‘Don’t think it’d be heavy enough, though it’s possible. How about an axe or a pick –?’
‘Not blunt enough. They’ve got square edges. What other long things are there? I’ve heard of a flail, but I’ve never seen one. A lead cosh, if it was long enough. Not a sand-bag – they bend.’
‘A lump of lead in an old stocking would be handy.’
‘Yes – but look here, Peter! Anything would do – even a rolling-pin, always supposing—’
‘I’ve thought of that. He might have been sitting down.’
‘So it might be a stone or a paper-weight like that one on the window-sill there.’
Mr Kirk started.
‘Strewth!’ he observed, ‘you’re quick, you two. Not much you miss, is there? And the lady’s as smart as the gentleman.’
‘It’s her job,’ said Peter. ‘She writes detective stories.’
‘Does she now?’ said the Superintendent. ‘I can’t say I reads a lot o’ them, though Mrs Kirk, she likes a good Edgar Wallace now and again. But I couldn’t rightly call ’em a mellering influence to a man in my line. I read an American story once, and the way the police carried on – well, it didn’t seem right to me. Here, Joe, hand me that there paper-weight, would you? Hi! Not that way! Ain’t you never heard of finger-prints?’
Sellon, his large hand clasped round the stone, stood awkwardly and scratched his head with his pencil. He was a big, fresh-faced young man, who looked as though he would be better at grappling with drunks than measuring prints and reconstructing the time-table of the crime. At length he opened his fingers and brought the paper-weight balanced on his open palm.
‘That won’t take finger-prints,’ said Peter. ‘It’s too rough. Edinburgh granite, from the look of it.’
‘It might a-done the bashing, though,’ said Kirk. ‘Leastways, the underneath part, or this here rounded end. Model of a building, ain’t it?’
‘Edinburgh Castle, I fancy. It shows no signs of skin or hair or anything about it. Just a minute.’ He picked it up by a convenient chimney, examined its surface with a lens, and said, definitely, ‘No.’
‘Humph. Well. That gets us nowhere. We’ll have a look at the kitchen poker presently.’
‘You’ll find lots of finger-prints on that. Bunter’s and mine, and Mrs Ruddle’s – possibly Puffett’s and Crutchley’s.’
‘That’s the devil of it,’ said the Superintendent, frankly. ‘But none the more for that, Joe, you keep your fingers off anything what looks like a weapon. If you sees any of them things what his lordship and her ladyship here mentioned laying about, you just leave ’em be and shout till I come. See?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘To go back,’ said Peter, ‘to the doctor’s report. I take it Noakes can’t have bashed the back of his own head falling down the steps? He was an oldish man, wasn’t he?’
‘Sixty-five, my lord. Sound as a bell, though, as far as you can judge now. Eh, Joe?’
‘That’s a fact, sir. Boasted of it, he did. Talked large as Doctor said ’e was good for another quarter of a century. You ask Frank Crutchley. ’E ’eard ’im. Over at Pagford, in the Pig and Whistle. And Mr Roberts wot keeps the Crown in the village – he’ve heard him many a time.’
‘Ah! well, that’s as may be. It ain’t never safe to boast. The boast of heraldry – well, I take it that’d be more in your lordship’s line, but it all leads to the grave, as Gray’s Elegy has it. Still, he wasn’t killed falling down the stairs, because there’s a bruise on his forehead where he went down and hit the bottom step—’
‘Oh!’ said Peter. ‘Then he was alive when he fell?’
‘Yes,’ said Mr Kirk, a little put out by being anticipated. ‘That’s what I was leading up to. But there again, that don’t prove nothing, because seemin’ly he didn’t die straight off. Accordin’ to what Dr Craven makes out—’
‘Shall I read that bit, sir?’
‘Don’t bother with it, Joe. It’s only a lot of rigmarole. I can explain to his lordship without all your onions and geraniums. What it comes to is this. Somebody ’it him and bust his skull, and he’d likely tumble down and lose consciousness – concussed, as you might say. After a bit, he’d come to, like as not. But he’d never know what hit ’im. Wouldn’t remember a thing about it.’
‘Nor he would,’ said Harriet, eagerly. She knew that bit – in fact she’d had to expound it in her latest detective novel but one. ‘There’d be complete forgetfulness of everything immediately preceding the blow. And he might even pick himself up and feel all right for some time.’
