Brass made his statement, and a very clever one it was, too. Its sheer, reckless audacity compelled admiration for the man. Undeterred by Gently in his window seat, or Somerhayes, pale from the loss of blood and with his arm in a sling, the artist rolled off a story that either one of them could have punctured in a dozen places. And all the while his green eyes twinkled ironically from one to the other…
He was returning to the north-east wing to fetch his lighter, that was the tale. On entering the great hall by the south-west door to the gallery, he had heard the voices of Mrs Page and Earle raised in the saloon. Naturally, he had been unable to avoid overhearing what was being said, and the purport of it had made him hesitate by the door in case Mrs Page needed assistance. In the event, Mrs Page succeeded in breaking away from Earle. With the final injunction to him that he had better leave in the morning, she had hastily departed in the direction of her own apartment. For some moments Earle had remained in the saloon, and Brass was about to pass on under the impression that the American had given up his intentions. Before he could do so, however, Earle rushed out of the saloon in obvious pursuit of Mrs Page, and Brass had siezed his arm and attempted to remonstrate with him. The American had refused to listen. He had grappled with Brass and attempted to throw him down. In the course of the struggle Brass was hurled against the wall under the panel of truncheons, and as Earle turned to continue his pursuit of Mrs Page, Brass had seized one of the truncheons and struck the American on the back of the head.
It went without saying that the blow was not intended to be fatal. Brass’s sole object had been to disable Earle and to prevent him carrying out what appeared to be a criminal purpose. Unfortunately he had struck not wisely but too well, and Earle, after tottering a few steps, had toppled lifelessly down the great stairs. Brass, shocked and alarmed at the result of what he had done, but realizing that it would probably pass as an accidental fall, had wiped and replaced the truncheon and left the affair to develop as it might. He had not been apprehensive when suspicion fell on Johnson, since he felt that the police were proceeding on grounds palpably insufficient (here he was obliged to pause while Sir Daynes baronetized once or twice), but in a recent interview with his lordship and Chief Inspector Gently it had been represented to him that his lordship was now under suspicion; he therefore felt it incumbent on him to confess. He realized that he had done wrongly in attempting concealment. He deeply regretted the trouble and unpleasantness it had caused. If any part of his statement were not quite clear, he would be happy to supply every detail that might assist complete clarification.
Sir Daynes was openly baffled by this masterly blue-print for a verdict of manslaughter. He scratched his grizzled locks and fired a number of his most telling glances at the apparently contrite artist. Things had happened that didn’t seem to have got on the record — odd, preposterous and downright unofficial things! The baronet had the feeling that he was being left out somewhere, and nobody seemed to be rushing to put him in the picture…
‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘Dyson, charge this feller with manslaughter. I’ll get on to you later if there’s to be any amendment of the charge. Oh, and regarding that other feller, Johnson…’
‘Yes, sir?’ enquired Dyson bleakly.
‘Better drop the charge, man — sort of thing doesn’t do our reputation any good!’
Dyson departed looking as though Christmas hadn’t done much for him, with him his supporters and the handcuffed Brass. Sir Daynes slewed in his chair to confront his lordship and Gently. Colonel Rynacker, who had been a silent witness to the processes of the goddamned, also appeared to have items on his mind.
‘Well?’ demanded Sir Daynes, raking the Somerhayes — Gently sector. ‘You’re not going to tell me it’s as simple as all that, eh? Got a spoke, haven’t you, to put in that feller’s wheel?’
Somerhayes nursed his bandaged shoulder and glanced across at Gently. It was an appealing, part-reproachful, part-admonishing look, and the Central Office man replied with the merest inflection of his shoulders. Somerhayes nodded back an acknowledgement that was equally discreet.
‘I do not think there is a great deal to add, Sir Daynes,’ he said in his flat-toned way of speaking. ‘I am prepared to amend my statement, of course, to confirm the fact that Brass was present in the hall-’
‘Yes, yes — don’t doubt it, don’t doubt it!’ interrupted Sir Daynes impatiently. ‘But what about this — hah — interview that’s supposed to have taken place between Gently and you and Brass — bit more than an interview, wasn’t it, judging by results?’
‘It served its purpose, Sir Daynes… I doubt whether it is necessary to encumber your case with the particular details.’
‘Not even though you got winged, man, and Gently had to chase Brass over the tiles?’
