by Lynn Brock
Gore’s nerves tautened. He divined instantly that Melhuish had been using the lens to examine the scratch on the dead man’s hand. What had he made of it? Why had he been so startled at being disturbed in his examination? Why had he waited to make it until the instant he was left alone?
CHAPTER VII
HIS smile of apology for his sudden intrusion was, however, tolerably natural and convincing, he flattered himself.
‘Some people in your hall … Do you mind if I let them get out?’
Melhuish laid the lens on his writing-table with a somewhat ostentatious carelessness.
‘Those two girls? Rather overpowering young women? You hadn’t met them before, I suppose. I dread them. The general’s a cheery old fellow. An indifferent general, I understand. But that’s a normal condition of British generals, apparently.’
He went to the door to look towards the hall.
‘All clear now, Colonel, I think.’
‘Good. Sorry to have disturbed you again.’
‘Not in the least. I was merely having a look at that scratch on poor Barrington’s hand. One has to be careful, naturally.’
‘Of course, yes.’
‘It’s merely a superficial scratch. No significance whatever.’
‘I see. Well, I think I’m safe now, doctor. Ah, there is Mrs Melhuish …’
She had come down the stairs and was standing in the hall looking towards them, her golden head agleam beneath a cluster of lights. Hurriedly Gore detached himself from Melhuish, aware that the latter was following him slowly, but hoping for time to say just the one word for which he knew she was waiting. As he reached her, however, the door of the waiting-room opened, and a weather-beaten, bearded little man, with a pair of blazing blue eyes, emerged puffily. Mrs Melhuish bowed.
‘How do you do, Admiral?’
‘That’s what I’ve come here to find out, Mrs Melhuish—if I can do it before midnight. How long more does that husband of yours mean to keep me shut up in this chamber of horrors, I should like to know? …’
Gore’s chance was gone. He swore softly as the hall door closed behind him. From the post office in the Mall, however, he rang up Linwood 7420, and heard instantly, to his relief, her voice say: ‘Yes? Who is speaking, please?’
‘Gore.’
‘I knew you would ring up. Well?’
‘Nothing, except a newspaper-cutting. I have that. When can I see you? What time do you start for Surrey tomorrow?’
‘My train is at twelve-thirty. I shall be here all the morning.’
He reflected that Melhuish would be out of the way then, going his rounds.
‘Very well, I’ll go round at half-past ten. By the way, is anyone likely to be listening in?’
‘No. Not here.’
‘Good. What clothes was Barrington wearing when you saw him last?’
The question plainly puzzled her … or alarmed her … for there was a silence before she repeated the words.
‘Clothes?’
‘Yes. Evening clothes?’
‘No. A dark suit—dark brown, I think—and a tweed overcoat. Why?’
‘I’ll explain when I see you. He had those … papers … with him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Loose—or in some sort of package?’
‘In a large envelope.’
‘Oh! Then there were not a great number of … papers?’
‘There were originally. But these are the ones he kept.’
‘And he had them with him last night. You actually saw them?’
‘Yes. He always took care to let me see them. He used to read me extracts from them sometimes. Not last night … but … usually.’
‘But you’re quite sure that what you saw were the papers—or some of them—those we want?’
‘Absolutely sure.’
‘I see. Well, I can’t explain very well until I see you; but I’m afraid, Pickles, it’s going to be awkward.’
‘They must be somewhere in his house—in some desk or drawer or something. I’ve thought of that. If they are, I’m done for. If Ethel finds them—Someone coming—Sidney.’
The receiver at the other end was replaced hurriedly. He waited until the exchange cut off. It was useless to wait longer, since he had not told her that he was speaking from the post office in the Mall. In any case there was nothing more that could be prudently said over the phone.
Barrington had changed into that brown suit, then, in the interval between their parting in Aberdeen Place a little before twelve and his return there some time round one o’clock. At what hour exactly had he returned there? Why the deuce hadn’t he found that out from her?
