In At The Death Page 7

  Boyce’s grey eyes were fixed upon the other’s broad features, not accusingly but in a shrewd watchfulness that missed no change of expression.

  ‘Why call on me?’ Masters began, and then he heaved himself up in his chair. ‘Look here, I didn’t do it! I know there was a lot of talk about Hardene and me, but I didn’t have anything to do with killing him! You can’t fix the thing on me!’

  His glance went to Inspector Parkin and a vicious look came into his face.

  ‘This is your doing, Parkin. Just because everybody in Bridgton knows that Hardene was making a dead set at me over his damned pretence at being so righteous you’re looking for a nice, easy way out. Well, it won’t work. Wait till I get hold of the Chief Constable. I’ll have a word or two to say to him about this!’

  ‘No call to take it that way, sir,’ Boyce interposed. ‘In any case, this is my investigation. No one’s making any accusations—it’s a good deal too early—but you must realize that it’s my duty to follow up every possible line of enquiry, and in view of the fact that your quarrel with Doctor Hardene was common knowledge and that both of you said some hard things I had no alternative but to talk to you about the matter.’

  His voice was quiet but there was an implacable note in it that steadied Masters. Boyce waited a moment or two longer and when the other made no further comment he rose to his feet.

  ‘I’m obliged to you for your help, sir. It may be that I shall need to call on you again and I may have to ask you for a statement, but subject to my confirming what you’ve told me about your movements last night there’s no need for you to feel that you’re under any kind of suspicion.’

  Masters raised his head. His lips were working. Tremaine waited for him to speak, but before the words could come there was a knock on the door and an instant later it was opened.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Jerome, I didn’t realize you were busy.’

  It was a woman’s voice. Tremaine saw her standing in the doorway, a rather frail, grey-haired woman who was leaning heavily upon a stick. She was not very tall and her form was slight, but there was character in her eyes and in the set of her determined chin.

  Masters made a great effort.

  ‘It’s—all right, my dear. We were just finishing. This is my wife,’ he went on, reluctantly, but seeing no way of escape. ‘My dear, this is Chief Inspector Boyce, of Scotland Yard. I think you know Inspector Parkin. This is Mr.—er—Mr.—–’

  ‘Tremaine,’ interposed that gentleman.

  Mrs. Masters gave Parkin a brief nod and turned her regard upon Jonathan Boyce. Her eyes, Tremaine noted, were very bright; there was not, he thought, much that she would miss.

  ‘Scotland Yard?’ she observed. ‘Isn’t that rather unusual, Jerome?’

  ‘I’m afraid he’s brought bad news, my dear,’ her husband said. He was speaking very carefully, as though he was talking to an invalid. ‘It’s about Doctor Hardene. He’s been murdered.’

  ‘Murdered?’ She leaned more heavily on her stick, and her lip curled. ‘I would hardly have described that as bad news. Not from your point of view, Jerome.’

  ‘But, my dear . . . ’ Masters threw a glance at Boyce and swallowed hard. ‘Murder is such a terrible thing. Surely at a time like this we should let bygones be bygones.’

  ‘Nonsense. The man was doing his best to ruin you and it’s just as well that he’s dead. Who knows what more trouble he might have stirred up?’

  There was appeal in the look Masters gave his visitors but he did not make any attempt to contradict his wife openly.

  ‘I see you’re what I might call a practical woman, Mrs. Masters,’ Boyce said. ‘You don’t believe that being dead does anything to change the colour of what a man did in his lifetime.’

  ‘I don’t believe in hypocrisy,’ she told him bluntly. ‘Doctor Hardene levelled a number of unpleasant charges against my husband, and as far as I’m concerned the fact that he’s dead means that there will be an end to the trouble. Whether he was murdered or not doesn’t come into it.’

  She waited, as though she expected Boyce to take her up, but the Yard man refused to be drawn.

  ‘I’ve asked all the questions I need to ask for the time being, ma’am, and I don’t want to take up any more of your husband’s time. I know that he’s a very busy man.’

