The Dusky Hour

by E. R. Punshon

  “I’ll have to go over to Way Side and talk to Thoms,” the colonel decided. “I’ll look in at Sevens on the way, too. It’s likely enough, if Bennett and young Moffatt were both members of the Cut and Come Again, they met there, and Moffatt recognised the body but didn’t want to say. You had better come with me, sergeant. It’ll have to be after the inquest, though. No time before.”

  “I wish we had the finger-prints of the whole Sevens party,” Bobby observed. “We may have some of them on file.”

  “Can’t suggest taking them at this stage,” decided the colonel. “And even if we had them, would that help to identify the murderer? Because that’s our job. Nothing else.”

  “No, sir,” agreed Bobby. “I think Thoms and Reeves have seen the body?”

  “Yes,” answered the colonel. “Both denied all knowledge. I questioned them afterwards. Thoms seems a sulky, suspicious young fellow. He gave me a bad impression. And then, of course, now there’s this affair with Bennett shows he was lying when he said he didn’t know him. We shall have him there, anyhow.”

  “He’ll probably plead he actually didn’t recognise the body,” Bobby suggested. “I’ve known that happen. And you can’t prove anything. Death does make a difference.”

  “Not that much,” grumbled the colonel. “I pressed him about his fight with Noll Moffatt. Most insolent tone he adopted. Told me it was no business of ours. He denied ever having been at the Towers Poultry Farm. I said that was curious, as his master made so many purchases there. He only mumbled something about not being the housekeeper. I didn’t feel at all satisfied. I must find out how Hayes came to employ him.”

  “That might be a useful line to follow up,” agreed Bobby.

  “Reeves,” continued the colonel, “was quite cool and collected. Positive he had never seen Bennett. Both he and Thoms refused to have their finger-prints taken. I couldn’t insist. But Reeves left his all the same. He went into the Red Lion bar and had some beer. One of my men was smart enough to have his glass collected, and there were quite good prints on it. Now there’s a phone call through to say they’ve been identified, and he’s well known.”

  “Is he, though?” Bobby exclaimed. “I wondered if that was just a tale about recognising me because he had seen me in court.”

  “Served two sentences for burglary, three years and five years,” said the colonel. “Interesting, eh?”

  Bobby agreed that it was.

  “Had a good character till about ten years ago,” the colonel continued. “Then he was discharged without references. A diamond ring had disappeared and he was suspected. Apparently he was innocent of that, for the ring was found afterwards down a wash-basin waste-pipe. I suppose he might have put it there to avoid discovery. Anyhow, by that time he had been caught red-handed and was serving a three-year sentence. After his release he was caught again and got five years, half a dozen other cases being taken into consideration. His time was up about eighteen months ago, and since then nothing has been heard of him till now. During his ticket-of-leave period he worked as a waiter in a small Brighton cafe and seems to have been quite satisfactory. Odd to have him turning up here and now, but can there be any connection with the Bennett murder? I don’t see what myself.”

  Bobby didn’t either. A coincidence, perhaps, and nothing more. But Bobby had grown to dislike coincidence nearly as much as a modern poet dislikes rhyme, rhythm, and sense. He said:

  “I was wondering, sir, if it might be as well to try to trace Mrs. O’Brien. I don’t know if that’s been thought of. It’s just possible she might have something to tell us.”

  The colonel nodded, a little pleased to show Scotland Yard they too, in the county constabulary, could think of things, even though murder cases were so rare in their well-ordered, law-abiding neighbourhoods.

  “I rang up Hayes to ask for her address,” he said. “He said he hadn’t got it, and didn’t know that of any of her friends. But he thought she was sure to write soon, either for a reference or to ask for some of her things she had left behind to be sent on. He promised to let us know as soon as he heard. They say at the station that she booked to London, so I’ve asked your people to make inquiries at the hotels.”

  “There’s the Dukeries Restaurant, too, near Leicester Square. Mr. Fisher’s young woman saw her there, and she might go again.”

