by Vernon Loder
Elaine gathered some of the unpleasantness of what was coming from her first glance at Tollard’s face, and she guessed that his anger was directed at her companion.
Her first impulse was to stay, then the thought that she might be asked to go, coupled with the fact that the presence of a third party during a quarrel is often unwelcome, and resented by those more directly concerned, she took up her diary, and turned to Carton.
‘I think he wants to speak to you,’ she said softly.
‘To swear at me, if I am any judge of looks,’ he responded, just above his breath. ‘Righto! I’ll be Ajax, if he is the lightning!’
She did not hear this, but slipped away before Tollard came up.
The angry man walked up to Carton as the latter was lighting a cigarette.
‘I have a crow to pick with you, Carton,’ he said.
‘Well, sit down, and let us see the bird,’ said the other, carefully extinguishing his match, and throwing it away. ‘Ornithology has always been one of my favourite studies.’
The lightness of his tone made Tollard frown ominously. ‘I hear you have been trying experiments this morning,’ he observed, sitting down heavily, and staring at Carton.
‘One,’ said Carton easily. ‘Will you smoke?’
Tollard refused the proffered case, with an angry gesture. ‘One of that kind is quite enough, Carton! I don’t forget that we are old acquaintances, but, in a matter of this kind, one must draw a line somewhere.’
‘No doubt. But come to the point. What have I done that annoys you specially?’
‘You come here, Carton, as a guest—an uninvited guest, but that is Mr Barley’s business, not mine. From the moment you arrived, I hear, you began to poke your nose into this business. No one engaged you to play private detective, even if you can play it, of which we have no proof.’
‘Is that your business, Tollard?’ asked the other mildly. ‘I don’t think it is. You are only a guest too, though you were invited before I was. If Mr Barley objects to my activities, I bow to him. He owns the house, you don’t.’
‘Very well,’ said Tollard viciously. ‘I’m not going to worry over mere debating points, or whether you have a right or not to do detective work here. But I have serious grounds for quarrel with you when you get someone to dress up to represent my dead wife—’
‘Wait a moment,’ said Carton hotly. ‘I won’t have that! I should never have thought of doing such a thing. What happened was this—I got Mrs Gailey to dress up, to see if Jorkins could recognise the garment. No, wait a moment. I want to be correct, and to do you justice. I asked Mrs Gailey if she would wear one cut like your wife’s—’
‘That is what I said.’
‘Yes, but it was on the cards that the intruder in the room might have adopted that rig for camouflage.’
‘At all events you sent her into the room where my wife had died.’
‘If I had known you objected so strongly, Tollard, I would have asked her to go into one of the other rooms.’
‘You had no business to meddle with the affair at all. That is my contention. I won’t have it! I’m damned if I let you, or any other man, do it!’
‘You’re anxious to see the criminal brought to justice, aren’t you?’
‘Of course; what do you mean, confound you?’
‘If I had not done what I did, the police would have gone on searching for a woman in a red dressing-gown, and the real offender might get clear away. None of you has the nous to do what I tried to do, and you blame me because I was successful.’
‘That’s infernal rubbish,’ said Tollard, with heat. ‘And if it were true, it would only mean that you diverted the attention of the police to Miss Gurdon, who was the one who last saw her alive.’
‘That’s a question. But, if it comes to that, what has it to do with you? You resent my sending Mrs Gailey into the room that was your wife’s. I resent very much your airs of proprietorship with regard to Elaine.’
‘I haven’t assumed any.’
‘Oh yes, you have. It was your silly arrangements that started this muddle,’ cried Carton, now as angry as his companion. ‘Don’t presume to tell me what I must not do with regard to her. If she objects, it is another matter.’
‘She does object!’
Carton found himself in a quandary. He could not give up now without laying before Elaine the full extent of the danger. He was not yet prepared to tell her what the doctor had said. That might involve Browne in trouble, for she would very likely take strong exception to an outsider constructing theories, and telling others of them, when those theories suggested that she might be the criminal for whom the police were looking.
