Fatal Venture (29 page)

His certainty was due to several considerations. First, elimination proved his case: no one but Malthus and/or Mason could be guilty. Then their alibi was of the constructed kind: an attempt to prove that they were in their car far from McArtt’s Hollow at the time of the crime. Further, they had called attention both to the time of leaving Dungiven and of arriving at Portrush, so as to have these established by other witnesses. And finally, the trick of altering the clock was old and well tried and fitted the situation exactly. Confirmation and the necessary warrants should arrive in two days, and the arrests could then be made on the first occasion on which the men went ashore.

French felt he had done so well that he deserved a holiday, and as no further step could be taken till he heard from Nugent, he decided to join the shore party next day. They were to land at Maryport and drive through the northern part of the Lake District, returning for the night to the ship at Whitehaven. On the following day they were to do the southern half of the Lake District, rejoining the ship at Heysham.

He found Mrs French strangely unenthusiastic when after dinner he announced his intention of accompanying her. Rather hurt, he asked what was the matter.

“Well,” she said after some hesitation, “I had promised to sit with Margot Stott. It appears Mr Morrison can’t go, and she’s like a fish out of water without him.”

“What of it?” French returned. “My going won’t prevent you sitting together.”

“No, I suppose not,” she answered doubtfully.

French swung round. “Look here, Em, what’s the trouble? You’ve got something on your chest. Get it off.”

“Well, if you must know, Joe, Margot’s afraid of you. She thinks you’re an enemy. She thinks you suspect Mr Morrison and she can’t forgive you for it.”

“Oh?” French turned away. “She does, does she? And why does she think that?”

“You ought to know. I don’t. At all events, I’m certain she’ll not come if she hears you’ll be there.”

French grunted. “Not very fair that. I’ve only been doing my job.”

“She knows that and she bears you no malice. It’s just that she can’t stand you for suspecting her young man.”

“Huh!” French was slightly testy. “And what does she expect? That I should stay in my cabin all the time?”

For a moment Mrs French did not answer. Then she spoke in a lower tone. “You know, Joe, I never interfere in your cases. But this time I’m going to ask you a question: Do you still suspect Mr Morrison?”

French hesitated. “As a matter of fact, I don’t,” he said presently. “But I can’t say so. If I began that sort of thing, people would put two and two together and guess where I stood.”

Mrs French nodded. “I see that – as a general rule. But in this case I want you to make an exception. The girl’s worrying her soul out. You must stop it: since you can.”

French, a cautious man, was unwilling to commit himself until everything was cut and dried beyond possibility of revision. But after all, he told himself, this was a special case. If he could properly ease the girl’s mind, he should do it. Besides, he liked Margot personally, and to cause her unnecessary suffering was the last thing he would wish.

“Very well,” he presently agreed. “I’ll tell her if you like. Or you can.”

“No, it wouldn’t be worth anything from me. Just stay where you are and I’ll find her and you can do it now.”

The evening had turned chilly and they had been sitting in the music room. French opened his novel to discourage the advances of the sociable, but before he had read many pages, his wife returned with Margot.

“Mrs French tells me you’ve something very pleasant to say to me?” Margot began as he pulled over a chair for her.

“Well,” French answered cautiously, “I hope so. My wife tells me that she thinks Mr Morrison is worrying because he imagines he is still on the police list of suspects.”

“I expect you’re being tactful and that she said that I was,” Margot interrupted. “You know so much, Mr French, that you must know that we hope to be married as soon as this affair is over.”

“Of course I said it was you,” Mrs French put in. “Don’t try to be clever, Joe.”

“Very well,” French admitted sadly; “it was you. Now you know. Miss Stott, we were bound to suspect everyone concerned – technically even yourself. It doesn’t mean anything, but it’s the regular routine – we have to check up on
everyone
. I had to check up on Mr Morrison.”

“Go on,” Mrs French said, in exasperated tones, “Can’t you say what you mean without all this beating about the bush? It’s like when he makes a joke, my dear. You can see it coming ten sentences ahead.”