  She stood aside to allow them to pass, a faint smile on her face.

  ‘And you’re a very clever one, Chief Inspector,’ she remarked. ‘You know that it’s useless to argue with a woman!’

  Boyce and his two companions were shown out of the house and they walked back down the drive towards their car.

  ‘A woman of character,’ Tremaine observed, and Parkin gave a dry chuckle.

  ‘You aren’t the first to find that out. There isn’t much of her but she’s the sort who knows what she wants—and gets it. Outside his house Masters is the strong man, the fellow who gets things done and expects everybody else to jump around when he says so or else. But inside it’s a different story. She’s got him under her thumb all right. You saw the way he curled up when she came in?’

  Boyce nodded.

  ‘Odd how so many of these blustering types turn out to have their heel of Achilles. Still, that part of it’s no concern of ours—as far as we know. What we came to find out was whether friend Masters could have been responsible for landing that piece of rock against Hardene’s skull. At the moment it doesn’t look much like it. How long would it have taken him to drive home from his club?’

  ‘Say fifteen minutes,’ Parkin returned. ‘Probably not quite as long. The city’s pretty dead after about ten o’clock and there wouldn’t have been much traffic about. It was a dry night as well, so there wouldn’t have been anything to hold him up.’

  ‘So if he didn’t get home until eleven, he needn’t have left his club until a quarter to. The body was found at half past ten, which means that if Masters did it there needs to be a sizable hole in his story. Even if we fix the time of death as late as five minutes or so before the constable found Hardene it’s clear that Masters couldn’t have done the job and made himself scarce unless he left his club just after ten at the latest. I can’t imagine him being stupid enough to pitch up an alibi with nearly three-quarters of an hour unaccounted for.’

  ‘That’s true, sir,’ Parkin said. ‘Masters is sharp enough. It doesn’t seem to make sense that he’d say he left his club at a quarter to eleven knowing that there’d be plenty of witnesses to say that he left a good deal earlier.’

  ‘And yet,’ Tremaine observed, ‘he was shaken about something.’

  They had reached the car by now. As they climbed in and drove off along the road he looked speculatively at Parkin.

  ‘It was Masters who was on your mind when we met you this morning, wasn’t it, Inspector?’

  Parkin returned his glance wryly, and with something of respect.

  ‘Did I make it so obvious?’

  ‘Obvious enough,’ Tremaine said. ‘You were certainly keeping something back. You had Masters pretty well lined up as the man we’re after, didn’t you?’

  Parkin nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted soberly. ‘You see, coming on top of that open row between them it looked like the kind of thing Masters might have done. You’ve seen him for yourself now; he can make a bad enemy. As a rule politics don’t get down to personalities here, but now and again you do get a flare-up and Masters and Hardene were both the type to take it seriously. Both of them were trying to get themselves in the headlines—Masters hasn’t been on the council long and he’s been trying hard to get himself noticed—and it was developing into a race to see who could finish off the other first. When I heard about Hardene the first thought that came into my head was that Masters was our man, but the Chief Constable had decided to call you in and I didn’t want to speak too soon in case I gave you any prejudices that might have got in your way. I knew that I might be wrong. In fact, it’s looking as though I was.’

  Tremaine m
ade no further comment. He leaned back against the upholstery, staring out of the windows of the car at the pleasant downland which was Bridgton’s pride, and it was Boyce who took up the conversation.

  ‘Well, we’re certainly moving,’ he remarked, ‘but it looks as though the next step’s going to call for the routine grind. There’s all the stuff in Hardene’s surgery to be checked over, a list of his patients to be gone through in case we can get a line on that telephone call, and Fenn and that fellow Slade to be followed up. And we’ll need to send someone down to the Venturers’ Club to make sure there aren’t any holes in the story Masters gave us just now.’

  Tremaine turned back from his study of the downs.

  ‘And we’ll need the files on the murder of Patrick Marton,’ he said quietly.

  ‘The seaman?’ Boyce studied him reflectively. ‘You still think there’s a connection?’

