When Franklin arrived outside the house, the crowd was still pretty dense and a couple of mounted policemen were keeping the roadway clear. The constable at the main gate evidently had his orders and as he passed Franklin through, the crowd stared excitedly.
That was the first time Franklin had seen the house properly—a two-storeyed building much like a country vicarage and evidently a Georgian survival. Curiously enough, its private road was different from the usual half-moon. On entering the gate you kept parallel to the main thoroughfare, then cut back sharply towards the house; in other words, the shrubbery was in the shape of the metal knob of a malacca cane. Moreover, whoever had planted it must have had his own ideas as to privacy. From the main road, except for its upper windows, the house was invisible since even then its laurels, hollies and privet made a screen which the eye could hardly penetrate.
As Franklin entered the dining-room and Usher closed the door behind him, Wharton emerged from the lounge with a man whom Franklin knew he had seen somewhere before. As soon as Wharton mentioned the name, he knew where—in the picture pages of the press and on the news bulletins of the screen.
“Fred! here’s somebody I’d like you to meet. Mr. Franklin… Fred Dunally.”
Franklin smiled. “Glad to see you, Mr. Dunally. I’ve seen your photo often enough.”
Dunally’s weatherbeaten face sort of crinkled to a smile.
“We can’t help that, sir.”
“Fred came along to help us,” explained Wharton. “We picked him up at Ipswich this morning. He’s just off to the National Sporting Club.”
“Got to meet Lord Weatherlie and the Committee, sir. I hear they want eight of us as bearers at the funeral… and I suppose I’ll be one.”
The tone was genuinely regretful that Franklin’s question was almost instinctive. “He was a good sort?”
“He was that. A real sport, sir. When he beat me, sir, he had me mesmerised from the start; I knew I was beat before I left my corner.” He shook his head. “We shan’t see another like him. A regular gentleman, sir, and one of the old sort like what you read about. A regular toff, sir, that’s what he was—and no more swank about him than there is about you and me.”
They saw him off at the door, then Wharton nodded his head reflectively. “He’s a good chap—Fred. I’ve known him for years, when his ears were as smooth as yours. Where d’you think he’s off to now?”
“National Sporting Club, you said.”
“Yes, but first of all he’s going to have another look at France. Curious sentimental sort of morbidity those people have!… still, it does him credit.”
“Do you know what I thought as I watched him go down the path?” asked Franklin. “I thought to myself. There goes what might have been a very pretty solution to a mystery. Ex-heavyweight champion kills rival, and so on.’ Only he strikes me as the last person in the world to kill anybody.”
“He wouldn’t kill a kitten!” said Wharton. “But come along in. We’ll have a pow-wow with Norris.”
Inside the lounge, the fire looked cheerful. Outside there was a raw drizzle and the brown paper over the hole in the far window gave the room a cockeyed sort of look.
“Where’s that pussy-footed valet?” asked Wharton.
“In the kitchen all right, sir!” said Norris, and conveyed a wink to Franklin. “He won’t poke his nose out of there.”
“Hm! Well, as I was telling Norris, things aren’t breaking any too well. France and Somers were complementary, so to speak. If either had been alive, we’d have had quite a lot of information about the other. As it is we’ve merely got Usher. Hayles is in bed with a breakdown.”
“Really! As bad as that!”
“Well, the doctor says he’s to be kept quiet and the last thing to do is to remind him about this case. His housekeeper’s there, and his mother’s due this afternoon. Claire’s taking away the correspondence and getting a man to see to what’s urgent. Of course we’ve got Hayles’s key to his room! that’s something.”
“Claire did come round then?”
“Oh, yes! spent best part of an hour here. Fine looking fellow!”
“Isn’t he? Regular guards’ officer type. They say he’s the best driver in England at the moment.”
Wharton gave his usual grunt. “He’s welcome.… He won’t break my neck. By the way I asked him very tactfully about Hayles. He laughed!” Wharton looked quite indignant. “He seemed to insinuate that France did all what you’d call the managerial work himself. Hayles seems to have been sort of found a job—had to make himself generally useful.”
Franklin was reminded of something. “Isn’t that in the book?—about France having his own original ideas about fixing up contracts and so on?”
“What book’s that?”
“Two Years in the Ring. France and Hayles collaborated in it. You mean to say you haven’t read it!”
Wharton snorted, then changed the subject. This time it was Franklin who winked at Norris.
“What’s all this about our friend in the kitchen?”
Franklin told him in detail. “Good work!” was Wharton’s only comment. Franklin failed to catch Norris’s eye, then made his question as casual as possible.
“What did Usher have to say for himself?”
