“So I thought you wouldn’t mind my coming to talk things over with you, Mr. Falkland. I’m just plumb worried about the old boy.”
It was young Lord Trant who spoke, sitting opposite Falkland in the latter’s office, and the architect smiled back at him as he proffered his cigarette case.
“I’m very glad to see you and talk things over,” he replied. “If any advice of mine is of any use to you, I shall be only too glad to give it. Say, if you start at the beginning and tell me your whole tale of woe—but get it out of your head that I have any influence with the police. I haven’t. To put the matter in a more personal way, I’m by no means certain that the police don’t suspect me of being involved in the tangle, and I hesitate to butt in with suggestions. ‘Let sleeping dogs lie’ seems to me quite good policy concerning the inspector in charge of the case. However, get your story off your chest and I’ll give you what advice I’m capable of.”
“It seems such a darned shame that my old uncle should have got into the middle of such a mess-up,” said Trant, his sunburnt, boyish face puckered into a frown. “Incidentally, Lee Gordon isn’t my uncle, as you probably know, but I’ve called him that since I was a small kid, so it comes natural. He’s always been jolly good to me, as he was to my father. I was born over here, you know. My father was abroad, prospecting rubber at the time, and my mother was pretty hard-up, and Lee Gordon came along and financed her over a difficult time, just because he was friends with my father. Luck turned a little later, and father made a small packet and mother and I went out to join him in South America—a month after I was born, that was, and Lee Gordon saw my mater through the journey and looked after her when she got blackwater fever. She died—and he was left with a three months’ infant on his hands, being me—and he got me settled with a nurse and went and collected my pater and fixed us up.”
The diffident grin on the young man’s face was very likeable as he continued apologetically, “I’m only boring you with all this because I want you to understand how badly I feel when I see the old man going to bits like this. He did everything for me when I was a squalling brat, and he’s stuck by me all his life. He only came over here to see me fixed up, and save me being lonely in this country when the lawyers made me come over and show my papers and all the racket connected with the estate.” A shamefaced grin lightened the keen young face. “Seems I’m going to have a dandy time now. I can pilot my own plane and do research on engines, and hop across the Atlantic—all the things I’ve most wanted to do—but I can’t get down to it and enjoy life when I see uncle going queer in the top storey worrying over all this crazy business connected with the Anderbys. I can’t think why he worries about it so much.”
“Can’t you? I can—but then I’m caught in the toils too,” said Falkland, rather grimly. “I’ve never been under police supervision in my life, and I tell you I don’t like it.”
“Oh, that!” said Trant scornfully. “It isn’t the cops who are worrying uncle. It’s this dotty business of spooks and spirit messages. He’s taking it seriously. That’s what worries me. He’s begun going to spirit seances. However, I want to tell you the story right from the beginning.”
Taking the cigarette Falkland offered, Trant went on: “You know how this ‘spiritist’ racket started: you and Brook and Lee Gordon all got those dotty messages, one way or another. Now tell me—what did you make of yours?”
“I came to the conclusion that some kind friend and well-wisher was inviting me to make a fool of myself by going and fishing for trouble,” said Falkland dryly.
“But you never imagined that you’d received a spirit message from Mrs. Anderby?”
“No. I don’t think that even in my wildest moment I thought that—though there was something uncanny about that message, all the same,” said Falkland. “It did go three parts of the way towards making me make a fool of myself because, in some idiotic way, I was averse from showing it to the police. When I finally did show it to Macdonald, it wasn’t hard to guess that he looked at me with even more concentrated interest than he’d shown before.”
“The devil of it is that it’s taken uncle an odd way,” said Trant. “He swears now that it was Mrs. Anderby’s voice he heard. He believed at first that she was still alive and was just spoofing him. Now he believes she’s dead, he’s worse off than he was before because he believes that it was her spirit talking.”
