弄假成真15
时间：2025-03-03 03:31:24
（单词翻译:单击）
Fifteen
It was a fortnight later that Inspector Bland had a long and unsatisfying interview with the Chief
Constable of the County.
Major Merrall had irritable tufted eyebrows and looked rather like an angry terrier. But his men
all liked him and respected his judgment.
“Well, well, well,” said Major Merrall. “What have we got? Nothing that we can act on. This
fellow de Sousa now? We can’t connect him in any way with the Girl Guide. If Lady Stubbs’ body
had turned up, that would have been different.” He brought his eyebrows down towards his nose
and glared at Bland. “You think there is a body, don’t you?”
“What do you think, sir?”
“Oh, I agree with you. Otherwise, we’d have traced her by now. Unless, of course, she’d made
her plans very carefully. And I don’t see the least indication of that. She’d no money, you know.
We’ve been into all the financial side of it. Sir George had the money. He made her a very
generous allowance, but she’s not got a stiver of her own. And there’s no trace of a lover. No
rumour of one, no gossip—and there would be, mark you, in a country district like that.”
He took a turn up and down the floor.
“The plain fact of it is that we don’t know. We think de Sousa for some unknown reason of his
own made away with his cousin. The most probable thing is that he got her to meet him down at
the boathouse, took her aboard the launch and pushed her overboard. You’ve tested that that could
happen?”
“Good lord, sir! You could drown a whole boatful of people during holiday time in the river or
on the seashore. Nobody’d think anything of it. Everyone spends their time squealing and pushing
each other off things. But the thing de Sousa didn’t know about, was that that girl was in the
boathouse, bored to death with nothing to do and ten to one was looking out of the window.”
“Hoskins looked out of the window and watched the performance you put up, and you didn’t
see him?”
“No, sir. You’d have no idea anyone was in that boathouse unless they came out on the balcony
and showed themselves—”
“Perhaps the girl did come out on the balcony. De Sousa realizes she’s seen what he’s doing, so
he comes ashore and deals with her, gets her to let him into the boathouse by asking her what she’s
doing there. She tells him, pleased with her part in the Murder Hunt, he puts the cord round her
neck in a playful manner—and whoooosh…” Major Merrall made an expressive gesture with his
hands. “That’s that! Okay, Bland; okay. Let’s say that’s how it happened. Pure guesswork. We
haven’t got any evidence. We haven’t got a body, and if we attempted to detain de Sousa in this
country we’d have a hornets’ nest about our ears. We’ll have to let him go.”
“Is he going, sir?”
“He’s laying up his yacht a week from now. Going back to his blasted island.”
“So we haven’t got much time,” said Inspector Bland gloomily.
“There are other possibilities, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes, sir, there are several possibilities. I still hold to it that she must have been murdered
by somebody who was in on the facts of the Murder Hunt. We can clear two people completely.
Sir George Stubbs and Captain Warburton. They were running shows on the lawn and taking
charge of things the entire afternoon. They are vouched for by dozens of people. The same applies
to Mrs. Masterton, if, that is, one can include her at all.”
“Include everybody,” said Major Merrall. “She’s continually ringing me up about bloodhounds.
In a detective story,” he added wistfully, “she’d be just the woman who had done it. But, dash it,
I’ve known Connie Masterton pretty well all my life. I just can’t see her going round strangling
Girl Guides, or disposing of mysterious exotic beauties. Now, then, who else is there?”
“There’s Mrs. Oliver,” said Bland. “She devised the Murder Hunt. She’s rather eccentric and
she was away on her own for a good part of the afternoon. Then there’s Mr. Alec Legge.”
“Fellow in the pink cottage, eh?”
“Yes. He left the show fairly early on, or he wasn’t seen there. He says he got fed up with it and
walked back to his cottage. On the other hand, old Merdell—that’s the old boy down at the quay
who looks after people’s boats for them and helps with the parking—he says Alec Legge passed
him going back to the cottage about five o’clock. Not earlier. That leaves about an hour of his time
unaccounted for. He says, of course, that Merdell has no idea of time and was quite wrong as to
when he saw him. And after all, the old man is ninety-two.”
“Rather unsatisfactory,” said Major Merrall. “No motive or anything of that kind to tie him in?”
“He might have been having an affair with Lady Stubbs,” said Bland doubtfully, “and she might
have been threatening to tell his wife, and he might have done her in, and the girl might have seen
it happen—”
“And he concealed Lady Stubbs’ body somewhere?”
“Yes. But I’m blessed if I know how or where. My men have searched that sixty-five acres and
there’s no trace anywhere of disturbed earth, and I should say that by now we’ve rooted under
every bush there is. Still, say he did manage to hide the body, he could have thrown her hat into
the river as a blind. And Marlene Tucker saw him and so he disposed of her? That part of it’s
always the same.” Inspector Bland paused, then said, “And, of course, there’s Mrs. Legge—”
“What have we got on her?”
“She wasn’t in the tea tent from four to half past as she says she was,” said Inspector Bland
slowly. “I spotted that as soon as I’d talked to her and to Mrs. Folliat. Evidence supports Mrs.
