Detection Unlimited (34 page)

The Colonel glanced at him. 'Well? Quite straightforward, isn't it?'

'Wonderfully,' said Hemingway. 'Just as if all the wheels had been oiled -- which I don't doubt they had been.'

The Colonel flushed. 'You believe that we missed something?'

'Sorry, sir! I do. Mind you, I'm not surprised! You'd none of you any reason to suspect Walter's letter wasn't what it seemed to be. I daresay I wouldn't have started to smell a rat, if I hadn't come upon it amongst Warrenby's own papers, where it had no business to be. It was that which set me thinking.'

'But, good heavens, Hemingway, are you suggesting that Warrenby, acting as Coroner, suspected all along that the letter was a fake?' exclaimed the Colonel, in horrified accents.

'Not all along, no,' replied Hemingway. 'I should say it was only when he got to thinking about it more particularly that he began to have his doubts, same like me. Probably after Gavin took up his residence in Thornden, and showed clearly what sort of a neighbour he was going to be. Silly of him to have made an enemy of Warrenby. That was his conceit, of course, thinking he could run rings round anyone he chose. Well, I've got plenty of evidence to lead me to suppose that Warrenby's reaction to the sort of contemptuous way Gavin probably treated him would have been to see if he couldn't get some kind of a hold over him. He'd be bound to think over Walter Plenmeller's death. It was easy for him to go over the inquest again, at his leisure. He may have felt as I do about the letter, or there may be something in it, which I haven't spotted, that struck him as fishy. You can take it he didn't remove it from the file because he wanted a bit of bedtime literature.'

'Do you believe it to be a forgery? I don't set up to be a handwriting expert, but I'd swear to it as Walter's handwriting.'

Hemingway nodded. 'Oh, yes, I wasn't questioning that, sir! Do you know if the envelope was preserved?'

'I can't remember that I ever saw an envelope, but if Carsethorn's in the station, we'll soon find out. He was on that case with Thropton,' replied the Colonel, picking up the house-telephone.

'He is, sir,' said the Inspector. 'I've just been having a word with him.'

The Sergeant came quickly in answer to the summons. Upon the question being put to him, his eyes narrowed, as though he were bringing a distant view into focus. After a moment's exercise of memory, he said positively: 'No, sir. We never saw the envelope. Mr Plenmeller handed the letter to Inspector Thropton, spread open, like it is now. He said something about supposing he'd got to give it to the police, though his instinct -- no, his baser self was what he said -- made him a sight more inclined to put it on the fire.'

'Sounds lifelike.' commented Hemingway. 'If you ask me, it was his baser self that made him hand you the letter. I wish I could see the envelope, though I don't suppose there was ever a chance that anyone would have been allowed to.'

'The housekeeper saw it,' said the Sergeant. 'I remember she told us how she was the one who saw the letter first. On the bedside-table it was. She said it had the one word, Gavin, written on it.'

'It had, had it? Well, it can't be helped: it's a safe bet the housekeeper wouldn't know whether it was Walter's writing, or only a copy of it.'

'What are you getting at?' demanded the Colonel. 'Why do you think the envelope may have been significant?'

'Just an idea I've got at the back of my mind, sir,' replied Hemingway, stretching out his hand to pick up the letter. 'A little while ago, you were telling me that only three weeks before Walter's death he was saying that he wouldn't have Gavin in the house again, or even see him.'

'But he did have him in the house again. Whatever the quarrel may have been, it was made up.'

'Yes, sir. But it occurs to me that that's exactly what he says in this letter.' Hemingway raised his eyes from the letter, one brow lifting quizzically, but no one spoke. All three men were watching him closely, and in the Colonel's face was an expression of dawning comprehension. 'Well,' Hemingway continued, 'I've now studied this letter till I'm sick of the sight of it, and, apart from the points I've already mentioned, there's only one thing about it which looks to me a little suspicious. Walter had a sprawling sort of writing, and a trick of joining one word to the next through not bothering to take his pen off the paper. Will you take a look at the date at the top of the page, sir, and tell me what you think?'

He laid the letter down before the Colonel, and, with one accord, Harbottle and Carsethorn moved round the table to obtain a view of it. The Colonel looked closely at it, and then across the desk at Hemingway. 'The figure 2 seems rather close to the 5,' he said slowly.

