“Where are we off to?” enquired the Inspector. “Fox House?”
“Out of the old gentleman's sight, for a start,” Hemingway replied. “I want to think.”
They reached the gorse-clump again, and Hemingway stopped. The Inspector watched him curiously, as he stood there, his quick, bright eyes once more taking in every detail of the scene before him. Presently he gave a grunt, and sat down on the slope above the lane, and pulled his pipe and his aged tobacco-pouch out of his pocket. While his accustomed fingers teased the tobacco, and packed it into the bowl of the pipe, his abstracted gaze continued to dwell first on the spot in the garden where the seat had stood, and then upon the stile, just visible round the bole of the elm-tree. The Inspector, disposing himself on the ground beside him, preserved a patient silence, and tried painstakingly to discover, by the exercise of logic, what particular problem he was attempting to solve. Hemingway lit his pipe, and sat staring fixedly at Fox House, his eyelids a little puckered. Suddenly he said: “The mistake we've been making, Horace, is to have paid a sight too much attention to what you might call the important features of this case, and not enough to the highly irrelevant trimmings. I'm not sure I've not precious near been had for a sucker.”
“I've heard you say as much before, but I never heard that it turned out to be true,” responded the Inspector.
“Well, it isn't going to be true this time—not if I know it! This operator is beginning to annoy me,” said Hemingway briskly.
The Inspector was a little puzzled. “Myself, I hate all murderers,” he said. “But I don't see why this one should annoy you more than any other—for it is not as if the case was a complicated one. It isn't easy, but that's only because we have too many possible suspects, isn't it? Taken just as a murder, I'd say it was one of the simplest I've ever handled.”
“When you talk like that, Horace, I think I must be losing my flair. I ought to have spotted at the outset that it was much too simple.”
“But you can't go against the facts, sir,” argued the Inspector. “The man was shot in his own garden, by someone lying up beside these bushes, at about 7.15 or 7.20, according to Miss Warrenby's evidence. You can doubt that, but you can't doubt the evidence of the cartridge-case Carsethorn's men found under the bushes. The difficulty is that the murder happened to be committed just when half a dozen people who all of them had reasons for wanting Warrenby out of the way were scattered round the locality, in a manner of speaking, and couldn't produce alibis.”
Hemingway had turned his head, and was looking at him, an alert expression on his face. “Go on!” he said, as the Inspector paused. “You're being very helpful!”
Harbottle almost blushed. “Well, I'm glad, Chief! It isn't often you think I'm right!”
“You aren't right. You're wrong all along the line, but you're clarifying my mind,” said Hemingway. “As soon as you said that the murder happened to be committed while a whole lot of Warrenby's ill-wishers were sculling about at large, it came to me that there wasn't any "happen" about it. That's the way it was planned. Go on talking! Very likely you'll put another idea into my head.”
The Inspector said, with some asperity: “All right, sir, I will! I may be wrong all along the line, but it strikes me that there's a hole to be picked in what you've just said. It can't have been planned. Not with any certainty. The murderer couldn't have known Warrenby would be in the garden at that exact time; that was just luck. He must have been prepared to go into the house, or at any rate into the garden, where he could have got a shot through the study-window, and when you consider how near he came to being seen by Miss Warrenby, as things turned out, you'll surely agree that there wasn't much planning about it. If he'd been forced to enter the garden, Miss Warrenby would have seen the whole thing. As I see it, he's got more luck than craft.”
“Don't stop! It's getting clearer every minute!”
“Well, do you agree with me so far?” demanded Harbottle.
“Never mind about that! You can take it I don't, unless I hold up my hand.”
“I see no sense in going on, if you don't agree with anything I say, sir.”
“Well, I shouldn't see any sense in us sitting here agreeing with one another,” returned Hemingway. “Where's that going to get us?”
