“I left him talking to Mrs. Callis,” Mrs. Barratt answered indifferently. “She had some arrangements to make with him, so I left them. They seem to have plenty to discuss. She’s always hanging about him, nowadays. Not that I care.”
“She’s full of zeal for church affairs, I hear,” Arthur commented with a smile. “Just as you used to be yourself, a good many years ago.”
“She’s a bossy little creature,” Helen Barratt said, without malice. “She likes to be in everything, and running it, if possible. I don’t mind. The more she does, the less need there is for me to take a hand. That’s always something. She seems quite keen on John,” she added unconcernedly. “Some people have been good enough to remark on that to me.”
“Get into the car before he comes out,” Arthur directed. “I’ll drive you home and we can have a few minutes’ private talk before the Reverend John turns up.”
He refrained from saying anything more until they reached her house and could talk comfortably. Then he began.
“Dungarvan had a look at the old lady this afternoon. She’s breaking up; there’s no doubt about that. What can you expect, at eighty-seven. When I got him to myself, I asked him a question or two. Was she fit to make a will? In his opinion, she was. Even a lunatic can make a will, apparently, so long as he does it in a lucid interval. Any will or codicil that she’s executed lately will stand, certainly.”
“So there’s no hope for Uncle Edward, then,” commented Helen Barratt.
“Not a shadow of one,” her uncle admitted, “unless the old lady changes her mind. And she won’t do that. She’s as bitter as ever on the subject of that divorce of his—more mid-Victorian than usual, if one gets on to the question. No, she’s cut him out of her will and out he stays. The amount of talk I’ve listened to about the sacredness of the marriage bond. . . . If Ted wants to see her again, he’ll have to wait till she’s in her coffin; she’ll never let him cross her doorstep as long as she has life in her. Not that he’s pressing for an interview. He’s completely fed with what’s happened. And he doesn’t love your good husband much, over it.”
“I did my best,” said Helen. “But you know what John’s like.”
“I do,” said Arthur, caustically. “All the same, it was indecent of him to lead the hue and cry against Ted over that divorce business. I dare say he had some grounds for insisting on kicking Ted out of his deaconship—not that Ted was much grieved over that part. But Barratt did more than a little to stiffen the old lady in her decision to cut Ted out of her will. I know that, from some things she’s dropped. Ted’s pretty bitter over it, and I don’t blame him there.”
“Neither do I,” Helen concurred. “I did my best to dissuade him, but you know how it is; one might as well talk to a stone wall, once he’s made up his mind. I suppose if I want to see Uncle Ted after this I’ll have to pay him a visit. He’d hardly come to see me, if there was a chance of John being on the premises. And there’s someone else who was almost as bad as John, and that’s Mr. Kerrison. I saw you talking to him at the hall door. He helped John to work up feeling against Uncle Ted amongst the church people. I think he might have left that to somebody else after his own doings in these slander actions.”
“He seems to have his knife in you,” said Arthur, thinking of what Kerrison had said to him. “And he’s a bit of a talker, you know.”
“I do know it,” said Helen Barratt. “But I’m not worrying about him just now. From what you’ve told me, Granny might change her will at any moment and cut you and me out, just as she cut Uncle Ted, if it crossed her mind to do it. And the new will would hold?”
“So it seems, according to Dungarvan. She may live for years yet. She’s doddering badly,” Arthur declared, brutally, “but she’s sane enough to execute a valid will or make an extra codicil. That’s the unfortunate fact, Helen. We’ll need to watch our step, in case she gets her back up some fine morning. If I were you, I’d display a little more enthusiasm for church affairs. It would do no harm. . . .”
“I hate the lot of them,” Helen retorted, with equal directness. “It’s granny’s fault from start to finish. After father and mother died and I went to live with her, she brought me up in that atmosphere and when I was in my teens I thought it was all right. One’s like that before one gets any experience. Then John came along, and I married him before I knew what I was letting myself in for. It seemed rather fine in those days to marry a minister and be made much of by the congregation, and all that sort of thing. I suppose I was quite genuine about it while the enthusiasm lasted.”
