Inspector Moresby Intervenes
“The biggest thing that’s happened since you took up the case, is it,
sir?” said a voice behind them. “Well, well, that’s interesting. May I
have a look at that shoe?”
They wheeled round, startled. Then Anthony glared, Margaret stiffened
and Roger grinned.
“Hullo, Inspector!” cried the last. “Where in the world did you spring
from?”
“The cave, sir,” the inspector replied, a little twinkle in his blue
eyes, as he possessed himself of the shoe. “Though not so much sprung
as crawled.” He turned the shoe over in his hand, examining it with
professional intentness.
“Find anything interesting in the cave, by the way?” Roger asked
airily.
The inspector glanced up from the shoe, his twinkle again to the fore.
“Only what you did, I fancy, Mr. Sheringham, sir,” he replied blandly.
“A copy of _London Opinion_, eh?”
“Well, I hope you found that as interesting as I did,” Roger returned,
somewhat discomfited.
Anthony had been watching this exchange without joy. When one has been
anointed ass enough to suspect, on grounds of mere material evidence,
a particularly high-souled young woman, it would only be decent, to
Anthony’s mind, on finding one’s self confronted with the said
high-souled young woman at least to exhibit signs of uncontrollable
embarrassment and gloom. Yet so far from exhibiting any such signs,
the inspector had completely ignored the high-souled young woman’s
existence. Things like that were simply not done.
“I expect you’d probably like to be getting back now,” said Anthony to
the high-souled young woman, in tones of frigid correctness. “May I
see you home?”
“Thank you, that is very kind of you,” replied the high-souled young
woman no less stiffly.
They turned and walked, like two faintly animated ramrods, back the
way they had come.
Inspector Moresby must have been singularly devoid of all sensibility;
even this pointed behaviour failed to move him to any exhibition of
remorse. “You’re quite right, Mr. Sheringham, sir,” he observed,
inhumanly unconscious of the censure conveyed in every line of the
dignified retreating figures. “This _is_ interesting, this shoe. I’ll
send a man down some time to look for its fellow. Now sit down and
tell me all about it. What made you think that the murderer is a man,
and what had that copy of _London Opinion_ got to tell _you?_”
Now it had certainly been no part of Roger’s plans to give the
inspector, for the time being at any rate, any idea of his new theory.
Beyond reporting to him, as in duty bound, the discovery of that
significant shoe, he was going to say nothing of the deductions he had
been able to draw from it. The inspector himself had chosen to
establish a rivalry between them, and Roger had not been slow to
accept the challenge. Yet in a quarter of an hour’s time, by a
judicious mixture of flattery, cajolery and officialism, the inspector
had succeeded in scooping from Roger’s mind every thought that had
passed through it during the last twelve hours, together with the full
story of his activities for that period. It was not for nothing that
Inspector Moresby had reached the heights he now adorned.
“Well, I’ll not say you’re on the wrong tack, sir,” he observed
cautiously, when Roger had hung the last bow and tied the final ribbon
about his newly decorated theory. “I’ll not say I think you’re on the
wrong tack, though I won’t say I think you’re on the right one either.
The reasoning’s clever, and though it’s easy enough for me to pick
holes in it, it’s just as easy for you to fill ’em up again. The
thing’s too vague to say either way just yet.”
“I made a perfectly legitimate set of deductions, and I’ve just had
them confirmed in a rather remarkable way,” Roger insisted not
altogether too pleased with this hardly exuberant praise of his
efforts.
“That’s quite right,” the inspector agreed soothingly. “But the
trouble is, you see, that in a case like this when the known facts are
so precious few, it’s possible to make half-a-dozen sets of deductions
from them, all quite different. For instance,” he went on with a
paternal air which Roger found somewhat hard to bear, “for instance
I’ve no doubt that if you gave me time, I could prove to you, just as
conclusively as you’ve proved your own theory, that the real murderer
is the doctor’s secretary—(what’s her name?) Miss Williamson.”
“Miss Williamson?” Roger echoed, startled out of his mild annoyance.
“Good Heavens, I never thought seriously of her. You don’t really
think——?”
“I do not, sir,” the inspector smiled. “Not for one minute. I can’t
say it ever entered my mind before. But—wait a minute!” He thought
rapidly for a moment, still smiling. “How’s this? Miss Williamson’s
setting her cap at the doctor,—” Roger caught his breath and looked at
the other narrowly, but the inspector returned his gaze with bland
innocence “—but knows she can’t get him, or _thinks_ of course that
she can’t get him, till Mrs. Vane’s out of the way. You’ve seen the
lady, and you probably gathered as well as I did that if Miss
Williamson makes up her mind to a thing, that thing’s going to happen.
She strolled over from the house to the top of the cliffs that Tuesday
afternoon to get a breath of air, and sees Mrs. Vane making for the
Russells’ house, alone; not a soul in sight. ‘Here’s my opportunity!’
she says, joins Mrs. Vane and easily persuades her, on some pretext or
other, to accompany her down to the ledge; and there all she’s got to
do is to push her over. That fits the facts all right, doesn’t it?”
“But was Miss Williamson out that afternoon?” Roger asked shrewdly.
“Oh, yes, sir,” said the inspector, with an air of mild surprise.
“Didn’t you know that?”
“No,” Roger had to admit. “I didn’t.”
