“... SPEED THE PARTING GUEST!”
Dr. Romain was just finishing his breakfast as Robin Greve entered the
dining-room, a cosy oak-panelled room with a bow window fitted with
cushioned window-seats. Horace Trevert stood with his back to the fire.
There was no sign of either Lady Margaret or of Mary. Silence seemed to
fall on both the doctor and his companion as Robin came in. They wore
that rather abashed look which people unconsciously assume when they
break off a conversation on an unexpected entry.
“Morning, Horace! Morning, Doctor!” said Robin, crossing to the
sideboard. “Any sign of Lady Margaret or Mary yet?”
The doctor had risen hastily to his feet.
“I rather think Dr. Redstone is expecting me,” he said rapidly; “I half
promised to go over to Stevenish ... think I’ll just run over. The
walk’ll do me good ...”
He looked rather wildly about him, then fairly bolted from the room.
Robin, the cover of the porridge dish in his hand, turned and stared at
him.
“Why, whatever’s the matter with Romain?” he began.
But Horace, who had not spoken a word, was himself halfway to the door.
“Horace!” called out Robin sharply.
The boy stopped with his back towards the other. But he did not turn
round.
Robin put the cover back on the porridge dish and crossed the room.
“You all seem in the deuce of a hurry this morning ...” he said.
Still the boy made no reply.
“Why, Horace, what’s the matter?”
Robin put his hand on young Trevert’s shoulder. Horace shook him
roughly off.
“I don’t care to discuss it with you, Robin!” he said.
Robin deliberately swung the boy round until he faced him.
“My dear old thing,” he expostulated. “What does it all mean? _What_
won’t you discuss with me?”
Horace Trevert looked straight at the speaker. His upper lip was pouted
and trembled a little.
“What’s the use of talking?” he said. “You know what I mean. Or would
you like me to be plainer ...”
Robin met his gaze unflinchingly.
“I certainly would,” he said, “if it’s going to enlighten me as to why
you should suddenly choose to behave like a lunatic ...”
Horace Trevert leant back and thrust his hands into his pockets.
“After what happened here yesterday,” he said, speaking very clearly
and deliberately, “I wonder you have the nerve to stay ...”
“My dear Horace,” said Robin quite impassively, “would you mind being a
little more explicit? What precisely are you accusing me of? What have
I done?”
“Done?” exclaimed the young man heatedly. “Done? Good God! Don’t you
realize that you have dragged my sister into this wretched business?
Don’t you understand that her name will be bandied about before a lot
of rotten yokels at the inquest?”
Robin Greve’s eyes glittered dangerously.
“I confess,” he said, with elaborate politeness, “I scarcely understand
what it has to do with me that Hartley Parrish should apparently commit
suicide within a few days of becoming engaged to your sister ...”
“Ha!”
Horace Trevert snorted indignantly.
“You don’t understand, don’t you? We don’t understand either. But, I
must say, we thought _you_ did!”
With that he turned to go. But Robin caught him by the arm.
“Listen to me, Horace,” he said. “I’m not going to quarrel with you in
this house of death. But you’re going to tell here and now what you
meant by that remark. Do you understand? I’m going to know!”
Horace Trevert shook himself free.
“Certainly you shall know,” he answered with _hauteur_, “but I must say
I should have thought that, as a lawyer and so on, you would have
guessed my meaning without my having to explain. What I mean is that,
now that Hartley Parrish is dead, there is only one man who knows what
drove him to his death. And that’s yourself! Do you want it plainer
than that?”
Robin took a step back and looked at his friend. But he did not speak.
“And now,” the boy continued, “perhaps you will realize that your
presence here is disagreeable to Mary ...”
“Did Mary ask you to tell me this?” Robin broke in.
His voice had lost its hardness. It was almost wistful. The change of
tone was so marked that it struck Horace. He hesitated an instant.
“Yes,” he blurted out. “She doesn’t want to see you again. I don’t want
to be offensive, Robin..”
“Please don’t apologize,” said Greve. “I quite understand that this is
your sister’s house now and, of course, I shall leave at once. I’ll ask
Jay to pack my things if you could order the car ...”
The boy moved towards the door. Before he reached it Robin called him
back.
“Horace,” he said pleasantly, “before you go I want you to answer me a
question. Think before you speak, because it’s very important. When you
got into the library yesterday evening through the window, you smashed
the glass, didn’t you?”
Horace Trevert nodded.
“Yes,” he replied, looking hard at Robin.
“Why?”
“To get into the room, of course!”
