by Zenith Brown
He shook his head. “I wish we’d got him alive. And somebody knew it, somehow. He must have heard enough to make the risk of doing away with him less than the risk of letting him stay alive. But how could they . . .”
Mr. Pinkerton stared anxiously at him.
“Well,” Bull said, “I’d take over below. Find out who saw Ogle last, and where.”
Inspector Kirtin nodded and went out, after helping the Inspector move the chest of drawers back. Then Bull signed to Mr. Pinkerton to close the door, and went very methodically through what appeared to the little man to be every inch of every belonging of Mrs. Darcy Atwater. He stopped at last and stood looking down at the grate, and stepped over to the door, signing to Mr. Pinkerton to follow.
They went down the corridor to Lady Atwater’s sitting room door. Pamela Atwater opened it at Bull’s knock. Mr. Pinkerton, following in, saw that another man whom he had not seen before was with the family group gathered by the fire.
Lady Atwater smiled a little wanly as Bull appeared.
“Come in, Inspector. This is my husband’s solicitor, Mr. Fleetwood—Mr. Eric Fleetwood’s father.”
A crochety bald-headed little man nodded curtly.
“I’m asking him,” Lady Atwater went on patiently, “to go back to town and not interfere—”
“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” Mr. Fleetwood père said testily. “I’m merely doing my duty by your late husband. This is no time to allow personal past differences to interfere. I have the greatest respect for your intellect, Lady Atwater, but you’ve had no experience in dealing with such a horrible situation.”
He glanced at the large burly figure of the Inspector.
“This is a man’s province, if I may say so.”
Lady Atwater drew a deep breath and closed her eyes.
“Inspector Bull has had experience dealing with such a situation, Mr. Fleetwood. More, I expect, than you have. I have complete confidence with him. If we should want advice, Eric is here.”
Eric Fleetwood’s father looked at him without enthusiasm.
“My son’s knowledge of the law, ma’am, is hardly imposing,” he said dryly. “The acquisition of it stopped abruptly when his aunt’s will was read. If you want advice on Aintree, however, I recommend him to you highly.”
He rose with a dignity that reminded Mr. Pinkerton of the senior pigeons on the porch of the British Museum, withdrawing after failing to get to a crumb of bread in time.
“I don’t, however, wish to intrude where I’m not wanted. I should, however, like to see Jeffrey before I leave.”
He bowed stiffly and went out, followed by Eric Fleetwood. Darcy Atwater hesitated a moment and went out after them.
“Have you seen my son, Inspector?” Lady Atwater enquired calmly. “I suppose he is at Mrs. Bruce’s?”
As Inspector Bull did not answer for a moment, Mr. Pinkerton glanced nervously at him. He was standing by the chair that Mrs. Darcy had left to open the door, and to which she had returned; and he had in his hands the jewel box that he had picked up from the table in front of her. Mr. Pinkerton saw the swift glint in her dark eyes.
“Just one moment, Lady Atwater,” Bull said. “I shall have to open this, Mrs. Atwater.”
“I forbid you to, Inspector,” she said sharply. “It’s my personal property. It has nothing in it that concerns you.”
“In that case, ma’am, there’s no harm in my opening it.”
Lady Atwater spoke before her daughter-in-law could.
“Don’t be absurd, Pamela. I have given Inspector Bull permission—if I needed to—to search any of our belongings.”
The colour that had drained from Pamela Atwater’s face flushed back again. She shrugged her shoulders.
“Oh, very well,” she said lightly. “I was merely trying to save you.”
Lady Atwater looked at her, a puzzled expression on her delicate face, and shrugged too. “Give him the key, Pamela.”
The dark woman took her bag from the table, opened it and handed Bull a small gold key. Mr. Pinkerton, watching her, saw the lines about her mouth tighten a little, her eyes harden. Bull inserted the key and turned it, and raised the green leather flap. An oblong piece of paper that had been crumpled and smoothed out, then folded in a small flat square, lay in the long chamois pocket. One corner of it had been burned. Mr. Pinkerton, his eyes glued on it, barely noticed the sparkle of the diamond clips.
