Designs on Life (13 page)

At seven fifty-five the police arrived. George had not come home by a later train. He had returned from London, as he had said that he would, on the six-twenty. The ticket-collector quite clearly remembered his handing in his ticket. Then George had started to walk across the fields to the Evitts’ house.

At the time when his body was discovered, under a hedge with his head battered in, he had been dead for at least an hour.

Detective Superintendent Ronald Tewson was very interested in Minnie’s watch. Had she or had she not re-set it at the Evitts’ when she found that it and their clock did not agree? But Minnie by then was not in a state to give him an answer on which he could place much reliance.

At first, in her grief, she had maintained a dreadful, vacant composure. She had told the police all that she could, but had grown quietly more and more dazed and incoherent, till her son Michael, a tall boy of nineteen, who had been summoned from a cinema, had led her upstairs to her room and the doctor had given her an injection.

As he watched her go, not losing her gentle restraint, but only her mind, Tewson, who could almost deceive himself that he could take murder in his stride, felt something in himself that he dreaded, the sense of pressure, almost of blockage in his head, caused, as he knew, by extreme anger. For this, he was certain already, was a cold-blooded crime, and of all kinds of crimes, that was the kind that made his own blood the hottest. But with that anger in him he always wore himself out, suffered more than was useful to anyone, and jumped to unwarranted conclusions. The unwarranted conclusion to which he jumped before the night’s work was over was that George Hobday had been murdered by his partner, Harry Evitt. All that funny business about the clock and the telephone call to the exchange. It was too convenient. But Tewson was not going to have anyone else saying anything of the sort yet.

“We haven’t a thing against Evitt at the moment,” he said dourly to Sergeant James Geary at one o’clock in the morning, as the two men gulped tea in Tewson’s office. “That’s the fact. Not a solid thing except that Mrs. Hobday doesn’t think she re-set her watch before she got home. Doesn’t
think
so! A solid fact, d’you call that?”

Geary was a younger, heartier man than Tewson.

“Look,” he said, “it’s the telephone call that’s the only trouble, isn’t it? The fact that they’ve confirmed it at the exchange that Mrs. Evitt did ring up and ask the time at six twenty-one, which made the Evitts’ clock right and Mrs. Hobday’s watch wrong, and put Evitt right there in the room with Mrs. Hobday when Hobday’s train got in, and for an hour afterwards. That’s all that’s worrying you, isn’t it?”

Tewson wagged his head in a furious parody of a nod of agreement.

“Of course a little thing like motive doesn’t worry me,” he said, his lips drawn back in a tight, ugly smile.

“You’ll find that in the books of the company, I shouldn’t wonder,” Geary said. “There’s been talk around for some time about where Evitt’s getting his money from. When you’ve talked to that accountant Hobday went to see in London...”

“Go on and teach me my job,” Tewson said. “It’s that telephone call you’re going to put me right on, isn’t it?”

“There were two telephone calls,” Geary said.

“That’s right,” Tewson said, “there probably were. One to the exchange and one to nowhere, and the one Mrs. Hobday heard was the one to nowhere. It could have been like that. Only if it was, I don’t like it.”

Geary looked faintly disappointed that his thinking had already been done for him.

“Why not?” he asked. “It’s nice and simple.”

“Simple!” Tewson said, as if the mere sound of the word made him feel ill.

“Look,” Geary said, “they arrive for the bridge-party—Mrs. Hobday and the two other women—and they play for a couple of hours. All three have got watches, but not one of them says anything then about the clock being slow. And the party breaks up at the usual time, because two of them have to catch a bus. And they all go out in the garden together to see the two ladies off, and Mrs. Hobday also goes to look at some shrubs, because Mrs. Evitt’s suddenly got interested in knowing what they are. But for some reason, instead of staying with Mrs. Hobday while she’s looking at the shrubs, Mrs. Evitt doubles back into the house, and when Mrs. Hobday follows her, she’s setting out drinks in the sitting-room. But by then Mrs. Evitt’s had three or four minutes to herself, and that would be plenty of time to ring up the exchange, get told that the time was six twenty-one, then put the hands of the clock back to six-ten. Well then, presently Evitt comes in. It’s really six-thirty, and he’s met Hobday at the station, started across the fields with him, done him in and gone on home. But the clock says it’s only six-twenty, and when Mrs. Hobday says the clock’s wrong, they make a fake call to the exchange which convinces the old lady for the time being that her watch is wrong. Now, what’s the matter with that?”

