THE INCREDULITY OF GERVASE HENSHAW
"Show Mr. Henshaw into the library," Morriston said to the footman. "This
is horribly tragic," he added in a low tone to Kelson, "but it has to be
gone through, and perhaps the sooner the better. His brother?"
"Yes; he mentioned him on our way from the station the other evening. At
any rate he will be able to see the situation for himself."
"You will come with me?" Morriston suggested. "You might fetch your
friend, Gifford."
Kelson nodded, opened the drawing-room door and called Gifford out, while
Morriston waited in the hall.
"The brother has turned up," he said as the two men joined him. "No doubt
to make inquiries. What are we to say to him?"
"There is nothing to be said but the bare, inevitable truth," Gifford
answered. "You can't now break it to him by degrees."
Morriston led the way to the library. By the fire stood a keen-featured,
sharp-eyed man of middle height and lithe figure, whose manner and first
movements as the door opened showed alertness and energy of character.
There was a certain likeness to his brother in the features and dark
complexion as well as in a suggestion of unpleasant aggressiveness in the
expression of his face, but where the dead man's personality had
suggested determination overlaid with an easy-going, indulgent spirit of
hedonism this man seemed to bristle with a restless mental activity, to
be all brain; one whose pleasures lay manifestly on the intellectual
side. One thing Gifford quickly noted, as he looked at the man with a
painful curiosity, was that the face before him lacked much of the
suggestion of evil which in the brother he had found so repellent. This
man could surely be hard enough on occasion, the strong jaw and a
certain hardness in the eyes told that, but except perhaps for an
uncomfortable excess of sharpness, there was none of his brother's rather
brutally scoffing cast of expression.
Henshaw seemed to regard the two men following Morriston into the room
with a certain apprehensive surprise.
"I hope you will pardon my troubling you like this," he said to
Morriston, speaking in a quick, decided tone, "but I have been rather
anxious as to what has become of my brother, of whom I can get no news.
He came down to the Cumberbatch Hunt Ball, which I understand was held in
this house, and from that evening seems to have mysteriously disappeared.
He had an important business engagement for the next day, Wednesday,
which he failed to keep, and this may mean a considerable loss to him.
Can you throw any light on his movements down here?"
Morriston, dreading to break the news abruptly, had not interrupted his
questions.
"I am sorry to say I can," he now answered in a subdued tone.
"Sorry?" Henshaw caught up the word quickly. "What do you mean? Has he
met with an accident?"
"Worse than that," Morriston answered sympathetically.
Henshaw with a start fell back a step.
"Worse," he repeated. "You don't mean to say--"
"He is dead."
"Dead!" Surprise and shock raised the word almost to a shout. "You--"
"We have," Morriston said quietly, "only discovered the terrible truth
within the last hour or so."
"But dead?" Henshaw protested incredulously. "How--how can he be dead?
How did he die? An accident?"
"I am afraid it looks as though by his own hand," Morriston answered in a
hushed voice.
The expression of incredulity on Henshaw's face manifestly deepened. "By
his own hand?" he echoed. "Suicide? Clement commit suicide? Impossible!
Inconceivable!"
"One would think so indeed," Morriston replied with sympathy. "May I tell
you the facts, so far as we know them?"
"If you please," The words were rapped out almost peremptorily.
Morriston pointed to a chair, but his visitor, in his preoccupation,
seemed to take no notice of the gesture, continuing to stand restlessly,
in an attitude of strained attention.
The other three men had seated themselves. Morriston without further
preface related the story of the locked door in the tower and of the
subsequent discovery when it had been opened. Henshaw heard him to the
end in what seemed a mood of hardly restrained, somewhat resentful
impatience.
"I don't understand it at all," he said when the story was finished.
"Nor do any of us," Morriston returned promptly. "The whole affair is
as mysterious as it is lamentable. Still it appears to be clearly a
case of suicide."
"Suicide!" Henshaw echoed with a certain scornful incredulity. "Why
suicide? In connexion with my brother the idea seems utterly
preposterous."
"The door locked on the inside," Morriston suggested.
"That, I grant you, is at first sight mysterious enough," Henshaw
returned, his keen eyes fixed on Morriston. "But even that does not
reconcile me to the monstrous improbability of my brother, Clement,
taking his own life. I knew him too well to admit that."
