‘No; but, for reasons I can’t tell you, we want to know what Joe was doing between the time he left here and the time he reached Poolhampton.’
‘Driving to Poolhampton, presumably.’
‘Agreed. But what was his state of mind? Was he just happy and carefree, going off for a holiday? Or was he agitated, moody, taciturn—like someone who’s planned to commit a murder the next night?’
‘No, not a bit of it: he was quite normal, I can ass——’
‘You were with him, then?’
‘All right, young man, all right. You needn’t be so cockahoop. Don’t imagine you’ve caught me out. I’d every intention of telling you. Joe asked me to drive a bit of the way with him. Actually I went as far as Aldminster and then took the bus back. The conductor will tell you, if you don’t believe me.’
‘You didn’t pass through Weston Priors, did you?’
‘Weston——? No, that’s off the main road. Besides, it’s beyond Aldminster.’
‘Joe picked you up here, and you went with him to Aldminster.’
‘No, not here, I met him on Honeycombe Hill.’
‘Accidentally?’
‘No, I’m telling you, we’d arranged to drive together.’
‘Was Joe wearing the ring during this drive?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t you give this information to Tollworthy?’
‘The man’s a gossip. I don’t want my private affairs blabbed about all over the town.’
‘But surely there’s no reason why you shouldn’t go for a drive with an old friend?’
‘Don’t be a fool. Of course there isn’t. But Maiden Astbury doesn’t need reasons for gossiping; all it needs is an excuse.’
‘How long had you to wait for the bus at Aldminster?’
‘About quarter of an hour. We got in at about two-forty-five and the bus leaves at three.’
‘And Joe picked you up when?’
‘Two-fifteen sharp.’
‘You took half an hour to cover the ten miles odd to Aldminster?’
‘There was no hurry. We had plenty to talk about.’
‘And Joe seemed to you quite normal?’
‘Of course he did. I’ve told you that once. Perfectly normal he was, talking about the cruise and so on.’ Miss Mellors got quite angry over it.
Nigel did his best to pacify her. Then, thanking her very much for the tea and the information, he returned to the Cammisons. While the interview was fresh in his mind, he wanted to test its bearings on the case. He took out a large sheet of paper, and wrote rapidly in his small, scholarly hand:
Joe Bunnett.
(i) Additional motive for killing Eustace—Eustace’s interference between him and Miss Mellors. His hatred of E. for this should have cooled in fifteen years: depends on character—some people break out at once, others smoulder. The Roxby’s affair might well have fanned the more personal motive into flame: brought to a head J.’s life-long repression by his brother.
(ii) It was a piece of Joe’s ring I found in the refrigerator-room. This is damning evidence that he was there on the night of the murder. Unless Mellors is lying about J.’s being in possession of the ring when he went off for his holiday. And why should she lie? (Echo answers, why?)
(iii) The anonymous letter. If Mellors’ evidence is correct, Joe had quarter of an hour to get from Aldminster to Poolhampton, which is a distance of five and a half miles (cf. Tollworthy’s time-chart). This would give him time, if he hurried, to make the four miles detour by Weston Priors and post the letter. Arrivals and departures will have to be verified by Tyler.
(iv) J.’s stage of mind. Mellors insisted (with perhaps too much vigour?) that he was perfectly normal. Wasn’t the whole business of this drive rather odd, though? M. and J. (according to M.) didn’t want to be gossiped about: yet what more fruitful source of gossip could there be than M. going off with J. at the beginning of his holiday?—the fact that M. returned soon afterwards would be no obstacle to scandalmongers, merely an additional juicy fact to speculate about. True, steps were taken to avoid discovery—M.’s meeting J. outside the town: but J. was well known in the county—M., too, probably—and they might easily have been seen driving together. Rather risky for them, surely? Which suggests that it was worth their taking this risk. Why? Obvious answers: either (a) Joe had planned to kill E., and was taking a sort of nerve-tonic, plus a farewell in case he got caught; (b) all this, and in addition M. was to give him, unwillingly, an alibi for the posting of the letter (if so, this must have failed somehow); (c) Joe and Mellors were in collaboration over the crime, and took this opportunity of talking over the details. But if (b) or (c), why has not J. a better alibi over the anonymous letter?
