the facts, Mr. Lunt. Defend yourself against them. I can do nothing
for you.”
“But the facts lie, doctor. God love you, you wouldn’t go to hang an
innocent man. I’ll tell you the truth, by God I will.”
Reggie sat down. “I can’t take up your case, Mr. Lunt. I am
committed. Anything you tell me is at your own risk. If you can
convince me that you’re innocent it’s my duty to do what I can for
you. But I advise you to hold your tongue.”
“Don’t you see?” Victor Lunt was almost screaming. “If they hang me
it’s you that’s done it. Will you listen now?”
“Go on, sir.”
Victor Lunt mopped his face, tried to speak, and stuttered. “I did go
out that day.” The words came in a half-articulate rush. “I wanted to
see what Cranford had done to Bert. And in the park I found Bert
lying shot. He had a pistol in his hand.”
“Do you want me to believe he shot himself?” Reggie frowned.
“O God, I don’t know. I swear it’s the truth, doctor. He was lying
there shot with a pistol in his hand. When I bent over him he grabbed
at me. “You swine,” he said, and he lifted his hand to shoot. Then I
bashed his face with a stone. But he shot and it cut my head. That
was the scratch, doctor. My God, you do see things. I grabbed the
pistol and wrenched it away from him.”
“The sprained thumb,” Reggie muttered.
“Then I heard the death-rattle.” Victor Lunt shuddered, and again he
could not command his speech. “I lost my head, doctor. I ran away. I
chucked the pistol away. I don’t know what I did. Doctor, I swear
it’s God’s truth.” He started up. “What do you mean to do now?”
For Reggie sat silent looking at him. “If it’s the truth, Mr. Lunt, I
advise you to tell it.”
“It is the truth. Don’t you know it’s the truth? O God!”
“I am not God, Mr. Lunt.”
Victor Lunt screamed. Two men had come into the room. “Mr. Victor
Lunt? I am Superintendent Bell. I hold a warrant----” Victor Lunt
fell upon the hearth.
They rushed at him, dragged him out of the fire. . . . “Apoplexy,”
Reggie said. “I thought it was coming.” The detective’s eyebrows
asked him a question. Reggie shook his head.
“This warrant won’t run,” said Superintendent Bell. “What was he
doing here, sir?”
“Asking for mercy,” Reggie said. “He’s taking the case to a higher
court. I wonder. I wonder.”
And that night Victor Lunt died. . . .
A few days afterwards Reggie gave a little dinner to Cranford and
Nurse Dauntsey, and Nurse Dauntsey in a shy evening-frock was
adorably happy. And in due time, “Have another peach,” Reggie said.
“Do you want to see me blush, Mr. Fortune?” But she took another.
“You can do pleasant things with the stones--he loves me, he loves me
not.”
“It’s not interesting any more,” said Nurse Dauntsey, and looked
demure.
“I’m off to British Columbia next week,” Cranford announced.
“Alone?” said Reggie, with his eye on Nurse Dauntsey.
“This year, next year,” Nurse Dauntsey counted. “May I have five
peaches, Mr. Fortune?”
“I’m sure you know what’s good for you. So you’re dropping the
Mozambique copper claim, Cranford?”
“Lady Lunt offered to turn it over to me. I couldn’t touch it.”
“Of course not,” said Nurse Dauntsey.
“Good thing for me Victor Lunt didn’t stand his trial,” Cranford said.
“Yes. It would have kept you in England.” Reggie lit a cigar.
“I should have had to tell the whole story.” Reggie stared at him.
“Yes. That’s the proposition, sir. It was the case you put up against
him got me off.”
“I put up nothing,” Reggie cried. “Everything I had against Victor
was true, and he knew it was true. That’s what broke him. He had a
queer story of his own though,” and Reggie told them Victor Lunt’s
version of the crime. “I’ve wondered how much of that was true. He
wanted me to believe Albert committed suicide, you see. And that’s
impossible.”
“Maybe it was all true,” Cranford said. “Poor beggar. He went through
it.”
