Blue Murder (19 page)

“Do you think that boy's father might have done it?”

“Old Ramsbottom?” exclaimed Richards. “Oh, good Lord, no! A Westcastle stevedore doesn't commit a murder because his son's been given a beating. Why, most likely he belts the boy every Saturday night just for the principle of the thing. When the evacuee boys first came here, they couldn't understand why their foster-parents didn't thrash them once a week, whether they'd deserved it or not. To hear them talk, you'd have thought that they were sorry to miss it, but I don't know that they'd take so kindly to it again now.

“I don't think Ramsbottom's the type to murder anybody except, possibly, in the heat of the moment. Men like that have a great respect for the law although they're so free with their threats. What does he say about it?”

“I haven't seen him yet,” said Driver. “He came down here on a day trip, and it means a special journey to Wescastle for me—”

“Special journey, my wooden leg!” interrupted Richards rudely. “The fellow's in Nether Naughton. I saw him this morning!”

Mr. Ramsbottom heaved his cumbersome body out of a creaking wicker-chair, as Inspector Driver and Sergeant Lovely were ushered into the front parlour of old Mrs. Selby's little cottage next door to the village stores. His eyes were bloodshot, his gaze shifting.

Driver summed him up as a man with an uneasy conscience.

“I know what you've come about,” he said in his broad northern accent. “I've been expecting ye ever since yon old devil was murdered. I tell you I didn't do it, so it's no good trying to make out that I did.”

“Well, in that case, you won't mind answering a few questions, Ramsbottom,” said Driver. “It's a case of murder as you know, and I've got to get all the evidence I can.”

“Ay,” agreed the stevedore cautiously. “I'll do my best.”

“First of all, what are you doing here? I understand from Superintendent Cheam that you came down from Wescastle on a day trip.”

“Ay, that's right.” (He said “that's reet” and matched the rest of his pronunciation to those words). “But I changed my mind, like.”

“You went to see Mr. Hardstaffe at his house, made a scene in the dining-room in front of his guests, and threatened him. He took you to his study. What happened there?”

Ramsbottom looked at Driver from beneath his thick black eyebrows.

“Nowt,” he said shortly. “That was the trouble. He said nowt but a lot of claptrap that wouldn't fool a babby. But when he said it, see, it sounded sense. Yes, he fair put it across me, and I went out without getting owt out of him.”

“What did you expect to get?”

“Satisfaction, sir, that's what! No one's going to treat our little lad that way without paying for it.”

“Yes, I thought it was money you were trying to get out of him. Well, you didn't get it. What happened then?”

“I walked about a bit, then went into The Fox and Feathers for a drink. And I sat down with my mild and bitter and did a bit of thinking, see. And I had a few more drinks and thought that I ought to have stuck to him a bit longer. I'd got him shaking like a jelly inside of that dining-room, see, and what does he do but get round me with his well-off talk. ‘And it won't do,' I says. My old woman'd never forgive me if I go back without satisfaction. Satisfaction's what I've come to get, and satisfaction's what I'll get, I say to myself. So I come back to supper and say I'm not going to catch the train after all. And I go upstairs after, and wait till Mrs. Selby's in bed, and then I come down again and let myself out and go back to see Mr. 'Ardstaffe.”

“What for?”

“‘Get some satisfaction out of him or murder him' was what I said to myself,” replied Ramsbottom frankly. “But I never meant it. I'd had a few drinks too many, what with being worried and being a stranger in the village. On my way, I broke a stick off of one of the trees alongside the road, but I never used it on the old man. I'll swear to that. I only wanted to catch him alone and shake the stick at him.”

“Well, what happened when you reached the house?”

“I walked round the garden and had a look at the windows. It was pitch black and I didn't like to use my torch. I'd forgotten about it being black-out. It must have been the beer.”

“You'd be lucky to get into that state on war-time beer,” remarked the Inspector. “You must have had a barrel full. Well, go on.”

