“But you can’t do that!”
“Can’t I?” The General got to his feet. “You refuse to speak? Very well then”—and he looked round at Norris.
Claire raised his hand. “Just a moment, Superintendent! Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that. You want to know about… Usher.”
Wharton sat down glowering. “Why did you put him in this house? To spy on France and your wife—wasn’t that it?”
“Well, not exactly. I thought… I had good reason to think that France was going beyond—er—what I might call the very wide license he had with my wife.”
“But you suspected her too?”
Claire thrust out his chin. “You be damn careful what you start insinuating! It was to protect my wife… against France; that’s why I had him here.”
“Precisely what I say. You didn’t trust your wife!”
Claire’s eyes narrowed. Norris, glancing round, thought there was going to be a scene.
“If you like to put it that way—yes! I wouldn’t trust any woman where Michael France was concerned.” He stammered out something as if finding it difficult to express himself, then, “What you don’t see is, that as soon as he started his tricks with my wife I determined to step in.”
“Why didn’t you speak to France direct? He was a friend of yours. He was more than a friend—ostensibly.”
“Why didn’t I? That’s my business. You wouldn’t understand in any case… I knew she was all right… that is to say, I knew she wouldn’t go wrong. I knew it when Usher rang me up on Friday.”
“How’d you know it?”
“I guessed it was that night club business… that’s why I called him off. I decided to chuck the whole thing—very liable to be misinterpreted, as you see—and I did call him off and, as far as I was concerned, that was the end of it.”
“And you spoke to your wife?”
“Why should I? There was nothing to it. I thought I’d let her have her fling, then talk afterwards. As a matter of fact, since you must know, I’d decided to thrash the whole thing out with France on Monday. That’s why I stayed in town. You don’t think I spend my Sundays—er—mooning about alone, do you?”
“I see.” Wharton nodded to himself once or twice. “As you say, most of that’s your own business. However, you’ve put yourself in a hole of your own making and whether we can save you any inconvenience, entirely depends on yourself. We know your movements, over the week-end—as we do those of everybody even remotely connected with the case—but we want your own statement about one or two things. What did you do, for instance, after Captain Utley dropped you at Euston?”
“If it interests you, I came direct to my house by underground.”
“And the time you got in?”
“Can’t say. Wish I could! My butler probably knows the time, and Utley might know when I left him.”
“What did you do the rest of the day?”
“Oh—er—just loafed round. I shouldn’t have been there at all if I hadn’t expected the chance of seeing France. However, my butler knows what I did. He fed me… and so on.”
“Quite so!” He blew his nose unnecessarily. “Your alibi—I’m glad to say—is perfect; and that’s a good thing considering the grudge you had against him. However, you’re out of it.… Know anybody who might have killed him?”
Claire shook his head. “Not a soul.”
“Hm! You showed no surprise at my statement that he was killed. How’d you know he was killed?”
Claire’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the idea? Trying to catch me out?”
Wharton waved a deprecating hand. “Not at all!”
“Everybody says he was killed. He couldn’t have killed himself. Why should he?”
“I don’t know,” retorted Wharton innocently. “All I know is that I made a misstatement which you accepted for gospel. Who exactly says he was killed?”
“All the papers hint at it. People at the club all talk about it, and other men tell me the same thing. You see they talk to me because I’m expected to know.”
“Exactly! And the best thing you can tell ’em, is that you don’t know. You can take it from me, Mr. Claire, that whatever I may have said, we hint at nothing of the sort. Michael France committed suicide. Is that clear?”
Claire shrugged his shoulders offensively. “If that goes with you, it goes with me.”
Wharton nodded. “One other thing. I may have to question your butler—entirely your own fault, by the way. I shall do that myself—as discreetly as I can. That, I hope, will be the full extent to which we shall worry you.… Oh, yes! Just one little thing. Did you happen to telephone to France on the Saturday night, from Liverpool Street?”
