Scotland Yard Takes a Hand
It was a singular greeting, to say the least, and the person who
uttered it was quite as remarkable as his queer method of expressing
himself seemed to indicate.
Grant, though in a fume of hot anger, had the good sense to choke back
the first impetuous reprimand trembling on his lips. In fact, wrath
quickly subsided into blank incredulity. He saw before him, not the
conventional detective who might be described as a superior
Robinson—not even the sinewy, sharp-eyed, and well-spoken type of man
whom he had once heard giving evidence in a famous jewel-robbery
case—but rather one whom he would have expected to meet in the bar of a
certain well-known restaurant in Maiden Lane, a corner of old London
where literally all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women
merely players.
During his theatrical experiences he had come across scores of such
men, dapper little fellows, wizened of face yet curiously youthful in
manner; but they, each and all, were labeled “low comedian.” Certainly,
a rare intelligence gleamed from this man’s eyes, but that is an
attribute not often lacking in humorists who command high salaries
because of their facility in laughter-making. This man, too, had the
wide, thin-lipped, mobile mouth of the actor. His ivory-white, wrinkled
forehead and cheeks, the bluish tint on jaws and chin, his voice, his
perky air, the very tilt of his straw hat, were eloquent of the
footlights. Even his opening words, bizarre and cheerfully impertinent,
smacked of “comic relief.”
“I figure prominently in this particular ‘piece,’” snapped Grant. “May
I ask your name, sir?”
“A wise precaution with suspicious characters,” rejoined the other,
smiling. Grant was suddenly reminded of a Japanese grinning at a joke,
but he bent over a card which the stranger had whisked out of a
waistcoat pocket. He read:
Mr. Charles F. Furneaux,
_Criminal Investigation Department_,
New Scotland Yard, S.W.
He could not control himself. He gazed at Mr. Charles F. Furneaux with
a surprise that was not altogether flattering.
“Did the Commissioner of Police send _you_ in response to my telegram?”
he said.
“That is what lawyers call a leading question,” came the prompt retort.
“And I hate lawyers. They darken understanding, and set honest men at
loggerheads.”
“But it happens to be very much to the point at this moment.”
“Well, Mr. Grant, if you really press for an answer, it is ‘Yes’ and
‘No.’ The Commissioner received a certain telegram, but he may have
acted on other grounds. Even Commissioners can be creatures of impulse,
or expediency, just as the situation demands.
“You are here, at any rate.”
“That is what legal jargon terms an admitted fact.”
“Then you had better begin by assuming that I am no villain.”
“It is assumed. It couldn’t well be otherwise after the excellent
character you have been given by this young lady.”
“She, at least, will speak well of me, I do believe,” said Grant, with
a strange bitterness, for his heart was sore because of the seeming
defection of his friend, the postmaster. “What I actually had in mind
was the stupidity of the local policeman, who is convinced that I am
both a criminal and a fool.”
“The two are often synonymous,” said Furneaux dryly. “But I acquitted
you on both counts, Mr. Grant, on hearing, and even seeing, how you
spent Monday evening.”
Grant, who had cooled down considerably, found a hint of badinage in
this comment.
“You have evidently been told that Miss Martin and I were star-gazing
in the garden of my house,” he said. “It happens to be true.”
“Oh, yes. There was a very fine cluster of small stars in Canis Major,
south of Sirius, that night.”
“You know something about the constellations, then?” was the astonished
query.
“Enough for the purposes of Scotland Yard,” smirked Furneaux, who had
checked P. C. Robinson’s one-sided story by referring to Whitaker’s
Almanack. “It may relieve your mind if I tell you that I have never
seen a real live astronomer in the dock. Venus and Mars are often in
trouble, but their devoted observers seldom, if ever.”
Grant warmed to this strange species of detective, though, if pressed
for an instant decision, he would vastly have preferred that one of
more orthodox style had been intrusted with an inquiry so vital to his
own happiness and good repute. Eager, however, to pour forth his
worries into any official ear, he brought back the talk to a definite
channel.
“Will you come to my place?” he asked. “I have much to say. Let me
assure you now, in Miss Martin’s presence, that she is no more
concerned in this ghastly business than any other young lady in the
village.”
“But she is interested. And _you_ are. And I am. Why not discuss
matters here, for the present, I mean? We have a glorious view of your
house and grounds. We can see without being seen. None can overhear. I
advise both of you to go thoroughly into this matter here and now.”
