Black Widow

by S. Fowler Wright

  “Yes, so I had been told. Do you know whether Sir Daniel was in the habit of keeping it loaded? In an unlocked drawer?”

  “I don’t really know. I shouldn’t have thought it was loaded. I don’t think he’d have been so careless. He might leave any of his drawers unlocked. He was very careless about that.”

  “And there was a box of cartridges in the same drawer?”

  “There was a box of something at the back of the drawer. I don’t really know more than that. I never thought about it particularly. No doubt that’s what it was.”

  Inspector Pinkey had an interval of silence. He gave some attention to his breakfast. It was really excellent bacon. He also considered the answers that he had just received. If they were true—and they appeared to be readily and frankly given—he could eliminate her from the enquiry. What remained? Suicide or Gerard Denton? Neither proposition could easily be reconciled with the facts as he knew them. He said: “In accepting a theory of suicide in a doubtful case such as this, it may be of great assistance if we can discover a motive—even one which may seem inadequate to a normal person. It is one of our difficulties that we can discover none here. Sir Daniel was in good health. We have the evidence of the post-mortem and of his own doctor, which you can probably confirm.”

  “Yes,” she said, “he used to fuss over himself at times, but I never knew him really ill for a day.”

  “So I understand, and he appears to have had no financial troubles. Blackmail, or some other complica­tion of double living, explains some cases, but we can learn of nothing of the kind here. His carelessness regarding keys, of which you have just told me, is consistent with the absence of such worries. I understand that his papers have disclosed nothing. His bank account has no unexplained debits. Only domestic unhappiness remains as a possible explanation of self-destruction. If you could tell me that there was such unhappiness, it might supply the motive for which we are seeking, though there would still be the difficulty of the shot coming from behind.”

  It was subtly if not unfairly put. She may or may not have seen that an affirmative answer might be held to inculpate herself as much as it would support a theory of suicide, but she showed no sign of resentment, neither did she reply. She took up his last point only.

  “Sir Lionel Tipshift considers it possible, as I have understood?”

  “Yes, possible, and no more. But still, a motive of any kind.…”

  She was silent, and then said deliberately: “It is a matter which I would rather not discuss, even with you. Inspector Trackfield has led me already to say more than I meant or should. He is dead now, and if there was a little trouble between us at times—it was never much—I only wish to forget.”

  He recognized that she meant what she said, and that he could not press it further at that time. Indeed, her refusal to reply was admission enough. Not that he really believed in suicide. He thought it absurd. He said quickly: “How about his brother? Was he on good terms with him?”

  “No, nobody was.”

  “You mean, no one was on good terms with your husband?”

  “Yes, it wasn’t easy.”

  “Well,” he said, as Lady Denton rose from the table, “motive or no motive, it looks as though it’s suicide that it’s got to be. I may have to go back this afternoon. I’ll just have a stroll round before I go.”

  “I’ve told the servants to give you any information they can, and to do anything you ask. I mayn’t see you again if you’re going back as soon as that.” She shook hands with a slight but sufficient cordiality, and as she left the room, Gerard Denton came in, and when he saw Inspector Pinkey he did not look pleased.

  He had come down in the complacent hope that he had allowed sufficient time for that infernal red-headed policeman to clear out. He couldn’t think why Adelaide had allowed him to come to the house at all. Surely there were barracks for such as he! He tried with indifferent success at this second encounter to look the affability which he did not feel, but his ordeal was not prolonged. The Inspector had talked to him last night, and was not a man to waste words. Now he returned nervous civilities with others which were more self-confident, but equally insincere.

  Then he went out, as he had told Lady Denton that he had intended to do.

  CHAPTER V.

  Inspector Pinkey, working upwards, which experience had taught him to be the more profitable direction in which to dredge for the gold of truth in the channels of muddles, errors, and lies beneath which he was accus­tomed to find it so deeply buried, commenced with the gardener’s boy.

