'Put someone on that door,' said Backhouse mildly, 'before they establish a right of way. I'll be at the cottage.'
He motioned Pascoe to move out before him, and let him wait by the car while he exchanged a few more words with the inspector. The street was surprisingly empty. The sun had grown warm as the morning progressed, but Pascoe shivered from time to time as he waited for Backhouse to come and start the short journey back to Brookside Cottage.
Chapter 3
Their driver parked the car on the grass verge about forty yards from the cottage. The assortment of vehicles scattered in the immediate vicinity prevented a closer approach.
Three or four newspapermen intercepted the superintendent as he walked along the road. Locals mainly, Pascoe assessed. It was still too soon for anyone to have emerged from the chaos of Saturday morning London. But they would do. Three dead from shotgun wounds was too big to leave in the hands of a local runner.
Backhouse dealt with them kindly but firmly. No, there were no developments yet. They were looking for a man who might be able to help them with their inquiries. Mr Colin Hopkins, yes, that was him. A photograph and description might be issued if it was felt to be necessary.
Pascoe had dropped behind as the questioning proceeded. When Backhouse and his interrogators stopped in front of the cottage, he found himself, deliberately blank-minded, looking up the side of the building between the garage and the wall. There was activity in the back garden and beyond. They would be looking for the weapon. Everything they found would be carefully scrutinized, of course, but it was the weapon they were hoping for. It made a difference if you knew the man you were searching after didn 't have a shotgun in his possession.
He doubted if they'd find it so near. Hurled in panic into the woods over the stream, it would have been found by now. Whereas if the killer were cool enough to make a more deliberate attempt to hide it, he would surely wait until his car had taken him a safe distance from the village.
The killer. He tested himself gently from the vantage point of disembodied objectivity he had scrambled on to in the last two hours. Was he ready yet to consider whether Colin… why Colin…
No. He wasn't quite ready. He walked up to the garage and peered in. What he saw surprised him.
'Sergeant!' Backhouse called authoritatively. Pascoe instinctively obeyed the summons and had joined the superintendent at the threshold before he started wondering about the tone of command. A new step in the psychology of their relationship perhaps. A reminder of his official subordination.
Or perhaps his service with Dalziel had made him too suspicious of all detective-superintendents' motives. Perhaps all Backhouse was doing was using his police rank as a red herring to divert the interest of the newspapermen from him. Clearly, as they moved off in a friendly, almost light-hearted, little group, they had no suspicion that the discoverer of the crime was so close.
In the cottage, much had changed. No effort had been made to tidy up after the rigorous search and fingerprinting examination which had taken place. Why bother when there was no chance of an irate householder turning up to complain?
Backhouse thought differently.
'For God's sake, Hamblyn,' he said to the ginger-moustached detective who came to greet him, 'get this place tidied up. And those cars outside. If I want a road-block here, I'll ask for it.'
'Yes, sir,' said Hamblyn unemotionally.
'Anything new?'
'Nothing useful, sir. Not as far as I can see. Anything on the car yet, sir?'
'I'm afraid not.'
Pascoe spoke lowly, diffidently.
'There's a car in the garage,' he said. It sounded daft as he said it but, hell, he had to say it. Not that it was possible they wouldn't have looked. Was it?
'Yes, yes; I believe there is,' said Backhouse. Then he laughed.
'Oh, I see your dilemma. Yes it's true the Hopkinses' car is in the garage. But it's the other one we're interested in. Royal blue Mini-Cooper according to best report. The one Mr Rushworth and Mr Mansfield arrived in.'
Pascoe was abashed. Hamblyn was looking at him with faint distaste.
'Let's step into the garden,’ said Backhouse, like a kindly host desirous of stirring his guest's digestive juices before lunch.
They went through the dining-room, passing the chalked body-outlines and ringed bloodstains, and out of the french window into the garden, halting near the sundial.
I'm really getting the treatment, thought Pascoe. What does he expect from me? Colin's present address?
'The Hopkinses' car was in the garage, the visitors' car on the driveway,' said Backhouse. 'This is the arrangement you'd expect and this is what the few people we've found who passed early last evening saw.'
'They couldn't see into the garage,' objected Pascoe.
'True,' said Backhouse. 'Now, here's what happened, or what possibly happened supported by a strong scaffolding of what did happen. There was a lot of broken glass scattered around here. Did you notice? From a whisky bottle, that was easy enough to establish. Were they hard drinkers, your friends?'
'Only on occasions,' answered Pascoe, recognizing the start of interrogation. 'And the occasion rarely merited the expense of scotch. But that was years ago. Things change.'
'Yes. Of course. Well, we've got a thorough house-to-house on now, but the first place my men called was the Eagle and Child, the second the Queen Anne. That's where she bought it.'
'The whisky?'
'That's right,' said Backhouse pensively. 'At about quarter to nine last night. Curious that. The Eagle and Child's nearer. No matter. The landlord's wife, who sold it to her at the off-licence counter, didn't see the car, but heard it drive away. She reckons it sounded more like the Mini-Cooper than the Hopkinses' Cortina.'
'A good ear,' commented Pascoe, watching a pair of thrushes which had decided the policemen were harmless, and were drilling for worms.
'No doubt we'll find someone to corroborate it,' said Backhouse. 'As things stand, it seems likely that they started drinking after dinner. When the scotch began to get low, Mrs Hopkins volunteered to fetch more; she used her visitors' car as it would have to be moved anyway to get her own out. On her return she either walked straight into the garden or went through the front door into the lounge, then the dining-room and out of the french windows.'
'And then she was shot,' said Pascoe.
'It seems likely. Very soon after she came back. She was still holding the full bottle, you see. We found the cap with the seal complete. She must have held the bottle in front of her, either to ward off the shot or to use as a weapon. The blast from the shotgun went right through it. There were splinters of glass embedded deep in the wound. Would any of your friends own a shotgun, do you think?'
'I don't know. I just don't know,' said Pascoe irritably. 'I've told you, Superintendent, this was a kind of reunion. I hadn't seen these people for years. How should I know what they were likely to do now?'
'Do people change that much?'
'They change all right. When someone's put a couple of ounces of lead pellets into your face, you change!'
Pascoe realized he was nearly shouting. Jesus, he thought, I should be back there too, lying on one of Constable Crowther's comfortable beds with some of Doctor Hardisty's comfortable pills inside me.
'Sir!' It was Hamblyn from the french window. Behind him stood two men.
'It's Mr French, the coroner, sir.'
'Hello, Superintendent,' said the taller of the two men who now stepped into the garden. He was over six feet, rather gaunt of feature, well tanned, his nose showing the pale indentations left by a frequent wearing of spectacles. His companion was a good nine inches shorter, less dramatic in every way, but his pale oval face was intelligent and far from weak. Both men wore casual, sporting clothes, French going in for bright colours, his companion much more subdued.