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"House for Sale," Amalgamated Press, London, 1934
"With Intent to Kill," Ward Lock & Co., London, 1936
MR. GUDDLE of Guddle and Cheek, house agents and surveyors, is showing a prospective buyer over an empty country house when, in one of the downstairs rooms they come upon the body of a dead man, obviously murdered. It takes all the pertinacity and skill of Superintendent Wadden and Inspector Head to fix the crime on the right person, but, as everyone knows who has read of the exploits of these police officers before, their investigations are so thorough as to give the illusion of actual truth—which is one of Mr. Vivian's most commendable qualities in detective fiction.
"COUNTRY wants rain," said Mr. Guddle—of Guddle and Cheek, house agents and surveyors. The laconic character of the remark was due, possibly, to the fact that he had to dodge a hen just as he opened his lips. He swung his steering-wheel deftly, and the fowl fled chirrawking through a hole in the roadside hedge.
"I believe," said Mr. Guddle, as he straightened out again, "they turn 'em out on purpose. It'd have been seven-and-six, if I'd hit it."
His passenger gave him a glance of distaste, and made no reply. Mr. Guddle was one to inspire distaste: he had the frowsy, unkempt ensemble usually associated with men who are put into households in cases of distraint—bailiffs' men. His car, though it travelled well, gave the impression of having been retrieved off a scrap-heap for this trip: his tie was a mere wisp of indeterminate hue, and his collar and laundries had been strangers for a long time.
The man beside him was of a different type, well-built, well-dressed in pin-stripe blue flannels, grey moustached, and, though apparently nearing his sixties, still an athletic-looking personality—definitely a personality rather than a nonentity. He eyed the dust on the hedges and foliage as they made their way along the country road, and silently concurred in that the country did want rain. Then he observed that they were approaching a road junction, and, before they reached it, Mr. Guddle swerved in to the side of their road, braked, and stopped before a large gate sadly in need of a coat of paint.
"And here we are, sir," said Mr. Guddle, cheerfully.
A large board, beside and just beyond the gate, announced that THIS DESIRABLE RESIDENCE was FOR SALE, OR TO BE LET ON A LONG LEASE. The desirable residence, shaded on this side by a big cedar flanked by a laburnum of which the blossoms had lately fallen, and a young, graceful chestnut tree, declared itself as of two stories, built of red brick, with a big bay window on either side the main entrance, which was sheltered by a porch supported on two freestone pillars.
"Two thousand five hundred," said the passenger, without moving in his seat. He appeared to consider the price excessive.
Mr. Guddle got out from the driving seat, slammed his door, and trotted hurriedly round to open the near side door.
"With company's water, main drainage, and gas laid on," he supplemented. "At that figure, it's a gift—you couldn't build a house like that, in these days, for three thousand, Mr. Morton."
"You couldn't build the Crystal Palace for three thousand, probably," Morton rejoined. "But I don't want the Crystal Palace, all the same." He descended slowly to the roadside, and Mr. Guddle closed the car door.
"It's been empty a long while, by the look of it," he said.
"A place soon goes down, if it's not lived in," Mr. Guddle assured him. "It wants a bit done here and there, certainly."
"It needs complete exterior redecoration," Morton said sternly.
"Well, yes." The admission sounded doubtful. "Strictly between you and me, I think they'd be open to an offer. Two acres of grounds, a fine position, gravel subsoil, and a house like that—they don't build 'em like that, nowadays. Pre-war, sir—that's what it is. Pre-war. And an architect's house, not a builder's. Old Mr. Denham of Westingborough was responsible for the plans, and his name's a guarantee. You don't want anything more—a guarantee, his name is."
"Yes, but a guarantee of what?" Morton inquired reflectively.
"Quality. Anyone in Westingborough'll tell you what his name stands for," Mr. Guddle responded, rather sullenly. He had an idea that his prospective client was indulging in sarcasm at his expense. Then he brightened up: enthusiasm, he realized, might help to accomplish the deal; visible resentment might kill it.
"You get no idea of the bargain it is, from here," he observed, and pushed the gate open. Having sagged below its latch, it swung freely. "Shall we look it over?"
Morton followed him just so far that the gate swung against its post after they had both passed on to the weed-covered drive, which ran for some score yards from this gate to the entrance porch, and there widened into a sweep that would admit of turning a vehicle. But, once inside, Morton turned back, and, picking a few flakes of peeling paint off the top bar of the gate, spoke again.
"Where, exactly, is Carden?" he asked.
"Half a mile or less farther along the road, straight on the way we were going," Mr. Guddle assured him.
"And that other road—the one that joins in with this just ahead? In what direction does that lead?" Morton pursued.
"Well, you see, sir, we've come straight out from Crandon," the agent explained. "If we'd borne away over the bridge just outside the town, instead of keeping straight, that road would have taken us through the marshes, up over the hills, past a mansion called Castel Garde, and then wound round to join in with this again just here. It's called the marsh road, and to go round by it would put four or five miles on to the run here from Crandon."
"We've come by the chord of the arc, you mean," Morton suggested thoughtfully. "I take it, too, that the two acres of grounds form a triangle, bounded on two sides by the two roads?"
"That is so, sir." Mr. Guddle grew hopeful again. This interest in the setting of the desirable residence betokened a possibility of a deal, and here was a man, evidently, who could see past a mere coat of paint and a few redecorations.
"Then, if you don't mind, we'll go back by that marsh road," Morton suggested. "I should like to see what Castel Garde looks like, having read and heard so much about it lately."
Mr. Guddle's hopes shrank, nearly to vanishing point. "I take it, sir, we may as well inspect the house, now we're here," he observed.
"Decidedly," Morton agreed, and turned his back on the gate. "And the third boundary—what is there on that side?"
"It's aggericultural," Mr. Guddle assured him. "There's them three cottages we passed about a hundred yards back. They back on to a field—winter beans, I think it was. The district is aggericultural."
"And in need of rain," Morton said gravely.
Mr. Guddle gave him a suspicious glance. Here, evidently, was more sarcasm. But Morton was placidly surveying the frontage of the red-brick house, possibly calculating the cost of redecoration.
"I've got the front-door key," Mr. Guddle said hopefully.
"How long has it been standing empty?" Morton inquired.
"The best part of two years," Mr. Guddle answered. "Quite two years, in fact. I believe, as a matter of fact, it might be more than two years. This is June—now—" He began to lose himself in calculations, necessary or otherwise to accuracy.
"How long has it been standing empty?" Morton repeated, with no variation from the tone of his original question.
"Two years last March," Mr. Guddle answered, truthfully but sulkily. He felt himself beginning to dislike this possible client.
"And looks it." Morton took a brief survey of the grounds, ignoring the agent's patent anxiety to get inside the house, where the signs of neglect might be less evident. No trace of the gravel of which the drive was composed was visible under its mat of dandelions, thistles, and grass: what had been a lawn was a tract of laid, dead grass through which the new spears had thrust themselves, to make in turn another matted tangle, unless some attention were paid to the mass before another winter fell. Beyond, the dead stalks of last autumn's chrysanthemums poked out above new-shooting bindweed and a flourishing thicket of nettles; still farther back, a mixture of rhododendrons and lilac had ceased to flower. Above and behind these reared two old pear trees, as if to say that some part of the two acres was devoted to a kitchen garden.
"Outbuildings?" Morton inquired, without moving.
"Stabling for three horses, and a good garage—take four cars easily," Mr. Guddle assured him. "Then there's a woodshed—we can go round the back after we've been through the house—I got a back-door key. Two rooms over the garage, too."
"Good hunting district, isn't it?" Morton suggested.
"Oh, fine—fine, sir! There's the Westingborough foxhounds, and the Crandon pack—fine sport with 'em, either of 'em."
Morton consented to advance toward the front door, and Mr. Guddle took out his key with renewed belief in a deal eventuating. He unlocked the door, flung it open, and stood back for his client to enter before him. But the client seemed in no hurry.
"Main drainage, I believe you said?" he suggested, standing on the step and looking into the bare, mouldy-walled entrance hall.
"And company's water," the agent assured him.
"It's the drainage that's most evident, from here," he said.
"There does seem to be a bit of a smell," Mr. Guddle admitted.
"Then thank heaven it's not a whole one," Morton observed.
"Of course, you want to have the drains tested," Mr. Guddle said encouragingly. "I wouldn't think of anyone going into a place without having the drains tested. And two years, more or less—there's all sorts of things get into drains in that time. Fine entrance hall, sir, this. The—er—the proportions. Noble staircase, that. For a house this size, I don't know where you'd find a nobler staircase."
"Positively regal," Morton confirmed him gravely, and at that he knew he hated this sardonic devil, hated him violently. But, restraining himself, he led the way in and waited.
"Dining-room and drawing-room one on each side the hall, and both about the same size," he intoned. "That fireplace, there, is after Adam. Mr. Denham had it made in keeping, after Adam."
"We all are," Morton said, with unabated gravity, and followed into the entrance hall. "The drainage, it appears, is not long after."
"It's got to be tested," Mr. Guddle insisted rather acidly. "Such things as cats, not to mention rats and things—" He broke off rather lamely. Olfactorily, Morton's assertion was fully confirmed.
"Possibly." Morton looked up at the ceiling as he spoke. "Two years—yes, mildew is inevitable. On the whole, it appears in pretty fair structural condition. Wants a lot spent on it, of course."
"I'm quite sure they would be open to an offer," Mr. Guddle urged.
"Two thousand, say," Morton suggested.
"Well, I don't know about that, sir. It's a long drop—a very long drop. But you'd better see what a well-built place it is. Now this"—he threw open the door on the left of the hall—"is what was used as the drawing-room. As I remember it, they had it furnished rather rock-cockyoh, and spoilt it. Might be made a fine room."
"It might," Morton agreed cautiously, looking over the smaller man's shoulder into the room. "Signs of damp on the walls, I see."
"Two years, sir—two years unoccupied. I assure you positively it's a gravel subsoil. And they would be open to an offer."
"Having failed to sell it in two years—yes,"
Morton agreed. "And the other—the dining-room?"
The little man closed the drawing-room door and trotted across to the other side of the hall. "This one, sir. Equally nobly proportioned." He turned the handle and thrust the door open. "There is, I remember, a serving hatch to the kitchen... Oh, hell!"
Again Morton looked over his shoulder. Face downward, to the left of the doorway as they gazed, lay the body of a man. The back of the skull had been smashed in, and lay in a brownish, horrible mess. Mr. Guddle backed away so suddenly and violently that he sent his companion back two or three steps, involuntarily.
"It—it wasn't the drains," he gasped, barely coherently.
"We must go for the police at once," Morton said, "and don't forget to lock that front door again as you come out."
He led the way out. Mr. Guddle, following him, closed the door and had to fumble tremblingly to put his keys away. At last he turned to Morton and gestured toward the road and his car.
"I—I'll take that offer of two thousand, Mr. Morton," he said as he hurried to keep up with the other's long strides.
"Not from me," Morton said firmly.
Mr. Guddle took a starting-handle from under the driving-seat, went to the front of the car, and swung the engine viciously. It picked up, roared, and went on roaring till he had hurried back to adjust the hand throttle-control. His lips moved meanwhile, and Morton, having seated himself, watched the movement.
"What was that you said?" he asked, when the roar had died down.
"I said, and not from anyone else either," Mr. Guddle answered morosely. "We'll never sell that damned place, now!"
He slammed in first gear, and drove on toward the police sergeant's house that he knew existed in Carden village.
"IT'S that empty house just out on the Crandon road, Mr. Head—where the marsh road forks off. Guddle drove over from Crandon with a man who thought about buying the house, and they found the body in a ground-floor room. Been there some days, they say."
Sergeant Purvis, the receiver to his ear, glanced up at the two men standing in his front room: Carden did not boast a police station; Purvis took poachers and other small fry over to Westingborough if he caught them, and about one journey of the kind in two years was his average. The sins of a village like Carden, as a rule, are not legal offences, and a station would have been superfluous.
"And the man who thought of buying the house wants to get back to London," Morton interjected.
"Just a minute, sir." Purvis made the reply, and turned to the transmitter again. "Well, sir, it appears they both found it," he said. "Opened the door and looked in—"
"Guddle found it," Morton broke in again. "I want to get away."
Purvis listened awhile, interposing a—"Yes, Mr. Head," or—"Yes, sir," at intervals. Finally, with "Very good, sir," he replaced the receiver and turned to his two visitors, taking a note-book and pencil from the pocket of his uniform coat.
"I'll just take a few particulars, gentlemen," he said. "P'raps you'll both sit down for a minute or two—"
"But, hang it, man, surely it's your place to go and inspect the body, not detain us here," Morton interrupted irritably.
"Have you mentioned finding that body to anyone else?" Purvis inquired, "or did you come straight here to me?"
"Drove straight here to you," Guddle answered.
"And locked up again before you left the house?" Purvis pursued.
"Yes, of course," Guddle rejoined.
"Well, then, that body's kept till you found it, so it'll keep another half-hour or so till Inspector Head gets here. Now, Mr. Guddle, your full name, please?"
"Horatio Nelson Guddle," the agent replied, rather sulkily.
"Of Guddle and Cheek, house and estate agents, Crandon," the sergeant amplified, writing as he spoke. Then he looked at Morton. "Your full name and address, sir?" he inquired.
"Frederick Leslie Morton, fifteen, Batten Gardens, Lancaster Gate, London, west," Morton replied. "Occupation, company director."
"Thank you, sir." Purvis wrote steadily, and looked up again.
"You went to view this house, The Angle, as it's called?"
"You know that already," Morton snapped. "I want to get away."
"What was the time when you got there?" Purvis pursued unmovedly.
"Half an hour ago—not more—what does it matter, when the man has been dead for days?" Morton sounded angrily irritated.
"That would make it three-five," the sergeant suggested calmly, and made another entry in his note-book. "You found the body on entering the house—by the front door, I understand?"
"No, Sergeant, we didn't," Guddle interposed. "We had a look at the entrance hall, then looked into the drawing-room that used to be—the room on the left of the hall, that is—"
"Find anything there?" Purvis interrupted.
"Mildew," Morton snapped, before Guddle could reply.
"Did you go all over that room?" Purvis asked, calmly.
"No, just looked in and shut the door again," Guddle said.
"And what did you do after that?"
"I went across the hall, looked into what had been the dining-room, and saw the body lying there. Mr. Morton looked in over my shoulder, and said—I think he said we ought to go to the police at once. I think that was what he said. So I closed the door—we didn't either of us go into the room—came out, took care the front door was locked, and came straight here to you. And that's all."
"You may think it's all," Purvis said, "but Mr. Head won't when he gets here, if I know anything about him. He'll want—"
"Look here, Sergeant!" Morton's voice had a note of exasperation in it. "Are you prolonging your inquiries with a view to keeping us here till this inspector of yours comes out from Westingborough?"
"I'm anticipating a few of the questions he's sure to ask you," Purvis answered. "Saving you time, as a matter of fact."
"Let me tell you, I'm going back to London," Morton snapped. "I've given you my name and address, and this man can confirm it. You have no business to keep me here—I didn't even find this body."
Purvis gave him a steady look, and then transferred his gaze to Guddle, who appeared slightly uneasy under it.
"Five-forty Westingborough, five-fifty-two Crandon, express," he said. "Mr. Head'll be out here by a quarter-past four, and you'll be able to catch it without any trouble. I expect Mr. Guddle'll drive you back to Crandon—twenty minutes at the most."
"I want to go back to Crandon at once!" Morton almost stormed.
"Very good, sir." The sergeant lost none of his calmness. "You might get a car from the Carden Arms, but I doubt it. The three-thirty 'bus has gone by now, and the next is four-thirty. Mr. Guddle, being the man that found the body, will stop here till Inspector Head arrives, and then make his statement."
"I've made it," Guddle protested. "Told you all I know."
"You may think so, Mr. Guddle," the sergeant replied sceptically.
"You may think so, Mr. Guddle," said Inspector Head, when, having read Sergeant Purvis's notes aloud, he had also heard Guddle declare firmly that that was all he knew about the body and the circumstances under which he had found it. "But you have a lot more to tell me, yet."
"Then I'd like to know what it is," Guddle snapped.
"This house is known as The Angle," Head observed. "From being at the angle of the three roads, probably. Yes. Who owns it?"
"Used to belong to a man named Berrow," Guddle answered. "About three years ago his wife died and six months after that he died."
"Leaving the house to whom?" Head pursued.
"Mainly to the mortgagees," Guddle explained. "He had a daughter, Helen Berrow. Went on the stage, she did. Then I believe she got on the films. Anyhow, she went to Hollywood, just after her mother died."
"The inference is that she went on the films," Head observed, and Morton, observing and listening to this quiet, kindly-looking man, began to like him. "She was the heiress, I conclude?"
"Berrow left her everything," Guddle assented; "and from what I remember it wasn't much. She didn't come back over here when he died. Lawson and Fell, the solicitors at Crandon, had the handling of the estate, and they are the mortgagees for The Angle. Fifteen hundred, the mortgage is, and Miss Berrow ain't paid any interest since her father died. Told 'em they could have the house, sell it, and let her have anything there was over after the sale."
"Miss Berrow is still in Hollywood?" Head pursued.
"S'far as I know," Guddle replied. "I ain't heard of her making a name for herself on the pictures, and don't know whether she's there or where she is. Lawson and Fell would know, of course."
"What keys have you got for the house—all doors?"
"Front and back doors only," Guddle answered. "Got 'em from Lawson and Fell when they put us up as agents—there's two other firms got keys though, I expect. Dodder's people got their board up facing where the two roads join, and Makin and Just put their board up facing the marsh road. They'd have a key apiece, I reckon."
"And Lawson and Fell have all the rest?" Head suggested.
"Except the back door—one key of that was left in the inside of the lock, so any of us could just unlock the door to show people the back outside premises, and then come through and lock it again, come out by the front, lock up, and leave everything secure."
"Taking away your front-door key for the next possible buyer—yes." Head assented thoughtfully. "Well, while Doctor Bennett is completing his examination of the body, we will just look round the ground-floor windows and the doors. Front and back door only, are there?"
"Side door as well," Guddle amended. "Goes out down there—" He pointed along the entrance hall to the staircase, behind which, from where Head stood, he could see the end of a passage. "Back of the drawing-room, and out to the garden without going round by the front or through the kitchen and servants' rooms. Straight along."
For Head had advanced and, as Guddle finished speaking, had entered the passage. It led him to a half-glazed door, the glass panel being frosted, and, on approaching the door, the inspector saw the key in its mortise lock. He tried the handle, and then turned the key and opened the door. The bolt squeaked rustily in withdrawing.
Head looked out at a tangle of shrubs and tall weeds, at the narrow intervening strip of tangled, unkempt grass, at the grass-grown path, and then down at the step beyond the threshold. He stooped, and from the step took up an ordinary hairpin, which he put in his pocket. Then, turning about, he faced Morton, close to him.
"Did you say anything, Mr. Morton?" he asked dryly.
"I—nothing! Oh, nothing!" Morton answered hurriedly.
"Now the back door." Head looked past Morton at Guddle, to whom he addressed the remark. The agent turned about with a hasty but respectful—
"This way, Mr. Head. I'll show you."
He led the full length of the passage, and across the back of the main entrance hall to another door which gave access to a narrow, rather gloomy passage extending toward the back of the house. Just inside the passage Head stooped again, picked up a second hairpin, and pocketed it without remark. Before him, at the end of the passage, was another door of which the upper half was panelled with frosted glass. Guddle paused before it, rubbing his chin perplexedly.
"The key was there—I'll swear it was," he said, in a troubled way. "I ain't been here for nearly four months, but it was here then."
"Don't touch that handle!" Head's voice was sharply commanding.
Guddle drew back his hand hurriedly and thrust it in his pocket, as if to place it out of temptation's way. He backed against the wall to give the inspector passage room, and glanced at Morton, looming over him, silent, interested, no longer anxious with regard to getting away, by all appearances. Head took out a magnifying glass, opened it, and gave the white earthenware door-handle a brief inspection.
"Yes," he said, as he drew back and put the glass away. "Yes, but—I wonder, Guddle, if you'd mind my taking a set of your finger-prints later on? These may be yours from a previous visit, and whoever opened that door may have done it without disturbing yours. On the other hand—well, you see why I want yours, don't you?"
"Oh, quite, Mr. Head—quite! Anything to oblige. Take mine if you like, with pleasure—I've nothing on my conscience."
"No house agent ever has anything on his conscience," Head observed placidly. "And that key was there when you were here last?"
"I turned it in the lock myself, and left it there," Guddle assured him. "And nobody's looked over the house since then."
"How long ago was that?"
"About the middle of March. Old lady wanted a country cottage. I told her this was no good for what she wanted, but she would come out and look it over. Regular fussy she was, too. Reckoned she might buy it as an investment, and offered twelve hundred. I got fed up, then, and told her I couldn't give it her, because it wasn't mine."
Head went back to the entrance hall, Morton preceding him. "Lawson and Fell," he soliloquized.
"Did you know this man Berrow?" He turned to Guddle and put the question abruptly.
"Used to see him in Crandon sometimes," Guddle confessed. "Elderly, pleasant-looking man. His daughter was very pretty—but she went on the stage, as I said. I didn't know him to speak to."
"Buried here?" Head pursued thoughtfully.
"As far as I know. Yes, though. Carden churchyard. Ellis, the stonemason at Crandon, was doing the memorial stone when I went to see him about selling his house, and he said he was putting it up here."
"Since Berrow has been dead over two years, surely he can have nothing to do with this body, Mr. Head?" Morton put in.
"Quite so," Head answered imperturbably, "but he may have left his keys somewhere at some time or other. We'll just look round at the back, I think, Mr. Guddle, while the doctor and superintendent finish what they're doing in there. Will you show me round?"
The two went out. Morton remained in the bare entrance hall, and Head did not suggest his accompanying them. Outside the main entrance they turned to the right, passed the big bay window of the drawing-room and, turning the corner of the house, followed the grass-grown path past the side door and came to an unfenced, concrete-paved area at the back of the house, a sort of yard bounded by the back wall of The Angle on one side, and by outbuildings on the other. Head, ignoring all else, went straight to the back door of the house, looked down at the doorstep, and picked up another hairpin. He put it in his pocket with the two he had already found.
"I thought so," he remarked in a satisfied way.
Then he looked round, and eventually went to the opposite edge of the concrete to that by which he had reached the back of the house, and gazed thoughtfully at the tangle of weeds, grass, and shrubs which appeared to extend right away to the point of the triangle of ground between the two roads. After a minute or less he faced about and surveyed the equally unkempt disorder beyond the other side wall of the house. Guddle watched him, but ventured no remark.
"Well, thank you, Mr. Guddle," he said at last, and moved to go.
Guddle trotted beside him. "Sorry I couldn't tell you anything about it, Mr. Head," he observed.
"Beyond finding the body, that is."
"It does seem a pity," Head assented gravely, "but then, I can't blame you for that. I didn't expect you'd be able to tell me anything. Beyond what you have been good enough to tell me, that is."
They went back to the front entrance. Morton, waiting on the doorstep, stood aside and nodded toward the interior of the hall.
"They're asking for you, Inspector," he said. "I told them you were round at the back."
"Thanks," Head answered, and went inside. Just outside the dining-room door he was confronted by Superintendent Wadden, uniformed, obese, fierce-eyed, and evidently perspiring.
"Any evidence, Supe, in addition to a hairpin?" Head inquired.
"How the devil d' you know we found a hairpin?" Wadden demanded in reply.
"NOBODY wants a corpse," Superintendent Wadden observed regretfully. "That's the trouble. There's Cortazzi, of course."
"With the Carden Arms full of his summer visitors, and his dining-room crowded every noon and evening with parties from all over the place—Cortazzi would walk up the wall and lay an egg if you suggested putting it anywhere about his place," Head pointed out.
Wadden slid himself a little nearer to the head end of the old-fashioned, horsehair-covered sofa in Sergeant Purvis's front room, and blew, as was his way when he wished to express distaste.
"Are there any springs left in this thing, Purvis?" he inquired aggrievedly. "Why don't you frame it and hang it on the wall?"
"It belonged to my grandmother, sir," Purvis apologized respectfully. "We don't like to part with it."
"Label it 'The Promise of Spring' and present it to a picture gallery." Wadden got up as he spoke, went over to an arm-chair, and lowered himself into it. "Strictly speaking, I suppose, we ought to hand this corpse over to you, you know. You could put it in that out-house at the back and have it under your eye till the inquest to-morrow—we shall have to have the inquest to-morrow."
"Under my nose, you mean, sir," Purvis objected.
"Well, we'll leave it there and you can put Sprott on guard over it—you go along to The Angle and tell him. Later, not yet. We've got to collate our findings first." He took out his note-book, rose to his feet again, and went to the telephone. "Description first," he explained. "We can't get that out too soon."
Removing the receiver, he asked for and obtained Westingborough police station, and was put through to the sergeant in charge.
"Pad and pencil, Wells, and take this down," he ordered. "Murder undoubtedly, at an unoccupied house known as The Angle, Carden, on Friday or Saturday last, according to the medical evidence so far obtained. Particulars of the victim as follows. Ready?"
"All ready, sir," Wells answered.
"Height, five feet nine or ten, age thirty-five to forty. Grey eyes, dark brown hair, closely and recently cut, and parted on the left. An eleven-stone man, I should say, probably of sedentary life—fleshy, but muscles poorly developed. Clean-shaven. Scar on left side of neck, under his ear, about three-quarters of an inch vertically by an eighth inch horizontally—yes, a long, narrow scar, probably a cut in the first instance, which would be not less than a year ago. Straight nose, thin lips, and a rather receding chin. Killed by one blow probably dealt with a heavy iron bar of round section, which smashed in his skull behind the right ear—behind and over the ear, that is. Round section, because there is no mark of cutting on the skull. It's simply broken in. Got all that?"
"All down, sir," Wells answered. "Shall I read it back?"
"When you've got the rest. Now for clothes. A well-tailored Harris tweed coat and trousers, chestnut brown in colour, and a smoke-grey flannel vest with four pockets. No outside breast pocket in the coat. Sixteen-and-a-half-inch starched white collar—yes, a double collar, inch and a quarter high, laundry-marked C.327. No other mark. Shirt, cotton and silk mixture, narrow brown and white stripes, same laundry mark, and no other. The collar is by Harling of Bond Street, and the shirt has no maker's name on it. Combination cellular summer underwear, cream-coloured, bearing no mark of any kind, probably tailored to measure. Fine quality brown cashmere socks—plain mid-brown, that is, and brown brogue shoes with fairly light soles, nearly new, and bearing no mark of any kind—made to measure, almost certainly. Dark brown soft felt hat, Battersby's best quality, nearly new, bearing no mark but the maker's. Are you keeping up?"
"All down in shorthand, sir. Shall I read it back now?"
"Don't be in such a damned hurry, man! Contents of pockets, now. Lower left vest pocket, a book of matches—Barnardo's Homes book. Lower right vest pocket, small penknife with two blades, one at each end, by Taylor of Sheffield, very little used, mother-of-pearl handle. Nothing else in vest pockets. Left inside breast pocket of coat, six one-pound and eight ten-shilling notes, not folded, and not in a case of any kind. Right inside breast pocket of coat, empty. Right outside pocket of coat, a fairly heavy, engine-turned silver cigarette case, containing nine Player's cigarettes under the band on one side, and six under the other band—yellow elastic bands. The cigarette case is well-worn, and the elastic of the bands has begun to perish and loosen. No name on it—nothing but the hall mark inside. There is a plain shield-shape on the outside for monogram, but it is not engraved with one. Nothing else in that pocket. Left outside pocket of coat, a brown bootlace, a farthing dated 1921, a pair of nail scissors in leather case with press-button fastening on the flap, and a Yale key not numbered, and stamped 'British made' on the reverse side from the word 'Yale.' Left trouser pocket, an eighteen-inch piece of fine white cord, thrust loose into the pocket. Right trouser pocket, two half-crowns, one two-shilling piece, three sixpences, and one penny. Are you still keeping up?"
"I've got it all down, sir."
"There's more, yet. Hip pocket, empty. Now add to personal description—good, even teeth, except for two artificial molars in lower jaw on left side, clipped by gold wire to their neighbours. The two upper front teeth are on the large side, and would probably be rather unduly prominent when the man was talking. Got that?"
"Yes, sir. Got it all."
"Read it all back, then."
Wells read back the description, and, as he read, Wadden nodded at the telephone transmitter at intervals, as if the man could see him.
"Right," he said at last. "Now get that out, the sooner the better. Special to all stations, and to the Yard. I'll be back with Mr. Head when we've finished here—midnight or sooner."
He blew, gustily, on his way back to the sofa. But, having reached that piece of furniture, he turned his back on it agilely, and went again to the arm-chair at the corner of the fireplace and sat down there. Mrs. Purvis, a small, plump woman with brilliantly red hair, brought in a tea-tray, and put it on the table.
"I thought you might like a cup, sir," she observed.
"Blessings on you, Mrs. Purvis!" Wadden exclaimed. "I didn't like to ask. Hurry up and pour it out, Head—sugar and milk, for me."
Mrs. Purvis left the three men. Wadden took his cup from Head and stirred its contents, round and round and round.
"You can get a Battersby hat anywhere," he observed abruptly. "All we've got is the C.327 laundry mark, and Harling of Bond Street on the collar. Probably, but not certainly, a London man."
"Except for the currency notes, the murderer took every scrap of paper out of the pockets," Head reflected aloud, and, standing by the centre table, sipped at his milkless, sugarless tea. "I wonder—how long will it take us to prove identity?"
"Gosh, it was a foul job, that examination!" Wadden exclaimed. "Head, we're getting more than our fair share. This is the fourth murder in this district inside two years, and two of 'em are strangers who came here to get killed. Y'know, we ought to get a poster out."
"A poster?" Head inquired dubiously.
"Fine hunting district, beautiful scenery, healthy air—come to the Westingborough district and get murdered. Every facility offered. Something of that sort. Joking apart, though, I wish I'd retired last month as I said I would. The next time the chief constable asks me to stay on— Purvis, you run along and tell Sprott the corpse stays where it is till to-morrow, in his charge. No, finish your tea first, man—he'll still be there when you get there. Tell him he needn't sit directly over it, and there won't be any pressmen out here till to-night, at the very earliest. Now, Head, what have you done, so far?"
"Guddle is getting his finger-prints done as soon as he gets back to Crandon—going to the station there, and the prints will be over to us here within the next hour, I should think," Head answered. "I rang Dodder, and also Makin and Just. Front-door key apiece and nothing else, and the keys haven't been out of their offices during the last month. Also, Crandon reports nobody in the least like the dead man is missing from there, as far as they know. Westingborough the same. Oh, Lawson and Fell, the Crandon firm of solicitors. They have keys of all three doors to The Angle, all in a sealed envelope."
"Then they'll have to break the seal and let us have a set," Wadden affirmed. "We've only got Guddle's front-door key and that one still in the side door, and you'll want to go in and out the back."
"Did I tell you the man Morton is staying the night at the Carden Arms instead of going back to London, in case we want him at the inquest to-morrow?" Head inquired after a brief pause.
"Is he, though?" Wadden drank his tea and held out the cup. "Repeat the dose," he urged. "Swizzle the pot round first—I like to be able to stand a spoon upright in it. Nice, kind, obliging man—and he was so devilish anxious to get away, too—wasn't he, Purvis?"
"Rather angry over being kept here, sir," Purvis agreed.
"But he only came looking for a house to retire into," Head pointed out. "He told me he'd never been in this district before, but came because it was recommended to him by a friend in London."
"Who was it said that a murderer is irresistibly drawn back to the scene of his crime?" Wadden half-soliloquized. "Never mind, though. Did he tell you the name of that friend of his?"
"A man named Darrell, who put up at the Carden Arms for a night last year, while he was on a motor tour," Head answered.
"There was once a man named Bunbury—or rather there wasn't," Wadden observed. "That was before the days of motor tours, though. Never mind—we'll postpone Morton for the present. Going now, Purvis? Right you are—come back here when you've seen Sprott. Head, we want the press in on this. That description—if it's in the London papers in the morning, we may have our victim identified at the inquest to-morrow afternoon. And that would be a big step."
"It will be in," Head promised. "I'll see to it."
"And now—hairpins," Wadden suggested, as the sergeant put on his helmet and went out. "Four of 'em—trot 'em out, man."
Groping in his pocket, Head produced the four hairpins and handed them over. Wadden rose from his chair and went to the window, and in the full light there examined the pins, with Head beside him.
"This fat one with the single dokes half-way along it was beside the body," he asserted. "The three wiggly thin ones are what you found planted outside the room. Rather badly planted."
"He was not an artist at his job," Head observed.
"No. Too—too prodigal. Overdid it. No woman would shed one hairpin beside the corpse, another at the side door, another at the back door, and yet another half-way between the two. They don't drip 'em about as freely as that, when they're not fighting. And there was no sign of a struggle. That man was hit once and once only, probably without suspecting the blow was going to be struck."
"Did he buy those pins?" Head mused aloud.
"No, he didn't," the superintendent affirmed confidently. "If he went in anywhere to get a packet of hairpins, he'd have come out with the one packet, either the fat or the thin sort. Not both."
"I wouldn't be sure of that," Head dissented. "He might have asked for a packet of hairpins, and then the man or girl in the shop might have asked whether the lady wanted fat or thin, or whatever the technical term happens to be. Then our murderer would see a chance of putting a little bit of realism in his broadcasting of pins, and say he wasn't sure, so he'd take a packet of each."
"Umm-m-yes," Wadden admitted reluctantly. "They're not common articles of virtue these days, are they?"
"I must ask my wife," Head said. "I believe hair is being grown again in some quarters, though. Little Nell, at the Duke of York, runs to wreaths over her ears lately, now I come to think of it, and I saw a girl in Westingborough the other day with a bump under the back of her hat. Not merely turned-up ends, but a bump like a turnip."
"You should have told her that," Wadden commented sourly. "Now, Sherlock, did he buy these pins, or steal 'em?"
"I'd say he didn't buy them," Head answered. "You see they're a bright, coppery colour, and any man who went buying bright coppery hairpins would be leaving a sort of link with himself. Men don't go buying hairpins as a rule. It would be noticeable."
"And they'd suit—?" Wadden held two of the pins up to the light and, gazing at them intently, left the sentence incomplete.
"Mrs. Purvis, for one," Head suggested. "Any redheaded woman, I mean. The pins are always coloured to match the hair—my mother-in-law uses brown ones since she dyed her hair chestnut. I noticed that when I borrowed one from her to clean the trap over the waste pipe in our kitchen sink. She swore she didn't wash her hair-brush over the sink, but I know better. Thank God she's gone back!"
"And what the hell has that got to do with bright coppery hairpins, man?" Wadden demanded irritably.
"Nothing, Chief," Head admitted meekly. "It's a mere thankful reminiscence. Those four would suit a redheaded woman."
"Cortazzi's wife would give a fox points and a beating," Wadden reflected. "Then there was that servant girl we saw coming out of the post office on our way here—you'd want smoked glass if you felt like gazing hard at her. Head, redheads ain't what you'd call unique round Carden. I wouldn't call 'em even rare. I'd go as far as to say they're not conspicuous by their absence, if I were pushed to it."
"And our man either owns one, in the matrimonial sense, or lives in the same house with one. Has access to her dressing-table, in fact, and knows where she keeps her hairpins."
"Shush, man! Wife, must be. Unless he bought the damned things."
"Almost certainly he didn't. What about sneaking into a servant's room on her half-day off, when his wife isn't looking?"
"Wanted, a redheaded woman, not bobbed nor shingled," Wadden soliloquized. "Here, take 'em!" He handed the pins back, went to the table, and poured himself a third cup of tea. As he stirred it he blew again, and shook his head.
"You don't like it?" Head inquired, observing his chief's expression. "It is rather thin, certainly."
"As thin as this tea," Wadden asserted irritably. "What'd you want to pour all the hot water into the pot for? She might have chestnut hair with those red lights in it, or even be a blonde of a sort. What do they call 'em—peroxide blondes, isn't it?"
"That or henna shampoos—I must have a word with my wife about this. But a blonde would use paler pins, not definitely red ones like these. Then again, did he scatter red ones to put a catch in it for us, being hitched to a brunette all the time?"
"If he'd been clever enough for that, he'd have planted 'em more artfully—artistically, I mean. When you come to think of it, Head, aren't we jumping rather a long way? Suppose a woman did it?"
"I don't think so," Head dissented thoughtfully. "A woman was the bait to lure this stranger to the district into an empty house, probably late in the evening, but not late enough for lights to be needed. It's not really dark before ten o'clock, this time of year. I'm of opinion, quite unjustifiably, that a red-haired woman was the bait. It was done by somebody with a fairly good knowledge of this district, quite possibly a resident in or near Carden—"
"Why late in the evening?" Wadden interjected.
"Fewer people about," Head explained. "Quite possibly a resident, and probably somebody having access to a front-door key, if not actually possessing one, which he may or may not have thrown away since."
"Oh, he had a front-door key," Wadden asserted confidently.
"He may have found an unfastened window, got through and fastened it on the inside, and then used the back-door key. Almost certainly he was the one who took it out of the back-door lock."
"You've searched the grounds?" Wadden asked after a pause.
Head nodded. "But not thoroughly, yet," he answered. "I'm going back there. He might have thrown his iron bar into any shrub or thicket, and there's two acres of grounds, remember, and a field with a half-grown crop on it at the back. I was mainly interested in making circuits to see if he left any trace of the way he went, but he didn't. That is, as far as I could see in the time I had to spare."
"D'you want any men to help you in the search?" Wadden inquired.
"I'll be happier without them," Head answered. "They might destroy tracks. We can get a gang to comb every inch for the iron bar to-morrow, if I don't find it before. Meanwhile I think somebody will give us the identity of the victim as soon as the description gets out. The clothes show a man in a fairly good position, and he'd be missed by somebody—missed from London, I think. How he got here—that's another line of inquiry. In fact, there's a lot to inquire into, with the little we have to go on up to the present."
"Get his identity, and we may get motive," Wadden suggested.
"A woman in it, I incline to think. To get him to that house."
"Find an iron bar, find one front-door and one back-door key, find where the dead man came from and who he is, and find a redheaded woman short of one fat and three thin hairpins," Wadden suggested. "Then find a rope and warn the hangman to stay put till he's called."
"We're having a slack time in Westingborough just now, fortunately for this business," Head reflected. "I think, Chief, I'd better look on Carden as my spiritual home for a bit, unless the case calls me to London, as it very likely will."
"Ye-es," Wadden assented thoughtfully. "I'll tell your wife on the quiet that you're after a redheaded woman, and then you can tell her what you like."
DENSE shrubberies, tracts of weed-smothered kitchen garden, and grass-grown paths, yielded nothing in the nature of a weapon suited to skull-smashing, nor was there any sign of a footprint—though, in view of the dry, hard character of the soil, Head scarcely expected one to remain—or breaking down of the growths that would indicate the passing of a human being other than by the drive from front gate to main entrance of The Angle. He worked down from the point of the triangular grounds, scanning every yard and doubling back and forth like a hound at fault, coming eventually to the breast-high hedge beyond which a field of winter beans, not long past their flowering, stretched away from The Angle and its small demesne.
Four men were hoeing in the field, evidently having begun their work parallel with the hedge that Head now faced, to work away from it and finish at the other side of the field. The inspector found a point where he could break through the hedge, and crossed to interview these men, shirt-sleeved, corduroy-trousered rustics who, judging by their assiduity, were on piecework. The leader ceased work as Head approached them, and passed a gnarled fist across his brow.
"Country want rain, it do," he observed. "We'll knock off when we git to the ind this time. Oy, mister, doan't yu go tromplin' they beans down like that! Yu bruk two off a'ready."
"How long have you men been working here?" Head inquired, and the other three ceased work to gaze at him.
"What yu wanter know for? What yu tromplin' beans down for?" the leader queried in reply, with marked hostility. "Yu tromple beans down like thaat, yu git us inter trouble when the guv'ner see it."
"Don't you worry about that," Head counselled genially. "I'll put things right with him. I'm investigating what looks like a case of murder at that house there"—he indicated The Angle behind him—"and want to know how long you men have been working in this field."
The rustic gazed solemnly at the house, just visible beyond its shrubberies, and shook his head solemnly.
"Ain't nobbudy live there since Master Berrow died," he said. "Empty, that is. An' we don't go about murderin' people."
"No, but you may help me to find out who does, and there's money in it, if you do," Head responded persuasively. "How long have you been working in this field, now?"
The man shook his head again. "We doan't want that sorter money," he said. "Blood money, that's what that is, an' blood money don't never do nobody no good what get howd on it. I likes my money clean."
"How many more times must I ask you how long you have been working here?" Head demanded sharply.
The rustic stared at him, and leaned on his hoe. "Who be yu, anyhow?" he demanded in reply. "Come tromplin' down Mr. Betterton's beans an' talkin' about murder, when nobody doan't live in that house—"
"I am Inspector Head, from Westingborough," Head interrupted.
The man stared at him with a mixture of respect and surprise. "Ah well, that's different, that is," he admitted.
"We statted work heere this mornin'," a youngster volunteered.
The other turned on him angrily. "Yu shet yure gob, Henry," he commanded. "Yes, sir"—he turned to Head again—"we started fust thing 'smornin'. Bin howin' all day, an' there ain't bin no screams ne nuthin' from Mr. Berrow's owd house that was when he was alive. Lot o' people fared to go there 'sarternoon, lookin' over the place, I reckon. But they warn't murderin' each other. People goo about aloone, when they wanter du murders, mostly. So I've heerd, anyhow." He made the qualification rather hastily, lest he might be considered a specialist in the art of murder.
"Well, one thing more—two things, rather," Head pursued. "Going over every foot of ground as you do over this sort of work, have you seen any footprints beside your own, or come across a piece of iron of any sort—gas-pipe, or a bar of any sort of metal? Footprints, now—have any of yow noticed footprints while you were at work?"
The spokesman shook his head gravely, as did two of the others. The lad who had spoken and been reproved shaped "No" silently with his lips as Head's gaze travelled to him.
"Found any piece of iron or other metal, then?" Head pursued.
"We'd 'a' picked that out an' chucked it inter hedge, if we did," the leader responded. "That might spile a binder blade, come harvest, if 'twere left layin' about. No, we ain't found nuthin' like that."
"Where do you all live?" Head pursued patiently.
"Live? Me, I live out on the Todlin'ton road, jest past station," the man told him. "Henry, he lodge wi' Joe heere—that's the middle cottage down theere—" He pointed at three cottages facing toward the Crandon road, and backed on to the beanfield. "Sam live in a cottage back o' the Carden Arms, an' what wi' people dancin' an' carryin' on there haaf the night, he don't git none too much sleep. Happen this murder o' yours ain't owd Mrs. Ward, is it? She died laast Satterday night next door to Joe's plaace. Bin ailin' six month an' more, off an' on, an' suffered a lot o' pain, fust to laast."
"It was not Mrs. Ward," Head assured him gravely. "It was a stranger to this part of the country"—he risked the statement—"very well dressed in a brown suit, and killed in that house last Friday or Saturday—the body is lying there now. Have any of you seen a stranger in a brown suit during the last fortnight?"
"Well, y'see, mister"—the man scratched his head and looked impressed by the definite assertion—"theere's a lot o' strangers come an' stay at the Carden Arms ivery summer, fishin' an' golfin' they goo in for. Then theere's a lot more come drivin' heere in cars Satterday an' Sunday ivery week, kickin' up hell's delight wi' music an' shoutin' an' what not at the Carden Arms so poor owd Sam can't git his sleep proper, an' us chaps don't take much notice o' strangers."
"No," Head agreed. "You know me by name, I expect?"
"Oo, yes, sir! We heerd o' yu afore," the man assented, with a sudden increase of respect in his tone and manner.
"Well, then, if any of you happen to remember having seen a man well-dressed in a brown suit anywhere near that house during the last fortnight or so, or hear of one, I want you to go straight to Sergeant Purvis and tell him all you know. Will you do that, all of you?"
"Sartinly we will, mister." Three nods from the others confirmed their leader's promise, and they stared at the chimneys and roof of The Angle, their slow minds taking in the fact that a body lay in the house. "But we ain't likely to, I rackon, wi' so many strangers about the plaace. If we du, we'll tell Mr. Purvis for ye."
A half-crown changed ownership, and Head, making for the gateway of the field, by which he could gain the Crandon road, heard the leader of the little band tell the others that there was a shillin' for himself and sixpence each for them, to which either Joe or Sam objected that sevenpence ha'penny apiece was plainly indicated. The dispute was still in progress as the inspector walked along the road toward Carden village, brooding over the problem the day had set.
He came to the village street, passing the Greyhound Inn, cottages, the butcher's shop, more cottages, the baker's, the post office and general store, with groceries in one window and soft goods in the other, still more cottages, and then a turning to the left, which he took, instead of going straight on to where the Carden Arms stood back in its courtyard at the foot of Condor Hill. Purvis would look after the 'bus conductors on the vehicles running between Carden, Westingborough and Crandon, and inquire for signs of a stranger in a brown suit; Crandon and Westingborough men would find out if the stranger had hired a car to fetch him out to Carden, while, if he had come in his own car, the car itself would have been somewhere in evidence—Head decided that the man, although well-dressed, was not the type to keep a chauffeur. The absence of a driving licence on the body implied nothing, since the murderer had removed every scrap of paper from his victim's pockets, apparently—or the man himself had been careful to carry nothing that might reveal his identity. But Head attributed that lack of paper evidence to the murderer, not to the murdered man.
A queer business. What lure had been employed to tempt the man into the empty house? Where had the murderer obtained his key to the front door? He had possessed such a key, Head decided, for, though he might get in by a window himself and then make use of the back door, it was unlikely that he would arrange for his victim to go round to the side or back of the house to gain admission. That he had carried the body there after his crime was out of the question. And that curious scattering of hairpins—what twist of mind had led him to plant such obviously misleading signs? Motive? Not robbery, for in going through the pockets he must have come across the currency notes. Vengeance—jealousy over a woman? A woman with red hair?
At that point in his cogitations the inspector raised his hat, for just such a woman passed him then. It was the vicar's wife, driving a small saloon car, and her husband, the Reverend James Ollyer, sat beside her. Head knew them slightly, as he knew most of the prominent people in these outlying villages: Ollyer, he remembered, had come here from an east London curacy some two years before, bringing his wife with him, and she had created rather a sensation in and about Carden, being easily the best-looking and best-dressed woman in the place. It was rumoured that Ollyer found her a handful to manage, and that she enjoyed a flirtation quite secularly. Her hair was chestnut with a distinctly reddish tinge, and Head noted it afresh as she gave him a smiling acknowledgment of his salutation, while the Reverend James beside her stared glumly and fixedly at the road before him, either ignoring or failing to perceive the pedestrian inspector, and appearing dourly displeased over something. Looking back at the pair after they had passed, Head decided that he must call at the vicarage and find some way of seeing Mrs. Ollyer without her hat: was that hair long enough to involve the use of pins?
