“It wasn’t done on purpose, it was accidental like,” fluttered a sulky voice from the settee where Martin pouched in comparative ease.
“That was to be his story,” Lady Alice said. “He pretends he had the knife in his hand, stumbled, and the wound on the body was inflicted accidentally. Don’t believe him, myself. I believe he thought it was a bright idea.”
“Caught my foot in the dark, tumbled, the knife went in, that’s God’s truth,” protested Martin once more.
“Believe it if you can,” said Lady Alice. “I don’t. Anyhow, he thought it was going to be easy money for life. Told me the knife wound, the photograph of the car, so on, made up evidence enough to hang me. Said he had begun by sending a print of the photo to one or two people and did I want him to go on? because it would be the police next time. Asked for twenty pounds down—he got a dozen. But not pounds.”
Martin shivered.
“Made me drunk first,” he muttered.
“To avoid,” Lady Alice explained, “unseemly scuffling. When I considered him sufficiently intoxicated I put those handcuffs on him—I knew he would never find out they were trick ones—and pushed him into the cupboard in the bedroom. I put bolts on it to keep him safe. When he began to be noisy I let him out.”
“The knife to my throat,” said Martin gloomily, “said she would cut it.”
“I should have enjoyed doing so,” Lady Alice confessed, “but I grow conventional in my old age. I decided not to. I contented myself with a gentle prick once or twice—in the tenderer spots.”
“A-i-eee,” said Martin reminiscently.
“I then,” continued Lady Alice, “placed him in the required position across the table, inserted a towel in his mouth out of deference to the request of the management to avoid all unnecessary noise, and proceeded according to plan.”
“Crool, it was, something crool,” whimpered Martin, “the way she laid it on.”
“The operation concluded,” Lady Alice went on, “I replaced him in the cupboard and had meant to take him out again later on to administer another dozen.” Martin showed signs of quitting his comfortable recumbent position in favour of a speedy exit, but Bobby lifted a restraining hand.
“It’s all right,” he said soothingly, “she shan’t do it any more.”
Martin glanced nervously towards Lady Alice, as if he felt only incompletely reassured.
“Perhaps he’s had enough,” conceded Lady Alice. “If you think so, you might take him away. Or do I ring up the dustmen?”
“Well,” said Wilkinson again. His vocabulary, unequal to the occasion, seemed limited to this one word. “Well,” he said once more, and sighed to think of all he might have said if only the occasion had not been so much too much for his powers of expression. At last he said to Lady Alice, “It’s all very well, but you didn’t ought, you know.”
“I enjoyed it,” Lady Alice pointed out, simply. Wilkinson gave it up and turned to Martin:
“Is it true you saw the murderer?”
Martin nodded.
“Who was it?”
“Don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“Too dark to see and I was too far away, I didn’t want to get too close, neither, not to a bloke what had just outed another bloke and still had a gun. I slipped along behind. I saw him throw something into that patch of bracken as he passed. I put a stone to show just where and followed him to his car. After he got in he sat there a bit and I crept up behind and noted the number, and then, because I thought it might be faked, I scratched my initials, ‘ W.M”, straight lines all, on the inside of the fender.”
“What with?”
“Her knife, what I had the accident with. If you can find the car you can identify it. ‘W.M.’ in two places, middle of fender and left, near the end.”
“Might be useful,” Wilkinson conceded. “Suppose you know you’ve made yourself an accessory after the fact, suppressing evidence and all that?”
“Not me,” said Martin with spirit. “Trying to help, I was, only I knew it wasn’t no good coming forward till I had my case complete. Trying to get confirmatory evidence, I was, from her”—he gave a sour glance at Lady Alice—“that’s all it was, not blackmail at all, never mentioned, blackmail wasn’t, and crool assaulted I’ve been just for helping the course of justice.”
“You were on the spot at the time of the murder?” Wilkinson asked Lady Alice.
