Thirteen Guests

by J. Jefferson Farjeon

  “1.34 a.m.—He is back in the hall, and going up the stairs to his bedroom.

  “The concluding episode that concerns us on this night occurred when Chater reached his room. All we know for certain is that he and his wife quarrelled. Their voices were heard through the wall by the Rowes, and also, as I subsequently discovered, by Taverley, who had been disturbed by various sounds, and who, beginning to wonder himself whether any trouble was abroad, left his room for a minute round about two o’clock. The Rowes heard no actual words, but Taverley heard a sentence which he believes ran: ‘Well, if things get too hot, there’s always a way out.’ When I asked Taverley whether he could swear to this he said he could not. He was also vague about the time, and was not a very satisfactory witness. Still, his information fits into the story, and helps in some degree to support my theories.

  “What caused this quarrel, and what lines did it take? From the events of the next day, and particularly from Mrs. Chater’s attitude and actions, I deduce that Chater told her what had happened, either voluntarily or through the pressure of her questions. I am reasonably certain that Mrs. Chater knew that Turner was dead (though Chater may have told her this was due to an accident, and that he had fallen into the quarry), and also that she knew Chater had stolen the poison. The remark overheard by Taverley assists this deduction. She became thoroughly alarmed, and after condemning her husband for his actions—not, I imagine, on moral grounds—there was a division of opinion about immediate policy. Very likely she wanted to fly. In that case, Chater would point out that flight would direct suspicion against themselves. He overrode her arguments at last, and they settled down to their final sleep on this earth.

  “Their moods next day must have been unenviable. Chater concealed his, and even when the death of the dog was being discussed he retained his outward composure. If Mrs. Chater’s mood was not remarked, this would be because even at the best of times she appeared to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But Chater knew that Turner’s body would shortly be discovered, and also that Thomas was a danger, despite the hold he had over him. Probably his alert mind interpreted correctly the attitudes of Bultin and Pratt in excusing themselves from the meet. Had he a dog’s chance of escaping justice when Turner’s body was discovered, and his identity revealed?

  “He made an attempt to secure an alibi. I found this out when, having ploughed through Earnshaw’s reticence, I made him repeat word for word all the conversation he could remember having had with Chater at the Meet. Reference to my note of my original interview with Earnshaw (before his admission that he was under Chater’s thumb) will show that more questions were discussed between them than I was first informed. As a matter of fact, the question of Chater’s behaviour to other guests was a subsidiary one. It was the relationship between these two men themselves that loomed above all else.

  “The attempt to establish, provisionally, an alibi was made by Chater just before the hunt began. He instructed Earnshaw to remember a perfectly mythical interview on the previous night which, if necessary, would account for Chater’s time during the period of the murder. Note here that Chater did not know he had been heard in the hall by John Foss, and imagined that the only other person he had to silence was the butler. The butler might logically have entered into his mind when stealing the poison.

  “It was this instruction that set Earnshaw thinking, and that brought to a head his subsequent rebellion, later in that day. Circumstances threw them together during the hunt. They had ample time to converse on private matters. Earnshaw, pressing for information which Chater would not supply, gathered that Chater wished him to perjure himself, if necessary, to cover some exceedingly serious matter, and with praiseworthy though tardy courage refused to play his part.

  “The quarrel began in a wood, just after they had become separated from Taverley and Anne Aveling. The nerves of both men were on edge, for, added to their natural animosity, each had a separate cause for worry—Chater because of his crime, and Earnshaw because he knew that Anne had deliberately left him behind, and that his chance of winning her was slipping away from him. Earnshaw tried for a while to lose Chater, in the hope of finding Anne, but Chater hung on to his heels. Chater was not going to let Earnshaw out of his sight till he had come to an understanding with him.

  “The quarrel grew. By the time they had reached Holm and had sat down to their lunch it was at bursting point. ‘I did not kill Chater,’ Earnshaw said to me, ‘but perhaps it was as well I did not have the opportunity.’ Then he recounted, as nearly as he could remember it, their last conversation while waiting for the lunch to be served.

