Ten Star Clues (21 page)

“Very much better,” agreed the colonel warmly. “I wish every one would be as frank. We haven't identified the weapon yet, and as a matter of fact, the automatic you mention can't be found now.”

“The devil it can't,” exclaimed Clinton, looking worried. “I didn't know that. Suggestive, eh? Looks as if it were the one used.” 

“We can't be sure,” the colonel answered cautiously. “All we can be sure of is that the bullets were fired from a point thirty-two, and that that is the calibre both of Earl Wych's pistol and of the one which presumably is still in the Wych estate office safe.”

“If the earl's pistol were used,” Clinton said slowly, “that does seem to suggest possibilities.”

He seemed to become lost in thought. Bobby said:— “Yes. What possibilities?”

“Hanged if I know,” Clinton answered with a half smile. “Can't say. Lawyers must be cautious, you know,” he added, his smile more marked now.

He wouldn't say any more, and presently was allowed to go. When the door had closed behind him, the colonel said:—

“I must say I rather like the way he sticks up for Ralph and all the time pretends he is just thinking of his own interests. A fine fellow.”

“Yes, sir,” said Bobby, who had resumed his inspection of the ceiling above their heads.

The colonel stared out of the window, fidgeted, hesitated. Unconsciously he imitated a favourite gesture and rubbed the tip of his nose. Then he said:—

“Or is he?”

“I don't know,” said Bobby.

“A bit odd,” the colonel said, “the way he dragged it in about Martin having seen him handling the automatic here. Why was he so keen on our knowing that?”

“There were one or two other things he said rather worried me,” Bobby said. “It all came in quite naturally about Ralph's temper and opportunities but it all did come in. Why shouldn't it for that matter?”

“You don't think,” said the colonel hesitatingly, “you don't think he can be our man?”

“It might be,” agreed Bobby cautiously.

“What possible motive could he have?” asked the colonel. “None,” he answered himself firmly. “So that lets him out. Hang it all, we mustn't get into the way of suspecting every one. Or must we?”

“Well, sir,” answered Bobby, “at present I think we must.”

The next and last on the list to be interviewed was Ralph, though first there was an interlude when an offer of refreshments brought by Martin was gratefully accepted. Not much time was spent in this way, though; not half enough indeed in the considered opinion of the stenographer, and then Ralph appeared, looking very grim and defiant. But his voice was quiet and steady as, without waiting to be questioned, he began abruptly:—

“I suppose you know what's being said about me?”

“We pay no attention to what people say,” the colonel told him at once.

“Don't you?” Ralph asked. “Well, I do. I don't like being called a murderer. If any one says it to my face, I'll—”

He stopped there, with an effort that was evident, with eyes so fiercely alight, a mouth so ominously set, that the colonel was quite startled—and not too favourably impressed.

“No violence, please,” he said sharply.

“May I suggest to Mr. Hoyle,” interposed Bobby, “that if any one is suspected of an act of violence, the best way to strengthen that suspicion is to commit a further act of violence.”

Ralph, who hitherto had hardly noticed Bobby, swung round in the chair he had just taken and stared at him. Their eyes met in a long and steady gaze, as those of Anne and Bobby had done a little before. But this time the long, searching stare they exchanged was not so much as if exchanged between two open adversaries, but, searching and questioning, an effort to divine each what was in the other's mind. ‘Are you guilty?' Bobby seemed to be asking and Ralph to be retorting: ‘What do you think?' Both of them seemed for the moment to have forgotten the colonel, who himself seemed loath to interrupt that silent, not so much duel as intensity of search into another's secret and most hidden thoughts. But then he coughed, almost apologetically, and said:—

“Ralph, I've known all of you a good many years. That makes no difference now. But I warn you again that any show of violence will only make things worse.”

Ralph swung round on him.

“Well, what would you do,” he demanded, “if people were going about behind your back saying you were a murderer?”

