What Franklin was wondering was how, in the absence of Norris, Wharton was to take a transcript of Usher’s cross-examination. He knew the valet, as the only available evidence, had been questioned more than once that night, and he knew Wharton’s uncanny memory, but even then he saw no sense in trusting to nothing but that memory. What actually took place however, was no cross-examination at all but something that explained itself.
“Thank you, Usher,” said Wharton, as the valet prepared to withdraw. Then he beamed over at Franklin. “Was there anything else we wanted to ask?” And as an afterthought, “Oh, yes! Just take a seat for a minute or two, Usher, will you?”
He waved him to the easy chair and picked up Norris’ notes. “Mr. Hayles has given us quite a lot of information and I don’t mind telling you—as a man of discretion—very interesting information too. But I think it would be just as well if you confirmed, as it were, what Mr. Hayles has been telling us. Two witnesses are always better than one.” He leaned forward impressively. “Tell me, now. Where did you—as a man of the world—expect Mr. France was spending last night?”
“I don’t know, sir. He said he was… he’d be away, sir.”
“Ah! He said! That’s hardly the point. Speaking as man to man, where did you think he’d made up his mind to be?”
“Well, sir, I knew he wasn’t going to the country because he’d given Ingham the week-end off.”
“Ingham? Oh yes, the chauffeur. You mean, if he’d been going to the country, he’d have taken the car?”
“Well, he always did, sir… so Somers said.”
“Then you and Somers discussed why Mr. France was staying in town!”
“No, sir. We didn’t discuss it. Somers just commented on it, sir; said he couldn’t understand why Mr. France had said he was going to the country, unless somebody else was giving him a lift.”
“I see. Now if I remember yesterday morning correctly, this is what happened. You and Somers finished packing and Ingham came round with the car. Mr. Claire had called round and was going away and as soon as he’d gone, Mr. Hayles came down from his workroom upstairs and stood chatting with Mr. France in the dining-room. He left shortly afterwards and his last words were, ‘See you on Monday.’ Then you and Ingham carried out the trunks and Mr. France and Somers went into the lounge. When they came out, the car was ready and Ingham drove you and Somers to Liverpool Street where the fog was not quite so dense as it had been. Ingham told you the guvnor had given him till to-morrow morning off, so that he might go and see his people at Huntingdon and he could take the car. On the way to Ipswich, Somers said nothing to you as to why Mr. France took him into the lounge for those ten minutes, but you thought it might have been to discuss your successor, since you’d given notice that morning. That’s all correct, isn’t it?”
“Quite correct, sir.”
“Was it absolutely essential, do you think, for Mr. Hayles to go to Martlesham? I mean, couldn’t you and Somers have gone alone?”
“I don’t know, sir. You see I don’t know exactly what Mr. Hayles went for.”
“What did he do exactly?”
“A gentleman called to see him with some papers on the Saturday—last night, and again this morning. He and Mr. Hayles went out together, sir.”
“And Mr. Hayles really was annoyed at being kept?”
“Very, sir! He… well, he said a few things, sir, and as soon as this gentleman had gone, sir, he hopped into the car and went off like mad… without any lunch.”
“I see. Now let’s suppose, shall we? that Mr. Hayles needn’t have gone down there. Now think it over. Mr. Hayles was—shall we say?—got out of the way. So were you and Somers. So was Ingham. The temporary day-cook left on Friday and the charwoman doesn’t come till to-morrow. Doesn’t it strike you that Mr. France wanted to remain here in this house… alone?”
The valet shuffled uneasily in his seat. Wharton took a good sup of the tea.
“Well, it rather looks like it, sir.”
“Hm! Those flowers in the bedroom. Were they there when you left?”
“You didn’t hear them ordered by any chance?”
“No, sir.”
“Ever seen or heard of flowers in that bedroom before?”
“No, sir.”
“Then tell me, as a man of the world, why were those flowers put there… secretly?”
Usher stammered inarticulately.
“Speak out, man! Don’t be diffident! Mr. Hayles was asked much the same question.”
“Then it looks as if he expected a lady, sir.”
