The Dusky Hour (20 page)

“Suppose her story's true, and she's reliable?”

“Oh, yes, sir, there's that,” agreed Bobby.

“Hadn't Hayes an alibi, though?”

“Yes, sir. Miss Henrietta Towers's evidence.”

“Oh, yes,” the colonel said. “Yes, I remember. She'll have to be questioned again.”

There was a knock at the door, and the constable appeared.

“Beg pardon, sir,” he said as the colonel frowned, for he had said he did not wish to be interrupted. “Young lady here, sir. Says she has information to give about the Bennett case. Miss Henrietta Towers.”

Both the colonel and Bobby were a little startled. They exchanged surprised looks. The constable waited stolidly. The colonel snapped out with temper, for he was worried and uneasy:

“Well, fetch her in. What are you waiting for?”

The constable endured this injustice as subordinates must the unfairness of their superiors, and retired. The colonel glared at Bobby and said very angrily:

“What's this mean?”

Bobby, one of whose great merits was that he knew when to hold his tongue, said nothing, thus depriving the colonel of an opportunity for biting his head off. The shorthand writer, fearing the colonel's thunderbolts might descend next upon him, tried to pretend he wasn't there. The door opened and Henrietta came in – strode in, rather, with her usual swinging step. She was carrying a somewhat worn-looking suit-case in one hand, carrying it easily, too, though it was of a good size and weight. The colonel waved her to the chair Mrs. O'Brien had occupied and looked at her severely.

“I understand you think you have something to tell us?” he asked, as if he were warning her to think again. “I thought you ought to know about this,” she answered, indicating the suit-case. “It was in a ditch on our land, near the road, close to a gate. It wasn't there before – before the murder. They say everything was taken out of the car before it was found, and I thought this might have come from it and you ought to see it.”

This seemed interesting. The colonel's ill temper began to pass. Bobby got up and, taking the suit-case, put it on the table where the colonel was sitting.

“Locked,” said the colonel, trying it. “How did you come to find it?”

“It was Mr. Youngman,” she explained. “He is our egg gatherer – for Weston Brothers. They take most of what we've got. It wasn't Mr. Youngman's regular day to-day. I think he just came to talk about the murder. Everyone is, you know. We've had a lot of reporters to tea to-day, and they've all been asking questions.”

The colonel groaned. Well he knew it, this influx of newspaper men and their questions.

“You haven't said anything to them about this?” he asked, indicating the suit-case.

“No,” she answered. “I thought I had better not.”

“Mr. Youngman told you about it?”

“No. I think he was a little disappointed he didn't know anything at the time about what had happened. The other man – the one who heard the shots – has had the reporters talking to him, and he says he's going to have his picture in the London papers, and I think Mr. Youngman feels if he hadn't stopped to talk to Mr. Hayes the reporters would have wanted his photograph too.”

“He says he was talking to Mr. Hayes at the time?” the colonel asked sharply.

“Just for those few minutes,” Henrietta explained. “He told me he looked at his watch and saw it was five minutes past four when he left Mr. Hayes. He had been talking to him for five or ten minutes, so if he hadn't stopped he would have been close to Battling Copse when it happened. He thinks he might even have seen the man who did it running away afterwards.”

The colonel and Bobby looked at each other. This was unexpected confirmation of Hayes's alibi, and appeared to clear him and to show that Mrs. O'Brien's accusation had been purely malicious. Henrietta, unaware of the interest her story had roused, went on calmly:

“How I came to find the suit-case was because he said, too, he had noticed a lady's bicycle near the road, but on our land. He said he wondered at the time what it was doing there and if it was ours. I knew it couldn't be.”

“Why?”

“We keep ours in the shed, and I knew no one had had it out that day. No one uses it much except me. Mother never does; she can't ride and won't learn, and if Molly takes it she has to alter it. She isn't as tall as I am. I wondered a little what a bicycle could have been doing there. It wasn't there before the murder.”

“How do you know?”

