Dead Man's Bluff

by Roderic Jeffries

  Her voice grew shriller. ‘I said you didn’t ought to ’ve took the money.’

  ‘I ain’t taken no money from no one.’

  ‘You’re forgetting something,’ said Clayton. ‘I told you, we can prove she was in Trighton on Monday afternoon so that makes you a liar from the start. Would you rather tell us the truth now and come to no harm, or will you go on lying and end up in court on a perjury charge that’s good for several years in prison?’

  Mrs Jarrold put her hand to her mouth in a gesture of anguish. ‘Tell ’em,’ she cried, for the second time.

  Jarrold slowly rolled himself a second cigarette and his ferret-like face was filled with indecision. He lit the cigarette. ‘She give me ten pound,’ he said suddenly, ‘for sayin’ Mrs Knott never left the ’ouse.’

  ‘I said it weren’t right to take the money,’ his wife said.

  Jarrold spoke with fierce contempt. ‘All you said was that I ought to have took the old bitch for twice as much.’

  ‘That ain’t true … ’

  ‘When in fact did Mrs Knott leave?’ asked Clayton, hastily interrupting what appeared to be the beginning of a family row.

  ‘She drove away in Miss Corrins’s car just after I’d finished me grub.’

  ‘Which makes it what time?’

  ‘Near enough half one.’

  ‘What sort of state d’you reckon she was in?’

  ‘Wild,’ he answered simply.

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘She looked like crazy and drove out of the place so fast she near crashed with a bus. The old woman’d come out and shouted at ’er, but she didn’t ’ear nothing.’

  ‘Do you know what time she returned?’

  Jarrold scratched his pointed nose. ‘It weren’t more’n a few minutes afore I stopped work.’

  ‘And when did you stop?’

  ‘Four-thirty.’

  ‘Did you see her at this time?’

  ‘Not me — just ’eard the car. I was round the back, in the green’ouse.’

  ‘Then how do you know it was her?’

  He seemed puzzled by the question. ‘It couldn’t ’ave been no one else. Miss Corrins’s car was back in the drive when I cycled away.’

  Clayton stood up.

  ‘Mister — what about the ten quid she gave me?’ asked Jarrold.

  ‘I’d strongly advise handing it back.’ Clayton did not imagine that his advice would be heeded.

  *

  Clayton arrived home at nine forty-five and in next to no time he was sitting down in the sitting-room.

  ‘How did it go, love?’ asked Margery.

  ‘Lousy.’

  ‘Has something gone wrong, then?’

  ‘Not really wrong, but I’ve had to spend the evening proving to their face that two women were liars and it’s not a happy sort of thing to do.’

  She sat down on the arm of his chair. ‘You’re looking tireder than ever. It’s a good thing we’re off on a holiday soon.’

  He spoke slowly. ‘Margery, if this case doesn’t get cleared up soon … ’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what does or doesn’t get done, you’re going and no argument. You need a holiday and a holiday you’ll have.’

  He didn’t try to argue, only too happy to enjoy the absolute certainty of her declaration. She put an arm round him and cradled his head against her side.

  The telephone rang.

  ‘Blast!’ she snapped. ‘That’ll be Superintendent Barry. I meant to tell you, he’s rung twice already this evening.’

  He groaned and stood up. He went out into the hall and answered the call.

  ‘Just wanted to say how pleased I am with the way this case has been handled, Jim. By the way, I had a word with Superintendent Akers and he said your local knowledge had come in quite handy. As I’ve always said, you can’t beat the value of local knowledge. Have there been any recent developments?’

  ‘Mrs Knott’s alibi has now been broken,’ said Clayton.

  There was a long whistle. ‘Has it, indeed! By God, you know, whatever you think you’ve got to hand it to these London boys — they don’t miss a trick.’

  ‘Only those which are trumped.’

  ‘What’s that?’ snapped Barry.

  ‘Nothing, sir.’

  ‘Sometimes, I don’t understand a word you say … So the case is over and done with, bar the shouting. Nice work, Jim. It looks good in the records, clearing up a case as tricky as this. I’m glad you’ve been able to be of some assistance.’

