‘Oh, not now!’ Vicky replied, not looking at him but at the Inspector. ‘I can’t think of anything but this afflictive murder!’
‘Well, it’s about that. I think you ought to know. I may say that I’m absolutely horrified!’
This was arresting enough to drag Vicky’s attention from the Inspector. She bent an inquiring gaze upon Alan. ‘About Wally’s murder?’
‘In a way. I mean, it’s something I’ve found out, only I can’t tell you here.’
Vicky saw that the Inspector had made himself known to Steel, and that both he and Steel had moved out of earshot. She said: ‘Well, all right, but let’s go into the lounge, if there is one, only I must tell Hugh, because he thinks he’s looking after me.’
‘I can’t see what you can possibly have to say to Vicky!’ exclaimed Janet, when Alan informed her that she would have to leave the King’s Head without him.
‘It’s just as well that you can’t,’ said Alan darkly.
‘Oh, Alan, I do wish you wouldn’t be so theatrical!’ Janet said. ‘You know how Father hates it!’
‘Father!’ he said, with a crack of bitter laughter.
‘Well, I’m sure I don’t want to pry into any secrets. I’ve got some shopping to do anyway,’ said Janet.
Vicky found Hugh talking to his father in the hall of the hotel. He was not much impressed by the news that Alan had important tidings to disclose, for he held a poor opinion of that young gentleman, but he agreed to await the outcome of the interview.
‘Because if he really has discovered a clue, or something, I shall immediately tell you,’ said Vicky. ‘And if it’s anything incriminating about Robert, we must suppress it, because it will upset all my plans if he’s arrested. Oh, I do think Janet is a calamitous female, don’t you?’
‘What was that she said?’ asked Sir William, looking after Vicky’s retreating form in some bewilderment. ‘Extraordinary girl! Times have certainly changed since I was a young man!’
Vicky, meanwhile, had led Alan into a leather-upholstered room leading out of the hall. It smelled of stale smoke, and was such a gloomy apartment that it was not surprising that no one ever sat in it. The discovery that the few weary flowers in a vase on the mantelpiece were made of paper pleased Vicky so much that she seemed to be in danger of forgetting the serious nature of Alan’s business. He recalled her to it by saying in a sepulchral tone that he knew why Wally Carter had visited his father on Sunday.
This at once claimed Vicky’s attention. ‘Alan, do you really? Tell me instantly!’
Alan, however, did not mean to be baulked of his dramatic effects. He said: ‘God knows what I’ve done to deserve such a father! If it weren’t for Janet, of course, I’d sooner starve than live under his roof. I mean, when one has ideals—’
‘I know about them,’ interrupted Vicky. ‘Go on about your father!’
‘I only heard of it in the most roundabout way,’ said Alan. ‘Though, I need hardly say I had my suspicions, and as a matter of fact I told Father that nothing would induce me to meet Samuel Jones. I’m afraid I let him have it from the shoulder, which shocked Janet, but you know how I feel about that kind of worn-out shibboleth, Vicky. Why one should be expected to respect a man simply because he happens to be one’s father—’
‘Oh, Alan, do get on!’ begged Vicky. ‘Wally and your father had got a deal on, hadn’t they?’
‘Of course, if you already know about it—’
‘No, I don’t, but Mary guessed it. And if you don’t stop reciting this voluminous prologue, and tell me what you’ve discovered, I shall go into a screaming fit! Do be more congruous, Alan darling!’
‘Well, you’ve heard about the new building scheme, haven’t you?’ said Alan, rather sulkily.
‘Here, in Fritton? Yes, they’re going to build a sort of ghastly garden-city all over Valley Reach, or something.’
‘That’s just where you’re wrong, because they’re not going to build over Valley Reach at all. I happen to know the Council has chosen quite a different site. Mind you, it’s absolutely secret so far!’
‘Well, I don’t care,’ said Vicky impatiently. ‘Is there any point to it? Because Hugh’s waiting for me.’
‘The point is that that swine Jones is a member of the Council. Also, he’s as thick as thieves with my father. Mind you, I can’t actually swear to this, but from what I know of Father I don’t think there’s a doubt I’m right. Do you know Frith Field?’
