Джорджетт Хейер - Detection Unlimited

He was right. Melkinthorpe coasted gently along, and the sound of a hay-cutter soon came to their ears. The hay was being cut in one of the fields abutting on to the road, and Kenelm Lindale could be seen, standing talking to one of his farmhands.

Hemingway got out of the car. “You stay here, Horace,” he said.

The Inspector, who had been expecting this, nodded. Almost bursting with curiosity, Constable Melkinthorpe slewed himself round in the driver's seat, and opened his mouth to speak. Then he shut it again. Something told him that an indiscreet question addressed to Inspector Harbottle would earn the enquirer nothing but a blistering snub. “Hot, isn't it, sir?” he said weakly.

The Inspector opened the newspaper he had brought with him, and began to read it. “It often is at this time of year,” he replied.

Constable Melkinthorpe, lacking the courage to venture on any further remark, had to content himself with watching the Chief Inspector walk across the field towards Kenelm Lindale.

Lindale had seen him, but he did not go to meet him. After one glance, he resumed his conversation with the farmhand. As Hemingway came within earshot, he said: “Well, get on with that job first: I'll be along presently, and we'll take another look at it. Good afternoon, Chief Inspector! What can I do for you this time?”

“Good afternoon, sir. Sorry to come interrupting you, but I'd like a word with you, please.”

“All right. I suppose you'd better come up to the house.”

“Provided we can get out of range of the din this machine of yours makes, I'd just as soon talk to you here.”

“Infernal things, aren't they?” Lindale said, walking beside him towards the blackthorn hedge which separated the field from the one beyond it. “Give me the old-fashioned methods! But it's no use, these days. Now, what is it you want?”

“I'm going to be quite frank with you, sir, and, if you're wise, you'll be frank with me. Because what I have to ask you I can quite as easily ask Mrs. Lindale, which, I take it, you'd a lot rather I didn't do.”

“Go on!” said Lindale evenly.

“Is Mrs. Lindale, properly speaking, the wife of a Francis Aloysius Nenthall, living at Braidhurst?”

There was a short silence. Lindale gave no sign that the question had startled him, but walked on beside the Chief Inspector, his face a little grim, his eyes fixed on the ground before him.

“Her maiden name,” continued Hemingway, “having been Soulby, and the date of her marriage the 17 thOctober, 1942.”

Lindale looked up, a smouldering spark of anger in his eyes. “You could prove it so easily if I denied it, couldn't you?” he said bitterly. “Damn you! In the eyes of the law she is, but if Nenthall weren't a Catholic, and a cold-blooded bigot on top of that, she'd be mine!”

“I don't doubt you, sir.”

“How did you find this out?” demanded Lindale.

“We needn't go into that,” replied Hemingway. “What I want to know—”

“Yes, we dam' well need!” interrupted Lindale. “I've got a right to know who told you! Unless someone tipped you off, you can't have had the slightest reason for suspecting it, and I want to know who it was who went ferreting out my private affairs!”

“Well, you do know, don't you, sir?” said Hemingway.

“Warrenby?” Lindale said, staring at him with knitted brows. “I've reason to think he knew—God knows how!—but he can't have told you! Unless— Have you come upon some blasted enquiry agent's report amongst his papers?”

“Is that what you expected?” Hemingway said swiftly.

“Good lord, no! What on earth should he do such a thing for? He once said something which showed me that he knew about Nenthall, but how much he knew, or how he knew it, I couldn't tell. I got under his skin one evening at the Red Lion—I couldn't stand the fellow, you know!—and he asked me if the name, Nenthall, conveyed anything to me. I said it didn't and there the matter dropped. He never mentioned it again, and, so far as I know, he didn't spread any kind of scandal about us, which was what I was afraid he'd do. I didn't think anyone but he knew anything about us—though I do know that that Midgeholme woman has done her best to discover all the details of our lives!”

“I don't mind telling you, sir, that I've no reason to suppose that anyone does know it, at any rate down here, except me and my Inspector. And I should think I don't have to tell you that I shouldn't, unless I had to, make it public.”

“No, I believe you wouldn't, but I can see how you might very well have to make it public. I've been hoping to God you'd get on to the track of the man who did do Warrenby in before you started making enquiries into my past!”

“You say Warrenby never mentioned the matter to you but the once, sir. Quite sure of that?”

“Of course I'm sure of it! Are you thinking he was blackmailing me? He wasn't. I haven't anything he wants—money or influence. What is more, had he tried that on I shouldn't have hesitated to put the matter into the hands of the police. It isn't a crime to live with another man's wife: I'd nothing to fear from the police. I can only suppose that he found it out by some accident, and let me know he'd done so to pay me out for choking him off.”

“Am I to take it, then, that the only use he made of his knowledge was to get off a bit of spite?”

Lindale was frowning. “It does sound improbable, put like that,” he admitted. “It's the only use he did make of it. He may have had other ideas in mind, but what they were I can't for the life of me imagine. The impression I had was that he said it partly out of spite, and partly as a sort of threat—Accept-me-socially-or-I'll-make-trouble kind of thing.”

“Which he could have done.”

Lindale stopped, and said: “Look here, Chief Inspector, I'd better be quite open with you! As far as I'm concerned, Warrenby was welcome to tell the whole world all he knew. Neither my—neither Mrs. Nenthall nor I have done anything to be ashamed of. There was never any furtive intrigue. We—well, we cared for one another for years, and Nenthall knew it. She married him during the War, when she was only a kid, and—well, it just didn't work out! I'm not going to say anything about Nenthall, except that if I murdered anyone it would be him! There was a child, a little boy, which made it all impossible. My wife is a woman of very strong principles. Then the kid died—meningitis, and—I shan't take you into all that. She was ill for months, and then—well, we had it out, the three of us, and the end of it was that she came to me. There couldn't be a divorce, so nothing ever got into the papers. My own view is that it's a mistake to make any secret of the situation. People aren't anything like as hidebound as they used to be. Her family, of course, have cut her out: they're Catholics, and pretty strict; and my father disapproves. But I think that most people, knowing the facts, wouldn't ostracise us—none that we've the least desire to be on friendly terms with. That's my point of view, but I said I'd be open with you, and so I'll tell you that my wife doesn't share it. She believes that she's living in sin, poor girl. We're very happy—but there's always that behind. Which is why I'd do a lot to keep the whole thing secret. A lot, but not commit murder—though I don't expect you to believe that. But whatever you believe, I'm dead sure you haven't enough evidence against me to justify an arrest! The bullet wasn't fired from my rifle, and I infer that you already know that, or you wouldn't be asking me questions: you'd be clapping handcuffs on me! Well, I quite see that you'll have to try to find out more, and I've no objection to that. All I do ask is that you'll refrain from worrying my wife. I won't have her driven into another nervous breakdown: she's been through enough!”