Arthur looked at her angry expression with some surprise. He had suspected for some years that Helen had changed markedly in her outlook, but she had never before put her views so plainly into words.
“I suppose you were,” he admitted.
“Oh, I was, undoubtedly, at that time. I was so young, and I’d no real ideas about things. It seemed grand, marrying on next to nothing with a career of good works and so on in front of one. But it all bores me stiff nowadays, uncle. They’re so frightfully narrow-minded, not like an ordinary church, somehow. And they’re not my sort. I can’t make friends amongst them. They’re not my class, and they think differently from me on almost everything one can talk about to them.”
“I know, I know,” Arthur agreed sympathetically. “You were caught young and you made a mess of it when you married Barratt. He may be all right for some people, but he’s not my sort, I quite admit. Too hearty, altogether, for my taste; and not quite It. Still, it’s done now, unfortunately. You can’t get out of it, poor thing.”
“Not by Uncle Ted’s way, certainly,” said Helen.
“No, I shouldn’t advise that,” said Arthur, with a wintry smile. “By the way, that husband of yours goes to see your granny regularly, doesn’t he?”
“Once a week at least—oftener, if she asks him.”
“I suppose he reports on my attendance at church,” said Arthur, sourly. “She’s sure to ask him about that. Has he any influence over her, do you think?”
“He’s proved it,” retorted Helen glumly. “Uncle Ted could tell you that. What’s worrying you, uncle?”
“Well, you know what he is,” responded Arthur morosely. “All for the church being supported, and people living a simple life of contentment. It goes down with her. Remember how he persuaded her to put up that cash to build the church hall? That was money which ought to have come to us, eventually. What troubles me is that he might put more silly notions into her head. I’ve got a feeling that he might come it over her and suggest that she should leave her whole packet to the church instead of to us. And where should we be, then? He’s keen enough on his church to do a thing of that sort. He didn’t marry you for money, you know.”
Helen’s face showed that she was aghast at her uncle’s surmise.
“You don’t imagine he’d do anything of that kind, really?” she demanded in a startled tone.
“He’s capable of it,” said Arthur grimly. “It occurred to me not long ago, and it’s been bothering me ever since. One or two things she let drop . . . they made me prick up my ears. Nothing definite, and I may be just imagining it all. . . . It may not have crossed his mind yet. But if it does, he’d never give us a thought. We’d be in Queer Street, so far as her cash goes. If she did a thing like that, she’d never change her will back again; you can be sure of that.”
He glanced at his watch.
“I think I’ll go before he turns up,” he went on. “He and I never hit it off, somehow; and I don’t feel too friendly just now. You don’t mind?”
“I quite understand,” Helen assured him. “So, good night, uncle. You’d better go. He may be here any moment now.”
She saw Arthur Alvington start off in his car; then she went upstairs to take off her hat. While she was there, she heard her husband’s key in the front door. When she came downstairs again, she found him in the sitting-room, staring blankly out of the window. He ignored her for a moment or two; then he
turned and spoke in a rather strained voice.
“Not a very good meeting, to-night.”
“No,” Helen agreed, indifferently.
“I had to stay and talk to Mrs. Callis. She wanted to ask me something.”
“Did she?” asked Helen, in an incurious tone. “I didn’t see Mr. Callis there.”
“No, he wasn’t there.”
John Barratt evidently had something on his mind; but he seemed to have difficulty in bringing it out. She saw no reason for helping him. Usually he was fluent enough, even boringly loquacious, for he loved to hear his own voice. She stepped over to the mantelpiece, took a cigarette from a box, lighted it, and then sat down in an arm-chair. Her action seemed to annoy her husband.
“I wish you wouldn’t smoke, Helen. I don’t like it.”
Helen Barratt looked up at him under her brows.
