They Found Him Dead Read online

  Hannasyde nodded, as though satisfied, and turned back to the typescript under his hand. His finger travelled down a list on one page, and stopped. ‘Trevor Dermott,’ he read out, and looked up inquiringly.

  The Colonel pursed his lips and glanced at the Inspector. ‘Yes,’ said the Inspector. ‘That’s a queer-looking business all right, Superintendent. There’s more to it than comes out in the evidence, if you understand what I mean. He don’t admit it, and she don’t either, but there’s plenty of people in this town to tell you how things were between Mr Trevor Dermott and Mrs Clement Kane.’

  The Colonel removed his horn-rimmed spectacles and polished them with his handkerchief. ‘I don’t listen to scandal; but there’s no doubt there’s been a lot of talk about Mrs Clement and Dermott. May be nothing in it: don’t know the fellow myself: he’s not a Portlaw man. Big, handsome chap, the sort of brute some women fall for. I can only tell you he’s been living pretty well in Mrs Clement’s pocket for the past three months.’

  ‘Well, sir, but there’s a bit more to it than that, isn’t there?’ said the Inspector. ‘By what Mrs Clement’s servants say she’d have run off with Dennott if it hadn’t been for Clement Kane coming into the property.’

  ‘Don’t know that I set much store by servants’ gossip,’ said the Colonel. ‘Both under notice, too. But I’m not saying that Dermott isn’t badly hit where Mrs Clement’s concerned. I should say he was head over ears in love with her. She’s a remarkably beautiful young woman. Mercenary, of course, but I dare say a man like Dermott wouldn’t see that. You couldn’t picture Rosemary Kane giving up a fortune for the sake of a grande passion.’

  ‘No, sir,’ agreed the Inspector. ‘What’s more, his actions on the day of the murder make it look very much as if Mrs Clement had told him she wouldn’t, down there by the lake. I mean to say, when a man goes off to his hotel and drinks himself silly, and then drives off into the blue, and gets pinched for driving a car under the influence of drink at five o’clock in the afternoon, it looks as though he’s had a bit of a facer, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, I certainly think we want to go rather carefully into Trevor Dermott’s movements that afternoon,’ said Hannasyde. ‘I see here that Mrs Clement Kane appeared to be anxious to convey the impression that he was an old friend of hers and of her husband.’

  ‘Which I’m ready to swear he was not, Superintendent. He may have known Mrs Clement before he started coming down here to see her – that I can’t say; but he was no friend of Mr Kane, either old or new.’

  ‘Does anyone corroborate this story of the schoolboy’s about him driving off at a – oh yes, I see the head gardener’s wife at the lodge also saw him. He seemed in a great hurry, and looked ever so queer.’ Hannasyde smiled slightly. ‘Yes, that looks to me like someone being wise after the event. If he was driving at a reckless speed, I doubt whether the gardener’s wife would have had time to notice what he looked like.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose she did have,’ said the Inspector. ‘But the boy, Timothy Harte, met him on foot, making for his car, and told Mr Roberts he looked like “nothing on earth” before he even knew of his cousin having been murdered.’

  ‘What about this boy?’ inquired Hannasyde. ‘Fourteen – seem to you reliable?’

  The Inspector grinned. ‘Well, I couldn’t say, Superintendent, not for certain. He’s as sharp as a sackful of monkeys, but by the way he talks, he’s got crime on the brain. American gangster stuff, you know. It seems he would have it all along that Mr Silas Kane was murdered.’

  ‘Mm, yes,’ said Hannasyde. ‘I’d very much like to look over the police record of that case if I may. Accidental death, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s what it was brought in,’ replied the Inspector rather guardedly. ‘There wasn’t any evidence – nothing to make a case on. He was an old man, and not a good life either. If he was murdered, the likeliest person to have done him in was Clement Kane – you might say the only person who had what you could call a real motive. But we established the fact that Clement drove from Cliff House to his own home that night, and he could hardly have got back to Cliff House in time to catch Mr Kane on his walk. But I’m bound to say that that case looks different in the light of this fresh one. I’ll send for the records.’

  While these were being fetched, Hannasyde continued to run down the list of suspected persons. He said after a moment: ‘I see you’ve put a query against Jane Ogle’s name. She’s the old lady’s maid, isn’t she?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the Inspector. ‘She’s been in service up at Cliff House for a matter of thirty years. She fair dotes on Mrs Kane. You know the style, I dare say. Well, it’s hard to know how to take her. She’s one of those who can’t answer a simple question without thinking you’re trying to trap her into saying something she doesn’t mean to. On the face of it, her way of carrying on is highly suspicious, but at the same time I know she’s an eccentric old maid, and it doesn’t do to set too much store by the silly way she acts. You’ll see by my notes she was in the garden at the time of the murder. According to what I’ve been able to get out of her, she thought the old lady ought to have her rug, and took it down to her before ever Mr James Kane went to ask her for it. She says she carried a tray down to the pantry at the same time, thus accounting for having gone out into the garden by way of the back door. By the time she reached the terrace, where Mrs Kane should have been sitting, James Kane had gone into the house after the rug, and there was no sign of the old lady.’

  Hannasyde looked up. ‘I thought Mrs Kane was supposed to be very infirm?’

  The Inspector smiled wryly. ‘Well, she is and she isn’t, Superintendent, if you take my meaning. Some days she’ll be carried pretty well everywhere, or at the best creep about with a stick and someone’s arm to lean on, and others she’ll get taken with a fit of energy, and move without anyone’s help. She says she went for a stroll towards the lake, and I’m bound to admit I shouldn’t be surprised if she did. The way she has it in for Mrs Clement it’s quite likely she’d go to spy out what young madam was up to with her fancy boy. What’s more, if her story’s true, she’d be out of sight of the terrace in about three minutes, even walking at her pace. She’d go through the rose-garden, and that’s surrounded by a big yew hedge, as you’ll see when you go up to Cliff House.’

  ‘And the maid went to look for her through the gardens?’

  ‘She says she did. She says she found her, beyond the rose-garden, by the potting-shed and the glass-houses. Well, that’s certainly on the east side of the house, same as the shrubbery – call it south-east – but it’s far enough away from the study for a deaf person not to have heard the shot. But it’s only their word for it that we’ve got, Superintendent. By the time anyone else got out to the terrace, Mrs Kane had got back there. Mind, I don’t say her story isn’t true; but what I do say is that it wouldn’t make a bit of difference to Jane Ogle if it wasn’t. She’d lie herself black in the face to protect the old lady, and the impression she gives me is that that’s just what she is doing. That, or she was up to something herself.’

  ‘Oh!’ Hannasyde considered for a moment. ‘A bit far-fetched, isn’t it?’

  ‘Exactly what I say,’ nodded the Colonel. ‘I’m ready to admit Emily Kane’s a ruthless old woman – to tell you the truth, I’m scared stiff of her! – and she never made any secret of the fact that she detested Clement. But somehow I don’t see an old lady of eighty being able to commit that murder, get to cover before Jim Kane could see her –’

  ‘If we are going to consider the possibility of Mrs Kane’s having committed the murder, sir, mustn’t we also take into consideration that James Kane would be very unlikely to give his great-aunt away?’ interposed Hannasyde.

  The Colonel was silent for a frowning moment. ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right there. But damn it all, the idea’s preposterous!’

  ‘Ye