“And anyway,” she added, “it would be the blacksmith who did it, not her. A really good case there. Think how that brawny arm could wield a sandbag! And his wife would never notice his absence with seven children to look after. She wouldn’t have time to notice a mere man.”
“This is degenerating into mere idiocy,” said Charles.
“It is rather,” agreed Emily. “Counting losers hasn’t been a great success.”
“What about you?” said Charles.
“Me?”
“Where were you when the crime was committed?”
“How extraordinary! I never thought of that. I was in London, of course. But I don’t know that I could prove it. I was alone in my flat.”
“There you are,” said Charles. “Motive and everything. Your young man coming into twenty thousand pounds, what more do you want?”
“You are clever, Charles,” said Emily. “I can see that really I’m a most suspicious character. I never thought of it before.”
Twenty-seven
NARRACOTT ACTS
Two mornings later Emily was seated in Inspector Narracott’s office. She had come over from Sittaford that morning.
Inspector Narracott looked at her appraisingly. He admired Emily’s pluck, her courageous determination not to give in and her resolute cheerfulness. She was a fighter, and Inspector Narracott admired fighters. It was his private opinion that she was a great deal too good for Jim Pearson, even if that young man was innocent of the murder.
“It’s generally understood in books,” he said, “that the police are intent on having a victim and don’t in the least care if that victim is innocent or not as long as they have enough evidence to convict him. That’s not the truth, Miss Trefusis, it’s only the guilty man we want.”
“Do you honestly believe Jim to be guilty, Inspector Narracott?”
“I can’t give you an official answer to that, Miss Trefusis. But I’ll tell you this—that we are examining not only the evidence against him but the evidence against other people very carefully.”
“You mean against his brother—Brian?”
“A very unsatisfactory gentleman, Mr. Brian Pearson. Refused to answer questions or to give any information about himself, but I think—” Inspector Narracott’s slow Devonshire smile widened, “I think I can make a pretty good guess at some of his activities. If I am right I shall know in another half hour. Then there’s the lady’s husband, Mr. Dering.”
“You’ve seen him?” asked Emily curiously.
Inspector Narracott looked at her vivid face, and felt tempted to relax official caution. Leaning back in his chair he recounted his interview with Mr. Dering, then from a file at his elbow he took out a copy of the wireless message he had dispatched to Mr. Rosenkraun. “That’s what I sent,” he said. “And here’s the reply.”
Emily read it.
Narracott 2 Drysdale Road Exeter. Certainly confirm Mr. Dering’s statement. He was in my company all Friday afternoon. Rosenkraun.
“Oh!—bother,” said Emily, selecting a milder word than she had meant to use, knowing that the police force was old-fashioned and easily shocked.
“Ye-es,” said Inspector Narracott reflectively. “It’s annoying, isn’t it?”
And his slow Devonshire smile broke out again.
“But I am a suspicious man, Miss Trefusis. Mr. Dering’s reasons sounded very plausible—but I thought it a pity to play into his hands too completely. So I sent another wireless message.”
Again he handed her two pieces of paper.
The first ran:
Information wanted re murder of Captain Trevelyan. Do you support Martin Dering’s statement of alibi for Friday afternoon. Divisional Inspector Narracott Exeter.
The return message showed agitation and a reckless disregard for expense.
Had no idea it was criminal case did not see Martin Dering Friday Agreed support his statement as one friend to another believed his wife was having him watched for divorce proceedings.
“Oh,” said Emily. “Oh!—you are clever, Inspector.”
The Inspector evidently thought that he had been rather clever. His smile was gentle and contented.
“How men do stick together,” went on Emily looking over the telegrams. “Poor Sylvia. In some ways I really think that men are beasts. That’s why,” she added, “it’s so nice when one finds a man on whom one can really rely.”
And she smiled admiringly at the Inspector.
“Now, all this is very confidential, Miss Trefusis,” the Inspector warned her. “I have gone further than I should in letting you know about this.”
