Murder Isn't Cricket, page 17
“You were born abroad, were you not?” hazarded the inspector.
“British, Inspector,” was the heated reply. It was then that he produced the birth certificate. Carruthers perused the document. It announced that Alfred Bosanquet had been born at Chelmsford on April 10, 1882, the son of Frederick William Bosanquet, gentleman of that parish, and of Mary Elizabeth, his wife, née Parson. The inspector handed it back.
“School?” he asked.
“Prep. school and Charterhouse,” replied Bosanquet. “And then Oxford, and since then in business. I am a self-made man, Inspector,” he announced. “I started as a small importer of merchandise, made myself markets, and I have made a pile. I’m still making it, though sometimes it’s a worry fighting our import quotas.”
“I’ve been told so by gentlemen in the City,” agreed the inspector. “Don’t know anything about it myself. I never had the brains to go into business,” he added, in a libellous insinuation against the force. “Now, what is worrying us, Mr. Bosanquet, is how the man came to be where he was found. We have discovered that he was there because he had seen someone in Thames Pagnall whom he thought he knew, and had apparently come down to see him again. You were sitting behind him all the time, and we were hoping that you could remember whether anyone approached him. The chief constable says you were watching the match, and must have been doing so through the back of him, so to speak.” The inspector stopped and waited for the answer.
“I did not see anyone go near him, Inspector. I did not even notice him.”
“There you are, sir,” said the inspector with a nicety of surprise. “That’s what the chief constable said. He said: ‘Carruthers, Mr. Bosanquet will think that he did not see anyone. He’ll probably think that he did not even see the man himself. Yet he must have seen him, unconsciously. He must have seen him right in front of the pitch. And he may have seen the man who went near him in exactly the same way. You must try to get into his subconscious mind.’ That is what the colonel said, Mr. Bosanquet,” the inspector concluded.
Mr. Bosanquet looked as though he wished it was the inspector who was subconscious, not his own mind. But he made the effort.
“Did you, for instance, see Crombie go near the man?” the inspector asked.
“No, not consciously, or unconsciously,” was the reply. “I should think that Crombie would be more likely to approach the ‘Green Man’ than the deck-chair, if I know him.”
“Perhaps one of the fieldsmen stood near him at some time, and spoke to him. He was watching the match, sir. Would you remember seeing something like that?”
“Preposterous, Inspector! Why the devil should fieldsmen be posted near where he was sitting? A skipper would be crazy to put a man there—and on the boundary, too.”
The inspector tried again. “Well, perhaps a man obstructed your view by walking past you on the green. He would, of course, pass the deck-chair.”
“No. It’s no go. I’d have noticed anybody, consciously, in that case, Inspector. The two of them would certainly have obstructed my view, and I should have called out to them.”
“And you didn’t shoot the man?” the inspector inquired, humourously.
“Me? In front of my guests? Ha! Ha! Likely, isn’t it?”
“Just my joke, Mr. Bosanquet,” apologized the inspector. “That reminds me, sir. Were your guests with you all the time? I mean one wasn’t missing for any period, I suppose?”
“Nary a one. We sat there from start to finish of the match except for lunch, and we were all together at that meal. We did not even leave the lawn for tea. Mrs. Bosanquet and Miss Malcolm brought that out to us in our chairs.”
“When you went across to the man we know that he was dead. The doctor agrees that he must have died somewhere between four-thirty and five-thirty o’clock. Crombie was there before you. Was Crombie in any way peculiar when you approached him? I mean to say, supposing he had killed the man, or knew something about it, was there anything about him that seemed to you suspicious?”
“No, Inspector. He was a bit annoyed because the man was holding him up from getting the chairs away; and the sooner he got ’em away the sooner he could get down to the ‘Green Man’, you understand. As for Crombie killing him, I don’t reckon that old George knows the first thing about guns. No, I still think that Leland was shot from the road by accident.”
