Close Quarters (12 page)

At this very pertinent question all individual trickles of conversation ceased as though they had been turned off at the main.

‘Not yet,' said Hazlerigg lightly.

‘Come, Mrs. Judd,' said the Dean hastily, ‘you mustn't talk of arresting. You're making us all quite nervous. Besides, the inspector is off duty for the moment. Here's one of your favourite chocolate cakes. Let me cut you a nice large slice.' He cut an enormous wedge, and with Mrs. Judd effectually gagged conversation again became general.

Dr. Smallhorn cornered Dr. Mickie and lost no time in expounding his latest grievance to him. ‘Boys, in my experience,' he was explaining, ‘are very sensitive – I'm sure you'll agree with me there, Dr. Mickie. These disturbances of the last fortnight have had a very deleterious effect on discipline.'

‘Oh, I don't know,' said Dr. Mickie, who on principle always disagreed with his scholastic colleague. ‘I've found them very well behaved lately. What do you say, Halliday?'

‘What do I say to what?' asked Halliday.

‘I was saying,' said Dr. Smallhorn, ‘that I've been finding the boys unusually troublesome lately. Only the other day I detected one of them passing a scurrilous note to his neighbour in class.'

‘Well, look what a bad example their elders and betters have been setting them,' said Halliday. ‘You ought to be thankful they haven't started murdering each other.'

‘Really,' said Dr. Smallhorn stiffly, ‘I think that's hardly a proper subject for a joke …'

‘I racked my brains for the best part of an hour,' Canon Trumpington was explaining to Canon and Mrs. Fox, ‘but still it eluded me. A quadruped of South America discovered in half a swamp with its tail turned up.'

‘Oh, dear,' said Mrs. Fox, ‘I'm afraid I'm dreadfully stupid about crossword puzzles. Herbert is very clever at them. He once won a pack of playing cards from the
Daily Telegraph,
didn't you, dear?'

‘What was the clue, did you say, Trumpington? A South American quadruped discovered in half a swamp with its tail turned up. Let me see now. No – I give it up.'

‘Quagga,' said Canon Trumpington, with mild triumph. Half of quagmire (that's a word for swamp, Mrs. Fox), “quag” – with the addition of the last two letters reversed – the tail turned up, you see?'

‘Well, just fancy that,' said Mrs. Fox. ‘Let me press you to another slice of this cake …'

‘I was pleasantly surprised to discover this afternoon,' said Dr. Smallhorn to the Dean, ‘that Inspector Hazlerigg is thinking of sending his little boy to our school in the near future. He is young, of course – only six and a half. But better too soon than too late. And young Essington Fox was scarcely seven when he came, and look how splendidly he's getting on. I was telling his father, the day before yesterday, he conjugated “rego,” active and passive, without a single mistake.'

‘That's more than I could do,' said the Dean with conviction …

‘I hear Canon Pritchard has passed away,' said Canon Beech-Thompson to Canon Trumpington. ‘It was indeed sad news. Such a healthy person. In the midst of life we are in death.'

‘He will be a loss to the diocese,' said Trumpington. ‘How did it happen?'

‘It was very sudden, I understand. A stroke of some sort during service … ah, Bloss, we were discussing the sad news about Canon Pritchard.'

‘We mustn't grieve,' said Canon Bloss firmly. ‘It was a very beautiful way to die. Far from making us sad,' he added sternly, ‘such an example should inspire all of us. He was a martyr. A martyr to his sense of duty.'

He bestowed a severe glance on the company and glided majestically away.

‘What a splendid expert witness he would make,' murmured Hazlerigg to the Dean.

‘Bloss is really a very likeable person,' said the Dean, ‘if you are prepared to discount his alarming manner. Once or twice I've even suspected him of possessing a sense of humour. He lost his only son in the war. I don't think anyone knew how much that boy meant to him. From that moment he froze. I wasn't here at the time, but I knew Bloss as a young man at Oxford and I can assure you that the change must have been astounding. Oh, goodbye, Mrs. Judd, I'm so glad you were able to get here. I hope you've enjoyed yourself.'

‘Do you think,' he added, when Mrs. Judd had gone, ‘that there was anything in that story of hers about a man watching her?'

‘I'm afraid it was one of my policemen,' explained Hazlerigg ruefully. ‘He might have had more sense than to spend the whole time loafing round Mrs. Judd's front gate. Of course, he wasn't watching her. Just keeping an eye on things generally.'