“Good lord, no!”
“Did you telephone at all?”
“I wanted to.” He laughed. “I left rather a good pair of gloves on the porter’s seat as I left the club. Only I couldn’t get through in time.”
“Exactly!” He shuffled the papers as if the business were at an end. Claire made as if to rise. “One tiny point, and we’re finished. Mr. Hayles is, as you know, unwell, and we can’t question him at all. Tell me, why exactly did he have to go to Martlesham?”
Claire frowned. “He was seeing the vendors over the purchase—my own purchase really—of the cottage adjoining Low Farm. We wanted it for extra quarters; rather a bit cramped as things were.”
Wharton rose. “Thank you, Mr. Claire. We’re very grateful to you for your help—”
Claire’s eyes narrowed again. “Don’t I have to put my signature to all—er—all this confession… and so on?”
“Confession!” Wharton appeared tickled to death. “My dear sir! This is only a friendly chat. You’d know the difference if it weren’t!” He changed the subject with extreme agility. “I suppose you’re going to the funeral to-morrow?”
“Naturally!”
“Of course,” added Wharton lamely. “Well, that is all, Mr. Claire. If your butler is questioned it’ll be more painless than the dentist’s. He won’t know the tooth’s out.”
But at the door he had to impart his little homily. “You’ll think me rude—and perhaps I am, but I can’t help it. Your wife made a certain—intimate confession to you to-night?”
“Possibly!”
“Go gently with her, Mr. Claire. I’m an older man than you and that’s why I take this liberty. She’s had a terrible shock—her own fault perhaps, but there we are. She’s a fine woman that… and a loyal one!… Good night!… Good night!”
He watched the departing figure to the turn in the road, then shut the door. The glare he gave Norris made that gentleman think he must have put his foot in it.
“Did you hear how he spoke? ‘Evenin’, Wharton!’ As if I was a bloody footman!” He glared again. “What’d you think of him?”
“Not much, sir. I wouldn’t have minded putting my foot into his stern.”
Wharton was mollified—then decided to be generous. “Mind you, Norris, we mustn’t be prejudiced. He knew he was going to cut a pretty poor figure so he had to brazen it out with that God Almighty air of his. Only he’s lying! Mrs. Claire promised me she wouldn’t say she heard a shot—only that she found him dead—and that’s a subtle difference. Also when I asked him how he knew that France was killed, you noticed that he didn’t say, ‘My wife told me,’ as he’d have had a perfect right to do.… And he’s a liar on another count. He couldn’t have guessed from that telephone message of Usher’s on the Friday that it was about a night club. Even Usher didn’t guess that—and it bamboozled me! And if he wanted to get annoyed about anything, why wasn’t it when I deliberately ticked him off—and asked him those alibi questions?”
“You remember Mr. Franklin said the same thing, sir—how it struck both him and Mr. Travers that Claire wanted his alibi inquired into… and that means there’s something wrong with it, sir… and there isn’t!”
Wharton went off at a tangent. “We’ll never prove he was the man in the house here. No one can prov
e how long he took over that journey from Euston. He wasn’t, in any case, the man Franklin heard in the house. He’s invited us to ask his butler about that, and he daren’t risk it if there was any flaw.… However, let’s go on with those experiments.”
The object of the new inquiry was soon apparent. Precisely how long had it taken to do all the camouflaging necessary to conceal both murders? Norris, as the more active of the two, tried it out. Wharton was lifted, carried into the bedroom and suitably arranged. The decanter used by Somers was washed out, the sink doped with the chloride, and the drain flushed. Then the decanter was refilled with whisky, the poison bottle placed and the window catch fastened. Everything took under ten minutes. Let five more be allowed for things which might have had to be done but were not apparent at the moment, and that gave fifteen minutes as a basis.
