And after that there was silence between the two.
CHAPTER XXV.
Inspector Pinkey went to the Station Inn to meet Mr. Redwin in the afternoon, having decided upon the firm and even minatory attitude with which he would uphold the dignity of the law (and that of the police force of the metropolis). He had several sentences already framed in his mind with which any unseemly levity or truculence could be abashed. Should the man continue to hint at things which he would not say, he would warn him that a very unpleasant time might be before him in the witness box at the coming inquest. He had formulated some excellent plans of assault upon Mr. Redwin’s reticence, and was not without hope that he might be about to add another to the more conspicuous successes of his career. But, as it has been easy to anticipate, they remained untested, for the sufficient reason that Mr. Redwin was not there. He was represented by a rather large trunk, and a disorderly scattering of some articles suggestive of the departure of a man who had packed in haste.
After the Inspector had waited an hour, the landlord showed him this room, which he considered carefully, with a strong and natural desire to subject Mr. Redwin’s effects to the expert examination which he was well qualified to make; but on considering that the man, in leaving his room for the weekend, had committed no offence known to the criminal law, and that if, at any moment he should return and find the Inspector kneeling beside a half-emptied trunk, it might be a discordant prelude to the intended interview, he reluctantly deferred a pleasure which he was to experience on a later day.
He waited two hours longer, knocking the balls about on the table of a deserted billiard room, and then went back reluctantly to the police station, having arranged with the landlord to ring him up in the event of Mr. Redwin’s return.
It seemed that he must have the interview with Gerard Denton without the advantage of whatever revelations Mr. Redwin would have been able to make, but in this anticipation he was wrong again, for seven o’clock came and went, but Mr. Denton did not.
Inspector Pinkey sat with Superintendent Trackfield waiting for him to arrive, and at four minutes after seven he made his customary remark for such occasions that they were generally a little late, but not much. At seven-twenty he was definitely uneasy, and at seven-twenty-five he felt that he might have been too emphatic when he had rejected the Superintendent’s suggestion that they should phone Bywater Grange ten minutes before, on the ground that it would be a mistake to show anxiety on their side.
He remembered Lady Denton’s remark that morning that Gerard was upstairs, and unwell, to which he had attached little importance at the time. He knew that the gentleman was addicted to spending the earlier half of his mornings on the upper floor, and it had seemed a very natural condition for him to be in. But, at the same time, he had had her assurance that Gerard would not fail to come, and he had a strong conviction that, had he been prevented by subsequent illness, she would have made some communication to that effect.
“I’ll tell you what, Trackfield,” he said, “we won’t phone. If we do, we may just be put off with a tale that he isn’t well, and we shan’t know whether it’s true or false. We’ll just take a run up to the house. We’ll get nearer the truth, and it’ll be a lesson to him that he can’t treat us just how he likes. And if he thinks we’ve come to run him in, when he hears there are two of us at the door—well, there mayn’t be much harm in that.”
It was in a mood to stand no nonsense from anybody that he got out of the car and rang the bell rather sharply at Bywater Grange; for his patience had been strained more than sufficiently during the long wait of the afternoon, and he had a well-founded instinct that things had been happening around him which were outside his knowledge, and which it was his business to understand. He was vexed by an uneasy fear that Redwin might have made the appointment with no intention of keeping it, nor of giving him information at any time, but only to hold him back from decisive action for a period required for some purpose which he was unable to guess. No one likes to be fooled, and it is particularly provoking to those whose living and reputation depend upon their ability to interpret the facts around them.
It seemed likely that Gerard Denton was to suffer as a result of Mr. Wheeler’s successful strategy, which that gentleman certainly had not foreseen or intended, and which may be held to demonstrate how unforeseeable the results of the most astute of human actions may be. Or, at least, it might have been held to demonstrate it, only that it didn’t turn out in that way. With no unusual delay, Pauline opened the door.
She looked somewhat surprised when asked if Mr. Gerard Denton were in, and a little alarmed, which the sight of the two officers may have been sufficient to explain. But she did not answer, for she had left the door of the dining room open, having been serving there when the bell rang, and Lady Denton heard Inspector Pinkey’s voice in the hall.
She called out: “Pauline, show the gentlemen in here.” She rose to meet them, seeming a little surprised, even a little agitated, at this untimely invasion. But she asked them courteously if they would join her at the meal.
They said no to that. Could they see Mr. Denton? Was he not in?
“I think there must have been a misunderstanding,” she replied. “He told me he was seeing you at the police station this evening. That was what was arranged.”
“Yes, but he didn’t come.”
“He’s not usually very punctual. I expect you’ll find he’s there now.”
“Could you say how long it is since he left the house?”
“He hasn’t been in since just after tea. At least, I think not. He asked me to walk with him, as he’d got something to tell me, so I went a little way and then turned back. I understood that he was staying out till it was time for his appointment with you. But it wasn’t clear. He seemed rather upset.”
“Which way did he go?”
