Fen Country Read online

  On the second day of the visit, however, Humbleby’s grievances were erased from his mind by the revelation of a serious crisis in his brother-in-law’s affairs.

  “I’m going to be retired,” said Pollitt abruptly that evening, over tankards in the pub. “I haven’t got round to telling Marion about it yet.”

  Humbleby was staring at him in amazement. “Retired? But you’re not nearly at retirement age yet. Why on earth—”

  “Because I’ve got across the chief constable,” said Pollitt. “He wanted a case to be considered closed—with perfectly good reason, I must say—and I wanted it kept open. I did keep it open, too, for a week or so—against his orders. Several of my men were tied up with it when they ought to have been doing other things.

  “I didn’t have the least excuse. I was going on instinct, and the fact that a couple of witnesses were just a bit too consistent in their stories to be true… If I did possess definite evidence that the facts in this case aren’t what they seem, I could put it up to the Watch Committee, and I’m pretty sure they’d uphold me. In fact, it wouldn’t come to that; the CC’d withdraw. But definite evidence is just what’s lacking—so…” And Pollitt shrugged resignedly.

  “M’m,” said Humbleby. “Just what is this case?”

  “Well, if you don’t mind coming along to my office tomorrow morning, and having a look at the dossier…”

  And the basic facts of the case, Humbleby found, were in themselves simple enough.

  A month previously, on 27 June, between 10:30 and 11:00 in the morning (the evidence as to these times being positive and irrefragable), a fifty-year-old woman, a Mrs. Whittington, had been murdered in the kitchen of her home on the outskirts of the town.

  The weapon—a heavy iron poker, with which Mrs. Whittington had been struck violently on the back of the head—was found, wiped clean of fingerprints, near by. The back door was open, and it was evident that the murder had followed, or been followed by, a certain amount of pilfering.

  Mrs. Whittington’s husband, Leslie Whittington, a man younger and a good deal better-looking than his wife, held the post of chief engineer in the machine-tool manufacturing firm of Heathers and Bardgett, whose factory was some ten minutes’ walk from the Whittington home.

  On the morning in question Whittington had been, as usual on weekdays, in his office at the factory. And the only respect in which, from his point of view, this particular morning had differed from any other was that he had been visited by a reporter, a girl, who worked for the most important of the Munsingham local newspapers. This girl, by name Sheila Pratt, was doing a series on the managers and technicians of Munsingham industry, and Whittington, an important man in his line, represented her current assignment.

  She had arrived at Whinington’s office shortly before 10:30 and had left again three-quarters of an hour later. During this period Whittington’s secretary had, on Whittington’s own instructions, told callers, and people who telephoned, that Whittington was out, thereby ensuring that the interview remained undisturbed.

  Moreover, there was a fire-escape running down past Whittington’s office window to a little-frequented yard.

  As a matter of course, Pollitt had set in train the routine of investigating whether some previous association could have existed between Whittington and Sheila Pratt. Their own assertion was that until the interview they had been complete strangers to one another; but Mrs. Whittington, Pollitt had learned, was not the divorcing sort—and the pilfering could easily have been a blind.

  Before any results could be obtained from this investigation, however, there had occurred that development which had resulted in the chief constable’s ordering the file on the case to be closed. Two days after the murder, a notorious young thug called Miller was run over and killed by a lorry on the by-pass road, and in his pocket were found several small pieces of jewelry looted from Mrs. Whittington’s bedroom at the time of her death.

  “There were witnesses, too,” said Pollitt, “who’d seen Miller hanging about near the Whittington house on the morning Mrs. W was done in. So it was reasonable enough to put the blame on him, and just leave it at that. Of course, Miller could quite well have come along and pinched the stuff after the murder was committed, but the CC thought that in the absence of any evidence against the husband that was stretching it a bit far, and one sees his point of view.”

  “One does,’ Humbleby agreed. “And I must admit, Charlie, that at the moment I still don’t quite see yours.”

