Staffin was evidently about to break out in gratitude when he stopped her.
“I may want to hear more about this affair later on. In the meantime, take my advice and say nothing about last night’s business to anyone. If Barford keeps quiet, it’s quite on the cards that you’ll not be dragged into it after all. But remember, if I have to ask you any questions, I want the plain truth and the whole truth. You understand?”
Staffin flushed.
“There was nothing in it that I can’t tell you, sir. Now I look at it, I see what a fool I was. Mr. Quevedo had such a smooth way of putting things, that half the time I just took what he said without really thinking about it. It looks different now—quite different.”
“I expect so. If any points happen to strike you, keep them in mind. Nothing but the whole truth’s any use to me. And now you’d better go, in case people find us talking together.”
Staffin made another effort to thank him for his help; but he cut her short and dismissed her, just as Johnnie’s footsteps sounded along the corridor.
“Got it?” Sir Clinton demanded as his nephew reappeared. “All right. Give me a screw-driver.”
“I can do it myself,” Johnnie asserted, rather resentfully. “I could have fixed it up myself easily enough, only Mother won’t let me meddle with the electric connections the least little bit. She’s so beastly nervous, you know. Just you see how I can fix it.”
He went over to the table, selected a screw-driver, and attacked the plugs. Sir Clinton kept a watchful eye on him as he exchanged the wiring.
“Tuck in the end of that wire,” he ordered, when the work was half-done. “You’ll have a short if you leave that tail floating round loose like that. Attention to details, young man, is half the secret of success in the police, if you’re really aspiring to a job with them in the future.”
Johnnie grinned at the rebuke; but he took pains to see that there were no further slips in his work.
“There, that’s done,” he said, at last, putting down his screw-driver.
Sir Clinton took the plug from him, tested the grip of the screws on the wire, and then slipped the plug into the socket of the power-circuit. Johnnie bent lovingly over the humming motor and tested the spin of the pulley with his finger.
“That’s the very thing I needed,” he exclaimed. “It’s far stronger than the one I’ve been using. I’m going to build a big crane, next; and this will be the motor of the travelling carriage, you know.”
Sir Clinton bent over the table, with its litter of bars, wheels, springs, and bolts.
“All right for a wet day,” he suggested, “but I shouldn’t waste the sunshine indoors, if I were you, Johnnie. What about taking me out on this lake of yours? Only, you’ll be good enough to keep your breath for your rowing, if you don’t mind. I have some things to think about and I don’t want to be bothered answering questions just now. Come along. Which is the way to the boat-house?”
Johnnie, overjoyed to learn that he was to have his uncle’s company for longer yet, led the way through the French window and down the path to the little landing-stage at the edge of the lake. The prohibition which accompanied the invitation did not trouble him much. He had been trained to keep quiet when his uncle was in an uncommunicative mood. Merely to have Sir Clinton’s company was a treat in itself.
Though it was of no great extent, the lake was not without variety; and Johnnie managed to display most of its features in the course of his row. Sometimes the boat explored a cool inlet overhung with trees, where Johnnie shipped his oars and, leaning perilously overside, studied the bottom in search of trout. Farther on, they coasted banks where the green turf ran clear to the water’s edge; or again they slid into forests of high swishing reeds among which Johnnie entangled his oars. Very occasionally Sir Clinton dropped a remark which showed that his eyes were alert; but Johnnie was not tempted to prolong any conversation which sprang up. He knew the symptoms of his uncle’s mood, and he suppressed his desire for talk.
An ordinary oarsman would have made the circuit of the lake in a very short time; but Johnnie’s rowing-technique was in the elementary stage; and when he had completed his somewhat leisurely exploration it was lunch-time. They tied up the boat at the tiny landing-stage and went back to the house. Sir Clinton was still in his uncommunicative mood; and Johnnie could see that the problem, whatever it was, had not been solved. During luncheon, Sir Clinton roused himself, as politeness required, and seemed to shake off his concentration. Without showing it, he studied Francia and attempted to draw him out. But the Argentiner had the knack of bringing other people into a conversation instead of talking himself; and Sir Clinton learned little more about him than he already knew.
