The Floating Admiral (Detection Club)

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

  Holland considered. “I couldn’t say. Perhaps. I suppose we stood still for a few seconds. Sort of frozen, you know. Yes, perhaps we heard the thud before I moved. I’m not sure we didn’t, now I come to think. But in any case there couldn’t be more than a second and a half in it either way.”

  “And then you followed your husband into the study, madam?”

  “Yes,” Elma faltered. “And saw—and saw …” She covered her face with her hands and her body shook.

  Holland leapt up. “Inspector,” he said, in a low voice, “get out.”

  Rudge got.

  In any case he had not expected to learn anything more.

  4

  “Of course it’s suicide,” growled the Superintendent. “The doctor says her grip on the dagger must have been applied during life; there’s only her prints on it; the Hollands were within a few yards of the room when she did it, and actually heard her fall; Rudge had command of the front door, and the back door remained bolted on the inside, and when he searched the house there was no one in it. How could it be anything but suicide?” The Superintendent spoke scornfully.

  Rudge said nothing, but his ruddy cheeks grew a shade ruddier still.

  “You don’t agree, Rudge?” said the Chief Constable.

  “No, sir, I’m afraid I don’t. The way I look at it is this. Would a woman going to commit suicide fill up the time beforehand by eating greengages? It isn’t natural.”

  “Then are you saying Holland killed her?” asked the Superintendent sharply. “Because there’s no one else who could.”

  “No, sir, I’m not saying that either.”

  It was the following morning, and a conference was being held at Whynmouth police station. Already there was tension in the air, and further tension threatened. The possibilities of Mrs. Mount’s death being due to suicide or murder had been discussed already for at least half an hour, and no decision had yet been reached. The Superintendent was all for suicide, and the Chief Constable had to agree that the logic was on his side; Inspector Rudge obstinately clung to murder, and when challenged to produce his proofs could only mutter puerilities about things being “natural” or the reverse, and “feeling things in his bones” no wonder the Superintendent snorted. Major Twyfitt had persevered nobly in a Chief Constable’s first duty, that of holding the balance between two disputing subordinates, but did not know how soon it might not escape from his grasp.

  He determined now to shift the ground of discussion. “Well, of course, Rudge, if you feel that way you’ll do all you can to collect evidence to support your ideas. Otherwise I think we can leave it for the time being to the coroner. Now, about the murder of Admiral Penistone. You told us last night of the dead woman’s identity with Célie Blanc, the lady’s maid, which does definitely connect the Vicarage with the tragedy, as you’ve felt all along,” said the Chief Constable soothingly. “And you told us about Hempstead’s discovery in the bathroom at Rundel Croft. Now, have you any ideas where all this is going to lead us?”

  “I have, sir,” replied the Inspector grimly. “I’ve a very good idea indeed.”

  “Ah, that’s good. What is it?”

  “I’d rather not say, sir, if you don’t mind, until I’ve collected a little more evidence,” Rudge answered, with a side-glance at the Superintendent.

  “Yes, yes, of course. So long as you’re working on definite lines. Well, the Superintendent has got the details from the Admiralty now about that episode at Hong Kong, which you’d like to hear. Just let Rudge have the facts, Superintendent.”

  Superintendent Hawkesworth drew a folded paper from his breast-pocket, opened it, and in a totally expressionless voice read:

  “‘Captain Penistone was involved in a disgraceful scene in Hong Kong in 1911. By his own admission he followed a girl, who was being ill-treated by a Chinaman, into a low-class den which was already unfavourably known to the authorities. After that he stated that he remembered nothing further. He was, however, seen, in an advanced state of intoxication, singing and dancing in the company of a number of seamen of both British and other nationalities, and Chinese coolies; and he was carried on board his ship the next morning, still under the influence of drink and opium, by a party of his own men who had recognised him the previous evening. In consideration of his record, Captain Penistone was permitted to send in his papers instead of being tried by court-martial. On the outbreak of hostilities with Germany, Captain Penistone volunteered his services in any capacity, and in view of the emergency he was reinstated temporarily with his rank of Captain. He served with distinction throughout the War, and so far as the Admiralty was concerned, the regrettable incident at Hong Kong was expunged from the records. The Admiral, however, expressed to several of the senior officers here his dissatisfaction with the affair, and his belief that a good deal more lay behind it than had ever appeared, and he used to state his intention of devoting his leisure on retirement to getting to the bottom of it; but as to whether there were any grounds or evidence for this belief, nothing is known here.’”

