“That was Lintott. He rang up whilst you were out to say he’d got a lot of stuff about Foster, and a number of good fingerprints from his brushes and shaving tackle. Foster wasn’t there, but he’d got a search warrant. I told him to rush the fingerprint business through and let me know the result. That was it, and it’s good enough to put Mr. Bobby Foster in the dock. His prints correspond exactly with the ones we couldn’t place, on the banisters and the sitting-room door. He was here that night, and he made those marks and he dropped his cigarette-case. His landlady says he came back in a taxi about midnight and made a lot of noise on the stairs. She says he didn’t go to bed, but walked up and down in his room talking to himself and kicking the furniture. Her husband went in to him at half past one and told him he was disturbing the whole house. The man says Mr. Foster was in an awful state-told him his girl had thrown him over, and he was going to buy a revolver and shoot himself, but he was going to shoot the other man first. He says there was a bottle of whisky on the table and Mr. Foster kept pouring himself out another drink. He says he tried to calm him down, but it was no good, and all of a sudden Mr. Foster shouted out that he wasn’t going to stand it any longer. ‘I’ll have it out with him,’ he said, ‘if I have to blow his head off!’ and with that he was down the stairs and out of the house and no stopping him-and by all accounts they were glad enough to be rid of him. They went to bed again, but they didn’t bolt the street door. Round about three in the morning the man heard something fall. He opened the bedroom door, and there was Mr. Foster on the stairs in his stocking feet with one shoe in his hand and the other where he’d dropped it on the half-landing. He didn’t look drunk any more, but he looked worse. The man says he looked as if he had seen a ghost. And he went back and picked up his shoe and on up to his room, all without making a sound. I’ll say we’ve got our man all right, or will have as soon as I get that warrant. There’s no doubt what happened, to my mind. He got round here somewhere about two o’clock, quarrelled with Mr. Craddock, and threatened him. Mr. Craddock had had a bang over the head already and he wasn’t feeling too grand. He gets scared, or wants to scare the other man, opens this drawer, and pulls out his revolver. Mr. Foster gets it from him-he’s a very powerful young man-and, either in a struggle or deliberately, Mr. Craddock is shot. Mr. Foster throws down the pistol and gets away just as Miss Craddock comes along. It fits in well enough with what she says she saw.”
“She says she saw the pistol in Ross Craddock’s hand.”
“Well, isn’t that where Foster would put it if he’d any sense in him at all?”
“He might. There’s one thing though-Miss Craddock had a key to the front door of Craddock House, but Bobby Foster hadn’t.”
The Inspector looked at him, frowning.
“You mean?”
“How did he get in, sir?”
Chapter XXVIII
When will you marry me, Lee?”
Peter stood on the hearth-rug and surveyed her with frowning intensity. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets. His tone was business-like and his manner abrupt.
Lee said, “I haven’t said I’m going to marry you at all.”
His frown deepened.
“Of course you’re going to marry me. I do wish you would stick to the point.”
“I said I hadn’t promised to marry you. That is the point.”
“No, it isn’t. We settled that yesterday. The present point is, when are you going to marry me? And I think it had better be as soon as possible. This is Thursday, and the licence business takes three days… Damn! that means the week-end comes in, so I suppose it will have to be Monday-or will a parson marry you on a Sunday? I don’t see why he shouldn’t-in the afternoon.”
Miss Fenton had a clear and pretty voice. She raised it perceptibly.
“Peter, I am not going to marry you-either on Sunday or Monday. I haven’t said that I am going to marry you at all.”
He swooped, pulled her up out of her chair, and held her at arm’s length.
“Why?”
“It’s not-it’s not a time to get married.”
“My child, marriage isn’t a beano. But I see your point. The inquest is tomorrow, and then I suppose they’ll let us get on with the funeral, say Saturday, and what’s to prevent our getting married on Monday? You want someone to look after you, you know. I can’t so much as go out for an hour or two but you go pouring confessions into old Lamb’s fortunately unresponsive ear. Poor old Lamb-first he thought Mavis had done it, then it looked as if I was a dead snip until Lucinda dropped on him out of the blue, on the top of which you came along with a confession, and now I gather that he’s quite sure it’s Bobby. But to return to our licence. You need looking after, I want to look after you, and-”
She shook her head.
“Peter, it won’t do-not till this is all cleared up. Don’t you see that if you marry me, the police will think I knew something and that you’d done it to make sure I couldn’t be called as a witness against you?”
Peter let go of her rather suddenly.
“What a perfectly horrible mind you’ve got!”
“Well, isn’t that just what they would think?”
“I don’t know-I suppose they might.”
He took her by the elbow and began to walk her up and down the room.
“Look here, my dear, you say put off getting married until the mess is cleared up. But suppose it isn’t cleared up-suppose it’s never cleared up. Do you realize that we are all under suspicion and we shall go on being suspected till kingdom come unless they really do find out who murdered Ross, and, what is more, prove it up to the hilt? Do you think Mavis did it? I don’t. I don’t suppose she’s ever handled a revolver in her life. Besides, look at what she did earlier on when he got fresh with her. She upped with the decanter and hit him over the head. Very nice, natural, womanly reaction. If she’d had a revolver handy she’d have hit him over the head with it or heaved it at him, but I’ll go bail she wouldn’t have fired it.”
Lee nodded.
“Yes, I think so too.”
“Always agree with me, darling. You’ll find it a splendid foundation for our married life. We now come to me. Do you think I did it?”
“No.”
“I suppose there are circumstances in which I might have done it-I don’t know. But whoever shot Ross shot him sitting. That’s the medical evidence-the shot travelled downwards. He was shot sitting, probably whilst he was still dazed after the clip on the head Mavis gave him with the decanter. I don’t see myself doing that somehow.”
Lee said “No” again.
“Then there’s Lucinda. I don’t know if they believe her statement, but I do. Of course the wish is probably father to the thought, because if she really did see someone coming out of Craddock House at a quarter past two in the morning, it spreads quite a lot of whitewash over the Craddock family. And that’s the snag-they may think the whitewash altogether too convenient.”
“I suppose so. I-I’ve been awfully frightened about Lucy, Peter. She was most frightfully worked up about Ross, and she doesn’t really seem to have known what she was doing on Tuesday night. The thing that frightens me is that as far as I can see she was the only person who could have got in from outside after Rush locked up. She says she found the door open, but-”
“Mavis and Ross came in. They may not have shut the door properly. No-that won’t wash. I don’t believe anyone could forget to shut a door they’d just opened with a latchkey. You see, he took the latchkey out all right. It was there on his chain. He simply couldn’t have forgotten the door. Besides Mavis was there.”
“Then who opened it? Someone did, if Lucy’s story is true. Oh, Peter, it frightens me.”