Wharton rubbed his hands. “Looks as if Hayles could have done the whole lot while he was here. But”—the General looked really pleased with himself—“now for the clue. Franklin was absent forty minutes from house and grounds, therefore, if the murderer had been watching him, he had forty minutes available. But he didn’t need forty minutes—he needed fifteen—and therefore he didn’t watch him! But the murderer was in the house when Franklin returned, and as he needed only fifteen minutes, and as he hadn’t finished, he hadn’t been there for fifteen minutes. That fits Hayles to a second.”
“You say he hadn’t finished, sir. Hadn’t finished what?”
“What he had to do,” said Wharton. “He hadn’t had time to think of that murder confession, or if he thought of it, he hadn’t time to find it and put it where it ought to have been found—by France’s body—upstairs!”
“That’s right enough, sir.”
“Not only that. He didn’t move France’s body at all! If he had, he’d have thought of the confession the very first thing instead of leaving it to the last! However, we’ll try to prove that in another way—by the clue.”
Norris still couldn’t see it. “What clue’s that, sir?”
Wharton preferred to be mysterious. “Did Usher leave a tray out for us?”
“Yes, sir—in the kitchen.”
“Then bring it to the lounge. And you’d better make a pot of tea to go with it. First of all I’ll put out this fire. Open the windows and leave the front door ajar. Let the air blow through the room!”
He fussed round while that was done, then pulled out his watch.
“You bring that supper to the lounge. I’ll try to get Franklin and tell him I’ll be round in an hour.”
During that small meal, he left the subject of the case absolutely alone. Norris went out and got a couple of evening papers and they read them over their pipes. Finally the general looked at his watch.
“Forty minutes since we put the dining-room fire out. It’s a cold night—quite as cold as it was on Sunday afternoon. Come along to the dining-room.… Now then, do you feel the room to be what Franklin described as ‘icily cold’?”
“It isn’t all that cold,” said Norris.
“That isn’t the point. Is it cold or not?”
“Well, it isn’t cold, sir. You’d know the fire had been on.”
“That’s the clue!” exclaimed Wharton triumphantly. “Mrs. Claire left the fire on. If nobody had been in the house till fifteen minutes—or even forty minutes—before Franklin entered it, Franklin wouldn’t have noticed any clamminess. The fire must have been put out earlier in the day! Therefore there were two entrances made—one before half past two when Franklin first came and the other after three when he went away!”
“Yes, sir; but couldn’t this man have been lying doggo all the time till Mr. Franklin went away, and have been the same man he heard when he came back?”
Wharton shook his head. “As soon as Franklin finished knocking at two-thirty, he’d have assumed he’d gone away and he’d have started to move about again. But Franklin hadn’t gone! He sat on the step with his ear virtually against the door. He’d have heard the least sound.” He pushed his pipe almost into the other’s eye. “I tell you there were two entrances made—and by two different people—or my name’s not Wharton. You and I were testing two processes done by the same person at one time. What happened was two processes done by two independent people at two different times.”
“If I understand you correctly, sir,” said Norris, “what happened is this. Sometime early on the Sunday—or it might have been late on the Saturday—somebody came in and camouflaged France’s body, and turned out the lights and fire. Then on the Sunday afternoon, while Mr. Franklin was marking time, somebody else entered—”
“Not while he was marking time! After Somers entered—and that wasn’t before half-past three.”
“Quite so, sir! After Somers came back, this other party entered and camouflaged his body and it was him Mr. Franklin heard in the house.”
“That’s it! Take the first man as X. He might have been Claire, entering on his way from Euston to his house. Call the second Y. That might have been Hayles—entering after his arrival at St. John’s Wood. That’s where we might start to concentrate—on the problem of X and Y.” He glanced at his watch. “Gone half-past nine. Franklin wasn’t in but I left word I’d be round. When’s Usher due in?”
“I told him ten, sir—and to get some supper out.”
