by Cyril Hare
“He did give us a lift, as a matter of fact,” said Eleanor, “though it was only a couple of hundred yards or so.” She shuddered. “And Jack must have been in the back of the van then.”
Hester gave a hoot of laughter.
“And I offered to get into the back and sit with the meat, because we were so squashed in front!” she exclaimed. “That must have given him a turn. No wonder he didn’t take to the suggestion!”
“This is all news to me,” said Mallett. “I had no idea that you had met Joliffe that afternoon. What happened, exactly?”
Hester told him briefly what had occurred.
“I thought he had just looked in at Minster to make passes at Louisa as usual,” she concluded. “But obviously he was killing time as well. To think I had only to open the back of the van and shew the old villain up—it makes me mad!”
“Making passes at Louisa?” asked Pettigrew. “Is that one of our friend’s weaknesses?”
“It certainly used to be. He was always dropping in at the Grange—tempting her with choice steaks and slabs of liver, I shouldn’t wonder—but he must have cooled off lately. I haven’t seen him about since Ellie and I had our ride with the corpse.”
“This is an interesting digression,” said Pettigrew, “but I want to get back to my questions. We still have to tackle the ones that really matter—How? and By Whom?”
Mallett shook his head. “I wish I could answer those ones, sir,” he said.
“But this is absurd. There must be an answer. After all, there’s plenty of evidence available, one way and another. Let’s go over it together once more…”
For some time, Pettigrew had been vaguely aware that the tea-shop, which had been crowded when they entered, was emptying rapidly. He had also known that his wife was making signs to him indicating that he should either do something or refrain from whatever it was that he happened to be doing. He had disregarded both phenomena, the one because it did not concern him, the other from established habit. Now he met with an interruption which he could not disregard.
“Excuse me, sir, but will you be requiring anything else, because we are closing now?”
The waitress was kind but firm. Rather sheepishly, he took the bill that she gave him and made his way to the cash desk through a forest of empty tables and upturned chairs. He turned to find his party in a state of dissolution. Hester was bidding an affectionate farewell of Eleanor and explaining that she had an engagement to spend the evening with the Old Cockyolly-bird—a name which elicited from Eleanor glad cries of loving recognition. Mallett was extending his hand to say Goodbye. A moment later they were swept out into the street.
Pettigrew saw Miss Greenway into a cruising taxi and turned to Mallett. For the first time he realized that his old friend was now well advanced in years. He looked not only old, but rather tired.
“What are your plans for this evening?” he asked him.
“Mr. Parkinson has asked me to have supper with him and some friends at the Yard,” said Mallett. He seemed unenthusiastic at the prospect. “I’ve left my bag at a hotel near Paddington.”
Husband and wife exchanged quick glances.
“Why don’t you change your mind and come home with us?” asked Pettigrew.
Mallett’s face lit up. He turned to Eleanor.
“May I, ma’am?” he asked.
“I wish you would.”
“I ought to warn you—if I do, Mr. Pettigrew and I will be talking about this case half the night.”
“You can talk as much as you like, Mr. Mallett, so long as you arrive at some conclusion, if it’s only that there’s nothing to be done. I want a little peace and quiet, and I know I shan’t have any until this ghost is laid once and for all!”
CHAPTER XVI
The Right Question
“How?” said Pettigrew. “How and By Whom?”
They were sitting in Pettigrew’s tiny study at Yewbury, Mallett smoking his pipe, Pettigrew pulling at one of his rare cigars. A decanter, a siphon and two glasses were at hand.
“As to How, sir,” said Mallett. “Well, you know what the doctor said at the inquest.”
“And I heard what Inspector Parkinson said about the doctor.”
“I think the Inspector is a trifle prejudiced about him, sir. Ever since I persuaded him that the medical evidence about the time of the death might be wrong—and what a job I had to get him to consider it!—he won’t hear any good of him. And yet all the doctor said was that the injuries were consistent with being knocked down by a car, and so they were.”
