“Well, Mr. Rufford,” he began in a pleasant voice, “I hope you won’t keep me long. I want to get back to my office. What’s the trouble? Nothing serious, I hope. Leaving my car unattended, perhaps?”
“I’m afraid it’s more serious than that, sir,” the inspector explained soberly.
His tone seemed to take Callis by surprise. He looked at Rufford in obvious doubt, and his rather amused expression changed to a much graver one.
“More serious?” he echoed. “Then what is it? I can’t think of anything.”
It was no part of the inspector’s business to enter into the feelings of people with whom he had to deal in the course of his duty; but he had his human side as well as his official one; and this human side now said very plainly: “Another damned disagreeable job here.” Without answering directly, he produced his folder, extracted the print of the woman’s face, and handed it across to Callis.
“Do you recognise her, sir?”
The accountant took it in his hand, gave it one startled glance, and then broke into counter-questions:
“What’s happened, man? Has she been in a motor smash? Is she badly hurt? Answer man, answer! It’s my wife. Where is she? In hospital?”
Long experience had made Rufford apt in the breaking of ill news, but this was a much worse task than usual. It was no business of his to tell all that he had discovered until it suited him to do so. With as much kindness as he could summon up, he gave Callis the main lines of the affair, stopping short at the discovery of the bodies. The tale, even toned down as it was, could not but be terrible. As the inspector proceeded, Callis seemed to lose his normal physical tautness. He listened with head bent, his hands clasped between his knees, and his eyes fixed on the floor. Once, an unintentionally vivid touch in Rufford’s narrative seemed to flick him almost like the stroke of a whip, and he flinched under it. When the inspector had finished his story, Callis sat for some seconds without making a sign. At last he pulled himself together with an obvious effort and, in a toneless voice, he put another question:
“Who was this man? Have you found out yet?”
The inspector shook his head, opened his folder again, and produced his second print.
“Perhaps you recognise him yourself, sir?”
Callis took it from his hand, gazed at it for a moment or two in silence, then passed it back again. He seemed completely stunned by what had been shown to him. Rufford waited patiently.
“I recognise it,” Callis said at length in a monotone. “Of course I recognise Barratt. But I can’t understand it. He’s been hanging about her skirts for long enough. He’s the minister of our church. People have been talking, I know, about her and him, but I paid no attention to all that. I can swear she was quite straight, Mr. Rufford. She’d never have . . . Why, she kissed me good-bye, when she went off yesterday, and I . . . I can’t realise it. I can’t.”
His voice ran up a tone or two in the scale and then broke off. For some reason or other, the sight of Barratt’s portrait seemed to have hit him very hard. He bent his shoulders again and stared at the carpet, the picture of a broken man. The inspector made no attempt to intrude on his sorrow. He had been through scenes of this kind before, in connection with deaths on the road; and he thought it well to let Callis have time to pull himself together after the shock. In a few moments the accountant managed to collect himself, but his voice still showed the effect which these revelations had made on him.
“I can’t make head or tail of this business,” he confessed. “But one thing I’m sure of: she would never have been unfaithful to me.”
Rufford knew the ring of a true statement when he heard it; and there was no doubt in his mind that Callis really believed in his wife’s fidelity. It would be a nasty knock for him when all the facts came out, the inspector reflected with a certain amount of unprofessional pity.
“No, I can’t make it out at all,” Callis continued in that toneless voice. “Do you think he lured her away into this out-of-the-way place, and then, when she wouldn’t fall in with his ideas, he . . . he killed her?”
“That’s what we’ve got to find out, Mr. Callis,” Rufford pointed out in a judicial tone. “And it’s up to you to help us, there. The best thing you can do is to pull yourself together—I know it’s a terrible shock to you, coming out of the blue like this—and tell me anything that’ll help to make things clearer.”
The business-like tone in the inspector’s voice seemed to brace the accountant, as Rufford meant it to do. He lifted his head and stared at his visitor, though there was still a dazed expression in his eyes.