“Look here, sir!” said Harbottle. “If we're going to assume that the murder was planned to take place when all the guests at that tennis-party were on their way home, then we've also got to assume that the murderer was banking on having all the luck he did have—which seems pretty inadequate planning to me! Why, it could have come unstuck in half a dozen places! To start with, he's got to do the job quick, because it cuts both ways, having a lot of people scattered near the scene: who's to say one of them won't come down the lane? You can say it's unlikely, but it might have happened. What was a dead certainty was that Miss Warrenby was bound to arrive on the scene at any moment. So he's got to reach the house ahead of her, shoot Warrenby, and get away without losing a second of time. What would have happened if Warrenby had gone upstairs, or into the back-garden? He must have faced that possibility! He must have thought, if he planned it, that he must allow himself quite a bit of time, in case of accidents.”
“Quite true, Horace. So you think that he laid his preparations—by which I mean his rifle—on the off-chance that he'd get an opportunity to shoot Warrenby?”
There was a pause. “When you put it like that,” said the Inspector slowly. “No, that won't do. But my arguments still hold!”
“They do,” said Hemingway. “They're perfectly sound, and they do you credit. Our operator didn't want to be hurried over the job, and it's safe to assume he wasn't going to take any unnecessary risks.”
“Then what's the answer?” said Harbottle.
“Warrenby wasn't shot at 7.15, nor anything like that time.”
There was another pause, while the Inspector sat staring at his chief. He said at last: “Very well, sir. I can see several reasons for thinking you're wrong. I'd like to know what the reasons are for thinking you're right, because you haven't jumped to a conclusion like that simply because you want to make out the murder was carefully planned.”
“I haven't jumped at all,” replied Hemingway. “I've been adding up all those bits and pieces of information which didn't seem to lead anywhere. Taking it from the start, the doctor was what you might call vague on the time of Warrenby's death.”
“Yes,” conceded Harbottle. “I remember it was the first point you queried, when you were going through the case with the Chief Constable. But it didn't seem to matter much, and goodness knows Dr. Warcop isn't the only doctor we've come across who's more of a hindrance than a help to the police!”
“You're right: it didn't seem to matter. The mistake I made was in accepting as a fact that the time of the murder was fixed. To go on, the next thing was that I was given a highly significant piece of information by Miss Warrenby. She told me, the very first time I saw her, that her uncle very rarely sat out of doors. Well, I didn't pay any particular heed to that, because it didn't seem to matter any more than the doctor's evidence. There the corpse was, sitting in the garden, with a bullet through his left temple; and there the cartridge-case was, lying just where you'd expect to find it, supposing Warrenby had been shot while he was on that seat.”
The Inspector sat up. “Are you going to say he wasn't shot in the garden at all?”
“I should think very likely he wasn't,” replied Hemingway coolly. “We'll hope he wasn't, because if we can prove he was actually shot somewhere else we shall have gone a long way to prove he wasn't shot at 7.15 either. He was probably shot an hour earlier. Which brings me to the third bit of seemingly irrelevant information, handed to me last night by old Father Time. Only, what with his daughter and Hobkirk telling me he was soft in his head, beside being Thornden's Public Enemy No. One, and it's standing out a mile that he had a spite against Reg Ditchling—not to mention the ambition he's got to have his picture in the papers on top of that—I'm bound to say I didn't set any store by anything he said. You know, Horace, it begins to look as though it's about time I retired. There doesn't seem to be anything I haven't missed.”
“I was thinking, myself, that there doesn't seem to be anything you have missed,” said the Inspector dryly. “I remember, now that you bring it to my mind, that Miss Warrenby did say that about her uncle's habits, but I shouldn't have, if you hadn't brought it up.”
“If you're going to start handing me bouquets, my lad, I shall know you've got a touch of the sun, and the next thing you'll know is that you're lying in hospital with an ice-pack on your head, or whatever it is they do to sunstroke cases,” said his ungrateful superior. “Besides, you're putting me out. The last bit of information I was handed came from that blonde cook of Warrenby's—which was where I began to pull myself together, because I didn't miss that. And if Warrenby never went out in his slippers, or without his hat, it looks more than ever as though he wasn't killed out of doors.”