  “I see,” said Rudge. “Followed a girl in, did he? Well, that clears up one point, sir, doesn’t it? File X!”

  “You mean, File X contained the evidence he had collected to support his view that the incident was rigged?” nodded the Chief Constable. “Yes, that’s the view we’d come to.”

  “And it gives you something else, Rudge,” added Hawkesworth. “It gives you motive. Those papers had disappeared from the folder, hadn’t they? Obviously they were taken after the murder, by the murderer. In other words, the Admiral was right. He’d got his evidence—and it was going to implicate somebody who didn’t want to be implicated. So the Admiral was murdered to stop him blowing the gaff. Well, that gives us a pretty strong pointer. The murderer is a man who was in Hong Kong in 1911. Anything wrong with that?”

  “Nothing,” Rudge agreed. “That’s right enough, sir. Must be. But there’s one thing I can’t understand, and that’s Mr. Holland’s story about seeing the Admiral, in his study, with a lot of papers on his desk, after midnight that night. According to what the doctor says, that’s just the time the murderer ought to have been looking for File X.”

  “And perhaps so he was,” said the Superintendent darkly.

  “If you mean Holland, sir,” said Rudge, returning to an old difficulty, “why did he want to come out with that story at all, when there was no evidence that he wasn’t safe in bed and asleep at the Lord Marshall?”

  “I don’t mean Holland,” snapped the Superintendent. “I mean the man Holland saw. The man whom he mistook for the Admiral. The man who was impersonating the Admiral—for the third time.”

  “The third time?”

  “Yes. Once in the study, once at the Lord Marshall, and once—in Hong Kong!”

  “Oh!” Rudge registered such genuine admiration that the Superintendent forgave him his foolishness about Mrs. Mount. “That’s a smart bit of work, sir, if I may say so.”

  “You can bank on it, that’s the murderer,” said the Superintendent complacently, and his tone added that that was not the end of the smart work.

  “But wait a bit,” cried the Inspector excitedly. “That means Mrs. Holland’s in it. Holland gave it away that she was in the study too.”

  “And haven’t you thought all the time that Mrs. Holland knew a good bit more than she let on?”

  “I never thought she was actually mixed up in the murder,” Rudge confessed.

  With an air of triumph the Superintendent rose and unlocked a cupboard. From it he produced a package, and from the package a white chiffon frock. His large hands looked absurdly incongruous on the delicate stuff as he draped the dress over the back of a chair before the eyes of the Inspector. His reason for doing so was plain; there was no need for him to point to the rusty-coloured stain that smeared one hip. “The missing white dress. Got a warrant to search her room at the Lord Marshall, and found it at the bottom of a drawer,” he said briefly.

  “I knew she kn
ew something!” exclaimed Rudge.

  “Why do people keep damning evidence against themselves?” Major Twyfitt asked.

  “Lucky for us they do, sir,” said Hawkesworth. To Rudge he added: “Mind you, I don’t think she was in it from the start. But she’s an accessory after, all right. And that gives us another pointer. See it?”

  “Oh, yes,” nodded Rudge. “The brother, Walter. I’ve had him in mind from the beginning.”

  “You have, eh?” said the Superintendent, somewhat discomfited. “Why didn’t you ever say so, then?”

  “No evidence,” replied Rudge smugly.

  “Anyhow, it seems clear enough now,” interposed the Chief Constable. “We can assume, I think, that if anyone has been impersonating the Admiral, either in Hong Kong or here, it must have been this Walter Fitzgerald. There must have been a strong resemblance. We’ve got evidence of that too, Rudge. Two witnesses who saw a man in Whynmouth on the day of the murder whom they mistook in the distance for the Admiral, and only realised when they were quite close that it was a younger man.”

  “Yes, sir? And that gives me another idea. May I put through a telephone call to London?”

  “Of course.”

