A Blunt Instrument (10 page)

"Fletcher?"

"Taking one thing with another, and adding up a few simple figures, that's what it looks like, Chief. Not that I've got his name yet, for I haven't. There are two girls still dancing at Duke's who were there in Angela's time, but they neither of them seem to think they ever heard what her boy-friend's real name was. All they could think of was Boo-Boo, which was what she called him, but which doesn't sound to me the sort of name any self respecting man would put up with except from a girl he happened to have gone nuts over. So that's not much help."

"Any description?"

"Yes, he was middle-aged, dark, thin, and natty. The late Ernest to the life. A lot of other people to the life too, if you come to think of it, but it'll do to go on with. Well, as I say, he set Angela up in the best of style, and she chucked dancing for a life of gilded leisure. That was a matter of six months after friend Charlie had gone to gaol. Nothing more was heard of Angela at Duke's for the next six months, which brings us to the end of December 1935, when she turned up again, wanting her old job back."

"Cast off?"

"That," said the Sergeant guardedly, "is the inference, but the fair Lily -'

"Who?"

"One of the chorus. She stated at the time, and today, when I saw her, that Angela was as close as an oyster about the whole business. Sifting the grain from the chaff, which isn't as easy as you might think when Lily starts talking, I came to the conclusion that the late Ernest (or substitute) was by way of being the great passion of Angela's life. Only he'd cooled off. But taking into account the fact that she wasn't in trouble, and had quite a bit of money put by, I'm bound to say it looks to me as though he didn't treat her so badly. However, the fair Lily sticks to it that she'd got a broken heart, and couldn't seem to fancy any of the other fellows who were floating around. After a couple of months she decided she couldn't live without the late Ernest, so she put her head in a gas oven, and that was the end of her."

"Poor girl! The more I discover about Fletcher the less I like him."

"Now, be fair, Chief!" begged Hemingway. "This isn't one of your seduction rackets. If Angela didn't know what was likely to happen she ought to have. But that's neither here nor there. What I want to know is, where and how does Charlie Carpenter fit into the scenario?"

"Have you been able to discover anything about his movements since he was released from prison? When exactly was that?" He consulted the dossier on the desk. "June 1936! A year ago, in fact. What's he been up to all this time?"

"You can search me," said the Sergeant. "He hasn't got pinched for anything, that's all I can tell you. Funny, isn't it? If he was out to pull a big revenge act, what's he want to wait a year for?"

Hannasyde looked at the photograph again. "Revenge? Does he give you that impression?"

"No, he doesn't. Silly, weak kind of face, and by all accounts he was a selfish young bounder, not given to putting himself out for anyone but himself. No, what it looks like to me, at first glance, is an attempt to put the black on the late Ernest. Not much of an attempt either, which is about what you'd expect, judging from his record."

"Yes," Hannasyde agreed. "And then we come up against the murder."

"Slap up against it," nodded the Sergeant. "And it doesn't fit."

"Several loose ends somewhere. He fits the description given by Glass and Mrs. North, though - but I admit they were too vague to be of much use."

"Oh, so Mrs. North was there, was she?"

"She was there, and unless I am much mistaken she thinks it was her husband who killed Fletcher."

The Sergeant opened his eyes at that. "You do see life in the suburbs, don't you? Nice goings-on! Whatever does Ichabod say about it?"

"As I haven't told him anything about it, he hasn't yet favoured me with his opinion."

"You wait till he gets wind of it. He'll learn a whole new piece to say to us. But this line on Mrs. North's husband is very confusing. What's been happening your end, Chief?"

Hannasyde gave him a brief account of his two interviews with Helen North. The Sergeant listened in silence, his bright, penetrating eyes fixed on his superior's face with an expression in them of gradually deepening disgust.

"What did I tell you?" he said, when Hannasyde had finished. "The whole stage is getting cluttered up with supers. I'll tell you something else, too; by the time we're through we shall have had just about all we can stand of this North woman. I wouldn't mind betting she thinks we've got nothing better to do than run round in circles while she gets on with this three-act problem play of hers. I'm surprised at you, Chief, letting yourself get dragged into her differences with her husband. What's more, where's the sense of her hiding all this IOU business from him? He's bound to find out in the end."

