Black Ship

by Carola Dunn

  “My job is to find out what happened,” he said. “What the public prosecutor and the courts decide to do about it is not for me to decide.”

  “No.” Aidan closed his eyes, looking exhausted and defenceless. “Go easy on Pat, Fletcher, if you can. He’s just a boy still. I wish Audrey were here.”

  She might well be at her husband’s bedside soon, if Daisy had her way. Irwin might dissuade her, though. He wouldn’t be too happy about having a gaolbird in the family.

  As for Patrick, Alec had more than enough to pull him in on a charge of interfering with a corpse, if nothing worse.

  Before he sent DC Peters to find Patrick, Alec arranged for the use of a room where they could be undisturbed. It was little more than a cupboard, badly lit, but adequate for his purpose, with a small table and three hard wooden chairs.

  While Peters went to fetch Patrick, he moved the chairs into his preferred arrangement, himself facing the suspect across the table, with the DC to sit against the wall, slightly behind Patrick, to take notes. On the whole, people were more willing to talk if they didn’t actually watch their words being written down. On the other hand, some found it easier to lie if they forgot their lies could be quoted back to them word for word.

  Patrick burst into the room. “He’s not … Aidan … He hasn’t died?”

  “Great Scott no! He’s very much improved.”

  He slumped onto the chair. “Thank God,” he said fervently. “I was afraid … I was afraid you were going to break it to me gently…. But you’re being a detective here, aren’t you? Not a friend of the family, I mean.”

  “Yes. Your brother has been telling me what actually happened the night Castellano died. I’m now going to ask you if you’d like to revise your previous statement. You do not have to say anything, but anything you choose to say will be taken down and may be used in evidence in a court of law. You’re entitled to have a lawyer present—”

  “A lawyer? I don’t need a law—Oh hell, I suppose I shouldn’t have hidden the body.”

  “Why did you?”

  “I hoped it wouldn’t be found for a while. That Aidan could go away until his head healed and no one would connect him with it. It seemed like a good idea at the time. There wasn’t time to discuss it, and Aidan was still pretty woozy anyway. You can’t blame him for that.”

  “All right. Now, suppose we start at the beginning. You took the boat train from Liverpool?”

  “Yes, and the tube from the station.”

  “At what time?”

  “The Flask was just opening, so it must have been half past five.”

  “But you didn’t go in.” Alec hadn’t read the report of whoever had questioned the people at the Flask, but if Aidan’s story was true, his brother hadn’t had time for a drink on his way home.

  He flushed. “No, not then.”

  “You walked on to Constable Circle.” That was for the record. “You took the path up through the garden in the centre.”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “I saw Aidan coming down the hill. He told you about the man with the gun?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I know now it was this fellow Castellano, but I wouldn’t have recognised him even if it hadn’t been getting dark. I’d never seen him before in my life.”

  “You hadn’t come across him in America?”

  “No. I gather he’d been in England for ages, long before I actually reached America. I was at sea for most of the time I was away, as I told you.”

  “Castellano was with your brother? He introduced him to you?”

  “Lord no! The man was pestering Aidan. Aidan was trying to ignore him. My father told me he’d been making a nuisance of himself on and off for weeks. Nothing serious, just irritating. I mean, nothing that would give anyone a reason to … to kill him, let alone Aidan, who’s the most peaceable man on the planet. He doesn’t even have a temper, far less lose it! And why Castellano should want to shoot me—Well, it’s beyond the bounds of credibility.” Patrick shook his head in disbelief.

  “Describe the sequence of events, please.”

  “Aidan saw me and waved. I think he started walking a bit faster, though it’s hard to be sure. Castellano kept up with him, anyway. They came on down the slope until they reached the fountain. As they came round it, Castellano took one look at me and pulled out a gun!”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “Say anything? He could have sung the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ and I wouldn’t have noticed. I was too stunned to move. He was pointing the damn thing at me! If it had happened on the other side of the Atlantic, I might have been halfway prepared, but I’d just come home safe. I tell you, I froze. This can’t be happening, I thought, not here! But big brother came to the rescue once again.”

