Chapter Sixteen

He was standing at the bus stop from Bramley when he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see the ginger moustache of Inspector Murray. “Mr Applegate,” the Inspector said, “can you spare me a few minutes, eh?”

In spite of the interrogative eh he did not consider this really a question – or thought it at least a question permitting only one answer. There was, after all, a bus in another hour, it was raining, and after his encounter with Eileen and her organisation there was something comforting about the presence of a police official at his side. He wondered mildly where the Inspector would take him for their little chat. Did Murdstone boast a Lyons? Or would it be a slightly seedy Graham Greene-ish pub? If a pub, was Murray a bottled or draught beer man? He was a little disconcerted when the Inspector turned briskly into a dung-coloured brick building that said “Kent County Constabulary” on a lighted lamp outside. The sight of a sergeant sitting at a desk, and of constables who straightened up respectfully at sight of the Inspector was not after all as comforting as it might have been. Nor was the bristling of the Inspector’s ginger moustache exactly reassuring, when they sat opposite each other in a little, bare room. As Applegate remembered, that moustache had formerly not bristled but drooped.

“I thought you’d like to know Winterbottom has been found.” The Inspector seemed able to put a questioning note into the simplest remark. “At home,” he continued. “It seems the knife was the last straw to him, as you might say. He felt his dignity was hurt, he’d had enough of life at Bramley, he wanted to go home. He hadn’t money for fare, hitch-hiked his way back. His father doesn’t intend to send him back to the school after what has happened. Can’t say I blame him. Now, I’ve talked to the boy. I’ve checked his story and it seems all right. He’s either a better actor than I’ve seen on the stage this year, or he had nothing to do with killing Montague.”

It was unwise, a legal friend had once told Applegate, to say anything at all to the police, and it was almost fatal to offer statements. Nevertheless, there was something about the Inspector’s interrogative air – his last sentence had ended on a characteristic upward inflection – that positively demanded answers. Fighting down an inclination to ask the number of actors the Inspector had in fact seen on the stage that year, Applegate asked instead whether any link had been traced between Winterbottom and Montague.

“None. I don’t believe there is any link.” Applegate was mute. “Eh?”

“Perhaps not.”

“We may have been led up the garden, eh? So we come back to two questions. Who took the knife away from you, and when?”

“It might have been any time after I put it in my pocket,” Applegate said lamely. “I thought nothing more of it.”

“Careless, Mr Applegate. And who knew Montague before he came to the school. You didn’t, eh?”

“Certainly not. I met him for the first time when we got out at the station and Miss Pont picked us up.”

“Miss Pont, eh? That’s a fine figure of a girl,” the Inspector said irrelevantly. “So you had no contact with Montague beyond a little casual conversation, at suppertime and such.” The way in which the Inspector’s moustache bristled, and in which he almost said “leetle” for “little” alarmed Applegate. He shook his head.

“No little private conversation, never unbuttoned himself to you, said he wanted to get something off his chest, as you might put it in a manner of speaking.” A rabbit conscious of impending doom, Applegate found nothing to do but shake his head again at this gingery fox.

“Then what were his fingerprints doing in three different places in your bedroom? By the light switch, on the wardrobe, and on the back of a chair?” Applegate gasped. Then, conscious of his open mouth, he smartly snapped it shut. He had remembered to remove the prints in Montague’s room, but had entirely forgotten that Montague’s prints were present in his own room. A fine detective story writer you are, he told himself gloomily. The Inspector had been waiting with an air of immense forbearance, but now he let loose a brisk “Eh?”

“No idea,” Applegate mumbled. “Simply can’t explain it.”

“One very simple explanation. Montague came in to talk to you after you’d left the Ponts. Then you went over to his room, there was a quarrel, you stabbed him, took whatever it was you were quarrelling about. Simple, straightforward. What’s wrong with it?”

This reconstruction was in some points so truthful that Applegate felt admittance of any part of it would be equivalent to admitting the whole. “Motive,” he said, with a gulp. “What motive?”

The Inspector brushed up his ginger moustache. “Bit of a problem. But Montague wasn’t a teacher by profession, you know that. He was a bit of a crook. Did a term in prison during the war. He was part of a drug distributing ring, and got caught. Always the little fellows who get caught. Smoke?”

Applegate accepted the tube, placed it in his mouth, and carefully lighted it. The Inspector stuffed tobacco into a curved pipe.

“Thing is he may have been going straight, but what did he want to take this kind of job for when he’d been selling cars in Warren Street?”

So he was a Warren Street car salesman, Applegate thought with a small feeling of self-congratulation. “Perhaps business was bad.”

“Wasn’t bad enough to make him choose school-mastering for a living. Tell you another thing. Ever heard of Eddie Martin, eh?”

The bigger the lie the better the chance. “No.”

“He was the kingfish of the drug ring – biggest fish we caught anyway. He came down to Murdstone not long ago. Got drowned, accident. Coincidence, I suppose you’d call it.”

“I suppose so. I don’t see what it’s got to do with me.”

“Now, you’re not a qualified teacher either. What are you supposed to be doing down here, eh?”

Here at last Applegate could give an answer that, however improbable it seemed, was true. “I’m a detective story writer, you’ve found that out.”

The Inspector took out from the drawer of his desk a book, on the dust jacket of which donnish figures disported themselves like satyrs, with their goat feet dancing the antic hay. Applegate recognised Where Dons Delight.

“Have you read it?”

“Very clever,” the Inspector said, without committing himself to a definite answer.

“I came down here to get local colour for my next book.”

“And then you got mixed up with this, eh?” He walked up and down the room, puffing at the pipe and flinging out sentences between balloons of smoke. “Tell you something to make you laugh. I believe this story of yours, most of it. I’m just showing you the possibilities. Want you to understand one thing, though. You’re in a mess, young man. You and that girl of yours. Up to the neck. Better tell me about it.”

Had Applegate still possessed the letters and the note he had taken from Montague’s wallet he would have felt strongly inclined to accept this suggestion. But he had not merely committed the offence of concealing material related to the crime, but had been stupid enough to lose it. He shook his head.

“I won’t pretend to see my way through this,” said the Inspector. Puff puff. “But I understand enough to know that you’re in danger.” Puff puff. “And Miss Pont, too, if that interests you.” He took his pipe out of his mouth and stood staring at Applegate, suddenly foxily amiable. “Eh?”

Applegate felt a sudden resurgence of confidence. “Nothing to say, Inspector. About Montague’s prints, has it occurred to you that he might have been in my room in the afternoon or evening, soon after we arrived?”

“Yes. But I don’t fancy that’s the way it was.” Ginger eyebrows drew together with a slightly frightening effect. “All right. You can go.”

“I’m not being detained?” Applegate asked jauntily.

“Why should I keep you in safety when you want to make a fool of yourself? But your blood’s on your own head – or I fear it will be. I hope your head’s a thick one.”