by Cyril Hare
“You’ve left it a bit late, haven’t you?” said Ventry, grinning maliciously into the mouthpiece of the telephone. “Or perhaps you haven’t put your clock right yet? How do you know the police haven’t been round here already?”
“Good Lord, they haven’t——!”
“No, it’s all right, they haven’t. But they might have, for all you knew. If you couldn’t trust me to hold my tongue, why didn’t you ring up an hour ago?”
“Because I’ve had a parcel of chattering idiots in the house ever since I got back. Besides, I couldn’t be sure you were at home. Where were you, anyway, when—I must stop now.”
The line went dead abruptly. Ventry stood for a moment, holding the silent receiver in his hand, an expression at once sly and thoughtful on his face. Then he replaced the instrument and walked back to the fireplace. He took his watch from his pocket and compared it with the clock on the mantelpiece before settling down in his chair again. This time he did not pick up the catalogue. Instead he sat idle, his hands on his knees, staring at the fire, while his half-smoked cigar extinguished itself in the ashtray. He looked as though he were waiting for someone—or something.
Inspector Trimble and Sergeant Tate arrived at Ventry’s door about a quarter of an hour later. The door was opened to them by the master of the house, who apologized for the absence of a servant to receive them and led them into the music-room, where he apologized again for the untidiness of the room, and offered them cigars, which were refused. After these preliminaries the inspector came to the point without further delay.
“I understand, Mr. Ventry, that you were a member of the orchestra at the concert at the City Hall this evening?”
“Certainly not. I was a soloist. Should have been a soloist, perhaps I should say.”
“Should have been—precisely. Mr. Evans informs me that you were not there when the concert was due to begin.”
“Unfortunately I wasn’t. I’m afraid it must have upset Evans very badly, but I thought he would have forgotten it in the greater upset later on.”
“Where were you?”
“When? At eight o’clock, when the concert started? I can’t say, precisely, but somewhere on the road between here and the City Hall, looking for a taxi or anything that would get me there. I found a bus eventually.”
“What caused the delay, Mr. Ventry? You possess a car, do you not?”
“I certainly do, and I intended to use it. I had allowed myself twenty minutes to get down to the Hall from here. But unfortunately the self-starter has a habit of seizing up rather badly from time to time and I found myself stranded.”
“I see. And when did you arrive at the Hall?”
“I didn’t take the time, but it was too late to be of any use. As I came up to the stage door I could hear the Mozart symphony in full blast. I knew then that Evans had given me up for lost and turned the programme upside down. I felt pretty sick about it, I can tell you.”
“What did you do then? You went into the Hall, I suppose?”
“No, I didn’t. I thought of going round to the front, but Evans never lets anybody in between the movements of a symphony, so that was no good. I could have hung about at the back, I suppose, but it seemed a pointless thing to do. Besides, I badly wanted a cigar, and there’s some idiot regulation about not smoking behind the stage. So I just lighted up and mooched around outside. It was a fine evening and I wanted to cool down a bit.”
“You are quite sure, Mr. Ventry, that you did not enter the stage door?”
“Quite sure. You can ask the man on the door if you like. I saw him there, though I don’t suppose he noticed me.”
“It didn’t occur to you to go and have a chat to Miss Carless?”
“It did not,” said Ventry with emphasis. “Evans had given strict instructions she wasn’t to be disturbed, and she is—was—pretty temperamental. I didn’t want to muck up two numbers on the programme.”
“Very well. You mooched around, as you put it, until—when?”
“Until the symphony was over. By that time I had finished my cigar and I was beginning to feel chilly. I thought I might as well go in and listen to the concerto from the back. So I slipped in—the doorkeeper wasn’t there then, by the way—and waited. There was quite a longish wait and I expected the concerto to start—but it didn’t. I was just going to pop out to see if Evans had decided to take the Handel next after all, when there was a general hubbub and the next thing I knew the place was swarming with the orchestra. I twigged from what I heard that there had been a disaster, so I decided that poor old Handel had had it for that evening and nipped off home as quick as I could.”
“By bus?”
