Death of an Airman (4 page)

The Bishop was sitting in the rear cockpit of the club Moth, which itself was sitting in the middle of the aerodrome. Miss Sackbut was in the front cockpit.

“If I didn't say it, you would fly straight into the ground,” she answered reasonably.

“I think even that would be preferable to your wild scream, which is profoundly unsettling.”

“I scream in order to make you realize that your movements of the control column
must
be coarse as the machine loses flying speed. Your elevators are losing their grip on the air.”

“No doubt all that is true,” answered the Bishop with dignity. “It means very little to me. I am afraid I must be constitutionally incapable of flying.”

Sally laughed. “Now then, don't despair. Everybody makes the same mistakes. Remember, the first check is
just
a check. Then wait. Then back, back, back!”

“There you go again!” said the Bishop sharply.

“Put your finger and thumb lightly round the control column.”

“They are.”

“Now—back, back, back! Do you get the idea?”

“The control column hit me in the tummy!”

“Exactly. It
should
do. Now, if you want to avoid my scream, bring it back in time, just as the machine is about to sink on the ground.”

The Bishop's pleasant and ruddy face took on the expression of a sulky child. “I really think I would much rather do no more flying at all to-day. I get worse and worse instead of better and better.”

Sally recognized the expression. “Well, you've done about twenty minutes, so perhaps you are getting tired. Taxi her back to the hangars.”

“I don't like taxying,” said Dr. Marriott stubbornly. “I appear to have no control whatever over the machine.”

“One hasn't in taxying, in aircraft like this,” answered his instructor airily, “without wheel brakes.”

“Then how do I get to the hangar?” asked the Bishop querulously.

“Just ooze over in the general direction of the hangar,” said Sally with a gesture. “
Coarse
movements of the rudder. Use the stick against the turn.”

The Bishop succeeded in oozing in the general direction of the hangar, and accepted Miss Sackbut's suggestion of a coffee. They drank it in the lounge. This was deserted except for a novice, a youth who was, it seemed, laboriously, and a little palely, preparing for his first cross-country flight as he bent over a table map in the corner.

“He is flying to Marsham, ten miles away,” explained Miss Sackbut.

“Why is he moving that piece of string round the map?” asked the Bishop curiously.

“He is finding at what point of the compass Marsham is in relation to here.”

“Really! And then he merely has to fly by his compass on that course and he arrives there?”

“No,” said Miss Sackbut; “he must allow for deviation, according to a table placed on his compass.”

“Oh!” answered the Bishop.

“He has also to find out the wind strength and direction and work out a small vector triangle or use a little instrument which solves the problem automatically. The result will tell him the course he must steer.”

Dr. Marriott pressed his brow. “How much more reasonable theology is! It sounds absurdly complicated. And does that bring him over Marsham aerodrome?”

Sally shook her head. “No; because while he is up the wind will change and he will get hopelessly lost.”

“Dear me! However will he reach Marsham?”

“The chances are that he will not,” answered Miss Sackbut. “If he is unscrupulous, he will fly to the railway line as soon as he is out of sight and follow it to Marsham, forgetting all about his compass. However, he is young and probably scrupulous, so he will wander all over England and finally land in a ploughed field to ask the inhabitants where he is. In getting off the ploughed field again he will hit a tree, and some time later we will send out a crash tender to bring the 'plane in, if repairable, and himself, if conscious.”

“Really!” said the Bishop. “I don't think I shall like cross-country flying.”

“Don't worry,” answered the girl reassuringly. “You'll be flying in a club machine, so I shall escort you. We take care never to damage a club machine. This bloke is flying in his own bus, so, of course, it's all to the good if we get the job of repairing it.”

The Bishop shook a playful forefinger. “Either you are very heartless, Miss Sackbut, or else you are a little given to exaggeration.”

After sighing audibly and going out twice to look at the windsock, the youth left. Then Sally turned firmly to the Bishop. “I'm glad we are alone. I've wanted to talk to you seriously. I believe you have something on your mind. You were getting on quite nicely with your training until the last day or two, but now your mind doesn't seem on the job.”

Dr. Marriott felt a little defenceless before Sally's very direct methods of approach. Even his episcopacy seemed no barrier against it.

“There is something on my mind,” admitted the Bishop at last. “Some very fishy things have turned up about Furnace's death, and I'm reluctantly coming to the conclusion that I shall have to speak to the police about it. That's not a thing I like doing.”