  “Again?”

  “He’s eight years older than me, you see, and he’s always considered it sort of his mission in life to keep me out of trouble. He tackled the brute round the knees, brought him to the ground. Only the ground wasn’t a nice muddy rugger field; it was slippery paving surrounding a fountain. They slid into the rim of the pool and both got knocked out.”

  “What happened to the gun?” Alec couldn’t keep the urgency from his voice. Without the gun as evidence of a threat from Castellano, the Jessups hadn’t a leg to stand on. Not that one of them did anyway, he reminded himself, considering the pathologist’s damning evidence.

  Patrick looked surprised. “Gosh, I’d forgotten. It flew out of Castellano’s hand when Aidan hit him, and I caught it. Aidan may be the rugger star, but I’m a fair hand with a cricket ball.”

  “And?”

  “‘And’?”

  “What did you do with it?”

  “I can’t rem—Yes, I can!” he said triumphantly. “I chucked it away. When you get your hands on a ball in cricket, you hardly ever hang on to it unless you’ve caught the batsman out. You bung it to the wicket-keeper or the bowler. Besides, I didn’t know when I caught it that Castellano was unconscious, and I didn’t want him getting hold of it again. I don’t know much about guns, but I reckoned if it landed in the pool, it wouldn’t be much use to him if he did find it.”

  “You threw it towards the pool?”

  “Yes, and on the whole I’m a pretty accurate shot. With a cricket ball, that is. The shape and weight and balance of a pistol are quite different, of course, so I might have missed.”

  “It has not been found in the pool, nor anywhere near it.”

  “You mean you haven’t found it at all? Damn it, I couldn’t have tossed it out of the garden!”

  “Never mind that, for the moment. Go on. Your brother and Castellano were lying unconscious by the pool.”

  “Well, naturally, I went to make sure Aidan was all right. Only he wasn’t. When someone gets hit on the head and knocked out, you expect them to open their eyes in a minute or so, don’t you? He just wouldn’t come round. He seemed to be breathing all right, though. I tried dipping my handkerchief in the pool and bathing his face.”

  “How long do you estimate he was unconscious?”

  “Gosh, I don’t know. It seemed like forever. I suppose it can’t have been more than about five minutes. It can’t have been that much darker when he blinked at me at last, or I wouldn’t have seen him blink. I’m telling you, I nearly sang the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ myself.”

  “Explain to me, please, your relative positions while you were trying to bring him round.”

  Patrick gave him an odd look. “Right-oh. They’d rolled apart, Aidan and Castellano, when they hit. There was just room to kneel between them. Oh! I suppose it was pretty stupid to turn my back on him like that. I never gave it a thought at the time. I was too worried about Aidan to worry about anything else. And then, when I did remember him, it turned out the crack on the head had killed him.” He was silent for a long moment. “It was an accident. Or at least pure chance. Aidan attacked him, but he didn’t intend to hurt him, just to stop h
im shooting me. You must see that!”

  If it weren’t for those two telltale bruises on either side of his throat, and the internal evidence that confirmed their meaning …

  The rest of Patrick’s tale matched Aidan’s closely. After hiding the body, he had helped his brother home, quickly explained to his parents what had happened, and then gone to the pub to establish an alibi. When he returned home, Aidan was ready to leave. He seemed perfectly all right except for a bit of a headache.

  Alec found the brothers’ story damnably convincing. He couldn’t see either of them as a cold-blooded killer, yet everything suggested one of them, probably Patrick, was just that.

  Could the pathologist be wrong? Or had they both inherited their mother’s thespian talent?

  He wasn’t quite ready for an arrest. First, he’d get them both to Scotland Yard and see whether they had a different song to sing in those austere premises.

  One thing was certain, it wouldn’t be the “Hallelujah Chorus.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  By the time Daisy, Audrey, and Mr. Irwin reached the Manchester Royal Infirmary, Aidan had been pronounced out of danger. He would have to forswear Rugby football for at least a year, preferably forever. But if, after another night in hospital, there was no relapse, he might go home.