“I think it’s adorable of you,” said Emily. “I shall never never forget it.”
“Well, mind,” the Inspector warned her. “Not a word to anybody.”
“You mean that I am not to tell Charles—Mr. Enderby.”
“Journalists will be journalists,” said Inspector Narracott. “However well you have got him tamed, Miss Trefusis—well, news is news, isn’t it?”
“I won’t tell him then,” said Emily. “I think I’ve got him muzzled all right, but as you say newspaper men will be newspaper men.”
“Never part with information unnecessarily. That’s my rule,” said Inspector Narracott.
A faint twinkle appeared in Emily’s eyes, her unspoken thought being that Inspector Narracott had infringed this rule rather badly during the last half hour.
A sudden recollection came into her mind, not of course that it probably mattered now. Everything seemed to be pointing in a totally different direction. But still it would be nice to know.
“Inspector Narracott!” she said suddenly. “Who is Mr. Duke?”
“Mr. Duke?”
She thought the Inspector was rather taken aback by her questions.
“You remember,” said Emily, “we met you coming out of his cottage in Sittaford.”
“Ah, yes, yes, I remember. To tell you the truth, Miss Trefusis, I thought I would like to have an independent account of that table-turning business. Major Burnaby is not a first-rate hand at description.”
“And yet,” said Emily thoughtfully, “if I had been you, I should have gone to somebody like Mr. Rycroft for it. Why Mr. Duke?”
There was a silence and then the Inspector said:
“Just a matter of opinion.”
“I wonder. I wonder if the police know something about Mr. Duke.”
Inspector Narracott didn’t answer. He had got his eyes fixed very steadily on the blotting paper.
“The man who leads a blameless life!” said Emily, “that seems to describe Mr. Duke awfully accurately, but perhaps he hasn’t always led a blameless life? Perhaps the police know that?”
She saw a faint quiver on Inspector Narracott’s face as he tried to conceal a smile.
“You like guessing, don’t you, Miss Trefusis?” he said amiably.
“When people don’t tell you things you have to guess!” retaliated Emily.
“If a man, as you say, is leading a blameless life,” Inspector Narracott said, “and if it would be an annoyance and an inconvenience for him to have his past life raked up, well, the police are capable of keeping their own counsel. We have no wish to give a man away.”
“I see,” said Emily, “but all the same—you went to see him, didn’t you? That looks as though you thought, to begin with at any rate, that he might have had a hand in it. I wish—I wish I knew who Mr. Duke really was? And what particular branch of criminology he indulged in in the past?”
She looked appealingly at Inspector Narracott but the latter preserved a wooden face, and realizing that on this point she could not hope to move him, Emily sighed and took her departure.
When she had gone the Inspector sat staring at the blotting pad, a trace of a smile still lingering on his lips. Then he rang the bell and one of his underlings entered.
“Well?” demanded Inspector Narracott.
“Quite right, sir. But it wasn’t the Duchy at Princetown, it w
as the hotel at Two Bridges.”
“Ah!” The Inspector took the papers the other handed to him.
“Well,” he said. “That settles it all right. Have you followed up the other young chap’s movements on Friday?”
“He certainly arrived at Exhampton by the last train, but I haven’t found out yet what time he left London. Inquiries are being made.”
Narracott nodded.
“Here is the entry from Somerset House, sir.”
Narracott unfolded it. It was the record of a marriage in 1894 between William Martin Dering and Martha Elizabeth Rycroft.
“Ah!” said the Inspector, “anything else?”
“Yes, sir. Mr. Brian Pearson sailed from Australia on a Blue Funnel Boat, the Phidias. She touched at Cape Town but no passengers of the name of Willett were aboard. No mother and daughter at all from South Africa. There was a Mrs. and Miss Evans and a Mrs. and Miss Johnson from Melbourne—the latter answer the description of the Willetts.”
“H’m,” said the Inspector—“Johnson. Probably neither Johnson nor Willett is the right name. I think I’ve got them taped out all right. Anything more?”
