The Beginning of the End: Parabola
Same day. 3 P.M.
In spite of early bed last night, no one was downstairs early this
bright morning, Sunday. I myself wanted breakfast at nine, but then I
am the one person in the House who has anything concrete to do (to
wit, this writing)—hence I require the less repose.
I visited the library before I went for food. To my grim pleasure, the
Book of Sylvan Armitage was back on its shelf. I am always grimly
pleased nowadays when anything baffling turns up. Crofts, by the way,
has proved blatantly sceptical about my experience last night; he said
that if I must go crawling about the House when decent folk are abed,
I mustn’t hold him responsible for what I think I see.
The telephone jangled in the corridor while I was at the table. I
heard Soames answer and take some message. Presently the servant came
to me.
“Superintendent Salt is holding on, sir, if you please.”
“Me, he wants?”
“He asked for any of the gentlemen, sir. Would you mind speaking to
him?”
“Not at all.” A few moments later I was saying, “Hello,
Superintendent; this is Bannerlee. Anything I can do for you?”
“Thanks very much, Mr. Bannerlee. Would you mind givin’ a message to
the doctor—Doctor Aire, I mean?”
“Delighted.”
“I’ve been lookin’ up _his_ whereabouts the two days before he came
down to Radnorshire.”
“_His!_”
“Yes. Nothing like thoroughness, is there? He might like to know he’s
not the Parson. Tell him he’s absolved, clean character, goes
scot-free.”
“He’ll be grateful, I’m sure.”
“Certain to be. Another thing, too, sir. I took the
liberty—unpardonable—of checkin’ _you_ also.”
“_Me!_”
The sound must have deafened Salt, for it was a little while before he
resumed, with smothered amusement. “Couldn’t help it, sir. All in the
way of routine. You’re acquitted, too, and can go your ways.”
“Thanks awfully.”
“Don’t mention it. By the way, I just told that man to inform Mr.
Pendleton that I’m comin’ up there this afternoon early, around
dinner-time. I’m bringin’ someone with me.”
“Oh? Any harm in asking who it is?”
“None at all,” chuckled Salt. “Good-bye.”
It was about one o’clock when I came downstairs again, after setting
down the record of last night’s expedition. I think everyone was in
the Hall, surrounding Salt and a young fellow in a neat grey suit, who
was lank and had freckles and brown hair. His appearance and manner—he
was smiling most of the time—were engaging. Salt also wore a
respectful grin; in fact, everyone looked brighter for this chap’s
presence, especially Crofts.
“Come on, Bannerlee,” he said; “let me introduce the beginning of the
end. You can guess who this is.”
I had a flash of genius. “Yes, I can, by George. It’s Harry—Mr.
Heatheringham.”
“Right!” declared the young man. “But after all, Mr. Bannerlee, you’ve
an unfair advantage in this guessing business.”
“You mean—?”
He winked, took my torch out of his pocket, and handed it to me with a
low bow, such as I had seen somewhere not long before. “Many thanks
for this. I had to borrow it when my own failed last night.”
“Gods! was it you I hit? I’m most awfully sorry.”
“It didn’t hurt, really, but for a little while I didn’t know where I
stood—er, that is, I wasn’t standing at all.” He felt a place on the
back of his head. “It’s hardly the size of a teacup—I mean the bump.
And I wasn’t dazed for long either.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” I avowed. “You certainly lost no time waking
and legging it.”
“Oh, I was awake, wide enough, when you were fastening me up—and a
neat job, that.”
“You don’t mean to say—”
“Yes, but I thought it was better to let you do your worst and untie
myself afterward. I wasn’t sure that the time for explanations had
come, and I wasn’t sure—then—just what you yourself were up to.”
“But if I’d been someone else, you might have been killed.”
His eyes were merry. “I knew it wasn’t somebody else. Suppose we call
it a draw.”
“We’re dying to hear how you escaped,” said Lib. “Why do you keep it
bottled up?”
“It’s my living, you see,” returned Heatheringham apologetically, but
with his customary smile. “I have to be up to a few of the little
secrets of my trade, or I don’t get any bread and butter. Some do it
on the stage for money, but in my business it comes in valuable in
good earnest to carry a few skeleton keys and know how to twist a hand
out of a knotted handkerchief.”