"Unfortunately," Morriston replied, sympathetically restraining any
approach to an argumentative tone, "your brother was practically a
stranger to me, and to us all. My friends here, Captain Kelson and Mr.
Gifford, met him casually at the railway station and drove with him to
the _Golden Lion_ in the town, where they all put up."
Henshaw's sharp scrutiny was immediately transferred from Morriston to
his companions.
"Can you, gentlemen, throw any light on the matter?" he asked sharply.
"None at all, I am sorry to say," Kelson answered readily. "I may as well
tell you how our very slight acquaintance with him came about."
"If you please," Henshaw responded, in a tone more of command than
request.
Kelson, naturally ignoring his questioner's slightly offensive manner,
thereupon related the circumstances of the encounter at the station-yard
and of the subsequent drive to the town, merely softening the detail of
their preliminary altercation. Henshaw listened alertly intent, it
seemed, to seize upon any point which did not satisfy him.
"That was all you saw of my unfortunate brother?" he demanded at the end.
"We saw him for a few moments in the hall of the hotel just as we were
starting," Kelson answered.
"You drove here together? No?"
"No; your brother took an hotel carriage, and I drove in my own trap."
"With Mr. ----?" he indicated Gifford, who up to this point had
not spoken.
"No," Gifford answered. "I came on later. A suit-case with my evening
things had gone astray--been carried on in the train, and I had to wait
till it was returned."
Henshaw stared at him for a moment sharply as though the statement had
about it something vaguely suspicious, seemed about to put another
question, checked himself, and turned about with a gesture of perplexity.
"I don't understand it at all," he muttered. Then suddenly facing round
again he said sharply to Gifford, "Have you anything to add, sir, to what
your friend has told me?"
"I can say nothing more," Gifford answered.
Henshaw turned away again, and seemed as though but half satisfied.
"The facts," he said in a lawyer-like tone, "don't appear to lead us far.
But when ascertained facts stop short they may be supplemented. Apart
from what is actually known--I ask this as the dead man's only
brother--have either of you gentlemen formed any idea as to how he came
by his death?"
He was looking at Morriston, his cross-examining manner now softened by
the human touch.
"It has not occurred to me to look beyond what seems the obvious
explanation of suicide," Morriston answered frankly.
Henshaw turned to Kelson. "And you, sir; have you any idea beyond the
known facts?"
"None," was the answer, "except that he took his own life. The door
locked on--"
Henshaw interrupted him sharply. "Now you are getting back to the facts,
Captain Kelson. I tell you the idea of my brother Clement taking his own
life is to me absolutely inconceivable. Have you any idea, however
far-fetched, as to what really may have happened?"
Kelson shook his head. "None. Except I must say he looked to me the last
man who would do such an act."
"I should think so," Henshaw returned decidedly. Then he addressed
himself to Gifford. "I must ask you, sir, the same question."
"And I can give you no more satisfactory answer," Gifford said.
"As a man with knowledge of the world as I take you to be?" Henshaw
urged keenly.
"No."
"At least you agree with your friend here, that my poor brother did not
strike one as being a man liable to make away with himself?"
"Certainly. But one can never tell. I knew nothing of him or his
affairs."
"But I did," Henshaw retorted vehemently. "And I tell you, gentlemen, the
thing is utterly impossible. But we shall see. The body--is it here?"
"The police have charge of it in the room where he was found. It is to be
removed at nightfall. You will wish to see it?" Morriston answered.
"Yes."
Morriston led the way to the tower, explaining as he went the
arrangements on the night of the ball. Henshaw spoke little, his mood
seemed dissatisfied and resentful, but his sharp eyes seemed to take
everything in. Once he asked, "Did my brother dance much?"
"He was introduced to a partner," Morriston replied. "But after that no
one seems to have noticed him in the ball-room."
"You mean he disappeared quite early in the evening?"
"Yes; so far as we have been able to ascertain," Morriston answered.
"Naturally, before this awful discovery we had been much exercised by
his mysterious disappearance and failure to return to the hotel."
"All the same," Henshaw returned sourly, "one can hardly accept the
inference that he came down here for the express purpose of making away
with himself in your house."
"No, I cannot understand it," Morriston replied, as he turned and began
to ascend the winding stairway.
On the threshold of the topmost floor he paused.
"This is the door we found locked on the inside," he observed quietly.
