Though all this was not as much as French would have liked, he recognised that it was more than he could reasonably have expected. He did not know how far it would help him to trace the unknown, particularly as several of the items of his appearance suggested a disguise, but at least there was something on which to work. On his way to the station he visited the Lydmouth telephone exchange to ask that all calls for Messrs Peabody’s establishment between 7.20 and 7.50 p.m. on the previous Saturday week should if possible be traced. It was an inquiry from which he did not expect much result, feeling that a man who had so well covered his traces in other particulars, would not have given himself away in this simple manner. However, there was always hope, and in any case it could not be neglected.
Tired, but pleased with his progress, French returned to Redchurch.
6
Progress
When, that evening, French came to compare Langton’s description of the purchaser of the bicycle with his recollections of the engineering staffs on the Widening, he found the result was not particularly illuminating. If the unknown were really tall and stout, and not merely made up to appear so, it could not have been Parry, who was of medium height and slight, nor yet Pole, who was the same. Nor could it have been Templeton, the contractors’ time-keeper, who, though tall, was very thin. On the other hand, Bragg, Carey, and Lowell were all big men. While, therefore, it by no means followed that the unknown was one of these three, they were the most likely persons who had yet come into the picture, and French felt that they should be the subjects of his preliminary inquiries. French discounted the moustache and glasses as being too like a disguise to be taken seriously. Carey, it was true, wore both, but his moustache was small and his glasses were pince-nez, not spectacles. Neither of the others had a moustache.
Incidentally these glasses and moustache might, if they were really part of a disguise, prove useful clues. French took a note that if he did not soon get what he wanted, he would try to trace their sale.
Another obvious point that would no doubt be helpful was that the murderer, so far as present information went, was down in the working quarter of Lydmouth at eight o’clock on the Saturday evening prior to the crime. Where were all the possibles at this hour? French saw that the investigation of this alibi would be quite as important as that for the time of the murder itself.
Well, then, to get down to it.
Of the three, Bragg, Carey, and Lowell, with whom he had decided to start, Bragg at a guess seemed the most promising. He had come more closely in contact with Ackerley than had either of the others, and was therefore more likely to have become involved with him in some nefarious association. With Bragg, then, he would begin.
A telephone to headquarters revealed the fact that Bragg was at Whitness, and half and hour later, thanks to a convenient ’bus, French was knocking at the office door. Bragg himself opened it. He invited French in and nodded when he heard his business.
‘Parry told me you were looking into the affair,’ he said. ‘Would it be indiscreet to ask what’s supposed to be amiss?’
French hesitated. ‘The chief constable is not very satisfied that the affair was an accident,’ he explained. ‘I have been instructed to make sure.’
‘But what does he suspect? Not suicide surely?’
‘No, not suicide.’ French looked very searchingly at the engineer. ‘As a matter of fact, he wants to be sure it was not foul play.’
Bragg was apparently very much impressed. He stared incredulously. ‘Foul play? Good Lord, inspector! Do you mean murder? You don’t really suspect that?’
French shrugged. ‘That was what occurred to him, Mr Bragg. I’m trying to pick up information about it. Hence my visit.’
‘But,’ Bragg seemed almost bereft of speech, ‘but who would want to murder Ackerley? Why, he was a general favourite. Everybody liked him. I can’t imagine anyone wishing him harm.’
‘If the truth be told, neither can I,’ French admitted. ‘However, orders are orders, and I must make my inquiries. Now, Mr Bragg. I want you, please, to answer a few questions.’
‘Of course, inspector. I’ll tell you anything I can. But you mustn’t mind my saying that I’m sure you’re on the wrong track. What exactly do you want to know?’
French wanted to know a great deal. He began with a series of questions about Ackerley himself, his character, habits, associations and peculiarities, following these up with similar inquiries about those with whom the deceased had been brought in contact by his work. Bragg answered freely enough, but nothing that he said seemed of much help. Most of it simply substantiated what French had already learnt from other sources, and what was new was unimportant.
These questions, however, while potentially useful in themselves were really only preliminary. To his vital inquiry French now turned: Where was Bragg at the time of the murder?
Bragg’s expression, which up to this had indicated surprise and interest, now changed subtly. It became alert and watchful, and the man seemed to French to be weighing his answers as he had not done at first.
‘I can tell you that quite easily,’ he replied with only a slight hesitation. ‘I was here.’
‘Here?’
‘Yes. I was in the office all that afternoon up till the time the ballast engine left.’
‘I understand, sir. You were working?’
‘Of course I was working. I was finishing the certificate. Do you know what the certificate is?’
‘I have an idea.’
‘Well, Monday was the day the certificate had to be finished, and it was because it was not finished at the usual time that Parry and I missed our train and went by the ballast engine.’
‘Quite so.’ French paused, then went on: ‘Now, we officers are not allowed to take unsupported statements. Can you give me any confirmation of this?’
Bragg was now looking definitely uneasy. His pause this time was very distinct.
