‘Well!’ said Mr Jones, looking after her retiring form with much disapproval, ‘she took it pretty coolly, I must say!’
‘No reason why she shouldn’t,’ replied White shortly. ‘She’s only his stepdaughter. If you want hysterics, hang around until his wife comes on the scene! She’ll provide you with them – though, if you ask me, she’d have been glad enough to have got rid of him any time these past two years!’
Vicky, speeding up the path to the house, reached the lawn where her hammock hung just as Hugh Dering came out of the drawing-room through the long open windows.
‘Hullo!’ said Hugh, taking in her bell-bottomed slacks, saffron straw sandals, and vermilion toe-nails in one awe-stricken glance. ‘I called to see Mary. Your butler thought she might be in the garden. Is she?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, but I shouldn’t think so, and anyway you can’t start a necking-party now, because it would be too utterly anachronous!’ said Vicky distractedly.
‘Thanks, but surprising though it may seem to you I hadn’t come to start a necking-party, as you so prettily put it!’ said Hugh, a somewhat frosty gleam lighting his eyes.
‘Oh well, I wouldn’t know! The most disjointing thing has happened, and it’s made me cry slightly, though why it should I can’t imagine, because I’m not much given to weeping.’
‘That accounts for it, then!’ said Hugh, as one who was glad to have a mystery solved. ‘That filthy stuff you put on your eyelashes has run. The effect is even more peculiar than usual!’
Though Vicky could not appear to turn pale, she could flush quite unmistakably, and did so, stamping her foot, and darting so flashing a look at Hugh that he ought to have been withered on the spot. ‘I now know that you’re a beast, and practically reeking of mothballs, or whatever it is you put with blankets, and winter coats, and everything else that’s completely fusty! Also, you’re as unfeeling as a cabbage, which is another thing you remind me of, and I suppose if you saw anyone stretched dead at your feet, you wouldn’t shed a tear, but would just pass it off as a poor joke or something!’
‘As I haven’t yet seen anyone stretched dead at my feet, I can’t say,’ replied Hugh. ‘And what that has got to do with your having black smudges on your face, I fail to grasp.’
‘Well, that’s exactly what I have seen!’ said Vicky, trying to wipe away the smudges. ‘You can be jolly thankful it’s only a little eye-shadow gone astray, instead of me being sick in front of you, which, as a matter of fact, is a thing I might quite easily do, from the utterly eccentric feeling I’ve got in my tummy!’
Hugh stared at her suspiciously. ‘Look here, are you putting on one of your acts?’ he demanded. ‘If not, what in the devil’s name are you talking about?’
‘You are an idiot, or you’d see I haven’t had time to think up an act! It’s caught me absolutely unawares, and I almost wish it hadn’t happened, in spite of its probably being a blessing in disguise once we’ve got used to the idea.’
Hugh grasped her by the shoulders, and shook her. ‘Stop talking in cypher, and pull yourself together! What’s happened?’
‘Someone’s shot Wally right through the chest!’ said Vicky. ‘On the bridge, and Janet shedding the most aprocryphal tears and a man in a striped shirt exactly like Brighton Rock, and that malignant Harold White telling me to break the news to Ermyntrude!’
‘Good God in heaven!’ ejaculated Hugh. ‘Here, I say, don’t throw a fit of hysterics for the love of Pete! Is he dead?’
‘Oh, he looked totally dead!’ shuddered Vicky.
The same thought which Harold White had given utterance to, that Wally had very nearly been shot the day before, slid into Hugh’s mind. He did not, however, speak of it, but turned his attention to the present task of soothing Vicky. She showed every sign of nervous collapse, and it was with a feeling of relief that he saw Mary come out of the house towards them.
‘Thank the Lord you’ve come,’ he said, thrusting Vicky into her arms. ‘Look after this wretched wench, will you? There seems to have been some kind of an accident. In fact, your cousin’s been shot. I’m going to find out what it’s all about.’
He did not wait to observe the effect on Mary of this baldly delivered piece of news, but hurried off towards the path that wound down through the shrubbery to the bridge across the stream.
