Mrs. Bradley went, musing, Sally at her side, out to the car. “Which way,” she demanded suddenly, “does Lord Comstock’s house lie?”
“I’ll drive you past it.”
Twenty minutes at speed down the green lanes brought them to a high red wall.
“This is it. I’ll go slowly, shall I?”
“Do, my dear.”
They cruised along, and at the gate halted for Mrs. Bradley to get out. A large policeman on duty there eyed her, as did several otherwise unoccupied persons come to gaze upon the spot where the murder was committed. Mrs. Bradley accosted none of them, and made no attempt to enter; but Sally at her side indicated the points of interest with all the fervour of a charabanc guide.
“Here we have the drive, you see how it goes. It’s about 150 yards to the house if you go direct, and about an extra 75 yards if you go round. That’s where Sir Charles left his car: you can’t see where Major Littleton left his, it’s behind the trees. You can’t see the bulge the study window makes, either, from here. Look here, Aunt Adela, wouldn’t you like to go in? Borthwick would let you.”
“Orders, miss,” said the large policeman; but dubiously.
“Thank you,” returned Mrs. Bradley pleasantly, “but I can see all I need from here.”
“You can’t see a thing. Those footprints ought to be grand still, there hasn’t been any rain since—”
Mrs. Bradley turned and eyed her pupil and niece.
“What did I tell you?”
“Yes, I know,” admitted Sally, shuffling, “motive and all that. But it does seem silly to absolutely neglect the other things.” “We won’t do that,” returned Mrs. Bradley grimly. “Let us inspect the scene of the accident.”
They moved to the other side of the road, a godsend to the unoccupied curious round the gate. The road was macadamized, its surface dust revealed no tyre tracks that could be identified. Sally, the omniscient, had obtained a few details about the affair during her previous day’s snooping.
“There was some blood here,” she said in a detached manner, pointing to a patch of grass at the roadside near the wall, “but I expect they’ve cleaned it up. There were flies, rather.” She gave a little shudder which belied the detachment.
“Which way was our conscientious policeman riding? To or from Winborough?”
“Towards, I expect. He was going off duty. He was on his wrong side, you see, if the accident was here.”
“So was Alan Littleton, in that case. They were both going the same way.”
“Well, but—” Sarah hesitated. She held no brief for the A.C., but her own deductions were dear to her. “I know. This must be what happened. Bartelmy is riding somewhere about the middle of the road, Major Littleton comes haring out and bumps him on to his head and then drags him on to the grass just here.” She indicated the stained patch, and turned, preening herself a little, to receive praise; but her aunt, unimpressed, was surveying the opposite hedge with a bright eye cocked sideways.
“D’you cut your holly in these parts?”
Sally read no Kipling; she remembered nothing of “that sacred tree which no woodman touches without orders;” but she had lived in the country all her life, and had an indignant answer ready.
“Of course not; not in hedges. It isn’t lucky.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Bradley gravely, examining a sturdy holly twig which had been broken short to the general hedge-level. “Then there’s somebody hereabouts, a stranger probably, who’s not superstitious.”
(IX)
The matter of the cook’s acquaintanceship with that chauffeur who had so annoyingly given Major Littleton the wrong number of a fleeing car was soon settled. It was done circuitously, to the accompaniment of helpless disapproval from Lady Selma, who, though she thought it her duty to see that her staff went to church and saw doctors, objected to intruding upon what she called their private lives.
“They have just as much right to their love-affairs,” said Lady Selina, devouring asparagus with ladylike greed, “as we have.” She looked round; the butler was not in the room. “I mean, naturally, I don’t allow the younger maids to have followers, and Strutt and Malkin are long past that age, and I never would have young menservants because it always makes trouble; but apart from that I do think one ought not to interfere.”
“My dear Selina,” implored Mrs. Bradley, “calm yourself. I do not propose to throw any further grit into Canon Pritchard’s domestic machine.” She eyed Sally blandly; Sally, that accomplished snooper, dear to servants and aware of all the relationships for miles around. The hint was taken, grinning; Lord Comstock’s chauffeur that day was to be Sally’s job.
