“No, I didn’t notice it,” replied David, “but after my bad mark let me score a good one again. When he reached the ground, he met you?”
“Yes. A few seconds afterwards, I expect.”
“But why did he return with you?”
“Yes, why didn’t he complete his get-away?” added Mr. Hopkins. “Wasn’t he a bit of a mug?”
“He had left the case behind,” answered Mr. Maltby.
“Oh, so he had, of course—you found it. Where?”
“It was behind a trunk near the window. Probably he was examining it when you came along, Mr. Carrington. Maybe he did not know till then just how much was in it. But you gave him a shock, and as he made for the window and climbed on the trunk it slipped out of his hand or his pocket. Forty-four pounds. A tragic sum to lose after all that trouble. Worth coming back for with a harmless, unsuspicious old gentleman.... But the forty-four pounds are still here, on that table.”
They looked at Exhibit B, bulging with the cost of a man’s life.
“He went away again,” recalled David.
“And returned again,” replied Mr. Maltby. “That cry of ‘Help’ gave him a proper scare. I am not sure, however, whether his third visit was due to the case or the weather. It may have been a combination of both.
“But we do know how he tried to get up to the attic, and how first one of us and then another blocked the way—some consciously, some unconsciously. Miss Carrington, for instance, had no idea what this lost sheep was looking for when she turned it back! But Smith would have got up to his attic eventually, because he thought he had sized the situation up and was playing a patient, waiting game. You were the only person he had to watch, Mr. Hopkins. He did not know you had told us of the tragedy, any more than he knew the tragedy’s full extent.”
“Didn’t he have to watch you, too?” asked David. “It was you who found his railway ticket.”
“Ah, but, I was also playing a patient, waiting game,” retorted Mr. Maltby. “You remember how I changed my attitude to him, in order to put him off his guard, and how I managed to get to the attic myself before he had any chance of doing so? I was curious about that attic after what you had told me, and when I came down I had found the letter-case.
“But I didn’t want Smith to know I had found it until I had cogitated a little more about the ticklish situation. If Smith had gone to the attic just then, he would merely have found the door locked again. Later, after my little cogitation, I worked out another plan, and I unlocked the attic door. The plan was to follow Smith up when he made for his goal and to turn the key on him.”
“He could have repeated his escape through the window.”
“He might have done so. But there is a wooden shutter across the window now, and it is very completely screwed up. He would have had a job.”
Then Mr. Maltby turned to Mr. Hopkins with a shrug.
“But all that is mere theory, for Smith has flown. And it was, perhaps, poetic justice that Smith’s path to escape—if he does escape—should have taken the particular direction it did. Smith screamed, I am willing to wager, because he thought he had seen Mr. W. T. Barling’s ghost.”
CHAPTER XIV
EXHIBITS A AND C
MR. HOPKINS took his handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. It was not the first time he had done so, but his brow had never needed the operation more acutely.
“W-what’s that mean?” he asked.
“It means,” answered Mr. Maltby, “that W. T. Barling is probably not the only person who has been murdered to-day, and that the body of the second murdered person is considerably nearer to us than Barling’s as we sit here. It means that Smith, in his last flight, tripped over the body, and may now be a raving lunatic—with a knife—as well as a murderer.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I nearly tripped over the body myself. But at the time I thought it was a log.”
“Then, since you now believe it wasn’t a log, shouldn’t we go out and look for it?” inquired David quietly.
His calmness surprised him. He attributed it to the possibility that he was growing numb to horror. No numbness, however, was visible in the goggling eyes of Mr. Hopkins.
“If you look for it, you are not likely to have Smith’s luck of finding it,” replied Mr. Maltby. “In fact, you may find Smith instead, and become an addition to the growing casualty list.”
“But——”
“As a good British citizen and stickler for the law you feel you have a duty to perform? In that case I won’t detain you. Only remember, before you go on your wild goose chase, that the body is undoubtedly dead, while you have not received any proof yet that it exists at all.”
