by Lynn Brock
‘It weren’t Mr Harry Kinnaird’s car, sir,’ said Rogers in morose triumph. ‘It’s Judge Thornton’s car. I knew it were a Sunbeam. I could tell it weren’t a Daimler, anyways.’
Melhuish, ignoring his difficult retainer absolutely, addressed himself to his companion.
‘I wonder if you’d mind very much giving us a hand for a moment or two. We want to carry poor Mr Barrington in and get him upstairs. I’m sure Mr Kinnaird will not make the least difficulty. I’ll go in and explain to him presently.’
‘Mr and Mrs Kinnaird are away, sir,’ said the man civilly. ‘They went to the south of France the day before yesterday. But, of course, I shall be only too pleased to do anything, doctor.’
His glance weighed Gore’s figure quickly and approvingly.
‘I think this gentleman and I can manage all right.’
The parlourmaid, carrying a hot-water bottle in either hand, met the cortege in the hall, but retreated discreetly before it up the stairs at a gesture from Melhuish. She alone of the household witnessed the curious indignity of its master’s ascent of the stairs. She stood, a mute, accusing sentinel, before a closed door, and watched his passage unblinkingly, bestowing upon Mr Kinnaird’s chauffeur a bleak smile of recognition, her fingers assuring themselves of the propriety of the spruce cuffs which, together with cap and apron, she had assumed since her mistress’s return. Noting these additions to her attire abstractedly as he went by her, Gore concluded that she had probably thought better of her decision to depart. Vaguely, for Mrs Barrington’s sake, he hoped that she had, since she appeared a decent, sensible sort of woman despite her grumpiness. Little did he think then that those tight, straight lips of hers were to utter the one word that was to solve the riddle of her master’s death.
But at that moment his attention was absorbed by the discovery, revealed as soon as they had entered the lighted hall, that the mud-stains on Barrington’s clothes had disappeared. Melhuish, who had ascended the stairs in advance, carried the dead man’s hat. So that it was not until they reached the bedroom where he awaited them that Gore perceived that it, too, had been brushed clean. There another still more significant fact leaped to his eyes, as the body was laid on the bed. The wrist-watch had disappeared.
Not a flicker of an eyelid, however, betrayed the sharp alarm that stabbed him like a knife at this confirmation of his worst fears. Nerves and brain that had acted like lightning in all the tight places of forty-two years, acted like lightning in this one. Melhuish meant to put up a cold bluff. Very well. There was just one thing to do: sit tight and let him get on with it.
He straightened himself and looked at his watch.
‘Well, it seems rather a heartless sort of thing to think about, doctor, but I’m supposed to dine with the Wellmores at eight. By the time I get back and change—’
Melhuish nodded.
‘Thanks very much. I’ll look after things here.’ He nodded too, pleasantly, to the chauffeur, who stood by the door, awaiting his dismissal. ‘That’s all, thank you. Much obliged.’
‘Not at all, sir,’ said the man civilly. ‘Though it’s the last job I ever hoped to do for poor Mr Barrington. He died very suddenly, doctor?’
‘Yes. Very suddenly. But he had had a long warning.’
‘Heart-disease, sir, hadn’t he? He used to tell me that his heart kept him awake at night a lot.’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘Good-afternoon, doctor.’
He saluted smartly and left the room a little behind Gore, who had taken leave of Melhuish with a nod and a smile. Gore waited for him in the hall, under pretence of surveying himself in the mirror there.
‘Er … you used to look after Mr Barrington’s car for him, I think?’
The man, who had been about to pass on with a smiling ‘Good-afternoon, sir,’ stopped.
‘Yes, sir. I used to clean it for him and do small odd jobs. Mr Kinnaird allowed me to do it in my spare time.’
‘Yes. So I understand. Er … Mr Barrington used his car a good deal at night, didn’t he?’
‘Well, yes, sir, he did a good deal, I believe.’
‘Have you any idea where he used to put it up when he took it out at night?’