“We went a little way up the Highcombe Road—the old road—the one that goes over the hill.”
Inspector Pinkey looked enquiry at his companion. He knew little of the local roads.
“He might have gone over the hill and come back through Loudwater. It wouldn’t take much over the hour at a steady pace.”
They went back to the police station, but Gerard Denton was not there.
CHAPTER XXVI.
At a later hour, when Lady Denton received the two police officers at Bywater Grange, they said that there could be no doubt that, if Gerard Denton had not returned home, he must have fled in preference to facing further enquiry, and they asked for additional information as to the circumstances in which he had left the house. They required also to question the servants as to whether he might have returned without Lady Denton’s knowledge. They had already sent out urgent instructions to the police over a sufficient area to detain anyone answering his description who should be unable to establish a separate identity.
“It’s a queer thing,” Lady Denton said, “and I scarcely know what to think. But I can’t believe that he’s run away, as you seem to suppose. It’s not like Gerard somehow, even if there’d been more cause than there is. He’s—he’s not got the pluck, if you understand what I mean. And beside that, he’d got nothing with him. And no money, so far as I know. He couldn’t have had very much. Yes, you can ask the servants, of course. He might have come in again without telling me. But he isn’t in his own room. We’ve looked there more than once already.”
Inspector Pinkey said: “Well, we’d better see round while we’re here, but I don’t suppose he’ll have come back.”
“You can go anywhere that you wish,” Lady Denton replied. “I dare say Pauline could show you round, unless you want me.”
They agreed that Pauline would be a satisfactory guide, and a thorough search assured them that Gerard Denton was not there, unless he were hiding in the outbuildings, which was not a probable supposition, and which it was too dark to decide with certainty.
They went back to the drawing room, where Lady Denton had considerately ordered that c
offee should be brought in (she already knew that Inspector Pinkey was not addicted to any more potent stimulant), and reported their non-success.
“I can’t say I’m surprised,” the Inspector said, “after Redwin clearing off in the same way.” He looked closely at Lady Denton as he said this, and was satisfied that she, at least, was not previously aware of that circumstance. She looked surprised, and, he thought more doubtfully, relieved, as though he had given her welcome and unlooked-for news. But perhaps it was natural that she should take it in that way, for Redwin had surely been of no friendship to her.
“You mean,” she asked, “that Mr. Redwin has left Beacon’s Cross?”
“Yes, he walked out of the Station Inn yesterday morning, leaving most of his luggage behind, and hasn’t been seen since.”
“And you think that that has some connection with the way that Gerard’s gone now? Then I must say that I’m sure you’re wrong. They hated each other, for one thing; and, in any case, they’d no reason to go off together. It isn’t sense that they should.”
The Inspector felt again that Lady Denton spoke with sincerity, and it inclined him to exculpate her from any responsibility for the double flight, as he believed it to be. He was in better spirits than he had been earlier in the day, for he felt that the criminals had gone far to resolve his problem by the folly of their own actions. It was almost an admission of common guilt. Perhaps Redwin had been planning to mislead him this afternoon with some lying tale, probably to turn suspicion in Lady Denton’s direction, and it had since been decided between the actual culprits that it was too dangerous an attempt. Possibly the scale had been turned when he had discovered the bribery of the gardener’s boy. And so they had preferred to fly—to fly separately, to confuse suspicion and make pursuit more difficult.
It looked now as though the murder had been the fruit of a common plot—probably of Redwin’s design, although Gerard’s had been the hand which had fired the shot. And he had done it in a blundering way, and at a foolish time, with the boy outside on the drive, which were just the kind of mistakes that Gerard Denton would be likely to make. Doubtless, suicide was to have been the apparent fact—suicide, with the explanation that Sir Daniel had been worried over his taxation irregularities, and a threatened exposure intolerable to one of his sensitive pride.
It was a theory in which the Inspector was fundamentally wrong on more than one point, as it is easy to see, but he had not had the advantage of overhearing the conversation between Bedford and Redwin at the dining table of the Station Inn, and the most expert mathematician cannot be expected to add a column correctly, if only one of its figures be concealed from view.
The Inspector’s judgment, after a week of indecision, came, though somewhat late, to the definite conclusion that Lady Denton had no part in the crime. Her tale, he considered, simple and straightforward from the first, of how she had run into the study at the sound of the shot and her husband’s fall, had been neither more nor less than the truth, as such unshaken statements most often are.
He knew that she had no strength of affection for her brother-in-law, who was not of a type, either physically or mentally, to which such a woman as she appeared to be would be likely to give more than the toleration that the relationship required; and his conviction that she was an innocent party to the tragedy led him to appeal to her now, with a new confidence, for any help that she might be able to give.
“I wonder,” he asked, “whether you can recall anything that was said during the day that would throw any light on his state of mind, or probable movements after you parted. You say he asked you to walk some distance with him. That, in itself, was rather unusual, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, perhaps it was. But it didn’t seem so at the time. He’s been very moody all day; and he was very unwilling to come to see you this evening. He made no secret of that. Indeed, we were discussing it all through lunch, till I got fed up and told him he’d better stop.
