Trent’s Own Case
Martin Edwards
E. C. Bentley
The second novel from the celebrated author of one of the most famous mystery classics ever written, Trent's Last Case.James Randolph is murdered early one evening and his body is found a few hours later. When the police arrive they discover that Randolph's safe has been ransacked and discarded wrapping paper litters his bedroom floor.Perhaps by chance or perhaps by design, Trent seems to have been the last person, other than the murderer, to see Randolph alive. But this is only one aspect amongst many which connect Trent with the murder and stimulate his interest: his friend Inspector Bligh is the detective in charge of the investigation, and then a long-time friend readily and perplexingly confesses his guilt. As much as he respects the abilities of Inspector Bligh, Trent's personal knowledge has him doubting the confession and intent on finding the truth.
‘THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB is a clearing house for the best detective and mystery stories chosen for you by a select committee of experts. Only the most ingenious crime stories will be published under the THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB imprint. A special distinguishing stamp appears on the wrapper and title page of every THE DETECTIVE STORY CLUB book—the Man with the Gun. Always look for the Man with the Gun when buying a Crime book.’
Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd., 1929
Now the Man with the Gun is back in this series of COLLINS CRIME CLUB reprints, and with him the chance to experience the classic books that influenced the Golden Age of crime fiction.
Copyright (#u52dfecca-2132-58a0-8321-f15f3225d767)
COLLINS CRIME CLUB
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by Constable & Co. Ltd 1936
Copyright © Estates of E. C. Bentley & H. Warner Allen 1936
Introduction © Martin Edwards 2017
Jacket design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1925, 2017
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008216320
Ebook Edition © August 2017 ISBN: 9780008216337
Version: 2017-06-27
Contents
Cover (#uf46d74d2-da5c-52a8-b460-b8f850f7a43e)
Title Page (#ubfa0b76d-5fec-5969-a54a-3e5ec697fd6e)
Copyright
Introduction
I. SOUTHWARD BOUND
II. A LITTLE SHEET OF PAPER
III. DEATH OF A PHILANTHROPIST
IV. NOT HARD OF HEARING
V. TRENT IS TAKEN ABACK
VI. AN ARREST HAS BEEN MADE
VII. ON A PLATE WITH PARSLEY ROUND IT
VIII. THE WHITE FLOWER OF A BLAMELESS LIFE
IX. THE TIARA OF MEGABYZUS
X. A MATTER OF TEMPERAMENTS
XI. IMPASSE
XII. THE COUNT EXPLAINS
XIII. FELIX POUBELLE 1884
XIV. GENIUS MUST LIVE
XV. EUNICE MAKES A CLEAN BREAST OF IT
XVI. THE WHISPERED WORD
XVII. FINE BODY OF MEN
XVIII. INFORMATION RECEIVED
XIX. RESURRECTION
XX. A GOLF MATCH
XXI. AUNT JUDITH KNITS
The Detective Story Club
About the Publisher
INTRODUCTION (#u52dfecca-2132-58a0-8321-f15f3225d767)
FEW detective novels published during ‘the Golden Age of Murder’ between the two world wars were as eagerly anticipated by crime fiction enthusiasts as Trent’s Own Case. The book first appeared in 1936, and within months its publishers Constable felt able to boast that it was the best crime novel of the year—quite a claim given that the competition included Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders, one of the enduring classics of the genre. Yet despite its initial success, the book has long been out of print.
Edmund Clerihew Bentley’s first novel, Trent’s Last Case (known as The Woman in Black in the US) had been published almost a quarter of a century earlier, in 1913. A journalist, Bentley (1875–1956) had been struck by the thought ‘that it would be a good idea to write a detective story of a new sort’. Although he admired the Sherlock Holmes stories, he was sceptical about the concept of the Great Detective, and soon ‘the most pleasing notion of all came to me: the notion of making the hero’s hard-won and obviously correct solution of the mystery turn out to be completely wrong. Why not show up the infallibility of the Holmesian method?’ The detective who proved all too human and error-prone was Philip Trent, a gentlemanly artist with a taste for amateur sleuthing. As the title of that first book suggests, Bentley had no thought of creating what is now known as a ‘series character’.
But Fate often conspires to defeat an author’s intentions. Trent’s Last Case was so well-written, and its plot twists so appealing, that people took it at face value as a highly entertaining country house murder mystery rather than as a parody. It became a best-seller, and was filmed. The legendary thriller writer Edgar Wallace hailed the book as ‘a masterpiece’, while Dean Inge, a prominent cleric and avid crime fiction fan, said it was ‘the best detective story I ever read’. After the First World War, when ingenious mystery novels packed with suspects, clues, red herrings and twists became all the rage, Bentley’s book inspired a new generation of writers, including Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Anthony Berkeley.
When Berkeley founded the Detection Club, a social network for leading detective writers, in 1930, Bentley’s lifelong friend G.K. Chesterton became the Club’s first President and Bentley was invited to become a founder member. Although he’d shown little appetite for building on the remarkable success of his debut, younger writers whom he’d influenced held him in high regard, and possibly it was encouragement from fellow Detection Club members that then helped to persuade Bentley to revive Philip Trent in a sequel.
Trent’s Own Case was, however, a collaborative work, and the person who did most to urge Bentley to return to the fray was his co-author, Herbert Warner Allen (1881–1968), a wine expert and occasional crime writer. It seems likely that the majority of the writing was done by Bentley, although Trent was not the only recurring character. Warner Allen’s own creation, the wine merchant William Clerihew, had appeared in ‘Tokay of the Comet Year’, a short story published in 1930, and also in the book Mr Clerihew: Wine Merchant three years later. Here a champagne cork supplies a clue which is discussed between Trent and Clerihew in one of the most appealing scenes in the book. The Clerihew name was a hat-tip to Bentley, who had, long before, devised the humorous four-line verse form known as the clerihew.
Trent’s Own Case concerns Trent’s investigation into the death of a philanthropist whose generosity towards charitable causes masks a deeply unattractive personality. The story is told in a leisurely, discursive style, but the writing offers a variety of incidental pleasures, and Trent’s return to the detection game after an extended absence is deftly explained:
‘It was long enough since he had resolved to have no more to do, in a quasi-professional way, with problems of crime. But the murder of a man whom he had known, and who had aroused his interest as a human curiosity, could not be disregarded; and the utterly unexpected appearance of an old friend in the character of the self-confessed criminal had given the keenest edge to Trent’s reviving taste for that grimly fascinating business.’
Writing to ‘Jack’ Bentley (as he was known to his friends) on 17 April 1936, before the book was published, Dorothy L. Sayers was rhapsodic: ‘I was just savouring the way the story was told and submitting to the spell of beautiful writing … nothing about a book is so unmistakeable and irreplaceable as the stamp of a cultured mind … all your figures get cheerfully up and walk out of the tapestry and talk and eat and move about in three dimensions, as if it was the simplest matter in the world. It’s not, of course, but you have the enormous advantage … of knowing, in the fullest sense of the words, how to read and write.’
The book’s publication, by Constable and Company, was celebrated at a private gathering, ‘The Trent Dinner’, on 21 May 1936. Most of the guests were members of the Detection Club: Sayers, Henry Wade, Freeman Wills Crofts, Milward Kennedy and Nicholas Blake. The novelist Frank Swinnerton, who was quoted on the back cover of the dust jacket as saying that Trent’s Last Case was the finest long detective story ever written, was also present; so were the publisher Michael Sadleir and his secretary, Martha Smith. But Chesterton, whom Bentley had met when they were boys at St Paul’s School, was missing; his health had given way, and he died on 14 June.
Bentley succeeded Chesterton as President of the Detection Club and, having written a handful of short stories about Trent more than two decades earlier, produced several more, which were gathered in Trent Intervenes and published by Thomas Nelson in 1938; Constable meanwhile published Warner Allen’s new murder story The Uncounted Hour. The Second World War put an end to Trent’s career once and for all, and although Bentley published one post-war thriller, Elephant’s Work (1950), it was not a success. His health declined, and he gave up the Presidency of the Detection Club in favour of Sayers. After the war, Warner Allen became a good friend of T.S. Eliot, despite Eliot’s decision to reject one of his thrillers: ‘The plot is extremely ingenious and involved, but I think that it moves too slowly, and especially that it is very slow indeed in starting.’ In his later years, Warner Allen’s publications mostly concerned wine.
The critics were kind to Trent’s Own Case. Torquemada, the Observer’s influential crime reviewer, was lavish in his praise, as were Milward Kennedy in the Sunday Times and Anthony Berkeley (under the name Francis Iles) in the Daily Telegraph. Later, the often acerbic Jacques Barzun and Wendell Hertig Taylor said in A Catalogue of Crime: ‘The problem is gripping and its solution good solid work’, and reckoned that it did not fall too far short of its legendary predecessor. In time, however, a reaction set in, which perhaps explains why the book has been absent from the shelves for so long. Bentley’s son Nicolas, a distinguished artist and himself an occasional crime writer, regretted that his father had allowed Warner Allen to talk him into producing the sequel. Inevitably, the story could hardly match Trent’s Last Case for originality or impact—very few books could. However, republication in the Detective Story Club now gives twenty-first century readers a welcome chance to judge this novel on its own merits.
MARTIN EDWARDS
January 2017
CHAPTER I (#u52dfecca-2132-58a0-8321-f15f3225d767)
SOUTHWARD BOUND (#u52dfecca-2132-58a0-8321-f15f3225d767)
‘I OUGHT to be going,’ Philip Trent said. ‘I’ve got an appointment, as I told you, and I mustn’t be late. You go on dining, Slick—have some of the crevettes Waldorf; they will bring the roses into your cheeks. If I come round with the car tomorrow about ten, will you be more or less ready?’
‘Less, I expect,’ Slick Patmore grumbled. ‘That is, if this ghastly weather doesn’t change in the night. A two-hours’ run through drizzle and chill is not my idea of a morning’s pleasure.’
‘It’s bound to change in the night,’ Trent assured him. ‘The only question is how many times it will change. That’s the exciting thing about a variable climate like ours; and it is at its best in April, as everybody knows. Oh to be in England, now that April’s there, and whoever wakes in England is entirely unaware whether it is going to rain cats and dogs or be gay with sunshine, birds and blossoms. Besides, it isn’t a question of pleasure for you and me tomorrow. It is duty, Slick, duty whose stern behest impels us to the deed of going to see Julian Pickett married.’
‘And drink his health in what old Blinky Fisher imagines to be champagne,’ Patmore added, moodily helping himself to another glass of La Tour–Figeac.
‘Why shouldn’t he have an imagination, just because he is a Canon of Glasminster?’ Trent asked. ‘He’ll need it, I should say, when he gives away his niece to Julian, and has to pretend that he has some sort of responsibility for a girl of the present time. Ha! I can see it now. “Who giveth this woman?” Come on, Blinky; to what green altar, O mysterious priest, lead’st thou that heifer? Probably he will have mislaid his spectacles, and will try to give Julian away.’
‘Didn’t you say you had an appointment?’ Patmore hinted.
Trent, descending the staircase of the Cactus Club, stood in the doorway and lighted a cigarette as he nerved himself to the task of going to see his favourite aunt off on the boat-train to Newhaven. It is a part of our island heritage, he mused, that at such times as we are on the point of leaving the country the weather is usually pretty beastly. As God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, so the Briton about to uproot himself from the native soil is upheld and solaced by the thought that the climate he is going to cannot possibly be so objectionable. An erroneous thought, perhaps; but what thoughts (he asked himself) are not so? This particular evening, at least, was quite noxious enough to warrant the rosiest anticipations of what it was going to be like anywhere across the Channel. Fortunate indeed was Aunt Judith!
As he looked out across Piccadilly, the air was full of a yellowish drizzle that had not character enough to be a fog. Behind the Green Park railings the trees showed vague drab outlines suggesting the scenery of a hell where the ache of dull depression reigned rather than any pain. Everywhere was that thin and scanty slime which modern cities dignify by the noble name of mud.
Trent glanced at the clock in the porter’s office. He had told Patmore the truth, and nothing but the truth; not the whole truth, which, after all, nobody ever tells, if only because there is not time. He had an appointment, and he must not be late, since the 8:20 from Victoria waited for no man; but the fact that he intended to be there a quarter of an hour beforehand, and the reasons for that decision, would not have interested his friend. Although Trent had, like most of us, a strong distaste for prolonged farewells, he knew that Aunt Judith expected the decent observance of any social rite; and fifteen minutes appeared to him to hit the happy mean between the over-assiduous and the perfunctory. During the brief drive to the station he might tax his brain—fond hope!—for some happy and original form of good-by.
As he buttoned his overcoat, the slamming of the door of a motor-car came from without. The swing-door of the entrance was pushed half open, and a tall man, roaring with laughter, paused with his foot on the threshold, and spoke over his shoulder. ‘Gute Nacht, du alte gute Kerl,’ he called, ‘und herzlichen Dank.’
‘Ach Quatsch!’ a harsh voice barked in reply as the car rolled away. ‘Wiederseh’n!’
The new comer pushed through the doors and moved with long strides across the hall. Trent knew the man well enough; so well as to want no conversation with him. A completely unashamed and unscrupulous egotist is not as a rule the best of company, even if one has not, as Trent had, a personal reason for objecting to his existence. There was, too, always the strong possibility that Eugene Wetherill would not try to be the best of company. The habits of that brilliant man of letters included a tendency to be gratuitously offensive, and Trent had had more than one unpleasant encounter with him before.
Turning his head as he reached the stairway, Wetherill caught sight of Trent and raised a hand in recognition. ‘You’re looking damnably serious,’ he observed with a wolfish grin. ‘It isn’t the sight of me, I hope, that has banished the winning smile. Forget your trouble, dear friend. All may yet be well. Forget our little disagreements in the past. Drown your sorrow with me at the bar—it’s astonishing what a lot can be drowned in one small absinthe cocktail.’
