Death at Hallows End (12 page)

“Certainly. Certainly,” said Holroyd, his weary bonhommie apparently restored. “Where do you want to start?”

This readiness to give information about himself seemed to Carolus exaggerated and suspicious.

“On the Sunday morning,” he said, with a glance at Cyril. “Did any of you go to church?”

Holroyd gave his mirthless leer.

“I did,” he said. “My brother, who usually accompanies me, was unable to do so.”

“Why was that?” Carolus asked Cyril.

“You ask too many questions, Mr. Deene, about things that don't concern you.”

This Carolus thought reasonable.

“I know,” he said. “I'm sorry. But I have to get at things my own way.”

“Perhaps I had better tell you,” said Holroyd, as if to pacify them both. “The truth is Mr. Darkin was particularly anxious
to go to chapel and it was impossible for us to leave my uncle alone. You must understand that he had scarcely left his bedroom since he had been with us. I'm afraid our establishment here was a bit rough and ready for him and he preferred the room we had been at pains to prepare. But to leave him with no one to summon in case of need would have been willful neglect and we were not guilty of it. My brother stayed in the house.”

“All the time?” Carolus asked Cyril.

“I went along to the farm once to see Stonegate, but couldn't find him.”

“What time would that have been?”

“Soon after eleven. I daresay about ten past.”

Carolus always found exact knowledge of the time that small things had happened days or weeks earlier, to be somewhat incredible.

“How do you come to remember the time so exactly, Mr. Neast?” he asked.

“Church bells,” said Cyril. “They'd just stopped in our church across the way.”

“They ring till eleven?”

“This Rector,” interrupted Holroyd, “has upset a lot of things with his newfangled nonsense but he has not ventured to change the time of our grand old Eleven O'Clock Service. We don't attend his church ourselves. I'm told it's little better than a Roman Catholic oratory. But we enjoy the peal of bells which is well known around here.”

“Were you out for long?” Carolus asked Cyril.

“Not more than half an hour.”

“Did you know that your uncle made a telephone call at that time?”

Holroyd joined in again.

“We do
now,”
he said. “The police have told us. We had no idea at the time, of course. My uncle was only alone in the
house for less than twenty minutes. It must have been then that he telephoned Humby and gave him instructions to draw up a will.”

This air of helping Carolus to unravel a mystery was rather beguiling.

“Do you know what were the terms of that will?”

“No. The police declined to tell us that. It was never signed, anyway.”

“I wondered whether you knew from any other source?”

For the first time Holroyd seemed a mite disconcerted.

“What other source
could
there be?” he asked.

“You might have enquired from Humby's partner,” Carolus said casually.

“We were not sufficiently interested. The will was never signed, so why should we want to know of our uncle's malice?”

“Malice? Then you
do
know that your uncle meant to cut you out?”

“We don't
know,”
said Holroyd, “but we think it very likely, all the circumstances considered.”

“All what circumstances?”

“You're very sharp, Mr. Deene. I was referring to my uncle's stay here. We are unused to visitors and were not able to make my uncle as comfortable as he liked to be. Nor did he approve of my having given up medicine for farming. And my brother …”

A slow grin spread over Cyril's red face.

“I got tight one night and really told him what I thought of him for the way he treated our mother. She was his sister, after all, and he never did a thing for her, the mean old so-and-so.”

“I don't think we should speak of him like that,” put in Darkin. “I always found him a truly generous man.”

“What did he ever do for you?” asked Cyril.

“I did not look for benefits from his service. He paid me well and that was all I asked or expected.”

Darkin resembled Chadband more at every moment, Carolus thought. And the resemblance grew when he said, “May I interrupt with a suggestion? Don't we all deserve a cup of tea? I can soon make it if you want, Mr. Neast.”

“Good idea,” said Holroyd. “Go ahead, Mr. Darkin. You know where everything is.”

There was a perceptible relaxation of tension.

“You're giving us a real grilling, Mr. Deene,” said Holroyd, with his unpleasant smile. “The police weren't nearly as thorough as you.”

“You're very patient,” said Carolus drily.

“We are anxious to be. We are very conscious of being in an unenviable situation until Humby is found. It is not pleasant to have someone disappear almost from one's gates, particularly when that person was on such a mission as Humby was.”

“I see that. But I have no official status, you know.”

“You have enough for us. We
want
to help. It is in our interest that Humby should be found as soon as possible.”

While they waited for tea, Carolus decided to use the break to discuss a matter outside the range of their discussion hitherto.

“You have recently lost one of your men, I understand,” he said to Holroyd, who on this as on every other subject held the floor.

“Yes. Most unfortunate. Old Rudd had been with us a good many years.”

“I was interested to hear that you were being so generous in the matter of his grave.”

Holroyd hesitated, then said, “It is the least we could do for those years of service.”

“His widow seems delighted with such an impressive monument as you plan. Are you superstitious, Mr. Neast?”

“I? Superstitious? What an extraordinary question. Not more than the next man, I believe. Why?”

“The whole business of monuments has always seemed to me somewhat to smack of superstition.”

Everybody seemed relieved when at this moment Darkin returned with a tea tray, and in a few moments handed to each of them a large plain cup. A packet of biscuits seemed to have been hastily tumbled out on a plate which was handed round. Nothing more was said for a few moments—the four of them seemed oddly pensive as they drank their tea.

“But you still have a good man in Stonegate?” said Carolus somewhat abruptly.

“A good worker. Not very observant or intelligent, unfortunately.”

“I've had a talk with him. He seemed reasonably observant to me, though he could not tell me much about the mysterious stranger he saw ahead of him in Church Lane just after his passing Humby's car.”