He pursued his way, and came to a neat, white-brick and red-tiled house standing alone beside the road in a fairly large, trimly kept garden. Beside it a big white gate, standing open, gave access to a short stretch of metalled road leading to a painted wooden shed, beyond which showed a length of plank platform, a single line of rails, and a big black board lettered in white—CARDEN FOR TODLINGTON. The station served both villages, and its single line, joining the main line at Westingborough, carried more phosphates, manures, and agricultural produce than passengers, especially since a regular service of 'buses had been established in competition, giving a cheaper and far more frequent service. Head entered the bare little booking-office, and the dusty planking echoed to his footfalls. A door labelled PRIVATE opened in the wall in which the ticket window, now closed, was set, and a middle-aged man, shirt-sleeved, but with his gold-braided peaked cap on his head, emerged in a leisurely way.
"Evenin', Mr. Head," he said with a mixture of cordiality and caution. "Who's been doin' what, to bring you out here?"
"What makes you think anybody has been doing anything, Mr. Hawk?" Head responded with a smile. He knew his man, and knew that sudden queries regarding a murder would not serve his purpose.
"Well, I see you comin' along," the stationmaster explained. "I said to myself, he ain't goin' by train, because there's nothing now till the eight-forty, and that comes away from Westingborough—don't go to it. So he's after somebody or something. Little bit o' deeduction, you might call it. Same as you'd do yourself."
"Ah! Quite logical. In fact, a nice little piece of reasoning," Head complimented him. "All alone here, are you?"
"Old Harry goes off at six, and I give Matt the afternoon off," Hawk explained. "Might as well. I don't expect a rush for the seven-fifteen goods and there's pretty sure to be nobody off the eight-forty out. There's three trucks for the seven-fifteen to pick up, and she'll maybe have a couple to drop, but that won't break my back. Country wants rain, don't it? I'm fair sick o' my watering can."
"The country does want rain," Head agreed gravely. "Mr. Hawk, I'm looking for a man well-dressed in a brown suit, with a brown soft hat and brown shoes. Do you remember seeing such a one get off any train at this station lately—within the last week or two?"
"Ah! I thought you was after somebody," Mr. Hawk observed. "He'd be, as you might say, a symphony in brown, now, wouldn't he?"
"He would," Head admitted, "except that his eyes were grey."
"Sort of piercing eyes—keen—look you through and through?" the stationmaster suggested. "Eyes you'd remember?"
"Possibly." Having only seen those eyes dull and half-closed, Head was not prepared to admit more than the possibility.
"A fattish sort of man, about my height," Mr. Hawk pursued, with increasing interest. "No luggage, from London?"
"It appears to be the man," Head agreed.
"Come off the eight-forty last Saturday night—no, it was Friday night. Only one to come off it, he was. Yes, it was last Friday night, an' I took his ticket myself, being out on the platform at the time because I'd asked Scott—he's the guard on the eight-forty—I'd asked him to bring me a sole from Westingborough. You can't get fish really fresh here in Carden. It was a lovely sole, too. My wife made some parsley butter to go with it. I do like a nice sole, fried so the little bones at the side go all crunchy. Slept like a top after that sole, I did—and the rhubarb tart she made to foller it. Not but what it's a bit late in the season for rhubarb, but the gooseberries are on the small side yet. Country wants rain, that's what it is. They'd soon swell if we got some rain."
"And this man with the piercing eyes came off the train alone?" Head suggested. "He was the only passenger to get off here?"
"It's an awkward time, y'see," Mr. Hawk explained. "Eight-forty—too soon to leave the pictures in Westingborough, and too late for your supper, in a general way, so nobody don't travel by it much. We held our supper up for the sole, me and the missus."
"Which way did the man in brown go?" Head pursued.
"Well, I took his ticket, as I told you. He sort of snapped at me—'Carden?'—he says, as if I'd done him an injury. Barked it at me, like, but I kept quite civil. I told him to turn to the left when he got through the gate and keep straight up the road—which he'd have to do, there being no turnings till you come out to the street—and he was round and through the booking-office and away before you could say Jack Robinson. Like a shot. I thought then, there's something funny about that man, and I wouldn't wonder if the police'd be after him before he got much older. Suspicious, the way he just said that one word and no more, and then went off in such a hurry. Not natural—no song frawd about it. Too much hurry, for these parts. I had a good look at his ticket to make sure it was the right date and he wasn't swindling the company, but it was all right. Down from London, the express that gets into Westingborough seven-fifty-five, and our eight-forty waits for it. At least, I concluded he come by that. He might have come by an earlier train and spent some time in Westingborough, but if that was so he'd have had to pass the barrier in and out. Collectors there would know."
"In a hurry, eh?" Head reflected.
"He didn't go back by train—not while I was on duty, at least," Mr. Hawk stated. "I can ask Matt, of course, if you like, Mr. Head."
"I don't think you need trouble to ask Matt," Head informed him. "I have fairly conclusive evidence that the man in brown did not go back by train. Eight-forty, on Friday evening. What sort of evening was it, Mr. Hawk? Quite light at that time, and quite fine, wasn't it?"
"Absolutely—ab-solutely, Mr. Head. No rain—the country wants rain, badly. I shall have to water my garden again to-night."
"It is a dry season," Head agreed. "As dry as any you've had since you've been here, I should think. How long have you been stationmaster here, Mr. Hawk? Some few years now, isn't it?"
"Nine year come Michaelmas," Mr. Hawk admitted, rather regretfully. "Posted here from Westingborough goods office—and forgotten! Nine blessed year! You'd think the company'd recognize a man like me—one with my gifts, though I do say it myself. I hear about whipper-snappers I wouldn't look at getting promoted, time and again, but do they promote me? Mr. Head, they do not! They stick me away in this God-forsaken backwater of a place, and forget all about me! I was saying to the wife only the other day—if I could make the company realize what a man I am! And she agreed with me, Mr. Head. I'll tell you what it is. Merit simply don't count, though I do say it myself."
"Apparently it doesn't," Head confirmed him sympathetically. "And in all those nine years, I suppose, you never saw the man in brown until he got off the eight-forty last Friday evening?"
"I'd 'a' known it if I had. You don't forget eyes like he had, not in a hurry. Like—like an eagle. A bad-tempered eagle—or an eagle in a hurry, maybe. No, I never set eyes on him before."
"Well, thanks very much, Mr. Hawk. I'll be getting along, now."
He got along, without intimating to the stationmaster that he would be required to give evidence at the following day's inquest. Sergeant Purvis could do all that: Head himself did not yet know at what time the inquest would be held, and, had he mentioned it, Hawk would have been reluctant to let him go before the whole story had been told.
He made straight for the Carden Arms, before which he had instructed the driver of the police car to wait. Crossing the forecourt of the hotel, he saw the usual half-dozen or more of visitors' cars parked, and Constable Jeffries, who had been at the wheel on the journey out here, sitting on the running-board of the police car, looking bored. Ignoring him for the time, Head went into the hotel, entered the telephone box by the reception desk, and called a London number.
"Inspector Byrne," he demanded, having got his number. "Inspector Head speaking. Yes, again. Hullo, Terry! Look here, that description. Make the grey eyes piercing. Yes, piercing—noticeably keen and searching gaze. The man who gave it me described them as eyes you would remember, eyes that looked you through and through."
"Why leave it till now, Jerry?" the voice at the other end asked.
"Because I've only just left the first man I could find who saw him alive. He'd been dead since last Friday when I saw him this afternoon, and it wasn't the eyes that were keen and searching, then."
"I get you, Jerry. Piercing it is, since you say so."
"How many papers can you get it in, to-morrow morning?"
"Every blessed one, my son. Unless he came out of a Trappist monastery, you'll have somebody bobbing up and recognizing him by to-morrow night, and from then on you'll have a simple, straightforward case to work on. Pedestrian—that's the word. Yes, pedestrian."
"Oh yeah?" Head gibed, none too amiably. "You come and tramp about country roads questioning yokels, and see how you like it!"
"Exactly—pedestrianism, Jerry. I will come, if they give me the case when you have to call the Yard in on it. It should be quite nice round your rural beats at this time of year, isn't it?"
"The country wants rain, I'm told," Head responded solemnly.
"Well, give my love to Bulgy Wadden, and accept same yourself, Jerry. Hang up, now, and I'll tell the fourth estate about these piercing eyes for you. Nothing else, is there?"
"Only that he came by rail from London last Friday afternoon."
"Did he? I wasn't looking—it may have been my half-day off. Hang up, Jerry. It's my afternoon on."
Head replaced the receiver and went out from the cabinet, smiling. He knew he could rely on Inspector Terence Byrne, who was also his cousin, to do all that was required. Going out to the forecourt again, he crooked a finger at Jeffries, who came over to him instantly.
"You know Carden pretty well, I think, Jeffries?" he asked.
"Fairly well, sir," the man admitted.
"Is there a ladies' hairdresser in the place?"
Jeffries thought for a second or two, and then shook his head.
"I never heard of one, sir," he answered. "Men's barber, yes, but that's hardly the same thing."
"It is not the same thing," Head asserted firmly. "What time is closing time for ladies' hairdressers in Westingborough?"
"To-night, sir? Friday night—seven-thirty, I'd say. Maybe eight o'clock. It's pay-night for the girls in offices and that sort, so they'd keep open fairly late, I should think."
"Right. Buzz me back to Westingborough in time to have a talk with one. You can make it easily."
"But—but what about the superintendent, sir?" Jeffries inquired.
"He can wait till we come back, or walk—it's only nine miles," Head answered heartlessly. "Come on, man—no time to waste!"
Wadden, as arranged between himself and Head, had been interviewing Cortazzi, the manager of the hotel, and had subsequently gone to the bar for a little refreshment. He emerged to the front entrance in time to shake his fist at the back of the car as it began to ascend Condor Hill, but knew that even his stentorian voice could not arrest its progress. He turned and saw Cortazzi beside him.
"Zey 'ave lef' you be'ind, Mr. Wadden," Cortazzi sympathized.
Wadden blew at the back of the receding car, and then turned and gave the hotel manager a sour look.
"Queen Anne is dead, Cortazzi," he said—to prevent himself from saying other things, probably.
Cortazzi pondered the statement, and eventually gave it up.
"Ze country, she want rain," he observed reflectively.
"THE policeman, I tell you, was on point duty at Piccadilly Circus just after dinner one night. He had both arms at full stretch holding up the traffic, and a chap who had dined well stepped off the pavement to him and said—'You're a dam' liar—it wasn't as big as that.'"
Superintendent Wadden looked down at the raconteur, seated with another man at one of the little tables in the entrance lounge of the Carden Arms. Carden, like Westingborough, was a good fishing centre, and Wadden regarded the whiskers on that story as grey and thin with age. He turned his back on the seated pair, moved over to the other side of the lounge to be out of range of any succeeding hoary chestnuts, and blew his disapproval at a case containing a stuffed pike, which looked as fierce and forbidding as himself. In a little while, he reflected, he would ring through to Westingborough and tell Head exactly what he thought of him for running off with the car like that. Give it time to get there, first, and then—
Another car, drawing up outside, attracted the superintendent's attention, and he recognized it by its driver, one Alfred Potter, as a hire-service vehicle from Parham's garage at Westingborough. Potter held the door, and there descended a woman. An abrupt movement in the lounge diverted Wadden's attention from her for a second or so, and he saw that the man who had been listening to the policeman-fish story had risen hastily to his feet and moved toward the door. Then he looked again at the woman, or girl, just entering the lounge: he estimated her height as five feet nine, credited her with small hands and feet, deep blue eyes, finely-cut features of patrician attractiveness, and reddish-chestnut hair, worn so long as to involve the use of hairpins.
"That's it—come along!" he murmured to himself disgustedly as he made this initial inventory of the new arrival. "As if there weren't enough red-heads in Carden already!"
The man who had risen to his feet faced the girl just within the doorway. "Well, this is a joyous miracle!" he exclaimed.
She took his offered hand after a pause of astonishment. "Maurice, what are you doing here?" she inquired, and Wadden saw her smile at the man, a happy smile that made her still more attractive.
"Oh, just a few days' fishing," Maurice answered.
Potter, the driver of the car, entered with a suitcase, put it down, and stood waiting beside the doorway.
"No, driver—put it back in the car," the girl said. "No—wait, though. Maurice, do you know where they keep the hotel register?"
"Over there—on the desk. You are staying, aren't you?" Wadden heard anxious solicitude in the query.
"I don't know, till I've seen the register." She went toward the desk, and Maurice followed her. He waited while she turned the book on the desk and ran her finger up the signatures, evidently tracing back from the last name inscribed. Eventually she turned away.
"No," she said. "I shall go over to Crandon and stay there. Driver, put my suitcase back in the car, please."
"Then I shall come over to Crandon and stay there too," Maurice threatened, or promised, resolutely.
Potter went out with the suitcase. Wadden reflected that it was nearly time to ring Head at Westingborough and give him a verbal flaying. The girl smiled up at Maurice, and Wadden, observing the man, made a mental inventory of his physique and features, and decided that he was a well set-up young fellow, but not the type to lure another man into an empty house and hit him over the head with an iron bar.
"But I shall probably go back in the morning," the girl said, "so it wouldn't be worth it. Oh, Maurice—now I think of it? Did you sell the Molasses Limited shares for me?"
"Didn't know you wanted 'em sold," Maurice answered. "If you gave the order to sell, probably the firm did. I've been here ten days."
"I wrote them to sell, last Monday," she explained. "They were standing at twenty-four, then—twenty-four and three, I think it was."
"Then surely you've had an acknowledgment of the order?" he asked.
"I wrote it from Bella's address—I was staying the week-end with her and her people. Probably she forgot to forward the reply."
"She's capable of it. Look here—won't you stay the night here, instead of going to Crandon and leaving me all desolate? It can't possibly make any difference to you."
"But it can, Maurice." Wadden heard earnestness, and perhaps a trace of sadness, in the reply. "Associations—I shall see you again in London, soon. I'd no idea you'd be here, you know."
She turned to go out, and the man went with her. Wadden, after a brief pause, followed to the doorway, wondering if he ought to let this red-head go without finding out more about her—he had an uneasily instinctive feeling, increased by her reference to associations with something or somebody in this place, that she might be in some way connected with the murder at The Angle. And, yet, if she were not connected with it, he would only be making a fool of himself by detaining and questioning her. He had hoped for some mention of her name in that conversation, but had heard none: over listening to the conversation, he had no scruples; the pair must have known he could overhear every word, and could have moved away from him if they liked.
Men and women in the lounge, he knew, were eyeing him interestedly, the more so since two or three of them had seen Head arrive and drive away: they knew something unusual must have happened in the village to bring the two police chiefs from Westingborough here, but Wadden hoped that no tidings of the murder would reach them yet, for there were three more of the guests to come in for dinner, and their expressions at sight of a police superintendent waiting in the lounge might be useful to him—if they were ignorant of the fact that the body at The Angle had been discovered. If they knew, they would be on their guard—assuming that they had anything to be on guard about.
But the three, all strangers to the district, as Wadden had already ascertained from Cortazzi, entered while Maurice was leaning into the car and talking to the girl, and none of them exhibited an expression that Wadden considered useful. He put on his cap and went out, resolved on another talk with Sergeant Purvis; he could ring Head from Purvis's place just as well as from the Carden Arms, and the sergeant, a really intelligent man and one who took his work seriously, might have something helpful to say.
Although, at Wadden's rate of travel, it took ten minutes to get from the hotel to Purvis's cottage, he was knocking at the front door of the cottage when the car driven by Potter passed him. Those two young people evidently had a good deal to say to each other, not all of it verbal: Maurice's eyes had said a good deal, in the hotel lounge. He was a stockbroker on holiday, evidently, and the girl had some property of her own, since she could give orders for the sale of shares. Well, good luck to 'em. They made a nice-looking pair.
Purvis himself opened the door to his chief, swallowed, and stood back in the passage-way. "Come in, sir," he invited. "That is, unless you want me to come out. I was just having a bite."
"Then you'd better go on biting," Wadden suggested, entering. "I'll get on to your telephone while you finish at it."
"As a matter of fact, sir, we'd just finished," Purvis admitted, following the superintendent into the front room. "There's the telephone. I'll wait outside till you've finished with it, sir."
"No, don't—I'll give him a few minutes more," Wadden dissented. "Look here, Purvis, what's your opinion of this hairpin dodge?"
"Well, sir, I'd say it was a blind. I don't think any woman hit the man a blow like that—I don't think so, though it's possible. I think the man who did it used those pins to set us looking for a woman, planned the whole thing deliberately, and wanted to make us believe a woman did it in a sudden fit of rage, and then went walking from door to door in fright over what she'd done, afraid she'd be seen leaving the house and recognized by somebody. And he didn't buy the pins, but took some of his wife's or somebody's. To buy hairpins and then scatter them about like that would bring forward every hairdresser in the country that ever sold a packet to a man, as soon as it's mentioned that the pins were found. No, he wouldn't be fool enough to buy. And I've talked it over—begging your pardon for doing so, sir—I've talked it over with my wife. The hairpin part, I mean."
"Well, what did you get?" Wadden inquired.
"Not much, sir, and yet quite a bit. There's only two shades of hairpins sold now, in a general way—bronze, for hair anything lighter than darkish brown, and black, for all the darker shades."
"Then our field widens considerably," Wadden said thoughtfully.
"In that way, it does, sir," Purvis confirmed him, "and in another way we can limit it. The three small pins, my wife tells me, are what they call fringe pins or invisible pins, and women with not very long hair use that sort quite a good deal. But the other one, the big one, points to fairly long hair, not just a turnup at the back or anything of that sort. Now if you don't mind my going on with what my wife told me, sir, I came to the conclusion that about half the women who use hairpins at all use the bronze, and the other half use the dark ones. Which gives us, say fifty per cent of the women round about here. But not more than a quarter of that fifty per cent have hair long enough to need the big pins—"
"I get you," Wadden interrupted. "Only twelve and a half per cent of the women in the district can possibly have any connection with this murder through their hairpins."
"That's it, sir, and the man, by getting his victim to come to an empty house of which he must have had a key, proves he belongs to the district. Therefore the woman does, too."
"It's not a fully justified assumption, Purvis, but it does you credit," Wadden observed. "I knew you'd got brains under your thatch, and like to see you use 'em. There'll be a few promotions going about when I retire, which won't be very long now—hullo! Who's that?"
Purvis, too, had started as he heard the energetic tattoo sounded on his front door. "I'll go and see, sir," he said, and went.
"Yes," Wadden heard him say after he had opened the door. "The superintendent is here. Don't get excited, Sprott. Calm down, man."
Wadden, at the door of the room by this time, heard Sprott's reply.
"It's Miss Berrow, Sergeant, and she told me she's sure she knows the man in that house—her father's house, it used to be while he was alive. Wants to go in—says she can identify him—I left her there and told her to wait till I'd seen you—"
"Come along—you'd better come too, Purvis." Wadden, his cap again on his head, gestured the man aside from the doorstep, and emerged in time to see the police car draw up, with Head inside. He led the way out from the front garden of the cottage to the road, opened the door of the car, and seated himself beside Head.
"On to The Angle, Jeffries," he bade. "Wait—come on, Purvis—you too, Sprott. Here, what d' ye mean by running off with this car and leaving me to cool my heels, Head?"
"I wanted to consult a hairdresser before they all closed in Westingborough," Head answered. "I came back as soon as I'd seen one."
"And found out there's two sorts of hairpins, bronze and black, and only two, and that they call the little pins fringe or invisible pins, and the little ones don't necessarily denote long hair, but the big one does, and about fifty per cent of women use each of the two colours, and only about a quarter of that fifty per cent have hair long enough to make 'em use the big pins. That so?"
"Perilously near it," Head agreed. "Where did you get it?"
"I didn't waste petrol trailing all the way to Westingborough and back for it," Wadden retorted. "I got it here, in Carden."
"My wife won't let me have lady friends as intimate as that," Head said gravely. "But"—he looked through the front window—"what—who's this stopped at The Angle? Who is she?"
"Helen Berrow, and I'll bet you double whiskies she uses bronze hairpins," Wadden offered. "Go carefully—she's just told Sprott she can identify the corpse. You can take that job on, Head—girls and women take to you more than they do to me. Jeffries, give him the brandy flask out of the side pocket. She'll probably want something of the sort after she's seen what's lying inside that house."
Some ten minutes later, Helen Berrow came out from the front entrance of The Angle, leaning heavily on Head's arm, her face a ghastly white. Wadden hurried to take her other arm and help her on her way to the car that waited for her at the gate.
"All right, Miss Berrow," he said, and his voice that could be so raspingly commanding at need was wonderfully gentle. "We'll go back with you to the Carden Arms—you'd better not go to Crandon tonight."
"I—I warned him—" she gasped, and did not end it, as Head helped her into the car. A significant glance passed between the two men: she knew more than the mere identity of the dead man, evidently.
"Back to the Carden Arms, Potter," Wadden bade. "Wait till I get in, though. Jeffries!"—he turned and called to the driver of the police car—"go back to the Carden Arms and wait there for me."
Head sat beside the girl on the way to the hotel, and Wadden took the seat in front, beside Potter—it was an ordinary five-seater saloon, but Wadden would not crowd his bulk in beside the other two. So they drew up at the hotel entrance in time to hear the sonorous bellowing of the dinner gong, and the man whom Helen Berrow had called Maurice came hurrying out from the entrance lounge as Head got out and gave the girl a hand down. Cortazzi too came bustling, and Wadden turned to him and blew at him, disapprovingly.
"No fuss—no noise, Cortazzi," he bade. "Find this lady a room for the night, and get a man to take her suitcase up."
"But I am fool, Mr. Wadden," Cortazzi protested. "There was one man come joost now—he take ze last room—"
"Put him on the roof," Wadden interrupted, gently but effectually. "Drown him if you like, but find this lady a room. Now!" The final word was blown at Cortazzi, within six inches of his face, and he backed away from it so precipitately as to bump into Maurice.
"I—I beg your pardon, sair!" he apologized humbly. "Orraight, Mistaire Wadden. Zere shall be ze room for ze lady. Now!"
He vanished inside. Head, with Helen Berrow's suitcase in his hand, took her arm and led her inside. Maurice was following when Wadden laid a hand on his arm and stopped him.
"A friend of this lady, I understand?" Wadden asked.
"What the devil are you doing with her?" Maurice fired back hotly.
Wadden gave him a steady look, one that lasted long enough to render the younger man uncomfortable. There were those who said that the superintendent's eyes could bore into souls.
"Helping her through trouble, at present," he answered. "What we shall do with her later depends on herself. What's your name?"
"Tarrant—Maurice Tarrant. I'm—what's she—? Look here, Inspector, I'm sorry I spoke like that. What's happened?"
"Superintendent—not inspector," Wadden corrected him. "The inspector is in there with her. Just leave her to him and to herself, till she turns to you. We want certain information from her as soon as she's in a fit state to give it, and after that she'll probably be glad enough to see anyone she knows. You get that?"
"But—but—Inspector—Superintendent, I mean—you're not accusing her of anything, are you? Because she's incapable of—" He broke off, pleadingly. His initial hostility had entirely vanished.
"If I were, I shouldn't make Cortazzi give her a room here," Wadden assured him. "Don't forget what I've told you. By the way, I heard a gong just now, Mr. Tarrant. If you go and get your dinner as if nothing had happened, it'll be the best thing you can do. Then you'll be ready for Miss Berrow when she wants a friend to talk to her."
He went inside, then, not staying to see what became of the younger man. Cortazzi, waiting anxiously in the entrance lounge, approached him and gestured at the staircase.
"I 'ave send one of ze maids wiz 'er, to ze room," he explained. "She tell ze inspector she coom down soon—fifteen meenit, she say."
"Right!" Wadden emitted the one word, and made a bee-line for a door at the back of the lounge. He had guessed, and guessed correctly, where he would find Head, who gestured an invitation.
"Certainly," Wadden agreed. "Not too much soda. What was he? Husband—lover—she's got no wedding-ring on, I saw?"
"Half-brother," Head answered. "Edward Claude Berrow, thirty-five years old, sharing a flat with her in London."
"Wadden lifted his glass. Here's how," he said, and drank. Then he put the glass down and observed—"Hollywood!" with derision.
"It's all to come," Head told him. "I've got nothing yet beyond the name and relationship. It was simply hell, her identifying the body, as I knew it would be. She told me his name and age before I took her in. After, I had to hold her up—that brandy-flask came in useful, too. I think we acquit her of complicity. She came here to look for him, but I think we acquit her, all the same."
"Of guilty complicity—yes," Wadden agreed, remembering the girl's attitude on encountering Maurice Tarrant. "But there's a matter of a front-door key to be explained, and a lot of other things. Did you get the address of that flat they shared?"
"Naturally." Head opened his note-book, and showed the address.
"Right. Eighty-four Manson Place, S.W.7." He copied it down. "Now, Head, I'm going to leave this end of it to you. I'll check up on that address, and if you don't hear from me it's O.K. You'll hear soon enough if it isn't. Also I've got to arrange about the inquest, and over that you can get Purvis to rake in any witnesses you want in attendance. Don't come back to Westingborough till you've got her full story, and you needn't come back then unless you feel like it. Quite probably you'll have both hands full over here, and feel like saving time by staying. I can look after everything over there till you've got this case in train for an arrest."
"Optimistic, aren't you?" Head inquired acidly.
"Merely complimentary. Good night, Head—I'll tell your wife I left you with a red-headed girl at the Carden Arms, and you're staying the night here. That'll larn you to run off with the car and leave me high and dry."
"I DON'T want any dinner, Mr.—Mr. Head, isn't it?"
"It is." Standing near the foot of the staircase in the entrance lounge of the hotel, Head assessed the girl who faced him. She had changed into a shimmering grey evening frock and, having recovered her composure, appeared more than normally attractive: at the other side of the lounge Maurice Tarrant hovered anxiously. Helen Berrow caught his gaze and inclined her head in greeting, and he took a step toward her and Head, and paused irresolutely.
"Then—I've told you who he is," she said. "What more do you—"
"Quite a lot," Head answered. "Everything you know. But you'd better have some dinner first. I'll wait here for you."
She shook her head. "I couldn't eat, just now," she dissented. "If you—perhaps there's some room where you could ask me all you want to know. We don't want—" Again she broke off, leaving the sentence incomplete, and glanced at Tarrant.
"Don't want anyone else listening," Head completed for her. "No. There's what they call the writing-room over here."
"Yes," she assented. "You'd better ask me questions. I don't see what more I can tell you, yet—anything that would help, I mean."
He led the way to the writing-room door, at the back of the lounge, and stood back for her to enter. It was a small room, unoccupied at the time, and he followed the girl in and closed the door. She went toward an easy chair by the open window.
"No," he bade. "You might be overheard from outside."
He drew another easy chair up beside a desk at the other side of the room, and gestured her to seat herself. Then he took the chair at the desk, and laid a notebook on it.
"Now, Miss Berrow," he began. "Let me tell you, first, that your half-brother has been dead a week, which may or may not make it more difficult for us to find out who killed him. I may ask you questions that appear irrelevant, but I'd like you to understand that I shall not put one single question to you without good reason, and anything you tell me goes no farther than this room. You understand that?"
"Quite fully," she answered. "I'll tell you all I can."
"To begin with, we understood that you were an only child."
"Of my father's second wife," she explained. "He divorced the first, and Claude—my half-brother—never lived here with us."
"Didn't know the place at all," Head suggested.
"He came to stay a month once—I was about ten years old, then."
"But he asked his way from Todlington station last Friday night," he pointed out. "If he had been here for a month, even years ago, he would have known the way from the station to the house, surely?"
"Not necessarily," she dissented. "Daddy drove to Westingborough to meet him, and drove him back there at the end of his stay."
"I see. How long ago was that?"
She made a mental calculation. "Seventeen—eighteen years ago," she said at last. "Eighteen years next August."
Which made her twenty-eight, Head reflected. "What brought you here to look for him, Miss Berrow—if you did come looking for him, that is?" he asked next. "I understand you came into this hotel, had a look at the register, and then decided to go on to Crandon for the night. Were you looking for your half-brother?"
"I was," she answered frankly. "He left home—left our flat in Manson Place, that is—last Friday, and told me before he went that he would be back the next day, or possibly the same night. That morning, he had had a letter postmarked from Carden, and I recognized the handwriting on the envelope, a woman's handwriting. I don't mean I knew who the woman was, but it was not the first time he had received letters in envelopes postmarked Carden and addressed in that hand."
"And did he always go away for a day or two when he got them?"
She shook her head. "No. Generally he said he would be out to dinner and came home late, so I concluded he had been dining with the writer. I never asked him about it, though."
"What specific reason had you for being worried over his absence?"
"Because it was unlike him—because I felt sure that if all were well with him he would let me know something of his whereabouts. And he—" She hesitated, as if reluctant to confess more.
"Yes?" Head questioned, after waiting for her to proceed.
"Claude and I were very good friends—I looked him up after I came back from Hollywood," she explained indirectly, "and we agreed to take the flat between us—we each went our own ways, of course—"
"What was he—what did he do?" Head interposed.
"Nothing," she answered. "He inherited his mother's fortune—she was very well off, and had no children by her second husband."
"I see. A man about town, with plenty of time on his hands."
"That would describe him," she agreed.
"How long have you been back from Hollywood, Miss Berrow?"
"I came back immediately I heard of my father's death. A little over two years, it would be. His death rendered me independent, though I like work for its own sake. I am beginning a contract with an English film company next month—I should probably have come here, or rather to Crandon, before, if I had not been busy over details of the contract until yesterday."
"We're getting away from your half-brother to your own affairs," Head observed after reflecting over her reply, "but I want every point in connection with this affair cleared up. Now, if you don't mind telling me, since your father's death rendered you independent, how does it happen that there is a mortgage of fifteen hundred pounds on The Angle, and Lawson and Fell, the Crandon solicitors, are practically the owners of the place?"
"It was Daddy's—my father's doing," she answered frankly. "You see, Mr. Head—I'll explain it fully, though. Daddy had a lot of investments, and there was one called Molasses Limited—he held about five hundred shares in it that he had bought at about eight pounds each. When the slump came, these shares dropped and dropped till they were only worth about five shillings—that was just after my mother died. Then he—my father—told me one day that if they dropped to a shilling he'd still believe in them, and he was going to put every penny he could raise into them while they were low—all he could get together, that is, without disturbing his income too much. It was then that he mortgaged The Angle to Lawson and Fell for fifteen hundred pounds, and added to that another thousand. With the two thousand and five hundred pounds he bought Molasses Limited at six shillings a share, and told me that whatever else I sold I was to hold on to them until they went up to twenty-four shillings again, if that didn't happen before he died. He made me promise to do that, and told me it would pay far better than redeeming the mortgage on The Angle—I could simply let that go to Lawson and Fell by not paying the interest. I did as he said, and ordered my stockbrokers to sell the shares last Monday, having seen that they were just over twenty-four shillings."
"Ten thousand pounds," Head reflected. "Just four times the original investment. Your father left everything to you when he died, I gather—or did he make provision for your half-brother too?"
"No—everything came to me. Claude's mother had died and left him all her money, then, and my father said he didn't need any more."
"Right—that's all cleared up, and now we can get back to the main issue, which is why you were worried, and came here to look for your half-brother. That was where we'd got when we branched off to your affairs, and you said you'd have been here before to look for him if it hadn't been for signing this film contract."
"Not only to look for him," she explained. "I wanted to see Lawson and Fell as well—they had written me to know what I meant to do about the mortgage, and I thought it would be best to have a talk with them about it. And I could see if Claude had come here, at the same time. I felt that something must have happened to him, to prevent his either coming back or letting me know why he didn't."
"In connection with the letter postmarked Carden," he suggested.
"Yes, because—" She hesitated, and then went on. "A few weeks ago, when he had received one of those letters and told me he would be dining out, I asked him why he didn't get married, in a casual way. He answered it was because she was already married. I remarked that that sort of affair generally led to trouble, and he said that it would if her husband got to know about it, because he was a dangerously jealous devil—they were the words Claude used. He used them, too, in a tone that showed he fully meant it, and perhaps was a little afraid. And as day after day went by and he didn't come back—and then I saw a policeman on duty at The Angle and ordered the driver to stop the car—I felt then that I couldn't go on without asking."
"And that policeman recognized you," Head suggested.
"Yes, and told me there was a body in the house. I knew before I saw it—felt sure, that is, and asked him to let me—" She rose to her feet suddenly, went to the window, and stood looking out with her back to Head. After awhile she turned back.
"I'm sorry," she said. "It—it was so terrible. Must you ask me any more? I've told you all I can, surely."
"Not quite all, I think," he answered gravely. "I know it must be distressing for you, Miss Berrow, but—"
He broke off and turned to look at the opening door. A man—it was the one who had told the policeman-fish story in Wadden's hearing—looked into the room, and then withdrew. Before he closed the door, Head could see Tarrant behind him, still looking anxious.
The girl seated herself again, and Head resumed his chair. "What more?" she asked. "I'll help all I can."
"About those letters postmarked Carden," he began again. "How long had your half-brother been getting them, to your knowledge?"
"Since a very little while after we took the flat," she answered, "but they were not all in the same handwriting. There were two different kinds of handwriting."
"Both women's handwriting, would you say, or was one a man's?"
"Both women's, I think. Yes, as nearly as one can tell."
"Would you recognize either, or both, if you saw them?"
She considered it, and shook her head. "I don't know. If it were that address, I think I should. Not if it were anything else."
"Distinctive handwritings, either of them?"
"In one—the one he used to get most of, not this one I saw on the Friday he went away—most of the letters were separate, and very much slanted. I think I could recognize that again if I saw it. But this other—no. An upright writing, done with a fine, hard nib, I should think, because both the down and up strokes were quite thin. Apart from that, quite an ordinary hand—not much different from my own. I can see it in my mind, on the postmarked envelope—"
"I must say," Head observed in the pause, "that I've never questioned anyone who answered more lucidly and usefully than you do, Miss Berrow. Now"—he stood up and away from the chair—"would you mind sitting at this desk and addressing me two envelopes just as they were addressed in those two handwritings? Forging the two types of handwriting as nearly as you can from memory, I mean."
"I'll try," she said, "but it may not be very near."
He stood back, and put his fountain pen down on the desk as she seated herself at it. "That's a fine, hard nib, you'll find," he told her, "and you'll find other sorts in the pen-tray there. I'll go over to the window and leave you alone while you do it."
He went and looked out from the window, absently. The area of search was narrowing, if, as seemed almost certain, the writers of these letters were connected with the crime. The Carden postmark indicated that someone in the village had written them: the change of handwriting might be a disguise; it was unlikely, Head felt, that the dead man had been carrying on illicit affairs with two married women in this one village. Unlikely, though not impossible.
Then Helen Berrow called him, and he went back and looked down over her shoulder. In the fine handwriting she had written the dead man's name as "E. Claude Berrow, Esq.," while in the other it was "E. Berrow," and the former contained the word "London," while the latter merely gave the postal district and number.
"I hope you won't go in for forgery, Miss Berrow," he remarked as she rose and went back to the armchair. "Those two entirely different types of writing look as if you might give the police a good deal of trouble, if you did. Thanks very much for these." He pocketed the envelopes, and seated himself at the desk again. "Now—yes, the matter of keys. Had either you or your half-brother any keys to The Angle, more especially the key of the front door?"
She shook her head. "None of any door," she answered positively.
"He was rather partial to the opposite sex?" he suggested.
"Far too much so, I thought," she agreed unhesitatingly. "It was the side of his character that I didn't like—and the only one. He was very lovable, and we got on well together over everything."
"Except this one particular trait. And he was—was he popular with women, would you say, as far as you saw him in contact with them?"
"Decidedly so. Engaged in half a dozen different affairs since he and I took the flat. It was his—his weakness."
"Quite so," Head agreed gravely. "How many of those half-dozen were married, to your knowledge? Or didn't you know them?"
"All married but one—that is, if both the two who used to write to him from Carden were. I concluded, from that talk I told you I had with him the day he received a letter from here, that one of them was!"
"With a dangerously jealous devil of a husband—yes. Did you see any of these women at any time, Miss Berrow?"
"Yes, two of them. The unmarried one and one other."
"And what were they, blondes or brunettes? Did he prefer blondes?"
"They were both fair. But what has that to do with it?"
"I merely wanted to know which way his tastes ran—though of course he may not have been consistent in them. Now, Miss Berrow, you were very badly upset, naturally, when we came out from that house, and you began a sentence and didn't finish it, on your way to the car. You said—'I warned him—' Against what, and when?"
"Against the dangerously jealous husband, the day he made that remark when I asked him why he didn't marry, instead of carrying on with one woman after another in the way he did."
"And what did he say to your warning, do you remember?"
"Yes, he said there was no real danger of the husband finding out anything, because they were very careful as to where and how they met. He made a cynical remark to the effect that though she was a fool over him, she was quite a clever woman in other respects."
"Ah! Then he wasn't deeply in love with her, if he could talk like that about her."
"To speak frankly, Mr. Head, Claude was never deeply in love with anyone but himself. It appeared to me that he had only to look at a woman to make her fall in love with him, and I believe the only real affections he ever had in his life were for his mother and me."
"I begin to see the man clearly," he remarked thoughtfully. "Plenty of money, no occupation, and those grey eyes of his—" He broke off, remembering how the grey eyes had impressed Mr. Hawk.
"Need you ask me any more?" she implored abruptly.
"A little more, yet," he answered. "I think—yes, everything you have told me is of value in some way, and I'm grateful to you for it. I won't put one more question than I feel is necessary, but there are two or three more points. One of them—do you think any one of the letters in envelopes postmarked Carden—or even an empty envelope with that postmark—would remain among your half-brother's effects?"
"I'm quite sure it wouldn't," she answered with certainty. "He always destroyed all letters after answering them, except such as it was absolutely necessary for him to keep—business communications."
"But you said he had no business," he reminded her.
"No, but he had property of various kinds—investments, and things of that sort involving a certain amount of correspondence."
"Yes, of course. Miss Berrow, in spite of your certainty on this point—have you looked through his belongings, though?"
She shook her head. "Certainly not. I thought—I didn't expect to find him dead here, and naturally I shouldn't—" She broke off.
"No, of course not. But in spite of your certainty on this point, I'm going to ask your permission to search for one of those envelopes among his things—to go to your flat and make a search."
"If it will help you, you may," she answered unhesitatingly.
"Thanks very much. Now, can you tell me the names of any of these ladies—the half-dozen you have mentioned as in love with him?"
"Only two. Miss Seaton, and a Mrs. Bond, both living in London."
"Do you know where they are now, by any chance?"
"Mrs. Bond and her husband went on a cruise a fortnight ago—it was to last three weeks, I understood. Miss Seaton lives with her parents in London, and I believe is there now."
"You can give me no more names? Pet names, or anything?"
"No—wait, though! Some weeks ago—I can't say how long it is—I opened the door of the dining-room in the flat while Claude was telephoning. I heard him say—'Is that you, Ann?' I'm sure it was Ann."
"Do you know if it were a local or trunk call?"
"I haven't the slightest idea. Hearing that he was talking to somebody, I shut the door and went away. They were the only words I heard. It may have been as much as three months ago."
"Ann, eh?" Head reflected, and resolved to check up trunk calls from the Berrows' flat for the past six months. On local ones, he knew, he could get no check. "And that's all in the way of names?"
"Quite. You think—think the dangerously jealous husband—?" She gazed up at him as she sat, leaving the query incomplete.
He shook his head. "I think it a possibility, Miss Berrow," he said, "but mere thinking wouldn't get me far. That's why I've given you such a bad time in here, and I'm tremendously grateful to you for answering my questions in the way you have." He rose to his feet, and she too stood up. "You'll be questioned again at the inquest to-morrow, and quite probably I shall want you to clear up more points for me yet, but for the present I think you've stood enough."
"I—I want to help," she said rather shakily. "He—he was dear to me, in spite of—of everything. And you've been very considerate, and—and made me feel I wanted to tell you all I could."
"Well"—he smiled at her, reassuringly—"I think there's somebody outside anxious to talk to you, but don't let him tire you too much. And do get something to eat before you go to bed. You'll find Cortazzi—he's the manager here—will simply turn the place upside down for you if you ask him. My chief's seen to that for you."
He shook hands, and left her, to find Tarrant waiting outside the door, and paused to give him a word of warning.
"Before you go in there, Miss Berrow has had a very severe shock, and on top of that I've been questioning her about as much as she can stand," he said. "She's had no dinner, too. Now I leave her to you."
He himself had had nothing since his cup of tea at Purvis's cottage, but he went straight out from the hotel and along the street to the general store, which also served as post office for Carden. The news of the murder was out, now, and a Westingborough reporter tried to buttonhole the inspector for information, but got shaken off in short order. Head rang the bell beside the door of the general store and waited till a grey-whiskered man looked out inquiringly.
"Your post-office staff, Mr. Murdoch," he asked. "Who are they, and where can I get in touch with them?"
"Is it about the murder, Mr. Head?" Murdoch asked in reply, eagerly.
"Don't know, yet," Head grunted in response, unamiably. "Where can I get in touch with them, I asked? It's urgent."
"Well, there's Miss Willis, she lives up at the other end of the street, and Miss Portman, she lives here, and takes night duty on the telephone switchboard—not that there's one call a week after hours as a rule. But she's here, if you want to see her."
"I do want to see her, at once," Head assented.
"Better come in, Mr. Head." He stood back from the door. "I'll tell her it's you, and—shall I say what it's about?"
"You won't, because you don't know," Head assured him.
"Well, we'll go along, then. She won't be in bed yet, I think."
Head followed him, and he entered the shop, turning on the light, and, passing behind the wire-grilled post-office counter, knocked at a door and waited until a voice bade him enter. Head, just beside him, saw a fair-haired girl sitting on a narrow bed, reading, and inwardly queried if every girl and woman in Carden were some degree of blonde. The girl stood up at Murdoch's entry.
"Yes, what is it, Mr. Murdoch?" she asked—rather crossly, Head thought. He noted that the bed was the only article of furniture implying that the room was used for normal occupation: the rest was office fitting, including the telephone switchboard.
"Inspector Head wants to see you, Miss Portman," Murdoch informed her. "It'll be about the murder, most likely, this time o' night."
"What can I do for you, Mr. Head?" She looked past Murdoch as she asked the question, coolly and interestedly.
"Possibly Mr. Murdoch will leave me to tell you," Head answered.
Murdoch glared at him inimically, but took the hint and went out, closing the door with an echoing bang. The girl shook her head gravely as she gazed at the closed door and then back at the inspector.
"He suffers from corns," she remarked, "and everyone suffers from his temper in consequence. Silly old ass! What is it, Mr. Head? Do sit down, won't you? I have to sleep here, because of the board."
"Yes, of course," Head agreed. "You're not on duty here in the daytime, though, are you? Because, if you are—"
"Oh, no!" she interrupted. "I'm behind the counter. What is it you want, though? Is it really about the murder?"
"It's a mere inquiry that might be about anything," he assured her, and took the two envelopes that Miss Berrow had addressed from his pocket. "I want you to take a good look at these, and see if the handwriting on either of them reminds you of anyone at all. If it's in the least like anyone who comes to this post office—like the handwriting of anyone, I mean. Take them and examine them."
"Why, certainly." She took the two envelopes, and devoted her attention first to the one with fine-stroked, upright handwriting. Eventually she shook her head and looked up, frowning slightly.
"It might be anyone," she said. "A woman, I should think, but I don't recognize it. An ordinary sort of fist."
"Quite," he agreed. "Try the other, though. It's not so ordinary."
She gave the second envelope a longer scrutiny, then with an abrupt movement held them both out toward him.
"Yes," she said, "but I'm not allowed to reveal anything in connection with post-office work. You know that, Mr. Head, don't you?"
"I have heard something of the sort," he answered slowly. "But in this case I'll indemnify you, or whatever the phrase is, over anything you tell me. Whose handwriting is that?"
"Is it—is it really connected with the murder?" she asked in reply.
"I'm not telling you whether it is or no," he said. "All I'm telling you is that I want to know whether you recognize that handwriting, and if you don't tell me now, I'll get an order from the postmaster-general authorizing you to tell me."
"It might be—I don't think it is, but it might be Mrs. Ollyer's writing," she said. "You know—the vicar's wife."
"My God!" Head breathed softly. "Yet another red-head!"
TWILIGHT was deepening as Head came out from Murdoch's front door and heard Murdoch himself shoot the bolts. There were groups of both sexes in the village street, discussing the tragedy that the day had revealed, and there was, too, a flow and ebb of the curious to and from the front gate of The Angle, where Constable Sprott refused entry to everybody, including even pressmen, and stolidly declined to give information concerning the crime. It was still light enough for Head, glancing toward the point where the two roads parted, to see quite a throng before the gateway of the house, would-be sightseers who, he knew, would stand agape in the hope of some development. He turned his back on them and went back to the Carden Arms.
There he found Morton, who had put up at the hotel for the night, the centre of attraction in the entrance lounge, for either Morton had told or in some other way it had become known that he had been present when the body had been discovered. He was not being badgered to tell what he had seen: other men stood as near him as they felt was fitting, and gazed at him with yearning hope while he and the raconteur whom Wadden had overheard appeared bored with each other. Head caught one remark as he passed the pair in his quest of Cortazzi.
"Yes," the other man was telling Morton, "the country wants rain."
Which indicated that the subject of the murder had been shelved, for the time. Disregarding hopeful glances at himself, Head passed on to the little office at the back, and there, as he had anticipated, found Cortazzi, who looked up from an account book at him.
"Cortazzi, I want a room for the night," he stated without preface.
The manager made a gesture of despair. "But it ees ze 'ight of ze season for me, Mr. 'Ead!" he lamented. "I make ze room for ze lady, an' it was so I put two of ze maids to sleep together an' move many of ze guests. Zere is no more rooms, Mr. 'Ead."
"You've got to find me a bed somewhere," Head insisted firmly, "even if it's in a cellar or on the billiard table."
"Not ze billiard table—no man sleep on ze billiard table!" Cortazzi sounded alarmed at the suggestion.
"If you've got any women sleeping on it, I can sleep in baulk," Head remarked. "Especially if they're red-headed," he added.
