Death of a Commuter (24 page)

“This was not so risky as it seems, for if they were stopped they had a perfectly good story ready. Felix had gone to his study and swallowed a whole bottle of Opilactic. They had discovered him and were driving him post haste to his own doctor at Buttsfield. They might have been blamed for not immediately sending for Sporlott who was nearer, but nothing more might have been proved against them. In fact—it's easy to talk after the event—I wonder why they didn't handle it this way in any case, and arrive on Kumar Shant's doorstep with their load. They
wouldn't have escaped all suspicion but they might have escaped conviction.

“But they had made other plans. They found the car park of the Great Ring empty as they were confident it would be. They pushed the corpse of Felix into the driving seat, left an empty flask of whisky with him and an empty bottle which had held Opilactic tablets, with one dropped on the floor for the sake of naturalness and got into Rumble's car to return.

“Their story, if they were seen or stopped on the way back, was equally good. Once clear of the Great Ring they could say that Rumble had seen Felix on the train that night and as he had not come home, they had been to Buttsfield to look for his car. Not very convincing but impossible to disprove. But they were not stopped and as far as they knew they were not seen.

“Whether George Catford was actually at the Great Ring with his motor-cycle out of sight, or whether he was on the road and saw
two
cars turn up towards the Great Ring and only
one
emerge from the turning so that he went up to investigate, we shall probably never know. But he knew what they had left there and followed them back to Brenstead. He even went up Manor Lane and saw Rumble drop Elspeth at her home, then followed him back to his own, noting the address. He was not quite as accurate as he thought about this because some nights later, when he came either to reconnoitre or to see Rumble, he got the wrong house and was seen by Patsy Thriver peering in the window of their house, which is next door to Rumble's.

“The rest of his movements we know. He returned to Butts-field, changed into his alarming black clothes and put on his dark glasses, then rode back to Brenstead in the early morning to watch outside Rumble's house. This, he believed, was the Great Chance for which, he told me, he had always held himself in readiness.”

“T
O
M
E, THE
M
OST
F
ASCINATING
T
HING ABOUT
I
NVESTIGATING A
clever crime is to find where the criminal has made his mistake. Fortunately for the course of justice he always makes at least one, and Elspeth Parador and James Rumble soon discovered theirs. They had forgotten to leave Felix's brief-case beside him in the car and it lay where he had left it in the hall of the Old Manor.

“That he had it with him that day we know from two sources—Thriver saw him put the will he had signed in it at his office and Flood held it for him when he opened the door of his car at Brenstead station.

“When did Elspeth discover it? That same night? Or in the morning? It is just possible that the discovery was made by Mrs. Byles or Mrs. Pocock, the two women who come in daily to help at the Old Manor; if so it will be a valuable piece of evidence. Whenever it was, Elspeth must certainly have decided to destroy every trace of it. It would be supposed that someone had stolen it from the car, she hoped, if the question arose at all. Before destroying it she went through the contents and found the new will.

“It is the unexpected which upsets the most careful plans and she and Rumble had made no provision for this. Destroy it? But Henrietta Ballard might know that Felix was leaving her money and would raise heaven and earth to trace the will, which might lead to all sorts of awkward questions. Ironically she had no personal interest in it one way or the other, but she knew Henrietta to be as ruthless as herself. Send it anonymously to Thriver who, she saw, had drawn it up? He would suppose that some repentant thief had returned it, perhaps. In the end, after a fruitless discussion with Rumble, who had his own worries at this time, she decided to keep it hidden and watch the course of events. The inquest must have relieved her mind a little. Suicide was officially accepted as the explanation of Felix's death and she could breathe again.

“Rumble, meanwhile, had been approached by Catford for a very large sum of money. Whether Catford followed him to his office when he left the train that morning, or made his approach by telephone, I cannot guess. But at any rate Rumble stalled. Had he known as much as I came to know of Catford he might have paid up. Catford wanted one big sum to take him somewhere, where he could use that as capital on which to accumulate a fortune. By the time he had failed in this, Rumble and Elspeth would have left the district and after a year, say, his information about what happened that night would not have been much good. I doubt if the police would have re-opened enquiries on a tale told by a man who had been in prison for fraud, and, if they did so, the evidence to support his story would have vanished.

