Chapter XI.Perspicacity of a Chief ConstableFor quite fifteen seconds George dithered silently on the doorstep. A Chief Constable was the last thing he had expected to be called upon to confront, and a stern-eyed, unsmiling, purposeful-looking Chief Constable at that. So far as George knew, Chief Constables were a contingency for which no preparation had been made at all. And of course itwouldhappen when both Guy and Doyle were not here to deal with it.“Mr. N-n-nesbitt?” dithered George. “He-he’s out.”“Where is he?” asked the unsmiling Chief Constable sharply.“Over at M-Mr. F-Foster’s, I think,” replied George, feeling under those penetrating blue eyes exactly like a schoolboy up before his head master. George would not have been the least surprised at that moment had the Chief Constable produced a serviceable birch-rod from his person and remarked sternly: “I’m going to birch you, boy!” He would have assumed a suitable attitude without hesitation.The Chief Constable, missing his opportunity, continued only to bore into George’s brain with his piercing glance. “When’s he coming back?” he demanded.“I don’t know,” said George feebly.The Chief Constable digested this. “Is Mrs. Nesbitt at home?” he rapped out.“Yes,” said George, without thinking. “No,” he added, thinking hastily. “Yes,” he corrected himself, thinking further. “I mean, I don’t know,” he concluded, ceasing to think at all.The Chief Constable looked surprised. “Is Mrs. Nesbitt at home or not?” he asked sarcastically. “Take your time, Mr. Howard, and try to remember.”George blushed warmly. He knew he was not handling the situation with all the tactful skill that his accomplices might require of him, but after all, what did it matter? Whatever he did was sure to be wrong. He decided to tell the truth, not especially to shame the devil but rather because it is so much easier.“She’s in thehouse, oh, yes,” said George with sudden cunning. “But I don’t know whether she’s athome, you know.” George knew all about that sort of thing. Women were often in a house, but that did not mean they were at home; not a bit of it. When is a woman in a house not at home? When George Howard called on her. Yes, George knew quite a lot about that sort of thing.“I see,” said the Chief Constable coldly. “She’s in the house, but you don’t know whether she’s at home. Is she dressed?”“Good Lord, yes,” cried George, much shocked. Dash it all, he’d only been with her two minutes ago himself. Wouldn’t have been with Cynthia if she hadn’t been dressed, would he? Dash this fellow!“Then will you kindly present my compliments to Mrs. Nesbitt, and ask her if I may see her?” said the Colonel, speaking slowly and distinctly, as to one of mediocre receptive powers. “If Colonel Ratcliffe, the Chief Constable, may see her,” he added, making the business perfectly plain.“You want to see me?” said a cool voice from inside the hall.George stood aside with a sigh of relief. Thank goodness, Cynthia had taken the thing into her own hands.Cynthia and Colonel confronted one another. Cynthia smiled.Now Cynthia’s smile has been mentioned before, cursorily. This time it must have the attention paid to it which it really deserves. For Cynthia’s smile plays a very important part in this story from now onwards; its effects were singularly far-reaching. Cynthia’s smile then, was very sweet, very infectious, very disturbing, and at the same time very soothing. A cross bull in full charge coming suddenly within the rays of Cynthia’s smile would probably pull up short, bow politely and offer to die for the Prime Minister. Cynthia, it may be said, was perfectly aware of the value of her smile, and she employed it quite unscrupulously; whenever she wanted her own way, for instance, or to put a nervous person at his ease, or to persuade somebody into a course of action which was totally repugnant to him. The number of hats Cynthia had cozened out of her husband simply by smiling for them was remarkable.Cynthia did not feel like a schoolboy in the presence of the Chief Constable. She just went on smiling at him, and in thirty seconds that austere man was, metaphorically speaking, frisking playfully about her feet.“Oh, so sorry to bother you, Mrs. Nesbitt,” he said almost genially, “but I wanted to see if you can throw any light on this extraordinary affair here last night. If you would——”“I’m sorry,” Cynthia interposed firmly, but still smiling, “but I can’t possibly. None at all. I’m sorry. Why don’t you go up to Mr. Foster’s and see my husband?”“That’s the gentleman who spoke to the young woman in the garden,” interposed the Inspector with paternal helpfulness.The Colonel, still under the influence of Cynthia’s smile, did not wither him with biting sarcasm; he just nodded. “Yes, that’s quite a good idea, Mrs. Nesbitt,” he said mildly. “I will. Thank you. I’m so sorry to have bothered you.”“Not at all,” said Cynthia politely, and closed the door on her smile. As she walked back to the drawing-room, followed by a respectful George, the smile disappeared.“And I hope that husband of mine will enjoy the interview,” said Cynthia, quite viciously. “I fancy he won’t find the Colonel quite such easy game as that poor dear old Inspector.”George was inclined to agree with her.In the meantime the poor dear old Inspector was walking (at a quite unnecessary pace, as he felt) along the road beside his superior, and as they walked the effects of the smile wore off for both of them. To the Chief Constable the world slowly ceased to be a rose-coloured place, full of sweet things and noble thoughts, and became once more a drab-coloured concern, where people do very naughty things indeed; to the Inspector it became a place where solid worth and invaluable experience do not always meet their due.