The Deductions of Colonel Gore

by Lynn Brock

  ‘Oh, damn that. Have you heard that they found the knife and a handkerchief of Gaul’s with it in a rabbit hole?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘It’s one of Gaul’s handkerchiefs all right, you know.’

  ‘Probably. Well, Mr Arling?’

  ‘Well—there are a couple of things you had better know. I think. First—about Lady Gaul. About three weeks ago Gaul came into the drawing-room from nowhere while I was sitting talking with Lady Gaul—about the slump in cross-word puzzles, I believe. He made a frightful ass of himself—delivered a regular little oration about the danger of our seeing so much of one another and so on and so forth. Of course, I simply roared.

  ‘But he was perfectly serious. As a matter of fact, I had cut down my visits to the Oast House a good deal during the last few weeks, because of that little scene. I need hardly say that he simply made a fool of himself. I don’t know why I didn’t tell you about this straight off. But—well, they hadn’t found that handkerchief then. Had Gaul himself said anything of it?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Well—there it is. And there’s another thing you had better know. I mean—I think you ought to know how things stand exactly—and this thing has been on my conscience. You know that letter? Well, when I found Lady Gaul dead, I saw that she had a letter in her hand, as I believed, in my handwriting. I took it out of her hand, read it hurriedly and, like a fool, lost my head and decided to suppress it.

  ‘Lady Gaul always called me Claud, you see—principally because my own name is John. The imitation of my handwriting was so infernally clever that I got scared and, as I say, lost my head. That’s the only excuse I can give you. I stuck the letter in my pocket and went out to get the servants. After I had found them—it took some time—I went to the telephone to ring up the doctor. When I went into the drawing-room again, I saw, to my amazement, the gardener taking a second letter from Lady Gaul’s hand.

  ‘That was the letter of which Sir Maurice showed you a copy. But the extraordinary thing—the devilish thing—is that that letter was also in an exact imitation of my handwriting, and was, word for word, a replica of the first letter, which I had pocketed. Of course, I ought to have spoken out—admitted that I had done a silly thing. But like a fool, I didn’t. However, I’m going to do it now. I have done it now. I’ve told Gaul, and I’ve told you I shall send a written statement to the police after lunch.

  ‘Of course,’ he went on, when they had walked some way in silence, ‘that second letter couldn’t have been written in the interval—say five or six minutes by the time the servants got to Lady Gaul. It was a long letter. It must have been written beforehand. But can you conceive any human being writing two such letters exactly the same? Why, he even went to the trouble of smearing them both with blood.

  ‘Here, I’ll show you the first letter. Can you conceive anyone doing such a thing?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Gore. ‘All you want is a person with a practised imagination who was also able to foresee that you would pocket the first letter.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Arling curtly. ‘And there’s only one person I know who fits both ways.’

  He took a sheet of note paper from his pocketbook and handed it to Gore. A long brown smear ran across its middle, encircled by smaller brown spots. Gore examined it carefully through a lens.

  ‘If it’s a forgery,’ he said, ‘it’s dashed well done. Not a quiver. Usually a glass gives the game away. But this was written slap off. I should like to see some of your own handwriting.’

  But the lavish specimens which Arling submitted to him when they reached his house quite clearly did nothing to affect his opinion.

  ‘Dashed clever,’ he said simply. ‘And dashed awkward—perhaps.’

  CHAPTER VII

  TASTES OF A SECRETARY

  ELLIS, Arling’s butler, was produced—a butler of the unctuous, refined type. He repeated, rather sulkily, his statement that Lady Gaul’s voice over the telephone that night had sounded shrill and excited. Requested by Gore to give an imitation, he refused at first, produced some ludicrous squeaks from an unwilling throat, refused finally and definitely to make a fool of himself. But Gore thanked him with such grave sincerity that he was visibly mollified.

  ‘You had no difficulty with Lady Gaul before you left her service?’

  ‘I have never had any difficulty with my employers in any place, sir. I esteemed Lady Gaul most highly. I did not quite suit her requirements—so I looked out for another place.’

  ‘Is it not a fact that Lady Gaul dismissed you because you drank too much?’