“For a time the two of them were cautious about seeing one another, Elspeth going to Rumble's house at night. I shouldn't be surprised if it was on one of these visits that Elspeth knocked over old Gobler, but I haven't the smallest evidence for that, just noting that it was someone who did not want to stop.

“It was at this point that my housekeeper's husband who had once worked for Parador came to me, and on his persuasion I went to see Magnus Parador and took an interest in the case. I must have been singularly unwelcome to Elspeth and Rumble who, however, were clever enough to appear pleased at my
arrival. Elspeth hoped I would get at the truth about Felix and I set to work.

“I had almost nothing to go on. I believed that the man in the train knew something about one of the other passengers but it was little more than a hunch. I put some faith in a brief-case I carried which was an exact duplicate of Felix's, but I knew it might fail to get reactions. I believed Felix Parador had been murdered and I suspected his wife for no better reason than that I did not see where he could have gone when he left the train that evening except home. I had to regard his five fellow travellers with almost equal suspicion and it happened that they provided a fine collection of red herrings, for all five of them, Thriver, Dogman, the brothers Limpole, and Rumble were out that night—Dogman, Thriver and Rumble being seen at The Royal Oak and the brothers Limpole chasing about the countryside looking for their sister. For a time I had at least to recognise that Sporlott and Hopelady had some sort of motive, but frankly I did not take them very very seriously as suspects. In fact for a time I was floundering.”

“We appreciate your modesty, Deene. But let us …”

“Yes,” said Carolus. “Let us. I'm dry. I didn't realise that I should keep you so long, gentlemen.”

“That's all right, Mr. Deene,” said Hemingway, and even Haggard said, “We'd certainly like to hear you out now we've gone so far.”

Carolus lit a cheroot.

“There were several things that pointed my way, but nothing absolutely reliable. The brief-case was not in the car when it was found and if it was a thief who had taken it surely he would have also taken the money, about £70, in Parador's pocket-case? There was an empty whisky flask, the idea being that Parador had swallowed the contents in taking his pills. This could have been intended to account for the whisky which the post-mortem would reveal, the whisky which Felix had actually drunk on arrival at the Old Manor. Thriver remembered the flask being emptied at his office. But there were ways of accounting for this other than the way I saw it.

“Then there was the little I discovered about the movements of Elspeth and Rumble that evening. Thriver heard the sound of television and radio as he approached the house and Elspeth did not ask him in as she usually did, but told him she was going to bed. This fitted with the probable timing—Felix was dead or dying and Rumble was with her. But it
proved
nothing. Thriver surprised Elspeth by saying he was going to The Royal Oak and soon after he arrived there Rumble came in for a drink. Again it was possible that he looked in as some sort of alibi before going with Elspeth to take the body to the Great Ring, but there was no certainty about this.

“More relevant, and hard to account for in any way but the truth was Boggett's story of the cars he heard late that night.
Two
going out of Manor Lane, which would be Elspeth taking the body of Felix and Rumble following her to bring her back,
one
returning followed by a motor-cycle, which would be Rumble and Elspeth returning followed by Catford, and
one
coming out of the lane again followed by a motor-cycle—Rumble going home with Catford following to see where he lived. All very nice but lacking the final touch of definite application. There was even the fact that Rumble, who rarely ate much in the evening, that evening finished off all that was left for him, which suggested to me that he had burnt or otherwise destroyed it to avoid leaving his meal untouched. But what was that worth as evidence?

