“And if I happen to agree with Peel, by any chance?”
“I’ve heard a good deal about you, sir. I’d trust your opinion even if it went against my own.”
“There’s a third possibility on the board,” Sir Clinton remarked. “Ah, here we are!”
The wrecked car had come in sight as he spoke; and he slowed down, bringing his car to a standstill long before it reached the point where the lodge gate broke the line of the wall on the left of the road. Ledbury’s surprise at this was evident. He had expected Sir Clinton to drive straight up to the scene of the disaster, where the constable was awaiting them, on guard over the wreckage.
“Aren’t you going on, sir?” the sergeant inquired, holding the car-door open in a tentative manner, as though he expected to be told to keep his seat.
“No use bringing an extra set of car tracks to mix things up, is there, sergeant?” Sir Clinton answered. “It’s safer to stop a decent distance away, just in case of need. We’ll walk the rest. By the way, have any cars passed this way since the smash?”
“None, sir, up to the time I left Peel here.”
“H’m!” Sir Clinton commented ruminatively. “There’s been at least one car through, if you look at the tracks there on the road. Lucky the surface seems to have been just right for taking impressions of the tyres. Now we’ll interview your friend.”
Constable Peel proved to be a young man with a certain cockiness of demeanour which suggested that he was not likely to under-estimate his own merits. Sir Clinton questioned him about passing cars, and found that his inference had been correct: one car had passed up the road not far ahead of their own.
“I signalled them to stop, sir,” Peel explained, “and then I went down and made them drive carefully past. Got them in as close to the ditch as possible, so’s they wouldn’t mix up the other wheel-tracks with theirs. That’s their track—the fresh one yonder.”
Sir Clinton’s nod conveyed his appreciation of this caution; and Peel threw a glance at the sergeant as much as to say: ‘There! You wouldn’t have thought of that!’ Ledbury ignored this, and contented himself with explaining that Sir Clinton had come to look into things on the spot.
“This is how it was, Sir Clinton . . .” Peel began. But Sir Clinton cut him short in a tone which combined politeness and decision.
“I’ll have a look round myself, first, constable. Then I’ll know better what questions I want to ask you.”
Constable Peel’s jauntiness declined slightly.
“Very good, sir,” he agreed.
He fell in alongside his superior, and both of them followed Sir Clinton over to the wreck of the car.
Chapter Five
SOME FACTS IN THE CASE
For several minutes, Sir Clinton stood on the grassy border of the road, apparently trying to reconstruct the sequence of events which had led up to the tragedy. Quite evidently, the car had been travelling at a fair speed when it went over the edge of the ditch and collided with the wall beyond. The radiator was smashed and twisted with the impact, and the near forewheel was badly buckled. Glass from the broken windscreen was scattered over the seats and the floor, as well as on the ground near by; and the floor-boards of the car, as well as the grass, showed ominous dark stains on which the blood was still moist. Quevedo had apparently been thrown through the windscreen when the shock occurred; and he had landed on the grass, clear of both the car and the wall.
Constable Peel manifestly found Sir Clinton’s silence rather long; and at last he decided to speak himself.
“The way I look at it is this, sir. The deceased had a skid or something, and his car went into the wall. He wasn’t killed outright. Then Barford—who’d a grudge against him—came up; and, seeing the man was all cut up with the glass, he saw his chance and finished him, thinking that a knock on the head would pass as having happened in the accident itself. And so it would, if he’d had time to get away. That would explain his saying to me . . .”
Sir Clinton looked up, evidently none too pleased at being interrupted.
“A skid, you say? Very well. Let me see the trace of that skid in the track of the car. Facts are what I want, constable.”
With rather less confidence in his air, Peel retraced the wheel-marks of the shattered car along the road.
“There!” he said, after walking a few yards, “that’s what I would say was the beginning of the skid, sir.”
Sir Clinton stooped over the marks and scrutinised them with care.
