X
THE EVIDENCE OF THE POLICE-INSPECTOR
‘My life upon ’t some miser,
Who in the secret hour creeps to his hoard,
And, kneeling at the altar of his love,
Worships that yellow devil, gold.’
The Bride’s Tragedy
Monday, 22 June
‘You may say what you like, my lord,’ said Inspector Umpelty, ‘and I don’t mind admitting that the Super is a bit inclined to your way of thinking, but it was suicide for all that, and if I was a sporting man, I wouldn’t mind having a bet on it. There’s no harm done by tracing this fellow Bright, because, if the identification of the razor is correct, that’s who this Alexis must have brought it from, but there’s no doubt in my mind that when the poor chap left his lodgings on Thursday, he never meant to come back. You’ve only got to look at the place. Everything tidied away, bills all paid up, papers burnt in the grate – you might say he’d regular said good-bye and kissed his hand to everything.’
‘Did he take his latch-key with him?’ asked Wimsey.
‘Yes, he did. But that’s nothing. A man keeps his key in his pocket and he mightn’t think to put it out. But he left pretty well everything else in order. You’d be surprised. Not so much as an envelope, there wasn’t. Must have had a regular old bonfire there. Not a photograph, not a line that would tell you anything about who he was or where he came from. Clean sweep of the lot.’
‘No hope of recovering anything from the ashes?’
‘Not a thing. Naturally, Mrs Lefranc – that’s the landlady – had had the grate cleaned out on the Thursday morning, but she told me that everything had been broken down into black flinders and dust. And there was a rare old lot of it. I know, because she showed it me in the dust-bin. There certainly was nothing there you could have made out with a microscope. As you know, my lord, generally these folk aren’t thorough – they leave a few bits half-burnt, maybe, but this chap had gone the right way about it and no mistake. He must have torn everything into small scraps first, and burnt it on a hot fire and beaten it into atoms with the poker. “Well,” I said to Mrs Lefranc, “this is a nice set-out, this is!” And so it was, too.’
‘Any books or anything with writing in the fly-leaves?’
‘Just a few novels, with “Paul Alexis” inside, and some with nothing at all, and one or two paper-backed books written in Chinese.’
‘Chinese?’
‘Well, it looked like it. Russian, maybe. Not in proper letters, anyhow. You can see them any time you like, but I don’t expect you’ll get much out of them. One or two history-books there was, mostly about Russia and that. But no writing of any kind.’
‘Any money?’
‘No.’
‘Had he a banking account?’
‘Yes; he had a small account with Lloyds. Matter of a little over three hundred pounds. But he drew the whole lot out three weeks ago.’
‘Did he? Whatever for? It wouldn’t cost him all that to buy a razor.’
‘No, but I said he’d been settling his debts.’
‘Three hundred pounds worth of them?’
‘I don’t say that. Fact is we can’t trace more than twenty pounds odd. But he may have owed money in lots of places, As he’s burnt all his papers, you see, it’s a bit difficult to tell. We shall make inquiries, naturally. But I shouldn’t be surprised if those hundred pounds had gone to some girl or other. There’s that Leila Garland – a hard-boiled little piece if ever there was one. She could tell a lot if she liked, I daresay, but we aren’t allowed to ask anybody any questions these days. If they say they won’t answer, they won’t and there’s an end of it. You can’t force ’em.’
‘Leila Garland – that’s the girl he used to go with?’
‘That’s it, my lord, and from what I can make out she turned Mister Alexis down good and hard. Terrible cut up he was about it, too, according to her. She’s got another fellow now – sort of friend of Alexis, but a cut above him, as far as I can make out. Sort of dago fellow; leads the orchestra down at the Winter Gardens, and makes a pretty good thing out of it, I fancy. You know the sort, all la-di-dah and snake-skin shoes. Nothing wrong with him, though, as far as that goes. He was quite frank about it, and so was the girl. Alexis introduced them, and presently the young woman got the idea that she could do better with the dago than with Alexis. She says Alexis was getting very close with his money, and didn’t seem to have his mind as much on Miss Leila as he might have. Possibly he had his eye on somebody else all the time and that was where the money went. Anyhow, Leila makes up her mind to give him the push and takes up with the dago, Luis da Soto, instead. Of course there was a scene, and Alexis threatens to make away with himself—’
‘Did he say anything about throat-cutting?’
