Ask a Policeman Page 10

  “My dear Selina, there’s nothing between these two that you need worry about.”

  “But”—the hostess drew back, gave expert consideration to the food at her elbow, helped herself with discretion, yet amply—” but Adela, they’ve been meeting!”

  “Of course they have. You put obstacles in their way. An obstacle is something to be surmounted. If you’d only taken the trouble to put a few in the Paradine boy’s path they’d be engaged by now.”

  “But, dear, what could I do? I, couldn’t have that really dreadful young man here. I saw him—once.” She shuddered. “No, no, Adela.”

  Mrs. Bradley, while mentally re-enacting the shudder, remained calm.

  “Then don’t have the Paradine boy here either. Forbid him the house.”

  “How can I possibly do that? What excuse could I make?”

  “You might say,” Mrs. Bradley considered, wickedly smiling, “you might say that you thought Sally was seeing too much of him.”

  “Darling Adela,” said Lady Selina, sighing, and absently helping herself to more green peas, “things always look so simple to you.”

  “Do they?” Mrs. Bradley’s voice took a graver note. “I wish they did.”

  (VII)

  But in the afternoon, about three, when Lady Selina was stertorously resting, a tap came at Mrs. Bradley’s door. (She, too, “rested” after lunch; she knew that the guest who neither rests nor writes letters puts too much strain upon a hostess.) To her call the door opened, revealing the small impish face of Sally Lestrange.

  “Well, darling child,” said Mrs. Bradley who was walking about the largest guest-room, clad in a magnificent Chinese coat covered with dragons, from whose voluminous sleeve the dark barrel of a revolver peeped. “I suppose you know your mother is, very rightly, most incensed.”

  “What on earth are you doing?” responded Sally, who had caught sight of the revolver.

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Bradley, surprised, “that! Just a theory. Quite untenable, unfortunately. Where have you been?” She put down the small black weapon, tidying it into its leather case. “You oughtn’t to stay away from meals, you know, without warning or cause.”

  “I’ve been snooping.”

  “Indeed! And what have you discovered?”

  “A lot. I’ve been talking to the servants and the policemen. Briggs, the gardener, is our chauffeur’s uncle. I know it sounds rather like the penknife of the gardener’s boy, but he is. D’you know what he says? He’s absolutely certain that he saw a woman go round that way.”

  “Which way?”

  “Round to the—north, I suppose it would be; the way the study window faces. And I don’t believe he remembers her coming back. And do you know what I think she did? Shot Lord Comstock—he was facing the window, wasn’t he?—and then just ducked round and hid in the sort of corner the study makes, jutting out. The office hasn’t got a window on that side; I rather particularly noticed it hadn’t. So she waits there, and hears all these other people jumping out of windows windows—Major Littleton made a fearful mess of the turf—and then she just strolls round after all the cars have gone.” Sally scribbled a rough plan with the best guest-room pen on the inviolate guest-room blotting-paper.

  “Look, really, Aunt Adela. It’s quite sound. Here’s the place; nobody could see her there. Nobody would be likely to come round that way—”

  “The gardener?”

  “Why should he?”

  “To get to the kitchen garden.”

  “If he hadn’t got his vegetables in by twelve o’clock he ought to be ashamed of himself,” riposted Sarah virtuously, “and the cook would have his blood. As a matter of fact I asked her, and Lord Comstock likes very young peas, and they take ages to shell, so she’d got everything in that she wanted by eleven.”

  Mrs. Bradley clapped delicately with her small yellow hands.

  “Excellent, Sally! Nothing omitted except the most important thing.”

  “I didn’t! I snooped for hours, I never took my nose off the ground, there’s absolutely nothing left out—”

  “Except the motive.”

  Sally was dashed for the moment.

  “Oh, the motive! But then, when you’ve established how a thing was done, you can always think out a motive afterwards.”

  Mrs. Bradley laughed, her sudden screech.

  “All very well for detective fiction, dear child, but detection fact runs quite the other way.”

