The inspector nodded as if satisfied. “I think you’re wise, Mr Sheringham, sir,” he said.
“Well, well,” remarked Anthony robustly. “What about a drink?”
“Anthony,” observed his cousin, “your ideas are sometimes nearly as good as mine.”
Anthony removed himself to the lower regions and returned with the wherewithal for celebrating the occasion fittingly. In the intervals of celebration, they continued to discuss the case, the inspector now paying ungrudging acknowledgments to his unprofessional rival’s acumen and ingenuity. Roger decided that after all he really liked that hitherto somewhat maddening man very much indeed.
Half an hour or so later the recipient of Roger’s new affection put down his glass with a sigh and looked at his watch. “Well,” he said with deep regret, “I suppose I’ll have to be getting along.”
“To interview Woodthorpe?” said Roger in some surprise. “But surely there’s no hurry about that?”
“When a man bothers to confess to a double murder, the least one can do is ask him why,” the inspector pointed out. “It’s merely a matter of form, I know, but I think I ought to get it done tonight. I’ve got a motor bicycle outside; it won’t take me a minute. By the way, Mr Sheringham, how do you account for that, I wonder?”
“Woodthorpe’s confession?” said Roger thoughtfully. “Yes, that is a little puzzling, I admit. But you do get all sorts of comic people confessing to crimes they haven’t committed, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes, sir; they’re always doing it. Sort of muddled mentality, I suppose. But you wouldn’t call Mr Woodthorpe a comic person, would you?”
“No, I certainly shouldn’t. There’s only one other explanation that I can see – a super-quixotic sense of chivalry. The village gossip must have reached him, and he would naturally be acquainted with the other members of the Vane ménage.”
“You’ve hit the nail on the head again,” the inspector agreed. “That must be the explanation. No doubt the report in the village is that I’m going to make an arrest at any minute.”
“But super-quixotic, for all that,” Roger smiled. “Now if it had been Anthony who had made the confession I should have understood it much better.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” asked that gentleman in high bewilderment. “This is all Greek to me.”
“Then Greek let it remain, Anthony,” replied his cousin kindly. “Greek let it remain. That shows the advantage of a classical education.”
The low hum of a distant engine floated in through the open window, increasing rapidly to a loud roar.
“Powerful sort of car, that,” Roger commented.
“That isn’t a car engine,” remarked Anthony, with all the scorn of the mechanically-minded for those not similarly gifted. “That’s an aeroplane, you ass.”
The inspector jumped hastily to his feet. “An aeroplane, did you say?”
Anthony cocked an ear towards the now shattering din. “Yes,” he was forced almost to shout. “Nearly overhead, and flying low. Making for the sea apparently. Young Woodthorpe celebrating his escape from arrest, I expect. You can tell it’s a –”
“I must go and look into this,” observed the inspector shortly, and vanished with rapidity. A minute later the noise of a motorcycle engine drowned that of the swiftly receding aeroplane.
“What on earth’s the trouble now?” wondered Anthony.
“Heaven knows,” replied Roger philosophically. “Probably friend Colin is still trying to make himself look guilty by pretending to do a bolt for the Continent. Dear me, what a handicap to a man a superdeveloped sense of chivalry must be! It’s as bad as a disease.”
The next hour passed pleasantly enough; there was plenty for the cousins to discuss, and Roger had not by any means yet got over his elation at triumphing over the inspector. He talked at considerable length. The second hour passed more slowly. By a quarter to twelve both were frankly yawning.
At ten minutes past twelve the buzz of a distant engine heralded Inspector Moresby’s return. They heard him pushing his bicycle round into the yard at the back, and then his heavy tread on the stairs outside.
“Thought you’d gone for the night,” Roger greeted him. “Well, was I right? Has Colin bolted for the Continent?”
“He has, sir,” replied the inspector, shutting the door and advancing into the room.
“Ah!” said Roger, not without satisfaction.
