The Heel of Achilles: A Golden Age Mystery

by E.

  “And what did he say to that?” asked Kenway.

  “He just glared at me and turned and stamped down the path. Fair ’mazed I was. But it weren’t any business o’ mine, so I gets me bag and leaves by the front door, ’cos the back door has to be bolted from the inside. So I starts off home as I wanted to get some fish and chips as we hadn’t a thing in the ’ouse—”

  “Yes, yes,” broke in Kenway, hurriedly. “And that was the last time you saw Harker, was it, that night?”

  “Yes. O’ course I—”

  Kenway did not want to hear any more of the Skelton family life. He interrupted the coming discourse. “Was he wearing this hat?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes, o’ course he was. He always wears his hat.”

  “And he was in a flaming temper?”

  “Not ’arf he wasn’t. Funny, ’cos William he don’t go letting himself jump off like that. Good husband and father he is, and a regular chapel-goer. But he were proper gone that day, I must say.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Skelton.” Kenway moved away.

  “Welcome, I’m sure. Only too pleased.”

  “Looks like William went back, as he said he would, and did Canley in,” said Mackenzie as the men walked away together.

  “Just because Canley was carrying on with his daughter? Doesn’t seem feasible to me. Must be something more than that in it, Mac. Has he got any particular friend we could have a talk with?”

  “Well, there’s Harry Johns. He’s a friend of the family for years. I know where to find him.”

  “Then back to John we go.”

  It was from Johns that the men a few minutes later heard the full story of William Harker’s tragedy. “The daughter is going to have a baby,” Johns explained. “William has sent her away, but I don’t think he’ll be able to keep it quiet.”

  “You weren’t able to find him after Mrs. Harker had told you the story that night?”

  “No. Couldn’t find a trace of him.”

  “Do you know what time he got home?”

  “Mrs. H. told me it was after midnight.”

  “Did he say where he’d been?”

  “All she could get out of him was that he had been walking all round the place.”

  Kenway hurried his fellow inspector back to the police station. The doctor, he said, must hear the story.

  Dr. Manson, to whom Kenway had telephoned the gist of the story, hurried down to Thames Pagnall. In the police station he heard the more detailed recital. He tapped with his restless fingers on the arm of his chair, the old harbingers of anxiety, the wrinkles appeared in the corners of his eyes.

  “Who and what is this man Harker?” he asked.

  Inspector Mackenzie looked across at Sergeant Bunny. “He’s a decent sort of a chap, sir,” the sergeant explained. “Goes to the same chapel as me. He’s eddicated is Mr. Harker, and a famous preacher round the country.”

  “A preacher?”

  “Yes, a lay preacher, sir. Goes round all the local chapels and gospel halls telling of the Word. But mind you, he ain’t no ’oly Jesus,” he added—a description which struck Doctor Manson as rather quaint. He smiled slightly. “Except on Sundays he likes his pint as much as anybody,” the sergeant added.

  “Well, he seems to have been bent on exacting some sort of satisfaction from Canley,” decided Doctor Manson, “and there is no doubt that he was on the premises on that fatal night—”

  “And in such a hurry to get away that he left his hat behind”—succinctly from Inspector Mackenzie. “Not, mind you, that I think William Harker is the kind of man to go about murderin’ anybody.”

  “You’d better get hold of him, Mackenzie, and let him speak for himself.”

  It was a quarter of an hour later that he appeared. A constable knocked at the inspector’s door and opened it. “Mr. Harker,” he announced. The preacher entered.

  Inspector Mackenzie pulled a chair forward and motioned him towards it. Harker waved it away, and stood waiting. He stood tense, his lips tightened across his mouth. So far he had spoken no word.

  Doctor Manson held out the discovered hat. “Is this your property, Mr. Harker?” he asked.

  Harker spoke for the first time. “It’s mine, yes,” he admitted. “I lost it. Where did you find it?”

  “Where did you last wear it?”

