‘Look here, sir. Have you been withholding this information?’
‘No, no! Certainly not. Never withhold information—at least, scarcely ever. Most irregular. Very bad form. I only heard the—er—details this morning.’
Nigel proceeded to recount his interview with the head brewer. Tyler told the sergeant to get a trunk-call through to someone in authority at Roxby’s.
‘Pity Barnes didn’t tell me all this before. Obstructive that man’s been all along. Still, it pretty well lets him out, I suppose.’
‘Lets him out? Why?’
‘Well, sir,’ explained the inspector, his small eyes narrowed superciliously, ‘that’s surely quite obvious. If Barnes had gone to all that trouble last night to destroy the evidence of this forthcoming deal with Roxby’s, he’d not be likely to tell you all about the deal this morning.’
‘I don’t know about that. It would be an excellent way of diverting suspicion from himself.’
‘Oh, come now, Mr Strangeways. That’s much too subtle for me. People don’t behave like that, outside of books.’
‘Well, then, why didn’t the thief take the file away? And why did he leave the room in such disorder?’
‘Lost his head, I expect. The servant, Alice, says she got up and went out of her bedroom about one o’clock in the morning. No doubt the thief heard her moving about and did a bunk.’
‘That’s very theoretical. If it was of such vital importance to him to keep the Roxby’s affair quiet by stealing the papers, why on earth didn’t he take the file too?’
‘I suppose he didn’t see the name “Roxby’s” written on it. It’s on the underside of the cover-flap where he could easily miss it.’
‘Well, I still think the whole thing suggests the murderer’s deliberately drawing our attention to the Roxby’s transactions; which would imply that his real motive for the murder was quite a different one.’
The inspector laughed. ‘With your imagination, sir, you ought to write a book.’
‘I have,’ replied Nigel sourly. ‘I have also eliminated another of your suspects.’
‘Is that so, sir?’ said Tyler in a humouring voice.
‘It is so. Ed Parsons.’
Nigel gave the gist of his interviews with Lily, Ed, and Gertie Tollworthy.
‘Humph! So them two were telling us lies all the time, were they? They’ll hear some more from me about that.’
‘No doubt. But in the meantime we’ve got this little affair of a murder on our hands. I——’
Nigel was interrupted by the tinkle of the desk telephone. The inspector took off the receiver.
‘Hallo! This is Inspector Tyler, speaking from Maiden Astbury, Dorset…. A round of golf? Yes, sir, it must have been inconvenient for you: but I happen to be investigating a murder…. Yes, Mr Eustace Bunnett…. Yes, sir, very sad…. Now I just want to know the details of the negotiations between him and your people for the sale of Bunnett’s…. Yes, sir, of course it shall remain confidential….’
The metallic gabble from the other end proceeded. At one point the inspector’s eyes grew round and he whistled under his breath. ‘Closing the place down, you say? … Yes, of course…. And was there anyone else, at your end or over here, who’d be likely to know of these negotiations? … I see. Thank you very much, sir. I think that will be all for the present.’
Tyler turned to Nigel with a triumphant look.
‘I wonder how your Mr Barnes is going to explain that.’
‘You speak in riddles. Elucidate, I pray you.’
‘Roxby’s were planning to extend their trade down this way. They’re building a new works near Bath, and they proposed to buy up Bunnett’s and close it down, so as to remove the competition. Said it’d pay them better than to modernise the place. And there was that Barnes stuffing you up with stories about how no one at the brewery’d be affected by the change! Played you up for a sucker properly, didn’t he?’
‘Well, he who sucks last sucks worst. We shall see. And are you rushing round to Mr Barnes with a nice bright pair of handcuffs on the strength of that?’
‘You bet I’m not. Plenty o’ routine work to be done before that. But you amateurs aren’t interested in that, are you? Too much like hard work, eh?’ the inspector said, with the heavy jocularity of a giant squid that has digested a hundredweight of fresh fish and is now telling a baby cuttle where it gets off. ‘I’m not saying that Barnes is our man. But I reckon I’ve narrowed it down to him, Mr Joe Bunnett and that Mr Sorn. They’re the only ones who’d be interested in those negotiations with Roxby’s not going through—and the only ones likely to know about them, too.’