The observation was beyond Cortazzi's comprehension—possibly he was not a billiard-player. "I mus' make 'Arry go to sleep with Jules, an' zen you 'ave one small, small room in ze top of ze 'ouse, Mr. 'Ead. It is ze best I can do." He rose to his feet. "I will go an' tell 'Arry he must sleep with Jules, an' so you 'ave ze room."
"And I suppose you still have some cold beef and salad?" Head asked. "Can you scratch me a meal of some sort together?"
"Ze cold beef, or ze 'am an' chicken," Cortazzi offered, pausing as he faced the doorway. "I poot heem in ze dining-room for you."
"Anything," Head assented, "and a pint tankard of beer with it."
"I go now," Cortazzi promised. "Ze bed an' ze dinner an' ze beer, it shall all be to you in ze shake of ze lamb's rudder."
Following the manager out, Head realized that he himself was dead tired, and very much in need of the promised meal. But, he found on returning to the lounge, he was not to have that meal at once, for he heard Morton say—"Yes, there he is," and Sergeant Purvis advanced.
"I thought I ought not to wait till morning, sir, since it's about the case," Purvis explained. "Mr. Ollyer's been to my place and told me he'd like to see you or Mr. Wadden, because he saw a light at The Angle last Friday night, and saw somebody there, too."
"Where is Mr. Ollyer?" Head asked, his weariness vanishing at the chance of obtaining voluntary information from the vicar.
"He said he'd be at home, sir. I told him I wasn't sure where he'd find you, but you might be here, and he asked me to find you and tell you, because he didn't want to leave his wife and the servants alone too long at home, after what's happened."
"Naturally," Head agreed. "I'll go along to the vicarage at once. And you go down to The Angle, Purvis, and see how Sprott is getting on with his visitors. Tell him to keep the press out, for to-night."
"I've been down, sir, and he's barking at everybody. They've flash-lighted him against the gate—with his mouth wide open."
"Well, ring Westingborough and tell them I told you we want another man out to take over at midnight. They won't leave the house alone much before morning, if I know anything at all about them."
"Right you are, sir," Purvis assented cheerfully.
By that time, the two were well on their way from the hotel. Cortazzi's cold meal would not suffer through being laid in readiness, so Head did not stay to inform the manager that the consumption of that meal was unavoidably postponed. He turned off from the street into the road leading to the railway station, leaving Purvis to go on toward his cottage alone, and pushed open the big white gate of the vicarage grounds. White flowers shone in the last of the twilight: a creeper on an arched trellis so darkened the front doorway that Head had to grope for the bell-push and, finding it at last, he pressed it and heard the result. After a brief while the door was opened by a maid with flaming red hair—Head recognized her as the one he and Wadden had seen that afternoon as they passed the village post office. There were, he decided with inward irritation, far too many red-headed women in Carden, though the Westingborough hairdresser had told him that bronze hairpins might indicate any shade of hair down to brown and up to pale blonde, since what used to be known as "blonde" pins were no longer obtainable, except, possibly, in some of the court hairdressers' establishments in London.
"I want to see Mr. Ollyer," he said. "Inspector Head, tell him."
The girl admitted him to a sort of study-dining-room—it appeared to serve both uses—and left him there. She seemed rather flustered and discomposed, he thought, but the fact of a murder having been committed in a quiet village like this might account for her manner. He waited, and presently Ollyer entered the room.
A tall man, this vicar, probably in his early forties, and undoubtedly of athletic tendencies and still in good condition. He moved with lithe, silent quickness, Head noted, and creases in the forehead over his rather deeply-set, hazel eyes denoted none too certain a temper. But he greeted his visitor quite pleasantly, though a trifle nervously, and with an almost furtive restlessness of gaze, altogether different from the inspector's steady, cool watchfulness.
"I don't know if I'm troubling you unnecessarily, Inspector," he said, "but when I heard—through one of our two maids, I must own—when I heard of this discovery of a body at the unoccupied house to-day, I felt I ought to tell you a circumstance which might bear on the crime—something that I saw myself just a week ago."
It sounded like a rehearsed speech, Head felt, a speech delivered with stilted, ponderous precision. He wished the man would look at him, instead of past him, round him, and all over the place.
"I am glad of all the information I can get, at this stage," he answered.
"Mine may or may not be relevant," Ollyer pursued. "On Friday last one of my parishioners, an elderly woman living in one of three cottages on the Crandon road, was very ill indeed—as a matter of fact, she died on the Saturday. On the Friday, her sister sent for me, but I had a meeting of churchwardens and did not get the message till past six o'clock. I am telling you these preliminary circumstances to explain my own movements at the time."
Odd, that, Head felt. Did the vicar fear to fall under suspicion in connection with the crime, that he was so careful to account for himself? His precision over it was ponderously meticulous.
"Yes, I understand it was a Mrs. Ward who died," Head said.
"Ah, you know about that, then! Well, I dined hurriedly, and then went to visit Mrs. Ward. I may tell you that though in humble circumstances, she had been a prominent and useful figure in church activities here, and I was deeply grieved over her passing. But you, I know, would prefer me to come to the point of what I have to tell."
"Tell it in your own way, with any details you like," Head urged.
"Er—thank you, Inspector. I am not sure as regards time. It may have been half-past seven, or later, when I reached Mrs. Ward's cottage, and as soon as I saw her I felt certain she was dying. She herself did not expect to recover, but was fully conscious, and very glad to see me. Again I cannot tell you with any precision how long a time I spent with her. All I can say on that head is that her sister brought a lighted paraffin lamp into the room before I left, but the windows in the cottage are small and face eastward, with high trees shading them from the other side of the road. It was no longer full daylight outside when I took my leave. I can time it no nearer."
"Suppose we say about a quarter-past nine," Head suggested, remembering that Mr. Hawk's lone passenger had left the railway station at eight-forty or a minute or two later.
"It may have been," Ollyer agreed. "It may have been anywhere between nine and half-past. I am not sure on the point."
"This Mrs. Ward's sister may be able to fix the time."
"Oh, no! Oh, no!" Ollyer dissented, with what appeared unnecessary energy. "The cottage is closed up, and all the furniture removed for auction at Crandon—there are one or two good antiques, by the way. The sister went back to Bournemouth—I think it is Bournemouth, either that or Bordon, some name of that kind—gone back to her home, in any case. And she left me alone with Mrs. Ward after bringing in the lamp, and probably would not know at what time I left the cottage—I did not see her on my way out. Between nine and half-past, though."
"We will go on from there," Head suggested placidly. Words were the vicar's business, he knew, and Ollyer was not stingy over them.
"I came out from the cottage to walk back home," the vicar went on. "My wife had driven me there, but I had told her not to wait, but leave me to walk back, since I did not know how long I should be. I remember there was a courting couple on their way toward Crandon, and apart from them, nobody visible on the road at all. The circumstance impressed itself on my mind through my reflecting on the extreme quietness of the evening, scarcely a sound of any kind. And so, to come to the point of what I want to tell you, I came along the road and abreast the entrance gate of the unoccupied house where the two roads join—a Mr. Berrow used to live there, I have been told."
"Before your time," Head observed, realizing that Ollyer had made a pause at this point to add impressiveness to his story. He had a flair for effect, even in such a case as this.
"I never knew the man. He had a daughter, I have been given to understand, who became an actress. But all this is quite beside the point. When I came abreast the gate of the unoccupied house, I saw a light through the window of the room on the right of the porch. It was not an ordinary light, but appeared to me to be an electric torch being held and directed away from the window into the room—I could see that it was a concentrated beam of light, not held still, but directed in a sort of wavering way, toward the inner wall and downward, as if at the floor under the wall. It wavered about, you understand."
"Quite," Head agreed and felt doubtful over the story. If, as was almost certain, Claude Berrow's body had been lying on the floor at that time, it seemed incredible folly on the part of his murderer to stay in the room and flash an electric torch in a fashion that rendered the light visible to anyone in the road. "What else? By the way, there was no curtain or obstruction of any kind to prevent you from seeing into the room, was there?"
"Nothing whatever. I could see in, could see the light, and that somebody was holding it and moving the beam from point to point."
"And this somebody—what about him?" Head queried.
"It was a woman," Ollyer answered surprisingly, though almost instantly Head realized that he might have admitted such a possibility, instead of obstinately deciding that a man had scattered the hairpins about the house. "I could only see her back as she stood there, and that only in outline, and dimly, but I am sure it was a woman."
"Ah!" Head sounded reflective over it. "Twilight already begun, the glass of the window between you and the figure, and the window itself a good twenty yards distant from the gate. And you are absolutely positive it was a woman in that room?"
"Utterly positive!" The energy with which the reply was uttered made it an exclamation, with no little anger in it over the implied doubt. "Can't you realize that the beam from the electric torch would reflect a certain amount of light toward the window, tend to make a silhouette of the figure standing there? I saw the outline, nothing more. A woman's hat—I am certain, and a cloak or coat with a fur collar—I am certain of that too. A tall woman, unless the floor of the room were considerably higher than the ground outside. A woman's figure—even with no more than the outline, one can tell the difference between a woman's figure and a man's. The draping of the cloak—I could see to below her waist, to her hips, and it was undoubtedly a woman standing in that room holding the electric torch."
"A red-haired woman," Head suggested.
"I couldn't tell the colour of her hair. Even if there had been light enough, I think her hat would have hidden it. Why red-haired?"
"Anything from pale blonde to brown, then," Head qualified his original surmise. "Never mind. You can tell me no more about this woman? Apparent age, approximate height—any details whatever?"
"No more than I have told you, the outline of the figure only visible. I paused for a moment or two at sight of it, and then went on, thinking that somebody must have taken the house, and had not yet put curtains at the windows. I saw no light in any other room."
"You didn't go inside the gate, I suppose?"
"Certainly not—why should I? I thought, since the house was to be occupied again, I had better give the people time to settle in before calling on them—that occurred to me as I went on my way home. After that, I dismissed the incident from my mind until to-night, when I heard that a body had been discovered in the house. I—"
"Didn't you remark on what you had seen to anyone?" Head interposed, with a definite object in the query.
"I said to my wife at some time that we might expect new parishioners, and I thought they had already moved into the house. Beyond that, nothing—this parish keeps me too busy for gossip. But I felt, having heard of the discovery of the body, that you ought to know this, though I fail to see what use you will make of it now I have told you. It is not as if I could help you to ascertain the identity of this woman, or tell you any more than I have already told."
"What you have told me is very interesting indeed," Head assured him gravely. "In fact, it may prove of very great importance in ascertaining how this man came by his death. I'd like to point out to you that Mrs. Ollyer appears to be connected in two ways with what you have told me, and may be able to—"
"Mrs. Ollyer knows nothing more than I have told her about the discovery of the body," her husband interrupted sharply. "She cannot possibly be connected with this affair in any way."
"On the other hand," Head said imperturbably, "Mrs. Ollyer drove you to the cottage, and then, I conclude, turned the car about and drove back home. I want to know if she did that, for one thing—"
"She did—drove straight back here," Ollyer interrupted again.
"In that case, she passed The Angle while you were with Mrs. Ward, and may have seen something that might be useful to me—"
"She didn't," Ollyer interrupted yet a third time.
"Both you and she may think she didn't," Head explained patiently, "but what appears quite trivial to you may be important to me. I want to see Mrs. Ollyer, and hear what she herself has to say."
"I am afraid I cannot permit that," Ollyer said stiffly.
Head looked him full in the face, and wished the man's eyes would not rove all over the room, but that their gaze would meet his own.
"I don't care whether you permit it or no," he said coolly. "In a case like this, where it is a thousand to one chance that a murder has been committed, I see and question anyone I choose, man or woman. Get that fact fixed in your mind, sir. There are one or two points in the account you have given me that I want checked up, as far as—"
Again Ollyer interrupted, this time with far from reverend calm. "Do you dare to insinuate that I have asked to see you in order to tell you anything exceeding strict truth?" he demanded hotly.
"I never insinuate," Head answered. "I leave that to counsel in the cases that sometimes arise out of my work. But I do advise, sometimes. At present, I'd advise you not to shout till you're really hurt, Mr. Ollyer. I've simply said I wish to interview Mrs. Ollyer."
"Well, you can't," Ollyer snapped. "She's rather badly upset and frightened over this affair—over a body being discovered in our parish—and she's gone to bed. So you can't see her."
"I will call here at ten to-morrow morning and see her then."
"I'll hear what she has to say about that," Ollyer retorted.
"I will call here at ten to-morrow morning and see her," Head insisted inflexibly. "Meanwhile I have to thank you for volunteering the information you have given me, and tell you that it will form part of the evidence at the inquest to-morrow. You will be required to attend, and will get a formal intimation in the morning to that effect."
"I foresaw that," Ollyer said sullenly. "As to your interviewing Mrs. Ollyer in the morning—"
"That point is already settled, and we can dismiss it," Head interrupted. "I will now bid you good night."
"I'll see you to the door," Ollyer offered with less sullenness, as if he realized the folly of antagonizing one in Head's position. "The maids have probably all gone to bed by this time."
He accompanied Head to the outer door, and there, surprisingly, offered his hand. "I shall see you in the morning, Mr. Head," he said. "A beautiful night, isn't it? Quite a perfect June night."
"It is," Head agreed. "Good night, Mr. Ollyer, and thanks again."
"No thanks necessary. Yes, a beautiful night, but the country wants rain."
The evidence on this last point, Head felt as he went back to the Carden Arms, appeared to be unanimous.
Cortazzi, evidently wondering what had become of his latest guest, was anxiously awaiting him in the entrance lounge.
"Ze cold collation, she is laid in ze dining-room, Mr. 'Ead," Cortazzi told him. "Ze beef an' ze 'am an' ze cold chicken an' ze salad. I will now draw ze beer myself, so he shall not be flat for you."
"Thanks, Cortazzi—I'll just have the shadow of a wash, first."
Telephoning this latest development to Wadden could keep awhile, he felt—the superintendent had almost certainly gone home, by this time, and would do nothing before morning. And Head himself felt too dog-weary to care whether his chief got the news or no, just then.
Beef and beer revived him, and he made a careful mental survey of all that had happened since, early in the afternoon, Sergeant Purvis had rung through to Westingborough and reported the discovery of the body. Not so very early in the afternoon, either: quite a number of events had been crowded into seven hours or a little more, and out of them, for special consideration, Head chose Miss Portman's verdict on the addressed envelope he had shown her, and Ollyer's attitude, rather than the story the man had told. His determination to prevent Head from interviewing his wife, if possible...
"Zere would be salmon, Mr. 'Ead"—Cortazzi, hovering in case his guest should need anything that was not provided, broke in on Head's reflections—"but ze feeshing, she is not good. Ze country, she want rain."
"If I hear any more about that rain, Cortazzi," Head told him sternly, "I shall arrest you for inciting a breach of the peace."
Cortazzi gazed at him apprehensively. "Mr. 'Ead, I did not do it, whatever it is," he pleaded.
"No? Well, fetch me another pint, and put a drink for yourself down to me—have one, I mean. Then I'll let you off."
"Thank you vairy mooch, Mr. 'Ead. You 'ave your leetle shoke—I am quite pleased. I 'ave a visky."
He hurried away with the empty tankard. It was of the highest importance, he knew, to keep on good terms with the police, and especially such notable personages in the force as Wadden and Head.
THE new day was very new indeed when Head arrived from the Carden Arms at the front gate of The Angle, and found Sergeant Purvis leaning pensively on the gate, gazing out at the road. The sergeant straightened himself at his inspector's approach, and opened the gate.
"Where's that Westingborough man?" Head inquired. "Why isn't he here on duty in place of Sprott?"
"I've relieved him, Mr. Head," Purvis answered. "Sprott's wife is ailing, so I let him go as soon as the other man got over here last night, and thought I'd better take over myself about half-past five this morning. It's much better than having a stranger among our people here. They know Sprott and me."
"And what you say goes, eh?" Head suggested. "Well, watchman, what of the night? Much trouble with visitors?"
"Reporters hanging round till as late as three o'clock. Nobody has put in an appearance since I got here, half an hour ago, sir."
"Well, you go on holding the pass while I have a look round inside. If Sprott comes on duty before I go, you might come in too."
"Right you are, sir, but I don't expect him till eight o'clock. I told him he needn't report here till then."
The right man in the right place, Purvis, Head reflected as he went to the front door of the house and let himself in with the key he had demanded from Guddle. But then, Superintendent Wadden always managed to put the right man in the right place: he had his district organized in such a way as to make a nearly perfect team of the men at his disposal, and Head, knowing that his chief's long-threatened retirement could not be much longer delayed, questioned whether he himself would be able to place men and get from them the willing team work that they accorded to kindly, apoplectic old Wadden. Over a problem such as this murder afforded, Head knew, he was by far the better man of the two, but when it came to the selection and management of men in the district he had doubts of himself. There was no doubt that he would step into the superintendency when Wadden retired, but he much preferred things as they were, and hoped that retirement was yet far off, though he knew it was not.
He crossed the entrance hall to the dining-room, and entered there. The gruesomely horrible corpse lay almost as he and Wadden had first seen it: Doctor Bennett and the superintendent between them had given it an exhaustive examination, and for the present Head was not concerned with it. He went to the window and looked out: the floor of the room was at about the same level as the ground outside.
So, if Ollyer had told the truth, and if he had made no mistake as to the sex of the person in the room when he passed, it had been a tall woman. If he had told the truth! Head had doubts on the point.
There was nothing of relevant interest in the room itself—apart from the corpse of Edward Claude Berrow, of course, but Head did not stay to examine that again. He went out, and along the passage to the back door: since the key of that door was missing, it was possible and even likely that the murderer or murderess had left the house by the back: the finger-prints on the handle had already been taken and compared with the set furnished by Mr. Guddle, for Wadden was not one to lose time on a case. And Guddle had not made these prints: their texture—it was a fairly clear impression—indicated either a man's fingers, or those of a large-handed woman. But then, in what Mr. Guddle had described as an aggericultural district, the majority of the women had work-expanded hands, with an epidermis of coarse texture.
Wadden, who missed nothing, had obtained and provided his inspector with a key to this door, and Head opened it and stepped out into the yard. His examination of the grounds on the preceding afternoon had declared to him that there was no possible entry from either of the roads bounding two sides of the triangle, other than by the front gate. The late Mr. Berrow had reinforced a good hawthorn hedge with a five-strand fence of barbed wire, so long ago that the strands were overgrown by the hawthorn to an extent that practically concealed them at this time of year: they were about fourteen inches apart from each other, so that the topmost was nearly six feet from the ground, and Head had made certain that nobody had grubbed under the lowest strand at any point and wriggled through from the road. He went and checked up on this certainty now, and determined that the hedge, unclipped for the last two years, had not been climbed or in any way crossed by a human being at any point: there would have been evidence among the young green branches of hawthorn, if such had been the case. Quite probably pressmen and other sightseers, hoping to evade the watchfulness of Sprott at some point, had looked at that hedge and cursed it, realizing what a heavy, luxuriant barrier it made.
The third side of the triangle, giving on to the beanfield, was equally impracticable. One could find places in the hedge—Head had found one himself yesterday—where it was possible to jump the deep ditch and land on the grass-grown border of the beanfield. But to get back was another matter altogether: there was the deep ditch, and the hawthorn hedge set on a bank so far above the level of the field that jumping up to it was out of the question, and climbing up from the ditch was almost equally impracticable. But one could get out to the field: had the murderer—or murderess—gone that way?
It seemed incredible that he—or she—would have the hardihood to come out by the front gate after committing the crime, and walk along the road—along any of the three roads joining where The Angle stood. Incredible, and yet... if any person well known in the neighbourhood managed to emerge to the road unnoticed, that person would be far less conspicuous walking along the road than jumping into the beanfield and making his or her way to the gate through the growing crop or along the border of the field.
Returned to and standing in the concrete-paved back yard, Head reflected on these things. Until he had had his interview with Mrs. Ollyer at ten o'clock, he determined, he would take her husband's story as genuinely and truthfully intended to assist the police in their investigations, and would rule out the possibility of either of the pair having been concerned in the crime—this in spite of Miss Portman's identification of that handwriting as like Mrs. Ollyer's. It was so easy, the inspector knew, to be turned on to a false scent by apparent evidence which might be coincidental and utterly misleading. He conjured up in his mind a totally unidentified murderer—or murderess—leaving the house by this back door, and going—where? To the front gate, of course, to wait and listen behind the hedge until it became possible to emerge unobserved to the road, and then walk unconcernedly away.
Possibly. But if he—or she—had not gone that way, then he or she must have gone by way of the beanfield. In that case, if he or she had gone round the grass border of the field to the gate, no trace of his or her passing would remain on the dry grass after a week's interval, and, if he or she had gone straight through the crop, those four men with their hoes had destroyed every footprint by now. And, Head remembered, they had told him that they had seen no footprints.
But, on the dry, hard soil, footprints would be almost if not quite invisible to a casual glance, and farm labourers as a rule are not observant people, apart from their work, though over that they may be cannily particular. As witness the leader of the hoeing quartette, who had accused Head of breaking down two beanstalks, and no more. It was quite true: the inspector had broken two, and the man, at his work all the time, had noted the destruction accurately.
Now, leaving any further quest of the iron bar, or whatever the weapon that had been used might be, to the half-dozen Westingborough men whom he intended to have turned into these grounds as soon as he met Wadden, Head crossed the grounds and kitchen garden to the hedge beyond which was the beanfield. Looking over, he saw that the four men were at their work again in echelon formation, the leading man of yesterday setting the pace again to-day. He was evidently a sort of foreman for their task, and, Head decided, was working well.
A close survey of the hedge showed the point where Head himself had broken through and jumped down into the field on the preceding day. Then, nearer to the direct Crandon road, which was also nearer to the gateway of the field, he found another thin place in the hedge, and, on examining it, found eight twigs broken, indicating someone having forced a way through, and withered to an extent that indicated the damage as having been done some days before. There was a displacement of earth at the bottom of the hedge, as if somebody had slipped in making a leap to the bank beyond, but no clear impression of a footprint: the bank itself, thickly grown with coarse, dry grass, revealed nothing, as did the intervening ditch: there was only the one indistinct mark in the soil, apart from the evidence of the broken twigs.
Suspicious, but not conclusive as regards the murderer—or murderess! If the latter, wearing a fur-collared cloak or coat, there would surely be some bit of fur or fabric left on the stubby, thorny hawthorn branches—and there was nothing of the sort! And the front gateway of The Angle, with darkness nearly complete, would make a much simpler and equally safe means of exit.
Still, Head went to his own gap in the hedge—the one he had used the day before, broke through again, and landed lightly on the bank of the field. Then he examined his own point of impact, and found that he left no footprint on the grass. And, from the edge of that grass to where the four men worked, every foot of soil was newly turned by the hoes, so that no imprint made a week before could possibly remain.
A short walk along the bank brought him to the point where somebody else had got through the hedge and jumped down into the field. From this side, no broken twigs were visible: the weed and bramble-infested ditch looked undisturbed at first, but Head scrutinized it closely and carefully under the gap, and, walking slowly along the bank toward the Crandon road side of the field, kept his gaze fixed on the ditch. So he went on, very slowly, until he was within a dozen yards of the corner of the field, with the gap an equal distance behind him. And then, standing at gaze, he almost felt his own heart thump.
A dock, rankly growing up from the bed of the ditch, had been broken down, its stem fractured so that its head, heavy with red masses of seed, hung downward at an acute angle toward something that stuck perpendicularly in the comparatively soft soil at the bottom of the ditch. Lying on his face on the grassy bank, leaning down and supporting himself by one hand on the side of the ditch, Head just managed to get hold on that something and withdraw it—the force with which it had been flung down there had driven one end nearly three inches into the muddy floor, and the blackish, clayey mud had displaced part of the evidence of the purpose for which this thing had been used. But, as Head regained his feet, he knew that he had in his hand the weapon with which Claude Berrow had been struck down.
It was a fourteen-inch length of iron pipe, about an inch in diameter: the screw thread on the end by which Head had withdrawn it, and by which the murderer had apparently held it, suggested that it was gas piping. It was not unduly heavy, but might have been wielded by an active and determined woman, just as probably as by a man. On the muddied end—or rather, beyond the inches to which mud adhered—was a brownish mess to which hairs—human hairs—clung. The user of the weapon had struck hard, fiercely and terribly hard. And, either in terror or in deliberate determination to be rid of the thing, the user had flung it into the ditch with far more than necessary force: had it been dropped in gently, it would probably have fallen flat and lain invisible among the weeds, instead of sticking endwise in the muddy soil after breaking the dock-stem and so betraying its presence. It was, together with the broken twigs in the hawthorn fence, practically conclusive evidence that the murderer—or murderess—had come this way after committing the crime.
Would Ollyer come this way? Would his wife come this way?
Pondering, realizing that in less than twenty-four hours—far less than twenty-four hours!—the identity of the murdered man had been almost accidentally ascertained, the Ollyers had been pointed out as a promising line of inquiry, a possible motive for the crime had been indicated, and the weapon used had been found, Head made his way toward the gate of the field. The hoeing party, having reached that side, and having worked out from the hedge till they were now opposite the gate, had paused in their labours, possibly in the hope that the inspector might exchange a word with them on his way out to the road.
"Mornin', sir," said the leader of the gang, cheerfully. "See yu ain't tromplin' down no beans, this time."
It was a totally different type of reception from that accorded to the inspector the afternoon before. These men had discussed and realized the fact of the murder, now, and probably, from survey over pints of beer of previous cases in the district, had a better appreciation of the personality and potentialities of Inspector Head.
"No," he answered. "Isn't it rather late in the year to be hoeing a crop like this? These beans are coming into pod, surely."
"Thussels, marster—thussels," the leader explained gravely.
"Ah! I see," Head assented with equal gravity—though he did not see why thistles should be more important than other weeds.
"Y'see, marster," the sage amplified his statement, "this heere fild's wholly bad wi' thussels, an' if they're let seed, it'll be ten times wuss nex' year. So Marster Betterton gun us the job o' howin' 'em down afore they seed, an' to tu'n over all the ground so's to git the young weeds too—long as it laast dry, that is. 'Cause, if it rain, they young weeds'll taake root again, but we caan't help that, an' there 'on't be no thussels seedin' anyhow. Cut 'um all down, we do. Took the fild, us fower did. Ha'd wuk it is, too."
Having taken the field, Head understood, meant that they had contracted to hoe it all for a certain price, and were, as he had conjectured, piece-workers, which accounted for their beginning early and working late, totally against trade union principles.
"I expect it is hard work," he agreed.
"We ain't sin no footmarks, sir," the lad Henry put in.
"It's s'prisin'," the leader remarked severely, "how young chaps jest outer schule caan't keep theer gobs shet, nowadays. Nosuh, we ain't sin no footmarks—I'd 'a' towd ye that, if he'd had sense enough to let me. But ye caan't larn 'em, nowadays. All alike, they are."
"Well, Henry, I'm glad you keep your eyes open," Head observed. "You won't find any footmarks now, I feel sure. Good morning, all."
He went out to the road, carrying the piece of muddied piping carefully. Fragments of a renewed discussion over the rights of sevenpence ha' penny apiece as opposed to a shilling for the leader and sixpence for each of the others came to him for awhile, though almost certainly his half-crown had been consumed fluidly some hours before.
Since Sprott had replaced Purvis at the front gate of The Angle, Head paused only to warn him that nobody must be admitted yet, and then went on to the Carden Arms, where Jeffries, sitting on the running-board of the police car from Westingborough, indicated that Wadden had arrived and was waiting inside. Cortazzi, in the entrance lounge, faced Head.
"Ze superintendent is in ze writing-room, Mr. 'Ead," he announced. "I keep zat room for you an' for 'im, to-day, because 'e ask me."
"You might bring me some breakfast in there," Head suggested, with a glance at his watch, which assured him that he had plenty of time for a conference with Wadden and breakfast as well before going to his interview with Mrs. Ollyer. "I've worked up an appetite."
"Sairtainly—sir—sairtainly!" Cortazzi assented cordially. "Ze bacon an' eggs, an' ze coffee—I order her now."
Head went on into the writing-room and, facing Wadden, silently held up the piece of gas piping. The superintendent took it, hefted it to ascertain its possibilities as a weapon, and laid it carefully on the desk at which Head had sat to interview Miss Berrow.
"Yes, deadly," he said gravely. "You're doing well on this, Head. Now sit down and spill every blessed detail from when I left you last night. Never mind what you told me on the 'phone—work it all in."
Before half that narrative had enlightened him, the door of the room opened to admit Harry and Jules, each bearing a large tray, and Head suspended his recital while they arranged his meal on a table. Wadden gazed pensively at the result of their labours.
"Here, waiter, fetch another cup and a lot more coffee," he ordered. "A lot more coffee, mind! Head, d' ye remember when we had coffee that January morning in the dining-room at the Grange, with Carter's body lying down under the window—that morning you found the trail of the old boots that went up a tree and stopped there?"[*]
* See Accessory After, by the same author. Ward Lock & Co.
"I'm not likely to forget it," Head answered. "Why?" He took the cover off the main dish placed before his plate.
"Well, you didn't exactly cover yourself with glory over that case, but this looks promising," Wadden explained. "D' ye know, there was once a hotel proprietor who didn't provide eggs and bacon for breakfast for his people. I'm not sure whether he got lynched, or died insane. One or the other—he couldn't possibly survive."
"Sausages?" Head suggested, piling eggs and bacon on his plate.
"Quite a lot of people haven't got enough faith for sausages," Wadden dissented. "No—it's safer to stick to the beaten track. Carry on with the tale—what did this Miss Portman make of it?"
Head began again, interrupting himself only for the entry of Harry with another cup and a very large coffee-pot and milk-jug. Then, while the superintendent drank five cups—good, large, breakfast cups—of coffee, he finished both his breakfast and the story of his various interviews and inquiries, up to the finding of the piping.
"'Stonishingly lucky, all of it," Wadden commented, and applied to Head's coffee-pot to refill his cup for the sixth time, since his own pot was empty. "So lucky, you're bound to strike a snag."
"A pedestrian case." Head quoted his cousin, Terence Byrne.
"Which is why you pinched the car last night, so it shouldn't be all pedestrian," Wadden observed. "And at ten, you go and see the lady in the case—it is ten, your appointment, isn't it?"
"One of the ladies in the case," Head corrected him. "According to Miss Berrow, there were six, and she herself is the seventh, though not in the way they were. But I doubt—"
"What?" Wadden asked, as the sentence remained incomplete.
"The woman at that window, for one thing."
"Ollyer's a fairly popular man here," Wadden pointed out. "A good man, as far as his record shows—of course, I haven't checked up on parsons very closely, since I don't look among 'em as a class for potential criminals. But I've never heard anything but good of the Reverend James. He's only been in Carden two years, though."
"Ever talked to him?" Head inquired.
"Once. He told me it was a cold day, and I couldn't contradict him. As nearly as I remember, we stopped at that and parted friends."
"Ever had a word with his wife?" Head pursued.
"I nearly did, once. In Market Street—she'd left her car standing where she oughtn't to park. Sergeant Wells got ahead of me, and warned her she mustn't. Fine-looking woman, Head."
"Red-haired," Head observed, rather morosely.
"The country wants rain," Wadden parried, in an irritable tone.
"You've been suffering too, have you?" Head inquired, as if pleased to find a fellow-victim of the monotonous platitude.
"Tortured!" Wadden assured him gravely. "Look here, Head, if you don't close this case today, we'll repeat the conditions to-night. I'll go into that room with an electric torch as soon as it gets toward darkness, stand in front of the window with my back to it, and play the torch over the back of the room. You stand at the gate as the Reverend James said he did, and see what you make of me—how much you're able to see, and what I look like, if any. Then we'll reverse it—I'll stand at the gate and you go inside and make play with the electric torch. Like you, I think that story of the woman needs salt. And there might be shadows or something to make a man look like a woman—some trick of the glass in the window, or something. Distortion."
"We must find that Mrs. Ward's sister," Head suggested.
"To check the time he went to the house and the time he left it—Mrs. Ward's house, I mean. Man, he wouldn't dare distort the time—he'd know we've only got to get at her to hang him, if he did that. You're not dealing with an uneducated moron of criminal tendencies when you tackle the Reverend James. But that lamp, of course, may have been put on the table by the sister as early as nine o'clock, or even before, which would give him plenty of time to get out of the cottage and into The Angle to admit Mr. Claude Berrow when he called—and dot him one which would stop his even whispering again. No, we'll get the woman and hear her story—get her address from the people who took the furniture to Crandon for sale—but I don't think it'll help us much. Another line—Mrs. Ollyer in the car, or after she'd come back home and garaged the car. Pity the rough iron of that pipe won't hold finger-prints, though probably the hand that held it was gloved in case it might. Certainly gloved if a woman did it."
"They being more partial to wearing gloves—the class that might kill Berrow, I mean. Yes. But if Mrs. Ollyer drove back and then went walking to The Angle, somebody would have seen her."
"Who would remember where the vicar's wife went walking, a week after it happened?" Wadden queried sceptically. "Besides, you've got to remember how little the bacon-worriers in a village like this are in love with the law in any form. They're scared of it. If half a dozen of 'em saw somebody hanging round The Angle at nine o'clock last Friday night, d' you think one of 'em would come forward voluntarily and tell us about it? Would he hell! That's why I wish they'd go to the talkies more than they do, even—it might make 'em realize that there's many a kind heart beating under a policeman's belt."
"Pretty much all the internal organs would have to be misplaced for that," Head pointed out. "Never mind, though. You're right—they won't come forward if they can possibly avoid it. But to revert to the Ollyers—and that handwriting. There's a link, there."
"Or a coincidental resemblance—which? The specimen you showed Miss Portman wasn't even written by Mrs. Ollyer, remember. It's a cranky sort of writing, but aren't all women cranky in some particular? Oh, yes, I know you're going to remark that she has an unusually glad eye and ankle, but what do you expect of a good-looking woman from London planted down in a country village and condemned to it, probably for the rest of her life? Ten to one she had her little circle of admirers when she was in London and misses 'em rather badly here."
"Claude Berrow being one of the circle," Head suggested.
"Don't get all woolly in your ruminations, man," Wadden bade, rather testily. "You know as well as I do—better, perhaps, since you had it straight from Miss Berrow and I've only got your version of what she told you—you know quite well that Claude Berrow was a lone wolf—and wolf is the right word, as far as his hunting women is concerned. He wouldn't join any circle round a woman. For one thing, he wouldn't want to join it, and for another, that type of man is hardly ever popular with other men. No. If he got to know Mrs. Ollyer at all in London, it wasn't as one of a circle of admirers."
"Why are you trying to put me off the Ollyers?" Head asked abruptly. "What's your brief for the man or his wife—or both?"
"I can't see her getting through that hedge and chucking the pipe away like that," Wadden answered. "And I can't see him taking the risk of coming out of the house of a dying woman in his parish, going into The Angle, and there putting paid to Claude Berrow's account."
"You're right, Chief, it doesn't fit," Head admitted frankly. "We'll postpone the rest, for now. I've got to get away to the vicarage."
"Have you spoken to her before?"
"Only casually—it was at a bazaar at Westingborough, and I had a minute or two's talk with her. She had a stall."
"Well, off you go, and look out she doesn't stall you to-day."
ADMITTED to the room in which he had interviewed the vicar the night before, Head found Mrs. Ollyer standing before the window, and her husband seated in an arm-chair at the corner of the empty fireplace, evidently reading from a volume he held. But he ceased his reading and stood up as the red-haired maid closed the door.
"Good morning, Mr. Head," he said with cool politeness. "You are well on time, I see. Ann, dear, Mr. Head wants to speak to you, he told me last night, about your driving me to Mrs. Ward's last week."
Ann! The name Helen Berrow had heard her half-brother speak!
Mrs. Ollyer came forward from the window into the room, and paused with one hand on the dining-table, gazing—unlike her husband—full and steadily at Head. Her eyes were dark-ringed, he saw, and had the redness that follows on many tears. Head made a little bow of salutation or acknowledgement of Ollyer's statement, and waited for her to speak—waited through a pause that she let last too long.
"What can I tell you, Mr. Head?" she asked at last.
There was repressed emotion in the query—was it fear, Head wondered? He glanced at Ollyer, standing rigidly before the fireplace.
"That is what I want to find out, Mrs. Ollyer," he said. "That is why I asked for an interview with you." He stressed the last word.
"Ordered one, rather," Ollyer said abruptly, harshly.
"Ordered one, if you prefer the word, sir," Head agreed calmly.
"Well, why don't you begin it?" Ollyer demanded.
Head gazed at him without replying, and went on gazing so long that he began to count Mrs. Ollyer's uneven, hurried breaths, and all the time he could get no direct answering gaze from the vicar. The tension of that silence grew and grew, until Mrs. Ollyer spoke.
"I knew it would be so, James," she said.
"Very well, then." Ollyer moved as he spoke, toward the door. "But I think"—grasping the door handle, he turned back to Head and for the first time looked him squarely in the eyes—"I think I must make some report on these intolerable inquisitions in my own house."
"Invited by yourself, remember," Head pointed out.
"Then doubted, badgered, forced to leave my wife to be badgered in turn!" Ollyer flung back fiercely. "I will report it!"
He went out, then, and Head faced the silent, waiting woman as the door latch clicked. She was tall, she had hair of chestnut red, and her name was Ann. There was strength enough in the fingers of the hand that hung down by her side, as they clenched and unclenched in nervous alternations, to strike a man down with a length of piping.
"I am sorry, Mr. Head," she said, and gave him a tremulous smile. "It is only because—because he wants to protect me."
Against what, Head queried inwardly? And the ingratiating, almost pleading quality of her smile—Wadden, many of whose remarks hit unexpected bullseyes, had warned him against this woman's trying to stall him: the warning had been lightly uttered, apparently, but Head knew that his chief, when on a case, was in earnest in all he said, and that apparent levity often masked his soundest conclusions.
"It's quite natural, Mrs. Ollyer," he said. "By the way, is there a slight smell of gas, or is it my imagination?"
"I don't smell any," she answered, "but there may be. We are having a new gas cooker fitted, and there might be a slight leak somewhere while the men are at work on it."
He had smelt no gas, but had drawn that bow at a venture, and had established a possibility of lengths of gas piping lying unused somewhere in the house. But, if she had been the one to use gas piping to kill Berrow, she would not have mentioned the new cooker, he felt sure: she would have known that he would deduce lengths of piping from it. Yet her nervousness, almost agitation, repressed but still evident, indicated knowledge of some kind, and with it fear.
"That sort of thing is disturbing in a house," he observed.
"Very," she agreed, "especially when the men bring the cooker and their tools, and then leave us alone for over a week before they come to complete their work. But that wasn't what you wanted to question me about, Mr. Head. I—what do you want of me?"
With the query, she moved a step nearer to him, glancing momentarily at the closed door and then back at him. It was a pretty, clever little piece of play that might have led some men to make an indiscreet rejoinder, but she was facing one quite as watchful and clever as herself, one whom she could not buy off at any price.
"To hear about your driving Mr. Ollyer when he went to visit Mrs. Ward, last Friday night, for one thing," he answered. "There may be circumstances of interest to me in it, especially in your return here."
"Circumstances of—of interest," she repeated, with a thoughtful intonation. "I don't see—I don't remember much about it."
"Do you remember what time you left here?" he asked.
"You know"—she ignored the query, and gave him another smile, definitely inviting, this time—"you must be a very clever man. It seems to me that every word you say may hide something, may have far more than its surface meaning. I shouldn't care to have you as an enemy. Not that I—" She broke off, as if fearful lest that statement might be interpreted for other than its surface meaning.
"But we're not getting anywhere, Mrs. Ollyer, with gas cookers and my cleverness," he pointed out gravely. "It was a very serious matter that made me insist on an interview with you."
She made one more attempt to influence him. "Where—where do you want to get?" she asked, in little more than a whisper.
"To your drive to Mrs. Ward's and back, to begin with," he answered coolly. "To what you saw on that drive, especially on the way back."
"What could I see?" she demanded, in reply. "What is there ever to see in a place like Carden?" There was, in that second query, a bitter resentment against life in such a village.
"Well, not much," he observed. "Which is why you go to London a good deal, I conclude—to break the dullness."
He did not know if she went to London once a week or once a year. The suggestion was a shot in the dark, and an unwise one, he realized, since it put her on her guard. She made no reply.
"Well, about your taking Mr. Ollyer to visit this sick woman, a week ago yesterday," he pursued. "Can you give me any idea of the time when you left here—with him in the car, that is?"
"None at all," she answered. "I believe it was after dinner, and beyond that—it must have been after dinner, of course."
"Why of course?" he asked.
"Because I remember it was almost dark when he got back, and we certainly dined together, as we have every night since—"
"Yes, since when?" he invited, since she did not end the sentence.
"I was going to say, since I last came back from London," she answered reluctantly. "We dined together all last week, I know."
"And when did you last come back from London?" he pursued.
"Is it of any consequence to you?" she demanded in reply.
"I am never quite sure what is relevant and what isn't," he answered frankly, "especially in such a case as this. If you don't wish to tell me, we'll let it pass. But I appear to be keeping you on your feet all this time, Mrs. Ollyer. Wouldn't you prefer to sit down?"
She shook her head. "I came back from London just three weeks ago last night, and I don't wish to sit down," she said coolly. "But don't let my standing up prevent you from taking a chair."
"Thanks, I prefer to stand, too." Apart from the discourtesy of seating himself while she kept on her feet, he had no intention of putting himself at the disadvantage of looking up rather than level at her. She was fencing beautifully, he knew, and momentarily growing more composed and able to parry his questions. But, whether she realized it or no, there had been nothing but preliminary skirmishing, so far: he had put no real pressure on her, yet.
"Just as you like," she said, and waited, gazing steadily at him.
"A body was found yesterday in the empty house just beyond the road junction—as probably you know," he pursued. "So far, we have ascertained that that body, as a living man, came up the road from Crandon station, and probably passed this house at about nine o'clock or a few minutes before, the night you drove Mr. Ollyer to visit the dying woman in the cottage just beyond the empty house. Almost certainly he was killed in the empty house that Friday night—"
"It was long before nine o'clock when I drove my husband to the cottage," she interrupted, "and long before nine when I got back here."
"We are getting a little nearer to the time, now," Head observed. "Long before nine, and quite dark when Mr. Ollyer got back—" He misquoted her statement deliberately, and almost waited for the interruption, which came as and when he expected it—
"Almost dark, I said," she insisted.
"Did you see anyone either in the grounds of the empty house, or in the road near it, in going to the cottage or returning home?" He ignored the correction, having realized that she was playing for time, now. Perhaps she expected Ollyer to return and interrupt them.
"I don't remember seeing anyone," she said.
"On the outward run, did you take any notice of the empty house?" he asked. "That is, look at it as you passed?"
"I haven't the faintest idea, now," she answered. "Probably not. While I am driving the car, I usually look at the road ahead."
"Which didn't stop you from recognizing me as you drove past yesterday afternoon," he pointed out rather dryly. "To get this quite clear, Mrs. Ollyer, you saw nobody in the empty house last Friday evening, either going to or returning from Mrs. Ward's cottage?"
"No," she answered decidedly.
"Anyone in the grounds, or near that big front gate?"
"No." But this second negative, he noted, was not so decided.
"Did you see any stranger in the village that evening?"
"It's useless to ask me that, Mr. Head," she told him. "There are strangers staying at the Carden Arms all summer, as probably you know. Practically every time I go out, I see one or more people I don't know, and I may have seen strangers that evening. Probably I did."
The reply was an evasion, he felt certain. But he did not press the point any further. She was getting far too composed for his liking, far too watchful and able to conceal her real feelings.
"You know, of course, about this body being found yesterday?" he suggested, regarding her carefully and intently.
"Everybody in Carden is talking about it," she retorted coolly.
"Have you any idea as to who the dead man may be?" he persisted.
"Why, no." The manner of the reply proved that the question had shaken her. "A stranger to the place, isn't it?"
"Why do you suggest that?" He fired this question at her as an implication, as if he suspected her of knowing more than she chose to reveal. She looked definitely frightened, now.
"Because—because if it had been anyone belonging to Carden, we should have heard by now," he said at last. "It—it isn't, is it?"
"There is the dead man's name and address, Mrs. Ollyer."
As he spoke, he held before her the envelope on which, according to Miss Portman, the handwriting resembled that of the woman before him. He heard her gasp of fear as she backed away, groped behind her to find a chair back, and seated herself, staring up at him.
"Why—why?" she whispered. "Why do you—?"
"Did you see him on Friday evening?" He shot the question at her, giving her no time to recover from the initial shock of the envelope.
"No. I—I didn't. Why must you—?" Again she broke off.
"When did you see him last?" he persisted. "In London, I mean?"
Through a long pause she stared up at him, fearfully, but gradually recovering some measure of self-control.
"I—I never saw him in London," she said at last, and Head knew the statement for a lie. He shook his head gravely.
"I'm sorry—I can't accept that answer," he said. "This man, whom you have owned you know, was brutally murdered last Friday evening. I want you to tell me truthfully when you saw him last."
She opened her lips to speak, but realized the futility of denying that she had known the dead man. Head had beaten her, she knew, driven her from point to point and with the envelope smashed down her last evasion. And, standing over her, he looked ruthlessly determined.
"Oh, it's all long ago!" she wailed. "All long ago!"
"Mrs. Ollyer, as soon as you heard of the discovery of that body, you knew it was Claude Berrow who lay dead in that house," he accused.
"I—I didn't," she denied. "When—when I heard Miss Berrow was staying at the Carden Arms—"
She broke off again, realizing that Head was forcing confession after confession from her.
"You felt sure then that the dead man must be Claude Berrow," he asserted. "He knew you—this is proved and beyond question—he knew you as Ann—don't trouble to deny it. What were your relations with him? I can check what you say from other sources, but I want your own statement. What were your relations with him?"
She leaned heavily on the table, and her head drooped so that he could not see her eyes. "All long ago," she whispered. "All long ago."
"How long ago?" he persisted mercilessly.
"Months—months and months—" She looked up at him again. "Oh, why must you torture me? I—I can't go on!"
The door was flung open, and Ollyer entered and stalked toward the mantelpiece. Mrs. Ollyer sat erect as abruptly as her husband had entered, and forced a smile at Head that revealed her fear lest Ollyer should suspect any of the revelations she had so far made. The vicar took from the mantelpiece the book he had been reading when Head entered the room, and faced toward the door again.
"How much longer is this inquisition to continue?" he demanded.
"Oh, don't be silly, James!" his wife answered, with light, almost amused reproof. "Mr. Head is being quite interesting."
"I am glad you find him so," Ollyer retorted cuttingly, and with an angry stare at the inspector stalked out again and slammed the door.
