by Roy Vickers
“Stand by!” He lifted her from the chair, clumsily, fumbling a little, and set her on her feet.
“That’s the end of the dumb-show,” he said defiantly.
“Thank you, Mr. Canvey,” said Curwen unexpectedly. “That’s what I wanted, though I could have done with a bit more.”
He spoke as if he were satisfied—satisfied, thought Jill, that Canvey was not the innocent man. As far as she could see, he had made the poorest show and contributed nothing.
Running counterwise was her personal feeling that the very feebleness of the performance was a guarantee of good faith. A liar tries to put his lies over, she assured herself. Lyle Canvey had weakened his own case. If he had been lying, he would have invented incidents which showed him to advantage. But she did not expect a police inspector to think along those lines.
Chapter Thirteen
When they returned to the sitting-room, Benjoy was explaining the mechanism of the lock to Veronica. Eddis was reading his manual of police training to Stranack.
“I take it, Inspector,” said Eddis, “that no report will be issued until you have completed your tests.”
“There isn’t going to be a report,” answered Curwen. “It’s your turn next.”
“I shall give you very little trouble.” His tone conveyed reproof. “I have only to repeat that I neither admit nor deny that a woman was present at the relevant time when I was myself in the lockhouse.”
Curwen controlled his annoyance.
“Please yourself! I’d like to know what chance you think that leaves you of proving your innocence.”
“None whatever,” answered Eddis. “I perceive no obligation to prove my innocence. My colleague, Stranack, takes a different view of his position and is interested in your experiment.” He turned to Stranack. “I think the Inspector is waiting for you to give your demonstration.”
Curwen could not deny that he was waiting. Before he could think up a dignified snub for Eddis, Stranack had taken the floor.
“I also will begin with the sound of the Ford engine.” He picked up The Prattler which Curwen had placed on the settee, rolled it and moved it like a baton while he was speaking. “But I’ll have to give you a bit of background first. I was in a black mood—with WillyBee Products—with myself—with my two colleagues. I was angry because I was odd man out. It was my idea to go to the depot and raid our own papers and I was disappointed.
“When I heard the engine, I told myself not to be an ass. I decided to go fishing. I took a rod off the rack. As I went out, the line swung loose—the hook caught on something and the gut snapped. I fitted another, outside. I took longer over it than usual and began to get irritable again. I couldn’t bore myself with fishing. I left the rod against the wall of the house and came back into this room.
“This thing—” he brandished the glossy “—caught my eye. It was on the settee—in much the same position as it was when I picked it up just now. I flung myself on the settee—I’ll do the flinging presently … Jill, you’ll help me, too, won’t you?”
“I’m helping the Inspector,” answered Jill with unwonted primness.
“I’ll take that the kind way. Will you go outside and stand by that bow window—the one on the left, dead centre, looking as if a snapshot had been taken of you on your way to the door? When I call to you, walk on, knock on the door and wait for an answer.”
He dropped the glossy onto the settee, then followed her to the door of the sitting-room and waited until she was seen in profile at the window.
“Now! I’ve just come in after leaving the rod.” In exaggerated mime of a man in a bad temper he strode into the room, caught sight of The Prattler snatched it and flung himself on the settee, facing the back of the room.
“This thing opened at Mrs. Brengast’s photograph, because it had been bent back at that page when we were all looking at it. The beauty of that photograph—” he stopped miming, to smile elaborately at Veronica. “The beauty of that photograph fanned up my feeling against WillyBee Products, so that I sort of began to hate the photograph as well. I tried to read other bits, but I kept turning back to it … I say, Inspector, you don’t mind if I damage this copy of yours, do you?”
“Eh?” Curwen was startled. “All right! Do what you like.”
“Remember I was very hard up, being badgered for small bills. I identified this lovely face and these enormously expensive clothes with my troubles. And—I behaved like an hysterical schoolboy.”
With the last words he tore a page from the journal, folded and re-tore the folds twice.
“All at once I saw a girl at the window. Instantly, I—”
“Stop!” ordered Curwen. “You saw a girl at the window when your back was to the window?”
“The fatal slip!” cried Stranack. “Every difficult thing thought out with diabolical ingenuity, only to crash on a simple point of everyday observation!”
He sprang from the settee.
“If you will be kind enough, Inspector, sit as I was sitting.” As Curwen grudgingly complied: “Get my angle. I was actually looking at Mrs. Brengast, though my thoughts were elsewhere … Now you can see that overmantel mirror out of the corner of your eye, can’t you! Something in the mirror moves. You turn sharply—and you see Miss Aspland, don’t you Inspector?”
“Carry on,” said Curwen, going back to his chair.
“Now, I don’t like strange girls to catch me behaving like an hysterical schoolboy. So I—”
He broke off and shouted: “Jill! Come along, slowly, and knock at the door.”
As Jill moved, he began to stuff the torn fragments of the photograph into the folds of the settee.
“So I pushed these bits out of sight and had not quite finished when—she knocked.”
He hurried across the room and opened the door.
“Oh! You’ve been walking on that ghastly road. Do come in and rest. Let me take your suitcase.” He took Jill’s purse-bag, miming it as a suitcase and put it down near the dining table. Jill attempted nothing in the way of theatricals but allowed him to direct her movements.
