Suspects—Nine

by E. R. Punshon

  “It seems such a tiny point” Olive said.

  “In itself, yes,” Bobby agreed. “But it showed the way and then the rest was easy. Everything began to fall into place, like the one word in a crossword puzzle that shows you almost at once what the others must be. Thanks to Martin’s evidence, we have been able to trace the car he used. It was a Bayard Seven, hired from a garage on the direct road to the Weeton Hill district. Tamar laid his plans quite carefully. He parked it in the garden of an old empty house he had got an order to view. We’ve proof of that, too. He drove that far in his own car, changed to the Bayard Seven there, left his own car in the same place, changed again afterwards, and when it seemed safe, returned the Bayard Seven to the garage he had hired it from. He had taken the precaution to give it a false number plate. He didn’t expect Martin to provide proof of identity by scratching the fender. It’s been discovered, too, that it was near there that he bought a broad-brimmed hat like the one Judy always wears.”

  “Do you think he hoped Judy would be taken for the murderer?” Vicky asked.

  “No, I don’t suppose so, I expect he just thought it would be a good idea to confuse the issues. It was Holland Kent he believed was carrying on the intrigue with Flora. She used to write to Judy, using Holland Kent’s name. Judy won’t admit it, but it’s plain that is what she did. Any envelope seen addressed to Holland Kent would divert attention from Judy. Probably, Judy thought it rather a good joke at first. By-the-way, we’ve found out where Flora and Holland Kent picnicked that Friday. A tramp saw them disposing of the remnants of their meal by the roadside and as the caviare tin hadn’t been quite emptied, he had the benefit of what was left and talked about it afterwards. The caviare made an impression on him, he told every one about it and what funny stuff the toffs ate. The tin can be identified by a dent in it and the tramp was able to say where he found it and to say there had been an empty bottle, too—regrettably empty, that was, though. There were no finger-prints on the caviare tin, been through too many hands, but Holland Kent’s were on the bottle which was Château Lafite, too. All that was jolly good work on the part of the Aylesbury police and as Aylesbury is far enough from Weeton Hill, and there’s the tramp’s evidence as to time, that gave a sound alibi.”

  “Do you know how he got Mr, Renfield’s pistol?” Vicky asked,

  “He seems to have visited Renfield in the one-room flatlet several times. Renfield wanted something done about his reversionary interests and Tamar made that an excuse to go and see him. That provided, him with an opportunity and there are his finger-prints to prove he had meddled with the cardboard box where the pistol was kept. There’s Martin’s evidence, too, as further proof he possessed the murder weapon. He had the same opportunity to use Renfield’s typewriter when he wrote the anonymous letter and we’ve found a finger-print of his on it as well.”

  Bobby paused a moment and added, slowly,

  “Odd how little unexpected things can trip a criminal up. If Renfield had not happened to upset a bottle of oil, there would have been much less chance of getting good dabs. If Hitler had not chanced to make that speech that night, and so send the exchange down, and yet not so far down as to be noticeable, then Tamar’s fatal blunder in his calculation would not have happened, either. Probably, Munday saw him leave the anonymous letter himself on the night of the cocktail party, wondered what was up, opened and read it on the sly, and either thought he would have a shot at pocketing the hundred pounds himself or else merely thought he would like to know what was going on, and so lost his life through his greed, or his curiosity, or the two combined. I suppose he told me it was Renfield he saw because he thought he would play up to his master until, at least, he knew more. I think it is quite certain Martin’s attempts at pumping him had already made him curious. In fact, Martin seems to have put every one on the alert. In a way, it was Martin who started the ball rolling—or it might be fairer to say nothing might have happened, or, at any rate, it might all have happened quite differently, if Lady Alice hadn’t employed him to make inquiries, or if he had been a little less clumsy in going to work. Lady Alice will have to give evidence and I must say I shan’t be sorry if counsel gives her a bad time. She deserves it.”

  “If you ask me,” said Vicky, dreamily reminiscent, “it’s counsel who’ll have the bad time. Trust Lady Alice to give as good as she gets and then some.”

