Preparations for an Arrest
The next day was a Sunday, and Roger made it a day of rest. He did not
welcome inactivity, but pending the arrival of Scotland Yard’s report
on the thumb-print he did not quite see what there was to do. During
the morning he lay on the little grassy ledge and lazily discussed the
case and life in general with Margaret and Anthony; during the
afternoon he lay there alone, with a book, while Margaret and Anthony
discussed other aspects of life somewhere else by themselves. The
inspector appeared to be busy on some trail of his own, and was not in
evidence.
In the evening Roger and Anthony both went to supper at Dr. Vane’s. It
appeared that the doctor had taken a liking to Roger, and the
invitation had come from him. He even went so far as to close the
laboratory altogether from six o’clock onward, which Roger rightly
interpreted as a compliment of the first magnitude. They passed a
pleasant if quiet evening, and no reference was made by anybody to
Mrs. Vane, her death or the resulting investigations. “In fact,” as
Roger confided later to Anthony during their walk home, “if one hadn’t
been told it was a house of mourning, one would never have guessed for
an instant that the mistress of it died violently less than a week
ago.”
Roger found himself returning Dr. Vane’s liking almost with interest.
The big, burly man was so genuine, so sincere, and (as Roger felt) so
transparently honest. His predilections he did not attempt to
disguise, and where he hated Roger was sure he would be no less
candid. Summing up his impressions on their rather silent walk home,
Roger found himself convinced that, whatever his feelings may have
been once, the doctor had very little affection for his wife at the
time of her death. Equally certainly his attitude toward Miss
Williamson was one merely of rather impersonal camaraderie.
“A disheartening business for any modest girl who’s trying as hard as
that lady is, I should imagine,” Roger told himself.
The next day was also a period of enforced rest. On this occasion,
however, Roger had not only himself but Anthony as well to amuse.
Margaret, it transpired, burdened by the household duties of a Monday,
was unable to devote a single minute to anything outside them. Roger,
fancying that he was able to appreciate these tactics, watched a
restless Anthony moodily kicking small stones on the road in front of
the inn till eleven o’clock, when the second post brought no official
envelope for Inspector Moresby, and then carried him off in the hired
two-seater to spend the day in Sandsea. They got back at half-past
seven (the two-seater, which was of a decidedly decrepit nature,
having behaved not at all well by the roadside) and found the
inspector awaiting them in the sitting-room.
“Hullo, Inspector,” Roger said at once. “Any news by the last post?”
The inspector regarded him benevolently. “Yes, sir; I’ve heard from
headquarters.”
“Have you? Any luck?”
“Luck, sir?” said the inspector with maddening deliberation. “Well, it
depends what you call luck, doesn’t it? Are you two gentlemen ready
for supper? I’m so hungry, I could eat an ox. Funny thing, the heat
always seems to make me hungry. My wife says——”
“Inspector,” Roger interrupted rudely, “I’m sorry for your wife and
family. Very sorry. They must suffer a good deal. By the way, did you
say you _had_ heard from Scotland Yard?”
“Yes, sir; I have. Why?”
“I refuse to play mouse to your cat, Inspector Moresby,” Roger said
with dignity. “So hand over that report, before I break your head.
Even a mouse will turn, you know.”
“I thought we could talk about it after supper, Mr. Sheringham,” the
inspector remarked innocently.
“Did you? Well, think again. Report, please Inspector!”
“He’s an impatient sort of gentleman, your cousin, isn’t he?” the
inspector observed to Anthony, grinning maddeningly.
“Yes, but he’s awfully dangerous when roused. We always humour him in
the family.”
“Is that good for him though, in the long run?” asked the inspector
with an air of earnest enquiry. “Now my experience of these impatient
people is that you ought to——”
Roger opened the door and called downstairs. “Landlord, empty the
flowing bowl! We shan’t want our supper till midnight!”
“I give in, sir,” said the inspector hastily. “Here’s the report!”
“Fill the flowing bowl, landlord,” Roger countermanded in stentorian
tones. “We’ll have supper at once.”
The report was all that Roger could have desired. Its laconic wording
ran as follows:—
“The impression is of the right thumb of Sam Field, _alias_ Slippery
Sam, _alias_ The Shrimp, _alias_ The Sky Pilot, _alias_ Herbert
Peters, _alias_ Herbert Smith, etc. etc. Served two years, 1909–11,
for robbery with violence; three years, 1913–16, for burglary; five
years, 1918–23, for fraud and embezzlement. Wanted now on three
similar charges. Small, dark, mole on right cheek, blue eyes, large
nose; good education, speaks well, ingratiating manners. Fond of
disguising himself as a solicitor, clergyman or other member of the
professional classes.”
“Golly!” observed Roger, and handed the report to Anthony.
“I thought you’d be interested, sir,” said the inspector blandly. “So
it’s the Rev. Samuel Meadows, is it? I thought I’d seen that man’s
face before, if you remember. Must have had a photograph of him
through my hands.”
