“Then there’s nothing more for me to do here,” said Ripponden, with the air of a man who is anxious to get away.
He took leave of the Inspector and went off across the grass towards the point where he had left his car in the sunken road. As he disappeared, the Inspector pulled out his prismatic compass and walked across the verandah to the spot where the bullet had been picked up. He repeated his observation of the bearing of the chair from this point; and then he began carefully to pace along the line of the shot. This was easy enough until he got among the undergrowth; but then the bushes prevented him from following a bee-line, and he had to help himself out with his compass in order to be sure that he was really keeping the true course. The high shrubs concealed the verandah and made direct reference impossible.
Suddenly he pulled up sharp. Face-high before him in the air there hung a lamentable object; the draggled body of a dead cat, open-mouthed, its limbs stiffly extended as it swung. A noose of stout twine was round its neck and it was suspended from a tree-branch.
For a moment the Inspector stared at it in surprise, with which some anger was mingled, for he was fond of cats. Who could be responsible for a thing like that? Then a recollection crossed his mind, and the piteous little body became associated vaguely with the boy at Carron Hill. Only a cruel boy would play that sort of trick. Another gleam of intuition made Westerham step forward and examine the woebegone object more closely.
“Hung up, and then shot at,” he muttered to himself as he discovered several bullet-wounds in the creature’s skin. “That’s a pretty trick!”
He looked round him and detected a second piece of twine dangling from another branch near at hand.
“He seems to have been at it there too,” Westerham grumbled. “That must have been earlier, and he’s cut the poor brute down and thrown it away, apparently. A nice young man, evidently.”
Then a thought occurred to him and he went round to the farther side of the suspended cat.
“Suppose a boy of fourteen were firing at that poor brute,” he reflected, “he’d have to elevate the barrel of his gun a bit above the horizontal. It’s face-high for me; it would be higher than his head. Let’s see roughly.”
The bushes made a tiny glade at this spot, so that quite clearly the shooter must have been quite close to his victim. The Inspector retired as far as the undergrowth allowed, and then, crouching down to a boy’s height, he went through the pantomime of taking aim at the carcase in the air. His imaginary line of fire, he noticed, was clear of the further undergrowth and might easily have carried a bullet undeviated onto the verandah of the Chalet.
“I’ll have to give that young beggar a gruelling and get the truth out of him,” was the Inspector’s conclusion as he made his way back to the Chalet.
Still he was far from thinking the case sufficiently clear to make precautions unnecessary. When he reached the Chalet, he called up the sergeant and, with his assistance, shifted the tea table and all its paraphernalia into the sitting room, where they would be free from any tampering.
“Now, I’m going up to Carron Hill,” he explained. “You, sergeant, will be in charge here until the ambulance comes up to remove the body. Here’s a key of the Chalet. You’ll have the constable with you in case anything happens and you need to send a message. I’ll arrange later for the removal of that tea table and the things on it. Don’t run any risks in shifting these cups and so forth; even the lees in them may have some importance, for all one can tell. I’ve labelled them, so there’s no mistake as to which is which. And don’t go finger-marking the silver. I may want to go over it for fingerprints later on. Oh, and another thing. There’s a dead cat hung from a tree in the wood there. Come here and I’ll point out the direction. See where I mean? Well, go in there and cut it down. Cut the twine well above the noose. And bring the body here to be collected with the rest of the exhibits. Do that yourself.”
He made the sergeant repeat his orders; then he turned to P. C. Gumley and demanded his report, which he listened to without comment. It added little to his knowledge.
Finally, having settled everything so far as the Chalet was concerned, he went over to where Miss Lindfield was still sitting.
“I haven’t come to bother you,” he explained, as she looked up with a start. “I’m afraid I’ve kept you here a long time, and you’ve been very helpful to us indeed. Just now, I’m going up to Carron Hill, and I think you’d better come with me in my car. You’re not really fit to walk any distance after all this strain. And besides, you may be able to help me in one or two things, up there,” he added, to reinforce his invitation.
