The Second Shot (12 page)

‘A detective sergeant,’ Bradley muttered. ‘Taking no chances, evidently.’

It was a plain reference to the question that was in all our minds.

Ethel excused herself, and after a moment Bradley strolled out of the room too.

He came back in a minute or two. ‘There’s a constable on duty outside the house,’ he informed us. ‘To see nobody leaves it, I suppose. By Jove, this looks like a serious business.’

One could not fail to agree with him.

He seated himself beside Mrs Fitzwilliam. ‘I’ve never seen the police at work before,’ he said languidly. ‘Ought to be most interesting.’

It was a remark perhaps not in the best of taste, and Mrs Fitzwilliam laughed nervously. ‘I’ve no wish to in the least. I – I prefer to invent this sort of thing.’

‘I remember when I was a young man at Dublin University,’ observed Professor Johnson, and embarked on a long anecdote. The conversation gradually became general.

‘I suppose the superintendent will want to question each of us,’ observed De Ravel. ‘Going to be rather awkward, isn’t it?’

‘Why?’ asked someone.

‘Well, I mean, that damned play we were doing. We were all in different places, you see. Just as we were meant to be.’ Was it my imagination that he slightly stressed the last sentence?

‘Just as we were meant to be,’ echoed Sylvia de Ravel, in deep tones. ‘No, I’m afraid that nobody will have witnessed the – accident.’ Her pause was calculated and produced its effect. Her husband looked at her nervously; we all looked at each other nervously.

Then, as if by silent agreement, everyone began talking at once.

Under cover of the babel Armorel’s clasp on my hand tightened, and she whispered: ‘Pinkie, I’m frightened. I’m terrified. What – what do you think the police will do?’ She stared at me with widened eyes.

I did my best to reassure her, and asked if she would prefer to let me take her somewhere else away from the others, but she said she would rather remain.

To my astonishment tea was served precisely at half-past four. There was really no need for astonishment, I suppose, but the humdrum things of life seemed so unnatural in face of one of its catastrophes. When everything is upside down, anything right side up must appear misplaced.

In actual fact the tea did us good. Ethel behind the teapot looked so normal, and what is more behaved so normally, that our jangled nerves began to rearrange themselves. It was scarcely a shock when John appeared at the door and announced that the superintendent would like to see Professor Johnson, in the study.

‘Why Professor Johnson first?’ asked De Ravel of no one in particular, as the door closed.

‘Independent witness,’ replied Bradley. ‘Didn’t know the deceased. Close at hand when it happened. Facts first, before fancies. I shall be the next, then Mrs Fitzwilliam.’

‘But I did know him,’ Mrs Fitzwilliam said, hesitatingly.

‘Yes, but I don’t expect he’s aware of it.’

‘Do you think,’ Mrs Fitzwilliam asked, still more haltingly and with a nervous glance round, ‘do you think it would be better if I – didn’t mention I knew him? Of course it was only very slightly, and – well, I mean, there’s no need for me to be mixed up in it more than necessary, is there?’ She looked round again as if appealing to us to support her. Her earlier vivacious manner had quite disappeared since the tragedy.

‘I think,’ Ethel said gently, ‘we ought all to tell the exact truth, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but if he doesn’t ask me that?’ Mrs Fitzwilliam persisted.

‘It would be better, perhaps, just to mention it.’

Mrs Fitzwilliam gave a rather forced smile. ‘Yes, of course. I should have done so really, in any case.’

John came back into the room.

‘The superintendent’s seeing everyone alone, of course,’ he said, as he took a cup of tea from Ethel.

‘You’ve been with him a long time,’ remarked De Ravel. ‘At least it seemed like a damned long time. What’s been happening?’

‘Oh, I’ve just given him the facts, so far as I knew them. It took some time to make him disentangle what we were pretending to do from what actually did happen.’

‘I expect he’s got it firmly fixed in his head that Pinkie shot him with a ball cartridge instead of a blank one,’ sniggered De Ravel.

‘That is just what I’ve been wondering,’ I said, rather uneasily. ‘But I looked. It was undoubtedly a blank cartridge in the breech. I examined it carefully.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said John. ‘There’s no doubt about that.’

‘But when I saw him lying there, that undoubtedly was my first thought,’ I said, as indeed it had been.

