Detection Unlimited Read online

  ‘What, has the Squire gone in for detection too?’ demanded Hemingway.

  ‘Of course he has! Everyone in Thornden has! The Squire’s idea is that the murderer was a Bellingham man, who came out by car or motor-cycle, hid same in his gravel-pit, and then lay up in the gorse-bushes until the right moment.’

  ‘And what’s your own theory, sir?’

  ‘No, no!’ Charles replied, laughing. ‘I’m not going to do your job for you! Or get myself sued for uttering slanders!’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ agreed Hemingway.

  ‘I wish I could ginger Mavis up to sue Mr Drybeck!’ said Abby, with feeling.

  ‘Good lord, you haven’t told her he thinks she did it, have you?’ exclaimed Charles.

  ‘I didn’t tell her, but someone did. She said she would rather not talk about it, and one had to make allowances, and she was sure he didn’t mean to hurt her feelings.’

  ‘That girl is really a saint!’ declared Mrs Midgeholme. ‘She may be exasperating, but you have to admit that she’s an example to us all!’

  The Chief Inspector was amused to perceive, from their expressions, that the example set by Miss Warrenby was not one which either Charles or Abby meant to follow. He took his leave of the party, and went away with Harbottle to where the car awaited them.

  ‘What do you suppose they were doing up at Fox House?’ said Abby, watching the two detectives turn the corner into the main road.

  ‘Probably having another look at the terrain,’ said Charles.

  ‘I only hope they haven’t been pumping Gladys,’ said Mrs Midgeholme worriedly. ‘You know what servants are! She’d be bound to make the most of every little unpleasantness there had ever been in the house, and what with that, on top of Thaddeus Drybeck’s really wicked attempt to throw suspicion on poor Mavis, I’m very much afraid the police may be thoroughly misled. Well! I’ve done my best, and I can’t do more! Come along, Ulysses! Home to Father!’

  Charles, watching with approval Ulysses’ first assumption of deafness and subsequent leisurely progress in Mrs Midgeholme’s wake, said: ‘I like that dog. He knows what is due to his own dignity. All the same, I’m damned if I’d put up with being called his father.’ He turned his head, and looked down at Abby. ‘You stood me up yesterday: what about running down to Filey Cove now?’

  ‘Don’t you ever do any work?’ asked Abby provocatively.

  ‘I do a great deal of work. I’ve been out on an important job this very afternoon. If you need reassurance, I shan’t get the sack for not returning to the office. I’m a full partner, let me tell you! No, you don’t!’

  Miss Dearham, about to retire strategically, found her right wrist clamped suddenly to the top of the gate, and at once protested. She said that Charles was hurting her arm, upon which he lifted her wrist and kissed it. Much shaken, she could think of nothing to say, but, blushing, adorably, peeped up at him under the huge brim of her hat. Charles, quick to seize opportunity, kissed her in good earnest.

  ‘What on earth are you doing?’ demanded Miss Patterdale, suddenly emerging from her little potting-shed, and screwing her monocle into her eye, the better to observe her young friends.

  ‘Asking Abby to marry me,’ responded Charles brazenly, one arm round Abby’s shoulders, his other hand still clasping her maltreated wrist.

  ‘Nonsense! You don’t ask a girl to marry you in front of her aunt!’

  ‘I’ve already made several attempts to ask her to marry me not in front of her aunt, but you always turn up just as the words are hovering on my tongue!’ Charles retorted.

  Miss Patterdale looked suspiciously from one flushed face to the other. ‘Well, I don’t know what the world’s coming to, I’m sure!’ she said. ‘Kissing and cuddling across my garden-gate! If you really are going to marry Abby you’d better come inside, and stop making a public exhibition of yourself! Or are you pulling my leg?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ said Charles, affronted. ‘You don’t suppose I’d kiss Abby across your gate, or anyone else’s, if I didn’t hope to marry her, do you?’

  ‘As far as I can make out,’ said Miss Patterdale, ‘you’re all so promiscuous these days that it would be unwise to suppose anything! Are you going to marry her?’

  Charles looked at Abby. ‘Am I, my only love?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Abby. ‘If – if you think we could make a do of it, I’d like to – awf’ly!’

  ‘Well, if that’s a proposal I’m glad I never received one!’ said Miss Patterdale. ‘However, it’ll give you both something to think of besides meddling in a murder-inquiry, so I daresay it’s a good thing. I’ll go and put the kettle on for tea.’

  ‘That,’ said Charles, releasing his betrothed, and opening the gate, ‘I take to be an invitation and a general blessing. That’s better! Now I can kiss you properly! To hell with the murder! Who cares?’

  Miss Dearham returned his embrace with fervour, but said, as soon as she was able to say anything: ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve rather lost interest in it, too. Though I should like to know what those detectives were doing up the lane, and what they’re up to now.’

  They were, in fact, being driven back to Bellingham; and as neither placed any great reliance on Constable Melkinthorpe’s discretion, their conversation would scarcely have interested Miss Dearham. It was not until they had been set down at the police-station, and Inspector Harbottle had given the deformed bullet he had dug out of the elm-tree into the safe-keeping of Sergeant Knarsdale, that the murder of Sampson Warrenby was even mentioned. The Sergeant said: ‘That looks like a .22 bullet all right. Well, if the rifle wasn’t the last you brought in, sir, I’m blessed if I know what to make of it!’

  ‘What we found out this afternoon puts an entirely different complexion on things,’ said Hemingway. ‘You get going, Knarsdale! I want the report on that little fellow as soon as I can get it! Horace, ask the chaps here for the Firearms Register, and bring it along to me!’

  When the Inspector presently entered the small office, he found his superior sorting the papers that had been taken from Sampson Warrenby’s desk. He said, as he put them aside: ‘We must have Coupland on to these. There’s one letter which seems to be written in answer to something I can’t yet find, but it’s a job for him, not for me. Got the Register? Good!’

  ‘I don’t know if you think I may have missed a .22 rifle, sir,’ said Harbottle, somewhat starchily, ‘but I can tell you now I made a list of every one within a radius of twenty miles of Thornden.’

  ‘Thirty-seven of them, which I never had any interest in, and never shall,’ said Hemingway. ‘I wish you’d pull yourself together, Horace! Up till today we’ve never considered any weapon but a rifle, because the range seemed to make it certain it could only have been a rifle shot. Which is another of the things we were meant to think. We’ve now got every reason to believe Warrenby was shot at much closer range, and I want to know just what lethal weapons there are in the neighbourhood.’

  ‘Carsethorn said something about the Major’s army revolver, but that won’t do, because –’

  ‘Of course it won’t! It’s the wrong calibre! Stop trying to annoy me!’ said Hemingway, opening the register.

  Silence reigned for a few minutes. Suddenly Hemingway looked up. ‘We’re getting warmer, Horace. I find here that when his firearms permit was last renewed, a couple of years back, the late Walter Plenmeller had a .22 Colt Woodsman Automatic Pistol in his collection. Which, let me tell you, was not in the gun-cabinet at Thornden House. Now then!’

  The Inspector came quickly round the corner of the desk to stare down at the entry.

  ‘Could you carry a gun like that without anyone’s knowing it?’ demanded Hemingway.

  ‘I suppose it could be done,’ admitted Harbottle. ‘But – Good Lord, sir, what for?’

  ‘Seems to me it’s time we did a little research into Plenmeller’s affair,’ said Hemingway, rather grimly.

  ‘Yes, I see we shall have to, but what I’m thinking