Fen Country (10 page)

“So he’s bought himself a horse at last, has he? He’s been talking about it for long enough… Yes, sorry, Tom. Go on.”

“Well, he didn’t find you, of course, so he rode back again and arrived home about a quarter to three. From then on he didn’t see the nephew, and the nephew didn’t see him.”

The chief constable took his time about this, too. It was a trick, the superintendent reflected, which had been increasingly in evidence since his wife’s sudden and tragic death two years before. And God knows, living alone in this great barn of a house with no one but an aging servant for company—

But by the time the superintendent reached this stage in his meditations, the chief constable was functioning again. “And fingerprints?” he asked.

“Only Gregson’s and the girl’s and the nephew’s so far—what you’d expect. But then, if it was an outsider who did it, he wouldn’t have needed to leave any prints. All he’d have to do, if the girl was waiting for him in the outhouse, would be to go through an open gate and an open door, and there he’d be. As to footmarks—well, the ground’s as hard as brass.”

They had reached the river-bank, and were standing beside a tree half of whose roots had been laid bare by the water’s steady erosion. Midges hovered above their heads. On the far bank, the dinghy in which Gregson had been accustomed to scull himself across on his visits to the chief constable bumped lazily against its mooring-post, and in the kitchen window of the farmhouse a light went on…

“Not an easy one, no,” the chief constable was saying. “You’ll be finding out about Elsie’s boy-friends, of course, and I suppose that until you’ve done that you won’t be wanting to commit yourself.”

He looked up sharply when there was no reply, and saw that the superintendent was staring out over the water with eyes that had gone suddenly blank.

“Tom! I was saying that I imagined…”

But it was a long while before he was answered. And when at last the answer came, it was in the voice of a stranger.

“But you’re wrong, sir,” said the superintendent dully. “I know who did it, all right.”

Fractionally he hesitated; then: “I tell vou frankly,” he went on with more vigor, “that I haven’t got anything that’d stand up in court. It’s like the Rogers case, as far as that goes… It’s like the Rogers case in more ways than one.”

The chief constable nodded. “I remember…”

And their eyes met, and they understood one another.

And presently the chief constable stirred, saying:

‘Yes, I’m glad it’s over. I don’t know that I ever seriously intended to try and bluff it out, but living’s a habit you don’t break yourself of very easily, and— Well, never mind all that.” He was trying hard to speak lightly. “By the bye, Tom, what did I do—leave my driving license lying on the outhouse floor?”

“You assumed I said R-O-D-E—as in fact I did—when you ought to have assumed I was saying R-O-W-E-D.”

“The chief constable considered. “Yes. Yes, I see. If I’d really left Town at lunch-time, I shouldn’t have known anything about Gregson’s precious horse. Well, well. Tom, I’m not at all sure what the drill is in a situation like this, but I should imagine you’d better get into direct touch with the Home Office.”

“There’s no case against anyone else, sir.” The superintendent’s voice was carefully expressionless.

“Thanks very much, but no. Now Vera’s dead, nobody—”

He grimaced suddenly. “However, I’m much too much of a coward to want to hang about waiting for the due processes of law. So, Tom, if you don’t mind…”

A mile and a half beyond the house, the superintendent stopped his car in order to light a cigarette. But he never looked back. And even in Gregson’s farmhouse, where they were starting their makeshift evening meal, no one heard the shot, no one marked, across the dark stream, the new anonymous shadow under the willow tree.

They were standing at opposite ends of the living-room, studiously ignoring one another. A little too studiously, the inspector reflected, as, with a sergeant in tow for witness, he stepped inside and closed the door behind him: that elaborate disinterest was as revealing as any demonstrativeness could have been.

“Well now, Mrs. Soane, Mr. Masters,” he said cheerfully, “It’s about time we had a little talk. That’s providing Mrs. Soane feels up to it, of course.”

Enid Soane shrugged. She was a faded, worried-looking blonde woman in the middle thirties, a former employee of Soane’s whom he had married in his retirement. “I dont mind,” she said lifelessly. “I shan’t get a wink of sleep tonight anyhow.”

