“How?”
“She said, ‘Hello, Judy.’ I said, ‘Hello.’ I gave her a light tap on the
chin. My brother taught me where to hit a person’s chin, so as to addle them.
Then I dived under her and pulled her through the water by the heels until
she was drowned.”
“Very neat,” Grant said. “You’ve thought it all out, haven’t you? Have you
invented a motive for yourself, too?”
“Oh, I just didn’t like her. I hated her, if you want to know. Her success
and her looks and her self-sufficiency. She got in my hair until I couldn’t
bear it another day.”
“I see. And will you explain why, having achieved the practically perfect
murder, you should calmly come here and put a noose around your neck?”
“Because you’ve got someone for it.”
“You mean because we’ve got Robert Tisdall. And that explains everything.
And now having wasted some precious minutes of my time, you might recompense
me and rehabilitate yourself at the same time, by telling me what you know of
Tisdall.”
“I don’t know anything. Except that he would be the very last person in
the world to commit a murder. For any reason.”
“You knew him fairly well, then?”
“No. I hardly knew him at all.”
“You weren’t—friends?”
“No, nor lovers, if that’s what you’re trying to say. Bobby Tisdall didn’t
know I was alive, except to hand me a cocktail.”
Grant’s tone changed. “And yet you’d go even to this length to get him out
of a jam?” he said, quite kindly.
She braced into resentment at the kindness, “If you’d committed a murder
wouldn’t you confess to save an innocent person?”
“Depends on how innocent I thought the police were. You underrate us, Miss
Sellers.”
“I think you’re a lot of idiots. You got a man who is innocent. You’re
busy hounding him to death. And you won’t listen to a perfectly good
confession when you get one.”
“Well, you see, Miss Sellers, there are always things about a case that
are known only to the police and are not to be learned from newspapers. The
mistake you made was to get up your story from the newspaper accounts. There
was one thing you didn’t know. And one thing you forgot.”
“What did I forget?”
“That no one knew where Christine Clay was staying.”
“The murderer did.”
“Yes. That is my point. And now—I’m very busy.”
“So you don’t believe a word I say.”
“Oh, yes. Quite a lot of it. You were out all night on Wednesday, you
probably went swimming, and you arrived back at lunchtime on Thursday. But
none of that makes you guilty of murder.”
She got up, in her reluctant, indolent way, and produced her lipstick.
“Well,” she drawled between applications, “having failed in my little bid for
publicity, I suppose I must go on playing blonde nitwits for the rest of my
life. It’s good I bought a day-return.”
“You don’t fool me,” Grant said, with a not too grim smile as he opened
the door for her.
“All right, then, maybe you’re right about that, and blast you anyhow,”
she burst out. “But you’re wrong about his doing it. So wrong that your name
will stink before this case is over.”
And she brushed past an astonished Williams and two clerks, and
disappeared.
“Well,” said Williams, “that’s the first. Humans are queer, aren’t they,
sir? You know, if we announced the fact that the coat we want has a button
missing, there’d be people who would pull the button off their coats and
bring it in. Just for fun. As if things weren’t difficult enough without
that. Not just the usual type, though, was she, sir?”
“No. What did you make of her, Williams?”
“Musical comedy. Looking for publicity to help her career. Hard as
nails.”
“All wrong. Legitimate stage. Hates her career. Softhearted to the point
of self-sacrifice.”
Williams looked a little crestfallen. “Of course, I didn’t have a chance
to talk to her,” he reminded.
“No. On looks it was quite a good reading, Williams. I wish I could read
this case as well.” He sat down and ran his fingers through his hair. “What
would you do, Williams, once you had got clear of the Marine?”
Williams understood that he was supposed to be Tisdall.
“I’d take a fairly crowded bus somewhere. First that came to hand. Get off
with a crowd of others, and walk off as if I knew where I was going. In fact,
wherever I went I’d look as if I knew where I was going.”
“And then, what?”
“I’d probably have to take another bus to get out of townified parts.”
“You’d get out of built-up areas, would you?”
“Sure!” said Williams, surprised.
“A man’s much more conspicuous in open country.”
