Джорджетт Хейер - No Wind of Blame

"All right, I don't want to hear about that. Had you got anyone with you, or hadn't you?"

"No," said Baker sulkily.

"Where did you go?"

"What's that got to do with you?"

"You take it from me, my lad, it's got a lot to do with me. What's more, you're doing yourself no good by refusing to answer my questions."

"Don't think you can come here brow-beating me!" said Baker. "The day will come when your kind will be in the gutter, where you'd like to trample the Workers of the World under your feet!"

"One of that sort, are you?" said the Inspector. "Now you answer me quick, or I'll ask you to come along to the police station!"

"One law for the rich and another for the poor!" said Baker bitterly. "I went for a run to try out a new bike, since you want to know. I took her to Kershaw, and back. So what?"

"Kershaw, eh? Went through Stilhurst village, didn't you?"

"Suppose I did?" countered Baker, watching him.

"What time would that have been?"

"I don't know. Think I go along looking at my watch?"

"Must have passed by Mrs. Carter's place, Palings," said the Inspector conversationally.

Baker's lean cheeks flamed suddenly. He took a step towards, the Inspector, his fists clenched. "What are you getting at?"

"Now, what is there for you to be all hot-up over in that?" wondered the Inspector.

"Come on, out with it! What are you nosing round after? Supposing I did pass Palings? What the bloody hell's it got to do with you?"

"Don't you take that tone with me, my lad!" said the Inspector. "I know how you went out to Palings twice yesterday, to see Mr. Carter. What did you want with him, eh?"

"If you know I went twice to see the dirty bastard, you ought to know that too! Go and ask him, if you don't!"

"Very clever, but it won't wash," said the Inspector. "You'd better come clean! Trying to put the black on him, weren't you?"

The flush returned. "I'll knock the teeth down the throat of the lying swine who says so!"

"Oh, lay off that stuff!" the Inspector said, roughly. "You went out to Palings, ranting about Mr. Carter having put your sister in the family way '

"Damn you, keep your ugly trap shut! So that's the game, is it? Well, you can tell Mr. Lousy Carter that my sister's got her rights, and he needn't think he can scare me out of bringing him to book! When the Red Flag's raised in this country, it'll be him and them like him that '

"Stow it! You went to Palings to blackmail Mr. Carter for five hundred pounds, didn't you?"

The effect of this accusation was not quite what Cook had expected. Baker's jaw dropped; he repeated in a dazed voice: "Five hundred pounds?"

"Well? Didn't you?"

"Five hundred - pounds?" said Baker again. "What the hell do you take me for? Here, I've had enough of your insults! You clear out of this! Five hundred pounds my foot! I suppose that's what the stinking swine told you? Well, you can damned well tell him from me that he's a bloody liar! And if you think I'd make capital out of my sister's shame, you're as big a bastard as he is!"

"Careful, now! Are you denying you went to Palings to get money out of Mr. Carter?"

"I never mentioned five hundred pounds, nor nothing like it! But when a man in his position, fair reeking of money, and old enough to be the girl's father, God damn his soul, gets a poor girl into trouble, he's got to help her, or I'll know the reason why! Oh, it's all very nice and easy for them as has money to burn, but what about them as hasn't? Who's going to support Carter's brat, that's what I'm asking you? Isn't it only justice he should pay for what he done to my sister? What would five bob a week mean to the likes of him? You answer me that, and then say I've been blackmailing the swine!"

"Leaving alone, for the moment., how much you tried to get out of him," said the Inspector, looking very hard at him, "you didn't find him willing to pay, did you?"

"No one," said Baker, somewhat obscurely, "is going to make out my sister's no better than a common streetwalker!"

"Oh! So Mr. Carter had his doubts, had he? He didn't see why he should pay for what he suspected wasn't his? Now we're getting at it, aren't we?"

"I'll make him provide for Gladys, if it's the last thing I do!" retorted Baker.

"But," said the Inspector, "he refused to pay, didn't he?"

"Fobbing me off with excuses!" muttered Baker. "If I had my way, I'd blow his brains out, the mealy scoundrel! That 'ud learn him to seduce innocent girls! But that's not going to help my sister, that's the way I've got to look at it!"

"Would it surprise you to learn that Mr. Carter was shot dead at five minutes to five this afternoon?" asked the Inspector.

"Shot dead?" Baker said numbly. "I didn't do it. I don't know a thing about it, as God's my witness!"

That was all the Inspector had managed to get out of Percy Baker, and it left him profoundly dissatisfied, for he could not quite bring himself to believe that the young man was acting a part. Nor did he believe that Baker had been acting when he so hotly denied having demanded five hundred pounds from Carter. It began to seem to the Inspector as though the murdered man's relations were playing some deep game, and had not scrupled to entangle Baker in its meshes. It might, he reflected, prove to be a difficult task for Baker to refute the accusation of blackmail.

When he reached the police station, it was to be met with the news that the rifle found in the shrubbery at the Dower House had been identified. It had been registered ten years previously by the late Mr. Fanshawe, and was the property of his relict, in whose name the licence had been kept up.

The Inspector drew a breath. "Someone living in the house," he said. "Well! I thought that from the start. And the whole lot of them combining to shift the blame on to young Baker, by spinning this yarn about him putting the black on Carter! It's that woman at the back of it, Superintendent: that screeching blonde, wanting to get rid of Carter, so that she can marry a foreign prince!"

"Go easy!" advised his superior. "If that was what she wanted, she could have divorced him, couldn't she? By all accounts, he gave her plenty of cause. The Chief Constable thinks this is a case for Scotland Yard."

The Inspector did not agree with him, but by the time he had interviewed Robert Steel next morning, and Dr Chester's housekeeper, he was forced to admit that he could not see his way through the maze. Robert Steel's scornful demand to be told how he could have known that Carter would be on the bridge at five minutes to five, seemed unanswerable. Steel stated that he had not known that Carter had meant to visit White, and if that were true, it did not seem possible that he could be the murderer. Whether it was true, remained, of course, to be proved; but the Inspector realised that it was not going to be an easy task to prove it.

Dr Chester's housekeeper was a little flustered, but she perfectly recalled the foreign gentleman's visit, and said without an instant's hesitation that he had arrived at a few minutes to five o'clock, before the doctor had got back from the call he had had to make.

The Inspector went next to Palings. He found Lady Dering sitting with Ermyntrude, having been brought over by Hugh, who was talking to Mary in the garden. When Peake announced the Inspector, Lady Dering at once got up to take her leave, and went out through the French window to join her son. She had exercised a most beneficial effect on Ermyntrude, who was both touched and gratified by her visit, and had unburdened her soul without much reserve. Ruth Dering's sympathetic goodsense had done much to calm her agitated nerves, and she was even able to greet the Inspector without any display of dramatic horror.

He came to the point without preamble, asking her whether she was the owner of a Mannlicher-Schonauer .275 rifle, registered as No. 668942.