“It’s a matter of terminology, I suppose,” he said sarcastically. “Skid seems to convey something to your mind which it fails to suggest to me. What do you say, sergeant?”
Ledbury, concealing his joy at the constable’s downcast appearance, bent over the track before offering an opinion.
“What I mean by a skid,” he explained, “is when the wheel slides sideways instead of rolling forwards. I don’t see anything like that in the tracks.”
He paused for a moment, and then added in a doubtful voice:
“That’s a rum start!”
“Very rum,” Sir Clinton agreed in a colourless tone. “But it’s a fact. You’d better make a note of it.”
Ledbury nodded and drew out his notebook. Sir Clinton was faintly amused to see that the pencil which the sergeant produced was one which required no licking to make it write. Peel also fished out a notebook and made a jotting.
“You think there wasn’t a skid, sir?” he demanded.
“Do you yourself think there was, after examining the track closely?”
Peel’s assurance was replaced by a slight nervousness as he heard Sir Clinton’s tone.
“Well, sir, perhaps I made a mistake.”
Sir Clinton’s expression was hardly reassuring; and his next words took the last trace of swagger out of Peel.
“A minute ago, you’d have been prepared to take your oath that this car skidded. If the coroner questioned you about it, that’s what you’d have testified, apparently. By that time, these tracks would have disappeared and there would be no way of checking your evidence. This isn’t one of your chicken-stealing cases, constable. You’ve charged a man with murder. And you don’t seem to think it worth while to look at things carefully. You’d simply got the idea that if a car smashed into a wall, there must have been a skid; so you took that for granted and never bothered to look. Isn’t that about it?”
Peel’s face showed that this shot was near the truth, and he refrained from attempting to answer.
“That comes of preconceived notions,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “What we really want are the facts, first of all. I don’t suppose either of you can tell me, but I’d like to know if this man Quevedo drove his car on the throttle or on the accelerator.”
Neither official could answer this query; but it prompted Ledbury to walk back to the car and examine the steering-wheel.
“You mean, sir, that the throttle’s full open?”
“Yes.”
Sir Clinton looked thoughtfully at the car for a moment or two, and then tested the throttle-lever gingerly with his finger.
“It’s quite tight, you’ll find, sergeant, if you test it. The shock of the smash wouldn’t shift it over, so far as one can guess. So apparently the car was on full throttle when the smash happened. If he’d been driving on the accelerator, the throttle would have been right back—just giving enough gas to let the engine tick over when the clutch was out.”
“I see that, sir, though I don’t drive a car of my own.”
He looked doubtfully at Sir Clinton.
“I suppose I ought to make a note of that, sir?”
“Wait a bit. There’s something else to couple on to it. You don’t drive a car, you say. Well, this is a four-speeds-forward gear-box. And the gear-lever’s in the notch for the third speed—the car’s not on top gear. You’d better jot that down in connection with the full throttle.”
Ledbury’s little eyes brightened.
“I think I see what you mean
, sir. It’s a flat road, so he wouldn’t have been changing gear between here and the village. And he wouldn’t be driving full throttle on third speed when he might have been getting more out of the machine by putting his gear on top and closing the throttle a bit?”
Sir Clinton seemed in no mood to encourage premature theorising.
“All you know, sergeant, is the position of the two levers. That’s a matter of fact. Let’s leave the pretty hypotheses out of it at present.”
He turned from the car to the spot where the body of Quevedo lay under the waterproof sheet.
“We’ll have a look at him now, sergeant,” he suggested.
“He’s a bit ugly, sir,” the sergeant suggested. “The glass of the windscreen cut him all about the face and neck—ghastly.”
“I’m not sensitive,” Sir Clinton explained curtly. “Let’s see what damage was done.”
Ledbury lifted the sheet and exposed the body. It was clear at a glance that the sergeant had not overstated the case. Quevedo’s face had apparently been driven across a sharp edge of the broken windscreen, and hardly a feature had escaped intact. Even the neck, where it was unprotected by his collar, had been cut deeply here and there.