‘Thanks, but I’ve got to go,’ Trent said. He added, ‘You don’t look as if you had anything much to drown. If I look serious, you look quite pleased.’
‘So I am.’ Wetherill laughed as he removed his broad-brimmed black hat and white scarf so that it could be seen he was in evening dress beneath his overcoat. ‘Much pleased. Nothing to drown, as you remark with that infallible discernment of yours; so I shall have that drink purely as a matter of principle—not with any sordid utilitarian purpose. Pleased! I should think I am pleased. I did a good stroke of business yesterday, dear friend, and I haven’t got over it yet.’ He paused a moment, as if recollecting himself; then he went on: ‘Whenever that happens, I have an unreasonable impulse to forgive the world for being what it is, and mankind for being what they are.’
‘Including Eugene Wetherill, I hope,’ Trent suggested sympathetically. ‘You ought not to be too hard on yourself, you know—it’s a fatal tendency. Fight it. Don’t let it master you. I’ve got to tear myself away now, but remember my words.’ He hurried through the doorway and down the greasy pavement in the direction of Piccadilly.
Wetherill, he thought, was certainly in a state of high satisfaction about something. The expression of contempt which he usually wore was probably, like all the rest of his external appearance, a carefully studied effect; but this evening it had yielded place to a look of genuine pleasure, and Trent wondered what might be the cause of it. Anything that pleased Wetherill would be quite likely to have a very different effect upon more normal minds; and Trent happened to know—as a good many people, unfortunately, knew—of one stroke of business done by Wetherill with which few men would have cared to soil their hands. But that had been months ago; this was evidently something recent, and it was curious that Wetherill had plainly hesitated to say what it was. He was anything but secretive as a rule about his own affairs, even the most discreditable; he liked posing as a paragon of immorality. It was difficult to reckon with a man who boasted of having destroyed his own self-respect.
A massive policeman loomed up at the corner of Charles Street.
‘Not a nice night, Officer,’ Trent remarked.
‘That it isn’t, sir,’ rumbled the constable in a tone suggesting that the grimy mist had found its way beneath his heavy water-proofs and permeated all his being. ‘There’s some that seem to enjoy it, though. See those runners coming up the other side of the way? Gawd! Sooner them than me. Funny amusement, isn’t it, sir, on a night like this?’
‘Splendid for them, really,’ Trent said. ‘When they’ve had a rub down and a change they’ll be as happy as so many kings of the Persians. It is youth, Officer—youth footing swift to the dawn, or to the Polytechnic, or somewhere delightful. We ought to envy them.’
Pushing on past the scattered procession of bedraggled lads in shorts and singlets who were jogging along in twos and threes at the edge of the pavement, Trent found the cab-rank he sought.
As he sat in the taxi, Trent’s thoughts turned back to the interview with old James Randolph which had preceded his dinner at the Cactus Club. It had been, he reflected, shorter than he had anticipated; shorter and even more unpleasant. Nobody could be expected to enjoy the discovery that one of his secrets, and a decidedly humiliating one at that, was shared by another person not at all well disposed towards him. Still, Randolph’s uncontrollable rage had seemed rather excessive for the occasion; he stood, after all, to lose nothing in either purse or repute so long as he behaved himself. And as to that there could be no doubt. Trent’s threat of exposure had obviously been quite effective. Whether Randolph’s denials of any dishonourable purpose were sincere or not, the man was certainly frightened now, and would conduct himself accordingly. Any scandal about the Tiara of Megabyzus would be a deadly blow to the old man’s inflated self-esteem. In short, Aunt Judith could be fully reassured before she left. If she were to do so with any remaining uneasiness about Eunice, it would spoil the trip to which she had looked forward so eagerly.
All his life Trent had been strongly attached to his aunt, that unusual old lady. This was a great moment in the life of Miss Judith Yates. She was leaving England for the first time in nearly forty years. Brought up in the twilight of the Victorian era, she had seen in her youth not a little of the world abroad; but the time had come when an over-confident brother had flung away most of the family fortune in some concern floated by a yet more hopeful financier. Thenceforward she had lived in the country on very small means, uncomplaining—indeed, singularly happy. She kept in touch with a wide circle of friends, many of them moving in the midst of affairs; she heard all that was made public, and a good deal that was not, of the world’s events, and the seamy side of high life and politics was pretty well known to her. Her prim appearance masked an exceedingly active, well-furnished and seasoned mind. Sometimes, to her amusement, modern young women imagined that they had shocked her; actually, Miss Yates in her time had contemplated with calm breaches of convention more startling than anything coming within their philosophy. She asked only that there should be something about the trespass that was worth considering; it was at pettiness and worthlessness that she drew the line. The closest bond of affection in her life, indeed, was a friendship, quite casually begun, with Eunice Faviell, the most brilliant of the younger generation of actresses, whose private history centred in a liaison that was no secret to the world she lived in.
A few months earlier she had come into a legacy, and had decided at once to see something, while health remained to her, of the European world again. ‘I mean,’ she had told Trent, ‘to travel in luxury, and to go on travelling until the money is spent.’ The journey now in prospect was a visit to friends in Rome, and she had declared herself as excited as when she went to her first dance, ready to savour every moment and every incident …
It was by a chance that she was taking the Dieppe route. She had meant to enjoy the comforts of the shorter crossing; but as it happened, a commission that she had given to her nephew Philip could not be carried out until the evening of her day of departure. So, with memories of having been a good sailor, she had decided to take the night service.
It was this errand that had taken Trent to his acrimonious interview with James Randolph; and he was reviewing now, as the taxi took him to Victoria, the grounds of his conviction that the job had been well and truly done. Aunt Judith, he knew, had eyes of the sharpest, and would guess only too readily that all was not well if he showed any sign of uncertainty.
Arrived at the terminus, with a little more margin of time than he had planned, he proceeded to the boat-train platform, stopping by the way to make a purchase at the flower-shop within the precincts. To his surprise, Aunt Judith was not to be seen. She had, of course, her place reserved; but Trent, knowing well her habits of mind, and knowing too that it was the first time in her life that she would be travelling in a first-class Pullman, had assumed that the longer she took over the preliminaries the greater her pleasure would be.
As he turned back, however, from his search for a non-existent Pullman in the forward end of the train, he saw his aunt supervising the transfer of hand luggage to a seat in a rearward section. She must have followed close upon his footsteps through the barrier. As he approached, she was conferring with the Pullman attendant, and that occupational optimist was giving a favourable view of the prospect for the Channel crossing. Trent presented his tribute of exuberant carnations.
‘Oh! That is kind of you, Philip. My favourite flower! And exactly what was wanted for the finishing touch to this stage of the adventure. My dear, you cannot imagine how I feel about it. Everything is so different from what it used to be—I mean everything in the way of getting abroad.’ Aunt Judith certainly appeared to be enjoying to the full the excitement that she had tasted in anticipation. Her eyes were bright, and her cheek had an unaccustomed flush.
Trent came at once to the point that was uppermost in his mind. ‘You will be glad to hear that it is all settled about Eunice. I saw Randolph this evening, as I had arranged, and I made quite sure that he won’t trouble her again. You know, Aunt Ju, I could see you didn’t feel quite confident about it when I told you I knew how to get a really binding promise out of the old man. Well, that is what I’ve done; you can set your mind at rest. I couldn’t explain to you how I was going to manage it, and I can’t now. I told him, you see, that I would keep quiet about it, as long as he lived at least; it was a bargain. But it’s all right.’
‘It is such a relief to know that, Philip.’ Miss Yates buried her nose in the carnations gratefully. ‘You are quite right, I couldn’t help being a little worried until it was quite certain.’
‘All the same,’ Trent went on, ‘it looks as if I am booked for a bit of a row with Eunice about it. It seems you wrote to her saying you had told me what had been going on, and you were letting me loose on the old man. She doesn’t like it. I got a note from her yesterday, and it wasn’t a nice note, though knowing what she is it didn’t altogether surprise me.’
There was a slight but perceptible elevation of Miss Yates’s chin. ‘What do you mean, Phil, by knowing what she is?’
‘Now don’t get up in arms, Aunt Ju. Of course I didn’t mean …’
‘My dear boy, I am not up in arms, but …’
‘Well, call it a partial mobilization then. You can’t bear to hear a hint of criticism of Eunice, everybody knows that. It’s how I feel myself about her, for that matter. But there’s no harm in saying I wasn’t surprised to be told that her private affairs were none of my damned business, and that she would be obliged if I would keep my nose out of them, and that she was perfectly capable of looking after herself … with more to the same effect.’
Miss Yates, smiling, laid a neatly gloved hand on his arm. ‘If that’s all you mean, Phil, by saying you know what she is, why of course you do … it’s common knowledge that Eunice has a good allowance of spirit. I dare say you have heard things in that tone of voice from her before. So have I, sometimes. So has your wife, though she is a much older friend than you are. None of us take it too tragically, I am sure. We all know …’
‘What she is. Wasn’t that what you were going to say, Aunt Ju? So there we are again at the starting-point of our misunderstanding, and we find ourselves in complete agreement—just like foreign ministers in an official communiqué.’
‘Yes; only we really are, my dear. Now I will confess to you, Phil, that I thought it quite possible she might write you something like that, and I hoped that you would disregard it. She has always insisted on managing her own life just as she likes, and making a hash of it in any way she chooses—which she has done, goodness knows.’
Trent nodded. ‘Goodness does know, indeed. Speaking of that,’ he added, ‘I saw Wetherill for a moment just before I started to come here. He was looking extremely well, I’m sorry to say. I never set eyes on that fellow without wanting to murder him.’
‘I wish you would, I’m sure,’ Miss Yates said with intense feeling. ‘Though there’s no way of doing it that wouldn’t be too good for him.’
‘Yes; and another thing against it is that it’s a game two can play at. He could give me points at it. Wetherill is not the convenient sort of villain who will always take a licking from the hero without doing anything about it. He is fit to take care of himself in any sort of a scrap, he’s afraid of nobody, and he loves a row. It’s a fact, you know, that he killed a man in a duel at La Spezia, after being wounded twice.’
‘I expect he cheated,’ Miss Yates said. ‘I never cared much for La Spezia, and now I shall like it less. Wetherill ought to have lived in Italy of the fifteenth century, along with the Sforzas and the other Renaissance wild animals.’
‘So he ought,’ Trent agreed. ‘But he has always left undone the things that he ought to have done.’
‘She has had nothing to do with him for some time now—she told me so. But that has happened before, and it never lasts. I do wish,’ Miss Yates said fretfully, ‘Eunice could have managed to take that sort of interest in any other man. There were enough for her to choose from, goodness knows! and a number of them very decent fellows, I have no doubt. There was that young doctor friend of yours, I forget his name—’
‘Bryan Fairman, you mean.’
‘Yes. I never met him, but I always thought it would be nice for her to be married to a friend of yours and Mabel’s, and I knew from the way you both used to speak of him that he was the right sort. What makes it all the more irritating is, she has always been very fond of him in a way.’
‘I don’t know,’ Trent said, ‘how many times she has refused to marry him—both of them have lost count, I should think—but I dare say she always did it in the most affectionate terms. Poor Aunt Ju! You never realized what you were letting yourself in for when you decided to become a mother to a girl like Eunice Faviell.’
Miss Yates smiled whimsically. ‘When I decided! It was Eunice who made up her mind to adopt me—you know it was. Why she did, I don’t suppose she knows herself.’ Miss Yates turned the discussion to her plans of travel, and to the changes wrought in Rome since the eighteen nineties. Trent’s own arrangements for the immediate future came under review. Early next day he was going down to Glasminster to attend the wedding of Julian Pickett. Perhaps Aunt Judith remembered Julian. Of course Aunt Judith did. He was the young fellow who had had a limp ever since a tiger bit him somewhere in the Himalayas.
‘In the gluteus maximus,’ Trent murmured.
‘I knew it was somewhere like that,’ Aunt Judith said. ‘Yes; and the day you brought him to see me he rolled up a sheet of music and made a noise like a panther through it, so that Elizabeth dropped the tea-tray in the pantry, and had to be given sal volatile.’
At 8:15 Miss Yates was installed in her place, continuing the conversation through the open window. At 8:19¾ a man carrying a kit-bag hurried past the barrier. He fled to the first-class Pullman, and leapt in just as the train began to move. He was standing in the doorway, with the attendant hauling in his bag, when he chanced to turn and look Trent straight in the face.
Trent, whose casual glance had seen in him only an unknown individual in a big coat over brown tweeds, and a soft hat well pulled down, uttered an exclamation. ‘Bryan! By Jove, you nearly missed it!’
‘Phil! You here!’ With a wild gesture the man leaned from the receding coach. ‘Why the devil …’ The rest of his shout was drowned in the rumble as the train gathered speed. Trent, in his astonishment, barely remembered to reply to his aunt’s wave from the window.
What could be the meaning of Bryan Fairman’s state of agitation? Why had his friend, usually so strictly self-controlled, looked and acted like a demoralized and desperate man?
CHAPTER II (#u52dfecca-2132-58a0-8321-f15f3225d767)
A LITTLE SHEET OF PAPER (#u52dfecca-2132-58a0-8321-f15f3225d767)
MISS Yates, for her part, had not perceived this brief scene of recognition, and she applied herself now, very contentedly, to the taking of things as they came. She observed that, as the train drew out of the station and gathered speed, there was a change in the atmosphere of the carriage. Passengers who had been painfully absorbed by long-drawn-out farewells pulled themselves together. They became more jaunty and less self-conscious. They were on the threshold of something like another existence, in which for a time they would be freed from the conventions of their environment and from neighbourly inquisition. Consciously or unconsciously, they hoped to be really rather more themselves. Moreover, they were southward bound, leaving fog and drizzle behind them. There was the sense of relief which doctors have in mind when they use the tactful expression ‘change of scene.’
