‘Which way did he go?’
An extremely dirty finger pointed in the direction of the church.
‘Sure?’
‘Ow, yes!’
‘Who was it?’ said Garth. ‘Do you know?’
Cyril looked surprised.
‘Course I do!’
‘Who was it?’
‘The one as they call the professor.’
Here was something with a vengeance. Garth said, ‘Are you sure?’
Cyril nodded emphatically.
‘Coo – I wouldn’t say a thing like that if I wasn’t! It was him all right. Ever so angry he was – put me in mind of Boris Banks in Murder at Midnight. It was a smashing picture – he didn’t ’arf carry on. You see, he’d murdered a lady-’
Garth recalled him firmly.
‘Cut all that and get back to Tuesday! What makes you sure who it was you saw?’
Cyril looked obstinate and a little dashed.
‘Well, mister, I seen him. I told you as how the moon was up – bright as bright it was. It was him all right. Lives in the house up at the top of the lane where the field is with the ruings. The gentleman that was shot, he lived there too.’
Garth whistled.
‘Well, if you’re sure, you’re sure. But you mustn’t say you are if you’re not. It’s – very important.’
Cyril nodded again.
‘Coo – I know that! It was him all right – name of Madoc.’
Garth stood there a moment. Then he put a hand on Cyril’s shoulder.
‘While he was there – while he was talking to Miss Brown, could you hear anything else – anything from the church?’
‘Only the other gentleman playing the organ.’
‘You did hear that?’
‘Ow, yes!’
‘All right – go on. What happened after that?’
Cyril stared.
‘Nothing. I went back in.’
‘How do you get back?’
‘Up the tree, mister, and a bit higher up – then if you crawl along, there’s a branch you can get hold of that brings you down where you can swing on to the window ledge.’
Garth thought of his Aunt Sophy’s feelings. He remembered performances of his own which included sliding down the outer slope of the roof and finishing up with his heels in the guttering, yet the human boy survived. He laughed and said, ‘Sounds quite a stunt. Then you went to bed, I suppose?’
‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t hear anything after that?’
Cyril shook his head regretfully.
‘I went to sleep. If I hadn’t I might have heard the shot. I don’t ’arf want to kick myself when I think about it. I didn’t hear nothing. Oh boy – I wish I had!’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE NEXT FEW hours saw a good deal of activity on the part of a number of people. Garth walked to Perry’s Halt and from there took the train to Marbury, from which sizeable town he judged that he could without indiscretion ring up Sir George Rendal. As a result of this conversation strings were pulled, a Chief Constable was tactfully approached and prevailed upon to request that the Harsch case should be taken over by Scotland Yard.
Garth, having finished with the telephone, partook of a horrible and very expensive meal at the Station Hotel and made his way back by the late slow local, wondering what hotel crooks did to food to make it so repulsive.
As he walked across the dark fields from Perry’s Halt he was wondering about other things. Madoc – why should Madoc have murdered Harsch? Jealousy over Medora Brown? A good stock answer out of all the melodramas that had ever been written. It did seem extraordinarily unlikely. But then people did do very unlikely things, and melodrama was a most constant factor in human affairs. Every day the snappier papers produced the most lunatic stories of human behaviour. Medora wasn’t his cup of tea, but she might be Madoc’s. She might even have been Michael Harsch’s. She was quite a handsome woman in her way. She could have sat or stood for almost any one of the darker heroines of Greek tragedy. A little old perhaps for Cassandra, but quite a possible Electra, who could never have been young, and a very credible Clytemnestra. Or Medusa. Yes, Medusa had it – a Medusa who had seen something which had turned her to stone. The legend in reverse.
Well, Madoc was bound to be arrested unless he had a very good explanation to hand about the key. He found himself wondering how Madoc would take arrest. These men who got angry about trifles sometimes found control in an emergency. He wondered, and wondered again, why Madoc should have shot Michael Harsch. There was the obvious melodramatic motive of jealousy. There was the impossible-possible twisted motive of the pacifist who sees himself rescuing the world from the latest perversion of science. It might be either of these, or a tangled mixture of both. He thought the police might have their work cut out to get a case that would hold water. A jury wasn’t going to like hanging a man on the unsupported evidence of a boy of twelve. He was glad the thing was off his shoulders anyway. He had made the report he was bound to make, and that finished it as far as he was concerned.
It felt like the middle of the night, but it was actually no more than eleven o’clock when he got back to the Rectory, where he discovered Miss Sophy in a woollen dressing-gown sitting up for him with hot coffee and sandwiches, over which she became very chatty but most admirably abstained from asking any questions. In her generation the men of the family came and went, and you never dreamed of asking them where they had been. It simply wasn’t done.
She talked instead about Miss Brown.
‘I am afraid Mr Harsch’s death has been a very severe shock. I would not let her sit up – she is, really not at all herself – but I hope perhaps in the morning, with the inquest behind her, she will be feeling better.’
Garth had his doubts. He felt concerned and embarrassed, and made haste to talk about Miss Doncaster. He had heard Aunt Sophy become quite animated on the subject before now, but tonight she merely sighed and said, ‘You know, my dear, I am sorry for her. She and Mary Anne had a very difficult time when they were young. Their father was a most peculiar man. He didn’t like people coming to the house, and they never had any opportunities even when they were abroad. I think they would have liked to marry, but they never met anyone. Mr Doncaster was really so very reserved, and he lived till they were both past middle age. And now Mary Anne is a complete invalid, so I feel sorry for Lucy Ellen, though sometimes she does make me lose my temper.’
Garth felt very warmly towards his Aunt Sophy as he said good-night.
At a little after ten o’clock next morning a very empty train approached Perry’s Halt containing two officers sent down from Scotland Yard. They were Chief Detective Inspector Lamb, a large imperturbable person with a sanguine complexion and strong black hair wearing a little thin upon the top, and Detective Sergeant Abbott, between whom no greater contrast could be imagined. They might, in fact, have furnished material for a cartoon entitled ‘The Police Officer, Old and New’ – Abbott being an extremely elegant young man who had arrived at his present position by way of a public school and the Police College. His fair hair was slicked back from rather a high brow. His clothes were of the most admirable cut. His expression as he sat opposite his superior officer was one of boredom verging on gloom. He had, as a matter of fact, just had his fourth application to be allowed to join the RAF refused, and refused with what could only be described as an official raspberry. To his Chief Inspector’s well meant recommendation to look upon the bright side he replied bitterly that there wasn’t one.
Lamb looked at him reprovingly.
‘No call to say things like that, Frank. I can feel for you all right, because the same thing happened to me in nineteen-fifteen. Downright put out about it I was, but I’ve come to see things different, and so will you.’
There was a faint insubordinate gleam in Sergeant Abbott’s pale blue eyes as he passed in review the shoulders, the girth, the very considerable avoirdupois of his superior, the reproof of whose glance became intensified.