Black Widow

by S. Fowler Wright

  With these thoughts in a very confident mind, he obtained a warrant for Gerard Denton’s arrest, and then decided to return to London, from which centre he could best direct the pursuit of the fugitives, while it would also enable him to resume duties which had been laid aside at the call of the present investigation.

  Before doing this, he had a further talk with Lady Denton, and examined the other inmates of Bywater Grange regarding the behaviour of Gerard Denton before leaving the house; but he obtained nothing beyond a general confirmation of the account she had given, and a specific memory of the parlour maid, who had overheard part of Gerard’s conversation with Lady Denton when he had asked her to go out, which supported her own account of that incident.

  It was on the afternoon of Thursday, three days after Gerard Denton had disappeared, that the rigour of the search which had been instituted bore its expected fruit, in what, to continue the metaphor, may be described as a double crop; for Inspector Pinkey, coming in after an absence of several hours upon business with which we have no concern, was informed that Redwin had been run to earth in a Bermondsey lodging, where he had been living under an assumed name; and, before this had been fully assimilated, there was a phone call from Beacon’s Cross with news of a kindred kind.

  As to Redwin, it may be said that his fears were his own undoing. For when Detective Sprinkler called upon him with no more sinister purpose than to suggest that Redwin had been his surname for a longer period than the one that he now used, and to propose that he should come back to the station with him (which he would have had no power to enforce), he assumed too readily that his previous identity had been betrayed, which, until Mr. Bedford had sat down beside him on Sunday morning, he had regarded as securely buried.

  Impulsed by this fear, his reply had been a sudden bolt for the door, on which Detective Sprinkler, a young but intelligent officer, considering that the less willing Mr. Redwin might be to enter a police station the more reason there might be that he should arrive at that destination, had tripped him up very adroitly, after which there had been a few minutes of very lively exchanges in which the bodies of both combatants took some bruises, and the furniture suffered more seriously. Finally, Mr. Redwin, accused of no crime, had the indignity of going to the police station with handcuffed wrists, and was promptly charged with the assault on Detective Sprinkler, not as an end in itself, but as a means of detaining him which he had himself been obliging enough to supply, while his capture could be reported to Scotland Yard, and his position in regard to the law receive the consideration that it deserved.

  In view of the violent circumstances which had led to his reception, and the evident desirability of discovering as much as possible about him (particularly of an unsatisfactory character), the officer who took the charge, showing an intelligence equal to that of Detective Sprinkler, had also taken Mr. Redwin’s fingerprints by one of those irregular methods which are only justified by their results, and by the time Inspector Pinkey came in, and received the news of his capture, it was accompanied by the interesting information that he had been identified as Timothy Pepworth Forsyth, who had served two earlier terms of imprisonment before he had disappeared, with a warrant for embezzlement issued against him.

  Inspector Pinkey, having had no more than a single moment to digest this information, was called to the telephone to hear Superintendent Trackfield’s voice at the other end of the wire.

  “I thought,” it said, “you’d like to know at once that Gerard Denton’s been found.”

  “So’s Redwin,” he replied. “We seem to be having a good day. Where did you run him down?”

  “We haven’t exactly done that. He’s dead.”

  “Suicide, I suppose?”

  “I can’t say that. We’ve no details as yet. Just the fact. But I thought I’d try to catch you before you left.”

  “Thanks for that.” Inspector Pinkey thought quickly. Redwin, however much or little he might finally appear to have been concerned in the case, was in safe storage now. He would keep. He added: “I’ll come down at once. There’s a train, if I remember rightly—yes, in about half an hour. The fast evening train.”

  He heard Superintendent Trackfield’s voice assuring him that he would meet him with his own car, and rang off.

  CHAPTER XXVIII.