‘But you're not expecting any more trouble, Inspector?' Hazlerigg reassured him on this point, and since most of the guests had gone took his leave.

Halliday lingered to the last. He had had an idea, born of something he had heard during the course of the afternoon. Of course, it didn't do to appear too inquisitive, but like the rest of the Close – perhaps even more so than most – he was bitten with the desire to find things out for himself. So he waited until the last guest had taken his leave and then approached the Dean – albeit a trifle shamefacedly.

‘I say,' he said. ‘Please don't think I'm being the complete busybody – I really have got a good reason for asking. Have you still got that anonymous letter – the last one, I mean – the one that came on the Monday evening?'

‘How in the world,' said the Dean, genuinely surprised, ‘did you hear about that? I have told no one except the police.'

‘I'm afraid everyone knows, though,' said Halliday. ‘Hubbard saw it, and he told Hinkey's gardener, and Hinkey's gardener told Morgan, and Mrs. Parvin heard Morgan telling Parvin—'

‘Say no more. We could hardly have gained wider publicity by publishing it in
The Times
.'

‘It is rather awful,' agreed Halliday, ‘how these things get about. But, harking back, I wondered if you had kept the original.'

The Dean looked a little confused. He appeared to be debating something with himself.

‘As a matter of fact,' he said at last, ‘though I had to hand the original to the police – I believe they wanted to test it for fingerprints and so on – I was so struck by its curious appearance that I made a copy of it; it's a tracing.' Seeing that Halliday looked a trifle surprised at this admission the Dean added, ‘In my younger days I was rather a student of handwriting – I was under Dr. Cross, the great calligraphist at Oxford, and I read a good many books on the subject. I used to practise on my friends, reading character from handwriting – just a parlour trick, really. But when I saw that note there was something in it that struck me as peculiar – you see what I mean? It was even more marked in the original. It is definitely an educated hand – and yet definitely unformed. It might very well have been written by a person possessing a good neat fist which he was anxious to disguise.'

‘Or else'—there was a note of suppressed excitement in Halliday's voice—'it might have been written by a—'

He broke off suddenly.

‘Is there someone at the door?'

The Dean, mastering an uncomfortable sensation in the pit of his stomach, walked firmly across the room and threw the door open. The passage outside was quite empty.

‘Sorry,' said Halliday. ‘It must have been my imagination.'

‘It wasn't imagination,' said the Dean. ‘I thought I heard something myself. I expect it was Benjamin Disraeli scratching to be let in. What about a game of chess? We're too late for Evensong, anyway.'

With which sedate amusement they passed the next hour and a half.

When Halliday let himself out of the Dean's front door it was already quite dark. A soft but persistent wind was rustling the leaves of the old plane-trees as he threw a leg across the low wall and started on the short cut back to his house over the precinct lawns. Despite the darkness he had taken that particular route so many times that his instinct had recorded every step of it and reproduced it without conscious effort on his part. Here he swerved automatically to the left to skirt the memorial cedar of Lebanon (planted in honour of the late king's jubilee and stunted at birth by Canon Beech-Thompson inadvertently sitting on it in the dark). Twenty more paces now and his footsteps would ring out on the asphalt path from the north-west corner. Here it comes. Four steps to cross it. One, two, three, four.

At that moment a most unpleasant thing happened. A second after his fourth footstep had rapped out on the path, in the silence which followed he heard a fifth step. It certainly wasn't his. Someone had crossed the path behind him.

He didn't hesitate for a moment; he started to run. He couldn't tell whether the pounding noise he heard was the sound of pursuit or simply the beating of the blood in his ears. A second later he had crossed the path at the corner of the west wall. And here for a moment he slowed down to listen. If anyone was after him he would hear them crossing the asphalt. The silence was complete. Halliday slowed to a walk. His imagination must be playing tricks, he thought angrily. And yet – he
had
heard something. It was with a feeling of relief that he reached and opened the gate.

His extra sense must have been working overtime that evening, for as his hand touched the gate it caused him, for no good reason at all, to step quickly to the right. The result was that the savage blow which was aimed at his head only grazed his left shoulder. Even in the pain and shock of the moment, what chiefly astonished him was the ferocity of the attack. For a moment his assailant loomed in front of him, a dim seen shape of menace. He threw up his left arm; in the same instant he shouted. The shout saved his life.

