already tonight.’

  There was a long silence. Lady Dromio wept quietly. Beside her, Mrs Gollifer sat perfectly still. Mr Greengrave had left the room. Through the open window there came the sound of a motorcar approaching the house. ‘Dr Hubbard,’ Hyland said. And again silence fell.

  ‘Here I am.’ Geoffrey Gollifer was in the room again, the revolver trailing idly in his hand. ‘And no doubt you are right. But it is pleasant for nobody – this story of why I really killed Oliver Dromio.’

  ‘I think,’ Appleby said quietly, ‘that we had better hear your mother first.’

  ‘My son’s confession is wholly false.’ Mrs Gollifer spoke at once. ‘Question him on details of the crime, and you will find that he cannot give information which the real murderer would be bound to have.’

  Hyland, whose eyelids were heavy and drooping, roused himself at this. ‘There may be something in that,’ he said. ‘Unless’ – he glanced suspiciously from mother to son – ‘unless the two of you are up to some pretty deep game. Mr Gollifer – just how did you leave the body?’

  ‘I left it where it fell.’ There was not a moment’s hesitation in Geoffrey Gollifer’s reply. ‘Lying there on the terrace.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ Appleby spoke quickly. ‘You dragged it into the study – didn’t you?’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘You see? Geoffrey is talking at random.’ Mrs Gollifer leant forward. ‘His whole story is only designed to conceal some very terrible secret which I know is bound to come out.’

  Appleby inclined his head. ‘That there is such a secret I am quite willing to believe. But if you, Mrs Gollifer, know that it is bound to come ou
t, it seems likely that your son knows too. Suppose he did not, in fact, kill Sir Oliver. Is he not more likely to be shielding a person than a secret? Now, who is the person whom it is most likely he should wish to shield?’

  ‘It is a secret, I tell you – and a secret Geoffrey did not even know until some time after this horrible murder had happened. It must have been nearly midnight when his car overtook me as I was driving home.’

  ‘I am afraid I don’t understand that at all, Mrs Gollifer. It would appear that you took leave of Lady Dromio before eleven o’clock. How, then, can you still have been on your road home at nearly midnight?’

  ‘Because I lingered here in the grounds.’ Mrs Gollifer had hesitated only for an instant. ‘I was extremely agitated, as you will presently understand. I lingered for some time before getting into my car and driving away. Geoffrey overtook me and recognized the car–’

  ‘Overtook you! Where, then, was he coming from?’

  ‘I was coming from here.’ Geoffrey Gollifer interrupted harshly. ‘I was coming from Sherris after killing Dromio.’

  ‘He overtook me and stopped.’ Mrs Gollifer pressed desperately on. ‘I was so distressed – almost prostrated indeed – that concealment was impossible. Moreover I knew that my secret was a secret no longer, and that Geoffrey must know of it soon. Because Lucy knew.’

  ‘Lucy had learnt that she was your daughter?’

  Mrs Gollifer paled. She looked at Appleby with dilated eyes. ‘It is impossible!’ she said hoarsely. ‘It is impossible that you should know that.’

  ‘Nevertheless, we do know it. Long ago, Mrs Gollifer, you committed – what must have been as difficult as it is uncommon in your rank of society – the crime of bigamy. It is Miss Lucy, and not Mr Gollifer here, who is your legitimate child.’

  ‘You have discovered the truth. It was in India, and when I was a girl, that I married. The marriage was secret at the time, because certain property of my own might have been forfeited had it been made public. And then the man whom I had married proved degenerate and wholly bad. I ran away from him – and presently found that I was with child. Kate – Lady Dromio, here – befriended me; my daughter was born without the knowledge of my relatives, and adopted into this house. I regarded it as a chapter in my life wholly closed, and later I married the man whose name Geoffrey bears.’

  ‘You mean,’ said Hyland grimly, ‘that you went through a form of marriage with the late Mr Gollifer.’

  ‘That is what I do mean. But of all this Geoffrey knew nothing until I told him the story tonight – and after poor Oliver had been killed.’

  ‘But why tonight? What prompted this sudden confession to your son? It was news of the most serious moment to him. Quite conceivably his tenure of the Gollifer properties is invalidated by these long-concealed facts.’

  ‘I had lived with the deception too long.’ Mrs Gollifer was now composed. ‘And moreover I saw the possibility of a very dreadful complication approaching.’

  Appleby looked up suddenly. ‘What was that?’

  Mrs Gollifer hesitated; it was her first moment, it might have seemed, of real indecision. ‘That is where Sir Oliver comes in,’ she said. ‘It introduces something that Geoffrey does not even yet know. And that is very important. For this further information might indeed suggest a motive for Geoffrey’s killing Oliver.’ Mrs Gollifer paused. Then she turned to her son. ‘Geoffrey,’ she said, ‘you are frantically resolved to take this crime upon yourself. But I challenge you. There is something I know about Oliver Dromio which might almost excuse the killing of him. But you do not know it; you have had no opportunity to learn it yet. Name it to these men, if you can.’

  ‘Oliver Dromio was blackmailing you. He had learnt the truth about Lucy, although I cannot tell how. He had been threatening to reveal the truth, and so extorting money from you for a long time.’

  Abruptly, composure left Mrs Gollifer; it was as if her face fell quite suddenly into the tragic lines of age. ‘You knew!’ she whispered. ‘Then all that living lie was in vain.’

