Trent's Own Case

by E. C. Bentley

  Mr Bligh glanced at Randolph’s trade card. ‘So I see. A fine business, I should think, Mr Randolph, in these times.’ His tone expressed an amiable interest.

  Randolph shot him a glance that was not quite so amiable. ‘The business is all right,’ he said bluffly.

  ‘It means everything to a business,’ Mr Bligh reflected, ‘to have a man at the head of it who started at the foot of the ladder. You know how to pick your men, for one thing. And I expect you’re a first-class driver yourself, Mr Randolph.’

  ‘The name of Waters,’ Randolph declared, ‘used to be pretty well known on the track at one time. But I have given all that up long ago. No time for it.’

  ‘Did you bring Mrs Randolph to London with you?’

  ‘I have never married,’ Randolph said. ‘No time for that neither. Old Aggie—that’s my partner’s widow, my old nurse—she’s living with me and looking after me still. There, gentlemen; now you know all about me, or as much as need be anyhow.’

  Randolph, still seated squarely in his chair, now pulled out a large handkerchief and blew his nose sonorously, as if sounding a challenge to all incredulity and suspicion. Trent, observing the gesture, once more exchanged significant looks with the inspector, who proceeded at once to make the comment for which the speaker appeared to be waiting.

  ‘And so that is the account you have given to the lawyers, Mr Randolph,’ he said. ‘A plain enough solution of the puzzle about your disappearance. Well, well! It’s all very simple when you know. You said something about being able to prove your identity, I think, if anyone should raise the question of your legitimate parentage. I suppose you are relying on the testimony of your old nurse.’

  ‘Ay! And there’s more than that,’ Randolph said. ‘I brought several things away with me when I left home, in case they might be useful. There’s the birth and baptism certificates that were taken out when I first went to Freyne Park School—my mother gave me them. And there’s the silver mug I had when I was christened, with my name and the date engraved on it. And there’s the Bible that was given me when I had learnt to read, with an inscription signed by my father—“from his attached father, James M. Randolph,” it says. And there’s a photograph of my mother and father, taken when they were first married, which she gave me—there’s something written on it,’ Randolph added after a moment’s hesitation, ‘and signed by her. All those things I brought with me when I drove up from Salisbury yesterday evening, and I left them with the solicitors this morning. Taken together with the family likeness I bear, they pretty well settled the matter, and I have asked Muirhead & Soames to go ahead and get my position legally established.’

  The inspector nodded. ‘I gather, Mr Randolph, you have heard your father is believed to have left no will.’

  ‘So I have been told; and nobody more surprised about it than me. When I heard of his death, I thought he would have left a will of course, and if so there might or might not be something in my favour. ’Twasn’t as if he had cast me off and disowned me, you see; none so bad as that. And you never know, anyhow. So I thought the sooner I came forward in my lawful name the better. I’m none so sure as yet, mind you, that there is no will, though the lawyers say they had often urged him to make one and he had always put off doing so. But however that may turn out, I mean to stand on my rights if I have got any.’ Randolph closed his lips inflexibly; then added with a change to an easier manner, ‘And now, if you’re satisfied, Inspector, what do you say to letting me know what the police inquiries have led to, and what it means when the papers say an arrest has taken place?’

  At this point Trent rose to go, for the hour of the appointment which he had mentioned to Mr Bligh was by this time not far off. James Randolph, who seemed now to be comfortably conscious of a certain mastery of the situation, gave him a curt but friendly farewell.

  As a taxi took him homeward, Trent thought of Randolph with a sympathy which, to all appearances, was the last emotion that he desired to awaken in his fellow-men. The brief and trite intimations he had given of the sort of life lived in his father’s household had developed in Trent’s fertile fancy to a tragic history of watchful, self-righteous rigour and of spirits broken or stunted by unending frustration. It was curious—Trent had seen the same oddity before—how, despite a feeling in the child which must have been at best one of dogged resentment and rebellion, he had derived from his father not only a remarkable likeness in face and physique, but similarities of bearing, gait and gesture such as no merely conscious imitation could ever have produced. The inspector, as Trent had noted, had been as much struck as himself by the way that this was shown even in such trifles as the posture of sitting in a chair or the management of a handkerchief. The parentless and untaught kitten, crouched with twitching tail by the mouse-hole, did not give more telling proofs of heredity.