The inspector, during the conversation, had put down the purport of the interview, with, here and there, verbatim notes of the more important pieces of the replies. He now read over the essential features, and Mr. Bosanquet signed the book. The inspector rose. “Well, I think that’s all there is to it, Mr. Bosanquet,” he said. “Many thanks for trying to help.”
“That’s all right, Inspector. It’s a duty, you know. I’ll show you out.”
The inspector’s next call was on Mr. Donald Watkins. Mr Watkins was an artist—and a very good artist. He was also a cricketer; and a very bad cricketer. Which was the reason why, despite all his assistance, financially and artistically, to the Thames Pagnall cricket club, he was never permitted to turn out in flannels for them. Once, when a ‘butter-fingers’ seemed to be only a small debit in a substantial credit account, they had given him a place in the team as a gesture, a reply to a very handsome donation of a large caricature of the members of the first eleven for the club-house. He managed to get two men run out, and, at a vital stage in the game knocked over a fieldsman who was as safe a catch as any team could hope for, just when the ball was entering his hands. Thames Pagnall lost the match. Mr. Watkins’ assistance was limited, now, to watching each match and offering advice to the committee about the players who should be dropped.
But Mr. Watkins, keenly as he had watched this particular match, was unable to help the inspector. “I can’t really say that I saw anybody go up to the man, Carruthers,” he said. “I did notice him there, because, now I come to think of it, I saw him lean forward when the men entered the field.” He paused, wrinkled his forehead, and then looked up. “Well, now, damme, thinking it over, I seem to recollect that there was someone with him, or just passing him—I don’t know which. He was, of course, some distance away, about a hundred yards, as you know, but . . . yes, I remember he did lean forward in his chair and look towards the tent as they came out. Mind you, there’s nothing in that. I do the same thing myself. Generally want to see if there are any new faces in the team.”
“You didn’t recognize who the person was you think you saw with him?”
“Lord, no! I wasn’t looking at him, you know. Only just noticed that there was somebody else. And I hadn’t got my glasses on. Perhaps Miss Malcolm saw him. She was looking for her nephew, who was supposed to be playing.”
“You were, of course, at Mr. Bosanquet’s at the time, Mr. Watkins?”
“Right. We were all there, as usual. It’s a better position than my own bit of front, and, of course, better company than watching by myself.”
“And you were all there from the start?”
“Sure.”
“And all the time? So that you would have noticed anything unusual?”
“Except for the spot of lunch during the interval, yes, we were there all the time. Except Mrs. Bosanquet and Miss Malcolm. They went in to get the tea ready at a quarter to five.”
“Nobody even went on the green to see how the score was going? I notice that the scoreboard faces the tent. You see, I’m trying to exclude anyone who might have gone on the green.”
The artist chuckled. “No reason for us to go across the green to look at the score, Inspector. Whenever there is a change, the board is always first turned towards old Bossy. He’s the club’s chief financial prop, you understand.”
“How do you think the man was shot, Mr. Watkins?”
“Well, so far as I can see, it must have been done from the road, Inspector. I reckon you’re making too much fuss in thinking the fellow was deliberately killed. I reckon it was an accident shot, and the chap with the gun is too scared to come forward and say so.”
“You think that the explosions you heard were shots, and not backfires, eh?”
“Wouldn’t like to say, but they might well have been. Not expecting to hear shots fired at a match, not even between Thames Pagnall and Maplecot.” He chuckled. “I reckon one would take sounds like that to have been backfires. We get plenty of backfires along that road, you know.”
Mr. Catling could give no more help than Mr. Watkins. In fact, he could give less. Told of the artist’s fleeting impression of having seen someone near the dead man, he expressed himself as doubtful of that vision. “We were all there, Inspector,” he said, “and looking for the team to come out. I don’t remember seeing anyone near the chair. I do faintly remember seeing the bloke himself, as planking his carcase in our line of view, and wondered that Crombie let him sit there. I reckon old Watkins has been imagining things. He had to go for his spectacles, I remember. I doubt if he would have seen anyone plainly. He’s a bit short-sighted and wouldn’t get what he would call perspective.”
