Mrs. Davis chuckled good-humouredly. “There, now you’re laughing at me,” she said. “I don’t know how it is, but most of my visitors always seem to find a joke in something or other I say to them. Perhaps it’s just as well, it keeps them cheerful and contented, and what I always say is: make your visitors happy as long as you’re sure they have got enough money to pay their bills. Not that they often manage to hoodwink me—”
“I’m sure they don’t,” interrupted the Inspector politely. “It would take a clever man to do that, I’m certain. By the way, how was it you knew all about the murder of Admiral Penistone before I got here?”
“It isn’t always those that get about the most that hears the most,” replied Mrs. Davis roguishly. “Here am I, not been outside the house this blessed morning, and I warrant I know more about it than anybody else in Whynmouth, barring the police, of course, Inspector. You see, it’s this way: you came in by the hotel entrance, and you wouldn’t have noticed it. But if you go up the side street there’s another door that leads into the Shades. It’s put there, apart from the house, so that it won’t interfere with the hotel visitors. They get their drinks in the smoking-room, and pay more for them, too. It’s the outside customers that use the Shades, fishermen and the like of that, such as the gentlemen who use the smoking-room wouldn’t care to associate with. Not that there’s anything amiss with them, bar that they’re a bit free with their language sometimes. They’re polite enough to me when I go in there in the mornings at opening time to see that all’s right and comfortable.”
“Ah, so you heard about the murder in the Shades this morning, did you, Mrs. Davis?” suggested the Inspector.
“Why! that’s just what I was going to tell you about!” exclaimed Mrs. Davis, in a slightly hurt tone. “But you gentlemen in the police are all the same. You’re so short with your questions that a body can hardly get a word in edgeways. As I was going to say, I was in there this morning when Billy the barman was taking down the shutters, and as soon as he unlocked the door in walked a couple of chaps with ambulance badges on. I asked them if there had been an accident, and they told me how Mr. Ware of Lingham had found the Admiral’s body in the Vicar’s boat, which was floating about, with no one in sight.”
At this moment, as though in answer to Inspector Rudge’s inward prayer, an agitated-looking cook appeared from the back regions and muttered something in Mrs. Davis’s ear. “Why, there now! if it hadn’t altogether slipped my memory,” she exclaimed. “I’ve been so interested hearing you talk, Inspector, that I’ve never ordered the joint for lunch. You’ll excuse me if I run off and see to it, won’t you, Mr. Rudge?”
The Inspector waited till Mrs. Davis had disappeared, then, when he was satisfied that she was out of hearing, rang a bell marked “Porter.” In a few minutes a bald-headed individual hustled into the entrance hall, still struggling with the short jacket which he had hastily thrust on over his rolled-up shirt sleeves. From his appearance he seemed to have been interrupted in the act of stoking the central heating system. He looked at Inspector Rudge enquiringly. “Yessir,” he remarked.
“I’m Inspector Rudge, and I came here to make certain enquiries. You knew Admiral Penistone, I believe?”
The man scratched his head. “Well, sir, I can’t rightly say as I knew him,” he replied. “I’ve only seen him once in my life, and that was last night. Came in here, he did, and asked for Mr. Holland.”
The Inspector nodded. “So I believe. Now, I’m particularly anxious to know how he was looking then. Did he seem worried, or anxious, or anything like that?”
“I couldn’t very well say, sir. You see, it was gone eleven, and I was just going to shut up the house. Mrs. Davis is always telling me to be careful of the gas, and there was only one light burning. The Admiral came just inside the door, and stood where you might be standing now, sir. ‘Is Mr. Holland in?’ he asks, sharp like. And almost before I had time to say he was in bed, he said that it didn’t matter and that he couldn’t wait, as he had a train to catch. He wasn’t here no more than a few seconds, sir. He seemed in a hurry, but I couldn’t properly see his face. I wouldn’t have known who it was if he hadn’t told me.”
Again the Inspector nodded. “You’d recognise him again if you saw him, I suppose?” he asked.
“Well, sir, I might and I mightn’t. I never got a proper sight of him, as you might say.”
“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter,” said the Inspector carelessly. “Was Mr. Holland in when Admiral Penistone called?”
“I’m pretty sure he was, sir, leastways, his boots was outside his door. I saw them when I went up to bed soon after. And he didn’t come in later, I know that for a fact.”
“How can you be sure of that?”
“Why, sir, because I locked the door as I always do round about half-past eleven. If anybody wants to get in after that, they presses the bell, which rings in my room, and I comes down and lets them in. And the bell didn’t ring last night, sir.”
“I see. And when is the door opened again?”
“I unbolts it first thing, when I comes down in the morning, sir, round about six, that is.”
“What do you do after you unlock the door?”
“Why, sir, I lights the kitchen fire and puts on the kettle for a cup of tea.”
“Did you happen to see Mr. Holland this morning?”
“I was in the hall when he went out after breakfast, sir. About nine o’clock that would have been. And he hasn’t come back since, at least not that I know of.”
The sound of Mrs. Davis’s voice, rapidly growing in intensity as she returned from the back regions, caused Rudge to beat a hasty retreat. He slipped out of the hotel, and began to walk towards the police station, reviewing the scraps of information which he had picked up at the Lord Marshall, and congratulating himself upon having had the idea of interviewing Mrs. Davis. Gossip though she might be, her freely-expressed opinions of people were based upon a certain native shrewdness. The Inspector felt that he had already gained a valuable side-light upon Sir Wilfrid Denny, and that even the revelation of that curious episode in the Vicar’s past might prove instructive. As to Holland, Mrs. Davis’s conviction that he was not the murderer was certainly well-grounded if he had spent the night in the hotel.
But of course, the most interesting thing he had learnt was the alleged visit of Admiral Penistone shortly after eleven last night. Unfortunately it was impossible to decide whether the caller had been the Admiral or not. The porter’s identification of him was obviously worthless. He did not know the Admiral by sight, he could not even undertake to recognise the caller again. Where, in fact, had been the Admiral? He had last been seen shortly after ten, by the boat-house. That would have given him an hour to get to Whynmouth. Hardly time to have walked the distance, and yet he was hardly likely to have taken the car out. Had he done so, somebody would have been sure to have heard him. Could he have come down in his boat? Possibly, if the tide had been flowing the right way.
Inspector Rudge frowned. He was no seaman, and he had begun to regard the vagaries of this infernal River Whyn as a personal affront to him. His idea of a self-respecting river was a placid stream which knew its own mind and flowed always in the same direction, like, say, the Thames at Maidenhead. But the Whyn was mad, subject, like a lunatic, to the influence of the moon, and changing the direction of its flow in obedience to some law which was past the Inspector’s comprehension. He decided that he would have to consult some expert on that point. For the present, he imagined that if the tide had been flowing down the river, there was no reason why the Admiral should not have called at the Lord Marshall at the time stated.
But on the other hand, his behaviour there had been quite contrary to what the Inspector had gathered of his character. He seemed to have been of a peremptory and determined nature. Rudge could not have imagined him walking into the place, with the intention of seeing Holland, and then suddenly changing his mind on the score that he had barely time to catch his train.