by Lynn Brock
‘Yes, sir. It’s only a small place. Mr Barrington had only a small car, sir, as I suppose you know.’
‘The car did not come back last night … or today?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Did not?’
‘No, sir. We were on the look-out for it, of course, all day, on and off. But it didn’t come.’
‘Mr Barrington’s chauffeur? He didn’t see it either … today … or last night after Mr Barrington took it out?’
‘Mr Barrington had no chauffeur, sir. Anything that was done to his car in the way of cleaning or suchlike, mending it or that, he used to get Mr Harry Kinnaird’s chauffeur to do it for him. Mr Harry Kinnaird used to allow his man to do it in his spare time. A very nice young man, sir, and very clever at that sort of work, I believe, and always willing to oblige anyone. So Mr Barrington used to make use of him that way. Mr Harry Kinnaird’s garage being the next to ours, sir, in the lane at the back.’
‘However … you’re sure the car didn’t come back?’
‘Quite sure, sir. There’s nothing new about that, sir, as far as that goes. I mean, Mr Barrington’s being away for the night. We’re used to that, sir.’
‘I see. He was frequently away for the night?’
‘Often, sir. Two or perhaps three nights in the week.’
‘With the car?’
‘Sometimes with, sir—sometimes without it.’
‘Any idea where he was in the habit of going?’
The elderly Florence compressed her thin lips primly.
‘Well, sir … we’ve had our ideas … but he’s dead now, and there’s only One has any right to judge him now.’
‘Yes, yes. Quite, quite. Er … perhaps Mrs Barrington has gone to stay with friends?’
‘Mrs Barrington has very few friends now, sir, that you’d call friends. However, I’ll bring you the card tray, sir. Perhaps that will help you. And then perhaps you’ll excuse me, sir. I think I heard my laundry coming back.’
Left alone with the card tray, he selected some dozen names with which he installed himself at the telephone. His inquiries were made with extreme caution and without revealing his own identity; it appeared to him under the circumstances neither necessary nor prudent to publish Mrs Barrington’s prolonged absence from her household nor the fact that he, personally, was in search of her. As a matter of fact, however, he found no difficulty in satisfying himself that none of the people whom he had selected had the faintest idea of her whereabouts. He was about to abandon his quest and ring up Melhuish to inform him of its fruitlessness, when another name—not amongst those which he had collected from the card tray—suggested itself.
Mr Challoner, as it happened, was at home, and answered the call with an extremely ungracious ‘Hallo.’
‘Oh. That you, Bertie? Gore at this end. I say, old chap, I wonder if you can help us. We’re trying to get hold of Mrs Barrington. I don’t suppose you’ve heard yet …’
‘Yes. I heard just five minutes ago. I met Miss Barracombe running round spreading the news.’
‘Oh. Well, I’ve been ringing up all sorts of people to try to find his wife. Melhuish asked me to. She’s not at her house, you see. I’m speaking from there. I thought perhaps you might be able to … er … help us.’
‘I?’ said Challoner’s voice stiffly. ‘I’ve no idea. Why the deuce should I?’
‘Oh, sorry. Right. Thanks.’
‘But … I say, Gore—just a moment. Why ring me up? Why should I know where Mrs Barrington is?’
‘I’ve been trying every one I could think of, my dear fellow. Sorry to have bothered you. I’ll have a go at someone else. It’s deuced awkward, you see, that she should be away, just now. Well, I’ll have a go at someone else … Good-bye, old chap.’
‘Good-bye.’
Gore smiled faintly at the angry truculence of that ‘Good-bye.’ A singularly ingenuous youth, Master Bertie Challoner.
‘Bet he’s telling her now we’re looking for her,’ he thought, as he rang up Linwood 7420.
‘That you, doctor? No luck so far. What? Oh … you’re bringing him here? Shall I wait? Yes … certainly. Very well. I’ll tell the servants. Yes. Right.’
