Colin, Who Art Thou?
Roger handed the letter back with a little smile. “How can I explain
this by my theory? Well, obviously enough, surely. ‘Colin’ must be Mr.
Russell.”
“Ah, but is he? Somehow I feel pretty sure he isn’t. Anyhow, that’s a
point we can soon settle. I bought a directory of the neighbourhood
yesterday—always do when I’m working on a case in the country. I’ll
run down and get it.”
“In the meantime,” said Roger, as the inspector’s heavy footsteps
echoed down the stairs, “we might as well get on with our lunch. I
wish I’d taken on a small bet with him about the identity of friend
Colin.”
“I shouldn’t have said there was much doubt about it,” observed
Anthony, helping himself largely to salad. “It all fits in, doesn’t
it?”
Two minutes later the inspector returned, an open book in his hand. He
laid it down on the table-cloth beside Roger and indicated an entry in
it with a large thumb.
“There you are, sir,” he said, with a commendable absence of triumph.
“‘Russell, John Henry, Rose Cottage.’ That’s your gentleman.”
“Humph!” said Roger, a little disconcerted. “But look here,” he added,
brightening, “Colin might have been a pet-name, or something like
that.”
The inspector took his place at the table. “It isn’t likely,” he said,
shaking out his napkin. “If it had been signed Tootles, or
Fuzzy-wuzzy, it might have been a pet-name all right. But Colin! No,
that doesn’t sound like a pet-name to me.”
“Then this appears to complicate matters pretty considerably,” Roger
remarked with some asperity.
“On the contrary, sir,” retorted the inspector cheerfully, applying
himself to his cold beef with every sign of satisfaction, “perhaps
it’s going to simplify them a lot.”
Roger knew that the inspector was confidently expecting to be asked to
explain this dark observation; he therefore went on with his meal in
silence. Somewhat to his surprise the inspector volunteered no
explanation of his own accord, his attention appearing to be entirely
divided between his plate and the directory, down the columns of which
he continued to run a careful thumb.
“There are two Colins in this neighbourhood,” he announced at last.
“Smith, Colin, plumber, East Row, Ludmouth, and Seaford, Colin James,
architect, 4 Burnt Oak Lane, Milbourne (that’s a village a couple of
miles inland). Neither of them looks like our man. But I hardly
expected to find him in here.”
“Why not?” asked Anthony.
“Because he’s probably a young man, living with his parents (isn’t
that a young man’s note, Mr. Sheringham, eh?); in which case of
course, he wouldn’t be mentioned. No, I shall have to spend the
afternoon making enquiries. In the meantime, I’d be much obliged if
you two gentlemen would not say anything about this. I stretched a
point in showing you what was on that paper, and I want you to
reciprocate by keeping quiet about it. I don’t want _anybody_ told,
you understand,” he added, with a significant look at Anthony; “male
_or_ female! You can promise me that, can’t you?”
“Naturally,” Roger said with a slight smile.
“Of course,” Anthony said stiffly.
“Then that’s all right,” observed the inspector with great heartiness.
“I shan’t be able to do anything until my man comes down with the
original document, of course; but he ought to be here any time now.
And by the way,” he added to Roger, “it may interest you to hear that
I’m officially in charge of the case now. I got my authorisation from
headquarters this morning.”
Roger picked up his cue. “I’ll mention that in my report to-night,
Inspector.”
“Well, you can if you want to, sir, of course,” said the inspector
with an air of innocent surprise.
As if by tacit agreement, the talk for the rest of the meal turned
upon general topics.
As soon as his pipe was alight the inspector rose to go. Roger waited
until he had left the room, then rose from his chair and darted in his
wake, closing the sitting-room door behind him.
“Inspector,” he said in a low voice, as he caught him up on the
landing, “there’s one question I must ask you. Are you intending to
arrest Miss Cross?”
The inspector looked at him quizzically. “Are you speaking as a
newspaper-man or as a friend of the lady’s, sir?”
“Neither. As Roger Sheringham, private and inquisitive citizen.”
“Well,” the inspector said slowly, “to a newspaper-man I should
answer, ‘Don’t ask me leading questions’; to a friend of the lady’s,
‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about’; and to Mr. Sheringham,
private citizen and personal friend of my own, if I may say so, ‘No,
I’m not!’”
“Ah!”
“For one thing, you see,” the inspector added with a smile, “the
evidence against her isn’t quite complete yet.”
“But look here, you don’t mean to say you still think that she may
have——”
The inspector waved aside the awkward question with a large hand. “I’m
not going to say what I think about that, even to you, Mr. Sheringham.
But one word of warning I will give you, to pass on to your cousin or
not as you think fit—things aren’t always what they seem.”
“Ah!” Roger observed. “In other words, I suppose, ladies strongly
under suspicion on circumstantial evidence aren’t necessarily guilty
after all. Is that what you mean?”
“Well, sir,” replied the inspector, who seemed not a little pleased
with his conundrum, “that’s all I’ve got to _say_. What I _mean_, you
must decide for yourself.”