Furneaux spoke emphatically. Even Doris put in a timid plea.
“Perhaps that would be the best thing to do,” she said. “Mr. Furneaux
has been most sympathetic. I am sure he understands things already in a
way that is quite wonderful to me.”
The very sound of her voice was comforting. Grant might have argued
with the detective, but could not resist Doris. Without further demur
he went through the whole story, giving precise details of events on
the Monday night. Then the recital widened out into a history of his
relations with Adelaide Melhuish. He omitted nothing. Doris gasped when
she heard Superintendent Fowler’s version of the view a coroner’s jury
might take of her presence in the garden of _The Hollies_ at a late
hour. But Grant did not spare her. He reasoned that she ought to be
prepared for an ordeal which could not be avoided. He was governed by
the astute belief that his very outspokenness in this respect would
weaken the inferences which the police might otherwise draw from it.
Furneaux uttered never a word. He was a first-rate listener, though his
behavior was most undetective-like, since he hardly looked at Grant or
the girl, but seemed to devote his attention almost exclusively to the
scenic panorama in front.
However, when Grant came to the somewhat strenuous passage-at-arms of
the previous night between Ingerman and himself, the little man broke
in at once.
“Isidor G. Ingerman?” he cried. “Is he a tall, lanky, cadaverous,
rather crooked person, with black hair turning gray, and an absurdly
melodious voice?”
“You have described him without an unnecessary word,” said Grant.
Furneaux clicked his tongue in a peculiar fashion.
“Go on!” he said. “It’s a regular romance—quite in your line, Mr.
Grant, of course, but none the less enthralling because, as you so
happily phrased Miss Martin’s lesson in astronomy, it happens to be
true.”
Grant was scrupulously fair to Ingerman. He admitted the “financier’s”
adroitness of speech, and made clear the fact that if the visit had the
levying of blackmail for its object such a possible outcome was only
hinted at vaguely. Being a novelist, one whose temperament sought for
sunshine rather than gloom in life, he wound up in lighter vein. The
ruse which tricked P. C. Robinson into a breathless scamper of nearly
a mile on a hot day in June was described with gusto. Doris, who knew
the village constable well, laughed outright, while Furneaux cackled
shrilly. None who might be watching the little group in that delightful
garden, with its scent of old-world flowers and drone of bees, could
have guessed that a grewsome tragedy formed their major theme.
The girl was the first to realize that even harmless merriment was in
ill accord with the presence of death, for the body of Adelaide
Melhuish lay within forty yards of the place where they stood.
“May I leave you now?” she inquired. “Father may be wanting help in the
office.”
“I shan’t detain you more than a few seconds,” said Furneaux briskly.
“On Monday evening you two young people parted at half past ten. How do
you fix the time?”
Doris answered without hesitation:
“The large window of Mr. Grant’s study was open, and we both heard a
clock in the hall chime the half-hour. I said, ‘Goodness me, is that
half past ten?’ and started for home at once. Mr. Grant came with me as
far as the bridge. When I reached my room, in exactly five minutes
after leaving _The Hollies_, I stood at the open window—that
window”—and she pointed to a dormer casement above the
sitting-room—“and looked out. It was a particularly fine night, mild,
but not very clear, as a slight mist often rises from the river after a
hot day in summer. I may have been there about ten minutes, no longer,
when I saw the study window of _The Hollies_ thrown open, and Mr.
Grant’s figure was silhouetted by the lamp behind him. He seemed to be
listening for something, so I, who must have heard any unusual sound,
listened too. There was nothing. I could hear the ripple of the river
beneath the bridge, so everything was very still. After a minute, or
two, perhaps—no longer—Mr. Grant went in, and closed the window. Then I
went to bed.”
“Did Mr. Grant draw any blind or curtains?”
“There are muslin curtains attached to each side of the window. One
cannot see into the room from a distance.”
Furneaux measured an imaginary line drawn from Doris’s bedroom to the
edge of the cliff, and prolonged it.
“Nor can you see the river or foot of the lawn from your room,” he
commented.
“No. In winter I can just make out the edge of the lawn. When the trees
are in leaf, all the lower part is hidden.”
“You had actually retired to rest about eleven, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“So if Mr. Grant came out again you would not know?” Doris blushed
furiously, but her reply was unfaltering.
“I would have known during the next half-hour, at least,” she said. “An
inclined mirror hangs in my room. I use it sometimes for adjusting a
hat. The square of light from Mr. Grant’s room is reflected in it, and
any sudden increase in the illumination caused by opening the window or
pulling the curtains aside would certainly have caught my eye.”