Bringing him there … Well … why hadn’t Melhuish brought him there at once—instead of carrying him into the consulting-room at Aberdeen Place and carrying him out again—if the man had died as he had said he had expected him to die? In the blindest darkness he could have told that he was dead. What need to take him in, then, to examine him? To give him time to see those two waiting patients? Perhaps. But Gore thought not. He knew of a more urgent need than that—a need that had to see, before other skilled eyes saw it, perhaps, what it expected to see.
‘You’re mad,’ said Gore’s common sense. ‘You’ve worked yourself into such a state now that you can’t think straight. The man daren’t do it. He daren’t attempt such a bluff. Why, that servant of his twigged something fishy about Barrington’s look straight off—twigged that he’d fallen—twigged the scratch on his hand. If a servant could twig it, Melhuish must know that anyone may twig it. He’d never try on such a bluff. He daren’t. That scratch means nothing—that’s the fact of the matter. You’re simply allowing your imagination to twist things so as to make them fit into one another … just because you’re in a funk about a woman who doesn’t care a hang about you …’
He was quite unable, however, to decide which belief he really and honestly held at that moment. One seemed as convincing as the other. He abandoned his speculations with some irritation, and went in search of the parlourmaid, to consult with her as to such simple preparations as appeared necessary.
He had returned to the sitting-room, and was awaiting Melhuish’s arrival there, when the sound of a car stopping outside the house brought him to the window, the blind of which had not been drawn. A smartly-figured young woman, visible for a moment against the lights of the vehicle as she paid her fare, came hurriedly up the drive, and admitted herself with a latchkey. The mistress of the house had returned, then. So Challoner had known where she was to be found, and had told her. Well … that was their affair. She had got back in time—that was the important thing. The less talk there was about the Barrington ménage for the next three or four days, well … very much the better for every one concerned.
Mrs Barrington’s face was still concealed by a thick veil when he met her in the hall, but he recognised her voice at once. Although nine years had elapsed since their last meeting, she displayed neither surprise, pleasure, nor emotion of any kind upon seeing him.
‘Don’t expect a broken-hearted, tearful widow, Wick,’ were her first words, as their hands touched. ‘I’m no use at pretending. I don’t feel anything. I’m not going to try to pretend that I do. Where is he? Still at Dr Melhuish’s house … or have they brought him here?’
‘Melhuish is bringing him here … They are probably on the way now. Your maid knows.’
‘Oh.’
She stood for a moment looking at her hands in silence. Then with a sudden movement she raised her veil.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘He did that the last time he spoke to me.’ Her voice rose to sudden passion. ‘Now … can you understand?’
Gore made a little gesture of deprecation.
‘Hadn’t you better go straight up to your room?’ he urged gently. ‘Much the best thing. Look here—let me ring up your mother and your sister for you …’
‘If mother or Elsa come to this house,’ she cried angrily, ‘I shall walk straight out of it. You understand?’
‘Well, but you must have someone to look after you,’ he protested—‘some woman. If you won’t have your own folk … what about Mrs Melhuish? You and she used to be tremendous friends, I remember. I’m sure she’d—’
‘Mrs Melhuish?’ she laughed impatiently. ‘Why on earth should she come here? Of all the people in the world I don’t want to see— You don’t know how amusing that suggestion of yours is, my dear Wick.’
‘But
you must have someone to look after you,’ he repeated. ‘You can’t be left to the mercy of servants.’
‘Oh, don’t talk nonsense,’ she said hardly. ‘I can look after myself. I don’t want anyone—anyone. I just want to go right away from here for ever and ever, and never see anyone or anything connected with Linwood again. That’s all I want. You don’t know, Wick—you’ve no idea what I’ve been through during these three years for which I’ve been that man’s wife. You think you know me, that I’m the Ethel Melville you remember nine years ago. I’m a very different sort of person, now, Wick, I assure you. I’ve learned a thing or two about life since those days. I can look after myself.’
She changed the subject with a gesture of the gloves which she had drawn off as she spoke. ‘Is it true that you were at Dr Melhuish’s house when he was found?’
‘Yes. I happened to have called—’
‘Those awful Barracombe girls found him sitting in the car, didn’t they?’
‘Yes.’
‘He was dead when they found him … or did he die in the house?’