  Rudge consulted his note-book, and then gave the number of Friedlander’s Hotel and asked for priority. The connection was made in less than two minutes. Rudge explained who he was, and said: “You remember telling me that Mrs. Arkwright only had one regular visitor, a tall man with a bronzed forehead? Did this man wear a beard? He did? Thank you.” He rang off.

  The other two looked at him enquiringly.

  “That connects up something more.” Rudge was unable to conceal his satisfaction. “The man who ran off with Mrs. Mount, the man whose name the Vicar never knew—that was Walter Fitzgerald too.”

  “Ah!” said two breaths simultaneously.

  “It’s beginning to work in.”

  The Superintendent cleared his throat. “Now, my theory of what happened that night is this. This man, this Walter Fitzgerald, came down—Yes? What is it? Oh, come in.” A loud knock at the door had broken him off in mid-sentence.

  Police Constable Hempstead entered, looking thoroughly pleased with himself. In his hand he held a short length of manilla rope, knotted to another short length. “Hope I’m not disturbing you, sir,” he said to Major Twyfitt, “but thought you’d like to know at once. I’ve searched both banks thoroughly this morning, from Rundel Croft to the sea, and found nothing except this.”

  “The missing bit of the painter!” exclaimed Rudge. “Where was it? Sorry, sir,” he added perfunctorily to the Chief Constable, who nodded good-humouredly.

  “Caught up in some bushes, ’bout half-way down, on the Vicarage side.”

  “Good man,” said the Chief Constable as he took the rope, and even Hawkesworth grunted approval.

  “Did you make any enquiries at the cottages?” asked Rudge.

  “Every one, sir. Nobody heard or saw anything. But I’ve found out something else.”

  “You have, eh? What?”

  “Well, you remember that set of photos you gave me, sir, of the finger-prints on the oars in the Admiral’s boat? Well, I believe I’ve identified them.” Hempstead produced a piece of paper, which the Superintendent took before anyone else could reach it.

  He whipped another set of the photographs out of his pocket and pored over them for a minute. Then he looked up. “That’s the man. Who is it, Hempstead?”

  Hempstead beamed with self-importance. “Neddy Ware, sir.”

  5

  When Rudge left the police station for a belated lunch he had a good deal to think about. The business was getting altogether too wide-spread for his liking. Half the inhabitants of Lingham seemed now to be implicated in the murder, or at the least accessories after it. The Vicar, Elma Holland, and now Neddy Ware. There was another point against Neddy Ware too. The plaster casts which had been taken of the footprints on the bank showed a number which had been definitely identified as the Admiral’s, several of his niece’s, and just a few of a large, coarse sole, studded with nails, which could belong to nobody at Rundel Croft but a gardener; but they might belong to Neddy Ware. The impressions were good, and the Super was going to find out himself, after lunch, whether they were Neddy Ware’s or not; but no one had any doubt now on the point.

  He had been cunning, had Neddy Ware. The Inspector ruefully acknowledged to himself that he had been completely taken in by the old man. Neddy Ware had given him precisely correct information on all matters concerning the river and its tides which he could have checked from anyone else who was familiar with them; even on points which might have told against himself he had been accurate; but what about his speculations, which the Inspector had unconsciously put on practically the same basis as the rest? It was difficult now to disentangle speculation from fact, even in consultation with his note-book, but there seemed to Rudge two main ideas which Ware had deftly given him and which had lain in his mind ever since as a basis on which any theory of the crime must be founded: that if the Admiral had taken his boat out at all that night he must have taken it down-stream, and that it would have taken him an hour to row to Whynmouth. How did these two ideas look now?

  For the first there really seemed no reason at all. Why must the Admiral have gone down-stream? So that the abandoned boat could have drifted to where it was found at the time it was found. But was it found at that time? And at that place? The whole of Ware’s first story must now be viewed with the deepest suspicion.

