Nine

They drove along Wilbraham Crescent, turned to the right up Albany Roadand then to the right again along the second instalment of WilbrahamCrescent.

“Simple really,” said Hardcastle.

“Once you know,” said Colin.

“61 really backs on Mrs. Hemming’s house—but a corner of it toucheson 19, so that’s good enough. It will give you a chance to look at your Mr.

Bland. No foreign help, by the way.”

“So there goes a beautiful theory.” The car drew up and the two men gotout.

“Well, well,” said Colin. “Some front garden!”

It was indeed a model of surburban perfection in a small way. Therewere beds of geraniums with lobelia edging. There were large fleshy-look-ing begonias, and there was a fine display of garden ornaments—frogs,toadstools, comic gnomes and pixies.

“I’m sure Mr. Bland must be a nice worthy man,” said Colin, with a shud-der. “He couldn’t have these terrible ideas if he wasn’t.” He added asHardcastle pushed the bell, “Do you expect him to be in at this time of themorning?”

“I rang up,” explained Hardcastle. “Asked him if it would be conveni-ent.”

At that moment a smart little Traveller van drew up and turned into thegarage, which had obviously been a late addition to the house. Mr. JosaiahBland got out, slammed the door and advanced towards them. He was aman of medium height with a bald head and rather small blue eyes. Hehad a hearty manner.

“Inspector Hardcastle? Come right in.”

He led the way into the sitting room. It evinced several proofs ofprosperity. There were expensive and rather ornate lamps, an Empirewriting desk, a coruscated ormolu set of mantelpiece ornaments, a mar-quetry cabinet, and a jardinère full of flowers in the window. The chairswere modern and richly upholstered.

“Sit down,” said Mr. Bland heartily. “Smoke? Or can’t you when you’reon the job?”

“No, thanks,” said Hardcastle.

“Don’t drink either, I suppose?” said Mr. Bland. “Ah well, better for bothof us, I dare say. Now what’s it all about? This business at Number 19 Isuppose? The corners of our gardens adjoin, but we’ve not much real viewof it except from the upper floor windows. Extraordinary business alto-gether it seems to be—at least from what I read in our local paper thismorning. I was delighted when I got your message. A chance of gettingsome of the real dope. You’ve no idea the rumours that are flying about!

It’s made my wife quite nervous—feeling there’s a killer on the loose, youknow. The trouble is they let all these barmy people out of lunatic asylumsnowadays. Send them home on parole or whatever they call it. Then theydo in someone else and they clap them back again. And as I say, the ru-mours! I mean, what with our daily woman and the milk and paper boy,you’d be surprised. One says he was strangled with picture wire, and theother says he was stabbed. Someone else that he was coshed. At any rate itwas a he, wasn’t it? I mean, it wasn’t the old girl who was done in? An un-known man, the papers said.”

Mr. Bland came to a full stop at last.

Hardcastle smiled and said in a deprecating voice:

“Well, as to unknown, he had a card and an address in his pocket.”

“So much for that story then,” said Bland. “But you know what peopleare. I don’t know who thinks up all these things.”

“While we’re on the subject of the victim,” said Hardcastle, “perhapsyou’ll have a look at this.”

Once more he brought out the police photograph.

“So that’s him, is it?” said Bland. “He looks a perfectly ordinary chap,doesn’t he? Ordinary as you and me. I suppose I mustn’t ask if he had anyparticular reason to be murdered?”

“It’s early days to talk about that,” said Hardcastle. “What I want toknow, Mr. Bland, is if you’ve ever seen this man before.”

Bland shook his head.

“I’m sure I haven’t. I’m quite good at remembering faces.”

“He hasn’t called upon you for any particular purpose—selling insur-ance or — vacuum cleaners or washing machines, or anything of thatkind?”

“No, no. Certainly not.”

“We ought perhaps to ask your wife,” said Hardcastle. “After all, if hecalled at the house, it’s your wife he would see.”

“Yes, that’s perfectly true. I don’t know, though … Valerie’s not got verygood health, you know. I wouldn’t like to upset her. What I mean is, well, Isuppose that’s a picture of him when he’s dead, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Hardcastle, “that is quite true. But it is not a painful photo-graph in any way.”

“No, no. Very well done. The chap might be asleep, really.”

“Are you talking about me, Josaiah?”

An adjoining door from the other room was pushed open and a middle-aged woman entered the room. She had, Hardcastle decided, been listen-ing with close attention on the other side of the door.

“Ah, there you are, my dear,” said Bland, “I thought you were havingyour morning nap. This is my wife, Detective Inspector Hardcastle.”

“That terrible murder,” murmured Mrs. Bland. “It really makes meshiver to think of it.”

She sat down on the sofa with a little gasping sigh.

“Put your feet up, dear,” said Bland.

Mrs. Bland obeyed. She was a sandy-haired woman, with a faint whin-ing voice. She looked anaemic, and had all the airs of an invalid who ac-cepts her invalidism with a certain amount of enjoyment. For a momentor two, she reminded Inspector Hardcastle of somebody. He tried to thinkwho it was, but failed. The faint, rather plaintive voice continued.

“My health isn’t very good, Inspector Hardcastle, so my husband natur-ally tries to spare me any shocks or worry. I’m very sensitive. You werespeaking about a photograph, I think, of the—of the murdered man. Ohdear, how terrible that sounds. I don’t know that I can bear to look!”

“Dying to see it, really,” thought Hardcastle to himself.

With faint malice in his voice, he said:

“Perhaps I’d better not ask you to look at it, then, Mrs. Bland. I justthought you might be able to help us, in case the man has called at thishouse at any time.”

