"I daresay, but I can't see that it's any part of my job to tell him."
The Sergeant sniffed. "What's the husband like? Give any reason for coming home a week before he was expected?"
"None. He's a good-looking chap. Got a bit of a chin, and thinks more than he says. Determined fellow, I should imagine; not easily rattled, and by no means a fool."
"I hope we bring it home to him," said the Sergeant uncharitably. "From the sound of it, he's going to be as big a nuisance as his wife. No alibi?"
"So he said. In fact, he made me a present of that piece of information."
The Sergeant cocked an eye at him. "He did, did he? Did it strike you he might be fancying himself in the part of a red herring?"
"It's a possibility, of course. He may suspect his wife of having killed Fletcher. It depends how much he knows about her dealings with the man."
The Sergeant groaned. "I get it. A nice game of battledore and shuttlecock, with you and me cast for the shuttlecocks. Of course, our heads won't really start aching till Mrs. North gets on to it that the man she saw may have been Charlie Carpenter. We'll have her eating all that evidence of hers about the late Ernest showing him off the premises then. Probably boloney, anyway."
"It may be, but she spoke the truth about her fingerprints being on the door. I verified that before I left Marley. The real discrepancy is in the time. At 9.35 p.m. Budd left Greystones by the garden-gate. I think we can take that as being true. Mrs. North was walking up Maple Grove at that time, and states that she saw a fat man come out of Greystones."
The Sergeant jotted it down on a piece of paper. "That checks up with his own story: 9.35 p.m. Budd leaves; the North dame arrives."
"Next we have Mrs. North leaving the study at 9.45."
"Short visit," commented the Sergeant.
"She and Fletcher had a row. She admitted to that the second time I saw her. Also at 9.45 we have the unknown man entering the garden by the side gate."
"X," said the Sergeant. "That's when Mrs. North hid behind the bush?"
"Yes. X entered the study, we suppose, a minute later. That isn't important. Now, according to her first story, Mrs. North then left by way of the garden-gate. According to her second version, she remained where she was, until about 9.58, when X, accompanied by Fletcher, came out of the study, and walked down the path to the gate. She then slipped back into the study to search for her IOUs, heard Fletcher returning, and escaped through the door into the hall. She was in the hall as the clock began to strike 10.00. At 10.02, Glass, on his beat, saw a man corresponding to Mrs. North's description of X coming out of the garden-gate, and making off towards the Arden Road. He entered the garden and reached the study at 10.05 p.m., to find Fletcher dead, and no sign of his murderer to be seen. What do you make of it?"
"I don't," said the Sergeant flatly. "It's looked like a mess to me from the start. What I do say is that all this stuff of Mrs. North's isn't to be trusted. In fact, there's only one thing we've got to hold on to, which is that at 10.05 p.m. Glass found the late Ernest with his head bashed in. That at least is certain, and what's more it makes Mrs. North's evidence look a bit cock-eyed. Glass saw X leaving the premises at 10.02, which means that if he was the murderer he must have done Ernest in between 10.00 and 10.01, allowing him a minute to get out of the study and down the path to the gate."
"All right: that's probably a fair estimate."
"Well, it doesn't fit - not if you're accepting Mrs. North's evidence. According to her, it was just on 10.00 when she heard Ernest coming back to the study. You think of it, Chief: Ernest has got to have time to get into his chair behind the desk again, and start to write the letter that was found under his head. It was obvious he was taken by surprise, which means that X didn't come stampeding up the path directly behind him. He waited till Ernest was in the house: it stands to reason he must have. Once Ernest has settled down he gets to work - enters, strikes Ernest with some kind of a blunt instrument, not once, mark you! but two or three times - and then makes off. Well, if you can cram all that into two minutes you're cleverer than I am, Super, that's all. Take it this way: if Ernest saw him off the premises, he pretended to walk away, didn't he?"
"You'd think so."
"I'm dead sure of it. While Ernest is strolling back to the house, he comes back cautiously to the gate. If he'd made up his mind, as he must have, to kill Ernest, he didn't open that gate till Ernest had reached the house again, which was at 10.00 p.m. He wouldn't have run the risk of Ernest hearing him. No point in it. Does he stride up the path bold as brass, thus advertising his presence? Of course he doesn't! He creeps up, and if it takes a minute to reach the study from that gate, walking ordinarily, as we know it does, it's my belief it took X a sight longer to do it in the dark, treading warily. By the time he's in the study again it must be a couple of minutes after 10.00, at which time, mark you, Glass saw him coming out of the garden-gate."
"I'm afraid you've got a fixation, Skipper," said Hannasyde gently. "We don't know that X was the murderer."
The Sergeant swallowed this, replying with dignity: "I was coming to that. It could have been Budd, come back secretly, and lying in wait in the garden till the coast was clear; or it could have been Mr. North. But if X, whom Glass saw, was Charlie Carpenter, what was he doing while Ernest was being knocked on the head?"
"There's another possibility," said Hannasyde. "Suppose that North was the murderer -'
"Just a moment, Super! Is North X?" demanded Hemingway.
"Nobody is X. Assuming that North was the man Mrs. North saw coming up the path, we have to consider the possibility of Fletcher's having been killed at any time between 9.45 and 10.01."
The Sergeant blinked. "Mrs. North's revised version being so much eye-wash? Where does Carpenter come in?"
"After the murder," replied Hannasyde.
There was a short pause. "We've got to find Carpenter," announced the Sergeant.
"Of course. Have you got anyone on to that?"
"I've got practically the whole Department hunting for him. But if he's kept out of trouble for the past year, it may be a bit of a job to locate him."
"The other point that puzzles me is the weapon used. The doctors seem to be agreed that the blows were struck with a blunt instrument like a weighted stick. The skull was smashed right in, you know. Now, both Glass and Mrs. North say that the man they saw was carrying nothing. You may rule Mrs. North's evidence out of court if you like, but you can't rule out what Glass says. The natural thing would be for the murderer to get rid of the weapon at once, but I've had the garden searched with a toothcomb, and nothing has come to light."
"Anything in the room? Bronze ornament, or paperweight, which could have been stuffed into the murderer's pocket?"
"The butler states that nothing is missing from the room, and although there is a heavy paper-weight there, I understand that it was produced later by your playful little friend, Neville Fletcher - about whom I'm going to make a few inquiries, by the way."
The Sergeant sat up. "He produced it, did he? From what I've seen of him, Chief, that's just about what he would do - if he happened to have murdered his uncle with it! It would strike him as being a really high-class bit of humour."
"Fairly cold-blooded."
"Don't you fret, he's cold-blooded enough! Clever enough, too. But if he did it, Mrs. North must have seen him on her way out of - Oh, now we're assuming Mrs. North's first story was the true one, are we?"