End of a Scoundrel
For a moment there was silence. Then:
“_Dead?_” Roger echoed incredulously. “You say he’s _dead?_”
“As a door-nail,” asserted the inspector without emotion. “Only just
(he’s still warm), but dead right enough.”
“Well, I’ll be damned!” said Roger blankly.
The inspector turned his eyes back to the motionless form in the chair
and continued to tug his moustache. “Hell!” he observed simply. As an
epitaph for the Rev. Samuel the remark was perhaps not inapposite.
“This appears to have torn it,” Roger said, closing the door behind
him and advancing gingerly.
“It does indeed,” the inspector agreed, and his tone was one of
profound regret. Roger gathered that the inspector was feeling balked.
Together they gazed at the occupant of the chair.
“Well, what’s the next move?” Roger asked, after a full minute’s
silence.
The inspector seemed to recall himself with an effort from some
meditation of his own. “The next move?” he repeated vaguely. “Well, we
shall have to get a doctor in at once, of course. And as you’re here,
sir,” he went on in brisker tones, “I wish you’d be good enough to get
him for me, will you? By rights I ought to stay here and see that
nothing’s disturbed and the body left untouched; and I shall want a
word with the landlady too.”
“Of course I will,” Roger assented at once. “Any particular doctor?”
“Well, there probably won’t be more than one in a place this size. The
landlady can tell us his name and address. It’s early yet, so you
ought to be able to catch him before he goes out. And on your way back
you might see if you can get hold of the local constable (he lives
quite near here, I know) and send him along too. I don’t want to let
the body out of my sight for more than a second at a time till he
comes, and that’ll leave me a bit freer.”
“Yes, rather,” Roger said, opening the door, “I’ll go at once.”
They made their way out into the passage and the inspector sent a
stentorian voice flying upstairs in search of the landlady. She
appeared at the top of the stairs, wiping her hands on a floor-cloth.
“Mr. Meadows is ill,” said the inspector abruptly. “What’s the name
and address of the nearest doctor?”
“Ill, is he?” said the stout landlady, much concerned. “Well, that’s
funny. Poor gentleman! He seemed quite all right when I took his
breakfast in to him. Not serious, I do hope? ‘Good-morning, Mrs.
Harper,’ he said, just the same as usual. ‘What’ve you got for
breakfast to-day?’ he said. And I——”
Firmly the inspector cut short the flow of the volubility and
extracted the desired information. Roger set out, leaving him to break
the news to her of her lodger’s untimely death. It was strange, he
reflected, that although in the past few people could have ardently
desired for the Rev. Samuel, under any of his pseudonyms, a long lease
of life, yet his death was a matter of deep regret for everybody in
Ludmouth who had had anything to do with him.
The doctor’s house was over half-a-mile distant, and with the help of
an intermittent jog-trot Roger managed to cover the ground to it in
less than five minutes. As the inspector had predicted, the doctor had
not yet started out on his rounds and, his surgery being just over,
Roger was able to see him at once. Somewhat breathlessly he stated his
business, the doctor, a tall, angular man with pince-nez on a pointed
nose, asked a few pertinent questions and hastily stuffed some things
into a small leather bag, and they set off together on foot, Dr. Young
apologising briefly for not being able to offer a seat in his car,
which was not yet ready for its morning’s work.
They walked briskly, in spite of the growing heat of the day, but not
too briskly for Roger to volunteer the answers to various questions
which the doctor might have asked but didn’t.
Fortunately their route took them past the house of the local
constable, which Dr. Young was able to point out, and the latter
waited while Roger routed out its occupant and told him to get into
tunic and helmet and follow on as quickly as he could. The constable’s
large red jaw dropped ludicrously as he assimilated Roger’s terse
communication.
Let into the house by the now white-faced and speechless landlady,
they hurried down the passage and into the sitting-room. With a nod to
the inspector the doctor stood for a moment, allowing his trained eye
to take in and photograph on his brain every detail of the dead man’s
attitude. Then he approached to make a closer and more detailed
examination, scrutinising the surface of the skin and tilting back the
head to obtain a clear view of the face.
“No distortion,” he murmured, half to himself and half to the
inspector. “No convulsions before death.” He lifted an eyelid with his
thumb and peered into the eye. “Pupils not contracted,” he announced,
and went on with methodical care to examine the dead man’s tongue.
