The Ha-Ha Case Page 13

  “No, of course not,” Jim agreed, but he contributed no suggestion.

  Oswald took a pace or two, as though movement helped his thought.

  “Do you know who pays the rent of this place?” he demanded, coming to a halt before his brother.

  “Johnnie told me that Mrs. Laxford was finding the money, but that he was to pay her back later on.”

  Oswald exchanged a glance with Una which showed that this was no news to either of them. Oswald swung round again to face his brother.

  “Yes. Laxford’s an undischarged bankrupt. You know that? And his wife hasn’t a stiver of her own, so Una tells me. Where did the cash come from to rent a place like this?”

  “That’s queer,” Jim commented, with awakened interest. “I hadn’t thought about that side of it. Where did they raise it, d’you know?”

  “Search me! They must have raised it from somebody. But that’s not the point just now. Point is, Johnnie was supposed to be the lessee; the lease is in his name. That’s so, Una?”

  “But Johnnie was a minor,” Jim objected. “He couldn’t make a valid contract.”

  “Oh, there was some flim-flam bringing in a bogus trustee. Una knows about it. She and Johnnie were good pals. He let out a lot to her without knowing it. Point is, Johnnie was technically the man who leased Edgehill. Laxford’s name didn’t come in at all. Now Johnnie’s dead, poor kid, we’ve got to make the best of it. He died without making a will, didn’t he?”

  “He couldn’t make a legal will till this morning when he came of age,” Jim pointed out, “and I don’t expect he made one before we went out shooting.”

  “Then this lease of Edgehill’s part of his estate. It goes to the family—the Governor, I suppose. That’s what I’m after, Jim. I don’t see much of the Governor. Still, I hate his living in foul digs the way he has to do. Let’s bring him here to live for the rest of the year that the lease runs. A blink of sunshine before he goes out, what? And Una can stay on and look after him. Kills two birds with one stone. It’s no catch for her, but she says she’ll do it. Cheer him up, make him happy while it lasts. What do you say?”

  Jim considered for a moment before replying.

  “It sounds all right,” he agreed. “That is, if you care to take it on,” he added turning to Una.

  “Of course,” the girl replied at once.

  “We’ll need to cut expenses to the bone,” was Jim’s comment. Then a thought seemed to strike him, and he asked: “What about the Laxfords?”

  “The Laxfords?” Oswald’s gesture emphasised his words. “Out they go, neck and crop, to-day.”

  Jim gave a curt nod of agreement, but Una showed her discomfort at this proposal of abrupt expulsion. She had been fond of her young charges, and she intervened on their behalf.

  “I don’t like the idea of turning out those two kiddies, Oswald, without knowing they’ve some place to go to.”

  “There’s an inn, isn’t there? They can go there, can’t they?”

  Una smiled rather wryly.

  “You don’t understand, Oswald. One has to pay one’s bill at an inn. The Laxfords are broke—really broke, I mean. Why, they had to pawn Di’s jewellery to pay their fares up here, when we shifted to Edge-hill. You can’t turn two children out into the street like that, when their father can’t scrape up enough to get a roof over their heads for the night. You mustn’t do it.”

  Oswald’s reply showed no yielding on the main point.

  “Well, they can’t stay here, Una. That’s flat.”

  Una considered for a moment and then hit upon an alternative proposal.

  “Why not let them shift into the Cottage? It’s empty and ready for occupation. That would give them time to turn round.”

  “I’d rather be shot of them for good. However . . .”

  He consulted Jim with a glance; but Jim was thinking about Una’s revelation of the state of Laxford’s finances, and his nod of acquiescence was purely perfunctory.

  “All right, then,” the elder brother conceded. “Have it your way, Una. So long as they get out of here straight off, I don’t mind where they go.”

  Jim was evidently still pondering over Una’s disclosure.

  “If they’re as broke as all that,” he said thoughtfully, “I’d like to know where they got the cash to lease this place. The agents would want references or else cash down, you know, and . . .”