This was a difficult question, and the colonel made no attempt to answer it. Ralph did not seem to expect any reply, for he went on immediately:—

“I was fond of him—of uncle, I mean, great-uncle really—I always called them uncle and aunt. You know we had a blazing row last night?”

“Ralph,” the colonel said, speaking slowly and with some care, “it is not our duty—or our practice—to warn people unless we think there is likely to be sufficient evidence to justify a charge. I don't think that about you and so I didn't mean to give you any warning. But now I will. I remind you formally that anything you say may be used in evidence, that you are not obliged to answer questions, and that if you wish you can have your solicitor present.”

“Thank you for making it so plain,” Ralph answered with some bitterness. “What you mean is the handcuffs are all ready but you are keeping them out of sight for the present. Well, anything I say you may use any damn way you like. I'm quite willing to answer any sensible”—he laid a slightly offensive emphasis on this last word—“any sensible question you want to ask me. As for a solicitor, I wouldn't mind old Clinton being here. He's been such a decent scout all along.” Ralph's bitter, angry expression softened momentarily as he mentioned his friend's name. “He's stood by me from the first,” and now Ralph's expression hardened again as if he were thinking of others who had emphatically not ‘stood by' him. “He's the one person I feel I can trust. But I don't think we need bother him just at present. He's got his own work to attend to, he's gone haring off to his office where his clients have been lining up all day, waiting for him. But I'll tell you one thing. No one's going to call me a murderer to my face and get away with it.”

The colonel took no notice of this renewed threat. He was turning over the papers before him. Bobby was idly jotting down his impressions on a scrap of paper. Why he did so he hardly knew, and when he had finished he tore the paper into small scraps and threw it into the waste-paper basket. What he had written ran much like this: “Strong emotions. Confiding. People with strong emotions generally are. If he trusted any one, would do so to the limit. Generous, hot-headed, truculent, sensitive. Interesting sort of chap. Eat out of your hand or fly at your throat, and a toss up which.”

It may be added that if Ralph had ever had an opportunity to read this summing up of his character, he would have read it with bewilderment and declared that almost the exact reverse was true in every single detail. He did become aware that Bobby was once again regarding him with a deep and searching intentness. He returned the scrutiny with an angry glare.

“Well?” he said with a truculence that fully justified one item at least of Bobby's jottings. “Well?” he repeated, this time still more truculently.

“Yes?” said Bobby amiably.

This interchange of interjections was hardly a promising conversational opening, and in fact conversation ceased therewith. The colonel was still busy with his papers. Ralph turned his defiant stare to the window as though wishing his challenge now to embrace the whole outside world as well. Bobby continued to tear into very small pieces the jottings he had been putting down. The colonel gave a preliminary cough as a warning that he was now ready to begin again.

“The dispute with your uncle,” he said, “I suppose was about the return of the man claiming to be Bertram Hoyle and now therefore succeeding to the title and estates.”

“You may as well understand at once,” Ralph interrupted, “that I don't admit for a moment that the fellow is anything but a bare-faced fraud.”

“His grandparents accepted him?”

“Yes, I know,” Ralph admitted, frowning heavily. “I can't make it out. I'll swear uncle knew well enough the fellow's an impostor. He must have known it. He as good as admitted as much when we were rowing at each other last night. He started talking about the honour of the family. I asked him what the devil the honour of the family had to do with accepting as a Hoyle, as the next Earl Wych, a fellow who hadn't a drop of Hoyle blood in his veins. He doesn't even look a Hoyle. He's no more a Hoyle than the first tramp you meet on the road or the first Irish labourer who comes over here to make a bit digging potatoes and goes home to pay his subscription to the I.R.A. to buy bombs for murder. And uncle had the cheek to tell me he was doing nothing in any way to affect my rights. It was none of my business, nothing to do with me, he said. Kicking me out to put a fraud in my place wasn't supposed to be any business of mine. That made me madder than ever.”

Bobby said thoughtfully:—

“It seems a curious remark. I mean, saying it was no business of yours. Can you suggest what it meant?”

