In the Quarry
The horse galloped across the lawn. Its homing instinct had been diverted a few moments previously by a man who, in an attempt to catch it, had sprung at it ineffectively from the roadside, causing it to jump a hedge into a flower-bed; but it was not to be kept from home, hay, and comfort, and it was finding its way back to the stables by an unaccustomed route.
A gardener caught it finally near the stable door, and was soothing it when Lord Aveling and Pratt arrived.
“Chater’s!” exclaimed Aveling, recognising it immediately.
“Then I suppose Chater will follow on Shanks’s pony,” remarked Pratt.
“If he hasn’t had a bad fall,” answered Aveling.
He gave an instruction to the gardener—the grooms were all on duty, and had not yet returned—and then made for the path leading to the wood in the rear of the grounds.
“This seems to be a day of misfortunes,” he commented to Pratt, striding at his side.
“Yes, but I’m afraid the misfortunes began yesterday,” replied Pratt. “This is the time to tell you of another.”
As Lord Aveling heard for the first time of the ruined picture, his expression grew more and more unhappy. He had always prided himself on his expression. It signified that he kept on top of circumstances, no matter what those circumstances were, and recently they had been particularly trying. Ambitious enterprises had received a check. Money was tight, owing to unfortunate investments, but a baron with ambitions must not show any signs of poverty; he must go on spending. A few months previously Anne had refused to marry a man who would have brought new wealth and position, if no brain, to the family. Now she was threatening to adopt the same attitude towards another eligible candidate. True, Sir James Earnshaw was double her age, but he would become a force by joining the Conservative Party, while Aveling’s own force would be augmented through his assistance towards the happy political event.
Tact, dignity, patience, courage, and the well-known expression of courteous solidarity had been used to fight these troubles, and Lord Aveling had even established a necessary but unpleasant association with a retired sausage merchant without, so far, too much embarrassment. It was mainly due to the Rowes that Edyth Fermoy-Jones owed her invitation this week-end. He had thought the Rowes would like to meet a well-known authoress (who had been promised an invitation to Bragley Court in an incautious moment), and that the well-known authoress would occupy most of her time impressing the Rowes.
But now, to his consternation and humiliation, Lord Aveling was oppressed with a hideous sensation that circumstances were getting the upper hand, and that this was the week-end selected by Fate to prove the point. Each new trouble attacked a nervous system that had previously refused to yield to the demands made upon it; each new trial became invested with exaggerated significance. He found he was battling against a nameless panic from which Zena Wilding seemed the only escape. Why Zena Wilding? He had asked himself that question. Would any pretty woman, not too young and not too old, have sufficed his mood, or had he really detected that she, like himself, was fighting difficulties behind a mask? He had also asked himself what he wanted of Zena Wilding. The usual thing—or just to be a little boy again, and lay his tired head in her lap?
He did not know. All he knew was that Zena Wilding, whose companionship he craved, was not dissipating his panic, but adding to it.
And now this dead fellow…and this ruined picture…
“But this is most shocking!” he exclaimed. “Yesterday evening, you say?”
“Between half-past four and a quarter to seven,” answered Pratt.
“Why did you not mention it before?”
“I thought I might find the culprit more easily by not mentioning it.”
“You had a suspicion?”
“Quite definite.”
“May I ask who?”
“If you don’t mind, I will keep that to myself. You see, if the man in the quarry did it, I shall be wrong.”
“But you don’t know the man?”
“Never seen him before in my life.”
“Then why should he have done it?”
“I have no idea.”
“Perhaps he ran amok after you locked him in the studio?”
“We have no proof yet that this is the person I locked in the studio.”
“Quite so, but it seems obvious!” retorted Aveling. “It would be a coincidence if there were two men around. He got out of the studio, killed the dog, and then—ended down the quarry.”
“You are forgetting one point,” said Pratt. “The picture was ruined before I locked the studio, so, if he did it, he did it before being locked in.”
They entered the wood.
“Perhaps he’s a lunatic?” suggested Aveling.
“Anybody who spoils a picture by Leicester Pratt must be a lunatic,” came the dry response.
Bultin rose from a tree-trunk and slipped his note-book away as they drew up.
“Are you writing the account already, Bultin?” inquired Aveling, with a frown.
“Provisionally,” answered the journalist.
“Well, kindly keep it provisional till we know a little more,” said Aveling.
“Publicity produces knowledge,” observed Bultin.
“Also crowds,” added Pratt. “Have sympathy, Lionel. If there are any plums, you won’t have to work for them—they will drop right into your mouth.”
