Fayre and Grey lunched at the station hotel, where the solicitor had
booked a room for the night. From Fayre’s point of view, the meal was
more than satisfactory. Grey showed a keenness that was after his own
heart and proved not only ready to impart information, but anxious to
hear anything his companion might have to tell him that had any
bearing on the case. He suggested that Fayre should make a note of any
questions he wished put to Leslie and leave it in his hands. They
agreed to meet at lunch on the following day and report progress.
Fayre’s first act on parting with Grey was to hire a bicycle. It was a
ramshackle affair with dubious tires, but it was the best the Whitbury
dealer could provide, and at least it made Fayre independent of the
Staveley motor. Lord Staveley had put his garage at his guest’s
disposal and had begged him to consider himself free to come and go as
he pleased, but Fayre hesitated to take too great an advantage of his
kindness. With the help of the bicycle he could pursue his
investigations in peace, unhampered by the thought of a waiting
chauffeur.
Mounted on the hireling, he set out for Keys, the first stage on his
quest for the carter. It did not take him long to locate the village
smithy, and the two men at work there looked with considerable
curiosity at “the gentleman from Staveley” as he toiled past their
door on an obviously inferior push-bike. A little farther on, on the
opposite side of the road, was a small ironmonger’s shop. Here he
dismounted, propped the bicycle against the curb, and went in. A
dusty-looking old man emerged from behind the counter and Fayre
proffered his request. It appeared that the old man might or might not
have a pair of trouser-clips. He would see, but it was a long time
since he had been asked for any. While he was rummaging in a drawer,
Fayre strolled to the window. From it there was, as he hoped, an
excellent view of the smithy.
The trouser-clips materialized and Fayre explained that he had taken
up cycling again after a lapse of years for the sake of exercise, and
added the comment that he found the roads very different from what
they had been when he was last in England.
“I reckon you got to have your wits about you nowadays, sure enough,”
agreed the shopkeeper. “I mind the day when a man might walk five mile
round here and see nothing but a horse and cart, and a child could
play in the lanes and its mother not give it a thought. It’s a
different story now.”
“I suppose you get a lot of motors through here?”
“A goodish few. They got one of the red signs at the bend there, but
it’s little notice most of them takes of it.”
“I saw a narrow shave the other day on the other side of the village,”
remarked Fayre conversationally. “A big car, coming round the corner
too quickly, as nearly as anything ran down a farm-cart. I wonder the
carter didn’t summons him.”
“Went off too quick, I reckon. That’s their way. Main difficult to
catch, they are.”
“They were going too fast for me to see the number. I should know the
cart, though. You don’t often see a white horse, nowadays.”
The old man’s face lit up with the proverbial curiosity of the
villager.
“That’ll be George Sturrock’s cart, I’m thinking. There’s not a many
white horses round about here, as you say. Or it might be Mr. Giles,
the farmer over to Grantley. ’E got a white mare. In a fine way, ’e’d
be, if anything ’appened to ’er.”
“I expect you know most of the horses round here,” observed Fayre.
“Living where you do.”
The old man chuckled.
“Always one for ’orses, I was. They’ve mostly got their allotted days
for coming down to the farriers yonder. You wouldn’t believe ’ow I
notice if one of ’em misses. Them two white ones, I see ’em regular,
the mare on a Monday and the ’orse Saturday.”
“You’ll see one of them to-morrow, then,” said Fayre pleasantly.
“Saturday morning, regular as clockwork, ’e come. George ’as only got
the one carter and ’e brings the old ’orse down afore ’e goes to ’is
dinner.”
Fayre paid for the clips and strolled out of the shop, well satisfied
with his opening move. The storm of chaff that greeted him as, flushed
and breathless, he peddled up the drive to Staveley nearly an hour
later failed to disturb his equanimity. He said he needed exercise
and, as Lord Staveley sapiently remarked, he seemed to be getting it.
Certainly he was markedly stiff the next morning and it required a
certain amount of determination to unearth his steed once more from
the garage and climb painfully into the saddle. He was rewarded,
however, for March was going out gently indeed and the air was soft as
spring. As he coasted quietly down the long slope to Keys he found
himself wondering, for the hundredth time, at the beauty of England
and regretting the long years he had wasted in the tropics.
He dismounted at the end of the road that led to the smithy and
wheeled his bicycle slowly to the door. Here he paused and stood
watching the smiths at work, one of a group of interested idlers. Out
of the corner of his eye he kept a good lookout for the white horse.
