When Rolfe had finished questioning Police-Constable Flack and joined his
chief upstairs, the latter, who had been going through the private papers
in the murdered man's desk in the hope of alighting on a clue to the
crime, received him genially.
"Well," he said, "what do you think of Flack?"
Rolfe had obtained from the police-constable a straightforward story of
what he had seen, and in this way had picked up some useful information
about the crime which it would have taken a long time to extract from the
inspector, but he was a sufficiently good detective to have learned that
by disparaging the source of your information you add to your own
reputation for acumen in drawing conclusions in regard to it. He nodded
his head in a deprecating way and emitted a slight cough which was meant
to express contempt.
"It looks very much like a case of burglary and murder," he said.
He was anxious to know what theory his superior officer had formed.
"And how do you fit in the letter advising us of the murder?" asked the
inspector.
He produced the letter from his pocket-book and looked at it earnestly.
"There were two of them in it--one a savage ruffian who will stick at
nothing, and the other a chicken-hearted specimen. They often work in
pairs like that."
"So your theory is that one of the two shot him, and the other was so
unnerved that he sent us the letter and put us on the track to save his
own neck?"
"Something like that."
"It is not impossible," was the senior officer's comment. "Mind you, I
don't say it is my theory. In fact, I am in no hurry to form one. I
believe in going carefully over the whole ground first, collecting all
the clues and then selecting the right one."
Rolfe admitted that his chief's way of setting to work to solve a
mystery was an ideal one, but he made the reservation that it was a
difficult one to put into operation. He was convinced that the only way
of finding the right clue was to follow up every one until it was proved
to be a wrong one.
Inspector Chippenfield continued his study of the mysterious message
which had been sent to Scotland Yard. It was written on a sheet of paper
which had been taken from a writing pad of the kind sold for a few pence
by all stationers. It was flimsy and blue-lined, and the message it
contained was smudged and badly printed. But to the inspector's
annoyance, there were no finger-prints on the paper. The finger-print
expert at Scotland Yard had examined it under the microscope, but his
search for finger-prints had been vain.
"Depend upon it, we'll hear from this chap again," said the inspector,
tapping the sheet of paper with a finger. "I think I may go so far as to
say that this fellow thinks suspicion will be directed to him and he
wants to save his neck."
"It's a disguised hand," said Rolfe. "Of course he printed it in order
not to give us a specimen of his handwriting. There are telltale things
about a man's handwriting which give him away even when he tries to
disguise it. But he's tried to disguise even his printing. Look how
irregular the letters are--some slanting to the right and some to the
left, and some are upright. Look at the two different kinds of 'U's.'"
"He's used two different kinds of pens," said Inspector Chippenfield.
"Look at the difference in the thickness of the letters."
"The sooner he writes again the better," said Rolfe. "I am curious to
know what he'll say next."
"My idea is to find out who he is and make him speak," said the
inspector, "Speaking is quicker than writing. I could frighten more
out of him in ten minutes than he would give away voluntarily in a
month of Sundays."
Again Rolfe had to admit that his chief's plan to get at the truth was an
ideal one.
"Have you any idea who he is?" he asked.
Inspector Chippenfield had brought his methods too near to perfection to
make it possible for him to fall into an open trap.
"I won't be very long putting my hand on him," he said.
"But this thing has been in the papers," said Rolfe. "Don't you think the
murderer will bolt out of the country when he knows his mate is prepared
to turn King's evidence against him?"
"Ah," said Inspector Chippenfield, "I haven't adopted your theory."
"Then you think that the man who wrote this note knew of the murder but
doesn't know who did it?"
"Now you are going too far," said Inspector Chippenfield.
The inspector was so wary about disclosing what was in his mind in regard
to the letter that Rolfe, who disliked his chief very cordially, jumped
to the conclusion that Inspector Chippenfield had no intelligible ideas
concerning it.
"If it was burglars they took nothing as far as we can ascertain up to
the present," said Inspector Chippenfield after a pause.