  “I suppose she’s got her excuse,” Bobby agreed. “She can say her only motive was to save a youngster whose life she thought Flora was ruining. Flora will have a bad time, though, with counsel making suggestions, and the judge pointing out blandly that this is not a court of morals.”

  “Not she,” said Vicky with- conviction, “she’ll twist the whole lot round her little finger. Watch her. She’ll—”

  She paused, reflecting. An idea had evidently struck her. A light came into her eyes. Olive exclaimed,

  “Vicky, don’t you dare think of selling her a new hat.”

  “Darling, of course not,” agreed Vicky, meekly, “but she will need one, won’t she? and it’s got to come from somewhere, and there’s one just come in—”

  “Vicky,” said Olive, nearly crying, “Vicky, if you do, I’ll... I’ll never speak to you again.”

  “Very well, darling, I won’t, really I won’t,” Vicky promised, but with a sigh, a lingering sigh, for, after all, is not ‘Business as Usual’ a famous phrase of much authority?

  “It’s, Holland Kent will come off the worst,” Bobby remarked, a forecast that, proved exceedingly accurate. “New hats won’t help him one scrap. No sex appeal to count. There’s a story he and Flora are meaning to go off together to Hollywood. Kent means to put money in films. Thinks films are gold mines. So they are—for the people who get out the money the other fellow puts in. He’ll be lucky if he doesn’t lose all he has, and all Flora’s, too, if she lets him.”

  “I suppose she’ll have to have him now,” Vicky remarked. “No one else left. If they go to America, she’ll be able to get a divorce there. Desertion or something. That is, if he’s only sent to prison. It was Holland Kent Mr. Tamar suspected all the time, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh, yes, that’s quite plain,” Bobby answered. “Tamar thought he was losing his wife and the thought was more than he could stand. That’s the line the defence will take. They’ll put it he had no desire or intention to kill Munday, didn’t know it was Munday, so it wasn’t murder, only manslaughter. And they’ll say the mistake is proof of his agitation and his confused state of mind in mistaking Munday for Holland Kent, who, he believed, was his wife’s lover and present for a clandestine meeting with her. He never had any real suspicion of Judy. Flora had, switched his suspicions to Holland Kent very effectively—a little too effectively for that matter. In point, of fact, Judy never really cared twopence for her—that was part of his attractiveness—and after he met Miss Maddox his one idea was to break with her. Only, the more he tried, the more she hung on, and the more she used Holland Kent, both as a blind to keep her husband off the truth and, also, to try to make Judy jealous and bring him back to her. Martin found out a lot and if only he had told us what he knew, things would have cleared up a lot sooner. But his only idea was to make something for himself on the side. Got more than he expected. Lady Alice is not a safe person to play with and she must have laid on that riding whip with a whole heap of goodwill.”

  “Serve him right,” interposed Vicky. “Do him good—do most men good,” she added thoughtfully.

  “It was through Martin’s questionings and hints that Tamar, who had suspicions already, got to know about the Weeton Hill tryst,” Bobby added.

  “Is that why he wrote himself that anonymous letter?” Vicky asked.

  “Yes. He knew his movements would be looked into and he wanted to suggest a reason why some one else should have been there—he hoped the hundred pounds would be taken as the murder motive. I expect, too, there was the old idea of escaping notice by becoming conspicuous, and that again was, probably,
behind the idea of pretending he believed he was the next threatened and applying for police protection—perhaps, too, in the hope of getting to know what was going on. Not very bright, but he was successful in business and so he thought he could be just as successful in everything else. But he forgot in business he had the force of his capital behind him and there are still a few things left where capital— money—doesn’t count for such an awful lot as it does in the city.”

  “It’s so hard to believe,” Olive said after a brief pause, “that any man could do such things.”

  “There’s a primitive savage brute in every man, if you ask me,” pronounced Vicky. “It’s rather disgusting and frightening, somehow, but I’m not sure it isn’t rather nice, too.”

  “Vicky,” said Olive, scandalized, “how can you say such things?”

