The Deductions of Colonel Gore

by Lynn Brock

  ‘Did he actually turn up for the appointment on the Promenade?’ Gore asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did she say if anyone had been with him?’

  ‘I asked her that question. She said she had seen no one waiting about for him—but that it was quite dark at the time.’

  ‘Did you make any reference at all to your having seen her in Selkirk Place on that Monday night, with the Rodney girl?’

  ‘Yes. She went there to meet Barrington. Apparently she—and, I gather, several other people—have been in the habit of meeting him there at various hours of the day and night. He was to have brought her some cocaine that night, and she waited for him from half-past eleven until just after I saw her—nearly two hours.’

  ‘Had she seen you at the gates?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Had she seen Barrington that night?’

  ‘I was afraid to ask her that question. I think not. I understood that she went home, just after I saw her at the door, without seeing him.’

  ‘Well,’ said Gore, when he had devoted some little time to an attempt to digest these communications, ‘now I suppose I had better tell you what I know, hadn’t I? Suppose we have a little drink first—or perhaps a big one is indicated. Personally, I feel slightly depressed …’

  ‘Rather curious, isn’t it,’ he said, as he let Melhuish out into the hotel grounds half an hour later, ‘that they didn’t discover any traces of poison in Frensham’s body. Or is it curious to the medical mind?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ Melhuish replied. ‘Both knives had a twelve-hours’ boiling.’

  ‘When did you do that?’

  ‘The day after one of my maids found one of them under the stand in the hall. I thought it—safer.’

  ‘Quite. Good-night, doctor. I’m glad we’ve had this chat. Looks as if we’re going to get some more snow. Remember me to Mrs Melhuish when you write, won’t you? When did you say she comes back?’

  ‘Wednesday, I hope. She’s looking forward to seeing you again, I know. Good-night. Good luck.’

  CHAPTER XXV

  THE adjourned inquest produced one fresh witness only. A disreputable-looking elderly tramp named Leech, described as of ‘no occupation,’ stated that some time between half-past six and seven o’clock on the evening of the preceding Saturday he had seen a smallish man, whom he now believed to have been the deceased, passing the Fountain at the end of the Promenade in the company of a taller man. He had been having a drink at the Fountain, he said, and had come out through the railings surrounding it just as these two men passed, going up Fountain Hill towards the Downs, and had been so close to them that he had seen both their faces distinctly. He was unable to say whether they had continued on up the hill or turned up the path branching from it towards Prospect Rock. The taller of the two men had worn a light-coloured raincoat and spoke like a gent. After they had passed he had stood in front of the Fountain for some little time, having nothing particular ‘on,’ and had then seen another man cross the road and follow slowly after the other two. He had been too far from this third man to see his face distinctly in the darkness, but he had thought at the time, ‘from him acting so funny,’ that he was following the first pair and keeping an eye on them. There were all kinds of ‘games’ carried on up there of evenings, he knew, and it was none of his business to bother his head about them. When he had smoked his pipe he had gone down Valley Road towards the river. He was unable to state precisely the hour at which he had seen the three men. Nor could he describe the appearance of any other person whom he had seen in the neighbourhood of the Fountain that evening, though he admitted that he had seen a ‘fairish few.’ He was unable to deny that he had just ‘done’ six months for assault and robbery. But he was sure that the smaller man of the two who had first passed him had been the deceased.

  He was a shifty-eyed, unsavoury-looking person, and it was clear that the coroner, at all events, attached no importance to his evidence. The jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown; and Gore was able to catch a train to take him to lunch at Cleveport.

  On Cleveport links, about half-past three that afternoon, he topped his drive from the fourteenth tee into a ditch considerably off the orthodox route to the fourteenth green, from which no man had ever been known to extract a ball with a golf-club. The plus-two cousin to whom reference has already been made, and who was at that moment four up, smiled pityingly, and said, ‘Hopeless, old chap. Have another.’

  The light was failing, and they were playing without the assistance of caddies. But Gore shouldered his bag and strode off towards the ditch with determination, and disappeared from sight into its muddy depths. The plus-two cousin surveyed the darkling landscape for some little time, and then decided to go and discover what was happening. As he approached the ditch he heard his antagonist’s voice utter a sound of inarticulate triumph.

