Sergeant Verity Presents His Compliments

by Francis Selwyn

  'How many sovs, Mr Rumer?'

  The keeper's mouth opened in the same mirthless smile, displaying his scattered yellow teeth as he thought the matter over.

  'There was four. There was Dr Jamieson, Lord Henry's physician. There was the Reverend Mr Cartwright from Bole Warren and the Reverend Mr Harrison from Lewes that was Lord Henry's friend. And there was Captain Loosemore that was a naval gentleman and friend of Lord William.'

  'And where was Captain Ransome?'

  Rumer laughed.

  'He ain't a sov, Mr Verity, nor even a half-sov. He was stood in the trees, as he might be one of the beaters.'

  'And might you have been able to see the gentlemen near Lord Henry, Mr Rumer?'

  'What I saw,' said Rumer, 'was Lord Henry on the edge of the sunken wall there, walking along it, and a great space all about him. The others was walking through the trees.'

  'Not Mr Richard,' said Verity reprovingly, "e wasn't walking anywhere.'

  'No,' said Rumer, "e was in a wheelchair. Used to ride a shooting pony until his legs got worse. But he'd shoot from a chair all right.'

  'And you saw Lord Henry fall?'

  'Saw 'im fall, Mr Verity, and heard the rifle go off.'

  'Saw the puff of smoke?'

  'No, Mr Verity. Never did. Ain't that odd?'

  'It ain't odd, Mr Rumer. Lord Henry was using that Prooshian powder, which don't make smoke. It shows you an honest witness, though. If you'd said you'd seen smoke,

  'Well I never,' said Verity. For the first time he was taken aback by one of Rumer's knowledgeable revelations.

  'You'll 'ave another jug?' said the gamekeeper hospitably.

  'Don't know as I should, Mr Rumer, when duty presses. What I should like most is an understanding between us that I might come back here, if need be, without a soul knowing about it. Not even Mr Richard Jervis himself.'

  Rumer sucked his teeth, shook his head and whistled softly.

  'It ain't my place to let you, Mr Verity. Nor Mr Richard's.'

  'But I gotta do the job proper,' Verity protested. 'I can't just go where Mr Richard Jervis thinks fit. 'e ain't a detective policeman, 'e wouldn't know murder from plum pudding nor a Seven Dials magsman from Prince Albert, poor crippled gentleman.'

  Rumer continued to whistle significantly. Wrestling over a decision which caused him visible distress, Verity drew from his pocket the remaining two sovereigns of the three for which he had signed a receipt to Richard Jervis. The keeper's yellow-nailed fingers closed over the coins.

  'Don't alter what belongs to Lord William, however,' he said quietly. 'What I don't see don't hurt. But what I do see, I must act upon. I got a place to keep, Mr Verity.'

  Verity's face flushed a deeper, port wine shade.

  'And that's where I thought we had our understanding, Mr Rumer. You was to be my friend in the business and, consequential on you being such, I wasn't to say a word to a soul about them cruel and felonious traps that has been left about the estate, quite contrary to 'is lordship's instructions, I'll be bound.'

  Through the tiny Gothic window of the keeper's lodge, he saw the dog-cart waiting. Rumer nodded, acknowledging that justice, albeit harsh, had now been done.

  5

  In blazing June sunshine, Verity walked eastward along the Strand from Northumberland Street. Coats in summer linen were unknown in the Private-Clothes detail, so that he still wore the black trousers which were shiny with age, the threadbare frock-coat and tall stovepipe hat. His red face and faint air of decrepitude suggested a long-employed counting-house clerk whose advance in age had not been accompanied by any rise in his professional status.

  The square-paned windows of the select little shops caught the sun at a dozen different angles. Someone had called it the finest street in Europe. It was certainly one of the most expensive. A smart olive-green brougham with the crest of a noble family on its door in small, discreet gold figuring, rolled to a gentle halt, and a shopman in a baize apron ran out to its occupant. In the broad thoroughfare, between the rows of pleasantly proportioned buildings, a slow procession of drags, carts, rattling little omnibuses, four-wheel cabs and hansoms, saddle-horses, broughams and chaises, rattled and jangled from Trafalgar Square to Ludgate. Here and there a splendid chariot with the coachman perched on a brilliant hammercloth and with liveried servants behind moved sedately through the throng of vehicles in aloof self-confidence.