By the time he arrived on the scene of the accident, Dr Hinchcliffe, a bloodless-looking man some years older than his partner, Maurice Chester, had risen from his knees beside Wally’s body, and had stated that there was nothing to be done, and that Wally had probably been killed instantaneously. Samuel Jones, still in his pink-striped shirt sleeves, was trying to explain to him, firstly how he himself came to be present, and secondly what he had been doing at the moment when the shot was heard. Harold White was standing beside Wally’s body listening, with a sardonic expression on his face, to his friend’s volubility, and Janet was hovering in the background, alternately sniffing, and blowing her nose.
Dr Hinchcliffe gave the impression of a man who disliked being called out on a Sunday afternoon, and, further, found such violent forms of death distasteful. He cut short Jones’s explanations by saying testily: ‘Yes, yes, my dear sir, but all that is a matter for the police, not for me!’ He turned a cold grey eye upon White, and added: ‘The police must be notified immediately. If you have not already done so, I will.’
‘I notified them as soon as I’d got hold of you,’ replied White. He caught sight of Hugh, and stared at him for a moment. ‘What do you want?’ he demanded. ‘Oh! Dering, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, I’m Hugh Dering. I met Miss Fanshawe a few minutes ago, and, frankly, what she told me sounded so incredible that I came along to find out just what has been happening.’ His gaze flickered to Wally’s body. ‘Apparently,’ he said, with the lightness of tone a man assumes when confronted by the macabre, ‘her story was correct.’
‘Wally Carter’s been shot,’ said White unnecessarily.
‘So I see. Do you happen to know how, or by whom?’
‘No, I don’t. And since you seem to like questions, where, may I ask, did you spring from?’
‘I,’ said Hugh, quite pleasantly, but with a certain hardening of the jaw, ‘sprang out of the drawing-room at Palings.’
‘If you’re Mr Dering,’ said Jones, ‘you’re staying at the Manor. Had you been at Palings long?’
‘No, I’d only just arrived there,’ Hugh responded. ‘Why?’
‘Only that it struck me suddenly that you must have passed close by here on your way from the Manor,’ explained Jones. ‘What I mean is, you might have seen someone sneaking out of this blooming shrubbery on to the road.’
‘Sorry,’ said Hugh. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Such questions, Mr – er – Jones,’ interposed the doctor, with an air of disgust, ‘would be better left to the police.’ He nodded at Hugh. ‘Good afternoon, Dering. Didn’t know you were at home.’
‘Just on a visit,’ said Hugh. ‘Nasty business, this.’
‘Quite shocking,’ replied the doctor repressively. ‘Such a thing has never happened in all the years I’ve been in practice here. Not a patient of mine, I’m glad to say.’
‘Well, I think I’ll get back to the house,’ said Hugh, unwilling to appear like an onlooker at a street accident. ‘You don’t want outsiders hanging about.’
‘Hold on a bit!’ said White. ‘You were one of that shooting-party, yesterday, weren’t you?’
‘I was, yes. What’s that got to do with it?’
‘Only that I heard through the head gamekeeper that there was a funny sort of an accident in the morning. It seems to me the police will want to know a bit more about that, and as you were present you’ll be able to tell them.’
‘I should doubt whether that episode has the slightest bearing on the case,’ Hugh answered. ‘
As far as I could make out – but I wasn’t near enough to give any sort of an opinion – no one was to blame but Mr Carter himself.’
‘Remember that we’re speaking of the dead!’ begged Mr Jones.
Hugh was prevented from uttering the retort that sprang to his lips by Janet’s exclaiming suddenly that she heard a car. Her father at once hurried off up the slope to the house, and Hugh, thinking that a retreat now would present an odd appearance, remained to see what was going to happen next.
In a minute or two, White came back again, followed by a Police Inspector from Fritton, and several attendant satellites.
The Inspector, a foxy-haired man with a thin face and a very curt manner, cast a swift glance round the assembled company before turning his attention to Dr Hinchcliffe. This glance undoubtedly took in the body on the bridge, but did not dwell on it; and it seemed also to include Hugh. The Inspector, however, gave no sign of recognising the son of a member of the local Bench. He nodded to Hinchcliffe, and said briskly: ‘Well, doctor, what have you got to tell me about this?’