“In the Garfield Case, sir,” observed the Inspector in somewhat dogged tones, evidently resuming a previous conversation, “the first thing I did was to measure up the furniture in the room where the murder had been committed.”“Why?” asked the Colonel shortly. Like most people who had come into contact with Inspector Cottingham for more than five minutes at a time, the Colonel felt that he wanted to go out and bay the moon as soon as the word “Garfield” cropped up in the conversation.The Inspector coughed slightly and looked up at the sky. That was the trouble with Colonel Ratcliffe, he would ask silly questions. He was a nice enough man taken all round, if a bit on the young side, but he’d be very much nicer if he’d only recognise once and for all that he was new to this game, and the Inspector was not. But did he recognise it? He did not. From the way he spoke sometimes, you might think that it was he who was the old hand, with a neatly solved murder mystery tucked away behind him, and the Inspector the novice. And he would ask such silly questions.“Why, sir?” repeated the Inspector in tones of surprise. Inspector Cottingham had always regarded his measuring of the furniture as a primary stroke of immense and subtle cunning. True, it had led to nothing just as matters turned out, but it might have produced all sorts of exciting results; and anyhow, it smacked of the professional touch in a most gratifying way, and now here was this absurd Chief Constable wanting to know why.“Well, for the same reason as I measured ’em last night, sir,” said the Inspector, playing for time. “Because—because—well——”“In the Garfield case, Cottingham,” said the Colonel patiently, coming to the rescue, “as I keep telling you, you had a body. Here you haven’t. And you can’t do anything until the body is found. Therefore, the first thing to do is to find the body. I think I’ve said something like that before.”The Inspector sighed, very gently. “But the body isn’t there, sir,” he pointed out. “And for why? Because they took it away with ’em.”“How do you know they did?”Here the Inspector was on surer ground. “Why, sir,” he countered triumphantly, “because the girl told Mr. Foster so.” This was the way things ought to be done. This was the way a real detective got his results. Not by chasing round, searching for bodies that weren’t there, but by sitting tight and looking official till somebody came along and revealed the whole thing.“It didn’t occur to you, I suppose,” said the Colonel very mildly, “that she might not have been speaking the truth?”“No, sir, it didn’t,” replied the Inspector firmly. “Why should it? She wouldn’t say anything at all if she wasn’t going to speak the truth. Why should she? Besides, Graves saw ’em taking the body away.” The Inspector felt he had scored a distinct point there. “That’s right,” he added, clinching it. “Graves saw ’em at it.”“Have you had Copham Spinney searched, as I told you over the telephone?” asked the Colonel, changing the subject.“Yes, sir. Graves had a look all round there and along that bank first thing this morning.” The Inspector spoke tolerantly, as one humouring a feeble-minded aunt. Graves had been sent to search Copham Spinney and the other bank because that was the Colonel’s orders, but both the Inspector and Graves himself had known it was a mere waste of time. And for why? Because the body was hundreds of miles away by this time, and on its way to foreign parts. That stood to reason. “He didn’t find anything though, of course,” he added, winking at a passing gate.“Graves!” snorted the Colonel. “Graves wouldn’t see a body if it came walking along the tow-path towards him.”The Inspector smiled politely at his superior’s humour. “Now, in the Garfield case, sir,” he remarked chattily, “what they——”“I don’t like it, I don’t like it!” said the Colonel hastily. The roseate hues had quite faded from the Colonel’s horizon by this time. In a really rosy world a murder is invariably accompanied by its appropriate body; murders without bodies attached would be very rare indeed. “The whole tale sounds fishy to me. Sounds just like a situation in a cheap thriller.”“Well, fancy that, sir!” beamed the Inspector, much struck by this example of powerful minds working in unison. “That’s just what I said last night.”“And where’s thatbody?” barked the Colonel, with sudden wrath, as if he expected his companion to produce it instead of a rabbit out of his helmet. “We can’t do anything without that. We can’t even establish the fact of murder at all.”“Well, we can’t do much without a body,” the Inspector went so far as to admit, “and that’s a fact.”The Colonel relapsed for a moment or two into moody silence.“If you ask me, Cottingham,” he said, a little explosively, “I believe the whole thing’s a mare’s nest. I don’t believe there is a body. I don’t believe there was even a murder. I believe Graves has been seeing visions.”“Oh, come, sir,” chided the Inspector, who had no intention of being robbed of his murder in this high-handed manner. “Graves doesn’t drink as much as that, he doesn’t. Besides, he heard the shot and he examined the body. The man was dead right enough, Graves says. Tall, big chap, he was, one of them foreigners; Frenchy or German or something. Big black beard, he’d got, Graves said, and wearing——”“Yes, yes,” interrupted the Colonel testily. “I know perfectly well what Graves said, and in my opinion he imagined the whole thing. May have seen something, perhaps, and imagined the rest. Apparently handcuffed two people together, if onecanbelieve a single word he says (probably two quite innocent people, if I know Graves), and——”“But what about Mr. Foster, sir?” interrupted the Inspector, his perturbation overcoming his manners. “You know what he says. You wouldn’t say he drank, would you, sir? Not Mr. Foster?”