  “It would be two or three days ago.”

  “Do you know where you lost it?”

  “No. I can’t think where I lost it.”

  “Where is your daughter, Mr. Harker?”

  “Elsie? What has my daughter to do with you?”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s gone to her aunt’s in Worthing.”

  “To have her child, Mr. Harker?” Doctor Manson raised a hand to stop the flow of words that were about to come from the man. “Understand Mr. Harker, that I have the utmost sympathy for you in this distressing business. I hear you well spoken of by everyone, and I know that your daughter has made a mistake in her friendship with a certain man. This is a case in which the sins of the children will be visited on the parents, which is in direct contradiction to the Biblical edict of which you will be aware.

  “But there are serious matters which we have to ask you,” he continued. “The man was, of course, Canley. Where were you on the night that Canley died, Harker?”

  “I don’t know where I was.”

  The answer reduced Inspector Mackenzie to a state of bewilderment. Doctor Manson eyed the man for a moment. “You don’t know where you were?” he asked. “Surely you must have some idea? What were you doing?”

  “I was walking under God’s skies, wrestling with my soul and my earthly passions,” said the man.

  Doctor Manson looked at him curiously. There was a certain sincerity about his speech that was impressively innocent. He uttered the statutory warning. “Mr. Harker,” he said, “there are certain questions which I as a police officer have to ask you. I have to warn you that you are not bound to reply to them, but that anything you may say in answer will be taken down and may be used in evidence. This hat which you have admitted is yours was picked up in the garden of Canley’s cottage the morning after he was found dead on the railway. What were you doing in that garden?”

  Harker looked surprised. “So that’s where I lost it,” he said. “I might ’a known, considering.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “I went to see Canley, to get justice for my child.”

  “Justice? Is that all you went to get?” asked Manson. “You did not go for, shall we say, vengeance?”

  “‘Vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord’,” said Harker. “It is not for the likes of us to interfere with the workings of the Almighty. He was a bad man, one of the worst, a blasphemer, a fornicator and living in adultery. He broke all the Commandments, and God punished him according to His Law.”

  “God didn’t,” Doctor Manson said. “Canley was murdered. Did you see him that night?”

  “I did not see the man at all.”

  “Harker.” Doctor Manson spoke quietly and seriously. “You went to that house round about seven-thirty o’clock. The woman Skelton was there. You were in what she calls a wicked temper. You left there without seeing Canley, who was not in the house. When you left you were wearing your hat. That hat was found underneath a window at the back of the house, and there were marks on the earth below the window showing that it had been trampled on. What time did you go to that house again, and what were you doing round that window?”

  “Did you stand underneath that window?” put in Inspector Mackenzie.

  The man nodded. “I went back to the house afore eight o’clock,” he admitted. “And I knocked, but there was no answer. I knew he should have been at home for his supper at that time, and I reckoned that he had seen me coming and knew what I wanted. He was lying low. I climbed on to the window of the kitchen to look into the house to see whether he was hiding from me. I saw no sign of him. That was when I fell from
the ledge and I must have lost my hat.” He paused.

  “You never entered the house?” asked Doctor Manson.

  “I did not, nor did I see Canley. I went with violence in me heart, that I admit. And then in me distress of mind, I tramped round the countryside, repenting me of me passions, and seeking the help of the Almighty in me trouble.”

  “And you did not kill Canley?”

  “Thou shalt do no murder,” quoted Harker.

  “What shoes were you wearing at that time?” asked Manson. Harker lifted up one of his feet. “These very shoes I have on, now,” he said. “I have no others except those I wear on the Lord’s Day.”

  The doctor looked at the soles of the shoes. They were rubber-heeled, and the rubber was worn thin. His face took on a graver look.

  “Very well, Harker,” he said. “You can go now. But we may want to see you again later on.”

