by Lynn Brock
‘Well?’
It seemed useless to fence about that point any longer.
‘Yes,’ Gore said, most unwillingly, ‘that, I own, was my idea too.’
‘Was?’
‘Is, then.’
Gore sat back in his chair.
‘I wish to God I had never sent your wife the infernal things,’ he said with sincerity. ‘I’m glad to see, at any rate, that you’ve taken them from your hall—’
‘One of them,’ Melhuish said gravely. ‘Someone else took the other from my hall … this afternoon. That is why I have ventured to make to you—whom I hardly know—a confidence which places my professional reputation in your hands. I am not going into my reasons—now—for making that confidence. I will say, simply, that I want to be prepared … and to prepare you … for a contingency the nature of which you realise, I have no doubt whatever, as clearly as I do.’
‘Someone else removed one of them,’ Gore repeated at length. ‘Who?’
‘That I cannot say … with certainty. I can only tell you that at five o’clock this afternoon, Clegg—my man—pointed out to me that one of the knives had been taken from the wall … the second time that one of them has disappeared, as of course Clegg knows. A considerable number of patients passed in and out of the hall this afternoon. Various people called to inquire for my wife. My wife’s bedroom is being done up while she is away. The men were in and out all day up to four o’clock. I suppose about thirty people, besides my own servants, were in the hall between two o’clock and five.’
Deliberately, without the slightest doubt, Gore noticed at once, he had omitted to recall Arndale’s visit in reference to the engagement of the Kinnairds’ chauffeur. There was nothing to conceal from this cold-blooded, cold-brained Northerner. The fat was in the fire with a vengeance—
‘Which knife was taken?’ he asked. ‘The one with a sheath … or the one without?’
‘The one without a sheath.’
‘The one,’ Gore risked hardily, ‘which you found in Barrington’s pocket … or in Barrington’s car … that afternoon?’
‘No. I didn’t find it that afternoon,’ Melhuish said quickly and plainly in some surprise. ‘Nor did I find it in Barrington’s pocket … nor in his car. I found it close to the gates over there leading into the hotel grounds, the night before. Monday night wasn’t it … the 6th? Yes. I found it on Monday night—just before I met you by the letter-box in Selkirk Place. I looked about for the sheath but couldn’t—’
He checked himself as Clegg entered the room.
‘A cigarette, Colonel?’
‘Nurse Scott has rung up, sir, to say that Mrs Brook is very bad. She wants to know if you can go to Foster Place at once. I told her you were at dinner, sir—’
Melhuish looked at his watch, then at his guest.
‘Will you forgive me? It is the poor girl who—’
‘Yes, yes. Of course, doctor,’ Gore said hurriedly. ‘Please don’t delay a second on my account—’
Melhuish hastened away to the telephone, returned to find Clegg aiding Gore into his overcoat in the hall.
‘Most extraordinary thing I ever heard of, sir,’ the man was saying. ‘I saw them both there with my own two eyes at lunchtime, both of them—’
‘I go out the back way,’ Melhuish interrupted, holding out his hand. ‘It would take me too long to walk to Foster Place. Again a thousand apologies. May I run in and see you one evening?’
‘Do.’
As he returned to the Riverside, retracing step by step the route he had followed on that Monday night, Gore paused to look back through the laurels of the Green towards the lamp in Aberdeen Place beneath which he had seen Barrington for the last time alive. He was actually thinking that it was quite within the range of probability that he might find himself compelled to state, on oath, his belief as to the identity of the man whom he had seen standing there that night with Barrington in the light of the lamp, when that possibility was brought home to him with a rather startling unexpectedness. A policeman emerged from the gates of the Riverside’s grounds as he neared them, glanced at him sharply as he went by, and then, perceiving that he was about to enter the grounds, turned and followed him.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ he asked, civilly, ‘do you happen to be Colonel Gore?’
‘Yes, I am Colonel Gore.’
‘Sergeant Long and I are making some inquiries respecting a man called Richard Frensham, sir. They told us at the hotel that you were dining at Number 33 Aberdeen Place. I was just stepping across there to ask you if you’d see the sergeant. He’s waiting in your rooms, sir. Seeing you in evening dress, I thought you might be Colonel Gore, so I stopped you.’
