Miss Caddick gasped and turned pale.
‘Oh, but I was reading, inspector,’ she cried. ‘I assure you that I was reading. And I went to bed at half-past ten—’
‘After the murder was committed,’ said Bloxham brutally. Miss Caddick gave a little scream of terror, and covered her face.
‘Oh, please, please, inspector!’ she said. ‘So unchivalrous to say a thing like that!’
At this interesting moment a knocking on the door as with a stick, or, in this case, Great-aunt Puddequet’s beloved umbrella, heralded the approach of the bathchair. Richard Cowes was pushing it.
‘Now, now, now!’ squealed Great-aunt Puddequet with her usual vigour. She rapped Miss Caddick playfully on the shoulder with the ferrule of the umbrella. ‘On Friday we entertain the trainer in the morning room at ten o’clock at night, and on Tuesday—’
She stopped. Miss Caddick had fallen fainting to the floor. The inspector and Richard Cowes rendered ineffectual, manlike assistance, and Great-aunt Puddequet improved the shining hour by ejaculating at five-second intervals, ‘Don’t be a fool, Companion Caddick!’ until the poor woman recovered. The inspector then left the scene of action, and, sending a maid in search of one of the girls, went to find Kost.
The trainer was reading a newspaper. He looked up when the inspector’s shadow dropped across the page.
‘About that tale you told me,’ said Bloxham. He spoke pleasantly, but there was an ill-tempered glint in his eye. ‘Why didn’t you say you paid a visit to Miss Caddick in the morning room, after you left the public house? I know that part of your yarn’s true, because I checked it up.’
Kost lowered the paper and shrugged his wide shoulders.
‘I will tell you, perhaps,’ he said. ‘I am sorry you find me a liar, but, sure, I am. It was this way. I am going to tell you about this visit, but later I say to myself: “Ludwig, you are a fool, perhaps. It was too near the time of the murder, this visit of yours. You go innocently, and you stay the very short time—not fifteen minutes, no; but more than ten, perhaps. And while you are there, this Hobson, the police make out he is murdered, you see. There is no noise, except the gramophone next door, and they sing the tunes as well, perhaps. Pretty big noise there, but no Hobson. Will the police believe what you say, Ludwig? They will not, perhaps.”’
‘Didn’t you see the corpse in the sunk garden, then,’ asked the inspector, ‘when you left the house?’
‘Not me. I don’t return through the sunk garden, perhaps. I return through the house, and back through the kitchen garden. That way out. I am afraid I shall be seen and someone will report me to the boss. Cannot risk that.’
‘And when did you push Hobson into the road?’
‘Then. Immediately. He is just arriving at the house, I think. He is in an objectionable condition. I am afraid he will with his shoutings frighten the ladies, perhaps, so I run him out of the gate and I think he falls into the ditch. Then I return to my hut.’
‘Oh?’ said Bloxham stonily. ‘Let me take you through your tale once more, and see if I can find any flaws in it.’
Kost grinned.
‘I am a liar, perhaps,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Who is not? And I am afraid of your English law, that is why I tell the lies. Now, I am still afraid of your English law, so I tell you the truth, this time.’
‘Quite,’ said Bloxham drily. ‘Now, this is your yarn. You went first to the public house. You then returned to the house and went to call on Miss Caddick. Time—about a quarter to ten. At ten o’clock, or thereabouts, you left her, and came out by way of the kitchen regions into the grounds. You then encountered Hobson and ran him into the road. Later—which must have been almost immediately—he went into the sunk garden and got himself murdered, but by that time you had returned to your hut.’
‘So,’ said Kost, with emphasis.
‘Ah!’ said Bloxham, with more emphasis. ‘And when did you open the back shed with your key and take out the bathchair?’
Kost looked surprised.
‘What for should I require the bathchair, perhaps?’ said he.
‘To carry Hobson’s corpse to the lake,’ said the inspector.
Kost chuckled gently.
‘You should tell that to the mare’s nest, perhaps,’ said he.
‘I will, when I’ve found the horse marines,’ retorted Bloxham. He turned and walked off in the direction of the house.
Kost gazed after him. Then he gave a peculiar little giggle and picked up the newspaper again.
The inspector went back to the room in which he had left the overcome Miss Caddick. To his relief, her employer had gone, and no one was with her but Amaris Cowes.