“I didn’t feel merciful,” Reggie said. “Whatever was the way of it,
he meant to get his brother murdered. He worked you up and sent you
off to do it. He meant the murder. No, I didn’t feel merciful. And
yet--I wonder.”
“I always meant to put you wise,” Cranford said. “You’ll pardon me. I
couldn’t afford to give anything away. And I told you no lies. I
didn’t murder Albert Lunt. But I killed him. Fair and clean, sir. On
my soul it’s as good a bit of work as ever I did. He was a yellow
dog. It was up to me to wipe him out. This is the way of it, doctor.
When they said he wasn’t at Prior’s Colney I laid to wait for him,
and then I saw him coming across the park. I met him and I told him
off. I had it all cut out. He had to have his chance, though he gave
me none. I had two guns. One for him, one for me. I offered him the
pick, and he snatched and fired at me while I had the other gun by
the muzzle. He was sure trash. Then he put in another miss and I
stretched him. That’s my tale, sir.”
“And it’s just as well you didn’t try it on a jury,” Reggie said.
Cranford started up. “Mr. Fortune, sir, I’m considerably in your
debt. But if you call me a liar----”
“Oh, no, no.”
“D’you call me a coward, then? I would have it all out if Victor had
come to trial.”
“You’ve run straight,” Reggie said.
“I sure have,” Cranford fumed.
“Do sit down, dear,” said Nurse Dauntsey in her nice, gentle voice.
On her Reggie turned. “And you knew all the time!” He shook his head
at her.
“Yes, of course, Mr. Fortune.” She looked surprised.
“Cranford, my congratulations,” said Reggie. “Never trust a really
nice girl unless you’re marrying her. Perhaps you knew that.”
CASE IV
THE EFFICIENT ASSASSIN
There was a silence that might be felt. The judge put on the black
cap. The prisoner gave a queer cackle of laughter. And Mr. Reginald
Fortune, the surgeon whose evidence had convicted him, yawned and
stole out of court. The Sunday School murder, one of the most popular
crimes of our generation, had bored Mr. Fortune excessively, and now
that the Sunday School Superintendent was safely on his way to the
hangman Mr. Fortune desired to forget all about it at once.
He stood on the steps of the Shire Hall, lighting a cigar. A large
young man, who had been struggling to get in, detached himself from
the guardian policeman and ran at him. “Fortune! My God!” he said
emotionally. “I thought I’d never get at you. I say, come somewhere
where we can talk.”
Mr. Fortune looked down through his smoke with sleepy eyes. “One
moment. One moment,” he murmured. “Oh, ah. You’re Charlecote--Beaver
Charlecote. Well, and what’s the best with you, Beaver?”
“It’s murder, old man,” Charlecote muttered.
“Everybody’s doing it.” Mr. Fortune frowned at him. “Who’s slain now?”
“It’s my father.”
“My dear chap! Oh, my dear chap!” Mr. Fortune was startled into
sympathy.
“I say Fortune--for God’s sake----” Charlecote gasped.
“Quite. Quite,” said Mr. Fortune, linked arms with him, and marched
him off.
When Reggie Fortune ambled through his four years at Oxford, Geoffrey
Charlecote was one of the great men of his college, a cricket blue,
socially magnificent, and even suspected of brains. The Charlecote
family dated from the Victorian age. When the building of railways
began, Geoffrey’s grandfather was a navvy. He became a contractor,
made half a million, and died. Shares of his practical ability, his
originality, his driving power, and his disdain for the ten
commandments (he was a mean old sinner) were inherited in different
proportions by his three descendants. Stephenson Charlecote, his son,
had one child, Geoffrey, and was also the guardian of an orphan
nephew, Herbert. Stephenson Charlecote was a capable man of business.