“Steady! Your shoes must be full of grit after all that walking. Lean on me.” He “supported” her to the settee. “Gin and orange juice?”
He was moving towards the sideboard when Curwen stopped him.
“You can skip the drinks. I’ll give you that your finger prints were on the bottles.”
“The Inspector is helping Mr. Stranack,” objected Veronica.
“Mrs. Brengast!” Eddis tapped the table. “I must ask you not to interrupt. The Inspector is not helping Mr. Stranack except in so far as it may be necessary to save public money.”
Stranack mimed drinks on a tray while Jill sat passive and unhappy. In spite of the ham acting, Stranack was giving the impression that he was repeating remembered acts. He was giving a version that was at once different from Lyle Canvey’s and more credible. He had accounted for the fishing rod. And in tearing up the photograph he had removed a great deal of Curwen’s suspicion of Veronica.
He was going on with his act, chattering at her, pausing to indicate her part of the dialogue and rigging it so that Curwen could guess what she was supposed to have said.
“That’s because I have seen you before,” gagged Stranack. “I must have gazed at you as one of a crowd—I’ve certainly never heard your voice before … Funny that I can’t place you.” He jerked a finger at The Prattler. “Ha! By heaven, you are WillyBee’s wife!”
He turned his back on Jill and addressed Curwen.
“That’s what we might call the end of the first phase. I’ve had to use different words now and again—and I’ve made it all happen much too quickly—but I’ve given you the general hang of it. You must now imagine a lapse of time during which we swap yarns.”
“How much time?”
“How on earth could I know?” countered Stranack. “You must have read about this sort of thing—it was like that. Shall I go on?”
Receiving a nod, h
e bent over Jill, an arm round her shoulders.
“There’s no earthly need for that!” cried Canvey, but Stranack ignored him.
“Put your arms round me, please Jill. We’re doing a stage kiss.”
In the stage kiss Stranack put his hand over his shoulder and touched Jill’s left hand. He stood, still holding her hand, and gazed at an imaginary wedding ring.
“I don’t like WillyBee. Perhaps that is why I feel I must ask—what about this? … Oh! … That definitely settles it.” He removed the imaginary wedding ring. “He goes out of your life tonight. Like this! He went through the motions of lobbing a wedding ring through the open window. “Sunk in the mud where he has made it belong” … Thanks, Jill!”
“This is absolutely outrageous!” cried Veronica. “As if any decent woman would run down her husband to a man she has known for an hour!”
Stranack ignored her.
“What about it, Inspector?” he asked. “You’ve admitted the finger prints on the bottle were mine. How many of your check points have I slipped up on?”
Jill supposed that Curwen would not answer.
“I’m not saying you slipped up,” he answered. He took out a notebook and turned the pages.
Veronica got up and stood in front of him, demanding attention.
“You were very sure that no one could have torn up that photograph but myself. That made you feel certain that I was here. Are you still certain I was here, Inspector?”
“Excuse me a minute!” Curwen was occupied with his notebook, but Jill suspected that he was stalling for time.
Veronica was not discouraged by the notebook.
“Even Miss Aspland must admit that Mr. Stranack described a woman behaving as I could not even be suspected of behaving.”
“I don’t know what you are complaining about,” said Curwen, replacing his notebook. “I am not detaining you, Mrs. Brengast.”
Eddis tapped the table.
“On a point of order, Inspector. I object to your allowing Mrs. Brengast to leave while you detain my colleagues and myself.”
“I can’t remember asking you to make the points of order,” retorted Curwen. “It will save trouble, Mrs. Brengast, if you will hand me your passport before you go.”
Veronica opened her bag and surrendered her passport, then turned to Jill.
“You were wrong, weren’t you!”
Jill made no answer. Was she wrong? Perhaps—but not because of anything Stranack had contributed. If he was one of the guilty men, all that he said could be ignored. But some of it was true—whether he was guilty or innocent. She would admit nothing except that she might have to revise some of her reasons for believing in Canvey’s innocence.
Veronica left the house without another word to anybody except Benjoy who went out with her to escort her past the guard.
“Can you seriously believe,” Canvey was saying, “that Stranack’s fooling about like that can tell you whether he is lying or not?”
“It was not fooling about,” answered Curwen. “Mr. Stranack has helped his own case. What about you, Mr. Eddis? Does the ‘no comment’ gag cover what we’ve just been told?”
“It would be ungenerous to deny that I was very favourably impressed,” said Eddis, again making it impossible for Curwen to do anything but listen. “I deplore the many farcical effects he chose to work into his narrative—effects more suited to a seaside concert party than a police investigation—but these lapses hardly detracted from the performance as a whole, which I found very convincing.”
“Convincing!” cried Curwen. “Are you telling me that he convinced you—which is the same as saying you are guilty?”
“Reflect, Inspector. Had I been guilty I would not have said it.” Another reproof for Curwen. “I was using the word in the artistic sense—meaning that, if I had not known that he was in Renchester at the time, he would have convinced me that he was re-enacting events which had actually occurred. Take, for instance, that delightful flourish—tearing the photograph out of the paper. Valueless in itself, but invaluable in point of realism. The sort of ridiculous thing a man might do in those circumstances. So we are ready to believe almost anything he likes to tell us.”
