It is quite possible, though we shall probably never have proof of it, that Joe strengthened this alibi by a little juggling with the petrol supply. It would be easy for him, just before he woke Bloxam, to fill up the tank from a tin he had secreted somewhere on the boat—or better, had previously hidden somewhere on shore, in the cave for instance, and only brought aboard on his return from Maiden Astbury. He could then sink this tin, and call Bloxam’s attention later in some unobtrusive way to the fact that the tank was full. Thus, there would be apparently incontrovertible evidence that the engine had not been used at all that night.
One further point worth noticing. Joe had saved Bloxam’s son from drowning. If the worst came to the worst, and the alibi started to leak, Bloxam would probably perjure himself black and blue for Joe. On the other hand, it would perhaps have been more sensible of Joe to take aboard a man whom the police could not possibly suspect of collusion with him.
Nigel took another deep draught and lit his second cigarette.
Now for what really happened. Everything went according to Cocker until he got to the brewery. (It seems reasonable to suppose that, if Eustace failed to be lured to the brewery by the anonymous letter, Joe had some alternative plan of getting into his house, waking him and bringing him there. He could bank pretty confidently, though, on Eustace’s passion for catching out his employees in petty derelictions.) We now come to the central problem of the case—why was not the murder carried out as originally planned? Tyler reconstructs it as follows. Either there was a struggle when the pair entered the refrigerator-room, and some mark was left on Eustace which necessitated the destruction of his body; or Joe stunned Eustace near the entrance, but did not stun him hard enough (through fear of leaving a suspicious wound), and Eustace recovered consciousness when Joe was carrying him into the refrigerator-room; a struggle took place, etc. The fragment of ring I discovered leaves pretty well no doubt that a struggle of some kind did take place.
For some reason, not yet demonstrable, the accident-plan goes wrong and Joe puts his brother into the copper. The idea that it was because of a wound inflicted by a left-handed person must be washed out; Herbert says that the blow which killed Miss Mellors was a right-handed one, and two murderers is more than one can stomach. Well now, according to Tyler, Joe put his brother in the copper and started back for Basket Cove. He was the man, probably, whom Gabriel Sorn heard riding away from the brewery on a motor-bike between 12.30 and 12.45.
Nigel jerked himself up straight, spilling some beer on his trousers.
Stop! Isn’t there a discrepancy there? Sorn said he heard the motor-bike on his way home. From the brewery to his digs is about five minutes’ walk. He got in at twelve-forty-five. Therefore he heard the cyclist at twelve-forty. Now, Eustace was due at the brewery at midnight. Speed was necessary to Joe’s plan—he had to return to Basket Cove as quickly as possible, soon after one o’clock, if he was to get The Gannet back on her course by the time Bloxam was due to relieve him. That being so, why did he spend forty minutes in the brewery? Even allowing for a certain amount of delay in getting Eustace where he wanted him, and then in transferring the body to the copper, forty minutes seems an unconscionable time to have hung about. One can scarcely credit that, in the heat of the moment, he would notice that a piece had been chipped off his signet-ring and spend valuable time hunting for it. Yet what other explanation can there be?
Leave that aside. Joe returns to The Gannet and finds it in flames. That is the key of Tyler’s case; it is the only theory by which he can explain Joe’s extraordinary subsequent actions. Nemesis steps in and puts a match to Joe’s alibi. What a headline it would make for the press! What a succulent text for the pulpit! What a subject for morbid clichés in suburban parlours. But is it true? Isn’t it much, much too good to be true? Tyler’s suggestion is that Bloxam, through waking up half-stupid from a drugged sleep, and/or through careleassness, and/or through his lack of experience with petrol engines, set the boat on fire. Of course, we can’t say anything very positive about that till we receive the expert’s report. But there are two minor, and one major negative points. The minor points are:—(i) if Bloxam started the fire, one would have expected him to have jumped overboard, not gone into the cabin where his body was found; (ii) even if he had not gone overboard at once, but fought the fire and got his clothes caught he would still naturally have jumped into the water then. By Jove, though, there are two possible explanations for that. The fire-extinguisher was in the cabin; whether the fire started near the engine or in the cabin, Bloxam would go for the extinguisher, and he may quite possibly have been overcome before he could use it. Alternatively, he may have jumped overboard; Joe may then have found his body in the water and put it back into the cabin—in order that the body might be more completely burnt and thus there should be no danger of a post-mortem revealing that he had been drugged.
