The Hunter and the Trapped (19 page)

“Mrs. Fawcett, you mean?”

“Who else? But then she had her trials, in which we all shared, I may say.”

“We – being?”

“What's that you say?”

“Who were you including in the trials?”

Miss Skinner found this amusing. Her old face split into a wide grin, followed by chuckles and choking and streaming tears, until she had gasped her way back to solemnity.

“I was including the kitchen,” she said. “Me and Joan, that was the girl that came in to clean. Only fourteen, just left school.”

“Can you tell me when this was?”

“It was the time of Mr. Simon's illness. The vicar wanted him to go away, but she wouldn't hear of it. He must be nursed at home. She must nurse him. You can see what that meant. A trial for us all, like I said. The girl left because she couldn't stand it.”

“Couldn't stand what?”

“Mr. Simon's ways. Asleep from morning to night some days. And others pacing his room, up and down, up and down. Poor soul. What he suffered. What we all suffered. He'd have done better in hospital. But Mr. Fawcett was a saint and devoted to her. He wouldn't force her. It's my belief she'd have gone the same way if he'd insisted.”

Her curious mirth had left her. Perhaps it had only been the excitement of having strangers to visit her. The tears that rolled down her lined face now were sorrowful. She had been part of the life of the vicarage, had shared their woes, had grieved for their distress. To Sergeant Clay, London born and bred, her attitude was incomprehensible. He put her agitation down to her extreme old age.

“You'd better go,” the niece said, speaking severely. “You're only upsetting her.”

But Mont was determined to finish what promised so well.

“I've been given to understand,” he said, “that young Mr. Fawcett suffered from asthma.”

Miss Skinner's face changed. A look of cunning spread slowly over it; she leaned forward to touch the Chief inspector's sleeve.

“That's what was given out,” she said. “And quite right, too. But my own dear mother had the asthma and what I didn't know of it would go on a penny piece.”

“It was not asthma, then. Was it a nervous breakdown? It sounds like that from your description.”

She shook her head.

“I made a promise and I'll never break it,” she said, firmly. “I don't know for why you come to me with your questions and your curiosity. You'd better ask Dr. Marshall, him that was in charge of the case. Or that young fellow that's his partner now. Not that either of them will tell you.” She peered up triumphantly into Mont's face. “Doctors don't tell, do they?”

“Is Dr. Marshall still practising here, then?” he asked. But Miss Skinner had closed her eyes and did not seem to hear him.

He moved away, Clay following. At the door, held open by the niece, he repeated the question.

“Dr. Marshall's dead,” she said. “She doesn't know. We thought it might be too much for her – too much of a shock. It's Dr. Campbell now. She thinks he comes because Dr. Marshall is too busy. Dr. Campbell treats her very well.”

“Would there be anyone else in Pontley who knew the Fawcetts?” Mont asked her.

“I couldn't say, I'm sure.”

And if she could say, she wouldn't, he decided. He had got something and it was important. He couldn't use old Miss Skinner in a witness box, but she had given him a very valuable clue. And Fawcett had given the name of Gordon, not Marshall, as the Pontley doctor. Genuine loss of memory or a deliberate lie? Did Gordon mean anything special to him as Beltonston seemed to do?

On the way back to London he explained all this to Sergeant Clay and on arriving there put his next inquiry into action. He wanted to know what Dr. Marshall had written in the certificate he sent to the Medical Board that had examined Fawcett on call-up and had rejected him. The records must still be in existence somewhere. They should be available. If necessary the Home Office must intervene to make them available. Dr. Marshall was dead. His personal records of past patients who had left the practice and the district were most unlikely to have been kept by his successor. Fawcett's illness had begun five years before the National Health Service came into being. No records there. The man himself had said he was hardly ever ill now and was not registered with any London doctor. So the Medical Boards records were the only available proof of Fawcett's asthma or whatever else he was suffering from.

