15: Pettigrew Unbosoms Himself

“YOU'LL have another whisky, Chief Constable,” said Pettigrew. It was not a question, but a simple statement of fact. The Chief Constable would have another whisky and it would disappear as quickly, and with as little apparent effect on the consumer, as the two which had preceded it at dinner and the two more which would certainly follow it before the evening was over. This was Mr. MacWilliam’s second visit to his house since they had met at the club, and he was beginning to wonder rather gloomily what he should do if the investigation into the Carless case outlasted his meagre supplies of liquor.

“Thank you,” said the Chief Constable. He helped himself liberally from the decanter, added the minimum of soda water and half emptied his glass at a gulp. “I’ve left a couple of bottles for you in the hall,” he added.

“You’ve---what?” asked Pettigrew faintly.

“I have never been able to understand,” said MacWilliam, looking meditatively at the glass in his hand, “why, in these days of shortages and rationing, it should be considered perfectly proper for guests to bring with them morsels of tea and sugar and disgusting little packets of margarine for the benefit of their hosts, while it is taken for granted that they should be supplied ad libitum with substances far more precious and---if you will forgive my mentioning it---a great deal more expensive. Now I don’t very much care for tea and hardly take any sugar, but I do---as you may conceivably have observed---drink an appreciable quantity of whisky of an evening. I repeat, therefore, I have left two bottles for you in the hall.”

Pettigrew opened his mouth to protest, but thought better of it. There was a finality about the Chief Constable’s tone and a doggedness about the set of his jaw that put any argument on the subject out of the question.

“It is very kind of you,” he ventured.

“Not at all. A simple matter of justice.” The man seemed rather touchily anxious that no question of gratitude should enter into the matter.

Pettigrew tried another tack. “Well,” he said, “if that is the case, I think I will have another glass myself.”

The Chief Constable thawed at once. “That was what I had been waiting for you to say,” he remarked genially. “Your very good health, sir!”

By common consent nothing had been said during dinner on the subject of his visit. MacWilliam had proved an agreeable guest, with a wide range of interests and a conversational gift that had met with Eleanor’s instant approval. It was only now, when, coffee concluded, the two men had adjourned to the tiny cubbyhole which Pettigrew dignified by the title of study, that the business of the evening was due to begin.

Pettigrew seemed distinctly reluctant to begin it, none the less. He mixed his drink, lit cigarettes for himself and his guest, made an unnecessary to-do about finding ash trays and placing them in convenient positions, and was positively fussy over the arrangement of cushions in his armchair. When he finally sat down he remained silent and almost embarrassed, staring at the electric fire that warmed the little room.

“You must be regretting,” said MacWilliam unexpectedly, “that it isn’t a good old-fashioned grate.”

“Eh?”

“Something to fiddle with,” the Chief Constable explained. “Something to poke, or put coal on, or puff at with a pair of bellows or just curse for smoking. Something to occupy you, in fact, and help postpone the evil moment.”

Pettigrew flushed guiltily, and then grinned. He found it impossible to be annoyed by this man, impertinent as he might be.

“I feel that I’ve brought you here on false pretenses,” he said.

“I was under the impression that I had invited myself.”

“Allowed you to come here on false pretenses, then.”

“Maybe. Though I hardly think you’d have made such a pother if it was simply a question of telling me that you had nothing to say. In any case I have a few more reports that have come in during the last week which I want to leave with you. But we’ll discuss them later. At the moment I want to listen to you.”

“I don’t know what you’re expecting to hear,” said Pettigrew, “but if it’s a cut-and-dried explanation of how this murder was done and who by, you are not going to get it. You asked me to keep my eyes and ears open, I remember, and so I have done, but as neither my sight nor hearing are particularly keen, and I have no gift for extracting confidences, I haven’t even any fresh bit of information to add to what you already have. Except one, now I come to think of it, and you can make what you can of it. Personally, I think it merely adds to the difficulties of the business. Here it is: Mrs. Basset is perfectly justified in saying that her watch is a reliable timekeeper. I ascertained that, unaided, by a superb piece of detective work the day before yesterday.”

“Um!” said the Chief Constable, and helped himself to another drink.

“That is the beginning and the end of my factual contribution to the problem,” Pettigrew proceeded. “Now for my general impressions about the case. I believe that this was a carefully calculated crime, committed for a valid and compelling motive. If I am right in that, then I can see only one individual who could have had such a motive or been capable of such calculation. At the same time, the facts your Inspector Trimble has so patiently collected make it quite impossible for that individual to have committed it. I trust I make myself quite clear?”

“Perfectly,” said the Chief Constable with the utmost solemnity.