"They were surprised to find anyone in the house. And after the shot was
fired they immediately bolted for fear the noise would attract
attention."
"What knocks a hole in the burglar theory is the fact that Sir Horace was
fully dressed when he was shot," said the inspector. "Burglars don't
break into a house when there are lights about, especially after having
been led to believe that the house was empty."
"So you think," said Rolfe, "that the window was forced after the murder
with the object of misleading us."
"I haven't said so," replied the inspector. "All I am prepared to say is
that even that was not impossible."
"It was forced from the outside," continued Rolfe. "I've seen the marks
of a jemmy on the window-sill. If it was forced after the murder the
murderer was a cool hand."
"You can take it from me," exclaimed Inspector Chippenfield with
unexpected candour, "that he was a cool hand. We are going to have a bit
of trouble in getting to the bottom of this, Rolfe."
"If anyone can get to the bottom of it, you can," said Rolfe, who
believed with Voltaire that speech was given us in order to enable us to
conceal our thoughts.
Inspector Chippenfield was so astonished at this handsome compliment that
he began to think he had underrated Rolfe's powers of discernment. His
tone of cold official superiority immediately thawed.
"There were two shots fired," he said, "but whether both were fired by
the murderer I don't know yet. One of them may have been fired by Sir
Horace. Just behind you in the wall is the mark of one of the bullets. I
dug it out of the plaster yesterday and here it is." He produced from a
waistcoat pocket a flattened bullet. "The other is inside him at
present." He waved his hand in the direction of the room in which the
corpse lay.
"Of course you cannot say yet whether both bullets are out of the same
revolver?" said Rolfe.
"Can't tell till after the post-mortem," said the inspector. "And then
all we can tell for certain is whether they are of the same pattern. They
might be the same size, and yet be fired out of different revolvers of
the same calibre."
"Well, it is no use theorising about what happened in this room until
after the post-mortem," said Rolfe.
"You'd better give it some thought," suggested the inspector. "In the
meantime I want you to interview the people in the neighbourhood and
ascertain whether they heard any shots. They'll all say they did whether
they heard them or not--you know how people persuade themselves into
imagining things so as to get some sort of prominence in these crimes.
But you can sift what they tell you and preserve the grain of truth. Try
and get them to be accurate as to the time, as we want to fix the time of
the crime as near as possible. Ask Flack to tell you something about the
neighbours--he's been in this district fifteen years, and ought to know
all about them. While you're away I'll go through these private papers. I
want to find out why he came back from Scotland so suddenly. If we knew
that the rest might be easy."
"I haven't seen the body yet," said Rolfe. "I'd like to look at it.
Where is it?"
"I had it removed downstairs. You will find it in a big room on the left
as you go down the hall. By the by, there is another matter, Rolfe. This
glove was found in the room. It may be a clue, but it is more likely
that it is one of Sir Horace's gloves and that he lost the other one on
his way up from Scotland. It's a left-hand glove--men always lose the
right-hand glove because they take it off so often. I've compared it
with other gloves in Sir Horace's wardrobe, and I find it is the same
size and much the same quality. But find out from Sir Horace's hosier if
he sold it. Here's the address of the hosiers,--Bruden and Marshall, in
the Strand."
Rolfe went slowly downstairs into the room in which the corpse lay, and
closed the door behind him. It was a very large room, overlooking the
garden on the right side of the house. Somebody had lowered the Venetian
blinds as a conventional intimation to the outside world that the house
was one of mourning, and the room was almost dark. For nearly a minute
Rolfe stood in silence, his hand resting on the knob of the door he had
closed behind him. Gradually the outline of the room and the objects
within it began to reveal themselves in shadowy shape as his eyes became
accustomed to the dim light. He had a growing impression of a big lofty
room, with heavy furniture, and a huddled up figure lying on a couch at
the end furthest from the window and deepest in shadow.