With a smile, Miss Yates settled herself in her place and looked round the carriage. There was a slight touch of luxury about it all which she found extremely soothing. The menu did not look exceedingly inviting, but to her there was a certain sense of adventure about dining in the train. And the man was so delightfully polite, particularly after she had ordered herself half a bottle of burgundy.
As dinner was served, she began unobtrusively to take note of her fellow-travellers, and build up for herself an imaginary picture of their lives. For Miss Yates had a keen curiosity about all strangers with whom she came in contact, and it amused her to fit each of them with a personal history. Sometimes she enjoyed the additional pleasure of contrasting her guesses with the later-appearing facts.
She had little hesitation in measuring up the tall, straight-backed, distinguished man, carefully dressed and with well-tended grey moustache, who sat nearest to her, reading a magazine. Not quite military, she decided; a more thoughtful type. Something diplomatic, undoubtedly; perhaps a newly-appointed ambassador or minister. Her conjecture would not have pleased the object of it, who prided himself on looking every inch a soldier. He was in fact a very eminent professor of history, on his way to Tunis, where he hoped to establish new facts about the battle of Thapsus that would blast the reputation of another eminent historian, whom he had been after for years.
Miss Yates was not much nearer the mark in placing the well-groomed young man of magnificent physique who came next under her eye. She thought the slight crookedness of his nose rather added to his attractiveness; too regular features often went, she had found, with an undesirable vanity in men. Some people might think his chest and shoulders over-developed, but that was often the case with rowing men, who were usually very nice boys; and Miss Yates thought of this youth as a Cambridge undergraduate going to join his parents abroad. His clothes were certainly quite right. At dinner he displayed a very healthy appetite, and drank only a little mineral water, while he happily studied a letter which Miss Yates surmised to be from a girl. She wondered what the young man could have been doing to his left ear.
The state of that organ, alas! was none of the young man’s doing. Miss Yates was looking at the beginnings of what is known as a cauliflower ear, the work of Baker Isaacs of Hoxton; and the youth himself was Gunner Brand, formerly heavy-weight champion of the army, holder of the Abingdon Belt, winner of a series of lucrative professional battles, and looking forward to a contest for the world title in three months’ time. He was on the way to join his trainer at their camp in Cap d’Antibes, and was now reading and re-reading a long letter from his fiancée, whose equal the world did not, in his opinion, contain.
Miss Yates was less at fault in her judgment of the neighbouring couple. Her quick glance took in a multitude of details of expression and turnout. The very pretty girl she set down unhesitatingly, and quite correctly, as a vain, selfish and bad-hearted fool. Her manner to the waiters as the train dinner was served appealed to Miss Yates as the very acme of the sort of hauteur represented in American films of English high-life. The young man, evidently her lately married husband, was a weak but not unamiable fool. Their whole appearance bespoke considerable wealth; and Miss Yates reflected, not for the first time, on the dangerous extent to which complete worthlessness is represented among the rich.
She understood best of all, perhaps, the kind of man who had so narrowly escaped missing the train. She liked his face, with its clean-cut lines and cloven chin. About thirty, she said to herself; an earnest type; a trained mind and a worker; perhaps a doctor; normally well controlled, but now showing signs of illness and all but ungovernable agitation. There was something reckless and haunted about his appearance. The term ‘Byronic’ occurred to Miss Yates’s unmodern mind. Was he, perhaps, suffering from a broken heart? Miss Judith believed in broken hearts, though she had learned that they can be broken in more ways than one. Certainly this man was desperately worried about something. He ate but little at dinner, and he drank a whole bottle of champagne without any visible improvement of his spirits. His hand shook as he raised his glass. Miss Yates wondered if he were flying from justice; but she could not think him an evil-doer.
As soon as he had finished his wine, he called on the waiter to clear the table at which he was sitting alone. The table clear, he planted on it his kit-bag and opened it. Miss Yates observed that on the top of its contents lay a number of paper packages, each secured with an elastic band; and of these the man proceeded to make one compact parcel, wrapped in a sheet of newspaper and tied with string. Replacing this in the bag, he next took from it a handful of sheets of paper, which he laid on the table before him.
Snapping the bag as if he was shutting up in it a guilty secret, he turned to writing busily in pencil. From where she sat Miss Judith could follow the ebb and flow of his inspiration. He would cover some sheets with a big scrawling hand, then suddenly shake his head critically, and seem to begin all over again.
‘Can he be an author?’ Miss Yates asked herself. ‘But surely no one could compose at that rate. And he doesn’t look like a literary man. A journalist, perhaps—but would a journalist be in such a dither over his work? He may be preparing a speech—but then he looks like the kind of man who would always know what he wanted to say, and would say it in plain words.’
As Miss Yates toyed with these speculations, the man wrote on. At length, rejecting yet another draft, he paused and considered; then scribbled what appeared to be a much briefer document. As he threw down his pencil, his glance met that of Miss Yates: and the blue eyes seemed to look right through her, focussed on something far beyond. So, at least, she hoped; for she saw him shudder violently before she turned her gaze away, with a sense as if she were spying on something that she had no right to see.
Vaguely she looked round the carriage, and remarked that the passengers were preparing for the arrival at Newhaven. Some with a half-furtive air were stowing cigarettes or tobacco from their bags in their pockets, with a view to the eluding of the French Customs. Others even more shamefaced were gulping down tablets and cachets of the drugs guaranteed to defy the demon of seasickness.
Miss Yates began to follow their example and prepare for transit to the boat. She had no fear of seasickness and no tobacco to conceal, but she got ready her tickets and passport. Her eyes wandered back to the agitated traveller. He had folded his final copy and placed it in a long envelope. The rest of his writing he folded into a wad, which he thrust beneath the fastenings of the newspaper-covered packet that Miss Yates had already observed.
As the train drew up at the platform he was the first to leave the Pullman; and Miss Yates noticed that as he started from his chair a piece of thin paper was wafted from it, unseen by him, to the floor of the carriage. It was unmistakably a leaf torn from an engagement-block, being headed by a printed date in thick capitals, with pencilled jottings below. So much Miss Yates could not but notice as she bent to pick it up; but the man was already heading a stream of travellers passing out, and she saw nothing of him as she stepped to the platform.
‘But certainly,’ she thought, ‘he will be crossing to Dieppe, and I shall see him on the boat.’
There, indeed, he was, already striding rapidly up and down the upper deck on the starboard side. Miss Yates attended first to the stowing of her own hand luggage. The turmoil of cargo-shifting and the casting-off of moorings ended at length; the steamer began to plough its steady way towards France. It was then that Miss Yates approached the man who had so much engaged her sympathy.
‘When you left the train, sir,’ she said without any nervous preliminary, ‘you left this little sheet of paper which had fallen from your seat to the floor. I thought it might be something of importance, so I had better return it to you.’
The man gazed at her a little wildly; then at the leaf which she was holding out to him. His eyes narrowed as he examined it in the half-light of the deck lamps; then he looked away, his face contorted as if with fear or keen anxiety.
Suddenly he turned to Miss Yates squarely. ‘You have made a mistake, ma’am,’ he said, in a shaking voice. ‘Very kind indeed of you to take the trouble, but that paper is not mine. I never saw it before. Many thanks all the same.’ He jerked a bow at her and immediately resumed his uneasy pacing of the deck.
Miss Yates was naturally taken aback. Why the man should so reject her good offices she was unable to conceive. The paper had unquestionably fallen from his chair. More than that—she had seen him, with a perplexed and frowning brow, intently studying that very paper more than once during the progress of his writing. Indignation might have overcome her; but Miss Yates was one of those who will always find excuses for anyone seeming so distressed and overwrought as did this fellow-passenger. She felt the agreeable thrill of a mystery as she carefully tucked the disowned scrap of writing in a pocket of her handbag.
The voyagers, for the most part, settled themselves for the crossing in the saloons and cabins, for the night was wet and cold. Miss Yates, in a glow of freedom and adventure, was resolved to lose none of the sensations proper to travel; she preferred to seclude herself with a rug in the shelter of one of the boats. That end of the deck might well have appeared deserted to the man who had so aroused her interest, when next she saw him. Emerging from one of the deck-houses, he resumed his pacing to and fro; and she noted that he now carried the shapeless package under his arm. Soon he paused beside the rail; and he quitted it with a nervous start when one of the crew passed by on some errand.
A minute later, what Miss Yates was half-expecting happened. The mysterious traveller again approached the rail, and furtively dropped overboard whatever it was that he was carrying. That done, he disappeared below; and Miss Yates saw no more of him until the disembarkation at Dieppe. She noted that he was among the first to pass out of the Customs shed; but neither on the Paris train nor elsewhere did she again set eyes on the man who had so surprisingly disowned the little sheet of paper.
Not until half an hour later did Miss Yates, having savoured the pleasure of skimming the first French newspaper she had seen for many years, think again of the leaflet which she had tried to restore to its possessor. Turning from the lively polemics of the Homme Trompé, which she had found more than a little bewildering, she began to review the details of the puzzle which had so much intensified the happiness of her release from the daily round of life in Farnham. The scrap of paper, now! If its possessor chose to deny his right to it, it was surely for anybody’s reading.
Miss Yates drew the paper from her handbag and noted at once that it was headed by that same day’s date. But what she read next, in a firm and legible pencilling, gave her a surprise far more thrilling than she had yet known in the brief affair of the mysterious passenger to Dieppe.
Heads jerked round, and startled looks were turned upon the quiet little Englishwoman, as she exclaimed aloud: ‘Good gracious!’
CHAPTER III (#u52dfecca-2132-58a0-8321-f15f3225d767)
DEATH OF A PHILANTHROPIST (#u52dfecca-2132-58a0-8321-f15f3225d767)
TO Chief Inspector Gideon Bligh’s experienced eye the scene explained itself—up to a point. That able officer stood in the centre of the late James Randolph’s bedroom on the upper floor of No. 5, Newbury Place, known to a simpler age as Newbury Mews. This was a small enclosure, approached by archways from the streets at either end of it, in one of the purlieus of Park Lane; No. 5 being the nearest to Bullingdon Street of the neat row of stables and coach-houses, converted now to the uses of well-to-do human habitation.
Mr Bligh stroked with one great hand his prematurely bald cranium while he considered the position. His appearance always commanded respect. He was tall and loosely built. His clean-shaven face, with its massive, vigorous features, wore habitually a stern expression. His skin, slightly tanned, was otherwise colourless.
In the doorway stood a police-sergeant, closely attentive to the proceedings of the man from headquarters. He had already put his superior in possession of the facts learned since the police had been called to the place by telephone, just after midnight; he had mentioned the points of interest so far disclosed in examination of the bedroom, and what he regarded as ‘a queer piece of evidence’ in the sitting-room below it. The time now was half past eight in the morning.
The body had been left by the police-surgeon as he had found it, lying prone before the dressing-table. The old man had been shot from behind and killed instantly, the bullet entering below the left shoulder-blade. He had been at the time—whether it mattered or not—in a peculiarly defenceless posture; for, being fully dressed in day clothes, he had been in the act of taking off his coat. The left sleeve was half-way down the arm, and the right had just slipped from the shoulder, so that the arms were for the moment pinioned. Clearly he had not believed himself to be in danger of any sort of attack. He had placed the contents of his pockets on the table before the looking-glass. Assuming him to have been still facing the table at the moment of his death, the murderer would have been standing at or near the doorway of the room—possibly outside the open door.
The room, kept in a state of speckless neatness, was somewhat scantily furnished; but Inspector Bligh knew enough of such matters to perceive that the few movables were articles of value—probably, seeing what had been the dead man’s reputation as a connoisseur, of great value.
Randolph, it was evident, had been about to dress for dinner. His evening clothes were neatly set out on two chairs. What he had carried in his pockets lay in a small disorderly heap before the looking-glass—a case containing notes to the value of seven pounds; a handful of coins; a watch with its slender chain of gold and platinum links; an eye-glass case; a leather key-case; a few letters, being ordinary business communications; a pencil; and, incongruous among these other articles, a champagne cork.
The inspector examined this last with some interest. Certainly it was an odd thing for Randolph to have been carrying, as appearances suggested, on his person. Had it been used, perhaps, to sheathe the end of some sharp-pointed object? The officer satisfied himself that this was not so. The cork was flawless and compact, to all appearances in just that condition in which it had left the bottle; it was branded ‘Felix Poubelle 1884.’ The inspector rubbed his chin as he considered these facts; but he found himself unable to attach to them any significance at all.
Close to this pile of personal oddments lay the separated parts of a safety razor, lacking a blade. The other materials for shaving, as Mr Bligh soon ascertained, lay among the articles on a shelf in the bathroom adjoining. They had not been recently used. On the same shelf lay the little case belonging to the razor, and within it were two new blades in their unbroken envelopes. Curious, then, was the presence of the razor alone, unscrewed and bladeless, on the dressing-table.
The inspector turned now to a small chest of drawers against the wall hard by the door opening from the passage. On the embroidered blue linen ‘runner’ covering its top stood a water-bottle, half-empty, and a tumbler from which, it appeared, water had been drunk. A glance showed that the inevitable fingerprints had been left on both of these—probably Randolph’s own prints, the inspector reflected sadly. Still, you couldn’t be sure. Murderers were not—so ran Mr Bligh’s train of thought—like criminals as a rule. All the regular crooks knew about fingerprints; and none of them were deliberate killers. Murderers were apt to be quite respectable; at least to know nothing of the ways of criminals or of the police either. But again, you couldn’t be sure.
Leaving this point for later investigation, he turned next to the fireplace. Randolph, the police had learned, had always a good coal fire burning in this during the cold weather. Yesterday’s fire had long burnt itself out, and the inspector raked through the ashes with the small poker that lay to hand. Nothing, however, rewarded his search.
