by Ashby, R. C.
Well, there was Mertoun, and from Mertoun she expected great things. She didn’t know him well; her story was one that could not be poured into a stranger’s ear. He would probably have laughed and left the house thinking her mad, or else warned Charlie Barr that the nurse was dangerous. Her idea was that the story must gradually dawn upon Mertoun—as in fact it did—and that as it dawned his intelligence would, like hers, reject the idea of a ghost, and aided by her suggestions come round to her own way of thinking. So she would gain a powerful ally who would not be ignorant of the proper steps to take. She had not counted upon Barr’s hypnotic power over Mertoun, or Mertoun’s own readiness to accept the supernatural. When she knew, she scorned him, which was rather ruthless of her. Of course she was terribly disappointed, but I don’t think Mertoun was altogether to blame. Others may think as they will.
Miss Goff was right in supposing that Mertoun’s knowledge of the ghost story would result in a few confirmatory parlour tricks by Mr. Barr. She had by now become uncannily clever at foreseeing her enemy’s moves. But they were such deft moves; no clumsy mistake for her to pounce upon. From then on, she and Charlie played a kind of chess game, very exhilarating, I’m sure; and Miss Goff grew more and more daring in her finesse, until on the night that the Colonel’s disappearance was discovered she brought out her trumps and took the first game of the rubber. No—the second, wasn’t it? Yes; for Barr won the first, Miss Goff the second, and I the third. That’s right. And as Miss Goff and I were playing together . . .
I learned that on a certain night not long after Mertoun’s arrival Miss Goff, awake in her bed, heard stealthy footsteps—Charlie going downstairs. She guessed he was gone to set some scene, so when ten minutes later she heard him as stealthily return she gave him half an hour and slipped down to see what he had been up to. The slashed picture.
She thought, “I’ll show this to Mertoun. It will open his eyes. Ghosts don’t cut up canvas!”
She fetched Mertoun, and Mertoun showed her quite clearly that he was by now Charlie’s victim instead of her ally. That was what she meant by saying that he had failed her in her test. After that, of course, she had no hopes from him. She went on bravely playing the game alone.
She even grew so bold as to throw defiant snippets of talk at Barr. After taking up the papers, for instance, to get the approval of the non-existent patient, she flung out at Barr, “Who knows from whose hand it will come?”
This was a deliberate challenge, and I consider that she was taking unnecessary risk in daring so much. Also after the séance—during which she had sat on the stairs, wondering how far Barr would dare to go—when Mertoun told her wonderingly that Gracchus had paid a visit; “Oh yes,” she said coolly; “I thought he would.” What did Barr make of these things?
Which brings us to the question of whether he ever suspected her of knowing more than she should. Personally I’m sure he didn’t. He made the great mistake of underrating her intelligence. He disliked her and thought her stupid and purposely enigmatic; that was all. He did make one attempt to prejudice Mertoun against her—just a precautionary measure—when he cried impulsively on one occasion: “Mertoun, I don’t trust that woman.”
The killing of Blaik broke Miss Goff down; to her it was very dreadful, and all her fears were revived. It was as well that she then decided to get away. She could do nothing more. All that remained was to allow the discovery of the Colonel’s empty room, and she decided that the next time Barr asked for admission he should have it. She would leave Fate to make the occasion and to direct her words. So the discovery was made and Miss Goff put up her wonderful bluff, with that simple argument which admitted of no discussion. Gracchus is out to destroy the Barrs; you have proved that for yourself; therefore he has taken the Colonel . . . and you can’t question either that or the existence of Gracchus without getting yourself into a very nasty position, Mr. Charles Barr!
And with that she left the house.
With regard to her brother, young Hamleth, a lazy young rogue but likeable. He was the one person to whom Winifred had confided her secret suspicions. Even the father believed in the ghost story. Hamleth believed Winifred, simply because she said it was so, but he also possessed a strong vein of superstition which complicated his ideas on the subject. All the same, Barr was always “that fiend” in their secret conversations, and they both longed to see him brought to book. Thence their willingness to assist my inquisitive delvings into the subject of the “haunt” without having any idea of my official position. I suppose they thought me a Mertoun minus the Mertoun failings—which I haven’t admitted to be failings at all. Well, I’m glad I didn’t disappoint them.
Miss Goff in the witness-box was the coolest person I ever saw. Hamleth, of course, was not called. I never saw him after, and I hope he was properly grateful for the work I put in when suppressing the lighthouse story from the evidence in the case. It was my own case, luckily, and in the end I managed to work Thorlwick hard without any mention of the Strickan; which was a good thing for both Hamleth and his father. They had undoubtedly prevented murder, though they might have paid a heavy penalty for their ingenuity. The story of the Colonel’s escape had no real bearing on the case, which was to prove the charges against Barr, and the incident was barely mentioned.
v
Now for my own part in the affair. How did I come into it at all? We must go back to the very beginning, when Mertoun first told me his unusual story in the Club. That story as told to me is probably still fresh in your mind. Just how did it strike you? Perhaps no two people alike.
When I was a very young man in the Metropolitan Police Force one of the things I was taught was to reject anything which insulted my intelligence.
