Ask a Policeman Page 9

  This was sufficiently exciting and suspicious; the entire table buzzed with conjecture. Mrs. Bradley, however, in royal blue and looking oddly like a travestied lizard, would attempt no guesses and volunteer no statements. She was most unsatisfactory, and the vicar had a reproachful eye for her, as for a parishioner spied drowsing in sermon-time. But at the duckling stage of the meal she leapt into public favour again.

  “Beg pardon, madam,” said the tremulous voice of that gratified crime-fancier, the butler, “Sir Ferdinand Lestrange on the ’phone.”

  Mrs. Bradley left the table to its buzzing, and sought the telephone in the hall.

  “Well, Ferdinand?”

  “Look here, mother. Do you want to take a hand in this Comstock business?”

  “Dear child, I’m human, I hope.”

  “I’ve been talking to the Commissioner. He’s going to give facilities to a chosen few—”

  “Not newspapers?”

  “No, no; amateurs; Wimsey among others. I thought as you were down there already—”

  “Of course. I’m greatly obliged to you, Ferdinand. Especially as, from what I hear, the police are going about the whole business in an entirely idiotic way. Suspending Alan Littleton, for instance.”

  “He was there, you know. With a similar weapon. They could hardly do anything else.”

  “Where are the two revolvers now?”

  “The local fellows are holding them, I believe. No finger-prints on either. On the one he was killed with, none at all.”

  “The one he was killed with? Dearest child, aren’t you assuming a good deal?”

  “The one found by the body; I apologize. The bullet has been extracted. By the way, one bullet only had been fired.”

  “Thank you, dear. I like my news crisp. Now, there are some people I would very much like to talk to. I’ve spoken with Alan; but there are these two unfortunates who are being detained—”

  “I’ll get the Commissioner’s office to telephone permission. Have you seen Comstock’s Clarion this evening? Black borders an inch thick, and a suggestion in the leader that he should be buried in the Abbey.”

  “I think that honour should be reserved for his murderer. Very much obliged, dear boy. Good-night.”

  (IV)

  In the morning there was a pitched battle with Lady Selina.

  “Adela, I will not have it. You are quite old enough—”

  “Sixty-four, dear.” A macaw-like screech.

  “—to judge for yourself, but I will not have my daughter mixing herself up in police-courts.”

  “Daddy was on the bench. He always said you saw simply masses of human nature like that. Why shouldn’t I go in with Aunt Adela?”

  “I will not have you cheapening yourself by running after a young man whom I have always refused to have in the house, I’m thankful to say. Of course, you’ll take no notice of me—”

  “He’s absolutely innocent, and I don’t know what you call Christianity, letting people down when they need help most.”

  “Don’t be irreverent, Sally. You must go out of the room if you can’t speak properly. It is your aunt’s fault for encouraging you. No, Adela, I will not listen, and much as I enjoy having you here, you know that I cannot have you encouraging Sally to be disobedient and wilful.”

  In short, Lady Selina was roused to the point, which occurred about once in five years, of putting her large and sensibly shod foot firmly down. Nothing could be done. Mrs. Bradley could do no less than withdraw her support from Sally, who unquestionably had displayed bad manners; and a quarter-hour later set off in a car, leaving the protagonists to simmer down. With a sigh for the tactlessness of parents she saw, as she stepped into her vehicle, the younger combatant, in an old leaf-coloured skirt, slipping away in the direction of Comstock’s house, and hoped, but without much confidence, that the child would keep out of mischief.

  They held Assizes in Winborough, which was the county town, and there was accommodation in its gaol for every degree of prisoner. Her name and permit had preceded her; and at eleven o’clock she found herself at last in the presence of Mr. Edward Kimberly Mills.

  He was shaven and kempt, and less offensive than Mrs. Bradley had feared; but he had already been a good deal questioned, and his manner with her was at first a trifle restive. But the third sentence broke it down.

  “I don’t usually deliver this sort of message, Mr. Mills; but my niece, Sally Lestrange, sends her love.”

  He steadied at that.

  “Does she? Has she told you—?”

