“I never thought of that,” said Alastair slowly. “Not that it matters. Poor old Colin must have been dead already by then.”
“By the way,” said Henry, “it’s true, isnᾠ
t it, that Colin couldn’t swim?”
“Yes,” said Alastair. “I often told him he ought to learn. It’s not safe messing about in boats, unless you can at least keep yourself afloat in an emergency.” He passed a hand over his brow. “It’s hell,” he said. “I ought to have gone after him last night and made sure he was all right. If only I—”
“Now don’t worry about that, sir,” said Proudie soothingly. “You couldn’t possibly know what was going to happen.”
“You see”—Alastair was talking to Henry—“I’ve seen old Colin a bit pickled many times, but he always managed the dinghy without any trouble. That’s why I—”
“Nobody could possibly blame you, Mr. Benson,” said Proudie, more firmly. Alastair gave him a glance in which gratitude and anguish were equally mixed. “And now,” Proudie went on, “I think that’s all for the moment. We needn’t keep you any longer, Mr. Benson.”
In the doorway, Alastair narrowly missed colliding with Sir Simon Trigg-Willoughby, who came striding in, bristling with anger. Before either Henry or Proudie could say a word, he barked out, “I have a complaint to make to the police. My car has been tampered with!”
Proudie looked taken aback; Henry, unsurprised, said, “I’m sorry to hear that, Sir Simon. What happened?”
“Last night.” Sir Simon sat down heavily. “Last night, when I wanted to go home. Thing wouldn’t start. Nothing unusual in that, of course, but damned annoying. I took Old George’s taxi home, and left Riddle working on the car. He couldn’t find the trouble—hardly surprising, really. Pitch dark and only a torch to work with. So very sensibly he left it and went home to his father’s place. Early this morning he phoned the local garage to come and tow the car away. I’ve just been in to see them.” Sir Simon paused, and snorted. “Rotary arm,” he went on, outraged. “Deliberately removed. Nothing wrong with the car at all. And what’s more, we found it.”
With that, he produced a small piece of Bakelite triumphantly from his pocket and threw it down on the table.
“Where did you find this?” Henry asked, intrigued.
“Riddle found it, to be accurate,” said Sir Simon. “Under a bush in the pub yard, close to where the car was parked. Disgraceful. Silly childish trick. Don’t see why these damned youngsters should get away with it.”
“What makes you think a youngster did it?” said Henry.
Sir Simon did not answer this directly, but merely remarked with venom on the bad manners and misguided sense of the humour of the younger generation in general, and in particular of...at which point, he went even redder than usual, and stopped.
“You mean you think Colin Street did this?” Henry asked.
“I’m making no accusations,” said Sir Simon quickly. “But he had a macabre sense of fun, poor boy, for all his brilliance. Practical jokes. You know the kind of thing I mean. Not funny, in my opinion.”
Henry picked up the distributor head. “May I keep this?” he asked.
“Must you?”
“It might be important,” said Henry. “The garage has surely supplied a new one.”
Sir Simon grunted his assent. Henry wrapped the small object carefully in his handkerchief, and then said, “By the way, Sir Simon, were you planning to take the car out again last night, or early this morning?”
“I wanted it for this morning,” said Sir Simon. “Priscilla’s motor is out of action, and I wanted to go to Woodbridge for some spares. The whole matter is extremely irritating.”
“Well, you can be sure that Inspector Proudie will investigate your complaint very thoroughly,” said Henry. Proudie looked none too pleased, and suggested a little acidly that they might now get down to the business in hand, asking Sir Simon to run through his recollections of Colin’s last hours: but apart from a positive and caustic assertion that the latter had been drunk and incapable when he left The Berry Bush, Sir Simon had nothing to add to what Henry and Proudie already knew. He gave his answers brusquely and briefly, and seemed glad to escape into the sunshine.
By contrast, George Riddle was inclined to be garrulous.
“Terrible business, sir,” he said earnestly. “Criminal offence, if you ask me.”
“What’s a criminal offense?” Proudie asked sharply.
“Falsifying the vote,” said George Riddle, unctuously. “Disgrace to the borough. Just what you’d expect from Herbert Hole.”
“We’re not talking about that,” said Proudie impatiently. “We’re talking about Mr. Street.”
“Not that he was much better,” said George, with a self-righteous sniff. “Wrecking people’s cars.”
“What makes you so sure that Mr. Street took the distributor head out of the Daimler?” Henry asked.
“Just like him,” said George.
“You didn’t think of looking at the rotor arm last night?”
“Course I didn’t. I thought it was the petrol pump—she’s given trouble before, see.”
“Why,” Henry persisted, “didn’t you go back to Berry Hall with Sir Simon in the taxi?”
“I could have,” admitted George a trifle uneasily, “but I felt sure I could fix her, and Sir Simon didn’t want to wait—doesn’t like leaving Miss Priscilla alone in the house. And I knew he wanted the car first thing in the morning.”
“Tell us,” said Proudie, “what you saw and heard while you were working on the car.”
“Me?” George looked surprised. “Nothing much. The ladies and gents from the boats all went off down the hard. Then Sir Simon went inside the pub with Bob Calloway, and they called Old George. He came round straight away, and took Sir Simon off. After that, Bob locked up The Berry Bush and put the lights out. It was all quiet and dark then.”
“How long did you work?”
“About an hour, I reckon—maybe a bit less. Then I got fed up and packed it in and went to my dad’s cottage.”
“Where’s that?” Henry asked.
George jerked a thumb. “Bit upriver from this one,” he said. “Couple of hundred yards. I did notice the lights were still on in here. Fact, I saw Mr. Rawnsley through the window.”
“What was he doing?”
“Nothing much. Sitting at that table, with a lot of papers and things laid out on it. Didn’t stop to look.”
When George had gone, Henry said to Proudie, “I’m bothered about the place where Colin’s body was found. Why was it so much upstream from the hard?”
“That’s easy,” said Proudie. “Question of tides.”
“How do you mean?”
“High water, four twenty-seven this morning,” said Proudie. “That means, before half past four, Mr. Street’s body—and the capsized dinghy—would have floated upstream. Half past four, dead water. Then, about five, they’d start drifting down again. That’s what the dinghy was doing when Mr. Benson spotted it.”
“So,” said Henry, “we can be absolutely certain that Colin was drowned before half past four.”
“Good lord, yes.” Proudie frowned. “I’d say about two o’clock would be the latest time, judging by where the body was found. But of course you never know for certain. In any case, I’m afraid it’s only too clear what happened.” He glanced through the notes he had taken. “Mr. Street had had too much to drink. Nobody disputes that. Mrs. Benson was worried about leaving him to row back on his own, but her husband was annoyed—and very naturally, if I may say so—at Mr. Street’s behaviour earlier in the evening, and took the attitude of letting him stew in his own juice. I hope Mr. Benson won’t go on reproaching himself. Anyhow, it’s perfectly clear that, in his drunken state, Mr. Street capsized his dinghy. We know that he couldn’t swim, and it’s well-known that bathing with too much alcohol in the system often causes cramp. He must have been too fuddled even to cry out. Just sank like a stone. A very nasty accident.”