They Found Him Dead Read online

  ‘Could it have been done in a few minutes, do you suppose?’

  ‘I should think so.’

  Roberts gave back the envelope. ‘Well, that certainly is interesting,’ he said. ‘Looks like you’re up against something, Kane. Can’t help blaming myself for this one. I ought to have thought of your car standing in that yard just crying out to be tampered with.’

  Emily, who had been listening to him with ill-concealed impatience, said crossly: ‘I don’t know why, I’m sure. You’re not a detective, are you?’

  Roberts turned courteously towards her. ‘Mrs Kane, when a man sees murder rife under his very nose, he’s apt to take notice of it.’

  ‘Scotland Yard has the matter in hand,’ said Emily, in her stiffest voice.

  Roberts smiled a little. ‘Sure they have. I expect when it comes to solving problems they’re swell. Maybe they’re not quite so clever at preventing crime.’

  At this moment Sir Adrian came out on to the terrace with Superintendent Hannasyde. Jim said at once:

  ‘My God, sir, has it come to this?’

  ‘No, not yet,’ replied Sir Adrian calmly. ‘I am still a free man. The Superintendent wishes to have a word with Mrs Kane.’

  Emily felt no particular animosity towards Superintendent Hannasyde, who had at their first meeting handled her with consummate tact; but her inevitable reaction towards anyone requiring anything of her was of hostility. She looked him up and down, and said: ‘I don’t know what he thinks I can tell him.’

  Patricia got up. ‘I expect you’d like to speak to Mrs Kane alone, Superintendent.’

  ‘Sit down!’ said Emily sharply. ‘I’ve no secrets. If I knew anything I should have told it in the first place. Well, what do you want?’

  Hannasyde took the chair Jim had thrust forward. ‘I take it that you have been informed of the accident to your great-nephew’s car, Mrs Kane?’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ said Emily; ‘and I’ll thank you to see that nothing of the sort happens again! I don’t know what the police think they’re for.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ promised Hannasyde. ‘I think you may be able to help me.’ He glanced fleetingly round the assembled company. ‘Do you wish me to speak frankly, or would you like to see me alone?’

  ‘No, I shouldn’t,’ replied Emily.

  ‘Then I’m going to be very frank indeed,’ said Hannasyde. ‘I have seen the foreman of Lamb’s Garage, and I have seen Mr Kane’s car. I am satisfied that the accident did not occur naturally. It remains for me to discover who tampered with the car. Sir Adrian will, I hope, forgive me if I say that his presence in the garage this morning makes it necessary for me to consider the possibility of his being the guilty person.’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense!’ interrupted Emily with a snort.

  ‘A thought occurs to me,’ said Sir Adrian, disposing himself in a deck-chair. ‘Had I a motive for murdering Clement Kane?’

  Hannasyde’s eyes twinkled appreciatively. ‘I have not yet discovered it, sir.’

  ‘Murder begets murder,’ said Jim. ‘You didn’t murder Clement, Adrian. His murder just put the idea of murdering me into your head.’

  Sir Adrian wrinkled his brow. ‘I never take my ideas at second-hand,’ he complained.

  ‘Waiving you for the moment, sir,’ interposed Hannasyde, ‘I am apparently left with only two suspects.’

  ‘Joe Mansell wouldn’t murder anyone, if that’s what you mean,’ said Emily. ‘I don’t know anything about his son, and I don’t want to.’

  ‘We’ll waive him too,’ said Hannasyde. ‘There is one other person who would benefit by Mr Kane’s death, and that is his heir.’

  Emily stared at him. ‘Maud? Rubbish, she’s in Australia!’

  ‘Are you sure of that, Mrs Kane?’

  ‘I had a letter from her, posted in Sydney. I don’t know what more you want.’

  ‘May I see that letter?’

  For a moment it seemed as though Emily would refuse; then she turned towards Miss Allison, and commanded her to fetch it from the davenport in her sitting-room.

  Patricia got up, and went into the house. Hannasyde said: ‘When did you last see your great-niece, Mrs Kane?’

  ‘When she was a child,’ replied Emily. ‘I don’t know when. I never took any stock in that Australian lot.’

  ‘Then it is safe to assume that you would not recognise her today?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. She was a plain child. I remember they dressed her very unsuitably. Just like them! If they had a penny to bless themselves with it went on grand clothes and trips to England. They never got any encouragement from me.’

  ‘Do you know anything of the man she married, Mrs Kane?’

  ‘Never saw him in my life. She used to write cadging letters to my son. Of course, we guessed that was at her husband’s instigation. He was no good at all.’

  ‘You never even saw a photograph of him?’

  ‘I never saw one, and if I had, I shouldn’t have been interested. If you want to know anything about him, you’d better ask Mr Roberts. He comes from Australia.’

  Oscar Roberts had been listening with a slight frown in his cold, intelligent eyes. He said slowly: ‘I’m an Australian sure enough, but I don’t know Sydney very well. What is the man’s name, Mrs Kane?’

  ‘Leighton,’ she replied. ‘That’s what my great-niece signs herself, anyway.’

  ‘Leighton?’ His frown grew. ‘The only Leighton I ever knew I met in a bar at Melbourne, and as far as I know, he wasn’t a married man.’

  From the recesses of her memory Emily unexpectedly brought a new fact to light. ‘That’s nothing. He left her years ago. I remember her mother – she was an empty little ninny, always whining about something or other – wrote to my son about it. I don’t know what she thought he could do about it. Of course, he did nothing at all. Maud was fool enough to take the man back again, but it didn’t last. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear of him posing as a bachelor in Melbourne, or wherever you say you met him. I’ve no doubt if he had sixpence in his pocket he wouldn’t trouble his head over Maud.’

  ‘They are not divorced?’ Hannasyde asked.

  ‘If they are I never heard of it. Maud had no pride at all. Just like her mother.’

  Hannasyde turned to Oscar Roberts. ‘How well were you acquainted with the man you met in Melbourne?’

  ‘Not so well. If he was the Leighton you want, he certainly wasn’t on the up-and-up when I knew him. He was picking up a living doing odd jobs for any firm that would use him. Chicken-feed! The trouble with him was drink. Are you figuring he might be at the bottom of this racket, Superintendent?’

  ‘He or his wife. Possibly both.’

  ‘That’s ingenious,’ Roberts admitted. ‘That certainly is ingenious; but I can’t get around to it fitting the hobo I knew.’

  ‘Would you know that man again if you saw him?’

  ‘Sure I’d know him, unless he was wearing a wig, or something. Say, you’ve got me thinking, Superintendent. But there’s a couple of snags I can see.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Roberts?’

  ‘Well, the first is that, assuming the Leighton I knew is the Leighton you’re after, I doubt whether he’d ever have got himself sobered up enough to tackle a job like this. Maybe we’re not talking of the same man. Let it go. The second snag is the number of murders. It’s too steep, Superintendent. The man who’d set out to commit no fewer than three murders so that his wife could inherit a fortune sure must be a master mind! You can take it from me all that amount of nerve don’t fit my Leighton, and from what Mrs Kane’s been telling us about, the guy her great-niece married, it don’t fit him either. Why, the man who could plan devilry on a scale as grand as that must have brains enough to make a fortune for himself!’

  ‘It doesn’t always f