“Baffling, at first sight,” Sir Clinton agreed cheerfully. “But it’s best never to admit that you’re baffled. I seldom do.”
“And since it baffled you at first sight, what did you do next?” sneered Wendover.
“I took another glance at it,” explained Sir Clinton. “That’s the most natural thing to do, I think. But now, Squire, I’ve had a busy day and I’ve talked more than I wanted to. Suppose we play one game before going to bed. I’ve got enough breath left to say ‘Mate’ when the proper time comes.”
Chapter Sixteen
The Four Cartridge-Cases
EARLY on the following morning, Sir Clinton summoned Rufford to his office at the police headquarters. The inspector’s eyebrows lifted slightly when he found Wendover installed beside the Chief Constable. Sir Clinton noticed his surprise.
“I’ve brought Mr. Wendover along,” he explained. “We may need a magistrate before we’re through with this business.”
“To sign a warrant?” queried the inspector, evidently satisfied by this pretext for Wendover’s presence during an official interview.
Sir Clinton refused to rise to the bait.
“He’s been an onlooker at the game,” he explained, “while you and the rest of us have been struggling with this Barratt case. I think we’re in the last lap, now, and he may as well see the finish.”
“Certainly, sir,” agreed Rufford, making a fairly successful effort to conceal his surprise at the chance of such a speedy termination of the affair.
“I’ve got the dossier of the case here,” Sir Clinton went on, taking from a drawer the folder which Wendover had seen several times before. “Just let Mr. Wendover see the extra exhibits, inspector. We’ll put all our cards on the table for him. Then he can’t say that we’ve kept him in the dark about any bit of evidence.”
“Very good, sir,” agreed the inspector, placing a number of envelopes of various sizes on the Chief Constable’s desk. “I’ve got all the stuff here, as you told me to have it handy. The envelopes are labelled, if you want to pick any of them out as we go along.”
“Thanks,” said Sir Clinton.
He turned over the various envelopes, glancing at the inscriptions, and finally selected two small ones from the series.
“We’d better begin with these,” he said, turning to Wendover. “This one contains four empty cartridge-cases which the inspector discovered beside the bodies of Barratt and Mrs. Callis; this other one contains four empty cartridge-cases obtained by firing four shots out of the pistol which was lying beside Barratt’s hand. I don’t want to get them mixed up, so I’ll pour out the one lot at this end of my desk. That will keep them apart.”
He suited the action to the word, and Wendover examined the four little objects cursorily.
“You may have to look more closely than that,” said Sir Clinton. “Here’s a watchmaker’s lens. Now, inspector, you’re a fire-arms expert. Just explain to Mr. Wendover how the cartridge-case is removed from an automatic after the shot’s fired.”
Rufford seemed pleased that his Chief had delegated this task to him.
“It works this way, Mr. Wendover,” he explained. “In these automatics, the firing of the cartridge drives back a sliding breech-block. Attached to that breech-block is an extractor-claw which slips over the rim of the cartridge during the loading process. So when the breech-block jerks back, it carries the cartridge-case with it, gripped by the extractor-claw. The breech-block is stopped suddenly at the end of its ‘travel,’ whereupon the cartridge-case flies on and is jerked clean out through the opening left by the retreat of the slide. Now if you left the design like that, most likely—if you fired straight to your front—the cartridge-case would hit you in the face, since it’s travelling backward in line with the barrel of the pistol. So a small piece of metal is put on the pistol—it’s called the ejector-block—and when the back-travelling cartridge-case strikes this, it’s diverted to one side, and the cartridge-case usually flies over your shoulder safely. That’s what you wanted, sir, isn’t it? I’ve got a spare pistol with me. Here’s the extractor, Mr. Wendover, and here’s the extractor-block.
“Thanks, I see what you mean,” said Wendover, with a pleasant courtesy.
He knew a good deal more about fire-arms than Rufford; but he was too kind to rob the inspector of his feeling of superior knowledge.
