A Javelin for Jonah

chapter

15

The Finishing Straight

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Kirk’s step-father was a grim-faced man in his late forties.

“But I don’t understand it,” he said. “Granted the lad wasn’t everybody’s money—he wasn’t mine—but why should anybody want to kill him?”

“Because he was blackmailing a murderer,” said Dame Beatrice.

“Blackmailing? He had no need to do that. Much against my advice and, I understand, against the rules of the College, my wife was always sending him money addressed to a Mr. Jones.”

“He did not blackmail for money.”

“What other reason is there for blackmail?”

“In this case,” said the inspector, “we have reason to believe that your step-son knew the identity of Mr. Jones’s murderer, and blackmailed him into bringing into the College drinks and cigarettes which your wife’s money provided. Jones, we suppose, acted on a commission basis with the connivance of the landlord of the village pub. When Jones was killed, his murderer was persuaded to take over.”

“I knew no good would come of supplying Kirk with money, but my wife wouldn’t listen to me. A fine kettle of fish has come of it!”

“Now, sir,” went on the inspector, “when your boy wrote home, did he ever give you any hint, even the slightest, that he knew who had killed Mr. Jones?”

“I’ve no idea. He wrote to my wife, not to me.”

“And she never showed you his letters?”

“No. I never suggested that she should, and she certainly never offered that I should read them. She doesn’t forgive me that I ever got Kirk sent here. She wanted to have him at home with a tutor when he was expelled from school, but I knew better, or thought I did. I didn’t hit it off with the lad or he with me. To my mind he was a psychopath, foul-tongued and cruel and dirty-minded. Got it from his father, I imagine. Asked for trouble and was expelled from school, but naturally I never thought he’d be in any danger in a place like this.”

“I’m afraid he ran into danger of his own accord, sir. He ought to have had more sense than to think he could boss a man who’d already committed murder. I’m afraid I shall have to accompany you to your home, sir, and ask your wife to produce your step-son’s letters or, if she hasn’t kept them, to tell me what was in them.”

“I’ve no objection, but I doubt whether she’ll be able, or even willing, to help you.”

“Surely she’ll be willing to help us lay our hands on her son’s murderer, sir.”

“Oh, well, if you put it like that…”

“Are you going to attend the inquest, sir? We shall need evidence of identification. There’s no doubt about it, but the formalities will have to be observed.”

“There will be an adjournment, I suppose?”

“Unless we can name the murderer in two days’ time, sir.”

The inspector returned on the following noon and reported to Gascoigne, Henry and Dame Beatrice that he had drawn a blank at Kirk’s home. The mother had not kept the boy’s letters, but she stated that Kirk had referred only once to Jones’s death. Since it occurred, her son had asked her to direct any of her own letters which contained money to a poste restante at the village post-office, and to address the envelopes to a Mr. Harper.

“None of the staff is called Harper,” said Gascoigne quickly.

“No, but the woman at the post-office will be able to give me a description of the man who called for the letters,” said the inspector. “I think we’re getting to the end of the road, sir.”

This proved not to be the case. The post-mistress produced three envelopes addressed to Mr. Harper and stated that nobody had been along to claim them.

“Whoever the chap is,” said the disgruntled inspector to Dame Beatrice, “he was too fly to chance being recognized at the village post-office, which meant they knew him and could put his real name to him. He must have planned young Kirk’s death from the minute the lad began to turn on the heat. He played along with Kirk, but only while he waited for the right opportunity. He was buying the drinks and smokes out of his own pocket, I suppose, without letting Kirk know that the letters were not being collected.”

“Then the landlord at the pub will be able to furnish you with a description of him,” said Henry. The inspector shook his head.

