Trent's Last Case The Woman in Black
by
E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
Part 1 out of 4
TRENT'S LAST CASE
by E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
CHAPTER I: Bad News
Between what matters and what seems to matter, how should the world we know
judge wisely?
When the scheming, indomitable brain of Sigsbee Manderson was scattered by a
shot from an unknown hand, that world lost nothing worth a single tear; it
gained something memorable in a harsh reminder of the vanity of such wealth as
this dead man had piled up--without making one loyal friend to mourn him,
without doing an act that could help his memory to the least honour. But when
the news of his end came, it seemed to those living in the great vortices of
business as if the earth too shuddered under a blow.
In all the lurid commercial history of his country there had been no figure
that had so imposed itself upon the mind of the trading world. He had a niche
apart in its temples. Financial giants, strong to direct and augment the
forces of capital, and taking an approved toll in millions for their labour,
had existed before; but in the case of Manderson there had been this
singularity, that a pale halo of piratical romance, a thing especially dear to
the hearts of his countrymen, had remained incongruously about his head
through the years when he stood in every eye as the unquestioned guardian of
stability, the stamper-out of manipulated crises, the foe of the raiding
chieftains that infest the borders of Wall Street.
The fortune left by his grandfather, who had been one of those chieftains on
the smaller scale of his day, had descended to him with accretion through his
father, who during a long life had quietly continued to lend money and never
had margined a stock. Manderson, who had at no time known what it was to be
without large sums to his hand, should have been altogether of that newer
American plutocracy which is steadied by the tradition and habit of great
wealth. But it was not so. While his nurture and education had taught him
European ideas of a rich man's proper external circumstance; while they had
rooted in him an instinct for quiet magnificence, the larger costliness which
does not shriek of itself with a thousand tongues; there had been handed on to
him nevertheless much of the Forty-Niner and financial buccaneer, his forbear.
During that first period of his business career which had been called his
early bad manner, he had been little more than a gambler of genius, his hand
against every man's--an infant prodigy- who brought to the enthralling pursuit
of speculation a brain better endowed than any opposed to it. At St Helena it
was laid down that war is une belle occupation; and so the young Manderson had
found the multitudinous and complicated dog-fight of the Stock Exchange of New
York.
Then came his change. At his father's death, when Manderson was thirty years
old, some new revelation of the power and the glory of the god he served
seemed to have come upon him. With the sudden, elastic adaptability of his
nation he turned to steady labour in his father's banking business, closing
his ears to the sound of the battles of the Street. In a few years he came to
control all the activity of the great firm whose unimpeached conservatism,
safety, and financial weight lifted it like a cliff above the angry sea of the
markets. All mistrust founded on the performances of his youth had vanished.
He was quite plainly a different man. How the change came about none could
with authority say, but there was a story of certain last words spoken by his
father, whom alone he had respected and perhaps loved.
He began to tower above the financial situation. Soon his name was current in
the bourses of the world. One who spoke the name of Manderson called up a
vision of all that was broad-based and firm in the vast wealth of the United
States. He planned great combinations of capital, drew together and
centralized industries of continental scope, financed with unerring judgement
the large designs of state or of private enterprise. Many a time when he 'took
hold' to smash a strike, or to federate the ownership of some great field of
labour, he sent ruin upon a multitude of tiny homes; and if miners or
steelworkers or cattlemen defied him and invoked disorder, he could be more
lawless and ruthless than they. But this was done in the pursuit of legitimate
business ends. Tens of thousands of the poor might curse his name, but the
financier and the speculator execrated him no more. He stretched a hand to
protect or to manipulate the power of wealth in every corner of the country.
Forcible, cold, and unerring, in all he did he ministered to the national lust
for magnitude; and a grateful country surnamed him the Colossus.
But there was an aspect of Manderson in this later period that lay long
unknown and unsuspected save by a few, his secretaries and lieutenants and
certain of the associates of his bygone hurling time. This little circle knew
that Manderson, the pillar of sound business and stability in the markets, had
his hours of nostalgia for the lively times when the Street had trembled at
his name. It was, said one of them, as if Blackbeard had settled down as a
decent merchant in Bristol on the spoils of the Main. Now and then the pirate
would glare suddenly out, the knife in his teeth and the sulphur matches
sputtering in his hatband. During such spasms of reversion to type a score of
tempestuous raids upon the market had been planned on paper in the inner room
of the offices of Manderson, Colefax and Company. But they were never carried
out. Blackbeard would quell the mutiny of his old self within him and go
soberly down to his counting-house--humming a stave or two of 'Spanish
Ladies', perhaps, under his breath. Manderson would allow himself the harmless
satisfaction, as soon as the time for action had gone by, of pointing out to
some Rupert of the markets a coup worth a million to the depredator might
have been made. 'Seems to me,' he would say almost wistfully, 'the Street is
getting to be a mighty dull place since I quit.' By slow degrees this amiable
weakness of the Colossus became known to the business world, which exulted
greatly in the knowledge.
At the news of his death panic went through the markets like a hurricane; for
it came at a luckless time. Prices tottered and crashed like towers in an
earthquake. For two days Wall Street was a clamorous inferno of pale despair.
All over the United States, wherever speculation had its devotees, went a waft
of ruin, a plague of suicide. In Europe also not a few took with their own
hands lives that had become pitiably linked to the destiny of a financier whom
most of them had never seen. In Paris a well-known banker walked quietly out
of the Bourse and fell dead upon the broad steps among the raving crowd of
Jews, a phial crushed in his hand. In Frankfort one leapt from the Cathedral
top, leaving a redder stain where he struck the red tower. Men stabbed and
shot and strangled themselves, drank death or breathed it as the air, because
in a lonely corner of England the life had departed from one cold heart vowed
to the service of greed.
The blow could not have fallen at a more disastrous moment. It came when Wall
Street was in a condition of suppressed 'scare'-suppressed, because for a week
past the great interests known to act with or to be actually controlled by the
Colossus had been desperately combating the effects of the sudden arrest of
Lucas Hahn, and the exposure of his plundering of the Hahn banks. This
bombshell, in its turn, had fallen at a time when the market had been
'boosted' beyond its real strength. In the language of the place, a slump was
due. Reports from the corn-lands had not been good, and there had been two or
three railway statements which had been expected to be much better than they
were. But at whatever point in the vast area of speculation the shudder of the
threatened break had been felt, 'the Manderson crowd' had stepped in and held
the market up. All through the week the speculator's mind, as shallow as it is
quick- witted, as sentimental as greedy, had seen in this the hand of the
giant stretched out in protection from afar. Manderson, said the newspapers in
chorus, was in hourly communication with his lieutenants in the Street. One
journal was able to give in round figures the sum spent on cabling between New
York and Marlstone in the past twenty-four hours; it told how a small staff of
expert operators had been sent down by the Post Office authorities to
Marlstone to deal with the flood of messages. Another revealed that Manderson,
on the first news of the Hahn crash, had arranged to abandon his holiday and
return home by the Lusitania; but that he soon had the situation so well in
hand that he had determined to remain where he was.
All this was falsehood, more or less consciously elaborated by the 'finance
editors', consciously initiated and encouraged by the shrewd business men of
the Manderson group, who knew that nothing could better help their plans than
this illusion of hero-worship--knew also that no word had come from Manderson
in answer to their messages, and that Howard B. Jeffrey, of Steel and Iron
fame, was the true organizer of victory. So they fought down apprehension
through four feverish days, and minds grew calmer. On Saturday, though the
ground beneath the feet of Mr. Jeffrey yet rumbled now and then with
Etna-mutterings of disquiet, he deemed his task almost done. The market was
firm, and slowly advancing. Wall Street turned to its sleep of Sunday, worn
out but thankfully at peace.
In the first trading hour of Monday a hideous rumour flew round the sixty
acres of the financial district. It came into being as the lightning comes--a
blink that seems to begin nowhere; though it is to be suspected that it was
first whispered over the telephone--together with an urgent selling order by
some employee in the cable service. A sharp spasm convulsed the convalescent
share- list. In five minutes the dull noise of the kerbstone market in Broad
Street had leapt to a high note of frantic interrogation. From within the hive
of the Exchange itself could be heard a droning hubbub of fear, and men rushed
hatless in and out. Was it true? asked every man; and every man replied, with
trembling lips, that it was a lie put out by some unscrupulous 'short'
interest seeking to cover itself. In another quarter of an hour news came of a
sudden and ruinous collapse of 'Yankees' in London at the close of the Stock
Exchange day. It was enough. New York had still four hours' trading in front
of her. The strategy of pointing to Manderson as the saviour and warden of the
markets had recoiled upon its authors with annihilating force, and Jeffrey,
his ear at his private telephone, listened to the tale of disaster with a set
jaw. The new Napoleon had lost his Marengo. He saw the whole financial
landscape sliding and falling into chaos before him. In half an hour the news
of the finding of Manderson's body, with the inevitable rumour that it was
suicide, was printing in a dozen newspaper offices; but before a copy reached
Wall Street the tornado of the panic was in full fury, and Howard B. Jeffrey
and his collaborators were whirled away like leaves before its breath.
All this sprang out of nothing.
Nothing in the texture of the general life had changed. The corn had not
ceased to ripen in the sun. The rivers bore their barges and gave power to a
myriad engines. The flocks fattened on the pastures, the herds were
unnumbered. Men laboured everywhere in the various servitudes to which they
were born, and chafed not more than usual in their bonds. Bellona tossed and
murmured as ever, yet still slept her uneasy sleep. To all mankind save a
million or two of half- crazed gamblers, blind to all reality, the death of
Manderson meant nothing; the life and work of the world went on. Weeks before
he died strong hands had been in control of every wire in the huge network of
commerce and industry that he had supervised. Before his corpse was buried his
countrymen had made a strange discovery--that the existence of the potent
engine of monopoly that went by the name of Sigsbee Manderson had not been a
condition of even material prosperity. The panic blew itself out in two days,
the pieces were picked up, the bankrupts withdrew out of sight; the market
'recovered a normal tone'.
While the brief delirium was yet subsiding there broke out a domestic scandal
in England that suddenly fixed the attention of two continents. Next morning
the Chicago Limited was wrecked, and the same day a notable politician was
shot down in cold blood by his wife's brother in the streets of New Orleans.
Within a week of its rising, 'the Manderson story', to the trained sense of
editors throughout the Union, was 'cold'. The tide of American visitors
pouring through Europe made eddies round the memorial or statue of many a man
who had died in poverty; and never thought of their most famous plutocrat.
Like the poet who died in Rome, so young and poor, a hundred years ago, he was
buried far away from his own land; but for all the men and women of
Manderson's people who flock round the tomb of Keats in the cemetery under the
Monte Testaccio, there is not one, nor ever Will be, to stand in reverence by
the rich man's grave beside the little church of Marlstone.
CHAPTER II: Knocking the Town Endways
In the only comfortably furnished room in the offices of the Record, the
telephone on Sir James Molloy's table buzzed. Sir James made a motion with his
pen, and Mr. Silver, his secretary, left his work and came over to the
instrument.
'Who is that?' he said. 'Who?... I can't hear you .... Oh, it's Mr. Bunner, is
it?... Yes, but... I know, but he's fearfully busy this afternoon. Can't
you... Oh, really? Well, in that case--just hold on, will you?'
He placed the receiver before Sir James. 'It's Calvin Bunner, Sigsbee
Manderson's right-hand man,' he said concisely. 'He insists on speaking to you
personally. Says it is the gravest piece of news. He is talking from the house
down by Bishopsbridge, so it will be necessary to speak clearly.'
Sir James looked at the telephone, not affectionately, and took up the
receiver. 'Well?' he said in his strong voice, and listened. 'Yes,' he said.
The next moment Mr. Silver, eagerly watching him, saw a look of amazement and
horror. 'Good God!' murmured Sir James. Clutching the instrument, he slowly
rose to his feet, still bending ear intently. At intervals he repeated 'Yes.'
Presently, as he listened, he glanced at the clock, and spoke quickly to Mr.
Silver over the top of the transmitter. 'Go and hunt up Figgis and young
Williams. Hurry.' Mr. Silver darted from the room.
