Suspects—Nine (25 page)

It was strange, Bobby thought, that as once before Judy had spoken in Olive's hat shop, as though in utter and entire forgetfulness of the presence of others save himself and Ernie, so now he was pouring out his deepest innermost feelings as if no one else was there but himself and Flora. A sign, a result rather, of the intensity of the pent-up emotions that possessed him, of the passions he had held down so sternly but that now forced their expression in words that were, in a sense, more their own than his.

But Flora, as she listened, changed again. That mood of high appeal in which, for an instant, she had touched greater heights than she had known before, left her, and with it the tragic dignity that, for that instant, had been hers. It was a snarl with which now she said to Bobby,

“Gambler and bully, he says he is, and it's true. Murderer, too. Why don't you arrest him? Afraid?”

“Oh, shut up, can't you?” Judy said, he, too, losing as he spoke all that strange and deep intensity by which before he had been shaken.

Strange, indeed, how the pair of them had changed all in one moment from squalid mutual recrimination to that note of tragedy that comes with suffering and anguish seen and faced and endured, and then again as instantaneously back to vulgar quarrelling. Judy was saying now, and looking very ugly as he said it,

“Murderer yourself. As you are so handy with a gun, you say, perhaps it was you shot Munday to keep him quiet? Well, did you?”

She made no answer but turned and hurried away and they heard the sound of her rapid feet upon the path outside as she fled in haste.

“Well, that's that,” Judy said heavily. “Now I'll have a drink.” He went across to the sideboard and produced whisky and a syphon of soda water. “Have some?” he asked Bobby.

“Did you mean what you said?” Bobby asked him.

“Say when,” Judy said. “Mean what? Oh, that she did in Munday? No, of course not.”

“I think, perhaps, you did,” Bobby said.

Judy made no answer to this and for some minutes the two of them sat there quietly, silent, deep in their own thoughts. The only movement either of them made was when Bobby got up once or twice to go into the scullery, there to draw water from the rainwater tank and bathe that damaged chin of his.

It was on his return from one of these excursions that Judy said to him abruptly,

“You had better clear out. I was going to kick up a row about your breaking in here but perhaps you've had enough to teach you a lesson for the future.”

“No one,” said Bobby gently, “can learn how to save himself from being attacked from behind when he isn't looking. Clever dodge, of course, but dirty, all the same. I agree you ought to be on the lookout for that sort of thing when you're up against crooks and bullies and general scum—like you,” said Bobby, still more gently, for his temper was even more damaged than his chin.

Judy glared but his own temper remained a trifle subdued after his recent interview with Flora. He contented himself with shrugging his shoulders.

“Served you right, snooping around,” he said. “Is your pal still running? I expected him back before this with a fresh squad of coppers to help. If you're still here when they turn up, I shall lay a charge against you for attempted burglary. Unless you've a search warrant?”

“Why have you been taking in letters addressed to Holland Kent?” Bobby asked.

“What's that?” exclaimed Judy, startled. Then he said aggressively, “What's that to do with you?”

“That's what I want to know,” Bobby explained. “A murder was committed at Weeton Hill, not far from here. Mrs. Tamar has accused you and you accused her in turn.”

“I didn't mean it,” interposed Judy, hastily. “She made me mad. That's all. I didn't mean it,” he repeated.

“Sure?” Bobby asked, and Judy answered with another of those scowls that so much heightened his general resemblance to a naughty little boy in a temper.

Bobby noticed it and found himself reflecting that naughty little boys in a temper sometimes smash things, sometimes valuable and important things, and that when the naughty little boy is, in fact, a young man of a disposition too much given to violence, then, indeed, the smashing might extend to more than things—to persons, too. He wondered if that could be what had happened and Judy snapped suddenly,

“Wonder what?”

“Oh, sorry,” Bobby said, surprised to realize that he had muttered the words “I wonder' aloud. “I was only thinking that if Mrs. Tamar and Holland Kent have been meeting each other here, as seems the case, and if Munday knew, and since Weeton Hill's not far away—well, you can see the implications for yourself. Mrs. Tamar would have a motive, to keep the knowledge from her husband. Holland Kent would have a motive, to save scandal both for himself and for her. Not much chivalry to-day, but, still, some men would go a long way to keep a woman's name out of a bad scandal.”