  “It was a woman, all the same.”

  “How can you tell? Don’t please say you’ve found the usual shred of cloth on the garden wall.”

  “No, I didn’t, but I found heel marks. Outside the study on the grass, just where someone would stand to look in. She must have been tall. The windowsill’s round about five foot six from the ground. I measured it as well as I could.” And with pride Sally produced a small and wizened dressmaker’s tape-measure.

  “May I ask how you were allowed to obtain all this information?”

  “I know most of the people round here,” Sally answered innocently, “and pretty well all the policemen. I don’t drive awfully well, that great car takes half a mile to turn in, so I’m always getting summoned. Well, cautioned and my number taken. Same thing. It’s Walter Borthwick on duty up there now, and he’s engaged to one of the girls at our lodge, so he just winked the other eye. He thought it probably was a woman, too.”

  “You shared your suspicions with him?”

  “Well, I thought I might as well give him something to think about. One idea lasts Walter quite a long time. What we couldn’t make out was how she got away.”

  “Or how she happened to have a revolver identical with the one on the desk,” said Mrs. Bradley a trifle tartly, but she was not as devastating as she might have been. This Sally, cheerful to the point of impudence, wildly investigating, more wildly arguing, was a Sally changed for the better. Mrs. Bradley had not much cared for the sulky adolescent of the day before, with her blighted love affair and her seclusion. It was remarkable that the girl had not as yet inquired for Mr. Mills; remarkable, and comforting from a family point of view.

  “How do you know it was one of those revolvers?” Sally asked defiantly. “I suppose the police stuffed you up with that; always taking things for granted. I wouldn’t mind betting, Aunt Adela, here and now, that it was an absolutely different revolver; not either of those at all.”

  “Two of a kind—coincidence. Three of a kind—a good deal the other side of improbable. I saw the bullet—unusual one; it was quite certainly from a .15. My dear child, find your motive, your state of mind. All these things—bullets, footprints—they all wait on that one fact. Don’t bother with all these people’s finger-prints; try to follow the whorls and convolutions of their minds.” Mrs. Bradley absently picked up the small gun in its leather sheath. “All the same, you’ve done remarkably well. Thanks, dear child.”

  Sally slipped away. At the door she turned.

  “Half a crown to sixpence on that bullet, Aunt Adela?”

  “Done,” responded Mrs. Bradley, in a voice like the dropping of stone into a well; and was fingering her revolver again as the door closed.

  (VIII)

  Next morning, after a somewhat tropical breakfast of fruit and coffee, encouraged by the parrot with cries of “Give ’er a glass of beer, watch ’er put it down, hullo, smack!” Mrs. Bradley was summoned to the telephone, Alan Littleton’s voice came ghostly over the wires.

  “Will you do something for me? How are you, I suppose I ought to ask first.”

  “I’m well. No farther on, though. What is it you want?”

  “I’ve been worrying over that policeman, poor chap; the one I ran down.”

  “Would you like me to go and see how he is?”

  “Bless you! Just what I was going to ask. And, look here—find out how they are off for money, will you? He’ll draw his insurance and so on, but that ought to go to the hospital. All the cottage hospitals are going broke with accidents brought in a
nd never paying. Just find out, if you can, how things are, and offer to help his wife. I feel badly about this.”

  “Why don’t you come down and do it yourself, Alan? And we can talk other matters over.”

  The ghostly voice laughed, briefly.

  “Hardly be in good taste, would it? I’m supposed to have had a hand in the business, you know. It was intimated that I had better stay where the official eye can find me if it wants. No country jaunts.”

  “On account of the revolver?”

  “And our personal feud, and opportunity, and half a dozen other things—what’s that?”

