Thirteen Guests

by J. Jefferson Farjeon

  It was certainly a gloomy room into which they walked, exuding an atmosphere that would not be easy to eradicate. The picture with its sinister smear of crimson paint formed in itself a sufficient scar, to which the broken window added its contribution; but it was the two bodies lying on the ground that supplied the definite evidence of gruesome tragedy. They did not lie side by side. They had been placed some distance from each other, as though through a sense of delicacy. Twenty-four hours previously, one had offered the other a light.

  The inspector walked to the unidentified body first. He regarded it fixedly, while the doctor behind him murmured, “A pity it had to be moved.”

  “A great pity,” agreed Kendall.

  “But with the darkness coming on,” added the doctor self-defensively, “and the belief that we could identify him if we brought him up—well, there was no alternative.”

  “There was an alternative,” replied Kendall.

  “What?”

  “Not moving him.”

  He turned to the second body. For a moment his eyes regarded it vaguely, as if he were still thinking of the first. Then suddenly they narrowed. He moved swiftly to the body and stooped over it.

  “Not a nice colour,” said the doctor.

  But Detective-Inspector Kendall was not thinking of the colour.

  “Did you know Mr. Chater well, my Lord?” he inquired, still scanning the dead man’s features.

  “I never met him before yesterday,” replied Aveling.

  “Then he wasn’t a personal friend of yours?”

  “No.”

  “Of some other member of your family?”

  “None of us knew him.”

  “But he was your guest?”

  “That is so.”

  “Then may I ask how he came to receive his invitation?”

  “He was a friend of another of my guests,” explained Lord Aveling.

  “I see,” replied Kendall. “Who was the other guest?”

  “Sir James Earnshaw?”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  He stared at the late friend of Sir James Earnshaw for several more seconds. Then his eyes left Chater’s face and roamed over his suit, and the hat lying by his side.

  “Anything been taken out of his pockets?” he asked.

  “Not as far as I know,” answered Lord Aveling.

  Kendall examined them.

  “Empty,” he said. “Odd? Or not?” He looked at the hip-pocket. “Something’s been in that one.”

  “And it’s not there now,” added the sergeant.

  “You amaze me,” said Kendall.

  He rose and walked slowly round the studio. He paused at the broken window, at the enormous canvas of the stag, and at the ruined picture of Anne. “Yes, and we’ve got to find out about this, too, haven’t we?” he murmured. “Crimson.” Sergeant Price, watching him, noticed that he was about to add something and changed his mind. “Well, let’s go to the house,” said Kendall instead. “I’ll come back here presently. I want to see Mrs. Chater.”

  They left the studio. When Lord Aveling had locked it, the inspector asked for the key, and pocketed it.

  “Is there another?” he inquired.

  “Only the one you have,” replied Lord Aveling.

  Crossing the dark lawn, the inspector regarded the windows that loomed at him like watchful yellow eyes. He stopped in the middle of the lawn and studied them.

  “What room is that?” he asked, pointing to one on the ground floor.

  “An ante-room,” replied Aveling.

  He followed the wall to where it right-angled towards the lawn. At the end of the protrusion was a door.

  “Can we go in that way?”

  “Yes.”

  “It isn’t the tradesmen’s entrance?”

  “No. Just a passage we use ourselves, leading to the grounds here at the back.”

  “Can anybody use it? You don’t keep it locked?”

  “Only at night.”

  They entered the house by the back door, and walked through the narrow passage to the great hall. Kendall glanced towards the right. A policeman stood near the door of the ante-room.

  “I think we ought to have some one at the back door, Price,” said Kendall.

  “Is all this necessary?” wondered Price. “Or is he just showing off?”

  Lord Aveling conducted him up the stairs. Two flights. He stopped at a door and knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again. There was still no answer.

  “Mrs. Chater,” he called.

  “Not there, eh?”

  Lord Aveling turned the handle. The door was locked.

