Suspects—Nine (9 page)

“Murder,” said Ferris, still more severely, “if you call that taking no action. Perhaps you do?”

Ferris waited for an answer. Bobby was far too prudent, far too experienced in the ways of seniors to offer any response. Slightly disappointed, Ferris said,

“Well, cut along.”

“Yes, sir,” said Bobby.

Ferris glared.

“Know what you're going for?”

“No, sir.”

“Then why don't you ask?” snapped Ferris.

“I thought instructions would be waiting for me, sir,” said Bobby meekly.

“You aren't paid to think,” declared Ferris, bringing out triumphantly the classic rebuke generations of seniors have administered to their juniors and that sheds so clear a light on how ‘thought' and ‘thinking' are generally regarded in this country. He went on: “South Essex say they want you for identification purposes. Eyewash. They want to know if you can tip 'em off on anything useful. Cut along.”

“Yes, sir,” said Bobby and was making for the door when Ferris called him back.

“Owen,” he said menacingly, “whatever happens, don't let them call us in. Got more than we can attend to as it is.”

“No, sir,” agreed Bobby sympathetically.

“All right,” said Ferris, “Car waiting,” he added with a suggestion in his voice that a car was quite unnecessary and that the service was going to the dogs when sergeants were provided with cars instead of being expected to find their own way and walk, if necessary.

Outside. Bobby discovered the car in waiting. They started and Bobby, as they sped through the deserted streets by the quiet ways his experienced driver knew, found himself speculating on the identity of the apparently still unknown victim.

Lady Alice, perhaps, for if Ernie Maddox had not known that some danger threatened, why had she been afraid?

Or possibly Mr. Tamar, for that letter he had shown Bobby might have been merely a ruse to lure him to a solitary spot where murder would be easy. Or again the murder might be the result of a meeting between a blackmailer and his intended victim. Tamar, Bobby fancied, was the kind of man likely, if the blackmailing threat were really serious, to take his own means to end it.

His thoughts turned to Roger Renfield, who would become a comparatively rich man on Tamar's death without issue, and who, if Munday could be believed, was in fact responsible for the blackmailing letter. And then there was the dark, sullen face of Judy Patterson, glowering in the background, and Bobby wondered if Ernie Maddox's fear had been in any way connected with him. True, at the cocktail party, Judy had seemed to take pains to avoid Tamar, but perhaps that had been in view of another meeting planned for later on.

No use, Bobby decided, trying to spin theories out of the little that he knew. By now they were almost through that vast network of streets in which, acre by acre, spreading London catches the surrounding country till it seems as though nothing but the sea will ever stop its growth, inevitable and certain as the passage of the years.

Perhaps not even the sea, Bobby thought, wondering if in time to come our posterity, having no more room on land, will imitate primeval lake dwellers and inhabit houses built on the waves—on high concrete piles, perhaps, or on floating islands.

Interesting speculation, he told himself, and imagined future ocean homes with one hole in the floor through which to dump rubbish and another through which to catch fish for dinner.

“Wake up,” said the driver, digging him violently in the ribs. “We're here. Wish I could spend my duty time snoozing and snoring. Some fellows have all the luck.”

“I wasn't snoozing,” said Bobby with dignity. “I was thinking. You fellows with nothing to do but joy ride all day long don't know what real work means.”

“Joy ride?” repeated the driver, slightly dazed. “Joy ride? Me? Us? Joy ride?” and he was still muttering ‘Joy ride?' bewilderedly after Bobby had alighted and introduced himself to the small group of men waiting in the inspector's room at the police station where tie Yard car had stopped.

There were three or four of them; all dignitaries of the South Essex police, including the principal local C.I.D. man, an Inspector Newton, who, after a few moments' talk, was asked to take Bobby out to the mortuary where lay the still unidentified body.

“Not a thing to show who it is,” Newton explained. “Makes it difficult. Delay.”

“That's right,” agreed Bobby. “Delay's the biggest snag in detective work.”

