‘On the beach, eh?’
‘Yes. He had – that is to say, I was facing in that direction when the assault took place – and I did not wish to pass this unpleasant person again. I knew by my map that it was possible to walk along the shore between Darley and Lesston Hoe, so I thought it better to go that way.’
‘I see. So you had your lunch on the shore. Whereabouts? And how long did you stay there?’
‘Well, I stopped about fifty yards from the lane. I wished to let the man see that he could not intimidate me. I sat down where he could see me and ate my lunch.’
P.C. Ormond noted that the kick could not have been a painfully hard one. Mr Perkins could sit down.
‘I think I stayed there for three-quarters of an hour or so.’
‘And who passed you on the beach during that time?’ demanded the constable sharply.
‘Who passed me? Why, nobody.’
‘No man, woman or child? No boat? No horse? Nothing?’
‘Nothing whatever. The beach was quite deserted. Even the unpleasant man took himself off in the end. Just before I left myself, that would be. I kept an eye on him, just to see that he didn’t try any more tricks, you know.’
P.C. Ormond bit his lip.
‘And what was he doing all that time? Tinkering with his car?’
‘No. He seemed to finish that quite quickly. He seemed to be doing something over the fire. I thought he was cooking. Then he went away up the lane.’
The constable thought for a moment.
‘What did you do then?’
‘I walked rather slowly on along the beach till I came to a lane that runs down between stone walls on to the beach. It comes out opposite some cottages. I got on to the road that way, and walked along in the direction of Lesston Hoe till I met the young lady.’
‘Did you see the man with the dark spectacles again that afternoon?’
‘Yes; when I came back with the lady, he was just coming up out of the lane. To my annoyance, she, quite unecessarily, stopped and spoke to him. I went on, as I did not wish to be subjected to any further incivility.’
‘I see, sir. That’s a very clear account. Now I want to ask you a very important question. When you next had an opportunity of regulating your watch, did you find it fast or slow, and how much?’
‘I compared it with the clock in the garage at Darley. It was exactly right at 5.30.’
‘And you had not altered it in the interval?’
‘No – why should I?’
P.C. Ormond looked hard at Mr Perkins, shut up his note-book with a snap, thrust out his lower jaw and said, quietly but forcefully:
‘Now, look here, sir. This is a case of murder. We know that somebody passed along that beach between two o’clock and three. Wouldn’t it be better to tell the truth?’
Fear flashed up into Mr Perkins’s eyes.
‘I don’t – I don’t –’ he began, feebly. His hands clawed at the sheet for a moment. Then he fainted, and the nurse, bustling up, banished P.C. Ormond from the bedside.
XXV
THE EVIDENCE OF THE DICTIONARY
‘ ’Tis but an empty cipher.’
The Brides’ Tragedy
Tuesday, 30 June
It was all very well, thought Constable Ormond, to be sure that Perkins’ evidence was false: the difficulty was to prove it. There were two possible explanations. Either Perkins was a liar, or Weldon had deliberately deceived him. If the former were the case, then the police would be faced with the notorious difficulty of proving a negative. If the latter, then a reference to Mr Polwhistle at the Darley Garage would probably clear the matter up.
Mr Polwhistle and his mechanic were ready and eager to help. They perfectly remembered Mr Perkins – which was not surprising, since the arrival of a complete stranger to hire a car was a rare event in Darley. Mr Perkins had pulled out his watch, they remembered, and compared it with the garage clock, mentioning as he did so that the watch had run down and that he had had to inquire the time of a passer-by. He had then said: ‘Oh, yes, it seems to be just right,’ and had further asked whether their clock was reliable and how long they would take to get to Wilvercombe.
‘And is your clock reliable?’
‘It was reliable that day all right.’
‘How do you mean, that day?’
‘Well, she loses a bit, and that’s a fact, but we’d just set her on the Thursday morning, hadn’t we, Tom?’
Tom agreed that they had, adding that ‘she’ was an eight-day clock, and that he was accustomed to wind and set her every Thursday morning, Thursday being an important day on account of Heathbury market, the centre about which all local business seemed to revolve.
