Suspects—Nine (14 page)

“Well, sir,” Bobby said, pausing as he was about to retire. “I did wonder if it would be an idea to try to find out who knew about Weeton Hill. It's not such an awfully well-known spot, most people have never heard of it. I was wondering if there was any thing to show that Judy Patterson knew of it? Very likely South Essex has gone into that?”

“Well, if you can find out anything, let them know,” the chief inspector said. “Tactfully, of course. Don't let them think we're trying to butt in or maybe we shall have to.”

“No, sir,” said Bobby and withdrew, sadly aware that his effort to pull strings had been a dismal failure, since the only result had been that the chief inspector would now certainly recommend that the Tamar request should be acceded to.

Pulling strings effectively was, he told himself, a natural gift like any other, and should no more be attempted by those without that gift, than should a man without any feeling for rhyme or rhythm attempt to write poetry.

Which, as Olive remarked when Bobby repeated this observation to her, merely showed how little he knew of the most admired poetry of the day.

Still in a very depressed mood, Bobby went off to search the telephone directories for the districts near Weeton Hill. It was a long shot, of course, but long shots sometimes come off, and presently Bobby, quickly looking up one name after another, found that of Mr. Julius Patterson. Reference to an ordnance map showed that the place indicated was near the small village of Sillington, about five miles from Weeton Hill and about three from the nearest railway station—Beam End.

Bobby went back to report this fact to the chief inspector and was told to ring up South Essex and see if they knew it. They did not, and were plainly a little vexed they had not thought themselves of searching the telephone directory. But they did know that Mr. Judy Patterson had arrived at Beam End railway station, where he was known as an occasional passenger, on the evening of the murder.

“Only here's the snag,” said South Essex, sounding now a trifle worried. “He arrived by the train due at eight-thirty. So how could he be the fellow seen about the same time standing by a car looking at a map? That's Mr. and Mrs. Atkins' evidence and it's more or less confirmed by the farm labourer who seems to have seen the same man about the same time. Only there's another snag there because none of them are very sure about the time. People,” said South Essex with a sigh that sounded over the wire more like a gale than anything else, “never are. Anything within half an hour is good enough for most of 'em.”

“Yes, I know,” agreed Bobby sympathetically. “As Judy Patterson lives somewhere in the district, would he be likely to want to look at a map?”

“Some of these week-enders,” South Essex pointed out very reasonably, “know nothing about the neighbourhood—just muck about and never go far, they know the London road there and back and that's all. Of course, there's the distance to consider.”

“About seven miles from Beam End railway station to the top of Weeton Hill, isn't it?”

“That's right,” agreed South Essex, “and as this Patterson bird was at the station at eight-thirty, according to the evidence, how could he get to Weeton Hill by nine? that is, if the doctors are right about the time of death. Tricky business, times, anyhow.”

“So they are,” agreed Bobby fervently.

“Another point, the car and map bird is reported as wearing plus fours. The railway people's evidence is that Patterson was wearing an ordinary lounge suit—not too sure of it, but they made no suggestion about plus fours though they remember the broad-brimmed hat. Only there again he could have changed his things if he had had a car ready, parked or hidden somewhere near. That would have got him to the top of the hill at the time required all right. Only there's no record of any car being seen, and, if there was one, why didn't some one spot it? His own car is out of action, at a garage, new something or another being fitted. That's why he travelled by train, apparently.”

“What about a bike?” Bobby asked. “A bike's easily hidden.”

“Yes, I know, but there's no trace of it,” said South Essex, sounding more worried still, and rang off; and Bobby, feeling that this particular worry belonged all to South Essex and none of it to him, went on to Olive's place, where he found her, waiting, alone and unhappy.

She looked a good deal relieved to see him.

“Lady Alice keeps ringing up,” she said. “She wants to know where Ernie Maddox is. She seems to think I ought to know. It's something about a Mr. Martin.”

“Martin?” repeated Bobby, startled at the introduction once again of that name of ill-omen. “What about him? Miss Maddox hasn't been here, has she?”