  He was one slow of words, but of a perpetual grin. His lack of fluency was further impeded by the fact that, when Inspector Pinkey interviewed him, he was sucking a very large sweet. He said that he had heard the shot, and had commenced to run to the window in the anticipation—perhaps hope would not be an unfair word—that “somethin’ was up.” He had been called back by Mr. Bulger, and had reluctantly continued weeding until Mr. Gerard had appeared from the window and questioned him as to having seen anyone come out previously. Had he done so? No—no one. Except, of course, Mr. Gerard. How long after the shot was fired? Quite a time. Five minutes? Yes, perhaps. Perhaps not. Quite a time. Mr. Gerard had come straight to him to know whether he had seen anything. Then he had gone on to question Mr. Bulger.

  This was the tale he had told before. There seemed no reason to doubt it, nor to hope that further questions would lead to any additional discovery.

  The Inspector, determined that no possibility should be overlooked, found some difficulty in considering him as a candidate for the position of murderer. A boy’s prank? Suppose he had discovered the weapon, so carelessly left in that unlocked drawer, during some lawless exploration of the vacant study?

  Suppose he had hidden when Sir Daniel entered, and shot him from behind? He was short enough to have to fire upward at Sir Daniel’s head. Suppose he had only meant to frighten him, firing up into the air? Suppose.… The Inspector reminded himself again of the relative importance of fact and theory; and these theories approached the absurd.

  The character given to Sir Daniel did not suggest that his gardener’s boy would be likely to play jokes with revolvers behind his ear. The Inspector looked at the cheerful, vacuous face, with its working jaws, as the sweet came back from the cheek in which it had been deposited for the exigencies of conversation, and the idea that he had deliberately shot Sir Daniel seemed too fantastic for further consideration. Still, if Lady Denton be put aside, he had been nearest to the scene of the tragedy. It was an explanation at least physically possible.

  The Inspector’s trained keenness of observation was inclined to perceive a suggestion of nervousness behind the obtuse screen of that perpetual grin. He knew that the country man or woman, with an appearance of slow stupidity, can often conceal thought or emotion far more successfully than his less stolid brother of the town. The boy had a reputation for slipping away from his work. He must have his own ideas, his own dreams of evil or good, through the long slow hours in which he pulled weeds from the garden path.

  “Now, Tommy,” he said, “tell me this. Did you run round to the kitchen, or go away for anything else just for a few minutes, so that anyone could have gone in at the study window, or gone out, without you seeing him, when Sir Daniel was shot? If you did that you needn’t be afraid that you’ll be blamed by Bulger or anyone else if you tell the truth, and you may save a lot of trouble all round.”

  The boy looked at him for a few seconds before replying, and the Inspector had an uneasy doubt that he was considering the expediency rather than the truth of the admission that he had been invited to make.

  It would be of little assistance to the solution of the problem if the boy should make a false statement that he had left the drive, under the impression that he would be pleasing those in authority, or from whom his employment came.

  But the Inspector was spared the embarrassment of that doubt, for, after his pause of silence, the boy shook his head in denial.
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  “How,” he asked, “could I ’a’ done that, with Mr. Bulger a-lookin’ on all the time? You can arst him, if you like.” And then, with a burst of convincing logic: “How could I ’a’ heard the bang, if I warn’t here?”

  Inspector Pinkey recognized his defeat, and strolled on to interview the gardener, a rheumatic ancient, who received him in the steaming heat of the cucumber house, and appeared quite willing to converse on any subject, comparatively indifferent to the fact that his deafness frequently resulted in his remarks having little relation to those which were addressed to him.

  However, by tact and patience, the Inspector finally obtained, in addition to some information respecting the domestic habits of cucumbers, and Mr. Bulger’s opinion of Hitler (which was not high), the information he sought.

