“It certainly seems it might have happened like that,” Bobby agreed.
“And then,” continued the inspector, “he finds he has his work to do all over again when George Winterton turns awkward just the way his brother did. But, when you’ve gone as far as what Shorton had, you don’t want to turn back without getting what you’ve risked your neck for, and it’s a fact, isn’t it, you yourself heard Shorton using threats to George Winterton.”
“Yes, that’s true enough,” Bobby agreed again.
“Well, then,” Wake continued, “the next thing is to get rid of George, or else what was done to Archibald would all be wasted. Only there’s the dog in the way; so its head is smashed in, and the body dropped in the sea. Next thing is to get Mr. Winterton alone somewhere; and, if you ask me, I shouldn’t wonder if that wasn’t what the telegram was for – a code message, meaning; ‘Meet me outside your house late to-night.’ ”
“Funny sort of code,” Bobby objected. “Funny appointment to make, too. Why should Mr. Winterton keep it?”
“Promised big things; curiosity excited,” the inspector answered promptly. “As for it’s being a funny sort of code, all codes are funny till you know what they mean, and a code that seems to have a plain meaning on the face of it, but really means something quite different, is always the safest sort. Well, he keeps the appointment, and he’s done in. Shorton gets away again without being seen, and there you are; and, if you ask me, that’s why there seems to be a sort of anxiety to keep the Coopers here. Perhaps they know nothing, and most likely they don’t, or suspect anything either, but, anyhow, what they do know is they’ve got a chance of a good job if they go on not knowing or suspecting anything. It’s only a straw, of course, but, when you find a straw being blown along the road you’re following, it’s often a sign it’s the right road you’re on. And don’t forget another straw is that Shorton happens to be a first-class swimmer.”
“It’s a possible theory, of course,” Bobby said slowly. “But isn’t there rather a lot left out? There’s all that business with the motor-launch the whole thing began with, and there’s the interview with the Shipman girl, and other things – the summer-house floor, for instance, someone swilled, and that, now, someone has been digging up.”
“Most likely the motor-launch has nothing to do with the case. Why should it? That was quite a time before Archibald’s death. As for the Shipman young woman, well, she’s a good-looking baggage, and most likely there had been some sort of flirtation going on. And the thing’s complicated enough without our worrying about the gardener at Fairview trying to clean up a summerhouse – which I expect is what happened – or doing a bit of repairs inside.”
“Mr. Winterton sent money to Jennings, which looks as if he were interested,” Bobby pointed out. “And digging up a floor is hardly doing a bit of repairing, is it?”
“There’s no proof the notes came from Mr. Winterton at all,” Wake pointed out, in his turn. “We know they were issued to him, but they may have passed from him to someone else, who sent them to Jennings. As for the summer-house floor, what can that have to do with Mr. Winterton’s murder, when it happened days after it? You don’t suppose his body’s been dug up on the quiet, and buried there again, do you?”
“No. But I would like to know what’s been happening there,” Bobby persisted doggedly. “Then there’s this crossword I’ve got here, that Mr. Winterton was working at, and that Colin Ross seemed so interested in.”
“What on earth,” demanded the inspector, looking quite bewildered, “can that have to do with the case? Holy Moses, half the people you meet have got a craze for the things – why, at home, they’re always fiddling about with them, and expecting thousand-pound prizes that never come!”
Bobby had to admit that undoubtedly crosswords were a passion with many people, and then another inspector came in, and Wake, pleased with his statement of his theory of the guilt of Mr. Shorton, and confident no flaw could be found in it, repeated it all over again in even greater detail.
But the newcomer seemed quite unconvinced.