“It wasn’t Joliffe’s car, though.”
“No doubt about that, sir. It’s quite impossible to kill a man with a car without leaving some pretty obvious marks on it, and ninety-nine times out of a hundred you’ll smash a headlight as well. There are no such marks on Joliffe’s car, and no signs of any recent repairs or painting. What bothers me is that Parkinson’s men haven’t found any fragments of glass or traces of paint where the body was found by Joliffe, which I should expect if he had been run down by a car.” Mallett sipped his whisky and added reflectively, “Unless, of course, he was knocked down somewhere else, and moved afterwards to Satcherley Copse.”
“No,” said Pettigrew decisively. “No. I absolutely decline to consider any more removals. This corpse is peripatetic enough as it is. You must think of something else.”
Mallett shook his head.
“I’ve only the medical reports and the photographs to go upon,” he said. “It’s quite clear to my mind that Jack Gorman was run over by a car—there are injuries on the legs and lower parts of the body that couldn’t well have been caused in any other way. But those weren’t the injuries that killed him. It’s my belief that Joliffe ran over the body as it lay on the road. He would have been coming round a bend there and could have done it quite easily by accident, though he won’t admit to any such thing.”
“And the injuries that killed him?” Pettigrew asked.
“A tremendous blow just over the heart. I’m not sure that it wasn’t two blows, but the area of damage was so extensive that it’s difficult to be certain. I’ve tried experiments, and there are several types of car and lorry that could catch a man at just that height with various parts of the wing or bonnet. But it is unusual to find the injury so concentrated as it was in this case.”
“So something else than a car could have done it?”
“Yes. A man with a sledge-hammer could have done it. Or better still, two men, each with a sledge-hammer. It would be rather a job to hit anyone in that particular part of the body if he was standing up, though. Easier if he was lying down.”
Mallett spoke in the tone of one discussing improbabilities so wild as to be virtually impossible, but his last phrase evoked a sudden disturbing suggestion in Pettigrew’s mind.
“Lying down?” he repeated. “In bed, for instance?”
“Quite so, sir.”
“I was thinking about what Miss Greenway had suggested as to Jack’s going to Highbarn Farm that morning.”
“That had come into my mind also, sir.”
“What kind of woman is Ethel Gorman?”
“I only know her by sight, sir. A very attractive young person.”
“And Tom Gorman?”
“Well, you’ve met him yourself, sir, and can form your own opinion. Quiet, reserved, wouldn’t you say? I should add, rather secretive.” Mallett paused, knocked his pipe out into an ashtray, and went on: “He has the reputation of being a jealous husband, if that’s what’s in your mind,”
“But this is impossible!” Pettigrew protested. “Jack had spent the night at Sallowcombe in bed with his own wife. He can’t have gone straight on to Highbarn and …”
“It doesn’t seem probable, even for a man with Jack’s reputation, does it, sir? All the same, if I was in charge of this case, I should make a few enquiries at Highbarn. Whether I shall persuade Mr. Parkinson to, is another matter. He is very thorough, but rather slow in accepting sugge
stions. The trouble I had in getting him to send Jack’s coat to the Forensic Science Laboratory you wouldn’t believe.”
“We seem to have moved on from How? to By Whom?” said Pettigrew. “I shouldn’t have said that Tom was a murderous type myself, but then so few murderers are in my experience. What about Dick? After all, he was the man who really stood to profit by Jack’s death—and still does, unless the unborn baby proves to be a boy.”
Mallett shook his head.
“If Dick did it, I’m a Dutchman,” he said. “I told you Tom was secretive, but Dick is just the opposite, with everything on the surface and ready to say the first thing that comes into his head—just as he did at the inquest. He might kill a man in hot blood—as any of us might—but he couldn’t take a calculated risk. He couldn’t have come along to me and asked me to help him prove that Jack died before Gilbert, knowing all the time that I only had to prove a little too much for him to be charged with murder. He just hasn’t got it in him.”