Bull took the folded paper, closed the case, locked it and handed it to Mrs. Atwater. He unfolded the paper and stood looking at it for a moment.
“Where did you get this, Mrs. Atwater?” he asked slowly.
“I found it.”
“Where, please.”
He put it fiat on the table. Mr. Pinkerton from round his elbow could see the sign of the Old Angel, Rye, at the top of it. It was a sheet of Mrs. Humpage’s not too liberally dispensed writing paper. And under the mark of the Old Angel was printed in block letters:
YOU’VE MADE ME LOSE MY POST AT THE BANK. I WANT £ 1000 TO CLEAR OUT AND KEEP MY MOUTH SHUT. I’LL BE OUT ON THE BALCONY WAITING.
There was no salutation. There was no signature either, but as Mr. Pinkerton instantly saw, none was needed.
He looked at Pamela Atwater. She was perhaps almost too calm.
“What is it, Inspector?” Lady Atwater asked quietly.
Bull picked the note up carefully by a corner and held it out to her. She looked at it, frowned, and looked first at him, then at her daughter-in-law.
“I should like to see this young man, Inspector.”
Mr. Pinkerton caught his breath.
“He is dead, ma’am,” Bull said soberly.
“Dead?”
Lady Atwater’s delicate voice was scarcely audible.
“He fell, or was thrown, off the balcony outside your bedroom, sometime between half-past six this evening and a quarter to eight, when he was found at the foot of the cliff,” Bull said. “The assumption from this, of course, is that he was thrown.”
Lady Atwater sat speechless. Bull turned to Mrs. Darcy Atwater. “You didn’t tell them, ma’am?”
“I saw no reason for upsetting everybody over a bank clerk.”
Lady Atwater stiffened, the colour coming back in two bright spots on her pale cheeks.
“Where did you get this, Pamela?” she demanded curtly.
“I found it, Lady Atwater.”
“I heard you say you’d found it. Where?”
Pamela Atwater smiled, coolly—almost triumphantly, it seemed to Mr. Pinkerton.
“In Jeffrey’s room, crumpled in a wad on the hearth,” she replied calmly. “It had been thrown into the fire, and fallen through the grate.”
“And what were you doing in Jeffrey’s room, in the first place? And what right had you to read any paper you found there in the second?”
Lady Atwater’s voice was very crisp. Her daughter-in-law did not turn a hair, somewhat to Mr. Pinkerton’s reluctant admiration.
“It’s high time somebody was doing something,” she retorted coolly. “I see no reason why Jeffrey, who has the best motive of anyone in the inn, should be so neglected by the police. However, that’s not why I was there. I went in to talk to him when I heard him come in. He was extremely rude to me.”
“And accordingly you felt privileged to snoop about in his private papers?”
“Yes, Lady Atwater—I did. You said you expected us to co-operate with the police. It seems to me your present attitude is a little inconsistent, if you will allow me to say so.”
Lady Atwater looked at her with level unclouded eyes, and said nothing for an instant. Then she looked back at Inspector Bull.
“You’ll find my son at Mrs. Bruce’s, Inspector. I’m sure he will be able to explain what on the face of it seems totally inexplicable. Will you tell Mrs. Humpage to tell that poor child if there’s anything in the world I can do for her, to come to me.”
Bull nodded. Mrs. Darcy Atwater followed him out. They went on down to the
second door, Mr. Pinkerton following tenaciously.
CHAPTER 18
“I don’t want you to misunderstand me, Inspector,” Pamela Atwater said, when they had got back inside her room again, Mr. Pinkerton standing as inconspicuously by the door as he could. “I have nothing but affection for my husband’s brother, and for his mother, though they have none for me. Sir Lionel was very fond of me. That’s probably why the others resent me, as you’ve doubtless noticed.”
She sat down and looked steadily into the fire in the grate for several minutes. Mr. Pinkerton could not tell whether she was undecided about what she wanted to say, or was merey trying to make up her mind as to the most annihilating way of saying it.
“I didn’t intend you should see that note,” she said at last.
“It’s odd, in that case,” Inspector Bull said placidly, “that you didn’t yourself bum it, as soon as you’d read it?”