“Haven’t asked him! Unless Hanson releases him, he’ll only tell a pack of lies.… Also we’re expecting the result of an inquiry to come through. What name was that you gave?”
“Forrest. Major Forrest.”
“Norris, ring up Hanson and Maude and say Major Forrest wishes to see Mr. Hanson most urgently at four thirty. Make sure he’ll be there—then ring off.”
“Something else you might like to know,” he told Franklin when the receiver was hung up again, “and that’s how we stand. First about France. His turn at the Paliceum was over at 9.15 and he left the building at 9.45. Nothing seems to have happened while he was there except that he received a telephone call just before 8.00. As soon as he left the building, he stepped into the fog and how he got to this house we haven’t been able to trace. He didn’t call at the Claire’s because he knew they’d be away, as Claire told us this morning. Also if he came straight here, it fits in with the time Menzies gave.”
“Exactly!” said Franklin. “But do you know, I’ve been wondering a lot about that man we heard in the house and I’ve thought of something else since last night. Usher and I both took it for granted it was France. Just come here a second, will you, and have a look through this window.”
He manipulated the General to the left-hand side window.
“Now then, look out there! You can see the kitchen light. I know you couldn’t do that last night, but the point is this. Yesterday afternoon this window couldn’t be said to overlook anything, because of the fog; all the same it might be said to overhear the kitchen door. And remember that except when Usher spoke to me first, we spoke, as I told you, very quietly. Very well then. Take the events as they occurred. Somebody who’d no right to be in the house heard me knock at the front door. He therefore prepared to bolt out the back way—”
“Why?”
“Because he knew that at any moment servants or the owner might arrive. However, to go on. He got ready to bolt out of the window—the way he’d come in. Then he heard Usher call out to me, and thinking it was himself that was being spoken to, bolted like a rabbit for the other way out—the front.”
“And he had time to shut the lounge door after him?” asked Norris.
“Why not? It’s instinctive. You try it and see.”
“And the blind was still down as Usher left it on the Saturday?”
“Why not? He hadn’t got so far as getting out of the window. He was at the window.”
Norris looked at Wharton. The General took up the argument. “You’re assuming that the marks we found on the window were footmarks.”
Franklin looked surprised. “Naturally!”
“But they weren’t! They weren’t made with a boot at all. All we can say is that they’re scratches. We daren’t go so far as to rely implicitly on their having been made to imitate a boot mark—though that’s almost certain.”
“In other words there’s no proof that anybody actually did come through that window!”
“That’s right.”
“Then why make the cut to get at the fastener, if the window wasn’t opened?”
Wharton shook his head. “We don’t know if the window was opened or not. All we know is what I told you. If anybody did get in, he made no mark. On the other hand, this mark is here—looking as if it might be a footmark… only it isn’t.”
“If I might suggest something,” said Norris. “Mr. Franklin hinted at two things. First, that whoever was in the house, or shall we say whoever got into the house while he was temporarily away, knew he’d be alone. Now, how could he know that unless he were Hayles? Who else’d know the servants weren’t due back till four o’clock?”
“Anybody might!” put in Wharton quietly. “France might have told half London for all we know.”
“Well, I suppose that is so, sir.… And then, secondly, Mr. Franklin said whoever was in the house would want to bolt because at any moment somebody might be coming in. Now if you substitute the words ‘at four o’clock’ for ‘at any moment,’ things look different.”
“Hm!” went Wharton. “Why don’t you say ‘Hayles’ direct, instead of being mysterious? You see,” he explained to Franklin, “we followed up Hayles from the time of boarding the train at Chingford. If he left the train en route, he couldn’t have got here so soon, because the train travelled faster than anything else. The line was clear for one thing. And as he kept on the train to Liverpool Street, he could have got to St. John’s Wood at 3.30, because we’ve tested it both ways and seen the actual times done yesterday. He could have been in this house before 3.35. What did his housekeeper say exactly?”
Franklin pulled out his notebook.
“At about 4.10 she said he’d come in about ten minutes before. That might mean anything… but it gives us twenty minutes when Hayles might have been in here.”
“A job for you,” said Wharton. “We’ll have to pin her down closer than that.”
Franklin smiled. “I know it’s no affair of mine, but why go to all that trouble? If there was any killing done, Hayles couldn’t have done it.”
“Possibly not—but he might have been in partnership with the one who did.”
“I suppose you haven’t anything new about that woman—the golden haired one?”
“Not at the moment. We’re on that Lucy business now, and the woman who called here on the Tuesday night—unless that was one of Usher’s red herrings. All the same, I doubt if a woman cut that hole.”
“You found the paper?”
