A few minutes later, the police-car was standing outside Rose Cottages, and the Chief Inspector was making the acquaintance of Mrs. Ditchling and five of her seven children, who ranged in age from Gert, who was twenty, to Jackerleen, who was six. He would willingly have dispensed with the introductions which were forced upon him, but while Mrs. Ditchling was cast into housewifely distraction by his visit, because she was afraid he would find the place a bit untidy—which was her way of describing a scene of such chaos as might be expected to exist in a very small cottage inhabited by seven persons, most of whom were of tender years—it was obviously considered by the rest of the family to constitute a red-letter day in their lives, Alfie, a young gentleman in velveteen knickers and Fair Isle jersey, going so far as to dash out into the garden at the back of the cottage yelling to his brother Claud to come quick, or else he wouldn't see the detective.
In describing the scene later, to Inspector Harbottle, Hemingway admitted that he lost his grip at the outset. The Ditchlings were not only friendly: they were garrulous and inquisitive, and they all talked at once. The Chief Inspector, stunned by his reception, found himself weakly admiring a hideous toy rabbit made of pink plush, shown him by Jackerleen—or, as she was mercifully called, Jackie; answering questions fired at him with the remorselessness of machine-guns by Alfie, and his brother Claud; and endorsing Mrs. Ditchling's opinion that for Edie to leave her nice, steady job at Woolworth's to become a film star would be an act of unparalleled folly. He was also put in possession of much information, such as the entire history of the late Mr. Ditchling's untimely demise; of the rapid rise, in Millinery, of Gert; of the medals Claud had won as a Boy Scout; of the trouble his mother had had over Alfie's adenoids; of the letter Ted had written from his training-camp; and of the high opinion his employer held of Reg, who, unfortunately, was going to the pictures that evening, and so had not come home after work. “He will be upset!” said Mrs. Ditchling.
Everyone seemed to feel that the absent Reg was missing a rare treat, Gert saying that it was a shame, Claud asserting that he would be as sick as muck, and Jackerleen asking her mother several times, with increasing tearfulness, if Reg wouldn't come home to see the pleeceman.
When the Chief Inspector at last managed to make known the reason for his visit, the confusion grew worse, for Mrs. Ditchling, shocked to learn that his rifle had not yet been returned to the Vicar, related in detail the circumstances of Ted's call-up, Gert asserted several times that Ted had told Reg particular not to forget to take the rifle back for him, Edie said that that was Reg all over, Claud and Alfie argued shrilly with one another on the certain whereabouts of the weapon, and Jackerleen reiterated her demand to know if Reg was not coming home to see the pleeceman.
“Well, I hope to God he's not!” said Hemingway, plucking the two boys apart, and giving each a shake. “Stop it, the pair of you! You shut up, Alfie! Now then, Claud! If you're a Wolf Cub, you just tell me where your brother put the Vicar's rifle—and if I see you try to kick Alfie again, I'll tell the Scoutmaster about you, so now!”
Thus admonished, Claud disclosed that Ted put the gun in his workshop, to be safe; and the whole party at once trooped out into the narrow strip of garden at the rear of the cottage. At the end of this was a wooden shed, which, Mrs. Ditchling proudly informed Hemingway, Ted had erected with his own hands. But as the door into it was locked, and the key—if not mislaid, or taken away in a moment of aberration by Ted—was in the absent Reg's possession, Claud's statement could not be verified. A suggestion put forward by Alfie, who wanted action, that the lock should be forced, was vetoed by the Chief Inspector. He issued instructions that Reg was to bring the Vicar's rifle to the police-station in Bellingham on his way to work on the following morning, refused the offer of a cup of tea and left the premises. He was accompanied to the door by the entire family, who saw him off in the friendliest way, the two boys begging him to come to see them again, and Jackerleen not only saying goodbye to him on her own behalf, but adding by proxy, and in a squeaky voice, the plush rabbit's farewell.
This scene so much astonished Constable Melkinthorpe that instead of showing his efficiency by starting his engine, and opening the door for Hemingway to get into the car, he sat staring with his mouth open.