  Inspector Mackenzie watched the door close behind him, and then turned inquiringly on the scientist. “Those shoes, with the hat, seem to clinch it, don’t they, Doctor?” he ventured, in strange contradiction to his opinion an hour ago that Harker was not the kind of man to commit murder.

  The doctor frowned. “Let me think it over carefully, Mackenzie,” he said. “I have seldom had a more baffling set of circumstances. Does Harker smoke, does anybody know?”

  Sergeant Bunny, who knew him best, denied the weed. “I’ve never seen him smoking,” he explained. “He liked his pint of beer or a drop of spirits, but he didn’t smoke, not to my knowledge.”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  The Assistant Commissioner came panting into the laboratory after a hurried climb up the staircase, the lift stopping one storey short of the penthouse attachment. He walked across to the scientist and sank down in a chair.

  “What the deuce are you up to now, Harry?” he asked. “I’m told that the village is full of suspects.”

  “I’m not so sure that it is as bad as that, Edward.” Doctor Manson smiled amiably. “But it is a fact that Kenway’s inquiries have led Mackenzie to believe that we have an embarrassment of possibles. And I think Kenway is that way inclined, also.” He looked across at the inspector.

  Kenway scratched a puzzled head. “I just don’t know what to think,” he decided.

  “Not after that last bit of reasoning of yours Kenway?” asked the A.C. “By the way, how does that stand up to your expectations?”

  “I think it would be better if Kenway told you the story of his inquiries and those of Mackenzie, Edward. It will refresh my memory and when he’s finished I’ll review them.”

  “Righto, get on with it, Kenway.” The A.C. settled down to listen. The inspector gathered his thoughts into order.

  “No, Sir Edward,” he said. “I see no grounds for altering the suggestion I made that Appleton and the woman Andover might be involved together with Appleton doing the actual deed and Mrs. Andover the clearing up. Doctor Manson seemed to think that the idea was reasonable.” He looked across at the doctor.

  “I did say so, Kenway—it is a reasonable theory. But that does not mean that I support it.”

  “But that was based, was it not, Kenway, on the fact that Mrs. Andover was away from her home all night, or until the early hours, and might have been at the cottage. How does it go if she was with another man—this person Betterton?” Merry put the pertinent question.

  “It has yet to be proved, Merry, that she was there. She said she was elsewhere when she found we knew that her first story that she had gone to her rooms and stayed there all night was not true. She would not say where she had been, only that she had been with someone not Appleton, and that the someone was not even in the same village. It is Mackenzie who suggested that the man might be Betterton.”

  “Betterton being the old gentleman who can’t leave his house?” asked the A.C.

  “Yes.”

  “And if we clear the lady, Kenway, what about Appleton alone?”

  “The one fact in that case, Sir Edward,” said Kenway, “is that Appleton was not at home all night, and can give no explanation of where he was.”

  “Or won’t give one for reasons which he thinks sufficient,” put in Merry.

  “Which is not quite the same thing,” said the Assistant Commissioner.

  Kenway digested this; but stuck doggedly to his point. “The fact remains, sir,” he said, “that Appleton was made to look a fool in front of his friends in the Miller’s Arms. He could still have gone round to Canley, and asked what the hell kind of game he was playing at. There had been passages between Mrs. Andover and Appleton, and I am quite sure that Canley knew of it, and deliberately led Mrs. Andover to assume that he was going away for the night, and then doubled back expecting to find she and Appleton together.

  “Appleton must have been aware of this—it must have been obvious to him when Canley suddenly appeared in the pub. I should say that it is the most likely thing to happen that he would go round and ask what was the game. Then there might have been a row and in a rage Appleton wiped him out. Once that was done Appleton had to safeguard himself, hence the plot to make it appear that Canley had walked out alone, as the doctor has deduced. Appleton has lived in the village all his life, knows the times of the trains, the short cut, and the loneliness of the lane.

  “And that is the case so far as Appleton is concerned?” asked the Assistant Commissioner.

  “Yes,” said Kenway.

