The Longer Bodies (24 page)

‘Go ahead,' said the inspector briefly.

‘I have my supper very early, perhaps,' began Kost, ‘as I am going to the lecture at the village hall. Mr Anthony has some food also, because he will not be present at dinner, as he proposes to accompany me.'

‘Oh, yes. Anthony went with you to the lecture. How long did the lecture last?'

‘To the minute I could scarcely say, perhaps. What about nine o'clock?'

The inspector nodded. He had obtained outside and perfectly reliable evidence that the lecture had ended just after nine.

‘Good enough,' he said. ‘Go on.'

‘Mr Anthony excuses himself when we arrive at the public house. I understand. Gentlemen do not go to the public house with their trainers when it is in their own village where they are lord of the manor, no. I go in. Mr Anthony walks down the road in the direction of the house. I think he is lucky, perhaps, to be in time for the port and the smokes. Very nice, that. So I drink my stout and laugh with the comrades there in the bar, and pass a little jest with the host, perhaps, and at half-past nine by the public house clock—he is ten minutes fast, you remember'—he grinned in unregenerate manner at the inspector—‘I return to my hut. No more comfortable beds in the house!' His grin widened. ‘Hard bed in the hut now! But I soon fall asleep, perhaps, and I dream I am winning the world's championship at figure skating. Ah, what a notion that! Then I am awakened. Shouting there is. I to the burning hut so quickly run!'

‘Ah, yes,' said Bloxham pleasantly. ‘And when did you stick those two iron rods in the ground outside the door of the blazing hut?'

‘A great sinfulness, perhaps,' said Kost, his face darkening. ‘Did I for certain know which of them did that, I would wring his neck for him, I think.'

‘I asked when
you
put them there,' said the inspector.

Kost stared at him.

‘I did not put them there, as you very well know, perhaps,' said he. ‘Madam believes me!' He turned and made Mrs Bradley a polite bow.

‘I do,' said Mrs Bradley emphatically. ‘But I believe you have some idea in your head, Mr Kost, as to the identity of the person who did put them there.'

Kost smiled.

‘It is only a suspicion, madam. There is no proof, perhaps. It was this way. When Miss Celia Brown-Jenkins cries the cry of “Fire” I am awakened at once. I sleep well, but lightly, perhaps. I arise. I pull on my trousers and coat. Out to the fire I run. I run very fast. Two hundred metres champion, but sprain my leg just before the Games. I click my tongue at that. Bad luck, Kost. You the laurel wreath have not obtained. Never mind. I run to the fire. But my hut, is it not further off from Mr Hilary's hut, perhaps, than the hut of Mr Brown-Jenkins and Mr Yeomond? So I arrive third. But no! Not third. Lo and behold, perhaps! I, Kost, over two hundred metres the fast runner—am beaten by—whom do you think?—Mr Cowes! Yes! Now I think to myself how can this be? But I do not think so at the time, because, after all, the hut of Mr Cowes is very near the hut of Mr Hilary Yeomond. But later I hear that Mr Cowes has not slept in his own hut. He has been up here at the house playing chess until too late to get back through the sunk garden. How, then, does he get from the house to Mr Yeomond's hut before I, Kost, can get from my hut to Mr Yeomond's hut? There is an answer. He arrives there not only before me, but before Mr Malpas Yeomond and Mr Brown-Jenkins, isn't it? He is in hiding. It does not do for him to seem to be first on the scene. Too suspicious, that. So he turns up in the third place, forgetting that I, Kost, can make even seconds always over your English hundred, and so should arrive before anyone from the house can arrive.'

‘But—Cowes?' said the inspector, frowning. ‘Would he play a stupid joke like that? And how did he know the hut would be set on fire that night?'

‘He set it on fire himself, I suppose,' said Mrs Bradley placidly. ‘He was the man who decoyed Hilary Yeomond out of danger, you see.'

‘Yes, but that's exactly my point,' said Bloxham. ‘What was the idea?'

‘Ah, now,' said Mrs Bradley seriously. ‘That is what we must find out. I wonder what opportunity he had for thrusting those iron bars into the ground without being seen?'

‘Oh, plenty of opportunity, madam,' said Kost. ‘But, to be just, so had every one of us, perhaps. The shouting, the confusion, the black figures against the flames indistinguishable, the running for water—who is to be certain what anybody did?'

