Comes a Stranger

by E. R. Punshon

  “I am sure she wasn’t,” Olive declared. “She was awfully upset and nervous; I can’t describe it, it might have been the most awful thing she was telling me about. I think she thought it was.”

  They went back through the Lodge grounds and out towards Wynton wood, where a sporadic, though by now hopeless, search for the missing pistol was still in progress. Behind the Lodge the ground rose slightly, and their way led them through a clump of trees growing just before the old boxwood hedge that here marked the boundary of the Lodge gardens. A fine view over the surrounding country was to be had here, and there was a seat in position from which it could be enjoyed. They went behind this seat and onwards through the trees, passing, as Bobby noticed, a fine bed of forget-me-nots, a bed some six feet long and two or three wide and that seemed to be carefully looked after. Bobby said:

  “They look nice.”

  Olive did not answer, but hurried on. Bobby said, thinking of Miss Kayne’s story and Mrs. Shepheard’s unconscious denial of it:

  “This thing seems full of contradictions of one sort or another, but none of them seem to have anything to do with Nat Kayne’s death—or with each other for that matter.”

  He began to tell Olive of Mr. Broast’s discovery that his pistol was missing. Olive agreed that she, and no doubt a great many others, knew that he possessed such a weapon.

  “But you can’t think,” she protested, “that Mr. Broast would want to shoot poor Mr. Kayne? why should he?”

  “Well, someone did,” Bobby pointed out, “and Mr. Broast’s pistol is missing. That doesn’t prove it was used. If it was used, that doesn’t prove Mr. Broast did the using. Only it’s got to be found somehow. If it were, one or two little discrepancies are worrying. You don’t know what’s behind them—like Miss Kayne saying she had been engaged and Mrs. Shepheard being sure she never had the chance.

  “I don’t see why Miss Kayne should have told me all that story if it wasn’t true,” said Olive, looking both thoughtful and uneasy.

  “Major Harley would say it was more sex starvation, probably,” remarked Bobby. “Then there’s Sir William Winders saying he never left the house after he heard what had happened till we got there. He said he was expecting us and didn’t want to miss us. And his butler says he started out for the village, went as far as the entrance to the wood, and then turned back by the pond and home.”

  “By the pond?” repeated Olive. “It’s rather a long way round.”

  “It’s not very big, is it?” Bobby asked. “Didn’t you say it wasn’t deep?”

  “Oh, no, only a foot or two, a little more perhaps. I used to play there sometimes when I was a tiny.”

  “Let’s go round by it, shall we?” Bobby said. “I’d like to have a look.”

  They walked on, and before long reached its somewhat muddy banks. They stood still, Bobby thoughtful and Olive wondering what was in his mind.

  “If you are suspecting poor Sir William now,” Olive said, “I don’t think you need. I think he is rather horrid, I always hated him when I was a child, but I don’t think he would ever murder anyone. Too flabby.”

  “There are times when a murder happens easily,” Bobby said.

  They went closer to the pond. Bobby walked along by the banks, his eyes intent and searching. He found footsteps presently where someone had been standing, close to the water’s edge. The earth was damp and the footprints were quite plain. They had evidently not been made by a labourer, but by someone wearing well cut, well made shoes; by someone, too, who had been standing there a few minutes, since the imprints were deep and well-defined. They pointed directly to the water, as though the person making them had walked straight up to it and then stood still.

  “What are you doing?” Olive asked.

  Bobby was taking off his shoes and socks. He rolled up his trousers above his knees. He took off his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves. Olive watched him, but asked no further questions. Bobby waded into the water. It hardly came up to his knees. In the middle of the pond it was a little deeper, but not much. Several times he stubbed his toes against stones. Once or twice he trod on old tins, though without hurting himself, for he proceeded very carefully. When his feet touched anything hard he felt for it and brought it to the surface. Once in this way he brought up some old wire and once an ancient and battered kettle. He flung them aside. In the centre of the pond he paddled to and fro, searching with his feet, with a stick he had picked up, getting himself thoroughly wet. Presently he found what he was looking for. He paddled back to the bank again. He was carrying a revolver in his hand and the water dripped from it and from the muzzle, splashing in a shower of drops on the surface of the pond. Olive said:

  “You’ll get cold, getting so wet.” Then she said: “What’s that?”