  “Well, it’s true,” Vicky defended herself. “You wouldn’t care for Mr. Owen half as much if you didn’t know that for all his looking and acting and talking as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth he’s just the primeval brute underneath and hard as—as the nether millstone,” said Vicky, rather proud of this simile. Then she added, meditatively, “We like our cats to purr by the fire but we want them to be good mousers, too.”

  “Oh,” gasped Olive, completely overcome. “Oh. Oh.” Bobby thought it was time to interpose. He didn’t like being called a primeval brute, he hated being spoken of as purring by the fire, he deeply resented being described as a good mouser, but, also he felt that on the whole, it was better not to discuss the subject further. He did permit himself to say, bitterly,

  “Talking of cats, you’ve got claws, anyhow, Mademoiselle Valclos.”

  “Now I’ve made him cross,” said Vicky complacently.

  Bobby ignored the senseless interruption. He went on, “It wasn’t that with Michael Tamar at all, he wasn’t a what-d’ye-call-it savage. What he had was the successful business man’s highly developed sense of property. It’s very strong in some people, you can see people in trams and ’buses who hate it if they think any one is reading the headlines over their shoulder. It’s their news, their property, something they’ve paid for and no one else is going to share it. Tamar had that feeling in a very high degree. He showed it the very first time I saw him, though I didn’t realize it then.”

  “Will Mr. Patterson have to give evidence?” asked Olive, slightly recovered by now, but still throwing dark glances at Vicky, who was too obviously feeling pleased with herself.

  “I don’t know, I hardly think so,” Bobby answered. “I imagine the case is complete without him and they are sure to say as little about all that business as they can. The courts don’t bring out any more dirt than is absolutely necessary.”

  “Ernie Maddox was here this afternoon,” Olive said, “She’s in a dreadful state.”

  “Nervous breakdown on the way,” said Vicky. “You can see it coming and I do think it’s a shame. He oughtn’t to be let.”

  “Who?” asked Bobby, not understanding this last sentence.

  But Vicky only sniffed, expressed her opinion that the brute in the male sex was equally compounded of the mule, the donkey, and the ass, the mixture somehow culminating in general pig-headedness, and then delivered it as her considered opinion that the world would get on much better without them, or, at any rate, if selected specimens were just kept in cages and only let out at intervals for necessary purposes; and so, having made this clear, departed in a general whirl of indignation and protest.

  “She’s being horrid because she’s so upset,” Olive explained, trying to make excuses. “About poor little Ernie Maddox.”

  “I don’t expect she will be called—” began Bobby, but Olive waved that aside.

  “It’s not that, at all,” she said impatiently. “Judy’s going to Kenya, he’s bought his steamer ticket.”

  “Has he, though?” asked Bobby, a gleam of hope in his eye.

  “I think he would have gone already,” Olive added, “only he has an appointment to-morrow.”

  “Oh, yes,” agreed Bobby, that gleam of hope dying swiftly away, “Yes, I heard about that.”

  “Only what makes it worse,” Olive continued, “is that he has written to Ernie to say good-bye.”

  “Written?”

  “Yes. I do think that’s mean. So does Vicky. So—so cowardly.”

  “Why?”

  “Shows he daren’t face her, doesn’t it?” demanded Olive. “He daren’t say it outright to her himself, so he is mean enough to do it in a letter.”

  “I see,” said Bobby.

  “What makes it even still worse,” continued Olive, “is that he says he is sure she’ll be happy with some one else. Ernie’s awfully hurt about that. Any one would be.”

  “I expect,” said Bobby, “with his record he feels—”

  “What Ernie feels doesn’t matter a scrap, I suppose?” interrupted Olive with extreme indignation, “Just like a man. They never care a scrap about any one else’s feelings, just their own, that’s all they think matters. I can’t imagine,” said Olive, meditatively, “why I ever got engaged to a man.”

  “Well, you are,” Bobby pointed out, comfortably, “and I’m sure Judy thinks he is being very unselfish.”