‘And there you are, you see,' said Bloxham, when Kost had been dismissed. ‘We can't prove anything.'

‘Yes, but that was a very good point he made about Cowes being the third person on the scene,' said Mrs Bradley. ‘You see, the practical joker of the family was certainly Anthony. But at the time the hut caught fire Anthony was certainly dead. There can be no doubt about that, I suppose?'

‘Oh, none whatever,' replied the inspector. ‘The medical evidence at the inquest yesterday gave the time of death as before midnight.'

‘Eleven forty-three,' said Mrs Bradley thoughtfully.

‘Yes. And yet it is too much to suppose that the burning of the hut had nothing to do with the more terrible event of the night,' said Bloxham. ‘What about changing the order of interviewing these people and having Richard Cowes in next? I should like to hear what he's got to say for himself before we go any further.'

RICHARD COWES CAME
in chewing a piece of rhubarb. At the sight of Mrs Bradley's revolted countenance, however, he slipped it swordwise into the silk cummerbund he was wearing round his waist, and smiled amiably.

‘Good morning, Prophetess,' said he.

Mrs Bradley, who, during a long, chequered, and interestingly varied career, had been addressed in almost all the known ways, in most of the known languages, started visibly and with assumed horror.

‘“Oh, no, oh, no, True Thomas, she said,”' quoted she with a fearful leer, ‘“that name does not belong to me. I'm but the queen of fair Elfland—”'

She ended on a hoot of mirth which surprised even the bovine Constable Copple on the other side of the folding doors. He took a step nearer the sergeant and whispered behind a large raw hand:

‘'Ave you 'eard tell o' that there Irish banshee?'

‘Ah,' replied the sergeant, who disliked Mrs Bradley intensely, ‘and I've 'eard tell of that there Orstralian laughing jackass, too, an' all.'

Richard Cowes took the chair which the inspector indicated, and hitched it round so that Mrs Bradley was included in the circle for conversation.

‘Now, Mr Cowes,' said the inspector. Richard leaned forward with that air of benign interest best shown by clergymen who are about to listen to dear little Brian's rendering of a piece about the pretty daisies, and beamed encouragingly. ‘You are on my list of suspected persons,' continued Bloxham sternly.

‘I beg your pardon,' said Richard sweetly. ‘Suspected of what?'

‘Of the murders of Hobson and Anthony, of course,' said the inspector shortly.

‘Of Hobson
and
Anthony,' said Richard thoughtfully. ‘Oh, well—yes. Very good. I'll plead guilty if it will save you trouble. You see'—he glanced at his wristwatch—‘it is now almost eleven-thirty. Lunch is at one, and you have still—excuse me!' He stepped to the opening, and gently but firmly prodded the sergeant in the back to move him out of the way. Then he put his head out between the two doors and swiftly counted the remaining occupants of the library. ‘You have still six persons to interview besides myself. That is, if you don't recall anyone. But I should almost think you'd be bound to ask one or two of them some more questions, when you've heard what everyone has to say.'

The inspector scowled at him.

‘Tell me all your movements from dinnertime onwards on the night of Anthony's death, Mr Cowes,' he said coldly. ‘And leave me to manage my affairs as I think fit. I am not in the habit of receiving gratuitous assistance, except from persons of'—he bowed to Mrs Bradley—‘tact and experience.'

‘Oh, quite, quite!' said Richard, waving his hands gracefully. ‘Just as you wish. I thought it might save trouble, that is all.'

‘You were at dinner with the others, of course?' said Bloxham.

‘On the night you mention? Yes . . . yes, I must have been. And after dinner was over I accompanied Hilary Yeomond to his hut.'

‘What did you do there?'

‘We remade the bed.'

‘Remade the bed?'

‘Yes, inspector. We removed the bedclothes, turned the camouflaged-potato-sack-misrepresented-to-the-general-public-as-a-mattress completely over, and replaced the divots—pillows, I mean—and then the bedclothes.'

‘But why?'

Richard shrugged his shoulders.

‘Are you a married man, inspector?' he asked.

The inspector snorted.

‘Well,' concluded Richard, ‘at any rate, that is what we did. Then I asked Yeomond to play chess. Do you play chess, inspector?'

‘I do,' said Mrs Bradley, before the inspector could answer. ‘You must play with me one day.'

‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure, O Sibyl,' replied Richard, gravely inclining his body in a gracious bow. He thrust the stick of rhubarb further round to the left, and faced the inspector again.

‘Up to the house we went, and into the dining room we meandered.'

‘Why the dining room?' asked Bloxham.

‘“Why not?”' quoted Richard under his breath. Aloud, he said:

‘Oh, it's comfortable and the table is convenient and the chessmen are kept in the bottom of the sideboard, and the port and the biscuits are easy of access, and the lights are charmingly shaded, and the colour of the curtains matches my eyes. That's all, I think.'

‘Well, go on,' snorted Bloxham.

‘But I am, inspector. Really and truly I am. Well, we played—do you want a detailed description of the game?'

‘No. Get on to the time of the first disturbance.'

‘The first disturbance,' said Cowes obediently, ‘occurred at the time which everybody else has stated, but for the accuracy of which statements I myself am quite unable to vouch. You don't mind, do you?'

‘Carry on,' said Bloxham, who had begun to write in a grim, a steady, and, to a less complacent person than Richard Cowes, a terrifying manner.

‘The disturbance took the form of a loud knocking, kicking, and banging at the locked door of the sunk garden, together with a noise of confused, deep-voiced shouting.'

‘I see. By “deep-voiced” I suppose you mean that it was a man's voice that you heard?'

‘Oh, I couldn't swear to that. It might have been my sister's voice, or even that of the cook. I wouldn't like you to compel me to
swear
that it was a man's voice.' And Richard Cowes looked considerably perturbed.

‘You're quibbling rather, aren't you?' said Bloxham, looking up from his papers.

Richard smiled nervously and said nothing. Mrs Bradley said suddenly:

‘I wonder whether we could have Miss Caddick here again for a moment?'

‘Oh, not yet, not yet!' said Bloxham hastily. ‘Afterwards, if you like. Make a note of it, will you, and we'll see her again later. I feel we're on to something really important here.'

He turned again to Richard Cowes.

‘Well, Mr Cowes,' he said, with an unpleasant rasp in his voice, ‘never mind about the voice. We can go into that, if necessary, later on. Now, then, please be very careful, as everything you say will be most carefully checked. What did you do upon hearing this loud noise at the door of the sunk garden?'

Richard drew the rhubarb from his belt with a flourish, held it vertically in stiff salute to Mrs Bradley, and then bit off a generous section and chewed it crisply but thoughtfully as he appeared to consider the question.

‘Answer the question at once,' said Bloxham. ‘Don't stop and—and—'

Richard finished chewing, and replaced the remainder of the provender in his cummerbund.

‘I can't talk with my mouth full,' he observed mildly. ‘The first thing that I did was to listen to a remark made by Yeomond.'

‘What was that?'

‘“Shall I go and let that idiot in, or will you?”'

‘Oh, Yeomond said that, did he?'

‘Yes. Then I said that we need not bother. One of the servants could get the key from the kitchen more quickly than we could.'

‘Oh! That is what you said, is it?'

‘Yes. But the noise grew so loud that Yeomond said that, at any rate, we had better go out on to the terrace and yell to the person or persons to be quiet, as our great-aunt, old Mrs Puddequet, had retired to bed, and might be alarmed by the noise.'

‘Who went out on to the terrace?'

‘Both of us.'

‘What?'

‘Both of us, inspector.'

‘Sergeant!' yelled Bloxham. ‘The next, please!'

Richard retired gracefully, taking three steps backwards out of the presence.

‘And Mr Cowes is not to leave the library. I haven't finished with him yet!' the inspector added ferociously.

‘The next on the list is Mr Hilary Yeomond, sir. Is that all right?' asked the sergeant in a hoarse whisper.

‘Yes, yes! Of course it's all right. Bring him in!' snarled Bloxham, whose temper seemed to be suffering under the strain.

‘Beg pardon, sir!' The sergeant coughed discreetly as he again inserted his head. ‘Mr Cowes says may 'e eat 'is rhubub while 'e's waiting?'

‘He can eat his hat if he likes,' said Bloxham shortly.

Hilary Yeomond came in, looking very youthful and clean in his flannels.

‘One question, Mr Yeomond,' snapped the inspector. ‘Did you and Mr Cowes go on to the terrace together or separately when you heard that disturbance at the gate of the sunk garden on the night of Anthony's death?'