The Longer Bodies (12 page)

Joe shrugged his shoulders and removed himself to the motor lawnmower, on the box of which he sat to smoke a cigarette.

‘To begin with,' said the inspector, ‘I wonder whether you have come to any conclusion about the use of the bathchair on the night of the murder?'

‘I do not understand you, inspector. Are you sure you mean on the night of the murder?'

‘Well, to be exact—' began Bloxham.

Old Mrs Puddequet laughed shortly, sharply, and offensively.

‘To be exact,' the inspector repeated loudly, for he was annoyed, ‘I mean the very—the extremely early hours of the following morning. At one o'clock, in fact—or thereabouts.'

‘What about the bathchair?' enquired the old lady testily. ‘Come to the point, man!'

‘Were you in your bathchair at one o'clock in the morning on Saturday, April the nineteenth?' snapped the inspector.

Great-aunt Puddequet produced from the recesses of the bathchair a tortoiseshell lorgnette, and, with its aid, studied first the inspector and then the sergeant, and then the inspector again. Apparently satisfied that, although curious variants of an existing type, they could still be classed among the known mammals, she lowered the absurd lens and spoke with dignity.

‘May I ask whether the police have any objection to make concerning the conduct of a householder, voter, citizen, and ratepayer who chooses to take early morning exercise in her own grounds, in her own bathchair, in her own sufficient clothing, and in her own time?' she enquired. ‘If so, say so, officers, and we will go into the matter at greater length and at a more convenient hour.'

She looked round the side of the bathchair and squealed shrilly for Joseph Herring. The Scrounger put a reluctant boot on the stump of his cigarette and stood up.

‘Attendant,' said Great-aunt Puddequet, ‘take me in.'

The inspector gazed after the bathchair with mixed feelings. The sergeant broke the silence.

‘Well, I'm damned!' he said. ‘She was in it all the time.'

‘Was she?' said the inspector, his blue eyes narrowing. ‘That's what we've got to find out, my lad. Hullo! She's hove to! Coming back to us, by gum! Now what?'

The bathchair drew up smartly, and Joseph Herring skilfully inserted a cigarette between his lips and lit it before his employer bade him once more retire to the box of the mowing-machine.

‘I ought to say, officers,' said old Mrs Puddequet, investigating the turn-ups of the sergeant's trousers with the ferrule of her umbrella and muttering ‘Permanent!' to herself in a disgruntled tone as she did so, ‘that a special service of motor-coaches is being run from Market Longer to the gate of these grounds to bring here persons who have a desire to see the spot whence the body was recovered. Pieces of stone and handfuls of gravel are being stolen from the sunk garden as souvenirs from the actual scene of the crime, and one enthusiastic collector has gone so far as to poison the small coarse fish which inhabit the mere in a determined effort to secure one of them as a unique reminder of an exciting occasion. I say no more.'

She peered round for Herring. Joseph removed his cigarette, extinguished it carefully, and placed the half of it which remained behind his right ear.

‘Attendant,' said Great-aunt Puddequet, who had witnessed this proceeding, ‘are you there?'

‘Yes, mam!' replied Joe, establishing himself in her line of vision.

‘Remove that disgusting appendage.'

‘You don't mean me fag, mam?'

Great-aunt Puddequet closed her lips and stared unwinkingly at him out of her baleful eyes.

‘Oh, 'ave it your own way,' muttered Joe. He took the cigarette from behind his ear, and, by a dexterous sleight of hand, shot it up the sleeve of his jacket, whence it slid confidingly back into the palm of his hand when the old lady turned her head.

‘Of course,' said Mrs Puddequet to the police officers, ‘it is not for a mere defenceless member of the general public to complain that there are two police officers spending all their time, both morning
and
afternoon, about the house and grounds, and that
still
her property is stolen under their very noses! Stone from the sunk garden, gravel from the paths, chub from the mere—disgraceful!'

At the end of this remarkable outburst she suddenly switched round in the bathchair and screamed to Joseph Herring to take her indoors.

‘Well,' said the inspector, gazing after her with a mixture of amusement and exasperation in his eyes, ‘so that's that.'

