CHAPTER EIGHT
‘ Odd thing, that blasted bust falling over like that,’ brooded Sir Daynes as he presided over the Manor House breakfast-table the next morning. ‘Can’t see it has any connection with our job, though, eh, Gently?’
‘Mmp?’ Gently was busy with his liver and kidneys.
‘Just damned odd — I mean, it might have killed someone. Pity there weren’t a few confounded busts on the stairs, eh?’
It was a happy thought, and Sir Daynes pursued it. A well-toppled bust on the landing in the great hall would have satisfied the best of policemen. Busts did topple — they had had a bona fide example of it — and what would have been more likely than for the half-cut American to have embraced a pedestal on his trip across the landing, and gone to his doom, manifestly by his own hand? But alas, it was one thing with busts and quite another with truncheons. One did not embrace a truncheon, or having embraced, collect a fractured skull; neither, unfortunately, did truncheons wipe and hang themselves back on the wall after such encounters. Sir Daynes shelved the question of busts with a frown and came back to more practical matters.
‘What did Henry talk about? Feller seems to have a crush on you.’
Gently shrugged as he unrinded a gammon rasher. ‘Talked about himself… not about the murder.’
‘Poor Henry,’ said Lady Broke. ‘He ought to talk to someone. He’s always bottled it up too much, I’m sure that’s half his trouble. What did he tell you, Inspector? Is there any chance of his marrying Janice?’
‘Hrmp! Hrmp!’ interrupted Sir Daynes hurriedly. ‘Shouldn’t say things like that just now, m’dear — position a little delicate, y’know — sub judice and that sort of thing.’
‘Sub judice?’ echoed Lady Broke. ‘What in the world do you mean, Daynes? Surely you don’t suppose that poor Henry is involved in this dreadful affair, do you?’
‘Of course not, m’dear, of course not!’ Sir Daynes turned a shade pink in his embarrassment. ‘But just at the moment, m’dear — best to be cautious. Never know how far a careless word may go, and that.’
Lady Broke considered this while she sugared her coffee. ‘Daynes,’ she said, ‘you do think Henry may be involved!’
Her husband grumbled and snorted and twice emitted a ‘preposterous!’
‘You do,’ repeated Lady Broke. ‘I know by the way you’re behaving, Daynes. And really, I’ve never heard of anything quite so ridiculous. Why, we’ve known Henry since he was a little boy in a sailor suit. I practically mothered him, Daynes — Tony and he used to go birds-nesting together.’
‘I’ve already said, m’dear!’
‘Yes, I know what you’ve said. And I know what goes on in that silly policeman’s mind of yours. But you listen to me, Daynes. I’m not often wrong in these matters. Henry is the last person in the world to offer violence to anybody — he’s been anti-blood-sport for years, and an abolitionist nearly as long. Doesn’t character go for anything in these foolish enquiries of yours?’
Sir Daynes rumbled helplessly and made a despairing gesture to Gently. ‘There’s the feller who fancies Henry — I tell you, I’m trying to keep the man out of it!’
‘Nonsense,’ said Lady Broke firmly. ‘You don’t think hardly of Henry, do you, Inspector?’
Gently reached for his coffee and made unintelligible noises…
‘Didn’t get very much from those weaver people,’ muttered Sir Daynes as the Bentley again turned its bonnet towards the Place. ‘Dyson put them through it, but it was the same damn thing over and over. Got the impression they’d talked it over y’know — always tell, with that sort of thing.’
‘Anything fresh on Johnson?’ Gently ventured.
‘Not sure I’d tell you if we had, damn your impertinence. But we haven’t, and that’s the truth. Only got the feller’s own statement. I thought that young feller, Wheeler, was going to let something slip, but dash me if he didn’t close up like a clam when we came to Johnson. Still got the servants to run through, but I don’t expect much there.’
Things, however, had brightened up during Sir Daynes’s absence. The conscientious Dyson, a great believer in repetition, had had a further session with the weavers, as a result of which young Wheeler had unclammed a few degrees. The strong man of the Northshire Constabulary’s CID met his chief with a manner of something like excitement.
‘I think I’ve got hold of something important, sir, something that will strengthen our case quite a bit.’
‘Hah?’ exclaimed Sir Daynes eagerly. ‘What’s that, Dyson, what’s that?’
‘It’s young Wheeler, sir. He’s admitted some information about Johnson.’
‘Johnson!’ cried Sir Daynes. ‘Well — go on, man — come to the point!’
‘It seems, sir, that Johnson has had a bit of a crush on Mrs Page since he’s been here. He’s never come out in the open with it, but these weaver people have noticed it, and if you ask me, sir, they were in a bit of a collusion to keep it from us.’
‘Hah!’ exclaimed Sir Daynes again. ‘Knew it, Dyson, knew it. So that’s what they were holding back on. Go on — what did Wheeler say?’
‘Well, sir, Wheeler isn’t what you’d call an observant type, and according to what he says he’d never added up the score until he heard one or two of them talking about it last night. Then he started remembering various little points about Johnson’s behaviour when Mrs Page was around, and decided there was something in it. This morning, when I had another go at him, he let it out.’
‘Fine, Dyson, fine.’ Sir Daynes hugged himself with delight and took several paces up and down the great hall, where Dyson had intercepted him. ‘But we’ve got to get the others to admit it too, Dyson — this feller is just the thin edge. Won’t do just to have a witness who remembers because he was given a nudge — want simple, direct testimony on an important point like that. Have you been at the others?’
‘Not since I’ve spoken to Wheeler, sir.’
‘Hammer away at them, man, hammer away. We’ll get what we want now one of them’s loosened up. By Jove, this is a turn up! Jealousy on top of the rest! No doubt, Dyson, that Earle was making a play for Mrs Page — hrmp! — in spite of the fact that Janice wouldn’t have looked at him.’
‘So I understood, sir.’
‘You understood rightly, Dyson. Get your men in the blue drawing room, and start having these people brought in.’
‘I have, sir. Everything is ready.’
‘Smart feller, Dyson.’ Sir Daynes clapped him on the back. ‘Oh, and just one other thing. You’ve seen those fellers in the drive?’
‘You mean the reporters, sir?’
‘I do, Dyson — sitting there in their blasted cars, like a lot of pike watching for a minnow. Well, I won’t have them in — make that quite clear to them. There’ll be a handout later on, and I hope they get confounded frostbite.’
A constable was dispatched to deliver this high decree — which was, in fact, a repetition of a lower-level directive already imposed — and Sir Daynes, after stamping around in the hall for a few minutes in case Somerhayes should appear to greet him, turned to set off for the north-east wing. His intention was interrupted, however, by a sudden screaming of brakes and a rattle of gravel from out on the terrace. A car door was slammed with impetuous vigour; heavy steps pounded over the gravel and up to the door. No bell was rung, no knocker was rapped; the sacred front door of Merely Place, for the first time in its two centuries, was ravished by the application of an irresistible shoulder.
‘Where,’ enquired a voice of thunder, ‘where is the goddam boss of this crazy, tinpot, two-bit outfit?’
Sir Daynes drew himself up to his full six feet. He squared his shoulders, set his lips and thrust out his jaw. And he went to do battle with this untimely eruption of the United States Air Force.
‘I’m Colonel Dwight P. Rynacker, USAF, commanding officer of Z Wing at Sculton Airfield — and I’m telling all and several that I’ve got some questions that need short, sharp answers!’
