“Good, we’ll let her get to bed as soon as we can.” He pricked his eras, catching the expected note of the cars turning in from the road. “That’s them. Go and switch the corner light on for them, Bennie, will you? And then I think you three might join the rest of the household inside.”
They withdrew thankfully; he felt the release of a quivering tension that made their first steps almost as nervous as leaps. Then the ambulance wagon came ponderously round into the yard, and Detective-Superintendent Duckett’s car impatiently shepherding it, and the machinery of the County C.I.D. flowed into the case of Alfred Armiger and took possession of it. It was a mark of the compulsive power of the deceased that the head of the C.I.D. had climbed out of his bed and come down in person at one o’clock in the morning. Only the murder of his own Chief Constable could have caused him greater consternation. He stood over the body, hunched in his greatcoat against the chill of the small hours and the hint of frost in the air, and scowled down at the deformed head which would never plan mergers or mischief again.
“This is a hell of a business, George. I tell you, my boy, when you came on the line and told me, I thought you’d gone daft or I had.”
“I felt much the same,” said George. “But there’s not much mistake about it, is there?”
Death, like its victim, had never been more positive. Superintendent Duckett viewed the setting, the body and the instrument, and said nothing until the doctor was kneeling over his subject, delicately handling the misshapen skull. Then he asked briefly, growling out of his collar: “How many blows?”
“Several. Can’t be sure yet, but six or seven at least. The last few possibly after he was already dead. Somebody meant business.” The doctor was youngish, ex-army, tough as teak, and loved his job. He handled Alfred Armiger with fascinated affection; nobody had cherished him like that while he was still alive.
“And I always thought it would be apoplexy,” said Duckett, “if it ever happened to him at all. How long’s he been dead?”
“Say half past eleven at the latest, might be earlier. Tell you better later on, but you won’t be far out if you consider, say, ten-fifteen to eleven-thirty as the operative period. And most of these blows were struck while he was lying right here, and I’d say lying still.”
“The first one put him out, in fact, and then whoever it was battered away at him like a lunatic to make sure he never came round again.”
“Not like a lunatic, no. Too concentrated and accurate. He was on target every time. But you could call them frenzied blows, they went on long after there was any need.”
“So it seems. Didn’t stop till the bottle broke. Marvel it didn’t break sooner, but glass plays queer tricks. George, on the details of this we sit, but firmly,” said Duckett heavily. “Dead, yes, of head injuries if we have to go that far, but keep the rest under wraps for the time being. I’ll issue a statement myself, refer the boys to me. And warn off those fellows who found him. We don’t want this released until I see my way ahead.”
“Very good,” said George. “I don’t think they’ll be wanting to talk about it, they’re too close to it for comfort. Can you make anything of that broken statuette?”
Duckett approached and stared at it, glumly frowning, then picked up its nearest neighbour, a couple locked in a tango death-grip. He grunted with surprise at its lightness, and turned it upside down to stare with disgust into its thin shell. “Sham as the rest of the set-up.” He put it back in its place and thumped the wall beneath it experimentally, but light as it was it sat sturdily on its broad base, and never even rocked. “Wouldn’t fall even if you crashed into the wall beside it, you’d have to knock the thing off bodily. No trace of anything else in the wreckage, nothing was thrown. No scratched paint. And anyhow, if it fell it would fall slightly outwards from the foot of the wall, this is right in the angle of the wall. May be dead irrelevant, may not. Get a record of it, Loder, while you’re about it. Not a hope of getting any prints off it, surface is too rough, but I suppose Johnson may as well try.” The photographer, circling Armiger’s body, murmured absorbed acquiescence, and went on shooting.
“And the champagne glasses,” said George.
“I saw them. You know whose prints will be on those, don’t you? Be a miracle if there are any others, unless it’s the maid’s who dried them and stacked them away here when they were unpacked. Still, we’ll see. Door, of course, Johnson, all the possible surfaces, baluster of that staircase. And that disgusting mess.” He indicated the magnum with a flick of his foot. “His own liquor turned traitor in the end.”
“Whoever was holding the neck of that,” said George, “must have been pretty well smeared. Blood all over it, right to the cork. His shoes and trousers may be spattered, too, though maybe not so obviously as to attract attention. I figure he was standing this side. He took care not to step in it. Not a trace between these marginal splashes and the door.”
“Well,” said Duckett, stirring discontentedly, “give me all you’ve got.”
George gave it, including his own accidental contact with Bennie during the evening.
“And those other two? What account have they given of their moves from ten o’clock on?”
“Clayton was sitting in the car out front when I left, which would be several minutes after ten. He says he moved the car into the yard about twenty past, as he saw no sign of Armiger coming back, and he was in the pub until closing-time, had one pint of mild, and that’s all. From half past ten until nearly eleven he hung around by the car. Still no boss. Then Calverley asked him to come into his own sitting-room, and he was there with Calverley and Mrs. Calverley all the time from then on. All three vouch for that. Bennie was clearing up in the bars with the other waiters, and keeping an eye open for Armiger returning, so that he could give Clayton the item. Around half past eleven Calverley and Clayton began to think they ought to investigate. They’re all used to doing what Armiger says and making no fuss about it, but they’d also be blamed if anything came unstuck and they didn’t deduce it by telepathy and come running, so whatever they did was pretty sure to be wrong, it was only a question of which was wronger, to butt in on him when he didn’t want them or to be missing when he did. I won’t say they were worried about him, but they were getting worried about their own positions with relation to him. Come midnight, they said to each other, better risk it. And they walked in solidly together and found him like this. The only period they don’t cover for each other is approximately half past ten to eleven, but I fancy you’ll find the indoor staff can account for Calverley for most of that time, too. Clayton could have moved around outside without being observed. I haven’t had time to see the others yet, but they’re waiting for me.”
“So many more months to shut,” said Duckett. “Those three will have spread the load by now.”
“You know, I doubt it. Don’t forget, this place only opened tonight, and all the staff except Bennie Blocksidge seem to have been brought into the district from all over. None of them knows the others yet. And when this drops on a bunch of strangers it’s just as likely to shut their mouths as open them. After all, somebody killed him, it might be the bloke sitting next to you.”
“Get on to ‘em, anyhow. When we finish here and take him away I’m leaving you holding it, George. Ring me