  “Yes, that could be followed up,” agreed the colonel, making a note of it, and, after a little more talk, Bobby retired.

  The inquest had been called for noon and did not take long, only formal evidence being offered and then an adjournment being ordered to allow, in the customary phrase, “the police to complete their inquiries.”

  But then there had to be time taken for luncheon, and various other matters had to receive attention, so that it was late, and darkness had set in, before the colonel and Bobby were able to present themselves at Sevens, where they were admitted by Reeves, the ex-burglar – if he was an “ex’ – and ushered into the library. There they were a little surprised to find not only Mr. Moffatt, but Mr. Pegley, who had ventured to call, it seemed, to hear the result of the inquest and any further developments.

  “Interested, you know,” he explained; “on the spot at the time.”

  It struck Bobby as a frank remark, and frankness is the natural use of innocence and therefore often used by guilt as well.

  The colonel was asking about the other members of the Sevens party. Ena, it seemed, was out, but would be back soon. Noll Moffatt was in his studio, as he called it; that “damn’ dark hole of his,” as his father generally referred to it; his “cubby-hole,” as his sister named it. He would be sent for. Mr. Larson had gone back to London. His address was Royal Chambers, the enormous and well-known block of buildings in Park Lane that had some claim to be considered the ugliest ever erected. It seemed he had no office, as he conducted all his business from his flat there.

  “Saves overhead, staff, and rent and all that,” observed Mr. Pegley enviously. “Where you score doing underground work for the swells – hearing at luncheon at the Ritz that one big nob wants to sell a railway or a mine, and at dinner at the Savoy that another wants to buy, bringing them both to meet at the Carlton for cocktails, and pocketing a fat cheque for commission. Enough to make you turn Labour when you think how you have to sweat yourself to earn a decent living. Believe it or not, I know the Stock Exchange list almost by heart, and that takes some doing.”

  “We must get in touch with him,” the colonel remarked, and explained they were trying to place the exact position of everyone in the neighbourhood at the actual moment of the murder; at, that is, four o’clock in the afternoon.

  “Well, I can tell you where I was,” Mr. Moffatt answered promptly. “I like forty winks sometimes. So after lunch that day I came in here, wrote a letter or two, had a look at The Times, and then I expect I dozed off. I often do.”

  “Did anyone else come into the room during the afternoon?” the colonel asked.

  “No one; they know better,” Mr. Moffatt answered with a grim smile, apparently quite unaware of the implications of this question. “They all know I don’t like being bothered in the afternoon. No one would unless it was something special.”

  “I see. Thank you,” murmured the colonel, and, glancing up, saw that Bobby was looking at the French windows, and guessed he, too, was reflecting how easy it would be to open those windows and slip out unperceived, to return the same way equally unnoticed.

  Not that there was anything to show that that had actually happened. But the possibility had to be remembered, and Colonel Warden looked more worried than ever as he asked one or two more questions about Mr. Moffatt’s trips to America.

  It amused Bobby a little, when he remembered the chief constable’s opinion that Mr. Moffatt would not make a good liar, to note with what a calm assurance that gentleman put forward the trip on which he had met Larson as his first visit to the States. The evidence that he had gone there pretty regularly every year for some time before
that was, however, conclusive. To Colonel Warden’s inquiry whether he intended to go again soon, he replied by a shake of the head.

  “I might, of course,” he said. “Ena enjoyed it. It’s her uncle, my brother-in-law, we went to see. He’s living in Boston now; used to be Hawaii, and that was a bit too far. There was some talk of it last year, but when I wrote for a berth they were full up, and so was the next boat, and then I got a touch of influenza and we gave it up. Might go next year.”

  Either he was ignorant of the blacklisting or he possessed a remarkable self-control, Bobby thought. He wondered which was the correct explanation.

  The colonel looked a little disconcerted, too, as he turned to Mr. Pegley.

  “We have to make our record as complete as possible.” he said, “so perhaps you wouldn’t mind telling us where you were about four that afternoon.”

