by J F Straker
Sullivan was as loquacious as Blake, and equally unhelpful about Avery. And both men reiterated their denial of blackmail.
Pitt was puzzled by this, and a little worried. Sullivan, he thought, could well be speaking the truth. He was a simple fellow, and obviously under Blake’s influence. Since he could neither read nor write, it was possible that Blake had written the note to Avery without Sullivan’s knowledge. It was Blake who had been watching the Averys’ house on the Saturday, it was Blake whom Mrs Gill had seen from the top of the bus on Wednesday. And no doubt Blake had had every intention of pocketing the whole of the blackmail money if it materialised.
That was straightforward enough. But why should Blake deny it all? Perhaps he thought the police would be unable to prove the charge, might even decide to drop it in view of the other charges. Yet those damned letters written to Avery’s woman had never been found; and why should Blake have destroyed them?
There was no I-told-you-so air about Sergeant Ponsford when his brother-in-law confessed to him this nagging doubt. The Sergeant had a headache, and his stomach was misbehaving. ‘A chill, I expect,’ he said. ‘I always did have a delicate tum.’
The van in which Heath had escaped had been found two miles west of Durnbourne. Heath himself was still missing. They thought he was probably hiding in the woods that fringed both sides of the main road at that point, and a police cordon had been thrown round the area. ‘And they are watching all the bus termini and railway stations, just in case,’ added Dick. ‘He can’t have got far; he didn’t have a long enough start.’
The Inspector nodded absently. There were so many odd facets, so many contradictions.
‘How deeply do you think Heath is involved?’ asked Dick. ‘Did he kill them both, or only Carrington, or neither?’
Pitt shook his head. He was not really listening. He sat at his desk doodling on the blotting-paper in front of him. The events of that morning had allowed little time for thought. Now, with Heath looming large in his mind, he was considering the possibilities of the vague idea which had occurred to him the previous afternoon.
The Sergeant eyed him curiously. ‘What’s on your mind, Loy?’ he asked.
‘Miss Weston’s hedge,’ said Pitt.
‘Eh?’ Dick was startled. ‘They’re a nice pair, I’ll admit that. But I wouldn’t have thought a girl’s legs could—’
‘Not her legs, you fool. Her hedge.’
‘Oh. That’s different. What’s wrong with her hedge?’
‘It’s too tall.’
‘Is it, though? Well, maybe we can persuade her to have it cut. How much do you want taken off?’
‘You’re an ass, Dick,’ said his brother-in-law, ‘but I’ll have to bear with you. What I’m getting at is that Miss Weston’s hedge is too high for her to have seen Laurie passing the house yesterday week as she said she did.’
‘Oh!’ The Sergeant was sobered. ‘How high it is, then?’
‘Five foot six exactly.’
‘But that’s fine!’ exclaimed Dick. ‘Laurie was five foot six, and she only saw his cap. What’s wrong with that?’
The Inspector stood up and walked over to the window.
‘It isn’t fine,’ he said. ‘What you’ve forgotten — I overlooked it myself until yesterday — is that — Come in!’
The knock was followed by an excited young constable.
‘That chap Heath, sir,’ he said. ‘They’ve got him. He’s here now.’
11—A Dose of Bicarb
It was blind panic that prompted Heath to run. He had no real hope of evading the police for long; sooner or later, he knew, they would catch up with him. But he wanted time to think. He had heard the questions they had put to Avery — the questions that later they would put to him. If he could get away, stall them off for a while — well, maybe then he could work it out. But he had to have time.
He drove fast, heading east along the coast road. The direction did not matter; all he wanted was to put as many miles as possible between himself and the police. Hands gripping the wheel, he urged the van on with his body, swaying backward and forward, steering mechanically. But the windows were down, and the cold air steadied his panic-stricken brain. He began to think, to search for the right answer. The time he was borrowing might be short. He must not waste it.
As he neared Durnbourne he realised that they would probably be waiting for him. There would have been time to alert the police in the area. But he was not ready for them yet, and the woods offered a sanctuary. He would sit in the woods and think it all out; and then, when he was ready, he would go home — if they would let him.