The man accompanied Gore to his sitting-room, where his superior, who had been seated at the writing-table, rose at their entry.
‘Hope you’ll excuse me using your table, sir. I was just jotting down some notes. I am Sergeant Long of the Westmouth City Police. I have received instructions to obtain from you any information you can give us concerning a man named Richard Frensham. I don’t know if you are aware, sir, that a man of that name was found dead this evening in the quarry below Prospect Rock?’
‘Yes. I have just seen the account in the evening papers. I’m afraid, though, that I haven’t a great deal of information to give you about the poor man, sergeant. I met Mr Frensham on two occasions only—the first time at the house of a Mrs Barrington who lives here in Linwood—’
The sergeant had picked up a little notebook from the writing-table.
‘Address, sir, please, and date?’
‘27 Hatfield Place. The date—Friday, November the 10th.’
‘Thank you, sir. And the second occasion?’
‘At the Excelsior Hotel, on Monday, November 13th.’
Sergeant Long required to make no note of that second meeting, for the reason that he already had one.
‘Yes, sir. I’ve got that. They told us at the Excelsior Hotel that a Colonel Gore had been there by appointment over the telephone to see Frensham on the afternoon of November 13th. Finding that a Colonel Gore was staying here at the Riverside, I concluded it was the same.’
‘Sounds very simple,’ thought Gore. ‘Pretty quick, all the same … for a provincial police-sergeant.’
Aloud he said: ‘Those are the only two occasions on which I met Mr Frensham.’
‘Might I ask, sir, what your relations were with him? Business dealings … or what?’
‘He was, I understand, a friend of Mr Barrington’s. After Mr Barrington’s death, which took place a couple of weeks ago, he offered to assist Mrs Barrington in arranging her husband’s affairs.’
‘What was Mr Barrington’s occupation?’
‘So far as I know, he had none. I myself only returned to England a few weeks ago—so that, naturally, my knowledge of the affairs of people living here in Linwood is rather limited … However, I believe I am right in saying that Mr Barrington had private means. Mrs Barrington is a very old friend of mine … I happened to be at her house one day when Mr Frensham called. That was how I made his acquaintance. I went down to see him at the Excelsior Hotel on November the 13th to get some information from him for Mrs Barrington about some business matters which he was looking into for her.’
‘Can you give us any information as to Frensham’s occupation or business, Colonel?’
‘I’m afraid not. I rather think Mrs Barrington told me he came from London. I gathered from his own conversation that he had travelled a great deal. But beyond that, as I say, I really know next to nothing about him.’
‘From what you saw of him, can you say if you know of any reason why he should have committed suicide?’
‘No. He seemed quite a cheerful little man.’
‘From what you saw of him, or from his conversation, did you form the conclusion that he went in fear of anyone—I mean, in fear of personal violence or molestation from any person?’
‘No. I shouldn’t have said so at all. I noticed
that the report in the Mail suggested that his fall had not been accidental. It said something about a knife having been found—’
Sergeant Long compressed his lips beneath his heavy moustache.
‘It was no accident, Colonel. He was stabbed in three places. It’s an ugly business, this. I saw the knife myself, sir. A nasty little affair. I’d say it was a black man’s or a yellow man’s knife, myself. I saw a knife once something just like it with a stoker I had to take off a West African cargo boat down in St Paul’s Dock a bit before the war. A native knife of some sort that was—the chap had got it from a nigger, he told us. You been in Africa yourself, Colonel, I hear?’
‘Yes, I was there for a couple of years.’
The sergeant’s steady brown eyes surveyed his face exhaustively—rested, Gore felt pretty certain, on the now nearly-healed but still conspicuous cut on his chin.
‘Well, there’s nothing more you can tell us about Frensham, is there, sir?’
‘Nothing, I’m afraid.’
‘Then I needn’t take up any more of your time, Colonel. Sorry to have had to trouble you. People don’t like us coming bothering them with questions, of course. However, that’s our job, sir. We’ve got to leave no stone unturned in a serious case like this.’