“That’s pure unadulterated rubbish,” said Falkland with energy. “Even if I could bring myself to believe in spirit voices—which I don’t—I can’t square up the idea of a disembodied spirit manipulating the dial of an automatic telephone.”
“Oh, sure, I’m with you there all right,” replied Trant, “and so’s uncle, up to a point, but he’s getting in with this crank crowd of spook merchants, and he rationalizes it out that a spirit can speak through a human medium and the medium can cope with the telephone.”
“That’s grand,” said Falkland dryly, “lead me to the medium, and I’d say you’d done a good deed for the day.”
Trant grinned, but his greenish eyes had an odd flicker in them, which Falkland noted as the young man’s rather nasal voice went on,
“Sure, it’d be a dandy deed—that medium’s got me guessing some! But to get on with the story: it doesn’t stop there by a long chalk. The old man’s had three more of those messages.”
“Has he, by jove!” exclaimed Falkland. “I hope to the deuce he’s told the Chief Inspector about them.”
“That’s just what he hasn’t done,” said Trant. “He’s gone just damned unreasonable. Says if a spirit is going to communicate with him the police aren’t the guys to understand. I only got it out of him today. The phone rang when I was there, and he sort of wilted and looked green, and made a grab for the receiver, all worked up in a sweat over it. I just went in bald-headed and made him tell me what had given him the jitters. He told me she’d spoken to him three times—twice while he was down at White Gables, clearing his junk out of the house, and once while he was in his own apartment at Savoy Chambers. The result is that he can’t hear the phone go without getting in a fair twitter over it.”
“What was the message sent to him?” inquired Falkland, and Trant replied,
“As far as I can get it out of him, the message consisted in telling him that he was to stay in England until ‘guidance’ came to him—that he’d be told what to do all in good time, and that he was the only person who could help Mrs. Anderby. It’s obviously a plant, unless the old boy’s imagining things. I’m worried stiff about him. He’ll go off his rocker if he just stays put, waiting for spirit messages over the phone. He’s had a lot to bother him lately because his rubber company’s struck trouble, and his shares are dropping in an ugly way, and just when he ought to be out East pulling things together, he’s tied by the leg here, waiting for another adjourned inquest on a dame he hardly knew.”
“Yes. It’s pretty sickening,” said Falkland. “I’m in the same position myself. I suppose I could clear out, but I hesitate to do so because if I insist on leaving England the police may interpret it as running away and stop me. That would just about put the lid on it. It’s an exasperating business.”
“I’d say it is. I want to get uncle clear away, out of all this spookery business, especially since he said he saw Mrs. A.—or her ghost—wandering round the garden at White Gables.”
“Good Lord! It isn’t as bad as that, is it?” asked Falkland, and Trant nodded.
“It is—just as bad as that. He was down at the house last Wednesday and he stayed until late in the evening. He was fond of that garden, you know, and he went wandering round by himself, having a last look at things, and he says he saw her on the lawn just where the old parson pipped off, and she was wailing like a banshee. He was properly rattled, and when he tried to run after her he tripped himself up over a branch or something and came a header. By the time he got up she’d disappeared.”
“Nervous dyspepsia or imagination?” queried Falkland, but Trant shook his head.
“That’s what I said, but it wasn’t. He did see something. He’s got a caretaker in the house, a cheerful beer-drinking old fellow named Wilkins. This chap had been down to the village and he was just coming back to the house, and he said he saw a woman in black disappearing up the road just after she turned out of the drive. Uncle told him quite solemnly it was Mrs. Anderby’s ghost he’d seen, and Wilkins was frightened stiff. He’s a countryman, and he doesn’t like the idea of spooks, and he refused to sleep in the house another night. I know the whole business sounds plumb crazy,” added Trant apologetically, “but I’m telling it to you just as I got it out of the old man. I didn’t like it. He seems simply possessed by this spook business, and to talk to him you might think he was plain bats.”
“And didn’t he tell the police about his ‘ghost,’ either?” queried Falkland, and Trant replied,
“No. Never said a word. Says it’s got beyond the realm of police procedure.”