  Geoffrey Gollifer nodded sombrely. ‘I knew – but it was only an hour or so before Dromio’s death that the knowledge came to me. I went home to find my passport. Very wrongly, I rummaged among your papers–’ He paused. ‘And almost at the same hour your reserve had broken down here at Sherris and – for some reason – you had told Lucy the truth.’

  There was silence in Lady Dromio’s drawing-room. Appleby, bending down, picked a single crumpled rose petal from the carpet. ‘A rose is a rose,’ he said – and looked at the petal as if it yet had some secret to reveal. ‘A rose is a rose is a rose.’

  ‘I told Lucy that she was my daughter. I told Kate that her son knew the story; I told her that I had been forced to pay him money.’ Mrs Gollifer spoke tonelessly now. ‘I had not intended to speak. But quite suddenly – it seemed to me that anything was better than these lived and acted and spoken lies. Lucy was horrified. I had not realized before that she loved Oliver so much.’

  Geoffrey Gollifer made a sudden movement where he sat. Hyland, apprehensive of the revolver, sprang towards him. But the young man was sitting immobile and pale again. ‘It was to be expected that Lucy would be upset,’ he said quietly.

  ‘And Kate was, for the time, completely overthrown. I realized that I had done wrong – that once again I had done wrong. I ought to have struggled to take both secrets – of Lucy’s birth and Oliver’s blackmail – to the grave with me. Meanwhile, there was nothing to do but go home. I said goodbye and then for what seemed an eternity wandered the grounds here. Then I did go home – and was overtaken by Geoffrey, as I have said. I was constrained to tell him the truth – part of the truth – and he immediately insisted that we return to Sherris. But that he had only an hour or so before learnt everything – learnt more than I could bear to tell him now – of that I had no idea.’

  ‘So now it is all tolerably clear.’ Geoffrey Gollifer looked first at the clock and then at Hyland. ‘It must be very satisfactory for you to get this affair straightened out within a few hours of its happening.’

  ‘Straightened out!’ Hyland flared into sudden exasperation. ‘I have never met such an abominable tangle of lies and deceptions in my life. You claim to have killed Sir Oliver. Yet you say that the body–’

  ‘There are certainly one or two points that are a shade obscure.’ It was Appleby who interrupted. ‘But I do not see that we need seriously quarrel with Mr Gollifer’s claim to be the murderer of the dead man – of one of the dead men. He had just discovered the fact of his own illegitimacy. No doubt he had been proud of his birth and proud of his possessions, so the discovery might very well unbalance him for a time. But there was more than that. He made the simultaneous discovery that the secret of his birth was being exploited by Sir Oliver Dromio to extort money from his mother. Here, surely, is a very sufficient motive for a crime of passion. We might well rest on it. And yet there is a further fact to be considered. Mr Gollifer had made another discovery. Lucy Dromio, Lady Dromio’s adopted daughter, was his half-sister. And here there is a reasonable question to ask. Was it simply the fact of Sir Oliver’s blackmailing her that prompted Mrs Gollifer, in this room earlier tonight, to tell Lucy Dromio the truth of the matter? Here was a secret which had been kept for years – and plainly it had been the intention to keep it for ever. What prompted Mrs Gollifer to reveal to Lucy that they were mother and daughter? Mrs Gollifer, in explanation, had spoken of seeing the possibility of a very dreadful complication approaching, but she has avoided elucidating this. I think she must see that her motive leads us to a fact enormously strengthening the case against her son. She had reason to believe her son to be in love with Lucy. And the growth of a love-affair between these two children of the same mother – between her two children – would appear very terrible to her. All the horror of incest would attach itself to the idea. Panic seized her and she told the truth.’ Appleby paused and then turned to Geoffrey Gollifer. ‘I think,’ he asked gravely, ‘that you
had formed such an attachment for Miss Dromio?’

  ‘I told you that the quarrel was over a girl.’ Geoffrey looked up with haggard eyes. ‘And it was Lucy, of course. What else should persuade me to kill the brute?’

  ‘Very well. Your story is so far emended that the girl becomes not somebody in a nightclub but Miss Dromio, whom you had just discovered to be your half-sister. Let us, please, have what further emendations are necessary. You arrived on the terrace and through the open study window you called upon Sir Oliver to come out and face you. What then?’

  Geoffrey Gollifer passed a hand over his forehead; he knit his brows in what might have been an effort either of calculation or memory. ‘Do you want it verbatim?’ he asked.

  ‘We should like the most exact account you can give.’

  ‘There wasn’t much said. I went straight to the point. I said, “Dromio, you’ve been blackmailing my mother.” He said, “Then has she split?” – or not exactly that, for he applied a filthy term to her. I said, “No, I found your letter.” He cursed and then laughed. “That bungling first shot,” he said. “I knew it might bring trouble.”’

  Appleby nodded. ‘I see. In fact, what you found among your mother’s things was the first letter demanding money that he wrote?’

  ‘Yes. There was only the one letter. After writing it he no doubt realized that it was poor technique.’

  ‘Uncommonly so. And what happened then?’

  ‘I said, “You’ve been blackmailing my mother about Lucy’s birth, and at the same time you’ve been letting Lucy fall in love with you. You’re not fit to live.” He said, “You’d have liked Lucy to be in love with you? Well, your precious discovery has cooked that goose. Unless you’re not too particular in such things. After all, we can all keep quiet. You can have your bride – or ought I to say your sister? I’ve done with her.”

  Geoffrey Gollifer paused. There were beads of sweat on his brow. Every eye in the room was intently fixed upon him.