Off the Record (26 page)

‘No,’ said Jack. His face was pale. ‘You know I said I’d been trying to think how the trick might have been worked? I think I know how it could be done.’

‘What?’

‘It depends on Mrs Dunbar’s eyesight.’

Bill looked puzzled. ‘How, exactly?’

‘It’s a question of time. Your expert at the Yard was convinced that Dunbar had opened and read the letter, the letter that was delivered, according to Mrs Dunbar’s evidence, after Carrington had left the hotel. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘Now say Carrington was there when the letter was delivered. Dunbar reads the letter and, maybe while he’s reading it, Carrington bumps him off. Carrington knows that the post-boy, a completely independent witness, will be able to fix what time he delivered the letter. All he has to do then is convince someone – anyone – that it’s earlier than in fact it is. He goes down into the lobby of the hotel and looks for someone to talk to about the time. There’s a couple of ways he could have done it. He could have brushed against someone, apologized, saying he’s frightfully sorry but he can’t stop because he’s got an appointment, makes a point of looking at his watch, exclaims, “It’s half four” and he’s going to be late. Or, if he saw someone with a newspaper, he could have stopped and asked for the racing results, mentioning that he had a bet on the four o’clock, say. Then he could pretend to see the time, laugh, and say it wouldn’t be in the newspaper yet because it’s only half past four. You see what I mean? It’s a way of impressing on someone’s mind that it’s half past four.’

‘And none of these people are capable of looking at the hotel clock for themselves?’

‘We’re talking about minutes, Bill. People don’t usually give the time to the precise minute. Besides that, it all depends on eyesight, doesn’t it? If an elderly gentleman were to have been reading a newspaper with spectacles, he wouldn’t be able to see the hotel clock with his reading glasses. It’d only be a blur and, in those circumstances, he’s unlikely to check the time with his watch. An elderly man wouldn’t have a wristwatch. He’d have a fob watch and to produce it, in those circumstances, would be tantamount to checking up on what this apologetic young man had said. Not only would that be impolite, but as far as the elderly gentleman’s concerned, it’s a very unimportant incident. Now what
actually
happened is that Carrington sees Mrs Dunbar, whom he knows. He dashes past her, saying he’s got an appointment at five and it’s half four already.’

‘Mrs Dunbar wears glasses,’ said Bill slowly. ‘She couldn’t have seen the hotel clock. When we were at her house and she staged that performance of accusing herself I remember she put her spectacles on and stared at Hector Ferguson. She was warning him to shut up, obviously, but she needed spectacles to see him.’ He smacked his fist into his palm. ‘It’s so simple,’ he said. ‘So incredibly simple. Bloody hell, Jack, I’m going to get to the bottom of this.’ He jerked his head towards the next room. ‘Stephen Lewis knows a damn sight more than he’s ever told us. I’m going to get the truth out of him if it’s the last thing I do. Come on. I’ve got some questions for that gentleman.’

Stephen Lewis, his arm now neatly bandaged, was drinking a weak whisky and water in the drawing room. His face was drawn and pale. ‘Are you nearly finished, Inspector? You’ll understand if I say I want nothing more than to get to bed.’

‘I imagine you do, sir,’ said Rackham with a rather forced smile. ‘We won’t be much longer, but there are another couple of questions I’d like to ask.’

Lewis sipped his whisky in a depressed sort of way. ‘If you must. What do you want to know?’

‘It’s this, sir. From the very start, you’ve believed that Gerard Carrington murdered Dunbar. Don’t bother to deny it, sir,’ he added, seeing Lewis’s startled expression. ‘I think it’s time you told the truth.’

Lewis bit his lip. ‘Perhaps,’ he said reluctantly.

‘Thank you. Mr Ragnall was in the Marchmont the afternoon Dunbar was murdered. His evidence – which he was very slow to give – put Mr Ferguson in the clear. However, it did occur to me to wonder what else he saw.’

‘Please, Inspector! Gerry Carrington’s my cousin. What do you expect me to say?’

‘I expect you, sir, to bear in mind that Carrington threatened your wife and your guests with a gun, shot you, and murdered your secretary. He’s a dangerous man and I believe both you and Hugo Ragnall knew just how dangerous he was.’ Lewis said nothing. ‘Shall I tell you what I think happened, sir?’ said Rackham. Lewis put the back of his hand to his mouth but still said nothing. ‘Very well. I will. Hugo Ragnall saw Mrs Dunbar and Hector Ferguson at the Marchmont, right enough, but he
also
saw Gerard Carrington.’ Lewis met his eyes, then looked away, wriggling unhappily on his chair. ‘You knew that, didn’t you? You knew that Carrington hadn’t left the hotel when he said he had. You knew he’d had the opportunity to kill Dunbar and you knew that because Hugo Ragnall had told you so.’