  The man’s face changed. The cast became a malevolent permanency. He turned to Arling.

  ‘I’ll answer no more questions from this gentleman, sir. Let him go ask those who have reasons of their own for telling lies about me.’

  But Arling displayed no sympathy with offended dignity.

  ‘Were you dismissed for drinking too much, Ellis?’

  ‘I was not. I left of my own free will.’

  ‘Where were you on the night of the murder?’ Gore asked placidly. ‘From nine to nine thirty?’

  ‘I’ve told you I will answer no more—’

  ‘Where were you, Ellis?’ Arling demanded.

  ‘Lying down, sir, in my room.’

  ‘But you told me that night that you had been out for a walk.’

  ‘I was lying down in my room, sir. I didn’t feel very well that night.’

  ‘Two lies,’ said his employer, abandoning him. ‘Do you want to hear any more?’

  ‘Not from him,’ Gore replied curtly. ‘I shall probably hear as many as are likely to be of any help before the day is done. I should get that statement to the police at once, if I were you, Mr Arling. It will give them plenty of opportunity for attending to their own business.’

  He found on his return to the Oast House that they had lost no time in doing so. Spain was standing in the road outside his cottage waiting with the news that the expected blow had fallen at last and that Sir Maurice had been arrested. Apparently the discovery of the morning had precipitated the disaster.

  Spain was utterly dejected.

  ‘It seems to be the basest kind of treachery and disloyalty on my part,’ he said mournfully. ‘but I can’t help it. Do as I will, the fact that he has been arrested persuades me to believe that perhaps the impossible is possible, and that he did kill her. I suppose I must not ask how you feel, Colonel Gore?’

  ‘I?’ said Gore brightly. ‘I feel remarkably hungry, if I may say so. This Surrey air—’

  ‘A thousand apologies,’ said Spain. ‘Lunch is ready. Will you forgive me if I leave you to be your own host? I have to get into Mortfield on my motorcycle at once to send off a lot of telegrams for Sir Maurice. Shall you stay the night—or do you think that, now, you will return to London this afternoon?’

  ‘No idea yet,’ Gore replied succinctly. ‘You can put me up here if necessary?’

  Spain assured him that a room was at his disposal and left him to an excellent lunch. Presently, through the window of the sitting room, where the butler had brought his coffee, Gore saw him depart on his motorcycle.

  ‘A sad little gentleman, sir,’ the butler commented. ‘I’m afraid, like the rest of us, he’s going to lose a good job.’

  When the secretary returned it was to find Gore browsing among his books.

  ‘Your literary tastes are severely classical, Mr Spain, I perceive. Rather too classical for me. I’ve been looking for a nice, bright, jolly modern novel to help my digestion. I have been able to find only three novels that could be called modern—all by the same man, by the way—a man of whom I never heard before.’

  He reached out a hand and selected one of three novels which stood in a clump between a set of George Meredith and a set of Hardy.

  ‘Silas Furlonger. No. I don’t believe I ever even heard of Mr Silas Furlonger.’

  The secretary smiled faintly.

  ‘Probably not. He is not a popular
person.’

  Gore turned over some pages.

  ‘This one appears to be about a dipsomaniac. Not jolly things, dipsomaniacs. I’ve known two or three of them in my—’

  He paused to read some lines.

  ‘Um,’ he said, and replacing the novel, picked out one of its fellows.

  ‘Birth control. Most interesting—but not utterly jolly.’

  He replaced the second volume and picked out the third, glanced at its title page, said ‘um’ again, and put it back in its place.

  ‘No, I’m afraid I’m not quite up to Mr Furlonger. A favourite of yours, Mr Spain?’

  ‘Well, yes. I was for a time Mr Furlonger’s secretary before I came to Sir Maurice.’

  ‘Indeed. Has he written many novels?’

  ‘No. Those three only. He doesn’t write at all now, I believe.’

  ‘A curious name. A nom de plume?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Really. Quite an unusual name.’

  Gore glanced at his watch. ‘A quarter to three. I wonder if you have a timetable, Mr Spain. I shall not stop the night, thank you. I find I must go back to town.’