Nigel sat back and read his notes over again. Several points began to stand out and suggest a quite different pattern–a most unexpected and sinister pattern, too. He took another sheet of paper and wrote:
Ariadne Mellors.
(i) No alibi for night of murder. Maid sleeps out. Suggests innocence, but might be double bluff.
(ii) Has physical strength to have laid out Bunnett and conveyed him into the copper.
(iii) Might conceivably have gained enough knowledge from Joe to write the anonymous letter and be familiar with geography of brewery. Is she expert enough to have tampered with the emergency bell in that way? (Good with her hands, cf. the art-and-craft stuff in her house.) Main difficulty here—how could she explain her presence in the brewery to Eustace? Almost insuperable, this. Pass on. Joe might have told her about Roxby’s; so she might have stolen the Roxby’s correspondence to divert suspicion. But suspicion thus diverted on to Joe. Surely she wouldn’t want this?—but see (v).
(iv) Motives. Very strong. (a) Her horror of drink—father drank himself to death—effect on daughter incalculable. By killing Eustace she would kill two brewers with one stone—Joe would be free from brother’s influence and thus enabled to give up the trade. (b) Personal hatred of E. for his influence over J., all the stronger in a woman of her domineering character. (c) Death of Eustace would free Joe to marry her….
(v) Is it possible that she murdered E. and is trying to incriminate Joe? Latter, either because she’s lost her nerve, or from a subconscious hatred of J. for having through moral weakness deprived her of wifehood and motherhood in the past. Sounds a bit fantastic, but would explain several points—(a) Her comparative readiness to tell me about the ring. N. B., I have nothing but her word to support J.’s ownership of ring. Her confusion when I first mentioned it may have been due, not to coyness about Joe, but to her being made suddenly aware that we had found a clue to her own presence in the refrig.-room. Whole story of giving ring to J. may thus be result of Mellors’ losing her head. (Note: Ask hotel servants, etc., at Poolhampton if J. was wearing ring.) (b) Mellors admitted to animus against Eustace—innocence or cunning? (c) She also manifested a certain degree of contempt for Joe. (d) ‘I shall never forget that afternoon Joe came to me and said he couldn’t do it; white and trembling’—was this a subtle way of impressing me with the idea of Joe as a potential murderer? (e) At one point she said, ‘What’s all this about my—Mr Bunnett’s ring?’ If ring had been in Joe’s possession all those years, would she have begun to say ‘my ring’? Possibly. A negligible point, this. (f) Her protestations that Joe seemed perfectly normal during the drive may have been deliberately over-emphasised in order to make me suspect her of concealing the fact that J. was not normal.
(vi) The anonymous letter. It is noticeable that Mellors gives herself something very like an alibi for this. She got out of J.’s car at Aldminster at two-forty-five: this wouldn’t have given her time to get to Weston Priors and back before the bus started unless she hired another car—which would obviously be too dangerous. If she wrote the letter, it must have been posted in one of two ways—(a) she asked J. to post it at Weston Priors en route for Poolhampton (but W. P. isn’t en route: therefore, unless M. and J. were in collusion, M. could surely give him no pl
ausible reason why she wouldn’t post it herself in Aldminster. Anyway, he’d almost certainly see Eustace’s name on the envelope, which would be fatal for M.) (b) J. and M. made a detour and posted it before they got to Aldminster: this would account for the unusual length of time they took over the journey.
Nigel studied all this with an expression of distaste. It struck him as rather ponderous and much too theoretical. The only thing in its favour was that it would give some direction to the police enquiries in the Aldminster district. After another twenty minutes, he took a third sheet of notepaper, and slowly wrote:
(i) Joe Bunnett. Best tip so far.
(ii) Collusion between Joe and Miss Mellors. Promising; but, if there was collusion, surely they could have thought up a more definite alibi for the anonymous letter. Only two explanations so far: either the alibi has been deliberately made rather weak, or M. has lost her head.
(iii) Miss Mellors. The most likely outsider at long odds.
