Who Pays the Piper?: An Ernest Lamb Mystery

by Patricia Wentworth

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I don’t know. I think I wanted to see if he was there, and if he was alone. I saw his hand and arm stretched out on the floor. I don’t know how long I stood there. It was—a shock—because I—had wanted to kill him. I thought about the shot. I thought perhaps he had killed himself. After a bit I went back on to the terrace. The glass door was open—”

  “One minute, Mr. Carrick—as you came up the steps on to the terrace the glass door would be in front of you on your left, and the windows of the recess still more to your left and at right angles?”

  Bill nodded and said “Yes.”

  “Very well, when you came up the steps you noticed that the window in the recess was open. Was the glass door open too?”

  “I didn’t notice it.”

  “It was nearer to you than the window was—would you not have noticed it?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t.”

  “Yet you noticed it at once when you came back. Do you think it possible that it was not open when you came up the steps, though it was open when you came back after looking in at the window?”

  “I don’t know—I just didn’t notice. As soon as I saw the door was open I went in. Do you want me to tell you what I saw?”

  “If you please, Mr. Carrick.”

  “Dale was lying face downwards behind the writing-table. It was his left hand and arm I had seen from the window. The right was doubled up under him. He had been shot through the back of the head. The chair you are sitting in was pushed back, and the second drawer on the right of the table was open. There was no sign of a struggle. There was a revolver lying across the corner of the blotting-pad on this side. I came as far as the end of the table and stood there for a bit. I thought I ought to give the alarm, but I—well, I funked doing it. Then I heard someone on the terrace and went out. It was Susan. When I saw her the only thing I thought about was keeping her out of it. I told her Dale was dead, and I took her back to the Little House. That’s all, sir.”

  “You say there was a revolver on the table. Did you touch it?”

  “I didn’t touch anything.”

  “Ever see the revolver before?”

  “No.”

  “Did you know Mr. Dale had a revolver?”

  “I don’t know—Susan says I must have—she says everyone knew.”

  Frank Abbott’s lips drew together as if he were about to whistle. No sound issued from them, but in his own mind he rendered the opening phrase of Chopin’s Funeral March.

  Lamb said a thought gruffly,

  “Did you know where he kept it?”

  “He didn’t,” said Susan—“not till I told him. Oh, he didn’t really!”

  Lamb looked at her for quite a long time. Then he said,

  “Did you hear the shot, Miss Lenox?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where were you?”

  “I had just come out of the orchard. I was clear of the trees.”

  “We’ll have to check the time that takes you—we’ll have to check all these times. But I dare say you’ve got a good idea how long it takes. Was there time for Mr. Carrick to have reached the study before you heard the shot?”

  Susan had been very pale. She became paler still. She said in a voice that did not rise above a whisper,

  “He was on the terrace. He didn’t go—straight—to the house.”

  “But if he had—was there time?”

  She looked at him and did not speak.

  “Was there time, Miss Lenox?”

  Bill said roughly, “Of course there was! What’s the good of beating about the bush? If I’d gone straight on to the house the way I was going I’d have been there when the shot was fired—it’s no good making any bones about that. But I didn’t go straight, so I wasn’t in the house. I was on the second terrace.”

  “Sure of that, Mr. Carrick?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “Yes.… You said you were pulling yourself together. Were you out of control?”

  “I wanted to kill him,” said Bill grimly.

  Frank Abbott glanced up from his shorthand and murmured something which sounded like “The prisoner conducted his own prosecution”. He received a majestic glance from his superior officer and went back to his notes.

  Bill’s colour rose.

  “I didn’t kill him—I only wanted to. He was a blackmailing swine, and I had to get Susan clear. I’d got sense enough left to know that it was no good crowding in and offering to beat him up. I’d got to keep my head. That’s why I was on the lower terrace and not up at the house when the shot was fired.”

  Inspector Lamb made no comment. He said,

  “Did you touch anything at all while you were in the study?”

