Detection Unlimited (11 page)

'I'm sure she's always been very nice to me,' said Mavis repressively.

'Oh, I'm not saying she isn't perfectly polite, but do you get anywhere with her?' demanded Mrs Midgeholme. 'When I asked her about her people, and where she came from, and how long she'd been married, she was evasive. There's no other word for it: evasive! I wondered at the time if she had anything to hide. Well, it isn't natural for a girl -- for that's what she is to me! -- not to talk about her people! And I'll tell you another thing,' she added, rounding on Hemingway, 'they never have anybody to stay! You'd think her mother and father would visit her, or his mother and father, or a sister, or something, wouldn't you? Well, they don't! Not once!'

'Perhaps they're dead,' suggested Hemingway.

'They couldn't all be dead!' said Mrs Midgeholme. 'Everybody has some relations!'

'Oh, Mrs Midgeholme, please don't talk like that!' begged Mavis. 'Now Poor Uncle has passed over I haven't any relations either. Not ones I know!'

'But you're not married, dear,' said Mrs Midgeholme, somewhat obscurely, but with an air of one who had clinched the matter.

At this point, the Chief Inspector intervened. He said that he would like to go through the late Mr Warrenby's papers, and in Miss Warrenby's presence.

• 'Must I?' Mavis asked, shrinking from the prospect. 'I'm sure Uncle wouldn't have liked me to pry into his desk!'

'Well, it's not to be supposed he's have liked any of us to do so,' said Hemingway practically. 'However, that can't be helped, and as I understand you're an executor to his Will, I think you'd better come and keep an eye on me.'

A biddable girl, she rose to her feet, saying as she did so: 'I couldn't believe it, when Colonel Scales told me that! I never had the least idea Uncle meant to appoint me I'm afraid I don't know what executors do, but I'm so touched it makes me want to cry!'

She then led the way across the hall to the large, sunny room on the other side of it, which Mr Warrenby had appropriated as his study. She paused on the threshold, and smiled wanly upon Hemingway. 'I expect you'll think me very foolish, but I hate going into this room! Of course, I know he wasn't -- I know it didn't happen there, but still I can't help looking for him when I go in. And I want to get rid of that seat in the garden at once. That is, if the police don't mind? I know nothing must be touched until you say so.'

'No, I don't mind: very natural you should want to get rid of it,' said Hemingway, stepping into the study, and looking round.

'Every time I see it it reminds me!' said Mavis, shuddering. 'My uncle very rarely sat out of doors. It was really my favourite seat, which seems to make it worse somehow. Doesn't it seem dreadful to think that if it hadn't been so terribly hot I don't suppose he ever would have taken his work out into the garden, and then none of this would have happened?'

The Chief Inspector, who was growing tired of these gentle inanities, agreed to this, and nodded to the constable who had been sitting in the room, reading a newspaper.

'I thought it best to leave a man on duty till you came, sir,' explained Sergeant Carsethorn. 'We couldn't very well seal the room, on account of the telephone. It's the only one in the house.'

A slight twinkle was in the Chief Inspector's eye as his gaze alighted on the instrument, which stood on Sampson Warrenby's desk. It appeared to him that Miss Warrenby must have been obliged to enter the study a good many times since the murder of her uncle. As though she read his thought, Mavis said: 'I've come to dread the sound of the telephone-bell.'

The room, which had obviously been swept and dusted, was very neat, the papers on the top of the desk, on which Sampson Warrenby had been working, having been collected into one pile, and tied up with red tape, and all the drawers in the desk sealed. The Sergeant explained that the papers had been scattered over the top of the desk, the fountain-pen, now lying tidily amongst several pencils in a little lacquer tray, uncovered beside them.

Hemingway nodded, and sat down in the chair behind the desk, an action from which Mavis averted her eyes. 'Well, now, Miss Warrenby, I take it I have your permission to see if there's anything here that might have a bearing on the case?' he said, cutting the tape round the papers.

'Oh, yes! Though I'm sure there can't be anything. I should so like to feel that the whole thing was an accident, and them more I think about it the more I believe it was. People are always shooting rabbits here -- in fact, I know my uncle several times complained to Mr Ainstable about it, and said he oughtn't to allow it on the common. Poachers, too. Don't you think it might have been an accident?'