“Yes, you didn't know I was their long-lost uncle, did you?” said Hemingway. “For the lord's sake, start her up, and look as if you were going to drive me to Bellingham, or we shall have Claud and Alfie trying to storm the car!”
“Where am I to drive you, sir?” asked Melkinthorpe.
“To the end of the row. I'm going to call on Ladislas, but I don't want that gang flattening their noses against the window.”
Fortunately the ruse succeeded, and by the time the car had reached the end of the row the Ditchlings had retired again indoors. Hemingway got out of the car, and walked back to Mrs. Dockray's cottage.
It was by this time nearly six o'clock, and Ladislas had returned from work. Ushered into the front sitting-room, by Mrs. Dockray, who eyed him with considerable hostility, the Chief Inspector found that Ladislas was entertaining two unexpected visitors. Mavis Warrenby, attired from head to foot in funeral black, and Abby Dearham, had called to see him, on their way back, by country omnibus, from Bellingham. It did not seem to Hemingway that their visit was affording Ladislas any pleasure. He was a handsome young man, with dark and romantically waving locks, and brown eyes, as shy as a fawn's. He was plainly frightened of the Chief Inspector, and lost no time in telling him, in very good English, that the ladies had just looked in on their way home. Miss Warrenby enlarged on this, saying in her earnest way: “Mr. Zamagoryski is a great friend of mine, and I felt I must show him that I utterly believe in him, and know he had nothing to do with my poor uncle's death.”
Looking anything but grateful for this testimony, Ladislas said: “It is so kind!”
Bestowing a smile of quiet understanding on him, Miss Warrenby took his hand, and pressed it in a speaking way. “You must have faith, Laddy,” she said gently. “And shut your ears to gossip, as I do. I often think how much better the world would be if people would only remember the monkeys.”
“But what good shall it do to remember monkeys?” cried Ladislas, recovering possession of his hand. “Pardon! This is not sensible, to talk of monkeys!”
“You don't understand. Three little monkeys, illustrating what I always feel is a maxim we ought to try to—”
“ I get it!” interrupted Abby triumphantly. “See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil! It's all right, Ladislas: it's only a saying, or something. Come on, Mavis! If the Chief Inspector wants to talk to Ladislas, we'd better clear out!”
Ladislas looked uncertainly from Hemingway to the ladies. Mavis said that perhaps he would prefer her to remain, her voice conveying so strong a suggestion that there existed between them a beautiful understanding that he looked more frightened than ever, and made haste to disclaim any desire for her support. So Mavis began reluctantly to collect her numerous parcels, and the Chief Inspector, retrieving from under the table a paper carrier, handed it to her, saying that she seemed to have been doing a lot of shopping.
“Only mourning,” Mavis replied reverently, and with a slightly reproachful inflection. “I know it's out of date to go into mourning, but I think myself it is a mark of respect. So I asked Miss Dearham if she would go into Bellingham with me, because I didn't quite feel I could go alone—though I know I must get used to being alone now.”
As she spoke, she turned her eyes towards Ladislas, who avoided her gaze, looking instead, and with considerable trepidation, at Hemingway.
“Quite so,” said Hemingway. “Did you respect your uncle, miss?”
This direct question made her blink at him. “What an extraordinary thing to ask me!” she said. “Of course I did!”
“Do you mean really, or because he's dead?” asked Abby, unable to suppress her curiosity.
“Abby, I know you don't mean it, but I do so hate that cynical sort of talk! I was very, very fond of Uncle Sampson, and naturally I respected him.”
“Well, that interests me very much,” said Hemingway. “Because, if you don't mind my saying so, miss, you seem to be about the only person I've met who did respect him.”
“Perhaps,” she suggested, “I knew him better than anyone else did.”
“Just what I was thinking,” agreed Hemingway. “So perhaps you can tell me why he managed to get himself disliked. Now, don't say he wasn't disliked, because I know he was and you must have known it too!”
If he had hoped to startle her out of her self-possession by these bludgeon-like tactics, he was destined to be disappointed. She only looked at him in a soulful way, and said: “I always think it's such a pity to judge by exteriors, don't you? My dear uncle had lots of little foibles, but under them he had a heart of gold. People just didn't know him. Of course, he wasn't perfect—everyone has some faults, haven't they? But it's like that beautiful little verse I learned when I was at school, and made up my mind I'd try to live up to.” She signed, smiled and, to the acute discomfort of Miss Abigail Dearham, recited in a rapt tone: “"There is so much good in the worst of us. And so much bad in the best of us, That it hardly becomes any of us To talk about the rest of us."”
