The Floating Admiral (Detection Club)

by Christie, Agatha; Detection Club, by Members of the

  But if he had done so, how was it that the Vicar, who was in the summer-house till twenty minutes past ten, had not seen him? Suddenly Rudge remembered the Vicar’s evident confusion when he had heard of the murder. Was it possible that he had actually seen the Admiral’s departure on this mysterious journey, and had his own very good reasons for not disclosing the fact? It was at least possible.

  The Inspector’s reflections were interrupted by a remark from Ware, who had at last succeeded in getting his pipe to draw satisfactorily. “Queer thing that I don’t seem to recognise Admiral Penistone,” he said. “There was only one of that name in the Navy List when I was serving, and I saw him more than once.”

  “Did you? When was that?” asked Rudge eagerly.

  “Why, on the China Station, twenty years ago and more. I was in the Rutlandshire then, one of the three-funnelled County class cruisers, she was, and the very devil to roll in a seaway. I remember once being caught in the edge of a typhoon, and she pretty nigh carried everything away, alow and aloft. That’s her, over there.”

  He pointed with the stem of his pipe to one of the photographs that adorned the room. “Her sister ship was on the same station with us. Huntingdonshire, she was called, and you couldn’t tell t’other from which, except by the bands on their funnels. Our six-inch guns for’ard was a bit higher above the deck, that was all. Huntingdonshire’s skipper was a man called Penistone, and a better officer you couldn’t meet. The Huntingdonshires swore by him. She was always a happy ship, all on board properly looked after. And smart too. Captain Penistone had been a gunnery expert before he was promoted, and he kept it up on his own ship. When he commanded her, Huntingdonshire had the best gunnery record in the Navy.”

  “Was this the same man whose body you saw in the Vicar’s boat this morning?” asked Rudge.

  “Well, if it was, he’s changed a lot since I knew him. Not that the body I saw wasn’t about the same height, and all that. But, if it was the same face, it has changed a lot in the last twenty years. It was the expression I go by mostly. The Captain Penistone I knew was a jovial sort of chap, with a cheery word for everybody, no matter whether he was just a stoker or the Admiral himself. And the chap I saw this morning, looked, with all due respect to him, an ill-tempered sort of devil.”

  “I fancy he was, from what I’ve heard of him,” replied Rudge. “Well, Ware, I’m much obliged to you for what you’ve told me. By the way, you’ll have to give evidence at the inquest, you know. You’ll get a summons to attend in due course. And I’ll drop in for another yarn sometime, if I may?”

  “Aye, you’re always welcome,” said Ware cordially. “And if you’re a fisherman, I’ll take you to a spot where there’s some fine sport to be had. It’s private by rights, like all the fishing here, but no one minds about me.”

  Inspector Rudge left the old man’s cottage, and started up his car. It was time to pay his deferred visit to Sir Wilfrid Denny. As he drove towards West End, his thoughts were busy with the problem of how to discover whether or not Admiral Penistone had rowed down-stream the previous night. If he had he was not likely to have been observed. The river ran out of sight of the road for the greater part of its course. Only at one point, Fernton Bridge, was it visible. There were certainly a few cottages close to its banks, but their inhabitants were pretty certain to have been in bed by ten o’clock. There was, therefore, only the faint possibility that someone had crossed Fernton Bridge at the moment that the Admiral had passed beneath it.

  The fact that his journey was not likely to have been observed had another bearing on the matter. His murderer must either have known of his intention, or must have seen him by chance, either at Fernton Bridge or in Whynmouth. But if he had met him by chance, how did he happen to be provided with a suitable weapon? People didn’t as a rule carry about with them daggers capable of inflicting such a wound. No, the casual meeting did not seem to fit in, somehow. The crime must have been premeditated. But until he could learn more of the Admiral’s associates it was impossible to guess who could have known of his plans. There was always the likelihood, of course, that the murderer had arranged the rendezvous.

