by J F Straker
‘No. I can’t honestly say that I heard Miss Connaught either — though I suppose I must have done.’
‘Did you leave your room at all before going to bed?’
‘No.’
There had been a slight pause before that second ‘no’. Pitt hesitated. Should he lay his cards on the table now, or should he seek to entangle the young man further?
He decided on the former alternative.
‘Would it surprise you to learn, sir, that twice during the course of the evening someone visited your room, and that on both occasions you were absent from it?’
Moull flushed. ‘I may have gone to the bathroom,’ he said.
‘I don’t think so, sir. The bathroom was empty at the time.’
He spoke with conviction. The other did not argue.
‘You still say you did not leave your room?’ Pitt persisted.
‘I’m not saying anything. Who was this mysterious visitor, anyway? It looks as if one of us needs his head examined.’
‘It looks as if one of you isn’t speaking the truth,’ the Inspector corrected him, ignoring the question. ‘That is a serious matter in a case of attempted murder.’
‘Murder?’ The other looked aghast. Then his face cleared, and he smiled. ‘Good Lord! You don’t think I was responsible for doping Colin’s milk, do you? Why, he and I are the best of friends. You ask him.’
His serene assurance unsettled the Inspector.
‘Even friends can be dangerous if they know too much,’ Pitt said harshly. ‘You know Russell believes that old Mr Connaught was murdered?’
The wariness came back to the young man’s eyes as he nodded.
‘Do you agree with him?’ Pitt asked. ‘Do you think it was murder?’
‘I don’t know enough about it to form an opinion,’ said Chris.
‘H’m! Mr Russell does not appear to confide in his friends,’ Pitt could not resist saying. ‘You went for a walk by the river that morning, didn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you often go walking before breakfast?’
‘Not often. It just happened that I woke early and couldn’t get to sleep again.’
The young man was vague about time, but that, if he were innocent, was understandable. It was a fortnight now since John Connaught had died. He had seen Mrs Smelton on her bicycle, said Chris, and he remembered passing a stranger as he crossed the far bridge. He had gone a little way along the river-bank, and had then retraced his steps to the school.
‘Why?’ Pitt asked bluntly. ‘Why didn’t you go on? What happened to make you turn back?’
‘Nothing happened. But I was in no hurry, and it was pretty misty along the river.’
‘Did you meet anyone on the return journey?’
‘No.’ And then more firmly, after a pause. ‘No. No one.’
Pitt asked him about his visit with Diana Farling to Mrs Bain’s cottage. The petrol-filled lamp was something that intrigued the Inspector out of all proportion to its apparent importance. If, as seemed certain, the Bains had not been guilty of carelessness, how had it happened? Had Mr Bain tired of his wife and chosen that rather clumsy method of disposing of her? Or was it, as the man had hinted to Russell, the work of an outsider? Whatever the reason, it seemed to lie beyond the sphere of the Inspector’s present investigations. Yet it was an incident so senseless and incomplete in itself that surely it had to be part of a larger and more comprehensive crime? And that scattered country district could not be so steeped in crime that it could boast another more serious than those he was now investigating.
Yet, if there were a connection, where did it lie? There had been time and opportunity enough for any member of the staff to set the scene, for Miss Farling had announced at tea that Moull was to be boarded out at the Bains’, and it was not until two and a half hours later that the lamp had exploded. But what was the motive? Russell had said ...
‘You were not very pleased at the prospect of sleeping at the cottage, were you?’ Pitt asked.
‘No, I wasn’t. It would have meant going out night and morning in all weathers. Besides, I —’ Chris stopped with a jerk, biting off the last word. His eyes narrowed, and when he spoke again his voice carried a pugnacity normally foreign to it. ‘I don’t think I like that last question, Inspector. Are you suggesting that I deliberately tried to blow up the cottage — to say nothing of Mrs Bain — simply to avoid having to sleep there? If you are, then let me tell you ...’
