Comes a Stranger

by E. R. Punshon

  “Yes, sir,” Bobby said slowly. “that’s what was in my mind. It seems to me a fair deduction.”

  “How did the Perkins girl get hold of the photograph, if it is that of the missing Mr. Virtue? do you think she’s in with Bertram Virtue?”

  “I thought of that, it’s possible but not very likely. It may be she found it in the way she says. I don’t know. It seems to have been in her possession ever since she got here. Possibly before. Of course, that will have to be gone into.”

  “Only,” the Major pointed out, “all this, though it’s interesting and important, doesn’t help us much to know who is guilty of these two recent murders?”

  “No, sir. At present we are just assembling facts, or trying to. Another fact we know is that Mr. Adams is here under a false name on an errand he won’t explain, and that the attempt he made to examine and photograph the Mandeville pages made Mr. Broast extremely angry. Yet we also know—your evidence, sir—that the Mandeville pages are genuine, so why shouldn’t any interested person examine them? We know also—my evidence—that Mr. Broast was again extremely angry when I happened to notice that Dryden’s autograph was not in a copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost where he had told us it was.”

  “Surely that’s trivial,” interposed the Major. “Temper at being found out in a mistake?”

  “It’s stuck in my mind, sir,” Bobby said apologetically. “I thought it odd at the time, and then it is a fact, and we’ve so few facts to give us any kind of lead. It’s just a fact, like the forget-me-not incident, and like the other fact that everything seems to have begun as soon as it was known a C.I.D. man was on the spot.”

  “You’ve something else on your mind,” the Major said. “Go on.”

  “Well, sir, that’s about all we know in the way of fact, but I do think we can deduce a few other things we can be reasonably sure of. If I’m right in thinking it’s in any way significant that all this started with my own arrival here, then I think it means some one knows something, is anxious it should come out, and yet dares not act openly—either dares not,” Bobby corrected himself, “or has only suspicions, and thought if the police got interested they might dig up something. Both Bertram Virtue and Adams have more or less admitted they’re afraid of the consequences if they talk too much.”

  “Brings them both into the picture,” commented the Major.

  “Another thing I’m inclined to think a reasonable deduction from what we know,” Bobby continued, “is that there’s something wrong with the Kayne library. It’s difficult to see what. Mr. Broast’s reputation seems to make it impossible to think, as I did at first, that the library is full of fakes and forgeries she daren’t allow to be seen. He does allow them to be seen, only not by Adams and not by Virtue. That seems to me very difficult to understand. Why are those two barred? Do they know something? Bertram Virtue’s no expert, anyhow. Yet it does seem to add up to something wrong, and what else can it be but forgeries Broast is afraid may be discovered?”

  “Doesn’t seem to hold water,” pronounced the Major. “Not when practically every bibliographical swell in the world knows, for instance, the Mandeville pages and all about them. They’re famous. If Broast had made a bloomer about them, even, it wouldn’t matter much. They aren’t his private property, and if he’s wrong, he’s wrong in conjunction with all the other experts.”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Bobby once more. “I wonder why—it’s another fact—Adams was so keen on letting us know Mr. Broast bought yesterday as genuine what Adams describes as a certain fake?”

  “Broast is as likely to be right as Adams,” observed the Major. “A difference between two experts, and Broast backs his opinion to the tune of a £100. Nothing in that, surely?”

  “No—o, sir,” said Bobby, though doubtfully. “It is a bit odd that Mr. Broast seems to have disposed of it pretty effectively, and won’t say how, so that apparently no independent opinion can be obtained. That may mean nothing or it may mean a lot, but at any rate another fact is that apparently now we can’t say for certain who was right—Adams in saying it was a fake or Broast in backing his opinion to the tune of a £100.”

  “Is it relevant?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I can’t see where it fits, but it’s there. It may be a part of the puzzle or it may be something altogether outside. It’s a fact, though, that there’s conflicting evidence, and the point can’t be decided because the exhibit has disappeared owing to action on the part of Mr. Broast.”

