The Dusky Hour (9 page)

“Had you tea there yesterday?” the colonel asked.

“Yes. I expect I was eating my muffins while – well, while whatever happened did happen. About four, wasn't it? At least, that's the Red Lion story. Someone heard the crash and noticed the time but didn't stop to look – thought it was someone playing marbles, I suppose. Nice friendly folk about here, but dumb; no imagination, no pep. I know it was about four when I got to Miss Towers's place, because I couldn't make them hear at first. They were all in one of the sheds, packing eggs or something. I remember thinking they couldn't be far away as it was tea-time. It was just the quarter past when one of them appeared. I remember looking at my watch and saying something about the time. Sort of mild hint I had been waiting. I had come straight by Battling Copse on my way, and I certainly didn't see or hear anything unusual. I expect I had gone some distance past before the thing actually happened. Anyhow, I heard nothing.”

“You didn't actually come through the copse?” asked the colonel.

“Oh, no; just passed by; the path skirts it but doesn't go through.”

“There may have been someone there?”

“Oh, yes, certainly; might have been as full as hell for all I know. If they had kept quiet and out of sight, no reason why I should know. Don't understand, though, why anyone should drive a car in there – rough ground, undergrowth, bushes, so on. Even if he wanted to go inside the copse himself, you would think he would park his car outside. Cook's persuaded it was burglars – she's got burglars on the brain. I suppose you don't put any stock in that idea? Burglars having a preliminary look-see; car parked ready for a quick get-away; row over something, and one of them croaked?”

“We have no ideas as yet,” the colonel answered slowly. “We think the dead man's name was Bennett.”

“Yes?” said Mr. Hayes, the name apparently meaning nothing to him. “Nothing to identify him? No cards, no papers, letters?”

“Everything like that seems to have been carefully removed,” the colonel explained.

“Everything? No bag? No valise?”

“No, nothing; even the tabs from the clothing had been cut out.

“Very odd.”

“Evidently the murderer wished to destroy all possibility of identification,” the colonel said.

“What about the car number?”

“Hired. Name Arthur Bennett and address a West End hotel Bennett left without saying where he was going. The address he gave at the hotel was in New York, but he claimed to be a British subject, and there hasn't been time yet to make inquiries in New York. But we did find some papers in the car, apparently overlooked by the murderer, and they suggest he was engaged in trying to sell American shares over here.”

Mr. Hayes fairly jumped on his chair.

“Share-pushing?” he cried. “Good Lord, can the fellow have been after me?”

“After you?”

“Well, I just thought –” said Mr. Hayes apologetically. “Nothing in it, I dare say. But I made my bit over there – catering business, some, but more by speculating. Not difficult if you keep your head. Most don't. And if you aren't too greedy. Most are. Anyhow, once your name gets on brokers' lists you're apt to be marked down as a possible mug. I get offers through the post sometimes – the W.P.B. is where they go. Two or three times I've had visitors. I show 'em the door. Plausible beggars, too. Talk the gold filling out of your teeth, some of them. I remember one. Little man, round face, all one smile. ‘Ted' or some such name – wanted to be on ‘Ted' and ‘Jack' terms at once. My name's John, you know. I don't think I ever got his surname; don't remember it, anyhow. I let him talk. Then I rang for the salt. ‘What's this for?' he says, looking at it sort of puzzled. ‘To put on the tail of the next bird,' I said. So he grinned. Saw I was on his game and went off. Curious business. I suppose they do find mugs at times and then it pays all right.”

“I understand there's an American gentleman interested in finance staying with Mr. Moffatt at Sevens,” the colonel remarked.

Mr. Hayes whistled again.

“Then Moffatt had better see the red light,” he declared. “But I think Moffatt's wide enough, isn't he? Goes across the pond pretty often, he says, so I dare say he knows how to bat.”

“It does seem,” remarked the colonel, firmly removing his now empty glass beyond the reach of Mr. Hayes, plainly itching to refill it, “a little odd the dead man came from New York and –”

“And so many round about here have been there, or still go?” interposed Hayes. “Like me to see the body? I met a hell of a lot of folk over there, one way and another. There's just a chance I might know him.”