The great journalist was a tall, strong, clever Irishman of fifty, swart and
black-moustached, a man of untiring business energy, well known in the world,
which he understood very thoroughly, and played upon with the half-cynical
competence of his race. Yet was he without a touch of the charlatan: he made
no mysteries, and no pretences of knowledge, and he saw instantly through
these in others. In his handsome, well-bred, well-dressed appearance there was
something a little sinister when anger or intense occupation put its imprint
about his eyes and brow; but when his generous nature was under no restraint
he was the most cordial of men. He was managing director of the company which
owned that most powerful morning paper, the Record, and also that most
indispensable evening paper, the Sun, which had its offices on the other side
of the street. He was, moreover, editor-in-chief of the Record, to which he
had in the course of years attached the most variously capable personnel in
the country. It was a maxim of his that where you could not get gifts, you
must do the best you could with solid merit; and he employed a great deal of
both. He was respected by his staff as few are respected in a profession not
favourable to the growth of the sentiment of reverence.
'You're sure that's all?' asked Sir James, after a few minutes of earnest
listening and questioning. 'And how long has this been known?... Yes, of
course, the police are; but the servants? Surely it's all over the place down
there by now .... Well, we'll have a try .... Look here, Bunner, I'm
infinitely obliged to you about this. I owe you a good turn. You know I mean
what I say. Come and see me the first day you get to town .... All right,
that's understood. Now I must act on your news. Goodbye.'
Sir James hung up the receiver, and seized a railway timetable from the rack
before him. After a rapid consultation of this oracle, he flung it down with a
forcible word as Mr. Silver hurried into the room, followed by a hard-featured
man with spectacles, and a youth with an alert eye.
'I want you to jot down some facts, Figgis,' said Sir James, banishing all
signs of agitation and speaking with a rapid calmness. 'When you have them,
put them into shape just as quick as you can for a special edition of the
Sun.' The hard- featured man nodded and glanced at the clock, which pointed to
a few minutes past three; he pulled out a notebook and drew a chair up to the
big writing- table. 'Silver,' Sir James went on, 'go and tell Jones to wire
our local correspondent very urgently, to drop everything and get down to
Marlstone at once. He is not to say why in the telegram. There must not be an
unnecessary word about this news until the Sun is on the streets with it--you
all understand. Williams, cut across the way and tell Mr. Anthony to hold
himself ready for a two-column opening that will knock the town endways. Just
tell him that he must take all measures and precautions for a scoop. Say that
Figgis will be over in five minutes with the facts, and that he had better let
him write up the story in his private room. As you go, ask Miss Morgan to see
me here at once, and tell the telephone people to see if they can get Mr.
Trent on the wire for me. After seeing Mr. Anthony, return here and stand by.'
The alert-eyed young man vanished like a spirit.
Sir James turned instantly to Mr. Figgis, whose pencil was poised over the
paper. 'Sigsbee Manderson has been murdered,' he began quickly and clearly,
pacing the floor with his hands behind him. Mr. Figgis scratched down a line
of shorthand with as much emotion as if he had been told that the day was
fine--the pose of his craft. 'He and his wife and two secretaries have been
for the past fortnight at the house called White Gables, at Marlstone, near
Bishopsbridge. He bought it four years ago. He and Mrs. Manderson have since
spent a part of each summer there. Last night he went to bed about half-past
eleven, just as usual. No one knows when he got up and left the house. He was
not missed until this morning. About ten o'clock his body was found by a
gardener. It was lying by a shed in the grounds. He was shot in the head,
through the left eye. Death must have been instantaneous. The body was not
robbed, but there were marks on the wrists which pointed to a straggle having
taken place. Dr Stock, of Marlstone, was at once sent for, and will conduct
the post-mortem examination. The police from Bishopsbridge, who were soon on
the spot, are reticent, but it is believed that they are quite without a clue
to the identity of the murderer. There you are, Figgis. Mr. Anthony is
expecting you. Now I must telephone him and arrange things.'
Mr. Figgis looked up. 'One of the ablest detectives at Scotland Yard,' he
suggested, 'has been put in charge of the case. It's a safe statement.'
'If you like,' said Sir James.
'And Mrs. Manderson? Was she there?'
'Yes. What about her?'
'Prostrated by the shock,' hinted the reporter, 'and sees nobody. Human
interest.'
'I wouldn't put that in, Mr. Figgis,' said a quiet voice. It belonged to Miss
Morgan, a pale, graceful woman, who had silently made her appearance while the
dictation was going on. 'I have seen Mrs. Manderson,' she proceeded, turning
to Sir James. 'She looks quite healthy and intelligent. Has her husband been
murdered? I don't think the shock would prostrate her. She is more likely to
be doing all she can to help the police.'
'Something in your own style, then, Miss Morgan,' he said with a momentary
smile. Her imperturbable efficiency was an office proverb. 'Cut it out,
Figgis. Off you go! Now, madam, I expect you know what I want.'
'Our Manderson biography happens to be well up to date,' replied Miss Morgan,
drooping her dark eyelashes as she considered the position. 'I was looking
over it only a few months ago. It is practically ready for tomorrow's paper. I
should think the Sun had better use the sketch of his life they had about two
years ago, when he went to Berlin and settled the potash difficulty. I
remember it was a very good sketch, and they won't be able to carry much more
than that. As for our paper, of course we have a great quantity of cuttings,
mostly rubbish. The sub-editors shall have them as soon as they come in. Then
we have two very good portraits that are our own property; the best is a
drawing Mr. Trent made when they were both on the same ship somewhere. It is
better than any of the photographs; but you say the public prefers a bad
photograph to a good drawing. I will send them down to you at once, and you
can choose. As far as I can see, the Record is well ahead of the situation,
except that you will not be able to get a special man down there in time to be
of any use for tomorrow's paper.'
Sir James sighed deeply. 'What are we good for, anyhow?' he enquired
dejectedly of Mr. Silver, who had returned to his desk. 'She even knows
Bradshaw by heart.'
Miss Morgan adjusted her cuffs with an air of patience. 'Is there anything
else?' she asked, as the telephone bell rang.
'Yes, one thing,' replied Sir James, as he took up the receiver. 'I want you
to make a bad mistake some time, Miss Morgan--an everlasting bloomer--just to
put us in countenance.' She permitted herself the fraction of what would have
been a charming smile as she went out.
'Anthony?' asked Sir James, and was at once deep in consultation with the
editor on the other side of the road. He seldom entered the Sun building in
person; the atmosphere of an evening paper, he would say, was all very well if
you liked that kind of thing. Mr. Anthony, the Murat of Fleet Street, who
delighted in riding the whirlwind and fighting a tumultuous battle against
time, would say the same of a morning paper.
It was some five minutes later that a uniformed boy came in to say that Mr.
Trent was on the wire. Sir James abruptly closed his talk with Mr. Anthony.
'They can put him through at once,' he said to the boy.
'Hullo!' he cried into the telephone after a few moments.
A voice in the instrument replied, 'Hullo be blowed! What do you want?'
'This is Molloy,' said Sir James.
'I know it is,' the voice said. 'This is Trent. He is in the middle of
painting a picture, and he has been interrupted at a critical moment. Well, I
hope it's something important, that's all!'
'Trent,' said Sir James impressively, 'it is important. I want you to do some
work for us.'
'Some play, you mean,' replied the voice. 'Believe me, I don't want a holiday.
The working fit is very strong. I am doing some really decent things. Why
can't you leave a man alone?' 'Something very serious has happened.' 'What?'
'Sigsbee Manderson has been murdered--shot through the brain--and they don't
know who has done it. They found the body this morning. It happened at his
place near Bishopsbridge.' Sir James proceeded to tell his hearer, briefly and
clearly, the facts that he had communicated to Mr. Figgis. 'What do you think
of it?' he ended. A considering grunt was the only answer. 'Come now,' urged
Sir James. 'Tempter!'
'You will go down?'
There was a brief pause.
'Are you there?' said Sir James.
'Look here, Molloy,' the voice broke out querulously, 'the thing may be a case
for me, or it may not. We can't possibly tell. It may be a mystery; it may be
as simple as bread and cheese. The body not being robbed looks interesting,
but he may have been outed by some wretched tramp whom he found sleeping in
the grounds and tried to kick out. It's the sort of thing he would do. Such a
murderer might easily have sense enough to know that to leave the money and
valuables was the safest thing. I tell you frankly, I wouldn't have a hand in
hanging a poor devil who had let daylight into a man like Sig Manderson as a
measure of social protest.'
Sir James smiled at the telephone--a smile of success. 'Come, my boy, you're
getting feeble. Admit you want to go and have a look at the case. You know you
do. If it's anything you don't want to handle, you're free to drop it. By the
by, where are you?'
'I am blown along a wandering wind,' replied the voice irresolutely, 'and
hollow, hollow, hollow all delight.'
'Can you get here within an hour?' persisted Sir James.
'I suppose I can,' the voice grumbled. 'How much time have I?'
'Good man! Well, there's time enough--that's just the worst of it. I've got to
depend on our local correspondent for tonight. The only good train of the day
went half an hour ago. The next is a slow one, leaving Paddington at midnight.
You could have the Buster, if you like'--Sir James referred to a very fast
motor car of his--'but you wouldn't get down in time to do anything tonight.'
'And I'd miss my sleep. No, thanks. The train for me. I am quite fond of
railway travelling, you know; I have a gift for it. I am the stoker and the
stoked. I am the song the porter sings.'
'What's that you say?'
'It doesn't matter,' said the voice sadly. 'I say,' it continued, 'will your
people look out a hotel near the scene of action, and telegraph for a room?'
'At once,' said Sir James. 'Come here as soon as you can.'
He replaced the receiver. As he turned to his papers again a shrill outcry
burst forth in the street below. He walked to the open window. A band of
excited boys was rushing down the steps of the Sun building and up the narrow
thoroughfare toward Fleet Street. Each carried a bundle of newspapers and a
large broadsheet with the simple legend:
MURDER OF SIGSBEE MANDERSON
Sir James smiled and rattled the money in his pockets cheerfully. 'It makes a
good bill,' he observed to Mr. Silver, who stood at his elbow.
Such was Manderson's epitaph.
CHAPTER III: Breakfast
At about eight o'clock in the morning of the following day Mr. Nathaniel
Burton Cupples stood on the veranda of the hotel at Marlstone. He was thinking
about breakfast. In his case the colloquialism must be taken literally: he
really was thinking about breakfast, as he thought about every conscious act
of his life when time allowed deliberation. He reflected that on the preceding
day the excitement and activity following upon the discovery of the dead man
had disorganized his appetite, and led to his taking considerably less
nourishment than usual. This morning he was very hungry, having already been
up and about for an hour; and he decided to allow himself a third piece of
toast and an additional egg; the rest as usual. The remaining deficit must be
made up at luncheon, but that could be gone into later.
So much being determined, Mr. Cupples applied himself to the enjoyment of the
view for a few minutes before ordering his meal. With a connoisseur's eye he
explored the beauty of the rugged coast, where a great pierced rock rose from
a glassy sea, and the ordered loveliness of the vast tilted levels of pasture
and tillage and woodland that sloped gently up from the cliffs toward the
distant moor. Mr. Cupples delighted in landscape.
He was a man of middle height and spare figure, nearly sixty years old, by
constitution rather delicate in health, but wiry and active for his age. A
sparse and straggling beard and moustache did not conceal a thin but kindly
mouth; his eyes were keen and pleasant; his sharp nose and narrow jaw gave him
very much of a clerical air, and this impression was helped by his commonplace
dark clothes and soft black hat. The whole effect of him, indeed, was
priestly. He was a man of unusually conscientious, industrious, and orderly
mind, with little imagination. His father's household had been used to recruit
its domestic establishment by means of advertisements in which it was
truthfully described as a serious family. From that fortress of gloom he had
escaped with two saintly gifts somehow unspoiled: an inexhaustible kindness of
heart, and a capacity for innocent gaiety which owed nothing to humour. In an
earlier day and with a clerical training he might have risen to the scarlet
hat. He was, in fact, a highly regarded member of the London Positivist
Society, a retired banker, a widower without children. His austere but not
unhappy life was spent largely among books and in museums; his profound and
patiently accumulated knowledge of a number of curiously disconnected subjects
which had stirred his interest at different times had given him a place in the
quiet, half-lit world of professors and curators and devotees of research; at
their amiable, unconvivial dinner parties he was most himself. His favourite
author was Montaigne.
Just as Mr. Cupples was finishing his meal at a little table on the veranda, a
big motor car turned into the drive before the hotel. 'Who is this?' he
enquired of the waiter. 'Id is der manager,' said the young man listlessly.
'He have been to meed a gendleman by der train.'
