I
Robert Cavenish had lived in the same house for years, a small house off St. John’s Wood High Street, which was run for him by a competent married couple—a Mr. and Mrs. Elliott, an elderly pair who regarded the house as their own home, and whose pride it was to make Cavenish comfortable.
On the evening after the party in the Manatons’ studio, Ian Mackellon came in to see Cavenish about eight-thirty. The younger man produced a pocket chess set, saying,
“I’ve set out the pieces as we left them last night.”
Cavenish made a wry face. “You would. Trust a Scot to remember the details of a game. Somehow I don’t fancy continuing that particular game. It was yours anyway.”
Mackellon laid down the wallet which held the miniature pieces. “You know, I’ve the oddest feeling that yesterday evening’s proceedings formed a sort of pattern—a game of chess with living players.”
Cavenish moved uncomfortably in his chair. “Maybe, but I can’t regard human beings as pieces on a board. The more I think the thing over the more uncomfortable I feel about it.”
“Why?” Mackellon shot out his abrupt question, and then studied the other with observant eyes. He continued at length:
“From seven forty-five until nine o’clock yesterday evening, you and I faced one another over a chess-board: during that same period Manaton and Delaunier faced one another across a model’s platform.” He paused, and then added, “I wish that Rosanne had been in the studio all the time, too, but I think you were right in insisting that the facts had to be stated, and not tampered with.”
“Yes. I don’t regret insisting on that: what fills me with discomfort was the way in which Manaton wanted to tamper with the facts, as though…”
He broke off, and Mackellon finished his sentence for him, “as though he believed that Rosanne knew something about it.”
“That’s it—a loathsome suggestion. I wish to God I could get Rosanne right away, out of that shoddiness which invests her brother and his affairs. I can’t stand that man Delaunier.”
“Here, steady on! It was through Delaunier you got to know the Manatons. Delaunier is a first-class chess player, though he’s not a first-class actor. It never occurred to you to dislike him until you saw him in contact with Rosanne Manaton. Incidentally, I shall be surprised if Delaunier doesn’t come in here some time this evening. I saw him at lunch; he rolled into my pub and held forth: he’s fancying himself in the role of detective.”
Cavenish frowned. “He’d fancy himself in any role, confound him. What’s it got to do with him, anyway?”
“No more than it’s got to do with any of the rest of us, but inevitably one is interested. I don’t pretend that I’m lofty-minded enough to banish the whole thing from my memory and pretend I’m not interested. For one thing, I shall never be able to forget the moment when that blustering ass of a Special butted in on us, dragging that tallow-faced laddie by the arm. It was the sort of thing which stuck in one’s mind. You know, every one of us was convinced that young Folliner hadn’t anything to do with it. Just sentiment, I suppose, because he was hurt, and looked green, and was in khaki.”
“Mr. Delaunier, sir.” Mrs. Elliott held the door open and Delaunier followed her into the room.
“’Evening, both of you. Hullo, finishing your game at long last?” Delaunier seemed to take the room in at a glance, and his eyes studied the little chess pieces. “Black to move, and mate in four moves,” he said, “but black hasn’t moved yet. The pieces are as they were when you left the game last night.”
Cavenish nodded, and closed the wallet. “Yes. I don’t feel like going on. I’ve given Mackellon the game.”
Delaunier laughed. “Throwing your hand in? That’s a mistake. I could pull that game out of the fire for you and force a stalemate, at least.”
Mackellon smiled, his hazel eyes glinting. “You’ve got a damned good memory, Delaunier.”
“Yes, so far as chess is concerned, I’ve a very good memory. Well, I’ve been prowling around the scene of the crime, and a few interesting points have emerged. I’m more than ever disposed to credit that pompous Special Constable with the onus of the affair.”
Cavenish said nothing, beyond indicating a chair by the fire, and Mackellon, sitting on the edge of the table, began to fill his pipe, asking, “Why?” in that terse abrupt manner of his.
Delaunier settled himself comfortably in the chair and lighted a cigarette.
“The name of the ‘Special Gentleman’ is Verraby—Mr. Lewis Verraby. He’s fairly well known in the district, it appears. He has the pleasant habit of buying up building land as cheaply as possible and making a fortune out of it by building flats and letting them as dearly as possible. That block on Vernon Hill is one of his major crimes—a blot on the landscape, and twelve foot by twenty for each tenant at a rental of £120 a year, heating and C.H.W. provided.”
