by Cyril Hare
The remaining possibility—that Sefton had disposed of his wife before the concert began—was knocked on the head by Clayton Evans in the simplest possible manner. Trimble went to see him at his rambling, untidy house just outside the city limits and was received courteously enough, but with an air of detachment that he found somewhat disconcerting. Evans seemed, indeed, to have lost all interest in the affair. He had already, he pointed out, made one statement to the police; clearly, he had no wish to be troubled again. But Trimble persisted.
“I want your assistance, if possible, in clearing up one further point, sir,” he said. “Who, so far as you know, was the last person to see or speak to Miss Carless before she was killed?”
“I should say that I was,” replied Evans casually.
“But surely, sir,” the inspector protested. “Your previous statement makes it clear that you saw her last when she went into her room in the company of her husband?”
“That may be. But I spoke to her after that, and she spoke to me.”
“When?”
“While I was on the way to the rostrum to open the concert.”
“Are you now saying, sir, that you spoke to her through the door of her room?”
“Yes. As you know, the artist’s room opens on to a corridor running behind the stage. So does the rehearsal room, which I was using. When I was about to go on to the platform I walked along the passage, opened her door a crack and said, ‘Are you feeling all right, Lucy?’ She answered, ‘Yes, thanks, bless you!’ or something of the kind. Then I shut the door and came away.”
“You have no doubt that it was her voice you heard?”
“Not the slightest,” said Evans with finality.
“You never mentioned this incident to me before,” said Trimble reproachfully.
“That is perfectly true,” Evans admitted. “But on the other hand I don’t think you asked me about it.”
“Not in so many words, perhaps,” Trimble protested. “But surely you must have seen that it was important.”
Evans shook his massive head slowly.
“I am not, thank God, what is generally called a practical man,” he observed. “I don’t pretend to understand practical men. Their values seem to me all wrong. They attribute enormous importance to things which so far as I can see don’t matter a damn, and they tend to disregard altogether things which, to me, are obviously fundamental. And the difficulty that I find in dealing with them is that it is quite impossible to tell in advance what they will regard as important and what not. Accordingly I long ago adopted a system, to which I have ever since scrupulously adhered, of taking everything said or suggested by a practical man at its face value, no more and no less. It is the only logical procedure, because the invariable characteristic of practical men is never to look below the surface of anything. When you interviewed me before, you asked me when I last saw Lucy Carless. I gave you a perfectly accurate answer. This time you wished to know who was the last person to speak to her. I have answered that also to the best of my ability. If you think of any other questions I shall do the same. And it is no use,” Evans continued as Trimble opened his mouth to reply, “it is no use telling me that I ought to have known that such and such a piece of information was relevant to the enquiry, because I am not a practical man, and so far as I am concerned the whole enquiry is completely irrelevant in any case.”
Trimble had some difficulty in keeping his voice under control as he said, “I don’t quite understand what you mean by that, sir.”
“I mean simply this: that whether you catch anyone for this murder or not, it doesn’t make a ha’p’orth of difference. The only thing that matters is that the next time you want a solo fiddle for a concert it will have to be someone who is not Lucy Carless—and no amount of detecting or arresting will alter that.”
After which, there was really nothing more to be said.
*
Not Zbartorowski. Not Sefton. Neither Dixon nor Pettigrew. The inspector noted, with grim satisfaction, as he crossed off the items on his list which he had eliminated, that all save one of those remaining dealt more or less directly with the man whom, despite the Chief Constable’s objections, he continued to regard as the likeliest of suspects. The exception was Clarkson, the only other potential clarinettist known to the police.
Clarkson lived in one of a street of small but pretentious houses, built as a successful speculation on the northern outskirts of Markhampton between the wars. He worked, with no great enthusiasm, as a sales manager in a local office. Trimble went to see him by appointment at six o’clock in the evening. Feeling the need for exercise, he walked from the police headquarters. Sergeant Tate accompanied him. The latter did not believe in unnecessary exercise, and his temper was not improved when the inspector beguiled the journey by cross-examining him on his recent activities.
“Have you finished looking into the matter of Ventry’s bus on the night of the concert?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” said Tate stolidly. “You will have my report this evening. I hadn’t quite time to finish typing it out,” he added.
Trimble chose to disregard the allusion to his mania for typewritten reports.
“You can tell me the result of your enquiry now,” he said graciously. “Let me see—it was bus routes 8 and 14 that you had to look into, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. Ventry would normally take one of those two routes from his house to the City Hall.”
The sergeant seemed determined to be as uncommunicative as possible, and Trimble had to prod him again.
“Well,” he said. “What results did you get?”
“Very much what you anticipated, sir. We can eliminate the 14 bus, at any rate. There was only one which got to the City Centre at the time Ventry says he did, or within a quarter of an hour of it. As it happens, the conductor knows him quite well by sight—he owns a bull-terrier bitch and Ventry wanted to buy one of her pups, I think he said—and he was quite positive he wasn’t on his bus that evening.”
“Very good,” the inspector said impatiently. “We can forget about him—and the bull-terrier pups, too. What about the No. 8?”
