Death Devil's Bridge (23 page)

Arnold Bateman threw down his fork. “This is what comes,” he said, with a dark look at Harry Dunstable, “of crying murder.”

Dunstable raised his chin, indignant. “I did not cry murder,” he said loftily. “I merely stated my belief that Albrecht's death was no accident. That is all.” With a hand that was almost as unsteady as Dickson's, he poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot in the center of the table. “And if the constable wishes to question me, I shall be glad to offer what information I possess that may bear on the matter. I hope it is helpful.” Laken observed that the latter remarks carried an undisguised significance, and were accompanied by a sly glance around the table.

Ponsonby rose to the bait. “And what sort of information would that be?” he demanded gruffly. “If you intend to aim any irresponsible allegations at me, Dunstable, you had better remember that you are in a most vulnerable position. One word from me and the British Motor Car Syndicate is ruined.” His voice began to rise. “Ruined, do you hear? I will see that every one of your notes is recalled for immediate payment. I will—”

“Harrumph!”
Bateman cleared his throat loudly and cast a meaningful glance in Laken's direction. Ponsonby colored and fell silent.

Dunstable sipped his coffee. “I doubt that you will recall any notes, Ponsonby,” he said, drawling out the words offensively. “If that happens, I may find it necessary to speak publicly about Mrs. Vickers's sad end—a sensational story, I fear, and hardly to your credit.”

“Don't be afraid of him, Ponsonby.” Dickson's words were acid. “No one will believe him.”

“And who would believe you, Arthur?” asked Dunstable with a poisonous laugh. “Your perjury in the matter of those patents makes it impossible for anyone to trust your word.” He glanced at Bateman. “And you, Arnold. Arthur injured you once, in that little
contretemps
at the Crystal Palace, and you let him off. How much did he pay you? Are you going to lie for him again?”

The silence was fruitful. Laken allowed it to ripen for a moment before he turned to Charles Rolls, who was seated at the end of the table. “I assume that you will have no objection to speaking with me, Mr. Rolls.”

“Not in the slightest,” Charlie Rolls said, with a careless air.
“I
have no secrets. In any event, I had intended to remain here for a day or two, since there is some repair that must be made to the balloon before it can fly again. I heartily agree that we should see this business to its conclusion before we leave,” he added, “whoever is to blame.” And he cast a glance around the table, allowing it to linger on the three drivers.

“But it was an
accident,”
Ponsonby objected. He turned to Laken, speaking desperately. “I have business in London, Constable. You can't possibly mean to keep me—”

“Indeed I do,” Laken said with authority, feeling that it was time to exert control over the situation. “I mean to keep
all
of you until this affair is concluded. Mr. Dunstable, I shall begin my interviews with you, if you please, in this room.” He looked at the others, who seemed to be in varying stages of confusion, according to their temperament: Rolls the coolest, Ponsonby the most agitated. “I shall appreciate your waiting in your apartments, gentlemen—without consultation among you.”

“Apartment, hah!” Ponsonby ejaculated. “It's no more than a broom closet.”

“But you have a broom closet to yourself, Frank,” Bateman said with a laugh. “The rest of us are sharing a broom closet.”

“And a bed,” Rolls said with disgust. He sighed. “The sooner you begin, Constable, the sooner this business will be concluded. Go to it,
do.”

And so Laken began a disagreeable task which he expected would take most of the morning and yield very little of substantive information.

 

 

Lawrence was also carrying out a disagreeable task. Under the supervision of Sir Charles and with the help of P.C. Gaskell, he had hauled the wrecked Daimler from the ravine beneath Devil's Bridge, carted it to the gatehouse cottage, and unloaded it in the drafty, dirt-floored barn which served as his mechanic's shop. Now, Sir Charles had charged him with reassembling as much of it as he could—which was not going to be much at all, he thought, surveying the shattered wreckage.

“Pardon me, sir,” he said to Sir Charles, “but ye don't expect this car to be driven again, do ye?”

“No.” Sir Charles gave Lawrence a glance in which he could read coldness and enmity. “I believe that the vehicle has been tampered with, Quibbley, and I would like your confirmation of my suspicions. I shall observe you as you do your work and raise queries from time to time.”