  “And what about this man Harker?”

  “There’s a very good case against him,” said Kenway.

  “What!” ejaculated the A.C. “How many people do you want to hang?”

  Kenway smiled sheepishly. “What I am doing, sir,” he replied, “is what the doctor does—arguing the case against all the suspects.”

  “Without fear or favour,” chuckled Doctor Manson. “Go on, Kenway, it is interesting and instructive. You’ve been making the inquiries, not me.”

  “Well, then, sir, the association of Canley with the girl Elsie is only part of the case against Harker. That is bad enough for the family—the girl is having a child by Canley. But what is more important is that all Harker’s life is in ruins by the association. For twenty years or more he has been a preacher. He has inveighed against the sin of adultery and vice, and now here he is held up to public opprobrium by the fact that his own daughter is what he would call ‘taken in adultery’. That is a terrible thing for him. He cannot ever preach again—and he lived for his preaching and the social position which it gave him in the chapels. Do you know,” said Kenway seriously, “I think he regards that as superior to the fact that his daughter is disgraced.

  “The motive is enormous. His world in ruins about his ears. He is a poor man and would want, in any case, the father of his girl’s child to support her. What is more likely that he would go and see the betrayer? We know that he did go, while Mrs. Skelton was in the house; that he was in a wicked temper, and said he would come back. He was wearing his hat on that occasion, and he went away with the hat. Then next morning after Canley is dead, we find Harker’s hat in the garden. He admits he went there.”

  “How does he explain the hat?” asked the A.C., who had not, of course, heard the story from Harker himself.

  “He says that he went back to the house to see Canley, knocked and could get no answer. Feeling sure that Canley was in and had seen him coming up the path, and knowing for what purpose the visit was being paid was not answering, he climbed up on the kitchen window-ledge to look in expecting to see him. He could see no sign of occupation, and then fell from the window. That would be when his hat fell off. It was dark, and he was scared. Either he could not find the hat, or he was too frightened to look for it, or he did not realize that he had lost it.

  “The entire point of the case is that he cannot explain where he was between the time that he first went to see Canley and early next morning—which are the vital hours.”

  “How does he say that he spent the time?” asked the A.C.

  “He sa
ys he was walking round the countryside wrestling with his soul.”

  “And nobody saw him—not even the policeman on beat?”

  “Nobody, sir. His friend, Harry Johns overheard the row in the works when Harker found out about his girl. He seems to have been a bit scared of what Harker might do, and so went round to the house to calm him down. Harker was out. Mrs. Harker said she was frightened, and would he go out and find her husband. Well, Johns said he would go after him and bring him home. He didn’t. He says he could not find Harker anywhere.”

  “Did Johns go to Canley’s?” asked the Assistant Commissioner.

  “Apparently not,” replied Kenway. “Although I should have thought that was the one place to go to.”

  “What about the daughter? She seems to be the one most gravely hurt, Kenway. Could she—”

  “No, sir.” Kenway was emphatic. “The idea did, in fact, occur to me, but Elsie did not leave her room all night after the row with her father.”

  Kenway sat back.

  “And that’s all?” asked the A.C.

  “All I can say, I think, sir. These are the only suspects. I can find no evidence of any kind against any other.”

  “Then what do you say to all that, Doctor?” Sir Edward looked across at the scientist with an appraising interestedness.

  Doctor Manson sat forward in his chair, in which during Inspector Kenway’s précis of the investigation, he had been lolling back comfortably, the while he listened with what seemed a lukewarm interest, to the recital. “We will take the three people whom Kenway has mentioned in the same order that he did, Edward,” he began.

  “Mrs. Andover first then, Doctor?” said the A.C.

  “Very well. I have viewed Mrs. Andover with great suspicion,” began the doctor. “Not quite from the same angle as Kenway here—because Canley had apparently played her for a sucker. But because of the possible effect of the playing—the psychological effect. I put myself in her mind, so to speak.”