Chapter XXVII

Well, sir, here’s her statement,” said Detective Abbott. “And if I may say so, I think she was telling the truth. The only thing against it is that Peter Renshaw was particularly anxious to impress upon me beforehand that Miss Craddock was so truthful that she couldn’t tell a lie if she tried.”

“H’m!” said the Inspector. “He might be very anxious for you to believe that she was truthful, and yet it might be the fact, you know.”

“Yes, I know, sir. But you’ve got to consider the tremendous importance for the whole Craddock family of this point about her having seen someone slip down the steps of Craddock House just before she got there at two-fifteen. If that’s true, it lets out Peter Renshaw, Miss Fenton, and Mavis Grey.”

“Lets herself out too.”

“Yes-only I don’t think she needs letting out, really. I’m quite sure her statement is true in the main. I’m certain she did try to find Mavis Grey and make a last appeal to her, and that the reason she didn’t give the alarm when she found Ross Craddock lying dead was that she saw Mavis’s powder compact and was so frightened at the idea of her being mixed up in the murder that she just panicked and ran away. That’s all natural enough. But that shadow slipping down the steps sticks in my throat, and if there’s no corroboration, I shouldn’t expect a jury to swallow it either.”

“We haven’t got as far as a jury,” said the Inspector. After a pause he added the word “Yet.”

He picked up Lucy Craddock’s statement and read it through to the end. Then he said,

“What’s made her so worked up about this affair between Mr. Craddock and Miss Grey? That’s what I’d like to know. Seems to me it’s all a bit out of reason. She mightn’t like him, and she mightn’t want her niece to marry him, but she wasn’t even Miss Grey’s guardian, and I don’t see why she put herself in such a state as this amounts to.” He tossed the statement down upon the table. “To my mind there’s something behind it, and I’d like to know what it is.”

“Yes, sir-you’re perfectly right. I pressed her about it, and I think I got something. Craddock couldn’t marry Mavis Grey because he was married already.”

“What?”

“Miss Craddock was a bit incoherent, but I gather that there had been some sort of a war marriage-old history-many years ago-very upsetting for the whole family. The woman was an actress and older than he was, but he was over twenty-one at the time and they couldn’t get the marriage upset. It didn’t last any time to speak of, but Miss Craddock said she was quite sure there had never been a divorce. She said she didn’t think Craddock wanted a divorce, because it suited his book to philander around and then be able to say that of course he hadn’t any intentions, because he was a married man.”

“Anything known about the wife?”

“I gather that none of them has ever seen her. Miss Craddock says that during the lifetime of her cousin, the elder Mr. Craddock, a small allowance was paid to her through Mr. Prothero, the family solicitor, but she believes Ross Craddock stopped it. There was a thing that struck me there, sir-once I’d got her started Miss Craddock fairly poured all this out. I couldn’t help wondering whether this rather mythical wife wasn’t a red herring. And that’s making me wonder whether Miss Lucy is quite the truthful innocent that Peter wants to make me think she is. First she sees a very convenient shadow slip down the steps of Craddock House, then she says she finds the front door open, and lastly she releases a whole news-reel about a twenty-year-old marriage.”

“I thought you said you believed she was telling the truth.”

Detective Abbott ran his hand back over his hair.

“I know I did. That’s the funny thing-when I was talking to her and taking down that statement I could have sworn it was all straight, but the moment I come to go over it to you I can see how fishy it looks. It’s too convenient for the Craddocks-that’s how it strikes me. And that story of someone coming down the steps-look how beautifully vague she leaves it. It might be a man, it might be a woman-she only says it was someone. And there’s no corroboration.”

The telephone bell rang. The Inspector lifted the receiver, listened for a while, and then said,

“That’s good enough-we’ll pull him in. Good work, Lintott! I’m coming straight over.”

He hung up and turned a satisfied face on Abbott.

“That was Lintott. He rang up whilst you were out to say he’d got a lot of stuff about Foster, and a number of good fingerprints from his brushes and shaving tackle. Foster wasn’t there, but he’d got a search warrant. I told him to rush the fingerprint business through and let me know the result. That was it, and it’s good enough to put Mr. Bobby Foster in the dock. His prints correspond exactly with the ones we couldn’t place, on the banisters and the sitting-room door. He was here that night, and he made those marks and he dropped his cigarette-case. His landlady says he came back in a taxi about midnight and made a lot of noise on the stairs. She says he didn’t go to bed, but walked up and down in his room talking to himself and kicking the furniture. Her husband went in to him at half past one and told him he was disturbing the whole house. The man says Mr. Foster was in an awful state-told him his girl had thrown him over, and he was going to buy a revolver and shoot himself, but he was going to shoot the other man first. He says there was a bottle of whisky on the table and Mr. Foster kept pouring himself out another drink. He says he tried to calm him down, but it was no good, and all of a sudden Mr. Foster shouted out that he wasn’t going to stand it any longer. ‘I’ll have it out with him,’ he said, ‘if I have to blow his head off!’ and with that he was down the stairs and out of the house and no stopping him-and by all accounts they were glad enough to be rid of him. They went to bed again, but they didn’t bolt the street door. Round about three in the morning the man heard something fall. He opened the bedroom door, and there was Mr. Foster on the stairs in his stocking feet with one shoe in his hand and the other where he’d dropped it on the half-landing. He didn’t look drunk any more, but he looked worse. The man says he looked as if he had seen a ghost. And he went back and picked up his shoe and on up to his room, all without making a sound. I’ll say we’ve got our man all right, or will have as soon as I get that warrant. There’s no doubt what happened, to my mind. He got round here somewhere about two o’clock, quarrelled with Mr. Craddock, and threatened him. Mr. Craddock had had a bang over the head already and he wasn’t feeling too grand. He gets scared, or wants to scare the other man, opens this drawer, and pulls out his revolver. Mr. Foster gets it from him-he’s a very powerful young man-and, either in a struggle or deliberately, Mr. Craddock is shot. Mr. Foster throws down the pistol and gets away just as Miss Craddock comes along. It fits in well enough with what she says she saw.”

“She says she saw the pistol in Ross Craddock’s hand.”

“Well, isn’t that where Foster would put it if he’d any sense in him at all?”

“He might. There’s one thing though-Miss Craddock had a key to the front door of Craddock House, but Bobby Foster hadn’t.”

The Inspector looked at him, frowning.

“You mean?”

“How did he get in, sir?”