“I shouldn’t be at all surprised,” said the Colonel coolly, “if somebody wasn’t pulling Mr. Foster’s leg. And I shouldn’t be even surprised,” he added quite gently, “if the same people weren’t trying to pull yours too.”“Lor’, sir!” gasped the Inspector, and lapsed into silence.“In which case,” said the Colonel, very softly, “it’s our business to make them sorry for it. Very sorry indeed. Just bear that in mind, will you?”By the expression on the Inspector’s face it seemed that he bore it with difficulty. The two walked on in silence, chewing the cud of the Colonel’s devastating theory. Along the road towards them, moving blithely and conversing with the utmost animation, came two figures.“That’s Mr. Nesbitt, sir,” said the Inspector. “And that’s Mr. Doyle with him.”“Doyle? That’s the feller who wrote all that twaddle in theSunday Courierthis morning, isn’t it?”“He did say he was going to send in a report of the case,” agreed the Inspector a little uneasily. He had read the report through that morning, till he almost knew it by heart, and no more delighted Inspector of Police would have been found in the country; now his delight was beginning to show signs of waning.“Humph!” observed the Colonel, busily putting two and two together and obtaining a perfectly correct answer. He glanced at the Inspector’s face and from the look of wounded bewilderment upon its surface deduced further that his colleague, though sorrowfully regarding the possibility that one of his legs might be a little longer than it was yesterday, was by no means sure of it; in any case, he had as yet not the faintest suspicion as to the identity of the author of this outrage. The Colonel decided not to enlighten him.“About what I said just now, Cottingham, that the whole thing may be a hoax,” he said, “keep that to yourself for the time being. I may be wrong, and we must get to the bottom of it first.”“Very well, sir,” agreed the Inspector, brightening slightly before this admission of doubt.The two pairs came face to face and halted.“Mr. Nesbitt and Mr. Doyle?” said the Colonel mildly. “Let me introduce myself, Colonel Ratcliffe.”“Oh, yes?” murmured Guy politely.“I’m Doyle, this is Nesbitt,” supplied Mr. Doyle, scanning the newcomer with a hopeful eye. Any chance of a fresh victim here?If the Colonel read this thought he took prompt steps to answer it. “I’m the Chief Constable,” he said, and watched Guy’s face intently. Was a flicker of apprehension, faint yet discernible, going to pass swiftly across it? There was not a flicker. The Colonel was disappointed. As a matter of fact he had been watching the wrong face.“Oh, yes?” said Guy, without a flicker.“I’ve just been round to your place to see you, but your wife told me you were this way so we came along to meet you. I wanted to ask you a few questions about this business last night.”“Of course,” Guy said warmly. “But there’s very little I can tell you, I’m afraid. I was absent all the interesting time. Most annoying; I wouldn’t have missed it for worlds. I was completely taken in by that note.”“Really?” said the Colonel in honeyed tones, and began to put his questions. They fell into line across the road and walked back towards Dell Cottage.Whatever dark suspicions were hidden in the Colonel’s bosom, he betrayed no sign of them. Questioning Guy closely about the note, its contents, the handwriting and what had happened to it, then about his movements from the moment he left home to the time he returned to discover P. C. Graves immured in his library cupboard, he appeared perfectly satisfied with the ready answers he received. Turning his attention to Mr. Doyle (who had now had time to recover himself and no longer flickered), he posed another set of queries and again appeared to accept the answers in all good faith. So did the listening Inspector.They passed through the faithful crowd and reached the Cottage and Guy asked the Colonel in for a drink. The Colonel was most grateful. He not only had a drink, but made a thorough examination of what Mr. Doyle referred to persistently as “the scene of the outrage.” Mr. Doyle also showed him a plan he had been at some pains to draw up for the benefit of the readers ofThe Courier, in which the position of the body was marked with a cross.“Oh, yes,” said the Colonel blandly. “And how did you know exactly where the body was?”“Me?” said Mr. Doyle with innocent surprise. “Nesbitt showed me. And the constable—what’s his name? Graves—showed Nesbitt.”And so for a long hour or more did the Colonel lay his traps and his intended victims skirt happily round them. At the end of that time the former went away a baffled man, with nothing more definite than some scrapings of the blood from the carpet in his pocket.“But that’s quite enough to clinch it,” he told Inspector Cottingham, who went with him. “I’ll bet a hundred to one that it’s chicken’s blood, or something like that. And while it’s being analysed I shall have a few things for you to do. There are some points I want checked.” And drawing a pencil and notebook from his pocket, he proceeded to make brief notes as he walked along, of the main heads of the story Guy had told him.At the same time that gentleman was ushering Mr. Doyle into the drawing-room, where Cynthia and George, having made all the conversation available, had fallen into a somewhat moody silence.Cynthia greeted her husband unkindly. “Well, Guy,” she said. “I suppose he saw through you?”“Saw through me, my dear? What an extraordinary idea. Certainly not. He didn’t see through me, Doyle, did he?”“Not for a moment,” Mr. Doyle assured him with conviction. “You were as opaque as—as George.”“Wives are most mistrustful people,” Guy murmured, dropping into a chair and extending his long legs. “As a matter of fact, Cynthia, I handled the gallant Colonel with considerable skill.”