“Mrs. Callis smokes, and yet you never say anything about that,” she pointed out coolly. “She’s practically a chain-smoker. I only take a cigarette now and again. If you’re starting an anti-smoking campaign, John, you’d better begin with her.”
Barratt’s annoyance at this counter betrayed itself in a heavy frown.
“I’ve no right to object in her case,” he declared, weightily. “She’s different. She’s not a minister’s wife like you. It’s your business to set a good example.”
Helen Barratt blew a cloud of smoke and watched it dissipate itself in the air. The action seemed to rasp her husband’s temper, as if it had been a defiance of his authority.
“There are other things besides smoking,” he said with a harsh note in his voice. “This gambling of yours . . .”
“I don’t call bridge at threepence a hundred very heavy gambling,” retorted Helen, acidly. “It doesn’t cost you anything. I keep a note of my winnings and losings, and I’ve come out a winner every year yet. Are you suggesting that I should drop playing bridge with my own friends and take to ‘old maid’ or ‘snap’ amongst the congregation?”
“You know I hate people playing cards for money,” said Barratt.
“And you dislike my going to dances, too, don’t you?” said Helen, determined to throw everything into the discussion, now that it had begun. “You never learned to dance, yourself; and you don’t care for my doing something which you can’t do. If my own friends ask me to a dance, I don’t see why I shouldn’t go.”
“Some of the congregation don’t like it,” said Barratt, heavily. “Mr. Kerrison said something to me about it, just the other day.”
“Kerrison!” echoed Helen contemptuously. “Of course he’s just the sort of man who’s fitted to sit in judgement on me. Now let us have this perfectly clear, John, since you’ve raised the matter. I didn’t marry you for money. But it’s the plain fact that because I married you with your poor salary I’ve had to go without a good many things which a girl of my class looks on as necessities. We’ve no maid, and I have to act as one. You can’t afford a car, and there isn’t a girl I know who hasn’t got one. And now you want me to give up the few amusements that I’ve got left. I don’t feel inclined to. I’ve given up a good deal by marrying you. You might think of that side of the matter for a change.”
Barratt made no immediate answer to this. Possibly he had never guessed that she had been thinking along these lines, for he seldom gave much time to other people’s thoughts. After a minute or two, he made an impatient gesture as though dismissing the subject, and then he opened a fresh topic in a tone which betrayed some perplexity.
“Rather a nasty thing’s happened, Helen. I’ve had an anonymous letter. A most disturbing affair, though of course there’s nothing in it. Still, it’s worrying. . . . I’d better show it to you.”
He fumbled in his pocket and produced a crumpled envelope from which he drew a single sheet of note-paper.
“Just read that, will you?” he said, as he passed it across to her.
Helen Barratt unfolded the letter and glanced at its few lines. She knitted her brows as she read, but she showed far less surprise and discomposure than her husband had expected.
“Not very nice,” was her comment.
“Not very nice!” ejaculated John Barratt. “Is that all you’ve got to say about it? Just see what it hints at. I wonder you can read it without . . .”
“It doesn’t surprise me so much as you’d expect,” she explained dispassionately, “because I’ve had a letter of the same sort myself. Only, mine was full of tales about you and your doings.”
“Me and my doings?” said Barratt, raising his voice. “What doings? Let me see it. I insist on seeing it.”
“I’m afraid you can’t,” Helen replied in a level voice. “The proper way to treat things of that sort is to burn them and say nothing about them to anyone. That’s what I did. That’s what you ought to have done.”
“My doings!” Barratt was a slow thinker. “What sort of doings of mine could anyone find fault with?”
“It hinted—or rather, it said bluntly that you and Mrs. Callis were too friendly with each other. You do let her fuss round you a good deal, you know. People notice these things more than you’d think, and some of the eyes on you aren’t friendly, it seems. I’m not in the least jealous; don’t imagine that for a moment. It’s nothing to me. . . .”