Somerhayes squirmed a little and glanced at Gently again. The chief inspector was sitting hunched like an owl in a belfry, an expression of extraordinary blankness on his face.
‘There were factors of this interview, Sir Daynes, which, as a magistrate, I have naturally been obliged to consider with great care. It was a consultation in which, admittedly, a great deal of emotion was involved. Rash words were spoken in anger, foolish determinations evoked and acted upon. But I believe that the only certain and significant thing to emerge from it is Mr Brass’s willingness to confess, and that the admission as evidence of what preceded it can only be prejudicial to the proper end of justice. You must therefore excuse me from being more explicit.’
‘But damn it all, man!’ exploded Sir Daynes with warmth. ‘If that’s your attitude, what sort of case have we got against this feller, eh? Next thing we know he’ll be getting off clean, with the confounded judge patting him on the back for doing his civic duty!’
Somerhayes smiled thinly and made his little bow. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I am obliged to act according to my conscience, Sir Daynes.’
‘And you, Gently!’ barked Sir Daynes, turning on the Central Office man. I suppose you’re backing Somerhayes up — won’t breathe a word about this afternoon?’
Gently stirred in his window seat. ‘It’s not for me to argue with a magistrate,’ he replied.
Sir Daynes gazed at them nonplussed. Never before had he met such a plain case of obstruction, with so little that could be legitimately done about it. If they wouldn’t come clean they wouldn’t — and there was nothing he could confounded well do to make them! He had got his man, he had got his confession, and what more could a chief constable reasonably ask for?
‘At the same time…’ mused Gently.
‘Eh?’ snapped Sir Daynes.
‘According to my conscience, you’d better make that charge murder
… with manslaughter, of course, as the happy alternative.’
‘No!’ exclaimed Somerhayes, rising to his feet. ‘As a magistrate, Mr Gently-’
Gently stopped him with a gesture.
‘As a magistrate, my lord, you can appreciate my point. You can appreciate the importance of your will as prosecution evidence. It gave Brass a murderer’s motive. He should be compelled to explain that motive. My conscience doesn’t think that the shadow of the gallows will be a bad thing for Mr Brass…’
Somerhayes sank back trembling; what colour he had had drained out of his handsome cheeks.
‘Perhaps you are right, Mr Gently,’ he murmured. ‘Perhaps you are right… I will inform Sir Daynes of the circumstances of the will.’
Gently nodded his mandarin nod. ‘I think that’s best. Especially as Mr Brass is such an admirable explainer…’
The charge was duly amended to murder and the alternative. Sir Daynes, if not happy, was satisfied with the case he was turning in. The feller might get off, in fact it was on the cards that he would, but a brush with the black cap followed by a few years’ segregation would make him think deeply before breaking out again. And, in the meantime, Somerhayes was clear. The son of his old friend was not to be exhibited in the dock at the next Quarter Sessions. By and large, things could have been a lot worse… and damnation! It was still Christmas, however irregularly the season had started off.
‘I guess the lieutenant stuck his neck out,’ admitted the colonel over a friendly Scotch. ‘If these youngsters will go skirt-hunting in other people’s preserves, then jeez, they’re asking for it, and you can quote Dwight P. Rynacker as saying so. You know something, Bart?’
‘No,’ replied Sir Daynes innocently. ‘I don’t know anything.’
‘I been holding out on you, Bart, I been keeping back Earle’s dossier. I had it here this morning, right in my briefcase, only when you got so goddam rumbumptious I reckoned you could darned well carry on without it.’
Sir Daynes glanced at him indignantly. ‘Me get goddam rumbumptious?’ he echoed.
‘Waal’ — the colonel grinned at him out of his jowls — ‘someone got goddam rumbumptious, and I guess that dossier stayed right in my briefcase. But I got it here again now, and you can have a go-over. The lootenant wasn’t quite the blue-eyed boy he gave out, Bart. He’d been in skirt-trouble before, here and back home. One time I cracked down on his leave this Christmas, when I found out where he was spending it, but I guess I didn’t like to be hard at this time of the year, and after a man-to-man talk about the facts of life I gave him his pass back. Which just goes to show, don’t it? Ain’t no goddam use being a sentimental colonel!’