  “If it’s not genuine, why should he pay a good fat sum for it?” demanded the Major.

  Bobby ignored a question to which he did not know the answer. He went on:

  “Another fairly obvious deduction is that the murderer must be someone connected with the Kayne library in some way. Miss Kayne herself, if she is Miss Kayne and not Mrs. Broast; Miss Farrar, who is studying at the lodge; Miss Perkins, who works in the library; Briggs, the butler; the two maids; Mr. Broast himself; Virtue and Adams, who want to get into the library and aren’t allowed. I think the murderer must be one of them, though I also think the innocence of some is fairly certain.”

  “Yes, but which of them, and which is the one we want?” asked the Major, shaking his head sadly at what seemed an almost unsolvable problem. “Take Adams. He has no alibi. He was the first to discover Winders’s body. He won’t give us his proper name and address or explain what he’s doing here. For all his prim appearance, we know from his war record he is capable of a good deal when he’s put to it. There seems to be no motive unless, as Broast has hinted, there’s been some plan on foot to rob the library. Pretty valuable stuff there. Is it possible young Kayne was behind some such plan? He may have wanted to draw back, hesitated, quarrelled in some way, and his accomplices felt he had to be silenced. Winders may have suspected something, and so he had to be silenced, too. How is that for a theory to work on?”

  “Quite good, sir, but not complete,” Bobby said, “not enough to take action on.”

  “No,” agreed the Major. “No. Or perhaps Adams has been selling Broast faked stuff and was afraid of its coming out? Not very strong that. Well, what about Virtue?”

  “It’s clear he is very anxious for the library to be searched, and the suggestion seems to be that he thinks his cousin was murdered there and the body hidden, but he daren’t say so without proof.”

  “I should think not,” growled the Major. “Bodies are hidden in queer places sometimes, I admit, in cellars and so on. But in a library, a world-famous library?”

  “Well sir, the library has a cellar,” Bobby remarked. “It’s where a fifteenth century printing press stands. Mr. Broast uses it still, I believe.”

  The Major shook his head, evidently unconvinced. Then he said:

  “Look here, Owen, how’s this for an idea? Virtue does believe his cousin was murdered here, perhaps for the sake of some specially valuable book or as a result of some quarrel. Wasn’t there something about the Dictes of Caxton he had bought? Well, Virtue can’t get proof, but he doesn’t mean the murderers to get away with it. So he takes the law into his own hands, shoots the two he believes guilty, and invent that yarn about seeing a dead body on the library floor to give himself an alibi?”

  “Well, sir, in that case, if it’s like that,” said Bobby hesitatingly, “wouldn’t you have expected Broast to be a victim, not the two trustees?”

  Major Harley played absently with his fingers on the surface of the table. He was silent for a time, but his look was troubled, and Bobby watched him with some surprise. Slowly, in a low voice he said:

  “Well, perhaps he’ll be next.”

  Bobby, unnerved, muttered:

  “Oh, well, now then, I never thought of that.”

  It had not struck him until then that perhaps even yet the series was not finished. He had advised and wished Olive to leave, but not because he had really thought any further danger existed, merely because he wished her away from unpleasant and depressing events. But now Major Harley’s words, still
more his anxious look, called up worse apprehensions.

  He said presently:

  “Thinking of Mr. Broast as a possible victim, rather takes us away from suspecting him of the murders.”

  “It’s nothing but guess work and speculation all round so far,” declared Major Harley. “I’m afraid we’ve got no further. Look at the time, too. We shall have to make inquiries in Paris. They may be able to give us an idea whether Virtue did actually disappear there, whether that’s a fact or whether it was a false trail laid to divert suspicion from what happened here. Not that the French police bother their heads too much about what happens to foreigners. They are a bit inclined to think that if tourists poke their noses into all the most disreputable holes in Paris they can find, then they’ve only got themselves to thank for what happens. Well, Owen, what’s the next step?”

  “Well, sir,” said Bobby hesitantly, “about those forget-me-nots…”

  “Well, what about them? Are they the next step?”