“And the things he did tell us?” cut in Curwen. “Were they true or untrue?”
“That will be determined by what you called your check points, Inspector. As your experiment has now been completed I call upon you to name the innocent man.”
“I didn’t undertake to name the innocent man. What I said was that I would make an arrest before I leave here.” Curwen swung the wicker stool round, opened his bag and took out a sheaf of typed papers, to be ready if required. “I can see you think I’m bluffing. You think the tests have not revealed the innocent man. You’re quite right. But they’ve revealed something else that your lawyers hadn’t thought up. I’ll put it this way: The accounts given by Canvey and Stranack just now were different in some ways. But they were the same in some other ways. Too many ways! The guilty men were not snooping on the innocent man in the early part of the evening. But one guilty man and one innocent man have given substantially the same account.
“One guilty and one innocent man!” repeated Eddis. “What evidence have you that one of those two was the innocent man?”
“I don’t need any. I gave you a chance to contradict their evidence and you didn’t take it.”
For the first time Eddis was silenced. Curwen continued: “The way the jury will look at it is that—right from the first—the innocent man has been helping the guilty men by supplying them with necessary information. Day after day. On all important points, both tell the same tale. I shall charge all three of you with—” he read from the typescript “—with being accessories after the fact of murder by a person or persons at present unknown. And when you’re all three in prison we shall start work on you, like we do on the crooks.”
Stranack laughed.
“A couple of days after you’ve arrested us, one dud lawyer will be sacked for making a fool of your Chief.”
“Don’t kid yourself with that notion!” Curwen was warming to his work. “You’ve not only told the same substantially true tale. What’s much more important is that you’ve also told the same lie—which proves you must have put your heads together, innocent and guilty. I mean that bit o’ moonshine about throwing the wedding ring into the lock.”
“I have never stated that a wedding ring was thrown into the lock!” exclaimed Eddis.
Jill seized her chance.
“Do you state that a ring was not thrown into the lock, Mr. Eddis?” she asked.
The men were startled by her cutting in. Curwen looked hurt.
“I neither assert nor deny it,” answered Eddis.
“Better leave the questions to me, Miss Aspland,” said Curwen stiffly.
“I’m sorry, Inspector. I felt I had to butt in because I know the wedding ring story is true. Veronica deceived you with a trick. And I thought you knew that the innocent man is Mr. Stranack.”
Chapter Fourteen
Jill had wrecked Curwen’s plan. He believed she had been at least partly in Veronica’s confidence, and he could not ignore her unequivocal statement. Also, she had puzzled the three men into silence.
Stranack was the first to adapt himself.
“I say, Jill—you’ve rather torn it, you know! I appreciate it more than I can say—I mean your speaking up on my behalf. You believe I am the innocent man because I told you so—in circumstances in which you were ready to accept my version. But neither you nor I can prove anything. It sounds ungrateful to say it, but you’re only hampering the Inspector and not really helping me at all.”
“I’m the one to say whether I’m being hampered or not!” rasped Curwen. “I’ve put up with a good deal from you three men. I’ve tried to treat you with every consideration and you’ve used it to chuck your weight about. Just get this into your heads—all three of you! I’m in charge here. You’ll speak when you’re spoken to. Start pl
aying the fool and you’ll get some rough stuff and see how you like it.”
“I agree with every word the Inspector has said,” proclaimed Eddis.
Curwen opened his mouth then decided to shut it. He turned to Jill.
“If you have any evidence, Miss Aspland, I am surprised that you did not offer it earlier.”
“Because I wasn’t certain until just now. Weighing things and deciding what is evidence is an expert job for which I am not qualified. May I tell you about it in my own way and leave you to sort out the evidence?”
“That would be the best. Wouldn’t you rather tell me without the others being present?”
“I think it would be better to let them correct me if they wish to do so,” said Jill thoughtfully. “To begin with, I know—as I think you do—that Veronica was here that night. I was greatly impressed by Mr. Stranack’s demonstration this afternoon, with me pretending to be Veronica. I felt that he was—living a great experience over again. After the first few seconds, when he looked at me, he looked through me. At another woman. A woman he loves.”
“That may be so,” said Stranack. “But while I was going through the motions of kissing you I was thinking of Inspector Curwen.”
“More than that,” continued Jill, “I know Veronica very well. The words Mr. Stranack used dovetailed with the words she would have used. He did suggest to me that he was talking to her. I had to restrain myself from answering in her idiom.”
“That’s not evidence!” Stranack laughed. “You’re merely recording your own impressions.”
“They were my impressions only, Inspector, but they altered the perspective of the facts I knew. They gave me a new view of Mr. Stranack. I began to remember very vividly what happened that night at the Red Lion when he was doing some trick—as I thought at the time—with her wedding ring. I thought that he offered her a ring as hers—that she refused it and that he took it back.”
“It wasn’t a trick—it happened just like that!” interrupted Stranack. “I was trying to bluff her into telling the truth.”