  It appeared that the gardener had been trimming the sides of the drive, working toward the house, and therefore in Tommy’s direction. He had kept a vigilant eye upon him, having too many previous experiences of his errant temperament to be careless in that respect.

  His deafness did not prevent him from perceiving very quickly the implication of the Inspector’s curiosity, which he appeared to regard as of a highly humorous complexion. He chuckled long over the idea of Tommy venturing into the study to make an end of his employer. “You be the fair limit, you Lunnon chaps,” he said, in appreciation of so good a jest, and long afterwards, when the somewhat discomfited Inspector had endeavoured to lead the conversation in other directions, he broke into a new cackle of laughter, and remarked as though confidentially to the cucumber he was tending: “They be the limit, they be.”

  The Inspector left at last, having obtained Mr. Bulger’s opinion (for what it was worth) that, if Tommy had succeeded in leaving his post, his objective would have been the kitchen, not the study, and that his desire had not been for his employer’s conversation, but for that of Mabel, the kitchen maid, who was, to Tommy at least, a more attractive member of the community. But Mr. Bulger was emphatic that he had gone nowhere at all. The only time that he had shown symptoms of flight, Mr. Bulger had called him back, and that occasion had been shortly followed by Mr. Gerard’s appearance, and was evidently that on which his curiosity had been roused by the sound of the fatal shot.

  Mr. Bulger also expressed a decided opinion (which the Inspector was to find general throughout the domestic staff) that Sir Daniel had shot himself, in doing which he had shown a sound idea of his own value. Mr. Bulger pointed out that this was one of the points in which man was superior to the animal, and still more to the vegetable kingdom, there being fruit trees of indifferent bearing which Lady Denton was unwilling to condemn to the axe, of which there was too little hope that they would make an end of themselves in the same way.

  The Inspector was also informed, in the course of a long metaphor of considerable complexity but unmistakable meaning, that it is meritorious to stir the soil either for the insertion of a seed potato or the removal of the resulting crop, but that the disturbance of dirt when you have nothing useful to sow, or profitable to reap, may be a less pardonable activity.

  It was a reflection which came at times to his own mind, as it must come to all but the most obtuse of those who minister to the blind and cruel impartiality of the law. He was aware of the conventional, and perhaps sufficient, reply; but he knew that it is difficult to state it briefly in convincing words, and—to a deaf man—he let the case go by default, and walked round to the kitchen to see what, if anything, might be learned there.

  It is no mean tribute to his tact and adroitness that he was able to overcome the latent hostility with which his investigation was regarded—doubtless in their mistress’s interest—by the domestic staff. By these qualities patiently exercised, he was able to obtain a willing repetition of tales which had been fully told more than once before, and it was no one’s fault that they did no more than confirm the narrative and conclusions which he had had from Superintendent Trackfield on the previous day.

  If the servants had any doubt of how Sir Daniel had died, it was evident that it was one that they were not disposed to develop, even in their own minds; nor was their loyalty to their mistress shaken thereby. Sir Daniel, their answers assumed, if they did not assert, had died by his own hand, and if the cook did not actually add “and a good thing too,” it was evident that she would have assented willingly to that proposition. Yet the Inspector had no difficulty in eliminating her as an alternative to the supposition of Lady Denton’s guilt. Had Sir Daniel been banged on the head with a flat iron in one of the back passages, it might have been a more doubtful matter.

  He gained nothing by these enquiries beyond the elimination of the indoor staff from the meagre list of those on whom suspicion might reasonably rest. His acquired habit of observation caused him to be more than subconsciously aware that Mabel, like Tommy, seemed to be fond of sweets of an unusual size, one of which, like him, she had found some difficulty in disposing of while she talked; but he failed (for which he blamed himself some hours afterwards) to see that there might be any connection between this coincidence and the cause of Sir Daniel’s death.

