Hemingway said: ‘Go right ahead! If you can close the bolt without the blooming thing’s going off, you’re softer-handed than I am.’
‘You don’t need to touch the bolt to cock the rifle,’ said Cook. ‘I’ll lay my life White didn’t. You want to get hold of the cocking-piece, behind the bolt – this thing – and pull it gently back like this, until the nose of the sear – that’s the piece which the top end of the trigger acts on – the bit that holds the firing-block back – catches in the bent. It won’t do more than just catch, and you don’t want to jog the gun, because it only needs a touch to set it off.’
Hemingway, who had been watching Cook suit his actions to his words, drew back as Cook cautiously released the cocking-pin. ‘Jog it! I’m taking precious good care not to breathe on it. Why haven’t I got a brother in the gun-trade? The silly fellow travels in some kind of patent baby-food. A lot of use that’s ever been to me, or likely to be! You got that fixed up yet, Wake?’
Wake, who had been attaching one end of the flex to the electro-magnet, rose to his feet. ‘All set, sir. Shall I switch on?’
‘The sooner the better: the suspense is killing me,’ said Hemingway.
Wake moved across to the wall-plug, and turned the switch on it. The horseshoe magnet shot forward, towards the electromagnet, the closed end hitting the trigger, and so releasing the mainspring.
‘And that,’ said Hemingway, as the rifle clicked, ‘is that, gentlemen! I said it was a pleasure to deal with Mr Harold White!’
‘I’ll have to say it’s been a pleasure to see you deal with him, sir,’ said Wake, making amends for past scepticism. ‘I don’t mind admitting I thought you were on to a wild-goose chase this time.’
Inspector Cook got up from the floor. ‘Yes, but there’s something that’s bothering me,’ he said. ‘They’re not wired for electricity at the Dower House.’
Hemingway looked at him in pardonable annoyance. ‘I never met such a set of kill-joys! Are you sure of that?’
‘Yes, I’m quite sure. They make their own electricity at Palings, but Mrs Carter never had the Dower House wired. They use oil-lamps.’
‘Well, that has torn it!’ said Wake. ‘Surely to goodness they couldn’t have run a flex to the electro-magnet all the way from Palings!’
‘Talk sense!’ snapped Hemingway. ‘Run a flex from Palings! Yes, over the lawn, and down through the shrubbery, and across the stream, and up the other bank! I wonder if they laid it under ground, or had it fixed up on poles?’
‘Well, I said surely they couldn’t have!’ protested the Sergeant.
‘They couldn’t have, and what’s more there wasn’t any point to it, even if it had been possible. What’s the whole aim and object of firing a gun by means of a contraption like that?’
‘To provide yourself with a water-tight alibi,’ replied Wake.
‘You’re right. And what kind of an alibi had any of that Palings lot provided themselves with? Or Mr Silent Steel? Or his High and Mightiness Prince Tiddly-Push? Or young Baker? Who had the only alibi that was so good no one but me thought of trying to bust it?’
‘Yes, it does look like White,’ said Cook. ‘Don’t think it’s any pleasure to me to have to say the Dower House isn’t wired!’
‘It not only looks like White; it was White,’ said Hemingway. ‘It couldn’t have been anyone else.’
‘No, but there’s another point as well, though I dare say it doesn’t mean so much,’ said Wake. ‘How did he get the rifle in the first place?’
‘I don’t know, but if you go and ask them up at Palings, they’ll tell you anyone could have taken it.’
‘Yes, that’s what they say,’ persisted Wake, ‘but, come to think of it, it isn’t quite as easy as that to walk off with a life-size rifle under your arm. Why, even supposing you had the run of the house, would you take a chance on it? Supposing someone was looking out of one of the windows? Supposing you ran into the butler, or a gardener, or someone? Of course, as soon as you started on White, I got to thinking about him returning Mr Carter’s shot-gun in a case of his own, but that’s no use, because the rifle wouldn’t go into a shot-gun case.’
Hemingway turned his head to look at the rifle, still held in the vice. ‘If I was to find that the fair Ermyntrude was right all along, I don’t know that I could bear it,’ he said slowly. ‘Can you break a rifle?’
‘What, like you do a shot-gun?’ said Cook. ‘No, they’re made differently. You can’t break any I’ve ever handled.’
‘Well, let’s have a look at this one,’ said Hemingway. ‘Give it here, will you, Wake?’
The Sergeant loosened the vice, and handed over the rifle. Hemingway inspected it. ‘I must say it doesn’t look as though you could. What are these little eyebolts for?’
Cook peered over his shoulder. ‘They’re only to fix a sling on to, if you should want one, aren’t they?’
‘I can’t say, but I believe in trying things out,’ replied Hemingway, laying the gun on his desk, and beginning to loosen the bolts.
He removed them in a moment or two, and then, with the air of a conjurer sure of his trick, quietly lifted the barrel out of the stock. ‘As easy as falling off a gate,’ he said. ‘Now we know why he chose the Mannlicher-Schönauer instead of that classy-looking Rigby. I dare say that doesn’t come apart anything like as neatly, if at all. Measure that barrel, Wake – not that I doubt it could have got into the hambone-case.’
