The Floating Admiral - Agatha Christie [95]
“Ah!” said Ware, and returned to his pipe again.
Once more the Inspector reminded himself that patience is a virtue.
And then Neddy Ware did a thing which surprised his listener. He voluntarily returned to the subject of his own doings. “So you want to know about me, Mr. Rudge? Well, seeing you know so much, perhaps I’d better tell you. I would have told you before, but it seemed better to say nothing about it, in case you might get foolish ideas into your head about me. That’s why I said the next morning I didn’t know him. Well, I did call for the Admiral, like you said. He’d offered me five shillings that afternoon, seeing me fishing near his place, to row him down to Whynmouth after late dinner, him not wanting to do any hard work with the oars just after eating a lot, you understand.”
“And where did you take him?” Rudge asked eagerly.
“Why, where he wanted to go—Whynmouth. I put him ashore at the steps, and he asked me the quickest way to reach the Lord Marshall. And that’s the last I see of him.”
“You didn’t wait for him?” Rudge said, disappointed.
“I did not. He said he’d be late, and come back likely by motor.”
“You left the boat, and walked back?”
“I did not. I rowed it back, and put it in the boat-house for him all ship shape.”
“Which end first?”
“I can’t say that. Probably bow. That comes easier. Why, Mr. Rudge?”
“Oh, nothing. Do anything else?”
“I give her a bit of a swab out before I left her, that’s all.”
“What time did you get to Whynmouth?”
“Couldn’t say for certain. ’Bout eleven, I suppose.”
“And you rowed the boat back nearly three miles against the tide. How long did that take you?”
“Not much under two hours. Must have been—yes, nigh on one o’clock (your time) before I berthed her.”
“And then you walked straight back to your cottage?”
“I did, Mr. Rudge. And that’s all I know. So I’m glad you don’t suspect me of murdering the Admiral, whatever others may think.”
Rudge persevered for some little time longer, but could get no further information. As he returned to his car he was not altogether satisfied with what he had got. How far could Neddy Ware be trusted? If one accepted his story it seemed proved that the man who visited the Lord Marshall that night really was the Admiral: and that might well be the case. But the rest of the story did not seem to ring quite so true. Would it be likely, for instance, that the Admiral would saddle Ware with that two-hour pull back against the tide for the sake of the forty-minute run down with it? It was possible, of course, but somehow the Inspector had a strong feeling that it was here that Ware’s story left the rails of truth. He was pretty sure that the old man had not told all he knew. Why, for instance, after getting to bed so late, was he up and fishing at such an early hour the next morning? It almost looked as if he knew what he was going to catch.
But for the present at any rate there was nothing to be done about it: and at least Rudge thought he might now take it as established that it was to Whynmouth that the Admiral had gone that night. But whom to see?
Whom but—his murderer?
Walter Fitzgerald had been in Whynmouth. With any luck he had been staying there, and could thus be traced. It was to Whynmouth that every signpost seemed now to be pointing: and it was towards Whynmouth accordingly that Inspector Rudge now headed his shabby little two-seater.
7
Nevertheless his journey thither was occupied by reflections of a matter alien to his errand. The more he thought about it the less satisfied he was that Mrs. Mount’s death was due to suicide, as the Super and Major Twyfitt were so comfortably convinced. The matter of the freshly-eaten greengages was only one of a dozen indications, slight enough in themselves but in the aggregate formidable, that suicide had never been intended. It was quite obvious that Mrs. Mount had been mixed up somehow in the Admiral’s murder. At any rate she must have known a good deal about it—too much, Rudge fancied, for its perpetrator. Her suicide was really