  Spain, if a little resentful at the sudden change of programme, provided a timetable promptly. Gore caught a train at Guildford and spent a penny on a special edition.

  ‘The Oast House Tragedy,’ he read. ‘Startling Developments. Arrest of Sir Maurice Gaul.’

  The only other occupant of the compartment, a stout woman, obviously bound for a garden party, distinctly heard the military looking gentleman in gray tweeds in the opposite corner, emit a snort. He appeared otherwise perfectly harmless, but at the last moment she decided to change into another compartment.

  CHAPTER VIII

  SPAIN WAXES VEHEMENT

  THE middle-aged gentleman in gray tweeds reached the Oast House again shortly after eight o’clock to find Spain and the butler paying off the servants, all of whom, by Gaul’s instructions, were to leave his service, temporarily at least, next morning. Spain explained that it was his employer’s wish that, in view of developments now probable, they should feel in no way fettered by any notions of loyalty to him.

  ‘They don’t want to go, sir,’ said the butler. ‘But they’ve got to go. So have Mr Spain and me. However, I’m not going far. I’m taking a room down at the Jolly Farmer. I have my own ideas about this business, sir. And there’s a certain person I mean to keep my eye on. I’ll mention no names—but I know he had it behind his eyes for poor Lady Gaul. I’ve heard him say so himself, when he was drunk.’

  Spain left the worthy man to complete his regretful task and accompanied Gore to his cottage, too depressed by the loss of an excellent position, Gore concluded, to display any curiosity or surprise as to his return.

  ‘The butler means the man who was butler before him,’ he explained. ‘But they’ve always been bitter enemies. He was talking nonsense just now. You intend to stay the night?’

  ‘No. I shall not detain you very long, Mr Spain. I wonder if you have any specimens of Mr Arling’s handwriting available. Possibly among Sir Maurice’s papers—’

  ‘No. Mr Arling never wrote to Sir Maurice. But, as a matter of fact, I have several sheets of manuscripts in Mr Arling’s handwriting. He has been working for some months back upon a book of nature studies. He is an ardent “ist” of various sorts—and I have been typing his manuscripts for him in my spare time.’

  While he went to the desk which occupied one corner of the sitting room, Gore strolled over to the bookcase to stand looking at the three novels of the uncelebrated Silas Furlonger.

  ‘By the way, Mr Spain, I think you said this afternoon that Silas Furlonger was not a nom de plume?’

  Spain was absorbed for a moment in his search for Arling’s manuscript. He turned then with a taped bundle of sheets in his hand.

  ‘Pardon? Oh—Furlonger. Yes, it’s a nom de plume. His real name is Ferdinand Miler. I think I told you that I had been his secretary for some time before coming to Sir Maurice. This is Mr Arling’s manuscript.’

  Gore took the bundle of sheets, and, having lighted a pipe, retired to an armchair with them. His interest, however, appeared, to be rather in the matter of the manuscript than its handwriting, for he read a couple of pages with close attention.

  ‘Mr Arling, too, is an imaginative person, apparently,’ he said musingly. ‘This opening of his is quite lyrical.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ smiled Spain, ‘nature study is a passion with him. As you probably detect, he has been strongly influenced both by Maeterlinck and Fabre. To that extent—I suppose, one would call him imaginative.’

  ‘It’s rather odd to find that streak in him—too.’

  ‘Too?’ Spain repeated vaguely.

  ‘You see,’ Gore explained, ‘there are at all events two things which I knew for certain about the person who murdered Lady Gaul. He was a person of what I described to Mr Arling himself this afternoon, as practised imagination, and he was also, necessarily, a person who knew that there had been a disagreement between Mr Arling and Sir Maurice Gaul with regard to Mr Arling’s intimacy with Lady Gaul.

  ‘Then there is the question of times. I have verified Mr Arling’s statement that he dined at the golf club at Mortfield and played bridge afterward. But I have ascertained from the secretary that in fact Mr Arling left the club at nine o’clock, having merely finished after dinner a game of bridge begun before it. The Oast House is not more than twenty minutes walk from the club.

