Chapter 11 #2
“Among other things, Mr. Leigh.” Alec waved him to the chair and sat down at the desk. “Your Christian name, please, for the record. Detective Constable Piper will be taking notes.”
“Donald. Among other things? You mean you don’t think it was Bott who socked him?” Leigh was incredulous. Obviously he, and probably most of the others, considered the case closed.
“I haven’t anywhere near enough evidence to decide.”
“But Bott’s the only one who scarpered, besides being the one DeLancey bullied and the one who threatened …”
“Hold on!” Sometimes it paid to let a witness or suspect
ramble on in his own way, but this was leading nowhere. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“Yes, of course, sir. Sorry. My hat, you mean we’re all of us under … ? Sorry! Not another word, except answers, of course.”
“Thank you.” Alec smiled at him. “What makes you say Horace Bott has decamped?”
Leigh flushed. “Actually, that’s what we’ve all been saying, but it isn’t true, is it? I rowed him across myself, this morning, long before DeLancey snuffed out. He was going to spend the day with his girl.”
“Did he take anything with him?”
“Just what he had in his pockets. No bag, or anything like that, if that’s what you mean.
He was talking of taking a picnic up the river.
I suppose he wanted to get well away from the scene of his humiliation, poor chap.
Come to think of it, he quite likely wouldn’t even hear what happened, would he? ”
“No,” said Alec absently. As Leigh spoke he had been half listening, half putting odds and ends together, his memory jogged by his own question and choice of the word “decamped.” “Did he mention his plans for after the Regatta?”
“He was going on a walking tour,” Leigh said promptly. “Camping at night. I don’t suppose he could afford to stay in country pubs even.”
“Excuse me a moment. I’ll be right back. Piper!” Alec led the way out of the library. In the hall, he said, “Go and find Bott’s bedroom.”
“Tent-peg,” said Piper.
“Exactly. There should be a bagful. Take one and match it against Tom’s find. Don’t let anyone see what you’re doing,
Ernie. They’re already convinced Bott did it, and even if the tent-peg’s his, it’s no proof.”
“Right, Chief.”
Alec returned to the library. As he opened a desk-drawer to look for paper and a pencil to make notes—he would not attempt a verbatim report—Leigh watched nervously.
“If it wasn’t Bott,” he burst out, “who was it? I didn’t hit him. He never bothered me much.”
“But you didn’t like him?”
“Oh, well, not exactly. He was a rotter. Not an out-and-out bad hat, you know, but a bit of a cad. If you ask me,” Leigh said earnestly, “he’d have done better at the House—that’s Christ Church College—where they’re used to dukes and such.
He’d have had to pull his socks up. As it is, he went from being the blue-eyed boy of the family to being a big fish in a small pond. ”
“Oh?”
“Ambrose is a small college, and it’s mostly plain gentry, not the nobility.
My people are County, not a title in the family.
So what with his pater being the Earl of Bicester, and his allowance being double anyone else’s, and good at sports on top of it, and sailing through his exams without ever swotting …
well, he just went on being cock of the walk.
He’s never had to consider anyone else’s feelings. Sorry, there I go blethering on again!”
“Not at all. An understanding of the victim’s character is often a great help in our investigations. So Basil DeLancey was accustomed to riding roughshod over all and sundry?”
“Yes, but he was especially offensive to people he despised, like Bott, and Miss Carrick. He didn’t think women belong at
the university, and she’s—er—no Helen of Troy,” Leigh said, delicately tactful. “He was pretty brutal to her. Verbally, I mean—I heard him more than once. Never laid a hand on her, of course. Miss Cheringham was the one he’d have liked to lay a hand on, if you’ll pardon the expression.”
“In the way of love-making, I take it? Did she respond favourably to his overtures?”
“Lord, no! Stony-faced. Of course, he managed to make even a compliment insulting, saying she was wasting her time with education.”
“She and Miss Carrick must have been pretty upset.”
“Not half as upset as Cheringham and Frieth. But I shouldn’t be gossiping about people like this,” said Leigh uneasily.
“It’s not gossip,” Alec reassured him. “You’re helping the police to find a murderer.”
“It’s not really murder, is it? I mean, Bott—whoever hit DeLancey could have finished him off on the spot if he’d wanted to. My hat, you don’t think it was Frieth or Cheringham, do you?”
“I haven’t enough evidence to be certain of anything.” Alec cast his mind back over what had been said by whom and when. Leigh and the others were presumably unaware that DeLancey had been hit on the back of the head with a weapon. “What do you think?”
“Frieth wouldn’t have hit him before the race.” Leigh looked and sounded positive. “Not while there was still a chance of Ambrose winning a cup. I still think it must have been Bott, even if he doesn’t know yet that DeLancey’s dead. He’s shorter and lighter, and DeLancey’s boxed for Oxford,
but Bott plays racquets. He’s quick on his feet. He might have popped one over DeLancey’s guard.”
Without any visible damage to himself? Alec didn’t bother to voice his doubt, since it was irrelevant.
He had noted Leigh’s evasion with regard to Cheringham.
Daisy’s cousin’s cousin had double Frieth’s motive for anger, being protective of both his cousin and his fiancée.
Also, the possible effect on the race of striking the stroke was probably less important to him than to Frieth, since he was of an intellectual bent.