“Gosh!” uttered Abby, revolted. “Did they really make you learn rancid things like that at your school? Mine was much better! We used to learn really good things, like "Fair stood the wind for France", and "Edward, Edward", and "Lord Randal, my son". There was some sense in that! Come on, we must go!”
The Chief Inspector raising no objection, she then hustled Mavis out of the room, and was heard adjuring her, in the passage, not to talk such ghastly tripe, because it made everyone want to be sick.
The Chief Inspector was left confronting Ladislas, who appeared to believe that he had fallen into the hands of the Gestapo. “I can tell you nothing!” he declared, standing with his back to the wall. “It does not matter what you do to me, I can tell you nothing, for I know nothing!”
“Well, if that's so it wouldn't be any use doing anything to you,” remarked Hemingway. “Not that I was going to. I don't know what antics they get up to in Poland, but in England you don't have to be afraid of the police. Are you and Miss Warrenby going to get married, may I ask?”
“No! A thousand times no!”
“All right, all right, there's no need to get excited about it! Just a friend of yours?”
“She is most kind,” said Ladislas, more quietly, but watching him suspiciously. “I do not have many friends here. When I am presented to her, I am pleased, for she is sympathetic, she asks me about my own country, and she herself is not happy, for that one, her uncle, is a tyrant, and, like me, she does not have friends. I do not think of marriage. I swear it!”
“Her uncle was unkind to Miss Warrenby, was he?”
“But yes! She does not say so—she is very good, she makes no complaint—but I have eyes, I am not a fool! She does even the work of a servant, for it is a large house, that, and there is only one servant who is in it, living in it! Miss Warrenby has told me that when the other became married to the gardener Mr. Warrenby would not have another to replace her, for he was not generous, and he said Miss Warrenby had nothing to do, so she could do work in the house. And always she must be obedient, and she must be at home to wait on this uncle, and to be polite to his friends, but her own friends she must not have, no!”
“Didn't like her making a friend of you, in fact?” Hemingway paused, but Ladislas only glared at him. “How was that?”
“I am Polish!” Ladislas uttered bitterly.
“He didn't, by any chance, get it into his head that you wanted to marry Miss Warrenby?”
“It is untrue!”
“All right, don't get excited! Did you see Mr. Warrenby when you went to the house on Saturday?”
“No!”
“Yes, you did. What was he doing?”
Ladislas broke into impassioned speech, the gist of the torrent of words which burst from him being that if he were not a foreigner the Chief Inspector would not dare to question him, or to doubt his word.
“In my job, we get into the way of doubting people's words,” said Hemingway equably. “Besides, you've got a trick of telling first one story and then another, which confuses me. You told Sergeant Carsethorn you didn't go to Fox House, and when he didn't believe that, you said you did. You told him you went to the back-door. Which leads me to think that you knew Mr. Warrenby was in the house, because you'd seen him. I daresay you reconnoitred a bit, and I'm sure I don't blame you, for he seems to have been the sort of man no one would have wanted to meet if they could have avoided it. So now you tell me just what did happen!”
This matter-of-fact speech appeared to damp Ladislas's passion.
After staring at Hemingway for a moment, he said in a flattened voice: “When I say I did not see him, I mean—I mean—”
“You mean you did,” supplied Hemingway. “Comes of being foreign, and not being able to speak English right, I daresay.”
Ladislas gulped. “He was in his study. He was reading some papers.”
Hemingway nodded. “At his desk? You could see him from the road, easy, if that was where he was. So then, according to what you told Carsethorn, you slipped up to the back-door, which, I must say, seems to me a silly thing to have done, because, for one thing, I've seen the path which the tradesmen use, and it runs up that side of the house, so that I should have thought you'd have caught Mr. Warrenby's eye; and, for another, unless he was uncommonly deaf, I should have expected him to have heard you knocking on the back-door. However, if that's your story, I don't mind: it doesn't seem to me to matter much.”