The inspector was looking decidedly grim. He did not return to his chair, but stood in the middle of the room, looking down on the other two. “I’m afraid I’ve got bad news for you, Mr Walton,” he said slowly. “Mr Woodthorpe hasn’t gone alone.”
Anthony stared at him. “What do you mean?” he asked, in a curiously high voice.
The inspector looked still more grim. “Miss Cross has gone with him,” he said shortly.
chapter twenty-six
Caustic Soda
“Miss Cross!” exclaimed Roger.
The inspector continued to address himself to Anthony. “You must be ready for a bit of a shock, I’m afraid. It’s Miss Cross that Mr Woodthorpe has been engaged to all the time. She’s been just amusing herself with you. She’s –”
“I think I shall go to bed,” observed Anthony abruptly, and rose from his chair. “It’s pretty late. Goodnight, you two.”
He went.
The inspector watched the door close, then dropped into his seat. “It’s a nasty smack for him,” he said sympathetically. “But he’s young. He’ll get over it.”
Roger found his tongue. “But – but that is almost incredible, Inspector!”
The inspector looked at him quizzically. “Is it, sir?”
“I can’t believe it of her. Are you sure you’re not making a mistake?”
“Perfectly. I’ve known it for some time as a matter of fact, but I couldn’t very well drop a hint to your cousin.”
“Of course,” Roger said slowly, readjusting his ideas in the light of this startling development, “of course, this makes Woodthorpe’s confession a good deal more understandable.”
“Oh, yes, I knew what he was getting at.”
“She must have shown him she was frightened,” Roger pursued, thinking rapidly. “But the last time I saw her she seemed quite all right. Something must have happened since then. Inspector – you’re looking guilty! Out with it!”
“I had a long interview with her this morning,” the inspector admitted. “Perhaps I did press her pretty closely. I knew she was concealing her engagement from me, you see, so she might have been concealing other things as well. Yes, I certainly did press her pretty closely.”
“What you really did, I suppose, was to convey to her quite obviously that you still suspected her after all and that if she couldn’t produce a better explanation of certain matters, she’d be finding herself very shortly in distinctly hot water?”
“We have to do these things, you know, sir,” confessed the inspector almost apologetically.
“Well, thank goodness I’m not a policeman,” retorted Roger, making no effort to conceal his distaste. “No wonder you frightened the poor girl out of her wits. I suppose you practically told her you were going to apply for a warrant against her. The rest was inevitable, of course. So what do you suppose is going to happen now?”
“Perhaps when she finds there isn’t a warrant out against her, Mr Woodthorpe will bring her back the same way as he took her away.”
“Oh, so you’re not going to apply for a warrant after all?” said Roger sarcastically.
“No, sir, I’m not.”
“Very nice for the girl’s reputation, I must say, to be careering about the Continent with a young man for goodness knows how long.”
“She’s engaged to him,” the inspector pointed out mildly. “It is possible for them to get married abroad, you know.”
Roger snorted.
There was silence.
“You seem very put out on her behalf,” the inspector ventured,
curiosity overcoming discretion. “Considering how she’s been treating your cousin, I mean.”
“She was a minx, I admit,” Roger said, with a little laugh. “I also admit that she took me in properly; I really thought she was quite fond of Anthony. But after all, I suppose she had some justification. If she was engaged to friend Colin all the time, the position must have been a very difficult one for her, both before Mrs Vane’s death and afterward, whether she knew anything about her fiancé’s intrigue with that lady or not. She couldn’t admit the engagement while she was under that cloud, you see, and all her energies must have been concentrated on clearing her name. I don’t say she behaved very nicely, but that must be the explanation. Having had it forcibly impressed on her that not only public opinion but the official police as well were dead against her, she deliberately set out to attach Anthony to her in order to make sure of getting him and me on her side and enlisting our energies on her behalf. Don’t you think that’s the truth of the matter?”
“Not a doubt of it, sir,” agreed the inspector heartily. “That’s the truth of that all right.”
