“Sit down, Mr. Hay,” Sir Clinton invited him. “Over there, beside Inspector Hinton. We want to ask you a question or two. Any objections?”
Hay glanced at Laxford. The game was up, evidently. His little piggish eyes took on a ruminative expression for a moment or two as he considered the course which would pay him best.
“What’s it all about?” he demanded, obviously to gain time.
“This assignment, mainly. Let him see it, Inspector.”
Hay glanced at the document, still thinking hard as his face showed.
“And what difference’ll it make whether I answer or don’t answer?” he demanded cautiously.
“Just the difference between a subp[#339;]na and a warrant,” Sir Clinton assured him blandly. “Or, if you like it better, just the difference between the witness-box and the dock.”
“Oh, I see,” Hay replied with a shrewd look. “The witness-box suits me best. None o’ this business about ‘whatever you say will be taken down in writing and used as evidence against you,’ eh?”
“All I promise you is a chance to make a clean breast of your share in the business of this assignment,” Sir Clinton said bluntly. “You’re not on oath, of course.”
Hay reflected for a moment or two longer. Then he made up his mind.
“Well, I’ve nothin’ to lose by it,” he said confidently. “Ask away.”
“Hurrying to the assistance of the victors,” Sir Clinton commented with an ironic smile. “A sound policy, Mr. Hay. Well, let’s get to business. How long have you known Mr. Laxford?”
“That’s an easy one,” Hay said impudently. “Three or four years is the tally. It was the year of Spion Kop’s Derby.”
“And when did you first meet Mr. John Brandon?”
“Just before he came by his sad accident,” Hay explained cheerfully. “Never set eyes on him before I came down here that time.”
Wendover felt almost sorry for Laxford as his futile lies were thus exposed, one after another.
“Would you mind explaining, Mr. Hay, what brought you down here. It was business, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, I don’t mind tellin’ you,” Hay assured him. “It’s all plain and above-board, so far as I’m concerned. Quite straight. I’ve done nothin’ I’m ashamed of.”
“I quite believe that,” Sir Clinton interrupted rather ambiguously. “But don’t try to gain time by repeating yourself. The plain truth is all we want and you don’t need to think before speaking it.”
“Well, it was this way,” Hay went on, quite unabashed. “I do a bit of business with Pluscarden the moneylender. Find him mugs with expectations and rake in a commission for introducin’ them. See? Laxford put me wise about this young Brandon’s expectations, and nat’rally I was on to it like tar. Cuttin’ the story as short’s a terrier’s tail, Pluscarden’s been financin’ the Laxford lot for quite a while, payin’ cheques to Mrs. L. on account o’ Laxford here bein’ an undischarged bankrupt. And all seemed as rosy as a pig’s complexion with great hopes in the hereafter, when young Brandon came of age and got his claws on some money. Nothin’ wrong with that. All quite straight, and you can have my word for it.
“I suppose Laxford was standin’ in with Pluscarden someways; but lately he began to think up a game on his own. I don’t rightly know what it was. Somethin’ to do with insurin’ the boy and usin’ the policy in some wangle or other over the estate. No business o’ mine, so long’s I stood in for a corner. The details were beyond me, and didn’t matter a damn anyhow, so far’s I was concerned. The bother was, Laxford hadn’t a blue stiver and he needed bread-and-honey for the insurance premium. He got it out o’ Pluscarden, with some yarn about buyin’ this place and payin’ a deposit. So poor old Pluscarden told me, and I never winked.
“Next move by Laxford was to get an assignment out o’ young Brandon. He got it easy, for young Brandon was silly-simple, the kind o’ mug you write with a capital M. But then Laxford found out it was no good because the youngster was under age; and by that time he’d paid the first premium. A most orkward state of affairs, wasn’t it? Quite distressin’, after all the bother he’d taken. That first assignment with its date on it was no better than . . . well, it was a good bit o’ paper spoiled, and that was all it was.
“Laxford got a new notion, then, and asked me down here. He told the boy some yarn about a flaw in the first assignment—or so I suppose—and he dictated a new assignment, with me as a witness. Only, the new assignment hadn’t a date on it.”
