Busman’s Honeymoon (17 page)

  ‘No, no. Mother Goose,’ said Peter, hastily. ‘Not there, not there, my child, Felicia Hemans. Let us pass on. How long did he live after he was hit?’

  ‘Doctor says,’ put in the constable, ‘“from half an hour to one hour, judging by the—the—hem-something-or-other.”’

  ‘Haemorrhage?’ suggested Kirk, taking possession of the letter. ‘That’s it. Haemorrhagic effusion into the cortex. That’s a good one.’

  ‘Bleeding in the brain,’ said Peter. ‘Good lord—he had plenty of time. He may have been coshed outside the house altogether.’

  ‘But when do you suppose it all happened?’ demanded Harriet She appreciated Peter’s effort to exonerate the house from all share in the crime, and was annoyed with herself for having betrayed any sensibility on the subject It was distracting for him. Her tone, in consequence, was determinedly off-hand and practical.

  ‘That,’ said the Superintendent, ’is what we’ve got to fine out. Some time last Wednesday night, putting what the doctor says with the rest of the evidence. After dark, if them candles are anything to go by. And that means—H’m! We’d better have this chap Crutchley in. Seems like he might have been the last person to see the deceased alive.’

  ‘Enter the obvious suspect,’ said Peter, lightly.

  ‘The obvious suspect is always innocent.’ said Harriet in the same tone.

  ‘In books, my lady,’ said Mr Kirk, with a little indulgent bow towards her, as who should say, ‘The ladies. God bless them!’

  ‘Come, come,’ said Peter, ‘we must not introduce our professional prejudices into the case. How about it. Superintendent? Shall we make ourselves scarce?’

  ‘That’s as you like, my lord. I’d be glad enough if you’d stay; you might give me a bit of help, seeing as you know the ropes, so to speak. Not but what it’ll be a kind of busman’s holiday for you,’ he finished up, rather dubiously.

  ‘That’s what I was thinking,’ said Harriet. ‘A busman’s honeymoon. Butchered to make a—’

  ‘Lord Byron!’ cried Mr Kirk, a little too promptly. ‘Butchered to make a busman’s—no, that don’t seem right somehow.’

  ‘Try Roman,’ said Peter. ‘All right, we’ll do our best. No objection to smoking in court, I take it. Where the devil did I put the matches?’

  ‘Here you are, my lord,’ said Sellon. He produced a box and struck a light. Peter eyed him curiously, and remarked: ‘Hullo! You’re left-handed.’

  ‘For some things, my lord. Not for writing.’

  ‘Only for striking matches—and handling Edinburgh rock?’

  ‘Left-handed?’ said Kirk. ‘Why, so you are, Joe. I hope you ain’t this tall, left-handed murderer what we’re looking out for?’ mm

  ‘No, sir,’ said the constable, briefly.

  ‘A pretty thing that’ud be?’ said his superior, with a hearty guffaw. ‘We shouldn’t never hear the last of that. Now, you hop out and get Crutchley. Nice lad he is,’ he went on, turning to Peter as Sellon left the room. ’Ard working, but no Sherlock ’Olmes, if you follow me. Slow in the uptake. I sometimes think his heart ain’t rightly in his work these days. Married too young, that’s what it is, and started a family, which is a handicap to a young officer.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Peter, ‘all this matrimony is a sad mistake.’

  He laid his hand on his wife’s shoulder, while Mr Kirk tactfully studied his notebook.

  SAILOR: Faith, Dick Reede, it is to little end:

  His conscience to too liberal, and he too niggardly

  To part from anything may do thee good....

  REEDE: If prayers and fair entreaties will not serve,

  Or make no battery in his flinty breast,

  I’ll curse the carle, and see what that will do

  —ARDEN OF FEVERSHAM.

  The gardener walked up to the table with a slightly belligerent air, as though he had an idea that the police were there for the sole purpose of preventing him from exercising his lawful right to obtain payment of forty pounds. He admitted, briefly, when questioned, that his name was Frank Crutchley and that he was accustomed to attend to the garden one day a week at Talboys for a stipend of five shillings per diem, putting in the rest of his time doing odd jobs of lorry-driving and taxi-work for Mr Hancock at the garage in Pagford.