“Ah! That’s just it!” Franklin thought the way he rubbed his hands was perfectly ghoulish. “Now, Usher does that surprise you? Would it be anything unusual?”
“I can’t say, sir… I know they always said he was—er—a bit that way inclined, sir.”
“A bit too fond of the ladies?”
“Well, yes, sir.”
Wharton chuckled. “You and I may be the same… only we haven’t been found out! Ladies here frequently?”
“Never, sir!”
“What! Never! You’ve never known a lady come here!”
“Well—er—one did come last week, sir.”
“Ah! now we’re coming to it! Tell me all about it.”
“It was one evening last week—Tuesday night, sir—when she called and asked to see Mr. France. I told her he was not at home and she said she’d wait. I told her she couldn’t do that as he mightn’t be in for hours, but she said she’d wait all the same, so I reported to Somers, sir, and he came and saw her off. I told Mr. France about it, sir, when I got round to the Paliceum—”
“You were acting as his dresser?”
“That’s right, sir. He’d been out all the evening and came straight there, and when I told him, he was furious, sir. Afterwards he told me and Somers she was on no account to be admitted.”
“What was she like?”
“Well, sir, she wasn’t… what you’d call a topnotcher, as they say. Smart and so on but… well, you know, sir.”
“Quite! And any other ladies at any other time?”
“None, sir… except Mrs. Claire, and she was different.”
“Naturally! More like a sister.”
“Exactly, sir.”
“And no other ladies?”
“No, sir.”
“Somers ever tell you about any?”
“No, sir. Somers never discussed Mr. France with me, sir. In his eyes, sir, whatever Mr. France did was perfect.”
“I see… Well, before I forget it, Somers hadn’t been himself recently. He was losing his grip. Getting a bit childish, wasn’t he?”
Usher’s face answered before he spoke. “What him, sir! He was a fitter man than I was! Smart and—”
“Not an old dodderer.”
“Not him, sir! Quiet now, that I grant you, sir… and a bit deliberate… but a healthy man, sir. At least, I never heard him complain.”
“Exactly! I was making a mistake… as we all do at times, Usher.” He opened a small envelope that lay on the table and took from it half a dozen long, silky, golden hairs. “Talking of ladies, did you ever see the head these were on?”
Usher was genuinely bewildered. “Never, sir!”
“The woman who called here last Tuesday?”
“I don’t know, sir… but I’m sure her hair was dark… at least it wasn’t that colour, sir.”
“You did out the bedroom yourself on the Saturday morning?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What did you do to the settee?”
“The settee, sir? Ran the vacuum over it, sir, and over the cushions; then shook out the cushions and put them back.”
“You’d have seen these hairs if they’d been there?”
“I would, sir. And they couldn’t have dodged the vacuum.”
“You’d swear to that?”
“Yes, sir. Now… or anywhere, sir.”
“Right! I’ll take your word for it.” He finished off the tea, produced a handkerchief and wiped his straggly moustache. “Well, Usher, you’ve helped us a good deal. And if you don’t mind a more personal question, you gave in your notice yesterday because you didn’t think you’d like Martlesham. Had you another post to go to?”
“Yes, sir—Colonel Welling, sir, who I was with before. His man’s leaving him, sir, and I knew he’d have me back.”
“I see. But you must understand this. For the present you remain here under my orders and when the end of the week comes, that’ll be time to see about your new post. No hostility to you mind; just the other way about. You’re the only witness we’ve got now Mr. Hayles is unfit. For instance, here’s something you can do for us. Here are three specimens of writing you might be able to identify. This one, marked ‘A’ which looks like a list of trains.”
“That’s Somers’s writing, sir.”
“Sure?”
“Positive, sir. I’ve seen it hundreds of times.”
“And this one?”
“Mr. Hayles’s, sir. He used to give us written orders nearly every day. I can show you one if you like, sir.”
“No it’s all right. What about this one?”
Usher looked scared, then, seeing Wharton’s reassuring smile, merely puzzled.
“It’s mine, sir. An old letter I was writing at the Paliceum and threw away. Somebody must have picked it up, sir.”