‘The man’s dead,’ replied the doctor. ‘Dead some time before I got here. Probably died almost immediately. Death was caused by a bullet passing either through or just above the heart – as far as I’m able to judge from a purely superficial examination.’
The Inspector stepped forward to Wally’s body, and looked at the wound. While the doctor called his attention to the absence of any burning of the clothes or powder-stains, and answered his various questions, Hugh watched the activities of his henchmen, and Mr Jones asked White, in an anxious undertone, if it would be permissible to ask to have his coat restored to him. He appeared to be unhappily conscious of his pink shirt sleeves.
The Inspector presently signified, that he had finished questioning the doctor, who picked up his case, and departed, declining Janet’s half-hearted offer to see him to his car.
‘And now, sir, if you please!’ said the Inspector, turning to White, and opening a small notebook. ‘Your name?’
‘I’m Harold White,’ replied White. ‘I live here, as you must know perfectly well.’
The Inspector paid no attention to this impatient rider. ‘And where were you at the time of the occurrence?’
‘Up there on the lawn, just outside the house,’ said White, with a jerk of his head towards the Dower House.
‘Anyone with you, sir?’
‘Yes, Mr Jones here, and my daughter. We were waiting for Mr Carter to arrive. He was coming to tea at my place.’
The Inspector raised his eyes from his notebook to bestow a look on Jones. Jones seized the opportunity to ask for the return of his coat. The Inspector said: ‘In just a moment, sir,’ and directed his gaze towards White once more. ‘An appointment, sir?’
‘Yes, I rang up this morning to ask him if he’d drop in at about five o’clock.’
‘I see, sir.’ The Inspector looked meditatively up the slope at the chairs drawn round the deserted tea-table. ‘Did you happen to see what took place here?’
‘No, I didn’t, but both my daughter and Mr Jones were sitting in full view of the bridge, and they saw Carter fall.’
‘Not me,’ interpolated Jones. ‘I wasn’t looking. I never thought anything till Miss White screamed, and then I couldn’t believe my eyes.’
‘Did you hear the sound, of the shot, sir?’
‘Yes, and then Miss White giving a scream.’
‘Did you form any impression where it came from?’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ said Jones hesitantly. ‘You know what it is when you hear someone shooting, and don’t pay much heed. Over there, I should have said.’
The Inspector watched him wave vaguely in the direction of the thickets on the Palings’ side of the river, and demanded to know which way Wally had been facing when he was shot. Mr Jones at once disclaimed all knowledge, explaining that although he had glanced towards the stream upon Janet’s first calling attention to Wally’s approach down the path on the opposite slope, he had not looked that way again until after the shot had sounded.
Janet, who was still clutching a crumpled handkerchief with which she from time to time dabbed at her nose, interrupted to say in a lachrymose voice that she had seen the whole thing, and that Wally had been walking across the bridge towards the Dower House.
‘If that’s so,’ said the Inspector, ‘we can take it the shot didn’t come from where you thought it did, sir. Else the gentleman would have got the bullet in his back, which you can see for yourself he didn’t. Now, miss: you say you saw the whole thing. Would you be good enough to tell me just exactly what you did see?’
‘Oh, I didn’t see a thing!’ said Janet earnestly. ‘I mean, there was absolutely nothing. I saw poor Mr Carter coming down to the bridge, and I said, “Here comes Mr Carter,” or something like that, but I don’t exactly remember what; and then I said, “I’ll go and make the tea,” or words to that effect, because I’d been waiting till Mr Carter arrived, you see, and left the kettle on the stove. Oh dear, and it’s there still!’ She added, in sharpened accents, as she recalled this circumstance: ‘It must all have boiled away by this time, and probably burned a hole in the kettle! Oh, I can’t think how I could have been so forgetful!’
‘Never mind about the kettle!’ said White. ‘Answer the Inspector!’
‘It’s the new kettle!’ said Janet, in very much the tone that Hugh felt convinced the Mad Hatter must have used in discussing the effect of the best butter upon his watch.
