Chapter Twenty-Six
TWENTY-SIX
Before going to Aidan Jessup’s room, Alec had a word with the matron herself.
That formidable figure, once convinced of the necessity, assured him that Patrick would not be allowed access to his brother until Alec had finished with him.
Hospital visiting hours, though stringent for ordinary patients, were usually relaxed for private patients, but it would be easy to delay the young man.
Fortunately, he had slept late and was still breakfasting when Alec received word that Aidan was awake and coherent.
As an added precaution, Alec beckoned the Manchester DC out of the room and posted him outside the door.
“How is he?” he asked in a low voice.
“Fair addled,” said Peters succinctly.
Alec raised an eyebrow.
“In his right mind,” the young man elaborated, “but no lawyer worth his salt ‘d agree he’s fit to make a statement.”
“Thank you. I won’t take a statement, then, just try to get enough out of him to know what questions to put to his brother. Who is not on any account to be allowed to interrupt.”
“Got it, sir.”
“I take it he hasn’t said anything of interest?”
“Nowt but asking for a drink o’ water, sir, which I gave him. He seemed to think I were a hospital orderly, and I didn’t set him straight.”
With a nod of approval, Alec went on into the room.
It was Spartan but very clean and neat, a haven from the public wards for those who could pay a little for privacy but could not afford a private nursing home.
Aidan lay flat on his back, his arms at his sides on top of the tightly tucked-in covers, a model patient.
A nurse must have tidied him back to hospital standards since Peters gave him a drink, Alec assumed.
Aidan turned his head on the pillow as Alec entered. His eyes appeared to focus with difficulty, but he recognised his visitor.
“Mr. Fletcher.” His voice was slightly slurred. He didn’t seem surprised to see Alec, whether because he was as yet incapable of experiencing surprise or because he had half-expected him.
“Good morning, Mr. Jessup. How are you feeling?”
“Much better. My God, it was awful! I’ve had a concussion before—playing rugger, you know—but nothing like this. It was like being drunk as a lord and having a frightful hangover at the same time.”
Alec moved the room’s one chair to the bedside and set it so that he could see Aidan’s face. “I’m afraid I have to ask you some questions.”
“I know. I can’t remember much, though.”
If he pleaded amnesia, no one would be able to prove otherwise. It was a common symptom of severe concussion. He might be tricked, though, if he were lying about it.
“I’m not taking a formal statement at this time,” Alec said, “but if you want a lawyer—”
“My father-in-law? No thanks!”
“Or someone else.”
“No, thank you.”
“All right, then, tell me what you remember of the evening you left London.”
“I’ve been lying here thinking about it—I’d sit up, but my head still gets a bit swimmy.
As I say, I’ve been thinking about it, and I still don’t see what else I could have done.
We were expecting Patrick home, as I’m sure you know by now.
We weren’t sure exactly when he’d arrive, but Father and I left work early so as to be there when he came.
I got fed up sitting there waiting, and it had stopped raining, so I decided to stroll down to the corner.
If I didn’t meet him, at least I’d have had a breath of fresh air and stretched my legs. ”
“You were very keen to see him.”
“Well, he’d been away a long time, and on his own for the first time. And there were business reasons why we were eager to hear his news.”
Also, thought Alec, there was a good deal of brotherly affection between them. Though Aidan was no public school boy, he had absorbed enough of the ethos not to mention it, but Alec had a hunch that their mutual fondness played a considerable part in the whole affair.
“You went out of the house….”
“And crossed the street. I expected Pat to come by taxi. The quickest way from our house to the street exit from the Circle is across the garden—though, come to think of it, he could have been driving round the Circle while I cut across. Anyway, it was getting dark and I was nearly at the fountain before I realised that the chap coming up towards me was Pat. And a moment later, that damn Yankee popped out of nowhere—”
“Out of nowhere?”
“I don’t know if he’d been hiding behind a tree or if he just happened to come around the Circle and see me walking down, and followed me.
He suddenly appeared beside me and started the same old jabber.
He had a business proposition for the firm, it would be worth our while, we’d regret it if we didn’t listen to him, and so on.
Father wasn’t interested. I brushed the fellow off, as per usual.
Next thing I knew, he was pointing a gun at Patrick! ”
“You’re sure of that?” Alec snapped.
