They Found Him Dead (17 page)

"It's extraordinarily decent of you," said Jim. "I do want time to find my feet; but isn't it asking rather a lot of you to keep you kicking your heels while I try to get abreast of this infernal net business?"

"If I see a chance of putting the deal through, I'll be content to kick my heels for a space." He regarded the tip of his cigar inscrutably. "It's not uninteresting—kicking my heels in Portlaw."

"You're interested in my cousin's murder?" said Jim bluntly.

"Well"—Roberts glanced at him with a slight look of amusement—"I feel I might be responsible in a roundabout way. You'll admit it's a fairly cute little problem the police are up against."

"A filthy case. They've called in Scotland Yard now."

"Yes, I'd the pleasure of receiving a call from Superintendent Hannasyde this morning."

"I believe he's pretty good. Rather a nice chap, I thought."

"Sure. I reckon he's the competent type they breed up at Scotland Yard. He's smart enough to get right onto Silas Kane's death. The trouble is, he's got mighty little to go on. Somebody certainly handled that business well. You have to hand it to them."

"You've always thought my cousin Silas was murdered, haven't you?" Jim asked curiously.

"I wouldn't say that. I thought maybe his death would bear some more investigating than it got."

"Yes, it looks like that now; but at the time I don't think any of us suspected there might have been foul play. It's going to be investigated now all right."

"That's so; but when you get a kind of family affair like this, it always seems to me the police have to work under a big handicap. This superintendent from London's no fool, but he doesn't know the folks he's dealing with. He can find out a lot through asking questions, but he can't get to know them the way a man moving amongst them like I am can. They're just naturally on their guard with him."

"You ought to have been a detective," said Jim, laughing.

Oscar Roberts smiled but said nothing.

"Do you mind telling me," said Jim; "have you got hold of something the police haven't?"

There was a slight pause. "Why, no, I wouldn't say that," replied Roberts in his measured way. "I'm not holding out on the police. Maybe I've got a hunch. I don't want you to feel sore at me chiselling in on what isn't, strictly speaking, any of my business. You've got to remember I was one of the first to see your cousin after he'd been shot. What's more, it sticks a bit in my head that I was to get Mr. Clement Kane's answer to my proposition that day. It looked a cinch he was going to turn me down flat. Well, he didn't get a chance to do it. Someone bumped him off first. Guess that gives me an excuse for taking an interest in the case, Kane."

"Oh, I've no objection!" Jim said. "Good luck to you!"

"Thanks." Roberts uncrossed his long legs and prepared to get up. "There's just one other thing I'd like to say." He rose and hesitated for a moment. "Don't misunderstand me, Kane: I'm going on a hunch only. But I'm bound to say that, if I stood in your shoes, I'd watch out for trouble."

Jim got up, a spark of anger in his eyes. "I think your hunch is fantastic, sir; but by God, if the Mansells think they can frighten me into falling in with their damned schemes they've got another guess coming to them!"

Oscar Roberts chuckled. "That's the spirit. But all the same, I wouldn't sit around by open windows all by yourself, Kane. An easy target's kind of tempting."

Jim's chin jutted mulishly. "If I thought there was a word of truth in it, damn it, I'd turn the whole Australian project down now!"

"Now, that's not what I want at all!" said Roberts. "I appreciate the way you feel, but I certainly didn't come here to put you right against my proposition."

Jim gave a reluctant laugh. "I'll try and keep an impartial mind. And thanks for the warning! Come out and join the tea party now."

Roberts demurred a little but allowed himself to be over-persuaded. Tea had been taken out on to the terrace some minutes before, and quite a large party was already gathered there. Emily, hearing of Sir Adrian's arrival, had come down in her best black silk dress, an honour not accorded by her to many, and was sitting with him beside her, listening to his cultured, rather languid voice with a less forbidding air than usual. Sir Adrian to every Kane but Jim was the unknown quantity.