“Good lord!” exclaimed Sally, genuinely shocked. “You, of all people! What on earth could
you
have heard? I am sure there is some mistake.”

“I do not think so,” he answered quietly. “Lady Laura apparently had a letter from Furnace in which he told her he was going to put an end to things.”

Sally flushed. “It's abominable! Laura is always saying that sort of thing. I don't believe it. Why didn't she mention it at the inquest? It's sheer publicity lust! I'm sure she wrote the letter herself.” Sally panted with fury.

“I understand she kept quiet about it out of regard to Furnace's reputation,” explained the Bishop, looking at her closely.

“A hell of a lot she cares for anyone's reputation! She nearly drove the poor fellow crazy and then dropped him like a hot cake. Bah!”

“All the same, she appears to have had the letter. Here it is.”

Sally seized it and read it through with a puzzled expression. It changed to one of concern. “The letter's genuine enough. Poor George! I could murder Laura. I don't believe she has a vestige of a heart. Is it really necessary to drag all this up?”

The Bishop did not answer immediately. “No,” he said at last, “I don't think it is—not as it stands. It is not necessarily evidence that the crash was deliberate. Indeed, a suicide would be a slight matter compared with what I have discovered. The truth is, Miss Sackbut, Furnace was not dead when he was taken out of the aeroplane. He died subsequently. What that may mean, I hardly dare to think. In fact, for the moment I refuse, deliberately refuse, even to speculate.”

Chapter V

Discovery of a Doctor

Inspector Creighton put his pince-nez carefully on the desk in front of him and regarded them thoughtfully for a moment. Then he picked them up and polished them with an air of fury. He was silent throughout this operation, and the Bishop watched him in equal silence. An odd policeman, reflected the Bishop. He looked just like a shopwalker. He had the same precise clothing, vaguely soothing gesture, and imitation genteel voice.

“Really, my lord,” said the Inspector, “this is a very remarkable suggestion you make.”

“I make no suggestion,” replied the Bishop patiently. “I am merely presenting you with two facts. As far as I can see, they can have nothing to do with each other. Or, rather, if you believe one, the other is of little importance.”

The Inspector picked up Furnace's letter to Lady Laura and dropped it again helplessly. “Well, look at this. As I suspected all the time, it
was
a case of suicide. But now, what about the
rigor
business? Why didn't you tell me of it before, my lord?” he asked plaintively.

“My observation became of no importance until I heard Bastable's story,” explained the Bishop disingenuously. “Then it became plain that Furnace must have died very shortly before I was left alone with him. Until then, it seemed to be on the surface merely a case of
rigor
delayed, abnormally, but not
more
than might be possible. Bastable's story gave an entirely different interpretation to it.”

Inspector Creighton looked the Bishop straight in the eye. “You don't put a sinister interpretation to it, do you?”

“Of course not!” Dr. Marriott hastened to answer. “The letter makes it plain that Furnace intended to commit suicide.
My
discovery at present only shows that he did not make a perfect job of it. He died as a result of injuries received in the accident, but death did not take place immediately.”

“I am glad you agree with me there. One has to go carefully, you understand. I mean Lady Laura is a person of influence. Naturally, that does not weigh with us directly, but it does remind us that if we do make a mistake, it will be all the more prominent.”

The Bishop felt it was time to cease fencing. “Are you having an exhumation?” he asked bluntly.

“H'm, yes,” admitted the Inspector. “We
are
having one. As a matter of form. Please remember that, my lord—a matter of form. We are applying for the order to-day.”

“You might keep me posted,” said the Bishop, “for various reasons.”

“We shall, of course, tell you in the unexpected event of anything coming to light at all out of the way, if you understand me. Most certainly we should. Let me show you to the door. This way, my lord.” Dignified and impassive, the policeman rose to his feet and gravely escorted his visitor to the street entrance.

The Bishop of Cootamundra left Baston police station with a certain amount of satisfaction. He liked Inspector Creighton and felt he could get on with him. They had understood each other. The Bishop, however, anticipated a modicum of difficulty if anything unexpected did turn up, and he still felt it his duty to try to guide matters so as to cause the minimum of unpleasantness all round. But the shopwalker was not to be bluffed, as the Bishop gathered from a certain shrewd sharpness in his eyes.

Now, the question was, would anything unexpected turn up?

***

Two days later, as the Bishop was walking quietly through Baston, a car stopped suddenly beside him. The screech of its braked tyres on the road made him look up. Dr. Bastable's face was poked out of the window.