  Mr. Pegley had no objection in the world, but could not undertake to be accurate to a half-hour or so. He said slowly, plainly trying to remember:

  “I left town in my car early and had lunch at the Oakley Road House. After that I made a call on a client. I wanted to advise her rather strongly against taking money out of war loan to put it in a concern I have confidential information isn’t too good. Then I came on here for my chat with Mr. Moffatt, who had very kindly suggested my staying to dinner. I should imagine I got here somewhere about five. At four I would be somewhere on the Bath Road, but Lord knows where exactly; I don’t. Anyhow, I wasn’t anywhere near the place where this poor cove of yours got done in,” he added cheerfully.

  But for that, it seemed, there was no evidence save his own.

  “Could you give me your client’s name?” the colonel asked.

  Mr. Pegley shook his head smilingly.

  “Confidential,” he declared. “One of my rules – never give a client’s name. Special reason in this case, too, as the lady doesn’t want hubby to know she dabbles. Besides, what would be the good? She could only say I was there, and didn’t stop to tea as she wanted me to. She wouldn’t get any nearer than that; very vague about time, ladies often are.”

  Ena had come into the room now. She had listened to all this; and her own account of her movements that afternoon was that after lunch she read a little and then went out for a solitary walk – towards Winders Green, however, not towards Battling Copse, so she had neither seen nor heard anything of what had happened. She did not remember having seen or spoken to anyone during her walk except Mrs. Markham, the wife of Mr. Markham, the farmer on whose land Battling Copse bordered, and Mr. Larson, who had passed, coming from the Winders Green direction by the path crossing the fields and skirting Higham Wood. It was growing dark; probably it was about half past four, but of the exact time she could not be sure. Anyhow, she was back in the house pouring out the tea at five. She was sure it was Mr. Larson, because at first in the dusk they had both thought it was one of Mr. Markham’s labourers till he had lifted his hat in passing, as no labourer would have done. Later a comparison of time and place had made certain it was Mr. Larson. He explained he had not stopped to speak as he had seen she was talking to a friend. He had lost a gold cigarette-case on that walk, Ena added. Apparently he had seated himself somewhere for a rest and a cigarette, had put the case down, and had then forgotten it when he went on. Luckily it had been found by probably the first person using the path when it was light next morning, still lying on the stile where Mr. Larson had left it. He had been very pleased to get it back, and had liberally rewarded the lucky finder.

  Then Reeves was summoned, and appeared, pale, thin, and noiseless as ever, but with a certain lurking apprehension, Bobby thought, visible in his uneasy eyes. At the colonel’s suggestion, Reeves was questioned in private, so that he might not be embarrassed by his employer’s presence. But he had little to say. He had spent the afternoon carrying out his usual duties, and then reading the paper in his pantry and possibly snoozing at times. He confirmed as far as he could the stories told by the others. Mr. Moffatt was never disturbed in the afternoon, and did occasionally – this in answer to a casual question of Bobby’s – sometimes stroll out into the grounds by the French windows. He might or might not have done so that particular day. Mr. Pegley had arrived about half past five or six, or possibly a little later – in ample time, anyhow, for a wash and a chat before dinner. Miss Ena and Mr. Larson had been out for walks, and he had heard of the discovery of Mr. Larson’s gold cigarette-case left lying on a stile for the first person passing to pick up, and lucky it had been someone honest, though Mr. Larson had come down handsomely with a pound note. Reeves added gloomily that it was easy enough to see what all these questions were getting at. He supposed he himself could have slipped out easily enough without anyone knowing, got to Battling Copse, committed the murder, and returned without being seen.

  “Only I didn’t, and why should I?” he grumbled. “Never having set eyes on the chap.”

  “There’s no question of that, my man,” the colonel told him. “Preliminary inquiries do not indicate suspicion.”

  “Oh, yes, they do,” retorted Reeves, a little less than usual now the well-trained and deferential servant, “when it’s the likes of me. There’s Mr. Noll coming in now,” he added, as they heard the front door open and shut. “Take a lot to make you suspect him, wouldn’t it?”

