Free Fen Country by Edmund Crispin Page B

everyone’s disposal. Taking it from him, Humbleby squinted down the barrel.
    “Clean as a new pin,” he said cheerfully. But Pinder noticed that something had made him more than usually pensive.
    “Well, that’s it, you see,” continued Bentinck, not very lucidly. “When I got to the lodge, there was Ellingham cleaning that thing, and it turned out he’d been out on his own, looking for something to shoot, since eight o’clock. I took the gun away from him, with all the usual gab about routine, and I’ll say this for him, he didn’t make any fuss about it. And until we see whether the murder bullet came from it, that’s really all—oh, except for the autopsy. Five months gone, our Enid was.”
    “Oh, Lord,” said Humbleby in genuine dismay. “Not that again. The number of times—”
    “Yes, it’s common enough, I suppose. Ah, well. If you get a nasty sort of girl like Enid Bragg into trouble, you must expect a bit of blackmail. And the only certain way of putting a stop to it—”
     
    “Damn!” Thus Superintendent MacCutcheon, breaking in violently on Humbleby’s thoughts in the first-floor office at Scotland Yard. He had finished reading the report, and now whacked it down angrily on the desk in front of him.
    There was a long silence.
    “Not pleasant,” said MacCutcheon at last.
    “Not pleasant at all, sir,” Humbleby agreed. From the particular expression on his superior’s face he was in no doubt that the evidence had been interpreted correctly. “And I don’t think we’re going to be able to pin the murder on him, either. There’s no alibi—that much I found out before I left. And if we worked hard at it, I dare say we could establish the connection with the girl. But we’ll never find the bullet, and without that—”
    “We shall have to try,” said MacCutcheon grimly. “If it’s just a charge of fabricating evidence people will think he only did it to get a conviction. That’s damaging enough, of course, but even so…”
    He reached for a blue-bound book from the shelves behind him, and riffled through the pages until he found what he wanted.
    “Gross’s Criminal Investigation, ” he announced. “Third edition, page 157. ‘A rifle barrel reasonably clean on one day will show plain traces of fouling next day. In such cases the barrel sweats after it has been cleaned.’
    “But when you looked at it, the barrel of Ellingham’s rifle was periectly clean.”
    “Yes.”
    “It oughtn’t to have been, if Bentinck’s story was true.”
    “No.”
    “So Bentinck, the only person with access to that rifle, had recently cleaned it.”
    “Yes.”
    “And there’d be no point in his cleaning it unless he’d fired it.”
    “No.”
    “And there’d be no point in his firing it, and subsequently lying, unless he happened to want a bullet to substitute for the real murder bullet which he dug out of the tree.”
    Again there was silence. “I suppose there’s no chance we’re wrong?” MacCutcheon burst out fretfully. “I mean, there were even traces of blood and brains on that bullet he gave you… I suppose—”
    “No, no chance at all.” Humbleby was definite. “As to the traces—well, after all, a quick visit to the mortuary with a—a pair of tweezers, say…”
    “Yes.” MacCutcheon relapsed into gloom again. “Yes… What gun do you think he used to kill the girl?”
    “His own, I imagine. I got a look at the register, and he certainly has one, and it’s a .360 all right. But his sergeant told me he’d hardly ever used it—which would account for his not realizing about the fouling.” Humbleby rose. “He had one morning’s shooting, it seems, years ago, and after that never went out again… No stomach for blood sports, the sergeant said.”

The Pencil
    It was not until the third night that they came for Eliot.
    He had expected them sooner, and in his cold, withdrawn fashion had resented and grown impatient at the delay—for although his tastes had