“Er—yes, by bus.”
“It comes to this, then,” said Trimble. “Nobody, so far as you know, can verify where you were while the symphony was being played. But I suppose that there are other members of the orchestra who can confirm that you were there when the concert was abandoned?”
“I’m not so sure of that,” replied Ventry, as unperturbed as ever. “You see, I’d made a pretty bad B.F. of myself that evening, and let the side down good and proper. I wasn’t too keen to face the music—or face the musicians, rather—and I was particularly anxious not to meet Evans. You may not believe me, but I’m quite scared of that man sometimes. So to cut a long story short, when I heard them coming, I hid.”
“Hid? Where?”
“In the Gents. It’s just inside the stage entrance, you know. I shut myself up inside one of the good old Vacant-Engaged compartments, and from there I heard what had happened from the chat of two of the pros who came in on their lawful occasion. Pretty callous they were about it, too. When the coast was clear I just slipped out—and believe it or not, everybody was so busy arguing and gossiping that I don’t think a soul spotted me.”
“You came quietly home and had your supper as though nothing had happened?” asked Trimble, nodding towards the table.
“I came quietly home and had a drink,” Ventry corrected him. “My woman laid this before she went out, which would be six-ish, I expect, and I ate it when I came back here after the rehearsal. Slack of me not to have cleared away and washed up, I suppose, but I don’t believe in keeping a dog and barking myself.”
“I see,” said the inspector. “So you came back here between the rehearsal and the concert. Did you use your car for that?”
“Oh, yes. She was functioning all right then.”
“Didn’t you leave your car outside the door, if you intended to drive down to the City Hall after supper?”
“Yes, of course, I did.”
“It’s not outside now.”
“Lord, no. I put it away when I got back. The self-starter was perfectly O.K. then. Funny the way these things behave. The car’s in the garage now. You can have a look at it if you like.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary,” said Trimble. “Just one other question: How long do you suppose the concert had been in progress when you arrived?”
“They hadn’t got very far into the first movement of the symphony—say five minutes.”
“Thank you. I think that covers all the matters I wished to ask you about, Mr. Ventry.” He glanced at Sergeant Tate. “Is there any point you had in mind, Sergeant?” he asked.
Tate looked up from his notebook. “I think I have all the particulars here, sir,” he said. “Just one routine matter, to make the report complete—what is the make and number of this gentleman’s car?”
“Since you wish it, Sergeant,” said Trimble with a faintly superior smile, rising from his chair as he spoke. “Perhaps you would answer the question, Mr. Ventry?”
“It’s a fourteen horse-power Hancock, and the number is TUJ 104.”
Inspector Trimble sat down again with a jerk.
“Did you say TUJ 104?” he asked faintly.
“Yes. Why not?”
Trimble stared at him. Ventry stared back without a hint of fear or suspicion visible on his face. If his expr
ession conveyed anything it was merely a slightly mocking good humour, which embraced also Sergeant Tate, whose eye Trimble was careful to avoid. It was an appreciable time before the inspector recovered himself. Then he said:
“If your car was immobilized outside this house from the time you returned from the rehearsal until twenty minutes to eight this evening, can you explain how it came to be at Eastbury Junction at twenty-nine minutes past seven?”
Very deliberately Ventry took another cigar from the box at his side, pierced the end and lighted it.
“I wonder,” he murmured as he threw away the match, “what the hell it was doing there.” Then he turned a candid countenance to the inspector. “I’m afraid I told you a silly sort of lie just now,” he observed easily. “At least, it wasn’t precisely a lie, but it had just the same effect. My self-starter does seize up from time to time and I was stranded this evening. Only the two things aren’t connected. So far as I know, the self-starter has been in perfect order all day. What happened was that when I came out of the house, to drive down to do my stuff at the concert, the car simply wasn’t there. That’s why I was late.”
Tate and Trimble both began to talk at once. Trimble got in first with, “If that is true, why on earth didn’t you say so at once, instead of telling this cock-and-bull story?”
“Because I felt such an ass,” said Ventry calmly. “Besides, I didn’t think you’d believe me.”