“Seems so,” she agreed, “though I didn’t know it at the time. I suppose you want the whole story. I employed that rat”—she jerked a contemptuous finger at Martin— “to watch Flora Tamar. She’s ruined enough lives.” She paused, and for once her grim, controlled features showed a spasm of emotion. “There was a friend of mine—he committed suicide. Because of her. I knew she was at it again. Not that she had ever stopped. Any man was sport to her. There was Holland Kent. There was Judy Patterson. I thought it was Holland Kent she was after. Really, it was Judy Patterson. She was using Holland Kent as a kind of blind to keep her husband from knowing who it really was. At least, Holland Kent wasn’t exactly a blind, a second string, rather, an understudy, a reserve to be played as and when required. I hired Martin to get information. He got some, mostly wrong. Probably, some of what he told me was just lies. Most likely, he already had it in his silly, dirty little mind that he would get us all in positions in which he could blackmail everybody. The story he told me that Friday night, he had all wrong, of course, on purpose perhaps, or perhaps not. The truth was that Judy told Flora he wanted to break off, and Flora, trying to keep him, to make him jealous, was going to spend the evening with Holland Kent. Motor drive. She didn’t want to risk being seen, and Holland Kent had no nice convenient cottage. Martin knew she had sent him a message they were to meet at the usual place. He thought that meant Weeton Hill where Judy used to pick Flora up and drive her to Whatah Ope Cottage in his car to prevent any risk of her car she came in being seen and identified. And then, too, Martin, who is a fool at his job as well as a crook and a blackmailer—”
“I ain’t,” protested Martin, “only a bloke must live. You can’t keep straight all the time if you’ve got no money.”
“The crook’s creed,” said Lady Alice. “Becky Sharp said much the same thing. Anyhow, by his clumsy way of making inquiries, he started all sorts of rumours, especially among Flora’s servants. Munday, in particular. Munday realized something was wrong. I don’t know for certain but I think it must have been that and I think that explains why he was on Weeton Hill. Spying. Perhaps that’s why he was murdered, or perhaps he was mistaken for some one else.”
“Who? By whom?”
Lady Alice shook her head.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I might guess but a guess is nothing. That fool Martin muddled everything. Trying to be clever. I suppose,” she added wistfully, “you couldn’t see your way to let me give him just one little half dozen more—only the half.”
“Here, none of that,” Martin exclaimed, in his alarm bumping the part where he was tender for the time against an arm of the settee. “A-i-eee,” he said.
“Keep quiet,” said Wilkinson, ignoring, however, Lady Alice’s petition.
“It wasn’t my fault, so it wasn’t,” protested Martin,
“I was discreet. I always am. It’s on my business cards. You look. Discretion and secrecy guaranteed. That’s what it says and you can’t say more. It was all Munday’s own doing. He tumbled to it on his own—the missus’s goings on, I mean. Shocking it was, the way she pulled the wool over her old man’s eyes. Munday told me so himself and wanted to know more. So he got his, poor devil.”
“I saw nothing,” Lady Alice said. “I got out of the car and walked on. Then I heard shots. I didn’t know what they meant. I waited and nothing happened and I went back home. Ernie was waiting. I told her to go home and not let herself be seen. I didn’t tell her what had happened because I didn’t know. I expect she guessed something was wrong. When she heard about the murder, I dare
say she thought it was me. She’s a good little soul, she kept quiet and never said a word.”
“How many shots did you hear?” Bobby asked.
Lady Alice shook her head.
“They came all together. I never even thought of counting them. That’s all I can tell you.”
Wilkinson turned to Martin.
“What did you see?” he demanded. “The truth, now.”
“I wasn’t near enough to identify nobody,” Martin repeated. “There was seven shots. I know that. I didn’t count. You couldn’t. All in a bunch they was. But these was seven cartridges I picked up. You find a car marked same as I said on the fender. Then you’ll know. But it ain’t one of Mr. Tamar’s cars, nor yet Mr. Holland Kent’s, because I’ve had a look on the Q.T. What’s more, when I got a chance to put it up to Mrs. Tamar she didn’t seem worried about the car being marked for identification—interested like but not worried. I didn’t tell her what the markings was, though, just in case she knew more than she let on.”