“You’re quite right,” he agreed, with an obvious effort to bring himself under full control. “I’m sorry. But you can guess what a shock this has been. I’m all right now—or nearly. Tell me what you want. I’ll not go off the handle again.”
He glanced away; and Rufford, following his eyes, found that he was gazing across the room to the mantelpiece on which stood a photograph of Mrs. Callis. Touched by the misery of Callis’s expression, the inspector hastened to distract his attention: and out of kindness he began by putting questions which bore less directly on the tragedy than those which he intended to ask later on.
“You see, Mr. Callis,” he began. “I know nothing about your affairs; and it’s essential that I should learn something about them. The coroner will probably expect me to be able to give him any facts which may come up at the inquest. . . .”
“Good Lord!” ejaculated Callis, evidently revolted at the idea. “Will there be an inquest?”
Rufford recognised the tone. It was the old story which he had heard so often before. “An inquest? But inquests don’t have to be held on people like us, surely.”
“Do you mean to say,” Callis went on heatedly, “that some miserable jurymen will go and look at her body?”
“The coroner may dispense with a jury, nowadays,” Rufford explained. “That is, if he sees fit to do so. And the the more he learns about the case beforehand, the more inclined he might be to handle it himself. I can’t guarantee anything, you understand. I’m merely telling you this.”
“I see,” said Callis, dully. “I’ll tell you anything you want. I hadn’t thought of an inquest, somehow. . . .”
His voice tailed off into silence. Rufford guessed what he was thinking. A beastly business, having someone dear to you turned into a public show for an odd lot of jurymen. But time was flying, and the inspector had no desire to see more of it go past unused. He spoke again in a brisker tone.
“I’ll begin at the beginning, Mr. Callis. When were you married?”
“Two years ago.”
“You must have been young then?”
“I was twenty-three; and my wife was twenty-two.”
Rufford was glad to notice that under this matter-of-fact examination, Callis was recovering fuller control of himself.
“What was her maiden name, please? Did she come of a local family or from elsewhere?”
“Esther was her name, Esther Prestage,” Callis explained. “Her family were townspeople here. In fact, this was their house. They died before she grew up, and she stayed on here with an aunt to look after her. When we married, the aunt moved out. It’s my wife’s house.”
“Had she a private income?” inquired the inspector.
“What on earth do you want to know that for?” asked Callis, obviously surprised by the question. “She had, as a matter of fact, or we couldn’t have got married as early as we did. It wasn’t much—just three or four hundred a year; but we could make a start on it, together with what I get from my firm. I’m only a very junior partner.”
Rufford ignored the question. But he noted the fact that Mrs. Callis had control of enough money to live upon if she had left her husband. That certainly made an elopement easier.
“Any children?” he inquired casually.
Callis shook his head. Rufford noted that this was another factor which would make it simpler for a wife to leave her husband in the
lurch.
“And, by the way, what about yourself?” he demanded. “Your Christian name, and so on. I don’t know them, you see.”
Callis had apparently pulled himself together completely now, under the inspector’s matter-of-fact treatment.
“John Callis,” he replied to the question. “I’m a C.A., and junior partner in Callis, Frensham, and Olney, of South Street. My uncle was the senior partner until his death. That’s why our name comes first on the list.”
“I know the firm,” Rufford volunteered. “Now, Mr. Callis, I want to hear something about your doings yesterday. You mentioned saying good-bye to your wife, I think. When was that?”
Callis made a movement as though to rise from his chair. Then he changed his mind, leaned back, and answered the question.
“My wife sometimes used to go and spend a day or two with one of her relations, a Mrs. Longnor. I’m not sure what the relationship is, exactly. Something pretty far-distant, anyhow, second cousin once removed or that kind of thing. Mrs. Longnor’s a few years older than my wife, but they’ve always been close friends.”
“Yes?” prompted Rufford, as Callis paused for a moment.
