Major Kent, like most men who lead an open-air life, had a healthy
appetite at breakfast-time. His table was always well supplied with
eggs, bacon, and, when possible, fish. In honour of Meldon's visit, he
had a cold ham on the sideboard, and a large dish of oatmeal porridge.
He was a man of primitive hospitality, and he surveyed the feast with
an air of proud satisfaction while he waited for his guest. He had to
wait for a quarter of an hour, and his glow of pleasure was beginning
to give way to a feeling of irritation when Meldon burst into the room.
"This place," he said, by way of apology for his unpunctuality, "is
certainly the sleepiest in the world. I had forgotten how sleepy it
is. I didn't so much as turn round in bed for nine solid hours, and I
assure you I never felt less inclined to get up in my life. I daresay
I'll get over it in a day or two; but just at present I feel that the
night wasn't long enough."
"Have some breakfast," said the Major, "and then you can go to sleep
again."
Meldon helped himself to porridge and milk.
"No, I can't," he said. "I've too much to do."
He worked through a helping of bacon and eggs. Then he attacked the
cold ham.
"There's nothing," he said, "like a good breakfast when you have a hard
day's work before you. I expect to be pretty busy, and I'll hardly be
in for lunch. I suppose you've no objection to my making myself a few
sandwiches before I start? I may pick up a meal somewhere in the
course of the day, but I may not. It's always well to be on the safe
side."
"What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to marry Simpkins to Miss King, of course. I thought we
settled that last night."
"Don't keep up that joke, J. J. It was all very well pulling my leg
last night, and I didn't mind it a bit; but a thing like that gets to
be stale the next morning."
"There's no joke that I can see," said Meldon. "If you read the papers
with any sort of attention lately, you'd understand that Mrs. Lorimer
is the last woman in the world who can be regarded as comic."
"We weren't talking about Mrs. Lorimer."
"Yes, we were. We were talking about Miss King, and she is Mrs.
Lorimer; although at present she prefers to be called Miss King. I
think she's quite right. It would be extremely bad taste to go on
using poor Lorimer's name after what she did to him. He wouldn't like
it. You wouldn't like it yourself, Major, if she'd killed you."
"I don't know that she did kill him," said the Major. "Even supposing
that you're right in identifying the two women--which of course you're
not--you'd still have no earthly right to assume that Mrs. Lorimer is a
murderess. The jury found her innocent."
"Of course it did. Any jury would. She's a most attractive-looking
woman. You'd have found her innocent yourself if you'd been on that
jury."
"I would not."
"Yes, you would. I've seen her, remember. You haven't, so you can't
possibly tell what you'd have done."
"I don't see," said the Major, "that her being good-looking proves that
she murdered her husband."
"No, it doesn't, but it accounts for the jury letting her off. The
evidence was amply sufficient for a conviction, and the judge summed up
dead against her. And any way it doesn't matter to us about the
evidence, for she owned up to me in the train. I told her I'd keep her
secret for her, and I don't intend to tell anybody except you. Apart
from her feelings altogether it wouldn't suit us for the story to get
out in Ballymoy. Simpkins would be choked off at once if he knew it.
Men have such a ridiculous prejudice against marrying a woman with any
sort of past."
"I don't think Simpkins would mind," said the Major, "if he thought she
had any money. That's the kind of beast he is."
"She has plenty," said Meldon, "Lorimer's, I daresay. At least she
looks as if she had plenty, and that's the same thing in this case. If
Simpkins marries her, it's extremely unlikely that he'll live long
enough to find out whether she really has a large fortune, or is simply
spending her capital."
After breakfast Major Kent returned to the subject of Miss King.
"I suppose," he said, "that you're absolutely certain that you've got a
hold of the right woman? You couldn't be making any sort of mistake?"
"I told you last night that I was certain, and I gave you my reasons;
pretty convincing ones I imagine--the sort of reasons that would be
conclusive to any man at all accustomed to criminal investigation. I
don't myself see how you can get behind the portrait and the lady's own
confession."
"You couldn't possibly have mistaken about that, could you? I mean she
couldn't have been confessing anything else which you could have taken
up to mean murder?"
"No, she couldn't. In the first place, it isn't at all likely that
there would be two attractive-looking lady criminals, travelling about
in trains at the same time, both wanting to confess what they had done.
In the second place, her crime must have been pretty serious, for she
was particularly anxious to find out whether it was likely to shock
you."
"Me?"
"Yes, you. She mentioned you by name, and asked particularly whether
you'd be likely to be shocked, when you found out who she was. Now, if
she had simply been slipping trifling articles off shop counters into
her muff, she wouldn't have expected you to be shocked. That's what
makes me say her crime was a serious one."
