“No, I wouldn't. Whatever it was that Warrenby found out—if that was the motive for his murder—you can bet your life it was something no one else knew anything about. That's obvious.”
“You're thinking Warrenby may have tried to blackmail him? That wasn't what was in my head, sir. To my mind, it was more likely he did Plenmeller some sort of an injury—because Plenmeller's the type of man who might easily kill out of sheer, wicked revenge. Only I haven't discovered a trace of anything like that. What's more, I put it to you, Chief, would he have gone round telling people he must take steps to get rid of Warrenby if he'd meant to shoot him? That's the last thing a murderer does!”
“Yes, my lad,” said Hemingway, in a dry voice. “And that's something he knows quite as well as you do. If he's the man I'm looking for, then I freely hand it to him! He's been remarkably clever. The killing wasn't done in some highly ingenious way that might have made us pay particular attention to a man who spends his life writing detective problems; he didn't try to fake an alibi for himself; he's told me and everyone else that he hated Warrenby's guts; and he's even told us all that he's quite capable of murdering someone—which I never doubted. He's even managed to stay as cool as a cucumber throughout, which isn't usual. That's probably because he's got a very good opinion of himself, and thinks he's far too clever for me to catch up with.”
“You don't think he could have done it just because he did hate Warrenby, do you?” asked the Inspector.
“No, I don't. Hating Warrenby was a lot more likely to make him think up ways of getting under his skin. Which I've a strong notion he did do. Warrenby wouldn't like that. We know what happened when he got a snub from Lindale. I'll bet he had worse to put up with from Plenmeller!”
“Now, wait a bit, Chief!” protested the Inspector. “If Warrenby was blackmailing him, he wouldn't have dared get under his skin!”
Hemingway shook his head. “I don't think it was ordinary blackmail. He hadn't anything Warrenby could want any more than Lindale had. But we know from what his clerk told us that Warrenby liked to find things out about people. He said you never knew when it might come in handy—and in the meantime it gave him a nice feeling of power. I should say he didn't really mean to let on to Lindale he knew what his secret was: he lost his temper, and out it came. Well, now, supposing he did know something to Plenmeller's discredit? Do you imagine he'd put up with Plenmeller being rude to him, shoving spokes in his wheel, and running him down to all and sundry if he could bring him to heel just by telling him that he knew what his secret was? If you ask me, Horace, he'd have thoroughly enjoyed lowering Plenmeller's crest! Anyone would, for that matter! Only that's where he slipped up: Plenmeller isn't the type it's safe to blackmail.”
“That may be,” agreed Harbottle, “but I'd also say he isn't the type you could blackmail easily! I mean, from the way he talks you'd think the chances are he'd be more likely to boast of having done something wrong than to try to keep it dark! Well, I ask you, sir. Look at the brazen way he told us he'd driven his brother to his death!”
“As a matter of fact,” said Hemingway slowly, “I was thinking of that. All things considered, I believe I'll take a look at that case. Did you read the whole of it?”
“The inquest on Walter Plenmeller? I haven't read any of it—barring the letter he left.”
Hemingway looked at him with a gathering frown. “What, didn't you even glance over the report? What made you pick the letter out?”
The Inspector blinked. “That's all there was. I found it in one of the tin boxes. I haven't been through any of the Coroner's records.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” said Hemingway, “that Warrenby had taken that letter out of the proper file, and put it amongst his own papers?”
“Yes, I suppose he must have, sir. I don't really know what they do with the reports on inquests. As Warrenby was the Coroner, I didn't make much of it, except to wonder whether he wanted that letter to taunt Plenmeller with, perhaps.”
“Next time you find a document like that where it has no business to be perhaps you'll be so good as to tell me!” said Hemingway wrathfully. “I thought you'd been running through that case!” He pulled open a drawer in the desk, and turned over the papers it contained.
A good deal chagrined, the Inspector said: “I'm sorry, sir. But there was nothing to the case! I had a talk with Carsethorn about it, and it was a straight case of suicide all right.”