Kane instinct bade Emily despise him for a fool who had never done a stroke of work in his life; Kane sense told her that, though he might be vague and impractical, he was no fool. His conversation was strange to her but gave her pleasure; his point of view nearly always clashed with her own, but though she might pour scorn on it, secretly she respected his judgment.

Rosemary and Betty Pemble were next to each other. Betty, having spent an hour alternately sympathising with Rosemary for having been left only Clement's private fortune and agreeing with her that it wasn't as though Jim had ever done anything to deserve the inheritance of the Kane estate, and that there was a hard streak in Patricia Allison, due undoubtedly to her spinsterhood, had leaped into the front rank of Rosemary's close friends. With the reappearance of her children upon the scene, however, Betty's attention had become necessarily diverted from Rosemary. She had settled them at a small table at a discreet distance from the rest of the party and was engaged, when Jim Kane and Oscar Roberts came out on to the terrace, in hushing them whenever their voices rose to obtrusive heights, which was often, and in remonstrating with them on the size of the portions they saw fit to cram into their mouths. Occasionally she explained apologetically to Rosemary that they weren't usually a bit like this. Timothy had ensconced himself beside Patricia at the tea table. Whenever the children offended his sense of propriety he glared at his plate and muttered: "Gosh!" in accents of repulsion.

Emily greeted Oscar Roberts without much cordiality.

She was not in the habit of attempting to overcome her prejudices and saw no reason to make an exception in this case. Roberts' way of drawing his heels together and bowing as he took her hand she condemned as foreign. She knew no more disparaging adjective.

She gave him a curt "How-de-do?" and immediately turned again to Sir Adrian and requested him to tell her what his wife was doing, gallivanting about Africa at her age.

"I really don't know," replied Sir Adrian.

"Then you ought to know!" said Emily tartly.

He smiled but merely said that he never presumed to question Norma's activities.

This was the kind of remark which Emily found baffling. In her opinion men ought to question their wives' activities. She would have said as much to most people but had just enough respect for Sir Adrian to refrain. She said instead: "She'll get eaten by cannibals one of these days."

"Oh, I don't think so!" replied Sir Adrian with easy optimism. "She's very capable, you know. An amazing woman! I find myself quite unable to keep pace with her extraordinary vitality." His glance wandered to Timothy's face, and from his to Jim's. "I fancy neither of her sons has inherited her forceful character."

"A good thing too!" said Emily. "What do you mean to do with that boy of yours?"

Sir Adrian looked rather alarmed. "Do with him?" he repeated.

"Yes," said Emily, impatiently. "What are you going to put him into?"

"Oh—ah! Well, it is rather too soon to think about that. He seems to me singularly ill suited to any profession which I can at the moment call to mind."

Emily gave one of her croaks of laughter and said after a moment: "I suppose you know the police suspect Jim?"

"I imagine they would be very likely to do so," he replied, gently polishing his eyeglass. "A lot of nonsense! I've no patience with it."

Sir Adrian got up to take his cup to Miss Allison and, as Oscar Roberts began to talk to Emily, remained standing by the tea table, sipping his tea and exchanging a few commonplaces with Patricia. He presently drifted away to a vacant chair beside Betty Pemble's, who at once engaged him in conversation. Her children, having finished their tea, had gone off in search of their new friend the gardener, so that Betty was able to give her undivided attention to Sir Adrian.

She thought him a most distinguished-looking man and was only too glad to be given the opportunity of telling him how much she felt for the family, and how she wished there was something she could do to help. Sir Adrian replied courteously but in a rather bored voice, and when Betty said that she expected he felt as though Jim were his own son, he said: "Dear me, no! Not in the least," with a good deal of mild surprise. He might have added that he had little or no parental feeling for Timothy, either; but happily for Betty's opinion of him, he was not in the habit of talking about himself, and so did not. He had, however, said enough to make Betty confide later to her husband that, charming though he was, she could not help feeling that there was something rather sinister about Sir Adrian.