“Now I shall tell you the truth!” said Ladislas impulsively. “I did not go to the door! I went away, because I do not wish to make trouble for Miss Warrenby, and if her uncle is at home it is plain to me that she cannot go with me anywhere. It makes nothing!”
“Only a bit of extra work for the police, and that's fair enough, isn't it?” said Hemingway.
He left Ladislas hovering between doubt and relief, and went out to find that Constable Melkinthorpe was no longer alone. He had left the car, and was standing beside it, grinning down at an aged and disreputable individual in a much-patched suit of clothes and a greasy cap, which he wore at a raffish angle wholly inappropriate to his advanced years. Beside him stood a buxom lady, who appeared to be torn between anxiety and annoyance; and, eying them both in a boding fashion, was a stout and middle-aged constable. As the Chief Inspector paused for a moment, surveying the group, the buxom lady tried to take the old gentleman's arm, and besought him urgently to give over, and come off home to his tea.
“You lemme go, or I'll fetch you a clip!” said the Oldest Inhabitant, in shrill but slightly indistinct tones, and brandishing a serviceable ash-plant. “Wimmen! I 'ates the sight of them! I'm a-going to 'ave a few words with the Lunnon 'tec, and it 'ud take more than a nasty, meddling female to stop me! Ah! And more than a mutton-headed flat-foot wot never got no promotion, and never would, not if he lived to be as old as wot I am, which 'e won't becos 'e eats too much—unless it ain't fat, but dropsy 'e's got.”
“Father!” expostulated his daughter, giving his arm a shake. “You've got no call to be rude to Mr. Hobkirk! If you don't stop it—”
“You give me any more of your impudence, Biggleswade, and you'll wish you'd kept a civil tongue in your head!” interrupted Constable Hobkirk, swelling with wrath.
“Mr. Biggleswade to you, Mr. Hobkirk!” instantly responded the lady, with a sudden veering of sympathy. “Ninety years old he is, and I'll thank you to remember it! Now, come along with you, Father, do!”
“What's all this about?” demanded Hemingway, stepping up to the group.
Constable Melkinthorpe so far forgot himself as to wink at his superior, but Hobkirk replied in official accents: “Police Constable Hobkirk, sir, reporting—”
“You shut your gob, young feller!” commanded Mr. Biggleswade. “You ain't got nothing to report. It's me as'll do the reporting. I'm going to 'ave me pitcher in the papers, and a bit wrote about me underneath it.”
“All right, grandfather!” said Hemingway good-naturedly. “But give the constable a chance! What's the matter, Hobkirk?”
“If there was anything the matter, which there ain't,” said the obstreperous Mr. Biggleswade, “it wouldn't do you no good to go asking 'im, because 'e ain't seen beyond that great stomach of 'is for years—not but wot that's far enough. Nor I won't 'ave me words took out of me mouth by 'im, nor you neither, becos the police never 'ad nothing on me, and I ain't afraid of any of you!”
“You're a wicked old man, that's what you are!” exploded the sorely-tried Hobkirk. “Before you got so as you couldn't do more than hobble about with a stick, you was the worst poacher in the county, and well I know it!”
Mr. Biggleswade's villainous countenance creased into a myriad wrinkles, and he gave vent to a senile chuckle. “That's more than you could prove, my lad,” he said. “I don't say I weren't, nor yet I don't say I were, but wot I do say is that I were a sight too smart for all them gurt fools to catch.”
“Don't pay any heed to him, sir!” begged his horrified daughter. “He's getting to be a bit childish! I'm sure I ask your pardon for him coming worriting you like this, but he's that obstinate! And coming up here to talk to you without his teeth!”
A vicious dig from her sire's elbow put her temporarily out of action. “My darter,” explained Mr. Biggleswade. “Lawful,” he added. “Which is wot makes 'er so blooming upperty! I got others. Ah, and sons! First and last—”
“Listen, grandfather!” interposed Hemingway. “There's nothing I'd like better than to hear your life-story, but the trouble is I've got work to do. So you just tell me what you want to see me about, will you?”
