In At The Death

by Francis Duncan

  Someone coughed, a trifle nervously. It was Parkin.

  ‘I haven’t had an opportunity yet, sir, of checking back to make sure, but I’ve an idea that Doctor Hardene’s name was mentioned at the time of the Marton case.’

  ‘The deuce it was!’ The Chief Constable’s stare alighted challengingly on his subordinate. ‘I don’t recall it.’

  ‘It didn’t amount to much, sir,’ Parkin explained. ‘I’ve been thinking it over since Mr. Tremaine here first put the idea into my head this morning. As far as I remember this chap Marton was supposed to have made some remark at the Seamen’s Mission about going to see Doctor Hardene. Quite a few men from the Mission went up to him at different times—he was supposed to be interested in welfare work.’

  ‘Wasn’t Hardene asked about it?’

  ‘He was interviewed, sir, but he said that Marton hadn’t called on him and that he knew nothing about him. There wasn’t anything to connect and it just looked like a dead end. Hardene had a good reputation; there was no reason to suppose that he was hiding anything so naturally the thing was left there.’

  ‘H’m. Doesn’t sound as though there was much to it.’ The Chief Constable pushed back his chair. ‘I’ve a Committee this afternoon and it’s time I was off. Use this room if you want to—I doubt whether I’ll be back much before half past five.’

  ‘That’s good of you, sir,’ Boyce said. ‘I’ll be glad of a chance to run through these files and sort things out. My sergeant’s still at the house and I’ll be joining him later on. If there should be anything fresh I’ll contact you.’

  The Chief Constable nodded and left the room, leaving the three of them still seated round the table.

  ‘Masters again,’ Tremaine observed. ‘There seems to be a general feeling locally that he must be behind it.’

  He was looking at Parkin, but the inspector left it to Boyce to reply.

  ‘You mean all that stuff about the complications attached to finding a motive?’ he mused. ‘It did sound a bit as though Sir Robert was taking it for granted that our chief job’s going to be pinning it on Masters. Still, that may be due to the fact that he doesn’t want a third unsolved killing on his hands and is in a hurry to get things cleared up.’

  Boyce reached for the files on the table in front of them and sorted rapidly through them.

  ‘Here you are, Mordecai, you take the Marton affair first, since it seems to be your particular pigeon. I’ll take the pawnbroker. I don’t pretend I can see any daylight, but Hardene must have had some reason for keeping those cuttings.’

  For some while there was silence as they studied the accumulation of reports, statements, and photographs. At last Boyce put the last item aside and leaned back with a frown.

  There was no doubt that the local police had been thorough, but it was equally clear that in each case they had been presented with the kind of problem that is an investigating detective’s nightmare. He glanced at Tremaine.

  ‘Not so good,’ he observed.

  ‘On the other hand, Jonathan,’ Tremaine remarked, ‘a challenge is always stimulating. After all, when a murder is committed by a member of the criminal classes or when you can narrow it down to a person belonging to a fairly small group of suspects who must have known the victim intimately, detection becomes a mere matter of humdrum routine. All you have to do is to look through your modus operandi records until you find all the known criminals who leave the sort of traces you’ve found at the scene of the crime and then start in to break down their alibis. If the person you’re after isn’t a regular criminal, but belongs to a small group of the victim’s relatives or acquaintances, there isn’t much trouble as a rule in deciding who might have done it; the real job is to get hold of the proof, which generally means that it’s in the science laboratory where most of the detecting is done. The policeman is just an office boy, collecting nail filings, or dust, or odd fibres of cloth.’

  Boyce made a grimace.

  ‘Sometimes it isn’t a bad thing to be an office boy. It saves a lot of wear and tear on the nerves. This kind of thing is calculated to make the plodding type like me wonder whether it’s worth while hanging on for the sake of the pension. Look at them!’ Boyce brought his palm down on the topmost pile. ‘Wallins had no near relatives and precious few acquaintances—certainly there’s no sign of anybody who could have had a motive for killing him—and every one of the known crooks who might have done the job has a cast-iron alibi. Some person unknown just walked in out of nowhere, did for the old chap and walked out again. With fifty million people to choose from it’s some outlook, isn’t it!’

