Читать книгу Murder by Matchlight - Edith Caroline Rivett - Страница 9

Table of Contents

There was no mistaking two things: first, that Stanley Claydon had been “scared stiff,” and second, that he was an asthmatical subject. His narrative had worked on his own nerves until he was as breathless as a man in the throes of bronchitis. Macdonald, who had been standing listening to Claydon’s story, came forward at this juncture saying:

“You needn’t be frightened of that any longer. In any case, if another man’s going to kill you, he doesn’t generally shout for the police while he’s doing it.”

“He wanted to put it on to me, that’s what he wanted,” said Claydon. “I knew it when I tried to beat it. ‘Oh, no, you don’t he says’—and I understood.”

“Now don’t you worry your head about that,” said Macdonald. “I want you to answer this question. You say that you heard the second match struck—and then the thud and the body falling: had you heard a second person walk on to the bridge?”

“No, sir. There wasn’t a sound.” Claydon turned eagerly to the plain-clothes officer, sensing the humanity in the quiet voice. “There was just this chap Tim. I knew where he was standing, just above my head, because I heard him shift his feet once or twice, but I never heard a sound of no one else coming—the other one, he must fair have crept up like a mouse. I didn’t hear nothing.”

“Think back to the time when you climbed up on to the bridge again,” went on Macdonald. “How did you get up?”

“I caught hold of the bars and pulled myself up—you know, like a monkey,” said Claydon. “I got my foot on to the edge and hauled myself on to the rail—and I’d just got there when this other chap turned his torch on me and came at me.”

“The chap with the torch was on the bridge then?”

“No, sir. Not then he wasn’t. He’d gone away a bit—further from the gate. He was about three yards along the path. If I’d known there was anyone there, I shouldn’t have climbed up like I did. I thought Tim must have thrown a fit, or been poisoned and fallen dead. You see I never heard no one else—and that’s rum, you know, because when you’re underneath that bridge there’s no mistaking when anyone sets foot on it. It sort of echoes.”

“Rum it is,” agreed Macdonald, and Claydon put in eagerly:

“Could it’ve been a bit of bomb or shrapnel or something like that hit ’im, sir? Something dropped out of a plane, say? A bit of stone’d do no end of damage if it was dropped from a height.”

“Maybe it would, but it wasn’t any bit of stone or bomb which killed this man,” said Wright. “It was something like a small coal hammer.”

Claydon, whose face was as pallid as a potato, turned a shade greener when supplied with this information, and after a moment’s pause Wright said to Macdonald:

“Shall I ask him to see if he can identify the body, sir?”

Macdonald nodded. “Yes, Inspector. I’ll look through your notes in the meantime, and read this other statement. I’ll be here when you come back.”