George Felse said afterwards that there was one moment when he gave Dinah Cressett up for dead, because she launched herself like fury straight between the police and the gun, which had still five serviceable rounds of .25 ACP ammunition in its eight-round magazine, as they afterwards confirmed. Dinah was not thinking of herself or the police, or the nearness or remoteness of her own death, but only intent on reaching Robert’s body and feeling for the pulse and heartbeat that were still alive in him.
But the moment passed without another tragedy; for Hugh, seeing the hopelessness of resistance, did the only thing left for him to do, and turned his little plaything upon himself.
This time he felt no superstitious terror, and his hand did not tremble. This time he made no mistake.
CHAPTER 14
« ^
THEY rushed Robert to hospital at emergency speed, siren blaring, and Comerbourne’s chief surgeon spent most of the night getting the bullet out of the wreckage of his left shoulder and putting the pieces back together, which was rather like assembling a jigsaw puzzle. For so small a calibre it had done a lot of damage; if he got off without a long stay in an orthopaedic ward later, he’d be lucky, but there was a good chance of an eighty per cent recovery eventually.
“Lucky for him,” said George to Sergeant Moon later, “that his father only brought back a Walther 8 from North Africa with him, instead of one of those 9 millimetre Lugers or something even bigger. A lot of the ranking officers in the German army carried those little fellows as auxiliary arms in the last war. I wonder how many of them are still running round loose in this country?”
They had the report from ballistics by then, and knew that the bullet recovered from Thomas Claybourne’s skull had been fired from this particular Walther 8, as had the companion bullet extracted from the cellar door. They had the coat, and the button from Dinah’s cardigan; they had a firm identification of the body of Thomas Claybourne, and understandable motive, everything necessary to a clear, satisfactory case. Except someone to charge.
“Ah, and so much the better,” said Sergeant Moon. “Saves the country’s money, makes sure he never does it again, and obviates any resultant harm and distress to innocent parties, which couldn’t do anybody any good, not even the great British public.”
“Innocent?” murmured George. They were sitting side by side in a settle at the “Duck”, in the quiet late morning hours when they had the place to themselves.
Diplomatically, Sergeant Moon did not answer. Mrs. Macsen-Martel was dead, the vicar himself was taking charge of her funeral arrangements, and the village had become a kind of closed shop, deceptively talkative except when strangers presumed to join in or even listen to the talk, when it was found to be designed only to avoid imparting information, to derail questions before they ever got asked, and to deploy a smoke-screen in which the more persistent could smother or withdraw.
“There isn’t going to be any trial, only a statement closing the case,” mused the sergeant, “and they won’t get much out of that. So technically we can hardly plead that anything’s sub judice—unless you’re contemplating other charges?”
“And if they start pumping you like that in here tonight,” George asked with interest, “what do you say?”
“We say we can’t discuss it, it’s sub judice,” said the sergeant without hesitation. “By the time they realise those possible other charges aren’t going to materialise, they’ve lost interest anyhow, and gone off after some new horror. Five hundred miles away, let’s hope!”
“All right, that’s my answer, too. It’s going to be days, in any case, before I can even question him. I’m certainly not going to rush the doctors on this one. And if he’s going to be a hospital case for weeks, maybe months, afterwards, time is hardly of the essence.”
“And will you be needing a shorthand writer when you do see him, George?”
“Now you come to mention it, Jack, I don’t believe I shall. A short written statement later, perhaps, just to round out my report.”
“Ah, that’s the spirit,” said Sergeant Moon with a gratified sigh. “If you want any help with the editing, I’ll be glad to come along and lend a hand.”
The village knew, but the village, which knew so well how to disseminate information, knew also how to keep its own counsel. The reporters came with cameras, loitered, questioned, even extracted answers, which were only later seen to be either useless or mutually destructive. There was a large and impressive funeral, to which the whole valley came as a gesture of solidarity, not with the Macsen-Martel clan as such, but with its own people. Later, when the inquest was over and permission was given, there would be another and quieter funeral, which those whose official duty it was would attend, and from which the rest would turn their eyes decently away, out of a discretion which nobody had to dictate. Even the inquest would not bring the newsmen very much joy, only the eyewitnesses’ evidence and the bald fact of a verdict of suicide. And the case would be closed. No trial, no conviction; never, officially, a murderer.
“She was a game old girl,” said Saul Trimble, when the regulars mustered in the bar of the “Duck” after the burial, still black-clad and sombre and exclusive, so like a private wake that all those who were not in the inner circle took one look within, and retired to the garden bar. “A game old girl, and never owed a penny.”
The valley had a gift for epitaphs. But it was Sam Crouch who found the only possible one for Hugh, late in the evening when the clock was ticking its way round to closing-time.
“Ah, well, he was his father’s son,” said Sam, wagging his round, simple, good-natured head.
Eb Jennings swivelled a rapid glance from Sam to Ellie, who had just dropped a glass into the washing-up bowl with an almighty splash that swamped the floor behind the bar. “You can say that again!”
“Nice-looking, though, you got to admit,” said Nobbie regretfully, mentally reviewing the revised list of interesting males. “Seems awful now, but you know, there were times when I rather fancied Hugh!”
There was, thought Ellie, industriously mopping up the spilled water, always a bright side to everything.
It was a week before Robert was allowed to fill in what gaps were left in the story. He had offered earlier, and his offer had been first vetoed by the doctors, and then courteously deprecated by the police, whose behavior throughout had been so considerate as almost to offend against his standards. When George finally came to sit beside his bed in the private ward borrowed for the occasion, Robert was propped up on carefully stacked pillows, his left shoulder completely encased in plaster and bandages. He had lost weight he could not afford to lose, and his pallor was so fine-drawn as to make him practically translucent, but his eyes were peaceful and resigned.
“I’m only sorry,” said George, “that I was rather later than I intended getting back that night. But I wasn’t expecting anything to break, and if Miss Cressett hadn’t dropped her bombshell, nothing would have.”
Robert’s face kept its guarded stillness at the mention of Dinah’s name. “I don’t know that I was too grateful to you, at first, for turning up at all,” he said frankly.
“Never mind, you may have good reason to be grateful later,” said George equably. “I knew by then it was your brother we wanted. He was a shade too clever about worming his way into the cellar, so I thought, well, all right, let him, let’s see what happens. He dropped his evidence against you in the only place he could get at easily, covering the action with his handkerchief. He couldn’t know that we’d been sifting cleared soil back into that pit for more than an hour then, so if there was anything new to be found by going through that layer again, it was plain he must have put it there. If he could have dropped it into the heap of soil on the far side of the cellar, which hadn’t been sieved, then he’d have had a better chance of getting away with it. Though even then probably thinner than he realised. He was just that little bit too anxious. Before I went north I told Brice to go carefully over the floor of the trench again. And when he confronted you with the pencil, and you owned it for yours at once—well, we knew then who was our man. I’m afraid that piece of cold-blooded treachery hit you harder than anything.”