Джорджетт Хейер - Detection Unlimited

But at this point the Assistant Commissioner had interrupted him, uttering savagely: “Flair! You needn't tell me! And it's perfectly true, blast him!”

The Chief Inspector would have had no hesitation in ascribing the first question he put to the Squire to his mysterious flair. Taking a chair on the opposite side of the table, he said, at his most affable: “Thank you, sir. Well, I thought I'd best come up to have a chat with you, because I understand you were by way of being a friend of Mr. Warrenby's.”

This unexpected gambit had the effect of producing a silence which lasted just long enough to satisfy the Chief Inspector. No one, watching him, would have supposed that he way paying any particular attention to either of his auditors, but although he choose that moment to pat one of the Sealyhams, who was sniffing his trouser-leg, he missed neither the Squire's stare, nor the slight rigidity which held his rather restless wife suddenly still, her gaze lowered to an unblinking scrutiny of her burning cigarette.

The Squire broke the silence. “Don't know that I should put it as high as that,” he said. “I got on perfectly well with him. No sense in living at loggerheads with one's neighbours.”

“No,” agreed Hemingway. “Though, by all accounts, he wasn't an easy man to get on with. Which is why I thought I might find it helpful to have a talk with someone who wasn't what you might call prejudiced against him. Or for him, if it comes to that. What with Miss Warrenby on the one side, and pretty well everyone else on the other, the thing I want is an unbiased view. How did he come to get himself so much disliked, sir?”

The Squire took a moment or two to answer this, covering his hesitation by pushing the cigarette-box towards Hemingway, and saying: “Don't know if you smoke?”

“Thank you, sir,” said Hemingway, taking a cigarette.

“Difficult question to answer,” said the Squire. “I never came up against Warrenby myself: always very civil to me! but the fact of the matter was that he was a bit of an outsider. Pushing, and that sort of thing. No idea how to conduct himself in a place like this. Got people's backs up. Before the War, of course,—but it's no use thinking backwards. Got to move with the times. No use ostracising fellows like Warrenby, either. Got to accept them, and do what one can to teach them the way to behave.”

Yes , thought the Chief Inspector, you're a hard nut to crack, Squire! Aloud, he said: “Would you have put it beyond him to have gone in for a bit of polite blackmail to get his own way, sir?”

The ash from Mrs. Ainstable's cigarette dropped on to her skirt. She brushed it off, exclaiming: “What a lurid thought! Who on earth did he find to blackmail in these respectable parts?”

“Well, you never know, do you?” said Hemingway thoughtfully. “I've been having a talk with his head-clerk, and it set me wondering, madam.”

“No use asking me!” said the Squire harshly. “If I'd had any reason to suspect such a thing, shouldn't have had anything to do with the fellow.”

“You're trying to make out why we did have anything to do with him, aren't you?” said Mrs. Ainstable, her eyes challenging the Chief Inspector. “It was my fault. I couldn't help feeling sorry for his unfortunate niece! That's why I called on them. It's all very silly, and feudal, but if we receive newcomers other people follow our lead. But do tell us more about this blackmailing idea of yours. If you knew Thornden as I do, you'd realise what an entrancingly improbable thought that is! It's all getting more and more like Gavin Plenmeller's books.”

Out of the tail of his eye Hemingway could see that the Squire's gaze was fixed on his wife's face. He said: “I can see I shall have to read Mr. Plenmeller's books. Which puts me in mind of something I had to ask you, sir. Did you ask Mr. Plenmeller to fetch some papers from his house, during the tennis-party on Saturday?”

“No, certainly not!” said the Squire curtly. “I asked him to let me have them back, but there was no immediate hurry about it. He chose to go for them at once for reasons of his own. Damned rude reasons, too, but that's his own affair! Don't know what you're getting at, but it's only fair to say that he was back at The Cedars before I left the party. Met my wife on the drive, and gave the papers to her. Might have given them to Lindale, and saved me the trouble, but that's not his way!”

“Something to do with this River Board I hear so much about, weren't they, sir? I understand a solicitor's wanted, and Mr. Warrenby was after the post?”

The Squire stirred impatiently in his chair. “Yes, that's so. Don't know why he was so keen on being appointed: there's nothing much to it. However, he had a fancy for it, and as far as I was concerned he could have had it. Not worth worrying about.”

“Well, that's what it looks like to me,” confessed Hemingway. “Not that I know much about such matters. Mr. Drybeck wanted it too, I understand.”

“Oh, that's nonsense!” said the Squire irritably. “Drybeck's well-enough established here without wanting jobs like that to give him a standing! As I told him! However, I daresay he'd have got it in the end! There was a lot of opposition to Warrenby's candidature.”

“Well,” said Hemingway, stroking his chin, “I suppose he has got it, hasn't he, sir?—the way things have turned out.”

“What the devil do you mean by that?” demanded the Squire. “If you're suggesting that Thaddeus Drybeck—a man I've known all my life!—would murder Warrenby, or anyone else, just to get himself appointed to a job on a River Board—”

“Oh, no sir! I wasn't suggesting that!” said Hemingway. “Highly unlikely, I should think. I was just wondering what made you back Mr. Warrenby, if Mr. Drybeck wanted the post.”

“Quite improper for me to foist my own solicitor on to the Board!” barked the Squire. “What's more— Well, never mind!”

“But, Bernard, of course he minds!” interrupted his wife. “Mr. Drybeck is the family solicitor, Chief Inspector, but—well, he isn't quite as young as he was, and, alas, not nearly as competent as Mr. Warrenby was! Yes, Bernard, I know it's hideously disloyal of me to say so, but what is the use of making a mystery out of it!”

“No use talking about it at all,” said the Squire. “Got no possible bearing on the case.” He looked at Hemingway. “I take it you want to know where I went and what I did when I left The Cedars on Saturday?”

“Thank you, sir, I don't think I'll trouble you to go over that again,” replied Hemingway, causing both husband and wife to look at him in mingled surprise and doubt. “The evidence you gave to Sergeant Carsethorn seems quite clear. You went to cast an eye over that new plantation of yours. I was looking at it myself a little while back. Don't know much about forestry, but I see you've been doing a lot of felling.”

“I have, yes,” said the Squire, his brows lifting a little, in a way that clearly conveyed to the Chief Inspector that he failed to understand what concern this was of his.

“You'll pardon my asking,” said Hemingway, “but are you selling your timber to a client of Mr. Warrenby's?”

“To a client of Warrenby's?” repeated the Squire, a hint of astonishment in his level voice. “No, I am not!”

“Ah, that's where I've got a bit confused!” said Hemingway. “It was the gravel-pit he was interested in, wasn't it? There's some correspondence in his office, dealing with that. I don't know that it's important, but I'd better get it straight.”

“I have had no dealings whatsoever with Warrenby, in his professional capacity,” said the Squire.

“He wasn't by any chance acting for this firm that's working your pit, sir?”