by Cyril Hare
“Those are the only two players we know of, I fancy. Now, is there any chance of our being able to find a crypto?”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“I mean, another man like Ventry, who can really play the thing but doesn’t let on that he can.”
“I should think it very unlikely, sir, so far as the Music Society is concerned. All the playing members were actually in the orchestra at the time of the crime, apart from Ventry, of course. The only non-playing members of the committee are the secretary and the treasurer—Mr. Dixon and Mr. Pettigrew. I shouldn’t think that either of them——”
“Neither should I, but just to be on the safe side you may think it worth while to make sure.” MacWilliam looked at his watch. “That seems to be as far as we can go for the time being, Inspector. Is there any other point you wish to mention?”
“I don’t think so, sir. We are, of course, conducting a search for Mr. Ventry’s missing clarinet and making the usual routine enquiries to try to trace the origin of the stocking with which the murder was committed.”
“Yes. With you, Trimble, I am sure I can take such things for granted. By the way, this is not a case in which you feel you would like some assistance?”
“Assistance, sir?” said Trimble, bristling.
“From Scotland Yard, I meant.”
“No, sir,” said Trimble firmly. “I’m not asking for any help from the Yard.”
“Very well,” said the Chief Constable politely. “I just thought I’d mention it.”
At five minutes to one Mr. MacWilliam, punctual as always, went out to his lunch. The inspector watched him go from the window of his office. Before him was a sheet of scribbled notes. They ran as follows:
Who was present when Dixon phoned Farren?
Did Farren get one message or two?
Conductor of Ventry’s bus.
Anyone else who saw Ventry’s car.
Was deceased alive when Sefton left?
Can Sefton play clarinet?
Find Zbartorowski—consult Mrs. Roberts.
Find professional clarinet in orchestra.
Find and interview Clarkson.
Get photographs of Ventry, Zbartorowski and Clarkson.
Can Dixon or Pettigrew play clarinet?
Trace stocking.
Ventry’s clarinet.
“That seems to be as far as we can go for the time being, Inspector,” he murmured with bitter irony.
12
Lunch at the Club
On the day after the concert Pettigrew went to lunch at the Markshire County Club. On coming to live in Markhampton he had thought it his duty to become a member of that respectable institution whose solid, unassuming premises are familiar to everyone whose business or pleasure takes him through the Market Square. He did not make as much use of his membership as he had expected, possibly because his domestication had proved more thorough than he had believed possible, but it gave him a certain standing among the worthies of the county besides offering a useful refuge on the occasions when, as happens in the best regulated marriages, home became momentarily untenable. This was such an occasion, Eleanor having decided to pay one of her rare visits to London.
The shabby, comfortable dining-room was more crowded than usual and he was relieved to be able to find a table to himself. Everybody in the room was, naturally enough, intent on the same topic of conversation, and it was a topic which he felt peculiarly anxious to avoid. He was not abnormally squeamish, he told himself, but he found it impossible to enter into a discussion about the murder of Lucy Carless with the relish that his fellow members were so cheerfully displaying. Murder in the newspapers was interesting enough—a welcome distraction from the far more sombre and depressing news that seemed to monopolize the bulk of the papers nowadays. Murder as the subject of a brief, neatly typed out and tied up with pink tape with a decent fee attached, was a matter for self-congratulation and a godsend in a lean term’s work. Murder in the raw—murder of a charming woman whom one had met and liked and chaffed over her distaste for Dickens not forty-eight hours since—that was a different thing altogether. It simply didn’t bear thinking of. If only one could avoid thinking! Pettigrew had made up his mind at the earliest possible stage that this time he was not going to allow himself to be drawn into the enquiry which, reason and experience told him, had already begun and was even now proceeding at the highest possible pressure into every ramification of the affair in the hands of highly-trained experts. Twice before, by the merest chance, he had stumbled on something that had helped to uncover a crime. He had not enjoyed either experience. This time there was nothing he could conceivably know or do that would afford the police the smallest help. This sober, comforting conviction made it all the more irritating that he could not, try as he would, shut his mind to the whole business. Instead he found his thoughts recurring over and over again to the events of the last two days, on the wild suspicion that somewhere, at some time, he had seen or heard something that it might be his duty to disclose to the authorities. It was a quite irrational suspicion, he told himself, merely the product of his pity for the dead woman and the shock of having been so closely concerned with the circumstances of her death; but it persisted in spite of himself. It was time that he gave it its quietus. Deliberately shutting his ears to the hubbub of conversation going on around him, he unfolded The Times which he had brought with him, propped it against the water jug on his table, and set himself to read the Births, Deaths and Marriages with unwonted concentration.