Hemingway, disinclined to enter into argument, said that it was too early for him to give an opinion. He ran quickly through the sheaf of documents, which concerned the efforts of a landlord to dislodge a tenant, and stretched over several months. Hemingway recalled that the letters which had been found, clipped together, at Sampson Warrenby's feet, had been written by this tenant, presumably before Sampson Warrenby had been called into the dispute, since the papers attached to them were copies of the landlord's own, acidly worded replies. It was the old story of a tenant protected by the Rent Restriction Acts, and the correspondence was increasingly acrimonious. But since Sampson Warrenby had merely acted in it in the role of legal representative to the landlord it was difficult to perceive what bearing it could have upon his murder. Hemingway laid the papers aside, and began to go through the contents of the drawers in the desk. One of these contained only such oddments as paper-clips, sealing-wax, spear nibs, and pencils, two others held virgin stationery; and another a collection of different sized envelopes. Two other drawers were devoted to bills and receipts; below these, a third held nothing but account-books and used cheques; and the fourth, on that side, contained bank-sheets. Such private correspondence as Sampson Warrenby had preserved was found thrust into the long central drawer at the top of the desk. Unlike the other drawers, it was in considerable disorder. Before touching its contents Hemingway considered it with a look of bird-like interest. 'Would you say your uncle was a tidy man, Miss Warrenby?'

'Oh, yes! Uncle hated things to be left about.'

'Is this how you'd expect to find a drawer in his desk?' She blinked at it. 'I don't know. I mean, I never went to his desk. I shouldn't have dreamed of opening any of his drawers.'

'I see. Well, if you've no objection, I'll pack this lot up, and go through it at my leisure. Then you won't have to have the house cluttered up with policemen any longer. Everything will be returned to you in due course.' He got up. 'See to it, will you, Harbottle? Now, Miss Warrenby, are there any other papers? No safe in the house?'

'Oh, no! Uncle kept all his important papers at the office, I think.'

'Then I won't be taking up any more of your time,' he said. • She escorted him into the hall, where they were immediately joined by Mrs Midgeholme and the Ultimas. Delicacy had prevented Mrs Midgeholme from accompanying them to the study, but she was plainly agog with curiosity, and would have done her best to ferret out of the Chief Inspector the discovery of a possible clue had not Miss Patterdale at that moment walked in at the open frontdoor. As she was accompanied by her lumbering canine friend, a 81 scene of great confusion followed her entrance, Mrs Midgeholme uttering dismayed cries, and both the Ultimas bouncing at the labrador, Ulysses in a very disagreeable way, and Untidy in a spirit of shameless coquetry. Rex, though goodnatured, took very little interest in the Ultimas, but Mrs Midgeholme was obsessed by the fear that he would one day lose patience with their importunities and maul them hideously. By this time she had succeeded in catching her pets, and scooping them up into her arms, assuring them, quite unnecessarily, that there was nothing for them to be afraid of, Mavis had explained to Miss Patterdale that the stranger was a detective from Scotland Yard: and Miss Patterdale, screwing her glass still more firmly into her eye, had looked him over and said that she was sorry to hear it.

'I knew that this was going to lead to a lot of unpleasantness,' she said. 'Well, it has nothing to do with me, but I do trust you won't wantonly stir up any scandal in Thornden!'

'Oh, Miss Patterdale, I'm sure there isn't anything like that to stir up! said Mavis.

'Nonsense! everyone has something in his life he'd rather wasn't made public. Isn't that so -- What's your name?'

'I'm Chief Inspector Hemingway, madam. And I'm bound to say there's a great deal in what you say. However, we do try to be discreet.'

'For my part,' said Mrs Midgeholme, 'I often say my life is an open book!' She added, with a jolly laugh: 'Which anyone may read, even the police!'

'I don't suppose the police have the slightest wish to do so,' replied Miss Patterdale, correctly assessing the Chief Inspector's feelings. 'I looked in to see how you're getting on, Mavis, and to ask you if you'd like to come down to the cottage to share my supper. Abby's none to the Haswells.'

'My own errand!' exclaimed Mrs Midgeholme, struck by the coincidence. 'And Lion would be only too pleased to escort her back later, but will she be sensible, and come? No!'

'It's very, very kind of you both,' said Mavis earnestly, 'but somehow I'd rather stay at home today, by myself 'Well, I shall leave Miss Patterdale to deal with you, my dear!' said Mrs Midgeholme, perceiving that Hemingway was about to leave the house, and determined to accompany him.