‘I quite understand, sergeant. Only sorry I can’t be of more assistance to you.’
‘Good-night, sir.’
The two large, well-drilled men saluted smartly and departed. Gore listened until their heavy footsteps had died away towards the hall. Then he crossed to the writing-table, and, picking up the little beaded sheath which lay still where he had left it before going out, on some unanswered letters beside the blotting-pad, contemplated it with grim amusement. It had lain there under Sergeant Long’s no doubt observant eyes while he had jotted down those notes of his. Those no doubt observant eyes had seen … and remembered … a knife ‘something just like’ the knife that belonged to that sheath. Had they seen also … and remembered also … a sheath something just like that sheath? If they had, would Sergeant Long not have said so? Or would he—?
‘I wonder,’ said Gore.
He seated himself by the fire to follow, step by step, the progress of an imaginary Sergeant Long, possessed … for the sake of argument … of intelligence, knowledge, and observation … well, say, equal to his own. This supposed Sergeant Long, having learned at the Excelsior Hotel that a Colonel Gore had called there on the afternoon of November the 13th to see Frensham, ascertained that Colonel Gore was staying at the Riverside Hotel in Linwood, went there, and made some inquiries about him. From the manager and the staff of the hotel he learned that on the evening of November 13th Colonel Gore had returned to the hotel with a badly cut chin. This supposed Sergeant Long then went into Colonel Gore’s sitting-room and saw there on a writing-table a sheath which was ‘something just like’ a sheath he had seen with a stoker off a West African cargo boat—the sheath of a native knife. He knew, did this observant Sergeant Long, that the knife with which Frensham had been stabbed, was a knife ‘something just like’ the knife which had belonged to that sheath which (supposedly) he had seen with that stoker. He had found out, also, had this clever Sergeant Long, that Colonel Gore had just returned from Africa. Now, supposing all that, what more would Sergeant Long have been likely to want to know?
His first question, surely, would have been … almost certainly, ‘When and where did you last see Richard Frensham?’
His next: ‘Where were you between the hours of six and seven o’clock this afternoon?’
His next: ‘Can you produce any evidence—any person who saw you, to prove exactly where on Linwood Down you were at a quarter to seven?’
His next, probably: ‘Did you have a quarrel with Frensham on the afternoon of November 13th, and’ (perhaps) ‘another quarrel with him on the evening of November 17th?’
His next: ‘Where is the knife belonging to this knife-sheath which I find here on the writing-table in your sitting-room?’
And his next, probably: ‘Will you accompany me to the Central Police Station?’
Surely no conceivable police-sergeant, knowing what that imaginary Sergeant Long was supposed to know, could find it in his heart to salute respectfully and go on his way with a benign ‘Good-evening.’
And yet … how easy it might have been for Sergeant Long to make his way to that blunder. And how deucedly awkward if he had made his way to it … or should make his way to it …
Suppose one were asked at the inquest to answer—on oath—the questions: ‘When you last saw Frensham, was he alone?’ and ‘Who was the tall man in a light-coloured raincoat with whom you say you last saw him in Old Cut Road about half-past five on the afternoon of November 18th?’
What could one do? One would have to tell the truth …
Not that Arndale didn’t deserve anything that was coming to him. But one didn’t want to be the person who, practically, put a rope about his neck …
Besides, Arndale was the sort of chap who’d go to pieces when he saw the game was up. Ten to one he’d own up to having done Barrington in also. If he did that … Pickles couldn’t be kept out of it …
Yes. A great deal depended upon Sergeant Long. A stolid, rather good-looking, ruddy-skinned big fellow—quiet, even gentle of manner … kindly of smile … But Gore had been too long a regimental officer to place any undue reliance upon the simplicity of those stolid, straightforward looking British façades.
He abandoned the strong temptation to consign the knife-sheath to his sitting-room fire and so get rid of it for good and all, and went into his bedroom to lock it up in the suit-case in which he kept possessions of special privacy and importance. Catching sight of his sheaf of graphs, as he was about to shut up the suit-case again, the thought occurred to him that one of them, at least, could now be brought to a full-stop at a final negative certainty. His suspicion of Arndale was a belief that was almost certainty, it was true; yet, after all, it was not certainty. But if he had ever been certain of anything in his life, he was certain now, he told himself, that Frensham had not had any hand in Barrington’s death.
