The Twenty-One Clues

by J. J. Connington

  “Not just then,” Sir Clinton explained. “We searched the house pretty thoroughly, first, except the old lady’s room.”

  “And you found nothing?”

  “Nothing. Not even a pistol,” said the Chief Constable, with a faint emphasis on the phrase.

  Wendover was surprised, but he refused to fall into what he imagined was a trap.

  “And what then?” he inquired.

  “I gave orders for exhuming those cats I’ve heard so much about and for the extraction of the bullets from them. A grisly job. But we’ll talk about that later on.”

  “You got hold of Callis, after that?” asked Wendover.

  “We did. Though it was rather late—or a bit early, whichever you like. However, he was still afoot, buried in a thriller and not wanting to go to bed till he’d wrested its secret from the last page.”

  “Well, what had he to say?” demanded Wendover, anxious to get to something definite.

  “Oh, he told a plain unvarnished tale,” said the Chief Constable. “He’d an engagement to spend the evening with the Alvingtons. He made it dear that their affairs are growing rather complicated, and he was to go as a friend and put his accountant’s experience at their disposal. I’ve checked that. It’s quite true. However, during the day he got a letter from Kerrison about some church business; and it struck him that he’d seen note-paper like that before. He must have his wits about him, to judge by the fact that he remembered the watermark on that anonymous letter and found an identical one on Kerrison’s letter. In fact, he followed on our heels in identifying Kerrison as the author of that ‘Watch your wife’ epistle.”

  “Why was he so sure about Kerrison?” demanded Wendover, in a sceptical tone. “Plenty of other people must be using similar paper.”

  “Kerrison had already got into trouble over slander,” Sir Clinton reminded him. “The other users hadn’t, so far as one knows. Anyhow, Callis felt sure enough of his ground to tax Kerrison with the job; and he told me that he was so angry that he meant to have it out with Kerrison at once. He meant to take precautions against any further libels or slanders on his wife’s name, which seems very natural. So he rang up Kerrison and asked him to call that evening, using Kerrison’s letter about church affairs as his excuse.”

  “Did you see this letter about church business?” interjected Wendover.

  “Oh, of course. I have it here, if you want to see it. There’s nothing in it of any importance from our point of view. Well, Kerrison never guessed that he’d been spotted. He agreed to visit Callis about nine o’clock, which fits in with what we learned at the Hermitage. Meanwhile Callis rang up the Alvingtons and explained that Kerrison was coming to see him on urgent business, so that he wouldn’t be able to drop in on them that night and lend his accountancy expertise to untangling their affairs. He arranged another evening instead.”

  “So the Alvingtons knew that Kerrison would be at Callis’s house that evening,” interrupted Wendover. “Ah!”

  “‘Ah!’ as you, say Squire,” Sir Clinton went on. “But let’s proceed with this unvarnished tale, if you please. I gather that when Kerrison arrived, Callis talked to him like a Dutch uncle and spared his feelings in no way. He must have been clever enough to jar the fellow completely off the rails by bluster, for Kerrison admitted that he was the author of the ‘Watch your wife’ masterpiece. Callis got quite hot when he was telling the tale to me. One may infer that he was probably even more heated in the original version. Anyhow, the upshot was that he dictated a letter to Kerrison and Kerrison was so cowed that he took it .down. Here it is. I brought it away with me.”

  He took from his pocket a sheet of note-paper and handed it to Wendover, who examined it.

  FERN LODGE

  HAYDOCK AVENUE

  “I confess that I wrote an anonymous letter reflecting on the character of one of my friends and I unreservedly withdraw the statements which I made in that document, knowing them to be false. I express my deepest and most sincere regret for what I did.

  “S. KERRISON.”

  “Is this actually in Kerrison’s handwriting?” demanded Wendover.

  “I’ve compared it with specimens of Kerrison’s MS.,” Sir Clinton answered definitely, “and I haven’t the slightest doubt that Kerrison actually did write that apology. The ink’s quite fresh, as you see. It must have been written last night.”

  “H’m!” said Wendover. “Well, go on.”