These chilly words pierced Lawrence to the very heart. As the morning had worn on and no questions had been put about his part in the demise of the Daimler and its unfortunate driver, he had begun to breathe somewhat easier. But he could not forget the hard look that Sir Charles had aimed at him across the breakfast table that morning, and he knew he was being watched as he loaded the wreckage into the wagon. And that cold tone just now, edged with suspicion, where before had been trust and confidence—It robbed Lawrence of every hope of escaping undetected and made him quite sure that Sir Charles had found him out. And if that were the case, was it not better to confess what he had done before he could be accused of it, and throw himself on the mercy of the court?

“Sir Charles,” he said, taking his hands out of his pockets and standing straight, a man who has made up his mind to be honest, even though he speaks a bitter and shaming thing. “I must tell ye the Lord's truth, sir.
I
tampered wi' that car, an' I'm desprit'ly sorry fer it.”

And in the next moment, he had confessed all. How Lord Bradford had insisted that Lawrence accompany him to London to look after the motorcar. How deeply distressed Amelia had been by the idea of exchanging her beloved rose-covered cottage for low, smoky rooms, and how he had begun to seek some means of preventing their departure. How he had believed that if the Daimler were somehow disgraced in the balloon chase, Lord Bradford might think better of the London plan. And how he had cast about in his mind for ways to effect this disgrace, and determined at last on the scheme of siphoning out all but a small portion of the car's petrol. When he was done, he stopped.

The silence lengthened. After a moment, Sir Charles said, “Well?”

“Well, sir?”

“Is that
all?”
Sir Charles said.

Lawrence wanted to ask whether that were not enough, but the question seemed an effrontery. “Yes,” he said, and hung his head. “The breakdown cudn't point to me as a pore mechanic, y' see. It had t‘be somethin' as wudn't connect to me at all, if ye see wot I mean, sir. That's why I concluded on the petrol. Albrecht insisted on fuelin' the car hisself, so I cudn't be blamed if it came up short. An' I had the oppertun'ty, d‘ye see, when I had t'stay up all the night to look after the balloon an' the gas plant.”

There was a moment's silence, and then Sir Charles spoke, very gravely. “And you did not tamper with the brake?”

Lawrence looked up, surprised. “The brake, sir?”

“Yes, the brake, Lawrence. The left brake.”

“Oh, no, sir,” Lawrence said emphatically, shaking his head. “I didn't
touch
the brake, ‘cept to tighten the bolts as 'old it to the lever mechanism, sir. All I did was siphon out the petrol. O' course, when I 'eard about the crash, I thought sure—” He stopped and swallowed.

“You thought that the motorcar had stopped partway up the hill on the far side of the bridge, and run backwards down the hill. Is that right?”

Lawrence felt himself among the lowest of men. “I did, sir,” he said at last. “All last night, I felt a mortal fear as I'd caused the wreck an' killed 'im, sir. It was a pure misery, sir, not but wot I deserved it fer wot I done.”

“I'm sure it was a misery, Lawrence,” Sir Charles said gently, and Lawrence heard the understanding in his voice. There was another silence, and then Sir Charles walked to the rear of the vehicle. “Well, then, let us get started. Let's see—where is the left rear fender?”

Lawrence sprang to attention, feeling a great relief. “ 'Ere, sir,” he said eagerly, and lifted the fender from a pile of loose wreckage. It was a curved piece of light metal four inches wide by eighteen inches long, designed to deflect mud thrown up by the turning wheels. It had been torn from the Daimler's body upon impact, and Lawrence had pulled it from the thorny coppice where it had been flung. “ 'Tis all over dents, sir,” he said with regret, thinking how, freshly polished, both fenders had gleamed.

“Put it on the floor here and let's have a look,” Sir Charles said, taking a magnifying lens out of one of his capacious pockets. He began to examine the top surface of the fender, then turned it over to inspect the underside, which was coated with a fine, flourlike gray dust. After several moments, he stopped, moved the lens, and turned the fender toward the light for a better view.