'Look where the light, upward stroke from the Y of May reaches it!' said Hemingway. 'It joins the 2 at the bottom of the figure, not, as you'd expect, at the loop at the top. How he made a 2, starting from the bottom of the diagonal line, I can't imagine. But if you carry that faint line from the Y on, in your mind's eye, the way it's going, I think- you'll find it would join the 5 exactly where it should, supposing Walter had dated his letter May 5th, and not May 25th.'

The Sergeant drew in his breath with a hissing sound; Harbottle cast a glance of grim, vicarious pride at his Chief; the Colonel sat back rather limply in his chair, and said; 'Good God! You think this letter may have been written at the time of the quarrel I told you about -- But it's diabolical!'

'Well, it'll have to go up to our expert immediately, sir, before we can be sure. It's little more than guess-work as yet. And I wonder whether it's already been in the hands of an expert?' he added pensively. 'I should say it had -- though not our chap.'

Harbottle, who had glanced at his watch, said: 'Let me take it, Chief! I can catch the 6.35 train, and come back first thing in the morning. I've just time to put a call through to Headquarters, and warn them to stand by.'

Hemingway nodded, and gave him the letter. As he left the room, with his long stride, Sergeant Carsethorn said in a shocked voiced: 'But -- but are you telling us, sir, that it wasn't a case of suicide at all?'

'I won't put it as high as that till I get a verdict on that letter,' replied Hemingway. 'But, assuming for the moment that the letter was written on the 5th May, and not the 25th, the suicide doesn't look anything like as good. If you hadn't been given that letter, you'd have looked a deal more closely into it than you did, wouldn't you? Let's take a look at it now! First, we have this Mrs Bromwich deposing that her master had been in one of his bad moods that day. What put him in a bad mood? Migraine, or his brother Gavin, carefully working him up? We shall never know the answer, of course, so we'll leave that. At 10.0, Mrs Bromwich goes up to bed. Her room's over the kitchen, and there's a door that shuts the servants' quarters off from the main bedrooms. I expect it corresponds with the one downstairs, which I've seen, the gardener, we find, sleeps over the stables. Half an hour later, Gavin goes to bed -- or so he states. The Coroner put a question to him about that. I wonder if he had his suspicions as early as that?' Hemingway hunted through the transcript. 'Yes, here we are. Asked him if he usually went to bed so early. Answer: No, very rarely. Had you any reason for changing your custom? Answer: My presence appeared to exacerbate my brother, so I thought it wise to remove myself. Quite neat. Gives the picture of Walter beside himself, and leaves us to suppose that Gavin may have been asleep when the gas fumes began to creep out of Walter's room. I should say he took his own measures to keep them out of his room. We have nothing after that until we come to Mrs Bromwich taking Walter's early tea to his room. She said there was a funny smell, which made her cough, and she couldn't get into Walter's room. So she goes across the upper hall to wake Gavin. Finds him asleep, tells him there's something wrong.

He smells the gas at once, and gets up quickly, and goes with her to Walter's room, first putting on his dressing-gown and slippers. All very natural -- and I daresay the dressing-gown had a pocket. He tries the door, finds it's locked, and sets his shoulder to it, breaking the lock. Gas fumes make them both reel back. Then we come to the handsome tribute Mrs Bromwich paid to 'Mr Gavin'. He didn't hesitate. He dashed into the room, flung back the curtains, and opened all three casements. The wind was blowing in at that side of the house; it seemed to blow the gas right down Mrs Bromwich's throat, and fair made her choke. And considering how much gas there must have been in the room, I'm sure I'm not surprised Mr Gavin then makes another dash for the gas-stove, and turns off the tap, and gasps out an order to Mrs Bromwich: she was to go downstairs at once, and ring up the doctor. So that gets Mrs Bromwich nicely out of the way. By the time she gets back, Mr Gavin is standing at the head of the staircase, looking dreadfully bad, and coughing fit to break a blood-vessel. Very likely, I should think: there were quite a few things he had to do in the room before she came back. If I'm right, he had to slip the door-key under Walter's pillow, for Dr Warcop to find in due course; he had to stuff a bit of rag into the keyhole; he had to finish off the job of fixing adhesive tape round the door. I should think he put most of it on when he went in the night before: it was bound to get broken as soon as the door was opened, so he was safe to stick it on everywhere but on the side where the door opens. As for that towel, which we hear got thrust back when the door was burst open, and had obviously been stuffed between the bottom of the door and the floor, my guess is that it was carefully arranged a little way away from the door, to present just that appearance. Well, back comes Mrs Bromwich, saying the doctor's coming at once. Gavin then tells her it's too late: Walter must have been dead for hours, and it's a case for the police. Well, we know Dr Warcop isn't what you might call good at fixing times, but he doesn't seem to have much doubt about this. Walter was cold. When he turned up, Gavin told him it was too late for him to do anything, and he let Mrs Bromwich go with him into the room. Which is when Mrs Bromwich sees that letter, and gives it to him, and Dr Warcop finds the key of the room. So there it is: an open-and-shut case, with everyone behaving very properly all round. Later, Gavin gives evidence at the inquest, and the result of that is that all the people who'd been thinking he'd behaved pretty badly to his brother start thinking that, after all, it's a bit rough on him to have to sit there listening to Walter's letter being read aloud in court, and very noble it was of him not to have destroyed it. I'll bet he enjoyed that day!'