Folliat’s statement. And that’s the particular, vital half hour.” Again he paused. “Then there’s the
architect, young Michael Weyman. It’s difficult to tie him up with it in any way, but he’s what I
should call a likely murderer—one of those cocky, nervy young fellows. Would kill anyone and
not turn a hair about it. In with a loose set, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“You’re so damned respectable, Bland,” said Major Merrall. “How does he account for his
movements?”
“Very vague, sir. Very vague indeed.”
“That proves he’s a genuine architect,” said Major Merrall with feeling. He had recently built
himself a house near the sea coast. “They’re so vague, I wonder they’re alive at all sometimes.”
“Doesn’t know where he was or when and there’s nobody who seems to have seen him. There
is some evidence that Lady Stubbs was keen on him.”
“I suppose you’re hinting at one of these sex murders?”
“I’m only looking about for what I can find, sir,” said Inspector Bland with dignity. “And then
there’s Miss Brewis…” He paused. It was a long pause.
“That’s the secretary, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. Very efficient woman.”
Again there was a pause. Major Merrall eyed his subordinate keenly.
“You’ve got something on your mind about her, haven’t you?” he said.
“Yes, I have, sir. You see, she admits quite openly that she was in the boathouse at about the
time the murder must have been committed.”
“Would she do that if she was guilty?”
“She might,” said Inspector Bland slowly. “Actually, it’s the best thing she could do. You see, if
she picks up a tray with cake and a fruit drink and tells everyone she’s taking that for the child
down there—well, then, her presence is accounted for. She goes there and comes back and says
the girl was alive at that time. We’ve taken her word for it. But if you remember, sir, and look
again at the medical evidence, Dr. Cook’s time of death is between four o’clock and quarter to
five. We’ve only Miss Brewis’ word for it that Marlene was alive at a quarter past four. And
there’s one curious point that came up about her testimony. She told me that it was Lady Stubbs
who told her to take the cakes and fruit drink to Marlene. But another witness said quite definitely
that that wasn’t the sort of thing that Lady Stubbs would think about. And I think, you know, that
they’re right there. It’s not like Lady Stubbs. Lady Stubbs was a dumb beauty wrapped up in
herself and her own appearance. She never seems to have ordered meals or taken an interest in
household management or thought of anybody at all except her own handsome self. The more I
think of it, the more it seems most unlikely that she should have told Miss Brewis to take anything
to the Girl Guide.”
“You know, Bland,” said Merrall, “you’ve got something there. But what’s her motive, if so?”
“No motive for killing the girl,” said Bland; “but I do think, you know, that she might have a
motive for killing Lady Stubbs. According to M. Poirot, whom I told you about, she’s head over
heels in love with her employer. Supposing she followed Lady Stubbs into the woods and killed
her and that Marlene Tucker, bored in the boathouse, came out and happened to see it? Then of
course she’d have to kill Marlene too. What would she do next? Put the girl’s body in the
boathouse, come back to the house, fetch the tray and go down to the boathouse again. Then she’s
covered her own absence from the fête and we’ve got her testimony, our only reliable testimony
on the face of it, that Marlene Tucker was alive at a quarter past four.”
“Well,” said Major Merrall, with a sigh, “keep after it, Bland. Keep after it. What do you think
she did with Lady Stubbs’ body, if she’s the guilty party?”
“Hid it in the woods, buried it, or threw it into the river.”
“The last would be rather difficult, wouldn’t it?”
“It depends where the murder was committed,” said the inspector. “She’s quite a hefty woman.
If it was not far from the boathouse, she could have carried her down there and thrown her off the
edge of the quay.”
“With every pleasure steamer on the Helm looking on?”
“It would be just another piece of horseplay. Risky, but possible. But I think it far more likely
myself that she hid the body somewhere, and just threw the hat into the Helm. It’s possible, you
see, that she, knowing the house and grounds well, might know some place where you could
conceal a body. She may have managed to dispose of it in the river later. Who knows? That is, of
course, if she did it,” added Inspector Bland as an afterthought. “But, actually, sir, I stick to de
Sousa—”
Major Merrall had been noting down points on a pad. He looked up now, clearing his throat.
“It comes to this, then. We can summarize it as follows: we’ve got five or six people who could
have killed Marlene Tucker. Some of them are more likely than others, but that’s as far as we can
go. In a general way, we know why she was killed. She was killed because she saw something. But
until we know exactly what it was she saw—we don’t know who killed her.”
“Put like that, you make it sound a bit difficult, sir.”
“Oh, it is difficult. But we shall get there—in the end.”
“And meantime that chap will have left England—laughing in his sleeve—having got away
with two murders.”
“You’re fairly sure about him, aren’t you? I don’t say you’re wrong. All the same….”
The chief constable was silent for a moment or two, then he said, with a shrug of his shoulders:
“Anyway, it’s better than having one of these psychopathic murderers. We’d probably be
having a third murder on our hands by now.”
“They do say things go in threes,” said the inspector gloomily.
He repeated that remark the following morning when he heard that old Merdell, returning home
from a visit to his favourite pub across the river at Gitcham, must have exceeded his usual
potations and had fallen in the river when boarding the quay. His boat was found adrift, and the
old man’s body was recovered that evening.
The inquest was short and simple. The night had been dark and overcast, old Merdell had had
three pints of beer and, after all, he was ninety-two.
The verdict brought in was Accidental Death.
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