“That's right, my lad, you listen to me, and you'll get made a Sergeant!” said Mr. Biggleswade approvingly. “'Cos I know who done this 'ere murder!”
“You do?” said Hemingway.
“He don't know anything of the sort, sir!” expostulated Hobkirk. “He's in his dotage! Sergeant! Why, you silly old fool—”
“You leave him alone!” said Hemingway briefly. “Come on, grandfather! Who did do it?”
An expression of intense cunning came into the wizened countenance of Mr. Biggleswade. “Mind, I'll 'ave me pitcher in the papers!” he warned the Chief Inspector. “And if there's a reward I'll 'ave that too! Else I won't tell you nothing!”
“That's all right,” said Hemingway encouragingly. “If you can tell me the name of the man I'm after, I'll take a photo of you myself!”
Much gratified, Mr. Biggleswade said: “You're a smart lad, that's wot you are! Well, if you want to know 'oo done it I'll tell you! It were young Reg Ditchling!”
“Father!” said his daughter imploringly. “It isn't right to go taking that poor boy's character away from him! I keep telling you you've got it all wrong!”
“Reg Ditchling,” repeated Mr. Biggleswade, nodding his hoary head mysteriously. “And don't you let no one tell you different! I was up on that there common—ah, and no so far from Cox Lane neither!—and I 'eared a shot. Plain as I 'ear you yammering now I 'eard it, and don't none of you start talking to me about no backfires, “cos there ain't any man living knows more about gunshots than wot I do—I didn't pay no 'eed, “cos it weren't none of my business, but 'oo do you think I seen not ten minutes later, “idling be'ind a blackberry bush?”
“Reg Ditchling,” replied Hemingway promptly.
“You leave me tell it you meself!” said Mr. Biggleswade, affronted. “Reg Ditchling it was! "And wot might you be up to?" I says to 'im. "Nuthin", 'e says, scared-like. "Oh, nuthin' is it?" I says to 'im. "And 'oo give you that rifle, my lad?" I says. Then 'e 'ands me a lot of sauce, and makes off, and I went up to the Red Lion to 'ave a pint afore me tea.”
“Yes!” interjected his daughter. “And when I went up to fetch you home it was all of seven o'clock, and Mr. Crailing told me you'd been there half an hour!”
Hobkirk, who had edged himself up to the Chief Inspector, said for his private ear: “That's right, what she says, sir, but make the silly old fool listen to a word of sense—I can't! I'll have a few words to say to Reg Ditchling when I get hold of him, borrowing guns he's got no right to have, but if he did any shooting on the common that day it was a good hour before Mr. Warrenby was killed. And I wouldn't believe that old rascal, not if he was to swear to it on his Bible-oath! It's all on account of old Mr. Horley being interviewed for the local paper the day he was ninety! Nothing'll do for Biggleswade but to get into the papers as well, with his picture!”
“Well, I hope he manages to pull it off,” said Hemingway, watching appreciatively the spirited way in which Mr. Biggleswade was resisting his daughter's attempts to drag him homewards. “A very lively old gentleman, I call him. He deserves to get his picture in the papers.”
Hobkirk eyed him doubtfully. “If you had to see as much of him as I do, sir—”
“Lord bless you, he wouldn't worry me! Have you had many of the villagers trying to do a bit of detection?”
“Sir,” said Hobkirk earnestly, “you wouldn't believe it! Something chronic, it is! I've had to choke off more silly fat-heads who saw people they don't like not more than half a mile from Fox House nowhere near the time Mr. Warrenby was shot—well, as I say, you wouldn't hardly credit!”
“That's where you're wrong, because I would,” said Hemingway. “Now then, grandfather! You go off home and have your tea, and don't worry me any more about it! I won't forget what you've told me! Come on, Melkinthorpe! Bellingham!”
At the police-station, he found the Chief Constable awaiting him, and chafing a little. He said cheerfully: “Sorry sir! Did you want to speak to me? I've been a bit held up by the local talent.” He saw that he had puzzled the Colonel, and added: “Amateur detectives, sir: the place is swarming with them.”
“Oh!” said the Colonel rather blankly. “Damned annoying! Got anything to tell me?”