‘And she was out in that bathchair—' began the sergeant.

‘Haring along at twenty m.p.h.,' grinned the inspector.

‘At one o'clock in the morning,' chuckled the sergeant.

‘Yes. It only remains to find out whether it was the devil himself or merely one of his angels pushing behind, and then we can forget all about it,' concluded the inspector. Then his tone changed.

‘I don't like her attitude a bit,' he said, frowning. ‘And the worst of it is that I really don't feel equal to browbeating an old woman of ninety. What's her idea, I wonder, in telling us a lie like that? Oh, well. Never mind that now. Let's follow her up to the house, and then I'll get on to Miss Brown-Jenkins again. She's the one who spotted her brother bending over the empty bed in Miss Yeomond's room.'

‘You don't suspect young Jenkins, sir?'

‘As I said before, I'm not certain how much of his yarn I can believe. After I've tackled his sister again I may be a little more certain on the point.'

Celia Brown-Jenkins could add little to the inspector's knowledge. She had talked with Priscilla until nearly one o'clock, and a few moments later Priscilla had appeared at the bedroom door and demanded to be allowed to share her room for the night as she had been frightened out of her own. Celia then went on to repeat her story of finding her brother in Priscilla's room at about half-past one, and of his subsequent tumble downstairs.

The inspector tapped his front teeth with his pencil and asked to see Miss Caddick. She, fluttering and alarmed, could say nothing beyond the fact that she had sat as usual, in the morning room, doing her crochet work, and had retired to bed at ten-thirty, her usual time. She had heard no more until she was awakened by the noise occasioned by the fall of Clive Brown-Jenkins.

‘Well,' said the inspector to the sergeant when Miss Caddick, chafing her wrists to make certain that the handcuffs were not even then upon them, had been sent in search of Richard Cowes, ‘we don't get much forrader, do we? You see, if the old lady sticks to that yarn of hers about being out in the bathchair at that time of night, my pet theory about the case falls to the ground.'

‘And what might your theory be, sir?' enquired the sergeant respectfully.

‘Well, in the murderer's place, I should certainly have obtained possession of that bathchair as a convenient means of transporting the body to the lake. But, of course, if old Mrs Puddequet's story
did
happen to be true, that would knock that idea on the head immediately.'

‘But her story isn't the truth!' said the sergeant indignantly.

‘Well, we believe it isn't. Still, there's just the bare chance that it might be. These old ladies get some cranky ideas into their heads at times.'

‘Yes. But, if it isn't true,' persisted the sergeant, ‘it means she knows who the murderer is, and is trying to shield him, as we said before.'

‘Oh,' said Richard Cowes at the door, ‘you know, sergeant, I hardly think that. She doesn't know who the murderer is, but she doesn't want you official people to know either. She thinks that, as long as the murderer goes undetected, so long will she enjoy the company of reporters, policemen, and morbid sightseers. She's basking in the limelight of twentieth-century publicity, and she just revels in it. So do go slow with the brain-waves, I beg of you! Don't curtail the pleasures of the aged!'

He advanced into the room, holding a large pheasant-eye narcissus in one hand and a stick of rhubarb in the other. Alternately and very delicately he sniffed at the one and bit a portion off the end of the other.

‘Mr Cowes,' said the inspector abruptly, when Richard had seated himself, ‘I want you to tell me, as exactly as you can, your movements on Friday, April the eighteenth, from half-past nine in the evening onwards.'

Richard meditated.

‘At half-past nine,' he said, ‘I was in the library. I remained there until nearly half-past ten. Then I returned to my hut with the book I had begun to read, and sat there until nearly half-past eleven, when my companion in distress, Mr Malpas Yeomond, came in and retired to bed. At just after twelve I also retired to bed. I awoke at just after six o'clock on the Saturday morning, except for a short interval of wakefulness between one and two a.m., and another between four and five.'

‘Did you see or hear anything of the man Hobson while you were in the library? The windows overlook the sunk garden.'

‘I heard an uneducated man's voice below, but I was absorbed in my reading and scarcely gave the matter any consideration.'