“Interesting, but I don’t see that it’s relevant,” said Cavenish.
Delaunier laughed. “Then you’ll never make a detective. Everything concerning any contact in a case is relevant.” He broke off, and then asked, “Did either of you fellows notice if the Special or the Tommy was wearing gloves yesterday evening?”
Cavenish shook his head, but Mackellon replied immediately, “The Special was wearing gloves—pigskin ditto, with buttons, fleece-lined, probably costing a couple of guineas the pair. Young Folliner had been wearing a pair of mitts, presumably: he’d got the left one on, the right was missing.”
“Very good, very good,” said Delaunier. “To get back to Cavenish’s ‘irrelevancy.’ Some months ago, Mr. Verraby purchased a couple of houses in Hollyberry Hill, the ones adjacent to Folliner’s. It seemed a senseless sort of purchase—two old houses, hardly fit for reconditioning, until you consider Verraby’s habits. If he has bought two houses in that block, it’s quite probable that he is the owner of the remainder which are unoccupied. He is not, however, the owner of number 25—though it’s pretty certain he wanted to be.”
Mackellon was studying Delaunier with smiling concentration. “I see your drift, but it’s a far-fetched motive. Incidentally, where did you grub all this up?”
“The local, my dear chap, the local. Always try the nearest house of refreshment. The Hollyberry Tavern was seething with excitement. Incidentally, they’ve still got some dry Martini—a rarity, these days. Now I ask you, assuming that Mr. Lewis Verraby is the owner of those very unpleasant relics of Victorianism which constitute numbers 23 to 29 Hollyberry Hill inclusive, don’t you think it’s probable, to put it mildly, that he has at some time or other approached the owner of number 25 with a view to purchasing that undesirable property?”
Mackellon nodded, his eyes very alert. “Yes, if you’re right in your previous surmise about the purchase of adjoining property, I agree.”
Cavenish spoke here. “Very ingenious, but I doubt if any jury would convict on such a motive.”
“I wonder,” said Delaunier softly. “Put together all that we know of deceased—”
“—which amounts to almost nothing in my case,” said Cavenish dryly. “I know that he is the Manatons’ landlord, that is all.”
Delaunier turned to Mackellon: “Can you add anything to that?”
“Only what the Manatons have told me—that Folliner was a miserly old skinflint, and that his domestic habits were of an unsavoury nature.”
“Yes, that he was a miserly old skinflint,” repeated Delaunier. “Do you think that such a man would accept a reasonable offer for his property? He probably knew that his land was an island site situated in the centre of a block already sold. He would have held out for his own price. A very irritating matter for a speculator in land-values… A miser… Isn’t that the point?”
“Perhaps, but I doubt very much if your theory would stand,” said Cavenish. “Also, it’s as well to remember that there is a law of slander.”
“Oh, that!” Delaunier snorted contemptuously, and then went on: “I’m interested in the ‘contacts,’ so to speak. Take all those persons, apart from the police, who were in the Manatons’ quarters at one time or another yesterday evening. Name them!” he demanded of Mackellon and the latter complied.
“The three of us present here, plus Manaton and his sister, Mrs. Tubbs, Neil Folliner, and Mr. Verraby—unless you include the latter with the police.”
“Oh, no, not for the purposes of this argument. Now how many of those persons has had first-hand contact with deceased? The Manatons, in the relation of tenants to landlord; Mrs. Tubbs, who worked for old Folliner—for charity rather than profit, I gather; Neil Folliner, relative of deceased; Mr. Lewis Verraby, probably a business associate.”
“Go on,” said Mackellon, and Delaunier looked up quickly.
“Haven’t I covered the ground, or have you any association with the dead man?”
“No, I haven’t, nor Cavenish, I believe—but haven’t you happened across him? Didn’t you say that you’d been to the studio when some previous tenants had it, and that you’d seen old Folliner then?”
Delaunier grinned. “You’ve a damned good memory, Mackellon, as you said to me a while ago. Yes. I did know the previous tenants a little—in actual fact, I told Bruce about the studio, when he was worrying around hunting for a place to paint in. This one had the merit that all the glass was intact—rather a rarity these days. I probably warned him that the owner was a nasty old customer, too, and that no decorations would be done. That’s as far as I can go. To the best of my knowledge I haven’t set eyes on old Folliner. Rather a pity: the number of contacts all add to the complexity of the design.”