“No, sir, I can't say I have. The soup's thickening nicely, which is as far as I'm prepared to go at the moment.”
“You seemed pleased!” said the Colonel.
“I am,” admitted Hemingway. “In my experience, sir the thicker it gets the quicker you'll solve it. Can you tell me anything about the way Mr. Ainstable's estate is settled?”
“No,” replied the Colonel, looking at him narrowly. “I can't. Except that the heir is Ainstable's nephew. Do you mean it's entailed?”
“Not exactly, no. At some date a settlement was made, but what the terms of it were I don't know. The Squire doesn't own the estate, that's all I know.”
“Good God! I had no idea—are you sure of your facts, Hemingway?”
“I'm sure he's only the tenant-for-life, sir, and I know the name of the firm of solicitors who act for the trustees of the settlement. But that's just about all I do know. How old was Mr. Ainstable's son when he was killed?”
The Colonel reflected. “He and my boy were at school together, so he must have been nineteen and—no, he was a few months older than Michael. About twenty.”
“Not of age. Then the estate must have been settled by his grandfather, or resettled by him. It can't have been resettled by this man while his son was still a minor. I'm not very well up in these things, but I did once have a case which hinged on the settlement of a big estate.”
“How did you find all this out?” demanded the Colonel. “I should doubt whether anyone except, I suppose, Drybeck knows anything about Ainstable's affairs. And, good God, he wouldn't talk about a client's private business!”
“Properly speaking,” replied Hemingway, “it was Harbottle who discovered it. And Mr. Drybeck wasn't the only person who knew there'd been a settlement. Sampson Warrenby knew it. And unless I'm much mistaken, Mr. Haswell knows it too—or at any rate suspects it.”
“I should have said that Warrenby was the last man in the world Ainstable would have confided in! But go on!”
“I'm dead sure he didn't confide to him, sir. Warrenby found it out. There's a copy of a letter he wrote to the solicitors of the trustees, saying that he had a client that was interested in Mr. Ainstable's gravel-pit, and that he was informed they were the proper people for him to apply to. And there's an answer from this firm, all very plain, stating that although any money would have to be paid to them, acting for the trustees, to be apportioned as between the tenant-for-life and the trust funds, all such contracts were a matter for Mr. Ainstable only. Now, on the face of it, it looks as if Warrenby must have approached Mr. Drybeck, knowing him to be Mr. Ainstable's solicitor, and been passed on by him to this London firm.”
“I suppose so,” said the Colonel, staring at him.
“Yes, sir, only I've met a lot of false faces in my time, and it's my belief this is one of them. I don't doubt Warrenby got the information he wanted out of Mr. Drybeck, but I should say he didn't appear in the matter himself. In fact, I don't know how he managed it, which is probably just as well, because I've got a strong notion that if ever I got to the bottom of the methods the late lamented employed to find out things about his neighbours I'd very likely get up a subscription for the man who did him in, instead of arresting him.”
“I don't follow you,” the Colonel said. “Why should Warrenby not appear in the matter? It seems to me that if he had a client—”
“Yes, sir, but another strong notion I have is that he hadn't got any such thing. Seems highly unnatural to me that Mr. Drybeck should never have mentioned the matter to the Squire, and that he didn't I'm quite satisfied. It came as news to Mr. Ainstable—and no such very pleasant news either.”
The Colonel stirred restlessly. “What makes you think there was no client?”
“The fact that we don't hear anything more about him, sir. Having gone to the trouble of finding out who was the right person to apply to, Warrenby didn't apply to him.”
“He might, surely, have discovered that the lease of the pit had already been granted.” objected the Colonel.
“I'll go further than that, sir. He might have known it all along. In fact, he must have known it. Everyone in Thornden couldn't help but know it. I think something made him suspect the Squire's estate had been settled, and he wanted to know just how the land lay. He hadn't a hope of getting Mr. Drybeck to tell him anything, so he went about the job in a different way.”
“I should like you to tell me exactly what's in your mind, Hemingway,” said the Colonel, in a level voice.