  “I think it’s the murder gun,” he answered. “I think Winders must have thrown it in to hide it.”

  “Bobby,” Olive whispered, “Bobby, does that mean—he did it?”

  CHAPTER XVIII

  MURDER AGAIN

  Bobby had at least learnt that it is never wise to jump to conclusions. Doubts, suspicions, questions, all had to be welcomed and considered, but a conclusion must be examined and tested and weighed in every possible manner before acceptance could even be thought of. It was not, for instance, even certain yet that this was the pistol missing from the library, nor, if it were, that that was the one from which the fatal shots had been fired. Quite possible that Sir William, knowing that he had a pistol in his possession and remembering that he had no licence for it, had chosen this method of getting rid of the thing.

  The discovery had to be reported at once, however, and of equal importance was it to make sure that the footsteps were preserved till they could be properly examined and measured. Leaving Olive, therefore, on guard he hurried back to the village, handed in the pistol, told his story, and was soon back with Superintendent Killick and some of his expert assistants. While they were doing what was necessary in the way of securing measurements, photographs, plaster casts, and so on, Bobby took Olive back to the Lodge, left her there, and then went on to the village to write out a full report. He was hurrying along at his best speed, when he heard his name called. Peering through the darkness, for by now it was night, he saw young Virtue stepping out of the shadow of a hedge where he had apparently been waiting.

  “You’ve found the pistol Kayne was shot with, haven’t you?” Virtue asked.

  “How do you know?” Bobby demanded sharply.

  ‘All over the village,” Virtue retorted. “Someone saw them handling it at the police station. Look here, I was waiting to see if I could spot you. There’s something I want to say, I know you think I’m holding out on you.”

  “Well, you are, aren’t you?” Bobby asked. “Very silly, too. It’s got to come out.”

  “If it did, it wouldn’t help you, not about who killed Kayne. If I knew” —Bobby thought he emphasized slightly this last word—“anything at all, I would tell you at once.”

  “Even if you had done it yourself?” asked Bobby.

  “Well, now, that’s just crazy,” declared Virtue, though looking distinctly uncomfortable. “Why on earth should I do a thing like that to a man I didn’t know the first little thing about?”

  “Is that quite accurate?” Bobby asked. “Did you never write to him, for instance?”

  “Oh, you’ve got on to that, too, have you?” Virtue asked. “Well, if you’ve seen the letter, you ought to know there’s nothing in it. I wrote to him as a library trustee. I asked if he knew anything about my cousin.”

  “Did he answer?”

  “Yes. He didn’t say much. But I got the idea he was a bit excited, as if he thought there might be something worth getting after. He said he might write again. I thought I would wait developments. I didn’t reckon on these developments. I was hoping he might help me find out what happened to James A. So why should I shoot him? unless you think it was all a bit of fun of mine?”

  “You told
us a very peculiar story, and I don’t mind saying that for my own part, I don’t believe a word of it,” Bobby retorted. “Only if it is accepted, well, then it gives you an alibi. Perhaps that’s what it was told for?”

  “Well, it wasn’t,” Virtue grumbled. “Trying hard to pin it on me, aren’t you?”

  “If I am, you’ve only yourself to thank,” Bobby answered steadily. “Telling lies, suppressing the truth, it’s equally suspicious.”

  “Oh, I know I’m in a jam,” Virtue admitted, “but I don’t mean to make it worse by shooting off a lot of guesses that might bring a whole heap of trouble. I promised not to, for one thing. There’s a little old business way back home that needs looking after if she’s not to go to glory. That’s all. Means nothing to you, but a whole heap to some of us.”

