Suspects—Nine (31 page)

D7d.
Evidence
.

If D8. (William Martin)

then:

D8a.
Motive
.

D8b.
Alibi
.

D8c.
Theory of Murder
.

D8d.
Evidence
.

then:

Bobby, when he had completed this document, looked at it in a very dispirited manner. He thought it covered all the available points and yet could not for the life of him see that it helped matters forward. Setting everything down in writing frequently helped to bring out the salient points and to emphasize connections that, before, had not been plain, but he could not see that anything like that had occurred here; He felt tempted, indeed, to tear the thing up and drop it in the wastepaper basket. After all, no one was expecting a memorandum from him.

Before, however, he could put this idea into execution there arrived Inspector Wilkinson of the South Essex C.I.D., who, somewhat to Bobby's relief, seemed very interested when shown the completed memorandum.

“Puts it all very clearly and very fairly,” he said. “But doesn't go a very long way towards picking out the right one of the eight or nine. Does it?”

“No, it doesn't,” agreed Bobby. “A very little way indeed.”

“Do you know who would be my choice?”

“No. Who?”

“Miss Ernie Maddox.”

Bobby looked startled. He had included her name as she was, undoubtedly, a possibility but he had not considered that possibility very seriously. And yet he did not know. There were strong depths of feeling in her. She was deeply in love with Judy. A woman will sometimes go far to clear away obstacles between herself and the man she loves. Could it be possible, Bobby wondered, that Judy himself had some such suspicion and that that explained his conduct?

Wilkinson was watching him closely.

‘‘Surprises you?' he said. “Think I've something up my sleeve?”

“Well, I wondered,” admitted Bobby uneasily.

“Most unlikely person,” said Wilkinson and chuckled very much.

“Oh,” said Bobby, annoyed. “There's an even more unlikely person, though.”

“Who?”

“Inspector Wilkinson, of the South Essex C.I.D.”

Inspector Wilkinson thought this nothing like so good a joke.

“I was being serious,” he said with dignity. “Time and again I've found it's the very person you never thought of, is the one you want. Small cases and big. If it's robbing orchards, then it's the best behaved boy in the village choir you have to think of first. Same here. You'll say she's a girl and girls don't murder, but then girls now-a-days, the modern girl—” He paused and looked gloomy for he was the father of three, all as modern and as disconcerting and as liable to lead their parents a dance, as girls have ever been since first girls were.

“No,” he said firmly, “I'm not forgetting the young lady. I've seen her and, if you ask me, there's depths in her. Don't you think so?”

Bobby had to agree that he did think so, and Wilkinson looked triumphant.

“Nothing fresh come in about Martin, I suppose?” he said. “The Barnet woman has turned up again, throwing fits. Says she is Mrs Martin, been married ten years, and it's up to us to tell where hubby is, because she's sure something's wrong.” 

“Mrs. Martin, is she?” said Bobby, surprised, for he had not suspected that. “Why does she think something's wrong? Any special reason?”

“Lots, in between hysterics. What it comes to is that Martin had a very special important appointment with her, and he didn't keep it and she knows he would if he could, and what have we done with him? She thought we had run him in and when we told her we hadn't, then she got more excited still and lots more hysterics. She swears it was something to do with Lady Alice, but she doesn't know what. I'm going along now to have a chat with her ladyship. I've arranged for you to come. You know her, you'll be able to tell if anything looks wrong.”

“All right,” said Bobby slowly.

“Some tale about her having done in a bloke out East, isn't there?”

“Yes. Arab robber.”

“Have to see her,” Wilkinson repeated. “Might be as well to see Mr, Renfield first, though, and find out what he has to say about that gun of his.”

“He hasn't been questioned yet?”

“No, he was in Ireland, on business, and has only just got back,” Wilkinson explained.

He picked up Bobby's memorandum again and looked at it doubtfully.

“It's all there,” he said presently. “Only where?”

It was then that Bobby saw. As a sudden flame of light from the midst of darkness, so he saw, saw the one fatal flaw, the one clear evidence of deliberate bad faith, therefore of conscious guilt. Excitedly he pointed it out to Wilkinson, who, when he understood, grew excited, too.

“Staring us straight in the face,” he said, “and no one saw it. Well, I'm blessed. Only,” he went on, “it's not the sort of proof you can ask a jury to convict on.”

“Makes the right track plain,” Bobby said. “Makes guilt plain and clears the others.”

“Yes,” agreed Wilkinson, “I think we can say that now we know the right track to follow, it won't be so hard to get the proof we want.”

Now that there had thus emerged from Bobby's memorandum this simple little indication of a truth so long and so strangely overlooked, there ensued an interval of hectic telephoning, of busy running to and fro, of general excitement, and, finally, a police car summoned to be put at the disposal of Inspector Wilkinson since, by the general concensus of opinion it was agreed that not a moment must now be lost in bringing matters to a head.

“Got to get a hustle on,” Wilkinson declared as he and Bobby settled themselves in the car. “Never know what's going to happen next? Suppose the party comes to remember having made a bloomer like that? Complete give-away when you come to think of it.”

“So it is,” agreed Bobby.

“Only,” Wilkinson pointed out, “we want a lot more to make it stick—to get a conviction, I mean.”

“So we do,” agreed Bobby once more.

Wilkinson lapsed into silence. Then he said,

“Got another tip about Judy Patterson last night. He's an ex-champ, light heavy.”

