Death Comes to Cambers (35 page)

Bobby paused, and the chief constable looked at him.

‘You haven't said anything about Sir Albert Cambers or about Eddy Dene yet,' he remarked.

‘No, sir, I am coming to them now,' Bobby answered, closing his note-book, for now he had come to a part of his narrative that he knew by heart.

‘In a case of this kind,' Bobby went on, talking now nearly as much to himself as to the others, ‘there are three lines of approach: motive, material clues, personal character. They all have their difficulties. Motive may not produce action. Material clues may be absent – not every murderer is kind enough to leave his card, or even the usual laundry-mark he can be traced by, and the saying that every murderer makes a mistake only means that every murderer who is caught has made one. Those who don't make mistakes get away with it – as in the Croydon poisoning case. As for character, only God knows our real character, or what opportunity and circumstance may bring out in any one of us. 

‘All the same, I don't see Sir Albert Cambers as the murderer type. He is neither violent enough nor cunning enough, and he is far too conventional – convention is a greater safeguard than fear of God or fear of the consequences.

‘It is true he wished for a divorce, and that he believed there was an intrigue between his wife and Dene entitling him to one. But I don't think there's anything to show he either believed or wished with passion enough to lead to murder; and his private detective, Jones, entirely failed to find any evidence to justify his belief – largely because there was none, since nothing of the kind existed. Jones believed that it did, however, because he was the kind of person always ready to believe in any story like that, and when he got an anonymous message to say Lady Cambers and Dene were meeting secretly in the Frost Field shed late Sunday night, he never thought of doubting. It was what he had expected. I think there's no doubt the message came from Dene himself, and I know Jones thought he recognized Dene's voice, and thought Dene was arranging the exposure in order to force a scandal and a marriage with Lady Cambers. Jones always interpreted everything that happened in the light of his own mentality. He let Sir Albert know he could provide the required evidence, and Sir Albert borrowed Miss Bowman's car and came along accordingly, having first written to Miss Bowman what might seem a rather compromising note. On his way he was caught in the rainstorm, drew up for shelter in a dip of the road, at the West Leigh turning, that was soon flooded, and was badly splashed by a passing Rolls-Royce car. As that was late at night, there was a good chance the Rolls-Royce belonged to someone living near – and to some wealthy person, as it was a Rolls-Royce. I asked the Yard to try to trace it, and Lord Lynton's chauffeur remembers passing a small car at that time, in that spot, and thinking it would soon get flooded out. Sir Albert says that then he drove on to Cambers, left his car parked by the roadside, waited in, or by, the rhododendron-bushes till three, and then gave it up and went home. His story is corroborated by the fact that he knew it was his own pet cigars Farman was smoking, while Farman says he heard sounds coming from the rhododendrons, and Sterling saw someone he thought was like Sir Albert going away about three a.m. Even the number of cigarette-ends picked up by the rhododendrons suggest a fairly long time spent there – and Sir Albert has developed the bad cold and touch of pleurisy you would expect if his story was correct.

‘On the whole, it seems to me he is fairly well cleared.'

‘Jones was ready to swear he was an eyewitness,' growled Colonel Lawson. ‘I'll prosecute for – for – attempted perjury?'

‘Public mischief,' suggested Moulland hopefully.

‘It's more than that,' said Colonel Lawson sternly. ‘He very nearly – very nearly indeed – made me make a public fool of myself!'

Moulland looked shocked, and was evidently trying to think, though without much success, of an appropriate penalty. Bobby continued: ‘That leaves Eddy Dene. He has a strong alibi. I'll ignore that for the moment, if I may. Take character first. The most marked feature of his is an extreme arrogance, partly natural, partly a morbid growth in defence against his poverty and surroundings, his daily work behind the counter, his resentment against what he was weak enough and silly enough to consider his inferior social position. Even when his work attracted attention at Oxford, and people came along from the University to see what he was doing, most likely only anxious to help him, he seems to have snubbed them. He was so self-confident he did not want help, only admiration; and probably he thought the Oxford dons wanted to steal his facts and theories he intended for his book he thought was going to startle the world. Also he had a very strong, resolute will – he knew what he wanted, and he meant to have it.

