In the Teeth of the Evidence (9 page)

    ‘My room’s on the main landing,’ went on Mr Cobb. ‘No, not the side near the corridor where the disturbance was – the other side. But I went across and had a bath; the bathroom’s near the steps that go down to the corridor. It would be about ten to one when I got back. All quiet then on the Western Front.’

    ‘What did you and Pringle talk about downstairs?’

    ‘Oh, this and that,’ replied Mr Cobb easily. ‘We got swapping yarns and so on. Pringle had a hot one or two, and yours truly kept his end up. Have a fag, Inspector?’

    ‘No, thanks. Did Pringle happen to mention – Yes, Ruggles, what is it? Excuse me one moment, gentlemen.’

    He stepped to the door for a word with the sergeant, returning in a minute or two with a card in his hand.

    ‘I suppose your photographic supplies don’t include this kind of thing, Mr Cobb?’

    Mr Cobb blew out a long cloud of smoke with a whistling noise.

    ‘No,’ he said, ‘no-ho! Where did you get this pretty thing from?’

    ‘Ever seen it before?’

    Mr Cobb hesitated. ‘Well, since you ask me, yes. The late lamented Pringle showed it me last night. Wouldn’t have said anything if you hadn’t asked me. Speak no ill of the dead and so on. But he
was
a bit up and coming, was Pringle.’

    ‘Sure it was the same one?’

    ‘Looks like it. Same pretty lady – same pretty pose, anyhow.’

    ‘Where did he carry it?’ asked the Inspector, taking the photograph back and attaching it to his notes with a paper-clip – but not before Mr Egg had snatched a glimpse of it and been suitably shocked.

    ‘In his breast-pocket,’ replied Mr Cobb, after a moment’s thought.

    ‘I see. Pringle told you what his job was, I suppose. Did he happen to say anything about taking precautions against thieves, or anything of that sort?’

    ‘He did mention that he had valuable stuff in his bag and always locked his bedroom door,’ returned Mr Cobb, with an air of great frankness. ‘Not that I asked him. No affair of mine what he did.’

    ‘Quite so. Well, Mr Cobb, I don’t think I need trouble you further at present, but I’d be obliged if you’d stay in the hotel till I’ve seen you again. Sorry to inconvenience you.’

    ‘Not at all,’ said the obliging Mr Cobb. ‘It’s all the same to me.’ He sauntered out, smiling pleasantly.

    ‘Pah!’ said Inspector Monk. ‘There’s a nasty piece of work for you. Cheap dirt. And a liar, too. You saw that photo? (And how anybody can print such filth beats me.) Well, that hadn’t been carried round in a breast-pocket. Edges quite sharp. Fresh out of its envelope, from the look of it. Don’t mind betting you’d find the rest of the series in that fellow’s suit-case. But naturally he won’t admit it – it’s a punishable offence to sell them.’

    ‘Where was this one found?’

    ‘Under Pringle’s bed. If Cobb hadn’t got an alibi – and I’m pretty sure Bates is telling the truth, and as a matter of fact, the cook’s window looks on to the billiards-room window, and she saw them playing there until 12.15. Unless they’re all in it together, which isn’t likely. And still no sign of Pringle’s bag. But we can’t get over the evidence of that clock. You’re sure it struck twelve?’

    ‘Absolutely. I couldn’t mistake one or two strokes for twelve.’

    ‘No, of course not.’ The Inspector drummed on the table and stared into vacancy. Monty took this for a dismissal. He went back into his own bedroom. The bed had not yet been made nor the slops emptied, the slatternly routine of the Griffin having been reduced to complete chaos by the catastrophe. He threw himself into a broken-springed arm-chair, lit a cigarette and meditated.

    He had been brooding for ten minutes or so when he heard the town clock chime the quarters and strike eleven. Mechanically he waited, expecting to hear the answering melodious strike of the kitchen clock, but nothing came. Then he remembered that Monk had set the hands twenty minutes forward that morning, so that it must have struck some time since. And then he bounded to his feet with a loud exclamation.

    ‘Heavens! What a fool I am! This morning at seven the town clock struck first, and the kitchen clock immediately after.
But last night I never heard the town clock strike at all
. The kitchen clock
must
have been altered somehow or other. Unless – unless – unless, by gosh! I wonder if that could be it. Yes. Yes, it’s possible.
Just before that clock struck twelve, Waters stopped snoring
.’

