The Satan Bug Part 6

"Not this time, I'm afraid. I have to go out. Twice. I want you to come with me the first time, that's why I wanted you here."

She didn't ask any questions. She picked up the phone, ordered whisky for me, sherry for herself. Old shirt-sleeves brought it up, huffing a bit after climbing the stairs. Mary smiled at him and said, "Could we have dinner in our room please?"

"Dinner?" Shirt-sleeves stiffened in outrage, his face going an imposible shade redder. "In your room? Dinner! That's a good 'un! Where do you think you've landed- Claridges?" He brought his gaze down from the ceiling, where he'd been imploring heaven, and looked at Mary again.

He opened his mouth to speak, closed it, kept looking at her and I knew he was a lost man. "Claridges," he repeated mechanically. "I-well, I'll see what can be done. Against the house rules, mind-you-but-it'll be a pleasure, ma'am."

He left. I said, "There should be a law against you. Pour me some whisky. And pa.s.s that phone."

I made three calls. The first was to London, the second to Inspector Wylie and the third to Hardanger. He was still at Mordon. He sounded tired and irritated and I didn't wonder. He'd had a long and probably frustrating day.

"Cavell?" His voice was almost a bark. "How did you get on with those two men you saw? At the farm, I mean."

"Bryson and Chipperfield? Nothing there. There are two hundred witnesses who will swear that neither of them were within five miles of Mordon between eleven and midnight last night."

"What are you talking about? Two hundred--"

"They were at a dance. Anything turned up in the statements made by our other suspects in number one lab?"

"Did you expect anything to turn up?" he said sourly. "Do you think the killer would have been so dumb as to leave himself without an alibi. They've all got alibis-and d.a.m.n good ones. I'm still not convinced there wasn't an outsider at work."

"Chessingham and Dr. Hartnell. How strong are their stories?"

"Why those two?" His voice was a suspicious crackle.

"I'm interested in them. I'm going to see them to-night and I wondered what their stories were."

"You're not going to see anyone without my say-so, Cavell." His voice was pretty close to a shout. "I don't want people blundering in--"

"I won't blunder. I'm going, Hardanger. The General said I was to have a free hand, didn't he? Blocking my way- which you can do-is not my idea of giving a free hand. The General wouldn't like it, Hardanger."

A silence. Hardanger was bringing himself under control. At last he said, in a quieter tone, "You gave me to believe that you didn't suspect Chessingham."

"I want to see him. He's not only acute and observant, he's more than usually friendly with Dr. Hartnell. It's Hartnell I'm really interested in. He's an outstanding research man, young and financially irresponsible. He thinks because he's clever with bugs he can be the same on the stock market. Three months ago Hartnell put all his cash into a fly-by-night company who'd splurged their adverts in all the national dailies. He lost the lot. Then he mortgaged his house a few weeks before I left Mordon. I believe he lost most of that too, trying to recoup."

"Why the h.e.l.l didn't you tell me before?" Hardanger demanded.

"It just suddenly came to me this evening."

"It just suddenly came--" Hardanger's voice cut off as if he had been strangled. Then he said, thoughtfully, "Isn't that too easy? Jumping on Hartnell? Because he's heading for the bankruptcy court?"

"I don't know. As I say, he's not clever at everything. I've got to find out. Both have alibis, of course?"

"Both were at home. Their families vouch for them. I want to see you later." He'd given up. "I'll be at the County in Alfringham."

"I'm at the Waggoner's Rest. A couple of minutes away. Could you come round to see us? About ten?"

" Us?"

"Mary came down this afternoon."

"Mary?" There was surprise in his voice, suspicion that he didn't get round to elaborating but, above all, pleasure. One good reason Hardanger had for not liking me too much was that I'd made off with the best secretary he'd ever had: she'd been with him three years and if any person could ever be said to be the apple of an eye like a basilisk it was Mary.

He said he would be around at ten.

CHAPTER FIVE.

I drove out to Hailem Woods with Mary sitting strangely silent by my side. Over dinner I'd told her the whole story- the whole story. I'd never seen her scared before, but she was that now. Badly. Two frightened people in a car.

We reached Chessingham's house about a quarter to eight. It was an old-fashioned, flat-roofed, stone-built affair with long narrow windows and a flight of stone steps leading up to the front door over a moat-like trench that ran right round the house and gave light to the bas.e.m.e.nt. High trees, sighing in the cold night wind, surrounded the house on four sides and it was beginning to rain heavily. It was a place and a night in keeping with our mood.

