MR. BATHURST TAKES HIS SECOND LOOK--WITH MR. CUNNINGHAM'S ASSISTANCE
Anthony drew me to one side. "I don't think we gain a lot by staying
here, Bill," he whispered. "We'll get back to my original
proposition--let's have another look at Prescott's bedroom."
We entered the house and went upstairs. It will be remembered that the
bedroom occupied by Prescott was the fourth along the corridor, and lay
between the rooms that had sheltered Major Hornby and Tennant. It had
been straightened and put in order.
Anthony went to the wardrobe and opened it. "Clothes all gone," he
remarked.
"Wouldn't the Inspector have them?" I suggested.
"I don't mean the clothes he was wearing--I wanted his other clothes."
"Mrs. Prescott, I expect--that's the explanation. She's taken them."
"Very probably, Bill! Never mind--can't be helped. I daresay she'll let
me have a glance at them if I consider it necessary. Let's have a look
at the dressing-table drawers. Are they empty too?"
I tried the first--empty. The others were in similar
condition--everything had been removed--either by Baddeley or for Mrs.
Prescott.
"We're late, old man," I said. "There's nothing here."
Anthony came and looked. "Pity! Still--it's my own fault--I ought to
have anticipated this. Delays are dangerous."
He crossed to the window, and looked out, leaving the bathroom door open
behind him.
"Precious little chance of any exit or entrance this way," he said. "A
cat would find a foothold difficult."
"Why?" I asked. "You didn't really consider that as a possibility, did
you?"
"I consider everything as a possibility, Bill--till I know it's not.
Hallo--that's rather interesting." He pointed to the wash-hand basin.
"What is it?" I said.
"The stub of a cigar! Not finished either. Funny place for a cigar."
"Not altogether," I ventured. "Suppose Prescott was smoking a cigar when
he came to bed that night and came in here to wash his hands. It would
be a very natural thing for him to put it there while he washed them."
Anthony nodded approvingly. "Yes! And when he'd finished washing them?"
"Well?"
"What then? Don't you think he would pick it up again and finish his
smoke rather than leave it lying there?"
"Possibly," I responded.
"Rather strange it hasn't been removed," he reflected. "Haven't any
servants been here since the murder?"
"Perhaps they did the bedroom and didn't trouble to come in here."
He picked up the portion of cigar. As he had remarked it had certainly
not been smoked to the point of necessary relinquishment.
"Remember what Mary Considine told us, Bill? Not long ago?"
"How do you mean?" I said.
"On the third occasion that she fancied Prescott was being watched or
followed she went into the garden where she imagined the watcher to be,
and detected the smell of cigar smoke. Nothing like conclusive, I
know--but certainly pointing in the same direction."
"What brand is it?" I asked.
Anthony demurred. "I am well aware that the immortal Holmes had
published a brochure on the various kinds of tobacco ash--I really
forget the number he mentioned--but alas! I am unable to keep pace with
him there. It looks an ordinary type--I can tell you one thing--it isn't
one of Sir Charles Considine's assortment--I've had too many not to know
that. Still I'll hang onto it." He put it carefully away in his pocket.
"You'll find that's Prescott's all right," I exclaimed. "How can you
imagine it could belong to anybody else? How could anybody else get in
here--for a start? In the bathroom of Prescott's bedroom!"
"There's a door, Bill," rejoined Anthony drily. "Quite a natural method
of entering a room. You may be quite right, and it may have been
Prescott's--all the same I'm going to have a look round in here--there
may be more in Mary's story than either of us anticipated." Out came the
magnifying-glass again and he got to work with it on the floor of the
bathroom.
I strolled back into the bedroom, and couldn't altogether resist a smile
as I heard him talking to himself from the farther apartment.
"These criminologists take things extraordinarily seriously," I thought
to myself. "Good job if they don't run across too many cases in a
lifetime."
I looked round the bedroom. Why shouldn't I try my hand at the sleuth
game? Perhaps I could find something! To the best part of my memory
Prescott's bedroom had not received too meticulous an examination. After
all he had slept and dressed in here for nearly a week, and a bedroom
might very easily contain something of his secret, assuming that he
possessed one. It was an intimate room--it touched a man--closely. If he
had anything to conceal, it might well be that it was hidden in here,
somewhere. I wandered round, my eyes searching for likely hiding-places.
Inspiration came from nowhere. My eyes caught the bed. Had anybody
looked underneath? At any rate I decided that I would! I went down full
length and wriggled my body underneath. And I had not been under there
many seconds when I formed the opinion that while the floor had nothing
to tell me, the wainscoting directly below the head of the bed had three
tiny pieces of paper on it! They had fluttered down as very small
fragments of paper will, and come to rest on the skirting-board, before
reaching the floor itself. Very probably of no consequence whatever, but
I'd have old Anthony in, come what may!
I went to the connecting door. "Come in here a minute, will you?"
To all appearances he was engaged in a close scrutiny of the bath-mat.
