Fen Country (21 page)

He frowned. “You’re at liberty, of course, to say that the comparison between myself and Buridan’s futile creature isn’t very apt—”

“On the contrary—”

“—the fact remains that as between robbery with violence on the one hand, and a calculated parricide on the other, I can’t for the moment see anything to choose. Of course, as soon as we go into the thing in detail, the scales are bound to come down on one side or the other. But it would save a lot of time and trouble if I could make up my mind which to concentrate on first. You probably know in outline what happened…”

“In very sketchy outline, yes,” said his companion, whose name was Gervase Fen. “I know that Tidgwick was a rich old gentleman who got shot through the heart yesterday evening in his own sitting-room. And I seem to remember the papers saying something about his being well-known among his friends as a practical joker.”

“‘Notorious’ would have been nearer the mark,” said Humbleby. “He really does seem to have been a quite remarkably silly old person. And the trouble is, it’s this silliness of his which has been responsible for confusing the issue…

“Was he in fact murdered while he was talking to his elder son on the telephone? Or was that just another of his jokes?”

“Harold”—Humbleby went on—“Harold Tidgwick, this elder son I’ve just mentioned, is a successful businessman with an overdeveloped conscience. His brother Mortimer—a tubby, cheerful young fellow with big winking glasses—is a research physicist. Their father’s estate, now that he’s dead, will be divided equally between them. But so far as I’ve been able to find out, it’s only Mortimer who’s in any immediate need of money. Mortimer, it appears, has an appetite for material luxuries somewhat in excess of his income, and that makes him my suspect number one.”

“Your suspect number two, I gather, being some so far anonymous thug.”

“Exactly. As to Harold, he’s out of it, as you’ll see in a moment. Now then, here’s what happened.

“Yesterday evening, at precisely 10 p.m., Harold Tidgwick received a telephone call from his father. For a minute or so they chatted about a dinner arrangement. Then Tidgwick
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suddenly let out a yelp, and bawled something incoherent about someone ‘coming at him,’ and then there was a second yell, and a shot, and a bump presumably caused by the telephone falling out of his hand.

“After that, nothing.

“Knowing the old man, anyone less conscientious than Harold would have dismissed this performance as bogus without a second thought. But Harold was too much the worrying sort to just let it pass, and after a little hesitation he rang Mortimer to ask him to go round to the father’s house and make sure everything was all right.’

“I should have thought,’ Fen interposed, “that Harold himself—”

“He had visitors in,” Humbleby explained. “And it’s they, by the way, who alibi him, for the whole evening… Mortimer was skeptical, of course, when he heard what had happened, and argued the point. But in the end he gave in and went.

“What he found, on arriving at the house at about 10:15, you already know: the old man sprawled on the carpet, with the telephone receiver off its cradle beside him and the gun lying near his foot… At least,” Humbleby corrected himself, “that’s what he says he found. And that, certainly, is what the DDI found twenty minutes later—Mortimer having phoned the police station from a box outside. But since Mortimer visited the house quite alone, there’s no knowing…”

“Exactly.” Fen nodded. “By the way, how did he get in?”

“Through the back door, apparently. It was the manservant’s night out, and the back door had been left open for when he returned… No fingerprints. No other helpful traces. No difficulty about unobserved ingress or egress…

“And that leaves just two possible hypotheses as to what happened.

“Number one: the telephone-call to Harold was genuine, and Tidgwick really was murdered at about a minute past ten. If that’s so, it lets Mortimer out, because we’ve established definitely that he was at home at that time.

“Number two: the call to Harold was a practical joke, and Mortimer, taking advantage of the—um—putative alibi it would give him, murdered his father on arrival at 10:15.”

“There’s a third, isn’t there?” said Fen. “Namely, that the call was bogus, but that nonetheless someone other than Mortimer shot Tidgwick before 10:15.”

Humbleby shook his head, however.

“No. It won’t wash. You see, old Tidgwick’s house is semi-detached, with only a very thin dividing-wall between the Tidgwick sitting-room and the sitting-room next door.

“In that next-door sitting-room, during the whole of the evening, set a very pleasant and obviously reliable couple who can swear that only one shot was fired, the one at about a minute past ten, and that—”

“But didn’t they do anything about it?” Fen demanded, staring incredulously.

“They didn’t. They knew old Tidgwick. They’d been had that way before.”

“Ah, I see. Like the story of the child who cried ‘Wolf!’ Well, but look here, if this couple heard only the one shot, that lets Mortimer out.”

“Wait, wait,” said Humbleby. ‘Let me finish, please. The point is that just before 10:15—and they’re certain of the time—this couple went out to have a nightcap at a pub. So if Mortimer did shoot his father, they would have just missed hearing it…

“No: it’s either some unknown, at a minute past ten. Or else it’s Mortimer, at 10:15 or shortly after. And I’m damned if I know which.”

There was a brief silence. Then Fen said abruptly: “It has to be Mortimer, you know.”

“‘Has to be’?”

“On the evidence you’ve given me, yes. Look at it this way. I think we can agree that an anonymous burglar—” Fen paused as a new thought occurred to him. “Incidentally, was there anything taken?”

“Yes. But Mortimer could have arranged that, as a blind. He had time enough, before the DDI arrived.” 

“Just so. Well then, I think we can agree that a burglar might well, after committing the murder, have replaced the fallen telephone-receiver in its cradle. But why, before leaving, should he change his mind and throw the thing back on the floor?

“One can see why Mortimer, if guilty, would do that. If Tidgwick’s call to Harold was a practical joke, then Tidgwick would have replaced his own receiver as soon as Harold rang off; and Mortimer would have thrown it on the floor again in order to give color to the idea of the murder’s having been committed at a minute past ten, a time for which he himself had an alibi.’

Fen reflected. “He’d also, no doubt, get rid of the blank-cartridge pistol or whatever it was that Tidgwick used for his silly joke. That’s a line, Humbleby. lf you were to search about a bit—”

“Yes, yes,” said Humbleby impatiently “I can quite see that once we’ve proved the phone-call bogus, Mortimer hasn’t got a chance. But what’s all this about the telephone itself? I agree that if the receiver in old Tidgwick’s room was replaced and then removed again, then obviously it’s Mortimer who’s guilty. But what on earth makes you think that happened? Why shouldn’t the receiver have gone on lying on the floor continuously from 10:01 to 10:15? What proof is there that it didn’t?”

And Fen sighed. “Our automatic telephone system,” he said, “is a wonderful thing. Don’t you see, Humbleby? If old Tidgwick’s receiver was off from 10:01 to 10:15—if, in short, it was never returned to its cradle after Tidgwick picked it up in order to ring Harold, then Harold could never have phoned Mortimer or anyone else: you put people’s telephones out of action if you don’t ring off at the end of a call.

“But Harold did phone Mortimer. Therefore old Tidgwick’s telephone was returned to its cradle after the bogus call. Therefore—again—it was subsequently put back on the floor for the police to find. And since no burglar could have any conceivable reason for doing that…

“Simple, isn’t it? Simple enough to hang a man.”