“What's that?” said Bobby, sitting up abruptly.

“Ex-champ, light heavy,” repeated Wilkinson. “Len Brown told me. Len Brown's Hon. Sec. to the First Metro Boxing Club. Judy Patterson was in the light-heavy final at the International Amateur Boxing competitions four or five years ago at San Francisco. Good man against him, too.”

“Who won?” asked Bobby in slightly agitated tones.

“Judy P.”

“On points?”

“No. A knock out.”

“Oh,” said Bobby, thoughtfully, and remembered that invitation he had so lightly given Judy to meet him at the gym.—twenty rounds, or till one of them couldn't stand, wasn't it? “Must be a good man with his hands,” said Bobby, and instinctively caressed his still-tender chin.

“Up to professional standing,” said Wilkinson. “Len Brown happened to mention it because he remembered Judy Patterson and saw him at First Metro gym. yesterday. Len thought he must be planning a come-back, but Judy said No, just a little private affair he had on hand and so he wanted a bit of practice to get back into form.”

“I see,” said Bobby.

“Sorry,” observed Wilkinson, “for the poor blighter up against him.”

“So am I,” said Bobby with fervour.

“Do a bit with the gloves yourself, don't you?” Wilkinson asked.

“Oh, not much, just for exercise,” Bobby explained. “I'm not up to professional standard,” he added bitterly.

“No, no,” agreed Wilkinson. “Of course not. I didn't mean that. Not many are. Now Judy P.—”

Fortunately, their arrival at their destination put an end to the conversation which Bobby was beginning to find agitating.

Roger Renfield occupied what used to be called a ‘bed-sit' but is now generally known as a “divan flatlet'. It was a room on the first floor of a somewhat dingy-looking building standing back a little way from the road, wherefrom it was screened by a few trees and shrubs in a neglected, dreary-looking patch of ground that, in past days, had been a gay front garden. For the house once had sheltered some prosperous Victorian merchant of that almost legendary epoch when the City of London dripped fatness, an income tax of sixpence in the pound was regarded as the harbinger of doom—as perhaps it was—and Mr. Gladstone was looked upon by the really respectable much as are Bolsheviks to-day by their spiritual descendants.

Now each room had been furnished with a Yale lock, three or four bathrooms had been pushed in here and there—mostly partitioned off from the larger rooms—gas fires, rings, hot-water heaters provided; and the house that once harboured a single family had now a different tenant for each room and, in the basement, a careworn lady who tried her best to please everyone, to see all paid their rent when due (few did), and to pour continual oil on all the ceaseless complaints of banging doors, late home-comings, cooking smells—for a kipper frying on a gas ring has much power—radios too loud, and all the various other grumbles that result from a score or so of strangers with different tastes, pursuits, and habits, all living in such close and unplanned proximity.

“Gives you,” said Wilkinson, glancing round, “gives you a sort of Home for Hard Ups impression, eh?”

“So it does,” agreed Bobby. “I suppose it's cheaper than rooms.”

“Renfield must be on the rocks pretty near to be pigging it like this—and all that pile of money waiting when Mr. Tamar pegs out, if no kids come, and yet not able even to borrow on his expectations, since kids are likely enough and then it's all U.P. with the Renfield prospects. Sort of perpetual push to crooked work.”

“Yes, indeed,” agreed Bobby soberly. “Lead us not into temptation ought to be the chief prayer of us all.”

They made their way upstairs. Wilkinson had been here before and knew which room Renfield occupied. He was expecting them and looked very nervous and apprehensive. After he had answered the few routine, questions Wilkinson started with, he began to protest.

“What's it all about now?” he asked. “That alibi business again? I always go to the cinema Friday nights. You can't expect me to produce witnesses to show I was nailed down in my seat the whole evening.”

“That's all right, sir,” Wilkinson assured him. “It's another matter we've called about, not the alibi question. You hold a firearms licence?”

“That's right.”

“You didn't mention it when we were here before?”

“Why should I? Nothing to do with any one.”

“We are entitled to all information,” said Wilkinson severely, “All. Looks bad if things are held back. The description given in the licence is—” and he proceeded to read out details of the make, calibre, registered number and so on.

“Well, what about it?” asked Renfield sullenly and with an evident growing unease.

“From information in our possession,” Wilkinson explained, “the description appears to answer to that of the pistol with which the murder was committed.”

Renfield looked still more uneasy.

“Nonsense, impossible,” he said. “Can't be.”

“Can you let us see it, sir?” Wilkinson asked.

Renfield pointed to the bottom drawer of a bureau standing before the window.

“That's where I've always kept it,” he mumbled, “Along with my portable typewriter. People here always trying to borrow the typewriter so I put it in there and keep the drawer locked.”

“You've a typewriter, too?” Wilkinson asked. “You never told us that, either.”

“Why on earth should I?” demanded Renfield wrathfully. “You'll be complaining next I didn't tell you the make of pants I wear. What's my having a typewriter got to do with you? I don't use it much. It's a small noiseless but the old fool across the landing started complaining of the noise it made.”

“We should like to see it, please,” Wilkinson said. “Both the typewriter and the pistol, if you don't mind.”

“What for?”

“We have been testing all typewriters in the possession of interested parties,” explained Wilkinson, “to find the one on which an anonymous letter in our possession was written.”

“Well, it wasn't written on mine,” grumbled Renfield, “I've written no anonymous letters. Besides, how could you tell, anyway? Typing's not like handwriting.”