“Well, can I have the proof?”
“No. There isn’t any proof. Not, at least, in your sense of the word. But you can have the second story which I am waiting to tell, and the delay may reduce your chance of encountering Smith’s knife. Shall I go on?”
“Please.”
“Right. Story No. Two, Exhibit C.”
He took the torn envelope from the table and carefully extracted the torn sheet, smoothing it out on his knee.
“I found this, as I have said, in the waste-paper basket of Thomson’s bedroom. It is a portion of a torn up letter, and I will read you out the legible words:
“ ‘DEAR CHARLES,
‘I shall
spend Christmas at
stores for a week
the items to you
will be two of us
daughter, and I enclo
the cost. I expect
Eve, probably
just before dinner.
ing about this vis... ’ ”
Replacing the fragment of letter in the fragment of envelope, Mr. Maltby continued:
“Unfortunately the signature is absent, so we do not know the name of the sender, but we may deduce the name of the recipient from this on the envelope: ‘rles Shaw.’ The letter, therefore, was from some unknown person to Charles Shaw, and the complete letter itself, up to the point where it breaks off, probably ran along these lines:
“ ‘Dear Charles, I shall be coming to spend Christmas at’—wherever this is—’so get in stores for a week. I shall leave the items to you, but there will be two of us, myself and my daughter, and I enclose’—however much the writer actually enclosed—’to cover the cost. I expect to arrive on Christmas Eve, probably in the evening’—or afternoon—’just before dinner. Say nothing about this visit.’
“We may take it that Charles Shaw was the caretaker or servant here. We may also take it, I think, that he slept in the room now occupied by Thomson, as it was there I found the scrap of letter, and as that room has been recently occupied. A slightly moist toothbrush was in a glass, and the jug was full of water. I also noticed a pair of pyjamas hanging from a hook on the door.
“Very well, then. Charles receives this letter—it is a pity the date was torn off—and buys the necessary stores for a week, unconscious of the fact that some of the stores will eventually be used by a marooned party from a train. I am assuming, by the way, that Charles occupied this house alone in the absence of his master, and was alone when he received the letter, and was alone this morning when he got up. Does the bedroom you have commandeered, Mr. Hopkins, look as though anybody had slept in it lately?”
“I can’t say that it does,” replied Mr. Hopkins, after a moment’s thought. “No, I can’t say that it does. Several unpleasant cobwebs about.”
“Then Charles is not as meticulous as he ought to be. How about the water jug and the water bottle?”
Mr. Hopkins thought again.
“Well, yes, of course!” he exclaimed suddenly. “I had a wash!”
“And found towels?”
“That’s right. I didn’t have to use my handkerchief!”
“Do you remember whether the towel you used was clean, or had it been used before? And was it a new cake of soap?”
“Towel clean, soap new.”
“Yes,” replied David. “She told me I was to add, ‘To soiling two fresh towels, defacing one cake of soap, and use of nailbrush,’ to the charge sheet.”
Mr. Maltby nodded.
“Good. The background of the picture is coming. Having laid in the stores, the lonely Charles awaits the arrival of his master and his master’s daughter. This morning he prepares two bedrooms for them, but not as thoroughly as he might. He omits to remove sundry cobwebs. Does this suggest a flaw in Charles’s character, or has he something on his mind? ... Something on his mind? ... I wonder whether Charles is ever worried by that picture in the hall?”
“What makes you say that?” asked David.
“I don’t quite know,” answered the old man. “I am groping my way through sensations as well as known or deduced facts. Probably Charles was used to loneliness, but it might give one a queer feeling to get up on Christmas Eve—all alone in a house like this—with snow all around, and still coming down—white without and black within—eh?—and, in the morning dusk, descending the stairs to that picture? Yes, it might. You remember, Mr. Carrington, how we have felt that that picture was watching us——”
“By God, I’ve felt that, too!” exclaimed Mr. Hopkins.