“Right! Keep his hoofs off that space round the door there. I’ll send round for that chair—and I’ll have Pryor come himself and look at the floor. You get on with Hayles’s workroom and I’ll make a start on Mrs. Claire’s times to Maidenhead.… And I must see the people at the Dame Heureuse to-night. Think of anything else?”
“Did you think of sending a man of our own down to … that village where Hayles might have gone?”
“Potter’s a good man. He’ll do till I’ve talked it over with Franklin.”
“Then is it any use going through the list of window-cutting specialists? It might have been a pro.”
“Don’t you believe it! No pro would have shot France for fun. It isn’t as if there was a struggle. And there wasn’t a thing touched. However”—and the General got on his greatcoat and muffler and stamped off.
But what he was thinking of as the car moved along to St. Martin’s Chambers, was not that elimination on the value of which he had so much insisted to Norris—or even the fact that, but for Lucy Oliver, precious little had been eliminated. What was worrying the General was two things that up to then had scarce been mentioned—the confession in France’s writing, under the body of Somers; and the long, silky hairs on the settee in France’s bedroom.
CHAPTER XVIII
POTTER STRIKES OIL
Had Potter been a golfer, his description of his day’s doings might reasonably have been “a perfect round”; every drive clean away, approaches bang up and putts well in—until perhaps at the eighteenth. He started off well by getting clear of town in his little two-seater before the dusk ended, and Ripley Norton was reached by teatime. At the “Hound and Huntsman” he ventured on his first question—to the ostler.
“I suppose you haven’t seen anything of Mr. Kenneth Hayles this afternoon?”
To his enormous surprise the answer was in the affirmative. The chase, in other words, seemed to be over.
“Yes, sir. He came along past here about an hour ago.”
“Good!” said Potter. “Where’s he live?”
Ten minutes later he drew in the car alongside a trimmed thorn hedge that fronted a rambling, white-walled house whose white gate was plain in the darkness. Moreover, a few yards ahead at the end of a paved path, a light showed clearly in a downstairs room. Potter knocked.
The light went out as though his knock had been a conjuror’s pistol shot; there was a sound of shuffling and finally the door was opened by a middle-aged woman in what might be called “civilian” costume. She put out her head like a hen from a coop and said nothing.
“Is Mr. Hayles in?”
“No, he isn’t. He’s away.”
“But I just inquired at the ‘Hound and Huntsman’ and they told me he was in the village this afternoon!”
“They must have made a mistake. He’s in London… he’s very ill.”
“Curious!” said Potter. “Might I come in for a minute? You see, I’ve come down for Mrs. Hayles. Mr. Hayles got a bit light-headed this morning and got away from the house and nobody knows where he is. We thought he might have come here.”
She waited for a moment or two, making up her mind apparently whether or not Potter was a specious and dangerous character, then, “Would you come round to the back door?”
Potter moved off gingerly as directed. Through the side gate was a kitchen garden with fruit trees that came as far as the door itself. In the large kitchen was a fire and a light, and a girl of under twenty was laying a cloth. A quarter of an hour later he was joining them at tea and, thanks to a homely recital of his private affairs, was hearing those of his fellow feeders, and the Hayles family in particular.
Mrs. Burgess, he learned for instance, was an old family servant. Mrs. Hayles was a good mistress and had the money. Mr. Hayles was regarded as delicate. He had definitely not been there that afternoon—the light Potter had seen was that of the housekeeper “getting something.” Moreover, he heard news of the rest of the triumvirate. Peter Claire had strains of the stand-offish and the cruel in him. As a boy he’d been inclined to give himself airs and once he’d tied together a cat and dog by the tail, with horrible results. He was described as rolling in money. Michael France had been of the mischievous, lovable, forgivable type—with a tongue like July butter.
Potter prepared for his long shot. He waved to the window. “I see you’ve got some nice young fruit trees out there. My sister usually sends me some fruit from the country every year, only she couldn’t this year. The wasps got most of it.”
“We had a big nest up the garden, didn’t we, Florrie?” said the younger Mabel.
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