‘Yes, of course I do.’
‘Well, a friend of mine, whose name I can’t tell you, happens to know that that’s the site they’ve chosen for the new building scheme. It isn’t publicly known yet, but naturally Jones knows. And I happen to have discovered that Father’s negotiating to buy some of the land!’
Vicky frowned. ‘Why? Oh, I see! I suppose it’ll suddenly be much more valuable! How on earth did you find out about it?’
‘Actually, through a chap I know who’s Andrews’s clerk. I dare say you don’t know whom I mean, but Andrews is my boss’s rival. Get it?’
‘Well, not utterly,’ confessed Vicky.
‘How was Father going to pay for that plot of land?’ demanded Alan. ‘He had to borrow a hundred from Carter only a couple of months ago, so I’d just like to know where the price of this land is supposed to be coming from! Why, it’s as plain as a pikestaff ! Obviously he’d put the scheme up to Carter, and they were going into some kind of a partnership over it, Carter putting up the cash, and Father and Jones getting a fat rake-off for having let him in on it, I dare say.’
‘Oh!’ said Vicky, digesting it. ‘I wouldn’t wonder if you’re right, only I don’t immediately see that it’s going to help. I rather hoped there was something frightfully tortuous on, which would bring on an utterly undreamed-of suspect, and solve everything.’
‘You don’t seem to see how damnable it is!’ said Alan. ‘It’s absolutely disgusting, and when I think of my father going in for that kind of dirty work it makes me feel like cutting away from him altogether.’
‘Oh, is it dirty?’ said Vicky innocently. ‘Would you mind frightfully if I told Hugh Dering? Because at the moment the police think Percy Baker was blackmailing Wally, and this seems to show that he wasn’t at all. You don’t know Percy, and I don’t really feel I can explain him to you, but he’s a garage-hand, and I do rather feel that it’s bad luck on him to be suspected of something he didn’t do.’
‘With me,’ said Alan grandly, ‘the State comes above every other tie. Naturally I shall confront Father with my suspicions, and if some unfortunate devil is being ruined through his filthy dealings I shall go to the police myself, and tell them all I know. Of course, it won’t be very pleasant for me – in fact, it’s practically crucifying myself but—’
‘Darling Alan, I should hate you to crucify yourself, besides it isn’t in the least necessary, and I don’t think it’s the done-thing to sneak about your father to the police. So I shall just tell Hugh, and see what he thinks we ought to do about it.’
‘I don’t see what it’s got to do with him,’ said Alan discontentedly. ‘As a matter of fact, I haven’t got much use for him. He’s one of those hearty, old school-tie fellows who make me rather sick.’
‘Well, I dare say you make him feel a bit squeamish, if he’s noticed you, which I rather doubt,’ retorted Vicky.
This unexpected championing of Hugh had the effect of putting Alan so much on his dignity that he needed no urging to go away, but said in an offended voice that it was obvious he was not wanted, and he only hoped that Vicky would not regret having succumbed to the glamour of an old Etonian tie.
So when Vicky joined Hugh at one of the little tables which were dotted about the hall of the hotel, she naturally had a good look at the tie he was wearing, and said in a tone of considerable astonishment: ‘Is that an old Etonian
tie?’
‘No,’ said Hugh, pulling forward a chair for her. ‘Sit down, and I’ll give you a drink. What would you like?’
‘I’ll have a Side-car, please. Weren’t you at Eton?’
‘I was. Why?’
‘Well, I wondered, because Alan said that was an old Etonian tie. I thought he must be wrong. What sort of a tie is it?’
Hugh had moved away to ring the bell for a waiter, but he turned at this, and regarded Vicky with a mixture of amusement and surprise. ‘It’s just a tie. Did Alan take you aside to give you erroneous information about my neck-wear?’
‘Oh no, that was merely by the way! Actually, he’s found out a sordid story about Wally and his father, and fat Mr Jones, which proves that Mary was right all along. So that ought to be a lesson to you not to be fusty and dusty again.’
‘What sort of a sordid story?’ asked Hugh. ‘Do you mean that he really did ask your mother for that five hundred for some business deal?’
