‘Not even when the beer was in?’ Bobby asked.
Farman looked a little startled, but was saved from answering by the sound of voices and of an opening door.
‘There’s Sir Albert coming,’ he said in a quick whisper.
CHAPTER 17
BOBBY REPORTS RESULTS
Bobby turned quickly to look with intent at this newcomer whose personality and character might have played, might still be playing, so great a part in the drama it was his own business to unfold – or try to. He saw a small, round, bustling man, a little bald, a little stout, a little red in the face, a little watery about the eyes, the mouth permanently a little open – a little, indeed, it seemed, of everything, though not very much of anything; altogether, an indeterminate sort of person. Such at least was the impression Bobby received from the one swift, concentrated glance that was all he had time to give – though, too, he had a vague impression of a kind of latent nervousness that might at times transform itself into a capacity for swift and sudden action – and then Sir Albert announced his appearance in the hall by one loud, sudden, shattering sneeze.
‘Farman,’ he called, ignoring Bobby, whom probably he guessed to be one of the numerous police scattered about the house, ‘Farman, I’m going to bed. My head’s splitting. A touch of flu, I think. Tell them to get me a room ready – one of the spare-rooms.’
‘Very good, Sir Albert,’ Farman answered. ‘Shall I send for the doctor, sir? Advisable, sir, in a manner of speaking, if I may say so.’
Sir Albert answered with another out-size in sneezes.
‘Doctors are all humbugs,’ he declared petulantly. ‘Tell Marshall he can come along if he likes. Fact is, I oughtn’t to have got up this morning – and I wouldn’t, either, only for this awful thing happening. And then I had to wait hours for their beastly car, feeling worse all the time. You had better be looking out for a new place, Farman.’
‘Sir?’ said Farman, a good deal startled.
‘Have to sell up, most likely,’ Sir Albert told him gloomily between two more resounding sneezes. ‘Nothing much left now the jewellery’s gone – not insured either. I always wanted that done, and it never was. Rotten look-out altogether.’
He vanished upstairs as he spoke in a crescendo of sneezes; they heard one final effort that sounded like the Platonic ‘form’ of sneeze made manifest on earth; then a door banged, and all was peace once more. Farman, who had been gazing after his master open-mouthed, turned disconsolately to Bobby: ‘Well, in a manner of speaking, that’s a nice thing to shoot off at a man,’ he complained, ‘and me at my age and the competition getting fiercer every day.’
He wandered away with a very depressed and melancholy air, and Bobby proceeded to the library, where he was received but coldly by Colonel Lawson, who was busy with Moulland and two or three other assistants.
‘Oh, there you are at last,’ Lawson said. ‘I’m waiting for those notes of yours – tried to get them read, but the man I gave them to said it was impossible to make them out.’
‘Indeed, sir,’ said Bobby, stung in a tender spot, for he really was proud of his shorthand. ‘I use Pitman’s, sir. It’s generally considered very legible, sir.’
‘Oh, it is Pitman’s, then,’ observed the Colonel. ‘They seemed to think it was most likely some private system of your own. Well, get to work; the sooner I have them in longhand the better.’ He turned to one of his newly arrived subordinates. ‘We’ve got to find this young Dene,’ he declared. ‘Get out a description of him at once. Looks pretty bad, his disappearing like this, especially when there was his pen found on the spot.’
‘Beg pardon, sir,’ said Bobby, bending sulkily over his insulted script, where every line and curve and angle seemed to him as plain as any print. ‘I’ve had a talk with Dene. He promised to come straight on. He should be here any minute.’
One of the county police appeared at the door.
‘Young man of the name of Dene, sir,’ he reported. ‘Says he’s been told you want to see him, sir.’
‘Oh, yes, quite right, quite right,’ answered Lawson. ‘Ask Mr. Dene if he would mind waiting a minute or two – explain what a lot one has to attend to in these affairs; and – er – see that he does.’
‘Very good, sir,’ said the policeman, and vanished, and Lawson turned to Bobby.
‘I was informed Dene could not be found – that he had probably left the village,’ he said severely, evidently holding Bobby much to blame.
