‘There’s one thing you haven’t mentioned,’ said Fen. ‘And that is finger-prints. If Elphinstone killed Bussy, his prints must surely be on the handle of the knife.’
Wolfe shook his head; the raising of this issue seemed to depress him. ‘They aren’t, though. Nor are there any prints anywhere in Judd’s house.’
‘Then doesn’t that mean – –’
‘It doesn’t mean anything in particular. You see, in addition to imagining he’s Wilson, Elphinstone has a fixation about gloves. He likes gloves, and wears them whenever possible, regardless of the weather.’
Fen frowned. ‘But he doesn’t, you know. I caught a glimpse of him when I was on the way here from the station, and he wasn’t wearing gloves then.’
‘Ah, I’d forgotten you’d seen him. But he was nude then, wasn’t he?’
‘Except for the pince-nez, yes.’
‘Dr Boysenberry has told us,’ said Humbleby with decided gloom, ‘that the nudity-fixation and the glove-fixation never occur simultaneously. But the glove-fixation and the Wilson-fixation almost always do. . . . I often think,’ he added peevishly, ‘that the diagnosis of lunacy sounds nearly as insane as the lunacy itself. Anyway, the provable fact remains that Elphinstone delights in wearing gloves. So the lack of prints doesn’t at all militate against his having killed Bussy.’
The sun was perceptibly lower now, and a breeze was stirring among the leaves. Again there was a silence – and this time it was Fen who eventually broke it.
‘The inquest,’ he said. ‘When is it to be?’
‘Tomorrow, as things stand. And the funeral on Thursday.’
‘And you’ll be taking the line that Elphinstone killed him?’
Humbleby shrugged. ‘What other line is there to take? No doubt it’s convenient for Mrs Lambert’s murderer that Bussy should die at this particular moment; but the evidence, as you’ve heard, definitely singles out Elphinstone as the one responsible.’
‘What I can’t make out,’ said Wolfe irritably, ‘is where Elphinstone is. The whole district’s been combed for him, but until last night there hasn’t been a sign of him anywhere. And now he’s disappeared again.’
‘You’ll have to find him now.’ Humbleby spoke soberly. ‘Or else there’ll be a general panic.’
‘Well, we’re having in men from another Division,’ said Wolfe, ‘and I couldn’t be more pleased, I can tell you, my resources have been strained to the limit just recently. . . . Oh yes, we’ll find him all right. In a day or two the whole place will be seething with coppers.’
Fen stirred uneasily on his regal eminence. ‘Did you go through Bussy’s pockets?’ he asked. ‘And look at his luggage?’
‘We did,’ Humbleby answered. ‘And found nothing to the purpose. Whatever views he may have had about Mrs Lambert’s murder, he evidently didn’t write them down. So as regards that we’re as much in the dark as ever, unless’ – he glanced up at Fen – ‘you have any notion of what he was planning to do.’
‘None whatever, I’m afraid,’ said Fen truthfully. ‘I was to have heard about it when I met him at the hut. I take it’ – he peered down at Wolfe – ‘that the Lambert investigation hasn’t produced any results so far.’
‘None. I was going to ask the Chief Constable to call in the Yard in any case – and now Humbleby’s here I shall be only too glad to hand the whole depressing business over to him.’
‘Thanks,’ Humbleby said. ‘It sounds an alluring prospect.’
‘There’s just one thing.’ The mood of catechism had not yet left Fen. ‘How did Bussy cover his tracks in doubling back here?’
‘We’re still not entirely sure.’ It was Wolfe who replied. ‘We know he took a London ticket at the station here, and we know he changed on to the London train at Sanford Morvel. After that it gets vague, but we think he slipped off the train at Wythendale, pinched a bike in the town, rode it to Sanford Condover, abandoned it there, and walked the rest of the way to the golf-course.’
‘And his luggage?’
‘He put it all in the guard’s van and left it to go on to Paddington.’ Humbleby stood up, brushing grass and earth from the seat of his trousers; and as he did so the Church clock struck six. ‘Time’s hurrying chariot,’ he murmured. ‘Unluckily it drives us towards something less agreeable than the complaisance of a coy mistress; it drives us – to descend to the rather squalid facts – towards a conference with the Chief Constable. If we’re to be punctual, Wolfe, we must go.’
‘I agree,’ said Wolfe; and he also got to his feet. ‘Well, thanks for your help, Professor Fen. I’m afraid we shall want you at the inquest tomorrow.’
‘I was resigned to that,’ said Fen.