His eye travelled now over the floor of the room, and came to rest where, beneath the window, there lay a quantity of crumpled brown paper and tangled string, marring the extreme tidiness of the surroundings. A moment’s examination showed that several packets, fastened with sealed cord, had been opened, their contents removed, and the covers flung down carelessly. From the appearance of these relics Mr Bligh judged them to have been slim parcels containing letters or documents of some kind, each parcel conspicously marked with a number in soft black pencil. The string in each case, the seals being unbroken, had been cut with an instrument of peculiar sharpness, as the perfectly clean division of the strands made plain.
The inspector’s eyes narrowed as his deft fingers smoothed these crumpled wrappings into their original shapes—shells emptied, now, of so much perhaps explosive matter. Had Randolph been shot for the sake of what was in these packets? Was that the murderer’s intended spoil? Letters, or papers? Not money or valuables, certainly; enough of those had been left on the dressing-table. And what kind of letters or papers were worth the taking of a man’s life? Apart from secret treaties and other materials of thrilling fiction, which Mr Bligh did not take very seriously, he knew of one kind which had, not seldom, been considered worth that price of guilt and peril.
But surely old James Randolph, that busy architect of good works, could have had no interest in blackmail. Scotland Yard knew of some little peculiarities of his—it knows so much about so many public characters, little as they dream of it. But there was nothing savouring of illegality. Besides, the man had been for years immensely wealthy, and the sources of his wealth were no secret. There could have been no temptation to one of the most sordid of crimes.
Setting aside this difficulty for the time, Mr Bligh poked about diligently among the brown paper and string; and on the carpet beneath them he soon discovered a safety-razor blade. His lips pursed themselves in a silent whistle. Here, no doubt, was the instrument chosen hastily for the opening of the packets—a blade taken from the razor where it had been placed in readiness for use. Bending down, the inspector noted that this was a blade of the make that went with the unscrewed razor on the dressing-table; a duplicate of the two in unopened envelopes in the razor-case.
If, thought Mr Bligh, the man who cut strings with this blade has left no fingerprints, it can only have been because he was careful not to do so. The inspector used his own pocket-knife to raise the little slip of steel from the carpet, and place it beside the water-bottle and tumbler already destined for expert examination.
His eyes now began to search the wall at this part of the room, and he discovered at once the small keyhole of a built-in safe—a safe of a primitive type, as Mr Bligh’s experience suggested.
It was as he noted this that heavy and hasty footsteps were heard on the stairs, and the excited red face of a young constable appeared over the shoulder of the sergeant in the doorway. The formula which Mr Bligh had employed so many hundreds of times in the earliest phase of his career rose again to his lips. ‘Now then,’ he said gruffly, ‘what’s all this?’
‘This is the man posted at the street door,’ the sergeant explained in the tone of one inured to the follies of inexperience. ‘What is it, Clarkson?’
‘I’ve just found this, sir, in the corner of the passage, just inside the entrance,’ the young man said. ‘I thought it might be important.’ He held out a green tie-on luggage-label, the string of which had somehow been snapped. ‘It’s a dark spot just there, and this label is much the same shade as the carpet. The door opens into a narrow passage, as you know, sir, and it would be awkward going out in a hurry with a bag of any size. This label may have caught against something, and come off without it being noticed, if the man was a bit flurried—so I thought, sir.’
The inspector, who had listened to this with wooden impassivity, now took the label in his hand. It was inscribed, in a shaky but sufficiently legible script, ‘Bryan Fairman, passenger to Dieppe.’
‘Dieppe, eh?’ Mr Bligh said thoughtfully. ‘I wonder.’ He spoke sharply to the attentive sergeant. ‘Get me the Yard on the phone at once.’ The apparatus stood on one of the two small tables flanking the bed; and the sergeant jumped to it.
‘Very good, Clarkson,’ the inspector said. ‘This may very possibly have a bearing on the case. I am acting on it now. You can go back to your post.’ He took the telephone instrument in hand.
In a few moments he was in touch with a colleague at headquarters, and giving swift instructions that inquiry should be made whether a passenger giving the name of Bryan Fairman had travelled by the night-boat reaching Dieppe that morning. The French police, he said, should be asked to co-operate to the extent of keeping this man, if identified, under observation, supposing that he had remained in Dieppe. If not, it would be of great assistance if his movements could be traced, as a serious charge might be brought against him.
Mr Bligh rang off.
CHAPTER IV (#ulink_e5ce6cf1-62d5-59a6-b121-e735c9207255)
NOT HARD OF HEARING (#ulink_e5ce6cf1-62d5-59a6-b121-e735c9207255)
‘AND now,’ Inspector Bligh said to his subordinate, ‘for a look at the sitting-room, and that queer piece of evidence, as you call it.’
He led the way downstairs to the room beneath the bedroom. It was an apartment of less bare appearance than the other, an effect of more luxurious comfort being produced at once by the deep-piled, patternless grey carpet which covered the whole extent of the floor from wall to wall. Two low-backed, thick-cushioned armchairs flanked an old-fashioned fireplace. One of these, the one having its back towards the window, had between it and the wall a table just large enough to hold a grey-enamelled telephone instrument, a London telephone directory, and an orderly pile of journals and printed documents. There were an oval centre table and, before the window, a small writing-table; both, as the inspector correctly guessed, ‘pieces’ of great price. At right angles to this last an inviting double-ended sofa stood backed against the wall; beside it, rising a modest two feet from the floor, was a narrow bookcase. In the bedroom there had not been a book to be seen. The bookcase here appeared to be occupied entirely by works of reference, from the austerity of Bradshaw, Baedeker and Whitaker to the more engaging appeal of a tall row of art-sales annuals.
Mr Bligh spent little time in examining the room and its contents as a whole. All appeared to be in precisely the state of undisturbed neatness that a man of rigidly orderly habits would require in his own establishment. It was the writing-table to which a gesture from the police-sergeant directed his special attention. Upon it was trimly laid out the usual array of writing materials, with a small open-fronted cabinet of Chinese lacquer, on the shelves of which were arranged in various sizes, note-paper, sheets of blank paper, cards and envelopes.
Upon the flat top of the cabinet stood an upright engagement-block. It had a separate leaf, with a sentence of Scripture at the foot, allotted to each day, and the leaves were set loosely so as to be turned over on metal rings as each day passed. On the leaf which now met the eye, two afternoon appointments at City addresses were noted, followed by the words, ‘5:30. T. Searle to call,’ presumably referring to some visitor expected by Randolph at his own house. The leaf so exposed was that for the day which had just begun; not, as would have been natural, the leaf for the previous day, the day of the crime. That leaf was missing, and vestiges of paper showed that it had been torn roughly from the file. Handling the block delicately, the inspector satisfied himself that this was the only leaf that had been so removed.
The block, he knew, had not been touched during the first police examination of the premises some hours before, when the signs of a leaf having been torn away had been noted. He considered the fact with bent brows. Someone, before or after the murder, had been tampering with this record of Randolph’s arrangements, and tampering to some purpose. The fingers of Mr Bligh’s left hand drummed lightly on his hairless skull—an indication with him of restrained excitement.
‘You were right,’ he observed to the gratified sergeant. ‘This is important. I don’t know, though, that I should call it queer when a murderer destroys the only direct evidence of his having been on the spot. And now I want to see this man Raught. Send him to me in here.’
Randolph’s manservant, who had been told to stay in his bedroom adjoining the sitting-room, soon presented himself—a lean, small, dark-visaged individual with a furtive eye. A shifty-looking character at the best of times, thought the inspector; and now looking sick and frightened. Mr Bligh stared hard at him for a few moments; then said with a quietness that seemed only to add to the man’s discomfort: ‘So your name is Simon Raught.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You were the late Mr Randolph’s personal servant, and you always slept on the premises when he was staying here. That right?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Any other servants?’
‘Not here, sir. Mr Randolph kept his establishment at his place in Yorkshire, where he lived most of the time. Besides me, there’s only a woman, Mrs Barley, to look after this place. She has a door-key and her job is to keep the place tidy, all the year round. Mr Randolph liked to have it kept so that he could come to London any time without notice, and find it ready for occupation. So long as he did find it ready—which I must say he always did—Mrs Barley could arrange her time to suit herself. When we were here, I used always to get the breakfast and do the bedrooms myself.’
Mr Bligh, still bending on Raught a gaze which he continued to avoid meeting, said gently: ‘It isn’t exactly your place as valet, is it, to do that sort of thing?’
‘I didn’t consider that, sir—not in dealing with Mr Randolph,’ Raught said. He swallowed nervously, and went on: ‘I didn’t mind what I did for him, owing everything to him, as you might say.’
The inspector grunted sceptically. ‘What about this Mrs Barley?’ he asked. ‘Oughtn’t she to be here this morning?’
‘I don’t know when she’ll be coming in, sir,’ Raught declared. ‘She had been here when we got down from Yorkshire day before yesterday, and she was here yesterday morning for an hour. But as soon as she hears of what’s happened, she’ll be along quick enough, you may be sure of that.’
‘What do you know about her?’
‘She’s a perfectly respectable woman, sir, I need ’ardly say. Before her husband died—a carpenter, I believe he was—they rented one of Mr Randolph’s cottages in Humberstone. I have ’eard that Barley got into bad company, sir, and got himself into some sort of trouble, which Mr Randolph ’elped him out of; but there was never anything against Mrs Barley. Since he died, she’s been living with her sister, who keeps a boarding-house used by foreigners mostly, I’ve been told—in Bayswater it is, Oldbury Terrace, I forget the number.’
The inspector took down these particulars in his notebook; then referred to an earlier entry.
‘When you were first questioned this morning, you mentioned a secretary.’
‘Mr Verney; yes, sir. He’s the gentleman that had the management of all Mr Randolph’s charities and that—his good works, as you may say. When Mr Randolph was staying here—’
‘When did he stay here? How much time did he spend here?’
‘There was nothing regular about it, sir. Every few weeks—I couldn’t put it any nearer than that; sometimes it was more frequent—we would come down for two or three days. Or we might go back to Brinton the next day. This time we came the day before yesterday, the Tuesday.’
‘Well, now about Mr Verney.’
‘He was often up at Brinton, sir, the place in Yorkshire; but he didn’t live there. He had rooms here in London, in Purvis Crescent, No. 36—off Willesley Road; I believe he spends a lot of time running the Randolph Institute, sir, in Kilburn—a sort of club, that is, for young men and boys. Whenever we were here, Mr Verney would come in, having his own door-key, to talk business. I should have expected to see him here before this, sir.’
Mr Bligh took another note; then once more he fixed the man before him with an intimidating eye.
‘And where do you say you were last night, when your employer was murdered?’
Raught repeated the account of his movements of which the inspector had already learned the substance. It had been the valet’s half day off, as it always was on Wednesdays. He had not gone out until a little before 6:30, when he had done so after laying out Mr Randolph’s clothes for a dinner which he was to have attended. Raught, on leaving, had gone straight to the Three Tuns in Rowington Street, where he had spent some time, and had afterwards visited the Running Stag in Gooch Street. He had often ‘used’ both places while in London, and was well known. Miss Whicker at the Tuns and Archie at the Stag could bear out his statement. Raught had then joined his sister, Mrs Livings, and her husband at the Pilatus restaurant in Warsaw Street at 7:30. After dinner they had gone on to Battersea, where his relations lived, and had visited the Parthenon Cinema, where a film called ‘The Two-Gun Terror’ was being shown. After that he had had a drink at his brother-in-law’s place, and come back to Newbury Place just before twelve o’clock. He was not expected to be back, he explained, before midnight, Mr Randolph being ‘very human’ in that respect.
‘And then?’ Mr Bligh inquired in his uncomfortably colourless tone.
Raught had gone upstairs to see if his master had returned. He had found the bedroom door wide open, the lights on, and his master lying dead on the floor before the dressing-table; it had given him ‘such a turn, sir, as I never had in my life.’ He had ‘felt’ at once that Mr Randolph was dead. There couldn’t be any mistake about it, the valet said, looking at him as he lay ‘all of a heap.’ He had, therefore, rung up the police immediately, being careful to leave everything just as it was. He had seen, when he came in, no signs of any stranger having been about the place. In reply to a question, Raught declared that he had not touched the body, or even examined it closely, his nerves being ‘all to pieces.’ Then how had he known that it was murder, and a case for calling in the police? Raught had not known; he had only ‘supposed it must be that.’
Inspector Bligh now resumed his silent study of Raught’s unprepossessing face. The valet, his eyes wandering in all directions, pulled out a handkerchief and squeezed it between his palms. Suddenly the question was shot at him:
‘Weren’t you in trouble a few years ago?’
‘Well, sir,’ Raught said with that shade of candour peculiar to those found out, ‘there was a small matter of false pretences—’
‘Blackmail, don’t you mean?’ the inspector asked grimly. ‘I thought I remembered your face—it’s a kind I see a lot of.’
Raught licked his lips and took on an injured expression. ‘Truly, sir, it wasn’t blackmail. What would be the use of my telling you a lie? I was in a bit of a ’ole, sir—through betting, it was. I was in Mr Randolph’s service at that time, and with your memory, sir, you may recollect he gave evidence of my good character while I was with him—no man could have acted kinder. I got six months, and when I came out he took me into his service again. Not many gentlemen would have done as much—saving me from drifting from bad to worse, as you may say. I would have given my life for him, sir.’
Raught’s cry from the heart did not impress the inspector, to whose accustomed ear it had not a genuine ring. Nor did he think much of the man’s alibi. The police surgeon had thought it probable that Randolph’s death had taken place not earlier than seven o’clock and not later than ten. Unless both Miss Whicker and Archie should prove able to time their customer’s coming and going with some accuracy, there was room enough in Raught’s tale for him to move about in, before keeping his verifiable appointment in Warsaw Street.
Setting that matter aside for the time being, the inspector opened another line.
‘Do you know anything about any person having an appointment to see your master yesterday evening, or any person who might have been coming here that evening for any reason?’
‘Well, sir, the only appointment Mr Randolph had made—to my knowledge, that is—was at six o’clock, with Mr Trent, the artist, who had been at Brinton painting his portrait some time ago.’