Robert Cavenish made an impatient movement. “I’ve no patience with that sort of jargon, Delaunier. There’s nothing amusing about murder, and being at close quarters to a case, as we happened to be in this one, doesn’t excuse being flippant about it.”
Delaunier’s dark eyebrows shot up. “You can only take pleasure in fictitious corpses, mon cher,” he replied, his lively dark eyes glancing towards Cavenish’s bookcase, “or do you read Michael Innes for his literary style and Dorothy Sayers as an admirer of her encyclopædic information? Come, surely you are being inconsistent? In this particular case, a very objectionable, mean old man was shot: he was very old, and his life was of no value to anybody, so far as can be judged. I regard the whole thing as a problem—a design, I might say. The fact that we were at close quarters only renders the interest more intense, to my way of thinking.”
Mackellon put in a word here: “I don’t think that Cavenish bothers about the decease of Mr. Albert Folliner, any more than you or I do. What he dislikes is a police interrogation which involves his own friends.”
Delaunier’s regard was quizzical. “His own friends,” he repeated softly. “Well, Cavenish might have rendered Miss Manaton a better service by persuading her to fall in with her brother’s way of thinking. It could have done nobody any harm. The only truth which matters is truth concerning the murder, and there Miss Manaton had no evidence to offer. Of what use for that admirable detective to waste his intelligence pondering over Rosanne’s inspection of the black-out? We could all have told him that it had no bearing on the facts.”
Cavenish flushed and his habitually tranquil face hardened as he answered: “I said before—and I say it again—to tamper with the truth is to put yourself in the wrong; it is a fool’s game, quite apart from the ethical aspect. Besides, you forget that Miss Manaton herself would not consider suppressing the truth, either for her own benefit, or the convenience of other people.”
Delaunier shrugged his shoulders, a smile twitching his mobile lips. “As you will, mon cher, as you will. The convenience of other people, you suggest. The convenience would have been for Miss Manaton alone—though it might have eased the anxiety of her brother and her friends. For myself, cela m’est bien egal.”
Mackellon interposed here. “You spoke about the detective—Chief Inspector Macdonald—being intelligent. I agree with you there. Any man less like a fool I never met, or less likely to be fooled. I don’t think he is likely to make any glaring mistakes, but if he had once discovered that we were tampering with the evidence, he would have been disposed to disbelieve everything we told him.”
Delaunier nodded. “Yes, yes. I see your point. Incidentally, have you seen Manaton to-day?”
“Obviously not,” said Mackellon. “Cavenish and I have had our jobs to do. The only time we are free is in the evenings. Have you seen him?”
“I have, and he was in a very vile temper. He had said that he wanted to go on with the Richelieu portrait, but when I arrived, ready to pose for his convenience, Bruce says that he does not feel like work. Rosanne was out, else she might have made him see sense. As for his portrait—it can go to the devil. I can’t be bothered to go running round after him if he chooses to be temperamental. Well, if I don’t see you again before the inquest, I take it we shall be called to give evidence?”
“It depends entirely how far the police have got with their case,” said Cavenish. “It’s quite probable that the first sitting will be no more than a necessary formality. They will take evidence of identification and of the discovery of death, and then adjourn. None of us has any first-hand evidence to give on the two primary points. They will call Verraby, Neil Folliner, and Mrs. Tubbs—the latter being the last to see the old man alive. Of course we may be summoned to attend in case the Coroner decides to take all the evidence available. I gather that the inquest will be held to-morrow morning, so if we are wanted, we shall get notice to-night. Good-night, Delaunier. Good of you to have looked in.”
“Not at all, not at all. Good-night, both of you. Mackellon, remember you have promised me another game some time. Good-night!”
II
After Delaunier had gone, there was silence between the two men, and at length Mackellon said:
“Well, I gather that your previous irritation with that chap has not abated.”
“It has not,” said Cavenish. “Maybe I’m being unreasonable. One has a tendency to judge people against a background. A man may be acceptable enough in a given set of circumstances, and quite unacceptable in others. Delaunier as a chess player, or as an actor, may be an interesting fellow. When he starts airing his views about the affair of last night, I admit that I don’t like him. It’s no use making an analogy of a detective story: the two experiences have nothing in common to my way of thinking. How do you feel about it?”
