‘If you’re wise, you won’t,’ said Chester grimly. ‘I could hardly afford to let such a statement go unchallenged. We have a law of libel in this country.’
‘Absurd!’ murmured the Prince. ‘You mistake me, I assure you! Without doubt, the police know you too well to concern themselves with your movements.’
He was not quite right, for Inspector Cook, pondering still over the case, had remembered that Chester had not been in his house at the time of the murder, and had thought fit to mention this circumstance, though reluctantly, to Hemingway. His own chief, Superintendent Small, snubbed him immediately. ‘The doctor was called out on a case, as might happen to any doctor,’ he said. ‘What reason would he have to kill Carter, that’s what I should like to know?’
‘Only that he’s very friendly with Mrs Carter – to put it no higher,’ replied Cook. ‘Mind you, sir, I’m not saying there’s anything in it, for I’m sure I haven’t anything against Dr Chester, and I know he’s highly respected. But it just flashed across my mind, in a manner of speaking.’
‘You’d better forget it,’ said Small. ‘Pack of rubbish!’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Cook, rather woodenly.
‘That’s all right,’ interposed Hemingway. ‘I’m always grateful for a bit of help. I wouldn’t like you to think I haven’t taken the doctor into account, because I have. But so far I haven’t had so much as a smell of a motive. That isn’t to say I won’t have, of course.’
‘Are you looking for one?’ asked Small, staring at him.
‘High and low,’ responded the Inspector promptly. To his Sergeant, a moment or two later, when they were alone, he added: ‘And that’s truer than what old fat-face thinks. At least, when I say I’m hunting high and low, what I mean is that some other mug’s going round Chipston making a fool of himself. I’m what you might call the brains behind the organisation.’
‘Do you mean you’re expecting to find that Chester’s the heir to the old mad woman’s money?’ demanded Wake, startled out of his customary stolidity.
‘The secret of being a highly efficient officer,’ said Hemingway, fixing him with a quelling look, ‘is on the one hand never to expect anything, and on the other never to be surprised at anything either. You remember that, my lad, and you may do as well as I have. I don’t say you will, because your psychology’s bad and you haven’t got vision, but you may. What’s the time?’
‘Going on for four o’clock,’ replied Wake, swallowing these strictures with a visible effort.
The Inspector frowned, and lit a cigarette from the stub of his old one. ‘If Aunt Clara isn’t something Carter saw in an opium-dream, I ought to be hearing from the Chief pretty soon.’
The call from London came through five minutes later, and the Sergeant, informed that Superintendent Hannasyde wanted to speak to Inspector Hemingway, handed over the receiver to his superior, and tried to look as though he were not listening. He soon abandoned this detached attitude, for the half of the conversation which he could hardly have helped hearing was too maddeningly tantalising to be ignored.
‘That you, sir?’ said Hemingway. ‘I’ve been getting what you might call a bit jumpy. Did they find anything?… They did?… You don’t say!… On no, I’m not surprised: I thought they would… They got what?… Oh, trustee! Yes, I get it. Was he able to tell us who the present heir is?… Nice work, sir! Let me have it!’
The Sergeant, stealing a glance at him, saw his face stiffen. He had been lying back at his ease in his chair, but he sat bolt upright all at once. ‘Say that again, Chief !’ he requested. ‘What name did you say?… You don’t mean it? Well, I’ll be— Good God!… Convey anything to me! Yes, it does!… What’s that?… He doesn’t know what?… The address! Oh, he doesn’t, doesn’t he? Well, that’s where I’m one up on him, because I do!… Yes, right here, under my nose!… No, it’s got me gasping around like a landed fish…Not a breath!… Not so much as a whiff of suspicion! Right out of the picture!… Here, tell me this, sir! What’s the sum total of this precious fortune… What, pounds? I’d do a murder myself for that… Finished? No, nor anything like it, but I will be, don’t you fret, sir!’
He laid the instrument gently down on its rest, and drew a long breath. Across the table, his eyes met the Sergeant’s avid gaze. ‘I wouldn’t have believed it!’ he said, and shook his head. ‘But a hundred thousand pounds! Is that a motive, or is it a motive? Do you know who’s the heir, to that little nest-egg, Wake?’
‘No!’ almost shouted the Sergeant. ‘I do not, sir, but I’d like to!’
‘White,’ said Hemingway. ‘Mr Harold White, my lad.’
There was a moment’s astonished silence. The Sergeant broke it. ‘But he couldn’t have killed Carter, sir!’
‘If he didn’t, I’ll resign from the Force,’ said Hemingway.
‘But, Inspector, you saw the spot where he was standing when Carter was shot! It wasn’t within sight of the bridge! It wasn’t anywhere near where the gun was found!’
‘He wasn’t within forty yards of where the rifle was found,’ agreed Hemingway. ‘More like fifty, from what I remember. This bird is a pleasure to deal with!’
‘Look here, sir!’ besought the Sergeant. ‘Setting that aside, isn’t it a fact he was hoping to get money out of Carter for his little land-racket? Why, he’d even started negotiations to buy the land, let alone bringing Jones up to the house to talk business with Carter!’
The Inspector stabbed a forefinger at him. ‘Bringing him up to the house to make a disinterested witness! All that shady stuff about the building estate was dust, my lad, dust to be thrown in our eyes!’
‘But I don’t see that you can say that, sir, honest I don’t! I mean, the thing couldn’t be done! Unless – why, do you suppose the son was in it, too?’
‘That long-haired nincompoop?’ said Hemingway. ‘Not he!’
‘Well, if you won’t have him in it, how was it done, sir?’
‘I don’t know,’ replied Hemingway, ‘but if I didn’t have a lot of yapping going on in my ear, I might be able to figure it out!’
The Sergeant relapsed into silence. Hemingway presently brought his gaze to bear on that offended countenance. ‘That hair-trigger pull,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir, I know. I’ve been thinking about that, too. I’ve heard of guns being fired by the opening of a door, but this was out in the open, in full view of a couple of people who hadn’t a thing to do with it – for you won’t tell me Jones or Miss White were mixed up in the murder!’
‘That’s an idea,’ said Hemingway. ‘The opening of a door. Not bad, Wake, not at all bad! But you’re wrong: it won’t do. There couldn’t have been any sort of string tied to that gate on to the bridge, because for one thing it would have been seen, and for another the rifle was about twenty yards off.’
‘I didn’t think there was anything tied to the gate,’ said the Sergeant. ‘I admit it looks queer, White being the heir to the old lady’s money, but I’ve met some odd coincidences before, and it’s possible he doesn’t even know he’s the heir.’
‘If you’ve met any coincidences as odd as a chap getting himself bumped off when he’s on his way to visit a relation of his, whose only hope of collecting a hundred thousand pounds is to see to it that the first chap hands in his checks before the present owner of that hundred thousand, you ought to write a book,’ said Hemingway.
‘Relation! He was so far removed that not even Carter knew what kind of a fortieth cousin he was!’
‘That’s all right,’ replied Hemingway. ‘Mr Dering was explaining the Law of Intestacy to me this morning. It would take too long to tell you about it now, but it’s perfectly clear. Now, you just consider White’s position, and stop making a lot of narrow-minded objections. The old lady’s over eighty, by what the Chief just told me, so it’s safe to say she isn’t for this world much longer.
’
‘She might go on for another five years, or more,’ said the Sergeant. ‘They say mad people are often very healthy.’
‘All the better for White if she did. You don’t suppose he wants her to die until Carter’s murder has been forgotten, do you? Oh no! He takes a long view, does Mr Harold White. By rights, we ought not to have known anything about mad Aunt Clara. If it hadn’t been for Carter’s way of lugging her into the conversation whenever he wanted money off his wife, I dare say we shouldn’t. Maybe that was just one thing White didn’t happen to know about. Now you answer me this! If Aunt Clara had kicked the bucket before Carter did, who’d have come into her money? Not White, my lad! Oh no! Miss Cliffe would have got the lot, because Carter had made a will on a half-sheet of note-paper, and had it witnessed, too. Unless Carter died before his aunt, White hadn’t a hope in hell of ever seeing a penny of that fortune.’
The Sergeant was slightly shaken. ‘I grant you it looks black,’ he admitted. ‘But how could he have done it, sir?’
‘That,’ said the Inspector, ‘is what we are going to find out.’
Sixteen
The Sergeant looked, if anything, more sceptical than ever, but Hemingway was paying very little heed to him. ‘The man I want is Cook,’ he said. ‘I want to know every movement White made from the moment Carter was seen approaching the bridge. Cook took all those first depositions.’
‘Yes, sir, but, as I remember, Jones and Miss White corroborated everything White said.’
‘Of course they did! Don’t you run off with the idea that I’m thinking White’s movements weren’t as advertised! The point is, that as soon as it was established that he was out of sight of the bridge, and within a few steps of Jones and Miss White, no one paid a lot of heed to his subsequent movements.’
‘Subsequent movements?’ repeated Wake slowly.
‘You don’t suppose the gun up and fired itself on its own, do you? If White’s at the bottom of this, there must have been some kind of mechanism used, which, mark you, White disposed of before Cook reached the scene.’
‘Maybe you’re right, sir. But the more I think about it the more it seems to me that if White was responsible, then the mechanism used was nothing more nor less than his son’s hands. Now, you just consider! Wasn’t it young White who spilled that story about his father’s plan to buy up part of Frith Field? Very unnatural thing for a man’s own son to do. I thought so at the time.’
The Inspector accorded this suggestion his consideration. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I’m bound to admit there may be something in that. All a put-up job between father and son. No, I don’t think there’s so much in it, after all. Young White doesn’t get on with his father. We’ll see what Cook has to say.’
Inspector Cook, delighted to be summoned to a conference, was much more impressed than Sergeant Wake had been by the disclosure that Harold White was now the heir to Clara Carter’s fortune; and although, casting his mind back over all the circumstances of the murder, he said that he couldn’t for the life of him see how White could have had any part in it, he was perfectly ready to work over every inch of the ground again.
‘Though whether I’ll be able to remember all that Miss White said, I doubt,’ he warned Hemingway. ‘There was precious little that seemed to have any bearing on the case, and you know how she talks!’ He drew up a chair to the table, and sat down to refresh his memory with a glance through the folder that contained his own report. ‘Taking it from when Miss White came out of the house, there was her, and Samuel Jones, and White sitting round the tea-table outside the drawing-room.’
‘In full view of the bridge,’ interpolated Hemingway.
‘That’s right. The garden’s pretty overgrown with flowering shrubs, but there’s a strip of lawn running down to the bridge which has only a bed of dahlias in it. Clear view of the bridge, and of the thicket on the Palings side, of course. I took note of that. You can catch a glimpse here and there of the paths they cut at Palings. And, of course, you can see the roof of Mrs Carter’s house, through the trees. Now you’ll have to let me think a moment. Yes, here it is.’ His finger traced the typewritten words: ‘Miss White was the one that called attention to Carter. She caught sight of him, coming down one of the paths, where the bushes aren’t so thick, and she got up, and said she’d go and make the tea.’
‘I remember that. The maid was out. White was sitting by the table all this time?’
‘Yes, but according to Miss White, it was then that he asked her why she hadn’t brought any cigarettes out.’
‘It was, eh? After Carter had been seen?’
Cook raised his eyes from the folder, and gazed frowningly into space. ‘Yes, after Carter had been seen. She said she’d go and get the cigarettes, but he told her not to bother, and walked over to his study window, which, as you know, Inspector, is hidden from the bridge by a bed full of flowering currant bushes, and the like.’
‘Go on,’ said Hemingway. ‘What happened next?’
‘Miss White said she was standing looking down to the bridge, when suddenly the shot sounded, and she saw Carter fall. I asked her particularly, at the time, if she’d noticed any movement in the shrubbery, and she said no, she hadn’t noticed anything.’
Hemingway looked a little disappointed. ‘No,’ he said, scratching his chin, ‘that won’t do. Not as it stands. There must have been something else happened after White went to the study window, and before Miss White saw Carter fall. If there wasn’t anything, then I’ll have to own I don’t see how White could have done it.’
‘Well, nothing did happen,’ said Cook. ‘I remember Miss White saying that she was just standing there, not thinking of anything in particular—’ He stopped. ‘Now, just a moment! The gate! She said she was thinking that the hinges on it ought to be oiled, or something of the sort. They certainly do creak badly. I wonder: would that sort of fit in?’
