The Dusky Hour (3 page)

Bobby, putting a finger on Battling Copse as shown in his map, looked up to hear the reply. At first, when the duty inspector at the Yard had packed him off down here at a moment's notice to see, at the request of the local police, if he could identify the unknown victim of a motor accident, he had been inclined to suppose his mission meant no more than an agreeable interlude in serious work; a pleasant country trip, in fact.

But it was beginning now to look as if it might turn out very differently.

“I heard something about it,” Mr. Moffatt answered. “No one I know, is it? Battling Copse? I didn't know it had happened near there. Something about a chalk-pit, I heard, and you couldn't run a car into that one near Battling Copse unless you tried.”

“Exactly,” said Colonel Warden.

“Eh?” said Mr. Moffatt, startled by the other's tone.

Battling Copse was nearly three miles distant from Sevens, forming, in fact, the further boundary of an outlying portion of the Sevens estate. It had its name from a tradition that there a Roman legion, marching to the relief of London, had been cut off and utterly destroyed by a British force during the Boadicea rising. Tradition declared that the ground had been reddened with the blood of the defeated and that the clash of spear on shield, as the Roman soldiers died where they stood, could yet be heard once every twelvemonth in the stilly winter nights. Oddly enough, though there was historical proof, confirmed by entries in the parish registers, that the copse had been the scene in the civil wars of a hot skirmish between the Parliamentary and the Royalist cavalry, no local memory thereof seemed to have survived. Apparently the earlier tale had swallowed the later one, though of the truth of the first story there was no proof whatever; and Mr. Moffatt was never quite sure whether to regret such forgetfulness of historic incident, or to be thankful for it, in view of the fact that the Roundhead force had been commanded by the Moffatt of Sevens of that time. Regrettable in the extreme, undoubtedly a sad blot upon the family escutcheon, and yet highly satisfactory proof that the escutcheon had been there to be blotted three hundred years ago. Mr. Moffatt could only hope that eight generations of unbending Toryism served for atonement, even though ever since then the eldest son of the family had always been christened “Oliver,” and known as “Noll,” in memory of the great Protector. Even Mr. Moffatt's father, a Tory of the Tories, had respected that tradition, though he had tacked on an “Albert” in honour of the Prince Consort, and had hoped that in time the “Albert” might displace the “Oliver.”

“Do you mean you think it was suicide?” Mr. Moffatt asked.

“It's a possibility,” agreed the colonel, “but some rather odd facts have turned up. One thing is that yesterday afternoon a car was noticed by our man here – Norris his name is.”

Mr. Moffatt nodded. He knew Norris well enough, the constable stationed in the village, a civil, intelligent fellow, though less active against poaching than one could have wished, and reported, though one hoped untruly, to have been seen reading the
Daily Herald
– a bad sign.

“It was standing in the lane that turns out of the road just beyond your entrance gates,” Colonel Warden continued, “going west, that is.”

“The lane leading to Markham's farm?”

“Yes, and nowhere else,” said the colonel. “Apparently, however, it did not go there, for there are no tracks higher up the lane, and no one at Markham's knows anything about it. Norris thought it an odd place to park a car. He took a note of the number, and it is the same as that of the car found in the Battling Copse chalkpit. More curious still, when Norris went on, towards Sevens, he saw a man standing on the bank behind the hedge just before the Sevens entrance, watching the house through a pair of field-glasses.”

“What on earth for?” exclaimed Mr. Moffatt.

“That,” said the colonel, “is what Norris asked. The fellow seemed confused. Norris had come up quietly on his bicycle and had taken him by surprise. He said something about Sevens being a fine old house and he was interested in architecture. Then he made off. Got into his car and drove away, or seemed to. Must have come back again. Nothing Norris could do, of course. Bad manners, but no legal offence in watching people through field-glasses. But Norris says he is certain the dead man found in the car in the chalk-pit is the man he saw.”