This was a relief to Mrs. Bradley, who privately considered her niece’s cure not yet so complete that she could be allowed with any safety within the walls which harboured the unjustly accused Mr. Edward Mills. She issued further instructions, when Lady Selina was well out of earshot, by which her assistant was empowered to draw up a plan of Comstock’s garden, drive, and the road beyond it. This settled, she went off alone to Winborough.
“Mills again?” said the Superintendent. “Well, I suppose you can see him. I’ve got some news for you, after.”
Mrs. Bradley declined the proffered privilege of a look at Mr. Mills. That unfortunate, she learnt, had been throwing his weight about, such as it was; he was a nuisance, and the Superintendent, confidentially, did not agree that there was any need for his detention.
“A young fellow like that stand up to a bully like Comstock, and shoot him in front? Not much,” said Easton. “Why, the first thing he asked me to send out for was, what d’you think? A solicitor? No! A bottle of brilliantine and some pills.”
Mrs. Bradley agreed that Mr. Mills in the rô1e of violent criminal was unconvincing, and brought the official back to his point of departure.
“Well, Superintendent! And what is this treat you have in store for me?”
“Ah! Now you’re asking.”
He went to a drawer, unlocked it with precautions, and returned bearing an envelope strengthened with cardboard; the kind of envelope in which photographs are despatched.
“It’s about those guns,” said he. “Ah, yes,” Mrs. Bradley was grave at once. “The tests. What news?”
“Mighty funny news,” returned the Superintendent. “News that turns the whole case upside down. Look.” He spread before her, like a hand at poker, five photographs. Two of these were pictures of the mushroomed bullet, immensely magnified, showing the striations made by the revolver barrel. Numbers three and four were labelled: “Test bullets fired from 15 red label.”
“That was Comstock’s own?” she asked. “Mills says so. Just you look at the marks. I’ve got a reading-glass here if you want.” But Mrs. Bradley waved it away, and used her lorgnettes. She spent two full minutes over the photographs of the mushroomed bullet; two more over the photograph of “red label”; then put both quietly down.
“It wasn’t fired from that gun.”
“No more it was. Try the other.”
The other was the revolver which Alan Littleton had carried. She took up the picture and lifted her glasses—ten seconds later she dropped them with an exclamation.
“Eh? “said Easton jovially. “Thought that’d get you. It did me. Couldn’t believe my eyes for the moment. Not a mark the same; not the faintest resemblance. Didn’t I say you could never be up to Fate? Not if you were as clever as a wagon-load of monkeys with their tails burnt off. Now that means, as of course you understand, ma’am, that we’ve got to look for a third gun. More trouble for us, but it lets out Major Littleton, and I’m glad of it.”
Mrs. Bradley was still staring down at the photographs, still tapping them with her lorgnettes, and her bright dark eyes were dull as pebbles. She came to herself with a start at the Assistant Commissioner’s name.
“What’s that? Oh yes, Major Littleton. Obviously not from his gun, but a 15 bullet all the same, Inspector. What, then, is the official explanation of th
e single spent shell in the revolver that was on the desk?”
“Easy. Mr. Mills put us on to it. Wonder we overlooked it; it’s kept us barking up the wrong tree all this time. Why, it never was fired that day at all! Mills says his employer used to pot at rabbits with it of an evening, from the window. Butler corroborates. Funny thing to do; why, you’d only wound the animal, if you did hit one, with a toy like this—”
“Lord Comstock had no prejudice against inflicting suffering,” said Mrs. Bradley. “Yes? And so this probably was fired at another time altogether?”
“That’s right. Then he might run a rag through the barrel next day and not notice the shell; this make doesn’t throw ’em out, you know. So there we’ve been, from the Home Secretary down to your humble, all sweating our souls out (pardon me) over a bullet that’s down a burrow this fortnight.”
The Superintendent laughed with extreme heartiness at the idea of the Home Secretary and a whole assembly of other distinguished persons thus ironically employed. Mrs. Bradley, however, did not laugh. She was horribly white, and her small alert face seemed sunken into twenty new wrinkles all in a moment. The Inspector, with a quick glance at a subordinate who stood by, conjured up a glass of water for her, and proffered it firmly, with apologies for not having anything stronger. She sipped it civilly, set it down, rose, took adequate leave with thanks; but her gallant bearing had much ado to carry off the small stricken face atop.