There was a pause. The Sergeant, who had been listening, fascinated, to this exposition, said: 'You've got me believing that's how it happened!'

'I've got myself believing it,' returned Hemingway.

'If it's true,' said the Colonel, 'if we find that you're right about the letter, you've got a strong case against Gavin, without any further evidence.'

'I want a stronger,' said Hemingway. 'I want that Colt Woodsman pistol.'

'Ah!' said the Sergeant heavily. 'And he's had plenty of time to get rid of it.'

'If he has got rid of it,' agreed Hemingway.

'Good lord, sir, you don't think he'd keep it, do you?'

'I don't know. You've got to bear in mind that he thinks we're searching for a rifle. What's more, it isn't all that easy to dispose of a pistol, particularly when you haven't got a car to get you well away from your own district, to some likely pond, or something of that nature. The thing I'm afraid of is that he may have thrown it into this river I've heard so much about.'

'You needn't be afraid of that,' said the Colonel. 'It's quite shallow, and at the moment there's hardly any water in it at all. I've never known such a season: we haven't had a spate since the beginning of March. He's more likely to have thrust it down a rabbit-hole, or to have buried it.'

'Not anywhere near Fox Lane, or Wood Lane, or the footpath, sir!' struck in the Sergeant. 'If you happened to be thinking he might have done it straight away! We fair combed the ground there, that I'll swear to! I had five chaps out there all Sunday morning.'

'I don't see this bird burying it,' intervened Hemingway. 'Nor yet pushing it down a rabbit-hole, with all respect to you, sir! If he buried it, he'd have run the risk of the new-turned earth's being spotted. There's his own garden, of course, but that seems to me •even more risky, with that gardener-groom of his on the premises. As for shoving it down a rabbit-hole, I don't see him doing that.

Setting aside, rabbit-holes are places we'd be bound to suspect, you never know when some dog won't sneak off hunting and start excavating the very hole you've chosen. What's more, unless he's found some place where it can stay safely for ever, it's got to be where he can retrieve it as soon as the hunt's been called off. So he wouldn't have poked it into a midden, or a haystack, or anything like that. It wouldn't altogether surprise me if he's got it hidden away somewhere in his house.'

'Well, it would me!' said the Sergeant suddenly. 'Not when he knew you were on the case, sir! He wouldn't have taken any chances once he'd seen you.'

Hemingway regarded him in some amusement. 'Now, come on, my lad, what do you want to borrow?' he demanded.

The Sergeant grinned, but stuck to his guns. 'Look here, sir, I was with you on Sunday evening, when you met him for the first time, in the Red Lion! Do you remember I didn't have to tell him who you were, because he recognised you straight off? Talked about a case you'd been on. Well, it was plain enough that he had a pretty fair idea of what he was up against! I could tell from the way he spoke that he knew the Yard had sent down one of their best men.'

'What do you you mean, one of their best men?' interrupted Hemingway.

The Colonel laughed. 'Spare the Chief Inspector's blushes, Carsethorn! But he may easily be right, Hemingway. Since Plenmeller hadn't an alibi, he must have faced the possibility of having his house searched. But if you don't think he buried the gun, what do you imagine he could have done with it?'

'Well, looking at it from the psychological angle, sir, I should say he'd go in for something a bit more classy.'