“Well, we can rule out Mrs. Cliburn, too,” said Hemingway. “Which brings us to this chap with the queer name. I've heard it before, but I don't seem able to put a face to it.”
“I suppose you might have heard it,” said the Colonel grudgingly. “He writes detective stories. Don't read 'em myself, but I'm told they're very ingenious.”
“Yes, I thought this case sounded a bit too good to be true,” said Hemingway. “So I'm stuck with one of these amateur crime-specialists, am I, sir? Has he got an alibi?”
“There seems to be some doubt about that,” replied the Colonel, on a dry note. “You'd better tell him what Plenmeller said to you, Sergeant. He may as well know what he's up against.”
“Well, sir, it's a fact I don't know what to make of him,” confessed the Sergeant. “Anyone would think there was nothing he liked better than to be mixed up in a case of murder! I ran him to earth at the Red Lion this morning, drinking a pint with Major Midgeholme, just after twelve. Quite the life and soul of the bar, he was, holding forth about the murder, and saying how he was sure the Major's wife had done it, because of Mr. Warrenby having been brutal to one of her little dogs. All by way of a joke, of course, but you could see the Major didn't like it. So then Mr. Plenmeller started in to prove how he might have done it himself. Very humorous he was, I'm sure, but not having the whole day to waste I stepped up to the bar, and told him who I was, and said I'd like a word with him. And if you was to ask me, sir, that was all he needed to make him quite happy. Anyone would have thought the whole thing was a play, and we was having drinks between the acts, and talking it over. Indecent, I call it, not to say cold-blooded! Naturally I'd no thought of asking him questions in a public bar: my idea was we'd step up to his house, but that wouldn't do for him. "Oh", he says, "you want to know where I was at the time the crime was committed, and I'm sure I haven't got an alibi!" The Major took him up pretty sharp on that, and said as how he knew very well he was on his way home when the rest of them—him, and Mr. Drybeck, and Miss Dearham—set off in young Mr. Haswell's car. "Ah!" says Mr. Plenmeller, "but how do you know I did go home? I might have been anywhere," he says, "and Crailing—that's the landlord of the pub—will swear I didn't come in here till close on eight last night!" Which, however, Crailing didn't do, not by a long chalk! He said he was positive Mr. Plenmeller came in long before that, though he couldn't be sure what the exact time was. Then I'm blessed if Mr. Plenmeller didn't tell him not to go saddling him with an alibi he didn't want. Before I could say anything, the Major spoke to him, very military. Told him not to make a fool of himself, and to stop trying to turn the whole thing into a farce. So then he laughed, and said it was all such good copy he wasn't going to he pushed out of it, and it was going to be very valuable to him to know how it felt to be what he called a hot suspect. However, he got a bit more serious after that, and he said that actually he had gone home before stepping down the street to the Red Lion, though he didn't think he could prove it, because so far as he knew Mrs. Blindburn—that's his housekeeper—couldn't have seen him, being in the kitchen, and certainly wouldn't have heard him, because she's as deaf as a post. Which is true enough: she is.”
“I see,” said Hemingway, somewhat grimly. “I've met his sort before! Oh, well, with any luck we may be able to pin the murder on him!”
The Colonel smiled, but Sergeant Carsethorn looked a little shocked. “Well, I daresay he could have done it,” he said dubiously, “but I can't say I know why he should want to.”
“The Chief Inspector wasn't speaking seriously, Sergeant.”
“No, sir. That's about the lot, then, as far as we've had time to discover.”
“What about young Mr. Haswell's father?” enquired Hemingway. “Or is he out of the running?”
“He wasn't there, sir. He went off to Woodhall that afternoon, and didn't get home till half-past eight. Woodhall's a good fifteen miles from Thornden: it's a big estate which he looks after for the owner. He's an estate agent, and he does a good bit of that sort of work.”
“Was he on good terms with Mr. Warrenby?”
