Henrietta Who Part 25

"What's the trouble?"

"Too ardent for my liking."

"It's not whether you like it, old chap," grinned Blake. "It's if the lady likes it."

"She's got quite enough on her plate as it is," said Sloan primly.

And he told Digger the whole story.

"A proper mix-up, isn't it?" Blake said appreciatively. "Rather you than me."

"Thank you. Crosby, if you want to be sick go outside."

"Who else knew you wanted Jenkins?" asked Blake, who was nowhere near as casual as he sounded.

Sloan frowned. "The Rector of Larking and his wife. Meyton's their name."

"Lesson One," quoted Blake. "The cloth isn't always what it..."

"It is this time."

"Oh, really? And who else is in the know?"

"No one that I know of. There's a James Heber Hibbs, Esquire..."

"Gent?"

"Landed Gent," said Sloan firmly, "of The Hall, Larking, but he doesn't know about Jenkins. Not unless the girl's told him and I don't quite see when she would have done. Owns about half the village if you ask me."

"For Hibbs read Nibs," said Digger frivolously. "Has he got a missus?"

"Yes, but you call her madam, my lad."

"And their connection with this case?"

"Obscure," said Sloan bitterly.

"Anyone else?"

Sloan hesitated. "There's a certain Major Hocklington but..."

"But what?"

"He might be dead."

"I see. Well, when you've made your mind up..."

"He might have had the M.C. and the D.S.O., too."

"That'll be a great help in finding him," murmured Digger affably, "but I'd rather he had a scar on his left cheek, if it's all the same to you."

"There's always the possibility," said Sloan, "that he had an agent."

"If he's dead, for instance?" Blake moved out of the photographer's line of vision.

"That's right."

Blake pointed the same way as the photographer's camera. "He's not going to tell you. Not now."

"No," said Sloan morbidly, "though, oddly enough, I'm after his blood too."

It was something after eight o'clock that evening when Inspector Sloan, supported by a still rather wan-looking Constable Crosby, reported back to Superintendent Leeyes in person at the Berebury Police Station.

"As pretty a kettle of fish, sir," Sloan said, "as you'll find anywhere."

"Suicide or murder?" demanded Leeyes.

But it wasn't as simple as that.

Dr. Dabbe had got to Cullingoak at a speed which, as far as Sloan was concerned, didn't bear thinking about. He was well known as the fastest driver in Calles.h.i.+re and nothing that his arch enemy, Inspector Harpe of Traffic Division, could do seemed to slow him down at all.

At the house Dr. Dabbe had met his opposite number, the Consultant Pathologist for East Calles.h.i.+re, Dr. Soriey McPherson. The two doctors had treated each other with an elaborate and ritual courtesy which reminded Sloan of nothing so much as the courts.h.i.+p display of a pair of ducks at mating time.

With professional punctiliousness each had invited the other's opinion on every possible point.

The upshot-after, in Sloan's private opinion, a great deal of unnecessary billing and cooing-was that Cyril Edgar Jenkins had probably been shot in the head by someone sitting opposite him across the table, who had pulled out a revolver and leaned forward.

"We can't be certain, of courrrse"-Dr. Soriey McPherson had rolled his "r's" in an intimidating way-"but it looks as if the rrevolver was placed in deceased's rright hand after death."

"I see, Doctor."

"Suicide," he went on, "was doubtless meant to be in-ferrrred."

Sloan thought the "r's" were never going to stop.

"We'll be needing a wee look at the poor chap's fingerprints on the revolver handle. D'you not agree, Dabbe?"

Dr. Dabbe had agreed. The powder burns, the position of the shot, the body, the revolver, all indicated murder made to look like suicide.

Sloan said all this to the Superintendent "But only inferred, sir. Not proved yet."

Leeyes snorted in a dissatisfied way. "Except, then, that he's dead, we're no further forward..."

Sloan said nothing. If Leeyes cared to regard that as progress there was nothing he could say.

"What about the blood?" said the Superintendent.

"Dr. Dabbe's grouping it now. He's going to ring."

