VERNEY had taken his leave, and Trent had noted that he was properly impressed—not to say astounded—by the fact, if fact it were, of the swift success of the official hunt for Randolph’s murderer. Trent had busied himself at once in procuring copies of all the latest editions and comparing their statements; then, after a meditative dinner, he had rung up a certain number in Bloomsbury, and proposed himself for a private and friendly call upon Chief Inspector Bligh, whom he was lucky enough to find at the other end of the wire.
The number of Trent’s friends among the metropolitan police, in its various grades, was small, but his relation with them was entirely one of mutual liking; and there was none with whom he was on easier terms than Mr Bligh, an officer of unusual parts, whose range of interests went considerably beyond his notable equipment of expert professional knowledge. In particular, he had made a hobby, and owned a considerable library, of the history of the Civil War in the United States.
It was nine o’clock when Trent found the inspector deeply engaged with book and pipe in his comfortable bachelor quarters.
‘Sorry to spoil your evening,’ Trent said as he placed his hat on a chair.
‘You won’t,’ Mr Bligh assured him. ‘If I’d thought you were likely to, I’d have told them downstairs to set the dog on you, instead of bringing up the drinks for you. Help yourself.’ And he waved a vast hand towards the tray with its convivial contents on the plush-covered table.
Trent took the armchair facing his host’s, and began the filling of a pipe. ‘Oh blessings on his kindly face and on his absent hair!’ he said. ‘I’ve interrupted your reading, anyhow. What is the book, I wonder? But need I ask? It is the Life, Campaigns, Letters, Opinions and Table-talk of General Joseph Eggleston Johnston, the Victor of Pumpkin Creek.’
‘There’s no such book,’ Mr Bligh retorted positively; ‘and,’ he added after a moment’s thought, ‘there wasn’t any such battle. What I was reading was Bernard Shaw—my favourite author.’
‘Another bond between us!’ Trent exclaimed. ‘And what draws you so especially to Shaw?’
The inspector patted affectionately the volume lying on his knee. ‘Shaw,’ he declared, ‘is the literature of escape. That isn’t,’ he added, in answer to Trent’s bewildered gaze, ‘my own expression.’
‘You relieve my feelings,’ Trent gasped, ‘more than I can say.’
‘No,’ the inspector said reminiscently. ‘That was the phrase used about Shaw by the man who first brought him to my notice. I had to interrogate a prisoner some years ago about a certain matter. A confirmed criminal, he was. They used to call him Pantomime Joe, on account of the cheek he used to give everybody from the dock. Why, if I’ve heard a judge say once that his court wasn’t a music hall, when Joe was on his trial, I’ve heard it half a dozen times. Joe was an educated man, and it was no surprise to me, when I visited him in his cell, to find him reading a book from the prison library. He showed it to me—Plays Pleasant, by G. B. Shaw. “What’s this?” I said. He grinned at me. “This is the literature of escape, Blighter,” he says, using a silly nickname he and his sort have always had for me. I thought that sounded a funny sort of reading to be put in the hands of a man who spent half his time in gaol, but he explained his meaning.’
‘And what can that have been?’ Trent wondered.
‘Why,’ the inspector said, ‘Joe meant, and I agree with him, that Shaw takes you right out of the beastly realities of life. I can tell you, after a hard day at our job, with all the spite, and greed, and cruelty, and filthy-mindedness that we get our noses rubbed in, it’s like coming out into the fresh country air to sit down to one of Shaw’s plays. Nobody half-witted, nobody brutal, nobody to make you sick. And if he ever does try to give you anybody who is a rotten bad lot, he doesn’t come within miles of the real thing. And there’s never a dull moment. Every dam’ character has something to say; even the stupidest ones. Everybody scores off everybody else. Who ever had the luck to listen to anything like it in real life? I tell you, it’s a different world.’
Trent nodded his appreciation of this. ‘But,’ he said, after a brief silence, ‘it was the world we live in that I wanted to consult you about.’
‘The Randolph murder,’ Mr Bligh said. ‘I know; you said so on the phone. And you have been painting his portrait, staying at Brinton to do it. And last week the man who runs the Randolph Institute said it would be a good idea to have a replica of it to hang up there. And Randolph was persuaded to agree, and wrote asking you to call at Newbury Place yesterday evening at six, which you did. And then he talked to you about doing the replica. And then you left, about six fifteen—so that you were one of the last persons to see the old man alive. Well! You’ve got something to tell me that I don’t know, I hope.’