  “I know, I know,” said Pollitt, disgruntled. “But I still maintain that those two—Whittington and the Pratt girl—had their story far too pat. I took them both through it several times—separately, and with all sorts of camouflage stuff about unimportant detail—and neither of them ever put a foot wrong. Look.” He thrust a sheaf of typescript at Humbleby. “Here are their various statements. You have a look at them.”

  “M’m,” said Humbleby, nearly an hour later. “Yes… Look, Charlie, the girl’s statements all contain stuff about the camera she brought with her to the interview. ‘Tripod… three seconds’ exposure’—all that. Do you happen to have copies of the pictures she took?”

  “She only kept one,” said Pollitt. “But I’ve got a blow-up print of that, all right.” He produced it and handed it across. “It’s a good picture, isn’t it?”

  It was unusually sharp and clear, showing Whittington at his desk with the desk clock very properly registering ten minutes to eleven.

  “But there’s nothing in it that’s any help, that I can see,” Pollitt went on. “The clothes are right. The—”

  “Just a minute,” Humbleby interrupted sharply. He had reverted from the photograph to the signed statements of Sheila Pratt, and was frowning in perplexity. “It’s possible that—I say, Charlie, is this girl an experienced photographer—a professional, I mean?”

  Pollitt shook his head. “No, she’s just a beginner. I understand she’s only bought her camera quite recently. But why—”

  “And this factory,” said Humbleby. “Is there a lot of heavy machinery? A lot of noise and vibration?”

  “Yes, there is. What are you getting at?”

  “A couple more questions and you’ll see it for yourself. Is Whittington’s office somewhere over the factory? Can you feel the vibration there?”

  “You can. But I still don’t understand—”

  “You will, Charlie. Because here’s the really critical query. Were those machines running continuously during the whole of the time Sheila Pratt was in Whittington’s office?”

  ‘And with that, Pollitt realized. “Tripod,” he muttered. Then his voice rose. “Time-exposure… Wait.” He grabbed the telephone, asked for a number, asked for a name, put his question, listened, thanked his informant, and rang off. “Yes, they were running,” he said triumphantly. “They were running all right.”

  And Humbleby chuckled. He flicked the photograph with his forefinger. “So that very obviously this beautifully clear picture wasn’t taken at the time when Sheila Pratt and Whittington allege it was taken—because tripod plus time-exposure plus vibration would inevitably have resulted in blurring… I imagine they must have faked it up one evening, after the factory had stopped work; and the girl was too inexperienced in photography to realize the difference that that would make in the finished product…

  “Well, Charlie, will your chief like it, do you think?”

  Pollitt grinned. “He won’t like it at all. But give the devil his due, he’ll swallow it all right.” He hesitated. “So that solves my own personal problem— and I needn’t tell you how grateful I am… But as to whether we can get a prosecution out of it—”

  They never did. “And really, it was a good thing,” said Pollitt two years later in London, when he and his wife were returning the Humblebys’ visit, and the conversation had turned to the topic of Whittington and his fate. “Because if the DPP had allowed it to be taken to court, the chances are he’d have been acquitted in spite of the l
ies and in spite of the information we dug out about the surreptitious meetings between him and the Pratt girl in the eighteen months before the murder.

  “And if he had been acquitted—well, he wouldn’t have needed to worry about the possibility of his new wife giving him away, would he? And he wouldn’t have set about stopping her mouth in that clumsy, panicky fashion…

  “And they wouldn’t be hanging him for it at Pentonville at nine o’clock tomorrow morning… What a bit of luck, eh?”

  Blood Sport

  “I’ve heard from the ballistics people,” said Superintendent MacCutcheon, “and they tell me there’s no doubt whatever that the bullet was fired from Ellingham’s gun. Is that what you yourself were expecting?”

  “Oh, yes.” At the other side of the desk, in the first-floor office at New Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector Humbleby nodded soberly. “Yes, I was expecting that all right,” he said. “Taken together with the rest of the evidence, it makes a pretty good case.”

  “And your own report?”

  Humbleby handed over a sheaf of typescript. “No verdict?” queried MacCutcheon, who had turned immediately to the final page.