He had been there about ten minutes when it came round the corner, led
by a lanky, brown-faced farm labourer. Fayre noted with satisfaction
that he did not belong to the heavy, bovine type so prevalent farther
south. Here was a true North-countryman with the shrewd grey eyes and
long upper lip of his kind.
Fayre moved aside to let him pass.
“I’ve seen you before, old fellow,” he remarked pleasantly, addressing
the horse.
The carter turned and summed him up silently.
“It was a bit dark and I didn’t get a good look at him,” Fayre went
on, speaking to the carter directly this time. “But he’s uncommonly
like the horse I saw on the Whitbury road about a week ago. If he was,
he’s lucky to be here now, that’s all I can say. There’s one motorist
near here that ought not to be allowed on the road.”
The carter flushed a deep red under his tan.
“It wasn’t no one round here or I’d ’a’ let him hear of it. It was
some damned stranger. I know the cars round here well enough. Ought to
be hung, comin’ round the corner like that, he ought!”
Fayre nodded.
“Lucky for me I hadn’t reached the bend,” he said. “I was walking
carelessly and he’d probably have got me. You didn’t take his number,
I suppose? A fellow like that deserves to be hauled up.”
“I got a bit of it,” the man answered grimly, “but he was off too fast
for me to catch the rest. _Y.0.7._ I did see, but I missed the rest of
the number. Likely enough one of them chaps from Carlisle.”
“Did he get you badly? I was too far off to see properly in the dark,
but it seemed to me that he caught you a bit of a smack.”
“It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t get us proper. Took a great
splinter off the tailboard. I’ll wager his mud-guard’s caught it.”
“That will give you something to go by if you see him again.
Especially if he took a bit of your paint with him.”
“Aye. He’ll have a touch of red on him, all right. But I don’t suppose
I’ll ever see him again. Likely he took the wrong turn up the lane and
had to come back and was makin’ up for lost time like. That’s the way
I figure it out.”
“No doubt. If I see him about anywhere, I’ll pass the word to you. He
was driving himself, wasn’t he? Or was there a chauffeur?”
“No, he was alone in the car. Joe Woodley, up to Mr. Sturrock’s, will
find me and I’d be glad to hear of him. He didn’t do no damage, not to
speak of, but that wasn’t his fault and I’d like to have my say with
him. On my right side, I was, and he can’t question it.”
The man moved forward into the smithy with the horse and Fayre
retrieved his bicycle and pursued his way to Whitbury. He had not
dared hope for so satisfactory an end to his investigations and was
anxious to see Grey and make his report. That the carter should have
noted even part of the number was an unlooked-for piece of good luck.
That and an injured mud-guard, probably with a smear of red paint on
it, was all they had to go on, but it was something, at least. If only
Miss Allen had been more intimate with her sister’s friends! Fayre
felt that to apply to her would be worse than useless, but, on the
impulse of the moment, he left the main road and swung round the bend
that led to Greycross. Once more his luck held, for, almost within
sight of the drive, he passed her, trudging sturdily along the road,
evidently on her way home to lunch.
He jumped off his bicycle and waited till she overtook him.
“I’m afraid you won’t remember me, Miss Allen,” he said. “But we drove
home from Whitbury together the other day.”
For a moment she looked puzzled, then her face relaxed in a pleasant
smile.
“Of course,” she exclaimed. “You were with Lady Cynthia and Sir Edward
Kean.”
“I’m an old friend of hers, though I hadn’t seen her for years till
the other day. I could wish we hadn’t renewed our acquaintance under
such sad circumstances.”
“Poor child, I’m afraid she’s in for a bad time. I wish it was over,
for all our sakes.”
“It is as hard on you as on her,” said Fayre sympathetically. “If you
will forgive my saying so, it was very kind of you to write to her as
you did.”
“It was the least I could do. I was as convinced then, as I am now,
that John Leslie had nothing to do with it and I felt it was my duty
to say so.”
“I wonder if I may ask you a question? Believe me, it is not from idle
curiosity.”
She looked both surprised and interested. “Certainly,” she said. “But
if it is about my sister, I am afraid I told Sir Edward all I knew
when he came to see me the other day.”
“Can you think of any one among your sister’s friends who drives a
large car with a touring body and who was likely to have been in this
part of the world on the night of the tragedy?”
She shook her head.
“The trouble is that I knew so few of my sister’s friends. I rarely go
up to town and she lived almost entirely in London, except when she
was abroad or visiting friends in the country. She had a very large
circle of acquaintances, but they were not people I should be likely
to meet down here. Why do you ask?”
She had hardly uttered the question when her own quick wits supplied
the answer.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, her voice sharp with interest, “You think she was
driven to the farm! I have known all along that she could never have
walked there.”
