He whipped round sharply with the sudden feeling that he was being watched, then relaxed as he met the gaze of two wondering blue eyes which regarded him steadily from a height of about two feet.
Resolutely banishing from his mind the jingle of words which reminded him that he could only stand and stare, Driver looked down at the solemn little face.
‘‘Well?” he said.
Then feeling that his tone was too official for the occasion, he repeated the word in a voice pitched in the falsetto.
The child continued to regard him with an unwavering, concentrated gaze which made Driver conscious, for the second time that day, that his trousers were baggy at the knees and that he had outgrown the circumference of his waistcoat.
“Paul! Paul! Oh, he’s here, Nanny. I’ll bring him back myself.”
The pretty, brown-haired girl smiled at the Inspector, as she came into the room and took the child’s hand.
Driver, at first sight, thought of her as a girl in her teens, until the thin gold wedding ring on her finger made him think again.
“I hope Baby hasn’t been a nuisance,” she said, in an attractively husky voice. “He’s just at the disappearing age, and doesn’t understand that it’s naughty to run away from Nanny.”
“Oh no. We were just getting acquainted,” replied Driver, clucking at the child as if it were a hen. “I’m Chief-Inspector Driver of New Scotland Yard. This is Lovely.”
She blushed.
“Well, I—thank you,” she murmured.
“Detective Sergeant Lovely,” said Driver, firmly avoiding his assistant’s gaze. “You, I take it, are Mrs. Hardstaffe.”
“Yes. They all call me ‘Mrs. Stan’ or ‘Mrs. Betty’ in the village, but I suppose I’m really the only Mrs. Hardstaffe in the family now.”
“Very sad, madam. We have some unhappy cases to investigate at times.”
Mrs. Stanton smoothed her son’s unruly hair.
“It must be a rotten job sometimes,” she agreed. “Rather like having to censor other people’s letters, but just as necessary, I suppose.” She paused, then added, I know it’s your duty to dig into people’s private affairs, but all the same it does seem a pity, now that both Mr. and Mrs. Hardstaffe are dead, to disturb them. Couldn’t the whole beastly affair be left alone?”
Here’s another member of the family who wants me to drop the case, thought the Inspector. What’s the big idea, I wonder?
“You believe it’s a family affair then,” he remarked, “You’re afraid that one of the family murdered them?”
“No, no, of course not! I’m sure it isn’t,” she exclaimed.
Sergeant Lovely thought that she turned pale, but he couldn’t be sure. You couldn’t tell nowadays, he thought, when women covered their skin with all sorts of cosmetics in spite of the scarcity. Trust a woman not to have a shiny nose as long as a bag of flour remained in the war-time larder. He didn’t doubt that they even put the yolk of their meagre egg ration into their stomachs, and saved the white for their faces. Silly creatures, women!
“You surely don’t mean to suggest that it would be better to drop this inquiry, and allow the murderer to go free?”
“Oh no, Inspector. I realise it’s impossible to do that. You’ve taken my remarks too seriously. I only mean that it’s unpleasant to be mixed up in an affair of murder. I’m thinking about my baby. This may have some dreadful effect on his life when he’s older.”
Driver nodded sympathetically.
I sincerely hope it won’t,” he said. “Now have you any theory about the murders? Sometimes a woman’s instinct jumps ahead to the truth without wasting time on the logical reasoning.”
The Sergeant did a sudden imitation of Popeye.
The Inspector’s belief is that a woman’s instinct is a sixth sense that tells her she’s right when she’s really wrong, he thought. Now what is he getting at I wonder?
Mrs. Stanton seemed to be thinking along the same lines, for she surveyed Driver critically for a few seconds.
“That’s very flattering, Inspector,” she drawled in what her husband called her ‘party voice,’ “but I haven’t the slightest idea.”
The Inspector hardly appeared to notice her reply, for he went on, almost as though he were talking to himself.
There seems no doubt that Mrs. Hardstaffe was murdered for her money, and it looks as if the motive for murdering your husband’s father was the same.”