Wait, though—she had told him the hour. She had said that Barrington had gone away about half-past one. Half-past one— If she was correct in that belief, then he had simply worked himself into a damn silly fuss over nothing. In that case the glass of the watch couldn’t have been broken by a fall at twenty-three minutes past one … last night. That idea was all moonshine. Barrington had had a fall at twenty-three minutes past one that afternoon, that was all there was to be said. How or where—that didn’t matter to her. Had had a fall, muddied his clothes, damaged his watch, and—it must be so—scraped his hand. Had had, possibly, a severe fall, and had been too badly knocked about by it to bother about his clothes. Had had, possibly, a fall severe enough to hasten his death …
His relief was so intense that he uttered aloud a little laugh that moved an observant newsboy to disrespectful parody. Amused, Gore stopped to buy a paper from the lad, whose demeanour changed instantly to the most respectful politeness at the prospect of business. As his hand went into his trousers-pocket in search of a coin, it came in contact with the envelope which he had transferred to it hurriedly in the consulting-room, and he took it out to place it in a pocket of greater safety. He remembered then the hastily-seen words written in the margin of the newspaper-cutting, and when he had secured his paper and paid the boy, moved a few steps forward to the nearest street-lamp to read them.
‘Tonight. One.’
He had gone to her, then, at one. That fitted in with Arndale’s having seen his car near the house shortly after one. Had he stayed a whole half-hour? Run the risk of discovery for a whole half-hour? Or had he gone away, after all, say, a minute or two before twenty-three minutes past? Gore’s brief-lived cheerfulness subsided into uneasy doubt. He went on his way across Linwood Gardens to Hatfield Place wrapped in such dejected absorption that it was not until he reached the steps of Number 27 that he realised that one of his hands still held, in addition to his evening paper, a handful of loose coppers and silver and the envelope containing the newspaper-cutting.
For if there was one thing of which he was certain with regard to this most infernal mess in which Pickles had involved herself, it was that her husband had, for his own reasons, deliberately lied to him when he had said that the scratch on Barrington’s hand possessed no significance. Of that Gore had no doubt whatever. If ever a man’s eyes had said, ‘I am lying, and you know I am lying, and I know that you know it,’ Melhuish’s eyes had said so then. Why had he lied? What reason could induce any medical man in his senses to do such a thing wilfully—to burke wilfully the real cause of a man’s death—to risk wilfully exposure, the loss of his reputation, of his professional honour, of his profession itself—if not a criminal prosecution and its penalty? Common sense answered inevitably: to save himself or someone else from a worse danger? And from that it was but a single step to the unavoidable conclusion. Rightly or wrongly, Melhuish suspected that his wife’s hand had been responsible for that scratch.
Well … if he knew enough about her relations with Barrington to suspect that, it hardly seemed worth while to bother about a few letters, did it? In any case, it seemed to Gore, Pickles was—to use her own dialect—pretty well done for. ‘Damn it all,’ he reminded himself sharply, ‘it’s quite possible that she may be arrested within the next twenty-four hours for the fellow’s murder, if what I th
ink and what I believe Melhuish thinks, is true. Do you realise that? Arrested for murder—lugged off by the arm by some big lout of a policeman—snapped away from all her life that has been like a flower snapped off its stem—done for—fini— Arndale saw Barrington’s car there last night and recognised it. How many other people saw it there and recognised it? For that matter how many other people know all about her affair with Barrington from beginning to end? Once let someone get wondering about that scratch on his hand and whoosh—the whole pack’ll be after her …’
But, then, where the devil had he been all that time, Barrington? Where the devil had he been hidden from the time he had died until the time when those two girls had found him sitting there in his car in the darkness, dead? Who had brought him back to Aberdeen Place that afternoon? Certainly neither Melhuish nor Pickles; that was sure. Who then? Some other silly ass like himself whom she had persuaded to help her out of the mess?