Gradually, while talk went on, we disposed ourselves in chairs, making
a group about this young man who showed from the first minute of
acquaintance such a winning, and even naïve, nature. He sat in the
midst of us now, busy parrying all sorts of questions, and I noticed
that while he spoke lightly, he glanced from person to person, making
brief, sharp studies of us. Particularly he kept stealing looks at
Miss Lebetwood and the two younger Americans.
I had returned the study intensively, striving to capture some elusive
recollection. “Pardon me, Mr. Heatheringham, but really I believe I’ve
met you somewhere—another time, I mean. Am I right?”
“Yes, indeed, we have met. We’ve been having lovers’ meetings all over
the place. You recollect the umbrella?”
The menagerie-keeper! I uttered a great gasp. “That was never you in
the crooked black beard!”
“Wasn’t it, though?” he retorted brightly. “I can see your eyes
popping now, Mr. Bannerlee, when I said, ‘I won’t need finger-nails.’”
“Incredible! That man was bulbous.” I pointed to the detective’s
hands, which were brown and lean. “Don’t tell me you owned the great
red wrists and fingers that fellow had.”
“Try a tightly-bound cuff or any other constriction around the wrist
and keep your arms down—see what happens. Your hands will look like
hams. The rest was just a matter of accessories, an inflated
chest-protector, some dowdy clothes, some black hair. A bad disguise,
on the whole.”
“On the contrary, your twin brother wouldn’t have recognized you.”
“No, but he would have had me arrested. Disguise should be
unobtrusive, but that one shouted all over the place. To tell the
truth, I used it more to give my friend Crofts Pendleton something to
worry about than for any other reason.”
“Oh, you did, did you?” said Crofts.
“Yes, old man. I didn’t realize the situation here might actually be
serious. I merely supposed some sneak-thief was snooping in the
neighbourhood. But it did seem a good chance to have a little sport
with you. You will let yourself in for it,” he accused our muttering
host. “I thought I’d make myself up into a figure of fun and have a
reconnaissance of the scene a couple of nights, just to assure myself
there was no cause for alarm. Then I’d be seen on purpose by some good
honest yokels and perhaps a village idiot or so, and pop in in a day
or two to see what the effect had been in the Vale. But matters turned
out differently from what I had expected, and by the time I met with
you, Mr. Bannerlee, the last thing on earth I wanted was to have it
known I was in the neighbourhood. So I improvised some unnatural
eccentricities and made up a line of desperate talk that I knew would
spoil the last chance of Crofts’ guessing it was me, in case you told
him of your experience, as I felt certain you would.”
“But I didn’t.”
“No, you didn’t. And it made no difference, for what I said about the
bothersome watch-dogs wouldn’t have made much impression, would it,
unless our friend knew where it came from? All those men you sent
out,” he told Crofts, “kept treading on my toes. I had to leg it twice
to slip away from them. And that was after I had made some very
material discoveries and would have given a year of my life not to be
seen.”
“How was I to know that?” said Crofts. “What discoveries do you mean?”
“I ran into a chap who must have been Sir Brooke Mortimer from what I
know now. He seemed to have lost his way, quite a distance up the
Vale. I set the gentleman going in the right direction and watched him
start back downstream. A bit unsteady, I thought he was—oh, nothing
wrong with him that way, but I could see his eyes weren’t too good. He
didn’t seem able to pick his footing, and he might have stepped into a
hole as big as a house without knowing what had happened to him.”
“And do you mean to say that he followed your directions
unhesitatingly when according to yourself you looked like something
out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales?” asked Lord Ludlow, who had been playing
finger-exercises on his knees.
“I don’t believe he quite took me in, my Lord. I’m telling you his
eyesight couldn’t have been good. He might have thought I was a
gentleman-farmer, for all I know—and he seemed like an unsuspicious,
trusting little chap.”
I saw that the subject was a painful one to be discussed in full
session this way, and I wanted to divert the course of conversation. I
nodded to Salt.
