Nursery Crimes Part 30

Not a flicker of guilt, Warrilow thought. Psychotic.

Like a little flower opening in the sun, Thomas put it. Pity there's evil at the heart of it.

Oh, G.o.d - Doctor Caradoc, Clare thought, recognising the language.

The real you, Zanny, Graham willed, is the way I see you now. Happy. With a grin on you like a Cheshire cat. Wish I could take you on my knee. Wish I could boot these policemen to h.e.l.l. Wish none of it had happened.

"If you should see Murphy in prison," Zanny told Thomas, "would you give him my very best wishes and tell him how pleased I am?"

"Yes, indeed," said Thomas, "with pleasure." He felt as if he walked in some fey countryside where the craziest remarks made sense.

Warrilow's countryside was very rational. He trod his route with precision, perfectly sure of where he was going.

"Do you think Murphy murdered Bridget O'Hare, Susannah?" he asked.

"Zanny," Zanny corrected him. "I think she might have fallen," she said cautiously.

"In your statement to Sergeant Thomas you said that you had murdered Bridget O'Hare."

"Just a bit of nonsense," said Zanny. "Miss Sheldon-Smythe went around the convent saying the same thing."

"Miss Sheldon-Smythe was in town having her hair permed at the vital time," Warrilow said. (A casual remark dropped by Constable Jones, the husband of the hairdresser, had produced this bit of evidence - though it hadn't been considered important. Miss Sheldon-Smythe hadn't been under suspicion - any more than this girl had been.) "I was picking flowers," Zanny said, "and most of the time I was with my friends. Anyone will tell you that. I didn't push Bridget O'Hare." "But you kept on insisting that you did."

"Only to save his life."

Warrilow smiled thinly. "That was very n.o.ble of you. Why should you want to do that?"

Zanny blushed. "Well - I rather liked him."

"If you still rather like him, then the prospect of his serving a long prison sentence must rather disturb you?"

"I really am awfully sorry for him," Zanny said, shifting uncomfortably, "but I don't see what I can do."

(Murphy, I'm sorry. But today is different from yesterday. Today there is Caradoc. And tomorrow there is Caradoc. You're yesterday, Murphy. You've gone.) Warrilow turned to Graham and Clare. "Your daughter's confession of guilt seemed very unlikely at the time," he said. "Had you backed it, however, it would have been believed."

"It was crazy nonsense, as the child's just told you," Clare expostulated.

"Utter rubbish," Graham agreed.

"You were placed in an extremely difficult position," Warrilow went on unperturbed. "Maybe that is why you cut the telephone wire on what you thought was Murphy's last night?" It was small actions, such as that, that indicated complicity. They knew -- had known for a long time - he was sure of it. His own certainty had grown during the last twelve hours. He had been wrong about Murphy. He had begun to doubt his guilt during the trial. The mentality to murder was the x factor that balanced the equation. In this case an elusive x factor -until now.

"I caught it in the Hoover," Clare said. "The cord snapped."

"When one's own kith and kin are concerned," Warrilow continued smoothly, "one tends to ignore the ethics of a situation. In certain circ.u.mstances it's almost forgivable - almost, but not quite."

"If we're talking about ethics," Graham snapped, "shouldn't we apply them to police procedure? Is this an accusation? Is it an inquisition? You've made no formal warning. Should I contact my lawyer?"

Warrilow acknowledged the criticism, but refused to be deflected. If his route were circuitous - and it was -he had good reason. "You will, no doubt," he said, "contact your lawyer in time. If a charge were to be laid against you, it would be one of criminal negligence. A lethal virus needs to be contained."

Graham's forgotten cigarette was burning up into his fingers. He flung it in the ashtray. "I don't understand you. Are you accusing my daughter of "murdering Bridget O'Hare?"

Warrilow sat back in his chair. All his movements were relaxed and leisurely. "Well, Susannah," he said, "do you think I might be?"

She had no doubt at all that he was. So there had been a witness then? Someone on the run from the police, perhaps, who hadn't come forward until the last minute? An army deserter, maybe?

"Witnesses lie," she said. "If you've got a witness, then he's telling lies."

She held Warrilow's gaze. His words were sharp little points of pain in her eyeb.a.l.l.s, but she refused to lower the lids. Her hands in her lap were loose and relaxed.

For sheer cold-blooded nerve, he thought.

"Witness?" Graham's voice grated with tension. "Are you trying to tell us there's a witness? I've never heard such G.o.dd.a.m.ned nonsense! Look at her . . . are you trying to say that she's capable of hurting anyone . . . that she went up on the headland . .. that she and Bridget...? My G.o.d, I think you're mad ... why the h.e.l.l have you come here? To tell us that Murphy has been reprieved because my daughter . . . because Zanny . . . because someone has framed my daughter, Zanny . . ."

He was becoming incoherent with rage and terror.

Warrilow was reminded of a jungle family of lions, the male snarling vengeance as the hunters closed in.

Your daughter is a vicious little feline, he thought. She's not even cowering behind you. She's out in front -as cool as dammit.

Of course the case would be difficult to prove. Almost impossible. It was on the cards that no one would try to prove it, though he'd push it all he could. Certainly there wouldn't be another confession from little Miss Moncrief. After a pa.s.sionate urge to tell the truth she was now swinging the other way. He wondered why.

It was time to answer her father's questions - so he answered them.

"Your daughter might or might not have murdered Bridget O'Hare," he said. "She might or might not have been telling the truth when she stated that she did. She might or might not be telling the truth now when she says that she didn't. There were no witnesses. Murphy was reprieved - not because there was any additional evidence - but because in murders of this kind, which are not pre-meditated, the death penalty is not always carried out."

Graham's face.was puce. Relief and anger fused into an explosive mixture that made his heart thump so hard he thought he was going to be sick. He had been led down tortuous evil paths by a twisted police officer. He had been played with. Dangerous admissions might have been milked out of him by reptilian methods. Might have been milked out of Zanny. She'd had the good sense to deny everything. Warrilow would suffer for this. He would complain to his superiors. He would have him demoted. He had acted outside the law. He had no business to be here at all.

Warrilow, who had a fair idea of what was going through his mind, gave him a moment or two to calm himself. He looked at the girl's mother. She was very pale and contained. Her long slender fingers were pulling little bits of fluff off her dressing-gown.-She looked like a patient who had just been given a reasonable prognosis. And now she was going to be slammed back under the surgeon's knife.

At times like this he didn't like his job very much. But it had to be done.

He turned back to Zanny.

"You pushed it down the back of the radiator, didn't you?" he said to her. "And I suppose your school uniform is hidden away somewhere?"

Zanny didn't answer. He was being rather too quick for her. She needed time. The non-existent witness had just faded off into the salty sea air of the headland. She had just turned smiling to Caradoc and told him that all was well. And now they were back in the convent again. They were back to yesterday evening. Events that seemed to belong to a dim and distant past were coming back.

"Not that we need your school uniform," Warrilow went on. "The shoes you're wearing now are evidence enough." He indicated the stains on the black leather. "Blood, of course."

"If you say so," said Zanny politely.

"Oh, you don't have to take my word for it," Warrilow was equally polite. "She didn't die until five o'clock this morning. She might not have died at all had she been discovered earlier. She was able to speak to us and we have her statement. A blackboard compa.s.s, wasn't it? According to her she'd drawn a circle with it - with figures one to twelve - a clock, perhaps?''

"Not really," said Zanny. "The twelve times table -one o'clock was one shilling, and so on. She made me repeat it ten times."

"And then?"

"And then she fell on the compa.s.s. The sharp end. It stuck in her throat."