‘Well, I’m still inclined to think that this Roxby’s business is a smoke-cloud put up by the murderer. Still, supposing you’re right: what about Joe Bunnett? He’d be the one most likely to know the details of the negotiations. Closing down the brewery would be a bad show for him financially; whereas Bunnett’s death gives him absolute control over it; and he does seem to have been really interested in the place—as a human being, I mean—the idea of all those chaps being turned off——’
‘Ah, very likely. But where is he? He’s so well known in this town and the villages around, because of his travelling round the pubs owned by the firm. Somebody’d be bound to have seen and recognised him by now. If it was him that entered Bunnett’s study last night, he can’t be very far away; he hasn’t been seen at the railway station here, and his car is in garage down in Poolhampton. But it’d be madness for him to stay anywhere near the town if he did the murder and this cruise of his was intended for an alibi.’
‘No news about The Gannet yet?’
‘No. Funny, that. Shipping’s been warned, as well as the coastguards and harbour authorities. Fairly easy for a man to disappear, but how you make a decent-size cabin-cruiser vanish, I just don’t know.’
‘Some bird got a magic wand, I expect. Or alternatively, it might have sunk.’
‘In this weather?’
‘Yes, it’s a brute, isn’t it? I suppose Joe Bunnett hasn’t been buying a motor-cycle lately?’
The inspector’s moon-white face assumed a positively Machiavellian expression.
‘Aha!’ he said. ‘I wondered would you think of that. I’m making enquiries. Still an’ all, he’s not the only pebble on the beach. This young Mr Sorn now—very suspicious his behaviour’s been. Said he was out for a walk that night, but——’
‘Somehow I doubt if we’d have got him to admit that so easily if he had done the murder. I dunno, though.’
‘And look at this motive. Fifty thousand quid to share withhis mother—she’s O.K., by the way: heard from the French police. She was sitting quiet in her villa over there when this happened.’
‘You’re not committing yourself to the Roxby’s motive, then?’
‘Not altogether. It doesn’t do to be bigoted, sir. Keep an open mind and study the facts is what I say.’
The sergeant entered and informed Tyler that there was a man wanting to see him outside. The inspector went out. Nigel lit a cigarette, laid the cigarette-card on his thumb and flicked it neatly into the waste-paper basket at the other side of the room.
‘Aha,’ he said to himself, ‘the old hand has not lost its cunning: which is more than can be said for the old brain, it seems. I just don’t begin to have an idea who killed Bunnett. Gabriel Sorn, now. He seemed so obviously the villain of the piece that maybe I didn’t think about him hard enough. He had opportunity and motive for the murder. On the other hand, he seems to have an alibi for the posting of the anonymous letter. Still, he could have got someone else to post it. Must find out if he knows anyone in Weston Priors. Motive, though. Somehow I can’t quite see that young man killing anyone for money: he’s not the calculating, cold-blooded type; and he did seem to be telling the truth when he said he knew nothing about Bunnett’s will. What he really seemed upset about at that interview was that his mother should have had relations with Bunnett. Yes: the idea of that and
of Bunnett being his father might well push a neurotic sort of chap like him over the borderline. And Bunnett had been wounding him in another vital spot too: he’d been making him write doggerel advertisements for Bunnett’s beers; remember how worked up he was about it on the night of the party. He’d resent that humiliation more than anything else almost. H’m. Gabriel Sorn. Yes. And the way, as I believe, the murderer’s been drawing our attention to this Roxby’s business; that points to Sorn, too: he would be diverting our attention from himself and his own motives, because he actually stood to lose least by Bunnett’s being closed down. Yes, Gabriel Sorn will bear looking into. I wonder was he taking another of his nocturnal outings last night.’
At this point the inspector entered with a puzzled look on his face.
‘Chap called Carruthers outside,’ he said. ‘Just like someone to turn up with fresh complications when I thought I was beginning to get things straight.’
