‘No,’ said Mary. ‘I mean, I don’t want to cry.’
‘It’s the shock,’ said Janet. ‘I expect you’re numbed. I know so well what you’re feeling, and if only you could break down and cry you’d be better!’
It was clearly impossible to tell Janet that though shock might be present, grief was not, so Mary merely murmured something unintelligible, and tried not to look as uncomfortable as she felt.
Janet gave her hand a squeeze that conveyed both sympathy and understanding, and stated: ‘You want me to tell you exactly what happened.’
Mary agreed, and Janet at once launched into her story, decorating it with such a wealth of detail that the main thread was more than once in danger of being lost in the tangle. The information that Samuel Jones had been asked to tea to meet Wally brought a frown to Mary’s brow, and she interrupted to say: ‘Do you mean the man who owns the store in Fritton?’
‘Yes, that’s the man. Somehow I can’t like him, but he can’t be as bad as Alan says, because after all he’s a Town Councillor, and I mean to say, he wouldn’t be, would he? Oh dear, I can’t bear to think of it! You just don’t know how awful it was, all day, Mary! Because Alan quarrelled with Father at lunch, and rushed out of the house without finishing his pudding, simply because Mr Jones was coming to tea. And I made some scones, but of course we didn’t eat them, and a brand new kettle was ruined, and naturally I couldn’t replace it on a Sunday, and Florence had a dreadful time trying to make tea for breakfast in a saucepan, because I need hardly tell you, my dear, that I discovered that the other kettle had a hole in it, and she’d never told me! I’m afraid Father had to wait for his breakfast, and he particularly wanted it at a quarter to eight, so that he could be at the office early. And Alan never came home to supper last night, and when I asked him this morning what he’d been doing, he simply bit my head off ! So what with Father being cross, and Alan worse, I’ve had an awful time. And, you know, when one has seen Death for the first time, it does upset one, only neither Father nor Alan seem to realise what I’ve been through in the least!’
She burst into tears, and Mary had considerable difficulty in soothing her. When she had at last succeeded, and had also managed to persuade her to go home by the garden-way, in order to escape any reporter who might be lurking by the front gates, she discovered that Robert Steel had arrived, and was waiting to speak to her before presenting himself to Ermyntrude.
She took him at once into the library, and shut the door. ‘There’s something I’ve got to tell you, Robert,’ she said.
‘You told me last night,’ he replied. ‘That butler of yours heard what I said to you yesterday. I’ve already had a visit from the police.’
‘Robert, I’m awfully sorry! What I didn’t tell you yesterday, was that I’m afraid I rather gave it away too. When the Inspector asked me point-blank about it, I didn’t know what to say, and probably made it all sound much worse than it really was.’
‘You needn’t worry,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m not making any secret of the fact that I’m damned glad Carter’s dead. But how I can be supposed to have had a hand in it I fail to see.’
‘Where were you when it happened?’
‘On the farm.’
‘Can you prove it? Was anyone with you?’
‘Old Jefferson was somewhere around. He wasn’t actually with me, but it doesn’t matter a tinker’s curse, anyway. I’m in no danger of being arrested.’
‘But, Robert, are you sure? Everyone knows how you feel about Aunt Ermy, and I’m positive the Inspector’s awfully suspicious.’
‘He can be as suspicious as he likes, but it’ll puzzle him to pin Carter’s murder on to me. How the devil am I supposed to have known that Carter would be on that bridge at five minutes to five? I didn’t even know he was going to tea at White’s place. Look here, I didn’t come here to discuss that: I want to know how Ermyntrude is.’
‘She’s all right. Did the Inspector seem satisfied?’
‘Can’t say; I didn’t ask him. Has that fellow gone yet?’
‘No,’ replied Mary, correctly guessing the identity of that fellow. ‘He isn’t going till all this has been cleared up.’
‘Do you mean the police have refused to let him go?’
‘I don’t think so. Aunt Ermy asked him if he would stay.’
The muscles about his jaw seemed to harden. ‘I get it. Can I see Ermyntrude?’
