The Longer Bodies (29 page)

They reentered the library, and Mrs Bradley sat down in the chair once more.

‘Yes, but that means that she threw the javelin at her own bedroom window,' protested Bloxham.

‘Well, why not? The moment we asked Kost for the names of persons who understood how to throw the javelin he mentioned Amaris Cowes first. Don't you remember?'

‘But you're not proving that Amaris Cowes murdered Anthony,' said Bloxham. ‘You're only proving that she could have played a silly trick—'

‘In order to create the impression—successfully, I think you will agree—that Anthony was alive and outside the sunk garden at eleven forty-three that night, instead of being dead and inside it at that hour,' concluded Mrs Bradley. ‘Don't you remember that Miss Caddick said that to throw the javelin at the window was just the kind of mad, stupid thing Anthony would think of?'

‘But why should she want to create such an impression? You don't suppose
she
did murder Anthony?' cried Bloxham.

‘Oh, I am quite
sure
she didn't?' said Mrs Bradley, suitably horrified at the very idea. ‘And your next question, of course,' she added, in the indulgent tone of a paternally minded tutor, ‘is, who
did
murder him?'

‘But half a minute!' cried Bloxham, considerably impressed by Mrs Bradley's effective demonstration. ‘Amaris Cowes is an artist.'

Mrs Bradley eyed him with the delighted astonishment of the teacher whose dullest pupil suddenly seems to see a great light.

‘Marvellous, child!' she ejaculated fondly.

‘And you once asked me'—Bloxham scowled in the effort to remember the incident—‘you once asked me—I say!' he suddenly shouted. ‘It was Amaris Cowes who chucked the little mermaid into the mere!'

‘I should imagine so,' replied Mrs Bradley, shaking her head sadly over the extraordinary workings of the artistic mind.

‘Because she didn't like it?'

‘Undoubtedly she didn't like it, child. Who could?'

‘Ah! Then you were wrong when you thought the murderer and his accomplice were the people who chucked it in? They knew it was in there, and they made use of it.' He grinned triumphantly at her.

‘So simple,' said Mrs Bradley, under her breath.

‘And of course it was Amaris who persuaded old Mrs Puddequet to dismount those frightful cupids, or whatever they were, and to substitute those two stone balls—' went on Bloxham.

‘One of which was made of clay, and contained the shot which killed Hobson,' said Mrs Bradley. ‘Strange, but true.'

‘Oh, but we decided that clay ball must have been substituted later by the murderer,' said Bloxham.

‘Please don't associate me with that particular finding,' said Mrs Bradley, with finality. ‘That clay ball was made by Amaris Cowes.'

‘You don't mean she was the murderer's accomplice?' cried Bloxham.

‘Well, everything seems to point to it. And now I must go back to the Digots' and dress for dinner.'

‘Yes, but you're all wrong, you know,' said Bloxham, rising. ‘You have forgotten, I think, that Amaris Cowes didn't even reach the house until four o'clock on the morning after the murder of Hobson. The man had been dead six hours when she arrived.'

‘There is that, of course,' said Mrs Bradley, looking considerably less important. She walked to the door, and Bloxham followed her. Both were grinning at secret thoughts; the inspector like a little boy who has cheeked nurse and got away with it successfully; Mrs Bradley with the gentle grin of the alligator replete with food.

‘If you are going to stay up all night, darling, I wish you'd say so, and then I could go to bed,' said the youthful Mrs Bloxham plaintively. She came over and sat on the edge of the writing table. ‘Is it still those silly old murders?'

Bloxham shut his notebook with a snap, tossed the sheets of paper on which he had been working into the basket, sighed heavily, and rose.

‘Have we had supper?' he enquired.

‘Of course, silly, nearly two hours ago.' Mrs Bloxham stood up and yawned. ‘I knew you weren't caring whether I'd taken the trouble to cook it or not. Ungrateful old pig, aren't you? Are you hungry again? There's bread and cheese—'

Bloxham pulled her hair.

‘Scotland Yard on the ball tomorrow,' he said, with affected lightness. ‘Then we shall learn how to do it.'

‘If
you
can't work it out, I'm sure those London smart alecs won't be any good,' said Mrs Bloxham defiantly. ‘It's your turn to use the bathroom first, so hurry up, old sleepy-head.'

At three o'clock in the morning Bloxham woke.