“There are woods. In fact, some of the woods in this part of the world
would hide a man indefinitely. And if a man got as far west as Ashdown
Forest, well, it’d take about a hundred men to comb Ashdown properly.”
Grant shook his head. “There’s food. And lodging.”
“Sleep out. It’s warm weather.”
“He’s been out two nights now. If he has taken to the country he must be
looking shopworn by this time. But has he? Have you noticed that no one has
reported him as buying a razor? There’s just the chance that he’s with
friends. I wonder—” his eyes strayed to the chair where Judy had been
sitting. “But no! She’d never risk as big a bluff as that. No need for
it.”
Williams wished to himself that Grant would go to the hotel and have some
sleep. He was taking far too much to heart his failure to arrest Tisdall.
Mistakes happened to the best of people, and everyone knew that Grant was all
right. He had the Yard solid behind him. Why need he worry himself sick over
something that might have happened to anyone? There were one or two crabbers,
of course—people who wanted his job—but no one paid any attention
to the likes of them. Everyone knew what they were getting at. Grant was all
right, and everyone knew it. It was silly of him to get so worked up over a
little slip.
If a policeman’s heart can be said to ache, then Williams’s stout heart
ached for his superior.
“You can get rid of this disgusting object,” Grant said, indicating the
coat. “It’s twenty years old, at least, and hasn’t had a button on it for the
last ten. That’s one thing that puzzles me, you know, Williams. He had it at
the beach, and it was missing when he came back. He had to get rid of that
coat somewhere along his route. It isn’t a very extensive route, when all is
said. And there wasn’t time for him to go far off it. He’d be too anxious to
get back and cover up his mistake in going away. And yet we haven’t turned
the coat up. Two duck ponds, both shallow, both well dragged. Three streams
that wouldn’t hide a penny and wouldn’t float a paper boat. Ditches beaten,
garden walls inspected on the wrong side, two copses scoured. Nothing! What
did he do with it? What would you do with it?”
“Burn it.”
“No time. It’s damp too. Soaking wet, probably.”
“Roll it small and stick it in the fork of a tree. Everyone looks on the
ground for things.”
“Williams, you’re a born criminal. Tell Sanger your theory and ask him to
make use of it this afternoon. I’d rather have that coat than have Tisdall.
In fact, I’ve got to have that coat!”
“Talking of razors, you don’t think maybe, he took his razor with him,
sir?”
“I didn’t think of it. Shouldn’t think he had the presence of mind. But
then I didn’t think he’d have the nerve to bolt. I concentrated on suicide.
Where are his things?”
“Sanger took them over here in the case. Everything he had.”
“Just see if his razor is there? It’s just as well to know whether he’s
shaved or not.” There was no razor.
“Well!” said Grant. “Who’d have thought it! ‘You disappoint me,
Inspector,’ says he, quietly pocketing the razor, and arranging his getaway
with the world’s prize chump of a detective watching him. I’m all wrong about
that lad, Sergeant. All wrong. I thought first, when I took him from the
inquest that he was one of these hysterical, do-it-on-the-spur-of-the-moment
creatures. Then, after I knew about the will, I changed my mind. Still
thought him a ‘poor thing,’ though. And now I find he was planning a getaway
under my very nose—and he brought it off! It isn’t Tisdall who’s a
washout, it’s me!”
“Cheer up, sir. Our luck is out at the moment. But you and I between us,
and no one else, so help me, are going to put that cold-blooded brute where
he belongs,” Williams said fervently, not knowing that the person who was to
be the means of bringing the murderer of Christine Clay to justice was a
rather silly little woman in Kansas City who had never heard of any of
them.
ERICA stood on the brake and brought her disreputable little
car to a standstill. She then backed it the necessary yards, and stopped
again. She inspected with interest the sole of a man’s boot, visible in the
grass and gorse, and then considered the wide empty landscape and the
mile-long straight of chalky lane with its borders of speedwell and thrift,
shining in the sun.
“You can come out,” she said. “There’s no one in sight for miles.”
The boot sole disappeared and a man’s astonished face appeared in the
bushes above it.
“That’s a great relief to me,” Erica observed. “I thought for a moment
that you might be dead.”
