Introducing a Goat-faced Clergyman
Roger had no definite plan in his mind as he walked with quick strides
along the cliff-top in the direction of Ludmouth. His impulsive flight
from the other two had been dictated by two instinctive feelings—that
he wanted to be alone to ponder over the significance of this fresh
information, and that Anthony and Margaret would probably be not at
all averse to a little dose of each other’s undiluted company. His
first idea, equally instinctive, had been to make a bee-line for the
Russells’ house and pour out a torrent of eager questions into the
lady’s astonished ears. Second thoughts warned him against any such
precipitation. He sat down on a convenient little hummock facing the
sea, pulled out and re-lit his pipe and began to think.
It did not take him many minutes to see that, if this new lane of
enquiry were not to prove a blind alley, there were two questions of
paramount importance first requiring a satisfactory answer. Of these
one was concerned with Mrs. Russell’s shoes: did they fit the second
lot of footprints in that patch of mud on the cliff-path, or not? If
they did, that did not actually prove anything, but Mrs. Russell
remained a suspected person; if they did not, then she must be
exonerated at once. The second, and far more important, was this—who
had been at the Russells’ house during the time when Mrs. Vane might
have been expected to call?
Roger was still considering the interesting possibility depending on
the answer to this question, when a gentle voice behind him cut
abruptly into his reverie.
“A charming view from this point, sir, is it not?” observed the gentle
voice.
Roger turned about. A little elderly clergyman, with silvery hair and
a face like a benign but beardless goat, was peering at him
benevolently through a large pair of horn spectacles. “Oh, Lord, the
local parson!” Roger groaned to himself—not because he disliked
parsons, local or otherwise, but because parsons are inclined to talk
and Roger, at that particular moment in his existence, surprisingly
enough was not. Aloud he said, courteously enough, “It is indeed;
particularly charming.”
The little old parson continued to beam, the sunlight glittering on
his huge spectacles. He did not go nor did he very definitely stay—he
hovered.
“He’s going to talk,” Roger groaned to himself again. “He wants to
talk. He’s aching to talk—I know he is! My pipe to the Coliseum he’s
going to talk!”
Roger’s deduction was not amiss. It was only too plain that the little
old clergyman had every intention of talking. He had, to be accurate,
on seeing Roger’s back in the distance, come nearly a
quarter-of-a-mile out of his way for the express purpose of talking.
He began to talk.
“I don’t remember seeing you in our little village. Perhaps you have
walked over from Sandsea?”
“No,” said Roger patiently. “I’m staying in Ludmouth.”
“Ah! At Mrs. Jameson’s, no doubt? I did hear that she was expecting a
visitor.”
“No, at the Crown.”
“Oh! Oh, dear me! Surely I am not talking to Mr. Roger Sheringham, am
I?” twittered the little clergyman.
“That is my name, sir, yes,” Roger admitted, with a mental side-note
upon village gossip, its velocity and the surprising quarters it
reaches.
“My dear sir!” The little parson’s beam grew brighter than ever. “You
must permit me to shake hands with you. No, really you must! This is
indeed a gratifying moment. I have read all your books, every one; and
I cannot tell you how I enjoyed them. Well, fancy, now!”
Roger was never in the least embarrassed by this kind of encounter. He
shook hands with his admirer with the greatest heartiness.
“It’s very kind of you to say so,” he smiled. “Very kind indeed. I
won’t pretend I’m not gratified. Any author who pretends to be
indifferent to appreciation of his books is a hypocrite and a liar and
an anointed ass.”
“Quite so,” agreed the little clergyman in some bewilderment. “Quite
so, no doubt. Well, well, well!”
“How did you know I was staying at the Crown, sir?”
“Oh, these things get about in a little community like ours, Mr.
Sheringham; very rapidly indeed, if I may say so. And having read your
books, to say nothing of your recent articles in the _Courier_,
including even this morning’s—— Ah, a sad business that brings you
down here, Mr. Sheringham! Very sad indeed! Dear me, poor lady, poor
lady!”
Roger’s annoyance at the interruption to his thoughts, already
considerably lessened, vanished completely. If this garrulous old man
had anything of interest to tell, without doubt he could be induced to
tell it. Perhaps the encounter could be turned to good account; in any
case it would be no bad thing to be _persona grata_ with the vicar. He
indicated with the stem of his pipe the hummock on which he had been
sitting.
“Won’t you sit down, sir?” he asked with a fittingly serious face.
“Yes, indeed it is; extraordinarily sad.”
