by Molly Thynne
“It wasn’t likely I should stay there, after what I’d seen, now was it?” he demanded indignantly.
“You might have informed the police,” suggested Grey.
“The police! Not me! Let them find out for themselves. It’s what they’re paid for!”
“Then from five-thirty to six-thirty, according to your account, you were lying in the grass at the corner of the lane,” said Grey, consulting his notes.
“As true as I lie ’ere. I never went near the place till I went up to the loft at seven or thereabouts.”
“No one saw you? You didn’t beg from any one while you were at the corner of the lane and the highroad?”
“Not a soul come near me save a car or two. Not a soul that’d speak for me. I ain’t got no luck, I ’aven’t. Never ’ad!” The little man’s voice was bitter.
Fayre bent over him, struck by a sudden idea.
“Nothing turned up the lane to the farm while you were lying there, did it?” he asked.
A gleam of suspicion crept into the tramp’s furtive eyes. He distrusted everybody on principle, especially people who asked abrupt questions, but he had not the courage or the intelligence to lie.
“There was one car,” he admitted cautiously. “They wouldn’t ’ave seen me, though. It was dark and I was out of range of the lights.”
Grey took up the interrogation eagerly, speaking softly so that his words should not reach the ears of the policeman sitting in the chair by the window.
“Can you remember what the car was like? Was it too dark to see who was in it?”
The little man looked at him with weary scorn. He was tired of being on the defensive and wanted, above all things, to be left alone.
“Pitch-dark, it was, nearly. I couldn’t ’ave recognized the Prince of Wales in all ’is feathers.”
“You’ve no idea of the colour of the car, or how many people were in it?” persisted Grey.
“You can’t see no colours in the dark. There was two people in it, though, unless one was the shofer. It come close to me, takin’ the turn, and I see the two heads. I did think one was a woman, but I don’t know why. It was pretty dark.”
“It went up to the farm, you say?”
“I don’t know where it went. How should I? It went up the lane, like I told you.”
“What time was this?”
“Just before I went along the road to the Lodge. About an hour after I lay down at the corner.”
“You are sure of the time, more or less?”
The tramp groaned.
“I don’t carry no watch, mister. Anyway, they couldn’t ’ave seen me, so it don’t prove nothing, either way.”
Fayre hitched up his chair nearer to the bed, his friendly gaze on the man’s face.
“I’ve been on trek myself without a watch,” he said cheerily, “and had to go by the skies. It’s a gift in itself and I’ll wager you’re as good a hand as any at calculating time. What time would you put it at, now?”
The man observed him shrewdly for a moment. Then:
“Seein’ as you’re the first as ’as spoke to me friendlylike since I’ve been ’ere I’ll tell you as near as may be. Gettin’ on for half-past six, I should say it was.”
“And more likely right than a dozen watches. Can you remember if it was a big car?”
The tramp nodded.
“Goin’ a lick of a pace, too. And what’s more, I see it again, goin’ back. And it was fair scorchin’ then.”
“Where was that?”
“On the road, just as I was comin’ away from that there Lodge.”
“Much later?”
“Twenty minutes or perhaps twenty-five, I’d put it.”
Fayre’s little bit of flattery had done its work and the man was now anxious to show off his ability to reckon time.
“It was going fast, you say?”
“Dangerous fast, I should call it. If I’d been a bit nearer the corner it’d ’ave caught me. As it was, it come near to smashin’ up a farm-cart that was goin’ peaceable and quiet down the main road. The carter didn’t ’alf ’ave something to say about it and I don’t blame ’im.”
“Too dark to see the farm-cart, I suppose? You wouldn’t know the carter?”
“Wouldn’t reckernize ’im, though ’e passed me close a minute or two later. The cart ’ad a white ’orse, though. I see that in the light of the lamps. And I see the man in the car, too, when the light ’it ’im. He was alone then.”
“You couldn’t identify him?” asked Fayre quickly.
But the man shook his head.
“I only see ’im for a second,” he said.
Fayre rose to his feet.
“We’ll look up that carter,” he said decisively. “After all, he may have seen you in the light of the lamps. If he did, you’ve got your alibi. Good-by and good luck. I hope your leg’s mending.”
For the first time the man’s gloom lifted. Fayre’s friendliness was, as usual, infectious and the tramp looked after him with something of the wistfulness of a stray dog.
“Good luck to you, mister,” he croaked in his hoarse voice.
Back at the hotel Grey went carefully through his notes.
“Not a bad morning’s work, on the whole,” he said. “I shouldn’t wonder if that car brought Mrs. Draycott.”
Fayre nodded thoughtfully.
“It looks like it. She was in thin evening slippers when they found her and it struck me at the inquest that she could never have walked that distance in them. And it went back without her and that poor little beggar at the infirmary never grasped the importance of what he’d seen. I wonder if the police got as much out of him as we did!”
Grey laughed.
“I’m willing to bet they didn’t. He’s a suspicious customer and wouldn’t say more than he was obliged and he obviously didn’t think it worth the telling. What about tackling the carter? It shouldn’t take long to run him to earth, given the white horse and the collision.”