The seated woman leaned forward again and shook her head—it was a gesture of despair. "He doesn't know," she said. "He mustn't know."
"It may be possible to keep him from knowing," Head told her. "I am interested only in finding out who killed Claude Berrow, not in bringing trouble of any kind to you or Mr. Ollyer—"
"Then"—she started to her feet as she made the interruption—"what can my knowing him have to do with—how can it possibly help you? I didn't see him that night—I haven't seen him for a long while—truthfully I haven't! I—he—there was—"
"Another attraction," Head suggested in the pause. "For him."
She nodded a silent assent, and twined the fingers of one hand in those of the other nervously, gazing at him with pleading eyes.
"What were your relations with him?" he persisted.
She dropped her gaze to the floor at her feet, and bent her head in a way that was in itself confession. "You know," she whispered.
"That he was your lover," Head asserted quietly.
He waited a long while, and at last she looked up at him again. The worst moment of this hour was over for her, now.
"Yes," she said, and made it a sad monosyllable.
"Beginning how long ago?" he asked, with quiet insistence.
"Two years—more than two years. Before he took that flat. I—you know so much—I don't know how much you know—" Again she paused and gazed at him pleadingly, but he ignored the unspoken prayer.
"Before you and Mr. Ollyer came to Carden, that will be," he said.
"Yes. But I—he never came here. To see me, I mean."
"Obviously," Head agreed. "You used to write and tell him when you were going to London, and then he'd ring you up by arrangement, and you'd meet there. When did you last meet him?"
"In March—nearly three months ago."
"Mrs. Ollyer, I don't wish to pain you any more than I must over this questioning, but your relations with this man may have a very important bearing on the cause of his death—indirectly, I mean. I want you to tell me—was he still your lover when you met him last March? I am sorry to ask the question, but I must."
She shook her head. "No," she said chokingly. "It was—it was to say good-bye. I asked him to meet me for—for that."
"And you said a final good-bye to him then?"
She nodded, and let the gesture stand as answer.
"Have you written to him since?"
"I... yes." She might have lied over it, but, raising her head to meet his gaze, she was forced to tell him the truth, now. He had beaten her utterly in forcing from her the implication that she had known Claude Berrow: all the rest of her confession became inevitable, then.
"Yes. How long is it since you last wrote to him?"
"A—a fortnight ago. Yes. Two weeks, quite."
"Since you had finally parted from him, why write?" he asked.
"I"—her gaze fell again—"I hadn't—I wanted—"
She turned her back on him, and stood thus while he watched the movement of her shoulders, knowing that his relentless questioning was cruelty, but knowing, too, that the slayer of Claude Berrow must be found.
"I understand," he said gently. "Leave it—you needn't say any more about it. But did he ever write to you here?"
"No." She turned and faced him again. "It was—I couldn't let him. No, he never wrote to me here, nor anywhere."
"And he was your lover, up to how long ago?" he asked.
"Must I—must you know?" she pleaded piteously.
"I am afraid I must," he said. "You will understand why I ask this, very soon. Up to how long ago was he your lover?"
"The—the beginning of the year—when I went to London in January," she answered tremulously. "That was—the last time of all."
"Five months ago," he reflected. "And where and how used you to meet him in London? You used to write and tell him you were coming up, he used to ring you—at some hotel, I suppose?"
"At the Bonsell, in Southampton Row." It appeared less difficult for her to make confession, now. "I—I stayed there."
"Under your own name, or an alias?"
"As—as Mrs. Burrows. And he—he came to see me there, that last time when we said good-bye. I thought—perhaps—but—"
There was no need for her to complete that broken fragment of an admission. She had hoped to win Berrow back to her then, and had failed. Whatever new love had come his way, it had displaced her.
"How many times have you written to him since last March?"
"Three—no, four times. But he never wrote to me here."
"No, so you told me. Mrs. Ollyer, I'm not going to pain you any more by questioning you about your relations with this man, and all you have told me is perfectly safe with me."
"Then—then you don't want to ask any more?" she asked hopefully.
"Yes, I do," he told her, "but this is impersonal—as far as you are concerned—if all your letters to Berrow were addressed in the same handwriting. Tell me that—were they all the same?"
"Why, yes," she answered, with surprise at the question. "Did you think I would let anyone beside myself address them?"
"In that case, who was his other correspondent in Carden? Whom did he know in this place, in addition to yourself?"
"His—other—correspondent?" She echoed the words with blank, utter surprise, and Head knew it was not feigned in any way.
"Somebody else used to write to him, and post the letters here," he said. "Have you any idea at all who it might be?"
"No. I didn't know—never dreamed of such a thing! He would—no, though, of course he wouldn't have told me if— But I didn't know. And there couldn't be anyone else, here!"
"Well, one thing more. Had your husband any suspicion at all of this affair—of the reason for your visits to London?"
"I am quite sure he knew nothing," she answered with energy.
"Admitting that he knew nothing, had he any suspicion?" Head persisted. "I don't mean definite suspicion of this affair with Berrow, but have you at any time since you have known him given him cause to distrust or suspect you, so that he might suspect you went to London for some purpose that he might not approve?"
Again her gaze dropped before his, and she did not reply.
"Tell me," he persisted. "It's quite safe, with me, and the query is far from irrelevant. Might he have suspected you?"
"He might," she owned, "but he did not."
"Are you absolutely certain he did not?"
After a long silence she shook her head. "Not—not quite," she owned, "but—but I'm sure he—he knew nothing."
"And would you consider him naturally a jealous man?"
"He is, very jealous," she assented. "And he—he—Mr. Head, he cares very much for me. You needn't—I mean you won't—"
"Let one word of this come to his ears—no," he promised. "If it does come to his knowledge, I assure you it will not be from me. My business is to find the man—or woman—who killed Claude Berrow."
"You don't suspect him—my husband?" she asked fearfully.
He evaded the query. "I want to know who was Berrow's other correspondent in Carden," he told her. "Many thanks for all you've told me, Mrs. Ollyer, and, as you phrased it yourself, I won't torture you any more. I'm sorry this had to be such an ordeal for you."
He left her seated at the table, her face hidden by her hands. It was a pitiable tale of weakness and adulterous deceit that he had dragged from her, but quite probably the danger of disgrace she had incurred—a disgrace that would have ruined her husband's life as well as her own—would prevent her from indulging in illicit intimacies for the future. It might be so: having had this opportunity of assessing the woman's character, Head felt far from certain on the point.
"Well?" Wadden asked when he had heard Head's story. "Do you want a warrant for Ollyer's arrest now, or will you wait till after the inquest? The evidence isn't direct, I know, but—" He paused, thinking.
"Neither," Head answered. "I'll go to London—I can pick up the twelve-twenty from Crandon—and go and overhaul his belongings in that flat in Manson Place—Berrow's belongings, I mean. There may be just the evidence we want, among them."
"And probably not," the superintendent grunted unamiably. "D'you think Ollyer went and left his card on the hall table when he invited Berrow to come down here and get sloshed on the kop?"
"What's your idea in trying to drive me to the conclusion that Ollyer killed the man?" Head demanded crossly. "You were doing your best to put me off them till I went to see this woman."
"The fair sex and police superintendents are always allowed to change their minds," Wadden reminded him. "If you go haring off to London by the twelve-twenty, you'll miss a lot of stuff at the inquest that might prove relevant, and also we'll miss our identification stunt—sex identification with the electric torch, I mean—at The Angle to-night. Ollyer is going to stand up at the inquest and swear he saw a woman through that window, and he'll stand watching by both of us while he does it. And another thing, Head. If Ollyer is innocent, and some other Carden man or woman did it, put your shirt on the certainty that the guilty party won't be able to keep away from that inquest. They'll want to know at first hand how much we know—or how much we give away of what we know—and what the chances are of our directing our attention to them. It's quite on the cards that you'll complete your case there, to-day."
"Has any hint of the identity of the dead man leaked out?" Head asked thoughtfully.
"Not one trace. I got hold of Miss Berrow while you were overhauling Mrs. Ollyer's past, and she hasn't betrayed to a soul that it's her half-brother—not even to Maurice Tarrant, which is saying a good deal. I got her to promise to say nothing till she gives the formal identification on the witness stand. Purvis hasn't talked, and Sprott hasn't either. Now look here, Head. It appears to me, if we have to acquit the Ollyers, that another Carden man and another Carden woman are mixed up in this—Berrow got another Carden man's wife infatuated with him when he turned Mrs. Ollyer down. Don't ask me how he met this second woman, though he might have met Mrs. Ollyer's train when she went on one of her visits to London, and seen the other woman get off it—anything! But to me, on what we've heard, this is a husband's revenge—no other relationship between the woman and the murderer would account for the crime so clearly. Therefore—"
"Both the murderer and his wife will turn up at the inquest," Head completed for him. "All right, Chief, and if that were so they would be worth watching. But, if we acquit the Ollyers, what reason have we for doubting that the Reverend James did see a woman at that window, and that it wasn't a man at all who killed Berrow?"
"There is a bit of a snag in that," Wadden admitted reflectively. "Yes, of course. Take away his only reason for lying, to divert suspicion from himself, I mean, and why should he say it was a woman if it wasn't—weren't, I mean?"
"And if a woman killed him, she wouldn't turn up at the inquest," Head asserted with conviction in his tone.
"Why not?" Wadden demanded. "What's to stop her?"
"I dunno. But I feel sure she wouldn't. Why should a woman kill him at all, Chief? Does it sound at all feasible to you?"
"My faithful friend, murder is never feasible," Wadden declared emphatically. "Was that Castel Garde affair feasible—was the Forrest case feasible? You know they weren't, either of 'em! And yet they happened just so, irrational idiocies with no more logic in them than a Geneva peace conference. We're assuming the motive for killing Berrow, but we've no more real grounds for that assumption than we have evidence against the Reverend James Ollyer or his wife."
"She didn't kill the man," Head asserted confidently.
"Did he, then?"
"I might be able to answer that after I've been to London."
"And might not. All right, go to London! And how the devil do you think you're going to get into that flat without Miss Berrow's permission, and without her being there to count the spoons after you've turned the plate chest out?"
"I've already got her permission to make the search," Head pointed out, "and I can take the latch key that was found on the body—it's a thousand to one that it's the key of the flat in Manson Place."
"Ah, you would leave the donkey work down here to me, wouldn't you?" Wadden observed witheringly.
Head maintained a thoughtful silence for awhile. At last he turned and went toward the door of the writing-room.
"Bar's open, Chief," he remarked. "We've earned a long cool one apiece, and I'll buy it. I'll see the inquest through with you and go up with Miss Berrow. Ollyer won't run away."
"Bless you, my son! If he did run away, it would simplify things for us considerably—after we'd caught up, of course. But somehow I can't see the Reverend James whacking a fellow-Christian on the sconce. It ain't—it ain't sacerdotal, Head."
"Can you ever visualize the author of a crime of passion committing it, before you get your evidence?" Head asked.
"And how the hell do you know this is a crime of passion?" Wadden demanded in reply. "Come on, man, this jumping to conclusions isn't half as satisfying as jumping to the bar, and we'll have nice time for a couple before we go down to the Greyhound and meet the coroner."
"I CONCLUDE, Mr. Ollyer, that you furnished this information to the police in the interests of justice, with a view to affording any assistance you could toward the discovery of the murderer—if murder be the correct designation of this tragedy?"
"I did, sir," Ollyer answered sonorously, "but the bullying, badgering methods of Inspector Head, worthy of being classed with what is known in America as the third degree, have since made me wish I had left the interests of justice to fend for themselves."
In the silence that followed the ringing declaration, the traditional pin would have literally clanged—but it did not fall. The coroner glanced at Head, seated and quite impassive, and then gazed again at his witness.
"Do I understand that you wish me to record a specific complaint against the methods employed by the inspector?" he asked.
"I wish to state here publicly that he cast doubts on my veracity while I was giving him all the information I could, and in addition to that, he bullied and badgered Mrs. Ollyer for a full hour this morning in an endeavour to make her say she had seen this dead man the evening he was killed—which she had not—and he left her finally in a state of nervous collapse. I may add that he insisted in conducting his inquisition alone with her—practically turned me out of my own dining-room! Neither Mrs. Ollyer nor myself ever dreamed of being subjected to such treatment as this man has inflicted on us."
The coroner paused to reflect, and glanced again at Head.
"To revert to the evidence you have given here, Mr. Ollyer, you state definitely and with no doubt at all in your mind on the point, that it was the figure of a woman you saw through the window of the room in which the body was subsequently found, and not the figure of a man? You are positive it was a woman in that room?"
"Utterly positive. I know it was a woman, in a woman's hat, and with a broad fur collar on her coat. I saw these clearly."
"Thank you, Mr. Ollyer. Members of the jury, any questions?"
"None, sir," the foreman answered after a pause.
"The witness may stand down. The proceedings are adjourned for a period of ten minutes. Superintendent, a word with you, please."
Wadden accompanied him through the doorway at the back of the big first-floor room in the Greyhound Inn, and a buzz of conversation broke out among that packed section of the public which had been so fortunate as to crowd in to hear the proceedings. Head sat facing this audience, and appeared quite unmoved by the vicar's attack, until the coroner returned to his table and rapped for order.
"Inspector Head," he called.
Head took the stand and was sworn. The coroner, content with very brief statements concerning the earlier part of the inspector's activities, left unrevealed the finding of four hairpins. Hawk and Guddle had testified respectively to the arrival of Berrow at Carden and the finding of the body: Miss Berrow had identified the body as that of her half-brother: Doctor Bennett had given the approximate times between which death could have occurred, and Ollyer had stated that he had seen a woman in the house. Now, in a tense silence, Head described how he had found the piece of gas piping after locating the gap in the hedge through which somebody had pushed a way into the beanfield some days before, judging by the withered condition of the broken hawthorn twigs, and finally the coroner took his witness on to his interview with Mrs. Ollyer, two hours before the inquest opened.
"Now tell me, Inspector, did the lady impress you as nervous and what is generally known as highly-strung?"
"She did, sir. I thought her in a very nervous state."
"I conclude you were therefore careful in questioning her?"
"Very careful. I wanted to be quite sure she had seen nobody in the vicinity of The Angle when she drove her husband to Mrs. Ward's cottage on what appears to be the evening of this man's death."
"That was all you wanted her to tell you?"
"Far from it, sir. I wanted to know if she had seen anyone in the grounds of this house, or in the house itself, on her return home alone in her car. I wanted to know if she had seen any stranger who might turn out to be the man going to his death in that house, and, in addition to that, I wanted to know if she had seen anyone resident in or near Carden near enough to the place to give rise to suspicion."
"Why this last—a resident in or near Carden?"
"Because we are compelled to assume the possession of a key to the front door of the house, and a fairly good knowledge of this locality to admit of making use of the place by inducing the deceased to keep an appointment there. We must not dismiss the possibility of a resident in the district being responsible for the death of this man."
"I see, Inspector—I see! Did Mr. Ollyer object to your interviewing Mrs. Ollyer to get this information?"
"He did. He began by refusing me an interview with her."
"And you insisted on seeing her?"
"Not last night. At ten o'clock this morning."
"Did she also object to being interviewed?"
"She expressed no actual objection. She was distressed, certainly, and upset over a thing like this occurring in her husband's parish, but I remember that when he entered the room while I was questioning her, and complained of the length of the interview, she told him not to be silly. I can say no more than that."
"I suppose you know I shall be compelled to record a formal complaint by Mr. Ollyer as to the manner of your questioning this lady?"
"I am aware of it, sir. All I ask is that Mrs. Ollyer may give evidence at any inquiry into my conduct and method of questioning."
"Did you, while interviewing Mr. Ollyer himself, express any doubt of the truth of statements he made to you?"
"Not intentionally. I told him that there were one or two points in the statements he made to me that I wished to check by hearing what Mrs. Ollyer had to say, meaning that I wanted to get a more definite idea of the time at which he saw the light in the window of The Angle, since he was very vague about it. It was at that point in the interview, as nearly as I remember, that he accused me of doubting his veracity. This was after I had insisted on seeing Mrs. Ollyer."
"Did you doubt his veracity?"
"I would rather say that I doubted his eyesight. It seemed incredible to me that a woman should show a light through the uncurtained window of that room at The Angle, especially as I already had reason to believe that the body of the deceased was lying in the room at the time. I wanted to press Mr. Ollyer to emphasis on the light having been in the room at that time, and on the sex of the person apparently holding it. I expressed the doubt of the possibility, and got the emphasis, which is a far different thing from doubting his veracity."
"But you made him angry over it?"
"I can't help that. I may have to make other people angry before the full circumstances of this man's death come to light."
"By using what Mr. Ollyer has described as third degree methods?"
"I deny that imputation most emphatically, sir," Head replied calmly, "and demand that Mrs. Ollyer herself shall be called to refute it at any inquiry that may be held regarding my conduct."
"That will do, Inspector. Failing any questions by members of the jury, you may stand down."
"Begging your pardon, sir," the foreman of the jury interposed, "couldn't we hear what Mrs. Ollyer has to say about this and get the matter settled now, once and for all?"
"You could not," the coroner informed him, "because the methods used by Inspector Head to obtain information are not directly relevant to the purpose for which you have been summoned here. I am compelled to enter a formal complaint against the inspector, and it will constitute the subject of an entirely separate inquiry. We are concerned here only with the circumstances under which Mr. Claude Berrow came by his death, and in my opinion, the amount of evidence collected with regard to the tragedy, in the few hours that have elapsed since the body was discovered, proves that both Superintendent Wadden and Inspector Head have been fully justified in all that they have done. Mr. Ollyer thinks differently. I am compelled to place his opinion on record."
The rest of the proceedings followed a normal course, and, since Wadden had decided that an adjournment would serve no useful purpose, the jury eventually delivered their inevitable verdict.
"Wilful murder by some person or persons unknown."
"Ker-rikey, man! You're for it!"
Wadden, back in the writing-room at the Carden Arms, blew emphatic confirmation of his statement through the open window, before which he stood with his hands in his pockets, gazing out. Head, who had just entered the room, came to the window and stood beside his chief.
"We are not perturbed," he said quietly.
"The devil's own reprimand from the big noise, quite likely asked to resign, and in any case highly unpopular. Whaddye mean, man, not perturbed? Are you thinking of going in for poultry farming?"
"I think we'll get on with the case," Head suggested. "Supposing, Chief, that the Reverend Ollyer got away from Mrs. Ward's in time to admit Claude Berrow to the empty house—with hairpins gleaned from his wife's dressing-table and a length of pipe from the vicarage back yard—wouldn't he just long to down me to make good his story of a woman in the room with an electric torch, knowing as he does that I've been doubting that story ever since I heard it?"
"Did he take the piece of pipe in the car then?" Wadden derided.
'"No, he got into The Angle and surveyed the ground before that night, made up his mind which room was handiest for laying out his man with one good swipe—medical evidence proves the murderer only struck one blow. He left the piece of pipe handy, on that visit of inspection, which would be safer than taking it with him on the night."
"And then put up this bluff of the woman with the electric torch to you as a blind, and doesn't like you for doubting it?"
"Mrs. Ollyer has chestnut red hair, long enough to need the big type of hairpin," Head answered indirectly. "They are having a new gas cooker fitted. Neither of them is prepared to say the time when Ollyer got back from visiting Mrs. Ward, beyond that it was almost dark. That is, in the region of ten o'clock. How does it look to you?"
"Do you want a warrant against him?" Wadden inquired, with far more gravity in his tone than when he had last asked that question.
"No. I haven't been to London, yet, and Ollyer won't run away. Which reminds me, I must see Miss Berrow about going to the flat."
"You'll find her and young Tarrant out in the garden. They're cross-examining each other as to whether kissing in public is a crime or only a misdemeanour, apparently, and can't get enough evidence to justify a verdict. And they won't, while they sit as far apart as that. D'you want to go to London today?"
"I'll have a talk with her again first. Meanwhile, supposing Ollyer's story of seeing a woman in the room is true, in conjunction with the hairpins? We know they're true. Supposing the story is, too?"
"No woman would be such a damned fool, man!"
"I agree. But supposing the story is true, all the same?"
"You mean, some trick of the window and the light made him think he saw a woman—but then, she wouldn't flash an electric torch, either before or after putting paid to Claude Berrow's account."
"Here's an alternative theory for you, Chief. A wronged husband found out that Claude Berrow and his wife—the husband's wife—"
"Yes, Claude wasn't married. Ollyer found out, you mean."
"Ollyer or anyone else, and boiled up with rage sufficiently to plan this murder. The fact that he's killed Berrow and taken no open action against his wife proves that he was desperately in love with the woman, and only wanted to get her lover out of the way. Planned the murder carefully, got Berrow down here by some means, and struck him down in that empty room. It was all very carefully planned, Chief, but he couldn't be sure the body wouldn't be discovered and a search for him begun that very same night. So he said to himself, I'll make it appear that a woman did this. I'll plant those hairpins to make her seem distracted over what she's done, rushing to the side door and dropping one pin there, and then rushing to the back door and dropping another. And I'll put a final, artistic touch into it. I'll take a coat—probably one of hers—a coat with a big fur collar, and a woman's hat, and an electric torch. After I've killed this man, I'll put the hat and coat on, and stand with my back to that window till I hear a car or somebody walking in the road, holding the electric torch in my hand. With the stillness there is at that time of night—and Ollyer told me he remembered how intensely still it was—I shall hear a car, or footsteps. Just as either of them comes abreast the gate, I'll flash that torch on the back wall of the room. The light will attract attention to the window, and it will appear that a woman is standing inside the room—"
"And whoever saw it might rush up to the house and find the body before the murderer could get clear," Wadden interposed.
"How find it, with no light in the room and every door locked and window closed?" Head demanded. "There would be no reason to suspect murder. The one who saw the light and the outline of the woman might go to the window and look in, but without a light the body wouldn't be visible, and by that time the murderer could be out by the back door, with that door locked behind him and the key in his pocket, and well on his way to the gap in the hedge, silent-footed on the grass paths of the kitchen garden and completely hidden by shrubs and bushes. He could hide there in perfect safety till any inquisitive busybody gave it up and went back to the road and on his way."
"Ollyer, or anyone else," Wadden suggested.
"If Ollyer himself were the apparent woman in that room, then he told me his tale in the hope that somebody would come forward and confirm it—that the one whose car or footsteps he heard in the road, and for whose benefit he flashed the torch, will come forward as soon as the proceedings at the inquest appear in print, and testify that there was a woman in that room last Friday night. Thus he'll get an alibi of sorts, as to having been on his way along the road and having seen what the other man saw, and the evidence of two people, himself and one other, to the effect that there was a woman in the room will make our establishing a case against him more difficult."
"Good reasoning," Wadden admitted. "The net appears to tighten."
"And his motive for discrediting me becomes clear," Head added. "Further, by this theory you get a sound motive for flashing the torch on the wall and standing back to the window, while a real woman's doing such a thing sounds too utterly self-incriminating for belief."
"M'yah!" Wadden grunted. "And supposing it wasn't Ollyer?"
"Then my theory is still feasible, and his grudge against me becomes the outburst of a worried man who fears his wife may have given cause for suspicion of her conduct, and may reveal to me far more than he wishes anyone but himself to know. Over that—over his complaint and the inquiry that follows, I'm not perturbed, as I told you."
"Then you ought to be! Wait till your wife reads about this—she'll comb your hair for you! Where are you off to now?"
"To find Miss Berrow and have a talk with her," Head explained. "Then, since the hotel lunch is a thing of the past, I'm coming back here for more of Cortazzi's cold beef and salad."
He found Helen Berrow seated in a deck-chair in the hotel garden. Tarrant had left her alone, for the time: a book, tumbled from her hand and with its pages disordered, lay on the grass beside her chair.
"I've come to see if you can amplify a little of what you told me last night, Miss Berrow," Head announced, looking down at her.
"Certainly, if I can," she assented. "Mr. Tarrant is very kindly making arrangements for the funeral for me, so I'm quite at liberty for the present. I think there is another chair somewhere."
Head went and procured the chair, and seated himself beside her. He saw, in the doorway giving access to the hotel from the garden, the tall figure of Morton, evidently regarding him and this girl.
"Now why doesn't that man go back to London?" he inquired, half of himself. "He wasn't even wanted to give evidence at the inquest."
"He told me he'd still like to find a house in this district," she explained. "Not The Angle now, of course, but he's staying over the week-end to look round. What is it you want to know, Mr. Head?"
"For one thing, will you still give me permission to go to your flat—it becomes yours now, I conclude—to go there and make a full examination of all your half-brother's effects?"
"Yes, certainly," she answered readily, "though I'm afraid you will gain nothing by it. Go to the flat when you like—you don't wish to wait till I go back, perhaps? I'm staying here for the funeral, unless you really wish me to go to the flat with you."
"No, I don't need you, if you don't wish to go, and I do want to see if there is anything there material to the case, to-morrow, probably. About getting into the flat without you, though?"
"You'll find a Mrs. Giddens, caretaker for the building, in the basement flat. She has a key to mine. I'll give you a note to her."
"Many thanks, Miss Berrow. Now one more thing, please. Those two envelopes you addressed for me—I want to know if you can tell me the relative frequency of the two series of letters, whether you saw as many of the one kind of handwriting as of the other, and when either of them began or left off being delivered for your half-brother."
"Quite probably I didn't see all of them," she answered, "and I've no idea what proportion of the whole I did see. I should say that within a month of our jointly taking the flat—a month or a little more—that slanting, distinctive handwriting with the Carden postmark on the envelope attracted my attention, and at that time I noticed that kind more than once, but not the other—the thin, upright type of writing. Of course, it was the postmark made me notice them."
"Naturally," he agreed. "But do you mean you saw none of the thin type of writing, when you first went to the flat?"
"No, not then. I should think—not till the beginning of this present year. Perhaps toward the end of last year—I am not sure."
"The thin handwriting didn't begin to arrive much before the end of last year, but the others came all the time, you mean?"
"Yes. If the thin kind came earlier, I didn't see them."
Berrow had been growing tired of the affair with Mrs. Ollyer toward the end of the preceding year, Head reflected, since he had ended it in January and finally said good-bye to her in March. Someone else, who posted letters from Carden, had apparently begun to attract the man at the turn of the year—or earlier, since she had got to the stage of writing to him by January at the latest.
"You would say, then, that one of these writers was corresponding with your half-brother all the time he shared the flat with you, and another, also posting letters at Carden, began corresponding with him at some time during the past six months? Is that the case?"
"It is, judging by the envelopes I saw. But I may not have seen all of them—the second series may have begun much earlier, for all that I know, and on the other hand I may have noticed its beginning."
"I am inclined to believe you did," Head observed thoughtfully. "Miss Berrow, did you know any of his men friends?"
She shook her head. "I never heard him mention any by name," she answered. "He was a member of the Olympic Casual club, and sometimes said he was going there to lunch, but he never mentioned the name of any other member, or of any man at all, to me."
The Olympic Casual, as Head knew, is a good place if one wants to lose money on horses, since it runs a private totalisator, but in the matter of social intercourse is about as useful as a solitary confinement cell. He had not expected Berrow to have men friends: the man had been far too fully occupied in his various affairs with women, evidently, to find time for normal acquaintance with other men.
"Ah! To revert to those letters, would you say that the old type of handwriting grew less frequent during the past six months, and the new type grew more and more frequent among his correspondence?"
"No, I should say they were about equal, and that there were from four to six of each. But, as I told you, I should never have distinguished them from the rest if it had not been for the Carden postmark."
"Naturally. Four to six of each, eh?" He knew, now, that there had been four in Mrs. Ollyer's handwriting, so this girl had not missed many of the Carden-postmarked envelopes: being country-posted, they would be delivered by the first post, and probably she had sorted the letters and handed Berrow his share at breakfast each morning. "Well, many thanks, Miss Berrow, and perhaps if I'm not about you'll hand that introduction to your caretaker to Cortazzi some time this afternoon or evening. I should like to go and make my search at the flat to-morrow, if possible, and if you're sure you don't mind my doing so."
"Not in the least, Mr. Head! I'll get the letter written before tea and give it to the manager for you if I don't see you. And—Mr. Head—if you'd like me to speak for you in answer to what that clergyman said about you, I shall be only too pleased to say how kind and considerate you have been in questioning me."
"That's very nice indeed of you, Miss Berrow, but I don't think I shall be called on to answer Mr. Ollyer's complaint. He's a very seriously worried man at the present time, and evidently a man of rather hasty temper as well, but when he's had time to think things over he won't want to press any charges against me, I feel sure. Now, if you'll forgive me, I'll go and get what ought to have been lunch, but as nearly as I can see will spoil my appetite for dinner."
"Oh, I'm so sorry if I've kept you talking too long!"
"You haven't, Miss Berrow. You're very nearly what I should call the ideal witness, and not far from the ideal in a few other ways as well. And I shall hope to have some definite news for you before you leave Carden, and in any case to have another talk with you."
He rejoined Wadden, who had by that time nearly finished his meal.
That night, when the summer dusk began to deepen, Sergeant Purvis warned off from the neighbourhood of The Angle's front gateway such loungers and sightseers as still hung round the place—the body had been removed for burial during the afternoon—and stood beside Superintendent Wadden, gazing intently at the dining-room window, while Head went inside the house, wearing his ordinary lounge suit and soft felt hat. Presently they saw his figure revealed against the faint glow of the electric torch as he directed its beam at the opposite wall and at the floor, and, after another minute or two, Wadden blew audibly.
"No mistaking that for a woman is there, Purvis?" he asked.
"I'd say not the slightest, sir," the sergeant responded. "You can't see the face or anything but the outline in that glow, but it's the figure of a man, all right. No chance of mistaking it."
Wadden clapped his hands loudly, and Head came out from the house and rejoined the other two at the gate.
"Could you see the silhouette, Chief?" he asked.
"Absolutely," Wadden assured him.
"Was there any chance of mistaking it for a woman?"
"Not a dog's chance! If anyone told a woman she looked like that, or could possibly be mistaken for it, she'd faint dead off."
"Oh, she would, would she? Didn't you say you wanted to give me a chance of seeing what you look like in there?"
"Gimme that torch!" Wadden ordered.
In turn he went within the house, stood with his back to the dining-room window, and rayed the torch into the room. Head gave him a good two minutes of silent study, and then clapped his hands. The superintendent emerged from the house, and returned to the gate.
"Anything like a woman's figure?" he asked.
"Not a hope in Hades," Head assured him. "Nobody could allege it."
"No? What did I look like?"
"I'd hate to tell you, Chief," Head said solemnly.
"But I mean—you're quite sure I didn't look like the outline of a woman—my cap couldn't be mistaken for a woman's hat, for instance?"
"No," Head assured him with outward solemnity but inward joy at getting his own back. "You looked exactly like yourself."
Wadden reflected over the series of replies.
"Young feller," he said at last, "I'll get my own back on you for that, if it takes me a year. I don't set up any claim to be the Apollo Belvedere, but—like myself! Grrr-rr-r!"
In its Monday issue, the Westingborough Sentinel and District Recorder devoted a separate half-column to a record of what it termed the praiseworthy activities of our justly-renowned guardians of law and order, Superintendent Wadden and Inspector Head, who went to the scene of the terrible tragedy at Carden and there, at approximately the hour of night which marked the commission of the crime, reconstructed the ghastly scene in its entirety.
"Our representative," the paper announced, was not permitted to view the whole of the grim proceedings, but he saw enough to assure him that the two officers spared no effort that might tend to complete the awesome realism of this mysterious murder, and, as every inhabitant of our district will realize, important and far-reaching results may be anticipated from this reconstruction of the tragedy in the near future. In consequence of this important item of news having been received just as we were about to go to press, the prices of pigs at Crandon market on Saturday will be found on our back page."
"Why the hell couldn't they let the pigs stay where they were?" Wadden growled when he read the account of his praiseworthy activities.
HAVING elected to investigate the late Claude Berrow's effects at Manson Place on the Sunday, Inspector Head travelled by the usual slow train from Westingborough to London, and, reaching his destination as church bells were beginning to clamour, found Manson Place enveloped in a truly Sabbatic calm, broken only by a youth intermittently roaring out his motor-cycle engine as he waited for a pillion passenger, and a perambulating optimist who evidently suffered from the delusion that he could make money by singing. Head, refusing resolutely to encourage the delusion, descended the area steps of number eighty-four, and rang the basement bell. A squatly-built, middle-aged, comfortable-looking little woman wearing a crumpled blue overall appeared, and, since at that moment the motor-cyclist on the other side of the road was rendering conversation quite impossible, the inspector handed over the letter of introduction Miss Berrow had given him, and pointed the woman's attention to the address on the envelope.
By the time she had withdrawn the brief communication and read it, the motor-cyclist had started on his way with a final and truly terrific imitation of a battery of machine-guns. Mrs. Giddens, as Head justly assumed the woman to be by her reading the letter, gazed at him and shook her head with portentous gravity.
"Yes, it's very sad, I'm sure," she remarked. "To give you every 'elp, she says, an' I'm sure I'll be only too pleased, Mr. 'Ead. That young feller across the way—'e's gorn, now—but 'e comes there an' makes that noise every Sunday mornin', as long as it's fine. I do wish that bird of 'is 'd find another nest."
"Probably they'll nest together, eventually," Head suggested.
"Let's 'ope so—a prambylator's quieter, ain't it? An' you're the cellybrated Inspector 'Ead, then? I reckoned you'd look all fierce, if you'll forgive my makin' the remark, Mr. 'Ead. I been readin' about you in my Sunday paper—that vicar didn't 'arf touse you at the inquest, didn't 'e? Miss Berrow says 'ere I'm to give you all the 'elp I can—it don't mean you're goin' to third degree me, do it? 'Cause my 'usband ain't no parson—'e used to be a middle-weight boxer, when 'e was younger."
She laughed at her own little witticism, and Head joined in the laugh. Evidently she was highly pleased at being brought into personal contact with one of the actors in the tragedy of the empty house, and meant to make the most of this opportunity for gossip. But one of her remarks had given Head an idea.
"I'll risk it, Mrs. Giddens, boxer or no boxer," he said. "As a beginning, now, before you take me up to the flat, might I see this Sunday paper of yours? It may not be the same as mine, and in any case I left mine in the train."
"Why, certainly," she assented. "Just 'alf a minute."
He waited on the doorstep of her dwelling, and in not much more than the promised half-minute she reappeared with the paper, folded open at the lengthy account of the preceding day's inquest at Carden. Inset were photographs of Claude Berrow, of The Angle as viewed from its front gate, with the inevitable X on the dining-room window, and of the Reverend James and Mrs. Ollyer. Head pointed to this last.
"You recognize that, Mrs. Giddens?" he asked.
She glanced at the photograph, then looked up at him and slowly, very slowly, winked. The effect was awful.
"'E was a one, 'e was," she said. "I—well! 'E certainly was."
"Ah!" Head observed thoughtfully, and waited.
"Not but what I'm very sorry," she pursued. "Sorry for 'er—Miss Berrow, I mean. It must be a great shock to 'er. But 'e wasn't no ankyrite, wasn't Mr. Berrow. No, but very fond of what 'e liked."
"And you recognize this photograph?" Head inquired again.
"Once," she answered. "I ain't makin' no fuss about your questionin' me, Mr. 'Ead. I know you got to tell the pleece everything they ask, an' it saves trouble all round if you're straight about it. That's 'ow I looks at it. That lady—I reckernizes 'er as soon as I opened the paper, though I only seen 'er once before."
"And that was—?" he invited. "You may be helping me quite a good deal by what you tell me, Mrs. Giddens, in addition to letting me into Miss Berrow's flat as she asks in that letter."
"Yes, well—let me see. It'd be as far back as last July, I think. Yes, it was, 'cause my Nellie went on 'er 'oliday the first week in July, an' it was while she was away. 'Er young man jilted 'er on that 'oliday, an' she was 'eartbroken till 'Erb come along at the beginnin' of September—'e works in a place where they paint cars, cellyloidin', I think they call it. Dries as it's put on—they blow it on out of a little brass tube. 'Erb brought 'is outfit one Sunday mornin' while I was doin' me spring cleanin', an' blew it on the front-room mantelpiece for me, a nice pink, an' it dried as 'ard as 'ard. A good-'earted chap, 'e is, an' in reg'lar work—my Nellie 'ad 'er 'ead screwed on right when she got 'im to come up to the scratch, an' the other ain't no loss. Too stuck-up to talk to me, 'e was. Now I do like a man like yerself, Mr. 'Ead, one as you can talk to an' not feel 'e's all 'aughty an' stand-offish. I always says that's 'ow you can tell a real gentleman. The stuck-up ones, they're afraid to be caught talkin' to people outside the ones they know reg'lar, but a real gentleman, 'e knows 'e is a gentleman, so 'e don't mind. But p'raps you'd like to come in, Mr. 'Ead, though the place ain't properly cleaned up yet? 'Erb brought some friends round last night, an' 'im an' Nellie wanted to go off to Southend early this mornin', so I told 'er I'd do the room out, an' what with Giddens wantin' 'is breakfast in bed an' me 'avin' to get it—but p'raps you'd like to come in?"
"I think not, thanks," he answered. "I'll get you to take me up to Miss Berrow's flat in a minute. But you were telling me about last July, and how you happened to see this lady then."
"Oh, yes! It would be last July, 'cause—you see, Mr. 'Ead, they didn't keep no maid livin' in the flat, 'cause there's only three bedrooms an' 'e—Mr. Berrow, I mean—'e liked to 'ave a spare. So my Nellie took on to do for 'em. She didn't like the idea of cap an' apron as Miss Berrow insisted she must, but I told 'er I wouldn't 'ave 'er 'angin' round 'ere doin' nothing no longer. You see, she was be'ind the counter in a tobacconist's before, but 'e made immoral suggestions, she being a good-lookin' girl, an' when she walked straight out 'e wouldn't give 'er a reference for another place. Giddens went round several times, but 'e kep' outer the way, else 'e wouldn't 'ave known 'is face from 'is feet when Giddens got finished with 'im. So my Nellie took on domestic service, which she'd said she never would, but beggars mustn't be choosers, an' I couldn't 'ave 'er 'angin' round no longer. I'll own she's a bit 'eavy-'anded, but I didn't quite like it when Miss Berrow said she'd 'ave to go to Woolworth's for 'er crockery in future, 'cause my Nellie was costin' 'er too much. That was after the Spode vaws fell off the drorin'-room mantelpiece, an' my Nellie took 'er dyin' oath she never touched it that day at all—she 'adn't begun to dust that mantelpiece, even. Not that Miss Berrow did go to Woolworth's—she's got some lovely china in that flat, an' my Nellie's got a riveter to repair quite a lot of it at 'er own expense so Miss Berrow shan't know, 'cause now she's got used to bein' there she's quite fond of Miss Berrow."
"Usually, I suppose, she's at work there on Sundays?" Head suggested. "Would have been working there last July, for instance, if she had not been on holiday?" His train back to Westingborough did not leave till five o'clock, and, if he exercised patience, he might yet extract a grain or two of corn out of this mass of chaff. To hurry Mrs. Giddens, or to keep her strictly to the point, might discourage her. And the day was young, yet.
"'As 'er times off, 'er two hours an' 'er 'alf-day 'an a day once a month an' every other Sunday," Mrs. Giddens explained. "But last July—Miss Berrow 'erself went away, an' she said my Nellie might 'ave 'er fortnight then, 'cause Mr. Berrow'd be away too most of the time, an' when 'e wasn't I could go in an' do for 'im. Of course, they paid me for it, an' I knew there'd be what 'e didn't eat—if I didn't 'ave it, it'd go in the dustbin. I do like people to be like that, not always askin' whether there was 'alf a glass left in the bottle they 'ad for dinner or why that chicken couldn't 'ave been done up for next day's lunch. I will say this for Miss Berrow, she's not like that. But are you sure you won't just step inside, Mr. 'Ead? It looks so unrefined, standin' 'ere talkin' in the doorway."
"No, thanks," he said. "I'll just hear the rest of what you were telling me about last July, in case it might be useful to me in connection with what happened at Carden, and then you can take me up to the flat."
"Oh, yes, about last July. But this must of been an awful shock for Miss Berrow, wasn't it? You know, Mr. 'Ead, Miss Berrow rung through from Carden yesterday morning an' told my Nellie she wouldn't be back till after the funeral—which is why my Nellie went to Southend to-day, it not being her reg'lar Sunday off—Miss Berrow rung through, as I was sayin', an' my Nellie told me 'er voice was literally tremulous with grief. That was the very words my Nellie said—literally tremulous with grief. She's a rare one at describin' things, my Nellie. An' recite—you should 'ear 'er recite, Mr. 'Ead!"
"I may have that pleasure yet, if I'm lucky," he assured her gravely. "But it was through her being away that you saw this lady last July?"
"Through 'er rolliday—yes, it was. Not but what I don't do all the cookin'—'cept the breakfasts, that is—when she's there. They didn't eat in much, but when they was in to lunch or dinner, I'd go in an' do it all for 'em, my Nellie not 'avin' the 'ands for a cook. I do say about cookin', you want 'ands for it, specially when it come to pastry. An' though I do say it myself, I can turn out a pie-crust that'd make a feather feel down-'earted, as the sayin' is. They 'as a charwoman in every week-day to do the 'eavy work, scrubbin' an' that like, an' I does what cookin's wanted, an' my Nellie does the cap an' apron part, an' though she is my own daughter, a better-'earted, more willin' girl never breathed. Young 'Erb got a treasure when 'e got 'er to say she'd be 'is one an' only, though I do say it meself."
Evidently, Head reflected, the Giddens family made a good thing out of the flat upstairs, since bottles were let go half-empty and fowls and joints, probably, came downstairs after one or at the most two appearances at the Berrows' table, while Mrs. Giddens as well as her daughter earned—or in any case received—wages for their services. He nodded his appreciation of Nellie's qualities.
"I assume, then, that you were called in to cook last July?" he suggested. "By Mr. Berrow, since you say Miss Berrow was away?"
"There, now, ain't that like a real detective!" Mrs. Giddens exclaimed admiringly. "I ain't 'ardly said one word—'ardly one word!—before you sees the 'ole situation just like them really clever detectives what you read about. Not but what some of 'em don't go a bit too far, scrapin' up a handful of dust outer the gas stove an' learnin' from it that the girl 'ad blue eyes, or tellin' where the treasure was 'id by the way a sandwich was bitten. Things like that, now, you reely can't believe—I do like a story to be natural when I read it, even if it is about detectives, an' I always say, give me a bit o' love in it too. Let 'em 'ave a good cuddle somewhere in the story, an' then you're 'appy too. That is, if you like readin'. I don't know if you like readin', Mr. 'Ead, but p'raps you don't get time for it."
"Not overmuch time," he agreed. "And it was through cooking for Mr. Berrow that you saw this lady last July, was it?"
"Exactly, Mr. 'Ead—ex... actly! 'E—that's Mr. Berrow—'e comes an' knocks at this door—it was a Tuesday, I believe, 'cause my Nellie went off on the Saturday for 'er rolliday with the chap what jilted 'er—I never see a girl cry like that girl cried over it!—an' Giddens said 'e 'oped 'e would come back prayin' for 'er to forgive 'im, 'cause then Giddens'd just about make him want a stretcher to go 'ome on—but 'e didn't come, an' I 'eard afterward 'e was walkin' out with a platinum blonde in a florist's shop in the Fulham road, takin' 'er to the pictures an' what not. An' it's the pictures what made this platinum blonde craze—you didn't see none of it before, an' you know it ain't natural when you do see it. Not but what it suits some girls—they always say a woman's crownin' glory is 'er 'air—"
"On a Tuesday"—Head ventured the interruption gently—"Mr. Berrow came and knocked at your door and asked you to cook for him."
"An' me tellin' you in the fewest possible words just 'ow it 'appened!" she reproached him sadly. "Mr. 'Ead, I didn't think you was a 'asty gentleman, specially since Miss Berrow spoke so 'ighly of you in this letter she give you to bring. I better get the key of 'er flat an' take you up, 'adn't I?"
"Now, Letty, what's it all about?" a deep voice behind her boomed, and in the gloom of the passageway Head saw the ex-middle-weight, his hair a tousled mop, his bull neck bare over the unfastened neck-band of his shirt, and his small eyes peering out at the visitor.
"Miss Berrow's sent this gentleman with a letter for me to let 'im into the flat to find out about the murder," the lady explained. "It's Inspector 'Ead, what's got the case in 'and."
"Pleasetermeetcher, sir—'eard aboutcher in the papers," Giddens said respectfully. "An' as for you, Letty, I've 'eard your voice a-rumblin' an' a-squeakin' 'ere for the last 'alf-hour, an' got fed up enough with it to come an' find out 'oo was sufferin' from yer this time. You want about 'alf a yard cut off that tongue o' yours, an' the end turned back arter the operation. If you got to let 'im into the flat, let 'im into the flat. If you reckoned 'er works'd run down after a bit, Mr. 'Ead, I can tell you there's no 'ope. They ain't run down since I married 'er, an' that's twenty-four year ago."
"I'll get the key," Mrs. Giddens promised, and backed past her husband, who advanced to the door in shirt, trousers, and socks only.
"It's a lovely day, sir," he ventured. "Miss Berrow bearin' up?"
"She is quite well," Head told him. "I'll tell her you asked after her, shall I?"
"As long as she don't think I'm too forward about it," Giddens assented doubtfully. "Yes, a lovely day, but the country wants rain."
"If you didn't take up all the doorway," his wife observed spitefully from behind him, "p'raps I could get out with the key an' take Mr. 'Ead up to the flat. It was you said for me to 'urry, wasn't it?"
"I didn't say anything o' the sort," Giddens fired back as he made way for her. "All I said was—"
"If I stopped 'ere to listen to all you said an' all you wanted to say, it'd last till 'alf-past twelve, which is openin' time on Sundays," she interrupted. "I'll take you along up, Mr. 'Ead."
They left Giddens plaintively asserting that good, honest beer was the backbone of England, and that he never drank more than was a good for him. Entering the house by its main, ground floor doorway, Mrs. Giddens led the inspector up to the second floor, unlocked a door there, and ushered him into a large, tastefully furnished room with a wide window giving on to Manson Place.
"'Ere you are, sir," she said. "Miss Berrow said I was to leave you to examine anything you wanted, an' lock up after you'd gone. So unless you want me to stop an' tell you where things are, I'll go."
"I think you might be able to give me some valuable information first," he suggested. "About last July, for instance."
"Well, as long as you're not too 'asty about it," she agreed, though with a measure of sulkiness. "I'm sure I was tryin' to tell you all I could when Giddens put 'is 'eavy foot down an' stopped me."