‘Now, Miss Caddick,’ said the police officer kindly, ‘I don’t want you to become alarmed and nervous, but I simply must ask you a few more questions.’
Miss Caddick gasped, shut her eyes, and waved him feebly away.
‘Now, don’t be irritating,’ said Amaris Cowes firmly. ‘The inspector is quite a nice young man and very kindhearted. Besides, you know you have nothing to fear. You didn’t kill the Hobson person, did you?’
Miss Caddick gave a little moan, but whether of fear or denial it was impossible to determine. Amaris patted her encouragingly on the shoulder.
‘Now, speak up,’ she urged. ‘Tell the truth and hang the consequences!’
‘But—but I can’t!’ wailed old Mrs Puddequet’s unfortunate prop-and-stay.
The inspector thought it time to assert himself.
‘If you wouldn’t mind leaving things to me, Miss Cowes,’ he said. ‘Stay within call, by all means, if you think Miss Caddick is likely to require any further assistance, but—er—yes, outside the door, if you would be so good.’
Miss Caddick gazed in anguish at the departing form of Miss Cowes. Then she turned to the inspector.
‘I would willingly tell you the truth, inspector,’ she said, ‘but there is dear Mrs Puddequet to be considered. I did all for the best, inspector, but our dear Mrs Puddequet is apt to be a little censorious. Yes, just a little censorious. You see, she has not had the freedom that we modern people have acquired.’
‘Mrs Puddequet need know nothing of what you tell me, Miss Caddick,’ said the inspector woodenly. ‘You mean Kost spent the night with you, I suppose?’
‘Oh, but inspector!’ wailed Miss Caddick, clasping her hands. ‘Not with me! Oh, indeed, do not imagine anything so dreadful! I never imagined that the police read the Sunday papers to that extent! But he did spend the night in the house. I—I admit that!’
‘Ah!’ said Bloxham. He glanced at her face and then down at the blank page of his notebook.
‘You see, it was like this.’ Once launched, Miss Caddick seemed eager to get the tale told.
‘He had confided in me several times how very spartan were the arrangements made for the athletes by dear Mrs Puddequet. The beds, he said, were hard. The food was plentiful but plain. The hours were a disgrace. It was very suitable for the young men, he thought, but the trainer was entitled to more consideration. I sympathized with the man, but, of course, it was not for me to pass on his complaints to dear Mrs Puddequet. It would have brought on one of her attacks, and that—er—those—er—them I have learned to dread. So I said nothing but a few words of womanly consolation such as may be conceived and uttered in sisterly fashion by any true ornament of her sex, until at last, on the morning of Friday—you know the Friday I mean?—the fatal Friday—Kost said that he could stand it no longer, and should give notice at once unless a proper bed could be found for him. Poor fellow! He looked so noble, and he seemed so determined to carry out his dreadful threat, that I felt I must do something to help him.’
‘What dreadful threat was that?’ asked Bloxham.
‘Why, to give in his notice, inspector. How awkward for me!’
‘Why for you?’
‘Well, I engaged him for the post, you see. By letter, of course. Mrs Puddequet left it all to me, and so just think how angry she wou
ld be if my choice gave in his notice after less than a fortnight’s work!’
‘I see.’
‘So I said to him that I would see him in the morning room at about a quarter to ten that evening, and that he was to bring his—all the things he would require for the night. He came exactly to time, but unfortunately he had forgotten his—er —his apparel. I told him my plan, and then he returned, by way of the kitchen (with Mrs Macbrae’s kind permission), and later came back to the morning room with his things.’
‘And where did he sleep?’ asked the inspector.
‘Well,’ began Miss Caddick, glancing nervously round the room, ‘there was only one bed that could be used, and the job I had to purloin sufficient linen for it without being discovered!’
‘And which bed was it?’ enquired the inspector patiently.
‘Well,’ said Miss Caddick, trembling with horror at the recollection of her own daring, ‘it was the bed in the little dressing room that opens out of dear Mrs Puddequet’s big bedroom. After all, it is never used, and the bed, although small, is exceedingly comfortable, for I slept on it for a week once when dear Mrs Puddequet contracted the influenza. I warned him that he must be very quiet, and that he must not snore, and that he must be prepared to vacate the room at half-past five on the Saturday morning, all of which instructions I must say he carried out to the very letter.’