  ‘I still think there might be one.’

  They drove by a roundabout route that enabled them to drop Parkin at the big, white-stoned building near the centre of the city that was the local police headquarters before setting out to contact Sergeant Witham at the empty house where Hardene’s body had been found.

  Both Boyce and Tremaine were silent after Parkin had left them; there was, indeed, plenty to occupy both their minds. It was not until they had once more reached the road bordering the downs that Boyce roused himself to study his companion with a quizzical smile.

  ‘Well, Mordecai, where’s it getting you?’

  ‘Nowhere,’ Tremaine told him ruefully. ‘But I’d like to know,’ he added, ‘what else was on Parkin’s mind.’

  Boyce looked at him in surprise.

  ‘Parkin? What else? I thought Masters was the bee in his bonnet.’

  ‘It was one of the bees,’ Tremaine said. ‘But there’s something else as well. And I think it must be something important. So important that it scares him.’

  Boyce started to smile benevolently and then changed his mind. It didn’t do to laugh where Mordecai Tremaine was concerned. He had a disconcerting habit of sometimes arriving at the truth a long way in advance of other people.

  7

  THE CHIEF CONSTABLE PRESIDES

  THE EVENING COURIER was a very creditable production for an evening newspaper with limited resources. Mordecai Tremaine, who had a weakness for newspapers and journalists, surveyed its early edition appreciatively.

  Rex Linton’s story, with suitable headlines, held the leading position on the front page. He was relieved to find that there was no mention of his own name; the account was, in fact, quite clearly the opening gambit.

  Linton was keeping one or two tricks up his sleeve; stripped of its biographical details concerning Hardene and its references to previous unsolved murders—Tremaine thought he detected the reporter’s sense of mischief—it gave nothing more than the bare facts of Hardene’s death.

  Tremaine read it in a few moments and then turned his attention to the rest of the paper. It was possible to glean a great deal of knowledge of a city and its inhabitants from the contents of its local journal.

  He was sitting in an inexpensive restaurant near police headquarters to which Boyce and he had repaired for a belated lunch, awaiting Jonathan’s return from making a telephone call to Sergeant Witham, now posted at Hardene’s surgery.

  The day had, of course, begun early, but even so he felt that they had accomplished a good deal—including arranging for accommodation at a seventeenth-century inn that had once been built against the ancient city wall and was now near enough to the modern centre to be a convenient base for operations.

  A touch on his shoulder made him look up to see that Boyce had returned.

  ‘Everything’s under control. Witham’s still busy sifting and there’ve been no visitors worth noting. Plenty of telephone enquiries though from people who’ve seen the papers. I’ve asked Miss Royman to take all calls and I’ve put a man in with her to keep a record of everybody who rings up. She’ll have her work cut out for a while but it’ll save her from brooding—if she has anything to brood about.’

  There was the faintest of undercurrents in his voice. Nervously Tremaine pushed back his pince-nez. It was a disturbing thought that such an attractive young woman as Margaret Royman should have shown a furtive interest in the items that had been locked in Graham Hardene’s desk, but it was also a fact there could be no disputing.

  Jonathan Boyce did not, however, say anything more about the girl. He nodded towards the newspaper Tremaine was still holding.

  ‘That Linton’s report? Anything there?’

  ‘Nothing we didn’t know—except for a few notes about Hardene.’

  Boyce glanced over the headlines and then looked down at his watch.

  ‘H’m. Time we were moving. Chief Constable’s waiting for us and I don’t want to start off on the wrong foot by keeping him waiting too long the first day.’

  A few minutes brisk walking brought them to police headquarters and they were shown up to the Chief Constable’s room—a long, official-looking apartment just above the main entrance to the building.

  ‘Come in, gentlemen, and find yourselves chairs.’

  Sir Robert Dennell turned from the window at their entrance and indicated the round, polished conference table that held the centre of the floor. With the light from the window falling upon him from behind he looked older than Tremaine had imagined him to be that morning. His tall, spare figure showed signs of stooping and there were lines of fatigue in his grizzled countenance.