“You have an unshakable witness in Miss Martin,” said Furneaux,
stabbing a finger at Grant. “Now, I’ll hurry off. You and I, Mr. Grant,
meet at Philippi, otherwise known as the crowner’s quest.”
Any benevolent intent he may have had in leaving these young people
together was, however, frustrated by Doris, whose composure seemed to
have fled since her statement about the mirror. She resolutely
accompanied the detective, and Grant had to follow. All three passed
into the post office, Doris using the private door. Mr. Martin looked
up from his desk when they appeared, and requested his daughter to
check a bundle of postal orders. The pretext was painfully obvious, but
Grant was not so wishful now to clear up matters with Doris’s father,
as the girl herself might be trusted to pass on an accurate account of
the affair from beginning to end.
He was about to reach the street quick on Furneaux’s heels when the
little man turned suddenly.
“By the way, don’t you want a shilling’s worth of stamps?” he said.
Grant smiled comprehension, and went back to the counter, where Doris
herself served him. She did not try to avoid his glance, but rather met
it with a baffling serenity oddly at variance with her momentary loss
of self-possession in the garden.
When he entered the street the detective had vanished.
He walked down the hill at a rapid pace, disregarding the eyes peeping
at him through open doorways, over narrow window-curtains, and covertly
staring when people passed in the roadway. The sensitive side of his
temperament shrank from this thinly-veiled hostility. He was by way of
being popular in Steynholme, yet not a soul spoke to him. Before he
reached the bridge, the other side of him, the man of action, of cool
resource in an emergency, rose in rebellion against the league of silly
clodhoppers. Back he strode to the post office and dashed off a
telegram. It ran:
“Walter Hart, Savage Club, Adelphi, London. Come here and help to lay a
ghost.”
He signed it in full, name and address. Doris was gone, but her father
received it, and read the text in a bewildered way.
“I find myself deserted by my Steynholme friends so I am trying to
import one stanch one,” said Grant, almost vindictively.
Martin murmured the cost, and Grant stormed out again. This time,
passing the Hare and Hounds, he looked at door and windows. He caught a
face scowling at him over a brown wire blind bearing the words “Wines
and Spirits” on it in letters of dull gold. It was a commonplace type
of face, small-featured, ginger-moustached, and crowned by a billy-cock
hat set at a rakish angle. Its most marked characteristic was the
positive hatred which glowed in the sharp, pale-blue eyes. Grant
wondered who this highly censorious young man might be. At any rate, he
meant to ascertain whether or not the critic was susceptible of satire
at his own expense. He walked up to the window, elevated his eyebrows
at the frowning person within, pretended to read the words on the
screen, looked again at the man inside, and shook his head gravely in
the manner of one who has accurately determined cause and effect.
Fred Elkin was quick-witted enough to appreciate Grant’s unspoken
comment. He was also unmannerly enough to put out his tongue. Then
Grant laughed, and turned on his heel.
Mr. Siddle, quietly observant of recent comings and goings, was
standing at the door of the shop, and missed no item of this dumb show.
He raised both hands in silent condemnation of Elkin’s childishness,
whereupon the horse-dealer jerked a thumb toward Grant’s retreating
figure, and went through a rapid pantomime of the hanging process. His
crony disapproved again, and went in. Now, both those men were on the
jury panel, so, to all appearance, Grant would be judged by at least
one deadly enemy, whose animosity might or might not be fairly balanced
by the chemist’s impartial mind.
The tenant of _The Hollies_ actually dreaded the loneliness of his
dwelling now, though it was that very quality which had drawn him to
Steynholme a year earlier. Work or reading was equally out of the
question that day. He sought the industrious Bates, who was trenching
celery in the kitchen garden.
“Have ’ee made out owt about un, sir?” inquired that hardy individual,
pausing to spit on the handle of his spade.
“No,” said Grant. “The thing is a greater mystery than ever.”
“I’m thinkin’ her mun ha’ bin killed by a loony,” announced Bates.
“Something of the kind, no doubt. But why are the little less dangerous
loonies of Steynholme united in the belief that I am the guilty one?”
“Ax me another,” growled Bates.
“Who is spreading this rumor? Robinson?”
“’E dussen’t, sir. ’E looks fierce, but ’e’ll ’old ’is tongue. T’super
will see to that.”
