by Zenith Brown
CHAPTER 10
“I should think you’d be ashamed of yourself,” Mr. Pinkerton blurted out miserably, going at a sharp clip to keep up with the long strides of Inspector Bull.
“Now, Mr. Pinkerton,” Bull said mildly, “I’m only doing my duty.”
“Rot,” Mr. Pinkerton said boldly. “And her trusting you.”
“No more than that girl Kathleen trusted you, Mr. Pinkerton.”
The little man stopped short by the house with the crooked chimney that everybody who paints comes to Rye to paint, they say because it is impossible to get the chimney any crookeder than it already is. He blinked nervously at his large friend, who had stopped too, a few steps along, and was waiting patiently for him.
“I . . . I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
“Then I don’t know what you mean, Pinkerton,” Inspector Bull replied. “So there’s an end to it. And come along, if you’re coming with me.”
They proceeded in silence along the churchyard and turned right into Watchbell Street. Blocking the street’s end, fairly hanging over the edge of the cliff, stood the dark timber and white plaster Tudor façade of the Old Angel. If the car in front had been a coach and four and the drizzling rain had been snow, it would have looked precisely like a Ye Olde Englisshe Christmas card. As it was, it looked precisely like the dampest, dismalest hole on earth. Even the lounge was cold as they came in. The fire was burning in the grate, but it had not been burning long enough to overcome its natural enemy, nor had it sufficient to eat to give it the strength wanted for the unequal combat.
Bull held his hands out to it and rubbed them thoughtfully.
Mrs. Humpage, coming from the kitchen through the dining room, looked at him, her lips pursed.
“What’s this I hear about an inquest, Inspector?” she demanded significantly, coming on into the lounge.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but that’s what Inspector Kirtin’s ordered,” Bull said.
“And my guests, sir?” Mrs. Humpage retorted pointedly.
Inspector Bull rubbed his hands more violently.
“Well, ma’am, as the corpse was your guest, and all your guests seem to be witnesses, I expect Inspector Kirtin was simply trying to do you and them a favour, having the inquest here.”
Mr. Pinkerton stared oddly at him. That kind of stolid humour—which was the most charitable view he could take of that extraordinary speech—was not like Inspector Bull. And as a rule Bull was always exactly like himself and not anybody else.
Mrs. Humpage stood looking at him in grim silence for a moment, the apple spots in her plump cheeks a deeper red than was entirely attractive.
“And did you send a man to turn my house upside down and inside out, I’d be pleased to know, sir?” she demanded sharply. “Because I’ll have you know, sir, I’m a God-fearing law-abiding citizen, and I don’t stand for none of your hanky-panky.”
Mr. Pinkerton’s spirit quailed as Inspector Bull turned from the fire, for Bull could be as grim as the next one when he’d got a mind to.
“Look here, ma’am,” the Inspector said placidly. “You don’t seem to have got it clear in your mind that a murder was done in your house last night. If you’ll get that clear, and try to help the police instead of hindering them, well all come out of it clearer in the end.”
“If you’re tryin’ to threaten a widow with no ’usband to protect her, sir . . .” Mrs. Humpage began, looking infinitely more able to protect herself than the late Humpage had ever been, even between his cups, from all Mr. Pinkerton had made out. But the Inspector interrupted her.
“This is what I mean, ma’am—It’s well known that the old inns in Rye have a good many passages and holes between their walls that anyone knowing them could use if they were a mind to. The last person that saw Sir Lionel—that we know of—left him alive and well. We know Mr. Fleetwood’s telling the truth there, because Lady Atwater said good night to him afterward, and he called back to her. It’s the duty of the police to check every possible entrance and exit to Sir Lionel’s room, and to check the whereabouts of every person occupying the inn last night, or entering it from the outside as well as leaving it.”
Mrs. Humpage was not quite so belligerent, Mr. Pinkerton thought.
“If you’re speaking of the poor dumb gentleman, sir, I can vouch for it that even if he did think there was a fire and try to get out of his room by the drainpipe, he never once left it after eleven. Because my room’s next door, and I can hear every living move he makes.”
Bull fumbled deliberately in his pocket, and brought out his pipe.
“If you dropped off to sleep, ma’am . . .”
