The Crime at Black Dudley (27 page)

‘Doctor Whitby,' he said, ‘do you know who murdered Colonel Coombe?'

The little doctor's benign expression did not alter.

‘Why, of course,' he said. ‘I should have thought that, at least, was obvious to everybody – everybody who knew anything at all about the case, that is.'

Abbershaw shook his head.

‘I'm afraid we must plead either great stupidity or peculiarly untrusting dispositions,' he said. ‘That is the point on which we are not at all satisfied.'

‘But my dear young people –' for the first time during that interview the little man showed signs of impatience. ‘That is most obvious. Amongst your party – let us say, Mr Petrie's party, as opposed to von Faber's – there was a member of the famous Simister gang of America. Perhaps you have heard of it, Doctor Abbershaw. Colonel Coombe had been attempting to establish relations with them for some time. In fact, that was the reason why I and my pugnacious friend behind us were placed at Black Dudley – to keep an eye upon him. During the progress of the Dagger Ritual, Simister's man eluded our vigilance and chose that moment not only to get hold of the papers, but also to murder the unfortunate Colonel. That, by the way, was only a title he adopted, you know.'

The three younger men remained unimpressed.

Martin shook his head.

‘Not a bad story, but it won't wash,' he said. ‘If one of our party stabbed the old boy, why do you all go to such lengths to keep it so quiet for us?'

‘Because, my boy,' said Whitby testily, ‘we didn't want a fuss. In fact, the police on the scene was the last thing we
desired. Besides, you seem to forget the extraordinary importance of the papers.'

Again Martin shook his head.

‘We've heard all this before,' he said; ‘and it didn't sound any better then. To be perfectly frank, we are convinced that one of your people was responsible. We want to know who, and we want to know why.'

The little doctor's face grew slowly crimson, but it was the flush of a man annoyed rather than a guilty person accused of his crime.

‘You tire me with your stupidity,' he said suddenly, ‘Good God, sir, consider it. Have you any idea how valuable the man was to us? Do you know what he was paid for his services? Twenty thousand pounds for this coup alone. Simister would probably have offered him more. You don't hear about these things. Government losses rarely get into the papers – certainly not with figures attached. Not the smallest member of our organization stood to gain anything at all by his death. I confess I was surprised at Simister's man, unless he was double-crossing his own people.'

For a moment even Martin's faith in his own theory was shaken.

‘In that case,' said Abbershaw unexpectedly, ‘it will doubtless surprise you to learn that the man employed by Simister to obtain the package had a complete alibi. In fact, it was impossible for him ever to have laid hands upon the dagger.'

‘Impossible?' The word broke from Whitby's lips like a cry, but although they were listening to him critically, to not one of them did it sound like a cry of fear. He stared at them, amazement in his eyes.

‘Have you proof of that?' he said at last.

‘Complete proof,' said Abbershaw quietly. ‘I think you must reconsider your theory, Doctor Whitby. Consider how you yourself stand, in the light of what I have just said.'

An expression of mild astonishment spread over the insignificant little face. Then, to everybody's surprise, he laughed.

‘Amateur detectives?' he said. ‘I'm afraid you've had a long ride for nothing, gentlemen. I confess that my position as accessory after the fact is a dangerous one, but then, so is Doctor Abbershaw's. Consider the likelihood of your suggestion. Have you provided me with a motive?'

‘I suggest,' said Martin calmly, ‘that your position when von Faber discovered that your prisoner had “eluded your vigilance”, as you call it, would not have been too good.'

Whitby paused thoughtfully.

‘Not bad,' he said. ‘Not bad at all. Very pretty. But' – he shook his head – ‘unfortunately not true. My position with Coombe dead was “not good” as you call it. But had Coombe been alive he would have had to face the music, wouldn't he? It was von Faber's own fault that I ever left his side at all.'

‘This was certainly a point which they had not considered. It silenced them for a moment, and in the lull a sound which had been gradually forcing itself upon their attention for the last few moments became suddenly very apparent – the steady droning of an aeroplane engine.