They walked together to the edge of the great dip. The quarry was a relic of past activity. No longer in use, much of its bareness had been reclaimed by vegetation. Lord Aveling stared down into the tangled space.
“See him?” inquired Pratt.
Lord Aveling nodded.
“What brought you up?” went on Pratt, turning to Bultin.
“My feet,” answered Bultin.
“Not really worthy. Try again?”
“Well, I like writing about corpses, but I don’t like sitting by them. This one is a nasty sight. Even nastier than when I saw him alive—”
“What! Saw him alive?” exclaimed Aveling. “When? Where?”
Bultin produced his note-book again, turned to a page, and read:
“‘Our train drew in at 5.56. We stepped out upon an ill-lit platform. The knowledge that we should shortly enjoy the greater cheer of Bragley Court—Lord Aveling’s cordial welcome is almost famous—’’’ He paused for an instant, and noted how, during that instant, the world grew a trifle brighter for Lord Aveling. “‘—modified to some extent the horror of a British platform in the British gloaming of a British October evening. But even so I had a strange sensation that unseen fingers were stretching through the dusk, and a curious incident accentuated the feeling. In reply to a famous actress’s question, I informed her that she undoubtedly was keeping us all waiting, and that no press photographers were about. With the famous laugh rendered even more famous by her imitators, she ran towards the waiting Rolls. And now the incident occurred.’’’
He paused again.
“No, not ‘occurred’—‘took place.’’’ He made the alteration. “No, after all, ‘occurred.’’’ He altered it back again. “‘And now the incident occurred. A man suddenly loomed before her. She stopped immediately. For a moment I thought she was going to faint. But she controlled herself with an effort, pushed by him, and entered the car. Of two other guests—a Mr. and Mrs. Chater, I being the fourth who completed the party—Mrs. Chater had already taken her seat, but Mr. Chater went up to the stranger and offered him a light. The offer was not accepted. “I’ll see you presently,” spat out the stranger. “I wouldn’t,” Mr. Chater spat back, and, in the words of Barrie, ‘joined the ladies.’ Delete, ‘in the words of Barrie.’ ‘But I did not immediately join the ladies. My business is news. You want it. I supply it. So I thought I would have a few words myself with this interesting stranger.
“‘I told him who I was. To my chagrin, he did not swoon with joy. He looked more as if he could have bitten me. I told him where I was going. This information softened him slightly. I felt that now I might touch him without being mauled. I offered him a light. His unlit cigarette hung uncared-for from his moist lower lip. This time he accepted. As I struck a match I mentioned my duty to the public. He stared at me. People say I have some gift of expression, but I could never express the look that suddenly leapt into his eyes. “You’ll get something to write about!” he promised.
“‘Did he mean to fulfil that promise? Shall we ever know? The next time I saw the man, between twenty-one and twenty-two hours later, he was lying at the bottom of a quarry, dead.’’’
Bultin closed his note-book and returned it to his pocket. Then a voice hailed them, and they turned. It was Dr. Pudrow, followed by a gardener and two grooms. The gardener, with lugubrious forethought, was wheeling a barrow.
“Where is he?” cried the doctor.
The definite task before them came as a relief to Lord Aveling. Anxious thoughts, disturbing conjectures, policies to be pursued, all were necessarily shelved while the grim business of descending to the quarry was engaged in. They found the man lying, face upwards, in a crumpled heap, and the doctor did not have to examine him to confirm that life was extinct.
“No doubt about it?” murmured Aveling.
“After rigor mortis, my Lord?” replied the doctor. “He has been dead several hours.”
“Can you say how many?”
Dr. Pudrow was now bending over the body. He did not answer for a minute. Then he remarked cautiously that he did not want to commit himself at the moment.
Pratt, who thought little of doctors, and particularly of this doctor, suggested the rigor mortis might give him some indication.
“It may occur half an hour or thirty hours after death,” retorted the doctor, well aware of Pratt’s opinion, and particularly sensitive when the opinion was implied before Lord Aveling, “and the condition may last for from twenty-four to thirty-six hours. The time varies according to the subject and the cause of the death.”
“The cause we know,” answered Pratt.
“Perhaps you will handle this case?” exclaimed Dr. Pudrow.
Lord Aveling interposed.
“You mean, of course, Pratt, that he died from his fall,” he said. “Quite so. But I think we can safely leave these matters to Dr. Pudrow.”