In his hands the family wealth increased. His only ambition was that
the family should get on in the world. So it was Eton and Oxford for
Geoffrey, Harrow and Cambridge for his cousin Herbert. Herbert
emerged elegant and ordinary. In spite of Eton and Oxford, Geoffrey
disturbed his father by showing signs of originality. He was bored by
the big house in Mayfair, he would not bother himself with society,
he scoffed at going into Parliament. This freakish obstinacy roused
the hereditary temper in Stephenson Charlecote, who was the more
angry with his son because his nephew Herbert obeyed him in all
things, and was successful in the most pompous drawing-rooms. The
breaking-point came when Geoffrey discovered that he wanted to go
abroad and be a sculptor. Stephenson Charlecote raged and decreed
that he should not. And Geoffrey went.
All this Reggie Fortune, who never forgot anything when he wanted it,
knew at the back of his mind. The rest Geoffrey told him as his car
took them back to London.
“My God, Fortune, it’s ghastly! I found him lying dead in the street
outside my place. I stepped in his blood. The old guv’nor!”
“Quite. Quite,” said Reggie Fortune. “Now begin at the beginning.”
“What is the beginning?”
“Well, you quarrelled, didn’t you?”
“He quarrelled. Oh, that sounds blackguardly. I dare say it was my
fault. Yes, we had a big row. Damn it, man, what do you mean? Do you
think I---- Oh, I say, this is loathsome. I believe that’s what the
police think. The old guv’nor!”
“Yes. But this don’t help him,” said Reggie Fortune placidly. “From
the beginning, please.”
Geoffrey Charlecote stared at him, gulped, and became more coherent.
“Well, after the row I went abroad. Paris, Rome, Munich. I kept up a
little place in Chelsea, too. I never saw the old man, and we didn’t
write. I suppose I’ve been a brute.”
“Hard stuff in the Charlecote family. What?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, Fortune--I swear I’m sorry.”
“Gut it out,” said Reggie Fortune.
“Well, in Munich I married.” He flushed. “You know, she’s an angel,
Fortune.”
“Quite. German angel?”
“No. She’s Italian. She came to Munich singing. And we met, and in a
month we were married. I tell you, Fortune, I’ve been a different man
since. It’s as if she’d given me a soul, you know.”
“Did you tell your father that?”
“It was she made me write to my father again. Lucia--she can’t bear
being in a quarrel. She’s so gentle, any sort of bad feeling hurts
her. So she brought me to try and make it up. I wrote to the old man
and he answered--just a short, civil, formal note. But Lucia was sure
it would lead to something, and so we came back to England. Then I
wrote to him again, and he came to see us in Chelsea. That was a week
ago--just a week ago to-day. He was pretty stiff and standoffish, but
he took to Lucia. Everybody does, you know. Fortune, old man, she’s
wonderful. I thought he seemed a good deal aged, but he was just as
brisk and sharp as ever. He had us to dine with him on Monday. And
then--well, last night he called on us again, came about four, stayed
a long time. And he was so jolly and genial. And afterwards I went
out to post some letters, and there he was, lying not a dozen yards
from our door. He’d been stabbed. He was in a pool of blood. Good
God! It was awful.”
“Yes. Yes. Seems to be a quiet street where you live.”
“Vinton Place--it’s a little cul-de-sac.”
“It was dark when he left? And you heard nothing? Yes. I wonder who
his money goes to?”
“What the devil do you mean?” Geoffrey cried.
“Well, that’s quite a fair question,” said Reggie Fortune placidly.
“If I’m actin’ for you, and if you like, I will, I look only to your
interests. If I’m acting for Scotland Yard--and if it’s a hard case,
they’ll call me in--I’m only concerned to get the truth out, whoever
suffers.”
“And do you think I don’t want the truth?” Geoffrey cried. “What are
you hinting at? Do you mean I murdered him?”
“Preserve absolute calm,” said Reggie Fortune.
“I’m not calm. What a beast I should be if I was calm. I want the
thing cleared up, man. I want my father to have justice. Whether you
act for me or act for the police it’s the same thing.”
“If you take it that way, I’ll act for the police, Beaver,” said
Reggie placidly.
Geoffrey Charlecote stared at him. “That’s enough, thanks,” he said.
“Stop the car. I won’t worry you any more, Mr. Fortune.”
