“Tell me.”
Bill put his hands over hers and pressed them down.
“If you don’t believe me, no one will. You’ve got to believe me. I heard the shot. I went up to the house. There was a light in the study. I went round to the side where Cathy has her table and looked in. One of the windows was open and the curtain flapping. I could see the other writing-table across the room. I couldn’t see Dale—only a hand and arm stretched out along the carpet. I went back to the terrace. The glass door was open. I went in, and there he was, fallen down behind the writing-table. I went and looked at him. I didn’t know what to do. He’d been shot through the head. There was a revolver on the writing-table. I didn’t touch anything. I was trying to think what I ought to do, when I heard someone on the terrace. I came out to see who it was, and when I found it was you I lost my head. I only thought about getting you away. I didn’t want you to get mixed up in it, and I didn’t want you to see him. I ought to have sent you home and called up the police. I think I ought to go back now.”
She shook her head.
“They’ll think you did it.”
“They’ll think so anyhow. Mrs. Mickleham heard me say I wanted to. Susan, I’d better go back.”
“It’s too late.”
“I expect it is. I don’t want to say you were there.”
Susan was steadying.
“Bill, you heard the shot. I did, but I didn’t think it was anything. I was just clear of the orchard. Where were you?”
“On the lower terrace. I didn’t go straight up to the house. That’s what is going to look bad for me. If I’d gone straight to the house, I’d have been there when the shot was fired. But I wasn’t—I wasn’t there. I was on the lower terrace trying to get hold of myself a bit. You see, I did want to kill him—”
“Bill!”
“So I had to get myself in hand. Then I heard the shot, and I stopped where I was for about a minute, because I wasn’t sure where the sound came from. It sounded awfully close. That was because the door was open. I was listening for footsteps—anyone moving. When I couldn’t hear anything I went on up to the house and looked in.”
“You didn’t see anyone or hear anyone?”
“No.”
“Could he have done it himself?”
“No, he couldn’t, Susan.”
Susan pulled her hands away and stood up.
“We heard the shot. Why didn’t anyone in the house hear it—why didn’t they come?”
“I don’t know,” said Bill Carrick.
Chapter Fourteen
Ill news travels apace. By eight o’clock it would have been hard to find anyone within a mile radius who did not know that Mr. Dale up at King’s Bourne had been found murdered in his own study—“and Scotland Yard called in, they do say.”
Mr. Pipe, the landlord of the Crown and Magpie, knew all about that. He was a man of slow but interminable speech delivered weightily in a deep booming voice, small and thin of person but mighty with the tongue. There must have been times when he stopped talking to listen, for he was always full of information, but behind his own bar he talked, and listened to none. He knew all about the death of Lucas Dale and why Scotland Yard had been called in.
“Shot right through the back of the head, he was, pore gentleman, and dead as mutton. If all the best doctors in the kingdom had been called in there wasn’t nothing they could have done for him. Alive and hearty one minute, as it might be you or me, and shot down the next as if he wasn’t no better than a rabbit. And when the police come they gets word as nothing’s to be touched on account of Scotland Yard being called in. And the reason for that, as I hear, is along of Colonel Rutland, the new Chief Constable, being down with the influenza. Leastways some say it’s that, and some say there’s other reasons—like them that’s suspected being a bit too well known locally. And there’s others’ll tell you ’tis because the ones they think done it belongs to London, and it stands to reason that London police ’ud have a better chance of ferreting out whatever it was as went before. We all know as you don’t just up and murder a man on account of not liking the look of him. It’s bad feeling and bitter ’atred as goes before murder, and no one won’t find out how it was done without they find out where the ’atred was.”
“They say he was going to marry Miss Susan,” said a hefty young man who was drinking beer.
“And that’s nonsense, William Cole!” retorted a thin woman in a draggled coat. “Everyone knows as Miss Susan and Mr. Bill’s been going together for years. Pint of bitter, Mr. Pipe.”
William grinned.
“Have it your own way, but Mr. Dale, he come up and fixed with Vicar to marry Miss Susan Thursday, and Vicar wasn’t none too pleased. Said just what you say, that Miss Susan was going with Mr. Bill. And Mr. Dale, he said, ‘Well, she’s marrying me on Thursday’. And that I heard with my own ears on account of the window being open and me putting lime on the rose-beds just outside.”
“Well then, I don’t believe it.”
“All right, you needn’t.”
“Next thing you’ll be saying is Mr. Bill shot him.”
“Not me—but the police will most likely.”
The talk went this way and that. Old Mr. Gill, whose grand-daughter was kitchen-maid at King’s Bourne, said he did hear tell there was bad blood between Mr. Dale and the American gentleman that was staying.
Mr. Pipe took up the tale again.
“There’s a good many of us could have something to say if it comes to that. The one it’s most likely to be is the one you wouldn’t be likely to think of, because it stands to reason if there was ’atred and ill will right down here in Bourne, we’d know about it, wouldn’t we? It stands to reason we would, for if there’s one thing more than another that can’t be hid it’s ’atred.”
