Who Pays the Piper? Page 8

  “So you stood there and listened. Well now, I’d like you to tell me just what you heard.”

  “It’s in my statement.”

  “I’d like to have you tell me about it all the same. I’m not trying to catch you, but sometimes a thing comes back to you that you’ve overlooked.”

  Raby looked unhappy. Out of the tail of his eye he could see that the young man you would never think was a policeman had got a pencil in his hand and a notebook ready, and the way things were shaping he’d have to stand up in court and swear he had listened at the door. Murder didn’t just kill one person, it could kill a man’s character too, and where was he going to get another job after being mixed up in a murder case? He took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead.

  “The first thing I heard was Mr. Dale using language.”

  “What sort of language?”

  Raby told him.

  “And then I heard the American gentleman say——”

  Inspector Lamb took a look at his list.

  “Mr. Vincent C. Bell—been stopping here since Thursday. Ever stopped here before?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Ever seen him before?”

  “Not before Thursday.”

  “All right, go on with what you heard him say.”

  Raby looked apologetic.

  “I wouldn’t listen in an ordinary way, sir, but the fact is I didn’t know whether to go in or not. What with Mr. Dale using language like that, and the American gentleman——”

  “Did he use language too?”

  “Not exactly. He called Mr. Dale a double-crossing, two-timing skunk.”

  Abbott’s hand came up across his mouth.

  “A nice distinction between language and epithet,” he murmured.

  Inspector Lamb settled himself in his chair.

  “And what did Mr. Dale say to that?”

  “He swore, sir. And then I thought I’d better not stay, so I came away.”

  “Now look here, Raby—you say they were swearing and flinging names. We all know there are ways and ways of doing such things. It’s not the words that count so much, it’s the way a man says them. All this that you say you heard, well, it might have been said chaffing, as you might say, or it might have been said in the way of two people having a difference of opinion and not much in it—if a man’s got a habit of using language, it mayn’t amount to much—or it might have been said in real deadly earnest, and I want you to tell me which of these three describes what you heard between Mr. Dale and Mr. Bell.”

  Raby wiped his forehead.

  “It was deadly earnest and not a doubt about it.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Oh, yes, sir. Both gentlemen were very angry indeed—not a doubt about it.”

  “Well, go on. What did you do after you left the study door?”

  “I went away, but I didn’t go farther than the other side of the hall, because I didn’t like what I’d heard.”

  “How long were you on the other side of the hall?”

  “A minute or two. And then the study door opened and Mr. Bell came out quick and slammed it behind him, and on through the hall and up the stairs. I don’t think he saw me, sir.”

  “Did you go in and attend to the fire?”

  “Yes, sir. Mr. Dale was standing over by the glass door with his back to me. He’d got the door a little bit open. He didn’t move or look round. I made up the fire and came out.”

  “If you came in by this door behind me here, you’d pass the writing-table on your way to the fire. Did you see Mr. Dale’s revolver?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You knew he had a revolver, and where he kept it?”

  The sweat came out on Raby’s forehead. He turned his handkerchief between clammy hands.

  “There wasn’t any secret about where he kept it. Everyone knew, sir. It was in that drawer on your right—the second drawer.”

  “Did he keep the drawer locked?”

  Raby hesitated, and said,

  “Sometimes.”

  “You’ve seen it open?”

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  “Was it open last night?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You mean the drawer was open?”

  “Yes, sir—it was pulled out.”

  “Did you see the revolver?”

  “No, sir—I wasn’t noticing.”

  “You mean you don’t know whether it was there or not?”

  “I didn’t take any notice one way or the other—I wasn’t thinking about it.”

  Abbott wrote.

  Inspector Lamb shifted heavily in his chair. He said in his expressionless voice,

  “Are you sure you saw Mr. Dale, and that he was alive when you went in?”

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  “And when you came out?” Raby looked blank. “He was alive when you came out again? You left him alive in the study?”

  Raby looked completely horrified.

