Free Fen Country by Edmund Crispin

it?”
    It was unusually sharp and clear, showing Whittington at his desk with the desk clock very properly registering ten minutes to eleven.
    “But there’s nothing in it that’s any help, that I can see,” Pollitt went on. “The clothes are right. The—”
    “Just a minute,” Humbleby interrupted sharply. He had reverted from the photograph to the signed statements of Sheila Pratt, and was frowning in perplexity. “It’s possible that—I say, Charlie, is this girl an experienced photographer—a professional, I mean?”
    Pollitt shook his head. “No, she’s just a beginner. I understand she’s only bought her camera quite recently. But why—”
    “And this factory,” said Humbleby. “Is there a lot of heavy machinery? A lot of noise and vibration?”
    “Yes, there is. What are you getting at?”
    “A couple more questions and you’ll see it for yourself. Is Whittington’s office somewhere over the factory? Can you feel the vibration there?”
    “You can. But I still don’t understand—”
    “You will, Charlie. Because here’s the really critical query. Were those machines running continuously during the whole of the time Sheila Pratt was in Whittington’s office?”
    ‘And with that, Pollitt realized. “Tripod,” he muttered. Then his voice rose. “Time-exposure… Wait.” He grabbed the telephone, asked for a number, asked for a name, put his question, listened, thanked his informant, and rang off. “Yes, they were running,” he said triumphantly. “They were running all right.”
    And Humbleby chuckled. He flicked the photograph with his forefinger. “So that very obviously this beautifully clear picture wasn’t taken at the time when Sheila Pratt and Whittington allege it was taken—because tripod plus time-exposure plus vibration would inevitably have resulted in blurring… I imagine they must have faked it up one evening, after the factory had stopped work; and the girl was too inexperienced in photography to realize the difference that that would make in the finished product…
    “Well, Charlie, will your chief like it, do you think?”
    Pollitt grinned. “He won’t like it at all. But give the devil his due, he’ll swallow it all right.” He hesitated. “So that solves my own personal problem— and I needn’t tell you how grateful I am… But as to whether we can get a prosecution out of it—”
     
    They never did. “And really, it was a good thing,” said Pollitt two years later in London, when he and his wife were returning the Humblebys’ visit, and the conversation had turned to the topic of Whittington and his fate. “Because if the DPP had allowed it to be taken to court, the chances are he’d have been acquitted in spite of the lies and in spite of the information we dug out about the surreptitious meetings between him and the Pratt girl in the eighteen months before the murder.
    “And if he had been acquitted—well, he wouldn’t have needed to worry about the possibility of his new wife giving him away, would he? And he wouldn’t have set about stopping her mouth in that clumsy, panicky fashion…
    “And they wouldn’t be hanging him for it at Pentonville at nine o’clock tomorrow morning… What a bit of luck, eh?”

Blood Sport
    “I’ve heard from the ballistics people,” said Superintendent MacCutcheon, “and they tell me there’s no doubt whatever that the bullet was fired from Ellingham’s gun. Is that what you yourself were expecting?”
    “Oh, yes.” At the other side of the desk, in the first-floor office at New Scotland Yard, Detective Inspector Humbleby nodded soberly. “Yes, I was expecting that all right,” he said. “Taken together with the rest of the evidence, it makes a pretty good case.”
    “And your own report?”
    Humbleby handed over a sheaf of typescript. “No verdict?” queried MacCutcheon, who had turned immediately to the final page.
    “Certainly there’s a verdict.” Humbleby paused. “Implicit, I