  “Mrs. Chater!” he called, more loudly.

  Kendall looked grim, and lowered his eye to the keyhole.

  “No key in the lock,” he said. “Find another quickly, or we’ll have to do some smashing.”

  Lord Aveling glanced anxiously along the passage towards another door. Beside it was a wall-table, with the flap down.

  “What’s the trouble?” demanded Kendall, sharply.

  “That is Mrs. Morris’s room,” murmured Aveling, looking worried. “I hope we can avoid noise.”

  “We must avoid it, if we can,” added the doctor. “She is very ill, inspector.”

  “Then of course we’ll avoid it if we can,” said Kendall quietly. “But we may find some one else—very ill—behind this door.”

  For a minute doors were robbed unceremoniously of their keys. Four keys proved useless, but the fifth slipped in and turned. Kendall threw open the door of the Chaters’ bedroom. It was empty.

  Chapter XIX

  Short Interlude

  “I can’t find the piece that goes here, Anne,” said old Mrs. Morris. “A straight edge. And brown.”

  She was lying in her bed, propped up by pillows. Her thin, worn hands lay listlessly on a jig-saw board, but her eyes were patient. Anne had watched the patience in those tired eyes for over two years—had seen it summoned by an iron will, till it had slipped into a heroic habit; and it had made her despise the fretting world outside that quiet bedroom where pain and relief from pain were the only incidents. Above all, it had made her despise herself. She moved quickly to the bed now, and began searching earnestly for the piece with the straight edge. Nothing in the world mattered at this moment but a small piece of three-ply wood.

  “It must be brown, dear,” said Mrs. Morris, “because it’s a bit of the squirrel.”

  “We’ll find it,” answered Anne optimistically.

  “Brown,” said Mrs. Morris.

  Suddenly Anne’s hand shot towards a piece. It rested momentarily against her grandmother’s, the one firm and strong, the other white and fragile almost to transparency. The cruel contrast sent a dart of pain through Anne’s heart, and she withdrew her hand hastily, loathing its youth and beauty and the carefully manicured nails.

  “No, not that one,” said Mrs. Morris.

  “I believe it is,” replied Anne, more loudly than she intended. But she was trying not to cry. “Look! Oh—so it isn’t!”

  “It must have a straight edge,” said Mrs. Morris, as Anne took the piece away again.

  “You’re always right,” answered Anne. “Well, what about this one?”

  She tested several pieces unsuccessfully. Presently, conscious that she was receiving no assistance, she glanced up. Mrs. Morris’s eyes were closed. But Anne continued with her task. The interest must be maintained. There was nothing else.

  “I was sorry the bottle was broken,” said Mrs. Morris. Her eyes were still closed. “I liked that bottle.”

  Anne was motionless.

  “Didn’t some one give it to me?…Last Christmas. Your Uncle Harry.”

  Uncle Harry had been dead ten years.

  Quiet feet moved past the bedroom door.
They were very quiet indeed, and did not pause, but Anne heard them. They wove into the rhythm of her heart-beats.

  “Did they get the stag?”

  “Yes, Granny,” answered Anne.

  “That’s a good thing,” said Mrs. Morris. “It’s over.”

  Anne knew that she was envying the stag. Mrs. Morris did not feel the trembling lips that touched the counterpane where her drawn knee made a tiny mound.

  In a few seconds the old lady opened her eyes. The pain had gone again.

  “Isn’t that the bit over there?” she said.

  Her thin fingers stretched forward, and fitted it.

  Chapter XX

  Bultin’s Time-Sheet

  The presence of Mrs. Chater in Bragley Court had added a definite contribution to the gloom of the atmosphere, but her absence, coupled with its baffling circumstances, introduced fresh discomfort. “Don’t you feel,” said Edyth Fermoy-Jones, in a dramatic whisper, “as if it had somehow brought things right into the house?”

  “It seems to have brought Mrs. Chater out of the house,” retorted Mr. Rowe.