“That's all rot,” Judy said angrily. “Holland Kent was never here in his life.”

‘“Then why,” asked Bobby, “were you taking in letters addressed to him?”

“Think you know a hell of a lot, don't you?” snarled

.. “Wrong,” retorted Bobby, “quite wrong. I think there's a hell of a lot we don't know. But we do know that.”

“How?”

“I've bits of two or three envelopes in my pocket, addressed here to Holland Kent and found in your dust-bin.”

“Oh, that's it, is it?” cried Judy, jumping to his feet. “That's what you were messing about for. Well, you just hand them over to me, do you hear?”

“Couldn't very well help,” Bobby answered, “not being deaf and that voice of yours probably carrying a mile or so. Where did you get that photograph from, I mean the one on your bureau over there? Miss Maddox's car, isn't it?”

Judy looked rather taken aback at this change of subject. He hesitated and turned towards the bureau but did not speak.

“It wasn't in the dust-bin, you know,” Bobby said. “It was lying there. I couldn't very well help seeing it. Where did you get it?”

“By post,” Judy answered. “I don't know who sent it or what for. It's Miss Maddox's car, all right. She doesn't know anything about it. I asked her. One of your tricks, perhaps?”

Bobby shook his head.

“We don't work that way,” he said. “But I think I recognize that stunted oak behind the car. I think I saw one like it on the road near Weeton Hill, not far from the big patch of bracken that goes half way up the hill, nearly.”

“I don't know what you're getting at and I don't care,” Judy said. “If there's any funny work behind sending me that photo, well, I'll wait till whoever it is comes out in the open. What about those bits of envelope you raked out of the dust-bin? Nice job, raking through other people's dust-bins. Are you going to hand them over, or have I got to take them? My property, you know.”

“In the first place,” Bobby explained, “I'm certainly not going to let you have them and though I'm still a bit groggy from the whack you hit me when I wasn't looking, I daresay I can still manage a bit of a fight. In the second place, I'm a policeman and a policeman moves in the sanctity of the law. If you hit me, you hit the British Constitution, and there'll be a chance to run you in—a chance some of our people want very badly indeed. In the third place, the pieces of envelope have already been identified both by me and by the man you saw, so destroying them wouldn't make any difference. That man, by the way, wasn't a pal of mine. He was under arrest. Thanks to your idiocy he has escaped. I don't know if you can be charged with rescuing him but I'm jolly well going to suggest it.”

“Rot,” Judy said, though uncertainly. “The chap was with you,” he pointed out.

. “Prisoners are often with some one,” Bobby retorted. “He is a man named Martin. We've been trying to pick him up. He is mixed up in the affair somehow. He may even be the actual murderer. We don't know. We want to question him. He's one of the suspects—like you,” said Bobby viciously, and was pleased to see Judy wince. “Now, thanks to you, he's got away again. I had word he might be in this neighbourhood so I was sent to have a look round. It struck me he might be trying to get in touch with you. Accomplices, perhaps.”

“Never heard of him,” interrupted Judy sulkily.

“Sure?” asked Bobby. “Did you know Lady Alice Belchamber was employing a private detective to watch Mrs. Tamar?”

He paused. Judy did not answer but looked more sullen still, more disturbed, too, so that Bobby guessed that he had in fact known.

“I expect you know,” Bobby continued, “it was Martin Lady Alice employed. Silly. Martin would double-cross any one for pay, even for the fun of it, just because he would rather be crooked than straight any day. Anyhow, there are a lot of questions we wanted to ask him. I was put on the job and I came along here to ask if you had seen anything of him. By a bit of luck I found him here. He was at the back, busy with your dustbin. He had collected scraps of shipping announcements—Kenya chiefly.”

“Anything wrong with that?” demanded Judy.

“Bless you, no. Nice place, Kenya, I'm told, that is, for any one with a bit of capital. He had also collected the pieces of envelope I told you about that I think want explaining.”

