“I can believe it, if that’s a sample,” commented Jim Telford with an ugly smile. “Well, go on. Any more of them?”
“One or two,” admitted Craythorn with a shade less geniality. “You knew something about the Hysons’ domestic arrangements, I gather. Now his death occurred last Thursday. Was that their maid’s usual night out, can you tell me? I’m just using you to confirm what we got in other quarters, I may say. We want to be sure that she was off the premises, you see?”
Jim Telford paused for some seconds before answering and his face suggested that he was racking his memory for some recollection which would enable him to check the matter.
“Yes,” he answered finally. “That’s right, so far as my knowledge goes. I remember that if I went round there for bridge on a Thursday we had to look after tea ourselves. There was no maid to bring it in. Yes, that’s correct.”
“Right! Then she ought to have been off the premises that night. She has an alibi, but we have to check everything, you know.”
Jim Telford nodded without saying anything, and the inspector continued.
“It was very good of you to come down and help us with your evidence. You came by train, I suppose?”
“No,” Jim Telford contradicted, “I drove down. I’m spending the night with my father-in-law here.”
“Long drive that,” commented Craythorn. “I’d have thought the train would have suited you better.”
“It’s only about two-fifty miles or so,” Telford explained. “And if I’d come by train, I’d have had the bother of going into town to catch the express. I’m at Glen Terret just now, so I’d have had to take my car anyhow.”
“Right!” said the inspector, but in a tone which suggested that he had really little interest in the matter. Then a fresh thought seemed to cross his mind.
“You smoke, I suppose? There’s no harm in your having a cigarette or a pipe here, if you’d like to.”
Telford gave him a quick glance as much as to ask: “What do you think you’re after?” Then he shook his head.
“I never smoke during business interviews,” he said, with a faint twang of irony in his tone.
Craythorn realised that he had failed in his indirect method. He wasted no further time but tried a frontal attack.
“Would you mind letting me see your pouch?” he asked, bluntly.
Jim Telford gave him a stare of astonishment.
“What for?” he demanded. “Are you thinking of changing your own brand and looking for tips? Well, I smoke Algonquin A, if that’s any help to you.”
He drew out his pouch as he spoke, opened it, and displayed the contents. As it chanced, Craythorn himself smoked Algonquin A and recognised the mixture at a glance. Its appearance was quite different from that of the dottle left on the hearth on the night that Hyson died. A tobacconist had identified that beyond dispute: Wainwright’s Trafalgar brand.
“It’s a good cool smoke,” Craythorn had the presence of mind to say, on the spur of the moment. “It’s my own brand.”
And in confirmation, he took out his own pouch and exhibited his tobacco, seizing the opportunity to compare the two samples to make quite sure. Jim Telford shut his pouch again and returned it to his pocket.
“Well, what next?” he asked.
“Just one thing more,” the inspector said, as though the point was a mere matter of form. “Can you give me an account of your movements on the night that Hyson died?”
At the question, Jim Telford raised his eyebrows in surprise, then, almost immediately, a frown came upon his face.
“Are you suspecting me?” he demanded, angrily. “I’m getting a very pretty idea of the police from the way you’re running this interview. First of all you question me about some damned slanderous letter you’ve received and throw aspersions on people who can’t defend themselves. And now you have the nerve to ask me to account for my movements, although I was two hundred miles away from here that day. Are you suspecting me of shoving Hyson’s head into his gas-oven? If you are, then say so, and I’ll know just what your intelligence amounts to.”
He made a gesture of contempt and sat back in his chair. Craythorn endeavoured, not too successfully, to explain his inquiry.
“You’re taking this in the wrong way,” he declared placably. “It’s a routine question, Mr. Telford. I’ve put it to every witness I’ve examined yet, in this affair. None of them took offence at it, so why should you?”
Jim Telford was by no means pacified.