"You were telling me, I think, that it was a Tuesday, and Miss Berrow and your daughter were away at the time," he encouraged her.
"Yes, an' Mr. Berrow come an' asked me if I could cook an' serve a little dinner for 'im an' a lady—'e never 'ad none of 'is ladies 'ere except when Miss Berrow was away. So I come up that evenin' an' cooked an' served, an' that was when I see 'er—this one in the paper, I mean. Lovely 'air she 'ad, I remember—like my Nellie's."
"Were they on good terms, Mr. Berrow and this lady?" he asked.
"Good terms? A pair o' love birds ain't in it! 'E says to me when I brought the coffee in—'Mrs. Giddens,' 'e says, 'don't you stop for anything else. We'll move inter the drorin'-room when we've finished, an' you can come in in the mornin' an' wash up.' An' she laughs sorter soft an' 'appy at 'im, an' I goes out an' down to me own place. Oh, 'e was a one, 'e was!"
"I see. Did you often come in and cook and serve while Miss Berrow was away?" Head asked meaningly.
"Ah!" She smiled. "You're a bit of a one yourself, aren't you? But there was only one other come 'ere with 'im, an' that was when Miss Berrow went to Brighton for a week the beginnin' of April. I asked 'im if 'e'd mind my Nellie 'avin' a couple o' days off an' not sayin' anything to Miss Berrow about it if I looked after things for 'im, an' 'e said 'e wouldn't, not if I'd cook a nice little dinner for two an' serve it one night, an' not stay to wash up. 'E sorter smiled when 'e said that—a fascinatin' smile 'e 'ad, too, the sort that'd make you do anything for 'im. 'E took 'er off in a taxi about midnight—I 'eard the taxi, an' looked out an' saw 'em go."
There was a train at a little after midnight which ran with only one stop to Westingborough, Head knew. A few people who wished to see an evening show in London availed themselves of it, though it meant reaching home at three in the morning, or later.
"What was this visitor like?" he asked after a pause.
"Oh, young an' 'appy," she answered. "Golden 'aired an' blue eyed, a tall lady, an' I 'eard 'im call 'er Lilian. Airy fairy Lilian, 'e called 'er, to make 'er smile. She did, too, quite a lot. They 'ad champagne an' veal croquettes an' a sweet. 'E told me to make the dinner small an' tasty, 'cause most likely they wouldn't eat much. You won't tell Miss Berrow I'm tellin' you all this, will you?"
"I will not," he promised. "Long golden hair, or bobbed?"
"Oh, quite long, as 'air goes nowadays. 'E took 'er 'at off for 'er while I was puttin' dinner on the table, an' she pulled it down to do it up properly—all down over 'er shoulders, it was, an' 'e told 'er she could go into 'is room to use the dressin'-table in there. They didn't mind me, neither of 'em didn't."
"Did you get any idea as to who she was, or where she came from?"
"Not the slightest—she'd be careful about that, of course. All I heard was when she laughed an' said she didn't care if she did get home with the milk, an' he said it wouldn't be the first time."
"Meaning that she had gone home with the milk before after meeting him, I suppose?"
"It would be that, because she laughed again an' said it was a long journey, or a lonely journey, or something of the sort, but she always had plenty to think about while it lasted."
A three-hour journey, Head reflected, from London to Westingborough by that train which left soon after midnight.
"At the beginning of April. Now, Mrs. Giddens, you may be putting me directly on to the track of the one who killed Mr. Berrow if you can answer this question. What day in April was this—what evening?"
"It was—let me see! Miss Berrow went away on the Saturday, to stay at Brighton till the Monday week. My Nellie wanted the Tuesday an' Wednesday off, I remember, an' I left the washin' up for 'er to do next mornin', 'cause the char 'ad sciatica an' couldn't come in that week. So it'd be the Wednesday evenin'. Yes, my Nellie was back to wash up, I remember. The Wednesday evenin'—second Wednesday in April, it was. An' 'e took 'er off in a taxi, an' I 'eard 'im come back an' struck a match to see the time. It was a quarter to one."
"Right you are, Mrs. Giddens—I think that's about all I want to know. Now I'll leave everything here just as I find it, and come down and tell you when I've finished. I believe that's according to Miss Berrow's instructions, isn't it?"
"That's it, sir. An' a sweet lady she is, too. I'm very sorry for 'er, about this—Mr. Berrow gettin' murdered, I mean."
Since Head made no response, but went toward a writing-desk that stood in the window bay, she left him, and he heard her shut the outer door and tiptoed toward it to make certain that she had shut herself outside. Reassured on that point, he turned to the object of his visit, going from room to room until he knew he had reached the bedroom Claude Berrow had occupied while he lived.
There, beginning with the wardrobe, he conducted a systematic investigation of everything in the room. The contents of Berrow's pockets as he lay dead in the empty house had included only one key, and Head felt certain that the murderer would not have taken other keys together with such papers as he found on the body—unless, of course, those keys had been likely to betray the name and address of the dead man. Thus, the inspector reasoned, there ought to be keys to such receptacles of Berrow's as were left locked, and those keys ought to be somewhere in his pockets, or among his most intimate belongings, and therefore in all probability in his bedroom. The wardrobe had been left unlocked: none of the pockets of the clothes left hanging within it—and Berrow had dressed himself variously and well—contained either keys or anything else, with the exception of a solitary threepenny-piece down in the corner of a vest pocket that its owner had probably dropped into the pocket and then forgotten. But, hidden from sight by the front ledge on top of the wardrobe, Head found a dusty pair of shoes, and in one of them were concealed the keys he sought. The fact that he found them there was evidence of the thoroughness of his search.
From then on, his quest was easy, but fruitless. He turned over every bit of personal linen, investigated every drawer to the extent of removing and carefully replacing the lining paper, and, though he found receipted bills, counterfoils of theatre tickets, and other things of the kind, there was nothing that bore in any way on Berrow's intimacies or personal activities. Head exhausted the possibilities of the bedroom in a little less than an hour, and then turned to other rooms in the flat, taking with him the keys he had found.
The spare bedroom gave him little trouble; in Miss Berrow's room, he contented himself with ascertaining that the keys he had found fitted none of the locked doors or drawers, and merely glanced into such as had been left unlocked. The small, beautifully-furnished dining-room yielded nothing at all, and finally Head came to the drawing-room and found it equally bare of anything that could be linked up with Berrow's past, with the possible exception of a locked drawer—the only one left locked—in the writing-desk that stood in the window bay. It might have been locked by Miss Berrow, Head knew: none of the keys he had found would turn in the lock.
He tried his own keys on the lock, but vainly. Then, standing back, he regarded it with annoyance.
"Sorry," he said to himself at last. "It's got to be done."
He took a carving knife from the sideboard drawer in the dining-room, and with it forced the lock. It was a flimsy thing with a brass bolt that snapped when he put pressure on it, leaving the woodwork uninjured. The drawer itself, he found, contained only blank sheets of writing paper and envelopes, and a small, leather-bound diary, which gave four days to a page. Head went carefully through the diary after assuring himself that the paper and envelopes were really blank.
He found, under a January date, the inscription—"A. from C. 12.55. Bonsell," and with that as guide looked through the March entries and found—"A. from C. 2.20. Bonsell." "A" evidently stood for "Ann," and "C" for "Carden." With this surmise as guide, he looked up the second Wednesday in April, and found—"L. from C. 12.55.?" The "L" was "Lilian," and the query meant that Berrow had made no arrangement as to where to spend the evening with her when he wrote this entry in the diary. There was, Head knew, an express from Westingborough, not stopping at Crandon, and arriving in London at 12.55. "Lilian" had almost certainly come up by that train, and returned the same day by the one leaving just after midnight—returned, that is, beginning her journey a few minutes after Thursday morning had begun.
Harking back through the diary, he found that "L" figured in it on two earlier occasions, one being the day after Berrow's January appointment with "A," and the other on the 26th of February. On both occasions she had apparently arrived by the 12.55, and a query mark was inscribed instead of any place of meeting to correspond with "Bonsell" in "A's" case. She had also, by the diary, come to London on the first Wednesday in May, travelling by the 12.55, and Berrow had also inscribed his own fatal journey to Carden as—"Self to C. Appt. 9."
He had, therefore, gone by definite appointment—but made by what means, and with whom? That problem appeared as far from solution as ever, Head felt, as he sat on the writing-desk turning the pages of the diary, and estimating that, including "A," Berrow had been entertaining no less than five lights o' love from January up to the time of his death. His half-sister had, naturally, glossed over his mode of life as much as she could, but the implications in this diary were devoid of gloss. He himself may have been, as Mrs. Giddens termed him, a "one," but his affairs had been legion.
Mrs. Giddens opened the outer door, and entered the room.
"I was wonderin' if you'd gone, Mr. 'Ead, an' forgotten to give me the oracle," she half-apologized. "'Smatter o' fact, me an' the old man thought we'd just look in round the corner afore closin' time, an' I didn't know but what you might go while we was gone."
"No." He pocketed the diary and stood up, glancing at his wrist watch. He had put three and a half hours into this search of the flat, the watch told him. "I said I'd come down and let you know when I left, Mrs. Giddens. Do you know what generally becomes of the contents of wastepaper baskets here?"
"Goes down the dustbin, sir, every mornin'."
"Well, it's not much use at this late day, but could I have a look at that dustbin, in case any scraps of paper have fallen out or stuck inside when it was emptied?"
"Why, yes, it's down in the shed under the pavement outside my door," she assented. "But if you mean papers Mr. Berrow might 'ave left, there ain't any. 'E burnt everything, most careful—every blessed scrap. 'You might not be inquisitive, Mrs. Giddens,' 'e says to me, 'but there's them as is, an' I'm takin' no chances. Many a man,' 'e says, ''as found 'isself unable to explain letters an' things, an' I been bit once that way. Never a scrap o' paper,' 'e says, 'do I keep about me or anywhere else, in future,' 'e says, an' 'e burnt every bit—wouldn't even give me the foreign stamp off of a henvelope. 'No,' 'e says, 'it's my rule—heverything!' An' heverything it was, too."
"I see. In that case, I won't trouble about the dustbin. If you'll be so good as to lock up, Mrs. Giddens, I'll get a bite to eat somewhere and then catch my train back. I've none too much time."
"DID you go to the Bonsell in Southampton Row and check up there?" Wadden asked, as he sat with Head in his office at Westingborough police station on the Sunday night.
"I did not, Chief. If I'd asked for Mrs. Burrows, as she called herself when she registered there, and found out all I could about her from them, it wouldn't have helped me one little bit over this Lilian. Berrow wouldn't have met Lilian at the Bonsell, after meeting the other there. In addition to that, three of the Sunday papers gave portraits of him, and if I went there inquiring after her, some nosey clerk might connect the man who came to see her there with one of the portraits, and there's more than one garbage publication that would pay a good price for information of that sort. It would mean utter ruin for the Ollyers here, and we can't inflict that on them."
"Quite so—quite so. We've no real grounds for assuming either Ollyer or his wife killed the man, whatever we may think. Head, how are we going to get a set of his finger-prints?"
"To check up with the prints on that back-door handle, you mean? Well, Chief, you can go and ask him if he'd mind letting you take a set of his prints, if you like—and a set of his wife's as well, since it may possibly have been either of 'em—"
"You go and ask him," Wadden interposed. "He might tell me a bible story, or something—tell me I was like myself, perhaps."
"He'd tell me a lot more than that," Head observed thoughtfully. "We've no right to go after his finger-prints, and I don't see any indirect way of getting them, at present. The prints on the door handle may form conclusive evidence for our case, when we've got our man."
"Y'know"—Wadden tapped the leather-bound diary lying on his desk—"I think I should describe Berrow as a professional sensualist. Takes after his mother, probably—old Berrow divorced her."
"Old Berrow's life must be investigated," Head remarked reflectively. "The people he knew round here. A front-door key missing."
"Possibly, not certainly. The murderer may have got in by a window, latched it after him, and then let Berrow in."
"Told him to go round to the side or back door, which both had keys on the inside of the locks. A thousand to one against it, Chief."
"Well, if you can find where old Berrow lost a front-door key and the man has been dead nearly three years, I'll hand it to you," Wadden promised. "And his wife might have lost the key, or Miss Berrow."
"Meanwhile," Head said, "Lilian is tall and golden haired and blue eyed—uses bronze hairpins both thin and fat, since her hair comes down to her shoulders. And she's come off the two-fifty-nine at Westingborough certainly in the early hours of the second Thursday in April and probably three other times this year, including the first Thursday morning in May. Westingborough ticket collectors, please."
"And even if they remember her, they won't know who she is," Wadden pointed out. "Quite a lot of women in this district go shopping in London on a Wednesday day-ticket, and do a theatre before they come back—do an evening show, I mean, and come back by that train."
"That may be so," Head agreed, "but the ticket collector who took her ticket—perhaps more than once—may be able to add to the vague description of her I got from Mrs. Giddens— Gosh, chief, how that woman talked! And what a gold mine the Berrows were to her and her family! Half-bottles of booze, joints only cut once, and heaven only knows how much more, and mother and daughter getting regular wages, daughter getting about half her time off and then taking a holiday when she felt like it—they'll feel a draught now."
"What's that got to do with your Lilian?" Wadden demanded with some asperity. "I don't want to sit here talking all night!"
"Well, Chief, you've had the day off—I haven't. No, it's nothing to do with Lilian. Chief, I think we'll put a voters' list for the district in front of Sergeant Wells, and tell him to extract all the Lilians out of it. Then he can classify them for us."
"Poor old Wells!" Wadden said commiseratingly. "We've got about sixty thousand voters on the parliamentary register for this division, since that damned flapper vote idiocy got itself handed to the Socialists by what calls itself a Conservative party. I shall have Wells walking up the wall when I tell him his new job."
"Well, how else will you get a complete check of them?"
"It's the best way, of course—at least, I can't think of a better," Wadden agreed. "I'll give him a couple of clerks to help him—they'll only have about twenty thousand names apiece to look through—and when they've done it, how much nearer are you to getting your man or woman? Ann Ollyer is just as likely as Lilian Flybynight, or whatever her other name happens to be. I don't see—"
"Lilian posted her letters to Berrow from Carden, just as Ann did," Head interrupted. "Get all the Lilians, sort out those belonging in and round Carden, and we may get a link of some sort. People who knew old Berrow and might have a front-door key—I've got more than one bee in my bonnet over this case, Chief, and they're all buzzing like the devil. I'll see about the ticket collectors, myself."
"The devil doesn't buzz," Wadden responded rather sourly. "Wells will, though, when he sees that register. He'll literally hum."
"We seem to lose sight of the fact that this is a particularly ugly murder case," Head reflected. "You do, apparently."
"Just you begin to realize, young feller," Wadden admonished him, "that if we took our work to heart we'd never get it into our heads properly. Just as a doctor can't afford to sympathize with his patients, so we can't afford to be sentimental over even murder cases. Treat 'em as plain work—if you start sympathizing and going soft, you'll let your man or woman get away from under your nose. I'm telling you that because I suspect you of a sneaking sympathy with these Ollyers. You've got to see them as marionettes on the board, and pull their strings as you pull the rest—don't be fool enough to turn human or see anyone in the case as human. They're merely part of your job, Head, and if a man can't sing at his work—you'll have some singing to do, too, over Ollyer's complaint against you."
"In the key of D sharp," Head suggested. "Well, Chief, anything more to discuss, or do we now go home and tell our wives we're sorry?"
The superintendent pushed back his chair from the desk and stood up. "You'd better take that," he said, pointing at Claude Berrow's diary. "Don't sleep with it under your pillow—you might dream you were in Mahomet's paradise, if you did. You can stay in this office all night if you like, but I prefer the boozum of my family, with a large, hefty accent on the booze part of it. Good night, Head."
Having left Sergeant Wells and two men pressed to assist him looking rather rueful over the prospect of extracting all the Lilians from a register of voters in the Westingborough division, Inspector Head made his way to the railway station early on Monday morning, and ascertained that one Tom Adams had been on duty on the night of the first Wednesday in May, going off after the arrival of the two-fifty-nine early on Thursday morning. Tom, summoned to the station-master's office, proved to be a middle-aged, stumpy little man with a humorous twinkle in his eyes. Even the station-master addressed him as Tom: he was the type of man whose surname would always be ignored by those who knew him, and he looked at Head as if he suspected a joke of some sort to eventuate from this summons to the office.
"I have told Mr. Head you were on late duty the first week in May, Tom, and he wants to see you about the passengers off the two-fifty-nine one morning during that week," the station-master explained. "I'll leave him to talk to you alone about it."
He obligingly vacated the office, and Head took up the questioning of the man, who, cap in hand, nodded a sort of greeting.
"You don't get many passengers off that train, I expect?" Head suggested, by way of beginning.
"Quite a few, Wednesday nights," Tom answered. "As many as a couple o' dozen—I'm saying Wednesday nights, but of course it's Thursday mornings, really. They have an evenin' in London, you see.
"More men than women, or the reverse?"
"Oh, mostly women—ladies, I should say. Quite a lot of 'em first-class passengers. Yes, Wednesday nights that train's fairly popular. It don't leave London till after midnight."
"Then a Wednesday day-ticket isn't available for it?" Head suggested. "Don't you have to excess the tickets, or something?"
"They get that done at the other end," Tom explained, and thus destroyed a hope that he might have taken particular observation of any lady passenger through having to collect excess fare.
"I see. Well, Tom, can you remember anything about the passengers who came off that train the first Thursday in May?"
"That'll be early Thursday morning, you mean, Mr. Head. I'm afraid I can't, definitely. It's over five weeks ago."
"Do you remember seeing, say, a short, dark lady give up her ticket that morning? One about two inches shorter than you?"
Tom shook his head. "Can't say as I do," he answered.
"No? Well, then, do you remember a tall lady, golden haired and blue eyed, possibly wearing a coat with a fur collar?"
Over this second type Tom hesitated awhile, ruminating in silence. "Tall, with golden hair," he mused aloud eventually. "I believe—yes, there was one like that, but I don't remember anything about a fur collar. If you hadn't said that, Mr. Head, I'd 'a' said she had a fur coat on—one o' these brown fur coats."
"Which would therefore have a fur collar," Head pointed out.
"Why, yes, so 'twould," Tom agreed with a smile. "But it don't seem the same, somehow. Tall, and got golden hair. She come off that same train one night in the winter—it'd be in February, because I haven't been on duty for that train since the last week in February, except for that one week in May. Nice-lookin' lady, she was."
"She would be—yes. If I can get in touch with her, she can put me on to the address of this short, dark lady I want to find. Have you any idea of her name or where she lives?"
Tom shook his head. "None at all, Mr. Head. Westingborough ain't what you'd call a small town, an' I collect a lot o' tickets off people I just know by sight in the course of a week. I'd know this lady if I was to see her, but I don't even know if she lives in the town."
"You are sure you could identify her if you saw her?"
"Not a doubt about it, Mr. Head—not a doubt about it. There's some things about people stick in your mind, you know, and how I remember her so well was because I thought to myself—that woman's got some sense. She don't go half shavin' off that pretty hair like a lot of 'em do, but there's quite a bun of it under the back of her hat. Got nice ankles, too—a good looker, takin' her all round. Unusual, rather—extra tall for a woman. But who she is or where she lives—that's beyond me, and I dunno how you'd find out."
"Any other points about her that you could describe?"
"I don't think so—yes, one thing, though. She hung back to hunt for her ticket, an' took it out of her purse—took the purse out of her handbag, first. Then she held the ticket between her lips while she put the purse back in the bag, and when she give up the ticket it had red lipstick on it, front an' back. An' I says to myself as I took a look at that ticket—first-class, it was, a white one—I says if I was the man what had the kissin' of you, an' I wouldn't mind if I was—but if I was, I'd make you wipe that stuff off your lips first. That greasy mess puts a chap off kissin'—does me, anyhow."
"But they all do it," Head observed.
"Not the ones I take to the pictures," Tom dissented. "They know I won't stand it. Odd, now—if you'd asked me who come off the two-fifty-nine that morning, I couldn't 'a' told you any one of 'em. But you mention this golden hair, an' she comes back into my mind quite clear, like. Yes, I'd know her if I saw her."
"Extra tall, uses lipstick, a bun of golden hair at the back of her head—how would you describe her face, Tom?"
"Thinnish face, with a straight nose—sort of aristocratic lookin' face. Not much colour in it. Palish. Dark eyebrows, I believe."
"Any other points about her that you can remember?"
"No, not special, except she got a nice, slim figure. A bit like that Cissie Thompson on the films. A bit like her—got the same sort of straight, sharp nose."
"Well, that's useful, thanks. I may be able to find her from what you've told me, and get the address of this short, dark lady from her. I won't keep you any longer now, Tom."
He went his way, leaving Tom under the impression that the mythical short, dark lady was the real object of his quest, and, taking the small two-seater car which he himself drove, this leaving the police saloon and its driver free for Wadden's use, he drew up half an hour after leaving Westingborough station outside the Carden Arms, in time to meet Helen Berrow and young Tarrant coming out together from breakfast in the hotel dining-room. The girl left Tarrant in response to Head's questioning look at her.
"More questions, Mr. Head?" she asked.
"One or two, if you don't mind," he answered. "I can ask them here, though—no need to shut you in the writing-room over them."
"Yes—well, what do you want to know?" she smiled as she put the question, a smile that indicated her willingness to help him.
"If you can tell me the names of any of your father's friends, or your own, while he and you were living at The Angle?"
"Why, yes," she answered. "We hadn't many friends, though. The only people I knew at all well were the Bettertons, and I still keep up a correspondence of sorts with Mrs. Betterton—she looked me up once in London since I came back from America, but I was out that day, so we didn't meet. Then my father knew the present vicar's predecessor and used to go to the vicarage a lot to play chess with him. And the doctor here—Doctor Hendred—his daughter and I were at school together, and I used to go to their house for tennis. I think that's all—my father was rather a recluse, and after I grew up I made most of my interests outside Carden, in London, mainly."
One item in the list stood out from the rest for Head: for the second time, the name Betterton occurred in his investigations.
"This Mrs. Betterton," he asked. "Have you by any chance a specimen of her handwriting here with you?"
She shook her head. "No," she answered, with evident surprise. "Why—you surely don't think—?" She broke off, gazing at him.
"That it might be like the writing on either of the envelopes you forged for me. Is it, by any chance?"
Again she shook her head. "No, not like either," she answered.
"And Mrs. Betterton's first name—the one you knew her by—is—"
"Helen, the same as my own," she answered. "Surely, Mr. Head—" She paused with the half-reproof incomplete, and he smiled.
"Sorry," he said, "I must explore every avenue. Which reminds me, I went to your flat yesterday, and I'm sorry to tell you I had to break the lock of one of the drawers in the writing-desk that stands in the bay of the window. Only the lock—the woodwork of the desk is quite undamaged, and I'm responsible for the cost of a new lock."
"The desk is of no great value," she said, "and I'll forgive you. All that furniture will be sold—I am not keeping the flat on alone. That drawer was one he—my half-brother—always kept locked."
"And it was the only thing in the flat—apart from your Mrs. Giddens, that is—which contained any useful information. Information which may be considerably more valuable to me than the cost of a new lock. Just one other point, Miss Berrow. Do you remember whether the last letter your half-brother received with the Carden postmark was in the slanting handwriting, or in the upright?"
"You mean the letter that led me to think he might have come to Carden when he left London last Friday week?"
"Yes. Did you notice which hand it was in?"
"Not to remember. I believe it was the upright handwriting, but am not sure. He came into the dining-room that morning as I was sorting the letters and took that one before I picked it up. I saw the writing on it upside down as it lay beside his plate after he had opened and read it, and saw the Carden postmark. I am not sure which of the two hands it was in—not sure, in fact, if it were either."
"A possible third correspondent living here," he suggested.
"Most unlikely," she dissented. "It was almost certainly one of the two, but I can't say definitely that it was."
"Well, many thanks, Miss Berrow. That's all I wanted to trouble you about. Do you mind my asking, though, when you return to London?"
"To-morrow morning, with—with Mr. Tarrant."
The way in which she made the little pause before Tarrant's name indicated one reason why she would not keep the flat on, and the proprietorial way in which he took her arm as Head left her went to prove that their intimacy had progressed considerably since her arrival here. Well, Head reflected as he drove off in quest of Sergeant Purvis, they would make a good pair, but Tarrant was the more fortunate of the two.
Purvis was just emerging from his cottage as Head drew up before it, and, in response to a gesture, he came out to the road and seated himself in the car, remarking by way of greeting that the country wanted rain. Head had known he would not get far without hearing it.
"I believe it does, Sergeant," he answered. "Any news? I had to go to London yesterday. What developments are there?"
"Two or three things, sir. I got to see the fitters putting the new gas cooker in at the vicarage, and they haven't missed any pieces of pipe. Said they'd have noticed if any length over a foot had been missing. Then I found out that Makin and Just of Crandon are selling that Mrs. Ward's furniture for her sister, and the sister, a Mrs. Cummins, is coming to Crandon to-morrow to see about the sale and a tombstone for the old lady. Berrow's funeral is at twelve o'clock to-day, and Mr. Ollyer rang me up to ask if you'd be over here some time to-day, and could he see you, either before or after the funeral."
"Umm-m!" Head grunted. "A fairly useful budget—all but the last item, which may or may not be—I'll go and see him first, Sergeant, and then come back here to you. You get out again, and I'll drive there alone. That is—you've nothing else to report?"
"Nothing more, sir." And Purvis got out from the car and went back into his home, while Head turned about and drove to the vicarage.
Ollyer was waiting alone in the room in which Head had interviewed him and his wife, and, in the brief, uncomfortable pause that followed the inspector's entry to the room, the vicar's white, drawn face and even more than usually restless eyes stated why he had asked for this interview. Knowing what was to come, Head pitied the man.
"The sergeant gave you my message, Inspector?" Ollyer asked at last.
"He did, sir," Head responded. "Less than ten minutes ago."
"I wanted to see you to tell you"—he hesitated, and it was plain that he did not find the telling easy—"to tell you, I discovered yesterday—last night—that I had done you a grave injustice in what I said at the inquest. That you had good reason—good reason to—to suspect me of having been the author of this man's death."
"Mr. Ollyer," Head said gravely, "I had far rather face the court of inquiry, and hear you press the charges you made against me, than hear what you are telling me now."
With an abrupt movement Ollyer faced about and went to the window of the room, where he stood for a minute or more with his back to Head. When he spoke again, it was without turning round.
"I believe you, Inspector," he said. "Knowing what I know now, knowing that you had only to speak one sentence at the inquest to justify yourself—and to ruin my wife's reputation in this village for ever. She confessed to me, last night, all that she told you. Inspector"—he faced about, then, and for once his gaze was quite steady—"I believe you have that sympathy with me now, as you had that regard for the honour of my name when I accused you without cause. And I ask your forgiveness—beg it!—for the wrong I did you."
"It is very freely yours, Mr. Ollyer," Head said, with a flashing memory of Wadden's words the night before, concerning Head's sneaking sympathy with the Ollyers. But Wadden himself, who hid a very human kindness under his fierce exterior, could not but have sympathized with the vicar in such a situation as this. "The more so as I realize it must have seemed to you that I went farther than I ought."
Ollyer came back into the room and held out his hand, and Head took it. "Thank you, Inspector," he said rather shakily. "There remains, though, to make full amends, so that you do not suffer in any way from the charges I made against you. This I must do."
"Not by explanation," Head dissented. "I couldn't accept that."
"No, but by—if you agree—by my seeing the lord lieutenant of the county—I have access to him—or whoever controls these things, and suggesting that there should be a public inquiry, as public as possible, at which I will appear and retract all I said. This much I owe you, and this you must let me do."
Hearing the steady determination in his voice, seeing his composure as they faced each other, Head revised his opinion of this man, a proud man if ever there were one, who proposed thus publicly to humiliate himself. He stood silent, not knowing what to say. It was easy to see that Mrs. Ollyer had been unable to bear the burden of her secret, knowing as she did that Head might summon her—almost certainly would summon her—to speak for him and against her husband, and that with the knowledge he held he could virtually compel her to defend him against the vicar's charges. Easy to see that she had been driven to confession, lest the fact of her intimacy with Claude Berrow should be dragged to light and her husband should learn it from other lips than her own. But in that she had misjudged Head: he would have had her summoned to give evidence, but would never have betrayed her confidence—if confidence her hardly-wrung confession of her guilt could be termed. He had relied on her clearing him without that.
"Will you agree to this, Inspector?" Ollyer asked at last.
"If—if you can think of no other way easier for yourself," Head answered. "It appears to me that this is no small thing to do—"
"Was it a small thing when you stood willing to sacrifice your whole career, possibly, to spare my wife and me?" Ollyer interrupted. "I do not wish an easy way, but a way that makes full reparation to you. I tell you quite frankly that I have spent the greater part of the night in prayer over this, and I believe the way I propose has been shown me in answer to my prayer. Will you agree to it—please!" The last word was a separate entreaty.
"I will—if the chief constable does," Head assented.
"I will write to him to-day," Ollyer said without hesitation. "One other thing, Inspector. I believe that my wife came under the influence of a man as fascinating as he was unscrupulous and adulterous—he has been sent to answer to the Great Judge of all our sins and frailties for his deeds, and it is not for me to say more than this concerning him. But I have forgiven my wife, and I believe, when the impression of this horror has in some measure passed from both our minds, we may yet find happiness together."
He could have taken no other course, Head knew. For a man in his position, divorce was an impossibility: but she had owned to having given him cause for suspicion once before, and now this, not mere suspicion, but fact—the danger in which she had stood, perhaps, might deter her from any thought of infidelity in future, and such a man as Ollyer was proving himself might win and hold all her affection in time, but to Head any prospect of happiness appeared remote.
"I sincerely hope you will, sir," he said.
"Through the exercise of such charity and compassion as you have shown toward my wife and me," Ollyer added. "Now, Inspector, if there is any one material thing I can do to help you in this case of yours, anything you care to ask—put these personal affairs I have inflicted on you out of your mind and ask it, and rely on me to do anything in my power. Whatever it is, you have only to ask."
"Very good, sir. To clear you of suspicion as completely as you can be cleared till I make an arrest, a set of your finger-prints."
"Willingly," Ollyer agreed without hesitation, and Head mentally visualized Wadden's stare of amazement when such a set of prints was placed before him. "You need a sheet of paper, I think, and I daub my hands with ink and press them on the paper. Isn't that the process?"
"Yes, but before we do that, I'd like you to grasp two round things, as nearly like door-knobs as possible, and let me have them." He felt that Wadden should have no excuse for saying that he had let sympathy deter him from the pursuit of his case. The vicar looked round his room, and eventually pointed at the wooden curtain pole over the window. "If I get that down, and unscrew the two knobs from the ends, how would they do?" he suggested.
"Admirably," Head agreed, "but it would be better if you let me unscrew them, with a folded handkerchief to prevent my prints from being transferred and obscuring yours."
Ollyer put a chair in the window recess and lifted down the pole. Some ten minutes later Head had the two knobs carefully wrapped in paper, and the vicar, having used a newspaper to rub his ink-blackened hands dry until he could wash them, signed his name on the sheet of paper over which the prints of his two hands sprawled.
"I hope this may be of far more help to you than merely removing suspicion from me," he said, "and gather from your asking such a thing that you have already discovered a set of the murderer's prints. Now is there anything else you care to ask before you go?"
"There is," Head told him. "Whether it has occurred to you, as it has to me, that what you saw through the window of the empty house on the night Berrow was killed was not really a woman, but a man wearing a woman's coat and hat as a disguise?"
"A man—wearing—" Ollyer shook his head. "I don't think so. The idea had not occurred to me—you are assuming, of course, that such a crime was beyond a woman's strength and determination, and that—but the coat was belted in to show a narrow waist, the line of the figure was that of a woman. The outline was quite clear."
"It would be," Head agreed. "Superintendent Wadden and I tried it on Saturday night with an electric torch, each watching the other in turn, and the reflected light gave an almost perfectly clear outline. But now, if I pull this jacket in at the waist—" He suited the action to the word. "You see?"
Again Ollyer shook his head. "I have got it as a woman in my mind," he said, "and find it difficult to dislodge that impression. A tall woman, well-built—but the outline of a woman."
The as yet unidentified Lilian was unusually tall for a woman, according to Tom Adams, Head reflected. "Well," he said, "my very best thanks, Mr. Ollyer, and my very best wishes too. You have not only made me sorry that you should be in any way involved in this case, but considerably simplified the case itself for me, as well."
Was he right, he wondered as he went back to Purvis's cottage, in thus implying complete acquittal of all suspicion to Ollyer? Wadden would not have approved, he knew, but then, Wadden had not the fine judgment of character that he himself possessed. And the two complete sets of finger-prints that he took away from the vicarage, one on the wooden knobs and one on the sheet of paper, would yield virtual proof of Ollyer's innocence by showing that his had not been the hand to grasp the door-knob of that door facing the paved back yard of The Angle. Or, equally, would yield virtual proof of the man's guilt.
But Head would not admit the possibility of this last, now.
He rang up Westingborough from Purvis's cottage, and was put through to the superintendent, who was still in his office.
"Oh, Chief," he announced. "No gas-pipes missing, Purvis tells me—you know, over fitting the gas cooker. We can look elsewhere."
"How the devil d'you know it was gas?" Wadden demanded testily. "It might equally be a water-pipe, for all you know."
"Possibly, but we can look elsewhere. I'm bringing back two sets of Ollyer's finger-prints to compare with the set on the door-knob."
"Heaven and earth, man!"
"And he's going to make public retraction of his charges against me—let the inquiry into my conduct be public, and retract there."
"Here, what have you been drinking, Head?"
"They're not open yet, Chief."
"Well, I'll be—look here, how would you like your Lilians? If we tear out the pages of the register with 'em on, and underline 'em all in red ink, will that do? To save Wells copying 'em out, I mean."
"Yes, that will do nicely, Chief."
"He's counted 'em. Four hundred and two—I thought it would be a commoner name than that."
"Make him go through the register again, to make sure he hasn't missed any," Head suggested. "Nothing else, Chief—I'll get back this afternoon."
"Right you are. But Wells is not a misser. Four hundred and two."
"DO you ever go to the talkies, Purvis?"
Having replaced the telephone receiver on its hook, Head turned to face the sergeant as he asked the question. Purvis stared with open mouth for a few seconds, as if he were questioning whether going to the talkies constituted a dereliction of duty, and an affirmative answer might bring him a severe reprimand.
"Well, sir, I take the wife sometimes," he admitted cautiously.
"Umm-m! Got any particular favourites among the stars?"
"Well, sir, there's that girl, Marleen De Trick—I like to see her, but the wife reckons she's a bit—well—a bit too—"
"Afraid you might take to riotous living if you saw too many of her pictures, eh?" Head suggested in the pause. "Another of them, now—have you ever seen a certain Cissie Thompson in any picture?"
Purvis nodded assent—he could not get the drift of this apparently irrelevant discussion, yet. "About a month ago, sir—yes. The wife and I took the evening 'bus over to Westingborough—'A Shattered Sunbeam,' the picture was, and she was good in it. The wife thoroughly enjoyed it, too—I've never seen her cry so much over a picture as she did over that one. A real good picture."
"Clever, too," Head observed. "Shattering a sunbeam isn't the sort of thing everyone could do. And Cissie Thompson was the star?"
"She was—well, the one that got shattered," Purvis explained. "But it all came right in the end, of course. I knew it would."
"Therefore, I conclude, you didn't weep. Purvis, I think we'll have Mrs. Purvis in on this, if you don't mind. Will you ask her to join us for a minute or two?"
"Why, certainly, Mr. Head. I'll tell her you want her."
He went out, a very puzzled man, and presently returned with little Mrs. Purvis, who patted her brilliantly red hair into order as she entered the room, looking slightly flustered over the unexpected summons, and also a little frightened, as if she feared lest Head intended to put her John on the carpet, and she had to witness it.
"Morning, Mrs. Purvis," Head said, with a cordiality that relieved her fears. "Your husband and I have been talking about pictures—the talkies, not the other sort—and he tells me you and he went to Westingborough about a month ago to see 'A Shattered Sunbeam.'"
"Yes, Mr. Head, we did," she assented. "It's very seldom he gets out of the place, and he gave Sprott particular instructions—"
"That's all right, Mrs. Purvis. Both the superintendent and I know there isn't a better man at his post in the district than your husband—don't blush, Sergeant!—and this was just a little talk about film stars. Cissie Thompson, for one. What did you think of her?"
"Well, sir, I thought she was just lovely. Not herself, I mean, but her acting. There was only one thing I couldn't quite understand, how she could come out from being half drowned, and still be as dry as a bone."
"Well, your husband has just told me she was the sunbeam in the picture, so perhaps that explains it. Now, Mrs. Purvis, just cast round in your mind, and think if you can remember anyone in or near Carden who resembles Cissie Thompson. Any lady in the place?"
"Yes—Mrs. Ollyer, the vicar's wife," Mrs. Purvis answered without hesitation. "I said to John that evening—if Mrs. Ollyer wasn't quite so tall, and had a straighter nose, you might mistake her for Cissie Thompson—and you told me not to be silly, John! But it is so."
"Umph!" The way in which Head grunted the comment proved that the reply was not what he had expected, and, possibly, was disappointing as well. "I've never seen Cissie myself. Can you think of anyone else you've seen here who resembles her—even slightly?"
The little woman shook her head. "It's not what you'd call an uncommon sort of face," she said. "There's nothing really uncommon about her except her acting, and that's just perfect. I don't like her voice—I don't like any of these American voices. But—well, no, Mr. Head, I can't think of anyone else she reminded me of. If we went to see her again, and I tried to think while I was seeing her, it might strike me that somebody else was like her. If I happened to be looking for a likeness, I mean. But I can't think of anyone except Mrs. Ollyer, and she's better looking, on the whole."
"Many thanks, Mrs. Purvis. If you do happen to think of a resemblance to anyone else, you might tell your husband and ask him to pass it on to me. Now I'm going to take him out for a little exercise, to give him an appetite for his dinner—and get one myself, too."
He left his car outside the cottage, and with Purvis walked to The Angle, both men silent on the way, since Head knew well that the sergeant was casting about in his mind for a woman who resembled the film star—a woman other than Mrs. Ollyer. Since all who had time and opportunity for the morbid interest a murder always produces were attending the funeral of the murdered man at that hour, there was not a soul in sight as Head opened the big gate and went toward the house.
"Has anyone else occurred to you, Sergeant?" he asked, as he unlocked and opened the front door of The Angle.
"I can't think of anyone, sir," Purvis answered, following him in. "I suppose you'd like me to come round with you?"
"I would. It isn't that I expect definitely to add to what we already know, but the atmosphere of the place may help to give ideas. To stand somewhere near where that murderer stood, waiting to kill—I always think the intensity of the minutes a murderer lives through while committing the crime must leave an impression, almost as if a part of himself remained, or a part of the evil that must be in him."
"It sounds horribly creepy," Purvis observed, following into the dining-room. "And here, somewhere by this door he must have stood—"
"Here on the right," Head confirmed the surmise, "waiting till Berrow had entered the room—then that iron death-dealer in his right hand lifted and swung—so!" He swung his arm circularly over his head, and Purvis started back as if he expected the blow to fall on him. "No, I'm not going to murder you, Sergeant, but it was so, and Berrow went down and lay there, his head toward the corner of the room. We should have had finger-prints on this door-handle if Guddle hadn't held on to it with his hot and dirty hand while he looked in and saw the body lying there. No prints on the inner handle—the murderer had no need to touch that, since he didn't close the door from the inside all the time. And the front door shows nothing—probably he opened and closed it by means of his key, as I did just now. There's no need to touch the handle of that door."
"You're sure it was a man, sir?" Purvis asked.
"What do you think?" Head asked in reply. "Here, with the sense of it strong on us, what do you think? Could a woman have waited here by this door and crashed a man's skull in with that one blow?"
"No," Purvis answered decidedly. "Not any woman I can think of."
He stood silent awhile, gazing, as was Head, at the brownish stain on the floor that marked the position of Berrow's head after he had fallen.
"And yet Mr. Ollyer swore he saw a woman," he added at last.
"Saw a woman's hat, and a woman's coat," Head corrected him.
"And—yes—by gum, Mr. Head, I've got to hand it to you! Wanted to be seen with a woman's coat and hat on! I puzzled and puzzled over why she was such a fool as to show a light. You and Mr. Wadden sort of joking over it when you took turns to come in and flash that torch for each other to see—and it never struck me!"
He thought it over for awhile.
"Because you kept on looking for a woman," he explained.
"And still keep on looking for her," Head told him. "For the woman the murderer used as a bait to get Berrow to come here. Her name, Purvis, is Lilian, and she's tall and golden haired and like Cissie Thompson. Long golden hair, not red, as we surmised at first."
"Golden," Purvis repeated thoughtfully. "You know, sir, I never thought Carden had so many women with all shades of fair hair, till this case started me going over 'em. The wife and I talked it over—about the hairpins, we began it—and when we started up to reckon how many women in the place might use that sort of hairpin, we just gave it up. But—golden, now. That eliminates a few."
"Leaving any special ones you can call to mind?" Head inquired.
"Not for the moment, sir. Perhaps I've gone over 'em too many times in my mind, and got addled. The only one I can think of for the moment is Mrs. Houghton, over at Castel Garde."
"Married only months ago, and he stopped to speak to me in Westingborough only a few days since and told me they were expecting a happy event in September," Head commented. "A real good man, too—no, you'll have to think again. They're out of it."
"Yes, I know," Purvis complained, "but I've got her in my mind for golden hair, and can't get her out again."
"Cultivate a one-way mind and keep the traffic moving," Head advised. "Let's go over the whole house, now we're here."
He led the way upstairs, and they went from room to room, finding no trace of recent human presence in any one. In the main corridor, Head paused and gestured along past the doorways in sight.
"Every door left open," he said, "so even if he had come upstairs there was no need for him to touch a handle. But he had no need to come upstairs, unless it were to make certain he was alone in the house, and he needn't have touched anything for that. No, nothing here. We'll go down again and do the rest of it."
At the foot of the stairs Purvis paused to gaze at the front door.
"You said there's no need to touch that handle, if you've got the key, sir," he said. "You've got to turn the handle as well, surely?"
"No. It's one single bolt, and either the key or the handle draws it back. Not that it's of any consequence—Guddle's greasy paw obliterated anything there may have been on the handles, both inside and out. No, nothing there. And nothing in here"—he entered the drawing-room as he spoke, and went to the window—"unless—" He broke off, examining the window fastening closely. "Come here, Purvis."
Purvis joined him and, following the direction of his pointing finger, gazed at the window-catch and the section of frame to which it was fastened. After awhile he nodded comprehension.
"Yes," he said. "Yes. Dust on everything if it's left a day or two—the country does want rain. And this house empty two years—there ain't enough dust there, Mr. Head—not like there is in the other room. Some, but you could blow it off—and you couldn't blow it off the window in that room where the body is."
"We'll go and look at that window," Head said.
They returned to the dining-room, and examined the framing across its middle—it was an ordinary, two-section sash window, as was the one they had just left, but brown-painted, while that in the drawing-room was white. The ledge on which the catch was set had gone a dirty dun colour with the accumulated dust of two years. Head pointed at one corner, and gestured Purvis forward.
"Blow, Sergeant," he bade.
Purvis gave him a questioning glance, and so ascertained that the invitation was extended in good faith. He blew, and started back coughing, while Head, ignoring the cloud of dust, looked at the ledge. It was still apparently as dirty as before, with the paint hidden.
"Wants a hard brush to shift it all, or soap and water," Purvis observed when he had finished coughing.
"Now we'll go back to the other one," Head remarked.
They went back, and again the inspector pointed at a corner of the middle section of framing and invited his sergeant to blow. Purvis blew obediently, and found no need for coughing afterward.
"You're right, sir," he said. "It's been cleaned off."
The white paint showed, almost clean, and on the rest of the middle framing there was no caked dust, but only a layer that could be blown away, one that might have accumulated in a week or two. Head stood gazing at it thoughtfully, making no comment.
"Shows how you can see and yet not see," Purvis observed.
"This is the first chance I've had to go through the house in a leisurely way, giving all the time I want to everything," Head rejoined. "Purvis, the murderer had no front-door key. When he first came here to plan his crime, this window was unfastened, and he got in by it—pushed up the lower half and crawled through. When he got inside, he pulled it down again—and found he'd left finger-marks on the woodwork. If he'd cleaned off the part where the finger-marks were and left the rest, it would have been instantly noticeable, so he cleaned it all off. Then he latched the window, took the back-door key, and went in and out by that back door."
"And let Berrow in by that door?" Purvis asked.
"No, by the front door. As I told you, either the key or the handle draws back the front-door bolt on the inside. Outside, you've got to use a key—it's like a Yale lock, but clumsier, and needing a long steel key of the ordinary pattern. If he'd had one, he wouldn't have taken and kept the back-door key. You can bet your boots and your shirt as well that he was waiting here when Berrow came off the eight-forty that Friday night and walked up to this front door."
"Well, sir, that's a step nearer," Purvis commented.
"Is it? All possible finger-prints carefully wiped off this window—it's interesting, but far from conclusive, as the monkey said when the goat butted at him and missed. We'll leave this for the present, and extend our search elsewhere, I think."
"Finger-prints on that front-door knob," Purvis suggested.
"Guddle's," Head dissented. "As I told you, there's nothing on either the inside or outside handle there but that house agent's trade mark, and he knows there's a water shortage and doesn't wash his hands too often. Well, I think that's all in here, and he had no key."
They went out, and made a careful survey of the rest of the ground-floor rooms, coming at last to the back door. The inner handle had been removed for delineation of finger-prints on it, and Head stood gazing at the door awhile, and then turned away.
"I wonder?" he reflected. "But no, he wouldn't be blood-spattered when he went out. Berrow fell at once, away from him."
They returned to the front door, and Head drew back the bolt by means of the knob. It slid back with noiseless ease.
"Oiled recently, you see," he remarked. "The superintendent spotted that instantly. Oh, it was well and truly planned—and perhaps we'll find out how he got his man to come here, before the end!"
They went out from the house, and Head, after closing the door, led the way round by the side door to the back, and paused again in the concrete-paved yard, with Purvis watching his frowning expression as he thought his way through the details of the crime.
"Guddle—Morton," he said at last. "What's happened to Morton?"
"Gone back to London, sir," Purvis answered. "Drove to Crandon in Cortazzi's car to catch the early train up."
"Umm-m! We know where to find him if we want him, but beyond a rather indecent curiosity over things that don't concern him, I don't think I've anything against the man. Ordinary city type, with plenty of money, and looking for a place in the country with a view to ending his days in pleasant surroundings. Don't blame him, either."
