Black Widow

by S. Fowler Wright

  Inspector Pinkey, having the benefit of a much more extensive experience in the incidence of such interviews, was unperturbed.

  “It’s no use starting that now. I don’t suppose there’ll be time. They’re almost always a bit late. That’s nervousness, I suppose. And they’re never late more than a few minutes. I suppose that’s nervousness, too. If they come on the tick, it’s often best to let them sit waiting for half an hour. But I don’t think we could have run him in on the mere fact that he gave a pound note to the boy. And if we’d made any charge, we should have had to caution him, and he might have said he’d shut up till he got legal aid. We’re far best as we are, keeping open minds, and asking him to explain. And my mind’s open enough. I’ve got no settled opinion yet of what happened in that room, or who was there when Sir Daniel died.

  “Besides, if we had arrested him, where should we be now, with the boy sticking out in the way he does? You’re often worse off when you’ve detained a man, and then let him go, than if you’d left him alone till you learned more.”

  “I dare say you’re right. I’ll agree to that, if he turns up. But if he tells the same tale as the boy, I don’t see that we’re much further advanced.”

  “But we’ve got one good card—the fact that he won’t know what the boy’s said.”

  “Yes, that’s true. Especially if he’s lying now.”

  The conversation was interrupted by the ringing of a desk telephone to announce that Mr. Gerard Denton had arrived.

  The Superintendent, who took the call, gave an interrogative glance at Inspector Pinkey, from whom he got an affirmative nod, and said: “Show him up.”

  A minute later, Gerard Denton entered the room, and was invited in a formal manner to take a seat at some distance from the two officers, who had not risen.

  Inspector Pinkey, crushing the end of a cigarette in an ashtray with firm extinguishing fingers, commenced the conversation after a style which had been successful on more than one previous occasion in obtaining confessions by which those who had taken the lives of others succeeded in hanging themselves, which it was improbable that anyone else would have been able to do. His method had an appearance of magnanimity, and may be compared, without unfairness to either side, to that of those who will hold back the hounds till the hare has sufficient start to give them all a good run—but not, of course, enough to let it get free.

  “Mr. Denton,” he said, “before I ask you to make any further statement, I want to put your position squarely before you, and, after that, if you have any explanation to offer, or wish to amend the statement you have already made, it will be for you to say. I don’t suppose I need tell you that we only want to get at the truth, and we’re not only willing, we are anxious to give full consideration to any facts in your favour that you can bring forward, just as much as those that tell against you that we already know.”

  Mr. Denton, so far from being grateful for this considerate opening, was roused to a flustered protest. To his mind, it had a very menacing sound, beyond that which he had expected to hear.

  “You don’t mean to say,” he protested anxiously, “that you’re accusing me of causing Sir Daniel’s death?”

  “I don’t mean that I’m accusing you at all. If I were accusing you of murder, you’d be under arrest. If you’ll listen, you’ll understand what I mean, and after that you can talk as much as you like.”

  The attitude which he was adopting now was not an invariable custom toward those he might invite to give explanations of their proximity to events of crime. He would often be patiently persistent in the securing of written statements which must not only be signed at the end, but initialled on every page. But when you have a statement already filed which is admittedly false in a very damaging particular—well, you can afford to appear generously indifferent on the question of whether it shall be amended to something else, which may or may not be nearer the truth than it is now.

  On this occasion, somewhat to Superintendent Trackfield’s unexpressed surprise, the Chief Inspector did not even suggest the presence of a shorthand writer, nor the provision of the usual official foolscap, on which an amended statement might be neatly and skilfully rendered into the police vernacular. He did not com­ment on these omissions, preferring to observe in silence the technique of the central organization, and he was to feel some satisfaction in this reticence when he received a subsequent explanation of the Inspector’s procedure, which he would find to be special to this occasion rather than a formula of routine. But that explanation was not to come until Gerard Denton’s ordeal was over.

  At the present moment, Mr. Denton sat in an obvious discomfort, which he vainly sought to control to such semblances of indifference or indignation as he con­sidered the more suitable front to present to the discharge of the Inspector’s batteries.

  “The position you have to face,” Inspector Pinkey went on, in the reasoning tone of one who points out to his fellow man a danger into which he may heedlessly fall, “is that, on your own statement, when your brother was murdered—as we are assured that he certainly was—you were the first on the scene, excepting only Lady Denton herself, and must therefore have been at no great distance away when the crime was committed.

  “You came, you said, from the library, where you had been reading, and Lady Denton’s evidence confirmed this. In her evidence, it is stated also that she crossed the passage so immediately after the shot was fired that it would have been a physical impossibility for the murderer to have left the study and passed along the passage to the library without being seen by her.

  “But we have less certain evidence that you would not have had time to leave the study by the window after the shot was fired, and before Lady Denton entered, and to have returned to the library; or, at least, to have entered the house, and come back to the study by the passage when Lady Denton cried out. It is, indeed, evident that you could have done this, and answered her call almost immediately.