“It’s what I always say,” said Easton to the sub-ordinate after her departure, “you can’t be up to women, try how you will. I’ve seen a woman tried for murder lend her handkerchief to the wardress when the judge put on the cap. And there’s my own wife; if I broke my leg to-morrow, nothing’d be too good for me, and yet if I was to break a vase to-night she’d give me hell. You can’t be up to ’em. Now, this Mrs. Bradley, she’s a sensible woman and she knows which end of a gun the shot comes out of; and Major Littleton is a friend of hers. Yet you see!”
“The relief,” opined the subordinate. “It makes you come weak at the knees.”
“Weak in the head, you mean,” rejoined his superior vaguely, but with intent to rebuke. “When you’re my age, you’ll get over trying to find a reason for anything a woman does. Get a move on.”
(X)
After dinner, which was oddly silent, but also, a good excuse for the silence, remarkably succulent, Mrs. Bradley went off alone, wandering into the near-by wood. She had refused the company of Sally, and gently set aside the suggestion of Lady Selina that they should play a fiendish form of joint patience called “backbite.” Lady Selina was as sulky as an excellent meal’s aftermath would permit, for she had not only been foiled in an attempt to ask Dick Paradine to dinner, but had actually been obliged to listen to a treacly commendation of Mr. Mills from her sister-in-law in her daughter’s presence; everything extolled, his curls, his innocence, his devotion. It was a little too much even for Sally, who, to Mrs. Bradley’s encomium of his hands—which were fattish and hairy, a very weak point—replied uncomfortably that anyhow they were pretty strong, and changed the subject. Somehow Mr. Mills in captivity lost some of his charm, as do certain animals. Lady Selina had the wisdom to know that her sister-in-law’s treatment of the affair was the right and effective one; but it is always galling to see a stranger easily succeeding where reproaches from those who should be the rebel’s nearest and dearest so lamentably fail. She did not interfere, therefore; but she was in a temper, a fact appreciated both by her daughter and her guest.
A glance from Mrs. Bradley, refusing escort on her stroll, implored her fellow-sleuth’s co-operation; a word, spoken low as the tray with coffee was taken jangling up, secured it.
“Be good, please, child.”
Followed a miracle. Sally of her own accord approached the baize-covered table, suggesting herself as fellow-backbiter; and on Lady Selina’s reluctant but acquiescent smile, Mrs. Bradley departed unquestioned through an open French-window, towards the wood. She had her great brocade work-bag slung upon her arm, out of which, in the green seclusion of the trees, she produced a small revolver, though not so small as those in the hands of the police, a few brass-shod cartridges, and the dark tubular cap of a silencer. With these she went through various manaeuvres, firing bullets into a piece of ¾inch plank which she set up against a tree for the purpose. All her movements were business-like, unhurried, and sure; some of them, to an observer, would have been puzzling. For when she had fired three times she took from the brocade bag, inexhaustible apparently as Mrs. Robinson’s of the Swiss Family, a small pair of scissors, the back of whose blades was roughened to the semblance of a file. This, breaking the revolver, she applied to some small part, a mysterious performance no more than ten seconds long. A moment’s thought; then she stooped, and did some other inexplicable thing with a small ramrod and a handful of earth; loaded again and fired, with seeming carelessness and extreme accuracy, until six bullet holes stood in a neat row along her piece of wood, the bullets themselves remaining embedded. Then she put all her paraphernalia back into the magnificent bag, covered the collection with hanks of coloured wools, and came strolling back to the drawing-room as the gilt Cupid adorning Lady Selina’s mantelpiece struck ten times with a hammer on his bell.
Mother and daughter were still bent over their cards. They played for counters, yellow, red, and white, which were gathered mostly under Lady Selina’s hand; that lady was beaming.
“Unlucky at cards,” said Mrs. Bradley to Sally. “I must tell Mr. Mills.”
