by Roy Vickers
“Before you left—by the window—did you lock the door?”
“No!”
“Dear me!” exclaimed Crisp. “A most unfortunate thing has happened. I forgot to warn you, when you started confessing, that what you said might be used in evidence. That means we can’t use any of your confession. The judge would strike it out.”
“I don’t know why you’re fooling with me, unless it’s sadism,” whined Ralph. “Anyhow, you’ve warned me now. I’ll dictate to that officer what I’ve said.”
Crisp let him dictate and sign his confession.
“I still don’t understand why you murdered him,” continued Crisp.
“I hadn’t any clear cut motive. I was a swine to accept his money, because I’ve always hated him. But surely the confession lets me off all this catechism!”
Crisp shrugged.
“Very well, Cornboise. We shall have to detain you on suspicion, pending further investigation.” He turned to Sanson. “Take him with you, please. Let him pack his things, but send an orderly with him.”
When Cornboise had left the room with Inspector Sanson, Crisp lit a cigarette—a comparatively rare occurrence. No one had ever seen him smoke one to a finish. His eye rested on Benscombe.
“Did you get anything out of that artist’s girl?”
“Nothing striking, sir. Fenchurch left their flat about three, telling her he was going to Watlington Lodge to rout out Ralph. Presumably, he changed his mind.”
“Why presume it? He may have come here and murdered Watlington.”
He became aware that Benscombe was watching him like an expectant puppy.
“Well, boy, what is it?”
“Are you sure that confession is only a stunt, sir?”
“Not sure, but extremely suspicious,” answered Crisp. “Work it out for yourself. His account of his movements, outside the library, is true. He says Watlington was asleep when he went in. Possible but unlikely, because Cornboise must have entered by the window within two minutes or so of Miss Lofting leaving by the door.”
He outlined Claudia Lofting’s evidence.
“Next, he says he struck through the wig. Untrue. The doctor says the wig was removed and replaced after the fatal blow had been struck. Also, I saw the wig myself. It was a bit awry, but undamaged. I was looking for signs of violence and found none.
“Next, he says he dropped the die-stamp on the floor. It was found on the mantelpiece. Admittedly, he revealed knowledge that death had been caused by a single blow, but he dodged my question about the appearance after death.
“Further, my question as to whether Watlington was already dead when Cornboise entered the study suggested that Miss Lofting might be guilty. As she warned me, he promptly confessed.”
“Yes, sir. But assuming he’s innocent, he wouldn’t know about the murder until we turned up. I’m putting myself in his place and assuming I’m innocent. The first thing I’d do when the police turned up would be to talk it over with my fiancée—there were about a couple of hours for this purpose. I’d say: ‘The police are bound to quiz us. Where were we when it happened? We’d better tell ’em the same tale or they’ll think we’re fishy.’ That’s what I’d say, sir—if I were innocent. But if I were guilty I’d avoid discussing it with her. Cornboise did avoid discussing it with her.”
“That would equally prove her guilty instead of him,” Crisp pointed out, “since she did not discuss it with him. The only inference you can draw from the fact that their tales conflict is that they are not in conspiracy.”
“And another thing, sir!” continued Benscombe unabashed. “What about that Will? When you handed him the envelope he fingered it and said it wasn’t the Will. When you opened up and showed it was, he threw his laughing fit. There was something there that shook his nerve. And it wasn’t the text of the Will.”
“Hm! You’ve got something there, boy!” It was part of Crisp’s policy to encourage bright juniors. “We’ll have to get to the bottom of this Will business—see who that is knocking.”
Benscombe opened the door to Andrew Querk in an advanced state of alarm.
Chapter Six
“Pray forgive me for this intrusion, Chief Constable. I have just seen Ralph Cornboise going upstairs, apparently in—ah—custody. As he passed me he called out: ‘Goodbye, Mr. Querk. I’m done for.’ My imagination attached an appalling meaning to those words—”
“He has confessed that he murdered his uncle, and has signed the confession—”
“I feared it! I knew it!” wailed Querk. “Lacking a shred of proof, I was nevertheless positive, though I refused to admit it to myself.”