“Did you report the loss to the police-station?” the inspector asked.
Sergeant Tate, not to be denied any longer, said in the same breath, “I thought you said just now that the car was in your garage at this moment.”
Ventry looked quietly from one to the other before deciding which to answer first.
“I didn’t report the loss in the first place,” he said, “because I was in such a tearing hurry to get down to the City Hall. I was late as it was, and telephoning would only have made me later. I didn’t report it afterwards, because, as this gentleman reminds me, it is at this moment in my garage. And that,” he added, “is why, as I said just now, I didn’t expect you to believe me.”
“Mr. Ventry,” said Trimble in a menacing tone, “this is a serious matter, and you may put yourself in a serious position by trying to mislead the police. Please be good enough to tell me the truth without any further beating about the bush.”
“Right,” said Ventry, leaning back in his chair and pulling at his cigar. “Forget all I said just now about the self-starter. That was simply eyewash. Everything else I’ve told you about this evening is perfectly true. But you can add this. When I got to the City Hall I noticed out of the tail of my eye a fourteen horse-power Hancock parked just beyond the stage-door entrance. Of course there are scores of them about and it never entered my head that it might be mine. After all, one wouldn’t imagine that anyone would pinch my car just to go to the concert. Anyhow, I was in much too much of a hurry to stop to investigate. The only thing that occurred to me was that it was a damn silly place to leave a car, right in the fairway, where it would block everything trying to get out of the car park. But when I found I was too late for the concert, and started to stroll round, I went over to inspect, and by gum! it was my car all right—door not locked, ignition key in the slot, exactly as I’d left it. Well, I thought, that saves me and the police a bit of bother, anyway. So I got in and sat there while I finished the cigar. When the symphony was over I went back into the Hall, as I told you, but I locked the door this time to make sure the blighter who had brought it there wouldn’t take it away again. Then, when I came to make my getaway, I nipped back into the car, started up just in time—there was someone hooting behind for me to get out of the way already—and buzzed off home. That’s what happened—and if you don’t believe me, all I can say is, I warned you.”
There was a long pause when he had finished.
“So that was what happened, was it?” said Trimble at last.
“Yes.”
“Can you play the clarinet, Mr. Ventry?” The question was shot out abruptly. If it was intended to take Ventry by surprise it certainly succeeded. For the first time he looked thoroughly taken aback.
“The clarinet?” he repeated. “Well, as a matter of fact I can—or could once, rather, because I haven’t touched it for years. But for God’s sake don’t tell anyone. Why do you ask? Oh, by the way,” he went on, without waiting for an answer, “there was rather a mess-up at the rehearsal over a clarinettist who walked out. I thought that had all been put right, though. Has that anything to do with it?”
“I’m not here to answer questions,” the inspector replied sternly. “But for your information, Mr. Evans has told me what occurred at the rehearsal. Why do you not want it known that you can play this instrument?”
“Because I hate it like poison,” said Ventry simply. “It’s like this. My father—God rest his soul—was mad about chamber music. He started with trios—he played the fiddle and my brother was quite a useful ’cello. My mother had to take the piano, though really she was a better violinist than he was. Then, as soon as my sister was old enough to make some sort of noise on a viola, it was quartets, with poor mother as second fiddle of course. But that wasn’t enough for the old sinner. One day he took it into his head that the family ought to tackle the Brahms Clarinet Quintet, so at a ridiculously early age I was sat down to learn the beastly instrument, when he knew perfectly well all I cared for was the organ, and I’m allergic to Brahms, anyhow. Damn selfish, wasn’t it?”
“Very interesting,” said Trimble, drily. “But that still doesn’t answer my question.”
“Why I’ve kept quiet about being able to play the thing since I’ve lived in this place? Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it? If I let on that I could, I should have Evans at me to turn out for every one of his concerts. Or perhaps he didn’t tell you of the wood-wind shortage that comes up at every committee meeting? It’s a standing dish. No thanks. I’d much rather keep quiet and pay for a pro to do the job—it’s only a drop in the bucket of what I do shell out for the orchestra every year, anyway.”