Mont no longer believed in the asthma story. It had no support anywhere. Oxford, for instance. It was difficult to get any account at all of Fawcett in Oxford. His name was there, he had taken a degree. But he seemed to have made no mark on the place and no friends. ‘A very quiet gentleman' said the elderly head porter of his college, who alone remembered him clearly.

A very different report had come in dealing with Fawcett's record at Summermoor. He had been a popular and successful teacher and had never been absent from the school for a single day on account of illness. He had given complete satisfaction to the headmaster and governors of the school. He had been liked and respected by the staff generally and had made one particular friend, a Mr. George Clark. It was thought to have been the latter's resignation to take up a different nonteaching post in London that had influenced Mr. Fawcett's own resignation. They had been very sorry to lose him.

“Glowing,” said Mont, bitterly. “Positively glowing. Much the same as Clark's opinion. Know what?”

“No, sir,” said Sergeant Clay.

“Clark's a sensible chap. Scientist. Feet on the ground. But a bit inexperienced, I'd say. Not much imagination. Doesn't come across the seamy side or doesn't notice it. Get my meaning?”

“He isn't likely to meet Mr. Fawcett at his off moments, in a mood, or whatever Mrs. Sewell meant when she described him as peculiar. Or perhaps Mr. Clark doesn't pay attention to it.”

“That's right. Doesn't pay attention. And there's another thing. That so-called asthma seems to have left him altogether. Very unlikely indeed, from what I know of it, if it really was asthma.”

“Yes, sir,” said Clay, who knew too little of the disease to venture an opinion.

Feeling he could do nothing very positive until he had the Medical Board report the Chief-inspector decided to tackle Mr. Fawcett again about the detail of his behaviour on the morning of Mrs. Morris's death. He found him at home, apparently studying his time-table for the new term at the college, due to begin in the following week.

Simon welcomed his visitor cordially, not attempting to hide a quiet amusement.

“Back again?” he said, as he drew up a chair to the fire. “I thought you'd captured the murderer. Wasn't it her husband after all?”

“Morris says she was alive when he left her.”

“So I read in the papers. He admitted stealing her handbag, didn't he?”

“Yes, he did. He couldn't very well deny it.”

“She wouldn't have given it up quietly,” Simon told him, with a curious gleam in his eyes. “From what I know of her she'd have run after him screaming blue murder.”

He stopped with a jerk, then laughed.

“Blue murder. That was what
she
got, wasn't it? Not the husband.”

Mont was repelled by the callous mirth, but Simon's words had reminded him of something Morris had said several times and stuck to, in spite of close questioning.

“She was waiting in the yard to see someone, according to Morris,” he said, watching Simon closely. “She told him so. Perhaps she didn't want to pass that up. Perhaps she anticipated getting a larger sum at that interview than she had in the handbag her husband had taken from her.”

“It's an ingenious theory,” said Simon, with frank admiration “I should never have thought of it. And who do you think she was waiting to see. Me?”

Mont was disconcerted. He said, angrily. “We have to consider all the possibilities. Various tenants in these flats …”

He broke off, collected himself again and took Simon over his movements on that morning. The details and the times corresponded exactly with Fawcett's previous statement and with what Clark had told him.

After a pause he said, “You had your lunch very early that day, didn't you? You'd have had ample time to come back here before catching your train at Victoria.”

“Only I happened to be buying a shirt and looking at pictures at the Tate.”

“Which cannot be proved.”

Simon shrugged. Anyone who was fool and knave enough not to take his word deserved silent contempt. The Chief-inspector resented the arrogance but had no remedy. He was baffled, but at least he had not been trapped into showing his true hand. He had not mentioned asthma. He had not referred to Pontley “By the way,” Simon said, as Mont was leaving. “George – George Clark, I mean, tells me you were a bit mixed up about where my parents lived. Pontley, Inspector, not Beltonston. Pontley, in Warwickshire. I told you. Shakespeare's country.”

“You told me Beltonston, sir.”

“But that's in Gloucestershire, far from Shakespeare's home. As you should have known.”

He wagged a playful finger at Mont, who began to lose his temper for the second time.