‘Twenty-eight inches over all,’ Wake announced, closing his foot-rule. ‘My word, the evidence is piling up, isn’t it? But we still haven’t got round the main difficulty, sir – though it looks to me as though we will, the way things are shaping.’
Hemingway gave him the rifle to fit together again, and sat down at his desk. ‘Some kind of a battery,’ he said. ‘Inside the study window, with a flex running from it to the electro-magnet.’
‘Could it? Without being noticed?’ asked Wake.
‘Yes, easy, it could,’ said Cook. ‘There’s a flower-bed running along the wall of the house, and creepers on the house, too. You’d never see the wire. He could have laid it along the bed till he got to the corner of the house, and then taken it across the bit of path lying between the house and the top-end of the shrubbery. He might have sprinkled a bit of gravel over it just there, though I shouldn’t think it would have been necessary myself. Then, all he had to do, once he’d got rid of the vice, and the electro-magnet, was to run back to the house, coiling up the wire as he went.’
Hemingway, who had not been paying much attention to this speech, suddenly said: ‘Didn’t you tell me White had got something to do with a coal-mine?’
‘That’s right,’ said Cook. ‘He’s manager of the Copley group.’
‘I thought so. What’s that thing called that they use in mines when they want to blast? Electrical thing they touch off the dynamite with?’
‘A shot-firer, do you mean?’ asked Wake. ‘But they don’t blast in coal-mines, do they?’
‘By gum, you’ve got it!’ said Cook. ‘They do do quite a bit of blasting here, because we’re remarkably free from gas, as it happens! He could have got hold of one, too, without a bit of trouble, in his position.’
‘Don’t they check up on those kinds of stores?’ asked Wake.
‘Yes, but, don’t you see? The murder was committed on a Sunday. White could have brought the shot-firer away with him on Saturday, and returned it to store on the Monday morning, and no one the wiser!’
‘Would it work?’ Hemingway demanded.
‘Yes, work a fair treat. Ever seen ’em use one? All you do is push the handle down smartly, and the next thing you know is that half the rock-face has fallen off.’
The Sergeant bent, and picked up the horseshoe magnet. ‘Funny he left this lying about for us to find,’ he said. ‘I must say, I
can’t understand him not slipping it in his pocket, so careful as he was about everything else.’
‘Yes, but it wouldn’t have been lying there like that,’ Cook pointed out. ‘You only turned the current off long after the recoil of the rifle. You’ve got to remember that White pushed down the handle of his shot-firer, and then released it. The jar of the rifle’s going off must have hurled the magnet away, once there was no strong attraction to hold it in its position.’
‘It did,’ said Hemingway. ‘I found it under some leaves, several feet from the sapling. White couldn’t risk hanging about to hunt for it. I dare say he didn’t even think it was so very necessary, either. Even if we did start hunting around, it wouldn’t convey much to us. I’m bound to say it didn’t.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Who has charge of shot-firers, and the like? A storekeeper? Know who he is, and where he lives?’
‘I can find out for you in less than no time,’ said Cook.
‘Thanks, if you’d do that, and let Wake know, he can go off and put in a bit of work interviewing the fellow,’ said Hemingway. ‘Not but what we’ve got enough on White, without that, to justify my applying for a warrant to arrest him. Still, we must tie up every end, if we can.’
Rather more than an hour later his Sergeant returned to him, in a mood of quiet triumph. ‘We’ve tied the last end, sir,’ he announced. ‘They had one of the shot-firers repaired last week, and it came back from the repair-shop last thing on Saturday morning, after the storekeeper had gone off duty. He told me Mr White was the last off the premises, and that he’d put the shot-firer away somewhere in his office. Said he was sure of that, because White was a bit late on Monday morning, and the shot-firer couldn’t be found.’
‘And then White turned up, and said it was in his office?’
‘That’s right, sir. Turned up with a biggish sort of attaché-case, went straight into his office, and brought the shot-firer out. I reckon that settles it. You ought to feel proud of the way you’ve handled this case, sir. I know I would be. Because at one time it really did seem as though there wasn’t what you’d call a good reason for suspecting anybody.’
The Inspector was secretly gratified by this tribute, but he replied with a mournful shake of his head: ‘Yes, but there’s always something to take the edge off for one. When I think about that silly widow sticking to it against all reason it was White that killed her husband, and being proved right, it quite makes me lose heart. And when I think of the way she’ll pat herself on the back—! Well, there! it doesn’t bear thinking of, and that’s all that there is to it. She’s probably telling her family how her instinct shows her it must have been White, right at this moment.’
But, as it happened, Wally’s murder was not just then paramount in Ermyntrude’s mind. Her daughter’s engagement had cast every other consideration into the background. It was, she said, the most delightful surprise of her life, and made up for everything. ‘I couldn’t have wished for better!’ she told Mary. ‘Of course, I don’t say I haven’t thought of an Earl, or at any rate a Viscount for her, but you can’t absolutely bank on getting a peer, can you, dearie? And the Derings are county: there’s no getting away from that! What’s more, he’s very nice, Hugh is, and not a bit up-stage with me, like an Earl might be. Fancy, though! I’d quite made up my mind it was you he was after! Well, I must say, you could have knocked me down with a feather! It’s to be hoped I don’t get any more shocks today, for really the excitement of this has made me feel quite exhausted!’