“They don’t murder you in the City,” he said with decision. “Only skin you alive, and when they’ve got all you have, why should they murder you as well? What they do is turn you loose to grow some more wool for them to clip. Most City men ought to be murdered themselves, if there were any real justice in the world, but they don’t commit murders. No need. You can take it from me, Miles Winterton is the man we want. It’s a good sound old rule: look out for who benefits. Pick up the motive, and there’s the murderer as well. Look at the facts. I mean the real facts there’s no getting away from. This Miles young man is known to have had a row with his uncle – got caught flirting with the pretty secretary, and was kicked out. They want to marry but can’t; the young man being out of a job, and uncle having turned nasty. But, once uncle’s out of the way, there’s no one to object to their marrying, and even if they don’t come in for a share of his money, as very likely they thought they would, Mrs. Archibald Winterton is on their side, and would be pretty sure to help them. You can take it from me, that’s the way it was. The first thing was to get rid of the dog.
“Next, Miss Raby makes up some excuse for getting uncle out of the house late at night – very likely lets him suspect she and Miles are to meet and he’ll catch them if he goes to look. Anyhow, they get him outside on some pretext like that, and finish him off. You can take it from me, it’s good enough for an arrest, and I know the Guv’nor thinks so, too.”
The “Guv’nor” was Major Markham, but both Bobby and the other inspector looked doubtful, and Bobby said:
“If it was like that, what about Archibald’s death?”
“Oh, that was just an accident – nothing in that,” retorted the other. “Take it from me, never look for murder till you’re obliged.”
“What about – well, about all the other things that have happened,” Bobby still objected. “The Laura Shipman girl, for instance. Where does she come in?”
“She doesn’t,” answered the other promptly. “Her story’s true. The woman you saw talking to George Winterton that night wasn’t her at all. Ten to one it was Miss Raby – you can take it from me, the whole thing you watched was just a dress-rehearsal of the murder, and Laura Shipman’s tale is true. It was the Raby girl picked up your watch, and went off with it, but afterwards she got nervy, or smelt a rat, and got rid of it where Laura Shipman found it. A very smart idea of yours,” he added consolingly to Bobby, who was looking a trifle crestfallen at the thought that this idea, which had never occurred to him before but which seemed all the same possible enough, might be the truth of the matter, “and I don’t say it wasn’t; very smart indeed; but you can take it from me, the smarter an idea is, the less likely it is to be practical. A detective officer doesn’t want to be too clever, it doesn’t – do.”
“He’s worried,” explained Wake, with a nod towards Bobby. “He wants to work everything into the case, including why there was fried potatoes for lunch yesterday and only boiled the day before. Now there’s a crossword puzzle he’s got on his mind.”
“Worrying things, crossword puzzles,” his colleague agreed; “but what have they got to do with the case?”
“Search me,” answered Wake, with classic simplicity.
“Shall I tell you what put me on to it?” the other asked Bobby. “I’ll tell you. You young fellows don’t always appreciate the importance of the merest trifles, and it was quite a trifle that lighted up this whole affair for me – and one I got from you yourself, though I don’t think you saw anything in it. I was reading up the case, just to refresh my mind on some points, when I came on one of your reports that said the Raby girl let on she had come back from London one day by the evening train. But the station – master told you she had really arrived by the afternoon train. Now, you can take it from me, when you notice a discrepancy in the evidence, you want to go for it.”
“I think that, too,” agreed Bobby. “It’s often
important.”
The other looked severe. In his view, Bobby was there to receive instruction, not to express agreement.
“Lots of men don’t know one when they see it,” he said, plainly implying that in his opinion Bobby was in that class. “But a discrepancy, if and when you see it, is always the starting-point you want. Now, there’s proof Miles Winterton was in the neighbourhood and keeping quiet about it. Most likely they met that afternoon and laid their plans. In point of fact there’s a bit of evidence two people answering their description were seen walking together by the cliff. And, on the night of the murder itself, we know – he admits it – that Miles slept in a car not so far away. He could easily have got to Suffby in it, left it at a little distance, proceeded on foot, most likely by a field-path you won’t know about, that runs from the main road to the village, past the Fairview garden, without anyone seeing or hearing him. Equally easy to get back the same way.”