“When my eyes got kind of used to the dark, I did see a light in a room downstairs, but it was only a bit of a slit and I couldn't see inside but I felt the window was open. Then—then I came back here.”

“Mr. Hardstaffe was in that room, and you know it!” exclaimed Driver. “You climbed through the window, crept up behind him, and murdered him!”

Ramsbottom look frightened.

“Nay, I did not. I swear I didn't do it. I never used the stick I tell you. I never meant to hurt him. I only wanted—”

“All right, we know,” put in Driver. “You wanted to force Hardstaffe to give you a compensation for bruising your son. I've met fellows like you before. But if you're by any chance telling the truth, why didn't you try to see Hardstaffe? Having gone so far why didn't you climb through the window? And why did you wait here for us to come and question you? Why didn't you go home by the first train in the morning?”

Ramsbottom moved uneasily in the chair.

“I knew he'd tell you that he'd seen me,” he said. “A bit of bad luck it were, that.”

Driver looked puzzled.

“Who? Do you mean Mr. Richards?”

“Ay, happen that'll be his name. As soon as he flashed his torch on me I knew it was all up wi' me.”

“Let's get this clear,” said Driver. “What time was this?”

“I reckon it'd be as near half past eleven as makes no difference. Happen the bit of light caught his eye, and he was going to warn them at the house.”

“You're not going to tell me that it was a police constable!” exclaimed the Inspector.

Mr. Ramsbottom looked surprised.

“Nay. I saw his uniform plain in the light. 'Twere one of them Home Guards!”

Arnold was surprised to find that the present atmosphere in the Hardstaffe's house was not in the least conducive to the writing of a detective novel.

It had previously seemed an extraordinary thing that the author with whom he had a first name in common, if nothing else—a man named Bennett—had been able to picture so vividly the Siege of Paris although he had not been in the same country at the time. Now, however, he perceived that this admirably realistic description might have been less convincing, had the author of it actually been there.

Here I am, Arnold thought, living in a house in which two murders have been committed, a house overrun by the police who suspect me among others, yet if I were to describe it in a book exactly as I see it, everyone who reads it would say, ‘It's evident that
he's
 never had any first hand experience of murder!”

For after the second hurrying of police procedure, of photographing, sketching, searching, and questioning, the house had settled down again to a normal way of life.

Even the people within the house became quite natural. Leda, once again wearing her tweeds or uniforms by day, because she “didn't believe in mourning anyhow”; Stanton and his wife Betty, occupying the two recently-vacated seats at table, and their baby son darting about the house like a particularly plump butterfly; Cook carefully measuring a minimum of sugar for the apple tart; Frieda indulging in outbursts of temper and hysterical weeping, and so remaining normal in her very abnormality.

There were no outward signs of strained nerves or over-wrought grief. There was no embarrassment between the members of the family. They spoke, ate, laughed, much as usual. They did not even avoid speaking of the two whom even murder had not put asunder, not, in speaking, did they lower their voices or utter hypocritical platitudes. They no longer used the drawing-room: that was all.

Arnold could not decide whether all this was due to the desire of the living Hardstaffes to maintain an air of serenity in front of their guest, or to a fanatical belief in the infallibility of Scotland Yard. But he reflected that it was a state of affairs which would have amazed his literary agent, if that suave, bald-headed gentleman were any longer capable of registering such an emotion.

Nevertheless, his book was progressing slowly.

One afternoon, he came down to tea in the breakfast-room, a little dazed from having concluded a new chapter in which his detective, Noel Delare, had become more than usually daring, and blinking because concentrated writing had made his eyes sore.

The dogs rushed towards him in ecstatic friendliness, and he stooped in an absent-minded way to pat the one nearest to his hand. They had become so much a part of his life that he no longer noticed the white hairs scattered over the legs of his trousers, nor worried that his bedroom smelled strongly of dog. At meal times now, he even threw bones under the dining-room table, and put down his empty plate to be licked.