Whitby looked up, mild interest on his face.

It was now quite light, and the others, following his gaze, saw a huge Fokker monoplane flying low against the grey sky.

‘He's out early,' remarked Prenderby.

‘Yes,' said Whitby. ‘There's an aerodrome a couple of miles across here, you know. Quite near my house, in fact.'

Martin pricked up his ears.

‘Your house?' he echoed.

The little doctor nodded.

‘Yes. I have a small place down here by the sea. Very lonely, you know, but I thought it suited my purpose very well just now. Frankly, I didn't like the idea of your following me and it made my friend quite angry.'

‘Hullo! He's in difficulties or something.'

It was Prenderby who spoke. He had been watching the aeroplane, which was now almost directly above their heads.
His excited cry made them all look up again, to see the great plane circling into the wind.

There was now no drone of the engine but they could hear the sough of the air through the wires, and for a moment it seemed as if it were dropping directly on top of them. The next instant it passed so near that they almost felt its draught upon their faces. Then it taxied along the ground, coming to a halt in the glow of the still burning head-lights of the big car.

Instinctively, they hurried towards it, and until they were within twenty yards they did not realize that Whitby's confederate had got there first and was talking excitedly to the pilot.

‘Good God!' said Martin suddenly stopping dead in his tracks. The same thought struck the others at precisely the same instant.

Through the waves of mingled anger and amazement which overwhelmed them, Whitby's precise little voice came clearly.

‘I observe that he carries a machine-gun,' he remarked. ‘That's what I like about these Germans – so efficient. In view of what my excitable colleague has probably said to the pilot, I really don't think I should come any nearer. Perhaps you would turn off our head-lights when you go back, they have served their purpose. Take the car too if you like.'

He paused and beamed on them.

‘Good-bye,' he said. ‘I suppose it would annoy you if I thanked you for coming to see me off? Don't do that,' he added sharply, as Martin's hand shot to his side pocket. ‘Please don't do that,' he repeated more earnestly. ‘For my friends would most certainly kill you without the least compunction, and I don't want that. Believe me, my dear young people, whatever your theories may be, I am no murderer. I am leaving the country in this melodramatic fashion because it obviates the inconveniences which might arise if I showed my passport here just at present. Don't come any nearer. Good-bye, gentlemen.'

As they watched him go, Martin's hand again stole to his pocket.

Abbershaw touched his arm.

‘Don't be a fool, old man,' he said. ‘If he's done one murder, don't encourage him to do another, and if he hasn't, why help him to?'

Martin nodded and made a remark which did nobody any credit.

They stood there watching the machine with the gun trained upon them from its cockpit until it began to move again; then they turned back towards the Riley.

‘Right up the garden,' said Martin bitterly. ‘Fooled, done brown, put it how you like. There goes Coombe's murderer and here are we poor mutts who listened trustingly while he told us fairy stories to pass the time away until his pals turned up for him. I wish we'd risked that machine-gun.'

Prenderby nodded gloomily.

‘I feel sick,' he said. ‘We spotted him and then he got away with it.'

Abbershaw shook his head.

‘He got away certainly,' he said. ‘But I don't think we've got much cause to regret it.'

‘What do you mean? Think he didn't kill him?'

They looked at him incredulously.

Abbershaw nodded.

‘I know he didn't kill him,' he said quietly.

Martin grunted.

‘I'm afraid I can't agree with you there,' he said. ‘Gosh! I'll never forgive myself for being such a fool!'

Prenderby was inclined to agree with him, but Abbershaw stuck to his own opinion, and the expression on his face as they drove silently back to Town was very serious and, somehow, afraid.

In the six weeks which followed the unsatisfactory trip to the Essex Marshes, Abbershaw and Meggie were fully occupied preparing for their wedding, which they had decided should take place as soon as was possible.