‘That is where he clashed with Lady Cambers. She was equally determined on having her own way, equally persuaded her way was the only right way. But she had nothing like Dene's clear-sighted intelligence, and I think it is easy to understand Dene's secret resentment at finding himself and his work, and all his future hopes, entirely dependent on her good-will. I think that resentment festered within him till it turned to hate.

‘One could call that the psychological position – Lady Cambers blandly heaping benefits on Dene, but exacting the payment of an implicit obedience. She seems to have made a rule, for instance, that there was to be no work of any kind done by him on Sundays – a trifle, but it made Dene as angry as trifles often do. He got to be like a tin of petrol, ready to explode at any spark.

‘That came – though it was more than a spark – when Lady Cambers informed him he was to take a job as valet practically, with Mr. Tyler, and was to marry Miss Emmers. He had never wanted to marry her, for one thing, and, for another, he knew she was married already, and that when Lady Cambers found out, she was likely to make things pretty warm all round and without too much discrimination. I expect, too, he felt Lady Cambers's suggestion as a mortal insult – it showed her real understanding and appreciation of him and his work. Most likely, to her one archaeological investigation was just like another; but Dene cared nothing, and knew less, about the Maya question, and was giving his whole knowledge and experience to the question of the emergence of man from the animal – he believed his book about that would make as big a sensation as Darwin's
Origin of Species
, he had already settled his was to be
The Origin of Man
. Obviously the Tyler idea and the Maya expedition would have meant abandoning that and all his hopes of speedy fame and recognition.

‘He knew, also, that Lady Cambers had made a will making Sterling her heir, and I've no doubt myself he was quite right in calculating that if Sterling inherited, Mrs. Sterling – Amy Emmers, that is – would see that the help he had been receiving from the Cambers estate would be continued. She seems to have promised him as much, quite innocently. To him, Lady Cambers had come to seem a useless, dictatorial old woman, full of whims and crotchets, it would be an advantage all round to replace by the Sterlings. Further, I think he was really fond of Amy in a brotherly kind of way, and genuinely distressed at the thought of her having to stand the brunt of Lady Cambers's anger – her foolish and unreasonable anger, he thought, and possibly he liked, too, the idea of a cousin reigning at Cambers House.

‘As regards motive, then, it seems he had everything to gain and disaster to avoid, both for himself and for his cousin, Amy.

‘As regards character, he had worked himself into a mood of mingled arrogance, contempt, resentment, that would make good rich breeding-ground for thoughts of murder.

‘Now to come to facts, the actual physical clues.

‘Jones states that the voice over the phone, telling him of the imaginary appointment with Dene in the Frost Field shed, was that of Dene himself. I suggest that was really part of a plan to get Sir Albert on the spot that night, and so confuse investigation. I am inclined to think it was Dene, again, who confirmed Lady Cambers's suspicions that Amy Emmers and Tim Sterling were attracted to each other. He knew they were communicating by cipher, and it is fairly certain he would be able to make it out if he tried. It was simple enough, and he went out of his way to tell Miss Emmers he had tried and failed, which I don't believe. I think he planned, too, to get Sterling on the spot that Sunday night, to confuse things still more.

‘In his arrogance and self-confidence, I don't suppose he thought it would be very difficult to baffle police investigation.

‘But he had to consider how to carry out the murder he most likely thought of merely as the removal of another obstacle, as he had already removed many in winning opportunity to devote himself to his chosen work. To carry out his intention inside the house would have been both dangerous and difficult. But suppose he could induce her to come out alone late at night? It must have seemed difficult, at first, to think how to manage that, but he knew she was much disturbed by the denunciations and protests made by the vicar, Mr. Andrews. He had warned her, for instance, that she would be responsible for souls led astray. I think Dene hit on this plan. He told Lady Cambers he had found fossils that proved his theories, but that to make this proof more obvious and convincing he intended to improve it a little by making a few alterations and additions – faking in fact – before showing the fossils to the world. And I think he pretended to be very excited – that would not be difficult – he would be excited by his secret intentions – and that he managed to convey to Lady Cambers that the only way of preventing him from producing this faked evidence was for her to go herself to take possession of the fossils for independent examination.'

‘But this is all theory,' interposed Colonel Lawson. ‘You can't put theory in the witness-box.'

