by J F Straker
He hesitated so long here that Pitt prompted him. ‘You knew the safe was behind it?’
‘Yes.’ Everywhere he looked there were faces, accusing faces. ‘I was hard up — and’ He gulped. ‘I dropped the picture when I took it down; the glass broke. I tried to open the safe — I wasn’t going to take all the money, only what I needed. And why shouldn’t I?’ he demanded hysterically, his voice rising. ‘She owed it to me; it was mine as much as hers. If she hadn’t turned Uncle Edward against us I’d have had my share. She had no right —’
‘Did you open the safe?’ Pitt said sharply.
‘No. I couldn’t. There was nothing to force it with.’ His voice was lower now. It sank almost to a whisper as he said, ‘And then — well, I suppose I panicked. I didn’t know when Elizabeth would be back, or — or Aunt Charlotte. I wanted to get away. I picked up the picture and the few pieces of glass, took them out to the yard, and dropped them down the well. Then I went home.’
The whisper faded to a sigh and died.
Pitt said, ‘You didn’t destroy that picture deliberately, because of your hatred of Mrs Lane?’
‘No, I didn’t.’ Now that he had told them there was more vitality in his voice. He sat up, flicking back the recalcitrant lock of hair with the old impatient gesture. ‘And I didn’t kill her either. She must have been dead long before I got to the house.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because she wasn’t there, that’s why. I tell you, the house was empty.’ He turned angrily to Bruce. ‘You know that. You were there before me. Why don’t you tell them?’
The Inspector’s alert eyes shifted to the blond young man leaning uncomfortably against the wall.
‘Yes, Mr Poulton,’ he said softly. ‘Why don’t you tell us?’
Bruce stepped away from the wall. His face was flushed. He said stiffly, ‘I called at the house just before half-past six. No lights were showing, and no one answered my ring. So I came away.’
‘Did you also try the back door?’
‘No.’
‘And was your visit connected with this so-called practical joke?’
‘No.’ And, as Pitt continued to regard him expectantly, ‘I wanted to see Miss Messager.’
What was it about the girl, Pitt wondered, that set all these young men running after her? Not her looks; the Rivers girl was twice as pretty. But the Rivers girl, of course, wasn’t an heiress. Or a presumed heiress.
He wondered if she had told them. ‘Anything further to add to that, Mr Poulton?’ he asked. ‘Did you see anyone near the house?’
‘No.’ Bruce hesitated. ‘But I thought I heard some one. In the garden.’
‘Whereabouts in the garden?’
‘Down towards the copse. But the noise could have been made by the wind. It was blowing quite hard that evening.’
Pitt looked inquiringly at Alan, who shook his head. ‘Not guilty, Inspector. I paid only the one visit, and that was after nine.’
‘That all, Mr Poulton?’
For the first time since he had entered the room Bruce looked at Desmond. But Desmond was still staring hard at the wall, and did not see the look.
Bruce said, ‘I heard a car coming from the direction of Tanbury. It turned out to be Desmond Farrel’s Wolseley. He pulled up at the corner and gave me a lift back here.’
‘Quite right, Inspector,’ Desmond said. ‘I too was on my way to see Miss Messager — on duty, as it were. I was the chap, you may remember, who was supposed to collect something of Mrs Lane’s and dump it near the river. I was about to turn into the lane when I saw Mr Poulton.’
‘You didn’t call at the house, then?’
‘No.’
‘So you phoned Miss Messager later?’
‘No, she phoned me. You asked me that before, Inspector. You wouldn’t be trying to fool me by any chance, would you? Not that it seems to matter who phoned whom.’
Pitt said sharply, ‘Any fooling that’s been done, Mr Farrel, has been done by you and your friends. It’s because of your irresponsible conduct and your disregard for the truth that I’m now having to waste time going over old ground. For instance, both you and Mr Lane here told me you gave him a lift into Tanbury on Thursday evening. We now know you did no such thing. So what?’
Surprisingly Desmond smiled.
‘Touché, Inspector. I apologize. But as for Thursday, I did exactly as I said — except that Mr Lane wasn’t with me, of course.’