“Did you?” said Cynthia, patently unconvinced.“He put the wind up me,” George contributed. “Those blue eyes of his, eh? Seemed to look right through you.”“You see, Nesbitt?” said Doyle. “The workings of a guilty conscience. Most instructive.” He contemplated George with interest. “Apparently not only a murderer, but his victim as well, feels uneasy afterwards.”“Yes, and talking of murders,” said Cynthia with energy, “I insist on you two getting hold of that poor Mr. Priestley and putting him out of his misery.” She went on to elaborate her demands at some length.“Oh, come, dear,” said Guy, shocked. “This is not the spirit of scientific investigation. This is (I’m sorry to have to say it, but the truth must be faced) paltry pusillanimity.”“‘Paltry pusillanimity,’” repeated Mr. Doyle with admiration. “Very nice. I must work that into my next article. It can come in about the police.”“Do you know there’ve been three reporters here already while you’ve been out?” said George gloomily. Cynthia having refused to allow a single one of them to set foot inside the house, it had fallen to George to get rid of them; that was why he was gloomy.“Good enough!” stated Mr. Doyle with satisfaction. “The leaven is beginning to work. Three, did you say? I shall be able to double my rates to The Courier soon, and get twelve mohair mats instead of six. What does one do with twelve mohair mats, Cynthia? You’re a housewife and ought to know these things.”“Be quiet about mohair mats! I want to know whether you’re going to tell Mr. Priestley the truth?”“No,” said her husband firmly.“No,” said Mr. Doyle firmly.Cynthia looked at George.“No,” said George weakly.“We don’t even know where he is,” pointed out Guy.“What’s his address?” Cynthia demanded of Mr. Doyle.“I don’t know,” replied that gentleman promptly.“Liar!”“Exactly!”Cynthia set her lips in a thin line. “Very well,” she said, just breaking the line to let the words through. “Verywell.”“Nesbitt,” said Mr. Doyle. “I’m afraid your wife doesn’t approve of us.”“I don’t think she ever has approved of me,” confessed Guy, not without pathos. “That’s why she married me. No woman ever marries a man she approves of, you know.”Cynthia laughed. “Oh, it’s no good getting cross with you babies. But I do wish you’d grow up some time before you die, Guy.”“Heaven forbid, my dear!”Mr. Doyle had drawn a sheet of note-paper out of his pocket and was studying it thoughtfully. He handed it across to Guy.“Do you think, Nesbitt, that something might be done with this? I purloined it, as one might say. It has the address at the top, but that can always be cut off. And it’s nice distinctive paper, isn’t it? I should think,” said Mr. Doyle still more thoughtfully, “that if a search were ever instigated in this neighbourhood for a piece of paper like that, there’s only one house in which it could be run to earth.”Guy began to steal jam. “You mean, if certain words were inscribed on it in block capitals, as I was describing to our friend the Colonel just now?”“Exactly. And then if one took a swift car (yours, for instance) and dropped this piece of paper inscribed with block capitals in a certain place where four roads meet, as you were also describing to your friend. I think you get me?”“This afternoon it shall be done.”“Now,” corrected Mr. Doyle. “That Colonel’s going to let no grass grow. This afternoon may be too late.”“You’re right. Now it is. I’ll do that, while you might be attending to a certain matter concerning boots, about which we were going to be so cunning. Do you know, dear,” said Guy, turning to his wife, “Mr. Foster has a small piece nicked out of the sole of his left boot. We noticed it in his footmarks in the garden this morning. Isn’t that interesting? Doyle here thinks it’s a new fashion, so he’s going to nick a bit out of one of George’s (which happen to be the same size and shape) so that George can be in the swim too. Isn’t that kind of him?”“What’s all this about?” asked George uneasily. George was a man who set a certain value on his boots.“But oh,” sighed Mr. Doyle, “how I wish that Reginald, besides having a broken boot, had a broken nose as well. How very blissful life would then be.”Cynthia giggled suddenly. She did not approve of all this nonsense; indeed, she most strongly disapproved. But then, on the other hand she did not love Mr. Foster. She knew she ought to love Mr. Foster, because Mr. Foster was her neighbour (distant, if not distant enough) and Cynthia had been brought up in the orthodox way. But certainly she did not love Mr. Foster. This was all the more unkind seeing that she had never even met him.“But he has!” giggled Cynthia. “It was broken in a boxing-match at school. He told Mary James all about it once, and Mary told me. He told her all about it,” added Cynthia feelingly, “for nearly an hour on end.”As if moved on a single string, Guy and Mr. Doyle rose and clung to each other in silence.“This is one of the times that are too sacred for speech,” observed Mr. Doyle a moment later with considerable emotion. “I must return to my concealed fiancée and George’s boots. Good-bye, Cynthia. George, you may follow me if you like, but don’t attempt to emulate me. I shall be walking on air, and that’s so dangerous for the uninitiated.” He moved with rapture out of the room.After an uncertain moment, George followed him.Guy smiled at his wife. “It’s twelve o’clock, darling, that’s all. Just time for a nice little spin before lunch. Care for one?”Cynthia tried to look cross with him and failed. “Guy, you are so ridiculous. I don’t know whether to be furious with you or glad.”“Be glad, darling. It’s so much less wearing. By the way, are you now going to run upstairs and put on your hat?”“Certainly not, Mr. Nesbitt,” said Cynthia with dignity and ran upstairs to do so.
