Police at the Funeral (21 page)

The Inspector was unimpressed. ‘If there's a sound alibi for that twenty-five minutes, of course, any flimsy case we may have got against him falls flat,' he said. ‘At the least hint of trouble, though, I suppose the family will brief a good man for the inquest. Do you know, Campion, in my opinion that's the one point where our judicial system goes to pieces. In a case like this where there's plenty of money, the least hint of trouble and you're up against a K.C. But if there's no money the law takes its course in its own sweet way with some young pup of a barrister defending at the trial, although there is always a good man for the Crown. I don't like this case. I wish I was in my own district. They're first-class fellows down here, but you can see that they don't like the scandal in the town any more than your young friend the lawyer does. What gives you the idea that William Faraday visited a pub on his way home, even supposing this preposterous amnesia story is true?'

‘On the first occasion that Uncle William experienced this distressing phenomenon,' said Mr Campion, deliberately ignoring the last part of the Inspector's remark, ‘he found himself standing outside the Roman Catholic church with a glass in his hand. In other words, he had walked into a public house, ordered a drink and walked out with the glass in his hand. After all, amnesia is a remote form of paralysis, isn't it? The mind rejects memory, often because memory is unpleasant. Memory means restraint. Uncle William loses his memory and loses his restraints. He satisfies his natural desire. He has his drink.'

‘All very pretty,' said the Inspector. ‘But you'll have a job reconciling that with the bath story.'

Mr Campion was silent for some seconds. ‘I should like to know how much the defunct Andrew had to do with that incident,' he said. ‘I think we are both lucky in being spared Andrew's aquaintance, Stanislaus.'

The Inspector grunted. ‘If you ask me, we're darned unlucky coming to this starchy place at all,' he said. ‘I wish I was on a good straightforward burglary. Well, you've brought me a lot of interesting information and spoilt it by taking all the guts out of it. Wherever we look we're met by that cussed conjuror. Someone's doing devilish clever tricks.'

Mr Campion nodded. ‘There's something very queer inside that house,' he said. ‘Something very, very queer.'

‘Madness,' said the Inspector shortly. ‘Madness with an “ism” of some sort. This is a job for a psychologist, I'm sure of that. That's the trouble. What a chemist says is evidence. What a psychologist says isn't. When they tried Palmer, chemical facts seem to have been largely a matter of opinion: that's where psychology stands today.'

‘Returning to the question of fair dealing,' remarked Mr Campion. ‘Have you found Cousin George?'

‘That's another impossible job,' the Inspector grumbled. ‘We've published a description and an appeal for him to come forward, but of course without result. Then he has no known address, no one seems to know much about him down here, he doesn't seem to have lodged in the town. All we know is that he was in London on Thursday. I say, no wonder he was off like a shot when he saw the girl. She behaved rather queerly about him, though. Personally, I think her behaviour has been rather queer all along. Oh, I've heard about the scandal,' he went on hastily before Campion could speak, ‘and I realize that that may account for more in this case than it would in my family, for instance.'

Both men were silent for some time. Then the Inspector relit his pipe.

‘All this loose thinking is very irregular, you know,' he said, grinning suddenly at Campion. ‘We shall concentrate on the gun. We've found a couple of witnesses who heard the shot, by the way. A man and his wife living in a cottage on the Grantchester Road say they heard a shot at about five minutes to one p.m. on the Sunday. The man says he went to the back door, but the meadows were all under a ground mist and he saw nothing. He says it was a “thick day”, whatever that may mean. It seems to be a local term for spring weather. What
a time for a murder, though, eh? Midday on a Sunday; everybody at home eating.'

‘Returning to the question of Cousin George,' persisted Mr Campion, ‘I take it that you don't consider him important?'

