Джорджетт Хейер - Detection Unlimited

“Now I shall tell you the truth!” said Ladislas impulsively. “I did not go to the door! I went away, because I do not wish to make trouble for Miss Warrenby, and if her uncle is at home it is plain to me that she cannot go with me anywhere. It makes nothing!”

“Only a bit of extra work for the police, and that's fair enough, isn't it?” said Hemingway.

He left Ladislas hovering between doubt and relief, and went out to find that Constable Melkinthorpe was no longer alone. He had left the car, and was standing beside it, grinning down at an aged and disreputable individual in a much-patched suit of clothes and a greasy cap, which he wore at a raffish angle wholly inappropriate to his advanced years. Beside him stood a buxom lady, who appeared to be torn between anxiety and annoyance; and, eying them both in a boding fashion, was a stout and middle-aged constable. As the Chief Inspector paused for a moment, surveying the group, the buxom lady tried to take the old gentleman's arm, and besought him urgently to give over, and come off home to his tea.

“You lemme go, or I'll fetch you a clip!” said the Oldest Inhabitant, in shrill but slightly indistinct tones, and brandishing a serviceable ash-plant. “Wimmen! I 'ates the sight of them! I'm a-going to 'ave a few words with the Lunnon 'tec, and it 'ud take more than a nasty, meddling female to stop me! Ah! And more than a mutton-headed flat-foot wot never got no promotion, and never would, not if he lived to be as old as wot I am, which 'e won't becos 'e eats too much—unless it ain't fat, but dropsy 'e's got.”

“Father!” expostulated his daughter, giving his arm a shake. “You've got no call to be rude to Mr. Hobkirk! If you don't stop it—”

“You give me any more of your impudence, Biggleswade, and you'll wish you'd kept a civil tongue in your head!” interrupted Constable Hobkirk, swelling with wrath.

“Mr. Biggleswade to you, Mr. Hobkirk!” instantly responded the lady, with a sudden veering of sympathy. “Ninety years old he is, and I'll thank you to remember it! Now, come along with you, Father, do!”

“What's all this about?” demanded Hemingway, stepping up to the group.

Constable Melkinthorpe so far forgot himself as to wink at his superior, but Hobkirk replied in official accents: “Police Constable Hobkirk, sir, reporting—”

“You shut your gob, young feller!” commanded Mr. Biggleswade. “You ain't got nothing to report. It's me as'll do the reporting. I'm going to 'ave me pitcher in the papers, and a bit wrote about me underneath it.”

“All right, grandfather!” said Hemingway good-naturedly. “But give the constable a chance! What's the matter, Hobkirk?”

“If there was anything the matter, which there ain't,” said the obstreperous Mr. Biggleswade, “it wouldn't do you no good to go asking 'im, because 'e ain't seen beyond that great stomach of 'is for years—not but wot that's far enough. Nor I won't 'ave me words took out of me mouth by 'im, nor you neither, becos the police never 'ad nothing on me, and I ain't afraid of any of you!”

“You're a wicked old man, that's what you are!” exploded the sorely-tried Hobkirk. “Before you got so as you couldn't do more than hobble about with a stick, you was the worst poacher in the county, and well I know it!”

Mr. Biggleswade's villainous countenance creased into a myriad wrinkles, and he gave vent to a senile chuckle. “That's more than you could prove, my lad,” he said. “I don't say I weren't, nor yet I don't say I were, but wot I do say is that I were a sight too smart for all them gurt fools to catch.”

“Don't pay any heed to him, sir!” begged his horrified daughter. “He's getting to be a bit childish! I'm sure I ask your pardon for him coming worriting you like this, but he's that obstinate! And coming up here to talk to you without his teeth!”

A vicious dig from her sire's elbow put her temporarily out of action. “My darter,” explained Mr. Biggleswade. “Lawful,” he added. “Which is wot makes 'er so blooming upperty! I got others. Ah, and sons! First and last—”

“Listen, grandfather!” interposed Hemingway. “There's nothing I'd like better than to hear your life-story, but the trouble is I've got work to do. So you just tell me what you want to see me about, will you?”

“That's right, my lad, you listen to me, and you'll get made a Sergeant!” said Mr. Biggleswade approvingly. “'Cos I know who done this 'ere murder!”

“You do?” said Hemingway.

“He don't know anything of the sort, sir!” expostulated Hobkirk. “He's in his dotage! Sergeant! Why, you silly old fool—”

“You leave him alone!” said Hemingway briefly. “Come on, grandfather! Who did do it?”

An expression of intense cunning came into the wizened countenance of Mr. Biggleswade. “Mind, I'll 'ave me pitcher in the papers!” he warned the Chief Inspector. “And if there's a reward I'll 'ave that too! Else I won't tell you nothing!”

“That's all right,” said Hemingway encouragingly. “If you can tell me the name of the man I'm after, I'll take a photo of you myself!”

Much gratified, Mr. Biggleswade said: “You're a smart lad, that's wot you are! Well, if you want to know 'oo done it I'll tell you! It were young Reg Ditchling!”

“Father!” said his daughter imploringly. “It isn't right to go taking that poor boy's character away from him! I keep telling you you've got it all wrong!”

“Reg Ditchling,” repeated Mr. Biggleswade, nodding his hoary head mysteriously. “And don't you let no one tell you different! I was up on that there common—ah, and no so far from Cox Lane neither!—and I 'eared a shot. Plain as I 'ear you yammering now I 'eard it, and don't none of you start talking to me about no backfires, “cos there ain't any man living knows more about gunshots than wot I do—I didn't pay no 'eed, “cos it weren't none of my business, but 'oo do you think I seen not ten minutes later, “idling be'ind a blackberry bush?”

“Reg Ditchling,” replied Hemingway promptly.

“You leave me tell it you meself!” said Mr. Biggleswade, affronted. “Reg Ditchling it was! "And wot might you be up to?" I says to 'im. "Nuthin", 'e says, scared-like. "Oh, nuthin' is it?" I says to 'im. "And 'oo give you that rifle, my lad?" I says. Then 'e 'ands me a lot of sauce, and makes off, and I went up to the Red Lion to 'ave a pint afore me tea.”

“Yes!” interjected his daughter. “And when I went up to fetch you home it was all of seven o'clock, and Mr. Crailing told me you'd been there half an hour!”

Hobkirk, who had edged himself up to the Chief Inspector, said for his private ear: “That's right, what she says, sir, but make the silly old fool listen to a word of sense—I can't! I'll have a few words to say to Reg Ditchling when I get hold of him, borrowing guns he's got no right to have, but if he did any shooting on the common that day it was a good hour before Mr. Warrenby was killed. And I wouldn't believe that old rascal, not if he was to swear to it on his Bible-oath! It's all on account of old Mr. Horley being interviewed for the local paper the day he was ninety! Nothing'll do for Biggleswade but to get into the papers as well, with his picture!”

“Well, I hope he manages to pull it off,” said Hemingway, watching appreciatively the spirited way in which Mr. Biggleswade was resisting his daughter's attempts to drag him homewards. “A very lively old gentleman, I call him. He deserves to get his picture in the papers.”

Hobkirk eyed him doubtfully. “If you had to see as much of him as I do, sir—”

“Lord bless you, he wouldn't worry me! Have you had many of the villagers trying to do a bit of detection?”

“Sir,” said Hobkirk earnestly, “you wouldn't believe it! Something chronic, it is! I've had to choke off more silly fat-heads who saw people they don't like not more than half a mile from Fox House nowhere near the time Mr. Warrenby was shot—well, as I say, you wouldn't hardly credit!”