For quite fifteen seconds George dithered silently on the doorstep. A Chief Constable was the last thing he had expected to be called upon to confront, and a stern-eyed, unsmiling, purposeful-looking Chief Constable at that. So far as George knew, Chief Constables were a contingency for which no preparation had been made at all. And of course itwouldhappen when both Guy and Doyle were not here to deal with it.
“Mr. N-n-nesbitt?” dithered George. “He-he’s out.”
“Where is he?” asked the unsmiling Chief Constable sharply.
“Over at M-Mr. F-Foster’s, I think,” replied George, feeling under those penetrating blue eyes exactly like a schoolboy up before his head master. George would not have been the least surprised at that moment had the Chief Constable produced a serviceable birch-rod from his person and remarked sternly: “I’m going to birch you, boy!” He would have assumed a suitable attitude without hesitation.
The Chief Constable, missing his opportunity, continued only to bore into George’s brain with his piercing glance. “When’s he coming back?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” said George feebly.
The Chief Constable digested this. “Is Mrs. Nesbitt at home?” he rapped out.
“Yes,” said George, without thinking. “No,” he added, thinking hastily. “Yes,” he corrected himself, thinking further. “I mean, I don’t know,” he concluded, ceasing to think at all.
The Chief Constable looked surprised. “Is Mrs. Nesbitt at home or not?” he asked sarcastically. “Take your time, Mr. Howard, and try to remember.”
George blushed warmly. He knew he was not handling the situation with all the tactful skill that his accomplices might require of him, but after all, what did it matter? Whatever he did was sure to be wrong. He decided to tell the truth, not especially to shame the devil but rather because it is so much easier.
“She’s in thehouse, oh, yes,” said George with sudden cunning. “But I don’t know whether she’s athome, you know.” George knew all about that sort of thing. Women were often in a house, but that did not mean they were at home; not a bit of it. When is a woman in a house not at home? When George Howard called on her. Yes, George knew quite a lot about that sort of thing.
“I see,” said the Chief Constable coldly. “She’s in the house, but you don’t know whether she’s at home. Is she dressed?”
“Good Lord, yes,” cried George, much shocked. Dash it all, he’d only been with her two minutes ago himself. Wouldn’t have been with Cynthia if she hadn’t been dressed, would he? Dash this fellow!
“Then will you kindly present my compliments to Mrs. Nesbitt, and ask her if I may see her?” said the Colonel, speaking slowly and distinctly, as to one of mediocre receptive powers. “If Colonel Ratcliffe, the Chief Constable, may see her,” he added, making the business perfectly plain.
“You want to see me?” said a cool voice from inside the hall.
George stood aside with a sigh of relief. Thank goodness, Cynthia had taken the thing into her own hands.
Cynthia and Colonel confronted one another. Cynthia smiled.
Now Cynthia’s smile has been mentioned before, cursorily. This time it must have the attention paid to it which it really deserves. For Cynthia’s smile plays a very important part in this story from now onwards; its effects were singularly far-reaching. Cynthia’s smile then, was very sweet, very infectious, very disturbing, and at the same time very soothing. A cross bull in full charge coming suddenly within the rays of Cynthia’s smile would probably pull up short, bow politely and offer to die for the Prime Minister. Cynthia, it may be said, was perfectly aware of the value of her smile, and she employed it quite unscrupulously; whenever she wanted her own way, for instance, or to put a nervous person at his ease, or to persuade somebody into a course of action which was totally repugnant to him. The number of hats Cynthia had cozened out of her husband simply by smiling for them was remarkable.
Cynthia did not feel like a schoolboy in the presence of the Chief Constable. She just went on smiling at him, and in thirty seconds that austere man was, metaphorically speaking, frisking playfully about her feet.
“Oh, so sorry to bother you, Mrs. Nesbitt,” he said almost genially, “but I wanted to see if you can throw any light on this extraordinary affair here last night. If you would——”
“I’m sorry,” Cynthia interposed firmly, but still smiling, “but I can’t possibly. None at all. I’m sorry. Why don’t you go up to Mr. Foster’s and see my husband?”
“That’s the gentleman who spoke to the young woman in the garden,” interposed the Inspector with paternal helpfulness.
The Colonel, still under the influence of Cynthia’s smile, did not wither him with biting sarcasm; he just nodded. “Yes, that’s quite a good idea, Mrs. Nesbitt,” he said mildly. “I will. Thank you. I’m so sorry to have bothered you.”
“Not at all,” said Cynthia politely, and closed the door on her smile. As she walked back to the drawing-room, followed by a respectful George, the smile disappeared.
“And I hope that husband of mine will enjoy the interview,” said Cynthia, quite viciously. “I fancy he won’t find the Colonel quite such easy game as that poor dear old Inspector.”
George was inclined to agree with her.
In the meantime the poor dear old Inspector was walking (at a quite unnecessary pace, as he felt) along the road beside his superior, and as they walked the effects of the smile wore off for both of them. To the Chief Constable the world slowly ceased to be a rose-coloured place, full of sweet things and noble thoughts, and became once more a drab-coloured concern, where people do very naughty things indeed; to the Inspector it became a place where solid worth and invaluable experience do not always meet their due.
“In the Garfield Case, sir,” observed the Inspector in somewhat dogged tones, evidently resuming a previous conversation, “the first thing I did was to measure up the furniture in the room where the murder had been committed.”
