Death of a Beauty Queen (21 page)

‘Looks as if he was keeping out of the way on purpose,' Ferris commented.

‘Take it from me,' said Wood impressively, ‘he's the man you want. That's what I've said from the very start.'

‘Well, go on looking out for him,' Ferris directed. ‘By the way, were you ever shown the knife the murderer used?'

Wood shook his head. He had been asked about the knife – he had given his assurance that he had never seen any sheath knife in the possession of anyone employed at the cinema, and certainly never in Mr Sargent's office. But in the general excitement and confusion reigning that night he did not think he had ever actually seen the weapon used. At any rate he had had no more than a passing glimpse of it.

‘Bought a sheath knife yourself, a little while ago, didn't you?' Ferris remarked. ‘At Sadler's, round the corner, in the High Street.'

Wood seemed a little startled, but agreed at once that he had done so. He had purchased it for a nephew, due presently to join a ship in London, but at the moment staying with his parents in Devon. It was a sheath knife of a type much used by sailors. After buying it, he had put a good edge on it, and then had locked it up in a drawer ready for the nephew when he called for it.

‘Let's have a look at it, will you?' asked Ferris casually.

Wood, very pale now, very uncomfortable, made some pretence of searching in various drawers, but finally, under questioning from Ferris, grown sharper and more imperative, admitted that it was missing. But he' had only discovered that fact quite recently, and till then it had never occurred to him to connect his knife with the murder. Indeed he still protested vehemently that, though he could not account for its disappearance, he was certain it could not be identical with the one that had been used. Ferris demanded sternly why he had not immediately reported a fact of such importance, and Wood, stammering and by now badly frightened, protested that at first he had simply never thought of it – it had never entered his mind to mention a knife he believed safely locked up in a drawer of his own table, indeed he had not even remembered it. And when he discovered it was missing, then, though he would not actually make the admission, he had evidently been too terrified to say anything.

But he asserted passionately that it could not possibly be the one used in the murder. How could it be, when he kept it safely locked up? Ferris retorted that if it had been in fact kept locked in a drawer, locked in a drawer it should still be. But it wasn't. So where was it?

Desperately seeking for corroborative evidence, Wood remembered that on the night of the murder he had shown the knife to a friend, who now kept a small shop near, but had at one time been at sea. He rang up this friend, whose name was Abbott, and when Mr Abbott appeared he confirmed that the knife had been in a drawer Wood had unlocked to show it to him.

‘Asked me if I thought it was the kind of thing would be useful on shipboard,' said Mr Abbott, ‘and I said it was.'

‘Why didn't you tell us all this before?' demanded Ferris angrily.

‘Wasn't none of my business,' retorted Abbott sturdily. ‘What was the good, anyway? I suppose you don't reckon it was Mr Wood did the girl in, do you? Him and me was talking here, in this very room for that matter, when it must have happened.'

It was pretty clear he had kept silent because he had not wished to seem to throw suspicion upon Wood – a suspicion, too, that no doubt he had felt quite convinced had no foundation in fact. But Ferris glowered at them both.

‘Keeping back information,' he growled. ‘Ought to be an offence. What do you suppose we can do if people keep things back? Serious, I call it.'

But Wood was recovering his courage now he found his neighbour supporting him.

‘Never entered my head,' he protested, ‘it could be anything to do with the knife I bought for Stevie. If it is, then it must have been pinched without my knowing. The chap that was in here asking for Miss Quin, most likely. You remember?' he appealed to Abbott. ‘He asked for a Miss Quin, and I told him there wasn't any name like that on the list – the fellow that said he had come by motor-coach.'

‘Not much to go on in that,' observed Ferris, at whom Wood had looked as if he felt he was offering a valuable clue. ‘Any number of motor-coaches. Now, if he had said where it came from –'

‘He didn't say anything about that,' Wood answered. ‘All he said was – when I told him if he had wanted to see one of the young ladies he ought to have been earlier, before they started doing themselves up – that he would have been earlier only the coach got in a bit late.'

‘Not much help there, either,' grumbled Ferris. ‘Lots of 'em come in a bit late.'