‘Except,’ put in Mr Kirk, who liked a literal precision, ‘for a sore head. But, generally speaking, that’s correct, according to Doctor. He might walk about and do quite a bit for himself—’
‘Such as locking the door behind the murderer?’
‘Exactly, there’s the trouble.’
‘Then,’ pursued Harriet, ‘he’d get giddy and drowsy, wouldn’t he? Wander off to get a drink or call for help and—’
Memory suddenly showed her the open cellar-door, yawning between the back-door and the scullery.
‘And pitch down the cellar-steps and die there. That door was standing open when we arrived; I remember Mrs Ruddle telling her Bert to shut it.’
‘Pity they didn’t happen to look inside,’ grunted the Superintendent. ‘Not as it’ud have done the deceased any good – he’d been dead long enough – but if you’d a-known you could have kept the house in statu quo, as they say.’
‘We could,’ said Peter, with emphasis, ‘but I don’t mind telling you frankly that we were in no mood to.’
‘No,’ said Mr Kirk, meditatively, ‘I don’t suppose you were. No. All things considered, it would have been inconvenient. I see that. But it’s a pity, all the same. Because, you see, we’ve got very little to go on and that’s a fact. The poor old chap might a-been killed anywhere – upstairs, downstairs, in my lady’s chamber—’
‘No, no, Mother Goose,’ said Peter, hastily. ‘Not there, not there, my child, Felicia Hemans. Let us pass on. How long did he live after he was hit?’
‘Doctor says,’ put in the constable, ‘ “from half an hour to one hour, judging by the – the – hem-something or other.” ’
‘Hæmorrhage?’ suggested Kirk, taking possession of the letter. ‘That’s it. Hæmorrhagic effusion into the cortex. That’s a good one.’
‘Bleeding in the brain,’ said Peter. ‘Good lord – he had plenty of time. He may have been coshed outside the house altogether.’
‘But when do you suppose it all happened?’ demanded Harriet. She appreciated Peter’s effort to exonerate the house from all share in the crime, and was annoyed with herself for having betrayed any sensibility on the subject. It was distracting for him. Her tone, in consequence, was determinedly off-hand and practical.
‘That,’ said the Superintendent, ‘is what we’ve got to find out. Some time last Wednesday night, putting what the doctor says with the rest of the evidence. After dark, if them candles are anything to go by. And that means – H’m! We’d better have this chap Crutchley in. Seems like he might have been the last person to see the deceased alive.’
‘Enter the obvious suspect,’ said Peter, lightly.
‘The obvious suspect is always innocent,’ said Harriet in the same tone.
‘In books, my lady,’ said Mr Kirk, with a little indulgent bow towards her, as who should say, ‘The ladies. God bless them!’
‘Come, come,’ said Peter, ‘we must not introduce our professional prejudices into the case. How about it, Superintendent? Shall we make ourselves scarce?’
‘That’s as you like, my lord. I’d be glad enough if you’d stay; you might give me a bit of help, seeing as you know the ropes, so to speak. Not but what it’ll be a kind of busman’s holiday for you,’ he finished up, rather dubiously.
‘That’s what I was thinking,’ said Harriet. ‘A busman’s honeymoon. Butchered to make a—’
‘Lord Byro
n!’ cried Mr Kirk, a little too promptly. ‘Butchered to make a busman’s – no, that don’t seem right somehow.’
‘Try Roman,’ said Peter. ‘All right, we’ll do our best. No objection to smoking in court, I take it. Where the devil did I put the matches?’
‘Here you are, my lord,’ said Sellon. He produced a box and struck a light. Peter eyed him curiously, and remarked:
‘Hullo! You’re left-handed.’
‘For some things, my lord. Not for writing.’
‘Only for striking matches – and handling Edinburgh rock?’
‘Left-handed?’ said Kirk. ‘Why, so you are, Joe. I hope you ain’t this tall, left-handed murderer what we’re looking out for?’
‘No, sir,’ said the constable, briefly.