“If you're sure you wouldn't mind,” said the colonel gratefully, accepting a voluntary proposal where otherwise he would have had to make a formal request.

“Delighted,” declared Mr. Hayes warmly. “At least, delighted's hardly the word, eh? Poor devil. Delighted if I can help you, I mean.”

“It's possible you may know him,” observed the colonel. “We have information he asked about Way Side – asked how to get here, in fact.”

“How to get here?” exclaimed Hayes, his rich voice running up the scale to a superb crescendo of utterly bewildered astonishment. “Well, if that don't beat Finnigan, and Finnigan beat the band. That all? Did he ask about me? Or anyone here?”

“Not that we know of.”

“Sounds as if it must be someone who knew me over that side,” declared Mr. Hayes. “Anyway, I shall be interested to see. Might be someone on the share-pushing stunt. Or someone I knew. You say he was shot? Found the weapon?”

“No,” said the colonel. “No trace of it.”

“It was probably a .32 Colt automatic,” observed Bobby, speaking for almost the first time.

“Plenty about,” observed Mr. Hayes. “I've got one myself. In the good old States, they're just one of the necessities of life, like cough-lozenges over here. Don't need them this side, but I've kept mine all the same.”

“I suppose you've a licence?” observed the colonel.

“Licence? No. I thought that was only for sporting guns – if you go potting rabbits and so on. I don't. I'm a fisherman. Never cared for shooting.”

“A licence is required for a pistol also, Mr. Hayes,” the colonel explained. “I'm afraid you're liable to a fine and confiscation of the weapon.”

“Well, now, if that isn't just too bad,” declared Mr. Hayes, his voice now a deep and tragic murmur. “What do I do about it? Pay my little fine, I suppose. Ought I to see a lawyer? I would like to keep the gun, I think, out here in the country. But I'm more than sorry if I've been breaking the law. Shall I hand it over right now? Do I get it back?”

“Well, perhaps, if you would let me have it, it might be as well,” agreed the colonel. “I dare say in the circumstances you might be allowed to keep it, but you must make formal application.”

“Right. I'll get it at once. It's upstairs. I keep it locked up in a drawer in my room.”

Bobby had produced his notebook. He was making a quite unnecessary entry. Looking up, he said:

“Have you any other firearms in the house, Mr. Hayes? A second pistol, for example?”

Mr. Hayes shot at Bobby a look from eyes that had ceased to be soft and languorous, that had grown hard, keen, searching instead. Eyelids, half lowered, screened them almost immediately, and it was perhaps only Bobby's fancy that made him think he detected a note of menace in the other's soft, slow, alluring tones as he answered: “Why, no, sure, one automatic's enough for me. I'm no two-gun man.”

Mr. Hayes duly produced his automatic. Colonel Warden gave a formal receipt for it, noticed it was loaded, withdrew the clip, observed that the bullet had been extracted from the first cartridge – a not unusual precaution against an accidental discharge – and also observed that the weapon was in good condition, clean and oiled, and showed no sign of recent use. There had, of course, been ample time for cleaning and reloading, but the chief constable supposed that a firearms expert would be able to tell whether or no the bullets found came from this pistol.

But that the colonel did not think probable. Had Mr. Hayes been the murderer, and this the weapon used, it would hardly, he supposed, have been handed over so complacently.

When they had taken their leave and were again in their car, he said to Bobby:

“Well, sergeant, what do you think of all that?” Without replying directly, Bobby told of the bout of fisticuffs by Battling Copse his sense of duty had so unfortunately obliged him to stop, and he repeated also the pieces of information given in the gossip of cook and maid. 

“If Hayes has two pistols and has only turned up one, looks rather bad, eh?” remarked the colonel, who had listened to all this with close attention. “We ought to get hold of the second one as well.”

“Yes, sir,” agreed Bobby, who did not see how this was to be accomplished, since they had no authority to search the house, and in any case Hayes had had plenty of time to conceal, if he so wished, any second pistol he did in fact possess.