Chessingham had heard the car and met us at the top of the steps. He looked pale and strained but there was nothing in that, everyone who was in anyway connected with "E" block had every reason for looking pale and strained that day.

"Cavell," he said. He didn't offer his hand, but opened the door wide and stood sideways to let us in. "I heard you were in Mordon. Must say I didn't expect you out here though. I thought they asked me enough questions to-day as it was."

"This is a pretty unofficial visit," I a.s.sured him. "My wife, Chessingham. When I bring along my wife I leave the handcuffs at home."

It wasn't funny. He shook hands reluctantly with Mary and led us into an old-fashioned sitting-room with heavy Edwardian furniture, velvet drapes from ceiling to floor and a fire burning in a huge open fireplace. There were two people sitting in high-backed arm-chairs by the fire. One was a good-looking young girl of nineteen or twenty, slender, brown-haired and brown-eyed like Chessingham himself. His sister. The other, obviously, was his mother, but much older than I had expected his mother to be. A closer inspection showed that she wasn't really so old, she just looked old. Her hair was white, her eyes had that curious glaze you sometimes see on old people who are coming to the end of their road, and the hands resting on her lap were thin and wrinkled and criss-crossed with blue veins. Not an old woman: a sick woman, a very sick woman, prematurely aged. But she sat very erect and there was a welcoming smile on her thin, rather aristocratic features.

"Mr. and Mrs. Cavell," Chessingham said. "You've heard me speak of Mr. Cavell. My mother, my sister Stella."

"How do you do, both of you?" Mrs. Chessingham had that a.s.sured direct no-nonsense voice that would have gone well with a Victorkn drawing-room and a houseful of servants. She peered at Mary. "My eyes aren't what they used to be, I'm afraid-but, my goodness, you are a beautiful girl. Come and sit beside me. How on earth did you manage it, Mr. Cavell?"

"I think she must have mistaken me for someone else," I said.

"These things happen," Mrs. Chessingham said precisely. For all their age, her eyes could still twinkle. She went on, "That was a dreadful thing that happened out at Mordon to-day, Mr. Cavell. Dreadful. I have been hearing all about it." A pause, again the half-smile. "I hope you haven't come to take Eric to jail already, Mr. Cavell. He hasn't even had dinner yet. All this excitement, you know."

"Your son's only connection with this affair, Mrs. Chessingham, is that he is unfortunate enough to work in number one laboratory. Our only interest in him is his complete and final elimination as a suspect. Every narrowing of the field is an advancement of a kind."

"He doesn't have to be eliminated," Mrs. Chessingham said with some asperity. "Eric has nothing to do with it. The idea is ridiculous."

"Of course. You know that, I know that, but Superintendent Hardanger, who is in charge of investigations, doesn't know that. All statements must must be checked, no matter how unnecessary the checking. I had a great deal of difficulty in persuading the superintendent that I should come instead of one of his own officers." I saw Mary's eyes widen but she recovered herself quickly. be checked, no matter how unnecessary the checking. I had a great deal of difficulty in persuading the superintendent that I should come instead of one of his own officers." I saw Mary's eyes widen but she recovered herself quickly.

"And why did you do that, Mr. Cavell?" I was beginning to feel sorry for young Chessingham, he must have felt foolish and ineffectual with his mother taking command in this fashion.

"Because I know your son. The police don't. Saves seventy-five per cent of the questioning straight away. And Special Branch detectives can ask a great number of brutal and unnecessary questions in a case like this."

"I don't doubt it. Nor do I doubt that you could be as ruthless as any man I've ever known if the occasion arose. But I know you won't on this occasion." She sighed and shifted her hands to the arms of her chair. "I hope you will excuse me. I am an old woman and not very well and so I have some privileges-dinner in bed is one." She turned and smiled at Mary. "I'd like to talk to you, my child. I have so few callers-I make the most of them. Would you like to help me negotiate those dreadful stairs while Stella sees to the dinner?"

When we were alone Chessingham said: "Sorry about Mother. She does tend--"

"I think she's a wonderful woman. No need to apologise." His face lightened a little at that. "About your statement. You said you were at home all night. Mother and sister will of course vouch for that?"

"Of course." He smiled. "They'd vouch for it whether I was at home or not."

"I'd be surprised if they wouldn't, after seeing them," I nodded. "Your mother could say anything and she would be believed. Not your sister. She's young and inexperienced and any competent policeman could break her down inside five minutes. If you were in any way involved, you're too smart not to see that, so your story has to be true. Can they vouch for the entire night-up to eleven-fifteen, say?"

