The Dusky Hour (16 page)

Then Reeves was summoned, and appeared, pale, thin, and noiseless as ever, but with a certain lurking apprehension, Bobby thought, visible in his uneasy eyes. At the colonel's suggestion, Reeves was questioned in private, so that he might not be embarrassed by his employer's presence. But he had little to say. He had spent the afternoon carrying out his usual duties, and then reading the paper in his pantry and possibly snoozing at times. He confirmed as far as he could the stories told by the others. Mr. Moffatt was never disturbed in the afternoon, and did occasionally – this in answer to a casual question of Bobby's – sometimes stroll out into the grounds by the French windows. He might or might not have done so that particular day. Mr. Pegley had arrived about half past five or six, or possibly a little later – in ample time, anyhow, for a wash and a chat before dinner. Miss Ena and Mr. Larson had been out for walks, and he had heard of the discovery of Mr. Larson's gold cigarette-case left lying on a stile for the first person passing to pick up, and lucky it had been someone honest, though Mr. Larson had come down handsomely with a pound note. Reeves added gloomily that it was easy enough to see what all these questions were getting at. He supposed he himself could have slipped out easily enough without anyone knowing, got to Battling Copse, committed the murder, and returned without being seen.

“Only I didn't, and why should I?” he grumbled. “Never having set eyes on the chap.”

“There's no question of that, my man,” the colonel told him. “Preliminary inquiries do not indicate suspicion.”

“Oh, yes, they do,” retorted Reeves, a little less than usual now the well-trained and deferential servant, “when it's the likes of me. There's Mr. Noll coming in now,” he added, as they heard the front door open and shut. “Take a lot to make you suspect him, wouldn't it?”

“Why should we suspect him?” Bobby asked quickly, and Reeves looked at him sideways and said:

“Everyone's talking about the bit of photographic film that was found, and about Mr. Moffatt's pistol being missing.”

“If everyone's talking, you had better tell them not to,” snapped the colonel, “or they'll be getting into trouble.”

“Yes, sir; certainly, sir,” answered Reeves, at once the smooth, deferential butler again.

The interview with Noll Moffatt did not prove very satisfactory. The young man seemed in an angry and suspicious mood; he answered questions as briefly as he could and would evidently have liked to refuse to answer at all. He did refuse once again to give any explanation of his quarrel with Thoms. It had nothing to do with the police. Scowling at Bobby, he wanted to know why Bobby had been so anxious to save Thoms from the jolly good thrashing he, Noll Moffatt, had been about to administer.

To Bobby this seemed an optimistic view. Thoms was probably a stone or two the heavier of the pair, certainly he was three or four inches taller, and it is an old and true saying in the boxing world that a “good big 'un will always beat a good little 'un.”

“I think,” Bobby remarked, “I heard you say something to Thoms about his wanting to throw you down the chalk-pit – too?”

“Well, what about it?” snarled Noll. “Eavesdropping, too, were you? One chap had been thrown down there, hadn't he?”

He stuck to it that what he had said had been no more than a passing reference to the recent tragedy, and had had no other meaning. To further inquiries he answered defiantly that he had no idea where exactly he might have been at four o'clock in the afternoon on the day of the murder. He didn't go about with a stop-watch and a time-table. He had been out all afternoon with his camera. Probably he had been quite near Battling Copse most of the time. But he had neither seen nor heard anything unusual. Asked what photographs he had taken that afternoon, he got rather red in the face – unnecessarily so, it seemed – and said he had only taken one or two. A bull under a beech-tree had offered a fairly good subject, and he had snapped it and that was about all. They could see the snap if they liked, but it wouldn't be any good; it was neither signed nor dated. Nor had he seen anyone during the afternoon who could confirm his statements. He added with some violence that if they thought he had murdered Bennett they could jolly well go on thinking so. He didn't care.

The colonel observed mildly that an inquiry did not necessarily imply a suspicion; and Bobby observed in his most mournful tones that it was always like that: if you asked some people if it had stopped raining, they would be quite capable of interpreting the remark as a subtle attempt to trap them into an admission of guilt; and Noll told them heatedly to “come off it.”

