The Ginger Cat Mystery (16 page)

“It's no use, Roly. I wish you wouldn't plead with me.”

“Stella, I implore you to change your mind. I'll stand by you and take all the blame if you'll only consent to marry me. Can't you see it's the only effective way out of the situation?”

“It's a heroic suggestion on your part, Roly, but I cannot consent. I've made up my mind. It wouldn't be fair to drag you into the mess. I'll face the music alone.”

“Think it over before you act, Stella. I'm showing you the one way out and you are foolish to refuse to take it.”

“I've done all the thinking I'm going to do.”

“Am I to take that as final?”

“Absolutely final!”

Here the pair got out of definite earshot but the conversation continued and it appeared as if Carstairs' words became almost angry in tone, for Miss Cornell sought refuge in sobbing which was distinctly audible. Vereker, satisfied that they had almost passed out of the wood, regained the path and made his way rapidly to Marston Manor.

He entered the formal garden by the door in the north wall and saw to his surprise Heather seated alone on the oak seat by the lily pool. He was quietly smoking his pipe and appeared the picture of contentment.

“Well, Inspector,” said Vereker as he came up and took a seat beside his friend. “Any important discoveries?”

“None,” replied Heather.

“You've dragged this pool for the pistol?”

“Yes, we've scraped every inch of the bottom for pistol and missing keys. No luck. Simply ruined the lilies and scared the goldfish off the gold standard. It's only a couple of feet deep and my men took off their boots and socks and paddled in it. Goss said it was a cushy job and very refreshing for the feet. I promised to buy him a tin bucket and a wooden spade if he found the pistol. Where have you been hiding?”

“I've had a long chat with Mr. David Cornell over at the bungalow.”

“What do you make of him? Rather a rum sort of customer in my opinion. I interrogated him about his daughter's relations with young Cornell. He fairly let fly on the subject of his nephew. Thinks he was a young wastrel. The old boy seems to have his wits about him and made some very shrewd remarks on the whole case. He's blind, but he sees more than most men once he gets the hang of the facts.”

“I agree, but I don't quite know what to make of him at the moment. I went into his bungalow thinking he wasn't worth worrying about in this business, but I left with quite a different notion, Heather.”

“Ah!” said Heather with a curious note of surprise in his voice. “You were always good at reading between a man's words. I had a similar experience with him.”

“There's something about David Cornell's knowledge of this case, Heather, that intrigues me,” said Vereker. “He seems to know just a shade too much about the whole business.”

“It puzzled me, too,” replied the inspector, “but his is the type of mind that troubles to draw conclusions from facts. You see, Mr. Vereker, he gets the case minutely described to him, questions the speaker for more details, arranges the facts and begins to think. In a way he resembles yourself. He makes intuitive deductions and, being blind and having nothing much to do, has plenty of time to think things over very carefully. Besides, he's a musician and I'm sure after all my experience that in a way an artist has a peculiar knack of jumping at the truth where men like myself have to climb up to it slowly step by step.”

“First time I've heard you admit it,” said Vereker smiling.

“I'm in the mood, a peculiarly fair mood at the moment. Of course the artist frequently jumps into a nasty mess of error which the practical detective always avoids, but we'll not argue the point. What struck you as unusual about Cornell's ideas?”

“He came to the conclusion that the shot was fired from the music room. Now unless he had a very careful account of the bloodstains, he could hardly arrive at such an opinion. He would have to be certain that there were no bloodstains in the hall or on the lower half-flight of stairs. We know there are no stains on the lower half-flight, but we're not sure there was none in the hall because the maid washed the linoleum before the arrival of the police. He doubtless got his account of the affair from his daughter Stella, and I don't think it likely that that young lady would give her father such a detailed, almost professional, description as would be necessary for him to work out such a theory.”

“He also has an idea that the body was dragged up to the first-storey corridor,” remarked Heather.

