Fog of Doubt (15 page)

‘I know, I know, and if I'd had the slightest intention of charging him, I swear I'd have let you know. To tell you the truth, I rather surprised myself. But there it was—the blood's established and he trots out that he's never been back to the car after seeing the body. I couldn't go on questioning him without the caution.'

‘The feller's a doctor,' said Cockrill, grumpily. ‘He's probably wading about knee-deep in gore all day.'

‘Not in this gore; not with great dollops of brain floating about in it.'

‘Of brain?'

‘Well, not actual chunks of grey matter,' confessed Charlesworth, leaning back in his chair to fish in his pocket for a packet of cigarettes. ‘But traces. Now, a G.P. doesn't get that kind of blood on him, not unless he's been dealing with an accident case or something, and he hasn't had any recently—he admits it. Then when I questioned him, he—well, he baulked a bit, you know, went white, all the usual signs.' He held out the packet. ‘Cigarette?'

‘No thank you,' said Cockrill, gruffly. He produced his own tobacco and papers and started rolling one. ‘So you charged him?'

‘How else
could
the blood have got into the car?'

Sergeant Bedd came back with the three glasses balancing each other in his big hands, and manoeuvred them down on to the table. They went through automatic gestures of good health, but Cockrill did not even put his glass to his lips. ‘He's shielding someone; that's the long and the short of it.'

‘That's what his wife said. O.K. he's shielding someone: but who?'

‘There are three women in this case—four if you count the old lady.'

‘This wasn't a woman,' said Charlesworth. ‘Take it from me.'

Inspector Cockrill was taking nothing from Mr. Charles-worth. ‘Not a woman? Prove it!'

‘The telephone message proves it. “Someone came in and hit me with a mastoid mallet”.'

‘Rosie's not sure; it may have been “a
man
came in and hit me with a mastoid mallet”. '

‘Well, if it was,' said Charlesworth, gaily, ‘then it wasn't a woman,
was
it?'

‘All right; settle for “someone”.'

‘Good. Well, here we have Raoul Vernet standing in the hall and someone comes in and hits him with the mallet. “Comes in” you observe: not “comes down”. So that counts out two of them, because both the Mrs. Evans's, old and young, were upstairs, or at any rate in the house; so he wouldn't have said “came in”.'

‘One of them might have gone out and come back,' said Cockie. ‘And anyway, Rosie may have misheard: she's quite unreliable.' Still, it was no part of his desire to throw suspicion on old Mrs. Evans, or on Matilda either.

‘Well, all right, skip “came in”. There he is standing in the hall; the light's on—Mrs. Evans left it on when she went upstairs. Now—Matilda Evans marches up to him and takes a crack at him. Would he ring up and say “someone”? Of course not—he'd say, “Matilda came up and dotted me one.” Same goes for Rosie Evans, only of course she was out of it anyway. Then, take the old lady; surely he wouldn't say, “someone”?—surely he'd say “an old woman came in and hit me”? You must agree with that!'

‘Yes,' said Cockie, slowly, ‘I think I must.'

‘And Melissa Weeks; if Melissa came up to you and conked you—you wouldn't call
that
“someone”, would you? You'd say, “a girl came in”, or you'd kind of remark on it, you'd say “some little bit of a girl came up and blipped me”—I mean, you'd be so surprised. It all sounds rather feeble,' said Charlesworth, thoughtfully, ‘but I honestly do think it's incontrovertible or whatever the word is. It can't have been any of those four women, so it must have been a man. And the only other man …'

Cockrill had already worked round to the same conclusion, by a different route. It must have been a doctor, and the only other doctor … The only other man, the only other doctor, had been half a mile away on the other end of a telephone; if one thing in the whole damn show was certain, it was that. ‘Someone came in and hit me with a mastoid mallet.…' If it had been a woman, surely he'd have said ‘a woman'. But no: ‘Someone', or ‘A man'—‘came in and hit me with a mastoid mallet.…'

