When the Wind Blows

by Cyril Hare

  When Trimble finally looked up from his reading it was merely to fire off a curt question.

  “Who did I send to take the statement from the stage door-keeper?” he asked.

  “Jeffrey,” said Tate briefly. That was another grievance. Jeffrey was one of these smart-aleck young detectives whom the inspector favoured, and he had been detailed to do a bit of real work, and perhaps get some real credit, while a man of seniority and experience like himself was left to tag along behind the great Trimble like a little dog.

  “Ah, yes, Jeffrey.” Trimble found the statement and read it in silence.

  The sergeant could not resist observing: “The door-keeper says that he left his post for five minutes just before the concert was abandoned. He says he went to talk to the man on duty at the main entrance about some eggs he had promised him. Actually what that young man’s interested in isn’t eggs at all but clothing coupons.”

  Trimble looked up from his reading long enough to remark, “That doesn’t make much difference, does it? The point is that he wasn’t there.”

  “Which may have been very fortunate for somebody,” said Tate. But if he had hoped to draw the inspector out he was disappointed, for that maddening person only grunted, and began to gather his papers up into a neat pile.

  Tate made one more effort.

  “Mr. Ventry’s housekeeper didn’t notice the car in the drive when she left the house this evening,” he said. “I particularly asked her——”

  “She also said that she left by the back way,” retorted Trimble. “You may not have noticed that there is quite a substantial hedge between that and the front door. I verified myself that you can’t see over it, and she’s a short woman.”

  He stood up. “Tomorrow,” he announced, “we will call at the hotel for Mr. Sefton at ten a.m. and take him to the mortuary for the formal identification of the deceased. After that will be the time to take a full statement from him. The Chief has arranged for a conference at noon. Good night.”

  Sergeant Tate went home a sulky, dissatisfied man.

  “This inspector has got his ideas all wrong about the case,” he confided to his wife, as he undressed for bed. “Dead wrong, from start to finish.”

  “Why, what are his ideas, exactly?” asked Mrs. Tate innocently.

  “I’m damned if I know,” her husband confessed. “But mark my words, Flo, they’re wrong, whatever they are!”

  *

  At a quarter to ten the next morning a car left police headquarters for the Red Lion, which, as every visitor to Markhampton knows, is the principal hotel in the city. Inspector Trimble had advanced the time for their departure by ten minutes, though characteristically he had not troubled to tell the sergeant his reason for doing so. The explanation came when, on arriving at the hotel, Trimble, instead of making his presence known to Sefton, sent for the head-waiter and engaged him in ten minutes’ close conversation. Reluctantly, Tate admitted to himself as he listened to their colloquy that the inspector could see as far through a brick wall as the next man.

  The waiter was then despatched to find Sefton, and the little party set off immediately to the mortuary. The bereaved husband stood the grisly ceremony well. He was pale and calm, though the unnatural rigidity of features suggested that he kept himself under control with difficulty. When it was over the inspector said to him:

  “I shall want a brief statement from you, sir, for the coroner. That will save you a lot of time and trouble at the inquest, when you come to give your evidence there. Just a formal matter, of course. Perhaps if you would care to come round now to the police station….”

  Sefton came and was installed in a comfortable armchair. He was given a cigarette from the box kept by the inspector for the use of visitors less abstemious than himself, and generally treated with a blend of deference and sympathy that exactly suited the occasion. It was, Tate conceded, a very pretty set-up altogether—if you liked that way of going to work.

  “Let me see, Mr. Sefton,” Trimble said, his fountain-pen playing busily over the statement form before him, “have I got your full Christian names? and the address? … Thank you. Better have the number of your identity card while we’re about it…. Thank you very much. Now we can start: ‘I am the husband of—What was your wife’s full name, Mr. Sefton? … Really! Funny the names these foreigners give their children, isn’t it?—‘husband of Lucille Olga Sefton, professionally known as Lucy Carless.’—Is that correct, sir? I don’t want to put down anything wrong, because of course this is your statement, and I shall ask you to sign it in a moment…. Right! I’ll go on: ‘I was married to my wife on——’ When was it exactly, sir? … Dear me! As recently as that! How very tragic! Now then: ‘At ten fifteen a.m. on Saturday the fourth November I attended at the mortuary, Corporation Street, Markhampton, where I was shown the body of a woman, whom I identified as my wife. She was aged——’ How old was your wife, sir? … Quite so. ‘—aged thirty-five, and had hitherto enjoyed good health.’ I take it that is so, sir? … Quite. ‘I last saw her alive at——’ When would you say you last saw your wife alive, Mr. Sefton?”

  “About half-past seven last night.”

  “Half-past seven,” repeated Trimble, continuing to write. “That would be at the City Hall, I take it?”

  “Yes. We had gone there together from the hotel. I left her in the artist’s room.”

  “You left her alone?”

  “Yes. She always wished to be left alone before playing in public. It—it was a matter of temperament, you will understand.”

  “You mean, you came with her to the Hall, saw her into her room and came straight away?”

  Sefton shifted uneasily in his chair. Insensibly the atmosphere of the interview had changed. The questions had ceased to be merely formal, though at what point they had done so it was difficult to say.

