A Blunt Instrument (14 page)

"You wouldn't be so encouraging if you knew what she's up to," said Neville. "She's trying to prove that I murdered Ernie."

"Oh no, dear!" said Miss Fletcher distressfully. "I'm afraid Neville's often very thoughtless, but he wouldn't do a thing like that."

"Why on earth you can't keep a still tongue in your head baffles conjecture!" Sally told Neville wrathfully.

"His poor father was very talkative," explained Miss Fletcher. "Dear Ernie, too, was always good company. But unfortunately Neville has got into a bad habit of mumbling, which makes it very difficult to hear what he says. Neville, I have just discovered that there will have to be an inquest. Can nothing be done to stop it?"

"No. Do you mind?" he inquired.

"Well, dear, it's not very nice, is it? We've never had such a thing in the family. So common! I wonder if Mr. Lawrence could do anything about it? I think I will go and ring him up."

"But Miss Fletcher -!"began Sally, only to be silenced by having her foot trodden on by Neville.

Miss Fletcher, recommending Neville to take care of his guest, drifted away. Neville said softly: "You know, you're a menace. Leave my aunt to me, will you?"

"But what's the use of letting her think there needn't be an inquest? It isn't very considerate of you to -'

"Of course it's not considerate! It wasn't considerate of me to discover that I hadn't a shirt fit to wear this morning, or a pair of socks without holes in them; and it won't be considerate of me when I think up a new annoyance, which I shall do as soon as this inquestbusiness begins to wear thin. You've got a disgustingly sentimental idea that bereaved persons ought to be humoured, cosseted, and given plenty of time in which to indulge their grief. I shouldn't be at all surprised to find that you're one of those paralysing monsters of unselfishness, with a bias towards self-sacrifice, and a strong yen for shouldering other people's burdens."

Sally gave a gasp. "Go on! It's the rankest kind of boloney, but I should be interested to know how you defend it."

"Shouldn't place people under obligations," said Neville briefly. "Nearly always intolerable. Effect on your own character probably disastrous."

"Why?"

"Spiritual conceit."

She polished her monocle. "There's something in what you say," she admitted. "Not much, but a grain of truth. Sorry I tried to butt in on your plans for Miss Fletcher's consolation. I very nearly took a hand in Helen's differences with John, too. A small, inner voice bade me hold my peace."

"A woman's instinct!" said Neville, deeply moved. "Not but what I sympathise with your purely rational desire to disperse the fog they grope in. But one should never forget that some people fair revel in fog."

"Helen isn't revelling in any of this," Sally replied. "Married couples who can't get on rather bore me in the ordinary way, but though I think she's been cavorting around like a prize ass my withers are a trifle wrung by Helen's troubles. They really do seem to have gathered thick and fast upon her. The worst of it is, I can't be sure which way John will jump if he discovers the truth."

"Baffling man -John," agreed Neville.

"Well, he is. Just consider it! He arrives in England, unexpectedly, the day Ernie is murdered, and turns up here the next morning, suspecting that the footprints discovered in the garden might be Helen's."

"Oh no, did he really? That leads us to suppose that he knew something."

"Yes, but what? Helen says he doesn't suspect her of having had any kind of liaison with Ernie. But when he walked in on us yesterday the general impression I got was that an iceberg had drifted in. In fact, he was coldly angry, and not loving any of us very noticeably."

"Forgive the interruption, but if he thought Helen was mixed up in a murder case, there was a certain amount of excuse for peevishness. I don't want to be old-world, but wife's admitted presence in home of noted lady-killer is enough to make most men feel a trifle out of humour."

"I know, and if he'd raged at her I could have understood it. He was just deadly polite."

"Obviously the moment for Helen to put over a big act as repentant wife."

"That what I hope she is doing, but she's so burned up over the whole thing that she seems to have lost grip. Of course, if John were to say: "Darling, tell me all," I expect she would. But he isn't that sort. They must have let themselves drift an awful way apart."

The same thought was in Helen's mind at that moment. She had just entered the library, where her husband sat writing at his desk, and almost before she closed the door behind her she wished that she were on the other side of it.

North looked up, regarding her in a way which did not tend to put her any more at her ease. "Do you want me, Helen?" he asked impersonally.

"I - No, not exactly. Are you busy?"