  “But to observe a possibility is very different from proving a fact, and—until today—we had the statement of the only available witness, the gardener’s boy, in support of your own account. We have now learnt that that evidence was untrue, and, on your own admis­sion, you had bribed the boy to deceive us. It is in accordance with our usual practice that we invite you to offer any explanation you may desire, or to amend your previous statement in any particular, before we draw the natural inferences from what we have just learnt. But there is no compulsion upon you to do so. It is a matter entirely for your own decision, bearing in mind that you have admitted the bribery of the boy.”

  “I said I gave him the note. We often do silly things when we get upset.”

  “No doubt we do. But it’s not the question of whether it was wise or foolish that concerns us now, so much as the reason why it was done.”

  “There wasn’t any real reason.”

  “Wasn’t it so that he might deceive us as to what he had seen?”

  “I didn’t ask him to say anything that’s not true.”

  “Perhaps not. But I suppose you know what suppressio veri, suggestio falsi means?”

  “I didn’t want to be mixed up in it more than I need. No one would.”

  “Then you admit that you were mixed up in it?”

  “I mean, having come out just before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before he was shot.”

  “Mr. Denton, I want to be fair to you, but the argument is not easy to follow. If, as you apparently wish us to believe, you were seen to come out of the study window just before the murder occurred, it doesn’t show you to have been mixed up in it at all. It seems to show, so far as it goes, that you weren’t there.”

  “Well, I wasn’t. That’s what I’ve always said.”

  Mr. Denton perceived by the Inspector’s expression that he did not consider this reply entirely adequate. He remembered Adelaide’s advice, which had sounded so foolish when it was given, but had a more possible aspect now. He added: “
I’d just had a row with Daniel. I didn’t want that to come out. I thought it wouldn’t sound very well. So I didn’t want anything said about my having been there at all.”

  The Inspector heard this surprising admission with an expressionless face, though he supposed that it marked the advance of another of the short, slow, hesitant steps which will lead to the truth at last. He only asked: “What was it about?”

  “It was always the same thing.”

  “Money?”

  “Yes. It was the way he doled it out.”

  “And how did the row end? Did you get what you wanted?”

  “Partly. I wanted eighty pounds. I got twenty-­five.”

  “Was it cash or cheque?”

  “It was a cheque. Mr. Wheeler’s got it now.”

  “Mr. Wheeler? Why?”

  “I didn’t know whether I should get it paid after Daniel was dead, so I took it to him. He said I’d better not present it, but, if I liked, he would give me the money.”

  “Then Mr. Wheeler knew all about this quarrel?”

  “No. I only told him I’d got a cheque that I wanted to cash.”

  “And I understand that you get control of your own money, now that your brother’s dead?”

  “Yes, I hope I shall.”

  “Do you mean you don’t know?”

  “Mr. Wheeler says he thinks I shall. It’s a question of whether another trustee’ll be appointed, and he says there’s no power under the will, but he’ll have to go to the court for directions.”

  “Did you know this before?”

  “I hoped I should get it, if Daniel died. But I didn’t know. I don’t know much about law.”

  “I see. Mr. Denton, I’m not saying I believe you or not. But I’m not going to ask you to sign another statement tonight. I suggest that you should think over your position very carefully, and come and see us again, say on Monday evening. You ought to be very careful, if you amend your statement, that you get it right this time. A habit of making false statements, when you’ve been as close to a murder as you have to this, would be very dangerous for yourself.”

  Mr. Gerard Denton went out. He was surprised, puzzled, confused, at the way in which the interview had so abruptly ended. Vaguely, he felt that Lady Denton’s advice had been instrumental in leading up to that unexpected dismissal, and that he owed her some thanks for that. But he reflected that, when the whole circum­stances, as they were known to both of them, were reviewed, it was no more than a sister-in-law should be expected to do.

  He left behind, in Superintendent Trackfield, a man as surprised as himself, but one in a better position to relieve this sensation by direct enquiry.

  “You don’t think,” he asked, “that a new statement’s worth taking?”

  “I don’t think there’s any hurry.”

  “I suppose not, while the boy stands to the same tale.”

  “I didn’t only mean that. I’m not sure that he isn’t telling the truth.”

  “And, if so, it makes it almost certain that Lady Denton did it?”

  “Yes. It makes it worse for her than it was before. It makes it almost sure, but not quite. But the first question is whether to believe Gerard Denton or not.”

  “He’s lied once. You can’t easily trust a man after that.”

  “Yes, but not more than the average man, if he found himself in such a hole, might be expected to do, and there’s a certain simplicity about the way he does that—and the way he tells the truth, if it is the truth—too.”

  “You mean about the row he had with Sir Daniel just before he was shot?”

  “Yes, that particularly. Wouldn’t a man who had more to hide have hidden that too? But you never know. I’ve learned never to be surprised.”

  Superintendent Trackfield was disposed to agree with this somewhat qualified belief in Mr. Gerard Denton’s probable innocence. But it is to be observed that neither of these intelligent officers was aware that the course of his admissions had been suggested by another mind.

  But the Superintendent, at the risk of being thought more stupid than he supposed that he really was, continued the admission of his own bewilderment, and his frankness was again rewarded.

