A Blunt Instrument (9 page)

Evidence of PC Glass: At 10.02, man seen coming out of garden gate. Evidence of Helen North: At 9.58, approximately, unknown man escorted to garden mate by Fletcher.

He was still looking pensively at these scribblings when PC Glass entered the office to report that no trace of any weapon had been found in the garden at Greystones.

Hannasyde gave a grunt, but said as Glass turned towards the door: Just a moment. Are you certain that the time when you saw a man come out of the gardengate was two minutes after ten?"

"Yes, sir."

"It could not, for instance, have been two or three minutes before ten?"

"No, sir. The time, by my watch and the clock in the room, was 10.05 p.m. when I entered the study. Therefore I am doubly certain, for to reach that room from the point where I was standing was a matter of three minutes, not of seven."

Hannasyde nodded. "All right; that's all. Report to Sergeant Hemingway in the morning."

"Yes, sir," Glass replied, but added darkly: "He that hath a froward heart findeth no good."

"I daresay," said Hannasyde discouragingly.

"And he that hath a perverse tongue falleth into mischief," said Glass with a good deal of severity.

Whether this pessimistic utterance referred to himself or to the absent Sergeant, Hannasyde did not inquire. As Glass walked towards the door, the telephone-bell rang, and the voice of the constable on duty informed the Superintendent that Sergeant Hemingway was on the line.

The Sergeant sounded less gloomy than when Hannasyde had parted from him. "That you, sir?" he asked briskly. "Well, I've got something, though where it's going to lead us I don't see. Shall I come down?"

"No, I'm coming back to town; I'll see you there. Any luck with those prints?"

"Depends what you call luck, Super. Some of 'em belong to a bloke by the name of Charlie Carpenter."

"Carpenter?" repeated Hannasyde. "Who the dickens is he?"

"It's a long story - what you might call highly involved," replied the Sergeant.

"All right: reserve it. I'll be up in about half-anhour."

"Right you are, Chief. Give my love to Ichabod!" said the Sergeant.

Hannasyde grinned as he laid down the receiver, but refrained from delivering a message which, judging by Glass's forbidding countenance, would not be well received. He said kindly: "Well, Glass, you've been doing a lot of work on this case. You'll be glad to hear that some of the finger-prints have been identified."

Apparently he was wrong. "I hear, but I behold trouble and darkness," said Glass.

"The same might be said of all murder cases," replied Hannasyde tartly, and closed the interview.

Chapter Six

Hannasyde found his subordinate awaiting him in a cheerful mood. "Any luck your end, Chief?" he inquired. "I've had a fullish sort of a day myself."

"Yes, I got hold of a certain amount," Hannasyde replied. "Glass could find no trace of the weapon at Greystones, though, which is disappointing."

"He was probably too busy holding prayer meetings with himself to have time to look for the weapon," said the Sergeant. "How's he doing? I can see he's going to be my cross all right."

"As far as I can gather, you're likely to be his," said Hannasyde, with the ghost of a smile. "He made a somewhat obscure reference to forward hearts and perverse tongues which I took to mean you."

"He did, did he? Ah well, the only wonder to me is he didn't call me a hissing and an abomination. I daresay he will yet. I don't mind him reciting his pieces, though it isn't strictly in accordance with discipline, as long as he doesn't take it into his silly head I've got to be saved. I've been saved once, and that's enough for me. Too much!" he added, remembering certain features of this event. "Nasty little tracts about Lost Sheep, and the Evils of Drink," he explained. "It's a funny thing, but whenever you come up against any of these reforming chaps they always have it fixed in their minds you must be a walking lump of vice. You can't persuade 'em otherwise either. What you might call a Fixation."

Hannasyde, who knew that the Sergeant's study of his favourite subject had led his adventurous feet into a strange realm of bastard words and lurid theories, intervened hastily, and asked for an account of his day's labours.

"Well, it's been interesting, but like what Glass said about me: obscure," said the Sergeant. "Taking our friend Abraham Budd first, we come to the first unexpected feature of the case. When I got up to Headquarters this morning, what should I find but his lordship waiting for me on the mat."

"Budd?" said Hannasyde. "Do you mean he came here?"

