Too Many Cousins, page 13
“The case of the family poisoned by sodium nitrite here in Bedford?”
She nodded again. “Vivien came for the week-end, just after it happened. Naturally we talked about it. She was specially interested because her precious Mr. McIvory, at the Ministry of Supply, handles that sort of thing, and she knows a lot about sodium nitrite. And the Sansil works,” added Mrs. Shearsby carefully, “aren’t the only place the Ministry gets it from.”
Mr. Tuke, theatrically satanic under a blood-red ray from the stained glass, looked at her, his dark brows raised a trifle. She moved restlessly under his gaze, and, as he did not speak, she went on quickly:
“Oh, I know it sounds horrid. But it’s all horrid, anyway, isn’t it? And Vivien wants money. Lots of money. She says so. She’s a snob, and she wants to show off among her smart friends in London, and be able to buy expensive things. And this man she’s engaged to hasn’t much, except his salary, and what’s he going to do when the Ministry of Information comes to an end? Live on Vivien, I suppose.” The words were coming fast, and there was malice and envy in Lilian Shearsby’s voice, under which its refined accents were breaking down. “I dare say I shouldn’t talk like this,” she said defiantly. “But I don’t care! I know how she’ll talk! What’s the good of mincing matters?”
The shining pince-nez quivered in the particoloured light, and suddenly, beneath her make-up, a flush flooded her cheeks. Her hands were working together again.
“I should try a bit of mincing, all the same,” Mr. Tuke said dryly. “It would be wiser, as your husband said.” He took out his watch with an air of closing the subject. “Dear me, I shall make you late. Where is your meeting?”
The commonplace question brought her back to earth.
“The meeting? . . . At our headquarters, in the High Street.”
“Let me drive you there. It is the least I can do, after imperilling your reputation for punctuality.”
Her cheeks still flushed, she was breathing a little fast. Harvey opened the front door, and her glance went past him to the sleek black Delage drawn up at the gate. It was easy to read her thoughts, and she gave the car’s owner a smile which he afterwards described to his wife as approaching the arch. Mrs. Tuke retorted that if the poor woman had known him better she would have been rightly suspicious of his unusual politeness. In happy ignorance, Mrs. Shearsby began to apply a touch of powder in front of a mirror in the hall. As they left the house she glanced quickly at the neighbouring windows. Even in wartime, trained observers in Burnside Avenue were no doubt watching the piistress of ‘ Aylwynstowe 5 depart in style.
CHAPTER XVI
THE attention of Mr. Tuke, as in his unaccustomed role of the squire of dames he ceremoniously opened the garden gate, was momentarily elsewhere. A little way down Burnside Avenue another car was drawn up at the kerb. It had not been there when he arrived. It had a familiar look: it was uncommonly like the rather battered Morris last seen outside The Bushel and Strike in Stocking some three hours ago. It was blue, and he remembered the registration letters. Through the windscreen he could see two figures in the front seat.
As the Delage began to move, so did this other car. On the way to the High Street, while Mrs. Shearsby spent much of her time scanning the pavements, once or twice waving to acquaintances, Harvey was watching, in the driving mirror, the blue Morris following behind. He had no doubt now as to its identity. It had not followed him to the Vicarage, nor when he took the road to Stocking Corner and so to Bedford. It must have come direct, probably some time later. It had been driven to Burnside Avenue, and these subsequent proceedings implied that the tall man in the check jacket and his tough-looking companion were interested in the tenants of ‘Aylwynstowe.’ It was natural to wonder whether their presence in Stocking, of all places, did not fall into some pattern. But what pattern? Harvey, to his annoyance, could make nothing of it.
The Delage, the Morris still in its wake, crossed the graceful bridge over the Ouse, and Lilian Shearsby indicated the W.V.S. headquarters in the High Street. The arrival could not have been more happily timed, for three women in uniform, unloading bundles from a small van, paused to stare in the most gratifying way. The passenger prolonged the sensation by voluble thanks, until Mr. Tuke, watching in the mirror the Morris in its turn drawing up a hundred yards in rear, felt that the need for good manners was past, and reached across her to open the car door. As Mrs. Shearsby got out she hailed her colleagues, still standing staring among their bundles.