The idea at first seemed ludicrous—grotesque. And yet as he knocked at the door of Number 27, it became abruptly the most probable and likely idea in the world. For he recalled just at that moment that just at that critical hour of the preceding night just such another silly ass had been in Aberdeen Place—close enough to the hall door of Number 33 to see Barrington’s car waiting near it.
He turned and stared through narrowed eyes at the lights that twinkled beyond the trees of Linwood Gardens. For the first time the unbelievable thrust certainty in his face.
Cecil Arndale … By God. So she had done it.
CHAPTER VIII
HE became aware that the hall door had opened behind him, and turned to find an elderly parlourmaid regarding him with tight-lipped sourness.
‘Good-afternoon. Has Mrs Barrington come in yet?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Dr Melhuish has asked me to find out, if possible, where Mrs Barrington is at all likely to be.’
‘No idea, sir.’
‘No idea at all?’
‘No, sir. For all we know, Mrs Barrington may not be coming back. Nothing would surprise us that happened in this house.’
Gore’s shrewd eyes took stock of the woman’s respectable aggrievedness.
‘It is exceedingly awkward,’ he explained. ‘No doubt Dr Melhuish told you over the telephone that Mr Barrington died this afternoon?’
She nodded silently. The fact appeared to possess no interest for her.
‘Mrs Barrington may not be coming back, you think? Have you any reason to think that she intended to remain for any length of time?’
She shrugged, looked first to right of her and then to left and then down her nose, after the manner of her class, plainly struggling between a desire to air her grievance, whatever it might be, and to give no information about anything to anyone.
‘She went away late last night, I understand? You realise that it is extremely urgent that we should ascertain where she is at once?’ His hand went into a pocket significantly.
‘May I ask your name, sir?’
‘I am Colonel Gore. I am a very, very old friend of Mrs Barrington’s.’
The maid’s hard features relaxed into a bleak smile.
‘I thought I recognised something about you, sir. You don’t remember me, I suppose. You wouldn’t, after so many years. But I was pantry-maid, sir, at Downs Lodge with Lady Harker, the time you and Mr Louis Harker and Mr Cecil Arndale blew up the harness-room, showing the coachman your experiments with your chemicals. I was watching the whole thing from my pantry, sir, that day. Flora was my name then, sir, though I had to change it to Florence afterwards, because of ladies I’ve been with not thinking Flora suitable to my station.’
Of Flora the pantry-maid of Lady Harker, Gore retained no faintest recollection whatever. But the blowing-up of the harness-room, and his share in the personal consequences of that exploit, he recalled very distinctly.
‘My goodness!’ he exclaimed, shaking this old acquaintance warmly by the hand, ‘I am a silly ass. I knew I’d seen you somewhere, but I couldn’t—Well, well, that was a good old bust-up, wasn’t it?’
She ushered him into a sitting-room off the hall, and there, when they had chattered for some moments of things and people of other and better days, she unburdened her soul readily enough of the trials of the present—trials so grievous that her box was packed and all her preparations made for departure from Mrs Barrington’s employment.
Stripped of her aggrieved comment, the facts were these:
Mrs Barrington had left the house about eleven o’clock on the preceding night, and had not since returned. Where she had gone Florence could not say. But why she had gone, Florence could, and did say very explicitly.
On the afternoon of the preceding day a gentleman had called to see Mrs Barrington. Florence did not know his name—he was not, it appeared, one of the gentlemen who visited the house regularly—but he was a big, tall, handsome young gentleman with very fair hair, and she had seen him often driving his motor-car ‘like mad’ about Clifton—always beautifully dressed. While this ornate caller had been with Mrs Barrington in her drawing-room, Mr Barrington had come in, and there had been a row for which Florence had no adjective but ‘shocking!’ The young gentleman—whom Gore had no difficulty in divining to have been Mr Bertie Challoner—had gone away; but the row had continued, upstairs in Mrs Barrington’s bedroom. When the housemaid had gone into the room some time later, Mrs Barrington had been crying on her bed, with her eye and all one side of her face bruised black and blue.