She was to have yet another. Shortly after dinner Dr Chester was announced, and came into the drawing-room looking rather grim.
‘Well, and what little bird can have told you the news?’ exclaimed Ermyntrude. ‘If it isn’t like you, Maurice, to be the first to come and congratulate. Well, I do think it’s sweet of you!’
‘Congratulate?’ he repeated. ‘What news are you talking about?’
‘But, Maurice! Vicky and Hugh!’ Ermyntrude said.
His brow seemed to lighten. ‘Vicky and Hugh! No, really? Yes, of course I congratulate you both, most heartily!’
Hugh, who had stayed to dine at Palings, shook hands with him. ‘Thanks. But I think you’ve got some rather different news, haven’t you?’
‘You know, then?’ Chester said.
‘No. I’ve an inkling, though, since I encountered Inspector Hemingway this afternoon.’
‘They’ve arrested White,’ Chester said.
‘Arrested White?’ Mary gasped. ‘But why? On what conceivable grounds?’
‘I don’t know. Alan rang me up to come and attend to Janet, who was in hysterics. I came straight on here, to let you know.’
‘I knew it!’ Ermyntrude said, fulfilling the Inspector’s prophecy. ‘All along I said it was that White, though not one of you would listen to me! A woman’s instinct is never wrong!’
‘Oh, how awful for Janet and Alan!’ Mary said. ‘Is there anything we can do?’
‘Not at the moment. I’ve given Janet a sedative, and told Alan not to let her get agitated. I hope—’
Ermyntrude arose suddenly from the sofa. ‘Told Alan!’ she said scornfully. ‘Yes, I see him keeping himself quiet, let alone anyone else! The idea of your leaving the poor girl with only Alan and that blowsy, good-for-nothing maid of theirs! Well, I thought you’d have more sense, Maurice, I must say! Why didn’t you bundle her into your car, and bring her straight up here, and that silly, feckless brother of hers as well, for heaven knows what he mayn’t do, left to himself !’
‘Bring them here?’ repeated Chester, for once in his life startled.
‘Where else are they to go?’ demanded Ermyntrude. ‘It seems to me you men never think of anything! Why, there’ll be reporters swarming all over the Dower House by tomorrow, if not before! Enough to drive Janet out of her mind, for she hasn’t any sense at the best of times. Vicky, love, go and ring up Johnson, and tell him to bring the big car round at once, will you?’
‘But, Ermyntrude, wait!’ said Chester. ‘Are you quite sure you know what you’re doing? The situation’s rather difficult, isn’t it? If White killed Wally—’
‘Now, don’t stand there talking far-fetched nonsense to me, Maurice!’ said Ermyntrude. ‘I never yet found any difficulty in doing my duty as a Christian, and I hope I never shall! What’s more, I’m a mother, and leave even a tiresome, chattering girl like Janet alone at such a time I tell you plainly I couldn’t reconcile it with my conscience to do! Now, that’s quite enough arguing! Mary, you’ll see to the bedrooms, won’t you, dearie?’
‘Yes, Aunt Ermy,’ said Mary, meekly following her into the hall.
Ermyntrude sailed upstairs to put on a wrap for the journey to the Dower House, but Mary was overtaken, with her hand already on the baluster-rail, by Dr Chester. He put his hand over hers, and clasped it. ‘Mary, that engagement!’
She found herself unable to meet his eyes. ‘Yes, were you surprised? I was the only person who knew it was blowing up.’
‘Mary, look at me! I thought – I could have sworn—’ He broke off, as though he did not know how to go on.
She did look up, but very fleetingly. ‘That it was going to be me?’
‘Yes,’ he said bluntly.
‘Well, so did I, at one time. Not that I had any real reason to, and as a matter of fact it wouldn’t have done at all. Hugh’s a dear, but he’s not my type, and I’m not his.’
His clasp on her hand tightened. ‘Mary, is that the truth? I thought— And he’s so much nearer you in age, that I made sure—’
‘Maurice,’ interrupted Mary, crimson-cheeked, ‘wasn’t it Aunt Ermy with you – ever?’
‘Ermyntrude? Good God, no! Mary, this isn’t the moment to ask you, but could you possibly – is there the slightest hope—’
‘Oh, Maurice, I think I must always have— Oh, look out, here she is!’
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‘And a nice hot-water bottle in Janet’s bed, Mary dear, don’t forget!’ said Ermyntrude, coming downstairs again. ‘I always say there’s nothing like a hot-water bottle for real comfort when you’re in trouble.’
About the Author
Georgette Heyer wrote over fifty books, including Regency romances, mysteries, and historical fiction. Her barrister husband, Ronald Rougier, provided many of the plots for her detective novels, which are classic English country house mysteries reminiscent of Agatha Christie. Heyer was legendary for her research, historical accuracy, and her inventive plots and sparkling characterization.
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