‘Of course,' he said aloud. ‘Damn fool!' He turned over and went to sleep again. At half-past eight he was knocking at the door of the superintendent's quarters.

‘I'm going over to Longer to make an arrest in connection with the murders of Hobson and Anthony,' he said. ‘I'm taking the sergeant and two men, as he's such a very powerful and athletic chap.'

‘Who?' asked the superintendent, looking over the top of the morning paper.

‘Comrade Kost.'

‘And what about the accomplice?'

‘Companion Caddick. It's true she locked him in the dressing room until midnight, but he could have killed Hobson before they ever went upstairs at all, and he could have put the body in the lake after twelve. Shan't be long.'

When he arrived at Longer, however, the two he sought had not appeared at breakfast, although it was more than half-past nine. Priscilla Yeomond, pale and anxious-eyed, said hesitatingly,

‘You don't think—oh, but no! No! It is impossible!'

‘What is?'

‘That they've been murdered,' said Celia Brown-Jenkins, grinning. ‘I'll go up to Great-aunt's bedroom and get Miss Caddick to hurry up.'

She put down her knife and fork and left the table. In a few moments, flushed and trembling, she returned.

‘She's just coming,' she said, with a curious catch in her voice. ‘Won't you have some breakfast, inspector?'

Bloxham refused, and sat waiting in a fever of impatience like a terrier at the mouth of a rat-hole.

The family champed its extraordinarily English breakfast stolidly, save for Celia; she merely drank three cups of coffee in quick succession, and then hid herself behind the morning paper.

‘Is Kost in his hut?' demanded Bloxham at last.

‘I'll go round and see,' said Clive Brown-Jenkins obligingly. ‘He's often late for breakfast,' he added carelessly, as he walked on to the terrace by stepping out through the open window.

‘Have breakfast so devilishly early here,' said Malpas, kicking first Francis and then Hilary under the table, and treating Priscilla to a warning scowl.

After an absence of almost a quarter of an hour, Clive returned.

‘Sorry. Can't find him. Probably out for a long run or walk or something devilish energetic,' he said. He reseated himself indifferently at the breakfast-table and reached for a third boiled egg.

‘How did the Bedouins do?' he enquired of his sister Celia.

‘The Bedouins?' Celia turned over the pages. ‘Ch —er—they lost by three wickets.'

‘Good egg!' said Hilary. ‘Lend me the page, Celia. Oh, never mind. Here's Aunt. I'll get her some brekker.'

He went to the sideboard and stood idiotically at attention as his great-aunt, in her bathchair, propelled by Amaris Cowes, entered the room.

‘Why, inspector?' said Great-aunt Puddequet, in surprise. ‘This is indeed an honour.'

‘Scarcely an honour, I'm afraid, Mrs Puddequet,' said Bloxham. ‘The fact is, I'm here very much on business, and it is absolutely essential that I speak to Miss Caddick and the trainer Kost immediately.'

‘Breakfast first,' said Great-aunt Puddequet implacably, ‘and all unpleasantness afterwards. Kidneys and bacon, Grandnephew Hilary,' she added, turning towards the sideboard. ‘And sit still, inspector. You'll spoil my digestive powers if you scowl and fidget like that. If you must see Companion Caddick and Trainer Kost, you must wait until they see fit to grace the room with their presence. They will be late this morning. He is teaching her to drive a motorcycle. Very creditable of him.'

Another quarter of an hour passed. Bloxham rose, his patience quite exhausted.

‘Mrs Puddequet,' he said, ‘I must ask you to allow one of the ladies to accompany me to Miss Caddick's room at once.'

A strong feeling that the catch was going to slip through the meshes of the net was presenting itself with alarming insistence.

‘I'll come,' said Celia, in return for a nod from her great-aunt.

Outside Miss Caddick's bedroom door she halted and tapped. There was no answer, so she called the occupant by name. At last she turned the handle and went in, only to reappear immediately.

‘She is still out with the trainer, apparently,' she said lightly. Bloxham strode past her into the room. The bed had been slept in, but otherwise the room was in order. Bloxham walked to the window, which had been mended since the night of Anthony's death, and leaned out.

‘Anybody been through into the sports ground?' he called to the sergeant, whom he had left in the sunk garden whilst he himself was in the house.

‘No one, sir.'

‘No. She would have gone down the back stairs and out through the kitchen garden,' said Celia, striving to keep her voice steady.