‘It may assist your election campaign. Or then again’ – Wolfe became pensive – ‘it may not. Still . . . ’
He paused, and a look of amazement appeared on his face.
‘What on earth,’ he demanded in a different tone, ‘is that?’
CHAPTER 12
FOR some time now a distorted noise had been approaching the vicinity of the inn. All three of them had heard it, without, however, pausing in their conversation to consider what it might be. Now, merging as it was into distinct utterance, it could no longer be ignored – and in another moment its source came sluggishly into view. This was a loudspeaker van, moving along uncertainly in third gear, and driven by a middle-aged lady whose unbending and ferocious preoccupation with the task suggested little previous experience of it; all about the van were pasted posters advertising the merits and integrity of Gervase Fen; and from the quadrifoliate loudspeaker on its roof there issued, horribly amplified, the voice of Captain Watkyn.
‘VOTE FOR FEN,’ it said, ‘THE CANDIDATE WHO is this ruddy thing still working old boy well what were you making faces for then oh I see WHO WILL PROTECT YOUR INTERESTS AGAINST CLASS DISCRIMINATION AND FACTIONAL STRIFE BY WHICH I MEAN THE LABOUR AND CONSERVATIVE GANGS THE CANDIDATE WHO WILL JUDGE EACH AND EVERY ISSUE ON ITS OWN MERITS AND WHO WILL . . .’
With intolerable slowness the sound receded up the village street, leaving a trail of hysterically barking dogs in its wake. Fen stared after it in great embarrassment. ‘I think,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘that I may have to put a stop to that sort of thing.’
‘Ah, well, it’s all part of the game, no doubt.’ Humbleby spoke with great disingenuousness. ‘We shall see you, then, at Sanford Morvel Town Hall tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Two-thirty, to be exact,’ Wolfe supplied; then a new thought occurred to him. ‘About the Persimmons girl. . . .’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Fen. ‘How is she?’
‘Worse, I’m afraid. They don’t think she’ll last much longer. And I haven’t been able to find a trace of any relatives, so the poor kid will die alone. . . . I suppose . . .’ Wolfe frowned suddenly – and a moment later relaxed again. ‘Lord, no; I’m getting murders on the brain.’
‘It was certainly an accident, if that’s what you’re getting at.’
‘Oh, yes, I’ve no doubt of it, really. Still, I wish I’d seen it happen – and if I’d stayed two minutes longer I should have done.’
Fen was surprised. ‘I didn’t realize you were here,’ he said. ‘I suppose it was your car I heard driving away.’
‘Probably. I had to come over and investigate some busybody’s complaint about drinking out of hours. The girl actually spoke to me as I was leaving – she’d lost her Personal Points, or something, and wanted to know – –’
‘All this may be very absorbing,’ Humbleby interrupted with impatience, ‘but really, Wolfe, we must be moving.’
‘Yes,’ said Wolfe obediently. ‘Sorry . . . Till tomorrow, then.’
Fen watched them as they strode off across the lawn – Humbleby small and dapper, Wolfe large and decidedly imposing. For a few minutes he remained where he was, brooding over the facts which the interview had brought forth. Then he sighed, clambered down from the roller, collected his cushions, and headed for the inn.
&
nbsp; The cushions belonged in the bar; and the task of replacing them was enlivened by an acrimonious discussion which was raging there when Fen entered – a discussion which involved Jacqueline, Myra, a louring youth, and a buxom village girl whose health and vitality illumined a frame that was Renoiresque in the outspokenness of its contours. Apart from them, the bar was empty.
‘I’m not getting mixed up with no police,’ the louring youth was saying doggedly across a half-pint of mild. ‘What I says is, once they got yer, they got yer. I’m not gettin’ mixed up with no police.’
Myra was indignant. ‘And what about justice, Harry Hitchin? You don’t think about that, do you? Here’s a poor devil been horribly murdered, and you and Olive saw the man as did it, and all you do about it is sit there on your bottoms saying you’re not going to get mixed up with the police. Well, I know what’s going to happen to you. You’re going to get yourselves thrown in gaol for being accessories after the fact, you mark my words.’ And at this point Myra became aware of Fen’s presence. ‘If you don’t believe me, you just ask that gentleman there.’
Harry Hitchin and Olive turned to look at Fen, and Olive emitted a little shriek.
‘That’s ’im,’ she said, pointing dramatically. ‘That’s one of ’em.’
‘Of course it is.’ Myra was disgusted. ‘It was Professor Fen who found the body.’
‘I’m not getting mixed up with no police,’ Harry Hitchin repeated apprehensively. ‘Not me, I’m not.’