Henshaw gave a keen look round, and nodded. Morriston pushed open the
door and they entered.
The body of Clement Henshaw still lay on the floor in charge of the
detective and the inspector, the third man having been despatched to
the town to make arrangements for its removal. With a nod to the
officials, Henshaw advanced to the body and bent over it. "Poor
Clement!" he murmured.
After a few moments' scrutiny, Henshaw turned to the officers. "I am the
brother of the deceased," he said, addressing more particularly the
detective. "What do you make of this?"
The question was put in the same sharp, business-like tone which had
characterized his utterances in the library.
"Judging by the door being locked on the inside," the detective answered
sympathetically, "it can only be a case of suicide."
Henshaw frowned. "It will take a good deal to persuade me of that," he
retorted. "Mr. ----"
"Detective-Sergeant Finch."
"Mr. Finch. Did the doctor say suicide?"
"I did not hear him express a definite opinion. Did you, inspector?"
"No, Mr. Finch. I rather presumed the doctor took it for granted."
"Took it for granted!" Henshaw echoed contemptuously. "I'm not going to
take it for granted, I can tell you. Did the doctor examine the body?"
"He made a cursory examination. He is arranging to meet the police
surgeon for an autopsy to-morrow morning."
On the table lay a narrow-bladed chisel, the lower portion of the bright
steel discoloured with the dark stain of blood.
The inspector pointed to it.
"That is the instrument with which the wound must have been made," he
remarked in a subdued tone. "It was found lying beside the body."
Henshaw took it up and ran his eyes over it. "How could he have got
this?" he demanded, looking round with what seemed a distrustful glance.
"I can only suggest," Morriston answered, "that one of my men must have
left it when some work was done here a few days ago."
"That is so apparently, Mr. Morriston," the detective corroborated. "It
has been identified by Haynes, the estate carpenter."
Henshaw put down the chisel and for some moments kept silence, tightening
his thin lips as though in strenuous thought. Then suddenly he demanded,
"Beyond the fact that the door was found locked from within, what reason
have you for your conclusion?"
Mr. Finch shrugged. "We don't see how it could be otherwise, sir," he
replied with quiet conviction. "Clearly the deceased gentleman must have
been alone in the room when he died."
"Might he not have locked the door after the wound was given?" Henshaw
suggested in a tone of cross-examination.
"Dr. Page was of opinion that death, or at any rate unconsciousness, must
have been almost instantaneous," Finch rejoined respectfully.
"Even supposing the autopsy bears out that view I shall not be
satisfied," Henshaw declared.
The inspector took up the argument.
"You see, sir, taking into consideration the position of the room it
would be impossible for any second party who may have been here with the
deceased to leave it undiscovered except by the door. To drop from this
window, which is the only one large enough to admit of an adult body
passing through, would mean pretty certain death. Anyhow the party would
have been so injured that getting clear away would be out of the
question. Will you see for yourself, sir?"
He threw back the window and invited Henshaw to look down. The argument
seemed conclusive.
"Was the window found open or shut?"
"It was found unlatched, sir," Finch answered. "But the servants think
that it was opened that morning and owing to the extra work in the house
that day its fastening in the evening was overlooked."
"Even if a second person had let himself down from the window," the
inspector argued, "the rope would have been here."
Henshaw kept silence, seemingly indifferent to the officials' arguments.
"I can only tell you I am far from satisfied with the suicide theory," he
said at length. "My brother was not that sort of man. He had nerves of
iron; he was in love with life and all it meant to him, and he made it a
rule never to let anything worry him. Let the other fellow worry, was his
motto. Well, we shall see."
He turned towards the door, and as he did so he caught sight of a
cardboard box in which was a collection of various articles, jewellery, a
watch and chain, money, a pocket-handkerchief, a letter, and a dance
programme.
"The contents of deceased's pockets," the inspector observed, answering
Henshaw's glance of curiosity. "We have collected and made a list of
them, and they will in due course be handed to you, or to his heir, on
the coroner's order."
"Is that a letter? May I see it?"
As the official hesitated, Henshaw had snatched the paper, a folded note,
and rapidly ran his eye through its contents. Then he gave a curious
laugh, as he turned over the paper as though seeking an address, and laid
it back in the box.
"A note from my brother to an anonymous lady," he observed quietly.
"Perhaps if we could find out whom it was meant for she would throw some
light on the mystery."