“Was the window bolted?”
The boy stopped and thought.
“No,” he said slowly, “now I come to think of it, I don’t believe it
was. No, of course, it wasn’t. I just put my arm through the broken
pane and shoved the window up. But why do you ask?”
“Oh, nothing,” answered Robin nonchalantly. “I just was curious to
know, that’s all!”
Horace stood and looked at him for an instant. Then he went out.
A quarter of an hour later, Hartley Parrish’s Rolls-Royce glided
through the straggling main street of Stevenish. A chapel bell tinkled
unmusically, and on the pavements, gleaming with wet, went a procession
of neatly dressed townsfolk bound, prayer-book in hand, for their
respective places of worship. A newsboy, sorting out the Sunday
newspapers which had just come down by train from London, was the only
figure visible on the little station platform. Robin bought a
selection.
“There’s all about Mr. Parrish,” said the boy, “’im as they found dead
up at ’Arkings las’ night. And the noospapers ’asn’t ’arf been sendin’
down to-day ... reporters and photographers ... you oughter seen the
crowd as come by the mornin’ train ...”
“I wonder what they’ll get out of Manderton,” commented Robin rather
grimly to himself as his train puffed leisurely, after the habit of
Sunday trains, into the quiet little station.
In the solitude of his first-class smoker he unfolded the newspapers.
None had more than the brief fact that Hartley Parrish had been found
dead with a pistol in his hand, but they made up for the briefness of
their reports by long accounts of the dead man’s “meteoric career.”
And, Robin noted with relief, hitherto Mary Trevert’s name was out of
the picture.
He dropped the papers on to the seat, and, as the train steamed
serenely through the Sunday calm of the country towards London’s outer
suburbs, he reviewed in his mind such facts as he had gleaned regarding
the circumstances of his late host’s death.
He would, he told himself, accept for the time being as _facts_ what,
he admitted to himself, so far only seemed to be such. Hartley Parrish,
then, had been seated in his library at his desk with the door locked.
The fire was smoking, and therefore he had opened the window. According
to Horace Trevert, the window had not been bolted when he had entered
the library, for, after smashing the pane in the assumption that the
bolt was shot, he had had no difficulty in pushing up the window.
Hartley Parrish had opened the window himself, for on the nail of the
middle finger of his left hand Robin had seen, with the aid of the
magnifying-glass, a tiny fragment of white paint.
Who had closed it? He had no answer ready to _that_ question.
Now, as to the circumstances of the shooting. The suicide theory
invited one to believe that Hartley Parrish had got up from his desk,
pushing back his chair, had gone round it until he stood between the
desk and the window, and had there shot himself through the heart. Why
should he have done this?
Robin had no answer ready to this question either. He passed on again.
Bude had heard loud voices a very few minutes before Mary had heard the
shot. That morning’s experiments had shown that Bude could have heard
these sounds only by way of the open window of the library and the open
doors of the garden and the library corridor. Additional proof, if Bude
had heard aright, that the library window was open.
Leaning back in his seat, his finger-tips pressed together, Robin Greve
resolutely faced the situation to which his deductions were leading
him.
“The voice heard at the open window,” he told himself, “was the voice
of the man who murdered Parrish and who closed the window, that is, of
course, if the murder theory proves more conclusive than that of
suicide.”
This brought him back to his investigations in the rosery. The abrasure
he had discovered on the timber upright was the mark of a bullet and a
mark freshly made at that. Moreover, it had almost certainly been fired
from the library window—from the window which Parrish had opened; the
angle at which it had struck and marked the tree showed that almost
conclusively.
Yet there had been but one shot! If only he had been able to find that
bullet in the rosery! Robin thought ruefully of his long hunt among the
sopping rose-bushes.
Yes, there had been only one shot. Mary Trevert had stated it
definitely. Besides, the bullet that had killed Hartley Parrish had
been fired from his own revolver and had been found in the body. Robin
Greve felt the murder theory collapsing about him. But the suicide
theory did not stand up, either. What possible, probable motive had
Hartley Parrish for taking his own life?
“He wasn’t the man to do it!”
The wheels of the train took up the rhythm of the phrase and dinned it
into his ears.
“He wasn’t the man to do it!”
The riddle seemed more baffling than ever.
Robin thrust one hand into his right-hand pocket to get his pipe, his
other hand into his left-hand pocket to find his pouch. His left hand
came into contact with a little ball of paper.
He drew it out. It was the little ball of slatey-blue paper he had
found on the floor of the library beside Hartley Parrish’s dead body.