Comes a Stranger (11 page)

The major nodded and looked grave again.

“Call that Point E.,” he said. “Very important. Everyone knew there was bad feeling. Perhaps that's what Miss Kayne was hinting at. Nat Kayne wanted the library sold and that meant Broast out of a job—out of control of the library anyhow, a little like trying to get the baby away from its mother.”

“I understand Mr. Broast was out at the time of the murder,” Bobby said.

“I believe he always took a stroll late at night,” the Major remarked. “As it happens I've met him once or twice when I've been prowling around on some job or another. He had an idea a walk before bed made him sleep better. He told me once a good brisk walk, wet or fine, was his cure for sleeping badly. After dinner he went to his own room—he lived at the Lodge, you know—attended to his letters. He used to speak them into a Dictaphone for the Perkins girl to type next day. When he had finished he went for a walk, so it was quite usual for him to be out at that time.”

“I had forgotten one thing,” Bobby said. “I remember now Miss Perkins came in with a message for him that Sir William was driving over to see him that evening—I rather thought at the time perhaps it was about the quarrel there had been with Mr. Nat Kayne.”

“Hum,” said the Major. “Sir William, eh? Does he come into it, too? Perhaps they can alibi each other. Anyhow, that's Point F., eh?

“Yes, sir. Point G., I think,” suggested Bobby, “might be finding out what caused the quarrel I saw. Kayne looked murderous enough as he went off, and if he felt like that, perhaps the others did as well—either Mr. Broast or Sir William.”

“Sir William, Sir William,” muttered the Major uneasily. “I can't think—very influential, very leading family and all that. Of course he must be asked. Point G. then—yes, Point G., undoubtedly.”

“Point H.,” continued Bobby, “might be where was Sir William at the time of the murder, and whether he heard the shots.”

“Point H.,” agreed the Major gloomily. “His family have been settled here since—oh, since the Conquest pretty well. Oh, yes, point H., undoubtedly. Of course, Sir William is one of the library trustees, but he didn't want to sell. He's almost as cracked on books as Broast—used to be a great friend of old Mr. Kayne's when they weren't trying to do the dirty on each other over some dog-eared old volume you would have expected to get for twopence. But they were great friends when they weren't at each other's throats.”

“Queer business, this book collecting,” Bobby said thoughtfully.

“It is,” agreed the Major with conviction. “Do you want that put down as Point I.?”

“Well, sir, I thought myself Point I. might be checking up on Mr. Adams. But we can call that Point K.”

“Who is Mr. Adams?” demanded the chief constable. “Haven't heard of him before. Where does he come in?”

“He is stopping at the pub here,” Bobby explained. “He says he is interested in bibliography and wanted to examine the Mandeville pages. Mr. Broast wouldn't let him see them, and there was a row. Then this evening, early, Mr. Broast told me he had seen someone hanging about the library, in the Lodge grounds, just before it got dark. He thought it was Adams. Adams claims to be a professor at the University of Nebraska. Broast says he doesn't believe it, he seems to suspect Adams of wanting to steal the Mandeville pages. I suppose they are valuable?”

“Broast calls them priceless,” the Major agreed. “Difficult to dispose of, though. What started the trouble with the Nebraska gentleman?”

“Just that Mr. Broast wasn't satisfied with his credentials. I must say Mr. Adams doesn't look like a burglar to me.”

“Point K. all right all the same,” declared the Major; “that is, of course, if it does turn out he's not what he says and the Nebraska people don't know him. We'll cable them and see what they have to say. Of course, if they're prepared to vouch for him—” The Major paused and looked worried. “Where's all this link up with the murder of poor young Kayne?” he demanded. “Does Broast think Adams was employed by Kayne to burgle the Mandeville leaves and they quarrelled or anything like that? Or what has he got in his mind?”

“I don't know, sir,” Bobby answered. “I haven't seen Mr. Broast since quite early this evening.” He paused and added in tones he made as colourless as he could: “I think I mentioned before that Mr. Broast was apparently out at the time of the murder.”

“Oh yes, yes, so you did,” agreed the Major and looked thoughtful.