I’m not going to say that a ghost story insults my intelligence; for that would be as bad as stating that supernatural phenomena are a farce, and I should have a hundred letters in the morning from a hundred estimable people telling me that though apparently a man I am really no better than a low form of pond life.
No. But what insults my intelligence is a ghost who hangs about and commits double murder. It can’t be. I’ve met them before. So almost at the first I had to discredit that very plausible-sounding ghost—I was disappointed at having to do it—and to substitute the age-old question, cui bono?
Charlie Barr, everybody shouts. How easy. Well, let me say at once that I didn’t jump straight on Charlie. Why should I? What was the matter with the Colonel, for instance, or even Ingram, or the man-servant M‘Coul as a suspect?
First I concentrated on Ingram, as he seemed such a likely subject with his unbalanced mentality. It was the kind of thing that would appeal to a man like Ingram, to project himself into the personality of a legendary ghost, to dress up in the fantastic trappings of a Roman soldier and stride about the moors on dark nights, mad with power, until he actually came to believe himself a reincarnation of Gracchus. Brain-storms might account for the murders, completely forgotten after they were committed. I never thought him a conscious murderer. What washed Ingram out finally was the fact that he couldn’t have been in the house and produced the phenomena, and since in any case there was no criminal intent on Ingram’s part there was no question of an accomplice in the house.
I went to Somerset House to see how the Barr money was left. Ian Barr’s will was produced. He had left over six hundred thousand, to his brother Germain Barr during Germain’s lifetime, and afterwards to his nephew Charles Barr, of New York. I next turned my attention to old Germain, the shadowy Colonel Barr who played such a passive part in the story. I wondered if that passivity were part of the plot, whether seclusion in his room on the grounds of illness were a neat alibi for the Roman soldier. In that case, of course, the nurse would have to be an accomplice, and possibly the man M‘Coul also.
Motive? The Colonel already had the house and all the money. Could it simply be abnormal
greed and megalomania that had caused him to wipe out his brother, and was he now trying to get rid of the interloping nephew? It didn’t seem to me a strong enough motive, though the means and opportunity were all right. I may say here, that whoever the murderer was it was plain from the first that the shepherd Blaik had been killed because he knew something he shouldn’t. What that was I didn’t attempt to guess at this stage.
If the Colonel were guilty, when and why had he staged his own disappearance? The motive for that baffled me. It was not as though any hint of discovery threatened him. There was no suspicion as far as I could see.
Could the man M‘Coul alone be the malignant spirit of the Barr family? Fraud on such a grand scale seemed too much for a servant. There was lively imagination behind these crimes. Meanwhile I thought it would be interesting to know a little more about the American nephew and his past history, and a few cablegrams sped between my office and the Detective Bureau of the New York Police Department. What I asked for in the first case was information about a young man who wrote books on psychology and had probably practised recently in New York as a psycho-analyst—name, Charles Barr.
Answer came back that there was no such person known. I then asked if any such person of different name could be traced, who had left for England in the autumn of ’29 or spring of ’30. The answer was that Doctor Gladius fulfilled the conditions, age thirty-seven, tall, medium build, dark, scholarly appearance; had written two books privately published; practised as psycho-analyst on Riverside Drive; antecedents unknown; left New York to avoid bankruptcy during winter of ’29-’30; said to have gone to join wealthy relatives in England. Suspected of doubtful practices, necromancy and hypnotism, by District Attorney, but no case made out.
Well, if that wasn’t our friend Charles I was ready to eat my hat; and it was all very suggestive too. Hypnotism and necromancy were words lush with suggestion in this case. Again I cabled to New York for fullest details of the activities of “Doctor Gladius,” and I received a comprehensive reply.
This was quite enough to send me north for a little fishing, while hiding the real purpose of the expedition from my companion, Mertoun. Charles Barr appeared to have had ample motive for descending upon his somewhat miserly old uncles, and means and opportunity for relieving them of their fortune before he was legitimately entitled to it. All that, of course, didn’t make him the villain, but he was well worth watching.
By now I had a manuscript of Mertoun’s story as he told it to me and as you have read it for yourselves. I read it carefully again, in the light of young Barr’s presumed criminality, and at once light fell on what had been inexplicable. To a man capable of “hypnotism and necromancy”—oh, those marvellous words from across the sea—a masquerade on the lines of the Roman ghost would present no difficulties. It was easy to see also how Mertoun had been taken in. The more I read, the more I marvelled at the consummate artistry of Barr, the amazing skill of his plot. He never hurried his part or overplayed it. But this wasn’t convicting him of the murders, or identifying him with the Roman ghost, which was practically the same thing. I should need something more tangible.
One of the first problems I set myself to solve was, what had actually happened to the Colonel? Where had he gone to? That disappearance had come as a real shock to Charlie. It was definitely not part of his plan. One piece of knowledge I shared with this simulator of ghostly visitants, and that was that the Roman was not to blame. Beyond that, like Charles, I was flummoxed. Two alternatives emerged from nights of thinking: either the Colonel had gone of his own accord, tired of his imprisonment, suspecting that some evil threatened him; or else the enigmatic Miss Goff had staged the affair. In any case, she would be an accessory to the escape.
