Wright moistened his lips.
‘I was thinking of the town clerk, sir.’
‘You were, were you? Well, I hope you’re wrong.’
‘He’s been in Fellaby long enough to have fathered the child, sir. He has enough influence behind the scenes, I think, to have helped Barson on his way. He could easily have kept Mrs Sawyer in her creature comforts. He’d have had no difficulty at all in putting his hands on a key to the museum. And twice he has retreated when the Lesueur-Sawyer relationship cropped up in conversation.’
‘Possible,’ Kenworthy said. ‘One thing——it was obvious from the moment that I started this morning that Lesueur didn’t do it. I checked his alibi, because he insisted that I should. But by that time he almost had me apologising for having suspected him. I certainly wouldn’t enjoy questioning him if he were the guilty party. The man’s a mind-reader. He made no bones about it, Shiner. He knew what I’d come for. Of course, the talk at his dinnerparty can have left him in little doubt. But I had to admire the way he squared up to me.’
Kenworthy speared peas with his fork.
‘He said at the outset, without any enquiry, that he wasn’t the father of Enid Barson but that he could hardly expect me to believe that; Fellaby had an idée fixe about it. And he volunteered that Warren asked him for a cool two thousand to hush up the redevelopment plot. As if, Lesueur said, the same thing wasn’t going on in dozens of councils throughout the country, whatever the colour of the majority party. And no law was being broken, as long as Barson himself had no undeclared financial interest in any transaction that was pending. Naturally, Lesueur hoped that his friends on the council would put business into his hands, when they legitimately could. He firmly believes it is to the benefit of the community at large whenever they do so. But to allege corruption——to prove corruption——is a very different thing from launching an attack on political grounds. He practically challenged me to prove anything——which, of course, I can’t. Lesueur is safe, and he knows it. Moreover, he has already given up hope of gaining anything from the development scheme. It would be incompatible with the private interests of his supporters. He admits he’s disappointed. He openly says he could have made fifty thousand clear——but Fellaby will get its shopping precinct, under the arcade of the civic centre, and the little man will be protected.——What animal surrendered this liver, do you think——a rhino?’
‘Did he know that Barson was trying to go it alone in the High Street?’
‘He knew that before Warren did. A man like Lesueur has to know everything. He laughed himself silly at the thought. It would have done him more good than harm, he said, if Barson had gone ahead and broken himself. Barson’s big mistake was Mrs Sturgess. One shouldn’t mix pleasure and business, Lesueur said——and he ought to know.’
‘Did he tell you why Warren and Barson called on him together?’
‘For the reasons I advanced last night: access and confrontation——with the accent on confrontation.’
‘Did he give you any reason for fixing Barson’s preferment all along the line?’
‘The same argument that he produced to you, when you asked him the same question——only watered down and wrapped up a bit for my superior intelligence.——Barson had his uses——until he forgot who was feeding him.’
‘Can I get you a sweet, sir?’
‘I hope you see one important thing,’ Kenworthy said, when Wright had disposed of the tray. ‘Warren’s blackmail bid failed. He was left with his earnings from Gill, and has been sailing close to some bitter winds. Barson was of no further use to him. But I doubt whether Barson had finished with Warren. Warren brought out all the juggernaut in Barson, and I think Barson was determined to break him. So there’s always hope, Shiner.’
A second shift of policemen came in for their midday meal. Kenworthy finished a plate of trifle, ate cheese and biscuits, then smoked and lapsed into long periods of silence. The canteen began to clear. Kenworthy showed no sign of wanting to move.
‘Do you think,’ Wright asked him, ‘I ought to have put the pressure on Durkin?’
Kenworthy blinked lazily.
‘Sheer waste of time,’ he said.
‘You wouldn’t think of having a go at him yourself, if the thing goes on for another day or two?’
‘Won’t be necessary,’ Kenworthy said.
The hands of the clock went on inexorably from two to a quarter past, then half past the hour.
‘Where the hell has Rhys got to?’
‘I expect Warren will demand a fair amount of time, sir.’
‘Nonsense. Either Rhys will have got him in the first five minutes, or it will be a war of attrition for days——with Warren winning——’
‘Rhys will know that, surely.’
Kenworthy made no reply at all. At twenty minutes to three, Rhys came down the stairs.
‘Well?’ Kenworthy asked.
‘He’s inside. Locked in the cells in Bradcaster main police station, much to the joy of several senior officers there. But not on a murder ticket.’
‘What, then?’
‘Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice——’
Kenworthy frowned.
‘You begged me to break him. I don’t know what other charge I could have preferred. Warren has a cast-iron alibi for the vital night. He was at a charity ball in Bradcaster, together with at least half a dozen of the Bradcaster inspectors, who can vouch for him as no one else could.——And we do know that he talked to those lads.’
‘We know he talked to them——that’s all we do know. What did he have to say about it?’
‘Collecting evidence. Making a bid to solve the Barson case as a free-lance.’
‘Very probably true,’ Kenworthy said. ‘And Burgess and Carter haven’t cracked yet, have they? Couldn’t someone else, as well as Warren, have talked to them? Someone with a stronger influence on them than Warren?’
‘So I’ve got a beauty on my plate——with Warren already closeted with his solicitor——’
‘It isn’t that that’s worrying me,’ Kenworthy said. ‘It’s where we go from here. You must have picked up quite a few other odds and ends from Warren. It wouldn’t surprise me if he knows who the murderer is.’
‘He does know who the murderer is. He offered to sell me the information, in exchange for dropping my charges, the cheeky sod.’
‘Well, he’s an accessory, then. He can’t hold on to that piece of information for ever.’
