The Dusky Hour (7 page)

“Are you Mr. Oliver Moffatt?” he asked.

“How do you know?” the young man exclaimed, surprised.

“Oh, police, C.I.D., and all that,” Bobby explained airily. “Hullo, where's your pal?” he added.

For the big man had seized the opportunity to disappear, wheeling the motor-cycle before him, and now they heard its engine starting on the path that ran by one end of the copse.

“I'm going too,” said Oliver Moffatt, and began to walk away.

“Half a minute,” Bobby protested. “There are just one or two questions I want to ask. Your friend's name, please, for one thing.”

“Ask him,” snapped Oliver.

“You don't wish to give it?” Bobby inquired.

Oliver only glared.

“Oh, well,” said Bobby, producing his inevitable notebook. “Objection duly noted. Any objection to telling me what the row was about?”

“Yes. Every possible objection.”

“I wonder why?”

“Wonder away.”

“Bad mistake, if I may say so,” remarked Bobby, “to set the police wondering. Never know where their wonders may not end. That affair in the chalk-pit here – you knew that was murder?”

“Murder?” repeated Oliver. “Murder?” he said again.

Bobby waited, hoping for further comment. The young man was clearly troubled, but he said nothing for a time. Then he asked:

“How do you know? Are you sure?”

“Our information,” Bobby said slowly, “is that the dead man had been shot. The pistol used was probably a Colt automatic, .32. We also have information that you are, or have been recently, in possession of a pistol of that make and calibre.”

“Good Lord!” gasped Oliver. “You don't mean you think I did the chap in, do you?”

He was plainly startled and alarmed, even more so than seemed quite natural in one conscious of complete innocence. Bobby waited again, hoping more might be said. But after a moment or two of troubled silence all that came from the young man was an angry exclamation:

“You've no right to say things like that!”

“All I've said,” Bobby pointed out, “is that you are reported to have had in your possession a pistol similar to that with which it is believed a man was shot close to this spot yesterday afternoon. Do you care to say if that is correct?”

“Dad has a Colt automatic,” Noll admitted. “I haven't seen it for months.”

“You have often used it?”

“I did a bit of potting at rats and so on at one time.”

“Not lately?”

“No. It got a bit damaged; a spanner or something fell on it in the garage; dented the barrel and knocked the foresight crooked. You could fire it all right, but not much good for taking aim. It'll be in the house somewhere.”

“It's been looked for but can't be found,” Bobby said. “Any objection to my making sure you haven't it on you?”

Without waiting for any such objection to be made, he ran his hand lightly over the other's clothing, making sure Noll had on his person nothing large, hard, and heavy, like an automatic, and at the same time keeping a wary eye open for any sudden punch that might come his way, for he had acquired a considerable respect for the young man's gift for rapid hitting. However, nothing happened. Noll, taken entirely by surprise, submitted meekly, and Bobby stepped back, out of fistic range.

“That's all right,” he said, and added warmly: “Thanks so much for letting me make sure.”

“I didn't,” snapped Noll with some truth. “And look here, I've had enough of this. I'm not going to answer any more of your damn' questions.”

He turned his back and marched resolutely away. Bobby made no attempt to follow. He felt it would be useless to ask any more questions just then, and he had at any rate assured himself that Noll was not carrying the missing automatic on his person. Besides, a few hours' reflection often made people much more willing to talk than they had seemed at first. Opening his notebook, Bobby jotted down the number of the motor-cycle he had been careful to memorise.

“Won't be difficult to trace that young man,” he told himself, and then went back to where he had left his cycle and rode on towards Way Side.

In spite of the delay, it still wanted a few minutes to ten when he reached his destination, and, as there was no sign of any car standing in front of the house, he concluded the chief constable had not yet arrived. He hesitated for a moment and then went round to find the back entrance. He had an idea that a little information about Mr. Hayes, who had made his money in America, and for directions to reach whose house the dead man had inquired, might be of interest, and might be gleaned better than by direct questioning through a little quiet gossip with the domestic staff.