Late in the afternoon, Sergeant Ledbury presented himself again; and from his expression it seemed clear that he was not ill-pleased with the way in which he had spent the day. Sir Clinton took him to the smoke-room, which offered the best chance of privacy.
“Well, sergeant, got to the bottom of it yet?” he asked, with obvious interest.
Ledbury shook his head cautiously. It was clear that he did not propose to boast of his results.
“I think I see my way through some of it, sir. That’s as far as I’d care to go.”
“Suppose we go that length together, then?” Sir Clinton suggested. “Let’s compare notes. You let me have your theory of the business, and I’ll tell you if we happen to differ on any point.”
The sergeant seated himself in response to a gesture from his host, pulled out a notebook, and glanced over some entries.
“Well, sir,” he explained, looking up again at Sir Clinton, “I started with the car tracks.”
“So did I,” Sir Clinton admitted.
“There were five of them altogether,” the sergeant continued after a nod of acknowledgment. “First of all there was the trail of the car that passed while Peel was on guard over the smash-up this morning. We can disregard that, seeing that Peel saw it go by without doing anything.”
He glanced at Sir Clinton as though seeking confirmation of this before continuing.
“Its tyres were different from all the rest,” Sir Clinton interjected, “so it’s reasonable to leave it out of the case. It wasn’t one of the other cars coming back, or anything of that sort. We needn’t bother about it.”
“That leaves four tracks,” the sergeant proceeded. “One of them was your own track, made when you arrived here last night. A bit along the road, near the village, the track of Quevedo’s car crosses your track. That confirms what you said this morning—that you met Quevedo coming out of the village.”
Sir Clinton’s expression showed that he was in no way offended by this.
“That’s very sound, sergeant. You were quite right to check everything and take nobody’s word for any point. I’d have been glad to have had you under me when I was in the police myself. Nothing like testing things and taking nothing for granted. Next?”
“That leaves three tracks: Barford’s, Quevedo’s, and the track of the man who reversed into the avenue. I took Barford’s trail next, sir. Now you’ll remember that Barford’s track went straight on without a check until he pulled up sharp just beyond the site of the smash. That meant that he’d never got out of his car until the smash was over—that’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“Quite, I think,” Sir Clinton conceded willingly.
“Just so,” Ledbury continued. “But it struck me that one man in a motor mightn’t need to get out of his car if he wanted to kill another man in a second car. He might do it either of two ways.”
Sir Clinton became obviously alert.
“You’re getting interesting, sergeant. This is good stuff. Go on.”
“The way I look at it,” Ledbury pursued, with obvious pleasure at the compliment, “is this. Barford might have driven up level with Quevedo and hit him a bat on the head in passing. That’s not outside the possibilities. But there’s two things against that notion, as I found when I went into things. F
irst of all, I know enough about first aid and ambulance work to find out for myself whether a man’s skull’s gone. I looked carefully; and there’s nothing wrong with Quevedo’s skull. What he died from was loss of blood from the glass cuts so far as I can see. Besides, if you were driving a car and someone hit you a bat on the head, you’d lose control of the wheel and your car would swerve.”
He glanced interrogatively at Sir Clinton, who nodded in confirmation.
“Just so,” Ledbury went on. “Now there wasn’t a sign of a swerve in Quevedo’s track, so far as I could see—not a big swerve, anyhow. The track wasn’t dead straight; but no motor track ever is dead straight, anyhow. It was as near straight as one usually sees ’em. So that put out of court any notion that Quevedo was killed at the wheel from a passing car.”
“I’m quite with you there,” Sir Clinton commented. “Now what about your second possibility about Barford’s behaviour?”
“Well, it’s this way, sir. Suppose, I thought, that Barford had been coming along full tilt behind Quevedo and had made up on him. Wouldn’t it have been possible, with both of them travelling at a fair lick, for Barford just to draw level and then begin scrounging, so to speak. I mean edging in towards Quevedo’s car until he forced him into the ditch. That would fit the long, smooth curve of Quevedo’s track, edging in and in towards his own side of the road until he got his near wheel into the ditch, wouldn’t it?”