The Sergeant hesitated. “I wouldn't say that exactly, but on the other hand I wouldn't say that there was anything definite, if you take my meaning. They were both on the Council, and I believe they had a few differences of opinion.”
“Tell me something else!” invited Hemingway. “Do you know of anyone who was on good terms with this character?”
The Sergeant grinned. Colonel Scales said: “Yes, you've hit the mark, Chief Inspector. He was a nasty piece of work, and no one could stand him! I don't mind telling you that I couldn't myself. He was one of those men who not only want to have a finger in every pie, but who are never content until they're top-dog. Sort of pocket-Hitler! A bumptious little upstart who wanted to be the kingpin in the district, and would go to any lengths to muscle in on things that were no concern of his, and which you wouldn't have thought he'd want to be bothered with! He even got himself on to the committee for the charity ball Lady Binchester organised, a year ago. I don't know how he managed that, but I've no doubt he thought it would give him a foothold in that set. More fool he!”
“It sounds to me, sir, as though this place where he lived can't have been the only place where he made enemies. We've gone into all the Thornden people. What about the people he must have rubbed up against here, where he had his business?”
“We've thought of that, naturally, but setting aside the fact that Carsethorn hasn't heard of any Bellingham-man being seen in Thornden at the time—of course, it's possible to get to Fox House across the common, I know—I don't know that he had any serious quarrel with anyone. There was a good deal of jealousy, a lot of people disliked him, we should most of us have been glad to have seen him leave Bellingham. He was the best-hated man in the district, but you don't murder a man you just don't like: there has to be some motive! And that, Chief Inspector, is why I thought it wisest to call in Scotland Yard at once: no one has anything that begins to look like a sufficient motive!”
“There's the Pole that seems to have been making passes at the niece, isn't there?” suggested Hemingway mildly. “What's more, there's the young lady herself. If she inherits his money, I should call that a pretty good motive.”
“You'd better go and make Miss Warrenby's acquaintance!” recommended the Colonel, with a bark of laughter.
“I will, sir,” said the Chief Inspector.
Chapter Six
“The trouble with you, Horace, is that there's no pleasing you,” said the Chief Inspector, some little time later. “I bring you down, in the middle of the summer, to as nice a part of the country as you could wish for, set you up in a pub which, as far as I can see, never got around to reading the Rationing Orders, and all you do is to sit there looking as though you'd been dragged to one of the Distressed Areas. I'll trouble you for the butter, my lad!”
The Inspector handed him a green dish fashioned into the semblance of a lettuce-leaf. “It is butter, too,” he said severely. “About a week's ration.”
Hemingway helped himself generously. Both men were sitting down, in the otherwise deserted coffee-room, to a high tea reminiscent of an almost forgotten age of plenty. The Sun, though perhaps its oldest, was by no means Bellingham's most fashionable hostelry. It was situated in a back street, and catered for Commercials; the rigours of its beds were alleviated by feather-mattresses; it had one bathroom, containing an antiquated painted bath, with an old-fashioned plug, and a wooden surround; and several of its tiny lattice windows could, by the exercise of careful force, be induced to open. Since its clients were not persons of leisure, only one sitting-room had been provided for them, and that the coffee-room, which contained, besides one long table, a number of horsehair chairs; a massive and very yellow mahogany sideboard, supporting an aspidistra, a biscuit-tin commemorating the coronation of Edward VII, and an array of sauce-bottles and pickle-jars; several steel-engravings in maplewood frames; and a tall vase full of pampas-grass. Meals were not served with elegance, or dignified by menu-cards, but the food itself was excellent, and prepared by a large-minded person. An order for tea was understood by this person to include a plate piled with bacon, eggs, sausages, tomatoes, and chips, three or four kinds of jam, scones, a heavy fruit cake, a loaf of bread, a dish of stewed fruit, and one of radishes. Sergeant Carsethorn had recommended the Sun to Hemingway, a circumstance which was causing that cheerful officer to take what his assistant considered a roseate view of his ability.