  As he crossed Fernton Bridge, Rudge stopped the car and looked over the parapet on either side. He found that he could see a few hundred yards, both up- and down-stream, before bends hid the river in either direction. On a clear night a boat would show up against the water for some distance. Having satisfied himself of this he continued his journey.

  West End was a suburb of Whynmouth on the harbour side of the river, and consisted mainly of red-brick villas, each standing in its square of garden. But one older stone-built house remained hidden from its neighbours and the railway to the north by a high shrubbery. This, as Rudge had ascertained, was called Mardale, and was the residence of Sir Wilfrid Denny. The drive gate was open, and he drove in, to be struck at once by the neglected and overgrown appearance of the lawn that sloped down to the river, and the state of dilapidation into which the house had been allowed to fall. He remembered Mrs. Davis’s hint as to Sir Wilfrid’s lack of means, which had apparently been fully justified.

  There seemed to be nobody about as he rang the bell, but, after a long wait, an elderly and rather forbidding-looking dame appeared, and looked enquiringly at him.

  “Is Sir Wilfrid Denny at home?” he asked.

  “No, he ain’t,” replied the woman. “ ’E was called to London hunexpectedly, and left by the first train this morning.”

  CHAPTER VI

  By Milward Kennedy

  INSPECTOR RUDGE THINKS BETTER OF IT

  A TACTFUL question or two elicited the facts that the “call” had been a telephonic one, and that it was not Sir Wilfrid’s habit to go often or regularly or, above all, early to London. He was not, it seemed, a city magnate, but a retired civil servant—“one of those conciliar officers,” the woman explained. The Inspector began to understand the untidiness of the drive; for whilst your Business Man usually acquires his knighthood at the height of his prosperity and retires to affluence, your civil servant finds that a title is small compensation for the difference between salary and pension.

  The news of Sir Wilfrid’s absence was disconcerting, but on the whole, and after a couple of seconds of quick thinking, not altogether unwelcome. Inspector Rudge was subconsciously aware that his enquiries were becoming unduly dispersed and that none of them by itself had so far earned the description of “thorough.” As he thanked the woman, gave her a polite message for Sir Wilfrid asking him to get in touch with the police on his return, started up the car and drove back towards Lingham, his subconscious feelings took definite shape in his conscience, so definite that just before he reached the fork of the road he pulled in close to the hedge, stopped the car, lit his pipe, took out his notebook, and meditated.

  He had been dashing about to and fro—from the Vicarage to Rundel Croft, from Rundel Croft to Whynmouth, from the Lord Marshall Hotel to Ware’s cottage, from the cottage back to West End, and now he was going—well, where was he going now? Of course, he had wasted very little time, for the distances were all of them small; incidentally he wondered whether a little while ago he had been quite safe to assume that the Admiral could hardly have reached the Lord Marshall on foot by eleven o’clock, for now that he came to consider it the distance from Rundel Croft could not be much over two and a half miles at the outside. However, that was by the way; what the Inspector wanted at the moment was to plan out his campaign.

  What had he learnt, in the first place, at Rundel Croft? By Jove, he had forgotten all about that newspaper. If Emery had discovered the “regular” copy still in the hall, might not the explanation of the copy in the dead man’s pocket be that he had indeed gone into Whynmouth? Well, it was idle to speculate; there, obviously, was one loose thread to be picked up. For the rest, his enquiries had been directed to two distinct purposes—to find out something about the people involved, their history and characteristics and so on, and on the other hand, to discover wha
t had happened after the dinner at the Vicarage on the previous evening. The more he considered it, the more annoyed he felt at Miss Fitzgerald’s flight—he hoped to goodness that was too strong a word; and he wondered, doubtfully, whether he had not been a bit too generous in the liberty he had allowed to Holland. Still, neither of them, perhaps—unless his impressions were all wrong—was the best source for information about the Admiral. But what else had he to go upon? Practically nothing but the gossip of the Vicarage, the servants, old Ware and Mrs. Davis, none of whom could boast more than a month’s acquaintance with the dead man. The Vicar had suggested that the Admiral usually was genial enough; his sons had implied rather the opposite. And old Ware—well, what reliance could be placed on his opinion? A petty officer could hardly have been intimate with the captain of a cruiser; and besides, twenty years was long enough to dim the vividness of his recollection. Of course, Sir Wilfrid Denny might have been able to help, but it was rather a leap in the dark. He might have known the Admiral no longer than had the Vicar; and if he had seen more of him in the past month it might simply be that the ex-gunnery expert had no particular penchant for clergymen; that would not be an unprecedented trait in a retired Admiral.