Way Side was a comparatively small, modern house. The servants' entrance was at the side, opposite a small detached building Bobby guessed was the garage. Here, leaning against the wall, was a motor-cycle, and Bobby, turning the lamp of his own cycle upon it, saw at once that the registration number was that of the machine on which the big and truculent young man of Battling Copse had ridden away.

Bobby stood for a moment or two wondering what that could mean. It could hardly have been Mr. Hayes himself, he supposed. But Mr. Hayes might have a son, perhaps, or it might be merely a visitor. He would have to try to find out.

He knocked at the back door. An elderly woman appeared; and Bobby explained that he was a sergeant of police, and asked if he could wait there for the arrival of Colonel Warden, the chief constable, who was on his way to call on Mr. Hayes. Bobby did not mention Scotland Yard. He felt that if he could be accepted as a member of the local force his visit would cause less excitement, and the Way Side staff be less impressed and perhaps more willing to gossip.

He was at once invited in and hospitably conducted to a small sitting-room he gathered was that set aside for the use of the servants. He was also offered a glass of sherry, but this, with many thanks, he begged to be allowed to decline, on the ostensible grounds that he was on duty, discipline was strict, and the chief constable ferocious in enforcing it. He regretted his devotion to discipline the less as a whisper he overheard made him darkly suspect that it was the cooking sherry he was to have been offered, since all other wine, apparently, was in the cellar and “master took care to put the keys in his pocket, the old screw, when he cleared her out.”

Bobby guessed that the “her” referred to Mrs. O'Brien, the former housekeeper, of whose quarrel with Mr. Hayes, and subsequent dismissal, Ena Moffatt had spoken. A judicious inquiry or two confirmed this, and confirmed, too, the tale Ena had told. Evidently there had been a first-class row between Mr. Hayes and Mrs. O'Brien, ending in a slap across the face for him and a not unnatural dismissal on the spot for her. All this had happened the day before, between tea and dinner, and Mrs. O'Brien had departed accordingly in a whirl of tears and indignation, breathing, too, many dark threats of vengeance.

The elderly woman who had admitted Bobby, and whom he now knew to be Mrs. Marshall, the cook, added cryptically:

“If she hadn't gone when she did, she'd have stayed.”

“That's right,” said a brisk, good-looking young woman who had now joined them, and who it was had suggested the cooking sherry as a way out of the impasse caused by Mr. Hayes's having impounded the late housekeeper's keys.

She had been introduced as Miss Edwards, the house-parlourmaid, and was addressed as “Aggie” by Mrs. Marshall. The only other resident member of the staff was apparently a young man named Ned Thoms, the “chauffeur-gardener,” the establishment running much to hyphens and Mrs. Marshall having already tacked “housekeeper” on to her former title of cook, so that she was provisionally “cook-housekeeper.” In addition, a woman came in every day from a cottage about a mile distant to help in the rougher work.

Both women, Aggie and Mrs. Marshall, would have been more willing to talk about Mrs. O'Brien's sensational exit from their midst but for their curiosity to know the purpose of the chief constable's approaching visit they were already associating with the chalk-pit tragedy every visiting tradesman or van-driver all day had been eager to tell them about. But, before the conversation changed, Bobby learned that Mrs. Marshall's cryptic remark that if Mrs. O'Brien had not gone when she did she would have stayed was less a truism and a platitude than an expression of a firm belief that Mrs. O'Brien had meant marriage, that the new hat, the ostensible cause of the quarrel, had been intended to clinch the matter, that Mr. Hayes's ridicule of it had been a symbolic refusal, and the slap across the face an acknowledgment of defeat.

“Meant he knew what she was up to and he wasn't having any, and so she let him have it,” explained Mrs. Marshall, still inclining to the cryptic.

Miss Edwards had been punctuating Mrs. Marshall's observations with knowing little giggles that Bobby was sure meant there was more to the story than had yet come out. But Mrs. Marshall discouraged them with answering frowns; and Bobby thought it best to let that lie for the time, and to confirm their expressed supposition that the chief constable's coming visit was in connection with the death of the unknown motorist whose body had been found in the chalk-pit not far away.

“It's possible he was on his way to visit someone in the neighbourhood,” Bobby told them, “so the colonel wants to find out if any of the residents knew him. We've been round by Sevens already, because we heard Mr. Moffatt had two American gentlemen staying with him.”