“It sounded a damned sight too much like suspicion, to me,” he grumbled. “I don’t mind that, in itself. But I’ve seen the way you hand on suspicions in the matter of that anonymous letter. Before my back’s turned, you’ll be asking your next witness if there’s any reason to suppose that I murdered my wife. And perhaps Hyson as well. It’s not good enough, not by a long chalk.”
But if this was meant to bluff the inspector, it failed completely.
“You haven’t answered my question, Mr. Telford,” he reminded Jim, ignoring the outburst.
Jim Telford’s face changed as though a fresh idea had occurred to him. He leant forward with an expression which suggested that he was laying a trap for Craythorn.
“Do you suspect me?” he asked silkily. “Just say so, if you do. I shan’t be a bit surprised, after what you’ve treated me to, already.”
But the inspector had faced hostile barristers in the witness-box too often to be entrapped so easily.
“If I didn’t suspect you, Mr. Telford, you’d be going the right way about it to make me change my views,” he declared quietly. “Now why make difficulties? All I want is something to put into my report. If I didn’t ask you that question, I might be hauled over the coals for not having asked it, even if it is a pointless one. It’s a mere matter of routine,” he ended, with a certain disregard for truth.
His manner, rather than his words, seemed to soothe Jim Telford’s indignation.
“Very well, let it go at that,” he agreed. “The bother is, I can’t produce anyone who saw me that day. It was Thursday, wasn’t it, when Hyson petered out? Well, this is how it was. I’m living at my cottage in Glen Terret just now, not in town. My maid’s in hospital, getting through scarlet fever. So there’s no one at the cottage but myself. I look after any meals I get there myself and I bring all the necessary food and so on down from town. So barring the kid who leaves the milk and the postman, nobody has any reason to drop in on me. That quite clear?”
“Quite,” admitted Craythorn, glad to find that he was going to get at the root of things in spite of the initial breeze between him and his witness.
“Very well, then,” Jim continued. “On that Thursday morning, I woke up in a weird state. The whole room seemed to be turning round and when I stood up, I nearly tumbled over with giddiness. I just had to crawl back to bed again and watch the walls spinning. I’m not liable to bilious attacks, but it must have been something of the sort. Some food I’d eaten, probably, that hadn’t been quite according to Cocker. Anyhow, I was fit for nothing but to shut my eyes and lie still. So I did that and nothing else for most of the day. A ghastly sensation, I can assure you.”
“Sounds like gall-bladder gone wrong,” Craythorn suggested in a sympathetic tone.
“Maybe. Anyhow, I lay there and dozed as best I could. I woke up now and again and sat up, but whenever I did that the walls started to go round and round again. In the meanwhile the kid had brought the milk from the crofter’s place up the glen a bit, and the postman had shoved a letter through the letter-slit. I didn’t see them, and they didn’t see me. I know they called, because I found the milk and the letter afterwards.”
Craythorn made a sympathetic noise.
“You didn’t call in a doctor?” he inquired.
Jim Telford smiled rather sourly at this suggestion.
“A bright thought. It occurred to me immediately as soon as the ceiling began to play ring-a-ring-o’-roses over my head. In fact it seemed just the thing t
o do. Unfortunately I was alone on the premises, and in such a state that I couldn’t take two steps without being sick. I’ve no phone there. And the nearest doctor is ten miles away. In the circumstances, I discarded the idea, bright as it seemed.”
Jim Telford’s obstructive tactics had roused the inspector’s suspicions, and even this matter-of-fact recital failed to lull them entirely.
“How long did this attack of yours last?” he inquired.
“Eight or ten hours after I woke up. Then I began to feel a shade better and was able to struggle into a dressing-gown and move about a bit. I was more or less all right next morning. A bit washed-out, naturally. People noticed that when I got up to the office. I was late, there, which wasn’t surprising, considering the state I’d been in.”
“And did you see a doctor that day?”
Jim Telford shook his head rather contemptuously.
“No, once the thing passed off, I was more or less all right again. I didn’t think it worth while to see a doctor. It seemed to have gone, completely. Evidently just a bad bilious turn, that was all.”