  An hour of work at the portrait of Sir Densmore ffinch, and of drafts on that veteran’s fund of scandalous recollection, drove Trent’s thoughts away from the Randolph affair; but they returned to it refreshed as he sat at a solitary luncheon. It was long enough since he had resolved to have no more to do, in a quasi-professional way, with problems of crime. But the murder of a man whom he had known, and who had aroused his interest as a human curiosity, could not be disregarded; and the utterly unexpected appearance of an old friend in the character of the self-confessed criminal had given the keenest edge to Trent’s reviving taste for that grimly fascinating business.

  Bryan Fairman, he was still convinced, was quite incapable of deliberate homicide, to say nothing of shooting a man in the back. But there had always been—Trent now admitted it to himself—something in the make-up of Fairman not inconsistent with the idea that he might, in a state of extreme nervous tension, be guilty of fatal violence. The air of cool reserve that marked him in ordinary social relations, and made him a man of few friendships and no popularity, cloaked a nature of the most sensitive kind. He would have treated with disgust the suggestion of his being what is called temperamental; but he was, in his own way, nothing else. That was to be seen in the intensity of his devotion, quite hopeless as it had always been, to Eunice Faviell; but that was another aspect of the matter. Trent, as one of the few who knew Fairman thoroughly, could name some things that raised his temper to a white heat and strained his steely self-control to bursting-point. Cruelty was among those things; so was injustice; so, too, was the self-satisfied and, as it were, studied obtuseness that threw an ignorant contempt upon all pioneer work in the spacious world of scientific research. There could be little doubt that Randolph had been guilty of the first two—that the cutting off of Fairman from the research that he lived for had been his work; and the old man had, to Trent’s own knowledge, made a deliberate display of the third. All this, taken along with the self-evident truth that Fairman’s illness had told upon his mental condition, made it far from difficult to believe that he had called upon Randolph in a dangerous temper.

  Trent, pacing up and down his studio as he turned these unacceptable thoughts over in his mind, felt in his pocket for a pipe; and along with it he turned out the thin cards on which were printed the enlarged photographs of the fingermarks found on the razor-blade in Randolph’s bedroom. He looked at them with scant attention as he recalled the ingenious attempt of Inspector Bligh to fit these unidentified traces into his picture of what had happened on the night of the crime. It was long ago—Trent could not think how long, but certainly a number of years—that he had made a careful study of the system used by the police in the preserving and classifying of fingerprints. For practice in the use of it, he had for some time amused himself by taking impressions of the fingers of any of his friends who would submit to that rather messy operation. In this branch of knowledge, he told himself, he had grown decidedly rusty. Looking at these well-marked prints of a finger and thumb, he had no more than a vague recollection of the dactyloscopic terms to be used in describing them. He turned to rummage in one of the drawers of a tall cabinet, and soon pulled
out a bundle of photographs fastened by an elastic band. He spread them on the table. Each consisted of a set of prints marked with a name, and with the characteristics of each print noted against it by his own hand in small but clear red-ink script. Neat work, he reflected; a waste of time, but neat enough. Ah! yes; that was the word for which he had been searching his memory—the word ‘ulnar.’ The forefingerprint on the blade showed an ulnar loop, with—he numbered the ridge-marks delicately with a fine pencil-point—seventeen counts. A very ordinary sort of pattern; there were many such, he could see, in his collection. But the unknown print had something else about it; a small white line dividing four of the ridges immediately to the left of the delta. The scar of a cut? No; there was no displacement or puckering of the ridges. What was the term for it? He shuffled through his own photographs rapidly. Yes; that was it! A crease.