“Have you?”
“By God, I have!”
“This fellow’s becoming more human and natural,” reflected David. “I wonder whether, after all, fear’s good for him?”
“Then Charles might have felt it,” said Mr. Maltby.
“Yes, and the chap in the picture was coming,” added Mr. Hopkins.
Mr. Maltby pursed his lips.
“Not necessarily,” he replied. “We don’t know that it is a picture of the owner of this house. It may be, but it may not be. There is something just pre-war about his suit. I should place his age at a little over sixty. Not such an enormous age, either, or so we like to think when we come to it. So if my sartorial knowledge is correct, that picture was painted over twenty years ago, and the subject of it would be about eighty-five to-day. Now that is an enormous age at which to be travelling about the wintry countryside at Christmas. Incidentally,” he went on, with a sudden rather wicked little glance at David, “it ruins our romantic conception of the daughter. We want a few bright spots in our reconstruction.” He turned for a moment to Exhibit C. “And this writing, though not very good, is not the writing of an octogenarian. If the present owner of this house were eighty-five, his daughter, in her fifties or sixties, would have written for him.”
All at once Mr. Maltby frowned at himself. The frown was followed by an apologetic shrug.
“You must forgive me for these apparent diversions,” he said. “Actually, they are not diversions at all. I am thinking aloud. Trying to recreate, as far as I can, the atmosphere and circumstances of this house when Charles got up this morning. When you find the atmosphere, facts resolve themselves inside it. You hear the thunder before it comes. Storm-clouds—a sudden unnatural flutter of still leaves—a cat chasing its tail——”
He jumped to his feet. Mr. Hopkins went back in his chair as though he had been shot. David remained still, but with a distressing tightening of his forehead.
“I see Charles!” cried the old man. “I see him! Not his face! His soul! Here he comes—down the stairs—yes, there’s his face, now—pale, deadly pale—a man with a sick spirit—terrified—the picture—are you looking at it, Charles?——”
He stopped speaking. He returned quietly to his chair.
“Now for this afternoon.”
“No, wait a moment!” gasped Mr. Hopkins.
“What for?” asked Mr. Maltby.
“I—I don’t know. Yes, I do. Do you think it would be— I mean to say—was there any whisky in the stores?”
“You can go and see.”
“Yes!” He rose, but sat down again. “No, after all. Carry on, carry on.” His hand moved towards his handkerchief, but again he did not complete an operation he had begun, and the hand returned limply to his knee, as though ashamed of itself. “Of course,” he said with the travesty of a grin, “you didn’t really see—er—Charles, did you?”
“Clearly enough,” answered Mr. Maltby.
“Yes, exactly,” murmured Mr. Hopkins, without any idea what he meant.
Then he forgot his shame, and indulged in another thorough mopping.
“May I interrupt with a question?” asked David.
“Of course,” replied the old man.
“I’m not sure whether it’s appropriate to the point we’ve reached, but—that room. The one you warned Smith not to enter. Did you see anybody there?”
Mr. Maltby smiled.
“I can answer that more definitely. I am afraid I created that bedroom out of my imagination, and also the alleged menace inside it, although I admit that inventing menaces in this house is like carrying coals to Newcastle. My object was to reduce Smith’s taste for wandering about loose, for the reasons I have already given.”
“Thank you. Now I’ll try and be quiet.”
“I don’t want you to. I am telling you a story, and your duty is to search for its flaws. Well, to proceed, we come now to this afternoon. Charles, having controlled any qualms he may have had, lights the fires in the hall, the drawing-room, this dining-room, the kitchen—no, that was assumedly lit before—and two bedrooms. I understand from Miss Carrington that the fire in Mr. Thomson’s room—Charles’s room—was laid but not lit, and that she lit that herself when Mr. Thomson was put there.”
“Quite correct,” answered David. “I have wood and coal in Thomson’s room down on my list.”