Newton grunted to signify agreement and they went out by the front entrance, where Bobby's driver lounged with a cigarette.

He gave a start of affected surprise on seeing Bobby.

“Well, well,” he said, “booted you out already? Not that I'm surprised. You know, sir,” he added in a loud aside to the Essex inspector, “I was asked confidentially to say you mustn't take him as a specimen. We aren't all like that.”

“Like what?” asked Newton, puzzled.

“He only means he doesn't want you to expect too much from others,” explained Bobby. “Oh, by the way, could he”—Bobby jerked a finger at the driver—“could you arrange for him to have a rest—lie down somewhere and have a cup of weak tea? You see, he's not much used to driving, especially at night. Bit of a strain.”

“Of course, certainly,” agreed the inspector kindly. “Tell the station sergeant,” he added to the driver. “He'll see to it for you—he'll make a cup of tea and show you where you can have a bit of a snooze if you like.”

The driver opened his mouth, tried to speak but could not. He spent most of his working life in a car, drove at least fifty thousand miles in a year, more than once had conducted without accident pursuits through crowded streets at a mile a minute or more. And now to have this said of him. At last he managed to get a word out.

“Not—not used to it?” he stammered.

Inspector Newton smiled at him still more kindly and went on. Bobby followed, waggling his fingers behind his back to indicate that, in his considered opinion; he had had the best of the exchanges. The driver thought of three brilliant and effective separate retorts he could have made and stored them in his mind for future use.

Newton stopped before a low building, behind, and a little distance from, the police station. He fumbled for a key and Bobby waited, wondering what dark secret lay within this silent, sombre building, and he thought, too, how strange were the contrasts of life as he remembered the careless schoolboyish chaff he had been exchanging with his driver and the errand on which they had come. Two men laughing at each other and one lying still and unknown and cold in this dark habitation of the dead.

The inspector got the heavy door open. He went through and switched on a light. A quiet form lay there, covered by a sheet. Newton turned it back.

“Know him?” he asked.

Bobby was for a moment too surprised to answer. He had thought of every one else but not of the man whose dead face now was staring up at him.

“Yes. I know him,” he said. “His name is Munday, I think, and he was butler to Mr. Michael Tamar.”

Apparently quite uninterested, Newton turned back the sheet, and moved away towards the door. Bobby followed. He could not tell whether his identification had been expected or whether Newton was simply not interested. He felt a little shaken. Strange to think that the man he had seen such a short time before placidly following his quiet respectable occupation of butler now lay so mysteriously slain in this quiet country spot. Inspector Newton said suddenly,

“Meant to make sure of him—three bullet wounds and then stabbed.”

“Stabbed?” repeated Bobby.

“Broad-bladed knife wound in the chest,” said Newton, “After death had occurred. To make sure.”

They came back to the main building where at the entrance the Yard driver still lounged.

“Hullo,” he said with an air of great surprise. “Brought him back? What for?”

“To report,” explained Newton, though indeed it seemed to him that ought to have been plain and that the question was quite unnecessary.

“Shall I wait to take him back or do you want to keep him?” asked the driver.

“Oh, he's going back,” answered Newton, who thought this just a trifle more reasonable. “We aren't keeping him.”

“Don't wonder at that,” said the driver, and was so pleased at having secured the opportunity to make this retort, for which he had so carefully angled, that in his turn he waggled his fingers at Bobby in order to show he thought the score was now even.

But Bobby did not even notice, for he had just seen peer at him for a moment from the darkness and then vanish into it again a small, thin-pointed, fox-like face he thought he recognized for that of Will Martin, the private detective of unsavoury reputation he knew to be in the employ of Lady Alice.

In the bare little room where generally the local inspector sat busy with traffic regulations, county council orders, and other such routine matters, Bobby told as fully and clearly as he could all the facts he knew, taking great care as he talked to confine himself to those facts alone and to leave his auditors to draw for themselves such inferences as they chose.

When he had finished Newton said firmly,

“Blackmail case. That's clear.”