‘He had to pass through Mrs Puddequet’s bedroom, of course, to get to this small dressing room?’ said Bloxham.
‘Well, just across one corner of it,’ Miss Caddick admitted. ‘But she is quite a sound sleeper.’
‘I see. Now, Miss Caddick, we come to the important point in all this. I want you to go on being quite frank with me, because it is only in this way that I can arrive at the whole truth, of which your narrative is just a small part. What about the time of the murder? It seems to me that you and Kost (on the qui vive and so on, as you must have been that night) would certainly have heard something of Hobson.’
‘Did Mr Kost tell you that he pushed a man out of the gate just before ten o’clock?’ asked Miss Caddick.
‘He mentioned the fact, yes.’
‘Well, when we heard Hobson shouting below in that terrifying way, Mr Kost said to me, “Here is that fellow back again, I suppose. What a worthless young man. I shall go and give him a piece of my mind.”— But I prevented him from doing so, because I did not wish him to betray to anyone—not even to one of the villagers—his presence in the house that night. You understand my position in the matter, inspector, don’t you?’
‘Oh, quite,’ said Bloxham. ‘In fact, one more question and then you’re through. At what time did his shouting stop?’
‘Oh, that I could not say, inspector. You see, there was such a noise in the next room, what with the gramophone and the singing and the laughing, and I was so anxious to get Mr Kost safely into bed that I scarcely know whether it stopped while we were still in the morning-room or whether it was still going on when we went upstairs.’
‘I see. Well, Miss Caddick, I think you have been very courageous to tell me all this, and I don’t think you need fear the results of your frankness.’
He was about to go when another thought struck him.
‘By the way,’ he said, ‘did Kost have any supper before going to bed?’
‘He had his usual meal, which corresponds roughly to our own dinner,’ replied Miss Caddick, obviously surprised. ‘Why?’
‘I just wondered,’ said Bloxham. ‘And now would you mind showing me your bedroom door, and then, if it isn’t troubling you too much, I would like you to accompany me into the grounds and point out to me your bedroom window. I want to see which way it faces.’
Mystified, Miss Caddick did as he had requested. Her bedroom door was next to that of old Mrs Puddequet. Her bedroom window looked on to the east side of the house.
Thoughtful, but cheerful, the inspector again sought out Kost and confronted him with Miss Caddick’s story. Unperturbed, the trainer admitted its truth.
‘And now,’ said Bloxham, ‘you’ve given me trouble enough. Don’t hide anything else. Why didn’t you confess that you got out into the sunk garden at about one o’clock in the morning and chucked a brick at what you thought was Miss Caddick’s window in order to attract her attention? Also, why didn’t you come clean about these sleeping arrangements and own up to shoving young Brown-Jenkins down the stairs? Also, why didn’t you say that in your search for Miss Caddick’s door you lost your way about the house and barged into Miss Yeomond’s room by mistake? And did you see or hear anything of the bathchair that night?’
Kost gazed at him in sheer amazement.
‘But why should I do these things, perhaps?’ he demanded. ‘What, the first time in a fortnight that I sleep on a bed that is a bed, shall I arise myself at one o’clock in the morning and throw large stones at the window of my benefactress, that disinterested, philanthropic lady who is not beautiful—no! but who overflows with the kindness of a great heart, yes! Shall I alarm and disturb her with stones and wanderings, perhaps? Ask yourself! I spit at the ungratefulness of such an action.’
He did so with a wholehearted completeness which was in tune with his remarks.
‘Now, look here, Kost,’ said the inspector, ‘you’ve told me so many lies that I’m not going to believe this one. I’m not saying anything more than that you were up, dressed, and acting the fool. I’m not accusing you of anything else, so do just come clean for once, and do yourself a bit of good. Clive Brown-Jenkins says he recognized you! So come on, now. Perhaps you were hungry, and wanted Miss Caddick to find you some food? Be advised by me; tell me the truth, or you’ll be in a nasty hole.’
Kost gave a howl of fury.
‘Get away from here, you fool of a policeman, perhaps!’ he yelled. ‘Or sure as sure I will throw you over my hut. As for Clive Brown-Jenkins, the sulky, lubberly boy, I will twist his neck for him, perhaps! Arrest me for the murder if you like, but for the ungrateful insulting of kind ladies, unbeautiful it is true, but good-hearted like which is never to be comprehended by the big, vulgar policeman, perhaps, no! Get away! Get away, I say!’