“Do you mind if I share your table?” said a pleasant, low-pitched voice.
Pettigrew nodded without speaking and kept his eyes fixed upon his Times. But before he had reached the foot of the column his natural good manners had asserted themselves. After all, this was a club, and not a public restaurant, and he did not wish to acquire the reputation of a curmudgeon. He removed the paper from its improvised stand and looked across to the newcomer with as pleasant a smile as he could muster.
It was with mixed feelings that Pettigrew realized that he was confronting the Chief Constable. His first reaction was one of disgust. MacWilliam’s mere presence served to recall to his mind the very subject which he was deliberately trying to avoid. But second thoughts brought relief. He knew the man only slightly, but it seemed fair to suppose that a person in his position would be the very last to wish to gossip on the matter, and it was gossip which Pettigrew was most concerned to be spared. Glancing round the room, he could see that necks were being eagerly craned in the direction of his table, and he reflected that the Chief Constable had been fortunate —or prudent—in selecting as his table companion the one person who would not seek to pump him on the topic of the hour.
The meal proceeded in silence. MacWilliam ordered his lunch and applied himself to it with seriousness and dispatch. At the other tables the conversation which had been interrupted by his entrance resumed itself, though in a noticeably lower key. Pettigrew began to think, with a feeling of relief in which disappointment was oddly mingled, that he would finish his lunch without exchanging a single word with his neighbour. Then, just as he was spooning into his mouth the last of the tasteless crême caramel which the club almost invariably provided by way of a sweet, the Chief Constable leaned across towards him and spoke.
“D’you mind if I ask you a question, Mr. Pettigrew?”
“No, of course not.”
“I’ve been having a chat with Inspector Trimble this morning, and he’ll be at you again, I have no doubt. But meeting you here, like this, I thought I might clear my own mind on the matter, if you have no objection.”
When he desired to be particularly ingratiating MacWilliam allowed a certain Scottish lilt, too faint to be called an accent, to colour his phrases. Pettigrew, who was English of the English, found it irresistible.
“No objection at all,” he repeated.
“Well then, can you tell me this—you’ll recollect, no doubt, Mr. Dixon telephoning yesterday afternoon about Mr.
Jenkinson coming to play at the concert?”
“I can recollect only too well,” said Pettigrew with a shudder. “Actually, I did a good deal of the telephoning myself.”
“But it was Mr. Dixon who ordered the car from Farren’s, was it not?”
“Oh, that! Yes, certainly he did.”
“Now this is the question: who, so far as you can remember, was present when that was done?”
Pettigrew considered the question carefully.
“Let me see,” he said. “I was there myself, of course. Then there was Mr. Evans, Mrs. Basset, and—let me see—I rather think Miss Porteous was there, too.”
“Miss Porteous?”
“The first violin. She is a member of the committee, too, you know.”
“Quite so. Was there anybody else?”
“I don’t think so. But the door of the room was open at the time and I can’t be sure if any other members of the orchestra weren’t about outside. The rehearsal had just come to an end, you will remember, so they were apt to be all over the place. I wasn’t paying any particular attention.”
“Can you say whether Mr. Ventry was there or not?”
“I am quite positive he wasn’t. He had gone off much earlier, before we had succeeded in getting hold of Jenkinson. He was rather offended, I remember, because Dixon turned down a suggestion of his for a substitute player.”