Miss Lindfield made no difficulties. In fact, she seemed relieved by his offer.
“That’s very thoughtful of you. I don’t believe I could have faced the walk in my present state. My nerves seem to have gone to pieces, and I’m like a limp rag after this strain.”
As he accompanied her down to the sunken road, the Inspector remembered one thing he had overlooked.
“Do you mind giving me a key of the Chalet, if you have one? I’ve given Mrs. Haddon’s to my sergeant.”
“I have one in my bag.”
The Inspector, feigning surprise, thanked her for the key.
P. C. Gumley, on the verandah, watched the two retreating figures morosely, and reflected on the ease with which “a brass-faced wench like that” could get round “a sap-headed softie like this Westerham.”
“Ugh! These women! Delilahs, that’s what they are. Just Delilahs,” he commented to himself as he turned away.
Chapter Nine
The Consequences of Intestacy
When Miss Lindfield showed the Inspector into the drawing-room at Carron Hill, they found Frankie curled up on a chesterfield, engrossed in a twopenny boy’s paper. Leaning against the chesterfield beside him was the rook-rifle. Frankie looked up crossly as they came into the room and was about to bury himself again in his paper, when Miss Lindfield addressed him sharply. She had been holding herself in for a long time, now; and here at last was a victim upon whom she could release the strain of her nerves. The Inspector was somewhat surprised by this new aspect of Miss Lindfield’s character.
“Frankie! Put that paper down and attend to me. Were you in the spinney by the Chalet, this afternoon, shooting?”
Frankie turned round on the chesterfield and stared at Miss Lindfield in obvious surprise. He had never heard her speak to him in that tone before; and a glance at her face showed him an expression which was new in his experience. This wasn’t the sympathetic Aunt Connie, the kindly auxiliary on whom one could rely to avert the worst consequences of one’s little misdoings. This was a dangerous-looking Aunt Connie, with tight lips and frowning brows. At the sight of her, Frankie realised that something had gone far wrong. Reluctantly he twisted his feet off the chesterfield and faced her, cudgelling his brains to account for her anger.
“Well, what if I was?” he retorted with a defensive sulkiness. “You were going to meet me there, Aunt Connie, when you came back from your walk. And I had the gun with me ’cause you told me to take it. You were going to buy me more cartridges. I don’t see what you’re rowing me for.”
“Haven’t you been warned to be careful with that gun of yours?”
Frankie’s dull eyes grew even less expressive and more shifty than usual. Evidently, he saw, there were the makings of a bad row of some sort behind all this. Well, he would keep his mouth shut till he got his bearings, and then he could lie his way out of the business in some way or other. The least said the better, until he got his lie ready. He stole a sidelong glance at the stranger who had come into the room with Miss Lindfield, and, finding himself under scrutiny from that quarter, he hastily looked away again.
Miss Lindfield spread her cardigan across a chair-back. “This is what you call being careful? Do you see that?” She pointed to the two bullet-holes in the fabric. “You nearly shot me, you little wretch. Do you understand that? And why didn’t you come when I called you
, after you’d fired the shot?”
“I didn’t hear you,” Frankie mumbled in a surly tone.
“You must have heard me. I called more than once. Don’t lie about it, now.”
“I didn’t hear you,” Frankie repeated obstinately, with his eyes on the carpet.
“Didn’t you see me?”
Frankie had discovered his line of defence. Deny everything and see what they made of that.
“No. You can’t see anything in that wood. It’s too thick,” he protested doggedly.
“And yet you were firing your gun in it without caring where the shots went? You broke Mrs. Haddon’s window, too.”
“No, I didn’t. I wasn’t near her cottage,” he muttered still staring at the carpet.
“Don’t tell lies. I saw the bullet myself. What were you firing at?”
“Different things,” said Frankie, desperately.
Much to his relief, Miss Lindfield switched off to a fresh line of inquiry.