The creamy bubbles whispered round the rim of his glass as he set it down on the table and sat staring into its amber depths: staring, staring down with eyes as bright and clear and brown as the clear, brown beer itself. Opposite him, Charlesworth too sat staring into his glass. ‘I'm sorry about it, Inspector, but there it is: I hate it myself, I had a beastly time bringing him in for the job, telling Mrs. Evans and all that—I like them both. From all one can see, the chap was no great loss and if he seduced the girl, then he certainly wasn't—but the point is that whether he did or not, quite obviously Thomas Evans believed that he had. He's a doctor, he must have tumbled to what was wrong with her; then, a mysterious assignation—with this foreigner suddenly appearing from Geneva, Mrs. Evans anxious to talk to the man alone, the girl anxious to avoid him, going off out into the fog.… Dr. Evans is dotty about his young sister, he thinks she's the last word in lily-white innocence, he sees her as seduced and betrayed and all the rest of it. He goes out, mills round for a bit till he sees by the lights that his wife's left the feller alone in the drawing-room, goes into the hall, gets out the gun and the mallet from the drawer and calls him out into the hall. He forces him to the telephone with the dud gun, swops over hands and conks him one with the mallet. Out to the car again with a bit of blood on his shoes; drives round some more, shows up all horror when the time comes.' He glanced up from his beer, eyeing the little Inspector anxiously. Surely it all hung together, surely it must be true? For the millionth time he wondered secretly whether he had not been over-impulsive in getting Thomas Evans charged. But damn it all—there was a case against him, and against nobody else. He insisted: ‘It was a man, it was probably a doctor. And the only other man, and incidentally the only other doctor, was half a mile away when Raoul Vernet rang up.'

The shaggy ash trembled on the end of Cockrill's cigarette, broke and fell like a grey snowflake, softly on to the table. He put out his hand and absently brushed it away, leaving a dry, grey smear. He said, dreamily: ‘
If
Raoul Vernet rang up.'

Charlesworth looked up sharply. ‘
If
he rang up? We known damn well he rang up.' Sergeant Bedd, doubting, murmured a word and he took it up from him. ‘Collusion? You surely don't suspect collusion between those two—Dr. Edwards and that girl?'

‘Not collusion,' said Cockrill; ‘no. Rosie would be a very bad person to collushe with—you wouldn't dare. She'd blurt it out two minutes later, all fluttering eyelashes and ackcherlies. Somebody spoke to her on the 'phone, that's certain; but whether it was Vernet.… And of course, if it wasn't.…' His eyes shone with the joy of it, the relief of it.

‘Why the hell shouldn't it have been?' said Charlesworth, angry with anxiety. ‘Of course it was Vernet: why shouldn't it have been?'

‘Only that Vernet was a foreigner.'

‘O.K., so he was a foreigner—he could still use the 'phone, I suppose? He spoke quite good English, by all accounts, plain English, perhaps, not fancy stuff, but there was nothing fancy about that message.'

‘Except perhaps for the mastoid mallet,' said Cockrill, comfortably.

CHAPTER TEN

R
OSIE
was ackcherly utterly
mis
. about Thomas, to think that poor, darling Thomas was mewed up in some frightful gaol and really, let's face it, all because of her. If only she hadn't been so naughty in Geneva, or, since really that had been inevitable because one was the way one was and one just couldn't help it, if only that stupid old Raoul hadn't come whizzing over in his beastly aeroplane to sneak to Matilda about her goings-on.… It was sort of fun at home, ackcherly, at least not fun at all of course, but frightfully exciting with police tramping about everywhere and reporters ringing up and coming to the door and climbing into the garden over walls and goodness knew what, and some of them were
great
fun, and terribly humorous, they honestly were, only it was horrifying to see in the papers next morning what nonsense they made up … But still, one had to be honest, one couldn't deny that it was not what one might call dull. Of course Matilda was in the last stages of gloom and terribly cross most of the time, bursting out into fits of unreasonable ill-temper, Gran alternating between hilarity and deepest depression, Melissa for ever in tears and tremblings, and poor, darling Thomas … For the hundredth time she said plaintively to Cockie that surely it must have been a burglar all the time; because it was idiotic to think that Thomas …

‘Do
try
and remember about that 'phone call, Rosie.'

‘But I
have
remembered,' said Rosie. ‘I've told you all all about it, over and over again.'

‘You don't think,' said Cockie, all casual, ‘that if you were on the spot you'd remember perhaps? Some littld extra thing?'