  “Not a great deal,” said Mrs. Bradley, who, having paid her tribute to sentiment, was not prepared to let Mr. Mills drivel. “Now, you know, I’m only here to help. I dare say you’ve been so much questioned that you’ve got your story quite fixed in your mind by this time, but I want you to be flexible. Let us try a few relaxing exercises. For instance, what was the late Lord Comstock’s manner to dependants?” Mr. Mills stared, smoothed his too-curly hair with a somewhat podgy hand, and replied:

  “Rude, mostly.”

  “Ah! Familiar, ever?”

  “Sometimes. But look here, I mean, don’t get the idea it was Farrant shot him, you know.”

  “Farrant? That’s your fellow – detainee? No, I didn’t suppose it. Did Lord Comstock ever have periods of intense depression?”

  “Funny you should ask that,” returned Mr. Mills, with a touch of awe. “He was always up and down. Cursing the soul out of somebody, or else sitting tight with a face screwed up like a fried sole.”

  “Or a lost one,” said Mrs. Bradley softly.

  “Which? Oh yes, I see. Bright of you spotting that. He was a bit of a genius, of course; you expect ups and downs. But,” said the young man again, with a gleam of alarm, “he didn’t shoot himself, you know. I mean, he may have been depressed, but I’d take my oath he didn’t do it.”

  “No,” dubiously Mrs. Bradley agreed, “possibly not while he could get himself noticed in any other way. These inferiority complexes always prefer to make other people suffer.”

  “Inferiority? But he was—”

  “A blusterer; I know. You’ve misapprehended the term as people do. Men conscious of inferiority are always trying to impose themselves on others, because they know that underneath they are cowards or cretins. Very occasionally they see themselves as they are; then they go down in the dumps. I don’t want to put the police type of question, but you must excuse just one. Is it true that you were under notice to leave Lord Comstock’s service?”

  Mr. Mills shot her a look; but the lizard’s face was smiling in kind wrinkles, and the beautiful voice was persuasive.

  “Well, as a matter of fact—but absolutely wrongly. I mean he’d got absolutely the wrong idea.”

  “What was the right idea?”

  “He thought I couldn’t hold my tongue.”

  “But you can, of course.”

  “Of course. Only what I mean is, you’ve got to make it worth a fellow’s while. I’d had one or two offers to sell information, you see; nibbles. I turned them down, of course. But I told Comstock I’d had them, and I—well, I sort of suggested that I could have found a use for the money. Just a hint, you see. After all, there was the future to think of. Only instead of giving me a rise, he told me to get out,” said the injured young man. “that was two days ago. Just the sort of thing he was always doing himself, too; only he gets—got—away with it.”

  “I see.” Mrs. Bradley pondered, and looked at him with unblinking lizard’s eyes.

  “Do you know, Mr. Mills, if you’ll allow an old woman to comment, I don’t think you’re cut out for a career of piracy. It takes a good deal of strong, sterling, bumptiousness and a thick skin to succeed as a blackmailer.”

  “Look here,” said the young man desperately, “I’ve had quite enough bullyragging. As much as I can stand. You’re Sally’s aunt and all that, but—”

  “Sally’s aunt,” repeated Mrs. Bradley gently. “You haven’t actually taken any money,
have you, Mr. Mills? From the nibblers, I mean?”

  Mr. Mills, his eyes intent and frightened, faced her and made no answer.

  “Because if you had,” went on Mrs. Bradley, as if musing, “of course that clears you from any suspicion of murder.”

  “Clears me?” echoed the young man, and rather painfully cleared his own throat.

  “Of course. Comstock was the goose that laid the golden eggs; he contrived the plans and—stunts, isn’t that the hideous word?—that the nibblers paid you for. It was to your direct advantage to keep Comstock alive, and planning, and the nibblers well informed. Of course you’ll say “—Mr. Mills’ mouth was opening, fish-like—“that he had already found out and dismissed you. But I imagine that, even so, you would not have lacked for information. There are always impressionable typists, and you with your remarkably good looks—you mustn’t really mind an old woman.” Mr. Mills, crimsoning once more, flinched as she dug him in the ribs with two bony fingers. “So, you see, it might be as well to own up.”

  Mr. Edward Mills hesitated, gulped, and came out suddenly with a request.