  “Er—yes, I suppose so,” he muttered.

  “I only want to ascertain if I can who was the last person to see your wife alive,” said Trimble. His voice was reassuring, but he had laid down his pen. “Now from what Mr. Evans tells me there must have been quite a lot of people about behind the stage at that time, and I wondered——”

  “I’ve just remembered,” Sefton put in. “I didn’t go straight away. I stayed with my wife ten minutes or so, talking.”

  “I quite understand. Were you talking about anything in particular, Mr. Sefton?”

  “Oh, no. There was nothing special—just this and that.”

  Trimble did not pursue the matter.

  “I see,” he said. “Then it would be roughly twenty minutes to eight that you left?”

  “Yes. I can’t pretend to be accurate, of course, but——”

  “No, no. Of course not. One can only be approximate in such matters. And you went round to the front of the house, I suppose?”

  There was an appreciable pause before Sefton answered.

  “No. As a matter of fact, I did not.”

  “Not? But surely you had been given a seat for the concert?”

  “Yes, I had, of course. For the first half of the concert, that is. I was accompanying my wife in the latter part. But I decided to go for a stroll outside instead.”

  “Decided to go for a stroll,” the inspector repeated. He sat silent for a moment as though to let the phrase sink in. Then he looked across the desk directly at Sefton and said softly, “That was an unusual sort of thing to do, wasn’t it?”

  Sefton avoided his eye. He looked more uncomfortable than ever. “I suppose it was,” he said. “But there were some things I wanted to think out.”

  “Things connected with music, perhaps?” Trimble suggested helpfully.

  “Yes, that’s it,” Sefton agreed a shade too eagerly. “My wife and I weren’t quite in agreement about the interpretation of one of the pieces we were going to play that evening, and I wanted to work it out in my head without being distracted. It’s a technical point and perhaps you wouldn’t understand——”

  “No,” sai
d Trimble drily. “Perhaps I wouldn’t. Would that be the subject of the conversation with your wife during the ten minutes you were in the artist’s room with her?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes.”

  “You didn’t say so just now when I gave you the opportunity. Did you have a meal at the hotel with your wife before you left for the Hall, Mr. Sefton?”

  “Yes, I did. But I don’t see——”

  “From what the head-waiter tells me, your disagreement with her on that occasion was not on technical points of music.”

  Sefton’s face had suddenly become a dark, angry red.

  “No,” he said. “It was not. It was on a personal matter.”

  “Personal to you two, or involving some other person?”

  After a brief silence Sefton broke out, “It’s not a subject I wish to discuss. My wife is dead. She had her faults, like everyone else, and I was not always as patient with her as I should have been. Can’t we leave it at that?”

  “I’m afraid we can’t, Mr. Sefton,” said the inspector smoothly. “You see, the evidence in my possession indicates that you and your wife that evening had something in the nature of a quarrel, in which some other man’s name was mentioned. Surely you must see that I have to investigate this business, if only in your own interests. Frankly now, sir, what terms were you on with your wife?”

  Sefton flung out his arms with an air of desperation.

  “How on earth can I make you understand?” he said thickly. “Have you got an attractive wife?”

  It was the inspector’s turn to be taken aback.

  “Have I——?” he faltered.

  “Of course you haven’t! Not attractive in the sense that Lucy was. How can you know what it means to be married to a woman who is so made that she attracts every man she sees; who isn’t satisfied to earn her living by making an exhibition of her beauty and talent to a crowd of goggling imbeciles, but encourages—yes, encourages every nasty creature who comes near her to—to take liberties——” His voice broke on something that was nearly a sob.

  Trimble drew breath to speak, but before he could say anything Sefton had begun afresh.

  “Isn’t that something to quarrel about, as you call it?” he demanded. “Wasn’t I justified in warning her where her conduct would lead to?”

  “Do you mean that her death was due to the conduct you have been speaking about?” Trimble interposed quickly.

  “What else could it have been? She tempted fate once too often and this was the result. It was madness letting her come here in the first place and I ought to have known it.”

  For once in a way the inspector at this point felt positively grateful for the presence of Sergeant Tate. The interview which he had managed with such skill up to now was bidding fair to run away from his control altogether. The solid, bovine form of Tate, making notes at the side of the desk, was a reassurance of normality now that he was fairly certain he had to deal with a man on the brink of hysteria. In a deliberately matter-of-fact tone he said:

  “Why was it madness to bring her to Markhampton in particular? I should have thought it was a pretty safe place, on the whole.”

  Sefton’s face assumed a look of crazy cunning. “Markhampton’s full of people who knew my wife well,” he said. “Knew her a lot too well, if you ask me—had known her years before I had—that’s a nice thing for a husband to put up with, isn’t it? Evans, to begin with—he’s known her ever since she came over from Poland. Ventry, too—she’d known him in London before he got his house here—how would you like to trust your wife with a man like that? She swore to me she’d never met that old man Pettigrew before, but d’you think I’d believe her? They were talking for minutes on end at Ventry’s party, as though they were old friends. And as if that wasn’t enough and more than enough, she goes out of her way to meet and smile at and talk to Dixon—Dixon of all men! Do you know who Dixon is?” he suddenly asked.