‘Yes, I’m now definitely sure he did. I say, what’s become of your father?’
‘Gone to buy some tobacco.’
A waiter came into the hall at that moment, and while Hugh gave his order, Vicky had time to take stock of her surroundings, and to discover that at the far end of the hall, in a dim inglenook by the empty fireplace, Robert Steel and Inspector Hemingway were seated in close conversation. As soon as the waiter had departed, she called Hugh’s attention to this circumstance. ‘Oh, I do think Janet is a menace!’ she said. ‘I don’t want Robert to be the guilty man!’
‘Don’t be silly,’ replied Hugh calmly. ‘And don’t forget, in your anxiety to provide your mother with a husband, that you would hardly want her to marry Carter’s murderer. I suggest that you wait until he’s been cleared of all suspicion before you start match-making. Are you going to tell me about Alan’s revelations?’
‘Yes, because I quite think it’s time I told the police that Percy wasn’t blackmailing Wally. Because, though he said he was the enemy of my class, he was rather pathetic in a way, and I don’t at all mind clearing his fair name.’
‘A beautiful thought,’ said Hugh. ‘The only flaw being that if you dispose of the blackmailing charge you at once pin a motive on to him.’
‘Oh dear, how tiresome! Yes, I see. The police will think he did it for revenge. Now I don’t know what to do!’
The waiter came back with two cocktails on a tray. Hugh paid for them, and lifted his glass. ‘Here’s to you, Vicky. Tell me the whole story.’
‘Well, I will, only I expect you’ll cast a blight on it, and refuse to believe a word,’ said Vicky gloomily.
But when Hugh had heard the tale, he gratified Vicky by taking it quite seriously, and admitting that it seemed probable that he had been mistaken in his first disbelief in Mary’s theory.
‘Yes, but it isn’t really in the least helpful,’ said Vicky. ‘Except that it shows Percy wasn’t blackmailing Wally, and even that doesn’t seem to be altogether a good thing.’
‘It doesn’t help to explain the murder,’ said Hugh, ‘but I certainly think the police ought to be told about it – for what it’s worth.’ He glanced over his shoulder, and saw that Steel and Hemingway had got up, and that Steel was moving towards the door. He caught the Inspector’s eye, and made a sign to him.
Hemingway came across the hall. ‘Want me, sir?’ he inquired.
‘Yes, Miss Fanshawe’s got something to tell you, which I think you ought to know. Sit down, won’t you? What’s yours?’
The Inspector declined refreshment, but turned an interested eye upon Vicky. ‘Now, is this going to be on the level?’ he asked. ‘Because if it’s just one of your variety turns, miss, there’s nothing doing. I’m a busy man.’
‘Oh, it’s absolutely on the level!’ Vicky assured him. ‘And if you’re busy trying to convict Mr Steel, just because of what Miss White said, it’s the most utter waste of time. I don’t say she didn’t ask him to tea on Sunday, because she probably did, but she talks so much that I don’t suppose he was paying the least attention to her. No one ever does.’
The Inspector made no reply to this, but as Vicky’s was precisely the explanation which Steel had already given him, her words carried more weight than even she had expected.
He listened to Alan White’s story, as recounted by Hugh, in attentive silence, remarking at the end that he was sorry he had never had the privilege of meeting Wally Carter. He did not seem inclined to comment further upon the story, so Vicky, who felt that it had fallen flat, said hopefully that it was probably the clue to the crime. But even this failed to draw the Inspector. He shook his head, and said that he wouldn’t be at all surprised if she were right.
To his Sergeant, twenty minutes later, he said that the case had now reached a highly promising stage. Wake scratched his chin, and said: ‘It beats me why you should say that, sir. What I was thinking myself is that whichever way we turn there doesn’t seem to be anything to grasp hold of. You keep thinking you’re on to something, and though you can’t say definitely that you’re not, yet it don’t seem to lead far enough, if you take my meaning.’
