Free Thou Shell of Death by Nicholas Blake Page B

the hut again, Bleakley shook his head sadly at Nigel.
    ‘No, sir,’ he said, ‘it’s no manner of good. They say dead men tell no tales, but it isn’t true here. The story is clear enough for a babby to see. I don’t like to think of a fine gentleman like Mr O’Brien taking his own life, but you can’t go against the evidence.’
    ‘The evidence,’ said Nigel slowly. ‘I believe I could make this dead man tell a very different tale, just on the evidence we’ve got so far.’

V
    A TWISTED TALE
    THE SUPERINTENDENT TWIRLED his moustache indecisively. There was something compelling about this young Mr Strangeways’ quiet confidence. His army training had given him a possibly misplaced belief in the superior wisdom of what he would never have thought of calling ‘the officer class’. And what a case this would be if—Bleakley decided to listen. It was perhaps the wisest decision he ever made in his life. He sent George off post-haste to Taviston with his prints, and Bolter into the house to fetch some breakfast for Nigel.
    Gesturing, now with an impaled sausage, now with a marmalade spoon, Nigel took up his parable. ‘I’m going to take as my hypothesis that O’Brien was murdered, and see how the evidence fits in with that. You can be the advocate for
felo-de-se
. Pull me up whenever I seem to misinterpret or contradict the facts. Between us we ought to thrash out the situation pretty thoroughly. Now first, the psychological evidence.’
    Bleakley twirled his moustache importantly. He was gratified that Mr Strangeways took for granted his knowledge of the meaning of these scientific terms.
    ‘Anyone who knew O’Brien well would tell you that he was the last person to put an end to himself. Even my short acquaintance with him convinced me of that. He was a remarkable character—an eccentric one, you might say; but not unbalanced. He had the physical courage to shoot himself, I’ll admit; but he had equally the moral courage to refrain from shooting himself. I don’t believe he would have any qualms about taking life—we know that in the air he was quite ruthless, and I can imagine him even murdering a man in cold blood if he had sufficient incentive—for revenge, for instance. He must have had a terrific will-to-live for him to have come through all he did, and you are asking me to believe that a man with such survival power could just go quietly into a corner and shoot himself.’
    ‘It wasn’t so quietly, sir. Several of them said he seemed all worked up like and excitable last night.’
    Nigel’s eyes glinted behind his spectacles and he waved a sausage forcefully in the air.
    ‘Ah, that’s just it. If O’Brien had been going to shoot himself, one would have expected him to be distrait, reserved, the stiff upper lip with an
occasional
outburst of semi-hysterical hilarity. But he wasn’t anything of the sort. He was uniformly gay. It was high spirits, not hysteria. The excitement beneath the surface, plus that fey look about him, are just what one would have expected from a man of almost reckless courage before going into battle. Which is exactly what he
was
doing. X’s ultimatum expired at midnight. Unfortunately O’Brien must have underestimated his adversary’s power this time.’
    Bleakley scratched his knee. He did not like to admit that Nigel’s last reasonings had taken him right out of his depth. Then, with a desperate effort to get back to solid ground, he said:
    ‘That may be so, sir. But don’t you remember? The writer of those letters said something about how Mr O’Brien mustn’t balk him of his revenge by committing suicide. Now, that might’ve been just what Mr O’Brien did, see.’
    ‘That’s a bright idea of yours, Bleakley. It would have tickled O’Brien’s sense of humour to forestall the fire-breathing Mr X like that. But I don’t believe it. And, don’t you see, X probably put that bit about suicide in deliberately; he had laid his plans to commit murder and