‘Because I think he did hear one.’
‘Well, what of it, sir? According to what you told me, what he heard couldn’t have had any bearing on the case. It was an hour too early!’
‘Horace, I told you only this morning I’d got a feeling the wrong end of the stick had been pushed into my hand, and that there’s something important I haven’t spotted. We’re now going to have a look for it!’
Sixteen
Where are we off to?’ enquired the Inspector. ‘Fox House?’
‘Out of the old gentleman’s sight, for a start,’ Hemingway replied. ‘I want to think.’
They reached the gorse-clump again, and Hemingway stopped. The Inspector watched him curiously, as he stood there, his quick, bright eyes once more taking in every detail of the scene before him. Presently he gave a grunt, and sat down on the slope above the lane, and pulled his pipe and his aged tobacco-pouch out of his pocket. While his accustomed fingers teased the tobacco, and packed it into the bowl of the pipe, his abstracted gaze continued to dwell first on the spot in the garden where the seat had stood, and then upon the stile, just visible round the bole of the elm-tree. The Inspector, disposing himself on the ground beside him, preserved a patient silence, and tried painstakingly to discover, by the exercise of logic, what particular problem he was attempting to solve. Hemingway lit his pipe, and sat staring fixedly at Fox House, his eyelids a little puckered. Suddenly he said: ‘The mistake we’ve been making, Horace, is to have paid a sight too much attention to what you might call the important features of this case, and not enough to the highly irrelevant trimmings. I’m not sure I’ve not precious near been had for a sucker.’
‘I’ve heard you say as much before, but I never heard that it turned out to be true,’ responded the Inspector.
‘Well, it isn’t going to be true this time – not if I know it. This operator is beginning to annoy me,’ said Hemingway briskly.
The Inspector was a little puzzled. ‘Myself, I hate all murderers,’ he said. ‘But I don’t see why this one should annoy you more than any other – for it is not as if the case was a complicated one. It isn’t easy, but that’s only because we have too many possible suspects, isn’t it? Taken just as a murder, I’d say it was one of the simplest I’ve ever handled.’
‘When you talk like that, Horace, I think I must be losing my flair. I ought to have spotted at the outset that it was much too simple.’
‘But you can’t go against the facts, sir,’ argued the Inspector. ‘The man was shot in his own garden, by someone lying up beside these bushes, at about 7.15 or 7.20, according to Miss Warrenby’s evidence. You can doubt that, but you can’t doubt the evidence of the cartridge-case Carsethorn’s men found under the bushes. The difficulty is that the murder happened to be committed just when half a dozen people who all of them had reasons for wanting Warrenby out of the way were scattered round the locality, in a manner of speaking, and couldn’t produce alibis.’
Hemingway had turned his head, and was looking at him, an alert expression on his face. ‘Go on!’ he said, as the Inspector paused. ‘You’re being very helpful!’
Harbottle almost blushed. ‘Well, I’m glad, Chief! It isn’t often you think I’m right!’
‘You aren’t right. You’re wrong all along the line, but you’re clarifying my mind,’ said Hemingway. ‘As soon as you said that the murder happened to be committed while a whole lot of Warrenby’s ill-wishers were sculling about at large, it came to me that there wasn’t any ‘happen’ about it. That’s the way it was planned. Go on talking! Very likely you’ll put another idea into my head.’
The Inspector said, with some asperity: ‘All right, sir, I will! I may be wrong all along the line, but it strikes me that there’s a hole to be picked in what you’ve just said. It can’t have been planned. Not with any certainty. The murderer couldn’t have known Warrenby would be in the garden at that exact time; that was just luck. He must have been prepared to go into the house, or at any rate into the garden, where he could have got a shot through the study-window, and when you consider how near he came to being seen by Miss Warrenby, as things turned out, you’ll surely agree that there wasn’t much planning about it. If he’d been forced to enter the garden, Miss Warrenby would have seen the whole thing. As I see it, he’s got more luck than craft.’
‘Don’t stop! It’s getting clearer every minute!’
‘Well, do you agree with me so far?’ demanded Harbottle.
‘Never mind about that! You can take it I don’t, unless I hold up my hand.’
