"And you see the beauty of the scheme, Mr Venables? The only person who knows what the head of the organization actually does - is the head of the organization himself. There is no one to give him away."
"So how do you know so much?" demanded Mr Venables pleasantly.
"When we have suspicions of a certain person, there are ways of making sure."
"Indeed? Such as?"
"We needn't go into all of them. But there's the camera, for instance. All kinds of ingenious devices are possible nowadays. A man can be snapped without his suspecting the fact. We've got some excellent pictures, for instance, of a uniformed flat porter, and a gas man and so on. There are such things as false moustaches, different dentures, etc., but our man has been recognized, quite easily - first by Miss Katherine Corrigan, alias Mrs Mark Easterbrook, and also by a woman called Edith Binns. Recognition is an interesting thing, Mr Venables. For instance, this gentleman here, Mr Osborne, is willing to swear he saw you following Father Gorman in Barton Street on the night of the seventh of October about eight o'clock."
"And I did see you!" Mr Osborne leaned forward, twitching with excitement. "I described you - described you exactly!"
"Rather too exactly, perhaps," said Lejeune. "Because you didn't see Mr Venables that night when you were standing outside the doorway of your shop. You weren't standing there at all. You were across the street yourself - following Father Gorman until he turned into West Street, and you came up with him and killed him..."
Mr Zachariah Osborne said:
"What?"
It might have been ludicrous. It was ludicrous! The dropped jaw. The staring eyes...
"Let me introduce you, Mr Venables, to Mr Zachariah Osborne, pharmacist, late of Barton Street, Paddington. You'll feel a personal interest in him when I tell you that Mr Osborne, who has been under observation for some time, was unwise enough to plant a packet of thallium salts in your potting shed. Not knowing of your disability, he'd amused himself by casting you as the villain of the piece; and being a very obstinate, as well as a very stupid man, he refused to admit he'd made a bloomer."
"Stupid? You dare to call me stupid? If you knew - if you'd any idea what I've done - what I can do - I -"
Osborne shook and spluttered with rage.
Lejeune summed him up carefully. I was reminded of a man playing a fish.
"You shouldn't have tried to be so clever, you know," he said reprovingly. "Why, if you'd just sat back in that shop of yours, and let well alone, I shouldn't be here now, warning you, as it's my duty to do, that anything you say will be taken down and -"
It was then that Mr Osborne began to scream.
Chapter 24
"Look here, Lejeune, there are lots of things I want to know."
The formalities over, I had got Lejeune to myself. We were sitting together with two large tankards of beer opposite us.
"Yes, Mr Easterbrook? I gather it was a surprise to you."
"It certainly was. My mind was set on Venables. You never gave me the least hint."
"I couldn't afford to give hints, Mr Easterbrook. You have to play these things close to your chest. They're tricky. The truth is we hadn't a lot to go on. That's why we had to stage the show in the way we did with Venables' cooperation. We had to lead Osborne right up the garden path and then turn on him suddenly and hope to break him down. And it worked."
"Is he mad?" I asked.
"I'd say he's gone over the edge now. He wasn't to begin with, of course, but it does something to you, you know. Killing people. It makes you feel powerful and larger than life. It makes you feel you're God Almighty. But you're not. You're only a nasty bit of goods that's been found out. And when that fact's presented to you suddenly your ego just can't stand it. You scream and you rant and you boast of what you've done and how clever you are. Well, you saw him."
I nodded. "So Venables was in on the performance you put up," I said. "Did he like the idea of cooperating?"
"It amused him, I think," said Lejeune. "Besides, he was impertinent enough to say that one good turn deserves another."
"And what did he mean by that cryptic remark?"
"Well, I shouldn't be telling you this," said Lejeune, "this is off the record. There was a big outbreak of bank robberies about eight years ago. The same technique every time. And they got away with it! The raids were cleverly planned by someone who took no part in the actual operation. That man got away with a lot of money. We may have had our suspicions who it was, but we couldn't prove it. He was too clever for us. Especially on the financial angle. And he's had the sense never to try and repeat his success. I'm not saying any more. He was a clever crook but he wasn't a murderer. No lives were lost."