“Good afternoon, Doctor Marriott.”

“Good afternoon, Doctor.”

“Your guess has proved right.”

“My guess? I don't quite follow?”

“We completed the autopsy to-day. Major Furnace was killed by a bullet in his brain.”

“A bullet!” The Bishop was genuinely startled. “This is dreadful!”

Dr. Bastable's wooden face wrestled with a knowing expression. “Come, come, you guessed something of the sort from the moment you discovered about the
rigor
!”

“I assure you, most positively no,” answered the Bishop in distress. “All I guessed then was that Furnace had died after the crash. But a bullet! It is really too dreadful.”

“Well, naturally, if you say you didn't guess it, you didn't.” Dr. Bastable seemed a little downcast. “It'll be a great disappointment for the Inspector. He thinks you knew all along, and that you'll be able to give him some valuable information. I promised that if I saw you I'd let you know he wanted to see you.”

“I will call in on him to-morrow,” promised Dr. Marriott.

***

Early next morning the Bishop was back again in Baston police station. Dr. Bastable and Inspector Creighton were treating him with flattering deference, referring repeatedly to his foresight. The Bishop continued to insist that he had foreseen nothing, but when he came to look back on it, he knew that deep down in his heart he had suspected something quite as bad all the time. The sensation of evil, for instance, when he had watched beside the body—aroused by the abnormality of the physical condition of the body certainly—but wasn't it perhaps also inspired by some aftermath of violence in the atmosphere?

The murderer must have left the hangar shortly before the Bishop went in.…

“Well, my lord, this is the position, isn't it, Bastable? The revolver-shot
must
have been fatal. The crash injuries were of a character which
might
have been fatal or might not. Actually a good deal of the injury which, from superficial examination, had been attributed to the crash was really caused by the bullet. So when Furnace was dragged from the aeroplane he must have been still living, although undoubtedly unconscious. Perhaps he was just on the borderline of death. But for some reason, it was so much to somebody's interest to have Furnace dead, that they took the risk of making certain. They relied on the head wound masking the revolver bullet, I suppose. A risky business, it seems to me.”

“Very risky,” said Dr. Bastable. “It amazes me that the bullet did not pass right through the head and out again, in which case the point of exit would have given it away. But these things happen. I shouldn't like to depend on it if I were a murderer.”

“Well, now what does all this suggest to you, my lord?” asked Inspector Creighton in a tone of deferential enquiry.

The Bishop answered hesitantly. “I must say it makes me think, very reluctantly, that whoever shot Furnace must have had some hand in causing the crash, and so the crash couldn't have been accidental, after all. We might even assume that the circumstances which caused the crash were such that if Furnace had been able to regain consciousness he would have been able to guess the murderer. That is what occurs to me.”

“Bravo, you have the mind of a detective!” exclaimed the Inspector.

Dr. Marriott smiled deprecatingly. “Or a criminal. I see one difficulty, however. How can one account for the letter to Lady Laura, written, I am afraid, in the definite contemplation of suicide?”

“That is a difficulty,” answered the policeman, sadly shaking his head. “It's the one thing that doesn't make sense.”

The Bishop placed the tips of his fingers together. “A further reflection suggests itself to me. Could there, do you think, be a doubt as to the authenticity of the letter? If I were a criminal and my victim was known to be in love with a certain lady, I might arrange for a letter threatening suicide to be sent to the lady.”

The Inspector permitted himself the familiarity of a wink. “Bless you, my lord, I thought of that. No doubt about the authenticity at all, unfortunately. I spent the morning comparing it with other specimens of the deceased's handwriting. Not a doubt of it; it's genuine.”

“Then our chain of deduction appears to have reached an
impasse
.”

“We are stuck,” agreed the Inspector, “for the moment.”

“The whole thing seems to be very extraordinary,” interrupted Dr. Bastable fretfully. “It was all so unnecessary. The man would have died from that head wound, anyway, and it was quite unnecessary to kill him. If only they had not done that it would merely have been a clear case of suicide. Very foolish. Meanwhile, gentlemen, my patients are waiting for me. Do you want me any more? Or can I leave you in your
impasse
?”

“Just before you go, Doctor Bastable, tell us this,” said Creighton. “Bearing in mind the nature of the head wound and the circumstances of the crash, what appearance would the deceased present when dragged out of the—er—flying machine?” The policeman spoke very carefully, as if threading his way among obstacles.

