WHEN FIRST WE PRACTICE TO DECEIVE
Bread of deceit is sweet to a man; but afterwards his mouth shall
be filled with gravel.--PROVERBS.
FATALITY AT GRASMERE
The inquest on the body of Major Trent, who was killed by a fall at the
Easedale Hotel, Grasmere, on Thursday evening, was conducted by Dr.
Ellis, coroner for Westmorland, at the Easedale Hotel on Friday.
Mr. Helmsley Trent, of Perche Place, Marybourne, Hants, identified the
body as that of his brother, Major Guy Glisson Trent, of Thurlow Park,
Surrey, and stated that the age of the deceased was thirty-nine years.
He was traveling in the Lakes with his wife on a motoring tour.
Mr. H. C. Gardiner, proprietor of the Easedale Hotel, stated that the
deceased, accompanied by his wife and her maid, came to the hotel on
Thursday evening and engaged rooms for the night. They dined in their
own apartments. About 9.30 P.M. deceased came to witness's
private parlor and made a complaint about his room. It was not usual
for guests to come to his parlor. Deceased was not drunk, but he was in
a quarrelsome mood, and inclined to make a row. Witness satisfied him
that the inconvenience complained of was due to the house being full.
Deceased then stayed on talking in a friendly way. About ten o'clock
witness suggested that it was getting late. Deceased came to the table
to fill his glass, and was standing by it when his feet slipped from
under him, and he fell backwards. No one was in the room except witness
and his friend, Mr. Merion-Smith. They were sitting by the window. The
table was between them and the deceased. They could not have reached
him in time to prevent his falling. Witness went at once to his
assistance, and found that he was already dead. His head had struck
the fender, which was about eight inches high, and had a sharp edge.
Deceased did not speak or move at all after the fall.
By the Coroner: Deceased had helped himself to whisky several times
uninvited. It was witness's private whisky. He had a tumbler in his
hand which was broken when he fell. Witness suggested that it was
getting late because he thought deceased had had enough. He was not
drunk.
By the Jury: Deceased was perfectly friendly after the first. He was
talking about India, where they had discovered mutual friends.
Miss Emily Marvin, housekeeper at the Easedale Hotel, said that the
deceased came to her to complain of his room. He was not drunk, but he
had had a drop. He seemed a very irritable sort of gentleman. Witness
took the complaint to Mr. Gardiner because she felt she could not
manage him herself. The floors were beeswaxed every Thursday morning.
They had been done that day. They were often a bit slippery at first.
She had once slipped down herself and broken a tray of glasses.
Mr. Denis Arthur Merion-Smith, aeronautical engineer, of Bredon, stated
that he was in the parlor with Mr. Gardiner when deceased came in.
Witness did not join in the conversation, but he saw all that passed.
Deceased's feet seemed to fly up in the air. He was quite dead when
they reached him. Witness loosened his collar, but was sure it would do
no good.
The Foreman: What in your opinion was the cause of the deceased's
fall?--I should not like to say. He was not intoxicated, but he was not
quite steady on his feet. A perfectly sober man would probably have
saved himself.
Dr. Leonard Scott, of Westby, said that he was staying at the Easedale
Hotel, and was called to attend deceased at about 10.30 P.M.
Deceased had apparently been dead about ten minutes when he examined
him. There was bleeding from the ears, with a deep cut at the back of
the head; also a very slight abrasion on the forehead, but this was
of no significance. It might have been caused by a splinter of glass
flying up and striking him. Death was due to fracture of the base of
the skull, and was probably instantaneous. In cases of severe fracture
that is not unusual.
By the Jury: If the deceased's feet slipped from under him, as
described by the other witnesses, his head would strike the fender
first. Deceased was a heavy man, and such a fall would be quite
sufficient to fracture his skull.
P. C. Thornborough gave details of the position of the body....
There was plenty more. Dr. Scott skimmed through it all to the verdict
of accidental death, and the jury's expressions of sympathy with the
widow. He read it standing in the street of Ambleside, and then doubled
the paper under his arm and trudged the five miles back to Grasmere.
The Easedale Hotel was no longer full. A violent death, an inquest,
and a confinement had emptied the house and attracted instead a crowd
of casual sightseers. The lounge and terrace were full of them. Scott
asked for Gardiner, and climbed many stairs to the roof. Coming out
of a last trap-door, he beheld Gardiner and his friend among the
chimney-pots, in close conversation, which died instantly on his
appearance.
