Читать книгу The Lake District Murder - Ernest Elmore - Страница 5

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On Monday morning it was still raining—a steady, whispering downpour which blurred the massive contours of the mountains. The wind had dropped over the week-end, but it was still intensely cold. For all that Inspector Meredith was early abroad. There was a great deal to be done and he realized that the inquest on Clayton could not be postponed indefinitely. It would mean three or four crowded days of investigation if he was to establish his theory before the coroner sat. The burial of the body could not be held up, anyway, for much longer than a week.

At nine o’clock, therefore, he was already closeted with Mark Higgins in the garage office.

“I’m sorry to tell you, Mr. Higgins, that owing to one thing and another there will have to be a slight delay in the holding of the inquest. With your permission I’m going to suggest that we have the body moved to the mortuary for the time being.”

Higgins looked surprised, but after one or two questions, which Meredith cleverly parried, he offered no objection to the body’s removal. It was thereupon arranged that a police ambulance was to call that morning and convey the body to the Keswick mortuary.

“Now as to Mr. Clayton’s will,” went on the Inspector. “I suppose you can’t give me any details of this, provided, of course, such a document exists?”

“As a matter of fact I can, Inspector. Clayton’s will was drawn up some years back with Messrs. Harben, Wilshin and Harben, the Penrith solicitors. I was one of the witnesses and as far as I know the will still stands. The main proviso was that the capital which Clayton had invested in this concern was to remain in the business in the event of his death.”

“In other words, the money was, in a sense, to come to you?”

“That’s about it, I reckon.”

“Were there any other beneficiaries?”

“Not as far as I remember, there weren’t. Of course there may have been a codicil. If so, I didn’t witness it. I shall be getting in touch with Harben as soon as possible. After all I shall be properly in the soup here if the original will has been altered. You see, I couldn’t afford to run this business off my own bat.”

“Exactly,” said Meredith. “By the way, did you know that after his marriage to Miss Reade, Clayton was planning to settle in Canada?”

A look of incredulity came over Higgins’s ferrety features.

“Canada? What, Clayton? That’s the first I’ve ever heard about that, Inspector. What was the idea, anyway? I always understood that after he was married, Jack intended to set up house with Lily in Braithwaite. He never told me that he was going to back out of the concern like that. Straight, he didn’t.”

“Oh, well, it’s probably just a rumour,” observed Meredith, lightly dismissing the subject. “Now can I have a look at that wood-shed you spoke about?”

Higgins, though puzzled and seemingly disturbed by the Inspector’s inquiries, proved quite ready to do all he could to help. He conducted the Inspector through the garden and led him round to the rear of the cottage, where a wooden shack had been erected at the end of a vegetable patch. The place was dark and damp, cluttered up with all manner of odds and ends. Hanging from a rusty hook on the wall was a coil of white rubber hosing. Meredith examined this closely. It was just as he expected. One end of the pipe had been recently severed. There was no doubt that the 9 ft. length attached to the exhaust had come from the wood-shed. But that being the case, how did the murderer know that the hose was in the wood-shed? And how did he succeed in cutting off an exact length and fixing it to the exhaust without previous knowledge of the required dimensions? The length and diameter of the hose were exactly right. The Inspector remembered the difficulty he had had in easing the hose off the end of the exhaust-pipe. Again his mind concentrated on Higgins. He alone would have the opportunity to take the necessary measurements and fix up the apparatus with any degree of safety. But at the time of the supposed murder, Higgins was in the bar of the Beacon. So much for that!

His next call was at the Braithwaite general stores. Lily Reade was sitting, white and distraught, over a late breakfast, in the room behind the shop. Her mother was hovering round solicitously, trying to make her daughter eat. When Meredith entered, the girl looked across at him with sleepless eyes and tried to summon up the ghost of a smile.

“I’m sorry to bother you again, Miss Reade, but it’s a little matter of routine. It’s about those steamship bookings. You don’t happen to know what line Mr. Clayton was intending to sail by?”

The girl shook her head listlessly. She barely seemed to understand what the Inspector was talking about. It was Mrs. Reade who came to the rescue and gave Meredith the desired information.

“I don’t rightly know what line it was, sir—but I know that Jack was getting the tickets through one of them travel agencies in Penrith. Maybe they’ll be able to tell you.”

The Inspector thanked the woman and after a few enheartening observations to the grief-stricken girl, he left the general stores for the village post office. In a few seconds he was through to the Penrith police station.

“This is Meredith speaking. I want you to go round the travel agencies over there and find out if they have issued two tickets for the Canadian crossing to a fellow named Clayton. Yes, J. D. Clayton. Got it? What’s that? Oh, second class, I imagine. Probably for about the end of April. Shove the report into Keswick when it comes through, will you? Thanks.”

As Meredith closed the door of the telephone cabinet, the village postman came into the office and hung his empty mail-bag behind the counter. On seeing the Inspector, who was a familiar figure in the district, he gave him a knowing look.

“Bad business about young Clayton, eh, Mr. Meredith?”

The Inspector agreed.