“In the park… thrown over from the road. Usual brown paper and seccotine.” He caught the further question in Franklin’s eye. “Nearer St. John’s Wood Station than this… in the direction of Hayles’s flat. And there isn’t a single print in the house that we can’t account for. Whoever broke in—if he did break in—had gloves on.”
“And there were no burglaries in the immediate district,” added Norris.
“Any point in arguing out what he was in the house for?”
“I don’t think so,” said Wharton emphatically. “There are too many things to be taken into account. Time enough for that when we’ve found out if France did kill himself and if Somers did commit suicide. That might be out to-night.”
“One unusual thing did strike me as I came in. You might imagine that all this business depended on the fog. Don’t you think, considering the way the house is shielded from observation, that the fog had nothing to do with it?”
“Hm! And what’s the application?”
“There isn’t any—it just struck me, that’s all. And what about the back way?”
“The fog wouldn’t make any difference to that. You could slip round to the back of the house without risk.”
“Just a second, sir, before I forget it,” broke in Norris. “We were rather taking Mr. Hayles for granted. But now I come to think it over, he couldn’t have been the one in the house!”
“Why not?”
“For this reason, sir. He daren’t have been in the house when he was heard—and that was about four o’clock—because he was the one person who knew the servants were due back then.”
Wharton’s smile was an exasperating one. “Couldn’t he have been here? He’s the very fellow who had a right to be here! If anybody had come back he could have rushed to the door and claimed to have made the discovery of the bodies!”
But Cotter still had a shrewd thrust. “Then why did he bolt?”
“Because… well, I’ll give you some reasons. He may have thought an alibi was safer. Or he may have lost his nerve. But, this is what I think. It was the voice that scared him and made him bolt. It was the unexpected voice. Franklin’s voice!”
“Just a minute, sir. Mr. Franklin just said he and Usher were talking sort of quiet. Then how did Hayles hear him?”
“That’s where I venture to differ from both of you,” said Wharton. “You both have the idea that fog deadens sound. Quite the other way about—the more water vapour in the air, the easier to hear. We can’t test it at the moment, but I’m sure I’m right. I think it was Hayles in the house. I think he heard Usher’s voice as he stood at this window. He didn’t worry about that because what he next expected to hear was probably the voice of a stranger. But the voice he did hear—Franklin’s—was quite different. He was a detective, as Hayles knew. That brought the panic. But remember there was a delay before he bolted. That was because he had some job to finish. Then as Franklin stepped into the kitchen, the job was done—or undone—and he was out of the house like a madman.”
Each was putting to himself the same question—what was the job that had to be finished? Then, “What about the Saturday night?” asked Franklin. “Alibis correct?”
“Absolutely! Usher, Somers, Hayles—everybody. Not a flaw anywhere.” He made himself a spill and lighted his pipe. “Still, that’s nothing—merely the first casting of the net.”
“And yet France had suspicions of each of the three you mentioned, or else why did he send me the specimens of their writing?”
Wharton shook his head.
“Perhaps Usher may have some idea,” went on Franklin.
Wharton shrugged his shoulders. “Usher’s was included. He was suspected… with the others.”
“Surely not! That must have been all bluff. How could he have suspected the man he put in the house?”
The General shook his head and left it at that and if Franklin had found leisure to think it out, he’d have known that far more was known about Usher than he d given the others credit for. However, the argument went on, about it and about, till finally Wharton looked at his watch.
“Quarter past four. Norris, tell that flat-footed sleuth to bring in some tea… for three.”
“Not for me!” said Franklin quickly. “I’m going out.”
“What’s the hurry? You’re not seeing Claire yet.” He laughed. “I see. Want to enjoy a free meal! And where’ll you be when you leave Claire?”
“Home probably. Want anything?”
“Hm! May do… about the inquest. Cotter’ll be in charge. We’ll simply have an adjournment for a fortnight.”
“But won’t that spill the beans? I mean, won’t everybody wonder why?”
“Let ’em!” said Wharton laconically. “We’ll fill this case so full of technicalities that they won’t know what the devil we do want.”
“My God!” said Franklin. “And they call it an inquest!”
Norris came back. “He’s bringing it, sir. Had it all ready.” And as an afterthought, “He’s a wily bird that!”
“Then he’s a lesson to us all,” said Wharton sententiously. “And mind you keep an eye on him while I’m out. If anybody asks for him—at the door or on the ’phone—say he’s out. When I ring up for him, have him here at the double. See you later, John!”
“Right-ho!” said Franklin. Then at the door he hesitated. “Oh, that reminds me. Any chance of Mr. Travers having a look round?”
Wharton glared. “Not the least… at present?”
“Right-ho!” said Franklin casually. “You’re probably right. It might have been a bit awkward.” And he drew back to let Usher pass with the tray.