Detection Unlimited Read online

  ‘No, he died in the last year of the War. No Lindales at all in the firm since your man pulled out.’

  ‘Pity. He might have been able to wise us up. Something odd about this.’

  ‘I don’t see anything odd about it. The woman you’ve seen must be his mistress. It does happen, you know!’

  Hemingway was frowning, and ignored this frivolity. ‘It hasn’t got that appearance,’ he said. ‘She isn’t that type at all. It isn’t that kind of household, either. Well, never mind! I’ve got another job I want done. Now, listen, Bob!’

  He was still talking to Hinckley when Inspector Harbottle came into the office. The Inspector wore his usual air of inpenetrable gloom, a circumstance which prompted his superior to tell the Superintendent that he must now ring off. ‘Because Dismal Desmond’s just come in, and I can see he’s suffered a bereavement. So long, Bob!’

  ‘If that was the Superintendent,’ said Harbottle, eyeing him severely, ‘has he had the report on any of the bullets yet, sir?’

  ‘Only the first. Nothing like the one we’re after. We shall be getting the rest tomorrow.’

  ‘It was not fired from Plenmeller’s rifle?’ said Harbottle, a strong inflexion of disappointment in his voice. ‘Well, I’m surprised!’

  ‘I’m not,’ replied Hemingway. ‘I fancy I see that bird leaving the rifle in the case for me to pick up, if he’d shot Warrenby with it!’

  ‘Well,’ said Harbottle, dissatisfied, ‘of all the people I’ve seen down here, I’d say he was the likeliest. I don’t mind telling you, Chief, I took a dislike to him the instant I laid eyes on him.’

  ‘I know you did, and I’ll do my best to bring it home to him,’ said Hemingway, who was jotting down various items in his notebook.

  ‘It’s no laughing matter,’ said the Inspector austerely. ‘A wicked tongue shows a wicked nature! When he told you he had murdered his brother, I was never more shocked in my life. Even you, sir, would not talk about a thing like that as if it was a good joke!’

  ‘Now, look here!’ exclaimed Hemingway wrathfully.

  ‘And, what is more,’ continued the Inspector, paying no heed to him, ‘whatever I may have believed at the time, I believe him now!’

  ‘You can believe what you like, but I’m not here to investigate the other Plenmeller’s death. Carsethorn tells me there was no doubt he committed suicide, anyway.’

  ‘Oh, he did that all right!’ said Harbottle. ‘But, if you were to ask me, I should say this man was morally his murderer.’

  ‘Well, he said he drove him to it, didn’t he? What have you found to put you into this taking?’

  ‘It hasn’t, strictly speaking, anything to do with this case,’ said Harbottle, ‘but I brought it along with those papers you see there, thinking you might like to read it. You’ll recall that I told you Warrenby was the Coroner: well, I came upon the letter that unfortunate man wrote when he killed himself. Here it is! Now, you listen to this, sir! It’s dated May 25th of the last year – that was the night he locked himself into his bedroom and gassed himself. “Dear Gavin, This is the last letter you’ll receive from me, and I don’t propose ever to set eyes on you again. You only want to come here for what you can get out of me, and to goad me into losing my temper with your damned tongue, and to be maddened by you on top of all I have to suffer is too much. I’ve reached the end of my tether. The place will be yours sooner than you think, and when you step into my shoes you can congratulate yourself on having done your bit towards finishing me off. You will, if I know you. Yours, Walter.”’ Harbottle laid the sheet of paper down. ‘And he was right, poor gentleman! He does congratulate himself!’

  Hemingway picked up the letter, and glanced at it. ‘Yes, well, I don’t like Plenmeller any more than you do, but I call it a damned mean thing to do, gas yourself and leave a letter like this behind you! Nice for his brother to have to listen to it being read out in court!’

  ‘You’d have thought he’d have left the district,’ said Harbottle.

  ‘I wouldn’t, because, for one thing, he’d find it hard to get a price for his property here; and for another, although he may be a coldblooded devil, he’s got plenty of nerve.’

  ‘Nerve enough to have shot Warrenby is what I think!’

  ‘Lord, yes!’ agreed Hemingway. ‘Nerve enough to shoot half the village, if it suited his book to do it! But if you’re trying to make me believe he shot Warrenby just because he didn’t happen to like him, you’re wasting your time, Horace! I’ve been telling the Chief Constable that I don’t know what constitutes a motive for murder, or what doesn’t, but that was putting it a bit too high. I do know that no one, barring a lunatic, kills a chap because he thinks he’s a pushing bounder! I daresay that’s what his highness would like me to think, so as he can sit back and watch me making a fool of myself, but if he wants me to treat him as a hot suspect he’ll have to give me a sniff of a real motive – and stop being the life and soul of the party! Did you find anything else at Warrenby’s office?’

  Harbottle glanced disparagingly at the papers on the desk. ‘I brought that lot along for you to look at, but I wouldn’t say they were likely to lead you anywhere. There’s some correspondence with one of the Town Councillors, which looks as if they’d had a row; and there’s a whole lot of stuff about a trust for sale, which I can’t say I quite get the hang of. Seems Mr Drybeck was the principal trustee, and had the handling of it. Warrenby was acting for someone he calls by a fancy name I never heard before.’ Harbottle picked up one of the clips of documents, and searched through them. ‘Here you are, sir! A Cestui que trust,’ he said, laying the letter before his chief, and pointing to the words.

  ‘Lawyers!’ ejaculated Hemingway disgustedly. ‘Go and see if there’s a dictionary on the premises, for the lord’s sake!’

  The Inspector went away, returning a few minutes later with a well-thumbed volume in his hand. ‘It’s a person entitled to the benefit of a trust,’ he announced.

  ‘Good!’ said Hemingway, who was running through the letters. ‘That’s about what it looks like, from all this. This client wants his share of the trust: that’s clear enough; and apparently it’s all in order to sell the thing, only, for some reason or other Drybeck’s being coy about doing it.’

  ‘Yes, but only because it’s a bad time to sell,’ Harbottle pointed out. ‘He says so in one of the letters, and it sounds reasonable enough. You’ll see that Warrenby doesn’t quarrel with that at all. Writes perfectly civilly, and says he appreciates the situation, but his client is anxious to receive his share of the sale without loss of time. I don’t see what bearing any of it could have upon the murder, sir. In fact, I was in two minds about bringing it to you. The thing that made me wonder was that Mr Drybeck came into the office this afternoon – nosing round, I thought, but he said he’d come to find out if there was anything he could do to help Coupland. He tried to get me to tell him if I’d discovered anything – at least, that’s the way I read his chat, but I wouldn’t be prepared to swear it wasn’t just inquisitiveness. I got rid of him, of course, and it did enter my mind that perhaps he was worried about this correspondence with Warrenby. I found nothing else that was any concern of his.’

  ‘Well, that’s interesting,’ said Hemingway. ‘There’s no doubt that this client of Warrenby’s was determined to have his share of the trust, and there’s no doubt that Drybeck’s stalling. Of course, it may be that he’s just trying to do his best for the beneficiaries – pity we don’t know what the others felt about an immediate sale! – and on the other hand it may be that he’s got reasons of his own for not wanting to sell the trust.’

  ‘Good gracious, Chief, do you mean you think he’s been embezzling the funds?’ exclaimed Harbottle.

  ‘No, not embezzling them, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s made a muck of the thing through being fatheaded, or half asleep. And if that’s so, then I’d bet my last farthing Warrenby had got wind of it. It’ll bear looking into, anyway. Is there anything in