CHAPTER FIVE
968 Words
CHAPTER FIVEPeskett was not the type of man that Bull would have picked for George Colton’s chauffeur. He was clearly not the sort of man to touch his cap and hold the door open with any kind of grace or suavity, even for a very respectable and prosperous merchant. Servants generally, male servants in particular, belong to that great class of people whose public and private lives have no connection with each other . . . like labour cabinet ministers, and interior decorators whose fathers are dukes. Publicly and privately their set-ups are as different as Fulham-road and Grosvenor-square. When they disappear from the eye of their public they reach a different plane of feeling and conduct; when they reappear they wear a mask that disguises them. Oliver Peskett was not like that, Inspector Bull thought. He could not place him.
“I want you to tell me about last night, Peskett.”
He conceded, in spite of whatever ideas he might have had from a first sight of the man, that the chauffeur’s story was simple, direct and explicit. Though not in exactly the same words, it differed in no essential, as far as Bull could remember, from the statement taken at the police station in Colnbrook and from that just given him by Mrs. Colton.
When Peskett had finished Bull thought it over a moment.
“What did you do when he shot?” he asked
“I didn’t do anything,” Peskett said. “I didn’t want to get shot myself, and I didn’t have a gun. I don’t think he would have fired if Mrs. Colton had kept her head. He didn’t look as if he meant to, anyway. I suppose she thought she’d scare him off.”
Bull thought again.
“How much were those diamonds worth?”
“I heard Mrs. Colton tell the sergeant at Colnbrook they were worth around £ 30,000.”
“That’s the first you knew of it?”
“That’s right.”
“But you knew he was carrying jewels of some value?”
“I didn’t. Nothing of the sort. I knew when I saw him get in the car at Windsor that he had jewels with him. He always carried them in that little black satchel. The day he took the Austrian crown jewels to Cheltenham to show them to Lady Morgan that’s the way he carried them. But I carried a gun that day. Some of those roads are pretty lonesome. He thought it was foolish. I never could figure him out about that.”
“Did he carry stones about often, in that satchel?”
“Never saw him carry them any other way, and I’ve been driving him two years.”
Bull wondered if he noticed a shade of defiance in the man’s voice.
“You weren’t armed last night, though?” he asked.
“Mr. Colton wouldn’t have it. Sometimes I used to take a gun without his knowing it, when I knew he had stones with him. I didn’t know he would, last night, so I didn’t have one. I guess it wouldn’t have been much good anyway. That fellow was pretty quick on the draw.”
Bull looked at him with a hardly perceptible but increased interest.
“Where are you from, by the way?”
“I came to Mr. Colton from Manchester.”
“Born there?”
“No. I worked there from 1919 on”.
“What doing?”
“I drove a lorry for Weber and Ernst.”
“You say Mr. Colton was opposed to firearms. Do you mean he didn’t carry them himself, or didn’t want you to?”
“Both. He said they invited murder. I guess he thought more about his hide than he did of money. That’s saying a lot.”
“How do you account for the gun he had in the side pocket of the car last night?”
Perhaps the placidity of Inspector Bull’s tone had the slightest dangerously silky quality.
The driver gave a short mirthless laugh.
“I don’t. I could swear he never had one there before.”
“When the man stopped you, you didn’t see he was masked until you let down the window, I understand.”
“That’s right. Then I saw he had a couple of guns. I did just what I was told.”
“You must have had time to get a pretty fair idea of what he was like, didn’t you?”
“Yes and no.”
Peskett hesitated a little.
“I couldn’t see his face at all, you see. Cap over his forehead, goggles over his eyes, mask over the rest. But I thought of one thing. His voice was faked, it was too deep. He was putting on, if you know what I mean. And he bit off his words, like he didn’t want to talk any more than he had to.”
Inspector Bull thought hard about that.
“What else?” he said.
“Well, he was taller than Mr. Colton. Then there was something about him. I don’t know what it was. But I’d know him if I saw him again.”
Bull looked at him thoughtfully. “What kind of a machine did he have?”
“Dunlop four.”
“Did you see it?”
“No. Heard it.”
“You know a lot about motorcycles?”
“I know enough to know what kind of an engine it’s got when I hear it go.”
“What did Miss Colton want out here a minute ago?”
The driver reached in his pocket for a cigarette. There was a noticeable hesitation.
“She wanted to know why I happened to take the Colnbrook Road instead of the by-pass,” he said then.
The faint glint of amusement in Inspector Bull’s eyes did strange things to his stolid, simple face.
“That’s just what I was going to ask you myself,” he said pleasantly.
“And I was going to tell you just what I told her,” the driver said calmly. “That Mr. Colton told me to take it when we left Windsor. I suppose he wanted to keep away from that place on the by-pass where there’s been three hold-ups the last fortnight.”
Bull nodded. “Reason enough, too. Well, good-morning. I’ll be seeing you later.”
He got into his car and set off for Windsor, with the germs of several ideas tucked away safely in his mind.
“Mr. Peskett isn’t as clever as he thinks,” Inspector Bull thought with some complacency.
- Writer