  “It means something to us,” Bobby said, “to find out who killed Kayne. We don’t like killings in this country.”

  “No one does,” retorted Virtue. “You’re being hostile. It’s no good our taking cracks at each other. Get us no-where. Listen, will you? That typist girl, Miss Perkins, has been trying to pump me. Did you put her up to it?”

  “What did she want to know?” Bobby asked in his turn without answering the question, for though he felt quite certain Miss Perkins had not been ‘put up’ to anything by the police, he saw no reason for saying so to Virtue.

  “Blessed if I could make it out,” Virtue answered. “Something about that photo you dug up. Wanted to know a lot about it, about me, about a whole heap of things. She’s a sticker when she gets going. I nearly had to throw her out to get quit of her.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Not a thing, why should I? A dumb little idiot like her,” Virtue answered. “I thought I would mention it. If you set her on, you can pull her off again. If you didn’t, you had better ask her what was back of all those questions she piled in with. Or I will myself. I shouldn’t wonder if she doesn’t know something, seen something, heard something. She gave me the idea she was dropping hints she wanted me to pick up. If it’s about me, I want you to make her come out in the open, that’s all.”

  It did not seem altogether unnatural to Bobby that the little typist was in a mood for asking questions, especially for asking questions about that photograph which seemed in some way so oddly connected with recent happenings. It occurred to him that Virtue might be trying to throw suspicion on the girl. Presumably Virtue would not know she was the only one whose alibi seemed to be supported by independent testimony—that of Mrs. Somerville, her landlady.

  Bobby went on to the police station to write his report. Killick got back while he was there, but Major Harley had an appointment at Mayfield he was obliged to keep, and he had not yet returned. However the discovery of the pistol had been reported to him over the ’phone and the further fact that it had been immediately identified as the one entered in the Firearms Register, as owned by, and in the possession of, Mr. Broast. The pistol itself had already been sent off by special messenger to a firearms expert for him to decide whether it could be proved that the bullets taken from the body had been discharged from this pistol. It had previously been examined for finger-prints, but without anything being found except vague traces too faint and uncertain to be of any value.

  It seemed also that one eager reporter, and already there were many in the village, all eager, had heard of the discovery of the pistol. Killick was very annoyed. So was Bobby for that matter, though more resigned, for he had more experience of the newspaper fraternity. But there was nothing to be done, though Killick said a few brief poignant words on the general subject of newspaper enterprise.

  From the police station Bobby went on to Mrs. Somerville’s to find Miss Perkins, as he thought it might be as well to ask her a few questions. She giggled a good deal, seemed enormously impressed by Virtue’s good looks—indeed when she looked ecstatic and compared him to Mr. Ronald Colman, whom he did not in fact in the least resemble, Bobby began to remember Major Harley’s sex starvation theories. She admitted, too, with her usual apparently incurable discursiveness that she had been asking Virtue questions, because, as she put it, she felt he ‘must Know Something.’

  “It all seems so Strange,” she told Bobby earnestly, “I mean to say, telling us he saw someone dead on the library floor when it was dark, and the shutters fastened, and him saying, too, it was like my photograph I found. Because how could it be, unless it was him, and it couldn’t be, could it? So I thought if I asked him perhaps he would explain it, but he didn’t, he was almost Rude.”

  She sniffed at the memory, and Bobby advised her not to ask any more questions, either of Mr. Virtue or of anyone else. She promised not to, and said she would go to bed instead, and indeed she looked so pale and worn and excited that bed was evidently the best place for her.

  “It’s all been so very trying,” she said. “And Mr. Broast ready to jump down your throat if you so much as open your mouth, especially about his pistol being lost, and he asked me if I had taken it, and I said I wouldn’t touch one of the things, not if you paid me, because I shouldn’t know if I was letting it off, and such a small thing like that could easily get lost. I told him most likely it was there all the time, in one of the drawers, under something, and he—he Swore at me. He did. I know every one’s upset and only Natural they should be, and I am, too, but I’ve quite decided. To-morrow I shall tell him,” said Miss Perkins with a great appearance of firmness, “he must either apologize or accept a month’s notice. I will Not be sworn at. He told me—” She lowered her voice to a whisper: —“He said right out I was to get to the Devil out of that. And I will not be sworn at,” Miss Perkins repeated with even greater firmness than before.

