“Is this his holder, by any chance?”
Flamborough produced the fly-in-amber holder as he spoke and laid it on the table. As he did so, he glanced at Markfield’s face and was surprised to see the swift change of expression on it. A flash of amazement followed by something that looked like dismay, crossed his features; then, almost instantaneously, he composed himself, and only a faint trace of misgiving showed in his eyes.
“No, that isn’t young Hassendean’s holder,” he answered.
“You recognise it?”
Markfield bent forward to inspect the article, but it was evident that he knew it well.
“Do I need to answer these questions of yours?” he demanded, uncomfortably.
“You’ll have that question put to you at the inquest when you’re on your oath,” said the Inspector sharply. “You may as well answer now and save trouble.”
Markfield stared for a moment longer at the fly in the amber.
“Where did you pick this thing up?” he demanded, without answering the Inspector’s question.
But Flamborough saw that he had got on the track of something definite at last, and was not inclined to be put off.
“That’s our business, sir,” he said brusquely. “You recognise the thing, obviously. Whose is it? It’s no use trying to shield anyone. The thing’s too conspicuous; and if you don’t tell us about it, someone else will. But it doesn’t look well to find you trying to throw dust in our eyes.”
Markfield could not help seeing that the Inspector attached special importance to the holder; and he evidently recognised that further shuffling was out of the question.
“I’m not going to identify it for you,” he said. “You’ve let slip that it’s an important clue; and I don’t know it well enough to make assertions about it. I’ll send for a man now who’ll be able to swear definitely, one way or another. That’s all I see my way to do for you.”
He put his hand on a bell-push and they waited in silence until a boy came in answer to the summons.
“Send Gilling to me at once,” Markfield ordered.
Then, when the boy had withdrawn, he turned to the two officials again.
“Gilling is our head mechanic. You can question him about it. He’s an intelligent man.”
In a few minutes the mechanic appeared at the door.
“You wanted me, sir?” he asked.
Markfield introduced the Inspector with a gesture, and Flamborough put his questions.
“You’ve seen this thing before?”
The mechanic came forward to the table and examined the holder carefully.
“Yes, sir. I made it myself.”
“You’re quite sure of that?”
“No mistake about it. I know my own work.”
“Tell us what you know about it,” the Inspector demanded.
The mechanic thought for a moment or two.
“It was about three months ago, sir. If you want it, I can look up the exact date in my workshop notebook where I keep a record of each day’s work. I made two of them for Dr. Silverdale at that time.”
Flamborough shot a glance at Markfield’s downcast face. It was pretty obvious now who was being shielded; and the Inspector remembered how Markfield had fenced in the matter of the domestic troubles of the Silverdales.
“Tell us exactly what happened then,” Flamborough encouraged the mechanic.
“Dr. Silverdale came to me one morning with some bits of stuff in his hand—amber-looking, same as this holder. He told me he’d been manufacturing some new stuff—a condensate like Bakelite. He wanted me to see if it could be filed and turned and so on. I remember his showing me the fly, there. He’d put it into the stuff as a joke—a fly to prove that the thing was genuine amber, and take people in when he showed the stuff to them. The condensate stuff was in sticks, two of them, about six inches long by an inch thick, so he suggested that I’d better make two cigarette-holders and see if the thing would stand being worked on a lathe without splitting or cracking. So I made the two holders for him. I remember the trouble I had to steer clear of the fly while I was shaping the thing.”
“And what happened to the holders after that?”
“Dr. Silverdale used the one with no fly in it for a bit and kept the other one for show. Then he lost the plain one—he’s always leaving his holders about the place on the benches—and he took to using the one with the fly in it. He’s been smoking with it for a month or more, now. I remember just last week asking him whether it was wearing well, when he came into the workshop with it in his mouth.”
“Have another good look at it,” Flamborough suggested. “I want to be sure there’s no mistake.”
Gilling examined the holder once more.
“That’s the one I made, sir. I could swear to it.”
He hesitated a moment as if wishing to ask a question; but Flamborough, having got his information, dismissed the mechanic without more ado. When the man had gone, he turned back to Markfield.
“I don’t quite like your way of doing things, Dr. Markfield. You might have given us the information at once without all this shuffling, for I could see at a glance you had recognised this cigarette-holder. If you’re trying to shield your colleague from a reasonable investigation, I’ll take the liberty of reminding you that one can become an accessory after the fact as well as before it.”
Markfield’s face grew stormy as he listened to the Inspector’s warning.
“I’d have a look at the law on slander, if I were you, Inspector, before you start flinging accusations about. If you remember the facts, it’ll help. I’ve only seen this holder at a distance when Dr. Silverdale was using it. I’ve never had a good look at it until you produced it. Naturally, although I had very little doubt about whose it was, still I wasn’t going to assert that it was Silverdale’s. But I got you a man who could identify it properly. What more do you want?”
Flamborough’s face showed that he found this defence quite unsatisfactory. Markfield’s obvious fencing with him