    He ran from the room and plunged hastily into No. 8. Like his own room, it was in disorder. Like his own room, it did not appear to have been dusted for weeks. And on the night-table by Waters’s bed, which stood close against the thin partition between the two rooms, there was a mark in the dust, as though some object measuring about three inches by three and a half had stood there during the night.

    Mr Egg darted out of the room and along the corridor. He fell up the two ill-lighted steps with a curse, turned the corner and burst into the bathroom. Its window looked out upon a narrow side-street, communicating at one end with the main road and at the other with a lane that ran between warehouses. Rushing downstairs, Mr Egg caught Inspector Monk just emerging from the coffee-room.

    ‘Hold Cobb!’ panted Mr Egg. ‘I believe I’ve bust his alibi. Where’s Waters gone to? I want to put a call through to him. Quick!’

    ‘Waters said he was catching a train to Sawcaster,’ said Monk, rather astonished.

    ‘Then,’ said Monty, calling upon his professional knowledge, ‘he’ll put up at the Ring o’ Bells, and he’ll visit Hunter’s, Merriman’s and Hackett & Brown’s. We’ll get him at one place or the other.’

    After a hectic half-hour at the telephone, he ran his quarry to earth at one of Sawcaster’s leading confectionery establishments.

    ‘Waters,’ gasped Monty urgently, ‘I want you to answer some questions, old man, and you can ask me why afterwards. Never mind how silly they sound. Do you carry a travelling-clock? You do? What’s it like? Old-fashioned repeater? Yes? About three inches square – squarish? Yes? Stood on your bed-table last night? Does it strike on a coiled spring? It does? Thank heaven for that! Deep, quick, soft note like a church bell? Yes, yes, yes! Now, old boy, think hard. Did you wake up last night and strike that repeater? You did? You’re sure? Good man! At what time? It struck twelve? What time does that mean?
Any time between twelve and one o’clock?
Then, for God’s sake, Waters, take the next train back to Cuttlesbury, because your dashed clock has nearly made you and me accomplices in a murder. Yes, MURDER . . . Hold on a moment, Inspector Monk wants to speak to you.’

    ‘Well,’ said the Inspector, as he replaced the receiver, ‘your evidence might have landed us in a nice pickle, mightn’t it? It’s a good job you had that brain-wave.
Now
we’ll go through Mr Dirty Cobb’s luggage and see if he’s got any more juicy photos. I suppose he took ’em along to show Pringle.’

    ‘That’s it. I couldn’t understand how the murderer got into the room. Naturally Pringle would lock his door. But of course he’d left it open for Cobb, who’d promised to slip along later and show him something to make his hair curl – “on the strict q.t.” and all that. It must have given Cobb a shock when Pringle yelled and I knocked at the door. But he was all there, I will say that for him. He’s probably a first-class salesman in his own rotten line. “Don’t let a sudden question rout you, but always keep your wits about you”, as it says in the
Handbook
.’

    ‘But look here,’ said the Inspector, ‘what did he do with Pringle’s bag?’

    ‘Dropped it out of the bathroom window to the accomplice he had summoned by phone from Tadworthy. Why, dash it all!’ cried Monty, wiping his forehead, ‘I heard the car go by, just after that confounded clock struck twelve.’

BITTER ALMONDS

A Montague Egg Story

‘Dash it!’ exclaimed Mr Montague Egg, ‘there’s another perfectly good customer gone west.’

    He frowned at his morning paper, which informed him that an inquest would be held that day on the body of Mr Bernard Whipley, a wealthy and rather eccentric old gentleman, to whom the firm of Plummett & Rose had from time to time sold a considerable quantity of their choice vintage wines, fine old matured spirits and liqueurs.

    Monty had more than once been invited by Mr Whipley to sample his own goods, sitting in the pleasant study at Cedar Lawn – a bottle of ancient port, carried up carefully from the cellar by Mr Whipley himself, or a liqueur brandy, brought out from the tall mahogany cabinet that stood in the alcove.

    Mr Whipley never allowed anybody but himself to handle anything alcoholic. You never, he said, could trust servants, and he had no fancy for being robbed, or finding the cook with her head under the kitchen dresser.