  Bobby agreed gravely that such language was indefensible. He had noticed that Miss Perkins spoke of the missing pistol as being ‘such a little thing’. But a Colt three-two revolver is not so very small, and Bobby thought the point worth taking up. He thought so still more when as a result of his questioning it became plain that what Miss Perkins declared she had seen in a drawer of Mr. Broast’s writing table was almost certainly a two-two automatic, which can no doubt be described as small.

  Satisfied on the point, Bobby did not press it. He thought it might turn out highly important, though he did not quite see how, and at any rate he did not wish to let Miss Perkins guess the significance he was inclined to attach to the information she had let slip. The less she thought it mattered in any way, the less likely she would be to talk about it, and Bobby’s impression at the moment was that no means existed of preventing her from talking, if she knew of anything to talk about. As well attempt to bridle the tides or check the stars in their courses, he thought, as keep Miss Perkins’s tongue from wagging once it knew there was something to wag for.

  So he merely repeated his former advice to her to go to bed, confirmed with a yawn his own overwhelming desire to seek a similar refuge, and departed. Looking back as he was going, he saw the light go up and her figure at the window as she drew the blinds. He hoped she would sleep well, as he felt he most certainly would himself. However, he had still to report this further odd and perhaps significant information of the small two-two automatic Miss Perkins appeared to have seen in Mr. Broast’s possession. He did so, and Killick thought the information interesting, but decided that it would be time enough to question Mr. Broast in the morning. They all, observed Killick feelingly, needed a rest.

  Bobby felt he did, anyhow, and as soon as he had some supper, departed for bed and a sound slumber.

  He was up in good time next morning and made the sort of breakfast it is wise to make when the time and the place of the next meal are highly problematic. Then he went on to the police station and almost as soon as he got there, Major Harley arrived. Two reports had reached him that morning, both significant. One was from the firearms expert to the effect that the bullets found in the murdered man’s body had undoubtedly been fired from the revolver sent to him. A full report would follow presently, b
ut the fact could be taken as clearly established. The other report had been received from the New York police by transatlantic ’phone and explained that there was no hope or prospect of tracing the photograph of which the particulars had been given them. All the records of the photographer in question had been destroyed in a fire, after which he had retired from business and was now believed to be dead.

  “And that’s that,” said Major Harley, “so far as the photo’s concerned. The pistol business looks bad, and I don’t understand the complication of the two-two automatic Broast is supposed to have had. He’ll have to be questioned about it, but it doesn’t seem important. The three-two revolver looks conclusive. I think it justifies us in thinking of making an arrest. It’s undoubtedly the weapon that was used. It belonged to Broast. Winders had access to where it was kept. It is found in a pond there is evidence Winders visited. There are footprints believed to be his. If they agree with his shoes when we test them—well, we shall have to hear anything he has to say. Winders may have some explanation to offer, but it looks bad, Owen, very bad.”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Bobby, who was of the same opinion.

  Their preparations completed, a little party, consisting of Major Harley, Superintendent Killick, Bobby, and one or two others set out for the pond where a sad and weary constable sat and thought the hours would never pass.

  The footprints were duly shown to the Major, examined, considered, talked over. The plaster casts were examined, too, and pronounced successful. There was a long argument as to whether it would be safe to dig up a portion of the bank containing them to be transported to police headquarters and kept as evidence, but finally it was agreed that the ground was too soft for that to be practicable, and they were all on the point of making a move when Wilson, Sir William’s butler, appeared, looking very pale and excited.

  “You’re not thinking he’s in there, are you?” he asked. “My heart went into my mouth when I saw you.”