“I didn’t!” explained Wharton blandly. “I just happened to run across it, that’s all, and wondered what it was.… You don’t want it again, I suppose?”
The valet shook his head and Wharton screwed it into a ball and tossed it over to the fire. Franklin touched a match to it and watched it burn.
“That’s all then, Usher, thanks, and we’re very much obliged to you.… Any chance of a scratch meal in about half an hour’s time? I shall probably be here all night.”
Wharton sat quietly, listening to the receding steps. Then he grunted and pulled out his pipe. “What’s your idea about that fellow?”
“I thought he’d the devil of a job making up his mind just what he ought to tell you and what he didn’t want to. And he did it damn well.”
“Which do you believe? Him or Hayles?”
Franklin rubbed his chin. “Now you’re asking. But why shouldn’t both be partly lying?”
“Exactly!” He shook his grizzled old head. “You know the old song? ‘A Boy’s Best Friend is His Mother?’ Well, the best friend for people like you and me is a liar! Prove that and you’ve got him! Reverse what he emphasises is right, and wash out what he tells you is wrong. Hayles says he wasn’t in a hurry to get away from Martlesham—therefore he was. He says Somers was just the man to commit suicide—therefore he didn’t—”
“And knowing all the time that he didn’t!”
Wharton shot a look at him. “Hm! I don’t think we can go as far as that… yet.”
“But it’s the logical conclusion!”
“That may be—but even we don’t know that… at the moment. To come to that, we don’t know whether Hayles was lying. It might have been Usher.”
“I wish you’d keep to one side of the argument,” said Franklin. “First you argue one way, then you right-about-face and prove yourself wrong.”
“Well, there’s some merit in being able to do that,” said Wharton complacently.
“Yes, and the devil of a lot of muddle,” retorted the other. “And that reminds me. You didn’t say anything to Usher about slipping out of the house.”
“I know I didn’t. That was deliberate. I want to give him all the rope in the world. If he slips out again, he’ll be followed. And we have an idea what he was actually doing. There’s a telephone box on the other side of the road. We’re trying to trace a call.”
That mollified Franklin somewhat. “Personally,” he said, “I think it wasn’t he who was lying. Keeping something back if you like.”
“What about that question of women? Whose statement are you to believe? Hayles’s or Usher’s?”
Franklin laughed. “You try to hot-stuff me like that! Calling Usher’s a statement! All you did was to drag a half-hearted sort of admission out of him. You put the words into his mouth!”
Wharton shook his head. “Oh, no! You didn’t see his face as I saw it. He knew why France stayed in town last night! I’m open to bet you ten to one I’m right.” He gave Franklin a quick look. “For instance, I’ll show you something. Let’s have a look in France’s bedroom again.”
Upstairs in the room, the finger-print people were just finishing and, according to Wharton, their next objective was the bathroom. Just inside the door he held Franklin back and waved his arm contemptuously.
“Well, what do you think of it all?”
Franklin made a face. “To tell the truth, I don’t know. It’s rather showy.” Then some sense of loyalty to the dead man produced an addendum. “But it’s a damn fine room all the same!”
Wharton snorted. “Fine room! Shall I tell you my idea of it? It’s the show room of a super-brothel—”
“Hi! Steady on, George! Don’t be crude!”
“Crude be damned. And crudity’s better than humbug. I tell you this room has something rotten about it. And you know it… only your idea of what France ought to have been is making you a damn bad detective!”
Franklin said nothing for a moment or two, then, “Perhaps you’re right. Mind you, I admitted from the first that I didn’t like that gilt table—”
“Quite so!” interrupted Wharton. “It looked out of place. And you might be interested to know that it came from the drawing-room and was there when Usher left yesterday morning. France, so the prints tell us, took it upstairs himself. That bowl there, came from the dining-room. France must have filled it with water and brought it up here for the roses. Now come over here!”
He moved over to the bedside table-cupboard and opened the door. Then, like a conjuror producing things from a hat, he took out one article after another.