“Now just take the magnifier,” said Sir Clinton, “and examine the end of this cartridge-case. You see the mark of the extractor, where it slipped over the rim of the case during loading: a slight flattening of the rim’s metal. Turn the thing round until that’s at the top. Then, at about the seven o’clock position, you’ll see the ejector mark: a slight straight cut in the brass. Got it?”
“Yes, I can make it out all right,” Wendover agreed.
“Good! Now you see the depression punched by the striker-pin which fired the cap of the cartridge? About half-way between it and the rim, you’ll see another feature on the brass.”
“A sort of island of metal, it looks like,” said Wendover, examining the object through the magnifier. “About the five o’clock position, isn’t it?”
“Yes, that’s the thing I meant,” Sir Clinton confirmed. “It’s a mark made by a particular chance tool-marking on the breech-block of the pistol out of which that cartridge was fired. Now turn that case on its side and look for a scratch on the metal, running straight along, parallel to the axis of the cartridge. See it? You may have to turn the thing about a bit till you get the light falling just right.”
“I’ve got it,” Wendover reported after a few failures.
“Then just note its position relative to the ejector mark,” Sir Clinton advised. “And then you might let the inspector have a look. He hasn’t seen it before.”
When Rufford had made his examination, Sir Clinton produced the three other cartridge-cases from the same envelope for their inspection. In each case they were able to identify the same types of marks in the same relative positions.
“That set,” Sir Clinton explained, “is the four which were found beside the bodies.”
He put them back in the proper envelope, and then poured out the remaining quartette from the second envelope.
“Have a look at these,” he suggested, “and see if you find the same set of marks on them.”
Wendover took precedence of the inspector. He examined the little objects first with his naked eye, then with the lens, taking each cartridge-case in turn and making no comment until he had completed his survey.
“Something wrong here, surely,” he said at last, putting down the magnifying glass. “Each of them has got the flattening of the rim produced by the extractor. But the ejector mark’s not quite in the same relative position. And I can’t see any scratch on the side of any of them, nor can I see that little island that I noticed in the last set. Perhaps Mr. Rufford has better eyes.”
Rufford had hardly troubled to conceal his contempt for the “amateur” while Wendover was making his investigation. He now picked up the little objects in turn. As his examination proceeded, surprise and annoyance showed on his features and deepened as each cartridge-case failed to reveal the indications he was seeking.
“You don’t see ’em?” asked Sir Clinton. “I’d be surprised if you did, because they aren’t there.”
“But they must be,” asserted the inspector. “It must be some trick of the light, or something. All these shots came out of the same pistol, sir. And I’ve compared the bullets very carefully. They all have the same rifling marks. Let me have another try.”
“Don’t bother too much with the scrape on the side of the case,” Sir Clinton advised. “These scrapes are not altogether to be relied on as proofs. But the other three points are sound.”
Rufford set himself again to his examination of the cases; but it was evident that he was making no better progress than he had done before. At last, baffled, he put them back on the desk with a certain pettishness in his gesture.
; “No, they aren’t there,” he confessed, crossly. “I don’t understand it, sir. All of these shots were fired from the same pistol. That’s plain, since the rifling-marks are the same on the two bullets from the bodies and the four bullets I’ve fired myself. These are identical; I’ll swear to that in the box.”
“The same pistol,” repeated Sir Clinton, though with a fresh intonation. “What is a pistol? Before we go any further, we’d better be quite sure what we’re talking about. I had the same trouble when Mr. Wendover and I were discussing the subject. You people seem to think that when you say ‘pistol,’ you’ve covered the whole ground. So you may have, in the dictionary sense. But a pistol is a complicated bit of mechanism, remember.”
The inspector scented a trap.
“I know you’ve got something up your sleeve, sir. You’re just pulling our legs. I admit I’ve got tangled up. Put it to us straight.”
The Chief Constable, instead of answering, began a search among the papers in the dossier, from which he finally extracted the rough sketch which Rufford had made to indicate the places where the four cartridge-cases had been discovered. (See diagram here.)