“I come home here for luncheon every day,” the accountant went on. “Yesterday, when I got back, my wife was out. She’d gone down town to do some shopping. I remember she mentioned at breakfast-time that she meant to do that, and I asked her to get me one or two things. When I came in, there was a telegram on the hall table, addressed to me, as I thought—just ‘Callis’ and the address on the envelope. I opened it. Just a moment. . . .”
He rose from his chair, walked over to a gimcrack little escritoire, searched for a moment or two amongst the pigeon-holes, and came back with a telegram in its envelope, which he handed to the inspector. Rufford opened it and read the wire.
“Callis, Fern Bank, Haydock Avenue. Am in town unexpectedly. If you can, meet me for tea at Robinson’s, drive me back home, and stay for a day or two. Edith.”
“Edith is Mrs. Longnor?” asked Rufford.
Callis nodded in confirmation.
“Robinson’s?” continued the inspector. “That would be the big drapery place in Victoria Street; they have a tea-room in the shop, of course. H’m! Wire handed in at eleven-fifty-five a.m. and sent out from Maxwell Park post office at twelve-ten. Have you a phone, Mr. Callis?”
“Oh, yes,” Callis replied. “I see what you mean. Why didn’t Mrs. Longnor ring up, instead of wiring? That’s funny. . . .”
He reflected for a moment or two over this problem. Then a solution seemed to occur to him.
“The Longnors have no phone in their house, I remember, so Mrs. Longnor might not think of ringing up from a call-office, as you or I would do, being accustomed to the phone. She’s rather feather-headed. You can see the number of words wasted in that wire; you or I could have got it much shorter. Probably she was passing a post office and thought wiring was the easiset way of doing it. My wife might have been out, as she actually was, you see. The wire made it certain that she’d get the message when she came home to luncheon.”
“I see,” said Rufford. “Likely enough you’re right, since you know the lady. Now, when Mrs. Callis got this wire, did she say anything about it?”
“She showed it to me—of course I’d seen it already when I opened it—and she told me she felt she’d like a little change so she’d go to the Longnors for a day or two. It’s not much of a change of air, really, for they live at Toynton Lacey, only an hour’s drive away. But my wife and Mrs. Longnor always get on together and it’s not a bad thing to get a change of company now and again.”
“Then when you went back to the office in the afternoon you said good-bye to your wife, I suppose, in view of this visit she was making to Mrs. Longnor. Did she seem quite as usual? No agitation? Nothing to suggest that it wasn’t just an ordinary visit to an old friend?”
“Nothing whatever,” Callis said, decidedly. “Why should she have been upset? It was a perfectly ordinary affair. She’s stayed with the Longnors often and often. If you’re suggesting that my wife had any other plans in her mind, then I’ll say as plainly as I can that you’re wholly mistaken. My wife was absolutely straight. I’m sure of it. Absolutely certain of it. I’m not going to be persuaded into thinking anything else, Mr. Rufford. I knew her, through and through.”
“You should know, sir,” Rufford agreed. “Now, another matter. You were at your office when she set out from here, weren’t you? But your maid must know when your wife left the house. I’d like to ask her about that, later on. That, and one or two other points. But they’ll keep, for the moment. Here’s something else. Have you a specimen of your wife’s handwriting that you could give me? Anything will do.”
Callis got up from his chair again and walked over to the escritoire, where he hunted about for a time in search of something which would satisfy the inspector. At last he returned with a sheet of letter-paper in his hand, and Rufford noted that it had the same heading and was of the same bluish shade as the fragments which he had collected beside the bodies.
“Will this do?” asked the accountant. “It’s just a list of members of some church committee that she had to summon to a meeting next week.”
“She took an interest in church work?” queried the inspector.
“Oh, yes,” Callis explained. “She took a strong interest in them. More than I did, I’m afraid, though I’m treasurer. But she was very busy amongst committees and so forth, really interested. She was head of the Guides and Brownies contingent amongst the girls of the congregation and very enthusiastic over them.”
