No Wind of Blame

‘You? Why, it’s taken me long enough!’ said Hemingway. ‘I don’t blame you for not spotting it. You got the gun, and there wasn’t a ha’porth of reason why anyone should have tumbled to it that it wasn’t fired by some bloke who dropped it, and made off.’

‘Well, it’s very kind of you to say so, I’m sure,’ responded Cook, a little dubiously.

‘I don’t see that the case is solved, not by a long chalk,’ remarked the Sergeant. ‘It’s all very well: and I grant you you’ve pieced it together a fair treat, sir, but what I want to know is, what is this mysterious gadget which set the rifle off just at the right moment?’

‘What I want to know,’ said Hemingway, ‘isn’t what is it, because we’ll find that out all in good time, but where is it?’

There was a pause. Inspector Cook said in a disgruntled tone: ‘Yes, and don’t we hope we may find it! Ten to one, he took it up to the house with him. He’s had plenty of time to get rid of it since Sunday.’

Hemingway tapped his teeth with a pencil, pondering. ‘No,’ he said presently. ‘That’s bad psychology. What you want to do is to put yourself in his place. To start with, you’ve got a vice to carry. On top of that, there must have been some bit of mechanism which actually fired the gun. Now, supposing you were to take a chance of getting them hidden away in the house: what happens if you go and run into someone on the way?’

‘Well, he’d have to take some chances. The maid was out, anyway.’

‘This bird take chances?’ said Hemingway scornfully. ‘I fancy I see him! Supposing Miss White had come up to the house for brandy, or bandages, or something, and had run into him carrying that ironmongery? She might easily have done it.’

‘Well, if it comes to that, how was he going to explain himself to Miss White, if he’d run into her without his gadgets?’

‘Easy!’ said the Sergeant promptly. ‘He could have pitched a tale about hearing someone in the shrubbery, and running after him. You bet he had all that planned!’

‘Then you say he hid the vice, and whatever else it was, down a rabbit-hole, or some such place?’

‘What was wrong with that pool I saw?’ inquired Hemingway. ‘It seems to me that if he had to dispose of something in a hurry, the pool was the quickest and the safest place. All he had to do was to climb that sandy bank, heave his gadgets into the pool, and be off up to the house to put through those telephone-calls.’

‘What about the splash?’ suggested Cook. ‘I grant you they might not have heard it on the bridge, seeing that it’s round the bend, and a bit of a distance off, but wouldn’t you have expected Miss Fanshawe, or that dog of hers, to have heard it?’

‘That’s where White was luckier than he knew,’ answered Hemingway. ‘Five minutes earlier, Miss Fanshawe was down by the stream, and would have seen the whole thing. But she told me that after she heard the shot, she turned into one of the paths leading up the slope. Now, I reckon that between the firing of the rifle, and White’s heaving the vice and what-not into the pool (if that’s what he did do) must have been all of five minutes, and very likely more. Miss Fanshawe would be out of earshot by that time, or if not absolutely out of earshot, far enough away for a splash not to catch her attention.’

‘Yes, and supposing all this did happen like you say, sir,’ put in the Sergeant. ‘White’s had plenty of time to fish his gadgets out of that pool, and dispose of them for good and all.’

‘Time, yes, if he’d thought it necessary, which he probably didn’t. But there’s one thing you’re forgetting: it’s muddy down by the water, and Mr White couldn’t get anything out of the pool without leaving some nice, deep footprints. What’s more, it ’ud be a pretty risky thing for him to go wading about in the pool when at any moment someone might have seen him from the Palings’ side. No, if he threw his apparatus into the pool, it’s there still, and that’s where we’ll find it.’

Half an hour later, two constables, with their trousers rolled well above their knees, were painfully stubbing their toes on all the foreign bodies sunk into the mud at the bottom of the pool. When the police-party had arrived at the Dower House, only Florence, the maid, had been in, and she had raised no objection to the Inspector’s pursuing investigations in the shrubbery. As long as he didn’t come getting in her way, she said, with a sniff, she was sure he could do as he pleased, for it was no concern of hers.

The first haul taken from the bed of the pool was disappointing. It consisted of two glass jam jars, and something that looked like the handle of a saucepan. Then the younger of the two constables cut his foot on a broken plate, and swore loudly; and, a moment later, his companion bent, and plunged his arm into the water, and pulled out something that had been half sunk in the mud. ‘I’ve got it, sir!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s a vice, sure enough!’

He waded to the bank, and handed his find to Hemingway. Hemingway betrayed not the smallest sign either of surprise or of gratification, but his Sergeant was visibly impressed, and regarded him with a good deal of awe. ‘My word, sir, you were right all along!’ he said. ‘Well, I wouldn’t have credited it!’

‘I’m always right,’ said Hemingway superbly. ‘Keep going, Jupp! You’ll find something more, or I’m a Dutchman.’

‘It wouldn’t be a sardine-tin, would it, sir?’ inquired Jupp, with a grin. ‘Fisher’s just cut his toe on one.’

‘You stop larking about, and get on with it!’ ordered the Inspector, somewhat unfairly. ‘Come on, Cook, we’ll see how this fits those grazes on the sapling.’

Both Inspectors were recalled presently by the sound of tumult by the pool. They hurried up the sandy bank, and found that the cocker-spaniel, Prince, discovering strangers in a pool which he regarded as his own, had plunged into the water, not, indeed, to evict the interlopers, but to join them in aquatic sports. He bore with him a large stick, a circumstance which induced Hemingway to shout out: ‘Never mind about playing with that dog! Get on with it!’

‘We’re not playing with the brute, sir!’ called Fisher, stung into a retort. ‘We?

??re trying to shoo it off !’

‘You leave it alone, and it won’t do you any harm!’ said Hemingway. ‘You’re only exciting it, waving your arms about like that. Here, come here! Good dog, bring it here, then!’

‘Well, well, well!’ said a voice from the farther bank. ‘What’s this? A regatta?’

‘Oh, it’s you, is it, sir?’ said the Inspector, casting an unfavourable eye over Mr Hugh Dering. ‘Well, perhaps you’ll call your dog off, since you happen to be here.’

‘Nothing,’ said Hugh, visibly enjoying the sight of the constables wrestling with Prince’s advances, ‘would give me greater pleasure, if he were my dog. But he isn’t.’

Vicky’s Borzoi bounded into view at this moment, and at once began to bark at the strangers. The two constables showed a marked disposition to leave the pool in haste, but Hugh grasped the Borzoi by the collar, and told him to be quiet. The Inspector began to explain, as tactfully as he could, that neither Hugh’s nor the dogs’ presence was in anyway necessary to him, but before he had succeeded in making this clear to Mr Hugh Dering, who was suddenly and unaccountably slow of understanding, Vicky had appeared upon the scene – a demure Vicky, in white organdie with black ribbons.