"What's up?" he queried.
I was as near excitement as I had been since this bewildering affair had
started.
I beckoned him. "Come in here!" I said. He came with alacrity. I lay at
full length as I had done just previously. "Flop down here." He joined
me. I pointed to the skirting-board. "See anything there?"
"Only too true," he muttered. "Wonder what it can be! Wriggle up and get
it, Bill, the honors are yours, it's your discovery."
I wasted no time to do his bidding.
There were three tiny pieces of paper, just as I had thought. I took
them carefully from the little ledge on which they were resting, and
crawled out triumphantly from under the bed.
"Good man!" he grinned. "What are they--exactly--now you've fished 'em
out? Pieces of a last week's hotel-bill or an announcement of the local
flower-show?"
I shook my head. "Remains of a letter," I grunted--"there's handwriting
here."
I handed the fragments to him. He took them eagerly. They were obviously
small parts of a letter that had been carelessly torn up by somebody in
the room, and in the throwing-away process had by some freak of wind or
whimsicality, fluttered to the skirting-board. So I reasoned. Anthony
spread them out.
I reproduce the three pieces here as nearly as I can remember them after
so long an interval.
I will meet you in the B so
when you Mary.
at 1.
I gasped! "Good Lord!" I exclaimed. Anthony raised his eyebrows.
"What's this?" he interrogated. "An assignation? Mary?"
"It's Mary Considine," I answered. "It's her handwriting--I've seen it
too frequently not to know it. Has she written that to Prescott?"
"No evidence as to whom it's addressed, Bill. We can only conjecture as
to that. Also we can only surmise what the capital 'B' stands for."
"What do you think yourself?" I whispered almost fearfully.
"Billiard room, possibly! On the other hand----"
"If it was her way of answering his proposal--why wasn't she frank with
us about it? Did she meet him or merely intend to?"
"Look at the handwriting again, Bill! Look at it closely."
I did as he told me. "You're absolutely _certain_ it's Mary Considine's
writing?" he urged with intensity in his tone. "You haven't the shred of
a doubt?"
"Not a shred," I replied. "Not the vestige of a doubt."
"Very well! I'll see her! I'm pretty accurate at summing people up
psychologically, and I'm fully prepared for an adequate explanation."
"I'm relieved to hear you say that," I said. "Somehow it goes against
the grain to have Mary implicated in this business, even though
remotely."
"How came you to look under there, Bill?" he asked suddenly.
"I think I was fired by your example," I replied after a slight pause.
"Yes, it was," I went on. "Seeing you poking about in the bathroom
started a train of thought in my mind and I decided to have a nose round
in here. I glanced at several things in the room, and then suddenly
thought of looking under the bed."
He showed signs of approval. "It only shows you that second thoughts
often prove to be very valuable. Our decision to take another glance at
the billiard room and at this bedroom has brought us a great deal of
really important information. We've progressed."
"Do you think so?" I queried rather gloomily, I'm afraid. "It seems to
me we're getting deeper and deeper into a kind of morass of doubt and
suspicion. Each clue we pick up seems to complicate matters, and
contradict the previous one." I sat on the bed. I really meant all that
I said. As far as these discoveries went we seemed to be traveling away
from a solution and not towards one.
"Be of good cheer, William," cried Anthony jocularly. "All will yet be
well."
"I don't know that I share your optimism," I responded--"what's the next
move?"
"I'm going to take a rather bold step," he replied. He came and sat
himself on the bed beside me. "I'm going to have another word or two
with Mary." Then he stretched his long legs out and thrust his hands
deep in his trousers-pockets. "Maybe I'm running a certain risk, but in
life you have to take risks--I'll take one now." He jumped to his
feet--"Coming, Bill?" I found myself wondering what was coming next as
we descended the stairs. Where were we going? I loathed the proximity of
Mary to the affair at the first onset and this latest development might
mean anything.
"Would you be good enough to give me a moment in the library?" asked
Anthony when we found her. "Just as a 'quid pro quo'? I gave you a few
moments in the billiard room, and now I'm asking you to return the
compliment." He smiled and Mary smiled back.
"Of course, Mr. Bathurst! I'll come now! Is it anything important?" she
asked when we were settled.
"That's a difficult question to answer, Miss Considine," said Anthony
seriously, and with an obviously deliberate choice of words. "You were
pleased a short while ago to tell me certain intimate details affecting
Prescott and yourself--I appreciated intensely the confidence you
imposed in me--you see you've known me for a considerably less time than
you have Bill, here." He paused.
Mary intervened. "I don't quite know to where all this is leading--but
possibly I share, to a very humble extent, your own gift of
character-reading."
Anthony bowed to her. "Thank you--again! I am yielding to the promptings
of that gift when I approach you now! And the information that you gave
me earlier makes that approach a matter of necessity." He held the three
scraps of paper out to her.
"Miss Considine--will you look at these very closely? Is the handwriting
yours?"
Mary glanced at the fragments with growing astonishment.