There was nothing else it seemed.
“Well,” said Narracott, “I think we have got enough to go on with.”
Twenty-eight
BOOTS
“But, my dear young lady,” said Mr. Kirkwood, “what can you possibly expect to find at Hazelmoor? All Captain Trevelyan’s effects have been removed. The police have made a thorough search of the house. I quite understand your position and your anxiety that Mr. Pearson shall be—er—cleared if possible. But what can you do?”
“I don’t expect to find anything,” Emily replied, “or to notice anything that the police have overlooked. I can’t explain to you, Mr. Kirkwood. I want—I want to get the atmosphere of the place. Please let me have the key. There’s no harm in it.”
“Certainly there’s no harm in it,” said Mr. Kirkwood with dignity.
“Then please be kind,” said Emily.
So Mr. Kirkwood was kind and handed over the key with an indulgent smile. He did his best to come with her, which catastrophe was only averted by great tact and firmness on Emily’s part.
That morning Emily had received a letter. It was couched in the following terms:
“Dear Miss Trefusis,”—wrote Mrs. Belling. “You said as how you would like to hear if anything at all should happen that was in any way out of the common even if not important, and, as this is peculiar, though not in any way important, I thought it my duty Miss to let you know at once, hoping this will catch you by the last post tonight or the first post tomorrow. My niece she came round and said it wasn’t of any importance but peculiar which I agreed with her. The police said, and it was generally agreed that nothing was taken from Captain Trevelyan’s house and nothing was in a manner of speaking nothing that is of any value, but something there is missing though not noticed at the time being unimportant. But it seems Miss that a pair of the Captain’s boots is missing which Evans noticed when he went over the things with Major Burnaby. Though I don’t suppose it is of any importance Miss I thought you would like to know. It was a pair of boots Miss the thick kind you rubs oil into and which the Captain would have worn if he had gone out in the snow but as he didn’t go out in the snow it doesn’t seem to make sense. But missing they are and who took them nobody knows and though I well know it’s of no importance I felt it my duty to write and hoping this finds you as it leaves me at present and hoping you are not worrying too much about the young gentleman I remain Miss Yours truly—Mrs. J. Belling.”
Emily had read and re-read this letter. She had discussed it with Charles.
“Boots,” said Charles thoughtfully. “It doesn’t seem to make sense.”
“It must mean something,” Emily pointed out. “I mean—why should a pair of boots be missing?”
“You don’t think Evans is inventing?”
“Why should he? And after all if people do invent, they invent something sensible. Not a silly pointless thing like this.”
“Boots suggests something to do with footprints,” said Charles thoughtfully.
“I know. But footprints don’t seem to enter into this case at all. Perhaps if it hadn’t come on to snow again—”
“Yes, perhaps, but even then.”
“Could he have given them to some tramp,” suggested Charles, “and then the tramp did him in.”
“I suppose that’s possible,” said Emily, “but it doesn’t sound very like Captain Trevelyan. He might perhaps have found a man some work to do or given him a shilling, but he wouldn’t have pressed his best winter boots on him.”
“Well, I give it up,” said Charles.
“I’m not going to give it up,” said Emily. “By hook or by crook I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”
Accordingly she came to Exhampton and went first to the Three Crowns, where Mrs. Belling received her with great enthusiasm.
“And your young gentleman still in prison, Miss! Well, it’s a cruel shame and none of us don’t believe it was him at least I would like to hear them say so when I am about. So you got my letter? You’d like to see Evans? Well, he lives right round the corner, 85 Fore Street it is. I wish I could come with you, but I can’t leave the place, but you can’t mistake it.”
Emily did not mistake it. Evans himself was out, but Mrs. Evans received her and invited her in. Emily sat down and induced Mrs. Evans to do so also and plunge straight into the matter on hand.
“I’ve come to talk about what your husband told Mrs. Belling. I mean about a pair of Captain Trevelyan’s boots being missing.”
“It’s an odd thing, to be sure,” said the girl.