  “‘What did you do last night?’ demanded Earnshaw, not for the first time.

  “‘Mind your own business,’ replied Chater.

  “‘I intend to make it my business,’ said Earnshaw.

  “‘Oh, what does that mean?’ asked Chater.

  “‘It means that you can smash me,’ said Earnshaw, ‘and I am going to find out how I can smash you. We all make slips, Chater. I made one years ago, and have been paying for it ever since. You made one two or three hours ago when you asked me to lie to provide you with an alibi.’

  “‘I didn’t ask you,’ said Chater. ‘I ordered you, and you’d better obey the order.’

  “‘Use your own terms,’ answered Earnshaw, ‘but I’m disobeying this order so I won’t have to obey any more. When I’ve found out what you’ve done—and, by God, I’m going to—we shall be quits, if it’s anything less than murder!’

  “‘What the hell are you talking about?’ retorted Chater. ‘And keep your voice down!’

  “‘Did you kill a dog last night, by any chance?’

  “‘No, I didn’t, and killing a dog isn’t murder, anyway, any more than killing a stag. But—for the sake of argument—suppose it was murder?’

  “‘In that case, I’d smash myself to hang you!’

  “‘Bah! Talk!’

  “Then Earnshaw said, ‘Listen, Chater. We’re down to rock-bottom with each other now. I’ve nothing to boast about, though I have tried to live down my past and stage a come-back. I’m not even suggesting that a political career is always as clean as growing potatoes. But I haven’t sunk quite to the bottom, and if you’ve committed murder I’ll see you swing, whatever it costs me. Now you know.’

  “Then Earnshaw got up and left him. And, between three and four hours later, was back at Bragley Court with the knowledge that a man had been found dead in the quarry, and that Chater had fallen from his horse.

  “He no longer had to fear a living Chater. But what of Chater’s ghost? Earnshaw was sharp enough to realise that when the police came along an awkward situation might develop for him. He decided to lie low and to see how events shaped themselves.

  “Fortunately for him, the truth about Chater’s death was found inside Chater’s hat.

  “Taverley had mentioned to me that his discovery of Chater at Mile Bottom was due to seeing his hat lying on the stubble. I count it a bad mark against myself that I did not examine the hat more closely when I saw it beside Chater’s body where it had been placed in the studio. But journalists sometimes score, and it was Bultin who discovered—or who expedited the discovery of—the little glass tube in the hat’s leather lining. This discovery will probably cause his own size in hats to increase.

  “Leng identified the glass tube. It was the tube that had contained the poison stolen from his cupboard. This, coupled with Chater’s fingerprint, not only proved who stole the poison, but also proved how Chater met his death.

  “He took the poison with him, concealing it in his hat. He had two reasons for this. One, he did not want to leave it about. Two, he might want to use it. I have the evidence of the innkeeper of the Rising Sun, at Holm, that Chater was in a very nervy condition. ‘Stayed till I thought he was never going to leave,’ said the innkeeper. ‘I said to my wife, “That man’s got something on his mind.”
Kept biting his nails, and once up he jumps, as if he thought somebody was coming, and twists his head round, and then sits down again. I watched him through the door. But that was only by himself, mind—when I was there, cool as cucumber.’ The innkeeper had Chater tabbed.

  “When Chater left the inn, he hesitated to return at once. He rode around. Maybe he lost himself. Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe he decided to return and face things. But when he got to Mile Bottom, he acted on impulse or design, took the tube from his hat, drained it, replaced it—and so ended his life.

  “Why did he replace the tube? I had questioned Leng, and understand the poison would begin to work in about thirty seconds—and then work swiftly. He had time to replace it. His reason may have been just to get rid of it that way, instead of throwing it down, or he may have done so subconsciously. At a moment like this, knowing his end was upon him, a man’s trivial actions would not necessarily answer to the normal rules of logic.

