Алистер Маклин - The Satan Bug

I glanced at the letter. It had to be genuine, of course.

“Got a set of six photographs. Beauties, too, although I say it myself. Here, I’ll let you see them.” He disappeared behind the curtain which I took to be the entrance of his darkroom and reappeared with a batch of obviously very new photographs. I took them. They looked terrible to me, just a bunch of greyish dots and streaks against a fuzzily dark background. “Not bad, eh?”

“Not bad.” I paused and said suddenly, “Could anyone tell from those pictures when they were taken?”

“That’s why I brought you up here. Take those to the Greenwich observatory, have them work out the precise latitude and longitude of this house and they could tell you within thirty seconds when each of these photographs were taken. Go on, take them with you.”

“No thanks.” I handed back the photographs and smiled at him. “I know when I’ve already wasted enough time – and I’ve wasted far too much. Send them to The Astronomical Monthly with my best wishes.”

We found Mary and Stella talking by the fireside. A few civilities, a polite refusal of a drink and we were on our way. Once in the car I turned the heater switch up as far as it would go but it didn’t seem to make any difference. The switch probably wasn’t attached to any heater. It was bitterly cold and raining heavily. I hoped the rain would ease.

I said to Mary, “What did you find out?”

“I hate this business,” she said intensely. “I hate it. This sneaking underhand approach to people. The lies – the lies to a lovely old person like Mrs. Chessingham. And to that nice girl. To think I worked all those years for the superintendent and never thought–”

“I know,” I said. “But you have to fight fire with fire. Think of this double murderer. Think of this man with the Satan Bug in his pocket. Think of–”

“I’m sorry. I really am sorry. It’s just that I’m afraid I was never cut out to be – well, never mind. I didn’t find out much. They have a maid – that’s why dinner was ready shortly after Stella rose. Stella lives at home – her brother insists on it, insists she spends all her time looking after her mother. Her mother is really pretty ill, I gathered from Stella. May go at any time – though she’s been told by her doctor that a transfer to a warm climate, like Greece or Spain, might add ten years to her life. Some dangerous combination of asthma and a heart condition. But her mother doesn’t want to go, says she’d rather die in Wiltshire than vegetate in Alicante. Something like that. That was all, I’m afraid.”

It was enough. It was more than enough. I sat without speaking, thinking maybe the surgeons who wanted to give me a new foot had the right of it, when Mary said abruptly, “And you? Learn anything?”

I told her what had happened. At the end she said, “I heard you telling the superintendent that you really wanted to see Chessingham to find out what you could from him about Dr. Hartnell. What did you find out?”

“Nothing. Never asked him.”

“You never – why on earth not?”

I told her why not.

Dr. Hartnell and his wife – they had no children – were at home. Both of them knew Mary – we’d met, socially, once, during the brief time Mary had been staying with me when I lived in Mordon – but they clearly didn’t regard our visit as a social call. Everyone I was meeting was nervous, very much on the defensive. I didn’t blame them. I’d have been nervous too if I thought someone was trying to hang a couple of murders round my neck.

I went through the spiel about how my visit was only a formality and the unpleasant experience I was sparing them by coming myself instead of letting one of Hardanger’s men do the questioning. Their activities in the earlier part of the evening were of no interest to me. I asked them about the later part and they told me. At nine-thirty, they said, they had sat down to watch television – specifically, The Golden Cavaliers, a TV version of a successful stage play that had just finished a long run in London.

“Did you see that?” Mary broke in. “So did I. Pierre was out late last night with a business friend and I turned it on. I thought it was wonderful.” For some minutes they discussed the play. I knew Mary had seen it and I knew she was finding out whether they also had really seen it and there was no question but that they had. After some time I said, “When did it finish?”

“About eleven.”

“And then?”

“A quick bite of supper and bed,” Hartnell said.

“By, say, eleven-thirty?”

“By that, at the latest.”

“Well, that’s perfectly satisfactory.” I heard Mary clear her throat and looked across casually. Her steepled fingers were resting lightly in her lap. I knew what that meant – Hartnell was lying. This I couldn’t understand – but I’d infinite faith in her judgement.

I glanced at the clock. I’d asked for a call at eight-thirty and now it was exactly that. Inspector Wylie was on time. The bell rang, Hartnell spoke into the phone then handed it to me. “For you, Cavell. The police, I think.”

I spoke, holding the ear-piece fractionally away from my head. Wylie had a naturally carrying voice and I’d asked him to be good and loud. He was. He said, “Cavell? Ah, you told me you were going to be there so I took a chance. This is urgent. Nasty spot of bother at Hailem Junction. Close tie-up with Mordon, if I’m not mistaken. Very unpleasant indeed. Can you get down there immediately?”

“As soon as I can. Where’s Hailem Junction?”

“Not half a mile from where you are. The bottom of the lane, turn right and pass The Green Man. Just there.”

I hung up, rose and hesitated. “That was Inspector Wylie. Some trouble at Hailem Junction. I wonder if I could leave Mary here for a few minutes? The Inspector said it was something unpleasant–”

“Of course.” With his alibi accepted Dr. Hartnell was almost jovial. “We’ll look after her, old man.”

I parked the car a couple of hundred yards down the lane, took my torch from the glove box and turned back towards Hartnell’s house. A quick look through the lit window and I knew I had nothing to fear from that quarter. Hartnell was pouring drinks and all three seemed to be talking animatedly, the way people do when the strain is off. I knew I could rely on Mary keeping them talking there indefinitely. Mrs. Hartnell, I noticed, was still sitting in the chair she’d been occupying on our arrival, she hadn’t even risen to greet us. Maybe her legs were troubling her – elastic stockings aren’t as undetectable as some manufacturers would like to think.

The garage was locked by a heavy padlock but the master locksmith who had been responsible for a tiny part of the training of myself and a score of others in the now distant past would have laughed at it. I didn’t laugh at it, I was no master locksmith, but even so I had it open in less than two minutes. I hardly cut myself at all.

Somewhere along the line Hartnell’s ill-advised plunge into the stock market had compelled him to sell his car and now his sole means of transport was a Vespa scooter, although I knew he used a bus to and from Mordon. The scooter was in good condition and looked as if it had been cleaned recently, but I wasn’t interested in the clean parts, only the dirty ones. I examined the machine closely and finally scraped off some of the dried mud under the front mudguard and put it in a polythene bag, which I sealed. I spent another two minutes looking around the garage, left and locked it.

Another quick check on the living-room showed the three of them sitting round the fire, drinking and talking. I made my way to the tool-shed behind the garage. Another padlock. From where I was I was now completely hidden from the house so I took the chance of having a good long look at the padlock. Then I picked it and went inside.