  “I say, please, you won’t tell Sally, will you? The typist, I mean. I can’t think how you got hold of it, there’s absolutely nothing in it, only this girl—well,” said Mr. Mills relinquishing all hope of an explanation in words, and relying on Mrs. Bradley’s intuition, “you see how it is.” He smoothed his too-curly hair, with just the hint of a lady-killing smile.

  “I do,” said Mrs. Bradley. “I see how quite a number of things are. You belong psychologically to a very large class; I won’t bother you with the technical name. But they all copy their neighbours, and do in Rome as Rome does, and in the right environment they can remain perfectly honest on a thousand a year.”

  She moved, with a gesture of farewell, to the door.

  “But look here,” said Mr. Mills, following, “I haven’t admitted anything. I’m not going to admit anything—”

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Bradley, with superb impatience, “my dear good ostrich of a young man, good-bye!”

  (V)

  The two revolvers were indeed in Superintendent Easton’s charge, and obedient to the wires pulled miles away by Sir Ferdinand Lestrange they were produced, with something of a tolerant and condescending smile.

  “Ah,” said Mrs. Bradley, peering down at the pair through lorgnettes, “American make, I see;?15, or thereabouts.”

  “Correct, ma’am,” agreed the Superintendent, a trifle surprised at this show of technical knowledge. “No finger-prints on either.”

  “No,” said Mrs. Bradley, “naturally. The butt’s rough. And as for the trigger, one doesn’t pull with the tip, whichever finger one uses. Personally, with a?38—but that’s a good deal larger—I find I have more complete control pulling with the middle finger, and steadying with the fore. However. Which was the revolver from which the shot was fired?”

  The Superintendent scanned both butts, and handed her the one to which a small red label was attached.

  “That’s the weapon. Fully loaded in all chambers, one shell fired, finger-prints wiped dean, and barrel.” Mrs. Bradley almost jumped. “Yes, ma’am. Barrel clean as a whistle.”

  “When’s the post-mortem?” Mrs. Bradley asked, paying no attention. “And where’s the bullet?”

  “Doctor’s in there now.” The Superintendent indicated the direction of the mortuary with a jerk of his head. “Well, talk of angels, as they say.”

  For a neat grey gentleman had appeared in the doorway, smelling not disagreeably of disinfectant.

  “That’s over, Superintendent! “he announced after one single curious but gentlemanly glance at Mrs. Bradley, who, dressed as she was in peacock green, seemed the last person to be expected in a police-station.

  “This is the bullet, ma’am,” said the Superintendent cheerfully, producing a small wooden box from his pocket. “And Dr. Raglan might have heard us talking about him. Of course,” he opened the sliding lid and eyed the greyish fragment, “this won’t tell us much till they get the microscope to it.”

  It was a small bullet. The nose had mushroomed; but there was enough lead left, the stalk, as it were, of the mushroom, in its original shape, to display the characteristics by which each barrel sets its own stamp upon every bullet fired from it.

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Bradley slowly, “I suppose we must wait for the microscope. Who wields it? You, Dr. Raglan?” Her smile drew him into the, conversation.

  “I’m not an expert, I’m afraid. It’s a very expert job, you know. Vital to be accurate.”

  “Browne and Kennedy; yes, I realize that.” She picked up the other revolver, broke it, and was squinting down the barrel and the chambers in turn. “And this is the weapon Major Littleton was carrying. Yes. You’ll fire test bullets from both, of course; and then compare the markings with this.” She indicated the grey fragment.

  “That’s the ticket,” said the Superintendent jovially. “Then we shall know for certain which gun it came out of.”

  “But not who fired the gun,” said Mrs. Bradley very gently. “Well, gentlemen, I’m greatly obliged to you. Dr. Raglan,” she paused, “is it possible that you attend the cottage hospital here?”

  “I am one of the surgeons, yes.”

  “The policeman who was so unfortunately run over, how is he?”

  “Not conscious yet. He’s had a very nasty knock.”

  “Funny it should be the A.C.”—the Superintendent corrected himself—” Major Littleton, that run him down. He’s always one to be thoughtful for the men. And him working out a traffic scheme to bring down the number of road accidents, too! Well, there’s no saying the funny way things’ll go,” said the Superintendent, who was reckoned something of a philosopher in the town, “a waggonload of monkeys is nothing, you might say, to Fate. Anything more I can do for you, ma’am?”

