“You won’t find any of mine,” I said. “I’ve had these gloves on all the time.”
He gave me a look that was interested, to say the least of it. Then he gave Hope a look. I suppose I didn’t look any too ornate that morning, even if I was well washed behind the ears. I dress for comfort, not effect, and of the three pairs of grey flannel trousers in the room, mine were the baggiest. As for my old tweed coat, Bernice threatened years ago to change it for a flag or balloon.
“You always wear gloves when you’re out?” Galley asked me.
I thought I’d get friendly. “Not very often,” I said. “They’re useful though, when I’m doing a burglary job.” He gave Hope another quick look. “So you do a bit of burglary occasionally?”
“One must live,” I said, but he still didn’t see the joke. “Well, we’ve only your word that you didn’t take the gloves off,” he said. “You’d better let us take your prints.” Hope took them and then Galley questioned me again. “You said you lived at a house called Ringlands.’”
“Not ‘lived’,” I pointed out. “I’m staying there with my sister. I arrived last night.”
“From where?”
“London.”
“You knew you were coming to an area? What about a permit?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t got one,” I said.
His eyebrows lifted. “But you know the regulations?”
“If I didn’t,” I said, “it was my business to make myself acquainted with them.”
“There we are then,” he said. “I’m afraid I shall have to report it to the Chief. It’ll be for him to decide. Have a look round this room now, Bill, and see what you can see.” I sat in the unscented armchair and watched the routine I’d watched a hundred times—chalk marks round the body, copious notes in notebooks, this and that gingerly touched with gloved fingers and an occasional puff of powder at a possible print. And Galley was a good enough man at the job, even if he was spreading himself for my benefit. He found two hairs on the chair and left them where they were, and he noticed the two kinds of cigarettes and the lipstick marks, and he had Hope try the ash-tray for prints, and from the way it was afterwards put aside I gathered they’d found something on it.
Steps on the front path announced the arrival of the doctor. He was a dug-out, for the regular police surgeon was in the Army, but he certainly knew his job. It was his opinion that the gun was small calibred and the shot fired from fairly close. Time of death he gave as roughly between 5.30 and 6.30 that morning, and Galley didn’t ask him how he knew.
Galley and Hope went through the dead man’s pockets, and while they made an inventory the doctor got into conversation with me. He had practised in Porthaven for forty years before his retirement, but had never attended Maddon. Ringlands he knew well enough and had met Helen, but as we were talking quietly, Galley didn’t gather a more favourable impression of myself. Then the telephone suddenly went and Galley took the call. I heard little except, “Very good,” and “Right-ho,” and the final, “Good-bye.”
“A bit of luck, doc.,” he announced. “The Chief was at Bycliffe and he thought if there was nothing doing he’d push on to Hastings to see somebody, so he rang the office on spec., and they told him about this.”
“Did he take his car or his bike?” asked Hope.
“His car, I think,” Galley told him. “What should he take his bike for?”
“Well, he won’t be here for a bit,” Hope said, and then looked over at the doctor. “Someone must have kept this place clean, the way it looks everywhere. Suppose you don’t know, sir, if he had anybody in?”
“I believe he had young Mrs. Beaney, just along the road,” the doctor said. “It won’t do any harm to ask.”
“Slip along and fetch her, Bill,” Galley said, as if the idea had been his own. “You needn’t tell her too much so long as she comes.”
Out went Hope, and Galley took off the receiver. I’d expected an ironic twist or two as I’ve told you, but I didn’t anticipate what was going to happen.
“About that woman calling herself Smith who rang you up,” Galley was saying. “What sort of a voice had she? . . . You know what I mean. Was she a lady, or what?”
“I see,” he went on. “Tell me this then. Did she strike you as anyone who’d make themselves up? . . . Yes, paint and powder and all that, and lipstick and a cigarette smoker. . . . You can’t say!”
He heaved an exasperated sigh, then his voice had a sudden urgency.