“My sister or I would have seen it, and we hadn't. I asked Molly. One of the hens will insist on laying in that corner of the field where Mr. Youngman said he saw the bicycle. All the hens have their own little fads, and this one simply won't lay anywhere else. She has got it into her head that's the proper place, and she would rather die than use the nests. So every day Molly or I go and have a look, when she's laying. Sometimes she takes another hen with her. I suppose she tells them what a nice quiet place it is, and much better than the nests, and every self-respecting hen ought to use it. It's very trying, but hens are like that – terribly determined creatures. So we have to go and look or risk losing the eggs and stopping her laying, and Molly says there was no bicycle there that morning. She is quite certain, and Molly sees everything like that. If it had been there, most likely she would have made a sketch – pattern of bicycle spokes against the hedge or something. If she was dying she would want to draw the medicine-bottles. After Mr. Youngman had gone I thought I would go that far and see if it had come back and if there were any eggs. There were no eggs and no bicycle, but I found the suit-case. It was in the ditch, pushed under some brambles. It looked as if it had been hidden, only not very well.”

“Can you show us the exact spot?”

“I broke off some branches so as to know it again.”

“You didn't try to open it?”

“Well, it's locked. I did try, but I couldn't.”

“Was this Mr. Youngman quite sure it was a lady's bicycle he saw?”

“I don't know. I suppose so. He said he thought it was mine, so he must have.”

Bobby got out a large-scale ordnance map at the colonel's request, and Henrietta was able to indicate the exact spot where the egg gatherer said he had seen the bicycle. A path was shown near, crossing the field, and then a little further on entering a wood, through which evidently a cycle could be ridden in almost complete immunity from observation. On the map Bobby had already marked with a tiny pencil cross the spot where Ena Moffatt, Mrs. Markham, and Mr. Larson had all met. A brief calculation and a tracing out of the intersecting footpaths, which seemed numerous in the neighbourhood, showed it would be quite possible for anyone leaving the spot where the bicycle had been seen to reach in the given time the meeting-place of the three people mentioned.

Not till Henrietta had been thanked and dismissed did either man comment on this fact. But then, looking more worried than ever, the colonel said:

“Well, this means we have Hayes's alibi confirmed and Ena Moffatt's knocked out. Nothing in that, of course, but there it is.”

“Yes, sir,” agreed Bobby, and the colonel scowled, as if he exceedingly disliked this quite innocuous remark.

“No one can possibly suppose...” said the colonel, with one of his best glares. “Besides, girls don't shoot.”

“No, sir,” agreed Bobby, and let his eyes wander for a moment to an evening paper that happened to be lying near, one of its flaring headlines announcing in huge letters: “Girl shoots lover.”

“Well, not girls like Ena Moffatt,” declared the colonel crossly. “I've known her for years.”

This did not in itself seem to Bobby to be entirely conclusive. But he held his tongue, and the colonel gave him another glare and said:

“Thank goodness, nothing about love in this affair.”

“No, sir,” agreed Bobby warmly. “Enough complication as it is without that”; and even the shorthand writer breathed a sigh of relief as he bent over his transcript.

The colonel turned his attention to the suit-case, examined it from various points, supposed it was no good expecting to find finger-prints on the blessed thing, and then pushed it over to Bobby and told him to get it open.

That did not prove a task of any great difficulty, and, when Bobby had accomplished it, he coughed gently as a signal to the colonel, standing staring frowningly out of the window as if for two pins he would arrest everyone in sight.

“A child like Ena,” he was muttering indignantly to himself.

At the sound of Bobby's gentle cough he turned and marched resolutely upon the open suit-case, as upon the imminent deadly breach. The contents seemed to consist entirely of clothing, all of it either new or with the laundry and other marks carefully removed.

“All that can't have been done after the murder – or can it?” the colonel said.

“Hardly likely, I think,” Bobby answered. “I expect after my talk with Bennett about share-pushing he realised we were on him, got the wind up, and made up his mind to bolt. And he went through his things to remove everything that might identify him.”