“Why?” asked the Colonel shortly. Like most people who had come into contact with Inspector Cottingham for more than five minutes at a time, the Colonel felt that he wanted to go out and bay the moon as soon as the word “Garfield” cropped up in the conversation.
The Inspector coughed slightly and looked up at the sky. That was the trouble with Colonel Ratcliffe, he would ask silly questions. He was a nice enough man taken all round, if a bit on the young side, but he’d be very much nicer if he’d only recognise once and for all that he was new to this game, and the Inspector was not. But did he recognise it? He did not. From the way he spoke sometimes, you might think that it was he who was the old hand, with a neatly solved murder mystery tucked away behind him, and the Inspector the novice. And he would ask such silly questions.
“Why, sir?” repeated the Inspector in tones of surprise. Inspector Cottingham had always regarded his measuring of the furniture as a primary stroke of immense and subtle cunning. True, it had led to nothing just as matters turned out, but it might have produced all sorts of exciting results; and anyhow, it smacked of the professional touch in a most gratifying way, and now here was this absurd Chief Constable wanting to know why.
“Well, for the same reason as I measured ’em last night, sir,” said the Inspector, playing for time. “Because—because—well——”
“In the Garfield case, Cottingham,” said the Colonel patiently, coming to the rescue, “as I keep telling you, you had a body. Here you haven’t. And you can’t do anything until the body is found. Therefore, the first thing to do is to find the body. I think I’ve said something like that before.”
The Inspector sighed, very gently. “But the body isn’t there, sir,” he pointed out. “And for why? Because they took it away with ’em.”
“How do you know they did?”
Here the Inspector was on surer ground. “Why, sir,” he countered triumphantly, “because the girl told Mr. Foster so.” This was the way things ought to be done. This was the way a real detective got his results. Not by chasing round, searching for bodies that weren’t there, but by sitting tight and looking official till somebody came along and revealed the whole thing.
“It didn’t occur to you, I suppose,” said the Colonel very mildly, “that she might not have been speaking the truth?”
“No, sir, it didn’t,” replied the Inspector firmly. “Why should it? She wouldn’t say anything at all if she wasn’t going to speak the truth. Why should she? Besides, Graves saw ’em taking the body away.” The Inspector felt he had scored a distinct point there. “That’s right,” he added, clinching it. “Graves saw ’em at it.”
“Have you had Copham Spinney searched, as I told you over the telephone?” asked the Colonel, changing the subject.
“Yes, sir. Graves had a look all round there and along that bank first thing this morning.” The Inspector spoke tolerantly, as one humouring a feeble-minded aunt. Graves had been sent to search Copham Spinney and the other bank because that was the Colonel’s orders, but both the Inspector and Graves himself had known it was a mere waste of time. And for why? Because the body was hundreds of miles away by this time, and on its way to foreign parts. That stood to reason. “He didn’t find anything though, of course,” he added, winking at a passing gate.
“Graves!” snorted the Colonel. “Graves wouldn’t see a body if it came walking along the tow-path towards him.”
The Inspector smiled politely at his superior’s humour. “Now, in the Garfield case, sir,” he remarked chattily, “what they——”
“I don’t like it, I don’t like it!” said the Colonel hastily. The roseate hues had quite faded from the Colonel’s horizon by this time. In a really rosy world a murder is invariably accompanied by its appropriate body; murders without bodies attached would be very rare indeed. “The whole tale sounds fishy to me. Sounds just like a situation in a cheap thriller.”
“Well, fancy that, sir!” beamed the Inspector, much struck by this example of powerful minds working in unison. “That’s just what I said last night.”
“And where’s thatbody?” barked the Colonel, with sudden wrath, as if he expected his companion to produce it instead of a rabbit out of his helmet. “We can’t do anything without that. We can’t even establish the fact of murder at all.”
“Well, we can’t do much without a body,” the Inspector went so far as to admit, “and that’s a fact.”
The Colonel relapsed for a moment or two into moody silence.
“If you ask me, Cottingham,” he said, a little explosively, “I believe the whole thing’s a mare’s nest. I don’t believe there is a body. I don’t believe there was even a murder. I believe Graves has been seeing visions.”
“Oh, come, sir,” chided the Inspector, who had no intention of being robbed of his murder in this high-handed manner. “Graves doesn’t drink as much as that, he doesn’t. Besides, he heard the shot and he examined the body. The man was dead right enough, Graves says. Tall, big chap, he was, one of them foreigners; Frenchy or German or something. Big black beard, he’d got, Graves said, and wearing——”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted the Colonel testily. “I know perfectly well what Graves said, and in my opinion he imagined the whole thing. May have seen something, perhaps, and imagined the rest. Apparently handcuffed two people together, if onecanbelieve a single word he says (probably two quite innocent people, if I know Graves), and——”
“But what about Mr. Foster, sir?” interrupted the Inspector, his perturbation overcoming his manners. “You know what he says. You wouldn’t say he drank, would you, sir? Not Mr. Foster?”
“I shouldn’t be at all surprised,” said the Colonel coolly, “if somebody wasn’t pulling Mr. Foster’s leg. And I shouldn’t be even surprised,” he added quite gently, “if the same people weren’t trying to pull yours too.”