Bloxham pushed past her and tore down the stairs and out through the sunk garden, bellowing to the sergeant to allow no one to leave the house.

The trainer's hut was empty. The sports field was deserted. The gymnasium was untenanted, and the mere a width of placid, shining water.

Bloxham ran back to the house.

‘I
must
see them,' he said shortly. ‘You don't know which direction they are most likely to have taken, Mrs Puddequet?'

‘No, young man,' said old Mrs Puddequet tartly. ‘I do not.'

‘Towards Hilly Longer,' said Clive shortly. ‘Look here, I'm going out for a spin that way now, this minute. I'll send them back here to you at the double.'

The inspector scribbled on a leaf out of his notebook.

‘If you wouldn't mind handing that in at the police station at Hilly Longer,' he said, ‘the sergeant and constable will get a conveyance in the village and follow up Mr Brown-Jenkins, and I shall sheer off in the other direction. Those two must be found. I'll send Constable Copple along here to keep my other man company.'

Clive, without waiting to hear any more, mounted his racing bicycle with all possible speed, and tore through the gates of the grounds.

Kost and Miss Caddick had almost reached the outskirts of Little Longer on their way home. Clive stopped them, and said urgently, ‘Can she drive that scrap-heap?'

‘Plenty, perhaps,' said Kost.

‘Then get away on it, Miss Caddick. The police are after you,' said Clive Brown-Jenkins earnestly. ‘Don't stop to argue. And you get on to the crossbar, Carver Doone,' he added to the trainer when they had given the terrified Miss Caddick a good push off for luck, ‘and keep your damned hoofs off the front wheel. I'm going to hurry.'

‘I shall go by train from Market Longer Station,' said Kost, as the racing bicycle with its double burden went hurtling through the main street of the quiet country town.

‘More fool you,' retorted Clive. ‘Southampton's the place for you. Half a minute. I've got a note to push through the letterbox at this police station. They'll never suspect it's you on the bar, so sit tight and Uncle Cliffy will save your blinking neck. This is doing me more good than anything since I won the Harriers' hundred miles tourist. Not that I like you, Kost. I'm not doing this because I like you. I'm doing it to get old Aunt Puddequet's cash. So mind you don't go and bungle matters when I leave you. I want that money badly.'

Kost chuckled tolerantly. He had attained a precarious balance on the crossbar by this time. He let go very cautiously with one hand, and felt in his left-side trousers pocket. Gingerly he produced a huntsman's horn, and commenced to blow it with a kind of solemn gusto.

Miss Caddick felt exhilarated, but unsafe. It was the very first time she had been out alone on the motorcycle. She was also exceedingly hungry, and, now that she had recovered from the state of panic into which Clive Brown-Jenkins's startling words had thrown her, she felt somewhat puzzled.

It occurred to her that she had not the slightest idea whither she was bound, and that she had no luggage, and only about two and tenpence in money. Her clothes were suited to early morning practice in the art, science, metaphysics, and philosophy of driving a motorcycle, but for all other conceivable purposes she judged them singularly inappropriate and decidedly unbecoming.

The motorcycle grunted its way up a long hill. At the top were crossroads. One, slanting back to the southwest across a beautiful common which bordered the New Forest, led to Little Longer village and the kindly house where breakfast was awaiting her.

‘A foolish and ill-natured jest on the part of Clive Brown-Jenkins,' said Miss Caddick, mildly indignant. ‘But what a magnificent morning!'

Greatly daring, for she feared corners and detested turning the motorcycle out of the straight, Miss Caddick urged her iron steed round into the homeward way. The road was narrow, but ran straight and open across the white and golden common. The scent of gorse and hawthorn and the pungent odour of her petrol-drinking stallion filled the summer air. A sudden glorious madness filled the soul of Myra Caddick. She burst into glad, full-throated song, and opened the throttle wide.

Clive Brown-Jenkins, having satisfied a twenty-years' craving to defeat the forces of law and order, pedalled leisurely homewards. Kost looked after the retreating bicycle and its altruistic rider with mixed feelings until both were out of sight. He then put his hands into his pockets and withdrew the sum of ten and fivepence. This he contemplated for a while. Then, thrusting it back into his pocket, he shrugged his shoulders, walked a short distance along the mean street in which Clive had set him down, and enquired of the first passerby the whereabouts of the nearest police station. To a startled inspector he observed: