“It’s an idea,” agreed Bobby thoughtfully. “It would fit in with the attempt to break and enter by the kitchen window. But would it be in the Christopherson psychology to carry out that mutilation of a dead man’s features?”
“When it’s a case of conscience—” Payne said and left the sentence unfinished. “Good enough for an arrest, sir?” he suggested tentatively.
“Nowhere near it,” declared Bobby with emphasis. “We’ve not a shred of proof that Derek Christopherson got back from Dunkirk, much less that he was ever hiding in the Conqueror Inn. Official records show him as killed in action and official records count. Our whole theory is an exercise in logic and can you imagine putting an exercise in logic before a British jury?”
Payne turned pale, aghast at the horror of such a thought.
“Then there’s Captain Wintle,” Bobby went on, “put to a choice between what he owed to his duty as an officer and what he owed to the man who saved his life.”
“Do you believe his story about his revolver?” Payne asked. “Because, sir, I don’t much think I do.”
Bobby was sitting back in his chair with his hands thrust resolutely into his pockets because he was trying to break himself of a growing habit of rubbing his nose hard in moments of perplexity. Recently it had received domestic comment of some severity and he had promised reformation.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I hoped to get some pointers out of talking to Wintle. I didn’t. We don’t even know the revolver we found is the one actually used.”
Payne looked startled.
“Oh, come, sir,” he protested. “It’s sure to be—certain.”
“Nothing certain in this case,” retorted Bobby. “I wanted to see if Wintle put that idea forward. He didn’t. I talked as if it were established that his revolver was the weapon used. He seemed to accept that. Ignorance or knowledge? What do you think? It might be either if you ask me. Wintle may be the man we want. There is the quite good theory to work on that he killed Larry Connor in a jealous quarrel. Snag. We don’t know that the dead man is Larry. Evidence. Wintle’s black eye and Maggie Kram’s belief that Larry was somehow mixed up with Rachel.”
“Slighter clues have led to the gallows,” Payne said.
“Often,” agreed Bobby. “But then there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that the Christophersons did the killing, even though Christopherson himself gave the first information.”
Payne nodded. He thought reasonable the suggestion that that might only mean that the alarm about the bank-notes had been given before the shooting occurred, or, alternatively, that Christopherson had realized that the loss of so much money was bound to lead to inquiry, investigation, and an almost certain discovery it was the part of wisdom to anticipate.
“Or again,” Bobby continued, “there’s the possibility that young Derek Christopherson, taking his exercise at night, ran into Larry Connor prowling round the Inn for his own purposes, got a shock, thought he was back at Dunkirk, and went for Larry, taking him in his disturbed mental state for a German soldier. Or if that happened, it may have turned out the other way with Larry killing Derek. You see we are up against a fresh complication now. At first we thought that as soon as we heard of a missing man, identity would be established—dead man and missing man sure to be the same. But now we have two missing men—Larry Connor and Derek Christopherson, and which is which?”
Payne didn’t know and said as much with both haste and emphasis.
“But there is one thing,” he ventured to suggest. “If there are two men missing and one dead, it’s a safe bet the second missing man is the killer.”
“No safe bets in this business,” retorted Bobby, also with haste and emphasis, “not in this tangle of disconnected facts, uncertain motives and emotional complications.”
Payne had produced his notebook and was consulting it.
“It’s like this,” he said. “First. Mr. Merton Kram is the killer and his daughter knows it and so does Micky Burke. Evidence. Maggie’s doubts and fears and she ought to know. The candle burning before Kram’s photograph on Micky Burke’s mantelpiece.”
“Yes, I could bear to know what that means,” Bobby interposed.
“Secondly,” continued Payne, “one of the Christophersons is the killer—father or daughter. Or the two of them together perhaps. Evidence. The revolver buried on their land. Motive. Keeping Derek hidden.”
“The report hasn’t come in yet from the gun expert to tell us for certain that that revolver is the one used,” Bobby reminded him.