Miss Allison did not find him sinister, but he seemed to her unapproachable. It was quite impossible to discover whether one were making a good or a bad impression upon him, for his manner was the same towards everyone. She could fancy that one saw him through a mist, which he had carefully wrapped round himself, and behind which he dwelt, blissfully aloof.

He seemed to take more interest in the whereabouts of old John Kane's stamp collection than in Clement's murder, and when Jim, in the privacy of his own bedroom, recounted his interview with Roberts to him, he said with a faint look of distaste: "Rather lurid, don't you think?"

"Yes, I do," replied Jim "Lurid and absurd. But you can't get away from the fact that, whether because they disliked the Australian scheme or for some other reason, Cousin Silas and Clement are both dead."

"Are you feeling nervous, Jim?"

"No, not exactly nervous. I'm not sitting about by open windows much."

"Well, I see no harm in that, if you feel there might be danger in it," said Sir Adrian. "But I find that my mind is quite unable to accept the possibility of a third murder taking place while the police are investigating the first and the second."

"Highly improbable," agreed Jim. His eyes narrowed at the corners in a rueful smile. "If you're apparently the third victim, it's surprising how much improbability you can swallow."

"Yes, I have no doubt it obscures your judgment," said Sir Adrian.

Jim laughed. "If ever I get badly rattled, I shall come and hold your hand, Adrian. You're the most tranquillising person I know. With you about the place, even the first two murders seem a bit farfetched. If you stay long enough, we shall begin to doubt whether they ever really happened. I'm sure you never had any murders in your family, did you?"

"No, we have always contrived to keep out of the penny press," replied Sir Adrian, looking through his stud box for a pair of cuff links.

Jim shook his head. "You must loathe being mixed up with a vulgar lot like us," he said solemnly.

"Don't be absurd, my dear boy."

Jim strolled towards the door. "I'll go and change. Oh, Adrian, can you bear it? I've gone into Trade—at least, it looks as though I probably shall."

"I can bear it; but I doubt whether your mother will like it. She will think it very unenterprising of you."

"Oh, Mother will want me to finance an expedition to the North Pole, I expect," grinned Jim.

"You are quite wrong. Unless my memory is at fault, your mother wishes to make Central China her next objective," said Sir Adrian, busy with his tie.

Later that evening Miss Allison, finding herself alone with him for a few moments, broached the same subject to him. "Mr. Roberts told me he had warned Jim to take no risks," she said. "Do you think it possible that the Mansells could—could really contemplate murder just to get their own way over this business deal?"

"No, I do not," replied Sir Adrian. "It is, of course, a temptation to believe an ill-conditioned young man like the younger Mansell to be capable of almost any crime, but one should guard against allowing mere prejudice to colour one's judgment."

"I have told myself that," said Miss Allison. "I expect I'm being stupidly anxious; but you see, it means rather a lot to me. When you care for a person your reason gets rather swamped."

"I hope you are not implying that I am the callous stepfather of legend?" said Sir Adrian, looking quizzically down at her.

She smiled. "Of course not. But he's not like your own son, or—or your fiancé, is he?"

"Certainly not in the least like my fiancé. And, I am happy to say, not much like my own son either. Though I have no doubt that Timothy will improve as he grows older."

"You are an unnatural parent, Sir Adrian."

"I am afraid I must be."

"And you don't think that any danger threatens Jim?"

"Extremely unlikely, I should imagine. From what I have heard of it—but I am lamentably ignorant on such matters—it does not seem to me that the proposed expansion of the business in Australia is of sufficient moment to provide a motive for three murders. There is, however, another possibility that occurs to me."

"Yes? Please tell me what it is!"

"No, I don't think I will do that," he replied. "It is a mere supposition which a very little investigation may easily disprove. I will have a talk with the superintendent from Scotland Yard tomorrow. That reminds me: I must request the butler to ring up the police station the first thing in the morning."