The chauffeur stared, obviously puzzled as to the purport of this interrogatory.
‘Well, no, sir. I can’t say that I have. I used to hear him taking it out late at night—our garage is the next to his, you see, sir, in the lane at the back. And sleeping there, of course I’ve heard him often going out at night in his car. But—no—I’ve no idea where he used to take it.’
‘I see.’
‘I shall be very sorry for my own sake that he’s gone, sir. It’ll mean a big loss to me. Especially now when I’ve been docked of half my wages for perhaps three or four months to come.’
‘How’s that?’ Gore inquired, as they went down the drive.
‘Oh, well—you see, sir—Mr Kinnaird may be a millionaire, and I believe he is, but he’s a precious tight ’un with the money—’
‘Only those that haven’t got it aren’t,’ smiled Gore.
‘I agree, sir. Still, it’s a bit thick cutting thirty shillings a week off your chauffeur’s wages when you’re spending perhaps a hundred a week or more in the south of France. Now, isn’t it, sir? Yes, I’ll miss poor Mr Barrington’s quid a week badly. I heard his car going out last night about one o’clock. I little thought it would be the last time I’d hear him going out with it.’
‘Well, well,’ said Gore, ‘it’s a difficult world. You never know what’s round the corner, do you?’
The chauffeur smiled.
‘Shouldn’t mind that so much, sir, if there weren’t such a lot of corners.’
The hall door of Number 27 opened, and the parlourmaid came out hurriedly on to the steps to peer towards the gates.
‘Is that you, Fred?’ she decided to call out. ‘The doctor wants to know if you’d leave a note for him at Coggan’s—the undertakers—you know? In Victoria Street. It’s in a hurry. He didn’t know that I was the only one in the house except the mistress—’
‘Certainly,’ said the man obligingly, and touched his cap to Gore as he turned away. ‘If you should happen to know of anyone who wants a man, sir, I’ve driven most kinds of cars. Had six months in shops. Perhaps you’d remember my name, sir—Thomson? …’
Gore promised to remember, and went off towards the Riverside hurriedly. He glanced at his watch. Just comfortable time. For the first time for two hours he realised that his shin was aching like the devil.
CHAPTER X
AT twenty-five minutes past ten on the following morning he was standing at the door leading out into the Riverside’s gardens from the annexe, watching his friend the page-boy perambulating two yapping and beribboned Pekinese in a drizzle that threatened to develop speedily into a downpour. Would he or would he not go? It was true that Melhuish would be out on his rounds, but he might easily learn that Colonel Gore had called again to see Mrs Melhuish. Two visits in less than twenty-four hours—he might well begin to wonder what the unduly sociable Colonel Gore was up to—even if he didn’t know. If he did know—and Gore had awakened that morning with very little doubt upon the point—well … the situation was even more uncomfortable.
So far as Gore could judge, now, what had happened was this. On that Monday night Arndale had met Barrington in Aberdeen Place at—say—a quarter to twelve, had gone with him to his house in Hatfield Place, remained there until nearly one o’clock, and then gone out with him in his car. So much seemed beyond doubt. Conjecture supposed that they had parted then, but that Arndale had somehow guessed or known where his companion was going. Quite probably Pickles herself had supplied the information, suspecting that Barrington might attempt the very trick which, in fact, he had attempted, and thinking it advisable to have a powerfully-built and devoted admirer handy in case of such need. Arndale, then, had followed Barrington to Aberdeen Place, and had been waiting outside when Barrington had come out. There
had been a quarrel. Barrington, the smaller of the two men, had taken the knife from his pocket—perhaps for purposes of intimidation rather than with any intention of actually using it. There had been a struggle for it, and somehow the blasted thing had scraped Barrington’s hand. Probably it was the fact that Barrington had died of heart-disease. Shock—fear—violent exertion—any of these might have proved the last straw. If he had begun to scream, for instance, Arndale might have stunned him to unconsciousness; but there would, almost certainly, have remained some tell-tale evidence of the heavy blow necessary to produce that result. No. Barrington’s heart had killed him.
