A Question of Proof Page 7

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘Did he what? Oh, yes, he burnt it, so he says.’

  ‘I meant – did he go, sir?’

  ‘Aha, George, you’re coming on. You’re wondering why a respectable solicitor should take any notice of a shady communication like that.’

  Pearson hadn’t thought of this at all, but he nodded his head portentously. ‘And I suppose nobody turned up,’ he said.

  ‘You suppose right, my boy, if Urquhart is to be believed. Now if the thing was a genuine hoax he would probably not have destroyed the note. On the other hand, if he really did meet someone, he would be eager to produce that someone to prove an alibi. Anyway, I’ve left him to simmer, too. We’re going to see him again tomorrow, though he doesn’t know it. I’ve put a tag on him, of course, and I’ve sent Wills and Johnson to inquire whether anyone saw him or his car anywhere about Edgworth. It’s a deserted sort of place, though.’

  ‘You mean, you think it’s possible that he –?’

  ‘He might have done it; yes. But I doubt it. He doesn’t stand to gain much by the boy’s death. No, I’ve other ideas about Mr. Urquhart. Lives very well for a solicitor, don’t he?’ the superintendent added irrelevantly. ‘Big car, posh house and all. Well, well, we shall see. Now, George, what is your theory about this crime?’

  This was another favorite gambit of the superintendent’s, and Pearson made the conventional movement in reply. He scratched his head, stared dismally into his whisky and soda, and mumbled something about not seeing the wood for the trees yet. Armstrong took so deep a breath that his buttons threatened to fly off and expelled it to the visible perturbation of his moustache; his decks thus cleared for action.

  ‘All right, then,’ he said, ‘let’s take a look at the trees. Assuming for the present that Wemyss was murdered where the body was found, some time between one and four p.m. Can we narrow the time down?’

  ‘Well, sir, no one but a loony would have killed him during the sports. Hayfield’s in full view of most of the sports ground and that particular haystack is only about thirty yards from where some of the spectators were standing.’

  ‘Twenty-six and a half, actually,’ said Armstrong with elaborate negligence. ‘Yes, you’re right there. We can take two-thirty as one limit. Probably two-twenty; because people were coming out on to the field by then. Now, Mrs. Vale says she was in that haystack till about one-twenty-five, and she wouldn’t be likely to admit it if it wasn’t true. What do you think of her, George?’

  George grinned sheepishly. ‘She’s a bit of all right, she is.’

  ‘Aha! Fallen for a skirt again. You’ll never make a detective, young man,’ rallied the superintendent ponderously. ‘Now, if you ask me, I’d say she was a deep one. Got nerve, too. Wonder if she’s got enough nerve to take her lunch beside a corpse.’

  ‘Good Lord, sir, you can’t mean that?’ The sergeant was genuinely shocked.

  ‘I should say she’d strength enough to strangle a young whippersnapper like that. And there’s the money, don’t forget that.’

  ‘Well, if you’re thinking of that motive, what about old Brimstone?’ said Pearson disrespectfully.

  ‘Mm. Took half an hour to change, he says. Had plenty of time to slip down before his wife came up. Mr. Urquhart told me the school was prosperous, though, and I can’t see Brimstone taking a risk like that unless he was on his beam-ends – if then.’

  ‘Surely that applies equally to Mrs. Brim–Vale, doesn’t it?’ said the chivalrous Pearson.

  ‘From that point of view, perhaps, though we don’t know that she may have run into debt privately. Dresses pretty expensively. But you’re forgetting what the servants said.’

  The sergeant stared uncomprehendingly.

  ‘“Flighty” was the word. I couldn’t get ’em to say any more. But that’s another possible motive. Supposing she’d been carrying on with someone, and Wemyss caught ’em at it, she and someone would want to stop his tongue for him, I fancy.’

  ‘B-but, she’s a lady, sir,’ was all the sergeant could find to say.