“Don't understand it,” said Mr. Moffatt. “If he wanted to see the house, nothing to stop him coming and asking.” In point of fact, Sevens was not a fine old house. The original building had been burnt down in mid-Victorian days and re-erected in a sham and inappropriate Gothic that always made Ena feel she loved her birthplace less than she should have done. Once, under a misapprehension born of old prints, a representative of
Country Life
had arrived, full of enthusiasm and belief that the ancient building survived. Ena had never forgotten his expression as he gazed upon the actual edifice. It had even battlements.

“Norris,” continued the colonel, “says the car went on up the road. Now you know that way leads nowhere once it is past Sevens except to Mr. Hayes's place, to the Towers, and to two or three cottages and then back to the main road again in a long circuit. So what was he after?”

“Excuse me, sir,” said Bobby, looking up in rather a puzzled way from the large-scale map he was studying, “is the Towers Mr. Hayes's place? I thought that was Way Side. That's marked here, but I can't see any Towers.”

“Poultry farm,” explained the colonel, “first place past Battling Copse – run by Miss Towers and her sister, London ladies who lost their money in some smash and are probably now on the way to lose what's left.”

“Sure to, sure to,” grumbled Mr. Moffatt, scowling and frowning as if he hoped as much. “I've told them so myself. Much better get back to town, much better.”

He spoke with so much apparent feeling that Bobby wondered if there was any reason why these Londoners were unwelcome as neighbours, or if Mr. Moffatt merely thought it a pity people should lose money in undertakings for which probably they were quite unsuited.

“Then Way Side is Mr. Hayes's place?” Bobby asked.

The colonel nodded, and to Mr. Moffatt he said:

“Hayes is an American, isn't he?” To Bobby he explained, as if fearing Scotland Yard efficiency might lift an eyebrow at ignorance of any of the more prominent residents in the district: “Only been there a few months. It was empty for some time after the last owner died, and then this man took it.”

“I don't think he is American,” Mr. Moffatt answered. “Pleasant fellow to talk to; seems anxious to be neighbourly. Of course, I don't know him well; he's hardly got settled in yet. He's called once or twice, though, and we've been over there. He did say he had made his money in America – a place called Denver; mining town apparently.”

“We found some papers in the car of the poor chap that's got himself killed,” the colonel explained. “They make it seem as if he may have been in the States, too. We thought possibly he might be going to call on Mr. Hayes, especially as there is some suggestion he had been asking how to get to Way Side. We wondered if he could have confused Sevens and Way Side?”

“Don't see how,” said Mr. Moffatt, “curious, though. I've a man here to-night – came down from town to chat and talk business. A Mr. Pegley. I believe he's been in America, and I think he mentioned Denver. I asked him if he knew Hayes, but he didn't seem to. Quite a big town, he tells me – Denver.”

“Interesting,” said the colonel, who had known about Mr. Pegley before, but had wished Mr. Moffatt to be the first to mention him. “Perhaps he can help us. I must ask him, if I may.”

“He is in the drawing-room,” Mr. Moffatt explained. “If you'll come along, Ena will give you a cup of coffee and you can ask Pegley himself. Do you know his name? The dead man's, I mean.”

“We think it is Bennett – Arthur Bennett,” Colonel Warden answered, “but it's an odd thing again – there were no papers or letters or anything of that kind in his pocket; no personal card either; nothing in the way of name or address. The papers we found were rather tucked away – in an envelope behind a cushion. And,” continued the colonel slowly, “they rather suggested Mr. Bennett – if that's his name – was engaged in – well, share-pushing, they call it.”

Mr. Moffatt fairly jumped. The card Larson had so negligently dropped before him was in his waistcoat pocket and now seemed suddenly to bulk enormous there, so that he expected Colonel Warden to point at it an inquiring finger. Bewilderedly he wondered if he ought to produce it, and how doing so would conform with his duty as a host.

“That is why,” Colonel Warden continued, apparently as unaware of that hidden card as though it shouted not its presence and its message to the whole world in the way Mr. Moffatt felt it must surely be doing, “we rang up Scotland Yard, as we knew they had been chasing American share-pushers lately, and asked them to send us down someone who might perhaps be able to identify the body. Detective-Sergeant Owen was good enough to come along by the next train.”