“The discovery of Mr. Heatheringham knocks one off the list of your
favourite suspects, eh, Superintendent?”
“Can’t say it does,” he rejoined, with that slow smoulder of humour
underneath the surface. “I’ve known about Mr. Heatheringham since he
arrived in our little community over a week ago.”
He had! More surprises were let loose. As a measure of sensible
precaution the detective had reported his presence to Salt as soon as
he arrived in New Aidenn. In the early dawn after meeting me, having
learned that there was something worth attention in the way of mystery
in the Vale, the young man discarded the crooked black beard of the
menagerie-keeper and glorified his chin with a rich red one, finely
adapted to his complexion. This emblem he had attached properly, using
separate hairs at the edges and trimming the whole to a nicety. He
commenced a campaign of deceit.
First Foggins’ driver was tempted from the path of duty with a
five-pound note, and reported sick. While Foggins the milkman was
tearing his hair, in walked the unblushing detective, and Foggins fell
victim to his wiles. That very noon the newly-employed had driven the
milk cart up the Vale. He had explained at the kitchen door, with a
certain amount of wit, though with his ready tongue all the time in
his cheek, why the service was so much delayed and how he had fallen
heir to the position. The listener to this merry tale was Rosa Clay.
It gained the young man a means of contact with affairs inside the
House which might have been extremely valuable had the storm not cut
off the Vale from Foggins’ circuit.
During the week Heatheringham formed with the Post Office attendant a
mushroom friendship that passeth all legality. So it came about that
Crofts’ impassioned letters were handed to their recipient direct,
without going to Worcester and back. It was, moreover, the detective
himself who had been on the Post Office end of the ’phone when Crofts
dictated his telegram Thursday afternoon with many maledictions on the
stumbling clerk who took the message.
The dinner-bell had rung and we were on our feet. Salt announced he
mustn’t stay, but would leave the field clear for the younger man. “Do
what he tells you,” he said. “He has an idea from time to time.”
Heatheringham drew me apart, until the rest were gone, even waving
Crofts ahead.
“You can do me a favour, Mr. Bannerlee, if you will,” he said with a
laugh in his voice, as if he might have something in the way of a
surprise to try on me.
“I suppose I owe you a month’s hard labour for battering you last
night—but, of course, I want to help you if I can. What shall it be?”
“You’re keeping a written record of events, aren’t you?”
“Crofts told you!” I exclaimed reproachfully—reproachfully in
reference to Crofts, that is.
“Not a bit of it—just my prowling. I’ve noticed your candles burning
until all hours, and last night I brought a small telescope with me
and had a squint at you from a tree way out by the Water. I could
hardly think that you wrote letters all night, could I?”
“Well, your guess is right, as it happens, but my penmanship is rather
free and easy, and I don’t think you’ll find much value—” I was
speaking slowly but thinking fast. Had I put down anything positively
libellous, anything I’d hesitate to sign my name to?
“Let me try, all the same. You and I are both detached onlookers in
this thing, Mr. Bannerlee, and I shouldn’t be surprised if we
supplement each other pretty fully. I’m quite frankly selfish, you
see,” he admitted easily. “I want to know all you know without telling
you what I know.”
“Oh, I’ll trust you to repay me, not later than noon to-morrow,” I
said. “Come along upstairs with me while I get the sheets for
you—unless you’ll wait until after dinner.”
“There’s no after dinner for me; I’m not taking dinner,” he answered,
and we went up the stairs together. “I had a snack in New Aidenn with
something like this in prospect. Time’s what counts. It will be dark
too soon to suit me.”
Same day. 7 P.M.
Please God, the experiment is over. It was not long.
About five this afternoon Heatheringham came into the library where I
was writing about the events of the day. He had wrestled with my
script since I had left him to go down to dinner, and he seemed even
better-humoured than before.
“I want some tea,” he said. “I want some tea, and yet, while there’s
light, I want a little assistance from the people here.”
“Are you commandeering the servants, too?”
“No, I can do without the servants, except that one who brought the
hot water.”
“Soames?”
“Right.”