“And very well she succeeded,” added Roger modestly. “Well, now that the whole thing’s at an end, so to speak, Inspector, what about a little bed?”
The inspector’s answer was not a direct one. “So you think the whole thing’s at an end, do you, Mr Sheringham?” he said, with a return to his quizzical expression.
“I do, yes,” said Roger, surprised. “Don’t you?”
“I’m very much afraid it is,” the inspector agreed.
Roger looked at him. “What are you driving at, Inspector? Have you still got a card or two up your sleeve? You surely don’t mean to say you don’t accept my solution of the mystery?”
The inspector puffed once or twice at his pipe. “If you’d asked me that question before, when Mr Walton was still here,” he said slowly, “I should have said that I did accept it. But as we’re alone – well, no! I certainly don’t accept it.”
“But – but why ever not?” Roger asked in astonishment.
“Because I happen to know it isn’t correct, sir,” returned the inspector placidly.
Roger stared at him through the blue haze of tobacco smoke. “Isn’t correct? But – but – well, dash it, man, it must be correct!”
The inspector shook his head. “Oh, no, sir, if you’ll pardon me. It isn’t correct at all. You see, my trouble hasn’t been to find out the truth; I’ve known that all along. My trouble has been to prove it. To prove it, I mean, definitely enough to satisfy a court of law. And that I haven’t been able to do, and I’m afraid, never shall. The truth’s plain enough, but there’s too many gaps in the chain of legal proof. It’s a great pity.” The inspector shook his head again, this time expressing gentle regret.
“What on earth are you talking about?” Roger cried. “Truth obvious all the time? What do you mean? I haven’t found the truth obvious all the time!”
Once more the inspector shook his head, now conveying the disappointed reproof of the master at the too easy failure of a fairly gifted pupil. “And yet it was staring at you in the face all the time, sir,” he said in tones of reproach. “The trouble was you wouldn’t look at it.” He drew again at his pipe for a moment or two, as if collecting in his mind what he wanted to say. Roger watched him in frank amazement.
“Yes, that was your trouble, sir,” resumed the inspector, in a slightly didactic voice. “All the time you’ve been refusing to look the facts in the face. This was a simple case, so far as just finding out the truth went; as simple as ever I’ve come across. But that wouldn’t do for you. Oh, dear, no! You must go and make a complicated business out of it. As simple a little murder as ever was, but you want to run about and raise all sorts of irrelevant issues that had nothing to do with the case at all.”
“Who did murder Mrs Vane, then?” demanded Rogers, disregarding these strictures. “If Meadows didn’t, as you seem to be meaning, who the devil did?”
“That’s the trouble with you people with too much imagination,” pursued the inspector. “A simple murder’s never enough for you. You can’t believe a murder can be simple. You’ve got to waste your time ferreting out a lot of stuff to try to make it look less simple than it really is. No good detective ought to have too much imagination. He doesn’t need it. When all –”
“Oh, cut the cackle for the time being!” interrupted Roger rudely. “Who did murder Mrs Vane?”
“When all the evidence points to one person, and motive and opportunity and everything else as well, the real detective doesn’t waste his time saying, ‘Ah, yes! I know a thing or two worth that. When all the evidence and the rest of it points to one person, then the odds are that that person is innocent and someone else has made it look like that. That’s how I should commit a murder, by Jove! I’d fake all the evidence to point to somebody else. That’s what must have been done in this case. So whoever may be guilty, we know one person at any rate who isn’t, and that’s the one that the foolish inspector from Scotland Yard, who hasn’t got a nice big imagination like me, is going to go and suspect. Haw, haw!’” The mincing accent with which the inspector strove to represent the speech of this superior person with imagination was offensive in the extreme.
“Who murdered Mrs Vane, Inspector?” asked Roger coldly.
“Why ask me, Mr Sheringham?” retorted the inspector, still more offensively. “I’m only the man from Scotland Yard, without any imagination. Don’t ask yourself either, though, because the answer’s staring you in the face; so of course you’d never be able to see it. Go and ask any child of ten in the village. He’d know. He’s known all the time, for the matter of that.”