XI
July 20, 8-11.30 a.m.
He that gropes in the dark finds that he would not.
ENGLISH PROVERB
‘NO,’ THOUGHT NIGEL, sipping his early morning tea, ‘this case is not really my dish at all. Its grotesque apparatus flattered but to deceive. Eustace Bunnett, thy bones are marrowless. From fair beginnings the case is falling away to foul routine. The police will take reams more of evidence, they will test every alibi, they will indulge in orgies of deduction—and, at the end of it all, someone will come forward and state that they saw X emerging from the brewery on the fatal night dripping with gore. That’s the way murder cases are solved. Or else, in a couple of days’ time, the chief constable will arise from his dreams of foxes and five-barred gates and call in the Yard, and some bright spark will be sent down and maybe discover the criminal’s identity, but there won’t be enough evidence to justify a prosecution, and one more will be added to the number of suspected murderers tripping it with light fantastic toe over the bodies of baffled policemen. And I must say I shan’t be wild with regrets. Eustace Bunnett was a crook, a menace, and a stunger. We can get along very well without him. And the case can get along very well without me.’
No doubt things would have turned out this way. A long, tedious investigation, with the police doing their best to give the murderer enough rope to hang himself with. But for one fact: the fact, which in an hour’s time Nigel would be compelled to realise, that the criminal was in a hurry. Unlike most murderers, whose trump card—if they have the nerve to play it—is to sit tight and say next to nothing, this one had a crying need for haste. Every minute was precious to him, and no one could deny afterwards that he had acted with skill and despatch. Nor could one deny that it was the very conditions of the crime itself that inexorably laid the toils into which the criminal fell. A very neat—in fact, an almost classic—performance by Nemesis, but reflecting little credit, Nigel considered, on himself and the other mortal agents of that unchancy goddess. All he could take credit for was that he tumbled to the murderer’s identity at nine-ten this Monday night: but it was a purely academic success on his part; for the murderer was destined to be caught anyway only a few hours later.
Nigel’s first indication that the march of events was accelerating into a double came at exactly 8.27 a.m. The telephone bell rang, Nigel was summoned, and the inspector’s voice barked from the other end:
‘Mr Strangeways? Tyler speaking. From the brewery. Been trouble here last night. Night-watchman caught someone on the premises. The fellow got away. Rang us up at once—Lock, I mean—and we made a search immediately. Couldn’t find anything. Making a more thorough search now. If you’d care to give me the benefit of your co-operation—’
Tyler was in the habit of coming out unexpectedly with stilted phrases like this, otherwise Nigel might have suspected a latent sarcasm. But the inspector’s voice sounded edgy and irritable: probably furious with himself for not keeping an adequate watch over the brewery, and taking it out on some wretched subordinate, thought Nigel; though no one could have expected——’
‘OK,’ he said, ‘I’ll be along in quarter of an hour.’
Ten minutes of that was spent in breakfast; and, as Herbert Cammison said, if any two other men could put down as much breakfast in the time, he’d like to know their names. The remaining five minutes brought Nigel to the brewery. Tyler was certainly doing himself proud; there seemed to be policemen everywhere, poking about, asking questions, or just standing still and radiating suspicion. The employees, too, were obviously affected by the excitement in the atmosphere; they worked spasmodically, outbreaks of furious energy followed by pauses for muttered talk and covert glances. Only the girls employed in the bottling processes tended their levers and conveyors without a break in their mechanical, jerky, marionette-like ritual.
‘Quite like old times,’ said Mr Barnes coming across Nigel on his way through the bottling-room: ‘Never seen ’em working like this since the guv’nor popped it. Eh, well, it’s an ill wind—as the saying goes. And to what do we owe the pleasure of this visit from you, sir?’
‘The murderer.’
Mr Barnes’ eyebrows shot up and remained levitated, as it were, against the white expanse of his brow.
‘Meaning, if I take you rightly, that the bloke Lock surprised in here last night is His Nibs in person. He must have a nerve. Well, they say the murderer always returns to the scene of his crime, don’t they?’