  And then Trent exploded in an oath, and the blood rushed to his head as he stared in consternation at the print from which he had read that harmless little word. He caught up the police photograph, and with shaking hands compared the two minutely. There could be no doubt or question. Here were two forefinger-prints exactly alike in every detail, even to the tiniest particulars brought out in each ridge by the process of enlargement. He turned to the thumbprint on his own card, and again compared the two. They were identically similar—of course!

  Trent collapsed into a chair and wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead. He felt as if he were in the crisis of a nightmare. The thing was madness; it didn’t make sense. But this was no dream; the cold facts were there. He strove to put a check on the racing tumult of his thoughts; the facts were there.

  This, then, was the answer of experience to his resolve, so well kept until now, to have no more to do with mysteries of crime. His personal contacts with old James Randolph had tempted him to the extent of seeking information, at least, about the course of the official inquiry. Then the discovery of an old and close friend’s incrimination in the affair had moved him to an absorbed and deeply distressful interest. And now this bewildering complication, this direct suggestion of something far worse than the revengeful act of a man mentally unhinged, had arisen as a challenge to the full exercise of such ingenuity and imagination as Trent had given formerly to problems of the sort. He could do no less than take that challenge up, and by his own way arrive at the truth, if possible, about this baffling case.

  The most direct and swiftest approach would be by means of a personal appeal to Bryan Fairman, that he should consent to clothe with as much detail as he could the outline of what had happened, or been seen or heard, that night at Newbury Place. His statement, it was clear, had been deliberately made as bare and uninforming as was consistent with his purpose. But the making of any such appeal, Trent saw at once, was out of the question. Even if Fairman had been in a condition to reply to questions, he had the right to keep his own counsel if he had so determined, and he was not a man who could easily be made to see better reasons than his own, even by the closest friend. But Fairman was ill and unapproachable; the police themselves could not question him, and leave to speak with him in such a state would never be given to anyone applying merely as a friend of the accused.

  It seemed to Trent that there was one line of inquiry, not altogether without promise, lying open. He had been struck at once—more so than Inspector Bligh had appeared to be—by the statement of the Dieppe police, that they had been completely unable to discover any reason why a foreigner, ‘souffrant et un peu toqué,’ should have betaken himself to a certain quarter of their town, and there appeared to be in search of something.

  Trent knew his France, as has been said, pretty well. He had lived two years there, for the most part in Paris, and at other times had explored many of the towns and countrysides. He was well aware that some acquaintance with the private affairs of every household was an object which every local police headquarters, for the soundest of public motives, set before itself, and was usually able to attain to its own satisfaction; so that a hand could be laid on the recorded facts at need. Fairman, whatever his state of mind, must certainly have had some purpose in travelling straight to a particular neighbourhood in Dieppe when he left England—in going thither, and in looking about for something which, it was alleged, he had failed to find. The Dieppe police, so Mr Bligh had said, declared themselves absolutely at a loss to account for such actions on Fairman’s part, although they had made every possible inquiry.

  It might be true. The Dieppe police might, on the other hand, have the soundest of public motives for being unable to find any clue to the proceedings of Fairman on this occasion. Trent could recall more than one case in which much more extraordinary facts had completely baffled the intelligence of officials who were certainly in a position to discover the truth if discovery had been their object. He reminded himself, indeed, that it was not an unheard-of thing for the French police to go to quite remarkable lengths with the purpose of making the truth undiscoverable by other people. On the whole, he was disposed to think that, as there was obviously more in Fairman’s proceedings at Dieppe than met the eye, there might well be more than met the eye in the official inability to supply a clue to them.

  At least there was something to be done in the way of search for the unguessable truth; and the next afternoon saw Trent setting foot on the quay in the old Avant Port of Dieppe.

  CHAPTER XI

  IMPASSE

  ‘IMPASSE de la Chimère.’ Trent said the words over to himself, relishing their hint of mystery, as he walked out of Dieppe harbour on his quest. Such a name, he thought, must lend some glamour of magic to the blindest of alleys.