“You can go on wanting,” growled Judy, looking more and more uneasy.

“I, also,” Bobby continued, “noticed that a window had been forced open. Martin said he had found it like that. I didn't believe him, but it might have been true and I considered it my duty, as a police officer, to find out what had happened; to see if there had really been an attempt at housebreaking, and if there had been, if there was any one still inside the house. I told Martin I was going to charge him—‘found on enclosed premises' and all that. Well, I could hardly leave him out there to do a bunk the moment I got inside, so I took him along. I made sure there was no one in the house, and no sign of disturbance. I saw the photo of Miss Maddox's car, couldn't very well help, it was lying right on the top of that little desk thing. I was climbing out of the window again when you knocked me out—from behind. Dirty trick, going for me like that when I hadn't a chance. Of course, Martin cleared off at once. Naturally. What's more, now he knows we want him, he'll go into hiding. He has any number of bolt holes, it'll take us all our time to dig him out and lucky if we do.”

Judy listened quietly to all this, looking all the time sulkier and sulkier and more and more like the naughty, small boy in a corner.

“All very well,” he grumbled. “How do I know that isn't all a yarn you've just made up?”

“Luckily,” Bobby explained, though, indeed, he might fairly have claimed there had been more in it than mere luck, “luckily I took a snap of Martin rooting about in the dust-bin.”

“Oh, well,” Judy grumbled, “how was I to know?”

“Preferred,” said Bobby bitterly, “to hit a fellow when he wasn't looking.”

“Oh, for the Lord's sake,” cried Judy, his defences broken through at last, “let up on that. I”—he gulped, he got it out with difficulty—“I apologise. I didn't think of anything but you snooping round while my back was turned. So I went for you.” He gulped again. “I saw red,” he said.

“Often do, don't you?” asked Bobby.

“I try not to,” Judy assured him, earnestly. “I expect it'll get me into trouble some day. When I was quite a kid, matron at school told my people I would do murder some day if I wasn't checked. Well, I never have yet, no matter what you think, though you did give me a bad scare once when you told me I looked murderous. I keep it under, generally, but it did get me when I saw you climbing out of that window. Of course, I'm sorry about that now. Look here,” he said, generously, “how would it be if you swiped me one, hard as you like, and make it evens?”

“How about,” said Bobby, “coming down to the gym some time—six-ounce gloves and twenty rounds, or till one or other can't stand?”

“Right,” said Judy eagerly. “Jolly decent of you, too. I suppose,” he added wistfully, “you wouldn't prefer the knuckles?”

“Gym people wouldn't stand for it,” explained Bobby. “You can do a lot with six-ounce gloves,” he added reassuringly.

“Yes, I know,” agreed Judy. “Awfully decent idea, I call it.”

“That's a bargain, then, though we'll have to wait till this Munday business is cleared up.”

“If I swing, bargain off, I suppose?” Judy asked grimly.

“Have to be,” agreed Bobby. “Now we'll drop private affairs, please. And remember, please, I'm a police officer helping in the investigation of a murder, and you're—”

“A suspect,” interposed Judy.

“An important witness,” Bobby corrected him. “The Miss Maddox car photograph came through the post? Have you the wrappings?”

“I expect they'll be in the dust-bin, too,” Judy answered. “I couldn't make out who it came from. I didn't recognize the handwriting and I couldn't make out the postmark.”

“Do you mind if we do some more dust-bin rooting?” Bobby asked. “I should like those wrappings.”

They went outside, accordingly, and presently discovered at the bottom of the dust-bin, somewhat damaged by proximity to an empty sardine tin, the brown-paper wrappings in question.

“Getting things out of dustbins isn't all fun,” Bobby remarked, as he did his best to make the oily, dirty and torn piece of brown paper as respectable as possible. “Woman's handwriting, I should say. Not Mrs. Tamar's, not Lady Alice's, either. I've seen hers. I've never seen Miss Maddox's.”

“It's not hers,” Judy said quickly.

“Looks an uneducated sort of hand,” agreed Bobby. “Have to get our experts on it. Can't read the postmark. Perhaps the experts can. Violet rays and that sort of thing.”