  ‘Got it?’ he inquired, pausing.

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact,’ replied a cheerful voice from the depths, ‘I believe I have.’

  Some minutes passed and nothing happened. The plus-two cousin advanced to the edge of the ditch and looked down into it.

  ‘Thought you said you’d got the damn thing,’ he growled unsympathetically.

  ‘Oh … that,’ said Gore vaguely. ‘No. Not yet.’

  But a very few moments later he found his ball, half-buried in ooze, and hit it from that impossible lie with an iron a hundred and eighty yards dead on the pin. His third shot was the finest brassie-shot he had ever played in his life. His mashie-shot went down. He won the next four holes, and finished one up.

  The plus-two cousin was inclined to regard that iron-shot from the ditch as the devil’s own luck.

  ‘Not at all, my dear fellow,’ Gore assured him. ‘Simply a matter of self-confidence, mental balance, and staying-power. Sorry that shot demoralised you so utterly. You were really playing quite decent stuff up to that.’

  As he approached the steps of the Riverside about eleven o’clock that night, a sturdily-built man who had been loitering close to the entrance to the Cliff Railway Station came across the road and stopped him with a deprecatory ‘Beg pardon, sir, could I speak to you a minute?’

  Gore halted and surveyed his waylayer unencouragingly.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Stevens, is it? Well?’

  ‘Well, sir,’ said the man shamefacedly, ‘I expect you’ve taken it pretty bad of me having let you down over that two quid. And I’m not going to make any defence of what I did, I’ve been ashamed to come near you, sir—that’s the truth. And I’m ashamed to look you in the face now. It was the drink did it, sir—I needn’t tell you that. Drink, and having the money. I hadn’t had five bob of my own for a twelve-month before that. However, no use me making a song about it now, sir. Don’t think I’ve come to try and cadge some more money out of you. I haven’t. But I’ve got something to tell you about that chap you asked me to keep an eye on—’

  ‘What?’ demanded Gore curtly.

  ‘I know the man that killed him,’ Stevens answered coolly, ‘if that’s any use to you. I been thinking it over ever since the news came out on Saturday night, wondering if I ought to go to the police, or come to you, sir, or keep out of it altogether. Anyway, I decided this evening I’d come along and see you first, as I’d done the dirty on you over that two quid. I don’t suppose the police would believe me if I was to go and tell them that I’d practical seen Frensham gettin’ done in. Look at all the thanks that chap—what’s his name? Leech—look at all the thanks he got for his trouble. Every one laughin’ at him—’cause he was one of us chaps that’s down on our luck, sir. But it’s right enough, sir, what he said, all the same. The two chaps he saw were Frensham and this chap Richards I’m telling you of—and the chap he see following them was me.’

  ‘Richards?’ Gore repeated after a moment.

  ‘Well, I don’t suppose that’s his name, sir, but that’s what he calls hisself anyway, where he’s liv
ing, out at Hilpound. Him and his wife’s got rooms out there, sir, over an ironmonger’s shop—in Gloucester Road—right facing the police-station.’

  ‘His wife, you say?’ Gore asked sharply.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s she like? What colour’s her hair?’

  ‘Sort of red, sir. Not ginger red—more of a copper colour like.’

  ‘Tallish? Good figure?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Does her face up a good bit, I’d say. A showy piece altogether, sir.’

  Gore turned towards the Riverside’s steps.

  ‘I believe I’m good for another quid, Stevens, if it’s any use to you.’

  ‘Use, sir—’ said the man ravenously.

  ‘Just come along then, will you.’