“Inspector, you’re hopeless!” Roger laughed, turning back to the
sitting-room.
Anthony was brooding darkly over his empty cheese-plate.
“I say, Roger,” he said at once, looking up, “does that damned
inspector still think that Margaret had anything to do with it?”
“No, I don’t imagine so, really. He may, but I’m more inclined to
think that he’s pulling our legs about her—yours especially. And you
are a bit of a trout over Margaret, aren’t you, Anthony? You rise to
any fly that he dangles over you.”
Anthony made a non-committal growling sound, but said nothing. Roger
began to pace the little room with restless steps.
“Dash that infernal letter!” he burst out a few minutes later.
“There’s no doubt that it does complicate matters most awkwardly.
Though it doesn’t rule out my bright solution of before lunch by any
means. The inspector ought to have seen that. What she was doing with
friend Colin doesn’t affect in the slightest degree the bad blood
between her and Mrs. Russell. We mustn’t get confused by issues that
lie outside the main chance.”
There was another pause.
“I must see Margaret!” Roger announced suddenly, stopping short in his
stride. “You muttered something this morning about having arranged a
meeting. For when?”
“Well, we didn’t actually _arrange_ anything,” Anthony replied with
preternatural innocence. “She happened to say that she’d probably be
going out to that ledge this afternoon about three o’clock with a
book, and I just mentioned that——”
“Cease your puling!” Roger interrupted rudely. “It’s a quarter to
three now. Get your hat and come along.”
Five minutes later they were walking briskly up the rise from the road
to the top of the cliffs, the wind blowing coolly about their heads.
It is perhaps not uninteresting to note in passing that Anthony wore a
hat and Roger did not. And one might go on to add at the same time
that Anthony’s grey flannel trousers were faultlessly creased, while
in Roger’s not a vestige of a crease could be seen. From this sort of
thing the keen psychologist draws any number of interesting
deductions.
“I say, you don’t mind me coming along, Anthony, do you?” Roger was
asking with an appearance of great anxiety.
“Of course I don’t. Why should I?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Isn’t there some old saying about the difference
between a couple and a trio in connection with company? I mean——”
“Oh, dry up, for Heaven’s sake! You’re not funny, Roger.”
“That,” Roger maintained firmly, “is a matter of opinion. Well, let us
talk very seriously about gulls. There are no less than seven hundred
and forty distinct species of gulls known to the entomologist, of
which one hundred and eighty-two may be found by the intrepid explorer
around the rocky coasts of these Islands. Perhaps the most common
variety is the _Patum Perperium_, or Black-hearted Wombat, which may
be distinguished by——”
“What _are_ you talking about?” demanded his bewildered listener.
“Gulls, Anthony,” replied Roger, and went on doing so with singular
ardour right up to the ledge itself.
“Hullo, Margaret,” he greeted its occupant pleasantly. “Anthony and I
have been talking about gulls. Do you think you could invite us to tea
this afternoon with you?”
“To tea? Whatever for?”
“Well, it’s such a long way back to our own. Yours is so much easier.”
“Don’t take any notice of him, Margaret,” Anthony advised. “He’s only
being funny. He’s been funny ever since we left the Crown.”
“Yes, and about gulls, too,” Roger added with pride. “Extraordinarily
difficult things to be funny about, as you’ll readily understand. But
I’m quite serious about tea, Margaret. I want to have a chance of
studying the occupants of your household at close quarters.”
“Oh, I see. But why?”
“No particular reason, except that I ought to have as close a view as
possible of everybody mixed up with the case. And I must confess that
I’m rather interested to have a look at this doctor-man of yours; he
sounds interesting. Can it be done?”
The girl wrinkled her brow. “Ye-es, I should think so. Yes, of course
it can! I’m keeping house for the time being, you know. I’ll just take
you in with me, and that’s all there’ll be to it.”
“Good! You needn’t say what we are or anything about us. Just
introduce us as two friends of yours who are staying down here.”
“Yes, I understand, Miss Williamson will be there, of course, but I
don’t know about George; as often as not he has a tray sent into the
laboratory for him. Still, you can take the chance.”
“Thanks, we will,” Roger said, descending to the little ledge. “And
now, as we’ve got an hour or so to spare, I propose that we devote it
to an elevating discussion upon some subject as remote as possible
from the business in hand. How say you, my children?”
“Right!” agreed Anthony, who had taken the opportunity of propping
himself with his back to the rock as near as possible to Margaret’s
side as was consistent with the convention that a young man shall not
sit directly on top of a young woman to whom he is not engaged.
“Anything you like—except gulls!”
During the next excellent hour Roger, lying on his back in the shade a
couple of yards away and staring up into the blue sky, could not
possibly have seen a tentative hand emerge from Anthony’s pocket,
grope about the turf in an apparently aimless way for at least ten
minutes and then pluck up the courage at last to fasten firmly upon
another, and very much smaller, hand which had been lying quite still
by its owner’s side the whole time. He could not possibly have
seen—but he quite definitely knew all about it.