“A tragic business.” The inspector produced his notebook, perched himself on the arm of a chair. “Not at all the sort of crime you look for in a quiet little village like this. Let’s see, now… Mr. Masters, you’d known Mr. Soane for how long?”

Oliver Masters, who had been leaning against the mantelpiece, straightened up abruptly: a thin, dark, middle-aged man, with a hooked nose and a jutting jaw. “Six years,” he said. “Ever since he retired from business and became nature correspondent on the
Echo
. I’m on the
Echo
too, you know. That was how we met.”

“And did he often invite you here to stay?”

“Fairly often. He rather idealized journalists and journalism, and I don’t think he ever quite realized what a dull, unimportant cog in the machine I am. However…”

“On this occasion, then, you came down just for the weekend. And earlier this evening the three of you went together to Evensong at the village church.”

“Correct.”

“After which you and Mrs. Soane left Mr. Soane in the churchyard and took a walk.”

“Yes. Soane had been showing us some of the queer inscriptions on the older tombstones. We suggested a walk, as it was such a fine evening, but he said he wasn’t up to it—he suffered a good deal from sciatica, you know. He would sit in the churchyard for a bit, he said, and then go home. So we left him there. “

“About what time would that have been?”

“Oh… I suppose a quarter or twenty past eight.”

“M’m. And where did your walk take you?”

“We cut across the fields toward Hod Hill. Over Lumsden Bridge, past the old mill, and then—”

“Yes. Did you happen to meet anyone you knew?”

Masters frowned. “I don’t think… Wait, though. We did pass the time of day with an old chap on the bridge. A nice old boy in a shooting-jacket—don’t know who he was, but he seemed a respectable sort of citizen.”

“Ah, the colonel, that’d be.” The inspector smiled. “Colonel Rackstraw. Quite a figure in these parts. Why, I remember him from when I was a boy.”

Masters stared. “Are you just guessing, or—”

“No, no. lt was the colonel all right. Of course, you haven’t heard.”

“Haven’t heard what?”

“That the colonel was attacked this evening in exactly the same way as Mr. Soane—the only difference being that the colonel survived it. It was a courting couple that found him, shortly after nine. He’d been knocked unconscious, and he was just coming round. From what he says, it must have happened fairly soon after you two met him down at Lumsden Bridge.”

And at that, Oliver Masters was filled with a sudden wild elation which he was hard put to it to conceal. If he had been a wiser man, he would have known this for what it was—an excessive nervous reaction after an excessive nervous strain, like the snap of a released elastic band.

But Masters was not wise; he was only clever. God, that was bright of me, he thought. For in truth, he remembered the respectable Colonel Rackstraw a great deal better than he had pretended: remembered how the colonel had asked them the time, how, even as he spoke, their ears had caught the faint distant jangle of the church clock’s chimes. “Ah—half past,” the colonel had said confidently, answering his own question.

But it had not been half past: it had been a quarter to. And Masters, striding along with a distracted Enid at his side, straining instinctively, unreasoningly, to put more distance, and ever, more distance, beween themselves and the thing that had happened in the churchyard after Evensong, until such time as they could collect themselves and consider what was best to do—Masters had seen, in a flash of inspiration, how the old man’s mistake could be turned to their advantage. Leave him to himself, and in due course he was liable to discover the error. But creep back surreptitiously, knock him unconscious with a heavy stone—and how would he know how long he had been dead to the world, how would he know that he had misheard the village clock … ?

It had worked, apparently.

“And the colonel didn’t see who attacked him?” Masters found himself asking.

“No. But I don’t doubt it was the same fellow who killed Mr. Soane… Incidentally, Mr. Masters, the colonel has told us that it was just half past eight when you and Mrs. Soane met him at Lumsden Bridge. It occurred to us that he might have come across you while you were out on your walk, and in fact he recognized your description at once. He asked you the time, he says, and—”

“That’s true. I’d forgotten. And he’s right—it was half past eight.’ Masters pretended to hesitate. “Is that important?”

“Fairly important, yes. You see, just before I came here this evening I managed at long last to establish, from a combination of factors, that it must have been round about half past when Mr. Soane was murdered. So if you two were a good ten minutes’ walk away…”

“I see,” said Masters. “Well, Inspector, I won’t make a fuss about your having suspected Enid and me, because obviously you’re bound to suspect everybody. But at the same time, I won’t pretend I’m not glad the colonel’s evidence clears us.”