Trent gazed at him as if in awe. ‘I don’t think,’ he said humbly, ‘there can be anything you don’t know. You have forgotten for the moment, perhaps, that he and I had a little disagreement, and I declined to do the job. Apart from that, I have nothing to add to your summary of the proceedings. How do you do it, Inspector? I may have an open countenance, but I hardly think you can have read all that in my face. Were you up the chimney listening to us, or what?’
Mr Bligh smiled grimly. ‘Information received—that’s what we usually call it,’ he said. ‘As for listening, Simon Raught, Randolph’s man, does all of that that’s required when he’s on the premises. Most of what I’ve mentioned he happened to hear, quite accidentally, last week at Brinton; and as for your visit, of course, he told me all about that.’
‘Of course,’ Trent agreed. ‘Be told, sweet Bligh, and let who will be clever; hear useful things, not deduce them, all day long. All the same, you will not persuade me that all that perfectly good information fell into your lap, as it were, when you were not noticing. I have seen Simon Raught only a few times—in fact, he never got as far as telling me his Christian name, as he evidently did with you—but he did not strike me as one who, when in trouble, would insist that all his secrets should be sung even into thine own soft-conchéd ear. I won’t inquire how you got all that out of him—there are various ways and means, I know. The thing I really wanted to ask you when I came here appears not to be in any doubt. The case is in your hands, as I hoped it might be.’
‘Good guess,’ the inspector remarked sardonically.
‘And you ask if I have anything to tell you—about Randolph as he was at our interview, I suppose you mean? No, I haven’t. He said nothing about anyone coming to see him after I had gone. He didn’t say anything about expecting to be shot, and he didn’t look as if he was. He seemed just as usual, in excellent health, and perfectly satisfied with himself.’
‘Hm! That doesn’t help much,’ Mr Bligh said. ‘Well, why did you want to see me about the case, then? We all understood you had gone out of the amateur sleuthing business long ago.’
‘Just because I happened to know Randolph, and to know some things about him that interested me—things I had heard before I made his acquaintance through painting his portrait, and things I have learnt since. And only this afternoon I was told a good deal by his secretary, Verney, whom I had met at Randolph’s house last January. He had already been giving you information, I gathered, earlier in the day.’
The inspector nodded. ‘But not a lot that I didn’t know. There was that about his having left no will, of course, which seems to be the case. But bless you! That’s not an unheard-of thing, even with the general run of wealthy people; and old James Randolph was not exactly an ordinary character.’
‘That’s just it. I know how very far from ordinary he was, and that’s why I’m interested. Besides, one of the reasons why I went out of business, as you call it, was that my wife has a morbid distaste for crime; but just now she is in the Cotswolds. I am alone and free, like the man in Chesterton; shameless, anarchic, infinite.’
‘I don’t know about anarchic and infinite,’ Mr Bligh said pointedly. ‘Well,’ he added, assuming an expression of regretful sympathy, ‘I’m more sorry than I can say, but there’s no need to let the thing trouble your ingenious brain any further, my lad. We’ve got the man.’
‘The papers have been told so—I saw that. And that is why I came to you; to hear more.’
‘The papers have been told nothing of the sort,’ Mr Bligh said testily. ‘They’ve found out for themselves that an arrest has been made, and they may possibly have found out that the man arrested was connected with one of Randolph’s concerns, and had just been sacked. But they’ve said nothing about its being the man who shot Randolph, because of course they daren’t; and in fact he hasn’t been charged with that. All the same, he’s the man.’
‘He is, is he?’ Trent looked into the other’s rugged face. ‘Swift work, with a vengeance. You’re certain about having got the man? Is the case really, so to speak, in the bag already?’
Mr Bligh’s smile was grim. ‘In closest confidence, as usual, I don’t mind telling you that I have clear evidence of the man’s having been in Randolph’s house in the evening, when Randolph was there alone. I have also—’
‘Yes,’ Trent murmured. ‘An “also” would seem to be in order.’
‘Also,’ the inspector went on, after blowing a couple of elaborate smoke-rings, ‘I have the man’s written and signed confession that he murdered Randolph.’
Trent fell back in his chair, while Mr Bligh resumed his pipe and gazed dreamily at a corner of the ceiling.
‘That seems to have made you think a bit,’ he remarked after a moment, cannily observant of a slight frown on his guest’s usually untroubled countenance. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if you had been working up some valuable theory of your own about the case. If you have, let’s hear it. A good laugh’s the best tonic in the world. Come on! Am I right?’
‘Very often, I dare say,’ Trent said, with a swift return to his accustomed manner. ‘Not now. I never had the slightest notion of a theory about the case. I only heard of it three hours ago. But I do take an interest in it as I told you, and I thought, with my well-known helpfulness, that you might like to have a talk about it, and even let me have a look at the scene of the crime; but now, perhaps, everything being as you tell me, you’d rather not.’