‘A pretty thing that’ud be, wouldn’t it?’ said his superior, with a hearty guffaw. ‘We shouldn’t never hear the last of that. Now, you hop out and get Crutchley. Nice lad he is,’ he went on, turning to Peter as Sellon left the room. ‘ ’Ard working, but no Sherlock ’Olmes, if you follow me. Slow in the uptake. I sometimes think his heart ain’t rightly in his work these days. Married too young, that’s what it is, and started a family, which is a handicap to a young officer.’
‘Ah!’ said Peter, ‘all this matrimony is a sad mistake.’
He laid his hand on his wife’s shoulder, while Mr Kirk tactfully studied his note-book.
8
£ s. d.
SAILOR: Faith, Dick Reede, it is to little end:
His conscience is too liberal, and he too niggardly
To part from anything may do thee good. . . .
REEDE: If prayers and fair entreaties will not serve,
Or make no battery in his flinty breast,
I’ll curse the carle, and see what that will do.
Arden of Feversham.
THE GARDENER walked up to the table with a slightly belligerent air, as though he had an idea that the police were there for the sole purpose of preventing him from exercising his lawful right to obtain payment of forty pounds. He admitted, briefly, when questioned, that his name was Frank Crutchley and that he was accustomed to attend to the garden one day a week at Talboys for a stipend of five shillings per diem, putting in the rest of his time doing odd jobs of lorry-driving and taxi-work for Mr Hancock at the garage in Pagford.
‘Saving up, I was,’ said Crutchley, with insistence, ‘to get a garridge of my own, only for that there forty pound Mr Noakes had off of me.’
‘Never mind that now,’ said the Superintendent. ‘That’s gone west, that has, and it’s no use crying over spilt milk.’
Crutchley was about as much convinced by this assurance as were the Allies, on being informed by Mr Keynes, after the conclusion of the Peace Treaty, that they might whistle for their indemnities, since the money was not there. It is impossible for human nature to believe that money is not there. It seems so much more likely that the money is there and only needs bawling for.
‘He promised,’ affirmed Frank Crutchley, in a dogged effort to overcome Mr Kirk’s extraordinary obtuseness, ‘that he’d let me have it when I came today.’
‘Well,’ said Kirk, ‘I dare say he might have done, if somebody hadn’t butted in and brained him. You ought to a-been smarter and got it out of him last week.’
This could be nothing but stupidity. Crutchley explained patiently: ‘He hadn’t got it then.’
‘Oh, hadn’t he though?’ said the Superintendent. ‘That’s all you know about it.’
This was a staggerer. Crutchley turned white.
‘Cripes! you don’t mean to tell me—’
‘Oh, yes he had,’ said Kirk. This information, if he knew anything about it, was going to loosen his witness’s tongue for him and save a deal of trouble. Crutchley turned with a frantic look to the other members of the party. Peter confirmed Kirk’s statement with a nod. Harriet, who had known days when the loss of forty pounds would have meant greater catastrophe than Peter could ever suffer by the loss of forty thousand, said sympathetically:
‘Yes, Crutchley. I’m afraid he had the money on him all the time.’
‘What! He had the money? You found it on him?’
‘Well, we did,’ admitted the Superintendent. ‘There’s no call to make a secret of it.’ He waited for the witness to draw the obvious conclusion.
‘Mean to say, if he hadn’t been killed, I might have had my money?’
‘If you could have got in before Mr MacBride,’ said Harriet, with more honesty than consideration for Kirk’s tactics. Crutchley, however, was not troubling his head about Mr MacBride. The murderer was the man who had robbed him of his own, and he took no pains to conceal his feelings.
‘God! I’ll–I’ll–I’ll – I’d like to—’
‘Yes, yes,’ said the Superintendent, ‘we quite understand that. And now’s your opportunity. Any facts you can give us—’
‘Facts! I’ve been done, that’s what it is, and I—’
‘Look here, Crutchley,’ said Peter. ‘We know you’ve had a rotten deal, but that can’t be helped. The man who killed Mr Noakes has done you a bad turn, and he’s the man we’re after. Use your wits and see if you can’t help us to get even with him.’
The quiet, incisive tone had its effect. A kind of illumination spread over Crutchley’s features.
‘Thank you, my lord,’ said Kirk. ‘That’s about the size of it, and put very plain. Now, my lad, we’re sorry about your money, but it’s up to you to give us a hand. See?’