  Gerard Denton had not been found by means of the elaborate network of espionage which had been spread for his snaring over some fifty thousand square miles of his native land. He had been found by a lurking poacher in a quarry pit, old and disused, which lay about three hundred yards aside from the Loudwater road. If Lady Denton’s memory were correct that she had walked with him to the turn of the hill, he must have left the road almost immediately that they parted, to take the hedge-side path, now deserted and overgrown, that led to the fatal pit.

  He lay among the rough stones of the quarry with a smashed arm and a broken neck. It was not a fall that any man could survive, nor was it one that could have come by accident in the dark. Not, at least, to one who knew the road, as he must have done. There was a closed gate to pass, and a walk along the quarry edge which was a mere track. It led nowhere.

  It was dear that he had committed suicide, or had been murdered deliberately in that lonely spot; but against the latter hypothesis there was not only its inherent improbability—for who should have known that he would have been walking there, or could have compelled or lured him from the safer road, or could have sufficient motive for such a crime?—but at the place where he fell, which could be plainly seen by the broken gravel at the edge of the narrow path, there was no sign of a struggle that could be detected by the keen eyes of Inspector Pinkey, or of the Superintendent, who had accompanied him to the spot.

  “It’s just the chance of a dry season that we’ve found him at all,” the Superintendent remarked. “He was lying half in the water and half out, as it was. Most years it would have been eight feet deep, if not more.”

  “Well,” Inspector Pinkey replied, “it’s just as well as it was. It made no difference to him, and it’s saved us a lot of trouble, and probably some blame for having let him escape.

  “It’s not how I like a case to end, but it’s better than if we’d had to leave it unsolved, or gone too far with something we couldn’t prove, and got a slap in the face when the verdict came. He’s made his statement now.”

  Superintendent Trackfield was not quick to reply. He saw the implication—which might not have been intended—against himself. Suppose he had carried out his own reluctant purpose of arresting Lady Denton for her husband’s murder, where would he be now? Worse than that—for he saw that there were more issues than his own reputation which had been in the balance then—where would Lady Denton have been, and to what tragic blunder of justice might it not have led, when all the legal resources of the Crown would have been marshalled to prove her guilt?

  He saw that he ought to put his own feelings aside in satisfaction that the case had been brought to a different end. But he would have been less than human had he failed also to see that its result would appear to justify the Chief Constable’s decision to call in the assistance of Scotland Yard, with a corresponding disparagement of his own abilities. Well, suppose it were no more than the truth was? Suppose he were rather dull, or, at least, less sharp-witted than the brilliant lights of the metropolitan area? There were many stupid folk in the world who lost no sleep owing to their unalterable mental deficiency.

  Probably, to the aloofness of archangelic minds, the mental difference between the greatest genius that the race of men had produced and its dullest boor was not enough to be easily recognized. And all the same (he thought rather obstinately), he should do the same again in the same position. As things were when the Chief Inspector came on the scene, he had thought the proper course was to apply for a warrant for Lady Denton’s arrest. And that opinion he would not change, though he might be glad that things had turned out in a different way. For Lady Denton was an intelligent and attractive woman, an
d Gerard Denton a man who could be quite easily spared.

  They walked back together to Bywater Grange, and saw Lady Denton there, who was grave enough, but did not express any deeper grief at her brother-in-law’s tragic end than she had shown at her husband’s death.

  This was on the morning following Inspector Pinkey’s return to Beacon’s Cross, and Mr. Wheeler, whom she had summoned as soon as Gerard Denton’s body had been discovered, arrived while they were there.

  They met in the drawing room in Lady Denton’s presence, and Mr. Wheeler, who had been considering the matter from several aspects as he journeyed down, said he was fortunate to have found them together. He didn’t want to dictate in any way, but he supposed there would be no point now in deferring the inquest further—probably it would be convenient all round to hold both inquests on the same day?

  “I own,” he said, “that I shall be glad if you see no objection to that, and the Coroner looks at it in the same light, for I’m bound to be present at both, and just now I’ve got a rush of business from every side till I don’t know what to leave, or to do first.”