  For Mrs. Bradley had been murmuring, in the manner of another eminent inquirer, Sir John Saumarez, a quotation from Shakespeare about opportunity; something to the effect that opportunity was the real culprit in all matters of crime. Major Littleton, a person on whom the point of quotations was blunted, save those which derived from Army or Police Regulations, replied without the reverence that better-educated persons accord to such hallowed platitudes:

  “Well, of course, if a man isn’t there you can’t plug him.” And he returned to his urgency about the policeman.

  “I’ll do it this morning,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Now listen to me, Alan. Where are you speaking from? Your own flat? You speak German, don’t you? Very well.” In a strong British accent Mrs. Bradley embarked upon a series of questions in that tongue, in which Sir Charles Hope-Fairweather figured literally as die Peitsche, the Whip; was there a woman in die Peitsche’s car? What like? What height? The answers were hesitating. There might have been. He certainly had seen a woman in the waiting car before he went into the house. Where was the car? In the loop of the drive. He thought it must have been a woman; it had a red hat, anyhow.

  “Did you see that hat in the car you chased down the drive?”

  “I don’t know. It was a saloon; the blind at the back was pulled down.”

  “Was there a chauffeur?”

  “No.”

  “Whose was the chauffeur you saw afterwards?”

  “Comstock’s.”

  “He gave you the number of the car, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. Wrong.”

  “You know, Alan, that might be very interesting.”

  “It made me look an absolute fool, if you call that interesting.”

  “Was he acquainted with the Canon’s cook, do you know?”

  “I didn’t happen to ask,” replied the ghostly voice, heavy with irony. “There had been a rather sudden death, and an accident or so just before I spoke to him—”

  “Now, my dear boy, don’t be angry because I ask you a question and you don’t happen to know the answer.” Mrs. Bradley, under stress, had broken once more into English. “I’ll find out myself, and let you know.”

  “Thanks,” said the voice, still ironic, “it would bring a ray of sunshine into my life to know for certain that that ensanguined fool—”

  “Alan, Alan!”

  “Was acquainted with the Canon’s cook.”

  “Dear child, you’re in a temper,” said Mrs., Bradley calmly, “I think you’d better ring off now. Keep in touch with me, Alan.”

  “Right. See my policeman for me.”

  “I will,” said Mrs. Bradley reassuringly, and did. Sally drove her in that car which had been the means of introduction to so many of the local force to the cottage hospital, where a pleasant matron gave them news Nasty concussion, but hopeful. His wife was with him.

  “Oh! I wonder if I might speak to her?” Mrs. Bradley asked, in tones that would have lured a dragon from its cave. The matron succumbed at once to the will of that strangely persuasive old lady in royal blue, and fetched in Mrs. Bartelmy, who stood miserably before them, her rid-rimmed blue eyes asking what the visitors could possibly want.

  “How d’you do,” said Mrs. Bradley, with her curiously-high, old-fashioned handshake, “and please sit down, won’t you? What an anxious time this is! You must save yourself all you can.”

  “Yes’m.” Mrs. Bartelmy sat, uncomfortably. Mrs. Bradley was a little overpowering, and it was Sally who set her at her ease.

  “Your husband was so awfully kind to me once when I forgot my licence. And that time I ran into the sheep one market day. I mean, it might have been fearfully awkward for me, only he made everything all right. I’m so glad he’s better.”

  Mrs. Bartelmy’s eyes began to fill again, and she muttered something about Alf always trying to do ’is best.

  “This smash is such disgustingly bad luck. We were rather wondering—” the girl glanced at Mrs. Bradley; but before that lady could take up her cue, Mrs. Bartelmy had launched a torrent of words.

  “Always on time, always out, even nights when there’s plenty’d wait about in shelter, always worrying to be doing right. Why, when ’e come to this morning I was there; and what’s the first thing ’e says? Not a word for me nor the children, nor where am I? Nor anything what you’d expect. He opens his eyes, and sees me there, and ’e says, if these was my dying words they’re gospel, ’e says, ‘Annie, I was on my right side!’” Mrs. Bartelmy wept.