Realising that he was dead, what would Arndale have been likely to do?
His first instinct, naturally, would be to clear off and leave the beggar lying there. But then there was that scratch on his hand to think about. He would say to himself: ‘They’ll examine that scratch. They’ll find out that it has been made by some poisoned weapon or something. They may find out quite easily that a poisoned knife had been taken from the Melhuishs’ hall. They’ll find Barrington with his car here, a little way from the Melhuishs’ house. They’ll get on to the Melhuishs’. Pickles will give the show away in the end and admit that Barrington was there with her, and that I was waiting outside for him.’ Having thought all that—probably with someone else’s assistance—though Cecil Arndale had always been quite capable of thinking very prudently and quickly where his own safety or comfort had been concerned, Gore remembered—he had picked Barrington up, out of the mud, put him into his car, and driven him away—
At that point there was a break in the story. It was difficult to imagine where the car and its dead owner had remained hidden all that night and the greater part of Tuesday. Difficult—but not impossible. It was simply a question of supposing Arndale to have known of a place where they might be safely hidden.
Well, then, as soon as darkness had fallen on Tuesday he had driven Barrington back to Aberdeen Place and left him there. Quite an excellent idea, that, to leave him at the door of the doctor who had been attending him—as Arndale could hardly have avoided knowing—for heart-disease, and who would be prudent enough not to draw awkward attention to a scratch on one of his hands. Why? Because the doctor, also, knew how Barrington had come by it.
That seemed to Gore an inevitable conclusion. Melhuish had had a hand in the business. Melhuish knew that Arndale had had that scrimmage with Barrington—had come out, say, four or five minutes after Barrington had left his wife, and had seen the two men struggling and Barrington fall. Either he had known before he came out, or he had learned from Arndale when he came out, that Barrington had been with his wife. Arndale, Gore felt pretty sure, would give Pickles away without hesitation if it came to explaining the very awkward position in which Melhuish had found him then. But it seemed much more likely that Melhuish knew all about Barrington’s visit to his wife that night before he came out. It was too curious a coincidence altogether that he should have followed Barrington out so quickly.
Wait, though—he had been called out by a Mrs MacArthur. Well, he might have known and have been called out.
Melhuish, then, had helped Arndale, probably, to decide upon the plan which had been adopted, on the understanding that he himself would manage all the rest if Arndale got the body back, next day after dark, to his hall door, or so close to it that he would certainly be the doctor to be called out to it by whoever found it. Arndale had driven the car away. Melhuish had gone off to the small boy with gastritis.
The story halted in places—there was that awkwardness about the unknown hiding-place—it supposed extraordinary nerve and will on Melhuish’s part—nerve and will which had, no doubt, overpowered such doubts and fears as Arndale might well have felt. But, on the whole, the bits of the story fitted. And it was the only story Gore could think of, of which the bits did fit, or anything like fit.
The knife and its sheath … what about them? There, too, for instance, the story halted pretty badly. The scrimmage must have taken place in Aberdeen Place, probably near the car, which would have been drawn up against the kerb of the footpath. Even if, in the course of the encounter, Arndale, in his anger or his flurry, had thrown the knife away from him, and thrown it with such force that it had crossed the roadway of Aberdeen Place and hidden itself inside the railing at that side of the Green, no man on earth could have thrown the sheath to the place where it had been found. As he stood at the door of the annexe, Gore’s eyes measured the distance. The width of the roadway in Aberdeen Place—say, fifteen yards. The width of the strip of Green—say, twenty yards. He took the little limp, featherweight sheath from his pocket and weighed it in the palm of his hand. The page-boy had disappeared indoors. He threw it across the grass with all his force, and measured the distance of its flight as he went to retrieve it. About nineteen yards. Absolutely out of the question that anyone could have thrown it thirty or thirty-five.
Then, the knife itself? What about it?