“Now that
is
interesting,” said Holroyd with more animation that he had shown for some time. “Have you any theories about his identity?”

“Not really. I don't often have theories until I can form one simple theory to account for everything. Of course this man may have no connection with what we are investigating.”

“He may not,” admitted Holroyd — somewhat reluctantly, Carolus thought. “But I can't help thinking he had. Strangers are not often seen in Church Lane on foot. A few motorists want to see the church, but a man walking at that time of the afternoon … it's so unlikely.”

“You may be right.”

Carolus still seemed reluctant to return to what might fairly be called his cross-examination.

“This farm belongs to you, Mr. Neast?”

“To me and my brother. We bought it for a song, I may say. If there's one thing I pride myself on it is being able to seize an
opportunity when I see one. I think it's one of the most important things in life. I saw this going cheap and in a few days had bought it and thrown up my medical career. That's what I call decisiveness.”

“Very laudable,” agreed Carolus.

Holroyd grinned again.

“Now aren't you going to ask us any questions about the
real
problem? I mean the disappearance of Humby?”

This time Carolus smiled back.

“I'm coming to that,” he said.

I
T WAS ALL RUNNING
too smoothly, Carolus thought, and nearly all Holroyd's answers were too slick to be altogether spontaneous. His willingness to be questioned might argue that his answers had been carefully prepared, might suggest that he had something to conceal, but was by no means incriminating. Yet Carolus was aware of an increasing discomfort in this house that came from more than his hideous surroundings. Whether or not any of these three was a murderer, they were all curious and highly unpleasant people.

So far Carolus had been doing little more than spar with them. The test would come now as he approached the crux of the problem.

“May I
once again start by following your movements on that Monday?” he asked as civilly as he could, considering the gross impertinence, in ordinary circumstances, of such a question.

Holroyd was unruffled.

“Certainly,” he said.

“My brother and I
went as usual to Cashford Market.”

“Leaving here at?”

“About eight-thirty.”

“Your uncle was still in bed?”

“Oh, yes. He did not get up till midday. He was, as you know, far from well.”

“At what time had he been called that morning?”

“At some very early hour by Mr. Darkin,” said Holroyd and glanced towards Darkin.

“It was a little later than usual when I went to Mr. Grossiter's room,” said Darkin calmly. “Say five forty-five. It was not often I was later than five. Mr. Grossiter felt the need of a little refreshment at this time.”

“So you went daily to him, usually at about five?”

“Just so.”

“Rather a bore, wasn't it?”

“It was part of my duty,” said Darkin unctuously. Carolus returned to Holroyd.

“Did either you or your brother visit your uncle before you left for market?”

“No. I had told him the previous night that we should be out all day. He had Darkin to look after him.”

“And you were out all day?”

For the first time Holroyd seemed surprised and irritated.

“Of course we were. A hundred witnesses at least could be found at Cashford to say that we were there throughout the day.”

“You lunched there?”

“At the Bull, where we are well known. We were engaged in business during the afternoon.” He became somewhat sarcastic. “I can supply you, if you wish, with the names and addresses of those with whom we dealt.”

“Quite unnecessary, Mr. Neast. I expect you have already given them to the police.”

Rather dramatically, Holroyd stood up.

“The police confined their questions to matters of interest to them. They were concerned with trying to trace the man who
disappeared from here. They did not waste their time and ours with irrelevant questions.”

Carolus remained cool and amicable.

“I assure you I should not have been so impertinent as to inquire about your movements if you had not invited me to do so. Perhaps you'd prefer that we broke this discussion off right here?”

Holroyd seemed to be struggling to reach a decision, and his brother spoke for him. He looked hostile and impatient.

“No. Get on with it,” he said. “I've got something to do if you haven't.”

“Thank you,” said Carolus blandly. “I'll be as brief as I can. At what time did you start for home?”

Holroyd seemed to have recovered his equanimity.

“That is the one point of time on which we cannot be precise,” he said. “Neither of us happened to look at his watch. But if you were to say five o'clock, or a quarter of an hour more or less, you would not be far wrong.”

“And you drove straight home?”

“Yes. There was nothing to delay us.”

“Till you reached Church Lane.”

At this Carolus fancied there was an increase of tension in the room. Yet Holroyd's voice was casual when he spoke.

“There was nothing to delay us there. We passed a stationary car which we now know to have been Humby's Jaguar.”

“Were its lights on?”

“I think not, There was still plenty of daylight. But my brother rather fancies they were. At all events the visibility was still all right and we saw the car as soon as we rounded the bend. “

“But you did not slow down?”

“Oh, yes I did. There was room to pass it, but not more than enough. I had to take it carefully.”

“There
was
room? Then it was pulled into the side of the road?”

“Yes. Where it was found next morning. Where the police photographed it.”

“That's most interesting, Mr. Neast. Stonegate, who passed the car on his way home an hour or so earlier, says it was right on the crown of the road when he saw it with Humby in it.”

“Yes. I know he does. If he is to be believed, and I should think he is, that ties up nicely for you, doesn't it? You have the time, within about an hour, when Humby disappeared.”

“No. I have the time when the car was moved. I don't know that this was the same as the time when Humby left or was taken from the car.”

“But it seems likely, doesn't it?” persisted Holroyd.

“Was there anyone in the car when you passed it?”

“To tell you the truth, I was so occupied with driving past in that narrow space that I did not notice.”

Carolus turned to Cyril Neast.

“Did you notice?” he asked.

Cyril looked surly.

“As a matter of fact I'd had one or two. Market day, you know. I was dozing.”

“Yet you noticed that the car's lights were on?”

“I said my brother rather fancied they were,” put in Holroyd at once. “I said no more than that.”