He stepped across to the window and gently raised one of the blinds. The
light of an August sun penetrated through the screen of trees in front of
the house and revealed the interior of the room more clearly. Rolfe was
amazed at its size. From the window to the couch at the other end of the
room, where the body lay, was nearly thirty feet. Glancing down the
apartment, he noticed that it was really two rooms, divided in the middle
by folding doors. These doors folded neatly into a slightly protruding
ridge or arch almost opposite the door by which he had entered, and were
screened from observation by heavy damask curtains, which drooped over
the archway slightly into the room.
Evidently the deceased judge had been in the habit of using the divided
rooms as a single apartment, for the heavier furniture in both halves of
it was of the same pattern. The chairs and tables were of heavy,
ponderous, mid-Victorian make, and they were matched by a number of
old-fashioned mahogany sideboards and presses, arranged methodically at
regular intervals on both sides of the room. Rolfe, as his eye took in
these articles, wondered why Sir Horace Fewbanks had bought so many. One
sideboard, a vast piece of furniture fully eight feet long, had a whisky
decanter and siphon of soda water on it, as though Sir Horace had served
himself with refreshments on his return to the house. The tops of the
other sideboards were bare, and the presses, use in such a room Rolfe was
at a loss to conjecture, were locked up. The antique sombre uniformity
of the furniture as a whole was broken at odd intervals by several
articles of bizarre modernity, including a few daring French prints,
which struck an odd note of incongruity in such a room.
The murdered man had been laid on an old-fashioned sofa at the end of
this double apartment which was furthest from the window. Rolfe walked
slowly over the thick Turkey carpets and rugs with which the floor was
covered, glanced at the sofa curiously, and then turned down the sheet
from the dead man's face.
At the time of his death Sir Horace Fewbanks was 58 years of age, but
since death the grey bristles had grown so rapidly through his
clean-shaven face that he looked much older. The face showed none of the
wonted placidity of death. The mouth was twisted in an ugly fashion, as
though the murdered man had endeavoured to cry for help and had been
attacked and killed while doing so. One of Sir Horace's arms--the right
one--was thrust forward diagonally across his breast as if in
self-defence, and the hand was tightly clenched. Rolfe, who had last seen
His Honour presiding on the Bench in the full pomp and majesty of law,
felt a chill strike his heart at the fell power of death which did not
even respect the person of a High Court judge, and had stripped him of
every vestige of human dignity in the pangs of a violent end. The face he
had last seen on the Bench full of wisdom and austerity of the law was
now distorted into a livid mask in which it was hard to trace any
semblance of the features of the dead judge.
Rolfe's official alertness of mind in the face of a mysterious crime soon
reasserted itself, however, and he shook off the feeling of sentiment and
proceeded to make a closer examination of the dead body. As he turned
down the sheet to examine the wound which had ended the judge's life, it
slipped from his hand and fell on the floor, revealing that the judge had
been laid on the couch just as he had been killed, fully clothed. He had
been shot through the body near the heart, and a large patch of blood had
welled from the wound and congealed in his shirt. One trouser leg was
ruffled up, and had caught in the top of the boot.
The corpse presented a repellent spectacle, but Rolfe, who had seen
unpleasant sights of various kinds in his career, bent over the body
with keen interest, noting these details, with all his professional
instincts aroused. For though Rolfe had not yet risen very high in the
police force, he had many of the qualities which make the good
detective--observation, sagacity, and some imagination. The
extraordinary crime which he had been called upon to help unravel
presented a baffling mystery which was likely to test the value of these
qualities to the utmost.
Rolfe looked steadily at the corpse for some time, impressing a picture
of it in every detail on his mental retina. Struck by an idea, he bent
over and touched the patch of blood in the dead man's breast, then looked
at his finger. There was no stain. The blood was quite congealed. Then he
tried to unclench the judge's right hand, but it was rigid.
