“But yes! She does not say so—she is very good, she makes no complaint—but I have eyes, I am not a fool! She does even the work of a servant, for it is a large house, that, and there is only one servant who is in it, living in it! Miss Warrenby has told me that when the other became married to the gardener Mr. Warrenby would not have another to replace her, for he was not generous, and he said Miss Warrenby had nothing to do, so she could do work in the house. And always she must be obedient, and she must be at home to wait on this uncle, and to be polite to his friends, but her own friends she must not have, no!”
“Didn't like her making a friend of you, in fact?” Hemingway paused, but Ladislas only glared at him. “How was that?”
“I am Polish!” Ladislas uttered bitterly.
“He didn't, by any chance, get it into his head that you wanted to marry Miss Warrenby?”
“It is untrue!”
“All right, don't get excited! Did you see Mr. Warrenby when you went to the house on Saturday?”
“No!”
“Yes, you did. What was he doing?”
Ladislas broke into impassioned speech, the gist of the torrent of words which burst from him being that if he were not a foreigner the Chief Inspector would not dare to question him, or to doubt his word.
“In my job, we get into the way of doubting people's words,” said Hemingway equably. “Besides, you've got a trick of telling first one story and then another, which confuses me. You told Sergeant Carsethorn you didn't go to Fox House, and when he didn't believe that, you said you did. You told him you went to the back-door. Which leads me to think that you knew Mr. Warrenby was in the house, because you'd seen him. I daresay you reconnoitred a bit, and I'm sure I don't blame you, for he seems to have been the sort of man no one would have wanted to meet if they could have avoided it. So now you tell me just what did happen!”
This matter-of-fact speech appeared to damp Ladislas's passion.
After staring at Hemingway for a moment, he said in a flattened voice: “When I say I did not see him, I mean—I mean—”
“You mean you did,” supplied Hemingway. “Comes of being foreign, and not being able to speak English right, I daresay.”
Ladislas gulped. “He was in his study. He was reading some papers.”
Hemingway nodded. “At his desk? You could see him from the road, easy, if that was where he was. So then, according to what you told Carsethorn, you slipped up to the back-door, which, I must say, seems to me a silly thing to have done, because, for one thing, I've seen the path which the tradesmen use, and it runs up that side of the house, so that I should have thought you'd have caught Mr. Warrenby's eye; and, for another, unless he was uncommonly deaf, I should have expected him to have heard you knocking on the back-door. However, if that's your story, I don't mind: it doesn't seem to me to matter much.”
“Now I shall tell you the truth!” said Ladislas impulsively. “I did not go to the door! I went away, because I do not wish to make trouble for Miss Warrenby, and if her uncle is at home it is plain to me that she cannot go with me anywhere. It makes nothing!”
“Only a bit of extra work for the police, and that's fair enough, isn't it?” said Hemingway.
He left Ladislas hovering between doubt and relief, and went out to find that Constable Melkinthorpe was no longer alone. He had left the car, and was standing beside it, grinning down at an aged and disreputable individual in a much-patched suit of clothes and a greasy cap, which he wore at a raffish angle wholly inappropriate to his advanced years. Beside him stood a buxom lady, who appeared to be torn between anxiety and annoyance; and, eying them both in a boding fashion, was a stout and middle-aged constable. As the Chief Inspector paused for a moment, surveying the group, the buxom lady tried to take the old gentleman's arm, and besought him urgently to give over, and come off home to his tea.
“You lemme go, or I'll fetch you a clip!” said the Oldest Inhabitant, in shrill but slightly indistinct tones, and brandishing a serviceable ash-plant. “Wimmen! I 'ates the sight of them! I'm a-going to 'ave a few words with the Lunnon 'tec, and it 'ud take more than a nasty, meddling female to stop me! Ah! And more than a mutton-headed flat-foot wot never got no promotion, and never would, not if he lived to be as old as wot I am, which 'e won't becos 'e eats too much—unless it ain't fat, but dropsy 'e's got.”
“Father!” expostulated his daughter, giving his arm a shake. “You've got no call to be rude to Mr. Hobkirk! If you don't stop it—”
“You give me any more of your impudence, Biggleswade, and you'll wish you'd kept a civil tongue in your head!” interrupted Constable Hobkirk, swelling with wrath.
“Mr. Biggleswade to you, Mr. Hobkirk!” instantly responded the lady, with a sudden veering of sympathy. “Ninety years old he is, and I'll thank you to remember it! Now, come along with you, Father, do!”
“What's all this about?” demanded Hemingway, stepping up to the group.
Constable Melkinthorpe so far forgot himself as to wink at his superior, but Hobkirk replied in official accents: “Police Constable Hobkirk, sir, reporting—”
“You shut your gob, young feller!” commanded Mr. Biggleswade. “You ain't got nothing to report. It's me as'll do the reporting. I'm going to 'ave me pitcher in the papers, and a bit wrote about me underneath it.”
“All right, grandfather!” said Hemingway good-naturedly. “But give the constable a chance! What's the matter, Hobkirk?”
“If there was anything the matter, which there ain't,” said the obstreperous Mr. Biggleswade, “it wouldn't do you no good to go asking 'im, because 'e ain't seen beyond that great stomach of 'is for years—not but wot that's far enough. Nor I won't 'ave me words took out of me mouth by 'im, nor you neither, becos the police never 'ad nothing on me, and I ain't afraid of any of you!”
“You're a wicked old man, that's what you are!” exploded the sorely-tried Hobkirk. “Before you got so as you couldn't do more than hobble about with a stick, you was the worst poacher in the county, and well I know it!”
Mr. Biggleswade's villainous countenance creased into a myriad wrinkles, and he gave vent to a senile chuckle. “That's more than you could prove, my lad,” he said. “I don't say I weren't, nor yet I don't say I were, but wot I do say is that I were a sight too smart for all them gurt fools to catch.”
“Don't pay any heed to him, sir!” begged his horrified daughter. “He's getting to be a bit childish! I'm sure I ask your pardon for him coming worriting you like this, but he's that obstinate! And coming up here to talk to you without his teeth!”
A vicious dig from her sire's elbow put her temporarily out of action. “My darter,” explained Mr. Biggleswade. “Lawful,” he added. “Which is wot makes 'er so blooming upperty! I got others. Ah, and sons! First and last—”
“Listen, grandfather!” interposed Hemingway. “There's nothing I'd like better than to hear your life-story, but the trouble is I've got work to do. So you just tell me what you want to see me about, will you?”
“That's right, my lad, you listen to me, and you'll get made a Sergeant!” said Mr. Biggleswade approvingly. “'Cos I know who done this 'ere murder!”
“You do?” said Hemingway.
“He don't know anything of the sort, sir!” expostulated Hobkirk. “He's in his dotage! Sergeant! Why, you silly old fool—”
“You leave him alone!” said Hemingway briefly. “Come on, grandfather! Who did do it?”
An expression of intense cunning came into the wizened countenance of Mr. Biggleswade. “Mind, I'll 'ave me pitcher in the papers!” he warned the Chief Inspector. “And if there's a reward I'll 'ave that too! Else I won't tell you nothing!”
“That's all right,” said Hemingway encouragingly. “If you can tell me the name of the man I'm after, I'll take a photo of you myself!”
Much gratified, Mr. Biggleswade said: “You're a smart lad, that's wot you are! Well, if you want to know 'oo done it I'll tell you! It were young Reg Ditchling!”