“Sure as you’re a copper,” Aidan said wryly.
“I didn’t get into combat during the War—they put me to running an officers’ mess, because of my experience in the trade—but I saw plenty of firearms. Well, I reacted without thinking.
I’m still a pretty useful rugger wing forward, you know, or was until this.
” He touched the top of his head. “I tackled him, as if it were the ball he was holding. I hit him pretty hard and we both went down. The paving was wet, slick, so we started to slide. I don’t remember the next bit.
I was out. Pat says we both hit the rim of the fountain head-on. ”
“The missing weapon!” The other missing weapon. What the hell had become of the gun? The Jessups would have had no conceivable reason to dispose of it.
Aidan smiled crookedly. “Were you looking for the traditional blunt instrument? It’s there, in plain sight, though I presume any blood Pat failed to clean up has been washed away by the rain.
I was out for nearly five minutes, Pat reckoned.
He was beginning to get really worried. He started splashing water from the fountain in my face—ugh!
—to try to bring me round. Maybe it worked, who knows.
At any rate, I started to show signs of life.
Then it dawned on Pat that he’d better check on the other chap. He turned—”
“Could you explain your relative positions?”
“It’s all a bit vague….” Aidan frowned in concentration. “Pat was kneeling between us, so somehow the American and I got separated. Perhaps we rolled apart when we hit the fountain. I suppose I let go of him when I was knocked out.”
“More than likely.”
“Pat turned away from me to—What’s his name? I can’t go on calling him ‘the American.’ ”
“He never introduced himself?”
“Neither Father nor I ever let him get that far. We have a long-standing and satisfactory arrangement with our American customer and we just weren’t interested in changing.”
“Castellano. Michele Castellano. Though there’s some question about whether that’s his real name, as his passport was faked.”
“He looked Italian. He was a thoroughly objectionable type, but I didn’t mean to kill him. I couldn’t let him shoot my brother in cold blood, could I?”
Silently, Alec cursed. A confession, and he couldn’t use it! But having spoken the words, Aidan would find them difficult to retract in circumstances more useful from a police point of view. He was no hardened criminal.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” Alec urged.
“Pat said something like ‘Oh hell, he’s still out. He can’t have as thick a skull as yours.
’ And then he said—he sounded a bit panicky—‘He’s not breathing.
I don’t think he’s breathing!’ I said, ‘Feel his pulse,’ or perhaps Pat said, ‘I’ll feel his pulse’—I’m not awfully clear which.
I was still a bit groggy. Does it matter?
What it comes down to is that there was no pulse. Castellano was dead.”
So much for the confession. If Aidan was telling the truth, he was implicating his brother, unaware that the blow to the victim’s head was not the cause of death.
While Aidan lay unconscious, or semiconscious, Patrick had compressed Castellano’s arteries until, starved of oxygen, the brain stopped sending signals to the lungs to breathe, the heart to beat.
“I still don’t see what I could have done differently,” Aidan said dully, “except not to let the others hustle me away. I wasn’t thinking straight. I should have stayed to take my medicine. It wasn’t exactly self-defence, but I was defending my brother.”
“What reasons did they give for your leaving in such a hurry? You’re speaking of your parents and your brother? Your wife?”
“Not Audrey! She was in the nursery, thank heaven, when I came in bloody-headed. Before she came down, Mother had patched me up and we’d decided I should go.
Why? It’s all a bit of a blur, but there seemed to be a dozen reasons.
Patrick swore he’d hidden the body so that it wouldn’t be found for days. ”
“When did he do that?”
“While I was sitting holding my head, wondering whether I could make it back to the house. If I’d been able to think, I wouldn’t have let him, but he always was impetuous, and once it was done, it was done.
He said if I stayed away until my head healed, there be no reason for anyone to suppose I had anything to do with it.
Then he buzzed off to create an alibi for himself. ”
“At the Flask.”
“Yes, he really did go there. Luckily, the servants hadn’t seen him arrive. If it was luck.”
“That remains to be seen. So far, your only reason for having left is that your brother hoped to get away with it.”
“He was, naturally, grateful that I’d prevented Castellano’s shooting him,” Aidan said vehemently, “and he didn’t see why I should suffer for protecting him.”
“What other reasons?”