  In the light of Gore’s sitting-room it was manifest that Stevens had been having, as he admitted, a rough time of it lately. He declined with a rueful grin the whisky of which he appeared in need, but munched some biscuits greedily—the first food, he said, that he had tasted that day. Following his adventures at the Excelsior Hotel, where he owned to having embarked upon a lurid ‘bust’ in the course of which he had no doubt ‘opened his mouth’ unwisely as to the source of his brief opulence, he had made his way on foot to Chippenham, where he had hoped, according to his own account, to borrow from some relatives living there two pounds wherewith to repay his benefactor. Disappointed in that virtuous hope, he had gone to Bath, and had there obtained employment for some days on the making of a new road. That job closing down, he had returned to Westmouth with a few shillings in his pocket and, discovering that Frensham was still staying at the Excelsior, had set himself to watch his movements in the hope that they might still be of interest to Gore. His account of himself for the hours between five and nine o’clock on the evening of the preceding Saturday was circumstantial.

  From his hiding-place in the archway in Purley Square he had seen a tall man in a light-coloured coat go into the Excelsior, come out again immediately with Frensham, and go off with him towards Old Cut Road. Following them, he had seen them both enter a cottage in a lane off Old Cut Road—Gore remembered that lane—and had waited behind some coal-carts until they had come out again.

  ‘See anyone pass while you were hiding behind those coal-carts?’ Gore asked.

  ‘Yes, sir. An old bloke in a trilby hat went by. Funny-looking old chap. Bit queer in the head, I think he was. I see him afterwards running and the people shouting after him. Why, sir?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing,’ said Gore hastily. ‘Carry on.’

  ‘Well, sir, they stayed in that little house for about twenty minutes. It was a place I’d seen Frensham go into before, but never with the tall chap. I never see him before that. They went up into Spring Road, me following behind, and Frensham got into a tram there and went into the city, and I chanced my arm, and went in with him, on the roof. I had ninepence left, so I thought I’d risk a penny of it. The tall chap went off the other way, walking—towards the Suspension Bridge. Frensham got off at Sunderland Bridge, and I followed him to a booking-office in Parr Street. Then he got on a bus, and I blew another thruppence following him out here to the top of Linwood Park Road. The bus was pretty crowded, but after a bit he spotted me, and came back and sat down beside me. “Hallo,” he says, “you’re back, are you? Well, how’s all your friends up this way?” “Nicely,” I says. “I’m just going to drop in for afternoon tea with some of them.” He laughed at that. “Yes,” he says, “you look as if you could do with another bit of kindness.” After that a lady came and forced in between us, so we said no more to one another. When he got out at the top of Linwood Park Road, I went on in the bus to the limit, and then nipped across the Gardens, and came out on the Promenade just a bit behind him. It was easy there, sir—on account of the big trees. But any way he never looked behind him once that I could see all the way along the Promenade. At the far end of the Promenade, a bit short of the Fountain, he met a woman and stopped to speak to her for a bit. Two little dogs she had, this woman I’m telling you of, sir. I crossed the road and sat down on a seat to wait until they’d finished talking, and I was too far off to see the woman with the dogs properly, to tell you what she was like. But whoever she was, I said to myself when I read the papers afterwards, it was her wrote that letter asking Frensham to meet her. What would you say, sir? Her meeting him just near the Fountain, and having them dogs, and all? Likely as not, she was in it with this chap Richards. Least that’s what I think, sir.’

  ‘Let’s get on to him,’ said Gore. ‘I’m waiting to hear where he comes in again.’

  ‘He come in when Frensham left the woman with the dogs, sir—that’s where he come in again. He come along the side of the Promenade I was sitting on, and stood looking across the road until Frensham left the woman. I twigged him at once. You couldn’t mistake him, ’cause he was such a tall, big-made chap, and you’d see the coat he had on half a mile off in the dark. Says I, I’ve seen you before, my lad, this evening. So I just sat tight on my seat and looked ornery. Then when the tall chap see Frensham going on, he crossed the road, putting on a bit of a spurt, and caught him up just before he reached the Fountain. By that time, of course, I’d got moving too, sir. But I had to go careful there, ’cause of the big lights in the centre of the cross-roads. I see a chap there, standing by the Fountain, looking at me, as I went by. I reckon, now, it was that chap Leech that give evidence this morning, sir.’

  ‘Possibly. Carry on.’