Craythorn nodded as though this had satisfied him; but at the back of his mind lurked a very definite suspicion. Suppose there had been some truth in that anonymous telegram. Suppose Telford had got wind of his wife’s intimacy with Hyson. He seemed a quicktempered fellow. Suppose he had squared his account with his wife, and that her death wasn’t a case of suicide at all. That had been neatly enough arranged. And here was the second party in the affair — Hyson — also a suicide. And Telford had been out of human touch, by his own evidence, during the whole of the time from Wednesday evening until Friday morning. He had a car at his Glen Terret cottage. And the drive down from there was “only two-fifty miles or so.” Call it eight hours each way and it wasn’t out of the common. And there was plenty of time to allow for a good sleep in the car, parked at the roadside in some quiet by-road, if he needed it. If he hadn’t been able to get a sleep, naturally he’d look washed-out when he turned up at his office on Friday morning.
There was no getting away from the fact that both Mrs. Telford and Hyson were dead; and that Telford was the only person who might have had a grudge against both of them. No certainty, the inspector reflected. Far from it. But very good grounds for suspicion, all the same.
“It’s unfortunate that you can’t produce someone who spoke to you during that time,” he commented.
His words seemed to recall a forgotten incident to Jim Telford.
“Someone who spoke to me?” he repeated. “That reminds me of a thing I’d quite forgotten. I did speak to a man on Thursday night, round about nine o’clock.”
“Oh!” ejaculated the inspector, rather crestfallen. “Then why didn’t you say so before?”
“So you’ve been suspecting me, after all, have you?” Jim retorted in a tone that was none too agreeable. “You seem to me to be more zealous than brainy, if you don’t mind my saying so. But perhaps it’s part of your routine” — he sneered at the word — “to begin by suspecting everybody, whether they have anything to do with the business in hand or not. You don’t consider people’s feelings evidently.”
Craythorn ignored this and stuck to his point.
“You say you spoke to someone?” he asked.
“Yes, I did. It was your way of putting it that made me forget it. You evidently wanted someone who’d seen me on Thursday; and I was doing my best to think of someone who had, so I forgot about the other side of it.”
“But no one came to the cottage, and you’ve no phone there, you tell me,” objected the inspector with increasing suspicion. “How could anyone have spoken to you?”
“Easy enough,” returned Jim Telford. “I’ve got a short-wave transmitter at my cottage. You can look that up, if you don’t take my word for it. My call-sign’s Gm3EB, and you’ll find it in the Radio Amateur Call Book, or the Post Office will verify it for you. There’s a man down here that I often speak to at night on the short waves. Cecil Netherby’s his name, of 5 Stanhope Gardens. You can check that, easy enough, for he’s on the phone. He’s not a particular friend of mine. In fact, our only common interest is wireless. So he’s a perfectly sound witness, you see. I mean, there’s no reason why he should perjure himself on my account, since I’ve no doubt you’d suspect him of that as part of your routine.”
“Well, go on,” advised the inspector, ignoring the sneer.
“Very well. You can’t ring a man up on the short waves. But he and I generally have a technical chat every second night by previous appointment. I had arranged to speak to him on Thursday night about nine o’clock; and by that time I was feeling a bit steadier on my pins, so I sat down at my transmitter and got in touch with him as usual. He’s a methodical fellow and keeps a careful record of his transmissions. My own log will show the thing too. It’s a condition of our licence that we keep a log. So you see it’s a fact that although I saw nobody, still I did have a talk with an independent witness. Now are you satisfied?”
“I’ll have to verify that, of course,” said the inspector, fighting in the last ditch.
“Of course — as part of the routine. Well, you’ll find it just as I’ve told you. And, as a special favour to me,” Jim added, “be so good as to avoid dragging in your suspicions when you talk to him. I’ll be inclined to cut up rough if I find you taking away my character as part of your routine.”
He paused for a moment and then in a less uncivil tone he put a question.
“Have you any idea who’s writing these anonymous letters?”