The inspector smiled faintly. ‘Ha! So Mr Trent, the artist, had an appointment at six. Why? Wasn’t Mr Randolph satisfied with the portrait done by Mr Trent, the artist?’
‘Oh! It wasn’t that at all, sir—quite the contrary. Everyone thought highly of the portrait, and I believe Mr Randolph’s intention in asking Mr Trent to call was to arrange about having another portrait done, or I should say a copy, like, of the first one. It was to be hung in the hall of the Institute, sir, the place I mentioned just now. Mr Verney was very keen about it, and though Mr Randolph was not so at first, he came to approve of the idea, sir.’
‘Hm! Very natural he should.’ Mr Bligh gazed thoughtfully out of the window. ‘It was to be a copy, yes? For the Institute—I see. You’re sure it was for the Institute?’
‘Oh yes, sir. Mr Verney was very anxious they should have it. They were speaking of it when Mr Verney was at Brinton last week, sir, and Mr Randolph said he would write a note to Mr Trent at once.’
The inspector suddenly turned his eye on Raught once more. ‘Not hard of hearing, are you?’ he observed agreeably; and as the colour flooded the man’s pale face he added: ‘You’re sure you haven’t forgotten any other little details of this private conversation between your master and his secretary? No? All right. Then Mr Trent called at six?’
‘It was just six, sir, when I opened the door to him,’ Raught said subduedly. ‘It was accidental, sir, as you may say, me being here when he called, because on Wednesdays my time is supposed to be my own after three o’clock. But you know, sir, what the weather was like all yesterday, and I hadn’t anything to do with myself before meeting my sister and her husband at seven thirty, and so I had a bit of a sleep in the afternoon, and then there was my best suit wouldn’t be none the worse for a pressing, and what with one thing—’
‘Never mind all that,’ Mr Bligh snapped. ‘You were still here at six—is that it?’
‘Yes, sir. And when I went to answer the bell, Mr Randolph was just coming out of the sitting-room to answer it himself; and he says: “Oh! You’re here still,” he says. “Well, if that’s Mr Trent at the door,” he says, “show him in here,” he says. So I showed Mr Trent in.’
‘And then what did they talk about?’
‘I could not say, sir.’
‘You didn’t listen, I suppose,’ Mr Bligh remarked dispassionately, ‘because you knew all about it beforehand. Well; what next?’
‘After about a quarter of an hour I heard the sitting-room door open, and Mr Randolph calls to me to show Mr Trent out again, which I did. And that’s all I know, sir, about anyone calling on Mr Randolph yesterday, because I went out for the evening myself a little later, and never come back again till near twelve, like I told you.’
Mr Bligh considered for a few moments, still fixing the unhappy Raught with a baleful eye.
‘You say you were out of here,’ he summed up at last, ‘by not later than 6:30. And your master had a dinner appointment in the City. You have told the sergeant here that the dinner was for eight o’clock, and that Mr Randolph would usually send for a taxi when keeping appointments of that kind. Is that right?’
‘Quite right, sir. He never had his own car in London.’
‘Hm! Time enough,’ the inspector muttered; then: ‘What do you know about a person called Bryan Fairman?’
Raught appeared sincerely surprised at the question. ‘I suppose that would be Dr Fairman, sir?’
‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ Mr Bligh grunted. ‘Who is he?’
‘I believe, sir, he is one of the doctors at the mental ’ospital at Claypoole, which is named after Mr Randolph, and kept up as you probably know, sir, entirely at his expense.’ (Mr Bligh nodded.) ‘I have seen Dr Fairman once, when he was dining at Brinton one evening. I think he had been asked over, sir, to speak about the work he was doing at the mental ’ospital.’
‘You think!’ Mr Bligh remarked with devastating emphasis. ‘You heard what he and Mr Randolph were talking about—that’s what you mean. Well, you’ve seen Dr Fairman. What kind of a man is he to look at? Tall or short? Dark or fair? Give me a description.’
Raught, in evident relief at the thought of some other person having attracted the notice of the police, took a moment for consideration. ‘I saw him only the once, sir, and that would be about three months ago, as near as I can fix it. But I remember him as a gentleman of what you might call medium size, rather thin, with black hair and a little moustache, a bit pale in the face.’
‘About what age? Does he wear glasses?’
‘I should say somewhere in the thirties, sir. I didn’t see him wearing glasses; he seemed to me like a keen-sighted man, his eye being sort of piercing, as they say, when he looked at you. I can’t think of anything else special about him, except his acting a bit nervous-like—jerky in his movements, if you know what I mean, sir.’
‘What about his expression? Pleasant?’
‘’Ardly that, sir. I should call it severe—not unpleasant I don’t mean, not that at all, but as if he wouldn’t laugh very easy. If I may say so,’ Raught added with an air of cringing slyness, ‘Dr Fairman’s expression is a little bit like your own, sir.’
‘Not unpleasant, eh?’ Mr Bligh said. ‘Well, you ought to know. Now then; apart from his appearance, what else do you know about Dr Fairman?’
‘Nothing, sir, only what I’ve heard mentioned in talk sometimes between Mr Randolph and other parties when—’
‘When your ear happened to be in the neighbourhood of the keyhole,’ Mr Bligh suggested pleasantly.
‘No, sir,’ the valet said, as one making patient allowance for the working of a suspicious temperament. ‘In my position, sir, people’s conversation often comes to my ears without me having to listen for it, even in a big ’ouse like Brinton. And as for a small place like this, you can see for yourself, sir, I’d be bound to hear a good deal of what was being talked about unless it was meant to be private—what with doors left open, or me going in and out about my work. And if I know anything about Mr Randolph,’ Raught added with the first touch of genuine feeling that the inspector had noted in him, ‘anything he wanted to be kept private would be kept private.’
‘And no blooming error,’ Mr Bligh prompted him with the ghost of a smile.
‘You take the words out of my mouth, sir,’ Raught said. ‘But I only mean that the old man—Mr Randolph, I should say—was no fool, if he was kind-hearted to a fault, as the saying is. I do know this, sir—if he wanted to see anybody here without the chance of being overheard, it was his habit to make an appointment for the Wednesday evening, which has always been my time off, and open the door to them himself.’
‘No fool, as you say,’ the inspector observed drily.
Raught ignored this offensive interjection. ‘As for what was said about Dr Fairman, his name has come up in conversation more than once between Mr Randolph and Mr Verney. Mr Verney seemed to think a lot of some special job Dr Fairman was doing at the mental ’ospital; what it was I can’t say. I thought Mr Randolph didn’t seem to think quite so much of it—spoke of it a bit short-like. Once, I remember, he said that the worst of these loony-doctors—’
‘Did he say “loony-doctors”?’ Mr Bligh cut in.
The valet hesitated. ‘He did not, sir; but he used some expression which the meaning of it was obviously that. And he said that the worst of them was that when they often got a bee in their bonnets themselves—that he did say, I’ll swear to it.’
The inspector smiled another wintry smile. ‘I said you were not hard of hearing,’ he commented. ‘Did anything more about this Dr Fairman come to your ears?’
‘Nothing that I can recall, sir.’
Mr Bligh sighed gently. At this hour the much-wanted Fairman, if he had caught the night-boat, as appearances suggested, might still be at his destination in Dieppe. On the other hand, his true destination was more than likely to be elsewhere, and he might be receding each moment farther beyond the reach of the English law’s long arm. The inspector strode to the sitting-room telephone, and soon was in touch with the same official to whom he had spoken before. He repeated briefly, for transmission to Dieppe, Raught’s description of the suspect, and asked that inquiries about him should be made immediately at the Randolph Mental Hospital at Claypoole, where he was one of the medical staff.
‘Now then,’ he resumed, turning to the valet who stood uneasily awaiting his attention, ‘before you went out, you left your master’s evening clothes ready for him?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Did you put out his razor?’
‘No, sir. I never knew him need to shave in the evening. I had left the razor on the shelf in the bathroom, with the other shaving things.’
‘Was there a blade in the razor?’
‘I had put in a new blade ready for next morning, sir. Mr Randolph liked to have a new one every day.’
‘And when you found his body, did you see the razor lying on the dressing-table?’
‘No, sir. I was too much upset to notice anything of that sort.’
‘You didn’t even see that there was a lot of brown paper and string on the floor?’
Raught dropped his eyes. ‘Now you mention it, sir, I did notice that—an untidy mess lying under the window, as if someone had been opening parcels. It slipped my memory sir—truly it did. And I never touched it.’
The inspector grunted. He had the impression that the valet was meeting all these inquiries with as much frankness as was in his nature. ‘Do you know,’ he asked, ‘if your master kept any valuables in his bedroom?’
The man hesitated. ‘None, sir, to my knowledge, except studs and links and that. But I—I fancy he had a safe set in the wall by the window.’
Mr Bligh’s face hardened. ‘Yah!’ he said ungracefully. ‘You fancy! Don’t you know?’
‘Well, sir,’ Raught said unhappily, ‘I have seen a keyhole.’
‘Of course you have,’ the inspector said brutally. ‘And the edges of the door too. The question is whether you know what was behind it.’
‘That I don’t indeed, sir,’ the valet protested. ‘And it was never opened in my presence.’
Mr Bligh still surveyed him with a disparaging eye. ‘Now, Raught,’ he said, ‘what can you tell me about this?’ He indicated the engagement-block standing on the Chinese cabinet. ‘Is that the usual place for it?’
The valet appeared genuinely startled. ‘It certainly is not, sir,’ he declared with emphasis. ‘That thing—I never remember seeing it there before. I have seen it often enough, and anyone could tell what it was for, sir, of course. Mr Randolph would often jot down an appointment on it when I was about. But he wasn’t ever communicative-like about his engagements—not that they were any business of mine. And this block, sir, was always treated like something specially private-like. He would always lock it away in a drawer of the writing-table—never once have I seen it left standing about like this. Most peculiar it is, to anyone knowing Mr Randolph’s ways.’ He shook his head portentously.
‘Well, that’s that,’ the inspector remarked after a moment’s rubbing of his chin. ‘Now come upstairs,’ he directed curtly. Raught’s leaden complexion became visibly less healthy as he was shepherded into the room where the body still lay.
‘Now, here’s another peculiar thing I want your opinion about.’ Mr Bligh pointed to the small heap of articles on the dressing-table. ‘Did Mr Randolph usually put the contents of his pockets here?’
‘Yes, sir. He always dressed here. There is no separate dressing-room.’
‘And have you ever seen anything of this sort among his personal effects?’ The inspector, watching the man’s face, indicated the champagne cork. ‘Can you think of any reason why he should have carried it about with him?’
Raught looked blankly at his questioner. ‘In the five years I have been with Mr Randolph, sir, I have never seen a cork among his things. It’s funny it should be that kind of a cork, too. He didn’t seem ever to care for sparkling wines. At home—at the place in Yorkshire, that is—he never touched them, though he kept champagne for his guests.’
‘Well,’ the inspector said sharply, ‘he might have had someone to lunch or dinner here, and given ’em champagne or something of the sort. You’d have known about that, I suppose.’
The valet shook his head decisively. ‘He never had lunch or dinner here, sir; let alone entertaining. When in London, he would have his meals mostly at the Lansdowne Club—that was where I had to ring him up in case of anything pressing. An egg and a bit of toast and a cup of tea in the morning—that is all the food I have ever known him take here. It wasn’t a ’ome, sir, not in any sense of the word. I had to cater for myself, that being allowed for in the wages—generous too. As for yesterday and the day before, he was out to lunch and dinner as usual. It’s true I wasn’t here at dinner-time being out for the evening; but I can answer for it there wasn’t enough in the place for what you might call a proper meal. And the only drink ever kept here was some brandy and bottles of seltzer, which Mr Randolph would sometimes have a drop of before going to bed. Besides,’ Raught went on after a brief pause, ‘he certainly intended dining out last night, sir—the Tabarders’ Company dinner it was to be—and he never missed anything to do with the Tabarders’.’
Mr Bligh looked interested. ‘Didn’t he?’ he said. ‘And why was that?’
‘Why, you see, sir,’ Raught explained, ‘Mr Randolph was a very large contributor to the Company’s charities—very munificent indeed, sir, I have heard; and he naturally liked the position it used to give him at their public occasions.’
Mr Bligh nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Anybody would. And so,’ he added quickly, ‘you knew all about it being the Tabarders’ dinner-night, though you never saw what was written on the block, and Mr Randolph was never, I think you said, communicative-like about his engagements. Not only that; you knew all about how he felt on the subject of the Tabarders’ dinner. You seem to know a lot more than you pretend, Raught.’
The valet’s tottering self-control gave way at this. He wrung his hand together, and it was with a sobbing voice that he broke out in a suddenly degenerated speech: ‘That’s it! That’s the way! Leading of a man on till you get ’im in a corner, and set ’im up against himself. I ain’t told you nothing but what’s gospel, and you come making me out a liar. Why shouldn’t I know it was the Tabarders’ dinner-night? I got ears, ain’t I? Even if he didn’t say nothing to me, I ’eard him talking about it to Mr Verney ’alf a dozen times, if you want to know; and as for ’im likin’ to be made a fuss of, and to be told ’e was a-runnin’ over with the milk of ’uman kindness—ain’t we got a reg’lar staff of servants down at Brinton, and don’t they talk over the guvnor and his little ways? Not ’alf!’ Raught exclaimed with lachrymose fervour. ‘Crool, that’s what it is, a-badgerin’ a man what ain’t done nothing but his dooty about this ’ere business—sendin’ for the pleece as I did, and a-dealin’ with ’em honest and truthful. A chap what’s once gone wrong ain’t ever give a chance.’ Here the valet’s emotion overcame him, and he mopped his eyes in wordless misery.
‘There, that’s enough of that,’ Mr Bligh said heartlessly. ‘You’ve told me a lot more, my lad, than I’d have got out of you if I’d been soft with you. Now about this safe.’ He took up the key-case, and held out its contents in silence.