“Lor’, sir!” gasped the Inspector, and lapsed into silence.
“In which case,” said the Colonel, very softly, “it’s our business to make them sorry for it. Very sorry indeed. Just bear that in mind, will you?”
By the expression on the Inspector’s face it seemed that he bore it with difficulty. The two walked on in silence, chewing the cud of the Colonel’s devastating theory. Along the road towards them, moving blithely and conversing with the utmost animation, came two figures.
“That’s Mr. Nesbitt, sir,” said the Inspector. “And that’s Mr. Doyle with him.”
“Doyle? That’s the feller who wrote all that twaddle in theSunday Courierthis morning, isn’t it?”
“He did say he was going to send in a report of the case,” agreed the Inspector a little uneasily. He had read the report through that morning, till he almost knew it by heart, and no more delighted Inspector of Police would have been found in the country; now his delight was beginning to show signs of waning.
“Humph!” observed the Colonel, busily putting two and two together and obtaining a perfectly correct answer. He glanced at the Inspector’s face and from the look of wounded bewilderment upon its surface deduced further that his colleague, though sorrowfully regarding the possibility that one of his legs might be a little longer than it was yesterday, was by no means sure of it; in any case, he had as yet not the faintest suspicion as to the identity of the author of this outrage. The Colonel decided not to enlighten him.
“About what I said just now, Cottingham, that the whole thing may be a hoax,” he said, “keep that to yourself for the time being. I may be wrong, and we must get to the bottom of it first.”
“Very well, sir,” agreed the Inspector, brightening slightly before this admission of doubt.
The two pairs came face to face and halted.
“Mr. Nesbitt and Mr. Doyle?” said the Colonel mildly. “Let me introduce myself, Colonel Ratcliffe.”
“Oh, yes?” murmured Guy politely.
“I’m Doyle, this is Nesbitt,” supplied Mr. Doyle, scanning the newcomer with a hopeful eye. Any chance of a fresh victim here?
If the Colonel read this thought he took prompt steps to answer it. “I’m the Chief Constable,” he said, and watched Guy’s face intently. Was a flicker of apprehension, faint yet discernible, going to pass swiftly across it? There was not a flicker. The Colonel was disappointed. As a matter of fact he had been watching the wrong face.
“Oh, yes?” said Guy, without a flicker.
“I’ve just been round to your place to see you, but your wife told me you were this way so we came along to meet you. I wanted to ask you a few questions about this business last night.”
“Of course,” Guy said warmly. “But there’s very little I can tell you, I’m afraid. I was absent all the interesting time. Most annoying; I wouldn’t have missed it for worlds. I was completely taken in by that note.”
“Really?” said the Colonel in honeyed tones, and began to put his questions. They fell into line across the road and walked back towards Dell Cottage.
Whatever dark suspicions were hidden in the Colonel’s bosom, he betrayed no sign of them. Questioning Guy closely about the note, its contents, the handwriting and what had happened to it, then about his movements from the moment he left home to the time he returned to discover P. C. Graves immured in his library cupboard, he appeared perfectly satisfied with the ready answers he received. Turning his attention to Mr. Doyle (who had now had time to recover himself and no longer flickered), he posed another set of queries and again appeared to accept the answers in all good faith. So did the listening Inspector.
They passed through the faithful crowd and reached the Cottage and Guy asked the Colonel in for a drink. The Colonel was most grateful. He not only had a drink, but made a thorough examination of what Mr. Doyle referred to persistently as “the scene of the outrage.” Mr. Doyle also showed him a plan he had been at some pains to draw up for the benefit of the readers ofThe Courier, in which the position of the body was marked with a cross.
“Oh, yes,” said the Colonel blandly. “And how did you know exactly where the body was?”
“Me?” said Mr. Doyle with innocent surprise. “Nesbitt showed me. And the constable—what’s his name? Graves—showed Nesbitt.”
And so for a long hour or more did the Colonel lay his traps and his intended victims skirt happily round them. At the end of that time the former went away a baffled man, with nothing more definite than some scrapings of the blood from the carpet in his pocket.
“But that’s quite enough to clinch it,” he told Inspector Cottingham, who went with him. “I’ll bet a hundred to one that it’s chicken’s blood, or something like that. And while it’s being analysed I shall have a few things for you to do. There are some points I want checked.” And drawing a pencil and notebook from his pocket, he proceeded to make brief notes as he walked along, of the main heads of the story Guy had told him.
At the same time that gentleman was ushering Mr. Doyle into the drawing-room, where Cynthia and George, having made all the conversation available, had fallen into a somewhat moody silence.
Cynthia greeted her husband unkindly. “Well, Guy,” she said. “I suppose he saw through you?”
“Saw through me, my dear? What an extraordinary idea. Certainly not. He didn’t see through me, Doyle, did he?”
“Not for a moment,” Mr. Doyle assured him with conviction. “You were as opaque as—as George.”
“Wives are most mistrustful people,” Guy murmured, dropping into a chair and extending his long legs. “As a matter of fact, Cynthia, I handled the gallant Colonel with considerable skill.”
“Did you?” said Cynthia, patently unconvinced.
“He put the wind up me,” George contributed. “Those blue eyes of his, eh? Seemed to look right through you.”