“What church is that?” demanded Rufford, seeing in this an easy transition to questions about Barratt.
“Oh, none that you ever heard of, Mr. Rufford,” said Callis in a tone which almost suggested that he was half ashamed of the denomination. “It’s a very small sect: the Church of Awakened Israel. My wife and I were brought up in it by our parents, and we went on attending when we grew up, more by force of habit than anything else. One gets into a rut and it’s a bother to get out of it. I don’t suppose there are a dozen churches altogether of the Awakened Israelities. Most of the congregation are uneducated people. It’s a very small affair, and dying out gradually, at that. I’d have dropped out myself, if they hadn’t made me treasurer. I could hardly leave them, after that. And my wife’s always been interested in the church’s affairs, so we stayed on.”
Rufford had never heard of the Awakened Israelites and had no interest in them now.
“This interest in church work would bring her into contact with Mr. Barratt, evidently,” he suggested, watching Callis closely. “But you weren’t, in any way suspicious of their relations, obviously. Still, you said a few minutes ago that people had been talking about them. How did that come to your ears?”
Callis moved uneasily in his chair, as though this question made him uncomfortable.
“Is it really necessary to go into that?” he demanded, in obvious bitterness.
“I’m afraid it is, sir,” said Rufford, relentlessly.
Callis hesitated for a moment, as though loath to fall in with the inspector’s wishes. Then he went over to the escritoire and unlocked one of its drawers with a key on his chain. After searching for a time, he came back with a sheet of paper which he handed to Rufford.
“I got that through the post, a day or two back,” he said, with an angry frown. “After you’ve looked at it, you’ll admit that some people have been doing more than talk. I had a good mind to put you people on the track of the writer, whoever it is; but on second thoughts I concluded that there was no use stirring up mud and making more gossip by dragging the affair into publicity. I kept the letter, though, in case any more came; for if there had been a number of them I’d made up my mind to put a stop to the business, cost what it might. And, of course, if I had to do that, then the more of these precious productions I could hand over to you, the better chance you’d have of tracing the writing.”
&
nbsp; “You didn’t keep the envelope?” queried the inspector.
Callis made a gesture of vexation.
“No, I didn’t,” he confessed. “Now that you mention it, I see that it was stupid of me to throw it away. It might have given some clue, I suppose. Still, it’s too late now. The fact is, when I got this production, my first impulse was to destroy it and put it out of my mind—forget it, impossible. And I destroyed the envelope while I was in that way of thinking. When I changed my mind, I forgot all about the envelope and didn’t think of fishing the fragments of it out of the waste-paper basket.”
“A pity, that,” commented Rufford.
The average man, he reflected, never seemed to think of taking the most obvious precautions. Something might have been gleaned from the postal marks on that envelope. However, Callis had at any rate kept this letter, and that was better than nothing. He unfolded the sheet and glanced at the straggling printed capitals which made up the message:
“YOU MUST BE VERY BLIND IF YOU dont SEE WHAT GOES ON UNDER YOUR NOSE. WATCH YOUR WIFE AND YOULL SEE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE HAVE SEEN LONG AGO. A PREACHER OUGHT TO SET A BETTER EXAMPLE. THERES A PLAIN HINT TO YOU. AND READ PROVERBS, VII.”
“I’ll keep this,” said Rufford, folding up the paper and stowing it away in his pocket.
Callis made a movement as though to take back the document, but apparently resigned himself, after a glance at the inspector’s face.
“You won’t go reading that stuff out in public at the inquest, I hope,” he said protestingly. “It’s not evidence, really; and it would just set a lot of ill-natured people gossiping on the strength of it. I want to keep my wife’s name clear. I know she was perfectly straight, and I won’t have people thinking she was anything else but straight. This has been a sore business, Mr. Rufford, as you can well guess. I don’t understand it. But at least I want her name kept clear of lies and slurs. I owe that to her.”
The Twenty-One Clues Page 6