‘For God’s sake, yes!’ Lewis let out a long, shuddering sigh. ‘Gerry always had a filthy temper. I knew that. I was afraid he’d gone off the deep end. He loathed Dunbar and with good reason. I couldn’t see that anybody else but Gerry could possibly have shot Dunbar, but I was damned if I was going to be the one to accuse him. Ragnall told me that he knew Gerry’s account of the time he’d left the Marchmont was false. I told him to keep quiet. After all, Gerry was in enough trouble without Ragnall knocking another nail in the coffin.’ He nodded at Jack. ‘When you got him off the hook, I didn’t think your explanation added up, but I thought it was all for the best. Ragnall would never have come forward if Ferguson hadn’t been in danger. It was one thing not making anything worse for Gerry. It was quite another letting Ferguson carry the can for something he hadn’t done. But I still don’t see why Gerry went berserk with Ragnall.’

‘Did you see the letter Carrington wrote to Ragnall?’ asked Jack.

Lewis nodded. ‘It was like the ravings of a madman. I couldn’t think what the problem was. After all, Ragnall hadn’t accused him of murder. He’d kept that under his hat. Gerry should have been grateful to him, not nearly insane with rage.’

Rackham cleared his throat. ‘And what if Hugo Ragnall had attempted a little blackmail?’

‘He couldn’t!’ began Lewis indignantly, then broke off. ‘Oh, my God,’ he said very softly. ‘Oh, my God.’ He turned his face away. ‘Gerry couldn’t have intended to murder him,’ he said at last. ‘He’s not like that. Not Gerry. His temper must have got the better of him.’

‘He had a gun, sir.’

‘I know he had a gun,’ said Lewis testily. ‘He shot me with the damned thing. He must have meant to wave it round and perhaps scare Ragnall into silence. I don’t know what was in his mind. I’ve stood by him and maybe I’ve been stupid. But Gerry is a brilliant man. It seemed all wrong that he should suffer for a temporary lapse of temper.’

‘Have you considered Colonel Willoughby, Lewis?’ asked Jack.

‘Uncle Maurice?’ said Lewis, bewildered. ‘What’s Uncle Maurice got to do with it?’

‘He was attacked,’ said Rackham. ‘We think he might have been attacked to draw you off for the day.’

Lewis looked at them blankly, then flushed angrily. ‘No. No, you’re not telling me that Gerry did that. I just don’t believe it. It was a burglar.’

‘It was a very convenient burglar, wouldn’t you say?’

Lewis stood up and walked to the sideboard where, his movements made clumsy by his bandaged arm, poured himself another drink. He turned around, obviously sunk in thought, then came to a decision. ‘Look, Inspector, I might have been stupid but I’m damned if I’m going to carry on being stupid. If Gerry really did attack Uncle Maurice, then he deserves everything he gets. I’ll tell you something else, too. I knew what Ragnall had seen. If Ragnall told Gerry as much, then I’m in danger.’ He took a long drink.

Perhaps it was his injured arm or perhaps it was his nerves, but Stephen Lewis had gone very white. ‘I don’t think I’m a coward, but that scares me.’

Jack believed him.

T
he Reverend Matthew Meldreth, Vicar of St Ambrose, Stonecrop Ash, Oxfordshire, looked at Joseph Woollard with a puzzled frown. Mr Meldreth had been vicar of St Ambrose for the last seventeen years and Joe Woollard had been the sexton for twenty-two, but neither of them could remember a situation quite like this.

The Reverend Meldreth picked up his pipe from his desk and absently stuffed it with tobacco from the old and dented pewter jar, a sure sign he was perplexed. Part of the trouble was that he knew so little about Colonel Willoughby. The Colonel had received him with a certain reluctance when Mr Meldreth had called to welcome his new parishioner last September. The Colonel had plied him with a
chota peg
, a Scotch of ferocious strength, complained about the cold, compared England adversely with India and said that no offence taken, he was sure, but he didn’t have much use for parsons in the general way.

