by Lynn Brock
‘It seems incredible,’ he smiled forcedly. ‘But they were all, naturally, places frequented by seedy customers like myself. One seedy customer is very like another. And the people at these places are not violently interested in their customers, as you are no doubt aware.’
‘Then there is only your own statement to cover the interval from May 2 afternoon to May 9 morning.’
‘That is so.’ Gaul glanced at his watch. ‘Before Mr Arling comes, I think I had better go into a very painful matter which, naturally, I prefer to discuss with you alone—from my point of view. You are aware that a letter was found in my wife’s hand. This is a copy of it.’
The last words which Lady Gaul had read had been these:
I can only say again what I said last night. Almost certainly your husband suspects. I hope and believe that so far it is merely suspicion. But for both our sakes, we must run no further risks. As we have often agreed, we have been mad. But for the sake of the wonderful sweetness of the madness that has been ours, there must be no hideous and disastrous anticlimax.
This must be final. Burn this letter. Burn every scrap of mine you have kept, if you have kept any. Be careful of that sly-faced little secretary of your husband’s. I feel pretty sure that he has been spying on us for some time back. I managed to leave my undervest behind last night. I hope you discovered it before the maids did.
Snip off the name tab and any laundry marks at once. I can get it some time. But don’t send it back—don’t write—don’t telephone. This is the end.—C.
‘You were away on the night of May 4?’ Gore asked after a pause. ‘Was that undervest found?’
‘Yes. By the police, in one of my wife’s bureau drawers. The name-tab and the laundry marks had been cut out.’
CHAPTER IV
GORE IS FRANK
‘YOU must not expect emotion from me, Colonel Gore,’ Gaul went on, when Gore had handed back the copy of the brutal letter to him. ‘I am past emotion—and you have no use for it. I will simply say that at this moment I have no faintest idea who the writer of that letter is, and that its contents came to me as an utter and overwhelming surprise. I was passionately devoted to my wife. I had always believed that she was devoted to me. But that letter was found in her hand by Mr Arling and my servants.’
‘I ask the question without apology, Sir Maurice. Is there anyone whom you can imagine capable of writing that letter—I mean, apart from any actual knowledge of such a person?’
Gaul hesitated, seemed to brace himself to conviction.
‘No.’
‘You must be entirely candid with me, Sir Maurice. Lady Gaul, it has been stated in the press, was engaged to Mr Arling prior to her engagement to you.’
‘Yes. But all that was quite finished—done with—long ago.’
‘You had no faintest suspicion of an affair with Mr Arling?’
‘None.’
‘Nor with anyone else?’
‘None. There is Mr Arling’s car. There is one other point. On my last birthday my wife gave me a case containing three cigarette holders of various lengths—amber and meerschaum. For the past year I have taken the case and the three holders with me wherever I have gone. Just before I left here on May 2, my valet handed me the case. I opened it, not a hundred yards from my gates, on my way to the station. I never smoke cigarettes without a holder.
‘I found then that there were only two holders in the case. On the night of May 5 the police found the third holder in an ash tray on a table just beside my wife’s chair. The point they make is that, as I admit, hitherto I have always taken the three holders away with me in the case. My man says that he did not open the case before he gave it to me, but simply picked it up off my dressing table, taking it for granted that all three holders were in it as usual.’
‘Had the third holder been seen by anyone in the interval between that and the night of the murder?’
‘No.’
The door of the room opened and Spain, the secretary, ushered in a big, bronzed, middle-aged man, with wide-open blue eyes which contemplated the world with the mild, good-humoured puzzlement of a child—a type, Gore reflected, whose apparent simplicity was probably entirely misleading. Having introduced the new arrival as Mr Arling, Gaul, without unnecessary explanation, left Gore alone with him.
Arling, too, it seemed, had little to add to the information already published in the press. There had been a partially smoked cigarette in the holder found in the ash tray beside the murdered woman, he said; but he could not recall whether there had been any loose ash in the tray.