I favoured the idea that it was all her doing; the Colonel had recently had a stroke, he would not be capable of much individual effort. Now what had she done with him?
She must have got him to some place not too far away, and she must have had outside help. But what help can a country nurse call upon, having neither money nor influence? Her own people. She had told Mertoun how they were all indebted to the Colonel. But who were Miss Goff’s people, and where did they hide themselves?
I couldn’t come to any definite conclusion until I made copious inquiries about Miss Goff and discovered that her father and brother were lighthouse-keepers, lived at Thorlwick, and had taken up occupation of the Strickan Light on the night of January 22nd. It would not take two strong men more than three-quarters of an hour to row to the lighthouse from the cove at the foot of the cliffs just beyond The Broch.
I went to Thorlwick and made cautious inquiries. The Goffs, father and son, had gone to take up duty at the proper time. The third man, Bell, had been ill and unable to go. Nobody seemed to know who had actually gone as third man. I went to see Bell on the pretence of getting him interested in a new kind of insurance. I led him round to his recent incapacity for work, but he was a mum fellow and I learned nothing. I then went on to discover the three men who had vacated the lighthouse for the Goffs’ occupation. From them I learned, circuitously and with much expenditure of tobacco, that three men had relieved them and the third was an unknown man, said to be from Burnfirth. I left it at that, satisfied as to what had happened to the Colonel. Then came that interesting meeting with young Hamleth by the moorside. I thought I’d caught a Goff, though he deceived me for a day or two, and when I knew I was right I sprang the whole thing on him to his consternation.
Now for the closing scenes. I had two problems in my mind, temporarily shelved but ready for future pondering. Where did Barr keep his stage-properties? And what was it that Blaik knew?
I came to two wrong conclusions. First, that Barr’s cache was in his own study under lock and key; and second, that Blaik had seen the masquerader in full rig sneaking away from the house to make an appearance on the moor and impress Mertoun, had followed curiously, and met his end. Obviously death was the only answer to anyone who accosted the Roman ghost.
These theories may have been stupid, but for a long time they satisfied me.
I wanted to get my hands on that Roman costume, to examine it, and see if the neck-guard were twisted in the way that Mertoun had described. My only idea was for me and Mertoun to get access to the house, for Mertoun to engage Barr, and for me to make a bold attempt at a reconnaissance. Afterwards I was prepared if necessary to take my life in my hands and burgle the study, complete with outfit. I can’t tell you in detail what an outfit I had with me, packed among my holiday luggage; but there was an up-to-date set of burglars’ tools—red lamp, electric torch, rubber gloves, three cameras, enlarging apparatus, and stacks of chemicals. Mertoun would have swooned at the knowledge.
Mertoun was eager enough to see Barr, and if I hadn’t discouraged him would have forced his way in and spoilt the whole thing. I could see I should have to work very slowly to get the man’s confidence. Mertoun then wrote a letter, and when the answer came I waylaid it—Hamleth Goff has described this incident—and took care that no hands but mine should touch it. I hoped to get the impressions of two fingers and a thumb, but when I took the paper upstairs and dusted it I was disappointed. Even the fold had taken no impression. It was rough, matt paper and the fingers that used it had been perfectly dry.
I then went in for direct methods. I found the father of Gwennie, the housemaid at The Broch, a crude, grasping-eyed farmer—or rather crofter, for he worked the few acres unaided, and kept about a score of fowls and a vicious sow.
I said to him in the blunt way he understood: “Can your girl Gwennie keep her mouth shut?”
He said that Gwennie could do it as well as most people if the inducement were of the right kind. His actual words wouldn’t bear reproduction, being both dialectical and objurgatory.
I said: “I want to see Gwennie next time she’s home. If she agrees to do what I ask she shall have a p
ound in advance and so shall you. If she completes the job and keeps her mouth shut—that’s the main thing—there’s another pound each for you. What about it?”
He said: “Give us my pound now.” I did. He said that Gwennie would be home for an hour or two the following evening, and she’d do whatever I wanted, and he’d see that she was as mum as the grave, and what about him taking care of Gwennie’s pound too? I wouldn’t agree to that.
The next night I went up and saw Gwennie. What I wanted was the glass from Barr’s bathroom, after he’d used it for his teeth in the morning. Gwennie saw nothing queer in a request that was worth four pounds. She brought the glass the very next day—“and I gave it an extra good polish too!” she said proudly. I controlled a desire to flay her and pointed out—as I may say I had pointed out on the first occasion when the prospect of the reward had prevented her from listening to a word I was saying—that the glass must be in its original soiled condition, and that she must let it dry and wrap it with the utmost tenderness in a piece of tissue-paper or a duster.
She did it at last and got her money; so did the father. I left them scrapping over the division, not accepting equality of terms for the labour involved.
I got enlarged photographs of three perfect prints, thumb and two fingers of the right hand, and imperfect ones from the left hand, blurred I feared by Gwennie. But it was quite as good as I could hope for.
