Buffet for Unwelcome Guests(46)

‘Helen was out of it,’ said Giles quickly. ‘She was up on the heath, walking—and the heath’s fifteen miles away.’

‘What, the whole afternoon? On a wet, blustery day?’

‘She does it to keep fit. She does film work—stunt stuff, really, in a mild sort of way: the stand-ins, riding and diving and skiing and shooting, all that lot. I told you we boys brought her up tough.’

‘Lots of people saw her on the heath, I dare say?’

‘You said it yourself—who else would be up there on such a day?’

‘Then who says she was there?’

‘I say so. I’d arranged to meet her there.’

‘And did you?’

‘No,’ said Giles. ‘But that was my fault. I mucked up the arrangements. The heath’s a huge place. I said to go on and I’d meet her—well, after I’d left Uncle Gem, but I couldn’t tell her that, she didn’t know I was seeing him. I just said about half past four by the Bell, which is a pub. But she thought I said at the Dell, which is a place where we sometimes picnic. They do sound the same if you mumble.’

‘And did you mumble?’

‘Yes, because I didn’t want Rupert to hear. The fact is, I thought I’d get in first, after seeing Uncle Gem. All’s fair?’ said Giles with a faintly self-deprecatory air.

‘All right. A quarter to four. Helen’s up on the heath, without an alibi; you and Rupert alibi one another outside your flats. What’s your story next?’

‘My story, as you so flatteringly call it, is that I went in, made myself a cup of char—as I hadn’t said I’d meet her till half past; and I’d left Uncle Gem a bit early—and then drove up to the Bell. And Rupert’s story is that he couldn’t get into Uncle Gem’s office and was hammering at the door when the police arrived and broke it open. He went in with them and then he saw this note on the desk and he was so shaken by the murder and this on top of it that he never stopped to think but just rushed off to look for Helen. She wasn’t at home, he rang round frantically to a few friends, nothing doing there; so he got into the car again and drove about just stupidly searching in places where he thought she might be—’

‘Did the places where he thought she might be happen to take him near the scene of the policeman’s murder?’

‘It’s all within a smallish area,’ said Giles, briefly. ‘A couple of miles or so. Except of course for the heath and that’s where she was, half an hour’s drive away from any of it. Rupert went out there eventually, knowing she often walked there at the week-end. But as I say it’s a huge place and in the end we all missed one another.’

‘So at the time of the policeman’s killing—about five you said—Helen and Rupert have in fact no alibis? And you?’

‘I’m afraid you will find this very convenient too,’ said Giles. ‘But yes, I have one for this time also. I waited for Helen for about twenty minutes and then I thought she might have decided not to come, it being such a filthy day; so I rang up the house to ask. The housekeeper will tell you so.’

‘You could have done that from anywhere.’

‘Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I did it from the call box outside the Bell. And I can prove it because I could see the people inside all crowded round the television—the pub was closed, but we know the people, we often go there; and I knocked on the window and made signs asking the score and they signalled back that extra time was being played, so I knew it was all square; and we all made praying signals through the glass….’

‘Well, I must say that sounds pretty conclusive.’

‘The police thought so too,’ said Giles; dry in his turn.

‘So that leaves Rupert and Helen.’

‘And your dear friend A.N.Other. And perhaps you’ll explain to me,’ said Giles, ‘not so much which of them killed Uncle Gemminy as how any of them could have. The door locked—the key was in the debris of the burnt-out desk, by the way—and bolted from the inside. The window was fifty feet up and a child couldn’t have got through the hole in the glass. Yet it had just that moment been broken and Uncle Gem had that minute been stabbed. So before we have accusations—I think there should be explanations.’

The old man shrugged huge shoulders up to the thick lobes of his ears. ‘Oh, well, as to that there are probably half a dozen. I can think of three, straight off—one for each of them: One for Rupert, one for Helen, one for my dear friend, as you call him, A.N.Other….’

Giles reacted immediately. ‘Why should Helen do such a thing? You agree that this crime was committed because of her.’