There seemed to be no shaking this evidence. It was true that neither Mr Polwhistle nor Tom had actually seen the face of Mr Perkins’ watch, but they both declared that he had said: ‘It seems to be just right.’ Therefore, if there was any discrepancy, Perkins must have been intentionally concealing the face. It was, perhaps, a little remarkable that Perkins should so insistently have drawn attention to the rightness of his watch. Constable Ormond remounted his motor-cycle and returned to Wilvercombe, more than ever convinced that Perkins was an unconscionable liar.
Inspector Umpelty agreed with him. ‘ ’Tisn’t natural,’ he said, ‘to my mind, for a man all upset as he was to start bothering about the exact time the minute he gets into a place. Trouble is, if he says he saw Weldon, and we can’t prove he didn’t, what are we going to do about it?’
‘Well, sir,’ suggested Ormond, with deference, ‘what I’ve been thinking is, if Weldon or whoever it was rode along the shore between Darley and the Flat-Iron, somebody ought to have seen him. Have we asked all the people who passed along the top of the cliffs round about that time?’
‘You needn’t think that hadn’t occurred to me, my lad,’ replied the Inspector, grimly. ‘I’ve interrogated everyone that went past between one o’clock and two o’clock, and not a soul of ’em saw hide nor hair of a horse.’
‘How about those people at the cottages?’
‘Them?’ The Inspector snorted. ‘They never saw anything, you bet your life – nor they wouldn’t, not if old Pollock was concerned in it, as it’s our belief he was – always supposing there was anything to be concerned in. Still, go and try your hand on them again if you like, young ’un, and if you get anything out of ’em I’ll hand it to you. Old Pollock’s got his back up, and neither him nor that brother-in-law of his, Billy Moggeridge, is out to give anything away to the police. Still, you trot along there. You’re a comely bachelor, and there’s no saying but you may be able to get something out of the women-folk.’
The blushing Ormond accordingly made his way to the cottages, where, much to his relief, he found the men-folk absent and the women employed at the wash-tub. At first he was none too cordially received, but, after he had stripped off his uniform tunic and given young Mrs Pollock a hand with the mangle and carried two buckets of water from the well for Mrs Moggeridge, the atmosphere became less frigid, and he was able to put his questions.
But the results were disappointing. The women were able to give very good reasons for having seen nothing of any horse or rider on Thursday, 18th. The family dinners had been eaten as usual at twelve o’clock, and after dinner there was the ironing to finish. There was a sight of washing, as Mr Ormond could see for himself, for Mrs Pollock and Mrs Moggeridge to deal with. There was Granpa Pollock and Granma Pollock and Jem, what was that particular about his shirts and collars, and young Arthur and Polly and Rosie and Billy Moggeridge and Susie and Fanny and little David and the baby and Jenny Moggeridge’s Baby Charles what was a accident what Mrs Moggeridge was looking after, Jenny being out in service, all of which do make work and often the washing don’t get finished till Saturday and you couldn’t be surprised, what with the men’s jerseys and stockings and one thing and another and every drop of water having to be fetched. Nobody hadn’t been out of the house that afternoon, leastways, only
at the back, not till after three o’clock for sure, when Susie took the potatoes out into the front garden to peel for supper. Susie see a gentleman then, dressed in shorts and carrying a knapsack, come up the lane from the shore, but it wouldn’t be him as Mr Ormond wanted to know about, because he came in later on with a lady and told them about the body being found. Mr Ormond was quite pleased to hear about this gentleman, nevertheless. The gentleman was wearing hornrimmed spectacles and he came up the lane ‘somewhere between half-past three and four,’ and went straight off along the road towards Lesston Hoe. This must, of course, have been Perkins, and a brief calculation showed that this time fitted in reasonably well both with his own story and Harriet’s. Harriet had met him about half-a-mile further on at four o’clock. But that proved nothing, and the crucial period between 1.30 and three o’clock remained as obscure as before.
