But Colonel Moldham’s tired and chilly regard was elsewhere. He was listening to Purbright’s first question.
It was a singularly direct one.
“Colonel, did you kill Francis Dean O’Dwyer?”
Rich Dick’s smile faded. The chief constable glanced at his nails. Bradley’s eyes remained wide and innocent, like those of an onlooker at a somewhat erudite quiz game. Moldham alone seemed to find the question perfectly normal, almost commonplace. He replied without hesitation.
“I did not.”
“But you did shoot the man?”
“I concede that that is possible.”
“Do you not know, sir?”
“Allow me to put it this way, inspector. An unauthorized person—a man, as I believe—had come upon my property in the hours of darkness. He did not answer my challenge. I aimed my gun at a point above where I judged him to be hiding...”
“A shotgun, colonel?” The interjection was Mr Chubb’s.
“Naturally, a shotgun. Twelve bore. I fired one barrel. He ran off; a little later I heard a car drive away. He must have left it ready in the Church Avenue—that’s the old carriageway, as you know.”
“And you did not then know who the man was,” said Purbright. “But you have now learned, have you not, that the fingerprints on pieces of glass from the window where he forced an entry have been identified as those of a man called Francis Dean O’Dwyer?”
“So I understand. Whoever he might be.”
“You have never heard of him?”
“Never.”
Colonel Moldham was probably as relaxed as his customary bearing allowed him to be, but Loughbury glanced at him occasionally as if he were on the alert to prompt his client should it prove necessary. Bradley noticed. He slipped in a question of his own.
“In your capacity as chairman of the board of management, do you not consider it an interesting coincidence that the intruder at Moldham Hall had earlier intruded violently upon an inmate of Twilight Close?”
Moldham stiffened and frowned but made no reply.
Rich Dick stared at Bradley with ostensibly good-natured reproval and said: “You know, Mr Bradley, I find the implication of that question very difficult to follow. I do hope that Colonel Moldham is not expected to enter some sort of defence in this regard. Suppose it transpires that the late Mr O’Dwyer had a fight that night in, say, the White Bear public house: would my client then be required to justify his directorship of Flaxborough Breweries?”
This humorous hypothesis seemed to please everybody, especially Mr Loughbury.
Purbright resumed the questioning.
“When I called at your home on Friday morning, sir, I was shown and removed for examination a piece of towelling that had been found in the courtyard. Do you—or Mr Loughbury, perhaps—wish to see it?”
The colonel shrugged indifferently. His solicitor, though, leaned across the table. Purbright placed in his hand the polythene-wrapped towel. Loughbury stared at it gravely and handed it back.
“The laundry code shows it to be one of the towels issued to the residents of Twilight Close,” said Purbright. “As you can see, it is quite heavily blood-stained. Have you an explanation of how it came to be lying by your garage?”
“No. I certainly did not put it there.”
“There is a point regarding the gun which I should like to be clear about, sir. Mr Benton says he heard two shots, not one.”
“He may well have done. I fired the second barrel when the fellow ran off.”
“To frighten him, of course,” interposed Rich Dick.
Purbright looked at the colonel. “Just to frighten him, sir?”
“I didn’t shoot at the chap, if that’s what you mean.”
“You say he ran off, colonel. How far would you say he ran?”
Loughbury made dissenting noises. The inspector had heard it was dark; how could he expect anyone to judge distance, particularly in a moment of stress?
“The roughest approximation would be helpful,” Purbright replied. “The colonel has told us that he heard O’Dwyer drive away. I had hoped that he could estimate—even in the darkness—how far off the car was when O’Dwyer reached it and started the engine, as he doubtless lost no time in doing.”
This time Moldham was left to answer on his own. He said the car sounded fairly distant, perhaps a couple of hundred yards down the old carriageway.
This seemed to satisfy Purbright. Bradley, invited to put his own choice of supplementary questions, shook his head.
Rich Dick interpreted this to signal the end of the interview. He placed the tips of his fingers on the table before him and leaned forward in preparation to rise. Mr Chubb looked similarly inclined.
“Now,” said Purbright, “we come to the question of why O’Dwyer came to this part of the country and in particular what his object was in breaking into Moldham Hall.”
The solicitor subsided back into his seat and began to stroke his clean, white moustache with the end of his little finger. Mr Chubb’s gaze wandered to the window: a sign, though still a mild one, of diminishing approval.
“Was any of your property taken, colonel?” Purbright asked.
“No, nothing whatever.”
“Yet there was damage suggestive of a search inside the house, was there not?” The question was a small open door, through which Moldham might jettison his earlier dissimulation. He did so.
“A bureau was forced open, and some drawers and a cupboard ransacked. As,” he added, “your chaps found when they went over the place yesterday.”
“Do you recall,” Purbright went on, “employing on the estate a man named Frederick Arnold some years ago?”
“Yes, I do.” Cautious, but unsurprised. “Quite a long time back. Why?”
“Your aunt was anxious to buy something that had belonged to Anold, sir. So, for some reason, was O’Dwyer. Our conjecture is that he believed her to have been successful, and that he determined to steal it. Do you find that a reasonable theory, sir?”
“On the contrary, I find it nonsensical. The truth is that my aunt wished to make a contribution to Arnold’s dependents and she devised, with Loughbury here, a little scheme to that end.” He turned to the solicitor. “You did explain to the officer, did you not?”
Rich Dick nodded. “To his subordinate, yes. But, perhaps...”
“Detective Sergeant Love did report the conversation to me,” Purbright confirmed. “However, it does not account for O’Dwyer’s intervention at the sale. He, quite dearly, considered Arnold’s odds and ends well worth bidding into the hundreds of pounds. Why, sir?”