‘So.’
‘At ten o’clock?’
‘I was not here at ten o’clock.’
‘Ah! Where were you at ten o’clock?’
‘I was drinking a glass of stout—oatmeal stout—at the inn. That was at half-past nine, about. I finish my drink—good stuff, that!—and I return. I return at a quarter or twenty past ten. There is a noise in the sunk garden as I come in at the gate to the grounds over there. I go to look. It is the man who is dead. I call to him to go home or he will be locked up. He tells me to go to the devil. I take him by the neck and run him back to the gate and push him into the road. I shut the gate. I listen. No sound. I think he has fallen into the ditch, perhaps. Right place for a drunken man who beats his wife. I hope the ditch is nice and wet. I hope he will have rheumatism after that. Then I go back to my hut and I sleep well. The stout makes me sleep well. Good stuff, that stout.’
The sergeant, who had taken down the whole of this statement in shorthand, glanced at the inspector.
‘Thank you, Mr Kost,’ said the latter smoothly. ‘You are sure of all the times you mentioned? What about the last one?’
‘Well, I leave the inn at about twenty minutes to ten. That is to say, at twenty minutes to ten by my time, but at ten minutes to ten by their time. I compared the clock in the bar with my watch, and they say ten minutes apart, so I believe my own.’
The usual idiosyncrasy of a public-house clock in being ten minutes fast, if not more, was well known to both inspector and sergeant, and they nodded without speaking, and waited for Kost to go on.
‘Well, I have my wristwatch with its luminous dial, and I think the night is fine, and so I will go for a brisk walk, perhaps. I walk the other way of the road, out towards Warlock Hill for a quarter of an hour, then I look at my watch and it says five minutes to ten. Then I return and I walk fast and I compute—a quarter of an hour back to the inn, and from the inn to the gate about six minutes at that pace, then from the gate to the sunk garden to see why the noise—and I arrive at the conclusion that it was between a quarter and twenty past ten when I find the man Hobson. That is Q.E.D., perhaps?’ He grinned triumphantly.
‘Perhaps it is,’ said the inspector, turning to go. ‘And perhaps it isn’t,’ he added to the sergeant as they returned to the house. ‘Anything strike you about that yarn of his?’
‘Well,’ replied the sergeant, treading cautiously. ‘Hobson might ’ave been murdered by somebody in the road and brought ’ere afterwards.’
‘Then what about the blood in the unfinished fishpond in the sunk garden? Why no blood on the gravel path? And why, in the name of goodness, all the rest of the fandango? Why not kill him and be done with it? Why tie him to the statue and chuck him in the lake? Oh, and that’s another thing, sergeant. How did the murderer get the body out that far? I’ve thought myself sick, tired, and silly over that. Of course, the way I look at it, we can cut out the village people to a man. Even if there was a possible suspect among ’em—which there isn’t at present—I should only follow him up as a matter of routine, and not from real conviction that he might have done it.’
‘You mean this ’ere is a toff’s job, sir?’
‘I do. What’s more, it’s somebody in this house.’
‘What about Kost, sir? He’s a foreigner, you know.’
‘Yes,’ said the inspector, allowing to pass unchallenged the usual English implication that foreigners are always either lunatics or criminals or both, ‘but the motive?’
‘Well, what might any of their motives be, come to that, Mr Bloxham?’ said the sergeant, with great earnestness. ‘You see, sir, it all comes back to this: we ain’t found no one with a motive except that sixpenn’orth of misery down in the village, poor little cat. And, as you said yourself, she hadn’t either the brains or the guts—although’—he paused as a new thought struck him—‘she might ’ave helped someone else do it! The whole job, as I see it, would be a sight easier for two than for one, sir.’
Inspector Bloxham nodded.
‘That’s an idea I’ve had for a few hours myself,’ he said. ‘We’ll get on to Mrs Hobson again when I’ve worked through the household here. Personally, that young Anthony doesn’t impress me very favourably. And the fact also remains, sergeant, that this is his home, and so he’d be bound to know Hobson a good deal better than the other people here in the house.’
