The Deductions of Colonel Gore

by Lynn Brock

  ‘If you believed that, why didn’t you get a policeman? Why did you do what you did? Why did you take him away and hide him that night and get rid of him the way you did next day? If you believed that, why were you so afraid of Frensham that you killed him, too, to silence his tongue? Why did you take the pains to get hold of a knife like the one you had used for the first job—the one that had done the first job so expeditiously? Nonsense, man. You knew—you know as well in your heart of hearts that you took Barrington’s life as you know that you took Frensham’s here … between this seat and that railing there. Mind, I don’t say you killed Barrington deliberately. I don’t believe you did.’

  ‘I’ve told you twice already that I didn’t kill him,’ Thomson said once more impatiently. ‘He got a scratch on his hand from the knife. But that couldn’t have killed him. I didn’t want to kill the blighter. Why should I? Here—as you’ve found out so much, you may as well know the lot. Barrington was to have paid me fifty pounds on the last day of October. He didn’t pay it. He kept putting me off with one excuse or another, and I wanted the money. He had promised it without fail for that Monday, and I was determined to have it. I knew he was dining at Dr Melhuish’s house that night, so I waited outside the house until he came out—with you.’

  ‘Where did you wait for him?’ Gore asked.

  ‘Down the area steps of an empty house, five or six doors from Dr Melhuish’s. We talked there for a bit under a lamp, and then he asked me to go to this house with him. I went, and we had a drink or two. He was in a hell of a temper because his missus was out, and he gave me the benefit of it. But he said that he was to get a hundred and fifty that night from Mrs Melhuish and that I should have my fifty out of it next morning. I said that wasn’t good enough, and that I’d go with him and wait for him. He changed, and went to Aberdeen Place in his car, and he told me to wait for him over by the bar at the back of the Riverside. He was to meet a friend there, he said—Frensham was the friend—and he was to come across there as soon as he’d got the money from Mrs Melhuish. I went to the door beside the bar and whistled, and Betty opened the door and asked me where Barrington was. Frensham was with her, and I spoke to them for a moment or so, and they asked me to go in and have a drink. But I wanted to keep an eye on Barrington, so I went back to Aberdeen Place again and waited at the top of the area steps of the empty house. While I was waiting there some chap came up Aberdeen Place from Albemarle Hill and stopped outside Dr Melhuish’s house. Barrington must have left the hall door open, for the chap just pushed it open and went in. After a moment he came out again, and went across into Selkirk Place.’

  ‘Any idea who he was?’ Gore asked.

  ‘No. It was too foggy then to see him clearly. He was a big fellow. I thought, when I saw him going in, that there was trouble coming to Barrington.’

  ‘Well—after that?’

  ‘After that I waited for a little while, and then I went down to Dr Melhuish’s door. It was standing open a little, and I heard Barrington—’

  ‘Don’t bother about that. I know what you heard. After a little while Barrington came out. Then, I suppose, you asked him for this money—this fifty pounds he owed you?’

  ‘Yes. He said that he had been paid by cheque, and that he couldn’t give me the money then. I knew that was a lie, and we had a row. He threatened me with that poisoned knife—’

  ‘How did you know it was poisoned?’

  ‘I heard Mrs Melhuish telling him some yarn about it—or him telling her one. I forget which. But one or other of them said it was poisoned.’

  ‘A yarn? You don’t believe it was poisoned? Now—why? Did it fail to work so expeditiously the second time you used it?’

  To that Thomson made no reply.

  ‘Where did you hide Barrington and his car that night? In your own garage, of course?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Curious what a long time it has taken me to find that out.’ Gore smiled grimly. ‘And yet I knew that Mr and Mrs Kinnaird and the family were away, and that there was no one in the house but yourself and an old housekeeper. I believe you were kind enough to supply me with that information yourself. Curious.’

  A couple of elderly men of the shopkeeper class in their Sunday clothes, followed by two puffed fat women in furs, came up the path and paused in front of the seat.

  ‘Must ’ave been travelling at some speed when ’e ’it them rocks,’ one of the men remarked, when he had looked down over the railing.