‘Um. Of course, if the murderer is an employee here, he couldn’t very well help returning to the scene of the crime, could he? Darned disturbing for the chap having that copper staring him in the face all day, don’t you think?’
‘Copper? Oh, I get you. I thought for a moment you was referring to our Boy Blue, our esteemed Inspector Tyler.’ The head brewer’s lugubrious countenance performed the unnerving contortions that represented his idea of a smile. ‘Which reminds me. Don’t bandy any witticisms with Tyler this morning, if you take my advice. Fair raging he is. Swallowed a fish-bone he has, proper. Badgering me about that pressure-copper again just now, so I said—humorous-like, but quite friendly—“there’s a ruddy sight too many coppers in the brewery this morning,” I said. My word, that didn’t half set him off. Somebody ought to design a safety-valve for that man or he’ll blow his lid off one of these days.’
‘Dear me, that would never do. Where is he now, by the way?’
‘Up in the guv’nor’s room.’
As Nigel arrived outside Eustace Bunnett’s door, he heard the voice of the inspector raised in querulous indigation.
‘What the hell do you think I put you at the brewery gate for? First you let the fellow get in and then you let him walk out again.’
‘I can’t be in two places at once, sir,’ a sullen voice replied.
‘And none of your lip, my lad, either! I suppose you went to sleep, eh?’
‘No, sir.’
Nigel thought it was time for someone to pour a little oil on these troubled waters. He entered.
‘Oh, there you are,’ said Tyler ungraciously. ‘This damned fool’—he jerked his head towards the red-faced and sweating young constable who stood at attention beside the desk—‘has let the murderer slip through his fingers.’
Nigel gathered that the constable had been on guard at the main gates, had heard shouts from within the brewery at about ten to one that morning, had rushed inside and met the night-watchman in full career after the intruder. Only the intruder somehow had got lost. The constable swore he had not passed by him, while Lock swore with equal vehemence that he had been escaping in the direction of the main entrance.
‘How did the chap get in, anyway?’ asked Nigel.
This turned out to be a somewhat tactless question. For it had been made apparent that, unless the intruder had climbed over the high wall—and there was not a trace of his having done so—he must have entered by the side door in Ledgett’s Lane; and that side door had not been guarded.
‘How should I know he’d be lik
ely to return to the brewery?’ complained the inspector. ‘Why, it was only a formality stationing Palmer at the main gate.’
‘Who has keys of the side entrance?’
‘There was one on Mr Bunnett’s ring. Joe Bunnett has one, and Mr Barnes and Ed Parsons. Anyone could have taken an impression, of course, and had a key made.’
‘Or anyone might have stayed behind in the brewery and hidden after the day’s work was over. Then he could have stolen the master-key out of the office.’
‘The master-key hasn’t been stolen,’ replied Tyler sourly. ‘Besides, if the chap had stayed behind, why did he wait so long to do whatever he wanted to do?’
‘Yes. That’s so. But what did he want to do? Destroy evidence?’
‘I suppose so. It was in this corridor outside here that Lock found the fellow. But there’s no sign of anything having been taken out of this room. Or from Mr Joe Bunnett’s. Lock seems to think he surprised the chap before he’d got properly to work, and I’d say that’s quite likely. What worries me more is that I can’t think of anything in the nature of evidence which the murderer’d want to destroy. We went through these rooms and the office very carefully a couple of days ago; we’d have found it then, if——’
‘It must be something which doesn’t appear incriminating on the face of it, but the murderer knows to be a danger to him.’ Nigel snapped his fingers and went on excitedly. ‘Look here, this must link up with the burglary of Eustace’s house. Suppose Eustace had something in his possession—letters, say—that would point to the murderer’s identity. Murderer ransacks his study, fails to find them, and steals the Roxby’s correspondence in order to confuse the trail. The next night he comes to the brewery, hoping to find what he’s looking for in Eustace’s room here.’
‘Yes, that’s all very well; but what is this piece of evidence? There was nothing in here with the remotest bearing on the murder; just business documents.’
‘Perhaps there’s a secret drawer, or an oubliette, or something jolly of that sort.’