‘This ’ere’s the key of the street door downstairs,’ whimpered Raught. ‘I know that because I’ve got one that’s the same. I don’t know nothing about any of the others, I wish I may—’
‘That’ll do,’ the inspector snapped. He picked out without hesitation the key to fit the lock in the wall, and soon the interior of a small and shallow safe was exposed—completely empty. His eyes travelled to the small pile of wrappings still lying almost beneath the safe, and again his fingers caressed his hairless scalp.
CHAPTER V (#ulink_f239f4ba-dcba-5482-96c5-10baeb4d48a4)
TRENT IS TAKEN ABACK (#ulink_f239f4ba-dcba-5482-96c5-10baeb4d48a4)
TRENT stood at the sitting-room window of his small house in St John’s Wood, gazing at the sky and meditating on the enviable life lived by such men as old Blinky Fisher, in such lovely and well-tended retreats as the Cathedral Close at Glasminster. It was the evening of the day after his leave-taking of Aunt Judith at Victoria. He had driven down to Glasminster with his friend Patmore that morning, had surveyed the spectacle of Julian Pickett—looking rather more unnerved than a big-game hunter should—being married to a young woman who did not seem at all formidable; had foregathered with a number of old friends at the house of Canon Fisher, and had returned as he had gone.
The effect on his spirit had been, as he had known it would be, to discontent him with any way of life but that of the ‘mild, monastic faces, in quiet collegiate cloisters.’ Being not particularly pious, far from learned, and delighting in the society of his fellow men, Trent never came in contact with the life of piety, erudition and seclusion without yearning to be a part of it. It was, as he put it to himself in a familiar phrase of godliness and scholarship, too damned silly for words.
‘What a wonderful sunset, Mrs McOmish!’ Trent said.
His housekeeper, who was laying the table for his solitary dinner, glanced briefly at the flaming sky. ‘I’ve seen waur,’ she said. She was a person whose words, thought usually of the driest, were as usually highly charged with unspoken significance. In this case, Mrs McOmish contrived to convey the strongly held opinion that nothing was to be gained by encouraging either this sunset, or sunsets as a class.
Trent shook his head. ‘Sophisticated!’ he said sadly. ‘To you, Mrs McOmish, all nature is old, outmoded stuff, I suppose. The sublime, unapproachable self-sufficiency of art—that is your whole creed.’
‘No the whole,’ Mrs McOmish replied guardedly. ‘I dinna ken what a’ that means aboot airt, and it may be pairt of the confession of the United Presbyterian Kirk, but there’s a guid deal else forbye, I assure ye.’
‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ Trent said absently. ‘But a truce to theology, Mrs McOmish. We were talking animatedly about the sunset, and you were just going to recall to me those moving lines in which Sir Walter Scott describes a similar phenomenon in the neighbourhood of the Trossachs. But what says another poet, Mrs McOmish; the one who uttered nothing base, though occasionally something silly? It is, he observed, a beauteous evening, calm and free—’
‘Weel, we a’ ken there’s nae chairge for it,’ Mrs McOmish admitted.
‘The holy time is quiet as a nun, breathless with adoration—’
‘It’s a peety,’ Mrs McOmish commented with some severity, ‘he couldna appreciate the weather without being popish aboot it. There’s a gentleman turning in at the gate, Mr Trent. Is it a friend of yours? Is it like he’ll be staying to dinner?’
Trent looked at the tall, quietly dressed young man who was approaching the house. ‘I know who it is,’ he said, ‘though he is a good deal changed in his looks. He doesn’t give me the idea that dinner would agree with him just now—had some kind of a shock, I should think. Now,’—Trent went nearer to the window—‘what on earth can it be that he’s picking up from the path?’
Mrs McOmish, an elbow clasped in either hand, also came to overlook the proceedings of the visitor. ‘It might be a wee piece of coal,’ she opined, with more display of interest than she usually permitted herself. ‘We had the new coal in three days syne. It’s terrible good luck to pick up a wee piece of coal—or what is better still, an auld rusty nail. Only the nail maun be crookit, ye ken. Oh ay, it’s a nail; he’s putting it in his inside pouch. Twenty years, and mair, I’ve keepit a rusty nail I found just by the Tammas Coats statue in Dunn Square—Oh preserve us! What a loup he gave, Mr Trent, seeing ye at the window!’
‘His nerves must be in a shocking state,’ Trent said. ‘There’s never been anything frightening about me, has there, Mrs McOmish? The beasts that roam over the plain my form with indifference see; let alone the private secretaries of Congregationalist millionaires. Well, if he wants to see me, will you show him into the studio? It isn’t so maddeningly tidy in there.’ And Trent walked to the door communicating with that scene of his labours.
‘I wouldna wonder!’ the housekeeper said grimly. ‘Ye’ve been in it a full half hoor since ye came back.’ She went out to admit the visitor.
‘Mr Verney to see you, sir,’ Mrs McOmish soon announced in what she would have described as an English voice.
Mr Verney, whose age might have been guessed at twenty-seven or thereabouts, was a person of somewhat damaged aspect, for he looked harassed and distraught to the last degree. But there was nothing weak in the essence of his appearance. His frame was spare and athletic, his carriage erect, and in his fresh-coloured eagle-featured face there was a pair of restless bright-blue eyes that did not give an impression of spiritual sloth.
It was he who spoke the first words as his hand met Trent’s in a rather perfunctory salutation.
‘What do you think,’ he said earnestly, ‘of this terrible news?’
‘What do you mean?’ Trent said. ‘I haven’t heard of any terrible news, believe me, my dear fellow. I only hope it’s not too bad—for you.’
Verney stared at him intensely. ‘How can you have missed it?’ he demanded, with a puzzled look in his very expressive eyes. ‘It’s been in all the early afternoon papers—it’s all over the town. Or do you mean that old James Randolph’s death doesn’t distress you at all?’
Trent was thoroughly taken aback, and for the best of reasons. Himself, at a little after six o’clock the evening before, he had left the same James Randolph not only alive but in a furiously bad temper, a picture of choleric vitality. ‘Randolph dead!’ he said blankly. ‘Why, did he have a stroke or something?’
‘A bullet was what killed him, Trent,’ Verney said coldly. ‘I can’t conceive—’
‘Oh! he was shot!’ A light broke over Trent’s mind. ‘Now I understand. You see, Verney, I drove down to Glasminster to a wedding this morning, and I’ve only just got back after all the merrymaking. If anyone had heard of it down there, it wasn’t mentioned in my hearing. But the early editions! They all had it, of course—I see that now. But you know how they like to keep you guessing. On the way back, I should think I saw a score of bills saying that a well-known millionaire had been found shot. I didn’t care if fifty millionaires, each more well-known than the last, had been found shot. It never occurred to me that it was Randolph. My dear fellow, what a shocking thing! It must have been a bad blow for you, being what you were to him. Tell me what happened.’
‘That’s just what I can’t tell you,’ Verney said in a dull tone. He sat with hands clasped between his knees, and stared at the floor. ‘All I know is he was shot by someone last night in his bedroom at Newbury Place, when nobody else was there—it’s the evening his manservant always had free every week. The man found his master lying dead when he came home, and at once sent for the police. You cannot imagine the shock the news was to me—I didn’t even know Randolph was in London. The first I heard of it was when a C.I.D. man called on me early this morning, to see if I knew anything that could give them a line. All I could say was that the old man hadn’t an enemy in the world, as far as I knew. And I said the last I had seen of Randolph had been last week, when I was staying at Brinton Lodge, having various matters to talk over with him; and that then he had seemed quite at ease and free from any anxiety. Since I heard the news I’ve been living in a sort of bad dream. I had a very real feeling for the old man; more like veneration than anything else. And this means more of a chaotic smashup than you can very well imagine. At last I took to walking aimlessly about the streets, just to take the edge off my nerves; and when I found myself near your place, I thought I would look in for a talk. I suppose you had not seen Randolph lately?’
Trent looked at his visitor consideringly. What he had just been told by Verney made one thing clear: he, Trent, must have been one of the last persons to see Randolph before his being murdered. And he had strong reasons for wishing that interview of his with the old man to remain a private affair. It had concerned the reputation of a woman for whom he had a deep regard; and it had been of a decidedly unpleasant, not to say scandalous, nature. The less said about it the better, in Trent’s judgment; above all, to those with whom Randolph had left an honourable memory. As for the police, of course they must be told; for one thing, the information would set a limit in one direction on the time during which the murder had been committed. But Trent saw no reason for taking Verney into his confidence.
‘It is some time since I saw him,’ Trent therefore replied, with more truth than candour. ‘It’s no use offering you a drink, is it?’ he asked; and Verney shook his head. ‘Very often a cigarette helps you to pull yourself together,’ Trent went on. ‘You look all to pieces. Try one of these.’
Verney looked up gratefully. ‘Thanks, I will,’ he said, extending a shaking hand towards the box held out to him, ‘I know all about tobacco and what it can do to you, though it’s long enough since I smoked any.’ He lit a Virginia cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘You see, the first year at Oxford I used to smoke a lot too much, as so many freshers do. Then, when I began to have dreams of a Blue, I dropped it altogether.’
‘And you got your reward, I dare say.’
Verney smiled, in momentary forgetfulness of the day’s bad news. ‘Do you take an interest in that sort of thing? Yes: three-mile; also cross-country running, since we are on the subject.’
‘No, I know nothing about it,’ Trent said; ‘but as soon as you spoke of dreaming of a Blue, I could see that your dream had probably come true. You look like a Blue. When Nokes outdares Stokes in azure feats, you know, it often marks him for life.’
Verney’s dejection again took possession of him. ‘Well, it came in useful when I began working for Randolph,’ he said. ‘The boys’ club part of the job was what always appealed to me most. You know about the Randolph Institute, I dare say. Nothing sectarian; just educational and social and athletic. I love it—in fact, I spend most of my time there, because there’s a room I use as a sort of general office for all Randolph’s charitable affairs. And of course, having a bit of a record in athletics gave me more influence with the lads than almost anything else could have done. Then my being a non-smoker was a good thing too, you see. You can hardly imagine the state that many of these young fellows get their respiratory tracts into with eternally smoking cheap fags. And as for running, there’s simply nothing like it for our sort of lads, so long as they’re sound physically—hard exercise in the open air, easy to fit in after the day’s work, and costs next to nothing.’
‘It’s good for you,’ Trent said. ‘You get all the exercise you need, I expect.’
‘All I need—yes. But to tell you the truth,’ Verney said, rather in the manner of one confessing to a secret vice, ‘since I began playing golf about five years ago, I prefer a round of that to any other open-air sport I know—and I have had a pretty good experience. Whenever I can manage it, I go off for a game to Matcham. It’s not a good course, and you often can’t get a caddy, but then I never want one; and it is the cheapest golf I know this side of London, which is what I have to consider. How I wish—but it is no use talking about that. As far as keeping fit goes, I have every opportunity, as you say. There’s nothing like running, above all, for that.’
‘There’s a good deal, no doubt,’ Trent said, ‘in having that sort of thing managed by someone who knows all about it.’
‘Yes,’ Verney said simply, ‘there is, of course. The boys have their committee; but they leave the whole show to me really, and I’m rather proud of the way our fellows have come forward since I took over. Last January the Randolph Athletic Club was runner-up in the Middlesex cross-country team championship, and challenged Southgate Harriers pretty closely. We provided the first two men home in that event, and we won the junior race easily. And now, I suppose’—he tossed the end of his cigarette into the fire—‘the Kilburn Institute’s all over and done with.’
Trent felt a moment of keen sympathy, for Verney’s whole manner was that of a heartbroken man.
‘Do you mean that his death really means the end of all that work?’ he asked. ‘Wasn’t there any endowment? Or surely there would be some provision in his will for the keeping-up of the various organizations he had started—what was that phrase he was so fond of using?—for the benefit of the community. I should think, from what I’ve heard, that the shutting-up of that Institute would pretty well amount to a social disaster for that part of London. It ought not to be possible.’
‘Well, it is,’ Verney said, as he accepted another cigarette. ‘You see, Trent, old Randolph had a rather strange side to his character as a public benefactor. He made a great fortune fairly early in life, and he devoted almost the whole of his income to charities and public objects. He continued to heap up more money; but I think it was because he could hardly help it. The real hobby of his life was to attend personally to all his enormous expenditure on charities and public objects. Sometimes he would give a great sum for some special purpose; but when he did that, it was always in the way of capital expenditure. He would build and equip a sanatorium, say, for some town or some big charitable institution; but he would never settle anything on it. He might, and usually did, put his name down year by year for a contribution to its upkeep; but he used to say he started a place like that as an opportunity for charity on the part of other people.’
Trent nodded. ‘That’s not unusual, I know,’ he said. ‘But how about places like the Institute? I always understood that was entirely his own private show, maintained by him exclusively. He surely can’t have left it high and dry, so to speak.’
‘That is just what I was coming to,’ Verney said. ‘The position of the Institute was just as you say—he held it in his own hands entirely, financing it as if it were a part of his own household. And he had other establishments on just the same footing, like the Randolph Infant Orphanage at Bishopsbridge, or the Randolph Mental Hospital at Claypoole. He was very proud of them, too, and saw to their being the best run places of their kind in the country. They cost him something, Trent; I’m telling you, and I know. But they never had a penny of funds of their own; and whatever Randolph parted with in any sort of way, he always would know what happened to it. He couldn’t seem to bear the idea of anyone else controlling wealth that he had amassed—that was at the bottom of it. And I don’t see that you could find fault with that, seeing that he did devote all those vast sums to other people, and put himself to a vast amount of trouble in looking after the spending of the money. But the unfortunate consequence is that now—’ he raised a hand, palm-downwards, and brought it down sharply on the arm of his chair.
Trent stared at him. ‘You don’t mean to say he’s made no bequests to these places that he created, and lavished money on, and that made up a large part of his reputation?’