“That isn’t quite so satisfactory, sir. There are two buses to consider there, being that they were running a relief that night, three minutes after the regular one went down. The first conductor said he was certain he didn’t stop anywhere that run between the top of Telegraph Hill and the Worple Way corner—that’s a good half-mile past Ventry’s house. He said he was full, outside and in. I told him he ought to have stopped, full or not, at the fare stage at the bottom of the hill, but that’s what he says, anyway.”
Tate paused to blow his nose. He seemed to Trimble to be deliberately spinning out his story.
“The other conductor was one of those silly girls,” he finally went on. “I could tell as soon as look at her that she wouldn’t be able to notice anything. However, for what it was worth, I showed her that snapshot of Ventry we got from the Advertiser office, and she was ready to swear she’d never seen him, that evening or any evening. But as I say, I don’t think her observation amounts to much. At best, I should call it a negative bit of evidence.”
“You can call it negative if you like, Sergeant,” said Trimble, “but it means that Ventry will never be able to prove his story about going down to the concert by bus. I was always sure he was lying.”
“Yes, sir,” said Tate in a noncommittal tone. He paused, and then added, “Of course, there’s more than one way of lying.”
“What exactly do you mean by that?” asked the inspector.
Tate seemed more reluctant than ever to explain himself. “Well, sir,” he said at last. “I thought it might be worthwhile making enquiries, while I was about it, to see if he came by some other bus.”
“Oh, you did, did you? I thought we were agreed that if Ventry took a bus from his house to the City Hall it must have been one of those two?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then why propose wasting time
checking up on other buses?”
“Just in case he went to the concert from somewhere else than his own house, sir. That was what I meant by other ways of lying.”
“Very well.” Trimble made the concession grudgingly. “Find out what other buses reached the Centre at about the right time, and have the conductors interviewed. It can’t do any harm. Jeffery can help you.”
“I shan’t want Jeffery.” Tate’s placid voice hardened perceptibly for an instant. “As a matter of fact I finished the enquiry myself this morning. It’s all in my report.” And once more he became provokingly dumb.
Trimble would have given a good deal to be able to rejoin, “All right, I’ll read it,” and let the subject drop there and then, but it was beyond his powers, as Tate very well knew that it would be.
“Well?” he said, harshly. “I’m waiting. What was the result of your enquiry?”
“A No. 5A bus,” said Tate in slow, deliberately flat tones, “reached the City Centre at just six minutes past eight. According to the conductor, one of the passengers who alighted there exactly resembled the photograph of Ventry which I showed him.”
“The man’s mistaken, of course,” said Trimble quickly. Extraordinary, he reflected even as he spoke, how calmly one could take a shock like that! Tate would never guess from his tone just what a disturbing blow the news had been. Thank God the sergeant hadn’t that trick of guessing your thoughts that made the Chief so uncomfortable to deal with! “These identifications from photographs are unreliable things.”
“Yes, sir.” Tate was as noncommittal as ever. “The man seemed fairly confident about it, though.”
“But he must be wrong!” Try as he would, a note of querulousness had crept into the inspector’s voice. “A 5A bus! That route doesn’t go anywhere near Ventry’s house. It comes into the city from the north, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. Here’s one of them coming towards us now.”
A double-decked bus swung past them, tracing a golden glow through the gathering darkness.
“There you are!” Trimble gesticulated feebly after it. “How could Ventry, or anybody coming from his side of the town, have reached the City Hall in that?”
“Quite, sir. That’s what I had in mind just now, when I said there was more ways of lying than one.”
“Of course Ventry’s lying! But it’s sheer nonsense to suppose he should——” The inspector checked himself abruptly. He had allowed himself, against all his principles, to be betrayed into arguing the case with his subordinate. “I’d better see this conductor fellow myself, I suppose,” he added, in the weary tone of the leader who had the distasteful task of clearing up his assistants’ mistakes.
“Very good, sir,” said the sergeant meekly.
They accomplished what was left of their journey in silence.
*
“Good evening, gentlemen!” Clarkson received the detectives with an eager smile. “Please forgive me if I kept you waiting at the door, but to tell you the truth I didn’t think it could be you when I heard the ring. I was listening for the sound of a car. Never thought you would be walking. Well, well! Glad to think you’re out to save the ratepayers’ money! Just let me take your hats and coats and we’ll go into the lounge. It’s only in the pictures that detectives keep their hats on indoors, isn’t it?”
Still chattering, he ushered the two men into a room, furnished in the height of the hire-purchase style of the mid-thirties. They were surprised to find that every item of the three-piece suite was already occupied. On the settee was a bald young man, fairly goggling with excited anticipation. One armchair was occupied by a plump, swarthy young woman who was simpering nervously behind her hand. In the remaining armchair another woman, fair-haired and good-looking, sat bolt upright with an expression of boredom and disgust on her hard, handsome features.
“This is the wife,” said Clarkson, indicating the blonde. “And this is Tom and Maureen—friends of mine.”
“Pleased to meet you,” burst simultaneously from the lips of Tom and Maureen. The wife said nothing. It was apparent from the look that she gave her husband that she could have said a good deal.
