The Inquest, and a Fresh Clue
The inquest was held on the following afternoon (that is, the
afternoon of Thursday) in the village school at Paston Whitchurch. As
he sat waiting to give his evidence, Reeves found his mind dominated,
as the mind is dominated at such moments, almost entirely by
irrelevant sense-impressions. There was the curious smell of the
schoolroom, which always suggests (it is hard to know why) ink and
chalk. There was the irritating pant and hoot of motors and
motor-bicycles outside the open windows. There was the inevitable
series of animals represented round the walls, looking like the
religious emblems of some strange, totemistic worship. The one
opposite Reeves had a caption underneath it in very large letters, THE
PIG IS A MAMMAL, as if to clear up any possible doubts which might be
felt by the youth of the parish as to what a pig was. There were the
names cut and inked on the desks; especially intriguing was the
signature of “H. Precious”—how did people in the country get such odd
names? And why were there so few names like that in the London
Telephone Directory? Carmichael would probably have a theory about
this. . . .
Such were the thoughts that kept dawdling through his mind, when he
felt that he ought to be forming important decisions. What was he
going to say when he was called in evidence? Was he going to give any
hint as to his suspicions of foul play, or would it be better to leave
the police to their own unaided intelligence? And if he did breathe
his suspicions, was he bound to mention the golf-ball which he had
found at the top of the embankment? Would they ask how he had employed
his time between the moment when he found the body and the moment when
the police arrived? He wished that he had discussed all this
beforehand with Gordon—or would that have been conspiring to defeat
the ends of justice? Anyhow, he wished the preliminary proceedings
would hurry up.
When he was actually called, he found that he was not asked for his
opinion on any theoretical point, and indeed was given no opportunity
of getting a word in edgeways as to the view he had formed of the
case. He was only asked details about the exact time of his discovery
(this question confused him rather) and the precise attitude in which
the body lay. Instead of being criticized for disturbing the clues by
removing the dead body, he was thanked for having removed it.
Altogether, the proceedings struck him as singularly ill-calculated to
assist in the clearing up of a mystery. It seemed rather as if Society
were performing a solemn act of purification over the remains of the
dead. In the end he sat down feeling exactly (the atmosphere helped)
as if he were back at school again, had just been “put on construing,”
not at the passage he had specially “mugged up,” but at the passage
next door to it, and had acquitted himself better than he expected in
the circumstances. The feeling was intensified when Marryatt got up;
Marryatt was still intensely nervous over the prospect of a suicide
verdict; and he answered the questions put to him confusedly and at
random, like a schoolboy who has omitted the formality of preparing
the lesson at all.
The heroine of the afternoon was undoubtedly Mrs. Bramston. The
coroner was not ready for her, and she got right in under his guard,
pouring out a flood of promiscuous information which he neither
demanded nor desired. Then strangers came—people from Brotherhood’s
office in London, people from the Insurance Company, people
representing the creditors: people, too, who represented the railway
company, and dilated for hours on the impossibility of falling out of
their trains by accident. In fact, nobody seemed to care a straw about
the mangled temple of humanity that lay in the next room, or whether
it cried to heaven for vengeance. Only two points mattered, whether
the Insurance Company had got to pay up, and whether the Railway
Company owed Compensation. Brotherhood had, as far as could be
discovered, neither kith nor kin in the world, and it was perhaps not
unnatural that the verdict given was one of death by suicide. Yet
Marryatt was to be freed of his apprehensions: Brotherhood had looked
worried lately at the office—had said, “Damn you, get out of the way”
to the lift-boy—had complained of headaches. He had committed suicide,
clearly while of unsound mind; and Marryatt might get on with the
funeral.
Marryatt seemed five years younger when they met afterwards to discuss
the situation. Strange, Reeves reflected, how in certain natures the
wish is father to the thought. Only last night Marryatt had seemed
eager to follow up the clues of a murder, so as to get the bugbear of
suicide off his mind; now that the act of suicide was declared
inculpable, he showed no great interest in prosecuting the inquiry.
“It’s a mystery,” he kept on saying, “and I don’t think we’re ever
likely to get to the bottom of it. If we could have hunted Davenant,
we should have had something to go on. Now that we know Davenant was a
fictitious personage, what’s the use of worrying? We’ve no clues that
can help us to any further action. Unless, of course, you like to go
to the police and tell them what you know.”
But to this Reeves would not consent. Ever since the apparent
indifference with which the police had treated his warning chits when
he was in the Military Intelligence, he had longed for an opportunity
to show them in the wrong.
“There are one or two things,” he pointed out, “which we’ve still got
to account for. There’s that cipher message we found in Brotherhood’s
pocket. There’s the list we found on the back of it; only four words,
but full of suggestion. And there’s the golf ball we found on the
embankment—there we have the actual clue in our pockets.”
“A precious poor sort of clue,” objected Gordon. “Leave that ball
lying about, and every third man in the club will be prepared to adopt
it as his long-lost property.”
Carmichael seemed destined to overwhelm them with surprises. At this
point he suddenly remarked, “You know, that’s not all the clues we’ve
got. There’s one that dropped out of poor Brotherhood’s pocket as the
caddies were carrying off the body to the tool-house. At least, the
caddies said so: my private impression is that the young ruffians
searched the pockets on their own——”
“Why on earth should they do that?” asked Reeves.
“Well, you know what caddies are—it’s a demoralizing profession. Not
that I believe much in boys going to school myself, but it does keep
them out of mischief. Those two boys, I think, went through the
pockets on their own.”
“They left four bob there,” suggested Gordon.