  Chapter 16

  Monday was an overcast day, but the storms had died away and the earth had the clean, renewed look that came when rain followed a long, dry period. The wind had swung round to the north-east and there was a chill to it, as if giving the first warnings of the coming winter.

  When Clayton read the report from the county forensic laboratory he learned that the shot recovered from Knott’s body was size 3.

  He began to tap on the desk with his fingers. Size 3 shot was too large for the ordinary game or vermin shooting that Knott would have done. He recalled the details of his search of the gun-room at Knott Farm. On top of the gun cupboard had been a cardboard case of cartridges containing eight boxes. One of the boxes had been green, the others a browny red. There had been no significance in this at the time, but was there any now in the light of the size of shot which had killed Knott?

  Bodmin came into the room with some papers which he put on Akers’s desk.

  ‘Is Superintendent Akers around?’ asked Clayton.

  ‘He’s gone out to collect the handwritten letters Alexander was supposed to have left behind: he’s going to have them checked against Hazel Clews’s handwriting, sir. He’s also going to see if Knott’s writing can be identified on the business correspondence.’ Bodmin had a voice almost totally devoid of inflection.

  Tell him when you see him I’ve gone out to the farm, will you? After that, I’ll be seeing Hulton’s ex-boss.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Clayton left and went down to his car.

  Signs of change were already apparent at Knott Farm. The tumbledown post-and-rail fencing along the drive had been pulled out and a three-stranded barbed-wire fence had been erected in its place, the thistles in the right-hand small paddock had been slashed, and across the road the gate into the paddocks had been re-hung.

  The Bentley was not in the garage and when he knocked on the front door of the house — which started the dogs barking — there was no answer. He waited, knocked again, and then found the key, opened the door, and went inside.

  The house was, in sharp contrast with his previous visit, dirty and in disorder. In the kitchen, used cutlery was stacked higgledy-piggledy on the draining board and on the table was a plate on which was some bacon that was growing mould.

  The gun-room was exactly as it had been before. He took the cardboard case down from the top of the gun cupboard and opened up the flaps. The boxes were as he remembered them: seven were a light browny red and contained number 5 shot, the eighth was green and contained cartridges of 3 shot. In this eighth box there were only two cartridges out of the original five of the top row. Why were there three missing and not two, he wondered, a perplexed frown on his forehead? He carried the case out of the house, locked up, replaced the key, and put the case in the boot of the car.

  He walked up the drive to the farm buildings and, hearing the thumping beat of a tractor, continued round to the concrete float. Hulton was using the foreloader to clean out last year’s dung from one of the bays. Clayton waited until the bucket was emptied into an old tipping trailer, then shouted at the top of his voice: ‘Can I have a word with you?’

  Hulton’s expression was angry. ‘What’s it this time?’

  ‘I shan’t keep you for long.’

  Hulton pulled out the stop button and the engine clattered to a stop, causing the tractor to vibrate heavily.

  ‘That sounds even worse than last time,’ said Clayton, nodding at the tractor.


  ‘It’s like everything else on the farm, totally neglected. The oil level was hardly showing on the dipstick, the oil seals in the rams were perished … ’ He drew the back of his hand across his forehead, leaving behind a smear of dirt. ‘How could any man treat property like this?’ He scrambled over the hydraulic pipes and the foreloader arm and jumped to the ground. ‘Well, what d’you want this time? Why the hell can’t you blokes leave me alone to get on with the work — it’s not as though there’s nothing to do. And, goddamn it, I’ve only just got rid of one smooth-tongued, oily bastard.’

  That, decided Clayton, was a pleasing description of Akers. ‘I’m sorry, but we’ve a job to do, same as you.’ Hulton noisily cleared his throat, then spat.

  ‘My job’s of some use.’ He leaned against the back wheel of the tractor, careless of all the dung on it.

  ‘You know Daniel Knott was murdered while he was carrying out an insurance swindle?’

  ‘So the other bloke told me. Trust the old fool to make a hash of even that.’

  ‘You don’t seem very surprised he was on a swindle?’

  ‘If you’d ever met him, you wouldn’t be surprised by any goddamn twisted thing he did.’