“Now,” he said, spreading the paper out on the desk so that both his hearers could examine it. “Here are the relative positions of the bodies and the four cartridge-cases. You reminded us, inspector, that an automatic pistol ejects its cartridge backwards and towards the side; and if I’m not mistaken, the Colt automatic pitches the empty shell over one’s right shoulder, more or less. Now look at the diagram. Mrs. Callis, facing south, was shot by someone standing on her left side—which is the same thing as saying that the shooter must have been somewhere near B in the diagram, standing with his face towards the west. Now on that basis, I reckon that the case of the cartridge which killed her must have been the one which landed at the star marked 3 in the diagram. Barratt was shot in the right temple, but he was apparently facing north at the moment (to judge from the way his body fell). If you allow that he was standing a few feet south of Mrs. Callis’s position, then the cartridge-case found at 3 gives you almost exactly the same range of travel as the one found at 4.”
“And the northward distance between 4 and 3 is roughly the same as the northward distance between where Mrs. Callis was sitting and the spot Barratt was standing when he was shot,” said the inspector, alertly. “That seems sound enough, sir. But we more or less knew all that already, didn’t we?”
“I admit it. But what you didn’t know was where the other pair of empty cartridge-cases came into the business, the ones marked 1 and 2. Let’s take them now. I’ll admit at once that they might have come from shots fired from any point over a fair zone and in any direction. But that can be narrowed down a bit in practice. The two shots heard by Polly Quickett came fairly close together. There wasn’t much time for the shooter to shift his position. One may reasonably assume that Mrs. Callis cried out ‘Don’t!’ when she saw the pistol pointing at her; then came the fatal shot; and then came the second report, fired from almost the same spot. Assume that the shooter stood at about B in the diagram, and that he fired with his pistol in the normal position, neither 1 nor 2 will fit the case. The range of travel from pistol to ground is too short in each case, when one compares it with the distance travelled by the cases 3 and 4.”
“That seems sound enough,” Wendover agreed, after scrutinising the sketch carefully. “How do you account for it?”
“Imagine that you’re standing at B, facing south, and that you fire your pistol into the ground,” suggested Sir Clinton. “The empty cartridge-case recoils over your right shoulder; but owing to your pistol being directed downwards, the ejected case goes almost straight up in the air and falls back in the bracken far nearer to you than it would have done if you’d held your pistol level. Now the position 1 seems to me to be just about where the empty case might fall, under these conditions. And the case which fell at 2, on the same reasoning, might have been fired by a shooter standing near ZZ and facing south. Have a good look at the sketch. I think you’ll agree with me.”
Rufford and Wendover bent over the desk. The inspector made one or two rough measurements on the diagram and then looked up.
“That’s sound enough, sir,” he admitted, “and of course I know you’re right; because we dug up those extra two bullets exactly where you told us to look for them, at B and at ZZ. That was a very neat bit of prophesying, sir, and until you explained it, I didn’t see how you’d managed to do it.”
“Satisfied?” asked Sir Clinton, glancing at Wendover.
“Oh, quite, quite. One can’t get over the actual bullets,” Wendover admitted. “And, of course, they’ve got the same rifling-marks as the two fatal ones. Have they?” he ended, suspiciously.
“They have,” Sir Clinton assured him.
“But that makes four shots,” objected Wendover. “Polly Quickett heard only two. She was positive about that.”
“Two and two make four,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “Two reports were heard by Polly Quickett shortly after nine o’clock, and two were heard by the late Kerrison at ten o’clock or thereabouts.”
“Stop a bit,” objected Wendover in a critical tone. “Your theory goes a bit further. It implies that an hour elapsed between the two deaths—three-quarters of an hour, at any rate.”
“Exactly,” agreed the Chief Constable.
“Then it may have been a suicide pact after all,” Wendover pointed out. “Barratt may have shot Mrs. Callis at nine-fifteen and then sat hesitating for three-quarters of an hour before he could screw himself up to keeping his bargain by shooting himself.”