  “I don’t think we ought to joke, dear,” murmured Mrs. Rowe, glancing at Ruth as though fearing she might be influenced by this bad example. But Ruth had never made a joke in her life.

  “Joke? Who’s joking?” exclaimed Mr. Rowe indignantly. “I was merely making a statement! What’s the matter with everybody?”

  He was battling against a secret, irritating nervousness. Not that he was scared! Bless his soul, no! After all, this was England, wasn’t it, and you couldn’t go far wrong once you had a houseful of policemen! They’d probably find simple explanations for everything, and that nobody had really murdered anybody! All this jumping to conclusions—it was silly. But, well, one—two—three—four—five things had happened, starting with the damned dog, and you never knew when they were going to stop!

  “What I meant,” said Edyth Fermoy-Jones, who did not intend to have her meaning spoilt by family bickering, “was that everything else has happened outside. This happened inside. While we were all sitting here—in this very drawing-room—Mrs. Chater went!”

  “And no one saw her go,” added Mrs. Rowe.

  “And no one knows where she’s gone,” nodded Miss Fermoy-Jones.

  She closed her eyes and thought. She always closed her eyes in company when she thought, so that the company would know she was thinking. Sometimes she cheated, and opened her eyes again without having thought at all.

  But this time she did think. She wondered where, if she created a similar situation in a novel—and she fully intended to—she would have the disappearing person found? She decided on a well.

  “I hear that detective’s going to cross-examine us all,” said Mrs. Rowe.

  “Oh, dear, how awful,” murmured Ruth.

  “Why? We’ve got nothing to worry about!” answered Mr. Rowe.

  “Somebody has,” declared Miss Fermoy-Jones. “I wonder who?”

  All at once she rose from her chair. If she had not been so heavy she would have jumped. A brilliant idea had occurred to her.

  “What is it?” asked Mrs. Rowe anxiously.

  “I believe—yes, I believe I’ve got it!” she replied, sepul-

  chrally.

  “What—you mean?—who?”

  But Edyth Fermoy-Jones shook her head, and set her lips firmly.

  “No! It wouldn’t be right! I must tell it to the inspector! Does anybody know where he is?”

  “I should have thought he’d have consulted you first,” said Mrs. Rowe. “I mean, writing mysteries yourself.”

  The authoress had had the same thought. But, after all, the police are apt to think as little of mystery writers as mystery writers are apt to think of the police. If Detective-Inspector Kendall had read her last novel, he was probably getting his own back.

  “No, after all, I’ll wait,” she said, sitting down again.

  She was not going to risk a snub. And she would have received a snub had she attempted to intrude on the inspector at that moment. A car had just stopped outside the house, and Kendall was on the doorstep, absorbed in the event.

  Bultin stepped out of the car. He almost stepped into the arms of Kendall.

  “Mr. Bultin?” inquired the inspector.

  “I am Lionel Bultin,” replied the journalist.

  “You’ve been doing some of our work, I understand?”

  “Journalists don’t wait.”

  “Nor do the police, once they’re called in. I’d like a chat with you.”

  “I am sure you would,” said Bultin. “Here? Or in my room?”

  “Your room, I think,” answered Kendall, considering. “But one question here. Did you come across any one outside—apart from policemen?”

  “You mean in the grounds?” Kendall nodded, and Bultin turned to the chauffeur. “Did you see any one?”

  “No, sir,” answered the chauffeur.

  “Nor did I,” said Bultin.

  “What about outside the grounds?” inquired Kendall. “Did you meet any of the visitors?”

  “No one.”

  “Ah—then Mrs. Chater was wrong. She told me a moment ago that one of the visitors had gone, and no one is supposed to leave the house.”

  “I thought Mrs. Chater herself had left the house?” said Bultin.

  “What made you think that?”

  “Your sergeant. He stopped us near the gate and said he was looking for her. No, I haven’t kidnapped her, Inspector. I never thought of it. It would have made a good story.”