‘I don’t think I can, inspector,’ he said slowly. ‘I was alone, you see. I was here about half-past four when Ackerley and Parry left to go out along the Widening, and I was here about half-past five when Parry returned. Parry can prove these statements. But for the time between …’ Once more Bragg sat in silence. ‘No, I’m afraid no one came in during that time. You’ll have to take my word for it … or do the other.’
French also sat in silence. ‘It’s rather important, Mr Bragg,’ he said at last. ‘I wish you could think of something.’
Bragg shrugged. ‘You don’t wish it as much as I do. But it’s too late. If I could have foreseen that the information would have been required, nothing would have been easier than to have got it. I had only to go over and chat with the men in the contractors’ office. But then, I didn’t know.’
‘I see the difficulty,’ French admitted. ‘What were you doing during that hour?’
‘What I told you; working at the certificate.’
‘Can you not tell me in more detail?’
‘Yes, if you want me to. It was Parry’s job at that time to take out the quantities of earthwork, cut and fill. He summed these and gave me the figures. I entered the figures in the certificate, priced them and extended them. You understand?’
French nodded.
‘Now, in checking over the amount of sea pitching which had been laid during the period of this certificate, it seemed high. I thought a mistake might have been made and I was afraid to include it. I sent Parry out to check over the measurements. But this involved Parry’s leaving the office before he had completed the earthwork. I finished it for him. That occupied me during most of the hour, though I also did some more work on the certificate itself.’
French felt grimly amused at the turn the conversation was taking. Actually it seemed as if he, French, was trying to prove his suspect innocent against the man’s own will. French, however, was really out for truth, not for a victim, and if Bragg was innocent the sooner he was off the list of suspects the better.
‘Can you prove that
you did that work during that hour?’ he asked.
Bragg shrugged. ‘How could I? I was alone.’ He paused, then went on: ‘Wait a minute; perhaps I can. Would Parry’s testimony constitute proof?’
‘It might, under certain circumstances,’ French replied cautiously.
‘Parry ought to be able to prove it. He knows how much he had left undone, and of course he knows I finished his work.’
‘We’ll ask him. In the meantime, I want you to show me exactly what you did.’
Bragg had at last seemed to realise what was in French’s mind. It was with some eagerness that he went to the cupboard and produced a book of cross-sections. He must, French thought, have been more anxious than he appeared. He dumped down the book before French and turned over the pages.
‘Here it is,’ he said. ‘You see these cross-sections, taken all along the railway, one at every hundred feet? Now, you see these little coloured areas on them?’
French saw them.
‘These coloured areas represent the amount of cutting or filling removed or deposited during the four-weekly periods for which the certificates are issued. There’s a separate colour for each period. Now let’s see.’ He turned over the pages. ‘Here,’ he pointed to Section 118, ‘is where Parry stopped. I finished from 119 to the end. You can see that from the work. We always keep the original sheets.’ From the cupboard he got a sheet of foolscap paper covered with calculations. It showed two handwritings. Up to Section 118 it was in one, and from 119 on in another. ‘That first work is Parry’s, the second is mine.’
French nodded. ‘I’m going to ask you, Mr Bragg, to do that work again. I think it would be worth your while: just to repeat exactly what you did that evening while Mr Parry was out of the office.’
Bragg was very willing. ‘While you time?’ he said. ‘I’ll be delighted. All the same I don’t think it is going to help you. How do you know that I won’t do it twice as slowly this time?’
French smiled. ‘I’ll take my chance of that,’ he declared.
Apart from the point at issue, French was interested to watch Braggs’s proceedings. He got some foolscap paper and took from a box a strange-looking little instrument consisting of polished rods, pointed feet, and a small graduated wheel. ‘A planimeter,’ said Bragg, answering French’s look.
‘Now,’ said Bragg, ‘you needn’t count the time of preparation, because all these things were ready to my hand. Start now.’
French noted the time, then watched the work. Bragg, having written down the number of the section on a sheet of foolscap, took the planimeter, planted it on the sections on its sharpened feet, then pushed a stylus round certain coloured areas. The wheel, being thus dragged about the paper, rotated backwards and forwards as it moved, and the reading on its scale before and after the operation enabled Bragg to obtain the area. Very quick and ingenious, French thought.
Bragg, having entered his result, went on to the next section. When all were done he summed them up with the comptometer, added two noughts, reduced the cubic feet to yards and entered it on a large blue form.
‘I have to suppose now that all these squares contain figures of money,’ he said. ‘There are seventy-two of them. I add with the comptometer. Then I complete this part of the certificate and also complete a duplicate.’ He went through the motions, wrote in a number of other details and signed his name; all twice over. ‘How long, inspector?’
‘Fifty-seven minutes, Mr Bragg.’
‘Well, there you are. I couldn’t have done that and left the office.’
French was satisfied enough as to that. If Bragg had really done all that work in the period in question, he certainly would not have had time to ride out to Downey’s Point and murder Ackerley.