She looked at him sharply. Mr. Pinkerton thought a faint smile played over her lips for a moment.
“However,” Bull continued, with equal placidity, “I dare say it might have been convenient in . . . future discussions.”
Mrs. Atwater nodded with the utmost coolness.
“As a matter of fact, I did plan to show it to my brother-in-law. It didn’t, of course, have the significance to me then that it has now Ogle’s dead.”
Bull looked enquiringly.
“It obviously means,” she said impatiently, “that Ogle knew something he thought was worth a great deal of money.”
“What would you think it would be, ma’am?” Bull asked.
“That Jeffrey killed Sir Lionel, of course,” she said without hesitation. “What else?”
Bull shook his head. “I was wondering if you might know.”
She looked at him angrily.
“Either you are as stupid as you look, Inspector, or you’re being extremely offensive.”
Mr. Pinkerton passed a finger round inside his narrow celluloid collar. How could anybody—especially a countrywoman of his—be so . . . short-sighted was one word that came to his mind, foolhardy was another. He tried to catch Mrs. Atwater’s eye, though for what reason, barring national pride, he did not know. But he might have been one of the love affairs of the chambermaid for all the notice she gave him.
Inspector Bull, of course, was as unmoved as was possible to imagine anything being. “We won’t get anywhere this way, ma’am,” he said calmly. “Have you any other reason to suspect Mr. Jeffrey Atwater?”
“I didn’t say I suspected him. I said he deserved the attention of the police as much as anybody else. Obviously the person who wrote this note suspected him.—I should hope his title wouldn’t throw dust in your eyes.”
“Wouldn’t you think, ma’am,” Bull said, and stopped. He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “If anything happened to Mr. Jeffrey Atwater, your husband would inherit the Atwater Collection as well as the estate, of course?”
She looked at him sharply. “Nothing is likely to happen to him, is there?”
“If he hanged for the murder of his father and Harry Ogle, it could be called something,” Bull suggested soberly.
“I see what you mean.”
She still eyed him steadily.
“If you think I want the Atwater Collection, you’re very much mistaken, Inspector. Neither my husband nor I has the least interest in it. We’re only interested in seeing the murderer of Sir Lionel caught out.”
Bull nodded. “Perhaps you’ll go on, ma’am.”
“The first point is this, Inspector. My husband’s father was upset about his son marrying this American woman. She’s American, she’s divorced, and she’s an artist, and Sir Lionel was very rigid, almost Victorian, in his ideas about women.”
“Did he ever speak to you about her?”
“Frequently. We saw with the same eyes. We both know the value of money.”
Mr. Pinkerton shook his head a little, wondering whether the Inspector was believing any of this. As for himself, he was sure, he didn’t believe a word of it. He took out his purple handkerchief and mopped his brow unobtrusively.
“When he got a letter from Jeffrey down here, saying Mrs. Bruce had consented to marry him, he was in a perfect rage. It was the last straw. Jeffrey hadn’t been home for days. Though what he was living on I haven’t an idea. Borrowing on bonds against his father’s death, I dare say.”
Bull looked enquiringly at her. “Did he ever try to borrow from you?”
Mrs. Darcy Atwater laughed with unpleasant amusement, it seemed to Mr. Pinkerton.
“No,” she said emphatically. “I happen to know he’ll have barely enough to live on. Most people, however, wouldn’t know that, though it’s pretty well known he was cut out from most of the private estate, apart from the Collection.”
Bull nodded.
“I haven’t said, of course, that he killed his father. It is true, though, that he did come out of his room that night, and go down the hall. I suppose that doesn’t mean anything, necessarily?”
“When was that, ma’am?”
“At two minutes past twelve,” Mrs. Atwater said promptly. “I shouldn’t have noticed, but I sleep very lightly in a strange place, and I have an illuminated travelling clock.”
“But you didn’t hear Sir Lionel groan?”
“No. I—”
It occurred to Mr. Pinkerton’s suspicious mind that she was on the point of saying she slept very soundly in a strange place, and caught herself just on the verge.
“I did, as a matter of fact, hear something, later. I thought someone was snoring, or the wind was howling. It was, you know. These old chimneys are a perfect sounding board.”