“Awkward to do it, though,” muttered the colonel, who saw as clearly as Bobby the difficulties in the way. “Very awkward.”

“Of course, sir,” Bobby pointed out, “it's possible the maid was mistaken. She was a bit scared, evidently, and shut the drawer in a hurry. I asked her one or two questions and she wasn't at all clear in what she said. She may be wrong in thinking there were two of them; she may have mistaken something else for the second pistol. I'm inclined to accept her story myself, but it's not much to go on. In cross-examination, a clever counsel would make her contradict herself every minute.”

“Hardly good enough to apply for a search-warrant on,” agreed the colonel.

“No, sir, especially as it may have been got rid of by now,” Bobby said. “I would like to know, though, what the fight was about. I thought possibly young Moffatt might be more willing to tell you.”

“I'll ask him,” declared the colonel. “Moffatt's son and Hayes's chauffeur? Curious. A lot of curious things about this business.”

“There's the row between Hayes and his former house-keeper, too,” Bobby said. “From what the other servants say, she expected to marry Hayes. He may have forced the quarrel simply to get rid of her. A little odd, though, its happening just now.”

“What did you think of Hayes himself?”

“Very friendly gentleman; very frank and open,” Bobby answered. “He told us everything we wanted to know before we asked, almost as if he had expected our questions. And he went out of his way to provide himself with an excellent alibi.”

“He made no attempt to hide his having an automatic,” the colonel remarked.

“He may have suspected the servants knew and were likely to tell,” Bobby pointed out. “I couldn't help feeling, when he was talking about Miss Towers, he was answering any gossip he thought we might have heard. Unreasonable to complain of people being too free with their information when generally the trouble is to get anything out of them, but there it is; he struck me as all prepared to tell us just what he wanted us to know – too innocent to be true. Of course, if his alibi stands, he can't be mixed up in the actual murder. But he may know something about it all that frankness and openness of his is meant to hide.”

“Have to interview Miss Towers, see what she has to say,” the colonel decided. “Bit late to-night,” he added, glancing at his wrist-watch, for, indeed, by now it was not far from midnight, “and I shan't have time in the morning. I think you had better see to that, sergeant, first thing to-morrow. You'll know better than anyone else what to ask and what to look out for.”

“Very good, sir,” Bobby answered. “Do you know if what Miss Towers says can be trusted? She and he have had time to fix up a story if they want to.”

Colonel Warden had, however, never heard of the Towers Poultry Farm or its occupants till now. He supposed some information about them might probably be obtained from Norris, the local constable.

“Seems,” observed Bobby thoughtfully, “there are three women just outside the case – Mrs. O'Brien, Miss Moffatt, Miss Towers. And I suppose they all use lipstick, because I suppose all women do, and they are all apparently friendly with Mr. Hayes.”

“I think we can leave Miss Moffatt out of it,” the colonel said stiffly.

“You see,” explained Bobby apologetically, “I keep wondering what her brother and Hayes's chauffeur were fighting about – one would hardly expect a youngster in Mr. Oliver Moffatt's position to be on fighting terms with a neighbour's chauffeur. Very likely nothing to do with our case, but one never knows. You noticed, sir, that Hayes rather went out of his way to tell us the older Moffatt went across to the States every year. Do you know if that is so?”

“No, I don't. Don't believe it either. I've known Moffatt long enough to feel sure I should know if there was anything in that story. Why should he take a trip like that every year? He has no business over there. If he does go, he must be deliberately keeping quiet about it. He does,” added the colonel, with a touch of uneasiness in his voice, “take rather a long holiday every autumn, and never seems to have much to say about it.”

“Inquiries,” hinted Bobby, “could be made at the steamship offices.”

“I'll see to it,” said the colonel briefly, “though I'm sure there's nothing in it.”

“Mr. Hayes,” Bobby went on, “seemed quite enthusiastic about the country and country life. I never heard anyone quite so – well, almost lyrical.”

“I suppose it's why he came here,” the colonel said.

“The servants gave rather a different impression,” Bobby pointed out. “They seemed to think it bored him to death; said he was only cheerful the days he was running up to town.”