‘Well, no, he didn’t. Said he’d take poison. But what’s the odds? He said he’d make away with himself and he’s done it, and here we are.’
‘Did you, by any chance, find any poison – you know, sleepy stuff or anything of that sort – in his room?’
‘Not a thing,’ said the Inspector, triumphantly.
‘H’m.’
‘But Inspector,’ put in Harriet, who had been listening to this conversation in becoming silence, ‘if you think Alexis had another girl in tow, why should he commit suicide when Leila Garland turned him down?’
‘I couldn’t say, I’m sure, miss. Maybe the other one turned him down as well.’
‘And left him a low, lorn crittur, with all the world contrairy with him,’ said Wimsey.
‘Yes, and then there was this Mrs Weldon. We found out about her through these other girls. Wouldn’t you say a prospect like that was enough to make any young fellow cut his throat?’
‘He could have gone away,’ said Harriet.
‘And suppose he owed her money and she turned crusty and threatened to put him in court? What about that?’
‘Perhaps the three hundred pounds—’ began Wimsey.
‘Oh, no, no!’ cried Harriet indignantly. ‘You mustn’t think that. It’s absolutely ridiculous. Why, the poor woman was infatuated with him. He could have turned her round his little finger. She’d have given him anything he wanted. Besides, she told me he wouldn’t take her money.’
‘Ah! But supposing he’d have given her the go-by, miss. She might have cut up rough about that.’
‘She would have been the one to kill herself then,’ said Harriet, firmly. ‘She wouldn’t have harmed him for the world, poor soul. Put him in court? Nonsense!’
‘Now you know very well, miss,’ said Inspector Umpelty, ‘that it says in the Bible that the infernal regions, begging your pardon, knows no fury like a woman scorned. I’ve always remembered that from my school-days, and I find it gives a very useful line to follow in our way of business. If this Mrs Weldon—’
‘Rubbish!’ said Harriet. ‘She’d never have done anything of the sort. I know she wouldn’t.’
‘Ah!’ Inspector Umpelty winked in a friendly manner at Wimsey. ‘When the ladies get to knowing things by this feminine intuition and all that, there’s no arguing with it. But what I say is, let’s suppose it, just for the moment.’
‘I won’t suppose it,’ retorted Harriet.
‘We seem to have reached a no-thoroughfare,’ remarked Wimsey. ‘Let’s leave that for the time being, Inspector. You can come and suppose it in the bar, quietly, later on. Though I don’t think it very likely myself. It’s our turn to suppose something. Suppose a fishing-boat had wanted to come in at the Flat-Iron just about low tide on Thursday – could she do it?’
‘Easy, my lord. Some of these boats don’t draw more than a foot of water. You could bring her in beautifully, provided you kept clear of the Grinders, and remembered to reckon with the current.’
‘A stranger might get into difficulties, perhaps.’
‘He might, but not if he was a good seaman and could read a chart. He could bring a small boat up within a dozen feet of the Flat-Iron an
y day, unless the wind was setting with the current across the bay, when he might get driven on to the rocks if he wasn’t careful.’
‘I see. That makes it all very interesting. We are supposing a murder, you see, Inspector, and we’ve thought out two ways of doing it. We’d be glad to have your opinion.’
Inspector Umpelty listened with an indulgent smile to the rival theories of the Man in the Fishing-boat and the Man in the Niche, and then said:
‘Well, miss, all I can say is, I’d like to read some of those books of yours. It’s wonderful, the way you work it all in. But about that boat. That’s queer, that is. We’ve been trying to get a line on that, because whoever was in it must have seen something. Most of the fishing-boats were out off Shelly Point, but there’s a few of them I haven’t checked up on, and of course, it might be some of the visitors from Wilvercombe or Lesston Hoe. We’re always warning these amateurs to keep from the Grinders, but do they? No. You’d think some of them was out for a day’s suicide, the way they go on. But I’ve got an idea who it was, all the same.’