Naturally Mrs Barrington had not gone out to dinner at Dr Melhuish’s. But Mr Barrington had. He had come home about twelve o’clock—(Florence herself had been asleep then, but cook had heard him)—and had gone out again a little before one, not to return. He had made no inquiries of the servants as to Mrs Barrington’s whereabouts. Florence was of opinion that he must have expected that Mrs Barrington would have left the house before he got back from Dr Melhuish’s. What else could he expect after what had happened before he had gone out?
‘And if you ask me, sir, back to this house Mrs Barrington won’t come—unless hearing Mr Barrington’s dead brings her back. But I may say, sir—and it’s only fair to myself—that, come back or not come back, I’m leaving today, sir, with my wages or without them, and my box is packed and ready to go with me. Because I’ve always been in nice, well-behaved places, and in any case the hours that is kept here and the noise there is at night never suited me. Gentlemen coming in at one and two in the morning, three or four nights in a week, to play cards and drink more than’s good for them, and talking and laughing all night so’s a person couldn’t get a wink of sleep till four or five o’clock in the morning. More like a gambling-hell, it was, sir, than anything else, lately. And so me and cook’s said often to one another. I’ll be only too glad to get out of the house and have no more trouble on account of it. I’m sorry for Mrs Barrington, sir, because I know she’s a lady, and I know of her family and have been with friends of her family since I was in service first, sir, I may say. Every one hereabouts knows that Mrs Barrington’s family was a very good family, sir. She was a Miss Melville, sir, as, of course, you know. But she ought to have been able to manage her house as a lady’s house, and not allow gentlemen drinking and playing cards till all hours of the morning.’
She and cook and Emily were much perturbed by the possibility of being summoned as witnesses to a possible inquest. Cook and Emily had felt so depressed by their forebodings that they had gone off to the pictures to try to brighten themselves up.
‘I shouldn’t think that you need be in the least anxious about that sort of thing,’ Gore assured her. ‘Poor Mr Barrington’s heart has been in a very bad way for a long time back. Dr Melhuish tells me that he has been liable to die at any moment for some months past. Now, let me see. Mr Barrington got back about twelve, you say. And went out again?’
‘Yes, sir. He went out again a little before one, cook says. She’s got dreadful weak nerves, cook has, being a stout woman as al
ways have weak nerves, if you’ve noticed, sir, and she was so upset by what happened in the evening that she never got a wink of sleep all night. She heard Mr Barrington going out again just before one o’clock, with whoever it was came in with him.’
‘Oh. Then someone came in with him at twelve o’clock?’
‘Yes, sir. Some man, cook says. She heard them talking here, and there were two glasses with the decanter and the siphon on that table this morning.’
‘And then—they both went out again just before one?’
‘Yes. Cook heard Mr Barrington going up to his room, and he must have changed his clothes, for Emily found his evening-clothes this morning in his dressing-room. And then they went out by the back way to the garage, cook says, about one, sir, or a little before, and went off in the car.’
‘How long did Mr Barrington stay out then?’
‘Well, he didn’t come back again, sir, after that.’
‘You mean—last night?’
‘I mean—at all, sir. The first any of us heard of him since that was when Dr Melhuish told me on the telephone he was dead. I can tell you, sir, that coming on top of mistress’s going away at eleven o’clock at night without a word to any of us, and not coming back—well, it was a bit too much for me, sir. I just sat down today and wrote out my notice, and then went and packed my box, and I’m going at eight o’clock, sir, soon as some of my things as were with the washerwoman come back, if you’ll excuse me mentioning them, sir. You can understand, sir—?’
‘Yes, yes. Naturally you must all find it very upsetting. Still, I hope you’ll stay at all events until Mrs Barrington returns. Er … the garage is at the back, then?’
