Death Comes to Cambers by E.R. Punshon Page B

years’ penal servitude for robbing his employer just before the war. He was in prison when the war broke out, was released earlier than usual in order to join up, served till the armistice, and has had a good character ever since.’
    â€˜I understand, sir,’ said Bobby. ‘I won’t let it influence me in any way.’ And, indeed, it hardly seemed likely to him that this twenty-year-old story was of any importance.
    He departed, therefore, and when he had gone the chief constable added to Moulland: ‘What’s the betting young Dene’s bolted?’
    â€˜You think he’s guilty, sir?’ Moulland asked.
    â€˜Looks like it. Great mistake to take up a young fellow of that class. Gives them ideas. Puts notions in their heads. Did you notice that, after the butler let Dene out, no one seems to have seen Lady Cambers alive? What about this for a working theory? Dene knows all about the jewellery. He strangles the poor woman, opens the safe with her keys he takes from her hand-bag, where he knows she keeps them, pushes the body through the window in order to conceal it later, and fills his pockets with the jewellery. He himself rings the bell for the butler to let him out, goes off without any suspicion being raised, and, instead of going home, slips round the house to recover the body. He carries it as far as where it was found, but then it gets too much for him and he abandons it there. He drops his pen by accident at the same time; he hides the jewellery and goes off to recover his nerve and wait for the discovery to be made. That accounts for all doors and windows being found fast in the morning, as they were apparently.’
    â€˜Yes, sir,’ agreed Moulland dutifully but a trifle doubtfully. ‘The maid says she was with Lady Cambers in her bedroom after Dene left.’
    â€˜She’s Dene’s sweetheart,’ the chief constable pointed out. ‘If a girl’s in love with a man she’ll say anything to save him. She may have been in it from the first, for that matter. There’s something I don’t understand about that girl, and that I don’t like.’
    â€˜Yes, sir,’ said Moulland, who, indeed, had reached his present eminence in the county police force chiefly through the zeal, fervour, and frequency with which, all through his career, he had said, ‘Yes, sir.’
    But Bobby, well on his way by now to the village, was considering many other theories and possibilities, and presently, perched on a five-barred gate, he produced his pocket-book and began to make a list of the points that seemed to him to require special attention.
    There was Mr. Bowman, for instance, to begin with.
    Was there anything in the various hints and rumours that his sister was the cause, knowing or unknowing, of the recent breach between Lady Cambers and her husband? At any rate, it would be interesting to find out, if possible, how far Sir Albert was seriously entangled with Miss Bowman. A man infatuated with a girl might do strange things to rid himself of the wife who stood between.
    What was Mr. Bowman’s financial position? (He had recently sold his car and had not bought a new one.)
    Was there anything about his discovery of the body to suggest he had seen it because he knew already it was there? (There was a high hedge, and the field sloped, and young Ray Hardy had apparently gone close-by without noticing anything. But, then, he might have been more absorbed with his own affairs and Mr. Bowman might have sharp eyes.)
    Was his apparent nervous collapse after the discovery genuine or assumed? It had been so marked that he had felt able neither to stay on the spot nor go on to business, but had been obliged to return straight home. If it was genuine, was it a result of guilty knowledge? If it was assumed, why?
    â€˜Plenty there to keep a fellow busy,’ Bobby told himself.
    Then there was Eddy Dene.
    How did his pen come to be on the scene of the