“Beltonston was what you said,” he insisted. “I'm not all that conversant with literary allusions. Not my line of country. But you certainly said Beltonston.”

“That's not possible,” Simon rebuked him, gently. “Even though the Sewells were such very close friends there would be no possible reason for my making such a mistake.”

Mont did not answer. He had now one very good, very convincing reason for the mistake; the overburdened conscience of a guilty, unbalanced mind. The key word leaping up from the abyss of the sub-conscious. Wasn't that the way the trick-cyclists talked?

He hurried away, and hardened as he was a cold dread took hold of him at the thought. Cold, because he had no proof. Cold and vague, too, because he did not know how his suspect would act. So far in his own interviews with Fawcett he had not been able to detect the slightest hint of a violent temperament. Quite the opposite. An educated, cultivated man, who had his feelings very well under control, who seemed if anything of a frivolous turn of mind. He could not imagine Fawcett tense, frenzied, or in any other mood that could lead to violence.

In his quandary, still possessed by that nagging fear of further crime, Mont went over the whole case again. It was Sergeant Clay who produced the next positive idea.

“I've been thinking about that cheque in Mrs. Morris's bag,” he said.

“Well?”

“D'you think she was trying a spot of blackmail on Fawcett with it? I mean, had an appointment with him to sell it back to him?”

“He wouldn't fall for that. It had no value as blackmail. The girl and Fawcett both say it was to pay for her holiday. It can't be proved it wasn't.”

“We know that. But did
he?
Lecturers aren't supposed to seduce the students, are they? He couldn't risk getting in bad with the college authorities. Mrs. Morris might have threatened to expose his rather close friendship with the girl.”

Perhaps Clay was right, Mont considered. Perhaps, as blackmail, to one vitally concerned to preserve his post at the college –

“Miss Dane's quite a dish, sir, isn't she?” Clay went on. “I was never all that sold on the holiday payment yarn, myself.”

“If you're right, he'd be more likely to come up with the lolly than she would.”

“Yes. Fair enough. You'd certainly think so.”

“Still, Mrs. Morris was always one to smell out a scandal where one didn't exist. Or didn't seem to exist. Look at Nelson. We'd never have got on to him, without her blackmail.”

“Fawcett's information about him led us to find that out.”

Mont gestured impatiently.

“You had something to suggest?”

“About that cheque. If Mrs. M. wanted to sell it him. He goes to the yard behind the flats with the money. She hasn't got the cheque.”

“I see what you mean.” Mont was interested. “He doesn't believe her. Thinks she's double-crossed him. Loses his temper …”

“Goes for her …”

“That's just it,” Mont cried, banging his desk with his open hand. “Is that chap ever likely to lose his temper to such an extent?”

“If he's a nut, he is. That's what they do, isn't it? He did it before to that boy at Beltonston, if he's the chap they want down there?”

“We're going round in circles,” Mont said, wearily. “I think I'll have a word with the girl's father. Dane won't give anything away about his daughter but he might know something we haven't heard about Fawcett.”

Hubert Dane was not at all surprised to have a visit from the Chief-inspector. He meant to turn it to good account if he could. This, with practised skill, he brought off in less than half an hour of careful insinuation, reservation and clearly defined discretion.

“Mind you, I'm not speaking from a personal experience of the man,” he said, earnestly. “I haven't often met him and then only in company, when he is at his best. And a very charming best that can be,” he said, with a smile that damned the charm utterly. “Besides, he's a friend of some very dear friends of mine. I wouldn't dream of saying anything that might raise suspicion, incredible in the circumstances, against anyone of his – well – acknowledged standing. All the same,” He paused effectively. “I can't help remembering a rather frightening experience – You were asking me about violence, weren't you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I didn't have this experience personally, so I'm not going to describe it to you. I can only suggest that you see …”

He stopped, heightening, as he intended, the Chief inspector's curiosity.

“Yes, sir? Who should I see?”

“Lieutenant John Allingham,” said Hubert. “He's in the Navy and serving at present in H. M.S.
Excellent
at Portsmouth.”