“Undoubtedly it would,” Sir Clinton admitted. “But I’ll tell you what it won’t fit. I noticed that Teddy Barford’s track overlay Quevedo’s track for most of the way. I mean that Barford’s near wheels were running between the tracks of Quevedo’s wheels. Whence it’s obvious that Barford came along almost in Quevedo’s track, and that he only passed him, as the crossing of the tracks shows, after Quevedo had gone to smash.”
“Oh, you noticed that, did you, sir? I thought it was a bit of a discovery of my own. Things are as you say, and that put the lid on any notion that Teddy Barford killed Quevedo without getting out of the car.”
“You’ve been very thorough, sergeant, I see. Go on.”
“Well, if Teddy didn’t kill Quevedo up to that stage, there’s no case against Teddy. He didn’t knock him on the head, like Peel wants to make out; for I’ve examined Quevedo’s skull and there’s no sign of any knock on it heavy enough to finish him. And Teddy didn’t cut Quevedo’s throat or anything of that sort, while he was lying on the ground; for there isn’t a trace of blood on his hands or his clothes. Lucky for him he hated Quevedo, sir. If it had been an ordinary man, Teddy would have been trying to lend a hand and got all mucked up with blood in doing it. It wouldn’t have been as clear a case.”
“So Barford’s cleared, in your opinion?”
“Quite cleared, sir. I’m glad of it. And now, sir, we come to the track of the man who reversed into the avenue entrance. The way I reasoned it out was this. He arrived there, coming from Raynham Parva direction. I’ve traced his tracks and they turn off into a side-road a bit along the main road. I can’t trace ’em farther than that, for there’s been a lot of new metal laid down thereabouts lately and the surface is bad for tracks. I’ve followed him up as far as I could go on a bicycle; but in the end the tracks disappeared, and when I tried the side-roads I found nothing. He turned off somewhere or other and got clear away.”
Sir Clinton nodded without speaking.
“Well, I had to give it up,” Ledbury went on. “All I had to go on was the tracks round about the avenue gate. Here’s what I made of them.”
“Wait a bit,” Sir Clinton interrupted. “It’ll be easier if we give this man a name. Call him Mr. Jones for the present. It saves words.”
“Jones, sir? Very well,” Ledbury acquiesced, with a broad smile. “This Jones, then, came along the road before Quevedo, but after you’d passed last night. I checked that up by the overlaying of the tracks when they happened to cross. It was clear enough in one or two places. And that confirmed your statement, sir, that this Jones wasn’t at the avenue gate with his car when you passed there yourself.”
He glanced slyly at Sir Clinton to see if this hit was acknowledged.
“Go on,” Sir Clinton suggested. “Truth-telling at the right time is one of my accomplishments, sergeant. It hardly calls for comment.”
Slightly damped, Ledbury continued his exposition.
“The way I look at it is this. The Jones man came along the road in front of Quevedo. For some reason or other, he decided to turn back, and he drove into the end of the avenue. Then he began to reverse out. Just as he’d got his car broadside across the road, Quevedo came along in his car. This Jones, seeing Quevedo’s lights, started to drive back into the avenue entrance so as to clear the road. Meanwhile, Quevedo had seen the obstruction and pulled up. After the Jones man had got his car back into the avenue out of the road, Quevedo started up and drove on again.”
Ledbury paused, as though awaiting comments, but Sir Clinton failed to use the opportunity.
“Now, that helps to account for one thing you pointed out, sir. It explains how Quevedo’s gear-lever was in third speed and not in top. He’d gone off from a standing start and was changing up. He just got into third when the smash happened—before he’d had time to reach top gear.”
“And the full-open throttle, sergeant?”
“I can’t somehow fit that in,” Ledbury admitted, rubbing his hair the wrong way at the back of his head in a perplexed fashion. “I’m almost inclined to think, sir, that that lever may have got jolted over in the smash.”
“Well, we part company there,” Sir Clinton said bluntly. “You can take it from me, sergeant, that the smash didn’t shift the lever. It was on the stiff side, if anything. I tested it to make sure. Now nobody drives a car on the throttle if the throttle-lever’s stiff. The accelerator’s far easier. So I inferred that Quevedo was most likely driving on the accelerator. Most people do as a matter of fact. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t.”
