by Zenith Brown
Mr. Pinkerton blinked.
“If somebody sent you a note like that, Pinkerton,” Bull said, “and you had in mind to get rid of him, would you just toss it on the grate and go off without bothering to see if it burned or not?”
Mr. Pinkerton blinked again. It was a point certainly. He was a little ashamed of himself for not having seen it.
“And . . . the others?” he asked.
Bull shook his head in the firelight there.
“I’ve been over ’em with Sir Charles,” he said wearily. He puffed at his pipe, the smoke a pink cloud in front of the fire.
“Lady Atwater, for instance,” he went on. “She’s devoted to her elder son. I see that now. She can’t abide her daughter-in-law. On the other hand . . .”
He stopped.
“She’s very frail,” Mr. Pinkerton said. “She could never have pitched Ogle off the balcony.”
Bull tamped down his sizzling tobacco. “Harry Ogle,” he said dispassionately, “was struck on the back of the head with an iron door stop before he went down the cliff. Kirtin found it not far from where he landed. There were no fingerprints on it—like the skewer, barring your own—but it came from Mr. Jeffrey Atwater’s room.”
Mr. Pinkerton swallowed. “Oh,” he said.
“Of course, none of these doors lock. Mrs. Atwater was the only one who insisted on having a key. Still, it’s hard to think Lady Atwater would do anything to throw suspicion on her son. However, you can’t tell. Murder’s always hard to make out.”
Mr. Pinkerton sat shivering in the shadows. The idea of the tiny Lady Atwater, white-haired and elderly and serene, driving a skewer through her husband’s heart as he lay asleep was incredible to him. However, lots of things had been that, in his time, and true enough; and no doubt would be in the future. He drew the covers up more tightly.
“There’s Fleetwood, of course,” Bull said reflectively. “He’s a friend of Darcy and Mrs. Darcy Atwater. It’s hardly conceivable he’d murder Sir Lionel. What would be his motive? He’s got a considerable fortune of his own. His mother’s aunt had her husband’s brewing fortune to dispose of, and gave him a large whack of it. He knows the present Lady Atwater and Mr. Jeffrey Atwater don’t like his father. The old gentlemen’s death was just a liability to him. Sir Lionel liked him, apparently. His manner’s against him, but you can’t convict people of murder because you don’t like the shape of their chin, Pinkerton.”
Mr. Pinkerton nodded, sitting there. He wondered if it could be time now to bring up the only idea he was really interested in.
“Mrs. Darcy Atwater, then?” he asked, in as matter-of-fact tones as he could manage.
“There you’ve got me,” Bull said slowly. “She’s trying to hang her brother-in-law, undoubtedly. But that might just be taking an advantage of an opportunity she didn’t herself make.”
He puffed in silence.
“She’s a hard woman, Pinkerton. She didn’t turn a hair when she looked at Sir Lionel lying there, not till she turned on you. She’d go far to get what she wanted. She’s been trying to hang on to the estate for a long time.”
Mr. Pinkerton nodded as vigorously as he could, what with his position and his shivering limbs and extremities.
“She’s got no motive,” Bull went on calmly, “for the death of the old gentleman just as such. She’s got plenty of money—she doesn’t need Darcy’s inheritance.”
He smoked a while, silently, the little Welshman sitting bolt-upright in the sagging old bed, waiting as patiently as he could.
“There are two possibilities about Mrs. Darcy Atwater,” he said slowly, after a long while. “If she could kill off Sir Lionel and be certain of having Jeffrey Atwater convicted of it, then it would make sense. She’d have got the jewels and the money and no mistake. Or . . . supposing the old gentleman was on the point of changing his mind about giving all his estate and the entail to Darcy. Mrs. Atwater’s a rich woman, but if she knew that . . .”
He stopped again, chewing his tawny mustache meditatively, bulking huge in the dim firelight.
“I . . . I know,” Mr. Pinkerton said. “And what about her husband?”
He asked it more for the completeness of the record than with any conviction, or even interest.
Bull shook his head.