“Think I don't know what that fellow's digging bullets out of trees for?” he asked hotly.

Bobby and the colonel both looked and felt a little disconcerted. They had hoped that the activities of the police emissary trying to recover the bullets fired from Mr. Moffatt's missing automatic by Noll when amusing himself with target practice would go unremarked, or at any rate with their significance not realised.

“It is necessary,” the colonel said mildly, “for us to ascertain if possible what pistol was used. Probably we shall test all we can trace. It is a pity Mr. Moffatt's can't be found.”

“I haven't seen the thing for months,” Noll declared. “It was in a drawer in dad's room. Anyone could have got at it.”

Noll also denied stoutly that he had recognised Bennett. If Bennett had been a member of the Cut and Come Again he might very likely have seen him there; he might even have exchanged a word or two with him. If so, that might account for a vague feeling he had had on his first sight of the body that he had somewhere seen someone like the dead man. But emphatically he had not recognised him or associated him with the Cut and Come Again. One met heaps of people. He noticed people's looks and whether they would “take” well, but he couldn't often put names and dates and places to them.

From that position there was no moving him. He agreed that of course he had met Miss Molly at the club. He spoke of her as Miss Towers, though he appeared to know that her real name was Oulton, but, then, Henrietta Towers had mentioned that her mother and her half-sister were generally known as Mrs. and Miss Towers, as the farm itself was known as the Towers Poultry Farm and Tea Garden.

“She went there to try to hear of an opening for her stuff,” Noll explained, “just as I went there to meet the film crowd. What about it?”

There was no reply to be made to this demand, truculent though the tone was in which it was uttered. The colonel said he hoped all at Sevens would do their best to find out what had become of the missing automatic, and now they must be going, as there were plenty of other inquiries to be made, but they would like to say good-bye to Mr. Moffatt first. That gentleman accordingly appeared, and the colonel took the opportunity to ask how long Reeves had been in his employ.

“About six or eight months, I think,” Mr. Moffatt answered. “Ena could tell you exactly. Not easy to get a good, competent man. They like places in town, and they can pick and choose nowadays. We were without one for nearly a year.”

“How did you come to hear of Reeves?” the colonel asked.

“Oh, he applied. He heard somehow I needed a man and he wrote. He has been quite satisfactory.”

“I suppose you had references?”

“Oh, yes; he had been in his last place for a good many years; since he was a boy, in fact. Went there as boot-boy and stayed on till there was a death and the establishment was broken up. Mrs. Oulton gave him a most excellent reference.”

“Mrs. Oulton?” repeated the colonel sharply, and Bobby could not quite prevent the little start he himself gave.

“Yes. Why?” Mr. Moffatt asked, noticing their interest. “His master's widow. I thought it was good enough if he had stayed in the same place so long; not too common to-day, when all they think of is bettering themselves, as they call it.”

The colonel agreed that it wasn't too easy to find any servant willing to stay long in one place. Then he and Bobby departed, and when they were in their car again, and driving towards Way Side, the colonel said moodily:

“Well, now, what do you make of all that?”

Bobby made nothing of it, and so prudently said nothing.

“Is it the same Mrs. Oulton?” asked the colonel.

Bobby thought it might be as well to try to find out.

“Anyhow,” said the colonel, “we know it was faked. The reference said he had been in the one place all his life, and we know he was sacked from one job on suspicion and has spent most of the last ten years in gaol. But how does that link up with Bennett's murder?”

Evidently the colonel expected no reply, so Bobby offered none, having, in fact, none to offer. But he was a little disconcerted when the colonel gave fresh instructions to the driver to stop at the Towers Poultry Farm.

“I'm going to get to the bottom of this, anyhow,” he declared, when they arrived, and, leaving Bobby in the car, he descended and knocked at the cottage door.