  The consultant was not happy to learn that home was two hundred miles away. A train journey was out of the question. But he conceded that a private automobile driven with the greatest care at a moderate rate of speed could do his patient no harm.

  Mr. Irwin’s hired car could not accommodate everyone in comfort if Aidan was to have room to lie down on one of the seats. Alec announced very firmly that he and Patrick would take the train. Daisy expected to go with them, but Audrey announced equally firmly that she wanted Daisy to travel with her and Aidan. She knew, she said, her father wouldn’t mind going by train, so as not to crowd the invalid.

  Her father did mind, but he gave in after a little grumbling. Audrey explained to Daisy later that Aidan would go mad shut up hour after hour with his father-in-law, unable to escape his homilies.

  In the meanwhile, the only time Daisy saw Alec alone was back in their bedroom at the Station Hotel. By then he was so exhausted, he hadn’t the energy to rag her for going to Lincolnshire and then proceeding to Manchester. He did ask whether she had learnt anything useful from Audrey or Irwin, but when she said, “No, nothing,” he promptly fell fast asleep.

  She was glad to be able to tell the truth. She didn’t know what she’d have done if Audrey had told her, as a friend, something she really ought to pass on to the police. But Audrey did know she was married to a policeman, she reminded herself drowsily. She wasn’t—wouldn’t have been—hearing confidences under false pretences…. She, too, fell asleep.

  The next day was a different matter. As the Lanchester purred southward, the strictly admonished chauffeur doing an excellent job of avoiding bumps, swerves, and sudden stops, Aidan told his wife what had happened on that fatal night.

  Daisy couldn’t help but hear. When he started talking, she pointed out that she was, to some degree at least, the ear of the Law. Aidan said it didn’t matter.

  “I’ve already told your husband everything,” he said wearily.

  Audrey listened in increasing distress, Daisy with interest that turned to puzzlement. Something was missing, though she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. She didn’t mention it. Audrey would only assume she was accusing Aidan of deliberately concealing the worst.

  The story was bad enough. Aidan expected to be prosecuted for involuntary manslaughter, or something of the sort, and Patrick was in trouble for moving the body and concealing a crime.

  “But they won’t send you to prison, darling?” Audrey asked in anguish. “You didn’t mean to kill him! And he would have shot Patrick.”

  “They can’t find the gun,” Aidan told her sombrely. “I don’t know whether they believe Castellano really threatened Patrick’s life. If they can persuade a jury I attacked him without immediate cause, even not meaning to kill him …”

  Audrey got a bit weepy. Daisy pretended not to notice Aidan comforting her and not to hear her promising to wait for him forever.

  The missing gun—was that what was bothering her? More crucial was Alec’s certainty that Castellano had been murdered with cool deliberation. Was Aidan protecting Patrick still, with lies now, rather than with action? Was Patrick protecting Aidan, similarly, by lying about the cause of death, as he had previously hidden the body and rushed his brother out of town? Did neither of them know the police had evidence of purposeful murder?

  Would Alec have let her travel with Aidan and Audrey if he believed Aidan to be a cold-blooded murderer?

  With a brave attempt at normalcy, Audrey started to talk about how much the children were enjoying her sister’s farm. They had helped feed chickens and collect eggs, watched the milking from a safe distance, and even taken brief rides on the broad backs of the cart horses. Her description of the last, with Marilyn hanging on like grim death and Percy blithely waving with both arms, made Aidan smile. But his eyelids soon drooped and he slipped into sleep.

  Daisy and Audrey stared silently out of the windows at the endless drab industrial towns of the Midlands. At least it wasn’t raining. Daisy was still plagued with a feeling that she had forgotten some vital fact. As so often happened, the harder she tried to pin it down, the less certain she was that she hadn’t imagined the whole thing.

  It was late when they reached Hampstead. They were all exhausted. Brief good nights were said on the pavement, then Daisy plodded up the steps to her front door, followed by the driver with her suitcase. At the top, he set it down. She tipped him, and as he ran back down to help the others, she rang the bell rather than dig for the key in her bag.

  Elsie opened the door. “Oh madam, I’m ever so glad you’re back.”

