Such Is Death by Leo Bruce Page A

of my choir are ex-Borstal boys. Grand fellows, all of them. Grand. So I’m not exactly a novice. May be able to help you quite a bit, old man. You tell me where you’ve got to and I’ll see whether light breaks.”
    Carolus inwardly squirmed but remained civil and businesslike.
    â€œI’ve got to that night on the promenade,” he said, “and I understand that you …”
    â€œAh, that night,” said Mr Morsell. “Now the first thing we should notice about it was that there was a blustering cold wind. Not at all a night on which people would be walking up and down the promenade by chance.”
    â€œYet you …”
    â€œThe second thing was the
time.
Just after closing-time, you notice. Just when anyone who wanted to cool his head might take a blow.”
    â€œIs that why you …”
    â€œBut the key to the whole thing as I see it is the coal-hammer. If we could find where that coal-hammer came from, we should be well on the way to the murderer.”
    â€œObvi …”
    â€œUnless he’d been clever enough to steal it to involve someone else. If I were you I should go all out on discovering a home from which a coal-hammer is missing. The police should go about it systematically and try every door in Selby. Someone must have noticed it by now. If you hear of one missing it would narrow down your suspects to those who have had a chance to steal it, wouldn’t it?”
    Carolus gave up, for the moment, any attempt to ask relevant questions.
    â€œYou think it was pre-planned, then?”
    â€œMy dear old chap, of course it was. And with a cunning given to few. The murderer was no sadist, but someone with a very good reason for wishing this man dead. If he had been a paranoiac there would have been an element of sexual perversity in the crime, whereas it was a shrewd and clever thing, a triumph of mind over matter which he thought would remain immune from discovery.”
    â€œWhat was the motive, then?” asked Carolus.
    Mr Morsell shrugged.
    â€œRevenge,” he suggested, greed, fear, pride, it could have been any of the usual motives. No power on earth would make me believe there was not a valid reason. There was too much logic and skilled reasoning in the affair.”
    â€œThat almost means you suspect one of the family.”
    â€œMy dear man, I suspect no one yet. I am much too old a hand at this sort of thing to fix on anyone. All I can say is, this looks to me like a cold-blooded affair and not the act of a sadist or exhibitionist. So a motive has got to be found. That’s where you come in, you field detectives, accustomed to dealing with these things in a practical way.”
    Carolus made a resolute attempt to put his first question.
    â€œI understand you were on the promenade that evening.”
    â€œI was indeed,” said Mr Morsell. “But unfortunately I saw nothing which could be at all helpful to you. A pity, because my powers of observation are unusually keen and if there had been some little incident or encounter which would give you any scope for enquiry I should have noted it in detail. But there wasn’t.”
    â€œPerhaps you will let me decide that,” said Carolus, driven towards exasperation at last. “What time did you go down to the promenade?”
    â€œMy dear old boy, I’m hopeless at remembering times.As my wife will tell you, she has to remind me of every appointment. It’s a congenital weakness of mine. But I should guess that in this case we left here soon after nine o’clock. We dine about eight. When I say ‘dine’ I mean we have our evening snack. That night we sat for some time over it before deciding to face the elements. I may say we didn’t realize, quite, what a disagreeable night it was. The wind must have come up in the late afternoon. Yes, we can call it nine o’clock, or soon after.”
    â€œHow long were you down