“Why not add the match?” murmured Mr. Hopkins.
“That done, Charles waits,” went on Mr. Maltby; “and his master and the daughter arrive.”
“I think I’ve spotted a flaw here, sir,” said David.
“Let me have it.”
“When did they arrive?”
“I place it this afternoon. You will remember, tea was prepared for them.”
“Yes, but according to your interpretation of the letter—if that’s correct—they were not due to arrive till the evening, just before dinner.”
“I agree there seems something wrong with our pattern here,” nodded Mr. Maltby, “yet it also seems too much of a coincidence to suppose that two other people should have arrived. Don’t you think so?”
“They might have been visitors,” proposed Mr. Hopkins.
“Visitors, in this weather?” queried Mr. Maltby. “Besides, is it likely that Charles would invite visitors just before his master’s arrival? Certainly this is not the kind of weather in which visitors just drop in for a chat.”
“I’ve thought of one more point,” said David.
“What?”
“The cups. There were three. Would Charles have tea with the others?”
“That is a very good point. I am not sure that I can deal with it.” The old man frowned, and stared almost accusingly at Exhibit C. “Yes, yes, there are one or two things here——” He threw up his hands. “Your point beats me for the moment, Mr. Carrington. Some trivial detail might adjust it. We must remember it, while proceeding with what, after all, remains the more likely hypothesis—namely, that the people for whom that tea was prepared were the people who were expected. The owner of the house and his daughter. Perhaps—yes, perhaps they altered their plans and arrived earlier than originally intended because of the weather.”
“The weather would have made ‘em arrive later,” argued Mr. Hopkins.
“If they had not advanced their plans on account of it,” retorted Mr. Maltby. “That is exactly what I am now suggesting.”
“Quite so, quite so,” murmured Mr. Hopkins. “I’m only trying to help.”
“The weakness remains, however. I’m not satisfied, but for the mome
nt this appears to be the best we can arrive at. The master and the daughter arrive before tea. How long before tea? Not long.... The devil knows how they got here——”
“Perhaps they did arrive long before tea, Mr. Maltby,” interposed David, “and got here before the weather worked up to its present pitch.”
“In that case, why do not the bedrooms show it? They would go to their rooms if they arrived long before tea, but if they arrived just before they might wait for the needed cup before ascending.”
“And leave their luggage below,” answered David. “Where’s the luggage?”
“Yes, I was just going to ask that,” exclaimed Mr. Hopkins, annoyed that he had been too late with the question. “They wouldn’t turn up for a week with only a toothpick!”
“I have also asked myself that question, and as yet I have no answer to it,” admitted Mr. Maltby. “If they arrived by car or some other conveyance, they would undoubtedly bring their luggage with them. But, how about this? They could not get a car to bring them from whatever station they arrived at. Presumably Hemmersby, some five miles distant. They decided, therefore, to leave the luggage behind, and send for it later. They certainly took no luggage away with them.”
“How do you know that?”
“You shall hear in a minute. The trouble is that we have no inkling of why they came. Their motive. I doubt whether it was just to enjoy Christmas here. I believe they came for some special purpose—a purpose that worried Charles Shaw considerably. Yes, if we knew why they came we might understand more about the manner of their coming, and their going.
“Still—they came. They came while we were chatting in the train, and while Smith was killing Barling in the next compartment. They came—and, very swiftly, something happened.”
Mr. Maltby paused, and his eyes now travelled to Exhibit A, the hammer. Mr. Hopkins tried to prevent his eyes from following the example.
“We do not know what the something was. We have got to find that out. We do not know whether the situation that arose was spontaneous or premeditated. If the ghost of that old man hanging on the wall had a voice, I’ll wager it could tell us. Maybe presently it will! But we do know the sequel. Three people were in this house, and three people left it. Two of the three were alive.”
Mystery in White (British Library Crime Classics) Page 11
