The Cornish Coast Murder (British Library Crime Classics) by John Bude Page B

do with his niece. Presently Mr. Tregarthan came out into the hall, looking a bit ruffled and red in the face. When I made as if to open the door for him, he waved me away. ‘It's all right,’ he said, ‘I know my way out without your help!’ And that was the last I saw of him. The last I shall ever see of him as it happens. He walked straight from this very door to his death! Poor man! Dreadful how sudden it comes, sir—just when you least expect it!”
    But Inspector Bigswell had heard more than enough. Mrs. Peewit had loaded him with such a sackful of information that he wanted a moment's quiet in which to sort the wheat from the chaff. There was just one other thing he wanted to find out before he left Cove Cottage and he racked his brains for an intelligent means by which this information could be obtained without Mrs. Peewit's knowledge. Inspiration came to him. He removed his peaked cap, mopped his brow, coughed raspingly once or twice and remarked, casually, that it was thirsty work asking questions. Could Mrs. Peewit oblige him with such a thing as a cup of tea? He was sure Mrs. Peewit knew how to make a cup of tea for a thirsty man—strong, not too much milk and three lumps of sugar. Flattered by this unexpected request Mrs. Peewit subsided, at once, to a more normal frame of mind and bustled out to attend to the Inspector's needs.
    Bigswell reckoned he had about three minutes in which to act. The moment Mrs. Peewit's footsteps had receded up the stone-floored passage, he went briskly to the desk and began to pull out the drawers. They were in two tiers each side of the spacious knee-hole—about eight drawers in all. The top ones were locked. With extreme deftness and alacrity he worked down the left-hand side, turning over papers, lifting files, groping here and there among a diversity of oddments. It was not until he came to the third drawer down in the right-hand bank that he found exactly what he was looking for. It had been a shot in the dark but the bullet had found its billet. Wedged between a double pile of blue exercise books was a leather holster. The flap was undone and if, as the Inspector reckoned, that holster had once held a revolver—well, the revolver was no longer there! Somebody, as he saw at a glance, had removed it recently, for the accumulated dust both on the holster and the exercise books had been disturbed by the brush of a hand or glove.
    Closing the drawer, he was just in time to stroll away to the fire-place, when Mrs. Peewit entered with the tea. Gulping it down as quickly as politeness allowed, the Inspector thanked the woman and, warning her that she might be summoned as a witness at the inquest on Thursday, he hurried down the path to the car.
    Grouch was waiting for him, sitting beside Grimmet on the front seat. On seeing his superior he sprang out and touched his helmet.
    “I've seen Charlie Fox, sir. It's all right. There's a fair sized room at the back. He'll have everything ready by two o'clock Thursday. I phoned through to Greystoke as you said, sir.”
    “Good!”
    Grouch drew himself up with pardonable pride, considering the importance of the news which he was bursting to deliver.
    “And that's not all, sir. I took the liberty of asking Fox a few questions. He knows most everybody in the village and there's always plenty of talk running free in the bar at nights.”
    “Well, Grouch?”
    “That chap with the gaiters, sir—I've got a line on him, I think.”
    “You know who it is?”
    “As near as dammit, sir! Ned Salter, the black sheep of the Boscawen flock, as I've heard the Doctor call him. Poaching's his line. Been before the Bench on more than one occasion. Caught him red-handed myself working the burrows up near the Grange. A shifty sort of customer at the best of times. Fox noticed his gaiters the other night in the pub. Some of the chaps was chipping Ned about it, saying he pinched ’em off a dossing keeper. That's as maybe, but there's something more to