“Did you tell her seven shots had been fired?” Bobby asked.
“Yes, I did. Why not?” Martin asked.
“I wondered how she knew,” Bobby explained.
“Trying a bit more blackmail,” Lady Alice remarked.
“The fiver she gave me, it was her own free will,” Martin declared, indignantly. “Ain’t I got to live?”
“Why?” asked Lady Alice.
“That’s all right,” interposed Wilkinson. “We shall want statements from you both. Makes it all clear as mud,” he added, “except any one, single, blooming thing to show who it really was.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
CONCLUSION
Official wheels move but slowly and a case has to be complete in every detail before it can be submitted to the Public Prosecutor; for Treasury Counsel, as the police are only too sadly aware, want proof, absolute proof, of every statement made. “Tell ’em,” growls Scotland Yard, below its breath, “that two and two make four, and they pack you off to New York to get a signed and sworn affidavit from Einstein that the statement is correct to the best of his knowledge and belief,” and then the Yard goes on to whisper horrid tales of men driven from home and family out into the wilds to seek confirmation of something that every one already knew and that, anyhow, didn’t matter in the least.
So it was not till the early part of the next week that Bobby, pale and tired-looking, for he had been working all hours, came to the little Mayfair hat shop at closing time one evening with the news that at last the arrest had been made.
“I don’t think he had any idea what was coming,” Bobby said. “I think he felt quite safe. It’ll be in the evening paper, I expect.”
Olive listened gravely but made no comment. She had already realized the inevitable. Vicky was there, dressed for departure, but not yet gone. She said,
“Do you think they’ll find him guilty?”
“His finger-prints are in the drawer where the pistol was taken from,” Bobby said. “The car he used has been identified by the scratches Martin made on the fender. His alibi has broken down. We know where he bought a broad-brimmed hat like the one Judy wore. The motive is strong. There’s the anonymous letter too.”
“You mean he wrote that as well?”
Bobby nodded. They heard in the distance the voice of a newspaper seller, chanting his refrain:
“Extry spee-shul. Weeton Hill Murder Sensation— Man charged—Extry spee-shul.”
Both Bobby and Olive remembered that other evening when they had listened to another newspaper seller bringing them the first news of the mystery that had come so close to them both, and to that other newsboy whose different news, though as remote to all appearance as it well could be—since who could have dreamed that the vagaries of foreign exchange would point to the identity of a murderer—had yet in the end given the solution?
Jenny, the little assistant, who had started out on her way home, came running back, full of excitement, a paper in her hand.
“Oo-o-o,” she gasped, “they’ve arrested Mr. Tamar —oh, do you think it’s true?
“I’m afraid there’s not much doubt,” Bobby answered,
“Oo-o-o,” said Jenny again. She became quite pale: “Oh, will they hang him?” she gasped.
“He may get a reprieve,” Bobby answered. “I daresay it’s likely enough,” and, indeed, that proved to be the case, for though counsel failed to get a verdict of manslaughter on’ ‘blinded with passion’ grounds, the public mood was sympathetic and the jury added a recommendation to mercy to the ‘guilty’ verdict they returned.
Indeed, the rough and often harsh justice of public opinion was inclined to declare that Flora was the really responsible person.
They sent Jenny home but Vicky still lingered, more inclined to talk than was Olive. Vicky asked,
“Was it only noticing about the exchange made you think it was Mr. Tamar?”
“He was always on the list of suspects,” Bobby answered.