“And so we come back to Mr. Joliffe,” said Pettigrew. “I should be so much happier if he could be cast as the villain of the piece throughout. I’ve taken a thorough dislike to him.”
“But logically that’s impossible, sir. Let me explain——”
“Don’t bother. We’ve been over all the ground already, and I realize that it’s only wishful thinking on my part. I’m hopelessly prejudiced against the man anyway. Don’t forget that he gave me the most unpleasant experience of my life at Bolter’s Tussock last September. That reminds me of something I’d been meaning to ask you for some time. When Joliffe took the body out of his cold store on Tuesday morning, why did he go to the trouble of carting it back to Bolter’s Tussock? There must have been scores of places just as good for his purposes and far more accessible to his shop at Whitsea.”
“That point puzzled me too, sir. But I think there’s no doubt that you were responsible for that.”
“I was? In heaven’s name, why?”
“Well, it so happens that Mr. Percy—you’ll remember Mr. Percy, sir?”
“Percy Percy! I’ll remember him to my dying day, I should think.”
“Mr. Percy has a small farm on the other side of the moor and on the Monday, when his shop was closed, Joliffe went over to see him about some beasts he had to sell. They got talking of this and that, and Mr. Percy happened to mention——”
“That he had met a lunatic on Bolter’s Tussock who claimed to have seen a dead body there. I can hear him saying it.”
“Quite so, sir. Well, that must have put Joliffe in rather a difficulty. He wasn’t to know that you had not been able to have a good look at this body so as to be able to give a clear description of it. He expected you to go off to the police with that description as soon as you could get out of bed.”
Pettigrew cleared his throat self-consciously. “Quite so. Go on,” he said.
“As I see it, he decided that it would be rather awkward if the police were told that Jack had been found on Bolter’s Tussock on Saturday when they had found him miles away on Tuesday. They might go and look at Bolter’s Tussock to make sure, and find something—bloodstains perhaps, or a button off his coat. Then they would start making the sort of enquiries which, in the end, I made. But if they found him on Bolter’s Tussock on Tuesday before you had made any report to them——”
“—they would conclude that I was one of the imbeciles who always come forward to distract the police with imaginary stories as soon as they read about anything of this kind in the papers. Really, Mr. Mallett, there is something rather diabolical about this man Joliffe. Is there any good thing to be said about him?”
“Well, sir, to give him his due, I think he is really devoted to his little granddaughters. As Mrs. Gorman said in court, the whole of this business was devised to get the inheritance for them. I think the bitterest blow for him must be that as soon as she tumbled to what he had done she left him and took the children with her. One could almost feel sorry for him over that. He’s a very lonely man just now.”
“I refuse to pity him. Isn’t he courting Louisa Gorman at Minster Tracy? She must be a lonely woman. They can console each other.”
“No, sir. You’re forgetting what Miss Greenway told us this afternoon. That affair seems to have fizzled out now.”
For a time it seemed that the conversation also had fizzled out. In the silence that followed Pettigrew jettisoned the butt of his cigar, and recharged Mallett’s glass and his own.
“Aren’t we running our heads against a brick wall?” he said at last. “Doesn’t all the evidence point to accidental death?”
“I won’t settle for accident until I can be sure of the kind of accident it was,” said Mallett stubbornly. “And there’s another thing, Mr. Pettigrew. This accident happened a deal too conveniently to satisfy me. He had only to live one day more for his daughters to come into all Gilbert’s money. Don’t tell me it was coincidence that he died when he did.”
In that moment revelation came to Francis Pettigrew.
“Of course not!” he said. “You are perfectly right—it wasn’t coincidence at all. I can see the whole thing now. Our whole trouble has been that we’ve been looking at this case from the wrong end. Look at it from the proper end and it sticks out a mile. Don’t you see, Mallett? The reason why we haven’t got the right answer is that we’ve never asked the right question!”