  “No.”

  “And you, Miss Lenox?”

  “I didn’t come in. I didn’t come any farther than the middle of the terrace.”

  Lamb swung round in his chair and picked up a paper from the table. His eyes travelled slowly from the page to Susan’s face.

  “Were you aware that Mr. Dale made a fresh will yesterday?” he said.

  Frank Abbott saw Bill Carrick start. Susan clenched her hands and said,

  “Yes.”

  “Were you aware of the terms of that will?”

  She kept her eyes on his face.

  “He rang me up and said he had made a will.”

  “Did he tell you what was in it?”

  Susan steadied the very small amount of voice she had left.

  “He said—it was the old-fashioned everything-to-my-wife sort. He said—he just wanted me to know—”

  The voice failed altogether.

  Bill Carrick sprang up.

  “She wasn’t his wife—she never would have been! The will isn’t worth the paper it’s written on!”

  Inspector Lamb got up too, slowly as befitted a man of his girth.

  “The will leaves everything to Miss Susan Lenox in anticipation of marriage. Mr. Duckett of the Market Square, Ledlington, who drew it up, will tell you that it is perfectly valid.”

  Susan lost the Inspector in a mist. It was a very thick mist, like cotton wool. She stopped trying to compete with it and shut her eyes.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Well,” said Inspector Lamb—“and where does this get us?”

  Frank Abbott opened his notebook.

  “Those times check up pretty well the way we thought. If Susan Lenox started up the hill three minutes after Carrick did, he could easily have reached this study by the time she got to the top of the orchard. Mrs. Mickleham gives us the times they started from the Little House.”

  “Think he did it?” said Lamb.

  Frank Abbott laughed.

  “Do you?”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “Hearing the boy his lessons,” murmured Frank Abbott. “ ‘Home-work at the Yard’, and ‘How to become an Inspector’—I beg your pardon, sir.”

  “You’ll need to one of these days. Tongue trouble—that’s what you’ve got. What do you say about Carrick? That’s what I asked you, you know.”

  “Well, Dale was shot with his own revolver—that’s been confirmed. Carrick most obligingly informed us that everyone knew about Dale’s revolver, and if he couldn’t remember knowing about it himself, that was just too bad and quite his own fault. If you’re going to take Susan Lenox’s evidence as to the time of the shot, Dale was killed at between one and two minutes after the half hour, and nearer the one than the two. I think we’ve got to believe her, because if she was going to lie she would produce something that would look a bit better for Carrick. As it stands, he had between four and four and a half minutes to reach the study and shoot Dale. I don’t believe he did shoot Dale. Firstly, because no guilty person ever furnished the police with quite so much gratuitous evidence against himself—to my mind he said everything that the murderer wouldn’t have said. Secondly, the thing is stiff with inherent improbabilities. He’s not only got to reach this room in fou
r and a half minutes, he’s got to get hold of the revolver and shoot it off while Dale’s back is turned. I can’t see how it could possibly have happened. If I was mad enough to kill a chap who had taken my girl I’d want to damn him into heaps before I shot him. If it had been Carrick’s own revolver, he might have rushed off with it, got in at the glass door, and shot Dale. But even so I don’t see how he was going to get behind him. Anyone sitting at this writing-table has that door in view all the time. And anyhow it wasn’t Carrick’s revolver, it was Dale’s. Suppose he came in and threatened Dale, and Dale got out his revolver—Carrick would have to take it from him. Dale was a powerful man. Do you think he could have got it without a struggle? And if he had got it, was Dale going to turn his back and let himself be shot through the head? And all in four and a half minutes—from the kitchen of the Little House, to Dale dead here on the floor. I say it couldn’t be done. And if it couldn’t be done, then I say Carrick didn’t do it.”