“On the other hand, if the murderer is any person other than the one who, as I say, could not possibly have killed Miss Carless, then we are faced with a perfectly staggering collection of coincidences instead of a logical sequence of events. The only solution that will fit---and I confess that I am far from happy about it---is to assume that this murder was the work of two hands---or, to be more accurate, of one brain and a wholly separate pair of hands, and highly specialized hands at that. Why the brain should have taken the appalling risk of employing an accomplice to do the dirty work, instead of using some other, safer method, I don’t see. Still less do I understand what influence could have been brought to bear on the hands to compel them to do a horrible act from which they could derive no profit whatever. But there it is. Unless we premise the hands, the case against the brain falls to the ground.”

“The hands being highly specialized,” remarked the Chief Constable, “I take it that there are not many candidates for the position.”

“Precisely. That ought to make it all the easier for you. But how you are going to make a case against the brain, short of a confession from the hands, is a bit of a problem.”

“Suppose we leave that problem until it arises?” said MacWilliam. “At the moment what interests me is the identity of the person you call the brain.”

Pettigrew said nothing for some moments. His gaze had reverted to the glowing orange bar of the fire, his hands were clasped, and his nose was wrinkled in an expression of discomfort and anxiety.

“I don’t really know anything,” he said at last. “That’s what I meant when I talked about getting you here on false pretenses. It’s just an impression, built upon---what shall I call it?---atmosphere, intuition---that, and an elementary point of law,” he added. “There may be absolutely nothing in it, but a little simple research will at least demonstrate whether the thing is feasible or not. That is a police job---a simple matter of ferreting round Somerset House. I have an idea that the Surrogate might be helpful, too---if you can persuade him that it’s his duty to talk.”

“The Surrogate, eh?” The Chief Constable was looking at his host with an expression in which exasperation and amusement were nicely blended.

“I go on beating about the bush in this way,” Pettigrew groaned, “simply because I can’t bring myself to perform the good citizen’s duty of peaching on his fellow human being. I can’t be sure, you see. It’s this business of an accomplice that bothers me---it seems to make such nonsense of the whole thing. It’s clean out of character, and that alone throws a horrid doubt over the whole theory. And don’t tell me that it’s the function of the jury to decide,” he added, with a sudden spurt of anger. “I’ve seen too many juries.”

“A minute ago you said that we should have a job to make out a case against him.”

“Did I? How filthily logical and consistent you are. I suppose policemen can’t afford to indulge in any decent feelings. Look, I’ll be honest with you, and myself. I’ll simply tell you what I saw and heard, beginning from the beginning and going right through to the moment when the estimable Trimble appeared on the scene. I’ll nothing extenuate nor ought set down in malice. Then if you come to the same conclusion that I do, in the light of all the knowledge you’ve acquired since, let the law take its course. My conscience will be clear. Like Pontius Pilate, I wash my hands. By the way, that reminds me---do you want to----?”

“Thanks,” said MacWilliam. “Perhaps it would be as well.”

“To begin with,” said Pettigrew, when the discussion was resumed a little later, “do you read Dickens?”

“Yes. I suppose I’ve read all of him one time or another.”

“David Copperfield?”

“That’s the best of the lot, to my way of thinking.”

“Cheers! Hold fast to David Copperfield. He’s the nub of the case so far as I’m concerned. Now Lucy Carless, God rest her soul, didn’t like Dickens. No, I’m wrong---and accuracy is all-important in these matters. She hated Dickens. And David Copperfield, she declared, was the worst of the lot. I know it takes a bit of believing, but I am being perfectly truthful, and what is more, she seemed to be quite sincere about it.”

“Just a moment,” the Chief Constable put in. “When did she tell you this?”

“I apologize,” said Pettigrew. “I said I would begin at the beginning, and then I was in such a hurry to get to David Copperfield that I skipped the preliminaries. Well, as you presumably know already, Ventry gave a party the evening before the concert. My wife and I were invited and . . .”

Pettigrew continued speaking for quite a considerable time. The Chief Constable heard him out to the end without interruption of any sort, his long legs extended in front of him, his gaze directed at the ceiling, whistling a soundless tune to himself. When the recital was finished he said, without moving from his position, “As you say, it is an elementary point of law. There was a paragraph about it in one of the papers a week or two ago.”

“You see what I’m getting at, then?”

“Ye-e-es. I see what you’re getting at all right. It takes a bit of working out, though. Let me see . . .” He ran over various points on his fingers. “It accounts for most of them,” he conceded. “Not quite all, but most. As you remarked just now, if your theory’s right, it’s a routine matter to confirm the facts.” He sighed. “I don’t know how I’m to manage Trimble over this,” he went on. “It would break his heart to have the case solved behind his back.”