  “When he was run into? Was that what he meant? Well, my dear Mrs. Bartlemy, this kind matron says that you haven’t anything to fear for him, he’s out of danger; and now I’m just going to ask her to give you a tiny whiff of smelling salts so that you will be’able to be brave again, and tell me a little about yourself and the children.”

  Mrs. Bartelmy sniffed, and whiffed; heard what Mrs. Bradley had to say, accepted with more tears what Mrs. Bradley had to bestow, gave two heartfelt handshakes, and returned comforted to her Alf.

  Mrs. Bradley went, musing, Sally at her side, out to the car.

  “Which way,” she demanded suddenly, “does Lord Comstock’s house lie?”

  “I’ll drive you past it.”

  Twenty minutes at speed down the green lanes brought them to a high red wall.

  “This is it. I’ll go slowly, shall I?”

  “Do, my dear.”

  They cruised along, and at the gate halted for Mrs. Bradley to get out. A large policeman on duty there eyed her, as did several otherwise unoccupied persons come to gaze upon the spot where the murder was committed. Mrs. Bradley accosted none of them, and made no attempt to enter; but Sally at her side indicated the points of interest with all the fervour of a charabanc guide.

  “Here we have the drive, you see how it goes. It’s about 150 yards to the house if you go direct, and about an extra 75 yards if you go round. That’s where Sir Charles left his car: you can’t see where Major Littleton left his, it’s behind the trees. You can’t see the bulge the study window makes, either, from here. Look here, Aunt Adela, wouldn’t you like to go in? Borthwick would let you.”

  “Orders, miss,” said the large policeman; but dubiously.

  “Thank you,” returned Mrs. Bradley pleasantly, “but I can see all I need from here.”

  “You can’t see a thing. Those footprints ought to be grand still, there hasn’t been any rain since—”

  Mrs. Bradley turned and eyed her pupil and niece.

  “What did I tell you?”

  “Yes, I know,” admitted Sally, shuffling, “motive and all that. But it does seem silly to absolutely neglect the other things.”

  “We won’t do that,” returned Mrs. Bradley grimly. “Let us inspect the scene of the accident.”

  They moved to the other side of the road, a godsend to the unoccupied curious round the gate. The road was macadamized, its surface dust revealed no tyre tracks that could be identified. Sally, the omniscient, had obtained a few details about the affair during her previous day’s snooping.

  “There was some blood here,” she said in a detached manner, pointing to a patch of grass at the roadside near the wall, “but I expect they’ve cleaned it up. There were flies, rather.” She gave a little shudder which belied the detachment.

  “Which way was our conscientious policeman riding? To or from Winborough?”

  “Towards, I expe
ct. He was going off duty. He was on his wrong side, you see, if the accident was here.”

  “So was Alan Littleton, in that case. They were both going the same way.”

  “Well, but—” Sarah hesitated. She held no brief for the A.C., but her own deductions were dear to her. “I know. This must be what happened. Bartelmy is riding somewhere about the middle of the road, Major Littleton comes haring out and bumps him on to his head and then drags him on to the grass just here.” She indicated the stained patch, and turned, preening herself a little, to receive praise; but her aunt, unimpressed, was surveying the opposite hedge with a bright eye cocked sideways.

  “D’you cut your holly in these parts?”

  Sally read no Kipling; she remembered nothing of “that sacred tree which no woodman touches without orders”; but she had lived in the country all her life, and had an indignant answer ready.

  “Of course not; not in hedges. It isn’t lucky.”

  “I see,” said Mrs. Bradley gravely, examining a sturdy holly twig which had been broken short to the general hedge-level. “Then there’s somebody hereabouts, a stranger probably, who’s not superstitious.”

  (IX)

  The matter of the cook’s acquaintanceship with that chauffeur who had so annoyingly given Major Littleton the wrong number of a fleeing car was soon settled. It was done circuitously, to the accompaniment of helpless disapproval from Lady Selina, who, though she thought it her duty to see that her staff went to church and saw doctors, objected to intruding upon what she called their private lives.