the police.’ He took a sip from the glass he was holding. ‘Now I must think of a way to explain mine,’ he added. ‘Crime isn’t easy, is it?’
With sudden passion, Laura exclaimed, ‘Oh, don’t! Don’t get mixed up in this. They might suspect you.’
Amused, Starkwedder replied, ‘Oh, I’m a very respectable chap–quite above suspicion. But, in a sense I am mixed up in it already. After all, my car’s out there, stuck fast in the ditch. But don’t worry, just a spot of perjury and a little tinkering with the time element–that’s the worst they’d be able to bring against me. And they won’t, if you play your part properly.’
Frightened, Laura sat on the footstool, with her back to him. He came round to face her. ‘Now then,’ he said, ‘are you ready?’
‘Ready–for what?’ asked Laura.
‘Come on, you must pull yourself together,’ he urged her.
Sounding dazed, she murmured, ‘I feel–stupid–I–I can’t think.’
‘You don’t have to think,’ Starkwedder told her. ‘You’ve just got to obey orders. Now then, here’s the blueprint. First, have you got a furnace of any kind in the house?’
‘A furnace?’ Laura thought, and then replied, ‘Well, there’s the water boiler.’
‘Good.’ He went to the desk, took the newspaper, and rolled up the scraps of paper in it. Returning to Laura, he handed her the bundle. ‘Now then,’ he instructed her, ‘the first thing you do is to go into the kitchen and put this in the boiler. Then you go upstairs, get out of your clothes and into a dressing-gown–or negligée, or what-have-you.’ He paused. ‘Have you got any aspirin?’
Puzzled, Laura replied, ‘Yes.’
As though thinking and planning as he spoke, Starkwedder continued, ‘Well–empty the bottle down the loo. Then go along to someone–your mother-in-law, or Miss–what is it–Bennett?–and say you’ve got a headache and want some aspirin. Then, while you’re with whoever it is–leave the door open, by the way–you’ll hear the shot.’
‘What shot?’ asked Laura, staring at him.
Without replying, Starkwedder crossed to the table by the wheelchair and picked up the gun. ‘Yes, yes,’ he murmured absently, ‘I’ll attend to that.’ He examined the gun. ‘Hm. Looks foreign to me–war souvenir, is it?’
Laura rose from the stool. ‘I don’t know,’ she told him. ‘Richard had several foreign makes of pistol.’
‘I wonder if it’s registered,’ Starkwedder said, almost to himself, still holding the gun.
Laura sat on the sofa. ‘Richard had a licence–if that’s what you call it–a permit for his collection,’ she said.
‘Yes, I suppose he would have. But that doesn’t mean that they would all be registered in his name. In practice, people are often rather careless about that kind of thing. Is there anyone who’d be likely to know definitely?’
‘Angell might,’ said Laura. ‘Does it matter?’
Starkwedder moved about the room as he replied. ‘Well, the way we’re building this up, old MacThing–the father of the child Richard ran over–is more likely to come bursting in, breathing blood and thunder and revenge, with his own weapon at the ready. But one could, after all, make out quite a plausible case the other way. This man–whoever he is–bursts in. Richard, only half awake, snatches up his gun. The other fellow wrenches it away from him, and shoots. I admit it sounds a bit far-fetched, but it’ll have to do. We’ve got to take some risks, it just can’t be avoided.’
He placed the gun on the table by the wheelchair, and approached her. ‘Now then,’ he continued, ‘have we thought of everything? I hope so. The fact that he was shot a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes earlier won’t be apparent by the time the police get here. Driving along these roads in this fog won’t be easy for them.’ He went over to the curtain by the french windows, lifted it, and looked at the bullet holes in the wall. ‘“RW”. Very nice. I’ll try to add a full stop.’
Replacing the curtain, he came back to her. ‘When you hear the shot,’ he instructed Laura, ‘what you do is register alarm, and bring Miss Bennett–or anyone else you can collect–down here. Your story is that you don’t know anything. You went to bed, you woke up with a violent headache, you went along to look for aspirin–and that’s all you know. Understand?’
Laura nodded.
‘Good,’ said Starkwedder. ‘All the rest you leave to me. Are you feeling all right now?’
‘Yes, I think so,’ Laura whispered.
‘Then go along and do your stuff,’ he ordered her.
Laura hesitated. ‘You–you oughtn’t to do this,’ she urged him again. ‘You oughtn’t. You shouldn’t get involved.’
‘Now, don’t let’s have any more of that,’ Starkwedder insisted. ‘Everyone has their own form of–what did we call it just now?–fun and games. You had your fun and games shooting your husband. I’m having my fun and games now. Let’s just say I’ve always had a secret longing to see how I could get on with a detective story in real life.’ He gave her a quick, reassuring smile. ‘Now, can you do what I’ve told you?’
Laura nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Right. Oh, I see you’ve got a watch. Good. What time do you make it?’
Laura showed him her wristwatch, and he set his accordingly. ‘Just after ten minutes to,’ he observed. ‘I’ll allow you three–no, four–minutes. Four minutes to go along to the kitchen, pop that paper in the boiler, go upstairs, get out of your things and into a dressing-gown, and along to Miss Bennett or whoever. Do you think you can do that, Laura?’ He smiled at her reassuringly.
Laura nodded.
‘Now then,’ he continued, ‘at five minutes to midnight exactly, you’ll hear the shot. Off you go.’
Moving to the door, she turned and looked at him, uncertain of herself. Starkwedder went across to open the door for her. ‘You’re not going to let me down, are you?’ he asked.
‘No,’ replied Laura faintly.
‘Good.’
Laura was about to leave the room when Starkwedder noticed her jacket lying on the arm of the sofa. Calling her back, he gave it to her, smiling. She went out, and he closed the door behind her.
Chapter 5
After closing the door behind Laura, Starkwedder paused, working out in his mind what was to be done. After a moment, he glanced at his watch, then took out a cigarette. He moved to the table by the armchair and was about to pick up the lighter when he noticed a photograph of Laura on one of the bookshelves. He picked it up, looked at it, smiled, replaced it, and lit a cigarette, leaving the lighter on the table. Taking out his handkerchief, he rubbed any fingerprints off the arms of the armchair and the photograph, and then pushed the chair back to its original position. He took Laura’s cigarette from the ashtray, then went to the table by the wheelchair and took his own stub from the ashtray. Crossing to the desk, he next rubbed any fingerprints from it, replaced the scissors and notepad, and adjusted the blotter. He looked around him on the floor for any scrap of paper that might have been missed, found one near the desk, screwed it up and put it in his trousers pocket. He rubbed fingerprints off the light switch by the door and off the desk chair, picked up his torch from the desk, went over to the french windows, drew the curtain back slightly, and shone the torch through the window onto the path outside.
‘Too hard for footprints,’ he murmured to himself. He put the torch on the table by the wheelchair and picked up the gun. Making sure that it was sufficiently loaded, he polished it for fingerprints, then went to the stool and put the gun down on it. After