The Floating Admiral (Detection Club)

by Christie, Agatha; Detection Club, by Members of the

  “Where did the Admiral keep it? On a ring with other keys like you do, or separately?”

  “By itself,” Emery told him. “It used to lie on his table in the pen tray. It had a label.”

  The Inspector strode sharply across the room.

  “Well, it’s not there now,” he announced. Several bright ideas sprang into his mind. The Admiral must have given the key to his niece when she walked up to the house ahead of him. She must either have come in and locked the door behind her—and so locked her uncle out: in which case how did he get the overcoat? Or else she must have left the window open, probably with the key in the lock and her uncle must have come in, locking the door and pocketing the key—but there had been no odd key in his pockets, certainly none with a label.

  Sergeant Appleton coughed.

  “Maybe this is it, sir,” he said and held out a key to which was attached a small metal label with the word “Window” engraved on it. He added, in answer to the Inspector’s rather angry questioning look, “We were going to tell you, sir, by the boat-house.”

  “That’s all for the present,” the Inspector said to Emery. “I may want you again later, so you’ll keep handy, see? Is there another telephone? Then this is an extension, I suppose?” (He pointed to one on a table at the far end of the study.) “Just switch it through to here. And another thing: I shall want to see the maid—Merton—again in a few minutes.”

  “Well, she’s gone out,” the butler told him, with perhaps a tinge of malicious satisfaction.

  “But I told you, didn’t I—” the other began, angrily.

  “It’s her mother. She’s queer.”

  The Inspector snorted again, and the butler hastily withdrew. It was useless to find fault with the poor creature; he could no more stop Jennie Merton going out than Mr. Holland coming in, as Rudge observed to the sergeant.

  “No harm done,” he added, in reference to the key; the sergeant rightly took this to be a veiled apology. “Where did you find it?”

  “In the boat—the Admiral’s boat.”

  “You haven’t been messing about—”

  “Oh no, sir. Not that there’s any danger. Apart from the oars and rowlocks, she’s as neat as a new pin.”

  “H’m. What about the key for finger-prints?”

  But it was easy to see that the rough surface of the label would not “take” a finger-print.

  “Someone took trouble with the boat,” said Rudge thoughtfully, “so I wonder how the key came to be left there.”

  “I don’t think the state of the boat means much—necessarily,” the sergeant suggested. “I had a word with the Vicar’s boys. They say that Admiral Penistone always gave her a mop over, like, last thing after he’d finished with her for the day.”

  The Inspector considered this. It seemed to fit in with the description of the Admiral as a precise martinet; and it might help to explain why, after hustling away from the Vicarage—directly after ten, because he must be in by midnight!—he had dawdled behind at the boat-house. But it was far from conclusive.

  “Well, fire ahead,” he urged the sergeant.

  “It just caught my eye, the edge of the label affair. Just sticking out from under the bottom boards of the boat. As if it had been dropped and had slipped down inside.”

  “We’d better try it, just to make sure.”

  He fitted it into the key-hole, and locked and unlocked the window.

  “That’s it all right,” he agreed and stood silent for a few moments, tapping the key against the palm of his left hand and staring absent-mindedly about the room. Suddenly he emerged from his brown study and walked across to the mantelpiece. He took down a large, framed photograph of a naval officer in full-dress uniform.

  “That’s him all right, isn’t it? Admiral Penistone?”

  “Yes,” said Sergeant Appleton in some surprise; he was enlightened about the conversation with old Ware.

  “It doesn’t sound likely to me that he’s not the real Admiral Penistone,” was his comment. “If he isn’t, he’s pinched the whole outfit,” and he pointed to an engraved cup which also stood on the mantelpiece. A further scrutiny, moreover, revealed a “group” of naval officers in the centre of which was a younger but unmistakably a likeness of the dead man. The names of the group were neatly printed below the photograph; and in the centre was the name of Captain Penistone.

  “I don’t think there’s more than a shade of doubt,” the Inspector agreed. “But we can’t afford to take chances. That’s one job I’ve got for you—to ring up the Admiralty.”