“Meaning that you suspect my husband?” she asked frigidly. “I find your method of saying so rather crude. I have always believed that a policeman’s job—whatever his rank or department—is to find out the truth, and not to indulge in idle speculations. If you’re determined to suspect anyone in the family, you shouldn’t forget that if my father-in-law died without making a will, my husband is not the only one to benefit by his death. If anyone in this house is capable of murder, it’s Leda. She’s got her father’s temper and her mother’s cunning rolled into one. Don’t leave her out of your calculations, Inspector.”
Driver smiled to himself.
It’s extraordinary what a bit of temper does to these society women, he thought. It sends ’em right back to the cavewoman age. If men saw women with their veneer off as often as I do, there’d be fewer marriages in the world.
“Was your husband at home on the night of his father’s murder?” he asked suddenly.
“No. He was—”
Too late, she perceived the trap he had set for her.
“Well?”
“He wasn’t at home,” she said defiantly, “but he has a far better alibi than I can give him. He’s in the Home Guard, and he was on duty all night.”
“Thank you,” said Driver. “I hope I haven’t caused you any annoyance, Mrs. Hardstaffe.”
She took the baby by the hand, and faced Driver with an expression of scorn on her pretty face.
“You haven’t succeeded in annoying me, if that was your intention, Inspector,” she said, and the slight tremor in her voice belied her words. “You have merely given me a most interesting insight into the way Scotland Yard conducts its inquiries. I read a lot of murder stories, and until now, I’ve always been amused at the character of the flat-footed policeman who stumbles about making a fool of himself. I really never believed before that such a man could exist in real life.”
She held her head high, and turned to make a dignified exit.
But Hardstaffe Junior had other ideas.
Removing the thumb which he had surreptitiously slid into his mouth as soon as he had sensed his mother’s preoccupation, he once again fixed the Inspector with a wide-eyed stare, and said emphatically,
“Daddy!”
The Constable and Sergeant Lovely exchanged glances.
They considered the honours even.
CHAPTER 28
The following morning, Inspector Driver, Superintendent Cheam, Sergeant Lovely, and the “shorthand constable” approached the gates set in the tall iron railings surrounding the school playground, watched by curious eyes from cottage windows.
“This is about the last time we shall be able to go through these gates,” remarked the Superintendent. “They’re going for salvage. I don’t know how we shall keep the children off the road once they’re gone. There’ll have to be an accident to one of ’em first, belike. That’s the way things get done in this village and that’s a fact.”
The playground was unwontedly silent, although it was nearly nine o’clock. Superintendent Cheam, anticipating that Driver would wish to interview the School Staff, had demanded a holiday for the children, which the Vicar having certain qualms because it was not a Church Festival, had given with some reluctance, and with awful threats of dire penalties should any child be seen within the precincts of the school.
As they were about to pass the door of the caretaker’s cottage which stood in the school grounds, Mrs. Burns, the caretaker, came out.
“Biggest busy-body in Nether Naughton,” murmured Cheam for the Inspector
’s benefit.
Mrs. Burns, not at all daunted by the general air of officialdom which enfolded them, rested her hands on her hips, and looked directly at Driver.
“You’ll be the gentleman from Scotland Yard, I reckon,” she said. “Come to arrest that Miss Fuller I’ll be bound.”
“Why should I do that?” asked Driver.
“Because she’s the murderer, of course,” was the reply. “Who else in this village had as much to do with the old devil as she did? Carrying on something awful they were. I’ve seen the pair of them coming out of that there door arm-in-arm many a time. Always half-an-hour after the rest of the School had gone, mind you, and me waiting to go in and clean the floors. And a man can do a good many things with a girl in a half-hour.”
“You’re tellin’ me!” murmured Cheam.
The woman, whose ears were evidently as sharp as her eyes, turned towards him.
