Merlin's Furlong by Gladys Mitchell

Author:Gladys Mitchell
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781477868966
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2014-03-11T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Merlin’s Choice

“…but yet I learned perfectly that it is no marvel at all though men in a wind lose their length in shooting, seeing so many ways the wind is so variable in blowing.”

—Roger Ascham, Toxophilus

With such knowledge as she felt she had gained from her interviews with old Mr. Aumbry’s nephews, Mrs. Bradley returned to the Chief Constable, whom she found in the courtyard.

“Yes, the inspector has traced the three servants,” he said, when she had reported her conversations. “They’re scared stiff, of course, but they’ve got watertight alibis for the time of the death. It seems that whenever any dubious transaction was on hand, the old man used to send them out on the spree so that he was alone in the house to finish his business. They’ve been positively identified as being elsewhere on the night of his death, because the Kanaka got so drunk that he was locked up, and the two Chinks were pinched in Southampton for peddling dope. We can absolutely wash them out. As for Havers, there’s no evidence they’d ever heard of him.”

“Where is the Kanaka now?”

“Still in quod. You see, he assaulted the policeman who was assisting him towards the police station. The magistrates took a grave view and handed him a month.”

“These three men appear to have behaved with great commonsense, both from their point of view and our own.”

“Well, yes, it does help,” the Chief Constable admitted. “The odds, then, are still on Richmond Aumbry.”

“No one but you seems to think so. Even Godfrey, who might be excused for feeling sore about the will, is positively certain that Richmond is incapable of murder. Besides, it seems to me that we’ve another suspect now.”

“Oh? Who?”

“The unknown person on whose behalf the three servants were granted leave of absence.”

“Yes, but we’ve no proof that such a person ever came to Merlin’s Furlong that day. We made enquiries, naturally, as soon as we learned that the servants could produce these alibis, but nobody in the village noticed any stranger passing through, and strangers, especially strangers in cars, would be pretty obvious in Merlin’s Ell, one would have thought.”

“Suppose the stranger had come by night and was already in the house when the servants were sent out of it?”

“Suppose what you like; there’s nothing to prove it.”

“In other words…”

“In other words…stymie,” said the Chief Constable.

“I’m not so sure,” Mrs. Bradley replied. “The first question we have to answer, it seems to me, is why the lawyer Godfrey was hit on the head, and by whom, and I have told you what Frederick Aumbry told me about that. And Frederick struck me, on the whole, as, at least, an impartial witness.”

“There’s one thing,” said the Chief Constable, “from all the evidence we have at present, it still seems that Godfrey Aumbry had every reason to desire to have his uncle alive. It seems certain that the old man intended to make him his heir.”

“Against that, surely, is the extremely shrewd remark by Frederick that old Mr.

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