  “It doesn’t matter a damn,” Oswald retorted impatiently. “Now look here, Jim. You and I must see Laxford and tell him to clear out. It won’t be a cosy chat. I shan’t spread butter on it. But we’ve got to keep our thumbs on one thing. Keep Johnnie’s name clean out of it. No talk about blackmail or suicide. We owe that to Johnnie.”

  “Oh, that’s all right,” Jim replied rather testily. “I’m not so likely as you are to go off the handle, if you ask me. It was just an accident, of course. The sort of thing that might happen to anyone. We all understand that quite clearly.”

  Oswald took no notice of his brother’s irony.

  “Quite so,” he said. “And now the next thing. How are we going to break this business to the Governor, Jim? That’s going to be a nasty job for somebody.”

  “Send him a wire,” Jim suggested.

  Una was revolted by this callous proposal.

  “You can’t do that,” she declared indignantly. “One of you must go up to town and do it as gently as you can. It’ll be a fearful shock to him. Oswald, you’d better do it.”

  Jim seemed not to see the implication of her choice.

  “Yes, you’d better take on that job, Oswald,” he concurred. “After he’s got over the worst of it, we can find plenty to divert his attention with. The whole business of Burling Thorn’s on our hands now and it’ll be enough to keep the Governor busy, once it starts. It’ll be good for him.”

  “All right, I’ll go, then. Una can come up with me. You’ve never met him, Una.”

  “I don’t think he’ll want a stranger at a time like that,” Una pointed out.

  “Something in that. We’ll settle it by and by, before train time. And now, Jim, let’s get Laxford off our hands.”

  Jim followed him from the room; and as they emerged into the hall, Dr. Brinkworth came downstairs followed by a tall raw-boned man with a solemn face.

  “Er . . . Mr. Brandon, this is Inspector Hinton of the local constabulary. He came up . . . er . . . a pure matter of form, you understand. And there will have to be an inquest, of course. The Inspector will be able to give you the . . . er . . . necessary particulars.”

  Chapter Eight

  Non-Existent Blood-Stain

  INSPECTOR HINTON’S parents had thought fit to have him christened Rufus, and in some ways their choice had been justified. He was red-haired and red-faced. Much to his disgust, his big-boned capable hands were also red. Even his eyes harmonised with the rest of the monochrome, for they had a russet tint like the irises of certain animals. And yet, for all this display of colour, no one would have described him as rubicund. His complexion had a weather-beaten look which matched his tall gaunt figure and his morose mannerisms.

  The inspector was just a shade cleverer than the average of humanity. He was not unaware of this. In fact, nobody recognised more clearly than he did himself that he was, as he put it, ‘a bit sharper than most.’ Unfortunately, he lacked the sense of perspective which might have shown him that he was not so very clever, after all. Secure in his possession of a superior intellect, he was apt to look down on the common run of people with a faintly tolerant contempt. Like Carlyle, he regarded them as ‘mostly fools.’ He had never read Carlyle. If anyone had shown him the passage in Latter-day Pamphlets, he would probably have growled out the tag about “great minds thinking alike,” with the kindly intention of paying Carlyle a compliment.

  As an offset to his physical uncouthness, Nature had given him a pleasant and sympathetic voice. It was one of the best weapons in his professional armoury, and the use to which he put it was characteristi
c. Contempt for ordinary humanity had made him an assiduous collector of conversational small change: “Just so,” “Now, then,” “Of course,” “I see,” and the like. Continual practice had given him such skill in the use of these depreciated tools that, time and again, they served to loosen the tongues of halting or stubborn witnesses. By his subtle modulations of a mere “Well, well!”, Inspector Hinton could feign any emotion from cynical indifference to breathless astonishment. His time-battered interjections became the vocal equivalents of understanding nods or interrogative glances. And, like a nod or a wink, they committed him to nothing. A prisoner, lured into amplifying a voluntary statement by the inspector’s interested “H’m?” or “Ah?”, could never assert that he had been subjected to illegal questioning; and yet Hinton generally secured the extra information which he wanted.