Another officer had come into the room, and had listened to all this with great attention.
“Wasn’t there a third nephew?” he asked. “A James Matthews, or some name like that? No one ever seems to have thought of him.”
“He doesn’t appear in the case at all,” Wake remarked.
“Just as well to make sure of that,” observed the new-comer. “The more you’re in a thing like this, the more you would want to look as if you weren’t. It seems he’s a painter, and lives in Paris, and though, of course, that isn’t anything against him, in my humble opinion, he ought to be looked up.”
“We don’t know he was ever near the place,” Wake objected.
“Do we know he wasn’t?” retorted the other. “In my humble opinion, it’s the most unlikely person you want to think the most about. It’s not a bad rule: look round, fix on the most unlikely, and make sure about him, one way or the other, first of all.” He added thoughtfully: “In my humble opinion, it was that telegram put the whole investigation wrong. Seemed like a snip, and turned into a wash-out instead.”
The others all evidently agreed with this observation, and, encouraged by the general approval, the speaker repeated:
“Pick on the most unlikely first, and then the next least likely, and work through ’em like that till there’s only one left, and then you have your man. At least, that’s my humble opinion.”
“If you ask me–” began Wake.
“You can take it from me–” began his second colleague; and just then the door opened, and there came in, breezily, Superintendent Andrews, Major Markham’s principal lieutenant.
“Hello, boys,” he said cheerfully. “You can all look forward to a rest cure now. I’m telling you for sure – the Suffby Cove mystery’s as good as cleared up, and now it’s only a question of arresting the murderer as soon as we can lay hands on him.”
“Who is it? What’s happened? Is it Colin Ross – Mr. Shorton – Miles Winterton – the third nephew, Matthews?” they all asked in chorus, and Andrews smiled on them genially:
“I’m telling you for sure,” he said again. “It’s Colin Ross all right. The Laura Shipman girl’s come through at last, and we’re proceeding to arrest right away.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Explaining An Infallible System
It was an announcement that reduced instantly to silence the astonished exponents of the different theories that had just been advanced. Not that they were convinced, not that they believed or accepted for one moment this rival proposition, for no man worthy of the name, or unworthy of it either for that matter, ever gives up his own belief so easily as that. But it was a superintendent who spoke, and, therefore, they, as befitted men under discipline, remained silent, and kept to themselves all the overwhelming objections and difficulties that at once occurred to them.
All, that is, except Bobby, and perhaps that was because his own special private theory – the one he hoped and believed Mitchell shared with him, though they had never discussed it openly – had not yet been relieved by expression, and was in consequence still eager to give itself form and substance in speech. Anyhow, while the others still clung in silence to their own beliefs, and still kept silence over the innumerable flaws they perceived in the superintendent’s, Bobby burst out:
“Colin Ross? Do you mean... a confession...?”
The superintendent surveyed the young man smilingly. Rather cheek for a young fellow, not yet even a sergeant, to start questioning his seniors like that. Still, he seemed keen, and the superintendent liked keenness; and then, too, about this young man there hung a flavour of the prestige the Yard bestows upon even its most junior members. So the superintendent decided to explain.
“Well, yes, in a way,” he said. “Enough to clear it all up now Miss Shipman’s found her tongue. They often do if you give them time to think it over after a talk, and then take them over the same ground again. That” – said the superintendent reflectively unheeding the impatience of his auditors – “that is where these third-degree merchants go wrong. They badger the subject till he gets so fed up he tells any lie that comes handy, because he simply don’t know where he is any longer – and then you don’t know where you are either. While if you only treat ’em as if you loved ’em, as likely as not, after a time, they’ll start telling the truth. Less strain on the memory, for one thing.”
The others had listened to this little homily on the art of extracting confessions with an impatience that, in the case of Bobby, was mingled with a certain discreet amusement, for he had recognised that the superintendent was repeating, almost textually, remarks made to him by Bobby’s own chief, Mitchell. Inspector Wake, letting his impatience master him, burst out:
“Beg pardon, sir. Do you mean Laura Shipman’s owned up she and Colin Ross did it?”