‘That’s what I like about it,’ replied Hemingway cheerfully. ‘In my experience, once a case gets so tangled up that it’s like the Hampton Court maze, it’s a very good sign. Something’s going to break. Now, I’ve just discovered two things which don’t seem to me to help much, but I’ve got a very open kind of mind, and I’m prepared to find that they’re a lot more important than I think. We’ve got to add Mr Silent Steel to the list of suspects, my lad.’
‘How’s that?’ inquired the Sergeant. ‘Not but what we always have had an eye on him, haven’t we?’
‘We’ll have two eyes on him now, because according to Miss White, that story of his about not knowing that Carter was going to the Dower House on Sunday won’t hold water. It transpires that she asked him to tea when they came out of church, and her father put him off by saying he’d got Carter coming.’
‘Is that so!’ exclaimed the Sergeant. ‘That doesn’t look too good, I will say!’
‘It doesn’t, but it doesn’t look too bad either. Steel’s explanation being that Miss White was talking nineteen to the dozen all the time he was trying to have a word with a friend of his, and he didn’t pay much heed to her. I’m bound to say I don’t altogether disbelieve him.’
The Sergeant thought it over. ‘She does talk,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘What was the second thing you discovered, sir?’
‘The second thing, if true, bears out friend Baker’s story that he never had a notion of asking Carter for five hundred pounds. Jones, White, and Carter wanted it for their own nefarious doings. You certainly have to hand it to Carter: regular turn in himself !’
The Sergeant, when the story was told him, said severely that there was too much of that sort of thing going on, but he didn’t see that it had much bearing on the case.
‘Not at first glance,’ agreed Hemingway. ‘But if young Baker wasn’t blackmailing Carter, then we’ve got to consider whether he shot him out of revenge, and if so, how he knew where to lay his hands on that rifle.’
The Sergeant frowned. ‘It’s my belief he’s too much of a wind-bag.’
‘You may be right, and I’m not denying I don’t fancy him much myself. The trouble is I’ve got something on the whole gang of them, and not enough to hang any one of them. You take the Prince: he’s got no alibi; he fakes one, which naturally makes me very suspicious. At the same time, I’m not surprised he wasn’t so keen on coming clean before he was forced to, supposing he didn’t shoot Carter; and I wouldn’t like to say that what he finally told us wasn’t true. It might have been. In fact, it’s quite plausible. Then there’s Steel. He’s in love with the widow, and it’s common knowledge that he hated Carter, and got remarkably hot under the collar at the way he treated the fair Er
myntrude. He’s not the sort of man I take to, and he’s just about as anxious to make me think that the Prince did it as the Prince is to make me think he did it. After him, we have to consider the Glamour-girl.’
‘Miss Fanshawe? Why, she’s only a kid, sir!’
‘Well, if she’s a kid she’s a shocking precocious one, that’s all I have to say!’ replied Hemingway. ‘She was in the shrubbery; she could have got the rifle any time she wanted; and she knew how to handle it.’
‘Pretty heavy gun for a little bit of a thing like her,’ objected the Sergeant.
‘I wouldn’t put it beyond her to fire it, not with that hair-trigger pull. If it had had a five-pound pull, which I’m told is the usual, she might have found it a bit too much for her. However, I don’t fancy her any more than I fancy the other girl. If she did it, it was to do her mother a good turn, which I grant you would seem to me a lot too far-fetched, if she weren’t such a caution. As it is, I wouldn’t like to say what she’d take it into her head to do. But if the other girl did it, she did it for the reason that nine people out of ten would: money. She thought she’d come into Aunt Clara’s fortune; and from what I can make out, it would have been sound sense to see to it that Carter didn’t get the chance to splurge around with it first.’
‘She doesn’t give me the impression of being that kind of a girl,’ said Wake.
‘Nor me either, but that’s not to say I’m right. Finally, we’ve got that young Bolshie, Baker. And I say finally, because he’s the one I fancy least of all. I’m a psychologist.’
‘Are you ruling out the widow, sir? Seems to me she had as much cause to shoot Carter as anyone, and we’ve only got her word for it she was lying down in her room at the time.’
‘You go and take another look at her, my lad,’ recommended the Inspector. ‘If she or either of the girls did it, they had to jump across the stream. Well, if you see her doing that you’ve got more imagination than what I have.’