Knollis waited with all the patience for which he was noted among his colleagues.
The Chief Constable hemmed behind his hand. “Well, it—er—started with the budgerigar, and then there was the cat!”
Knollis jerked into startled attention. “Wha-at?”
“Yes, I’m afraid that is it, Inspector. You see, Mrs. Manchester found her pet budgie lying in the boudoir with its neck broken—that was on Sunday morning. It had a silken cord tied loosely round its neck. Yesterday noon she found her cat in the cactus house in similar circumstances. . . .”
“Mm!” muttered Knollis.
The Chief Constable shuffled in his chair, and pushed the cigarette box still nearer to Knollis. “Have a smoke, Inspector! Do have one! And you, Sergeant!” Knollis and Ellis took cigarettes, lit them, and waited. Colonel Mowbray played with his monocle.
“The name of the bird was—er—Sweetums, and the cat was Boofuls. . . .”
He pushed back his chair, stamped across the room, returned to the chair, and sat down. “Oh, this is too bloody for words! I’m sorry, Inspector! So help me heaven, I’m sorry! I think it’s a darned shame to drag you down from London. Oh lor’, what a mess!”
Knollis cast a long and sorrowful look at Ellis. Ellis leaned back in his chair and began to chuckle quietly. “Sweetums and Boofuls!”
“What’s so darned funny?” demanded Knollis.
“Wait until Fleet Street get hold of this!” exclaimed Ellis. “The case of Sweetums and Boofuls, or Death Stalks the Village! Can’t you see the banner across the front page of the Daily Distress? Oh, my Gawd!”
“Oh, shut up!” said Knollis, and immediately said “Sorry!” for he was not by nature a crude man.
“He’s right, you know,” said the Chief Constable. “It’s going to make a laughing-stock of the whole Force. And this is what comes of money without breeding behind it. Damn all social revolutions!”
“Why does he insist on an investigation, sir?” Knollis asked curiously.
“Showing off, for one thing—and he got a scare out of it. I don’t agree with him, of course, but I can see how his limited intelligence has reached what appears to be a logical conclusion. Mind you, it wouldn’t scare an educated man! His wife is the cause of it all. She’s constantly saying that her life would be empty but for her budgie, her cat, and Freddy—in reverse order, I imagine. So Manchester reasons that these two deaths are warnings that his own is to follow, which is damned rot!”
Knollis sat quietly for a couple of minutes or so, and then looked up. “When can I interview him, sir?”
The Chief Constable blinked to mental attention. “You don’t mean to say that you are getting interested in the silly affair?”
Knollis’s eyes vanished into the secrecy of his keen features. “Were the animals strangled with the cords?”
“Eh? No, as a matter of fact, they weren’t! Manchester fetched a vet to both bodies, and he reported that the cervical vertebrae had been dislocated in each case—just as you’d wring a fowl.”
“Interesting,” murmured Knollis. “I would like to see Manchester as soon as possible, sir.”
“But, man, it’s dam silly!” protested the Chief Constable. Then he stopped, and looked hard at Knollis. “Or is it?”
Knollis replied slowly and cautiously. “If the bird and the cat had been strangled with the cords, I would be inclined to say that it was nothing but spite, possibly directed against Mrs. Manchester, but as the two pets were killed by manual pressure, and the cords placed round their necks afterwards . . . ”
“Yes, Inspector?”
“Well, the cords may have a significance!”
“Mm, ye-es,” the Chief Constable admitted grudgingly.
“The bird was found on Sunday morning?”
“Shortly after breakfast.”
“And the cat yesterday—which was Monday—at noon?”
“Yes, that is right.”
“So that, if Manchester’s scare-idea is correct, he should be killed at tea-time to-day?”
The Chief Constable opened his eyes so wide that his monocle fell to the length of its retaining cord. “Good God! You’ve an imagination like a fiction writer?”
“Thanks for the compliment, sir.”
The Chief Constable waved an impatient hand. “It’s bosh! Only the good die young, and at that rate Manchester will reach the ripe old age of a hundred and fifty. Go and get settled in at the Crown! Have your tea, a smoke, a drink, a bath, and I’ll send a car for you about six o’clock. If he’s pacing up and down his cage, let him pace. It will work off some of his energy.”