‘He was dead when they found him. You … er … you knew, of course, that his heart was in a bad way? …’
‘I knew that he had been going to Dr Melhuish about it. I guessed that it must be something serious. But he never told me anything about himself.’ She smiled again bitterly. ‘I used to try to find out things for myself in the beginning. But it didn’t pay. How grey you’ve grown at the temples, Wick. But you’ve kept your grin—and your figure. Still a bachelor?’
‘Alas! Er—you’d like to see Melhuish when he comes? Or do you think you need?’
‘Well … do you think it’s necessary? I’ve no idea what I’m expected to do. I don’t want to see him if it’s not necessary. I don’t suppose he’ll want to see me either. He disapproves of me, I know. Indeed, I’ve no doubt that he and his wife have told you so already.’
‘Gracious, no,’ Gore assured her hastily. ‘What an absurd idea. On the contrary, they were both most awfully put out, I know, that your earache prevented your going to them last night. Mrs Melhuish—’
‘Oh, hang Mrs Melhuish!’ she cried out angrily. ‘Hang the whole lot of them. Cats. Treacherous, spiteful cats, that’s what all these Linwood women are. Wait until they find out about this black eye of mine. I suppose it will be all over the place tomorrow. Wait until they get hold of it. Then you’ll hear them howling and squalling. For two pins I’d just walk out of that door again into a taxi and drive to Broad Street and clear out by the first train I saw for anywhere, for good, and leave them to it.’
In a tolerably wide experience of his fellow-woman Gore had learned at least the wisdom of silence before her wrath. This most unconventional of widows was, he perceived, on the edge of that condition which privately he described as ‘jumps.’ He said, ‘Now, now,’ soothingly, pulled down her veil adroitly, took her by the arm, and led her to the foot of the stairs.
‘Florence,’ he called.
The parlourmaid’s head, as he had expected it would, came over the balusters.
‘Er … do you know what hot-water bottles are?’
‘Yes, sir,’ replied the woman in surprise.
‘Well, go and make two of ’em as hot as hell, and get them and your mistress into the same bed as quickly as possible. Got that?’
When the woman had descended to the lower regions he said peremptorily, ‘Up you go.’
Mrs Barrington burst into tears distressingly; but she went.
Gore returned to the sitting-room and stood there for a little while looking at a small pedestal writing-table which occupied one of the corners by the window. Possibly there—in one of those little drawers, those infernal letters had been kept. Well … they were not there now, nor anywhere in that house; so much appeared certain. At all events those which really mattered. Quite possibly the others were there still. Pleasant for Mrs Barrington when she found them … and for Pickles. Deuced awkward that they should be on such bad terms as they appeared to be. However, those other letters, it seemed, were not serious … or so serious.
But if Barrington had not returned to the house after that stormy interview in the hall at Aberdeen Place, what had become of the letters that did matter? He had had them with him there; Pickles had been quite definite upon that point at any rate. What had become of them afterwards?
There, at once, he came once more to a standstill. Had Barrington got into his car and driven himself away to some night-haunt of his? Or had someone else driven him away? Driven him away, hidden him and his car somewhere until darkness had fallen that afternoon, and then driven him back to Melhuish’s door and left him there, to be found, as in effect he had been found, by some curious person?
Looked at that way, side by side—considering the improbabilities and difficulties of the second supposition, the first appeared immensely the more likely. If it were the correct one, then the sole hope of recovering the letters lay in finding out where Barrington had spent the night and the greater part of that day—questioning. Heaven knew how many people as to how he had spent his time and where he might be expected to have left behind him a bundle of letters. A pretty job to undertake. One might as well start in to look for a flea in a crowded church. Not that that or any other job would trouble one much if one could only be sure that that scratch on Barrington’s hand had nothing to do with his death or with Pickles. That was the thing that mattered. Blow the letters. The fellow was dead—probably the letters would never be heard of again.
On the other hand—that someone else who might be supposed to have driven Barrington away and brought him back again so mysteriously—who was he?
Melhuish himself? Melhuish had certainly not brought him back. He had been in his consulting-room, there could be no doubt, from two to six that afternoon, as on all other afternoons of the week save Sundays. If it was not he who had brought Barrington back, almost certainly it was not he who had driven him away. It was impossible to suppose that he would have been mad enough to enlist a confederate to do half of so desperately dangerous a job for him.