He laid down his pen. "Not if you wish to talk to me."

This reply, though possibly intended to be encouraging, had the effect of making Helen feel a very long way away from him. She moved across the room to a chair by the window, and sat down in it. "It's such a long time since we talked together - really talked - that I seem to have forgotten how," she said, trying to speak lightly.

His face hardened. "Yes."

She realised that hers had been an unfortunate remark. She said, not looking at him: "We - we ought to talk this thing over, don't you think? It concerns us both, doesn't it?"

"Certainly. What do you want to say?"

She tried to formulate sentences in her brain; he neither moved nor spoke, but sat watching her. Suddenly she raised her eyes, and said abruptly: "Why did you come home like that? So unexpectedly, and without a word to me?"

"I thought, Helen, that you already knew the answer to that question."

"I? How could I know?"

"You informed me that you did. You said that I had come home to spy on you."

She flushed. "I didn't mean it. I was upset."

"That you were upset by my arrival is not, my dear Helen, a very reassuring thought."

"Not that! Ernie's death - that policeman asking me such ghastly questions!"

"We should get on better," he remarked, "if you did not lie to me. I know you rather well. You were horrified to see me."

She looked rather hopelessly across at him. "Oh, what's the use of talking like this? It only leads to misunderstandings, and bitterness."

After a moment's silence, he answered levelly: "Very well. What did you want to talk to me about? Fletcher's murder?"

She nodded. "Yes."

"It seems to be very much on your nerves."

"Wouldn't it be on yours?"

"That would depend on whether I felt either grief, or fear."

"Grief ! Oh no! But I was there that evening. I don't want to be dragged into it. You must see how awful my position is!"

"Had you not better tell me exactly what happened?" he suggested.

"I did tell you. I think I've made the Superintendent realise that it would be no use asking me to identify the man I saw, but -'

Just a moment, Helen. It is time we understood one another. Did you,, in fact, recognise that man?"

"No!" she said quickly. "I never saw his face."

"But you have some idea, haven't you, who he was?"

She said in a low voice: "If I had I shouldn't tell a soul. You can be sure of that."

"In that case, there does not seem to be much point in pursuing the matter further," he said. "The only advice I can possibly give you, as things are, is to keep calm, and to say as little as you can." He picked up his pen again, but after writing a couple of lines, said, without looking up: "By the way, have you any objection to telling me why Neville Fletcher came to see you on the night of the murder?"

She gave an uncontrollable start, and faltered: "How do you know? Who told you?"

"Baker saw him leave the premises, and mentioned it to me this morning."

"Do you encourage the servants to report to you who visits me?"

"No," he replied imperturbably.

"Neville came to tell me Ernie had been killed." He looked up at that. "Indeed! Why?"

"He knew I was a friend of Ernie's. I suppose he thought I'd want to know. He's always doing mad things.

You simply can't account for anything he says or does."

"What does he know about this business?"

"Nothing. Only what we all know."

"Then why did he think it necessary to visit you at midnight to tell you what you would certainly know a few hours later?"

"He'd seen my footprints," she said desperately. "He thought they might be mine. He came to find out."

"If Neville leapt to the conclusion that the footprints were yours he must enjoy a greater share of your confidence than I suspected. What is there between you?"

She pressed her hands to her throbbing temples. "Oh, my God, what do you take me for? Neville! It's - it's almost laughable!"

"You misunderstand me. I wasn't suggesting that there was any love between you. But your explanation of his visit is altogether too lame to be believed. Did he by any chance know that you were at Greystones that evening?"

"No, of course not! How could he? It was a guess, that's all."

"Not even Neville Fletcher would make such a guess without having very good reason for doing so. Am I to understand that you were so much in the habit of visiting Fletcher in that - you will have to forgive me if I call it clandestine - manner, that it was a natural conclusion for Neville to arrive at?"

"Oh no! Neville knew all the time that I didn't feel about Ernie except as a friend."

He raised his brows. "Was your possible relationship with Fletcher of interest to Neville?"

"No. No, of course not. But I've known Neville for years." Her voice tailed off uncertainly.

"I am quite aware of that. I too have known Neville - or shall we say, have been acquainted with him? - for years. Are you asking me to believe that that extremely detached young man asked you to explain your dealings with his uncle?"