Again he fell to musing, and again roused from it.
"He waited, Purvis—waited to make sure his man was dead—I don't mean Morton, but the one I want. He must have waited, because Berrow got here by nine o'clock, and it was nearly ten when the vicar saw that woman showing a light in the room. He put on the woman's hat and coat after he had killed Berrow, and waited till he heard footsteps. After that, he hurried, went out by the back door before anyone could get from the gate to the front of the house, and then—"
"Went down the garden and through the hedge into the beanfield," Purvis suggested. "It was dark or nearly so when Mr. Ollyer saw him, so he needn't wait any longer after he'd left the house."
"A still night—Ollyer remembered how very still the night was," Head pursued. "Yes, went down the garden—but he had that woman's coat and hat with him. He'd taken them off, and had to carry them. He went down to the hedge—let's go down to the hedge, Purvis"—and they set off, Head leading—"and stood there listening for any sound that might break the stillness, any footsteps in the road, or car passing, for he didn't want to be seen then."
They came to the gap where, on the Saturday, Head had noted the broken and withered twigs, and again paused.
"A woman's hat, and a woman's coat with a fur collar—and he pushed his way through here and jumped into the field," Head remarked. "Very nearly dark, too, or perhaps quite dark, by that time. And yet there's not a scrap of fabric from a tear of clothing, not a thing beyond the broken twigs and that scraping footmark to show that anyone pushed a way through here. Can you see anything?"
Purvis knelt to examine the very narrow gap between two stout hawthorn stems. For minutes he knelt there, gazing intently into the gap, and at last stood up and shook his head.
"Except for the twigs, not one solitary thing, sir," he admitted.
"Now you push your way through, and jump," Head ordered.
Without hesitation the sergeant obeyed. Head, hearing the thud of his feet on the grassy bank beyond, bade him wait where he was, and examined the gap thoroughly. Narrow though it was, only one more broken twig attested that Purvis had passed through it, though Head looked closely for other signs. No thread, as nearly as he could tell, had been torn from the uniform tunic and trousers.
"Stay just where you are, Sergeant," he bade. "I'm coming through in a minute, but not here. My gap is higher up the fence."
He moved away to the right, found the gap he had used before and, pushing his way through, leaped and landed on the bank of the field. Then he looked back at the hedge, and eventually joined Purvis.
"Does anything strike you about that gap, Sergeant?" he asked.
"It looks a lot bigger from this side than it does from the other, if that's what you mean, sir," Purvis answered.
"Now come and look at mine," Head invited.
They went together away from the Crandon road side of the field, and stood before this second weak point in the hawthorn hedge.
"Does anything strike you about this one?" Head inquired.
"The branches on this side fly back—you can hardly see there's a gap at all, from this side," Purvis said. "I see, sir—whoever planned the murder looked out his line of retreat in advance, but examined the hedge from this side! Lined up that other gap with the pear tree just behind it, and knew where to aim at when he came down the garden in the dark. Marked it all down by walking along this bank some time or other, most likely in daylight to get it all clear—but as you said about the window-frame, Mr. Head, is it a step nearer, or isn't it? Anyone might come along here, and nobody would notice 'em overmuch. Unless—those four men over there—" He indicated the four workers hoeing well away toward the middle of the field, now.
"They didn't start work here till last week," Head dissented, "and the murderer surveyed his ground before he committed his crime, not after, which would make it ten days ago at least."
"He must have held that woman's coat and hat over his head when he went through the hedge," the sergeant suggested thoughtfully.
"Or rolled them up and tucked them under his arm," Head amended. "Under his coat, too, and it was a coat of some smooth sort of cloth that wouldn't catch in the hedge and leave traces, something as smooth and strong as that uniform cloth of yours. Rainproof, waterproof—no! The country wants rain, and nobody but an utter fool would turn out in a rainproof or waterproof these last two months. But some hard, smooth sort of cloth, to leave no trace at all."
"There'd be marks on his clothes though, sir," Purvis asserted, and pointed to his own right sleeve. A faint, greenish mark showed on the blue, and there was another, better defined line of green just under the belt-hook of his tunic, one that he had not yet seen.
"I whacked it hard, but it won't come out," he said. "It'll take a lot of brushing out, too. Stuff off trees always does."
"Interesting—very," Head observed. "Stand still."
He brushed and smacked with his hand at the line under the belt-hook, but, though his efforts rendered it fainter, it still showed.
"We're getting on, Sergeant," he said cheerfully. "I think we can eliminate the possibility of a woman having committed the crime."
"Meaning she couldn't push through that gap and take the jump across the ditch without leaving a mark of some sort, sir?"
"Meaning, also, that a woman wouldn't take the risk of making a survey here, visible from both roads, to find a likely gap to get through. Meaning that a woman would be hardly likely to plan so completely—and, moreover, climb through that drawing-room window and latch it after herself. A woman, hanging round here to do these things without being seen, would be far more noticeable than a man. Also there's the force with which the piece of piping was flung into the ditch, and whoever pushed a way through that gap was burdened with the weapon, with an electric torch of some sort, with all the papers there may have been in Berrow's pockets, and with a fur-collared coat which neither man nor woman would risk wearing to push through that gap after committing a murder. No, not a woman."
"I believe you're right, Mr. Head," Purvis agreed gravely.
Head looked across at the three cottages. "And Mr. Ollyer came out from that middle cottage, probably before Berrow's body had gone cold," he said. "I think I'll leave the occupants of those cottages till I see this Mrs. Cummins—to-morrow, you said, she'd be in Crandon. You ring through to Makin and Just this afternoon and find out the earliest time I can see her—tell them they've got to arrange it. What's the state of your throat after all this, Sergeant?"
"The state of my throat?" Purvis echoed in a puzzled way.
"Yes. Mine's all raspy—it's the dust in the dry air. The Greyhound is nearest, I think, and those chaps over there are just leaving off for their midday snack. One might hear things, in the Greyhound."
They preceded the four workers, who were advancing with hoes on their shoulders, through the gateway of the field, and made their way to the inn. Head led the way into the private bar and, after ordering two pints of draught cider, pointed Purvis's attention to the stained and varnished deal partition separating them from the public bar. It was about seven feet high, and voices on the other side discussing the funeral of the murdered man were plainly audible.
The only other occupant of the private bar was a leather-coated motor-cyclist, who bade Head a cheerful good morning, and added the observation that it was a fine day.
"It is," Head agreed, "but the country wants rain."
"Curious thing," said the motor cyclist, "I was just going to make the same remark myself."
"I know you were," Head agreed. "That's why I hurried with it."
The motor cyclist gave him a sour glance, finished his drink, and went out, just as the door of the public bar clanked in closing and heavy footfalls sounded on the board floor beyond the partition. A series of sharp explosions announced the departure of the leather jacket and its wearer, and conversation beyond the partition followed.
"Nearly finished knockin' beans about, Phil?"
"Thussels, yu mean," said a voice which Head recognized as that of the leader of the hoeing gang. "'Nuther tu days, I rackon."
"Yow ain't haaf lucky, gittin' that job," said the first speaker. "Rackon yow went'n jest said prayers to Marster Betterton, t'go howin' a bean crop as forrard as that is. Spile more'n the good ye du, that will. Sile's as dry as it is, that don't oughter be pulled about, lettin' miesture out from round the roots."
"Yu don't know what yu're a-talkin' about," Phil retorted scornfully. "Thussels higher'n the beans, an' that fild allus bin a bad un f'r thussels, that have. That'll be a clean fild nex' yeer, that will. Marster Betterton know what he's a-doin' on."
"Y a-as," the other man drawled satirically, "howin' beans arter they're in pod. 'T'ain't niver bin done afore i' this parish, an' if that was my beans, it wouldn't be bein' done now, thussels 'r no thussels. Ruinin' what mighter bin a good crop, that's what 'tis."
"Ther's one thing about Marster Betterton, he du mind his own bisness," Phil retorted angrily. "I di'n't come in heer to argy-bargy about that, but to git a pint. Howin's dry enough work wi'out mardlin' about whether that should be done 'r shoul'n't."
"Well, no offence, Phil, no offence," the other man said placatingly. "I jest said yow was lucky to got the job, tha's all."
"Mebbe if yu went round lookin' f'r jobs, 'steddy settin' in heer haaf yure time, yu'd be lucky too," Phil responded. "I don't wanter hear no more about it. I gotter work, I hev."
In the following silence Head and Purvis finished their respective drinks and went quietly out, turning toward the sergeant's cottage, since the two-seater was still parked outside it.
"Do you make anything of that, Sergeant?" Head asked.
"I'm thinking it over," Purvis answered. "That man was right, though. I've never heard of turning men into a field to hoe beans after they've begun to come into pod, and I've lived here all my life. Hullo, though—that's Hawk, the station-master. What does he want with me, I wonder?"
They saw Hawk, tightly buttoned in his best uniform coat, and with his gold-braided cap on his head, come out from the cottage gateway. Since he gazed down the road toward The Angle, he did not perceive their approach until they were quite near him. Head surveyed the contours of the station-master.
"Mr. Hawk is like the beans," he remarked. "Coming into pod. And whatever else he tells us, he's going to announce that the country wants rain."
"THOUGHT I'd just run up and see you, Sergeant, seeing I've nothing else till the two-five up—morning, Mr. Head," the station-master announced by way of greeting. "Though it's warm walking—I'm beginning to wonder how long this weather's going to last. The country do want rain."
"If it's anything important," Purvis told him, "perhaps you'd like to come inside. You're quite right"—he gave Head a glance reminiscent of the prophecy the latter had just uttered—"the country wants rain. Come in, Mr. Hawk—it's cooler inside."
"I dunno whether you or Mr. Head'll think it important," Mr. Hawk observed as he followed to the cottage door, and Head made a third in the procession, "but it appears to me I've unearthed a clue. Seemed to me it was important enough to put it in your hands at once, after readin' the account of that inquest on Saturday." He followed Purvis into the sitting-room, and Head again brought up the rear. "I dunno if I ought to report it to you or to Mr. Head here—which of you—but it looks to me undoubtedly like a clue. And clues, I said to myself, is what the police want in a case like this."
"Sit down, Mr. Hawk, and tell us both about it," Head invited. "It was very good of you to put yourself out like this over it."
"Oh, notatall, Mr. Head—notatall! I've nothing more on my mind till the two-five up." Mr. Hawk seated himself, as Purvis's gesture had directed, on the horsehair-covered sofa, and looked down at it as if he doubted its honesty, since it had appeared to have springs in its upholstery. Then he unbuttoned his coat, took an envelope from an inner pocket, put it down, and buttoned the coat again.
"Well, tell us what you've found," Head invited again.
"I made my usual visit to Woodney Halt this morning," Mr. Hawk began, and checked himself. "I ought to explain, though, that in addition to being station-master at Carden here, I also have Woodney Halt and Gunwell under my charge, the Halt being, as perhaps you know, no more than a rest-cure for the man what looks after it, and Gunwell not much more. Still, they are a part of my responsibility."
"Quite so," Head assented. Woodney Halt, he knew, was a mere board platform and a cottage midway between Carden and Westingborough, while Gunwell was the next station on the other side of Carden, farther away from the junction of the single line with the main at Westingborough. "And you went to Woodney Halt this morning."
"Mondays and Thursdays I go there regular," Mr. Hawk explained further, "and Tuesday and Friday are my days for Gunwell. Collect what money there is in hand and see everything's all right. Woodney, as I said, is a rest-cure—precious little ever to collect from there. However, that puts the situation plain before you both, and I went there this morning and found everything quite in order. Joe Morton and his son look after the halt and the level crossing, and Joe, naturally, got to talking to me about the murder. Read all about it in the paper this morning, Joe had, so of course he knew the name of the man that got murdered and all about it. Rare old gossip, Joe is."
"Quite a newspaper in himself," Purvis agreed. "I know him."
"Just so, Sergeant—just so. Well, you see, there ain't much ground attached to his cottage there, so he's made a kitchen garden outer what used to be the grass bank alongside the line, from the little ditch where the ballastin' leaves off, up to the wire fence that makes a boundary for the company's ground. I must say I ain't seen a more promisin' crop o' maincrop taters than what Joe's raised alongside the line, not this year, I haven't. An' early this mornin', Joe tells me, he reckoned he'd earth them taters up, the tops havin' covered in the ground so it'll keep what moisture there is, and it won't do 'em no harm in spite of the drought. So out goes Joe, leavin' his son to work the signals for the nine-ten, and starts to earth up the taters. I'm making it all clear, I hope?"
"Perfectly clear," Head told him gravely. "We're listening."
"So he starts," Mr. Hawk continued, "and sees bits of paper, all torn up, in among his taters. 'Drot them passengers,' says Joe to himself, liking to have things neat and tidy round his place, and the ground being all dry, he reckoned them bits of paper would go on littering up his crop till he dug the taters out. Then he picks up one piece, and sees on it one word, and that word was 'Berrow.'"
He paused for effect, and eyed both his auditors expectantly.
"Yes, Mr. Hawk?" Head said questioningly. "It looks as if this might be important. The word was in writing, I take it, not in print?"
"Ord'nary handwriting," Mr. Hawk confirmed him. "At that—'Hullo,' says Joe, and scratched his head a bit. Then he picks up another piece, and not being exactly a fool, remembers reading how this Mr. Berrow, coming off the eight-forty at Carden last Friday week, must 'ave passed through Woodney Halt. He picks up another piece, which is the corner of a envelope with the postmark 'Carden' on it. He puts that against one of the other pieces he's picked up, and sees it's pretty certain they're both part of the same envelope. Then he gets another teeny little piece, which was a different coloured paper to what he'd already got, and reads on it three letters, A, n, and g, and it was a capital A. 'Hullo!' says Joe, 'if that ain't the beginnin' of the word "Angle," may I never eat another tater. Someone's wrote to this Mr. Berrow about The Angle, and while the train was sittin' here that Friday night he tore the letter up and threw it out among my taters.' Which was a pretty smart bit of deeduction for a man like Joe, as I told him. In fact, I told him I never expected it of him. But then, he told me, he's always reading these mystery magazines and detective stories, not being overburdened with work there at Woodney, and he'd read in the paper how the coroner said there was no evidence how this Mr. Berrow had been got to come to an empty house like The Angle, except that his father'd lived in it. Joe puzzled over that himself, so when he sees these bits, he was all ripe for 'em, as you might say."
"And he collected all the pieces he could find, and put them in that envelope you have there?" Head suggested.
"He stopped earthing up taters," Mr. Hawk said severely, and with determination that his recital should not be curtailed. "Stopped. At once. He called to his son, who was just opening up the level crossing for a milk float, the nine-ten being gone through—the nine-ten don't stop at Woodney Halt. He calls to his son—'Haggai!' he calls, that being the son's name, his mother being a Seventh Day Adventist and having a strong mind, while Joe's a reasonable man and all for peace. 'Haggai!' he calls, and the lad comes over to him. 'You start helpin' me to pick up these here bits of paper,' says Joe, 'and mind you don't miss any. Chance has placed in my hands, or among my taters, a clue which may be of incal—incalc—anyhow, a valuable clue to the murder. So you pick 'em up and if you so much as miss one, I'll warm your tail for you.' Quite circumstarnshil, Joe was when he told me that. 'You will realize, Haggai,' he says, 'that I have to make a full report of this clue to Mr. Hawk, who I'm responsible to for all I do, and him being a conscientious as well as a capable man, and ought to 'ave been promoted to something better'n Carden years ago, and would 'ave been if it wasn't for rank favouritism.' These was Joe's very words, as he told 'em to me."
"And they picked them up, and put them in this envelope?" Head suggested again. He wanted the envelope, not the rest of the story.
"They did not," Mr. Hawk dissented coldly. "When I got there, the lad Haggai was on the signals again—there being no passengers except me, as usual! he had no tickets to collect. Joe was in the booking-office, if you can call that dirty little shack a booking-office, and he'd pieced together nearly all the front of the envelope, which is bluish paper, and started on a letter which was in a totally different writing, and on white paper at that. But Joe'd got out the piece that come after the one with 'Ang' on it, and the two together read 'Angle at,' being tiny little pieces, and he'd got two more that read 'rible troub', which he guessed meant horrible trouble. He stopped when I went in, and told me all about it, and I reprimanded him pretty sharp. 'Whatever it is,' I told him, 'you got no business to go doing that sort of thing. You may be wiping finger-prints off them bits of paper, destroying the very meaning the police'll fetch out when they put 'em under chemicals and turn a microscope on 'em. A little knowledge,' I told him, 'is worse than any rolling stone, because it can't possibly gather moss or lay up treasure for itself. You put them pieces of paper in a envelope at once, and I'll zake 'em along to Sergeant Purvis with the greatest possible expedition. It may be that we have solved the mystery of the murder in the haunted room—in the empty house, I mean.' I'm just in the middle of the haunted room."
"You're not, Mr. Hawk," Sergeant Purvis contradicted.
"Reading it, I mean," Mr. Hawk explained. "It'd turn Edgar Wallace's blood cold, that book would. Well"—he stood up, and offered the envelope to Head—"there's all Joe and his son Haggai could find of what there was among the taters, but I expect some of it'll have blown past the tater patch in the last ten days. However that may transpire, I have done my duty, and now retire from the scene of action, to get my dinner and be on hand for the two-five up."
Having been suitably thanked and complimented on the brilliant piece of detective work he had accomplished—Head expressed it in that way, though Joe Morton and his misnamed offspring had done most of the work—Mr. Hawk retired in quest of dinner and the two-five up, and the sergeant, returning from escorting him as far as the front door, found Head seated at the centre table with the contents of the envelope emptied out on the red baize cloth.
"We've had two pieces of amazing luck in this case, Purvis," the inspector observed as he sorted bluish-white scraps from considerably smaller, pure white fragments of paper. "One was Miss Berrow's turning up and saving us all the trouble of identifying her half-brother, and the other I've just dumped down here for sorting. You'd better sit in—we might get this lot put together, I think, before bothering about eating. Envelope first, now—I'll get that together, and you can begin on the other bits. They'll take longer."
It took him ten minutes or less to piece together the envelope. On its front, in a handwriting closely resembling the fine-lined, upright script Helen Berrow had written for him, appeared—
E. Claude Berrow, Esq.,
84, Manson Place,
London, S.W.7.
He took out the envelope Miss Berrow had inscribed and, comparing the two, realized that she had made a remarkably good imitation of the characterless, copy-bookish handwriting on the torn and reconstructed envelope. Then, examining the pieces which constituted the back of this latter, he came to the conclusion that it had been rather clumsily steamed open and resealed. There were dirty marks where the flap had been gummed down, and Head, collecting the pieces and putting them all back in the envelope in which Mr. Hawk had brought this find, decided that an indubitable thumb-print at the edge of the resealed flap ought to correspond with the prints already delineated from the inner handle of the back door at The Angle. But to confirm this, he must wait till he got back to Westingborough.
If it were so, this letter explained very nearly everything—except the identity of the criminal, which Head did not anticipate he would obtain from it. But it explained—assuming the thumb-print did correspond—that some husband had got hold of his wife's letter to Berrow, steamed it open, learned from it the nature of the intimacy between the pair, and replaced it with a letter of his own in as near an imitation of the woman's handwriting as he could achieve, inviting Berrow to come to Carden and be murdered. Thus, convinced now that his theory of the motive for the crime and the method of its commission were correct, Head interpreted the regummed flap and soiling thumb-mark that had been made in pressing it down. Berrow would not be likely to observe that the envelope had been steamed open: if the handwriting of the letter were reasonably like that to which he was accustomed from this correspondent, he would suspect nothing.
Piecing together the letter was slower work, as Head found when he began helping the sergeant at it. The fragments were very tiny, and appeared to have been wrenched apart with considerable force, their edges being turned up in many cases. The two men smoothed them out bit by bit, and fitting edge to edge where they could, found that several pieces were missing. The completed reconstruction showed a regular, firm, forward-slanting handwriting, not differing greatly from that on the envelope, but having more character in the formation of the letters and with the down strokes thicker than the up strokes. It appeared to Head that the writer had disguised his or her handwriting on the envelope, and written naturally for the letter. The paper was thin and poor, evidently a sheet from a cheap writing-pad. The text of the letter—or rather, of such portions of the letter as Joe and Haggai had been able to find—read—
Wedne...
Darl... C,
I am... ... rible troub... ... not come to see you nex... ... ay as we arranged, but mus... ... you come and see me at Ca... ... ld meet you at The Angle at... ... evening on Friday week. I will be wa... ... at nine, and will open the front do... ... you in. I am in an aw... .... on and must see you. Whatever you do, don't... ...
Love, longingly,
Your
L.
"All clear," Head remarked, when he had read it. "I don't think we need trouble ourselves about the missing bits. Here it is, Purvis:
Wednesday
Darling C,
I am in terrible trouble, and cannot come to see you next Wednesday as we arranged, but must see you. Can you come and see me at Carden? If so, I could meet you at The Angle at nine o'clock in the evening on Friday week. I will be waiting for you at nine, and will open the front door and let you in. I am in an awful situation and must see you. Whatever you do, don't fail me.
Love, longingly,
L.
"I think that's pretty much exact, sir," Purvis agreed.
"There are alternatives," Head remarked, studying the reconstruction as it lay on the baize cloth. "It may be either 'terrible' or 'horrible,' and again may be either 'position' or 'situation.' Several minor ones, too. But the main purport of the letter is in no doubt at all. It's a pressing invitation to Berrow, from the murderer."
"No train time in it, sir," Purvis pointed out.
"He knew Berrow would look that out, and see that eight-forty at Carden station would get him to The Angle by nine, man."
"It's a woman's writing, Mr. Head, almost certainly."
"I wonder how many times he wrote it before he was satisfied with the forgery?" Head queried. "Written, Purvis, with intent to kill. As coldblooded, devilish a crime as the Forrest case, if you think of all the planning that led up to it. This letter was written—was posted, rather—ten days before the murder. Berrow and the woman had arranged to meet two days before the murder—clever, that keeping him waiting for her two days longer, knowing he wouldn't dare show himself here at any time other than the one she appointed—wouldn't dare try to see her at any other time, in any case. Oh, clever, clever, but we'll get him, Purvis! We'll get him, yet!"
"It begins to look like it, to me," Purvis agreed, deliberately.
"I'll take this lot"—Head scooped up the fragments as he spoke, and shot them back into their envelope—"and leave you to your meal. It's long past two o'clock. I'm going to eat at the Carden Arms, and then, unless you ring or come there for me, going back to Westingborough with the collection I've made. There's a list of Lilians I must study before going further here, in addition to the treasure I've got to put before Wadden, and I'll bring that list over with me and go through it with you, since you know the residents here by sight. Don't forget to find out about Mrs. Cummins from Makin and Just for me—I must see her when she comes to Crandon to-morrow. You'll be able to get me at Westingborough any time after half-past three. So long, Purvis—we're getting on."
But, he reflected as he drove toward the Carden Arms, failing another stroke of luck like the two they had had already, there was a long way to go, yet, before they laid hands on Berrow's slayer.
"Come in, Head. The old man's only been gone about ten minutes."
Head entered the superintendent's office, where Wadden sat in his shirt-sleeves, perspiring visibly.
"Colonel Patterson, you mean?" he suggested.
"Have we got two chief constables?" Wadden queried unamiably. "I said the old man, didn't I? About holding an inquiry on you before getting you to send in your resignation. And he began by telling me that the country—"
"Don't, Chief!" Head interrupted pleadingly. "If you do, I won't wait for the inquiry, but resign now."
"All right, then. Look here, what's the recipe, or formula, or whatever you call it, for hypnotizing savage parsons?"
"There isn't," Head answered. "His wife confessed."
"What?" The superintendent half lifted himself out of his chair by his hands on its arms. "To the murder?"
"No, to him." And, at the quiet reply, Wadden sank back again.
"My God!" he breathed softly. "Poor Ollyer!"
He sat quiet for awhile, and Head did not speak.
"That's tragedy, if you like, Head," he said at last. "And it accounts—I told the old man what you'd told me over the 'phone from Purvis's place this morning, and he got Ollyer on the 'phone from here and talked to him. Of course, I didn't get the other end of the conversation. But when the old man hung up he turned to me and said we'd make it Thursday afternoon in the town hall here, and you were a bright lad and he was glad Ollyer was going to restore the lustre of your name. Words to that effect. The old man thinks a lot of you, Head, and he was badly worried till he'd had that talk with Ollyer. So that's my news. Now yours—you've got Ollyer's finger-prints, you said—it wouldn't have taken a gas-pipe to knock me down when you told me that. We can give 'em an initial comparison with this." He tapped a sheet of photographic printing paper which contained a reproduction of the prints found on the door-knob from The Angle.
"Later, I think," Head dissented. "I'm entirely off the Ollyers, for the time. Listen to this—I'll make it as short as I can."
He recounted the events of his day, beginning with his interviews with Tom Adams and Miss Berrow, describing how he had taken advantage of Ollyer's offer of help and got the vicar's finger-prints, over which Wadden made his first interruption—
"Glad you didn't lose your head and sympathize instead of remembering business," he said. "Go on, though. What next?"
Head described how he had gone over The Angle with Purvis, and deduced from the cleaned window framing that the murderer had got in by that window and had had no key to the front door—
"Might have got in to have a look round out of sheer curiosity, before he ever thought of this crime," Wadden interrupted again.
"Quite possibly," Head assented, "except that, if that were so, he would probably have come out the same way and not troubled to annex the back-door key. It's not as material as some other things."
He went on to describe how, with Purvis, he had examined the two gaps in the hawthorn hedge, and decided that the murderer had surveyed the hedge from the beanfield when determining his line of retreat, since he had chosen the smaller, more difficult gap, which looked the larger of the two when viewed from the field-side. Wadden nodded approval of the theory, silently. Head went on to the overheard conversation in the Greyhound public bar, and again the superintendent nodded approval, but made no verbal comment. Next came Mr. Hawk and his find—the inspector emptied out the contents of the envelope on to the desk, and Wadden looked up at him.
"There's a fate in these things, Head," he said. "You can call that find a bit of luck, or whatever you like, but—I'm saying it with all reverence—it looks to me as if God didn't mean the man who smashed Berrow down in that house to get away."
"It may be so," Head agreed. "Now I suggest, to help in stopping him from getting away, we get a pot of gum, three sheets of paper, and reconstruct separately the front of the envelope, the back, and the letter itself. I've done it once, so it won't take long."
But it took them over an hour, during which time they fitted each scrap of paper to its original neighbour with meticulous accuracy. At the conclusion of their task, Wadden took the back of the envelope and compared the smudgy thumb-print at the edge of the flap with the photographic reproduction of the door-knob prints.
"Not more than a dozen whorls there," he said, examining them through a magnifying glass, "and I can't find—Head, if it's the same man, he grasped that door-knob with his left hand, and made this impression on the back of the envelope with his right. I'll put Wells on to it, and get him to bring out those faint marks more clearly, but I don't see any definite correspondence. When you've got your man, we can compare both his thumbs with this. One thing"—he drew toward him the prints of Ollyer's hands Head had put before him earlier in their talk—"it ain't the vicar's, just as it ain't his on the door-knob. 'L.' So it was your Lilian. Wells has got his four hundred and two Lilians all underlined in red for you."
"What do you make of the obviously disguised handwriting on the envelope, Chief?" Head asked.
"The same as you do, of course," Wadden answered. "Her handwriting would be recognized at Carden post office, or by somebody she got to post her letters—or she thought it might be, and so took no chances. Somebody who posts a lot of letters, probably, this Lilian."
"I didn't say I made that of it," Head dissented.
"Then what the hell? Never mind, I won't push you if you want to keep it under your thatch so as not to prejudice my views of the case. You've got a definite theory, apparently, and I'll let you hide it as long as you see fit. One thing, though, Head, you'd better remember. In our work, in business, in pretty much everything in life—when you can see your quarry clearly, don't hover. Pounce."
"I don't see the quarry clearly, yet," Head answered soberly. "I have my own theory now, as you say, but so far I'm not going near my man, not investigating him, even. I've got two direct pointers at him, and then there are the prints on that door-knob and the back of the envelope for evidence if I strike the right quarry when I pounce. It's not enough, Chief. It wouldn't please the old man if the murderer got away through insufficient evidence."
"Are you going to give me those pointers?"
"I've given both of them already. It's up to you, Chief."
Wadden got out from his chair, and reached for his coat. "You've done a pretty fair day's work, laddie," he remarked. "Keep your damned pointers—I'm not worried. But I am thirsty. We'll go across the road, I think, and tell golden haired Nellie we've earned one apiece, and then you can come back and get intimate with your four hundred and two Lilians. Do you count on finding the rest of the evidence you want among them?"
"I do not, Chief. In fact, there's a snag in my theory, there. Yes, there's time to go and see little Neil."
"Seeing as how you've been a good lad, I'll buy 'em," Wadden promised.
THE guests at the Carden Arms were just coming out from breakfast when Head, having left his two-seater in the forecourt of the hotel, entered the lounge. He waited, but saw no sign either of Tarrant or of Helen Berrow, and at last went to the office at the back, having seen Cortazzi's sleek black head through the glass partition.
"Is Miss Berrow anywhere about, Cortazzi?" he asked.
"I am vairy sorry, Mr. 'Ead. She go to London by ze first train zis morning, an' Mr. Tarrant he go wiz her. She is not heer any moar."
"Thanks. It's of no consequence. I just wished to say good-bye to her. Any fresh arrivals yesterday?"
"Zere is a—what you call him?—a psychic gentleman. I hear him say he go to ze agent an' get permission to view ze 'ouse where ze murder was, an' zen he raise ze—ze spectre of ze dead man, an' it shall tell him who do ze murder. He say ze police are all fools. I say to myself—'Aha, my friend! You 'ave not yet meet Mr. 'Ead.'"
"Ah, well! Tell him I'd like an interview with the spectre when he's raised it. Thanks very much, Cortazzi—good morning."
Indifferent to the opinion of the psychic gentleman, and knowing that he had convinced Cortazzi that Miss Berrow's presence or absence was a matter of indifference to him, the inspector went on to Purvis's cottage, and, as on the preceding day, left his two-seater in the road and went to see the sergeant, frowning thoughtfully as he went up the garden path to the cottage door. In all probability, he would have to make another visit to London, now: he regretted his decision, the preceding evening, to refrain from turning out again after analysing and classifying his four hundred and two Lilians, feeling sure as he had that Miss Berrow would be available for yet one more question this morning. The question could keep, for the present, but he would want it answered eventually, if only as confirmation of a point in his theory: meanwhile, other things claimed his attention.
"Morning, Purvis. What about this Mrs. Cummins?"
"Makin and Just told me they're putting the furniture from Mrs. Ward's cottage in their sale this afternoon, sir, and Mrs. Cummins is going to attend the sale—come in, Mr. Head, if you've got a minute."
Head followed him into the sitting-room, and resolutely turned his back on the horsehair-covered sofa. "You looked out trains?" he asked.
"I did, sir. If she's going to attend that sale, the twelve-ten at Crandon is the only one that's any use to her, and it looks to me as if she'll have to get up in the middle of the night to get up from Bournemouth and cross London to catch that."
"Well, early rising is a doubtful virtue. There were some good antiques, I understand. I expect that's why she's attending."
"Quite likely, sir. There's some authentic Jacobean stuff."
"Ah! And that's all you have to report, is it?"
"To report—yes, sir. But I've been thinking over this case-—" The sergeant paused, as doubtful whether to voice his thoughts.
"Then put it into words," Head advised. "The woman took her dog to market because two heads are better than one. What is it?"
"That letter, for one thing, sir. Somehow I don't think I'd have fallen for it as Berrow did. Especially as you say it was forged."
"No?" Head smiled. "What would you have done?"
"Written—there was plenty of time. Got in touch with her somehow to find out what it was all about, I think."
Head seated himself at the baize-covered table on which they had reconstructed the fragments of the letter the preceding afternoon, and smiled up at the sergeant, who was regarding him diffidently.
"He couldn't write to her here," he said. "I've been told that he described the husband as a dangerously jealous devil. Since that letter told him she couldn't go to London to meet him on the Wednesday, he either had to come and keep the appointment, or wait till he heard from her again. And if the letter had been genuine, it might have meant that the dangerously jealous devil had found out all about his wife and Berrow, and Berrow would want to know the whole of the situation, whether the husband meant to take action, and just how much evidence he had—he'd want to know as quickly as possible, too."
"Still, coming all that way—" Purvis urged, and paused again.
"You're judging him by yourself, or by me, or by any other normally employed man," Head pointed out. "Berrow, by information that I have from two sources, was a man of leisure with a weakness for women, Purvis—a sensualist with nothing whatever to do. Quite apart from the urgency of this letter, it was pleasant June weather, and he knew this district, having once spent a month at The Angle with his father. He could run down, see what the trouble was, put up for the night at the Carden Arms, and quite possibly stay there for the week-end, though I don't think he planned to do that, having no baggage with him. In fact, the total absence of baggage leads me to think he meant to go back that same Friday night—he could have caught the ten-fifty up from Crandon, either leaving here by the ten o'clock 'bus or getting a car to take him over. He was a man with plenty of money, and all his time on his hands, and probably the idea of meeting this woman who was in love with him in an empty house at that hour, appealed to his love of adventure. And it's evident, if my theory that the husband killed him is correct, that the forgery of the wife's handwriting is a good piece of work, since Berrow didn't suspect it."
"A very good piece of work, I'd say, sir," Purvis agreed.
"Well, consider the rest of the planning," Head urged. "The ground carefully surveyed, a prior entry to the house virtually proved by the cleaned-off window-ledge, and completely proved by the oiled bolt of the front door—two things which go to show that it wasn't a woman waiting for Berrow in the empty house that night. She might have cleaned off the window-ledge, but she wouldn't have oiled the bolt. And the man who made his plans so carefully wouldn't let the handwriting of that letter betray him. He'd sit up all night copying a specimen of her handwriting over and over again, rather than let that happen. And I believe his specimen was a letter she'd written to Berrow, and put in the envelope he discovered already addressed, and steamed open and used again. That was how he learned that she disguised her handwriting on the envelope, and wrote naturally for the letter itself. These things explain themselves as we go on."
"They certainly seem to, when you get talking, Mr. Head," Purvis agreed. "Now we're talking like this, I'd like to tell you I took the liberty of cycling over to Woodney Halt yesterday evening, to take a look at that potato patch. It's the opposite side of the line from the platform, and I got Joe Morton to let me have a good look over it, but I couldn't find any more pieces. But I had an idea."
"Which was—?" Head asked interestedly.
"It was this, sir. It didn't seem reasonable to me that this Mr. Berrow should drop that letter in the district. I wondered to myself—supposing the murderer, with all Berrow's papers in his pockets, were going to Westingborough by a train the next day, or any day, as far as that goes—isn't it likely that he, and not Berrow at all, tore that letter up and threw it out when he got as far away as Woodney? I thought I'd put the idea to you, Mr. Head."
"I'm glad of any idea you can put to me, Purvis," Head answered, "and appreciate the fact that you're doing your best in this case. But I don't accept your theory over this. The murderer would have sense enough to burn any papers he took from Berrow's body, I think. No. Isn't it much more reasonable that Berrow himself, having that letter in his pocket on the way down here, took it out for one more look at it between Westingborough and Woodney? He just wanted to assure himself that he had it all correct, that he was to meet her at The Angle at nine on the Friday evening, and not any other day or time. Having read it, he had no further use for it, and so tore it up. The train stopped at Woodney, and he looked out and saw a patch of growing potatoes, four miles away from Carden. He put the window down while the train was standing beside the platform, and threw the pieces of the letter in among the potatoes. They were torn quite small, he'd reason, and nobody would take enough notice of them to connect them with him. He knew nothing of Joe Morton's tidy mind, and had no idea that Joe would be annoyed over tiny scraps of paper in his potato patch, or that his name, the word 'Berrow,' was all on one of the fragments he threw out. To him it was a perfectly safe thing to do."
"Yes, I see, sir. And you think the murderer is still in Carden?"
"So much so"—Head took a folded paper from his breast pocket, unfolded it, and put it down before the sergeant—"that I want you to take your bicycle while I go over to Crandon to see this Mrs. Cummins, and investigate these Lilians—eleven of them, altogether. Don't go questioning them directly, but see if you can find out without rousing the idea that you're interested in them, how many of them are tall, young, attractive, have long golden hair, and make day trips to London occasionally. You'll find the list will take you as far as Gunwell one way, then nearly to Woodney, and half-way to Crandon in this direction. Our Lilians are widely distributed, but we must get descriptions of them, and mustn't let them know we're doing it."
Purvis took up the list and studied it. "I've got particulars of a lost dog," he said thoughtfully.
"Irish terrier, answers to the name of Mick. He might be at any of these addresses."
"A safe pretext," Head admitted. "Get them all done to-day, if you can, preferably by the time I get back here from Crandon."
"I'll do my best, sir. Here's two we can rule out. Mrs. Cornell is sixty and suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, and Miss Smith is the Woodney schoolmistress, wears horn-rimmed spectacles and got a voice like a corncrake. Dark-haired, too, and speaks at temperance meetings whenever she gets a chance. Quotes Lady Astor."
"Doesn't sound appetizing," Head commented. "You can guess, from what I've told you of Berrow and the Lilian we want to find, how much to say about the lost dog to any of the other nine. I leave it to you. Oh, and get through to the three agents who have the sale of The Angle in hand, and tell them that under no circumstances is anyone to be shown over the property till we give permission."
"Very good, sir. I'll see about that at once. Head left him, and set out for Crandon. Passing the front gate of The Angle, he pulled up at sight of a white-bearded, spectacled man peering in at the drawing-room window of the house.
"Here, you—come out of that!" he called.
The bearded man, after a pause of amazement, came slowly away from the house, and approached the side of the car.
"My good man," he queried majestically, "do you know whom you are addressing in that insolent fashion?"
"Nor care," Head retorted shortly. "You, let me tell you, are addressing Inspector Head of the Westingborough police force. Now face back to where you came from, and keep going, or I'll arrest you for trespassing on this property and take you in to Crandon with me to charge you. Off you go—quick march!"
The bearded man opened his mouth, possibly to remonstrate, but met Head's gaze and thought better of it. He turned away and shambled in the direction of Carden, meekly.
"And the same to every other psychic idiot," Head murmured to himself as he drove on toward Crandon and—he hoped—Mrs. Cummins.
It was safe, Head concluded, to assume that Mrs. Cummins would come straight from the station, after the arrival of the twelve-ten, to the offices of Messrs. Makin and Just, in order to get some idea of when the furniture from her deceased sister's cottage would be sold—since she was coming to Crandon with a view to attending the sale. He made his own way to the offices of the firm, who were the leading estate agents and auctioneers in the town, and, having explained that he wanted a private interview with Mrs. Cummins as soon as possible after her arrival at the office, was ushered into a small room and left alone for a period that admitted of his learning all about the latest developments of the Crandon mystery from three different newspapers. The police, he learned, were completely at fault. They had ascertained the identity of the murdered man by a pure fluke, since Miss Berrow's arrival at Carden on the day the body was discovered could be regarded as nothing else. It was evidently a case in which the assistance of Scotland Yard should be sought, and that without further delay.
Inspector Head, he learned, whose reputation rested solely on his handling of the notorious Forrest case some two years previously, had paid a visit to London on the Sunday and ransacked the flat that had been occupied by the unfortunate Mr. Berrow (Mrs. Giddens had been talking to a reporter, Head deduced easily), but, apparently, the worthy inspector had found nothing that would aid him to the solution of the mystery. He had, meanwhile, conducted the case in such a way as to incur a complaint regarding his conduct by the vicar of Carden, which it was understood would form the subject of an official inquiry. The mystery was of a nature that rendered provincial brains and methods inadequate for its solution. The Yard, and the Yard alone, could produce men capable of handling it successfully.
Unperturbed, Head laid the paper down and faced the woman he had come to see. The clerk who ushered her into the room said simply—"This is Mrs. Cummins, Mr. Head," and closed the door on her. Head saw her as a rather small woman with a resolute but kindly face, one in her sixties, probably, plainly and neatly dressed in unrelieved black. He drew forward a chair for her, and gestured her to take it.
"About the discovery of a dead man at Carden last Friday, Mrs. Cummins," he said without preface. "I want to ask you a few things about happenings the night before your sister's death—I have been told that you are Mrs. Ward's sister. You have heard of the murder, I expect, and I should like to ask you a few questions in a friendly way."
The woman shook her head and remained standing. "I'm quite sure I could tell you nothing," she answered. "Mr. Makin told me you wanted to see me, but he didn't say what it was about. Yes, I've read about the murder, of course, especially since it seems to have happened that night before my dear sister died, but I know nothing more than what I've seen in the papers. Nothing whatever, I assure you."
"I see, Mrs. Cummins," he said, knowing that things which she might regard as less than trivial might be important evidence for him. "You have come all the way here from Bournemouth, I understand?"
"Not to-day—sir." She added the title as by an afterthought. "I came to London yesterday and stayed the night with my youngest sister—she's got a boarding-house in Bayswater, and I hope to make enough out of the sale of this furniture to go into partnership with her. Everything was left to me, and Mr. Makin tells me it should be a very good sale—over four hundred pounds, he expects from it."
"I'd no idea Mrs. Ward had such valuable things," he observed with polite surprise. "I knew, of course, that she was very much respected in Carden—in fact, Mr. Ollyer himself told me he would miss her in connection with parish work. A real loss to the place, in fact."
"Mr. Ollyer thought very highly of her, sir," Mrs. Cummins said with some trace of emotion. "Everyone did that knew her."
"And Mr. Ollyer came to see her that Friday night before she died," he suggested. "Stayed quite a long time with her, he told me."
"Quite an hour, I should think," she agreed. "But—"
"Do sit down, Mrs. Cummins," he interrupted courteously. "It's this time factor I'm trying to get clear in connection with the murder. You see, Mr. Ollyer actually saw somebody whom we conclude was the murderer in that house, after he left Mrs. Ward's cottage, but he's hazy about the time he left and passed the empty house. If you can help to settle that point, I assure you you'll be helping me."
She seated herself, then, and Head took another chair facing her.
"I don't want to be too long," she remarked, "though I'm sure I'd do anything I could to help anyone. You see, sir, I'm in service at Bournemouth—cook in a large gentleman's house—and I promised to get back to-night. And since I gave notice last week, seeing that I'm going into partnership with my youngest sister, I don't want to break my promise to the gentleman and not get back."
"Quite so—quite so, and very creditable of you, Mrs. Cummins," he assured her. "I'll take as little of your time as possible. Now about Mr. Ollyer's visit. Have you any idea of the time when he got to the cottage to see your sister? You'd let him in, of course?"
"Yes, sir, I let him in, and took him up to her room. I think it would be about eight o'clock. She was so pleased to see him—she'd been waiting and hoping he'd come, all the afternoon."
"About eight o'clock—yes. And he told me you took a lighted lamp into the room before he left. What time would that be?"
"Nine—about nine, I should think. They're small windows in the cottage, and a creeper shades the window of the room that was my sister's. She said she liked to see the blooms, and wouldn't cut it back, so the light in the room got dim very early."
"Mr. Ollyer didn't go immediately after you had taken the lamp in, did he? I understand he stayed a while longer?"
"Twenty minutes to half an hour longer, or it may have been even longer than that. I went downstairs again and out by the back door to look at the sunset. I'd been in the house with her all day, and felt I wanted to breathe the open air—I don't know if you know what it is to be shut up in a sick room, sir. Not but what Edie—my sister, I mean—wasn't patient in all her suffering, but the air of the room, and the feeling of pain. And I knew, then, what the end would be."
There was a simple, dignified acceptance of what had evidently been to her a great loss, evident in her voice and manner, and Head felt both sympathy and respect for the woman.
"I don't wish to pain you by talking of this," he said.
She smiled. "It's not pain," she answered. "Edie's gone to a better country, and when God wills I shall join her there. But you wanted to know when Mr. Ollyer left, you said. Standing at the back door, I heard him come down the stairs inside, and heard him shut the front door after him. I think, if I say it would be then about a quarter to ten, it wouldn't be far wrong. It may have been a little later, or a little earlier, but somewhere about a quarter to ten."
"Growing dark, wasn't it?"
"Beginning to grow dark. A still night—a very still night. I remember it very clearly. And standing there by the back door I could almost hear death coming to take Edie from me—a silly fancy, you'll think it, Mr. Head, especially from an old woman like me—"
"I've far too much respect for affection between sisters to regard a thought like that as silly, Mrs. Cummins," he interrupted.
"I'm glad to hear you say that, sir. People nowadays haven't much respect for anything—except, perhaps, their own wishes. And now I've told you the time Mr. Ollyer went away, as nearly as I can remember, there's nothing else I can tell you, I know."
"No, nothing, apparently," he agreed reflectively. "I suppose, after the vicar had gone, you went back to your sister?"
"Straight up to her room. I remember she said how kind people had been to her, which was only natural, seeing she was always doing things for other people till she got too ill. And she said, now the vicar had been, she felt quite happy, and was going to try and get some sleep. So I gave her her medicine and left her."
"To get some sleep yourself, I suppose?" he suggested.
"No, I didn't feel sleepy. I went out into the front garden and stood by the gate. I was wondering why people like Edie have to suffer so much—she was hardly ever free from pain, the last ten years of her life. But God knows best, I suppose."
"God knows best," Head agreed sincerely.
"It was difficult to realize it, standing there and knowing she would be taken away so very soon. I couldn't think, then, of—of the better country. Only of myself and of how I didn't want her to go."
Head saw her wipe the tears from her eyes, and made no comment. None was possible, he felt. Presently she smiled at him.
"Selfish of me," she said. "But I expect you're selfish too, Mr. Head, over people you love—everybody is. I stood there thinking those selfish thoughts till a man came past and startled me into realizing that it must be past ten o'clock, and I ought not to leave Edie alone so long without seeing if she'd gone to sleep or wanted me."
"Till a man came past and startled you," he echoed, fully on the alert for all that such a happening might mean. "In what direction was he going? Toward Carden, or away from it, toward Crandon?"
"Coming away from Carden, sir. He startled me because I didn't hear him coming—he was walking on the grass close to the hedge, and suddenly he seemed to be almost over me, passing so close to the gate. I started back, frightened for the moment."
"Mrs. Cummins," Head said gravely, "this may be of far more importance than the time of the vicar's arriving at the cottage and leaving it. What was this man like—tall or short?"
"Tall—about your height, sir, I should think."
"Did you see his face clearly?"