“He hasn’t a ghost of a motive, that I can make out,” he said. “Except what we just said—Sir Lionel was going to change his will. There’s no evidence anywhere for it. Lady Atwater did say she thought he might, or hoped he would, or wasn’t sure he wouldn’t, someday. But there’s no fact to it, Pinkerton. Apart from that, what is there? As far as he’s concerned, his father’s death made no difference about the Collection. He gets it, he would have got it in any case. Anyway, he says he doesn’t want it. He’s already got the biggest slice of the pie. There’s no doubt he’s head over heels in debt. Some of it we’ve traced, and no doubt some of it we haven’t. But what then? Nobody would hound him, in the position he’s in. His father was an old man, in bad health, Pinkerton. Ate too much, drank too much, had a bad temper.”
Bull shook his head. “And the last we know about his father, according to Fleetwood’s testimony, is that young Darcy Atwater was on the point of getting the money and the jewels too, as far as Sir Lionel could do anything about it. No, everything points away from him.”
Mr. Pinkerton, nodding his acquiescence in the semi-darkness, screwed up his face and wrinkled his forehead in an effort to recall something that he knew he wanted to bring up. Then he thought of it, suddenly, and hesitated. He still wanted to ask the Inspector about it, but as he had no possible explanation for it except an obvious one—one that furthermore was strongly opposed to the position he had allowed himself to take—he hardly liked to mention it. Especially as Inspector Bull had not. He had, however, he reflected in an instant, forgot Bull’s extraordinary and often demonstrated clairvoyance.
“There’s those last words of Sir Lionel Atwater’s you heard, of course,” he said soberly. “ ‘My son . . . my heir.’ They mean something. What, I can’t say.”
He smoked in a kind of sombre baffled silence.
“They could mean Mr. Jeffrey Atwater, who’s his son and heir to the Collection. They could mean Darcy Atwater, who’s his son and heir to the estate. But there’s not the slightest evidence, on the face of it, that either of ’em killed him, or had any reason to kill him. Could they mean something else? I’ve thought about it a score of times.”
Mr. Pinkerton shook his head dismally. So had he.
Bull knocked the ashes out of his pipe against the grate and sat with the bowl cupped in his hands, looking down at it. Then he got up heavily.
“Well, it’s too dark to work on the balcony tonight without destroying more traces than we’d find,” he said. “In the morning we might learn something.”
Mr. Pinkerton’s jaw dropped. He stared, dry-lipped and blinking, his hands suddenly much colder, his heart beating in dismayed terror, at the placid deliberate countenance in the pale firelight.
“There’ll be traces aplenty,” Bull went on. A faint shade of hopefulness appeared in his stolid voice, as if that at least was something. “There’s grime and soot from a whole winter’s fogs and fires on the floor out there, and the rail. It ought to be as easy as following a trail in mud. I’m putting one of Kirtin’s men up there, as soon as the Atwaters and so on have gone to bed.”
The icy perspiration crept down Mr. Pinkerton’s spine. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. He made a desperate effort then, still without success.
Inspector Bull had got to his feet and was standing there, looking down into the fire. Mr. Pinkerton moistened his paralyzed lips again. Bull stretched his long arms wearily, and yawned. He moved toward the door.
It would be better, Mr. Pinkerton realized mechanically, to do it, as he had got to do it some time, in the semi-dark. He controlled his shaking voice.
“Inspector . . .” he said weakly. Bull stopped, looking back at him.
“I . . . I’m afraid . . . I’ve already ruined the balcony. I was out there a long time . . .”
CHAPTER 24
For several moments Mr. Pinkerton thought Inspector Bull could not have heard what he had said. He simply stood there, on his way to the door, for a very long time. Then, with equal silence, he moved slowly back and stood between the wretched little man, clutching desperately at his bed-clothes, and the fire, still looking at him. Then, at long last, he sat down on the oak settle.
“What were you doing out there, Pinkerton?” he asked.
There was a superhuman mildness in his voice that fooled Mr. Pinkerton not at all.
“I was . . . investigating,” Mr. Pinkerton managed to say, incoherently.
Inspector Bull was silent again. He said, after some time, “What did you find out, if anything?”
Mr. Pinkerton moistened his lips once more, and gripped firmly at the bedclothes to keep his hands from shaking.
“Why, not anything, actually,” he said, contritely. “I . . . I just looked in the windows. Mr. Darcy Atwater was in Mr. Fleetwood’s room, with him and the elder Mr. Fleetwood. Mr. Fleetwood Senior was giving him a cheque. He was very pleased. He wasn’t at all the way he seems to be downstairs, in the . . .”