“No, not since yesterday. I told Lady Alice so, but I'm not sure she believed me. She seems worried—frightened, almost.”

The hour was late by now for Bobby had spent a long time at the Yard. Olive who, out of business hours, inhabited two small rooms above the shop, began to prepare a light supper with the help of a chafing dish while Bobby smoked a cigarette, thought how pleasant a thing it is to watch a woman cooking you a meal, and recounted the events of the day.

“I expect the Maddox girl has just gone to visit a friend somewhere,” he remarked, “but it does look to me as if I were booked for this Tamar watchdog business. I wonder if he is really scared or if they just feel they want to know what's going on and think they would like me there to pump.”

Olive, bending gravely over the various ingredients fizzling together in her chafing dish, said very slowly,— “I can't think what Ernie Maddox has to do with it. I can't help wondering why she wants to come in with me all at once.”

“She and Judy Patterson struck me as being pretty thick,” observed Bobby. “Are they in love do you think?”

“I don't know,” answered Olive, looking troubled.

“What do you think of Judy?” Bobby asked.

Olive did not answer at once but instead turned into a dish waiting for it the concoction she had now brought to—she hoped—perfection.

“Cheese, egg, shredded smoked salmon, a dash of onion, a hint of mustard, on a base of prepared macaroni,” she said, a trifle nervously. “
Cauchemar aux chapeaux Farrar
, I call it,” she explained.

“By any other name,” decided Bobby, “it would doubtless be as nice, but it wouldn't seem as nice.”

Olive beamed.

“There are times,” she admitted, “when I'm almost glad we're engaged.” Then she said abruptly, “I don't know what I think about Judy. I haven't seen enough of him to be sure. He's—well, disturbing. Vicky says he looks like a naughty child sulking in a corner and it makes you feel you want to take him and coax him to be good again, only you aren't sure whether you could or whether he wants to be.”

Bobby, busy with
Cauchemar aux chapeaux Farrar
, only grunted. He could do no otherwise for his mouth was full. But he understood vaguely that to many women such an impression would be an almost irresistible attraction.

“I would like to know,” he remarked, before gathering a fresh mouthful, “what he was hanging round Flora Tamar for.”

Olive had no suggestions to make. The
Cauchemar aux chapeaux Farrar
passed into the realm of happy memory. Olive went to make some coffee. She began grinding beans she had already roasted, for she did not labour under the common sad delusion that you make coffee as you make tea by throwing a teaspoonful or so into a pot and adding hot water. The 'phone bell rang. Olive went to answer it. When she came back she said,

“That was Lady Alice again. She's asking about Judy now. I said I hadn't seen him.”

“You didn't tell her he had been at the Tamars'?”

Olive shook her head and brought him a cup of coffee.

“I asked her about Ernie,” she said. “She seems worried about her still.” 

“I wonder if I had better go round there,” Bobby said. “She may know more than she wants to say over the 'phone. I hope she hasn't got the girl mixed up with Martin. Martin's a pretty tough specimen.”

“You don't think he can be the murderer?”

“On general principles, he's the pick of the bunch,” declared Bobby. “Probably he's got a sound alibi. He always has. It's permanent. But I don't see any motive. Unless—”

“Unless what?”

“Well, it's only an idea,” Bobby said, “but there does seem to have been some sort of—not exactly blackmail, rather a kind of conspiracy to get money out of Tamar. A kind of mixture of the confidence trick and of what the Americans call extortionate letters. Munday and Martin might have been in it together and have quarrelled. Of course, it doesn't begin to fit.”

“I would rather think it was like that,” Olive said slowly, “than—than other things,” she concluded vaguely, so that Bobby wondered if she had something more definite in her mind.

He did not attempt to press her. He said:

“I think I'll ask Lady Alice if we can help, if she is really anxious about Miss Maddox. I can put it in an unofficial sort of way, perhaps. I'll ask her about Martin, too, as she mentioned his name to you. You don't mind, do you?”

Olive had no objection. She was, in fact, a trifle relieved at Bobby's suggestion, for she still believed she had detected a note of urgency in Lady Alice's voice.