  As he spoke, he took down a copy of Who’s Who from a shelf full of reference books.

  “Here we are,” he said. “H’m. No address given, I see—just the outline of his career in the service. Gunnery, yes. China Squadron. Seems to have been a bit of a star-turn. Funny that he should have retired so young—I thought the axe was a modern invention. Anyway you ring up the Admiralty. If he’s the right man, they can probably tell you a bit more about him, or suggest how we can find out. Go ahead, Sergeant, get on to the Admiralty.”

  Sergeant Appleton took off the receiver. The line was dead; the lamentable Emery obviously had failed to switch the telephone through. The sergeant set off to remedy matters, and took the opportunity to give the butler a piece of his mind.

  He returned to find the Inspector seated at the writing-desk, deep in a fresh attempt to translate legal language into common sense. It was not really as difficult as he had fancied, on his previous and hurried inspection of the will. The estate of Admiral Penistone’s brother-in-law apparently was divided equally (apart from one or two small legacies) between Elma Fitzgerald and her brother. Until her brother’s death was established, she and her uncle were trustees for his share, the interest upon which, less a consideration to both of them, was to be put to the capital; on his death, the money went absolutely to her. As for her share, she did not receive the principal until she married, and until then her uncle and Mr. Edwin Dakers, of Dakers and Dakers, were trustees. The only remarkable clause was a provision that if she married without the written approval of her uncle, she retained only a life interest in her share, the money on her death going to a series of charities. The Inspector was rather gratified to find that, as he had suspected, there was no question of the Admiral having been her sole trustee; his recollection of the law was that such a situation was hardly possible. The document of course was a copy; Dakers and Dakers probably would know if it was a copy of a proved will, and it might be necessary, for formal purposes, to inspect the original at Somerset House. The sergeant could talk to Mr. Edwin Dakers. …

  But the sergeant did not seem to be getting on with his telephoning, the fact of the matter being that he was far from certain how exactly one “rang up the Admiralty” and for whom one asked when one was in touch with that august department. The local exchange had not been particularly bright either, but was supposed to be making enquiries. The Inspector frowned, and glanced restlessly at the Evening Gazette which he had thrown down on the desk. He must have a careful look through the copy in the dead man’s pocket. The way it was folded might be suggestive, or there might be a marked paragraph. The Admiral would surely not have bought an extra one, knowing that his own would be lying in the hall, unless there had been something of special importance in it. The “news” did not look anything out of the usual: a “London Flat Tragedy” occupied most of the front page, together with an account of fresh trouble in Manchuria (Moscow, as usual, was said to be giving liberal help to the latest unpronounceable War Lord) and a picture of the bridesmaids at a wedding at St. Margaret’s.

  The telephone bell rang. The sergeant, still apprehensive, took up the receiver. His expression changed rapidly to one of surprise.

  “Who? Yes. Hold on and I’ll fetch—oh, very well. Who? Oh, yes, yes, just wait—” he beckoned frantically to the Inspector, who came quickly across the room.

  “Who is it?”

  “Miss—yes—I’m listening—Miss Fit
zgerald.”

  “Give it to me,” the Inspector demanded. “Come on, man.” The sergeant was scribbling illegible notes on the pad before him. At length and rather doubtfully he handed over the instrument. “Miss Fitzgerald? This is Inspector Rudge. I’m glad you’ve rung up. I want to ask you—”

  “Sorry,” he heard in Elma Fitzgerald’s flattest tones, “I can’t wait now. I’ve sent you a message. And by the way, I’m not Miss Fitzgerald.”

  There was a click as she rang off. The Inspector swore, and joggled the lever furiously up and down.

  “Trace that call, please,” he demanded of the exchange, and explained who he was.

  “It’s all right, sir,” said the sergeant. “She was speaking from the Carlton, in London. She said so herself, and besides I heard the hotel exchange say so when the call came through.”

  “What was the message? Wouldn’t wait to speak to me, eh?”