‘Yes, I expect she’ll be very glad to see you,’ replied Mary. ‘Only, if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather you didn’t pick a quarrel with the Prince. We’ve got enough to contend with already.’
‘Don’t be a fool!’ said Steel shortly. He looked frowningly down at her. ‘What was this precious Prince doing when Carter was shot?’
‘He was at Dr Chester’s house.’
‘Seems to me the police might look into his movements before badgering me. I suppose the truth is that the case is beyond their capabilities.’
This, though merely a remark occasioned by annoyance, was the conclusion Inspector Cook had rather despairingly reached. He had come away from Palings with enough evidence to make him feel hopeful of a speedy result to his investigations, but a quiet study of this evidence, coupled with several conflicting circumstances, had shaken his confidence.
He was a zealous officer, and he had lost no time in interrogating Percy Baker. He guessed that Baker would leave Fritton on Sunday evening, or very early on Monday morning, since he worked at the larger, manufacturing town of Burntside, some twenty miles from Fritton; and he forwent his supper in order to catch this important witness.
Miss Gladys Baker was easily located. She lived with her widowed mother, in one of the back streets of Fritton. When the Inspector arrived at the house, she, and her mother and brother, were sitting down to supper, in company with Mrs Baker’s lodger, an earnest young man who worked in Jones’s store. Mrs Baker opened the door to the Inspector, which was perhaps unfortunate, since she was a lady of extremely delicate sensibility, and the information that he wanted to see her son at once brought on her palpitations. However, when she had been supported into the kitchen, and left there in the care of her daughter and the lodger, Percy Baker took the Inspector into the front room, a neat apartment, smelling strongly of must, and decorated with red plush, aspidistras, and pampas grass, and asked him belligerently what he wanted.
He was a good-looking young man, but rather spoiled by the pugnacious expression he habitually wore; and it soon became apparent to the Inspector that in his different way he was quite as dramatically inclined as Ermyntrude Carter. When asked what he had been doing that afternoon, he countered by demanding what his movements had got to do with the police; and when told never to mind about that, he plunged into a dark, and somewhat involved diatribe against the police, whom he called minions of the bourgeoisie. Finally, the Inspector managed to elicit from him the admission that he had been out on his motor bicycle.
‘Out on your motor-bike, were you? Take anyone with you?’
Baker looked suspiciously at him. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘You answer my question, and never mind what I’m getting at. Come on, now! Took your young lady, I dare say, pillion-riding?’
Baker sneered horribly at him. ‘I’ve got no time for young ladies. Think I’d get married, with the world the way it is? Marriage is for the rich, and a man who—’
‘All right, I don’t want to hear about that. Had you got anyone with you, or hadn’t you?’
‘No,’ said Baker sulkily.
‘Where did you go?’
‘What’s that got to do with you?’
‘You take it from me, my lad, it’s got a lot to do with me. What’s more, you’re doing yourself no good by refusing to answer my questions.’
‘Don’t think you can come here brow-beating me!’ said Baker
. ‘The day will come when your kind will be in the gutter, where you’d like to trample the Workers of the World under your feet!’
‘One of that sort, are you?’ said the Inspector. ‘Now you answer me quick, or I’ll ask you to come along to the police station!’
‘One law for the rich and another for the poor!’ said Baker bitterly. ‘I went for a run to try out a new bike, since you want to know. I took her to Kershaw, and back. So what?’
‘Kershaw, eh? Went through Stilhurst village, didn’t you?’
‘Suppose I did?’ countered Baker, watching him.
‘What time would that have been?’
‘I don’t know. Think I go along looking at my watch?’
‘Must have passed by Mrs Carter’s place, Palings,’ said the Inspector conversationally.
Baker’s lean cheeks flamed suddenly. He took a step towards, the Inspector, his fists clenched. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘Now, what is there for you to be all hot-up over in that?’ wondered the Inspector.
‘Come on, out with it! What are you nosing round after? Supposing I did pass Palings? What the bloody hell’s it got to do with you?’