“You were to meet me in the spinney. Why weren’t you on the lookout for me?”
“I was. I waited ever so long. I thought you’d be there far sooner. Then I got tired of hanging about and I went off to meet you.”
“Indeed!” said Miss Lindfield, making no effort to conceal her scepticism. “And which road did you take?”
Her tone made it plain that she expected him to fall into a trap.
Frankie reflected for a moment. Should he tell the truth now or . . . ?
“I took the short cut. I thought you’d be coming that way.”
“Ah!” said Miss Lindfield, obviously disappointed by the answer.
She seemed about to put another question, then thought better of it, and washed her hands of the case.
“This is Inspector Westerham. He’s going to ask you some questions. You needn’t try to tell him any lies. You understand?”
“I’m not telling lies,” Frankie protested mechanically; but his demeanour lent no support to his words.
To his rather limited intellect, the world seemed to have been turned upside down in the last few minutes. Auntie Connie, the friend in need who had helped him often in the past, had turned in a flash into an open enemy. She had always swallowed his fictions without comment; and now she had made it plain that she did not believe a word he said even if it was the truth. Worse than that, she had brought in the police. In his very early days, Frankie had fallen into the hands of a nurse whose ultimate threat—so awful that it was never executed—was: “I’ll see the policeman gets you!” And round this menace, in Frankie’s childish brain, there had accreted a throng of dim horrors, all the worse for being formless. As he grew older, experience modified his views. But still, far down in the depths of his consciousness, there lurked something of the early terror; and rumours of the Third Degree rekindled it at times.
Inspector Westerham looked him up and down, critically, before putting his questions. He was not altogether satisfied with the way Miss Lindfield had broken the ground for him. She had sense enough to withhold the real trouble; but she had obviously given the boy a bad jar and put him so much on the defensive that it might be hard to extract anything whatever from him now. As to Frankie himself, the Inspector’s shrewd mind classified him at once: “A rank bad witness at the best.”
“Now, Frankie,” he began pleasantly, “I want to ask you one or two questions, as Miss Lindfield said. Answer them if you can. If you can’t answer, say you can’t. If you aren’t sure about anything, just say so. You understand?”
Frankie rubbed his toe into the pile of the carpet and muttered something in the affirmative. The Inspector’s display of friendliness failed to elicit any response. “It’s like his cheek, calling me ‘Frankie,’” was the boy’s mental comment.
“You took your rifle down to the spinney,” continued Westerham, ignoring Frankie’s hostility. “What time did you get there?”
“I dunno.”
“Haven’t you a watch?”
“It’s broken.”
“Was it long after lunch when you started?”
“A while.”
Westerham tried the boy with one or two other questions, but failed to drive him into any admission. Frankie had made up his mind that if the time was important to the Inspector, it must be because it would tell against him, and he was determined to deny his questioner any information on the subject. Westerham gave it up at last and turned to a fresh subject.
“You were shooting in the wood. What were you firing at?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Come, come!” said Westerham, sharply, “this won’t do. You must remember some things you shot at. Birds, for instance. Did you shoot at any birds? I saw a wood-pigeon there.”
“I shot at some birds,” Frankie admitted grudgingly.
The Inspector made a mental note that if that were so, Frankie’s gun must have been lifted above the horizontal and that a dropping shot on to the verandah was now a proved possibility.
“Did you shoot a cat?”
Frankie’s eyes slipped round momentarily to the Inspector’s face and then slid away again. This was evidently the real thing, he thought. They’d found out about his hanging up that cat and shooting the beastly thing to death while it choked at the end of the string. This was where he’d have to go warily.
“No, I didn’t. I found a dead cat and hung it up to shoot at.”
The Inspector, with a picture of the forlorn little corpse in his mind’s eye, easily guessed that the boy was lying to save himself. Without ado, he accepted the last statement at its face value and brushed the cruelty question aside.
