Death Comes to Cambers (23 page)

Strange, indeed, he thought, if a thing so simple, so harmless, so ordinary as a rabbit-trap, was to be proved the cause and origin of so grim a tragedy, though, indeed, in the tangled, complicated, unreasoning web of human emotions and beliefs, there is no cause so great or small but it may lead to consequences immeasurably huge or tiny, and the fall of an empire mean the release of a mouse from a trap, and the cackling of geese the changing of the destiny of man.

Crossly Bobby told himself that a detective's business is truth; and that of proof there was as yet no shred, since a man may be out in the rain for many reasons besides murder, and the talk of an ill-balanced youth too fond of strong ale must not be taken too seriously. All the same, he found it hard to keep his eyes away from those hanging garments with their grim suggestiveness accentuated by the shifting shadows the declining sun cast from them upon the walls of the old barn behind.

A certain movement and agitation was becoming apparent about the farm. Evidently the approach of Colonel Lawson and his companions had been observed. A tall, thin, worried-looking man came down to the gate admitting to the yard, and stood there waiting. He was wearing blue overalls, and was fidgeting with an oil-can he held, for he was a farmer of the new type, put his faith in petrol, and, like mankind in general, had solved the problem of production but not of distribution, so that his ancestors would have been equally amazed at the amount of food he produced from the ground, and at his difficulty in disposing of it except at actual loss. Behind him hovered an elderly woman, see-sawing, as it were, between gate and house, and then suddenly, as if at last making up her mind, running full speed into the house and banging the door behind her. In the yard itself two or three of the farm-workers found occasion to busy themselves eagerly about unimportant jobs that permitted them to give their whole and undivided attention to the approaching trio.

‘Good evening. Mr. Hardy, I think?' Colonel Lawson greeted the worried-looking man in blue overalls, who, still leaning on the farm gate, made no effort to move at their approach.

‘Aye, that's me,' he answered. ‘You're police. About the murder. There's nothing anyone can tell you here.'

‘That's what we've come to inquire about,' Colonel Lawson began, and was interrupted by the brief retort: ‘That's what I'm telling you.'

‘Then you can tell me this as well,' the chief constable retorted sharply. ‘Lady Cambers has been brutally murdered, and her body found in one of the fields of your farm. Is it true you and your son resented certain ideas she had about spring-traps; that she had spoken of refusing to renew your lease; that your son is known to have made violent threats against her?'

He paused. There was no reply. The farmer gaped and stared, and became very pale. He was holding the oil-can he carried at an angle that allowed the contents to drip slowly out, but he paid no attention. It seemed as if the violence of this direct assault of the chief constable's words upon his mind had served to stun him. Bobby felt very sorry for him, and yet felt that the colonel's direct methods very often had much to recommend them. Lawson went on, evidently satisfied with the impression he had made: ‘I am here as chief of the county police, in pursuance of my duty, to ask your son what explanation he has to give, and to account for his whereabouts last night.'

‘So that's it, is it?' Hardy mumbled.

‘Yes, it is,' Lawson snapped angrily. ‘I must ask you to stand aside.'

‘Where's your warrant?' Hardy demanded.

‘None is needed,' Lawson told him. ‘Now, Mr. Hardy, you had better be reasonable. I don't want to have to put you under arrest for wilful obstruction of the police in the execution of their duty, but I will remind you that your attitude is highly suspicious.'

‘Wait here,' Hardy told them, and began to walk back towards the house.

Disregarding this injunction, they followed him closely. He gave them an angry look over his shoulder, but made no comment. He even slackened his pace and began to dawdle a little till he was quite near the house, when he suddenly broke into a run and dashed inside, banging the door behind him.

‘The man's a fool,' said Lawson, frowning heavily.

‘Looks bad,' Moulland pronounced. ‘Very bad.'

‘Panicking, that's what it is,' Bobby observed.

Lawson lifted the knocker on the door, and smashed it down two or three times with vigour, so relieving, a trifle, his feelings.

‘We'll wait a moment or two,' he said. ‘I don't want to have to take extreme measures'; and on a sudden impulse Bobby slipped round the corner of the house just in time to see a side-door open and Ray Hardy, pale, wild-eyed, panic-stricken, come slipping out.