Rufford had listened to the “amateur” with a faint smile of superiority.
“If you’re right, sir, then Barratt must have gone for a little stroll, after murdering the girl. To collect his thoughts, perhaps. That railway guard, Judkins, saw her body lying there at nine-twenty-five, and he’s spot-certain that there was no other figure in the bracken-patch at that time.”
“Let’s finish with the cartridge-cases before we start a fresh hare,” suggested Sir Clinton, coming to Wendover’s rescue. “We’ve got four bullets, and four cartridge-cases connected with this affair. Unfortunately, these two sets don’t correspond in their markings, as we’ve just seen.”
“That’s true enough,” said Wendover, not ill-pleased to see the inspector at a loss. “On the face of things, the bullets were fired from the pistol you found, whereas the cartridge-cases were fired from another pistol entirely. So you people ought to be able to produce four more cartridge-cases corresponding to the shots from that pistol which Barratt had.”
“Not necessarily,” said Sir Clinton with a faint smile. “I think a practical demonstration is what’s wanted here. Did you bring those two automatics with you, inspector?”
Rufford dipped his hands into his jacket pockets and produced a pair of Colts.
“I borrowed them from a gunsmith,” he explained. “They’re identical with the .38 pistol that I found beside the bodies.”
He put them down on the desk before the Chief Constable, who looked at them rather fastidiously.
“They’re rather oily,” he complained, pulling out his handkerchief and giving each of them a rub with it before going further. “That’s better. I wonder if they’ve been cleaned since they were fired last—if they have been fired.”
He twisted a piece of paper into a screw and inserted it into the barrel of one pistol; but he pushed it too far in and gave an exclamation of vexation.
“It’s stuck inside the barrel. Never mind, we’ll get it out by and by. Meanwhile, we’ll put it into this drawer, to keep it quite separate from the other one.”
As he pulled open the drawer in his desk, somebody passed the window of the room in which they were, and an expression of annoyance flashed over the Chief Constable’s face.
“Was that Arthur Alvington?” he asked. “Looked like him. I don’t want him shown in here while we’re busy. Will you see that he’s kept waiting till
we have time to deal with him, inspector, please.”
Rufford turned to leave the room. Sir Clinton dropped the pistol into the drawer, which he then closed with a slight slam. Wendover had stepped to the window to look into the street. In a moment or two, Rufford returned and explained that Alvington had not entered the police station.
“Well, we can go on, then,” said Sir Clinton, with relief in his tone. “I’d no particular desire to have Master Arthur popping in at this particular moment. Just hold this pistol, will you?”
He picked the second pistol from the desk and handed it to Wendover, who took it, looking rather puzzled.
“H’m!” said the Chief Constable ruminatively. “We’ve got six bullets in all: two from the heads of the bodies; two from the turf; and two from the dead cats that Kerrison shot. All of these bear the same rifling-marks. That’s right, I think? And we’ve four empty cartridge-cases, which don’t correspond to the pistol found beside the bodies. That’s the state of affairs. Not so very difficult, after all. Just put that pistol down on the desk, Wendover, please.”
Wendover did so, and Sir Clinton picked it up, holding it so that they could see exactly what he did.
“I told you that a pistol was a complicated piece of mechanism,” he reminded Wendover. “Now, we’ll dismount this one a bit. I’ll take out the magazine, first.”
He suited the action to the words and laid the empty magazine on the desk before him. Then, holding the pistol well in view, he made two swift and simple movements of his hands, after which he put down separately on the desk the barrel of the pistol and the remainder of the weapon.
“Quite simple, isn’t it?” he commented. “You see how easy it is to remove the barrel from an automatic of this type. These weapons are all practically standardised. Now I’ll assemble this one.”
He did so, while they watched him carefully. When he had finished, he put the assembled automatic down on the desk with a gesture warning them not to touch it.
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