Fayre thought of Kean and the snubbing he had received at his hands and hugged himself. Now, at last, he had a definite plan of action.
“I’ll tackle the carter,” he said gleefully, “and let you know how I get on.”
CHAPTER VIII
Fayre and Grey lunched at the station hotel, where the solicitor had booked a room for the night. From Fayre’s point of view, the meal was more than satisfactory. Grey showed a keenness that was after his own heart and proved not only ready to impart information, but anxious to hear anything his companion might have to tell him that had any bearing on the case. He suggested that Fayre should make a note of any questions he wished put to Leslie and leave it in his hands. They agreed to meet at lunch on the following day and report progress.
Fayre’s first act on parting with Grey was to hire a bicycle. It was a ramshackle affair with dubious tires, but it was the best the Whitbury dealer could provide, and at least it made Fayre independent of the Staveley motor. Lord Staveley had put his garage at his guest’s disposal and had begged him to consider himself free to come and go as he pleased, but Fayre hesitated to take too great an advantage of his kindness. With the help of the bicycle he could pursue his investigations in peace, unhampered by the thought of a waiting chauffeur.
Mounted on the hireling, he set out for Keys, the first stage on his quest for the carter. It did not take him long to locate the village smithy, and the two men at work there looked with considerable curiosity at “the gentleman from Staveley” as he toiled past their door on an obviously inferior push-bike. A little farther on, on the opposite side of the road, was a small ironmonger’s shop. Here he dismounted, propped the bicycle against the curb, and went in. A dusty-looking old man emerged from behind the counter and Fayre proffered his request. It appeared that the old man might or might not have a pair of trouser-clips. He would see, but it was a long time since he had been asked for any. While he was rummaging in a drawer, Fayre strolled to the window. From it there was, as he hoped, an excel
lent view of the smithy.
The trouser-clips materialized and Fayre explained that he had taken up cycling again after a lapse of years for the sake of exercise, and added the comment that he found the roads very different from what they had been when he was last in England.
“I reckon you got to have your wits about you nowadays, sure enough,” agreed the shopkeeper. “I mind the day when a man might walk five mile round here and see nothing but a horse and cart, and a child could play in the lanes and its mother not give it a thought. It’s a different story now.”
“I suppose you get a lot of motors through here?”
“A goodish few. They got one of the red signs at the bend there, but it’s little notice most of them takes of it.”
“I saw a narrow shave the other day on the other side of the village,” remarked Fayre conversationally. “A big car, coming round the corner too quickly, as nearly as anything ran down a farm-cart. I wonder the carter didn’t summons him.”
“Went off too quick, I reckon. That’s their way. Main difficult to catch, they are.”
“They were going too fast for me to see the number. I should know the cart, though. You don’t often see a white horse, nowadays.”
The old man’s face lit up with the proverbial curiosity of the villager.
“That’ll be George Sturrock’s cart, I’m thinking. There’s not a many white horses round about here, as you say. Or it might be Mr. Giles, the farmer over to Grantley. ’E got a white mare. In a fine way, ’e’d be, if anything ’appened to ’er.”
“I expect you know most of the horses round here,” observed Fayre. “Living where you do.”
The old man chuckled.
“Always one for ’orses, I was. They’ve mostly got their allotted days for coming down to the farriers yonder. You wouldn’t believe ’ow I notice if one of ’em misses. Them two white ones, I see ’em regular, the mare on a Monday and the ’orse Saturday.”
“You’ll see one of them to-morrow, then,” said Fayre pleasantly.
“Saturday morning, regular as clockwork, ’e come. George ’as only got the one carter and ’e brings the old ’orse down afore ’e goes to ’is dinner.”
Fayre paid for the clips and strolled out of the shop, well satisfied with his opening move. The storm of chaff that greeted him as, flushed and breathless, he peddled up the drive to Staveley nearly an hour later failed to disturb his equanimity. He said he needed exercise and, as Lord Staveley sapiently remarked, he seemed to be getting it.
Certainly he was markedly stiff the next morning and it required a certain amount of determination to unearth his steed once more from the garage and climb painfully into the saddle. He was rewarded, however, for March was going out gently indeed and the air was soft as spring. As he coasted quietly down the long slope to Keys he found himself wondering, for the hundredth time, at the beauty of England and regretting the long years he had wasted in the tropics.
He dismounted at the end of the road that led to the smithy and wheeled his bicycle slowly to the door. Here he paused and stood watching the smiths at work, one of a group of interested idlers. Out of the corner of his eye he kept a good lookout for the white horse.
He had been there about ten minutes when it came round the corner, led by a lanky, brown-faced farm labourer. Fayre noted with satisfaction that he did not belong to the heavy, bovine type so prevalent farther south. Here was a true North-countryman with the shrewd grey eyes and long upper lip of his kind.
Fayre moved aside to let him pass.
“I’ve seen you before, old fellow,” he remarked pleasantly, addressing the horse.
The carter turned and summed him up silently.