    So Mr Egg frowned and sighed, and then frowned still more, on seeing that Mr Whipley had been discovered dead, apparently from prussic acid poisoning, after drinking an after-dinner glass of crème de menthe.

    It is not agreeable when customers suddenly die poisoned after partaking of the drinks one has supplied to them, and it is not good for business.

    Mr Egg glanced at his watch. The town where he was at that moment reading the paper was only fifteen miles distant from the late Mr Whipley’s place of residence. Monty decided that it might be just as well to run over and attend the inquest. He was, at any rate, in a position to offer testimony as to the harmless nature of crème de menthe as supplied by Messrs Plummett & Rose.

    Accordingly he drove over there as soon as he had finished his breakfast, and by sending in his card to the coroner, secured for himself a convenient seat in the crowded little schoolroom where the inquest was being held.

    The first witness was the housekeeper, Mrs Minchin, a stout, elderly person of almost exaggerated respectability. She said she had been over twenty years in Mr Whipley’s service. He was nearly eighty years old, but very active and healthy, except that he had to be careful of his heart, as was only to be expected.

    She had always found him an excellent employer. He had been, perhaps, a little close about financial matters and had kept a very sharp eye on the housekeeping, but personally she was not afraid of such, being as careful of his interests as she would be of her own. She had kept house for him ever since his wife’s death.

    ‘He was quite in his usual health on Monday evening,’ Mrs Minchin went on. ‘Mr Raymond Whipley had telephoned in the afternoon to say he would be down for dinner—’

    ‘That is Mr Whipley’s son?’

    ‘Yes – his only child.’ Here Mrs Minchin glanced across at a thin, sallow, young-old man, seated near Mr Egg on the bench reserved for witnesses, and sniffed rather meaningly. ‘Mr and Mrs Cedric were staying in the house. Mr Cedric Whipley is Mr Whipley’s nephew. He had no other relations.’

    Mr Egg identified Mr and Mrs Cedric Whipley as the fashionably dressed young man and woman in black who sat on the other side of Mr Raymond. The witness proceeded.

    ‘Mr Raymond arrived in his car at half-past six, and went in at once to see his father in the study. He came out again when the dressing gong rang for dinner, at a quarter past seven. He passed me in the hall, and I thought he looked rather upset. As Mr Whipley didn’t come out, I went in to him. He was sitting at his writing table, reading something that looked to me like a legal paper.

    ‘I said, “Excuse me, Mr Whipley, sir, but did you hear the gong?” He was sometimes a little hard of hearing, though wonderfully keen in all his faculties, considering his age. He looked up and said, “All right, Mrs Minchin,” and went back to what he was doing. I said to myself, “Mr Raymond’s been putting him out again.” At half-past—’

    ‘One moment. What had you in your mind about Mr Raymond?’

    ‘Well, nothing much, only Mr Whipley didn’t always approve of Mr Raymond’s goings-on, and they sometimes had words about it. Mr Whipley disliked Mr Raymond’s business.

    ‘At half-past seven,’ continued the witness, ‘Mr Whipley went upstairs to dress, and he seemed all right then, only his step was tired and heavy. I was waiting in the hall, in case he needed any assistance, and as he passed me he asked me to telephone to Mr Whitehead to ask him to come over the next morning – Mr Whitehead the lawyer. He did not say what it was for. I did as he asked me, and when Mr Whipley came down again, about ten minutes to eight, I told him Mr Whitehead had had the message, and would be with him at ten the next day.’

    ‘Did anybody else hear you say that?’

    ‘Yes. Mr Raymond and Mr and Mrs Cedric were in the hall, having their cocktails. They must all have heard me. Dinner was served at eight—’

    ‘Were you present at dinner?’

    ‘No. I have my meals in my own room. Dinner was over about a quarter to nine, and the parlour-maid took coffee into the drawing-room for Mr and Mrs Cedric, and into the study for Mr Whipley and Mr Raymond. I was alone in my room till 9 o’clock, when Mr and Mrs Cedric came in to have a little chat. We were all together till just before half-past nine, when we heard the study door slam violently, and a few minutes later, Mr Raymond came in, looking very queer. He had his hat and coat on.