  ‘Well, sir, as you know, I suppose, the footpath that goes to Prospect Rock twists off to your left as you go up Fountain Hill. When I see Frensham and the tall chap taking off along the path, I was in a bit of a fix. Because it’s so narrow and twisting along that path you couldn’t tell when you mightn’t turn a corner and run bang into them. So I thought I’d just cut on ahead of them through the bushes to the top of the path—where it comes out on to the Downs again—and find a bit of cover and wait for them to come along. Not that I thought, then, there was anything up. But somehow, I don’t know how it was, sir, once I got following Frensham so far, I got sort of keen, if you can understand, sir, not to let him go if I could hold on to him.’

  ‘I can understand,’ said Gore. ‘Carry on, Stevens.’

  ‘Well, I went on ahead, then, sir, pretty smart. It’s rough going there, over the rocks, and in amongst them bushes—but many’s the night I’ve slept out just there, sir—I know it well. I made for a place among the bushes where I knew I could make myself comfortable and see anyone coming out at the top of the path on to the Downs. And when I’d been there, perhaps—well, getting on to seven or eight minutes, sir—not longer—I see the tall chap coming along by himself, going at a tidy pace, and making across the grass towards Blackbrothers Hill direction. “Hallo,” I says to myself, “where’s the little ’un got to?” So when the tall chap had got well away, I went down the path, looking out for Frensham. But of course I see no sign of him. I went as far as where the path comes out into Fountain Hill again, and then I thought to myself, well, I’ve lost him for now. I’ll follow the big fellow and see where he goes. So I doubled back up the hill and across the grass, and about half-way to Blackbrothers Hill I see my friend in the white coat again all right, going hell for leather. “Making for the tram,” I says to myself. “Another tuppence or thruppence gone west.” Sure enough, he got on the tram at Blackbrothers Hill, and went down to Sunderland Bridge. There I see him gettin’ on a Hilpound car. “Blimey,” I says to myself, “here goes my bed for tonight.” And so it did, sir, for he went all the way to Hilpound, and that’s a thruppenny fare. He got off just before where the trams stop, at the near end of Gloucester Road, and I see him going into this house over an ironmonger’s shop—Liversedge is the name over the shop, sir—there’s a hall door beside the shop, and he let himself in with a key. Of course I couldn’t tell then, sir, whether he was going to stay there all night or how long he was going to stay there. But anyhow I hung about on chance—about an hour and a half it
was, before I see him come out again, and got on a tram going into the city. ’Course all I could do, sir, was kiss him good-bye, the bank being broke. However, as I’d come so far, I thought I might as well try to find out if he lived there in that house, and perhaps what his name was. So I went up to the door and knocked—there was an “Apartments” card in the fanlight, you see, sir—and asked if they had any rooms to let. The old dame as opened the door looked at me pretty queer, ’cause of me not being what you might call exactly flush-looking. However, I kidded her I was working at a big garage I see in Gloucester Road, and she took me up and showed me some rooms at the top of the house. ’Course I said I was nervous about being at the top of the house ’count of fires. So, as we were coming down the stairs again, a piece with this copper sort of hair I told you of, sir, come out on to the landing to give the old lady some money—the rent it must have been, I expect. “Oh, thank you, Mrs Richards,” said the old dame. “I hopes as your husband enjoyed his tea. He had to go away again very soon, this evening.” “Yes,” says the other one—the young one, “he had to go back to his work. Isn’t it a nuisance? I’ll have to go to the pictures by myself this evening.” “’Nuff said,” I says to myself. So I tells the old lady I was sorry, and cleared out. ’Course I had to walk back into the city, so when I got in the boys were calling out about the murder. Fair knocked me out, that did. If I’d have stopped to look, when I went back along the path looking out for Frensham that time, I expect I might have seen the blood on the ground, dark and all as it was.’

  ‘Where did you sleep that night, Stevens?’ Gore asked.

  The man grinned.

  ‘Well, I was lucky that night, sir, as it happened. A watchman in Coronation Road let me doss by his fire. None too dusty that, sir—with a bit of sacking for your head. Wish I was sure of it for tonight.’

  Gore smiled.

  ‘I think we may be able to do a bit better than that for you tonight. Now, look here … I want you to tell me exactly how many people you’ve told this yarn of yours to—and who they are.’