“Well, as you wish, sir,” Knollis said reluctantly.
“That’s giving you an hour and a half in which to prepare yourself to meet him. It’s—yes—half-past four now.”
He broke off irritably as one of the half-dozen telephones on his desk broke into song. “Yes, speaking. Who? All right. Show him up.”
He replaced the handset, and grimaced. “Prepare to meet a fate worse than death in the lions’ den. Manchester is on his way up!”
CHAPTER II
THE SUSPICIONS OF MANCHESTER
Knollis eyed the furniture magnate closely as he entered the room and plodded across the deep carpet to the Chief Constable’s desk. He was of medium height, and carried so much fat, in so many rolls, that it was impossible to guess at the shape Nature had intended him to be. His face was a pink bladder, from which piggish eyes peered by permission of necessity. His neck consisted of three pink tyres, beneath the lower of which showed the bottom edge of a blue-striped collar, with which he was wearing a vivid blue tie. He was dressed in a suit of bluish Harris tweed, and across the vest was festooned a gold watch-chain decorated with two football medals, a Devonshire pixie, a massive red seal, and a watch key. His feet, shod in black patent leather, were so small that it seemed impossible that his bulk could balance on them.
He extended a podgy paw to the Chief Constable, who took it reluctantly and did not disguise his distaste.
“Thought I’d better run down and see what was what,” said Manchester. “I like to see things getting done—never was one for hanging about. You said you was going to let me know when the tecs arrived.” Knollis and Ellis winced, and the Chief Constable passed them a sympathetic glance.
He forced a smile. “The detectives arrived but a few minutes ago, Mr. Manchester. Allow me to present Inspector Knollis and Sergeant Ellis, both of New Scotland Yard.”
Manchester nestled his lower chin in his hand, and looked them over as if he was buying them. “So you fellows are the tecs! Well, I hope as you are good, because I want my money’s worth. I got it to pay with, see. That’s Fred Manchester!”
“I think I understand,” Knollis replied quietly.
The Chief Constable grimaced.
Manchester turned on him, rather than to him. “Told ’em anything yet?”
“The bare details only,” said the Chief Constable. “I was acquainting them with the matter when you arrived.”
“Happen I’d better tell him myself, and in my own words,” remarked Manchester. “I won’t take as much time as you. Now, Inspector, it’s like this. My wife has always reckoned as she’d have nothing to live for if it weren’t for me, and the cat, and the budgie. Sweetums and Boofuls, she calls them, and she calls me Humpty—when we’re private-like. Daft, but that’s a woman all over, even the best of ’em, and I’ve got the best. Anyway, the little woman’s all upset, and thinks as it might be me next. Now I can look after myself, and don’t need no watchdog, but the little woman must be set at ease. I’m a successful man, you see, Inspector, and successful men have enemies—mainly them what’s jealous. That’s the way of the world—jealous of them what’s got on because they haven’t been scared to force the pace.”
“Have you any suspicions with regard to the identity of the perpetrator of these two outrages?” asked Knollis, anxious to stem the flood of self-praise from Manchester.
The f
urniture magnate blew out his fleshy cheeks, and then scratched his ear. “Yes and no. There’s a good few as doesn’t like me—mainly because of what I was just saying about me being—”
“Quite! Quite!” Knollis interrupted.
“Yes, well, there’s Tanroy for one!”
“Sir Giles Tanroy!” exclaimed the Chief Constable. “Nonsense, Manchester!”
“Nonsense my foot,” retorted Manchester. “Doesn’t he reckon as I worked him into a tight corner so as he’d have to sell Baxmanhurst to me?”
“He has said as much,” the Chief Constable replied quietly.
“Did I hell as like!” Manchester bawled. “Tanroy’s like the rest of his sort—no businessman. If he’s mug enough to buy shares in a duff company he can’t blame anybody except himself for what happens.”
“You—er—did advise him to buy them, I believe?” queried the Chief Constable.