As Rolfe stood there gazing intently at the corpse, and trying to form
some theory of the reason for the murder, certain old stories he had
heard of Sir Horace Fewbanks's private life and character recurred to
him. These rumours had not been much--a jocular hint or two among his
fellows at Scotland Yard that His Honour had a weakness for a pretty face
and in private life led a less decorous existence than a judge ought to
do. Rolfe wondered how much or how little truth was contained in these
stories. He glanced around the vast room. Certainly it was not the sort
of apartment in which a High Court judge might be expected to do his
entertaining, but Rolfe recalled that he had heard gossip to the effect
that Sir Horace, because of his virtual estrangement from his daughter,
did very little entertaining beyond an occasional bridge or supper party
to his sporting friends, and rarely went into Society.
Rolfe began to scrutinise the articles of furniture in the room,
wondering if there was anything about them which might reveal something
of the habits of the dead man. He produced a small electric torch from
his pocket, and with its light to guide him in the half-darkened room, he
closely inspected each piece of furniture. Then, with the torch in his
hand, he returned to the sofa and flashed it over the dead body. He
started violently when the light, falling on the dead man's closed hand,
revealed a tiny scrap of white. Eagerly he endeavoured to release the
fragment from the tenacious clutch of the dead without tearing it, and
eventually he managed to detach it. His heart bounded when he saw that it
was a small torn piece of lace and muslin. He placed it in the palm of
his left hand and examined it closely under the light of his torch. To
him it looked to be part of a fashionable lady's dainty handkerchief. He
was elated at his discovery and he wondered how Inspector Chippenfield
had overlooked it. Then the explanation struck him. The small piece of
lace and muslin had been effectually hidden in the dead man's clenched
hand, and his efforts to open the hand had loosened it.
"Well, Rolfe," said Inspector Chippenfield, when his subordinate
reappeared, "you've been long enough to have unearthed the criminal or
revived the corpse. Have you discovered anything fresh?"
"Only this," replied Rolfe, displaying the piece of handkerchief.
The find startled Inspector Chippenfield out of his air of bantering
superiority.
"Where did you get that?" he stammered, as he reached out eagerly for it.
"The dead man had it clenched in his right hand. I wondered if he had
anything hidden in his hand when I saw it so tightly clenched. I tried to
force open the fingers and that fell out."
Inspector Chippenfield was by no means pleased at his subordinate's
discovery of what promised to be an important clue, especially after the
clue had been missed by himself. But he congratulated Rolfe in a tone of
fictitious heartiness.
"Well done, Rolfe!" he exclaimed. "You are coming on. Anyone can see that
you've the makings of a good detective."
Rolfe could afford to ignore the sting contained in such faint praise.
"What do you make of it?" he asked.
"Looks as though there is a woman in it," said the inspector, who was
still examining the scrap of lace and muslin.
"There can't be much doubt about that," replied Rolfe.
"We mustn't be in a hurry in jumping at conclusions," remarked the
inspector.
"No, and we mustn't ignore obvious facts," said Rolfe.
"You think a woman murdered him?" asked the inspector.
"I think a woman was present when he was shot: whether she fired the shot
there is nothing to show at present. There may have been a man with her.
But there was a struggle just before the shot was fired and as Sir Horace
fell he grasped at the hand in which she was holding her handkerchief. Or
perhaps her handkerchief was torn in his dying struggles when she was
leaning over him."
"You have overlooked the possibility of this having been placed in the
dying man's hand to deceive us," said the inspector.
"If the intention was to mislead us it wouldn't have been placed where it
might have been overlooked."
As the inspector had overlooked the presence of the scrap of handkerchief
in the dead man's hand, he felt that he was not making much progress with
the work of keeping his subordinate in his place.
"Well, it is a clue of a sort," he said. "The trouble is that we have
too many clues. I wish we knew which is the right one. Anyway, it knocks
over your theory of a burglary," he added in a tone of satisfaction.
"Yes," Rolfe admitted. "That goes by the board."