Both those, in our present state of ignorance about the source of the fire, are reasonable theories. But they both break down on my major negative point, which is this: the kingpin of Joe’s plan was that Bloxam should be asleep while The Gannet was in Basket Cove. His alibi would be blown up with all hands if Bloxam should awake, find the boat lying in the cove and his employer disappeared. Therefore, the very last mistake Joe would be likely to make would be to give Bloxam an insufficient amount of the drug. Unless Bloxam had a freak resistance to whatever drug was administered, he could not possibly have woken up so soon, and therefore he could not have accidentally set the boat on fire. Therefore, the only solutions left are either that the boat caught fire of itself, or that some third party—neither Joe nor Bloxam—set it on fire deliberately.
‘Eliminate the impossible; and whatever is left will be the truth.’ That’s all very jolly; but I am faced with a whole set of impossibles. I’ll have to pass that over for the present. Proceed with Tyler’s reconstruction. Joe finds his alibi shot to pieces. He hides the dinghy in the cave, piling seaweed and drift against the cave-mouth; the idea being to conceal for as long as possible the whereabouts of The Gannet and so give him more time for escape. That fits the facts reasonably enough. He then puts his head in his hands and does a bit of thinking. This is to account for the time between his arrival at the cave—not later than one-thirty—and the time the tramp heard the motor-bike ‘receding inland’, two or maybe three o’clock. Admittedly the tramp hadn’t a watch; but these fellows develop a pretty accurate sense of time. Joe decided on the audacious stroke of hiding up for a day or two in his own house while destroying the evidence against him and getting hold of his passport.
He gets back to Maiden Astbury somewhere around three o’clock, probably dumping his motor-bike somewhere outside the town: Honeycombe Wood would be a good place for concealing it; I wonder have the police searched it yet. He goes to ground in the attic. It is too late to get his passport from the brewery, for dawn will soon be breaking; anyway, he’s had all the excitement his nerves can stand for one night. The next night, Friday, he lies low; he knows that Bunnett’s body will only have been found that evening, and the brewery will be swarming with police. On Saturday night he makes his first move; he lets himself into Eustace’s house with the duplicate keys he took off the body, removes the incriminating Roxby’s papers, and—a point the inspector has overlooked—stole some food.
On Sunday morning, so Tollworthy told me, Mrs Bunnett was in a tantrum because her maid—so she said—had eaten a cake and two loaves that had been baked the day before. Why did no one notice that point? Maids may steal a slice or two of cake from time to time; but they most certainly do not polish off a whole baking. This incidentally accounts for the crumbs in the attic.
Why did Joe not enter the brewery the same night and get hold of his passport? According to Tyler, because he was afraid the police might still be poking about in the brewery. That is plausible; but Tyler’s theory at this point throws up several difficulties. First, if Joe intended to flee the country, thus inevitably drawing suspicion upon himsel
f, why did he bother to destroy the evidence of the Roxby’s transaction? Second, was the destruction of The Gannet so disastrous that the only course open to him was this foolhardy one of returning to Maiden Astbury, getting his passport, going abroad and starting life all over again? Surely the sensible thing to have done, when he found The Gannet in flames, was to have rowed the motor-bike out to deep water and dumped it, and then walked over Basket Down till he found a farmhouse. He could surely make up some plausible story to account for his having to put in at the cove, the outbreak of the fire, and the death of Bloxam. Provided the bike had originally been obtained—as no doubt it had—in another part of the country and in such a way that the purchase could not be connected with him, and provided it was sunk deep, there was simply nothing to connect him with the murder. Still one must admit that murderers are apt to lose their heads, especially Joe’s type; the natural impulse of his sort would be to run to mother when in trouble, and his return to Maiden Astbury can be explained by his desire to get in touch with Ariadne Mellors, whose relationship with him was clearly semi-maternal. The first objection, too, is not insuperable. It can be argued that he destroyed the Roxby’s papers in order to give himself time; the longer the police believed that he was still cruising about on The Gannet, and the longer they had nothing like those papers to suggest his own motive for the crime, the longer it would be before they instituted a serious search for him. No doubt he had some bad moments on Saturday, when he heard them below examining his study and bedroom. But, when the search proceeded no further, he would assume that he was not yet suspected and could postpone going for his passport till a later night—when, with any luck, the brewery would be comparatively free of police.