‘You need not bother, sir,’ Pitt said placidly. ‘I can guess. Well, we will have your statement typed, and I’ll let you know when it is ready for signing.’
‘Statement?’ The young man stared at him. ‘I’ve made no statement.’
‘We would like your signature, Mr Moull, to a summary of what you have said in this interview. That is a customary request, although you are not bound to comply with it. And if you wish to modify or alter any part of your statement ...’
He paused. The stare was a troubled one. So troubled that for a moment the Inspector had wild hopes of a confession — or of at least an approach to the truth. Then Moull shook his head slowly and walked out of the room.
‘I’m not sure I didn’t bungle that,’ Pitt said thoughtfully. ‘Though I can’t think how.’
Sergeant Maddox clucked sympathetically. ‘He didn’t take kindly to signing that statement,’ he said. ‘And for why? Because it’s as full of lies as a colander is of holes.’
‘He may be lying, but unless we know where and why he’s lying we aren’t much forrader. The only concrete evidence against him is Smelton’s statement that he was out of his room at eight-thirty and nine o’clock last night. And Smelton may be lying. Smelton himself may be the poisoner. You suggest Moull may have slipped into Russell’s room before ten and waited there. Well, so could Smelton. No one saw him leave the school, and no one can say when he arrived home. Not if his wife was away for the night, as he says.’
‘They may have a maid.’
‘I doubt whether schoolteachers can afford maids. However, suppose Smelton was speaking the truth — where was Moull?’
‘In Russell’s room, as I said.’
Pitt nodded impatiently. The Sergeant, he thought, was exercising that particular horse too often and neglecting the rest of the stable.
‘Supposition only. He might have been in someone else’s room.’
‘Wouldn’t he say so in that case?’
‘I can think of reasons why he might not,’ said Pitt. ‘But there is one factor here that points to Moull, and not Smelton, as the liar. I didn’t tell Moull when his visitor called. Therefore, since he must realize that the vital time was after ten o’clock, he would, if he had been in his room then, assume that his visitor called before ten. But he didn’t assume that — presumably because he couldn’t. He was out of his room both before and after ten. Get me?’
‘I’m not sure that I do. A bit involved, isn’t it?’
‘All right, skip it,’ said Pitt. ‘It’s probably irrelevant.’
Now that he had met and talked with the staff he needed inside information about them from the headmaster. It would have helped him in his interviews had he been able to get it earlier, but Joseph Latimer was not an easy man to corner. Nor, when the Inspector eventually succeeded in cornering him, was he particularly informative. With the exception of Smelton and the two matrons all the staff were comparative newcomers, he said, and he knew little about them. Diana Farling had come the previous January; she had good references from a school in Ireland, where her mother lived. Mr Latimer thought that her father was dead and that her mother had remarried, but he could not be certain of that.
‘I understand she has a cottage out at Chaim,’ said Pitt. ‘Has she an income apart from her salary? Even small cottages cost a tidy sum these days.’
Mr Latimer did not know. Miss Farling was an efficient secretary, and he was not concerned with her private life. Nor was he any more informative about the rest of the staff. Anne Conn
aught and Christopher Moull had joined Redways at the beginning of the summer term. Moull’s home was in Kent; he was a shy young man and a poor disciplinarian, though willing. Pitt gathered that it was only his willingness that restrained Mr Latimer from sacking him. As for Russell — here the headmaster grimaced — ‘I know nothing of his past, apart from one reasonable reference, and I hope that I shall not in any way be connected with his future. This is his first term here, Inspector, and his last. Since I feel that I am perhaps biased against him I would prefer to keep my opinion of him to myself.’
‘And Mr Smelton?’ asked Pitt.
Here the headmaster’s knowledge went a little deeper, but only in respect of Smelton the schoolmaster. Of Smelton the man he could say little, apart from some rather scathing comments on the man’s inability to manage either his wife or his financial affairs. Pitt wondered how such an impersonal and cold-blooded creature as Joseph Latimer could run, apparently successfully, such a personal institution as a private boarding-school.