"I daresay, but I can't see that it's any part of my job to tell him."

The Sergeant sniffed. "What's the husband like? Give any reason for coming home a week before he was expected?"

"None. He's a good-looking chap. Got a bit of a chin, and thinks more than he says. Determined fellow, I should imagine; not easily rattled, and by no means a fool."

"I hope we bring it home to him," said the Sergeant uncharitably. "From the sound of it, he's going to be as big a nuisance as his wife. No alibi?"

"So he said. In fact, he made me a present of that piece of information."

The Sergeant cocked an eye at him. "He did, did he? Did it strike you he might be fancying himself in the part of a red herring?"

"It's a possibility, of course. He may suspect his wife of having killed Fletcher. It depends how much he knows about her dealings with the man."

The Sergeant groaned. "I get it. A nice game of battledore and shuttlecock, with you and me cast for the shuttlecocks. Of course, our heads won't really start aching till Mrs. North gets on to it that the man she saw may have been Charlie Carpenter. We'll have her eating all that evidence of hers about the late Ernest showing him off the premises then. Probably boloney, anyway."

"It may be, but she spoke the truth about her fingerprints being on the door. I verified that before I left Marley. The real discrepancy is in the time. At 9.35 p.m. Budd left Greystones by the garden-gate. I think we can take that as being true. Mrs. North was walking up Maple Grove at that time, and states that she saw a fat man come out of Greystones."

The Sergeant jotted it down on a piece of paper. "That checks up with his own story: 9.35 p.m. Budd leaves; the North dame arrives."

"Next we have Mrs. North leaving the study at 9.45."

"Short visit," commented the Sergeant.

"She and Fletcher had a row. She admitted to that the second time I saw her. Also at 9.45 we have the unknown man entering the garden by the side gate."

"X," said the Sergeant. "That's when Mrs. North hid behind the bush?"

"Yes. X entered the study, we suppose, a minute later. That isn't important. Now, according to her first story, Mrs. North then left by way of the garden-gate. According to her second version, she remained where she was, until about 9.58, when X, accompanied by Fletcher, came out of the study, and walked down the path to the gate. She then slipped back into the study to search for her IOUs, heard Fletcher returning, and escaped through the door into the hall. She was in the hall as the clock began to strike 10.00. At 10.02, Glass, on his beat, saw a man corresponding to Mrs. North's description of X coming out of the garden-gate, and making off towards the Arden Road. He entered the garden and reached the study at 10.05 p.m., to find Fletcher dead, and no sign of his murderer to be seen. What do you make of it?"

"I don't," said the Sergeant flatly. "It's looked like a mess to me from the start. What I do say is that all this stuff of Mrs. North's isn't to be trusted. In fact, there's only one thing we've got to hold on to, which is that at 10.05 p.m. Glass found the late Ernest with his head bashed in. That at least is certain, and what's more it makes Mrs. North's evidence look a bit cock-eyed. Glass saw X leaving the premises at 10.02, which means that if he was the murderer he must have done Ernest in between 10.00 and 10.01, allowing him a minute to get out of the study and down the path to the gate."

"All right: that's probably a fair estimate."

"Well, it doesn't fit - not if you're accepting Mrs. North's evidence. According to her, it was just on 10.00 when she heard Ernest coming back to the study. You think of it, Chief: Ernest has got to have time to get into his chair behind the desk again, and start to write the letter that was found under his head. It was obvious he was taken by surprise, which means that X didn't come stampeding up the path directly behind him. He waited till Ernest was in the house: it stands to reason he must have. Once Ernest has settled down he gets to work - enters, strikes Ernest with some kind of a blunt instrument, not once, mark you! but two or three times - and then makes off. Well, if you can cram all that into two minutes you're cleverer than I am, Super, that's all. Take it this way: if Ernest saw him off the premises, he pretended to walk away, didn't he?"

"You'd think so."