Manchester sniggered. “I can advise you to jump in the river, but you ain’t mug enough to do it if you can’t swim. I could have made a packet out of them shares. Tanroy hadn’t the sense.”
The Chief Constable glanced at Knollis and shook his head sadly.
“Tanroy would give me a knock if he got half a chance!” Manchester said defiantly.
The Chief Constable leaned across the desk, his features expressing his outraged feelings. “You are surely not suggesting that Sir Giles Tanroy forced his way into your house, and into your wife’s boudoir, in order to commit so petty an act as wringing a bird’s neck?”
Manchester clenched his fists and took a step forward. “That’s it! Side up with him! He’s one of your own set. That’s why I wanted a tec from the Yard. They are im—impartial. Aren’t you?” he suddenly demanded of Knollis.
“I hope so,” Knollis replied, shocked by the outburst.
“So do I! By God, I’ll stand for no incompetence or shilly-shallying!”
“You know,” the Chief Constable pointed out quietly, “you may just as well accuse the rest of the world of being against you. You are letting your imagination run away with you, Manchester.”
“And why not?” shouted Manchester. “Isn’t the world against me? Hasn’t it tried to stamp me down ever since I started trying to get on? There’s Temple—my own gardener—for one. He reckons as I did him for two hundred quid a few years back. And for why, you asks? Here’s me, trying to help the working man, and what happens? He can’t pay, and I have to fetch the stuff back because I’m in business for a living. And I get abused! Abused, mind you! What the hell do they think I am? A charitable institution?”
The Chief Constable shook his head, silently.
“There you are, then,” continued Manchester.
“Temple’d do me in if he got half a chance. I wanted to help him, but I wouldn’t have kept him for a week if he hadn’t been a good gardener. I pays for the best, and I want it.”
“I am going to be frank,” said the Chief Constable, leaning across his desk. “You took him on, as you call it, because you created such a bad impression in court when you sued him for arrears. You knew that the case was going to damage your business, and so you acted the part of a man who, having been robbed of his cloak, was willing to give his tunic. You know that I am speaking the truth!”
“Do I get protection and justice, or don’t I?” Manchester protested. “Or is it kept for your own sort,” he added sneeringly.
Colonel Mowbray polished his monocle and screwed it back into his eye. “The law of the land protects the persons and properties of everybody, Mr. Manchester. Myself, the policeman on his beat, and these gentlemen from London are only concerned with our duty, and we do not question the ethics and morality of our work, satisfied as we are that those above us who make the laws are capable of doing so. You get protection and justice if you ask for it.”
Manchester spread his hands in a dramatic gesture, appealing to Knollis and Ellis; the latter was busy with notebook and pencil.
“There you are then. Protection and justice are what I’m asking for. I’m asking for protection against them as hate me—and that’s me that don’t hate nobody! I don’t hold no grudges against nobody. Inspector Kollis—”
“Knollis,” the Chief Constable interposed.
“Inspector Knollis,” went on Manchester, “I’d even forgot, in my own mind as Temple’d tried to do me for the furniture, and employed him because I was sorry for him, and what does he do?”
“What does he do?” Knollis asked simply.
Manchester took a deep breath. “Give me patience! Two pints inside him at the local, and he’s breathing mutiny and calling me everything from a pig to a swine!”
“Definitely a case for the R.S.P.C.A.,” chuckled the Chief Constable, “but anyway, Manchester, are there any other people you suspect?”
Manchester fingered his nose in an ungentlemanly manner. “I ain’t so sure about Dana if it comes to that. No, I ain’t at all sure!”
“Who is Dana?” Knollis asked in the manner of the learned judge.
“Dana? She’s Dana Vaughan, the actress woman. I wouldn’t have her in the house for five minutes if it wasn’t for Milly—that’s the wife. Been pals for years, they have. She was playing in that thing in London what’s run for three and a half years. Hm! I can’t think of its name now!”
“The Hempen Rope?” suggested the Chief Constable.
“That’s the one!”
“Oh yes, I remember seeing her in it,” said Knollis. “What are your objections to this lady’s presence in your house, Mr. Manchester?”