Verney arose and crossed his arms. ‘I mean this,’ he said harshly. ‘Randolph made no bequests at all. He left no will.’
CHAPTER VI (#ulink_c8d6118d-66bc-50ec-bbf7-aa723ea127f3)
AN ARREST HAS BEEN MADE (#ulink_c8d6118d-66bc-50ec-bbf7-aa723ea127f3)
THERE was a momentary silence as Trent took in this amazing statement and its implications.
‘The man who murdered Randolph,’ Verney said, ‘has probably killed half a dozen invaluable charities and other good works stone dead with that same bullet. Besides that, he has dried up completely a great stream of benevolence that spread itself out in all directions. For I am convinced that there is no will; and if there is no will, what is to happen to the Randolph fortune, and to the causes that it supported, heaven alone knows. Somebody will inherit, I suppose; but there will be delay, and who can answer for what he will do with the money? He may prefer horse-racing, or yachting, or play-producing, or any other way of getting rid of money by the cartload. One thing is practically certain; he won’t live on a few thousands a year, and devote the rest to well-directed benevolence.
‘Another thing,’ Verney went on, holding up an expository finger. ‘There may be rival claimants, and a dispute dragging on indefinitely; for as far as I know Randolph had no near relations. You may have heard that he had a son, an only son, who disappeared from home when he was about sixteen, and has never been heard of since. The old man did everything possible to find out what had happened to him, but no trace of him was ever found and he was given up for dead long ago. But there may be other relatives. You see what a disaster the whole thing is likely to be, apart from the personal loss of such a man, and such an influence for good.
‘There is one detail,’ Verney went on after a moment’s pause, ‘of interest to you. Randolph was very anxious that you should paint a replica of the Tabarders’ portrait of him, to be hung in the hall of the Institute. Did you hear about that?’
‘I had a note from him about it,’ Trent said, ‘but nothing was settled.’
‘Well, it never will be now,’ Verney said; and then broke out desperately: ‘I tell you, Trent, the shock and the horror of this business, and the prospect of so much wreckage, have driven me pretty nearly insane.’ And Verney sunk his head between his hands, his fingers clutching his hair.
Trent, while his lips took a dubious twist, put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. ‘Better not meet trouble half-way,’ he said. ‘After all, the whole thing depends on your belief that Randolph had made no will. What grounds are there for thinking that he could have been guilty of such an amazing piece of imprudence as that? It’s really hardly credible.’
Verney, without looking up, shrugged his shoulders. ‘The grounds for thinking so are good enough, unfortunately. The fact is that, at the time of his death, he was really thinking, for the first time, about putting his affairs in order. His lawyers had been dropping hints for a long time that it was high time he made a will. I told him so myself, too, more than once—it was my obvious duty to do so, I thought, though a very unpleasant one. Whenever I did, he made it quite clear that there was no will as yet. He used to say there was time enough, that he was good for many years yet. But he hated the subject being mentioned—didn’t like the idea of dying, I suppose, like many other people; though if any living being had a right to feel confident about his prospects in the next world, Randolph had. And then at last he did begin to consider the thing seriously. Several times he said things that showed me he was thinking about the disposal of his estate. And then, before he had got to the point of doing anything definite, he was struck down.’
Trent thought for a few moments before saying: ‘Still, he may have made a will earlier in life—when he was married, for instance. Men usually do, I believe.’
Verney made a gesture of impatience. ‘He may—yes; when he was a comparatively poor man with no great philanthropic interests to think about. But if he did, I think he would have mentioned it; and anyhow, it’s not to be supposed that the terms of any such will would prevent everything getting into the sort of hopeless mess that I’m thinking about. Then, apart from his own foundations, there are all the causes that had expectations as regards Randolph’s estate—had a right to have them, I mean, seeing that for years he had been a regular and generous supporter of them.’
‘What sort of things do you mean?’ Trent asked. ‘Never having been a philanthropic millionaire, it would interest me to know how it all works—if you won’t think I’m being irreverent to say so.’
Verney looked into vacancy, as one assembling his ideas. ‘Why,’ he said, ‘to put it the simplest way, there must have been dozens of secretaries and chairmen of committees trying, at odd times, to sound me discreetly about what Randolph’s testamentary dispositions were. There’s the Humberstone General Infirmary; and the Humberstone Endowed Schools Foundation; and the Moss Lane Congregational Church of the same place; and the London Missionary Society; and the British and Foreign Bible Society; and the Yorkshire Congregational Union; and the Congregational Pastors Retiring Fund; and Leeds University; and the Scalbridge United Independent College; and the National Lifeboat Institution; and the Harrowby Seamen’s Institute; and the Dewsby Deaf and Dumb Institute; and—oh! I could name another dozen or more that have a direct interest in what happens to Randolph’s estate.’
‘Thanks! Thanks!’ Trent said smiling. ‘You needn’t go on, Verney, I see how it is. I’d no idea your field of work was such an extensive one. It’s no business of mine, of course, but I’m afraid this is going to be a serious thing for you personally.’
Again Verney shrugged. ‘It will send me hunting another job, after over two years of such a job as I shall never get again. But I’m not worrying about that just now. I want,’ he said savagely, ‘to see the man who killed Randolph taken and hanged—the cowardly brute who shot a defenceless old man in the back, and cut short a life that was given up to works of mercy and humanity. I suppose they’ll run the fellow down, Trent—you understand these things. It’s not likely he’ll escape, do you suppose?’
‘No, not likely,’ Trent said. ‘It does happen of course, now and then. But you have to give the police a reasonable allowance of time when a murder has been undiscovered for a good many hours, as I gather from what you tell me.’
Verney nodded. ‘Yes, naturally. I suppose it must depend on the traces left behind by the murderer—the weapon, footprints, fingerprints, the kind of thing one reads about.’
‘If he was careful,’ Trent pointed out, ‘he need not have left any traces at all. Criminals often don’t; but they may easily get found out all the same. Do you remember exactly what it was that was given out to the papers this morning?’
‘I’ve got one here.’ Verney produced a folded copy of the Sun from his coat pocket. ‘There you are—it’s little enough.’
Below an array of headlines, and a portrait of a clean-shaven, hard-looking old man, Trent read as follows:
At an early hour this morning the police were called to No. 5, Newbury Place, Mayfair, the London residence of Mr James Randolph, the millionaire whose long record of charitable activities and public beneficence has made his name honoured throughout the country.
He had been shot through the heart, the body lying on the floor of the bedroom, where he had, it is presumed, been dressing before attending the banquet of the Tabarders’ Company.
His absence from the banquet caused surprise, as he was a member of the Court of the Company, and was to have spoken to the toast of the guest of honour on this occasion, the Home Secretary. On inquiry at Tabarders’ Hall this morning, we learn that several attempts were made during the evening to call Mr Randolph’s house by telephone, but that the calls were unanswered.
Mr Randolph’s valet, the only servant sleeping on the premises, was, in fact, out for the evening; and it was by him that the body was discovered on his returning to the house, when he immediately telephoned the police.
No. 5 Newbury Place is one of a row of mews converted into five small residences, all tenanted by persons of social position. Such a house was well adapted to the simple way of life preferred by the late Mr Randolph, for he spent but little time in London, and lived as a rule at Brinton Lodge, his country house in the neighbourhood of Humberstone, Yorks.
‘So that’s all,’ Trent remarked. ‘Most of that was written up in the Sun office, after they’d made their own inquiries. There’s hardly anything at all about the crime itself, is there?’
‘Hardly anything,’ Verney agreed. ‘But I suppose it’s all that was given out. The other evening papers have just the same; not a syllable more. I’ve looked carefully.’
Trent considered the other’s haggard face for a moment in silence. ‘Well, the officer who saw you this morning,’ he suggested, ‘didn’t he tell you anything more? By the way, it’s the kind of case they would put Bligh onto, I should think, if his hands aren’t too full already. Was your visitor a tall, powerful-looking sort of bloke with a head like a billiard-ball?’
‘That was his name,’ Verney said with a faint smile, ‘and your description fits him nicely. No, he hadn’t a word more to tell me than there is in that paper. It was I who was expected to do the telling—whether I knew of anyone who could conceivably have had any ill-will against Randolph, or whether he had seemed at all upset or unusual in his manner lately, or whether I knew what he kept in the safe in the bedroom; and so on. And to all of that my answer was no, and no, and no. The inspector also wanted to know how I had been spending my own time that evening.’
Trent laughed. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘That’s the routine.’
‘So he was good enough to assure me,’ Verney said, with an answering gleam of grim amusement. ‘Fortunately I was able to satisfy him that my time had been fully occupied, in the presence of other people. It was the Institute Athletic Club’s weekly grind that evening, you see. I never miss running with the boys, and after changing, I stayed on with them in Kilburn, till half past ten, as I usually do. And now I must be off. It’s been a relief to talk the thing over.’
Trent rang the bell. ‘You might wait and see the latest edition,’ he said. ‘It’s usually delivered here before this time.’
Mrs McOmish appeared at the door, a copy of the Sun in her outstretched hand. ‘If it’s the paper you want—’ she said.
But her speech was cut short by an exclamation from Trent, who had already caught sight of the line of capitals strung along the top of the first page. He seized the paper from her and read aloud to Verney the brief paragraph which had been added, in heavy type, to the matter which he had already seen dealing with the Newbury Place murder.
‘It is understood,’ he read, ‘that an arrest has already been made in connection with this abominable crime.’
CHAPTER VII (#ulink_fe97a19b-9752-566d-8484-e200a22fbdd5)
ON A PLATE WITH PARSLEY ROUND IT (#ulink_fe97a19b-9752-566d-8484-e200a22fbdd5)
VERNEY had taken his leave, and Trent had noted that he was properly impressed—not to say astounded—by the fact, if fact it were, of the swift success of the official hunt for Randolph’s murderer. Trent had busied himself at once in procuring copies of all the latest editions and comparing their statements; then, after a meditative dinner, he had rung up a certain number in Bloomsbury, and proposed himself for a private and friendly call upon Chief Inspector Bligh, whom he was lucky enough to find at the other end of the wire.
The number of Trent’s friends among the metropolitan police, in its various grades, was small, but his relation with them was entirely one of mutual liking; and there was none with whom he was on easier terms than Mr Bligh, an officer of unusual parts, whose range of interests went considerably beyond his notable equipment of expert professional knowledge. In particular, he had made a hobby, and owned a considerable library, of the history of the Civil War in the United States.
It was nine o’clock when Trent found the inspector deeply engaged with book and pipe in his comfortable bachelor quarters.
‘Sorry to spoil your evening,’ Trent said as he placed his hat on a chair.
‘You won’t,’ Mr Bligh assured him. ‘If I’d thought you were likely to, I’d have told them downstairs to set the dog on you, instead of bringing up the drinks for you. Help yourself.’ And he waved a vast hand towards the tray with its convivial contents on the plush-covered table.
Trent took the armchair facing his host’s, and began the filling of a pipe. ‘Oh blessings on his kindly face and on his absent hair!’ he said. ‘I’ve interrupted your reading, anyhow. What is the book, I wonder? But need I ask? It is the Life, Campaigns, Letters, Opinions and Table-talk of General Joseph Eggleston Johnston, the Victor of Pumpkin Creek.’
‘There’s no such book,’ Mr Bligh retorted positively; ‘and,’ he added after a moment’s thought, ‘there wasn’t any such battle. What I was reading was Bernard Shaw—my favourite author.’
‘Another bond between us!’ Trent exclaimed. ‘And what draws you so especially to Shaw?’
The inspector patted affectionately the volume lying on his knee. ‘Shaw,’ he declared, ‘is the literature of escape. That isn’t,’ he added, in answer to Trent’s bewildered gaze, ‘my own expression.’
‘You relieve my feelings,’ Trent gasped, ‘more than I can say.’
‘No,’ the inspector said reminiscently. ‘That was the phrase used about Shaw by the man who first brought him to my notice. I had to interrogate a prisoner some years ago about a certain matter. A confirmed criminal, he was. They used to call him Pantomime Joe, on account of the cheek he used to give everybody from the dock. Why, if I’ve heard a judge say once that his court wasn’t a music hall, when Joe was on his trial, I’ve heard it half a dozen times. Joe was an educated man, and it was no surprise to me, when I visited him in his cell, to find him reading a book from the prison library. He showed it to me—Plays Pleasant, by G. B. Shaw. “What’s this?” I said. He grinned at me. “This is the literature of escape, Blighter,” he says, using a silly nickname he and his sort have always had for me. I thought that sounded a funny sort of reading to be put in the hands of a man who spent half his time in gaol, but he explained his meaning.’
‘And what can that have been?’ Trent wondered.
‘Why,’ the inspector said, ‘Joe meant, and I agree with him, that Shaw takes you right out of the beastly realities of life. I can tell you, after a hard day at our job, with all the spite, and greed, and cruelty, and filthy-mindedness that we get our noses rubbed in, it’s like coming out into the fresh country air to sit down to one of Shaw’s plays. Nobody half-witted, nobody brutal, nobody to make you sick. And if he ever does try to give you anybody who is a rotten bad lot, he doesn’t come within miles of the real thing. And there’s never a dull moment. Every dam’ character has something to say; even the stupidest ones. Everybody scores off everybody else. Who ever had the luck to listen to anything like it in real life? I tell you, it’s a different world.’
Trent nodded his appreciation of this. ‘But,’ he said, after a brief silence, ‘it was the world we live in that I wanted to consult you about.’
‘The Randolph murder,’ Mr Bligh said. ‘I know; you said so on the phone. And you have been painting his portrait, staying at Brinton to do it. And last week the man who runs the Randolph Institute said it would be a good idea to have a replica of it to hang up there. And Randolph was persuaded to agree, and wrote asking you to call at Newbury Place yesterday evening at six, which you did. And then he talked to you about doing the replica. And then you left, about six fifteen—so that you were one of the last persons to see the old man alive. Well! You’ve got something to tell me that I don’t know, I hope.’