“So I thought, sir,” he said, “but that road is closed, too. Twenty pounds in used one-pound notes was put through his letter-box with a note in Roman capitals saying that the drinks and cigarettes were to be left at the College main gate as early in the morning as possible, and that when the money was exhausted a note to that effect was to be left in an empty packing-case. Well, according to the landlord, there was only a pound of the money left after he’d delivered the stuff a couple of times. He showed me the pound note, but, of course, being a used one, it told me absolutely nothing. No use for prints or anything else. I suppose, sir,” concluded the inspector, turning to Gascoigne, “there’s no chance that any of your staff or students might have seen something?”

“Seen something, Inspector?”

“Seen who went and picked up the stuff at the gate, sir. It would have to be somebody with a car, I imagine, because anyone lugging a packing-case of drinks up to the College would have been an object of interest, I take it.”

“Not if it took place after dark, Inspector.”

“A car means a member of staff,” said Henry. “I think, you know, Gassie, that the inspector would probably like to question each one of us again, now that it seems most unlikely that the murderer could be one of the students.”

“I have the utmost confidence in my staff,” said Gascoigne, with an uncertainty in his voice which went far towards denying the truth of this statement, “but the inspector knows his own business best.”

“I don’t wish to interview members of your staff again just yet, sir,” said the inspector. “That can come a little later. Dame Beatrice has another enquiry in mind, and one which she prefers to hold without my direct assistance. If the outcome is what she hopes for, it will not be long before I can make my arrest.”

“Oh? What does she propose to do?”

“That, sir, remains her business and mine for the present.”

“Oh, very well,” said Gascoigne stiffly. “I have no wish to pry.”

“It’s not that, sir. The point is that we’ve had two deaths by murder, and there’s a strong probability that there’s been a third. I wouldn’t want Dame Beatrice to run the risk of becoming victim number four. The murderer is an intelligent amateur, as a great many murderers are. She thinks she knows who he is, but we still need proof, and the ultimate proof will probably have to be his own confession, so far as I can see, and how she hopes to get that, well, I really don’t know. However, she’s the psychologist, not me.”

“But is he likely to confess?” asked Henry.

“When we have laid our conclusions before him perhaps he will have no option, sir, being the kind of emotionally disturbed man she thinks he is.”

“What did you mean about a third murder?” asked Gascoigne.

“One we shall not even seek to prove, sir, since we have come to the conclusion that we shall get nowhere with it. I refer to the death of Potts, the village blacksmith. He was hit over the head by a slate from the roof of an outhouse— to be plain, the earth-closet—in his own back-yard. We would dismiss the occurrence as a complete although fatal accident, except that we have reason to believe he could identify the murderer as a man who approached him some time ago with the offer of a rather special job.”

“What job? You don’t mean… ?” said Henry.

“Yes, sir. It seems that the murderer may have approached Potts with an order to put a new steel head on that particular javelin we know of. Potts probably turned it down as being the kind of job he was not equipped to undertake and I daresay he forgot all about the incident, but if the murderer realized that we were beginning to take an interest in Potts, he may have decided to eliminate him. We can’t prove it, as I say, so we’re ignoring it, but it makes an extra pointer, all the same, as Potts, if it had been brought back to his recollection, might be in a fair way, as I said, of being able to identify (or, at least, to describe) the customer who had made enquiries about the javelin. Of course it’s too late for any of that now.”

“I did not care to offer the suggestion earlier,” said Gascoigne, “but when at last I had convinced myself that Davy had been deliberately murdered, I thought Potts was the most likely person to have committed the crime. He came here, you know, and made a very great fuss, and accused Davy of having seduced Bertha Potts, one of our maids, and of having got her with child.”

“Oh, but the murderer couldn’t have been Potts,” said Henry. “How would he know that the students had shut Jonah away in the stoke-hole? How would he get a key to it? How would he get hold of a javelin out of my stores?”

Gascoigne did not reply. Dame Beatrice, who had been, hitherto, the silent member of the company, said, as she glanced at her watch, “Well, I must be on my way. You will excuse me, Mr. Medlar, I am sure, if I am not back in time for dinner in hall. I may not return, in fact, until tomorrow morning.”

She collected Laura and her car and asked to be taken to the local hospital.