“You mean on account of her shoes?”
“Of course. I was surprised that no one at the inquest made any
comment on it. I couldn’t have walked that distance myself in thin
evening slippers, and I am a good walker. My sister was a very bad
one; she hated it. I have said from the beginning that I was sure she
had no intention when she started of going to the farm. But, of
course, if she expected to be driven there . . .”
“You are sure she never mentioned any friend with a car whom she
expected to meet in this neighbourhood?” persisted Fayre.
“Absolutely certain,” was the decisive answer. “As a matter of fact,
she hardly mentioned any of her own friends to me. We had not met for
a long time and most of our talk was about various relations and
acquaintances who belonged to the past. What had happened to them, and
that sort of thing. You know how one goes over ancient history at
those times. Besides, she knew I took very little interest in the
people among whom she moved latterly. I wish now I had taken more!”
“Did anybody see her leave the house?”
“One of the maids saw her, through the scullery window, going down the
drive. That was how I first knew she had gone out.”
“When was this, Miss Allen?”
“About six, I gather, but the girl was a little vague about the exact
time when I questioned her.”
“And when did you first hear of it?”
“About half-past six. I went back to the drawing-room when I had
finished my letters and did not find her there. The maid came in to
make up the fire and I asked her if she had seen her. I was astonished
to hear that she had gone out.”
Fayre held out his hand.
“It is more than good of you to have been so frank with me,” he said
gratefully. “You have cleared up one or two points that were puzzling
me. I am ashamed of myself for worrying you about such a painful
subject. My only excuse is that I am lunching with Leslie’s solicitor
and all is grist that comes to his mill just now.”
“I am only too glad to be of help. You must remember that I, too, have
my reasons for wishing to see this matter cleared up. Give my love to
Cynthia when you see her.”
Fayre rode on to Whitbury with one load, at least, off his mind. Miss
Allen, quite unconsciously, had cleared herself definitely of
suspicion. Just about the time Mrs. Draycott must have reached the
farm her sister was questioning the servant concerning her. With a
sigh of relief he wiped Miss Allen off his list of suspects.
He found Grey hungrily awaiting his lunch. While they were eating
Fayre gave him a brief account of his morning’s work.
“We haven’t done so badly,” he finished. “We have corroborated the
tramp’s story of the car and, what is more, got at least part of the
number. We know that the mud-guard was injured and is probably marked
with red paint. We have established the fact that there was only one
person, a man, in it when it returned and I see no reason to doubt the
tramp’s assertion that there were two people in it going. It looks
very much as if one of those people was Mrs. Draycott. Anyhow, it is
odd that the tramp should have had the impression that one was a
woman. He made the suggestion on his own, without any prompting from
us. Best of all, we have established the fact that Mrs. Draycott could
not, according to the maid at Miss Allen’s, have been shot before
six-thirty. The doctor has put it down as not later than seven. That
fits in, more or less, with the arrival and departure of the
mysterious car.”
Grey nodded.
“It’s straightening itself out a little,” he agreed. “But the car is a
tough proposition! That number, by the way, is a London one, as you
probably know, which widens our field considerably.”
“Miss Allen, also, is convinced that her sister never walked to the
farm.”
“I know. I gather that she emphasized that point in her interview with
Sir Edward. I have seen Leslie, by the way, and I put your questions
to him. His description of the scene at the farm after the arrival of
Gregg was very circumstantial. He told me one thing that rather struck
me.”
“Anything that bears on our friend the doctor?”
“Yes. It’s small, but interesting. Fortunately for us, Leslie has got
what is known as an oral memory. That is to say, he remembers things
he has heard more easily than things he has read. With most people it
is the other way round. He told me that, at school, he always had to
say a thing out loud before he could learn it. The result is that he
was able to repeat to me, almost word for word, everything that was
said in his presence that night. Of course, the peculiar circumstances
helped to impress it all on his memory. He shares your opinion of
Gregg. Thinks him a tough customer and inclined to be brutal, at any
rate in speech. This being the case, he was surprised at the emotion
Gregg showed at the sight of Mrs. Draycott’s body. He says it was
slight, but quite apparent, and would have been perfectly natural in a
layman. In Gregg, it struck him as curious. There was something
curious, also, in the wording of Gregg’s answer to the Sergeant when
he asked him if he had ever seen the deceased. Leslie says he thought
nothing of it at the time, but it remained in his memory and he is
certain that he has it correct.”
“I thought Gregg denied ever having met her.”
“His exact words were that she was no friend of his. The Sergeant,
very naturally, accepted it as a denial.”