  What about the second point, then? From Rundel Croft to Whynmouth, by water, was about two and three-quarter miles. The Admiral must have started at between a quarter-past and half-past ten. At that time the tide was, even according to Ware’s own information, at its strongest ebb. Could a lusty man not row a boat, with a swiftly flowing tide to help him, at faster than a slow walking pace? Nonsense; of course he could. Twice as fast. Very well, then. Neddy Ware had wanted to deceive the police as to the time the Admiral could have reached Whynmouth that night (assuming for the moment that on the other point he had been speaking the truth, and it was down-stream the Admiral had gone). Now why the deuce had he wanted to do that?

  At this point the Inspector mechanically pushed his full plate of gooseberry pie away from him and allowed one of his landlady’s best efforts to get stone cold.

  There were only two possible reasons that Rudge could see; one, that somebody had an alibi for half-past eleven, but not for eleven o’clock; and the other, to make the police think that the man who called at the Lord Marshall just after eleven was an impostor—which was exactly what they did think. But in that case the man really was the Admiral. …

  This was getting altogether too difficult. Rudge noted the point for future reference, and followed another line.

  There was another advantage too in shifting forward the time of events by half an hour or so. Just after midnight the brother, Walter Fitzgerald, had been in the Admiral’s study. This extra half-hour gave him plenty of time to get there, break the news to his sister, and begin his search for File X, by midnight. Without it, Rudge had found the time-table exceedingly cramped.

  Well, there already were the answers to any number of his thirty-nine articles of doubt. Rudge turned them up in his note-book and glanced through them, to see whether this intervention of Neddy Ware’s cleared up any more puzzles.

  It did, at once. 26: Why was the Admiral wearing a coat? Rudge remembered the difficulty. If it was the Admiral who had taken out his boat that night, and a fairly warm night at that, why wear a coat for hard rowing? But suppose it was not the Admiral who had been doing the rowing. Suppose it was Neddy Ware, who had not only brought the boat back but had taken it out too, with the Admiral as a passenger. There was a profitable line of enquiry. If only that were true, Neddy Ware must know not only where the Admiral had gone, but who had killed him. But how on earth to find out if it were true? Because quite certainly Neddy Ware would not give himself away on that point.
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br />   Well, there was only one possibility. The Vicar had been sitting in his summer-house. He might have seen. Rudge had had a suspicion already that the Vicar had seen something from that summer-house. Well, the Vicar had got to be made to speak, that was all.

  Falling at last on his gooseberry pie, Rudge swept the plate clean in half a dozen gargantuan mouthfuls, followed them with a couple of bites of bread and cheese, and ran down to the street and his car.

  Mr. Mount was in, and had just finished his own lunch. He received the Inspector in his study.

  Rudge came to the point at once. “Sorry to bother you again, sir, but we’ve information that Admiral Penistone left Rundel Croft in his boat, at about ten-fifteen. You were sitting in your summer-house at that time, overlooking the river. Did you see him leave?”

  The Vicar answered at once. “Since you ask me the direct question, Inspector: yes, I did.”

  “Thank you, sir. Is it any good my asking why you didn’t let me have this information sooner? Although I never actually asked you, you must have known it would be very valuable.”

  “Certainly, I will tell you. It was because I feared that my knowledge might lead you to suspect an innocent man.”

  “I see, sir. Then you know who murdered Admiral Penistone?”

  “No,” the Vicar retorted, “I don’t. But I’m pretty sure who didn’t.”

  “Well, we’ll leave that. Which way did the Admiral head, sir? Up-stream or down?”

  “Down.”

  “And Neddy Ware was rowing him?”

  The Vicar looked first startled, and then distressed. “Inspector, if you suspect old Ware of—”

  “I don’t, sir. Not of the murder.”

  “I have your word?”

  “You have, Mr. Mount.”

  “Very well. Then I will admit to you that Ware was rowing the Admiral that night; and extremely surprised I was to see it. I had no idea they were even acquainted. But that is the reason why I said nothing of what I saw. We parsons have to rely a good deal on our estimate of people’s natures, you know, and I would stake everything I have on the fact that old Ware is totally incapable of anything of that kind. I’ve known him ever since he came to Lingham, you see, so I feared that this information of mine would put you on an entirely wrong scent. I therefore determined to volunteer nothing myself, but to use what influence I may have with Ware to induce him to come to you of his own accord and give you a full account of his own knowledge of that night’s happenings, whatever it may be. I may say I have quite failed.”