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  “Did you notice what time it was?”

  “It was nineteen minutes past six.”

  “How do you know?”

  “By the clock on the study mantelpiece, sir. I noticed it when I had made up the fire.”

  “And what did you do after that?”

  “I went to my pantry until a quarter to seven, when I returned to the study and found that Mr. Dale had been shot. Mr. Dale liked a cocktail at that hour, and I was taking it to him.”

  Lamb let him go. When the door had closed behind the butler he said,

  “What d’you make of him?”

  Abbott’s pale eyebrows rose.

  “He’s nervous.”

  The round brown eyes of Inspector Lamb had a faintly reproachful look.

  “That’s natural,” he said. “You’d be nervous if you’d found your employer murdered and weren’t sure whether the police were thinking of putting it on you, let alone having to own up you’d been listening at doors, which isn’t the best of manners for a butler.”

  “Oh, quite—quite.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, that leaves from nineteen minutes past six till a quarter to seven for someone to have come into the study and shot Dale with the revolver which he kept in his writing-table drawer. Everyone in the house seems to have known about it. It doesn’t take twenty minutes to shoot a man, wipe the revolver, and melt from the scene. There was plenty of time for our Mr. Vincent Bell to come back and finish his quarrel. I wonder if he did. Are you going to have him in and ask him?”

  “I think I’ll have the secretary first,” said Inspector Lamb.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Monty Phipson gazed earnestly, first at Inspector Lamb and then at Frank Abbott. He wore an air of horrified interest blended with a desire to be helpful, yet tinged—yes, quite definitely tinged with nervousness. Abbott, staring coolly back, was reminded of a rabbit eyeing a specially delectable piece of lettuce. The nose twitched with appetite, the whiskers twitched with terror. Monty Phipson had in fact no whiskers, but the illusion persisted.

  Lamb took him through his statement. He had been upstairs in his room from six o’clock till a quarter to seven. He had seen no one, and he had heard nothing. His room was on the other side of the house. He had written some letters, and then he had played some records over on his gramophone. Just after a quarter to seven the butler came and told him that Mr. Dale had been shot. He at once rang up the police.

  “This matter of your not hearing the shot, Mr. Phipson—it seems to me somebody ought to have heard it. Mrs. Raby and the maids had the wireless on. Raby’s pantry is next door to the servants’ hall. He says there was a band programme and they were getting it pretty loud. There’s a baize door and a lot of hall and passage between this and the kitchen wing. And you were playing over gramophone records. When did you start?”

  Mr. Phipson removed his glasses, polished them, and replaced them on his nose. A rabbit in pince-nez.

  “Oh, well now,
Inspector, I shall do my best to be accurate, but I wasn’t looking at the time. It was six o’clock when I went to my room—I do know that, because the grandfather clock in the hall was striking as I went upstairs. And then—let me see—I wrote two letters—let us say about ten minutes to each—and addressed the envelopes and stamped them—so that would bring us to between twenty and twenty-five past six. And then I got out a case of records and put on—now, let me see—it was the finale of the Ninth Symphony.”

  “A loud piece?”

  Abbott cocked a pale eyebrow.

  “A very loud piece, sir. Orchestra, chorus, four soloists—all going full split. Joie de vivre with the lid off—fully choral and fortissimo. In fact, very loud. It really might drown the sound of a shot.”

  “We’ll try it out,” said Inspector Lamb.

  “How many discs did you play?” said Frank Abbott.

  Mr. Phipson looked nervously helpful.

  “Well, I am not quite sure. There are three discs of the finale, and I put on the first one, and then my mind rather wandered to one of the letters I had written, so I let the record stop. In the end I re-wrote the letter, and I can’t really say whether I turned the disc over or put on the next one. I know this must sound very foolish and absent-minded, but I was thinking about my letter, and I am afraid I did not notice what I was doing. In fact, I was not really attending to the music—my mind was on something else.”

  “On Mr. Dale?” said the Inspector.

