Part 23 (1/2)

They were busy. The building was full of bustle and hurrying voices. They shoved me still hand-cuffed from room to room under escort and barked out intermittent questions. 'Later,' they said. 'Deal with that one later. We've got all night for him.'

I thought with longing of a hot bath, a soft bed, and a handful of aspirins. I didn't get any of them.

At some point late in the evening they gave me a chair in a bare brightly lit little room, and I told them what I had been doing at Humber's and how I had come to kill Adams. I told them everything which had happened that day. They didn't believe me, for which one couldn't blame them. They immediately, as a matter of form, charged me with murder. I protested. Uselessly.

They asked me a lot of questions. I answered them. They asked them again. I answered. They asked the questions like a relay team, one of them taking over presently from another, so that they all appeared to remain full of fresh energy while I grew more and more tired. I was glad I did not have to maintain a series of lies in that state of continuing discomfort and growing fatigue, as it was hard to keep a clear head, even for the truth, and they were waiting for me to make a mistake.

'Now tell us what really happened.'

'I've told you.'

'Not all that cloak and dagger stuff.'

'Cable to Australia for a copy of the contract I signed when I took on the job.' For the fourth time I repeated my solicitor's address, and for the fourth time they didn't write it down.

'Who did you say engaged you?'

'The Earl of October.'

'And no doubt we can check with him too?'

'He's in Germany until Sat.u.r.day.'

'Too bad.' They smiled nastily. They knew from Ca.s.s that I had worked in October's stable. Ca.s.s had told them I was a slovenly stable lad, dishonest, easily frightened and not very bright. As he believed what he said, he had carried conviction.

'You got into trouble with his Lords.h.i.+p's daughter, didn't you?'

d.a.m.n Ca.s.s, I thought bitterly, d.a.m.n Ca.s.s and his chattering tongue.

'Getting your own back on him for sacking you, aren't you, by dragging his name into this?'

'Like you got your own back on Mr Humber for sacking you yesterday.'

'No. I left because I had finished my job there.'

'For beating you, then?'

'No.'

'The head lad said you deserved it.'

'Adams and Humber were running a crooked racing scheme. I found them out, and they tried to kill me.' It seemed to me it was the tenth time that I had said that without making the slightest impression.

'You resented being beaten. You went back to get even... It's a common enough pattern.'

'No.'

'You brooded over it and went back and attacked them. It was a shambles. Blood all over the place.'

'It was my blood.'

'We can group it.'

'Do that. It's my blood.'

'From that little cut? Don't be so stupid.'

'It's been st.i.tched.'

'Ah yes, that brings us back to Lady Elinor Tarren. Lord October's daughter. Got her into trouble, did you?'

'No.'

'In the family way...'

'No. Check with the doctor.'

'So she took sleeping pills...'

'No. Adams poisoned her.' I had told them twice about the bottle of phen.o.barbitone, and they must have found it when they had been at the stables, but they wouldn't admit it.

'You got the sack from her father for seducing her. She couldn't stand the disgrace. She took sleeping pills.'

'She had no reason to feel disgraced. It was not she, but her sister Patricia, who accused me of seducing her. Adams poisoned Elinor in gin and Campari. There are gin and Campari and phen.o.barbitone in the office and also in the sample from her stomach.'

They took no notice. 'She found you had deserted her on top of everything else. Mr Humber consoled her with a drink, but she went back to college and took sleeping pills.'

'No.'

They were sceptical, to put it mildly, about Adams' use of the flame thrower.

'You'll find it in the shed.'

'This shed, yes. Where did you say it was?'

I told them again, exactly. 'The field probably belongs to Adams. You could find out.'

'It only exists in your imagination.'

'Look and you'll find it, and the flame thrower.'

'That's likely to be used for burning off the heath. Lots of farmers have them, round here.'

They had let me make two telephone calls to try to find Colonel Beckett. His manservant in London said he had gone to stay with friends in Berks.h.i.+re for Newbury races. The little local exchange in Berks.h.i.+re was out of action, the operator said, because a water main had burst and flooded a cable. Engineers were working on it.

Didn't my wanting to talk to one of the top bra.s.s of steeplechasing convince them, I wanted to know?