“I don’t agree with him there,” said Falkland decisively. “The police ought to be told.”
“Well, I’m not so sure,” said Trant meditatively. “I told you I thought the whole business had got the old boy down. He felt Anderby’s death very much, just hated to see him go plonk down on the grass under his very eyes. Then Major Grendon died and uncle felt more shaken up than ever. When they fished Mrs. Anderby out of the river and asked him to try to identify her, he was just horrified. He’s a kind-hearted old boy, and the sight of her upset him so much he can’t get it out of his mind. Well—I ask you—” and the young man spread out his hands, “is it surprising he’s seeing things? He’s just getting to be a fair nerve case.”
“Then you believe he has only imagined that he’s getting these messages?”
Trant’s greenish eyes flickered again.
“The Lord knows what I believe. He got the first message all right—the same as you and Brook did. You all got the same dope so you couldn’t all have imagined it, could you?”
“There was nothing imaginary about my communication,” replied Falkland tersely. “It’s now in the hands of the police, to be shown to the jury as Exhibit A—one day.”
“One day,” echoed young Trant. “I don’t pretend to know who’s pulling the funny business, but I do know the old man’s letting it get him down, imagination or not. Now see here. I want to get him away out of the country. There’s no earthly object in his being badgered out of his wits between the police and this spook business. It’s just silly. He won’t make any effort to move himself, and he says the police want him for the adjourned inquest. I want to get him away—and I thought maybe you could help me by putting in a word with your swell cop. You’re pretty well in with him, I’d say.”
Falkland laughed. “You’d say wrong then. It’s true I’ve seen a lot of him, but that was all because he was interrogating me—talking things over and turning my mind inside out to the best of his not inconsiderable ability. It’s no use my going to him and suggesting that Mr. Lee Gordon’s state of health requires a foreign cruise. If you want to move on those lines you’ll have to get a doctor’s certificate.”
Trant shook his head. “No go. He wouldn’t consult a doctor—and he’d be just flaming mad if he knew I’d come to you about all this.”
Falkland studied the young man with shrewd, thoughtful eyes.
“You asked my advice, you know, so you can’t complain if I rub it in. The police ought to be told about this spirit message campaign. I can’t see the point of it, but it seems to me very essential evidence.”
Trant frowned. “Now, see here, Mr. Falkland. I’ve told you that my notion is to get the old boy away out of the country. If he goes to the police and tells them that he’s receiving spirit messages d’you think it’ll make them keener to let him go? Not on my life! They’ll hold him for further evidence.”
“Quite rightly,” said Falkland incisively. “They would make it their business to find out who could—and who could not—have sent those messages. I can make a fair guess myself. Why she’s doing it, I don’t know. It may be exhibitionism, or it may be malicious intent, but it ought to be investigated.”
There was silence between the two men for awhile, and Falkland pondered over the expression in young Trant’s bright eyes. After a moment the architect spoke again.
“You don’t think that I have been sending those messages by any chance, do you?” he inquired, “because if you do, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”
The young man flushed, and his eyes flickered with the same light which Falkland had noted before.
“No, sir. I don’t. If I did, I tell you I shouldn’t be sitting here talking to you like this. You say it’s a woman has sent those messages—meaning the old lady at the boarding house?”
“Well, isn’t that the common-sense explanation?” asked Falkland. “She’s a queer old party, always given to producing messages she says she’s received in her dreams, or through her planchette board. It seems to me more than probable that she’s revelling in a new game, and that your uncle’s the victim.”
Trant lighted another cigarette and hurled the match violently out of the window.