  “The next stage was that Callis, keeping Kerrison waiting, went and rang Mrs. Barratt up to tell her about the state of affairs. He meant to take Kerrison round to her house and make him apologise to her personally for the reference to Barratt in that anonymdus letter: ‘A preacher ought to set a better example . . .’ and so forth. He’s still harping on the string that his own wife was completely innocent, you see; and he wanted a second witness to clinch the authorship of the anonymous letter, if Kerrison dared to deny it later on. He’d got Kerrison into a blue funk—remember those two slander actions—and he meant to put the screw on while the funk lasted. But Mrs. Barratt was out, and he got no answer to his phone call. I think that’s sound enough. Mrs. Barratt was out at that time. We checked up her evidence, by inquiries. She went out at eight o’clock to visit some old friends in Windsor Drive—people called Mallard. She reached there at eight-thirty, stayed for about an hour, and was home again about five past ten. We know she was home then, because she found that she had run out of tea, and she went out and borrowed a quarter of a pound from a neighbour. We’ve checked that up also. There’s no doubt that Mrs. Barratt was home at Granville Road at ten-fifteen, as she stated.”

  “Why all this checking up in her case?” asked Wendover.

  “We’re checking everything we can, naturally,” said the Chief Constable, “and, as it happens, we can check her statements easily. But now I’d better go back a bit and give you the rest of Callis’s evidence. Having failed to get hold of Mrs. Barratt, Callis had no further use for Kerrison, and dismissed him with very little ceremony. That was about a quarter to ten. Callis, feeling a bit worked up by the interview, then settled down to his thriller to divert his mind from the recent scene. His maid came in at eleven-twenty and saw that he was still downstairs. In fact, he gave her some orders about breakfast. We’ve checked that also; and she confirms his story.”

  Wendover opened his mouth to make some comment, but Sir Clinton hurried on to complete his story.

  “There were one or two questions I wanted to ask Callis, after he’d finished his tale. The first was about Mrs. Callis’s will. There was no difficulty there. Callis was one of the executors, and knew all about it. Her father left her a life-interest in his estate; that’s where her private income came from. If she died without issue, then that capital went to her aunt and some other members of her family. All that she had to leave in her own will were a few personal possessions, jewellery and so forth, which she left to her husband. We’ve checked that by her solicitors—Callis gave me their address—and they reckon that these chattels may be worth a couple of hundred pounds or so—not more. Nobody else was mentioned in her will.”

  “So Callis gets next to nothing by her death—financially?” said Wendover.

  Sir Clinton gave a confirmatory nod.

  “I’m suspicious of everyone, in a case of this sort,” he admitted, “so I questioned the solicitor rigidly. It’s quite all right. There are no concealed assets or anything of that kind. Actually, Callis is worse off financially, since her income disappears and he won’t have it to help out his housekeeping expenses. I don’t think that matters to him. He’s making a moderate income from his business.”

  “She wasn’t insured?” demanded Wendover.

  Again Sir Clinton shook his head.

  “No, there’s no policy on her life, none of any sort. There are no concealed assets, as I told you. It’s all square and above-board.”

  “What else did you ask Callis?”

  “I asked him if Kerrison had returned that
pistol which Callis lent him for his cat-shooting. He hadn’t, Callis told me.”

  “Then where’s it gone?”

  “Where we’ll never find it, I expect,” said the Chief Constable in a regretful tone. “I’ve no notion what’s become of it. All I know is that we didn’t find it at the Hermitage, though we searched for it everywhere. And now Squire, I’ve given you the whole of Callis’s evidence. Let’s turn to a fresh field. This morning, these victims of Kerrison’s pistol were dug up and the bullets extracted from the corpses. Rufford and I had a look at the bullets. And the rifling marks on those bullets out of the dead cats are identical with the rifling marks that Rufford found in the bullets which killed Barratt and Mrs. Callis. Sensation! Won’t Peter Diamond be pleased when he gets that bone to gnaw? But perhaps you’d like to try your teeth on it first, before he rushes into print.”

  Sir Clinton had meant to surprise Wendover, and he succeeded completely.

  “What’s that you say? Are you quite sure there’s no mistake?”