‘Dirty work between him and Mrs Hobson,’ said the sergeant, nodding wisely. ‘Well, she’s not been a bad-looker in her time, I should judge. Stranger things ’ave happened, and will happen again with human nature what it is today, sir.’
With this sententious remark he followed the inspector through the doorway of the sunk garden, and they mounted the steps to the house.
‘Well, inspector,’ said Miss Caddick, fluttering to meet them, ‘have you made your arrest? I do hope we shall soon be out of this terrible suspense and trouble. I declare I shall soon give up going to bed at night. I seem to become more and more nervous as time goes on.’
‘Well, Miss Caddick,’ replied the inspector, ‘I hope you will soon be at peace again. The only suspect so far is Mrs Hobson, but we hope to complete our case shortly now. Could I get hold of Miss Amaris Cowes, do you think?’
‘Oh, but inspector!’ Miss Caddick clasped her hands in affected consternation and horror. ‘She knows nothing of this dreadful affair! She did not arrive here until four o’clock the next morning. By a milk train! Are not the modern young women extraordinary!’
‘Precisely,’ replied the inspector, following her into the dining room and selecting a chair.
Amaris Cowes seemed to have been gardening. She was wearing breeches and gaiters, enormous shapeless gloves consisting of a compartment of honour for the thumb and one large roomy bag for all the fingers, very muddy boots—the property of Clive Brown-Jenkins, as her brother took a size smaller than she did—and a trenchcoat which smelt strongly of dogs, and was the kennel jacket of Timon Anthony.
She seated herself gingerly on the edge of a chair and gazed serenely at the inspector.
‘Yes, I did really come on the milk train. It gets into Market Longer just about three,’ she said. ‘The stationmaster will remember me, I expect. He said I was a stowaway and must pay my fare.’
‘Oh,’ said the inspector, nonplussed. ‘And—er—what did you say?’
‘I said nothing. I never waste words. I pushed him out of my way and came here.’
‘Oh?’ said the inspector, for the second time.
‘I shall report you, my man, for insubordination,’ added Amaris, staring at the sergeant with disconcerting gravity. ‘You are grinning at your superior officer.’
‘And you don’t know—you had no knowledge of the man Hobson before you came down here?’ asked the inspector hopelessly.
Amaris Cowes laughed.
‘I suppose you are expected to ask people that sort of thing,’ she said. ‘It must be awfully trying. No, I knew nothing of the man until I heard that he was dead. Oh, and my hobbies are painting and gardening, my birthday is in September, and my favorite colour is tomato-red. I was born in the year that Thingummy won the Derby. They wore them mottled that season, you remember; and my published works include the Encyclopedia Britannica and Barnaby Rudge. Oh, and I spent the night in the gymnasium,’ she added.
Joseph Herring scratched his jaw. Then he counted the rabbits again.
‘There’s the two white Angoras and two lots of Flemish Giants, three in each ’utch,’ he said to himself, screwing up his apelike visage and squinting through the wire mesh. ‘But there’s only two Belgian ’ares. Now, what can you make o’ that?’
He opened the hutch and lifted them out. There could be no doubt about it. There were only two. Joe apostrophized them softly, as they tentatively explored the grass at his feet.
‘Now, why the ’ell can’t you let me know what’s ’appened to your brother, drat you! ’E could ’ave nibbled ’is way out of the b— ’utch. Yes. I knows that. But �
��e couldn’t ’ardly turn round and block up the ’ole be’ind ’im, could ’e! What’s the game? And what ’ad I better—oh, cripes! ’Ere comes the old gal!’
The bathchair, propelled this time by Miss Caddick, and attended by Celia Brown-Jenkins in a canary-coloured frock, and by Priscilla Yeomond in a green one, came slowly up the paved path of the kitchen garden. A cluster of gooseberry bushes hid Joe’s nefarious activities from view, so that by the time that Great-aunt Puddequet came within sight of the rabbit hutches there was only one Belgian hare on the ground.
The other, in a large spare hutch covered with a piece of clean sacking, was probably wondering what had happened to him.
Great-aunt Puddequet’s rabbits were one of her chief diversions, and Joe, as rabbit-fancier-in-chief, was a marked man. His employer regarded him with a mixture of dark suspicion and grudging respect. She sensed that his passion for rabbits was inferior to her own. In knowledge of their needs and habits, however, she realized that he was distinctly her superior. She leaned forward and addressed him.