“Hullo, Muriel! Sorry if I’m a little late, Mrs. Blake.”
“Here are the men’s clothes at last,” said the woman called Muriel, looking at Mr. Tuke with frank curiosity. “Though they seem to be mostly youths’ again. Help us hump these in, and we’ll get the rest out.”
“And they must be carefully counted this time,” Mrs. Blake said, with the air of asserting herself.
Raising his cap about an inch to Lilian Shearsby’s final wave and smile, Harvey let in his clutch and drove slowly down the street. The blue Morris was still at the kerb when he turned round the first corner and again pulled up. He slid out from the driving seat and walked back to the corner. The High Street was crowded and busy, and there were a surprising number of cars, hooting their way up and down or parked in accordance with municipal ordinances. Unaware of the stringency and peculiarity of these, Harvey had fortunately drawn up the Delage on the correct side of the road for that day of the week. Glancing back down the High Street, under cover of a group of women walking past his turning, he found the scene in which he was interested unchanged. Mrs. Mortimer Shearsby and her companions were carrying bundles from the van across the pavement in a mannish and energetic manner, and the Morris car, its occupants still visible in the front seat, remained stationary a hundred yards beyond.
Harvey took further stock of the situation. On the far side of the High Street, in the opposite direction and only twenty yards away, stood a telephone cabinet. As another party of shoppers straggled past his turning he dodged across through the traffic and shut himself in the glass box. As he asked for Whitehall 1212, he could still see the distant Morris through the window.
Goins rattled, the connection was made, Button “A” was pushed, and after a brief passage with intermediaries the high voice of Mr. Hubert St. John Wray came thinly over the line. It sounded rather peevish.
“Well?”
“Tuke here,” said Harvey, grinning fiendishly at the instrument.
“So they tell me. Where is ‘here’?”
“Bedford.”
“So you have gone there? Well, what is it?”
“I want you to do something, Wray. Highest priority, please. Ring up the police here and ask them to send an intelligent and inconspicuous plainclothes officer, at once, with an inconspicuous car or motor-bike, to the telephone box on the east side of the High Street, a hundred yards north of the W.V.S. headquarters. Got that? The number is 06632. Hurry, there’s a good chap.”
“What the devil——”
“Don’t waste time. I want a car followed, and the men in it know mine.”
“I was trying to ask what all this is about.”
“I don’t know myself, but the plot thickens. You know what plot. Now just get on with it, will you? I want the man at once. He’ll find me by the box.”
“Really, Tuke——”
“ Hurry!” said Mr. Tuke, and rang off.
Leaving the cabinet, he took up a position a yard or two away, with the box itself concealing him from the men in the Morris, of which, however, in the intervals of the traffic, he could catch glimpses through the glass. He could also dimly see the W.V.S. ladies still hauling bundles from the van. A haughty young woman entered the cabinet, and he shifted his place slightly to see round her. Having glanced at his watch, he took out a cigar and lit it with his usual care.
The young woman left, to be succeeded by a man in a green baize apron. Harvey smoked placidly. Down the street the proceedings continued. In the meantime, however, the telephone system—in spite of occasional lapses still one of our minor modern miracles—was elsewhere doing its stuff; and he had waited only six minutes by his chronometer when a plain green saloon car drew up a few yards away. A man sitting by the driver got out, eyed Harvey in a speculative manner, and came towards him.
“Mr. Tuke?” he said.
“The same.”
“I was instructed to look for you here, sir. I am Detective-Sergeant Webley.”
“Did they give you a portrait parlé? I’m easily described.”
Sergeant Webley smiled. He was a nondescript ma^i of middle age, plainly dressed, who might have passed unnoticed anywhere.
“ Perhaps I ought to ask for proofs of identity, all the same, sir.
Mr. Tuke, his eyes still on the blue Morris, produced the necessary papers. “You know what this is about, I take it?” he asked.
The sergeant returned the documents. “Those deaths at Stocking and Guildford? Yes, the Yard explained,- sir. I am making some inquiries here for Inspector Vance. I happened to be in the station when the call came through just now.”
