‘I’ve told you. We’ve serched this room, sir. And when we search a room, we do it properly,’ said Tyler, visibly aggrieved.
‘Yes, I’m sure you do. Oh, well, I’d fancy a talk with Lock. Is he here still?’
‘I’ll send for him.’
A few minutes later, Lock entered with his stiff, military stride. Nigel asked him to repeat his story of what had happened last night.
‘It was like this, sir. I’d finished the midnight round of inspection and was sitting in that little room near the main entrance, taking a breather. After a bit, somehow—you know how it is—I seemed to remember hearing a sound I didn’t ought to have heard.’
‘What sort of a sound?’
‘I didn’t connect it with anything just then. You see, I didn’t hear it, in a manner of speaking. I remembered that there’d been a sound, that’s all—like when you’re busy on something, you don’t hear the traffic outside, and yet you do hear it——’
‘Subconsciously?’
‘That’d be it, sir, no doubt. I’ve thought about it since, and—as I told Mr Tyler here—I’d make a guess it was the noise a swing door makes closing; you know, the kind that work by air-compression. Anyway, I goes along—it was just after quarter to one—the way where I remembered the sound to have come from.’
‘Turn on any lights?’
‘Bless you, no sir. I knows my way about here in the dark like a mole. I’d a torch, of course; but I didn’t want to use it in case it should give away my position to the enemy. A proper night-attack—that’s what I wanted to spring on the blighter, see? Well, I came upstairs quiet, and just as I rounded the corner at the other end of this passage, I saw someone outside the door of Mr Bunnett’s room. There’s a bit of light comes in through the skylight just above; not what you’d call light, but not as dark as the stairs; just enough for me to see a sort of figure. So I clicked on my torch; only, me standing close against the wall, the movement hit the torch against it about a second before the light went on—the button’s a bit stiff, you see. The blighter heard the sound and it gave him time to nip round the corner and be off; moved like a bleeding streak of lightning, he did, if you’ll pardon the expression: just saw his tail-light whisking off, as you might say. I goes after him, thinking he’d be bound to run out by the front entrance, but seems like he didn’t’.
‘You didn’t hear him running away?’
‘No. It’s a long passage, you see; by the time I’d got to the other end, he could have been half-way to Margate. He must’ve had rubber-soled shoes, though, or I’d’ve heard him clattering down the stairs.’
‘This figure you saw standing by the door—which Mr Bunnett’s door, by the way?’
‘Couldn’t say for sure. Mr Eustace’s, I presumed. I dunno.’
‘We’ll come back to that. The figure. Could you say anything more about it? Height? Bulk? Sex?’
‘No, sir. It was quite still a second, and I stood quite still. I got an impression that it was bending forward, as it might be to feel for the keyhole. Reckon I thought it was a ghost for a second.’
‘Perhaps it was,’ said Tyler irritably. ‘I’m half-inclined to think you imagined the whole thing.’
‘Not me, sir. No. It was a bloke all right. But more than that I can’t tell you—unless you’d like me to imagine a lot o’ details as I never saw,’ he added with heavy humour.
‘Get that torch, will you?’ Nigel asked.
‘What’s all this?’ said the inspector suspiciously, when Lock had departed on his errand.
‘An experiment in optics—if that’s the word I’m groping for.’
Lock returned. Nigel inspected the torch and noted that the button was still stiff. He stationed Lock at the end of the corridor where he had been the night before, and himself stood outside the door of Eustace Bunnett’s room.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘shut your eyes tight. Count ten. Then click on the torch; try and hit the end of it against the wall first, like you did last night. When you know the torch is lit, open your eyes.’
Nigel leant forward to the door. When he heard the tap of the torch against the wall, he paused a fraction of a second, hen raced for the corner.
‘No good, sir! I seen you!’ Lock called out. He had grasped the point of the experiment now. They repeated it several times, Lock deliberately taking longer to switch on the torch before he opened his eyes. But every time he saw Nigel before he could get round the corner.
‘It’s proved, then, that the chap was not trying to get into Eustace’s room. Now we’ll try Joe’s.’
Joe Bunnett’s door was only a yard from the end of the corridor, nearer to it than Eustace’s though on the same side. This second set of experiments had a very different result. The first time, Lock saw Nigel just before he turned the corner, the second time he only saw the tail of his coat, the third time he saw nothing at all.
