Detection Unlimited Read online

  ‘What we do know, though, is that he was driving himself in his car. If I’ve got to choose between a car and a motor-bike, I’ll try and hide the motor-bike, thank you very much!’

  ‘There must be some place where either could be hid,’ said the Inspector obstinately. ‘The more I think of it, the more I’m convinced transport was needed.’ He paused, and said suddenly: ‘What about the dead man’s own garage? It’s a double one: I noticed that. What was to stop him, as soon as he’d shot Warrenby, from driving his car in, and leaving it there until Miss Warrenby had run off to fetch Miss Patterdale?’

  ‘And what little bird told him that’s what she would do?’ enquired Hemingway. ‘You have got a touch of the sun, Horace! What anyone would expect her to do was to have rung up for the police, or the doctor, not to lose her head, and go careering off as she did!’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ said Harbottle defensively. ‘Girls do lose their heads, after all!’

  ‘They do, and not only girls either. But when that happens you can’t guess what they’ll do, far less bank on them choosing any particular one of four or five silly antics!’

  ‘No,’ Harbottle admitted. ‘Come to think of it, sir, it’s funny she did lose her head, isn’t it? She seems to me one of the self-possessed kind.’

  ‘No, I don’t think it is,’ Hemingway replied. ‘In fact it’s what I should have expected her to do. Nasty jolt for a girl who kids herself into believing that all is love and light. She was rocked right off her balance.’ He knocked his pipe out lightly, and got up. ‘Come on, now! It’s no use us arguing who might have fired that shot at 6.15 until we’re sure there was a shot at that time. And if there was, then what was our operator aiming at when he fired the second shot an hour later?’

  The Inspector looked gloomy. ‘As well look for a needle in a haystack! He probably fired it into the ground.’ He saw Hemingway cock a quizzical eyebrow at him, and said hastily:

  ‘No, not the ground! Not if Miss Warrenby heard the impact!’

  ‘Just in time, Horace!’ remarked Hemingway. ‘You and your knowledge of guns! And I don’t think we need go round looking for a likely haystack. What we’ve got to remember is that what we’ve all been thinking was a narrow shave for our operator was just as carefully planned as the rest of it. He wanted Miss Warrenby on the spot as a witness; he wanted the shot to sound natural; and he didn’t want the bullet to be found. Well, the only safe targets I can see are the trees. Plenty of them across the lane, in the grounds of Fox House, but they’re too far off to be dead-certain targets. Putting myself in his place, I should have aimed for the elm-tree. It’s the only tree on this side of the lane with a big enough trunk for the purpose. Let’s go and take a look at it!’

  They descended into the lane, and walked up it a few yards to where the elm-tree stood. The Inspector glanced back at the gorse-bushes, silently calculating. ‘You’re not looking high enough, Chief,’ he said. ‘If it’s there, I should expect to find it a good ten feet above the ground.’

  ‘You would?’ said Hemingway, staring up the bole of the tree. ‘You’re very good, Horace: what do you make of that graze!’

  The Inspector strode quickly to his side, and gazed up at a gleam of pale colour where a small splinter had been chipped from the tree-trunk. There was a good deal of surprise in his face, not unmixed with awe. ‘Well, I’ll be –! I do believe you’re right, sir!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Well, don’t say it in that tone of voice! What we want now is a ladder, or a pair of steps. Got a knife on you, Horace?’

  The Inspector nodded. ‘Yes, I’ve got that, but where do we find the steps?’

  ‘We’ll borrow them from the house,’ said Hemingway. ‘That is, if Gladys is in. If she’s got the afternoon off, we’ll see if there’s a ladder in the gardener’s shed.’

  ‘It’ll be locked,’ prophesied the Inspector. ‘And if you ask that girl for a ladder she’ll be bound to come and watch what we do with it.’

  ‘She won’t, because I shall keep her in the kitchen, asking her a whole lot of silly questions.’

  They walked up the straight path which led from the tradesmen’s gate to the back-door. The sound of loud music seemed to indicate that Gladys had not got the afternoon off, but was listening to Music While You Work, turned on at full blast. So it proved. Gladys was polishing the table-silver, and came to the door with the leather in one hand. The manner of her greeting to Hemingway led the Inspector to infer that his chief had not scrupled to charm and to flatter her at their previous encounter. He cast a sardonic glance at Hemingway, but that gentleman was already engaged in an exchange of badinage. Beyond saying: ‘Whatever do you want a ladder for?’ Gladys raised no demur at lending her employer’s property to the police. She gave Harbottle the key to the gardener’s shed, warning him that if he didn’t put the ladder back where he found it the gardener wouldn’t half raise Cain on the morrow, and invited Hemingway to step into the kitchen, and have a cup of tea. The kettle, she said, was just on the boil. When the Inspector reappeared, some fifteen minutes later, he interrupted a promising tête-à-tête, and it did not seem to him that his superior had found it necessary to ask his hostess any questions, silly or sensible. Gladys sat on one side of the table, both her elbows planted on it, and a cup of very strong and very sweet tea held between her hands, and as the Inspector came in she was giggling, and telling Hemingway that he was a one, and no mistake. ‘If my Bert was to hear you, I don’t know what he wouldn’t do!’ she said.

  ‘Ah!’ said Hemingway, briefly meeting the Inspector’s eyes over her head. ‘If I was a marrying man, I’d cut your Bert out!’

  ‘Sauce!’ said Gladys, greatly delighted. She looked over her shoulder at Harbottle, and added, politely, but without enthusiasm, ‘Would your friend like a cuppa?’

  ‘No, he never drinks it,’ said Hemingway, rising to his feet. ‘Besides, two’s company, and three’s none. Now, I’ve just got to check up on one or two points. Any objection to my going into the study?’

  Gladys glanced at the clock. ‘Fat lot of good it would be to start objecting to you policemen!’ she remarked. ‘I don’t mind, but can’t you wait a bit? It’s just on the quarter, and I can’t miss Mrs Dale’s Diary. Sit down, the pair of you, and listen to it! It’s ever so nice.’

  ‘No, we mustn’t do that, because we’ve got to get back to Bellingham,’ said Hemingway. ‘There’s no need for you to come with us to the study, though. You stay here and listen-in! I’ll see the Inspector doesn’t go pinching anything.’

  ‘You haven’t half got a nerve! More likely him as’ll keep an eye on you, I should think! You won’t go turning the room upside-down, will you?’

  Hemingway assured her that he would preserve apple-pie order in the room, and as, at that moment, a voice suddenly announced: ‘Mrs Dale’s Diary: a recording of the daily happenings in the life of a doctor’s wife,’ she temporarily lost interest in him, and turned the face of a confirmed addict towards the radio.

  The two men quietly withdrew, and went along the passage at the back of the house to the hall.

  ‘You found it?’ Hemingway said.

  The Inspector opened his hand, disclosing a small piece of lead.

  ‘Now we are getting somewhere!’ said Hemingway. ‘We’ll send that off to town for comparison with the one that was dug out of Warrenby’s head. Knarsdale can take it up tonight.’

  ‘I wish I thought there was a hope of finding the cartridge-case of that one,’ said the Inspector.

  ‘Well, there isn’t, and I should say there never was. Our operator didn’t leave much to chance. We were meant to find the one under the gorse-bush. We weren’t meant to find the other, and we shan’t.’

  He led the way into the study as he spoke, leaving the door open, so that he could hear any approaching footsteps.

  ‘Over by the desk!’ he said briefly. ‘He was probably shot while he was sitting behind it. There wouldn’t have been much blood, but there must have