“Mr. be blowed. Don’t be an ass, Beaver. It’s a bad business. Let’s
make the best of it.”
“Will you stop the car?” Geoffrey said loudly, and stood up.
“Five miles from nowhere? Oh, go easy.” But Geoffrey turned and
opened the door. So the car was stopped, and Geoffrey Charlecote left
forlorn in his rage on the road.
Reggie Fortune lay back and sighed. “Poor beggar. I wonder. Poor
beggar,” he said. And when he came back to Wimpole Street the first
thing he did was to ring up the Hon. Stanley Lomas, the Chief of the
Criminal Investigation Department. As a consequence you behold him
sitting under the French prints in the study of Mr. Lomas.
“I thought you’d be on to this, don’t you know?” Lomas said. “It’s a
pretty case. Wealthy old gentleman, impecunious heirs, sudden death.
That’s natural enough. But impecunious heirs don’t stab much--not in
England.”
“Yes. You’re intelligent, Lomas. But you’re prejudiced. You always
believe in the obvious.”
“The obvious is what happens.”
“Oh, Peter! If it did, we wouldn’t want a Criminal Investigation
Department. Well, now, this is what I’ve got. Check it, please.
Geoffrey quarrelled with the old man--went away, commenced artist,
and married an Italian girl--at her wish tried to make it up with the
old man--old man was willing, called on Geoffrey twice, and after the
second visit Geoffrey found him stabbed and dead just outside.”
“That’s all right,” Lomas nodded. “An odd thing is, just before the
murder the old man remade his will in favour of Geoffrey. When they
quarrelled, he had a will drawn up which left everything to the
nephew Herbert. Under this last will Herbert gets twenty thousand,
and all the rest goes to Geoffrey. It was only signed on the morning
of the murder.”
“There’s a deuce of a lot of unknown quantities in this equation,”
Reggie said. “Silly, futile things facts are. This set will do for
anything you please. As soon as he knew the will was in his favour,
Geoffrey does the old man in. Or when he heard there was a new will
cutting him out, Herbert sees red and knifes the old man. By the way,
Lomas, I suppose the old boy was stabbed?”
“What? Oh, damme, don’t be clever. He was stabbed all right. The
divisional surgeon and his own doctor, Newton, they both went over
the body. Stabbed in the throat. We’ve got the weapon, too. Sort of
stiletto or dagger.”
Reggie cocked an eye at the head of the Criminal Investigation
Department. “Sounds Italian,” he murmured.
“It is Italian.”
“And Geoffrey married an Italian wife.”
“An Italian singer--a singer at cafes. That’s the kind she was. Yes,
that’s the proposition.”
“Lomas, old thing, you ought to write melodramas. The diabolical
Italian singer, she leapt out of the dark, she pulled a d--dagger
from her stocking, and she fell upon the dear, kind old gentleman and
left him weltering in his gore. Then she put the dagger down, so the
gifted detective could find it, and went back to dinner.”
“It is silly, isn’t it?” Lomas grinned. “But there it is, don’t you
know?”
“I don’t know,” said Reggie Fortune.” I don’t know anything. I was
born of poor common-sensible parents, and this is all crazy. I
suppose he really was stabbed?”
“You will harp on that. Go and look at him in the morning. Hang it,
man, the family doctor and the divisional surgeon they ought to know
if there’s a hole in him or not.”
“But why--why? Geoffrey--the Italian wife--they were on velvet
anyway. The disappointed nephew--well, I suppose he still had his
allowance while the old man lived. Do you know anything about Nephew
Herbert?”
“Man about town--Society tame cat--usual vices, what? Plays a bit
high. He’s nothing in particular.”
“Don’t sound like a lurking stabber,” Reggie admitted.
“People don’t do these things. That’s the trouble. Queer case.”
“I suppose the old man hadn’t a lurid past?”
Lomas shook his head. “Most respectable old bird.”
Reggie stood up and gave himself a full glass of soda water. “The
extraordinary efficiency of the assassin,” he said carefully. “Lomas,
old dear, observe the extraordinary efficiency of the assassin. Mr.