  ‘Saving up, I was,’ said Crutchley, with insistence, ‘to get a garridge of my own, only for that there forty pound Mr Noakes had off of me.’

  ‘Never mind that now,’ said the Superintendent. ‘That’s gone west, that has, and it’s no use crying over spilt milk.’

  Crutchley was about as much convinced by this assurance as were the Allies, on being informed by Mr Keynes, after the conclusion of the Peace Treaty, that they might whistle for their indemnities, since the money was not there. It is impossible for human nature to believe that money is not there. It seems so much more likely that the money is there and only needs bawling for.

  ‘He promised,’ affirmed Frank Crutchley, in a dogged effort to overcome Mr Kirk’s extraordinary obtuseness ‘that he’d let me have it when I came today.’

  ‘Well,’ said Kirk, ‘I dare say he might have done, if some body hadn’t butted in and brained him. You ought to a-beer smarter and got it out of him last week.’

  This could be nothing but stupidity. Crutchley explained patiently: ‘He hadn’t got it then.’

  ‘Oh, hadn’t he though?’ said the Superintendent ‘That’s all you know about it.’

  This was a staggerer. Crutchley tamed white.

  ‘Cripes! You don’t mean to tell me—’

  ‘Oh, yes he had,’ said Kirk. This information, if he knew anything about it, was going to loosen his witness’s tongue for him and save a deal of trouble. Crutchley turned with a frantic look to the other members of the party. Peter confirmed Kirk’s statement with a nod. Harriet, who had known days when the loss of forty pounds would have meant greater catastrophe than Peter could ever suffer by the loss of forty thousand, said sympathetically:

  ‘Yes, Crutchley. I’m afraid he had the money on him all the time.’

  ‘What! He had the money? You found it on him?’

  ‘Well, we did,’ admitted the Superintendent. ‘There’s no call to make a secret of it.’ He waited for the witness to draw the obvious conclusion.

  ‘Mean to say, if he hadn’t been killed, I might have had my money?’

  ‘If you could have got in before Mr MacBride,’ said Harriet, with more honesty than consideration for Kirk’s tactics.

  Crutchley, however, was not troubling his head about Mr MacBride. The murderer was the man who had robbed him of his own, and he took no pains to conceal his feelings.

  ‘God! I’ll—I’ll—I’ll—I’d like to—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said the Superintendent, ‘we quite understand that. And now’s your opportunity. Any facts you can give us—’

  ‘Facts! I’ve been done, that’s what it is, and I—’

  ‘Look here, Crutchley,’ said Peter. ‘We know you’ve had a rotten deal, but that can’t be helped. The man who killed Mr Noakes has done you a bad turn, and he’s the man we’re after. Use your wits and see if you can’t help us to get even with him.’

  The quiet, incisive tone had its effect. A kind of illumination spread over Crutchley’s features.

  ‘Thank you, my lord,’ said Kirk. ‘That’s about the size of it, and put very plain. Now, my lad, we’re sorry about your money, but it’s up to you to give us a hand. See?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Crutchley, with an almost savage eagerness. All right. What d’you want to know?’

  ‘Well, first of all—when did you last see Mr Noakes?’

  ‘Wednesday evening, same as I said. I finished up my work just before six and come in here to do the pots; and when I’d done ’em he give me five bob, same as usual, and that’s when I started askin’ him for my forty quid.’

  ‘Where was that? In here?’

  ‘No, in the kitchen. He always sat in there. I come out of here with the steps in my ’and—’

  ‘Steps? Why the steps?’

  ‘Why, for that there cactus and the clock. I wind the clock every week—it’s an eight-day. I can’t reach either on ’em without the steps. I goes into the kitchen, like I was saying, to put the steps away, and there he was. He give me my money—’arf a crown, and a bob, and two tanners and sixpence in coppers, if you want to be perticler, all out of different pockets. He liked to make out he couldn’t ’ardly lay ’and on a ’apenny, but I was used to that. And when he’d finished play-actin’, I asks him for my forty pound. I want that money, I says—’

  ‘Just so. You wanted the money for the garage. What did he say to that?’

  ‘Promised he’d let me have it next time I come—that’s today. I might a-known ’e never meant it. Wasn’t the first time he’d promised, and then always ’ad some excuse. But he promised faithful, this time—the dirty old swine, and well he might, and him all set to skip with ’is pockets stuffed full of bank-notes, the bleeder.’