The little clergyman seated himself with a nod of gratitude and Roger
dropped on to the warm turf by his side.
“Do you know, there is a most distressing rumour going about in the
village, I understand,” remarked the former deprecatingly, but none
the less gossipingly. “Something about foul play. That is nothing new,
of course; your article this morning hinted quite plainly at it. But
they have got to the stage in the village of importing actual names
into their suspicions. Do you know that? Most regrettable; _most_
regrettable.”
“It’s what you’d expect, isn’t it?” said Roger a trifle shortly; he
had stayed to pump the other, not to be pumped himself. “What name or
names have they imported?”
“Really, Mr. Sheringham,” the parson hesitated, “I’m not sure whether
I ought——”
“I’ve only got to walk into the bar at the Crown and ask the nearest
loafer, if you don’t wish to tell me,” Roger pointed out with an air
of indifference.
“That is true. Yes, that is very true, I’m afraid. Yes, I fear you
have. Well, perhaps in that case—— Well, they are talking about Miss
Cross, you know; Mrs. Vane’s cousin. Most regrettable; _most_
regrettable! Surely _you_ don’t think, Mr. Sheringham, that——”
“I agree with you,” Roger interrupted brusquely, forestalling the
unwelcome question. “Most regrettable! But surely you, as their vicar,
could——?” He broke off meaningly.
The little clergyman looked at him in surprise. “Me?” he said
innocently. “Oh, but you are making a mistake. _I_ am not the vicar
here. Oh, dear, no! Meadows, my name is: Samuel Meadows. Wait a
moment; I have a card somewhere.” He began to fumble violently in all
his pockets. “Oh, dear, no; I am not the vicar. I have retired into
private life. A small legacy, you understand. Just a resident here,
that is all; and of only a few weeks’ standing. Oh, dear, no; my
parish was in Yorkshire. But Ludmouth is so— Ah, here we are!” With an
air of mild triumph he produced a card from the pocket which he had
first searched, and held it out to Roger. “Perhaps if you were passing
one day—? I should be extremely honoured.”
“Very kind of you indeed,” said Roger politely, his interest in the
little cleric now completely evaporated. He struggled to his feet.
“Well, I must be getting along.”
“You are going back to Ludmouth?” queried the other with gentle
eagerness, rising also. “So am I. We might perhaps walk in together.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m going the other way,” returned Roger firmly. “Good
morning, Mr. Meadows. See you again soon, I expect.” And he set
briskly off in the direction of Sandsea.
Behind the first undulation he took cover and watched his late
interlocutor make for the road and pass slowly out of sight. Then he
came out of hiding and walked rapidly over to the little house which
lay half-way between that of Dr. Vane and the village—the house which
sheltered the frivolous Mr. Russell and his jealous lady.
A perfectly respectable parlour maid answered his ring and looked at
him enquiringly.
“Is Mrs. Russell in?” Roger asked. “I should like to speak to her for
a moment.”
“No, sir; I’m afraid she isn’t. And Mr. Russell is out too.”
“Oh! That’s a nuisance.” Roger rubbed his chin a moment in thought;
then he came to a sudden decision. “You read the _Courier_ sometimes I
expect, don’t you?” he asked unexpectedly.
“Yes, sir,” replied the maid in a puzzled voice. “Cook takes it in,
she does.”
“She does, does she? Good for Cook! Well, look here, I’ve come down to
Ludmouth specially for the _Courier_, to send them news about that
accident you had here the other day.”
The girl’s face cleared. “Mrs. Vane? Oh, yes, sir! Then you’re a—a
reporting gentleman, sir?”
“A reporting gentleman!” Roger laughed. “Yes, rather; that describes
me to a T. Well, now,” he went on very confidentially, “the fact of
the matter is this. I ran along to ask Mrs. Russell one or two
questions, and I’m in too much of a hurry to wait for her. Now, do you
think you could answer them for me instead?”
“Oh, yes, sir,” fluttered the maid. “I think I could. What would it be
that you want to know?”
“Well, now; Mrs. Vane was coming here that afternoon, wasn’t she? And
she never came. Now, I suppose you were in all the afternoon yourself,
weren’t you?”
“Me, sir? Oh, no. I was on my holidays. I only got back yesterday.”
“I see. Rotten, coming back to work again, isn’t it? But the cook
would have been in, of course?”
“No, sir; she was out too. It was her afternoon off. There was nobody
in that afternoon but Mrs. Russell herself.”
