that be hadn’t quarrelled with.”
“You didn’t know of this plan of his to make Miss Norris his heiress?”
“All we knew was that Leslie was written off for good, so it no longer concerned us. His father had made that very plain.”
She was turning the narrow wedding ring upon her finger, and George saw that it was loose. The cheek on which the dark hair curled so lustrously was thinner than it should have been, too, perhaps with too much fatigue and worry, carrying the child, running this oppressive, cramped apology for a home and working part-time to eke out the budget; or perhaps with some other strain that gnawed at her from within. Something terrifying and destroying had happened to her when Leslie caved in and wrote to his father, something he might never be able to undo. Thanks to that unrelenting old demon of a father of his, he had another chance to come up to her expectations, if he had it in him; but after that one slip he had to prove it, up to then probably she’d been serenely sure of him. And yet George could see Leslie’s point of view, too. He must love his wife very much, or he wouldn’t have burned his boats for her sake; and to see her fretting here, to think of his son spending the first months of his life here, was surely enough to bring him to heel, however reluctantly. You could even argue that his attitude was more responsible than hers. What was certain was that by that one well-meant gesture he’d come dangerously near to shaking his marriage to pieces.
“I won’t trouble you any longer, Mrs. Armiger. Thank you for your help.”
He rose, and she went with him to the door, silent, disdaining to add anything or ask anything. Or hide anything? No, she would do that, if she had to. Maybe he’d soon know whether she was already hiding something.
The stairs were dark and narrow, the house smelled of oilcloth, stale air and furniture polish. Mrs. Harkness’s frigid gentility would never stand many visits from the police, even in plain clothes. George had already observed that no telephone wires approached the house, and that there was a telephone box only fifty yards away at the corner of the road. He drove away in the opposite direction, but turning left at the next by-road came round the block and parked under the trees within sight of the bright red cage, and sat watching it for a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes, twenty-five; but Jean Armiger didn’t come.
That pleased him; he had liked her, and he wanted her on the level, and though he had suffered some reverses in the past he had never yet learned to be sufficiently wary of the optimism with which he viewed the motives and actions of those people who made an instant good impression upon him. However, he went through the motions of scepticism; he wouldn’t commit himself to believing absolutely in her until he’d called Grocott, who was back in the office by now waiting for the telephone to ring.
The call tended to confirm his view that Jean was honest, and her testimony reliable. Young Leslie, called discreetly into conference from his dusty warehouse behind the big shop in Duke Street, had told a story which tallied at all points with his wife’s. Instead of going straight back after posting his letters he’d gone for a walk round by the park. He hadn’t been away quite half an hour, because he was certain the church clock hadn’t struck ten when he let himself into the house again. All very simple and entirely probable, and there had certainly been no contact between husband and wife. Yet the result, perversely, was to make George turn and take another look at his dispositions; and there was still room for doubt. As Jean had so unwisely revealed that she knew, Duckett’s bald statement was in the noon papers. Armiger had been found dead last night on the premises of The Jolly Barmaid with severe head injuries; foul play was, by implication, taken for granted, though Duckett had avoided committing himself. That was enough to alert both the dispossessed son and his fiercely loyal wife; guilty or innocent, they would know they must shortly account for their movements on that evening, guilty or innocent they might find themselves without a surety except each other, and make haste to coordinate the details of their story before the questions were asked. There’d been time for a telephone call between the appearance of the early editions on the streets and George’s two-thirty deadline. Depressed, George searched for the vindicating detail which should justify him in throwing this doubt overboard, but he couldn’t find one. Given the intelligence Jean certainly did not lack, there could have been collusion.
“How did he look?”
“Not too bad. A bit shocked, naturally, but he didn’t pretend they’d been on good terms, or that he was terribly cut up. Even if he was, actually, he wouldn’t let you see it. A very reserved chap, and a bit on the defensive, too.”
“Scared?”
“I wouldn’t say scared. But he’s well aware that he’s in a spot to attract, shall we say, the unwelcome attentions of the nosy public as well as ours. He’s no fool, and he knows his affairs are common property. Knows his strongest card is that he had nothing to gain by killing his dad, too.”
“Did he take pains to call your attention to the fact?”
“You underestimate him,” said Grocott with a short laugh. “He’s giving us credit for seeing that much ourselves. He just seemed to me to be leaning back on it for reassurance every time the going looked a bit rough.”
“How does he get on with the drivers and warehouse men?” asked George curiously. Such little communities don’t always take kindly to young men of superior education and manners accidentally dropped among them, especially if the alien tends to keep himself to himself.
“Surprisingly well. They seem to like him, call him Les, and let him mull in with them or keep quiet according to how he feels. Main thing is, I think, that there’s nothing phoney about him. He doesn’t try to be hail-fellow-well-met or drop his accent and pick up theirs. They’d soon freeze him out if he did, but he’s a lot too sensible for that. Or too proud. Either way it’s worked out to his advantage.”
The picture that emerged, thought George as he walked back to his car, was an attractive one, but he had to beware of being disarmed by that into writing off Leslie Armiger as innocent. Money is not the only motive for killing. There on one side was the heiress, already so wealthy that the money motive was no motive at all, and on the other side this young couple, very poor indeed but with nothing whatever to gain by Armiger’s death. He was of some potential value to them still so long as he remained alive, since in time he might have relented and taken them into favour after all. Especially with a grandson or granddaughter on the way. On the other hand, those who knew him best had said that he was extremely unlikely to change his attitude, and anyone can let fly in a rage, even with nothing to gain by it but the satisfaction of an overwhelming impulse of hatred and a burning sense of injury.
And there were others who didn’t love him, besides his own son. Clayton, that quiet tough in uniform, had turned out to be under notice, and Armiger had apparently tossed his prison record in his teeth when they fell out, and told him he was “bloody lucky to have a job at all.” Had that been merely a shaft at random, or meant to suggest to him that Armiger could, if he chose, make it practically impossible for him to find alternative employment anywhere in the Midland counties? People have been killed for reasons a good deal less substantial than that. And there was Barney Wilson, who had been done out of the home on which he’d set his heart, merely to satisfy Armiger’s spite against his son. That way the injury might smart even more fiercely than if the blow had been aimed