“Did they know him?” Mrs. Marshall asked.

“Didn't seem to, but they are to have a look at the body tomorrow in case they do.”

“Oo-ooo,” said Aggie, shuddering. “How awful like.”

“The colonel seems to have an idea Mr. Bennett – that's his name, we think; the motorist's, I mean – was either an American or else had been over there,” observed Bobby. “Mr. Hayes is an American gentleman, too, isn't he?”

“Oh, no, he's a Londoner, he is,” Mrs. Marshall answered.

“America's where he made his money,” interposed Aggie. “He often talks about it. I've heard him at table. He says it's a lovely country; he says America for making money, England for spending it. That's why he's come home, he says.”

“He'll be pleased to see your gentleman,” Mrs. Marshall said to Bobby – this expression he gathered, and thought it a very nice one, referring to Colonel Warden. “He's always saying how good the English police are, and you know you can trust them, and not like them over there where anyone can be kidnapped in their beds any night almost.”

“Oo-ooo,” said Aggie tremulously, but all the same a little as if she felt the experience might not be without its interesting side.

“As all can see for theirselves on the pictures,” added Mrs. Marshall. “I don't know how they ever dare go to bed.”

“I'm sure I don't either, Mrs. Marshall,” said Aggie, but again a little as if she would have risked it all the same.

“Very nice Mr. Hayes feels like that; means a lot on both sides when people are friendly to the police and feel they can trust them,” observed Bobby. “Mr. Hayes isn't scared of burglars, then?”

Mrs. Marshall went pale at the thought of burglars, and said the very idea of such gave her quite a turn. Aggie opined that it would take a good deal to scare Mr. Hayes.

“Look at the way he stood up to Mrs. O'Brien,” she said in tones that suggested that for her part she would far rather meet half a dozen burglars than one Mrs. O'Brien.

“Formidable lady, Mrs. O'Brien?” Bobby suggested.

Mrs. Marshall admitted it. Miss Aggie mentioned that Mrs. O'Brien stood near six feet. Mrs. Marshall remarked reminiscently that once a carter delivering goods had tried to be cheeky. It had been a fair treat to see Mrs. O'Brien reach for the rolling-pin and see him go off down the drive in such a scare as never was.

“He's little and thin and quiet, Mr. Hayes,” said Aggie, “and she would have made twice him and to spare, but after she lost her temper and slapped him – well, all in a twitter, she was, and glad no worse happened to her than told to get out. There's a way he has of looking at times makes you go all crawly up and down the back, like when you see you've just nearly gone and been and trod on one of them big spiders or there's a rat about might run up under your dress if you didn't mind – Oo-ooo.”

“Be quiet, Aggie. I don't know how you can think of such horrors,” exclaimed Mrs. Marshall, and poked the fire for protection.

“Oh, I don't mean it isn't all right if you do what he says,” protested Aggie.

“Well, he's the master, and good wages, too, if distrustful like, and keeps things locked up the way a real gentleman wouldn't; but, then, likely that comes from living in foreign parts,” said Mrs. Marshall, for whom evidently foreign parts excused much.

“Just as well not to be nervous when you live so far in the country,” Bobby said. “He's not like Mr. Moffatt, over at Sevens. He doesn't keep a pistol by him, just in case?”

“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Marshall.

“Yes, he does, Mrs. Marshall,” said Aggie. “There's two in a drawer in his bedroom. I saw them when I was tidying up one morning. Gave me quite a turn. It's a drawer he generally keeps locked, but that morning it wasn't.”

“Well, you didn't ought to have opened it,” said Mrs. Marshall. “Mrs. O'Brien would have given you fair what for if she had known.”

Aggie tossed her head, and pouted, and Bobby guessed that fear of a rebuke from the formidable but departed Mrs. O'Brien had probably been her reason for not mentioning her discovery before. Bobby observed that gentlemen living in the country often liked to have a pistol by them in case of emergency, and tried to find out if the two Aggie had seen had been revolvers or automatics. But she had no idea of the difference, and could give no description of the weapons. She had, she explained, shut the drawer again in a hurry, since you never knew “when them things mightn't go off and kill someone.”