  “I still don’t see,” he said, “why you put him off till next Monday night.”

  “No, I don’t see how you could. I must have seemed rather a fool to you. I didn’t have time to tell you before, between questioning the boy and Gerard Denton being due. It was the talk I had with Redwin this afternoon.

  “We’ve got nothing on him that we can use, though we expect he’s a blackmailer and know he’s a thief; and, as to this murder, I’m no nearer connecting him with it than I was before; but I don’t think I’ve ever met a man that it would give me a greater pleasure to lay by the heels, if I could see how.

  “The fellow hints at things that he won’t say, and I’ve got an instinct that it’s something more than just bluff. He knows something that he’d give any soul he’s got to blurt out, if he could do it without hanging himself. That’s the impression he gives me.

  “So I hinted a bit too. I gave him a hint that some things might be overlooked if they were disclosed in the right way, and to enable us to deal with something else of a more serious kind, that would be regarded very differently if we should find them out for ourselves.

  “I don’t know how much effect it had. He only made some sneering reply about what we found out for ourselves not being much. He’d been rude enough before then. ‘I notice you fellows never bark so loud as when you’re under the wrong tree,’ was one of his contributions to the conversation. But I let all that pass as though I had a deaf ear. I dare say our time will come. It mostly does with his sort.

  “But whether it was the hint I gave, or just that his hatred of someone—whoever he wants us to think it is—was too strong to endure the thought that he might go free, I can’t guess, but between the two he ended up by saying that, if we were still hunting round on a cold scent, I could see him again on Monday afternoon, and he might show us the vermin we want to catch.”

  “And you think he can?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. I don’t trust him a yard. If I wasn’t so clear that a man can’t shoot another when he’s playing billiards two miles away, I shouldn’t be oversure that he hadn’t put me off till Monday to allow good time for a getaway for himself. But I thought I’d put Denton off till the evening of that day, so that he’ll come here without being specially summoned, just as soon as I’ve found what Redwin’s wanting to spill. By the way, what proof did you have, beyond it being at the bottom of Denton’s trunk, that it wasn’t his gun with which Sir Daniel was shot? I mean, why shouldn’t Denton have taken Sir Daniel’s gun out of his drawer after he was shot and put it into his own trunk?”

  The Superintendent admitted that he couldn’t say.

  CHAPTER XX.

  Inspector Pinkey, reviewing the events of the past day, during a somewhat wakeful night, was conscious of a feeling of dissatisfaction, for which he told himself in vain that there was no adequate cause.

  The day had, indeed, been one of active progress and unexpected discovery. The disclosure of the bribing of Tommy, and the admissions that his statement and that of Gerard Denton were deliberately inaccurate, were an important, and might be an essential, step toward the solution of the whole enigma. Beyond that, he had the hint from Redwin which, obscure as it was, might yet prove to be the pointer which would guide him to the evidence he required. And he had Redwin’s promise that he would give him further information if he should ask for it on Monday next.

  Altogether a good day’s work, and one which had taken its catch from waters where the local police had fished vainly before. But the Inspector’s trouble was that he could not see what to do next. The information which he had gained, significant and potentially serious though it might be, was not enough in itself to fasten the crime upon any one of those it concerned, nor did he see how it could be used for the obtaining of further, more decisive, evi
dence.

  If the evidence of Tommy and Gerard Denton, as they now agreed upon it, could not be shaken, it definitely cleared Gerard Denton, if not of any participation in the crime, at least so far that the fatal shot could not have been fired by his hand. If that evidence were accepted as true, it definitely—some might say decisively—increased the gravity of the suspicion attaching to Lady Denton.

  But, even so, it did not follow that it would make a conviction easier to obtain, for the case against her would now largely rest on the evidence of two witnesses who had discredited themselves in advance, and whose unsupported testimony a jury would be very slow to accept.

  Besides—quite apart from what a jury might or might not be induced to swallow, the vital question remained—was Gerard Denton telling the truth now, or simply offering an amended lie? It was a vital question to the Inspector, for though, when he made an arrest, he liked a conviction to follow, he liked also to feel sure that he had laid his hand on a guilty man.

  And apart from this, there was Redwin’s promise. But the Inspector neither wished to avail himself of it, nor could he feel confident that it might not lead him further astray. The way in which it had been offered had been an insult hard to endure, with its suggestion that the evidence was lying under his eyes, but that he must first prove his incompetence before Redwin would contemptuously come to his aid. The spirit which underlay it was of an obvious malice, from one of less than doubtful integrity. Yet he knew that it was upon such sources that he must often rely, from such motives that the insinuations were often made by which he would obtain the convictions of better men than the informers from which they came.

  When he reviewed the past day, he felt that he had done well; when he considered the one which was near its dawn, he could not see what he should do next. Perhaps a chat with Mr. Fisher, if he could make a pretext for that. Perhaps a few further words with Mr. Gerard. Or with Lady Denton at breakfast ­time. Perhaps something would occur, such as had done yesterday, when he had overheard the voice of the angry cook.