  “Certainly there’s a verdict.” Humbleby paused. “Implicit, I mean,” he added. “You’ll see.”

  “Nice of you,” said MacCutcheon. “Nice of you DI’s to try and keep my tottering intellect alive with little games. Well, I’ll buy it. Smoke if you care to.” And he settled down to read, while Humbleby, leaning back in his chair and lighting a cheroot, reconsidered the salient features of his visit to Harringford the previous day…

  He had arrived there by train, with Detective Sergeant Pinder in tow, shortly before midday; and they had gone at once to the police station. Inspector Bentinck, who received them, proved to be a bony, discontented-looking man of fifty or thereabouts.

  “Between ourselves,” he said, as he led them to his office, “our County CID are a fairly feeble lot at the moment, so I’m glad the CC had the sense to call you people in straightaway. And of course, having a ruddy lord involved… You knew that, did you?”

  “It’s about the only thing I do know,” said Humbleby.

  “I’ve got his gun here.” They had reached the office, and Bentinck was unlocking a cupboard, from which presently he produced a .360 sporting rifle. Two slats of wood were tied to either side of the breech, and there was a loop of string for carrying the weapon.

  “Not been tested for prints yet,” said Humbleby intelligently; and Bentinck shook his head.

  “Not been touched since I confiscated it yesterday morning. But in any case I shouldn’t think you’ll get any prints off it except his—Lord Ellingham’s, I mean. He’d cleaned it, you see, by the time I caught up with him.”

  “Well, well, we can try,” said Humbleby. “Pinder’s brought all his paraphenalia with him. See what you can get, please,” he added to the sergeant. “And meanwhile”—to Bentinck—”let’s have the whole story from the beginning.”

  So Pinder went away to insufflate and photograph the rifle, and Bentinck talked. “Ellingham’s one of what they call the backwoods peers,” he said. “He’s got a big estate about five miles from here, but I shouldn’t think there’s much left in the family coffers, because he lives in the lodge, not in the manor-house—that’s shut up. He’s about fifty, not married, lives alone.

  “Well now, like everyone else, Ellingham’s had his servant problems, and just recently—for the last year or so, that is—the only person he’s been able to get to look after him has been this girl.”

  “Enid Bragg.”

  Bentinck assented. “Enid Bragg. And a fortnight ago even she packed it in—since when Ellingham’s had to look after himself.”

  “What sort of girl was she?”

  “Not bad looking in a trashy sort of way,” said Bentinck. “I don’t know that there’s much else good to say about her… Anyway, point is, this Enid lives—lived—in a cottage with her parents not far from the Ellingham estate. And it was yesterday morning, while she was waiting for the 8:50 bus so as to come into town and do a bit of shopping, that someone picked her off with a rifle, presumably from behind the hedge opposite the bus-stop.

  “Well, of course, when the bus came along, there she was with a hole in her head, and it wasn’t long before me and the sergeant got out there and took over. We went through all the usual motions, but the only worthwhile thing we got out of it was the bullet.”

  Bentinck opened a drawer in his desk and produced a small jeweler’s box in which a squashed rifle bullet lay on a bed of cotton wool. “It’d gone clean through her and buried in an ash tree behind the bus-stop.”

  “No cartridge-case?”

  “Not that we’ve been able to find. So I said to myself, well, better look up Ellingham first, because I knew he’d got a gun, and after all, the girl had been working for him until just recently, and what should I find but that—”

  Here Bentinck broke off at the return of Pinder, who announced that he had dusted and photographed the two or three blurred prints on the rifle, and that it was now at everyone’s disposal. Taking it from him, Humbleby squinted down the barrel.

  “Clean as a new pin,” he said cheerfully. But Pinder noticed that something had made him more than usually pensive.

  “Well, that’s it, you see,” continued Bentinck, not very lucidly. “When I got to the lodge, there was Ellingham cleaning that thing, and it turned out he’d been out on his own, looking for something to shoot, since eight o’clock. I took the gun away from him, with all the usual gab about routine, and I’ll say this for him, he didn’t make any fuss about it. And until we see whether the murder bullet came from it, that’s really all—oh, except for the autopsy. Five months gone, our Enid was.”