  Beyond the glitter of the river in the summer afternoon, the dark tenements of Southwark sprawled in close and narrow streets. Their occupants were rarely to be seen in the Strand however, for a wise authority had imposed a penny toll on Waterloo Bridge, which obliged most of those who lived on the Surrey shore to walk round by Westminster Bridge in order to save twopence a day. None the less, Verity noticed a pair of girls, fourteen or fifteen years old, dressed in black and seeming the daughters of the poor, who walked with great self-assurance, gazing in at shop windows. His natural suspicion was aroused. Then a man in a black silk hat and cloak approached them. He spoke to the elder girl, while her sister began to draw away. As Verity passed he heard the bigger girl scolding the younger impatiently. She took the youngster's arm and pulled.

  'You are a fool. Oh, you fool! Come, he wants us.'

  There was nothing the law of the land required him to do and Verity, moving on uneasily, reflected that his first allegiance now was to the employer who had hired him. Before the windows of Somerville and Pope, gunsmiths, he halted and surveyed the goods offered behind the small square panes. The specimens of the gunmaker's art were such that a man hardly needed to be a follower of the sport in order to admire their beauty. The stocks of the rifles shone with an immaculate auburn gloss, the fine grain polished to a liquid perfection. Brass and filigree blazed like gold in the summer sun, steel barrels sleek as satin and the entire ensemble displayed on velvet of the richest green. Verity pushed open the door.

  Somerville looked as though he had returned hastily from a battue on a country estate and had not had time to change into his town clothes. Shooting jacket and gaiters exuded an air of fresh moorland among the smoke of the town and the faint stench of the city river. Around him, the tall glass cases and the solid leather chairs gave the little shop the impression of a gun-room in a country house.

  'I was expected,' said Verity firmly, 'with Mr Richard Jervis' compliments.'

  'So you were,' said Somerville with a faint Devonian burr which almost matched Verity's intonation. 'To see the rifle.' He seized Verity's hand and shook it with anxious sincerity, then turned about, unlocked a tall display-case and took down a gun from one of the upper shelves. Verity noticed that a label had been tied to it.

  'You come,' said Somerville, as though his visitor did not know it, 'about poor Lord Henry. Well, sir, this is the gun that did the bloody deed. Beautiful as sin and twice as treacherous.'

  'Might there have been something amiss with the weapon, then, Mr Somerville, sir?' Verity asked with an appearance of innocence.

  'Amiss?' Somerville could hardly believe his ears. 'Amiss?

  With our finest piece? Why, sir, we made it for Lord Henry five years since, we fitted him for it as though it was his wedding suit. Stock snug to the shoulder, barrel true to the eye.' He raised the gun in demonstration and lowered it again. 'See, Mr. . . .' 'Verity,' said Verity.

  'See, Mr Verity. Do see, now. Touch there. That stock is smooth as a girl's skin, ain't it. And the barrels! Damascus laminated steel! Nothing better. None of your old horseshoe nails melted down and beaten round a bar. Them barrels, Mr Verity, I saw made. Best silver steel beaten flat and worked into a beautiful twist. Do touch it, sir, do! None of your Brummagen there. Why, sir, there they still do melt down their old horseshoe nails and make an iron bore. Bust up in no time.'

  'It's a fine weapon, Mr Somerville.'

  'Rough-bored, smooth-bored, lapped, polished. . . .'

  'Rifled, Mr Somerville?'

  'French rifling,' said Somerville confidentially. 'None better when this w
as made. Our weapon, Mr Verity, will hit with unerring precision when held by a steady hand.'

  'Your weapon, Mr Somerville?'

  'All our weapons, sir! A child might take the top off an apple at a hundred paces, if only he held it steady.'

  'That's very nice, Mr Somerville. And what might that bit of ornament be on the piece, that metal bit?'

  'Now that,' said Somerville, 'is a game-maker with a little scoring wheel. When a shooter hits his mark, he can move it without altering his hold on the gun. As he does so, the numbers go round on two little wheels. He can mark up to ninety-nine.'

  'And what might it say when Lord Henry was killed?'

  'Six, Mr Verity,' said Somerville sadly. 'Only six. His lordship wasn't much for the chase.'