“Aha!” observed Roger all to himself. Aloud he said mechanically, “I
see,” and began to rack his brains furiously for a tactful way of
getting hold of a pair of Mrs. Russell’s shoes. It was not an easy
problem.
Usually a problem tended to lose its interest for Roger if it were too
easy, but for this one the time-limit was not sufficient. On the spur
of the moment he could only see one thing to do, so he did it.
“Can you lend me a pair of Mrs. Russell’s shoes for an hour or so?” he
asked blandly.
“Her _shoes?_” repeated the astonished maid.
“Yes; any pair of outdoor ones. I’ll let you have them back before she
notices they’re gone.” And he jingled significantly the loose silver
in his trouser-pocket.
“Not—not _foot-prints?_” twittered the maid, thrilled to the bone.
Roger made up his mind in a flash. After all, why not tell the truth?
There was no doubt that the maid would appreciate it, and a spy in the
enemy’s camp might be useful.
“Yes,” he nodded. “But keep this to yourself, mind. Don’t tell a
soul!”
“Not even Cook?” breathed the excited girl.
“Yes, you can tell Cook,” conceded Roger gravely, knowing the
paramount necessity of permitting a safety-valve. “But you’ll be
responsible for it going no further. Promise?”
“Oo, yes, sir! I promise.”
“Well, cut up and get me a pair of her shoes, then.”
The girl needed no second invitation. She cut.
In less than a minute she was back again. “Here you are, sir. I put a
bit of newspaper round them, so as nobody could see what you’re
carrying. But you’ll bring them back, won’t you, sir?”
“Oh, yes; some time this afternoon. In fact, I’ll tell you what I’ll
do. I’ll bring them to the back-door. How about that?”
“Yes, that would be better, sir. Thank you.”
“And if anybody else wants to know what I came for, say I’m a reporter
for the _Courier_ wanting to see Mrs. Russell; that’ll do as well as
anything else. Here!”
A ten-shilling note changed hands, and Roger turned to go. A stifled
sound from the girl caused him to look round.
“Yes?” he said enquiringly.
“Oo, sir! Mrs. Russell! You don’t think as how she _done_ it, do you?”
“Done what?” asked Roger gravely.
“P-pushed Mrs. Vane over the cliff! They hated each other like wild
cats, they did. Many and many’s the time I’ve heard the missis giving
it to the master about Mrs. Vane. ‘If I get hold of her, _I’ll_ give
her what-for!’ she says. ‘I’ll spoil her looks for her! I’ll show her
she can’t——’”
“No, no!” Roger interrupted hastily. “Good gracious, no! You mustn’t
think anything like that. I want the shoes for—for quite a different
reason.” And he fled for the front gate.
The maid looked after him with an air of distinct disappointment.
The newspaper parcel under his arm, Roger made at top-speed for the
point on the cliffs where the second stair-way emerged. It was only a
matter of form to try the shoes he was carrying into that second lot
of footprints; he knew beyond any shadow of doubt that they were going
to fit. Within a quarter-of-an-hour of leaving the lady’s own front
door his confidence was justified: her shoes fitted as perfectly into
the tracks as if they had made them—which Roger had very little doubt
they had! With a crow of triumph he turned round and scurried up the
stairs again two at a time. The Ludmouth Bay Mystery was as good as
ended.
Half-way across the open ground toward the house he caught sight of a
large and portly figure turning in at the front gate from the road.
Judging correctly that the mistress of the household was returning, he
changed his direction abruptly and made for the little ledge,
whistling loudly (and quite unnecessarily, as Anthony pointed out
later with some heat. “Dash it all, man, I haven’t known the girl for
twenty-four hours yet. That sort of thing makes a chap look such an
ass!”) as he approached within view of it.
“Victory! Victory!” he exclaimed dramatically to the startled couple
beneath him, waving the shoes above his head. “And here are the
spoils—your prize, fair lady! You might return them to the owner for
me some time, will you? Or rather, to the owner’s parlour maid for
preference. Catch!” And tossing the shoes down on to the ledge below,
he took a standing jump and hurtled through the air in their wake.
“Roger, you’ve discovered something!” Margaret cried, as the
victorious one landed with a thud perilously near her feet. “What?”
“I say, you haven’t got to the bottom of it, have you?” demanded
Anthony excitedly.
Roger folded his arms and, striking a Napoleonic attitude, grinned
down most un-Napoleonically at the other members of the alliance. “I
have solved the Mystery of Ludmouth Bay, my children!” he announced.