“Good God!” Roger exclaimed, genuinely shocked. “You don’t seriously mean that –” He paused.
“Of course I do!” returned the inspector more genially. “Good gracious, sir, I can’t think how you can have persuaded yourself she didn’t. Everything was against her – every single thing! There wasn’t a loophole, so far as common sense went (I’m not talking about legal proof, mind you.) Of course she did it!” He lay back in his chair and roared with callous laughter at Roger’s unmistakable discomfiture. It was the inspector’s hour, and he was evidently going to enjoy every minute of it.
“But – but I can’t believe it!” Roger stammered. “Margaret Cross! Good Lord!”
“Well, perhaps I ought not to laugh at you, sir,” the inspector went on, continuing nevertheless to do so with the utmost heartiness. “After all, you’re not the first one to be taken in by a pretty face and a nice, innocent, appealing sort of manner, are you? Why, there’s mugs in London being taken in by ‘em every day!”
The country mug winced slightly, but no words came to him.
“Of course I wouldn’t be saying any of this if Mr Walton were here,” said the inspector, ceasing to laugh. “It’d be a nasty shock for him, very nasty indeed; and the one he’s got already is quite enough. You’ll keep it all dark from him, of course.”
Roger found his voice. “Who killed Meadows, then?” he asked abruptly.
“Why, the girl!” ejaculated the inspector. “She killed ‘em both, I keep telling you. Meadows saw her with Mrs Vane, lay low for a few days, then sprang it on her and started in to blackmail her, no doubt; probably wanted most of that ten thousand pounds she was to get under the will. So she finished him off, too.”
“Oh, rot!” Roger cried incredulously.
“It’s true enough, sir,” said the inspector more seriously. “I saw it all the time; knew he must have been murdered when we found him there dead. It was a nasty blow for me too, I can tell you, because he was my only witness against her for the murder of Mrs Vane. That’s what I was going to arrest him for, as a matter of fact, to keep him safe in prison and make him talk – not because I thought he’d committed the murder himself, like you; I never did think so. In fact, I knew he hadn’t. Yes, she spoilt my case against her there completely.”
“But – but loo
k here, can you prove these extraordinary assertions in any way, Inspector?”
“Well enough for common sense, sir, though not beyond all reasonable doubt, which is what the law wants. Let’s take the two cases in turn. What were the clues in the first one?
The coat-button and the footprints. Well, the footprints had been made by a number six shoe, fairly new, the heels not worn at the side; Miss Cross, I found out, had been wearing shoes that afternoon which answered to that description. That wasn’t conclusive, of course; half a dozen people might have been wearing shoes like that. But the coat-button was. There was no getting round that. The maid was dead certain that button had been on Miss Cross’ coat when she went out, and there it was in the dead woman’s hand. That would want a lot of explaining away.”
“But it could be explained away.”
“Oh, yes, sir; it could,” agreed the inspector cheerfully. “I showed you how myself.”
“But what about those shoes I found in the sea? You said they were Mrs Russell’s.”
“So they were, sir. But what about them? You never seriously thought those were really the shoes the murderer had worn, did you?”
Roger choked slightly, but made no reply.
“Oh, I can’t believe you thought that,” continued the inspector with relish. “Why, that was an old pair, not new like the pair that had made those footprints. A child could have seen that. Besides, they’d only been in the water an hour or two.”
“What?” Roger cried.
“Oh, didn’t you know that, sir?” asked the inspector innocently. “Oh, yes; they weren’t much more than wet through. And you don’t mean to say you never recognised them, sir? Well, dear me!”
“Rub it in, rub it in,” Roger groaned. “Dance on my body if you like. I’ve no doubt I deserve it. No, I didn’t recognise them. Would you mind explaining to my futile intelligence what exactly you mean by that?”
Roger Sheringham and the Vane Mystery Page 22