  'And you, Mr Somerville, having seen the gun, and the bullet what was took from his head, you can imagine how he must a-fell, hit the gun on the ground to jar it, and shot 'isself through the head?'

  'Mr Verity,' said Somerville sadly, 'the bullet that killed him had been shot from this gun, which he was carrying when he died. There was little marls on the stock of the rifle, where it fell. When the gun was taken from his grasp it was empty and had been fired, though of course it was fired anyway that morning at least half a dozen times before.' Verity nodded.

  'Mr Somerville, might a man shoot himself on purpose with such a weapon. I know his lordship never did, but might it happen.'

  Somerville looked at him disapprovingly.

  'He might, Mr Verity, if he could hold it far enough along his arm to turn the muzzle on himself and still press the trigger. However, a poor wretch that's determined on self-destruction is likely to find fifty easier ways of doing it.'

  'But for a man that wanted to destroy 'isself, while making it look accidental, it might be the very thing.'

  'It might,' said Somerville, 'and there again it mightn't. But I ain't going to go so far as supposing that self-destruction ever crossed poor Lord Henry's mind.'

  'Nor am I, Mr Somerville, no more am I. But us detective police has the habit of looking at a thing all sides up.'

  'Generally,' said Somerville coolly, 'it's what's most likely that's true.'

  'Generally it is, Mr Somerville. Generally it do turn out that way.'

  If Dr Jamieson had been a fat man, he might have been spectacularly jowl'd. As it was, his slack red face hung in creased meagre folds, his eyes watered easily and his general disposition seemed that of profound melancholy.

  'It is not my custom to discuss such matters with hired policemen,' he said glumly. 'I set no precedents. What I had to say was said to the coroner's jury.'

  He looked up from the broad partners' desk at which he sat. Behind him on the marble mantelshelf a fine Orleans clock with nymphs in bronze ticked sedately and, despite the June warmth, a fire burned crisply in the grate.

  'I was given to understand, sir,'said Verity respectfully, 'as you mightn't object to setting Mr Richard Jervis' mind at rest.'

  'I do not object,' said Dr Jamieson tetchily. 'I will set his mind and yours at rest. But I will be no party to calumny and family quarrels.'

  'Family quarrels, sir?'

  Jamieson ignored the question.

  'The matter is quite simple, sergeant. Lord Henry Jervis was walking on the sunken fence dividing the woodland from the grass terrace. That fence is four and a half feet high. In the sight of the keepers he stumbled, the loaded rifle which he was carrying hit the ground and jarred, that jarring fired a bullet at an upward angle, entering the skull behind the right ear, being diverted by the bone mass towards the back of the skull and becoming impacted there. The gun never left his hand. Indeed, when he was picked up it was hard to prise his fingers free. He had clutched it in the final instinctive spasm, clutched it in the so-called death-grip.'

  'The wound, sir,' said Verity appreciatively, 'just the entry of a rifle bullet?'

  Jamieson opened a drawer and took out a sheet of blue notepaper. He unfolded it and took out a small piece of card with an engraving upon it. Verity recognized it. When a photograph was taken of a body, for the benefit of a coroner's jury, it was customary to present it in the clearer and more easily available form of a steel engraving, taken from the print itself. The card showed a tiny puckered hole, impersonal and dehumanized.

  'Was he washed before the examination, sir?'

  'Washed?' said Jamieson suspiciously.

  'Washed for his grave-clothes, sir, when they laid him out. Only there ain't no blackening round the wound, sir.'

  'Schultze powder, sergeant. He was using Schultze powder. Smokeless. Whether or not they washed the wound makes no odds; you can't have blackening with smokeless powder.'

  'Quite so, sir,' said Verity, handing back the card. 'One other thing, sir.' 'Yes?'

  'Might it happen, in any way you know of, sir, that Lord

  Henry could either have took his own life or been cruelly murdered?'

  Dr Jamieson gave a faint snort of derision.

  'Who tells such tales?'

  'No one, sir. Only if they're tales then the truth is the best way to stop 'em being told.'