Pitt frowned. There was something wrong there; what was it? Maybe it would come to him later. He turned to Elizabeth. ‘Have you anything to add to this spate of confession?’ he asked.
‘No, I don’t think so,’ she said.
‘Are you sure, Miss Messager? Perhaps I’m old-fashioned, but your apparent unconcern at your aunt’s disappearance shocks me. The first telegram you knew to be a hoax. Good enough. I might even allow you the somewhat crudely worded note pushed under the mat. A little too melodramatic to be real, don’t you think, Mr Torreck?’ Alan bowed a polite agreement. ‘But the second telegram and the phone call — they had to be genuine. And yet — still no alarm?’
‘It was late,’ she said uneasily.
‘Yes, miss, it was late. But crime doesn’t keep regular hours, and neither do the police. It was not too late to phone. However, you saw Constable Williams the next day — at his request, not yours — and then went off for the day. Where? Urgent business?’
‘No,’ said Elizabeth, and told him. As she spoke of the lunch she and Desmond had eaten at the Speckled Trout she remembered how happy they had been, that they would soon be going back there for a whole weekend. It cheered her a little to think of it.
‘Just an outing, eh?’ Pitt grunted. ‘I must say I find that a trifle unnatural under the circumstances, miss.’
Of course he found it unnatural, thought the girl. But, even if she were free to tell him the truth, how could she expect a policeman, whose business was crime and who looked only for the criminal in every out-of-the-way incident, to understand her state of mind on that day? It was her day, her very first day as a wife. In a way it was her honeymoon. How could there be room in her mind that day for Aunt Charlotte and policemen?
‘There was nothing I could do to help,’ she said weakly.
He nodded, not in agreement but as though that was the answer he had expected. But he did not smile at her as he had smiled the first time they had met, and she felt vaguely unhappy that he should so obviously think ill of her.
‘Well, that seems to be that.’ He stood up. ‘I don’t intend to lecture the lot of you on the stupidity of your behaviour though I’ve no doubt others will have plenty to say later. But how five presumably intelligent people —’ He let out a gusty sigh. ‘Good night, Miss Messager. Mr Lane, I must ask you to return to the station with us, I’m afraid.’
Fear had come back to Michael in full volume; he believed arrest to be imminent. But he followed the tall figure of the Inspector docilely enough, with the unusually silent Watkins close behind. In the room they had left the four who remained looked at each other askance, each reluctant to be the first to break the silence, to set the tone of the discussion that must follow. The threat implied in the Inspector’s parting admonition — that the law had not yet finished with them — was something none could ignore.
Desmond stood irresolute. Then, with no word of explanation, he hurried from the room. The little party of three was outside his own door as he joined it, and he plucked impetuously at the Inspector’s sleeve.
‘May I have a word with you, Inspector? In private?’
Pitt looked at him, sizing him up. He did not want to be side-tracked by irrelevancies. Then he nodded to the Sergeant and followed Desmond into the latter’s room.
‘Keep it short, please, Mr Farrel,’ he said.
‘All right. It’s just that I thought you were a little hard on Miss Messager,’ Desmond told him.
Pitt’s anger broke over him like a storm.
‘
Good God, man! Is that all you wanted to say? Hard? Why, if I had my way I’d clap the whole damned lot of you into gaol. You concoct some idiotic practical joke, that no one in his right senses could consider even slightly humorous — and then, when it goes sour on you and a woman is murdered, you haven’t the guts or the decency to own up. You let the police waste precious time following false trails that never should have been laid, and which a word from you could have prevented. Hard!’ He drew a deep breath. ‘Good night, Mr Farrel.’
‘Please!’ Desmond said. ‘Give me a chance to explain. I wanted you to understand why Miss Messager seemed so — so callous. I thought it might help if you had the right slant on that.’
Pitt had paused with his hand on the door-knob. Now he came back into the room.
‘Go on,’ he said tersely.