“Better and better.” Indicating the blue Morris, Mr. Tuke gave in a few words his reasons for being interested in it. “The attraction seems to be Mrs. Mortimer Shearsby. Don’t ask me why. And if you do ask what the devil I’m doing butting in like this, I can only plead a sort of proprietary role in the case. Some of the parties concerned came to me, and I took the matter up with the A.G. And I was born nosy.”
Sergeant Webley, watching the Morris, smiled again.
“We know quite a lot about you, Mr. Tuke. There was that case of a man named Sleight. At Steeple Mardyke. It was outside the county, of course, but near enough for us to be interested.” He was frowning a little as he peered at the distant car. It was apparent that he had excellent sight when he went on: “That’s a Cambridgeshire registration. Wonder what they’re up to? Anyway, it looks like it was a good thing you did butt in, sir. I was beginning to think we’d come to a dead end here.”
Down the High Street the ladies of the W.V.S. had carried in their last bundle. All three disappeared inside their headquarters. The van moved off. But the Morris remained. “Nothing on the Mortimer Shearsbys?” Harvey queried. Cautionary habits die hard, and for an almost imperceptible instant Sergeant Webley hesitated. Then he said:
“No, sir. We can’t find a soul who saw Mr. Shearsby at any of the times we want to know about. Washing out that business in April—it’s too long ago to hope for a bit of luck— we’ve still only his word for what he did on July the 18th and over the Bank Holiday week-end. We’ve had to go careful. Mr. Shearsby’s a man in good position, and Sansil’s a big firm. We don’t want trouble with them. And anyhow, Mr. Tuke,” the sergeant added earnestly, “I don’t see it. Not his own sister. His cousins, yes—he might do them in. But not his sister, when there’s a couple of cousins left he’d get just as much money from. No, I can’t see him doing it. And if he didn’t, it lets him out of the other affair at Stocking. At least, that’s how I look at it.”
“I agree with you there,” Harvey said. “And it’s a point about his sister, though not entirely convincing. Have you considered his character?”
“His character, sir?” The sergeant withdrew his gaze from the Morris to give his companion a puzzled look. “There’s never been anything against him, and he’s lived here ever since he started as a boy with Sansil. What they call a lab. assistant he was then. He pays his way and leads a very quiet life. Always in his garden.”
Mr. Tuke shuddered. “So I noticed.”
“He’s not what you’d call popular,” Mr. Webley went on. “At least, not with those under him. A bit of a toady, by accounts, with the heads and so on. Then he doesn’t smoke or drink, and he’s tight with money. For ever talking about it, too. All Bedford knows he’s coming into a fortune one of these days. And now he’s shooting his mouth about these deaths, saying how much he’ll make by them one minute, and the next dropping hints about needing to take care of himself on dark nights.” The sergeant shrugged tolerantly. “It’s all just silly talk, to show off. Mr. Shearsby likes to feel important.”
“Perhaps I should have used the word temperament instead of character,” Mr. Tuke said. “To illustrate what I was getting at, do you remember the Seddon case?”
“I’ve heard of it, sir. It was before my time in the force.”
“Seddon was another very mean man. He was always thinking and talking about money. And he buried his victim as cheaply as it could be done.”
This time Sergeant Webley’s glance was distinctly startled. Precedents carry weight with any official body of men, and there was a frown on his pleasant, nondescript face as he resumed his watch on the motionless Morris.
“I didn’t remember that, sir,” he said thoughtfully. “Oh, you can push comparisons too far. But a mean streak will carry a man pretty far, too. Or a woman.” Mr. Tuke had taken out his cigar-case. “Can you smoke on this sort of duty? The less you look like a policeman the better. Talking of women, how do Mrs. Shearsby’s alibis work out?”
“She has a good one for the 28th of July, sir.” Mr. Webley applied a match to his Larranaga. “We’ve found a woman here who came all the way back with her from Cambridge. They sat together as far as Hitchin. That means Mrs. Shearsby was in Cambridge as late as nine o’clock, like she said. Then she was seen there, after her W.V.S. meeting, by another member, a Mrs. Darby, at a quarter to five. Well, sir, the next bus after that to pass Stocking Corner left at six-forty. It gets to the Corner at seven-ten. At eight-twenty the last bus’ the other way passes the Corner That gives an hour and ten minutes for a five-mile walk, to that bridge in the lane and back, and a murder thrown in. And then the murderer would have to go through the village. You know what those places are, sir—they’d never miss a stranger walking through on a summer evening. And nobody saw Mrs. Shearsby, nor anyone else. There is another way to the lane, by getting off the bus further on, but that makes six miles to the bridge and back, and cuts the time down to just over the hour. It’s an impossibility.”