  He pushed the papers from him and leaned back with a gesture of despair.

  ‘As for this other fellow, Marton, there isn’t even a place to begin. It isn’t even certain who he really was. Enquiries in the West Indies where he joined his ship drew a blank and nobody here in Bridgton seems to have known anything about him.’

  Inspector Parkin was looking disturbed. Tremaine glanced at him over his pince-nez, his eyes twinkling.

  ‘Don’t take it to heart, Inspector. He doesn’t mean it, you know. It’s just his way of letting off steam.’

  Boyce pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. He paced restlessly about the room, hands thrust into his pockets and his brows drawn together in a frown.

  ‘I suppose he could have had those cuttings just because he was interested in them as cases. As a doctor he might have found something worth studying from the medical point of view. I suppose there was a good deal of comment locally at the time about the murders.’

  ‘There was,’ Parkin agreed. ‘A murder in the city naturally gets talked over quite a lot—we don’t get all that number, fortunately—and a murder that seems just a bit out of the ordinary is usually given a fair amount of space in the newspapers, even in these days.’

  Boyce stopped in front of the window, staring down into the street below for a moment or two, then he swung back to face his companions.

  ‘Well, we can’t afford to go running into dead ends,’ he said decisively. ‘The Chief Constable’s expecting results, and there doesn’t seem to be anything here that ties up with Hardene. Sorry, Mordecai, but you see how it is.’

  ‘That’s all right, Jonathan,’ Tremaine said quietly. ‘It was just a feeling I had. After all, there was really nothing to go upon.’

  He was gathering up the files and documents they had been studying when there was a knock at the door and a uniformed constable came in.

  ‘Beg pardon, sir,’ he said, approaching Parkin, ‘but these have just come for you. The lab said they were urgent.’

  Parkin took the photographs and the typewritten sheet the constable had brought. He studied them intently for a moment or so and then he gave a low whistle of excitement.

  ‘Take a look at these!’ he exclaimed, and held them out to Boyce.

  The photographs were enlargements of revolver bullets and they showed the markings made by the gun from which they had been fired. Whoever had prepared the photographs had marked various points in red ink.

  Boyce raised his head from the prints and looked across at Tremaine, a sudden keenness in his grey eyes.

  ‘It looks,’ he said, ‘as though your hunch wasn’t so wide of the mark, after all. The bullet that killed Marton did come from the gun Hardene was carrying around in his little black bag!’

  He handed the photographs across the table for Tremaine, trying to preserve a decent modesty, to examine for himself.

  There could be no doubt about the points of resemblance. The Chief Constable was going to be presented with his first development in excellent time.

  8

  HINT OF A SECRET ROMANCE

  SERGEANT WITHAM HAD evidently been both busy and methodical. Books and papers were arranged neatly upon the late Doctor Hardene’s desk, and in the notebook in front of him the sergeant had made a number of careful entries.

  He sprang up as Boyce and Tremaine came in.

  ‘I thi
nk this is the lot, sir. As far as I can take it, anyway.’

  ‘Good man,’ Boyce said. He sat down at the desk and flicked the pages of the note-book. ‘You seem to have done the job thoroughly—as usual, Witham. I’ll see it’s mentioned in the right quarters.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Boyce sat down. A note had been despatched by special messenger to Sir Robert Dennell at his Committee meeting, informing him of the result of the tests made with the gun in Hardene’s bag; it should allow him at least a limited breathing space in which he could gather up any further threads.

  ‘H’m. Investments about four thousand. Income—not too bad; if he was honest in his income-tax returns. He seems to have been comfortably enough off. Anything to show where the money came from?’

  ‘No, sir. I haven’t been able to find anything going back more than four or five years—that’s about the time he came here. As far as it goes it’s all straightforward enough. He kept an account of his dividends as they came in—all his money was in good class industrials and he doesn’t seem to have done much buying and selling.’

