THE RING AND THE PIPE
The barrister possessed himself of the tobacco pipe, examined it, and
passed it up to the Coroner, who in his turn looked it over before
handing it to Mr. Fransemmery and his fellow jurymen. It went the
round of the twelve and returned to the barrister, who held it up for
Grimsdale to look at once more.
“You found this—which is a briar-wood tobacco pipe, of superior
manufacture, silver-mounted—on the supper-table in your parlour
after the three men had gone, Grimsdale?” he asked. “Did you come to
the conclusion that one of them had left it there?”
“Certain of it, sir.”
“Why, now, are you certain? I suppose you’d had other customers in
that parlour, during the previous day?”
“Yes, sir. But I’d laid the supper-table myself. That pipe, sir, when
I found it, was lying on a small plate—where one of the gentlemen
had sat. And it had just been used, sir—the bowl was warm.”
“I congratulate you on your power of observation, Grimsdale,” said
the barrister with a smile. He laid the pipe on the table before him,
amongst his papers, and turned to the Coroner. “I think, sir, you
spoke of adjourning at this stage?” he continued. “If I may make a
suggestion, it would, I think, be best if the adjournment is of such
a nature as to afford time for more searching enquiry; it seems to me
that there is a good deal to go into, and——”
“We will adjourn to this day fortnight,” said the Coroner. He turned
to the jury and gave them some instructions and advice as to keeping
their minds open until further evidence was put before them. Then,
with a murmured expression of his hope that by the time they met
again the police would be able to throw more light on what was a very
painful problem, he left his chair, obviously relieved that the
morning’s proceedings had come to an end.
The old dining-hall rapidly cleared. Spectators, witnesses, officials
began to unpack themselves out of nooks and corners and to drift away
in groups and knots, discussing the events and revelations of the
morning. Mrs. Tretheroe went off with her two guests; Harry
Markenmore and his sister left the room in company with Harborough;
the jurymen filed away in twos and threes. But in the centre of the
temporary Court, around the big table at which the lawyers and
officials had sat, with books and papers before them, several men
gathered, and began to discuss matters informally—the Chief
Constable; Blick; the barrister who had represented the authorities;
Chilford; Walkinshaw, and Mr. Fransemmery, who, in spite of the
Coroner’s admonition, felt himself justified in hearing whatever
there was to hear.
“What I feel about it,” Chilford was saying as Mr. Fransemmery joined
the group, “is just this—and I say it as solicitor to the Markenmore
family—there must be a searching investigation into Guy Markenmore’s
business affairs and his private life in London! This affair was not
originated here, nor engineered here! If Detective-Sergeant Blick
wants to get at the bottom of things he ought to begin in
London—where Guy Markenmore has lived for some years past.”
“You think he was followed down here?” suggested the barrister, who,
business being over, had lighted a cigarette, and sitting on the edge
of the table, was comfortably smoking. “You think this was a job put
up in London?”
“I think there’s every probability that all and everything that we’ve
heard this morning has practically nothing whatever to do with the
real truth about the murder of Guy Markenmore!” answered Chilford.
“I’m quite certain—in my own mind—that John Harborough is as
innocent as I am, and I’m not much less certain that the two men who
were with Guy at the Sceptre are also innocent. The probability is
that those men will be heard of—they’ll come forward. You’ll find
that the meeting at the Sceptre—an odd one, if you like!—was
nothing but a business meeting. No—we’ve got nowhere yet! As I say,
if Blick there wants to do some ferret-work, he’s got to go back and
start in London. How do we know what Guy Markenmore’s affairs were?
Or his secrets? For all we know, somebody or other may have had good
reason for getting rid of him.”
“What puzzles me considerably,” observed the Chief Constable,
“is—how did those two men who were with Guy Markenmore at the
Sceptre come into and get out of the district unobserved? My men have
already made the most exhaustive enquiries at every railroad station
in the neighbourhood, and we’ve got hold of—nothing!”
“Strangers, too!” said Walkinshaw.