‘Yes,’ said Crutchley, with an almost savage eagerness. ‘All right. What d’you want to know?’
‘Well, first of all – when did you last see Mr Noakes?’
‘Wednesday evening, same as I said. I finished up my work just before six and come in here to do the pots; and when I’d done ’em he give me five bob, same as usual, and that’s when I started askin’ him for my forty quid.’
‘Where was that? In here?’
‘No, in the kitchen. He always sat in there. I come out of here with the steps in my ’and—’
‘Steps? Why the steps?’
‘Why, for that there cactus and the clock. I wind the clock every week – it’s an eight-day. I can’t reach either on ’em without the steps. I goes into the kitchen, like I was saying, to put the steps away, and there he was. He give me my money – ’arf a crown, and a bob, and two tanners and sixpence in coppers, if you want to be perticler, all out of different pockets. He liked to make out he couldn’t ’ardly lay ’and on a ’apenny, but I was used to that. And when he’d finished play-actin’, I asks him for my forty pound. I want that money, I says—’
‘Just so. You wanted the money for the garage. What did he say to that?’
‘Promised he’d let me have it next time I come – that’s today. I might a-known ’e never meant it. Wasn’t the first time he’d promised, and then always ’ad some excuse. But he promised faithful, this time – the dirty old swine, and well he might, and him all set to skip with ’is pockets stuffed full of bank-notes, the bleeder.’
‘Come, come,’ said Kirk, reprovingly, with a deprecatory glance at her ladyship. ‘Mustn’t use language. Was he alone in the kitchen when you went out?’
‘Yes. He wasn’t the sort people dropped in for a chat with. I went off then, and that’s the last I see of him.’
‘You went off,’ repeated the Superintendent, while Joe Sellon’s right hand travelled laboriously among the pothooks, ‘and left him sitting in the kitchen. Now, when—’
‘No, I didn’t say that. He followed me down the passage, talkin’ about givin’ me the money first thing in the morning, and then I ’eard ’im lock and bolt the door be’ind me.’
‘Which door?’
‘The back door. He mostly used that. The front door was allus kep’ locked.’
‘Ah! Is that a spring lock?’
‘No; mortice lock. He didn’t believe in them Yale things. Don’t take much to bust them off with a jemmy, he’d say
.’
‘That’s a fact,’ said Kirk. ‘So that means the front door could only be opened with a key – from inside or out.’
‘That’s right, I should a-thought you’d a-seen that for yourself, if you’d looked.’
Mr Kirk, who had indeed examined the fastenings of both doors with some care, merely inquired:
‘Was the front-door key ever left in the lock?’
‘No; he kept it on his bunch. It ain’t a big one.’
‘It certainly wasn’t in the lock last night,’ volunteered Peter. ‘We got in that way with Miss Twitterton’s key, and the lock was perfectly free.’
‘Just so,’ said the Superintendent. ‘Was there any other spare key that you know of?’
Crutchley shook his head.
‘Mr Noakes wouldn’t go ’andin’ out keys by the bushel. Somebody might a-got in, you see, and pinched something.’
‘Ah! Well now, to get back. You left the house last Wednesday night – what time?’
‘Dunno,’ said Crutchley, thoughtfully. ‘Must a-been getting on for twenty-past, I reckon. Anyway, it was ten past when I wound that there clock. And it keeps good time.’
‘It’s right now,’ said Kirk, glancing at his watch. Harriet’s wrist-watch confirmed this, and so did Joe Sellon’s. Peter, after a blank gaze at his own watch, said, ‘Mine’s stopped,’ in a tone which might have suggested that Newton’s apple had been observed to fly upward or a B.B.C. announcer heard to use a bawdy expression.
‘Perhaps,’ suggested Harriet, practically, ‘you forgot to wind it up.’
‘I never forget to wind it up,’ said her husband, indignantly. ‘You’re quite right, though; I did. I must have been thinking of something else last night.’
‘Very natural, I’m sure, in all the excitement,’ said Kirk. ‘Can you remember whether that there clock was going when you arrived?’
The question distracted Peter from his own lapse of memory. He dropped his watch back into his pocket unwound and stared at the clock.
‘Yes,’ he said, finally. ‘It was. I heard it ticking, when we were sitting here. It was the most comfortable thing in the house.’