"Quite clearly, just for a moment, sir. You see, I was standing quite still just inside the gate, and I think it was just as much a shock to him, coming on me like that, as it was to me. A frowning sort of face, and his eyes wide open as if the sight of me frightened him, and he almost jumped away into the middle of the footpath and turned his head away and went on. Hurrying, I thought."
"Was he carrying a bundle or parcel of any sort?"
"I'm not sure about that. I think he had something under his arm."
"Yes, I thought so. And how was he dressed—can you say?"
"Only I believe it was a darkish jacket and trousers. I believe it was that, but it was almost quite dark, then, and I shouldn't have seen his face if he hadn't been so very close to me till he jumped away and turned his head away. I'm not sure about his clothes."
"Would you know him if you saw him again?"
"I'm almost sure I should, sir."
"You don't know him already, I suppose?"
She shook her head. "Not anyone round Carden, sir—except Mr. Ollyer and the doctor, and people who came to see my sister while she was ill. We're south-country people, and she only came up here when she married. I don't know the place at all."
"You say this man looked frightened?"
"Startled, sir. You see, there's a privet hedge in front of all three cottages, higher than I'm tall, and since he was walking on the grass close to the hedge and I was standing at the gate, he couldn't see me till he was within about a yard of me. So naturally he was startled when he did see me, and almost jumped back."
"And hurried on the way he was going," Head added.
"Yes, he hurried. I could hear his footsteps. He kept to the middle of the path, didn't walk on the grass any more. Why—do you think, sir—?"
She gazed at him in a troubled way.
"Coming from Carden, Mrs. Cummins, means coming from the direction of the empty house—or rather, from the gateway of the field behind those cottages. I'm going to tell you in confidence, because I feel sure I can trust you to keep it to yourself, that I believe the murderer of Claude Berrow looked you in the face that night, and then turned his head away and hurried on. Now, if I find and arrest that man, will you see if you can identify him for me as the one you saw?"
"If—if it must be, sir. I shouldn't like doing it."
"Suppose it were your brother who had been murdered?"
"I shouldn't like doing it, sir, all the same. Vengeance is Mine, God says. Only, if I felt I ought—if it was right—" She paused.
"Do you think it right that a murderer should go free?"
"Of course not, sir. Yes, I see. If you're sure—if you find out in other ways, so you're sure, and just want me to say it was the man I saw—the one you're sure did it, I mean. Then I would, but I shouldn't like doing it, all the same."
"Which makes you the most reliable kind of witness, since you wouldn't say anything you were not quite certain was true," he told her. "All right, Mrs. Cummins—I'm not going to ask you to come and identify the murderer to-day, but I believe I shall have to ask it of you in the near future, and since that is so, I shall be glad if you will give me the full address at which I can find you for the next few weeks. It may be a few days, yet, before we need your evidence."
She gave the particulars willingly enough, and Head shook hands with her and left her. A shrewd woman, he decided, deeply religious, kind-hearted, and utterly trustworthy. As fine a character, without exception, as any with which this case had brought him in contact.
And it was strange, he reflected as he drove back toward Carden, that this woman had actually seen the murderer face to face, and two of the people he had questioned had seen the mysterious Lilian, but still he could not learn the identity of either. Perhaps Purvis, having completed his quest of the missing Irish terrier, would have something conclusive to report.
SINCE Sergeant Purvis was still out on his quest of Lilians when Head called at his cottage on the way back from Crandon, the inspector drove on to the Carden Arms and, as he had anticipated, found Wadden seated in a cosy chair in the entrance lounge. The superintendent laid aside the paper he had been reading, and crooked a finger at a similar chair: they had the lounge to themselves: fishers and golfers had either gone out to their respective sports, or were enjoying a siesta after lunch. Head dropped into the chair indicated.
"I thought I'd run over, since things are quiet in the home town," Wadden observed. "Have you had a look at the papers to-day?"
"Two or three of them," Head answered, and lighted himself a cigarette, "while I was waiting for Mrs. Cummins at Crandon."
"I hope you've observed that you're a brainless goop, and we've got to go on our knees to the Yard to solve this mystery."
"Yes, it's that agency man Calthorpe, I think his name is, or it might be Calton. Something like that. He wanted me to take him over The Angle with a photographer, and then be interviewed about the case. I told him to try Guddle for an order to view, and for an interview as well—having told Guddle nobody was to go to The Angle."
"And for that, of course, Guddle doesn't like you," Wadden surmised. "It'll go to his heart to refuse the handsome offers he'll get for showing people round. He'll get so wild, he may even have a bath in desperation. So that accounts for it. And now, what news?"
"I saw the lady, and she evidently saw our man."
"Berrow, you mean, or the other one?"
"The other one." Head looked round to make certain that he and Wadden had the lounge to themselves, and then recounted the main facts of his interview with Mrs. Cummins. The superintendent listened in silence, and thought awhile over the story.
"Y' know, it's enough to make us go and bump our heads against a wall," he said at last. "You've got this Lilian of yours from a London woman who doesn't know her surname, and verified her from a ticket collector who doesn't know either of her names. Now you get what appears to be our man from a south-country woman who never saw him before, as nearly as she can tell you, and doesn't know him from a crow."
"But we're narrowing the field, all the same," Head pointed out. "We're entitled to deduce, now, that the man in question did wait inside the house to show a light, and then not only went away through the hedge at the end of the grounds and through the gateway of the beanfield, but also walked away from Carden, in the direction of Crandon. That narrows the field considerably."
"She wasn't sure about his carrying a bundle?" Wadden asked.
"If you tuck a bundle under your arm, which arm is it?" Head inquired in reply, after a brief pause for thought.
"The left, nearly always," Wadden answered, after thinking over it.
"Instinctively, to leave the right hand and arm free," Head told him. "All right-handed people do. Now that man, going toward Crandon, would pass Mrs. Cummins with his right side nearest to her—his body would be between her and the bundle under his left arm, and as near as nothing it was dark, then. She couldn't be sure."
"Why didn't he walk on the other side of the road, farthest from the cottages, if he didn't want anyone to see him?"
"Because there's no grass on that other side to deaden the sound of his footsteps, and also the hedge on that other side has been cut down to within eighteen inches of the ground. He'd have shown up against the skyline like a miller in a coal-cellar. It's a five-foot hedge between the beanfield and the road, and he kept close to it, with about a foot width of grass to deaden his footfalls."
"Stooping a bit as he passed the cottages, so that anyone looking through a window shouldn't see his head, eh?"
"Possibly. But the farm workers who live in those cottages go to bed early—ten o'clock would be about their latest, unless they've gone over to the pictures in Westingborough, and that would be on a Saturday night, when they know Sunday morning saves them from getting up early. If he knew Mrs. Ward was dying, as he probably did, he'd think anyone in the cottage with her would be inside at that hour, not standing out by the front gate."
"Yes, all beautifully explained, but who the hell is he?"
"One more day, Chief. Don't call the Yard down on me quite yet. I want to see Purvis when he gets back, and then go to London to-night, possibly—though that depends on what Purvis has to tell me."
"You carry on, and remember your reputation rests solely on your handling of the Forrest case, and provincial brains and methods are inadequate for this. In fact you're a mere clodhopping bacon-worrier."
"M' yah!" Head derided. "I didn't expect bouquets over the Grange affair, but they might have given me credit for finding out who did it at Castel Garde within an hour of getting there."
"You were too quick, my lad. You didn't give the papers a chance to cuss you for being slow and work up columns and columns of a mystery before you made your arrest. From their point of view, it was over before it was begun. Most unpleasing, to them."
"Inconsiderate of me." He looked at his watch. "I wonder whether Purvis is back yet, and what he's found in the way of golden hair?"
"I'm wondering one other thing—sit quiet for a minute, and elucidate another feature of the Carden mystery with me. Pedalling a bicycle is hot work this weather, and you gave Purvis a long round. I went there, and his wife told me about it. Look here. When Guddle found that body, it was lying in what used to be the dining-room."
"It was," Head assented.
"A million to one it wasn't knocked down anywhere else and then carried into that room. It was knocked down there."
"It was," Head agreed again.
"Then how did the murderer get Berrow to walk in, cross the entrance hall, and walk into the dining-room to be killed? There were no signs of a struggle. He wasn't dragged across the hall, surely."
"No, he wasn't," Head agreed reflectively. "At least, after being struck, or there'd have been a trail of blood. But I think—yes. As soon as that front door was closed, it would be practically dark in the entrance hall at that time—too dark, in any case, to aim a blow with certainty of its being instantly fatal. Berrow might have been merely injured by it, and might have cried out, if he had been struck there. How did the murderer get him to go into the dining-room?"
"Yes, how?" Wadden echoed. "You can search me."
"I think—probably we shall never learn the full details, but this is what I think, and it's a revision of my original view, to a certain extent. The murderer wanted that woman's hat and coat to make Berrow believe he was the woman, and he had them on when Berrow entered the house. He pulled back the bolt and opened the door, and went across to the dining-room door as Berrow entered the house. In almost darkness, remember, and we have it from Tom Adams that she was a tall woman. Berrow would just be able to see the outline of a hat he probably knew—possibly the one he took off when she dined with him at his flat, that night she let her hair down and did it up again. And he'd be able to see the outline of the fur collar, and understand the caution that would prompt her to get well away from the front door before making a sound. Since he obviously hadn't suspected anything wrong with the letter, having obeyed the summons in it, he wouldn't suspect that anyone was impersonating her. And so he followed what he thought was the woman—Lilian—into the dining-room, and the blow fell before he had time even to lift a hand in self-defence."
"Or did the murderer grab him by the arm, drag him into the room from the front door, and then smash him down?" Wadden asked.
"Either," Head answered, "but I think mine is the more likely theory. And as I said, I don't expect to learn which of the two is correct, unless we get a full confession from our man when we've caught him. And that type of murderer doesn't confess, as a rule."
"Says he, having associated with murderers from childhood up," Wadden observed. "I can see you're aching to get off and hear how Purvis got on with your Lilians. All right—I'll tell Jeffries to take the car back, and wait here and go back with you."
"Better not," Head advised as he rose to his feet. "Purvis may tell me enough to send me after Lilians, and then you might be late."
"You've ruled out the Ollyers, now?"
"Completely. Ollyer didn't walk toward Crandon with a bundle under his arm. He went home to the vicarage."
"He might have gone to some lonely spot along that road to hide the woman's hat and coat, before going home."
"Take it from me, Chief, it wasn't Ollyer. Berrow was passing under the big cedar that shadows all the front of The Angle by nine o'clock, and Ollyer didn't leave Mrs. Ward's cottage till somewhere about half-past nine. And the murderer would not have kept Berrow waiting—he'd know he might make his victim suspect something wrong, if he did. No, it was not Ollyer."
"The whole blessed case is one mass of conjecture and unsupported theories," Wadden complained. "All you actually know is that Berrow had affairs with two women in Carden, and a man walked down the road toward Crandon the night Berrow was killed."
"Apart from the letter and envelope found in Joe Morton's potato patch, the piece of piping used to kill Berrow, Ollyer's evidence of the woman's hat and coat seen through the window, and the finger-prints on the back-door handle," Head reminded him. "We'll leave out the hairpins and the oiled bolt on the front door for the present, and I won't say anything about getting Ollyer's set of finger-prints."
"There's something else you've left out," Wadden observed.
"Oh, quite a few things, possibly," Head agreed. "What particular one have you in mind, though?"
"The country wants rain," Wadden said impressively.
Then Head turned away and walked out from the lounge, and as he went he hummed a tune. Wadden, recognizing the melody, remembered that the words to which it was set were highly improper, not to say obscene. He smiled as he observed Head enter the two-seater.
"A good lad," he said to himself, "but he mustn't get too serious."
"Go on eating, Sergeant," Head advised. "We can talk at the same time—that is, if you don't mind my talking while you eat."
"Not a bit, Mr. Head. The wife said she'd bring it in here for me, because she's got a friend coming and wants to lay tea in the other room." He seated himself and renewed his assault on a plate of roast beef, new potatoes, and cauliflower, which had evidently been kept warm pending his return from his round of Lilians.
"Well, did you find anything promising?" Head inquired.
"I did, sir—the very last one, as it would be. I went to Woodney—she was a farm labourer's wife. Four more were, too. Two others were too old and tough to be likely, and the young one over at Gunwell was gipsy dark and short and fat. Then, last of all, there was the one along the Crandon road, that farm about two miles out from here. Mrs. Lilian Maud Heron, her full name is, and she said wouldn't I come in, because you can always trust a policeman, and her husband wouldn't be back till five or six because he'd gone to the sale at Crandon to see if he could pick up any of Mrs. Ward's antiques."
"Had she any news of your Irish terrier?" Head inquired.
"She'd seen a dog loose in the road, but it looked like a retriever and she didn't take much notice. And it must be warm, bicycling on a day like this, and if I'd come in for a minute they always kept some bottled beer on a cool stone floor this weather."
"Did you fall?" Head inquired amusedly.
"Well, sir, I fell for the beer, I'll own, but drank it on the doorstep. You never know, with that sort of woman, and I wasn't taking any risks. I'm going to warn Sprott, too."
Head lay back in the arm-chair and laughed softly. "Good man, Purvis," he said. "Was it golden hair?"
"Dyed gold, or peroxide, or whatever it is," Purvis assured him. "Muddy at the roots. She'd got it all fluffed out at the sides, and it didn't look any too long at the back, but there was a pin sticking half-way out behind her right ear as if it might fall at any minute, and it was a big pin like the one found near the body. So it was long enough for that sort of pin. You couldn't call her eyes blue, really. They were that sort of green that might be anything, brown lights in 'em—sort of flecked in the iris. Odd eyes, and they might possibly look blue in some lights. And she wasn't over tall. I'd say about five-feet-seven or eight. Goes to London quite a lot, she told me—she'd have told me anything, she was so glad to see something in trousers. Goes to plays—you never get anything but back-number pictures at Westingborough, and Crandon's worse. Bragging, I thought."
He finished the beef and the last potato on his plate while Head reflected over the description, which was vivid enough.
"What class of woman?" Head asked at last.
"Difficult to say, sir," Purvis answered. "Educated, I'd say, though. Quite likely the superior chorus girl type—though I don't know anything about chorus girls. But she told me she came from London, and living in the country was perfectly deadly, and sometimes she wished she'd never married and come down here. It's a small farm, but she was dressed much too like a city woman for a farmer's wife. Silk blouse, silk stockings, high-heeled shoes, and her face made up. I've seen her before, of course, and it's odd that she didn't occur to me when you started inquiring about golden-haired Lilians. But I didn't know her name was Lilian then—didn't know her at all, in fact. She seemed to look on that lost dog as a godsend."
"But you wouldn't go inside to drink the beer," Head suggested.
"Not being quite the goat, sir," Purvis assented, and pushed his empty plate toward the middle of the table. "It seemed to me that she just kept on talking in the hope that I would go in, and I believe she'd have told me the name of her maiden aunt twice removed if I'd asked her. Anything to keep me standing there talking to her. The sort of woman you'd describe as man-hungry, and shows it much too plainly. Fed-up with the dullness of country life."
"And the husband—what about him?" Head asked.
"Heron? Well, sir, he's the average small farmer about this part of the world. A quiet chap, works hard, and from what I've heard of him plays hard when he does play—which isn't often. Runs an old bull-nosed Morris, and I might have had him for a twenty-pound fine one night when he nearly killed himself coming down Condor Hill after he'd been on the binge at Westingborough. Tight as a lord, he was, but I had Sprott with me, and we just lifted him out of the car and took him to the Carden Arms and asked Cortazzi to look after him—it was last winter, and the hotel was empty then. Sprott drove the Morris down to the hotel and left it there, and we never heard any more about it. He wouldn't remember how he got to the Carden Arms."
"Would he kill a man through jealousy?"
Purvis shook his head. "Hard to say, Mr. Head. Hard to say what any man might do, then. I wouldn't—I'd turn the woman out for letting me down, and let her get on with it. He might, but I don't think he would. And yet a man who'd marry a woman like that might do anything. Peroxide, paint, lipstick, low-cut blouse and silk stockings—I drank that beer on the doorstep, and came away."
"It doesn't sound right," Head said reflectively. "Far too obvious for a practised sensualist like Berrow. Did she show any agitation over facing a policeman on her doorstep?"
"Just at first, sir, she looked rather flustered, but when she heard about the missing Irish terrier she cheered up wonderfully and invited me to step inside. But I wasn't having any—except beer."
Head rose slowly to his feet. "It doesn't sound at all promising, Purvis," he said, "but I think it's my duty to interview this Lilian."
"But I've already been there, sir," Purvis pointed out.
"Yes, about a dog," Head said. "I'm going about you. I want to know why you waste time going round inquiring for lost dogs when we have a murder case on hand, and whether you've been there on this foolish errand, as you have been to some other places to my knowledge. You need bucking up, Purvis, looking for lost dogs instead of trying to find the murderer. I'm surprised at you!"
Purvis smiled. "You might have been still more surprised, sir, if I'd gone inside instead of drinking that beer on the doorstep," he said. "I expect I should, too."
"Oh, no!" Head assured him. "Not in the least surprised. That's why you didn't go in—if you really didn't. How do I find Delilah—what's the place like?"
"About two miles along the Crandon road, Mr. Head. The house is within ten yards of the road, and there's a rambler rose—it isn't in flower yet—over a trellis round the front door. You'll see a tarred weather-boarded barn behind the house, a little to the right."
"I think I know it," Head said. "A small white gate in a hawthorn fence, and a straight path to the front door."
"That's the one, sir. Two miles out or a little less."
"Leave it to me, Purvis. I haven't much hope from such an obvious Lilian, but I can't let her pass without investigation."
He consulted the torn-out page of the electoral register that Wells had pinned in with some forty other pages for his reference, and ascertained that "Heron, Lilian Maud" preceded "Heron, Richard James," their common address being given as "Anwell Farm, Portnersbury." He knew Portnersbury as a hamlet, rather than village, situated midway between Carden and Crandon: it had, in mediæval times, been a place of some importance, but had sunk to its present insignificance with the decline in agriculture. As he drove away, he saw Purvis grinning through the window of his cottage: the sergeant, remembering his own interview with Mrs. Heron, evidently wondered whether Head would also conduct his investigations on the doorstep, or would accept her invitation and hold sweet converse with her inside the house.
But, having drawn the car in to the side of the road abreast the small white gate in the hawthorn fence, and entered the garden, Head saw that he had no need to go to the house, for the woman whom Purvis had described started up from a deck-chair in which she had been sitting, quite close to the hedge and shaded by a weeping ash. The branches of the tree, curved downward until some of them had actually taken root, formed an arbour which almost concealed the chair and its occupant, and she emerged, patting her hair with her right hand, and carrying an open, paper-covered book in her left. Head lifted his hat.
"Mrs. Heron, I believe?" he asked.
"Yes," she answered. "Is it—" she smiled, and hesitated—"are you the man who lost the Irish terrier?"
He shook his head. "No," he answered. "I am Inspector Head, from Westingborough, following up Police-Sergeant Purvis."
She dropped the book as he spoke his own name, and, ending his explanation, he stooped to recover it for her.
"I'm so sorry," she said, as she took the book from him. "Thanks so much. He—yes, he did call this afternoon. Not long ago. About a missing dog. An Irish terrier. And now you—"
She spoke in queer little jerks, and left the last sentence incomplete. A sudden access of colour in her cheeks as he gazed at her rendered the rouge she evidently used less conspicuous, for the minute.
"That dog seems to be exercising his mind rather unduly," Head observed. "Has he been gone long?"
"Oh, quite an hour, I should think. I'm afraid—" she fingered the pages of her book and looked at him coyly—"afraid I tempted him to stay a little while. He looked so hot and thirsty, poor man, and I gave him a glass of beer. We always keep some bottles on a cool stone floor, this time of year."
"Well, a glass of beer is not a very great crime," he observed. "Not nearly so great, in fact, as wasting time over a lost dog when there are far more important things needing attention."
"Oh, you mean the murder! I've read all about it, and about you too. I think"—again she looked coy—"the vicar must have been absolutely silly. And it must be so difficult for you."
"A murder usually is difficult," he agreed, returning her gaze steadily. So far, he could not quite make up his mind about her. She was certainly not unusually tall, being scarcely of average height, and by no stretch of imagination could her eyes be described as blue. But she had golden hair, and he could see the end of one substantial bronze hairpin as she turned her head a little to give him a friendly, not to say encouraging smile. A flirt obviously, and ready to flirt with any man—but would Claude Berrow have travelled from London to Carden at the bidding of such a one?"
"Wouldn't you like a drink, Mr. Head?" she invited softly.
He had felt almost certain the suggestion was going to be made, and shook his head at it. "No, thanks," he said. "I must go back to Carden and see what the sergeant is doing." But he made no move to go. "A pretty place you have here," he added.
"One gets tired of it," she countered. "Dull—there's no life. My husband is usually out all day, either in the fields or—to-day he's gone to Crandon, and I know what that means! I'm all alone here."
Tempting, probably, to some types of man, but surely too obvious for Claude Berrow. If she had not dropped the book when Head mentioned his own name, and coloured so conspicuously, he would have ruled her out as a suspect and gone his way.
"I suppose it is rather quiet," he observed.
"So much so that I'm glad to see anyone. No adventures here—I suppose you get plenty of adventures, though, don't you? Things like this murder. My husband won't let me talk about it, even."
"Doesn't think it a fit subject for you," he suggested.
"Oh, well—he thinks he knows everything, and I'm frivolous. Perhaps I am—don't you like a woman to be frivolous sometimes?"
"It depends on the woman, and the time," Head answered gravely. "And I really ought to be following up Sergeant Purvis—"
"Oh, do stay and have a cup of tea with me!" she interrupted. "In there—under the ash." She turned and indicated the arbour formed by the branches of the tree. "It's so seldom I meet a celebrated man like you, and we shall be quite alone. I'll get the girl to bring tea out for us, shall I? And then you can tell me all about the murder."
He acquitted her, then. A brainless fool who would take any risks to get a man to herself, and the type from which such a one as Claude Berrow would shy at once. He shook his head.
"Some other time, Mrs. Heron. We shall meet again, I expect. I've stayed talking too long already. Many thanks—it's tremendously kind of you to offer it."
"Quite sure you won't? It's so cool and cosy, under the tree, and I'm just going to tell the girl to make tea. Surely you're not in such a hurry as all that?"
"I'm afraid I am," he insisted. If she had been on terms of intimacy with the murdered man, she would not have invited one whom she knew was looking for his murderer to spend a quiet half-hour alone with her. A brainless fool, yes, and therefore dangerous, but no woman would be such a fool as that.
"Some other afternoon, then," she suggested. "I'm—I'm nearly always alone, in the afternoons."
"And so you remain, as far as I'm concerned," Head thought but did not say as he made a more or less courteous exit. He turned his car about and drove off, but not before he had lifted his hat once more to Lilian Heron, smiling and waving her hand to him over the white gate.
Yet, he reflected as he drove toward Carden, she was not altogether brainless. She had evidently used cruder methods with Sergeant Purvis than with himself, and possibly would adapt herself still more to suit men like, say, Berrow. But the invitation to dalliance was too plainly expressed, and there was about her a cheapness not only of personal attributes, but of mind as well. If such a one had written to tell Berrow that she was in terrible trouble, he would shy from her, not come to ascertain the nature of the trouble.
Head had nothing tangible on which to base such a decision: it was instinctive, a summing-up of the woman and her far too visible arts. He dismissed her from any participation in the case, there and then, and turned, finally, to the investigation that he had felt since the day the body was discovered would lead him to the murderer. Here again he was guided by instinct: for a little while Ollyer had appeared as the probable author of the crime, and Mrs. Ollyer had led the inspector a long way from his initial, instinctive belief. Now, he felt, he had disposed of the Ollyers, and had got a negative result from the only other likely quarter apart from the one in which he began to feel certain he would find his man. He had, in fact, eliminated such alternatives as had existed.
Just three days before, the murder had been discovered: chance had revealed the identity of the victim within a matter of hours, and chance, too, had recovered the letter that had brought Berrow to Carden. But Head felt convinced that chance would aid him no more, nor had he need of it. He had begun to see his way clearly, and would follow it, past Lilian Heron to the woman who had known Berrow, and whose husband, Head felt certain, had killed the man.
THE five-forty, express from Westingborough to London, took Inspector Head among its other passengers that Tuesday evening, and afforded him three hours of sober meditation over the murder of Claude Berrow. Since, on the preceding Friday afternoon, Sergeant Purvis had telephoned through from Carden to report the discovery of the body, it might be said that Head had lived on the case all day and slept on it every night, and, after his visit to the flat in Manson Place on Sunday, development after development had swung his mind from point to point, giving him little time to review and analyse any particular feature of the case. Thus these three hours of solitary reflection had their use.
Guddle, Morton, Hawk, Miss Berrow, the Ollyers, the four men hoeing beans, the evidence given at the inquest, Mrs. Giddens, the reconstructed and pasted-up fragments of a letter and envelope that he took with him on this journey, Mrs. Cummins, Lilian Heron—he reviewed them all as the heavy train roared Londonward, gave to each a cool, judicial period of reflection, and tried to fit each into its place in the puzzle that, he felt, was now nearing solution. He knew that, as Wadden had said, there was no more than a mass of conjecture and unsupported theories to hold him to the line he was now pursuing: the one piece of evidence to which he attached weight was of such a nature that it would be ridiculed by any defending counsel and discounted by a jury, in so far as it pointed to the identity of the murderer. Mrs. Cummins, if faced in court by the author of the crime, might be unable to identify him with certainty, and the defence would make her evidence conflict with Ollyer's certainty of having seen the outline of a woman silhouetted against the window of the empty house. The finger-prints on the door-handle might be regarded as almost conclusive proof of identity: if the piece of piping had been capable of retaining similar prints, Head would not have undertaken this journey, but would have gone at once to arrest his man. But, as things stood, he wanted greater certainty before making a move.
Thus he went to London, and on arrival at the terminus took a taxi straight to Manson Place, arriving there at about a quarter-past nine. A ring at the bell of Miss Berrow's flat brought to the door a pert-looking girl in an unduly short skirt and a rather crumpled silk blouse. She was not unattractive, but she appeared flushed, and her hair was none too tidy as she regarded Head hostilely.
"I wish to see Miss Berrow," he announced.
"Miss Berrow's out," the girl answered.
"Can you tell me what time she will be back?"
"I don't know. You'd better call round in the morning. What name, so I can tell her who called?"
"Inspector Head."
"Well, I'm sorry, but she's out. I'll tell her you called."
She began to close the door, but its lower edge came in contact with the toe of Head's shoe, and the door itself remained open. The girl's flush deepened as she stared angrily at the inspector.
"I've told you Miss Berrow's out, and you'll have to call in the morning," she snapped. "You're not going to third-degree me, Mr. Head."
"No?" he queried coolly. He had heard a slight sound, which appeared to come from the direction of what he knew was the drawing-room of the flat.
"But I might have a little talk with Herbert—I didn't catch his other name—on Sunday. I think I'll come in and wait till Miss Berrow gets back. I want to see her to-night."
The girl's face paled instantly, with fear rather than anger. "I can't—she wouldn't want me to stop in the flat all alone by myself," she stammered. "And I'm under notice, anyhow."
"That's a pity." Since he advanced into the tiny entrance hall of the flat as he spoke, and closed the door, the girl had to retreat. She backed against the drawing-room door as if to defend it against his entrance. "But before you leave finally, Nellie, I want a talk with you, as well as with Miss Berrow."
"Miss Giddens, to you," she flung back at him. "I've done nothing to make me afraid of the police, and if you're sneak enough to tell her about me not being alone here, get on with it."
"We'll call you Miss Giddens when we put you in the witness-box, Nellie," he said evenly. "Now, if you'll follow me into the dining-room here, Herbert can steal out without my seeing him while I ask you a few questions to clear up a point or two."
"I shan't do anything of the sort!" she retorted angrily.
"In that case," he said with unruffled calm, "I'm afraid I shall have to take you to the handiest police station and get you to make a statement and sign it there. I'd rather not do that, but if you insist on keeping up this defiance, I shall have no alternative."
She tried to stare him out, but his steady, intent gaze was too much for her. From behind the drawing-room door, somebody failed to sneeze inaudibly, and made a half-choked "Kerrr-cheu!" of it. Head smiled, and looked past the girl at the closed door.
"Most unfortunate," he remarked.
"Oh, I hate you!" she exclaimed, half-sobbingly. "All right, then, I'll come into the dining-room. But I shall tell Miss Berrow how you forced your way in when she was out, and bullied me."
"Quite so," he agreed. "Now let's go into the dining-room and give Herbert a chance to force his way out."
The door behind the girl opened, and, since she had been leaning against it, she had to start forward to recover her balance. A heavily-built youth with a shock of red hair stood in the doorway.
"'S'no good, Nell," he said. "I 'eard all 'e said, an' it's a fair cop. You arsked me round, an' I ain't done nuthin' I shouldn't. I'd 'a' kep' quiet if it 'adn't been for 'is talkin' about a bloke 'e keeps callin' 'Erbert. 'Oo's 'Erbert? Are you doin' the dirty on me with another bloke? 'Cause, if you are, my name's Walker."
"Now see what you've done!" Nellie sobbed at Head.
"You can't quarrel with the pleece," the youth told her severely. "Just as well you tried it, though, 'cause now I know you're playin' double. All right, Nell—I'm through with you. 'Erbert can take what's left, an' I wish'im luck. Good night, Mr. 'Ead."
"Good night, Mr. Walker," Head responded suavely, and stood back to make way for the other as he went to the outer door. The girl was sobbing tempestuously, but the youth took no heed of it, and Head let him go, knowing that he could have nothing of value to tell. When the door had slammed, the girl ceased sobbing and stared vindictively at Head: her reddened eyes spoiled her attractiveness, for she was not one of those rare beings who can cry prettily.
"Oh, aren't I fond of you!" she exclaimed witheringly.
"Not very," he replied, with unabated composure. "But would you prefer to answer a few questions here, or come round to a police station and make and sign a formal statement? It's just as you like."
She backed though the open doorway of the drawing-room. "Oh, come and get it over, then!" she said sullenly. "I s'pose, when you got what you want outer me, you'll go and give me away to her?"
"I am not concerned with Miss Berrow's domestic arrangements, or the use you make of her flat while she is out," he told her. "But don't you think it would be as well to put those things away?"
Following the direction of his glance, she observed the half-emptied bottle of port and two glasses on an occasional table in front of a settee, on which the cushions appeared badly crumpled. Crimson with vexation, she went to the table and snatched up the bottle.
"Port should always be handled gently," Head observed. "Even if it isn't crusted, there's always a sediment."
"Got any more nasty things to say?" she demanded hotly. "Or is it because I didn't ask you to have a drink and a cuddle?"
"I'm not in the mood for either," he answered rather sternly. "In fact, when you've put that bottle away, I think we'll go along to a police station. You may be slightly more sensible, then."
"No— Oh, no!" she begged, in sudden desperation. "I didn't mean anything, only you do talk so sneering and nasty. What is it—what do you want to know? I don't know anything."
"Well, put that bottle and the glasses away, and then come back here," he commanded. "I'll soon tell you what I want to know."
He waited, and presently she came back from her errand and faced him, sulky and silent, an unpleasing figure with her crumpled blouse, reddened eyes and untidy hair. He regarded her disapprovingly.
"Are you supposed to wait here till Miss Berrow comes in?" he asked her, "or do you go down to the basement when you like?"
"I sleep here, now," she answered. "She don't like being alone in the flat at nights, now Mr. Berrow isn't here any more."
"I see. How long have you been in service with Miss Berrow?"
"All the time since they've been here—since they took the flat."
"All the time, eh? Well, Nellie, I want you to cast your mind back, and see if you can remember any occasion when a woman—a lady, I should say—called to see Miss Berrow when she was out."
"How can I remember any particular one?" she queried sullenly. "Lots of people call to see her, and she's often out."
"Yes, to the extent of your taking two or three days off at a time without her knowledge," he reminded her. "Not that I'm interested in that. I want to call to your mind one particular visitor, who probably called and asked for Miss Berrow some time during the last year. She was exceptionally tall, had a good figure, and rather conspicuously golden hair. If it happened in the winter or on a cold day, I think she would be wearing a fur coat. She asked for Miss Berrow, and may or may not have given her own name. Now, were you in the flat when a lady answering to that description called and asked to see Miss Berrow? Try to remember, because it's important."
"I do remember—I was in," she answered. "It was the beginning of last winter—November, most likely. A long fur coat."
"A long fur coat," he assented. "Did she give her name?"
"Not to me. I answered the door, and she seemed all disappointed when I told her Miss Berrow wasn't in. But Mr. Berrow was, and he looked out of this door and saw her. Then he came to the door."
"Came to explain himself that Miss Berrow was not in?" Head suggested, finding yet another of his assumptions justified.
"Yes. I heard him tell her Miss Berrow wouldn't be back till the next day, and ask if he could do anything for her."
"And then?" he queried interestedly. "Did he ask the lady's name in your hearing?"
She shook her head. "I heard him ask her if she wouldn't come in for a minute, and he took her into this room. I went out to the kitchen, and then he rung the bell and told me to bring in tea—for him and her, I mean. And when I took it in they were talking quite friendly, and I heard him say something about a friend of Helen's being welcome. Miss Berrow's name is Helen—he meant her."
"Did he often entertain ladies to tea here?"
"That was the only one I ever knew him to ask in."
"The one he subsequently asked to dine here with him?"
"Oh, no, he didn't! He never had anyone to dinner here."
Mrs. Giddens, evidently, had faithfully kept her own counsel about the little dinner for two, Head reflected.
"She was tall, with golden hair and blue eyes?" he suggested.
"Very tall, and her eyes were blue. It was golden hair, too."
"Did she stay long, that afternoon?"
"Quite an hour, I should think. Maybe more. Then they went out together, I remember. Mr. Berrow rung for a taxi, and I come in here to clear away the tea things, and saw 'em both get in."
"Drove away together, eh?"
"Yes. I cleared away the tea things and washed up."
"Did you hear her name mentioned?"
"No, not by either of 'em. I only heard him say Miss Berrow's name was Helen—he said—'My sister's name is Helen,' and I thought it was funny, because if she was a friend of Miss Berrow's she'd know that without his telling her. But she said—'Yes, so it is.'"
"Did you hear either of them mention the word Carden?"
"The place where he was murdered, you mean? No, I didn't. I didn't hear much of what they said, only she said she mustn't miss her train. That was when they were going out to the taxi. I'd left the door to the kitchen open, and I heard that. And he said he'd see she caught it all right. Then they went out, and I went to get the tea things out of the drawing-room and saw 'em drive away."
His assumption was fully justified, now. That afternoon, he knew, had marked the beginning of the intimacy between Berrow and the golden haired Lilian: it fitted in with and confirmed his theory; Miss Berrow had noticed the first of the letters addressed in thin, upright handwriting somewhere about the beginning of this present year, or possibly just at the end of the previous year: the intimacy between Berrow and "Ann's" supplanter had progressed to the stage of appointments by letter in from a month to six weeks—and here was yet another possible witness who could identify this Lilian, but did not know her name! But Head felt that he could name the woman, now, and knew, too, that Wadden's explanation of the disguised handwriting on the envelope was not the right one: Lilian had not been anxious to avert recognition of her writing in Carden, but here, at the flat.
"Saw them drive away," Head repeated thoughtfully. "Nellie, what sort of man was Mr. Berrow, as you knew him?"
"A very nice, kind gentleman," she answered unhesitatingly. "He'd do anything for anybody. Mother only had to ask him if she wanted to get me a day off when Miss Berrow was away—of course, she'd come up and look after him till I got back. He was like that over everything, didn't mind how he put himself out if anyone asked him, and always pleasant. Mother used to say anyone could take him in."
The description fitted in with the manner of Berrow's death. For the last time, when he had gone to The Angle, he had been "taken in." A less pleasure-loving, shrewder man would have questioned that forged appeal, hesitated before entering through the front doorway of the empty house, shadowed and darkened as it was by the big cedar in the garden so that he could see only a vague outline of the one who admitted him. "Mother had only to ask him—" and Lilian, too, had only to ask him. Ann had only to ask him, and he had acceded to her request for a farewell interview, though on the March day on which he had bidden her a final good-bye Lilian had completely superseded her in his thoughts, and the interview must have been one that he would have avoided if he had consulted his own inclinations. It was all in keeping: this girl's testimony, together with Berrow's half-sister's evident affection for him, proved that apart from his fatal weakness where women were concerned he had been far from a repellent character.
"That's all, Nellie," Head said abruptly.
"Mr. Head, you won't tell Miss Berrow, will you?" The appeal was made with almost tearful vehemence, and she clasped her hands together as she faced him, as if willing to go down on her knees when all other methods of persuasion had failed.
"As I told you before, your little affairs are no concern of mine," he answered coolly, "I understood you to say you were under notice to leave, in any case."
"Yes, because she's giving up the flat—not till then. And she'd most likely turn me out right away, if she knew about—about the port wine, and my having him up here like that. You won't, will you?"
"It's not my business," he answered indifferently.
She gave him a long, fearful stare, evidently anxious to get a more definite assurance of silence from him, but not daring to ask it. And, for his part, he felt a sense of disgust with his fellow man and woman, then. Berrow, Mrs. Ollyer, this girl, tall Lilian and Lilian Heron—was there no restraint or decency left among mankind?
"What time is Miss Berrow coming back?" he demanded abruptly.
She shook her head. "I don't know. She said she'd be dining with Mr. Tarrant—they're engaged—and perhaps they'd come back here, but she wasn't sure. He called for her about eight o'clock."
Head looked at his watch, and saw that it was already past ten. If Tarrant had taken Miss Berrow out to dine at eight, it meant that they would finish the meal too late for any theatre. If he, Head, left now, it meant that he would be compelled to stay in London for the night, since he would not return without seeing Miss Berrow, while if she returned either with or without Tarrant at a reasonable hour, he would be able to catch the train just after midnight by which Lilian had travelled more than once.
"I'll wait for her," he said.
"You said—said something about me being a witness," the girl half-queried timidly. "I—I don't know anything about the murder."
"No, none of them do," he replied. "Don't worry about that now—quite probably you won't be wanted at all. I'm not sure about it. You can get on with whatever you want to do—if you ever do anything, that is—and leave me to wait for Miss Berrow."
She hesitated, and the outer door latch clicked.
"That is Miss Berrow," she said, and voices outside the room confirmed her, and proclaimed that Miss Berrow had not returned alone.
Head faced the door as the girl entered, wearing the shining grey evening frock in which he had seen her at Carden, with a cloak over it, and followed into the room by Maurice Tarrant. They both halted to stare at the inspector and at the frightened-looking Nellie.
"Only a few more questions, Miss Berrow," Head said. "I've been extracting information from your maid, and waited to see if I could get a little more help from you over the Carden case."
"Why, certainly," she answered rather stiffly, "though I don't see what more help I can give you. I thought—but you and Mr. Tarrant have met, I believe. You know Inspector Head, Maurice?"
"We know each other, but I haven't congratulated him yet," Head put in before Tarrant could reply. "I do now, though, most sincerely."
Tarrant's incipient frown relaxed to a smile. "I did hope Miss Berrow could count herself clear of you here, Inspector," he said. "Thanks very much all the same—I'm a lucky man."
"A fortunate pair, I should say," Head observed, "except that Miss Berrow is far from clear of me, I'm afraid. She will probably be wanted both for police court proceedings and for evidence in the criminal court, though I'll promise to spare her all I can. But to-night"—he took a wallet from his breast pocket, and extracted from it the pasted-up fragments of the envelope found in Joe Morton's potato patch—"I think you will recognize this, Miss Berrow."
He held the paper out to her as he spoke. "The handwriting, I mean."
She gave it only one glance, and nodded at him.
"The upright hand, and the postmark—yes," she said. "I recognize it."
He took it back from her. "Now," he asked, "will you see if you can recognize this?" And he handed her the pasted-up scraps of the letter that had been found with the envelope.
She gave it a long, critical survey, and Nellie, standing back by the occasional table on which the port bottle had stood, made no movement toward leaving the room. Tarrant looked over Miss Berrow's shoulder, and after awhile shook his head.
"And the papers said you hadn't a clue!" he exclaimed.
"They meant they hadn't—to what we've been doing," Head said. "Does that handwriting remind you of anyone, Miss Berrow?"
"I think—it looks like—" she began, but he interrupted her.
"Not the name—don't speak the name," he said, with a glance at Nellie. "Have you any handwriting like it in your possession here?"
"I—yes, I believe so," she answered. "Like it, but—"
She broke off, still scrutinizing the broken text.
"Would you mind letting me see it, then?" he asked.
"Yes, of course I will, if it's any use to you. One minute."
She went out, and the two men and the girl waited in silence. On Nellie's face was a look of intent interest, and with it a sort of awe as she glanced at the inspector. Tarrant offered his cigarette case, and, as Head gave him a negative gesture, lighted one for himself. They heard the squeak of an opened drawer in a room on the other side of the corridor—Miss Berrow's bedroom, Head knew. Presently she returned, and held out the paste-up Head had handed to her, and with it a letter. He took them both.
"May I read the letter?" he asked.
"Yes, there's nothing secret in it," she answered.
But he did not so much read it as compare it with the one he had brought, holding them side by side and looking from one to the other. Then, through a long minute, he scrutinized the signature of the letter she had found for him.
"Not quite the same writing, is it?" he asked, looking up at her.
"I can't see any difference," she answered.
"No? Possibly not. May I take this letter with me?"
"If—but you have the other. If you really need it."
"I do, very urgently," he assured her.
"Then—yes. After all, I don't know why I kept it."
"Thanks very much, Miss Berrow. And good night. That's all I wanted, and now I'll catch my train back to Westingborough."
She offered him her hand. "Claude was right—one should never keep letters," she said. "I wish now that I'd burned that one, as he used to burn all his. Good night, Mr. Head."
"I'm very glad you didn't," he said. "Good night, Mr. Tarrant."
"And Wells isn't a misser, isn't he?" he mused, on his way to the station in a taxi. "I think—I think we shall find this makes four hundred and three!"
"WELL?" Wadden inquired, as Head entered his office on Wednesday morning. "Was it a good night out, and what did your wife say?"
"She let me down gently," Head answered, "which is more than I feel like doing for Sergeant Wells. Is that copy of the voters' list anywhere handy, before I go and arrest my man?"
"Arrest your man?" Wadden pressed the bell-push on his desk as he echoed the words. "So it was good night out? Oh, Collins?" He addressed the police clerk who appeared in his doorway. "Tell Sergeant Wells we want that copy of the register of electors for the district—the one with pages torn out. Fetch it here to me, will you?"
Collins disappeared. Head nodded an affirmation in response to the superintendent's query. "I believe it contains the last piece of evidence I want before going for him," he said. "That is, unless you think you'd better make the arrest instead of me."
"Not I! You can have all the glory, and I'm not saying you don't deserve it—that is, until your man gets away because of insufficient evidence. All right, Collins—hand it over to Mr. Head."
Head took the mutilated volume and turned over its pages as the man went out. At last he found the page and name he wanted, and put the register down on Wadden's desk, pointing to one name on a page.
"I thought so," he said. "Didn't you say Wells wasn't a misser?"
"There's some excuse for him, though not much," Wadden remarked. "But if you were down in here as Head, Napoleon Montmorenci Charles, I'd forgive him for missing the Charles. It'd fall under the surname in the second line, just as this Lilian does here."
"All the less excuse for missing it, surely," Head dissented.
"I dunno," the superintendent grunted. "Don't you worry—I'll get on to Wells and rake his liver with a toasting-fork for this. Brantwhite Farm—Helen Jeannette Lilian. And you're satisfied?"
"That it's time to move—yes. I think there will be more chance of completing the case with him inside. A free hand for any investigations I might make. And I'm sure in my own mind—I'll go over it all with you later, but I want to get him first. I've never seen the man, to my knowledge, but I'm not less sure."
"Then don't hover, but pounce," Wadden advised. "How many men do you want with you? It's not going to be difficult, is it?"
"I've no idea. I'll take a couple, if you agree, and pick up Purvis at Carden for another. The big car, of course."
"Obviously. And you're not going to wait for a warrant?
"That's for you to say, Chief."
Wadden pressed his bell-push again. "Pounce," he said. "I'll order out the car for you. Jeffries and one other, eh?"
Head nodded assent. "Purvis is good enough in case of trouble," he remarked. "The sight of three men is usually good enough, too."
"True, lad. While Jeffries is getting the car out, I'll make out a warrant for you. You can stop off at Sir Bernard Ashford's place on your way and get him to sign it—we may as well have everything in order. Yes, I rang, Collins. A warrant form, and tell Jeffries to turn the car out at once. And warn Constable Williams he's to go in it to Carden with Mr. Head to make an arrest, in ten minutes."
He looked up at Head as the man went out. "I hope you're remembering that a wife can't be called to give evidence against her husband," he said. "This is going to be circumstantial evidence only."
"As long as the fingerprints tally when I've got him, I'll risk the rest," Head declared. "And once he's inside, I feel pretty certain that Brantwhite Farm will give me more than I've got."
"Three—not quite five days," Wadden mused. "It was Friday afternoon when Guddle found the body. Not so bad. Don't forget you've got to attend at the town hall to-morrow afternoon and go through the hoop for third-degreeing Mrs. Ollyer."
"I know," Head said. "I wish there were some other way for Ollyer, but it's all arranged, now. I've got to like the man."
Then Collins returned with the warrant form. Within ten minutes Head was on his way with his two men, and in less than half an hour Sergeant Purvis emerged from his cottage and seated himself beside Jeffries, buttoning his tunic after entering the car.
"The Crandon road, Jeffries," he explained. "First gateway on the right after you pass those cottages. I'll tell you when to pull up."
He turned to address Head as the car moved on again.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Head—I ought to have remembered her hair was gold too, but these last few days it's seemed as if you couldn't throw a stone without hitting either a golden or red haired woman."
"Don't throw too many," Head advised. "You might hit your wife."
He uttered the admonition in a grave, preoccupied fashion: almost in the same way as a drowning man is said to see all the happenings of his life in his last moments of consciousness, so now, at the end of this quest, Head saw the crowded sequence of his own patient, tireless efforts since he had begun by questioning Guddle on the Friday afternoon. It was a kaleidoscopic medley of human weaknesses, frailties, and deceits, and, contrasting with them all, Ollyer's sterling Christianity and manly determination to make amends for the injury he had inflicted, and Mrs. Cummins's patient acceptance of God's will. Mankind appeared as an unending enigma: a myriad conflicting impulses drove men and women hither and thither, inclined them to baseness, to nobility, patient endurance of ill, deceit, murder—
"Here you are, Jeffries. I'll get out and open the gate."