‘About that telephone message from Lady Gaul, Mr Arling?’ Gore asked. ‘Your butler took it?’
‘Yes.’
‘It occurred to you, of course, to ask him if her voice had sounded agitated or distressed?’
‘Yes. He said that her voice had seemed to him rather excited and rather shrill.’
‘He knew her voice well?’
‘Oh, yes. He was in Sir Maurice Gaul’s employment for five years before they came here. Shortly after they came here—well Lady Gaul thought a smaller place would suit him better. I happened to have lost my old butler just at the time. So Ellis came to me.’
‘You were out until ten o’clock on the night of May 5?’
‘Yes. At the golf club. I dined there.’
‘And Ellis? He was in at half past nine, when the message from Lady Gaul arrived? Where was he for the hour before that?’
Arling smiled.
‘Out, I believe. But you had better see poor Ellis before your imagination does him any injustice.’
‘I should like to very much. Perhaps, some time this afternoon?’
‘Any time.’
‘You were a very old friend of Lady Gaul’s. Had she ever mentioned to you before that she was in any trouble?’
‘Never.’
‘I may take it then, Mr Arling, that the contents of the letter which was found in her hand came to you as an utter surprise?’
Arling stiffened.
‘Of course.’
‘You were at one time engaged to Lady Gaul?’
‘Yes.’
‘You are a man of the world, Mr Arling. You realize that the British public has quite made up its mind that you were the writer of that letter?’
Arling shrugged.
‘Realize? I have always realized that there are plenty of idiots in the world.’
‘Quite. However, I ask the question directly. Did you write that letter?’
‘Good God, man, no.’
‘I take it that the original letter is at present in the hands of the police?’
‘I believe so.’
‘I should like to see the original. The police, I presume, have discovered resemblances between its handwriting and your own. Many?’
Coolly as the question was asked, the reply was given as coolly.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Arling. ‘The handwriting was quite an excellent imitation of mine. By the way, I suppose that Gaul has told you that the police found two letters of mine in Lady Gaul’s escritoire, together with a third letter which I did not write, but which they are quite convinced I did.’
‘No. Sir Maurice did not mention that.’
‘He probably left it to me to tell you everything that concerned myself. At any rate, such is the fact. The two letters which I did write to Lady Gaul were both solely concerned with plants and cuttings which I gave her for her garden and so on. The one which I did not write is a note making an appointment—not to mince matters—to spend a night with her at the Savonia Hotel on a date in last April—the fourteenth, I think. It is curious that Gaul did not tell you about it.’
‘Not in the least,’ Gore said curtly. ‘Either Sir Maurice believes that you murdered his wife—or he murdered her himself. Either supposition would explain his silence reasonably.’
Arling’s blue eyes stared.
‘You are certainly frankness itself.’
‘I wonder,’ Gore smiled amiably
, ‘if you are, Mr Arling?’
‘I have grown rather callous to people who wonder about me during the past week or so,’ Arling said frigidly. ‘I’m afraid I must leave you to wonder.’
Gore sighed.
‘Very well, Mr Arling, thank you. I shall continue to wonder—until I find out.’
CHAPTER V
BLOODSTAINED LINEN
SO the interview terminated. Arling left the room, and was succeeded by a defile of the servants, each of whom was solemnly ushered in and out by a dignified butler. Gore interviewed, first, eleven miscellaneous servants, none of whom could tell him more than that Sir Maurice and Lady Gaul had always appeared on excellent terms, that Mr Arling had been a frequent visitor at the Oast House, but a perfectly open one, both during Sir Maurice’s presence and his absence, and that he or she, as the case was, had gone to Farnham to witness the night attack on the night of May 5, and had reached home shortly after eleven o’clock in the small char-a-banc which had been hired for the purpose of their outing.