Roger watched the rather gruesome business with profound interest. He
had already formed a tentative theory to account for the man’s death,
and was anxiously awaiting some confirmation of it from the doctor’s
lips. In the passage outside the constable signalled his arrival by
blowing his nose importantly.
The doctor straightened up and adjusted his pince-nez, turning to the
inspector. “You’ve got the case in hand?” he remarked. “Inspector
Moresby, isn’t it?”
“That’s right, sir,” said the inspector, economically answering both
questions at once.
“Yes, I’ve heard about you, of course. Gossip soon travels in a place
like this, and the doctor’s always one of the first to hear it. Well,
it seems you’re going to have a second case to look after, Inspector.”
“Ah!” said the inspector.
The doctor indicated the body with a careless gesture. “Know anything
about him?”
“Very little,” the Inspector replied untruthfully. “I’d got my eye on
him, though,” he admitted.
“Any reason to suspect suicide?” asked the doctor curtly.
“Well—no reason to _ex_pect it, doctor,” returned the inspector with
some care. “No, certainly not.”
“Um!” The doctor removed his pince-nez and began to polish them with
his handkerchief. “You were on your way to arrest him, I understand?”
“Somebody seems to have been talking,” the inspector observed, and
grinned openly at Roger’s guilty blush.
“I mean,” amplified the doctor, “there may be some connection.”
“You think it’s poison, then?” enquired the inspector genially.
The doctor frowned. “I can’t possibly say that yet, till I’ve examined
the body. At present I see no marks of violence. I’d like to get him
on to his bed; will you give me a hand?”
Between them they carried the slight figure without difficulty
upstairs and into a room which the stout landlady, fluttering round
them like a corpulent hen on the landing, indicated as the dead man’s
bedroom. The doctor began to undress the body, the inspector helping
him, and Roger, for once feeling himself in the way, retired to the
sitting-room downstairs to await their verdict.
On the floor by the chair in which the dead man had been sitting lay
his pipe, fallen no doubt from his nerveless hand. Roger was about to
pick it up with aimless curiosity, when he remembered that nothing
should be handled except by the official police. He sat down on a hard
horsehair sofa of uninviting aspect and began to think furiously.
At the first shock this unexpected death had seemed completely to
upset his carefully worked out theory, the success of which had seemed
last night to be a foregone conclusion; but during his hurried mission
to the doctor even this had fallen into its place in the scheme. Long
before the word suicide had been mentioned at all Roger had arrived at
the same conclusion. This explanation, he had realised, so far from
upsetting the theory, comfortably confirmed it. Meadows must have got
wind of the fact that the net was being drawn round him, and had taken
in desperation the only way out. And how had he thus got wind? Even
though he was alone, Roger wriggled a trifle guiltily.
It would be an exaggeration to say that Roger had betrayed the
inspector’s confidence. It would be no exaggeration at all to say,
putting it on its mildest possible terms, that he had been indiscreet.
Actually in touch over the telephone with the editor of the _Courier_
(that great man) himself, he had let slip something more than the
demure “important developments are expected at any minute” of his
official report; he had, in fact, so far given way to his
temperamental volubility as to hint that the important developments
were due entirely to the _Courier’s_ own special correspondent and his
remarkable acumen, the said correspondent having unearthed in the
neighbourhood, by a cunning and perspicacity far exceeding that of his
official colleague and rival, the presence of a notorious criminal
whose past life had been discovered to be bound up with that of the
deceased, who had ample motive for compassing her death, and who was
actually going to be arrested, though not ostensibly on this account,
the very next day—all of which had duly appeared, in a little
laudatory article upon the special correspondent, as a preface to his
own article that morning. It is true that Roger had imagined himself
to be speaking in the strictest confidence, but he had certainly erred
in overestimating a newsman’s sense of personal honour where his
paper’s interests are concerned.
He glanced across at the _Courier_ which had been taken from the dead
man’s knees and wriggled again. Reading that little paragraph, Meadows
could hardly fail to realise that his game was up; nobody else perhaps
could see the personal application, but to the man concerned it must
have been as clear as daylight. Roger ruefully anticipated a bad
quarter-of-an-hour with the inspector. However leniently the latter
might be disposed to treat the slip and however readily he might
accept Roger’s own explanation, this must mean the end of even such
meagre confidences as he had been cajoled into bestowing.