‘Very unfortunate, miss, I’m sure, but hardly to be wondered at,’ said the Inspector. ‘And after you said you’d go and make the tea, what did you do?’
‘Oh, I don’t remember! I just got up out of my chair, and sort of stood, I think. And then my father spoke about the cigarettes. Or was that before?’
‘Was Mr White with you at the tea-table at that moment, then?’
‘Yes, he was sitting in the basket-chair, talking to Mr Jones. Then he said that about the cigarettes—’
‘I beg pardon, miss, but I don’t quite get this bit about the cigarettes,’ said the Inspector, with unimpaired patience. ‘You’ll understand I don’t want you to tell me what isn’t relevant. Of course, if the cigarettes have got any sort of bearing on the case, or perhaps help you to remember just what happened, that’s different.’
‘Oh no, they haven’t anything to do with it! I mean, how could they have? It was only that my father was annoyed at my having forgotten to bring out a box, and, of course, I said I’d run and fetch them at once, only he said not to bother, and he’d get them himself, or something like that. And he got up and went over to the study window, and leaned in to get the box on his desk, and I suppose Mr Jones was speaking to me, only I don’t really remember, though if he hadn’t been I should have gone in to make the tea, so I’m sure he must have been. And I was standing by the table, looking down here, not thinking a thing, except that I’d forgotten to oil the hinge of the gate – of course, it’s really Mrs Carter’s gate, but she can’t hear it from her house, because it’s further away than ours—’
‘Good Lord, girl, can’t you stick to the point?’ exclaimed White. ‘Get on with it, for Heaven’s sake!’
‘Yes, father,’ Janet said submissively. ‘Only I’m so upset, and I don’t want to keep anything back.’
‘That’s all right, miss,’ said the Inspector. ‘You were standing looking down here. Now, where would Mr Carter have been then?’
‘Oh, he was coming across the bridge. I remember that distinctly, because he didn’t bother to shut the gate after him. He never does. And then all of a sudden I heard a shot, and saw poor Mr Carter sort of collapse. It was awful!’
‘You didn’t see anyone, or notice any movement in all this shrubbery?’ asked the Inspector, looking round with disfavour upon his leafy surroundings.
‘Oh no, nothing like that! For a moment I simply didn’t realise it. I mean, I hadn’t an idea of anything like that happening.’
‘No, miss. And did you notice where the shot seemed to come from?’
‘Not at the time, because I was too shocked to think, only now I feel sure it must have come from somewhere there,’ Janet said, indicating the shrubbery that stretched up to the Dower House.
The Inspector did not appear to be much gratified by this somewhat dubious testimony. White cast a look of withering contempt at his daughter, and said in an exasperated tone: ‘You were asked what you noticed at the time, not what you feel sure of now. Sorry, Inspector: my daughter’s a bit upset. Though, as a matter of fact, I believe she’s right. I had a distinct impression of a shot being fired from somewhere in that direction.’
The Inspector transferred his attention to him. ‘And you were standing just where, sir?’
‘By my study window. You can’t see it from here – it’s behind that clump of azaleas – but I’ll show you.’
The Inspector turned to stare at the sombre mass of rhododendron bushes. ‘Those shrubs stretch as far as the road?’ he asked.
‘Yes, on both sides of the stream. Only it’s a much bigger plantation on the Palings’s side, of course. The road goes off to the right over the bridge across the stream, you know, skirting Mrs Carter’s grounds. We’re only about fifty yards from the road here.’
The Inspector nodded. ‘We’ll look into that presently, sir. Now, when Miss White screamed, what did you do?’
White gave a wry grin. ‘As a matter of fact, I asked her what the devil was the matter. She gasped out something about Carter’s being shot, and I naturally hurried up to see. Both she and Mr Jones were gaping – staring, down here. I told them both to pull themselves together, and ran down on to the bridge.’
‘Just a moment, sir. I take it Mr Carter wasn’t lying the way he is now?’
‘No, of course he wasn’t. I raised him in my arms, to see where he was hurt, and afterwards gave him to Mr Jones to support, while I dashed to the telephone. I suppose Mr Jones laid him down like that.’