  ‘Come, come,’ said Kirk, reprovingly, with a deprecatory glance at her ladyship. ‘Mustn’t use language. Was he alone in the kitchen when you went out?’

  ‘Yes. He wasn’t the sort people dropped in for a chat with. I went off then, and that’s the last I see of him.’

  ‘You went off,’ repeated the Superintendent, while Joe Sellon’s right hand travelled laboriously among the pothooks, ‘and left him sitting in the kitchen. Now, when—’

  ‘No, I didn’t say that. He followed me down the passage, talkin’ about givin’ me the money first thing in the morning, and then I ’eard ’im lock and bolt the door be’ind me.’

  Which door?’

  ‘The back door. He mostly used that. The front door was allus kep’ locked.’

  ‘Ah! Is that a spring lock?’

  ‘No; mortice lock. He didn’t believe in them Yale things. Don’t take much to bust
them
off with a jemmy, he’d say.’

  ‘That’s a fact,’ said Kirk. ‘So that means the front door could only be opened with a key—from inside or out.’

  ‘That’s right. I should a-thought you’d a-seen that for yourself, if you’d looked.’

  Mr Kirk, who had indeed examined the fastenings of both doors with some care, merely inquired: ‘Was the front-door key ever left in the lock?’

  ‘No; he kept it on his bunch. It ain’t a big one.’

  ‘It certainly wasn’t in the lock last night,’ volunteered Peter. ‘We got in that way with Miss Twitterton’s key, and the lock was perfectly free.’

  ‘Just so,’ said the Superintendent. ‘Was there any other spare key that you know of?’

  Crutchley shook his head. ‘Mr Noakes wouldn’t go ’andin’ out keys by the bushel. Somebody might a-got in, you see, and pinched something.’

  ‘Ah! Well now, to get back. You left the house last Wednesday night—what time?’

  ‘Dunno,’ said Crutchley, thoughtfully. ‘Must a-been getting on for twenty-past, I reckon. Anyway, it was ten past when I wound that there clock. And it keeps good time.’

  ‘It’s right now,’ said Kirk, glancing at his watch. Harriet’s wrist-watch confirmed this, and so did Joe Sellon’s. Peter, after a blank gaze at his own watch, said, ‘Mine’s stopped,’ in a tone which might have suggested that Newton’s apple had been observed to fly upward or a B.B.C. announcer heard to use a bawdy expression.

  ‘Perhaps,’ suggested Harriet, practically, ‘you forgot to wind it up.’

  ‘I never forget to wind it up,’ said her husband, indignantly. ‘You’re quite right, though; I did. I must have been thinking of something else last night.’

  ‘Very natural, I’m sure, in all the excitement,’ said Kirk. ‘Can you remember whether that there clock was going when you arrived?’

  The question distracted Peter from his own lapse of memory. He dropped his watch back into his pocket unwound and stared at the clock.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, finally. ‘It was. I heard it ticking, when we were sitting here. It was the most comfortable thing in the house.’

  ‘It was right, too,’ said Harriet ‘Because you said something about its being past midnight and I looked, and it said the same as my watch.’

  Peter said nothing, but whistled a couple of bars almost inaudibly. Harriet remained imperturbable; twenty-four hours of matrimony had taught her that, if one was going to be disturbed by sly allusions to Greenland’s coast or anything else, one might live in a state of perpetual confusion.

  Crutchley said: ‘Of course it was going. It’s an eight-day, I tell you. And it was right enough this morning when I wound it. What’s the odds, anyhow?’

  ‘Well, well,’ said Kirk. ‘We’ll take it, then, that you left here some time after 6.10 by that clock, which was right as near as makes no difference. What did you do next?’

  ‘Went straight to choir practice. See here—’

  ‘Choir practice, eh? Ought to be easy enough to check up on that. What time’s practice?’

  ‘Six-thirty. I was in good time—you can ask anybody.’

  ‘Quite so,’ agreed Kirk. ‘All this is rowtine, you know getting the times straight and so on. You left the house not earlier than 6.10 and not later than—say 6.25, to let you get to the church at 6.30. Right. Now,
as
a matter of rowtine, what did you do after that?’