“Oh, yes. She went out just as I said, for a breath of air. It was a
hot afternoon and the laboratory got a bit stuffy. She was on the top
of the cliffs for about half-an-hour, and says she saw nobody. It was
a bit before the time of the murder, but we’ve only got her word for
that. If nobody saw her go out and nobody saw her come in, how are we
to know she’s telling the truth? I tried to get some confirmation of
her statement from the doctor, but he’s as vague as you like. Might
have been the morning, so far as he remembers. Besides, he wasn’t in
the laboratory all the afternoon himself; I got that from the maid who
took his tea in to him there; he wasn’t there then.”
“Well, how about the coat-button? How is that going to fit in?”
“On her way down the drive,” responded the inspector glibly, “Miss
Williamson noticed a coat-button lying on the ground. She recognized
it as one of Miss Cross’s, and being a precise, careful sort of
person, picked it up and slipped it into her pocket, meaning to give
it to Miss Cross later. After the murder, however, she says to
herself: ‘Well, there’s nothing to beat a murder that looks like an
accident, but I’ll just make sure that if anybody _is_ going to be
suspected it shan’t be me!’ and with that she climbs down to where the
body’s lying (she’s a strong, active-looking woman, so that wouldn’t
give her overmuch difficulty) and puts the button in the dead woman’s
hand. As for the footprints, they might just as well have been made by
her as anyone else.”
“Very neat,” said Roger approvingly. “And the shoes, eh? What about
them?”
The inspector laid one finger along the side of his nose and rubbed
that organ slowly; his eyes began to twinkle again. “Ah! Well, I can
think of several ways of working those shoes in, sir, and I’ve no
doubt you can do the same.”
“Meaning that you’ve already made an interesting deduction or two from
them, about which you’re determined to keep as tight as a clam?” Roger
laughed. “All right, don’t be frightened; I won’t try to open you.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, sir,” returned the inspector
guardedly, and left the implication of his words tactfully vague.
“Anyhow, Mr. Sheringham,” he went on the next moment, “you see how it
is. It’s easy enough to twist the facts, when they’re so few, into
meaning exactly what we want them to mean, and away from meaning
exactly what we don’t want them to mean. It’s only in those detective
stories, where the inspector from Scotland Yard always shows up so
badly, that there’s only one inference drawn from a set of facts (not
one fact, I’m meaning; a set) and that’s invariably the right one. The
fact of the matter is, sir,” the inspector added in a burst of
confidence, “that what I said about Miss Williamson might just as well
apply to anyone. Given the motive in this case, _anybody_ might have
done it!”
“That’s true enough,” Roger agreed ruefully. “Heaven knows we’ve got a
big enough field to search. Still, I’m confident I’m on the right
track, and I shall jolly well remain confident, however much you try
to damp me. So the next thing I’m going to do is to carry on with my
enquiries about a strange man being seen round these cliffs between
three and four-thirty last Tuesday afternoon.”
“Well, it can’t do any harm, can it?” observed the inspector
restraining his enthusiasm.
“And what are you going to do?”
“Me, sir?” said the inspector innocently.
“Yes, come on, Inspector; out with it. You know perfectly well you’ve
got your job of work all planned out. Be a pal.”
The inspector smiled. “Well, if you must know, sir, I’m going to make
a few enquiries about this shoe.”
“Ah!” Roger observed maliciously. “Well, it can’t do any harm, can
it?”
They laughed.
“Inspector,” said Roger softly, “can’t you forget for once that you’re
a member of an official body and be human? I found that shoe for you.
Isn’t it up to you to let me know what the result of the few enquiries
is? Not for publication, of course, unless you say the word.”
The inspector struggled for a moment with his official reticence.
“Very well, Mr. Sheringham,” he said. “That’s fair enough.”
“Sportsman!” Roger approved as they parted.
Before they had progressed fifty yards in opposite directions, Roger
had turned and was running back again. “Inspector!” he called. “Half a
minute!”
The inspector turned and waited for him, “Yes, sir?”
“There’s one thing I’ve always been meaning to ask a real live police
inspector,” Roger panted, “and always forgetting at the crucial
moment. What do you _really_ think at Scotland Yard of detective
stories?”
The inspector ruminated. “Well, sir,” he said darkly, “we must have
our amusements, I suppose, like everyone else.”
This time they really did part.
The inspector did not return to the inn for lunch, and Roger and
Anthony ate a somewhat silent meal, each having plenty to occupy his
own thoughts. Roger debated for a short time whether to depute some of
the enquiry work, which now seemed to be assuming gigantic
proportions, to his cousin, but decided on consideration that rather
more delicate handling was required than Anthony would probably be
able to bring to it. That young man therefore found himself with the
afternoon off duty once more, whereupon he announced casually that he
might not be back for tea and made a few guarded enquiries as to the
possibility of hiring a two-seater in Ludmouth, just in case one
happened to want to see something of the country round. By a
superhuman effort Roger managed to refrain from all attempts to amuse
himself.
Immediately after lunch he set out once more on his wearisome round.
It was nearly eight o’clock before he returned, and then it was with
the glad face and bounding step of one to whom success has come,
doubly sweet because almost hopelessly deferred. Anthony and the
inspector, half-way through their supper, looked round in astonishment
as the remaining member of their trio, almost unrecognisable beneath
the enormous grin which decorated his countenance, burst in upon them
like a dervish.
“I’ve done it!” shouted the dervish. “Alone, unaided, unhonoured and
unsung, frowned upon by the official police and snubbed by half the
small boys in Ludmouth, have I done it!” He produced a small piece of
paper from his pocket-book and laid it with a flourish beside the
inspector’s plate.
“There’s a present for you, Inspector Moresby,” he said. “The
thumb-print of Mrs. Vane’s murderer. Anthony, carve me a double
portion of that veal-and-ham pie, please!”