They Found Him Dead Read online

  ‘I do wish you’d try to get it out of your head that I suspect Jim Kane any more than I suspect any of the others. I don’t. I suspect him a good deal less than I suspect some, but I try to be impartial. Have a shot at it yourself.’

  The Sergeant cast him a reproachful glance, but merely said: ‘Are you going to tackle Pretty Paul yourself, Chief?’

  ‘Yes. Anything come through from the Yard for me?’

  ‘Come to think of it, I believe something has,’ replied the Sergeant, and went to see.

  He came back in a few minutes with a long envelope which he handed to the Superintendent. While Hannasyde slit it open, spread open the several sheets contained in it, and read them quickly through, he stood watching him with an expression of bird-like interest. ‘Anything doing, Chief?’ he ventured to ask presently.

  ‘Not a great deal. The Sydney police know nothing of the Leighton I want. Mrs Leighton is there all right. Seems to have been living there for about a year. Melbourne cables nothing known of Edwin Leighton since the end of 1933, when he was discharged from prison after serving a short term for obtaining money under false pretences. Seems to have faded out.’

  ‘Well, anyway,’ said the Sergeant, brightening, ‘if he’s been in prison, they’ll have his finger-prints and photograph. Were they asked for?’

  ‘Yes, if the police had them. Copies are being sent by air mail.’

  ‘Any description?’

  ‘Not very helpful. Age, forty-two; height, five foot eleven inches; hair, brown; eyes, grey.’

  ‘Fancy that!’ said the Sergeant ironically. ‘Wife know anything of his whereabouts?’

  ‘Apparently not.’ Hannasyde folded the sheets and slipped them into his pocket. ‘Nothing much to be done about that till we get the photograph. I’ll go and call on Paul Mansell.’

  He walked from the police-station to the offices of Kane and Mansell, and after sending in his card was very soon escorted to the room at the back of the building on the first floor that was Paul’s office. On his way up the stairs and down the broad corridor he took swift note of his surroundings, and did not miss the door on the landing, set wide to admit the fresh air, that gave on to the iron fire-escape leading down into the yard.

  Paul Mansell had his secretary with him when Hannasyde was ushered into the room, and was apparently busy with a heavy file. He did not look up immediately, but when Hannasyde walked forward to a chair by the desk, he raised his eyes, and said: ‘Ah, good afternoon! Just a moment, if you please. Miss Jenkins, take this!’

  He dictated a letter, which seemed to Hannasyde rather unimportant, and then dismissed the girl, and said: ‘Sorry to keep you waiting. What can I do for you?’

  The over-genial note in his voice did not escape Hannasyde. He replied calmly: ‘You can tell me, Mr Mansell, what your car was doing outside Cliff House at 3.30 p.m. on August 10th.’

  Paul Mansell lost some of his colour. He countered with a swift question: ‘Who says my car was outside Cliff House that afternoon?’

  ‘I have evidence that it was drawn up at the side of the road by the tradesmen’s entrance, Mr Mansell. Do you care to explain this?’

  Paul lit a cigarette, and inhaled a breath of smoke before answering. ‘I should very much like to know where you got this tale from.’

  ‘I am sorry. I am not in a position to disclose the source of this piece of evidence,’ said Hannasyde, unmoved.

  ‘Well, really, I –’ Paul stopped, plainly undecided what to say. ‘I don’t know that I feel inclined to answer this most extraordinary question, without knowing –’ He met the Superintendent’s cold eyes, and broke off again.

  ‘Do you deny that your car was parked outside the grounds of Cliff House that afternoon, Mr Mansell?’

  Paul looked at him for a moment under his lashes. ‘Deny it? No, I didn’t say I denied it. But it has nothing to do with this case, I can assure you. As a matter of fact, the raison d’être is so simple –’

  ‘I should be obliged to you if you would tell me what the raison d’être was,’ interrupted Hannasyde.

  ‘Oh, certainly! I’ve no objection,’ said Paul. ‘As I told you before, I was due at a tennis party at Brotherton Manor that Saturday. I stayed talking to Mrs Trent longer than I meant to. I had to stop at Cliff House to pick up my racket, that’s all.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? Because I’d left it there, of course. If you don’t believe me, you can go and ask my sister, Mrs Pemble, or her husband. They were both there.’

  ‘Both where?’

  ‘At Cliff House, the day before Silas Kane’s death. There was a small tennis party – well, hardly a party: just ourselves, and Patricia Allison. My people haven’t got a tennis-court, and Silas Kane let us use the ones at his place whenever we wanted to. On that particular occasion it came on to rain just before tea, and we all went into the summer-house – sort of glorified sun-parlour arrangement: I dare say you’ve seen it – hoping that it would clear up. Played silly games, you know. Up Jenkins, and Rummy, and that sort of thing, to pass the time. The rain kept on, and we all went up to the house for tea. I happened to leave my racket in the summer-house: forgot about it, you know. The weather didn’t clear up, and in the end we – my sister, and Pemble, and myself – drove home without returning to the summer-house. I remembered my racket when I got back to Portlaw, but I knew where I’d left it, and that it would be perfectly safe and dry. I knew I’d put it in its press too, which was all that mattered. Naturally I didn’t go chasing back to Cliff House for it. Then all this business of Silas Kane’s dying, and then Clement came, and what with one thing and another I never thought about the racket again till I had to play tennis at Brotherton Manor on the tenth. Of course, I remembered at once where the thing was, and I simply picked it up on my way. That’s all. Not really interesting, is it?’

  ‘Do you mean, Mr Mansell, that you just walked through the grounds to the summer-house without anyone’s knowledge, abstracted your racket, and came away again?’

  ‘That’s it. What do you suppose I’d do? Drive up to the front door and send the butler to get the darned thing?’

  ‘I should suppose that a more usual form of procedure would have been to call first at the house to ask permission to get your racket,’ replied Hannasyde.

  Paul brushed that aside with one of his airy gestures. ‘Quite unnecessary, I assure you. I know the Kanes so well – I mean, I’ve always had the run of the place, pretty well. I don’t say that, if I’d had twenty minutes to waste, I mightn’t have done the polite as you suggest, but the point is, I was late already. You must be fairly familiar with Cliff House by this time. Do you know where the tennis-courts are situated? They’re a day’s march from the house – dam’ silly place to have put them, I always thought – but that’s beside the point. The point being that, if you nip in the tradesmen’s entrance, and turn sharp to your left down the first path you come to, you reach the summer-house in about half the time it takes you if you start from the house. Anything more I can tell you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hannasyde. ‘Why did you conceal this perfectly innocent errand?’

  ‘Oh, come, Superintendent, I don’t know that I concealed it!’

  ‘Pardon me; but when I asked you for a precise account of your movements on the afternoon of August 10th, you not only made no mention of this episode, but you must obviously have misstated the time of your leaving Mrs Trent’s house after lunch. No matter how near to the side entrance of Cliff House the tennis-courts may be, you could not, if you left Mrs Trent at 3.25, have stopped at Cliff House, collected your property, and still have contrived to arrive at Brotherton Manor at 3.45.’

  Paul smoked for a moment or two in uneasy silence. Then he said: ‘Well, if you must know, I got the wind up a bit. Silly of me, of course; but when I got the news of Clement’s having been shot, and