“He went away, you say?”
Mr. Catling laughed. “Oh, don’t try to hang poor old Watkins,” he joked. “That was before lunch and just about the start of the match. And he wasn’t gone more than a couple of minutes. He’s only three doors down from ‘Green Shutters’, you know.”
“He seems to think that Miss Malcolm may have seen the other person, Mr. Catling. She was, he says, by his side and was looking in the same direction. I suppose she hasn’t said anything to you about it?”
“No, Inspector; and I think she would have done had she seen anyone. We have, naturally, talked the death over, since it must have taken place in front of our eyes.”
“I’ll have a word with her about it, Mr. Catling.”
“You’ll have to wait a few hours, I’m afraid, Inspector. She’s in town at the moment. We have a bit of a party at the ‘Olive Grove’ to-night. Making a night of it, you know. Birthday celebration. Anyway, I’ll ask her, and give you a ring in the morning.”
“Thanks very much. I suppose you haven’t thought any more about those explosions? Do you think they were shots, or backfires?”
“Don’t know what to think, Inspector. They may have been shots, of course. When you aren’t listening for anything you don’t take particular notice, you know. I suppose that the natural inclination on hearing noises like that from the direction of the roadway, is to put them down as backfires. That’s as far as I can say.”
With this inconclusive result of his inquiries, the inspector returned to the police-station. He sat down at his desk and prepared to write out his official report for the chief constable. Inspector Carruthers was a worried man. A doubt was taking root in his mind: a doubt as to whether Leland had been murdered at all; a doubt as to the omnipotence of Chief Detective Inspector Dr. Manson, of Scotland Yard. The doctor had, notoriously, a suspicious mind. The inspector began to wonder whether it was not too suspicious a mind. He sat twiddling his fountain-pen between his fingers, as he cogitated whether he should express this opinion to Colonel Mainforce in his report.
As though by the process of telepathy, Sergeant Wharton entered. “Oh, Inspector, Dr. Manson sent a man down for the photographs taken of the body on the green. He said that he had arranged with you to have them. I gave them to the messenger. I hope I did right?”
“Quite right, Sergeant, thanks. . . . Wonder what he wants with those,” he said to himself as the door closed behind Wharton.
“He’s seen the green and reconstructed the crime with Lambert. S’funny.”
He turned again to his report. I incline to the opinion that the man Leland was not deliberately shot, he wrote. I have carefully examined all the people suggested. . . .
* * * * *
Dr. Manson received the photographic prints in his laboratory. With the aid of the deputy scientist he laid them out, side by side, on the large table that occupied the centre of the room.
The cine ten-millimetre films had each been enlarged up to a picture measuring ten inches by eight inches, and since all the shots from the four positions had been printed, they numbered forty-eight pictures. “And very well taken they are, Jim,” the scientist acknowledged to Sergeant Merry. “Perfect exposures and sharp in every detail. We could not have done better ourselves. Now it is our task to see whether they can tell us anything more than we already know. Suppose we begin with the front view?”
Sergeant Merry brought forward the twelve snaps which Mr. Bosanquet’s camera had taken from exactly face to face with the dead man, and the pair stared at them intently. They showed Leland lying easily in his chair, the body at an angle of some forty-five degrees. The face was, of course, covered by the tilted hat. The hands, which in the case of a person resting in that position would normally be crossed over the stomach, were lying alongside the thighs. Apart from that there seemed nothing in the photographs to distinguish them from snapshots of a man sleeping quietly in the sun. Dr. Manson laid them aside for the time being.
The prints taken from the left-hand side of the dead man were next considered. There appeared to be two sets of “shots”; the first obliquely from an angle of about seventy degrees from the central front of the chair, and the latter square to the side of the chair. They, again, had been given perfect focus and exposure. This, together with the fact that bright sunlight had been pouring down on the subject at the time the pictures were taken, had resulted in well-defined lines—and shadows.