“He would strike on that explanation because, like me, he probably thought a man shot in the brain couldn't run up the steps himself. But his reason for coming to such a conclusion was that the murderer wanted to conceal the way he entered the house and left it. As you know, Heather, there must be some point in such a concealment, and the only point I can see is that the murderer wanted to hide the fact that he had possession of the duplicate keys of the music room. Mr. Cornell once had possession of them. Those keys are a very dangerous pointer to a detective. They narrow the question by giving some idea as to the person who could easily get hold of them or had possession of them.”

“Now, Mr. Vereker, you're getting into your old form. I like to hear you talk like that. Anything else?” asked Heather puffing vigorously at his pipe.

“Another point. In talking about the missing weapon he promptly asked me if we had searched the music room.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Heather with some surprise.

“I pulled him up rather too abruptly, I'm afraid. I'm not as clever as you at leading witnesses up the garden. I asked him his reason for putting the question. His reply, Heather, was an amazing one to me. He replied that he had asked it because Mrs. Cornell used to keep an automatic pistol in a drawer of the bureau near the music room door.”

“By Jove, Mr. Vereker, this is the real stuff!” exclaimed Heather. “You naturally wondered why he should drag in Mrs. Cornell's miniature automatic. He couldn't possibly have known that the weapon that had fired the shot was an automatic. He had heard nothing about the nature of the bullet. Only Doctor Redgrave and ourselves know anything about the bullet and Redgrave was particularly cautioned not to mention anything about it. Not that he would in any case. He's a professional man and knows his job better than to talk about such things even in confidence.”

“Exactly, Heather. How could he possibly have known that the murderer had used a miniature automatic? I think Cornell at once saw he had made a dangerous mistake. He went on to talk about a .45 pistol he'd taken out to France and so forth to fling up conversational dust in which to hide his slip. I let him ramble and asked him if he'd ever seen the weapon. He had felt it, was his reply and I promptly produced the one you lent me and asked him if Mrs. Cornell's resembled it. After carefully feeling it, he said it was exactly similar. I've handled your gun very gingerly since because he has left some nice finger-prints on the barrel. You might get these photographed and developed. They may come in useful,” said Vereker and extracting the pistol carefully from his pocket, handed it back to the inspector.

“Everything's useful at times,” commented Heather and placed the weapon in its original cardboard box which he produced from some obscure part of his anatomy.

“I tried to bowl him a body-liner on the pistol business a little later, but he was too wary. Referring to the weapon we want he naively said, ‘You've an idea it was Mrs. Cornell's pistol?' I'm afraid it wasn't too bright an effort to cover up his former mistake, but it showed me clearly that he knew he'd made a mistake and was eager to retrieve it. Then after further polite conversation he boldly broached the subject of suspects in the case and jokingly said that our list probably contained his daughter and himself.”

“Shrewd chap,” remarked Heather. “If you're fishing for information there's something very disarming about a blunt question. It has a knack of toppling over a man's finer judgment.”

“I must admit it was embarrassing, but I'm rather good at slipping round the direct thrust. He saw I was going to be diplomatic and then gratuitously supplied reasons why his daughter should be one of our chief suspects. It was a novel experience for me, Heather. It was the first time I'd encountered this bold type of gambit. He may have thought it amazingly clever, but its only effect was to rouse my suspicions all the more. He was trading on the assumption that no man would supply damaging suggestions to the police for suspecting his daughter unless he knew his daughter was absolutely above suspicion. I didn't rise to it and he learned nothing about how his daughter stood in our eyes. He tried the same move by giving me a motive why he should be the man who shot Frank Cornell. This was trying a supreme bluff if he had anything to do with his nephew's murder. I was all on my toes to catch every shade of expression on his face, every intonation of his voice…”

“Did you learn anything?” asked Heather with some impatience.