  “And so we come finally to the last tragedy—Mrs. Chater.

  “Her general attitude has been described, but her active participation in events did not begin until she was asked to identify the man who had been found in the quarry—Turner. Like Miss Wilding, she refused to view the body, saying she knew nothing of the man; and it was at this moment that her control gave way. In a full knowledge of the facts, her condition is easy to understand. Her husband had killed Turner. He was absent, and could not advise her. Moreover, she learned almost immediately afterwards that his horse had returned without him, and she was a distracted woman groping in the dark.

  “Into that darkness entered the figure of Earnshaw. Earnshaw was a man who would benefit considerably by an accident to Chater. Her mind seized on this, and, after rushing up to her room and locking herself in, she obeyed a second impulse to leave the room and tackle Earnshaw on his way to his own room.

  “But her short interview with him gave her no satisfaction. His threats increased her terror and her rage. On her way back to her bedroom, she saw Bultin put the knife in the drawer, and when, a little later, Dr. Pudrow gave her the news of her husband’s death, the final threads of sanity snapped.

  “We know how, profiting by the temporary absence of Pratt, she stole the knife from the drawer and descended to Earnshaw’s room. The button Price found outside that door was the button I myself found, later, to be missing from her dress. (Her interview with Earnshaw had taken place by the stairs, some little way from the door.) We know that she found Earnshaw’s door locked. We know that, using the information supplied by her husband on the previous night, she escaped from the house, went to the shed, found the bicycle Turner had left there, and rode away on it. Mad revenge, when thwarted, yielded to mad terror. She fled before the police came.

  “It was ironic that, flying from danger, her means of escape should have played the final trick upon her. I have ascertained from the Smiths, to whom the bicycle belonged, that the chain was loose and constantly needed adjusting. Turner had ridden the bicycle hard on the previous day. It may be assumed that Mrs. Chater, on her last ride through the darkening lanes, rode it equally hard. A steep hill was her undoing. The constable who found her, and who notified us at Bragley Court, said she was already dead when he came upon her. The chain was off its wheel, and the knife lay in the road about five yards away.

  “Mrs. Chater, from all accounts, must have been a pathetic creature. Probably she had little to look forward to, and the defective bicycle may have proved a blessing in disguise.

  “Indeed, Fate has taken matters largely out of our own hands by dealing out justice to the various miscreants in her own way, saving in the case of the butler, Thomas, whose punishment is not our particular concern.”

  As he closed the book, a thought struck him.

  “Odd, I never found that flask!”

  Chapter XXXII

  The Truth

  Man’s calendar, saving when its events intrude, has no interest for other creatures. A kennel was empty, and there was one stag less in Flensham Woods, but otherwise life underwent no change in the bracken and the briar and the burrows, the trees and the streams around Bragley Court. The cock-pheasant did not know that a man had fallen down a quarry near his sanctuary of russet foliage, nor would he have cared a feather if he had. Man was an incomprehensible biped causing birds to shift from one place to another when he came too close, and occasionally sending loud bangs through long sticks; but the cock-pheasant had always avoided the bangs, and the idea that man possessed sensations to arouse pity or hatred or love did not exist. (The idea hardly existed in the more intelligent creature, despite his mental advantages, that a pheasant possessed sensations of any significance.) The sly old fox at Mile Bottom was similarly ignorant and callous. Had a man fallen from his horse near the fox’s earthy home? Granted temporary speech and understanding, the fox might have stated in a Court of Law, “Yes, I do vaguely remember some disturbance or other. A horse nearly put his beastly hoof in my front door. But he didn’t quite, and I was very drowsy, and really and truly I’m not in the least interested. Can I go now, please? You’re thoroughly boring. I want to walk out with a badger.”

  A hind wondered why her companion was not about to-day. These were disturbing times. Another stag had vanished into the void a week previously. But the hind did not cry her eyes out, and felt anxious mainly for her own safety, denied the comforting knowledge that, unlike yesterday, to-day her safety was ensured, and would remain so for many months to come.