“Come in, please, Mr. Querk.”
Querk came in, but not as other men come into a room. He walked as a man walks when he is leading a procession. He came to a halt when he had reached a position from which he could address the. Chief Constable and his aide as an audience.
“This is tragedy. Stark tragedy!” he proclaimed. He removed his pince-nez, deemed to have been obscured by the effects of his emotion. When he replaced them, he abandoned his office as a symbolic figure and became a provincial mayor in distress. “Forgive me! We were old friends, Lord Watlington and I. I was ‘dear old Andrew’ to him and he was ‘old pal Samuel’ to me—though, of course, he was considerably my senior in years.”
“Quite! Will you sit here, Mr. Querk. There are one or two questions—”
“Ask me anything you like, Colonel. Anything! There can be no fear now of betraying professional confidence. His vast fortune has become meaningless. The family he had hoped to found is already destroyed. It is saddest of all when a successful life ends in undeserved squalor. Don’t you think!”
“I do!” said Crisp. “Will you tell me how you knew Cornboise was guilty before we knew it?”
“My fear—my intuitive knowledge—was based on a premonition.”
Querk sat down with an air of one conferring an honour on the company.
“In the library after lunch, my poor friend made a questionable remark—I prefer not to repeat it—which seemed to cast doubt on Miss Lofting’s status as—ah—a lady of reasonable education and unblemished social repurtation. His own phrase, used in his Will, to describe an essential prerequisite in his nephew’s wife. I happened to be watching Ralph’s eyes. What I saw there positively frightened me, Colonel.”
Benscombe writhed and received a scowl from his Chief. “Is that all, Mr. Querk?”
“Everything!” said Querk with profound satisfaction. “I am keeping nothing back. Nothing whatever. It would be very difficult, Colonel, to exaggerate the unease I subsequently suffered. When I retired to my room at about a quarter to three, I was unable to rest, though the heat almost invariably makes me drowsy after lunch. I sat wide awake by the window which, I may remark, permits an oblique view of the window of the library.”
“Ah!” Crisp permitted himself a sigh of relief. “And you saw something?”
“I did indeed. Something, however, which merely served to increase my anxiety. I saw poor Ralph approach the window and enter the library. Within, say, a couple of minutes, he emerged. As he did so, the stable clock struck a quarter past five. In such circumstances, a striking clock gives an almost uncanny emphasis. Don’t you think?”
“We can safely agree on that,” said Crisp. “What did you do?”
“I did everything possible,” answered Querk, “to persuade myself that my fears were groundless. When Ralph came out, however, his outline was, to say the least, alarming. He seemed to totter blindly away. He actually fell prone on the lawn, then picked himself up, and hurried to the garage. I take no shame in confessing to you, Colonel, that my own state of mind was not far removed from panic.”
“But you still did nothing!” snapped Crisp.
“On the contrary, I took immediate action. Action which I fondly believed, had ended the whole unhappy incident. To be precise, I closed the book I had been trying to read, and went down to the library.”
&n
bsp; “What!” The exclamation had burst from young Benscombe—a terrible breach of etiquette.
Querk looked at him in some surprise, was about to comment, when Crisp cut in.
“What did you see in the library, Mr. Querk?”
“Nothing noteworthy,” answered, Querk. He glanced again at Benscombe, as if expecting another interruption. “My first impression was that Lord Watlington must have dozed off again. I shut the door with deliberate clumsiness, so that the noise should wake him. Then I became aware that he was not asleep.”
“What did he look like?” rapped out Crisp.
“I confess that I did not notice his appearance, though, had it been in any way remarkable, I should doubtless have done so. I was about to speak to him when he—er—made a noise at me.”
“Are you sure?” Crisp was puzzled. “What sort of noise?”
“A deplorable noise,” answered Querk. “Made by pursing the lips and blowing through them. In the same breath—if that is possibles—he said: ‘What do you want, you old horse thief?’—a playful idiom much used in Africa among intimate friends.”