“Yes,” agreed Harbottle. “I see all that, but what I don't yet see is the point of it. It seems to me that there isn't any point at all. When you get a murder faked to look as if it was committed some time later than the actual time, it's generally done to give the murderer an alibi. I heard of a case where the shooting was done with a revolver that had a silencer fitted to it, and a few minutes later, when the murderer had established an alibi, a detonator went off, leading everyone to think that was the noise of the shot.”
“I was on that case,” said Hemingway.
“Were you, sir? Then you'll agree it isn't on all fours with this one. For one thing, no detonator makes a noise like a .22 rifle; for another, Miss Warrenby said she heard the sound of the bullet's impact; and for a third, the fake—if it was a fake—was fixed to take place when nobody had an alibi. Nobody, that is, except young Haswell, Miss Dearham, and Miss Patterdale. Well, neither Haswell nor the girl could have committed the murder an hour earlier, because they were both at The Cedars, playing tennis; and Miss Patterdale, I take it, we needn't consider. She's never been in the running. You can say that for anything we know she shot Warrenby at 6.15, or thereabouts; but she certainly didn't fire the shot Miss Warrenby heard, and if she's found out a way of faking the sound of a rifle being fired, and the impact of its bullet, the whole thing timed to go off an hour after it's been set, she must be a master-criminal, instead of a respectable maiden lady without a stain on her character. Yes, and besides all that, the apparatus would have had to have been removed, and disposed of. Aside from the fact that the whole idea of such an apparatus is impossible—”
“You needn't keep on trying to convince me Miss Patterdale didn't do it,” interrupted Hemingway. “And you needn't prove to me that the second shot couldn't have been fired automatically either, because I know that too. Even if such an apparatus were possible, the absence of just one crucial alibi rules it out. The second shot wasn't fired for that purpose. In fact, quite the reverse. It was fired so that you and I should have a nice lot of hot suspects to occupy our minds.”
The Inspector considered, deeply frowning. “Yes,” he acknowledged. “That's possible, I suppose. It certainly narrows the field, if you're right, Chief. If we're to assume that the time of the murder was between 6.00 and 6.30, we're left with Gavin Plenmeller, the Pole, Mr. Haswell, and, I suppose, the Vicar. Well, naturally, the first thing that comes to one's mind is that Plenmeller was absent from The Cedars at that time.”
“Which gives him an additional reason for wanting to make it appear that the murder was committed a good deal later on,” interpolated Hemingway.
“It does, of course. But there's a snag, sir. I'm willing to believe—though I can't say I like the idea—that at some time or other he parked a rifle where he could pick it up easily; I'm willing to believe he again parked it, after committing the murder. But what I can't believe is that he parked it a third time! He may be a cool customer, but it just isn't in human nature to leave the fatal weapon hidden in a ditch, or some such place—and there aren't any ponds he could have thrown in into—when you know the police are going to be on the spot, and searching thoroughly, within a matter of half an hour! Whoever did it must have got rid of the rifle where it wouldn't be found—which indeed he has done!—and Plenmeller didn't have enough time to do any such thing. If the chap who owns the Red Lion is to be believed, and I don't see any reason for disbelieving him, Plenmeller was in his bar-parlour round about 7.30 to 7.45. I grant you he could have reached the Red Lion from here in that time, but that's all he could have done. And limp or no limp, you aren't going to tell me he sat in the Red Lion with a rifle stuck down his trouser-leg! You'll remember, too, that the landlord told Carsethorn he'd stayed to dinner there. Where was the rifle all that time? And whose rifle was it? We know it wasn't his own!”
Hemingway regarded him with a half-smile. “You know, Horace, there's no pleasing you at all,” he said. “First, nothing will do for you but to pin this crime on to Plenmeller, and now, when it begins to look as if we might be able to do it, you turn round and argue that he couldn't have done it!”
