Detective and mystery stories; England -- Fiction; Murder -- Investigation -- Fiction
“Given that I was in York that night, what do you infer from that?
March 14th was not the night of the murder, if that’s what you are
driving at,” he said at last.
Fayre went on steadily.
“How long have you known Mrs. Draycott and what were you and she doing
in Paris in the spring of 1920? You had been married to Sybil for less
than a year and I know you too well to insult you by the suggestion
that it was merely a vulgar intrigue.”
Kean threw his cigarette into the fire.
“You’re right there,” he answered evenly; “it wasn’t. You haven’t
entirely lost your sense of proportion yet, Hatter. I had my own
reasons for wishing to see Mrs. Draycott, and, as she happened to be
in Paris at the time, I went there. I stayed at the Bristol and she
was in a small hotel on the other side of the river. Does that satisfy
you?”
Fayre walked over to the writing-table and drew out the top drawer.
From it he took two “Red Dwarf” pens and threw them on the table. With
the exception of a brown earth stain down the side of one of them,
they were identical, even to the black ink-stains that smeared the
handles.
“One of these is the pen I picked up at the farm. Can you explain the
other, or give any reason why you did not use this in your defence? We
have proof that it did not belong to Leslie and that it was dropped
some time before the murder. It would at least have proved the
presence of a third person at the farm that night.”
Once more Kean hesitated. Then he raised his head and spoke quite
frankly.
“Because it was the property of the person I wished to shield. I give
you fair warning, Hatter, that, however deeply you may have managed to
implicate me, I do not intend to divulge the name of the owner of that
pen. Any more exhibits?”
Fayre was stung by the contempt in his voice. He took his note-case
out of his pocket and extracted a snapshot which he placed on the
table beside the pens.
“Yes,” he answered, and there was grief rather than anger in his
voice. “This. I would have spared you this if I could, Edward.”
Kean picked it up and examined it.
“So you’ve stumbled on that, too. You’ve been pretty thorough,
Hatter.”
“You knew, then?”
“That Sybil’s first husband was alive? I’ve known it for the last six
years. As a matter of fact, I fetched him from Germany myself and
placed him in an asylum in Dorset. You know he’s hopelessly insane, I
suppose. Three specialists have pronounced him incurable.”
“You’ve lived with Sybil for six years, knowing all the time that
Gerald Lee was alive?”
Kean looked at him with frank speculation in his eyes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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