Bobby said:

“Am I right, sir, in thinking Mr. Broast has a revolver? I suppose, if that's so, the number and make will be in the firearms register?”

“And all that, I suppose,” sighed the Major, “will be point L. I'll look up particulars about Broast's revolver in the morning.” He got to his feet. “Look at the time,” he said, “and we must make an early start. Breakfast at seven. I rang them up from Chapman's to tell them, and to have a bed ready for you. You had better turn in now and get what sleep you can. Even a couple of hours is better than none.”

Scanty sleep and hurried breakfast brought Major Harley and Bobby to Mrs. Somerville's house so early next morning that Miss Perkins was not yet visible.

Mrs. Somerville, however, was bustling about in a very excited state, divided between the necessary morning tasks and sudden darts to the door in the hope that someone would appear who really knew what had actually happened the night before. Early as it was, rumours were already abroad, the only point on which they agreed being that a dead body had been found in the sunk lane through the wood. Mrs. Somerville's interest was the greater in that she herself had been out the night before and had actually passed by the spot where the lane entered the wood.

“So it might have been me as like as not,” she pointed out, a trifle tremulously, “and never shall I get over it, never.”

“What time was this?” Bobby asked, wondering if she, too, had heard the shots.

But it appeared that she had reached home almost exactly at ten. She was quite sure of the hour, because Miss Perkins had been sitting up waiting for her, busy sewing and listening to the wireless. Miss Perkins, a little peeved perhaps at being kept up beyond her usual bed time, had switched off the wireless the moment she heard Mrs. Somerville returning, made some remark about the late hour—she was generally in bed by ten or soon after apparently—and had gone straight up to her room where Bobby remembered he and Mills had seen her sitting at the window, smoking a final cigarette presumably, when they passed by in their car on the way to Longmeadow farm. As ten was the hour at which Len Hill heard the shots, it was evident Mrs. Somerville had been indoors at the time of the murder. Seeing Bobby glance first at the clock and then at his wrist watch, she remarked that her clock was always right because they set it each day by the wireless signal, though indeed it was the wireless programme itself by which they went in that house almost as much as by the clock. They knew what was on, what coming on, when it began, when it ended, indeed it appeared as if she personally regulated her whole life by wireless. And she remained convinced that last night she had had the narrowest possible escape.

She seemed to think, too, that the errand of her two visitors was to assure themselves of her safety, expressed her appreciation of their concern for her well being, and looked quite surprised when they explained that they wished to see Miss Perkins. Knowing that it would be better to give some reason, if the wildest tales were not soon to be in circulation, the Major added that Mr. Broast reported having seen a stranger hiding near the library in the Lodge grounds and that it was necessary to know if Miss Perkins had also seen him.

Mrs. Somerville accordingly went upstairs and knocked at Miss Perkins's door, returning with the information that she would be down in a minute.

“She doesn't make an early start, she hasn't to be at the Lodge till ten,” Mrs. Somerville explained, “and I don't blame her for wanting her rest, her not being strong, and needing it, working all hours, too, like a driven slave, and the only chance she ever has for a breath of fresh air when she's coming and going to work.”

“Too bad,” said Bobby, while the Major, scowling and impatient, for he had some domestic experience of what “down in a minute” might mean, was looking alternately at his watch and the door, “does she never take a little walk in the evenings before bed?”

“Oh, no, fair wore out she is when she gets home and glad enough to rest with a bit of sewing and the wireless. She always says she's quite got out of walking in a manner of speaking with sitting all day with those musty old books.”

“She ought to try cycling,” Bobby suggested; “she could still be sitting and yet have exercise and fresh air all the same.”

“Well, now, it's funny you should say that,” Mrs. Somerville remarked, “for it's what I'm always telling her, me being a great one for cycling. But some way she can't learn. Nervous. That's what it is. Goes all of a wobble and flop over and then she won't try again. She says the first time she ever tried to go alone, before she came here, she ran right into a baker's cart and might have been killed, and now it's just as if she couldn't manage her arms and legs and in a manner of speaking no sooner she's on than she's off. Nervous.”