“Your husband is quite certain about it?”
“Oh, yes. Wore these boots most of the time in winter, the Captain did. Big ones they were, and he wore a couple of pairs of socks inside them.”
Emily nodded.
“They can’t have gone to be mended or anything like that?” she suggested.
“Not without Evans knowing, they couldn’t,” said his wife boastfully.
“No, I suppose not.”
“It’s queer like,” said Mrs. Evans, “but I don’t suppose it had anything to do with the murder, do you, Miss?”
“It doesn’t seem likely,” agreed Emily.
“Have they found out anything new, Miss?” The girl’s voice was eager.
“Yes, one or two things—nothing very important.”
“Seeing as that the Inspector from Exeter was here again today, I thought as though they might.”
“Inspector Narracott?”
“Yes, that’s the one, Miss.”
“Did he come by my train?”
“No, he came by car. He went to the Three Crowns first and asked about the young gentleman’s luggage.”
“What young gentleman’s luggage?”
“The gentleman you go about with, Miss.”
Emily stared.
“They asked Tom,” went on the girl, “I was passing by just after and he told me about it. He’s a one for noticing is Tom. He remembered there were two labels on the young gentleman’s luggage, one to Exeter and one to Exhampton.”
A sudden smile illuminated Emily’s face as she pictured the crime being committed by Charles in order to provide a scoop for himself. One could, she decided, write a gruesome little story on that theme. But she admired Inspector Narracott’s thoroughness in checking every detail to do with anyone, however remote their connection with the crime. He must have left Exeter almost immediately after his interview with her. A fast car would easily beat the train, and in any case she had lunched in Exeter.
“Where did the Inspector go afterwards?” she asked.
“To Sittaford, Miss. Tom heard him tell the driver.”
“To Sittaford House?”
Brian Pearson was, she knew, still staying at Sittaford House with the Willetts.
“No, Miss, to Mr. Duke’s.”
<
br /> Duke again. Emily felt irritated and baffled. Always Duke—the unknown factor. She ought, she felt, to be able to deduce him from the evidence, but he seemed to have produced the same effect on everyone—a normal, ordinary, pleasant man.
“I’ve got to see him,” said Emily to herself. “I’ll go straight there as soon as I get back to Sittaford.”
Then she had thanked Mrs. Evans, gone on to Mr. Kirkwood’s and obtained the key, and was now standing in the hall of Hazelmoor and wondering how and what she had expected to feel there.
She mounted the stairs slowly and went into the first room at the top of the stairs. This was quite clearly Captain Trevelyan’s bedroom. It had, as Mr. Kirkwood had said, been emptied of personal effects. Blankets were folded in a neat pile, the drawers were empty, there was not so much as a hanger left in the cupboard. The boot cupboard showed a row of bare shelves.
Emily sighed and then turned and went downstairs. Here was the sitting room where the dead man had lain, the snow blowing in from the open window.
She tried to visualize the scene. Whose hand had struck Captain Trevelyan down, and why? Had he been killed at five and twenty past five as everyone believed—or had Jim really lost his nerve and lied? Had he failed to make anyone hear at the front door and gone round to the window, looked in and seen his dead uncle’s body and dashed away in an agony of fear? If only she knew. According to Mr. Dacres, Jim stuck to his story. Yes—but Jim might have lost his nerve. She couldn’t be sure.
Had there been, as Mr. Rycroft had suggested, someone else in the house—someone who had overheard the quarrel and seized his chance?
If so—did that throw any light on the boot problem? Had someone been upstairs—perhaps in Captain Trevelyan’s bedroom? Emily passed through the hall again. She took a quick look into the dining room; there were a couple of trunks there neatly strapped and labelled. The sideboard was bare. The silver cups were at Major Burnaby’s bungalow.
She noticed, however, that the prize of three new novels, an account of which Charles had had from Evans and had reported with amusing embellishments to her, had been forgotten and lay dejectedly on a chair.
The Sittaford Mystery Page 19