Джорджетт Хейер - Detection Unlimited

“I will, sir,” said the Chief Inspector.

“The trouble with you, Horace, is that there's no pleasing you,” said the Chief Inspector, some little time later. “I bring you down, in the middle of the summer, to as nice a part of the country as you could wish for, set you up in a pub which, as far as I can see, never got around to reading the Rationing Orders, and all you do is to sit there looking as though you'd been dragged to one of the Distressed Areas. I'll trouble you for the butter, my lad!”

The Inspector handed him a green dish fashioned into the semblance of a lettuce-leaf. “It is butter, too,” he said severely. “About a week's ration.”

Hemingway helped himself generously. Both men were sitting down, in the otherwise deserted coffee-room, to a high tea reminiscent of an almost forgotten age of plenty. The Sun, though perhaps its oldest, was by no means Bellingham's most fashionable hostelry. It was situated in a back street, and catered for Commercials; the rigours of its beds were alleviated by feather-mattresses; it had one bathroom, containing an antiquated painted bath, with an old-fashioned plug, and a wooden surround; and several of its tiny lattice windows could, by the exercise of careful force, be induced to open. Since its clients were not persons of leisure, only one sitting-room had been provided for them, and that the coffee-room, which contained, besides one long table, a number of horsehair chairs; a massive and very yellow mahogany sideboard, supporting an aspidistra, a biscuit-tin commemorating the coronation of Edward VII, and an array of sauce-bottles and pickle-jars; several steel-engravings in maplewood frames; and a tall vase full of pampas-grass. Meals were not served with elegance, or dignified by menu-cards, but the food itself was excellent, and prepared by a large-minded person. An order for tea was understood by this person to include a plate piled with bacon, eggs, sausages, tomatoes, and chips, three or four kinds of jam, scones, a heavy fruit cake, a loaf of bread, a dish of stewed fruit, and one of radishes. Sergeant Carsethorn had recommended the Sun to Hemingway, a circumstance which was causing that cheerful officer to take what his assistant considered a roseate view of his ability.

“And I'd like to know how they come by all that bacon,” added Harbottle, in a sinister voice.

The Chief Inspector poured himself out another cup of tea, and lavishly sugared it. “Why you ever went in for homicide beats me,” he remarked. “What you ought to have done was to have got yourself a job as snooper for the Ministry of Food. What's it matter to you where they come by their bacon? I didn't hear you making any bones about eating it. Have another cup of tea!”

Harbottle accepted his offer, and sat for some minutes stirring the brew meditatively. “It's all very well being sent into the country,” he said suddenly, “but I don't like this case, Chief!”

“That's because you've got an inferiority complex,” responded Hemingway, unperturbed. “I thought there'd be trouble when they started talking about the Squire. It set you off remembering the days when you were one of the village lads, carting dung, and touching your forelock to the Squire.”

“I did no such thing!” said his indignant subordinate. “What's more I never carted dung in my life, or touched my forelock! I hadn't got one, and I wouldn't have touched it if I had had!”

“One of the Reds, were you? Well, it's no use brooding over the equality of man here, because that won't get us anywhere.” He observed that the Inspector was breathing heavily, and added soothingly: “All right, Job! you cool off, or you'll very likely burst a blood-vessel.”

“Why Job?” demanded the Inspector suspiciously.

“If you read your Bible you'd know that the poor chap suffered from a horrible disease. Amongst other things, which I've forgotten for the moment.”

“Now, look here!” exploded Harbottle. “What am I supposed to be suffering from, I'd like to know?”

“Me, mostly,” replied Hemingway serenely.

A reluctant grin greeted this sally. “Well you're the boss, so it won't do for me to contradict you, sir. But what you see in this case to be pleased about I can't make out! Seems to me it's either going to be so easy that this local Sergeant you think so well of might just as well have solved it for himself; or it's going to be such a snorter that we shall never get to the bottom of it.”

“It's got class,” said Hemingway, selecting a radish from the dish. “It's got a good decor, too, and, barring the Pole, I like the sound of the dramatis personae . It isn't every day you get a murder amongst a lot of nice, respectable people living in a country village. Of course, I daresay Snettisham will dig up some character with a record as long as your arm, here in Bellingham, who'll turn out to be the guilty party, but so far it looks a lot more promising than that. It's got what you might call possibilities.”

The Inspector frowned over these. “The Pole—which you wouldn't like!—and the niece, which the Chief Constable laughed at. I didn't reckon much to any of the others. Except that I'd like to know why the Chief Constable shut up so tight when Carsethorn started on the solicitor—Drybeck!”

“Because Drybeck's his own solicitor, and he plays golf with him every weekend,” replied Hemingway promptly.

“Did Carsethorn tell you that, sir?”

“No, he didn't have to. It's standing out a mile the Chief Constable's on friendly terms with most of the people mixed up in the case. That's why he was so prompt in calling us in, and I'm sure I don't blame him.”

Harbottle shook his head over this evidence of the frailty of human nature, but he appeared to accept it, and relapsed once more into meditative silence. The frown deepened between his brows; he presently said abruptly: “There's one thing that strikes me about this case, Chief!”

“What's that?” asked Hemingway, not looking up from his study of the plan of Thornden.

“Well, it seems to be fairly well established that the shot was fired from close to that clump of gorse. How did the murderer know that the deceased was going to be so obliging as to sit down on that seat in his garden at just that time of day?”

“He didn't,” replied Hemingway. “He probably didn't even know he was going to have the luck to find Warrenby in the garden at all. You think it over, Horace! If the murder was committed by one of the people at that tennis-party, he knew Miss Warrenby wasn't in the house, and it's a safe bet he also knew it was the maid's day out. He may have thought Warrenby was likely to be in the garden on a hot June evening, but it wouldn't have mattered if he hadn't been. You've seen the house: it came out good and clear in one of the photographs. It's got long French windows, which would be bound to be standing open on a day like that. As for the time, that didn't matter either. If the Pole did it, obviously he couldn't have, because he must have had to lie up, waiting for Warrenby to show himself, for nearly a couple of hours. Which is one reason why I don't, so far, much fancy young Ladislas.”

“The more I think of it, the more I can't help feeling it must have been someone who wasn't at that party at all,” said Harbottle. “If it was one of them, where was the rifle? If it had been a cricket-match, we could assume it had been all the time in the murderer's cricket-bag; but what would anyone take to a tennis-party which could possibly hold a rifle?”

“Nothing, of course. That's quite a good point, Horace, but there's an easy answer to it. If the murderer was at that party, he knew the locality well, and somewhere between the Haswells' place and Warrenby's he had that rifle cached where he could pick it up easily at the right moment. You're a countryman! You ought to know it isn't very difficult, where you've got woods, and hedges, and ditches. I'd choose a ditch, myself, at this time of the year, when the grass is long, and everything a regular tangle of dog-roses, and meadowsweet, and the rest of it.”