  ‘Anything particularly interesting?’

  ‘There’s this,’ Witham said. He reached towards the desk and picked up a small, blue-covered book. Tremaine recognized the diary Boyce had earlier found in the desk. ‘Seems to have been with his personal papers, cheque book and so on. It’s not so much a diary as an appointment book.’

  ‘Sounds all right,’ Boyce remarked. ‘I did glance at it as a matter of fact.’ He took the book from his subordinate’s hand. ‘As a doctor he’d need to keep some record of the people he was due to see. Miss Royman, I daresay, would keep the ordinary list of appointments, but he might have liked his own reminder of the more important patients. You didn’t happen to notice,’ he added, balancing the note-book thoughtfully, ‘whether Miss Royman seemed at all interested in this? I left it with several other items on the desk as I mentioned over the ’phone.’

  ‘Everything seemed to be where you left it, sir,’ the sergeant returned. ‘I can’t say I noticed anything in that way about Miss Royman. In fact, I don’t think she came in here at all.’

  Boyce pursed his lips.

  ‘She didn’t, eh? Still, I’m sidetracking you. What was it you were going to say about the book?’

  ‘It looks as though he used it to jot down notes about different affairs he had to attend—dinners, lectures, and so on. But I did spot something I thought you might like to have a look at.’

  Witham leaned over and turned the pages of the diary. He indicated an entry and then flicked over a page or two more and pointed out another.

  ‘He seems to have been in the habit of seeing quite a lot of the lady, doesn’t he?’ Boyce remarked. He quoted from the diary. ‘Elaine—eight-thirty. Meet Elaine—Elm Tree. Does he give her any other name anywhere?’

  Witham shook his head.

  ‘No, sir. It’s always just Elaine. The entries begin in January and go on right up to a day or two ago. Generally there are about two entries a week, sometimes only one.’

  ‘Just the name and a time?’

  ‘A time or a place. I had a word with Miss Royman—didn’t tell her anything, of course. Elm Tree is a place on the downs—there’s an old elm tree there that’s a local landmark. The only unusual entry,’ Witham finished, ‘is this one.’

  He indicated a date in the diary about a fortnight previously. The name and a time appeared as in the other entries, but right across it Hardene had scrawled the word Trouble. The letters were thick as though he had been in a state of emotion at the time so that the nib of his pen had spread more than usual.

  Boyce closed the diary and passed it across to Tremaine with a twinkle.

  ‘This looks as though it might be right in your department. A secret romance. Hardene and the mysterious Elaine.’

  Tremaine looked disapprovingly over his pince-nez.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘that I am in sympathy with clandestine meetings—unless there are good and sufficient reasons for them.’

  He spoke a little primly. Boyce was aware of his weakness for Romantic Stories and was sometimes given to pulling his leg. Where lovers and romance were concerned Tremaine had a blind spot; he was a sentimentalist and he disliked there being no happy ending. He also disliked any note of the sordid being introduced into what he saw as something fundamentally beautiful in the best of all worlds.

  The Yard man saw the effect he had produced and turned with a chuckle to the remainder of the items on the desk.

  ‘What about his bank statements?’ he asked. ‘Everything in order?’

  ‘Apparently,’ Witham said. ‘Decent balance in his current account and no large outgoings. Bills were all paid by cheque. The only cash withdrawal was a regular one of fifty pounds, drawn on the first of the month and payable to self.’

  Boyce nodded acceptance.

  ‘Well, I suppose he’d need a certain amount of cash to keep going. To pay his housekeeper and so on.’

  ‘She was paid by cheque, sir.’ Witham’s voice showed that he was puzzled. ‘I thought fifty pounds was rather a lot since everything was settled by cheque and not cash. He even had an account for his tobacco and cigarettes that was cleared monthly through his bank.’

  ‘Petrol? Being a doctor he must have got through quite a bit on his rounds.’