  ‘Well,’ said the other, ‘say it’s three hundred feet. A fallin’ body acquires an acceleration of, what’s it?—thirty-two feet a second, isn’t it? Well, you can work it out from that. You got to take the mean velocity for each second. Well, say ’e fell sixteen feet in the first second—thirty-two and sixty-four’s ninety-six, half of that—forty-eight feet in the second second—sixty-four an’ ninety-six’s ’undred and sixty, ’alf of that—eighty—lemme see—sixteen, forty-eight, eighty … that’s ’undred an’ forty-four … and so on. You can work it out quite simple. S’pose ’e was travellin’ a good ’undred and fifty miles an hour when ’e landed, any’ow.’

  The women, squinting at their powdered noses, made little noises of appreciation.

  ‘I never knew such a ’ead for figures as ’Enry’s got,’ said one of them. ‘I always say ’e’s wasted in the tobacconist’s business. W’ere was it they found the blood, ’Enry?’

  Henry prodded the snow in various carefully selected places. For a moment the party was thrilled by the appearance of a reddish stain beneath the ferule of his stick. Discovering, however, that it was due to a fragment of crumbled sandstone, the second man, visibly a little resentful of Henry’s head for figures, uttered a loud and derisive laugh.

  ‘Wot’s ticklin’ you now?’ demanded Henry coldly.

  ‘Me?’ said the other, smiling irritatingly at the view. ‘S’pose I can laugh if I want to, can’t I? Don’t be so touchy.’

  ‘Touchy?’ retorted Henry. ‘’Oo’s touchy?’

  ‘Now, now … don’t let us ’ave no more argy-bargyin’,’ urged Henry’s wife. ‘Kickin’ up a piblic row on Sunday mornin’—’

  The party went on their way, grumbling and slipping as they descended from the little plateau. Thomson laughed with cynical amusement.

  ‘Other people get much more value out of these little affairs, don’t they? How long more have I got to sit here?’

  ‘Not very long,’ Gore assured him.

  ‘Mind if I smoke?’

  ‘Not in the least.’

  ‘Thanks so much. Well, now you’d like to know about Frensham, I suppose.’

  ‘Before we come to that—again as a matter of curiosity—you drove Barrington’s car back the following afternoon to Aberdeen Place?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Had you any special reason for leaving it just where you left it?’

  ‘Yes, of course. If the knife had killed him … and if it were found … well, it belonged to Melhuish. If he had simply died of heart disease—there was a chance that the whole thing might blow over quietly. I knew he was to have gone to Melhuish that Tuesday afternoon about his heart. He had told me so himself, while I was with him at his house the night before.’

  ‘I see. Very carefully thought out.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I thought it out pretty carefully.’

  ‘Well, then—about Frensham? Frensham and Miss Rodney, she tells me, actually saw you and Barrington having this tussle. Did they see you putting him into the car and driving away with him?’

  ‘No, they didn’t actually see that. The car was over in Aberdeen Place. The fog was too thick to see across there from where they were. But Frensham suspected at once—in fact, he knew at once.’

  ‘So he began to threaten you. Why? In order to get money out of you?’

  ‘Yes. He knew that Barrington was to have got that hundred and fifty from Mrs Melhuish that night—and he guessed, of course, that I had it.’

  ‘You had it?’

/>   ‘Oh, yes. I had it. I have it. You’ll find it in my box—all but two quid.’

  ‘Thanks. Frensham, then, began to threaten you, because you wouldn’t give up this money. Now, let us come to last Saturday evening. You had thought out everything most carefully again, hadn’t you? You had got the knife—you had selected the place. How did you induce Frensham to come up here—to this lonely place—in the dark—with you?’

  ‘Simply promised him what he wanted—half that hundred and fifty. He thought he could bluff the lot out of me, then.’

  ‘Where did you meet him?’

  ‘Just by the Fountain.’

  ‘By arrangement?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I offered him fifty, and we argued the matter out. He didn’t know the Downs. He came up here like a lamb, arguing the whole way along. It was quite simple.’

  ‘I see. Thanks very much, Thomson. Now, first of all, I want to leave Mr Arndale out at his house across the Downs. Then you’ll drive me to Dr Melhuish’s and put up the car. After that … you are your own master. I have only one warning to give you. And that is this: if you give anyone any trouble—you understand what I mean by those words?—if you give anyone any trouble whatever—no matter what it may cost me or anyone else, I’ll hang you. Now, come along.’

  The three men went back silently along the path to the car, passing Stevens, whose disappointment at so tame an ending to the interview expressed itself in an incredulous ‘Wash out, sir?’ as the party went by in single file.

  ‘Yes, you can bung off, Stevens,’ Gore nodded. ‘I’m going across the Downs with Mr Arndale. I shall be back to lunch.’