“Now, that's not fair, Chief!” Harbottle protested. “You know very well I don't want to pin it on to anyone but the right man! All I said was that as far as appearances go he seems to me a more likely murderer than any of the others, except, perhaps, that chap Lindale. I daresay he wouldn't stick at much, but for the purposes of this argument he's out of it. I don't see how Plenmeller could have got rid of the rifle, but I do see that it wouldn't have been difficult for any one of the other three to have done so. The Vicar—mind you, I'm not saying it was him, and I don't think it was, either—the Vicar wasn't at The Cedars after 6.00, so he might have committed the murder at 6.15; and as we don't know what he was doing after he left that sick parishioner of his he might possibly have fired your second shot. Since he could have got into the grounds of Fox House from his own meadow, there would have been very little fear of his being seen; and he had all the time in the world to dispose of the rifle.”
“The only difficulty being that his rifle wasn't in his possession at the time,” said Hemingway. “However, the rifle is the stumbling-block in every instance, so I won't press that point.”
“I've nothing more to say about the Vicar. You've met him, and I haven't. What I do think is that we can't rule out Ladislas any longer. He told you that he didn't know anything about that tennis-party. That might be true, or it might not. My experience of a place like this is that everyone knows when someone's giving a party. Say he did know! All right! He shoots Warrenby, realises he's bound to be suspected, and so hangs about until he hears someone coming. He may even have sneaked along the common to watch the footpath, knowing that several people were likely to leave The Cedars by the garden-gate. He's got a motor-bike; his landlady was out that evening: what was to stop him driving off anywhere he pleased—perhaps to the river—and getting rid of the rifle?”
“What rifle?” asked Hemingway, all polite interest.
“I don't know. One of those we haven't checked up on, probably.”
“What made him wait for three-quarters of an hour before shooting Warrenby? We know he was seen turning into Fox Lane at 5.30; if Crailing's to be believed, Father Time turned up at the Red Lion at about 6.30, which means that he must have heard the shot he did hear at about 6.15, or a few minutes earlier. I agree that the murderer didn't want to have to do the job in a hurry, but three quarters of an hour seems to me a long time to wait.”
“Well, from your description of him, he sounds a temperamental, nervy sort of a chap,” offered the Inspector. “Perhaps he couldn't make up his mind to do it straight off.”
“Rotten!” said Hemingway. “If that's the way it was, and he'd hung about, trying to summon up enough resolution to pull the trigger, he'd have gone off home without pulling it at all!”
“There might be some other explanation.”
“There might. What happened to his motor-bike all this time? Did he leave it standing in the lane for nearly two hours, just to make sure anyone that happened to have passed that way would know he must be somewhere around?”
“Of course not. He might have hidden it amongst the bushes on the common. Taken it up the path that goes to the seat where we found Biggleswade.”
“Talk sense! You try and hide a motor-bike amongst a lot of bushes! That old sinner would have spotted it like a flash!”
“By the time he reached the place Ladislas would have retrieved it, and ridden off,” returned the Inspector.
“Then Father Time would have heard the engine starting up, and he hasn't said a word about hearing any such thing.”
“That isn't to say he didn't hear it. He's out to make a case against Reg Ditchling, and that would spoil it.”
“All right, I'll concede you that point. There's this to be said in favour of suspecting Ladislas: he had a motive we don't need a strong microscope to see. What about Haswell?”
“There isn't enough about him, and, if you'll forgive me saying so, sir, that's the trouble. We don't really know where he was, or what he was doing, up till eight o'clock, when he got home.”
“What we do know, though, is that he was driving himself in his car. If I've got to choose between a car and a motor-bike, I'll try and hide the motor-bike, thank you very much!”
“There must be some place where either could be hid,” said the Inspector obstinately. “The more I think of it, the more I'm convinced transport was needed.” He paused, and said suddenly: “What about the dead man's own garage? It's a double one: I noticed that. What was to stop him, as soon as he'd shot Warrenby, from driving his car in, and leaving it there until Miss Warrenby had run off to fetch Miss Patterdale?”
“And what little bird told him that's what she would do?” enquired Hemingway. “You have got a touch of the sun, Horace! What anyone would expect her to do was to have rung up for the police, or the doctor, not to lose her head, and go careering off as she did!”
“I don't know about that,” said Harbottle defensively. “Girls do lose their heads, after all!”
“They do, and not only girls either. But when that happens you can't guess what they'll do, far less bank on them choosing any particular one of four or five silly antics!”