  “Oh, Lord,” said Humbleby in genuine dismay. “Not that again. The number of times—”

  “Yes, it’s common enough, I suppose. Ah, well. If you get a nasty sort of girl like Enid Bragg into trouble, you must expect a bit of blackmail. And the only certain way of putting a stop to it—”

  “Damn!” Thus Superintendent MacCutcheon, breaking in violently on Humbleby’s thoughts in the first-floor office at Scotland Yard. He had finished reading the report, and now whacked it down angrily on the desk in front of him.

  There was a long silence.

  “Not pleasant,” said MacCutcheon at last.

  “Not pleasant at all, sir,” Humbleby agreed. From the particular expression on his superior’s face he was in no doubt that the evidence had been interpreted correctly. “And I don’t think we’re going to be able to pin the murder on him, either. There’s no alibi—that much I found out before I left. And if we worked hard at it, I dare say we could establish the connection with the girl. But we’ll never find the bullet, and without that—”

  “We shall have to try,” said MacCutcheon grimly. “If it’s just a charge of fabricating evidence people will think he only did it to get a conviction. That’s damaging enough, of course, but even so…”

  He reached for a blue-bound book from the shelves behind him, and riffled through the pages until he found what he wanted.

  “Gross’s Criminal Investigation,” he announced. “Third edition, page 157. ‘A rifle barrel reasonably clean on one day will show plain traces of fouling next day. In such cases the barrel sweats after it has been cleaned.’

  “But when you looked at it, the barrel of Ellingham’s rifle was periectly clean.”

  “Yes.”

  “It oughtn’t to have been, if Bentinck’s story was true.”

  “No.”

  “So Bentinck, the only person with access to that rifle, had recently cleaned it.”

  “Yes.”

  “And there’d be no point in his cleaning it unless he’d fired it.”

  “No.”

  “And there’d be no point in his firing it, and subsequently lying, unless he happened to want a bullet to substitute for the real murder bullet which he dug out of the tree.”

>   Again there was silence. “I suppose there’s no chance we’re wrong?” MacCutcheon burst out fretfully. “I mean, there were even traces of blood and brains on that bullet he gave you… I suppose—”

  “No, no chance at all.” Humbleby was definite. “As to the traces—well, after all, a quick visit to the mortuary with a—a pair of tweezers, say…”

  “Yes.” MacCutcheon relapsed into gloom again. “Yes… What gun do you think he used to kill the girl?”

  “His own, I imagine. I got a look at the register, and he certainly has one, and it’s a .360 all right. But his sergeant told me he’d hardly ever used it—which would account for his not realizing about the fouling.” Humbleby rose. “He had one morning’s shooting, it seems, years ago, and after that never went out again… No stomach for blood sports, the sergeant said.”

  The Pencil

  It was not until the third night that they came for Eliot.

  He had expected them sooner, and in his cold, withdrawn fashion had resented and grown impatient at the delay—for although his tastes had never been luxurious, the squalid bedroom which he had rented in the Clerkenwell boarding-house irked him.

  Now, listening impassively to the creak of their furtive steps on the staircase, he glanced at his gun-metal wristwatch and made a certain necessary adjustment in the hidden thing that he carried on him. Then quite deliberately he turned his chair so that his back was toward the door.

  His belated dive for his revolver, after they had crept up behind him, was convincing enough to draw a gasp from one of them before they pinioned his arms, thrusting a gun-muzzle inexpertly at the back of his neck.

  Peny crooks, thought Eliot contemptuously, as he feigned a struggle. And, “petty crooks,” again, as they searched him and hustled him down to the waiting car.

  Yet his scorn was not vainglorious. The hard knot into which his career of professional killing had twisted his emotions left no room even for that. Only once had Eliot killed on his own account—and that was when they had nearly caught him. He was not proposing to repeat the mistake.