And that, thought Mr Meldreth, lighting his pipe, more or less amounted to the sum of his knowledge of the late Colonel. About Mrs Tierney, the Colonel’s housekeeper, he knew even less. A Roman Catholic, Mrs Tierney took no part in parish life. Even if she had been one of his flock, the Colonel’s severe bronchitis, which had plagued him since his return to England, would have kept her tied to the house. However, although he had never been through the doors of St Ambrose, the Colonel was still a parishioner and when he died – a truly shocking business, that! – Mrs Tierney had asked for the Colonel to be buried with the due rites and ceremonies of the church. Mr Meldreth had called upon Joseph Woollard, Sexton, who, in addition to digging out the graves, was also the undertaker.

‘I saw Mrs Tierney the day after the Colonel passed away, Reverend,’ said Woollard. ‘She told me that the Colonel’s nephew wanted him to be buried properly, as you’d expect. I fixed him up with a nice bit of elm, with brass handles, as right as a trivet. I called this morning to tell her it was all done and to arrange for the coffin to be taken back to his bungalow, so he could be buried from his own house, which she said was what she wanted. And then, as I’m telling you, she wasn’t there. She was gone.’

Mr Meldreth sucked deeply at his pipe. ‘When you say gone, Joe, are you sure you mean gone?’

‘Yes, Reverend,’ affirmed Joe Woollard vigorously. ‘Gone to London, so Martha Giles says – she’s next door but one and friendly with Mrs Tierney – and no one seems to know when she’ll be a-coming back. That was two days ago now, and the funeral’s the day after tomorrow, as you well know, and I don’t know what to do with the body.’

‘But dash it, man, she must have left some instructions. She can’t have just disappeared.’

‘But she has. I don’t know, but London could have gone to her head, like, and she might have clean forgot her duties. Things happen in London.’

Mr Meldreth recalled Mrs Tierney and shook his head. The idea that the pleasant, homely, middle-aged woman should have been seduced by bright lights and wicked ways was too fantastic for words and said more about Joe Woollard’s choice of Sunday paper than his sense. In a way, though, he was right. Things happen in London. ‘She could have met with an accident, I suppose.’

Joe Woollard acknowledged this less sensational explanation with a downturned face. ‘She might have done at that. But what do I do with the Colonel? He can’t be buried from his bungalow, not if no one’s there to see him off.’

‘He’ll have to be buried from your workshop, Joe. You’ll do it all properly, I know. I’d better get in touch with this nephew of the Colonel’s. I presume he’s coming to the funeral.’

But that was more than Joseph Woollard knew; nor did he know the Colonel’s nephew’s address or even his name. And Reverend Meldreth, completely at a loss and after two hours delay, reluctantly telephoned the police.

The first Jack Haldean knew of Mrs Tierney’s disappearance was when his landlady, Mrs Pettycure, told him that Mr Rackham was on the telephone and would appreciate a word.

‘Jack,’ said Bill, his voice tinny on the phone, ‘this is just a thought, but when you drove Gerard Carrington to meet his uncle, Colonel Willoughby, did you come across the Colonel’s housekeeper, a Mrs Tierney?’

‘That’s right, Bill. I had quite a long conversation with her. She seemed a very pleasant woman.’

There was a pause. ‘Would you recognize her? If she was dead, I mean?’

‘Good God, what’s happened?’

‘That,’ said Rackham grimly, ‘is what I want to find out.’

The mortuary attendant pulled back the grey cotton sheet from the face of the body on the narrow wooden table. Jack swallowed. ‘That’s her, all right.’ Rackham nodded to the attendant who replaced the sheet.

Jack was silent until they regained the street. He was thankful to be out of the building. In a way, the waiting room, with its scrubbed deal table and institutional chairs, where he had spent minutes that seemed like hours while Rackham completed the paperwork, had been worse than the whitewashed mortuary itself. There was a vase of sweet peas on the table. At least no one had tried to pretend the mortuary with its lonely occupant and air laced with formaldehyde was anything but clean, cold and depressing.

‘There’s a pub across the road,’ said Rackham. ‘Come on. I think we both need a pick-me-up.’

In the Dog and Duck, Jack swallowed quarter of his pint of Bass in a single gulp. ‘My God, I needed that,’ he said with feeling. ‘The atmosphere of that place seems to stick to your clothes, doesn’t it? I’m sure I stink of disinfectant.’

‘I hate seeing a woman come off worse.’ Bill was pale with emotion. ‘It’s
wrong
, Jack. You told me she was a decent, kindly soul, and she looked it. How anyone could wish harm to a woman like that beggars belief.’

‘What on earth happened to her?’ asked Jack.

‘She fell under a number eleven bus outside Paddington Station two days ago.’

‘The same day Hugo Ragnall was shot.’