And he proceeded to ask the right question and to supply the answer to it with emphasis and elaboration.
Mallett had never been an emotional man—members of his profession cannot afford to be—and with increasing age his manner had become calmer and quieter than ever. He listened to Pettigrew’s excited harangue with an air of no more than interested attention. When it was over he took time to refill and light his pipe. Then he said:
“You know, Mr. Pettigrew, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if you were right. In fact, I think I’d be prepared to go so far as to say outright that you are right. As you say, once you look at the case from the proper angle all the probabilities point that way. It’s a pity that we shall never be able to prove it, but at least you have the satisfaction of knowing the answer.”
“Don’t be so dismal,” said Pettigrew. “In any case, it’s not for us to prove anything. That’s up to Parkinson and his merry men.”
“Suppose I can persuade Mr. Parkinson to start this enquiry all over again from a new standpoint, do you suppose there’ll be any evidence left after all this time?”
“Nobody can tell that till the evidence is looked for. There are some kinds of evidence that are indestructible. With any luck this will be.”
“Let’s hope so. I’ve got to persuade Inspector Parkinson, and Parkinson’s got to persuade his Chief. Then if the preliminary enquiries indicate that we’re on the right track, the Chief’s got to persuade the Home Office. It will all take time, and the first stage will be the longest, I fancy. If there’s nothing to show at the end of it, my name will be mud.” He drained his glass and stood up. “And now if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Pettigrew, I think it is time I went to bed. It has been a most rewarding evening and I’m very grateful to you for all you’ve done. If only——”
“Yes?”
“If only I could get an answer to that other problem that was troubling us, then I should really know we were on the right lines.”
“I’m in a generous mood,” said Pettigrew. “I’ll answer that one for you too. Or rather, I’ll tell you where to find the answer. It’s in your library. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes—or is it The Memoirs? Look it up when you get home—you’ll recognise it easily enough.”
“Sherlock Holmes,” repeated Mallett. “I won’t forget. Good night, sir, and thank you.”
CHAPTER XVII
The Right Answer
About the middle of June, Pettigrew received a letter from Exmoor:
“Dear Mr. Pettigrew,
I thought you would be interested to know—the baby was born yesterday, and it’s a boy.
Dick Gorman rang me up to tell me, and I’m glad to say he’s taken the news very well. I have Doreen and Beryl staying at Sunbeam while their mother is in hospital—did I tell you, my housekeeper was stepsister to Bob Gorman, Jack’s third cousin, who lives at Combe Martin, so she is really one of the family?—and they are thrilled at having a brother. I expect they will be here another two or three weeks, when they will go to join their mother at Tracy Grange. It would give me very great pleasure if you and your good lady could come to spend a week here next month, after they have gone. The country should be looking very pretty then, and with no hunting going on, there won’t be so many visitors about. I may say I have at last persuaded Mr. Parkinson to look into the matters we discussed the last time we met, and there may be some interesting developments shortly. Looking forward to seeing you,
I am,
Yours respectfully,
J. Mallett.
PS. I have looked up the Sherlock Holmes story you were thinking of. I am sure you are right, but it seems to be altogether too late to do anything about that now.”
Owing to various difficulties and delays, it was not until nearly the end of July that the Pettigrews were able to accept Mallett’s invitation. On the evening of their arrival, they found him in his sitting-room contemplating three silver porringers, four silver mugs and half a dozen spoons of different shapes and sizes, alike only in their emphatic ugliness.
“It’s the christening to-morrow,” he explained. “Mrs. Gorman’s asked me to be a godfather. Odd, isn’t it, considering that I nearly disinherited her, but she said that if it hadn’t been for me she would never have known the truth about Jack, and by way of showing her gratitude she’d like to make me responsible for his son. Can you understand how women’s minds work, Mrs. Pettigrew?”