"And that was when the council put up the fence and the reflectors—you can't rightly miss 'em as you come into the bend-—and the Ministry put up the warning signs too. So there's been nothing gone amiss since then. I wouldn't say it was dangerous at all."
That was the thing in a nutshelclass="underline" the bend was at worst a minor hazard, but no killer. The moment a driver began to go into it at night those red reflectors would glare back warningly; even the ill-fated bus had almost managed the unexpected curve successfully.
"But young Smith found it dangerous, didn't he?" murmured Butler.
"Sir?" The constable frowned.
"The motor-cyclist," began Butler patiently. "If he came down the straight and went through the gap just there ... it looks as though he never even started to turn into the bend . . ."
"Ah . . . well now . . ." It was not so much a conjecture as a problem when put like that, and the constable's reluctance to tackle it was weakening ". . . it does look a bit like that when you think about it."
And he was thinking about it now. He looked up the straight and then to the gap, eyes narrowed, and finally at the pond itself. Then back up the straight again. "You see, sir, there was no brake mark and no skid mark. Yet he came down fast—that's sure enough, for the motor-bike was well out in the water. And
—" he paused "—and now I come to think of it, well, it wasn't quite where I'd have expected it. . ."
"Indeed?"
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The constable nodded judiciously. "If he was taking the corner, or just beginning to, it should have ended up further to the right—the right, that is, as we're lookin' at the pond from here. But it was two, maybe three yards to the left of that... So it's like you said, sir—if you asked me I'd say he came directly down the road and straight across through the hedge like there was no corner at all—"
He stopped suddenly, glancing at Butler nervously again as though expecting a reprimand.
"I think you're quite right, constable," said Butler encouragingly, ignoring the glance. "We have the two fixed points—the gap in the hedge and the position of the machine in the pond—and if we imagine a back-bearing from them we ought to have his angle of approach. You're absolutely right!" He paused to let his praise sink in. "But how would he come to do a thing like that?"
"That 'ud be hard to say, sir. Even if he was riding dead straight his headlight 'ud pick up the first of the reflectors. Even my bicycle light picks 'em up."
"Could he have mistaken it for the rear lights of a car?"
"Oh no, sir. There's no mistaking them."
"Then supposing a car came round the corner as he was approaching it—could it have cut off the reflectors and then blinded him?"
"Mmmm ... it could have, I suppose—but it would have lit 'em all up first and warned him there was a corner here." Emphatic shake of the head. "I doubt it, sir. I doubt it very much."
Butler doubted it too. But if a car was already waiting on the bend in the darkness, all its lights out—
then all switched on suddenly, high beam, to dazzle the oncoming motorcyclist ? Or if there had been a prepared obstacle in the road?
Butler shook his head to himself just as emphatically. It was all too providential, too elaborate and too theatrical, and far too-clever, involving exact knowledge and preparations— a daunting risk of bringing down the wrong man anyway. Altogether not a bit like the Spetsburo Thirteen.
"Not unless he was riding like a maniac, anyway," concluded the constable. "I heard tell he'd taken a drop too much—have you considered that, sir? Dr Fox 'ud be able to tell you that for sure."
Like a maniac who'd taken a drop too much: Neil Smith roaring through the night with the fear of the Spetsburo behind him—or maybe simply trying to shake Paul Zoshchenko from his tail! On a high-powered bike that was a better formula for disaster than any far-fetched plot.
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In the last analysis the shorter, simpler answer always made the best sense, disappointing though it might be.
"Yes, Colonel Butler—the powers-that-be warned me to be ready for you."
Dr Fox examined Butler's credentials suspiciously, and then measured Butler himself against them with equal distaste. "It seems I must answer every question you put to me to the best of my ability."
Medium hostile, categorised Butler. Or if not actually hostile, then somewhat nettled at being leaned on by those powers-that-be to divulge information properly reserved for the coroner's court. And of course no hardpressed general practitioner gladly suffered unscheduled calls on his time.
"I'd be grateful for any help you can give me, doctor."
Nod. "I've no doubt. The trouble is, Colonel, that answers—medical answers—are not always amenable to words of command. You'll be wanting 'yes' or 'no' from me and I shall be giving you 'maybe' if you're lucky—that's my experience, anyway. But we shall see, shan't we!"
Butler watched him without replying. Dr Fox was evidently used to opening the bowling, so bowl he must be allowed to do, at least for the time being.
Fox indicated the close-typed form on the desk between them. "I take it that you've seen a duplicate of this report, Colonel? What more do you require? Conjecture off the record?"
"I'll settle for that, doctor."
"Hmm! Well I can't say it seems exceptionally complicated. To put it bluntly, he rode his motor-cycle under the influence of drink, did your Neil Smith—or as we have to say now, he exceeded the permitted level of alcohol in his bloodstream. No conjecture there, certainly—the actual figure was 230 millilitres
—that's about six and a half pints of beer, or 13 whiskies, as near as I can estimate. All on an empty stomach, and I wouldn't have said he was a drinking man."
So the false "Boozy" Smith had not been a drinking man, whatever the real one had been. But that was hardly surprising in his line of work.
"In fact he wasn't fit to be on the road at all, and if it hadn't happened at Pett's Pond it would assuredly have happened somewhere else very soon," went on Fox unemotionally. "It was just beginning to hit him hard. I suppose we should be thankful that he only killed himself."
"Would you consider the Pond a dangerous spot?"
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"Every inch of every road is a danger spot when there's a drunk on it. The pond corner's no worse than a dozen others within this parish. As a matter of fact it could have been the safest place for him to have gone off the road, seeing as he wasn't wearing a crash helmet. The water could have saved him."
"But it didn't."
"No, it didn't. But there's nothing very surprising in that."
"You mean for a grown man to die in four feet of water doesn't surprise you, doctor?"
"I mean exactly what I have said. Grown men have drowned in much less than four feet of water, Colonel. When it comes to drowning, some people find a few inches of bathwater quite sufficient." Fox lifted his chin and gazed at Butler with a hint of scorn. "I don't know what your experience of death is—
I suppose you peacetime soldiers haven't seen so much of it—but I have always found life much more surprising than death."
Butler clenched his back teeth. "Is it of any significance that he was floating face downwards? Would you have expected him to float that way?"
The corner of Fox's mouth twitched. "Oh, come now, Colonel—Butler was it?—if the object of this interview is to bandy old wives' tales, then we shall both be wasting our time. If you want to create a mystery where there is none, nothing I say is likely to prevent you doing so. But you must try not to ask stupid questions."
Butler cursed Audley and his clever little bits of verse as he felt the situation slipping from his grasp. He had plainly bodged things to the point where they were doing little more than fence with each other.