  “Suppose it was this way,” said Lamb—“he didn’t come in through that glass door at all, he got into the house some other way and came in by the door the butler used—the one that’s behind me now. Dale wouldn’t see who it was—he’d think it was the butler or the secretary. But Carrick would see the open drawer, and the revolver lying handy. Then you’d get it this way—Carrick snatches the revolver, Dale pushes back his chair, and Carrick jumps back and shoots him as he gets up. How about that?”

  “How did he get into the house? There wasn’t a door or a window open on the ground floor except the door and the window in this room. As Dale sat at his table he was facing between the two with the window on his right front and the door on his left front. No one could have come in by either without his seeing them.”

  “Here’s another way then,” said Lamb—“the revolver wasn’t here at all—Miss Lenox had it. She may have taken it because she was afraid of what might happen when those two met. Raby saw the drawer pulled out, but he didn’t see the revolver. We took that to mean that he wasn’t noticing, but it may have meant that the revolver wasn’t there. Suppose Miss Lenox did take it, and Carrick came on it. They were in the kitchen. One of the dresser drawers would be a likely enough hiding-place. Say he came on it and stuffed it down into the pocket of his coat. He rushes in on Dale and begins to tell him off. He called him a blackmailing swine to us just now. Suppose he let off like that at him—what would Dale do? Push back his chair and turn round to go and ring the bell. And Carrick shoots him. That wouldn’t take so long.”

  Abbott nodded.

  “Highly ingenious, but I don’t think. Too many ifs and ands. You can ask Susan Lenox.”

  “You think she’d tell the truth?”

  “I don’t think she could tell a lie without giving herself away. No practice, and would always be a very poor performer.”

  “It’s a queer set-out,” said Lamb.

  “As you said to start with. And how true. Here, to agree with Bill Carrick, is a first-class blackmailing swine on the verge of smashing up certainly two, probably three people’s lives. Someone removes him in the nick of time—a most praiseworthy act—and it is our unfortunate duty to hunt down this benefactor and get him hanged.”

  The rosy face of Inspector Lamb became stern. His eyes protruded slightly.

  “Now, Abbott, that’s enough of that. Fancy ways of talking about it don’t make crime into anything except just crime. Murder’s murder, and the law is the law. There’s a law against the blackmailer for his blackmailing, and there’s a law against the murderer for his murdering. It’s the law that’s got to punish people—not you, or me, or Mr. Carrick, just because we think a man’s a bad man. He’s got the right to have a judge and a jury on that, and be found guilty or not guilty as the case may be. So don’t let me hear any more of that fancy stuff. Too much tongue, my lad—that’s what’s the matter with you, and some day it’s going to get you into trouble.”

  “Absit omen,” murmured Frank Abbott—“I mean, yes, sir.”

  Lamb grunted.

  “Where’s the report on those finger-prints? I want to run through it.… Now, let’s see how this works in. Raby’s prints all over the place—faint. That’s what you’d expect.… Very good and fresh on the wood-box and the edge of the hearth. That bears out his statement all right.… Only Dale’s own finger-prints on that pulled-out drawer and on the pushed-back chair.… No finger-prints at all on the revolver. Whoever used it wiped it off or wore gloves.… Dale’s prints on the handle of the glass door and the latch of the open window.… A print of nearly the whole of Carrick’s hand on the window sill. That bears out his statement that he stood there and looked in.”

  “Then there isn’t any possibility that he could have shot Dale in the time.”

  “Looks that way. Now—let’s see—what about the glass door? His statement looked as if it wasn’t open when he went along to the window, but it was open when he came back. There are some old faint prints of the footman’s, the one person in the house who has an unbreakable alibi, and apart from them nothing but Dale’s. If that door was opened after Dale was shot, or pushed wide after being ajar as seems likely from Raby’s evidence—he said it was a little bit open—then the person who pushed it open must have carefully avoided leaving prints. That’s where I can’t fit young Carrick in. Apart from all this time business, I don’t see him being so careful about prints—not in the frame of mind he was in. He might have thought to wipe the revolver, but I don’t see him bothering with the door. Of course he might just have given it a shove with his shoulder, and off like that. But if he found it wide open, as it was found by Raby at a quarter to seven, well, then he’d have no call to touch it.”