"I'm dead sure of it. While Ernest is strolling back to the house, he comes back cautiously to the gate. If he'd made up his mind, as he must have, to kill Ernest, he didn't open that gate till Ernest had reached the house again, which was at 10.00 p.m. He wouldn't have run the risk of Ernest hearing him. No point in it. Does he stride up the path bold as brass, thus advertising his presence? Of course he doesn't! He creeps up, and if it takes a minute to reach the study from that gate, walking ordinarily, as we know it does, it's my belief it took X a sight longer to do it in the dark, treading warily. By the time he's in the study again it must be a couple of minutes after 10.00, at which time, mark you, Glass saw him coming out of the garden-gate."

"I'm afraid you've got a fixation, Skipper," said Hannasyde gently. "We don't know that X was the murderer."

The Sergeant swallowed this, replying with dignity: "I was coming to that. It could have been Budd, come back secretly, and lying in wait in the garden till the coast was clear; or it could have been Mr. North. But if X, whom Glass saw, was Charlie Carpenter, what was he doing while Ernest was being knocked on the head?"

"There's another possibility," said Hannasyde. "Suppose that North was the murderer -'

"Just a moment, Super! Is North X?" demanded Hemingway.

"Nobody is X. Assuming that North was the man Mrs. North saw coming up the path, we have to consider the possibility of Fletcher's having been killed at any time between 9.45 and 10.01."

The Sergeant blinked. "Mrs. North's revised version being so much eye-wash? Where does Carpenter come in?"

"After the murder," replied Hannasyde.

There was a short pause. "We've got to find Carpenter," announced the Sergeant.

"Of course. Have you got anyone on to that?"

"I've got practically the whole Department hunting for him. But if he's kept out of trouble for the past year, it may be a bit of a job to locate him."

"The other point that puzzles me is the weapon used. The doctors seem to be agreed that the blows were struck with a blunt instrument like a weighted stick. The skull was smashed right in, you know. Now, both Glass and Mrs. North say that the man they saw was carrying nothing. You may rule Mrs. North's evidence out of court if you like, but you can't rule out what Glass says. The natural thing would be for the murderer to get rid of the weapon at once, but I've had the garden searched with a toothcomb, and nothing has come to light."

"Anything in the room? Bronze ornament, or paperweight, which could have been stuffed into the murderer's pocket?"

"The butler states that nothing is missing from the room, and although there is a heavy paper-weight there, I understand that it was produced later by your playful little friend, Neville Fletcher - about whom I'm going to make a few inquiries, by the way."

The Sergeant sat up. "He produced it, did he? From what I've seen of him, Chief, that's just about what he would do - if he happened to have murdered his uncle with it! It would strike him as being a really high-class bit of humour."

"Fairly cold-blooded."

"Don't you fret, he's cold-blooded enough! Clever enough, too. But if he did it, Mrs. North must have seen him on her way out of - Oh, now we're assuming Mrs. North's first story was the true one, are we?"

"If we're considering Neville Fletcher as the possible murderer, it looks as though we should have to. But that brings us up against two difficult fences. The first is that her finger-prints were on the panel of the door, and I don't quite see how they came there if she didn't leave the room by that way. The second is that if her original story was true we know that a man entered the study at about 9.45, and left the premises again at 10.02 - for it seems a trifle far-fetched to suppose that more than one man visited Fletcher during those seventeen minutes. That being so, when did Neville find time to murder his uncle? In between Glass's seeing X depart and himself entering the study? Stretching the bounds of probability rather far, isn't it?"

"It is," admitted the Sergeant, caressing his chin. "But now you come to point it out to me I don't mind owning that the absence of the weapon wants a bit of explanation. I suppose the murderer could have shoved a heavy stick down his trouser leg, but it would have made him walk with a stiff leg, which Glass would have been bound to have noticed. I'm trying to think of something he could have had in his pocket - a spanner, for instance."

"That's assuming the murder was premeditated. One doesn't carry heavy spanners in one's pockets. Somehow it doesn't look premeditated to me. I can't bring myself to believe in a murderer who plans to kill his victim by battering his skull in, midway through the evening, in his own study."

"No, that's true," said the Sergeant. "And we went over the fire-irons. It looks as though the weapon, whatever it may have been, was got rid of pretty cleverly. It might be a good thing if I had a look round the place myself. A little quiet chat with that butler wouldn't do any harm. Surprising what you can pick up from servants - if you know the way to go about it."