  “Oh, quite,” Sir Clinton assured him definitely.

  “So that’s why you found no pistol when you searched Kerrison’s house after the motor smash,” said Wendover, in the tone of one who at last sees his way through something which has puzzled him. “Of course if that pistol was found beside the bodies, it never went back to the Hermitage at all, after . . .”

  “After Kerrison shot the pair of them?” Sir Clinton completed the sentence. “Very ingenious, Squire. Very convincing—to you, at any rate. But if Kerrison shot them with that pistol, how do you account for Rufford finding Barratt’s finger-prints on the weapon instead of Kerrison’s? Surely there’s a screw loose in the reasoning.”

  “H’m! that’s true,” Wendover admitted. “But he may have shot them and then, after cleaning his own prints off the pistol, taken Barratt’s hand and made the prints from his fingers.”

  “Your guess may be right,” the Chief Constable conceded. “It’s yours, not mine; and you can have full credit for it if you turn out to be right, Squire. But my own notion’s different.”

  “What is it, then?” demanded Wendover.

  “I hate repeating myself,” said Sir Clinton, “and I gave you a tip on the subject a while ago. If you can’t remember it, there’s no harm done. Besides, what we’re immediately concerned with just now is the matter of Kerrison’s death. Suppose we stick to that, Squire. ‘What was the crime? The murder of Kerrison. ‘Who did it?’ It’s your turn to play, Squire. Go ahead.”

  “Who did it?” echoed Wendover. “The Juggernaut gentleman who drove that blue car over him, obviously. And if you want to identify driver——”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” interrupted the Chief Constable. “You’ve started off with an unproved assumption. What evidence have you that it was a male driver? Nobody can swear to that, so far as we’ve been able to ascertain.”

  “Well, the driver, then,” said Wendover, rather snappishly, as the interruption had thrown him off his line of thought. “The driver must have been someone who could get the use of Arthur Alvington’s car. Unless you’re prepared to deny that Alvington’s car was the one that did the trick.”

  “I’m not prepared to deny it, Squire, so you may proceed.”

  “But you won’t assert it? Cautious fellow, you are.”

  “I won’t assert it till the time comes, Squire. But I did find some blood on the radiator shield, as well as observing that the side-lamp was missing from the mudguard, so I’m not prepared to deny you your assumption that Alvington’s car did kill Kerrison. So go on.”

  “Then the driver must have been somebody who had access to that car at the right time,” Wendover proceeded. “What kind of lock was on the garage door? A Yale, which snaps by pulling the door shut? Or an ordinary lock which needs the turn of a key to lock it?”

  “It was an ordinary lock, not a Yale,” said Sir Clinton. “Alvington had to fish his key out of his pocket before he could open it. And, to make all definite, he assured me that when he brought his car in before dinner, he locked the garage before going into his house. That may help to clear your way for you. Go ahead.”

  “Then it must have been one of the Alvingtons who drove the car,” Wendover asserted flatly. “They were the only two people who could open the garage.”

  “Oh, no,” Sir Clinton retorted with dangerous suavity. “There was another key that we know about. Mrs. Barratt told me that she had a key of her uncle’s garage. He allows her to use his car now and again. You’ve been too quick in making your list of possibles, Squire. Not only so, but we know that she was within a stone’s throw of her uncle’s house that night between eight-thirty and nine-thirty, for she was paying a visit to her friends the Mallards, who live only a few doors from Alvington’s house in Windsor Drive. What have you to say to that?”

  “You’re trying to pull my leg, Clinton; but it doesn’t come off this time,” retorted Wendover, obviously pleased to be able to score off the Chief Constable. “I’ve got a better memory than you think. Mrs. Barratt did not kill Kerrison. Why? Because Kerrison was killed at ten-fifteen whilst Mrs. Barratt was in Granville Road, miles away from the Hermitage, at five-past ten. She borrowed tea from her neighbour, then. That’s your own evidence, Clinton.”

  “I give you best, Squire,” admitted the Chief Constable. “I really thought I’d catch you, though.”

