A Midnight Expedition
When the inspector had gone to bed that night, as he did very shortly
after this unprecedented outburst of confidence, Roger sat up to await
the return of Anthony. A plan of campaign had been forming in his
mind, and he was on tenterhooks to put it into operation.
Anthony made his appearance at half-past eleven, to be greeted by his
cousin with severity and heavy sarcasm.
“Have you been studying the beauties of nature under the pale crescent
moon?” Roger demanded. “Don’t attempt to deny it—you have! One of the
beauties of nature, at any rate. Well, it’s as well, I suppose,
because she certainly won’t be beautiful to-morrow under this
treatment. Her nose will be red, her eyes watery, and she’ll be
snuffling and sniffling with a streaming cold. There’s a picture for a
young lover! Will you love her in December, Anthony, as you did in
May?”
“Dashed funny, aren’t you?” growled the young lover, blushing warmly.
He helped himself to what the inspector had left in the whisky-bottle.
“That depends on the point of view,” Roger admitted very fairly. “_I_
think I am; you don’t. It’s all a matter of opinion.—Now, hurry up and
put that inside you, Anthony. There’s dirty work afoot for us
to-night.”
“To-night? You mean there’s something you want to do right away?”
“I do; and I’ve been waiting two or three hours for you to come in and
do it with me. I want to make a little nocturnal expedition, in
circumstances of some secrecy. To the fatal ledge, no less. You won’t
need a hat; come on. Everybody’s gone to bed, so for Heaven’s sake try
to plant your large feet down gently; I don’t want anybody to know
we’ve gone out.”
Obeying this injunction as well as possible, Anthony crept after his
cousin down to the back-door of the inn, guided by the light of the
latter’s torch. Roger softly drew back the bolts, unlocked the door
and pocketed the key. They passed cautiously through.
“I say, where are we going, Roger?” Anthony whispered.
“Yes, it is rather exciting, isn’t it?” Roger agreed, answering the
implication of the whisper rather than the actual words. “I told you,
to the ledge.”
“Yes, but why?”
“I’ll have to explain a few other things first. Wait till we’re out of
this yard.”
As they stepped out into the highroad Roger began to give his
companion an account of the evening’s work, describing the interview
with young Woodthorpe as accurately as he could. The recital took them
half-way across the stretch of turf, and then Anthony gave tongue.
“That’s the chap who did it,” said Anthony with the utmost confidence.
“Can’t you see his game? He wanted to shut her mouth; stop her telling
her husband, you see. Seems obvious to me.”
“So I suppose he put a pair of female shoes on his hands and walked
along on them beside Mrs. Vane to disguise his footmarks?” queried
Roger.
“He could easily fake those,” Anthony returned, unmoved by this
facetiousness. “The inspector himself said footprints were the easiest
thing in the world to fake.”
“Within limits,” Roger demurred. “Besides, you must remember that the
letter, which looked so suspicious at first, has rather lost its
importance. I told you, it didn’t refer to that Tuesday at all; it was
for last Tuesday fortnight.”
“You told me he _said_ it was,” Anthony retorted cunningly. “But he
can’t prove it, can he? You’ve only got his bare word to go on. And if
he did push her over, it seems to me he wouldn’t jib at telling you a
naughty fib or two, dear Roger.”
“Anthony, you overwhelm me!” Roger murmured. “To think that such a
possibility had never occurred to my simple mind. That’s the worst of
having such a trustful nature, I always believe everything I’m told.
If you were to tell me for instance that you’d been singing the Indian
Love Lyrics to a jellyfish between the hours of nine and eleven-thirty
this evening, I should believe you instantly.”
Anthony’s reply is unprintable.
When peace had been restored:
“You still haven’t told me what we’re coming here for,” Anthony
remarked.
They had reached the head of the nearer flight of steps, and Roger
began to descend, flashing his torch before and behind him for the
benefit of the following Anthony. “To have a look at that cave of
course,” he replied over his shoulder.
“But why the hurry?”
“Because if we leave it till a Christian time to-morrow,” Roger
explained patiently, “Moresby will certainly forestall us. And if
there _is_ anything interesting in the way of clues to be found there,
we shall decidedly never see it, and probably never even hear of it,
if we let Moresby get there first.”
“Oh!” said Anthony.
They gained the ledge and made their way cautiously along its narrow
width.
“By the way,” Anthony remarked airily, “Margaret was asking—that is,
do you happen to know whether that infernal inspector has still got
any comic ideas about Margaret in his head?”
“How the average Englishman does shirk a plain statement of unpleasant
fact,” Roger murmured. “He’d rather use a hundred innocent words to
wrap up his perfectly obvious meaning than half-a-dozen blunt ones.
You mean, I suppose, does Moresby still think that Margaret murdered
her cousin? Well, I don’t know. I did try to sound him, but he’s
indecently reticent on the subject. On the whole I’m inclined to think
that his ideas on that point are a little less rigid than they were.”