“One thing that worried me a good deal, though it wasn’t the sort of evidence you could take notice of officially, was the way once when I was talking to him he described the scene just as if he had been there, told how the murderer lay still, waiting for the victim to show over the brow of the hill. ‘That’s how it happened, he said, almost as if he knew. It bothered me. Then he said it was five or ten minutes after the delivery of the anonymous letter before Munday brought it to him. Well, how did he know that, unless he had left the thing himself? Munday told me he thought it was Renfield he saw, but I didn’t feel too much inclined to believe that, and if he had seen it was really Tamar himself, well, that might explain how he knew so much; as it does, in fact, explain what he went to Weeton Hill for. Then, later on, Tamar seemed relieved to hear the pistol had been found and talked about finger-prints on it. Sounded as though he knew there wouldn’t be any and knew the pistol could be traced to some one else. What he really hoped was that the discovery of the pistol would turn suspicion from him and on Renfield. You see, he had a grudge against Renfield, both because he suspected him of trying to flirt with Flora and again over the money question Renfield was worrying about. I don’t suppose he expected Renfield to be seriously suspected, most likely he merely thought it was another false trail to worry us; and if it made things awkward for Renfield, all the better. The thing that really bothered most of us about him was that alibi he put forward. It was so clumsy and seemed to depend so much on circumstances he couldn’t possibly be sure about, most of our people were inclined to accept it. The natural idea is, if you fake an alibi, you fake it water-tight—or try to. That’s generally how we spot the manufactured alibi. It’s too complete. This one wasn’t. But the more we looked into it, the stronger it seemed to grow. The ten-shilling note with Tamar’s figures on it turned up. Actually, Tamar paid it in next day, during the morning, when there’s a different staff on duty, when he expected them to be too busy—Saturday morning—to take much notice of a stray motorist buying cigarettes; when, in any case, no inquiries would be made, since it didn’t seem to matter who was or wasn’t there on Saturday morning, hours after the murder. Tamar had to risk the note not turning up. But it was a fair risk. An offer of a reward was very likely to produce it. If it had been paid into a bank, for example, one of the clerks would almost certainly have noticed it had figures jotted down on it. It did turn up. It had been given in change to a lorry driver who was very pleased to claim the fiver reward, and so there was the proof the note had actually been paid by Tamar as and when he said, proof enough to satisfy any jury not too careful to notice that the ‘when’ was a very vague ‘when’, covering a good many hours and allowing fully sufficient time for the murder.”
“But there was an attendant, too?” Vicky interposed. “I thought he said he saw Mr. Tamar?”
“Yes,” agreed Bobby. “Tamar had luck there, but I rather think he had calculated on something of the sort. He seems to have known one of the attendants was an ex-convict and generally bad cha
racter, and he guessed the fellow might be willing to support his alibi in the hope of favours to come—and perhaps, too, out of a kind of fellow-feeling and to do down the police. A good many crooks are like that. Ready to help each other to down the police on general principles and because one good turn deserves another and may get it some day. Anyhow, the fellow was very dicky about times and now he has broken down altogether under a bit of questioning. I don’t suppose the defence will even bother to call him and if they do, it won’t help. But if Tamar’s luck held there, it crashed badly over the foreign exchange, and over Hitler’s choosing that very evening for making one of those genial little speeches of his that do such a lot to help on what our Government calls ‘appeasement’. The night before the exchange had been at the rate of one seven five francs to the pound. That means that a million and a quarter francs were worth about £7,142 17s. 6d. in English money. But on that Saturday morning the exchange rate opened, after Hitler’s speech, one of his mildest by the way, at one seven seven, point seventy-five to the pound and went worse later on. But 177.75 was the figure posted in the city that morning; we have evidence Tamar asked at his bank, where he called to cash a cheque, what the rate was and was given that figure, and it was the figure he used in the calculation on the ten-shilling note he paid in at the coffee stall, near Southampton, later on—works out at about £7,031 15s. As it happened, the difference had its importance because Tamar rather laid stress on the limit for the purchase contemplated being £7,000 and while the second figure is near enough for it to be reasonable to go on, the first figure is a good way beyond. Yet it was this second figure that Tamar worked out and talked about, though he could only have arrived at it on the morning after the murder. So the calculation was made after, not before the murder, as Tamar pretended, and that showed his alibi was deliberately faked—and faked beforehand. An innocent man could not have known so early that day that there was any need for an alibi, since nothing was made public till much later.”
Suspects—Nine Page 26