On the other hand, since winning a trophy was more important to Frieth, he was more likely than Cheringham to have gone to the boat-house to check on the boat.
He might have quarrelled with DeLancey, perhaps over his treatment of the cox and its results for the Ambrose eight, perhaps over Tish.
In hot blood, he could well overlook the consequences for the next morning’s race.
But would either of them have struck out with anything but his fists? Improbable, Alec thought, but certainly not impossible.
“Tell me about Bott and DeLancey,” he requested.
Apart from a penitent acknowledgement that he and his friends had rather egged DeLancey on in the whisky affair, Leigh’s account differed only in minor particulars from Daisy’s.
“Bott’s rather a pill,” he said frankly, “but he had every right to be mad as fire. DeLancey went too far. I’d have said he deserved to get his comeuppance, if he hadn’t died of it. ”
“It sounds as if he knew how to make himself unpopular. Had he a reputation as a womaniser?”
“There was a story making the rounds. But that was a shop-girl, not a respectable young lady like Miss Cheringham,”
Leigh added hastily. “The usual thing: got the girl into trouble and deserted her. I heard his brother came down quite handsomely to hush it up. No question of breach of promise, mind you, just her mother threatening to make a song and dance about it.”
“No father or brother out for his head?”
“Not that I know of,” Leigh said with regret, sorry to dismiss a hypothetical suspect who was a complete outsider.
“A widow with an only child, I believe. Anyway, it was last year people were talking about it. It’s rather a long time to wait for vengeance unless you’re planning something a bit more sophisticated than a biff on the noddle. ”
Alec was relieved not to have to call on the Oxford city police to run to earth an unnamed and possibly mythical malefactor. He made a note, though, to check Leigh’s information with the others.
“Was he biffed in the boat-house?” Leigh asked. “I saw your man rooting around there.”
“To your knowledge, was DeLancey at the boat-house last night?”
“I didn’t see him go, but he kept blethering on about Bott making threats and how the boat ought to be guarded. Said he didn’t see why his brother should care if he chose to spend an uncomfortable night down there.”
“This was yesterday evening?”
“Yes, after dinner.”
“Who was there?”
“Lady Cheringham, Miss Dalrymple., Fosdyke for a while, but he’s an early-to-bed-and-early-to-riser, Poindexter, Wells, Meredith.” Leigh stopped to think. “Cheringham and Frieth were out on the terrace most of the time, with Miss Cheringham
and Miss Carrick. Or vice versa, if you see what I mean.
Miss Dalrymple went out to take a telephone call, then came back and said she was ready for bed.
About half ten, I should say. That was when Lady Cheringham called the other girls in and they all went up together.
Cheringham and Frieth came in a few minutes later, and went straight up. ”
“They didn’t stop to hear DeLancey holding forth?”
“Not that I remember.”
“And Bott wasn’t there?”
“No, he didn’t come in to dinner. With his girl, I expect, and went straight up when he got back.
Can’t blame him after what happened the night before and that morning.
If he’d turned up, DeLancey hadn’t the sense to leave him be.
He had a couple of whiskies and was starting on a third when he got a telephone call.
While he was gone, the rest of us buzzed off to bed.
We were pretty fed up with his grousing. ”
“All the rest went up?”
Leigh pondered. “Yes, I think so. I’m pretty sure, actually. Meredith came out of the drawing-room right after me, and he was the last.”
“And you didn’t see or hear DeLancey come up later?”
“Not a whisper. We were in and out to the bathroom and so on, but I, for one, dropped off pretty quick and slept like a baby till morning. DeLancey wouldn’t necessarily have made a lot of noise. He could put away three whiskies without bursting into song or falling over his shoelaces.”
It dawned on Alec that he did not know what DeLancey had been wearing when he was struck down. Daisy hadn’t mentioned how he was dressed when he invaded her room, and Tom hadn’t had time to investigate the contents of his wardrobe.
“Do you dress for dinner here?” he asked.
Leigh looked taken aback. “Good Lord, yes. We rowers may expose our knobbly knees to the world at times, and sit on the lawn in our shirtsleeves on a hot day, but in general we’re quite civilised.”
Alec had never given much credence to the tales of British gentlemen changing for dinner in the depths of the jungle, but perhaps they were true. Would Daisy expect him to dress every evening when they were married?
He dragged his mind back to the present. Heat and thirst made it difficult to concentrate. The admirable Gladstone wouldn’t bring the tea in the middle of an interview.
Alec looked round as the door opened. Not Gladstone with the tea, but Piper, looking pleased with himself.
“That’s all for now, thank you,” Alec said to Leigh. “You’ve been very helpful. Sergeant Tring will take your fingerprints, for elimination purposes, and I may have a few more questions for you later. Were you meaning to leave Henley today?”
“No, I’ll stick it out. Don’t want to leave the others in the lurch. Is it all right if I go up the river to watch the rest of the races?”
“By all means. Wait half an hour and some of the others will be free to go with you. Please don’t talk about what we have been discussing.”
“Right-oh, sir.”
Leigh went out and Alec turned to Piper. “Any luck?”
“Got it, Chief. Perfick match. I reckon Bott was going to hole the boat with it.”
“Possibly,” said Alec. “The question is, why the dickens should he throw it away in the shrubbery?”