‘These things are sent to try us,’ said Nigel.
‘Dunno what to make of it. This chap looks after the refrigerating-room in the brewery, he says. Apparently, on the morning after the crime, Friday morning, that is—he found some emergency bell connected with this room out of order.’
‘The devil he did! This is great news. Now we’re getting somewhere at last. Why on earth didn’t he say something about it before?’
‘Afraid of getting into hot water. It was his business to look after the refrigerators, you see. So he put the bell right and said nothing. Now, as you know, on Friday night we made a thorough search of the premises looking for anything that’d give us a line on the exact spot where the crime was committed. We found nothing. So next morning we typed out an appeal, which Mr Barnes posted up in various parts of the brewery, asking anyone who had noticed anything unusual or amiss the day before to come forward. So this Carruthers sleeps on it and today he decides it’s his duty to bring the information. I don’t see, though, as——’
But Nigel was already out of the room and beginning to question Carruthers.
‘The bell was out of order. You mean it had been disconnected, switched off—whatever the word is, or deliberately damaged?’
Carruthers began to be exceedingly technical.
‘Hoy! Stop!’ said Nigel. ‘I was suckled on irregular verbs, not high-frequency coils. Tell me in words of one syllable. Uncle Percy’s first lessons in electricity to the tots.’
Carruthers grinned and did his best. Nigel gathered that the bell had been put out of order, in such a way that it might well seem the result of an accidental breakdown: Carruthers, however, knew that this type of bell was most reliable, and was strongly of the opinion that it must have been tampered with.
‘Come along!’ Nigel exclaimed. ‘We must visit the scene of the crime. This is big stuff. Noted amateur bloodhound follows up the Clue of the Sabotaged Bell.’
He led the way to the brewery, Tyler and Carruthers vainly attempting to match his long, loping strides. Soon they were standing outside the solid door of the refrigerating-room. Carruthers gave a short lecture-demonstration.
‘And this bell was in working order on Thursday?’
‘Oh, yes, sir. Tested it on Thursday afternoon myself.’
‘Let us explore, then,’ said Nigel.
‘You’re wasting time, sir,’ said the inspector. ‘We’ve been over that room already.’
‘Never mind.’
The heavy door was swung open and they entered. They searched for a quarter of an hour. The refrigerating-room was cold, clean, blanched and empty as a winter sky.
‘There you are, sir,’ said the inspector.
‘Yes. There—it seems—I am.’ Nigel was standing near the door, his back to one of the refrigerators. ‘Doesn’t seem so cold as when I was here last.’
‘No, sir,’ said Carruthers. ‘We’re defrosting now.’
Nigel stiffened. Then his mouth fell open and his face took on the blank, staring expression of one who has been shot and is just on the point of toppling over.
‘Defrosting!’ he yelled. ‘God, what a fool I am! Good old Jack Frost! Where’s that blasted coat got to, I wonder?’
He took to his heels and ran like a mad dog out of the room. The inspector, pounding after him, arrived a very bad second at the head brewer’s signal-box of an office. Nigel was already rummaging in the pockets of several long white coats that hung on the wall. Now he held out his hand to Tyler. On the palm lay a fragment of some dark green substance, about the size of a third of his little fingernail.
‘There you are,’ he said breathlessly: ‘the missing clue. Feast your eyes on it, old boy. Now we’re off.’
He hurried back to the refrigerating-room, the inspector rumbling ominously at his side. When they had returned, Tyler burst out, ‘Now, then, sir. What is all this about? What’s the idea concealing evidence like——?’
‘Concealing my backside! I only just remembered it. When I was being shown over this room on Friday morning, I picked up that little slip of stuff—without thinking—you know—and put it in the pocket of the white coat I was wearing. Carruthers mentioning defrosting touched the spring in my memory. You see, this object was lying on a pocket of frost at the bottom of that groove there.’
‘Well, but——’
‘Don’t you see? Lying on a pocket of frost. It caught my eye. That means it must have dropped there quite recently, otherwise the frosting would have covered it. When did you defrost last—before the night of the murder, I mean, Carruthers?’