‘Well, you know that Miss Messager and her aunt didn’t get on; every one in the village must have told you about the rows they had. But it was all second-hand information spread by Mrs Green, and I wouldn’t like to guess how much she exaggerated. It’s perfectly true that Elizabeth — Miss Messager — disliked her aunt; she’s often admitted it. But you can dislike a person without rowing, can’t you?’
‘I don’t see where this is leading,’ Pitt said impatiently.
‘No,’ Desmond admitted. ‘I’m rather off the track. That’s because you got me flustered. What I was leading up to is that Miss Messager is a pretty forthright person. She speaks and acts as she feels.’
‘Are you suggesting that, because she felt like murdering her aunt, she did so?’ Pitt asked, astonished. The expected speech for the defence seemed to be turning into a speech for the prosecution.
‘Good Heavens, no! I’m saying that she’s no hypocrite. Hating Aunt Charlotte the way she did, it wasn’t in her nature to assume a concern she didn’t in fact feel. That’s one reason for what you call her unnatural behaviour. The other is that she didn’t believe that her aunt was missing. Not until the body was found. She thought it was a hoax.’
‘At first, yes. But not later. Not after the second telegram.’
‘Yes, she did. Even after the second telegram.’ Desmond told him of the discussion he had had with Elizabeth at the Speckled Trout, and of her theory that Mrs Green had invented the second telegram and the phone call from Mrs Donelly. ‘We couldn’t think of any motive that might have prompted the woman to play such a trick, unless it was that she disliked Elizabeth and wanted to frighten her. But, apart from motive, the idea made sense at the time.’
Pitt was not impressed, and said so. What he did not say was that he suspected Desmond must have had a further motive for inveigling him into his room; the one given was too thin. Yet what was this other motive? To separate him from Michael Lane, so that the latter might attempt an escape? If so he didn’t know Jim Watkins. But because there was something here that he could not fathom the Inspector was uneasy. He would have waited no longer had he not remembered that previous statement of Desmond’s which had puzzled him. Now he had spotted the flaw.
‘Last night, Mr Farrel, you stated that you had to be back here by six-thirty on Thursday evening? Was that the truth?’
‘Certainly it was. I told you, I just about made it.’
‘Yes. But tonight you also told me that you had intended to call at The Elms on your way back. You were going to lay some sort of false trail by the river, I believe.’
‘Yes. So I would have done if Miss Messager had been at home. But she wasn’t, and I didn’t.’ Desmond was puzzled. ‘I don’t see what you’re getting at, Inspector. There’s nothing contradictory there, surely?’
‘Isn’t there? You had to be back by six-thirty — and you were. But you would have been considerably later than that if you had done what you had planned to do. So either you lied about the time you had to be back, or you lied about your plans, or you lied about the times at which you left Tanbury and arrived at The Elms.’ Pitt pulled thoughtfully at his nose. ‘That’s a nice choice in lies, Mr Farrel. Take your pick.’
Desmond was silent. He did not want to admit that he had lied at all; however insignificant the lie might be, it remained a lie, it would still be a canker of suspicion in the minds of the police. But which to choose? All except one could be checked — probably had been checked — and that one was the most damning of all. His father would confirm the time he had been due to return, his friends the tasks that had been allotted to him. That left him no choice.
He said, apparently inconsequentially, ‘Did the tobacconist confirm that I called in at his place that evening?’
It was not inconsequential to the Inspector.
‘He did. You were there some time between five-thirty and five forty-five. Does that help you to make up your mind? Or do I have to point out that, even if we accept the latter time, you could still have been at The Elms shortly after six o’clock?’
Desmond grimaced. ‘I know,’ he said frankly. ‘That’s why I was more than willing to supply Mr Lane with the alibi he needed. It gave me one too — though I didn’t let him know that. As a matter of fact, Inspector, I had aimed to be at The Elms by six-fifteen. Mrs Lane should have left by then, I thought, and it would give me just enough time to do what I had to do. But I didn’t make it. The car died on me.’
The other’s eyebrows lifted slightly. ‘Where and when?’ he asked succinctly.
The reply was equally brief. ‘In the car park. It wouldn’t start. Ignition trouble.’
