by John Bude
“One thing, Mr. Hardy. You say you and Miss Tregarthan had been great friends. Why the past tense?”
“Simply that on Monday evening I learnt that she no longer wished to have anything further to do with me. As a proof of this I received a bundle of letters which I had written to her at various times. I burnt them and destroyed at the same time, Inspector, the finest memories of the last two years of my life.”
CHAPTER XVIII
PERFECT ALIBI
“AND now,” said Ronald Hardy, taking a deep breath, “let me deal with the second division of this statement—what transpired in Cove Cottage between seven-thirty and eight-forty-five on Monday night. I see, Inspector, that you've already found out that something did transpire. I'll be as brief and as clear as I can. I was sitting at my desk when Mrs. Peewit—I don't doubt that you've already made her acquaintance—came in and told me that Mr. Tregarthan wished to speak to me. I was tremendously surprised. He had never gone out of his way to speak to me or visit me—the opposite, in fact! For some strange reason he had always resented my friendship with his niece. I had never been invited to Greylings, though I had occasionally seen Ruth there when her uncle was safely out of the way. This unexpected visit was, therefore, a bit of a surprise. He hadn't been two minutes in the room, however, before I realised what had brought him to Cove Cottage. He came as an emissary from Miss Tregarthan. She had sent him, apparently not having the courage to come herself, to say that she no longer wished to see me. No reason given—understand? Just that. I was on no account to speak to her again. I was, of course, unable to conceal my emotions for I had been deeply in love with Ruth Tregarthan for some months. Tregarthan was quick to notice my dismay and for him it was doubtless a moment of triumph. I argued. I demanded an explanation of this sudden change in his niece's attitude towards me. He refused to speak further. I regret to say that I lost my temper then. I swore that it was his doing. He had influenced his niece and engineered the whole business. Tregarthan responded with an equal show of anger and we had a regular set-to. The result was that he banged down the bundle of letters on my desk and, still raving, stamped out of the room.
“I was left staring at the letters, trembling and bewildered. It had all been so sudden. I was plunged into the darkness of absolute despair. What was left of the future? What was there left to live for? All that I had been striving for seemed to have been shattered in the wink of an eye. My work, my ambition—what did I care about my career? A curious mood assailed me. I fell into a sort of trance—mind you, my brain was working with absolute clearness—but my sense of reasoning seemed to be paralysed.
“I got to work quite mechanically. First I burnt the letters, one by one, in the fire. Then I tidied up my desk, sorted out all Ruth's letters from my correspondence and, in turn, destroyed them. This done, for a long time I sat at my window staring with blank eyes at the storm, which was approaching slowly across the sea. I knew exactly what I had to do. There were no doubts in my mind as to the sanity of my scheme. It was like an inevitable duty, an army order that had to be carried out.
“I opened the drawer in my desk where I kept my old service revolver. I slipped it out of its holster and put it in my pocket. Very vaguely I realised that Mrs. Peewit had previously come into the room and set my supper on the table. I left it untouched.
“What time I left the cottage I can't rightly say.”
“Section three,” put in the Inspector.
Hardy nodded absently, as if he did not fully realise the meaning of the Inspector's interpolation.
“I put on my hat and overcoat, went to the garage,” he continued, “and took out my car. It was my idea, you see, to drive to a lonely spot somewhere along the coast road and there to put an end to my life. A wild and illogical idea, I confess. But there it was.
“Then something unforeseen happened—a trivial and rather ridiculous thing considering my highly coloured mood. Just before I reached the Vicarage, there was a deafening report and my front tyre burst. I skidded a bit and pulled in automatically to the side of the road and stopped my engine.”
“A burst!” exclaimed the Inspector. “Why the devil didn't I think of that before? The single shot! I'm cracking up, sir, no mistake about it.”
The Superintendent grinned.
“Go on, Mr. Hardy.”
“Well that little accident had a peculiar effect on my outlook. Slowly I realised that what I was intending to do was a coward's way out. After all, I argued, if I had the courage to put a bullet through my brain, why shouldn't I summon up enough courage to face the facts of my adversity and turn my back on the idea of suicide? Did it mean that I was too great a coward to face the future? Was there no hope? Wasn't it possible that Ruth might suffer a change of heart? The more I thought about it, the more clearly I saw that I had acted hastily and without proper regard for the circumstances which had brought about my dismay. Wasn't it, perhaps, a trick on Tregarthan's part? Had Ruth really sent her uncle with those letters? Was it possible that he had stolen them from her desk to lend colour to his story?
“All the time I was turning these things over in my mind I was mechanically removing the damaged wheel and replacing it with the spare. It did not take me long. When I had completed the job my mind was made up. This trivial accident had sobered me completely. It had given me time to reflect.
“I snatched the revolver out of my inside pocket and flung it into the ditch by the roadside. I felt that in doing so I was flinging temptation behind me. I took a huge breath of mingled relief and determination and climbed back into the car.