Stanislaus Oates scowled. ‘Not very,' he said. ‘Suppose we do find him? Suppose that by chance he walks into our arms, what then? We can't arrest him. We can only ask him where he was on Sunday at the time of the crime. Unless he's an absolute fool he'll have a satisfactory answer for that. Besides, why should he have anything to do with it at all? He wasn't known to have any grudge against Andrew. He was in the house for about an hour on the night before the first murder, but he hasn't been seen anywhere near it since. Just because he was in the habit of holding up his aunt for a pound or two from time to time it doesn't follow that he was a potential murderer. No, Campion, you can't get away from it. This was an inside job. There was nothing accidental about either killing. They were deliberately planned crimes. Someone had good reason to want both those people out of the way. I may be wrong, but I have a feeling that that person is still at work. You look out for yourself. The mind that is responsible for this little lot isn't going to have its plans upset by any nicely-spoken little gent in horn-rimmed spectacles. There's your gipsy's warning.'

Mr Campion did not answer for some moments. The Inspector's words had driven him back in spite of himself to his theory of earlier that morning.

‘I'll come down with you and see the scene of the crime, if you don't mind,' he said at last, rising to his feet. ‘I never like to miss an opportunity of watching the old war-horse going into action.'

But although they walked for some considerable distance alone together, Mr Campion said nothing of the question that was weighing on his mind. Had Mrs Faraday over-estimated her autocracy in her own domain and ordered the execution of Andrew Seeley for crime or crimes as yet unknown?

‘
IT'S VERY IRREGULAR
you coming along like this,' the Inspector grumbled. They had turned out of the new road, crossed a maze of narrow streets and now took the path across the meadows to the river. ‘Very irregular,' he repeated gloomily. ‘I don't want to sound ungrateful, old man,' he added hastily, ‘and by all means come along. I only mention it because there'll be Bowditch down here and one or two other fellows.'

Mr Campion smiled. ‘That's all right,' he said. ‘I'll efface myself as much as possible. You go right ahead. Pretend I'm not there. If you do it well enough the others will think they're seeing things and that always adds a little fun to the proceedings.'

There were several plain-clothes men on the banks of the Granta and a uniformed man by the bridge, to say nothing of the one or two hopeful spectators. The prospect was cold and gloomy and served to emphasize the melancholy futility of any further proceedings so far as the unfortunate Andrew Seeley was concerned.

As they approached, one of the raincoated figures came hurrying towards them. This proved to be Detective-Sergeant Bowditch, the Inspector's colleague from the Yard. There was a legend in the Force that Bowditch had been born in a helmet, and he certainly suggested the policeman in mufti more successfully than any man Mr Campion had ever seen. He was tall, squarely built, with a red face and a thick soft black moustache. His small eyes were surrounded by creases and his whole appearance conveyed a quite unwarrantable cheerfulness.

‘Hullo, sir,' he said, and smiled, his face diffused with a delight for which there was no visible cause. He glanced inquiringly at Campion, but receiving no explanation for the young man's presence favoured him also with a welcoming beam. Stanislaus eyed him gloomily.

‘Found anything?' he inquired.

‘No,' said Mr Bowditch, adding still more cheerfully, ‘no. Come down to have a look?'

He did not seem to expect to receive a reply, and went on. ‘We've combed both banks from the willows to the road, and there's not a sign of anything. Of course, it's some time since it happened.'

Stanislaus nodded sourly. ‘I know,' he said. ‘Hullo, what's this?'

The three men glanced down the footpath to where a fourth man was hurrying towards them, something in his hand. The newcomer turned out to be a grey-faced sergeant of the local police, bearing a battered green felt object.

‘I found this under some dead leaves in that bit of copse up there,' he said, pointing to the clump of trees just below the footpath bridge on the south side of the river. ‘I don't know if it's anything of importance, but it was under a pile of leaves and doesn't seem to have been there very long.'

Stanislaus took the exhibit with interest. It was the battered relic of a green trilby hat. Headband and lining were gone and the braid with which the edge of the brim had been bound was frayed.

‘Not the hat the deceased wore to church on the Sunday in question,' said Mr Bowditch jovially. ‘Apart from the fact that the deceased wore a bowler on that occasion, the condition of this hat precludes any such eventuality.'

The Inspector's withering glance had the effect of silencing his subordinate without in any way diminishing his good temper.