  Armstrong smiled good-humouredly. ‘And ladies never do anything worse than leave their cars unattended outside shops. Well, let’s get on to the other trees. Take opportunity only. Tiverton? Out of the question. Gadsby? Might have croaked the lad before, after or between drinks and hid the body in the rumble seat. But when did he plant it in the hayfield? Must have been after the sports. I’ll have to find out where they all were between four-thirty and seven; should have done it before. Then there’s Sims; out in the field after two-fifteen; but Griffin and Mould were outside too – far too dangerous. Griffin? Mould is his alibi and a pretty strong one. Evans? In the wood all the time, he says, till two-fifteen. A nice, quiet place for a bit of strangling, though I didn’t find any marks of a struggle. But when could he plant the body?’

  ‘Mr. Griffin smoked a cigarette after lunch, so no one would be outside till about one-forty,’ suggested Pearson.

  ‘Good for you, me lad, I’d forgotten that. Though it’d be a pretty risky business carrying a body from the wood to the hayfield. There aren’t many windows looking that way, but he couldn’t be certain no one would come out. Still, there’s that pencil… You know, it’d have been much easier if he’d been in the haystack with Mrs. Vale.’

  The sergeant looked pained again. Armstrong grinned at him. ‘Well, if you won’t have that, what about Wrench? Another of the frightened brigade. Poor alibi. Says he was in his bedroom most of the time. Seemed a bit disconcerted when I asked him what book he’d been reading. Could have done it between lunch and one-forty, when Griffin went out – though there again, he couldn’t be sure no one wouldn’t come out. Then there’s Mould. He’s a bit simple – that type’s often homicidal – and the sort of person Wemyss might have ragged the head off, but he was having lunch in the kitchen till he went out to meet Griffin. Last of all, Rosa. Poor alibi from two to two-thirty, but the same objection to her as to Sims. There remains the mysterious individual with blue eyes and a brown suit. Nobody saw him till the opening of the sports – and I doubt if anyone saw him then.’

  ‘You mean, Wrench is making it up?’

  ‘I’m sure he is, and I should very much like to know why. It’s about the feeblest effort at a faked alibi I’ve ever heard. Well now. In point of opportunity, Mrs. Vale or Evans – or both of them together – win in a canter. Don’t look at me in that nasty way, young feller, you’ve got to keep your susceptibilities out of this. Next come Mr. Vale, Gadsby and Wrench in a bunch, and Wrench is the dark horse of that lot. Tiverton, Griffin, Sims, Mould and Rosa are left at the start.’

  ‘And for motive, sir?’ There was a mixture of respect and apprehension in the sergeant’s voice.

  ‘Three possibilities so far. Money, revenge, and silence. Vale or Mrs. Vale might have been actuated by the first; Sims or Mould by the second; Mrs. Vale and the unknown someone by the third,’ said the superintendent succinctly.

  Pearson shifted uneasily, ‘It certainly don’t look too good for Mrs. Vale.’

  ‘Revenge seems to me least likely. Grown men don’t kill boys just because they’ve had their tails twisted by them. Money? Well, as I say, the Rev. Vale seems to have enough of it; his wife is more open to suspicion on that count. But I put my money on the third. If the boy knew of some intrigue going on, he was just the sort who’d be likely to blab about it. Mrs. Vale is one obvious party, though I’m not forgetting Rosa. As for the other party, the someone –’ Armstrong paused significantly.

  ‘Evans?’

  ‘You’ve said it. Young, good-looking; just the opposite of that old fossil of a headmaster. And his pencil was in the haystack. And he and Mrs. Vale both took their lunch out; curious coincidence, that. I’m going to keep a pretty sharp eye on those two birds.’

  The sergeant emptied his glass and stared at the bottom of it, presumably for inspiration. Finally he said, ‘I don’t quite understand, sir, why you haven’t considered the possibility of it h
aving been done by one of the boys.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about that. I’m not forgetting the possibility. Of course, if it had been, it could only have been a rag that went too far. Boys don’t murder each other – besides, I forgot to tell you. I had a little chat with several of the head boys; prefects, they call them. Anyone leaving the room had to ask their permission. No one did. But even supposing someone had got out unnoticed. Supposing they had set on this young Wemyss. They might have pretended to throttle him, or to garrotte him with the cord, but the medical evidence suggests that he was first strangled with hands and then the cord tied round to make certain. Nobody would do that as a joke. It’s deliberate murder. And I don’t believe any boy could make those bruises, either.’