“How do we know that?” demanded Chilford. “There are a tidy lot of
men within an area of twenty miles who might have business dealings
with Guy Markenmore. His business here that night might have been
just as much with those two men as with his brother and sister.
Probably it was.”
“Grimsdale asserts that the first man was an American,” remarked
Walkinshaw. “We haven’t a plenitude of Americans in residence about
here. I could count them on my fingers.”
“That’s so,” said the Chief Constable. “If the man was an
American—and Grimsdale says he’s met a good many in his time, so he
ought to know—he came from somewhere outside our neighbourhood. But
what beats me is—how did he and the other man get away, unobserved,
on Tuesday morning?”
Mr. Fransemmery, who, like Blick, had listened attentively, but
silently, to these exchanges of opinion and idea, coughed gently, as
if deprecating any idea that he wished to interfere.
“Talking of—of America,” he remarked, “it may be of no importance,
and not even relative to the subject under discussion, but I may
observe that a mail steamer left Southampton for New York at one
o’clock on Tuesday afternoon last. Now, Markenmore is within thirty
miles of Southampton by road, and if this man—the first man—was an
American, it is possible that he journeyed to Southampton, caught
that boat, and was away to sea before hearing of what had befallen
the man whom he had entertained to supper. I know about that boat,
because I mailed some antiquarian documents to a friend of mine in
the United States by it.”
The Chief Constable twisted his military moustache and considered Mr.
Fransemmery.
“Um!” he remarked. “Might be a good deal in that—he might certainly
have taken this place in his way between London and Southampton.
But—the queer thing is, we can’t hit on a trace of his coming or
going!”
“Why did he never return to the Sceptre—where three pounds fourteen
shillings change was due to him?” asked Walkinshaw.
“I don’t know,” said the Chief Constable. “But I’m very sure of
this—whoever he was, he didn’t board the early morning train from
Selcaster to London, either at Selcaster or at Mitbourne, that
particular morning. There were only five passengers went aboard at
Selcaster, and two at Mitbourne, and the railway folks know every man
jack of ’em!”
“It’s not necessary to board a train to get into or out of a
district,” observed Walkinshaw. “My own belief is that these two men
came here and left here by motor-car.”
The Chief Constable looked at Walkinshaw and grunted his dissent.
“Do you think I haven’t thought of that?” he said. “I’ve had my men
making enquiries of that sort all over the place! Every neighbouring
village—every farmstead on the hill-sides! And—not one scrap of
information.”
“That doesn’t surprise me, nor affect what I say,” retorted
Walkinshaw. “You know as well as I do that where we are now is about
the middle of what we’ll call a triangle. On each of all three sides
of us lies a big main road. On every one of these three roads there’s
no end of motor traffic nowadays. I ought to know, for I live on one
of them. I reckon there are at least forty cars of one sort or
another pass my house every hour.”
“Not first thing in the morning!” interrupted the Chief Constable
sceptically.
“I’m giving you an average,” said Walkinshaw. “From five o’clock
onward, anyhow. Do you think one car would be noticed out of the
hundreds that come and go? Rot!”
“Where did they put their car while they came to the Sceptre?” asked
the Chief Constable.
“I see nothing difficult about that,” replied Walkinshaw. “I’d engage
to hide any car, however big, in one of our byways or plantations, or
in a convenient spot in the hollows of the downs, for a few hours,
without anybody seeing it. A lonely district like this, and at night,
too! Easy enough!”
“If these two men came together in a car,” said Chilford, “why did
one man present himself at Grimsdale’s at nine o’clock in the evening
and the other at two o’clock in the morning?”
“For that matter—if you’re going into whys and wherefores,” retorted
Walkinshaw, “where did the first man go when he walked out of the
Sceptre’s door after first going there? He was away until close on
eleven o’clock. Where had he been?”
“Well, we’ve gone into that, too!” said the Chief Constable, almost
defiantly. “There isn’t a soul in the village who saw any stranger at
all that night!”