‘Anything else of interest?' Stanislaus inquired of the finder of the hat. ‘What's in that hut over there?' He pointed to a little shanty standing among the haze of budding leaves in the copse.

‘There's nothing there, sir, save for a few bits of sacks, dead leaves and so on.' The man was unenthusiastic. ‘Seems to have been used as a storage place for tools and a shelter for the workmen clearing the wood at some time or other. Shall I verify that, sir?'

‘Oh no, no need. I'll come and have a look later. Thank you very much, Davidson.'

As the man went off, Stanislaus handed over the battered hat to Bowditch.

‘You can take charge of that,' he said. ‘I don't think it's anything to do with this business. I shall make a point of seeing where it was found, though. You say there's absolutely no sign from the road to the willows to show where the body was put into the water? Of course it might have floated down for miles, though the cottager says he heard the shot from his direction.'

‘That's so,' said Mr Bowditch happily. ‘But if you'll step along and have a look at this stream, sir, you'll see right away what occurred to me.'

As they moved on down the footpath towards the little humpbacked stone bridge, he continued.

‘You'll see,' he said, ‘the current is slow at the sides but swift in the centre. It is also comparatively deep here. Well,' he continued, still with his smile, ‘you see what I mean? In order to get a body to drift any way you'd have to place it in the swift part of the stream. In other words, if I was doing it myself I'd drop it over this here bridge.
If
I was doing it,' he said, and broke into a roar of laughter, which he speedily suppressed at an aggrieved glance from Inspector Oates.

There was obviously a good deal of sense in Mr Bowditch's observation. Mr Campion, considering the scene, came to the same conclusion himself. He also recollected Mr Cheetoo's dilations on the same subject. There was, as the observant student had noticed, a strong eddy just below the bridge which would have held any floating object for some considerable time if it had not succeeded in sweeping it into the bank. It was evident that the Inspector himself was inclined to take Mr Bowditch's line of reasoning, for he devoted his attention for some time to the bridge.

This was of the stone humpbacked variety, high enough to permit a small boat to pass beneath it when the river was at its normal level. It was topped by a low stone parapet on either side, and the surface of this the Inspector scrutinized carefully. After some moments of earnest contemplation he turned away regretfully.

‘There's nothing,' he said. ‘Of course. What can you expect? I suppose this bridge is used fairly often. Children run along the parapet. There is no moss, and any traces of mud, blood or dust that might have been left will have gone long ago in the
downpour we've had in the last ten days. Come on. We'll take a look at the hut.'

The hut, which lay fifteen yards or so from the footpath and possibly thirty from the bank, turned out to be one of those temporary structures which clearance men occasionally leave behind them. It was composed mainly of faggots, and roofed with sticks covered with a sack or two. It was quite sound, however, and the ground inside was dry and hard. The Inspector paused at the entrance and peered in.

One or two matted sacks stiff with mud lay in a corner, but for the rest the place was empty. There was no sign that it had been disturbed since its constructors had abandoned it.

‘No traces of any kind?' the Inspector inquired.

‘No footprints,' said Mr Bowditch joyously. ‘But then there wouldn't be on this stuff. There's no reason to suppose that the deceased came up here, is there?'

The stiff wiry twitch outside the hut betrayed nothing. It did not even show any traces of their own passage over it, in spite of the dampness of the ground. The Inspector's gloom increased.

‘That hat,' he said, ‘where was that found? This is a waste of time, Bowditch.'

‘That's right,' said the red-faced man. ‘Still, it's all got to be done. Never overlook anything, and you can't miss the thing you're looking for. That's the idea, isn't it? The beautiful hat which our colleague discovered was located at a point over here. It was buried by somebody, and I should say he knew best.' He glanced happily at the ruin in his hand.

They returned to the footpath again and walked on for a dozen yards or so, pausing at last before a heap of newly-turned leaves, wet and pungent in the fine rain which had now begun to fall.

‘There you are,' he said. ‘I think Davidson is right, too. This hadn't been here very long. It was buried under the leaves, not covered fairy-tale fashion by robins and such. What does that tell you, sir?'