  “I don’t know that there’d be any objection from us,” Inspector Pinkey said cautiously, “but it’ll be for the Coroner to decide.”

  “Yes, of course, but I dare say you’ll be able to let me know before I go back.” And then to Lady Denton: “I’ll stay to lunch, if I may?”

  “Yes,” she said; “I shall be glad if you will.”

  The two officers shortly left, and Lady Denton was alone with her solicitor.

  “I suppose,” she said, “you’ll like to go over Gerard’s papers. I’d rather leave them entirely to you, if I may. Mr. Trackfield had a look round last night, and a Mr. Leadbeater, from the Coroner’s office, has been here for about two hours this morning—he only left half an hour ago—but I don’t think they took anything away.”

  “I don’t suppose they found anything sufficiently important to take,” Mr. Wheeler replied easily, “and, in any case, they were within their rights if they did. They could only be interested in anything bearing on the causes of either death.”

  “They wouldn’t be likely to find anything of that kind.”

  “No, not unless he had left a note.”

  “He wouldn’t have done that. I don’t believe Gerard had any idea of committing suicide. Not when he left the house.”

  Mr. Wheeler looked somewhat surprised at this statement, but he only said: “Well, you’re in the best position to judge.”

  She frowned a little at this, as though puzzled by some possible implication it might contain, and then said in explanation: “Gerard never meant anything.”

  Mr. Wheeler recognized some profundity in this reflection. Whatever he might have done would be the result of the moment’s impulse, the inadequacy of his own instincts of greed or fear to resist the impact of surrounding circumstance. It would be done from weakness rather than from strength of will; and if he had killed himself, it was most unlikely that it would have resulted from a settled purpose, such as would have left a letter behind him to announce the deed. Had he written such a letter, he would have been more likely, in a later vacillation of purpose, to have come back alive.

  “No,” he said, considering how singularly abortive Gerard Denton’s life had been, either for evil or good, “I don’t suppose there’ll be much to interest me either. But I’d better have a look through. I don’t think he had made a will.”

  Even his finances had been under the control of others. If it were a fact (which Mr. Wheeler did not believe) that he had murdered his brother to obtain possession of that which was his, it had been as abortive an act as might be expected from such a source. There could be no more of which to take control than the balance (if any) of the sum which had been lent by his own office a few days before, and the statement of any personal debts which might remain to be paid. It did not occur to him that Gerard Denton was the sort of man who might keep a diary very regularly and frankly entered.

  Lady Denton led him to Gerard’s room, and said: “You’ll find a lot of old papers and books in the trunk in the clothes closet. That’s where he turned up the pistol he had that was like Sir Daniel’s. But Mr. Trackfield’s been through them, and he says they’re just old junk, of no value at all. The only places he left locked were the little desk in the window and the top drawer of the chest. They found the keys in his pocket, and after Mr. Leadbeater had gone over everything, he left them here.”

  She went away to the supervision of a house that she ordered well, and Mr. Wheeler turned to the investigation of the privacies of a dead client, as he had often had occasion to do before.

  They met at lunch an hour later. He had brought down a small bundle of papers which he was taking away. “Apart from these,” he said, “you can destroy anything which you regard as being of no value, so far as I am concerned. There are a few personal articles which must be valued for probate, but I needn’t trouble you about them.”

  “It will be all right if I just tell Pauline that the papers can be destroyed?”

  “Ye-es, I suppose it will, if you’d rather not do it yourself. There’ve been three of us over them now, and we seem agreed that there’s nothing of value there. But you’d better not do that until after the inquest has been held.”

  “Mr. Leadbeater rang up a few minutes ago. He said the inquest will be held at eleven tomorrow morn­ing, and the adjourned inquest at twelve. They’re to be held at the Station Inn.”