“I’m interested, but in a more impersonal way than yourself,” said Mackellon. “What I should like to get at is the opinion and reactions of that C.I.D. fellow. Why did he came into the studio? What did he think of it all? Did he believe any of us, or did he think we were all telling a carefully concocted yarn? He gave me the impression of being unusually aware: not only listening to what was said, but studying the speaker with a cool objective judgment. You know we must have looked a damned funny lot to him. Had that occurred to you?”
Cavenish moved uncomfortably in his chair. “Yes. It occurred to me all right, but I thought the Chief Inspector was an unusually intelligent fellow: he seemed to grasp the situation immediately, without either surprise or incredulity.”
“Never batted an eyelid. True to his nationality. He’s a Highlander, or derived from them. Incidentally,” Mackellon paused here and knocked his pipe out, and started refilling it as he asked:
“Just how much do you know about the Manatons?”
Again there was a silence, and at length Cavenish answered:
“Just about as much as you do—barring a few words Rosanne has let drop, which I shan’t repeat.”
Mackellon looked at the fire as he smoked, and then he said: “You remember Delaunier asked us to his rooms one evening for a double game of chess. I played Delaunier, you played Manaton. One or two things have occurred to me since. We stayed and jawed round the fire after our games were finished. I thought Manaton was an intelligent fellow in many ways, but he had curious gaps in his information about current events.”
“Yes,” said Cavenish dryly. “He had. I didn’t notice him much at the time. He’s a good chess player. That’s all I cared about—not so good as Delaunier, of course. That chap’s nearly in the front rank. Did it ever occur to you—as it occurred to me—that Delaunier and Manaton together might be going to propose playing for stakes? They didn’t, though. Then we went along to the studio one evening, and after I’d got to know Rosanne I gave up criticising her brother.”
Cavenish spoke simply, and Mackellon nodded. “Quite. I wish you luck. I still do. I like Rosanne Manaton. I think she’s fundamentally straight, and she must have had the hell of a life with that brother of hers: she’s honestly devoted to him and she slaves for him, to keep him straight.”
“Then you think he’s crooked?”
“Not of necessity. He’s unstable, and he gets drunk very easily. Not drunk in a noisy tipsy way, but in a way which makes him reckless and absolutely irresponsible. Hasn’t he ever borrowed money from you? I thought so. That money would have gone to the nearest pub. He puts down neat whisky as long as his money lasts. I lent him money once, and Rosanne asked me not to do it again.” Mackellon got up and stretched his long limbs. “When Macdonald was talking to us in the studio, I had a feeling that he had grasped something of all that without being told a word of it.”
“That’s an exaggeration, of course,” said Cavenish. “The Chief Inspector is a trained observer, and as such he would gather a lot that the average man would miss. As a matter of fact, I thought that Bruce Manaton showed up unusually well when he was talking to Macdonald. He was reasonable and explicit, and courteous—a quality not always noticeable in him.”
Mackellon laughed. “Meaning that he is habitually infernally rude. Well, if you don’t feel like a game, I’ll get off home. I’ve got some figures I want to check.”
“Right.” Cavenish got up and stood fiddling with some spills on the mantelpiece. As Mackellon turned to the door, the older man said:
“You haven’t said what you came to say, have you?”
Mackellon stood still by the door. “No. I suppose I haven’t, actually—but perhaps it’s as well to leave some things unsaid. I admit that I wish we had never got to know Delaunier or the Manatons, but I don’t suppose you feel like that about it.”
“No,” said Cavenish quietly. “I don’t.”
III
After Mackellon had gone, Cavenish took up his book again and tried to read, but found that he could not settle down to it. Having read the same page three times without taking in a word of the meaning, he put the book down and decided to go for a walk and try to get rid of the unaccustomed restlessness which possessed him.
He put on his overcoat and went quietly out of the house. It was a black moonless night, and he stood at the front door until his eyes grew a little accustomed to the dark. As he stood, Cavenish felt a sudden sense of unease. He had only the vaguest notions about police procedure, and he wondered if he and Mackellon and Delaunier were all being “shadowed.” Were the police watching their movements, noting that the three of them had foregathered this evening for a consultation? Some motive of caution in Cavenish’s careful, sensible mind told him that he would be better advised to go indoors again, rather than roam the streets in the black-out. The thought irritated him and he stepped out, determined to walk off the malaise which possessed him.