“When I drove off I had no idea where I was going to. I intended to drive on through the night and evolve some plan as I went along. London never entered my mind then. I stamped on the accelerator, anxious to place as much distance as possible between myself and the revolver lying in the ditch. It was not until I was some way past the Vicarage that I realised that I had been driving without lights. Somebody shouted at me just before I reached the church and waved a lantern. I suppose that made me aware that something was amiss. Later I switched on the lights and, passing Towan Cove, went as fast as I dared along the coast road.
“Then, somehow, the idea of a complete change of environment came to me. I knew it was the only way—to get right away for a bit and get things straight in my mind. At Barrock Corner I swung off the coast road and drove back over the moors to Greystoke. I reckoned I should just have time to catch the late London express. I reached Greystoke with a few minutes to spare. I garaged the car at Fenton's in Marston Street and was on the platform just as the train came in.
“That's my statement, Inspector—the whole of it. It's the truth—every word of it. I can't do more now than hope that you'll accept my story, corroborate it, perhaps, by further evidence, and dismiss the idea from your mind that I had anything to do with the murder of poor Tregarthan.”
At the conclusion of his statement, Ronald Hardy lay back in his chair with his eyes half-closed. The strain of telling his story, on top of all that he had suffered since Julius Tregarthan walked into Cove Cottage on Monday night, had obviously exhausted him. He was a man who had been through hell and at that moment, he looked like it.
The Inspector's words, however, brought a faint smile to his lips and a gleam of satisfaction animated his drawn and pallid features.
“What you have told me, Mr. Hardy, is extremely interesting. I needn't prolong your suspense. Your story fits in faultlessly with the evidence which I have already collected from various witnesses. You are cleared of all suspicion and I only regret that on top of your personal troubles you should have suffered any further inconvenience. But you see how we were placed? If only you had come forward at once, we should both have been spared a hell of a lot of trouble.” He leaned toward the desk. “By the way—that's your property, I believe?”
He held out the Webley.
“Or shall I keep it for you?” he added meaningly.
Hardy shook his head.
“N
o—it's all right, Inspector. You can trust me with it now. One doesn't make the same mistake twice. At least, I won't, I promise you!”
He took the revolver, looked at it casually and dropped it into his overcoat pocket. Little did he realise that the revolver had been the cause of a major sensation and the devil's own amount of confusion in the unsolved mystery surrounding Julius Tregarthan's death.
“Is there anything further you wish to ask me, Inspector? Or am I free to go?”
“Perfectly free, Mr. Hardy. I should like to have some idea of your whereabouts in case I should need you later on. Your idea is to return to Cove Cottage, I take it?”
“Yes—that was my intention as soon as I had cleared myself of suspicion. There's my novel to be revised finally for the publishers. When that is done ... well I can't say. I shall probably return to London for an indefinite stay.”
The Inspector cleared his throat, made as if to speak, hesitated and finally said:
“I shouldn't place too much reliance on Mr. Tregarthan's statements on Monday night if I were you, Mr. Hardy.” He was thinking that if Mrs. Mullion was right about the revolver, Ruth Tregarthan could not be quite indifferent to the fate of Ronald Hardy. “I can't say more than that at present.”
“And Ruth—Miss Tregarthan?” asked Hardy with great eagerness. “You'll tell her about all this, Inspector?”
The Inspector gave his promise and, after shaking hands with the Superintendent and thanking Bigswell for his reassurance, he was escorted from the room by the attendant Constable—a free man cleared of all suspicion, and a man greatly enlivened by the Inspector's veiled hint about Ruth Tregarthan's attitude.
“Well?” demanded the Superintendent when he and Bigswell were alone. “Where are we now?”
The Inspector shrugged his shoulders.
“Hardy's got a perfect alibi, at any rate. Every incident in his story checks up with the collected evidence. Tregarthan's visit, the quarrel, the tyre burst, the revolver in the ditch, the man with the lantern, even the fact that he was driving without lights,—not a single point was omitted from his statement. I'm the only man in complete possession of all the facts, so nobody could have put him wise before he walked in here this morning. That's certain.”
“And the girl?”
“Well, sir, I have an idea that when she learns that Hardy's innocent, she'll come forward with the truth. I'm going back to Boscawen at once. To the Vicarage. I want a word with that girl, right away. She's been hiding something and I want to know what it is.”
Five minutes later the Inspector was speeding along the familiar moorland road which linked Greystoke with the coast.
Hardy's statement had knocked the bottom out of his previous theory. He realised, with a sigh of dissatisfaction, that it meant starting all over again. Since Hardy was innocent, there was every probability that Ruth Tregarthan was a victim of a mistaken belief rather than an accomplice in the murder of her uncle. What then was there left to work on? The Vicar's theory? It certainly looked like it. More than ever did the result of the Reverend Dodd's experiment seem to bear on the case. The hurdle theory had gone west with the establishment of Hardy's innocence. This being the case, it was almost certain that Tregarthan had not been shot from the wall. How then to account for the fact that the line of flight of the three bullets was so impossibly high? It only left one supposition. The Vicar was right. Tregarthan had been shot from the sea.