He knew that such behaviour pleased Leda, and it had become a habit with him to try to please her.

He found that Betty Hardstaffe was holding out a cup of tea for him, and he stammered an apology. Leda chaffed him loudly about his preoccupation, then broke into a long account of her activities at a recent W.V.S. meeting, which enabled her sister-in-law and Arnold to enjoy their tea without the necessity of uttering a word.

When they had finished, Leda got up, gave Arnold a playful pinch on the ear, and said gaily, “Come on, Lazy bones, you haven't had any fresh air to-day. A walk will do you good.”

She turned to Betty. “I have to look after him, otherwise he'd either kill himself with working on his old book, or else would suffocate to death.”

She slipped her arm through his, and urged him into the hall, followed by the dogs, howling and snarling in their excitement at hearing one of the few words of the human language they cared to understand.

Once out of doors, Leda's animation left her, however, and she walked along in silence until they came to their favourite path through the wood beyond the paddock.

“Arnold, I've got a confession to make,” she said.

Arnold turned to her with a startled look on his round, placid face.

To one whose mind was as engrossed with the intricacies of crime as his, the word ‘confession' could convey only one meaning. For one brief second, he saw Leda as a murderess.

Then he as quickly shook the thought away.

“A confession?” he asked. “Do you think I'm the right person to tell it to? I mean, perhaps it would be better if you told—er—someone else.”

Leda looked at him strangely for a moment.

“You sound as if you think I ought to go to the police,” she said.

“No, no. That's not what I meant at all,” he lied. “But I'm not much good at giving advice, that's all.”

“I don't want advice,” returned Leda. “I only want to tell you that I've done something which may offend you.”

Arnold smiled in relief.

“That's quite impossible,” he said.

“Is it?” Leda regarded him mischievously. “Would you mind being engaged to me?”

Arnold was so much taken by surprise that he could find no immediate reply. He wondered for a moment whether it was Leap Year, but a hasty division of the year by four reassured him.

Engaged to Leda? Engaged to be married? Married to Leda?

He was honest enough to admit to himself that the idea was not new to him. She had made him very comfortable since he had come to live in the village. She would soon be a rich woman, and she would be generous to him. They had become great friends and had much in common.

The lines of a once popular song recurred to his mind.

or words to that effect.

But he had decided some time ago that this wasn't enough.

After all, he wasn't so old yet. At fifty, a man wasn't past feeling passion for a woman, and he found the idea of marrying just for a home and an insurance against old age irksome. And how could he feel passion for a woman who always looked lady-like, played a good game of golf and a good hand at bridge, was a thundering good sort, but had no—no ‘oomph' whatever?

He was aware of Leda's clear eyes regarding him earnestly as these thoughts skimmed through his mind, and, anxious not to hurt her feelings, he answered her with another lie.

“I'm afraid I hadn't thought about it.”

“Oh, that's all right,” replied Leda. “You needn't be afraid that I want to try and hook you or anything. You know me better than that, I hope. I'll try to explain.”

She paused, and appeared to be listening to the faint yapping of the dogs which told of their distant pursuit of conies.

“It's all Betty's fault,” she went on. “She button-holed me this morning and asked me when you were going to leave.”

“Well—yes—I—to tell you the truth, I was thinking about that myself,” stammered Arnold.

“Liar!” exclaimed Leda. “Now, Arnold, do let me tell you about this in my own way. You know very well that I never hint at anything: I always say straight out what I mean and people can like it or lump it as far as I'm concerned. If I really thought you ought to leave here, I should tell you without all this rigmarole. Can't you see that what I'm trying to tell you is that I don't want you to go away? I've got used to seeing you around the place, and I don't see any earthly reason why you shouldn't stay if you want to.”

She paused, obviously awaiting a reply, and Arnold, sighing for the glib tongue of Noel Delare, said awkwardly.

“Of course I do. I should be very sorry to go away. You've made me so welcome, and I'm comfortable—and—happy. We're such friends—”