‘He can deny that he ever mentioned it. Warren’s confident that he’ll shake off this charge. So am I, now you’ve changed your mind about him——’
‘I haven’t. Now listen——he offered to sell you the murderer’s name——’
‘At his own price. We can’t possibly——’
‘I know we can’t possibly!——But if he made you an offer like that, he must have offered you some token of confidence.’
‘He did. He says he has the museum key——in a safe deposit in Bradcaster. He says he picked it up from a bed of reeds, on the edge of the canal, and that it bears irrefutable identity marks.’
‘Well, that’s it, then!’
Kenworthy sprang to life.
‘You hold on there while I do some phoning.’
‘What’s he on about now?’ Rhys asked Wright. ‘Doesn’t tell a man much, does he?’
‘He tells me next to nothing.’
‘I didn’t believe Warren about this damned key.’
‘Evidently Kenworthy does.’
‘I only hope he knows what he’s doing.’
To alleviate the Welshman’s misery, Wright told him about Durkin.
‘Poor bloody Malpas!’ Rhys said.
When Kenworthy came back to their table, he said nothing at all to them about the nature of his errand. Instead, he returned to Warren and the perversion of justice charge.
‘I shouldn’t worry too much about that,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to drop it, of course——but you’ll ha
ve a better one, because Lesueur is prepared to go the whole hog with a blackmail rap. I don’t care for the likes of Lesueur, but he has guts, and he doesn’t like Warren. And with all the talk there’s been about this case, he’ll welcome a chance to clear his name.’
‘Well——that’s a relief.——But it doesn’t help us to get the murderer.’
‘The key does.’
‘I don’t see that the key’s any use, until we have the murderer in the dock.’
‘He will be.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t talk in bloody riddles, man.’
Kenworthy patted him paternally on the arm.
‘I promised you, didn’t I, that I’d leave you to gather up the crumbs?’
‘I see no crumbs.’
‘Well——we can talk on the way to the station. And if I haven’t finished by the time we get there, you can get a ticket to the first stop and come with us. That’s Arnotfield. It takes just six minutes. If I couldn’t solve a case like this in six minutes, I’d consider myself nothing but a burden on the tax-payer.’
All of which, Wright thought, was just so much bull on the part of Kenworthy, for the superintendent did not so much as open his mouth on the way to the station, with Rhys tramping at his side, panting like an exasperated cart-horse. And there was not the suspicion of a smile on Kenworthy’s face, not a twinkle in his eye, not even a surreptitious wink for Shiner. And even when they arrived at the station, and Wright had collected their bags, and they were standing on the platform, waiting for the train, all Kenworthy could do was prattle aimlessly about the tourist posters, pointing to towns of which his wife had received picture postcards, and recommending hotels in which Rhys had no interest.
The 3.47 drew in, late and grubby, and they found a first-class compartment to themselves. A whistle blew, and they were sucked into the station tunnel, with its smoke-caked brick-work. They they were accelerating alongside the canal, the hulk of Wardle’s ruin falling back beside a grey stone bridge, and they saw the roofs and chimneys of the Carlton estate. Soon, they were crossing a brook spanned by a wooden foot-bridge.
‘Before the industrial revolution, Shiner, this must have been rather a lovely county.’
‘Superintendent Kenworthy,’ Rhys pleaded, ‘we have three and three quarter minutes left. And my ticket is only as far as Arnotfield.’
‘Oh, yes——Well, I rang the murderer up and asked him to meet you in the forecourt of Arnotfield station. So it would have been a waste of the tax-payers’ money if you’d booked any further.’
‘And you assume that he’s going to keep this extraordinary appointment?’
‘He said he would. Very eagerly, I am told. For I did not actually speak to him myself. That would have given the game away. I got a friend of mine in Bradcaster to make the call——and to say that he was speaking from Warren’s office. To say that Warren himself would be at Arnotfield——to hand over a key——at a price.——Oh, and I’ve arranged for a couple of quite strong young plain-clothes men to be inconspicuous but handy——just in case.’
‘You’ve left me a modicum of filling in to do myself, haven’t you?’
‘Not a lot. I made sure the telephone call was monitored and recorded. The very fact that our man is there at all gives you your lever. Plus the other odd little pieces that will drop into place when you see who it is.’
The coarse grass of the hills bulged away in overlapping folds to the moors of the horizon. The driver began to brake for Arnotfield.
‘Well, you’ll see in a minute,’ Kenworthy said. ‘The only man in Fellaby decent enough to murder the man who double-crossed his daughter. No——sit still——keep your head back. We don’t want him to see us too soon.’
Wright was sitting in the worst position of the three to get a reasonable view of the station. But he caught sight of the mudspattered paint-work of a red shooting-brake, and standing by its bonnet the unmistakable figure of Colonel Hawley.
‘You see,’ Kenworthy said, ‘like the rest of Fellaby, we made the mistake of assuming that when Bill Hawley delivered the Christmas goodies at number 19, he was doing it on Lesueur’s account. It might help you to know that he drove Lesueur to the Griffin on the night in question——and called to pick him up afterwards. If you want any further——’
But Rhys had bounded out of the train before it stopped. Two young men in mufti were sauntering inconsequentially up the station drive.
For the next few miles there was scarcely a break between the conurbations. A faint orange ball of sun hung in the industrial murk over the rows of terrace houses.
‘For God’s sake let’s get back to the bloody Smoke,’ Kenworthy said.
Copyright
First published in 1968 by Cassell
This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world
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Copyright © John Buxton Hilton, 1986
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Death of an Alderman Page 19