  Like all places worth finding, the Impasse de la Chimère was hard to find. Trent had to consult several passers-by before he discovered that the way to the Impasse ran down an old-fashioned narrow side street off a tram-bedevilled, motor-ridden road. From that side street another even narrower turned on the left.

  He had the impression of walking into loneliness and the unknown. The grey houses were mute and mysterious; the streets were empty. At last ‘Impasse de la Chimère’ caught his eye, rudely carved and half defaced by time, at the corner of a narrow passage down which a cart might just be able to pass with hubs scraping the wall on either side. It was a place of emptiness, for the alley ran straight for fifty yards or so between high and formidable walls above which showed the branches of ancient trees. The uneven cobbles of the roadway might have been laid in the days of the Grand Monarque.

  Suddenly the alley turned right and opened out with a sweep on either hand. On the right was a gate surmounted by a battered nondescript animal in stone, which might well be the Chimera that gave its name to the Impasse. The house that lay behind it, visible through the iron gateway, was evidently a place of dignity and tradition. Unhonoured by any name on the gate-post, it was distinguished, convict-like, by a number, 7A, on an ugly little enamelled plaque set crookedly on the wall by a careless workman. Why the authorities of the town should have bestowed on the largest house in the Impasse this number-letter combination, as though there were not enough whole numbers in the universe, was a riddle to which Trent saw no answer. There were, in fact, four houses, 1, 3, 5 and 7A, with no gaps to account for the even numbers or the missing 7.

  Musing on the high degree of success with which the fundamental logic of the Latins is concealed from the inquiring stranger, Trent went forward. A little wind sighed in the burgeoning branches overhead. The sense of desertion became almost unbearable. He thought with a shiver of the words:

  Where no one comes

  Or hath come since the making of the world.

  Further along from the gateway of the Chimera was another opening in the long containing wall, closed by a wooden gate. This was much the worse for wear, and through the chinks in it could be caught a glimpse of a smaller house, detached from its neighbour, but much resembling it in architectural style and in the traces of age. On the gate-post, below the official 5, was carved the curious name ‘P
avillon de l’Ecstase,’ and above the gate was a rough wooden notice daubed with whitewash, announcing ‘Villa à Louer.’

  As Trent stood gloomily considering the poetic contrast between these two inscriptions, a miracle happened; one of those miracles which so often pass unnoticed, though they change the whole face of nature. The sun coming out from behind a cloud shot a sudden shaft into the Impasse de la Chimère, and a great splotch of colour blazed up beyond the gates he had been studying. A huge round pumpkin, a potiron, all red and gold, with a chunk cut mathematically out of it, flamed like fire outside a modest shop that was No. 3 of the Impasse, and an adjacent pile of withered oranges, a few green apples and some miscellaneous vegetables became a scene of splendour.

  Trent’s depression vanished. He thought no more of the loneliness, the grey mouldering gates and walls, the atmosphere of decay and desolation which had chilled him for the moment. He turned away from the Pavillon de l’Ecstase. The glory of the pumpkin had opened his eyes to the truth that the end of the Impasse was as inviting as the approach to it had been dismal. An ancient inn, one wing of it adjoining the fruiterer’s shop, was built right across the dead end of the alley and round its other side in the shape of an E without the centre stroke; and this alluring hostelry bore the name of Hôtel du Petit Univers et de la Chimère. ‘Cuisine Bourgeoise, Vins de Touraine et d’Anjou, Quetsch de Lorraine, Armagnac Vieux,’ were among its promised attractions, and Trent succeeded in deciphering a prehistoric notice—‘Ici on loge à pied et à cheval.’

  Here it was, no doubt, that Fairman had taken his cup of coffee as mentioned in the brief report from the Dieppe police, before returning to the steamboat quay. It was clearly the place for beginning his own inquiries, and surely they could have no pleasanter starting-point.