“Yes, boys are frightened of stealing money; they connect it with
going to prison. But they don’t mind stealing other things; I think
they could tell you why the pouch was empty, and why there was only
one cigarette left in the case—they were too clever to clear both
completely. After all, you know, it isn’t very long since people gave
up ‘wrecking’ in Cornwall. I remember a very interesting conversation
I had with a man down there in the _Lugger_ Inn at Fowey——”
“You were going to tell us something about a clue,” said Gordon
gently.
“Ah yes: one of them came up to me afterwards—it was the one they call
Ginger. I wonder why are boys with red hair called Ginger? Ginger is
of a greenish-yellow tinge, if you come to think of it. Where was I?
Yes, he came up to me with a photograph, and told me that it had
fallen out of one of the pockets as they carried the body. That is
almost impossible, you know, for a man always carries photographs in
his breast pocket, and a thing can’t fall out of a man’s breast pocket
unless you turn him upside down and shake him. Ginger was obviously
scared at the thought that he might be concealing a clue—he referred
to it as a ‘clue’ himself—and did not care to give it to the police;
so he handed it over to me.”
“And you?”
“I have it here in my pocket—the breast pocket, observe. To tell the
truth, I am a little absent-minded, and it was only during the inquest
that I remembered the photograph; it seemed to me too late then to
mention anything about it in public.”
“Carmichael,” said Gordon very seriously, “if you don’t produce that
photograph it will, I gather, be necessary to turn you upside down and
shake you.”
“Of course, of course.” Carmichael fumbled in his pocket, and from a
voluminous pocket-book produced with great deliberation the object of
their impatience. It represented the head and shoulders of a young
woman: the features were refined, and might in real life have been
beautiful. The camera cannot lie, but the camera of the local “artist”
generally finds it difficult to tell nothing but the truth: and this
was the work of a Mr. Campbell, whose studio was no further off than
Binver. Meanwhile the photograph was not in its first youth; and the
style of coiffure represented suggested (with what could be seen of
the dress) a period dating some ten years back. It was not signed or
initialled anywhere.
“Well,” said Reeves, when the trove had been handed round, “that
doesn’t prove that we’re much further on. But it looks as if we had
come across a phase of Brotherhood’s life that wasn’t alluded to at
the inquest.”
Gordon shuddered. “Just think if one went off the hooks suddenly, and
people came round and tried to dig up one’s past from the old
photographs and keepsakes one had hidden away in drawers! One should
destroy everything—certainly one should destroy everything.”
But Reeves was no sentimentalist; he was a sleuth-hound with nose down
on the trail. “Let’s see,” he reflected, “I can’t remember at the
moment what the present Binver photographer is called.”
“You will find it,” suggested Carmichael, “on that group over your
head.” Reeves had it down in a minute.
“Yes, that’s right: Campbell,” he said. “Now, if one of us goes off in
Binver and says he’s found this photograph, and would Mr. Campbell be
kind enough to let us know the address it was originally sent to, so
that we can restore it, that ought to do the trick. Photographers are
full of professional etiquette, but I don’t see that we could go wrong
here.”
“I don’t mind going,” said Marryatt; “as a matter of fact, I’ve got to
ride in to see a man on business.”
“Heaven defend me,” said Reeves, “from having business with anybody at
Binver!”
“You will, though, with this man, some day.”
“Why, who is it?”
“The undertaker,” said Marryatt.
“Undertakers,” said Carmichael, “have been very much maligned in
literature. They are always represented as either cynical or morbid in
the exercise of their profession. As a matter of fact, I am told that
no class of men is more considerate or more tactful.”
“I’ll be back in three-quarters of an hour,” said Marryatt, buttoning
the photograph away. “Carmichael, I hope you won’t produce any more
clues while I’m away.”
When Marryatt had gone, and Carmichael had sauntered off to the
billiard-room, Reeves sat on there fidgeting and discussing the
possible significance of the latest find.
“It’s odd,” he said, “how one can live for years in the artificial
life of a club like this and not know one’s neighbours in the least.
We’re a world to ourselves, and an outside face like that conveys
nothing to us; probably the name won’t either. What beats me at
present about the photograph is this—how long ago would you say that
photograph was taken?”
“I’m not an authority on ladies’ fashions, I’m afraid, but surely it’s
pre-war.”
“Exactly. Now, Brotherhood only came here just at the end of the war,
at least, he only joined the Club then; I asked the Secretary about
it. And ‘Davenant’ joined even later, only a year or two ago. When a
man takes a house here, one assumes that he’s only come here for the
golf. But it looks as if Brotherhood, or else his phantom self,
Davenant, knew the Binver world already—at least well enough to
possess photographs of its belles.”
“Not necessarily,” Gordon pointed out. “She may have had no later
portrait to give him than that one, even if she gave it him only a
year or two ago.”
“That’s true. And yet women generally keep their portraits pretty well
up-to-date. Here’s another point—from the caddie’s account, it seems
that this portrait must have been loose in the pocket; but he can’t
always have carried it like that. . . . Good Lord, what a fool I am!
What size was the empty frame in Davenant’s cottage?”
“Oh, just that size. It’s a common size, of course, but I suppose most
likely it was that portrait which ‘Davenant’ caught up in a hurry
before he left his house; and crammed it into his pocket anyhow.
Assuming, of course, that Carmichael’s right.”
“Yes, that makes the thing as clear as daylight, so far. I hope
Marryatt makes good time. Look how slow we’ve been on the murderer’s
tracks; we’ve given him two full days already.”
“By the way,” said Gordon, “I’ve just remembered—Thursday’s early
closing day at Binver.”