“I must do my duty, mustn’t I,” said Mrs. Bland, with a sweet bravesmile. She held out her hand.

“Do you think you’d better upset yourself, Val?”

“Don’t be foolish, Josaiah. Of course I must see.”

She looked at the photograph with much interest and, or so the in-spector thought, a certain amount of disappointment.

“He looks—really, he doesn’t look dead at all,” she said. “Not at all asthough he’d been murdered. Was he—he can’t have been strangled?”

“He was stabbed,” said the inspector.

Mrs. Bland closed her eyes and shivered.

“Oh dear,” she said, “how terrible.”

“You don’t feel you’ve ever seen him, Mrs. Bland?”

“No,” said Mrs. Bland with obvious reluctance, “no, no, I’m afraid not.

Was he the sort of man who—who calls at houses selling things?”

“He seems to have been an insurance agent,” said the inspector care-fully.

“Oh, I see. No, there’s been nobody of that kind, I’m sure. You never re-member my mentioning anything of that kind, do you, Josaiah?”

“Can’t say I do,” said Mr. Bland.

“Was he any relation to Miss Pebmarsh?” asked Mrs. Bland.

“No,” said the inspector, “he was quite unknown to her.”

“Very peculiar,” said Mrs. Bland.

“You know Mrs. Pebmarsh?”

“Oh yes, I mean, we know her as neighbours, of course. She asks myhusband for advice sometimes about the garden.”

“You’re a very keen gardener, I gather?” said the inspector.

“Not really, not really,” said Bland deprecatingly. “Haven’t the time, youknow. Of course, I know what’s what. But I’ve got an excellent fellow—comes twice a week. He sees the garden’s kept well stocked, and well ti-died up. I’d say you couldn’t beat our garden round here, but I’m not oneof those real gardeners like my neighbour.”

“Mrs. Ramsay?” said Hardcastle in some surprise.

“No, no, farther along. 63. Mr. McNaughton. He just lives for his garden.

In it all day long, and mad on compost. Really, he’s quite a bore on the sub-ject of compost—but I don’t suppose that’s what you want to talk about.”

“Not exactly,” said the inspector. “I only wondered if anyone—you oryour wife, for instance—were out in your garden yesterday. After all, asyou say, it does touch on the border of 19 and there’s just a chance thatyou might have seen something interesting yesterday—or heard some-thing, perhaps?”

“Midday, wasn’t it? When the murder happened I mean?”

“The relevant times are between one o’clock and three o’clock.”

Bland shook his head. “I wouldn’t have seen much then. I was here. Sowas Valerie, but we’d be having lunch, you know, and our dining roomlooks out on the roadside. We shouldn’t see anything that was going on inthe garden.”

“What time do you have your meal?”

“One o’clock or thereabouts. Sometimes it’s one thirty.”

“And you didn’t go out in the garden at all afterwards?”

Bland shook his head.

“Matter of fact,” he said, “my wife always goes up to rest after lunchand, if things aren’t too busy, I take a bit of shuteye myself in that chairthere. I must have left the house about—oh, I suppose a quarter to three,but unfortunately I didn’t go out in the garden at all.”

“Oh, well,” said Hardcastle with a sigh, “we have to ask everyone.”

“Of course, of course. Wish I could be more helpful.”

“Nice place you have here,” said the inspector. “No money spared, if Imay say so.”

Bland laughed jovially.

“Ah well, we like things that are nice. My wife’s got a lot of taste. We hada bit of a windfall a year ago. My wife came into some money from anuncle of hers. She hadn’t seen him for twenty-five years. Quite a surpriseit was! It made a bit of difference to us, I can tell you. We’ve been able todo ourselves well and we’re thinking of going on one of these cruises laterin the year. Very educational they are, I believe. Greece and all that. A lotof professors on them lecturing. Well, of course, I’m a self-made man and Ihaven’t had much time for that sort of thing but I’d be interested. Thatchap who went and dug up Troy, he was a grocer, I believe. Very ro-mantic. I must say I like going to foreign parts—not that I’ve done much ofthat—an occasional weekend in gay Paree, that’s all. I’ve toyed with theidea of selling up here and going to live in Spain or Portugal or even theWest Indies. A lot of people are doing it. Saves income tax and all that. Butmy wife doesn’t fancy the idea.”

“I’m fond of travel, but I wouldn’t care to live out of England,” said Mrs.

Bland. “We’ve got all our friends here — and my sister lives here, andeverybody knows us. If we went abroad we’d be strangers. And thenwe’ve got a very good doctor here. He really understands my health. Ishouldn’t care at all for a foreign doctor. I wouldn’t have any confidencein him.”

“We’ll see,” said Mr. Bland cheerfully. “We’ll go on a cruise and you mayfall in love with a Greek island.”

Mrs. Bland looked as though that were very unlikely.

“There’d be a proper English doctor aboard, I suppose,” she said doubt-fully.

“Sure to be,” said her husband.

He accompanied Hardcastle and Colin to the front door, repeating oncemore how sorry he was that he couldn’t help them.

“Well,” said Hardcastle. “What do you think of him?”

“I wouldn’t care to let him build a house for me,” said Colin. “But acrooked little builder isn’t what I’m after. I’m looking for a man who isdedicated. And as regards your murder case, you’ve got the wrong kind ofmurder. Now if Bland was to feed his wife arsenic or push her into the Ae-gean in order to inherit her money and marry a slap-up blonde—”

“We’ll see about that when it happens,” said Inspector Hardcastle. “Inthe meantime we’ve got to get on with this murder.”