  'Lord Henry killed himself,' said Jamieson, 'of that there is no doubt. His gun was in perfect order, there was no sign of anything to trip him up, even supposing a murderer had fancied the remote possibility of staging such a thing. He fell over his own feet. As to self-destruction, it would be cumbersome in the extreme to do it in such a manner, pointing a rifle at his head and then jarring it on the ground until it went off. No, sergeant. There were half a dozen of us close by him, the keepers were looking at him. They saw no such thing. Lord Henry killed himself by pure accident. Dammit, man, he had every reason in the world for wanting to live. He was young, healthy, rich. Tell me that Richard Jervis wants to do away with himself and I might understand why. Tell me that some injured husband has taken a shotgun to Lord William and I might believe you. But not Lord Henry.'

  'Yessir. Much obliged, sir. Been a great assistance, sir.'

  Jamieson stood up and came round the desk, laying a hand on Verity's arm, man to man.

  'Take some advice,' he said in a rich, affable voice. 'Do what you must do and then, soon as you decently can, go back to your proper duties. There's nothing for you here.'

  'Yessir,' said Verity stiffly. 'Most 'elpful, sir.'

  He backed awkwardly towards the door, bowed clumsily, and withdrew.

  The chatelaine at Mrs Butcher's waist rattled its cluster of keys, her starched skirts rustling on the narrow wooden steps of the servants' stairway as she climbed. Once or twice she put a hand to her lace cap, as though fearing that the exertion of the ascent might have dislodged it from its place, crowning her white hair. Verity followed behind her, puffing a little. The arrangement of the Jervis town house reminded him of a visit with Bella to the Old Vic to see the Indian Jugglers. Then, as now, the way had lain up bare precipitous steps to the gallery, a staircase divided from the more expensive part of the building which led to boarded and roughly furnished apartments.

  'That's a nasty wretch, Rumer,' said Mrs Butcher, 'a cold cruel man, to be sure. Dr Jamieson I only saw, never heard speak above a few words.'

  'Friend of Lord Henry's, was he?' gasped Verity. 'Friend and medical man altogether?'

  Mrs Butcher paused on a step, drew breath and thought. She shook her head and began to climb again.

  'More Lord William's friend, though he cared for the whole family o' course. He was more of Lord William's liking, if you take the meaning, more of a sporting gentleman and ladies' man.'

  Verity puffed a little more.

  'I don't see 'ow I should be a sporting gentleman and ladies' man, Mrs Butcher, not if I was obliged to spend half the year at sea and most of the rest caring for a great house like this and the lands at Bole Warren.'

  Mrs Butcher chuckled and climbed faster.

  'Bless you, Mr Verity! Lord William don't spend more than two months a year at sea. 'e's in town all the rest. Only, o' course, he prefers to live
where he's accustomed rather than in Portman Square.'

  'Not live 'ome, Mrs Butcher? Not in a fine 'ouse like this? Now, why might that be?'

  Mrs Butcher turned on a tiny half-landing and faced him.

  'There's gentlemen,' she said, 'that likes their game with other gentlemen, wagering sovereign for sovereign with the 'ighest in the land. There's gentlemen that likes ladies who ain't quite what they should be. In course, they can't bring 'em in a carriage to Portman Square, nor they can't send 'em through the kitchen way neither. Such gentlemen is very often found to have apartments in the White Bear and such places. And that's all about that, Mr Verity.'

  'And such goings-on might lead to family quarrels, as Dr. Jamieson said?' Verity asked innocently.

  'I don't undertake to know what 'e may a-said,' Mrs Butcher announced firmly. 'However, I do know what my place is worth and when I've said enough, even to oblige a sad young fellow what Mr Stringfellow was prevailed upon to take as son-in-law.'

  She turned her amply-skirted back upon him and opened a small door on the half-landing. Stepping through it, Verity found himself on a sumptuous landing, carpeted in blue and gold, ending in a fine rounded Georgian window before which the sculpted head of a girl in corkscrew ringlets reflected on its pedestal the afternoon sun with brilliant marble whiteness.

  Mrs Butcher bustled along before him, drawing up her chatelaine and selecting a key. They stopped before a massively carved door.

  'Never a soul crossed the threshold since the poor young gentleman went to his tomb,' she said, lowering her voice dramatically. 'And you wouldn't be now unless Lord William was with the fleet and Mr Richard had give such express instructions.'

  The key turned in the lock and she opened the polished door.

  'I'm to stay here, like a sentry at St James' Palace,' she said, 'till you do come out again.'

  Verity bowed slightly, in his lumbering awkward manner, and entered the apartments of the late Lord Henry Jervis. The door closed behind him.