“No. I don’t agree with you,” he replied. “It’s one of two things: either uncle’s going batty—and to hear him talk you might imagine he was pretty far gone—or else someone’s pulling a deep game on him. If that’s the case, the person who is doing it is most probably Mrs. Anderby’s murderer, trying to prove that Mrs. Anderby is still alive, and that it’s not her corpse at all they fished out of the river. I’ve been going into the evidence myself as far as I’ve been able, and I know there’s something to support that view. When Mrs. Anderby’s belongings were burnt up in that shack somebody took a lot of trouble to make it hard to find out anything about her or her past life. It’s an almighty queer business.”
“There’s lots that’s queer about the whole show,” said Falkland, “but assuming Mrs. Anderby was murdered—and there’s no evidence to that effect——”
“Oh, isn’t there?” interrupted the young man. “Have you been to see the place they found her? I have. It’s supposed to be verboten and all that—shut off by the police—but graft’s graft in every country in this world, and gamekeepers aren’t averse to pocketing fivers. Well, I tell you they found her wedged underneath a fallen tree trunk which had fouled the stream. D’you think any suicide would choose that way to drown—crawling under a tree trunk to get firmly held down?”
“Not being well up in suicides, I can’t tell you,” said Falkland, “but isn’t it conceivable that her body floated downstream until it got wedged under the tree?”
“D’you have a good stream in backwaters in this country?” asked Trant scornfully. “That stream’s so sluggish it hardly carries a straw along a foot an hour.”
“It varies,” said Falkland. “It’s not a dead end. The backwater rejoins the main stream half a mile farther down, though the exit’s very small. Anyway, there is a stream of sorts running through it. I know. I fished there when I was a boy.”
Again Trant regarded the older man with his bright-eyed stare, and Falkland went on impatiently,
“Well, never mind that. Accept your hypothesis for argument’s sake. Mrs. Anderby was murdered. Go on.”
“O.K. Then I’d say her murderer is sending those messages for two reasons—and one is to try to get my old boy to swear he’s heard her voice over the phone. The other’s to get him in such a state of jitters that he’ll go dotty and get himself involved by confessing he murdered her himself.”
“That’s rather far-fetched,” said Falkland. “From what I’ve seen of Mr. Lee Gordon, he’s not the man to be stampeded into nonsense of that kind.”
“He seems just a plain, matter-of-fact old josser to you, doesn’t he?” replied Trant, “but I know him better than you do. He’s had fits of getting religion when he’s been in contact with some of the Fundamentalists and Amy Macpherson crowd. Believe me or not, he’s capable of saying the rummest things when he’s had an orgy of revivalism. He gets over it and becomes himself again—but the streak’s there.”
He left off his vigorous speech for a moment and stared at Falkland in his intent way.
“You never guessed that side of him, did you? Wal, I know you’re a first-rate architect, but maybe you’re no psychologist. Now in this racket, taking the folks who’re involved in the inquiry, who would you say was the best psychologist?”
“I don’t quite follow your line of thought,” said Falkland, and Trant retorted,
“It’s plain enough. In the first case a message was sent to the three of you—Brook, Lee Gordon and yourself. Which of the three reacted most to the message? Not Brook. It’d take a lot to rattle that chap. Not you. You’re a hundred per cent skeptical over spirit messages. Lee Gordon was the only one who took the thing in the spirit in which it was sent. He believed he’d heard Mrs. Anderby’s voice—her spirit voice—and it’s Lee Gordon who’s been singled out for a continuation of the racket. Now I ask—who was a good enough psychologist to observe that he was the most likely subject to get rattled—and to do something silly?”
Falkland shrugged his shoulders. “I think I see your line of thought,” he replied. “You’re suggesting that one of the three of us who received messages—or said that we received them—is the actual sender. In other words that Brook or I have been doing it.”
“And isn’t Brook a good psychologist?” burst out Trant. “You know him. You’ve talked to him—far more than I have. Isn’t he just the type of merchant to cash in on the results of his own observations? You think it out. It makes sense.”
Falkland lighted another cigarette and puffed away thoughtfully at it before he replied.
“Just what are you implying?” he asked at length. “You do a bit of thinking, too. Why should Brook have murdered Mrs. Anderby?”