Ralph only answered by a gesture of helpless and angry bewilderment.

“Did you ask your uncle for an explanation?”

“Well, what do you think?” retorted Ralph. “I did nothing else.”

“I'm asking,” Bobby explained, “because our information—it's in one of these statements—is that your first reaction was to call your uncle a liar.”

“Well, so he was, lying like blazes,” answered Ralph, though now a little on the defensive.

“Not exactly asking for an explanation, though,” murmured Bobby. “You see, from what I gather about Earl Wych he was very conscious of his—well, his rank and position. Proud of being Earl Wych. I suppose any one would be. So I was rather wondering if calling him a liar was quite the best way of getting him to explain. Especially when the word was used from a young man to a much older man, from a nephew to his great-uncle, indeed from any one at all to the Earl Wych.”

“Rubbing it in a bit, aren't you?” grunted Ralph sulkily. “All the same, if you don't want to be called a liar, you shouldn't tell lies.”

“You see,” explained Bobby as gently as before, “what I'm really trying to get at, is:— Did your talk with your uncle last night run on the same lines? I mean, did you start off by calling Earl Wych a liar?”

“I suppose I made it pretty clear what I thought of the whole business,” Ralph admitted. “I don't think I called uncle a liar again. Not that I remember. I may have said it was all a blasted lie or something of that sort.” He paused for a moment and seemed to be reflecting. “Oh, well,” he said, “I suppose really I didn't give uncle much chance to explain. I felt too sore. I suppose I might have gone a bit slower. I think he must have gone the way old people do sometimes—second childhood, that sort of thing.”

“Did he give that impression to you or to any one else apart from his recognition of his grandson?”

“No, he didn't,” admitted Ralph. “Not in the least. Vigorous as any one half his age—especially when he was telling me things. None of my business, he told me. That's what made me so mad. But I didn't call him a liar again. At least I don't think I did. Anyhow, he called me much worse things.”

“In fact,” suggested Bobby, “a somewhat undignified slanging match on both sides?”

“Well, if you like to put it that way,” Ralph admitted again. “What you are getting at is that I was a blasted fool to lose my temper; and if I had had the sense of a year-old baby, I might have got a reasonable explanation?”

“The words are your own,” said Bobby gravely, “but the meaning is more or less mine.”

“All very well for you to talk,” grumbled Ralph. “If someone came along and kicked you out from where you belonged you mightn't be quite so calm and cool and reasonable and all that. Besides, old Clinton did try to get an explanation. If any one could have talked uncle over, he could. He didn't, any more than I did, though of course they didn't row at each other. Clinton just got shown the door. That was all. Clinton didn't quite like it when I said I would have a try. He said it would only make things worse. He was right enough all right. He generally is. Got quite huffy with me about it, and said he hoped I would take his advice another time or he would chuck the whole show. So I suppose next time I shall have to. I suppose you are thinking it's a pity I didn't this time.”

Both Bobby and the colonel assured him with some emphasis that that was exactly what they did think. If Clinton's advice had been followed, this unfortunate and violent quarrel, just before the occurrence of the murder, would never have taken place.

“There's one other question I want to ask,” the colonel went on. “I understand an automatic, point three-two, was kept in a drawer of this writing table. Can you say when you saw it last?”

“I haven't the least idea. I expect I knew it was there —or was there at one time—but I haven't seen it or thought of it for years. Not that I remember. It didn't figure in the row last night, if that's what you're getting at. We didn't get as fair as threatening each other with automatics.” He was silent for a moment and then said, shuddering slightly, as though the question brought home to him more vividly what it was that had happened:— “Do you mean it was the one used to kill uncle?”

“We can't tell that yet,” the colonel answered. “No one seems to know what has become of it.”

“Does any one know if it was there recently?” Ralph asked. “Uncle may have got rid of it or put it away somewhere.”

“There seems proof it was in its case in the top drawer of this table a day or two ago,” the colonel answered. “The empty case is there still.”