"Still," said the Major, "even supposing she really was afraid of
shocking me; though I can't see how she came to consider me at all--"
"She did. You may take that for certain."
"There are other things besides murder that I should strongly
disapprove of."
"You're thinking of divorce court proceedings now. But she's not that
sort of woman at all. I had every opportunity of studying her
character in the train, and I'm certain that she wouldn't mix herself
up with anything of a disreputable kind. Whatever poor Lorimer may
have had to complain of--and I don't in the least deny that he had a
grievance--he'd have been the last man to accuse her of anything of
_that_ sort. I never met a woman who impressed me more strongly as
being thoroughly respectable."
"Come now, J. J. Murder! Surely murder--"
"Not when treated as an art. De Quincey wrote an essay on the subject.
If you'd read it, you'd know better than to mix up artistic murder with
the commonplace assassinations of the ordinary burglar. You might just
as well say that Beethoven is the same sort of person as the Italian
organ-grinder who plays abominable tunes under your window, in the hope
of your giving him twopence to go away."
"Nothing you've said so far," said the Major, "convinces me in the
least that your identification of the lady is certain, or even likely
to be right."
"I knew you'd be sceptical. You always are sceptical about anything
the least out of the common; so while I was shaving this morning I
arranged the evidence in such a way that you can't possibly escape from
it. In the first place, there are the portraits. I don't dwell on
them because you haven't seen Miss King, and so they won't--for the
present--carry much weight with you. In the second place, there is her
confession. You choose to consider that I was mistaken about that, and
that Miss King was really confessing something of quite a different
kind. I say nothing about the improbability of my being mistaken in a
perfectly simple matter. I simply leave the confession on one side,
and offer you corroborative evidence of a quite unmistakable
description. Here's a copy of a Dublin paper. I put it in my pocket
on purpose to show it to you. I suppose you'll believe what you see
printed in a newspaper?"
"It depends very much what it is. I don't believe everything I see in
papers."
"That, if you'll excuse my saying so, seems to me to be carrying your
habit of scepticism to the verge of actual mania. I don't think you
ought to adopt that kind of attitude, Major. If you had been trained
in theology, or even secular metaphysics, it might be excusable; though
then, of course, you wouldn't do it. But in a simple and almost
entirely uneducated country gentleman like you, it's simply grotesque."
"Go on about the newspaper, J. J."
"Here it is for you; but I don't see that it's much use giving it to
you if your mind is made up beforehand to disbelieve every word that's
in it."
He took a newspaper from his pocket and handed it to Major Kent,
indicating with his thumb a column on the middle page.
"The Lorimer Case. Judge's Charge to the Jury. Acquittal.
"Scene outside the Court. Enthusiasm of the Crowd. A Demonstration."
The Major read aloud the heavily-leaded lines which filled half the
column.
"Skip that part," said Meldon. "The cheers don't matter to us, though
I daresay Miss King enjoyed them at the time. Go on to the bottom of
the next column where you see the words 'An Interview' in large print."
"Our representative," read the Major, "called this evening at Mrs.
Lorimer's hotel. He was at once shown up to her sitting-room, where he
found her--"
"Go on," said Meldon; "that part about her being cool and
unembarrassed, and the next bit about her wearing a well-cut grey
travelling-dress, isn't important; though, as a matter of fact, her
dress was grey."
The Major skipped a paragraph, and then began to read again.
"'I always felt quite certain,' said Mrs. Lorimer, in reply to a
question asked by our representative, 'about what the jury's verdict
would be. I have perfect confidence in the commonsense and justice of
Englishmen. In fact, I had all my arrangements made, through my
solicitors, for my movements after the trial. I have taken a house in
a very quiet neighbourhood, where I shall be free from all inquisitive
publicity.'"
"There," said Meldon, "those are almost the exact words Miss King used
to me in the train."
The Major went on, reading aloud.
"'May I ask,' said our representative, 'in what part of the country--?'
'No,' said Mrs. Lorimer, smiling. 'You may not ask that; or, if you
do, I shall not answer you. But you may do this for me, if you like.
You may tell the hall porter to order a cab for me, a four-wheeler. I
have a good deal of luggage.'"
"She had," said Meldon; "I saw it when we got out at Dunbeg station,
and it wasn't all there, for one of her trunks had got lost on the way."