“What about the railway?”
“She couldn’t have done it that way, either, sir. She might have caught the 5.10 from Cambridge, getting her to Whipstead at 5.30. But the last train back to Cambridge leaves at 8.5, and it was punctual that day. Now Mr. Shearsby, him that was killed, was alive at-a quarter-past seven. Then he had to get from the inn to the bridge in the lane, or somewhere about there. Near half a mile— say eight or ten minutes. I can’t work it out that he was killed much before half-past seven, at the earliest. My own idea is, it was a good deal later. But take seven-thirty. Then the murderer had to get back to the station by 8.5, and the only way from the lane, unless you go by the village, and that isn’t much shorter, is by footpaths, and it’s over three miles.”
“The way the mysterious semi-clerical gent is supposed to have gone after he left the station?”
Sergeant Webley smiled. “Yes, sir. And I’ve got some news about him. But I ask you—three miles and a bit in thirty-five minutes. No woman could do it, not if she ran the whole way. And supposing she came by the 5.10 and went on to the bus route by the back lanes, its three miles again, and the last bus goes by about eight-ten. Forty minutes. And she’d still have to fit a murder in. Anyway, Mrs. Shearsby didn’t come or go either way. There wasn’t any strange woman at the station that evening, nor picked up by the bus. The only strangers were the man and the boy you’ve heard about.”
“It sounds fairly conclusive,” Mr. Tuke agreed. Sergeant Webley gazed thoughtfully at the blue Morris through a cloud of cigar smoke.
“Anyhow, Mr. Tuke,” he said, “I never did put much stock in the idea of her having done it. It isn’t a woman’s crime, to my way of thinking. Poisoning, yes—but not this bashing people over the head and chucking them in rivers.,,
“Oh, my dear fellow, don’t have illusions about women,” Harvey said. “Think of Mary Borden and her little hatchet, and Mrs. Pearcey and hers, and a score of others.” Apparently Sergeant Webley had not heard of either of these ladies, for he looked puzzled again. How odd it was, Mr. Tuke reflected, that in police work, alone of the professions, no attempt seemed to be made to teach the history of the subject.
“Wonder how long we’ve got to wait?” the sergeant murmured. “Till Mrs. Shearsby comes out, I suppose, if it’s her they’re after. Look, sir, are you in a hurry?”
“Far from it. I’m enjoying myself, I’m on holiday, and I insist on hearing your news about the semi-clerical gent.” The sergeant chuckled. “It’s a good name for him. Well, why not come and sit in my car, sir, while we wait? More comfortable than standing here. Gome to that, if you’re on holiday, why not stay in the car?”
“Join in the hunt, you mean?”
“If you care to, Mr. Tuke. It’s a bit irregular, but you put us on to this, and you’re in the P.P’s office, and all that. It might interest you to find out what that car is up to, and you could tell them about it in London.”
“It would interest me extremely. Sergeant, you’re a trump. But what about my own car?”
Mr. Webley jerked a thumb towards his driver. “The constable there will drive it to the station, and you can pick it up when we get back. If those fellows come from Cambridge, they’ll be going back there. When we’ve found out where they go to, we’ll hand over to the Cambridge police.” He paused, stared at the Morris,, and added: “I’ll have a closer look at them first, if you’ll wait here.”
He strolled away among the crowd on the pavement. Mr. Tuke, effaced behind the telephone cabinet, smoked his cigar and watched the throng. In a few minutes the sergeant rejoined him.
“I’ll know the driver again. But I daren’t draw attention to myself, and what with the other chap’s peaked cap and glasses I couldn’t make much of him. Except his nose. What they call Roman. And he’s grey-haired, like you said, sir. Well, we’ll be going along, if you like.”