"No." He frowned. "Stella went to bed about ten-thirty. After that I spent a couple of hours on the roof."

"Chessingham's observatory? I've heard of it. No one can prove you were up there?"

"No." He frowned again, thinking. "Does it matter? I haven't even a bicycle and there's no public transport at that time of night. If I was here after ten-thirty I couldn't have made it to Mordon by eleven-fifteen anyway. Four and a half miles, you know."

"Do you know how the crime was carried out?" I asked. "I mean have you heard? By someone making a diversion to allow someone else to cut through the fences. The red herring got away in a Bedford van stolen from Alfringham."

"I'd heard something like that. The police weren't very communicative, but rumours get around."

"Did you know that the van was found abandoned only one hundred and fifty yards from your house?"

"A hundred and fifty yards!" He seemed genuinely startled, then stared moodily into the fire, "That's bad, isn't it?"

"Is it?"

He thought briefly, then grinned. "I'm not as smart as you think. It's not bad, it's good. If I were driving that van I'd have had to go to Alfringham first for it-after leaving here at ten-thirty. Also, if I were the driver, then I obviously couldn't have gone to Mordon-I'd have been making my supposed getaway. Thirdly, I wouldn't have been so d.a.m.ned stupid as to park it at my front door. Fourthly, I can't drive."

"That's, pretty conclusive," I admitted.

"I can make it even more conclusive," he said excitedly. "Lord, I'm not thinking at all to-night. Come up to the observatory."

We went up the stairs. We pa.s.sed a door on the first floor and I could hear the subdued murmur of voices. Mrs. Chessingham and Mary talking. A Slingsby ladder led us up into a square hut affair built in the centre of the flat roof. One end of the hut was blanked off with plywood, an entrance covered by a hanging curtain. At the other end was a surprisingly large reflector telescope set in a perspex cupola.

"My only hobby," Ohessingham said. The strain had left his face to be replaced by the eager excitement of the enthusiast. "I'm a member of the British Astronomical a.s.sociation, Jupiter Section, and a regular correspondent for a couple of astronomical journals-some of them depend almost exclusively on the work of amateurs like myself- and I can tell you that there's nothing less amateurish than an amateur astronomer who's been well and truly bitten by the bug. I wasn't in bed till almost two o'clock this morning-I was making a series of photographs for The Astronomical Monthly The Astronomical Monthly of the Red Spot in Jupiter and the satellite occulting its own shadow." He was smiling broadly in his relief now. "Here's the letter commissioning me to do them-they've been pleased with some other stuff I've sent in." of the Red Spot in Jupiter and the satellite occulting its own shadow." He was smiling broadly in his relief now. "Here's the letter commissioning me to do them-they've been pleased with some other stuff I've sent in."

I glanced at the letter. It had to be genuine, of course.

"Got a set of six photographs. Beauties, too, although I say it myself. Here, I'll let you see them." He disappeared behind the curtain which I took to be the entrance of his darkroom and reappeared with a batch of obviously very new photographs. I took them. They looked terrible to me, just a bunch of greyish dots and streaks against a fuzzily dark background. "Not bad, eh?"

"Not bad." I paused and said suddenly, "Could anyone tell from those pictures when they were taken?"

"That's why I brought you up here. Take those to the Greenwich observatory, have them work out the precise lat.i.tude and longitude of this house and they could tell you within thirty seconds when each of these photographs were taken. Go on, take them with you."

"No thanks." I handed back the photographs and smiled at him. "I know when I've already wasted enough time- and I've wasted far too much. Send them to The Astronomical Monthly The Astronomical Monthly with my best wishes." with my best wishes."

We found Mary and Stella talking by the fireside. A few civilities, a polite refusal of a drink and we were on our way. Once in the car I turned the heater switch up as far as it would go but it didn't seem to make any difference. The switch probably wasn't attached to any heater. It was bitterly cold and raining heavily. I hoped the rain would ease.

I said to Mary, "What did you find out?"

"I hate this business," she said intensely. "I hate it. This sneaking underhand approach to people. The lies-the lies to a lovely old person like Mrs. Chessingham. And to that nice girl. To think I worked all those years for the superintendent and never thought--"

"I know," I said. "But you have to fight fire with fire. Think of this double murderer. Think of this man with the Satan Bug in his pocket. Think of--"

"I'm sorry. I really am sorry. It's just that I'm afraid I was never cut out to be-well, never mind. I didn't find out much. They have a maid-that's why dinner was ready shortly after Stella rose. Stella lives at home-her brother insists on it, insists she spends all her time looking after her mother. Her mother is really pretty ill, I gathered from Stella. May go at any time-though she's been told by her doctor that a transfer to a warm climate, like Greece or Spain, might add ten years to her life. Some dangerous combination of asthma and a heart condition. But her mother doesn't want to go, says she'd rather die in Wiltshire than vegetate in Alicante. Something like that. That was all, I'm afraid."