“But no one knew of him till Grimsdale had testified.”
“Or—who’ll admit that they did!” sneered Chilford. “He must have
gone somewhere, and seen somebody.” He pulled out his watch. “I’m
going home to lunch,” he said. “This is waste of time. My advice to
Blick is—go back on your tracks and get to work at the
fountain-head—in London!”
“What’s Blick say?” asked the barrister with a laugh. He had steadily
smoked cigarettes in silence while the others had talked. “Come,
Blick?”
“Blick is a wise young man,” said the Chief Constable. “He’s going to
say nothing. You’ll take your own line, eh, Blick?”
“As at present advised,” answered Blick, with a smile. “Always ready
to hear anything in the way of suggestion though.”
“Come along,” said Chilford, “it’s two o’clock. Glad to give any of
you—all of you—some lunch if you’ll come with me. Cold food—but
plenty of it.”
The men trooped out into the hall. And there, coming from the
morning-room, they saw Harry Markenmore and Valencia. Harry came up
to the group and nodded at Blick.
“My sister wants to ask Sergeant Blick a question,” he said, turning
to the Chief Constable. “Something about my late brother’s personal
effects.”
Blick turned to Valencia; the other men paused, interested and
attentive. Valencia looked at the detective with something of anxiety.
“It was you, wasn’t it, who examined my brother Guy’s clothing and
what he had on him?” she asked. “You mentioned a lot of things in the
witness-box this morning. Did you mention everything?”
“Everything—yes,” replied Blick.
“Every single thing that you found?”
“Every single thing!”
Valencia’s eyes grew more troubled. She looked round at the attentive
faces.
“There—there was something that you didn’t mention that my brother
certainly had on him when he went out of this house on Monday night
at half-past ten,” she said, turning again to Blick. “A ring!—a ring
of very curious workmanship, on the third finger of his right hand.”
“He had one ring on the third finger of his right hand,” said Blick.
“A very fine diamond ring—a single stone.”
“He had two rings on the third finger of his right hand,” asserted
Valencia. “The diamond ring you speak of, and this other one. I spoke
of it to him while he was here. It was a ring of very odd
appearance—it looked to me like copper, with some enamel work on it.
It attracted my attention because—because I know some one who has a
ring exactly like it—its duplicate, in fact.”
“Yes?” said Blick quietly. “Who?”
“Mrs. Tretheroe,” replied Valencia.
The men standing by glanced at each other.
“You are sure your brother was wearing this second, odd-looking ring
when he left you?” asked Blick.
“I am certain of it,” affirmed Valencia. “Absolutely!”
“And you say that Mrs. Tretheroe has a similar ring?”
“Which she always wears,” said Valencia.
“There was no such ring on your brother’s finger when I made my
examination,” remarked Blick. “But now—I’ll see into the matter.”
Harry and Valencia went back to the morning-room, and the others made
for the front door. But before they reached it, another interruption
in their progress towards Chilford’s hospitable table occurred. A
young, alert-looking man, who held a note-book in one hand, and
pencil in the other, came up.
“Mr. Chief Constable,” he said, with confident assurance, “allow me
to introduce myself—Mr. Summers, of the _Daily Sentinel_—specially
sent down, sir.”
“What do you want?” asked the Chief Constable. He was thinking of
Chilford’s cold roast beef, and had a natural dislike of reporters.
“Nothing more to tell you than what you’ve heard.”
“I should be obliged if you’d show me the five-pound note which the
presumed American gave to Grimsdale,” said Mr. Summers, “and the
tobacco pipe which was left at the Sceptre.”
The Chief Constable turned to Blick.
“Any objection to that?” he asked.
“I should say that Mr. Blick—from what I happen to know of his great
abilities—has no objection,” interposed Mr. Summers, who was clearly
one of those young men who leave no stone unturned in the effort to
build up good copy. “Mr. Blick, sir, knows the value of
publicity—especially in a journal of our immense circulation—as
well as I do.”