There was a table, there were chairs, there was a bed beneath an
awning. Gardiner, at full length on a lounge, swung his feet to the
ground and welcomed his visitor. Merion-Smith acknowledged him with a
distant nod.
"I've brought you the local rag," said Scott, planting himself firmly
on a hard upright chair. "It has a full report. I walked over to
Ambleside for it."
Gardiner thanked him amiably, glanced over the sheet, and passed it to
Denis, who read solidly through from end to end; this to keep out of
the conversation. "Here's a man I don't know: safe to be a bounder:
confound his impudence!"--such was his attitude to the casual stranger.
He did not like the middle classes.
"We're up here because he didn't fancy the parlor," said Gardiner, with
a lazy nod towards his friend. "Says the place makes him sick. You'd
expect a flying man to have cranks, wouldn't you? He has enough to
stock an engine. What do you recommend for nerves, doctor?"
"M'm! you don't look up to much yourself. You're the color of brown
holland."
"Me? I'm as limp as a rag; never felt so pale in my life. All these
agitations are so trying," said Gardiner, filling his pipe and pushing
the cigarettes across the table. "Help yourself. I can recommend them;
that fellow never buys a cheap smoke. How's Mrs. Trent?"
"As well as can be expected."
"Poor little woman," said Gardiner. "I say, doctor, I am beastly sorry
about this. Sorrier than I've been about most things in my life."
The sincere feeling behind his words drew out Scott's impatient reply.
"Woman! She's a child: not a day over twenty. A girl's too young at
that age to marry and face this sort of thing. I'd make it illegal."
"My dear man, don't shout at me! _I_ don't know how old she is:
couldn't tell her from Eve, if I met her. I never saw her without that
motor veil thing hanging over her face. She's lost her child, hasn't
she?"
"She has."
"Do you know where she comes from, or anything about her people?"
"What the maid told me. She has no people. Lived till her marriage with
an uncle and aunt who owed her a grudge about some money that was left
to her over the uncle's head. They wouldn't let her speak to a man, for
fear she should marry and they lose the enjoyment of it. Trent made her
elope with him. Naturally she looked on him as a sort of St. George."
"A good thing he died before she found him out, then."
"He was a rascal, was he?"
"Well, he wasn't precisely a St. George."
"H'm!" said Scott. It was an expression he used often, and with
varying meaning. Gardiner smoked in silence. Denis, who had read to
the end of the inquest, propped his tall, immaculate person against a
chimney-stack and watched them both. When he did not snap, the little
doctor expressed himself like an educated man, and his voice was pure
in quality. These things were in his favor.
"Has she still got that idea in her head about me?" asked Gardiner.
"How do I know, man? Do you suppose I talk to my patients about things
of that kind? She hasn't mentioned you at all, so far as I know. Lies
still, says nothing, asks no questions--brooding over that scamp, I
suppose. Well, she's getting better, and that's all that concerns me."
"Yes," said Gardiner. He looked very tired. "If you see a chance, give
her my regrets and condolences and all that, will you? You might pitch
it pretty strong. I shan't be here to do it myself."
"You won't? Where are you going?"
"Oh, I've sold the place, and I'm clearing out. Didn't you know? I was
going in any case at the end of the month, and I've put it forward
a bit, to give my successor a chance. All this fuss is very bad for
trade. It's emptied the house. It'll fill up again quicker if I'm out
of it."
"Where are you going yourself, hey?"
"To the most beautiful place in the Ardennes, which I design to run as
a sanatorium--no, not a common open-air shop, but healthful bracing
breezes for the jaded, don't you know? Very great it's going to be. I
invite you to come out and pay me a visit."
"H'm! do you think I have nothing to do but run about the Continent
enjoying myself?"
"Oh, I thought you might combine business with pleasure--see the place,
and then recommend it to your patients. I should be charmed to receive
them."
"You would, would you? Not half so pleased as they'd be to come."
"Why, who are your patients?" asked Gardiner, idly answering the
significance of his tone.
"Criminals," said the little man. "I'm doctor at Westby Jail--where
you'd be at this minute, if Mrs. Trent had had her way."
