The Unexpected Guest

‘I can accept the last statement without question, I think,’ said Starkwedder. ‘After all, there’s a certain amount of evidence to support it.’ Approaching the sofa again, he looked down at Laura. ‘All the same, it’s a bit drastic, don’t you think? You say you’ve hated him for years. Why didn’t you leave him? Surely that would have been much simpler.’

Laura’s voice was hesitant as she replied, ‘I’ve—I’ve no money of my own.’

‘My dear girl,’ said Starkwedder, ‘if you could have proved cruelty and habitual drunkenness and all the rest of it, you could have got a divorce—or separation—and then you’d get alimony or whatever it is they call it.’ He paused, waiting for an answer.

Finding it difficult to reply, Laura rose and, keeping her back to him, went across to the table to put her glass down.

‘Have you got children?’ Starkwedder asked her.

‘No—no, thank God,’ Laura replied.

‘Well, then, why didn’t you leave him?’

Confused, Laura turned to face her questioner. ‘Well—’ she said finally, ‘well—you see—now I shall inherit all his money.’

‘Oh no, you won’t,’ Starkwedder informed her. ‘The law won’t allow you to profit as the result of a crime.’ Taking a step towards Laura, he asked, ‘Or did you think that—?’ He hesitated, and then continued, ‘What did you think?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Laura told him.

‘You’re not a stupid woman,’ Starkwedder said, looking at her. ‘Even if you did inherit his money, it wouldn’t be much good to you if you were going to be imprisoned for life.’ Settling himself comfortably in the armchair, he added, ‘Supposing that I hadn’t come knocking at the window just now? What were you going to do?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Perhaps not—but I’m interested. What was your story going to be, if I hadn’t come barging in and caught you here red-handed? Were you going to say it was an accident? Or suicide?’

‘I don’t know,’ Laura exclaimed. She sounded distraught. Crossing to the sofa, she sat facing away from Starkwedder. ‘I’ve no idea,’ she added. ‘I tell you I—I haven’t had time to think.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘No, perhaps not—I don’t think it was a premeditated affair. I think it was an impulse. In fact, I think it was probably something your husband said. Was that it?’

‘It doesn’t matter, I tell you,’ Laura replied.

‘What did he say?’ Starkwedder insisted. ‘What was it?’

Laura gazed at him steadily. ‘That is something I shall never tell anybody,’ she exclaimed.

Starkwedder went over to the sofa and stood behind her. ‘You’ll be asked it in court,’ he informed her.

Her expression was grim as she replied, ‘I shan’t answer. They can’t make me answer.’

‘But your counsel will have to know,’ said Starkwedder. Leaning over the sofa and looking at her earnestly, he continued, ‘It might make all the difference.’

Laura turned to face him. ‘Oh, don’t you see?’ she exclaimed. ‘Don’t you understand? I’ve no hope. I’m prepared for the worst.’

‘What, just because I came in through that window? If I hadn’t—’

‘But you did!’ Laura interrupted him.

‘Yes, I did,’ he agreed. ‘And consequently you’re for it. Is that what you think?’

She made no reply. ‘Here,’ he said as he handed her a cigarette and took one himself. ‘Now, let’s go back a little. You’ve hated your husband for a long time, and tonight he said something that just pushed you over the edge. You snatched up the gun that was lying beside—’ He stopped suddenly, staring at the gun on the table. ‘Why was he sitting here with a gun beside him, anyway? It’s hardly usual.’

‘Oh, that,’ said Laura. ‘He used to shoot at cats.’

Starkwedder looked at her, surprised. ‘Cats?’ he asked.

‘Oh, I suppose I shall have to do some explaining,’ said Laura resignedly.

CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_f26b994b-e171-5987-b474-59500518f5f2)

Starkwedder looked at her with a somewhat bemused expression. ‘Well?’ he prompted.

Laura took a deep breath. Then, staring straight ahead of her, she began to speak. ‘Richard used to be a big-game hunter,’ she said. ‘That was where we first met—in Kenya. He was a different sort of person then. Or perhaps his good qualities showed, and not his bad ones. He did have good qualities, you know. Generosity and courage. Supreme courage. He was a very attractive man to women.’

She looked up suddenly, seeming to be aware of Starkwedder for the first time. Returning her gaze, he lit her cigarette with his lighter, and then his own. ‘Go on,’ he urged her.

‘We married soon after we met,’ Laura continued. ‘Then, two years later, he had a terrible accident—he was mauled by a lion. He was lucky to escape alive, but he’s been a semi-cripple ever since, unable to walk properly.’ She leaned back, apparently more relaxed, and Starkwedder moved to a footstool, facing her.

Laura took a puff at her cigarette and then exhaled the smoke. ‘They say misfortune improves your character,’ she said. ‘It didn’t improve his. Instead, it developed all his bad points. Vindictiveness, a streak of sadism, drinking too much. He made life pretty impossible for everyone in this house, and we all put up with it because—oh, you know what one says. “So sad for poor Richard being an invalid.” We shouldn’t have put up with it, of course. I see that, now. It simply encouraged him to feel that he was different from other people, and that he could do as he chose without being called to account for it.’

She rose and went across to the table by the armchair to flick ash in the ashtray. ‘All his life,’ she continued, ‘shooting had been the thing Richard liked doing best. So, when we came to live in this house, every night after everyone else had gone to bed, he’d sit here’—she gestured towards the wheelchair—‘and Angell, his—well, valet and general factotum I suppose you’d call him—Angell would bring the brandy and one of Richard’s guns, and put them beside him. Then he’d have the French windows wide open, and he’d sit in here looking out, watching for the gleam of a cat’s eyes, or a stray rabbit, or a dog for that matter. Of course, there haven’t been so many rabbits lately. That disease—what d’you call it?—myxomatosis or whatever—has been killing them off. But he shot quite a lot of cats.’ She took a drag on her cigarette. ‘He shot them in the daytime, too. And birds.’

‘Didn’t the neighbours ever complain?’ Starkwedder asked her.

‘Oh, of course they did,’ Laura replied as she returned to sit on the sofa. ‘We’ve only lived here for a couple of years, you know. Before that, we lived on the east coast, in Norfolk. One or two household pets were victims of Richard’s there, and we had a lot of complaints. That’s really why we came to live here. It’s very isolated, this house. We’ve only got one neighbour for miles around. But there are plenty of squirrels and birds and stray cats.’

She paused for a moment, and then continued. ‘The main trouble in Norfolk was really because a woman came to call at the house one day, collecting subscriptions for the village fête. Richard sent shots to the right and left of her as she was going away, walking down the drive. She bolted like a hare, he said. He roared with laughter when he told us about it. I remember him saying her fat backside was quivering like a jelly. But she went to the police about it, and there was a terrible row.’

‘I can well imagine that,’ was Starkwedder’s dry comment.

‘But Richard got away with it all right,’ Laura told him. ‘He had a permit for all his firearms, of course, and he assured the police that he only used them to shoot rabbits. He explained away poor Miss Butterfield by claiming that she was just a nervous old maid who imagined he was shooting at her, which he swore he would never have done. Richard was always plausible. He had no trouble making the police believe him.’

Starkwedder got up from his footstool and went across to Richard Warwick’s body. ‘Your husband seems to have had a rather perverted sense of humour,’ he observed tartly. He looked down at the table beside the wheelchair. ‘I see what you mean,’ he continued. ‘So a gun by his side was a nightly routine. But surely he couldn’t have expected to shoot anything tonight. Not in this fog.’

‘Oh, he always had a gun put there,’ replied Laura. ‘Every night. It was like a child’s toy. Sometimes he used to shoot into the wall, making patterns. Over there, if you look.’ She indicated the French windows. ‘Down there to the left, behind the curtain.’

Starkwedder went across and lifted the curtain on the left-hand side, revealing a pattern of bullet holes in the panelling. ‘Good heavens, he’s picked out his own initials in the wall. “RW”, done in bullet holes. Remarkable.’ He replaced the curtain, and turned back to Laura. ‘I must admit that’s damned good shooting. Hm, yes. He must have been pretty frightening to live with.’

‘He was,’ Laura replied emphatically. With almost hysterical vehemence, she rose from the sofa and approached her uninvited guest. ‘Must we go on talking and talking about all this?’ she asked in exasperation. ‘It’s only putting off what’s got to happen in the end. Can’t you realize that you’ve got to ring up the police? You’ve no option. Don’t you see it would be far kinder to just do it now? Or is it that you want me to do it? Is that it? All right, I will.’

She moved quickly to the phone, but Starkwedder came up to her as she was lifting the receiver, and put his hand over hers. ‘We’ve got to talk first,’ he told her.

‘We’ve been talking,’ said Laura. ‘And anyway, there’s nothing to talk about.’

‘Yes, there is,’ he insisted. ‘I’m a fool, I dare say. But we’ve got to find some way out.’

‘Some way out? For me?’ asked Laura. She sounded incredulous.

‘Yes. For you.’ He took a few steps away from her, and then turned back to face her. ‘How much courage have you got?’ he asked. ‘Can you lie if necessary—and lie convincingly?’