‘Then she can tell me,’ he said slowly.
To his relief, Tollard dropped that point, though his voice was not less angry when he continued. ‘I object very much, Carton, to your tone when you speak of Elaine and myself. Are you suggesting that there is anything between us?’
‘No, not for a moment; if you mean anything concrete. I think from first to last you have been unwise.’
Tollard’s eyes flashed. ‘Well, mind your own business from this time on! Don’t dare to go into that room again! I shall tell Mr Barley I protest against anyone searching there who is not an officer to whom the duty has been given.’
Carton did not reply. He remembered suddenly that Tollard was, after all, a man who had been recently bereaved under very tragic circumstances. He had forgotten it in the natural heat engendered by the other’s dictatorial tone.
‘And I shall tell Miss Gurdon my opinion of your ill-timed interference,’ Tollard added, when no reply came. ‘I am returning to town tomorrow.’
The funeral was to take place in London, and Carton nodded gravely.
‘I am sorry we have had this disagreement, Tollard. It was not of my seeking.’
‘That is a matter of opinion,’ said Tollard coldly, and walked away.
Carton remained deep in thought for a few minutes, then he too went to the house, and spoke to Mr Barley.
‘I should like to go into Elterham at once,’ he said. ‘Could I have a car?’
‘Certainly,’ said his host. ‘I’ll send out to—’
‘I can drive myself, if you will let me use the two-seater,’ Carton told him hurriedly. ‘I want to tell the police about my discovery this morning.’
‘I was just going to telephone,’ said Barley. ‘But you can have the little car if you wish.’
‘Thank you. I have reasons of my own for telling the police first about Jorkins. I’ll go now.’
As he drove off to Elterham ten minutes later, Carton was deciding on his course. With this knowledge of Jorkins’s colour-blindness, he had something to go on. The police would welcome this unexpected information, and, if he played his cards well, they might do something for him in exchange.
Now that the whole household knew of it, the thing could not be kept dark any longer.
His interview with Tollard had ruffled him not a little, but he grew calmer during the drive, reflecting that Tollard would be gone next day, and he would have the field to himself. Only, he decided that Tollard’s outburst was due to his overwrought state of mind, and threw no light on his relations with Elaine. He had been indiscreet, and now he was stubborn, that was all. Somehow, he thought he remembered those characteristics in him as a boy.
Elaine’s reluctance to have him continue his investigation troubled him more. Why the dickens should she be so anxious for him to drop it? If things went wrong she was most likely to suffer for it. On the other hand, if she was innocent, as he, of course, believed, she would laugh at such an unlikely possibility.
He drew up in an hour outside the central police station in Elterham, and asked to see Superintendent Fisher, sending in his card, in the corner of which he had pencilled ‘Stowe House.’
The policeman to whom he had given the card returned in a few moments.
‘The superintendent is busy at the moment, sir, but if you will wait,
he will see you.’
‘I’ll wait,’ said Carton, and sat down in a chair pulled forward for him by the officer.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE DART
WHEN Carton arrived at the police station, Fisher was in consultation with Detective-Inspector Warren. They both looked up with interest when the officer brought in Carton’s card, and when the man had gone, Warren smiled slightly.
‘That’ll be the gentleman who didn’t give evidence, but was listening so eagerly at the inquest, sir,’ he said. ‘I hear from our fellow who is keeping an eye on the maids at the house that he is very busy doing the Holmes business.’
Fisher raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s an odd thing what a fascination our job has for amateurs! If they were paid to do it, they would soon get sick of it.’
‘It’s a play to them,’ assented Warren. ‘But now, sir, we have, I suppose, to pay some attention to the medical theories from London.’
‘Of course. Dr Scruttel is a most eminent man. He has been behind the scenes in most of the big cases in recent years.’
‘But even a big man can’t dispose of the woman in red, sir.’