  ‘Had you some idea of what was going on?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘This farm’s worth thirty-five thousand quid, forgetting all the woods. That’s a lot of money,’ said Clayton.

  ‘In the state it’s in now, you’d have to be a bloody fool to pay that sort of money for it,’ retorted Hulton. ‘Anyway, it’s unkind land. This yellow clay is death to good farming.’

  ‘Yet you were keen enough to get here to farm it.’

  ‘What d’you expect? It’s mine. If it was a desert, I’d’ve rushed to farm it. Christ, man, can’t you understand how I’d rather farm this place when I own it than make twice as much for half the work as the manager of the finest Fen farm in the country? It’s mine. It’s my land.’ He stared out past the exterior Dutch barn at the lie-back field in which were the cows. Just for a moment, there was the look of a visionary in his heavy, almost sullen face.

  Clayton spoke. ‘Let’s talk about last Monday.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘What time did you start work in the afternoon?’

  ‘One-thirty.’

  ‘And you worked until when?’

  ‘It was time to break off and milk the cows.’

  ‘When did Fingle come out to the field you were cutting?’

  ‘I’ve gone through all this before.’

  ‘Go through it again.’

  Hulton brought a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket. After a moment’s hesitation, he offered it, then lit a match for them both. ‘He was out early on, then he was around again at three-thirty, shouting at me for stopping cutting. Like I said to him, “You milk the cows and I’ll keep cutting.” That shut the old bastard up.’

  ‘Where’s the nearest telephone to the field you were working in?’

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked, for the first time showing any emotion other than sullen resentment.

  Clayton repeated the question.

  Hulton’s brow creased in thought. ‘There’s a call-box at the cross-roads in the village.’

  ‘How long d’you reckon it would take to walk from the field you were in to the call-box?’

  ‘Five minutes.’

  ‘Did you make a call from there last Monday afternoon?’

  ‘Of course not. Why the hell should I’ve done?’

  ‘Someone may have telephoned Mrs Knott at around half-past one to tell her where she could find her husband’s girlfriend.’

  ‘Why bother to do that?’

  ‘In order to cause mischief: so much mischief that Mrs Knott became wild with grief and rage.’

  Hulton jerked himself upright and then climbed back on to the seat of the tractor. ‘I didn’t phone her, or anyone else.’ He started the tractor and worked the hand throttle until the noise of the engine was too loud for any further conversation.

  Clayton returned to his car. He backed down to the road, noted the time, and then drove cross-country to Idenford and Jacktree Farm. The journey, thanks to all the narrow, winding lanes and blind corners, took him sixty-five minutes.

  Fingle was bowed right over by rheumatism and he not only had to use a stick to walk, but also had to hold his head up at a painful angle to see where he was going.

  He cursed Hulton for a thankless no-good who’d returned endless kindnesses by quitting his job without notice and leaving Fingle in a terrible state with cows to milk, hay to turn … Clayton brought the conversation round to the question of confirming Hulton’s evidence. Fingle had gone down to the five-acre field at a quarter past two to see if the grass was being cut properly and he had returned there at three-thirty to find Hulton had stopped because, he claimed, it was time to get the cows in and milk them. Hulton, being stupid, incompetent, and pig-headed, had always insisted on milking at the same time when everyone knew that it didn’t matter if the milking was an hour or two late because hay was being made …

  Clayton thanked the other and left. He again timed himself on the journey back to Knott Farm and drove as fast as he dared. After scaring himself twice, he arrived within fifty-five minutes. No one could do the journey in less than forty-five minutes, so that it was quite impossible that Hulton could have been at Knott Farm at five past three that Monday afternoon.

  *

  On his return to the police station, Clayton went up to the CID general room. DC Pritchard was there, trying to type out a report and becoming infuriated as his fingers hit either the wrong keys or else several all together so that everything jammed.

  Clayton handed Pritchard the cardboard case of cartridges. ‘Take these to Dabs at HQ. See the detective-sergeant and ask him to check each box for prints and also each of the cartridges inside the boxes. On the way, take a couple of clean mug shots to the Corrins woman’s place and hand them to Mrs Knott — who’s bound to be there — and ask her if she recognizes them. Give the photos to Dabs for comparison prints.’