“Strange too, to my way of thinking,” went on the postman, obviously trying to inveigle the Inspector into giving his opinion of the case. “Very strange. There’s a rumour going round that things aren’t all they look to be—if you take my manner of meaning?”

“Really?” Meredith smiled blandly.

“Not that I’m the one to listen to tittle-tattle. But I thought it strange myself, seeing that when I returned from my afternoon round on Saturday young Jack seemed as merry as a cricket. Yes—stopped and had a chat with him I did, same as I might be chatting to you now.”

For the first time Meredith’s eye showed a spark of interest.

“You spoke to him? What time was that?”

The postman considered this question for a moment.

“Well now, let me see. I finished up at the Manor at about a quarter to six. I reckon it takes me a good fifteen minutes on my bicycle to get from Colonel Howard’s to the garage. So that makes it about six, don’t it?”

“And Clayton didn’t give you any hint of what was in his mind, I suppose?”

“Not him!” answered the postman vehemently. “Right as rain he seemed. Joking about his wedding, we were. Maybe you know that he and Ted Reade’s girl were to be hitched up in a month or so. I were pulling his leg about it. But he gave me back as good as I gave, did young Jack. Come as a bit of a shock to me when I heard as he had done away with himself.”

“I can quite see that. Nice chap, from all accounts.”

“He was that. Better than that ferret-faced partner of his.”

“What, Higgins? By the way, was he about when you were chatting to Clayton?”

“No. But I see him pass me on that there noisy motor-bicycle of his as I was turning out of the Colonel’s drive-gate.”

Meredith’s interest increased. This was another spoke in the wheel of Higgins’s alibi. Higgins had said that he had left the garage at about quarter to six, a fact which fitted in with the postman’s information. At all events, Clayton was alive and, apparently, in a normal frame of mind, when Higgins left for Penrith.

“Strikes me,” observed the Inspector, “that you must have been the last man to see Clayton alive.”

“That I weren’t!” exclaimed the postman with something approaching triumph. “You know young Freddie Hogg—the publican’s son?—well, he saw Jack Clayton a good hour and a half later on. We was discussing the case down at the Hare and Hounds last night, when young Freddie told us about him seeing Clayton in the garage on his way back from Keswick on his bicycle. He didn’t stop—but he see him right enough.”

“He was quite certain that it was Clayton?”

“Course he was. He and Clayton was pretty friendly, you see. I reckon Fred made no mistake about it.”

“That’s interesting,” observed Meredith, concealing his pleasure at the news. “I should like to have a word with Mr. Hogg. Where can I find him?”

“Down at the pub. He helps his father behind the bar.”

Freeing himself from the coils of the postman’s everlasting chatter, Meredith directed Railton to drive him down to the Hare and Hounds. As luck would have it, Hogg was alone in the bar, polishing up the handles of the beer-engine.

“Mr. Fred Hogg?” asked Meredith.

“That’s me, sir. Anything I can do for you?”

Meredith smiled. “I hope so, Mr. Hogg. It’s about young Clayton. I believe you saw something of him on Saturday night?”

“That’s right. I’d been over to the pictures at Keswick and as I passed the garage on my way back, I saw Jack Clayton standing in the entrance. I called out ‘Good night’ to him and he waved his hand in reply. As it was raining I didn’t stop for a chat. But it was Jack right enough.”

“You’re dead sure?”

“I’d swear to it in a court of law if needs be,” answered Hogg solemnly.

“Well, I hope there won’t be any need,” countered the Inspector. “What time was it when you saw him?”

“Seven-thirty or thereabouts. Perhaps a bit later.”

“You can’t fix it more definitely than that, I suppose? For example, do you remember what time it was when you got home?”

“Yes, I can tell you that. The bar clock was striking eight when I first came behind the counter. Say five minutes to put my bike in the shed and take off my hat and coat. That makes it five to eight.”

“And how long would it take you to cycle from the garage to here?”

“Well, there was a head wind, of course, but I’m pretty sure I could do the distance in twenty minutes.”

Meredith nodded and made a few rapid notes of these all-important facts. He looked up after a second and observed: “So you think it’s pretty safe to say that you saw Clayton at 7.35 on Saturday night?”

“That’s it.”

“When you said ‘Good night’, did he answer?”

“He didn’t say anything. Just gave me a sort of ‘Cheerio’ with his hand, if you see how I mean.”

“You didn’t notice if there was anybody else hanging around when you passed the garage?”

“I didn’t notice anybody—no.”

This terminated Meredith’s visit to the Hare and Hounds and a few minutes later he and the constable were speeding through the misty rain towards Keswick. On their way they passed the local ambulance returning from the garage to the mortuary and Meredith could not help thinking that the inanimate object inside that vehicle had set him a problem that might prove extremely difficult to solve.

Back in his office he lit his pipe, stretched out his feet to the stove, and ran over the results of his morning’s investigations.