  This mastery of vocal inflection was the inspector’s solitary artistic accomplishment. Its exercise gave him more than a little sardonic amusement. He made a hobby of it, elaborated his effects, and furbished up his verbal trivialities with all the care that a master lapidary brings to the polishing of some rare and beautiful gem.

  His official superiors were not favoured by displays of his peculiar talent. “Never get funny with the men higher up,” was one of the first tenets in his unwritten code. Efficiency was the card he played in their case. He took special pains with his reports, whether oral or written. Invariably they were divided, like ancient Gaul, into three parts: Evidence, Inferences, and General Conclusions. No facts were ever suppressed, even when they happened to tell against his own theories. No inference ever got mixed up with his summary of the actual evidence in a case. “No hugger-mugger methods for me,” he would say, with conscious superiority.

  In his rare moments of expansion, Inspector Hinton would impress upon his subordinates that a member of the police force should function like a perfect machine, smoothly, efficiently, and without emotion of any sort.” Like me, you understand?” he would add modestly, to make the matter perfectly clear.

  Curiously enough, he ignored something which completely invalidated his simile. No machine works in the hope of changing its name; but at the root of his own efficiency lay a burning desire that Inspector Hinton should become Superintendent Hinton at the earliest possible moment. He kept that ambition to himself, naturally; but it flamed all the more fiercely behind the screen. “If one big case comes my way,” he told himself confidently, “then I’m sure of my step.” It never crossed his mind that he might not be equal to the emergency when it came.

  When the news of the disaster in the Long Plantation reached him, his obvious course was to send a sergeant up to Edgehill to take the necessary particulars. From the constabulary point of view, the affair was purely formal: a gun-accident, a coroner’s inquest, a verdict of “Death by misadventure.” A mere matter of routine.

  As it chanced, however, the only sergeant available at the moment was one of the inspector’s bêtes noires, a man whose reports never satisfied Hinton’s refined demands. The fellow had been on the carpet only the day before. He’d bungle the business, somehow, the inspector reflected in wrathful contempt. And then Inspector Hinton would eventually be put to more trouble than it would cost him to go to Edgehill himself in the first place.

  Behind all this fuming and fretting, a psycho-analyst would have suspected that Inspector Hinton was rationalising something. As a matter of fact, he hated to delegate responsibility. It was his notorious failing as a superior officer and it had earned him the nickname of “The Grabber.” His subordinates disliked him because he was so loath to give them opportunities.

  He reached Edgehill in advance of Brinkworth, and, while waiting for the doctor, he filled in time by making some inquiries from the servants. When the physician came on the scene, Hinton accompanied him upstairs and watched him examine Johnnie’s body, jotting down notes from time to time as the doctor described the results of his observations.

  “I’ll read what I’ve put down, doctor,” he said, when the examination was over. “Just check it, will you? He’s quite dead. He may have died a couple of hours ago. The wound’s on the right side of the head. It involves the scalp and the bone. It’s smooth at the back and rather irregular at the front. The external ear’s damaged. There’s a hole in the skull, and a bit of bone’s detached. There’s no apparent singeing or blackening round the wound. There’s some blood—not much—on the collar of his jacket which has been removed from the body. There’s been a certain amount of blood exuded since he was brought up here, staining the pillow. You conclude he died from a gunshot wound. That’s right?”

  “Er . . . yes, that’s quite right,” Dr. Brinkworth confirmed. He glanced round the room as though searching for something. “I . . . er . . . suppose we can wash our hands, Inspector. In case we happen to meet anyone. . . .” A gesture completed his meaning.

  “I saw a lavatory as we came along the corridor,” explained Inspector Hinton, who missed little. “We’d better go there before we go downstairs.”

  At the foot of the staircase, a minute or two later, they encountered the Brandon brothers. Hinton waited for the doctor’s introduction and then, ignoring Oswald, he turned to Jim.

  “Sorry to intrude on you with these formalities, sir,” he began in his most sympathetic tone. “Nasty shock, it must have been. I knew young Mr. Brandon slightly—and liked him, if I may say so.”

  Jim made an inarticulate acknowledgment.

  “We have to make inquiries,” the inspector explained, with a semi-apologetic note in his voice, “even in the case of a pure accident like this.”