“You see, Nesbitt?” said Doyle. “The workings of a guilty conscience. Most instructive.” He contemplated George with interest. “Apparently not only a murderer, but his victim as well, feels uneasy afterwards.”
“Yes, and talking of murders,” said Cynthia with energy, “I insist on you two getting hold of that poor Mr. Priestley and putting him out of his misery.” She went on to elaborate her demands at some length.
“Oh, come, dear,” said Guy, shocked. “This is not the spirit of scientific investigation. This is (I’m sorry to have to say it, but the truth must be faced) paltry pusillanimity.”
“‘Paltry pusillanimity,’” repeated Mr. Doyle with admiration. “Very nice. I must work that into my next article. It can come in about the police.”
“Do you know there’ve been three reporters here already while you’ve been out?” said George gloomily. Cynthia having refused to allow a single one of them to set foot inside the house, it had fallen to George to get rid of them; that was why he was gloomy.
“Good enough!” stated Mr. Doyle with satisfaction. “The leaven is beginning to work. Three, did you say? I shall be able to double my rates to The Courier soon, and get twelve mohair mats instead of six. What does one do with twelve mohair mats, Cynthia? You’re a housewife and ought to know these things.”
“Be quiet about mohair mats! I want to know whether you’re going to tell Mr. Priestley the truth?”
“No,” said her husband firmly.
“No,” said Mr. Doyle firmly.
Cynthia looked at George.
“No,” said George weakly.
“We don’t even know where he is,” pointed out Guy.
“What’s his address?” Cynthia demanded of Mr. Doyle.
“I don’t know,” replied that gentleman promptly.
“Liar!”
“Exactly!”
Cynthia set her lips in a thin line. “Very well,” she said, just breaking the line to let the words through. “Verywell.”
“Nesbitt,” said Mr. Doyle. “I’m afraid your wife doesn’t approve of us.”
“I don’t think she ever has approved of me,” confessed Guy, not without pathos. “That’s why she married me. No woman ever marries a man she approves of, you know.”
Cynthia laughed. “Oh, it’s no good getting cross with you babies. But I do wish you’d grow up some time before you die, Guy.”
“Heaven forbid, my dear!”
Mr. Doyle had drawn a sheet of note-paper out of his pocket and was studying it thoughtfully. He handed it across to Guy.
“Do you think, Nesbitt, that something might be done with this? I purloined it, as one might say. It has the address at the top, but that can always be cut off. And it’s nice distinctive paper, isn’t it? I should think,” said Mr. Doyle still more thoughtfully, “that if a search were ever instigated in this neighbourhood for a piece of paper like that, there’s only one house in which it could be run to earth.”
Guy began to steal jam. “You mean, if certain words were inscribed on it in block capitals, as I was describing to our friend the Colonel just now?”
“Exactly. And then if one took a swift car (yours, for instance) and dropped this piece of paper inscribed with block capitals in a certain place where four roads meet, as you were also describing to your friend. I think you get me?”
“This afternoon it shall be done.”
“Now,” corrected Mr. Doyle. “That Colonel’s going to let no grass grow. This afternoon may be too late.”
“You’re right. Now it is. I’ll do that, while you might be attending to a certain matter concerning boots, about which we were going to be so cunning. Do you know, dear,” said Guy, turning to his wife, “Mr. Foster has a small piece nicked out of the sole of his left boot. We noticed it in his footmarks in the garden this morning. Isn’t that interesting? Doyle here thinks it’s a new fashion, so he’s going to nick a bit out of one of George’s (which happen to be the same size and shape) so that George can be in the swim too. Isn’t that kind of him?”
“What’s all this about?” asked George uneasily. George was a man who set a certain value on his boots.
“But oh,” sighed Mr. Doyle, “how I wish that Reginald, besides having a broken boot, had a broken nose as well. How very blissful life would then be.”
Cynthia giggled suddenly. She did not approve of all this nonsense; indeed, she most strongly disapproved. But then, on the other hand she did not love Mr. Foster. She knew she ought to love Mr. Foster, because Mr. Foster was her neighbour (distant, if not distant enough) and Cynthia had been brought up in the orthodox way. But certainly she did not love Mr. Foster. This was all the more unkind seeing that she had never even met him.
“But he has!” giggled Cynthia. “It was broken in a boxing-match at school. He told Mary James all about it once, and Mary told me. He told her all about it,” added Cynthia feelingly, “for nearly an hour on end.”
As if moved on a single string, Guy and Mr. Doyle rose and clung to each other in silence.
“This is one of the times that are too sacred for speech,” observed Mr. Doyle a moment later with considerable emotion. “I must return to my concealed fiancée and George’s boots. Good-bye, Cynthia. George, you may follow me if you like, but don’t attempt to emulate me. I shall be walking on air, and that’s so dangerous for the uninitiated.” He moved with rapture out of the room.
After an uncertain moment, George followed him.
Guy smiled at his wife. “It’s twelve o’clock, darling, that’s all. Just time for a nice little spin before lunch. Care for one?”
Cynthia tried to look cross with him and failed. “Guy, you are so ridiculous. I don’t know whether to be furious with you or glad.”
“Be glad, darling. It’s so much less wearing. By the way, are you now going to run upstairs and put on your hat?”
“Certainly not, Mr. Nesbitt,” said Cynthia with dignity and ran upstairs to do so.