‘You may think this an odd request,’ Pollard said, ‘but may we take a look at your car?’
Michael Jay stared at him in astonishment.
‘By all means,’ he said. ‘Come outside.’
As at St Julitta’s, a parking space near the front door had been reserved for cars belonging to the staff. In it were a dark blue Hillman, a shabby estate car, and a scarlet mini. There was also a sizeable gap.
‘This one’s mine,’ Michael Jay said, going up to the Hillman. ‘Shall I run her out for you?’
‘Please,’ Pollard replied. ‘Is this how the staff cars were parked at the school?’
‘More or less. The mini belongs to the girl who’s the equivalent of Geoff in this area. And the Kings’ dormobile was parked round at the back, as they were sleeping in it. They prefer to, if any privacy’s available.’
He reversed the Hillman clear of the adjacent cars, and got out Pollard and Toye scrutinized the coachwork of the off side, finally concentrating on an area over the rear mudguard with a lens.
‘This small scrape here is recent,’ Pollard said, as they straightened up, ‘Any idea when and where you got it?’
‘Not within a day or two,’ Michael Jay replied, looking baffled. ‘I first spotted it last Monday, when I filled up with petrol for the run up here from Cornwall. I didn’t have the car out last Sunday, and had driven down there from Kittitoe on the Saturday, as you know.’
‘Was the car standing out while you were in Cornwall?’
‘No. They gave me a lock-up.’
Pollard considered.
‘Did you have the car out for the expedition on Friday?’
‘No. I went over to Starbury in Geoff Boothby’s car. The Kings and Miss Crump travelled with the coach parties. The last time I had mine out at Kittitoe was on the Friday morning. I ran into Winnage for various oddments, and took in petrol for Cornwall. I’m pretty sure I hadn’t been biffed then. I can remember walking round the car at the petrol station, and taking a look at the tyres, and I’m fairly observant. I suppose one mustn’t ask what all this is in aid of?’
‘Tell you shortly,’ Pollard replied. ‘Just a few more points. How exactly were the staff cars at the front of the school parked? I mean which way on, and in what order?’ Michael Jay screwed up his eyes in an attempt to visualize. ‘All three nose to wall, always. Susan Crump next to the front door, Geoff next to the library, and mine in the middle, as I’m the most careful driver, and it was a tight fit.’
Pollard rested his arms on the roof of the Hillman, and looked across it at its owner.
‘What I’m leading up to is this,’ he said. ‘Mr Boothby states that after coming out of the front door at the end of the film show, he had difficulty in backing out his car. Somebody had parked an Austin 1100 outside the library bay, slightly overlapping him. He had a couple of shots, in the second of which he says he just touched your car. He then abandoned the attempt, and finally managed to force one of the Austin’s windows which was open a little, and get the brake off.’
Michael Jay stared at him.
‘But surely this is frightfully important,’ he exclaimed. ‘I mean, if he was seen coming away from Horner’s place at a quarter past ten, and was held up over getting away from the school, surely he’s in the clear on the time score? I can swear that the films weren’t over until ten to ten.’
‘I’m afraid it’s not conclusive. It could be argued that he noticed the scrape when loading up his own car to leave on Saturday morning, and saw how he could turn it to account. Then there’s also the possibility of his having paid an earlier visit to the bungalow, during the film show. So far no one has witnessed to his being present. Going back to the forcing of the Austin’s window, we think that forcing it would have left traces of damage, and want to contact its owner. Can you remember who owned a car of that type on the Kittitoe Fortnight?’
Michael Jay groaned, and clutched at his thick black hair.
‘Hell, I just can’t! Not offhand, anyway. When you’re constantly coping with fresh batches of people, the last lot just falls out of your mind. Perhaps one of the others might remember … here come the Kings, anyway.’
A green dormobile had turned into the drive, and was being edged into its allotted space. Pollard gazed at it, momentarily distracted by thoughts of family holidays when the twins were a year or two older … it would be a real money saver…
He pulled himself together as a man and a woman scrambled out, wearing jeans and windcheaters, and with cameras and binoculars slung round their necks. They looked anxiously towards Michael Jay and himself, and were introduced as Paul and Janice King.