"That's right, Chief. Came along as soon as he'd read the news in the evening paper. They'll start getting the evening editions out before breakfast soon, if you ask me. Anyway, Mr. Budd had his copy tucked under his arm, and was just oozing helpfulness."

"Do get on!" said Hannasyde. "Does he know something, or what?"

"Not so as you'd notice," responded the Sergeant. "According to him, he left the house by way of the garden-gate at about 9.35 p.m."

"That tallies with Mrs. North's account, at all events!" said Hannasyde.

"Oh, so you got something there, did you, Super?"

"Yes, but go on with your report. If Budd left at 9.35 he can't have seen anything, I suppose. What did he come to Scotland Yard for?"

"Funk," said the Sergeant tersely. "I've been reading a whole lot about causations, and that naturally made it as plain as a pikestaff to me -'

"Cut out the causations! What's Budd got to be frightened of? And don't hand me anything about Early Frustrations or Inhibitions, because I'm not interested! If you knew what you were talking about I could bear it, but you don't."

The Sergeant, accustomed to this lack of sympathy, merely sighed, and said with unimpaired good humour: "Well, I haven't, so far, got to the bottom of Mr. Budd's trouble. He calls himself an outside broker, and, by what I can make out, the late Ernest was in the habit of using him as a kind of cover-man every time he wanted to put through any deals which, strictly speaking, he oughtn't to have put through. At least, that's the way it looked to me, putting two and two together, and making allowances for a bit of coyness on friend Budd's part."

"I'd gathered that he was a broker. There are one or two copies of letters to him amongst Fletcher's papers, and a few of his replies. I haven't had time yet to go through them carefully. What took him down to see Fletcher at nine o'clock at night?"

"That's where the narrative got what you might call abstruse," replied the Sergeant. "Nor, if you was to ask me, should I say that I actually believed all that Budd told me. Sweating very freely, he was. But then, it's been a hot day, and he's a fleshy man. However, the gist of it was that owing to the difficulty of hearing very well over the telephone there was some sort of misunderstanding about some highly confidential instructions issued by the late Ernest in - er - a still more highly confidential deal. Our Mr. Budd, not wishing to entrust any more of this hush-hush business to the telephone, went off to see the late Ernest in person."

"It sounds very fishy," said Hannasyde.

"That's nothing to what it smelt like," said the Sergeant. "I had to open the window. But bearing in mind that the man we're after isn't Budd, I didn't press the matter much. What I did see fit to ask him, though, was whether the aforesaid misunderstanding had led to any unpleasantness with the late Ernest."

Hannasyde nodded. "Quite right. What did he say?"

"Oh, he behaved as though I was his Father Confessor!" said the Sergeant. That may have been on account of my nice, kind personality, or, on the other hand, it may not. But he opened right out like a poppy in the sun."

"I can do without these poetical flights," said Hannasyde.

Just as you say, Chief. Anyway, he took me right to his bosom. Fairly oozed natural oil, and what I took to be highly unnatural frankness. He didn't keep a thing from me - nothing I'd already got wind of, at any rate. There was a little unpleasantness, due to the late Ernest's having assumed that certain of his instructions had been acted on, which, owing to the telephone and one thing and another, they hadn't been. However, once the late Ernest had got over his naughty temper, all became jake again, and they parted like brothers."

"Oh!" said Hannasyde. "Quite plausible. It might be true."

"Yes, but I'll tell you a funny thing," said the Sergeant. "I've been swotting flies all day, but the whole time little Abraham was with me I never saw a fly settle on him, not once."

"Oh!" said Hannasyde again. "Like that, is he?"

"Yes," replied the Sergeant. "He is. What's more, Super, though you and I may not see eye to eye about Psychology, I know when a man's got the wind up. Little Abraham was having quite a job to keep his feet down on the ground. But I'm bound to say he did it. He answered all my questions before I'd even had time to ask them, too. Gave me a word-picture of his state of mind when he read about the late Ernest's death that was a masterpiece. First you could have knocked him down with a feather; then he thought, why, it must have happened not half-an-hour after he had left the late Ernest. After that he hoped he wouldn't get mixed up in it, and from there it was only a matter of seconds before he remembered handing the late Ernest's butler his card; and, on top of that, having Ernest address him in a loud and angry voice. Finally, it struck him like a thunder-clap that the late Ernest had shown him out by the side gate, so that no other person had witnessed his departure. Having assembled all these facts, he perceived that he was in a very compromising situation, and the only thing to be done was to come straight round to the kind police, whom he was brought up to look upon as his best friends."