It was enough. It was more than enough. I sat without speaking, thinking maybe the surgeons who wanted to give me a new foot had the right of it, when Mary said abruptly, "And you? Learn anything?"

I told her what had happened. At the end she said, "I heard you telling the superintendent that you really wanted to see Chessingham to find out what you could from him about Dr. Hartnell. What did you find out?"

"Nothing. Never asked him."

"You never-why on earth not?"

I told her why not.

Dr. Hartnell and his wife-they had no children-were at home. Both of them knew Mary-we'd met, socially, once, during the brief time Mary had been staying with me when I lived in Mordon-but they clearly didn't regard our visit as a social call. Everyone I was meeting was nervous, very much on the defensive. I didn't blame them. I'd have been nervous too if I thought someone was trying to hang a couple of murders round my neck.

I went through the spiel about how my visit was only a formality and the unpleasant experience I was sparing them by coming myself instead of letting one of Hardanger's men do the questioning. Their activities in the earlier part of the evening were of no interest to me. I asked them about the later part and they told me. At nine-thirty, they said, they had sat down to watch television-specifically, The Golden Cavaliers The Golden Cavaliers, a TV version of a successful stage play that had just finished a long run in London.

"Did you see that?" Mary broke in. "So did I. Pierre was out late last night with a business friend and I turned it on. I thought it was wonderful." For some minutes they discussed the play. I knew Mary had seen it and I knew she was finding out whether they also had really seen it and there was no question but that they had. After some time I said, "When did it finish?"

"About eleven."

"And then?"

"A quick bite of supper and bed," Hartnell said.

"By, say, eleven-thirty?"

"By that, at the latest."

"Well, that's perfectly satisfactory." I heard Mary clear her throat and looked across casually. Her steepled fingers were resting lightly in her lap. I knew what that meant- Hartnell was lying. This I couldn't understand-but I'd infinite faith in her judgement.

I glanced at the clock. I'd asked for a call at eight-thirty and now it was exactly that. Inspector Wylie was on time. The bell rang, Hartnell spoke into the phone then handed it to me. "For you, Cavell. The police, I think."

I spoke, holding the ear-piece fractionally away from my head. Wylie had a naturally carrying voice and I'd asked him to be good and loud. He was. He said, "Cavell? Ah, you told me you were going to be there so I took a chance. This is urgent. Nasty spot of bother at Hailem Junction. Close tie-up with Mordon, if I'm not mistaken. Very unpleasant indeed. Can you get down there immediately?"

"As soon as I can. Where's Hailem Junction?"

"Not half a mile from where you are. The bottom of the lane, turn right and pa.s.s The Green Man. Just there."

I hung up, rose and hesitated. "That was Inspector Wylie. Some trouble at Hailem Junction. I wonder if I could leave Mary here for a few minutes? The Inspector said it was something unpleasant--"

"Of course." With his alibi accepted Dr. Hartnell was almost jovial. "We'll look after her, old man."

I parked the car a couple of hundred yards down the lane, took my torch from the glove box and turned back towards Hartnell's house. A quick look through the lit window and I knew I had nothing to fear from that quarter. Hartnell was pouring drinks and all three seemed to be talking animatedly, the way people do when the strain is off. I knew I could rely on Mary keeping them talking there indefinitely. Mrs. Hartnell, I noticed, was still sitting in the chair she'd been occupying on our arrival, she hadn't even risen to greet us. Maybe her legs were troubling her-elastic stockings aren't as undetectable as some manufacturers would like to think.

The garage was locked by a heavy padlock but the master locksmith who had been responsible for a tiny part of the training of myself and a score of others in the now distant past would have laughed at it. I didn't laugh at it, I was no master locksmith, but even so I had it open in less than two minutes. I hardly cut myself at all.

Somewhere along the line Hartnell's ill-advised plunge into the stock market had compelled him to sell his car and now his sole means of transport was a Vespa scooter, although I knew he used a bus to and from Mordon. The scooter was in good condition and looked as if it had been cleaned recently, but I wasn't interested in the clean parts, only the dirty ones. I examined the machine closely and finally sc.r.a.ped off some of the dried mud under the front mudguard and put it in a polythene bag, which I sealed. I spent another two minutes looking around the garage, left and locked it.