‘Don’t you take that tone with me, my lad!’ said the Inspector. ‘I know how you went out to Palings twice yesterday, to see Mr Carter. What did you want with him, eh?’
‘If you know I went twice to see the dirty bastard, you ought to know that too! Go and ask him, if you don’t!’
‘Very clever, but it won’t wash,’ said the Inspector. ‘You’d better come clean! Trying to put the black on him, weren’t you?’
The flush returned. ‘I’ll knock the teeth down the throat of the lying swine who says so!’
‘Oh, lay off that stuff !’ the Inspector said, roughly. ‘You went out to Palings, ranting about Mr Carter having put your sister in the family way—’
‘Damn you, keep your ugly trap shut! So that’s the game, is it? Well, you can tell Mr Lousy Carter that my sister’s got her rights, and he needn’t think he can scare me out of bringing him to book! When the Red Flag’s raised in this country, it’ll be him and them like him that—’
‘Stow it! You went to Palings to blackmail Mr Carter for five hundred pounds, didn’t you?’
The effect of this accusation was not quite what Cook had expected. Baker’s jaw dropped; he repeated in a dazed voice: ‘Five hundred pounds?’
‘Well? Didn’t you?’
‘Five hundred – pounds?’ said Baker again. ‘What the hell do you take me for? Here, I’ve had enough of your insults! You clear out of this! Five hundred pounds my foot! I suppose that’s what the stinking swine told you? Well, you can damned well tell him from me that he’s a bloody liar! And if you think I’d make capital out of my sister’s shame, you’re as big a bastard as he is!’
‘Careful, now! Are you denying you went to Palings to get money out of Mr Carter?’
‘I never mentioned five hundred pounds, nor nothing like it! But when a man in his position, fair reeking of money, and old enough to be the girl’s father, God damn his soul, gets a poor girl into trouble, he’s got to help her, or I’ll know the reason why! Oh, it’s all very nice and easy for them as has money to burn, but what about them as hasn’t? Who’s going to support Carter’s brat, that’s what I’m asking you? Isn’t it only justice he should pay for what he done to my sister? What would five bob a week mean to the likes of him? You answer me that, and then say I’ve been blackmailing the swine!’
‘Leaving alone, for the moment, how much you tried to get out of him,’ said the Inspector, looking very hard at him, ‘you didn’t find him willing to pay, did you?’
‘No one,’ said Baker, somewhat obscurely, ‘is going to make out my sister’s no better than a common street-walker!’
‘Oh! So Mr Carter had his doubts, had he? He didn’t see why he should pay for what he suspected wasn’t his? Now we’re getting at it, aren’t we?’
‘I’ll make him provide for Gladys, if it’s the last thing I do!’ retorted Baker.
‘But,’ said the Inspector, ‘he refused to pay, didn’t he?’
‘Fobbing me off with excuses!’ muttered Baker. ‘If I had my way, I’d blow his brains out, the mealy scoundrel! That ’ud learn him to seduce innocent girls! But that’s not going to help my sister, that’s the way I’ve got to look at it!’
‘Would it surprise you to learn that Mr Carter was shot dead at five minutes to five this afternoon?’ asked the Inspector.
‘Shot dead?’ Baker said numbly. ‘I didn’t do it. I don’t know a thing about it, as God’s my witness!’
That was all the Inspector had managed to get out of Percy Baker, and it left him profoundly dissatisfied, for he could not quite bring himself to believe that the young man was acting a part. Nor did he believe that Baker had been acting when he so hotly denied having demanded five hundred pounds from Carter. It began to seem to the Inspector as though the murdered man’s relations were playing some deep game, and had not scrupled to entangle Baker in its meshes. It might, he reflected, prove to be a difficult task for Baker to refute the accusation of blackmail.
When he reached the police station, it was to be met with the news that the rifle found in the shrubbery at the Dower House had been identified. It had been registered ten years previously by the late Mr Fanshawe, and was the property of his relict, in whose name the licence had been kept up.