“What’s in the parcel?” asked Laura, looking at a large, square, narrow package which was propped up on the front seat beside George, the chauffeur.

“A photograph of the staff of Joynings College before Hamish took the place of the man called Merve whom the students injured,” Dame Beatrice replied.

“What do you want me to do when we get there?”

“To take down all that is said.”

“Verbatim?”

“If your shorthand will stand the strain.”

“What do you think you pay me for?”

“Chiefly for the pleasure of your society.”

The town was not a large one, and the hospital was a bungalow-type building standing in pleasant, tree-planted grounds. Dame Beatrice was expected (the result of an official telephone call from the inspector) and was greeted by the matron in a spacious vestibule just inside the front door.

“Yes, Colin Dawson is getting on very nicely,” she said, in response to an enquiry from Dame Beatrice. “We think he may be able to try out his crutches next week. Did you wish to see him?”

“No, I think not. You have been told, Matron, that I am assisting the police, have you not?”

“Oh, certainly.”

“I wonder how many people you can identify in this photograph?”

George, who had carried it in, unwrapped the parcel. He returned to the car with the wrappings while Laura and Dame Beatrice held up the large, heavy frame for inspection.

“Let us go into my office,” said the matron, “then we can put it down on a table while I study it. I really need my glasses.”

She did not take long to make up her mind. “This man,” she said, pointing to one of the two faces in the picture which were unfamiliar to Dame Beatrice and Laura, “was a patient here fairly recently. We understood that he had been in a fight with some ruffians. His injuries were extensive but fortunately not serious.”

“Did he have any visitors while he was here?”

“Yes, several, including his uncle, and twice he was visited by this man.” She indicated another figure in the photograph. “He also—this man—came to see Colin Dawson two or three times and seemed very distressed by Colin’s accident, for which he blamed himself bitterly, saying that if he had not taken an entirely unnecessary holiday the accident would never have happened.”

“You cannot possibly remember the date of his first visit to Colin, I suppose?”

“Not to a day, but it was very soon after Colin was admitted, I do remember that much. Colin’s mother came the same day, so the ward sister kept this man outside until the mother left, as we did not want too many visitors at one time while the poor boy was still in a state of shock.”

“And the man came again after that, you say?”

“Oh, yes, more than once, I believe. The ward sister would know more about it than I do. You would like to have a word with her, would you?”

“Very much indeed.”

The ward sister was no more certain of definite dates than the matron had been. She picked out the same two men from the photograph and then put a finger on Gascoigne.

“Only once,” she said, “but he came and brought flowers and some beautiful hot-house grapes.”

“How long ago?” asked Dame Beatrice.

“Oh, right at the beginning, before anybody else at all— any other of Colin’s visitors, I mean, including his mother and this other man.”

“Thank you, Sister.” Dame Beatrice took farewell of the matron and returned to the car with Laura, who was carrying the photograph.

“Did you get what you wanted?” Laura asked.

“Yes, I did.”

“Anything the lawyers can tell the jury?”

“No, child.”

“So, really, we’re no farther on.”

“You are wrong. The case may well be solved and the murderer may even confess.”

“Why may he?”

“Because he is what the inspector called him, an intelligent amateur. He will be too intelligent not to recognize the justice of my findings, and too much of an amateur to realize that I have no proof of what I say. I cannot prove that he had the new head put on the javelin, and I cannot prove that he was the man who used the javelin to kill Mr. Jones. I cannot prove that Kirk was blackmailing him, unless he himself chooses to admit it. I cannot even prove that he was the man who so foolishly went to the forge.”

“Well, honestly, I think he’ll be a fool if he confesses.”

“He will be a fool,” said Dame Beatrice, “but I believe he’ll do it.”

“I take it that one of the faces we didn’t recognize was that of Jones,” said Laura. “The other one, I suppose, must have left the college before we were dragged into all this.”

“One of Colin’s visitors was certainly Barry,” said Dame Beatrice.

“Oh, but we knew that, didn’t we?” said Laura, looking puzzled.