‘That’s that, then,’ said Nigel. ‘There’s reasonable evidence that the person you saw was trying to get into Joe Bunnett’s room.’
‘Or just coming out,’ said the inspector, who had been looking on.
‘Now we’ve got to turn Joe’s room upside down. There’s just got to be something there. I don’t believe the murderer would have had time to remove it. A trained watchman like Lock would become conscious of that sound—the swing-door or whatever it was—very soon after his subconscious mind had noted it. A reaction of ten to thirty seconds, I’d say. But even supposing it was a minute, or two or three minutes—even that would hardly give the intruder time to open the drawers, perhaps the safe, and get what he had come to get. Obviously he didn’t know exactly where the thing was to be found, or he wouldn’t have wasted time burgling Eustace’s house the night before.’
The inspector looked cunning. ‘Suppose the intruder was Joe Bunnett himself. Suppose the burglary at his brother’s house was simply to get hold of those Roxby’s papers, and there was something else in his room here he had to have too. He’d be able to find it quickly enough. And he’s the most likely person to have a key to his own room, what’s more.’
‘Yes. That’s true. Though I can’t understand why he shouldn’t have burgled Eustace’s study and his own room on the same night. Does he ration himself to one deed of darkness per twenty-four hours? Seems rather whimsical. Well, let’s make a last attempt to crack this nut.’
They entered Joe Bunnett’s room. A safe, a desk, a filing cupboard, a threadbare carpet, a photograph of an outing of the brewery employees, a pencil drawing of The Gannet, and a few chairs, formed the bulk of the furniture.
‘You searched the room this morning?’ Nigel asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Dust?’
‘No good, sir. We left too many marks in the dust during our first search to be able to pick out any fresh ones. There are no new fingerprints.’
Nigel opened a drawer in the desk at random. It contained nothing but copies of Razzle and Film Fun. He closed it hastily, murmuring:
‘Tut-tut. A harem. Revealing, but not pertinent.’
He poked his fingers into one of the pigeonholes. ‘He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum—no, not a plum, a passport.’
He flipped over the pages idly. The usual debauched-looking photograph. ‘Joseph Bunnett. Age forty-eight. Height, five feet eight inches. Fair hair. Moustache. The usual stuff. Visaed for France and Switzerland last year.’ Nigel starting rummaging again. Then he stiffened suddenly and let out a wild whoop.
‘Eureka!’
‘How much? Wasp stung you, sir?’
‘Not wasp. Idea. Yes, why not? Joe wants to get out of country. Wants his passport. All quite regular. What about it?’
Tyler scratched his chin. ‘Um. There’s something in that. Yes. But, look here, if he’d planned to kill Eustace and clear out of the country, surely he wouldn’t forget to have his passport with him?’
‘No. But supposing all that cruise business was meant for an alibi, and something went radically wrong with it.
Suppose he intended to turn up in Maiden Astbury after a decent interval and say, “Well, boys, I only heard about my brother being dead when I put in at Falmouth,” or words to that effect; and suppose for some reason that plan got scuppered, and he realised that Fortune (fickle jade) had given him a kick in the pants, then what’s more likely than that he should lose his head and make a bolt for it—calling in for his passport en route?’
‘I dare say. Well, that may give us something to work on.’
‘Something to work on? That’s meiosis. Don’t you see—he’s in a tearing hurry now. He’ll be coming back for his passport again. He’s got to have it, and then we have him.’
‘Optimistic, aren’t you? You must know by now that we could have him arrested wherever he lands in France.’
‘No; because he doesn’t know that we know that it’s the passport he’s after. He has no reason to believe that we suspect him yet to the extent of warning the French police. He imagines that we’re still swimming round in circles looking for The Gannet.’
‘Something in that. Where’s he hiding, though? That’s what I’d like to know. Can’t be far away if it’s him that’s been doing these burglaries.’
‘Maybe he’s staying at the Royal Hotel, disguised as the Archdeacon of Wessex.’
‘And maybe my name is Winston Churchill,’ retorted the inspector ferociously.
Nigel stared at his shoe-laces. He went to stub out his cigarette in an ash-tray on the mantelpiece. The ash-tray, he noticed, was one of those advertising ones; ‘Castle Brand Mineral Waters’ was stamped on it.