He was admitted, and Bobby told himself that this visit was probably a mistake. Unlikely, he thought, that Mrs. Oulton knew anything about the reference, or that anything would be gained by questioning her. And Reeves would very likely come to hear of it and take the alarm and possibly disappear, which would be another complication in an already sufficiently complicated case. The colonel, to Bobby's mind, was behaving too much like the contract player who puts down his cards on the table, and that you should only do when you are certain of winning every trick – a degree of certainty certainly not yet attained in this case.

The colonel came back soon, frowning and disturbed.

“The old lady was there alone,” he said. “Gave her quite a shock when I asked her if her name was Oulton. She says she prefers to be known by her first husband's name, and she didn't know people here knew she was Mrs. Oulton. I think she has an idea it might prejudice people against the girls if it was known their father had been a bankrupt and had committed suicide. But she says she has never given anyone a reference since Mr. Oulton's death. They had three or four menservants during his life, but none named Reeves. She has seen Reeves himself, and is quite certain she doesn't know him and that she never employed him. She gave me the names of the menservants they had, and I expect they could be traced, though it hardly seems necessary. We know Reeves is a wrong 'un, and if we want to we can charge him with presenting forged testimonials.”

“Yes, sir,” agreed Bobby, hoping that would not be done just yet.

They were silent for the rest of the drive, each busy with his own thoughts. When they stopped before the Way Side front door, Mr. Hayes was on the threshold before they could alight.

“I wondered if it could be you by any chance,” he said, welcoming them warmly. “Do you know, I was thinking of ringing you to ask, if you had the time to spare, if you would give me an appointment for a few minutes' chat.”

He ushered them indoors, established them in arm-chairs, produced his inevitable whisky, hoped they would stay to dinner – it would be a charity to share a meal with a lonely man, only he must let cook know, or she would be going on strike. And did they really mean it when they declined a drink, and, if they unbelievably did mean it, would they mind if he lubricated?

They did mean it; they regretted pressure of business made it impossible to accept his kind invitation to dine; they would not mind in the least how much and how often Mr. Hayes “lubricated”; and was it anything of importance Mr. Hayes had been intending to ring up about? Unnecessary to repeat that even the tiniest piece of information might be of the greatest value.

“Well, I don't know, and that's a fact,” said Mr. Hayes, dallying with the soda-water syphon and then setting it aside in favour of the whisky bottle. “I should hate to think I was putting you on an innocent man. Still, you would soon find out he was innocent if he is, and that would be all right. Clear the ground, so to say.”

“Always a help,” observed the colonel.

“Well, there you are,” said Mr. Hayes. “But it's up to you to decide what my say is worth; that's your responsibility, and mine is to say it. It's Thoms.”

“Thoms?” repeated the colonel. “The fact is, we came to ask you about him. Has he been with you long?”

“A year, or a little longer. Curiously enough, it's through him I found this place. He knew I was on the look-out. He heard of it from some other chauffeur he was talking to – a gossiping lot, chauffeurs, when they get together. He passed it on to me. I ran down to have a look-see, liked it, bought it, here I am. Thanks to Thoms,” he said, and laughed, and Bobby thought that laugh was not altogether natural.

The colonel asked:

“Do you know anything about him before he came to you? He had references, I suppose?”

“I never saw any,” admitted Mr. Hayes. “I just took him on, just like that. I had had to fire my man. On the spot. Caught him with my wallet in his hand. Petty thieving – cigars and petrol and so on – you expect, but a wallet with a wad of notes in it I thought going a bit far. I had missed money before. So I told him to clear and he was off in two minutes and glad it wasn't in handcuffs. I'm a pretty good driver, but I own up the innards of a car are just a bag of mystery to me, as the schoolboy said of the sausage. Before I had even started to get a fresh man – I half thought I would do without one – I got into a jam. The car stuck. Couldn't move her. Stuck for keeps, it seemed, and me late for an important appointment that meant money. I cursed some, but that was no help, and then Thoms popped up. Passing, as it happened, saw my fix, stopped to watch, and then stepped up and told me what was wrong. Like that. Seemed he was a chauffeur and out of a job. I took him on – he had saved me a goodish little pile I would have missed if he hadn't got me going in time – and he's been with me ever since.”