“I still would have heard him.” Mrs. Humpage said positively. “He’s got to open his door, which squeaks like a lost soul. Then he’s got to open another door that’s locked at night to keep it from rattling in the wind. That’s why, when all the commotion was afoot, he couldn’t get out the proper way, and that’s the reason he tried to get out by the drainpipe.”
Bull stuffed his pipe into his oiled-silk pouch and pressed the brown damp tobacco into the bowl.
“If he can’t hear, how did he know about the commotion downstairs?” he asked, almost agreeably, Mr. Pinkerton thought.
“Because,” Mrs. Humpage replied instantly, “people were running up and down stairs, banging doors, and shaking the old timbers to the roof tree. And it smelled like something was burning too. He didn’t have no way of knowing cook left the damper closed and put a lot of trash in the stove, thinking the fire was out and she’d use it for kindling the next morning, which was what caused the smell in the back of the house.”
A light of triumph appeared in her eyes as Bull hesitated.
“I’m thinking of my house, Inspector,” she said, in a more conciliatory vein. “It’s the only way I’ve got to make a living, such as it is. If you’d come to me and says you’d like to see all the nooks and crannies, I’d have been pleased to point them out to you. I’m sure I don’t want to stand in the way of your doing your lawful duty, sir.”
Inspector Bull nodded. “Then perhaps you’d tell us what became of Mr. McPherson, ma’am.”
Mrs. Humpage’s jaw dropped.
“Love you, sir,” she cried. “That’s what I’ve been meaning to do all morning. He said he had an eight-o’clock call he’d got to make in Hastings, and be sure to knock him up early.”
She looked at the watch pinned on her bosom. “—And it’s ten now!”
“You needn’t disturb yourself, ma’am,” Bull said. “He left for Hastings last night.”
“But—that’s his car, out front,” Mrs. Humpage said. “He wouldn’t take a bus and leave his own car, now would he, sir?”
Inspector Bull’s manner implied that that didn’t make any difference, as of course it didn’t, Mr. Pinkerton knew. Especially as Mr. McPherson seemed to have had another car in the parking field below Cinque Ports Street.
“Has he been coming here long, ma’am?” Bull asked.
“Off and on, for some years, sir. He’s a traveller in vacuum cleaners. He works from Dover up to Sydenham and down to Southampton. He comes this way every month or so. He’s very clever, Mr. McPherson is. He says the women of England are waking up to the fallacy of household drudgery, whatever that means, sir. He says no woman in America would think of not having a vacuum cleaner, any more than she would of not having an extra hat for Sunday best.”
“What company does he travel for?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, sir, I dare say I have one of his cards in the office. He’s always wanting to sell me a cleaner, but I say Jo’s head is a vacuum and he cleans well enough for me.”
She frowned suddenly. “You don’t think he’s ever got anything to do with . . . with this, sir?” she whispered, nodding toward the stairs. “Why, how would he have ever known they were even coming here, sir, when they didn’t know it themselves until they were here.”
“I’ll have a look at the register, ma’am,” B
ull said calmly. “How is Kathleen?”
“Poor chick,” Mrs. Humpage said. “She’s caught a wretched cold. I’m keeping her to her bed today, sir. I hope you’ll not go getting her temperature up again, badgering her. She’s frightened out of her wits with all this murder talk.—I’d best see to getting her some hot broth straight away myself, if you’ll excuse me, sir.”
Inspector Bull watched her bustle back through the dining room. Mr. Pinkerton silently watched him chew the end of his mustache. Then Bull knocked the ashes out of his pipe into the fire.
“I’m going up to see Lady Atwater,” he said. “You can come along.”