Pitt was not mechanically minded. ‘Ignition’ and ‘fuel’ were, he knew, the most quoted sources of trouble, and equally vague. But he decided not to press for a more exact diagnosis. It would probably have no meaning for him, and Watkins and Lane were waiting.
He said severely, ‘This is the third different account of that journey I have had from you in the space of twenty-four hours, Mr Farrel. I would suggest a stricter adherence to the truth in future, or you’ll find yourself in serious trouble. Will you come down to the station tomorrow, please, and sign your statement? And read it carefully first — in your own interests.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Desmond said humbly and humility was strange to him. ‘Can I offer you a drink before you go? You must need one.’
‘I do, sir. But you and your friends are so fond of wasting my time that you leave me none to spare.’ Again his hand was on the door-knob, and again he paused. ‘By the way, why was it so important that you should be here by six-thirty that evening?’
‘That’s when the bar starts to fill up,’ Desmond said, surprised. ‘And my father was out.’
Chapter Twelve
An Evening full of Surprises
It was at Elizabeth’s invitation, given when she heard that his father was away in London, that Alan Torreck stayed to dinner at the hotel. Her husband’s assertion that Alan was in love with her continued to intrigue Elizabeth; she wanted to discover for herself the truth of that assertion. She even exerted herself, when Bruce had left them and she and Alan were alone in her room, to lure him into declaring his love; perversely, the fact that she was already married and unable to take advantage of any offer he might make served merely to whet her curiosity. But either Desmond had been mistaken or Alan possessed an obstinate determination to remain a bachelor. All her blandishments and wiles failed to draw from him either word or look which might be interpreted as encouragement.
Dinner was not a gay meal. Desmond’s attempts at cheerfulness were spasmodic; mainly he ate in silence, or discussed with Alan the possible significance of Michael’s impending arrest. They had no doubt about that, and little sympathy for the victim; their main concern lay in how the arrest would affect themselves. Since they had all been partners in the original conspiracy, it seemed unlikely that they would escape unscathed. Elizabeth, still feeling put out by her inability to break down Alan’s barrier of reserve, was in a fretful mood. She railed at them for their cold-blooded and selfish attitude towards Michael’s probable arrest; and then, when Alan pointed out that arrest did not necess
arily imply guilt, that Michael might be the victim of his own stupidity, she perversely insisted that of course he was guilty — if not of murder, then of assault and attempted robbery at the very least. It had to be Michael or Bruce, she said. Who else was there?
‘All of us,’ Alan declared bluntly. ‘Desmond, yourself, myself. We none of us have a watertight alibi; and all of us had good reason, from the police view-point, to wish Aunt Charlotte dead. Well, perhaps not Desmond. But you and I certainly.’
‘You needn’t leave me out,’ Desmond said. ‘I disliked her as much as anyone. No, Bruce is the chap who is the enigma here. He was at the house before Michael, by his own admission; and I can’t say he looked particularly delighted when I pulled up to offer him a lift. Quite the reverse. At the time I put that down to discomfiture at having been discovered paying court to Elizabeth immediately Aunt Charlotte was out of the way; he had no other reason to be there. If only he had a motive he’d be a very healthy candidate. But he hasn’t. He’s not even hard up, like the rest of us; he’s careful with money, is Bruce. And his father must be doing pretty well; he’s collared most of the meat trade round here.’
‘Of course Bruce had a motive,’ Elizabeth said, impetuously disagreeing once more. ‘He hated Aunt Charlotte like poison.’
The two men stared at her in astonishment.
‘Bruce did?’ said Alan. ‘Why?’
Reluctantly Elizabeth told them of the snubs her aunt had delighted in inflicting on Bruce, of the deep wound it had made in his pride. She had not meant to tell them, but having said so much there was no alternative.
‘That alters the look of things,’ Desmond said thoughtfully. ‘Do the police know?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. I haven’t told them.’
‘And Bruce isn’t likely to,’ Alan said. ‘Still, now that they know he was there that evening they’re going to investigate him rather more closely. It may be they’ll unearth a lot more he’s said nothing about.’