“When was this done?” Sir Clinton inquired.
“It was the night I arrived here—Tuesday. That’d be the 24th of August.”
“But Brandon was still a minor, then, and the new assignment was no more valid than the first one,” Sir Clinton objected.
“That’s so. But it had no date on it. That was the difference. You could fill in any date that suited you, later on; and if it was nobody’s interest to ask questions, then that was all right.”
“Why not simply have waited till Brandon came of age?”
Hay seemed to be enjoying his own revelations.
“Because we ain’t got to the end yet,” he explained. “There’s another thrillin’ instalment introducing that sex interest so necessary to the films. Laxford explained to me that he thought his young friend was gettin’ a bit too fond of Mrs. L. I was to keep my eye on ’em, if I didn’t mind. I didn’t, o’ course. Always ready to help a friend, so long’s there’s something in it for me. And as it happened, I surprised the two o’ them in compromising circumstances, as it says in the divorce reports. Shockin’! My modesty’s hardly got over it yet.”
“That was on August 27th?”
“It was. The reason for the hurry was that a shootin’ party was arrivin’ the next week and they’d have been all over the place and gettin’ in the way, thus reducin’ my chances of actin’ as guardian of respectability. And I couldn’t be stayin’ on here indefinitely, waitin’ till they’d finished their visit.”
“In fact, you laid a trap for Brandon?”
“It’s you that puts that interpretation on it, not me. Well, that, o’ course, gave Laxford an extra hold on the boy if he wanted to use it. He could put any date he liked on the assignment and the boy wouldn’t object. And yet Laxford could go into the box and swear that the boy hadn’t been subject to any pressure when he wrote the assignment; and the boy would have to keep his mouth shut about the date.”
“What was the point of all this man[#339;]uvring?”
“Laxford was afraid that at the last moment young Brandon’s family would get hold of him. As a matter of fact, Mr. Brandon here”—he pointed to Jim— “turned up in the nick o’ time, just as Laxford was anticipatin’, and nearly bust the whole scheme.”
“And what was this £25,000 policy to be used for?”
“Search me! I didn’t inquire too closely. Some financial wangle in connection with young Brandon’s estate, as I told you. But what it was all about, I didn’t inquire.”
Sir Clinton considered for some moments. Then he turned to the inspector.
“Mr. Wendover will give you a warrant to arrest Thomas Laxford on a charge of attempting to obtain money on false pretences. You’d better go into another room and make a sworn declaration. Here’s a Testament.”
He took the little volume from his attaché-case and handed it to the inspector, who withdrew for a few minutes along with Wendover. When they returned, Hinton made his formal arrest and handed Laxford over to the constables who were waiting.
“Now, Inspector, you’ll search these premises for any evidence you can get. Cheque-books, pass-books, and correspondence are what you’ll need to look for, mainly. Take care of that assignment and John Brandon’s diary.”
He turned to Hay, who seemed to have taken Laxford’s arrest as a matter of course.
“We’re going to detain you for the present, Mr. Hay. You’ll spend your leisure in making a full statement—the fullest possible statement, please—in writ
ing. The inspector will assist you with questions, I’ve no doubt. You gave us only an outline, just now. We want the details as well, you understand. Then I leave you to Inspector Hinton. He’ll look after your comfort.”
Hinton handed Hay over to the constables and followed Sir Clinton to the door, where he drew him aside from the others. The recent events had left the inspector a little crestfallen; for his judgment told him that, with all the evidence in his hands, he had failed to get as much out of it as the Chief Constable had done. Still, the main problem still faced them. All this business about the assignment was trifling in comparison with the issue of a capital charge.
“But what about the other business, sir?” he asked.
Sir Clinton’s eyebrows lifted slightly.