S. Charlecote comes out of his son’s house. A few yards from the door
somebody kills him so quickly, so neatly, that he don’t make one
sound. And then this extraordinarily efficient assassin leaves his
dagger for you to find.”
“Who says he didn’t make a sound?”
“Yes. Geoffrey and his angel wife. Yes. Only them and no one else.
That’s a flaw. Little essays in the obvious by S. Lomas. Well, it’s
me for the corpse, then.”
And so in the morning he called at the mortuary. He was slightly
surprised to find the divisional surgeon and Dr. Newton waiting for
him. He returned thanks. “Is there anything to which you’d like to
draw my attention, gentlemen?”
“It’s a plain case, to my mind,” said the divisional surgeon.
“I am always glad to have a specialist’s opinion,” said Dr. Newton.
“Of course, this sort of thing is rather out of my line. I confess I
can hardly approach it calmly.”
“Quite. Quite. Most distressin’. I suppose you knew him well, doctor?”
“An old patient, Mr. Fortune. I may say an old friend.”
“Ah, yes. You know the family, of course.”
“They were once such an affectionate family,” said Dr. Newton. “It’s
really terrible.” He sighed. He was a florid, bearded man with a
sentimental expression and manner. “Poor Charlecote! He never seemed
to bear up after Geoffrey broke with him. But who would have thought
that strange escapade would have ended like this?”
“So you think Geoffrey did the trick?”
“I beg your pardon!” Dr. Newton was horrified. “You put words into my
mouth, Mr. Fortune. No, no. A most invidious suggestion.”
“Murder’s rather an invidious business,” said Reggie placidly. “Come,
doctor, what do you think of Geoffrey?”
“I have never been able to conceal from myself, Mr. Fortune, that
there is an odd strain in Geoffrey, as it were something abnormal or
thrawn--a certain violence of temperament.”
“In the blood, perhaps.”
“Perhaps. And yet there was nothing of it in his father. Or in his
cousin Herbert.”
“Cousin Herbert. Yes. What about Cousin Herbert?”
Dr. Newton laughed. “Frankly, Mr. Fortune, you baffle me. Because
there is nothing about Herbert. A very worthy young man, no doubt,
but colourless, quite colourless.” Reggie nodded. “No.” Dr. Newton
pursued his own train of thought. “In my own speculations on the
affair--this most deplorable affair--I find myself continually
confronted by an unknown quantity, a mysterious entity, Geoffrey’s
Italian wife.”
“Ah, there you have it,” said the divisional surgeon heartily.
Reggie looked at them, nodded, and without more talk led the way to
the body. It did not occupy him long. Two wounds had sufficed to make
an end of Stephenson Charlecote. One in the throat, which had pierced
the carotid artery; one in the chest, which had reached the heart.
Superintendent Bell, in attendance from Scotland Yard, produced the
weapon found by the body--a long, thin dagger or stiletto, obviously
capable of causing the wounds, obviously Italian in origin.
Reggie finished his examination and turned to the two doctors, who
were waiting on him reverently. “Anything in particular occur to you,
gentlemen?”
“Quite straightforward, I think.” The divisional surgeon shrugged.
“Technically speaking, a very neat bit of work.”
“I would go even further,” said Dr. Newton. “The crime seems to have
been committed with remarkable skill and determination.”
“The extraordinary efficiency of the assassin,” Reggie murmured.
“Yes. Touched the spot every time.”
“It would almost seem to suggest some experience in the use of this
weapon,” said Dr. Newton.
“That is indicated.” Reggie nodded at him. “Yes. Deceased been in
good health lately?”
“I have been treating him for some time for gastric trouble--a
persistent gastric catarrh. It was troublesome, but hardly serious.”
And upon that Reggie got rid of them and was left alone with
Superintendent Bell. Superintendent Bell cocked an oldish but still
bright eye. “And the next thing, sir?” said he.
“I am feeling depressed, Bell. Do you ever have feelings? I feel this
is all wrong.”
“Well, sir, the evidence is thin, very thin.”