“I don’t need to tell you, Superintendent, and that’s a fact,” she said. “There’s not a man, woman or child in this village as didn’t know the sort of thing that was going on, but no one tried to stop it. I told the Vicar it was his place to do something about it, but he talked about throwing stones through glass, though I don’t know what he meant by that. As I said to him, the children do enough damage what with their catapults and such-like without him encouraging them to break windows with stones. ‘Very well, Vicar,’ I says to him. ‘If you won’t do anything, I will.’
“And did you?” asked Driver.
“Did I?” repeated Mrs. Burns. “Ho, yes I did. I told Miss Hardstaffe in this very yard when she called to see her father. ‘The way that young girl runs after your poor old Dad, Miss,’ I said, ‘is a disgrace to the village,’ I said, ‘and it’s about time someone did something to put a stop to it,’ I said. And Miss Hardstaffe looked at me and said soft-like, ‘All right, Mrs. Burns. I’ll see to it.’ But, you seer she didn’t do anything after all, and now look what it’s come to! He murdered his poor wife, did Mr. Hardstaffe, so’s he could wed the girl, and she got sick of him and murdered him. Fair asked for it, too, he did, carrying on with a girl young enough to be his granddaughter. Well, I’ve seen her come through that door, winter and summer, day in and day out, and I reckon that next time I see her she’ll be wearing handcuffs.”
She whisked herself back into the Cottage as quickly as a figure into a weather-house.
“Anything in it?” Driver asked the Superintendent.
“A good deal,” was the reply, “but I don’t see any motive. They were certainly ‘carrying on’ as Mrs. Burns says, but Miss Fuller swears that there was no intimacy between them, and who am I to doubt the lady’s word?”
“Pretty, is she?” queried Driver.
“I resent that remark,” retorted the Superintendent good-humouredly. “Yes, she’s pretty. Rather a beauty in an exotic kind of way. Red hair, pale skin, bright makeup. If she’d been a village girl, she’d be reckoned the village belle. But she’s always kept aloof from the local folk and gives you the impression that she considers herself above them. Stuck-up, they call her. She never bothered with anyone until she took up with the headmaster, and what she could see in a googley-eyed, wizened little fellow like him, I never could imagine. To my mind, she’d have been better off if she’d walked out with one of the local farmers. But there’s no accounting for women. They all seem to fall for a fellow who hunts, and dresses for dinner. It don’t seem to worry them at all what kind of man is inside the pink coat or dinner-jacket.”
“Very descriptive,” said Driver, “I’ve been trying for years to put all that into words. You don’t happen to be attracted by the young lady yourself, by any chance?” The Superintendent laughed.
“Who? Me? Not on your life! She’s very decorative and all that, but my old woman’s a regular Old Dutch to me. She may not be much to look at, but she bakes the best pasty in Northshire, and what she doesn’t know about a steak-and-kidney pudding isn’t worth knowing.”
Nevertheless, the Superintendent seemed disappointed to find, a little later, that Driver appeared to have little interest in Charity. It was, he thought, almost as though the Inspector had said when he first saw her, “Oh, it’s you!” and had instantly made up his mind about her. Whether he thought her guilty or not, Cheam had no means of knowing.
Two of his questions only seemed to hold any significance.
“Have you any reason to believe, Miss Fuller, that Mr. Hardstaffe made a will in your favour?”
“He—he always intended to provide for me, but I—I don’t know whether he did or not.”
“If he had done so after his wife’s death, was he likely to have destroyed it or to have wished to destroy it at the time of his death?”
“Yes. We—we quarrelled. He might have done.”
“Thank you, Miss Fuller. I won’t detain you any longer.”
For all the world, thought Cheam, as though he were a Defending Counsel rather than a Public Prosecutor. Surely he couldn’t have fallen under the spell of Miss Fuller’s charm so suddenly?
The Inspector methodically interviewed the small wartime staff of the little school without eliciting any information beyond a general dislike of their late headmaster and all his ways.
His longest interview was with Mr. Richards who quite obviously enjoyed the experience of being questioned by a detective.