She could not help smiling, but there was fright in her eyes. "No. Actually, I told him."

"You told Neville Fletcher… I see. Why?"

She muttered: "No reason. It - sort of came out. I can't explain."

"That at least is evident," he said harshly.

"You don't believe anything I say."

"Do you find that surprising?"

She was silent, staring down at her clasped hands.

"Is Neville in love with you?"

She said, with genuine surprise: 'Neville? Oh no, I'm sure he's not!"

"You must forgive me for being so ignorant," he said. "So little have I spied on you that I'm not at all up to date. Who, at the moment, is an enamoured swain? Is Jerry Maitland still in the running?"

"If I told you no one had ever been in the running you'd- believe that as little as you believe the rest of my story."

"As I have yet to hear the rest of your story, I can't answer that. Oh, don't insult my intelligence by telling me that I have heard it!"

Her lips were trembling. "If you think that, is this the way to get me to tell you the whole truth? You treat me as though I were - as though I were a criminal, and not your wife!"

"My wife!" He gave a short laugh. "Is not that a trifle farcical?"

"If it is, it's your fault!" she said in a choking voice.

"Oh, undoubtedly! I failed to satisfy you, didn't I? You wanted more excitement than was to be found in marriage with me, and one man's love was not enough for you. Tell me this, Helen; would you have married me if I had not been a rich man?"

She made a gesture, as though thrusting his words away from her, and rose jerkily to her feet, and stood with her back to him, staring out of the window. After a moment she said in a constricted tone: "If they don't arrest me for Ernie's murder, you had better divorce me."

"They won't arrest you. You needn't let that bugbear ride you."

"Things look very black against me," she said wearily. "I don't know that I care much."

"If things look black, you've kept something from me which must be of vital importance. Are you going to tell me what it is?"

She shook her head. "No. When the case is over - if we come out of it intact - I'll make it possible for you to divorce me."

"I'm not going to divorce you. Unless -'He stopped.

"Well? Unless?"

"Unless there's someone else whom you've fallen in love with enough to - But I don't believe there is. You don't fall in love, Helen. All you want is a series of flirtations. But if I am to help you now -'

"Why should you?" she interrupted.

"Because you're my wife."

"The whole duty of a husband, in fact. Thank you, but I would prefer you to keep out of it."

"I can't do that."

"You were a fool to come down here!" she said.

"Possibly, but if you were to be dragged into the case there was nothing to be done."

She turned. "To save your own good name? Do you hate me, John?"

"No."

"You're indifferent, in fact. We're both indifferent." She came away from the window. "I don't want to be divorced. I realise that all this mess - Ernie's death, the scandal, everything! - has been my fault, and I'm sorry. In future, I'll be more careful. There really isn't anything more to be said, is there?"

"If you don't trust me enough to tell me the whole truth, nothing."

"I trust you as much as you trust me!" she said fiercely. "You know how much that is! Now, if you please, let's banish the whole subject. Do you mean to come home to dinner tonight?"

He was looking rather narrowly at her, and did not answer. She repeated the question; he replied in his usual cold way: "No, I shall dine in town. I may be late back. Expect me when you see me."

Chapter Nine

Sergeant Hemingway left Greystones in a thoughtful mood. An exhaustive search had failed to discover the hiding-place of any weapon, but one fact had emerged with which he seemed to be rather pleased.

"Though why I should be I can't tell you," he said to Glass. "It makes the whole business look more screwy than ever. But in my experience that's very often the way. You start on a case which looks as though it's going to be child's play, and you don't seem to get any further with it. By the time you've been at work on it a couple of days you've collected enough evidence to prove that there couldn't have been a murder at all. Then something breaks, and there you are."

"Do you say that the more difficult a case becomes the easier it is to solve?" asked Glass painstakingly.

"That's about the size of it," admitted the Sergeant. "When it's got so gummed up that each new fact you pick up contradicts the last I begin to feel cheerful."

"I do not understand. I see around me only folly and sin and vanity. Shall these things make a righteous man glad?"

"Not being a righteous man, I can't say. Speaking as a humble flatfoot, if it weren't for folly and sin and vanity I wouldn't be where I am now, and nor would you, my lad. And if you'd stop wasting your time learning bits of the Bible to fire off at me - which in itself is highly insubordinate conduct, let me tell you - and take a bit of wholesome interest in this problem, you'd probably do yourself a lot of good. You might even get promoted."

