The Attic Murder, S. Fowler Wright [children's books read aloud .TXT] 📗
- Author: S. Fowler Wright
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“I only told the truth. You needn’t thank me for that.”
“Well, that’s more than everyone tries to do, and some who do make it a muddled job… Jean, there’s some tea left in the pot, isn’t there? You might give Miss Weston a cup.
Mary accepted this offer of hospitality, recognizing the inexpediency of saying that she had had a meal half an hour before. It settled her there for conversation for a few minutes, at least, which she must use to the best advantage she could.
“I should think,” she said, “that you’re wise to be getting away. I expect you’ve heard that Francis Hammerton’s disappeared.”
Peter Entwistle looked at her in a questioning manner, as though puzzled as to what the implication of this statement might be. She was aware that it was clumsily said, but she was feeling for an opening which was not easy to find.
“I don’t see,” he replied, “why he should clear out. He oughtn’t to have had much to fear. Except, of course, that he’d got a sentence to serve. I’d forgotten that… I shouldn’t think he’s gone far.”
“I don’t think he’s gone willingly. Mr. Jellipot thinks he’s been kidnapped, if nothing worse.”
She thought that Peter Entwistle’s manner became more reserved, if not hostile, as she said that. It was embarrassed, as it might have been had her conversation over-stepped the limits of decency, in a way which his own politeness withheld him from observing openly.
He said: “Mr. Jellipot? Oh, yes, I know. He spoke up for Hammerton yesterday. Well, I hope he’s wrong… But Banks didn’t send you here to tell me that Hammerton’s disappeared.”
He looked at her with a new suspicion in his mind, which she did not guess, but which was fortunately dissolved by her reply.
“No. It’s nothing to do with Mr. Banks. It was Mr. Jellipot who asked me to see you.”
(Was it right, she wondered, to mention that? But how could she tell what was right or wrong, being in the dark as she was. She could only go on talking, watching for a chance to say what she had been told.)
“Well, what does he want to know?”
“I’m not clear about that. In fact, he didn’t say. I think he’d like to see you himself… I suppose you’ve no idea who really did kill Mr. Rabone?”
Peter Entwistle looked at her without answering, but with an expression in which anger was not disguised, though bewilderment was more clearly indicated.
She thought: “He must have done it himself, and he supposes that I know.” She remembered that Mr. Jellipot had said that if he were innocent she would be in no danger at all, but if he were guilty — - Well, it was too late to draw back. She went on blunderingly.
“I think Mr. Jellipot’s always been sure that it wasn’t you, and Inspector Combridge never felt sure it was. It was Mr. Banks who would have it that it could be no one else, and of course, when you went away, it seemed to show he was right.”
Peter Entwistle’s face had become expressionless, as he asked: “I suppose he sees that he made a mistake now?”
She was conscious that the position had become menacing in some intangible way, and what might be wise or foolish to say was beyond her wits to decide. She must speak the truth as far as she could, and let the results be what they might. Being in the dark as she was, it was the simplest, and might be the wisest way.
“I don’t know that he does,” she answered. “I don’t think Mr. Banks changes his opinion very easily. But Mr. Jellipot has never thought it was you, or, at least, that was the impression I got. Of course, if you could suggest who it was, it would make it clearer for you and Mr. Hammerton. It may be that Mr. Jellipot wanted to talk it over with you. But that’s only a guess. I don’t know.”
“I’ve no time to see Mr. Jellipot. I’m going away. Did Mr. Banks tell you why he thought it was me?”
“I don’t know that he had any reason except what was said in court. I mean about being your window, and it being a left-handed man, and you going away. Oh, and you turning up when Mr. Hammerton was in court.
“I think that Mr. Banks attached special importance to that, because he’d said that, if you’d done it, you’d be sure to go to see Mr. Hammerton brought up. I don’t understand why, but he felt sure, and I suppose the fact that he’d said you would, and then you did, influenced Inspector Combridge’s mind.”
Well, she had got it in, as she had promised she would. She had explained the matter from the angle of the Texall Enquiry Agency, and it looked as though all the satisfaction she would get would be that which comes from the sense of a promise kept, for Mr. Entwistle listened in a silence that became grimmer as she went on.
“It rather looks,” he said, after a pause that left her vaguely afraid of she knew not what, “as though Mr. Banks were no friend to me?”
“No,” she said, “but I don’t suppose he felt any ill-will either. He just wanted to find out who murdered Mr. Rabone, and at that time he thought it was you.”
He made no answer to that. He turned to his wife to say: “Jean, we’re not going tonight. I’ve got to see Mr. Jellipot. You’d better go back to number eleven. I can ‘phone you there.”
Mrs. Musgrave looked troubled and bewildered, but she did not appear to be a wife who argued or required explanations under whatever circumstances. She said: “Yes, Peter. But don’t be long.”