‘Hope we haven’t held things up,’ the man said. ‘We’ve left the pack down on the estuary, Mike, and told ’em to make their own way back.’
‘Help me shove the bus back,’ Michael Jay said, ‘and we’ll go along to the office.’
Pollard took stock. Paul King, with pale sandy hair and rather sharp features, had vitality and intelligence, he thought, but looked temperamental. Janice King he put down as a hardboiled but competent little piece. Back in the office he sensed a change of atmosphere. It was as though the three Horner staff had drawn together, and his official status was more in evidence. Involuntarily he became more formal.
‘For the benefit of Mr and Mrs King,’ he said, ‘I will restate the purpose of our visit here. Certain facts about Wendy Shaw’s murder are now definitely known to us. She was alive and acting perfectly normally at eight o’clock. At about a quarter past ten there was no answer to a telephone call to the bungalow. At eleven-forty, when Mr Horner, his daughter and son-in-law returned, she was nowhere to be found. From these facts it seems reasonable to deduce that by about ten-fifteen she was either already murdered, or had left the bungalow with her killer. We also know,’ he went on, conscious of the three pairs of eyes fixed upon him, ‘that various people were in the vicinity of Uncharted Seas after eight o’clock on that evening. One of these, Mr Geoffrey Boothby, admits that he drove there after your film show at St Julitta’s.’
‘Geoff!’ Paul King exclaimed incredulously.
‘He would land himself up to the neck in something like this,’ Janice King commented, with a slight edge of contempt on her voice. ‘Poor old Geoff! Too utterly fantastic!’
‘We know when Mr Boothby left the bungalow,’ Pollard resumed. ‘What we are trying to establish is at what time he arrived there. Mr Jay did not see him leave the school premises. Did either of you?’
He looked enquiringly from husband to wife. Paul King, scowling deeply, slowly rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I can’t remember seeing a sign of him after dinner. To begin with I was editing film in the lab I was using as a dark room, and didn’t emerge with the finished product until about twenty to nine. I didn’t notice him in the audience, or going out of the show at the end. I went along to a sort of farewell do in the common rooms afterwards, and they’re nowhere near the front entrance.’
‘What about you, Mrs King?’ Pollard asked.
She gave a faintly provocative shrug.
‘Honestly, I don’t think I’d have noticed my own Mum around that evening,’ she told him. ‘We were late back from the expedition, and people had got a bit wet, and the fusspots were certain they’d develop pneumonia. Then I had to cope with the projector and what-have-you, as Paul was still editing the blasted Fortnight film. You see, he —’
‘Perhaps Mr King would tell us about this himself,’ Pollard interrupted her, politely but firmly.
‘Entirely my own fault,’ Paul King said irritably. ‘I ought to have done the processing of the last film on the Thursday night, and the bulk of the editing on Friday morning, before we started for Starbury Bay. As it was, I was asked to join a party at the pub after dinner, and left the processing till Friday morning, banking on having ample time to edit the thing, and integrate it with the film as a whole after we got back from Starbury. The result was th
at I couldn’t get the job done by dinner time, and we had to put on a short film to keep people amused until I was ready.’
‘I see,’ said Pollard. ‘Do I take it, then, that neither of you noticed Mr Boothby during the show itself, or going off afterwards, or, for that matter, coming in later?’
Both the Kings shook their heads.
‘He certainly wasn’t in the common rooms,’ Janice said. ‘Of course, he isn’t the matey type, and apt to slope off on purely social occasions, isn’t he, Mike?’
Michael Jay, looking worried and unhappy, agreed. ‘First-rate on the work side of a Fortnight, but not much help over the get-togethers,’ he added rather absently.
From further questioning Pollard established that the Kings had gone off to bed themselves when the parties first showed signs of breaking up, at about a quarter to eleven, and had not needed to pass through the entrance hall to go out to their dormobile.
