“It's nothing of the sort! Now, I won't have you making that kind of joke, any of you! It's in very bad taste. Mavis says those things because she thinks one ought not to speak ill of the dead, that's all.”
“In what terms does she speak of the Emperor Domitian, and the late Adolf Hitler?” enquired Gavin, interested.
“That,” said Miss Patterdale severely, “is different!”
“Well,” said Gavin, setting down his empty cup, and dragging himself out of his chair, “if I am not to be allowed to suspect Mavis, I must fall back upon my first choice.”
“Who's that?” demanded Abby.
“Mrs. Midgeholme—to avenge the blood of Ulysses. I won't deny that I infinitely prefer her as a suspect to Mavis, but there's always the fear that she'll turn out to have an unbreakable alibi. Mavis, we all know, has none at all. That, by the way, will be our next excitement: who had an alibi, and who had none. You three appear to have them, which, if you will permit me to say so, is very dull and unenterprising of you.”
“Have you got one?” Abby asked forthrightly.
“No, no! At least, I hope I haven't: if that wretched landlord says I was sitting in the Red Lion at the time I shall deny it hotly. Surely the police cannot overlook my claims to the post of chief suspect? I write detective novels, I have a lame leg, and I drove my half-brother to suicide. What more do the police want?”
“You know,” said Charles, who had not been attending very closely to this, “I've been thinking, and I shouldn't be at all surprised, taking into account the time when it happened, if quite a few people haven't got alibis. Everyone was on the way home from our party—the Squire, Lindale, the Major, old Drybeck!”
“Don't forget me, and the Vicar's wife!” interrupted Gavin.
“I don't mind adding you to the list, but I won't have the Vicar's wife. She can't have had anything to do with it, and only confuses the issue.”
“What about the Vicar himself?” asked Abby, her chin propped on her clasped hands. “Where was he?”
“Went off to visit the sick, didn't he? Anyway, he's out of the running too.”
“So are Major Midgeholme, and Mr. Drybeck,” Abby pointed out. “We ran them home.”
“On the contrary! I set the Major down at the cross-road, because he told me to. I don't know what he did when I drove on. Not that I think he's a likely candidate for the list, but we must stick to the facts. I then set old Drybeck down outside his house. We left him waving goodbye to us: we didn't actually see him enter his house, and for anything we know, he didn't.”
“No, that's true,” agreed Abby, her eyes widening. “And he really is a likely candidate! Gosh!”
“Now, that's quite enough!” Miss Patterdale interposed. “Talk like that can lead to trouble.”
“That's all right, Aunt Miriam,” said Charles. “I bet he isn't the only one who might have done it.”
“Well, just you remember that!” she admonished him. “It's all very well to talk like that about people like poor old Thaddeus Drybeck, but you wouldn't think it nearly so amusing if someone were to do the same about your father, for instance.”
Charles stared at her. “Dad? But he wasn't there!”
“Of course he wasn't. But what would you feel like if we started to make up stories of where he might have been? You shouldn't let your tongue run away with you.”
She appealed to deaf ears. Young Mr. Haswell, betraying an unfilial delight in this novel aspect of his parent, gave a shout of laughter, and gasped: “Dad! Oh, what a rich thought! I must ask him if he can account for his movements!”
Chapter Five
By noon on the following day, the Chief Constable was listening to a report from Detective-Sergeant Carsethorn, who had spent a busy but unpromising morning; half an hour later he expressed a desire to be allowed to think the thing over; and within ten minutes he had reached a not unexpected but not very welcome decision. “And I don't mind telling you, Carsethorn,” he said, as he sat waiting to be connected with a certain London telephone number, “that I should do exactly the same if Inspector Thropton hadn't chosen this moment to go down with German measles!”
“Yes, sir,” said the Sergeant, torn between a natural desire to achieve promotion through his brilliant handling of a difficult case, and an uneasy suspicion that the problem was rather too complicated for him to tackle.
It was therefore with mixed feelings that, shortly before four o'clock, he made the acquaintance of a bright-eyed and cheerful individual, who was ushered into the Chief Constable's room at the police-station, a tall and rather severe man at his heels.
“Chief Inspector Hemingway?” said Colonel Scales, rising behind his desk, and holding out his hand across it. “Glad to meet you! Heard of you, of course. I warned Headquarters this would need a good man, and I see they've sent me one.”
“Thank you, sir!” said the Chief Inspector, without a blush. He shook the Colonel's hand, and indicated his companion. “Inspector Harbottle, sir.”
“Afternoon, Inspector. This is Detective-Sergeant Carsethorn, who has been in charge of the case.”
“Very happy to work with you,” said the Chief Inspector, briskly shaking the Sergeant's hand. “Of course, I don't know much about it yet, but I'm bound to say it sounds like a nice case, on the face of it.”
“Eh?” ejaculated the Colonel, startled by this view of a case which he (like Miss Patterdale) feared would lead to much unpleasantness. “Did you say nice?”
“I did, sir. What I meant was that it's out of the ordinary.”
“In a way I suppose it is. The murder itself does not present us, I think you will agree, with any unusual features, however.”
“Plain case of shooting, isn't it, sir? No locked rooms, or mysterious weapons, or any other trimmings?”
“The man was shot in his own garden,” said the Colonel, looking at him rather uncertainly. It appeared to him that Chief Inspector Hemingway approached his task in a disquietingly light-hearted spirit. He recalled that he had been warned by an old friend at Scotland Yard that he would find the Chief Inspector a little unorthodox.
“Ah!” said Hemingway. “What you might call a nice, wide field.”
“No, a garden,” said the Colonel.
“Just so, sir.”
“I'd better tell you exactly what has happened to date. Sit down, all of you! I'm going to light a pipe myself. You can do the same. Or there are cigarettes in that box.”
He sat down, and began to fill his pipe from an old-fashioned rubber pouch. The Chief Inspector took a cigarette, and lit it; and his subordinate, offered the box by Sergeant Carsethorn, said in a deep voice that he never smoked.
Having, by the expenditure of several matches, got his pipe going, it did not take the Colonel long to lay the bare facts of the case before Hemingway. It took rather longer to enumerate and to describe the various persons who made up the society of Thornden; and here it was seen that the Colonel was picking his words carefully. Inspector Harbottle, who had been sitting with his eyes fixed on the opposite wall with an immobility strongly suggestive of catalepsy, suddenly bent a gloomy gaze upon him; but his superior maintained his air of birdlike, uncritical interest.
“Dr. Rotherhope performed the autopsy this morning,” concluded the Colonel. “Perhaps you'd like to read the report. Nothing much to it, of course: the cause of death was never in doubt.”
Hemingway took the report, and ran through it. “No,” he agreed. “The only information it gives us which we didn't know before is that the bullet was probably fired from a .22 rifle, and that's a bit of news I could have done without. Not but what I daresay I should have guessed it. Oh, well! I don't suppose there are more than forty or fifty .22 rifles knocking around the neighbourhood. It'll make a nice job for my chaps, rounding them up. Cartridge-case been found, by any chance?”
“Yes, sir,” said Carsethorn, not without pride. “It's here. Took a lot of time to find it. It was in the gorse-bushes you see on the plan.”