Manchester opened his great toad-like mouth and sought for words, meanwhile inelegantly scratching the back of his neck. “We-ell, she’s a fine actor and all that, Inspector, and I do give her that, but she don’t like me.”
“May I ask why, Mr. Manchester?” ventured Knollis.
Manchester shuffled his feet. “It’s this way, Inspector. I mean, you do understand human nature, don’t you?”
“To some extent,” Knollis replied. “The study of human nature is part of my profession.”
“Well, that’ll help you to see my point,” Manchester said bluntly. “Some years ago, at a dance, I got a bit lit up and made love to her—or so she said next morning. She took me all wrong, and thought as I’d meant something as I didn’t say. You get me?”
“I—er—get you,” said Knollis.
“Well then, I was engaged to Milly, and Dana threatened to tell her. I managed to quieten her down, but I always have a sort of feeling as she’s never forgot. It’s the way she looks at me sometimes. . . .”
He glanced round the room, and then back at Knollis.
“She looks as if she’d like to do me in!”
“And she is at present staying with you and your wife, Mr. Manchester?”
“She is, Inspector. Her nerves went bust with murdering the same fellow on the stage every night, and she had to leave the show. Milly asked her down to re—re—”
“Recuperate?” suggested the Chief Constable.
Manchester grated his teeth together. “I knew the blasted word all right. I just couldn’t get it out. Anyway, as I was saying, Inspector, she’s been here for two months, and I’ll be glad when she packs off again.”
“And you consider that any of these three people may be capable of strangling a pet bird and cat? I do understand you correctly, Mr. Manchester?” said Knollis.
Manchester stared at Knollis with something akin to admiration showing in his eyes. “You got it all right. Yes, I reckon as I’ve got the right men to work this thing out for me.”
“Sir Giles Tanroy, Temple, and Dana Vaughan—bird and cat slaughterers,” the Chief Constable murmured. He twisted his monocle round in his eye and stared through the window. “How are the mighty fallen! Tell it not in Gath! Publish it not in the streets of Askelon!”
He suddenly turned on Manchester. “Pardon my manners, Manchester, but you are a darned fool!”
Manchester thumped the table with his fist, and
the Chief Constable swore as the ink jumped from the well.
“I know one of them three done ’em in, and they’ll do me!” Manchester shouted. “I know it, I tell you!”
The Chief Constable sighed. “Well, you may be right, and consequently we must investigate the matter.” Manchester’s right eyebrow lifted. “Now you’re talking sense, Colonel! I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if one of ’em wasn’t out to do me in, same as Milly says. There’s something in the wind—I can sniff it!”
“There seems to be a little bad odour somewhere,” the Chief Constable admitted.
“Inspector, I’m relying on you,” Manchester said grandly. “I know a good man when I see one!”
“Thank you,” said Knollis. He gave a slight bow in order to hide the smile that was creeping to his lips.
“That’s all right,” Manchester said magnanimously. “Now then; when are you coming to Baxmanhurst?” Knollis looked at his watch. It showed a few minutes to five o’clock. “Seven o’clock? Will that be convenient?”
“I could do with you a lot earlier.”
“The Inspector needs food, and a wash and a rest, after his journey from London,” the Chief Constable pointed out.
“Well, seven o’clock then, and don’t forget!” said Manchester.
He turned to Colonel Mowbray. “I’ve got Tanroy calling at my place at five o’clock. It’ll do him good to hang around a bit. I think I’ll have it out with him when I do see him!”
“Just a moment, Mr. Manchester,” interrupted Knollis. “I would prefer that you do not discuss this matter with anyone. I also suggest that you keep to the house until we arrive, and make sure that you are in the presence of at least one other person.”
Manchester’s eyes widened. “So you really think as somebody is laying for me!”
Knollis shook his head. “I merely mean that I don’t wish you to take any risks, either physically or verbally.”
Manchester turned to the Chief Constable. “He means . . . ?”
The Chief Constable smiled, the first genuine smile he had exhibited since Manchester walked into the room.
The Threefold Cord Page 2