  “I understand he’s the secretary of the orchestra,” said the inspector, in some surprise.

  “He is the former husband of my wife. Now do you understand?”

  “I can quite see that meeting him may have been rather awkward, but after all——”

  “Awkward! Awkward! My God! Can’t you realize that it was hell? I warned her of the danger she was running into, but she would take no notice.”

  “What danger are you referring to exactly, Mr. Sefton?”

  Sefton laughed wildly. “‘What danger’ is good,” he said. “Here is a woman killed and you ask what danger was she in!”

  “I did not ask that,” the inspector pointed out. “I asked you what danger you warned her she was running into by meeting these gentlemen you have mentioned—and Mr. Dixon in particular.”

  Sefton did not reply for a moment. He sat silent, breathing fast, his fingers drumming on the arms of his chair.

  “I should have thought it was obvious,” he said at last, in a calm, flat voice. The excitement seemed suddenly to have oozed out of him, and he looked tired and almost apathetic.

  “It seems very far from obvious to me,” remarked Trimble. “I can understand an attractive woman being in danger from—from someone who claimed the right to be jealous of her attentions to other men, shall we say? Why should she be in danger from her divorced husband? I should have thought he was the last person to have any motive to harm her.”

  Sefton said nothing.

  “Are you sure that was the kind of danger you warned her of, Mr. Sefton? Or was your warning in the nature of a threat of what you might do if she was too friendly with other men?”

  Colour rushed into Sefton’s face.

  “No, no!” he exclaimed, with a touch of his former vigour. “I tell you I loved my wife! I wouldn’t have touched a hair of her head!”

  “Very well.” The inspector abruptly closed the discussion and resumed again in a matter-of-fact tone. “You were saying that you left the Hall at about seven-forty and went for a stroll. Where did you go?”

  “I don’t know. Nowhere in particular. I just walked up and down. I didn’t go far from the City Hall for fear of losing my way.”

  “And you came back—when?”

  “About half-past eight, I suppose. I was aiming to get back well before the interval, so as to see if my wife wanted to run through any of our pieces in the second half of the programme. When I got back I was surprised to hear no music going on, as the concerto should still have been playing at that time. I thought my watch must have stopped. I went in by the stage door. I saw nobody about, so I walked straight into the artist’s room, Evans was there and a doctor. They—they told me …”

  The sentence trailed away miserably.

  “Quite,” said Trimble. “But can you give me the name of anybody you saw or spoke to during the fifty minutes or so that you were outside the building?”

  Sefton shook his head slowly.

  “I don’t think——” he began. Then his face

  cleared. “Yes,” he said, “I remember speaking to someone.”

  “Oh? And who was that?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You really mean to say you spoke to somebody and don’t know who it was?” asked the inspector incredulously.

  “How the devil should I know?” retorted Sefton. “I had plenty on my mind that evening. I tell you, this was just a man in the street I passed a casual remark to. I never gave him a second thought.”

  “It might be to your advantage to remember something about him,” said Trimble drily.

  “Well, I can’t. I just have a vague recollection of talking to a man, and that is all. Wait a minute, though…. I believe—I have a distinct impression that he was in a uniform of some sort.”

  “Was he a policeman?”

  “No—no, I’m fairly certain he was not a policeman.”

  “Very well. If I may give you a piece of advice, sir, you would be wise to take steps to find this man in uniform who is not a policeman as soon as possible. If you can,” he added, pointedly.
“And now, sir, I’ll just get your statement in order and you can read it through and sign it.”

  Sergeant Tate cleared his throat violently.

  “Did you want anything, Sergeant?” asked Trimble in his most superior tone.

  “Yes, sir. I should like to ask this gentleman if he can play the clarinet.”

  “No,” said Sefton at once, “I don’t and I can’t. Why do you ask?”

  Neither officer replied to the question. But Trimble looked at Tate and said quietly, “Thank you, Sergeant.” And whether he was being sarcastic or not, Tate could not in the least determine.

  11

  A Conference with the Chief

  Though he had never admitted it to anybody, even to himself, Inspector Trimble was a little afraid of his Chief Constable. It was not that the Chief was a particularly awe-inspiring personality, or a stickler for discipline. On the contrary, he was a quiet, unassuming man, on the best of terms with most of his subordinates. Personally, Trimble had nothing whatever against Mr. MacWilliam, who had trusted him, promoted him, assisted him in every way. But there was none the less, barely perceptible, something in the Chief Constable’s manner towards him which never failed to induce in him a certain feeling of nervousness. He seldom criticized, his suggestions were always helpful and to the point, his behaviour was invariably courteous and considerate. The real trouble, as Trimble finally came to realize, was that he never seemed quite to take his detective-inspector altogether seriously. The work—yes. Nobody could complain that MacWilliam did not regard that as serious. A more devoted police officer never existed. But through and above the work itself, during their gravest conferences together, Trimble was disturbed and secretly intimidated by the consciousness that he himself was under scrutiny—a scrutiny none the less searching for being quite kindly—and that the scrutineer was gently amused by what he saw.