“Well, I’d ’ate a man as took my girl,” said William Cole.
The thin woman flashed round on him.
“What’s Mr. Bill done to you for you to keep picking on him?”
William grinned.
“He hasn’t done nothing to me. ’Twasn’t me as took his girl.”
Mr. Pipe’s voice boomed out.
“There’s ladies to be considered as well as men. ’Atred isn’t one of those things as the men have got a prerogative for. Why, there was a lady in here no later than this very afternoon round about five o’clock or a bit later, and she had a double brandy, and the way she took it off, well, you wouldn’t often see anything like it. And if I told you what she said, well, you wouldn’t believe me, and if you would, it’s not the time for me to be telling it. I don’t say as how she’s got anything to do with Mr. Dale, and I don’t say as how she hasn’t, but I do say as ’atred will out.”
“It’s murder will out,” said the thin woman.
“There’s no murder without ’atred,” said Mr. Pipe in a resounding voice.
Chapter Fifteen
There is a routine which waits upon murder. It is a matter for the expert—the police surgeon to say how a man has died, the police photographer to fix that last dreadful pose, the finger-print expert. They have their exits and their entrances, they do their part, and go their way. The scene is cleared. The evidence remains to be dealt with.
At ten o’clock next morning Inspector Lamb was engaged in dealing with it. He sat, a massive figure, at Lucas Dale’s writing-table. As he flicked over the pages of his notebook, his large, florid face was as nearly expressionless as a face could be. On the opposite side of the table was a slim young man with a pale face and very pale hair worn rather long and slicked very smoothly back. He had a pale blue eye, and an oddly elegant air for a policeman. He was in fact Detective Sergeant Abbott—Christian name Frank, but known among his intimates as Fug, owing to an early passion for hair-oil. It was Inspector Lamb’s considered opinion that there were worse young fellows at the Yard, and that in time, and always provided he didn’t get above himself, there might be the makings of a good officer in young Abbott. He sat back in
his chair and said,
“Get that butler in. I want to take him through his statement.”
He picked up a paper from the desk before him and ran his eye over it whilst Abbott went to the nearer door and gave a message to the constable on duty outside.
Raby came in. A thin man with a worried look, rather hollow in the cheek, rather hollow about the eyes, rather white about the gills.
He said, “Yes, sir?” and was invited to sit down.
“Well now, Raby, we’re looking to you to give us all the assistance you can.”
“Anything I can do, I’m sure.”
The man was nervous, but that was only natural.
“Well then, I’ve got your statement here, and I’d like just to go through it with you. You say that you were crossing the hall at a quarter past six last night, when you heard voices in this room. Now just whereabouts were you when you stood and listened?”
“That’s not in my statement. I never said I stood and listened.”
Lamb gazed at him impassively.
“You must have done, or you couldn’t have heard what was said. What I want to know is how close to the door you were, and which door it was.”
Raby swallowed.
“Was it the door you came in by just now?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How close were you?”
Raby swallowed again.
“I was bringing some logs along for the fire—”
“Do you generally bring the wood for the fire?”
“No, sir, but Robert was out.”
“Oh, yes—Robert is the footman. Just give me that list of the servants, Abbott.… Robert Stack—footman. Where does he go when he’s out?”
“Ledcott, sir. His mother lives there.”
“The local people have checked up on him,” said Abbott. “He was there from four to nine.”
Inspector Lamb glanced at the list in his hand.
“The rest of the staff consists of your wife, Mrs. Raby, Esther Coleworthy and Lily Green, housemaids, and Doris Gill, kitchen-maid. None of them were out?”
“No.”
Raby showed some relief at getting away from the study door.
“Yes, I see Mrs. Raby says in her statement that the three girls were under her observation during the time between six o’clock and a quarter to seven—when the body was found. They were, she says, in the servants’ hall listening to a band programme on the wireless. Now, Raby, we’ll just get back to where you were. Which door were you at—this one here behind me, or the one at the other end of the room?”
“It was this one.”
Relief had come too soon. They were back at the study door.
“And you were how close to it?”
“Well, I’d come right up to it with the wood, and then I heard them quarrelling, and I didn’t like to go in.”
“So you stood there and listened. Well now, I’d like you to tell me just what you heard.”
“It’s in my statement.”
“I’d like to have you tell me about it all the same. I’m not trying to catch you, but sometimes a thing comes back to you that you’ve overlooked.”
Raby looked unhappy. Out of the tail of his eye he could see that the young man you would never think was a policeman had got a pencil in his hand and a notebook ready, and the way things were shaping he’d have to stand up in court and swear he had listened at the door. Murder didn’t just kill one person, it could kill a man’s character too, and where was he going to get another job after being mixed up in a murder case? He took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.
“The first thing I heard was Mr. Dale using language.”
“What sort of language?”
Raby told him.
“And then I heard the American gentleman say—”
Inspector Lamb took a look at his list.
“Mr. Vincent C. Bell—been stopping here since Thursday. Ever stopped here before?”
“No, sir.”
“Ever seen him before?”
“Not before Thursday.”
“All right, go on with what you heard him say.”