  The sergeant felt that this reasoning, though specious, had been rather flimsily constructed by Armstrong as a defence against a possibility which he had not explored with his usual thoroughness. Pearson loyally repressed an inclination to wonder whether his superior was not marshalling the facts to fit his own theory, though indeed the case against Mrs. Vale and perhaps Evans did look far stronger than any other. After rather a long silence he said tactfully:

  ‘Well, sir, I presume the chief constable is not going to call in the Yard at present. After your work in the Crawleigh murder last year, I don’t suppose he thinks we shall need their help.’

  ‘No, he is leaving it to me for the present,’ replied the superintendent, not without gratification, ‘but a fellow called Strangeways is coming down; he’s a nephew of the Assistant Commissioner. Private inquiry agent he calls himself, an amateur, but he’s done several pretty enough pieces of work. Evans wired for him this morning. He’s a friend of his, apparently, so I suppose he’ll be doing his best to put a spoke in our wheel. Still, he’ll be living in the school and he may be able to find out what I want to know more than anything else.’

  ‘And what’s that, sir?’

  ‘How the murderer got Wemyss into position for the murder.’

  VI

  Two Balloons Go Up

  ONCE AGAIN SWEENY, the factotum, is ringing his bell. He mutters to himself the while, but whatever he may be saying is drowned by the harsh peremptory tongue which tells the school that another day has begun. The shadow of death still lies upon the school, but it is chequered now, a kind of half-mourning, here lying heavy as original darkness, here shot through by the returning rays of a normal sun. In the dormitories, where boys are scurrying to and fro, thinking of a lesson unprepared, a cricket match, holidays to come, the shadow lies lightest. Here the elastic mind of youth has thrown off whatever weight tragedy may have laid upon it and bounds forward irrepressibly on its natural course, though even here there may remain one or two dark patches not yet dissipated by the sun. In their cramped, monastic bedrooms the masters are dressing. Though morning smiles happily outside their windows, night still holds the upper hand within. Is it from one of these rooms that blackness emanates to infect all the rest? Is it here – the core and centre of evil – hidden away from sight like an ancestral monster? And is that monster dormant again now, satisfied with one disaster, relapsed again into a period of sleep? Or is it waiting, the Adversary, ambushed behind a smile, an old acquaintance, an ordinary face?

  Thus pondered Michael, deliberately trying to multiply his apprehensions to their highest power, skating fancy figures over the thin ice which he already could hear cracking beneath his feet. That pencil. How much did the superintendent really know? Was it possible that no one had seen Hero and himself in the haystack? How innocent and safe it had all seemed then. There had only been two people in their world, but now the world was closing in on them, as on growing children, and the end of innocence in sight. ‘The wages of sin is death’ – the final, remorseless phrase marched into his mind. He shook his head impatiently. Surely one had got rid of that outdated superstition. But no, it seemed to have taken on a new lease of life. He remembered the half-laughing words Nigel had once spoken, ‘We’re not meant to be happy. You may think you’ve got away with it at last, but that’s just when They come back at you.’ Well, at least he’d keep Hero out of this. The fact of their love remained, and if some sacrifice must be offered in return for it, to appease the jealous gods, let them take him. Let them take him and break his neck on the end of a string. God, he thought, I’m talking as if I had done it myself; talking melodrama like any wretched egoist of a murderer writing his last confessions. I’m not guilty. They don’t hang innocent people. Oh, don’t they just? Anyway, Nigel will find out the truth…

  The Rev. and Mrs. Vale are having breakfast. Well, I asked for it, Hero is thinking; I asked for a crashing great emergency to turn up and cut the tangle, and it has. At least, it’s turned up, but it only seems to have made the tangle worse so far. I can’t leave Percy now, just when he feels everything is breaking up for him. It’s not honour and dutifulness. One can fight pompous abstracts, but not this imperative woman deep inside oneself. Oh, Michael, your hands, your exquisite touch. I wonder what Michael did say to that policeman. ‘Yes, Percy, Mr. Strangeways?’ she said: she had the successful wife’s faculty of keeping her ears for her husband and her thoughts to herself.