“I suppose it was you having found out that he’d given Tommy the pound note that he couldn’t get out of his mind.”
“You had known about that all along?”
“Yes, he told me the next day, and I said then that I thought it was a mad thing to have done. I told him that such things always come out in the end, and then look worse than they are.”
“What reason did he give you for having done it?”
“Just the same as he does now. He didn’t want it to come out that he’d left Sir Daniel just before he was shot, or of the row that they’d had then.”
“He made no secret about the row?”
“No, he couldn’t have done that. I overheard part of it, if not all.”
“Was it exceptionally violent?”
“No, just ordinary. Nothing more than they often had.”
“Did he give any reason for asking you to go out with him tonight?”
“No, not exactly. I thought he wanted some encouragement or advice about seeing you. I’d shut him up rather sharply at lunch-time, so it wasn’t as surprising as it may sound.”
“Did you go far?”
“Yes, I think it was about the bend of the road, where it goes over the hill. I didn’t notice particularly. I’d said I’d turn back more than once, when I understood he was staying out, and then he’d start talking again.”
“What about?”
“About seeing you tonight, and the mess he’d be in if you got Tommy to say anything that wasn’t true. It was all about that.”
“About something that wasn’t true? Or perhaps something that was?”
“No. He said Tommy was telling the truth now, and I said I believed he was, and, if so, I couldn’t see what he’d got to fear. He said he’d have a stroll round till it was time to see you, as he didn’t feel like coming in.”
“And you thought he meant what he said?”
“Yes. And I do now. I suppose we shall know who’s right in the end, but I don’t think he had any intention of going away. I think he’d have behaved differently if he had.”
Inspector Pinkey was not uninfluenced by this opinion, which had an echo in his own mind, but he had long learned the first lesson of successful detection, that both theories and opinions must give way to facts. “Still,” he said, “there’s the fact that he’s not here.”
“Yes,” she agreed, and then: “Of course, he may have got into a panic and gone off in a silly way. It’s the kind of thing he’d be rather likely to do. I mean, it’s the way he’d do it, if he did it at all.”
“Yes, I dare say it is. Lady Denton,” he said very seriously, “I want to ask you a question to which I think there can be only one reply. Should you wish to shelter your husband’s murderer in any circumstances, or whoever he might be?”
“No,” she answered. “Certainly not. I suppose nobody would.”
“Then I must ask this. In your own heart, can you acquit Mr. Gerard Denton of complicity in the crime?”
There was a pause of silence. Then she said, with a slow deliberation: “Yes, I see how it looks to you, and I suppose it will come out in the end, as things mostly do. But I don’t think there was a crime at all. I think Daniel shot himself, though I don’t profess to know why. But that’s what I think, and that’s what I shall always say.”
“Well, Lady Denton, you won’t get many people to agree with you about that.”
“Which,” she said, with a slight smile relieving the gravity of her face, “won’t prove that I’m wrong.”
CHAPTER XXVII.
Inspector Pinkey’s rather extensive experience had shown him that the investigation of a crime such as that with which he was now dealing (if crime it were) would commonly pass through three phases. There would be, first, the hopeful stage when the preliminary evidence would be crowding in, and it would appear to be a brief and easy matter to prepare a convincing case against the most evident culprit. After that, there would frequently be a period of reaction and doubt, when other facts would appear which declined to fall in wit
h the simplicity of the first hypothesis, and the baffled investigation would move round in widening circles, like a homing pigeon cast loose in a foreign land, flying round at greater heights till it perceives some distant landmark, and strikes straight and fast for the goal of its certain home.
It was this third stage that the Inspector supposed that he had now reached. He had little doubt that, if he could catch the two fugitives, the separate police examinations to which they would then be subjected would lead, if only by their discrepancies and denials, to the ultimate discovery of the truth, and the expiation of a deliberate and treacherous crime.
In the case of Gerard Denton, he felt that his proximity to the scene of the tragedy, and the fact that he was known to be on bad terms with his half-brother, joined to the bribery of the boy, and the falsehood of the signed statement which he had previously made, gave a significance to his flight which justified the issuing of an immediate warrant for his apprehension. Nor did he think that that event would be long delayed, when he considered his inexperience in evading capture, and the circumstances under which he had left his home.
In the case of Redwin, however significant the simultaneous disappearances might be to his own mind, he saw that he must proceed with greater caution. He had really nothing beyond the way in which he had been dismissed, his subsequent conduct, and his general character, to connect him with the crime, and he knew that no jury would convict, nor could he hope even to obtain his committal, without something of a much more definite character.
For the moment, he must be content to trace him, and then—well, a short “detained for enquiries,” with all its attendant possibilities, would be clearly indicated.
And, of course, Gerard Denton might have been induced to speak before then, and supplied the necessary data on which to proceed against his companion in crime.
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