“Not alone _I_ did it, for you, Margaret, put me on the right track,
and yon pair of shoes also played their part. But the important thing
is that the mystery is solved, and you can hold up your head again,
Margaret, my dear, or your hands or your feet or anything else you
jolly well like; nobody will say you nay.”
“Oh, Roger, do explain! Not—not Mrs. _Russell?_”
The grin died slowly out of Roger’s face. His imagination was his
trade, yet it had simply never occurred to him that the rescue of
Margaret meant the snaring of somebody else—that through his
activities Mrs. Russell now stood in the perilous position from which
Margaret had been plucked only just in time.
“I’m afraid so,” he nodded seriously. “And by the way, there’s one
very obvious thing we overlooked about you, Margaret,” he went on,
glancing at the neat little feet upon which he had so nearly landed.
“However much the rest of the evidence might seem to compromise you,
you were never in any real danger; that second lot of footprints was
obviously never made by you, you see. Well, I’ll tell you what I’ve
been doing.”
He dropped on to the turf, pulled out his pipe and began his story.
“I say, that’s great!” exclaimed Anthony in high glee, when he had
finished.
“Oh, poor Mrs. Russell!” was Margaret’s comment, and Roger glanced at
her with quick understanding. It was an echo of his own thoughts of a
few minutes before.
They began to discuss the situation.
“Well, Anthony,” Roger remarked half-an-hour later. “Time we were
getting back for lunch. And I want to hear what Moresby’s got to say,
too.”
“Moresby’s going to get the shock of his young life,” observed Anthony
grimly. “And I’m going to be in at the death.” Inspector Moresby, one
gathered, had infringed upon Anthony’s code of things that aren’t done
when he had the presumption to follow up a train of evidence to its
logical conclusion—Margaret; henceforward there was no good in him.
“Well, in that case come along,” Roger replied, scrambling up.
“Margaret, you’ll deliver those shoes at the back-door some time this
afternoon, will you? Thanks very much. Well, now, about meeting you
again, I should think——”
“Oh, we’ve fixed all that,” Anthony interrupted very airily.
It was about five minutes after this that Anthony delivered his views
upon whistling already recorded. At the same time he had something to
say on the subject of grins, and still more upon that of winks. Grins,
winks and whistles, it appeared, shared with Inspector Moresby the
murkiest depths of Anthony’s hatred and contempt.
Lunch was waiting for them when they arrived back, hot and thirsty, at
the inn—huge plates of cold beef, a salad, a white loaf and pleasantly
salt butter, raspberry tart and cream. Inspector Moresby was also
waiting for them, his face completely obscured at the moment of their
entering the room by the bottom of one of their host’s satisfactory
tankards (one cannot realise too strongly the fact that, when not
standing at street corners or arresting unarmed the most dangerous
criminals, members of the British Police Force are utterly and
completely human).
“Ah, here you are, gentlemen,” he observed heartily, emerging from the
tankard. “They asked me if we were going to take our meals together in
here, and I took the liberty of telling them we were. It’s a bit
lonely eating down there alone, if you’ve no objection.”
“None at all,” responded Roger, no less heartily. “Only too pleased,
Inspector. And I see you had the forethought to order up three of the
best. Excellent! Well, you’d better get ready to drink my health.”
“What have you been doing then, sir?” asked the Inspector humorously.
“Solving the mystery?”
“I have,” said Roger, and plunged into his story once more.
“So what do you think of that?” he concluded, not without a certain
triumph.
The Inspector wiped his moustache carefully. “It’s ingenious,” he
said. “Quite ingenious. But I shouldn’t pay too much importance to
footprints if I were you, Mr. Sheringham. Footprints are the easiest
thing in the world to fake.”
“It’s ingenious because we’re dealing with the deeds of an ingenious
criminal. That’s all. Anyhow, can you produce anything that can’t be
explained by the theory?” Roger challenged.
“Yes, sir, I can,” replied the inspector imperturbably. “That bit of
paper you picked up yourself. Our expert made it out all right. The
original’s coming on by special messenger, but I got a code telegram
half-an-hour ago, and I’ve written out for you what was on the paper.
How are you going to explain that by your theory?”
Roger took the piece of paper the other was holding out to him and
read it eagerly, Anthony craning over his shoulder. It was inscribed
as follows:——
Monday.
“Elsie darling, for Heaven’s sake meet me once more before you do
anything rash. You must let me explain. You _can’t_ do what you
threaten when you think what we’ve been to each other. Meet me at
the usual place to-morrow, same time. _Please_, darling!
“Colin.”
“P. S. Destroy this.”