“Well, you’ll find the rest of us in the conservatory, waiting for
both tea and you. Since the tragedy outside the Hall, the venue of tea
has been shifted.”
“I suppose they could wait fifteen minutes for their feeding, if I
suffered with them?”
“We have been in training for martyrdom all week. But what on earth is
this rigmarole you’re going to put us through?”
“I want you to rehearse a little drama you have already performed
without rehearsal.”
It was just that.
“I’m sorry if this is painful to some of you,” he said later in the
conservatory. “But it’s vital. I need to check some observations, and
there’s no way else. I’m awfully sorry to trouble you; really I am,
but it’s my living, you know.” He gave a sly smile. “It’s my living,
and it will help you to escape from here to-morrow. Is it a bargain?”
From the time Cosgrove left the Hall until Miss Lebetwood found him
dying outside may have been an hour. We were asked to re-enact as
precisely as possible our movements during the last quarter of this
period.
“You would be asleep, sir, over by the gate-house, if I’m not
mistaken,” said Heatheringham to Oxford. “I’ll let you off the
sleeping. Just be on hand, if you don’t mind. You,” addressing
Belvoir, “would be coming toward the towers and meeting Miss Mertoun
and Lord Herbert. Presently you’d commence monkeying with the winch.”
He spoke to me. “You were returning from the Delambre cottage, weren’t
you? Doctor Aire and Mr. Maryvale must see you from the summer-house.
I think you’ll all work into it.”
“But how silly!” said Miss Lebetwood. “All I can do is to wander about
the strawberry trees looking for tennis balls I know won’t be there.”
“It’s all make-believe, you know,” answered Heatheringham. “And I
can’t change the parts around, can I?”
“I don’t see how my doing that can help.”
“Still,” insisted the detective deferentially, “it will assist me a
lot if you’ll just go through the motions. Now, is everybody clear
about what he’s to do?”
“Shall I fetch hot water for Mr. Bannerlee, sir?” asked Soames, who
had been admitted to our company.
“That’s hardly essential. But you might carry an empty pannikin to
give mental support. Now, shall we commence? Some of the ladies may
need coats. It’s beginning to blow a bit.”
“Not fair unless you tell us what you’re going to do yourself,”
protested Lib.
“I’m going to be here, there, and everywhere,” said Heatheringham.
“You may even hear me giving a few stage directions. Come on, people,
I want my tea. One, two, three, go.”
Little gusts of wind were stirring. Evening frost had caused a
marvellous change in the foliage, and the air was chromatic with
flying leaves. They blew in my face while I breasted my way to the
north end of the sycamore park, where I turned to retrace my steps.
Through the dim light of the wood, I saw the black forms of Maryvale
and Doctor Aire together on the porch of the abandoned summer-house.
They nodded when I came nearest them. I reached the bridge, the
cypresses, the lawn, the mansion itself. I saw people beyond the
gate-house.
Suddenly I remembered that to keep in character I must peer into the
Hall, and my flesh began to crawl at the thought of seeing the grim,
phantasmal bone. I would not see it, of course, but if I did—
Then I caught a glimpse of Heatheringham over a hundred yards south of
the House. He seemed to be waving me on, and I assumed that I must be
a little behind my schedule. Without a glance into any of the windows
I obediently rounded the library tower, entered the half-opened door,
not omitting to ring, since I had done so on the previous occasion.
The footman answered the bell with what would have been appalling
suddenness had I not known he had been waiting for me. He received my
instructions for hot water with the same obeisance and the same
perfunctory words in the identical tone as before. I climbed the empty
House to my room.
I was in a quandary, for it would do no manner of good to take off my
coat and repeat the little battle with myself whose result had been a
wounded finger. I certainly wouldn’t subject my digit to the
safety-razor’s mercies a second time. But for the sake of keeping in
the rhythm of the other day I might perform some of the milder
motions. First I must go out to the balcony, where I had picked up the
odd little scrap of rope.
I pressed through the window and, standing on the roof outside, saw
the forms of people anticking about the tower and heard the rasp of
the winch. Someone was on the lawn a little distance beyond the walk
that skirts the House—Heatheringham himself.