The car drew up and the porter hurried from the entrance. Mr. Cupples uttered
an exclamation of pleasure as a long, loosely built man, much younger than
himself, stepped from the car and mounted the veranda, flinging his hat on a
chair. His high-boned, quixotic face wore a pleasant smile; his rough tweed
clothes, his hair and short moustache were tolerably untidy.
'Cupples, by all that's miraculous!' cried the man, pouncing upon Mr. Cupples
before he could rise, and seizing his outstretched hand in a hard grip. 'My
luck is serving me today,' the newcomer went on spasmodically. 'This is the
second slice within an hour. How are you, my best of friends? And why are you
here? Why sit'st thou by that ruined breakfast? Dost thou its former pride
recall, or ponder how it passed away? I am glad to see you!'
'I was half expecting you, Trent,' Mr. Cupples replied, his face wreathed in
smiles. 'You are looking splendid, my dear fellow. I will tell you all about
it. But you cannot have had your own breakfast yet. Will you have it at my
table here?'
'Rather!' said the man. 'An enormous great breakfast, too--with refined
conversation and tears of recognition never dry. Will you get young Siegfried
to lay a place for me while I go and wash? I shan't be three minutes.' He
disappeared into the hotel, and Mr. Cupples, after a moment's thought, went to
the telephone in the porter's office.
He returned to find his friend already seated, pouring out tea, and showing an
unaffected interest in the choice of food. 'I expect this to be a hard day for
me,' he said, with the curious jerky utterance which seemed to be his habit.
'I shan't eat again till the evening, very likely. You guess why I'm here,
don't you?'
'Undoubtedly,' said Mr. Cupples. 'You have come down to write about the
murder.'
'That is rather a colourless way of stating it,' the man called Trent replied,
as he dissected a sole. 'I should prefer to put it that I have come down in
the character of avenger of blood, to hunt down the guilty, and vindicate the
honour of society. That is my line of business. Families waited on at their
private residences. I say, Cupples, I have made a good beginning already. Wait
a bit, and I'll tell you.' There was a silence, during which the newcomer ate
swiftly and abstractedly, while Mr. Cupples looked on happily.
'Your manager here,' said the tall man at last, 'is a fellow of remarkable
judgement. He is an admirer of mine. He knows more about my best cases than I
do myself. The Record wired last night to say I was coming, and when I got out
of the train at seven o'clock this morning, there he was waiting for me with a
motor car the size of a haystack. He is beside himself with joy at having me
here. It is fame.' He drank a cup of tea and continued: 'Almost his first
words were to ask me if I would like to see the body of the murdered man if
so, he thought he could manage it for me. He is as keen as a razor. The body
lies in Dr Stock's surgery, you know, down in the village, exactly as it was
when found. It's to be post-mortem'd this morning, by the way, so I was only
just in time. Well, he ran me down here to the doctor's, giving me full
particulars about the case all the way. I was pretty well au fait by the time
we arrived. I suppose the manager of a place like this has some sort of a pull
with the doctor. Anyhow, he made no difficulties, nor did the constable on
duty, though he was careful to insist on my not giving him away in the paper.'
'I saw the body before it was removed,' remarked Mr. Cupples. 'I should not
have said there was anything remarkable about it, except that the shot in the
eye had scarcely disfigured the face at all, and caused scarcely any effusion
of blood, apparently. The wrists were scratched and bruised. I expect that,
with your trained faculties, you were able to remark other details of a
suggestive nature.'
'Other details, certainly; but I don't know that they suggest anything. They
are merely odd. Take the wrists, for instance. How was it you could see
bruises and scratches on them? I dare say you saw something of Manderson down
here before the murder.' 'Certainly,' Mr. Cupples said.
'Well, did you ever see his wrists?'
Mr. Cupples reflected. 'No. Now you raise the point, I am reminded that when I
interviewed Manderson here he was wearing stiff cuffs, coming well down over
his hands.'
'He always did,' said Trent. 'My friend the manager says so. I pointed out to
him the fact you didn't observe, that there were no cuffs visible, and that
they had, indeed, been dragged up inside the coat-sleeves, as yours would be
if you hurried into a coat without pulling your cuffs down. That was why you
saw his wrists.'
'Well, I call that suggestive,' observed Mr. Cupples mildly. 'You might infer,
perhaps, that when he got up he hurried over his dressing.'
'Yes, but did he? The manager said just what you say. "He was always a bit of
a swell in his dress," he told me, and he drew the inference that when
Manderson got up in that mysterious way, before the house was stirring, and
went out into the grounds, he was in a great hurry. "Look at his shoes," he
said to me: "Mr. Manderson was always specially neat about his footwear. But
those shoe-laces were tied in a hurry." I agreed. "And he left his false teeth
in his room," said the manager. "Doesn't that prove he was flustered and
hurried?" I allowed that it looked like it. But I said, "Look here: if he was
so very much pressed, why did he part his hair so carefully? That parting is a
work of art. Why did he put on so much? for he had on a complete outfit of
underclothing, studs in his shirt, sock-suspenders, a watch and chain, money
and keys and things in his pockets." That's what I said to the manager. He
couldn't find an explanation. Can you?"
Mr. Cupples considered. 'Those facts might suggest that he was hurried only at
the end of his dressing. Coat and shoes would come last.'
'But not false teeth. You ask anybody who wears them. And besides, I'm told he
hadn't washed at all on getting up, which in a neat man looks like his being
in a violent hurry from the beginning. And here's another thing. One of his
waistcoat pockets was lined with wash-leather for the reception of his gold
watch. But he had put his watch into the pocket on the other side. Anybody who
has settled habits can see how odd that is. The fact is, there are signs of
great agitation and haste, and there are signs of exactly the opposite. For
the present I am not guessing. I must reconnoitre the ground first, if I can
manage to get the right side of the people of the house.' Trent applied
himself again to his breakfast.
Mr. Cupples smiled at him benevolently. 'That is precisely the point,' he
said, 'on which I can be of some assistance to you.' Trent glanced up in
surprise. 'I told you I half expected you. I will explain the situation. Mrs.
Manderson, who is my niece--'
'What!' Trent laid down his knife and fork with a clash. 'Cupples, you are
jesting with me.'
'I am perfectly serious, Trent, really,' returned Mr. Cupples earnestly. 'Her
father, John Peter Domecq, was my wife's brother. I never mentioned my niece
or her marriage to you before, I suppose. To tell the truth, it has always
been a painful subject to me, and I have avoided discussing it with anybody.
To return to what I was about to say: last night, when I was over at the
house--by the way, you can see it from here. You passed it in the car.' He
indicated a red roof among poplars some three hundred yards away, the only
building in sight that stood separate from the tiny village in the gap below
them.
'Certainly I did,' said Trent. 'The manager told me all about it, among other
things, as he drove me in from Bishopsbridge.'
'Other people here have heard of you and your performances,' Mr. Cupples went
on. 'As I was saying, when I was over there last night, Mr. Bunner, who is one
of Manderson's two secretaries, expressed a hope that the Record would send
you down to deal with the case, as the police seemed quite at a loss. He
mentioned one or two of your past successes, and Mabel--my niece--was
interested when I told her afterwards. She is bearing up wonderfully well,
Trent; she has remarkable fortitude of character. She said she remembered
reading your articles about the Abinger case. She has a great horror of the
newspaper side of this sad business, and she had entreated me to do anything I
could to keep journalists away from the place--I'm sure you can understand her
feeling, Trent; it isn't really any reflection on that profession. But she
said you appeared to have great powers as a detective, and she would not stand
in the way of anything that might clear up the crime. Then I told her you were
a personal friend of mine, and gave you a good character for tact and
consideration of others' feelings; and it ended in her saying that, if you
should come, she would like you to be helped in every way.'
Trent leaned across the table and shook Mr. Cupples by the hand in silence.
Mr. Cupples, much delighted with the way things were turning out, resumed:
'I spoke to my niece on the telephone only just now, and she is glad you are
here. She asks me to say that you may make any enquiries you like, and she
puts the house and grounds at your disposal. She had rather not see you
herself; she is keeping to her own sitting-room. She has already been
interviewed by a detective officer who is there, and she feels unequal to any
more. She adds that she does not believe she could say anything that would be
of the smallest use. The two secretaries and Martin, the butler (who is a most
intelligent man), could tell you all you want to know, she thinks.'
Trent finished his breakfast with a thoughtful brow. He filled a pipe slowly,
and seated himself on the rail of the veranda. 'Cupples,' he said quietly, 'is
there anything about this business that you know and would rather not tell
me?'
Mr. Cupples gave a slight start, and turned an astonished gaze on the
questioner. 'What do you mean?' he said.
'I mean about the Mandersons. Look here! Shall I tell you a thing that strikes
me about this affair at the very beginning? Here's a man suddenly and
violently killed, and nobody's heart seems to be broken about it, to say the
least. The manager of this hotel spoke to me about him as coolly as if he'd
never set eyes on him, though I understand they've been neighbours every
summer for some years. Then you talk about the thing in the coldest of blood.
And Mrs. Manderson--well, you won't mind my saying that I have heard of women
being more cut up about their husbands being murdered than she seems to be. Is
there something in this, Cupples, or is it my fancy? Was there something queer
about Manderson? I travelled on the same boat with him once, but never spoke
to him. I only know his public character, which was repulsive enough. You see,
this may have a bearing on the case; that's the only reason why I ask.'
Mr. Cupples took time for thought. He fingered his sparse beard and looked out
over the sea. At last he turned to Trent. 'I see no reason,' he said, 'why I
shouldn't tell you as between ourselves, my dear fellow. I need not say that
this must not be referred to, however distantly. The truth is that nobody
really liked Manderson; and I think those who were nearest to him liked him
least.'
'Why?' the other interjected.
'Most people found a difficulty in explaining why. In trying to account to
myself for my own sensations, I could only put it that one felt in the man a
complete absence of the sympathetic faculty. There was nothing outwardly
repellent about him. He was not ill-mannered, or vicious, or dull--indeed, he
could be remarkably interesting. But I received the impression that there
could be no human creature whom he would not sacrifice in the pursuit of his
schemes, in his task of imposing himself and his will upon the world. Perhaps
that was fanciful, but I think not altogether so. However, the point is that
Mabel, I am sorry to say, was very unhappy. I am nearly twice your age, my
dear boy, though you always so kindly try to make me feel as if we were
contemporaries--I am getting to be an old man, and a great many people have
been good enough to confide their matrimonial troubles to me; but I never knew
another case like my niece's and her husband's. I have known her since she was
a baby, Trent, and I know--you understand, I think, that I do not employ that
word lightly--I know that she is as amiable and honourable a woman, to say
nothing of her other good gifts, as any man could wish. But Manderson, for
some time past, had made her miserable.'
'What did he do?' asked Trent, as Mr. Cupples paused.
'When I put that question to Mabel, her words were that he seemed to nurse a
perpetual grievance. He maintained a distance between them, and he would say
nothing. I don't know how it began or what was behind it; and all she would
tell me on that point was that he had no cause in the world for his attitude.
I think she knew what was in his mind, whatever it was; but she is full of
pride. This seems to have gone on for months. At last, a week ago, she wrote
to me. I am the only near relative she has. Her mother died when she was a
child; and after John Peter died I was something like a father to her until
she married--that was five years ago. She asked me to come and help her, and I
came at once. That is why I am here now.'
Mr. Cupples paused and drank some tea. Trent smoked and stared out at the hot
June landscape.
'I would not go to White Gables,' Mr. Cupples resumed. 'You know my views, I
think, upon the economic constitution of society, and the proper relationship
of the capitalist to the employee, and you know, no doubt, what use that
person made of his vast industrial power upon several very notorious
occasions. I refer especially to the trouble in the Pennsylvania coal-fields,
three years ago. I regarded him, apart from an all personal dislike, in the
light of a criminal and a disgrace to society. I came to this hotel, and I saw
my niece here. She told me What I have more briefly told you. She said that
the worry and the humiliation of it, and the strain of trying to keep up
appearances before the world, were telling upon her, and she asked for my
advice. I said I thought she should face him and demand an explanation of his
way of treating her. But she would not do that. She had always taken the line
of affecting not to notice the change in his demeanour, and nothing, I knew,
would persuade her to admit to him that she was injured, once pride had led
her into that course. Life is quite full, my dear Trent,' said Mr. Cupples
with a sigh, 'of these obstinate silences and cultivated misunderstandings.'
'Did she love him?' Trent enquired abruptly. Mr. Cupples did not reply at
once. 'Had she any love left for him?' Trent amended.