As if to confirm this verdict there became audible, floating to them down the narrow cottage stairs, the sound of Miss Perkins's nervous little giggle.

“Oh, I'm so sorry,” she said, fluttering down the stairs. “Isn't it Awful? It doesn't seem as if it could be, not here, not Murder. Oh, do they know who it is was killed?”

Major Harley hesitated. He was an official and thoroughly imbued with the official view that none of the public should ever be told anything that could possibly be kept from them. None of their business, anyhow. But Mr. Nat Kayne's name would certainly soon be known, indeed was probably already known throughout the greater part of the neighbourhood.

“It's Mr. Nat Kayne,” he said.

Mrs. Somerville gave a faint scream and said it couldn't be, not Mr. Nat; why, she had seen him herself only the day before as well as ever he was in his life. Miss Perkins stood still and frozen. Her face grew ghastly, a kind of wild bewilderment showed in her expression. The two men watched her curiously. Mrs. Somerville's babblings died into silence, as though abruptly extinguished. In a low, uncertain voice, Miss Perkins said:

“No… no… no… not him.”

Neither the Major nor Bobby answered her. Mrs. Somerville began to look frightened. About the girl there seemed such an agony of dread and doubt as though even the balance of her reason shook. She lifted a slow hand and crooked a finger at them, at Bobby and the Major. She said in the same low, uncertain voice:

“It isn't—true. It isn't—true. No.”

“I'm afraid there's no doubt,” Major Harley said.

“It can't be,” she repeated. Then when they did not answer she seemed to draw herself together, by an effort of every force of will and nerve that she possessed, recovering a self-control that had nearly left her altogether. She put her hands together and held them before her. She said,

“Nat Kayne… it is Nat Kayne? Nat… not Nat?... not someone else?”

“No, it is Mr. Kayne,” the Major repeated, a little offended by her use of the dead man's Christian name.

“Ah, yes,” she said. “I see.” She stood upright and still. Then she said: “How did it happen? It was in the sunken lane through the wood?”

“Only think of it,” interposed Mrs. Somerville, “and all the many times I've been that way myself, and him such a good-looking young gentleman, almost like some of them that's in the pictures.”

“Yes, it was in the lane, about ten last night,” the Major said.

“In the lane at ten last night,” Miss Perkins repeated, and still her looks, her voice, her manner, were a little wild. “Last night at ten while we were sitting here, listening to the wireless.”

“You were, but not me,” said Mrs. Somerville, “I had only just got in, and him such a nice gentleman, with a pleasant word for all.”

“Yes, he had, hadn't he?” agreed Miss Perkins. She seemed more natural now, her self control more assured. She said: “He was handsome as a dream—a Greek god. Mr. Broast said so himself. He was shot—did you say he was shot? Do they know who did it? Why? why should… anyone? Him? Why should it be him?”

The major explained that every possible step was being taken to discover the murderer. At present they hadn't much to go on, even the weapon used by the murderer had not yet been found, though a careful search was being made. 

“We couldn't do much last night,” he told them, “but I arranged for some of my men to be there as soon as it was light. We'll find it, if we have to go over the whole place with a comb.”

“When you do find it,” Miss Perkins said, “most likely that will show who it was.”

The Major remarked that at any rate it would be a very useful and significant indication, and then went on to explain that the object of their visit was to know if Miss Perkins could confirm in any way Mr. Broast's statement that a stranger had been seen lurking near the library, and, if so, if she could give any description of him. But Miss Perkins, it appeared, had seen nothing herself. Mr. Broast had mentioned the incident to her, and had seemed disturbed. But that was all she knew. Mr. Broast was always nervous about burglars, she added.

The Major thanked her, said they would like a statement from her in writing, and so managed to get her alone with himself and Bobby into the little front sitting-room, while Mrs. Somerville, called away to take in her morning's supply of milk, exchanged news and confidences with the milk-man, and acquired much prestige from the fact that she had recently been conversing with the chief constable himself, who was even then actually in the house, along with another detective gentleman.