Hemingway had found the letter, and was re-reading it. “Then what made Warrenby take this letter out of the record? Don't talk nonsense to me about wanting to taunt Plenmeller with it! Much he'd have cared! It must already have been read aloud in court!”
“After what Coupland said to us, sir, I only thought it was rather typical of the man to want to get his hands on something to Plenmeller's disadvantage. Which, to my way of thinking, it is, because it shows him up to be a heartless sort of man, deliberately getting on his brother's nerves. But I'm sure I'm very sorry.”
“All right. I ought to have asked you where you found it. Get me that file! If the office is shut, find out where Coupland lives, and—”
“You needn't worry, sir: I'll get it,” interrupted the Inspector, his back very rigid.
“And find out if the Chief Constable's in the building! If he is, I'd like a word with him, at his convenience.”
A few minutes later, he was informed by the Sergeant on duty that Colonel Scales had come in a little while earlier, to do some business with the Superintendent, and had left a message in the charge-room that he would like to see the Chief Inspector before he left the police-station. “He says, would you go right in, sir?”
Colonel Scales was just nodding dismissal to a very stout Superintendent when Hemingway went to his room, and he said: “Come in, and sit down, Hemingway! Glad to hear you want to see me: I hope it means you've got something?”
“Yes, I have, sir,” responded Hemingway. “Several things. I've sent one of them round to your Dr. Rotherhope by one of my chaps, and I hope he'll be able to let me have a report on it tonight. He told me he'd got a small laboratory, so I don't think I shall have to send it all the way to Nottingham to be analysed.”
“What is it?”
“I can't tell you that, sir: I only know what I hope it may be. It's quite a long story.”
“Then have a cigarette, or light your pipe, and tell it to me!” invited the Colonel. “Nothing more you wanted to say to me, is there, Mitcham?”
“No, sir,” replied the stout Superintendent regretfully, and withdrew.
“Now!” said the Colonel.
“Well, sir, putting it baldly, Sampson Warrenby wasn't shot at 7.15; and in all probability he wasn't shot with a rifle.”
“Good God! How do you arrive at that?”
Hemingway told him. He listened in attentive silence, surprise in his face, and a good deal of respect, but when Hemingway reached the end of his story, and said, with a rueful smile: “I missed a lot of points on this case, and I don't deny it,” he gave a gasp, and exclaimed: “Did you, indeed? You must set yourself a pretty high standard! But this alters the whole case! If the murder was committed between 6.00 and 6.30 you've narrowed the field considerably.”
“Unless it was committed by someone we know nothing about, which I don't think, sir, it's narrowed to four people, only two of whom seem at all likely. Those unaccounted for at that time are the Vicar, Mr. Haswell, young Ladislas, and Gavin Plenmeller. If the Vicar got hold of a gun on the side, and shot Warrenby, or anyone else, with it, I'm resigning before I get kicked out. I can't form an opinion about Mr. Haswell, because he's not one who gives away much, but I don't at all fancy him, for various reasons—the principal one being that I haven't discovered even a hint of a motive for his having wanted to put Warrenby away.”
“I'm pretty confident you won't,” said the Colonel. “I've known him for years—in point of fact, he's a friend of mine—and although a thing like that mustn't be allowed to weigh with either of u
s, it does enable me to say that if he murdered Warrenby I've been deceived in his character ever since I first knew him!”
“That's all right, sir: he's not my fancy by any means. Which leaves us with Ladislas, and Plenmeller. And of those two I prefer Plenmeller.”
“The Pole—Ladislas, as you call him—has a definite motive,” the Colonel pointed out. “Plenmeller, I agree, is perhaps the more likely of the two to have thought out and executed such a careful murder, but he seems to have had no motive at all.”