  ‘He could have murdered Lady Gaul and reached his own house by ten o’clock—easily. Of course, one has to suspect him of quite unusual cleverness, if one is to suppose that he wrote that letter and left it in Lady Gaul’s hand to point, obviously and inevitably, to her husband as the murderer. But there are lots of quite unusually clever people in the world. And, glancing at this manuscript, it would occur to anyone that Mr Arling was one of them, wouldn’t it?’

  Spain’s eyes had hardened.

  ‘I can at all events tell you that Mr Arling has taken considerable pains to distort every possible fact against Sir Maurice. It has been most marked—most gratuitous. As for imagination—well, frankly, does that matter? Does it require much imagination to stab a woman in the back?

  ‘Not that I suppose for a moment that he murdered Lady Gaul,’ he added with a shrug. ‘He could have done it, no doubt. But—why? Because he quarrelled with Lady Gaul over that letter he had written her?

  ‘I don’t think that letter would ever have been found, if that had been the case. Mr Arling is a sensitive, cautious man—a man with a perfect dread of anything like notoriety—’

  He paused. Gore had risen and had come across the room toward him tranquilly, yet with a deliberation that had caught the other’s attention.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Spain.’ Gore smiled faintly. ‘Now, will you kindly sit down again in that chair and listen to me.’

  As if every drop of blood had fled from his body, the secretary’s drawn little face went, in a flash, livid white. An odd little ejaculation of terrified dismay choked itself in his twitching throat. He sat down again in the chair from which, divining the truth, he had half risen, and stared at Gore helplessly.

  CHAPTER IX

  WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

  ‘ON the evening of May 5,’ Gore said quietly, ‘you left this cottage on foot at five o’clock and arrived at the house of your friends, the Taits, on the outskirts of Guildford, at six. You dined there, and left at half past eight, saying that you had to walk most of the way back to reach here by eleven. The distance is about nine miles—uphill most of it.

  ‘Two and a half hours was a reasonable allowance. And as you explained to the Taits, no bus ran westward along the Hog’s Back to help you between 7 and 9 P.M. Off you went then at eight thirty—and, so far as is actually known, you reached this cottage a little before eleven.

  ‘Of course you didn’t walk, though—either to Guildford, or back from it. You have a motorcycle and a clever brain. I needn’t guess exactly h
ow you kept the motorcycle in the background, from the Taits in Guildford and the housekeeper and the head gardener here. But I’m quite sure you managed it, quite simply.

  ‘You got back about nine. That gave you ample time to complete your preparations—if they had not already been completed. You had only to make sure that the two servants, who never probably entered the drawing-room in the evening, were safely out of the way at the end of the garden. You went into the drawing-room, made a pretext of some sort for disturbing Lady Gaul, got behind her, and stabbed her.

  ‘You smeared your ingenious forgery of Mr Arling’s handwriting with blood—or was it already smeared? Probably you also dabbed one of Sir Maurice’s handkerchiefs with blood then. You put his cigarette holder with a half smoked cigarette of his special brand, in an ash tray beside Lady Gaul, and then you switched on the lights—or were they on all the time? Of course, nothing could be seen from the road. That would have been a risk—but a small one.

  ‘Then you went to the telephone, rang up Mr Arling’s house, and produced an imitation of Lady Gaul’s voice good enough to pass muster with Mr Arling’s butler—who, by the way, had, I rather think, drank more than was good for him that evening, and had been sleeping it off, his master being out. At any rate, he delivered your message to Mr Arling at ten o’clock, and Mr Arling came up to the Oast House and found what you had left for him to find. I don’t know where you were hidden—but the blinds were up.

  ‘You could have seen every movement of Mr Arling’s from outside. But more probably you were inside. You saw him put your forgery No. 1 into his pocket, and then rush out of the room. You had known just what Mr Arling would do—you had forgery No. 2 ready—bloodstains and all. You jammed it into Lady Gaul’s hand and cleared off.

  ‘You probably went to where your motorcycle was hidden, probably among the gorse somewhere on the heath. You lay low there until about quarter of eleven. Then you walked out on to the road and arrived here, on foot for anyone who wanted to see you doing it.