“I know why you’re so interested in me, Inspector,” he said. “It’s because I’m one of the few people who have stated before witnesses that I should derive a considerable amount of pleasure from murdering Mr. Hardstaffe. In the world of fiction, this would quite exonerate me, for the real murderer would be far too clever to admit his dislike so openly. But the law, I know, likes witnessed statements, so carry on.”
“Did you think you were really capable of murdering Hardstaffe?”
“No. I despised him too much. When he thrashed that boy, I was livid—well, you should have seen the fear in the child’s eyes... For two pins I’d have kicked him through the village and pitched him on a dunghill, but I wouldn’t have crept up behind him and bashed his head in ‘with a blunt instrument’ in cold blood. One needs a certain sense of proportion in these things.”
“One does,” Driver agreed drily. “How do you know he was killed in that particular way?”
Richards grinned.
“This is the village of Nether Naughton, Inspector,” he replied. “You’re not in London now, you know. All the walls have eyes and ears which remain open all the year round.”
Driver nodded.
“I understand, Mr. Richards, that you are a Conscientious Objector, or so the walls say. How is it, then, that you talk so easily of killing people?”
Richards bit his lip in annoyance.
“So that’s what they say, is it?” he said. “Well, well.”
“Healthy young men don’t avoid serving their country without some reason of the sort, even if they are school teachers.”
Richards looked up, with a wry smile.
“They do make artificial legs well nowadays, don’t they?” he asked.
Driver nodded.
So that’s it, is it?” he said. “All is not true that gossips?”
Lost my right leg in a motor accident when I was eighteen,” Richards explained. “You don’t need to stick a needle into me or slip a drawing pin onto the chair. I’ll show you.”
He bent down and began to untie his shoe-lace.
“Don’t bother,” said Driver. “I’ve already trodden on your foot!”
They both laughed.
“Of course I could join up for R.A.F. ground staff or something, even though I’m no Bader,” Richards went on, “but they seem to think that, under all the circumstances, I’m being most useful where I am.”
“Can you tell me anything about Mr. Hardstaffe’s death?” asked Driver. “You must have thought about it a bit, and have some suspicions.”
Richards shook his head.
“It’s a pretty little proble
m right enough,” he said, “but I really haven’t thought about it very much. I can’t say that I regret his departure or consider it inappropriate. He seemed to me to be the kind of man who is a blight upon the face of the earth, and it was about time someone bumped him off. As to who did it—well, almost everyone he knew hated the sight of him. Perhaps they all got together and drew lots.”
“Do you think that boy’s father might have done it?”
“Old Ramsbottom?” exclaimed Richards. “Oh, good Lord, no! A Westcastle stevedore doesn’t commit a murder because his son’s been given a beating. Why, most likely he belts the boy every Saturday night just for the principle of the thing. When the evacuee boys first came here, they couldn’t understand why their foster-parents didn’t thrash them once a week, whether they’d deserved it or not. To hear them talk, you’d have thought that they were sorry to miss it, but I don’t know that they’d take so kindly to it again now.
“I don’t think Ramsbottom’s the type to murder anybody except, possibly, in the heat of the moment. Men like that have a great respect for the law although they’re so free with their threats. What does he say about it?”
“I haven’t seen him yet,” said Driver. “He came down here on a day trip, and it means a special journey to Wescastle for me—”
“Special journey, my wooden leg!” interrupted Richards rudely. “The fellow’s in Nether Naughton. I saw him this morning!”
CHAPTER 29
Mr. Ramsbottom heaved his cumbersome body out of a creaking wicker-chair, as Inspector Driver and Sergeant Lovely were ushered into the front parlour of old Mrs. Selby’s little cottage next door to the village stores. His eyes were bloodshot, his gaze shifting.
Driver summed him up as a man with an uneasy conscience.
“I know what you’ve come about,” he said in his broad northern accent. “I’ve been expecting ye ever since yon old devil was murdered. I tell you I didn’t do it, so it’s no good trying to make out that I did.”
“Well, in that case, you won’t mind answering a few questions, Ramsbottom,” said Driver. “It’s a case of murder as you know, and I’ve got to get all the evidence I can.”
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