“Oh, well, sir, I think we can take that for granted,” Payne answered. “Or why was it buried? And who else can have buried it but the Christophersons?”
“Yes, I know,” Bobby agreed.
“Thirdly,” Payne continued. “There’s Captain Wintle. A downy bird if you ask me. Evidence. His black eye and the revolver used by the killer traced back to him. Fairly conclusive. So there’s three lines to follow up and all of them good and promising.”
“Nothing for us to do but make our choice,” observed Bobby, “even if they do all contradict each other, and if two of them are certainly wrong, why not all three? And don’t forget Loo Leader popping in and out in a way that wants explaining rather badly. What’s his game?”
“Nosing round,” said Payne with confidence. “Trying to find out anything he can use. Spot of blackmail.”
“Might be,” agreed Bobby. “Why was the revolver wrapped in a large scale map before it was buried?”
“Being wrapped in paper would keep it in better condition,” Payne answered, a trifle surprised by the question.
“I meant its being a large-scale map,” Bobby explained. “Was that something that was better hidden, too? And why the pin holes all over it?”
“Well, sir, are pin holes relevant?” Payne asked, respectfully contemptuous.
“Don’t know,” answered Bobby, “but anyhow I’ve rung up the Regional Commissioner’s office and one of the staff is coming along to have a look. Those pin holes interest me somehow.”
Payne managed to indicate it was an interest he could not share. Pin holes and murder seemed far apart, he thought.
“Then there’s that business of eggs,” Bobby went on. “Why did Maggie Kram, when she was trying to find out what was interesting Larry in the Conqueror Inn, hit on eggs as an excuse for making inquiries and why was Loo Leader talking about eggs as well? And why had Loo Leader the same idea as Merton Kram about using the Conqueror Inn outbuildings as a depot—to avoid cross journeys, they said, didn’t they?”
But here they were interrupted by the arrival of the report of the expert to whom the dug up revolver had been sent for examination.
“Just another little snag,” Bobby said with a sigh as soon as he had given the report a glance, “the bullet used in the killing did not come from this revolver. It has been fired quite recently but it didn’t fire that particular bullet.”
Payne said with great annoyance:
“But, sir—hang it all—well, I ask you. Weapon carefully hidden on the scene of a crime and you are to believe there’s no connection?”
“I don’t know about ‘no connection,’” answered Bobby slowly, as his eye travelled down the long report. “The stain you remember we noticed is blood, fairly fresh, very likely dating from the time of the killing, though they can’t be precise. Also they’ve found three fingerprints they’ve brought up clearly enough for identification. Photos enclosed. Prints on record as those of a man named Alf Hall. Remember the name?”
“Not at the moment,” Payne confessed. “I’m trying to think.”
“Pal of Loo Leader’s, the forgotten man, I suppose,” Bobby said. “Works for him as a lorry driver. So there is Loo Leader back in it again, and why Hall’s dabs and not Loo’s? I’m afraid we have rather forgotten Mr. Alf Hall.”
“What was he in for if his dabs are on record?” Payne asked.
“Murder charge,” Bobby answered. “Charge reduced to manslaughter. Sentence
five years. Been out three years and some months. Nothing since known against him. Interesting.”
CHAPTER XXVII
FIFTH COLUMN
IN THE AFTERNOON there arrived a member of the staff of the District Regional Commissioner—a retired major of the Indian army, as pleased to be back again at work as twenty-five years before he had been happy at the thought of retiring. He had with him a large-scale map of the district marked with a number of tiny circles in red ink. When the two maps—this one and that in which the buried revolver had been wrapped—were compared, complete coincidence was at once apparent between the red ink circles on the one, the pin holes pricked in the other.
“Means,” said the major, “that every munition factory, all the new ones recently built, every factory engaged in war work, and that means practically every factory in the district, and in addition every dummy factory as well, all plainly marked here. Fifth column work. They are secret. What?”