‘But you said he was in a different place, John,’ said Ethel.

‘After all, he couldn’t have got there, Cyril, could he, in that case?’

‘I thought he might somehow have struggled there, if he had been only unconscious at first,’ I muttered.

‘Oh, well, that’s out of the question,’ said John, rather impatiently. ‘He was playing the fool right up to the last. No, it must have happened after you people had left him, of course.’

‘Where
was
he shot, John?’ asked Mrs de Ravel, breaking her moody silence.

‘Right through the heart, the doctor thinks, from the back.’

I think we all started at that. ‘Exactly where you’d said?’ Mrs de Ravel murmured.

‘Exactly,’ John replied shortly. ‘In fact, right through that dab of red stuff on his coat.’

‘Ah!’ Mrs de Ravel breathed. She crouched back in her chair, and fixed her green-flecked eyes on me.

I felt extremely uncomfortable. Did the woman really suspect me of having shot Eric in sober earnest?

But the general feeling, though nobody expressed it, was terribly plain: somebody
had
taken advantage of our little play and its arrangements to turn it from a farce into a tragedy. Who?

‘Who
was
it shooting in the wood?’ asked Mrs Fitzwilliam suddenly, with an air of desperation. I was sure that the question had been trembling on her lips all the time, and only good taste had prevented it from being put. Now she could restrain it no longer.

I was relieved to hear it, too. It had been in my mind ever since I heard the second shot, but I too had not cared to put the query. Its implications were so obvious. Moreover, the way all reference to the matter had been so carefully avoided was in itself significant.

John, however, looked merely mildly surprised. ‘I fired down there,’ he said.

‘You?’

‘Yes. I thought I’d complicate things a bit by firing a shot in the air while you were still in the neighbourhood.’

‘Complicate things? Oh, I see; the play, yes. But there were two shots.’

‘Were there?’ said John, puzzled. ‘I never heard the second.’

‘I did. Didn’t you, Mr Pinkerton? You were down there looking for the firer at the time.’

‘Yes,’ I nodded. ‘I heard it.’

‘So did we,’ put in Bradley. ‘The first one fairly loud, and the second much fainter. But after all,’ he drawled, ‘there must have been two shots, mustn’t there? One that you fired in the air, Hillyard, and one that killed Scott-Davies.’

‘Yes, of course,’ John agreed. ‘How stupid of me.’ But he still looked puzzled.

There was a little silence, while all of us tried to work out this matter of two shots.

‘I suppose the police have a pretty good idea of what must have happened?’ resumed De Ravel. ‘I mean, Eric must have picked up the gun, taken it along with him and loaded it, and then – ’

‘No,’ said John. ‘That’s rather a curious thing. It wasn’t the same gun. The other was still lying where we left it.’

‘Another gun?’ I said, in a surprised voice.

‘Yes. And by the way, that completely wipes out the possibility of a blunder, because we looked at the one you’d used, Cyril, and it had obviously fired a blank cartridge. There’s no confusing a rifle barrel after blank and after ball.’

‘Ah,’ I said relievedly.

‘But where did the other gun come from, John?’ asked Ethel. ‘Who took it down there?’

‘That,’ said John in grave tones, ‘is precisely what the police will want to know.’

There was another little pause.

‘What about fingerprints on it?’ asked Bradley.

‘The sergeant examined it roughly while we were down there. He couldn’t give a definite opinion on the spot, but he seemed to think that all the prints were made by one set of hands. He seemed to think, too,’ John added, in a perfectly expressionless voice, ‘that the hands would almost certainly be Scott-Davies’.’ There was no need for him to add that that meant nothing at all. It had been actually a point in our own play.

Professor Johnson came back, saying that the superintendent would like to speak to Mr Bradley. ‘I thought as much,’ Bradley murmured with positive satisfaction, as he went out of the room.

Everyone wanted to ask the professor questions, and Armorel clasped my hand still more tightly as he told what had happened. Except to take her tea, and so forth, the poor girl had not loosed it at all. Nor had she uttered a word, beyond mechanical replies to such kindly questions as were put to her by Ethel. Her agitation rather surprised me. Could it be that her wild words of the morning had been the result only of a feminine
crise des nerfs,
that she had never meant anything of what she had said, and now that her wishes had been so swiftly fulfilled she was overcome with grief? Yet I could not believe that she had been fond of her cousin. Both rumour and her entire behaviour denied it. But naturally it would be a shock to any girl to lose so suddenly the playfellow of her childish days; that, no doubt, was all that was the matter; she would soon get over that.