My mind went back to Zachariah Osborne. "Did you always suspect Osborne?" I asked. "Right from the beginning?"
"Well, he would draw attention to himself," said Lejeune. "As I told him, if he'd only sat back and done nothing, we'd never have dreamed that the respectable pharmacist, Mr Zachariah Osborne, had anything to do with the business. But it's a funny thing, that's just what murderers can't do. There they are, sitting pretty, safe as houses. But they can't let well alone. I'm sure I don't know why."
"The desire for death," I suggested. "A variant of Thyrza Grey's theme."
"The sooner you forget all about Miss Thyrza Grey and the things she told you, the better," said Lejeune severely. "No," he said thoughtfully, "I think really it's loneliness. The knowledge that you're such a clever chap, but that there's nobody you can talk to about it."
"You haven't told me when you started to suspect him," I said.
"Well, straight away he started telling lies. We asked for anyone who'd seen Father Gorman that night to communicate with us. Mr Osborne communicated and the statement he made was a palpable lie. He'd seen a man following Father Gorman and he described the features of that man, but he couldn't possibly have seen him across the street on a foggy night. An aquiline nose in profile he might have seen, but not an Adam's apple. That was going too far. Of course, that lie might have been innocent enough. Mr Osborne might just want to make himself important. Lots of people are like that. But it made me focus my attention on Mr Osborne and he was really rather a curious person. At once he started to tell me a lot about himself. Very unwise of him. He gave me a picture of someone who had always wanted to be more important than he was. He'd not been content to go into his father's old-fashioned business. He'd gone off and tried his fortunes on the stage, but he obviously hadn't been a success. Probably, I should say, because he couldn't take direction. Nobody was going to dictate to him the way he should play a part! He was probably genuine enough when he told of his ambition to be a witness in a murder trial, successfully identifying a man who had come in to buy poison. His mind ran on those lines a good deal, I should think. Of course we don't know at what point, and when, the idea occurred to him that he might become a really big criminal, a man so clever that he could never be brought to justice.
"But that's all surmise. To go back, Osborne's description of the man he had seen that night was interesting. It was so obviously a description of a real person whom he had at one time seen. It's extraordinarily difficult, you know, to make up a description of anybody. Eyes, nose, chin, ears, bearing, all the rest of it. If you try it you'll find yourself unconsciously describing somebody that you've noticed somewhere - in a tram or a train or an omnibus. Osborne was obviously describing a man with somewhat unusual characteristics. I'd say that he noticed Venables sitting in his car one day in Bournemouth and was struck by his appearance - if he'd seen him that way, he wouldn't realize the man was a cripple.
"Another reason that kept me interested in Osborne was that he was a pharmacist. I thought it just possible that that list we had might tie up with the narcotic trade somewhere. Actually that wasn't so, and I might, therefore, have forgotten all about Mr Osborne if Mr Osborne himself hadn't been determined to keep in the picture. He wanted, you see, to know just what we were doing, and so he writes to say that he's seen the man in question at a church fкte in Much Deeping. He still didn't know that Mr Venables was a paralysis case. When he did find that out he hadn't the sense to shut up. That was his vanity. Typical criminal's vanity. He wasn't going to admit for one moment that he'd been wrong. Like a fool, he stuck to his guns and put forward all sorts of preposterous theories. I had a very interesting visit with him at his bungalow in Bournemouth. The name of it ought to have given the show away. Everest. That's what he called it. And he'd hung up a picture of Mount Everest in the hall. Told me how interested he was in Himalayan exploration. But that was the kind of cheap joke that he enjoyed. Ever rest. That was his trade - his profession. He did give people eternal rest on payment of a suitable fee. It was a wonderful idea, one's got to hand him that. The whole setup was clever. Bradley in Birmingham, Thyrza Grey holding her sйances in Much Deeping. And who was to suspect Mr Osborne who had no connection with Thyrza Grey, no connection with Bradley and Birmingham, no connection with the victim. The actual mechanics of the thing was child's play to a pharmacist. As I say, if only Mr Osborne had had the sense to keep quiet"
"But what did he do with the money?" I asked. "After all, he did it for money presumably?"
"Oh yes, he did it for the money. Had grand visions, no doubt, of himself travelling, entertaining, being a rich and important person. But of course he wasn't the person he imagined himself to be. I think his sense of power was exhilarated by the actual performance of murder. To get away with murder again and again intoxicated him, and what's more, he'll enjoy himself in the dock. You see if he doesn't. The central figure with all eyes upon him."
"But what did he do with the money?" I demanded.
"Oh, that's very simple," said Lejeune, "though I don't know that I should have thought of it unless I'd noticed the way he'd furnished the bungalow. He was a miser, of course. He loved money and he wanted money, but not for spending. That bungalow was sparsely furnished and all with stuff that he'd bought cheap at sales. He didn't like spending money, he just wanted to have it."
"Do you mean he banked it all?"
"Oh no," said Lejeune. "I'd say we'll find it somewhere under the floor in that bungalow of his."
Both Lejeune and I were silent for some minutes while I contemplated the strange creature that was Zachariah Osborne.
"Corrigan," said Lejeune dreamily, "would say it was all due to some gland in his spleen or his sweetbread or something either over-functioning or under-producing - I never can remember which. I'm a simple man - I think he's just a wrong 'un. What beats me - it always does - is how a man can be so clever and yet be such a perfect fool."
"One imagines a mastermind," I said, "as some grand and sinister figure of evil."
Lejeune shook his head. "It's not like that at all," he said. "Evil is not something superhuman, it's something less than human. Your criminal is someone who wants to be important, but who never will be important, because he'll always be less than a man."
Chapter 25
At Much Deeping everything was refreshingly normal. Rhoda was busy doctoring dogs. This time, I think, it was deworming. She looked up as I came in and asked me if I would like to assist. I refused and asked where Ginger was.
"She's gone over to the Pale Horse."
"What?"
"She said she had something to do there."
"But the house is empty."
"I know."
"She'll overtire herself. She's not fit yet -"
"How you fuss, Mark. Ginger's all right. Have you seen Mrs Oliver's new book? It's called The White Cockatoo. It's over on the table there."
"God bless Mrs Oliver. And Edith Binns, too."
"Who on earth is Edith Binns?"
"A woman who has identified a photograph. Also faithful retainer to my late godmother."
"Nothing you say seems to make sense. What's the matter with you?"
I did not reply, but set out for the Pale Horse.
Just before I got there, I met Mrs Dane Calthrop.
She greeted me enthusiastically.
"All along I knew I was being stupid," she said. "But I didn't see how. Taken in by trappings."
She waved an arm towards the inn, empty and peaceful in the late autumn sunshine.
"The wickedness was never there - not in the sense it was supposed to be. No fantastic trafficking with the Devil, no black and evil splendour. Just parlour tricks done for money - and human life of no account. That's real wickedness. Nothing grand or big - just petty and contemptible."
"You and Inspector Lejeune would seem to agree about things."
"I like that man," said Mrs Dane Calthrop. "Let's go into the Pale Horse and find Ginger."
"What's she doing there?"
"Cleaning up something."
We went in through the low doorway. There was a strong smell of turpentine. Ginger was busy with rags and bottles. She looked up as we entered. She was still very pale and thin, a scarf wound round her head where the hair had not yet grown, a ghost of her former self.
"She's all right," said Mrs Dane Calthrop, reading my thoughts as usual.
"Look!" said Ginger triumphantly.
She indicated the old inn sign on which she was working.
The grime of years removed, the figure of the rider on the horse was plainly discernible: a grinning skeleton with gleaming bones.