Still hard at work trying to plan out his new line of investigation, the Inspector suddenly realised that the car had swung off the coast road. A second later it was at a standstill outside the door of the Vicarage.
CHAPTER XIX
REUNION
RUTH TREGARTHAN had not been present at her uncle's funeral that afternoon. Tregarthan's sole relation, and elder brother, had motored down from London and picked up Ramsey, the solicitor, in Greystoke. The Vicar had officiated at the brief and simple ceremony, which was attended by a good sprinkling of curious villagers. The three men had returned, at once, to the Vicarage, where Ramsey was to read the will.
It was a perfectly straightforward affair. Tregarthan had left everything unconditionally to his brother, including all his property and various monies invested in industrial and government concerns. He was not, as the Vicar had previously suspected, a wealthy man. His income accruing from property and investments was, in fact, far smaller than seemed compatible with his mode of living. The will read, Tregarthan's brother, John, pointed out that no mention had been made of Greylings. Ramsey's eyebrows lifted and his obvious surprise was doubled when Ruth, too, questioned him as to the future ownership of the house.
“But surely, Miss Tregarthan, you were aware that Greylings was held in trust by your uncle until such times as you should marry—or in the event of your not marrying, until you reached the age of thirty? Your father arranged this matter with me a year or so before his death. Eight hundred a year was settled on you; and your uncle, Julius Tregarthan, was left with full powers to administer your income as he saw fit until such times as I have stated. If you married or when you reached the age of thirty your uncle's trusteeship automatically ceased. Your father had great faith, apparently, in your uncle's financial abilities and, I need scarcely add, integrity. Surely you were aware of this arrangement, Miss Tregarthan?”
Ruth shook her head in amazement.
“Uncle always gave me to understand that he alone benefited from my father's will. I knew he was my legal guardian until I reached my majority, but I had absolutely no knowledge of this settlement!”
“But when you reached the age of twenty-one, surely your uncle spoke to you about your father's arrangement?”
“Never!” contested Ruth. “He told me that since I was of age and capable of managing my own affairs, he was prepared to settle an allowance on me—but he made no mention of the fact that it was my father's money!”
“And the amount of this allowance?”
“A hundred and fifty a year.”
“A hundred and fifty!”
Ramsey looked incredulous.
“And the house?”
“I always understood it was my uncle's property and that, in the event of his death, it was to come to me. I had no reason to doubt this statement.”
“Well! Well! Well!” said Ramsey with the air of a man who is asked to swallow more than it was humanly possible to credit. “So your uncle has been keeping back some six hundred and fifty pounds per annum, which was, by reason of your father's arrangement, legally due to you. Have you any idea what has happened to this money?”
“I really can't say, Mr. Ramsey. I've never really troubled about money. I've been quite content to go along as I have been doing down here. It never struck me that my uncle was concealing anything from me.”
Ramsey turned to John Tregarthan.
“We shall have to go into this, of course. With your permission, Miss Tregarthan, I'll get in touch with the manager at the bank and make a few inquiries. Much as I dislike speaking ill of the dead—de mortuis nil nisi bonum, you know—I can't help suspecting that your uncle has been misappropriating the money which he held in trust. I haven't looked into the trust account naturally—but we must do so without delay.”
And after certain formalities had been concluded, a very puzzled solicitor left the Vicarage for Greystoke. John Tregarthan accompanied him.
Only a few minutes after Ramsey's departure, the Inspector's car drew up at the door.
He was admitted to the study, where presently he was joined by Ruth.
“Once again I've got to trouble you, Miss Tregarthan,” said the Inspector. “But it's good news this time.”
“Thank heaven for that,” sighed Ruth. “Does it mean you've at last found the murderer?”
“I'm afraid not.” It was Bigswell's turn to sigh. “But I'm glad to say I've eliminated a possible suspect from my list.”
“And who is that?”
“Ronald Hardy,” said the Inspector.
“Ronald!” exclaimed Ruth. “You've found him? You know where he is?”
“Well, if I'm not mistaken,” smiled Inspector Bigswell, “he's probably having his tea, at this minute, down at Cove Cottage.”
“He's here!” In a flash the girl's whole appearance seemed to undergo a transformation. Anxiety seemed to slip from her. The worried look in her eyes gave place to one of relief and thankfulness. “Why didn't I know before? Why didn't he tell me? Didn't he know I was at the Vicarage?”
“Aren't you being a little illogical, Miss Tregarthan? I understand from Mr. Hardy that on Monday last you sent a message to say that you never wished to see or speak with him again. He also mentioned a packet of letters which you returned.”
Ruth stared at the Inspector with blank astonishment.
“But it's ridiculous! Absurd! Ronald's letters, as far as I know, are still in my desk down at Greylings!”