He went without replying, and Mary followed him down the stairs.
When they reached the street, she saw her taxi waiting where she had arranged.
“I’ve got a taxi across the street,” she said, when he would have turned the opposite way.
He looked at it, hesitated, and said: “No, thank you. I’ll choose it myself, if you don’t mind.”
He led the way up the street while she reflected that the pound note might really prove to be an inadequate remuneration for the waiting driver.
She stopped, as a more sinister thought came to her mind. “I don’t see,” she said, “why I should trust you if you don’t trust me.”
He looked at her with the eyes of a man whose thoughts are on other things. Then he laughed. “No,” he said, “I don’t see why you should. We’d better both get on to a bus.”
So they proceeded by that conveyance, and with a mutual feeling of recovered confidence, to Mr. Jellipot’s house.
“WHAT tickets?” Mr. Entwistle asked, as the conductor approached them, after they had climbed to the top of a Wimbledon bus.
“I’m not quite sure. All the way, I should think.”
Mr. Entwistle didn’t look pleased.
“Lawyer’s office at Wimbledon?” he asked sceptically.
“No. Don’t you see that it’s nearer seven than six? Do you think we should find him at his office now?”
Mr. Entwistle took the tickets from a man whose impatience was becoming assertive, but he continued the subject.
“Know where he lives?”
“Yes; it’s in Stagpole Road.”
“Been there before?”
“No. But he gave me the address if we should be late.”
Mr. Entwistle said no more. He appeared to find sufficient occupation in his own thoughts.
When they got down at Wimbledon he said: “Half a minute. I’ve got something to do.”
He went into a telephone booth, and found Mr. Jellipot’s name at the address which Miss Weston mentioned. Had he failed to do so, he had resolved to turn back.
He enquired from a policeman, and learned that Stagpole Road was nearly a mile away, on which he called a taxi, which, seeing assurance of her own safety in the mood of suspicion which he displayed, Mary made no objection to entering. So they came safely at last to Mr. Jellipot’s door.
The mode of travelling which Mr. Entwistle had preferred had not been the fastest possible, and Mr. Jellipot had finished dinner and was enjoying the evening cigar which was the one vice of his bachelor solitude, when his visitors were announced.
He received them with his usual quiet cordiality, and the timid, somewhat hesitant, manner which concealed the unhurried working of a very capable brain.
“I am particularly pleased to see you, Mr. Entwistle,” he said, “because your coming assures me that you had no part in William Rabone’s murder, which was an opinion I had already formed, and ventured, with some diffidence, to express to those who are most conversant with such problems, and consequently more capable of their solution than I can ever expect to be. And it also leads me to hope that another theory that I have formed, but on which I scarcely ventured to build, it being as conjectural as it was, may not be entirely unfounded… You will take a glass of wine, Miss Weston? And you, Mr. Entwistle? No? You may be right, for your work calls for a steady hand.”
The length of this somewhat involved, and yet fundamentally lucid statement, had given time for Peter Entwistle to settle comfortably in the softly upholstered chair which Mr. Jellipot had indicated for his use, and relieved him of the necessity of immediate speech. It gave him the satisfaction of knowing that he would be speaking to a lawyer whose mind had no lingering doubt of whether he were himself a party to the crime for which he was about to denounce another, and the final words, the implication of which he was quick to guess, confirmed an opinion already formed that Mr. Jellipot was of a more astute and more militant quality than his manner showed.
Mr. Jellipot, still in no haste to approach the subject in all their minds, asked by what means they had come, and being told that they had utilized the services of a Wimbledon bus, he had a moment of gravity.
“It was,” he said, “a rather bold thing to do.”
Peter Entwistle, who had considered it in a contrary light, looked uncomprehendingly at this criticism, and Mr. Jellipot expounded it further.
“I suppose,” he said, “you felt a doubt as to whether Miss Weston might be a decoy to lead you into a position of further compromise, or even more acute and imminent danger. I do not blame you for that. Whether or not you believed what she must have told you, it remained a possibility which you would wish to eliminate from a position already sufficiently hazardous. But did you think how easily, by the method you chose, you could be followed here by those whom you will have, in fact, a greater reason to dread?”
“No,” Peter admitted, “I can’t say that I thought of that.”
Mr. Jellipot shook his head slightly over the illjudging recklessness of the young, and recovered cheerfulness to observe that, as no one could have foreseen that Miss Weston would be calling upon him, or the purpose with which she went, the damage might not have been very great.
His next words went to the heart of the subject which had brought Peter Entwistle there, and saved him the task of preliminary explanation. “I needn’t ask you to tell me,” he said, “who killed William Rabone. Your coming here is sufficient answer to that. What I should like to know is whether you have, or could obtain, anything in the nature of legal proof, or whether it will be necessary to make the arrest on the
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