The Chief Constable and his aide exchanged glances of secret astonishment.
“So he—started a conversation, did he?”
“No! I think I can claim to have taken the initiative. ‘Samuel, old pal,’ I said, ‘you have never yet been the loser by taking my advice. I advise you now to tell Miss Lofting you are glad—as you know you are in your heart, Samuel—tell her you are glad she wants to marry Ralph.’
“At first he refused point blank. Leaning heavily, I fear, on our friendship, I pressed my point. To my intense gratification, he yielded his judgment to mine and promised to tell Miss Lofting at the first opportunity.”
The unctuous voice came to a temporary halt. Crisp reflected that, on the pivotal point—the time at which Ralph left the library—Querk was corroborated by Watlington’s wife.
“I have told you, Chief Constable, at some length and in some detail—”
“That’s how we like it,” said Crisp hastily. “What time did you leave the library, Mr. Querk?”
“Let me see if I can recall the time by the aid of external circumstances,” mouthed Querk. “Almost as soon as I entered the library I heard Ralph’s car leaving the garage. The exhaust has a noticeably high-pitched, piping note. There followed our brief but important conversation, as I have reported. My poor friend then referred to some business matters we had discussed before lunch. He mentioned—somewhat pointedly, I must confess—that he was expecting a trunk call at five-thirty. Taking the hint, I went back to my room to prepare some notes for our next business conference. I was—I remember now—in the act of removing the cap from my fountain pen some two or three minutes later when that very strident clock struck the half hour—half past five.”
Young Benscombe was making notes. Crisp contemplated the deadlock. Ralph’s confession that he had killed Watlington before five-fifteen—Querk’s statement that he was talking to Watlington between five-fifteen and five-thirty. Add Claudia’s warning that Ralph would confess if he were frightened on her account.
There was every reason to believe Querk—every reason to disbelieve Ralph. But there were more facts to be sifted before drawing any major inference.
“When you were in the library, Mr. Querk,” asked Crisp, “did you notice the position of this die-stamp?”
“Indeed I had good reason to notice it, for it twice caused interruptions while I was talking to Lord Watlington. And if there is one thing more than another I dislike, it is being interrupted!”
“Where was the die-stamp?”
“Near his left elbow, in the first instance. In the very act of greeting my arrival, he knocked it to the floor and I had to wait while he retrieved it and put it back, unfortunately, in the same place. A minute or so later, his elbow precipitated it sideways into the ash-tray. As I daresay you have discovered, he kept an office duster in the right hand drawer. With this, I removed the ash from the die-stamp and placed it—rather pointedly, I fear—where it would not be likely to interrupt me again!”
The die-stamp, Crisp reminded himself, bore one set of finger-prints only. Querk’s not Cornboise’s. Another point in support of Querk. The duster incident, too, explained why Claudia Lofting’s prints—as well as Watlington’s—had disappeared.
“When you were all in the library after lunch were you shown certain letters written by Miss Lofting?”
“Lord Watlington handed the letters in question to Miss Lofting. It was, as you can imagine, an extremely embarrassing incident in which, I fear, my old friend’s dignity suffered. Miss Lofting made a scornful remark to the effect that the letters proved she had been living with a man—ah—without benefit of clergy. But I have not allowed myself to take her words literally.”
There were small items to be checked. Querk had not noticed a registered parcel on the hall table; his mind being occupied with other matters. He knew nothing of the arrangements for the dinner party, nor of the movements of other persons.
There remained the old lady in the garden, whose credentials Crisp had taken for granted.
“I’ve been given to understand that Watlington was married?”
“An unfortunate episode in early life,” answered Querk sadly. “They separated by consent very shortly afterwards. A very embittered and—I say it with reluctance—and ungrateful woman. Lord Watlington bought her an adequate annuity yet she continued to pester him to return to her, on the ground that she suffered from——er—lack of company. At his request I wrote to her explaining the nature of molestation, with the result that she has ceaselessly importuned me to use my influence to effect a reconcilition. But why need we talk of that no doubt well-meaning woman who—”
“We needn’t,” said Crisp. “Do you know anyone called Fenchurch?”
