Send for Paul Temple

‘Oh, yes,’ he said, taking in the fact that here was possibly a source of much-needed information, and corroboration. ‘Well, Madam, can—er—you throw any light on this matter?’

‘I’m afraid not, Sergeant,’ replied Miss Parchment calmly. ‘I was in my room reading when Mr. Daley arrived with the news that this gentleman had shot himself and that a Mr. Temple wished to see me. Naturally, I was dreadfully upset about the matter and so of course—’

This was more than Horace Daley could stand. ‘You didn’t look very upset to me,’ he interrupted.

‘I have learnt to control my emotions,’ answered Miss Parchment sweetly.

For once, the innkeeper had nothing to say in return. Miss Parchment, when she chose, could silence him very effectively with a few polite words, whereas all Sergeant Morrison’s abuse, and for that matter anybody else’s, only served to stimulate him the more.

Nothing seemed to ruffle Miss Parchment. Even the present tragedy had affected her less than some queer discovery she might have made about one of the old English inns that interested her so much. She had been sitting there in her chair, regarding the scene with a completely dispassionate interest. Now and then a slight smile flickered across her face. Then it vanished again. She clearly had a delicate, almost evanescent sense of humour. Cruder sallies left her unmoved. As unmoved as did the corpse on the bar parlour floor in front of her. The harsher realities of life, and death, appeared to have no part in her scheme of things. From the police point of view, she made an admirable witness in that she was so calm and collected, an advantage even if she had little of any value to tell him.

‘Well, Miss Parchment, how long have you been staying here?’

‘I arrived yesterday afternoon, Sergeant,’ she replied. ‘I’m on a walking tour of the Vale of Evesham. I’m interested in old English inns,’ she explained with a smile. ‘Very old English inns.’

‘Yes—er—yes, just so,’ replied the sergeant, not too intelligently. He felt perplexed and, for some strange reason, Miss Parchment embarrassed him.

‘Could I have your full name and permanent address?’ he asked gruffly, trying to make his voice as formal and official as possible, but with little success.

‘Amelia Victoria Parchment,’ said Miss Parchment, as the sergeant commenced to write, ‘47B, Brook Street, London, W.1.’ With a word of thanks, that was more a sigh of gratitude that this part was all over, he turned back to Horace Daley. There was still the point to be cleared up of how the murderer, if any, could have made good his escape.

Temple had been sitting in his car immediately outside the inn during the actual tragedy, and he was certain that nobody had left or entered from the front of the inn. And the back was apparently impossible. Was it, after all then, a question of suicide?

‘Now, Mr. Daley,’ the sergeant said, this time with slightly more respect in his voice, ‘could anyone have come in here whilst you were in the back parlour?’

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘They could ’ave come from either upstairs or from the street.’

‘What about from the back,’ the sergeant persisted; ‘there’s an open courtyard, isn’t there?’

‘Yes, but there’s no way o’ gettin’ into the inn except through the back parlour, an’ I was in there all the time.’

Sergeant Morrison grunted heavily. The mystery was too much for him.

At that moment the door behind the bar counter opened, and Police Constable Hodges reappeared. He pushed open the flap, waddled through rather than walked, and finally came to rest in front of his superior officer.

‘There’s nothing in the courtyard, sir,’ he reported, ‘except a lot of blessed pigeons.’

Horace Daley suppressed a smile.

The sergeant again started an examination of the room. He peered out of the window and went into Daley’s sitting-room next door. He stayed about five minutes, not knowing what he expected to find, but nevertheless diligently searching every corner. Close on his heels followed Horace Daley, while the rest of the party stayed in the parlour, talking quietly of the tragedy that had suddenly enveloped them.

It seemed clear that the murderer, whoever he was, could not have entered by the sitting-room. Next, the sergeant opened the door to the hall and slowly mounted the stairs. There was little the sergeant did not examine. He inspected every room, opened every window, looked into every cupboard, almost as if the murderer might still be hidden on the premises somewhere.