Chapter Ten
Night Birds
I
THE SCROUNGER PEERED forth into the night. The night was a poet’s night—‘chilly, but not dark’—luminous with stars. The mere, broad and placid under the sky, stretched away into a ghostly darkness of its own, and between the stems of the reeds it made queer little eerie sucking noises, at once attracting the attention and repelling the imagination of the solitary wanderer on its banks. The pollard willows, fantastic by day, almost unseen under the stars, wagged their ungainly branches in a sudden sharp gust of wind which blew from the southwest, and were as suddenly still again. A water vole swam across the broad stream to some secret opening into wonderland, and the Scrounger, knocking the dottle out of his long-finished pipe, spat in the water for luck and emerged from cover.
Apparently the omens were propitious, for, leaving the shelter of the pollard willow, behind whose gnarled, ancient, and goblin trunk he had been ensconced for the past quarter of an hour, he crept along the bank, dodging from tree to tree, until he was behind the high diving-boards at the upper end of the mere. Under his left arm he held a small wooden box. Inside the box something scratched and scrabbled. The Scrounger sat on the lowest step of the diving-board and wiped his brow with his right cuff.
‘Gawd!’ said he, with immense feeling. He set the wooden box on the ground and apostrophized it in a whisper.
‘Now, what’s to be bleedin’ well done? You dunno! I dunno! I’ll ’ave to plant yer where you’ll grow nicest. That there Caddick! But ’ow’s it goin’ to be did? If only I knowed the time, it ’ud be some ’elp! Well, I gotter leave yer ’ere for the present, any’ow. So long! Be good till Dadda comes ’ome!’
He placed the box gently on the step above that on which he had been seated, then, very cautiously, he made his way, under cover of the fence, round the s
ports field and towards the kitchen garden. As he passed the hut in which Hilary Yeomond slept, someone coughed. The Scrounger melted almost into the fence in dismay, for the cough came from outside, not inside the hut. A drop of cold sweat ran down his body and made him shudder.
From the back of the hut a dark shape detached itself and took form as a human being. Silent as a shadow it trotted towards the mere. Joseph Herring waited while he counted his fingers seven times, then he broke from cover and darted in at the gate of the kitchen garden, which he had left open two hours earlier. In less than three minutes he had gained admission to the outer scullery and was painstakingly and methodically cleaning some yellowish clay and some dark-brown mud off his boots. Many times during his labours he stopped to listen, but all was silent save for the slight sound of water running away down the sink.
Joe finished grooming the left boot and placed it on the stone floor. Then an idea occurred to him. In his stockinged feet he stepped over to where the boots and shoes of the household had been placed in a neat row awaiting his early-morning attentions, and selected a pair of ladies’ walking shoes. He picked them up, carried them back to the sink, and then, carefully removing with the blade of a clasp-knife as much of the damp and dirty residue as possible from his own right boot, he plastered it generously about the soles and toecaps of the shoes he had selected. Then he walked over to the windowsill with one of the shoes in his hand, pressed the sole of it firmly down on the clean white sill, and again in the middle of the stone floor, cleaned up all other marks on the floor, and replaced the shoes where he had found them.
He then smiled sweetly, and, boots in hand, admitted himself to the inner scullery, went through it into the kitchen, and so proceeded up the back staircase to bed. His alarm clock showed that the time was five minutes past one.
Joseph was soon between the sheets, where he slept the sleep of a little child.
II
Miss Caddick had had a disturbing evening. To begin with, Miss Celia Brown-Jenkins, a distressingly independent lady of immature years but fully fledged hardihood, had not appeared at dinner, and Miss Caddick, having been beguiled into a promise to conceal guilty knowledge of her whereabouts, had been compelled to sit through what seemed an interminable and tasteless meal listening to old Mrs Puddequet’s diatribes on present-day young madams who flew into a pet over nothing and sulked in their bedrooms. Miss Caddick knew perfectly well that the erring Celia was not in the house at all, but had made clandestine escape from Great-aunt Puddequet’s somewhat oppressive mansion into the brilliant life of one of London’s dance halls, and would return anon. How much anon Miss Caddick could not determine.
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