Leeyes drummed a pencil on his desk. "You say no one in Cullingoak saw or heard anything?"

"No one. The people in the house next door on one side were out and the woman in the other always has a lay down after her lunch. Anyone could walk in the back, just like we did. He did have a job in Calleford, by the way. She confirms that."

"No other children?"

"No sir, not that she knew of."

Leeyes grunted. "And Major Hocklington-where have you got with him?"

"The Army are doing what they can, but..."

"I know, Sloan. Sat.u.r.day night's not the best time."

"No, sir. If he were a serving officer now it would be quite simple."

"I presume," coldly, "you checked the Army List days ago."

"Yes, sir."

"So we have to wait." Leeyes wasn't good at waiting.

"Yes, sir."

"And our other friends?"

Sloan turned back the pages of his notebook though he knew well enough what was written there. "Bill Thorpe excused himself pretty smartly after the inquest and went off just before Arbican went back to Calleford."

"Went off where?"

"Larking, he says. He wouldn't have lunch in Berebury with the Meytons and Henrietta."

"Why not?"

"Said he hadn't time. Had to get back to the farm."

"And did he?"

Sloan said carefully. "No one happened to see him at s.h.i.+re Oak-which, of course, is not to say he wasn't there."

"Did you get his background?"

"It seems all right, sir. Second son of middling-size farmers with quite a good name locally. Lived in Larking all his life. Known Henrietta ever since she was a child. Been home from Agricultural College for about two years."

"Found the body with the postman, could have knocked it down, stuck to the girl like a leech since it happened, wants to marry her quickly." Leeyes's rasping tones supplanted Sloan's matter-of-fact report. "Could have killed Cyril Jenkins. Could have known the whole story. Could have wanted money..."

"Why, sir?"

"He's the second son, Sloan. You've just said so."

"Yes, sir." It was futile to argue with the Superintendent.

Leeyes grunted. "And this other fellow-the one with the money. What about him?"

"Hibbs?" said Sloan. The Superintendent was always suspicious of people with money, a.s.suming it-in the absence of specific evidence to the contrary, to be ill-gotten. Sloan cleared his throat uneasily. "He and his wife went into Calle-ford for the day."

"They did what?"

"Went into Calleford," repeated Sloan, going on hastily, "they had a meal at The Tabard. She went to a dress shop and he called in at a corn chandlers in the morning..."

"Whatever for?"

"He's hand-rearing some pheasants this year, sir." Sloan himself had always wondered what you did at a corn chandlers. "And he visited a wine merchant just after lunch."

"When was Jenkins shot?"

"Roughly about three o'clock." The two pathologists had been as agreed on this as on everything else.

"Could he have done it?"

"Easily. So could Bill Thorpe. Anyone could have done it. Even Arbican if he had had a mind to-to say nothing of Major Hocklington. Always supposing he exists."

Leeyes was thinking, not listening. "Sounds as if it could have been someone Jenkins knew fairly well-all this business of back doors and sitting down at the table together."

"Yes, sir." Inspector Blake had cottoned on to that fact, too, as he went methodically about his routine investigation. "The only trouble is that we don't know who it was that Cyril Jenkins knew."

"No." Leeyes frowned. "Or what."

"The whole story, I expect," said Sloan gloomily. "That's why he had to go."

The telephone rang. Leeyes answered it and handed it to Sloan. "The hospital," he said. "Dr. Dabbe."

Sloan listened for a moment, thanked the pathologist, promised to let him know something later and then rang off.

"The late Cyril Jenkins's blood was Group AB," he announced.

"And the girl's?" asked Leeyes.

"We don't know yet. We're going to ask her if we can have some to see."

"Tricky," p.r.o.nounced Leeyes. "Be very careful..."

"Why, sir?"

"Because if this case ever gets to court"-he stressed the word "if heavily, and implied if it didn't it would be Sloan's fault-"if it does then you will probably find some clever young man arguing that you've committed a technical a.s.sault, that's why."

"But if the putative father..."

"Get as many witnesses to her free consent as you can," advised Leeyes sourly. "That's all."