‘Feller took me in,’ growled Sir Daynes to his whisky. ‘Damned impertinent and that, but I couldn’t help liking him.’
‘Heck, everyone liked him,’ assented the colonel. ‘That’s just where the catch lay, Bart. He’d got a charm index about ninety-five at proof. But the old Adam was tucked away there, don’t you forget it, and all the more dangerous on account of being hid up.’
Gently sat smoking an American cigar and contributing nothing to the conversation. He’d been taken in too… if that was how you’d describe it! He could see Earle now, unwrapping his presents on the seat of that first-class compartment. He could hear the young airman’s voice with its thrill of enthusiasm and expectation. So there’d been a flaw in that fresh young character, a streak of cold selfishness, perhaps, among the layers of friendly warmth. Was he different in that from the rest of humanity? Was he particularly damned for being imperfect? One took the good with the bad, the rough with the smooth. In the compound of mortality none dared to require perfection. Yet Earle’s weakness had been fatal to him. Out of a thousand chances he had drawn the intolerant one. A cooler, more forbidding, less generous man might never have attracted retribution for his failings, nor ever have gladdened a single soul. Who had Earle taken in? Who had expected him to be a god?
‘Guess I’ll miss him,’ said the colonel. ‘Guess I’ll miss the young hound! He got drafted over here at the same time as me. Came in the same flight, we did, way back in August. Reckon we’ll fly him back, too… His folk’ll expect that.’
‘Hmph! Inquest tomorrow,’ said Sir Daynes gruffly.
‘Yeah… I know the ropes. I’ll have a wagon there to collect him.’
The fire burned red, and Sir Daynes, coming out of a revery with a jerk, suddenly remembered that his spouse was keeping a lonely vigil in the Manor House.
‘Hah — Gently!’ he exclaimed. ‘Better be getting back, man… There’s nothing we can do here, and Somerhayes has gone off to jaw things over with his cousin. Care to join us over at my place, Colonel? I can guarantee the central heating!’
The colonel nodded, getting to his feet. ‘I’d surely appreciate that, Bart, right now.’
‘It’ll be a change of blasted atmosphere — I try to keep business out of the home. Outside it, y’know, I’m the chief constable of Northshire, but once I cross that confounded threshold I’m just Gwendoline’s husband…’
Lady Broke had her skating, and, by way of a special and not-to-be-adopted-as-precedent dispensation, Gently was indulged in another day’s pike-fishing, by means of an air-hole cut in the ice. This proved to be a highly successful operation. The pike, wholly innocent of the dangers of air-holes, almost hung around waiting for the gleam of Gently’s spoon. Certainly, he didn’t get a specimen. The largest, an eighteen-pounder, was no rival for the celebrated heavy-weight that graced the wall in Finchley. But they bit firm and they bit often, and the average weight was gratifyingly high. At the dusky end of the day Gently struck his gear with the complacent feeling of a man who had really been among the pike, and having been there, had acquitted himself. A snapshot taken by Sir Daynes provided a permanent record of the fact.
Of Somerhayes, Gently saw no more before he returned to town. He did not attend the inquest, which dealt merely with identification, and Sir Daynes, who did, reported that Somerhayes ‘hadn’t got a blasted word for him, not for anyone else as far as he could see’.
‘Poor man,’ commented Lady Broke, whose maternal interest in Somerhayes never flagged. ‘It’s been a shocking time for him, Daynes, truly shocking. I shudder to think of what he must have been through. If I were him I would take a long, long holiday in — you know, the West Indies or somewhere like that. And I would take Janice Page with me. I think it’s ridiculous how he doesn’t marry her!’
Sir Daynes pooh-poohed, but his prescient lady maintained her opinion; and whether the idea was communicated to Somerhayes supersensorily or by more material media, he did, in fact, very shortly depart with Janice for the sunny shores of Jamaica. Johnson, who proved quite capable of the task, was left to manage the tapestry workshop.
‘I liked the inspector,’ said Gertrude Winfarthing dreamily, as, with the housemaid, she stripped the now-vacant bed. ‘Give me a ten-bob note he did, which is more than half of them do. An’ he got a twinkle in his eye… Did you notice his twinkle, Irene? I reckon a girl like me could do worse than marry a man like that, spite of his being fiftyish and always got a pipe in his mouth…’
And she kept her piece of mistletoe for quite a long time afterwards.