  ‘This Mr. Strangeways is, I understand, able and well-connected. Evans suggested that he should wire for him, as you know, in order that we might have someone to – a-ah – watch the case in the interests of the school. I have just heard that he will be arriving at Staverton by the twelve-forty. Evans has the last period off and intended to meet his friend at the station. Perhaps you might care to go in with him and drive Mr. Strangeways back.’

  ‘That’s a good idea. We might all have lunch there. I’ve some shopping to do.’ Even Percival Vale might, at any other time, have noticed the over-studied negligence in her voice. But he had other things to think of.

  ‘I am not at all sorry he is coming, my dear,’ he confided, ‘I am by no means happy at the course the investigation is taking.’

  ‘Why, Percy? Has the superintendent been bothering you about the will?’.

  ‘No. He has not, in fact, touched upon it at all. I really can’t understand it. But I strongly resent members of my staff being held in suspicion.’

  Hero’s hands suddenly clasped themselves tight under the table. She spoke sharply, ‘Whatever do you mean?’

  ‘Perfectly ridiculous on the part of the superintendent. He found Mr. Evans’ pencil in the haystack where poor Algernon was murdered. He’d dropped it there, of course, during the hay fight. But Tiverton has told me, in confidence, that the police seem to be attaching importance to it. Quite erroneously, of course. A member of my staff connected with an occurrence like this! Fantastic.’

  The headmaster was quite heated at the idea. But his wife’s heart dropped below zero. God, it’s come. What fools we were, tempting providence like that. One can’t tell how brave one is till the emergency comes, I said. Well, here it is. Go on, be brave! Think hard! What are you going to do now? Thank heavens I shall be able to talk with Michael before that foul policeman turns up again. Michael will know what to do. That’s it. Put it all on to him! Get into a panic again like a blasted schoolgirl!

  But it was not given to Hero to discuss the new development with Michael until discussion had become useless. At ten o’clock Armstrong arrived at the school and asked for a few words with Mr. Evans. Michael went into the morning room. The superintendent received him amiably enough, but he was not an unknown quantity now; Michael felt the force of authority behind him and a certain indefinable menace. Armstrong began seriously:

  ‘Now, Mr. Evans, I have come to ask you one or two questions which I am afraid may be distasteful to you. But I am sure you realise that in a case of this grave nature the interests of justice must overweigh all private considerations.’

  Michael relaxed slightly. This didn’t sound like an address to a suspected murderer.

  ‘Certainly,’ he said.

  ‘When you were in the wood, Mr. Evans, you said you were looking ou
t in the direction of the hayfield some of the time?’

  ‘Yes – I think I did – once or twice.’

  ‘Did you happen to notice Mrs. Vale there?’ This is getting difficult. Tell the truth when in doubt. ‘No – she was in the haystack, wasn’t she. One can’t see over the top from the wood.’

  ‘I see. And you would be prepared to state on oath that to your knowledge no one else came out on to the hayfield while you were in the wood?’ ‘Yes, but it doesn’t seem to help much. As I say, I hadn’t the field under view for more than a few minutes altogether.’

  Armstrong rubbed his chin and his brow contracted. He said, with apparent hesitation, ‘It’s a pity. If only you’d been looking in that direction most of the time – well, as it is, it only helps to strengthen a theory which I was most reluctant to form.’ He paused in an indecisive way.

  ‘What on earth are you getting at?’ said Michael, a premonition of what was to come sharpening his voice.

  ‘Look here, sir. I have come to a tentative conclusion, and I’m going to take the risk of telling you what’s in my mind; I shouldn’t be sorry, as I say, if somebody could prove it wrong. Even we policemen don’t much fancy accusing a – you realise, sir, that everything I am going to say is in strict confidence?’

  ‘Yes. Go on.’

  ‘Well, then, the most tenable explanation of the crime so far is that it was committed during lunch by Mrs. Vale, with or without the connivance of her husband.’ The superintendent blurted out this last speech, as though trying to conquer his own doubts as to its truth. His eyes looked at Michael with a rather apologetic expression, but they looked at him very hard. Michael sprang to his feet in a swirl of emotions – shock, indignation, fear and a certain utterly base relief.

  ‘Stop! You must be mad,’ he was almost shouting. ‘I won’t listen to this! It’s absolutely wicked. It’s sheer lunacy to imagine that –’ Armstrong gestured with his hands and interrupted.