They went up the little stairway and along the dark panelled corridor to where it turned. Bull stopped, looked up and down, and took a piece of paper out of his pocket. Mr. Pinkerton, peering round his elbow, saw a jotted memorandum of the rooms and their occupants; quite necessary, he thought, in view of the irregularity of the old inn. It had been built round an inner yard that was now, on the ground floor, the dining room and bar parlour. As they stood, backs to Watchbell Street and the entrance to the lounge, facing the cliff and the sands and the Channel, Sir Lionel and Lady Atwater’s three-room suite was behind them and to their right, the inner sitting room and Sir Lionel’s bedroom both virtually adjoining Mr. Pinkerton’s own room still farther behind them, to get to which Mr. Pinkerton would have to go down, across the lounge and up another flight of narrow stairs. In the corner in front of them and to their right was Lady Atwater’s bedroom. Next to it on the cliff front of the inn was a small passage leading to a window overlooking the sands, then the W. C., and, following, the rooms of Mr. Fleetwood, Mrs. Darcy Atwater, Darcy Atwater, and the deaf and dumb gentleman on the corner opposite Lady Atwater. Turning again to the left, round the inner well, they would come to Mrs. Humpage’s room; and Jeffrey Atwater’s was on the inner well, his door opening on the corridor across from Mr. Fleetwood’s.
Bull went on a little ways down the hall and stopped. Mrs. Atwater’s room was closed, but they could hear her quite plainly.
“I’ll see the girl myself, Eric,” she was saying positively. “Love in a cottage is one thing, but love in a house with forty bedrooms and fifty acres of park to pay taxes on is another. She isn’t fool enough not to see it, if Jeffrey is.”
“You know, Pamela darling,” Mr. Fleetwood drawled, “I think you’re dead right. But if you’ll pardon me for saying so, you’re dead wrong if you go bargin’ in tellin’ ’em that. Tact, my dear, was not one of the ingredients of your mother’s milk.”
“Don’t be vulgar, Eric,” she said sharply. “I should think you’d be one of the last persons on earth to go mooning about tact when money is what’s wanted. Anyway, Sally Bruce is a smart woman. She’ll see the point, and she’ll snap at it. What’s the use of being Mrs. Jeffrey Atwater if she’d got to do her own washing up? You can’t eat jewels, my lad. If Jeff were like Darcy he’d see that quick enough.—By the way, you haven’t loaned Darcy money, have you?”
Eric Fleetwood laughed sardonically. “Not bloody likely, my dear. I always thought the old boy would change his mind.”
“What did he want with you, last night?”
“Just what I told you last night. Or this morning, whenever it was.”
“Then he hadn’t changed his mind?”
“He certainly had not. Not about the jewels particularly. Did you expect him to?”
“No,” Pamela said shortly. “But you know how old men are, and she’s pretty attractive, in an American sort of way.”
“Old Sir Lionel was English, my dear.”
“That’s what I mean,” Pamela said dryly.
“Well, you’re wrong,” Fleetwood returned. “She’d made some slighting reference to his family. If the old boy had had an Act of Parliament in his pocket, Jeff would have gone out with it down his throat. Well, I’ve got to get on with it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought you wanted me to do my bit to make Jeff see the light. If you don’t, say so. It’s not a job of work that’s much to my fancy.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“I think we’ll lie low a bit, Eric,” Mrs. Darcy Atwater said slowly. “You’re wrong about the Bruce woman. But Jeffrey’s got his dander up. He wouldn’t recognize sense when he saw it. Wait till he’s got inheritance taxes to pay and has to put the Collection under the hammer. He’ll be a little more reasonable.”
“Just go gently, old girl,” Mr. Fleetwood said indifferently. “They’re neither of them Welsh miners, you know.”
Mr. Pinkerton, quite annoyed at that, was glad that Inspector Bull decided on that moment to move, and was not so glad when he found the two of them wedged in the narrow W. C., with the door closed, waiting until Mr. Eric Fleetwood’s steps disappeared along the hall, and a door opened and closed.
Bull opened the door and went quietly down the hall. Mr. Pinkerton, following, saw him raise his hand to tap on Lady Atwater’s sitting-room door, and suddenly lean forward instead, his head close to the old wood. Mr. Pinkerton, coming up as quietly as he could, watched him listening there intently, straining every nerve in what he knew to be a phenomenally acute sense of sound. Then he raised his head quickly and took a step back as Lady Atwater herself opened the door.
“Good morning, Inspector. Come in.”
Her delicate face lighted gently, as if she were pleased to see him. The brown snails of her curling kids were gone, her hair was a short soft white mass over her fragile head. She still wore her tweed suit and her stout walking shoes, but she sat down on the sofa as if she were dressed in sable ermine, folding her frail transparent hands in her lap. Mr. Pinkerton saw Bull look covertly about the room. Just then he heard Mrs. Humpage’s voice coming through the solid oak panelling.
