Death Among the Sunbathers (17 page)

Ferris, looking at the ceiling, suggested,

‘Ask her.'

‘Asking questions means getting lies told you. I was taught that in infant school, if you weren't,' snapped Mitchell, who this morning was both cross and worried. ‘It may come to that,' he conceded, ‘but it would mean letting her know she's being watched, and then probably she would stop her little game, whatever it is. Only what on earth can she be up to, prowling round the place the way it seems she is?' Ferris, still with his eyes upon the ceiling, remarked, ‘Seems it was a woman driving the Bayard Seven when it passed us; that is, if we can trust what the A.A. scout says, and I don't see why we shouldn't.'

Selecting about the one square inch of desk visible, Mitchell used it to drum upon hard with his fingers.

‘It's a possibility,' he agreed. ‘If Keene's guilty, she might have been willing to help him out... even though it was her own sister... only you won't find Treasury counsel very anxious to put that to a jury... or a jury very anxious to accept it, either... unluckily there's no saying where Keene was himself last night. He gave our man the slip and we've no record of his movements. You notice Owen says both Sybil Frankland and Miss James part their hair on the right?'

Ferris nodded.

‘That's important,' he agreed, ‘but I must say, for my part, it's Curtis himself I'm thinking most about. There's this new story that Hunter and Keene have been quarrelling. We've only his word for it. Suppose he just faked that yarn up to throw suspicion on them?'

‘If it's Curtis all the time,' objected Mitchell, ‘and he's the guilty man, who is the woman who seems to be in it somewhere? I'm inclined to agree with you we must accept the A.A. man's evidence as proving there is one. All we seem to have got so far is that the murder was committed some time between Jo Frankland's saying good-bye to Mr Bryan just outside the car park, and the moment when the driver of the Bayard Seven spoke to the A.A. man – and that must have taken some nerve when the murdered girl's dead body was almost certainly lying in the bottom of the car at the moment, though probably covered up in some way. Whoever it was, she evidently wanted to be taken for Miss Frankland, as she had on her coat and hat and gave the A.A. man her card, so it's pretty certain what she was after was to provide evidence that Jo Frankland left Leadeane Grange safely – a little bit of extra proof, and there's nothing so suspicious as the little bit of extra proof that's faked nine times in ten. It was faked this time all right, and I take it the chances are the murder was committed in the car park, most likely just as she was starting up, so the noise of the engine would drown the pistol shot. Significant, too, that the car park attendant was out of the way at the time; only was that pure coincidence that gave the murderer his chance he – or she – was quick to seize? Or was it part of a prearranged plan? If it was the last, then it means the Leadeane Grange lot are in it somehow. Only how? And why? Sybil Frankland's story is that the day of the murder she was at Ealing the whole time. But her mother started out early to visit a friend living at Purley and didn't get back till late, and the daily woman they employ left as usual after lunch. Consequently Sybil was alone in the house from lunch till nine or thereabouts, according to her own story, and there's nothing to show she stayed there the whole time. Nothing to show she didn't, for that matter, but she may have been hanging round Leadeane just like last night, for all we can tell. As for Miss James, according to Owen there's evidence she was busy writing letters in her own room at the Grange at the moment when Miss Jo Frankland left there with Bryan. Owen has a confidential report from Mrs Barrett, who seems quite trustworthy; she's the widow of a man who served his full time in the Force. Her statement's clear enough. There had been some sort of business meeting or committee meeting or something between Bryan, Zachary Dodd, and Miss James, at which there was a good deal of quarrelling, as apparently is generally the case. Mrs Barrett says she remembers clearly being sent down to the canteen where Mr Bryan and Miss Frankland were sampling some of the weird stuff they sell there, to tell Bryan the other two were waiting for him, and Bryan asking Miss Frankland to excuse him, and her saying that was all right and she would have another look round till he was free. After the meeting was over, Mrs Barrett, who is always on guard at the door leading to the upper part reserved for women, is quite certain she saw Miss James go back to her room. When Mrs Barrett went off duty, she reported as usual to Miss James, who was still busy with her letters in her room, and couldn't have left it without Mrs Barrett seeing her – unless she climbed out of the window or up the chimney or something like that. So far there's no trace of any other woman.'