‘Yes, sir, that’s what I heard,’ Bobby agreed. ‘I inquired at his home, but they didn’t seem to know anything there, so I went on to the field where he works. I thought it a likely place, and he was in the shed there. He said he had locked himself in to avoid interruption while he was putting his things straight. They all had been very much upset this morning.’
‘Very extraordinary,’ commented Lawson. ‘At a time like this, too. Locked himself in, you say? H’m! On pretence of work?’
‘Yes, sir, though I shouldn’t think it was altogether pretence,’ Bobby ventured to say. ‘I think he is very keen. I think he thinks it’s very important. He has scientific theories he hopes to get accepted – about evolution and the origin of man. He is writing a book he thinks will prove very important.’
‘More important than getting to the bottom of a thing like this?’ demanded Lawson sarcastically.
‘The impression he gave me, sir,’ Bobby answered, ‘was that he was entirely wrapped up in his work, and took very little interest in, and cared very little about, anything else. He mentioned his fountain-pen. He says he lost it last Thursday. He said that before I said anything about it. He has advertised in the Hirlpool Gazette for its return, offering ten shillings reward. The advertisement was sent so that they would get it some time Saturday, he says. I haven’t checked it, but that can easily be done by phone. I noticed also that when he lighted a cigarette he used a match of the type of the one found near the body. He said it had been left in the shed by Jones, the stranger staying in the village Lady Cambers thought might be a burglar. It seems he went off in a hurry this morning, as soon as he heard the news of the murder. Dene said, too, that it was after Jones had been to see him that he missed his pen.’
‘Queer story altogether,’ commented Lawson. ‘Have to look into it. Can the pen have been left there to throw suspicion on Dene? Or...? Odd, very odd. Find out anything else?’
‘Yes, sir. I had a talk with an old labourer who thinks he saw Mr. Sterling in the neighbourhood on his motorcycle about half-past ten last night, before the rain began. And Mr. Andrews, the vicar, thinks he saw Sterling, too, after the rain, about half-past eleven. But neither of them could swear to his identity.’
‘Very odd,’ commented Lawson, beginning to look a little worried and to breathe a little hard, as he was apt to do in moments of mental stress. ‘Didn’t Sterling tell us he had a breakdown on the way, and, instead of coming on here, put up at an inn because he was afraid of arriving too late? And he didn’t explain very clearly why he was coming down late on a Sunday when he would have to be back at work first thing Monday morning. Curious altogether. Did Mr. Andrews explain how it was he happened to see him?’
‘He says he went out to look for a trapped rabbit he thought he heard crying. Then the rain came on and he had to take shelter. Afterwards he saw the motor-cyclist he took for Sterling.’
‘That means,’ commented the colonel, ‘he was in the neighbourhood himself at the time the murder was committed?’
‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Bobby, his voice as non-committal as had been that of the colonel. ‘I asked if he had seen or heard anything else in any way suspicious. He said he hadn’t.’
‘Does he often go out late at night looking for trapped rabbits?’ demanded Lawson.
‘I understand there’s been some feeling locally about the use of spring-traps,’ Bobby answered. ‘Both Lady Cambers and the vicar objected strongly. They want the farmers to promise to give them up. It seems Lady Cambers had gone so fa
r as to threaten one farmer, a man named Hardy – he rents the land where her body was found – that she wouldn’t renew his lease unless he promised not to use spring-traps any longer. That would have meant a heavy loss for him as he owns some land himself, which he works with what he rents. It’s not enough to work by itself but it’s enough to prevent him from wanting to move. So he was rather tied up, and apparently Lady Cambers took advantage of it to make him give in about the traps. His son, a young man called Ray, resented it a good deal, and Farman, the butler here, says he heard him one night threatening to wring Lady Cambers’s neck if she went on interfering. But he was drunk at the time and no one took him seriously.’
‘Perhaps it’s a pity they didn’t,’ observed Lawson moodily.
‘I’m told also he professes to be violently in love with Amy Emmers, one of the maids here – the one who found out that Lady Cambers was missing. She is engaged to Eddy Dene.’
Colonel Lawson gave a little jump.
‘Well, now, there we’re back at Eddy Dene,’ he said.