“I told you, sir,” the sergeant pointed out. “He’s not a pretty sight. Nothing much to be seen but blood and cuts. Even if he hadn’t been hurt in the smash-up, the glass would have finished him. His jugular vein’s severed. He’d have bled to death in no time. You can see the amount of blood there is round about him on the grass.”
Sir Clinton nodded absently in reply and continued his examination.
“Funny what a clean cut you get from a piece of glass,” Constable Peel communicated to the world in general. “Just like a razor, it is.”
“Or a piece of paper,” the sergeant amplified. “I’ve had a finger cut with the edge of a bit of paper once—deep. You’d hardly believe it unless you saw it.”
He seemed anxious to soothe Peel’s feelings after the rough handling that Sir Clinton had given the constable. Ledbury was not the man to bear a grudge too long.
“A thread’ll bite deep enough, too,” Peel pursued. “If you pull a fine bit of thread through your fingers too quick, it’ll give you a nasty sort of wound—just like a glass-cut. It’s so clean that it doesn’t bleed on the surface for quite a while.”
Sir Clinton rose to his feet.
“You can cover him up again for the present,” he said. “I’ve seen all I want to see just now.”
He moved over to the car and stood examining it while the two officials covered the body with the sheet again.
“I suppose you’ve taken a note of the appearance of the face and so forth?” he asked, as Ledbury came to his side.
“Yes, sir. But of course there’ll be a P.M. and the surgeon will get all the details then.”
Sir Clinton leaned on the side of the car and examined the litter of broken glass on the floor of the driving-seat.
“Lot of blood there,” he pointed out. “Better make a note of that, sergeant. By the way, did you note anything about blood on his clothes?”
“There was a lot down the front, sir. I suppose it soaked him pretty well when the jugular began to bleed. He was lying partly on his side; and it would flow all over the place when it gushed out.”
“I’d make a note of that too, if I were you. Now we’ll have a look at these car-tracks. It’s lucky the tyre-marks seem to be different. Makes it easy to pick out one from another.”
He stepped along the road beyond the body.
“This is the mark of Barford’s car, I take it?” he asked Peel. “He overran the spot where the smash was, and then pulled up sharp, if one can trust the marks.”
Peel followed his gesture, and saw where the regular marking of the tyre merged into a long clean stroke in the mud.
“You mean these’ll be his back wheels with the brakes on and the wheels locked—just sliding on the road instead of rolling, sir?”
Peel stopped abruptly, realising that he was on the forbidden ground of theory. Sir Clinton’s smile reassured him slightly.
“This mark here, sir,” he went on, rather encouraged, “is where Teddy Barford reversed his car after I’d told him he’d have to come along with me.”
“Did he start off with a jerk?” Sir Clinton inquired, pointing to the place where the back wheels had evidently spun and slipped as the clutch was let in.
“He did, sir. He always does.”
Sir Clinton accepted the information as though it were fresh to him.
“Now, I think, we’ll have a look at the track of the wrecked car,” he suggested. “We may as well be thorough when we’re at it.”
Accompanied by the two officials, he started at the point where the two-seater had gone into the ditch and worked back along the trail without haste.
“One of you had better make a diagram of this, before the marks get obliterated,” he suggested. “It’s an easy enough job for you—the track’s almost perfectly straight. All you have to do is to measure the near wheel’s distance from the edge of the road, here and there, along the track at fixed distances apart.”
They had come to the lodge gate as he spoke; and a glance showed him that the lodge itself was unoccupied. The gate was slightly set back from the road, and the avenue from the house broadened out like a delta so as to round off the turns at the sides. Sir Clinton left the track of the wrecked car and moved into the end of the avenue.
“H’m!” he said. “See that? Here’s the track of another car. Down on the road, its track’s crossed by the track of the wrecked car, so this one was here before Quevedo came along.”
They studied the fresh track for a short time; and at last Constable Peel could restrain himself no longer.