‘My God, this is simply awful,’ Michael Jay burst out suddenly. ‘Obviously the idea of Geoff having killed anybody is simply ludicrous, yet none of us can produce the simple bits of information that would remove him from the picture altogether. Somebody simply must have seen him around. Damn it, there were about ninety people milling about.’
‘If it proves necessary,’ Pollard said calmly, ‘we shall question every one of them. By the way, were any outsiders invited to the festivities on the last evening?’
‘I managed to ring Andrew Medlicott when we decided to put on the short bird film,’ Janice said. ‘He came along, but I don’t know of anyone else, do you?’
She looked at Michael Jay and her husband, both of whom replied in the negative.
‘Did Mr Medlicott stay on for refreshments in the common rooms?’ Pollard asked.
‘Oh, no. He’s a poppet, but as shy as they come. Paul and I only got to know him because he’s taken up bird watching.’
The sound of tramping feet and loud conversation came from the corridor.
‘That’s Susan’s lecture finishing,’ Michael Jay said, getting up and going to the door. ‘Here she comes.’
As he spoke, a stocky figure in slacks and a crumpled cotton top appeared on the threshold.
‘These the sleuths?’ she demanded, indicating Pollard and Toye.
‘Come in, and meet Superintendent Pollard and Inspector Toye of Scotland Yard,’ Michael Jay said. ‘Miss Susan Crump, gentlemen. And I hope to God she’ll be a bit more help than the rest of us have been,’ he added heavily.
Susan Crump stared at him. ‘For heaven’s sake, Mike! What goes on?’
‘At the moment, Miss Crump,’ Pollard told her, ‘we’re anxious to find out if Mr Boothby was present at the film show on the last Friday of the Kittitoe Fortnight, and at what time he drove away from the school to go and see Wendy Shaw at Uncharted Seas, as he admits to have done.’
‘Geoff?’ she exclaimed, thrusting a straggling lock of greying hair out of her eyes. ‘Bonkers! If you’re hounding Geoff Boothby, you’re wasting your time, let me tell you, not to mention the taxpayers’ money. I haven’t the remotest idea when he went out — I was down at the assembly hall end of the place after the show. But he was in the show all right, the whole time. He was sitting with that schoolmaster chap from Essex who brought two of his boys to the Fortnight. Yates, wasn’t he called? They were a couple of rows in front of me.’
There was a brief tense silence, broken by her three colleagues all speaking at once.
When Susan Crump and the Kings had gone, Michael Jay looked across the table at Pollard.
‘I’ve remembered the name of that couple who owned the Austin 1100,’ he said. ‘Gedge, they were called. And I’m almost sure they were Londoners. Head Office will have their address, of course.’
‘You’re discreet, Mr Jay,’ Pollard remarked approvingly. ‘Most people would have shouted it out the moment it came into their heads.’
‘I kept my mouth shut on principle, may I say? There was no particular significance about it.’
‘I take your point,’ Pollard told him. ‘Got that list of cars and their owners that Mrs Makepeace gave us, Toye?’
Toye had already extracted it from the file, and passed it over.
‘Here we are,’ Pollard said, running his eye down the typewritten sheet. ‘Streatham … telephone number and all. Good for the Horner organization. We’re grateful, Mr Jay. This is going to save valuable time. And now we’ll remove ourselves, and ring these people from the local station.’
As he escorted them to their car, Michael Jay expressed the hope that Mrs Makepeace would be able to get away from Kittitoe as soon as possible.
‘Quite apart from all the work she did for the Fortnight, this business has been pretty grim for her,’ he said, ‘especially having been the means of the body being found.’
Pollard assured him that Mrs Makepeace had already been told that as far as the police were concerned, there was nothing to detain her at the school.
‘The romance you’re sponsoring seems to be going ahead all right,’ he remarked to Toye, as they drove off.
‘They’d match up nicely, I’d say,’ Toye allowed.