Then, according to Tyler, Joe’s hand was forced. On Sunday, about midnight, he was surprised in his study by an intruder; he struck out in panic, struck out again and again in the dark; then, all too late, found that he had killed the one person he could have trusted to back him through thick and thin. It was now imperative for him to clear out of the country at once, before the body was discovered. So he went over to the brewery after his passport, but was baulked by the night-watchman. Here again Tyler’s theory fits the facts well enough; yet it doesn’t seem to fit all the implications. For instance, is it conceivable that Joe could have struck down Miss Mellors? If she surprised him in the study, surely she would recognise and speak to him before he had time to deliver a blow; she had an electric torch, after all. If, on the other hand, he had heard someone moving about in the study, the natural thing would have been for him to sit tight in the attic; if there had been anything incriminating in the study, the police would have found it the day before. Finally, if it was Joe who visited the brewery on Sunday night, where is he now?
Arrived at this crux, Nigel swallowed the rest of his beer, walked slowly several times round the room, opened his second bottle, and sat down again.
Where is Joe Bunnett now? It is almost incredible, with the whole county police searching for him and considering how well known he is round here, that he has not been found. There seem two possible explanations. He is still in the brewery; there are probably a number of hiding places there that he would know of and the police would not guess. Alternatively, he may be dead. This fits best the uneasy conviction I’ve had all along that some unknown person has been trying to frame Joe. Let us predicate this X and see what follows. It follows, surely, that X was in collusion with Joe over the murder of Eustace. Otherwise one would have to suppose that he happened to surprise Joe while he was killing Eustace, or immediately afterwards; but, if X was a bad lot, the result of this would be blackmail—the last thing X would want would be for anyone else to suspect Joe, and therefore he would not go around planting incriminating evidence against him. Alternatively, if X was the sole murderer, how on earth—without making Joe suspicious of him—could he arrange that Joe should put into Basket Cove that night and behave generally in such a dubious manner? And how did the burning of The Gannet fit in?
Suppose, then, that X and Joe are in collusion. Does that give me a line on X? There’s no doubt that the people Joe would reasonably collude with are—in order of preference—Miss Mellors, Herbert Cammison, Gabriel Sorn, and Mr Barnes. Cross out Miss Mellors. True, she was with Joe when he or she probably posted the anonymous letter; she might even have entered Joe’s house to plant incriminating evidence against him, and been killed by him because he realised she was double-crossing him. But she is dead, and therefore it cannot be she who got rid of Joe. Anyway, she was surely too fond of Joe to double-cross him. Herbert Cammison? He and Joe were friends: they were the two people who had the strongest motives for killing Bunnett. How would it have worked out. Herbert would probably be the brain behind the whole plan. Also, he would post the anonymous letter. We know he was in the vicinity of Weston Priors that afternoon. Difficulty here, why hasn’t Joe a better alibi for the posting of the letter? Answer: he probably had, and would have come out with it if asked by the police, only the burning of The Gannet upset the whole plan. Well, then, Joe had the obvious alibi for the night of the murder; therefore it was he who did the actual killing.