They began to walk towards the police car.
She nodded again. “Vivien came for the week-end, just after it happened. Naturally we talked about it. She was specially interested because her precious Mr. McIvory, at the Ministry of Supply, handles that sort of thing, and she knows a lot about sodium nitrite. And the Sansil works,” added Mrs. Shearsby carefully, “aren’t the only place the Ministry gets it from.”
Mr. Tuke, theatrically satanic under a blood-red ray from the stained glass, looked at her, his dark brows raised a trifle. She moved restlessly under his gaze, and, as he did not speak, she went on quickly:
“Oh, I know it sounds horrid. But it’s all horrid, anyway, isn’t it? And Vivien wants money. Lots of money. She says so. She’s a snob, and she wants to show off among her smart friends in London, and be able to buy expensive things. And this man she’s engaged to hasn’t much, except his salary, and what’s he going to do when the Ministry of Information comes to an end? Live on Vivien, I suppose.” The words were coming fast, and there was malice and envy in Lilian Shearsby’s voice, under which its refined accents were breaking down. “I dare say I shouldn’t talk like this,” she said defiantly. “But I don’t care! I know how she’ll talk! What’s the good of mincing matters?”
The shining pince-nez quivered in the particoloured light, and suddenly, beneath her make-up, a flush flooded her cheeks. Her hands were working together again.
“I should try a bit of mincing, all the same,” Mr. Tuke said dryly. “It would be wiser, as your husband said.” He took out his watch with an air of closing the subject. “Dear me, I shall make you late. Where is your meeting?”
The commonplace question brought her back to earth.
“The meeting? . . . At our headquarters, in the High Street.”
“Let me drive you there. It is the least I can do, after imperilling your reputation for punctuality.”
Her cheeks still flushed, she was breathing a little fast. Harvey opened the front door, and her glance went past him to the sleek black Delage drawn up at the gate. It was easy to read her thoughts, and she gave the car’s owner a smile which he afterwards described to his wife as approaching the arch. Mrs. Tuke retorted that if the poor woman had known him better she would have been rightly suspicious of his unusual politeness. In happy ignorance, Mrs. Shearsby began to apply a touch of powder in front of a mirror in the hall. As they left the house she glanced quickly at the neighbouring windows. Even in wartime, trained observers in Burnside Avenue were no doubt watching the piistress of ‘ Aylwynstowe 5 depart in style.
CHAPTER XVI
THE attention of Mr. Tuke, as in his unaccustomed role of the squire of dames he ceremoniously opened the garden gate, was momentarily elsewhere. A little way down Burnside Avenue another car was drawn up at the kerb. It had not been there when he arrived. It had a familiar look: it was uncommonly like the rather battered Morris last seen outside The Bushel and Strike in Stocking some three hours ago. It was blue, and he remembered the registration letters. Through the windscreen he could see two figures in the front seat.
As the Delage began to move, so did this other car. On the way to the High Street, while Mrs. Shearsby spent much of her time scanning the pavements, once or twice waving to acquaintances, Harvey was watching, in the driving mirror, the blue Morris following behind. He had no doubt now as to its identity. It had not followed him to the Vicarage, nor when he took the road to Stocking Corner and so to Bedford. It must have come direct, probably some time later. It had been driven to Burnside Avenue, and these subsequent proceedings implied that the tall man in the check jacket and his tough-looking companion were interested in the tenants of ‘Aylwynstowe.’ It was natural to wonder whether their presence in Stocking, of all places, did not fall into some pattern. But what pattern? Harvey, to his annoyance, could make nothing of it.
The Delage, the Morris still in its wake, crossed the graceful bridge over the Ouse, and Lilian Shearsby indicated the W.V.S. headquarters in the High Street. The arrival could not have been more happily timed, for three women in uniform, unloading bundles from a small van, paused to stare in the most gratifying way. The passenger prolonged the sensation by voluble thanks, until Mr. Tuke, watching in the mirror the Morris in its turn drawing up a hundred yards in rear, felt that the need for good manners was past, and reached across her to open the car door. As Mrs. Shearsby got out she hailed her colleagues, still standing staring among their bundles.