"What is this--please?" she queried.
"Can you help by answering my question first?"
I watched her and saw the amazement in her eyes.
"Very well then--Mr. Bathurst--yes. But I can't----"
"You are certain? I want to be unmistakably certain--certain for
instance that it isn't an imitation--a wonderfully accurate imitation?"
She wrinkled her brows and pored over the pieces. When she raised her
eyes she betrayed greater wonderment than ever.
"Mr. Bathurst--Bill--I'm absolutely bewildered. I'm
certain--positive--as positive as I ever could be about anything--that
this is my handwriting--yet I can't recognize the letter from where
they've come--I can't even think whom it's to--and if I didn't know that
it _was_ my handwriting--_I should swear that I hadn't written it_!!"
"You mean," suggested Anthony, "that you don't----"
"I mean this--absurd though it may seem and sound--that I recognize the
handwriting, but I don't recognize the _letter_. It is entirely
unfamiliar. It appears to me at the moment that I've never previously
seen it." The color flamed in her cheeks and her eyes were bright with
excitement. Anthony waited for her to proceed. He seemed to divine what
her next question was going to be.
"Tell me," her lips were working tremulously, "what is this? How did it
come into your possession?"
"Those three fragments in your handwriting, Miss Considine, were found
under the bed in the room recently occupied by Gerald Prescott."
"What?" she exclaimed--indignation challenging surprise in her
tone--"Mr. Bathurst--it can't possibly be--I've never written a line to
Mr. Prescott in my life."
"Yet they were discovered as I have just said." He spoke very quietly.
"There is some mistake--some mystery," she reiterated.
"Some enemy hath done this--eh?" remarked Anthony.
"I'm dumbfounded--I don't know what to say or suggest. I can't think!"
"Tell me," he said, "I realize the fragments are small, and therefore,
not too easy to identify--but there's this point. Do you recognize the
notepaper as notepaper that you yourself would have been likely to use?"
She looked at it closely and ran her fingers over its surface.
"Yes," she answered. "It is Considine Manor notepaper--I am sure of
that. We have used it for years. I can show it to you."
She went across to Sir Charles Considine's desk that stood in the
corner. "Here is some," she said. "Compare it for yourself."
Anthony took it and inspected its texture and quality. Then passed it
over to me. There was no doubt about it.
The fragments that I had picked up were pieces of the Manor notepaper.
Then I took a hand. "If you don't recognize the letter, Mary, that these
fragments are part of--well, it seems to me that you can't have written
it. Don't you see what I mean?"
She gazed at me blankly. Then her reason appeared to reassert itself.
"That's just how it appears to me, Bill! That's what I've been trying to
tell both of you." She crossed and seated herself again.
"Yet it is your handwriting--you are certain," interposed Anthony.
"Yet it is my handwriting----" she echoed his words in acquiescence.
"It's a staggerer," I exclaimed. "It all seems so completely
contradictory."
"The most paradoxical and seemingly contradictory things have sometimes
the simplest solutions," remarked Anthony--"when you can find them."
Mary pressed her hands to her brow. "If I could only think clearly about
it," she cried wearily, "I'm sure the explanation would come to me--but
I can't! I can only repeat what I've previously said--I'm certain it's
my handwriting--yet I have no knowledge of the writing beyond that
fact." She turned to Anthony. "You say you found the pieces under the
bed? Am I to understand you suspected their existence and were looking
for them?"
"Bill was the discoverer, Miss Considine--not I," replied Anthony. "I
haven't really heard the source of his inspiration."
"It seemed to me there was just a possibility of picking something up in
the bedroom"--I tried to bear my blushing honors with modesty--"so I
just had a crawl round. Of course it was a piece of terrific luck. A
positive thousand to one shot." I looked at Anthony. He had relapsed
into a chair--thinking hard. His silence seemed to infect the whole
room, and Mary and I sat and regarded each other solemnly. Then Anthony
astounded us both. I always knew that his mind had the habit of flying
off at surprising tangents, and I was a little prepared for the sudden
turn it took now.
"How many cars have you in the garage, Miss Considine?" he asked.
She wrinkled up her forehead in surprise.
"Of our own, do you mean, or including everybody's? I don't quite
follow----"
He regarded her steadily.
"Of your own--belonging to Considine Manor, if you prefer it put that
way."
"Two."
"What are they?"
"What make--do you mean?"
"Exactly," he answered.
"A 'Daimler' and a 'Morris-Oxford.'"
Anthony made a gesture of annoyance. "Had them long?"
"The Daimler about four years--the Morris-Oxford only a few
months--February, I think we bought it. Why?"
He waved her question on one side, swinging a question back to
her--"What made you buy it?"
She thought hard for a moment. Then her face cleared. "The other car we
had at that time kept giving trouble. The engine was continually giving
us trouble."
Anthony leaned across--nervously eager with excitement--"What was the
other car--Miss Considine?"
"The old one?--a 'Bean,' Mr. Bathurst."