He picked up the bundle of diagrams and glanced at the key-sheet, pinned to the front, on which the number of each graph was set opposite the initials of the person to whom the graph referred. Number 7 was F.’s graph, and Gore was about to turn it up and complete it when his eyes fell on the initials facing the number 15. A. H … Weren’t those the initials given in the newspaper reports—the initials signing that letter that threw an important light …?
There had been a run on the papers that evening, apparently, for it was nearly a quarter of an hour later when at length Percival succeeded in procuring a copy of the Evening Mail for him. His recollection, he found, however, had been quite accurate. The initials of the writer of that important and illuminating letter were A. H.
He returned to his chair by the fire and—not for the first time, as will be remembered—informed the hearth-rug that he was damned.
CHAPTER XXI
‘THE discovery on Saturday evening last,’ said the Westmouth Times and Courier of Tuesday, November 21st, ‘of the dead body of a man lying amongst the rocks in a disused quarry at the foot of the cliffs on the south-west edge of Linwood Down, was the subject of an inquiry held yesterday at the City Coroner’s Court.
‘The deceased was Richard Frensham, age, occupation, and permanent place of residence unknown. The circumstances of the tragedy, which had excited widespread attention, presented certain grave features, for the further investigation of which the police applied for and obtained an adjournment of the inquiry.
‘Mrs Margaret Rummer, proprietress of the Excelsior Hotel, Purley Square, identified the body of Frensham, who, she thought, was about forty-five years of age and had frequently stayed at the Excelsior. She did not know what his occupation was, but thought he was a racing man. He was out a great deal, often from early morning until late at night. He had engaged a bedroom at the hotel on October 24th, a
nd had slept in it every night since that date until the night of Saturday last. She did not know if he had any particular friends, but he was a jolly, friendly little man, ready to chat with anyone in the bar or about the house. He appeared to have plenty of money, and to be lucky backing horses. He appeared to be in the habit of carrying a good deal of money about with him. He had won a good deal of money, he had told her, on a horse called Step-Out on Friday last. He had had ten pounds on the horse, he had told her, and it had won at 16 to 1. She saw him in the hall of the hotel some time about five o’clock or a little later on last Saturday afternoon. He was fidgeting about. She thought he was expecting someone. That was the last time she saw him alive. He always paid his bill regularly. He paid in cash. She had never known him pay by cheque, nor seen him with a cheque-book. She always considered him a most respectable, civil man. He had never told her of any permanent address. She thought he came from Birmingham by his accent and by his knowing Birmingham so well.
‘James MacMillan, quarryman, said, on Saturday evening last about seven o’clock he was returning by the track along the river with William Bishop to Westmouth from Digglesbury, where they were both in employment. Passing under Prospect Rock they heard a cry which seemed to come from the cliffs above their heads, and then a kind of smack against the ground in the old quarry under the rock. Thinking someone had fallen, he and his mate went into the quarry and had a look about, but saw nothing, and went on towards Westmouth.
‘William Bishop, quarryman, corroborated the evidence of the preceding witness.
‘William Edward Rose, quarryman, said he was returning on Saturday evening from Digglesbury to Westmouth a little way behind Bishop and MacMillan. He heard a cry or shout from the top of the cliffs near Prospect Rock, and, seeing MacMillan and Bishop coming out of the old quarry called out to them to ask them if anyone had fallen. They did not hear him, and went on towards Westmouth. He decided to have a look for himself, to see if anyone had fallen, and after searching about for a little while found the dead man’s body jammed between two large boulders with its feet in the air. He ran after MacMillan and Bishop, and all three went to the police-station in Spring Road and informed the police of what they had heard and seen. He was certain the man was dead when he found him, though he did not touch him. He struck some matches and saw that his head was split clean open and his brains coming out. He was bleeding a lot. He looked up towards Prospect Rock from the quarry before he went after MacMillan and Bishop, but could not tell from the quarry whether there was anyone up there, as the cliff bulged out and it was then black dark.