Trent gazed at him as if in awe. ‘I don’t think,’ he said humbly, ‘there can be anything you don’t know. You have forgotten for the moment, perhaps, that he and I had a little disagreement, and I declined to do the job. Apart from that, I have nothing to add to your summary of the proceedings. How do you do it, Inspector? I may have an open countenance, but I hardly think you can have read all that in my face. Were you up the chimney listening to us, or what?’
Mr Bligh smiled grimly. ‘Information received—that’s what we usually call it,’ he said. ‘As for listening, Simon Raught, Randolph’s man, does all of that that’s required when he’s on the premises. Most of what I’ve mentioned he happened to hear, quite accidentally, last week at Brinton; and as for your visit, of course, he told me all about that.’
‘Of course,’ Trent agreed. ‘Be told, sweet Bligh, and let who will be clever; hear useful things, not deduce them, all day long. All the same, you will not persuade me that all that perfectly good information fell into your lap, as it were, when you were not noticing. I have seen Simon Raught only a few times—in fact, he never got as far as telling me his Christian name, as he evidently did with you—but he did not strike me as one who, when in trouble, would insist that all his secrets should be sung even into thine own soft-conchéd ear. I won’t inquire how you got all that out of him—there are various ways and means, I know. The thing I really wanted to ask you when I came here appears not to be in any doubt. The case is in your hands, as I hoped it might be.’
‘Good guess,’ the inspector remarked sardonically.
‘And you ask if I have anything to tell you—about Randolph as he was at our interview, I suppose you mean? No, I haven’t. He said nothing about anyone coming to see him after I had gone. He didn’t say anything about expecting to be shot, and he didn’t look as if he was. He seemed just as usual, in excellent health, and perfectly satisfied with himself.’
‘Hm! That doesn’t help much,’ Mr Bligh said. ‘Well, why did you want to see me about the case, then? We all understood you had gone out of the amateur sleuthing business long ago.’
‘Just because I happened to know Randolph, and to know some things about him that interested me—things I had heard before I made his acquaintance through painting his portrait, and things I have learnt since. And only this afternoon I was told a good deal by his secretary, Verney, whom I had met at Randolph’s house last January. He had already been giving you information, I gathered, earlier in the day.’
The inspector nodded. ‘But not a lot that I didn’t know. There was that about his having left no will, of course, which seems to be the case. But bless you! That’s not an unheard-of thing, even with the general run of wealthy people; and old James Randolph was not exactly an ordinary character.’
‘That’s just it. I know how very far from ordinary he was, and that’s why I’m interested. Besides, one of the reasons why I went out of business, as you call it, was that my wife has a morbid distaste for crime; but just now she is in the Cotswolds. I am alone and free, like the man in Chesterton; shameless, anarchic, infinite.’
‘I don’t know about anarchic and infinite,’ Mr Bligh said pointedly. ‘Well,’ he added, assuming an expression of regretful sympathy, ‘I’m more sorry than I can say, but there’s no need to let the thing trouble your ingenious brain any further, my lad. We’ve got the man.’
‘The papers have been told so—I saw that. And that is why I came to you; to hear more.’
‘The papers have been told nothing of the sort,’ Mr Bligh said testily. ‘They’ve found out for themselves that an arrest has been made, and they may possibly have found out that the man arrested was connected with one of Randolph’s concerns, and had just been sacked. But they’ve said nothing about its being the man who shot Randolph, because of course they daren’t; and in fact he hasn’t been charged with that. All the same, he’s the man.’
‘He is, is he?’ Trent looked into the other’s rugged face. ‘Swift work, with a vengeance. You’re certain about having got the man? Is the case really, so to speak, in the bag already?’
Mr Bligh’s smile was grim. ‘In closest confidence, as usual, I don’t mind telling you that I have clear evidence of the man’s having been in Randolph’s house in the evening, when Randolph was there alone. I have also—’
‘Yes,’ Trent murmured. ‘An “also” would seem to be in order.’
‘Also,’ the inspector went on, after blowing a couple of elaborate smoke-rings, ‘I have the man’s written and signed confession that he murdered Randolph.’
Trent fell back in his chair, while Mr Bligh resumed his pipe and gazed dreamily at a corner of the ceiling.
‘That seems to have made you think a bit,’ he remarked after a moment, cannily observant of a slight frown on his guest’s usually untroubled countenance. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if you had been working up some valuable theory of your own about the case. If you have, let’s hear it. A good laugh’s the best tonic in the world. Come on! Am I right?’
‘Very often, I dare say,’ Trent said, with a swift return to his accustomed manner. ‘Not now. I never had the slightest notion of a theory about the case. I only heard of it three hours ago. But I do take an interest in it as I told you, and I thought, with my well-known helpfulness, that you might like to have a talk about it, and even let me have a look at the scene of the crime; but now, perhaps, everything being as you tell me, you’d rather not.’
Mr Bligh rubbed his chin. ‘I don’t know about that,’ he said slowly. Then, after a few moments’ consideration, he added: ‘It’s like this. The evidence is all there. I’ve told you, roughly, what it is. But there are some queer things about the case all the same, and we might as well have a yarn about it.’
‘Just what I should like. You know it’s safe to talk to me.’
‘If it wasn’t, my lad, you wouldn’t be here.’ A chuckle agitated the crumpled expanse of Mr Bligh’s waistcoat. ‘Well, you’ve seen what little there is in the papers, of course.’
‘Certainly; and it’s very little indeed. Can you tell me one thing, for instance, that they don’t mention—just how Randolph was shot?’
‘He was shot through the heart from behind, probably from the direction of the door of the bedroom, when he was just taking his coat off. It looks as if it was done by someone who had come to see him by appointment, and whom he had let in himself, the valet being out for the evening. The bullet was fired from a Webley .455, probably fitted with a silencer.’
‘Ah!’ Trent received this information with a thoughtful brow. ‘So that’s how it was. And you’re telling me that nobody knows this as yet but the police—and the surgeon, of course.’
‘Well, the man who murdered him knows it, I suppose,’ the inspector observed.
‘Yes, I’m capable of supposing that myself,’ Trent rejoined. ‘And now that we have arrived at that point, who did murder him?’
‘We haven’t arrived at that point.’ Mr Bligh, it was clear, was taking an innocent pleasure in saving up the climax of his tale. ‘Let’s take things in their order. First, there were the obvious possibilities to be thought of.’
‘The servants, you mean.’
‘You’ve read in the paper that there was only one, a manservant, sleeping in the place. He was out for the evening, and found the body when he came home; then informed the police by phone immediately. So he said.’
Trent nodded. ‘Raught—yes, I know him. And you put him through it, of course.’
‘I thought,’ the inspector said dubiously, ‘I had wrung him pretty dry; but one couldn’t be certain. Still, he’d got a reasonable enough story about having left the place just after you left it, to spend his evening off with some relations; and he hadn’t any motive that lay on the surface. He declared that when he found the body, he was in too much of a dither even to make out how Randolph had been killed. It might be true; but naturally I didn’t set him aside. The only other servant is a charlady, Mrs Barley, who kept the place in order when Randolph wasn’t staying there. I saw her too this morning—a simple soul, she is. I thought to myself, I miss my guess if she knows anything whatever about the crime—or about anything else worth mentioning. Then, as you know, I saw Verney, the secretary, who was always about the place when Randolph was in London; and he gave me a satisfactory account of his movements on the evening of the murder.’
‘Movements,’ Trent murmured. ‘An admirable word. Bend against Primrose Hill thy breast, dash down like torrent from its crest, with short and springing footstep pass the Marble Arch and Hamilton Place. Not a very good rhyme, that.’
‘The account he gave was rather more detailed,’ Mr Bligh said coldly. ‘After the run, which you appear to know about, he stayed at the Randolph Institute till ten thirty, and was in his rooms off Maida-vale five minutes later. All that’s been checked. As for motive, all he seems to have got by the crime is the loss of a good job.’
‘Like Raught—yes,’ Trent said. ‘And now, if I may ask a question—you know what weapon was used. You’ve got it, I suppose.’
‘Why should you suppose anything of the kind?’ the inspector retorted. ‘It’s not usual for murderers to leave the weapon lying about, is it?’
‘It’s not usual for them to confess,’ Trent pointed out; and Mr Bligh grunted morosely. ‘I only thought,’ Trent went on, ‘he might have led gently up to the confession, as it were, by not taking away the revolver.’
‘Well, we haven’t got it, that’s all,’ Mr Bligh snapped. ‘But we know what make it was, and what calibre, by looking at the bullet and the breech-markings on it—nothing easier, as it happens, with that type. As for where it is, all I can say is that it’s more likely than not to be lying somewhere on the floor of the Channel; but that’s nothing better than a guess.’
‘What I want to know,’ Trent persisted, ‘is why this Webley should be visiting the bottom of the monstrous world, since the murderer has confessed.’
The inspector rubbed his chin once more. ‘Well, of course, so do I. But come! We’re getting in advance of the story. If you do want to know what really happened, you must let me tell it my own way.’
He proceeded to give Trent a brief account of his investigation on the scene of the crime. He told of the empty safe; of the signs of documents having been stolen; of the fingerprints on the carafe and tumbler, and on the razor-blade found on the carpet; of the champagne cork; of the leaf missing from the engagement-block in the sitting-room.
Trent, who had listened in closely attentive silence, interposed at this point.
‘An engagement-block!’ he said. ‘And was that in a position where it could easily be seen?’
‘Anybody could see it. The cabinet it stood on was on top of the writing-table, just in front of the window. What about it?’
‘Only that I feel certain that it wasn’t there when I saw the old man in that room at six o’clock. I noticed that dwarf cabinet, too—it is a beautiful little thing.’
‘Hm! Yes.’ Mr Bligh again fingered his chin. ‘That does happen to be one of the funny points. Because Raught, the manservant, says positively that it never was left lying about, that Randolph was always most careful to keep it locked away. Still, of course, he may have had it out to refer to, some time before he was shot.’
‘So he may. And then, of course, the man who came to see him, and whose name was on the block as having an appointment with him, very cunningly tore off that leaf and took it away; thus destroying a piece of direct evidence that he had been there that evening.’
‘Yes.’
‘After which he rushed off and bunged in a confession of having been there, and having shot Randolph. Changeable sort of bloke!’
The inspector sighed wearily. ‘I know, I know. And Randolph may have torn off the leaf himself, for some reason. But look here! There’s one more thing I haven’t mentioned yet. When I saw it, it looked to me like a fatal blunder; and so it would have been, if the damfool hadn’t gone and—but never mind that just now, I am telling you things as they happened.’ He went on to describe the last of the morning’s finds, the luggage-label picked up in the hallway; and when he repeated the name written on the label, Trent made a movement of uncontrollable surprise.
‘Bryan Fairman!’ he exclaimed.
‘That’s what I said. He’s the man who did it,’ Mr Bligh added.
‘Do you mean to say he is the man whom you know to have been at Randolph’s place when he was shot, and who has confessed to the murder? Why, I know him!’
‘Is there anybody in this blasted case that you don’t know?’ the inspector asked plaintively. ‘Anyhow, if you know Bryan Fairman, you know a damned nuisance—him and his confession!’
‘I suppose you might call a murderer that,’ Trent admitted. ‘But really, Inspector, this is incredible. Fairman is one of my oldest friends. Do you remember when we were talking about Eunice Faviell some time ago, and the way so many men go crazy about her? I mentioned to you that a great friend of mine was one of those victims. I was speaking of this same Fairman. I have known him half my life, and of all the men that I should call sound citizens, he is about the most blameless. Why, I saw him only last night—’ and here Trent broke off, realizing suddenly the possible significance of that meeting.
The inspector’s eyelids narrowed. ‘Yes?’ he said gently.
‘He was catching the 8:20 at Victoria,’ Trent said slowly. ‘He very nearly missed it. And that’s the boat-train for Dieppe—I was seeing somebody off by it. But good Lord! Bryan Fairman! You know, it’s quite impossible to believe—’
‘Wait till you hear all there is to believe,’ Mr Bligh advised him. ‘There’s plenty. To begin with, “Passenger to Dieppe” was written on the label, as I was just going to tell you. Well, all that did for me was to give me someone to go after; which of course I did. If he was going to Dieppe by the night-boat, as seemed most likely, it was a thousand to one he was on his way to somewhere much further off, and had had a good many hours’ start on his journey, whatever it was—because the boat gets there in the small hours. But on the off-chance of Dieppe being his real destination, I had him looked for there; and sure enough I soon got news of him—and a lot of it. The first information was that Dr Bryan Fairman, complete with passport, had come by the boat and taken a room at the Hôtel Beau-Rivage. He left there about nine thirty this morning, after taking nothing but a cup of coffee. Then it came through that an Englishman carrying a kit-bag had been seen hanging about in a place called the Impasse de la Chimère, in the outskirts of the town, looking as if he had lost something. What on earth he can have wanted there the French police haven’t the least idea; they say they have made every possible inquiry—and they are pretty good at that, as you know—and they cannot imagine what he was after in that spot.’
‘That is remarkable, too,’ Trent said thoughtfully. ‘If the French police could not get any information they were looking for from local householders or concierges, it should mean that there wasn’t anything for them to get. And as for my friend Fairman being seen wandering about in the environs of Dieppe, it simply doesn’t make sense to me. He studied for a year at the Salpétrière in Paris, and as far as I know that is all the experience of France that he has. What else did you hear about him?’
‘In the same place,’ the inspector proceeded, ‘there is an inn, and Fairman had some more coffee there before he went away. The man who keeps the place says that the Englishman looked sick, and a bit dotty.’
‘Did he really say that?’ Trent inquired with keen interest.
‘His words were, as reported to us,’ replied the inspector, who numbered a practical, working knowledge of French among his professional merits, ‘that the man seemed to be “souffrant
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