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‘I didn’t think there was anything tied to the gate,’ said the Sergeant. ‘I admit it looks queer, White being the heir to the old lady’s money, but I’ve met some odd coincidences before, and it’s possible he doesn’t even know he’s the heir.’
‘If you’ve met any coincidences as odd as a chap getting himself bumped off when he’s on his way to visit a relation of his, whose only hope of collecting a hundred thousand pounds is to see to it that the first chap hands in his checks before the present owner of that hundred thousand, you ought to write a book,’ said Hemingway.
‘Relation! He was so far removed that not even Carter knew what kind of a fortieth cousin he was!’
‘That’s all right,’ replied Hemingway. ‘Mr Dering was explaining the Law of Intestacy to me this morning. It would take too long to tell you about it now, but it’s perfectly clear. Now, you just consider White’s position, and stop making a lot of narrow-minded objections. The old lady’s over eighty, by what the Chief just told me, so it’s safe to say she isn’t for this world much longer.
’
‘She might go on for another five years, or more,’ said the Sergeant. ‘They say mad people are often very healthy.’
‘All the better for White if she did. You don’t suppose he wants her to die until Carter’s murder has been forgotten, do you? Oh no! He takes a long view, does Mr Harold White. By rights, we ought not to have known anything about mad Aunt Clara. If it hadn’t been for Carter’s way of lugging her into the conversation whenever he wanted money off his wife, I dare say we shouldn’t. Maybe that was just one thing White didn’t happen to know about. Now you answer me this! If Aunt Clara had kicked the bucket before Carter did, who’d have come into her money? Not White, my lad! Oh no! Miss Cliffe would have got the lot, because Carter had made a will on a half-sheet of note-paper, and had it witnessed, too. Unless Carter died before his aunt, White hadn’t a hope in hell of ever seeing a penny of that fortune.’
The Sergeant was slightly shaken. ‘I grant you it looks black,’ he admitted. ‘But how could he have done it, sir?’
‘That,’ said the Inspector, ‘is what we are going to find out.’
Sixteen
The Sergeant looked, if anything, more sceptical than ever, but Hemingway was paying very little heed to him. ‘The man I want is Cook,’ he said. ‘I want to know every movement White made from the moment Carter was seen approaching the bridge. Cook took all those first depositions.’
‘Yes, sir, but, as I remember, Jones and Miss White corroborated everything White said.’
‘Of course they did! Don’t you run off with the idea that I’m thinking White’s movements weren’t as advertised! The point is, that as soon as it was established that he was out of sight of the bridge, and within a few steps of Jones and Miss White, no one paid a lot of heed to his subsequent movements.’
‘Subsequent movements?’ repeated Wake slowly.
‘You don’t suppose the gun up and fired itself on its own, do you? If White’s at the bottom of this, there must have been some kind of mechanism used, which, mark you, White disposed of before Cook reached the scene.’
‘Maybe you’re right, sir. But the more I think about it the more it seems to me that if White was responsible, then the mechanism used was nothing more nor less than his son’s hands. Now, you just consider! Wasn’t it young White who spilled that story about his father’s plan to buy up part of Frith Field? Very unnatural thing for a man’s own son to do. I thought so at the time.’
The Inspector accorded this suggestion his consideration. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, I’m bound to admit there may be something in that. All a put-up job between father and son. No, I don’t think there’s so much in it, after all. Young White doesn’t get on with his father. We’ll see what Cook has to say.’
Inspector Cook, delighted to be summoned to a conference, was much more impressed than Sergeant Wake had been by the disclosure that Harold White was now the heir to Clara Carter’s fortune; and although, casting his mind back over all the circumstances of the murder, he said that he couldn’t for the life of him see how White could have had any part in it, he was perfectly ready to work over every inch of the ground again.
‘Though whether I’ll be able to remember all that Miss White said, I doubt,’ he warned Hemingway. ‘There was precious little that seemed to have any bearing on the case, and you know how she talks!’ He drew up a chair to the table, and sat down to refresh his memory with a glance through the folder that contained his own report. ‘Taking it from when Miss White came out of the house, there was her, and Samuel Jones, and White sitting round the tea-table outside the drawing-room.’
‘In full view of the bridge,’ interpolated Hemingway.
‘That’s right. The garden’s pretty overgrown with flowering shrubs, but there’s a strip of lawn running down to the bridge which has only a bed of dahlias in it. Clear view of the bridge, and of the thicket on the Palings side, of course. I took note of that. You can catch a glimpse here and there of the paths they cut at Palings. And, of course, you can see the roof of Mrs Carter’s house, through the trees. Now you’ll have to let me think a moment. Yes, here it is.’ His finger traced the typewritten words: ‘Miss White was the one that called attention to Carter. She caught sight of him, coming down one of the paths, where the bushes aren’t so thick, and she got up, and said she’d go and make the tea.’
‘I remember that. The maid was out. White was sitting by the table all this time?’
‘Yes, but according to Miss White, it was then that he asked her why she hadn’t brought any cigarettes out.’
‘It was, eh? After Carter had been seen?’
Cook raised his eyes from the folder, and gazed frowningly into space. ‘Yes, after Carter had been seen. She said she’d go and get the cigarettes, but he told her not to bother, and walked over to his study window, which, as you know, Inspector, is hidden from the bridge by a bed full of flowering currant bushes, and the like.’
‘Go on,’ said Hemingway. ‘What happened next?’
‘Miss White said she was standing looking down to the bridge, when suddenly the shot sounded, and she saw Carter fall. I asked her particularly, at the time, if she’d noticed any movement in the shrubbery, and she said no, she hadn’t noticed anything.’
Hemingway looked a little disappointed. ‘No,’ he said, scratching his chin, ‘that won’t do. Not as it stands. There must have been something else happened after White went to the study window, and before Miss White saw Carter fall. If there wasn’t anything, then I’ll have to own I don’t see how White could have done it.’
‘Well, nothing did happen,’ said Cook. ‘I remember Miss White saying that she was just standing there, not thinking of anything in particular—’ He stopped. ‘Now, just a moment! The gate! She said she was thinking that the hinges on it ought to be oiled, or something of the sort. They certainly do creak badly. I wonder: would that sort of fit in?’
‘It might. The creak of the gate being the signal, in a manner of speaking. Though it doesn’t explain how White could have fired that shot. However, there’s no sense in trying to rush things. What happened when Carter fell?’
