Mr Conyers, I suppose, must remain on our list, since his only alibi for the time of Miss Patterson's murder rests solely on his wife's assurance that he was with her the entire evening, first at the birthday revels and later in his own quarters. This, I know, is against my previous judgment, but that depended largely upon Lionel Kempson-Conyers' being the proposed victim.
Well, Mr Conyers claimed, as we know, to have retired to his own part of the house. As he did not even ring for a drink, there is nothing to substantiate this claim and for the present we must ignore it, although my commonsense still tells me that it is almost certainly true.
With Mr Nigel Kempson, however, we are on different and much safer ground and, not to weary you with overmuch repetition, his alibi no longer holds water, but is as full of holes as a domestic colander. In brief, this is what happened.
It seemed to me, that in this interesting but baffling case, there might well be a nigger in the woodpile. I turned the thought over in my mind and fastened upon a very minor but maybe a significant mystery. I wondered why the photographer had not kept his appointment to visit Hill House on the night of Miss Kempson-Conyers' birthday party.
The arrangement had been that Mr Nigel Kempson was to pick him up in the town at an appointed meeting-place at about eleven p.m. and convey him by car to the manor house. Apparently he did not turn up at the rendezvous and Mr Nigel, having waited for a considerable time, returned without him.
It seemed strange to me that a professional photographer, having contracted to take a number of pictures in the house of so wealthy a woman as Mrs Kempson, had not kept what promised to be a very lucrative assignment, so I decided to make some enquiries.
My problem, and that of the police, was that there was no apparent reason why the same person should have committed both the murders. Added to this was the mystery of there having been (it seemed) two Mr Wards, both false, and the strange fact that nobody could have known beforehand (again it seemed) that Miss Patterson would attend the party in place of her brother except the two Pattersons and their parents.
Apart from this, the absence of the photographer made him as much or as little of a suspect as anybody else, but, at any rate, he appeared to be a person whose movements should be more fully investigated.
As Mr Nigel had gone back to his London flat, I returned to Hill House and asked Mrs Kempson to repeat to me all that she could remember of the arrangements for the photographer's visit. She was only too anxious to find a scapegoat outside her own family, for she fully realised the implications suggested by the absence from the festivities of Mr and Mrs Conyers, herself and Mr Nigel at what must have been the time of Miss Patterson's death. She had previously done her best to impress upon me that Doctor Tassall was also out of her house at that time, and I knew that he had lied about his call to a maternity case. Perceiving my new drift, which might implicate the photographer, she proved more than willing to give me all the information she could.
She produced the photographer's typewritten reply. In it he regretted that a previous appointment would prevent him from attending at Hill House on the evening in question unless he could add a return taxi fare to his bill. To this Mrs Kempson had replied that, as the taxi would be kept waiting, presumably, while the photographs were being taken, and as it appeared that this would be a lengthy process, since her grand-daughter had arranged for a number of group photographs, as well as some individual portraits, to be taken, Mr Nigel Kempson would meet him outside the cinema in Broad Street, convey him to the house by car and take him back when the session was over.
This arrangement had been made over the telephone and the photographer had agreed to it, but there was nothing in writing.
I asked her whether the suggestion to pick up the photographer had come originally from Mr Nigel. She replied that it had not, and I wondered whether he had resented her high-handed assumption (as I saw it) that he would be willing to absent himself from the party for an hour or more merely to satisfy Miss Kempson-Conyers' whim and Mrs Kempson's wishes.
The photographer's address was at the top of his letter, so I went to see him.
I do not know why I had expected him to be a young man. He was nothing of the kind, but is, I should imagine, at least fifty years of age. When I announced that I had come from Mrs Kempson he looked hopeful and said, 'Oh, she's going to do something about it, then?'
About what?' I asked.
'Why, me hanging about in Broad Street best part of an hour,' he replied, 'waiting to be picked up.'
'But you were not there at the right time.'
'Who wasn't?'
'You weren't. Mr Nigel Kempson waited for you, but you did not appear.'
'Who didn't?'
'You didn't.'
'You've got it the wrong way round, I'm afraid, madam. It was Mr Kempson didn't show up, not me,' he said. 'I would have written to Mrs Kempson to claim something for my time and the loss to me of not taking the photographs, but I reckoned she had enough on her plate with that poor girl getting murdered and Mrs Kempson's name in the papers and everything, so I thought I'd bide my time before I put it to her that she'd let me down.'
'I think we had better get this quite clear,' I said to him. Well, there was nothing to shake his story. He produced Mrs Kempson's letter and a copy of his own reply...'I keep copies, madam, mine being a chancy business and people sometimes in no hurry to settle up, so I like to have a record of the whole transaction'...and he gave me the gist of the subsequent telephone conversation. He then said:
'Of course, that's the weak point, so far as I'm concerned, madam. I haven't anything in writing to say that Mr Nigel Kempson was to pick me up and nothing about the time or the place. I jotted them down, but that's not evidence, is it? And even if it was, I wouldn't have a case to take to court, I don't reckon, even if I was prepared to go as far as that, which, between ourselves, I would not be.'
'Just give me an account of what happened from the time you left your last appointment that evening and the time you decided that Mr Nigel Kempson was not going to put in an appearance,' I suggested.
The appointment, it appeared, had terminated at the Assembly Rooms in the Town Hall after he had taken photographs of the guests who attended a banquet there. He had taken three pictures in a matter of minutes. This was at half-past nine. From then until nearly ten o'clock, he and his assistant had been occupied in taking orders for copies of the photographs and had met with what he called 'about the usual run of luck' in selling the photographs later and in the matter of drinks.
They had then packed up their paraphernalia and he himself had crossed the road for another drink at the Goat and Grapes before that hostelry closed at ten-thirty, while his assistant had returned to the studio with the camera and so on. When the bar closed, the photographer, being known to the landlord as a personal friend, had been taken behind the bar to the back premises of the inn for a private drink which, incidentally, he would pay for on the morrow.
'It was to use up the half-hour before Mr Kempson was to pick me up,' he explained, 'but just in case he should be early, I went along to stand outside the cinema at ten to eleven, not to keep him waiting.'
'Ah, yes. You can prove this, of course; I said. He did not put up any pretence of not understanding me.
'You surely don't think I killed that poor young creature and that's why Mr Kempson didn't pick me up at eleven, do you?' he said. 'He never turned up, I tell you, and that's why I turned it in at midnight and went home, and pretty cheesed off I felt, I don't mind telling you. Well, I didn't think I ought to 'phone up at that time of night and the next day was Sunday and then, when I 'phoned on Monday morning, a policeman answered and told me to ring up later, as Mrs Kempson could not talk to anybody. Then, of course, it was in the local paper all about the murder, so I wouldn't bother her, like I said.'