He was in the woods for two hours. It did not seem very long to him, and it was only the sound of voices that made him look at his watch. He knew it was the police, searching the woods; and still he wasn’t ready. His mind had gone round and round the problem. It seemed to him that there was only the truth; and the truth spelt disaster.
He began to move silently through the woods, away from the voices. But presently there were other voices ahead, and he turned right, going faster, thinking speed more important than silence. They were all round him, he thought. He would have to get out of the wood.
When he heard the voices again he lost his nerve and began to run; blindly, with no thought to direction. He was deep in the wood now, and the undergrowth was thicker. Brambles and low branches impeded him, and sometimes he fell. But always he picked himself up and ran on, a hand shielding his face, another stretched out to move the foliage aside where it was thick. The very act of running added to his fear, so that his mind was now obsessed with a wild desire to escape. He no longer tried to reason.
They heard him coming and waited. And to Heath the hand that caught him was at first just another bramble, so that instinctively he fought to release himself from its clutches. But then there were other hands, and he came to his senses and saw them. And at that he ceased to struggle and was suddenly calm.
‘What are you arresting me for?’ he asked, panting. ‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘We are not arresting you, sir,’ said a tall sergeant. ‘But I must ask you to accompany me to the police-station for questioning.’
His trousers were torn and his jacket was frayed where the brambles had caught and loosened the threads. His face was scratched and dirty. To Inspector Pitt he looked a rather pitiable object.
‘Why did you run away, Mr Heath?’ he asked sternly.
It was funny, thought Heath, how you could try to escape from something, fight like hell to fend it off — and then, when it caught up with you, find that it wasn’t nearly as big or as terrifying as you had imagined it to be. All that time in the woods had not been able to supply him with the right answer. And now it didn’t seem to matter. Not so much, anyway.
Even so, he wouldn’t succumb meekly. He wasn’t done yet. If they didn’t know…if they were only guessing, hoping to frighten him into the truth…
‘I was browned off.’ His throat was dry, his voice not quite under control. ‘You fellows seem to haunt me. Seeing you at the works again this morning—’ He stopped. Wiser not to enlarge on that. ‘What am I supposed to have done, anyway?’
‘We’ll come to that later,’ said Pitt. ‘But if you get yourself involved in a murder two murders — you must expect the police to ask questions. Had you been more co-operative at the beginning—’
‘You can cut out the sermon, Inspector. What is it you want to know?’
‘That’s better,’ Pitt approved. ‘Well, now. To begin with, how well do you know Mrs Laurie?’
This applied assumption by the police of a knowledge at which they were only guessing had the desired effect. Heath, uncertain of how much they knew (he had caught only fragments of the conversation in Avery’s office), dare not deny it. He shook his head in a negative manner, hoping that the Inspector might yet give him a lead.
Pitt looked at him sorrowfully. ‘Still running away, Mr Heath? Then I’ll be more explicit. Why did you send
money to Mrs Laurie?’
The Inspector’s confidence was disturbing. ‘Oh, that!’ He tried to laugh. ‘It’s not a crime to send money to a person, is it?’
But Pitt had no intention of being baulked at this stage. Heath was going to talk, and talk turkey. ‘You know Mrs Laurie is the wife of the postman who was murdered yesterday week?’ he asked.
‘I’d heard he was murdered,’ Heath said cautiously. ‘But of course that was only a rumour. There are a good many rumours floating around Grange Road at present, Inspector, and most of them aren’t true.’
‘It was in the papers,’ said Pitt.
‘Was it? Well, that still doesn’t make it true. At least…’ He paused, and looked from one to the other of the police officers. ‘When did you say he was murdered?’
‘Yesterday week. Friday, the day he disappeared.’
To their astonishment, he laughed. It was a genuine laugh, tinged with contempt. ‘If you believe that then someone’s been fooling you,’ he said. ‘The postman may be dead, but he wasn’t killed yesterday week.’
‘And why are you so sure of that?’ asked Pitt.