“Herbert Peters!” Roger murmured raptly. “Do you know, I _guessed_
right inside me that he’d turn out to be Mrs. Vane’s husband, but I
daren’t put it into words; it seemed too good to be true. But I
thought you said you’d got no information about Herbert Peters?”
“Yes, that was a bad bit of routine work,” the inspector admitted
handsomely.
“You’ve got no doubts about it now, I suppose?” Roger persisted.
The inspector did not reply directly. “What do you imagine his motive
was?” he asked instead.
“Well, he was blackmailing her, obviously. It was a gift for him. She
married the doctor when he was in the middle of that five years’
stretch, evidently hoping that he wouldn’t be able to trace her. Oh,
yes; it was a gift for friend Peters.”
“But that doesn’t answer my question, sir,” the inspector pointed out
mildly. “That would be a motive for her murdering him, not he her.
What do you imagine _his_ motive was?”
Roger helped himself to pickled onions. “Well, it’s impossible to say
definitely, isn’t it? I daresay I could think of half-a-dozen
perfectly good motives, but this one strikes me as the most obvious:
she knew there were two or three warrants out against him, so she
countered his threat of blackmail with a threat of her own, to hand
him over to the police. He got the wind up and pushed her over the
cliff in a sudden panic. How’s that?”
“That’s quite plausible,” the inspector agreed.
“After you with the potatoes, Anthony,” said Roger. “Well, what do you
think about it, fair coz?”
“Seems clear enough to me. We know he was there, and as you say, he
probably had plenty of motives. Perhaps he was really in love with her
and frightfully jealous. Then he might have sort of seen red when she
told him what she’d done, mightn’t he?”
“Yes, that’s a good idea,” Roger agreed. “No blackmail at all, you
mean. And that fits in with what Margaret said about her being
frightened of somebody a week or two before her death. By the way,
Anthony, you can tell Margaret now that she needn’t bother about
searching any more in Mrs. Vane’s papers.”
“What’s that, sir?” queried the inspector.
Roger explained how he had been trying to approach the identity of the
mysterious stranger by two different routes.
“Going behind the backs of the official police, eh?” the inspector
commented. “Well, well, reporters will be reporters, I suppose.”
“And officials will be official. Well, what are you going to do about
it all, official one? You’ll arrest him, of course?”
“Am I talking to a reporter?” asked the inspector cautiously.
“Not unless you want to. ‘Important developments are expected at any
minute.’ Is that what you mean?”
“For the time being, if you please, sir. I shan’t arrest him to-night,
you see.”
“Not to-night?”
“No. I’ll go along and see a magistrate and get a warrant after
supper, but I shan’t arrest him till to-morrow morning. There’s no
hurry, and it’s more convenient in a little place like this. He can’t
have taken alarm at your interview with him on Saturday, or he’d have
cleared out before now, and I’ve already made sure he hasn’t done
that.”
“But why trouble to traipse off to a magistrate and get a warrant?”
Roger asked curiously. “I thought you didn’t need a warrant for an
arrest on suspicion of murder.”
“But I’m not going to arrest him on suspicion of murder, sir.”
“You’re not?” Roger said in surprise. “Why not?”
“For several reasons,” the inspector returned non-committally. “For
one thing it’s handier, when there are other reasons for arresting a
man, not to do so on the murder charge. They’re more liable to give
themselves away than if you’ve started off by frightening them to
death already. We usually find it pays. And besides, it gives us an
excuse for holding them when our murder evidence may not be quite
complete.”
“I see. I’m learning things about our official criminologists.”
“We’re nasty people to get into the hands of, sir,” the inspector said
jovially.
“You are indeed. I shall think quite seriously before committing my
next murder. And you imagine you’ll be able to induce Meadows to give
himself away?”
“We have our ways of making people talk,” observed the inspector
darkly.
There was a short silence.
“Well, I must be getting along now,” said Anthony, and went.
Roger regarded the closed door for a moment. “It’s nice to be young,”
he said, from the depths of his thirty-six years.
“Humph, yes; but there’s a rude awakening coming, I’m afraid,” replied
the inspector with surprising gloom.
“Your profession seems to have made a pessimist of you, Inspector,”
Roger smiled.
The inspector meditated this. “Well, perhaps it has; but there’s one
thing I have learnt—things are seldom in reality as they appear on the
surface! And that’s a thing youth never has and never will learn.”
“Hark to the disillusionment of middle-age!” Roger laughed, refusing
to echo the other’s suddenly serious tone.
They settled down to a comfortable discussion of the case.
“There’s only one thing that still puzzles me,” Roger said a little
later. “Everything else falls into place neatly enough, but what on
earth is a pair of Mrs. Russell’s shoes doing in the jig-saw?”
“I was wondering when you’d come to them,” the inspector agreed.
“There _are_ ways in which the chap could get hold of them, of
course,” Roger mused. “I did myself. Or I suppose he could have bought
them at a jumble sale, or picked them out of the ash-bin. But why? And
why Mrs. Russell’s?”