‘Keeper!’
‘Yes, mam?’
‘Exhibit the animals.’
‘Very good, mam.’
‘This Flemish Giant, keeper, is getting a little too thin.’
Joe, immediately recognizing stolen property, smiled in tolerant good-humour.
‘’E ’as missed you, mam. ’E’s bin pinin’ away.’
‘Explain yourself.’ Great-aunt Puddequet looked pleased.
‘It’s this way, mam. Ever since you took such a fancy to that there bit of sunk garding t’other side the ’ouse, seems as if that rabbit knowed it. Don’t seem to take to ’is food nor nothink. I dessay ’e’ll be as right as rain now.’
Great-aunt Puddequet stroked the blue-grey creature’s long ears, and gave it back into Joe’s large, gnarled hands.
‘Now the Angoras, keeper,’ she suggested. Joe, on safe ground here, handed them out. They were nervous and scrabbly, however, so that she very quickly had them put back into their hutch.
‘And now,’ said Great-aunt Puddequet in pleased anticipation, ‘for my dear little Belgians, keeper.’
Joe coughed discreetly, and handed out a solitary little bunny.
‘Beg pardon, mam,’ said Joe, ‘but I took the opportunity with the other two, seeing that they was that way inclined—’ He jerked his head suggestively towards the covered hutch and winked solemnly.
‘Enough, keeper. Refrain from indelicacy. Nothing is gained by loose conversation. You have done very creditably, keeper.’
The bathchair moved on, and disappeared. Joe took out his handkerchief and wiped his face. Then he removed the sacking from the large spare hutch and tenderly returned the solitary little Belgian hare to his companion.
‘And where the ’ell your b— brother ’as gorn, ’as me licked,’ he confided to the pair of them. ‘Seems like I’ll ’ave to find you another. But it’ll ’ave to be a sister if I’m to keep me end up with the old gal.’
He turned again to the hutches and went on with the work of hygienic importance. From the kitchen, and pursued by the maledictions of the cook, came Timon Anthony. He was eating a large and rather unmanageable slice of game-pie. With him was Richard Cowes.
‘Hullo, Joe,’ said Anthony, as he came up with Herring. ‘The old lady been round here this morning?’
‘It’s a funny thing, sir, but she ’as.’
‘Why funny? Thought she often came along to have a look at the bunnies and make sure you didn’t sneak one for the Sunday dinner!’
‘Mister Anthony,’ said Joe sorrowfully, ‘she do come round to see ’em pretty often. But what I notice, sir, is this: she always chooses ’er time.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning, sir, as I’ve suffered another misfortune with these ’ere rabbits. Takes me all me time to think out quick enough what to say to ’er, because, once she got wind there was anything wrong, I’d get the sack without any manner of doubt at all. It’s cruel, the lies an honest working man ’as to tell to keep ’is head above water and the wolf from the door.’
‘Why, what’s happened now?’
Anthony put the last piece of pie-crust into his mouth, leaned against the bole of an apple tree, and prepared to listen to a long tale of woe. The tale was not long.
‘Why, somebody’s pinched one of them Belgian ’ares.’
‘What, again?’
‘What d’you mean—again?’
‘Thought you lost one before—a few days ago. Why, it was the day of the murder, wasn’t it?’
‘Ah, that wasn’t a Belgian ’are. That was a Flemish Giant. They’re nothink alike, nothink. Look for yourself.’
Timon solemnly investigated. So did Richard.
‘And now you’ve lost one of the hares,’ he said. ‘When did it go?’
‘Well,’ said Joe, rubbing his hands on a wisp of straw, ‘if I knowed that, I might make a guess at who took it. But one thing I do know. And that is—none of this ’ere thieving used to go on before the old lady ’ad this last dotty turn of ’ers.’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Anthony.
‘Well, sir, you oughter know bettern anyone, I should say. What can you call it but dotty, this athletics business?’
‘Oh, that!’
‘Yes, sir—that. And d’you know what I think? I believe that there Kost knows all about my rabbit. I reckon ’e eats ’em.’