‘Yes, sir,’ agreed Bobby. ‘He appears to have an alibi that would have to be broken down before he could be suspected. His mother says he was in his room all night. He came home wet through, having been caught in the storm, and toothache came on. She says she heard him moving about all night. She says he kept her awake, shuffling up and down in his slippers, as the pain prevented him from sleeping. There is no doubt about the toothache, for his face is quite badly swollen. I am sure Mrs. Dene believes what she told me, but of course she didn’t actually see him and it might have been someone else she heard. There’s an out-house just under his bedroom window that would make it quite easy to climb in or out.’
‘Engaged to the Amy Emmers girl?’ mused Lawson. ‘If they were both in it, she might have taken his place. Anything more?’
‘Only that, as he had got wet through, all his things were in the kitchen all night, drying before the fire. All his other clothing Mrs. Dene has put away, so if he went out he must have gone in a sack or something like that – or in nothing at all.’
‘Any accomplice taking his place,’ Lawson observed, ‘might have brought a change of clothing – this Emmers girl, for instance.’
‘I suppose that’s possible,’ agreed Bobby, though doubt-fully.
‘In any case,’ decided Lawson, ‘I think we had better have a chat with young Mr. Sterling and hear what he has to say. It looks bad, only then how to explain the rest?’ He paused, hesitating, staring, doubtful. ‘Find Sterling, someone,’ he ordered, ‘and bring him along – Oh, and tell Dene how sorry I am to keep him waiting. I suppose Sterling is still here?’
‘Yes, sir, I think so,’ Moulland answered. ‘He rang up where he works to say he was detained. I saw him in the garden a few minutes ago.’
‘Well, send someone to find him,’ Lawson ordered, and added to Bobby: ‘You heard Sir Albert Cambers had arrived?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Bobby answered. ‘I heard him tell Farman he felt poorly and thought he had a touch of flu. He’s gone to bed and they’ve sent for the doctor. I understand he says Lady Cambers has left very little money?’
‘Yes, that is so,’ agreed Lawson. ‘It seems he has been mixed up in speculation on the Stock Exchange, and has lost so much it will take all his wife’s fortune to clear him.
But what’s interesting is that he admits she did not know how heavy his liabilities were when she took them over.’
‘Hell of a row when she found out,’ observed Moulland suddenly from the background, where he was busy with a large and heavy note-book.
‘Yes, but had she found out,’ mused Lawson, ‘or was he afraid of her finding out? We’ve got to know that. He seemed genuinely upset about the disappearance of the jewellery.’
‘That’s a point I ought to mention, sir,’ Bobby put in. ‘Dene gave me the idea he was very surprised and disturbed when he heard about that. I thought it seemed there was something behind, though I can’t be sure. But I do feel fairly certain his surprise was genuine.’
‘Put on, perhaps,’ suggested Moulland. ‘Never know.’
‘Well, there it is,’ Bobby said. ‘That’s my impression. And Mr. Andrews says he saw Lady Cambers burn her will. She had made one leaving everything to Mr. Sterling and then changed her mind and burnt it, partly because she hoped her husband would return. Mr. Andrews says he thinks no one knew except himself.’
‘Difficult to be sure,’ commented Lawson. ‘There’s that maid of hers, the Amy Emmers girl. Maids get to know a lot. I’ve an idea that girl has played a bigger part in what’s been going on than she pretends. There’s that story of her quarrel with her mistress, for example – undarned stockings, she said, didn’t she? A bit thin. She’ll have to be questioned again, too, after we’ve heard what Sterling has to say.’
As he spoke, the door opened and there entered young Tim Sterling, more pale, more thin, more eager-looking even than before.
‘You want to ask me some more questions?’ he said quietly.
CHAPTER 18
TIM STERLING’S EXPLANATIONS
‘Yes, that’s so,’ Colonel Lawson answered. ‘Some new facts have come to our knowledge we should like to ask you about. If you’ll sit down a minute, I’ll look at our note of what you told us before.’