“No objection at all,” said Blick, laughing. “There’s the note—I
suppose you want the number? B. H. 887563. The pipe—that’s on the
table inside—the police have it. Here, I’ll show it to you.”
He went back into the old dining-room with Summers; the others
waited, chatting about Valencia’s information respecting the ring. A
few minutes passed; then Blick, looking slightly puzzled, put his
head into the hall.
“Chief Constable!” he called. “That pipe!—have you got it?”
The Chief Constable turned around with a suddenly roused alertness.
“I?” he exclaimed. “No—I haven’t got it. Isn’t it there?”
Blick shook his head, his puzzled look changing to one of vexation.
He withdrew into the dining-room again, and the Chief Constable
strode after him. The other men followed, each impelled by a
curiosity for which they would have found it hard to account. Blick
was rummaging about amongst the books and papers on the table. Two or
three policemen were there; so, too, were a similar number of
solicitors’ clerks, and the Coroner’s officer; at one end of the
table a couple of local reporters were busily writing out their notes.
“I’ve never seen it—at least since it was held up,” said a
police-sergeant to whom Blick was appealing. “I saw Grimsdale produce
it, and I saw the Coroner and the jurymen handling it, and I’ve never
seen it since.”
“Who had it last?” asked Blick.
“I had!” answered the barrister. “I took it from the jury, and laid
it on the table—just there.”
“Well, it’s gone!” said Blick. He turned to the police-sergeant.
“Have any of your men gone away who might have been likely to pick it
up?”
“Nobody’s gone away yet,” replied the sergeant. “We’re all here—all
of us that came.”
Blick turned over everything that remained on the table. His face
curiously set, and he said nothing.
“Everybody that went out of the room passed along that side of the
table,” remarked the sergeant. “If anybody wanted to pick it up and
carry it off, they’d nothing to do but put a hand out. Nobody would
notice—in that crush.”
“Who should want to carry it off?” asked Blick with asperity.
Summers, who had been assisting in the search, suddenly chuckled.
“There’s one man in existence who’d have been jolly glad to carry it
off!” he exclaimed.
Blick looked up, frowning.
“What do you mean?” he snapped out. “Who?—what man?”
“The man who left it on the supper-table at the Sceptre, of course!”
retorted Summers, with another chuckle. “How do you know he wasn’t
there amongst the deeply-interested audience? May have been!”
Blick threw aside a final mass of papers, and turned to the door.
“Well, it’s gone, anyway!” he muttered.
“Nice piece of evidence disappeared, too,” soliloquized Summers. “You
might have traced it to its rightful owner, Mr. Blick. But I think
he’s got it—what? Clever! However, if he’s the person who purloined
it off this table, you know one thing—he’s somebody who’s somewhere
close at hand. Eh, Mr. Blick?”
But Blick was once more in the hall, and the Chief Constable and the
other men followed him.
“Odd, that, Blick!” said the Chief Constable. “Who can have got
it—and why?”
“There may be something in what that newspaper chap says,” answered
Blick in an undertone. “The man who left it at the Sceptre may have
been here this morning, and taken the opportunity to possess himself
of it. However——”
“Now come across the park to my house, you fellows, and have some
lunch,” broke in Chilford. “All ready—come on!”
Blick excused himself—he had work to do, he said. On the previous
day, finding that his labours at Markenmore were likely to be
protracted, he had taken rooms at the Sceptre, and thither he now
hastened. He had many things in hand; much to think over. That
morning, before going to the inquest, he had sent a messenger into
Selcaster with instructions to buy certain matter for him: his first
question on reaching the Sceptre was—had the messenger returned?
“Parcels on your sitting-room table, Mr. Blick,” answered Grimsdale.
“Lunch there, too.”
Blick sat down to his lunch, alone, and ate and drank steadily for
half an hour. Then, when the table had been cleared, he lighted his
pipe, pulled out his penknife, and cut the string of the parcels that
had been sent him from Selcaster.