“Someone is talking. That is quite certain.”
“There’s a chap in the ’Are an’ ’Ounds—kem ’ere last night.”
“Ingerman?”
“Ay, sir, that’s the name. ’E’s makin’ a song of it, I hear.”
“Anybody else?”
“Fred Elkin is gassin’ about. Do ’ee know un? Breeds ’osses at Mount
Farm, a mile that-a-way,” and Bates pointed to the west.
Grant hazarded a guess, and described the face of condemnation seen at
the inn. Bates nodded.
“That’s un,” he said. Then he drove the spade into the rich loam. “They
do say,” he added, apparently as an after-thought, “as Fred Elkin is
mighty sweet on Doris, but her’ll ’ave nowt to do wi’ un.”
Grant whistled softly. This explanation threw light on a dark place.
“The plot thickens,” he said. “Mr. Elkin becomes more interesting than
he looks. Are there other disappointed swains in the offing?”
“What’s that, sir?”
“Has Miss Martin any other suitors?”
“Lots of ’em ’ud be after her like wasps round a plum-tree if she’d
give ’em ’alf a chance. But _you_ put a stopper on ’em.”
Bates was blunt of speech, though a philosopher withal.
“Elkin is my only serious rival, then?” laughed Grant, passing off as a
joke a thrust which was shrewder than the gardener knew.
“’E ’as plenty of brass, but I reckon nowt on ’im,” was the
contemptuous answer.
“Well, he is not a likely person to kill a woman he had never before
seen. Miss Martin will marry whom she chooses, no doubt. The present
problem is to find out who murdered Miss Melhuish. Now, had _I_ been
the victim you would be thinking hard, Bates.”
“I tell ’ee, sir, it wur a loony.”
Nor was Bates to be moved from that opinion. He held to it, through
thick and thin, for many days.
Grant wandered into the front garden. His eyes rose involuntarily to
the distant post office, and he noticed at once that the dormer window
was closed. Yet Doris shared his own love of fresh air, and that window
had always been open till that very hour. Somehow, this simple thing
seemed to shut him out of her life. He walked to the river, and gazed
at the spot where the body was drawn ashore. In the absence of rain the
water ran clear as gin, and the marks made by the feet of Adelaide
Melhuish’s murderer were still perceptible. If only those misshapen
blotches could reveal their secret! If only some Heaven-sent ray of
intuition would enable him to put the police on the track of the
criminal! Theoretically, a novelist and essayist should be a first-rate
detective, yet, brought face to face with an actual felony, here was
one who perforce remained blind and dumb.
Yet he was not blameworthy for failing to solve a mystery which was
rapidly establishing a record for bewildering elements. Wherein he did
err most lamentably was in his reading of a woman’s heart.
No answering telegram came from his friend in London. The day wore
slowly till it was time to attend the inquest. He found a crowd
gathered in front of the Hare and Hounds. Superintendent Fowler was
there, and quite a number of policemen, whose presence was explained
when a buzz of excitement heralded Grant’s arrival. He decided not to
stand this sort of persecution a moment longer.
Before the superintendent could interfere, he leaped on to a set of
stone mounting-steps which stood opposite the door. Instantly, seeing
that he was about to speak, the angry murmuring of the mob was hushed.
He looked into a hundred stolid faces, and stretched out his right
hand.
“I cannot help feeling,” he said, in slow, incisive accents which
carried far, “that a set of peculiar circumstances has led you
Steynholme folk to suspect me of being responsible, in some way, for
the death of the lady whose body was found in the river near my house.
Now, I want to tell you that I am not only an innocent but a
much-maligned man. The law of the land will establish both facts in due
season. But I want to warn some of you, too, I shall not trouble to
issue writs for libel. If any blackguard among you dares to insult me
openly, I shall smash his face.”
He knew when to stop. Superintendent Fowler’s nudge was not called for,
as the orator simply met the scrutiny of all those eyes without another
word.
Curiously enough, the sense of justice is inherent in every haphazard
gathering of the public. Grant’s soldierly bearing, his calm defiance
of hostile opinion, the outspoken threat which he so plainly meant, won
instant favor. Someone shouted, “Hear, hear!” and the crowd applauded.
From that moment he had little to complain of in the attitude of the
community as a whole. There were subtle and dangerous enemies to be
fought and conquered, but Steynholme looked on, keen to learn of any
new sensation, of course, but placidly content that the final verdict
should be left in the hands of the authorities.