As the second blow landed on his forearm a light flared up. Canon Trumpington had heard the shout and, flinging open his front door, came charging gallantly down the front path. He found Halliday leaning painfully over the wall nursing a throbbing arm. In a few seconds he had his story and was helping him towards his house. As they went he kept a careful watch over his free shoulder and grasped his stout walking-stick with tremendous determination. The assailant, however, had disappeared as silently as he had come.

A phone call to the Bear brought Hazlerigg on to the scene, but he quickly came to the sensible decision that no good purpose would be effected by trampling over the ground in the dark. He therefore returned to the police station and arranged for two constables to be on duty in the Close until the morning. He was taking no chances.

12

BREAKING AN ALIBI AND CATCHING A TARTAR

Friday morning and Melchester awoke to another fine day – the third in succession. But now the sunlight had a hard quality and edge to it.

Hazlerigg got up before seven and made his way to the Close. He found a bored constable, who reported that everything was exceedingly (not to say excessively) quiet. Dismissing him, he set about a methodical search which, after half an hour, had revealed absolutely nothing.

Halliday's assailant – pursuing his old technique, thought Hazlerigg – had apparently not trodden on the grass at all. The turf was soft enough, even after two fine days, to show distinct traces where Halliday had stepped off the verge and then staggered back on to it again. There was a little dried blood on the top bar of the gate. That was all.

He simply stood on the road and sloshed at him with a stick as he came through the gate, thought Hazlerigg. Safe, simple, and confoundedly unhelpful.

He cast about for a further quarter of an hour but without much hope of result. In fact, he was really killing time until he could decently knock up Halliday and get his story. Knowing the aftereffects of shock he expected to find him confined to his bed. He was therefore surprised and a little disgruntled when Halliday rode up on his bicycle with his cassock over his arm.

‘I'm a bit stiff,' he confessed, ‘but I had an early service in the town. It's wonderful how it takes your mind off your own troubles if you have something that's got to be done.'

‘If everyone acted on those lines,' said Hazlerigg, ‘life would be so much easier. Now tell me—'

Halliday told him.

‘I see,' said Hazlerigg. ‘You didn't by any chance recognise him?'

‘He was tall – I think. And fairly massive, or does everyone look larger at night?'

‘They do, rather. Male sex?'

‘Definitely – and bareheaded. Wearing some sort of coat turned, up at the neck.'

Hazlerigg said, ‘Tell me, Mr. Halliday, why do you think you were attacked?'

Halliday grinned.

‘This is going to be awkward. If you really want to know, I think that it all happened because of something I said. Something rather silly. And if that's true – mind you,
if
that's true, I've got a very fair idea of who it was that attacked me last night. But that's not to say that the person who attacked me was the one that killed poor old Appledown.'

‘But look here—'

‘I know what you're going to say, sir. But it's no good.'

‘If you know anything, it's your duty—'

‘No, it isn't,' said Halliday, firmly but respectfully. ‘Because I don't know anything. What I suspect is my own business,'

‘You may be running a considerable risk.'

‘I don't think so. But if I must, I must.'

‘All right,' said Hazlerigg. ‘Don't say I didn't warn you.' He went home to breakfast and found Pollock conscientiously bolting his toast.

Hazlerigg had been thinking over the curious attitude adopted by the victim of the last night's attack. He perceived, on second thoughts, that it might prove useful.

‘If,' he explained, ‘he really is on to somebody, and somebody thinks that Halliday suspects him, and thinks further that Halliday has explained his suspicions to us then obviously there's no further object in trying to lay Halliday out. If, on the other hand, somebody thinks that Halliday is keeping his suspicions to himself he may have another whack at him, in which case we've only to keep an eye on Halliday and use him as bait. No. Funnily enough the thought of enacting the role of the cheese in the mousetrap doesn't seem to worry him.'

Hazlerigg paused, poured himself out another cup of coffee and, addressing the ceiling rather than his subordinate, added: ‘Let's have a frank opinion, Sergeant. How do you think we're doing?'

‘We've done a lot of work,' said Pollock slowly, ‘and we've eliminated a lot of possibilities.'

‘Don't damn us all with faint praise.'

‘We've opened up a good many trails—'

‘I know. Explored every avenue. Like the politicians.'

‘But after a promising beginning they've all turned into blind alleys.'