Trimble bowed gravely in the general direction of the three-piece suite.
“I am delighted to make your acquaintance,” he said. Turning to his host he went on smoothly. “Now, Mr. Clarkson, I have one or two matters to discuss with you. Have you another room where the sergeant and I——”
“Oh, no!” Clarkson interrupted him. “That’s not the idea at all! You see, Tom and Maureen are my alibis.”
“Your what?” asked the inspector, genuinely startled.
“My alibis. So’s the wife, only I don’t know whether she counts in law—like witnessing a will, if you see what I mean. I say,” he added anxiously, “I suppose it is the City Hall murder you’ve come up about, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Trimble assured him, “it is.” He caught Sergeant Tate’s eye as he spoke, and for once in a way a gleam of mutual comprehension and amusement passed between them. “Perhaps you’d better tell us all about it,” he added, and drew up a chair, leaving the sergeant to share the settee with Tom.
“Well, it’s like this,” Clarkson chattered on. “I take an interest in criminal matters, well, I suppose every intelligent person does more or less, but I take a particular interest as it so happens, and of course knowing as I do quite a lot of the fellows in the orchestra I was naturally very much interested indeed when I heard about the Mystery of the Missing Clarinet. (I don’t know what you fellows call it, but that’s the name I always think of it by. It seems to suit it somehow.) Well, it being pretty well an open secret that by all the rights I ought to have been the clarinet at that particular concert, and would have been if that chap Evans hadn’t gone all stuck up and peculiar, when I heard that you were enquiring after me, I said to myself, ‘Hullo, hullo! The Missing Clarinet is suspected to be Yours Truly!’ Am I right?”
“Perfectly right,” said Trimble emphatically.
“What did I tell you?” said Clarkson triumphantly to his wife, who looked, if anything, sourer than ever. “Well, I quite definitely wasn’t the Missing Clarinet, and what’s more I wasn’t at the concert at all. If I’m not good enough to play, as I told Bill Ventry, then I’m damned if I’ll pay good money to go and listen. That’s what I thought, anyway. I’m not so keen on music as all that, though a chap must have a hobby of one sort or another. Of course, as it turned out, I simply cut off my nose to spite my face. When I found I’d missed a really front-page sensational murder, I was wild, I don’t mind telling you. However, that’s all over and done with and it’s no good crying over spilt milk. But if you ask me”—here he leaned forward confidentially towards the inspector,—“if you ask me, the chap to keep your eye on is that damned conceited prig, Clayton Evans. I wouldn’t put it past him to bump a girl off just because she made a bloomer at rehearsal. He’s simply crazy, that chap—crazy about music, that is. Of course, I’m fond of music myself, within reason—that’s why I was so set on playing in the orchestra, if he’d only let me have a decent part——”
“You were going to tell me about your alibi, Mr. Clarkson,” Trimble reminded him gently.
“Sorry, old man, so I was. Afraid I do run on a bit. Look, won’t you have a cigarette or something? I’ve been quite forgetting my manners…. Well, if you won’t, I’ll just light up myself, if you don’t mind…. Well, as I was saying, the alibi. The long and the short of it is that instead of going to the concert we spent the evening with Tom and Maureen here.”
“The whole evening?” asked Trimble solemnly.
“The whole evening. At least, I did. Wait a minute, I’ll give you all the works. I know how particular you chaps are about trifles. Mind you, I don’t mind—it’s your job, I know. Anybody who’s made a study of these things as I have can tell just how important trifles can be. Look. Tom and I work in the same office. We left together, about a quarter to six, and went straight to his place—that’
s in Charleville Road; only just round the corner. Maureen was there. Violet, that’s the wife, didn’t come along till quite a bit later. Where were you, by the way? We’d arranged to meet you there at six.”
Mrs. Clarkson spoke for the first time since the detectives had entered the room.
“What the hell does that matter?” she said. “Get on with it, and don’t waste the inspector’s time.”
“All right, all right,” replied her husband, with an unexpectedly savage snarl. “It’s not the first time you’ve been out on your own with no decent explanation, that’s all. Anyway,” he turned back to Trimble, “there it is. We had a few drinks until she did turn up, and then we had our evening meal—the four of us. After that we sat down to a quiet game of poker and it was eleven o’clock before we broke up. O.K.?” he appealed to Tom and Maureen.
“Absolutely,” said Tom, who had been following this long and complicated narrative with breathless interest.
“Gospel truth,” echoed Maureen.
“Thank you very much indeed,” said Trimble. “You have made everything perfectly clear, Mr. Clarkson, and have been of the greatest assistance.”
“That’s all right, old man, that’s all right. Only too glad to help. And now, if you won’t think it rude of me, will you be wanting Tom and Maureen any more? Because if not, I think they rather want to get away——”
“Maureen’s got something rather special in the oven,” Tom explained.
Trimble, who felt that he had seen enough of the couple to last him a lifetime, assured them that their presence was no longer required in the interests of justice. Before they went he made them thoroughly happy by taking their names and address in his official notebook and adjuring them solemnly not to reveal what they had heard to anyone.