  “She said she understood you wanted to get in touch with her, and with Mr. Holland. So you’d be interested to know that they were both staying at the Carlton and would be there for the next day or two, and then they would come back. She’d be out dancing to-night but would always be glad to see you by appointment. But would you remember to ask for Mrs. Holland, as she was married by special license to-day.”

  The Inspector digested—or began to digest—this news in silence. If Elma and Holland were man and wife, it made it difficult to … And then the will. If the Admiral was dead, the clause about his consent to his niece’s marriage presumably fell to the ground … Elma’s message certainly gave him something to think about.

  “Well, Sergeant,” he decided, “we’d better get on with it. Hurry up that call to the Admiralty, and after that I want you to get hold of Mr. Edwin Dakers,” and he rapidly fired off a series of instructions, including one that he was to be told when Jennie Merton came back. “I’m going down to the boat-house,” he ended and departed via the french window.

  He found Hempstead patiently on guard.

  “Any news?” he asked him.

  “No, sir. No one been here.”

  “No fresh discoveries?”

  “No, sir. The sergeant told you about the key?”

  “Yes. Good work. Anything happened opposite?”

  “No, sir. The young gentlemen have been looking everywhere for the knife, but I don’t think they’ve found anything. They said they were going to have a bathe now.”

  The sun was getting hot, and there was a note of envy in the constable’s tones.

  “Seen the Vicar?”

  “Yes, sir. He’s been watering the garden.”

  “What, this morning? In the sun?”

  “Yes, sir, with a hose. Worth watching, it was. He watered pretty well everything in sight—even the flowers now and again. But I shouldn’t say he’s done them much harm. I reckon he doesn’t know an awful lot about gardening, and that’s just what Bob Hawkins, who goes in twice a week, says.”

  The Inspector surveyed the boat-house and its contents.

  “We’ll make casts of those footprints if we can,” he said, “though they don’t look very distinctive. And I think we’ll take out the oars and rowlocks. We can’t keep this place under observation for ever and if there are any finger-prints that’ll tell us anything, we don’t want them mucked up.”

  He stepped into the boat and began cautiously to hand out the articles in question to Hempstead. Whilst he was so doing, the sound of voices on the opposite bank made him turn, rocking the boat rather perilously. The two boys, clad in bathing dresses, with towels in their hands, were coming down the rough, red-brick path from the summer-house. A sudden thought struck the Inspector.

  “Hullo!” he called, as they reached the Vicarage landing-steps. “I wonder whether you’d let me have the loan of your old punt for a while? It would save me going round by road every time.”

  “Rather!” the elder of the two answered.

  “If you could bring her across and swim back,” Rudge suggested.

  “That’s the idea,” the boy answered with a grin.

  By the time the paraphernalia from the boat had been landed safely, the punt had arrived; the Inspector moored it to a ring in the Rundel Croft landing-stage.

  “How many times a day do you bathe?” he asked pleasantly. “Or has the search made you so hot?”

  “It’s all part of the search,” the younger replied, perhaps detecting a note of criticism in the question.

  “We’re going to try diving for the weapon,” the other added.

  “Good,” said Rudge, “though I’m afraid that what with the mud and the tide, and not knowing quite how big the weapon is likely to be, it won’t be easy. I’d hoped you’d find it on the bank somewhere, but it seems you’ve drawn a blank.”

  “All we’ve found is the Admiral’s favourite pipe,” said Peter.

  “Indeed! And where did you find that?”

  “In father’s study. He must have left it behind last night. He was smoking it after dinner.”

  “Sure it’s his?”

  “Oh, yes. You’ll see why when you see it. A dirty old meerschaum shaped like a nigger’s head.”

  “You haven’t got it here, then?” As he asked, he realised that the question was a foolish one.

  “It’s up at the house.” Alec nobly refrained from a sarcastic comment, and stepped to the end of the punt, preparatory to diving into the river.

  “I say, Alec, don’t you think we ought to tell him—?” his brother checked him.

  “Tell him what? Oh, that. You are a fool, Peter. No, it’s got nothing to do with it.”