  “So am I,” said Daisy fervently, hurrying into the warmth of the hall.

  “There’s messages,” announced the parlour maid, lugging the suitcase in and closing the door. “The master rang up, and he may be very late tonight. And that Mr. Lambert called twice, and I know it was him, even if he did have his collar up and his hat down and wouldn’t give his name.”

  “Oh no!”

  “Yes’m, it was him for sure.”

  “What did he want?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me, ’m. Said he needed to speak to you or the master, so I told him you was in the North and if he wanted the master, he’d better go to Scotland Yard, and he said he wasn’t going there, thank you very much, the way they treated him last time. He said to tell you it was urgent, but he wouldn’t leave an address or telephone number.”

  “Oh dear, I wonder what’s wrong!”

  “Not to worry, madam. He said he’d keep coming back till he got hold of you. And there’s one more.”

  “One more what?” Daisy asked blankly, her mind on Lambert’s gyrations.

  “Message, ’m.” She went to the hall table. “My sister brought round this note. They’re in a terrible state over there, she said, but she wouldn’t tell me what about, and I reckon she don’t really know.”

  Daisy’s heart sank. On the whole, she would have preferred to remain in ignorance. Trying to hide a sigh, she said, “Thank you, Elsie. Take my suitcase up, would you, please.”

  She opened the note. It was from Mrs. Jessup. Patrick had been asked to go to Scotland Yard to “assist the police with their enquiries.” What did it mean? Mr. Irwin was no help at all, since all he did was reiterate that he “took the gravest view” of the situation, which she and her husband were quite capable of doing for themselves. Would Daisy please come—when she had recovered from the journey, of course—and explain the significance of those ominous words.

  There was a blotch that looked alarmingly like a tearstain. Daisy couldn’t imagine Mrs. Jessup crying. Had the note sounded even remotely accusatory, she would have sent a refusal, wrapped decently in mentions of fatigue an
d the lateness of the hour. But nothing suggested Daisy or her policeman husband was responsible for the Jessups’ plight.

  She decided she’d better go right away. If she took off her coat and sat down, or went to see the babies, she might never get moving again. With a sigh she made no effort to conceal, she called up the stairs to Elsie. “I’m going next door!”

  “The only question I want you to ask him,” Alec said to Tom Tring, “is, ‘And then?’ I want you to hear his story just as he chooses to tell it. With any luck, we might learn something from comparing it with what he told me in Manchester. I want it word for word, Ernie.”

  “Don’t I always, Chief?” Piper asked, injured.

  Alec grinned. “On the whole, unless my wife is present.” Ernie Piper was expert at omitting from his notes the bits of Daisy’s interventions that were best omitted.

  On this occasion, close similarity of wording would suggest Patrick was reciting a tale he had learnt by heart. On the other hand, if minor details varied, odds and ends he’d surely remember if they’d actually happened, the presumption would be that he was making it up and had forgotten exactly what he had said before.

  Tom and Ernie went out. Alec turned to the pile of reports on his desk. On top were those compiled during his absence.

  Mackinnon had returned from Lincolnshire. According to his official typed report, Mrs. Aidan Jessup appeared to have been kept in ignorance of her husband’s and brother-in-law’s activities. A paper clip appended a single pencilled sheet: He had not tried to find out from her the whereabouts of her husband because Mrs. Fletcher had assured him that was already known.

  Alec crumpled the paper into a ball and chucked it in the wastepaper basket. Mackinnon was getting as good as Ernie Piper at covering up Daisy’s meddling.

  Tom had talked to Whitcomb, who had returned home from the City at about twenty to seven, by taxi because of the rain. He had seen nothing and no one in the garden. It had been dark and wet and he had not been looking.

  No one knew where Lambert was, but his landlady, going into his room to dust (so she claimed), thought he had come back while she was out shopping and taken his razor, toothbrush and hairbrush, and some clothes. Alec was relieved that he had shown signs of life. The man was an incompetent, frequently irritating idiot, but one wouldn’t want any harm to come to him, not least because of repercussions from the Americans. Daisy would be glad.