He stopped, having nearly said “in the bar,” which would have brought up something that he would much rather have forgotten.
“. . . in the lounge. He was quite gay. He was saying something to the solicitor, laughing. Mr. Eric Fleetwood apparently thought it wasn’t the correct thing, because he shook his head and looked quickly at his father. Then they all went out.”
Bull took his pipe out of his pocket again, and filled it.
“Go on,” he said.
“Well, that’s all really. Except that Mrs. Atwater was still there in her chair. She’d not even lighted that cigarette. She was smiling to herself.”
He stopped.
“Yes,” Bull said. “What else?”
Mr. Pinkerton swallowed. Bull knew, of course, in any case. He would have guessed in the fraction of an instant. And of course, in any case, it would not be right for Mr. Pinkerton to deceive him. Not in direct examination like this.
“Well,” he went on, unhappily, “I thought it wouldn’t do any great harm if, while I was out there, I just had a glance into the deaf and dumb man’s room. Mr. Ross—is that his name?”
Bull drew a deep and patient breath.
“That’s what he calls himself,” he replied stolidly.
“Why, he isn’t deaf at all,” Mr. Pinkerton said. He sat up straighter, with some excitement, in spite of his situation. “I happened to . . . to sneeze. He came bouncing to the window. He’d been reading a book, as if he was memorizing something out of it . . . and he kept moving his lips while he was doing it—just as if he wasn’t dumb either. He opened the window and looked out, as if he’d been expecting somebody to come.”
He hesitated, faltered, and came to a complete stop, looking at the Inspector with some hopefulness. Inspector Bull did not seem impressed with his information. Mr. Pinkerton’s heart sank still further.
“I’m . . . I’m very sorry, Inspector,” he said humbly.
“I told you . . .” Bull began. Then he stopped too, and shook his head with so much resignation that Mr. Pinkerton was on the whole more dashed than he could ever recall having been. If only he weren’t so forbearing, he thought wretchedly; if he’d get angry, or anything. . . . But he didn’t.
“Well,” Bull said, very patiently, “what’s done is done.”
He lighted his pipe. Mr. Pinkerton sat motionless with hands clasped about his updrawn knees. Anything he might say now, he realized only too well, would sound not merely prying but the very height of impudence. Still, the situation could not be worse, very well.
He glanced timidly at Bull. “Did . . . he murder Sir Lionel?” he asked, in a small voice.
“He may have done,” Bull said. “He’s well known to the Continental police. He’s not deaf, and he’s not dumb. He just doesn’t speak much English.”
Mr. Pinkerton blinked rapidly.
“Really, Inspector!” he exclaimed. “Would . . . could it have been him, do you think, that Sir Lionel was calling ‘foreign scum,’ just before dinner, the night he was killed?”
Bull looked at him with silent and incredible . . . something; Mr. Pinkerton did not care to put a name to it.
“When did you say?” he asked, with careful placidity.
“The . . . the evening they came,” Mr. Pinkerton got out. “I heard him when the cupboard must have been open, saying that. He was very angry.”
Inspector Bull still stared silently at him. After several quite unbearable instants he said, “If there’s anything else you’ve not told me, Mr. Pinkerton, now’s the time to do it.”
It seemed to the little man for some time that he really could not speak, now.
“I can’t think of anything else,” he said, at last, in a choked voice that he had difficulty recognizing as any part of him. “Except that both Mrs. Atwater and Lady Atwater went to see Mrs. Bruce this evening. Mrs. Atwater told Mrs. Bruce she’d not told everything she knows to the police yet Lady Atwater is on Mr. Jeffrey’s side. She said she’d stood between him and his father for thirty-two years, and Mrs. Bruce must help her stand between him and what’s ahead of him. Mrs. Bruce told her about the detectives. She said it wasn’t her husband, it was Mrs. Atwater that must have hired them.”