"'Our representative,' read the Major, 'shook hands with Mrs. Lorimer
as she entered the cab. The order given to the driver was Euston
station. Thus a lady of great personal charm, whose terrible
experience has for some weeks focussed the attention of the civilised
world upon the affairs of her private life passes--'"
"You needn't go on," said Meldon. "The rest of the article is mere
piffle. The essential part is what you've read out, and I imagine it
ought to pretty well clinch the matter. She drove to Euston, intending
to travel from that station to some very quiet neighbourhood in which
she had taken a house beforehand. Now where could you possibly find a
quieter neighbourhood than this?"
"I don't see that you've proved your point, J. J. There are a lot of
other places for which you might start from Euston."
"Not so many quiet neighbourhoods. Think of where the London and
North-Western Railway runs. Lancashire! You wouldn't call Bolton a
quiet neighbourhood, I suppose. North Wales! You know what it is at
this season of the year, thick with holiday people. No. You may take
it for certain that if she left Euston she came to Ireland. Now all
English people head straight for the west as soon as they land in this
country, especially those who have any kind of a past that they are
anxious to keep dark. Dublin and Wicklow are just as thick with people
as England is. Nobody ever stops half-way across the country.
Besides, there wasn't another woman in the train with me who could
possibly have been Mrs. Lorimer."
Major Kent rose from his chair and knocked the ashes out of his pipe.
"I don't suppose, J. J., that it's any use telling you that you're
going to make an ass of yourself."
"Not a bit, because it isn't true. I'm going to proceed in the most
circumspect and cautious manner. Not that I'm the least afraid of
making an ass of myself. I should never do that under any
circumstances. But because I have a conscience and I am afraid of
doing a grave injustice, I am going to convince myself first of all
that this fellow Simpkins really deserves to be killed. I admit the
force of all you said about him last night, especially that part about
the heating of the church; but it's a serious thing to condemn a man to
death. It's a thing that you can't undo again once you've done it. I
must see the man myself before I take any further steps."
"You can't have him here, J. J. He's a horrid little cad, and I won't
have him inside this house."
"I'm not asking you to, at present. Later on if it becomes necessary
in the interests of justice to patch up some appearance of a
reconciliation between you and him I shall, of course, ask him here;
but in the meanwhile--"
"You may entertain him yourself, if you do."
"I may. But that won't deter me from doing my duty. You haven't had
the education in philosophy and literature, Major, that you ought to
have had; but the years that you spent in the army ought to have taught
you that no amount of unpleasantness should prevent a man doing his
duty. I thought that was one of the things which military life
impressed on me. Suppose now that it was your duty to stand in a pool
of water on a wintry night looking out for the approaching army of a
powerful enemy. You wouldn't like doing it because you'd know that
you'd have a cold in your head next day which would probably last you
for the rest of that particular campaign. But would you allow that
fact to interfere with your duty? I'll give you credit, Major, for not
even considering your own comfort in the matter. You'd stand in the
pool. You wouldn't so much as splash about, and when your feet got wet
you'd bear it without grumbling. Why can't you admit that I am
actuated by the same sort of motives in doing my duty?"
"But is it your duty? I can't see, really, that there's any need for
you to mix yourself up in it at all."
"It is my duty," said Meldon, "for several reasons. In the first place
you are my friend, and you've always been kind to me; so it's plainly
my duty to do you a good turn when I can. Next, I liked what I saw of
Miss King. I'm convinced that she's in earnest about her art, and is
really working at it simply for art's sake and not from any selfish
motives. Therefore, as an educated man, it's my duty to help her if I
can, without outraging my own conscience or acting in any way
unsuitable for a clergyman. Assuming Simpkins to be the kind of man
you describe, it is a public duty, the duty of every good citizen, to
put him out of the world altogether. He's nothing but a nuisance here,
and he can't be really happy. I imagine that even for his own sake
he'd be a great deal better dead. He may not see that himself, but
it's very likely to be true. What's the use of his dragging out a
miserable existence in a place where he is getting more and more
unpopular every year? He can't like it. Where does he live?"
"He lives," said Major Kent, "in that little house just beyond the
police barrack."
"That won't save him," said Meldon. "Miss King would laugh at our
police after slipping through the fingers of the Scotland Yard
authorities, and any way he'd have to go and live with her once they're
married. I'll call there."
"At this time of day," said the Major, "he'll probably be in his
office, next to Doyle's hotel."
"I'll leave a card at his house first," said Meldon. "It's only civil.
Then I'll go on to the office. I suppose you can send me in, Major?
I'll walk back. I wouldn't like to keep your horse in town all day. I
shall probably be a long time. I can't scamp the business, you know.
I must thoroughly investigate Simpkins. After that, I'll look in and
have a chat with Doyle."