Before breakfast that morning he had taken a mashie and two ancient golf-balls out into the grounds of the hotel, played the balls carefully over the railings into the Green, and climbed over after them. In half an hour’s energetic patrolling to and fro in the likely regions of the dank little enclosure he had found, however, nothing more lethal than a decayed corkscrew. He had made, then, an exhaustive search of the hotel grounds in the neighbourhood of the gates by which he had found the sheath, but without result. That part of the story, too, remained, then, vague.
Then, Arndale had told Challoner that he had seen Barrington’s car near the Melhuish’s door shortly after one o’clock. Would he have made any reference whatever to Barrington or his car if, only an hour or so before, he had played the part which the story supposed him to have played? Hardly. No doubt he had gone into Challoner’s flat, after disposing of the car and Barrington for the night, in order to have, afterwards, an explanation to give of his having been in the neighbourhood of Aberdeen Place at that hour on that night, suppose anyone should have happened to see him and recognise him. The last thing in the world he would think of doing would, surely, be to make any reference whatever to having seen Barrington’s car.
Stop a bit—
It was probably at that precise moment that it occurred to Gore for the first time that Challoner, too, might have had some hand in the business. Not in the actual performance of it, but in bridging that difficult gap between the time at which Barrington’s car had left Aberdeen Place on Monday night and the time at which it had returned to it on Tuesday afternoon. Challoner had a car, and, presumably, a garage for it. If he had a garage, it would almost certainly be quite near his flat—probably in that lane at the hotel end of Selkirk Place. There were plenty of garages there. And on that Monday night his car had not been in its garage; he had said that it had gone into dock on Monday afternoon with a big-end gone. On that night, that garage, a minute or so from Aberdeen Place if it was situated in the lane, had been empty.
Challoner and Arndale were brothers-in-law. Challoner’s views and feelings with regard to Barrington were clear enough. If Arndale had gone into his flat and told him his story and said: ‘I’m in a devil of a fix, Bertie. Your garage is empty,’ would Challoner have refused him the use of it?
Why … perhaps—nay, in all probability—Mrs Barrington had been there in Challoner’s rooms at the very time. There could be no doubt that she had left her house that night on account of the row of the evening—the row of which Challoner had been the cause, if the grumpy, but obviously truthful, parlourmaid was to be believed. What was the obvious—the only conclusion? She had gone to Bertie Challoner—to his flat—and had remained there. Had been there when Arndale had been there—had heard his story—had, by her very presence if not by actual words, persuaded Challoner—if he had needed any persuasion—to become his brother-in-law’s confederate in getting rid of the dangerous, hated thing that waited outside for disposal. Deserted as both Aberdeen Place and Selkirk Place both were at night, th
at conference must, for prudence sake, have been a hurried one. The less time given to Challoner to think, the more likely he would have been to act rashly. Arndale had probably obtained the key of his garage from him without the least difficulty, driven the car to it, and locked it up for the night. Then he had returned to Challoner’s flat—probably to say that there had been no hitch. It had been about twenty minutes to two or thereabouts when he had come out of Challoner’s flat again so hurriedly. Gore estimated that would allow, from the time of Barrington’s death at twenty-three minutes past one, seventeen minutes for all that had to be done. Quick work—but if there was anything certain, it was that, if the job had been done that way, it had been done quickly. Challoner’s garage must be supposed to be quite close to his flat; that was essential. If it was in that lane, the thing was as plain as a pikestaff.
Why not go and find out, now, on his way to Aberdeen Place? He looked at his watch. Half-past ten exactly. It would take perhaps five minutes to find out if Mr Challoner had a garage in the lane.
As a matter of fact it took just a minute. A shirt-sleeved young fellow hosing a van informed him at once that Mr Challoner’s garage was the first on the left from the Selkirk Place end of the lane.
Plain as pikestaff.
It has been said that Wick Gore was a very human person. As he went past the pillared gates of the Riverside’s back entrance again, he smiled grimly yet not unkindly, at the spot where he had found the sheath of the Masai knife.