  “I’ll answer any questions you like,” Jim assured him. “I quite understand. But I saw nothing of the accident myself. I was on the other side of the stream when it happened and I didn’t get to the spot till some minutes after.”

  Inspector Hinton might feign sympathy when it suited, but his mind was fixed on one thing only, at the moment: the production of a perfect report. He made a soothing gesture with his hand.

  “Let’s begin at the beginning,” he suggested suavely. “I understand you were out shooting, early this morning, along with Mr. John Brandon, Mr. Hay, and Mr. Laxford. You carried your own gun. Your brother also had his own gun. Mr. Laxford and Mr. Hay were using guns belonging to the house, I’m told. You all walked in company down the road to the cottage of the gardener, Stoke, where you sheltered for awhile. Then the party split up.”

  His calculated pause had the effect of a question.

  “That’s so,” Jim agreed. “We were going to shoot in the Long Plantation. Mr. Laxford suggested we should spread out well, so as to run no risk of firing into each other. I think perhaps he was afraid of . . .”

  He broke off suddenly as if he had said something which he regretted.

  “Yes?” said Hinton encouragingly.

  Jim apparently fell into the trap baited with the monosyllable.

  “Well, perhaps I shouldn’t have said that,” he explained in a reluctant tone. “It’s only a guess. I got the notion that Mr. Laxford was a bit nervous. You see,” he went on in a burst of apparent frankness, “I’m afraid my brother was careless with his gun. Some people didn’t like to shoot with him, just because of that. I spoke to him myself once or twice about it. In fact, I checked him as we were walking down to the gardener’s.”

  Oswald’s trained features showed nothing; but he gave Jim high marks for the skilful way he had handled this point. That awkward little pause at the start had riveted the inspector’s attention in a way that nothing else would have done, and had made him take special notice of the evidence, apparently so reluctantly given, about Johnnie’s careless management of firearms.

  “I see,” said Hinton concisely.

  As though eager to leave the subject, Jim continued his main narrative without further prompting.

  “Mr. Hay went off towards the west side of the Plantation. Mr. Laxford kept straight on till he got to the trees. That was the last I saw of them till af
ter the accident. My brother and I turned to the right—eastward, I think it is—once we got into the Plantation. There’s a narrow footpath running that way. We took it and went on till we got to the ha-ha, the sunk fence, you know.”

  “I know,” said the inspector, slightly nettled to find doubt thrown on the extent of his vocabulary.

  “We stopped there for a moment or two,” Jim continued. “My brother was going to walk up the line of the ha-ha, on top of the sunk fence. I was going on a bit farther, across the Carron, before turning north. When we were all in position, you see, there would be four of us in line: Mr. Hay on the far left, then Mr. Laxford, then my brother walking along the top of the sunk fence, and I myself on the extreme right, across the stream. That was the last I saw of my brother before the accident.”

  “Just so,” Inspector Hinton murmured. “And then?”

  Jim seemed to recollect something.

  “Oh, just one other point. It’s not important, except that it made me keep my ears open. My brother made a bet with me that he’d get a bigger bag than I could, before we got to the top of the Plantation. I just mention that to let you see why I had my ears cocked to hear his shots—to know how he was getting on, you know.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Hinton encouragingly.

  This fellow Brandon, he reflected, seemed to have his wits about him. He told a plain tale, when the ordinary witness would have rambled all over the shop. Young Brandon could write a good report, if he tried his hand at it. Not like that damned sergeant.

  “When I got to the stepping-stones,” Jim continued, “I heard three shots: two together and then a third, much nearer. Then, up among the trees I heard some shouting. I couldn’t hear what they were saying; the wind was gusty and made a lot of noise in the trees round me. Then I shot a rabbit myself and left it. After that I heard two more shots, and then a third. The first one sounded far off, but the other two were quite loud, so I took it they were fired by my brother. Just after that, I think, I shot another rabbit and left it lying to be picked up later on. It must be there still, and that gives you my position at that moment, roughly. And after that I heard another shot, pretty far off.”