One thing now appeared certain—at 7.30 on Saturday night Clayton was still alive. Old Luke Perryman had discovered the tragedy about half-past nine, which meant that Clayton had lost his life sometime between 7.30 and 9.30. Meredith deliberately employed the phrase, “lost his life”, because he realized that it was still impossible to rule out the theory of suicide. On the other hand at six o’clock, according to the Braithwaite postman, Clayton was as “merry as a cricket”, joking about his forthcoming marriage, in fact. Did that suggest suicide? And again at 7.30 when Fred Hogg cycled past, Clayton was to all accounts standing about idly in the entrance to the garage. Then what about the waiting meal? Surely with the tea already in the pot and the kettle on the boil, Clayton would slip off at the first slack moment to have his meal? Then there was the matter of the hose-pipe. At first sight that favoured the suicide theory because Clayton was one of two people who knew that the hose was there and that it would fit exactly over the exhaust-pipe of his car. But to counteract this there was the puzzling fact that his hands were clean. This seemed to suggest that it was Higgins who had fitted the hose on to the exhaust, but Higgins had already left for Penrith on his motor-cycle.

One thing obtruded in Meredith’s mind—the complete absence of motive. Not only for the murder, if such it was, but for the suicide. Clayton was enjoying perfect health. He was free from money worries, as far as the Inspector had been able to ascertain, and about to marry the girl of his choice. Why then had he put an end to his life? The motive was equally indeterminate if it was a case of murder. Higgins might have committed the crime for the sake of the money which would come to him, but, once again, Meredith found himself up against that unassailable alibi.

Yet he now felt pretty certain in his mind that there had been foul play. His next move, therefore, was to try to reconstruct the crime from the meagre data available. Firstly, Clayton must have been overpowered in some way, dragged or carried to the car, placed in the driving-seat with the mackintosh over his head. The hose was then fixed and the car started. The murderer, probably in a car, then made himself scarce. That Clayton was still alive when sitting at the wheel of his car was certain. The cause of death, according to Dr. Burney, was asphyxia, due to the inhalation of carbon monoxide—that is to say, exhaust fumes. How then had Clayton been overpowered? Three methods occurred to Meredith. He could have been stunned, given an anæsthetic or drugged. The first could be ruled out on Dr. Burney’s evidence. It is impossible to stun a man without leaving some form of bruise or abrasion. An anæsthetic, on the other hand, was possible, though rather improbable. All anæsthetics have powerful and characteristic odours, which are inclined to impregnate the clothes of a victim. Neither he nor Dr. Burney had noticed any smell of chloroform or ether clinging about Clayton’s person. Not that this precluded the use of anæsthetics—it merely suggested that if Clayton’s death had been arranged to look like suicide, the slightest hint of anæsthetic would defeat the whole cleverly thought-out scheme. Meredith’s inclination was toward drugs. They are easily administered and certain in result. Clayton might have been persuaded to take a drink with the murderer and——

Meredith suddenly clicked his fingers and let out an exclamation of pleasure. Clayton had taken a drink! Hadn’t Dr. Burney said that the man’s lips smelt of whisky? Well, here, thank heaven, was something fitting in with his theory! And if Clayton had been drugged it would be a perfectly simple matter to come to a decision over this point. It would merely mean official permission to have an autopsy. And if traces of a drug were found in the stomach or intestines, that would settle all doubts as to whether Clayton had taken his own life or not!

Meredith felt elated. Here was daylight at last. It might be difficult to persuade the Chief Constable that his suspicions warranted an autopsy, but he was determined to go all out to get it.

He had just reached this point in his ruminations when the ’phone bell rang on his desk. He took up the receiver.

“Penrith station—Sergeant Matthews speaking. About those tickets. I’ve traced the bookings all right. Clayton had reserved two second-class berths on the Ontario—sailing Liverpool on April 7th. The tickets were paid for on the 20th of this month—by cheque, signed J. D. Clayton. Any good to you, sir?”

“Excellent. That’s just what I wanted.”

Meredith rang off.

“So that clears up that loose end,” he thought. “Clayton must have been playing square with the girl. No doubt now that he did intend to sail for Canada. Otherwise he wouldn’t have paid for the tickets. The 20th—let’s see?—that’s three days before his death. Looks to me as if the suicide idea hadn’t crossed his mind then.”

With an energetic stride the Inspector crossed into the outer office.

“I want you to get this notice into all the usual local rags,” he said to the Sergeant on duty. The Sergeant took up his pencil.

“Will anybody who called at or passed the Derwent garage between the hours of 7.30 and 9.30 on the night of Saturday, March 23rd, kindly communicate with the Keswick police station at the earliest possible moment. Got it? Good. By the way, what about the Portinscale and Braithwaite constables? Anything to report?”

“Nothing, I’m afraid, sir. Usual number of private cars and lorries on the road, but nothing of any suspicious nature to report. I’ve been in touch with the A.A. people, but without any result either.”

“Well, let’s hope that appeal of mine will bring somebody forward. It’s a curse that it was raining. It keeps people indoors.”

“Any luck so far, sir?” asked the Sergeant, respectfully.

The Inspector shook his head.

“Nairy a bite, I’m afraid, Sergeant—a few nibbles perhaps, but that’s all. It’s a puzzling business, take it all round.”