“Here’s a funny thing, sir!” he pointed out eagerly. “This car turned in to the mouth of the avenue and then reversed out again. Funny thing to turn back at this point on the road. He must have missed his way, or something, and only noticed it when he reached this length.”
Ledbury had examined the track even more minutely.
“Another funny thing,” he contributed, with an expression on his face which showed he was not ill-pleased to wipe the eye of his colleague. “This fellow’s track coming in is overlaid by Quevedo’s car-track, just as you said, sir. But the track he made after he reversed out is on top of Quevedo’s track. And, what’s more,” he added, “this fellow seems to have been manœuvring about a bit. He came in here; then he reversed till he was half across the road; then he drove in again; and finally he reversed out a second time for his turn homewards. The two tracks of his wheels are almost on top of each other, but I can see the double trail in the blur all right.”
“That’s a sound bit of observation, sergeant,” Sir Clinton complimented him. “I’ll add two further points; and then I think we’ve got the lot. First, the bed of the avenue’s fairly soft; and if you look at the point where the car rested when it came in first, you’ll find the marks are deep compared with the ones made when it came to a standstill a second time. Evidently it stood for quite a while the first time, and only a short time afterwards. Second, this car wasn’t here when I passed along the road last night; and I may tell you I met Quevedo’s car just outside Raynham Parva. So this fellow must have come along a side road and turned into this road after I’d passed. Otherwise, I’d have met him. And I met no one but Quevedo.”
He seemed to consider carefully before he continued:
“You’ve seen Barford’s clothes by daylight, I suppose. Any blood on them, did you notice?”
Ledbury looked at the constable, and both shook their heads. Sir Clinton’s expression seemed to suggest that he was relieved by this negative evidence.
“I’d like to have another look at that car,” he said, turning back along the road in the direction of the wreckage. “We’d better do the thing thoroughly, sergeant; and search the floor in case there’s something to be picked up amongst the litter.”
; Under his directions, the sergeant began to collect the broken glass which strewed the seats and floor of the car, each fragment being handed to Sir Clinton for examination as it came to hand. Most of those on the floor were moist with blood. At last it seemed as though only a few minor fragments remained to be secured.
“Nothing that looks important so far,” Sir Clinton confessed. “Still, stick to it, sergeant. Let’s have every scrap you can find.”
Ledbury obediently grubbed on the floor; and, after fishing out one or two fresh samples of glass, he came upon one which Sir Clinton evidently regarded as of more interest than the rest.
“Have a good look at this, sergeant,” he suggested, holding the fragment out for inspection. “Would you say that was plate glass from the windscreen?”
Ledbury and Peel bent over it.
“That’s not plate glass,” Peel declared. “It’s far too thin; and you can see a rounded sort of edge at one side—a ground edge, isn’t it?”
“That describes it well enough,” Sir Clinton admitted.
“I know what that is, sir,” Ledbury broke in. “It’s a bit of a spectacle lens.”
“Have a good look at it,” Sir Clinton repeated, offering it to the sergeant.
Ledbury scrutinised the fragment for some seconds.
“It’s a spectacle lens, sir, right enough.”
“Hold it up and look through it, sergeant. It’s not a lens, you’ll see. There’s no curvature. It’s plain on both sides.”
“So it is, sir,” Ledbury admitted, handing it over to Peel so that he also might examine it.
“Hunt around a bit more, sergeant. This looks as if we might find something else worth having.”
Ledbury returned to his task, handing out his discoveries as he made them. Three or four small pieces of glass were dismissed by Sir Clinton without comment; but at last he seemed to find something which interested him.
“What do you make of that?” he inquired, handing the last chip back to the sergeant.
“It’s too thin for plate glass, so it isn’t a bit of the windscreen. There’s no other broken glass on the car that I can see; for the lamp lenses wouldn’t get in here; and the clock and speedometer faces aren’t smashed—nor the dashboard light.” Ledbury held the fragment up and peered through it. “It’s got a curve on it.”
Nemesis at Raynham Parva (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 6