‘Very neatly put,' sighed Hazlerigg. ‘Very neat, indeed. Mickie and Prynne and Malthus. So many picturesque cul-de-sacs – or culs-desac. And the sum total of it all is this. Every single suspect for our original time of the murder has practically been eliminated himself. There's only one answer to that. We must have been wrong about the time. Simple, isn't it?'

‘But we can't have been wrong – we had the whole thing beautifully watertight. Appledown was dead before the rain started at ten minutes past eight …'

‘Agreed.'

‘And alive at a minute or so after eight.'

‘Who says so?'

‘The whole choir saw him coming out of his front door.'

‘You might as well hear,' said Hazlerigg, ‘what is now my opinion of that episode. They saw a figure which they took to be the head verger for two good and sufficient reasons. Because he had come out of Appledown's front door and because he was wearing Appledown's type of coat and rather noticeable hat. That's all. The figure they saw had its back turned to them and was engaged in pinning a note on to the doorpost. A very natural action for the owner of a house, you see, and leading to the assumption that the figure so acting
was in fact
the owner of the house. Also, it was an excuse for keeping the back turned. Clever.'

‘But surely, it was incredibly risky; one of the boys—'

‘None of the boys saw his face, if that's what you're going to say. I know, because I asked them yesterday.'

Pollock was rapidly assimilating this new notion.

‘If it wasn't Appledown, who was it?'

I'm afraid there's no doubt about that,' said Hazlerigg grimly. ‘Just ask yourself a few questions. Who had the most obvious motive for killing Appledown – jealousy of a scandal with his wife on the one hand and personal advancement on the other? Who went to see Appledown at twenty-five minutes to eight that evening, and would have conveniently forgotten to mention it if Mrs. Judd (heaven bless her ancient soul) hadn't happened to spot him from her window?'

‘If,' said Pollock, ‘it was really Parvin, as you suggest, how did he get to the Victoria and Albert on the stroke of eight?'

‘He didn't,' said Hazlerigg. ‘There are two possibilities. Either he's hand in glove with the disreputable Mr. Begg – and remember that Begg has no reason to love the police. Or else – and I rather incline to this view myself – Parvin is relying for his alibi on the fact that on this particular night, Mr. Begg's clock was ten minutes slow. Not fast, as an honest publican's clock should be, but slow. And relying further on the fact that Mr. Begg, with his known record, would die rather than admit that his clock was slow.'

‘Then do you mean to say that Parvin killed Appledown, appeared at the front door at eight o'clock to establish an alibi at a time when he knew the choir would be passing, returned to the house, picked up Appledown, carried him to the Chapter House, dressed him in hat and coat, dropped him into position, and sprinted up to the Victoria and Albert, arriving there at ten past eight? With due respect, it's not possible.'

‘Of course it isn't possible,' said Hazlerigg. ‘For the very good reason that it never happened. Parvin went to Appledown's house at twenty-five to eight. On one of a dozen pretexts, which would suggest themselves between one verger and another, he took Appledown out to examine the fastening of the engine-shed door. Both were wearing the very common ecclesiastical blue Burberry (you must have noticed that every other person in the Close possesses one). Appledown was wearing a hat. Parvin was bareheaded. Had anyone seen them crossing the road Parvin would not have killed Appledown. But no one saw them. Parvin had left his walking-stick behind one of the cloister buttresses. With it he kills Appledown. Then he takes his keys, puts on his hat, and watching till the coast is clear slips back across the road into Appledown's house. No great risk really. He sits down and passes the few minutes that are left before the choir are due in scribbling an imitation of Appledown's vile calligraphy. Then he puts on that distinctive hat, and when the choir come past he is busy sticking the note on to the door-post. I like that alibi. To my mind it's the only real touch of genius in the whole thing. Simple, efficient, and foolproof. The moment the choir are out of sight he becomes Parvin again by the very simple expedient of taking off the hat. I should say, as a guess, that he put it back into Appledown's hall, to be rescued much later that night and restored to the corpse.'

‘By Jove,' said Pollock. ‘Excuse my interrupting, sir. But that explains why the hat was so much less wet than the rest of the clothes. It was something I couldn't understand at the time. If it had really been lying all night under a shower bath from the choked drain-pipe – it would have been pulpy with moisture – whereas, in fact, it was barely damp.'

‘Good,' said Hazlerigg. ‘I think you're right.'

‘There's just one snag,' said Pollock, who seemed to have abandoned the role of carping critic and become even more enthusiastic about the theory than its begetter. ‘Even allowing what you say, wasn't that note he pinned up rather a startling piece of forgery?'