Hannasyde was frowning. "It's almost too plausible. What did you do?"

"Gave him a piece of toffee, and sent him home to his mother," answered the Sergeant promptly.

Hannasyde, who knew his Sergeant, apparently approved of this somewhat unorthodox conduct, for he said: "Yes, about the best thing you could do. He'll keep. Now, what about this Charlie Carpenter you spoke of over the telephone?"

The Sergeant abandoned flippancy for the moment. "A packet!" he said. "That's where we come on the second unexpected feature of this case. As a matter of fact, I thought we were going to draw a blank on those fingerprints. But this is what we've got." He picked up a folder from the desk as he spoke, and handed it to his superior. It contained a portrait of a young man, two sets of photographed finger-prints, and a brief, unsentimental record of the latter career of one Charlie Carpenter, aged twenty-nine years, measuring five feet nine inches, weighing eleven stone six pounds, having light-brown hair, grey eyes, and no distinguishing birth-marks.

Hannasyde's brows went up as he read, for the record was one of petty rogueries, culminating in a sentence of eighteen months' imprisonment for false pretences. "This is certainly unexpected," he said.

"Doesn't fit at all, does he?" agreed the Sergeant. "That's what I thought."

Hannasyde was studying the portrait. "Flashy-looking fellow. Hair probably artificially waved. All right, Sergeant: I can see you're bursting with news. Let's have it.

"Newton handled his case," said the Sergeant. "He doesn't know much about him, beyond his little lapses. Young waster with no background, and a taste for hitting the high spots. Dances and sings a bit; been on the stage, but not what you'd call noticeably; at one time did the gigolo act at a cheap dance-hall in the East End; seems to have gone pretty big with the ladies: you know the type. Not in the late Ernest's walk of life at all. In fact, I was just thinking I'd hit on the greatest discovery of the age, which was that Bertillon had made a mistake after all, when Newton said something that opened out a whole new vista before me."

"Well?"

"He said that at the time of his arrest, which took place, as you'll notice, in November of 1934, Charlie was living with an actress - that means front row of the Beauty Chorus - of the name of Angela Angel!"

Hannasyde looked up. "Angela Angel? Wasn't there a case about a year ago to do with a girl called Angela Angel? Suicide, wasn't it?"

"It was," said the Sergeant. "Sixteen months ago, to be precise." He opened the case in which he had borne Ernest Fletcher's papers away from Greystones, and picked up a photograph that was lying on the top of a pile of documents. "And that, Super, is Angela Angel!"

Hannasyde took the photograph, and recognised it at once as the one which had struck an elusive chord of memory in the Sergeant's brain earlier in the day.

"As soon as Newton mentioned the name, which he only did because of the girl having been a case herself, poor kid, I remembered," said the Sergeant. "Jimmy Gale was in charge of her little affair, which was how I came to hear a bit about it at the time. Did herself in for no particular reason that anyone ever discovered. She wasn't in trouble, she'd got a job in the chorus of the cabaret show at Duke's, and quite a bit of money put by in the bank. All the same, she stuck her head in a gas oven one night. Well, looked at as a case, there was nothing to it. But there were points which interested Gale in a mild sort of a way. For one thing, she didn't leave any letter behind, explaining why she'd done it, which, in Gale's experience, was unusual. Nine times out of ten a suicide'll leave a letter behind which'll make some poor devil feel like a murderer for the rest of his life, whether he deserves to or not. She didn't. What's more, they never found out what her real name was. She even opened her bank account under the name of Angela Angel. She didn't seem to have any relations, or if she had they never came forward to claim her; and she wasn't, by all accounts, one of those who tell their girlfriends the whole story of their lives. None of the rest of the chorus knew much about her when it came to the point. But what they did know was that about seven or eight months before she killed herself she got off with a very nice gentleman, who set her up in style in a smart flat with the usual trimmings."