“Hardly secret, are they?” Bobby suggested. “You can’t hide a factory—even a dummy—from people living in the neighbourhood. Or from anyone passing near. You can keep secret the work being done, but the building itself has got to be visible.”
“Fifth column work,” repeated the major. “That map would give valuable information to any Hun bombers.”
“Couldn’t they get much the same information from aerial reconnaissance?” Bobby asked. “We’ve had machines over several times, flying high.”
The major explained in some detail that photographs, though showing every detail of a building, often gave little indication of the building’s exact location.
Bobby said, yes, he understood that; and did the major think it likely that a lorry driver, engaged in road transport, might mark in this way the position of the different factories, simply and wholly for his own convenience in delivering his load.
“If any lorry drivers,” declared the major with some vigour, “are doing anything of the sort, the sooner they are put somewhere safe, the better. What?”
“Yes,” agreed Bobby. “Yes.” He had already explained the circumstances in which the map had been discovered. “And while,” he said, “we think we know who tipped us off where to find the revolver, we can’t prove it, and there’s no telling if he knew anything about the map. Nothing to show.”
“Map much more important, much more disturbing,” declared the major. “A murder only means one more man killed. What? But we’ve had cases of bombs aimed at factories we thought no one knew anything about. Aerial reconnaissance, perhaps. You can’t be sure. What? Is that all you know?”
“Well, we’ve found dabs—fingerprints,” explained Bobby in case the word was not understood. “Not on the map. Nothing distinguishable there. On the revolver. We know whose they are and I am having the man brought in for questioning as soon as we can find him.”
“He must be found at once—at once,” the major insisted, and looked dissatisfied when Bobby, who knew well the difficulty of finding those who did not wish to be found, would say no more than that he would do his best.
The major suggested calling in Scotland Yard. Bobby remarked that that cost money and the Wychshire police rate was already a subject of bitter comment. Besides Scotland Yard had its own work to do, and plenty of it, and would probably display small gratitude if offered more. In the major’s view these were mere excuses and poor ones at that. He said firmly that he expected the Regional Commissioner would want Military Intelligence informed. He made it plain that he considered it all much too dangerous and disturbing an affair for it to be left in the hands of local police. Bobby’s murmur that in this country there are only local police, and Scotland Yard as local as any other, was received with some disfavour as having about it a distinct aroma of insubordination. It was added, not so much as a suggestion but as a definite order which Bobby would disregard at his own risk, that until the Home Office, Military Intelligence, and the Regional Commissioner, and probably other important officials as well, had been informed and consulted, no definite action was to be taken. That, said the major, was definite.
“Means, I suppose,” Bobby reflected after the major had departed, “that my man is to have every chance to get away while the bigwigs are ‘passing to you’ for suggested action. Oh, well.”
A discouraging prospect, he thought, and then he sent for Payne to whom he explained the official brake put upon their movements.
He added thoughtfully that it was, he supposed, a result of the odd way in which the case had continued to broaden out.
“Begins,” Bobby said, “with the murder of an unidentified man and now reaches back towards Dunkirk and outwards towards Ireland and forwards to Lord knows where and what.”
“Example,” suggested Payne, “of not being able to see the tree on account of the wood.”
“It does seem like that,” agreed Bobby, “but all the same I think one can start now to pick out the really significant facts from the whole lot of incidents and information we’ve got together. And I do think if you do that you can see how they begin to make sense. There’s the money Christopherson picked up.”
“But we’ve never heard a thing about it,” Payne protested. “Two thousand pounds left in the road and not a hint of a claim put forward. It doesn’t make sense.”
“I think it does,” Bobby said. “It makes sense exactly because it doesn’t make sense.”
“Yes, sir, if you say so, sir,” answered Payne, his voice full of a deeply contemptuous deference.
“Then,” Bobby continued, “there are the dead man’s dabs we found on the glass cut out of the kitchen window at the Conqueror Inn and in that connection the further fact that Leader had the same idea as Kram of using the Conqueror Inn outbuildings as a depot—to save what they called cross loads, wasn’t it?”