“I say; there may have been some truth in that yarn about her sick aunt. Have the bus from Cleavesham met and question the conductor. . . . I know it may be too late, but we’ve got to take a chance.”
He hung up and then gave me a look, and I didn’t know why. But I met it unblushingly. And then one of those queer silences fell on the room. The doctor sheered off and stood looking out of the window, and Galley was idly moving the papers on the desk. I sat contemplating the mess into which my cussedness had landed me and wondering if with any gracefulness I could call off the wild-goose chase of Miss Smith. But most of all I was thinking of Bernard Temple—people’s warden, church worker, and a vital cog in the war effort of Cleavesham—and trying to reconcile all that with a stolen wad of notes and the look of sheer malignancy on his face when he had swung his leg and kicked a dead man in the ribs.
CHAPTER IV
WITCH-DOCTORING
Mrs. Beaney was doubtless called “young” to distinguish her from an ancient mother-in-law, for she was best part of fifty. She was tallish and gaunt with legs like a robin’s and the general look of an adventurous crow, and I very much doubted if the relationships between her and her late employer had been other than strictly business ones. I didn’t see her at close quarters, however, only through the window as she approached with Hope, and as the idea was not to scare her with a look at the body, she was interviewed in the dining-room. The doctor went in too and I was left alone with the corpse. I don’t think that had quite struck Galley at the time, and he was probably too interested in questioning the woman to worry if I should bolt. I was interested, too, in what Mrs. Beaney might be saying and I actually moved towards the door to try to overhear. Then I thought better of it and returned to my chair.
Then I noticed something. That ash-tray had two lips. It was fashioned, in fact, like a sweet tray, and on one of the lips—quite large they were too—Hope had shown up a very clear print. What was more he had left his apparatus on the desk flap, and at once I had my ears pricked for the sounds from the other room. But though Hope had dark powder as well as white I was too scared to make a dusting and press it on paper, for I mightn’t have had time to blow the powder off and make a fresh dusting. But I did make a copy of that print and with infinite care, counting the ridges and noting them down, and all the time my ears were strained for the sounds from that other room. I reckoned I’d make a good job of it and it was lucky that I’d finished, for Hope came in and then went out with his apparatus to take Mrs. Beaney’s prints. A few minutes after that Mrs. Beaney left and the three came back to the room.
“Temple,” Galley was saying reflectively. “Do you know him, doctor?”
“I’ve heard the name often enough,” the doctor said, “but I’ve never attended him.”
That was a good time for me to chip in with the little I allowed myself to know. It was quite gratefully received.
“How did his name crop up?” I asked.
“I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you,” Galley said, after a glance at Hope. “Mrs. Beaney said he was the only friend this Mr. Maddon had. Used to call a fairish bit.”
“She never heard them having a quarrel?”
The question startled him, and because I’d hit a nail clean on the head.
“I’m afraid I can’t go into any more details,” he told me rather curtly. “But you might tell us where this Temple lives.”
When he knew he gave Hope another look and said it was interesting. What he meant was the point he’d seize
d on—that if one followed the field-path, one actually passed his cottage. Then, before he could ask me anything more, there was an interruption.
“Here’s the Chief now,” Hope suddenly said.
Galley instinctively pulled himself up and straightened his coat back. I squinted round through the window and saw a man placing a bicycle against the front gate. As he came down the path I saw that his soft felt hat was soaked and his waterproof was dripping too.
“A bit wet, sir?” Galley hailed him.
“Just a bit,” Chevalle said, and jokingly. It was an attractive voice, but what I was wondering was if it would be quite as pleasant by the time he had finished with me. And it wasn’t any too promising when Galley button-holed him and took him into the other room, where I guessed he was being told about myself.
Chevalle looked a soldier. He was about five foot ten and carried himself well, and he had what I might call a parade-ground poise. The clipped moustache took something of the heaviness from the face and the square jaw, and his eyes were the kindly sort. When he came into the room and looked across at me, there was actually a smile in them.