Arndale? There was no getting away from the fact that Arndale did fit into that second supposition dismayingly. On the spot at the critical moment. Pickles could probably twist him round her little finger. Just the rather weak, good-natured sort of chap that would allow himself to be persuaded into helping a woman out of a fix.
Here followed an interval during which Gore debated with himself quite unprofitably as to the motives which had induced him to behave in that weak, foolish way also. But eventually he picked up the thread of his argument once more at a point a little farther on.
Someone—some man—had come in with Barrington at twelve o’clock … who was he? Barrington must have met him on his way to his house from the Melhuishs’. Instantly Gore’s memory flashed back to the tall figure in a light-coloured raincoat which he had seen for a moment through the laurels of the Green, halted beside Barrington’s in the light of a lamp in Aberdeen Place, just after their parting. He had thought at the time that the wearer of the raincoat was Arndale, he remembered. Arndale had certainly been wearing such a coat when he and Melhuish had seen him come out from Challoner’s flat. Was Arndale, then, the man whom the cook had heard come in with Barrington, who had talked over a whisky-and-soda with him for an hour or so, and gone out with him again just before one o’clock … in the car?
Blazes … it did fit.
Gore caught just then a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror over the fireplace, and made a rueful face at it. The second supposition looked altogether too like the correct one, after all—so like it that the thumb of one of his hands, which had been rubbing the pad of his second finger thoughtfully, flicked the chances of any other supposition’s being the right one into the ewigkeit.
Footsteps rasping on the gravel of the little drive distracted him from his reverie. He glanced out through the window and saw the headlights of a large car drawn up before the gate. Mr Barrington had come
home.
CHAPTER IX
‘COLONEL GORE, sir?’ inquired the elderly chauffeur to whom he opened the hall door.
‘Yes. That Dr Melhuish’s car? Oh, there is Dr Melhuish. I’ll go down.’
Melhuish was removing the rugs which had covered the occupant of the back seats of the car during the brief journey from Aberdeen Place. He turned his head as Gore came out through the gate.
‘Mrs Barrington has got back, I hear. Have you seen her?’
‘Yes,’ Gore answered, wondering a little who had given him this piece of information. ‘I’ve persuaded her to go to her room.’
‘Good. Which floor is he to be taken to?’
‘Second.’
Melhuish considered for a moment, his eyes fixed on the headlights of a car drawn up some thirty yards away before the gates of the next house. He turned to his chauffeur.
‘Go and tell Mr Harry Kinnaird’s man I want to speak to him for a moment, Rogers, will you. He’s there, beside that car.’
The elderly Rogers—a converted coachman, obviously—turned a dogged, dubious muzzle towards the blinding beam of the headlights at the next gate.
‘I don’t think that’s Mr Kinnaird’s car, sir. His is a Daimler. That’s a Sunbeam, by the look of her.’
‘Go and do what I’ve told you to do,’ said Melhuish curtly.
‘Fearful old humbug, that chap of mine,’ he explained coldly, when the man had gone upon his errand. ‘He is constitutionally incapable of tightening a nut until he has argued for twenty minutes that it can’t possibly be loose. I’ve been trying to get rid of him for twelve months, but he simply refuses to go. We shall want a third to help us up those stairs, I think. I’m afraid I shall have to enlist your services again, Colonel, if I may. Awfully sorry to give you so much bother. But old Rogers is absolutely useless except at meal-times.’
This sudden outburst of loquacity terminated as abruptly as it had begun, and the two men waited in silence by the car, concealing the back seats from the possible curiosity of the passers-by. No one, however, paid the slightest attention to that portion of the car, which lay in an obscurity rendered still more secure by lights in front. As they waited Gore puzzled his brains in the effort to imagine how his companion had learned so extraordinarily quickly that Mrs Barrington had returned. That problem was still, however, unsolved, when the argumentative Rogers returned, accompanied by a smart, youngish man in the breeches and leggings of his calling.
