He passed rapidly over some other passages without audible comment, and then halted for a few moments at an entry.
"Now we come to his meeting with Mrs. Silverdale, and his first impressions of her. It seems that she attracted him by her physique rather than by her brains. Of course, as he observes: ‘What single woman could fully satisfy all the sides of a complex nature like mine?’ However, he catalogues Mrs. Silverdale’s attractions lavishly enough."
Flamborough, with a recollection of the passage in his mind, smiled cynically.
"That side of his complex nature was highly developed, I should judge," he affirmed. "It runs through the stuff from start to finish."
Sir Clinton turned over a few more pages.
"It seems as though Miss Hailsham began to have some inklings of his troubles," he said, looking up from the book. "This is the bit where he’s complaining about the limitations in women’s outlooks, you remember. Apparently he’d made his fiancée feel that his vision took a wider sweep than she imagined, and she seems to have suggested that he needn’t spend so much time in staring at Mrs. Silverdale. It’s quite characteristic that in this entry he’s suddenly discovered that the Hailsham girl’s hands fail to reach the standard of beauty which he thinks essential in a life-companion. He has visions of sitting in suppressed irritation while these hands pour out his breakfast coffee every day through all the years of marriage. It seems to worry him quite a lot."
"You’ll find that kind of thing developing as you go on, sir. The plain truth is that he was tiring of the girl and he simply jotted down everything he could see in her that he didn’t find good enough for him."
Sir Clinton glanced over the next few entries.
"So I see, Inspector. Now it seems her dancing isn’t so good as he used to think it was."
"Any stick to beat a dog with," the Inspector surmised.
"Now they seem to have got the length of a distinct tiff, and he rushes at once to jot down a few bright thoughts on jealousy with a quotation from Mr. Wells in support of his thesis. It appears that this ‘entanglement,’ as he calls it, is cramping his individuality and preventing the full self-expression of his complex nature. I can’t imagine how we got along without that word ‘self-expression’ when we were young. It’s a godsend. I trust the inventor got a medal."
"The next entry’s rather important, sir," Flamborough warned him.
"Ah! Here we are. We come to action for a change instead of all this wash of talk. This is the final burst-up, eh? H’m!"
He read over the entry thoughtfully.
"Well, the Hailsham girl seems to have astonished him when it came to the pinch. Even deducting everything for his way of looking at things, she must have been fairly furious. And Yvonne Silverdale’s name seems to have entered pretty deeply into the discussion. ‘She warned me she knew more than I thought she did; and that she’d make me pay for what I was doing.’ And again: ‘She said she’d stick at nothing to get even with me.’ It seems to have been rather a vulgar scene, altogether. ‘She wasn’t going to be thrown over for that woman without having her turn when it came.’ You know, Inspector, it sounds a bit vindictive, even when it’s filtered through him into his journal. The woman scorned, and hell let loose, eh? I’m not greatly taken with the picture of Miss Hailsham."
"A bit of a virago," the Inspector agreed. "What I was wondering when I read that stuff was whether she’d keep up to that standard permanently or whether this was just a flash in the pan. If she’s the kind that treasures grievances. . . ."
"She might be an important piece in the jigsaw, you mean? In any case, I suppose we’ll have to get her sized up somehow, since she plays a part in the story."
The Chief Constable turned back to the journal and skimmed over a number of the entries.
"Do you know," he pointed out after a time, "that young fellow had an unpleasant mind."
"You surprise me," the Inspector retorted ironically. "I suppose you’ve come to the place where he gets really smitten with Mrs. Silverdale’s charms?"
"Yes. There’s a curious rising irritation through it all. It’s evident that she led him on, and then let him down, time after time."
"For all his fluff about his complex character and so forth, he really seems to have been very simple," was Flamborough’s verdict. "She led him a dance for months; and anyone with half an eye could see all along that she was only playing with him. It’s as plain as print, even in his own account of the business."
"Quite, I admit. But you must remember that he imagined he was out of the common—irresistible. He couldn’t bring himself to believe things were as they were."
"Turn to the later entries," the Inspector advised; and Sir Clinton did so.
"This is the one you mean? Where she turned him down quite bluntly, so that even he got an inkling of how matters really stood?"
"Yes. Now go on from there," Flamborough directed.
Sir Clinton passed from one red marker to the other, reading the entries indicted at each of the points.
"The tune changes a bit; and his irritation seems to be on the up-grade. One gets the impression that he’s casting round for a fresh method of getting his way and that he hasn’t found one that will do? Is that your reading of it?"
"Yes," Flamborough confirmed. "He talks about getting his way ‘by hook or by crook,’ and one or two other phrases that come to the same thing."
"Well, that brings us up to a week ago. There seems to be a change in his tone, now. More expectation and less exasperation, if one can put it that way."
"I read it that by that time he’d hit on his plan. He was sure of its success, sir. Just go on to the next entry please. There’s something there about his triumph, as he calls it."
Sir Clinton glanced down the page and as he did so his face lit up for a moment as though he had seen one of his inferences confirmed.
"This what you mean?" he asked. "‘And only I shall know of my triumph’?"
"That’s it, sir. High-falutin and all that; but it points to his thinking he had the game in his hands. I’ve puzzled my brains a bit over what he really meant by it, though. One might read it that he meant to murder the girl in the end. That would leave him as the only living person who knew what had happened, you see?"
"I’m not in a position to contradict that assumption," Sir Clinton confessed. "But so far as that goes, I think you’ll find the point cleared up in a day or two at the rate we’re going."
"You’re very optimistic, sir," was all the Inspector found to reply. "Now I’ve left one matter to the end, because it may have no bearing on the case at all. The last year of that journal is full of groans about his finances. He seems to have spent a good deal more than he could afford, in one way and another. I’ve noted all the passages if you want to read them, sir. They’re among the set marked with white slips."
"Just give me the gist of them," the Chief Constable suggested. "From that, I can see whether I want to wade through the whole thing or not."
"It’s simple enough, sir. He’s been borrowing money on a scale that would be quite big for his resources. And I gather from some of the entries that he had no security that he could produce. It seems he daren’t go to his uncle and ask him to use his capital as security—I mean young Hassendean’s own capital which was under his uncle’s control as trustee. So he was persuaded to insure his life in favour of his creditor for a good round sum—figure not mentioned."
"So in the present circumstances the moneylender will rake in the whole sum insured, after paying only a single premium?"