When he reached the main road he turned northwards, towards Hampstead. The air was clear to-night, and a sharp north wind met him: he could see the traffic lights at the road junctions ahead—Circus Road and Marlborough Place—the green lights shining beneath their hoods with startling vividness. There was very little traffic on the wide road, and still fewer pedestrians. Now that his eyes were accustomed to the gloom, Cavenish set out at a good pace, finding that the exercise lulled his sense of discomfort. When he reached Swiss Cottage, he hesitated at the junction of the roads, and then took the right-hand fork, leading to Fitzjohn’s Avenue and the Heath. As he began to mount the long hill, he admitted to himself that he knew where he was going. Common sense might bid him keep away, but something stronger than common sense was urging him in the direction of Hollyberry Hill.
Cavenish, as Rosanne Manaton knew, was a poet at heart. Beneath the façade of organising ability and conscientious industry was a mind which played with the music of words, and as he walked his mind repeated the rhythm and melody of one of the most melodious of poets. Asked for his opinion of Swinburne, Cavenish would have said: “It’s all sound, just skilful sound, without any significant thought behind it,” but as he strode up the hill his mind took pleasure in the rhythm of “Atalanta.”
“Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her,
Fold our hands round her knees and sing;
Oh that man’s heart were as fire and could spring to her,
Fire, and the strength of the streams that spring.”
His mind was too occupied with the verse to be analytical, and no errant sense of the ludicrous prompted him to laugh at the thought of a middle-aged, conscientious Home Office official striding up Fitzjohn’s Avenue in the black-out to the lilting music of Swinburne.
Towards the top of the hill he turned off to the right and made his way through several small roads until he reached Hollyberry Hill and turned in at the gate of number 25 towards the studio. Even at the door he hesitated, and then, angry with his own hesitation, knocked at the studio door. It was opened by Bruce Manaton; heedless of the black-out regulations, he threw the unscreened door wide, so that Cavenish was confused by the sudden glare of light.
“Damn you, what do you want? Where’s Rosanne?” demanded the painter. “Where is she, I ask you?”
IV
Cavenish pushed inside and closed the studio door. Facing him, at the far end, was the great white canvas with the drawing of the Cardinal. The canvas was streaked now with daubs of violent red, vermilion, cadmium scarlet, alizarin crimson and cobalt violet shadows. To Cavenish it looked quite mad—experiment or lunacy, he knew not which.
“Where is she?” demanded Manaton again. He had donned his blue painter’s coat, and his palette was still in his left hand, bedaubed with thick shining splodges of red.
“I don’t know where she is, Manaton. How should I know? I haven’t seen Rosanne since I left here last night. You’d better tell me what you mean.”
“She went out, just after tea, to do the shopping, she said. That man was here—Macdonald. He’s searched the place, ransacked everything. Rosanne went out just before he started: she knew he was going to search—and she’s not come back. God! I shall go mad if I don’t know where she is.”
“Didn’t she say where she was going, or when she’d be in?”
“No, I tell you. She just went.”
“If you’re really worried about her, why not tell the police? They’ll know if there’s been an accident.”
Manaton flung his palette down and laughed, a furious sound with no mirth in it.
“Police!” he stormed. “Are you being funny? For all I know the police have taken her. It’s just the sort of fool-thing they would do. I tell you I can’t tell the police. I don’t know where she is, or what she’s doing or why…” He stamped his feet furiously, and shouted, “As for you, damn and blast you, if it hadn’t been for you this needn’t have happened. You and your puritanical conscience, you poor codfish—you knew you were safe enough. If you’d told Rosanne to say she was in here, with us, this would never have happened. It’s your fault.”
Cavenish stood aghast, not knowing what to reply.
“You’re wrong,” he protested. “I know you’re wrong. You wanted to shield Rosanne with lies—”
“Yes, damn you! I wanted to shield her, with lies or with anything else. Don’t I know what she’s done for me? Is there anything I wouldn’t do for her? You make me sick, you and your prating ways. Get out, I say! Get out!”
“I tell you I won’t get out! I want to know where Rosanne is…”
His words were interrupted by Manaton’s storm of laughter.
“Where she is? She’s not here, I tell you that! Didn’t Macdonald go over the place inch by inch? Ask him! She’s not here. Go and ask Delaunier! Perhaps he knows.”
Robert Cavenish felt helpless: helpless and sick at heart. To stay here was useless. He went outside and began to tramp up and down the dark roadway, thinking, arguing with himself, helpless and irresolute.