‘Yes – yes, indeed.’ She stood quite still for a moment. ‘I felt very apprehensive. I had asked that he should have police protection.
‘Well,’ said Garth, ‘at any rate they can’t say Madoc did it – can they?’
Miss Silver said, ‘No-’ in rather an absent voice. And then, ‘Pray give me any particulars you may have learned.’
‘I didn’t see the boy myself. He’s about sixteen – Tommy Pincott, a cousin of Ezra’s and quite a bright lad. Mabel says he told her Ezra was found face down in the stream just beyond the last house in the village. It’s no depth there – not more than about a foot – but if he was drunk and tumbled in, there would be enough water to drown him.’
Miss Silver coughed.
‘You think it may have been an accident?’
Garth said bluntly, ‘No, I don’t. Drunk or sober, Ezra knew his way home, and got there. He’d been at it for too many years to drown himself a good quarter of a mile out of his way. I think somebody did him in and hoped it would be taken for an accident – and if he had been trying his hand at a spot of blackmail, there’s your motive.’
She said, ‘Yes.’ And then, ‘I must dress. Inspector Lamb must know of this at once. He will be coming down.’
But it was half-past three in the afternoon before the Chief Inspector and Sergeant Abbott rang the Rectory bell. Miss Silver received them in the study. Even at a moment like this she could not dispense with the personal side of a valued friendship. She shook hands with a smile. She enquired by name for each of the three daughters who were the pride of old Lamb’s heart.
‘The one in the A.T.’s has her commission? How very nice. Such a pretty girl – I remember you showed me her photograph. Lily – such a sweet name, and so appropriate for a fair girl. And Violet – in the Wrens, was she not?… Engaged to a Naval Officer? How very, very interesting. And your youngest daughter Myrtle – I think she was a W.A.A.F.? Such important work. I am sure she is enjoying it. And I hope Mrs Lamb is well, and does not miss her girls too much.’
Frank Abbott controlled a humorous twist of his lips. There had been a time when he suspected Miss Silver of diplomacy, but it was all as serious on her side as old Lamb’s. She really wanted to know about his daughters, and whether his wife was enjoying good health. He took the opportunity of sharpening a pencil and waited for them to emerge from domesticity.
Lamb led the way.
‘Well, well, we must get down to business. I hear you want to see Mr Madoc.’
‘I should like to do so, if you will be so very kind as to make it possible.’
He nodded.
‘Eleven o’clock tomorrow. He’s in Marbury jail, as I expect you know. There isn’t very much you don’t know – is there? And whilst you are there, see if you can get him to talk. Not about the crime of course – that wouldn’t be proper now he’s been charged – but the War Office is pestering us about this invention of Mr Harsch’s in which they were interested. Harsch made a will leaving everything to Madoc, and that includes all the notes about his experiments, and this invention, whatever it is. They say the whole thing was practically completed and they want it badly. Madoc won’t play because he’s a pacifist. They don’t know whether they can get the will set aside or not, but meanwhile they are in a regular stew about Harsch’s papers, because if he was murdered for them, they won’t just be left kicking about. Mind you, I’m not saying that’s why he was murdered. Our case was against Meade, and the motive there would have been jealousy, but this Sir George Rendal is very hot on its being the work of an enemy agent, and he’s like a cat on hot bricks about those papers. Madoc, he won’t play – just says they were left to him and they’re his affair.’
‘So I understand from Major Albany.’
‘Well, you try and get Madoc to say what he’s done with them. Between ourselves, we’ve put on two men from the Special Branch just to see there isn’t a convenient burglary up at Prior’s End.’
Miss Silver coughed.
‘You said just now that your case was against Mr Madoc. Did you use the past tense advisedly?’
Lamb had seated himself in the rector’s old chair, which was of very comfortable proportions for a man of his size and weight. There was a shade of reluctance in his expression as he looked across at Miss Silver busily knitting a khaki sock for her second cousin Ellen Brownlee’s son in the Buffs. The Air Force pair, duly completed, now reposed upstairs in the left-hand top drawer of Miss Fell’s spare bedroom, waiting for the address which she had asked her niece Ethel to send on to her as soon as possible. The needles clicked, the ball of khaki wool revolved. Miss Silver sustained that reluctant look with a pleasant, deprecating smile.
Lamb cleared his throat.
‘As a matter of fact, this man Ezra Pincott’s death – well, it’s a complication, there’s no doubt about that. I’ll give you what we’ve got. If you can see where it fits in, I can’t.’
Miss Silver coughed.
‘You mean, Inspector, that it does not fit in with your case against Mr Madoc?’
Frank Abbott, sitting up at the writing-table with his notebook ready, chose this moment to lean upon his elbow and slide a hand across his mouth. Behind this screen he relaxed into an appreciative smile. Lamb said stolidly.
‘I’m not saying that one way or the other. I’m giving you the facts.’
Miss Silver said brightly, ‘Unfaith in aught is want of faith in all. It is the little rift within the lute That by and bye will make the music mute And ever widening, slowly silence all.’ She coughed and added, ‘Dear Lord Tennyson – and how true!’
Sergeant Abbott gave himself up to reverent enjoyment. His Chief Inspector’s response was all that he could have hoped.
‘If that’s poetry, I’m not much of a hand at it. And as to being true, it sounds to me like throwing away an apple because it’s got a speck on it.’
Miss Silver smiled.
‘What a good illustration! I fear I interrupted you. You were going to tell me about Ezra Pincott. Pray continue.’
‘Well, there it is. The police surgeon’s done the post mortem, and the man was drowned.’
Miss Silver knitted.
‘I think there was something more than that.’
Lamb gave a grunt.
‘He was found face down in a foot of water. He was drowned. What more do you want?’
‘A shocking fatality. But there is something more, or you would not be concerned about it.’
Lamb shifted in his chair.
‘Well, if you must know, he’d been hit. Bruise behind the ear. He didn’t get that falling on his face into the water.’
Miss Silver said, ‘Dear me!’
‘He went in alive, but he’d been hit first. He’d had a good deal of liquor – some of it was brandy. Now he didn’t get brandy at the Bull. Beer was what he drank there, and by all accounts he could put away more than most before he was what you could call drunk. One of your steady day-in-day-out topers, but they tell me nobody’s ever seen him incapable or in any way unable to get himself home. And he didn’t have that brandy at the Bull.’
‘Where did he have it?’
‘I’d be glad if someone would tell me that. Well, there you are. You sent me a message yesterday to say he was boasting that he knew something that would put money in his pocket, and you thought someone ought to keep an eye on him. I’m sorry I didn’t take you at your word and put a man on to him then and there. I didn’t think there was all that hurry. Abbott was coming down here today, and I left it over till then. Seems I was wrong, but it’s no good crying over spilt milk. The man’s dead, and I’m going to find out how he died, whether it knocks the case against Madoc endways or not.’