“Mr Purbright!”
The interruption was not loud, but it had been delivered in so authoritative a tone that it produced several seconds of shocked silence. Every head turned towards Mrs Moldham-Clegg.
The old woman unhurriedly pressed flat the crochet work on her knee, then spoke again, without raising her eyes.
“Thanks to the unaccountable wrongheadedness of my nephew, you policemen are about to make fools of yourselves. I think I had better correct one small misconception before worse comes of it. My nephew, Mr Purbright, did not shoot that wretched burglar. I did.”
Purbright looked at the colonel, then at Rich Dick. Both seemed equally at a loss, but the solicitor recovered first. “I think,” he said quietly to Purbright, “that the old lady is being a little...”—he smiled, seeking the word—“...quixotic.”
“Don’t be so damned patronizing, Richard,” said Mrs Moldham-Clegg. “It is Bruce who fancies the role of gallantry, not I.”
Bradley realized that official litany was in danger of being outstripped by events. He whispered to Purbright, who hastily delivered the prescribed caution to Mrs Moldham-Clegg.
She brushed it aside impatiently. “You can say all that to Loughbury. That’s what he’s paid for. I simply wish to cut through these ridiculous complications and mystifications to what is a perfectly straightforward matter. Now then, first of all, you can send your young man to fetch something from upstairs.”
The “young man” looked about him with good-natured surprise, then, hesitantly, rose. He looked like a Sunday school pupil responding to an invitation to take over the class.
“I think that either you or the colonel should accompany the sergeant,” Purbright suggested.
The old woman nodded to her nephew. He was looking extremely unhappy. “Now look here, aunt...”
“Bruce. You will kindly take the young man to my bedroom and show him the drawer in the wardrobe.” To Love, she spoke more gently: “I trust you are not as absurdly coy about ladies’ under-garments as those policemen who were supposed to be searching the house the other day.”
By the time the sergeant returned he had almost stopped blushing.
He handed Purbright a small rifle.
“BSA point two two repeater,” he said, offhandedly.
Purbright examined the weapon. He raised his eyes to the old woman’s. She was regarding him shrewdly.
“Mr Purbright,” she said, “there is one thing I wish to be clearly understood. If I am going to tell you everything that happened, there must be no confusing side issues. I am too old to be bothered with all this alias nonsense. Until now, the unfortunate person whose behaviour obliged me to shoot him has been referred to as O’Dwyer. I am accustomed to that name. I wish to hear him given no other.”
For a moment their mutual regard held. Then Purbright said:
“The man’s wife has identified him as O’Dwyer. That is his name, so far as we are concerned.”
Mrs Moldham-Clegg gravely inclined her head. Her solicitor sat motionless, determinedly avoiding the sight of Bruce Moldham’s deeply anxious face.
“Very well, inspector,” the old woman said. “You had better get on with that cautioning business, if you must, then we can clear the matter up once and for all.”
It was, as Bradley remarked later, rather as if murder trials could now be got at Harrod’s and Mrs Moldham-Clegg were putting in her order.
It had been nearly one o’clock in the morning, she said, when noises awakened her and she realized that there were movements within the house. Not long afterwards, Colonel Moldham had come to her bedroom and told her that he was going downstairs as he believed that somebody had broken in.
“He was in his dressing-gown and was carrying his gun. At night he keeps it in a corner of the landing. One never knows, these days, and we’ve no living-in staff except old Benton, and he’s on the far side of the court.
“When my nephew had gone, I went to the window and looked out. There was a car down in the court. I opened the window at the bottom and stood listening for a while. Suddenly I heard voices downstairs. One was my nephew’s.
“It occurred to me that the burglar might get away from Colonel Moldham and make for his motor car. I thought of the little two-two in what we call the Caledonian room, next but one to my bedroom, and I fetched it. I don’t shoot properly now, of course, but I keep my eye in with the odd partridge, and it seemed sensible to have a go at the burglar’s tyres.”
At this point, Mrs Moldham-Clegg halted her narrative and peered helpfully towards Sergeant Love. “Are you managing all right?” she asked.
He said yes, oh yes, fine; and she turned to Purbright. “I’m not being tedious, am I? You must tell me if this is not the sort of thing you want.”
“You are being admirably to the point, ma’am. Please go on.”
After a brief, indifferent glance at Bradley, she did so.
“I went back to the window and looked down. There was some shouting and I heard someone running, then my nephew switched the outside lights on and came out into the court.
“The burglar had nearly reached his motor, but when he looked round and saw that Colonel Moldham had a gun, he stopped straight away and stood still. My nephew went up to him.
“I was just about to come downstairs and telephone the police when the burglar jumped forward and grabbed the gun. It was Bruce’s fault, of course, for not pointing it at him, but one is trained not to, and one doesn’t, and that’s all there is to it.
“However, in a very short time indeed, there was my poor nephew on the ground, and there was the burglar, standing over him and actually taking aim with Bruce’s own gun. It was quite a terrible moment.
“Naturally, I did the only thing possible in the circumstances. I shot the burglar before he could pull the trigger.”
And Mrs Moldham-Clegg took up her crochet work once more, bending her head to the task.
After some seconds of silence, Purbright coughed. “And then, ma’am?”
She looked up sharply. “Then nothing, Mr Purbright. I have told you what you wish to know.”
More silence, increasingly uncomfortable for all save the old woman, who seemed to have dismissed their presence from her mind.
Purbright spoke to her. “There are two things you have not mentioned, Mrs Moldham-Clegg. Your story of shooting O’Dwyer with this rifle does not account for his having received shotgun injuries. Nor have you offered any explanation of how his body came to be in the river.”
She regarded him placidly. “The river is reasonably near, inspector. It seemed not at all a good idea to leave the man on the estate. Churchill and I took him to a little landing-stage at the end of what we call Shapp’s Meadow.”
“You carried the body on the horse, you mean, ma’am?”