“If ye'll pardon me, sir,” Lawrence said, “wot are we lookin' for?”

“We are looking for some means of identifying the person who might have tampered with the brake, Lawrence,” Sir Charles replied. He took out a small leather case, opened it, and extracted a glass microscope slide. With a pearl-handled penknife, he scraped a dab of a greasy substance from the underside of the fender and deposited it onto the slide, then topped the smear with a circular glass cover.

“What sort of grease,” he asked, holding the slide to the light, “might this be, Lawrence? Something you regularly use on the vehicle, perhaps?”

Lawrence looked up at it. With the light shining through, he could see that the substance, whatever it was, was decidedly red and contained minuscule bits of something—grass, perhaps, or leaves.

“Don't b‘lieve so, sir,” he said doubtfully. “The grease I use on the wheel bearin's is yellow, like, an' 'asn't got ‘ny leaves in it. I can show it to ye, if that would 'elp.”

“Yes, that
would
help, later,” Sir Charles said, bending over the fender again. After a moment, he said, “There's something else I want you to see,” and handed Lawrence the lens.

Lawrence looked at the underside of the fender. He saw a long smear of reddish grease, dusted over, and a smudged and dusty fingerprint, with a pattern of ovals and whorls resembling one that Sir Charles had once shown him, enlarged, in a photograph. On that occasion, Sir Charles had said that the print, which had been left by the tip of a man's finger, could be used to distinguish that particular man from any other individual in the entire world. Lawrence was unclear as to the details of the process, but that Sir Charles understood and could practice it, he had no doubt.

“Ah,” Lawrence said, straightening up. He wanted to say more, but could think of nothing to add.

Sir Charles took out another leather case from a different pocket—a fingerprint kit, it proved to be, containing a small inking pad and several small white cards. “Let's see your fingers, Lawrence.”

Instinctively, Lawrence put his hands behind his back, momentarily disconcerted. What if the print were his? What if he had inadvertently placed a fingertip in that smear of grease while he was polishing the upper side of the fender, or tightening the brake? If it
were
his print, would it incriminate him?

But Sir Charles was standing before him, the fingerprint kit in his hand, and there was nothing for it but to assent. So Lawrence wiped his fingers with a clean cloth, then allowed Sir Charles to roll each one first upon the inking pad and then upon the card. Then Sir Charles spent several interminable moments comparing the impressions thus obtained with the print on the fender. After a while, he glanced up.

“No, Lawrence,” he said, “I do not think the print is yours.”

Lawrence gulped. “You ain't sure, sir?”

“Unfortunately, the print on the fender is smudged. I believe I can ascertain enough points of comparison to rule you out as its maker, however.”

“Well, sir,” Lawrence said, with some relief, although he could wish that the comparison had been more definitive.

Sir Charles put Lawrence's fingerprint card into an envelope and the envelope into his pocket. “So, Lawrence,” he said sternly, “you emptied the petrol tank. I suppose that explains why the vehicle did not explode when it hit the trees.”

“I s'pose, sir.” Lawrence could feel the weight of Sir Charles's disapproval. “By the time the Daimler got to Devil's Hill, it wud've bin nearly out o' fuel, like. Not much left to explode, sir.”

“Then it was providential indeed that you removed the petrol, Lawrence.”

“Excuse me, sir?” Lawrence blinked, thinking he had not heard aright. “Prov'dential, sir?”

“Exactly so. If the fuel tank had been full of petrol, as it should have been at that point in the chase, the open flame of the hot-tube igniter would certainly have caused the wreck to explode into flames. The driver, poor fellow, would not have survived to offer a clue to the cause of the crash, and the vehicle, together with any evidence of brake-tampering, would have been destroyed.”

“Well, sir,” said Lawrence with circuitous logic, “it cud not ‘o bin me 'oo mucked up the brake, fer I knew that the tank was empty.”

Sir Charles's mouth relaxed into a rare smile. “I may not praise you publicly for what you did, Lawrence, but I will tell you privately that I am damned glad of it.” He clapped Lawrence on the shoulder. “Damned glad of it, indeed.”