“I dare say that was it,” agreed the colonel. “No papers of any kind, no letters – what's this?”

He had found, pushed away between two shirts, a woman's handbag. It was small and looked fairly expensive. He opened it. Within, on the flap, was written Ena Moffatt's name and the Sevens address. Her personal cards were within, too, and in a small packet were a number of letters. The colonel looked at them distastefully and doubtfully at Bobby. Bobby said nothing, but his mouth was set and grim. The colonel swore softly in an undertone and then picked them up, his face crimson. He looked at Bobby imploringly but got no encouragement. Swearing with a vigour and a fluency of which he was quite unaware – he had no idea that he was uttering a word aloud – he began to turn the letters over.

“Love-letters,” he said with a sort of muffled moan. “Very much so.” His looks began to grow less embarrassed, became black and frowning instead. “Very much so,” he growled again. “Bit thick – disgraceful. Filthy – obscene. A child like her – wouldn't have believed it. Dated from Brighton – an hotel. Addressed Mickey Mouse – my God – and signed, ‘Quack, quack.' ‘Quack, quack'!” repeated the colonel in a kind of wail that was far indeed from any suggestion of the comic. He stared at Bobby. “I've known her since she was a child,” he said.

Bobby said nothing.

“Got to see it through,” the colonel said heavily.

“Our job, sir,” Bobby answered, “to see things through. And, if we don't, it's all the same, for it goes on by itself.”

The colonel pressed the bell on his table. To the constable who answered he gave orders for his car to be brought round.

“Have to see it through,” he repeated. “You had better come, too, Owen. What do you make of it?”

“We ought to be quite sure of our facts,” Bobby said cautiously, “before we come to any conclusions.”

“Those letters are facts enough,” the colonel answered. “And that bicycle – a lady's bicycle hidden near the scene of the murder. Well?”

“It suggests very strongly,” Bobby said as the colonel paused, obviously challenging him to give an opinion, “that someone knew what was going to happen and had arranged a way of escape. That's good logic, but there's no proof who that person was. There's an off-chance the bicycle is mere coincidence, though that's not likely. I think we must assume connection.”

A woman's bicycle,” the colonel went on when Bobby paused, “and it can hardly have been Miss Towers's, and Mrs. O'Brien was seen shortly afterwards, not on a bicycle, on foot. And Ena Moffatt's handbag with these letters in Bennett's suit-case. Well?”

“It is easy to make a theory,” Bobby said, putting into words the conclusions they were both conscious of. “Both Bennett and Miss Moffatt are members of the Gut and Come Again. Miss Moffatt denies all knowledge of Bennett. The fact remains they both went to the same club, though there is no proof they ever spoke there. Bennett may have got possession of the handbag without Miss Moffatt's knowledge – probably he did. But, having got hold of it and seen the letters he may have thought there was a chance of blackmail of one kind or another – money or something else, making use of her in some way. That might account for his spying on Sevens. He may have told Miss Moffatt she had to meet him, and she may have known about her father's pistol and taken it with her – for protection, perhaps; perhaps with some idea of frightening him into returning the letters. There was some sort of quarrel. The pistol went off.”

“You suggest that's what happened?” said the colonel aggressively.

“I think it is a plausible deduction from the facts,” Bobby answered steadily. “I think it is one that would occur to anybody.”

“I know,” agreed the colonel. “Got to test it,” he said firmly.

The constable appeared again, to say the car was waiting.

The drive to Sevens was a silent one. Neither man spoke; both were busy with their own ideas, both going over and over again in thought the theory Bobby had advanced, looking for weak spots in it, liking it less and less as the distance to Sevens grew less. Only when they were quite near did the colonel exclaim suddenly:

“It was a man seen leaving the copse after the shots were heard.”

“Yes, that is so,” agreed Bobby, who had already reminded himself of the fact. “Prosecuting counsel would say it might have been her brother. No need, anyhow, for the prosecution to prove who it was or what he was doing.”

“I expect,” agreed the colonel bitterly, “that is just what a prosecution would say.”