‘Hello, Ray,' Bobby hailed him cheerfully. ‘Colonel Lawson wants to ask you something. Now, don't go playing the silly goat. Running away is open confession, and 

if you tried to hide you would be spotted in no time.' Ray, who was evidently in a highly nervous state, still seemed more than half inclined to run. But Bobby slipped an arm through his and spoke again.

‘Whatever you do, don't run,' he repeated. ‘If you are innocent, it's merely putting in a plea of guilty. If you are guilty, then it's the final proof needed. And innocent or guilty, you're soon caught. There's no hiding-place in all England for a man we know, and know we want.'

Talking thus, he propelled Ray gently back to the front of the house, and the young man made no resistance.

‘They're saying, in the village, I did it,' he muttered, ‘but I never did.'

‘That's all right,' Bobby said. ‘But I'll give you one tip – tell the truth and nothing else. If you're innocent, it's safest, and if you're guilty, it's quickest.'

‘I never did it,' Ray repeated. ‘I never meant... '

They came round the corner of the house. Colonel Lawson, his patience exhausted, had just begun to ply the knocker with all the downright, straightforward energy of his nature; nor had the resultant reverberations died away when the door opened, and Mr. Hardy showed himself, so thin, so tall, so pale, so spectral, in a word, he had the appearance of a ghost.

‘You can come in, if you want to,' he said. ‘You can search the house from top to bottom. You can search every building on the farm. You can... Oh God!' He broke off in a sudden anguished cry as he caught sight of Bobby and Ray approaching, arm-in-arm.

‘This is Ray Hardy, sir,' Bobby said to the colonel. ‘He was in the yard just behind the house. He says he is quite prepared to give all the information he can.'

‘Very good,' said Colonel Lawson severely, and regarded Bobby with equal severity. ‘What were you doing behind the house?' he demanded. ‘I don't remember your asking permission.'

i74 

‘No, sir. Very sorry, sir,' Bobby answered meekly. ‘I acted on impulse, sir. It just struck me he might be there.'

‘Well, as he was there, as it happened, we'll say no more about it,' promised the chief constable, ‘but I would like you to remember, for the future, that I prefer my men to follow instructions.'

‘Yes, sir,' said Bobby, still more meekly.

‘You had better come inside,' said the farmer, eyeing with dislike sundry peeping heads and staring eyes now growing visible in convenient positions near-by.

They all went indoors accordingly, and in the seldom – used front sitting-room the examination began. Ray admitted the use of threats, but protested vehemently that he had never intended to carry them out. Pressed, he admitted, too, that if Lady Cambers had implemented her threat of refusing to renew their lease, the result would have been something like ruin. Nor did he deny that he had continued the use of the spring-traps Lady Cambers so strongly objected to.

‘Just foolishness, what her and vicar and the others said,' Ray protested. ‘All very well for them. They didn't want to sell the skins; they didn't have their sowings eaten down as soon as up. Ask Eddy Dene. He's brains hasn't he? And he said it was all fuss and foolishness. Quickest best, he said. He said you might as well talk about not sticking pigs because it hurts when the knife's put in. Pigs have to be slaughtered, and rabbits has to be trapped, and that's all there's to it.'

Bobby thought this interesting, and looked to see if Colonel Lawson thought so, too. But apparently the colonel had noticed nothing, and went on hammering away with question after question.

Soon Ray admitted, too, that he had been out when the rain began that night. With some hesitation he came at last to admit, as well, that he always made the round of his traps at night, because occasionally they strayed on other people's land – most frequently, somehow, on that belonging to Lady Cambers herself.

‘The fat would have been in the fire, all right, if the old girl had found that out,' he confessed, ‘so I reckoned it was better like to go round while it was dark.'