Mr. Cupples played with his teaspoon. 'I am bound to say,' he answered slowly,
'that I think not. But you must not misunderstand the woman, Trent. No power
on earth would have persuaded her to admit that to any one--even to herself,
perhaps--so long as she considered herself bound to him. And I gather that,
apart from this mysterious sulking of late, he had always been considerate and
generous.'
'You were saying that she refused to have it out with him.'
'She did,' replied Mr. Cupples. 'And I knew by experience that it was quite
useless to attempt to move a Domecq where the sense of dignity was involved.
So I thought it over carefully, and next day I watched my opportunity and met
Manderson as he passed by this hotel. I asked him to favour me with a few
minutes' conversation, and he stepped inside the gate down there. We had held
no communication of any kind since my niece's marriage, but he remembered me,
of course. I put the matter to him at once and quite definitely. I told him
what Mabel had confided to me. I said that I would neither approve nor condemn
her action in bringing me into the business, but that she was suffering, and I
considered it my right to ask how he could justify himself in placing her in
such a position.'
'And how did he take that?' said Trent, smiling secretly at the landscape. The
picture of this mildest of men calling the formidable Manderson to account
pleased him.
'Not very well,' Mr. Cupples replied sadly. 'In fact, far from well. I can
tell you almost exactly what he said--it wasn't much. He said, "See here,
Cupples, you don't want to butt in. My wife can look after herself. I've found
that out, along with other things." He was perfectly quiet--you know he was
said never to lose control of himself--though there was a light in his eyes
that would have frightened a man who was in the wrong, I dare say. But I had
been thoroughly roused by his last remark, and the tone of it, which I cannot
reproduce. You see,' said Mr. Cupples simply, 'I love my niece. She is the
only child that there has been in our--in my house. Moreover, my wife brought
her up as a girl, and any reflection on Mabel I could not help feeling, in the
heat of the moment, as an indirect reflection upon one who is gone.'
'You turned upon him,' suggested Trent in a low tone. 'You asked him to
explain his words.'
'That is precisely what I did,' said Mr. Cupples. 'For a moment he only stared
at me, and I could see a vein on his forehead swelling--an unpleasant sight.
Then he said quite quietly, "This thing has gone far enough, I guess," and
turned to go.'
'Did he mean your interview?' Trent asked thoughtfully.
'From the words alone you would think so,' Mr. Cupples answered. 'But the way
in which he uttered them gave me a strange and very apprehensive feeling. I
received the impression that the man had formed some sinister resolve. But I
regret to say I had lost the power of dispassionate thought. I fell into a
great rage'--Mr. Cupples's tone was mildly apologetic--'and said a number of
foolish things. I reminded him that the law allowed a measure of freedom to
wives who received intolerable treatment. I made some utterly irrelevant
references to his public record, and expressed the view that such men as he
were unfit to live. I said these things, and others as ill-considered, under
the eyes, and very possibly within earshot, of half a dozen persons sitting on
this veranda. I noticed them, in spite of my agitation, looking at me as I
walked up to the hotel again after relieving my mind for it undoubtedly did
relieve it,' sighed Mr. Cupples, lying back in his chair.
'And Manderson? Did he say no more?'
'Not a word. He listened to me with his eyes on my face, as quiet as before.
When I stopped he smiled very slightly, and at once turned away and strolled
through the gate, making for White Gables.' 'And this happened--?' 'On the
Sunday morning.'
'Then I suppose you never saw him alive again?'
'No,' said Mr. Cupples. 'Or rather yes--once. It was later in the day, on the
golf-course. But I did not speak to him. And next morning he was found dead.'
The two regarded each other in silence for a few moments. A party of guests
who had been bathing came up the steps and seated themselves, with much
chattering, at a table near them. The waiter approached. Mr. Cupples rose,
and, taking Trent's arm, led him to a long tennis-lawn at the side of the
hotel.
'I have a reason for telling you all this,' began Mr. Cupples as they paced
slowly up and down.
'Trust you for that,' rejoined Trent, carefully filling his pipe again. He lit
it, smoked a little, and then said, 'I'll try and guess what your reason is,
if you like.'
Mr. Cupples's face of solemnity relaxed into a slight smile. He said nothing.
'You thought it possible,' said Trent meditatively--'may I say you thought it
practically certain?--that I should find out for myself that there had been
something deeper than a mere conjugal tiff between the Mandersons. You thought
that my unwholesome imagination would begin at once to play with the idea of
Mrs. Manderson having something to do with the crime. Rather than that I
should lose myself in barren speculations about this, you decided to tell me
exactly how matters stood, and incidentally to impress upon me, who know how
excellent your judgement is, your opinion of your niece. Is that about right?'
'It is perfectly right. Listen to me, my dear fellow,' said Mr. Cupples
earnestly, laying his hand on the other's arm. 'I am going to be very frank. I
am extremely glad that Manderson is dead. I believe him to have done nothing
but harm in the world as an economic factor. I know that he was making a
desert of the life of one who was like my own child to me. But I am under an
intolerable dread of Mabel being involved in suspicion with regard to the
murder. It is horrible to me to think of her delicacy and goodness being in
contact, if only for a time, with the brutalities of the law. She is not
fitted for it. It would mark her deeply. Many young women of twenty-six in
these days could face such an ordeal, I suppose. I have observed a sort of
imitative hardness about the products of the higher education of women today
which would carry them through anything, perhaps.
I am not prepared to say it is a bad thing in the conditions of feminine life
prevailing at present. Mabel, however, is not like that. She is as unlike that
as she is unlike the simpering misses that used to surround me as a child. She
has plenty of brains; she is full of character; her mind and her tastes are
cultivated; but it is all mixed up'-Mr. Cupples waved his hands in a vague
gesture--'with ideals of refinement and reservation and womanly mystery. I
fear she is not a child of the age. You never knew my wife, Trent. Mabel is my
wife's child.'
The younger man bowed his head. They paced the length of the lawn before he
asked gently, 'Why did she marry him?'
'I don't know,' said Mr. Cupples briefly.
'Admired him, I suppose,' suggested Trent.
Mr. Cupples shrugged his shoulders. 'I have been told that a woman will
usually be more or less attracted by the most successful man in her circle. Of
course we cannot realize how a wilful, dominating personality like his would
influence a girl whose affections were not bestowed elsewhere; especially if
he laid himself out to win her. It is probably an overwhelming thing to be
courted by a man whose name is known all over the world. She had heard of him,
of course, as a financial great power, and she had no idea--she had lived
mostly among people of artistic or literary propensities--how much soulless
inhumanity that might involve. For all I know, she has no adequate idea of it
to this day. When I first heard of the affair the mischief was done, and I
knew better than to interpose my unsought opinions. She was of age, and there
was absolutely nothing against him from the conventional point of view. Then I
dare say his immense wealth would cast a spell over almost any woman. Mabel
had some hundreds a year of her own; just enough, perhaps, to let her realize
what millions really meant. But all this is conjecture. She certainly had not
wanted to marry some scores of young fellows who to my knowledge had asked
her; and though I don't believe, and never did believe, that she really loved
this man of forty-five, she certainly did want to marry him. But if you ask me
why, I can only say I don't know.'
Trent nodded, and after a few more paces looked at his watch. 'You've
interested me so much,' he said, 'that I had quite forgotten my main business.
I mustn't waste my morning. I am going down the road to White Gables at once,
and I dare say I shall be poking about there until midday. If you can meet me
then, Cupples, I should like to talk over anything I find out with you, unless
something detains me.'
'I am going for a walk this morning,' Mr. Cupples replied. 'I meant to have
luncheon at a little inn near the golf-course, The Three Tuns. You had better
join me there. It's further along the road, about a quarter of a mile beyond
White Gables. You can just see the roof between those two trees. The food they
give one there is very plain, but good.'
'So long as they have a cask of beer,' said Trent, 'they are all right. We
will have bread and cheese, and oh, may Heaven our simple lives prevent from
luxury's contagion, weak and vile! Till then, goodbye.' He strode off to
recover his hat from the veranda, waved it to Mr. Cupples, and was gone.
The old gentleman, seating himself in a deck-chair on the lawn, clasped his
hands behind his head and gazed up into the speckless blue sky. 'He is a dear
fellow,' he murmured. 'The best of fellows. And a terribly acute fellow. Dear
me! How curious it all is!'
CHAPTER IV: Handcuffs in the Air
A painter and the son of a painter, Philip Trent had while yet in his twenties
achieved some reputation within the world of English art. Moreover, his
pictures sold. An original, forcible talent and a habit of leisurely but
continuous working, broken by fits of strong creative enthusiasm, were at the
bottom of it. His father's name had helped; a patrimony large enough to
relieve him of the perilous imputation of being a struggling man had certainly
not hindered. But his best aid to success had been an unconscious power of
getting himself liked. Good spirits and a lively, humorous fancy will always
be popular. Trent joined to these a genuine interest in others that gained him
something deeper than popularity. His judgement of persons was penetrating,
but its process was internal; no one felt on good behaviour with a man who
seemed always to be enjoying himself. Whether he was in a mood for floods of
nonsense or applying himself vigorously to a task, his face seldom lost its
expression of contained vivacity. Apart from a sound knowledge of his art and
its history, his culture was large and loose, dominated by a love of poetry.
At thirty-two he had not yet passed the age of laughter and adventure.
His rise to a celebrity a hundred times greater than his proper work had won
for him came of a momentary impulse. One day he had taken up a newspaper to
find it chiefly concerned with a crime of a sort curiously rare in our
country--a murder done in a railway train. The circumstances were puzzling;
two persons were under arrest upon suspicion. Trent, to whom an interest in
such affairs was a new sensation, heard the thing discussed among his friends,
and set himself in a purposeless mood to read up the accounts given in several
journals. He became intrigued; his imagination began to work, in a manner
strange to him, upon facts; an excitement took hold of him such as he had only
known before in his bursts of art-inspiration or of personal adventure. At the
end of the day he wrote and dispatched a long letter to the editor of the
Record, which he chose only because it had contained the fullest and most
intelligent version of the facts.
In this letter he did very much what Poe had done in the case of the murder of
Mary Rogers. With nothing but the newspapers to guide him, he drew attention
to the significance of certain apparently negligible facts, and ranged the
evidence in such a manner as to throw grave suspicion upon a man who had
presented himself as a witness. Sir James Molloy had printed this letter in
leaded type. The same evening he was able to announce in the Sun the arrest
and full confession of the incriminated man.
Sir James, who knew all the worlds of London, had lost no time in making
Trent's acquaintance. The two men got on well, for Trent possessed some secret
of native tact which had the effect of almost abolishing differences of age
between himself and others. The great rotary presses in the basement of the
Record building had filled him with a new enthusiasm. He had painted there,
and Sir James had bought at sight, what he called a machinery-scape in the
manner of Heinrich Kley.
Then a few months later came the affair known as the Ilkley mystery. Sir James
had invited Trent to an emollient dinner, and thereafter offered him what
seemed to the young man a fantastically large sum for his temporary services
as special representative of the Record at Ilkley.
'You could do it,' the editor had urged. 'You can write good stuff, and you
know how to talk to people, and I can teach you all the technicalities of a
reporter's job in half an hour. And you have a head for a mystery; you have
imagination and cool judgement along with it. Think how it would feel if you
pulled it off!'
Trent had admitted that it would be rather a lark. He had smoked, frowned, and
at last convinced himself that the only thing that held him back was fear of
an unfamiliar task. To react against fear had become a fixed moral habit with
him, and he had accepted Sir James's offer.
He had pulled it off. For the second time he had given the authorities a start
and a beating, and his name was on all tongues. He withdrew and painted
pictures. He felt no leaning towards journalism, and Sir James, who knew a
good deal about art, honourably refrained--as other editors did not--from
tempting him with a good salary. But in the course of a few years he had
applied to him perhaps thirty times for his services in the unravelling of
similar problems at home and abroad. Sometimes Trent, busy with work that held
him, had refused; sometimes he had been forestalled in the discovery of the
truth. But the result of his irregular connection with the Record had been to
make his name one of the best known in England. It was characteristic of him
that his name was almost the only detail of his personality known to the
public. He had imposed absolute silence about himself upon the Molloy papers;
and the others were not going to advertise one of Sir James's men.