‘No, that is my trouble. Dr Scruttel’s theory is a very good one. It fits all the facts, if we can presume malice between those two, as I think we can from what we know. But we can’t get away from Jorkins’s evidence.’
Warren reflected. ‘No one came near her from the time she went to bed until the morning; no one we have evidence of, that is. But what happened during the night we can’t say. If the dart could have been used in the hand, and was, it’s a pity it was not something with a big enough handle to take prints.’
‘Even then they might have been washed off.’
‘And this evidence of the expert about the narcotic effects of the poison is great. So far as we have gone into it, sir, we are pretty sure Tollard and his wife quarrelled that morning—the morning before the murder, when they drove into town here. I have seen two people, the assistant at the bookshop where Mrs Tollard had ordered some books, and the man at the garage where they put up their car.’
‘Have you any idea what books she bought?’
‘I have. The assistant said he had some trouble getting them. One was about music, by some odd American writer, and the other was an art book—at least the assistant said it was; but he told me he had a look at it, and it was the craziest idea he had ever known. It was about pictures not being like the things they are supposed to represent, he said.’
‘Oh, that’s only modern art,’ said the superintendent impatiently. ‘But what else did he say?’
‘He said the husband looked very impatient, and out of temper. The lady and he didn’t exchange a word in the shop, but, when the books were packed up, and the gentleman offered to take them, the lady snatched them away, and carried them herself.’
‘Did she look angry, to his thinking?’
‘He said not. He told me she was very pretty and pale, but her face was very set and melancholy. She didn’t glare at her husband, but looked at him as if she was sorry for herself.’
‘Very good. Now the garage.’
‘The garage man had the same ideas. He said they did not talk there, but he had an idea the missus, as he called her, was in the sulks.’
‘Then it looks like a quarrel, and I’ll bet it wasn’t the first.’
He rose. ‘Well, I think that will do for the moment. Get those reports from our man in London and look into them. A great deal turns on the state of affairs in their place during the last year.’
‘Will you see this Mr Carton now?’
‘Yes, you might ask him to come in, as you go out.’
Warren left the room, took a good look at Carton, and asked him to step into the superintendent’s room.
He would have given a good deal to be present at the interview, but he had had his orders.
‘Straight ahead of you, through that door, sir,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ said Carton, and rose.
Superintendent Fisher looked at his visitor with some curiosity, asked him to sit down, and at once assumed an attentive attitude.
‘You are a new guest at Mr Barley’s, sir?’
‘Yes, I have just come home from Africa, superintendent. Before I go further, I may tell you that I was an Assistant Commissioner among the natives, and had a certain amount of work to do that would be done here by your people.’
Fisher nodded. That explained in part this young man’s zeal. ‘I see, sir.’
‘So, naturally, when I arrived and heard of the state of affairs, and knew that—I mean to say was a friend of Miss Gurdon’s, I thought I would help, where and how I could.’
Fisher smiled faintly. ‘A not unusual idea, sir.’
‘No, but one that you fellows don’t like as a rule! However, I don’t blame you. You must often be hampered by fellows who know nothing of the job.’
‘Cases here are not quite those you meet with among natives,’ said Fisher drily.
Carton laughed. ‘A mild reproof, but it doesn’t happen to hit me on a sore spot. If I was the kind of ass who messed about without producing any results, it might offend me.’
‘Have you produced any results, sir?’
‘I think so, but you can judge of that later. In this case one of your pieces of evidence is a poisoned dart. Now, in Africa, in one part, there are bushmen; tiny little, ugly fellows, who generally keep to the depths of the forest.’
‘I have read of them, sir.’
‘And I’ve seen ’em, superintendent! They use bows and arrows, and are pretty expert. Also they poison the tips as the South American Indians do.’
‘I see, sir.’
‘So I have some slight knowledge of the subject.’
‘The dart wouldn’t tell you much, sir.’
‘How do you know?’ said Carton. I have found out one thing that reverses all your theories, so don’t be too sure.’