“Evidence? Oh, my aunt, we haven’t come to evidence yet. I’m
uncomfortable. Everything seems wrong way up. Why did anybody kill
the old man? He was making friends with Geoffrey again and anyway he
had enough to live on. Herbert had an allowance and something of his
own, too. Nobody else stood to gain by his death.”
“If you leave out the Italian girl, sir.”
“It keeps coming back to her,” Reggie said mournfully. “But why?
Suppose he was nasty to her when he called. Would she run out and
stab him in the street? I wonder. Did he know some horrid secret
about her past? What is her past, Bell?”
“Pretty short, sir, anyway. She’s not more than eighteen. She was a
café singer, all right. But we have nothing against her. In my
experience they’re no worse than others.”
“And that’s that. Have you seen his papers?”
“Better come up to the house, sir. His solicitor will be there. But I
understand there’s nothing in them. Very few private papers at all.”
“Well, well. I suppose he was murdered.”
Superintendent Bell stared. “Mr. Lomas said you were harping on that.
Pretty clear, sir, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” said Reggie drearily. “But it’s all wrong, Bell, it’s
all wrong.”
At the dead man’s house, his solicitor, old Sir Thomas Long, was busy
in the library, and helping him, to Reggie’s surprise, was Herbert
Charlecote. Herbert revealed himself as a pallid, dandyish man,
punctiliously polite. Colourless--Dr. Newton hit him off to the life.
Herbert was very gratified to make Mr. Fortune’s acquaintance.
“I don’t know whether to hope you can throw any light on this
miserable affair, sir?”
Reggie shook his head. “Your uncle was stabbed, and died immediately
of the wounds. That is the whole case, Mr. Charlecote. I suppose you
can’t help us?”
“I am bewildered. Quite dazed, Mr. Fortune.”
Reggie nodded and lingered, and Herbert discreetly left him with the
solicitor.
“Well, Mr. Fortune?” Sir Thomas took off his glasses and pursed his
lips.
“Nothing. Well, Sir Thomas?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Ah. That was a little odd, wasn’t it?” Reggie nodded at the door by
which Herbert had gone out.
“Mr. Herbert Charlecote offered to help me. He used to act as his
uncle’s secretary. It was hardly for me to point out that there might
be objections, if he was afraid of none.”
“Does he know of the new will?”
“Neither he nor his cousin Geoffrey. Mr. Herbert, I infer, believes
himself sole heir, and Mr. Geoffrey believes himself disinherited.”
“And yet, just after the new will is made the old man is murdered!
Oh, it’s all wrong,” Reggie said peevishly.
“An odd case. A very odd case, Mr. Fortune.” Sir Thomas put on his
eyeglasses again. “But I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
Superintendent Bell opened the door. But Reggie seemed reluctant to
go, and on the stairs he loitered so much that the Superintendent
turned--“Anything doing, sir?”
“That gastric catarrh,” Reggie murmured. “Let’s see the valet.”
The valet, an oldish man, was found. He testified that Mr. Charlecote
had been much upset by the quarrel with Geoffrey. Mr. Charlecote had
complained a good deal about his health. But there were no particular
symptoms. Dr. Newton had been attending him for a long while. But the
valet did not think that he had done Mr. Charlecote any good. For one
thing, Mr. Charlecote did not take his medicine. There had been a
good deal of medicine. Mr. Charlecote’s instructions were always to
pour it down the sink.
“And that’s that,” said Reggie as they went out.
“We don’t get anywhere, sir, do we?” the Superintendent sympathized.
“Anything you suggest?”
“How does it strike Superintendent Bell?”
“Looks like a bad case, sir. One of those where the criminal has all
the luck. Verdict, persons unknown.”
“So Scotland Yard leaves it at that?”
“Unless Mr. Fortune has something up his sleeve.”
“Nary card. But you know we’ve missed something, Bell.”
“Have we, indeed, sir? And where shall we look for it?”
“Oh, watch out. Watch everybody.”
“Life is short, sir,” said Superintendent Bell gloomily, and with
that they parted.