“It was a bit dark and I didn’t get a good look at him,” Fayre went on, speaking to the carter directly this time. “But he’s uncommonly like the horse I saw on the Whitbury road about a week ago. If he was, he’s lucky to be here now, that’s all I can say. There’s one motorist near here that ought not to be allowed on the road.”
The carter flushed a deep red under his tan.
“It wasn’t no one round here or I’d ’a’ let him hear of it. It was some damned stranger. I know the cars round here well enough. Ought to be hung, comin’ round the corner like that, he ought!”
Fayre nodded.
“Lucky for me I hadn’t reached the bend,” he said. “I was walking carelessly and he’d probably have got me. You didn’t take his number, I suppose? A fellow like that deserves to be hauled up.”
“I got a bit of it,” the man answered grimly, “but he was off too fast for me to catch the rest. Y.0.7. I did see, but I missed the rest of the number. Likely enough one of them chaps from Carlisle.”
“Did he get you badly? I was too far off to see properly in the dark, but it seemed to me that he caught you a bit of a smack.”
“It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t get us proper. Took a great splinter off the tailboard. I’ll wager his mud-guard’s caught it.”
“That will give you something to go by if you see him again. Especially if he took a bit of your paint with him.”
“Aye. He’ll have a touch of red on him, all right. But I don’t suppose I’ll ever see him again. Likely he took the wrong turn up the lane and had to come back and was makin’ up for lost time like. That’s the way I figure it out.”
“No doubt. If I see him about anywhere, I’ll pass the word to you. He was driving himself, wasn’t he? Or was there a chauffeur?”
“No, he was alone in the car. Joe Woodley, up to Mr. Sturrock’s, will find me and I’d be glad to hear of him. He didn’t do no damage, not to speak of, but that wasn’t his fault and I’d like to have my say with him. On my right side, I was, and he can’t question it.”
The man moved forward into the smithy with the horse and Fayre retrieved his bicycle and pursued his way to Whitbury. He had not dared hope for so satisfactory an end to his investigations and was anxious to see Grey and make his report. That the carter should have noted even part of the number was an unlooked-for piece of good luck. That and an injured mud-guard, probably with a smear of red paint on it, was all they had to go on, but it was something, at least. If only Miss Allen had been more intimate with her sister’s friends! Fayre felt that to apply to her would be worse than useless, but, on the impulse of the moment, he left the main road and swung round the bend that led to Greycross. Once more his luck held, for, almost within sight of the drive, he passed her, trudging sturdily along the road, evidently on her way home to lunch.
He jumped off his bicycle and waited till she overlook him.
“I’m afraid you won’t remember me, Miss Allen,” he said. “But we drove home from Whitbury together the other day.”
For a moment she looked puzzled, then her face relaxed in a pleasant smile.
“Of course,” she exclaimed. “You were with Lady Cynthia and Sir Edward Kean.”
“I’m an old friend of hers, though I hadn’t seen her for years till the other day. I could wish we hadn’t renewed our acquaintance under such sad circumstances.”
“Poor child, I’m afraid she’s in for a bad time. I wish it was over, for all our sakes.”
“It is as hard on you as on her,” said Fayre sympathetically. “If you will forgive my saying so, it was very kind of you to write to her as you did.”
“It was the least I could do. I was as convinced then, as I am now, that John Leslie had nothing to do with it and I felt it was my duty to say so.”
“I wonder if I may ask you a question? Believe me, it is not from idle curiosity.”
She looked both surprised and interested. “Certainly,” she said. “But if it is about my sister, I am afraid I told Sir Edward all I knew when he came to see me the other day.”
“Can you think of any one among your sister’s friends who drives a large car with a touring body and who was likely to have been in this part of the world on the night of the tragedy?”
She shook her head.
“The tr
ouble is that I knew so few of my sister’s friends. I rarely go up to town and she lived almost entirely in London, except when she was abroad or visiting friends in the country. She had a very large circle of acquaintances, but they were not people I should be likely to meet down here. Why do you ask?”
She had hardly uttered the question when her own quick wits supplied the answer.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, her voice sharp with interest, “You think she was driven to the farm! I have known all along that she could never have walked there.”
“You mean on account of her shoes?”
“Of course. I was surprised that no one at the inquest made any comment on it. I couldn’t have walked that distance myself in thin evening slippers, and I am a good walker. My sister was a very bad one; she hated it. I have said from the beginning that I was sure she had no intention when she started of going to the farm. But, of course, if she expected to be driven there …”
“You are sure she never mentioned any friend with a car whom she expected to meet in this neighbourhood?” persisted Fayre.
“Absolutely certain,” was the decisive answer. “As a matter of fact, she hardly mentioned any of her own friends to me. We had not met for a long time and most of our talk was about various relations and acquaintances who belonged to the past. What had happened to them, and that sort of thing. You know how one goes over ancient history at those times. Besides, she knew I took very little interest in the people among whom she moved latterly. I wish now I had taken more!”
“Did anybody see her leave the house?”
“One of the maids saw her, through the scullery window, going down the drive. That was how I first knew she had gone out.”