The Manderson case, he told himself as he walked rapidly up the sloping road
to White Gables, might turn out to be terribly simple. Cupples was a wise old
boy, but it was probably impossible for him to have an impartial opinion about
his niece. But it was true that the manager of the hotel, who had spoken of
her beauty in terms that aroused his attention, had spoken even more
emphatically of her goodness. Not an artist in words, the manager had yet
conveyed a very definite idea to Trent's mind. 'There isn't a child about here
that don't brighten up at the sound of her voice,' he had said, 'nor yet a
grown-up, for the matter of that. Everybody used to look forward to her coming
over in the summer. I don't mean that she's one of those women that are all
kind heart and nothing else. There's backbone with it, if you know what I
mean--pluck any amount of go. There's nobody in Marlstone that isn't sorry for
the lady in her trouble--not but what some of us may think she's lucky at the
last of it.' Trent wanted very much to meet Mrs. Manderson.
He could see now, beyond a spacious lawn and shrubbery, the front of the two-
storied house of dull-red brick, with the pair of great gables from which it
had its name. He had had but a glimpse of it from the car that morning. A
modern house, he saw; perhaps ten years old. The place was beautifully kept,
with that air of opulent peace that clothes even the smallest houses of the
well-to-do in an English countryside. Before it, beyond the road, the rich
meadow-land ran down to the edge of the cliffs; behind it a woody landscape
stretched away across a broad vale to the moors. That such a place could be
the scene of a crime of violence seemed fantastic; it lay so quiet and well
ordered, so eloquent of disciplined service and gentle living. Yet there
beyond the house, and near the hedge that rose between the garden and the hot,
white road, stood the gardener's toolshed, by which the body had been found,
lying tumbled against the wooden wall, Trent walked past the gate of the drive
and along the road until he was opposite this shed. Some forty yards further
along the road turned sharply away from the house, to run between thick
plantations; and just before the turn the grounds of the house ended, with a
small white gate at the angle of the boundary hedge. He approached the gate,
which was plainly for the use of gardeners and the service of the
establishment. It swung easily on its hinges, and he passed slowly up a path
that led towards the back of the house, between the outer hedge and a tall
wall of rhododendrons. Through a gap in this wall a track led him to the
little neatly built erection of wood, which stood among trees that faced a
corner of the front. The body had lain on the side away from the house; a
servant, he thought, looking out of the nearer windows in the earlier hours of
the day before, might have glanced unseeing at the hut, as she wondered what
it could be like to be as rich as the master.
He examined the place carefully and ransacked the hut within, but he could
note no more than the trodden appearance of the uncut grass where the body had
lain. Crouching low, with keen eyes and feeling fingers, he searched the
ground minutely over a wide area; but the search was fruitless.
It was interrupted by the sound--the first he had heard from the house--of the
closing of the front door. Trent unbent his long legs and stepped to the edge
of the drive. A man was walking quickly away from the house in the direction
of the great gate.
At the noise of a footstep on the gravel, the man wheeled with nervous
swiftness and looked earnestly at Trent. The sudden sight of his face was
almost terrible, so white and worn it was. Yet it was a young man's face.
There was not a wrinkle about the haggard blue eyes, for all their tale of
strain and desperate fatigue. As the two approached each other, Trent noted
with admiration the man's breadth of shoulder and lithe, strong figure. In his
carriage, inelastic as weariness had made it; in his handsome, regular
features; in his short, smooth, yellow hair; and in his voice as he addressed
Trent, the influence of a special sort of training was confessed. 'Oxford was
your playground, I think, my young friend,' said Trent to himself.
'If you are Mr. Trent,' said the young man pleasantly, 'you are expected. Mr.
Cupples telephoned from the hotel. My name is Marlowe.'
'You were secretary to Mr. Manderson, I believe,' said Trent. He was much
inclined to like young Mr. Marlowe. Though he seemed so near a physical
breakdown, he gave out none the less that air of clean living and inward
health that is the peculiar glory of his social type at his years. But there
was something in the tired eyes that was a challenge to Trent's penetration;
an habitual expression, as he took it tobe, of meditating and weighing things
not present to their sight. It was a look too intelligent, too steady and
purposeful, to be called dreamy. Trent thought he had seen such a look before
somewhere. He went on to say: 'It is a terrible business for all of you. I
fear it has upset you completely, Mr. Marlowe.'
'A little limp, that's all,' replied the young man wearily. 'I was driving the
car all Sunday night and most of yesterday, and I didn't sleep last night
after hearing the news--who would? But I have an appointment now, Mr. Trent,
down at the doctor's--arranging about the inquest. I expect it'll be tomorrow.
If you will go up to the house and ask for Mr. Bunner, you'll find him
expecting you; he will tell you all about things and show you round. He's the
other secretary; an American, and the best of fellows; he'll look after you.
There's a detective here, by the way--Inspector Murch, from Scotland Yard. He
came yesterday.'
'Murch!' Trent exclaimed. 'But he and I are old friends. How under the sun did
he get here so soon?'
'I have no idea,' Mr. Marlowe answered. 'But he was here last evening, before
I got back from Southampton, interviewing everybody, and he's been about here
since eight this morning. He's in the library now--that's where the open
French window is that you see at the end of the house there. Perhaps you would
like to step down there and talk about things.'
'I think I will,' said Trent. Marlowe nodded and went on his way. The thick
turf of the lawn round which the drive took its circular sweep made Trent's
footsteps as noiseless as a cat's. In a few moments he was looking in through
the open leaves of the window at the southward end of the house, considering
with a smile a very broad back and a bent head covered with short grizzled
hair. The man within was stooping over a number of papers laid out on the
table.
' 'Twas ever thus,' said Trent in a melancholy tone, at the first sound of
which the man within turned round with startling swiftness. 'From childhood's
hour I've seen my fondest hopes decay. I did think I was ahead of Scotland
Yard this time, and now here is the hugest officer in the entire Metropolitan
force already occupying the position.'
The detective smiled grimly and came to the window. 'I was expecting you, Mr.
Trent,' he said. 'This is the sort of case that you like.'
'Since my tastes were being considered,' Trent replied, stepping into the
room, 'I wish they had followed up the idea by keeping my hated rival out of
the business. You have got a long start, too--I know all about it.' His eyes
began to wander round the room. 'How did you manage it? You are a quick mover,
I know; the dun deer's hide on fleeter foot was never tied; but I don't see
how you got here in time to be at work yesterday evening. Has Scotland Yard
secretly started an aviation corps? Or is it in league with the infernal
powers? In either case the Home Secretary should be called upon to make a
statement.'
'It's simpler than that,' said Mr. Murch with professional stolidity. 'I
happened to be on leave with the missus at Haley, which is only twelve miles
or so along the coast. As soon as our people there heard of the murder they
told me. I wired to the Chief, and was put in charge of the case at once. I
bicycled over yesterday evening, and have been at it since then.'
'Arising out of that reply,' said Trent inattentively, 'how is Mrs. Inspector
Murch?'
'Never better, thank you,' answered the inspector, 'and frequently speaks of
you and the games you used to have with our kids. But you'll excuse me saying,
Mr. Trent, that you needn't trouble to talk your nonsense to me while you're
using your eyes. I know your ways by now. I understand you've fallen on your
feet as usual, and have the lady's permission to go over the place and make
enquiries.'
'Such is the fact,' said Trent. 'I am going to cut you out again, inspector. I
owe you one for beating me over the Abinger case, you old fox. But if you
really mean that you're not inclined for the social amenities just now, let us
leave compliments and talk business.' He stepped to the table, glanced through
the papers arranged there in order, and then turned to the open roll-top desk.
He looked into the drawers swiftly. 'I see this has been cleared out. Well
now, inspector, I suppose we play the game as before.'
Trent had found himself on a number of occasions in the past thrown into the
company of Inspector Murch, who stood high in the councils of the Criminal
Investigation Department. He was a quiet, tactful, and very shrewd officer, a
man of great courage, with a vivid history in connection with the more
dangerous class of criminals. His humanity was as broad as his frame, which
was large even for a policeman. Trent and he, through some obscure working of
sympathy, had appreciated one another from the beginning, and had formed one
of those curious friendships with which it was the younger man's delight to
adorn his experience. The inspector would talk more freely to him than to any
one, under the rose, and they would discuss details and possibilities of every
case, to their mutual enlightenment. There were necessarily rules and limits.
It was understood between them that Trent made no journalistic use of any
point that could only have come to him from an official source. Each of them,
moreover, for the honour and prestige of the institution he represented,
openly reserved the right to withhold from the other any discovery or
inspiration that might come to him which he considered vital to the solution
of the difficulty. Trent had insisted on carefully formulating these
principles of what he called detective sportsmanship. Mr. Murch, who loved a
contest, and who only stood to gain by his association with the keen
intelligence of the other, entered very heartily into 'the game'. In these
strivings for the credit of the press and of the police, victory sometimes
attended the experience and method of the officer, sometimes the quicker brain
and livelier imagination of Trent, his gift of instinctively recognizing the
significant through all disguises.
The inspector then replied to Trent's last words with cordial agreement.
Leaning on either side of the French window, with the deep peace and hazy
splendor of the summer landscape before them, they reviewed the case.
Trent had taken out a thin notebook, and as they talked he began to make, with
light, secure touches, a rough sketch plan of the room. It was a thing he did
habitually on such occasions, and often quite idly, but now and then the habit
had served him to good purpose.
This was a large, light apartment at the corner of the house, with generous
window-space in two walls. A broad table stood in the middle. As one entered
by the window the roll-top desk stood just to the left of it against the wall.
The inner door was in the wall to the left, at the farther end of the room;
and was faced by a broad window divided into openings of the casement type. A
beautifully carved old corner-cupboard rose high against the wall beyond the
door, and another cupboard filled a recess beside the fireplace. Some coloured
prints of Harunobu, with which Trent promised himself a better acquaintance,
hung on what little wall-space was unoccupied by books. These had a very
uninspiring appearance of having been bought by the yard and never taken from
their shelves. Bound with a sober luxury, the great English novelists,
essayists, historians, and poets stood ranged like an army struck dead in its
ranks. There were a few chairs made, like the cupboard and table, of old
carved oak; a modern armchair and a swivel office-chair before the desk. The
room looked costly but very bare. Almost the only portable objects were a
great porcelain bowl of a wonderful blue on the table, a clock and some cigar
boxes on the mantelshelf, and a movable telephone standard on the top of the
desk.
'Seen the body?' enquired the inspector.
Trent nodded. 'And the place where it lay,' he said.
'First impressions of this case rather puzzle me,' said the inspector. 'From
what I heard at Halvey I guessed it might be common robbery and murder by some
tramp, though such a thing is very far from common in these parts. But as soon
as I began my enquiries I came on some curious points, which by this time I
dare say you've noted for yourself. The man is shot in his own grounds, quite
near the house, to begin with. Yet there's not the slightest trace of any
attempt at burglary. And the body wasn't robbed. In fact, it would be as plain
a ease of suicide as you could wish to see, if it wasn't for certain facts.
Here's another thing: for a month or so past, they tell me, Manderson had been
in a queer state of mind. I expect you know already that he and his wife had
some trouble between them. The servants had noticed a change in his manner to
her for a long time, and for the past week he had scarcely spoken to her. They
say he was a changed man, moody and silent--whether on account of that or
something else. The lady's maid says he looked as if something was going to
arrive. It's always easy to remember that people looked like that, after
something has happened to them. Still, that's what they say. There you are
again, then: suicide! Now, why wasn't it suicide, Mr. Trent?'
'The facts so far as I know them are really all against it,' Trent replied,
sitting on the threshold of the window and clasping his knees. 'First, of
course, no weapon is to be found. I've searched, and you've searched, and
there's no trace of any firearm anywhere within a stone's throw of where the
body lay. Second, the marks on the wrists, fresh scratches and bruises, which
we can only assume to have been done in a struggle with somebody. Third, who
ever heard of anybody shooting himself in the eye? Then I heard from the
manager of the hotel here another fact, which strikes me as the most curious
detail in this affair. Manderson had dressed himself fully before going out
there, but he forgot his false teeth. Now how could a suicide who dressed
himself to make a decent appearance as a corpse forget his teeth?'
'That last argument hadn't struck me,' admitted Mr. Murch. 'There's something
in it. But on the strength of the other points, which had occurred to me, I am
not considering suicide. I have been looking about for ideas in this house,
this morning. I expect you were thinking of doing the same.'
'That is so. It is a case for ideas, it seems to me. Come, Murch, let us make
an effort; let us bend our spirits to a temper of general suspicion. Let us
suspect everybody in the house, to begin with. Listen: I will tell you whom I
suspect. I suspect Mrs. Manderson, of course. I also suspect both the
secretaries--I hear there are two, and I hardly know which of them I regard as
more thoroughly open to suspicion. I suspect the butler and the lady's maid. I
suspect the other domestics, and especially do I suspect the boot-boy. By the
way, what domestics are there? I have more than enough suspicion to go round,
whatever the size of the establishment; but as a matter of curiosity I should
like to know.'