“I wouldn't be too sure of that, sir. It's what I particularly wanted to talk to you about. One thing he had which, so far as we know, no one else had, and that's an automatic pistol of the calibre we're looking for. It's listed amongst his brother's guns, and it wasn't in his gun-cabinet when I went to his house. Of course, there's no saying what kind of an armoury Ladislas may have, but I never yet heard that a .22 pistol was issued by any army, English or foreign. And if it wasn't a leftover from the War, I don't know how he could have come by it, for, unless I'm very much mistaken, he's not a member of the underworld, and he wouldn't have the ghost of a notion how to get hold of an illicit gun. So that leaves Gavin Plenmeller, and it's about him I want to consult you, sir.”
“I can't tell you a thing,” the Colonel said. “I don't like the fellow; I agree that he'd be capable of planning such a murder; but I know of no reason why he should have done it—unless you think the thrillers he writes have gone to his head, and he wanted to prove he could baffle the police!”
“No, I don't think that, sir—though I don't doubt he thinks he can baffle us. I've got a strong suspicion it's the old story of a man getting away with one murder, and believing that because he's fooled the police once he can do it again.”
The Colonel sat up with a jerk. “What? Good God, are you suggesting—?”
“I want to know just what happened when Walter Plenmeller was supposed to have committed suicide,” said Hemingway.
For perhaps half a minute the Colonel sat staring at him, an expression of mingled incredulity and dismay in his face. Then he said, rather explosively: “Have you any reason for making such a suggestion?”
“Yes, sir, that!” said Hemingway, laying Walter Plenmeller's letter on the desk. “It was found amongst Warrenby's papers—and I should like to know why he took it out of the file, and kept it locked up in a tin-box.”
“Took it out of the file? But that is the most irregular— Good heavens!”
“Highly irregular,” agreed Hemingway. “It's safe to assume he had a good reason for doing it. I'm bound to say I don't see what it was, but I've got a hunch that letter contains the clue I'm looking for.”
The Colonel had picked the letter up, and was reading it. “I remember it well,” he said. “I hold no brief for Gavin, but in my opinion this is a damnable letter to have written! I thought so at the time. In fact, I was extraordinarily sorry for Gavin.”
“It seems to show that his brother hated him pretty bitterly, and I suppose he wouldn't have done that without cause.”
“That's nonsense!” the Colonel said. “Walter didn't hate him at all! What you've got to understand is that Walter was always an uncertain-tempered man, and after he got shot up in the War he used to fly off the handle at the smallest provocation. How much he actually suffered I don't know, and I doubt if anyone did, but he was a real case of nerves shot to pieces. He certainly used to get appalling migraines, and he was always complaining of insomnia. The London specialist he went to prescribed tablets for that. It was established that he took one on the night of his death.”
“He didn't by any chance take a lethal dose?”
“No. Apart from what the post-mortem revealed, the housekeeper—she's there still, by the way—testified that when she dusted his room the morning before, she noticed that only one tablet was left in the bottle he kept on the bedside-table. Another bottle, unopened, was found in his medicine-chest.”
There was a very alert look in the Chief Inspector's face. “So that although he had the means to his hand to commit suicide in the easiest and most pleasant way possible, he chose to gas himself? That seems to me quite an interesting point, sir, if you don't mind my saying so.”
“You mean it's a point we should have gone into.”
“I wouldn't go so far as to say that, but it does rather strike one, doesn't it?” said Hemingway apologetically.
“It didn't. And in justice to Inspector Thropton, who was in charge of the case, I must say that there was no reason why it should have. It's quite possible that Walter didn't know what the lethal dose was, or what its immediate effect might be. I don't think it's surprising that he should have preferred to take his usual dose, to send him to sleep, and turned on the gas. Surely that was as pleasant a way of killing himself as any other?”
“I should think it would be,” agreed Hemingway, “if the tablet sent him to sleep in a matter of a minute or so. But if it was like any sleeping-draught I ever heard of, and took about half an hour to act—well, then I don't think it was such a pleasant way of dying. And, what's more, I don't see what he took it for at all.”