Bull stared down into the fire. The quarterboys on the church clock, the oldest working clock in all England, struck the three-quarter hour. And, as the last tinny stroke died in the silent night, Mr. Pinkerton suddenly started up in his bed with such a violent leap that his head struck sharply against the solid oak behind him, and Inspector Bull sprang to his feet, the settle crashing to the floor behind him. A scream so full of terror that it made Mr. Pinkerton’s thin grey hair literally stand, his hands shake uncontrollably, his bloodstream race with horrified excitement through his veins, ripped through the quiet inn.
Inspector Bull was through the door in an instant, his feet pounding on the stairs, across the lounge, up the other flight. Mr. Pinkerton sat frozen with dread for one long moment, then scrambled out onto the icy floor and into his overcoat. A woman’s voice, hysterical, high-pitched and incoherent, seemed to fill the night. He searched desperately for his plaid wool slippers, got his feet into them at last, bolted out the door, down his stairs and up into the other corridor. People were coming from everywhere, crowding about in the narrow dimly-lit hall.
Mrs. Darcy Atwater, her face white as chalk, was clinging desperately to Bull’s arm, faint with terror. Mr. Pinkerton, edging up from behind, looked quickly at the drawn faces of the others . . . Jeffrey Atwater, his mother, Eric Fleetwood, Darcy Atwater; Mrs. Humpage, red-eyed and mottle-faced, the potboy Jo shivering behind her in a flannel nightshirt, sizes too big for him.
Pamela Atwater was trying stubbornly to control herself. She shrank toward Bull as Lady Atwater, cooler, Mr. Pinkerton thought, than all the rest of them, brought her dressing gown from her open room and laid it about her bare shoulders.
Sergeant York came out of the passage by the back stairs.
Mrs. Atwater’s shaking hand pointed to the balcony. Bull glanced at York. Mr. Pinkerton saw the sergeant shake his head. Bull turned calmly. “The rest of you go back to bed,” he said. “There’s no cause for alarm—go along, please.”
Mr. Pinkerton watched them, fascinated, as they fell back and disappeared. Lady Atwater took her son’s arm. He led her back to her room, and went on round the corridor to his own. Eric Fleetwood shrugged his shoulders and closed his door. Darcy Atwater, still struggling against sleep, stood helplessly looking on. He followed his wife and Bull back into her room. Mr. Pinkerton, peering in from the door, saw that the balcony window was tightly closed, the large chest pushed closer to it than it had been before.
Mrs. Atwater sank down on the edge of her bed.
“I’m sorry!” she cried hysterically. “I thought I heard someone out on the balcony.”
She made a strong effort to recover herself. “Nerves, I suppose. I’m very sorry, really, Inspector. Go back to bed, Darcy, you’ll catch your death of cold.”
Her voice had calmed, but she was still white, and her whole body shook in fitful spasms.
“You can go to sleep, Mrs. Darcy,” Bull said calmly. “Sergeant York will be out there the rest of the night, and I’ll have a man in the corridor. You don’t need to fear.”
She nodded silently.
“You ought to have some air in here, Pamela,” Darcy Atwater said. He roused himself with an effort, crossed the room and opened the upper half of one side of the casement. He shivered as the misty air struck his face.
“Good night,” Pamela Atwater said. “I’m sorry I made such a fool of myself.”
She shuddered again.
Bull closed the door. They stood in the hall outside for a moment.
“Nervy, what?” Darcy Atwater said, in as matter-of-fact a tone as so sleepy a tone could be. “Good night.”
Inspector Bull said “Good night, sir,” and stood watching him return to his room. Mr. Pinkerton glanced up at him. Then he turned quickly as he heard a click in the lock behind him. He heard a chair slide along the floor, and bump as it struck the door. Mr. Pinkerton shivered himself, what with the fright and what with the cold.
Jeffrey Atwater’s large figure appeared round the corner of the corridor. He came quickly down to them, his face set.
“Nerves?” he asked curtly.
“Or something,” Bull said. “You’d best get back to bed, sir.”
Atwater nodded and went back. Bull went down the passage to where Sergeant York stood by the window opening onto the balcony.
“I didn’t make a sound, sir,” York said.
“Did you hear anything?”
“Not outside, Inspector. Someone went to the lavatory. I expect that’s what she heard.”
“Who was it?”
“I couldn’t make out. It could have been any of them, for all I could tell, sir. Mrs. Atwater’s light was the only one on. It hadn’t been off. The one over the mirror in front of the window.”