'All very well to laugh,' replied the inspector, 'but at the first stage of
affairs it's the only safe principle, and you know that as well as I do, Mr.
Trent. However, I've seen enough of the people here, last night and today, to
put a few of them out of my mind for the present at least. You will form your
own conclusions. As for the establishment, there's the butler and lady's maid,
cook, and three other maids, one a young girl. One chauffeur, who's away with
a broken wrist. No boy.'
'What about the gardener? You say nothing about that shadowy and sinister
figure, the gardener. You are keeping him in the background, Murch. Play the
game. Out with him--or I report you to the Rules Committee.'
'The garden is attended to by a man in the village, who comes twice a week.
I've talked to him. He was here last on Friday.'
'Then I suspect him all the more,' said Trent. 'And now as to the house
itself. What I propose to do, to begin with, is to sniff about a little in
this room, where I am told Manderson spent a great deal of his time, and in
his bedroom; especially the bedroom. But since we're in this room, let's start
here. You seem to be at the same stage of the inquiry. Perhaps you've done the
bedrooms already?'
The inspector nodded. 'I've been over Manderson's and his wife's. Nothing to
be got there, I think. His room is very simple and bare, no signs of any
sort--that I could see. Seems to have insisted on the simple life, does
Manderson. Never employed a valet. The room's almost like a cell, except for
the clothes and shoes. You'll find it all exactly as I found it; and they tell
me that's exactly as Manderson left it, at we don't know what o'clock
yesterday morning. Opens into Mrs. Manderson's bedroom--not much of the cell
about that, I can tell you. I should say the lady was as fond of pretty things
as most. But she cleared out of it on the morning of the discovery--told the
maid she could never sleep in a room opening into her murdered husband's room.
Very natural feeling in a woman, Mr. Trent. She's camping out, so to say, in
one of the spare bedrooms now.'
'Come, my friend,' Trent was saying to himself, as he made a few notes in his
little book. 'Have you got your eye on Mrs. Manderson? Or haven't you? I know
that colourless tone of the inspectorial voice. I wish I had seen her. Either
you've got something against her and you don't want me to get hold of it; or
else you've made up your mind she's innocent, but have no objection to my
wasting my time over her. Well, it's all in the game; which begins to look
extremely interesting as we go on.' To Mr. Murch he said aloud: 'Well, I'll
draw the bedroom later on. What about this?'
'They call it the library,' said the inspector. 'Manderson used to do his
writing and that in here; passed most of the time he spent indoors here. Since
he and his wife ceased to hit it off together, he had taken to spending his
evenings alone, and when at this house he always spent 'em in here. He was
last seen alive, as far as the servants are concerned, in this room.'
Trent rose and glanced again through the papers set out on the table.
'Business letters and documents, mostly,' said Mr. Murch. 'Reports,
prospectuses, and that. A few letters on private matters, noth-in4g in them
that I can see. The American secretary--Bunner his name is, and a queerer card
I never saw turned-- he's been through this desk with me this morning. He had
got it into his head that Manderson had been receiving threatening letters,
and that the murder was the outcome of that. But there's no trace of any such
thing; and we looked at every blessed paper. The only unusual things we found
were some packets of banknotes to a considerable amount, and a couple of
little bags of unset diamonds. I asked Mr. Bunner to put them in a safer
place. It appears that Manderson had begun buying diamonds lately as a
speculation--it was a new game to him, the secretary said, and it seemed to
amuse him.'
'What about these secretaries?' Trent enquired. 'I met one called Marlowe just
now outside; a nice-looking chap with singular eyes, unquestionably English.
The other, it seems, is an American. What did Manderson want with an English
secretary?'
'Mr. Marlowe explained to me how that was. The American was his right-hand
business man, one of his office staff, who never left him. Mr. Marlowe had
nothing to do with Manderson's business as a financier, knew nothing of it.
His job was to look after Manderson's horses and motors and yacht and sporting
arrangements and that--make himself generally useful, as you might say. He had
the spending of a lot of money, I should think. The other was confined
entirely to the office affairs, and I dare say he had his hands full. As for
his being English, it was just a fad of Manderson's to have an English
secretary. He'd had several before Mr. Marlowe.'
'He showed his taste,' observed Trent. 'It might be more than interesting,
don't you think, to be minister to the pleasures of a modern plutocrat with a
large P. Only they say that Manderson's were exclusively of an innocent kind.
Certainly Marlowe gives me the impression that he would be weak in the part of
Petronius. But to return to the matter in hand.' He looked at his notes. 'You
said just ' now that he was last seen alive here, "so far as the servants were
concerned". That meant--?'
'He had a conversation with his wife on going to bed. But for that, the
manservant, Martin by name, last saw him in this room. I had his story last
night, and very glad he was to tell it. An affair like this is meat and drink
to the servants of the house.'
Trent considered for some moments, gazing through the open window over the
sun- flooded slopes. 'Would it bore you to hear what he has to say again?' he
asked at length. For reply, Mr. Murch rang the bell. A spare, clean-shaven,
middle- aged man, having the servant's manner in its most distinguished form,
answered it.
'This is Mr. Trent, who is authorized by Mrs. Manderson to go over the house
and make enquiries,' explained the detective. 'He would like to hear your
story.' Martin bowed distantly. He recognized Trent for a gentleman. Time
would show whether he was what Martin called a gentleman in every sense of the
word.
'I observed you approaching the house, sir,' said Martin with impassive
courtesy. He spoke with a slow and measured utterance. 'My instructions are to
assist you in every possible way. Should you wish me to recall the
circumstances of Sunday night?'
'Please,' said Trent with ponderous gravity. Martin's style was making
clamorous appeal to his sense of comedy. He banished with an effort all
vivacity of expression from his face.
'I last saw Mr. Manderson--'
'No, not that yet,' Trent checked him quietly. 'Tell me all you saw of him
that evening--after dinner, say. Try to recollect every little detail.'
'After dinner, sir?--yes. I remember that after dinner Mr. Manderson and Mr.
Marlowe walked up and down the path through the orchard, talking. If you ask
me for details, it struck me they were talking about something important,
because I heard Mr. Manderson say something when they came in through the back
entrance. He said, as near as I can remember, "If Harris is there, every
minute is of importance. You want to start right away. And not a word to a
soul." Mr. Marlowe answered, "Very well. I will just change out of these
clothes and then I am ready"--or words to that effect. I heard this plainly as
they passed the window of my pantry. Then Mr. Marlowe went up to his bedroom,
and Mr. Manderson entered the library and rang for me. He handed me some
letters for the postman in the morning and directed me to sit up, as Mr.
Marlowe had persuaded him to go for a drive in the car by moonlight.'
'That was curious,' remarked Trent.
'I thought so, sir. But I recollected what I had heard about "not a word to a
soul", and I concluded that this about a moonlight drive was intended to
mislead.'
'What time was this?'
'It would be about ten, sir, I should say. After speaking to me, Mr. Manderson
waited until Mr. Marlowe had come down and brought round the car. He then went
into the drawing-room, where Mrs. Manderson was.'
'Did that strike you as curious?'
Martin looked down his nose. 'If you ask me the question, sir,' he said with
reserve, 'I had not known him enter that room since we came here this year. He
preferred to sit in the library in the evenings. That evening he only remained
with Mrs. Manderson for a few minutes. Then he and Mr. Marlowe started
immediately.'
'You saw them start?'
'Yes, sir. They took the direction of Bishopsbridge.'
'And you saw Mr. Manderson again later?'
'After an hour or thereabouts, sir, in the library. That would have been about
a quarter past eleven, I should say; I had noticed eleven striking from the
church. I may say I am peculiarly quick of hearing, sir.'
'Mr. Manderson had rung the bell for you, I suppose. Yes? And what passed when
you answered it?'
'Mr. Manderson had put out the decanter of whisky and a syphon and glass, sir,
from the cupboard where he kept them--'
Trent held up his hand. 'While we are on that point, Martin, I want to ask you
plainly, did Mr. Manderson drink very much? You understand this is not
impertinent curiosity on my part. I want you to tell me, because it may
possibly help in the clearing up of this case.'
'Perfectly, sir,' replied Martin gravely. 'I have no hesitation in telling you
what I have already told the inspector. Mr. Manderson was, considering his
position in life, a remarkably abstemious man. In my four years of service
with him I never knew anything of an alcoholic nature pass his lips, except a
glass or two of wine at dinner, very rarely a little at luncheon, and from
time to time a whisky and soda before going to bed. He never seemed to form a
habit of it. Often I used to find his glass in the morning with only a little
soda water in it; sometimes he would have been having whisky with it, but
never much. He never was particular about his drinks; ordinary soda was what
he preferred, though I had ventured to suggest some of the natural minerals,
having personally acquired a taste for them in my previous service. He used to
keep them in the cupboard here, because he had a great dislike of being waited
on more than was necessary. It was an understood thing that I never came near
him after dinner unless sent for. And when he sent for anything, he liked it
brought quick, and to be left alone again at once. He hated to be asked if he
required anything more. Amazingly simple in his tastes, sir, Mr. Manderson
was.'
'Very well; and he rang for you that night about a quarter past eleven. Now
can you remember exactly what he said?'
I think I can tell you with some approach to accuracy, sir. It was not much.
Zzz First he asked me if Mr. Bunner had gone to bed, and I replied that he had
been gone up some time. He then said that he wanted some one to sit up until
12.30, in case an important message should come by telephone, and that Mr.
Marlowe having gone to Southampton for him in the motor, he wished me to do
this, and that
I was to take down the message if it came, and not disturb him. He also
ordered a fresh syphon of soda water. I believe that was all, sir.'
'You noticed nothing unusual about him, I suppose?'
'No, sir, nothing unusual. When I answered the ring, he was seated at the desk
listening at the telephone, waiting for a number, as I supposed. He gave his
orders and went on listening at the same time. 'When I returned with the
syphon he was engaged in conversation over the wire.'
'Do you remember anything of what he was saying?'
'Very little, sir; it was something about somebody being at some hotel--of no
interest to me. I was only in the room just time enough to place the syphon on
the table and withdraw. As I closed the door he was saying, "You're sure he
isn't in the hotel?" or words to that effect.'
'And that was the last you saw and heard of him alive?'
'No, sir. A little later, at half-past eleven, when I had settled down in my
pantry with the door ajar, and a book to pass the time, I heard Mr. Manderson
go upstairs to bed. I immediately went to close the library window, and
slipped the lock of the front door. I did not hear anything more.'
Trent considered. 'I suppose you didn't doze at all,' he said tentatively,
'while you were sitting up waiting for the telephone message?'
'Oh no, sir. I am always very wakeful about that time. I'm a bad sleeper,
especially in the neighbourhood of the sea, and I generally read in bed until
somewhere about midnight.'
'And did any message come?'
'No, sir.'
'No. And I suppose you sleep with your window open, these warm nights?'
'It is never closed at night, sir.'
Trent added a last note; then he looked thoughtfully through those he had
taken. He rose and paced up and down the room for some moments with a downcast
eye. At length he paused opposite Martin.
'It all seems perfectly ordinary and simple,' he said. 'I just want to get a
few details clear. You went to shut the windows in the library before going to
bed. Which windows?'
'The French window, sir. It had been open all day. The windows opposite the
door were seldom opened.'
'And what about the curtains? I am wondering whether any one outside the house
could have seen into the room.'
'Easily, sir, I should say, if he had got into the grounds on that side. The
curtains were never drawn in the hot weather. Mr. Manderson would often sit
right in the doorway at nights, smoking and looking out into the darkness. But
nobody could have seen him who had any business to be there.'
'I see. And now tell me this. Your hearing is very acute, you say, and you
heard Mr. Manderson enter the house when he came in after dinner from the
garden. Did you hear him re-enter it after returning from the motor drive?'
Martin paused. 'Now you mention it, sir, I remember that I did not. His
ringing the bell in this room was the first I knew of his being back. I should
have heard him come in, if he had come in by the front. I should have heard
the door go. But he must have come in by the window.' The man reflected for a
moment, then added, 'As a general rule, Mr. Manderson would come in by the
front, hang up his hat and coat in the hall, and pass down the hall into the
study. It seems likely to me that he was in a great hurry to use the
telephone, and so went straight across the lawn to the window he was like
that, sir, when there was anything important to be done. He had his hat on,
now I remember, and had thrown his greatcoat over the end of the table. He
gave his order very sharp, too, as he always did when busy. A very precipitate
man indeed was Mr. Manderson; a hustler, as they say.'