The Ultimas still tucked under her arms, she sailed down the garden path beside him, saying mysteriously that there was something important she felt she ought to tell him. 'I couldn't say anything in front of Miss Warrenby, so I just bided my time till I could get you alone,' she said confidentially.

The Sergeant could have told Hemingway that Mrs Midgeholme was unlikely to have anything of the smallest interest to impart. He grimaced expressively at Harbottle, but that saturnine gentleman merely smiled grimly, and shook his head.

Encouraged by an enquiring look from Hemingway, Mrs Midgeholme said: 'To my mind, there isn't a shadow of doubt who shot Mr Warrenby. It's one of two people -- for although I always think Delia Lindale is a hard young woman, I don't think she would actually shoot anyone. No, I never quite like people with those pale blue eyes, but I beg you won't run away with the idea that I have the least suspicion about her! It's her husband. What's more, if he did it, it's my belief she knows it. I popped in to see her this morning, just to talk things over, and the instant I opened my mouth she tried to turn the subject. She gave me the impression of being in a very nervy state -- not to say scared! She didn't talk in what I call a natural way, and she didn't seem able to keep still for as much as five minutes. Either she thought she heard the child crying, or she had to go out to speak to Mrs Murton, her daily woman. Something fishy here, I thought to myself.' She nodded, but added surprisingly: 'But that's not what I wanted to say to you. It may have been Kenelm Lindale, but only if it wasn't someone else. Ladislas Zama-something-or-other!'

'Yes, I wondered when we were coming to him,' said Hemingway, with deceptive affability.

'Now, I couldn't say a word about him in front of Miss Warrenby, because the poor girl, I'm afraid, is very fond of him. I always did think it would be a most unsuitable match, and, of course, if he killed Mr Warrenby, it really wouldn't do at all.'

'Well, if he did that, madam, he won't be in a position to marry Miss Warrenby, or anyone else,' Hemingway pointed out. 'But what makes you think he did?'

'If you knew the way he's been running after the girl, you wouldn't ask me that!' said Mrs Midgeholme darkly.

'I daresay I wouldn't, but then, you see, I'm new to these parts.'

'Yes, that's exactly why I'm being perfectly frank with you. My husband says the least said the soonest mended, but there I disagree with him! It's one's duty to tell the police what one knows, and / know that never would Sampson Warrenby have consented to such a marriage. He forbade his niece to have anything to do with Mr Ladislas, and if he's so much as guessed she was still seeing him behind his back -- well, there would soon have been an end to that young man!'

'You think he's have done the shooting instead?'

'No, I don't go as far as that, for though I've no doubt he'd have been capable of it, he was far too sly and clever to do anything like I hat. Mr Ladislas would have found himself out of a job, and been obliged to leave the district. Don't ask me how Warrenby would have managed that! I only know he would. He was that kind of man. And of course Mr Ladislas must have guessed he'd leave his money to his niece, even if he didn't know it for a fact, which he may have done. And he was actually seen turning into this lane that afternoon!

II he didn't know Miss Warrenby was at the Haswells', all I can say is that I'm surprised. I won't put it any more strongly that that: just surprised! So there we have him, on the spot, with a motive, and, I ask you, what more do you want?'

'Well, just a few things!' said Hemingway apologetically. 'Not hut what I'm much obliged to you, and I'll bear all you've said in mind. Now, I wonder what Ultima Untidy has found to roll in?'

This ruse was successful. Mrs Midgeholme, who, once clear of the garden, had set the Ultimas down, turned, and hurried with admonishing cries towards Untidy. The Chief Inspector swiftly joined his subordinates in the car, and said: 'Step on it!'

7.

THE Sergeant, concerned, said: 'I'm sorry we walked into Mrs Midgeholme, sir, wasting your time like that! If I'd known, I'd have warned you about her.'

'You'd have been wasting your time to have done so,' said Harbottle, from the seat beside the police-driver. 'The Chief likes talkers.'

He spoke in the resigned voice of one forced to tolerate a weakness of which he disapproved, but Hemingway said cheerfully: 'That's right, I do. You never know what they'll let fall. I picked up quite a lot from Mrs Midgeholme.'

'You did, sir?' said the Sergeant, faintly incredulous.