“Only that her watch wasn’t wrong when she got home,” Tewson said, “or only three minutes wrong, which doesn’t signify. Or”—he rubbed the side of his jaw thoughtfully—”or does it?”

“But it’s her watch not being wrong that proves all this,” Geary said.

Tewson gave a weary shake of his head. “Evitt—a man like Evitt—he’d have thought of that, Jim. But when we saw him, he wasn’t scared. Things had worked out just as he meant them to. So he’s got something else up his sleeve, and that means there’s something else coming, something for us to trip over and send us flat on our faces. Yes…” Tewson stopped as the telephone rang at his elbow, then, as he reached for it, repeated sombrely, “Yes, something else is coming.”

His conversation on the telephone lasted for some minutes. When it was over, he looked expressionlessly at Geary, then leant back in his chair, stared up at the dingy ceiling and muttered, “Didn’t I say?”

“What was it?” Geary asked.

“That was young Hobday,” Tewson said. “His mother’s watch is thirty-five minutes fast. In about six hours, it’s gained nearly half an hour. What do you make of that, Jim?”

In disgust, Geary exclaimed, “That means her watch
was
wrong at the Evitts’. She must have re-set it there and forgotten doing it. And it had already gained another three minutes by the time she got home. It’s hopelessly out of order. Or did anyone get a chance to tamper with the watch?”

“The boy says not. He says she talked to him quite sensibly for a little while when he got her alone before the injection hit her, and she was quite sure no one had had a chance to tamper with it.”

“Then you aren’t going to be able to smash Evitt’s alibi so easily.”

“Because of the sheer coincidence that her watch, her good watch, that she’s had for twenty-two years, went wrong the same evening as her husband was murdered?” Still staring at the ceiling, on to which, at one time or another, he had projected most of his problems, Tewson shook his head. “No,” he said definitely.

“Then someone did tamper with it—stands to reason,” Geary said.

“Yes.”

“The boy?”

“Why?”

“Working with Evitt, perhaps. There’s this story that he was on bad terms with his father.”

“The Evitts’ story. No one else supports it.”

“But then …” Geary found himself staring at the ceiling. But he was unable to draw from it the inspiration that Tewson seemed to find there. Once more he fixed his eyes on Tewson’s face, which just now was almost as grey, as lined and as blank as the ceiling.

“But then no one but Mrs. Hobday could have tampered with the watch,” Geary said. “Mrs. Hobday herself. Only why should she do it? She seemed fond of her old man. So why should she do that to protect Evitt?”

“Just let me think Jim, Tewson answered quietly. “Just let me think a little.”

In the morning Harry Evitt did not go to the office. He knew that this was a mistake, but he was afraid to leave Rina by herself. The day before she had done her part well. Both in the handling of Minnie Hobday and of the police, she had shown the nerve and resourcefulness which he had known would be roused in her by excitement and the presence of an audience. But the morning after a night quite without sleep, alone in the house, she was not to be trusted.

He knew that she ought to go round to the Hobdays’ house to inquire after Minnie, but he doubted if he could make her go. She clung to him, needing to be continually reassured that all had gone as he had planned. So when, in the middle of the morning, the police reappeared, Evitt felt from the start at a disadvantage. He felt that he must explain his own presence at home, when surely, of all times, he was needed at the office, and that he must apologise for Rina’s failure to be the kind, concerned friend of the bereaved woman.

“My wife’s so upset, Superintendent… A bad night… Perhaps a prowler around somewhere… Afraid...”

The words limped out uncertainly. They were bad tactics, Evitt knew, even as he produced them. A murderer should never explain or apologise.

What made it worse was that, for all the notice that Tewson seemed to take, Evitt might not have spoken at all. Tewson had followed him into the sitting-room, had nodded briefly to Rina, who had risen from her chair by the fireplace, then he had stood glancing around the room with the air of looking for something. The fact that he had the air of knowing just what he was looking for made Evitt’s plump hands turn to ice.