“Hullo, Muriel! Sorry if I’m a little late, Mrs. Blake.”
“Here are the men’s clothes at last,” said the woman called Muriel, looking at Mr. Tuke with frank curiosity. “Though they seem to be mostly youths’ again. Help us hump these in, and we’ll get the rest out.”
“And they must be carefully counted this time,” Mrs. Blake said, with the air of asserting herself.
Raising his cap about an inch to Lilian Shearsby’s final wave and smile, Harvey let in his clutch and drove slowly down the street. The blue Morris was still at the kerb when he turned round the first corner and again pulled up. He slid out from the driving seat and walked back to the corner. The High Street was crowded and busy, and there were a surprising number of cars, hooting their way up and down or parked in accordance with municipal ordinances. Unaware of the stringency and peculiarity of these, Harvey had fortunately drawn up the Delage on the correct side of the road for that day of the week. Glancing back down the High Street, under cover of a group of women walking past his turning, he found the scene in which he was interested unchanged. Mrs. Mortimer Shearsby and her companions were carrying bundles from the van across the pavement in a mannish and energetic manner, and the Morris car, its occupants still visible in the front seat, remained stationary a hundred yards beyond.
Harvey took further stock of the situation. On the far side of the High Street, in the opposite direction and only twenty yards away, stood a telephone cabinet. As another party of shoppers straggled past his turning he dodged across through the traffic and shut himself in the glass box. As he asked for Whitehall 1212, he could still see the distant Morris through the window.
Goins rattled, the connection was made, Button “A” was pushed, and after a brief passage with intermediaries the high voice of Mr. Hubert St. John Wray came thinly over the line. It sounded rather peevish.
“Well?”
“Tuke here,” said Harvey, grinning fiendishly at the instrument.
“So they tell me. Where is ‘here’?”
“Bedford.”
“So you have gone there? Well, what is it?”
“I want you to do something, Wray. Highest priority, please. Ring up the police here and ask them to send an intelligent and inconspicuous plainclothes officer, at once, with an inconspicuous car or motor-bike, to the telephone box on the east side of the High Street, a hundred yards north of the W.V.S. headquarters. Got that? The number is 06632. Hurry, there’s a good chap.”
“What the devil——”
“Don’t waste time. I want a car followed, and the men in it know mine.”
“I was trying to ask what all this is about.”
“I don’t know myself, but the plot thickens. You know what plot. Now just get on with it, will you? I want the man at once. He’ll find me by the box.”
“Really, Tuke——”
“ Hurry!” said Mr. Tuke, and rang off.
Leaving the cabinet, he took up a position a yard or two away, with the box itself concealing him from the men in the Morris, of which, however, in the intervals of the traffic, he could catch glimpses through the glass. He could also dimly see the W.V.S. ladies still hauling bundles from the van. A haughty young woman entered the cabinet, and he shifted his place slightly to see round her. Having glanced at his watch, he took out a cigar and lit it with his usual care.
The young woman left, to be succeeded by a man in a green baize apron. Harvey smoked placidly. Down the street the proceedings continued. In the meantime, however, the telephone system—in spite of occasional lapses still one of our minor modern miracles—was elsewhere doing its stuff; and he had waited only six minutes by his chronometer when a plain green saloon car drew up a few yards away. A man sitting by the driver got out, eyed Harvey in a speculative manner, and came towards him.
“Mr. Tuke?” he said.
“The same.”
“I was instructed to look for you here, sir. I am Detective-Sergeant Webley.”
“Did they give you a portrait parlé? I’m easily described.”
Sergeant Webley smiled. He was a nondescript ma^i of middle age, plainly dressed, who might have passed unnoticed anywhere.
“ Perhaps I ought to ask for proofs of identity, all the same, sir.
Mr. Tuke, his eyes still on the blue Morris, produced the necessary papers. “You know what this is about, I take it?” he asked.
The sergeant returned the documents. “Those deaths at Stocking and Guildford? Yes, the Yard explained,- sir. I am making some inquiries here for Inspector Vance. I happened to be in the station when the call came through just now.”