'Ah! he appeared to be busy. But didn't you say just now that you noticed
nothing unusual about him?'
A melancholy smile flitted momentarily over Martin's face. 'That observation
shows that you did not know Mr. Manderson, sir, if you will pardon my saying
so. His being like that was nothing unusual; quite the contrary. It took me
long enough to get used to it. Either he would be sitting quite still and
smoking a cigar, thinking or reading, or else he would be writing, dictating,
and sending off wires all at the same time, till it almost made one dizzy to
see it, sometimes for an hour or more at a stretch. As for being in a hurry
over a telephone message, I may say it wasn't in him to be anything else.'
Trent turned to the inspector, who met his eye with a look of answering
intelligence. Not sorry to show his understanding of the line of inquiry
opened by Trent, Mr. Murch for the first time put a question.
'Then you left him telephoning by the open window, with the lights on, and the
drinks on the table; is that it?' 'That is so, Mr. Murch.' The delicacy of
the change in Martin's manner when called upon to answer the detective
momentarily distracted Trent's appreciative mind. But the big man's next
question brought it back to the problem at once.
'About those drinks. You say Mr. Manderson often took no whisky before going
to bed. Did he have any that night?'
'I could not say. The room was put to rights in the morning by one of the
maids, and the glass washed, I presume, as usual. I know that the decanter was
nearly full that evening. I had refilled it a few days before, and I glanced
at it when I brought the fresh syphon, just out of habit, to make sure there
was a decent- looking amount.'
The inspector went to the tall corner-cupboard and opened it. He took out a
decanter of cut glass and set it on the table before Martin. 'Was it fuller
than that?' he asked quietly. 'That's how I found it this morning.' The
decanter was more than half empty.
For the first time Martin's self-possession wavered. He took up the decanter
quickly, tilted it before his eyes, and then stared amazedly at the others. He
said slowly: 'There's not much short of half a bottle gone out of this since I
last set eyes on it--and that was that Sunday night.'
'Nobody in the house, I suppose?' suggested Trent discreetly. 'Out of the
question!' replied Martin briefly; then he added, 'I beg pardon, sir, but this
is a most extraordinary thing to me. Such a thing never happened in all my
experience of Mr. Manderson. As for the women-servants, they never touch
anything, I can answer for it; and as for me, when I want a drink I can help
myself without going to the decanters.' He took up the decanter again and
aimlessly renewed his observation of the contents, while the inspector eyed
him with a look of serene satisfaction, as a master contemplates his
handiwork.
Trent turned to a fresh page of his notebook, and tapped it thoughtfully with
his pencil. Then he looked up and said, 'I suppose Mr. Manderson had dressed
for dinner that night?'
'Certainly, sir. He had on a suit with a dress-jacket, what he used to refer
to as a Tuxedo, which he usually wore when dining at home.'
'And he was dressed like that when you saw him last?'
'All but the jacket, sir. When he spent the evening in the library, as usually
happened, he would change it for an old shooting-jacket after dinner, a light-
coloured tweed, a little too loud in pattern for English tastes, perhaps. He
had it on when I saw him last. It used to hang in this cupboard here'--Martin
opened the door of it as he spoke--along with Mr. Manderson's fishing-rods and
such things, so that he could slip it on after dinner without going upstairs.'
'Leaving the dinner-jacket in the cupboard?'
'Yes, sir. The housemaid used to take it upstairs in the morning.'
'In the morning,' Trent repeated slowly. 'And now that we are speaking of the
morning, will you tell me exactly what you know about that? I understand that
Mr. Manderson was not missed until the body was found about ten o'clock.'
'That is so, sir. Mr. Manderson would never be called, or have anything
brought to him in the morning. He occupied a separate bedroom. Usually he
would get up about eight and go round to the bathroom, and he would come down
some time before nine. But often he would sleep till nine or ten o'clock. Mrs.
Manderson was always called at seven. The maid would take in tea to her.
Yesterday morning Mrs. Manderson took breakfast about eight in her
sitting-room as usual, and every one supposed that Mr. Manderson was still in
bed and asleep, when Evans came rushing up to the house with the shocking
intelligence.'
'I see,' said Trent. 'And now another thing. You say you slipped the lock of
the front door before going to bed. Was that all the locking-up you did?'
'To the front door, sir, yes; I slipped the lock. No more is considered
necessary in these parts. But I had locked both the doors at the back, and
seen to the fastenings of all the windows on the ground floor. In the morning
everything was as I had left it.'
'As you had left it. Now here is another point--the last, I think. Were the
clothes in which the body was found the clothes that Mr. Manderson would
naturally have worn that day?'
Martin rubbed his chin. 'You remind me how surprised I was when I first set
eyes on the body, sir. At first I couldn't make out what was unusual about the
clothes, and then I saw what it was. The collar was a shape of collar Mr.
Manderson never wore except with evening dress. Then I found that he had put
on all the same things that he had worn the night before--large fronted shirt
and all--except just the coat and waistcoat and trousers, and the brown shoes,
and blue tie. As for the suit, it was one of half a dozen he might have worn.
But for him to have simply put on all the rest just because they were there,
instead of getting out the kind of shirt and things he always wore by day;
well, sir, it was unprecedented. It shows, like some other things, what a
hurry he must have been in when getting up.'
'Of course,' said Trent. 'Well, I think that's all I wanted to know. You have
put everything with admirable clearness, Martin. If we want to ask any more
questions later on, I suppose you will be somewhere about.'
'I shall be at your disposal, sir.' Martin bowed, and went out quietly.
Trent flung himself into the armchair and exhaled a long breath. 'Martin is a
great creature,' he said. 'He is far, far better than a play. There is none
like him, none, nor will be when our summers have deceased. Straight, too; not
an atom of harm in dear old Martin. Do you know, Murch, you are wrong in
suspecting that man.'
'I never said a word about suspecting him.' The inspector was taken aback.
'You know, Mr. Trent, he would never have told his story like that if he
thought I suspected him.'
'I dare say he doesn't think so. He is a wonderful creature, a great artist;
but, in spite of that, he is not at all a sensitive type. It has never
occurred to his mind that you, Murch, could suspect him, Martin, the complete,
the accomplished. But I know it. You must understand, inspector, that I have
made a special study of the psychology of officers of the law. It is a grossly
neglected branch of knowledge. They are far more interesting than criminals,
and not nearly so easy. All the time I was questioning him I saw handcuffs in
your eye. Your lips were mutely framing the syllables of those tremendous
words: "It is my duty to tell you that anything you now say will be taken down
and used in evidence against you." Your manner would have deceived most men,
but it could not deceive me.'
Mr. Murch laughed heartily. Trent's nonsense never made any sort of impression
on his mind, but he took it as a mark of esteem, which indeed it was; so it
never failed to please him. 'Well, Mr. Trent,' he said, 'you're perfectly
right. There's no point in denying it, I have got my eye on him. Not that
there's anything definite; but you know as well as I do how often servants are
mixed up in affairs of this kind, and this man is such a very quiet customer.
You remember the case of Lord William Russell's valet, who went in as usual,
in the morning, to draw up the blinds in his master's bedroom, as quiet and
starchy as you please, a few hours after he had murdered him in his bed. I've
talked to all the women of the house, and I don't believe there's a morsel of
harm in one of them. But Martin's not so easy set aside. I don't like his
manner; I believe he's hiding something. If so, I shall find it out.'
'Cease!' said Trent. 'Drain not to its dregs the urn of bitter prophecy. Let
us get back to facts. Have you, as a matter of evidence, anything at all to
bring against Martin's story as he has told it to us?'
'Nothing whatever at present. As for his suggestion that Manderson came in by
way of the window after leaving Marlowe and the car, that's right enough, I
should say. I questioned the servant who swept the room next morning, and she
tells me there were gravelly marks near the window, on this plain drugget that
goes round the carpet. And there's a footprint in this soft new gravel just
outside.' The inspector took a folding rule from his pocket and with it
pointed out the traces. 'One of the patent shoes Manderson was wearing that
night exactly fits that print; you'll find them,' he added, 'on the top shelf
in the bedroom, near the window end, the only patents in the row. The girl who
polished them in the morning picked them out for me.'
Trent bent down and studied the faint marks keenly. 'Good!' he said. 'You have
covered a lot of ground, Murch, I must say. That was excellent about the
whisky; you made your point finely. I felt inclined to shout "Encore!" It's a
thing that I shall have to think over.'
'I thought you might have fitted it in already,' said Mr. Murch. 'Come, Mr.
Trent, we're only at the beginning of our enquiries, but what do you say to
this for a preliminary theory? There's a plan of burglary, say a couple of men
in it and Martin squared. They know where the plate is, and all about the
handy little bits of stuff in the drawing-room and elsewhere. They watch the
house; see Manderson off to bed; Martin comes to shut the window, and leaves
it ajar, accidentally on purpose. They wait till Martin goes to bed at
twelve-thirty; then they just walk into the library, and begin to sample the
whisky first thing. Now suppose Manderson isn't asleep, and suppose they make
a noise opening the window, or however it might be. He hears it; thinks of
burglars; gets up very quietly to see if anything's wrong; creeps down on
them, perhaps, just as they're getting ready for work. They cut and run; he
chases them down to the shed, and collars one; there's a fight; one of them
loses his temper and his head, and makes a swinging job of it. Now, Mr. Trent,
pick that to pieces.'
'Very well,' said Trent; 'just to oblige you, Murch, especially as I know you
don't believe a word of it. First: no traces of any kind left by your burglar
or burglars, and the window found fastened in the morning, according to
Martin. Not much force in that, I allow. Next: nobody in the house hears
anything of this stampede through the library, nor hears any shout from
Manderson either inside the house or outside. Next: Manderson goes down
without a word to anybody, though Bunner and Martin are both at hand. Next:
did you ever hear, in your long experience, of a householder getting up in the
night to pounce on burglars, who dressed himself fully, with underclothing,
shirt; collar and tie, trousers, waistcoat and coat, socks and hard leather
shoes; and who gave the finishing touches to a somewhat dandified toilet by
doing his hair, and putting on his watch and chain? Personally, I call that
over-dressing the part. The only decorative detail he seems to have forgotten
is his teeth.'
The inspector leaned forward thinking, his large hands clasped before him.
'No,' he said at last. 'Of course there's no help in that theory. I rather
expect we have some way to go before we find out why a man gets up before the
servants are awake, dresses himself awry, and is murdered within sight of his
house early enough to be 'cold and stiff by ten in the morning.'
Trent shook his head. 'We can't build anything on that last consideration.
I've gone into the subject with people who know. I shouldn't wonder,' he
added, 'if the traditional notions about loss of temperature and rigour after
death had occasionally brought an innocent man to the gallows, or near it. Dr.
Stock has them all, I feel sure; most general practitioners of the older
generation have. That Dr. Stock will make an ass of himself at the inquest, is
almost as certain as that tomorrow's sun will rise. I've seen him. He will say
the body must have been dead about so long, because of the degree of coldness
and rigor mortis. I can see him nosing it all out in some textbook that was
out of date when he was a student. Listen, Murch, and I will tell you some
facts which will be a great hindrance to you in your professional career.
There are many things that may hasten or retard the cooling of the body. This
one was lying in the long dewy grass on the shady side of the shed. As for
rigidity, if Manderson died in a struggle, or labouring under sudden emotion,
his corpse might stiffen practically instantaneously; there are dozens of
cases noted, particularly in cases of injury to the skull, like this one. On
the other hand, the stiffening might not have begun until eight or ten hours
after death. You can't hang anybody on rigor mortis nowadays, inspector, much
as you may resent the limitation. No, what we can say is this. If he had been
shot after the hour at which the world begins to get up and go about its
business, it would have been heard, and very likely seen too. In fact, we must
reason, to begin with, at any rate, on the assumption that he wasn't shot at a
time when people might be awake; it isn't done in these parts. Put that time
at 6.30 a.m. Manderson went up to bed at 11 p.m., and Martin sat up till
12.30. Assuming that he went to sleep at once on turning in, that leaves us
something like six hours for the crime to be committed in; and that is a long
time. But whenever it took place, I wish you would suggest a reason why
Manderson, who was a fairly late riser, was up and dressed at or before 6.30;
and why neither Martin, who sleeps lightly, nor Bunner, nor his wife heard him
moving about, or letting himself out of the house. He must have been careful.