  “Oh, no, no—not at all.”

  “Would you care to tell us what you had on your mind?”

  Mr. Phipson dropped his glasses and picked them up again.

  “Well, really, Inspector, it was a private matter—a very private matter—but if you will regard it as confidential——”

  Inspector Lamb gazed at him with a kind of ponderous patience.

  “As to that I can’t give any undertaking, Mr. Phipson. But a private matter that hadn’t anything to do with Mr. Dale’s death—well, neither Abbott nor me would mention it.”

  Mr. Phipson drew an agitated breath.

  “It is naturally painful to me to have to take strangers into my confidence, but of course in a murder case I understand nothing is sacred. The letter I have alluded to was to a young lady, and my mind was a good deal disturbed over it. After re-writing it as I have told you I was still not satisfied, and in the end I decided to destroy it. You will now perhaps understand why I have no very accurate recollection of the order in which I played those records.”

  “Were you still playing them when Raby came to your room?” said Abbott.

  A gleam brightened Mr. Phipson’s eyes behind the pince-nez.

  “Yes—yes—I was playing the last side. I remember that distinctly.”

  “There are three discs, aren’t there?”

  “Yes, yes—six sides. Marvellous music!”

  “They would take a good twenty minutes to play even if you missed one side of the first disc. And you wrote a letter too.”

  “I may have missed more than one disc,” said Mr. Phipson in a dejected manner. “It is more than probable—in fact, I think I must have done so. With the interval I have already mentioned, I suppose I was playing from about five-and-twenty past—no, no, it would be a little later, wouldn’t it—I know the importance of being accurate—shall we say twenty-seven minutes past?” His nose twitched in a worried manner. “I am afraid I find it very difficult to fix the exact time, Inspector, because you see, I cannot be certain how long it took me to write those letters, but perhaps half past six—no, no, I think earlier than that—this is really very difficult——”

  Of all witnesses, the nervously conscientious witness is the least dear to the official heart. Interminable delays, small verbal quibblings, acute attacks of conscience over minor details have a very rasping effect upon the temper. Inspector Lamb said,

  “We’ll leave that for the moment, Mr. Phipson. How long have you been with Mr. Dale?”

  “Three years—no, let me see, that is not quite exact—it would have been three years next Thursday.”

  “But Mr. Dale had not been here for three years.”

  “Oh, no, Inspector. When I took up my duties he was in London. And then we travelled. He was very fond of travelling. I accompanied him to Egypt and to South Africa. Then about a year ago he bought King’s Bourne. Mr. Bourne the late owner had just died. Mr. Dale decided to have the whole place done up, and I was backwards and forwards a great deal seeing to things. Mr. Bourne’s widowed sister, Mrs. O’Hara, was living here with her daughter Miss Cathleen O’Hara and her niece Miss Susan Lenox. Mr. Dale wished her to have any furniture that she fancied, and I was to see about that, and about doing up the house she was moving into. It is called the Little House, and it is just at the foot of the garden here. Mr. Dale was most considerate about the whole thing—really most considerate.”

  “Is that the Miss O’Hara who has been employed as a secretary here?”

  A slight flush came into Mr. Phipson’s face.

  “Social secretary—yes. Not, of course, that I couldn’t have done all that was necessary in that way, but—well, to speak quite frankly—I suppose I had better speak frankly——”

  “Much better,” said Inspector Lamb with a sudden dry sound in his voice.

  Mr. Phipson looked at him over the top of his pince-nez.

  “Well then, I think Mr. Dale was glad to put the employment in her way. Mr. Bourne died in embarrassed circumstances, and there was very little left for the family. And then, of course, there was his feeling for Miss Lenox.”

  “And what sort of feeling was that?”

  Mr. Phipson looked arch.

  “Oh, the usual one, Inspector. Mr. Dale made no secret of it. It really was quite obvious from the first, but of course the news of the engagement did come as a surprise to us here in the house—I don’t think it can have got very much beyond the immediate household, because he only informed us yesterday.”