“How did you know it was me? I suppose you
did
know it was me?”
“Yes. There’s a funny squiggle on the instep part of your sole where the
price has been scored off. I noticed it when you were lying on the floor of
Father’s office.”
“Oh, yes; that’s who you are, of course. You’re a very good
detective.”
“You’re a very bad escaper. No one could have missed your foot.”
“You didn’t give me much time. I didn’t hear your car till it was nearly
on me.”
“You must be deaf. She’s one of the County jokes, poor Tinny. Like Lady
Middleway’s hat and old Mr. Dyne’s shell collection.”
“Tinny?”
“Yes. She used to be Christina, but the inevitable happened. You couldn’t
not
have heard her.”
“I think perhaps I was asleep for a minute or two. I—I’m a bit short
of sleep.”
“Yes, I expect so. Are you hungry?”
“Is that just an academic question, or—or are you offering me
food?”
Erica reached into the back of the car and produced half a dozen rolls, a
glass of tongue, half a pound of butter, and four tomatoes.
“I’ve forgotten a tin opener,” she said, passing him the tongue, “but if
you hit the tin lid hard with a flint it will make a hole.” She split a roll
with a penknife produced from her pocket and began to butter it.
“Do you always carry food about with you?” he asked, doubtfully.
“Oh, always. I’m a very hungry person. Besides I’m often not home from
morning till night. Here’s the knife. Cut a hunk of the tongue and lay it on
that.” She gave him the buttered roll. “I want the knife back for the other
roll.”
He did as he was bidden, and she busied herself with the knife again,
politely ignoring him so that he should not have to pretend to an
indifference that would be difficult of achievement.
Presently he said, “I suppose you know that all this is very wrong.”
“Why is it wrong?”
“For one thing, you’re aiding an escaped criminal, which is wrong in
itself, and doubly wrong in your father’s daughter. And for another—and
this is much worse—if I were what they think me you’d be in the gravest
danger at this minute. You shouldn’t do things like that, you know.”
“If you were a murderer it wouldn’t help you much to commit another one
just to keep me from saying I saw you.”
“If you’ve committed one, I suspect you don’t easily stop at another. You
can only be hanged once. And so you don’t think I did it?”
“I’m quite sure you didn’t.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“You’re not capable of it.”
“Thank you,” he said gratefully.
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Oh! Oh, I see.” A smile actually broke through. “Disconcerting but
invigorating. George an ancestor of yours?”
“George? Oh. No. No, I can tell lies with the best.”
“You’ll have to tonight. Unless you are going to give me up.”
“I don’t suppose anyone will question me at all,” she said, ignoring the
latter half of his remark. “I don’t think a beard becomes you, by the
way.”
“I don’t like it myself. I took a razor with me but couldn’t manage to do
anything without soap and water. I suppose you haven’t soap in the car?”
“I’m afraid not. I don’t wash as often as I eat. But there’s a frothy
stuff in a bottle—Snowdrop, they call it—that I use to clean my
hands when I change a wheel. Perhaps that would work.” She got out the bottle
from the car pocket. “You must be much cleverer than I thought you were, you
know.”
“Yes? How clever does that make me actually?”
“To get away from Inspector Grant. He’s very good at his job, Father
says.
“Yes, I think he probably is. If I didn’t happen to have a horror of being
shut up, wouldn’t have had the nerve to run. As it was, that half hour was
the most exciting thing that ever happened to me. I know now what living at
top speed means. I used to think having money and doing what you
liked—twenty different things a day—was living at speed. But I
just didn’t know anything about it.”
“Was she nice, Christine Clay?”
He looked disconcerted. “You do jump about, don’t you? Yes, she was a
grand person.” He forgot his food for a moment. “Do you know what she did?
She left me her ranch in California because she knew I had no money and hated
an office.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You know?”
“Yes, I’ve heard Father and the others discussing it.”
“Oh. Oh, yes…And you still believe I didn’t do it? I must be very
bargain counter in your eyes!”
“Was she very beautiful?”
“Haven’t you ever seen her, then? On the screen, I mean?”
“No. I don’t think so.”