‘Did any of these people have cause to dislike Russell?’ he asked.
The headmaster struggled between personal animosity and a regard for the truth. ‘Not so far as I know,’ he said cautiously. ‘Not until he started accusing all and sundry of murder. I imagine they liked him then no more than I did.’
And that, thought Pitt, was a minus quantity. ‘Where were you yourself last night, sir? Until, say, eleven o’clock?’ he asked. He realized that he had to tread warily here. But, headmaster or no headmaster, the question had to be put.
Mr Latimer told him. He obviously considered the question an impertinence, but he told him. He had spent the evening, he said, as he spent most evenings during term-time, working in his study. His wife and son had also been in the room until ten-thirty. After that he had been alone until Russell disturbed him.
Pitt decided to leave it at that, and not to brandish a further red rag by delving into the circumstances surrounding the death of John Connaught. He knew from Russell what cause Latimer had had to dislike the old man. He knew too how Latimer and others had benefited from Connaught’s death. And, although he was beginning to suspect that Russell had been right in designating it as murder, he needed to know more about it before voicing his belief, either to the headmaster or to his own superiors. His job was to discover who had tried to poison Russell. Connaught’s death was at present no concern of his unless it helped him to do that.
But he did ask about the identity-disc. To his surprise Mr Latimer promptly produced it from his desk. It was of plastic, and stamped with the late owner’s name and address.
‘Mr Smelton gave it to me, Inspector. He admitted that he could see no reason for preserving it — it has no value — but thought that, in view of Russell’s extraordinary accusations and apparent loss of sanity, it might be wiser to do so. And I agreed with him.’
There was one more stretch of thin ice to negotiate. Pitt introduced it by admiring the photographs on the library walls, and was surprised to see a faint enthusiasm in the other’s face.
‘I took them myself,’ Latimer said, his voice less frigid. ‘I am — or was — a keen photographer. But nowadays I seem to have little time for it.’
‘You do your own developing and enlarging, I suppose?’
‘Of course. No true photographer would dream of doing otherwise.’
There was a slight pause. It’s no good, thought Pitt; you can’t skate round the damned thing, you’ve got to go at it baldheaded. ‘I hope you won’t misunderstand this, Mr Latimer, but isn’t potassium cyanide used in photographic processes? Isn’t it a fixative?’
‘I don’t think I misunderstand you, Inspector,’ the headmaster said grimly, standing stiffly erect. ‘I can assure you that there is no potassium cyanide in my darkroom and that I did not attempt to poison Russell last night. Isn’t that what you wanted to know?’
‘Not exactly, sir.’ Pitt was relieved at the lack of fireworks. He had anticipated a more vigorous reaction. ‘I was not suggesting that you yourself were implicated. But cyanide was used — and obtained at short notice, apparently. If there had been a supply in the building —’
‘Well, there was not. In any case, I keep the darkroom locked.’
Pitt rose to go. But if he had finished with the headmaster the headmaster had not finished with him. ‘Perhaps you should know, Inspector, that I intend to send the boys home on Monday,’ he said curtly.
‘I’ve no objection, sir. The staff will have to remain, of course.’
‘Yes. And I should be obliged if you and your colleagues would be as unobtrusive as possible when parents are here. I do not wish to advertise this unfortunate affair.’
We might be the broker’s men, Pitt thought angrily. ‘You won’t be able to hush it up,’ he said shortly. ‘Not after the newspapers have got wind of it.’
Mr Latimer winced.
‘I see no reason why they should,’ he said. ‘I shall give orders that no reporters are to be admitted. And I presume it is not customary for the police to indulge in gossip.’
It was too much for the Inspector.