  “Why should we suspect him?” Bobby asked quickly, and Reeves looked at him sideways and said:

  “Everyone’s talking about the bit of photographic film that was found, and about Mr. Moffatt’s pistol being missing.”

  “If everyone’s talking, you had better tell them not to,” snapped the colonel, “or they’ll be getting into trouble.”

  “Yes, sir; certainly, sir,” answered Reeves, at once the smooth, deferential butler again.

  CHAPTER 15

  MR. HAYES HAS SUSPICIONS

  The interview with Noll Moffatt did not prove very satisfactory. The young man seemed in an angry and suspicious mood; he answered questions as briefly as he could and would evidently have liked to refuse to answer at all. He did refuse once again to give any explanation of his quarrel with Thoms. It had nothing to do with the police. Scowling at Bobby, he wanted to know why Bobby had been so anxious to save Thoms from the jolly good thrashing he, Noll Moffatt, had been about to administer.

  To Bobby this seemed an optimistic view. Thoms was probably a stone or two the heavier of the pair, certainly he was three or four inches taller, and it is an old and true saying in the boxing world that a “good big ’un will always beat a good little ’un.”

  “I think,” Bobby remarked, “I heard you say something to Thoms about his wanting to throw you down the chalk-pit – too?”

  “Well, what about it?” snarled Noll. “Eavesdropping, too, were you? One chap had been thrown down there, hadn’t he?”

  He stuck to it that what he had said had been no more than a passing reference to the recent tragedy, and had had no other meaning. To further inquiries he answered defiantly that he had no idea where exactly he might have been at four o’clock in the afternoon on the day of the murder. He didn’t go about with a stop-watch and a time-table. He had been out all afternoon with his camera. Probably he had been quite near Battling Copse most of the time. But he had neither seen nor heard anything unusual. Asked what photographs he had taken that afternoon, he got rather red in the face – unnecessarily so, it seemed – and said he had only taken one or two. A bull under a beech-tree had offered a fairly good subject, and he had snapped it and that was about all. They could see the snap if they liked, but it wouldn’t be any good; it was neither signed nor dated. Nor had he seen anyone during the afternoon who could confirm his statements. He added with some violence that if they thought he had murdered Bennett they could jolly well go on thinking so. He didn’t care.

  The colonel observed mildly that an inquiry did not necessarily imply a suspicion; and Bobby observed in his most mournful tones that it was always like that: if you asked some people if it had stopped
raining, they would be quite capable of interpreting the remark as a subtle attempt to trap them into an admission of guilt; and Noll told them heatedly to “come off it.”

  “Think I don’t know what that fellow’s digging bullets out of trees for?” he asked hotly.

  Bobby and the colonel both looked and felt a little disconcerted. They had hoped that the activities of the police emissary trying to recover the bullets fired from Mr. Moffatt’s missing automatic by Noll when amusing himself with target practice would go unremarked, or at any rate with their significance not realised.

  “It is necessary,” the colonel said mildly, “for us to ascertain if possible what pistol was used. Probably we shall test all we can trace. It is a pity Mr. Moffatt’s can’t be found.”

  “I haven’t seen the thing for months,” Noll declared. “It was in a drawer in dad’s room. Anyone could have got at it.”

  Noll also denied stoutly that he had recognised Bennett. If Bennett had been a member of the Cut and Come Again he might very likely have seen him there; he might even have exchanged a word or two with him. If so, that might account for a vague feeling he had had on his first sight of the body that he had somewhere seen someone like the dead man. But emphatically he had not recognised him or associated him with the Cut and Come Again. One met heaps of people. He noticed people’s looks and whether they would “take” well, but he couldn’t often put names and dates and places to them.

  From that position there was no moving him. He agreed that of course he had met Miss Molly at the club. He spoke of her as Miss Towers, though he appeared to know that her real name was Oulton, but, then, Henrietta Towers had mentioned that her mother and her half-sister were generally known as Mrs. and Miss Towers, as the farm itself was known as the Towers Poultry Farm and Tea Garden.