  “Yes, sir, if you agree,” Bobby answered.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  ACCUSATION

  Late as it was when Bobby left the village police station, he did not go straight back to the inn and his bed but made his way first to the Lodge, where he wished to leave a note for Olive so that the developments just planned by himself and Major Harley should not come as a surprise to her. For to Bobby’s suggestions the Major had now given a somewhat reluctant consent.

  “Private property,” he had said gloomily. “Common trespass, that’s what it is you want, Owen. Police have no more rights than anyone else, only they’ve got to be more careful. If they look over the wall ten to one it’s called stealing a sheep.”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Bobby sympathetically, more than sympathetically indeed, “but still trespass isn’t an offence in itself. The only remedy is an action for damages, and we shan’t do any damage to speak of.”

  “We can be ordered off the grounds,” said the Major in a depressed voice. “Nice fools we shall look.”

  However, in the end Bobby had received authority to make the few arrangements necessary, and now, after pushing the note he had written to Olive through the Lodge letter box, he was returning home to the village, the inn, and bed, when he saw standing by the side of the road a man and woman talking. Immediately the woman slipped away, as though the sound of his approaching footsteps had frightened her, and it seemed to him that on the still night air there was borne back to him a faint and distant giggle.

  From the shadows in which they had been standing the man who had been her companion detached himself and came towards Bobby. Bobby saw it was Bertram Virtue. Virtue said to him:

  “I was looking for you. There’s something I want to say.”

  “Yes,” said Bobby. “Well, what?”

  “It’s this,” Virtue answered, speaking very slowly and deliberately. “I’ve told you a cousin of mine, James A. Virtue, disappeared on a trip to Europe and we never knew what happened to him. Well, now I believe he was murdered. I believe he was murdered right here, in this village. I believe he was murdered by Broast, the man in charge of the Kayne library. I believe I can prove it.”

  “Yes,” said Bobby, non-committally, though inwardly so excited his bed and his need therefor passed quite from his thoughts. “Well, better come along to the police station and make a statement. You understand, of course, you are making a serious charge? You said you had proofs?”

  “There’s this,” said Virtue. “James A. visited here. We’ve letters, the last he ever wrote, dated from here. He came specially to show Broast a Dictes printed by Caxton he had found. It’s a valuable thing, worth real money, worth more than money if you’ve got the collector’s bug. It was in what they call mint condition. James A. found it in a farm down Cape Cod way, Massachusetts. In James A.’s last letter, the one dated from this place, he said Broast was more than excited about it, called it the finest example of Caxton’s work he had ever seen. James A. said Broast would give almost anything to get hold of it for his library. Of course, James A. wouldn’t part, it meant just as much to him, more, because he was so mighty proud of having found it. Well, after that, nothing more has ever been heard of James, but the Dictes is in Broast’s library. How did it get there?”

  “Are you sure it’s the same copy?” Bobby asked. “Can you prove it?”

  “Yes. James A. told us. He pricked his initials on the last page.”

  “How do you mean? pricked them?”

  “With a pin. Pricked his initials in outline—J.A.V. You can’t see them unless you hold the page up to the light.”

  “Your statement is that these initials, outlined in pricks made by a pin, are on the last page of the copy of the Dictes now in the Kayne library?”

  “Yes.”

  “You would be prepared to say that on oath?”

  “Yes.”

  Bobby remembered the woman he had seen slipping away as he came up and that faint sound of a distant giggle borne back to him on the quiet night air. Miss Perkins, he felt certain. It looked as if Virtue had persuaded her to examine the Dictes in the Kayne library and ascertain that it did in fact show the private marks described. It seemed good evidence. Virtue went on:

  “There’s not only that. I can give a full description of the book, the names on the title page former owners wrote in. I’ve got a copy of the description James A. wrote out after he had found it. It meant a lot to him, the sort of thing that only happens once in a lifetime, and the only to one collector in a thousand. It meant as much to him as being asked to run for President would mean to some folk. James A. would never have parted while he was alive.”