‘An Englishman’s home is his castle,’ murmured Nigel. Then, pianissimo, ‘I suppose Joe Bunnett is not hiding in his own house, Tyler?’
‘His own!—what?—Do you think he’s crazy?’ the inspector almost shouted.
‘No. Perhaps just cleverer than we thought. Have you searched the house?’
The inspector’s eyes swivelled away from Nigel. He looked uncomfortable. ‘Searched the house? Well, no, sir. We had no call to; I mean, we couldn’t possibly suppose—it’s ridiculous,’ he blustered—‘of course, we’ve been through his study and bedroom—on Saturday morning it was—to see if there was anything that’d give a clue to his present whereabouts. But we’ve not been all through the house, not torn up the floors, and tapped the walls and all that hokey-pokey. When the search was made, there was no reason to suppose he was the murderer.’
‘Shades of the Bow Street Runners!’ Nigel ejaculated to himself. Aloud he said, ‘Well, I should think a careful search ought to be made now, don’t you?’
The inspector conceded this, somewhat grudgingly. He did not enjoy being caught out in an error. To hide his feelings and reassure himself, he proceeded first with a meticulous examination of the room. Every paper was taken out, perused and tossed over to Nigel. It was thus that the second discovery of the morning took place. In a drawer, mixed up with a number of personal letters, several ancient dance programmes, the menu of a regimental dinner, and some extra-strong peppermints, they found a document, duly signed and witnessed, by which Joe Bunnett bequeathed everything of which he should die possessed—to Ariadne Mellors.
‘Well, for crying aloud!’ exclaimed Nigel. ‘This really is a most ill-regulated case. First we don’t get a sniff of a clue, and now they’re raining down on us like autumn leaves—and all pointing different ways—more like the Sibyl’s leaves, I should say.’
‘May be significant, after what you told me about your interview with Miss Mellors yesterday.’
‘Um. Opens up all sorts of avenues. As for instance, Mellors may have planned to murder Joe as well as Eustace; motive, to get the brewery into her own hands and close it down—staggering blow to the liquor trade; then lost her nerve and decided to get hold of this compromising will and destroy it—or keep it till things had blown over. Or she may have been in collusion with Joe, may even have been hiding him in her own house: one or other of them kills Eustace; then Joe loses his nerve, and Mellors has to silence him—I never could imagine why Lady Macbeth didn’t put something in her husband’s coffee when he started making embarrassing remarks at the dinner-table. Come to think of it, there’s a good deal of superficial resemblance between the Macbeths and Joe and Miss Mellors. Well, she kills Joe to safeguard herself, and comes after the will for the same reason. There are any number of possible permutations and combinations of this situation.’
‘No doubt,’ said the inspector dryly. ‘I’m not interested in sums just at the moment, though. We’ll find out where Miss Mellors was last night, and then look over Joe Bunnett’s house.’
Miss Mellors was not in. The maid had not seen her that morning, but Miss Mellors always cooked and washed up her own breakfast, and was often out before the maid arrived. They were on the point of taking their leave when the girl exploded a bombshell. Nigel had remarked aside to Tyler that, as she went home after dinner every night, she could know nothing about her mistress’s movements. The girl overheard this: a sly look came into her eyes: she said she had been talking over the garden fence that morning with her friend, Iris, who worked next door; Iris told her that last night she had been saying goodnight to her boy inside the gate just before twelve o’clock, and they’d seen Miss Mellors come out of her house ever so stealthy and hurry down the road. In which direction? The maid pointed. Ah, thought Nigel, past Joe Bunnett’s house towards the brewery. This was a push-over. The inspector knew that Joe Bunnett left the keys of his house in Miss Mellors’ charge when he went off on holiday. He had borrowed them for his previous search. The maid was sent off to fetch them. After a few minutes she returned, looking bewildered, and said that the keys were gone from the hook they usually hung on; they’d been there yesterday evening, she’d happened to notice: funny goings-on, wasn’t it?