The Inspector drew a breath. ‘Someone living in the house,’ he said. ‘Well! I thought that from the start. And the whole lot of them combining to shift the blame on to young Baker, by spinning this yarn about him putting the black on Carter! It’s that woman at the back of it, Superintendent: that screeching blonde, wanting to get rid of Carter, so that she can marry a foreign prince!’
‘Go easy!’ advised his superior. ‘If that was what she wanted, she could have divorced him, couldn’t she? By all accounts, he gave her plenty of cause. The Chief Constable thinks this is a case for Scotland Yard.’
The Inspector did not agree with him, but by the time he had interviewed Robert Steel next morning, and Dr Chester’s housekeeper, he was forced to admit that he could not see his way through the maze. Robert Steel’s scornful demand to be told how he could have known that Carter would be on the bridge at five minutes to five, seemed unanswerable. Steel stated that he had not known that Carter had meant to visit White, and if that were true, it did not seem possible that he could be the murderer. Whether it was true, remained, of course, to be proved; but the Inspector realised that it was not going to be an easy task to prove it.
Dr Chester’s housekeeper was a little flustered, but she perfectly recalled the foreign gentleman’s visit, and said without an instant’s hesitation that he had arrived at a few minutes to five o’clock, before the doctor had got back from the call he had had to make.
The Inspector went next to Palings. He found Lady Dering sitting with Ermyntrude, having been brought over by Hugh, who was talking to Mary in the garden. When Peake announced the Inspector, Lady Dering at once got up to take her leave, and went out through the French window to join her son. She had exercised a most beneficial effect on Ermyntrude, who was both touched and gratified by her visit, and had unburdened her soul without much reserve. Ruth Dering’s sympathetic good-sense had done much to calm her agitated nerves, and she was even able to greet the Inspector without any display of dramatic horror.
He came to the point without preamble, asking her whether she was the owner of a Mannlicher-Schönauer .275 rifle, registered as No. 668942.
‘I’m sure I don’t know!’ replied Ermyntrude. ‘Though, now you come to mention it, I believe one of my first husband’s rifles was a Mannlicher – whatever-it-is. Mind you, it wasn’t his best gun! A Rigby, that’s what he used to swear by, and he had another gun, too, but that was only for elephants. My fir
st husband was a big game shooter.’
‘When he died, madam, you kept his guns?’
‘Of course I kept his guns! Not that they were any use to me, but I’d as soon have sold his hairbrushes!’ said Ermyntrude, becoming a little intense. ‘Everything in the gun-room’s kept just as he used to have it. Or rather,’ she added, ‘it was till I married Mr Carter, and he started messing about with things.’
‘Are the late Mr Fanshawe’s guns kept under lock and key, madam?’
‘The gun-room isn’t locked, if that’s what you mean. Of course, I know very well it ought to be, but that was Mr Carter all over! He never locked anything, without he went and lost the key, and it was a miracle when he put anything away, what’s more!’
‘Then anyone could have had access to your first husband’s rifles?’
She stared at him. ‘They’re in a glass case. The key’s generally in the lock. What would anyone want with them? Look here, what are you driving at?’
‘A Mannlicher-Schönauer – .275 rifle, No. 668942, was found yesterday in the shrubbery across the stream, madam.’
Ermyntrude gave a gasp, and rose from her chair with quite surprising agility, and stalked to the door. ‘Come along!’ she said over her shoulder, and led the Inspector to the gun-room.
In a baize-lined mahogany case with glass panels, two rifles stood in a rack which was designed to take four.
‘My gracious goodness me!’ exclaimed Ermyntrude. The key was in the lock, the Inspector turned it, and opened the case. ‘A Holland & Holland, and a Rigby,’ he said, after examining the two rifles.
‘That’s what I told you,’ said Ermyntrude mechanically.
‘Are there any cartridges for any of the three rifles, or did you turn them in when Mr Fanshawe died?’
‘Oh, I don’t know! I can’t remember. There used to be cartridges in that drawer.’