‘I suppose,' asked Bobby, speaking for the first time, ‘he didn't say what made it late?'

‘Ran over some lady's pet dog, just as it started,' answered Wood. ‘The chap said he thought they were never going to get off, along of the fuss she made,'

Ferris, a reserved and patient man, became eloquent. Bobby listened with sympathy, and now and again, when Ferris seemed to hesitate for a word, which was seldom, he supplied one. Wood gaped and cowered under the storm he had aroused. Abbott edged towards the door, but on die threshold paused to listen with an awed admiration.

‘Heard nothing like it,' he said, in a thrilled aside, ‘since a deck hand on the old
Eutropus
dropped a bucket of tar on the old man's shore-going togs the day we docked in New York.'

‘What's the matter now?' Wood demanded, in an injured voice, when presently the storm showed signs of abating.

‘Can't you see,' demanded Bobby, Ferris being still slightly hysterical, ‘that gives us just the clue we want. It's a million chances only one motor-coach ran over a lady's pet dog that day, and you say it was just as the coach started. It ought to be quite easy to find out where it happened, and then we'll know what district to look in for this man you talk about. I expect we shall want you to go there for a day or two, to see if you can see him.'

‘What about my work?' asked Wood, somewhat sullenly.

‘I think, for your own sake,' observed Ferris significantly, ‘you had better do all you can to help us now.'

His meaning was evident, and Wood went slightly pale again as he hurriedly promised to do all he could to help.

‘Why on earth couldn't you tell us before?' Bobby demanded.

‘Well, no one asked me,' explained Wood.

‘It's like Mitchell says,' lamented Ferris. ‘The things people know and don't tell is just about as bad as the things they don't know and do tell.' Then he turned sharply on Wood again. ‘Anything else,' he demanded bitterly, ‘you're keeping up your sleeve and never saying a word about.'

‘I've never kept anything up my sleeve I knew mattered,' asserted Wood sullenly.

‘About that knife of Mr Wood's,' remarked Abbott, from the door. ‘It can't have been the fellow you were talking about that took it – I remember now. After he had gone, Lily Ellis came in to ask about a parcel she was expecting from a shop in the High Street. A boy brought it in just then, and she wanted to open it to see if it was right, so I picked up the knife, from where it was on the table, and give it her to cut the string with.'

'Did she give it you back?' Ferris asked quickly.

‘I don't think so; I don't remember,' Abbott answered. ‘The phone went just then, and I answered it, and then I had to call Mr Wood to speak. But after that I don't remember seeing either Lily Ellis or the knife.'

Ferris made a gesture of a new despair.

‘That means,' he almost wailed, ‘that now we've traced the thing back to Lily Ellis. This isn't a case, it's a nightmare.'

However, Mitchell did not seem unduly impressed when this new development was reported to him.

‘We knew already Miss Ellis had handled the knife,' he pointed out, ‘as her finger-print is on it. What we need is proof who used the thing. As the case stands, it is still riddled with doubt. Half Brush Hill is whispering about the way Mr Irwin's hair has turned white since the murder, and the other half about Sargent's connection with the girl – it seems to have got about now they had been seen together in restaurants and places like that. Then there's Miss Perry's statement. It gives us valuable pointers, of course, though a good deal will depend on a cable I'm expecting to-day or tomorrow. And we've no idea yet what became of the missing handbag, or who took it, or why. Meanwhile, as soon as we can be sure what motor-coach ran over a dog that day, and where it happened, it must be followed up for all it's worth. It may mean a good deal if we can get in touch with step-father Quin Miss Perry told us about.'

‘He must be lying low on purpose, that's certain,' observed Ferris. ‘And why? – unless he's the murderer himself. That s what I'm coming to think. Miss Perry says he staged a sham suicide to try to get money out of his wife. Well, suppose he staged a sham murder, threats and all that, to try to get money out of his step-daughter, and went just a bit too far – so the sham turned into the real? There was a case the other day where a woman tried to stage a sham accident to get money out of a motorist, and it went too far, turned into a real accident – and a fatal one, at that.'

