Dead on Time by Clifford Witting

Author:Clifford Witting
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Galileo Publishing
Published: 2022-04-08T12:25:04+00:00

XII.

Family Conference in the Blue Boar

MEANWHILE Detective-sergeant Peter Bradfield was not idle. Having arranged for Stanley Dilks’s bicycle to be collected and brought to police headquarters, he prepared to get busy on the telephone. His first call was to the police station at Southmouth.

Southmouth—or Southmouth-by-the-Sea as it had been renamed when part of it had been developed into a seaside resort of great popularity with holiday-makers—was some three miles to the south of Lulverton, with which, if building work ever got well under way again, it might one day merge in what has been described in another place as “a single uncomely and enormous blot on the fair countryside of Downshire.” In the district known as Old Town were the harbour and docks.

This first call put through by Bradfield bore fruit. They were able to tell him that during the night a Ford V8 had been stolen from outside a house in Stoneleigh, a residential area on the northern outskirts of Southmouth. The car was the property of a Dr. Hope Smith, who had been called out by a sick patient in Stoneleigh. While he was in the house, the car had been quietly driven away. It was not a saloon, but the hooded model known as “club cabriolet.” The Southmouth inspector—his name was Dixon—told Bradfield its number and also the colour of it, which was green. Scotland Yard, he said, had already been informed of the theft.

Bradfield considered it a reasonable assumption that this was the car that had knocked down Stanley Dilks. He therefore suggested to the inspector that the Yard might be told that the car in question had a damaged headlamp—probably on the off side. After a few more minutes’ conversation, he rang off, well pleased with results so far.

He put on his hat and, with his hands in the pockets of his raincoat, went down the stairs and out into the High Street. In his inquiries concerning a green Ford V8 that might have been in Lulverton around seven o’clock that morning, he met with no success until he happened to fall in with Tom Fitch, the potman at the Blue Boar. In a bibbed apron and with his cap on the back of his head and a cigarette hanging from his mouth, this tall, robust young man was emerging from the passage-way between the hotel and the Shades just as Bradfield, as if he had no more to do than kill time, came strolling along the High Street.

When he saw Fitch, Bradfield paused in his saunter.

“Well, Tom,” he said carelessly, “how are things here this morning after last night’s excitement?”

“Quiet enough, considerin’,” was the reply. “Miss Betty’s taken it worst, but then she was struck on young Winslake. ’Tisn’t no laughing matter, far as she’s concerned. ’As ’e bin up afore the beak yet?”

Bradfield avoided an answer by asking:

“Tell me, Tom, were you here at seven o’clock this morning?”

Fitch nodded.

“I was rubbin’ up the front brasswork. The guv’nor must ’ave it lookin’ like a new penny.

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