"I set no store by worldly honours," said Glass gloomily. "Man being in honour abideth not: he is like the beasts that perish."

"What you do want," declared the Sergeant with asperity, "is a course of Bile Beans! I've met some killjoys in my time, but you fairly take the cake. What did you get out of your friend the butler?"

"He knows nothing."

"Don't you believe it! Butlers always know something."

"It is not so. He knows only that harsh words passed between the dead man and his nephew on the evening of the murder."

"Young Neville explained that," said the Sergeant musingly. "Not that I set much store by what he says. Pack of lies, I daresay."

"A lying tongue is but for the moment," observed Glass, with melancholy satisfaction.

"You can't have been about the world much if that's what you think. Do you still hold to it that the man you saw on the night of the murder wasn't carrying anything?"

"You would have me change my evidence," said Glass, fixing him with an accusing glare, "but I tell you that a man that beareth false witness is a maul, and a sword, and a sharp arrow!"

"No one wants you to bear false witness," said the Sergeant irritably. "And as far as I'm concerned, you're a sharp arrow already, and probably a maul as well, if a maul means what I think it does. I've had to tell you off once already for giving me lip, and I've had about enough of it. Wait a bit!" He stopped short in the middle of the pavement and pulled out his notebook, and hastily thumbed over the leaves. "You wait!" he said darkly. "I've got something here that I copied out specially. I knew it would come in useful. Yes, here we are! He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed." He looked up to see how this counter-blast was being received, and added with profound satisfaction: "And that without remedy!"

Glass compressed his lips, but said after a moment's inward struggle: "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. I will declare my iniquity, I will be sorry for my sin."

"All right," said the Sergeant, returning his notebook to his pocket. "We'll carry on from there."

A heavy sigh broke from Glass. "Mine iniquities have gone over my head; as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me," he said in a brooding tone.

"There's no need to take on about it," said the Sergeant, mollified. "It's just got to be a bad habit with you, which you ought to break yourself of. I'm sorry if I told you off a bit roughly. Forget it!"

"Open rebuke," said Glass with unabated gloom, "is better than secret love."

The Sergeant fought for words. As he could think of none that were not profane, and felt morally certain that Glass would, without hesitation, condemn those with Biblical aphorisms, he controlled himself, and strode on in fulminating silence.

Glass walked beside him, apparently unaware of having said anything to enrage him. As they turned into the road where the police station was situated, he said: "You found no weapon. I told you you would not."

"You're right," said the Sergeant. "I found no weapon, but I found out something you'd have found out two days ago if you'd had the brains of a louse."

"He that refraineth his lips is wise," remarked Glass. "What did I overlook?"

"Well, I don't know that it was any business of yours, strictly speaking," said the Sergeant, always fair-minded. "But the grandfather clock in the hall is a minute slow by the one in the late Ernest's study, which synchronised with your watch. What's more, I found out from Miss Fletcher that it's been like that for some time."

"Is it important to the case?" asked Glass.

"Of course it's important. I don't say it makes it any easier, because it doesn't, but that's what I told you: in cases like this you're always coming up against new bits of evidence which go and upset any theory you may have been working on. On the face of it, it looks as though the man you saw - we'll assume it was Carpenter - did the murder, doesn't it?"

"That is so," agreed Glass.

"Well, the fact of that hall clock's being a minute slow throws a spanner in the works," said the Sergeant. "In the second act of her highly talented performance, Mrs. North stated that that clock struck the hour, which was 10 p.m., while she was in the hall, on her way to the front door. You saw Carpenter making his getaway at 10.02. That gave him a couple of minutes in which to have killed the late Ernie, disposed of the weapon, and reached the gate. It's my opinion it couldn't have been done, but at least there was an outside chance. Now I discover that when Mrs. North left the study it wasn't 10.00, but 10.01, and that's properly upset things. It begins to look as though Carpenter wasn't in on the murder at all, but simply went down to try his luck at putting the black on the late Ernie, and was shown off the premises as described by Mrs. North. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if Carpenter turns out to be one of those highly irrelevant things that seem to crop up just to make life harder. The real murderer must have been hiding in the garden, waiting for his opportunity, and while you were taking notice of Carpenter, and deciding to go and investigate, he was doing the job." ~

Glass considered this for a moment. "It is possible, but how did he make his escape? I saw no one in the garden."