  No, Rudge told himself, he must clearly get to work on less haphazard lines; there would be records at the Admiralty, there were the solicitors, there would be “references” given to the house-agents when the lease of Rundel Croft was signed. And the thought of the solicitors reminded him of the will. He had not finished his study of it; its provisions might be of first-rate importance, as a guide to motive. He did not even know whether it was a copy of a proved will, though that obviously would make a vital difference.

  There seemed to be plenty of enquiries to set on foot, and the first essentials seemed to be a telephone and a staff; it was not much use leaving both the sergeant and the constable to spend their day at the boat-house while he himself tried to be everywhere at once and to do three jobs at the same time. Still, he would not be in too much of a hurry; he was enjoying his pipe and he wanted to look all round the problem. What about last night’s events? By Jove, there was a point which he seemed to have missed. Where was the key of the french window? Was the Admiral the only one who had a private key, or did his niece possess one also?

  Rudge puffed away at his pipe and flicked over the pages of his notebook. The maid—yes, Jennie Merton: nice little thing, and quite intelligent. She had given him a pretty clear picture of Elma Fitzgerald and her uncle and the household as a whole. Had she, though? Had he not been a shade too ready to take her opinion as reliable? She had been there just three weeks; and yet when she had told him that Elma and the Admiral were “sharp” with one another, and that Elma and Holland did not “hold hands” much and that she could not understand the whys and wherefores of Elma’s variability in getting herself up and putting on her best clothes—well, had not he been a bit too ready to think that there was something mysterious, almost sinister, in all of this? More likely the other maid, the one who had been so bored that she had left after a week of Rundel Croft, could have told him the inner history of the Admiral’s household: perhaps they were used to a gayer life. … Anyhow, she must have been pretty thoroughly bored if she had chucked her wages in order to get away. He pulled himself up sharply; here he was, on the brink of labelling the vanished maid as a foreign adventuress—and all on the strength of a few words of Jennie Merton’s.

  And when he came to think about it, there was something, well, a little confusing about Jennie’s account of the morning, and the disappearance of that white evening dress. Emery, apparently, had found Jennie, and Jennie had gone to wake up her mistress and to tell her she was wanted (the whole process taking no less than ten minutes). Then Jennie was told to clear out at once, as her mistress wished to get up. But at some stage she was told to pack a few things for the night. And when she started on the packing—and that, presumably, was while her mistress was being interviewed downstairs—the white frock had vanished and was nowhere to be found. Yet Jennie blandly assumed that the frock was afterwards packed in the bag by her mistress, as if that explained everything. It certainly seemed to suggest that her wits were not so wonderfully sharp after all. And what was more, he would have another word or two with her on the subject.

  There was certainly a good job of work to be done at Rundel Croft. That was not to say there was nothing to do at the Vicarage. If the two boys had found no trace of the weapon, a proper search might need to be organised. And then the Vicar’s hat: on the one hand he had been so quick to remember where he had absent-mindedly left it, which seemed a bit inconsistent; and on the other he had shown no perturbation when the subject was mentioned—at any rate infinitely less than at other points in the interview.