‘How about those cottages along the coast, where I went to try and get help?’ asked Harriet. ‘Surely they must have seen the boat? I thought those sort of people knew every boat in the place by sight.’
‘That’s just it,’ replied the Inspector. ‘We’ve asked them and they’re all struck blind and dumb, seemingly. That’s why I say I think I could put a name to the boat. But we’ll find a way to make them come across with it, never fear. They’re a surly lot, those Pollocks and Moggeridges, and up to no good, in my opinion. They’re not popular with the other fishers, and when you find a whole family boycotted by the rest of them, there’s usually something at the back of it.’
‘At any rate,’ said Wimsey, ‘I think we’ve got the actual time of the death pretty well fixed by now. That ought to help.’
‘Yes,’ admitted Inspector Umpelty, ‘if what you and the lady tell me is correct, that does seem to settle it. Not but what I’d like a doctor’s opinion on it, no offence to you. But I think you’re right, all the same. It’s a great pity you happened to fall asleep when you did, miss.’ He looked reproachfully at Harriet.
‘But wasn’t it lucky I was there at all?’
The Inspector agreed that it was.
‘And taking this question of the time as settled,’ he went on, ‘we’ve got some information to hand now that may clear matters up a bit. At least, from all I can see, it just goes to show that this murder-stuff is clean impossible, as I’ve said it was all along. But if we prove that, then we’re all right, aren’t we?’
The conference was taking place in the Inspector’s cosy little villa in the suburbs of the town. Rising, Mr Umpelty went to a cupboard and extracted a large sheaf of official reports.
‘You see, my lord, we haven’t been idle, even though suicide looks more probable than anything else on the face of things. We had to take all the possibilities into account, and we’ve gone over the district with, as you might say, a magnifying glass.’
After an inspection of the reports, Wimsey was obliged to admit that this boast seemed justified. Chance had helped the police very considerably. An application had recently been made by the local authorities to the County Council to have the coast-road between Lesston Hoe and Wilvercombe put into better repair. The County Council, conscious that times were bad and that money was tight, had courteously replied that it did not think there was sufficient traffic along the said coast-road to justify the proposed expenditure. As a result of these negotiations, persons had been appointed (at a modest wage) by the County Council to take a census of the vehicular traffic passing along the said road, and one of these watchers had been stationed, during the whole of Thursday, 18 June, at the junction formed by the coast-road and the high road from Lesston Hoe to Heathbury. At the other end of the twelve miles or so which interested the detectives was Darley Halt, where, as Harriet had already discovered for herself, the gates were always shut unless particularly summoned to be opened for a passing vehicle. On either side of the railway gates was a wicket for foot passengers, but this was of the kind that does not admit anything so large even as a push-cycle. It was clear, therefore, that unless the hypothetical murderer had come on foot, he must have been seen at one end or other of the road, or else have come from some intermediate farm. During the past four days, the police had carefully investigated the bona fides of every traveller over this section of the road, Every car, motor-cycle, push-cycle, van, lorry, wagon and beast had been laboriously checked up and accounted for. Nothing had been unearthed to suggest suspicion of any kind. Indeed, all the persons using the road were local inhabitants, well known to all the police officers, and each one of them had been able to give an exact account of his or her movements during the day. This was not so surprising as it may appear, since nearly all of them were either tradesmen, accomplishing a given round in a given time, or farmers with business on their land or in the adjacent towns, who had witnesses to prove their departure and arrival. The only persons whose times could not very well be checked were those who loitered attendance upon cows and sheep in transit; but, apart from the extreme improbability of these rustics having gone out of their way to cut a gentleman’s throat with an Endicott razor, Inspector Umpelty was quite ready to vouch personally for all of them.