“Well, sir, taking one thing with another, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that the Squire's committing waste—and has been doing so ever since his boy was killed. Now, as I say, I'm not an expert, but I do know that if you've got a settled estate, and you go selling its capital, in a manner of speaking—timber, mineral rights, and suchlike—about two-thirds of what you make out of it has to be put into the estate funds.” He paused, but the Colonel said nothing. “And if you put the whole sum into your own pocket—or perhaps invest it so that your wife will be left comfortably off when you're dead—well, that's committing waste.”
The Colonel raised his eyes from their frowning contemplation of the blotter on his desk. “That's a pretty serious charge, Chief Inspector.”
“It is, sir. Only, of course, I'm not concerned with what Mr. Ainstable may be doing with his estate, except in so far as it might have a bearing on this case. It isn't a criminal offence.”
“What do you mean to do?”
“Get the Department to make a few discreet enquiries for me. There won't be any noise made over it, but it's got to be done.”
“Of course,” said the Colonel, a little stiffly. “If you think you have enough evidence to justify an enquiry.”
“Well, I do think so, sir. To start with, I've got reason to suspect that Warrenby had some sort of a hold over the Squire. To go on with, I've had a look at that estate, and I can see there's precious little money being spent on it, and a tidy sum being taken out of it. Then I find that it's going to a nephew who, by all accounts, is next door to being a stranger to the Squire. And I don't mind saying that I've got a lot of sympathy for the Squire, because he's been hamstrung by a settlement that was meant to make everything safe and snug. If the boy had lived to be twenty-one, I don't doubt the estate would have been resettled, and provision made for Mrs. Ainstable. But he didn't and it looks to me very much as if the Squire knows that nephew of his wouldn't look at it the same way his son would have. Well, when I saw Mr. and Mrs. Ainstable, I thought she looked a lot more likely to die than he did. But when I left Old Place, I went and paid a call on the Vicar, and that's where I learned that the Squire has a bad heart.”
“Angina,” said the Colonel shortly. “But, as far as I know, he's only had two not very severe attacks.”
“Yes, Mr. Haswell, who happened to be with the Vicar when I called, said there was no reason why Mr. Ainstable shouldn't live for a good many years yet. On the other hand, you don't have to be a doctor to know that he might go very suddenly. That adds quite a bit of colour to what I'd already noticed. Which was that when I mentioned those two letters Harbottle found in Warrenby's office I knew I'd given the Squire and Mrs. Ainstable a nasty jolt. I got the impression that the last thing either of them wanted me to do was to start nosing round that gravel-pit, or all the timber he's been felling. And on top of that, when the Vicar started to say something about the gravel-pit, Mr. Haswell nipped in as neat as you please, and flicked his mind off on to something quite different. Which leads me to think that he's got pretty much the same idea as I have about what the Squire's up to.”
There was a short silence. The Colonel broke it. “This is a damned, nasty affair, Hemingway! Well—it's up to you, thank God! If you're right—if Warrenby was blackmailing the Squire, not for money, but merely to force him to sponsor him socially—does that, in your view, constitute a sufficient motive for murder?”
Hemingway rose to his feet. “I don't remember, offhand, how many cases I've had, sir,” he said dryly. “A good few. But I couldn't tell you what constitutes a motive for murder, not yet what doesn't. Some of the worst I've handled were committed for reasons you wouldn't even consider to be possible if homicide didn't happen to be your job. You don't need me to tell you that, sir.”
“No,” said the Colonel. “But it depends on the type of man involved.”
“That's right, sir: it does.”
The Colonel glanced up. “Blackmail,” he said heavily. “Yes, that's a motive, Chief Inspector—a strong motive.”
“Yes, and it gives us a nice wide field,” agreed Hemingway. “Because, unless I miss my bet, I don't think the Squire was the only person Warrenby was putting the black on.” He glanced at his watch. “If you'll excuse me, sir, I'll be leaving you. I told my chief I'd be giving him a ring about now.” He walked over to the door, and looked back, as he opened it, a twinkle in his eye. “I've got upwards of half a dozen people who could have committed this murder, as far as their alibis go, which is nowhere,” he remarked. “At least four of them have got what'll pass for motives, and the end of it will very likely be that it'll turn out to be someone I haven't begun to consider yet.”
“I hope to God you may be right!” said the Colonel.