He indicated Bobby as he spoke. Bobby bowed slightly. Mr. Moffatt said:

“Oh, yes – Reeves told me. Knew him, apparently.” The colonel looked surprised, even startled. Bobby looked a trifle surprised, too, and said:

“Your butler? He knew me? I didn't recognise him.” He took out his notebook and made an entry. But Mr. Moffatt was thinking of something else. He said:

“There were papers in the car but none on the body? Isn't that rather queer?”

“We thought it so,” answered the colonel cautiously. “Everyone has some sort of document in his pocket,” declared Mr. Moffatt, “if it's only a notebook or an old envelope. Can they have been taken by someone – removed?”

“We thought it possible,” agreed the colonel, still cautiously.

“But, then, that would mean,” said Mr. Moffatt hesitatingly, “that would mean – murder?”

“We thought it possible,” agreed the colonel once again.

Mr. Moffatt looked very disturbed, even uneasy, but excited and interested as well. Murder was certainly a dreadful thing, but also, in a way, impersonal. It was like a war in Spain, a famine in China, a revolution in Mexico or Brazil, tragic, deplorable, but also comfortably remote. Startling, certainly, that this time it had come even as near as Battling Copse, three miles away, on the west far boundary of the Sevens estate, but none the less utterly remote from oneself.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “I mean, what for?... Have you any idea?”

“Well, we haven't much to go on at present,” the colonel answered. “One of Markham's men, on his way to work this morning, noticed car-tracks and broken bushes near the Battling Copse chalk-pit. He didn't think much of it – not a quick thinker, probably. Later he mentioned it to some of his mates and Mr. Markham heard of it, and went down to have a look himself. He saw at once something had gone over the edge of the pit, and there below was the car, upside-down, with the poor chap who had been driving it lying all smashed up by its side. He sent word to Norris, Norris reported, and when I heard I thought I had better come along myself. From the first I didn't think it looked like an accident. Of course, a skid at a high rate of speed might have done it. But there was no sign of that. And to get there off the road would mean a sharp turn for no apparent reason and then forcing a way through bushes that even in the middle of the night or a fog would have shown any driver he was off the road. It looks as if the car had been parked there for some time, out of the way, and then deliberately driven over the edge.”

“But that would be suicide,” Mr. Moffatt exclaimed.

Colonel Warden made no reply. Detective-Sergeant Owen still seemed absorbed in his map, even though at the same time he was watching and listening attentively. Mr. Moffatt was beginning to feel vaguely uncomfortable. Murder seemed somehow to be creeping near – too near. No longer did it seem merely a paragraph in the paper, something fresh to chat about, an occasion for a comfortable shiver over a comfortable glass of wine. Besides, the impression was growing upon him that these two men, the burly, elderly, soldier-like colonel, the good-looking but quite ordinary young fellow from Scotland Yard, were both watching him closely, though he could not imagine why. He said:

“You have no” – what was the word? ah – “no clues?”

“There was a woman's lipstick,” the colonel answered, “picked up near where the car went over. Nothing to prove any connection, but it certainly hadn't been there long and Markham says he saw it long before, so far as is known, any woman had been near. And a fragment of the wrapper of a roll of photographic film. Someone found it and handed it to Norris, and Norris is sure no one had been taking snaps. No connection, most likely; it's not usual to take snaps of murders.”

Bobby, as if in answer to the colonel's nod, opened an attaché-case he had with him and produced a small metal lipstick case and a fragment of a paper wrapper with enough printing on it to show what purpose it had served. Both were carefully preserved in cellophane envelopes, though the lipstick case had been trodden deep into the mould by the foot of its finder, and the fragment of wrapper had been handled by half a dozen persons before finally coming into Constable Norris's possession.

But routine is routine, regulations must be observed, and “Protect the evidence” remains the first standing rule of all investigation.

“Not much chance of finding anything in the way of footmarks or finger-prints,” observed the colonel. “Everything was pretty thoroughly trampled over and pulled about long before Norris got there. The car had been turned right side up, the dead body carried up to one of the farm outhouses. Of course, they had no idea it was anything but an accident. There's nothing much for us to go on – except the lipstick case and the bit of Kodak film wrapper. Oh,” he added carelessly, “and that odd incident Norris happened to see – the watching Sevens through field-glasses.”