‘You may think so, sir,’ said the other sceptically.
‘I have. There is no doubt of it. It kills your supposed woman in red, and leaves you without a leg to stand on.’
‘If you’ll prove it I shall be much obliged.’
‘If you will let me see the dart, I’ll prove the other thing to you in a minute.’
Fisher reflected. ‘I don’t think I can, sir. And if you have any evidence that bears on the case, I can subpoena you to attend the inquest when it is resumed.’
‘If you do, I shall only swear to what I know,’ said Carton with a grin. ‘I have heard a good deal of evidence in my time, and I know the rules.’
Fisher looked curiously at him again, then rose and unlocked the office safe, from which he took a small case.
‘What do you want to do with the dart?’
‘Only to hold it between my fingers for two moments, and have a squint at it through a magnifier.’
Fisher produced a strong lens from a drawer. ‘I have one here. If I let you see the dart, will you tell me what you know, or think you have discovered?’
‘Every bit of it,’ said Carton, smiling to himself as he saw that he would get his own way. ‘All.’
‘Here you are then, sir,’ said Fisher, handing over the small case, and the lens. ‘But you must handle it carefully. Wait a moment. I had better get you a forceps. I don’t want any fingers on the thing.’
He found a watchmaker’s forceps, and handed it over, keeping a steady gaze on Carton as he opened the little case, and picked up the dart with the forceps.
‘Did you put it in this case the moment you got it?’ Carton asked, looking at the empty case, and seeming interested in it, ‘or was it otherwise packed?’
‘It was put in this cardboard case at once, sir.’
Carton nodded, and carefully examined the dart under the lens. His face showed no sign of triumph or pleasure as he replaced it in the box, and Fisher was secretly amused at what he thought the amateur’s disappointment.
‘It doesn’t give you much of a
clue, sir, does it?’
‘Not much,’ replied Carton, handing the box back to him. ‘But now to my part of the bargain.’
Fisher got out a note-book and pencil, and stared at him eagerly.
‘Go on, sir.’
‘To be brief, superintendent, the man Jorkins is colour-blind! I tried an experiment yesterday, and he mistook a lady in a yellow dressing-gown for one in red!’
The superintendent exclaimed sharply, and put down his pencil. ‘Do you mean to say that is true, sir?’
‘I do. I tested him with a lady at that window, and he thought she was wearing red.’
Fisher looked admiration. ‘You are very smart, sir. I take back anything I said. If it is true, it reverses the whole case. Who do you think he saw?’
‘I think he saw Mrs Tollard herself.’
‘Dr Scruttel!’ cried Fisher, and then checked himself.
‘Is that a man, or an exclamation?’
‘I was thinking of something else, sir.’
‘I always carry a pinch of salt with me,’ said Carton drily. ‘But after this, you may not feel that I am so much in the way after all.’
Fisher nodded. ‘If you often have ideas like that, I wish you would lend us some. But, if what you are saying is true, and of course we must have the man examined by an oculist to make sure, then we have either a criminal outside the window with the blow-pipe, or one of the guests, or servants, in the house.’
‘It might seem so.’
‘But we have now compared the fingerprints of the three persons who used the pipe on the lawn previously with those that were on the blow-pipe itself, and they correspond exactly. There were the marks of just three pairs of hands—Mr Haine’s, Mr Tollard’s, and Miss Gurdon’s. If there was a man outside, who had stolen the weapon, or borrowed it, and put it back, there ought to have been the marks of another pair.’
Carton looked seriously about him. The evidence was beginning to close in about Elaine. Ortho Haine might be dismissed without thought. There remained only Tollard. But what could Tollard have done when he was away in the Isle of Wight?
Somehow, the superintendent seemed to read his thoughts. ‘If you are wondering if Mr Tollard could have had anything to do with it, you are mistaken, sir. We thought of the possibility of his having administered poison in some other way, but where could he get a similar poison if it was a secret that not even the toxicologist of the Home Office knew?’