“. . . a whole scuttle of coal on his fire, Jo. He’s a rich man, for all you’d never suspect if from the way he acts,” she was saying. “You’d think he hadn’t got a bent farthing, to look at him. What’s all this water doing on the floor—and look at his fancy pyjamas, the legs all wet. Whatever has he—”
Then the voice stopped as abruptly as it had begun, though Mr. Pinkerton, who sat blinking nervously in his chair in front of Lady Atwater’s fire, knew Mrs. Humpage certainly had not stopped in the middle of things that way. The rattle of coals hadn’t stopped, cut short, as if the coals themselves had been suspended in mid-air, either. He looked apprehensively at Bull. Whether he’d heard it or not he couldn’t have told by the expression on that stolid face. He was looking at Lady Atwater, completely absorbed, apparently, in the gentle pale face and steady eyes that were fixed, waiting, on his.
Mr. Pinkerton, behind his perturbation, was not so much worrying about the coals he was burning beyond the panelled walls—though Heaven knew that was bad, too—as wondering, with dismay, how Mrs. Humpage had possibly found out such an astonishing thing about him . . . for he had never once thought of himself as a rich man, much less give the faintest indication of it. Then the greenish face of the bank clerk moved across the back of his mind, and his heart sank a little. He had thought, foolishly, that Mrs. Humpage was so pleasant to him because she was a kindly woman. He straightened his narrow string tie, and moistened his suddenly dry lips.
CHAPTER 11
“If you don’t mind my asking you again, ma’am,” Inspector Bull was saying soberly, “are you sure you didn’t hear anything that sounded odd, or sounds odd now you look back on it, after you went to bed last night?”
“No, Inspector, I’m very sure of it,” Lady Atwater said gently. “I came to the door after Mr. Fleetwood left, and said good night to my husband. His bedroom door was open, but as I’ve told you, I didn’t want to talk to him about this American girl till morning, to give him and his dinner time to settle. Frankly, I thought that after seeing her, and after being so annoyed with my son’s wife, he’d manage as he so frequently did to find a reason for coming round.”
“Did he . . . not like Mrs. Darcy
Atwater?”
“He used to think she was wonderful. He’d got to, you see, because he unearthed her and insisted on Darcy’s marrying her, and, at first . . .”
She stopped, looking at the Inspector.
“I’m assuming you’ll use the utmost discretion in using the information I feel it my duty to give you,” she said gently.
“You can trust me, ma’am,” Bull replied.
Mr. Pinkerton raised his mental brows and settled back in his chair.
“At first he was delighted with her. She always agreed with him, which virtually no one else ever did. She was careful about money. I’ve seldom known anyone who could make a shilling go further.”
Inspector Bull glanced involuntarily at Mr. Pinkerton, but the little man did not notice it. He was thinking about the late Mrs. Pinkerton.
“She’s a woman of very great means. My husband had some idea she would make my son Darcy . . . well, less extravagant, possibly.”
“And did she?”
Lady Atwater smiled.
“As the twig is bent, Inspector. However, after my husband decided to disinherit Jeffrey to teach him a lesson—because I assure you in the beginning, Inspector, he only meant to do that . . . He was really much fonder of Jeffrey than he was of Darcy. That’s why he was always so much harder on him. Darcy didn’t matter, really. But Jeffrey was so like his father, in many ways, and his father wanted him to be a Tory, and eventually something great as a Tory, and when Jeffrey turned out to think the Tories were a lot of stuffed shirts, he couldn’t bear it. Anthony Eden’s name would send him into a rage that lasted for days.”
She raised her fragile transparent hands. “Well, you see.”
“And Mrs. Darcy Atwater, ma’am?” Bull asked patiently.
“She took too much for granted, entirely, Inspector. She assumed that she and my husband were after all the guardians of our name, and she began acting as if, since he wouldn’t take care of his health, she might as well begin taking over at once. And you know, Inspector, there’s nothing more intolerable than a competent capable woman who thinks she has the reins in her hands.”