‘It’s about time you faced the facts, Mr Latimer. This isn’t a tuppenny ha’penny theft or common assault; when we make an arrest it will be on a charge of attempted murder. It’s news, Mr Latimer. It will make the big dailies, and it’ll be splashed all over your local paper, I shouldn’t wonder. And there’s nothing you or anyone else can do to stop it.’ He laughed grimly. ‘As for barring the place to reporters — well, try it and see what happens. They’ll get the news somehow. If they don’t get it from you or your staff they’ll get it from the boys. Over fifty boys here, aren’t there? So that if you close down the school on Monday there will be that many fresh sources of information for the reporters to get at. Not very reliable sources, perhaps; but talkative, I imagine. Have you thought of that?’
Mr Latimer had not. Not in connection with newspapers.
‘Do you expect to make an arrest shortly?’ he asked, considerably chastened.
But Pitt was not prepared to commit himself on that.
James Latimer showed surprise and annoyance at finding the police already informed of his quarrel with Colin, but he did not attempt to deny it or to minimize its significance. Instead he practically went out of his way (in a spirit of bravado, the Inspector thought) to emphasize his dislike of his rival, and concluded by saying that, although he had not put poison in the milk, he was fully in sympathy with whoever had done so. The sharp rebuke which this remark elicited from the Inspector did not help to keep the interview on an easy footing.
On the previous evening, said James, he had been with his parents in his father’s study until shortly after ten-thirty. He had then gone upstairs, via the main staircase, with his mother and, after saying goodnight to her outside her room, had retired next door to his own. ‘And I can produce no witnesses, Inspector, to testify that from then on I was in bed,’ he mocked. ‘That makes me a marked man, I shouldn’t wonder.’
Pitt took no notice of this crack. He had already decided that James had a rather warped sense of humour. ‘I’m told you were away the night before Mr Connaught was drowned,’ he said. ‘Is that correct?’
James slapped his thigh noisily.
‘Good Lord, Inspector, don’t tell me you’ve joined Russell on that old hobby-horse! With the two of you in the saddle it must be buckling at the knees. You’ll kill it if you’re not careful and what will Russell do then, poor thing?’
‘Were you away that night, Mr Latimer?’
The other stared at him thoughtfully, the smile fading. ‘Yes,’ he said, with unusual brevity.
‘Where?’
‘That, Inspector, I am not prepared to say. Not, at any rate, until you start rattling the handcuffs in earnest.’
‘Handcuffs don’t rattle, Mr Latimer — they snap. And perhaps I should have said, where did you go after leaving Mr Connaught?’
The black eyebrows lifted. ‘Good Lord! So you know that too,
do you? What it is to have friends! But I’m afraid the answer is still the same.’
‘What was your business with Mr Connaught that evening?’
James shook his head. ‘Sorry, Inspector. You’ll have to rattle harder than that before you can persuade me to discuss my private affairs with strangers.’ He frowned. ‘What’s biting you, man? You know damned well that J.C. was alive the next morning — so what the devil does it matter what happened the evening before?’
***
Pitt was glad to get away from the school. He did not like small boys in large quantities, he did not like the Latimers, he did not like witnesses who apparently went out of their way to confuse and annoy. He felt frustrated and peevish. The only item of the day he could recall with genuine pleasure was the look on the headmaster’s face when he had told him that a constable would remain on duty at the school overnight.
He was surprised at the size of Philip Smelton’s house and the elegance with which it was furnished. No wonder the man is hard up, he thought, and no wonder he wanted that flat. A place like this must cost a packet to run. Certainly more than a schoolteacher is likely to earn.
Dorothy Smelton surprised him too. He had dismissed her husband as an insignificant, pompous little man notable only for his irascibility. That Smelton could have inspired the affection of such a charming and vital woman seemed incomprehensible.
Smelton had telephoned the news to Dorothy that morning, explaining that it might delay his return — a return which, for once, Dorothy was eagerly anticipating. She was not abnormal in her love of gossip, but little happened in Wainsford to stimulate conversation. It had never occurred to her that she might be interviewed by the police; all her information, she had thought, would have to be gleaned from her husband. Now, with a Detective-Inspector actually in her house, she saw herself as the centre of interest for many a party to come. Mobilizing all her considerable charm and powers of persuasion, she went to work on her visitor.