‘Oh, come,’ said Timon Anthony, laughing, ‘you couldn’t prove that, you know, Joe. Besides, the chap’s a vegetarian. And, if you couldn’t prove it, you shouldn’t say it. By the way, didn’t my grandmother spot that one was missing?’
‘No, sir. I was give an idea, and I won through on it. If I’m lucky she won’t bother me again today. But if she asks a lot of questions tomorrow I’m liable to slip up, so before then I got to replace him with a her.’
‘With a her?’
‘A doe, sir.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yes. This very night that job ’as got to be done.’
‘Where will you go? Market Longer?’
‘I might. And I might slip up to London on the quiet.’
‘I should make it London for safety’s sake. How about cash?’
‘I got what me ferrets makes. More than enough.’
‘Oh well, look here,’ interpolated Richard Cowes. ‘Ten bob. All I’ve got on me. You take that.’
‘If my grandmother didn’t keep me so beastly short, I’m hanged if I wouldn’t go up to Town myself tonight and have a look round. I’m fit to die of doing nothing down here,’ said Anthony, peevishly. ‘Even raking round to get evidence against Hobson’s murderer bores me stiff.’
He strolled off, following the trail of old Mrs Puddequet’s bathchair. Joe looked after him thoughtfully, and then rubbed the top of his nose with the back of his hand. Richard went back to the house.
In his perambulations Timon encountered Amaris Cowes. She had set up her easel near the bathing hut and was painting a group of pollard willows on the opposite bank of the mere.
For some time Anthony stood and watched her. Then he said abruptly:
‘Joe’s lost another rabbit.’
Amaris, one brush between her teeth and the other daubing away busily, nodded.
Undaunted by her preoccupied air, Anthony pursued the subject.
‘Funny thing, what?’
Amaris nodded again, laid down the one brush and removed the other from between her teeth.
‘Expound,’ she said.
Timon expounded. When he had finished she nodded again.
‘Wonder whether he’s right,’ said Anthony.
‘Right about Kost?’
‘Yes.’
‘No.’
‘Eh?’
‘Kost is a vegetarian,’ said Amaris.
‘How do you know?’
‘Great-aunt told me so. It was the only thing, so far as they could discover, which singled him out from all the other trainers who applied, s
o Miss Caddick chose him on the strength of it.’
‘By Jove!’ said Timon admiringly. ‘Quite the knack of it, haven’t you?’
‘Of what?’
‘Winning people’s hearts.’
‘Great-aunt confides in me about unimportant matters, if that is what you mean.’
‘Only in unimportant ones?’
‘I think so. She hasn’t told me yet who murdered that wretched man.’
‘Hobson?’
‘Who else has been murdered here?’
‘But do you think she knows who did it?’
‘Oh, yes. Of course she knows. At any rate, she is very anxious that no one else shall find out anything.’
‘Well, I mean, she probably disliked the fellow.’
‘Yes. Pity anyone should be taken up for stamping on a crawling thing of that type. They’ll arrest the wife in the end, I expect.’
‘The wife? Whatever for?’
‘Motive.’
‘Oh. Important thing, of course, the motive. She must have had a pretty good one. He led her the deuce of a life, they say.’
‘Poor creature.’
‘Yes.’
From the distant house a shrill whistle, blown three times in succession, announced that it was lunchtime. Amaris packed up her belongings, and, Timon helping her, carried them up to the house. On the way, Timon paused.
‘Faint with hunger?’ asked Amaris.
‘No.’
‘What, then?’
‘I wish you’d marry me.’
‘Why?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I feel you’d buck me up.’
Amaris walked on again. After a fraction of a second, Timon followed her example. As they reached the sports ground and began to walk across it, she said:
‘I shouldn’t have time.’
‘Time?’
‘To buck you up. My career, you know. I paint.’
‘Yes.’
‘No.’
‘Eh?’
‘No, I shouldn’t have time, I meant.’
‘No, I’d be your life-work, wouldn’t I?’ He grinned self-consciously.
Amaris considered him with unflattering detachment, and then slowly shook her head.
‘I should hate to think so,’ she said gently.
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