Puzzled and dissatisfied, Ormond chugged slowly back to Darley, noticing as he went how little of the beach could actually be seen from the road. It was, in fact, only for about a mile on either side of the Flat-Iron that the road ran actually close to the edge of the cliffs. Here there was the breadth of a wide field between them and the height of the cliff hid the sands from view. It would not really have been so risky a business as one might suppose to ride in broad daylight to commit a murder at the Flat-Iron, and it was hardly surprising that no traveller on the road had seen the bay mare pass. But had she passed? There was the horseshoe to prove it and there was the ring-bolt on the rock to suggest it. It was the ring-bolt that was chiefly bothering Constable Ormond, for if it was not there to hold the horse, what was it for? And Wimsey’s latest theory had made it necessary for the horse to be released and sent back before the Flat-Iron was reached.
And that was a very hit-or-miss theory, from the murderer’s point of view. How could he be sure that the animal would go back and would not hang about the place attracting attention? In fact, after being galloped violently for four and a half miles, it was far more likely to take matters easy. If one was to ignore the ring-bolt, was it not possible that the bay mare had been tethered somewhere, to be picked up later? There were weighty objections to that. There was no post or groyne along the shore to which she could have been tied, and if the murderer had brought her close in under the cliff, then he would have had to leave two lines of footprints – the mare’s in going and his own in returning. But he might have argued that this would not greatly matter if it was at some distance from the Flat-Iron. It might just be worth while to turn back and examine the shore from that point of view.
He did so, riding right up as far as the Flat-Iron itself, scrambling down by the same path that Harriet had used, and working his way along at the foot of the cliff in the direction of Darley. After about half-an-hour’s search, he found what he was looking for. There was a recess in the cliff where at some time there had been a fall of rock. Jammed in among the boulders was a large wooden post, which had apparently formed part of a fence – erected, no doubt, to keep men or animals from straying upon the dangerous part of the cliffs. If the bay mare had been brought in there, she might easily have been tethered to the beam, while, owing to the overhang of the cliff and the accumulation of fallen stones, she would have been practically invisible, either from the sea or from the road above.
This discovery was gratifying, but it would have been more gratifying if Ormond could have found any positive indication that this had really happened. The sand was so loose and dry that no recognisable marks could be expected above high-water mark, nor, though he examined the wooden post very carefully with a lens, could he find any indications of its having been used as a horse-post. A strand of rope fibre, a horse-hair or two would have been better than a bank-note to Ormond at that moment, while a bunch of horse-droppings would have been worth its weight in rubies. But none of these simple, homely sights rewarded his anxious gaze. There was the piece of timber and there was the recess in the cliff, and that was all.
Shaking his head, he walked to the edge of the water and set out at a brisk trot for the Flat-Iron. He found that by pelting along as fast as a heavyish, fully-clothed young constable could be expected to pelt on a hot summer’s day, he could reach the rock in twelve minutes exactly. It was too far. Five minutes’ walk was the most that Weldon could possibly have allowed himself by Wimsey’s calculation. Ormond again scrambled up the cliff, remounted his bicycle and began to do sums in his head.
By the time he arrived at the police-station, these sums had taken a definite form.
‘The way I look at it is this, sir,’ he said to Superintendent Glaisher. ‘We’ve been going along the line that it was Perkins that was providing the alibi for Weldon. Suppose it was the other way round. Suppose Weldon is providing the alibi for Perkins. What do we know about Perkins? Only that he’s a school-teacher and that nobody seems to have kept tabs on him since last May. Now, he says he slept at Wilvercombe and didn’t start away that morning till one o’clock. That’s a bit thick to start with. The only proof he offers of that is that he bought some stuff at a chemist’s – he doesn’t remember the chemist and he isn’t clear about the time. Now we know that Weldon was in Wilvercombe that morning, and his time isn’t altogether accounted for, either. Supposing those two had met and fixed it all up there. Perkins comes along to Darley and gets the horse.’
‘We’ll have to find out whether anyone saw him pass through the village.’
‘That’s so, sir. We must check that up, naturally. But say he really got there at about 1.15 or so. Then he’d have plenty of time to get along with the mare, tie her up where that there post is, and buzz along on foot to the rock and commit his murder.’
‘Wait a moment,’ said Glaisher. ‘This place is fifteen minutes’ quick walk from the rock.’
‘More like fifteen minutes’ run, sir.’