At length he returned downstairs, feeling that it was all far more than he could tackle by himself and that the inspector ought to be consulted before anything further was done. He was, at any rate, sure that the murderer – if murder it was – was no longer on the premises, and for the moment there seemed little else to be done. Fingerprints might be taken as a matter of routine, but the bar parlour was used by many different people every day, including chance motorists who felt attracted by the inn’s inviting old exterior, and stopped for some refreshment. They could therefore expect to find only a confused medley of fingerprints which it was unlikely would help them very far. The fingerprints on the revolver itself he felt certain would prove to be exclusively Harvey’s.

‘I wonder if you’d mind running me back to the station, Mr. Temple?’ he asked. ‘I feel that I ought to have a word with Inspector Merritt about this.’

The novelist agreed. He walked over to the bench in the corner of the room where he had flung down his overcoat, and prepared to face the outer coldness of the night. Then, taking his leave of the others, he left the room to start up the car and warm the engine for the run down to the police station. Meanwhile, the sergeant was apologizing to Dr. Milton.

‘The police “doc.” is down with the “flu”,’ he explained, ‘and Mr. Temple suggested that you might—’

The doctor cut short his apologies. ‘Only too glad to be of service, Sergeant. Think nothing of it.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ the sergeant replied courteously. Then he turned to where Miss Parchment was still sitting with quiet self-effacement.

‘You can go to your room, Miss Parchment. I doubt whether the inspector will want to see you tonight.’

‘Oh, thank you,’ she replied. ‘Good night, Sergeant. Good night,’ she added, turning to the others. She wrapped her lace shawl around her neck, and with a parting smile for everyone, she opened the door and was gone.

Throughout the whole trying period, she had remained completely calm and collected. The sight of the body, and the blood now congealing on the back of the head, had not in the least upset her. Not so Horace Daley. Even now, when he might be expected to have grown accustomed to the sight of the body, he was still feeling singularly repelled.

‘I say,’ he burst out at last, addressing the sergeant, ‘what the ’ell’s goin’ to happen to this fellow? We just can’t leave ’im ’ere all night!’

‘I’ll attend to that, Daley,’ said the sergeant, turning his back on the innkeeper and addressing the constable. ‘Hodges, I think you’d better wait at the front – and don’t let anyone enter.’

‘Very good, sir.’ The constable buttoned up his greatcoat, and went outside to take up his station.

The sergeant took one last look round the room to make certain there was nothing he had omitted. He felt he had done all he could, and turned to Dr. Milton.

‘We’ll be as quick as we can, Doctor,’ he said.

‘That’s all right, Sergeant.’

He let himself out and hurried to the car where Temple sat waiting, the engine of the car purring, ready to leap away. He nodded to Hodges in passing, and even as he shut the door of the car, Temple was lifting his foot from the clutch pedal and pressing down the accelerator. The brilliant headlamps threw into light the wide sweep of road ahead, and the great car disappeared into the night.

Inside the bar parlour, Dr. Milton and Horace Daley were left alone. For perhaps five minutes neither of them spoke. Both sat on the hard benches of the bar parlour, now gazing at the body, now turning away to stare idly into space.

It was Horace Daley who broke the silence.

‘They’ve gone!’ he said in a low voice, far too low for Constable Hodges to hear.

The doctor nodded.

‘I don’t like it,’ said Horace suddenly, with a note of alarm in his voice. ‘I don’t like it.’

There was an expression of contempt on Milton’s face. ‘Don’t be a damned fool,’ he said, keeping his voice low. ‘Everything’s turned out perfectly.’

They relapsed into the same tense silence. Daley got up and walked across to the window. After a pause he turned.

‘Have you had any more information about the Leamington job?’

‘Yes,’ said the doctor. ‘It came through this morning.’

‘Well?’

‘We meet on—Thursday.’

Horace Daley whistled his surprise. ‘Thursday,’ he said. ‘Here – or at your place?’