“Do you possess a clarinet?”
“Rather. I’ve got quite a nice set— B flat, A, and E flat. Lovely things they are, too—it’s only spitting into them myself that I object to.”
“May I see them, please?”
“Yes, if you like. I don’t care what you do—so long as you don’t expect me to play them.”
Ventry rose, and led the officers to the hall of the house. Large, glass-fronted show-cases lined both the walls. They were full of musical instruments of all kinds, at which the inspector gazed with complete lack of comprehension.
“A regular museum you’ve got here,” he observed.
“Quite a nice collection,” said Ventry complacently, throwing back the doors of one case. “Actually my uncle made it. Funnily enough, he couldn’t play a note of anything, but had a passion for buying old instruments. I’ve just added a few things from time to time. I picked up that theorbo only the other day, for instance. But of course the gem of the collection is——”
“There’s a clarinet in the corner,” observed Tate, interrupting him without ceremony.
“What? Oh yes—rather a nice piece, that. Over a hundred years old. I don’t suppose it has been played for years. The key system is quite different from the modern type, as you’ve noticed, no doubt.”
“I’ve noticed nothing of the sort,” snapped the inspector, who was beginning to feel the strain of several hours of hard work coming on top of a normally busy day. “I asked you to let me see your clarinet, the one you can play when you’re so minded, and I wish you’d do so without beating about the bush.”
“Sorry!” said Ventry equably. “I forgot you weren’t an enthusiast. The chaps you’re looking for—and I still haven’t the foggiest idea why—are down here, on the bottom shelf. Now which do you want to—— Hullo! That’s damned queer!”
“What is queer?”
“The B flat’s missing. It�
��s funny. I could have sworn I saw it here yesterday.”
“What’s a B flat? Is it part of the instrument you mean?”
“Certainly not. I mean that one of my clarinets has gone.”
“Which one?”
“I tell you—the B flat.”
The inspector gave it up.
“Whichever it is,” he said, “tell me this. Is it the one you’d have taken to play in the concert this evening, if you had been playing the clarinet and not the organ?”
“Yes, I should think so. You’d better check the scoring with Evans, though. But I don’t understand——”
“Never mind whether you understand or not,” Trimble interrupted. “The point is—the instrument has gone.”
“I understand that,” said Ventry suavely.
“Since yesterday?”
“I’m pretty sure it was here yesterday.”
“What makes you sure?”
“Well, I had a little party here yesterday to meet Miss Carless and her husband—or rather to meet Miss Carless. The husband was a sort of compulsory extra. They were here before the other guests arrived and I remember showing them my collection. We had all the cases open and I took out some of the best things for them. I’d have been bound to notice if the B flat had been missing then.”
“Suppose I were to tell you, sir, that I have reason to think Miss Carless was murdered by the man who played first clarinet in the orchestra this evening?”
Ventry raised his eyebrows and then said slowly, “I don’t know what the answer is to that one, Inspector. But if you mean what I rather think you do, I can only say this: if there’s one thing I should be less likely to do than to commit a murder, it would be to play that damnable instrument in public.”
10
Interview with a Bereaved Husband
It was nearly midnight when the two detectives returned to their headquarters, but Inspector Trimble showed no signs of going to bed. Sergeant Tate watched him, with a growing sense of grievance, as he sat at his desk, ploughing steadily through the pile of reports and statements that the case had already produced. Tate was concerned not so much with the lateness of the hour—policemen, like seamen, are schooled to dispense with sleep when the occasion demands—as with his superior’s manner of dealing with him. For this was the time of night, and the stage in the investigation of a case, when his former inspector would light his pipe, take down his back hair and gossip endlessly, deliciously, as man to man; weighing the pros and cons in his slow, measured tones, heavy with the familiar Markshire accent, inviting his assistant’s views and making him feel that the officers of the Markhampton Force, whether they got their man or not, were friends and brothers, irrespective of rank. Not so the New Bloke. He did not even smoke. Just sat there like a graven image, reading his papers and looking clever. Showing off, Tate reflected bitterly; that was the only word for it—showing off.