  ‘Vicar asked me to drive his car over to Pagford for him. He don’t like driving himself after lighting-up. He ain’t so young as he was. I had me supper over there at the Pig and Whistle and had a look-on at the darts match. Tom Puffett can tell you. He was there. Vicar give him a lift over.’

  ‘Puffett a darts player?’ inquired Peter, pleasantly.

  ‘Ex-champion. And still throws a tidy dart.’

  ‘Ah! it’s the power he puts behind it, no doubt. Black he stood as night. Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell. And shook a dreadful dart.’

  ‘Ha, ha!’ cried Kirk, taken unaware and immensely tickled. ‘That’s good. Hear that, Joe? That good, that is. Black? He was black enough last time I saw him, halfway up the kitchen chimney. And shook a dreadful dart—I must tell him that. Worst of it is, I don’t suppose he ever heard of Milton. Fierce as—well, there, poor old Tom Puffett!’ The Superintendent waited to roll the jest over again on his tongue before returning to his inquiry.

  ‘We’ll see Tom Puffett presently. Did you bring Mr Goodacre back?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Crutchley, impatiently; he was not interested in John Milton. ‘Half-past ten I got him home, or just after. Then I went back to Pagford on my bike. I got in just on eleven and went to bed.’

  ‘Where do you sleep? Hancock’s garage?’

  ‘That’s right. Along of their other chap, Williams. He’ll tell you.’

  Kirk was in the middle of extracting further particulars about Williams, when the sooty face of Mr Puffett poked itself in through the door. ‘Excuse me,’ said Mr Puffett, ‘but I can’t do nothing with this ’ere pot. Will you ’ave the reverend’s gun, my lord? or shall I fetch the ladders afore it gets dark?’

  Kirk opened his mouth to reprove the intruder, but was suddenly overcome. ‘Black it stood as night,’ he muttered, joyfully. This new way of applying quotations, not to edification, seemed to have caught his fancy.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Harriet. She glanced at Peter. ‘I wonder if we’d better leave it till tomorrow?’

  ‘I don’t mind telling you, me lady,’ observed the sweep, ‘Mr Bunter’s fair put out, thinkin’ he’ll have to cook dinner on that there perishin’ oil-stove.’

  ‘I’d better come and talk to Bunter,’ said Harriet. She felt she could not bear to see Bunter suffer any more. Besides, the men would probably get on better without her. As she went out, she heard Kirk call Puffett into the room.

  ‘Just a moment,’ said Kirk. ‘Crutchley here says he was at choir practice last Wednesday night from half-past six on. Do you know anything about that?’

  ‘That’s right, Mr Kirk. We was both there. ’Arf-past six to ’arf-past seven. ’Arvest anthem. “For ’Is mercies still endure. Ever faithful, ever sure.”’ Finding his notes less powerful than usual, Mr Puffett cleared his throat. ‘Been swallowing of the sut, that’s what I’ve been doing of. “Ever faithful, ever sure.” That’s quite correct.’

  ‘And you see me round at the Pig, too,’ said Crutchley.

  ‘Course I did. I’m not blind. You dropped me there and took vicar on to the Parish ’All and come back not five minutes arter for your supper. Bread and cheese, you ’ad, and four and a ’arf pints, ’cause I counted ’em. Drahnd yourself one o’ these days, I reckon.’

  ‘Was Crutchley there all the time?’ asked Kirk.

  ‘Till closin’. Ten o’clock. Then we ’ad to go round and pick up Mr Goodacre again. Whist-drive was over at 10, but we ’ad to wait gettin’ on ten minutes while he ’ad a chat with old Miss Moody. ’Ow that woman do clack on, to be sure! Then ’e come back with us. That’s right, ain’t it, Frank?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And,’ pursued Mr Puffett, with a large wink, ‘if it’s me you’ve got your eye on, you can ask Jinny wot time I got ’ome. George, too. Real vexed, Jinny was, at me settin’ down to tell George about the match. But there! She’s expectin’ ’er fourth and it makes ’er fratchetty-like. I tell her, it ain’t no good blamin’ her dad, but I reckon she gotter take it outer George somehow.’

  ‘Very good,’ said the Superintendent, ‘that’s all I want to know.’

  ‘Right,’ said Mr Puffett. ‘I’ll be seein’ about them ladders, then.’