“But what’s the connection?” Payne asked, looking doubtful now.
“Add,” continued Bobby, “the egg motive which was used both by Maggie Kram, calling herself Emma Jones, and by Loo Leader when they were dodging about the moor asking questions—Maggie because she wanted to know what attraction Larry Connor found at the inn, and was it Rachel? and Loo for reasons that are getting fairly plain, aren’t they?”
“Oh, yes, sir,” agreed Payne, firmly determined not to confess that for him they were anything but plain.
“Much more important,” Bobby went on, “is the spanner Micky Burke says was taken from him by an army sergeant we can’t trace. Practically that’s proof, but proof we can’t produce in court.”
“No, sir,” agreed Payne, wondering what the proof was, and, more especially, what it proved—or didn’t prove.
“Add to that the discovery of the revolver buried on Conqueror Inn land wrapped in this map marked with factory sites and also showing Alf Hall’s dabs, and—well, there you are, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” agreed Payne, beginning to grow a trifle wildeyed as he wondered desperately where ‘there’ might be.
“Of course,” Bobby concluded briskly, “I’ve always had a sort of vague suspicion of the truth. The double coincidence of Loo Leader and Alf Hall made one thing plain. I never feel much inclined to accept coincidences. Of course, they happen, and jolly rum ones, too, but not doubled. You may go to London for the first time in years and meet your old pal you haven’t seen or heard of for years, and who is also in London for the first time in years. But it won’t also happen that your old pal chances to know something you want to know and he is the only man in town can tell you. That’s the sort of double coincidence I can’t accept. In other words, coincidences aren’t significant and if they are I don’t believe them. Finally there’s your discovery at the Ritz shack. That sort of clarified everything.”
“Yes, sir, I see, sir,” said Payne, his voice and manner making it quite plain he was very far indeed from ‘seeing.’ “Beg pardon, sir, but I didn’t discover anything at all at the Ritz shack.”
“You discovered that an order there for tinned eggs on toast was a joke fo
r sardines on toast,” Bobby reminded him. “It was when you told me that and how the joke started that I got the tie up I had been waiting for.”
“Yes, sir,” agreed Payne once more, and once more looking extremely puzzled.
“Now I feel sure we know,” Bobby went on, too deep in thought to notice how Payne winced at that ‘we,’ “what it’s all been about, we can go after the evidence we haven’t got. It’ll be a funny thing if now we can’t squeeze some admission out of someone. Only there are ‘definite’ orders from the Regional Commissioner bloke to avoid ‘definite’ action. Only what right has a Regional Commissioner bloke, except ‘in case of emergency,’ to give any orders even to a back yard pussy cat—whether ‘definite’ orders or just ordinary common or garden orders. So far as I know a Regional Commissioner’s powers are more or less dormant till he issues a proclamation that he is jolly well going to use them.”
“I take it, sir, we are expected to co-operate,” observed Payne, looking a trifle alarmed, for he had all a well-disciplined mind’s respect for authority.
“So they ought to co-operate with us,” Bobby remarked. “Blessed word—co-operate. Almost as blessed as Mesopotamia. Anyhow, I imagine my duty is to see that no murder goes unpunished. I think I shall continue to exercise my own discretion and you needn’t look so scared, Payne. My responsibility, not yours. And I shan’t rush my fences. One thing, when there’s a war on, there’s always the army if you get the sack. Hitler has cured unemployment all right, as all his pals in this country used to be so fond of telling us. No wonder he was so popular in the city of London when he cured unemployment in destroying trades unions—the perfect ideal, so seldom realized here below. No wonder the F.B.I. was so eager to—co-operate.”
“Yes, sir,” agreed Payne, realizing that with Bobby, as with others occasionally, a tendency to be nervous at the possible result of contemplated action was apt to show itself in a tendency to chatter. “There’s that, sir. There’s your pension, too, to think about,” he added by way of reminder—a totally unnecessary reminder, too.
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