“No,” Harbottle admitted. “Come to think of it, sir, it's funny she did lose her head, isn't it? She seems to me one of the self-possessed kind.”
“No, I don't think it is,” Hemingway replied. “In fact it's what I should have expected her to do. Nasty jolt for a girl who kids herself into believing that all is love and light. She was rocked right off her balance.” He knocked his pipe out lightly, and got up. “Come on, now! It's no use us arguing who might have fired that shot at 6.15 until we're sure there was a shot at that time. And if there was, then what was our operator aiming at when he fired the second shot an hour later?”
The Inspector looked gloomy. “As well look for a needle in a haystack! He probably fired it into the ground.” He saw Hemingway cock a quizzical eyebrow at him, and said hastily: “No, not the ground! Not if Miss Warrenby heard the impact!”
“Just in time, Horace!” remarked Hemingway. “You and your knowledge of guns! And I don't think we need go round looking for a likely haystack. What we've got to remember is that what we've all been thinking was a narrow shave for our operator was just as carefully planned as the rest of it. He wanted Miss Warrenby on the spot as a witness; he wanted the shot to sound natural; and he didn't want the bullet to be found. Well, the only safe targets I can see are the trees. Plenty of them across the lane, in the grounds of Fox House, but they're too far off to be dead-certain targets. Putting myself in his place, I should have aimed for the elm-tree. It's the only tree on this side of the lane with a big enough trunk for the purpose. Let's go and take a look at it!”
They descended into the lane, and walked up it a few yards to where the elm-tree stood. The Inspector glanced back at the gorse-bushes, silently calculating. “You're not looking high enough, Chief,” he said. “If it's there, I should expect to find it a good ten feet above the ground.”
“You would?” said Hemingway, staring up the bole of the tree. “You're very good, Horace: what do you make of that graze!”
The Inspector strode quickly to his side, and gazed up at a gleam of pale colour where a small splinter had been chipped from the tree-trunk. There was a good deal of surprise in his face, not unmixed with awe. “Well, I'll be—! I do believe you're right, sir!” he exclaimed.
“Well, don't say it in that tone of voice! What we want now is a ladder, or a pair of steps. Got a knife on you, Horace?”
The Inspector nodded. “Yes, I've got that, but where do we find the steps?”
“We'll borrow them from the house,” said Hemingway. “That is, if Gladys is in. If she's got the afternoon off, we'll see if there's a ladder in the gardener's shed.”
“It'll be locked,” prophesied the Inspector. “And if you ask that girl for a ladder she'll be bound to come and watch what we do with it.”
“She won't, because I shall keep her in the kitchen, asking her a whole lot of silly questions.”
They walked up the straight path which led from the tradesmen's gate to the back-door. The sound of loud music seemed to indicate that Gladys had not got the afternoon off, but was listening to Music While You Work, turned on at full blast. So it proved. Gladys was polishing the table-silver, and came to the door with the leather in one hand. The manner of her greeting to Hemingway led the Inspector to infer that his chief had not scrupled to charm and to natter her at their previous encounter. He cast a sardonic glance at Hemingway, but that gentleman was already engaged in an exchange of badinage. Beyond saying: “Whatever do you want a ladder for?” Gladys raised no demur at lending her employer's property to the police. She gave Harbottle the key to the gardener's shed, warning him that if he didn't put the ladder back where he found it the gardener wouldn't half raise Cain on the morrow, and invited Hemingway to step into the kitchen, and have a cup of tea. The kettle, she said, was just on the boil. When the Inspector reappeared, some fifteen minutes later, he interrupted a promising tête-à-tête, and it did not seem to him that his superior had found it necessary to ask his hostess any questions, silly or sensible. Gladys sat on one side of the table, both her elbows planted on it, and a cup of very strong and very sweet tea held between her hands, and as the Inspector came in she was giggling, and telling Hemingway that he was a one, and no mistake. “If my Bert was to hear you, I don't know what he wouldn't do!” she said.
“Ah!” said Hemingway, briefly meeting the Inspector's eyes over her head. “If I was a marrying man, I'd cut your Bert out!”