The inspector felt, after the latest evidence, that he had gone too far; and he was glad enough of the chance to send Telford away in a less irritated frame of mind.
“It’s hardly our business, sir,” he explained. “The Post Office Investigation Branch deals with things of that sort through their own special staff. We only come into it when they’ve caught the perpetrator. They have an investigator down here on the spot at the moment, and he’s doing his best. But it’s not easy to lay one’s hands on people of that kind, as you’ll understand.”
“No, probably not,” Jim Telford agreed in a ruminative tone. “Still, one would like to see him nailed. And, by the way, Inspector, I got a bit hot under the collar when you were questioning me. Sorry if I rasped your feelings. But you know all about my affairs and I’m sure you’ll make allowances.”
“Of course, sir, of course,” Craythorn hastened to confirm. “I hope you take no offence either. ‘A policeman’s life is not a happy one,’ sometimes. We have to do things that go against our grain, whether we like it or not.”
Jim Telford nodded with more sympathy than he had hitherto shown.
“Now just one thing,” he said. “Have you any definite case against anyone in the matter of Hyson’s death?”
The inspector thought swiftly before he replied.
“No,” he admitted finally. “We haven’t got that length.”
“Not . . .” Jim broke off without mentioning the name which he appeared to have on the tip of his tongue.
“No, nobody,” confessed the inspector. “Can you give us a hint by any chance?”
“Good Lord, no!” said Jim, with unexpected vehemence. “I just asked out of mere curiosity. I don’t want to see any mud stirred up.”
“Ah,” said Craythorn, rather disappointed. “Well, I’ll have to see Mr. Netherby, of course. But I’ll take care about what you said.”
Chapter Fifteen
The Short-Wave Fan
CRAYTHORN wasted no time when he had work to do. Hardly was Jim Telford out of the police station than the inspector was at the telephone, trying to get in touch with his next witness. But Cecil Netherby proved to be an elusive person. He was, it seemed, a commercial traveller of sorts; and, having failed to run him down at any of his probable ports of call, Craythorn had to content himself with making an appointment at his house that evening. At eight o’clock he made his way to 5 Stanhope Gardens, which turned out to be a small semi-
detached villa with “CHATSWORTH” painted on the gate in addition to the street-number.
Netherby was a small, stout, red-faced man, who at first regarded the inspector with some suspicion which he endeavoured to conceal under a flow of geniality.
“Inspector Craythorn? And what’s your trouble, may I ask? If it’s my hawker’s licence you want to see, I pawned it last Thursday week, old man. If my parrot’s caught psittacosis without permission from the authorities, then you can take the damn bird away with you and call it square. I’m sick of its conversation, long ago.”
“I’ve called to see you about your wireless,” the inspector explained concisely.
He was tired, after a busy day, and the humour of this cheery vulgarian failed to catch his mood.
“My wireless? Want to see my licence? I’ve got my amateur one, all present and correct; had it for years now.”
“No, no, it’s not that,” Craythorn explained. “I want to ask a question or two about your transmissions.”
“Oh? Say you so? Very well, then. ‘Business before pleasure,’ as the man said when he kissed his wife before calling on his sweetheart. Fire ahead, old man.”
“Do you ever talk over the short waves to a man called James Telford?”
“Telford? Call-sign Gm3EB? That him? Yes, I do, old man. I get him every second night, almost; and he drops in to see me here if he happens to be in this neighbourhood. What about him?”
“What sort of a man is he?” inquired Craythorn cautiously.
“One o’ the best, old man, one o’ the best,” Netherby assured him. “No side about him. And sharp as they make ’em, sharp as they make ’em, especially when it comes to wireless. I know a fair bit myself, but he taught me a thing or two, I can tell you.”
“You have to keep a log, haven’t you, under the terms of your Post Office licence?”
“Right you are! You want to look at it, old man? I’ll fetch it. ’S a matter of fact, I’m rather proud of it — the way I keep it, I mean. All shipshape and in apple-pie order. Just a jiffy.”
Murder Will Speak Page 23