At the Crowncliff police station they ran into the familiar hold-up of getting no reply to their telephone call, and a second attempt after a hasty lunch was also unsuccessful. Pollard then rang the Yard, asking for the Gedges to be located at the earliest possible moment, adding that he was just about to start back to Stoneham, and could be contacted there.
On the way they discussed the information gathered at Crowncliff. On the credit side it could now be accepted that Geoff Boothby had not paid an earlier visit to the bungalow during the film show. If the delay he claimed to have had in setting off for Uncharted Seas afterwards could also be established, he could be crossed off the list of suspects. In this connection both men agreed that, in itself, the damage to Michael Jay’s car was inconclusive as evidence, but it would reinforce the significance of a damaged window in the Gedges’ Austin.
The unexpected presence of Andrew Medlicott at the entertainment was rather interesting.
‘Where do you suppose the chap was between 9.50 pm, and the time that couple driving home from Biddle Bay saw him coming out of one or t’other of the drive gates?’ Toye asked.
‘God knows,’ Pollard replied. He relapsed into a lengthy silence, his thoughts revolving round the rather enigmatic figure of the bursar. It occurred to him again that inadequate knowledge of the school building was being a handicap, making it difficult to visualize the numerous comings and goings on the night of the murder. Another visit to St Julitta’s was indicated…
Depression began to envelop him. Suppose Boothby were cleared, and Andrew Medlicott able to prove that he’d put in an hour and a half over accounts in his office? One would be left with Hugh Stubbs and his obsessions, and that bull at a gate, Glover… It was human personality that made investigation so hellishly complicated … people’s fears, so often irrational, and the infinite variety of outlets found by their innate aggressiveness … even more, the fact that the great majority were genuinely unconscious of what made them tick…
‘The real murderer of Wendy Shaw is that pathetic bloody mother of hers,’ he suddenly said aloud.
Toye looked startled. Then, in his careful conscientious way, he mulled over this proposition.
‘I get you, sir,’ he said, after so long an interval that Pollard’s mind had moved on to another topic.
On arriving at Stoneham in mid-afternoon, they learnt that prompt action by the Yard had produced only a negative result. The Gedges’ house in Streatham was shut up, and the neighbour in charge of the key reported that they were touring Cornwall, and not expected back until the weekend. She did not know on which day.
‘Too vague,’ Pollard said. ‘We’ll get a police message on the air this evening.’
While this was being dealt with, he came to a decision.
‘Look here,’ he said to Toye, ‘I want you to hang on here tonight. The
Gedges or some local station may ring in. If so, get the Gedges along here with their car, or along to me if more convenient for them. I’ll go on down, and put up with my aunt — here’s her phone number. She’s a local, and a governor of the school, and I want to see what I can pick up about the Stubbs-Glover-Medlicott bunch, to get some sort of a starting point on each of them. I know we’ve had a certain amount from Pike, but I feel I’d like a bit more. There’s not much my revered aunt misses. Ring me first thing tomorrow about our next move. OK?’
Toye, who enjoyed a little scope for independent action, concurred.
‘Right, then,’ Pollard said. ‘I’ll ring her straight away.’
He got through without difficulty.
‘Tom here, Aunt Is,’ he told her. ‘Speaking from Stoneham, and taking you up on your offer. Can I have a bed tonight? No, only me. Inspector Toye’s staying up here. I’ll eat on the way down, of course.’
‘You’ll do nothing of the sort,’ Miss Isabel Dennis’s voice came crisply over the line. ‘There’ll be a proper meal waiting for you here.’
‘Short notice, isn’t it?’
‘Aha! I’ve changed the car for a mini.’
‘Changed the car for a mini?’ he echoed.
‘To make room in the garage for a deep freeze, my lad.’
10.
Why faintest thou?
Matthew Arnold. Thyrsis.
Suddenly a long melancholy bellow rose and fell, hanging in the air as if reluctant to die away.
‘Sorry you’ve come in for this,’ Isabel Dennis remarked. ‘One soon gets used to it, though. There’s been a fog bank out at sea all day. It’s moving in now — look.’
No Vacation From Murder Page 12