“Hello!” I called aloud in the high wind. “Everything working
smoothly?”
He must have seen me before, for he answered quickly, cupping his
hands. “Yes, I think they’re all in their places. You did come out
there the other day, didn’t you?”
“I did, and should go in again now if I keep in step.”
“Did you order that hot water?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“How did the servant behave?”
“Admirably; he didn’t turn a hair.”
“No, I should think not. Well, carry on. I’m bound this way.” He
shouted the last words in a bristling wind, and set off walking toward
the north.
“Good hunting,” I called after him.
I had now been on the roof for nearly five minutes and had equalled
the span of time I spent there before. I returned to my chamber.
I laid my watch on the table and timed my own part of the programme,
to make as near the proper _rapprochement_ with Soames as I could. I
allowed half a minute for divesting myself of coat and shirt, and as
long again for my struggle with the oak chest and my mishap with the
stool. (The handle of the chest was gone now; no use repeating that
fracas.) Thirty seconds more of searching for a place to attach my
strop, perhaps the remainder of the minute spent in that unhappy
stropping (for luck and devilment I gave the curlicued bracket a jerk
and a smash), fifteen seconds to stare like a fool at the place where
I had formerly cut my finger, a few moments for crossing to the door
and listening for Soames—
My heart missed a beat or two. Someone _was_ climbing the stairs!
It was silly of me, of course, to be taken aback by the very thing I
was waiting for, I had heard no one but Soames himself ascending at
his proper time.
But the slam of the door down below and the deep brawling laughter
which followed— Dear God! they, too, reverberated, and the sound of
that inhuman mirth now held a ghastly message which it had not on the
first occasion.
And early above the sound of the laughter had I heard a single sharp
explosion, like the report of a firearm?
I leaped across to the window. This time there was no fan of light
spreading from the Hall, but I saw indecipherable forms criss-crossing
on the lawn, and the sound of conflicting cries floated up in the
lapse of the wind.
To leave the chamber, to reach the stair-head, took but a second or
two. Again I saw Soames green as an old statue, a grotesque caricature
of Aquarius, stony-lipped with mortal fear, the little empty water-can
dangling from his hand.
I ignored him, but heard his feet pound down the stairs behind me.
Down at the front entrance, just outside the door, I caught sight of
Lib, still as wax. We looked at each other, mirroring the dread we
saw.
“Did you hear it?” I said at last.
Her voice was weak. “The shot, you mean?”
“Was there a shot?”
“There was if my ears are working.”
“Where?”
She shook her head miserably. “I—I don’t know. I think it was out on
the lawn.”
“Then why were you coming in?”
She clenched both little fists and shook them tremblingly. “I was only
doing what the detective told me to do. Besides, he—he came in first.”
“_He came in!_”
“He went in this door while I was quite a way from the House.”
“Then what’s become of him? He couldn’t have fired that shot outside!”
“Don’t ask me. Don’t ask me. I don’t know anything about it. I got to
the door in time to hear the tail-end of that laugh—that was enough
for me. I don’t want to lead the searching-party. This is the last
time I officiate for any detective.”
“Come along with me, then. He must be here somewhere.”
“I think they’re trying to find him outside, sir,” said Soames, who
had stepped warily to the corner of the House.
“That’s because they don’t know he went in here. Come along, both of
you.”
We passed into the portrait-corridor, and I shouted Heatheringham’s
name a couple of times, without effect.
Several of the servants had emerged from their quarters and were
clustered about me while I stood at the door beneath the musicians’
gallery, scrutinizing the vast gloom of the Hall. Somehow, I was loath
to enter or to switch on the light ready to my hand.
“Nobody here,” said Lib beside me, in a tone of relief.
I still moved my glance through the spaces of the room. Feet were
pouring through the front door. I heard Crofts’ voice raised:
“Heatheringham’s missing. What in thunder are you up to?”
Then I saw something limned against the dark expanse of the central
window of the Hall: the shape of a man who leaned heavily against the
window-frame, looking out to the lawn. The moment my eyes had
distinguished him, I knew it was Heatheringham. But he was awfully
still! Why hadn’t he heard my shout?