  ‘Right, sir.’ Pritchard stood up, obviously very happy to leave the typewriter.

  ‘You may … ’ Clayton stopped. It seemed unnecessary to warn against the kind of reception Miss Corrins would probably offer. Pritchard’s ebullient character was surely proof against her, even in her most virulent form.

  Clayton walked along to his own room, which thankfully proved to be empty. He sat down and checked through the yellow pages of the telephone directory for the list of gunsmiths. There were two in Gertfinden, two in Parqueton, and one in Relstone. He knew Janes and Lines to be the bigger of the two in town and he telephoned them and asked to speak to the manager.

  ‘Mr Knott?’ said the manager. ‘Yes, he always comes to us. When he first moved down here, he bought a gun — a very nice sidelock Churchill, I seem to remember.’

  ‘Did he buy cartridges from you?’

  ‘We supplied him with a considerable number when he had his own shoot, but I understand he gave that up, due to cost — although obviously things weren’t as they should be. I did hear … ’ There was a short cough. ‘I was told you could always buy a brace of pheasants in the village.’

  ‘Have you sold him cartridges recently?’

  ‘I couldn’t say off-hand, but he always bought on account so I could find out from the records.’

  ‘Will you have a check for me, then? If he did buy some, will you also find out if possible what make they were and what size shot?’

  ‘I’ll ring you back, shall I?’

  Clayton telephoned the other gunsmiths. None of them had ever knowingly dealt with Knott.

  The manager of Janes and Lines reported back after twenty minutes. ‘We last sold a case of two hundred and fifty cartridges to Mr Knott in April. They were Eley Grand Prix, number five shot. The assistant remembers Mr Knott saying he was doing no more than wander round his own woods rough shooting and wanted the best all-round shot size.’r />
  ‘That’s fine. And you haven’t sold any single boxes to him at any time?’

  ‘I can’t guarantee that, of course. He could have paid cash and one of the young assistants either didn’t know him or couldn’t remember him.’

  ‘Do you stock Super County size three shot cartridges?’

  ‘No, we don’t.’

  ‘Many thanks for all your help. I’ll send someone round later on for a written statement.’ Clayton rang off. He stared unseeingly at the far wall.

  *

  DC Pritchard returned to the station at seven-fifteen that night. He exchanged ribald comments with a uniformed constable in the corridor, then playfully made a football tackle — his sixteen stone sent the other flying into the wall with a hard thump. The PC swore his shoulder was broken and Pritchard roared with laughter.

  He reported to Clayton and put the case of cartridges on the desk. ‘Dabs has carried out all the tests, sir. Mrs Knott’s prints are on the box of Super County cartridges, but not on any of the others.’

  ‘Are there any other prints?’

  ‘None on any of the boxes.’

  ‘What about the cartridges?’

  ‘Two of the cartridges from the Super County box had her dabs on’em, but all others were clear.’

  ‘Did they take photos?’

  ‘Yes, sir. You’ll get a set with the typed report.’

  ‘Good. Thanks.’

  *

  The senior legal assistant from the Director of Public Prosecution’s office — advising because this was a murder case — leafed through the papers he had taken from his brief-case. He was a middle-aged man, with a cheerful round face that held a hint of authority. He wore thick hom-rimmed glasses. ‘It’s a case which relies very heavily on circumstantial evidence,’ he said.

  ‘Quite so, sir,’ said Akers, ‘but murder cases usually do.’

  ‘I am aware of that fact,’ replied the other drily. ‘What I’m saying is that this case relies more than usual on such evidence.’

  Akers, thought Clayton, was unaware of the implied rebuke. Could any words pierce that armour-plated self-confidence?

  Akers leaned forward. ‘There are three possible beneficiaries to the murder and four possible suspects, Clews and Shear, Mrs Knott, and Hulton. Clews, Shear, and Hulton all have alibis for the time of death, Mrs Knott does not. A jury has to be really stupid to miss the significance of that evidence.’