“I noticed, too, how conveniently invisible from anywhere, certainly from any window, was the yard at the back of the Old Manor where the cars of both Felix and Rumble must have stood that evening. It was an ideal place to keep them during the hours when no one must know that either of the men was in the house and the body could have been put in the car there. Even Rumble's hysteria with me, when he found I had been questioning Elspeth,
could
be explained by his love and consideration for her which, I for one, never doubted. I had my theory but as Detective-Inspector Haggard is about to tell me, there was no proof worth a cold carrot.

“For a time it continued like that. Elspeth and Rumble
decided that it would be best to let it be seen that they were in love. They thought, probably rightly, that more suspicion would be aroused by clandestine meetings, if they were discovered, than an open, even proud, admission. They also decided to return the will anonymously to Thriver. They were not much worried about me, but Henrietta Ballard was a different matter.

“Very indicative was Elspeth's reaction to the brief-case. When she saw it in my hand at her house she never batted an eyelid. If she had known nothing of what had happened to Felix's she would have remarked on it. Couldn't have helped doing so. It could only be that old-fashioned thing a guilty conscience which made her affect to ignore it But this again was not proof.

“Then, in a place and at a time when I least expected it came what I needed. At Chatty Dogman's party there appeared dramatically the woman Felix Parador had been keeping. She had heard from Thriver that according to the only will in his possession she had been left nothing and, drunk or drugged or both, she had come to raise hell with Elspeth as publicly as possible. Elspeth kept her head while she raged but when she had gone, as any woman might, she broke down. Her remarkable self-possession left her and she let fall those words which, if the death penalty had not been abolished, would have hanged her as surely as Edith Thompson's love-letters hanged her. Henrietta had shouted, ‘he left me without a sou', and Elspeth, in the hysteria of reaction after she had gone, said, ‘and he
didn't
leave her without a sou'.

“Remember, this was before the will had been sent back to Thriver. It proved that Elspeth had seen the will. It proved that Felix had been to his house that night. It proved—to my mind at least—that Elspeth and her lover had murdered him.”

There was silence for a moment then Haggard said quietly, “There
are
other possible explanations, you know.”

“There are. But so remote that they needn't be seriously considered. What I wanted was enough to persuade the police to reopen the case. Once they did so they would find the evidence which in their position of authority, and with their expertise they
can
find, while I cannot. Which you
will
find, I believe, when you have heard the rest.”

There was a long pause which even Mr. Gorringer did not interrupt.

“I was not yet satisfied and there was still George Catford. I deliberately told Elspeth that I had unearthed Catford and was going to see him. This put her and Rumble in a desperate position. If I was once able to make Catford talk they were both lost. They decided to risk everything on an attempt to kill me that night. I had told Elspeth that my housekeeper would be away and they hoped to find me alone in the house. There were risks here—that someone might note the number of their car or that they might be seen. They guarded against these as best they could. Rumble had his old overalls from the time he rode a motor-cycle (as I had heard from Thriver), and Elspeth, I would like to bet, still had the things she needed to put on an effective make-up. But whatever the risks, they had to take them. The alternative was failure and imprisonment—the sure, the only alternative. So they arrived here that evening and found the curtains of this room undrawn and the room lit only by firelight.

“I don't know how much Rumble saw when he looked in but not enough to distinguish me and shoot me from there. He tried to enter by the front door but found himself blocked by a stranger. Quite desperate now, he levelled his revolver at the headmaster's chest and forced him to retreat. But when I shot at the sky through that window he lost his nerve. Heaven knows what he thought, if he thought at all, but his first anxiety was for Elspeth waiting in the car outside. Perhaps he thought I had shot at her, though I could not even see the car from here. He dashed out and they drove away.

“As you know, I emptied the house after that. I expected that as soon as Rumble and Elspeth saw that no newspaper carried any account of the incident they would conclude, as was indeed the case, that if anyone heard the sound of a shot they had put it down to a car backfiring. They could now only hope that Catford would be greedy enough to keep the thing to himself in order to
obtain the money they promised him, and telephoned him that very evening to tell him the money was being arranged and would be handed over in a day or two. Whether one or both of them came here again on the following night I don't know. In their state of mind at that time they were capable of it.”