‘It's a possibility,' agreed Mitchell, ‘though still only one among a whole lot of others, and possibilities aren't good enough for Treasury counsel, let alone juries. For the present we must just carry on. Owen, you had better stand by ready to follow up as soon as there's a report comes in about any place where a motor-coach ran over a pet dog the day of the murder.'

‘Very good, sir,' said Bobby, and, after he and Ferris had left the room, he remarked to Ferris:

‘Sounds as if Mr Mitchell were following up some fresh line. I hadn't heard of any development abroad, but there must be if he is expecting a cable.'

‘It's all fresh lines in this affair,' grumbled Ferris. ‘Give me a nice simple straightforward case where a burglar pots a householder, or a wife gives hubby a dose of poison to teach him to keep his eyes in the boat. Then you know where you are, but in a business like this – well, where are you?' Bobby felt himself unable to answer this question, and so made no attempt to do so.

‘Mr Gilbert,' he remarked, ‘you've heard of him, of course – Mr C.K. Gilbert, I mean – said in one of his broadcasts that a detective's first need is to put himself in the criminal's place, so as to understand his motives, and then he'll understand his actions, too. But how can you do that when there's any number of different motives suggested, and any of them may be the true one – jealousy, panic, anger, theft, revenge, preventing a marriage, a quarrel, blackmail, goodness knows how many more?'

Ferris only shook his head without answering, and departed on his affairs, while Bobby found a quiet corner where he could sit and try again to form some coherent theory of events that would fit the facts, and all the facts so completely as to exclude all other possibilities.

He failed entirely in the effort, but fortunately had not to spend much time on so fruitless an occupation, for soon a report came in that one of the motor-coaches of the independent Blue-Yellow line had on the day of the murder run over a dog just after leaving the garage at Lowfields. Luckily the animal had not been much hurt, but its indignant owner had protested so volubly, and it had taken so long to pacify her, that the coach had run late all through that journey.

To Lowfields accordingly, to pursue the investigation there, Bobby was promptly dispatched. It proved a small isolated village, consisting of a few cottages clustered about the twin foci of the community, the church and the pub, that ministered to man's two essential needs, the spiritual and the physical, and of an outer fringe of villas whereof the masculine inhabitants disappeared gloomily to London during the week (Tuesday to Thursday), but came joyfully to life during the week-end (Friday to Monday), when, with enormous gravity, they drove little balls round and round what once had been bits of the local common, a flourishing poultry farm, a field or two of grain or pasture, till all had been turned to nobler uses.

As Lowfields could proudly boast that the nearest railway station was five miles distant, and as the Blue-Yellow coach service was neither frequent nor rapid, the district had been spared that invasion from London which has done so much to spoil the countryside – at least, saved from all save those who could afford a car, or preferably two, the six-cylinder for the head of the family, and the little runabout held in aid. So during the week (Tuesday to Thursday) one saw a long procession of these little runabouts, conveying their drivers to those mysterious offices in the City whence flowed, in equally mysterious fashion, that stream of cash which permitted the soul-shaking activities of the week-ends (Friday to Monday); this stream of little runabouts being presently followed by another stream of stately six-cylinders, directed, for their part, towards those once-again mysterious operations known as ‘shopping' or ‘calls.' But, for the aboriginal inhabitants, means of communication were still infrequent, slow, and a trifle uncertain.

Indeed Lowfields occupied so remote and hidden a position, most probably even the Blue-Yellow coaches would never have found it out but for the fact that a friend of the private secretary of the managing director had had for sale a piece of land in the village extraordinarily suitable for the building of a garage for the company's coaches. The private secretary had so discreetly and so skilfully crabbed all other suggestions that in despair the managing director had suggested Lowfields as a possible, but unlikely, alternative, and, finding considerable opposition expressed, had thereupon developed his well-known strength of character – ‘pig-headed obstinacy,' it had been called – that by sheer immovability of disposition had bullied success itself into acquiescence. So his worn-out colleagues on the Blue-Yellow board had also acquiesced, and at Lowfields a garage and offices were duly established.