“Your name’s Travers?” he said. “Mine’s Chevalle. I’m the Chief Constable. And you’re staying at Ringlands with your sister, Mrs. Thornley.”
“Yes,” I said. His voice was pleasant and the accent somehow familiar. The West of Scotland was how I placed him at first, and then, from the smooth, unforced sounding of the final ‘r’s’ I changed to Northern Ireland.
He merely nodded and smiled and then began busying himself with Galley and the doctor. I sat down again.
If Galley knew his job, Chevalle knew it even better. There was no fuss and no display but he covered the ground and he found what Galley had missed.
“Curious?” he said, and sniffed round the chair. “I’ve smelt that scent somewhere. But doesn’t it strike you as funny, Galley, that this Miss Smith should have stayed here long enough to have left her scent in the room and”—his eye went to the cigarette-ends—“and smoked three cigarettes.”
“Two, sir,” corrected Galley.
“You sure? I thought you said three.”
He had a closer look and then took up the thread of thought.
“Even two cigarettes would take a quarter of an hour at the least. All that time she was here with a dead man, and yet she was scared to stay on and wait for the police.”
“If you ask me, sir,” Galley said, “there’s something fishy all round.”
“There usually is in murder cases,” Chevalle told him dryly, and then caught my eye and smiled. “But what did the woman do with herself all that time?”
“Perhaps she was the one who went through this desk.”
“Everything is as you found it?”
“Not a thing touched, sir,” Galley assured him.
“Then the desk was gone through in a hurry. That wouldn’t have taken a quarter of an hour. And if she was genuine, why should she be such an incredible fool as either to search the desk and leave it like this when she knew she was going to ring us, or to do it after she’d rung us? She didn’t even tidy it after she’d rung us.”
“I know, sir,” Galley said and shrugged his shoulders. “Did they ask at the station what she was doing here at all?”
“I believe she said she happened to be coming by.”
“Then she could only have been coming along the field-path from the village or to the village,” Chevalle pointed out. “That doesn’t explain why she came to the house. You say Mrs. Beaney said nobody ever came here except tradesmen and occasionally Mr. Temple.”
“But Mrs. Beaney only comes in of afternoons, sir.”
“True enough,” Chevalle said. “But what’s that in the grate?”
He had spotted the tiny heap of ash and was on his knees at once. The two corners of cardboard were brought out with gloved fingers, and his eyebrows lifted at the sight of them. But he could make nothing of them and Galley put them in the envelope.
“Which way did this Miss Smith go out?” he was asking Galley.
“Don’t know, sir. Both doors were open.”
“I found the back door opened,” I broke in. “The front door was locked and bolted and I opened it myself.”
“Then she went out the back way,” he said. “Perhaps we’d better have a look.”
Galley asked what about the body? Another minute and he and Hope were carrying it out to the ambulance in which the doctor had come. As I stood by the door with Chevalle, watching them, a woman went by on the path towards the village. She had a good look back before she passed out of our sight.
“That was Mrs. Beaney,” I said.
“I know Mrs. Beaney,” he told me wryly. “She’s off to give the village the news. I wouldn’t mind wagering that by the time you get back to Ringlands, Mrs. Thornley will be telling you all about it.”
“I know her sort,” I said. “But you know my sister pretty well, don’t you?”
“She’s a very good friend,” he said. “And a very good sort.”
He must have thought it odd that I made no comment, but I happened to be thinking. I liked Chevalle. I had taken to him from my first sight of him, though perhaps I had been biased by Wharton’s praise. In any case, and on a sudden impulse, I pulled out Wharton’s letter.
“I don’t know if you’ve time to glance through this. It’s from an old friend of yours and mine.”
“Indeed?” he said, and was smiling as he unfolded the letter. Then his expression changed and there was quite a look of concern on his face when he had finished reading it.
“My dear fellow, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
“Why should you have had?” I said.
“And your sister never told me of your . . . your activities.”