“Heatheringham!” I called, and was shocked how strained the syllables
crept from my lips. “Heather—”
“Where is he? Do you see him?” demanded Crofts, pressing to the door.
“Why didn’t you light up—good God!”
He had switched on the electricity. From outside, beyond the window,
came cry upon excited cry when the form of the detective was revealed
by the blazing chandelier. But we who were behind Harry Heatheringham
could see why he did not answer us, why he did not move. There was a
gaping wound at the base of his brain, and the whole back of his trim
grey coat was black with blood.
“Lawks!” cried Soames, and seemed about to faint.
Persons were rushing in from outside now, through the french windows.
Doctor Aire took one look at the wound, and his face was filled with
the most complete astonishment. His little dark eyes came out of their
hiding-places, and even his tobacco-leaf complexion went several
shades wan.
“Keep the women away,” he snapped at Soames, “and don’t let Maryvale
come in here.”
“This is horrible, horrible,” Crofts kept saying.
“Is—is he dead?” asked Bob Cullen timidly, but no one smiled.
“He is,” answered the Doctor. “Men with holes in their heads like this
are dead as Pharaoh.”
I ventured to touch the left hand that hung with such dreadful
listlessness. “Why, he’s stiff!” I blurted, and a great shudder shook
me. “He’s stiff! He must have been dead a long time. But, Doctor, I
was talking to him less than five minutes ago!”
“You were!” exclaimed Crofts in an incredulous bull-voice.
“Quite so,” said Aire. “I noticed it the moment I saw the poor
fellow.” He, too, touched the left hand. “Stiff, yes, but not cold
yet.”
“What’s it all mean?” asked Belvoir.
“He could never be leaning there in that semi-lifelike manner if it
weren’t the case,” said Aire. “I observed it, as I said, when I had
the first glimpse of him. I have heard of it, but I’ve never seen a
case before.”
“A case of what?”
“Instant _rigor mortis_. It occurs sometimes, under certain
conditions, in sudden death.”
Ludlow, who stood near the body on the other side, was regarding it
with awe, but his sharp face quickened with discovery. “Have you
looked at his other hand? There’s a revolver in it.”
“Then he did fire the shot,” I cried.
“I’ll stake my life the shot was from somewhere outside,” avouched
Crofts.
“I’m sure it was,” said Belvoir quietly.
“The point I wish to make,” said Ludlow, “is that the revolver is
outside. He’s put his hand right through.”
It was so. Concealed by the fact that the body pressed close to the
window, the right arm half-way to the elbow had been thrust through
the glass and the wrist was supported by one of the cross-bars between
the small panes. The weapon was tightly clutched in the hand, and its
nose pointed upward!
“What in the name of reason could he have fired at up there?”
It was when we laid the dead detective, stiff in the original posture,
revolver clamped in hand, on the carpet spread over the _Brocade de
Lyons_ creation that we looked beyond that article of elegance and saw
what had been concealed behind it.
Splashes of blood from Heatheringham’s wound were on the floor at our
feet, between the body and the couch. Now we beheld more blood, a
trail of it across the floor in drops that led in a long, irregular,
parabolic curve from the couch to the open door by the clock-corner,
and so out into the corridor. There the track ceased abruptly.
“Hm,” said Aire, standing at the spot. “Here’s where the assailant
tucked his bludgeon away.” He looked up and down the gallery. “Friend
Crofts, why not have another search and see if one of these priceless
paintings doesn’t conceal a door?”
“There has never been, and is not any secret passage in the House,”
said Crofts decisively. “You can say amen to that.”
Aire shrugged his shoulders. Lord Ludlow shook his head several times,
though what at no one could tell. Belvoir stared at the last drop of
blood where it stained the blue-carpeted floor as if he were
fascinated by it. Bob Cullen pursed his lips and whistled a ditty of
no tone. Crofts kept putting his hands in his pockets and taking them
out again.
Insensibly, instinctively, we drew the tiniest bit closer to one
another. Spiritually, we huddled. We were all little men, badly
frightened, in the great House where murder stalked invisible.
If this is “the beginning of the end,” what will the end itself be
like?