“Of whom? By whom?” asked a tall, thin man with a long, thin face from which protruded an equally long and thin nose. He was, Bobby had already gathered, the district superintendent. He went on: “Sergeant Owen is quite clear the letter only made an offer to sell information No threat used?”

“No, sir. None,” agreed Bobby.

“Blackmail behind it,” asserted Newton confidently. Then he said, “It's clear enough. This Mr. Tamar's our man. I've a hunch.”

Any one less likely to have a ‘hunch', much less a correct one, Bobby could not imagine. He fancied one or two of the others present thought the same for he could see they looked a little amused.

The thin-faced superintendent said slowly,

“Jealousy motive seems possible and if jealousy once gets strong enough, it can account for anything. Only where does Munday come in? No one jealous of him.”

“Seems to me,” said a third man who had not spoken before, “it's Lady Alice we've got to think about first. She must have had some motive in putting on a private 'tec to watch Mrs. Tamar.”

“There again,” the superintendent pointed out, “where does Munday come in? No one was watching him, why should they? He was watching nobody as far as we know. Why Munday? Again, we mustn't forget Mr. Renfield's life interest in Mr. Tamar's money. Only there again: Why Munday?”

No one answered. Inspector Newton looked more obstinate than ever and Bobby was sure he only kept himself with difficulty from once again asserting his belief in Mr. Tamar's guilt.

The third man said,

“Yes, why Munday? only there it is, it was Munday.”

Without taking any notice of this remark, the superintendent continued,

“Sergeant Owen has told us two other facts that may turn out to mean something. He says Lady Alice had a broad-bladed sort of knife hanging up in her flat and there's a story that in her travels she killed a thief with it. Self-defence, of course. That right, sergeant?”

“Yes, sir,” said Bobby.

“Have to look into it,” said the superintendent. “Not much good, though. Even if it was the weapon used, there's been plenty of time to clean it.”

“These scientists,” said Newton. “They'll find lots where there isn't anything—not in the ordinary way.”

“Knife fit the wound?” said the third man.

“That wouldn't help much,” declared the superintendent. “None of the experts would be likely to go further than saying it might possibly be what was used. And juries don't care for ‘mights' and ‘possibles'. There's another thing. Sergeant Owen tells us he thinks he saw outside here just now the man he believes to be employed by Lady Alice to watch Mrs. Tamar.”

“Believes and thinks,” grunted Newton. “I like facts, like Munday being Tamar's butler and an appointment made for where there's a dead body found.”

“Jimmy Newton,” said the superintendent severely, “you've got it into that thick head of yours that Tamar's our man. Keep it there, inside, till we've some evidence. At present, there's none.”

“Well, I've a hunch,” mumbled Newton.

Bobby would have liked to remark that a detective with a hunch was a public danger, and that, if he had been the South Essex chief constable, he would promptly have returned Mr. Newton to ordinary duty. It was not for him to make any such comment, however, and the superintendent went on,

“We'll have to try to look into all these people, see what they have to say and where they all were round about nine o'clock last night. If there's one with a good sound foolproof alibi, that'll probably be our man—or our woman. This Martin fellow, too. What's he hanging round here for at this time of night? You said his name was Martin?” he added to Bobby.

“Yes, sir. Will Martin. He is employed by Eternal Vigilance, Ltd.”

“Hum—yes—I know that lot,” said the superintendent. “Nothing much against them, is there?”

“No, sir. They've sailed a bit near the wind often enough but never gone quite over—as far as is known. Martin's crooked all through in my belief but he's a downy bird. Knows the law. He used to be in a solicitor's office, and he's as tough as they make 'em. I do know the Eternal Vigilance people themselves don't trust him. But he's useful.”

“We'll put him through it,” said the superintendent with a confidence that Bobby felt was likely to meet presently with rude shocks, for Mr. Martin had been put through it so often, and with such poor results, that now it had about as much effect on him as has a shower of rain on a duck.