The inspector thanked her brusquely, asked her to show him the telephone and rang up his headquarters. He arranged for several men to come up at once, two to cover the back of Joe Bunnett’s house, another with a bunch of skeleton keys to open the doors and a fourth to guard the front gate. Meanwhile he and Nigel waited in the porch of Le Nid. In six minutes’ time, a couple of plainclothes men walked past and gave an unobtrusive signal meaning that the rear of the house was now covered. The inspector and Nigel followed. One man stayed at Bunnett’s gate, the other walked up the neat flagged path behind them. The house seemed preternaturally still: its closed shutters gave it a vacuous look: was there a madman’s brain hidden behind that blind, vacant front? Nigel wondered; or the desperate frenzy of a murderer, nervous as a hair-trigger after three days of suspense, isolation and peril, cornered now, ready to break out? It was strange to think that he had never set eyes on this man whom they had now run to earth. Or had they? Was it conceivable that he would have the cold nerve to stay on in his own house all this time?
A key clicked and the door opened. The inspector shouldered his way past his subordinate into the dark hall. Nigel followed, instinctively putting out his hands as though to ward off the blow that might fall out of the shadows. But no blow came; no sound, except the harsh echoes of their own feet on the stone floor. Dining-room, empty. Lounge, empty. Furniture shrouded in white dust-covers. Tyler plucked these covers away one by one. Kitchen, empty. Cellar, empty. Every cupboard, every cranny was explored. Not a word had yet been spoken; that was odd, thought Nigel; there was something oppressive about the house that forbade them to talk, even in whispers. They filed upstairs. One, two, three bedrooms, all empty. At the end of the passage, a smaller room—Joe’s sanctum; sporting prints on the walls; a bureau; fishing rod and golf clubs in a corner; a shove-halfpenny board; a deep armchair facing the fireplace, its back to them, shrouded, too, in a dust-cover. Automatically the inspector moved up to it and twitched off the cover. He gasped. The armchair was the one thing in the house that was not empty. Ariadne Mellors was sitting there, her head battered in.
For several seconds the three stood there, stunned by that discovery. Then Nigel said in a whisper:
‘That’s a steep price to pay for the proof of one’s innocence.’
As though this released him into activity, the inspector started furiously to work. It was almost unimaginable that the murderer could still be in the house, but Tyler sent his subordinate to search bathroom, lavatory, linen-cupboard and whatever else there might be, while he himself telephoned for assistance. Nigel glanced from the hideous thing slumped in the chair to the blood-stained poker that lay in the grate. A shattered electric torch on the floor, patches of blood between fireplace and desk. Miss Mellors must have entered the room, surprised the murderer (or had he been lying in wait for her?) and been killed without preamble or mercy. Had she had time even to scream once, it would surely have been heard next door and reported. Nigel felt sick. He was, he realised, indirectly responsible for this. Interviewing Miss Mellors yesterday evening, he had made it all too plain that Joe Bunnett was under grave suspicion; so she had come over last night, surely to find if he had left any incriminating evidence against himself and to destroy it if need be. Semper Fidelis was the family motto of that uncouth, comical, ill-starred woman; she had lived up to it and died by it. It was unthinkable that, if she had been Joe’s accomplice in the murder of Eustace, Joe should have killed her; for, as an accomplice, she would have known of his hiding place and he would have expected her to visit him there; whereas, if Joe was the murderer at all, he had evidently struck out at his visitor of last night in the darkness and desperate panic, not realising who she was.
But there was still not definite proof that Joe had murdered Eustace, apart from the fragment of the signet-ring found in the refrigerator-room. It was possible that someone else, the real murderer, might have got possession of the ring or had a replica made, and left the clue behind to implicate Joe. On the other hand, if the murderer was not Joe, what was he doing in this house last night? Nigel clicked his fingers. Got it! Planting some more false evidence. Well then. Yes, it fits in. We thought that Joe killed his brother and hid himself here. But surely three nights in this house would be bound to leave some traces of occupation. Yet we’ve found none. This cuts both ways, though. If the murderer wants to make us believe that Joe has been skulking here and therefore is the killer, he’d surely have faked some evidence pointing to that. Perhaps Miss Mellors caught him out before he had time to do that. Yet he couldn’t have known that the police would not make a detailed examination of the house till today. Perhaps there is some evidence, planted or genuine, which we’ve failed to discover. Damn! How could any evidence have been planted when Miss Mellors kept the only keys of the house. Had anyone else a set of keys? There must be a duplicate for the front door, at least. Only Joe Bunnett, surely. Still, I suppose somebody might have taken an impression of his key and had another made. More work for the inspector. Perhaps they’ll feel inclined to call in the Yard after all this.
There's Trouble Brewing Page 16
