“This is Sir Clinton Driffield; this is Dr. Ringwood,” the Inspector answered smoothly, taking no notice of Mr. Hassendean’s other remarks.
“Ah! I’ve heard of you, Sir Clinton,” Mr. Hassendean acknowledged, less ungraciously. “Well, what about it?”
“We’ve met under rather unfortunate conditions, Mr. Hassendean,” Sir Clinton admitted soothingly, “but they’re none of our choosing, you know. I quite understand your feelings; it must be a bad shock to come home to an affair like this. But I hope you’ll see your way to give us any information you have—anything that will assist us to get on the track of the person who shot your nephew. We really depend on you to help us at once, for every hour lost may make it more difficult to lay our hands on the criminal. Without knowing it, you may have the key to the thing in your hands.”
More by his manner than by his words, the Chief Constable had succeeded in pacifying the old man.
“Well, if it’s put like that, I don’t mind,” he conceded, with a slight lessening in the asperity of his tone. “Ask your questions and I’ll see what I can do for you.”
Dr. Ringwood, watching the change in the situation, reflected sardonically to himself that a title had its uses when one came to deal with a snob.
“That old bounder was rude to the Inspector on principle; but when Sir Clinton Driffield asks precisely the same question, he’s quite amenable,” he thought to himself. “What a type!”
The Chief Constable, when he began his interrogatory, was careful not to betray that he already had some information.
“Perhaps we’d better begin at the beginning, Mr. Hassendean,” he suggested, with the air of one consulting a valued collaborator. “Could you throw any light on your nephew’s arrangements for this evening? Did he mean to stay in the house, or had he any outside engagement that you knew about?”
“He told me he was going out to dinner with that hussy next door.”
Sir Clinton’s smile further disarmed old Hassendean.
“I’m afraid you’ll need to be more definite. There are so many hussies nowadays.”
“You’re right there, sir! You’re right there. I agree with you. I’m speaking of the French one next door, her name’s Silverdale. My nephew was always hanging round her skirts, sir. I warned him against her, often enough.”
“I always knew something would happen!” Miss Hassendean declared with the air of a justified Cassandra. “And now it has happened.”
Sir Clinton returned to the main track.
“Have you any idea if he meant to spend the evening next door?”
Miss Hassendean interrupted before her brother could reply.
“He mentioned to me that he was going with her to the Alhambra to dance. I remember that, because he actually asked me where I was going myself tonight, which was unusual interest on his part.”
“Scattering his money, of course!” her brother rapped out angrily.
“He had money to scatter, then?” Sir Clinton asked casually. “He must have been lucky for his age.”
For some reason, this reflection seemed to stir a grievance in the old man’s mind.
“Yes, he had about £500 a year of his own. A very comfortable income for a single young man. And I had to sit, sir, as his trustee; pay over the money quarterly to him; and see it wasted in buying jewellery and whatnot for that wench next door. I’m not a rich man, sir; and I give you my word I could have spent it better myself. But I’d no control over him, none whatever. I had to stand by and see all that good money flung into the gutter.”
Dr. Ringwood turned aside to hide his smile at this revelation of the drysalter’s soul.
“By the way, who gets that money now?” Sir Clinton inquired.
“I do, sir. And I hope I’ll put it to better use.”
Sir Clinton nodded in response to this sentiment, and seemed to ponder before he asked his next question.
“I suppose you can’t think of anyone who might have had a grudge against him?”
The old man’s glance showed some suspicion at the question; but his sister seemed to have less compunction, for she answered instead.
“I warned Ronald again and again that he was playing with fire. Mr. Silverdale never took any open offence, but …”
She left her sentence unfinished. Sir Clinton seemed less impressed than she had expected. He made no comment on her statement.
“Then I take it, Mr. Hassendean, that you can throw no light on the affair, beyond what you have told us?”
The old man seemed to think that he had given quite enough information, for he merely answered with a noncommittal gesture.
“I must thank you for your assistance,” Sir Clinton pursued. “You understand, of course, that there are one or two formalities which need to be gone through. The body will have to be removed for a post mortem examination, I’m afraid; and Inspector Flamborough will need to go through your nephew’s papers to see if anything in them throws light on this affair. He can do that now, if you have no objections.”
Old Hassendean seemed rather taken back by this.
“Is that necessary?”
“I’m afraid so.”
The old man’s face bore all the marks of uneasiness at this decision.
“I’d rather avoid it if possible,” he grumbled. “It’s not for use in Court, is it? I shouldn’t like that, not by any means. To tell you the truth, sir,” he continued in a burst of frankness, “we didn’t get on well, he and I; and it’s quite on the cards that he may have said—written, I mean—a lot of things about me that I shouldn’t care to have printed in the newspapers. He was a miserable young creature, and I never concealed my opinion about him. Under his father’s will, he had to live in my house till he was twenty-five, and a pretty life
