She sighed. “Let’s just consider the gun. You said you found it in the barn.”
“Correct.”
“So the murderer must have dropped it after he shot Cliff Morton, right? If it was my daddy, why would he do such a stupid thing, for crying out loud? He must have known it was vital evidence, an American Army automatic. Wouldn’t he have taken it away with him, gotten rid of it someplace else?”
I shook my head. “He was afraid the others would see it. He was coming back later, you see, to dispose of the body and clean up the blood. So he tucked the gun out of sight, between two bales of hay.’”
She clicked her tongue in disbelief. “I don’t swallow that, either, but let’s stay with the gun. He didn’t pick it up later, did he?”
“Because I’d already found it.”
“And you secretly kept it: that much I’m forced to go along with.”
I said ironically, “Thanks.”
Alice regarded me with that penetrating gaze of hers. “Theo, has it ever occurred to you that you weren’t actually protecting my daddy by withholding the gun from the police?”
I frowned back.
She went on. “If you’d handed it in, they would have asked the questions I just did. As it is, they assumed he got rid of the murder weapon himself, like the ruthless killer they made him out to be.”
A pulse started drumming in my forehead.
She said, “Disturbing thought, huh?”
I answered hollowly, “It’s another way of looking at it. It didn’t occur to me at the time.”
“Because, like everyone else, you assumed Daddy was guilty.”
“He was.”
She simply looked at me and said nothing.
She’d made her demand. A quixotic trip to Somerset to prove her daddy’s innocence. I suppose I should have seen it in her eyes the first moment she mentioned him. To my mind it was misguided and likely to cause us both unnecessary distress, but I was lumbered. I could see she wouldn’t be argued out of it. The best I could do was get some safeguards into the contract.
I said, “If I agree, it’s between you and me, a private trip.
No press. Right?”
She nodded. “I can handle Digby.”
“No pictures. Nothing.”
“Okay.”
“We go today and come back tonight. We can do it in under two hours.”
“Fine.”
“And whatever the outcome, you’re on your own after this.”
“All right.” She held out her hand. “Is it a deal?”
I said, “When you return the gun.”
She gave a slight smile. “I didn’t take it, Theo. It’s in the box in the filing cabinet where I found it. I put it back there when I went to collect my backpack.”
TEN
We were on the A4, heading west to Somerset. Surprised? By now you must have got me down as a hard-nosed opportunist, so I won’t blame you for assuming I reneged on the deal after Alice made an idiot of me over the gun. Only I didn’t.
I’d like you to believe it was because, after all, I’m a man of integrity. Duke’s daughter had asked me to show her the place where the tragedy was enacted, and I was uniquely fitted to act as guide. It was a small repayment on my debt of gratitude to Duke.
I’d like you to believe all that, but you’re sharp enough to see that she still had me by the short and curlies while Digby Watmore was in attendance. Who wants to feature in News on Sunday?
So I remained out of sight while she went out and talked to him. I’m not sure what was said. It took about ten minutes. The photographer got out to say his piece as well and looked decidedly annoyed. But Alice prevailed. Shaking their heads, the two men got back into the car and drove off.
When she came in, she handed me Digby’s card, which he’d wanted me to have in case I changed my mind about a photograph. She told me that he’d promised to keep in touch, and I took the hint. There was to be no ducking out of the Somerset trip.
I insisted that the rucksack traveled with us, telling Alice that she might wish to spend a few days in Somerset. She was a dream of a girl, terrific in bed, only, please God, not mine again. For peace of mind I was going to have to settle for Val, who went at it like a blanket bath but never mentioned her daddy.
For some while the only sound in the car had been the moan of the windscreen wipers working on a steady but meager drizzle. I can assure you that the weather wasn’t on our minds. I was still stewing over Digby when Alice rather fazed me by saying, “I had no idea he would be so handsome.”
I frowned. I simply couldn’t see it.
After a pause she added, “I mean my daddy.”
“Ah.” My brain did some quick backtracking. She must have found those mug shots of Duke in the books on the trial that I’d tried to hide from her. Sad, wasn’t it, that the first sight she’d ever had of her father had to be a picture like that? I don’t know whether you’d agree, but I found it pathetic, really pathetic, in the old-fashioned meaning of the word. It was the kind of thing that gets to me. More touching, I think, because she was unaware of it herself.
I’d be a right bastard to abandon her.
I’m not a total idiot when it comes to women. I know when I’m being manipulated. For two days I’d been putting up a wall of cynicism, and she kept knocking it down.
She continued unselfconsciously and with a touch of pride. “I mean, it’s not surprising that a girl like Barbara should have found him attractive. I can picture that first meeting between them, the day the two guys drove you back to the farm in the jeep. He must have looked terrific in his uniform.”
I gave a nod.
We let the wipers take over again.
Sometime after Newbury she said, “The jury was out for less than an hour. That’s not long, is it?”
“Not long.”
Another silence. Her thinking was precise and unhurried. She meshed in her statements with the car’s engine note, making sure I was listening.
“The prosecution had a very strong case.”
“Devastating.”
“All that ballistics evidence. I skimmed through it, but it must have impressed the court.”
“Textbook stuff.”
“They found some bullets fired from the same gun, right?”
“Right,” I said.
“Where did they pick them up, Theo?”
“I told you about the shooting lesson Duke and Harry gave to me and Barbara.”
“Oh, yes.”
“The police combed that field and collected all the used bullets they could find and compared them with the bullet found in the barn.”
Alice sighed. “And proved it was fired from Daddy’s gun.”
“Beyond any doubt.”
After a pause she commented, “So they didn’t actually need the gun to prove their case.”
“Clever, wasn’t it?”
She doggedly pursued her point. “It didn’t make any difference that you had the gun all the time.”
I said tersely, “We’ve been over this once.”
She switched the emphasis. “All this forensic science, the skull and the superimposed photograph, the dental records and the bullets, sounds really impressive. The jury was bound to be dazzled by stuff like that.”
I didn’t like the drift. I decided to take a firmer line. “The case against Duke would have stuck without all that. He was guilty, Alice, there isn’t any question. Listen, I know what I
saw. After me Duke was the first to know about Cliff Morton attacking Barbara. I watched him dash towards the barn.”
“You actually saw him go into the barn?”
“He ran in there. I’m sorry if this is painful to accept, but he really cared for Barbara. It was a crime of passion.”
She shook her head. “To me it doesn’t add up.”
“Why?”
“He runs into the barn, right? This girl he really cares for is being raped. What does he do about it? Pull the guy off her and throttle him? No, he leaves them there and goes back to the farmhouse to fetch his gun. Is that the conduct of a passionate man?”
I said, “It’s the difference between manslaughter and murder.”
“Okay, but how do you explain it?”