“Funny notion, that,” he said, rather quizzically. “What made you think of hanging a dead cat up to shoot at?”
Frankie was obviously relieved to find that the deadness of the cat was accepted without question. Lest that matter should be reopened, he hastened to answer the Inspector’s query at some length.
“I’d got tired of shooting at a fixed target. I wanted something stiffer to hit. So Auntie Connie suggested something hung up at the end of a string and we fixed up a tin can so that it swung about in the wind. Then when I . . . found the dead cat, I thought it’d be more fun to hang it up and shoot at it. So I took away the can and hung up the cat.”
“I see. And you walked round it and shot at it, I suppose, just as it happened to swing, eh? By the way, that wasn’t only today, was it? You’ve had it hung there for a day or two?”
Frankie paused for a moment before answering. Then, apparently, he decided that here the truth could do no harm.
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s that,” said the Inspector cheerfully. “Now can you tell me what time it was when you left the wood to meet Miss Lindfield?”
Frankie’s eyes went sidelong to the incriminating cardigan on the chair-back. Since the cat affair had been got over so easily, it was evident that the real trouble centred in this other business. He thought swiftly and decided to stick to what he had said before.
“I don’t know. It was a good while after I got into the spinney. That’s all I can tell you. You said I wasn’t to say, unless I was sure. And I’m not sure.”
“You’re quite sure you’re not sure?” demanded the Inspector, watching him keenly.
“I’m dead sure,” Frankie returned firmly, guessing that here he was on absolutely safe ground.
Westerham realised that he had come up against a stone wall. The boy would never deviate from his denial.
“You’ve got some ammunition still left for this toy?”
He tapped the rook-rifle, as he spoke. Reluctantly, Frankie put his hand into his pocket and fished out a few cartridges.
“You may as well give me the lot,” Westerham said, with a touch of grimness. “You won’t be using this gun again. I shall have to confiscate it.”
Frankie’s face fell He had been calculating that they would make him pay for the broken window; and he regarded that as quite sufficient punishment in the matter
. He did not even know that he had broken the beastly thing; but one of his stray shots must have done it, somehow. He had an uneasy recollection that he had fired without thinking where his bullets might land. But to lose his gun was more than he had bargained for. In his strait, he turned for help to the old quarter.
“Auntie Connie! You won’t let him take my gun? I haven’t really done any harm with it.”
But that appeal was the match which fired the mine of Miss Lindfield’s pent-up emotions.
“You haven’t done any harm, you miserable little beast! Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve shot your Auntie Winnie—killed her. That’s one thing you’ve done. And you’ve robbed your father of £12,000. He’ll have something to say to you about that. And you’ve taken seven or eight thousand pounds out of my pocket as well. That’s what your shooting’s cost us.”
She pulled herself up suddenly with an obvious effort and turned to the Inspector.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Westerham,” she said in a more restrained tone. “Have you done with this boy? You have? Then”—she turned on the cowering cause of her anger—“get out of my sight. Now! This moment I can’t bear to look at you.”
The Inspector raised no objection to this abrupt dismissal of Frankie. In the boy’s present state of mind, there was nothing to be extracted from him; and at that moment Westerham had not enough information from other sources to be able to lay traps which would extort the facts from this confirmed young liar. Later on, there would be time enough for that, if it proved necessary.
Besides, Westerham had other things to think about at this juncture. Miss Lindfield’s outburst had given him his first inkling of a new factor in his problem. Up to that time, he had been coming steadily to the conclusion that the death of Mrs. Castleford was purely accidental. All the evidence pointed to her having been hit by a stray bullet from the rook-rifle. But this sudden revelation of financial elements in the background shook his confidence more than a little. Evidently, in some way which Miss Lindfield’s words had not made clear to him, she and the boy’s father stood to lose heavily by Mrs. Castleford’s death. A shooting accident is one thing; a death involving the transfer of thousands of pounds may be something quite different. This would have to be looked into at once.
The Castleford Conundrum Page 13