Peter Lovesey - Wobble to Death

‘I merely wanted-’

‘Just tell me, in simple words, why you won’t leave me alone.’ O’Flaherty’s mood was swinging from aggression to desperation. ‘I’m in danger, am I? Well tell me this. Have you seen a looney outside with a bloody sledge-hammer looking for me? If you haven’t I’m not interested.’

‘I’ll be brief,’ promised Mostyn-Smith. ‘Mr Darrell is dead, and Monk is dead. You must be the next.’

‘And why, in God’s name, should that be?’

‘Don’t you see? Somebody required Captain Chadwick to win the race. Therefore Darrell had to be stopped. They gave him poison hoping his death would appear to be due to tetanus. And when strychnine was found to be the cause they tried to make it appear that Monk had made a grievous error and then committed suicide. But the post-mortem examination proved that he, too, had been murdered.’

‘You said you’d be brief.’

‘And so I have been. Can’t you see that this homicidal ruf-fian, whoever he is, will not allow anyone to defeat Captain Chadwick? Your splendid efforts on the track have made you a serious contender, a rival to the Captain. You have become an unexpected obstacle to our murderer’s plan, and he will try to remove you, be sure of that.’

‘Thank you,’ said O’Flaherty, without much gratitude in the words. ‘So I’m next for the strychnine. And I’ll tell you something that might surprise you, Double-barrel. It’ll be a mercy to feel the spasms coming on-because I’ll know that in no time at all I’ll be free for ever from you and your bloody safety precautions! Now will you get out and leave me fifteen minutes’ rest before I go to the slaughter?’

Nodding appeasingly, Mostyn-Smith backed towards the door. The reception had not been exactly what he anticipated, but the Irishman was an irascible fellow, and might ponder the logic of the argument when he had controlled his temper. At least one could now return to one’s own endeavours with an unspotted conscience. None the less, he would keep a fatherly eye on the Irishman.

Sergeant Cribb arrived at the Hall early, conscious that there was much to do. Progress had been made, but it would have to be accelerated. Thackeray’s inquiries into the supplier of the poison might provide a lead, yet there was precious little time in which to follow it up. A false name was sure to have been used, and descriptions from shop-keepers were generally altogether too vague. The main pos-sibility of progress was still in the Hall itself. All the suspects except Cora Darrell were there, committed to remain in the Hall until 10.30 p.m. on Saturday.

He had examined the case by every orthodox procedure: sus-pects, means and opportunity, and possible motives. The tim-ing of the crimes, he knew, was fundamental, but it was complicated by the nature of Darrell’s death. The act of mur-der had been committed not when Darrell breathed his last, nor when he first collapsed, but at some time before he drank the ‘bracer’ at 4 a.m. on Tuesday morning. Monk had made up the potion at his lodgings and brought it to the Hall with the other provisions on Sunday night. Some time in the next twenty-four hours the murderer had got into the tent, found the bottle and added the strychnine. If Monk were eliminated, as he had to be now, the possibility of the murderer adding the poison to the drink while Darrell was in the tent was remote. So it was probably done some time during Mon-day, when Monk and Darrell were occupied with the race.

Who had reasons for going into the tent? Darrell, Monk, Herriott-as promoter, Jacobson-as manager, Chadwick (possibly) as a fellow-competitor concerned about mutual facilities and Harvey for a similar reason. Cora, he knew from the newspapers, had been in the tent when she visited the Hall on Monday afternoon, but that was with Monk. Could she and Monk have arranged her husband’s death between them; and would she later have battered Monk to fake the suicide? It was conceivable, for the trainer was already in a stu-por and it would not need a powerful blow from one of those metal struts to see that he remained that way.

So up to five people could have entered the tent without being challenged. And then Cribb remembered. He delved thumb and forefinger into his fob and took out a crumpled piece of newspaper, the account of Monday’s events in the Hall. His thumb-nail settled below a particular sentence.

‘The dressing and feeding accommodation of Chadwick and Darrell contains every appliance for their comfort and convenience; your columnist examined the latter’s commodious tent and consid-ered it worthy of housing a campaigning monarch on some foreign field of battle.’

Cribb winced. The entire sporting Press had to be added to the list of those who could have got into the tent. Abandoning the matter for the moment, he walked over to Chadwick’s tent.

‘Mr Harvey?’

The trainer looked up from a newspaper. He was having a late breakfast of kidneys refused by the Captain that morning. ‘My name’s Cribb-Sergeant Cribb. You’ve probably seen me about the Hall these last few days. You look after Mr Chadwick, don’t you?’

‘Captain Chadwick.’

‘That’s right. Point is, I need to interview him. Straighten out some facts, you know. When’s he coming off the track?’ Harvey was dubious. ‘He comes off at noon, for about twenty minutes, but he won’t welcome questions. He needs all the time for his lunch.’

‘I understand. Shan’t keep him long. I’ll be here at twelve, then. Oh, and er-Mr Harvey.’

‘Yes?’

‘Once you’ve dished up the tripe and onions, be a stout fellow and leave me alone with the guv’nor, will you? Confidential questions, you know.’

There was resentment in Harvey’s nod of acquiescence.

‘FACT IS, CAPTAIN Chadwick, I need your help.’

Cribb was sitting opposite the Champion, who was eating hungrily, averting the sergeant’s keen gaze.

‘I need your help,’ Cribb repeated. ‘Comes a point when you’ve tried every deuced line of inquiry you know, and nothing’s come out of it. So I ask myself what’s to be done. And the answer comes back: get some help. Now you’re a man of education and a military expert too. Strikes me that if anything untoward happened in this arena it wouldn’t pass your notice. I’m right, sir, aren’t I?’

Chadwick sniffed, and took a mouthful of cold chicken. Cribb’s persuasive sallies rarely sank without trace. He was floundering now.

‘You’d have noticed the comings and goings at Darrell’s tent on Monday, for example?’

Another bite at the chicken leg.

Cribb persevered. ‘I believe the reporters were shown the living quarters, and later Mrs Darrell came to see the tent.’ Silence again.

At last Captain Chadwick lifted his napkin to his lips and moustache, wiped them and tossed it aside.

‘For your information-Sergeant’-and he spoke the rank as though he were addressing a crossing-sweeper-‘I am not in the pay of the constabulary, and I feel myself under no obligation to act as their informant. If you wish me to answer questions, then kindly put them in a civil fashion, and not in these obsequious subterfuges.’

‘Very well, sir. How many times have you raced against the late Charles Darrell?’

‘None before this event.’

‘You had not met him before Monday?’

‘We met to sign articles last week. It is the custom in two-man races,’ explained Chadwick, ‘and ours was a race within a race.’

‘Did you have any communication with him before then?’ ‘Merely through the medium of the newspaper that usu-ally arranges such events. He was not the class of man that I am accustomed to meeting with.’

‘And your trainer?’ Cribb continued. ‘Was he in touch with Darrell or his trainer?’