Bull nodded. “When did Mr. Jeffrey Atwater come back?”
“I didn’t hear him.”
“That note, then, ma’am. In view of it, is there anything further you’d care to say about hearing someone on the balcony?”
She hesitated for the briefest instant.
“As a matter of fact, Inspector, I didn’t hear anyone on the balcony,” she said coolly. “I opened the window to see if I could see anyone out there. Ogle, of course. I knew my brother-in-law didn’t have a thousand pounds to give him, but I could do it. I thought perhaps if I talked to Ogle I could find out what he knew.”
Mr. Pinkerton, sitting silently on the edge of his chair by the door, caught his breath sharply, but he trusted unnoticeably, as an idea came to him. There were two things about Mrs. Darcy Atwater, he thought with some excitement. One was that, from what anyone could make out, she would be as likely to give anyone a thousand pounds as to jump off the balcony herself—which was not likely. The second was that she was a large and strong woman; twice the strength of the pallid and sedentary Harry Ogle lay in that dark Welsh frame, if Mr. Pinkerton was any judge. Which of course he was not, really, he thought instantly.
“And did you?” Bull asked.
“No. He wasn’t there. I realize now, of course, that he was already dead.”
“When did you look out, Mrs. Atwater?”
“When I came up from dinner. About half-past seven. We dined early, because Lady Atwater hadn’t been able to take lunch or tea. She seemed to want us all out of the way also. I thought she was expecting my brother-in-law to bring Mrs. Bruce over to dine with her in her room. In fact, I think she’d ordered dinner for them. But they didn’t show up.”
“And what time was it you found the note?”
“At quarter to seven, when my brother-in-law came in. I was just going out of my room to Lady Atwater’s to join my husband as he was going in his door. He looked upset. I followed him in and said I’d like to talk to him. He threw the wadded note into the fire—he’d just had it in his hand—and said I could go to hell.”
Her lips tightened.
“He was extremely rude about it.”
Bull nodded.
“He walked out of the room and slammed the door. I saw the piece of paper he’d thrown in the fire had fallen thro
ugh the grate, so I fished it out and read it. I was greatly surprised. When I realized what it meant. I started back to my room to look out on the balcony, but just then my husband came out of his room, and Mr. Fleetwood came up from downstairs, so I didn’t have a chance. They both wanted a drink before dinner, so we went directly downstairs.”
“And Mr. Jeffrey?”
“I don’t know what happened to him. I presumed he’d joined his mother, although he wasn’t there when we came back for coffee. She said Mrs. Bruce hadn’t come. She didn’t mention him, and the table was cleared, so I don’t know whether he ate with her or not.”
Bull nodded again, and got heavily to his feet. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said.
Mrs. Atwater tapped the end of a cigarette on the arm of her chair.
“I hope, Inspector,” she said, quite civilly, “that you haven’t misunderstood my motive in being as frank as I’ve been.”
“No,” Bull said soberly. “I don’t think I have. Thank you.”
Mr. Pinkerton, edging toward the door, glanced at him unhappily. There seemed to be no doubt about the conclusion that had for some little time been forcing itself into his small consciousness. Bull was out of his ordinary milieu—too far out—in dealing with these people. If Pamela Atwater had been the daughter-in-law of a draper in Ealing, he’d never had been taken in by her for an instant. It was unfortunate—Mr. Pinkerton flushed in thinking it—that they hadn’t sent somebody else down, somebody who would not be so awkward and simple as the big man with the tawny mustache and the cinnamon-brown Harris tweed suit. Bull had been all right, dealing with Kathleen and Harry Ogle. They were the kind of people he could see through in an instant. The Atwaters, as anybody could see, were a very different cup of tea.
Mr. Pinkerton blinked, quite despondently.
CHAPTER 19
Inspector Bull closed Mrs. Atwater’s door. Mr. Pinkerton peered up at him timidly. He might possibly suggest, he thought.—Then he stopped very short, for there was a look on Inspector Bull’s normally quite expressionless face that on any other face would have been called grim amusement. On Inspector Bull’s, Mr. Pinkerton did not quite know what to call it. It was something, in any case, that made his voice fade away in his scrawny throat.