I gave her hand a small squeeze, and she rewarded the action with a smile so grateful, so utterly unlike the Armorel I had thought I knew, so almost humble, that I experienced quite an emotion.

Professor Johnson had little to tell us. He had been asked only such questions as might have been expected. I gathered, from the way he phrased his replies, that the superintendent had dropped no hint of any dissatisfaction with the theory of accident. I could only hope that was so. I had no wish at all to be mixed up with a murder trial.

Bradley’s prophecy had been remarkably correct. After himself Mrs Fitzwilliam was summoned. She was rather longer away, and when she came back she told us that she had been questioned about the two shots. She and I had of course been the nearest to the scene of Eric’s death at the time.

I, however, was not summoned next, but Armorel. She went off literally trembling with fear, and I was more concerned for her than I can say. Indeed, so obviously upset was she that Ethel absolutely insisted on accompanying her into the study and remaining there during the interview, which the superintendent kindly made as short as possible.

Our three guests were now preparing to go, the superintendent having told them that so long as they left their addresses and could be reached instantly in case of necessity, there was no need for them to remain. John got out the car to take them to the station and I think that none of them was at all sorry to leave.

De Ravel was interviewed after Armorel, and then Mrs de Ravel; still no summons came for me. At last I was called, last of all of us. Elsa of course was in no fit state to be questioned at all.

My first impression of Superintendent Hancock was of an intelligent, capable officer. It would be anticipating to say here that my impression was a grievously mistaken one.

It was with little apprehension that I gave the superintendent a small bow and sat down in the chair he indicated. Indeed I had been wishing to be called sooner, as I fancied I might be able to help the investigation to some small extent. The extreme danger in which sheer, malignant chance had placed me had not even occurred to my mind.

‘Mr Cyril Pinkerton, isn’t it?’ began the superintendent, in quite friendly tones. ‘I’m sorry to have to trouble you, sir, but there are just one or two things I should like to hear from you. By the way, what is your profession?’

‘I have none,’ I smiled. ‘Hobbies, yes, but no profession. I am fortunate enough to have a small private income.

Nothing large, you understand, but quite enough to enable me to live on in moderate comfort.’

‘You live in London, I understand.’

‘Yes. I have a small service flat in Kensington Square. No. 27, Cromwell Mansions.’

‘Thank you, sir. And your age is?’

‘Thirty-six.’

‘And unmarried?’

‘Certainly.’

‘I see. Now, you knew the deceased, Mr Scott-Davies, very well, I believe, did you not, Mr Pinkerton?’

‘Not very well, by any means. Not even well. We were the merest acquaintances.’

‘Yes? Well, now, sir, I should like you to give me in your own words an account of what has happened here this afternoon, to
your
knowledge; never mind about anything to which you can’t speak at first hand.’

‘Certainly, Superintendent,’ I said, and gave as succinct a résumé of the afternoon’s events as I could.

‘Thank you, sir. That seems quite straightforward. Now Mr Hillyard has already told me that he himself loaded the gun that you used this afternoon in your play-acting, and of which I understand you were the firer, with a blank cartridge which he prepared for the purpose himself. Did you examine that cartridge before you actually fired the gun?’

‘I did, Superintendent. I was brought up as a boy never to point firearms at anyone, even if they were unloaded, so that it was almost instinctive to make certain at the last minute that there had been no mistake. It was certainly a blank cartridge. And as a matter of fact I did not point it at Mr Scott-Davies at all, but over his left shoulder.’

‘I see. Now, I suppose you’re used to handling firearms, Mr Pinkerton? I mean, you do a good bit of shooting, one way and another?’

‘I never shoot, no. I have an objection to taking wild life, and in any case I am, as you see, short-sighted.’

‘Yes. Then in your opinion we can rule out any possibility of the accident having occurred during your play-acting?’

‘Well, I should imagine so,’ I said dryly. ‘He was certainly alive during the rest of our scene. Everyone can confirm that. As Mr Hillyard remarked, he was playing the fool to the last.’