‘I see no sense in going on, if you don’t agree with anything I say, sir.’
‘Well, I shouldn’t see any sense in us sitting here agreeing with one another,’ returned Hemingway. ‘Where’s that going to get us?’
‘Look here, sir!’ said Harbottle. ‘If we’re going to assume that the murder was planned to take place when all the guests at that tennis-party were on their way home, then we’ve also got to assume that the murderer was banking on having all the luck he did have – which seems pretty inadequate planning to me! Why, it could have come unstuck in half a dozen places! To start with, he’s got to do the job quick, because it cuts both ways, having a lot of people scattered near the scene: who’s to say one of them won’t come down the lane? You can say it’s unlikely, but it might have happened. What was a dead certainty was that Miss Warrenby was bound to arrive on the scene at any moment. So he’s got to reach the house ahead of her, shoot Warrenby, and get away without losing a second of time. What would have happened if Warrenby had gone upstairs, or into the back-garden? He must have faced that possibility! He must have thought, if he planned it, that he must allow himself quite a bit of time, in case of accidents.’
‘Quite true, Horace. So you think that he laid his preparations – by which I mean his rifle – on the off-chance that he’d get an opportunity to shoot Warrenby?’
There was a pause. ‘When you put it like that,’ said the Inspector slowly. ‘No, that won’t do. But my arguments still hold!’
‘They do,’ said Hemingway. ‘They’re perfectly sound, and they do you credit. Our operator didn’t want to be hurried over the job, and it’s safe to assume he wasn’t going to take any unnecessary risks.’
‘Then what’s the answer?’ said Harbottle.
‘Warrenby wasn’t shot at 7.15, nor anything like that time.’
There was another pause, while the Inspector sat staring at his chief. He said at last: ‘Very well, sir. I can see several reasons for thinking you’re wrong. I’d like to know what the reasons are for thinking you’re right, because you haven’t jumped to a conclusion like that simply because you want to make out the murder was carefully planned.’
‘I haven’t jumped at all,’ replied Hemingway. ‘I’ve been adding up all those bits and pieces of information which didn’t seem to lead anywhere. Taking it from the start, the doctor was what you might call vague on the time of Warrenby’s death.’
‘Yes,’ conceded Harbottle. ‘I remember it was the first point you queried, when you were going through the case with the Chief Constable. But it didn’t seem to matter much, and goodness knows Dr Warcop isn’t the only doctor we’ve come across who’s more of a hindrance than a help to the police!’
‘You’re right: it didn’t seem to matter. The mistake I made was in accepting as a fact that the time of the murder was fixed. To go on, the next thing was that I was given a highly significant piece of information by Miss Warrenby. She told me, the very first time I saw her, that her uncle very rarely sat out of doors. Well, I didn’t pay any particular heed to that, because it didn’t seem to matter any more than the doctor’s evidence. There the corpse was, sitting in the garden, with a bullet through his left temple; and there the cartridge-case was, lying just where you’d expect to find it, supposing Warrenby had been shot while he was on that seat.’
The Inspector sat up. ‘Are you going to say he wasn’t shot in the garden at all?’
‘I should think very likely he wasn’t,’ replied Hemingway coolly. ‘We’ll hope he wasn’t, because if we can prove he was actually shot somewhere else we shall have gone a long way to prove he wasn’t shot at 7.15 either. He was probably shot an hour earlier. Which brings me to the third bit of seemingly irrelevant information, handed to me last night by old Father Time. Only, what with his daughter and Hobkirk telling me he was soft in his head, beside being Thornden’s Public Enemy Number One, and it’s standing out a mile that he had a spite against Reg Ditchling – not to mention the ambition he’s got to have his picture in the papers on top of that – I’m bound to say I didn’t set any store by anything he said. You know, Horace, it begins to look as though it’s about time I retired. There doesn’t seem to be anything I haven’t missed.’
‘I was thinking, myself, that there doesn’t seem to be anything you have missed,’ said the Inspector dryly. ‘I remember, now that you bring it to my mind, that Miss Warrenby did say that about her uncle’s habits, but I shouldn’t have, if you hadn’t brought it up.’
‘If you’re going to start handing me bouquets, my lad, I shall know you’ve got a touch of the sun, and the next thing you’ll know is that you’re lying in hospital with an ice-pack on your head, or whatever it is they do to sunstroke cases,’ said his ungrateful superior. ‘Besides, you’re putting me out. The last bit of information I was handed came from that blonde cook of Warrenby’s – which was where I began to pull myself together, because I didn’t miss that. And if Warrenby never went out in his slippers, or without his hat, it looks more than ever as though he wasn’t killed out of doors.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Harbottle. ‘I see all that, but what I don’t yet see is the point of it. It seems to me that there isn’t any point at all. When you get a murder faked to look as if it was committed some time later than the actual time, it’s generally done to give the murderer an alibi. I heard of a case where the shooting was done with a revolver that had a silencer fitted to it, and a few minutes later, when the murderer had established an alibi, a detonator went off, leading everyone to think that was the noise of the shot.’
‘I was on that case,’ said Hemingway.
‘Were you, sir? Then you’ll agree it isn’t on all fours with this one. For one thing, no detonator makes a noise like a .22 rifle; for another, Miss Warrenby said she heard the sound of the bullet’s impact; and for a third, the fake – if it was a fake – was fixed to take place when nobody had an alibi. Nobody, that is, except young Haswell, Miss Dearham, and Miss Patterdale. Well, neither Haswell nor the girl could have committed the murder an hour earlier, because they were both at The Cedars, playing tennis; and Miss Patterdale, I take it, we needn’t consider. She’s never been in the running. You can say that for anything we know she shot Warrenby at 6.15, or thereabouts; but she certainly didn’t fire the shot Miss Warrenby heard, and if she’s found out a way of faking the sound of a rifle being fired, and the impact of its bullet, the whole thing timed to go off an hour after it’s been set, she must be a master-criminal, instead of a respectable maiden lady without a stain on her character. Yes, and besides all that, the apparatus would have had to have been removed, and disposed of. Aside from the fact that the whole idea of such an apparatus is impossible –’
‘You needn’t keep on trying to convince me Miss Patterdale didn’t do it,’ interrupted Hemingway. ‘And you needn’t prove to me that the second shot couldn’t have been fired automatically either, because I know that too. Even if such an apparatus were possible, the absence of just one crucial alibi rules it out. The second shot wasn’t fired for that purpose. In fact, quite the reverse. It was fired so that you and I should have a nice lot of hot suspects to occupy our minds.’
The Inspector considered, deeply frowning. ‘Yes,’ he acknowledged. ‘That’s possible, I suppose. It certainly narrows the field, if you’re right, Chief. If we’re to assume that the time of the murder was between 6.00 and 6.30, we’re left with Gavin Plenmeller, the Pole, Mr Haswell, and, I suppose, the Vicar. Well, naturally, the first thing that comes to one’s mind is that Plenmeller was absent from The Cedars at that time.’
‘Which gives him an additional reason for wanting to make it appear that the murder was committed a good deal later on,’ interpolated Hemingway.
‘It does, of course. But there’s a snag, sir. I’m willing to believe – though I can’t say I like the idea – that at some time or other he parked a rifle where he could pick it up easily; I’m willing to believe he again parked it, after committing the murder. But what I can’t believe is that he parked it a third time! He may be a cool customer, but it just isn’t in human nature to leave the fatal weapon hidden in a ditch, or some such place – and there aren’t any ponds he could have thrown it into – when you know the police are going to be on the spot, and searching thoroughly, within a matter of half an hour! Whoever did it must have got rid of the rifle where it wouldn’t be found – which indeed he has done! – and Plenmeller didn’t have enough time to do any such thing. If the chap who owns the Red Lion is to be believed, and I don’t see any reason for disbelieving him, Plenmeller was in his bar-parlour round about 7.30 to 7.45. I grant you he could have reached the Red Lion from here in that time, but that’s all he could have done. And limp or no limp, you aren’t going to tell me he sat in the Red Lion with a rifle stuck down his trouser-leg! You’ll remember, too, that the landlord told Carsethorn he’d stayed to dinner there. Where was the rifle all that time? And whose rifle was it? We know it wasn’t his own!’