‘Why? Because he spoke to me on the telephone Monday evening. That’s why.’
Has he gone crackers? wondered the Inspector; or is it another of his lies? ‘You’re wrong, you know,’ he said. ‘Laurie died on the Friday, as I said. If someone spoke to you on the telephone it wasn’t Laurie.’
It was Heath’s turn to look puzzled. He scratched his head.
‘I can’t understand it,’ he said. ‘The voice was the same. What’s more, he told me he was the postman. And it seemed reasonable. That was how he got hold of the letter, I thought.’
It wasn’t until he had said it that he realised he had given himself away. He looked fearfully at the Inspector. But it was the Sergeant who spoke.
‘Why are you so sure it was the postman on the phone?’ he asked. ‘You heard his voice only once before, and I gathered that wasn’t a lengthy conversation.’
‘He happened to use the same words,’ said Heath, relieved that they had taken him up on that point and not on the other. ‘He’s got quite a distinctive voice, too. But I agree that I may be mistaken. As you say, he didn’t have much to say the first time I heard him.’
‘Would you recognise him if you saw him?’ asked Pitt.
Heath shook his head. ‘No. I didn’t see him properly.’
‘And this letter you say he got hold of? What’s all that about?’
His heart sank, but he tried to bluff it out. ‘It was a private matter, Inspector. I don’t wish to discuss it.’
‘I don’t think you quite realise your position, Mr Heath.’ Pitt’s voice was icy. ‘On your own admission you and Laurie had a fight on the day he disappeared — only a few minutes, in fact, before he disappeared. On Tuesday you sent money to his wife. Taken together, those two facts need a lot of explaining. And if you cannot explain them satisfactorily…’
He thought it better to leave the sentence unfinished. The implication should be sufficient.
Heath was really worried now. He knew very little about the law, and he thought it quite likely that, should he continue in his refusal to explain, he stood a good chance of being arrested for the postman’s murder. And as yet they had said nothing about Carrington!
He began to walk nervously up and down the room.
‘I’ll tell you this,’ he said. ‘About a fortnight ago I was desperately in need of money. I’d committed a…an indiscretion. That’s the part I can’t explain, Inspector — but I swear it has absolutely nothing to do with Laurie.’
‘Go on,’ said Pitt.
‘Well, I wrote to an aunt of mine, telling her what had happened and asking her to help me out. I needed two hundred pounds, I told her, and I needed it before last weekend. I thought she might send it because — well, that’s bound up with family affairs that wouldn’t interest you. But it was this money I was expecting when the postman called Friday afternoon. I had made sure it would come that day if it was coming at all. And when it didn’t I — well, as I told you, I chased after him.’
‘That was when he knocked you down?’
‘Yes. Of course, afterwards I realised what a fool I’d been; but that didn’t alter the fact that the money hadn’t turned up. When you told me next day that there should have been a registered letter for me I guessed it must have been from my aunt. But I still hadn’t got the money, so I wrote again, asking her to cancel the cheque and send another.’
‘Did she do that?’
‘Yes.’
‘And how does the postman come into all this?’ asked Pitt.
‘It was on Monday evening that he rang me up,’ said Heath. ‘He told me he’d got my aunt’s letter, with a cheque for four hundred pounds enclosed.’
Dick Ponsford whistled softly. Some aunt! he thought.
Heath heard the whistle. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It staggered me, too. But then came the shock. Laurie said that Aunt Ellen had replied to my letter by writing on the back of it — that’s a habit of hers — and he therefore knew all about my — er indiscretion. He said he would return the cheque; but as I had only asked for two hundred I could pay him the balance in return for his silence.’
‘I see,’ said Pitt. ‘And how does Mrs Laurie come into it?’
‘I was to send the money to her. Not all at once, but in weekly instalments. If I sent her four pounds a week, he said, it would keep her for a year. After that he would be able to provide for her himself.’
‘So you sent the first instalment?’
‘Yes. I couldn’t do anything else, could I? If I’d refused he would have sent my letter to the — to the people concerned.’