  “You might let me know the result of the test with these.”

  She indicated the two revolvers.

  “Right you are. Anything else you’d care to see now?”

  “One only. The Vicar’s cook.”

  (VI)

  From that interview, on which no stress need be laid, Mrs. Bradley emerged a trifle flushed; but it was the flush of victory. Dr. Prichard, when he returned that evening, was given notice by the cook; an event less cataclysmic than that lady supposed, since, unknown to her, the Vicar had for months been summoning courage to get rid of her. “Leaving to be married,” was the cook’s excuse, and conflicting conjectures were made as to the swain; but the cook kept his name to herself, together with the fact that he was an unemployed garage hand, now upon the dole. All this was later. It is some tribute to Mrs. Bradley’s personality that on the day of their encounter the cook was left in tears, while no ripple disturbed the unblinking tranquillity of the other’s saurian gaze.

  Mr. Mills, the Superintendent, and the cook between them had taken some two and a half hours to interview; highly-concentrated and intensive interviewing, which might have been expected to leave Mrs. Bradley exhausted. It did not, however. At the first newsagent’s shop she stopped her car and bought an armful of papers; one with a deep black border, Lord Comstock’s own organ of opinion, the others paying their tribute of ebony headlines to that least picturesque of robber-barons. There were interviews with the highly-respected suspects. There were photographs—a rival paper had somehow secured one of the late peer at the age of four, sullen, in Fauntleroy velvet and curls, and one at the age of eighteen, still sullen, with a caption where, by some compositor’s regrettable error, a superfluous “s” had crept in: THE MAN OF PROMISE(S). Mrs. Bradley read them all, holding the sheets with one hand, while with the other she wielded her lorgnettes. She read and re-read the tribute of the Archbishop and Sir Charles Hope-Fairweather.

  “This has been a terrible shock to me,” stated His Grace, “the more so that I had long known the late Lord Comstock and was indeed with him very shortly before the tragic occurrence which has robbed British journal
ism of “—Mrs. Bradley could imagine the Archbishop hesitating at this point, murmuring de mortuis, and non-committally plunging—“a virile figure. Our long acquaintance was not always unchequered with differences. His most recent campaign had indeed given me considerable pain, and I felt it my duty to endeavour to restrain him in what I felt to be a course of action unbefitting his strictly Church upbringing. His death so closely following upon this interview was a considerable shock. He might be described as the most robust influence in British journalism of recent years. It is now over a quarter of a century since as a boy he was committed to my charge, and I have no hesitation in saying that he regarded me as a true friend; one who never flinched from the duty of recalling him when necessary to those Christian principles from which it is my belief that, in spite of recent aberrations, he had never in his heart of hearts departed. Modern England will mourn her strongest man.”

  “In fact,” mused Mrs. Bradley, “exactly the same thing three times over. Let us see what Sir Charles has to say.”

  Sir Charles, despairing of being able to voice one single word of praise for what Lord Comstock was, went off into panegyrics of what he might have been. “A sportsmanlike effort,” was Mrs. Bradley’s verdict, “considering that Comstock had probably been blackmailing him”; and she read the brief soldierly phrases with care.

  “He had sound views on many political and Empire problems. That he was a man of immense energy cannot be denied. His patriotism was unquestioned. His potential influence for good can hardly be overestimated.”

  Thus Sir Charles, all public-school tradition, refraining from hitting a man when he was down, and no doubt, like the Archbishop, muttering the Latin tag to himself. He was brief, however; for if one were to speak the truth, and yet record of such a person as Comstock nothing save good, there remained very little indeed to be said by any honest man.

  There was a picture of Mr. Mills, taken at Cambridge, and looking a little too healthy, and jolly, and curly; all these the camera recorded, together with the strange flightiness a face acquires from having small eyes set too wide apart. Lady Selina’s consternation at the thought of having such a person inside her doors was, in face of this photograph, very easily explained. Mrs. Bradley was fond of her niece, and would have deplored as wholeheartedly as Lady Selina such an acquisition to the family. The family, however, if it displayed only a modicum of intelligence, was in no danger, and she explained as much at luncheon to a harassed mother whose only chick had not returned for food.