A housemaid gave it as her opinion that for the last weeks—two or three or so—Mr Arling had not come so much to the house. The butler explained that Mr Arling had been away a good deal during those weeks, and got the housemaid out of the room as soon as he could.
Then followed the housekeeper and the head gardener. They were both most respectable and intelligent servants, and they both told their story briefly and lucidly. The fact emerged that the head gardener was ‘courting’ the comely housekeeper—a detail which accounted, no doubt, for their lack of interest in night attacks, and their being found together at the end of the garden by Mr Arling.
Gore asked them both the two questions which he had asked Arling concerning the cigarette holder, and smiled upon learning that they had been asked the same questions by the police inspector.
‘That,’ he said, ‘proves how exactly alike great minds can think.’
The gardener stated that there had been a half-smoked cigarette in the holder, and that the police had found that it was one of the brand which Sir Maurice Gaul usually smoked—a Russian cigarette made by Torrance & Co. He could not say that he had noticed any loose ash in the tray.
The housekeeper, however, stated definitely that there had been no ash in the tray. By order of the police everything in the drawing-room had been left absolutely untouched for two whole days. On the third day she had been permitted to go into the room with a housemaid shortly before lunch time.
She had looked round the room then carefully to estimate what amount of cleaning up the housemaid should be instructed to perform after lunch. She remembered distinctly seeing the ash tray still on the small table and noticing that the holder had been taken away. She was perfectly clear in her mind that there was then no loose ash in it. She was almost certain that there had been none in it when she had first seen the cigarette holder lying in it, on the night of the murder.
‘Why, sir,’ she asked, ‘what has that to do with it? That’s what I can’t make out.’
‘Well, Mrs Colfin,’ Gore replied, ‘some people, you see, put their cigarette ash in the ash tray. Most people, however, put it on the carpet. Now, I suppose you would not have noticed if there had been any ash on the carpet that morning, would you?’
The housekeeper, bridling a little, supposed she would certainly have noticed. It was one of the things she was paid to notice. Lady Gaul had always been very particular about ash on the carpets, and she had to notice it, because Sir Maurice threw ash about everywhere.
‘I mentioned that to the police inspector, sir. But there was no ash on the drawing-room carpet that morning. I’m quite certain of that. The police inspector said just the same as you, sir. He wanted to make out that there might have been, without me seeing it. But it wouldn’t pay me not to have my eyes open, sir, in my position.’
‘You are probably quite right, Mrs Colfin,’ Gore said soothingly. ‘Now, you were in the garden that evening chatting with the head gardener, Robertson. How long?’
‘From about nine o’clock on, sir. I took my knitting out, as I often do. And when the light went Robertson and I went on chatting about things.’
‘So that from about nine until about twenty minutes past ten—when Mr Arling came in search of you—Lady Gaul was absolutely alone in the house?’
‘Well—alone—well, yes, sir. Except for whoever murdered her. The dogs were about, sir, of course.’
‘Quite. But you heard no sound from the house while you were down there in the garden?’
‘No, sir. Except the noise of the motors on the road, when any passed.’
As Mrs Colfin and the head gardener left the room, the butler appeared once more, followed by Spain.
‘That, sir, is all the staff. Shall you require any of them again?’
‘No, thank you, I think not.’
‘I suppose,’ Spain said, when the man had gone away, ‘that I ought to be included in the household staff. Though I’m afraid I’m unlikely to be of much assistance to you. I was out when the dreadful affair took place. I spent the evening in Guildford with some friends and didn’t get back until nearly eleven.
‘The police insisted on getting the names of my friends, and the hour I left the house to return here, and all that—I gave them a written statement. If you’d care for a copy, here is one.’
Gore smiled as he glanced at the neatly-typed sheet of foolscap.
‘I don’t think I want this, Mr Spain, thank you. Not being a police inspector, I am permitted to use such meagre intelligence as the Lord has given me. When Sir Maurice went away on May 2, did he give you any address in Bristol?’