“There was something in his whole attitude which struck me as false and artificial. An absolutely innocent man might do it as a joke, but it's not a subject that any innocent man would joke about. A guilty man would have to be a supreme actor to be natural enough to carry it off successfully. Of course Cornell was only toying with an amateur like myself, but the stratagem was weak. As you know, Heather, jocularity is a very common resort of the criminal. His conceit in his astuteness leads him to try this bluff and it's a feeble one to try on any experienced police officer. The younger the man is in crime, the greater his readiness to undervalue his official opponent's intelligence.”

“Thanks, Mr. Vereker,” interrupted Heather complacently. “Not often we get such a nice pat on the back. You've certainly got your teeth in Mr. Cornell's trousers and he's a poor, harmless, blind man. Not quite fair but as I've got him down in my bad books, I'll not blame you on this occasion. Did he give himself away on any other point?”

“Be patient, Heather. After all this talk which, to put it briefly, seemed to me only a move on Mr. David Cornell's part to see how his daughter and he stood with regard to us in the business, something made a scratching noise at the door. Cornell rose and opened the door, which creaked loudly on its hinges, and in walked a fine grey Persian cat.”

“I thought you were going to say that the ginger tabby made its bow,” interrupted Heather.

“You're too eager, Inspector, and jump too hastily to conclusions. The grey cat doesn't concern us, but here's a striking detail. After Cornell had opened the door he complained about the grating noise it made on its hinges. Crossing the room to a desk, he took from a drawer an oil can and was going to oil the door hinges when I offered my services. The offer was accepted and I found to my delight that the can was a ‘Three in One' oil can.”

“That's excellent, Mr. Vereker. We both know that the lock of the outer door of the music room was recently oiled with ‘Three in One' oil. It gives point to a very curious remark he made to me. When we were talking about the music room he said the lock and hinges of that door creaked very badly and if he had been the murderer he'd have oiled them thoroughly before trying to enter the house that way, because from the bedrooms over the music room it was easy to hear the music room door opened if the occupants of those bedrooms slept with their windows open.”

“Amazing! It looks as if the man knew every clue we were likely to pick up and was cleverly trying to bluff us off tracing them down to him!” exclaimed Vereker thoroughly perturbed at this piece of information.

“To tell the truth, Mr. Vereker, I'm getting very uncomfortable about Mr. David Cornell. He worries me in a way I've seldom been worried before and I don't know exactly how I'm going to deal with him.”

“I'm not surprised, Heather. I've reached the point of asking myself how he could possibly have shot a man with such deadly aim in a dark room.”

“Ah, that's the rub!” exclaimed Heather. “But it's getting near lunchtime and I propose we return to Marston and refresh. I've a lot to tell you and I daresay you've got a packet of news for me. We'll discuss things over our grub. We're going to have a roast capon for lunch and an apple pie with real Marston cream, I can't be bothered with business with that staring me in the mind's eye.”

I had another strange experience this morning which I haven't told you about yet, Heather,” said Vereker to the inspector as they sat at lunch.

“I daresay,” said Heather. “There'll be all sorts of little things you're keeping hidden up your sleeve, but to show you I bear no malice I'm going to help you to the liver wing of this lovely bird. When I've finished carving, I'll sit down quietly and listen to your yarn, but not one moment before. I like to make a neat job of carving a capon, so I'll trouble you not to bother me. By the way, they haven't brought in any beer. Now go and get it yourself and save Mrs. Borham the trouble of coming in and interrupting us when we get busy with our discussion.”

Vereker disappeared and when he returned he found that Heather had completed his task and was sitting waiting for him.

“Now we're O.K.,” said the inspector. “Step on the gas and let her rip. What was your strange experience?”

“After I left the bungalow this morning,” said Vereker, “I cut across the paddock and was making my way through the wood when I heard voices. Shortly afterwards two figures came into sight in the distance. They were Carstairs and Miss Cornell. They were talking very earnestly to one another and didn't spot me. I was anxious not to meet them at the moment because I wanted to get to Marston Manor and catch you before you left, so I just stepped off the path and hid behind a thick clump of hazels while they passed. I naturally kept my ears open to hear what they were saying.”