Suppose all this is true, subsequent events admit of two different interpretations: (a) Herbert had planned all along to double-cross Joe. He went down to Basket Cove that night, presumably on a motor-bike, possibly stopping Joe outside the town and riding pillion on his: knocked Joe on the head and disposed of his body somehow; set fire to the yacht; and he has since been dealing out this incriminating evidence against Joe; (b) Herbert had no intention of double-crossing his accomplice. Joe, finding the yacht burnt, returns to Maiden Astbury gibbering with panic and somehow gets in touch with Herbert. Herbert realises Joe’s nerve has cracked; Joe may give the show away any minute and implicate Herbert. Therefore, Joe must be silenced. He kills Joe and disposes of the body—how, I do not yet know. How much of the evidence against Joe is genuine, so to speak, and how much Herbert faked, is for the moment irrelevant. This second interpretation is the more reasonable one in every way except that it assumes the fire in The Gannet to have been accidental. I don’t believe Herbert is a villain; he would not have planned from the beginning to double-cross Joe; he is, on the other hand, a bit cold-blooded and ruthless; once he realised that his accomplice was breaking under the strain, he would be quite capable of sacrificing him. Herbert has a clear-headed idea of his own value to the world confused by no false modesty. He might easily say, in his dispassionate way, ‘The killing of Eustace was justified on social grounds; he was an enemy of society. Joe must be silenced now, too, because he is a danger to me and I am a valuable member of society.’
There is no doubt that Herbert is the most likely candidate for the position of Joe’s accomplice. He had both a social and a personal motive for getting rid of Eustace; he has an excellent brain and nerve; he is quite uncompromising; he might, under certain circumstances, be the most dangerous type of fanatic—the cool-headed one. At the same time, one must not pass over Gabriel Sorn or Mr Barnes as possible accomplices. Gabriel was not, as far as I know, a close friend of Joe’s. But he had those two very strong motives for killing Eustace—the money he would inherit (if indeed he knew about that), and his neurotic feelings towards Eustace as his father. The weak point about him or Mr Barnes is that neither of them were in such a favorable position as Cammison to dispose of Joe’s body. A doctor is expert at dissecting bodies; a doctor goes off on his rounds in the country, and has much more opportunity of getting rid of the remains than men who are pegged down all day in a brewery.
Nigel felt acutely uncomfortable about all this. He liked Herbert and he liked Sophie. In fact, he had only decided to stay on and help in the case because they seemed in obvious need of his help. Herbert had been absolutely open about his motives; moreover, Nigel had seen him examining the bodies of Eustace Bunnett and Miss Mellors; it was incredible that he should not have turned a hair, if he was responsible for the murder of them both, directly or indirectly. Alas, n
ot quite incredible. Herbert was a man of steel, no getting away from it. However, might there not be some theory which would fit the facts and leave Herbert out of it?
Nigel took a deep breath, drained his tankard and poured out the third bottle—a signal, as it were, that the third phase of his battle of wits against this invisible enemy was beginning. He lay back in his chair, threw his long legs over the arm, and started a meticulous review of the case up to date.
The characters of the persons involved came first beneath his trained scrutiny. Then the events and material clues. Finally he exercised his astonishing verbal memory to recall everything he had heard said since his arrival in Maiden Astbury—not the evidence only, but also—and more important now—the apparently irrelevant remarks let drop from time to time. It was while he was engaged on this that the point came into his head which soon enabled him to work out a whole theory of the crime. It was a little remark made by Sophie Cammison, a remark of such seemingly grotesque irrelevance that there could be no possible excuse for lingering on it. Yet it teased him. It was like a small urchin making a long nose at the Nelson Column—absurdly impertinent, ludicrously disproportionate; yet somehow arresting. As Nigel rather irritably considered it, another point lit up in his mind, and then another. He jumped to his feet and began striding excitedly round the room. It was like watching those electric signs that light up letter by letter, gradually spelling out a name. And the name, Nigel knew as he watched with growing excitement these little points lighting up one by one—the name they unreeled was the name of the murderer.
There's Trouble Brewing Page 19