It was the shadow along the body of the man that appeared chiefly to attract the attention of Dr. Manson. This appeared as a thin line of black, marking, of course, the projection of the top of the body from the background of the chair—in other words, the thickness of the man’s body. The scientist measured the width of the thickness with a micrometer gauge. It scaled a fraction over a millimetre.
“Now this, Merry, may give us something,” the scientist suggested. “Where is the corresponding picture taken from the opposite side—the right side?”
Sergeant Merry sought it out and produced it. A similar black shadow ran along the figure equally with the former. Using again the micrometer scale, the scientist, after a careful re-check, gave the thickness as one and a quarter millimetres.
“So that, Doctor, we get the strange result that on the side on which the sun would be shining, and therefore casting less shadow, the shadow is, nevertheless, thicker than on the shaded side, where one would expect to find it thicker,” said Merry.
Dr. Manson looked sharply up. “On the side on which the sun is shining, Jim?” he asked,
“Of course, Doctor. According to the position of the road in the picture background, the body was lying obliquely to it, and the road runs south-west to the coast. Therefore, the body is lying almost west to east. Now, at six-thirty o’clock, when we know the pictures were taken, the sun would be due west. Therefore the shadow on the right side of the body should be less than on the left side of the body. We have just the opposite.”
The scientist consulted the pictures again. He walked across to the map drawers and produced an ordnance map of Surrey. His next task was to check the geographical run of the road where it passed through Thames Pagnall. “I think, Jim, you are as near right as makes no matter,” he said. “Now, where does that lead us?”
“To a certainty that the man was not lying squarely on his back, but was definitely leaning to one side—the right side.”
“We must, I think, Merry, concede that. And it gives us a somewhat interesting calculation, Jim, does it not?”
“Such as?”
“Well, take the possible angle of the sun’s rays at six-thirty o’clock, at which they would strike the body. That should give us a rough estimate of the thickness of the shadow which should appear on the left side of a man of his build—he was about your size, Jim. It should be, roughly, twice the thickness of the shadow on the sunny side. Having calculated that, we can, I think, calculate at what angle out of the straight the body must have been in order to give us a shadow on the sunny side nearly a millimetre thicker than on the shadow side.”
The two men settled down to an independent working of the calculation. Some minutes passed before each looked expectantly at the other. The results, checked, showed only an infinitesimal difference.
Dr. Manson’s face, usually in repose, was now alert. His eyes, deep sunk in the broad forehead, seemed to have come forward in their sockets. The wrinkles had gone from the brow, and the crinkles from the eyes of him. Merry saw and knew the signs, as would, also, the scientist’s colleagues at the Yard, had they been present; the doctor was seeing an idea working out. He took from his pocket his notebook. He opened it at a page on which he had entered the calculations made at the cricket green experiment with Constable Lambert in the deck-chair. A porcelain tile resting on the top edges kept the book open at the pages.
“Now, before we go any further, Jim,” he suggested, we must make certain that the two photographs we are taking are exact as to scaling of the chair and the man.” With a gauge he obtained the distance from the head of the chair in one picture to the lower extremity of the model’s feet. This was checked against the same objectives in the second picture. There was a difference of no more than three millimetres in the depth and two in the width, ensuring a somewhat complicated readjustment of the earlier calculations. Satisfied, at last, that the figures represented the narrowest margin of error, the two scientists entered upon the next progression.
“Now, Jim, assuming that we have here the correct position of the figure of Leland in the chair, what effect would it have on the angles which we obtained by our experiment at Thames Pagnall, and which are entered in my note-book, and, I expect, in your dossier? We had better, I think, arrive at individual conclusions to avoid any semblance of error.”
In a silence that was pregnant with expectation, the two men worked with pencil and paper. Two minutes . . . three . . . four . . . five passed. Sergeant Merry laid down his pencil and waited. The scientist, after a final check of his figures, looked up. “Well?” he asked.