‘What is all this?’ Fen demanded.
‘Go on, Harry,’ Myra urged. ‘You tell him about it. He’s not the police.’
‘’Ow ’m I to know that? It’s a trap, that’s what it is.’
‘You had better’ – Fen spoke with Rhadamanthine severity – ‘tell me everything you know. Otherwise it’s the lock-up for both of you.’ They stared at him with antagonism. ‘The caboose,’ he added for full measure. ‘The Big House. I’ll have a small whisky, please, Myra.’
A muttered conference ensued between Olive and Harry Hitchin. Fen received his whisky and contemplated them grimly as he drank it. Presently Harry said reluctantly: ‘Well, we don’t mind you knowin’ of it.’
‘That’s very generous, I’m sure. What did you see, where, and when?’
‘It were last evenin’.’ Harry gulped beer in an attempt to refresh jaded nerves. ‘We was in the gorse by fourth green.’
‘The gorse. Surely, in the gorse, you can’t have been – –’
‘We was mollocking,’ said Harry with distinct satisfaction. ‘She’m a rare un for mollocking, is Olive.’
Olive appeared gratified by this tribute. ‘Me Grammer,’ she remarked, ‘me Grammer allus says: “When oats be cutting, maids be riggish.”’
‘Your grandmother is clearly a depraved old woman. . . . What time did you arrive there?’
‘’Twere near eleven,’ said Olive; the moral defeat of her paramour seemed to have fanned into life whatever sparks of common sense she possessed, and she took up the tale with some zest. ‘And moon were almost full. Me Grammer, she says: “When moon be full, lads’ll be wenchin.”’
This repository of erotic lore, Fen foresaw, was likely to keep the point of the recital almost indefinitely in abeyance. ‘For heaven’s sake,’ he said, ‘leave your grandmother out of it.’
‘She’m a rare un,’ Harry interpolated – feeling, perhaps, that he must not lose the conversational initiative altogether. ‘A rare un, is Olive’s Grammer.’
‘Evidently she is. But at the moment I’m trying to get at what, if anything, you both saw.’
‘You just keep your trap shut, ’Arry ’Itchin,’ said Olive with sudden ferocity, ‘or you’ll be after fashin’ the genulman.’ And here she grinned enticingly at Fen and hitched her skirt several inches above the knee, possibly with a view to repairing whatever social damage Harry’s indiscretion might have done. ‘’Twere full moon, then,’ she resumed, ‘an’ we weren’t ’ardly settled in gorse afore we sees a Stealthy Form goin’ into ’ut.’
‘A Stealthy Form? Does that mean someone you can’t identify?’
Olive nodded. ‘We was too far off to see ’oo ’twas.’
‘But anyway, it wasn’t a woman?’
‘Might ’a’ bin a woman,’ said Olive. ‘Woman in trousers, that’s to say. Some girls, they wears trousers, and you sees their fat ’ips fair bustin’ out of ’em.’ She paused, contemplating this indelicate vision with evident pleasure. ‘Might ’a’ bin a man, though,’ she admitted after some thought.
Fen sighed. ‘It didn’t occur to you that it was the lunatic?’
This possibility had clearly not struck Olive before ‘Lor’, no!’ she exclaimed, wide-eyed. ‘We would ’a’ up and runned if we’d thought ’twere the daftie. This Form, see, ’e lit a fire in ’ut, an’. I says to ’Arry, “’Tis nowt but a tramp,” I says, and ’Arry, ’e says – –’
‘I says, “Shut up talkin’”. Harry observed. ‘“Shut up talkin’”. I says.’ He felt, obviously, that the masterfulness of this injunction might serve to elevate him, in Fen’s eyes, from the disrepute into which he had fallen.
‘So we watches the ’ut for near on an hour,’ Olive went on, ignoring the interruption, ‘an’ then, near midnight, along comes another chap, a lean un, lookin’ back over his shoulder as ’e walks. An’ ’e goes into ’ut, and then there’s a kind o’ noise.’
‘A kind of noise?’
‘Like a scuffle. An’ ’Arry, ’e says, “Lor’,” ’e says, “they’m fightin’. We’d better get out of’ere, quick.”’ Wincing at this pitiless comment on his manhood, Harry mumbled something indistinguishable. ‘But afore we could move,’ Olive continued with rising excitement, ‘out comes the first chap, and off ’e goes. An’ then a minute after, you comes along ’an looks in the ’ut an’ ’urries away again. An’ after that,’ she concluded with simplicity, ‘we goes off an’ finishes our lovin’ elsewhere.’