  ‘Same way as the rest. He had a monthly account with a garage round the corner. I’ve been scratching my head about it, but I’m blessed if I can see where he got rid of fifty quid a month.’

  ‘Maybe it brings us back to Elaine. The high cost of women,’ Boyce remarked.

  ‘I did think of that, sir, so I checked back. There are references to Elaine right back in January, and I got the feeling that if we could find his diary for last year there’d be entries there as well. But the fifty-pound withdrawals don’t start until May. Before then he just drew odd amounts on different dates as though he put in a cheque whenever he was short of money.’

  ‘H’m.’ Boyce stared up at the ceiling for a moment, frowning. ‘Miss Royman’s gone, of course, but the housekeeper’s still around, and she’s probably the best bet for this job anyway.’ He brought his eyes down. ‘Ask her to come in, will you?’

  A few moments later, shepherded by the sergeant, Mrs. Colver appeared in the doorway. Boyce rose and put out a chair for her.

  ‘Sit down, Mrs. Colver,’ he invited. ‘I only want a friendly chat and we may as well make ourselves comfortable.’

  The housekeeper brushed a wisp of grey hair from her forehead and took the proffered chair uneasily.

  ‘I know you think I’m a confounded nuisance,’ Boyce went on cheerfully, ‘and no doubt I am, especially if I’ve just interrupted an important operation in the kitchen. But we’re making progress and we’ve come to a point where we need your help.’

  The housekeeper sat forward on the edge of her chair. Her face looked suddenly startled.

  ‘Progress?’

  ‘Yes,’ Boyce said, as though he had noticed nothing significant in her manner. ‘We’re feeling quite pleased with ourselves. Now, Mrs. Colver, you may think that my questions are a little, well, indelicate, shall we say, but I can assure you that they’re not being put without good reason.’

  Tremaine stared suspiciously at his friend. It was unlike Jonathan Boyce to take so long to get to the point.

  Then he glanced at the housekeeper, her plump, middle-aged form seated uncomfortably on the edge of her chair, and apprehension growing in her face, and he thought he could see what Boyce was aiming at.

  ‘We’ve been looking into the doctor’s affairs,’ Boyce went on, ‘and it seems that he was in the habit of paying all his bills by cheque. He even, in fact, paid your own salary that way.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. He said it made things much easier if everything was done through the bank.’

  She spoke in a precise, artificial manner. She was anxious to give a good impression and yet did not want to make it
obvious what she was doing in case it aroused curiosity as to her reasons.

  ‘The only cash drawings we’ve been able to trace,’ Boyce continued, ‘are various amounts of fifty pounds each which were drawn on the first of the month, commencing last May. For a man in Doctor Hardene’s position, of course, it wouldn’t normally seem anything unusual, but it does seem rather a large sum for him to draw since he dealt with all his obvious expenses by cheque. Can you suggest any reason why he might have wanted so much in cash?’

  The housekeeper held his steady gaze. She shook her head.

  ‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘No, I can’t give you any reason. Everything for the house was ordered on account. When the bills came in I gave them to the doctor and he paid them. It was only when anything unexpected happened that he gave me any money.’

  ‘You mentioned this morning that the doctor went out now and again socially although he did very little entertaining here. When he did go out where did he usually spend his time?’

  ‘Sometimes he went out to dinner. With friends—or perhaps when there was some special affair on with other doctors. After he began to get interested in council work he went out more often, but as a rule it was only to see people he thought he ought to know or to go to political meetings.’

  ‘He was a bachelor, of course,’ Boyce remarked casually, ‘but because a man isn’t married it doesn’t mean that he can’t have any friends among the ladies. Did he ever give you any cause to think he might decide to marry one day?’

  The housekeeper’s lips met in a thin line. For the first time she seemed unable to keep her feelings firmly under control.

  ‘He wasn’t the marrying kind,’ she said, and there was a waspish note in her voice.

  Boyce glanced at her from beneath his eyebrows. It was always a good thing from the point of view of really finding out things when a witness allowed emotion to show.