Hemingway regarded him with a half-smile. ‘You know, Horace, there’s no pleasing you at all,’ he said. ‘First, nothing will do for you but to pin this crime on to Plenmeller, and now, when it begins to look as if we might be able to do it, you turn round and argue that he couldn’t have done it!’
‘Now, that’s not fair, Chief!’ Harbottle protested. ‘You know very well I don’t want to pin it on to anyone but the right man! All I said was that as far as appearances go he seems to me a more likely murderer than any of the others, except, perhaps, that chap Lindale. I daresay he wouldn’t stick at much, but for the purposes of this argument he’s out of it. I don’t see how Plenmeller could have got rid of the rifle, but I do see that it wouldn’t have been difficult for any one of the other three to have done so. The Vicar – mind you, I’m not saying it was him, and I don’t think it was, either – the Vicar wasn’t at The Cedars after 6.00, so he might have committed the murder at 6.15; and as we don’t know what he was doing after he left that sick parishioner of his he might possibly have fired your second shot. Since he could have got into the grounds of Fox House from his own meadow, there would have been very little fear of his being seen; and he had all the time in the world to dispose of the rifle.’
‘The only difficulty being that his rifle wasn’t in his possession at the time,’ said Hemingway. ‘However, the rifle is the stumbling-block in every instance, so I won’t press that point.’
‘I’ve nothing more to say about the Vicar. You’ve met him, and I haven’t. What I do think is that we can’t rule out Ladislas any longer. He told you that he didn’t know anything about that tennis-party. That might be true, or it might not. My experience of a place like this is that everyone knows when someone’s giving a party. Say he did know! All right! He shoots Warrenby, realises he’s bound to be suspected, and so hangs about until he hears someone coming. He may even have sneaked along the common to watch the footpath, knowing that several people were likely to leave The Cedars by the garden-gate. He’s got a motor-bike; his landlady was out that evening: what was to stop him driving off anywhere he pleased – perhaps to the river – and getting rid of the rifle?’
‘What rifle?’ asked Hemingway, all polite interest.
‘I don’t know. One of those we haven’t checked up on, probably.’
‘What made him wait for three-quarters of an hour before shooting Warrenby? We know he was seen turning into Fox Lane at 5.30; if Crailing’s to be be
lieved, Father Time turned up at the Red Lion at about 6.30, which means that he must have heard the shot he did hear at about 6.15, or a few minutes earlier. I agree that the murderer didn’t want to have to do the job in a hurry, but three-quarters of an hour seems to me a long time to wait.’
‘Well, from your description of him, he sounds a temperamental, nervy sort of a chap,’ offered the Inspector. ‘Perhaps he couldn’t make up his mind to do it straight off.’
‘Rotten!’ said Hemingway. ‘If that’s the way it was, and he’d hung about, trying to summon up enough resolution to pull the trigger, he’d have gone off home without pulling it at all!’
‘There might be some other explanation.’
‘There might. What happened to his motor-bike all this time? Did he leave it standing in the lane for nearly two hours, just to make sure anyone that happened to have passed that way would know he must be somewhere around?’
‘Of course not. He might have hidden it amongst the bushes on the common. Taken it up the path that goes to the seat where we found Biggleswade.’
‘Talk sense! You try and hide a motor-bike amongst a lot of bushes! That old sinner would have spotted it like a flash!’
‘By the time he reached the place Ladislas would have retrieved it, and ridden off,’ returned the Inspector.
‘Then Father Time would have heard the engine starting up, and he hasn’t said a word about hearing any such thing.’
‘That isn’t to say he didn’t hear it. He’s out to make a case against Reg Ditchling, and that would spoil it.’
‘All right, I’ll concede you that point. There’s this to be said in favour of suspecting Ladislas: he had a motive we don’t need a strong microscope to see. What about Haswell?’
‘There isn’t enough about him, and, if you’ll forgive me saying so, sir, that’s the trouble. We don’t really know where he was, or what he was doing, up till eight o’clock, when he got home.’