‘No. I understand he gave Lady Gaul one.’
‘Curious that he should not have given you one—I suppose there were letters to forward?’
‘No. Sir Maurice detests any kind of interruption or disturbance when he is working on a book or a story. I have known him to leave most important letters unanswered—unlooked at—for weeks.’
‘You have never seen anything to indicate that Sir Maurice and Lady Gaul were not on the best of terms?’
‘No.’
‘And you have been in Sir Maurice’s employment for a considerable time?’
‘Nine months.’ The little, pale, dejected man flushed into a sudden vehemence. ‘I trust, Colonel Gore, that you are not one of the many who have allowed themselves to be misled by a few absolutely deceptive appearances. I admit that there are circumstances which, unfortunately, chance may render it absolutely impossible to explain by proved facts.
‘But for anyone who has known him intimately, even for the short period for which I have known him, the idea that he could have committed this terrible crime is ludicrous—absolutely and merely ludicrous. I do assure you of that. Forgive my speaking with such emotion. But I have just been speaking to that idiot of a police inspector who has practically lived on the premises for the past week.
‘He told me that some boys found some pieces of linen stained with blood this morning, on the heath, down near the pond. They brought them to the police sergeant, and he went to the spot and poked about and found, in a rabbit hole which had practically been filled in with packed heather, a bloodstained kitchen knife and some other pieces of bloodstained linen. The pieces, put together, he says, make a handkerchief.
‘When I left him he was about to go through the things which Sir Maurice saved from the fire—what he had in the suitcase which he took away to Bristol—hoping, of course, to be able to make out that the handkerchiefs are of the same kind of linen and pattern as the pieces he found in the rabbit hole.
‘“This will swing him,” he said to me, smacking his lips. I—well, I’m afraid I said more than I ought to have said. But isn’t it outrageous that a bumpkin of a village policeman should be allowed to say such a thing—in the hearing of Sir Maurice’s own servants?’
‘Rather unnecessary,’ Gore agreed. ‘What about the knife?’
‘The sort of knife they cut up meat with in th
e kitchen. The cook says it may have been one of his.’
‘Well,’ Gore sighed, ‘it is certainly a most difficult business, Mr Spain. Fortunately Sir Maurice remains perfectly cool and collected.’
‘Isn’t he wonderful?’ the little secretary exclaimed fervently. ‘Marvellous courage, marvellous self-control. He reminds me of the protagonist of a Greek tragedy—the favourite of Fortune, the man who had everything—struck down suddenly—robbed of everything—his wife, his honour, his house, his liberty—perhaps his life—humbled to the dust—and yet, undefeated.’
‘As you say, quite a tragic figure,’ agreed Gore, impressed by this view of his client.
‘Absolutely Sophoclean,’ said the secretary.
CHAPTER VI
ARLING MAKES A CONFESSION
ARLING appeared at the door. Beyond him, Gore had a glimpse of a purple-faced police sergeant in mysterious colloquy with a lily-white constable. The two turned and peered in curiously at him, then, exchanging a smile of amusement, turned away and went up the road toward the house.
‘The force is mildly annoyed by your arrival on the scene, Colonel Gore,’ Arling smiled. ‘They’ll show you anything they have in their possession. But on the whole they think they’d like you to mind your own business and leave them to get on with theirs. You said you’d like to meet my butler; perhaps you’ll walk down with me to my house and have lunch. Though I don’t know if it is quite delicate on my part to invite you to eat with me.’
‘Sir Maurice has arranged that Colonel Gore will lunch here, Mr Arling,’ said Spain.
Arling appeared relieved. The two men chatted of indifferent subjects as they went down the road that wound among the gorse. Their walk was nearly over when Arling stopped and turned to face his companion abruptly.
‘Look here, Colonel Gore. Do you believe that Gaul did this?’
Gore shrugged.
‘I am here to ask questions, Mr Arling, not to answer them.’
