No Wind of Blame

‘Five hundred – pounds?’ said Baker again. ‘What the hell do you take me for? Here, I’ve had enough of your insults! You clear out of this! Five hundred pounds my foot! I suppose that’s what the stinking swine told you? Well, you can damned well tell him from me that he’s a bloody liar! And if you think I’d make capital out of my sister’s shame, you’re as big a bastard as he is!’

‘Careful, now! Are you denying you went to Palings to get money out of Mr Carter?’

‘I never mentioned five hundred pounds, nor nothing like it! But when a man in his position, fair reeking of money, and old enough to be the girl’s father, God damn his soul, gets a poor girl into trouble, he’s got to help her, or I’ll know the reason why! Oh, it’s all very nice and easy for them as has money to burn, but what about them as hasn’t? Who’s going to support Carter’s brat, that’s what I’m asking you? Isn’t it only justice he should pay for what he done to my sister? What would five bob a week mean to the likes of him? You answer me that, and then say I’ve been blackmailing the swine!’

‘Leaving alone, for the moment, how much you tried to get out of him,’ said the Inspector, looking very hard at him, ‘you didn’t find him willing to pay, did you?’

‘No one,’ said Baker, somewhat obscurely, ‘is going to make out my sister’s no better than a common street-walker!’

‘Oh! So Mr Carter had his doubts, had he? He didn’t see why he should pay for what he suspected wasn’t his? Now we’re getting at it, aren’t we?’

‘I’ll make him provide for Gladys, if it’s the last thing I do!’ retorted Baker.

‘But,’ said the Inspector, ‘he refused to pay, didn’t he?’

‘Fobbing me off with excuses!’ muttered Baker. ‘If I had my way, I’d blow his brains out, the mealy scoundrel! That ’ud learn him to seduce innocent girls! But that’s not going to help my sister, that’s the way I’ve got to look at it!’

‘Would it surprise you to learn that Mr Carter was shot dead at five minutes to five this afternoon?’ asked the Inspector.

‘Shot dead?’ Baker said numbly. ‘I didn’t do it. I don’t know a thing about it, as God’s my witness!’

That was all the Inspector had managed to get out of Percy Baker, and it left him profoundly dissatisfied, for he could not quite bring himself to believe that the young man was acting a part. Nor did he believe that Baker had been acting when he so hotly denied having demanded five hundred pounds from Carter. It began to seem to the Inspector as though the murdered man’s relations were playing some deep game, and had not scrupled to entangle Baker in its meshes. It might, he reflected, prove to be a difficult task for Baker to refute the accusation of blackmail.

When he reached the police station, it was to be met with the news that the rifle found in the shrubbery at the Dower House had been identified. It had been registered ten years previously by the late Mr Fanshawe, and was the property of his relict, in whose name the licence had been kept up.

The Inspector drew a breath. ‘Someone living in the house,’ he said. ‘Well! I thought that from the start. And the whole lot of them combining to shift the blame on to young Baker, by spinning this yarn about him putting the black on Carter! It’s that woman at the back of it, Superintendent: that screeching blonde, wanting to get rid of Carter, so that she can marry a foreign prince!’

‘Go easy!’ advised his superior. ‘If that was what she wanted, she could have divorced him, couldn’t she? By all accounts, he gave her plenty of cause. The Chief Constable thinks this is a case for Scotland Yard.’

The Inspector did not agree with him, but by the time he had interviewed Robert Steel next morning, and Dr Chester’s housekeeper, he was forced to admit that he could not see his way through the maze. Robert Steel’s scornful demand to be told how he could have known that Carter would be on the bridge at five minutes to five, seemed unanswerable. Steel stated that he had not known that Carter had meant to visit White, and if that were true, it did not seem possible that he could be the murderer. Whether it was true, remained, of course, to be proved; but the Inspector realised that it was not going to be an easy task to prove it.

Dr Chester’s housekeeper was a little flustered, but she perfectly recalled the foreign gentleman’s visit, and said without an instant’s hesitation that he had arrived at a few minutes to five o’clock, before the doctor had got back from the call he had had to make.

The Inspector went next to Palings. He found Lady Dering sitting with Ermyntrude, having been brought over by Hugh, who was talking to Mary in the garden. When Peake announced the Inspector, Lady Dering at once got up to take her leave, and went out through the French window to join her son. She had exercised a most beneficial effect on Ermyntrude, who was both touched and gratified by her visit, and had unburdened her soul without much reserve. Ruth Dering’s sympathetic good-sense had done much to calm her agitated nerves, and she was even able to greet the Inspector without any display of dramatic horror.

He came to the point without preamble, asking her whether she was the owner of a Mannlicher-Schönauer .275 rifle, registered as No. 668942.

‘I’m sure I don’t know!’ replied Ermyntrude. ‘Though, now you come to mention it, I believe one of my first husband’s rifles was a Mannlicher – whatever-it-is. Mind you, it wasn’t his best gun! A Rigby, that’s what he used to swear by, and he had another gun, too, but that was only for elephants. My fir

st husband was a big game shooter.’

‘When he died, madam, you kept his guns?’

‘Of course I kept his guns! Not that they were any use to me, but I’d as soon have sold his hairbrushes!’ said Ermyntrude, becoming a little intense. ‘Everything in the gun-room’s kept just as he used to have it. Or rather,’ she added, ‘it was till I married Mr Carter, and he started messing about with things.’

‘Are the late Mr Fanshawe’s guns kept under lock and key, madam?’

‘The gun-room isn’t locked, if that’s what you mean. Of course, I know very well it ought to be, but that was Mr Carter all over! He never locked anything, without he went and lost the key, and it was a miracle when he put anything away, what’s more!’

‘Then anyone could have had access to your first husband’s rifles?’

She stared at him. ‘They’re in a glass case. The key’s generally in the lock. What would anyone want with them? Look here, what are you driving at?’

‘A Mannlicher-Schönauer – .275 rifle, No. 668942, was found yesterday in the shrubbery across the stream, madam.’

Ermyntrude gave a gasp, and rose from her chair with quite surprising agility, and stalked to the door. ‘Come along!’ she said over her shoulder, and led the Inspector to the gun-room.

In a baize-lined mahogany case with glass panels, two rifles stood in a rack which was designed to take four.