‘One may turn up,' suggested Ferris, though not very hopefully.

‘May,' agreed Mitchell, ‘but until she does we've got to leave her out. The man I have been hoping would turn up is that other motor-cyclist who was reported as having been seen to stop Miss Frankland when she was on her way to the Grange and to be quarrelling with her. It mayn't mean much and it may mean a lot, but we seem to have no luck trying to trace him.'

‘Nothing to go on,' Ferris pointed out, ‘and either he hasn't seen our appeal to him, which isn't likely seeing the way the papers have featured it, or else he has his own reasons for not wanting to.'

‘It may be that,' agreed Mitchell, ‘and by the way, when you meet Owen today, you might tell his lordship that when I gave him a free hand, I didn't mean we never wanted to see him ever again. Tell him that if it's quite convenient he had better show up here about eight this evening. I don't say his reports haven't been full and less useless than some, but there are several questions I want to put him. I haven't set eyes on him,' Mitchell complained, ‘since the investigation began and I gave him his orders.'

‘Very good, sir,' said Ferris, rising to go, and then Mitchell corrected himself,

‘No,' he said, ‘don't tell Owen to report here – tell him to come to my house at ten. But of course,' he added with deep sarcasm, ‘only if it's quite convenient. Give some of these youngsters their head,' he grumbled, ‘and they seem to think they can have it all their own way for ever after. But I should like to see Owen again before he's grown out of all recognition with the passing years.'

‘Very good, sir,' said Ferris, and departed, thinking to himself that it really must be a difficult case when it made the old man so touchy; and a little later on a message was brought to Mitchell that a gentleman had called who said his name was Freeman, and he had come about the ‘Burning Car Mystery' as the papers called it, having noticed an appeal in the Press to him to communicate with the police.

Mitchell sat up at once and told the messenger to bring in Mr Freeman without any delay. The newcomer proved to be a youngish man who described himself as a journalist on the staff of the
Daily Intelligence
. It was he, he said, who had intercepted Jo Frankland on a motor-cycle on the day of her murder; and he would have come forward before but for the fact that his paper had packed him off abroad the afternoon of the murder to interview a Russian supposed to possess certain valuable information.

‘I speak Russian,' Mr Freeman explained, ‘that's why they picked on me.'

‘You knew Miss Frankland, I understand?' Mitchell asked.

‘Just as a girl doing rather well on the
Announcer
,' Freeman explained; ‘she had brought off one or two rather good exclusive stories, and I got word from a girl pal of mine that she was after another that afternoon that promised big. So I thought I would try to see if I could find out what it was. I knew the road she was taking, and I got out my motor-bike and cut her off. I put it to her that if she would let me in on the ground floor I would do as much for her some day, and she said there was nothing doing. So I said, All right, I would hang on till I saw where she went, and she said I could do that as much as I wanted, and I could go to blazes, and anyhow all she was doing was going to a sun-bathing place after the sunshine cure some people are so keen on. Well, I didn't believe her, and I said so, and afterwards I followed her just to make sure. But it was O.K., a place called Leadeane Grange where they sit and bake all day – it's been written up once or twice. I waited a little to make sure she wasn't just trying to throw me off the tracks, but she stopped there all right, and then I saw Curtis himself was there – her husband, you know; I reckoned then he had come to meet her or she to meet him, and that was all there was to it. So I went home and found the paper had been ringing me up and wanted me badly. I was on my way to Warsaw an hour later, and I heard nothing about your wanting to see me till I got back to-day and started looking through the back files to see how things had been going while I was away, and how much I owed my bookie now.'

