Death Comes to Cambers by E.R. Punshon

after a time to tell them what had happened and that I shouldn’t be coming. But I think I’ll go on now, if there’s nothing I can do to help. There are several things I ought to attend to.’
    The chief constable did not think there was anything Mr. Bowman could do just at present. Accordingly he departed, and Mr. Sterling was introduced.
    He proved a good-looking young man, with a thin, dark face, about twenty-three or four years old, tall and of vigorous appearance. He, too, was in a nervous, agitated state. The news of his aunt’s death had been a dreadful shock to him. He had heard of it at Hirlpool, where he had spent the night. Already everyone in Hirlpool was talking about it – the most sensational murder the district had ever known. He had started out from home the night before to visit his aunt, leaving his rooms on the outskirts of London, near his place of work, in quite good time. But the journey had been a series of misadventures. His motor-cycle had broken down repeatedly, and the more often he got it going the more certain it was to break down again. The ignition was all wrong. He began to enter into technical details that interested Bobby enormously, but that Colonel Lawson, who thought motor-cycles slightly vulgar, promptly checked. So Sterling apologized, and added that he had lost his way in the dark, and been caught in the rain, and had a skid and a tumble, and finally had reached Hirlpool somewhere in the small hours and then had knocked up a pub and secured shelter. It jolly well wouldn’t have done, he explained, to disturb his aunt and her household at such an hour. Of course, if he had known what had been happening, he added moodily, it would have been different. But who could have dreamed of such a tragedy?

CHAPTER 9
TEN SUSPECTS – THREE QUESTIONS
    This was all Sterling had to say, so his examination did not last long. As he himself explained, he had only arrived on the scene that morning. But one point of importance did emerge at the end of the interview.
    â€˜I think that’s all we have to ask you at present,’ Colonel Lawson had said, and then, remembering, added: ‘Oh, by the way, yes. I understand you are your aunt’s heir?’
    â€˜I don’t know. She told me once she intended to make her will in my favour,’ Sterling answered slowly. ‘I have no idea whether she did or not. Of course, even if she did, she might have altered it again.’
    â€˜Had you any reason to think she might do that?’ the chief constable asked.
    â€˜Oh, I don’t know; she rather seemed to think it gave her a right to tell me what I had to do. She got a bit shirty if you didn’t do just what she thought you ought,’ answered the young man. ‘Of course, it was awfully good of her, thinking of leaving me everything, and I was very grateful and all that, but I wasn’t going to do the tame-lap-dog act all the same. There are limits.’
    â€˜Was there any special point you disagreed upon?’ Sterling hesitated, flushed, looked as if he would refuse to answer, changed his mind and said: ‘Oh, well, I suppose it was that she rather wanted to pick out a girl for me to marry, and I didn’t see it. I dare say we both got a bit ratty.’
    â€˜When was this?’
    â€˜Oh, I don’t know exactly. Quite recently. She was always bringing it up.’
    â€˜Did she actually say anything about changing her will?’
    â€˜No. Yes. Well, in a way. I thought once she was hinting she would, and I told her straight out when I married I should please myself. It wasn’t only that. I knew jolly well she wanted Uncle Albert to come back. She was very bitter about him and very keen on him at the same time. I knew he only had to make it plain he was turning down the Bowman girl for good and all, and aunt would have jumped at the chance of making it up with him. Then, of course, she would have had to make her will over