“There are all sorts of ways of accounting for that pair of shoes, I
take it,” the inspector said thoughtfully. “Your idea is that his
object was to leave a female trail behind him, if he was going to
leave any trail at all?”
“Yes; the same as with the coat-button. Substituting the Rev. Samuel’s
name for Miss Williamson’s, by the way, I think the explanation you
put forward to account for the coat-button must be the correct one,
Inspector. It certainly seems the simplest.”
“Well, in that case, if all he wanted was to leave a female trail,”
continued the inspector, who evidently preferred to deal with one
point at a time, “the question of the ownership of the shoes becomes
unimportant. All that matters is that they shall be female shoes, and
large enough for him to be able to get into them more or less, after
their sides have been split. Isn’t that what you mean?”
“Precisely.”
“Well,” said the inspector, with an air of clinching the topic, “as I
said, then, there are all sorts of ways of accounting for his
possession of that pair.”
“That’s perfectly true,” Roger assented.
A few minutes later the inspector left to seek his magistrate.
He had not been gone long before Anthony returned. Margaret had seemed
a little seedy (reported the latter), admitting on pressure to a touch
of hay fever or incipient influenza or something equally depressing,
and had been unable to stop out long, nor had Anthony pressed her to
allow him to accompany her indoors for a time; with reluctance both
had agreed that she would be better in bed. However, he had been able
to break the great news to her and was now the bearer of her heartiest
and rapturous congratulations to Roger.
“Well, I’m not sorry you’re back, Anthony, I must say,” observed that
gentleman, having elicited these facts. “Entrancing though my company
should be, I was beginning to get just a trifle satiated with it.
Besides, it’s a shame and an abominable thing to stay indoors on an
evening like this. Let’s stroll down to the sea-level and gloat over
the moonlight on a rock somewhere, while your Uncle Roger tells you
what a great man he is.”
__________________________________________________________________
Before letting him out of his sight, Roger had extracted a promise
from the unwilling inspector, obtained by means of the most blatant
threats in connection with his capacity as a reporter, to allow him to
be in at the death on the following morning. Not altogether trusting
to the efficacy of a promise won under such conditions however, he was
out of bed at least an hour earlier than usual and proceeded to watch
the inspector’s door with lynx-eyed assiduity. He need not really have
troubled. Inspector Moresby, while quite alive to the advantages of
appearing to grant a difficult favour, had not the least objection to
figuring on a million breakfast-tables as the hero of a thrilling
arrest, complete with full details “from our special correspondent,
who was an actual eye-witness of the scene.” Not the very least
objection. Roger had lost an hour’s sleep for nothing.
They breakfasted and set out together, leaving Anthony to kick his
heels in the inn or meditate over the beauties of nature from the top
of a convenient cliff as he saw fit.
The house in which the Rev. Samuel Meadows, _alias_ Slippery Sam,
_alias_ Herbert Peters, _alias_ etc. etc., had taken rooms, was in the
centre of the village. The two walked briskly along to the front door,
Roger on his toes with excitement at reaching the end of the chase,
the inspector relating anecdotes of the _really_ interesting arrests
he had effected.
A stout woman opened the door to them and smiled as she recognised
Roger. “Yes, he’s in his sitting-room,” she said, in answer to their
inquiries. “I took his breakfast along not much over an hour ago, and
he hasn’t gone out yet. Not but what he isn’t a quiet gentleman
altogether, the Rev. Meadows; never does go out much, he doesn’t.
Keeps ’imself _to_ ’imself, as you might say. A better lodger I
couldn’t wish for. Now the last gentleman who had these rooms——”
“Can we go along?” asked Roger.
“To be sure you can, sir,” agreed the stout woman with much
heartiness. “You know the way, don’t you? Seeing as you were here only
the other day, I mean. And you might tell him I’ll be down in a minute
for the tray, will you, sir? Then you’ll be more comfortable-like, you
see. I ought to have fetched it sooner, I know, but what with one
thing and another, there! the time goes before you ever notice it’s
gone, doesn’t it?”
“Long before,” Roger murmured mechanically, following the inspector
down the narrow passage. Still discoursing, the stout woman
disappeared into the upper regions.
The two stopped out of sight of the stairs and Roger indicated the
door of the Rev. Samuel’s sitting-room. Dispensing with the formality
of a knock, the inspector pushed it open and entered.
Just inside the threshold he halted so abruptly that Roger, following
close on his heels, collided with his burly back. “Hullo!” he
exclaimed softly. “Hul-_lo!_”
Roger peered over his shoulder. The Rev. Samuel Meadows was certainly
there, for he could see him seated in a chair by the window, a copy of
the _Courier_ across his knees. But his head was sunk on his chest,
one arm hung limply by his side, and his whole attitude was twisted
and unnatural.
“Good God!” Roger exclaimed in shocked tones. “What’s the matter with
him?”
The inspector strode forward, bent to peer into the half-hidden face,
and thrust his hand inside the clerical coat. Then he stood up and
tugged at his moustache, staring down at the still, crumpled figure.
“The matter, sir?” he repeated slowly. “He’s dead—that’s what’s the
matter with him.”