  In Bragley Court itself, however, life had completed a transformation. Faces that had smiled were grave. Voices normally resonant had dropped to whispers. None of the guests had departed, for an unwritten law was holding them to their engagements, but there was no enjoyment for them on this grim Sunday. They were merely awaiting the release of Monday morning.

  And yet in certain breasts there was a sense of unvoiced relief. The tide of tragedy had ceased to flow, and there were no indications that it would flow again to drown survivors. Sir James Earnshaw, sensitive to every little breeze that blew, and subtly testing the situation in so far as it affected himself, began to hope that his past had died with those who had previously kept it alive. Kendall alone knew his secret now—and was Kendall interested officially? “Thank God I have escaped Bultin!” thought Earnshaw. The relief of this consoled him partially for the fact that Anne had also escaped from him.

  Zena Wilding was another guest whose heart was beginning to beat more quietly. She tried to feel pity for the man who had duped her, and who now could trouble her no more, but her feelings were numb. She could not say whether official necessity or journalistic lust would force her story into momentary limelight. Perhaps an unpleasant experience lay ahead of her, and one morning she would find her name among the headlines. But she had been conscious of Kendall’s sympathy when he had interviewed her; and even Bultin, as though events had stirred him out of his usual cynicism, had once given her a smile that was almost human.

  But it was the Avelings themselves who had contributed most definitely to her comfort. In the privacy of their room Aveling had said to his wife, “I think, after all, my dear, I won’t back that play.”

  “Why not?” Lady Aveling had answered. “I heard Mr. Rowe telling you he was willing to back you if you did.” And then she had added, in a manner that had somehow taken him back many years, “We’ve always had pluck, you and I—the Avelings face things.”

  Lady Aveling had then marched straight to Zena’s room, and had told her the money would be found.

  In the drawing-room, Edyth Fermoy-Jones murmured, “The evidence certainly points to suicide—one must admit that—but, well, there might be other theories.”

  “What other theories?” asked Mr. Rowe. “I don’t see ’em!”

  “I wish you’d do something, Ruth,” muttered Mrs. Rowe. “We’re all just sitting about.”

  “Didn’t it strike any one as significant, Mrs. Chat
er disappearing so suddenly?” demanded the authoress.

  “If you mean she did it, how could she have?” exclaimed Mr. Rowe. Conscious that he had raised his voice, he dropped it and repeated, in a lower tone, “How could she have? Why, she was never out of our sight the whole blessed afternoon! And then what about that glass tube thingummy?” He turned to Bultin, who was watching Pratt play Patience. “What made you think of that hat, Bultin?”

  “There’s your seven,” said Bultin. “On the eight of clubs.”

  “Damn smart, that was,” persisted Mr. Rowe. “How did you get on to it?”

  “Don’t disturb them, dear,” whispered Mrs. Rowe. “Why don’t you get a pack, Ruth? They can’t do Patience while people talk.”

  “I do mine while you talk!” responded Mr. Rowe. “However, if Bultin doesn’t want to talk, that’s all right.”

  “You’ve blocked your ace,” said Bultin. “I came upon Taverley practising fielding by throwing ping-pong balls into a hat. He bet he’d get all twelve in, and he did. When he took the hat up he said, ‘Hallo, what’s in the lining?’ It was a cigarette. Why not take the Jack? De Reszke Minor. Ivory-tipped. Kind Chater smoked. Looked like Chater’s hat. ‘I wonder if he used his lining as a pocket,’ said Taverley, ‘and thought this hat was his? I missed it from the rack before dinner on Friday.’ There, what did I say—if you’d taken the Jack you’d have done it.”

  It was the first time Bultin had told this story. He had allowed the inspector to deduce that his brainwave had sprung from inspired virgin soil.

  “Well, I’m blowed!” blinked Mr. Rowe, impressed. He watched Pratt sweep up the cards and begin shuffling them for another attempt. “What are you going to do about your picture, Pratt?” he asked.