He crossed to Rina’s side. Standing on the grey hearthrug with his shoulder touching hers, he reached automatically for the warmth of the fire. But yesterday’s wood fire, for decorative purposes only in this well-heated room, was a heap of ashes.

“I came to tell you,” Tewson said, “that Mrs. Hobday has withdrawn the statement she made to us yesterday evening that your clock was wrong. She believes now it was her watch that was wrong. Since it was practically speaking right when she reached home, she suspected you at first of having altered your clock and lied to her about your call to the exchange, in order to create a false alibi for yourself. But now she thinks she must have unthinkingly re-set her watch while she was here.”

Tewson had been looking at the grandfather clock while he was speaking, but now his eyes rested on Evitt’s face.

Evitt gave a grave nod, almost a bow. He was striving to assume a solemnity of sorrow for his dead friend and partner. It made a slowness of utterance, while he chose his words, seem fairly natural. But he found it difficult to keep his feet still.

“I see,” he said. “May I ask what made her change her opinion?”

“Her watch went on gaining after she got home,” Tewson said.

“Ah, I see. Just an unfortunate coincidence then.”

“Was it?” Tewson gave a tight-lipped, ferocious smile. Then he moved away. He crossed to the telephone and stood looking down at it. “That’s what she believes herself. An unfortunate coincidence. But I’m not so sure...” He had picked up a little writing-pad from beside the telephone, the kind of pad intended for the jotting down of messages. From across the room its cover had looked as if it were of tooled leather, of emerald green and gold. But in fact it was of painted metal, cold to the touch of his fingers. “I’m not sure that I agree with her. Mrs. Evitt, what did you do with the pencil that belongs to this pad?”

Rina started. Evitt could feel the trembling begin in the arm that was pressed against his. But her voice was only a very little higher than usual. No one who did not know her well would have noticed it. With an audience to play to, he thought, you could always rely on her.

“The pencil?” she said. “Why, I-I don’t know. Isn’t it there?”

“I mean the pencil, a green and gold pencil, with which, as Mrs. Hobday told me this morning, you kept tapping her wrist yesterday afternoon, her left wrist, all the time you were playing bridge—tapping her watch too pretty often, of course,” Tewson said.

“Did I do that?” Rina asked. “I don’t remember. Oh, you don’t mean that
that
could have upset her watch!”

Evitt took it up quickly. “No, Superintendent, surely you aren’t suggesting that you can deliberately make a watch go wrong—because I take it that that’s what this might imply—by giving it gentle little taps with an ordinary pencil.”

“No, not an ordinary pencil,” Tewson said. “That isn’t what I’m suggesting. But I know these pads. The pencils that go with them have magnets in them. That’s to make them hold on to the metal covers of the pads, the idea being that you won’t mislay them. Neat, if you can be bothered with that sort of thing. And if you keep on tapping a watch with a quite powerful magnet, you can make it go very wrong indeed. You can’t tell
how
wrong, of course. You can’t tell if it’ll go fast or slow or stop altogether. All you can be pretty sure of is that with that magnet drawing at the works, they’re going to be badly enough upset to make the watch useless as evidence against a fine old clock like that and a faked call to a telephone exchange. Where
is
that pencil, Mrs. Evitt?”

There was silence in the room. For a moment the Evitts stood close to one another, both tense, wary but wooden-faced. Then Rina drew away from her husband, clawed suddenly at his round, empty face with her nails and started to scream at him.

The strange thing is that when Sidney Sankey taught Roddie Bourne to play with matches, it was done without the least intention of harm, either to the child or to anyone else. If a destructive element in Sankey’s nature revealed itself in the ideas he had of playthings suitable for a child of five, he himself was unaware of it. Indeed, the instruction of Roddie in this perilous entertainment was probably as innocent an action as Sankey ever performed, for it occurred during the time of extraordinary happiness for him in his friendship with Roddie and with Roddie’s family.

When Sankey first met them, the Bournes, like him, were newcomers to the small Midland town of Bardley. Oliver Bourne, who was thirty-eight, had been in the infantry throughout the war and had been teaching boys for ten years before he arrived in Bardley. He had come as senior history master to the school where Sidney Sankey had just been given the first, and as it turned out, the only job he was ever to have, teaching a little of practically everything to the younger boys.