‘I might,' said Rosie, doubtfully. Anyway it would be something to do; the reporters seemed to be falling off a bit to-day, and everyone at home was
hell
. She climbed thankfully into a taxi with Cockie and went round to Tedward's house.

Ted Edwards also, was sick at heart for his friend. Already late for his afternoon surgery, he still hung miserably about the house with his hands in his pockets, staring out of the window at the bleak, pewter-grey of the canal. Of course there was no real danger; one way or another they would get Thomas out of it, even if he had to confess to the thing himself. Not that the police could possibly prove anything against him; but it would create a diversion—indeed, it would be rather fun. Only quite how to set about it was the thing.…

Rosie appeared suddenly at the window and scrabbled on a pane with her long, curved, pink nails like a cat pleading to be let in. When he got round to the front door, Inspector Cockrill was there too. They explained their errand. ‘Of course,' said Tedward. ‘Go ahead. Only I'll have to go off and leave you to it, because I'm late already; and I've got all Thomas's stuff as well as my own. But Rosie can show you all right, she knows her way round.'

‘What about the old trout—hasn't she come back?'

‘No, indeed,' said Tedward. ‘She's “sent for her things” in dudgeon; it's obviously not the thing for me to have got mixed up in a nasty murder.' He laughed. ‘She's probably working on her reminiscences of me already; what I have for breakfast and how I wear out my socks. Bad cess to her!' He went out to his car.

‘I do adore Tedward,' said Rosie, watching him as he manœuvred his stubby form through the narrow door and subsided into the driver's seat. ‘He's so sort of solid and comfortable. Tedward Bear I call him; it makes him so mad!'

It was true that it made Tedward mad: mad with that ravening hunger of his for something more tender from her, or something less—better that she should be cold and disregarding altogether than torment him with her innocent coquetries, her little, offhand pet names and dabbing caresses that proclaimed aloud that to her he was no more and never would be more than dear old, tubby old Tedward Bear, comfortable and kind. He let in his gears with a grinding jerk and shot forward through the gate, his eyes blinded by the mist of his idiotic tears. I
must
get over it, he thought; I
must
shake it off. A fat, cross-grained, hard-up old buffer like me, slavering over a girl of half my age … It was disgusting, it was absurd, he was ashamed of his weakness in persisting in this octogenarian folly; but the moment he set eyes on her, so fresh and spring-like in her ebullient health and gaiety and that sort of overlying innocence of mind—all his resolves were scattered to the wind and his head was in the stars—and his heart in his boots. He shot across the stream of the traffic turning out into Maida Vale and a volley of curses brought him abruptly to his senses. He flapped a penitent hand at bus and taxi drivers, and continued more soberly towards St. John's Wood: all unaware that in the house he had left, his belovéd was unwittingly settling down to prove him a murderer.

The house was on the simplest possible plan: the front porch opened on to a wide corridor running straight through to the back door, with the stairs leading up off it; to the right of the front door was the sitting-room and behind that the surgery; the window of the surgery, close to the back door, looked out on to a pleasant small London garden. But a tangle of outhouses beyond kitchen and dining-room on the far side of the house rendered the garage inaccessible except by a good deal of awkward manœuvring; even knowing it as well as its owner must, Cockrill could see that it must have been tricky on a night with a pea-soup fog. He went back to Rosie, curled up in the comfortable armchair before the Cosy stove in Ted-ward's surgery with the cat, like a lump of carved anthracite curled on her knee. ‘What on earth have you been doing, Cockie?'

Cockie modestly h'm-h'm'd. ‘Oh, I see; beg your pardon. Well, what now?'

‘I want you to tell me exactly—but exactly,' said Cockie who had caught this dreadful expression from Rosie herself, ‘what happened here, night before last, when Raoul Vernet died.'

‘Oh,
lor'!
' said Rosie; it was so boring, going over and over the thing. ‘Well, I've
told
you. I got here just about nine. Tedward went out and made me a cup of tea.…'

‘You were in here? In the surgery?'

‘No, we went into the drawing-room and he lit the gas and made me sit in a chair and nurse the cat while he got the tea. I was a bit frozen, what with the fog and all.'