  “What’s that?” the Inspector enquired.

  “Oh, nothing,” was the airy answer. “Something we lost, not something we found.”

  “Better tell me, then,” Rudge suggested. “Police job to find things, you know.”

  “Then you can do the diving instead of us,” Alec suggested, brightly. “Still, as Peter’s said so much, I’d better tell you. But it’s got nothing to do with your business. At least, I don’t see why it should have. It’s just that we—or at least Peter—left a knife in the summer-house yesterday afternoon, or he says he did, and it’s not there now.”

  “Is that so?” Hempstead too pricked up his ears. “What sort of a knife? A pocket-knife, I suppose.”

  “Well, no. It was a large-sized Norwegian knife. We’d used it to point a stake—you want a sharp knife for that. Anyway, it’s lost; and the chances are that Peter never left it in the summer-house at all. He’s as bad as father for not knowing where he’s put things.”

  And he plunged into the river, promptly followed by Peter, the Inspector getting somewhat splashed in consequence. But he was content to get this fresh news at the cost of a few drops of water, and with a smile on his face he watched the two lads swim across, scramble out on to the far bank and begin to dive valorously in search of the unknown weapon.

  The smile slowly faded; evidence—or call it information—seemed to be piling up. He thought of the proverb about the difficulty of seeing the wood for the trees.

  “Interesting, sir, wasn’t it?” Hempstead’s voice broke in on his thoughts. “Things begin to take shape, as you might say.”

  The latter phrase was as much a question as the former.

  “Maybe,” the Inspector answered him, slowly, “but there are plenty of puzzles yet. One thing, Hempstead, is that overcoat. Suppose the Admiral went out in his boat: well, I grant you he might take an overcoat with him, but it would need to be a very cold night before you or I’d put on a thick overcoat to row in. Other things apart, you want your arms free, don’t you?”

  The constable produced a throaty noise meant to convey assent without definitely committing him to it.

  “And another thing,” Rudge went on, “is that evening paper. Oh, lots of puzzles there are about that, as well as the cross-word. But the biggest is ‘where did he get it?’ It must have come by the eight-thirty last night—there’s no getting away from
that.”

  There was a pause; and then he added slowly and almost breathlessly, “Unless it came down by road.”

  And then he turned to Hempstead, just sharply enough to catch him smothering a yawn. He remembered that the unfortunate constable had been on night duty. That in turn suggested two things to him—first that he must get the oars and rowlocks up to the station, and that Hempstead could see to that and have himself “relieved” at the same time; and secondly—

  “You didn’t notice anything particular in the way of cars in the neighbourhood, round about half-past ten, say, last night, did you, Hempstead?”

  The constable considered the point.

  “Well, now you come to mention it, sir,” he said at length, “there was a car stopped in Lingham just about a quarter to eleven or thereabouts. I noticed it stop by the lamp in the Square. Closed car, it was, with a woman in it.”

  “Alone?”

  “That I couldn’t say. I only know there was a woman because I saw her lean out of the window and speak to the chauffeur, or whoever was driving.”

  “Would you know her again?”

  “Can’t say I should, sir. And I didn’t notice the number of the car much, either—you see there was no occasion, then. I just happened to notice the car. It didn’t stop above a couple of minutes and then drove on. Along the Whynmouth road.”

  “And that, of course,” said Inspector Rudge, “would take it past the Vicarage.”

  CHAPTER VII

  By Dorothy L. Sayers

  SHOCKS FOR THE INSPECTOR

  THE Inspector ruminated for a few moments upon the fascinating possibilities suggested by this piece of information, and then, dismissing Hempstead with the advice to get a good meal and turn in, he walked slowly back towards the house.

  “Yes, sonny, what is it?”

  This was to Peter Mount, who had suddenly appeared at his elbow.

  “A note for you from father,” said the boy. “I came across with it.”

  “About the funeral, I expect,” said Rudge to himself. But the note ran:

  DEAR INSPECTOR RUDGE,