“I’m lucky at sleuthing, anyhow,” returned Sally, reddening. “What about that half-crown?”
“I don’t know,” said Mrs. Bradley, and her voice suddenly was lifeless. “Perhaps you owe me six-pence.”
“What? Was it really another gun that shot him?”
“Give ’er air, give ’er a glass of beer, that’s right, pop!” The parrot, waking from his drowse upon the perch, checked Sally’s movement, and her mother’s remonstrances concerning the unsuitability of crime as a drawing-room topic checked further speech. Mrs. Bradley, looking ill, went out of the room and without further explanation to bed. She had concluded her investigations.
(XI)
From Mrs. Bradley’s diary:
June 14th.
Sensation! Somebody, whose public-spiritedness cannot be too highly commended, has shot Lord Comstock in his own house. A. L., strangely enough on the spot, and gave me full details. (Follow the circumstances of the crime, so far as these were known at the time of Major Littleton’s message.)
It is impossible really to blame anyone, with the single exception of His Grace the Archbishop, who ought to have brought up the late C. better while he had his hands on him.
June 15th.
All still agog with the murder. Ferdinand has arranged for me to have facilities for inquiry. Bless the boy! Accordingly, to kill two birds with one stone, went to-day to interview E. Mills, who is detained on suspicion. Quite awful! Sally must have been out of her mind with boredom to have considered him for one moment. Her mother’s fault, of course. He represented romance, though he has hands like suet puddings. A little judicious encouragement would have worked wonders. However.
M. is quite obviously not guilty. He is terrified, because he is playing a doable game, and is afraid that this will come out and debar him from future employment. There is a good old Scots word, spunk, which means, I believe, tinder; he has none. No affront, no bullying could ever strike a spark out of him. An unpleasing specimen. May be safely left out of all calculations, even Sally’s.
Saw the guns in question; also the bullet, but only a microscope would reveal anything there. Curious about the one empty shell, and the clean barrel. It looks rather as though somebody had intended to clean it completely and had been disturbed. But surely one would remove the shell first of all? Difficult.
Interviewed Vicar’s cook. Red-headed, handsome, truculent; the sort that would bully a decent man to death, and work her hands to the bone for a
waster. Admits joy-ride with latter in Vicar’s car, thus making a curious coincidence. (See trial of Frenchwoman who stated that the burglars who murdered her husband were dressed as stage Jews. Burglars disproved, but three costumes such as she described had been stolen from the Jewish Theatre that very night. The long arm of coincidence is really endless I) The chauffeur’s statement, confusing numbers of the cars, pure malice probably. Had seen the Vicar’s car out, and thought he would give the joy-riders a fright. Sally must inquire.
Disposed of two further suspects on way home in car. Sir Charles H.-F. could never, NEVER, shoot a quarry sitting. (C. may have been standing, but morally the analogy holds.) Sir Charles would not know what to do with a revolver. An elephant-rifle, 12-bore, or fists are his weapons. Possibly, if driven beyond endurance, a horsewhip. Nothing so unsportsmanlike as a revolver. (The bullet was fired from one, that is quite conclusive.)
H. G. the Archbishop, also discharged without a stain on character, except that noted under yesterday’s date. Read his message to the press, and came to the conclusion (irresistible) that he could never have rested content with one shot, even if that had done the business. Tautologous by nature, as all ex-schoolmasters are. Could not have resisted repeating himself. Pistol would have been another matter. Revolver, and only one shot fired, puts him out of court. A relief. One does not like to think of the scandal, had it been otherwise.
Remains Farrant, the butler, A. L. (but not likely), and Person Unknown. Query, lady with Sir Charles?
This theory supported by Sally’s information. (Too enthusiastic, but probable.) Woman hid in blind corner beyond window. Difficulty of getting away. Bribe to gardener? Unlikely. If so, a tall woman. Worth considering. (Sally displaying common sense, glad to say.) Trouble here is to discover how woman could have come into possession of one of the weapons. Query, bullet may not belong to either? (Remember Sally bet 2s. 6d. to 6d. that it did not.)
Ask a Policeman Page 10