‘In fact, my lord,’ he said, ‘you may take it from me that all these people we have checked up are all right. You can put them right out of your mind. The only possibility left now for your murderer is that he came by sea, or else on foot along the shore from either Wilvercombe or Lesston Hoe, and, as this young lady says, Wilvercombe is the more probable direction of the two, because anybody coming from Lesston Hoe would have seen her and put his crime off to a more convenient season, as Shakespeare says.’
‘Very well,’ said Wimsey. ‘All right. We’ll admit that. The murderer didn’t take any sort of wheeled conveyance for any part of the journey. Still, that leaves a lot of possibilities open. We’ll wash out the Lesston Hoe side altogether and only take the Wilvercombe direction. We now have at least three suggestions. One: the murderer walked by the road from Wilvercombe or Darley, came down on to the beach at some point out of view from the Flat-Iron, and thence proceeded by the shore. Two: he came from one of those two cottages where the fishermen live (Pollock and Moggeridge, I think you said the names were). You don’t mean to say you’ll answer personally for those men, do you, Inspector?’
‘No, I don’t – only they weren’t there,’ retorted the Inspector, with spirit. ‘Moggeridge and his two sons were over in Wilvercombe, buying some stuff there – I’ve got witnesses to that. Old Pollock was out in his boat, because Freddy Baines saw him, and his eldest boy was probably with him. We’re going to pull those two in, and that’s why I said the murderer might have come by sea. The only other Pollock is a boy of about fourteen, and you can’t suppose it was him that did it, nor yet any of the women and children.’
‘I see. Well then. Three: the murderer walked the whole way along the coast from Darley or Wilvercombe. By the way, didn’t you say there was somebody camping out along there, just beyond Darley Halt.’
‘Yes,’ said Harriet, ‘a square-built sort of man, who spoke – well, not quite like a countryman – like a gentleman of the country sort.’
‘If anybody had passed that way, he might have seen him.’
‘So he might,’ replied the Inspector, ‘but unfortunately we haven’t laid hands on that particular gentleman, though we’ve got inquiries out after him. He packed up and departed early on Friday morning, taking his belongings in a Morgan. He’d been camping at the bottom of Hinks’s Lane since Tuesday, and gave the name of Martin.’
‘Is that so? And he disappeared immediately after the crime. Isn’t that a trifle suspicious?’
‘Not a bit.’ Inspector Umpelty was quite triumphant. ‘He was having his lunch at the Three Feathers in Darley at one o’clock and he didn’t leave till 1.30. If you’ll tell me how a man could w
alk four and a half miles in half-an-hour, I’ll get a warrant made out for Mr Martin’s arrest.’
‘Your trick, Inspector. Well – let’s see. Murder at two o’clock – four and a half miles to go. That means that the murderer can’t have passed through Darley later than 12.50 at the very outside. That’s allowing him to do four miles an hour, and since he would have to do at least part of the distance along the sand it’s probably an over-estimate. On the other hand, he wouldn’t be likely to do less than three miles an hour. That gives 12.30 as his earliest time – unless, of course, he sat and talked to Alexis for some time before he cut his throat.’
‘That’s just it, my lord. It’s all so vague. In any case, Mr Martin isn’t much good to us, because he spent Thursday morning in Wilvercombe – or so he mentioned to the landlord of the Feathers.’
‘What a pity! He might have been a valuable witness. I suppose you’ll go on looking for him, though it doesn’t seem as if he’d be very much good to us. Did anybody notice the number of his Morgan?’
‘Yes; it belongs to a London garage, where they hire out cars to be driven by the hirers. Mr Martin came in there last Thursday week, paid his deposit in cash and returned the ‘bus on Sunday night. He said he had given up his house and had no fixed address, but gave a reference to a Cambridge banker. His driving-licence was made out in the name of Martin all right. There was no trouble about the insurance, because the garage uses a form of policy that covers all their cars irrespective of who is driving them.’
‘But wasn’t there an address on the driving-licence?’
‘Yes; but that was the address of the house he’d given up, so they took no notice of that.’
‘Do garage-owners usually ask to see people’s driving licences?’