  “There is nothing more absolutely beastly selfish,” pronounced Olive, “than being unselfish all to yourself.” Bobby meditated on this aphorism. Olive continued: “He knows perfectly well he’ll be miserable and so will she, and he’ll take to drink, most likely, and she’ll go into a convent or something, and it’ll serve them both jolly well right, and I don’t care a scrap,” and with that Olive fairly flounced out of the room, and Bobby had an uncomfortable feeling that she had gone upstairs to cry, which made him feel very queer inside, and decide, also, that girls are a queer lot, only so is everything else, and the more you know, the queerer it all seems.

  However, there was something else he had to say and when Olive came down again, all ravages, if any, carefully repaired, he remarked, hesitatingly,

  “Oh, by the way, I’m afraid I shan’t be round to-morrow night. We shall have to put that off.”

  “Duty?” asked Olive.

  “Well—er—in a way,” said Bobby, “not exactly, perhaps, arising, out of, as they say.”

  Much to Bobby’s relief, Olive did not seem at all curious; though there was a far-away look in her eyes that he remembered afterwards and knew should have made him cautious. But, at the time, he was too relieved to get away without further questioning to do more than add on the doorstep,

  “You know, I don’t think I feel quite up to the mark. It’s just possible, I’m not sure, but I may have to put in for a few days’ sick leave.”

  “After to-morrow evening?” asked Olive, casually. Bobby gave her a suspicious glance but decided that the question was as innocent as Olive looked.

  “All depends,” he said, “how I feel.”

  “You do look rather peaked,” Olive admitted.

  “Been kept at it,” said Bobby. “Not much time off for any one when there’s a case like this and all sorts of loose ends to be tidied up.”

  “You want a holiday,” agreed Olive. “After to-morrow, perhaps. Ernie,” she added, “says Judy’s looking awfully fit. He’s been getting ready—for Kenya, she says—by going to some keep-fit place—the First Metro B. C. Gym, she called it.”

  “Trying,” observed Bobby gloomily, “to get back into form.”

  “For Kenya?” Olive persisted.

  “Oh, for anything that comes along,” explained Bobby, and departed, very pleased to think Olive was so free from that curiosity supposed to be characteristic of all the daughters of Eve, and had seemed so satisfied with the simple explanations offered her.

  It was just about half-past seven next evening when he presented himself at the First Metro Boxing Club Gym, and if he did feel much as the sacrificial lamb may be supposed to feel as it is conducted to the altar, none the less he was fully determined to do his best so long as he could stand. Not too g
ood, though, that he should be so distinctly below par. Extra work, prolonged often to all hours, is not exactly the best form of training and Judy, apparently, had been, very naturally, making careful preparations. Anyhow, before being knocked out, if that was to be his fate, he would do his best to hand Judy something to remember and, after all, this was a world in which you had to take your luck as it came—and it came at that moment in an unconcerned:

  “Oh, there you are at last.”

  “Olive,” he gasped.

  “Judy,” she told him, “has been here hours—well, twenty minutes at least. To get warmed up, he said. It’s happening. The warming up, I mean. He’s with some one who’ll do that for him all right, at least, I hope so.”

  Bobby was too dazed to pay much attention to these cryptic remarks. He said feebly,

  “But look here—”

  Olive paid no attention. She held him by the arm and led him into the vestibule of the Club. She seemed to be expected there. She said, “Where’s Mr. Patterson?”

  This question appeared to amuse every one. They all grinned but no one offered any other answer. They seemed to think grins were enough.

  “But—” began Bobby.

  “Be quiet,” said Olive severely.

  A door opened. Judy appeared. He looked exceedingly sheepish. Ernie Maddox was by his side. She looked slightly dishevelled, especially about the hair. With one hand she was trying to put it straight, but not very successfully. With the other hand she had Judy by the arm, exactly as Bobby, in his uniform days, had been accustomed on occasion to conduct certain citizens to a not-too-welcoming police station. Olive took hold of his own arm in a somewhat similar manner. He found himself being gently but irresistibly impelled forward.