“One can’t expect to clear everything up at one swoop. You’ve got these two fellows under lock and key for the present, so that we can put our hands on them at any moment. That’s something accomplished, isn’t it? As to the other business, as you call it, the evidence isn’t complete yet, and there’s no need to hurry. Come up to the Grange to-night after dinner and we can talk it over.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And, by the way, Inspector, I congratulate you—quite unofficially—on the way you’ve collected the evidence in this affair. A very good bit of work, and your reports were admirable.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Hinton was not over-gratified by this praise, which he took to be merely his due. He saw his ‘big case’ eluding his grasp. The crucial thing in it was the assignment; and his fairness forced him to recognise that the Chief Constable was the man who had established the trickery of Laxford in that matter. All that Hinton had done was to reach the stage where Jim Brandon’s oath would have been pitted against Laxford’s evidence, and a jury might have believed one witness just as readily as the other. But that Milton experiment had gone to the root of the business and had exposed Laxford completely. And he acknowledged to himself that that experiment had been outside his scope.
Sir Clinton went out to the car and took his seat beside Jim Brandon.
“We’ll drop you at Edgehill,” he said.
Jim nodded his thanks for the courtesy.
“We owe you a good deal for that affair,” he said gratefully. “If we’d had to fight a case against Laxford it would have cost a mint of money and we might have lost in the end. As it is, we get that £25,000 as a windfall; and it’ll come in very useful. I always distrusted that fellow. He stuck at nothing.”
Chapter Eighteen
The Solution
WHEN he presented himself at the Grange, late in the evening, Inspector Hinton hardly felt in his best form. At the back of his mind was the depressing conviction that, although he had ferreted out the main factors in the Edgehill drama, he had failed to score when it came to those finer details which may be all-important when placed before a jury. The Chief Constable had wiped his eye in that match; and while Hinton was honest enough to admit this to himself, still eye-wiping is not a pleasant process for the patient. Worst of all, he knew that he had not cleared up the actual shooting of young Brandon. On that crucial point, a sharp barrister might easily make hay of his case; for there was no denying that it did not hang together at all. Some of the facts seemed in flat contradiction with the rest.
When he was shown into the smoking-room where Wendover and his guest awaited him, it added to his annoyance to find that Sir Clinton was obviously in the best of spirits.
“Well, Inspector, you’ve got your men under lock and key,” the Chief Constable greeted him. “And Mr. Hay has made a clean breast of his share in the business? I was pretty sure he’d come across without difficulty.”
“Oh, he squealed loud enough, sir. A pig with a knife in its throat couldn’t have done more,” Hinton declared coarsely. “I’ve got it all down in writing, signed and witnessed. So far as the minor charge goes, Laxford’s number’s up, sir. But . . .”
“But the shooting case is still about as clear as muddy water, you mean? Well, we can’t afford to hang about till the mud settles. We’ll have to filter it, metaphorically. The filtering apparatus is on the table over yonder. Perhaps we’d better bring it nearer to hand.”
As they shifted the table into a more convenient position, Hinton noted the things which lay on it: the four guns, some empty cartridge-cases, and the little ring of pasteboard which he had last seen in Kenneth Dunne’s talisman.
“You’re not a shooting man, Inspector?” Sir Clinton asked, when they had settled down again. “No? Then in that case we’ll take Mr. Wendover’s opinion.”
He reached over and picked up one of the guns on the table.
“This is James Brandon’s gun,” he explained as he passed it to Wendover. “Have a look at the barrel and tell us what you make of it.”
“It’s a cylinder, apparently,” Wendover pronounced, after a brief examination. “A fairly old gun, I should say, by the look of it.”
“What Mr. Wendover means is that the barrel has the same diameter all the way up from the chamber to the muzzle,” Sir Clinton translated. “Now this is young Brandon’s gun. What do you make of it?”
“A half-choke, by the look of it.”
“And this one? It’s the one Laxford started out with.”
“Another half-choke,” was Wendover’s verdict.
“And now the last one, the one Hay went off with that morning.”
“A full-choke.”
“What Mr. Wendover means is that in each of these last three guns there’s a constriction in the barrel near the muzzle, so that the bore at the muzzle is smaller than the bore at the breech, where the cartridge-chamber is. I’m not going to give a lecture on ballistics, but the choke acts as a kind of mechanical ‘shaker-up’ of the column of moving shot, and tends to prevent the charge of shot from spreading as much as it does from a cylindrical barrel. You must have noticed that in your own experiments.”