  “Mr. Dale was engaged to Miss Lenox?”

  “So he informed us yesterday—let me see—it was just before tea. And of course it was a surprise, because Miss Lenox was engaged to Mr. Carrick.”

  Lamb put up a monumental hand.

  “I’d like to know about this engagement to Mr. Carrick. Who is he?”

  Mr. Phipson explained with gusto. Mr. Carrick was the son of the late Dr. Carrick, deceased some two years ago. He had been engaged to Susan Lenox for about that length of time. He was an architect with his way to make. He had done some work on the alterations to King’s Bourne.

  Mr. Phipson took much longer over it than that, but the Inspector suffered him with patience.

  “And when was this engagement broken off?”

  Monty Phipson assumed the air of a man of the world.

  “As far as my information goes—well, it never was broken off—the lady just changed her mind. Very suddenly, Inspector. Mr. Carrick was certainly down staying at the Little House last Wednesday night, and of course they may have quarrelled then, or they may not. But from certain indications I believe—but perhaps I ought not to indulge in conjecture——”

  “I think you had better finish what you were going to say.”

  “If it will be of any help—I am most anxious to assist you in every possible way. I was going to say that Miss O’Hara was taken ill here on Saturday morning, and that Miss Susan Lenox was here for some time, after which Mr. Dale took them both home in the Daimler. From certain indications of emotional disturbance I am of the opinion that Mr. Dale had at that time proposed and been accepted.”

  The Inspector slewed round to the table and picked up one of the papers which lay there. He said “Yes——” in a meditative tone and faced round again upon the secretary.

  “What do you know about Mr. Vincent Bell?”

  Monty Phipson put up a deprecating hand.

  “Very little, I assure you—very little indeed.”

  “As what, Mr. Phipson?”

  �
�Let me see—he arrived here on Thursday morning quite unexpectedly——”

  “Mr. Dale didn’t expect him?”

  “As to that I cannot say, but if you would like me to express an opinion——”

  Frank Abbott drew a long breath and permitted himself to gaze at the ceiling.

  Lamb said imperturbably, “Let us have your opinion.”

  Monty Phipson edged a little forward in his chair.

  “Well, in my opinion Mr. Dale was taken completely by surprise, and it was not a very pleasant surprise either. Mr. Bell just said he was stopping—and he stopped.”

  “What sort of terms were they on?”

  “Well, I hardly like to say. I naturally feel the responsibility of giving evidence like this, and I am most anxious to be fair. I think I might say that there was a good deal of tension. Mr. Bell’s manner was not very tactful. I think he and Mr. Dale had had some business association in the United States. I believe Mr. Dale was engaged in—well, Inspector, in rum running during the prohibition period. If I had not had some idea of this before, I should have guessed as much from Mr. Bell’s allusions and hints. Mr. Dale resented them a good deal, and several times I thought there was going to be a quarrel, but Mr. Bell would always laugh it off.”

  “I see. Well now, Mr. Phipson, how did you and Mr. Dale get along?”

  The question, in this homely shape, did not seem to worry Mr. Phipson. He looked conscientious and said,

  “Oh, I hope he had no cause to be dissatisfied.”

  “That’s no answer, Mr. Phipson. I don’t want to know what you hope. The question is, was he satisfied?”

  An air of offence became evident.

  “Really, Inspector, I am being most careful about my answers. Mr. Dale had no reason to be dissatisfied—no reason at all. If you want to know whether he was satisfied, I can only say that he gave me no reason to think otherwise.”

  The Inspector opened his mouth to speak and shut it again. His right shoulder jerked slightly.

  Frank Abbott took up the tale.

  “What was Dale like to work for? Easy—considerate—difficult?”

  Monty Phipson looked at him coldly.

  “My position was an extremely confidential one. Such a position is never without occasional difficulties. I think I may say that Mr. Dale appreciated that.”