‘I'm expecting a report on the handwriting from our experts; let's defer judgment on that point until it arrives. A friendly visit to the Victoria and Albert seems to be the next move.'

‘In our official capacity?'

‘I think not. Mr. Begg doesn't sound the sort of man who would respond to official questioning. No, we'll wander in separately and see if anything crops up. Try not to look too like a policeman. You can play darts and engage the local talent in gossip whilst I will stand Mr. Begg a friendly drink and induce him to open to me the secrets of his flinty bosom. And talking about opening, when
do
they open in this confounded hole?'

‘Ten o'clock,' said Pollock enthusiastically. ‘So I'm told.'

Mr. Begg's flinty bosom was proving an exceptionally resistant and tenacious tract.

The proprietor of the Victoria and Albert was a huge man, who appeared at first sight to be as broad as he was long and was certainly as thick as he was broad. The expression on his face indicated that he had looked on life and found it hollow. Two hands of the size (and colour) of bronze warming pans rested negligently on the bar in front of him. Unlike young John Brophy he had proved neither an easy nor a fluent conversationalist.

‘Fine morning,' said Hazlerigg. ‘Half a pint of bitter, please. Barney's Badger Beer, I see. A fine nutty ale. An excellent choice.'

‘Eh?'

‘I said I admire your choice of beer.'

‘Fat lot o' choice,' said Mr. Begg, exposing the remnant of his front teeth in a wintry smile. ‘They owns the place.'

‘Ah, I see. A tied house. Well, that's the only way to get security these days. Perhaps you'll have a drink yourself. It all goes to increase the profits of the company.'

Mr. Begg, interpreting a drink as meaning an imperial pint, filled an enormous glass and emptied it at his customer's expense, without mellowing perceptibly. Having exhausted the possibilities of the weather, Hazlerigg enlarged lightly on the coming football season.

‘Never watch the game,' said Mr. Begg, ‘silly waste of time.' The conversation languished. Hazlerigg paid for another round of drinks and introduced a political note. Mr. Begg expanded a little and condescended to explain, with imaginative detail, what he would do to a number of prominent public men if he had a chance. None of them, Hazlerigg felt, would have derived any pleasure from the treatment. Encouraged by this flow of soul, Hazlerigg bought a third pint for his host and touched on another favourite subject of the working classes, the iniquity of the police.

There could be no doubt at all about the success of this move.

Mr. Begg's eye gleamed with a positive animation and he put down his beer half finished (a thing which he hadn't done for several years) in order to explain fully to Hazlerigg his opinion of the Chief Constable of Melchester. Colonel Brabington, it will be remembered, had spoken in an unstinted way about Mr. Begg – sufficient to say that his was a paean of praise beside Mr. Begg's opinion of Colonel Brabington.

This was all to the good. But even on what was evidently his favourite subject the landlord displayed a curious reluctance to descend from the general to the particular. The police, Hazlerigg gathered, were scum. Further, they conspired to rob a man of his bread. But as to how they performed this robbery no details were forthcoming.

‘Make difficulties – about closing-time?' suggested Hazlerigg. That, implied Mr. Begg, was putting it mildly.

‘Perjuring themselves, I suppose, and swearing your clock was ten minutes slow or five minutes fast, or something of that sort, eh?'

But at the very mention of his clock, a change seemed to come over the landlord. Three pints of Barney's Badger Beer were forgotten. The customary look of cold suspicion returned to Mr. Begg's eye.

‘What's wrong with my clock?' he said. ‘It goes all right, doesn't it – what's wrong with it, then?'

Hazlerigg hastened to assure him that his clock was perfectly right, as indeed at that moment it was.

‘It's the best clock in Melchester,' said Mr. Begg. ‘And set by time-signal on the wireless every blessed morning, see?'

Hazlerigg saw. He had either to declare his identity and proceed to an official interlocutory, or withdraw. It was no consideration of Mr. Begg's size or ferocity which dictated the latter course. Hazlerigg had subdued larger and more dangerous men, but out of the corner of his eye he could see that Pollock appeared to be in animated conversation with three
habitués
of the four-ale bar. This decided him. Finishing his ale, he bellowed across (it being one of his sovereign rules of life that the louder you say a thing the less attention people pay to it), ‘See you soon, chum. I'll be at the Cock and Pye. Can't stay there after twelve.' Having, like a careful general, established his next base, he withdrew.