‘You could have informed the police,’ Pitt suggested. ‘We know how to deal with gentry like that. Did he return the cheque?’
‘Yes. But I already had the second one by then, so I burnt it.’
‘And the envelope?’
‘I burnt that too.’
The Inspector sat silent for some time, thinking over what Heath had told him. And with the silence Heath himself grew more nervous. At last he could stand it no longer.
‘I didn’t kill the man, Inspector,’ he said earnestly. ‘I’ve told you everything now, honest I have. I know I’ve acted like a damned fool, but it’s no worse than that.’ He wanted to refer to Carrington, to make them come out into the open; but he could not bring himself to speak the man’s name. ‘What are you going to do? You’re not going to keep me here, are you? The sergeant said I wasn’t under arrest.’
‘No, you’re not under arrest, Mr Heath.’ Pitt was uncertain how to act. He could not detain the man indefinitely. Yet if he let him go…
‘There’s another little matter we may as well clear up while you’re here,’ he said. ‘The quarrel between you and Carrington.’
Now for it. ‘You couldn’t really call it a quarrel,’ he said slowly. ‘We happened to be in love with the same girl, that’s all. The gossips in Grange Road will have told you that; it won’t be news to you.’
‘I wasn’t referring to the general state of affairs between the two of you, Mr Heath. I want to know about the row you had on Sunday night.’
Heath shook his head. ‘I don’t understand, Inspector. I haven’t spoken to Carrington for weeks.’
Pitt lost his temper.
‘Good God, man!’ he said angrily. ‘Don’t you ever come out into the open without being pushed? I’ve got witnesses who heard you — can you understand that?’
‘They’re lying,’ said Heath. ‘I wasn’t there.’
‘Where?’ snapped Pitt.
‘Well — wherever they said I was.’
The Inspector looked at him in disgust.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘Have it your own way. But let me tell you this. From now on we’ll be watching you all the time. You won’t get away from us. One false move…’
He snapped his fingers expressively and turned away.
�
�Bloody young fool,’ he said, when Heath had gone. ‘Lies, lies, lies. It gets him nowhere. Worse, it gets us nowhere also.’
‘Self-preservation, I suppose,’ Dick suggested.
‘Lying won’t help him. Nor the others, either. Avery, Harris, Morris, Bullett, Mrs Laurie — the whole flaming lot of ‘em have lied right and left. They have no more moral sense than a bunch of — of — of stoats,’ he ended lamely.
‘Why stoats?’ asked Dick.
‘Well — why not?’
The Sergeant did not press the point. ‘You were suggesting, before Heath arrived, that Dorothy Weston was also a candidate for the Ananias stakes,’ he said.
‘Ah, yes. Miss Weston.’ The Inspector’s mood changed. He sat down at the desk, picked up a pencil and began to draw. ‘Look, Dick. It’s a matter of simple geometry. The Westons’ hedge is five foot six high and at least a foot thick. The snag lies in the fact that the house lies below the level of the road and is fairly close to the hedge. So Miss Weston, standing in the front room downstairs, was looking up at the hedge. There.’ He drew in a diagonal line. ‘That’s roughly her line of vision. See what I mean?’
Dick nodded, calculating rapidly. ‘According to this the postman would have had to be over seven foot high for her to have seen his cap.’
‘Yes, I know. I’m a bit out somewhere. Probably the house stands higher than that. But the fact remains that she couldn’t have seen a man only five foot six inches tall on the other side of that hedge. Not even his cap. Not from that angle, anyway.’
‘So she was lying, eh?’
‘Yes. But the point is — did she know she was lying?’
The Sergeant considered this. ‘I don’t think I quite get it, Loy,’ he said. ‘You couldn’t make it plainer, could you?’
‘No,’ said Pitt. ‘I can’t. The idea is there, chasing itself round my head. But don’t ask me to put it into words. Not yet. What I need is — well, something that will make it click. Blow up all the bits and pieces, mix ‘em thoroughly, and have them fitting neatly into place when they settle again.’