Denis would not look at his friend. "I can't say I envy you your job,"
remarked the young man.
"That just shows you don't know anything about it," was the instant
retort. "Criminals have souls as well as you, haven't they? There are
better men in prison than scores I've met outside, whom our ungodly
laws can't or won't touch. I've known one man get eighteen months for
stealing a pair of boots, and another let off with a fine and a caution
for roasting a cat on the fire. Christians? Why, we haven't got up
to the ten commandments yet! The Jews did put _Thou shalt not kill_
and _Thou shalt not commit Adultery_ before _Thou shalt not steal_;
but impurity's nothing to us, and cruelty not much more. Christians!
We reserve our jails for any one who dares to meddle with our sacred
property. Upon my soul, I wonder any man can find the face to refuse
the women a share in mending the laws of this land, considering the
pretty mess we've made of them ourselves!"
He shot out of his chair and marched to the edge of the roof. Gardiner
followed, laughing, and sat on the parapet. A rose and silver sunset
was darkening the fells above Easedale Tarn, and the moon, a globe of
pearl, made beautiful the cold gray eastern sky.
"I don't know what you want to leave your own country for," said Scott,
still irascible, but simmering into calm. "Isn't this good enough for
you?"
"Oh, I'm out for a land where they have more Christian laws," said
Gardiner easily. "England's too civilized to be livable," he added.
Scott did not hear him. He was studying the house under their feet.
"That's Mrs. Trent's room below, I suppose? And your parlor below
that, on the ground floor? Any one in that south wing opposite could
see straight in. Lucky for you there was nobody watching on Thursday
evening."
"_Lucky?_ What the devil do you mean?"
Scott turned round and stared in the face.
"You didn't want any visitors in hysterics, did you? Enough people
involved in it already, aren't there? What do you mean yourself?"
"I thought," said Gardiner, "I thought you were echoing Mrs. Trent's
idea, and suggesting I'd done him in."
It was the best he could do, but it was not good. Scott stared at him
with his bright eyes, shifted them to Denis, and brought them back to
Gardiner again. Gardiner knew that in the first moment of surprise he
had started violently, changed color, showed all the signs of guilt.
Nothing could erase that impression.
"Your nerves must be in a bad way for you to jump like that at an
innocent remark," said Scott dryly.
"They are, I told you so. You can give me something for them, if you
like. I don't mind swallowing your beastlinesses."
"No," said Scott. He pulled out his watch. "I must go to my patient.
Good-night to you both." He climbed down through the trap-door, and
then poked his head up again to add: "Mind, I never meddle with what
isn't my concern. Never."
He was seen no more, and they heard him descending the ladder.
"Damn," said Gardiner.
"He won't make any use of it," said Denis. "That's not a bad little
chap, Harry."
"Not a bad little chap? He's a most confoundedly inquisitive little
chap! He won't rest till he's ferreted out the whole thing. Oh, _damn_!
I wouldn't have had this happen for anything. Why the devil couldn't I
keep my countenance? I thought I might have trusted myself for that!"
He paced up and down in a fury.
"You've had a tryin' time."
"Trying? I've had a scarifying time! That inquest, when the foreman
began pumping you--I'd have murdered you as well, Denis, if you hadn't
been adroit. But if I'm going to lose my nerve over such trifles as
this--what an ass! oh, what an ass!"
He threw himself back on the lounge. Denis could not help feeling that
he took it rather weakly. He did not allow for the rift in his friend's
armor, that demoralizing fear of confinement. In these last few days
their positions seemed to have been reversed.
"Scott can't do anything," he said rather coolly. "It's no use his
suspectin' if there's no one he can pump, and there isn't. I'm not
going to give it away, and you aren't either, when you're yourself
again. As to Mrs. Trent, she can't prove anything from the chisel--you
might have left it there from openin' the case. Besides, Scott wouldn't
discuss it with her. He's above that."
"I dare say you're right, but I wish I hadn't been such an ass, and I
wish he weren't the doctor at Westby," said Gardiner, with a huge yawn,
"it brings it so unpleasantly near. Oh, Lord! I am tired. Do you mind
clearing out now? I expect I shall sleep like a log. Please the pigs,
in another couple of weeks' time I'll be out of this over-civilized,
over-populated country!"