But had Bragg done it?
‘Now, Mr Bragg, without your speaking to him, I’m going to ask Mr Parry to do the same job. Will he be in here this morning?’
Bragg laughed. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘I wondered how you’d satisfy yourself. Yes, Parry’s due at any time and you can get him to do what you like. There’s the paper, if you care to sit down and wait for him.’
‘Thank you, but there’s one other question that I may as well ask when I’m here. Where were you, Mr Bragg, between half-past seven and eight on Saturday evening week, that was the Saturday before Mr Ackerley’s death?’
French, though usually exceedingly sharp in such cases, could not tell if this came as a shock to the victim. Bragg’s manner certainly expressed just the surprise natural under the circumstances.
‘Saturday evening week,’ Bragg repeated. ‘How do you expect me to be able to answer that now? Let’s see.’ He thought or simulated thought. ‘On that Saturday afternoon I went out sailing and in the evening—yes, I remember. My wife and the child went out to her mother’s; there was some children’s do on. I was asked, but I hate those sort of things and I didn’t go. I stayed at home and read a novel: I was tired after the sailing.’
‘Were you alone in the house?’
‘Yes, the servant goes out on Saturdays.’
‘And can you let me have any confirmation of that?’
Bragg was now making little effort to hide his uneasiness. ‘No, I’m afraid I can’t. My wife and the child can prove I was there when they went out about seven and when they came back about ten, but I can’t prove anything about the time between.’
‘Where do you live, Mr Bragg?’
‘In Howard Street, Lydmouth.’
While French had to admit to himself that Bragg’s statement was reasonable and might well be the truth, it was equally evident that it might be an invention and that he might have bought the bicycle. Moreover, if he were guilty he would doubtless have devised some kind of alibi for the time of the murder, but it would probably not have occurred to him to do so for the time he was making the purchase. He would not have believed that the transaction would become known. There was, however, nothing more to be said for the moment and French read his paper till Parry appeared.
‘Look here, young Parry,’ Bragg greeted him, ‘the inspector wants you to do tricks for him. I’ll leave you this office, inspector. I have to go down to the viaduct.’
Parry came in and French explained what he wanted. Parry was no fool and obviously realised what was behind the request. He whistled below his breath, washed his hands and sat down before the sections.
‘Where exactly did you stop work that afternoon when you went to measure the pitching?’ French began.
‘We can see that,’ Parry returned. ‘The actual work for the certificates is always kept in case some question should arise. It’s in this book.’ He turned to the sheet Bragg had already exhibited. ‘The work in that handwriting is mine,’ he explained, ‘the rest is Bragg’s.’
‘Very well, Mr Parry. Would you mind doing what Mr Bragg did. I want to see how long it takes.’
Parry worked in the same way as Bragg, though not so quickly. He was evidently doing as well as he could, yet he took sixty-five minutes. Here was convincing proof that Bragg had worked fairly. French was satisfied that the work could not have been done in much less than an hour.
‘Now,’ French went on, ‘do you know of your own knowledge—this is very important, remember, and you may have to swear to it in court—do you know that Mr Bragg had finished that work when you came back from measuring up the pitching, and before you left for the ballast engine?’
‘Oh, yes, I know that all right.’ Parry spoke confidently. ‘He had inked in the earthwork total on the certificate. He couldn’t have done that without finishing the sections.’
This seemed pretty conclusive to French. He turned it slowly over in his mind, searching for loopholes. Parry’s voice interrupted him.
‘There’s a way in which you can be quite sure that Bragg finished the certificate, inspector,’ he was saying. ‘I forgot about it until just now. Bragg gave me the certificate that night and asked me to send it to the divisional offiice, as he didn’t want to spend the time goin
g round there on arrival in Lydmouth. I put it in the driver’s box on the ballast engine. In the upset of Ackerley’s death I forgot about it and left it there. It was found by the driver when he was going off duty and handed first thing in the morning to Mr Clay, the stationmaster at Redchurch. It was labelled, of course, and Clay forwarded it to the office. The driver told me about it next day and I at once made inquiries as to whether it had been safely received. So you see Bragg had no opportunity of altering it after he left the office. If it hadn’t been complete then the accountant would have raised hell about it.’
This, if true, settled the matter. French was, however, leaving nothing to chance and he took a note to see Driver Blake and Stationmaster Clay before finally accepting the alibi. In the meantime he might take the opportunity to get Parry’s statement as to his own movements during the two periods in question.
But Parry had very little to tell him. With regard to the Monday afternoon of the murder he simply repeated his statement at the inquest: he had parted from Ackerley at the sea pitching, had carried out his measurements, and had then hurried directly back to the office. Unfortunately he was not seen on the way. The working day being officially over, the line was deserted.
The previous Saturday evening he had spent, so he said, in his rooms. He had taken a long walk in the afternoon and like Bragg, being tired, he had remained in after supper. He thought his landlady could vouch for this, but he wasn’t absolutely sure.
Death on the Way Page 8