Bobby, taking all this down, thought that with every word the case looked blacker. The young farmer, slow of mind, badgered, confused by the ceaseless hail of questions, evidently did not realize how grave were the admissions he was making. Colonel Lawson's method of direct and simple frontal assault was succeeding well this time. Probably, indeed, it was the method best suited for breaking down the young man's defences. How easy for a jury to believe, to accept it as proved, that on this midnight expedition he and Lady Cambers had chanced to meet, she, on her side, having come out to see for herself if her wishes had been observed, and perhaps already suspecting that they had been ignored. If things had happened like that, what more probable than that Lady Cambers had repeated threats about the lease, and that thereon, in rage and desperation, Ray had carried out the threats that he, on his side, had undoubtedly made?

‘Why didn't you tell the truth at once instead of denying you had been out that night?' demanded Colonel Lawson finally.

‘Well, I didn't do it,' Ray answered sulkily, ‘but I didn't want to give folk the chance to say I had – same as I knew they would if they could.'

He stuck firmly to his story to the end. He had neither seen nor heard Lady Cambers. He didn't believe she had come out to look for the traps because for one thing he didn't believe she would have had the least idea where to begin looking. He had been caught in the rain and drenched to the skin almost instantly, so heavy was the downpour. He had gone back home after it stopped. And that was all he knew, he insisted.

Moulland was so far stirred by all this as to take, for 

once, independent action. He got up and muttered something in his chief's ear. Bobby was sure he was advising immediate arrest. Lawson looked doubtful, hesitated, but finally told Ray that was all they wanted to ask him for the moment, but that he must remain at hand in case he was again required. The young man stumbled unhappily away, dazed as if with drink under the mental bludgeoning he had received, and Bobby was aware of an impression that very shortly he would have been ready to confess, though probably only to retract it again soon enough. When the door had closed behind him, Lawson said: ‘Looks about as bad as it can. Looks as if we were on the right track. Only what about Dene? Deliberately defiant and insolent he was, and why, unless there's a reason?'

Neither of the other two ventured to attempt this conundrum. But it was evident that Lawson's prejudice against Eddy was still strong, nor perhaps, considering the attitude Eddy had chosen to adopt, was that much to be wondered at. After a pause, when Lawson seemed to be breathing and thinking a little less vigorously, Bobby ventured to say: ‘I think myself, sir, there are several points that ought to be cleared up before any action is taken. We don't know yet who hid in the rhododendrons, or why.'

‘If the case is complete, we can safely ignore that as a side-issue,' pronounced the chief constable, and to Bobby that seemed dangerous doctrine.

‘Might have been young Hardy himself, hiding in a panic, wondering what to do next,' Lawson added, after a pause.

‘He doesn't smoke Balkan cigarettes,' Bobby observed. ‘Then we don't know who had the refreshment, brandy and so on, we've heard was taken in Lady Cambers's room that night.'

‘Young Hardy again,' Lawson said. ‘It appears there's something between him and that Amy Emmets girl. Suppose he went back to the house and told her what had happened? She lets him in. They talk a little, and she gets him brandy to help him steady himself. Afterwards she lets him out and locks up behind him. That's why the butler found all the doors and windows fastened. Afterwards Hardy hung about in the rhododendrons for a time, wondering whether to stay and face it out or bolt, and possibly smoking cigarettes he's got hold of somehow.'

‘Plenty been hanged on less than that,' declared Moulland suddenly.

‘There is still the jewellery,' Bobby said. ‘Would he go on from murder in a passion to cold-blooded theft?'

‘Why not? The Emmers girl knew all about the jewellery, and quite likely had the keys, or knew where they were. They took the jewellery because they meant to go abroad together when they thought it safe.'

He paused. He was plainly thinking deeply. His heavy breathing seemed laden with Ray Hardy's fate. To Bobby, too, it seemed just then that arrest must mean condemnation, so neatly did opportunity and motive appear to fit together.

‘There's Dene's pen,' he said, half to himself.

Lawson turned and looked at him.

‘If it wasn't for that,' he said slowly, ‘I think we could take action, but perhaps that should be cleared up first. If we can trace it to Hardy, though, I shall think it conclusive.'

Even Colonel Lawson, by no means inclined, either by temperament or training, to expect small things from his subordinates, showed a touch of surprise when Bobby presented him next morning with all the statements that had been taken from the persons interviewed the previous day, all carefully and neatly transcribed, ready to be submitted to those concerned for their approval and signature.