Roger began to compose a letter to the editor of the _Courier_ in
which he purposed to acquaint that great man with the precise and
unvarnished state of his feelings toward him.
He was still in the middle of its vitriolic sentences when the
inspector and the doctor reappeared.
“Yes,” the former was saying, “I’ll arrange all that with the Coroner,
doctor. Ten o’clock to-morrow morning, the inquest (I don’t see that
we can put it much earlier than that) so you’ll be able to get going
by eleven.”
“Mr. Simpson—the Coroner—I’m afraid you’ll find him rather a fussy
little man,” said the doctor doubtfully. “Very full of his own dignity
and importance.”
“Oh, I won’t tread on his toes,” the inspector laughed. “I’m used to
fussy coroners, I can tell you. I promise you he’ll call the inquest
for ten all right, when I’ve done with him. And you’ll get in touch
with the Sandsea man right away?”
The doctor nodded. “Yes, but of course the Coroner will have to
confirm it.”
“I’ll see he does that,” returned the inspector confidently. “Dear me,
look like having a busy day in front of me, don’t I? And then there’s
all these things in here to seal up and send to Sir Henry Griffen for
analysis. Bother the Rev. Samuel Meadows! What did he want to go and
give me all this trouble for?”
“It is suicide, then?” eagerly put in Roger, who had been waiting with
impatience during this exchange for an opportunity of learning what
had been discovered. “He did take poison?”
Dr. Young looked disapproving before this leading question. “Really,
it’s quite impossible to say yet; we must look to the post-mortem to
establish the cause of death. There are no signs of apoplexy, it’s
true, but he may have had a bad heart. It’s impossible to say anything
definitely yet.”
“You’ll have to wait for the adjourned inquest for all that, Mr.
Sheringham, sir,” said the inspector reprovingly, though his eyes
twinkled. “Be careful what you say to this gentleman,” he added to the
doctor. “He’s a pressman. They’re all unscrupulous, but he’s worse
than most.”
“Yes,” said Roger, considerably relieved to find that the other was
disposed to treat his blunder so jocularly. “Yes, I’ve got to grovel
to you, Inspector, I know. I’ve got a perfectly good explanation, but
I know I don’t deserve to be forgiven. Say when you’ve got a spare
quarter-of-an-hour to-day, and I’ll come and grovel _ad lib_.” He
turned to the doctor. “Then those are the only three
possibilities—apoplexy, heart or poison?”
“So far as one can say,” agreed the doctor guardedly.
“And you’ve no idea at all what poison it is?”
“I’ve no idea that it is even poison at all.”
Roger eyed his interlocutor sadly. There was such a lot of possible
information to be obtained, and apparently so little probability of
obtaining it. For the life of him he did not know what to ask next.
“Well, doctor, you’ll be wanting to get along now, I suppose,” the
inspector broke in on this dilemma. “And Mr. Sheringham, I’m afraid I
shall have to turn you out of here. This room’s got to be kept locked
from now on, and nobody allowed in except under orders from me.”
“Right-ho, Inspector,” Roger acquiesced. “And of course all these
breakfast things and so on will have to be analysed, if they do find
poison in the body, won’t they? By the way, there’s his pipe on the
floor there; he may have been smoking it just before he died.—Well,
doctor, if we’re to be turned out, I’ll stroll along part of the way
with you.”
The doctor managed to conceal his joy at the prospect.
Inspector Moresby watched them go with his twinkle in full action. His
obvious surmise was not amiss. Roger obtained some excellent exercise,
but nothing else. For half-a-mile he walked by the doctor’s side,
pumping busily; but either the well of his companion’s information had
run dry or else the pumping machinery was out of gear. In either case,
truth remained coyly in her fastness and none of Roger’s strenuous
efforts succeeded in bringing her to the surface.
Returning disconsolate to the inn, however, he had a pleasant surprise
in finding Anthony unexpectedly in attendance. For the next hour or
two he was able to discourse, on the farthest unsubmerged rock, to a
thrilled audience of one to his heart’s content.