The Colonel laid his pipe down. “Damn you, Hemingway!” he said, with an uncertain laugh. “You're beginning to make me feel uncomfortable! I suppose we ought to have considered that—but there didn't seem to be the smallest reason to suspect that there had been foul play! It's true that Gavin was his half-brother's heir, but Plenmeller wasn't a rich man! There's the house, and what's left of the estate, but I can tell you with certainty that Plenmeller found it hard to make both ends meet. Would Gavin have murdered his brother just to possess himself of a dwindling income, and a house he can't afford to run as it should be run?”
“Well, sir, I take it that would depend on what the state of his own finances were,” said Hemingway. “Judging by that letter, they weren't any too healthy. "You only want to come here for what you can get out of me," seems to show that he was trying to get money out of Walter. Did anything come out about that at the inquest?”
“No. I don't think anything much was said about it. It was so obvious—it seemed so obvious that things had got to be too much for Walter. It wasn't as though he'd never had such an idea, you know. He'd often said that he was tempted to put an end to himself. No one thought he meant it—it sounds an unkind thing to say, but he was so wrapped up in his ailments that he was sometimes quite maudlin about himself, and damned boring, too!—but it turned out that he had meant it. Or so we believed.”
“Yes, I see, sir. But you said a minute or two ago that he didn't hate his brother. This letter looks to me as though he did.”
“Yes, but you didn't know him,” the Colonel said. “To me, this reads like Walter in one of his rages—Dr. Warcop called 'em nerve-storms. I can't tell you the number of flaming rows he had with people. He flew out at me once, in the Club, over something quite trivial. I didn't pay any heed, and it soon blew over. He was like that with Gavin, but I'm quite sure that he was fond of him, in his way. He was a good bit older, you know, and in the days before his own health was wrecked he was always very sorry for Gavin. He was proud of him, too. Used to talk a lot about his books, and how clever he was. There was nothing he liked better than hearing Gavin scoring off people. Only, of course, sooner or later, Gavin would score off him, and then the fat was in the fire again. It's fair to say that no one could amuse him more or infuriate him more. I can't tell you the number of times he's sworn he'd never have Gavin to his house again, and blackguarded him to anyone he could get to listen to his grievances. But it always ended in smoke. As soon as he'd cooled off, he used to start missing him, I think. You can imagine that he hadn't many real friends. People naturally shied off, and it's my belief he was lonely. Anyway, I can assure you that this sort of wild diatribe—” he flicked the letter with one finger—”didn't make much impression on those of us who'd known for years just how much his furies were worth. Why, it can't have been more than three weeks before he died that he had some sort of
a row with Gavin, and bored everyone in the smoking-room one afternoon by talking in exactly the style of this letter, and swearing that this time he meant what he said, and that he wasn't going to see Gavin again, much less allow him to come down to Thornden House. Well, I can only tell you that about three days before his death he was here in Bellingham, to meet Gavin at the station, and to take him out to Thornden in a hired car, and as pleased as possible about it!”
“That's interesting,” said Hemingway. “And what did Gavin do, in three days, to drive his brother into committing suicide?”
“It does sound extraordinary, of course,” the Colonel admitted. “Dr. Warcop—yes, I know what you feel about him, but, after all, he was Walter's medical attendant, and he must have known a good deal about him!—Dr. Warcop, as I say, considered that the balance of his mind was disturbed at the time. How much Gavin may have had to do with that, no one can tell. He certainly thought that Walter exaggerated his ailments, and the letter Walter wrote indicates clearly that he didn't scruple to say so. He himself said at the inquest that Walter had complained of migraine on that last day. He described him as "more than ordinarily on edge". I remember that he was asked if there had been any quarrel between them, and he replied quite frankly that he had become so impatient with his brother for indulging in what he called "querulous self-pity", that he had spoken his mind on the subject. Dr. Warcop's opinion, which he expressed privately to me, was that this might well have been enough, in the mood Walter was then in, to have pushed him right over the edge. You can say, morally speaking, that Gavin was at least partly responsible for his brother's death. There's no doubt he behaved quite heartlessly to him. Whether he hoped to goad him into committing suicide is a question which, thank God, lay beyond our province! In fairness to him, I should tell you, perhaps, that his subsequent conduct was meticulously correct.”
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