The Floating Admiral - Agatha Christie [35]
Sergeant Appleton coughed.
“Maybe this is it, sir,” he said and held out a key to which was attached a small metal label with the word “Window” engraved on it. He added, in answer to the Inspector’s rather angry questioning look, “We were going to tell you, sir, by the boat-house.”
“That’s all for the present,” the Inspector said to Emery. “I may want you again later, so you’ll keep handy, see? Is there another telephone? Then this is an extension, I suppose?” (He pointed to one on a table at the far end of the study.) “Just switch it through to here. And another thing: I shall want to see the maid—Merton—again in a few minutes.”
“Well, she’s gone out,” the butler told him, with perhaps a tinge of malicious satisfaction.
“But I told you, didn’t I—” the other began, angrily.
“It’s her mother. She’s queer.”
The Inspector snorted again, and the butler hastily withdrew. It was useless to find fault with the poor creature; he could no more stop Jennie Merton going out than Mr. Holland coming in, as Rudge observed to the sergeant.
“No harm done,” he added, in reference to the key; the sergeant rightly took this to be a veiled apology. “Where did you find it?”
“In the boat—the Admiral’s boat.”
“You haven’t been messing about—”
“Oh no, sir. Not that there’s any danger. Apart from the oars and rowlocks, she’s as neat as a new pin.”
“H’m. What about the key for finger-prints?”
But it was easy to see that the rough surface of the label would not “take” a finger-print.
“Someone took trouble with the boat,” said Rudge thoughtfully, “so I wonder how the key came to be left there.”
“I don’t think the state of the boat means much—necessarily,” the sergeant suggested. “I had a word with the Vicar’s boys. They say that Admiral Penistone always gave her a mop over, like, last thing after he’d finished with her for the day.”
The Inspector considered this. It seemed to fit in with the description of the Admiral as a precise martinet; and it might help to explain why, after hustling away from the Vicarage—directly after ten, because he must be in by midnight!—he had dawdled behind at the boat-house. But it was far from conclusive.
“Well, fire ahead,” he urged the sergeant.
“It just caught my eye, the edge of the label affair. Just sticking out from under the bottom boards of the boat. As if it had been dropped and had slipped down inside.”
“We’d better try it, just to make sure.”
He fitted it into the key-hole, and locked and unlocked the window.
“That’s it all right,” he agreed and stood silent for a few moments, tapping the key against the palm of his left hand and staring absent-mindedly about the room. Suddenly he emerged from his brown study and walked across to the mantelpiece. He took down a large, framed photograph of a naval officer in full-dress uniform.
“That’s him all right, isn’t it? Admiral Penistone?”
“Yes,” said Sergeant Appleton in some surprise; he was enlightened about the conversation with old Ware.
“It doesn’t sound likely to me that he’s not the real Admiral Penistone,” was his comment. “If he isn’t, he’s pinched the whole outfit,” and he pointed to an engraved cup which also stood on the mantelpiece. A further scrutiny, moreover, revealed a “group” of naval officers in the centre of which was a younger but unmistakably a likeness of the dead man. The names of the group were neatly printed below the photograph; and in the centre was the name of Captain Penistone.
“I don’t think there’s more than a shade of doubt,” the Inspector agreed. “But we can’t afford to take chances. That’s one job I’ve got for you—to ring up the Admiralty.”
As he spoke, he took down a copy of Who’s Who from a shelf full of reference