Part 25 (1/2)
”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?”