‘’Tweren’t none of our business,’ said Harry defensively.
Fen sighed anew. ‘And you don’t think you’d recognize this first man if you saw him again?’
‘No,’ said Olive promptly. ‘’E didn’t come the way you and the lean un came, so we couldn’t see ’im proper.’
‘You said you watched the hut between the time the first man arrived and the time the second man arrived. Did anyone – anyone – enter or leave the hut during that hour?’
Olive shook her head, emphatically. ‘We’d be certain to ’a’ seen if anyone ’ad.’
‘But surely, if you were – ah – mollocking, your attention – –’
‘We’d ’a’ seen,’ Olive reiterated with great certainty. ‘We’d ’a’ seen, ’cos ’Arry’s afeared me Dad’ll be after ’im with a knife, an’ ’e knows it if anyone’s comin’ towards ’im even so much as a mile orf.’
‘I ain’t afeared o’ your Dad,’ said Harry pettishly. ‘Don’t you go sayin’ I’m afeared o’ your Dad.’
‘That you are, ’Arry ’Itchin.’ Olive repudiated this slur on her veraciousness with vigour. ‘That you are. Why, what about the time – –’
Fen intervened hurriedly. ‘Yes, well, never mind that now,’ he said. ‘The point is that your story’s extremely important, and must be told to the police.’
‘Don’t want to get mixed up with no police,’ Harry muttered. But now Olive rounded on him with considerable savagery.
‘You’ll do what I says,’ she informed him uncompromisingly. ‘An’ what I says is, we go to the police, like the genulman tells us to.’
At this, the poor remnants of Harry’s self-assurance vanished like smoke before a gale. ‘Ur,’ he assented feebly.
‘And I think you’d better do it straight away.’ His point gained, Fen became more genial. ‘Can either of you drive a car?’
‘Ur,’ said Harry with dawning interest.
‘Well, mine is round in the yard, and you can drive to Sanford Morvel in it if you like.’
‘Ur,
’ said Harry eagerly.
‘But be sure to bring it back in good time. I’m not providing it for you to mollock in half the night.’
‘Olive’s Grammer,’ Harry remarked, ‘she allus says . . .’
‘“When swallows be leaving, girls be conceiving.”’ said Fen. ‘Will you kindly finish your drinks and go?’
They obeyed, departing hand in hand. Fen watched in silence as with a horrid grinding of gears they set off to face their ordeal. Then he ordered another whisky – this time a large one.
‘What a couple,’ said Myra resignedly. ‘Daft as they come.’
A small spate of customers entered the bar. Myra and Jacqueline served them. And Fen, perched on a stool, brooded. If Olive and Harry were telling the truth – and he saw no reason for supposing that they were not – then apart from Bussy and himself only one person, the murderer, had been at the hut on the previous night; which meant that the hypothesis of Elphinstone’s having camped, decamped and been replaced by the rational X was no longer tenable. Either the murderer had been X, or he had been Elphinstone. And he must – Fen argued – have been Elphinstone, for the simple reason that by no possible means could X have known that Bussy was due to appear at the hut. And yet . . . Fen shook his head; a coincidence so thoroughly convenient for the murderer of Mrs Lambert surely deserved to be probed further. But in what direction was one to look? It was conceivable, he decided after a good deal of thought, that in a detailed knowledge of Elphinstone’s lunacy some discrepancy might be found – as, for instance, that he abhorred tinned ham. . . . And that necessitated an interview with the person in charge of the asylum at Sanford Hall. What was the name? Boysenberry. Fen finished his drink and went to the telephone.
CHAPTER 13
SANFORD HALL, viewed in the morning radiance of that continuing summer, was discreet rather than arrogant, demure rather than impressive – and this in spite of its considerable dimensions. Approaching it, at eleven o’clock on the Wednesday, Fen saw that it lay along the crown of the hill like an elegant toy, its carefully spaced sash windows tactful and unobtrusive, its main door solid and dignified, its plain chimney stacks neatly massed against the porcelain sky. It spoke – to those capable of interpreting such wordless messages – of the spacious and dignified days in which, Anne being on the throne and Marlborough away at the wars, it had been built; and to fill it with lunatics, Fen thought, argued an aesthetic obtuseness rare even in a Government official . . . And yet, on further reflection, it was possible to modify this opinion; for it was likely, after all, that the architect would have preferred to have his lovely design associated with the often cheerful irresponsibility of madmen rather than with the fitful bureaucratic zeal of some meddlesome Ministry.
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