  Not that there was any evidence of weakness in either voice or manner as he took his seat with them at the table.

  ‘Now, Parkin,’ he said incisively, to the inspector who had accompanied them, ‘you first. Let’s have your report.’

  Briefly Parkin detailed the morning’s activities, including the visit to Jerome Masters. The Chief Constable listened intently to what Parkin had to say and then looked significantly across at Boyce.

  ‘Masters, of course, is an obvious suspect. I take it you already know about the trouble with Hardene?’

  ‘I know about it, sir, in the sense that I’ve heard that Hardene and Masters were at daggers-drawn over certain accusations Hardene had made. What I don’t know is how much truth there was in them and therefore how much real motive Masters might have had.’

  ‘Neither does anybody else,’ the Chief Constable said drily. ‘It rather looks as though we’re going to have the unpleasant job of looking for dirty linen. It’s always a distasteful business when things go wrong in local politics. Even a city like this is really quite a small place. Before you know where you are you’ve got down to personalities and the mud that’s stirred up takes years to settle down again.’

  ‘I think you’re being a bit gloomy, sir,’ Boyce put in. ‘Naturally, if we’re forced to decide that Masters is the chap we want we’ll have to see about getting a watertight motive, but there’s nothing definitely pointing his way as yet apart from his upset with Hardene. And if he is in the clear over the murder we’ll have no call to go probing into anything else.’

  The Chief Constable nodded.

  ‘I’m certainly not anxious to get his back up if he’s innocent. Masters can be an ugly customer. What was your impression?’

  ‘I’m inclined to agree, sir—up to a point. He could be a very ugly customer, if he thought he could get away with it. But my feeling this morning was that he wasn’t altogether sure of himself. And whatever else he may be there isn’t much doubt that he isn’t master in his own house.’

  A shadow crossed Sir Robert Dennell’s face.

  ‘We needn’t hold that against him. Plenty of men are in the same boat—if they were honest enough to admit it. Very often it’s the man who feels most sure of himself who has the least cause to boast.’

  There was a note of bitterness in his voice and Tremaine gave him a thoughtful glance. But the Chief Constable did not elaborate what he had said. He glanced down at the note he had made on the p
ad in front of him and when he spoke again it was in the authoritative tone in which he had opened the proceedings.

  ‘So far it seems that although there are one or two likely leads you haven’t been able to arrive at anything definite. Not that I’m concerned about that. It didn’t look like an open and shut case, otherwise I wouldn’t have called in the Yard, and I hardly expected you to have anything concrete to put forward at this stage.’

  He glanced across the table, and his eyes, blue and hard, the eyes of a man used to having his instructions obeyed without question, rested upon Jonathan Boyce.

  ‘Any assistance you need, Chief Inspector, is at your disposal. In return I want to be informed of every development as soon as it takes place. As soon as it takes place,’ he repeated, with a slight emphasis.

  ‘I quite understand, sir,’ Boyce returned, without expression, and the Chief Constable gave a wintry smile.

  ‘I wonder whether you do? People don’t like unsolved murders and we’ve had two in the last eight months. It becomes a little difficult when the Chief Constable has to refuse dinner invitations because it’s embarrassing to be asked awkward questions by leading citizens. I’ll be available to you at any time, and any request you make to Parkin here will be dealt with without delay. I want this case broken and I want it broken in the shortest possible time.’

  ‘I’ll do my best, sir,’ Boyce returned quietly. ‘You’re giving me all the advantages you can. The scent’s still warm. I won’t let you down.’

  For a moment the Chief Constable’s gaze held, then he relaxed with something like a little sigh.

  ‘I don’t think you will,’ he said. He reached out to a pile of documents and files and pushed them across the table. ‘I understand you wanted these. You’ll find everything there about Marton and the pawnbroker Wallins—everything we were able to find out, that is. I think, quite frankly, that you’re off on a wild-goose chase because my men didn’t leave much undone, but if you think you can dig up anything fresh, well, there’s the whole bag of tricks.’