“Better and better.” Indicating the blue Morris, Mr. Tuke gave in a few words his reasons for being interested in it. “The attraction seems to be Mrs. Mortimer Shearsby. Don’t ask me why. And if you do ask what the devil I’m doing butting in like this, I can only plead a sort of proprietary role in the case. Some of the parties concerned came to me, and I took the matter up with the A.G. And I was born nosy.”
Sergeant Webley, watching the Morris, smiled again.
“We know quite a lot about you, Mr. Tuke. There was that case of a man named Sleight. At Steeple Mardyke. It was outside the county, of course, but near enough for us to be interested.” He was frowning a little as he peered at the distant car. It was apparent that he had excellent sight when he went on: “That’s a Cambridgeshire registration. Wonder what they’re up to? Anyway, it looks like it was a good thing you did butt in, sir. I was beginning to think we’d come to a dead end here.”
Down the High Street the ladies of the W.V.S. had carried in their last bundle. All three disappeared inside their headquarters. The van moved off. But the Morris remained. “Nothing on the Mortimer Shearsbys?” Harvey queried. Cautionary habits die hard, and for an almost imperceptible instant Sergeant Webley hesitated. Then he said:
“No, sir. We can’t find a soul who saw Mr. Shearsby at any of the times we want to know about. Washing out that business in April—it’s too long ago to hope for a bit of luck— we’ve still only his word for what he did on July the 18th and over the Bank Holiday week-end. We’ve had to go careful. Mr. Shearsby’s a man in good position, and Sansil’s a big firm. We don’t want trouble with them. And anyhow, Mr. Tuke,” the sergeant added earnestly, “I don’t see it. Not his own sister. His cousins, yes—he might do them in. But not his sister, when there’s a couple of cousins left he’d get just as much money from. No, I can’t see him doing it. And if he didn’t, it lets him out of the other affair at Stocking. At least, that’s how I look at it.”
“I agree with you there,” Harvey said. “And it’s a point about his sister, though not entirely convincing. Have you considered his character?”
“His character, sir?” The sergeant withdrew his gaze from the Morris to give his companion a puzzled look. “There’s never been anything against him, and he’s lived here ever since he started as a boy with Sansil. What they call a lab. assistant he was then. He pays his way and leads a very quiet life. Always in his garden.”
Mr. Tuke shuddered. “So I noticed.”
“He’s not what you’d call popular,” Mr. Webley went on. “At least, not with those under him. A bit of a toady, by accounts, with the heads and so on. Then he doesn’t smoke or drink, and he’s tight with money. For ever talking about it, too. All Bedford knows he’s coming into a fortune one of these days. And now he’s shooting his mouth about these deaths, saying how much he’ll make by them one minute, and the next dropping hints about needing to take care of himself on dark nights.” The sergeant shrugged tolerantly. “It’s all just silly talk, to show off. Mr. Shearsby likes to feel important.”
“Perhaps I should have used the word temperament instead of character,” Mr. Tuke said. “To illustrate what I was getting at, do you remember the Seddon case?”
“I’ve heard of it, sir. It was before my time in the force.”
“Seddon was another very mean man. He was always thinking and talking about money. And he buried his victim as cheaply as it could be done.”
This time Sergeant Webley’s glance was distinctly startled. Precedents carry weight with any official body of men, and there was a frown on his pleasant, nondescript face as he resumed his watch on the motionless Morris.
“I didn’t remember that, sir,” he said thoughtfully. “Oh, you can push comparisons too far. But a mean streak will carry a man pretty far, too. Or a woman.” Mr. Tuke had taken out his cigar-case. “Can you smoke on this sort of duty? The less you look like a policeman the better. Talking of women, how do Mrs. Shearsby’s alibis work out?”
“She has a good one for the 28th of July, sir.” Mr. Webley applied a match to his Larranaga. “We’ve found a woman here who came all the way back with her from Cambridge. They sat together as far as Hitchin. That means Mrs. Shearsby was in Cambridge as late as nine o’clock, like she said. Then she was seen there, after her W.V.S. meeting, by another member, a Mrs. Darby, at a quarter to five. Well, sir, the next bus after that to pass Stocking Corner left at six-forty. It gets to the Corner at seven-ten. At eight-twenty the last bus’ the other way passes the Corner That gives an hour and ten minutes for a five-mile walk, to that bridge in the lane and back, and a murder thrown in. And then the murderer would have to go through the village. You know what those places are, sir—they’d never miss a stranger walking through on a summer evening. And nobody saw Mrs. Shearsby, nor anyone else. There is another way to the lane, by getting off the bus further on, but that makes six miles to the bridge and back, and cuts the time down to just over the hour. It’s an impossibility.”