‘Temperature was raised on Wednesday evening, lowered again on Thursday morning.’
‘So frost would be forming all Thursday?’
‘That’s right, sir.’
‘Q.E.D.,’ said Nigel triumphantly. ‘If this little object had been dropped there before Thursday night, by Friday morning it would have been covered over with frost. But it was not covered with frost. Ergo, it was dropped some time during Thursday night or Friday morning.’
‘But that don’t lead anywhere necessarily. One of the employees might have dropped it there on Friday before you came in.’
‘Just have a look at it, will you? It’s a fragment chipped off something. Off what?’
Inspector Tyler scrutinised it closely. There were fine lines, part of some pattern, indented on the solid dark-green surface. The inspector breathed heavily over it for a minute.
‘I’ve got it!’ he said; ‘it’s a fragment off the seal of a signet-ring. But——’
‘Exactly. And it could only have been splintered off by violence: its owner taking a swipe at that refrigerator, for instance, and cracking it hard with his fist, so that the seal is chipped and that fragment falls on to the pocket of frost underneath.’
‘But, damn it, sir, people don’t go about taking swipes at refrigerators.’
‘No. Certainly not. Deuced bad taste, knocking refrigerators about. That’s just the point. But a bloke might easily take a swipe at another bloke, in a struggle, in the dark, miss him, and crack his fist up against the fridge, by mistake.’
‘M’m. Something in that. I’d better take charge of that bit of seal. Shouldn’t be difficult to find out who owns a seal ring, though I expect he’ll have got rid of it when he found it was splintered. It’s not a piece of Mr Eustace Bunnett’s, anyway: his was intact.’
‘I should say the College of Heralds might be able to reconstruct the whole crest from that bit there, and once you knew the crest you’d be as near as nothing to the murderer.’
‘We’ll take a look at it under the microscope first, sir.’ The inspector was peering closely at the side of the refrigerator. ‘Ah, here’s a little chip here, straight above where you found that bit of seal, looks as if it’d been freshly made. H’m. Four foot six from the ground. That’s about the height you’d strike it with a fist if you were aiming at the jaw of a chap Bunnett’s height.’
Nigel was staring abstractedly at his feet. ‘I wonder why it was that the murderer’s plans went wrong,’ he said.
X
July 19, 1.30–5.30 p.m.
The lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine.
TEMPERANCE BALLAD (nineteenth century)
NIGEL WAS STILL somewhat abstracted when he returned to the police station after lunch. This might have been ascribed to the two helpings of roast beef, three helpings of plum-tart, and plateful of cheese and biscuits which the Cammisons had, with growing apprehension, watched him eat.
‘You know,’ Herbert said, ‘you’ll do yourself an injury if you persist in eating like this. I had a case not long ago——’
‘I don’t mind about that,’ said Sophie. ‘It’s my larder I’m worrying about. We shall have to build an annexe on to it before Nigel’s next visit.’
‘Mphm. Jolly good cheese this. Could I have some more?’
‘It’d be interesting to test your blood-pressure at this stage.’
‘I’m sure there’ll be nothing left for supper,’ said Sophie.
‘Oh, I say. Won’t there really? Look here, let me take you both out to the hotel then,’ said Nigel, genuinely moved.
Sophie laughed. ‘No, it’s all right. We’ll scrape something together. You are funny, you know. But nice.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Are you stoking up for something definite, or just on general principles?’ Dr Cammison asked.
‘Well, both. Men of genius have commonly been notoriously large eaters. Also, I’m going to interview Miss Mellors. What do you think of her?’ he shot point-blank at Sophie.
‘Me? Oh, I don’t know about people.’ Sophie looked solemn and a little harassed behind her horn-rim spectacles, like an owl mobbed by tits. ‘She’s quite nice really, though she is bossy. I think she’s probably a sentimental old thing and ashamed of it, and that’s why she puts on that sort of sergeant-major manner. I shouldn’t be surprised if she had a secret sorrow.’
‘Darling, and you talk about her being sentimental!’ said Herbert.
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