"I daresay you didn't see anyone, but you didn't go looking behind every bush, did you? You flashed your torch round, and thought there was no one in the garden. There might have been, and what was to stop him making his getaway while you were in the study?"

They had reached the police station by this time. Glass paused on the steps, and said slowly: "It does not seem to me that it can have happened like that. I do not say it was impossible, but you would have me believe that between 10.01, when Mrs. North left the house, and 10.05, when I discovered the body, a man had time to come forth from his hiding-place, enter the study, slay Ernest Fletcher, and return to his hiding-place. It is true that I myself did not enter the study until 10.05, but as I came up the path must I not have seen a man escaping thence?"

"You know, when you keep your mind on the job you're not so dumb," said the Sergeant encouragingly. "All the same, I've got an answer to that one. Who says the murderer escaped by way of the side gate? What was to stop him letting himself out the same way Mrs. North did - by the front door?"

Glass looked incredulous. "He must be a madman who would do so! Would he run the risk of being seen by a member of the household, perhaps by Mrs. North, who had only a minute or two before passed through the study door into the hall, as he must have known, had he been lying in wait as you suggest?"

"Heard you coming up the path, and had to take a chance," said the Sergeant.

"Folly is joy to him that is destitute of wisdom!" said Glass scornfully.

"Well, for all you know he was destitute of wisdom," replied the Sergeant. "You go and get your dinner, and report here when you've had it."

He went up the steps, and into the building. It was not until he had passed out of Glass's sight that it occurred to him that the constable's last remark might not have been directed at the unknown murderer. A wrathful exclamation rose to his lips; he half turned, as though to go after Glass; but thought better of it. Encountering the Station Sergeant's eye, he said: "Somebody here must have had a grudge against me when they saddled me with that pain in the neck."

"Glass?" inquired Sergeant Cross sympathetically. "Chronic, isn't he? Mind you, he isn't usually as bad as he's been over this case. Well, it stands to reason, doesn't it? His sort has to have a bit of sin in front of them to get properly wound up, as you might say. Do you want him taken off?"

"Oh no!" said the Sergeant, with bitter irony. "I like being told-off by constables. Makes a nice change."

"We'll take him off the job," offered Cross. "He's not used to murder-cases, that's what it is. It's gone to his head."

The Sergeant relented. "No, I'll put up with him. At least he's a conscientious chap, and apart from this nasty habit he's got of reciting Scripture I haven't anything against him. I daresay he's got a fixation, poor fellow."

An hour later, mellowed by food, he was propounding this theory to Superintendent Hannasyde, who arrived at the police station just as his subordinate came back from a leisurely dinner.

"You never know," he said. "We shall quite likely find that he had some shocking experience when he was a child, which would account for it."

"As I have no intention of wasting my time - or letting you waste yours - in probing into Glass's past, I should think there is nothing more unlikely," replied Hannasyde somewhat shortly.

The Sergeant cast him a shrewd glance, and said: "I told you this wasn't going to be such a whale of a case, Chief. Said so at the start. Bad morning?"

"No, merely inconclusive. Budd had been doublecrossing Fletcher; Neville Fletcher seems to be up to his eyes in debt; and North did not spend the evening of the 17th at his flat."

"Well, isn't that nice?" said the Sergeant. "Stage all littered up with suspects, just like I said it would be! Tell me more about friend Budd."

Hannasyde gave him a brief account of the broker's exploits. The Sergeant scratched his chin, remarking at the end of the tale: "I don't like it. Not a bit. You can say, of course, that if he had to hand over nine thousand shares which he hadn't got, and couldn't get without pretty well ruining himself, he had a motive for murdering the late Ernest. On the other hand, what he said to you about Ernest's not being able to come out into the open to prosecute him rings very true. Very true indeed. He's not my fancy at all. What about North?"

"North, unless I'm much mistaken, is playing a deep game. He told me that after dinner at his club he returned to his flat, and went early to bed. What actually happened was that he returned to his flat shortly after 8.30 p.m., and went out again just before 9.00. He came back finally at 11.45."