The Floating Admiral - Agatha Christie [90]
Superintendent Hawkesworth drew a folded paper from his breast-pocket, opened it, and in a totally expressionless voice read:
“‘Captain Penistone was involved in a disgraceful scene in Hong Kong in 1911. By his own admission he followed a girl, who was being ill-treated by a Chinaman, into a low-class den which was already unfavourably known to the authorities. After that he stated that he remembered nothing further. He was, however, seen, in an advanced state of intoxication, singing and dancing in the company of a number of seamen of both British and other nationalities, and Chinese coolies; and he was carried on board his ship the next morning, still under the influence of drink and opium, by a party of his own men who had recognised him the previous evening. In consideration of his record, Captain Penistone was permitted to send in his papers instead of being tried by court-martial. On the outbreak of hostilities with Germany, Captain Penistone volunteered his services in any capacity, and in view of the emergency he was reinstated temporarily with his rank of Captain. He served with distinction throughout the War, and so far as the Admiralty was concerned, the regrettable incident at Hong Kong was expunged from the records. The Admiral, however, expressed to several of the senior officers here his dissatisfaction with the affair, and his belief that a good deal more lay behind it than had ever appeared, and he used to state his intention of devoting his leisure on retirement to getting to the bottom of it; but as to whether there were any grounds or evidence for this belief, nothing is known here.’”
“I see,” said Rudge. “Followed a girl in, did he? Well, that clears up one point, sir, doesn’t it? File X!”
“You mean, File X contained the evidence he had collected to support his view that the incident was rigged?” nodded the Chief Constable. “Yes, that’s the view we’d come to.”
“And it gives you something else, Rudge,” added Hawkesworth. “It gives you motive. Those papers had disappeared from the folder, hadn’t they? Obviously they were taken after the murder, by the murderer. In other words, the Admiral was right. He’d got his evidence—and it was going to implicate somebody who didn’t want to be implicated. So the Admiral was murdered to stop him blowing the gaff. Well, that gives us a pretty strong pointer. The murderer is a man who was in Hong Kong in 1911. Anything wrong with that?”
“Nothing,” Rudge agreed. “That’s right enough, sir. Must be. But there’s one thing I can’t understand, and that’s Mr. Holland’s story about seeing the Admiral, in his study, with a lot of papers on his desk, after midnight that night. According to what the doctor says, that’s just the time the murderer ought to have been looking for File X.”
“And perhaps so he was,” said the Superintendent darkly.
“If you mean Holland, sir,” said Rudge, returning to an old difficulty, “why did he want to come out with that story at all, when there was no evidence that he wasn’t safe in bed and asleep at the Lord Marshall?”
“I don’t mean Holland,” snapped the Superintendent. “I mean the man Holland saw. The man whom he mistook for the Admiral. The man who was impersonating the Admiral—for the third time.”
“The third time?”
“Yes. Once in the study, once at the Lord Marshall, and once—in Hong Kong!”
“Oh!” Rudge registered such genuine admiration that the Superintendent forgave him his foolishness about Mrs. Mount. “That’s a smart bit of work, sir, if I may say so.”
“You can bank on it, that’s the murderer,” said the Superintendent complacently, and his tone added that that was not the end of the smart work.
“But wait a bit,” cried the Inspector excitedly. “That means Mrs. Holland’s in it. Holland gave it away that she was in the study too.”
“And haven’t you thought all the time that Mrs. Holland knew a good bit more than she let on?”
“I never thought she was actually mixed up in the murder,” Rudge confessed.
With an air of triumph the Superintendent rose and unlocked a cupboard. From it