“She wants me to say that Mr Morrison is no longer under suspicion,” French explained, ignoring this flanking attack. “I hate doing it till the case is ended and nothing can be reopened. But, subject to that reservation and for your ear alone, I may say that I’m satisfied that Mr Morrison is innocent.”

“It took you long enough to get to it,” Mrs French grumbled.

Margot’s eyes shone. “I can’t say,” she declared in low tones, “how thankful I am to hear that and how grateful I am to you both. I don’t deny it has been a ghastly worry.”

“I’m more than sorry,” French protested; “but, you know, things did look suspicious at one time. He was actually at the Hollow when the murder took place.”

Her eyes grew round. “Does he know that you know that?”

“Oh, yes. I put it to him and he admitted it.” “He never told me. He told me he was there, you understand, but not that you knew it.”

“Wanted to save you worrying,” suggested French.

She looked at him gratefully. “I think you’re the nicest man I ever met. And so clever as to be uncanny. How
on earth
did you know that he had been there, and when you did know it, how on
earth
did you clear him in your mind? But I suppose I mustn’t ask questions of that sort. I can only repeat how grateful to you both I am.”

A nice girl, this, French thought. Young, and yet not too modern. He loathed the hard-faced, loud-voiced, gin-tippling type of young woman. These he called “modern,” oblivious of the fact that they represented only an insignificant part of as fine a rising generation as this country has ever possessed.

“I’m glad to have been able to set your mind at rest,” he assured her, “and, as the matter is past, I don’t see why I shouldn’t answer your questions. Someone left a footprint in the Hollow and Morrison was the only person we could hear of who had got rid of a pair of shoes at the time.”

“Yes, he told me he had done that as a precaution. He didn’t know he had left a print.”

“Naturally, or he would have rubbed it out. The print, however, showed wear in certain places and his other shoes were similarly worn. There was no doubt that he had made it.”

“How extraordinarily clever. I can’t imagine how you thought of it all. But that only makes the other mystery the greater. In the face of that, how ever did you prove his innocence?”

“Through your action principally.”

She stared. “My action?”

“Your action,” he insisted. “There were several indications that he was telling the truth, the chief being that he couldn’t have had an appointment with Mr Stott, as he expected to be at the Causeway at the hour of the crime. It was your unexpected action that altered his plans.”

“But – it seems almost too dreadful to joke about – but couldn’t we have had a conspiracy about that?”

French smiled. “No. The Atkinsons made a statement, like everyone else, and after that it was impossible to believe that when you went ashore you had intended to go to Castlerock.”

“Nothing about my admirable character,” Margot gurgled happily. “I may tell Harry, mayn’t I? I’d run now, but he’s with the Captain.”

“Oh yes, you may tell Morrison, But he must keep it to himself.”

“I think all that’s simply marvellous,” she went on. “Then there have been tales about Mr Bristow and photographs. I suppose I mightn’t ask about that?”

“What is being said?”

“Just that he was suspected, but that he took some wonderful photographs which cleared him.”

“Well, that’s true in a way,” French admitted. He wondered whether he might properly show this delightful girl the prints: to make up to her as far as he could for the suffering he had caused her. After all, why not? They were ancient history so far as the case was concerned. “I’ll show them to you if you like, but, again, it must go no further.”

“Oh,” she breathed, “I promise that. I’d be simply thrilled.”

A little uneasy in his mind, yet assuring himself that he had no need to be, French went to his cabin and brought the photographs.

“There,” he explained, handing over that of the ruin from the south-west, “is a photograph taken near Portrush at just about the time of the murder. Whoever took it must therefore be innocent. You see?” She nodded.

“And there,” he handed over the four he had taken on deck, “are experimental views taken by four different photographers. Can you make anything of them?”

For some moments she looked blankly at the views, then suddenly clapped her hands. “But, of course,” she exclaimed, “you don’t know who this is” – she pointed to the shadow on the ruin photograph – “but you do know these?” – touching the deck views.

French agreed.

“Clever!” she declared. She looked over the prints and picked out No. 1 of the deck pictures. “That’s the one, isn’t it?”

“That’s the one,” French admitted. “Mr Bristow.”

“I see how you do it now! I call that just fascinating.”