‘You did not go out on to the terrace to find out the cause of the disturbance?'

‘There was no disturbance, so far as I know. After about two minutes the voice obtruded itself no more. Whether the man went away then, or whether my conscious mind was so fully occupied with my reading that I did not notice exactly when the voice ceased, I cannot say. There was gramophone music going on in the next room, I remember, but whether that eventually drowned the sound of the man's voice I cannot say.'

‘What were you reading, Mr Cowes?'

‘I was rereading Mommsen's work on the Romans. A fascinating set of volumes, inspector.'

The inspector cordially agreed, and, politely dismissing him, sent again for Malpas Yeomond, and asked him to name the hour at which Richard Cowes had returned to the hut on the night of the murder.'

‘I don't know,' replied Malpas shortly. ‘He was already in the hut when I myself returned at just after eleven-twenty.'

‘Did he leave the hut again that night?'

‘I shouldn't say so. Why should he?'

‘I'll tell you,' replied the inspector, leading him to the door.

They walked out at the front door of the house and on to the terrace. Side by side they descended the steps and walked back to the unfinished goldfish pond, which had been left untouched since the murder. The inspector and sergeant drew aside the tarpaulin and disclosed the bloodstains on the concrete bottom of the empty pond.

‘Here's where the body lay for a time,' said Bloxham, ‘and from here it had to be transported to the lake. Now, my idea is that the transporting was done with the help of old Mrs Puddequet's bathchair, and that bathchair was actually seen in action at about one o'clock on the Saturday morning.'

‘Oh, if you're asking me whether Cowes was in the hut at one o'clock in the morning, I can tell you at once that he was! It was just before one that he woke me and said that he thought he heard someone knocking at the door, so he opened it and looked out, but there was no one about, so he shut it again and went back to his bunk. Then I must have fallen asleep in the middle of something he was saying, for I remember no more until daylight, when I woke up and found him just in the act of getting up.'

The inspector nodded, thanked him, and Malpas returned to the house, while the police officers went back to Market Longer.

‘There's something that I haven't got hold of,' said Bloxham sorrowfully to the superintendent at Market Longer Police Station. ‘Look here, I've charted it according to the statements they've given me, and this is how it works out.'

He handed his chart to the superintendent, who glanced at it, and then, frowning, bent over it more closely and checked up the number of names written at the left-hand side.

‘You haven't yet got on to the man Herring, I see,' he said. ‘I've had a complaint about him, by the way. He's been stealing rabbits.'

He found a letter and handed it across to the inspector. Bloxham perused it, frowning. Then, handing it back, he said:

‘Well, if that's true, it either clears him of being suspected of the murder or implicates him pretty thoroughly. I hadn't got on to him simply because I haven't tackled any of the servants yet. And I haven't tackled the servants because I don't believe it was a servant's job. I'm convinced in my own mind that the murder was committed by someone who stood on the terrace and dropped something heavy and hard on to Hobson's head as he stood cursing below in the sunk garden. If you'll have a look at this plan—it's fearfully rough, but I daresay it will serve to show what I mean—you'll be able to take in the position better.'

The superintendent studied the chart and plan side by side as Bloxham expressed his theory.

‘Hobson stood here, where I've marked in a letter H,' said he, ‘and the murderer would have been up here at M. Hobson had come to the house full of a grievance. He was disgustingly drunk, and that's why he missed the steps in the dark. There was sufficient light in all the rooms—three in number—which open on to the terrace to give him the impression that his loud and repeated imprecations would certainly be heard. They were heard. Somebody came out on to the terrace from one of those three rooms and—well, bumped him off with a brick or something. Now, the three rooms are the drawing room, breakfast room, and library. In the drawing room were Malpas, Francis, and Priscilla Yeomond, with Celia Brown-Jenkins; in the breakfast room was Miss Caddick—she seems to make that her special little domain after dinner until she goes to bed—and in the dining room was Richard Cowes, and in the library was Clive Brown-Jenkins. Now, the first four can all account for each other—'

‘Supply each other with an alibi, in short,' said the superintendent.