‘Yes, but over wet sand; through water, actually. Shall we call it just over a mile? Right. Then that leaves three and a half miles for the mare. At eight miles an hour, that needs – eight miles in sixty minutes, one mile in sixty over eight’ – Glaisher always had to work these rule-of-three problems out on the corners of blotting-pads; it had been the worst stumbling-block he had had to overcome on his way to promotion – ‘thirty multiplied by seven over eight – oh, dear! divide by two – multiply – divide –’
Ormond, who had the gift of being able to add three columns of figures at once in his head, waited respectfully.
‘I make it about twenty-six minutes,’ said Glaisher.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘That means’ – Glaisher gazed at the face of the station-clock with working lips. ‘Fifteen minutes from two o’clock, 1.45; twenty-six minutes from that again – that’s 1.19.’
‘Yes, sir; and we can allow him four minutes to tie the mare up; 1.15 I make it he’d have to start out from Darley.’
‘Just so; I was only verifying your figures. In that case he’d have had to be in the village at 1.10 or thereabouts.’
‘That’s right, sir.’
‘And how and when did he pick the mare up again, Ormond?’
‘He didn’t, sir, not as I make it out.’
‘Then what became of it?’
‘Well, sir, I look at it like this. Where we’ve been making the mistake is in thinking as the whole job was done by one person. Supposing now as this Perkins commits his murder at two o’clock and then hides under the Flat-Iron, same as we thought. He can’t get away till 2.30; we know that, because Miss Vane was there till that time. Well, then, at 2.30 she clears and he clears, and starts to walk back.’
‘Why should he walk back? Why not go on? Oh, of course – he’s got to fix up his time to fit in with Weldon’s 1.55 alibi.’
‘Yes, sir. Well, if he was to walk straight back to Pollock’s cottage, which is two miles from the Flat-Iron, doing a steady three miles an hour, he’d be there at 3.10, but Susie Moggeridge says she didn’t see him till between 3.30 and four o’clock, and I don’t see that she’s got any call to
lie about it.’
‘She may be in it too; we’ve got our doubts about old Pollock.’
‘Yes, sir; but if she was lying she’d lie the other way. She wouldn’t give him more time than he needed to come from the Flat-iron. No, sir, it’s my belief Perkins had to stop on the way for something, and I fancy I know what that was. It’s all right for the doctor to say that the man who cut this chap’s throat may not have got blood on himself, but that’s not to say he didn’t get it – not by a long chalk. I think Perkins had to stop all that time to get his togs changed. He could easily take an extra shirt and pair of shorts in his kit. He may have given the one he was wearing a bit of a wash, too. Say he did that, and then got to Pollock’s place about 3.45. He comes up by the lane, where Susie Moggeridge sees him and he goes along another half-mile or so, and he meets Miss Vane at four o’clock – as he did.’
‘H’m!’ Glaisher revolved this idea in his mind. It had its attractive points, but it left a great deal open to question.
‘But the mare, Ormond?’
‘Well, sir, there’s only one person could have brought back the mare that we know of, and that’s Weldon, and only one time he could have done it, and that’s between four o’clock, when Polwhistle and Tom said good-bye to him, and 5.20, when Miss Vane saw him in Darley. Let’s see how that works out, sir. It’s three and a half miles from Hink’s Lane to the place where the mare was left; he could start at four, walk there in an hour or a bit less, ride back quick, and just be back at 5.20 in time to be seen by them two. It all fits in, sir, doesn’t it?’
‘It fits, as you say, Ormond, but it’s what I’d call a tight fit. Why do you suppose Perkins came back with Miss Vane instead of going on to Lesston Hoe?’
‘It might be to find out what she was going to do, sir, or it might be just to look innocent-like. He’d be surprised to see her there, I expect – not knowing about her going up to Brennerton – and it’s not wonderful he should have seemed a bit put about when she spoke to him. He might think going back with her was the boldest and best thing to do. Or he may have felt anxious and wanted to see for himself whether Weldon had got back with the nag all right. He was very careful not to speak to Weldon when they did meet – went out of his way to have nothing to do with him, as you might say. And as for his clearing off the way he did, that’s natural if you come to think of it, supposing he had those pants and things all soiled with blood in his knapsack.’