‘It might. The creak of the gate being the signal, in a manner of speaking. Though it doesn’t explain how White could have fired that shot. However, there’s no sense in trying to rush things. What happened when Carter fell?’
‘Miss White screamed,’ replied Cook. ‘White asked her what the devil was the matter – he’s a testy chap, you know – and she must have told him, I suppose, for he came over to her, to see for himself. Yes, and he had a box of cigarettes in his hand right enough, for he chucked it on to one of the chairs, and I saw it there myself, with the cigarettes spilled all round it. No hanky-panky about that. He said he was going to reach in through the study window for a box of cigarettes, and that’s just exactly what he did do.’
‘While his son shot Carter,’ interjected Sergeant Wake.
Cook turned his head. ‘What’s that? Young White? I don’t see him doing it myself.’
‘Wake’s got a notion it was a put-up job between the two Whites,’ explained Hemingway.
‘Well, that would surprise me!’ said Cook. ‘Why, it’s common knowledge young Alan loathes his father! And as for him firing a rifle, I doubt if he’d know how. He’s a regular wet, that chap: doesn’t hold with bloodsports, and talks a lot of half-baked stuff about Bolshevik Russia, and that kind of thing.’
Hemingway lifted an eyebrow at his subordinate. Wake said obstinately: ‘It’s wonderful what a difference money can make to a man. Supposing that quarrel he and his father had at lunchtime, on the Sunday, was just a blind to make us think they weren’t on good terms?’
‘Then by all accounts they’ve been putting up those blinds ever since they came to the district,’ said Cook dryly. ‘No, I reckon that’s straight enough: there’s no love lost between White and his son.’
‘Does White hate his son enough to send him out to murder Carter for him?’ asked Hemingway.
‘Good Lord, no, Inspector!’ replied Cook, quite shocked. ‘Why, that would be downright wicked! Things aren’t
as bad as that! Stands to reason they can’t be, or they wouldn’t live in the same house.’
‘That’s what I thought. Go back to the moment when White chucked the cigarettes into the chair, will you? What happened next?’
‘He shouted to Jones and Miss White not to stand staring, but to come down to see what they could do for Carter, and set off for the bridge. They ran after him, of course, but Carter must have been dead before they got there.’
‘In fact,’ said Hemingway, ‘White got his two witnesses out of the way, for it’s not to be supposed they’d pay attention to anything except Carter’s body, once they’d been set on to look after him.’
‘You can put it that way if you like,’ Cook said, staring. ‘Seems to me a natural thing for them all to run down to the bridge.’
‘It’s too natural,’ said Hemingway. ‘The whole of it. There’s something fishy about this chain of highly plausible circumstances. There was a very good reason for asking Carter over in the first place, and that same reason made it look as though White was the last person to want him dead.’
‘Yes, but that’s twisting things round, sir!’ protested Wake.
‘Maybe, and maybe it’s doing exactly the opposite. You keep quiet! What about the fair Ermyntrude’s instinct? Go on, Cook! What happened on the bridge?’
‘White told Miss White to try and stop the bleeding, and ran back to the house to get hold of a doctor, and to ring us up.’
Hemingway nodded approvingly. ‘And very right and proper, I’m sure! Where’s the telephone?’
‘In the hall. I saw it,’ replied Cook.
‘You don’t say! So that it would be highly natural for Mr White to run round the corner of the house, so as to go in by the front door, thus disappearing from sight of the bridge, behind those rhododendrons?’
‘Yes,’ Cook said. ‘Yes, it would. You think he went into the shrubbery, once the other two couldn’t see him? Well, now you put me in mind of it, Miss White said that it seemed ages before he got back to them. I didn’t set much store by that, for no doubt it would seem ages, under the circumstances. But even supposing you’re on the right track, I still don’t see how he can have fired that rifle in the first place. Of course, I realise there would have had to have been a bit of mechanism used, which he’d got to get rid of quick. That’s plain enough. What isn’t plain at all, not to my way of thinking, is what actually fired the rifle. It can’t have been the opening of the gate, now, can it?’