Superintendent Mitchell gave no sign of how keenly this statement interested him. The thin, loquacious lips from which at times such a torrent of words could issue remained firmly pressed together, the grey eyes stayed half closed and indifferent. One or two additional questions were put and answered; it was elicited that the ‘girl pal' had no idea of the nature of the ‘big, exclusive story' Miss Frankland had hinted she was on the track of. To Mitchell's suggestion that perhaps Miss Frankland had not been speaking very seriously, Freeman agreed that occasionally some journalists, though not many, would ‘talk big' as he put it, and hint at wonderful stories they were on the verge of obtaining that, however, never materialized into cold print. But Jo Frankland had not been like that.

‘She wasn't one of the sort that's all talk and no do,' Mr Freeman insisted. ‘If she said she was on a big thing, then it was a big thing she was on all right. She didn't often talk that way, but when she did, then editors sat up and took notice.'

‘It would be a great help if we knew what she had in her mind,' Mitchell remarked. ‘You see, it looks as if possibly it was something important enough for those implicated to think it worth while to silence her.'

‘I don't see how I can help you there,' Freeman said, shaking his head. ‘Whatever it was, she meant to keep it to herself. My pal, who told me about it, thought it was something that was worrying her a bit, as if she were afraid it might be too big for her to handle alone. That's why I thought there might be a chance she would be willing to take me in; that she might be glad of someone to give her a bit of backing – women have a pull in our job in some ways, but there's times when they want a man to back 'em up all the same. A woman,' said Mr Freeman, growing profound, ‘has her box of tricks all right, but a man has his, too – what wheedling is to them, whisky is for us, and there's times I would sooner back whisky than wheedling. But anyway Jo Frankland wasn't having any that afternoon, told me off pretty short and said what she knew was for her and for the
Announcer
and not for anyone else. Made it quite plain that whatever she was on the track of, she meant to keep to herself.'

‘Well, if you do get any hint of what it was, you'll let us know, I can depend on that?' Mitchell said, and after Freeman had promised, the superintendent went on, ‘I suppose you are sure it was Mr Curtis you saw? Could you swear to his identity?'

‘Well, I only had a glimpse of him,' Freeman admitted. ‘He was at the entrance to a sort of yard where two or three cars were parked. He was standing in the door of some sort of shed or outbuilding of some kind he was either just going into or else just coming out of. At the time I certainly thought it was Curtis, but I didn't take much notice. I wasn't specially anxious he should see me; I didn't want him to be able to tell Jo Frankland I had actually followed her; I knew I should get my leg pulled a bit if that got known. So I cleared off again. I thought her husband being there showed she wasn't after anything big just then, or, if she were, anyhow there wouldn't be much chance for anyone else to butt in. And as soon as I got back I got the message I told you about. I saw one or two notices in the papers abroad of the murder, but they hadn't reproduced anything about your wanting to get in touch with me. I only saw that when I got back here again.'

‘Well, you've removed one name from our list of suspects,' Mitchell remarked. ‘There was always the chance, so long as we couldn't trace you, that the unknown motor-cyclist might turn out the man we wanted. Now we know it was you and you were on your way to Warsaw, that possibility's wiped out. And the information you've given us may prove of the greatest value.'

He thanked Freeman again, and after his visitor's withdrawal sat in silence for a long time, trying to make clear in his mind the far-reaching implications of this new intelligence.

‘Doesn't look,' he mused, ‘as if Curtis had been quite telling the truth when he said he went straight back home and stayed there, drinking himself stupid. Looks a little as if this proves he was on the spot when the crime was committed. That means identity established – time and motive and opportunity. Only it won't be much good relying on this new evidence unless we get something to corroborate it. If all Freeman can say is that he thought so at the time, but only had a glimpse and didn't take much notice, no jury would be much impressed. Any smart defending counsel would whittle that story away to nothing in two twos. Not water-tight,' he decided; ‘we want the something more we haven't got so far before we can do anything.'

Shaking his head at the difficulty of securing water-tight evidence, Mitchell went on with his work of reading and annotating the reports received that morning. After lunch he drove out again towards Leadeane to a spot where by arrangement he was to meet Ferris who had been charged with another minor investigation. Ferris had not much of interest to report, and after listening to what he had to say Mitchell drove on with him to Leadeane Grange, where, as the day was fine and sunny, there were a good many visitors.