Part 34 (2/2)

And so?

So we must just go on hammering away. Collecting facts and sorting them out. At any rate we have established that it was not Fairfax and not the girl, who was murdered. And again he smiled somewhat bitterly.

Next morning several reports had come in. Fairfax's alibi was in order. The shop at which he had bought the two hand-bags was able to find the purchase in their books for that Wednesday, and a record of their having been sent to Hammersmith that night. The a.s.sistant even claimed to recognize the photograph shewn him. The barmaid at the Sword on the Cross remembered the incident referred to by Fairfax and on seeing his photograph said that he often came in. But she could not, of course, fix the date. However, since Fairfax had been at Braxham for some days before, and had, presumably, gone to France the morning after, this added weight to his story. The most concise and satisfactory confirmation came from the Flints.h.i.+re Hotel, who remembered Fairfax and had a record of his having stayed there that night under the name of Fortescue.

Nice 'ow it all fits in, commented Beef.

I think we can take it as proved, Stute admitted more dryly.

Then Galsworthy had to tell us that both the commissionaire and the box-office clerk at the Cinema clearly remembered Molly Cutler having waited about in the foyer for at least an hour on the day of the suicide, and had often commented on it since. Galsworthy was about to go into details of how upset she had been when Stute cut him short and dismissed him.

'E's a decent young fellow, Beef said. 'Is trouble is 'e keeps too much to 'imself. Never gets among the other fellows. 'Owever, wot with this training. . . .

There are more important matters to be discussed, Beef, than the idiosyncrasies of your a.s.sistant. Have you done as I asked you and questioned the various garages where Rogers might have bought petrol?

Yessir. 'E 'ad some in at Timkins's near the station at some time just before three, but that's all.

Very well. And now we will go round and see the people living beside old Rogers's shop, to see whether they remember hearing the motorbike that night.

The houses of the High Street were old, and as so often happens behind the clearly divided shop fronts, the living quarters were chaotically arranged. The yard of one house would be set behind the back windows of another, while behind a lock-up shop would be the whole of a dwelling-house which was reached by a pa.s.sage running down beside it.

We went first to old Rogers himself, who left his workshop to show us where his adopted nephew had kept his motor-bike. Between Rogers's shop and the next, a dingy furniture store was a public pa.s.sage leading right through to another street, and in the wall of this was a wooden doorway into Rogers's back-yard.

He had fixed that door with a spring catch behind it, and a Yale lock, so that when he went out on his bike he left the latch of the lock up, and when he came back he had only to kick the door and it would stay open for him. You can see the place on the paint-work where he used to kick it. Then he could ride right in, across the yard, and into that shed, where he kept it. It was a heavy machine, and he didn't like wheeling it, old Rogers explained.

Very ingenious, said Stute. But noisy for you if you were sitting in your room behind the shop.

Oh, we didn't mind that, said old Rogers with a smile. We were used to noise when he was about.

I see. So that if, when he came in at eight o'clock that evening, he had come on his motorbike, you would certainly have known it?

Oh yes. But I'm sure he didn't. Unless by any chance he wheeled it in on purpose. Even if he'd ridden it up the pa.s.sage I should have noticed, because it used to resound between those two walls.

So that I am to understand that he came in on his motor-bike between half-past six and seven while you were out, and then went out again on foot?

''That's what it certainly looks like. His bike was in the shed next morning, anyway.

Whose windows are those? queried Stute indicating two very dirty windows which looked out on to the Rogers's back yard. They faced the wall with the door in it from a house behind the shop on that side.

Some people we have nothing to do with. Well, there are a lot of children, and they took to climbing out of that window into our garden, and when I spoke to the mother about it, she got very abusive. Very abusive indeed.

Does she own the shop in front of her house?

Oh no. That's a lock-up sweet shop. These premises are let to hervery cheaply I believe, but the landlord can't get her out. Not very pleasant neighbours for us. Such very dirty children. My wife gets quite worried about them.

I see. How does one get to them?

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