  Kendall was not in the least abashed.

  “I’m not apologising,” he smiled. “In spite of the good story, I didn’t think you had kidnapped her; but I try everything once. Well, let’s be moving.”

  “Before we move, I will return good for evil,” said Bultin. “Don’t look only for Mrs. Chater. Look for a black bag and an old Hercules bicycle with the front mudguard bent and the bottom screw missing from the makers’ name-plate at the back. An old Hercules lady’s bicycle with the front mudguard bent is really enough, but it’s the missing screw that will please the public and make the headline.”

  “This sounds interesting,” admitted Kendall. “But what’s the idea?”

  “That you look for them,” replied Bultin.

  Kendall frowned slightly, then beckoned to a constable.

  “I wonder if you’re going to be useful to me, Mr. Bultin?” he queried as the constable approached.

  “Only if you’re useful to me,” answered Bultin. “Not out of affection.”

  Kendall gave the constable an instruction, then followed Bultin up to his room on the second floor. Leicester Pratt looked up from a book as they entered.

  “If you two wish to talk, I’m not going,” he warned.

  “I don’t want you to go, sir,” replied Kendall. “I hope you’ll talk, too. I require both your stories—for a book I’m writing myself,” he added, producing his note-book from his pocket and sitting down. “Yours first, Mr. Bultin. And while you’re telling it please don’t be a journalist, but a sub-editor. A sub-editor cuts, and I’ve a lot to get through.”

  “I’m glad you’re rude,” said Bultin. “Now I can be.”

  Pratt smiled. His friend did not usually need a reason. But already he had noted a vague uneasiness behind Bultin’s manner, and it intrigued him.

  “As rude as you like, provided you make it snappy,” returned the inspector. “Now, then. About this bag and this bicycle?”

  Bultin glanced towards a drawer. Pratt, watching, recalled that Bultin had glanced at the drawer once before. “What’s in it?” he wondered. “Bultin’s skeleton?”

  “We’re working together?” asked Bultin, removing his eyes from the drawer.

  “I don’t make bargains,” snapped Kendall. “Have you h
eard that two people have been killed?”

  “I helped to find one of them,” murmured Bultin.

  “And have you heard that the wife of the one you didn’t find has been making definite accusations?”

  “Against whom?”

  The inspector leaned forward with a cynical grin.

  “I haven’t got your infinite tact, Mr. Bultin,” he said, “but I am not a fool. I see you didn’t know that Mrs. Chater has been making definite accusations. Never mind to whom, or against whom, but accept the fact that I arrived here with that information—to find the lady’s door locked and the room empty. Now perhaps we can get on? By the way, before I leave this room, you won’t mind if I look in that drawer?”

  Bultin’s expression did not change. He had trained it into a dog’s obedience. But a sudden memory disconcerted him. He recalled how, years ago, people used to get on top of him. He recalled the exact sensation, and it leapt close to him through the vista of time. “No, you’re not the reason,” he told Kendall in his thoughts, denying him the credit. “It’s that one silly slip I made. Well, I won’t make another.”

  “You can look in the drawer now, if you like—it’s not locked,” said Bultin. “But you may like to hear about the bag and the bicycle first.”

  “Go on,” nodded Kendall.

  “You know that Mr. Pratt and I found Body Number One. That’s not a bad title. Body Number One. Mr. Pratt went back to the house while I waited—”

  “And poked around?”

  “I should not have been a journalist if I had not poked around. I should not even have been human. I tried to find some clue to the man’s identity. I examined his pockets.”

  “Oh, you did?”

  “Why not? There was no question then of foul play. A man had fallen down a quarry. Or, if there was any question, his pockets might have indicated the answer. Lord Aveling was still at the hunt—”

  “I understand he had just returned?”

  “As a matter of fact, he had, but I did not know that.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “I found the time the man died. Nineteen minutes past one.”