Prenderby seemed inclined to forget the Black Dudley affair altogether: his own marriage to Jeanne was not far distant and provided him with a more interesting topic of thought and conversation, and Martin Watt had gone back to his old haunts in the City and the West End.

Wyatt was in his flat overlooking St James's, apparently immersed as ever in the obscurities of his reading.

But Abbershaw had not forgotten Colonel Coombe.

He had not put the whole matter before his friend, Inspector Deadwood of Scotland Yard, for a reason which he was unable to express in definite words, even to himself.

An idea was forming in his mind – an idea which he shrank from and yet could not wholly escape.

In vain he argued with himself that his thought was preposterous and absurd; as the days went on and the whole affair sank more and more into its true perspective, the more the insidious theory grew upon him and began to haunt his nights as well as his days.

At last, very unwillingly, he gave way to his suspicions and set out to test his theory.

His procedure was somewhat erratic. He spent the best part of a week in the reading-room of the British Museum; this was followed by a period of seclusion in his own library, with occasional descents upon the bookshops of Charing Cross Road, and then, as though his capacity for the tedium of a subject in which he was not naturally interested was not satiated, he spent an entire week-end in the Kensington house of his uncle, Sir Dorrington Wynne, one-time Professor of Archaeology in the University of Oxford, a man
whose conversation never left the subject of his researches.

Another day or so at the British Museum completed Abbershaw's investigations, and one evening found him driving down Whitehall in the direction of the Abbey, his face paler than usual, and his eyes troubled.

He went slowly, as if loth to reach his destination, and when a little later he pulled up outside a block of flats, he remained for some time at the wheel, staring moodily before him. Every moment the task he had set himself became more and more nauseous.

Eventually, he left the car, and mounting the carpeted stairs of the old Queen Anne house walked slowly up to the first floor.

A man-servant admitted him and within three minutes he was seated before a spacious fire-place in Wyatt Petrie's library.

The room expressed its owner's personality. Its taste was perfect but a little academic, a little strict. It was an ascetic room. The walls were pale-coloured and hung sparsely with etchings and engravings – a Goya, two or three moderns, and a tiny Rembrandt. There were books everywhere, but tidily, neatly kept, and a single hanging in one corner, a dully burning splash of old Venetian embroidery.

Wyatt seemed quietly pleased to see him. He sat down on the other side of the hearth and produced cigars and Benedictine.

Abbershaw refused both. He was clearly ill at ease, and he sat silent for some moments after the first words of greeting, staring moodily into the fire.

‘Wyatt,' he said suddenly, ‘I've known you for a good many years. Believe me, I've not forgotten that when I ask you this question.'

Wyatt leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, his liqueur glass lightly held in his long, graceful fingers. Abbershaw turned in his chair until he faced the silent figure.

‘Wyatt,' he said slowly and evenly, ‘why did you stab your uncle?'

No expression appeared upon the still pale face of the
man to whom he had spoken. For some moments he did not appear to have heard.

At last he sighed and, leaning forward, set his glass down upon the little book-table by his side.

‘I'll show you,' he said.

Abbershaw took a deep breath. He had not been prepared for this; almost anything would have been easier to bear.

Meanwhile Wyatt crossed over to a small writing-desk let into a wall of bookshelves and, unlocking it with a key which he took from his pocket, produced something from a drawer; carrying it back to the fire-place, he handed it to his visitor.

Abbershaw took it and looked at it with some astonishment.

It was a photograph of a girl.

The face was round and childlike, and was possessed of that peculiar innocent sweetness which seems to belong only to a particular type of blonde whose beauty almost invariably hardens in maturity.

At the time of the portrait, Abbershaw judged, the girl must have been about seventeen – possibly less. Undeniably lovely, but in the golden-haired unsophisticated fashion of the medieval angel.

The last face in the world that he would have suspected Wyatt of noticing.

He turned the thing over in his hand. It was one of those cheap, glossy reproductions which circulate by the thousand in the theatrical profession.

He sat looking at it helplessly; uncomprehending, and very much at sea.

Wyatt came to the rescue.