  Mr. Wheeler considered these hours. There would be the visit to the mortuary, some distance away, to be got in, for the South Buckfordshire Coroner was of the old school, and still regarded the viewing of the body as an essential part of the ritual he controlled. There was a clear implication that the inquest on the body of Gerard Denton was not expected to be of a lengthy kind. He asked: “Same jury for both? I suppose he didn’t say that?”

  “No. He just told me the times and asked me to be sure to be there. He said a formal notice would follow, but he thought I should like to know first.”

  “Did you say I was here?”

  “Yes, I said I would let you know.”

  “I must have a word with Pinkey before I leave, but I expect he’ll be ringing up to give me the same information. I’ll wait for that, if it doesn’t keep me too long.”

  There was silence after that for some minutes. Lady Denton was not disposed for conversation of a wandering kind, and Mr. Wheeler’s thoughts were concentrated upon the problem of how he could pass an idea from his mind to hers without the clumsiness of the spoken word.

  “I suppose,” he said at last, “you know that you’ll be required to give evidence tomorrow morning?”

  “Yes, I understood that.”

  “I don’t mean that you’ve any need to worry. You’re one of the best witnesses I ever heard. You answer clearly, and say just enough, and not a word more.”

  “I suppose it will be mainly about how Gerard left the house, and how we walked up the road?”

  “Yes—and perhaps a bit more than that. But the Coroner doesn’t mean to go very deep. He’d have allowed more time if he had. It’ll be just evidence of the state he was in, and ‘temporary insanity’ in the routine way. It’s how he means to deal with the adjourned inquest that’s not so easy to tell. Coroner friendly to you?”

  “Mr. Duckworth? Yes, of course. We’ve met often enough. I don’t know him well. Rather fussy, but not a bad sort.”

  “I was thinking—if you should be recalled to the box—”

  “Is it likely I shall?”

  “I don’t know. There are circumstances in which I might ask for you to be recalled myself. It’s all a question of how it goes.”

  “You don’t think there’ll be more trouble now? They won’t adjourn it again?”

  “I can’t say. I don’t anticipate that. It’ll be a walkover for us, more likely than not. But I just wanted to give you one tip. You ought to be quite clear as to whether the drawer was open or shut.”r />
  “Is it so important which?”

  “Not at all. But it’s important you should be sure.”

  Lady Denton looked at him with eyes that did not fall, though he thought he saw a slight pallor under her delicately painted skin. She said with a slow, challenging deliberation: “You think you know what happened when Daniel died?”

  “Yes,” he said, with equal deliberation, “I think I do.”

  “But you don’t know how it happened—how it came to that, and why it couldn’t be any other way.”

  “No,” he acknowledged. “No one could. We may be thankful—we lawyers, I mean—that that is more than the law requires.”

  “And that is why no trial was ever fair.”

  He did not deny that. He had often thought that, while the leaving of certain classes of crime unprobed, and the criminals untraced or unpunished, might lead to greater evils, very difficult to assess; yet, in very numerous instances, far more human misery was caused, even more social harm occasioned, possibly even more injustice done, by the probing of such a tragedy than if its neighbours had glanced aside.

  There was something to be said for the old primitive Saxon law by which the men of his own hundred—the men who knew him—would consider the circumstances under which their neighbour had committed an act of violence, and decide whether they would stand by him or cast him out. And there was surely a sounder equity in the custom by which, if it were decided that a monetary penalty would properly close the event, the fine went to the pocket of the injured man or his relatives, and not to the community, as it does today.

  So he might think, in an idle mood, but what had such doubts to do with the present case? He might think he knew—or at least partly knew—what happened when Sir Daniel died, and he might have a theory of the events which had led thereto, but these did not necessarily justify the event. And as to what had happened since, he had no more than a puzzled doubt. He might be thankful again that the law, finding facts sufficiently difficult to ascertain, concerns itself with no more than the consequences of human action, even to the absurdity of the proposition that a man who shoots at another with intent to kill is held to be less guilty if he be unable to aim straight.