“I see, sir,” the inspector hastened to declare, though in truth he could not make out what bearing this had upon the problem at issue.
“What we want to establish, if possible,” Sir Clinton pointed out, “is simply this: which of these four guns actually killed young Brandon.”
“Yes, sir, of course,” the inspector agreed, “but I don’t see that this gets us any nearer to it.”
“Then we’ll turn to the cartridge question next,” Sir Clinton pursued. “Perhaps we may get some help there. When these guns came into your hands, you found—I’ll take them in the same order as before—that James Brandon’s gun was empty. It had been cleaned, dissembled, and packed away in its case, which is what one might have expected from a man who looked after his gun properly. So no cartridges were found in its barrels. In the barrels of young Brandon’s gun, you found an empty case in the right barrel, and a live cartridge in the left barrel. Here they are, labelled. In Laxford’s gun—which had been in Dunne’s hands—you found two empty cases, these two which I’ve labelled like the others. In the gun that Hay used, you found no cartridges, used or unused. That’s correct?”
“That’s quite correct, sir,” Hinton confirmed.
He was thinking hard, but he could see no light in the affair at all. The Chief Constable, so far, had merely recapitulated the evidence which he himself had ferreted out.
“Now at this point,” Sir Clinton went on, “you must take into account a little shuffle which occurred. Your friend Stoke, the gardener, has a passion for curiosities, as you’d have discovered if you’d accepted his invitation to inspect his museum. I strongly advise you to pay it a visit, Inspector. It’s worth seeing.”
Hinton had difficulty in repressing a snort of contempt. That miserable collection of rubbish! He’d heard about it. Nobody but a fool would waste time staring at trash of that sort. But the Chief Constable’s next words gave him a shock.
“To a man like Stoke any little curiosity is worth having, I should think. What would appeal to him more than the very cartridge wh
ich had killed a man? So, when he got an opportunity—as he very frankly explained to me—he pocketed the cartridge which was originally in the right barrel of young Brandon’s gun after the tragedy. And to make sure that his larceny wasn’t noticed, he replaced it. He took both the used cartridge-cases from Hay’s gun, slipped one into the barrel from which he had taken the ‘fatal’ cartridge, pitched the second of Hay’s empty cases out of the window. I found it when I looked for it, so that his tale’s corroborated to that extent. And, further, you found Hay’s two barrels empty yourself, which also fits in. So here”—he picked up one of the empty cases from the table—“is the actual empty case which was in the discharged barrel of young Brandon’s gun when it got up to the gun-room at Edgehill.”
“How did you get on to this, sir?” Hinton asked, with a slight quiver in his voice.
He could not yet see what the Chief Constable was driving at, but he could guess from his tone that he regarded the empty case as important. And he, Inspector Hinton, had missed that bit of evidence. Damn!
“How did I get it?” Sir Clinton echoed. “I visited Stoke’s museum and found it there, all neatly labelled and ready for me.”
Hinton’s feelings clamoured for unprintable expression, but with an effort he choked them down and maintained his official mask.
“Indeed, sir. Very interesting.”
Sir Clinton busied himself with lighting a fresh cigarette and put the spent match in an ashtray before going on.
“Now we come to a rather interesting point. I’ve spent some minutes this evening in firing shots from young Brandon’s gun, and also from the other guns, just in case there might have been any other little shuffles going on. Now here are the results.”
He pointed to a number of spent cartridge-cases on the table.
“I don’t see much use in that,” Wendover interjected in a critical tone. “With a high-velocity firearm like an automatic, I’ll admit, you get marks left by the breech-shield, the extractor, and the ejector on the soft brass of the cartridge-case. But the back-pressure in a shot-gun isn’t big enough to leave any pattern of the breech-shield on the brass; and the extractor works far too gently to make a mark except by accident. You’ll not get much out of that.”
The Ha-Ha Case Page 27