“You’ve said enough,” Mrs French put in reprovingly. “He’ll get swelled head and be impossible to live with.”

French indeed was enjoying himself. This was an intelligent girl and it was interesting to hear her comments.

“Wonderful the way the Government of Northern Ireland look after their old ruins,” she went on, picking up the Portrush view again. “I could understand a railing and even grass, but I must say that flower-beds are doing the thing proud. What do you think, Mrs French?”

French’s Em looked over her shoulder. “Yes, and good flowers, too. Delphiniums and clarkia, those are, and good plants.”

“Yes. Don’t they bloom late in that northern climate? I am a bit of a gardener, you know. Did you see the garden on that island in – Bantry Bay, wasn’t it? We’ve seen so many bays I get them all mixed,” and she ran on so light heartedly that French grew more and more pleased with what he had done. Presently she excused herself and went off to look for Morrison, who, as she put it, “must have finished with the Captain by this time.”

The next day’s excursion through the Keswick and Ullswater areas was such a success that French felt he must at all costs join that of the following day also, to Coniston, Windermere and on to the south. That following morning was as fine and clear as its predecessor, and everything seemed propitious for the drive. French had struck up a mild friendship with Carrothers, the Galashiels stockbroker, and they had booked seats on the coach behind those of Mrs French and Margot. French was in great form. He had missed so many of these shore excursions that he was feeling pleasurably excited and talked more than usual, cracking not a few somewhat elderly jokes.

Then the whole thing was suddenly spoilt. Half an hour before the boats were due to start he was called to the telephone. It was Nugent.

“I thought I’d better ring you up,” came the DI’s voice thinly, “to save you going any further with that theory you put in your last letter.”

French’s heart sank. “What exactly do you mean?” he asked, trying to banish any feeling from his voice.

“Just that the Malthus-Mason idea is a washout. The alibi’s sound.”

For a moment French remained silent. Then, “Tell me,” he said in the same steady voice.

“Firstly,” came the answer, “neither Malthus nor Mason had an opportunity of tampering with the clock. They went out with the ladies to the garden after lunch, and apparently it might then have been possible for one of the men to have hung back and put it on half an hour, though neither of the ladies noticed this. But it would have been impossible for them to put it back again.”

“How so?” French asked as the other paused.

“The only time it could have been done was just before starting back in the car, when the ladies went upstairs to put on their things. But it wasn’t done then. It’s a striking clock, and it couldn’t have been put back half an hour. As you know, it would have to be put on eleven and a half hours. But this would have been heard. It has a loud chime which sounds through the house.”

“That seems pretty conclusive,” French admitted.

“There’s more in it than that,” Nugent’s voice continued. “Mrs Hetherington went to the sitting room and looked at the clock before they started and it was then half past four. She was the last to leave the sitting room and neither of the men returned to it after her.”

“I give up the idea.”

“There was still another check,” the DI went on inexorably. “Miss Dormer was going to some function later in the evening, and, being nervous about the time, she checked the hour of leaving the house by her watch. It was four-thirty, and her watch was correct later on and was not altered. Neither lady, furthermore, noticed anything unusual about the time of arriving back.”

“In short, it’s established the men left at four-thirty.”

“Yes, absolutely. And it’s equally established that if they did that they couldn’t have called at McArtt’s Hollow.”

“Quite; I see that. Well, that’s one matter settled at all events. Thank you for ringing me up.”

To French this information was a knockout blow. He had been satisfied that at last he saw his way through the case, and now instead of the success he had counted on, failure was staring him in the face. And it wasn’t as if he had made some small error, some revision of detail, some modification of theory. His failure was fundamental. Not only was he unable to prove the murderer’s guilt; he had now, after an exhaustive investigation lasting almost a fortnight, no idea who the murderer was.

It looked as if he must be someone outside his circle of suspects. No doubt, Stott’s character having been what it was, there were many who had wished him dead. But how were they to be discovered? French had made a list of those whom Stott’s correspondence showed as potential enemies, and compared it with that of the ship’s company. The only names common to both were those whom French had already considered and found innocent. What more could he do? It was not possible to investigate the life of everyone on board. One could deal only with those against whom there was some thread of suspicion.