“Electric kettle—all ready filled. Teapot—with the tea already in it. Milk. Bowl of sugar. Tin of biscuits. Look at ’em! And the maker’s name! Cost half a quid if they cost a penny.” He put them all back again. “Now you know what Usher knew—why France wanted to have this house to himself.”
Franklin nodded but said nothing. Wharton turned half right.
“Something else. Those cushions on the settee had been disarranged as if somebody’d sat on ’em. That’s where we found those hairs I showed Usher.”
Without waiting for comment, he moved out of the door and down the stairs. When they’d got to their chairs again, Franklin was the first to speak.
“Damned if I know what to make of it! The pistol.… Are the woman’s prints on it?”
“France’s only… and blurred ones.”
“Pistol and bullet agree?”
“Looks like it. They’re on that now… at headquarters.”
Wharton sat sucking away at his cold pipe. Franklin, after a minute’s scowling away at the fire, suddenly looked up.
“I can’t make head or tail out of the woman business but I can see what’s in those samples of writing. France believed one of the men in his house was responsible for the anonymous threats and thought the writing would show me which one. That’s obvious, I admit.”
“Well, it’s true… that’s the main point. By the way, we’d better take over all that inquiry for you as part of our routine. Suppose you don’t mind?”
“Not in the least. And talking of writing, where was that note written that was found under Somers’s body? At the writing table in France’s bedroom?”
“One minute, young fellow!” said Wharton. “What are you assuming? That Somers wrote it? Or France? Or neither?”
“That France wrote it—as Usher said.”
“I see. And what exactly were you going to deduce?”
“Well—er—” Then he laughed. “To tell the truth, I don’t precisely know—except possibly this. Where France wrote it, there he died. He wouldn’t go running all over the house with a thing like that in his hand. Just after he wrote it, he’d shoot himself—if he did shoot himself. If he wrote it in his bedroom, then I should say he committed suicide—and, of course, there.”
“Funny you should say that,” said Wharton. “Come into the drawing-room and I’ll show you something else.”
He halted by the cloak-room door.
“See that bookcase? It’s a secretaire bookcase. This top drawer pulls down… like this… to form a writing desk. Here’s the pen the confession was presumably written with. The ink’s gone to the Yard. This leather blotter case had in it practically a new sheet of blotting paper; on it, in reverse, the last letters of the confession. That’s gone to the Yard too. The note was almost certainly written here. How it got into Somers’s hands, we don’t know.”
“Would it be too amazing a coincidence to assume that France wrote the note here—intending to commit suicide—but was killed before he could do it?”
“Can’t say. Personally I believe life’s nothing but coincidences all through. What we do know is that his prints were on it… and the blotting paper… both sets blurred.”
He closed the drawer and stood back. Franklin looked at the bookcase, then at the lounge door. “Damned if I can see two pennorth of daylight! France wrote the note here, if he did write it, and killed himself upstairs, if he did kill himself. And how did Somers get the note? That is, if he did get the note. And why did he kill himself, if he did kill himself? And why did he go to the lounge to do it?”
“No use being impatient,” was Wharton’s comment. “We haven’t been in the house more than five and twenty minutes and you’re expecting miracles. We’ve got to let the sediment settle—and there’s a hell of a lot of it in this house. Isn’t that Usher?”
In the dining-room the valet was setting out a frugal meal—sandwiches, cake, fruit… and more tea.
“My God!” said Franklin, watching the General pouring himself out a breakfast cup. “Never saw such a chap as you are. Your innards’ll be awash!”
Wharton put in half a dozen lumps of sugar. “Never mind my innards! Have a sandwich.”
Franklin rose hurriedly. “Not for me! I’ll slip off to the flat and have a meal. Be back in about an hour.”
“No flat for you!” said Wharton bluntly. “We’re only just beginning. I want to hear all about that man you and Usher heard in the house. And I want a meticulously detailed account of what happened the other night—you know, that party you went to with Hayles; the one you were showing off about!”
Franklin’s glare missed fire as the General leaned across to the plate. Then he made the best of it.
“Right-ho, then! And pass those damn sandwiches before they’re all gone!”