“Because he had connived at other murders for their mutual profit, and when she began to get rattled he got rid of her for his own safety.”
Falkland shook his head. “It’s an ingenious idea, but it won’t wash,” he replied. “Quite apart from my own liking for Brook—and I do like him, I can’t believe there’s the remotest possibility of your idea being within miles of the truth. If Brook had been accessory for Mrs. Anderby’s profit, he would only have done it for his own advantage—pecuniary advantage, presumably.”
“Well, where did he get the dollars from to equip that swell clinic of his? It must have cost him a pretty packet.”
“I don’t know—but I’m quite sure the police do. It’s one of the things they’d have looked into. Also—a much simpler matter—they would have examined Mrs. Anderby’s banking account and all her past financial transactions. Any transfer of money from her account to Brook’s would have been noted at once.”
“Oh, come! You don’t imagine he was such a mutt as to allow any of those transactions to appear on paper! Not he. He’s not so simple as that. There’s ways and means of conveying profits for services rendered. Besides, maybe the transaction wasn’t a financial one. A mutual advancement alliance for the benefit of both parties may have been aimed at. After all, Brook came pretty near the dock once for liquidating one medical practitioner. Maybe he’s got a few skeletons tucked away in his cupboard which he doesn’t want exhibited. The police don’t find out everything, not by a long chalk! If it hadn’t been for Major Grendon’s death none of this racket would have materialized. The police never guessed there was anything phoney about Mrs. Anderby until it was fairly shoved under their noses by you, Mr. Falkland.”
The architect rumpled up his thick hair. “That’s rather illuminating, isn’t it?” he said. “If I had held my tongue, poor old Grendon might have got a verdict of suicide, and Mrs. Anderby might still be making pious pilgrimages to her husband’s grave—but that doesn’t get us any forrarder over your problem, which is—what’s the right thing to do about Mr. Lee Gordon and his spirit messages?”
“I know the answer to that one,” replied Trant. “Get him clear of the whole show. It’s nothing to do with him, nor he with it! Just because a poor old josser fell dead on uncle’s lawn he’s being driven bats and crackers by a racketeer who’ll end by murdering him, as sure as nuts is nuts. Grendon was murdered, wasn’t he? Why? Because he knew something—without realizing that he did know it. Maybe uncle knows it, too.”
“Well, if you’re so convinced on that point why not go to the police and tell them so?” argued Falkland. “Set out all suspicions against Brook; give the exact times when the messages occurred, and when the woman in black was seen on the lawn at White Gables, and let them check up on Brook. Ask for police protection for him—anything rather than just waiting for trouble, expecting him to be murdered.”
“I’ve told you why I don’t want to go to the police. They can’t prove anything. That’s obvious. If they’d been able to make out a case against Brook they’d have got him in jug by now. If I supply them with a little extra chapter and verse about spirit messages they’ll just badger poor old uncle again and see to it that he doesn’t get away from this god-darned country. I won’t do it—and I trust you not to do it either.”
His green eyes met Falkland’s with that queer aggressive light in them, as he got to his feet.
“I reckon I’ve wasted a lot of your time, Mr. Falkland,” he added, more placidly this time. “I just felt I wanted to talk things over with you, to see if you could help.”
“So far as getting permission for your uncle to leave the country is concerned, I can’t do anything,” said Falkland. “I want to go to the States myself: so does Brook. If Macdonald let any one of us go he’d have to let the others. Brook and I are witnesses in the matter of Grendon’s death: Lee Gordon is witness in the matter of Anderby’s—and the idea is that the two cases hang together. Murder is taken seriously in this country, you know.”
“And it’ll be taken more seriously if my old uncle’s the subject of the next inquest,” retorted Trant.
Falkland got up, his voice suddenly impatient.
“It’s no use hectoring me about it, young fella-me-lad. I’ve told you what’s the sensible thing to do. If you can’t see it that’s your lookout.”