“What the devil do you mean, Inspector?” asked Dr. Bastable peevishly.

“I mean—well, I don't want to make this a leading question, you see—but, tell me, would it have been a reasonable mistake for a layman to think him dead?”

“Laymen are never reasonable,” snapped the doctor. “I believe them capable of anything. They might think a dead man unconscious or a senseless man dead. You'd better,” added Bastable a trifle maliciously, “ask the Bishop, who is a medical expert and saw the fellow when he was pulled out of the aeroplane. I really must rush off now. Good-bye.”

“Bastable's rebuke is called for,” admitted the Bishop. “I ought to have ascertained at the time whether life was extinct.”

“Well, well, I'm sure you're not to be blamed. He would not have lived, anyway. But you understand what I am getting at?” commented the Inspector meaningly.

“I do. And I can only say that Furnace was quite motionless when he was lying on the grass and that the aspect of the head wound was such that anyone might have been pardoned for supposing him dead. At the same time, I find it difficult to forgive myself for not attempting to make sure. I can only plead the rush, the circumstances, the strangeness of it all.”

“No one is blaming you for a moment, my lord. The point is, are we to blame the three gentlemen who got Furnace out? I mean Captain Randall, this young fellow Vane, and the ground engineer, Ness?”

The Bishop shook his head. “I don't see how you can blame them for a moment. It was a mistake shared by all of us.”

“Very well. We will acquit them of negligence. But note this well, my lord. We don't cease to suspect them. On the contrary. They may have been guilty of much worse than negligence. The very contrary, in fact.”

“Come, come, Inspector,” said the Bishop blandly, “aren't you trying to make my flesh creep? You surely don't consider, even for a moment, that those three men murdered Furnace after taking him out of the wrecked 'plane?”

The Inspector became vague. “I suggest nothing, my lord. I merely offer the point. The murderer must have found out, some time that morning, that Furnace was not in fact dead but still living. Now who was in a better position to do that than one—I say one, mark you; it might be any one—of the three who got him out of the wreck?”

The Bishop nodded.

“Now, of course, this is only one suspicion. Another line to follow is, who else came into contact with Furnace between the time of his supposed and real death? Not many, surely; nor should they be difficult to find. One of those must be the murderer. Here is a third line of approach. How was the aeroplane caused to crash if, as we think, there was an earlier murder plan to get rid of Furnace, and the fact that it miscarried was the motive of the second murder? Without some such supposition the murder is pointless—the act of a madman. And even a madman would have waited to see whether Furnace would recover or not. Now here we come up against two difficulties. The Air Ministry expert suggested that the machine was in perfect trim. Then, as a second obstacle, Furnace had previously recorded his intention to commit suicide. A very tangled business here, my lord.”

“It is indeed,” admitted Dr. Marriott. “It seems to me that you might find it a little less tangled were you able to ascertain why any person should want to murder Furnace. I can't conceive why, myself.”

“You took the words from my mouth, my lord,” said the Inspector reproachfully. “Yes, the motive is the important thing. Now I have told you the general plan of campaign and, of course, it will be my duty the next few days to work on it. I cannot disguise from you, my lord,” went on the policeman insinuatingly, “that I am relying a great deal upon your help.”

“And how, precisely, can I help you?” replied the Bishop with a warning coolness.

“You are inside the club. You are meeting the people. You can give me invaluable inside information which,” added the Inspector with a touch of pathos, “would result in apprehending the perpetrator of this dastardly crime.”

“I cannot consent, I am afraid,” replied Dr. Marriott with hauteur. “You must see that I cannot figure in the life of this excellent club as a mere spy.”

“But, my lord, I am appealing to you as a citizen!”

“I am certainly aware of my duties as a citizen,” answered the Bishop, capable, even in flannels, of an episcopality which overawed the Inspector. “I do not think you will find me lacking in them. At the same time, I am no policeman, but a clergyman.”

“Of course, my lord,” agreed the Inspector humbly.

“My clerical duties are primary, and, if anything, they encourage discretion rather than the reverse.

“Naturally, my lord.”

“At the same time,” added the Bishop, whose studies in casuistry had given him an unconscious facility in finding good reasons for indifferent actions, “there is some evil canker at Baston Aero Club which may well spread. It is certainly my duty to fight its spread, mainly by spiritual means, I hope, but I shall co-operate with the civil arm where necessary. In any case,” added the Bishop, “I think you should keep me informed of the progress of the case.”