“Well, I can’t sort of fit that in, I admit,” Ledbury confessed. “I don’t profess to know more than the ordinary about cars. Perhaps I’ve missed something or other that I ought to have seen; but I don’t see it, sir.”
“We’ll come back to it later on,” Sir Clinton suggested. “Go ahead.”
Ledbury’s little eyes betrayed something of his discomfiture.
“To tell you the truth, sir, that’s about as far as I got,” he confessed. “I don’t somehow seem able to fit anything more into place. I’d like to hear how you worked it out yourself. If it’s really a murder, then there’s no time to be lost, I know, and it doesn’t seem quite straight to go muddling along myself when you’ve got something up your sleeve that might help.”
Sir Clinton could appreciate Ledbury’s position.
“I daresay if you’d had a little more time, sergeant, you’d have worked things out a bit further. We’ve been much on the same lines of thought so far, apparently; and at one or two points you’ve been more thorough than I was.”
“I had more time, sir.”
“Well,” Sir Clinton continued, brushing this aside, “what you haven’t fitted in yet, so far as I remember, are three things at any rate, or perhaps four: the open throttle, the two bits of glass we found amongst the débris, and the blood on the inside of the car.”
Ledbury’s sudden gesture betrayed his vexation as this last item was mentioned.
“Now I see it, sir. I was a bit of an ass,” he added ruefully.
Then his face, which had cleared for a moment, became puzzled again.
“I’m not sure I see it rightly yet, sir,” he confessed. “You mean, don’t you, that if Quevedo got cut by being thrown through the windscreen, then he’d have bled outside the car and not inside? His blood would have been on the grass and not on the floor and seats of the car? That’s right enough, now I come to see it; but it doesn’t seem to get us much forrarder, does it?”
“Perhaps not,” Sir Clinton conceded. “It certainly doesn�
�t get me so far that I can tell you much about the murderer. You won’t be able to arrest him without a good deal more trouble, I’m afraid. All I can give you is a story which fits all the facts. Whether it’s the right story or not, I don’t profess to know, naturally. That’s a matter for further investigation. Not my job, sergeant.”
“I’d like to hear it now, sir, if you don’t mind.”
“Here it is, then, for what it’s worth.”
Sir Clinton lighted a cigarette before continuing. He seemed to use the pause to fit his narrative together.
“Suppose this is the sequence of events,” he began at length. “This Mr. Jones has a grudge against Quevedo—a grudge big enough to make murder a possible way of squaring the account. I assume that; I can’t prove it. Mr. Jones discovers something about Quevedo’s movements. I don’t know how he managed that. He was known to Quevedo and he wanted to keep Quevedo in ignorance of his pursuit of him. I suspect he must have had a confederate or confederates who watched Quevedo. However it was done, Jones knew that Quevedo was leaving Raynham Parva last night by motor, and he even knew the approximate time. He believed that Quevedo would be driving alone; and he knew the car was an open touring one. All that’s implicit in my theory. I can’t prove it.”
Ledbury made a movement as though to jot down something in his notebook; but an obviously disapproving glance from Sir Clinton checked him in the act.
“There’s nothing there that you need put down. It’s the purest surmise. I’ve nothing to back it. Well, Mr. Jones starts off in his car ahead of Quevedo and he halts at the avenue gate. He couldn’t afford to be late, so probably he was a bit early. He swings his car into the entrance to the avenue, and he waits. He waits a good few minutes, evidently; for the tracks of his wheels were deep where he stood the first time, as I pointed out to you.”
Ledbury made a gesture of acknowledgment.
“I’d forgotten that point, sir. Stupid of me.”
“From that spot, Mr. Jones could see down the road towards Raynham Parva. It’s a straight, level stretch, you remember. By and by, he sees the lights of a motor coming along; and at once he lets his car run out, blocking the road. If it turns out to be a stranger, there’s no harm done. All Mr. Jones needed to do was to apologise for blocking the road, and drive his car back into the avenue to clear the way for the other man. No one would think twice about a thing of that sort. The other driver would see Mr. Jones was turning his car. Quite an innocent thing to do. The blocking of the road would look quite accidental.”
Nemesis at Raynham Parva (A Clinton Driffield Mystery) Page 8