“That would be a young man named Clarkson, I take it?”
“Yes,” said Pettigrew in some surprise. “That was the name.”
“I see.” The Chief Constable lit a cigarette and stared thoughtfully in front of him. Around them the room was emptying, as members went in search of coffee in the smoking-room. “Would you mind very much, Mr. Pettigrew, if we had our coffee in here? I have”—he looked at his watch—“a few minutes to spare, and——”
“Not at all, not at all,” Pettigrew assured him. All the same, he felt absurdly anxious that the discussion should end as soon as possible.
“Strictly speaking,” MacWilliam went on, “I shouldn’t be asking you all this, because, as I have said, the matter is in the hands of Inspector Trimble. He is a very—a very conscientious officer”—Pettigrew fancied that at this point he could detect something like a twinkle in the Chief Constable’s eye—“and I’m sure you will give him every possible assistance. Perhaps it would help him if, when he sees you, you did not mention that we had met in this way.”
“I quite understand.”
“I was sure you would. Now, do you think you may have mentioned this telephone message we have been discussing to any other person?”
“I think so—yes, I am pretty sure I told my wife about it.”
“About what, precisely?”
“About the whole business of getting hold of someone to take the place of this confounded Pole. I had been worked pretty hard that afternoon and had a rather ludicrous experience talking to Jenkinson when I finally got on to him, and——”
“But did you tell Mrs. Pettigrew or anybody else that you knew that Farren’s car had been ordered to meet the 7.29 train that evening at Eastbury Junction?”
“Oh, dear me, no!”
“I was afraid not.” The Chief Constable sighed, and appeared to be waiting for Pettigrew to say something. He waited in vain for a long moment and then said quietly, “If I may say so, Mr. Pettigrew, you display unusual restraint.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Pettigrew stiffly. He understood perfectly well, and realized at the same time that MacWilliam knew it, and was deriving some amusement from the fact. Strange, he reflected, how expressive an apparently immobile face can sometimes be! This fellow is telling me that I’m a liar as plainly as a man could without batting an eyelid. I wonder how he does it?
“I was referring, of course,” the Chief Constable explained elaborately, “to the admirable restraint with which you have contented yourself with answering my questions. Most people would have been unable to resist the temptation of asking what they were all about.”
“I have some experience both of asking questions and answering them,” Pettigrew could not resist saying.
“Some experience—yes.” MacWilliam appeared to be immensely entertained by the admission, though not a muscle of his face moved. “I think you know my friend Mallett of New Scotland Yard?”
“Yes,” said Pettigrew, sulkily. He felt that he was being driven into a corner.
“You won’t mind my telling you, I hope, that he has a very high opinion of your intelligence?”
It was the last straw. Not the compliment, but the mild, deprecatory tone in which it was phrased, proved too much for Pettigrew’s reserve. Suddenly he wanted to laugh out loud, to greet this odd, subtle creature as a man and a brother.
“Tell me, Chief Constable,” he said, “do you play chess?”
“I do, a little. And—not to imitate your restraint—why do you ask me that?”
“I was just wondering how many moves ahead you could see.”
The two men looked into each other’s eyes for a moment in silence and then both began to laugh simultaneously.
“I think we can call the game off, Mr. Pettigrew,” said MacWilliam, becoming serious again. “I know what you are feeling about this, but I’ve a strong idea you can help me. Mr. Mallett has often told me——”
“Is Scotland Yard coming in on this?” Pettigrew asked.
“I think not. I don’t want to discourage Trimble on his first big case, and he’s a sensitive fellow. I fancy my Force can do all the detection work that’s necessary. It’s just that I’ve a feeling that there’s something about the case that takes it a little beyond a policeman’s depth. And that’s where you come in.”
Pettigrew nodded. Exactly how he did not know, he found himself taking for granted the very thing he had been rejecting as unthinkable less than half an hour before.