“But there’s nothing in it to make you jealous,” protested Barratt angrily. “I’ve never said a word to her that couldn’t be heard by anyone. I’m not in love with her, nor she with me. You know that perfectly well, Helen. I meet her and talk to her as I talk to anyone else. There’s not a word of truth in it, not a single one. You don’t believe it, surely?”
“No more than you believed all this stuff about me,” his wife answered. “I don’t suppose you believed it, did you?”
Barratt flushed painfully under her steady scrutiny. From boyhood onwards, he had been troubled by a tendency to blush when in an awkward position.
“No, of course I didn’t believe it,” he asserted.
“Then why get so red?” she retorted, adding to Barratt’s discomfort by the remark. “It’s not worth bothering about, really. Someone had evidently turned spiteful, that’s all. Have you been treading on any corns lately? I wonder. . . . Has Mrs. Callis been put in charge of anything when somebody else was looking for the job? That’s perhaps at the root of the trouble. You know how easily some people take offence; and you’re not very tactful, John, even at your best. Think it over; perhaps you’ll see light. In the meantime, I’ll pitch this precious production into the waste-basket.”
She suited the action to the word.
“It’s safe enough there. I’ll use it in lighting the kitchen stove in the morning. There are advantages in having no maid, after all,” she added, ironically.
“But . . .” Barratt began.
“I shouldn’t worry over it,” his wife advised him seriously. “That sort of person isn’t worth thinking about. Still . . . I wish I knew who wrote it.”
Chapter Two
Suicide Pact
AMONG his colleagues and subordinates, Inspector Rufford had the reputation of being “a good starter, but a poor stayer.” When a case was presented to him, he threw himself into it with all his energy, spared himself no labour to secure all available evidence, collated his results with considerable care, and, if a solution was attainable within a few days, he generally succeeded in discovering it. But if the case dragged on for some time without apparent progress, he was apt to lose interest; and thereafter his investigation was inclined to be mechanical rather than eager. As one of his colleagues put it: “Rufford’s top-hole as a hundred-yards’ sprinter, but no earthly good as a miler.” But the crimes which come to the notice of the police are generally simple, so Inspector Rufford had many successes to his credit.
In addition, he had some rarer qualities. He kept excellent notes of his cases, and he drilled his subordinates into something like his own efficiency in this respect. The note-books of his constables were models of their class. He
took a keen interest in criminological methods in general, and had acquired a considerable library on that subject, so that he was able at times to utilise methods usually reserved for experts. While his initial zeal lasted, he was untiring in his search for clues, even of the most obscure types, for he was by no means devoid of the imaginative gift for seeing behind the surface of events. Even a carping critic had admitted that “Rufford can see the obvious quicker than most people.” Which was his peculiar way of saying that the inspector sometimes saw things which were obvious to the critic after they had been pointed out to him.
The inspector was an even-tempered man; and although he was busy with routine work when a constable entered the room, he merely looked up from his papers without a trace of annoyance at the interruption.
“Two railwaymen outside, sir,” reported the constable. “Asking to see you. They say it’s urgent.”
“Send them in,” ordered Rufford concisely, putting his documents aside for the moment.
Almost at once, the two callers were ushered into the room by the constable. One was a short, square-built, keen-eyed man in his early forties; the other was a burly fellow, rather younger, with a humorous face.
“Off duty?” queried the inspector, with a glance at their working clothes.
“No,” explained the older man, “but the next train we take out is the eleven-fifty-seven an’ we’ve got permission to come across here an’ make a report. I’m a driver. Jack Gage is my name an’ I live at 33 Cranborne Street. This is my fireman, Tom Handen, 72 Rugby Street.”
Rufford jotted down the names and addresses and then looked up inquiringly.
“This is the way of it,” began the engine-driver in response. “Me an’ Handen took out the seven-forty-seven from here this morning as usual: the Aldred train. Stops at every station an’ gets to Aldred at eight-thirty-six. Maybe you know the line.”
The Twenty-One Clues Page 3