Bobby started off accordingly and when he knocked at the door of Lady Alice's flat, Lady Alice herself opened it at once, though Bobby had been half afraid that at this late hour she might be in bed. An unnecessary fear, for Lady Alice practised the small hours. She was wearing her usual rough tweed coat and skirt which was her almost permanent attire—a probably untrue tale declared that she had worn it at the Buckingham Palace garden party. She said, scowling at him,

“Oh, it's you. I've had some of your sort here already.”

“Not us,” explained Bobby. “South Essex, I expect.”

“All the same,” retorted Lady Alice.

“Not at all,” protested Bobby slightly hurt. “Quite different, in fact. I haven't come about the Weeton Hill murder. Not our affair. Miss Farrar told me you had been ringing her up and seemed worried about Miss Maddox. So I thought I would ask if there was anything we could do, if you're really anxious, that is.”

Lady Alice did not answer directly but turned and went back into the flat, leaving the door open, however. Accepting the unspoken and perhaps unintended invitation, Bobby followed. She looked at him, seemed to hesitate, and then nodded towards a chair, as if deciding that since he was there he might as well stay there. As, however, she remained standing herself, he did not sit down. She was silent, but she watched him closely, her harsh, strongly-marked features showing now a trace of uneasiness and doubt, he thought, though doubt and uneasiness seemed to go not well with that arrogant beak-like nose and the light-coloured eyes where anger lurked. Bobby said,

“I'm afraid I'm a very late caller.”

“Thinking of my reputation?” she asked sardonically. Bobby did not answer that but instead looked pointedly towards the mantelpiece. Lady Alice indulged in the kind of harsh croak that seemed to do duty with her for laughter.

“Oh, it's still there,” she said.

In fact, in the same place upon the wall above the mantelpiece, hung a broad-bladed, slightly-curved knife. Lady Alice went across to it.

“Your South Essex friends were interested,” she remarked. “I offered to let them take it away if they wanted to test it for blood-stains or anything else.” She took it down and drew it from its sheath, a bright, formidable- looking weapon. “Once there was blood upon it,” she said quietly, “but that was long ago.”

“I am sure the South Essex police were satisfied,” observed Bobby.

“You're not and they weren't,” she retorted. “Only they couldn't do anything. Wanted an alibi. Like old Mr. Weller. An alibi. Nothing like it, I suppose. Well, I was here all that Friday evening, working on some travel articles I'm doing. Not good enough for them, though, and I've no witnesses. I suppose they think I ought to have had a nannie holding my hand, just for their benefit. I hadn't. I was alone all the time. I take jolly good care I am when I'm working. I got my own supper—bread and cheese, beer, pickled onions. No one called and I rang up no one. That's that.”

“Absence of an alibi is only negative evidence,” Bobby said. “The only thing about an alibi is that a sound one automatically saves any more bother. You have a car?”

“No. I drive but if I want a car, I hire one. I didn't on Friday.”

“Has Miss Maddox a car?”

Lady Alice helped herself to a cigarette before replying. She said slowly,

“Yes. Of course. Young people to-day think they don't exist unless they have a car. The others didn't ask me that, they asked a lot but not that. I suppose you'll put them on to it now?”

Bobby did not answer.

“You don't feel you wish anything done about Miss Maddox?” he asked instead. “I take it you have no special cause for anxiety? Miss Farrar told me you had mentioned Martin's name. Personally, I am always inclined to be anxious and suspicious when I hear of him.”

“You're right about that,” Lady Alice said darkly, a little heavily.

She was silent then for a moment or two, and Bobby, watching her, thought again that there was a formidable and a daunting air about her—so Judith might have looked, he thought, when she swung the scimitar above the head of Holofernes or Jael, Heber's wife, when she put out her hand for the hammer and the tent peg. Well could he believe that tale of the robber Arab slain with his own knife that later hung above the mantelpiece in a London flat. He went to look at it more closely. Lady Alice watched him and her eyes were bright and hard and the fire in them crept nearer to the surface. She said slowly,