  Inspector Rudge knocked out his pipe and started up the car. He was for Rundel Croft, and as he turned into the drive he found yet another reason for his decision—the traces in the boat and boat-house. He left the car in front of the house and hurried round and down in search of his two subordinates. They greeted him in a manner which suggested that they were bursting with news.

  “Well, Sergeant?” he asked. “Anything important? Found the weapon?”

  “No, sir, but—”

  “What, then? The footprints?”

  “Er—no, sir.”

  “H’m. Well, we’ll hear about it in a minute.”

  Then he realised that he was being rather needlessly abrupt and that Sergeant Appleton in particular was now wearing a distinctly sullen expression.

  “Sorry,” he said with a pleasant smile. “The point is that we’ve a lot to get through and I want to get started at once on the jobs that are going to take the most time. Just set the wheels moving, you know. So if you haven’t actually caught the murderer, or as good as done so—”

  “Not quite that, sir,” the sergeant answered, his good humour restored.

  “Then you, Sergeant, come up to the house with me. Hempstead, you’ll stay on here. We’ll be down again as soon as we can. Keep an eye on the opposite bank too.”

  The two men hurried back to the house, and the Inspector led the way straight to the french window which was foremost in his thoughts; one thing was certain, the key was not on the outside. They hurried round to the front door and rang the bell; after an interval of at least three minutes, during which the Inspector fumed impatiently, Emery opened it and admitted them with the same air of incompetent reluctance which had been the Inspector’s first impression of him.

  “I want another word with you, Emery,” he began, sternly.

  “Here it is,” said Emery.

  “Here what is?” The man really seemed to be half-witted as well as painfully slow.

  “Evening Gazette,” Emery explained, turning and pointing to a side table in the hall.

  “The regular copy? The one which is delivered about nine? Where was it?”

  “There.”

  “But you told me you weren’t sure. If it was lying there all the time—”

  “No more I was,” Emery asserted, in weak indignation, “and the minute I went to see and my back was turned, you skipped off.”

  The Inspector snorted; he was unable to deny that the man had some reason on his side, but people who were as slow as the butler must expect all kinds of criticism.

  “Had it been read?” was his next question. He saw at once that it was not calculated to produce a helpful answer, so he hastily amended it and extracted from Emery the opinion that the paper had not been touched since first it had been laid by him on the table.

  The Inspector nodded; then picked up the paper and requested the butler to lead the way to the study. The sergeant was distinctly puzzled, particularly at the appropriation of the Evening Gazette, but followed in silence, and closed the study door behind the little procession.

  “Now, Emery,” the Inspector resumed, with difficulty restraining a tendency to shout, “I want to know about the keys of the french window—the one you shut but did not bolt
. First of all, were all the other doors locked and bolted when you went to bed last night? They were, eh? So that this was the only way by which the Admiral and Miss Fitzgerald could get in. I see. And now this window—how many keys are there?”

  “I’ve got my key here on my ring,” the butler replied and quite briskly produced a fat bunch, selected the key and proffered it for inspection. The other took it, satisfied himself that it was the right key by unlocking the window, and handed back the bunch. He had wondered how the butler managed to remember not to leave the key in the lock inside; the bunch explained it.

  “Right,” he said. “How many others are there?”

  “Only the one that I know of. The one the Admiral had himself.”

  “Sure of that?”

  “It’s the only one I ever heard of.”

  “Miss Fitzgerald hasn’t got one?”

  “No.”

  “How d’you know?”

  “Well, once or twice of an evening she’s borrowed the key from the Admiral.”

  “Oh, does she often go out in the evening?” The Inspector could not resist this deviation from the main channel of his questions.

  “Now and again. With Mr. Holland,” the butler told him, with an approach to a smirk.

  “Walking out, eh?” Rudge suggested vulgarly; and the smirk became an accomplished fact. Rudge made a mental comparison of this with Jennie Merton’s opinion; then, as if determined to keep Emery in his place, he asked sharply: “What’s happened to the second key—the Admiral’s?”

  “Well, I—I really couldn’t say.”