“If you want to know what time the man died,” observed Bultin, in a voice that suggested he was stifling a yawn, “it was at nineteen minutes past one last night.”
“How do you know that?” demanded the doctor, astonished, while Lord Aveling stared.
“By his wrist-watch. It is broken, and the hands mark the time it stopped. I am assuming,” Bultin added, “that your ‘several hours’ meant more than three—otherwise he could have died at nineteen past one to-day.”
Against his will, Dr. Pudrow was impressed. So was Pratt. “Bultin did not waste his time while I went to the house to report,” he reflected. “I wonder what else he’s discovered?”
“He has certainly been dead more than three hours,” the doctor replied, “so you are probably right. Can you also tell us who he is?”
“No, I can’t tell you who he is,” answered Bultin. “There is nothing on him to suggest his identity. But there are three people up at the house who may be able to.”
“Only two at the moment, I think,” murmured Aveling, as Bultin glanced at him.
“Can you get them here?” requested the doctor. “Some one connected with him should be notified as soon as possible.”
“Yes, yes, I agree—but both these guests are ladies,” objected Aveling. “It would not be reasonable to ask them to make this descent, especially as it is getting dark, and they are tired. In fact, I doubt whether they could do it. Why not let my men carry him up?”
“To the house?” inquired the doctor.
Aveling’s frown grew. The house was depressed enough, as it was.
“Or the studio,” suggested Pratt.
The frown vanished. Lord Aveling was living, emotionally, from instant to instant. Bultin’s account of the incident at the station had filled him with wretched forebodings, and he discovered that his main impulse, rightly or wrongly, was to protect Zena Wilding from unhappiness. His own happiness was being invaded from so many sides that it was almost a relief to have some one else’s to concentrate on. “Besides,” he argued with himself, with the self-deception of the would-be virtuous, “isn’t it my duty to protect my guests from annoyance? If I happen to be particularly interested in one of them, I must not remove that protection through self-consciousness.” His over-sensitive mind was once more developing situations in advance. “I have done nothing wrong!” He thanked God for that, though it was a sign of his anxiety that he had to produce the statement to himself.
“A good idea, Pratt,” he said aloud. “Yes, the studio. But what about you? Your work?”
“My work?” Pratt smiled. “My work is obviously post-
poned.”
Aveling made a sign to his waiting men. As they commenced their task, under the doctor’s direction, Bultin looked on with vague disapproval. Pratt drew him aside.
“Your expression is not heavenly, Lionel,” he said. “What’s the matter?”
Bultin shrugged his shoulders.
“That’s not good enough for me, you oyster!” insisted Pratt.
“Bodies are not usually moved till the police arrive,” answered Bultin.
“Nor, perhaps, are their pockets searched,” replied Pratt, “though I know journalists sometimes imagine they have special privileges.”
“Did I search his pockets?” asked Bultin innocently.
“You knew there was nothing on him to indicate his identity. It would not surprise me to learn that you so searched for laundry marks. You can’t have it both ways, my boy. If the police eventually arrive, the more you anticipate their work the bigger your scoop. At the moment, you can pretend you are helping. To the local inspector you may merely be a nuisance.”
“If you were as clever as you thought you were, you’d be a gargantuan,” said Bultin.
“If you were as clever as you thought you were, you’d be the size of a pea-nut. My picture of you will be called ‘The Splendid Spoof,’ and it will be of a drugged Inferiority Complex inside enormous bulges of inflated skin. We never really change, you know, but some of us are devils at make-up. Well, what else have you discovered?”
Bultin turned his eyes towards the workers.
“They’ve got him up,” he said. “We’d better be moving.”
“The knife, for instance?”
“What knife?”
“The knife that killed the dog?”
“Is that all the knife was intended to kill?” asked Bultin. “Come along.”
But Pratt suddenly laid a detaining hand on Bultin’s sleeve.
“Tell me something, Lionel,” he said. “A different sort of a question this time.”
“Well?”
“Are you interested in justice?”
“What’s that?”
“Perhaps, after all, only a word of seven letters. I’m not asking the question ethically. I’m just curious. If a man commits a murder, are you glad when he is hanged? If a man hasn’t committed a murder, do you rejoice when he’s acquitted? Or, provided you get a good story, don’t you care a damn?”
Bultin thought for a moment.
“Provided the public get a good story,” he replied, “do they care a damn?”
“That’s a devilish good answer,” said Pratt. “Put it in your biography. By the way, have you heard about Chater’s horse? It’s come home without him.”