Sergeant Purvis got out from the car, and Head came back to earth, and concentrated his faculties on the task before him.
A hundred yards of rutted, ill-kept lane between two high hedges aglow with dog-roses ended in an oval of flint-paved yard or forecourt, beyond which stood the homestead of Brantwhite Farm, its frontage of weathered red brick half-hidden by wistaria and climbing roses, its diamond-paned, lattice windows all opened to admit what breezes the hot June day might give. A woolly old English sheep dog slept in the shade beside the doorstep, slept so soundly that even the noise made by the car in circling to draw up before the door did not waken him: he looked very old, and lay with his head stretched out and very still. Under a window near one corner of the house-front, Head saw an iron pipe that rose some foot or more from the ground and then, with a right-angled joint, turned to horizontal and led round the corner of the brickwork with a second right-angled joint. Each of the joints was newly red-leaded, as if plumbers had not long finished their work on it. Head, out from the car almost before it had stopped, went to the corner of the house and saw that the pipe ran along the side of the house and ended beyond it at a new-looking horse-trough just inside the gateway of the farmyard. With the one glance he returned to the doorway of the house and faced a sober-looking woman in her thirties, who had come to the door at the sound of the car without waiting for bell or knocker to summon her.
"I want to see Mr. Betterton," Head said. "Is he at home?"
She made an apprehensive survey of Purvis besides this questioner, of Williams, stolid and formidable behind them, and another uniformed man in the driving seat of the car. "He's—he's somewhere about, sir," she answered hesitatingly. "Out in the barn or stables, I expect. Mrs. Betterton's in. Shall I go and find him for you, sir?"
"No," Head answered. He faced about momentarily. "Sound that hooter, Jeffries, and get the most out of it."
At the blaring roar of the klaxon the old dog wakened and barked noisily at these ominous-looking strangers. The woman came out to him as Jeffries took his finger off the press button.
"Quiet, Bruno—lie down!" she bade, and the dog obeyed. In the following silence a door inside the house opened and closed—they could hear it distinctly—and a tall, golden haired woman appeared from the dimness of the hallway and faced Head. She had eyes of glorious, speedwell blue, dark-lashed, in a face that Burne-Jones might have craved to paint, but now both eyes and face showed alarm—as she gazed from Head to his men and back at him.
"What is it—why are you making this noise?" she demanded.
Because she had already brought one man to his death, and another must die through having taken vengeance into his own hands, Head had no pity for her. "We want your husband, Mrs. Betterton," he said.
She backed into the doorway again, and saw the other woman still standing at the side of the porch, puzzled and uncertain.
"Go away, Hetty," she said chokingly. "Go away."
But the other woman did not move. The old dog started up at the sound of heavy footfalls inside the house, and wagged his tail. A man emerged from the doorway, one so tall that he had to stoop to pass out from the gloom to the sunlight. His sleek black hair, swarthy face, and almost black eyes proclaimed other than English blood in some one or more of his forbears as he glowered at Head.
"What do you want?" he demanded harshly. "What do you—"
But then, looking past Head, he saw Jeffries sitting at the wheel of the big car, saw Purvis and Williams in uniform and helmeted. For a moment, as a fighting gleam came into his eyes and his fists clenched, both Head and Purvis stiffened to meet physical violence and master it, but the man stood still, as did the two women behind him.
"I arrest you, Frederick George Betterton, and charge you with the murder of Edward Claude Berrow, and I warn you that anything you may say in answer to the charge may be taken down and used as evidence against you." And, as Head spoke the words, he advanced to face his man, with Purvis on his right and Williams on the left.
"I am not guilty," Betterton said, but his voice was suddenly hoarse and strained. "I am not guilty."
That second negation was half-obliterated by a wild scream of anguish. They saw Betterton's wife fling up her arms and fall, and the woman Hetty caught her as she fell. But Head had no pity for her.
They gyved their man, who made no resistance, and led him to the car. The old dog followed them, and Williams had to thrust him gently back before taking his place beside Jeffries.
"No, Bruno," he said, with gentle firmness. "Go back, boy!"
Betterton, seated between Head and Purvis in the back of the car, spoke once as they swayed slowly along the rutted lane.
"The roses are very lovely this year," he said, almost too softly for Head or Purvis to hear the words. "I shall not see them fall."
They did not answer, and he did not speak again.
But, when they led him through the doorway of the police station at Westingborough, he lifted his head and looked up at the sky, as if he had seen Dante's age-worn sentence graven above the door.
"What? Press? Oh, blister the press—I've got work to do! I'm a brainless provincial—go and worry Scotland Yard! Go where you like, as long as you get out of here and don't worry me! Here, Purvis, I want you! GET OUT OF HERE, I said!"
The press agency reporter got out, realizing that his own indiscreet criticisms of Inspector Head's abilities had robbed him of a scoop, since nobody had been able to reveal to him the identity of the handcuffed man he had seen led into the police station, and his two attempts at loosening the tongues of uniformed constables had weakened his faith in the brotherhood of police and press. One had told him that it was most likely the nephew of Charley's aunt, and the other that he might find the name in the last verse of "Mademoiselle from Armenteers," if he looked hard enough. They had no love for one who, they knew, had openly sneered at Inspector Head's abilities.
"He'd no business in here at all," Head observed severely, and turned from watching the retreating figure. "Yes, Purvis—look here. Tell Jeffries he's to drive you back, and you're to take a competent plumber with you. Find one in the town here, and tell him exactly what he is to do, to save him from coming back for any tools after he gets there. In front of that house, you'll see a pipe coming up out of the ground, and it's run along the side of the house and on till it ends at a horse trough. Tell the plumber he's to turn the water off at the source, and dismantle all that piping so that every length is separate and all joints are removed. I want to be able to get at both ends of each length of pipe. When your plumber has dismantled the whole lot, get him to put them down carefully somewhere, and to be very careful that the ends don't get knocked up or damaged. And you stay there yourself and keep guard over them. I'll be along in a couple of hours or thereabouts—as soon as I've finished here and got a search-warrant for the house."
He went back to Wadden's office. Betterton had been formally charged, and had had the contents of his pockets duly catalogued: he had assented uninterestedly to having his fingerprints taken when the regulation formula on the subject had been repeated to him, and had been led away. Now, Wadden sat musing at his desk as Head entered.
"I'm going back to Brantwhite Farm, Chief," Head announced.
"Yes? Well, we'll have the search-warrant here ready for you in a quarter of an hour. What d'you make of him?"
"I've made no mistake," Head answered gravely. "His eyes when I first saw him—it seems odd that I've never noticed him before, with his height and that gipsyish face. But he'd go to Crandon for everything he wanted—he wouldn't come here. And so—"
He broke off, and stood thoughtful for a minute or so.
"I don't think your search-warrant will give you anything. "Wadden remarked at the end of the silence. He'll have destroyed all traces by this time, judging by his preparations."
"And the evidence I want most, I can't put in," Head observed.
"You mean the wife?" Wadden suggested.
"No, I mean four men hoeing beans after they are in pod. If he'd put them to work in that field the day after killing Berrow, I could have put it forward as a strong point against him. But he didn't—he waited a whole week, and then put them in, just to wipe out any mark he may have made jumping down from the gap in the hedge and stumbling over the grass bank on to the cultivated soil, and probably to obliterate his footprints in the gateway, too. He'd pass that gateway every day, and probably more than once a day, and see his own footprints in the loose soil just inside the gate, but he wouldn't dare go inside to rub them out, lest he should be seen at it. There they were day after day, and no rain coming to batter the ground and wash them out, and at last he lost his nerve over it and put the four men in to go in and out and overtread any marks there were, or hoe them out."
"You could get counsel to put that up," Wadden remarked.
"And defending counsel to pull it down," Head retorted. "Put up an expert in agriculture to declare that no farmer in his senses would hoe beans at that stage of growth, and the defence will fetch half a dozen farmers to swear they do it every year—find liars from somewhere. No, Chief, we can't depend on it, and yet if it hadn't been for Ollyer I should have followed the instinctive belief I got from seeing those men at work, a long while before I did."
"You haven't told me yet what you got in London last night," Wadden reminded him. "Did you see Miss Berrow?"
"I did, and got from her a letter signed Helen Betterton. We must have a handwriting expert to testify to the differences between that writing and our paste-up—they're so small that Miss Berrow said the two were in the same hand. I also got the beginning of the intimacy between Berrow and Mrs. Betterton—how they met. Now I want to know how Betterton got hold of his wife's letter to Berrow—there's a lot to do before we have a watertight case, Chief."
"Oh, well, you've got practically enough to justify a committal already, when we're sure that his fingerprints tally," Wadden said consolingly. "Then we ought to be able to get the case on before the long vacation begins, and I'm resigning at the end of July. Flat and final this time, laddie. I'm going to grow tomatoes under glass, and if they develop criminal tendencies I'll send for you."
A WINDLESS day, with no cloud to mitigate the blazing heat of the July sun: every window of the crowded court open, and scarlet robes, gowns, silken and stuff alike, and heavy horsehair wigs, all burdens that their wearers would gladly have thrown aside. But they were playing a game of which the prize was a human life, and, six in front and six behind, there sat twelve men and women to decide on the merits of the game, and say whether chicanery and distortion of fact—evident from Calloway's first cross-examination of a witness for the Crown—should prevail against truth added to simple truth, or whether Frederick George Betterton should be hanged by the neck and so die.
For it is the business of men like Calloway to ignore such minor matters as the guilt or innocence of their clients, to defame witnesses, to sway a jury by cunning innuendoes, and by blatant lies that they know are lies even as they utter them. They are paid to win a case, and thenceforth the merits of the case are nothing to them. By sly meanness, by infamous allegations as to character, by pitiful appeals to juries to have sympathy with the plight in which their clients are placed, by every trick and twist that law and the custom of the courts allow, they strive to outwit their opponents rather than to assure that justice shall be done, and in more than one case the dirty lustre of their names has been enriched by unjust verdicts. The case, and the case alone, is their concern: murderer, perjurer, or blackmailer may go free—it is all one to such men, for a verdict secured for the client means a bigger fee next time, and a higher place among that section of the legal fraternity whose business is defence—getting the man or woman off, whatever he or she may have done.
Fully half the first day of the trial of Frederick George Betterton for the murder of Edward Claude Berrow was occupied by the opening speech in which Sir Herbert Eustace, who led for the Crown, detailed the commission of the crime, its motive, and the way in which the identity of the criminal had been established by Inspector Jeremy Head. Then came the long array of witnesses for the prosecution.
Guddle, whose greasy, mean face rose above an unclean collar even here, detailed how he, in showing a Mr. Morton over the empty house, had found the body. Calloway let him go with no question on behalf of the defence—the evidence was immaterial to Betterton's case. Mr. Hawk related how the man in brown had asked the way to Carden after descending from the eight-forty on June the eighth, and then described how he had gone to Woodney Halt and found Joe Morton piecing together the fragments of a letter, and had deemed that letter sufficiently relevant to the case to take it to Sergeant Purvis and Inspector Head. Calloway saw a possible small point here.
"Mr. Hawk?" He had a friendly, almost confidential way of addressing witnesses for the opposition. "Are you sure it was on June the eighth that Mr. Berrow arrived at your station by the eight-forty?"
"Quite sure," Mr. Hawk responded confidently.
"Ah, yes! You knew Mr. Berrow quite well, then?"
"Never set eyes on him before, sir, to my knowledge."
"Did you view the body at any time, while it was lying in the empty house, or before it was buried?"
"Why, no," answered the rather puzzled Mr. Hawk. "Of course not."
"I asked you just now, Mr. Hawk, if you were sure that Mr. Berrow got off the eight-forty at your station on June the eighth, and you said you were. Now you say you had never set eyes on him."
"I meant this man in brown clothes got off the eight-forty," Mr. Hawk amended hastily. "The one we're all talking about."
"Oh, a very different thing—a very different thing!" Calloway assured him, with oily pleasantness. "Tell me, now, how many people in Carden who travel by your trains wear brown clothes?"
"I'm sure I don't know, sir, but since the 'buses come—"
"That will do, Mr. Hawk. You don't know. I didn't expect you would know. You're quite sure this stranger, whom you had never seen before and have never seen since, got off at your station in the evening of June the eighth, and not June the seventh or ninth, or May the tenth or June the seventeenth. Quite sure, now?"
"Absolutely certain," Mr. Hawk answered, feeling himself on safe ground, now. "It was the eight-forty on the eighth of June."
"And what makes you so positive?" Calloway asked sweetly.
"It was the sole me and the wife had for supper that night," Mr. Hawk explained. "The guard on the eight-forty got it for us at Westingborough, and a rare nice sole it was, too."
"I have no more questions to ask you," said Calloway, observing the smiling faces of those around him. "The jury will accept the evidence of the sole, perhaps, more readily than your certainty that the man in brown was identical with the man murdered in the empty house."
Mr. Hawk stood down, and Helen Berrow took the stand. She told how her half-brother had left the flat in Manson Place on the Friday preceding the discovery of the body, and how, when a week had passed with no news of him, she had determined to go to Carden as well as to her solicitors at Crandon, since on the morning of his departure her half-brother had received a letter postmarked Carden. She told how she had failed to find Claude's name in the hotel register at the Carden Arms, how on seeing a policeman on duty at The Angle she had ordered her driver to stop, and had had an instinctive feeling that the body in the house was that of her half-brother. She assented to the suggestion that she had identified the body as that of her half-brother.
A piece of paper, on which were pasted the reconstructed pieces of a torn envelope, was handed to her.
"Miss Berrow," Eustace asked her, "can you say if you have seen that handwriting, or any handwriting resembling it, before?"
"I have," she answered without hesitation.
"Will you state where and when you have seen the handwriting?"
"On envelopes addressed to my half-brother, at the flat where we lived in Manson Place. For the first time, as nearly as I can tell, in January of this year, and five or six times since."
"Did the deceased receive many letters?"
"Quite a few. Six or seven each morning would be an average."
"Then, among so many, how do you recognize this handwriting?"
"The Carden postmark drew my attention to it first, and then I noticed the thin, rather copybookish strokes of the letters, and that they were always quite upright, not slanted at all."
"Have you any idea of the identity of the writer?"
"I don't know anyone whose handwriting resembles that."
"Was Mrs. Betterton, the wife of the accused man, a friend of yours, or an acquaintance?"
"Yes, a close acquaintance, until I went abroad over two years ago. I have not seen her since my return to England."
"Do you know if she has made any attempt to see you since your return to England?"
"Yes. I was told that she called at my flat one day last November, but I was out that day, and missed seeing her."
"Who told you that she called?"
"Claude—my half-brother. He said he saw her and told her I was out, and she said she would call again, but she never did."
"Did you know her in conversation as Helen?"
"Yes. Her name is Helen, the same as my own."
"You know that her full name is Helen Jeannette Lilian Betterton?"
"I do since her husband was arrested. I didn't before."
"Has she, to your knowledge, visited the flat where you and your half-brother lived since that occasion in last November?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"That will do, thank you, Miss Berrow."
Calloway let her go. It would be unsafe, he knew, to make any attempt at upsetting her evidence with regard to the envelope, for she might reveal the fact that most of Berrow's correspondents had been women, and thus show by implication that some husband would appear as an injured party, sooner or later.
Amelia Ellen Giddens, aged twenty-five, took the stand and admitted that she was a domestic servant employed until recently by Miss Helen Berrow, but at the present time on the dole.
"Miss Giddens," Eustace began on her, "were you employed as a domestic servant by Miss Berrow at her flat in Manson Place as far back as last November?"
"A long while before that, sir. Nearly two years, altogether," Nellie answered—rather eagerly. It was sweet to be called "Miss Giddens" by this grave gentleman.
"Then you were in service at the flat last November?"
"Yes, sir. Except on my day and half-days off, of course."
"Do you remember if any lady called at the flat and asked to see Miss Berrow, any day in November?"
"Yes, sir. I do remember one asking me."
"Now, Miss Giddens, I want you to look round this court carefully, and tell me if you can see in it any lady resembling the one who called to see Miss Berrow that day. Take your time over it."
"I don't need to, sir. There she is, sitting behind that gentleman in a wig a little way away from you."
She pointed at Helen—or Lilian—Betterton, seated behind Calloway, and the woman moaned and tried to shrink down in her seat.
"You are sure that is the lady who called to see Miss Berrow?"
"Quite sure, sir."
"She asked for Miss Berrow, I suppose?"
"Yes, sir, and I told her Miss Berrow was notatome."
"Did she go away, then?"
"No, sir. Mr. Berrow came out of the drawing-room and saw her, and asked her in. Then he told me to take tea for two into the drawing-room, and she was still there."
"How long would that be after she asked to see Miss Berrow?"
"I can't say exactly, sir. She was with him in there about an hour altogether, and then they went off together in a taxi."
"You mean they were alone together in the drawing-room of the flat?"
"Yes, sir."
"For an hour or thereabouts?"
"Yes, sir."
"Thank you. That is all I wish to ask you."
Calloway rose with an ingratiating smile.
"Miss Giddens," he said, "you were employed by Miss Berrow to wait on both her and Mr. Berrow, I believe. Is that the case?"
"Yes, sir," Nellie answered happily. A very pleasant gentleman, this, of not nearly such a forbidding aspect as the other.
"You have been questioned before about this lady who visited the flat and asked for Miss Berrow last November?"
"Yes, sir. Inspector 'Ead—Head, I mean—came to the flat one night and asked me about it."
"Did he show you a photograph of the lady you say is the one you saw last November, and tell you that was the one?"
"No, sir, he didn't show me any photo at all."
"Did he describe her to you in any way?"
"No, sir. He asked me to describe her to him."
"I see. You are at present unemployed, are you not?"
"Yes, sir."
"Miss Berrow dismissed you from her service, did she not?"
"Ye-yes, sir."
"For entertaining young men at the flat in her absence?"
The question was as sweetly put as any other, but Nellie failed to answer it. She stood with mouth and eyes both wide open.
"Miss Berrow described you as untruthful and dishonest and refused to give you a reference, and your father thrashed you for your misconduct with young men in the flat. Is that the case?"
Nellie broke down and sobbed. The judge leaned forward. "These allegations are quite irrelevant," he observed.
"My lord, I am merely establishing the fact that the witness is dishonest and untruthful. I will not press the question, or ask her anything further."
And he sat down.
Then Mrs. Giddens, who, on entering to take the oath, failed to perceive her Nellie seated next to Mr. Hawk and in tears. Eustace got from her the story of the little dinner she had prepared for Mr. Berrow and a golden haired lady whom he called Lilian, airy fairy Lilian, and of how he had bidden her not trouble about the washing up but leave them alone together in the flat, though out of sheer goodness of heart she had stayed in the kitchen and washed up, because her Nellie was sure to be tired next morning after having two days off which Mr. Berrow had said she might because Miss Berrow was away—but at that point Eustace stopped the torrential flow of information.
"One moment, Mrs. Giddens. Can you tell the jury the date on which you prepared this little dinner for two?"
"Not the date, sir. But it was the second Wednesday in April, because it was when Miss Berrow was away at Brighton an' Mr. Berrow said my Nellie might 'ave the Tuesday an' Wednesday off if I'd do the little dinner for 'im an' the lady all nice, an' it was the evenin' before my Nellie come back to work, which was the Wednesday evenin', an' as I told Mr. 'Ead they was like a couple o' love birds, all 'appy like, an' I looked outer me own window an' see 'em go off nigh on twelve o'clock, an' 'e come back in the taxi alone some while after 'cause I looked out again an' seen 'im get out an' pay the man, as I told Mr. 'Ead—"
"At what time did you serve this little dinner, Mrs. Giddens?" Eustace interrupted, stemming the flow again.
"It'd be about eight o'clock, sir, an' I—"
"About eight o'clock—yes. At what time did you leave Mr. Berrow and the lady in the flat together?"
"About 'arf-past nine, sir, 'cause I stopped to wash up though 'e said I neenter, so my Nellie shouldn't 'ave too much to do next mornin', though if I'd known then what I know now about 'er carryin'ons—'avin' of 'er fellers up there on the sly like she did—"
"Do try to keep her to the point, Sir Herbert!" the judge interposed testily. "I see your purpose in extracting this rather unsavoury evidence, but let us get on with the case."
"My lord, I have only one more question to put to the witness. Now, Mrs. Giddens"—he turned to her again—"will you look round this court, and see if you can find anyone in it resembling the lady whom Mr. Berrow called airy fairy Lilian?"
The woman's pudgy forefinger shot out at arm's length with scarcely any hesitation. "That's 'er! Bless my soul—she's gone dead off!"
It was true. Helen Jeannette Lilian Betterton had fainted, and there was an interval in which water was fetched and she was subsequently supported from the court by one of the nurses in attendance. Then Eustace spoke again.
"I have no further questions to ask this witness," he said. "I leave it to the members of the jury to decide whether we have or have not established the existence of an immoral intimacy between this Lilian whom two witnesses have identified here as Mrs. Betterton, and the murdered man."
"Mr. Calloway?" the judge asked.
"I have no questions to ask her, my lord," Calloway answered rather gloomily, and resumed his seat.
"The court is adjourned till to-morrow," the judge said, rising.
While, for the greater part of the next morning, Eustace took Head through the long recital of the discoveries he had made in the days between the finding of the body and the arrest of Betterton, the accused man sat looking absently through an open window of the court as if all this concerned some other than himself, and he had no interest in it. There was no breeze, not so much as a stirring of the heated air as would shake petals from a dog-rose overblown, and Calloway, seated and listening intently to Head's evidence, wiped his face at intervals with his handkerchief. Berrow's diary was produced when Head explained where and how he had found it, and, as it was passed round among the members of the jury, they were bidden take note that "L. from C." appeared under the dates of the second Wednesday in April and the first Wednesday in May, and that "Self to C. Appt. 9" corresponded with the day on which the man in brown had come to Carden by the eight-forty train in the evening.
Then Head told of his search of The Angle and its grounds, and of finding the piece of iron pipe in the ditch. The piece of pipe, still with dried mud and blood and human hairs adhering to it, was produced in court, as was another, twelve-foot length of pipe, with ends daubed with red lead, and Head told how he had gone to Brantwhite Farm after arresting Betterton and taking him to custody, and there had compared lengths of pipe that he had ordered to be dismantled, carefully observing the ends of each length, with the shorter piece he had found in the ditch, and eventually had found one end to which the muddied end of the shorter piece fitted, showing that it had been hacksawed from the longer piece. The two were fitted to each other that the jury might view them and decide whether they had been sawn apart. Still further points in the inspector's evidence were the dusted-off window framing at The Angle, the oiled bolt of the front-door lock, and his discovery that no key was necessary to draw back the bolt from the inside, while, as had been elicited from Guddle in the course of his evidence, a key to the back door of the empty house was missing.
The accused man roused to a fearful sort of interest when the knob from the back door of The Angle was produced, together with reproductions of the fingerprints found on it, and these prints were shown to correspond with those of his own left thumb and forefinger, while the print smudged in the gum of the reconstructed back of an envelope showed as that of his own right thumb. The inspector also identified a woman's fur-collared coat as one he had taken from a wardrobe at Brantwhite Farm homestead, after questioning a woman named Ethel Yates who was employed as domestic servant there.
Calloway, knowing that he had little chance of shaking the evidence of this witness, yet tried his usual tactics of discrediting him.
"You appear to have interviewed quite a number of people in connection with this case, Inspector?" he suggested. "Haven't you?"
"Quite a number," Head agreed composedly.
"Including among them"—he affected to consult his notes—"a Mrs. Ollyer. I believe you questioned her at some length?"
"I did," Head agreed again.
"To such length, in fact, that you caused her great distress. Is that the case?"
"It was distressing for her to give particulars of the points I asked her about, but they were essential to my inquiries."
"No, no, Inspector. I asked you did you cause her great distress? By your method of conducting what you consider essential—"
"Your lordship, I object!" Eustace, on his feet, addressed the judge. "My learned friend is dragging in a matter which has been the subject of a public inquiry at which all complaints against the inspector's conduct were unreservedly withdrawn, and an apology was made to him for their ever having been made!"
"The objection is upheld," the judge said. "Counsel for the defence will not assist his client by what, I fear, amounts to an attempt at misrepresentation of fact. The result of the inquiry into Inspector Head's conduct in connection with this case is common knowledge. You, members of the jury, may dismiss this cross-examination of the witness from your minds. It has no bearing on this case."
With a mumbled apology to the bench Calloway gave it up, and wiped his face as he resumed his seat.
But a heavier blow was in store for him. A handwriting expert compared the script of the torn and reconstructed letter with the complete letter signed by Helen Betterton that Head had obtained from Helen Berrow, and stated that the script of the former was a forgery of the latter. For ten minutes, after Eustace had extracted the statement from the man, Calloway tried to shake his evidence, and then the judge intervened.
"It is within your power," he said, "to establish that the two letters were written by the same hand. If they are, the evidence of the writer is available on the point."
That writer, as on the preceding day, sat behind Calloway then, but he dared not call her in evidence. She had begged him to let her remain away from the court, but he dared not comply with that request either, lest the jury might conclude from her absence that she anticipated and feared to hear an adverse verdict on her husband.
Over Ollyer's evidence to the effect that he had seen what he believed to be a woman in the empty house Calloway scored a point, since the vicar remained firm in his belief that the figure had been that of a woman. But then came Mrs. Cummins, with her definite recognition of the man in the dock as the one whose face had been within a foot or two of her own for a moment on the fatal Friday night, and Calloway could not shake her firm certainty, though he badgered and ridiculed her to the very limit to which he dared go, gently deriding her for asserting that she could see in the dark, eliciting the fact that she had to wear spectacles when she wanted to read, and sympathizing with her over her failing eyesight. Then he extracted from her the admission that she had seen portraits of the accused man in newspapers, and suggested that they were responsible for her belief that the accused was the man she had dimly glimpsed with his face rendered indistinct by the brim of his hat. It was all in vain: she was certain that Betterton and no other had given her that momentary, startled stare, and then averted his head to hurry on.
He had more success over her impression that the man had had a bundle under his arm, reducing it from a definite impression to a doubtful half-belief, and, in the end, almost annihilating the bundle altogether. She was not sure: she thought the man had a bundle under the arm farthest from her: yes, it might possibly have been the way he had held his arm: he might not have had a bundle at all, but she believed he had: it was too dark for certainty.
"You say this man's face was within a foot or two—say two feet—of your own?" Calloway questioned.
"Not more than two feet—not as much, I think," she answered.
"Then even if he had a bundle under the arm farthest away from you, it would not have been more than four feet away, would it?"
"No, I suppose it wouldn't."
"Not more than four feet away. Yet it was so dark that you cannot swear that the man was actually carrying a bundle, you tell us?"
"Not for a certainty. I believe he had something under his arm."
"And you believe that, in that pitch darkness, you got a clear view of the man's face, sufficient to identify him here?"
"No, I know the face is the same."
"Come, come, Mrs. Cummins! You can't have it too dark to see if the man were carrying anything, and yet light enough to see his face so clearly as to identify it with my client's face!"
"I didn't take particular notice of what he was carrying under his arm. I was looking at his face, and it is the same face as the one I pointed out. I saw it close enough and long enough to be sure."
"In pitch darkness, and with your faulty eyesight?"
"I didn't say my eyesight was faulty. I only said I had to use glasses for reading."
"Will you tell the jury, Mrs. Cummins," the judge interposed, "if it were actually a pitch-dark night when this man passed you?"
"No, my lord, it was not," she answered, glad of the relief from Calloway's silky, weasel-like insistence. "It was just like other summer nights, just gone dark, with the stars out. When I went back to the front door after seeing the man, I could still see white flowers in my sister's garden. So it couldn't be what you call pitch dark."
"Thank you. I don't know if counsel wishes to question you further with regard to your eyesight, or on any other subjects."
"My lord, I will leave the witness to you," Calloway said with a profound, ironic bow toward the bench, and sat down.
My lord dismissed the witness, and she was followed by Ethel Yates, domestic servant in the employ of the Bettertons until a fortnight before the opening of this trial. Eustace rose to examine her.
"Can you tell me, Miss Yates, when Mrs. Betterton last went to London—or rather, when she left home for the day after telling you she was going to London?"
"Yes, sir. It was the Wednesday before the body was found."
"Did she go alone?"
"No, sir. The master drove away with her, and they came back together. Off the nine-fifteen from Crandon, I believe."
"Did she often go to London?"
"About once a month, sir. Generally the first Wednesday."
"The first Wednesday in the month, I take it. Alone, or with Mr. Betterton, do you know?"
"Always alone, sir, till the week when the body was found."
"What was the last occasion on which she went alone?"
"The first Wednesday in May, sir."
"You are quite certain of that?"
"Quite sure, sir, because the Thursday was my birthday, and she gave me the day off. I went to London, then."
"And the time before that first Wednesday in May—can you remember when she went, before that?"
"I think it was the second Wednesday in April, sir, but I'm not sure. It may have been the first Wednesday, but I know she always went on a Wednesday, and generally caught the twelve-fifty-five."
"From Crandon, that will be?"
"No, sir, from Westingborough. The twelve-fifty-five doesn't stop at Crandon—doesn't stop at all between Westingborough and London."
"You act as maid to Mrs. Betterton—acted as maid, I should say?"
"Well, sir, I was housemaid there, but I used to do things for her. Look after her clothes, and so on."
"Yes. And she was friendly with you, and used to talk freely to you, I expect. Was it so?"
"Well, sir, I didn't forget my place, but she did used to talk to me sometimes about different things."
"About what things?"
"About—well, she told me about Christmas time she'd met an old school friend in London, and the next time she went up they'd most likely go to a theatre together, so she wouldn't get back till the early hours of Thursday morning."
"How did she get back, do you know?"
"She told me she caught the last train to Westingborough, and had a car waiting at the station by arrangement beforehand."
"A hired car, you mean?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did this coming home in the early hours happen more than once?"
"Every time she went, after her telling me about meeting this old school friend. She said her name was Hetty, the same as mine."
"And the Wednesday before the body was found, Mr. Betterton went with her, you say?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did she make any comment to you about his going?"
"Not exactly a comment, sir. When they were both ready to go, she beckoned me aside and told me she wanted me to send a telegram for her. It was to be just the three words—'Cannot meet. Writing.'"
"To what address was this telegram to be sent?"
"I don't know, sir. She was opening her bag to get out a pencil to write it down, and the master came in out of the car and said they must start at once. And she didn't say any more about it."
"Did you speak to her alone again before they left the house?"
"No, sir. He kept with her, so I couldn't. He hurried her away."
"She seemed pleased over his going with her, I suppose?"
"No, sir. She wouldn't hardly speak to him, I thought."
"But they had planned to go together beforehand, surely?"
"No, sir. She'd told me the night before that she was going, and wouldn't be back till the small hours, as she called it, and hoped she wouldn't wake him coming in."
"So she couldn't have known he'd go with her, then?"
"What point are you trying to establish, Sir Herbert?" the judge interposed to inquire.
"Simply that Mrs. Betterton had written to Berrow, telling him she would meet him on that first Wednesday in June as usual, my lord, and that the forger of the substitute letter would not let her know till the last minute that he was accompanying her, lest she should communicate with Berrow and rouse suspicion regarding the genuineness of that substitute letter in his mind."
"I see. Continue with your witness."
"Miss Yates," Eustace went on, "Mr. and Mrs. Betterton went to London on the first Wednesday in June, you say, and returned together. Now can you remember anything about the Friday evening of that week?"
"Not to be really sure about it, sir."
"Can you say whether Mr. Betterton were at home or not for the whole or any part of that Friday evening?"
"No, sir, I can't. I'm not sure. I know he came in late one evening that week and went straight upstairs and came down again, but it might have been either Thursday or Friday or Saturday."
"Very well, we'll leave that. Now I want you to take a look at this coat with the fur collar, and tell me if you recognize it."
She took the coat and looked at it. "Yes, sir. It's one of Mrs. Betterton's."
"Do you remember anything in connection with it, any remark made to you by Mr. or Mrs. Betterton?"
"Yes, sir. Sunday morning—the Sunday before the body was found, it would be—Mrs. Betterton called me into her bedroom and took this coat out of the wardrobe and showed it to me. She showed me it was all crumpled and had a lot of dust on one of the sleeves, and wanted to know if I'd had anything to do with it, but I told her I hadn't. She said she hadn't worn the coat since she went to London in it in March, because it was really a winter coat, and she'd hung it up carefully on a hanger and it wasn't crumpled then, and it wasn't dusty either, and it hadn't got any stains on it, but now there was a nasty-looking brownish stain on the right side, under the pocket. And it couldn't get dusty in the wardrobe, she said, and she couldn't understand it anyhow if I hadn't done something to it. And I told her I'd take my oath I hadn't, and then she showed me where she'd hung it, at the back of other things in the wardrobe, and they weren't dusty at all. Then I said I'd put it right for her, so I took and sponged out the stain with warm water, and brushed the dust out, and ironed out the creases with a damp cloth. It seemed as if it'd been all crumpled up anyhow, not the sort of creases you could get wearing it."
"This stain you sponged out—what was it like?"
"A sort of rusty brownish, sir, and hard to get out. Almost the way you'd think blood would dry into the stuff."
"Did it strike you that it might be blood?"
"Well, sir, I didn't see how any blood could possibly get on the coat, because she'd have seen it there when she hung it away, if it'd been there, I thought. And it couldn't have got any blood on it since she hung it there, so I couldn't think what it could be."
"That will do as regards the coat, thank you. One other thing, now. Do you know whether a new horse-trough has been put up in the farmyard at Brantwhite Farm this year?"
"Yes, sir, there was. By a firm from Crandon."
"Do you know anything about the supply of water to this trough?"
"Mr. Betterton got some pipes, and joined them on to what used to be a tap against the wall for watering the front garden, and from there they went along the side of the house to the trough."
"Do you mean Mr. Betterton fixed these pipes himself?"
"Yes, sir. He was very handy over jobs like that, carpentering and washers for taps, and things of that sort."
"Do you know where he kept his tools?"
"In a shed next the woodshed, and he had a bench in there, sir."
"He didn't leave them lying about anywhere else, I suppose?"
"He always said somebody else had moved them, if he couldn't find anything when he wanted it, sir, and sometimes got in a temper about it till whatever it was got found again."
"Did anything get lost over fixing these pipes?"
"Yes, sir, he asked me if I'd seen a hacksaw anywhere, and I told him I didn't know what a hacksaw was, and he said a fool like me wouldn't, only he used a bad word as well as fool. And he said he'd have to find it to finish the job, because one of the pipes was more than a foot too long, and he couldn't gnaw it through with his teeth."
"Do you know if he found the hacksaw?"
"I expect he did, sir, because I heard him making a horrible grating noise through the kitchen window on one of the pipes—I could see it was one when I looked through, and it sort of jumped about and he swore and then I shut the window to keep the swear words out."
"Then you didn't actually see him cut the piece off the pipe?"
"No, sir. But he'd said he couldn't finish the job till he had cut it off, so I expect he did, because he did finish the job."
"Did you ever see that piece of pipe lying about?"
"No, sir, I didn't think to look for it."
"No, there was no reason why you should. How long was this before the body was found in the empty house—how long before that time did Mr. Betterton fix the water supply to the horse-trough?"
"Three weeks to a month, sir, I think. About three weeks."
"Thank you, Miss Yates. That completes the evidence for the Crown in this case. No, don't stand down. My learned friend will have a few questions to ask you, I think."
Calloway rose to the attack.
"Miss Yates, about this old school friend of Mrs. Betterton's, called Hetty. Did Mrs. Betterton tell you much about her?"
"Not much, sir. Said she'd met her after a long while, and they'd been at school together, and now they were going to meet a lot when Mrs. Betterton went to London, and go to theatres together."
"Had you any reason to think Mrs. Betterton was lying about this?"
"Why, no, sir!" She looked surprised as she answered.
"You feel sure she was speaking the truth?"
"As far as I know she was, sir."
"Yes. She was speaking the truth. Do you remember Mr. Betterton saying, nearly a week before he went to London with Mrs. Betterton, that he meant to go with her?"
"He never mentioned anything of the sort in my hearing, sir."
"Can you say definitely that he never mentioned it to anyone?"
"Of course I can't, sir."
"You often went out for your time off wearing Mrs. Betterton's coats and hats, didn't you?"
"Never, sir! They would never fit me."
"Oh, so you tried them on, did you?"
"I did try a hat on once, sir, but never anything else. Mrs. Betterton's coats'd have dragged on the ground, if I'd tried to wear 'em."
"You ascertained that by trying them on, I conclude?"
"I did not, sir. I could see, without doing that."
"You tried a hat on, you say?"
"Yes—one Mrs. Betterton said I could have if I liked. But she wore her hair long, and I don't. It was too big for me."
"I don't think you got on very well with Mr. Betterton, did you?"
"He was a bit hasty, sometimes."
"Did you dislike him?"
"It wasn't my place either to like or dislike him. I had to work there, and keep on good terms with people."
"Did you dislike him?" Calloway repeated patiently.
"I didn't like him as much as I did Mrs. Betterton."
"Did you dislike him?" he repeated a third time.
"Yes, then, I did. But I didn't show it."
"Being the ideal servant, you wouldn't. Cherished your dislike in secret and let it grow, eh?"
"I didn't say that. I didn't say anything of the sort."
"No—I asked you if you did. But we'll let it pass, Miss Yates. Did you hear, before this trial began, that Inspector Head was supposed to have found a piece of iron piping, and had assumed that the man whose body was found in the empty house had been killed with it?"
"I read about it, sir, if that's what you mean."
"You don't know whether Mr. Betterton actually found his hacksaw?"
"No, I'm not sure whether he did or no."
"You don't know whether he cut a piece off one length of pipe?"
"He said he couldn't finish the job till he'd done that."
"But you don't know that he didn't carry the pipe length farther into the trough, or managed somehow without cutting the pipe?"
"No, except that I heard him cutting the pipe."
"Are you sure he wasn't filing the end smooth for a joint?"
"Well, no, not exactly sure."
"And you never saw any piece of pipe that he had cut off a length?"
"No. I said I didn't."
"And you definitely dislike Mr. Betterton?"
"Your lordship, I object!" Eustace was on his feet again. "The witness has already answered that question."
"I uphold the objection," the judge said.
"I apologize, my lord," Calloway said sweetly. "The jury, I should have remembered, are already aware that she regarded her master with deep antipathy. I have no more questions to ask her."
"I THINK you will agree with me, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, when I say that this is a case in which the greater part of the evidence speaks for itself, needing no comment from me before his lordship puts before you, with that impartiality for which our law is famed, the case as a whole."
Sir Herbert Eustace paused, and then with deliberate impressiveness went on with his final speech. Behind him, a ray of sunlight slanted downward through a window of the court, and made golden radiance of a listening woman's hair.
"To one point only, ladies and gentlemen, I wish to direct your attention now. It has been established by the prosecution, and has not been challenged by the defence, that an intimacy—probably a guilty intimacy—existed between the wife of the man in the dock before you and the man whose body was found in that otherwise untenanted house. You may regard that intimacy as an established fact.
"Again, the defence has not questioned that the letter signed 'Helen Betterton' was written by the wife of the accused man, nor attempted to deny that the handwriting of that letter is her handwriting. They have contented themselves with denying that the other letter, signed simply 'L.,' is written by the accused man in imitation of her handwriting. Since they do not deny that the letter signed 'Helen Betterton' is genuine, it follows, if the other letter is not a forgery, that it must also have been written by Helen Betterton. The defence has not put up a third person as the writer of this second letter, for to postulate such a thing would be too absurd. Either the accused man or his wife wrote the letter.
"You will remember that my learned friend, on behalf of the accused man, brought all his undoubted skill to bear on the handwriting expert who testified that the letter signed 'L.' was a clever imitation of the writing in the letter signed 'Helen Betterton.' A far simpler way of proving his point was open to him, for he had only to call the wife of the accused man to testify that she wrote this second letter, and its authorship would have been settled for good and all.
"You are aware, of course, that the prosecution cannot call the wife of an accused man to witness against him. But there is nothing in our law to prevent the defence from calling a woman to testify for her husband, and, if she is so called, she may only be cross-examined regarding the evidence she has given: she may not be questioned on any other point.
"But she was not called. You have, in spite of the efforts of my learned friend to shake it, unshaken evidence by a handwriting expert that the writer of the letter signed 'Helen Betterton' did not write the letter signed 'L.'
"Further, and bearing on the same point, if she wrote this letter bidding 'Darling C.' to meet her at The Angle on that Friday night, and telling him that she could not meet him on the Wednesday as arranged, why should she, as soon as she knew her husband meant to accompany her to London on the Wednesday, wish to send a telegram worded 'Cannot meet. Writing'? You have heard the maid Yates testify that Mrs. Betterton wanted to send such a telegram, and that her husband intervened and prevented her—that she refrained from saying anything more about it because he was within hearing.
"Is it not far more probable that the woman wrote making an appointment to meet Berrow in London on the Wednesday, that the husband by some means got hold of her letter, opened it, and substituted a carefully forged appeal to Berrow to come to The Angle at nine o'clock on the Friday evening? Is it not far more probable that his announcement of his intention to go to London, made at the last possible minute, was held back to leave the woman believing as long as possible that she was going to meet her lover, and then made when the husband could be sure of keeping with her, and thus preventing her from communicating with the other man in time to stop him from keeping the appointment at The Angle on Friday evening?
"Now I want to draw your attention to the evidence of the Reverend James Ollyer, who told you, and under cross-examination insisted, that he saw the outline of a woman, revealed in the light of what was probably an electric torch, when he looked through the window of the house as he passed. The outline—he saw no more.
"If the outline were that of a woman, it can only have been Mrs. Betterton. Neither prosecution nor defence has put forward the suggestion that a third party forged her handwriting. If it were Mrs. Betterton in that house at that hour, then, ladies and gentlemen, you must not only acquit the accused. You must put his wife in the dock in place of him. The person, man or woman, whose outline was seen in that room at that hour on Friday night, was the one by whose hand Claude Berrow was done to death, and was also the one who wrote the letter bidding him come to The Angle. I do not see how you can come to any other conclusion on the evidence that has been put before you.
"I will, with his lordship's permission, repeat the three questions I put to the accused in cross-examination, after he had given evidence in his own defence.
"'Had you any knowledge that intimacy of any kind existed between your wife and Claude Berrow?'
"'No.'
"'Did you write the letter signed "L." requesting him to come to The Angle at nine o'clock on Friday night?'
"'I did not.'
"'Having had that letter handed to you in its mutilated and reconstructed form, and having had an opportunity of examining it, can you express any opinion as to who did write it?'
"'I suppose it must have been my wife.'
"Did he realize, I wonder, when he uttered that third reply, that if you accept it as true, and believe that she wrote the letter, then she must come to stand in that dock on the charge of having murdered her lover? I do not think he realized this.
"You will remember that in the course of his evidence the accused accounted for his finger-prints on the door-knob by saying that he got into the house through the drawing-room window, looked it over, unlocked and opened the back door, closed and locked the door again, and got out again through the window. This, he says, he did through interest in the house, having known its occupants during the lifetime of the murdered man's father.
"After his three replies to the only questions I put to him in cross-examination, I considered it futile to cross-examine him on this evidence.
"Ladies and gentlemen, it is for you to decide, on the evidence that has been placed before you, whether Frederick George Betterton is guilty or innocent of the crime with which he here stands charged."
The ray of sunlight no longer made radiance in a woman's hair, but had passed beyond her and soon would begin to travel up the wall of the court. The judge was nearing the end of his utterly unimpassioned concluding address to the jury:
"I would remind you that you must dismiss entirely from your minds the result of a verdict in favour of the accused man. It is nothing to you that his wife might in that case stand where he stands now. Similarly, the impassioned plea of counsel for the defence on behalf of his client, eloquent though it has been, must not form a basis for your decision. You must come to that decision simply and solely on the evidence that has been placed before you, without regard for the ultimate consequences of your verdict. You have not been called here to decree vengeance, or to show mercy, but to assure that justice shall be done.
"I will, in conclusion, draw your attention to one point which I expected would have been raised by the defence. From the chain of evidence presented to you by the prosecution, a link is missing. It is in connection with the letter urging the man Berrow to come to The Angle, the letter of which the fragments have been reconstructed, and which you have all had an opportunity of examining and comparing with one which is, as has not been questioned, written and signed by Helen Betterton.
"I want you to realize that, if you believe the evidence of the prosecution, and that in this letter the accused man forged his wife's handwriting, then he must have had some letter of hers addressed to Berrow, in order to know that in writing to Berrow the woman addressed him as 'Darling C.' and signed herself with the initial 'L.' Any variation from the style of address and signature that she usually employed would have aroused Berrow's suspicion, and he would not have kept the appointment for which the letter asked.
"Nothing has been put before you to show that the accused man had an opportunity of getting hold of such a letter of his wife's. Nothing has been said of a method by which he might have obtained one of her letters to Berrow. Opportunities and methods may occur to your minds as they have to mine, but the omission of any mention of this point appears as a missing link in the evidence for the prosecution, and a lost opportunity for the defence. I put it before you not as a vital, decisive point, but as one that you should bear in mind.
"Apart from that one point, the evidence you have heard, all of it what is termed circumstantial evidence, shows motive, deliberate preparation for the commission of the crime, and, if you accept the medical evidence and believe that the man in brown arriving at Carden station on Friday night was Berrow, fixes the day and time of the crime itself within very narrow limits. I will add, for the benefit of counsel engaged in the case as much as for yours, that in all my experience on the bench I have never heard the rules for the production of evidence stretched to such limits as in these last four days.
"I repeat, ladies and gentlemen—put all thought of the consequences of your verdict from your minds. Those consequences, in so far as they affect others than the accused man, must not weigh one jot or one tittle with you, for it is your duty to decide this case on the evidence that has been placed before you, and on that alone. You may now retire and, when you are agreed upon your verdict, return here and deliver it."
The end of the ray of sunlight, far from the waiting woman's hair, now, passed up the back of a bench on the other side of the court, and touched the farther wall. Slowly, very slowly, it moved up the wall. Then roofs beyond which the sun travelled toward its setting intervened and, though night was yet far away, shadow fell on the crowded court, and the hushed whispers of the waiting crowd seemed to intensify, to grow louder and more ominous.
An usher called for silence, and the accused man was brought back into the dock. The jury filed in, and all men and women in the courtroom stood until the judge had taken his seat.
The accused man, standing in the dock, glanced for a moment toward the foreman of the jury, and then gazed out through the open window at red roofs, sunlit when he had last looked out and seen them, but all in shadow, now.
He knew, before a word was spoken, that never again would he see dog-rose petals fall, or go along the lane leading to his home.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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