  “Sounds like the same copy,” Bobby agreed. “Mr. Broast will have to be asked to account for its possession. But I don’t know that it amounts to proof of murder. It’s pretty late now, Mr. Virtue, too late to do anything to-night. I think your best plan will be to draw up a full statement and let us have it first thing in the morning. It will be for the chief constable to decide what further steps to take.”

  “You mean Major Harley?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. I’ll do that.”

  “Mr. Virtue,” Bobby said gravely, “when I say a full statement, I mean it. I mean everything. I’m thinking of that story you told us about what you said you saw in the library the night of the first murder. I think that needs explaining.”

  “Oh, well,” said Virtue, “that was just a yarn.”

  “You mean it was a lie?” Bobby asked.

  “I suppose so; nothing like talking straight, is there?” Virtue said with a little nervous laugh. “Only a lie means when you want to deceive anyone, doesn’t it? and I didn’t reckon that yarn would deceive anyone for long, not even British police. I just knew that book was there and I had to get to see it someway.”

  “What about the broken glass of the Glastonbury Psalter case?”

  “Yes, that was me, too,” admitted Virtue. “I used to be quite good with a catapult when I was a kid. I took a shot with one and hit that glass case square. I reckoned, in the excitement, I would get a chance to grab the Dictes and have a look. It was a good plan, but it didn’t work. All the folk made a rush for where the sound of the smash came from,, all except one old fellow who stayed leaned right up against the case with the Dictes in it. His nose was so deep in some other book he was looking at, I don’t think he had heard a thing. My big idea had been to force open the case—I knew it was locked, but it didn’t look so strong as all that—and grab the Dictes. But I couldn’t do a thing with him leaning right up against that very case. I asked him if he hadn’t heard a smash, and what he thought was happening, and he sort of looked at me and said it was a most interesting variant and the use of signatures was characteristic and decisive, and then he put his nose back in the book and my chance was gone before I could make up my mind to slug him and do what I wanted. Anyway, he was too old to slug, and I couldn’t expect him to stand for it if I yanked him out of there and sm
ashed open the case and grabbed the Dictes. Even the way he had his nose in that book, he would have been bound to notice something was happening.”

  “I expect so,” agreed Bobby.

  “So I went away,” Virtue continued, “and tried to think up something else. Not so easy. Then I heard there was a swell Scotland Yard cop down here for the weekend. So I worked it out to frame something, so there would just have to be a search of the library, and I thought if the Scotland Yard folk were so mighty smart as they are let on to be, then they might spot it. I reckoned to be let in on the search. I reckoned if I was, I would get hold of that Dictes someway. Well, that didn’t come off either. Oh, and I described James A. the way I did because I thought it would give Broast a jolt, if James A.’s body was hidden there and someone said they had seen it lying on the library floor.”

  “Mr. Virtue,” said Bobby with more severity than he felt, for it was difficult not to experience some degree of sympathy for this ingenuous young man, “you seem to have behaved very foolishly and in a way to make us doubt your whole story. You should have brought your suspicions straight to us.”

  “A fat lot of good that would have been,” retorted Virtue. “Thank you. I’ve had some, British cold water I mean. And it’s sure a colder brand than any other ever known. I got an introduction to one of your swell lawyers. He went all up in the air. Said if I didn’t watch my step, I should be in for an action of libel, heavy damages, too, said a libel action in this country—well, it was a libel action, said making suggestions of that sort against a scholar of Mr. Broast’s standing was mighty serious, said on my own showing James A. had been traced to Paris and his baggage was found there, and so how could anything have happened to him here? I tried to say it wasn’t so difficult to fake a trail, but he wouldn’t have it. I tell you I crawled away after that talk feeling I was mighty lucky not to be going inside for the rest of my life and a million dollar fine as well. All the same I had my own ideas still, and I meant to find out what had happened to James A. and if that Dictes was his. It didn’t work out the way I expected, and you may call me a fool from the last house in Foolsville, but then I wasn’t reckoning on two fresh murders. What I say is, Broast put them through, too, and you can call that libel or slander or any darn thing you like.”