  “So that limits us down to the two Alvingtons, just as I said,” Wendover continued. “And they haven’t a credible alibi, since the maid was out. Either of them would swear an alibi for the other, no doubt; but would you believe them if they did?”

  “Not whole-heartedly, I’ll confess,” Sir Clinton conceded. “I don’t care much for these family alibis. We see too many of them break down in practice. But I’d feel happier about your ideas, Squire, if you’d suggest a motive for either of the Alvingtons murdering Kerrison.”

  Wendover evidently had his solution ready.

  “By your own account of them,” he pointed out, “the Alvingtons put a lot of weight on money. That’s the tender point with both of them. Now Edward Alvington’s divorce case resulted in his losing his expectations under his mother’s will. Who was the main agent in that business? Barratt, from all we’ve heard. And what’s happened to Barratt? He’s dead. But Kerrison was also an actor in that affair. He backed up Barratt strongly in the matter of ostracising Edward Alvington from their church; and that move may have a good deal to do with old Mrs. Alvington’s decision to change her will.”

  “Ah! So you’re narrowing it down still further?” asked Sir Clinton. “It’s Edward Alvington you’ve got your eye on for this murder? I’m not going to put limitations to the vagaries of human nature, but don’t you think that the provocation here is comparatively small when you weigh it against the risk of a hanging? Would Edward Alvington have reckoned the game worth the candle?”

  “My point is that he wouldn’t be risking a hanging,” explained Wendover. “Has anyone been hanged yet for a road accident? I can’t remember any case of it. Manslaughter at the worst, that’s all Edward Alvington could be charged with; and he’d get off with imprisonment, and not a long one, either. On that basis, it might be quite worth his while to give himself the satisfaction of knocking Kerrison out.

  “I suppose that’s true,” Sir Clinton admitted in a thoughtful tone. “Very suggestive, Squire, and no irony intended. I’ll have to think over things carefully, now that you’ve put that idea forward. On the face of it, I frankly admit, we couldn’t prove that Kerrison was deliberately run down. But if I’d been the man who did it, I think I’d have loaded myself up with whisky immediately afterwards, just to give ground for the defence that I wasn’t quite myself when the ‘accident’ happened. And both the Alvingtons were dead sober when I called on them. Perhaps they’re not really so very clever.”

  He reached over for a fresh cigarette from the box, lighted it, and then turned back to Wendover.

  “You can’t say I haven’t led a bus
y life to-day, Squire. Rather a hectic time, now I look back on it. And I forgot to mention that I dropped in at a stationer’s shop and ordered fresh note-paper, so you can continue your epistolary exertion without fear of running short. That’s by the way. I’ve kept one tit-bit to the last.”

  “What’s that?” demanded “Wendover, as Sir Clinton irritatingly broke off his explanation.

  “I interviewed another railwayman,” the Chief Constable pursued. “He’s the guard of a goods train, and he’s been on the sick list for some days, too busy with his own troubles to bother about ours, I gather. Anyhow, he’s now come up to the scratch and produced his evidence. I can put it in a nutshell. On the night of the lovers’ nook affair, his train passed the bracken-slope at nine-twenty-five. It was dusk by that time, but one could still see largish objects at a fair distance. This fellow—Judkins is his name—knows that bracken-patch well. He takes a friendly interest in it; and gets some amusement out of some things he sees happening there at times. So when his van came opposite to it that night, he was all alert for his evening fun. He saw something on the spot where Rufford found the bodies. But he was slightly disappointed to observe that there was only one person present. He saw a woman lying amongst the bracken. I took him in hand myself and examined him most carefully, but he stuck to it that all he saw was a woman lying down and that there was no other figure near.”

  “What about young Oley and the Quickett girl?” Wendover demanded. “If he can see things so clearly, why didn’t he notice them?”

  “Because they crept away very soon after nine o’clock. They told us that. Your memory’s not so good as you make out, Squire, or you’d remember that.”

  Wendover was obviously perplexed in his attempt to fit this new fact into the chain of evidence already in his mind.

  “It seems to muddle things up, more than a little,” he admitted in a puzzled tone. “What do you make of it, Clinton?”