“Sauce!” said Gladys, greatly delighted. She looked over her shoulder at Harbottle, and added, politely, but without enthusiasm, “Would your friend like a cuppa?”
“No, he never drinks it,” said Hemingway, rising to his feet. “Besides, two's company, and three's none. Now, I've just got to check up on one or two points. Any objection to my going into the study?”
Gladys glanced at the clock. “Fat lot of good it would be to start objecting to the policemen!” she remarked. “ I don't mind, but can't you wait a bit? It's just on the quarter, and I can't miss Mrs. Dale's Diary. Sit down, the pair of you, and listen to it! It's ever so nice.”
“No, we mustn't do that, because we've got to get back to Bellingham,” said Hemingway. “There's no need for you to come with us to the study, though. You stay here and listen-in! I'll see the Inspector doesn't go pinching anything.”
“You haven't half got a nerve! More likely him as'll keep an eye on you, I should think! You won't go turning the room upside-down, will you?”
Hemingway assured her that he would preserve apple-pie order in the room, and as, at that moment, a voice suddenly announced: “Mrs. Dale's Diary: a recording of the daily happenings in the life of a doctor's wife,” she temporarily lost interest in him, and turned the face of a confirmed addict towards the radio.
The two men quietly withdrew, and went along the passage at the back of the house to the hall.
“You found it?” Hemingway said.
The Inspector opened his hand, disclosing a small piece of lead.
“Now we are getting somewhere!” said Hemingway. “We'll send that off to town for comparison with the one that was dug out of Warrenby's head. Knarsdale can take it up tonight.”
“I wish I thought there was a hope of finding the cartridge-case of that one,” said the Inspector.
“Well, there isn't, and I should say there never was. Our operator didn't leave much to chance. We were meant to find the one under the gorse-bush. We weren't meant to find the other, and we shan't.”
He led the way into the study as he spoke, leaving the door open, so that he could hear any approaching footsteps.
“Over by the desk!” he said briefly. “He was probably shot while he was sitting behind it. There wouldn't have been much blood, but there must have been some.”
“There was none on the papers we found on the desk,” Harbottle reminded him. “And I see no sign of any on the desk itself.”
“The top of it, according to young Haswell, and to Carsethorn, was littered over with papers. I don't doubt they got spattered, and were carefully removed. We'll get Warrenby's clerk to go through the lot I took away: he may know if anything's missing. Try the window-curtains, and the woodwork of the window! I want to have a good look at the carpet.”
The carpet was a thick Turkey rug, with a groundwork of red, and a sprawling pattern of blue and green. On his hands and knees, Hemingway said: “Fresh blood falling on this wouldn't show up. He might have missed it. A couple of spots is all I ask for!”
“There's nothing on the curtains,” the Inspector informed him. “However, they hang well clear of the long window, so there might not be.” He too dropped on to his knees and closely studied the floorboards. “You'd expect to see a sign on the floor, though.”
“The murderer must have looked to see, and if there was blood on any of the woodwork he'd have wiped it carefully. May have tied something round Warrenby's head before he moved him. Come here, and tell me what you make of this!”
The Inspector went to him, took the magnifying-glass held out to him, and through it stared at two very small spots on the carpet which showed darker than the surrounding red. “Might be,” he grunted.
“Cut 'em off!” commanded Hemingway. “It's a lucky thing it's one of these shaggy rugs. Give me that glass again.”
With its aid, he presently discovered another stain, fainter and rather larger, as though it had been smeared over. “And I think that proves my theory, Horace,” he said cheerfully.
“If the stains turn out to be bloodstains,” amended his cautious assistant, putting the tufts he had sawn off into the match-box Hemingway was holding out to him.
“That'll be a job for Dr. Rotherhope,” said Hemingway. “They look remarkably like it to me.” He glanced at the desk. “And it accounts for the fountain-pen left with its cap off,” he remarked. “I ought to have paid more attention to that when Carsethorn told me that's how he found it. Come on! that sounds like my blonde coming to look for me!”