  Arndale, who, after his first angry outburst, had preserved a moody silence, hesitated before he followed Gore into the back of the car.

  ‘What about the girl?’ he asked morosely. ‘What guarantee have we that she won’t talk?’

  ‘None whatever,’ Gore said simply, ‘except her knowledge of the consequences for herself if she does. I’ve explained them to her pretty thoroughly. And that’s really all I or anybody else can do.’

  Thomson, who had now started his engine, turned about in his seat.

  ‘How did you find her?’ he asked. ‘I should just like to know that.’

  ‘Sorry. I’m afraid you must continue wondering about that, Thomson.’

  ‘Did you find her—or did she go to you, Arndale? Tell me that.’

  ‘We found her,’ said Gore. ‘You made the job quite simple for us. Carry on.’

  It was not until they had covered nearly half a mile of the straight stretch of road skirting the cliffs at the western fringe of Linwood Down, that Arndale’s eyes turned from their dejected gaze across the gorge to look ahead with uneasiness to the sharply curving S, towards the first loop of which he car was rushing at a pace which had attracted Gore’s attention also.

  ‘Steady,’ he called out. ‘Don’t drive so fast.’

  Thomson made some inaudible response over his shoulder, and slackened speed slightly. But immediately Gore saw him open the throttle again stealthily, and they took the first bend of the S at something closer to forty miles an hour than was at all comfortable. The car executed a mighty skid in the snow, plunged back across the road, straightened, and then hurtled at headlong speed towards the low wall that guarded the road at its most dangerous turn. Arndale rose to his feet.

  ‘My God!’ he exclaimed. ‘He’ll have us over the cliffs.’ He leant forward and struck Thomson on the shoulder heavily. ‘Pull her up,’ he shouted, ‘Pull her up, you damned fool.’

  Thomson turned and laughed up into his face.

  ‘Don’t be nervous, old cock,’ he said contemptuously. ‘We’re all going home together.’

  At that Arndale, after a panic-stricken glance towards the death that was rushing to meet them, turned and scrambled over the back of the car as Gore vaulted into the vacant front seat and grabbed the wheel. For a crazy fifty yards the car swung madly from side to side of the road. A bare six feet from the wall it swung about on two wheels, performed a somersault, and then lay extraordinarily still. A solitary figure, half a mile away across the snow, took off his hat and began to run, his dog barking joyously at his heels.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  ON the morning of the following Thursday, when Mrs Melhuish and Mrs Arndale called at the Riverside with a large quantity of chrysanthemums and solicitous inquiries for Colonel Gore, a stolid-visaged person who stated that he was the colonel’s man, took them over from Percival outside his master’s door peremptorily. The colonel was up that morning for the first time, he explained, and not quite dressed. The two ladies, however, declared that that didn’t matter in the least, and, though with obvious misgivings as to the propriety of the proceedings, he admitted them to the invalid’s sitting-room.

  There they found Colonel Gore seated at his writing-table in a dressing-gown which he drew about him rather hurriedly upon their appearance, with a plaster-of-Paris-encased leg cocked up on an adjoining chair. When he had thanked them for their flowers, learned that Mrs Melhuish felt almost quite herself again, and that Mrs Arndale’s husband’s leg was progressing as satisfactorily as he assured them his own was, Mrs Melhuish bent with knitted brows to inspect a curious-looking diagram upon which he had apparently been working at the moment of their entry and which is here reproduced for the reader’s edification.

  Mrs Melhuish, it has to be admitted, could make nothing of this document. Mrs Arndale said it reminded her of the performance of a what-do-you-call-it—not a barometer—but the other thing. Colonel Gore refused, with some trifling embarrassment, to explain it, and diverted the conversation to the chrysanthemums again.

  Then for a little time they discussed the accident on the preceding Sunday morning. Mrs Melhuish couldn’t understand it. She had often noticed the Kinnairds’ chauffeur. Quite a superior-looking young man. She was sure the Kinnairds would not have kept him so long if they had thought him a reckless driver.

  ‘Do you think he had been drinking?’ she asked severely. ‘One would say he must have been either mad or drunk to have attempted to take that corner at such a speed. Perhaps he was just showing off.’

  ‘Perhaps so,’ Gore agreed.

  ‘Well, he paid dearly for it, poor fellow,’ said Mrs Arndale. Left a widow, I suppose. Was he married, dear?’