“Well, thank God the fellow’s beginning to see a little sense at
last,” was Anthony’s pious comment.
They progressed the rest of the way in silence, busy with their
respective thoughts.
“Walk carefully, Anthony,” Roger remarked as they approached the scene
of the tragedy. “We don’t want to leave our footprints at any rate.
Try to tread only on dry rock.”
They picked their steps with elaborate caution.
Roger halted and flashed his torch round him. “This is the spot. You
haven’t been here before, have you? That’s just about where she fell
off, by that little cleft on the edge. Now you sit down on that
boulder in front of you while I look round. We don’t want to leave
more traces than we need, and my tread is probably rather more catlike
than yours.” He began to poke about among the crevices and loose
boulders at the back of the ledge.
A subdued cry of triumph a few minutes later brought Anthony to his
side.
“This must be it,” Roger said, flashing his lamp upon a small aperture
in the cliff face, almost covered by a large boulder. “Look!” He held
his torch in the opening.
By screwing his head down to the level of his knees and peering round
a corner of the boulder Anthony was just able to make out a dim and
damp interior. “Great Scott,” he said in dismay, “I shall never be
able to get inside that.”
“It is going to be a struggle,” Roger admitted, comparing his cousin’s
burly bulk with the extremely small entrance. “A certain simile
concerning the eye of a needle occurs to me with some force. Still, if
friend Colin can do it, I should say you ought to be able to. But
don’t stick half-way, or you’ll annoy the inspector when he comes
exploring. Now then, expel a deep breath and follow Uncle Roger.” He
dropped on his hands and knees and began to worm his way inside.
“I can’t cope with that,” observed Anthony ruefully, as he watched his
cousin’s feet slowly and painfully drag themselves out of his field of
vision. “I’ll watch the proceedings from the doorway.” He assumed a
recumbent position and inserted his head and a portion of one shoulder
in the tiny opening.
Inside was a tolerably respectable little cavern, some ten feet wide
by a dozen deep, shelving at the back till ceiling met floor at an
acute angle amid a medley of small rocks and fragments of stone; along
one side a ledge two or three feet high and as many deep formed a
natural couch, while a large, flat boulder opposite was equally useful
as a table. Roger, standing upright in the centre without difficulty,
was throwing his light into the various nooks and crannies with which
the irregular sides were seamed.
“Any luck?” Anthony asked, twisting his head at an uncomfortable angle
to improve his field of view.
Roger turned his light on to the floor. “There’s no doubt the place
has been used,” he said slowly; “and used a lot. Cigarette-ends,
matches, candle-ends all over the place.” He took a couple of steps
toward the back and peered down among the rocks. “Half-a-dozen empty
chocolate boxes,” he continued, turning over his finds. “Paper bags,
sandwich wrappings, half a bun; there doesn’t seem to be anything very
exciting here.” He began to roam round the little enclosure, examining
its possibilities with careful attention. Stooping, he picked up
half-a-dozen cigarette-stubs and scrutinised them under his lamp.
“Four gaspers and two Turkish,” he delivered judgment, “the latter
marked with pink at the ends. Can you deduce anything from that,
Anthony? Pale ends, pink-tipped. . . . Probably Mrs. Vane smoked them
while chewing her chocolates, or, alternatively, chewed her chocolates
while smoking them—a purely psychological distinction which certainly
won’t interest you, but in either case an abominable practice; she
seems to me to have been that kind of woman. Well, Anthony, except so
far as we confirm friend Colin’s story, I’m very much afraid we’ve had
our journey for nothing. All these things are damp, and most of them
mildewed. I can quite believe that the place hasn’t been used for over
a fortnight.”
“Were you looking for anything in particular?”
“No, just hoping against hope.” He bent and peered into a cavity in
one of the sides. “Half-a-dozen banana skins and the remains of an
orange. Not very helpful. How very hungry this place seems to have
made those two! Well, I suppose we’d better be getting back.”
“What’s this thing just in front of me?” Anthony asked suddenly. “Bit
of newspaper or something. No, you can’t see it from where you’re
standing. Behind that big flat rock on your left.”
Roger retrieved the article in question. “A copy of _London Opinion_,”
he replied without very much interest. “That would be Master Colin’s
property, I should imagine; not the lady’s. Issue dated— Why, hullo!”
“What?” Anthony asked eagerly.
Roger paused and made a rapid mental calculation. “Good for you,
Anthony!” he exclaimed. “Do you know what this is? It’s last
Saturday’s number!”
“Oho!” observed Anthony with interest.
Roger stared at him. “So Colin was not telling the truth after all!”
he exclaimed softly.
“That’s just what I’ve been trying to din into you all the time,”
kindly pointed out his cousin.