“The last thing she’d do,” I said. “I don’t think she wholly approves of my peace-time association with the police.”
He laughed. “Well, we can do with you down here. Galley’s steady and reliable and all that, but he hasn’t a lot of imagination. He’s only had his rank for the last three months. His predecessor, an excellent fellow, was killed in a raid. But I’ll talk to you about all that later.”
“Not if you’re thinking of dragging me into this case,” I said. “I’m an invalid. Go easy’s my motto!”
Galley and Hope were coming back and we left it like that. The first thing we all did, for I tagged along uninvited, was to look outside the back door. Chevalle and Galley spotted the first heel-mark at the same moment. Hope was told to make casts, and then Chevalle had a look round.
“What I’m wondering,” he said, “is how the woman got in. Maddon must have let her in. Therefore he knew her. And very well too, or he’d have put on a collar and tie.”
“What woman?” I ventured.
“The woman who killed him,” he said. “Whether she and Miss Smith were the same person remains to be seen. Personally I’m inclined to doubt it.”
The cigarette-ends were now in an envelope and the silky hairs in another. Then during a last rummage Chevalle found a hair-pin. It was a light bronze and probably belonging to the woman of the hair. That too went into an envelope and so did the ash-tray. Then I was left alone again while Chevalle and Galley inspected the upstair rooms.
“They’ve been searched too,” Chevalle told me when he came down. “Wonder what was being looked for?”
“Why not the old, old story?” I said. “Blackmail letters.”
He stared, then raised his eyebrows. “That’s a mighty good suggestion. I often wondered where Maddon got his money from.”
There didn’t seem to be anything for me to wait for, so I said I’d be going. I added, for Galley’s benefit, that if I was wanted I’d be somewhere at hand.
Chevalle strolled with me to the front gate. “It’s rather short notice,” he said, “but I’d like you to come and have supper with us to-night. Sevenish. I expect I’ll be free enough by then.”
“I’d love to come,” I said, �
��if you’re sure I shan’t be in the way.”
“Don’t you worry about that, my dear fellow,” he said. “But about in there,” he said, and nodded back at the house. “Got any ideas?”
“One or two,” I said, and at the moment I hadn’t the faintest intention of telling him the half of them. “Maybe to-night they’ll be worth telling you.”
“Sure they’re not now?”
“Dead sure,” I said. “But I’d like you to do a couple of things—only because I think they’re going to help. One is, keep an eye on Temple. Put a man on his tail.”
“Temple!” he said. “What on earth do you know about Temple?”
“Don’t know yet,” I said. “I know he didn’t kill Maddon, but I do know too that he may have an idea who did.”
“That’s a mighty strong statement.”
“If you care to trust me till this evening I may make it stronger,” I said. “As for the other thing, I’ll tell you without being too enigmatical that it’s also bound up with Temple. And it’s this. Forget all about Miss Smith.”
I’ve rarely seen a man so taken aback. His face, tanned as it was, seemed to flush, and I thought it was with annoyance. After all he’d every right to be furious at the calm presumption of an outsider like myself of whom he knew nothing at first hand. But it wasn’t annoyance. It was sheer bewilderment.
“But she’s . . . she’s important. She’s vital,” he said, or rather stammered. “She’s simply got to be questioned.”
“So you can question her, and in ten minutes’ time,” I said. “But I don’t think you’ll be doing any good.”
That bewildered him even more.
“Look here, Major,” I said. “I know where you can lay your hands on her but I’m not quite sure what might happen if you do. In another half-hour I may be sure. She doesn’t know me but I know the way to make her talk and I’d like to try it. What about it?”
“You go ahead then,” he said.
I had been deliberately sheering off, and all I had to do then was to call back that I’d be seeing him that evening and be giving him some news. If I’d looked back after that I knew I’d have seen him staring after me and wondering just what I was—cheap bluffer, witch-doctor, or just someone who’d made rather too apposite an appearance at that house.
The Case of the Platinum Blonde: A Ludovic Travers Mystery Page 5