“Not quite that,” the superintendent answered; “but with what she has told us, and the evidence we had already – well, it’s good enough. We know he’s been plunging pretty heavily on the gee-gees, and most likely he’s badly dipped, like all the other racing men you come across, and that reminds me – anyone been here yet from Dugdale & Co.?”
“I don’t think so, sir – the big bookmakers?” Wake said.
“Yes. We’ve got a sure line now that Ross ran five different accounts with them, under different names – that means he’s been hit in five different places, most likely. Dug’s been wired to let us have full particulars of the different accounts. Well, there’s your motive – badly hit under five different names, and a rich old uncle in the background. Then, of course, we know he was on the spot at the time. There’s identity established. We’ve the evidence of Owen here that he behaved in a most suspicious manner; and then there’re the finger-prints, though a jury always looks a bit sideways at finger-prints. And now we’ve got what the Laura Shipman girl has told us as well.”
Wake turned to Bobby.
“Didn’t you say Ross had disappeared?” he asked quickly.
“They told me, at Fairview, they hadn’t seen him since last night, and didn’t know where he was,” Bobby answered. “Mrs. Cooper, the housekeeper, seemed to think most likely he had gone off to some race-meeting.”
“Not him,” declared the superintendent cheerfully. “He’s bolted. So much the better; clinches it, that does. You want a water-tight case to satisfy a jury now-a-days, and when a man bolts that clears the road for you by putting the ace of trumps up your sleeve. Good sound reasoning that, when a man runs, there’s a reason. But he won’t get far. All the ports and air-ports were warned some time ago.”
Wake jerked a thumb at Bobby; with a deep and subtle cunning, using Bobby to express the dissatisfaction he himself felt with the superintendent’s confident pronouncements.
“I’ll bet that young man’s not convinced,” he said. “He wants the whole thing complete – every item covered – from what Archibald Winterton was going to have for breakfast the day he got drowned, to why the gardener’s been swilling the floor of the Fair – view summer-house.”
“Not swilling it,
digging it up,” Bobby protested meekly. “Of course, I don’t know yet what Miss Shipman’s said.”
“Oh, there’s no secret about that,” the superintendent admitted. “She’s made a statement, and signed it all right. Seems there was a pretty hot flirtation between her and, first of all, Archibald himself, the wicked old sinner, and then the nephew, young Ross. Seems, according to her, George Winterton had tumbled to it one of his nephews was carrying on with some girl in the village, but he didn’t know which of the two, and he didn’t know which girl. But he was wrathy and upset about it, and that’s why he rather boiled over when he found Miles was doing a bit of the same sort of thing with his secretary girl. He seems to have jumped to the conclusion it was Miles who was mixed up with the other girl in the village as well, and he went right in off the deep end and cleared Miles out. But apparently, Archibald was a wary old bird, and George had no idea his brother had been fooling with the same village girl – of course she swears black and blue there was nothing to it but a bit of kissing, and now and again meeting each other in Yarmouth or somewhere, and doing a dinner and the pictures. She had some letters from him, though, and Colin Ross tumbled to what was going on, and was mad jealous, she says. Notice that – the jealousy, I mean?”
“Means” – cried with some excitement the last of the three men listening to him – “means ten to one it was Ross did in Archibald, too. That explains why the dog never barked; it would know him, of course.”
“Most likely it was like that,” agreed the superintendent, “only it’s lucky we haven’t got to prove it against a smart defending K.C. Proof” – he added thoughtfully – “proof is the very devil.”
And this remark was greeted with a sympathetic murmur from all his three colleagues, for so thought all of them, and so thought Bobby, too, though he considered it more in accordance with the discipline he always respected when he remembered not to join audibly in the murmured approval of his seniors.
Crossword Mystery Page 21
