Fog of Doubt by Christianna Brand Page B

Cockie.
    â€˜He seems such a nice chap,’ said Charlesworth. ‘And yet …’
    There was a dank stone bench beyond the mulberry tree and they sat down there on Cockrill’s mackintosh and offered one another cigarettes. ‘You must say the thing about the message is pretty fishy.’
    â€˜I don’t see how you can base a whole case on it. Accidents happen. That ass of a secretary girl, Melissa—she may easily have forgotten writing it down, or she’s got in a flap and just blankly denies it; perhaps she knows she got it down wrong or something.’
    â€˜She seems rather a peculiar wench,’ said Charlesworth, thoughtfully. ‘I wish to hell she’d put a Kirbigrip in her hair.’
    â€˜Inferiority complex,’ said Cockrill. ‘When girls wear their hair draped over their faces, it’s always a sign.’
    â€˜There was a girl called Veronica Lake who started off under the same disability,’ said Charlesworth. If the dear old boy were going to begin delving into psychology.…!
    Sergeant Bedd came out to meet them, moving quickly and quietly on his large feet up the overgrown garden path, as an elephant passes silently through the jungle. Like the elephant, he too wore a baggy, dark grey suit. His square brown face broke into a thousand delighted wrinkles at sight of Inspector Cockrill and he sat down before them, perched at their feet like a small boy, on the stump of a tree. ‘What do you think of this business, Sergeant?’ said Cockie. ‘By the way, Thomas Evans is a friend of mine.’
    â€˜Well, it certainly looks a bit sticky for your friend, Inspector, but as I tell Mr. Charlesworth, there’s no use in rushing things. If it was an inside job, it must have been either Dr. Evans, or his lady—after all, she was here in the house with the chap. The great question is—was it really an inside job?’
    â€˜What about the front door?’
    â€˜Just pushed to,’ said Charlesworth. ‘They’re the scattiest family I ever came across. Everybody always forgets their latch key.…’
    â€˜â€œEverybody” means Rosie,’ said Cockrill.
    â€˜I daresay. Anyway, the front door sticks just enough to keep it shut without the latch being down, and during the daytime, that’s what they do with it.’
    â€˜But this was the night-time,’ said Cockie.
    â€˜Yes, but Rosie was still out.’
    â€˜So that an intruder could just have pushed the door open and walked in?’
    â€˜Yep. And just the night for it, fog and all.’
    â€˜If the house had been watched at all, they’d know about the front door,’ said Bedd. ‘There’s a lot of that stuff around Maida Vale. And seeing the doctor go out …’
    â€˜They may even have sent a fake message to get him out,’ suggested Cockrill, a trifle too eagerly.
    â€˜Well, they might,’ acknowledged Charlesworth.
    Sergeant Bedd sat on his ricketty stump, looking up at them like an overgrown child with his elders, and thought his thoughts aloud. ‘They’ve been watching the house. They know Mrs. Evans goes upstairs for quite a while every evening. They’ve seen the others go out—they believe she’s alone. As soon as the lights go on upstairs, they push open the front door and go in. The Frenchie comes out to see what the noise is and they hit him over the head with the first thing handy and clear out.’ He shrugged. ‘We haven’t found any signs of them,’ he said.
    â€˜They’d have gloves and sneakers and all the rest of it.’
    â€˜Yes, it doesn’t count much, one way or the other.’ But there was a snag to it. Mr. Charlesworth and Inspector Cockrill sat eyeing one another warily. If the old boy didn’t tumble to it.… If the young jackanapes couldn’t see it.…
    â€˜But the snag is,’ said Sergeant Bedd in his deep, slow rumble,