“Of course,” MacWilliam was saying, “it’s only a feeling. We haven’t got all the facts yet—simple little facts like those I was asking you about just now—and it may be that when they are all assembled the whole thing will turn out quite plain. But I don’t think I’m wrong.” He looked at his watch again and rose from the table. “I must be getting back to my office. You’ll want to see all the particulars in the case, of course, so far as they have gone.”
“Shall I come over to your place now and pick them up?” Pettigrew asked, rising in his turn. “I have the afternoon free.”
“Did I not tell you that Trimble was a sensitive man?” said the Chief Constable reprovingly. “My goings out and comings in are all done under his window. It would break his heart if he knew I was bringing anyone in behind his back.”
“Of course—I shouldn’t have made such a stupid suggestion.”
“I’ll be round at your place this evening, say at nine o’clock, and run through the facts with you,” MacWilliam went on, as they walked through the deserted dining-room towards the door of the club. “That is, if Trimble doesn’t take it into his head to come and interview you then. But I’ll find out his movements in advance. And you’ll not forget, whenever he does come, that so far as he is concerned you are just a poor, dumb witness answering questions.”
“Is he likely to ask me any that you haven’t asked me already?”
“Well, he is liable to want to know whether you can play the clarinet. You can’t, I suppose?”
“Good Lord, no!”
“Do you happen to know of anybody else who can—Dixon, for instance?”
“Dixon is notorious for knowing all about music, while remaining quite unmusical. That’s why he’s such a satisfactory secretary. I think you can be quite sure he can’t play a note of anything.”
“I see.” The Chief Constable stopped just short of the door. “Perhaps it would be as well if we left the club separately,” he said with a conspiratorial air. “The constable in the Square has a way of noticing me when I go past him and if we were together he might mention it to someone.”
“B
y all means,” said Pettigrew. “But before you go, if it’s not too crude a question, what exactly do you want me to do?”
“Do? Why, I’m not asking you to do anything. All I suggest is that you should read the police reports, keep your eyes open, and do a little thinking about what you’ve seen and heard and read. And then, if anything occurs to you, just let me know.”
“I see.”
“The idea being,” the Chief Constable concluded, “that if Trimble seems to be in difficulties I can drop him a hint. I’m afraid he finds it remarkably distasteful to accept a hint from me, and it would be downright nauseating for him if he knew that it came from an outsider like yourself. That’s why I’m keeping you in the background. I hope you don’t mind, seeing what a good cause it’s in.”
“No,” said Pettigrew. “I suppose I don’t. I thought I did mind having anything to do with the business, but I find I’m wrong. As you say, it’s a good cause.”
“The highest possible cause in the world,” said MacWilliam solemnly. “The honour and glory of the Markshire County Constabulary.”
And, to Pettigrew’s surprise, this time he seemed to be completely serious.
13
Polish Interlude
“Mr. Zbartorowski?” said Mrs. Roberts in mild surprise. “But, Inspector, what do you want to see Mr. Zbartorowski for?”
“That, Madam,” replied Trimble, “is neither here nor there. I am asking you to assist the police.”
Mrs. Roberts looked milder than ever. “But I don’t see why I should assist the police,” she observed, in the manner of a kind-hearted housewife gently declining to buy unwanted goods from a travelling hawker. “Mr. Zbartorowski is a friend of mine who has had a very hard time, and I want to assist him.” She picked up the sewing on her lap and recommenced the work which she had put aside on Trimble’s entrance, as though to emphasize that, so far as she was concerned, the interview was at an end.
“Are you suggesting, Madam——?” the inspector began, but he did not bother to complete the sentence. It was only too apparent from the serenely obstinate expression on her face, as she sat with her eyes intent upon her needlework, that Mrs. Roberts was in fact suggesting all those unheard of, barely mentionable things that he was about to put to her. Instead he looked round the room and caught the eye of Mr. Roberts, who sat smoking his pipe in the armchair on the opposite side of the fireplace.