Raby looked apologetic.
“I wouldn’t listen in an ordinary way, sir, but the fact is I didn’t know whether to go in or not. What with Mr. Dale using language like that, and the American gentleman—”
“Did he use language too?”
“Not exactly. He called Mr. Dale a double-crossing, two-timing skunk.”
Abbott’s hand came up across his mouth.
“A nice distinction between language and epithet,” he murmured.
Inspector Lamb settled himself in his chair.
“And what did Mr. Dale say to that?”
“He swore, sir. And then I thought I’d better not stay, so I came away.”
“Now look here, Raby—you say they were swearing and flinging names. We all know there are ways and ways of doing such things. It’s not the words that count so much, it’s the way a man says them. All this that you say you heard, well, it might have been said chaffing, as you might say, or it might have been said in the way of two people having a difference of opinion and not much in it—if a man’s got a habit of using language, it mayn’t amount to much—or it might have been said in real deadly earnest, and I want you to tell me which of these three describes what you heard between Mr. Dale and Mr. Bell.”
Raby wiped his forehead.
“It was deadly earnest and not a doubt about it.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Oh, yes, sir. Both gentlemen were very angry indeed—not a doubt about it.”
“Well, go on. What did you do after you left the study door?”
“I went away, but I didn’t go farther than the other side of the hall, because I didn’t like what I’d heard.”
“How long were you on the other side of the hall?”
“A minute or two. And then the study door opened and Mr. Bell came out quick and slammed it behind him, and on through the hall and up the stairs. I don’t think he saw me, sir.”
“Did you go in and attend to the fire?”
“Yes, sir. Mr. Dale was standing over by the glass door with his back to me. He’d got the door a little bit open. He didn’t move or look round. I made up the fire and came out.”
“If you came in by this door behind me here, you’d pass the writing-table on your way to the fire. Did you see Mr. Dale’s revolver?”
“No, sir.”
“You knew he had a revolver, and where he kept it?”
The sweat came out on Raby’s forehead. He turned his handkerchief between clammy hands.
“There wasn’t any secret about where he kept it. Everyone knew, sir. It was in that drawer on your right—the second drawer.”
“Did he keep the drawer locked?”
Raby hesitated, and said,
“Sometimes.”
“You’ve seen it open?”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“Was it open last night?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You mean the drawer was open?”
“Yes, sir—it was pulled out.”
“Did you see the revolver?”
“No, sir—I wasn’t noticing.”
“You mean you don’t know whether it was there or not?”
“I didn’t take any notice one way or the other—I wasn’t thinking about it.”
Abbott wrote.
Inspector Lamb shifted heavily in his chair. He said in his expressionless voice,
“Are you sure you saw Mr. Dale, and that he was alive when you went in?”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“And when you came out?” Raby looked blank. “He was alive when you came out again? You left him alive in the study?”
Raby looked completely horrified.
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“Did you notice what time it was?”
“It was nineteen minutes past six.”
“How do you know?”
“By the clock on the study mantelpiece, sir. I noticed it when I had made up the fire.”
“And what did you do after that?”
“I went to my pantry until a quarter to seven, when I returned to the study and found that Mr. Dale had been shot. Mr. Dale liked a cocktail at that hour, and I was taking it to him.”
Lamb let him go. When the door had closed behind the butler he said,
“What d’you make of him?”
Abbott’s pale eyebrows rose.
“He’s nervous.”
The round brown eyes of Inspector Lamb had a faintly reproachful look.
“That’s natural,” he said. “You’d be nervous if you’d found your employer murdered and weren’t sure whether the police were thinking of putting it on you, let alone having to own up you’d been listening at doors, which isn’t the best of manners for a butler.”
“Oh, quite—quite.”
“Well?”
“Well, that leaves from nineteen minutes past six till a quarter to seven for someone to have come into the study and shot Dale with the revolver which he kept in his writing-table drawer. Everyone in the house seems to have known about it. It doesn’t take twenty minutes to shoot a man, wipe the revolver, and melt from the scene. There was plenty of time for our Mr. Vincent Bell to come back and finish his quarrel. I wonder if he did. Are you going to have him in and ask him?”
“I think I’ll have the secretary first,” said Inspector Lamb.
Chapter Sixteen
Monty Phipson gazed earnestly, first at Inspector Lamb and then at Frank Abbott. He wore an air of horrified interest blended with a desire to be helpful, yet tinged—yes, quite definitely tinged with nervousness. Abbott, staring coolly back, was reminded of a rabbit eyeing a specially delectable piece of lettuce. The nose twitched with appetite, the whiskers twitched with terror. Monty Phipson had in fact no whiskers, but the illusion persisted.
Lamb took him through his statement. He had been upstairs in his room from six o’clock till a quarter to seven. He had seen no one, and he had heard nothing. His room was on the other side of the house. He had written some letters, and then he had played some records over on his gramophone. Just after a quarter to seven the butler came and told him that Mr. Dale had been shot. He at once rang up the police.
Who Pays the Piper?: An Ernest Lamb Mystery Page 8