“Oh yes, he’s quite definite about it,” said the inspector with perfect truth. “We can’t shake him… By the way, I suppose you checked the time on your own watch? It really was half past?”

“Certainly.”

“Your watch is reliable, is it?”

“Yes, perfectly reliable.”

The inspector got to his feet. “Well, so now we know where we are.” He snapped his notebook shut. “I’m arresting the pair of you for Mr. Soane’s murder. And I have to warn you that anything you say now may be used in evidence at your trial.”

Enid Soane cried out incoherently. She was not a very intelligent woman: for all her lover’s explanations, she had never really understood how the attack on the colonel was going to help them, and her instinct had been against it. Now, it seemed, she was being proved right…

“Don’t be silly, Inspector,” Masters was saying with an atternpt at coolness. “You’ve admitted yourself that the colonel’s evidence lets us out. Unless you’re lying about what the colonel said—”

“No, Mr. Masters, I’m not lying.”

“Then how can you arrest us?”

“I can arrest you because at half past eight this evening—the time is proved—there was a burglary at Mrs. Watling’s house here in the village. And because very unfortunately the colonel left his heel-print on a flower-bed in the garden. Poor gentleman, he’s always been a little eccentric that way. They only let him out of the Institution just the other day, and now he’ll have to go back again.

“But although he’s eccentric, he does have what the psychiatrists call insight—and the instinct to cover up. So you see, he too wanted an alibi, and you and Mrs. Soane were to supply it. If you hadn’t acquiesced in his ‘mistake,’ for your own purposes, I don’t think I could have touched you. But as it is…”

“All right, Inspector,” said Masters shakily. “I’ll admit I lied. It wasn’t half past when we met this—this madman at the bridge, it was a quarter to. But you can see why I lied, can’t you? Although I didn’t kill Soane, I had enough sense to realize that I was an obvious suspect, so I seized on the old man’s testimony—stupidly, I admit—as ameans of clearing myself. That’s understandable, isn’t it? That’s—”

“Yes, Mr. Masters, quite understandable. The only trouble about it is that you told your lie a bit too soon in the day. You told it before I’d informed you of the time of Mr. Soane’s death.

“How could you possibly know that your lie would ‘clear’ you, as you put it, unless you already knew at what time Mr. Soane was killed? And how could you know that, unless you killed him, or saw him killed, yourself?”

And to that, Oliver Masters had no answer, either then or afterwards. None.

From:
The Assistant Commissioner, Criminal Investigation Department, Metropolitan Police.

To:
HM Secretary for Home Affairs.

PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL

New Scotland Yard,
London, SW1
12 May, 1959

Dear Mr. Clunes,

Thank you for your letter dated yesterday. Needless to say, the nature of the questions regarding the Wynter case which Opposition Members are proposing to ask in the House of Commons comes as no particular surprise to me. I have in fact dealt somewhat disingenuously with this matter, as you will see; but to suggest that I have avoided arresting Gellian on account of my personal acquaintance with him is absurd. The outline of the case which follows will, I hope, be sufficient to secure a withdrawal of the questions. If this fails, I shall of course be glad to offer the Members concerned a full and free opportunity to question myself, and the officers who have conducted the investigation, in whatever fashion they think fit.

Their suspicions are the more ironical in that Gellian was in fact arrested only yesterday morning, on my personal instructions. Since the Department of Public Prosecutions regards the evidence against him as insufficient, the arrest was made without a warrant; and within a couple of hours Gellian was inevitably once again a free man. My action did, however, succeed in its intended purpose: Gellian and Mrs. Wynter had planned to be married yesterday afternoon; as a result of the scene in my office, the marriage will not now take place. You will say, and rightly, that it is no business of the police to discourage people who wish to marry murderers. Nonetheless, when the intending partner is completely unsuspicious, there is, I believe, a good deal to be said on humane grounds for dropping a hint. In fact, the simple ruse we employed succeeded handsomely, thereby confirming the theory we had formed as to the only possible method by which this (superficially) perplexing murder can have been committed.