‘I am trying to outline the probable course of events, sir,' Bobby answered. ‘And it is hardly all theory, for I am depending on what Miss Emmers told me when she thought that Jones's claim to have been an eyewitness of the murder proved Sir Albert's guilt and exonerated Dene, and so left her free to tell me what she knew. What I have just said, Dene outlined to her as a sort of joke he intended to play on Lady Cambers – possibly that was how the idea first occurred to him – to show up her ignorance, and make her less anxious to interfere with him. It got to be serious. He calculated that if she did visit the hut she would do so without saying anything to anyone, because, for one thing, she wouldn't want gossip about her visiting Frost Field alone and late at night, and then there was no one she could take with her except Amy, who was Dene's cousin, or the butler, Farman, whom I don't suppose she much wanted. She was a strikingly self-reliant woman, but if she did take a companion, or if she didn't go at all, it would only have meant thinking out another plan. Nothing would have been lost.'

‘Dene has his alibi still. And the pen found near her body, Dene lost some days before,' Lawson remarked.

‘It was the pen that finally convinced me of Dene's guilt,' Bobby said. ‘Or rather the ink in it.'

‘The ink?' repeated Lawson. ‘Why? How?'

‘The ink was identified at the laboratory as being the “Perennial” brand. Dene claims he missed the pen on Wednesday, and he sent in his advertisement about its loss on Friday. But all that may only prove careful preparation. As it happens the “Perennial” brand of ink is entirely new – it was only on public sale last Monday, and there was none of it in the village till a traveller left a sample at Mr. Dene's shop on the Friday and urged him to try it himself. Mr. Dene took it into his little private office with that idea. It follows, therefore, that the pen must have been filled with “Perennial” ink on or after the Friday, and no one but Eddy Dene and old Mr. Dene had access to the ink. Old Mr. Dene may be safely left out of the question, and there seems, therefore, a clear inference that Eddy Dene was using the pen two days after he claims to have missed it. I think it is fairly certain he hit on the idea of leaving the pen on the spot to draw on himself the instant suspicion he knew he could not wholly avoid, with the idea that when he could show he had missed the pen three days earlier, suspicion would be turned away, and therefore be all the slower, once proved unfounded, to attach itself to him again.'

‘There's still the alibi – the proof he was in his room at the time,' Colonel Lawson said.

‘Yes, sir,' agreed Bobby. ‘I've asked Station-Sergeant Weatherby to help me there, and I think there's a room used for stores at the top of the building, but otherwise empty. If you could come up there with me, sir, I think I could show you how that might have been worked. Only I would like to point out one thing first. Both Norris and Mrs. Dene confirm Dene's alibi and support each other. But neither actually saw Dene, and Mrs. Dene's statement that he spoke to her through the closed door is an afterthought. In her original statement she signed she says clearly and plainly that he made no answer when she knocked the first time. It was on the second occasion, a couple of hours later, when he responded.'

With that he led the way to the top of the building, where Sergeant Weatherby was waiting outside a closed door.

‘Busy as bees, sir,' he announced, with a grin as his chief appeared.

‘What are?' Colonel Lawson asked.

‘Shall we listen, sir?' Bobby asked; and when they were all silent they heard coming from within the room a curious indeterminate kind of shuffling, jerking noise, very much as if someone or something were moving to and fro.

‘What's that?' Colonel Lawson demanded. ‘Who's there?'

‘No one, sir,' answered Weatherby, evidently enjoying a joke to himself.

‘Mrs. Dene,' Bobby said slowly, ‘hearing sounds like these coming in the middle of the night from her son's room would naturally conclude they were caused by him. She would think it could be nothing else, and so would be certain that was what it was. Her belief would be quite honest and sincere, and her getting no answer to her knock she would put down to his state of nerves over his supposed toothache – perhaps the toothache was genuine, though; the dentist said there was an exposed nerve anything could start. Dene may have started it himself, with a pin or something, so as to make his face swell, or the swelling I saw may have been a bit of cotton-wool Norris, too, hearing sounds coming from the room, and hearing afterwards that Dene had had an attack of toothache that night, would be ready to believe just in the same way that he had heard him walking up and down the room.'