“What about the railway?”
“She couldn’t have done it that way, either, sir. She might have caught the 5.10 from Cambridge, getting her to Whipstead at 5.30. But the last train back to Cambridge leaves at 8.5, and it was punctual that day. Now Mr. Shearsby, him that was killed, was alive at-a quarter-past seven. Then he had to get from the inn to the bridge in the lane, or somewhere about there. Near half a mile— say eight or ten minutes. I can’t work it out that he was killed much before half-past seven, at the earliest. My own idea is, it was a good deal later. But take seven-thirty. Then the murderer had to get back to the station by 8.5, and the only way from the lane, unless you go by the village, and that isn’t much shorter, is by footpaths, and it’s over three miles.”
“The way the mysterious semi-clerical gent is supposed to have gone after he left the station?”
Sergeant Webley smiled. “Yes, sir. And I’ve got some news about him. But I ask you—three miles and a bit in thirty-five minutes. No woman could do it, not if she ran the whole way. And supposing she came by the 5.10 and went on to the bus route by the back lanes, its three miles again, and the last bus goes by about eight-ten. Forty minutes. And she’d still have to fit a murder in. Anyway, Mrs. Shearsby didn’t come or go either way. There wasn’t any strange woman at the station that evening, nor picked up by the bus. The only strangers were the man and the boy you’ve heard about.”
“It sounds fairly conclusive,” Mr. Tuke agreed. Sergeant Webley gazed thoughtfully at the blue Morris through a cloud of cigar smoke.
“Anyhow, Mr. Tuke,” he said, “I never did put much stock in the idea of her having done it. It isn’t a woman’s crime, to my way of thinking. Poisoning, yes—but not this bashing people over the head and chucking them in rivers.,,
“Oh, my dear fellow, don’t have illusions about women,” Harvey said. “Think of Mary Borden and her little hatchet, and Mrs. Pearcey and hers, and a score of others.” Apparently Sergeant Webley had not heard of either of these ladies, for he looked puzzled again. How odd it was, Mr. Tuke reflected, that in police work, alone of the professions, no attempt seemed to be made to teach the history of the subject.
“Wonder how long we’ve got to wait?” the sergeant murmured. “Till Mrs. Shearsby comes out, I suppose, if it’s her they’re after. Look, sir, are you in a hurry?”
“Far from it. I’m enjoying myself, I’m on holiday, and I insist on hearing your news about the semi-clerical gent.” The sergeant chuckled. “It’s a good name for him. Well, why not come and sit in my car, sir, while we wait? More comfortable than standing here. Gome to that, if you’re on holiday, why not stay in the car?”
“Join in the hunt, you mean?”
“If you care to, Mr. Tuke. It’s a bit irregular, but you put us on to this, and you’re in the P.P’s office, and all that. It might interest you to find out what that car is up to, and you could tell them about it in London.”
“It would interest me extremely. Sergeant, you’re a trump. But what about my own car?”
Mr. Webley jerked a thumb towards his driver. “The constable there will drive it to the station, and you can pick it up when we get back. If those fellows come from Cambridge, they’ll be going back there. When we’ve found out where they go to, we’ll hand over to the Cambridge police.” He paused, stared at the Morris,, and added: “I’ll have a closer look at them first, if you’ll wait here.”
He strolled away among the crowd on the pavement. Mr. Tuke, effaced behind the telephone cabinet, smoked his cigar and watched the throng. In a few minutes the sergeant rejoined him.
“I’ll know the driver again. But I daren’t draw attention to myself, and what with the other chap’s peaked cap and glasses I couldn’t make much of him. Except his nose. What they call Roman. And he’s grey-haired, like you said, sir. Well, we’ll be going along, if you like.”
They began to walk towards the police car.