Pettigrew felt a sudden uneasy qualm in the pit of his stomach.

“Do you think the case is solved then?” he asked.

“Well, no, I don’t,” the Chief Constable rejoined with surprising cheerfulness. “We’ve got a long way to go yet, even supposing the facts match up to your very attractive supposition. There’s hope for Trimble yet.”

He appeared to become suddenly conscious of the empty glass at his elbow. Pettigrew took immediate steps to remedy the situation.

“And talking of facts,” he went on, “I promised to let you see the further reports and statements I brought with me. I think you’ll find them interesting.”

He produced a small packet of typewritten papers. They brought the history of the investigation up to date, concluding with Trimble’s report on his visit to the Clarksons’ house. Pettigrew read them through, at first casually, and then with growing attention as he neared the end. When he reached the final page his face was blank with disappointment. He turned back and read over again some of the sheets, this time with anxious concentration.

“Why didn’t you let me see these before?” he asked accusingly, when his scrutiny had come to an end.

“Well,” said MacWilliam with a deprecatory air, “I could see that you had something on your mind, and I didn’t want to distract you.”

“Distract me be blowed! If you’d given me these when you first came in you’d have saved me from making a fool of myself! Surely you can see as well as I can that they knock the bottom out of my case?”

“I think you’re exaggerating a little.” The Chief Constable remained as calm as ever. “But I’d go so far as to say that these reports don’t supply the bottom that your case needs if it’s to hold water.”

“ ‘And it shall be called Bottom’s Dream, because it hath no bottom,’ ” said Pettigrew bitterly. “Well, let’s forget it! I have been wasting your time, Chief Constable. It’ll be a lesson to you not to ask for amateur help behind the backs of your detective force in the future.” He laughed. “Funny to think that just now I was sweating blood because I didn’t want to throw suspicion on somebody who----”

“And now you’re relieved because you think you’ve been proved wrong,” MacWilliam interrupted him. “Man, you’re nothing but a bundle of inconsistencies! You’ve just produced the only logical, consistent explanation for the whole sequence of events, and now you want to drop it like a hot potato.”

“I want to drop it because it leads straight to a plain, blank impossibility.”

“If the logical solution is an impossibility, then either there is something faulty with the logic or the impossibility is a delusion,” said the Chief Constable confidently. “Now I maintain that your logic is good, subject to verification of the facts on which your hypothesis is based. I propose to proceed with the verification, and if that works out as it should, then we will take a good look at the impossibility, and see what becomes of it. It is time I took myself off,” he continued. “Good night to you, Mr. Pettigrew. It has been a most interesting evening. I’ll be seeing you again later.”

---

“I like your Chief Constable, Frank,” said Eleanor when he had gone. “But do you suppose he is good at his job?”

“Very good, I should think.”

“I shouldn’t imagine that he had many original ideas of his own.”

“Perhaps not, but he has a very ruthless way with other people’s ideas.”

Eleanor looked at her husband narrowly.

“You don’t sound very happy about it,” she observed.

“I’m not,” he confessed. “I feel that I have started something, and I don’t quite know where it will end. I have a horrible feeling that it may simply end in MacWilliam uncovering a very ugly skeleton in somebody’s cupboard, which will do nobody any good, and may do a lot of harm. If it doesn’t end that way----”

“Well?”

“Then it will end in uncovering a corpse in the same cupboard, which will be more horrible still.”

“Frank?”

“Yes?”

“Wouldn’t you like to tell me about everything? I might be able to help you.”

Pettigrew shook his head. “I want to keep you out of this, if I can,” he said. “And I don’t really think you could help. One thing you could do for me, perhaps---reach me down that book in the corner of the top shelf.”

“Grove’s Dictionary of Music, do you mean? Which volume do you want?”

“No, no, I mean Hobbes’s Leviathan, next to Grove. There’s something there that seems apt to my present state of mind.”

He turned the pages until he found the passage that he sought. “Here it is,” he said, and read aloud:

Sometime a man desires to know the event of an action; and then he thinketh of some like action past, and the events thereof one after another; supposing like events will follow like actions. As he that foresees what will become of a Criminal, re-cons what he has seen follow on the like Crime before; having this order of thoughts, the Crime, the Officer, the Prison, the Judge, and the Gallowes.

“The last word ought to be ‘Home Secretary,’ to bring it up to date,” Eleanor said. “But it’s a lovely passage, and it would be a pity to spoil it.”

“You comfort me with your wise words,” said Pettigrew, closing the book. “I shall go and put away Mr. MacWilliam’s noble gift and then come to bed.”