There had not been time for Bobby to transcribe in full his shorthand notes of Sterling’s previous examination, so, a little pleased to show how easily he himself at least could read his shorthand, he fluttered over the pages of his notebook and hurriedly jotted down what he thought were the salient points. He put the result before Colonel Lawson, who concentrated on it with frowning and deep-breathed attention, and Sterling, who was evidently beginning to feel a little nervous, said: ‘May I smoke? Is that allowed?’ Moulland frowned. He thought the suggestion showed a lack of proper respect. Colonel Lawson, who thought so too, was about to refuse, when he saw Bobby looking at him, and, without quite knowing why, changed his intended refusal into consent. At once Bobby was offering his petrol-lighter.
‘Oh, thanks,’ Sterling said, accepting the offer, and then, noticing how hard Bobby was looking at his cigarette-case, offered it to him. ‘Have one?’ he said.
‘Oh, thanks awfully,’ Bobby said, instantly taking one; and Moulland, almost unable to believe his eyes and ears at such slack ideas of discipline, looked at the chief constable in mute appeal to be allowed to launch the thunderbolt he had all ready. No less displeased at such slackness, the colonel was about to let go one of the largest size on his own account, when Bobby meekly came across and put the cigarette down on the table before him.
‘I suppose I must wait till the investigation is over. This is duty for us, you know,’ he said to Sterling as he did so, and Colonel Lawson frowned and breathed more deeply than ever as he saw it was a Bulgarian Tempo, that expensive and not too common brand whereof the stumps had been so frequent in the rhododendron-bushes before the front-door of the house.
‘What’s up?’ Sterling asked, vaguely aware of by-play, of an increase of tension.
‘I used to smoke Balkan cigarettes myself,’ Lawson observed. ‘Found them a bit expensive, though.’
Sterling made no answer. Apparently he saw no reason for discussing his choice of cigarettes. Lawson went on: ‘Do you always smoke the same brand?’
‘No. Generally the cheapest gasper I can get hold of,’ Sterling replied then. ‘Why? You didn’t ask me to come in here to chat about cigarettes, did you?’
‘No, no,’ Lawson answered. ‘There are some new facts that have been mentioned. Can you say what was the exact time you started last night to come here?’
‘I didn’t notice particularly,’ Sterling answered. ‘I suppose it would be somewhere about eight.’
‘It was dark?’
‘Practically.’
‘The distance is about forty miles – say, about an hour’s run.’
‘Rather more – built-up area a good part of the way. I’m not a speed merchant.’
‘You expected to arrive between nine and half-past?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. But I think I told you I had a break-down. I had to stop to adjust...’ He gave brief technical details. ‘And I got caught in that storm, lost my way – the rain was like a wall; you couldn’t see an inch before your nose. Then I had another breakdown – jolly awkward at that time of night. Finally I got to Hirlpool in the small hours. I got a bed at the Red Lion. They might be able to tell you the exact time I got there. I didn’t notice. I was only too glad to get to bed.’
‘I suppose you got thoroughly drenched?’
‘Well, I had my waterproof cape and leggings,’ Sterling answered. ‘Rain like that will go through pretty nearly everything, though – it splashed up from the ground a good eight or ten inches. Soaked my shoes and socks all right.’
‘As a matter of form,’ Colonel Lawson went on, poking distastefully at that cigarette of Balkan brand that lay upon the table before him, ‘we want to establish the whereabouts of everyone at the time when the murder, so far as we can calculate, was committed. That would be, we think, a little before midnight.’
‘I understand,’ Sterling answered gravely. ‘Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you very much. A little before midnight I suppose I was scooting round trying to find my way to Hirlpool – or anywhere else where I could get a bed.’
‘You had definitely given up all idea of trying to reach Cambers?’
‘Yes. I didn’t want to fetch everyone out of bed. Aunt wouldn’t have been awfully pleased.’
‘I think I ought to tell you,’ Lawson said slowly, ‘that two witnesses state that they saw you in this neighbourhood, one quite early in the evening – about half-past ten – and one later on, after the rain had stopped.’
‘I am suspected of the murder, then?’ Sterling asked, quietly enough but a little more pale than usual.
‘I have not said so,’ Lawson retorted. ‘In point of fact, we don’t suspect anyone yet. We are merely making preliminary inquiries on which to proceed. But it does seem that what these two witnesses tell us is inconsistent with your own story.’
Death Comes to Cambers Page 15