“Fenchurch!” repeated Querk. “The name is familiar, though I cannot for the moment recall—oh yes! An artist who was to paint Lord Watlington’s portrait. He was, I believe, among the dinner guests.”
Crisp glanced at the typed copy of notes which Watlington had pencilled on his blotting pad.
“Do these words mean anything to you, Mr. Querk? ‘Casa Flavia’: ‘Tarranio’; ‘Fabroli’?”
“Casa Flavia I know as a small town in Italy. The other words are meaningless to me.”
Before Crisp could ask another question, there came from the hall the sound of a woman’s voice in energetic protest. Benscombe, hurrying to investigate, was accosted in the doorway.
“I must see the Chief Constable. It’s ever so important, and I won’t keep him a minute.”
Querk got up.
“If I can be of any further help, Chief Constable, do not hesitate to send word. I shall not be retiring for another hour.”
From the doorway came Benscombe’s voice in protest.
“I say, you know, you simply must wait until I have asked whether the Chief Constable will see you.”
“Oh! I recognise your voice! You asked me all those questions on the phone about Arthur. Why didn’t you tell me you were the police? Why didn’t you tell me Watlington was dead? You played a trick on me. I shall report this.”
“Let her come in,” called Crisp.
An entrance was made—a lamentably self-conscious entrance—by a willowy blonde of about thirty, who could probably have made a reasonable living as a mannequin or showgirl. ‘She is very pretty and very vain’ Fenchurch had said, and Crisp agreed with him. The vanity would waste time, so he decided to eliminate it.
“You have a complaint against one of my officers,” he barked. “What is the complaint?”
“Oh, it’s nothing really! Only, that man pretended to be one of us.”
“A policeman often has to slander himself in the course of his duty. Anything else?”
“Slander himself! Well!” The willowy blonde looked a little like a spoilt child in a first encounter with a stern governess. “I must say I didn’t expect this kind of treatment
from a Chief Constable. I may as well tell you, before we go any further, that I have a friend who’s a cousin of the Home Secretary.”
“Then I must be careful!” said Crisp. “What is your name?”
“I’m Mrs—Arthur—Fenchurch!”
“That’s your occupation. I asked your name.”
“Ooh!” The vanity had become as remote as the Home Secretary. Her outward covering had been ripped off, leaving her to face the fact that she was not, never had been, the Pampered Pet she desired to be. She lived in a world where ‘a girl has to look after herself’—a slogan that was both her creed and her theory of the universe. She had sense enough to perceive that her long, beautiful legs and her curly, conventional prettiness were useless weapons in her present emergency.
“All right, then—Glenda Parsons,” she admitted sulkily.
“What’s that you’re carrying?” asked Crisp.
“Mr. Fenchurch’s sketch book.”
“May I see it, please?”
She handed him a leather bound sketch book. Crisp opened it and turned the pages, some of which contained line notes. Crisp recognised the leather—no doubt the same which he had seen protruding from Fenchurch’s pocket when he spoke to him on the terrace.
“Where did you get this?”
“Miss Lofting handed it to me when I was waiting in the hall. She said Mr. Fenchurch must have dropped it.”
Crisp returned it to her.
“Sit down, Miss Parsons.”
With every sign of unwillingness, she drew an upright chair from the table, removed a piece of wrapping paper from the seat. The chair was the one farthest from Crisp.
“Why have you come here?” As she seemed to find the question difficult, Crisp added: “What do you want?”
“Only something that belongs to me. Lord Watlington said if I would slip in here into his study about half-past ten he’d give it to me.”
“That sounds a very odd arrangement. You were invited to dinner, weren’t you?”
“Yes.” She answered with reluctance, fidgetting with the wrapping paper.
“Why didn’t you turn up?”