  “I think he was telling the truth,” said Frank Abbott. “I don’t know what a jury would think.”

  Lamb frowned.

  “Well, there it is. Now, what about this footmark?” He picked up a piece of paper and stared at the drawing on it. “Fore part of a woman’s shoe—size five—no heel mark.… There’s a muddy puddle on the path up from the Little House just before you come to the lower terrace. I noticed Miss Lenox went wide of it without looking when we went down with them just now. It’s a soft bit of ground—probably always wet after rain. She stepped wide without having to give it a thought. The question is, did she forget about it last night? The shoe that made that mark had been in a puddle all right. If it hadn’t rained before we got here, we’d have been able to pick up the prints on the terrace and on the steps. The woman who wore that shoe stood just inside the glass door. That’s the only clear print, but there were traces of mud right across to where the body was found. I think she came as near him as that. Perhaps she was wearing gloves. Perhaps she handled the revolver. Perhaps she shot him. Now Miss Lenox says she didn’t come into the room—Mr. Carrick says so too.”

  “Susan Lenox couldn’t have shot Dale. She didn’t leave the kitchen of the Little House till the half hour, and she heard the shot—” Frank Abbott stopped abruptly.

  Lamb wagged a finger at him.

  “She heard the shot, and Carrick heard the shot—and nobody else did. And it’s their times we’re taking to argue with. If they’re not telling the truth, what happens to your four and a half minutes and Carrick not having time to get here? If they’re not telling the truth about where they were when they heard the shot, they had the best part of a quarter of an hour to come and go upon, and either of them could have shot him, or they could both have been in it together—as far as the time was concerned—” Lamb paused, and added, “Miss Lenox takes a shoe that’s very much the size of this.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The telephone bell rang. Frank Abbott listened, scribbled on a piece of paper, hung up, and pushed the paper over to Inspector Lamb.

  “The bank at Ledlington—about those notes. He drew the two hundred in four fifties. These are the numbers.”

  Lamb picked up a bunch of keys and unlocked the top drawer on the right-hand side of Lucas Dale’s writing-table. Th
e contents of the dead man’s pockets came into view—a handkerchief, a stub of sealing-wax, a pocket-knife, a green and blue marble, a twist of twine, a pencil, a fountain pen, a snapshot of Susan Lenox in a small brown leather case, a cheque-book on a Ledlington bank, some loose change, and a sealskin wallet with his initials on it in gold.

  Lamb took up the cheque-book and flicked over the counterfoils.

  “Here we are—the last cheque he drew, dated yesterday—self two hundred pounds. And—” he took up the wallet and opened it—“here are three of the fifties. This one”—he put a splayed forefinger on the last of Abbott’s scribbled numbers—“this one’s gone. When I rang up this morning the manager was out. I said they could wait till he came in if it made them any happier, but the clerk I talked to remembered Dale coming in. He said it was after lunch round about a quarter to three. Now the Vicar says it was half past three when Dale came to see him. That means he drove straight from the bank to the Vicarage, and he must have driven fast. Well, he was back here at four o’clock according to Raby. That was when he informed the household of his proposed marriage. Then he had tea. By six o’clock or so he was quarrelling with Mr. Vincent Bell. When, where, and how did he get rid of that fifty-pound note?”

  “He might have given it to the Vicar—fee for marriage—donation on occasion of marriage or what not.”

  “Ring him up and ask him,” said Lamb.

  But Mr. Mickleham denied any knowledge of a fifty-pound note. The denial was on the verbose side, and the Inspector was frowning before Abbott at length said politely,

  “Thank you very much, sir—that was all we wanted to know,” and hung up.