  He judged the results of the morning’s investigations to be of an entirely negative character; yet the implicit championship of Lady Denton which he had encountered among the retainers of Bywater Grange, both inside and out, must have had some effect on his mind, for he found himself much less willing to return to headquarters with a report which would confirm the issuing of the warrant for Lady Denton’s arrest than he had been when he had parted from her two or three hours before.

  He did not see how an interview with Sir Daniel’s late secretary could alter the position in any way, in view of the excellent alibi which he possessed, nor what further enquiries could be made usefully in any other direction. The case seemed to be one to be placed before a jury, and which they must decide. Yet he resolved, even while he was listening to the cook’s somewhat voluble opinion of her late employer, that he would not return without giving Mr. Redwin an opportunity of explaining the threats he had been heard to make.

  He asked the parlour maid to tell her mistress that he proposed to trespass on the hospitality of the house for another night, but that he might not be in till late, and took a pleasant two-mile walk to the Station Inn.

  CHAPTER VI.

  It was a warm walk under the midday sun, and Inspector Pinkey entered the empty dining room of the Station Inn with a slight sense of fatigue, sufficient to double the comfort of the armchair into which he sank, and with an appetite which considered that lunch, due to be served in twenty minutes, could not arrive too soon.

  But though his body relaxed in the cushioned ease of the chair, his mind was alert and active, and he was quickly and quietly aware of the entrance of another guest a few moments after himself, who sat down in such a position that he was out of sight unless the Inspector should turn deliberately round to survey him, which he was little likely to do, being satisfied that he could introduce himself better over the table of the coming lunch, if he should think it advisable to do so.

  Nor was the newcomer so entirely beyond observation as he may have supposed, for there was a fire screen in the summer emptiness of the grate—a glass flower-painted screen, which reflected with sufficient clearness to inform the Inspector that he was himself being surveyed with more than the polite and casual interest that a fellow guest might be expected to show.

  A few minutes later, when the waiter had entered with a steaming calf’s head, and other dishes worthy of a larger assembly, Inspector Pinkey seated himself opposite to a man of something less than middle age, neatly dressed, and with an appearance of competence and self-possession. He had sleek hair, short and black, and dark eyes in a sallow long-nosed face, and the Inspector, expert though he was in such questions of identification, had some doubt of whether he might be the man he sought.

  But it was a doubt that he need not show. He resolved to reveal himself, and, if it were not Redwin, he could turn the conversation
so that no harm would be done.

  He asked casually for a mustard pot that he did not need, and then added, in his less official manner: “Pinkey’s my name, but I don’t suppose you’ve heard of me before. I’d better give you a card.”

  He handed one over the table, which Mr. Redwin (for it was he) glanced at without surprise.

  “So I supposed,” he said sourly. “Something about Denton, no doubt? What do you want to know?”

  There was a directness of approach here which could only be met in the same way.

  “I hoped you might be able to give us information which would throw some light on the tragedy.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because I understood that you were his confidential secretary until less than a fortnight ago.”

  “Then I suppose you heard how I left?”

  “I have heard that you left abruptly, but I know nothing of the circumstances, nor am I particularly concerned to enquire. I am merely asking you to give assistance, which is the duty of every citizen under such circumstances.”

  Mr. Redwin made no answer to this. He went on with his meal as though he had not heard. The Inspector felt that it might be polite to add: “I need scarcely say that there is no suggestion that you had any complicity in the matter. If I ask your help, I am not therefore suggesting—”

  Mr. Redwin interrupted him abruptly: “No, you couldn’t.” It seemed for a moment that he proposed to terminate the conversation with that curt interjection; but he went on: “Though it’s no thanks to you that I’m not in jail now. Do you think I don’t know how everyone’s been badgered to say they’re not sure I was here? If I’d happened to have been out walking that afternoon, you’d have moved all heaven and hell to find some pretext to run me in.”

  There was a tone of mingled anger and contempt in this speech which made it evident that there would be no willing help from Mr. Redwin unless he could be brought to a different mood.