  ‘No,’ replied Mrs Melhuish, ‘thank goodness. Quite bad enough for Sidney to have his car smashed up, without having to pay a pension to a widow. Of course the car was insured—’

  ‘Oh, then, that’s all right,’ laughed Mrs Arndale cheerfully. ‘Now, my dearest Barbara, we must trot along. I’ve got to have a tooth stopped, run down a tweeny, and find Cecil a book he can read—all before lunch. Come along. See you sometime, Wick. Keep on getting better and better. By-bye.’

  She waved a farewell from the door and was gone. Mrs Melhuish held out her hand.

  ‘I’m so glad you had it out with your husband, Pickles,’ smiled Gore. ‘By the way, I’ve got those letters for you.’

  ‘What?’

  She hung towards him, still holding his hand. Her exquisite eyes filled slowly with a divine rapture. Her clear pallor warmed to the flush of a wild rose. ‘Get out,’ she whispered softly. ‘You’re pulling my leg.’

  He averted his eyes hastily.

  ‘Fact,’ he said brightly. ‘They’re in there in my bedroom. I’ll send them across to you.’

  ‘Don’t,’ she smiled. ‘Burn them for me. Where did you—?’

  ‘Now—no questions,’ he commanded. ‘That is to be my reward.’

  Mrs Arndale’s voice called her reproachfully from the corridor.

  ‘Very well,’ she smiled. ‘That … and this.’

  She bent, kissed the thin spot on the top of his head, and fled laughing from the room.

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  GORE’S explanation of the incident which took place on Cleveport links in that ditch near the fourteenth tee is, perhaps
, of some interest.

  ‘When I saw that ball whizzing off for the ditch,’ he says, ‘I was pretty sure that it had gone into the ditch, but not quite. As I went after it, the idea occurred to me: “Suppose I were to find two balls now—both new Red Kings—one in the ditch and unplayable, and the other, say, just at the edge of the ditch in a good lie. Which ball would one select as one’s own?” Of course such a thing was absolutely unlikely, and the idea was a futile sort of idea enough—the sort of thing that comes into one’s head without any particular reason and goes out of it and leads to nothing. And of course I did find no ball in a nice lie at the edge of that ditch. But somehow my mind jumped from that idea—I had nothing to do with its jumping—it just jumped, and I found myself wondering if there could have been anyone mixed up with Barrington and Frensham who was sufficiently like Arndale to be easily mistaken for him. And then my mind made another jump to the only person I could think of who had been mixed up in the business and who was anything at all like Arndale—Thomson. I had no sooner thought of Thomson than I began to think of a dozen different things connected with him, all at once. I remembered that I had seen him in a light-coloured raincoat—the afternoon he called to see me about a recommendation to Melhuish. I remembered that he had called at Melhuish’s house the afternoon the knife had disappeared for the second time from the hall. I remembered that he had been connected with Barrington in looking after his car for him. I remembered that he had been in a great hurry to get away from the Kinnairds’ employment into Melhuish’s. I remembered that he was a big, powerful chap. I remembered his face. But I think the thing that really first convinced me that I was on the right track was my remembering that Mrs Barrington’s maid had called him “Fred”. I don’t know why that had stuck—but it had stuck. I suppose I remembered everything connected with that afternoon Barrington was found especially distinctly. At all events I remembered quite distinctly that the maid had called out “Fred” to him, and I was almost certain that he had signed himself Alfred in the note which he had left for Melhuish giving the Kinnairds’ address, and which Melhuish showed me the evening I dined with him. Well, if his name was Alfred, a person who knew him well enough to call him by his Christian name might call him “Fred”, but it seemed hardly likely. “Alf”, perhaps—or even “Alfie”—if not full “Alfred”, but hardly “Fred”. Of course then I asked myself, why, if his name was Frederick, should he have changed it into Alfred. That puzzled me, until I remembered that one of the slips in the pocket of Barrington’s bank-book which was found amongst Frensham’s things at the Excelsior, concerned someone whose initials were F. T. If Frederick Thomson knew that Frensham had that slip in his possession, and if he meant to murder Frensham—it seemed to me that he might, if he was an intelligent, careful person, decide to alter his name to Alfred Thomson. The Kinnairds were away—that made it easier. It was a long shot—but, as a matter of fact, Thomson was quite an intelligent sort of person up to a certain point. Still, I admit I rather patted myself on the back when I found that the Rodney girl had been altering the F’s on his collars and things to A’s.