He must have crept about like a cat. Do you feel as I do, Murch, about all
this; that it is very, very strange and baffling?' 'That's how it looks,'
agreed the inspector.
'And now,' said Trent, rising to his feet, 'I'll leave you to your
meditations, and take a look at the bedrooms. Perhaps the explanation of all
this will suddenly burst upon you while I am poking about up there. But,'
concluded Trent in a voice of sudden exasperation, turning round in the
doorway, 'if you can tell me at any time, how under the sun a man who put on
all those clothes could forget to put in his teeth, you may kick me from here
to the nearest lunatic asylum, and hand me over as an incipient dement.'
CHAPTER V: Poking About
There are moments in life, as one might think, when that which is within us,
busy about its secret affair, lets escape into consciousness some hint of a
fortunate thing ordained. Who does not know what it is to feel at times a wave
of unaccountable persuasion that it is about to go well with him?--not the
feverish confidence of men in danger of a blow from fate, not the persistent
illusion of the optimist, but an unsought conviction, springing up like a bird
from the heather, that success is at hand in some great or fine thing. The
general suddenly knows at dawn that the day will bring him victory; the man on
the green suddenly knows that he will put down the long putt. As Trent mounted
the stairway outside the library door he seemed to rise into certainty of
achievement. A host of guesses and inferences swarmed apparently unsorted
through his mind; a few secret observations that he had made, and which he
felt must have significance, still stood unrelated to any plausible theory of
the crime; yet as he went up he seemed to know indubitably that light was
going to appear.
The bedrooms lay on either side of a broad carpeted passage, lighted by a tall
end window. It went the length of the house until it ran at right angles into
a narrower passage, out of which the servants' rooms opened. Martin's room was
the exception: it opened out of a small landing half-way to the upper floor.
As Trent passed it he glanced within. A little square room, clean and
commonplace. In going up the rest of the stairway he stepped with elaborate
precaution against noise, hugging the wall closely and placing each foot with
care; but a series of very audible creaks marked his passage.
He knew that Manderson's room was the first on the right hand when the bedroom
floor was reached, and he went to it at once. He tried the latch and the lock,
which worked normally, and examined the wards of the key. Then he turned to
the room.
It was a small apartment, strangely bare. The plutocrat's toilet appointments
were of the simplest. All remained just as it had been on the morning of the
ghastly discovery in the grounds. The sheets and blankets of the unmade bed
lay tumbled over a narrow wooden bedstead, and the sun shone brightly through
the window upon them. It gleamed, too, upon the gold parts of the delicate
work of dentistry that lay in water in a shallow bowl of glass placed on a
small, plain table by the bedside. On this also stood a wrought-iron
candlestick. Some clothing lay untidily over one of the two rush-bottomed
chairs. Various objects on the top of a chest of drawers, which had been used
as a dressing-table, lay in such disorder as a hurried man might make. Trent
looked them over with a questing eye. He noted also that the occupant of the
room had neither washed nor shaved. With his finger he turned over the dental
plate in the bowl, and frowned again at its incomprehensible presence.
The emptiness and disarray of the little room, flooded by the sunbeams, were
producing in Trent a sense of gruesomeness. His fancy called up a picture of a
haggard man dressing himself in careful silence by the first light of dawn,
glancing constantly at the inner door behind which his wife slept, his eyes
full of some terror.
Trent shivered, and to fix his mind again on actualities, opened two tall
cupboards in the wall on either side of the bed. They contained clothing, a
large choice of which had evidently been one of the very few conditions of
comfort for the man who had slept there.
In the matter of shoes, also, Manderson had allowed himself the advantage of
wealth. An extraordinary number of these, treed and carefully kept, was ranged
on two long low shelves against the wall. No boots were among them. Trent,
himself an amateur of good shoe-leather, now turned to these, and glanced over
the collection with an appreciative eye. It was to be seen that Manderson had
been inclined to pride himself on a rather small and well-formed foot. The
shoes were of a distinctive shape, narrow and round-toed, beautifully made;
all were evidently from the same last.
Suddenly his eyes narrowed themselves over a pair of patent-leather shoes on
the upper shelf.
These were the shoes of which the inspector had already described the position
to him; the shoes worn by Manderson the night before his death. They were a
well-worn pair, he saw at once; he saw, too, that they had been very recently
polished. Something about the uppers of these shoes had seized his attention.
He bent lower and frowned over them, comparing what he saw with the appearance
of the neighbouring shoes. Then he took them up and examined the line of
junction of the uppers with the soles.
As he did this, Trent began unconsciously to whistle faintly, and with great
precision, an air which Inspector Murch, if he had been present, would have
recognized.
Most men who have the habit of self-control have also some involuntary trick
which tells those who know them that they are suppressing excitement. The
inspector had noted that when Trent had picked up a strong scent he whistled
faintly a certain melodious passage; though the inspector could not have told
you that it was in fact the opening movement of Mendelssohn's Lied ohne Worter
in A Major.
He turned the shoes over, made some measurements with a marked tape, and
looked minutely at the bottoms. On each, in the angle between the heel and the
instep, he detected a faint trace of red gravel.
Trent placed the shoes on the floor, and walked with his hands behind him to
the window, out of which, still faintly whistling, he gazed with eyes that saw
nothing. Once his lips opened to emit mechanically the Englishman's expletive
of sudden enlightenment. At length he turned to the shelves again, and swiftly
but carefully examined every one of the shoes there.
This done, he took up the garments from the chair, looked them over closely
and replaced them. He turned to the wardrobe cupboards again, and hunted
through them carefully. The litter on the dressing-table now engaged his
attention for the second time. Then he sat down on the empty chair, took his
head in his hands, and remained in that attitude, staring at the carpet, for
some minutes. He rose at last and opened the inner door leading to Mrs
Manderson's room.
It was evident at a glance that the big room had been hurriedly put down from
its place as the lady's bower. All the array of objects that belong to a
woman's dressing-table had been removed; on bed and chairs and smaller tables
there were no garments or hats, bags or boxes; no trace remained of the
obstinate conspiracy of gloves and veils, handkerchiefs and ribbons, to break
the captivity of the drawer. The room was like an unoccupied guest-chamber.
Yet in every detail of furniture and decoration it spoke of an unconventional
but exacting taste. Trent, as his expert eye noted the various perfection of
colour and form amid which the ill-mated lady dreamed her dreams and thought
her loneliest thoughts, knew that she had at least the resources of an
artistic nature. His interest in this unknown personality grew stronger; and
his brows came down heavily as he thought of the burdens laid upon it, and of
the deed of which the history was now shaping itself with more and more of
substance before his busy mind.
He went first to the tall French window in the middle of the wall that faced
the door, and opening it, stepped out upon a small balcony with an iron
railing. He looked down on a broad stretch of lawn that began immediately
beneath him, separated from the house-wall only by a narrow flower-bed, and
stretched away, with an abrupt dip at the farther end, toward the orchard. The
other window opened with a sash above the garden-entrance of the library. In
the farther inside corner of the room was a second door giving upon the
passage; the door by which the maid was wont to come in, and her mistress to
go out, in the morning.
Trent, seated on the bed, quickly sketched in his notebook a plan of the room
and its neighbour. The bed stood in the angle between the communicating-door
and the sash-window, its head against the wall dividing the room from
Manderson's. Trent stared at the pillows; then he lay down with deliberation
on the bed and looked through the open door into the adjoining room.
This observation taken, he rose again and proceeded to note on his plan that
on either side of the bed was a small table with a cover. Upon that furthest
from the door was a graceful electric-lamp standard of copper connected by a
free wire with the wall. Trent looked at it thoughtfully, then at the switches
connected with the other lights in the room. They were, as usual, on the wall
just within the door, and some way out of his reach as he sat on the bed. He
rose, and satisfied himself that the lights were all in order. Then he turned
on his heel, walked quickly into Manderson's room, and rang the bell.
'I want your help again, Martin,' he said, as the butler presented himself,
upright and impassive, in the doorway. 'I want you to prevail upon Mrs
Manderson's maid to grant me an interview.'
'Certainly, sir,' said Martin.
'What sort of a woman is she? Has she her wits about her?'
'She's French, sir,' replied Martin succinctly; adding after a pause: 'She has
not been with us long, sir, but I have formed the impression that the young
woman knows as much of the world as is good for her--since you ask me.'
'You think butter might possibly melt in her mouth, do you?' said Trent.
'Well, I am not afraid. I want to put some questions to her.'
'I will send her up immediately, sir.' The butler withdrew, and Trent wandered
round the little room with his hands at his back. Sooner than he had expected,
a small neat figure in black appeared quietly before him.
The lady's maid, with her large brown eyes, had taken favourable notice of
Trent from a window when he had crossed the lawn, and had been hoping
desperately that the resolver of mysteries (whose reputation was as great
below-stairs as elsewhere) would send for her. For one thing, she felt the
need to make a scene; her nerves were overwrought. But her scenes were at a
discount with the other domestics, and as for Mr Murch, he had chilled her
into self-control with his official manner. Trent, her glimpse of him had told
her, had not the air of a policeman, and at a distance he had appeared
sympathique.
As she entered the room, however, instinct decided for her that any approach
to coquetry would be a mistake, if she sought to make a good impression at the
beginning. It was with an air of amiable candour, then, that she said,
'Monsieur desire to speak with me.' She added helpfully, 'I am called
Celestine.'
'Naturally,' said Trent with businesslike calm. 'Now what I want you to tell
me, Celestine, is this. When you took tea to your mistress yesterday morning
at seven o'clock, was the door between the two bedrooms--this door
here--open?'
Celestine became intensely animated in an instant. 'Oh yes!' she said, using
her favourite English idiom. 'The door was open as always, monsieur, and I
shut it as always. But it is necessary to explain. Listen! When I enter the
room of madame from the other door in there--ah! but if monsieur will give
himself the pain to enter the other room, all explains itself.' She tripped
across to the door, and urged Trent before her into the larger bedroom with a
hand on his arm. 'See! I enter the room with the tea like this. I approach the
bed. Before I come quite near the bed, here is the door to my right hand--open
always--so! But monsieur can perceive that I see nothing in the room of
Monsieur Manderson. The door opens to the bed, not to me who approach from
down there. I shut it without seeing in. It is the order. Yesterday it was as
ordinary. I see nothing of the next room. Madame sleep like an angel--she see
nothing. I shut the door. I place the plateau--I open the curtains--I prepare
the toilette--I retire--voila!' Celestine paused for breath and spread her
hands abroad.
Trent, who had followed her movements and gesticulations with deepening
gravity, nodded his head. 'I see exactly how it was now,' he said. 'Thank you,
Celestine. So Mr Manderson was supposed to be still in his room while your
mistress was getting up, and dressing, and having breakfast in her boudoir?'
'Oui, monsieur.'
'Nobody missed him, in fact,' remarked Trent. 'Well, Celestine, I am very much
obliged to you.' He reopened the door to the outer bedroom.
'It is nothing, monsieur,' said Celestine, as she crossed the small room. 'I
hope that monsieur will catch the assassin of Monsieur Manderson. But I not
regret him too much,' she added with sudden and amazing violence, turning
round with her hand on the knob of the outer door. She set her teeth with an
audible sound, and the colour rose in her small dark face. English departed
from her. 'Je ne le regrette pas du tout, du tout!' she cried with a flood of
words. 'Madame--ah! je me jetterais au leu pour madame--une femme si
charmante, si adorable! Mais un homme comme monsieur--maussade, boudeur,
impassible! Ah, non!- -de ma vie! J'en avais par-dessus la tete, de monsieur!
Ah! vrai! Est-ce insupportable, tout de meme, qu'il existe des types comme ca?
Je vous jure que-- '
'Finissez ce chahut, Celestine!' Trent broke in sharply. Celestine's tirade
had brought back the memory of his student days with a rush. 'En voila une
scene! C'est rasant, vous savez. Faut rentret ca, mademoiselle. Du reste,
c'est bien imprudent, croyez-moi. Hang it! Have some common sense! If the
inspector downstairs heard you saying that kind of thing, you would get into
trouble. And don't wave your fists about so much; you might hit something. You
seem,' he went on more pleasantly, as Celestine grew calmer under his
authoritative eye, 'to be even more glad than other people that Mr Manderson
is out of the way. I could almost suspect, Celestine, that Mr Manderson did
not take as much notice of you as you thought necessary and right.'
'A peine s'il m'avait regarde!' Celestine answered simply.
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