Mr Bligh rubbed his chin. ‘I don’t know about that,’ he said slowly. Then, after a few moments’ consideration, he added: ‘It’s like this. The evidence is all there. I’ve told you, roughly, what it is. But there are some queer things about the case all the same, and we might as well have a yarn about it.’
‘Just what I should like. You know it’s safe to talk to me.’
‘If it wasn’t, my lad, you wouldn’t be here.’ A chuckle agitated the crumpled expanse of Mr Bligh’s waistcoat. ‘Well, you’ve seen what little there is in the papers, of course.’
‘Certainly; and it’s very little indeed. Can you tell me one thing, for instance, that they don’t mention—just how Randolph was shot?’
‘He was shot through the heart from behind, probably from the direction of the door of the bedroom, when he was just taking his coat off. It looks as if it was done by someone who had come to see him by appointment, and whom he had let in himself, the valet being out for the evening. The bullet was fired from a Webley .455, probably fitted with a silencer.’
‘Ah!’ Trent received this information with a thoughtful brow. ‘So that’s how it was. And you’re telling me that nobody knows this as yet but the police—and the surgeon, of course.’
‘Well, the man who murdered him knows it, I suppose,’ the inspector observed.
‘Yes, I’m capable of supposing that myself,’ Trent rejoined. ‘And now that we have arrived at that point, who did murder him?’
‘We haven’t arrived at that point.’ Mr Bligh, it was clear, was taking an innocent pleasure in saving up the climax of his tale. ‘Let’s take things in their order. First, there were the obvious possibilities to be thought of.’
‘The servants, you mean.’
‘You’ve read in the paper that there was only one, a manservant, sleeping in the place. He was out for the evening, and found the body when he came home; then informed the police by phone immediately. So he said.’
Trent nodded. ‘Raught—yes, I know him. And you put him through it, of course.’
‘I thought,’ the inspector said dubiously, ‘I had wrung him pretty dry; but one couldn’t be certain. Still, he’d got a reasonable enough story about having left the place just after you left it, to spend his evening off with some relations; and he hadn’t any motive that lay on the surface. He declared that when he found the body, he was in too much of a dither even to make out how Randolph had been killed. It might be true; but naturally I didn’t set him aside. The only other servant is a charlady, Mrs Barley, who kept the place in order when Randolph wasn’t staying there. I saw her too this morning—a simple soul, she is. I thought to myself, I miss my guess if she knows anything whatever about the crime—or about anything else worth mentioning. Then, as you know, I saw Verney, the secretary, who was always about the place when Randolph was in London; and he gave me a satisfactory account of his movements on the evening of the murder.’
‘Movements,’ Trent murmured. ‘An admirable word. Bend against Primrose Hill thy breast, dash down like torrent from its crest, with short and springing footstep pass the Marble Arch and Hamilton Place. Not a very good rhyme, that.’
‘The account he gave was rather more detailed,’ Mr Bligh said coldly. ‘After the run, which you appear to know about, he stayed at the Randolph Institute till ten thirty, and was in his rooms off Maida-vale five minutes later. All that’s been checked. As for motive, all he seems to have got by the crime is the loss of a good job.’
‘Like Raught—yes,’ Trent said. ‘And now, if I may ask a question—you know what weapon was used. You’ve got it, I suppose.’
‘Why should you suppose anything of the kind?’ the inspector retorted. ‘It’s not usual for murderers to leave the weapon lying about, is it?’
‘It’s not usual for them to confess,’ Trent pointed out; and Mr Bligh grunted morosely. ‘I only thought,’ Trent went on, ‘he might have led gently up to the confession, as it were, by not taking away the revolver.’
‘Well, we haven’t got it, that’s all,’ Mr Bligh snapped. ‘But we know what make it was, and what calibre, by looking at the bullet and the breech-markings on it—nothing easier, as it happens, with that type. As for where it is, all I can say is that it’s more likely than not to be lying somewhere on the floor of the Channel; but that’s nothing better than a guess.’
‘What I want to know,’ Trent persisted, ‘is why this Webley should be visiting the bottom of the monstrous world, since the murderer has confessed.’
The inspector rubbed his chin once more. ‘Well, of course, so do I. But come! We’re getting in advance of the story. If you do want to know what really happened, you must let me tell it my own way.’
He proceeded to give Trent a brief account of his investigation on the scene of the crime. He told of the empty safe; of the signs of documents having been stolen; of the fingerprints on the carafe and tumbler, and on the razor-blade found on the carpet; of the champagne cork; of the leaf missing from the engagement-block in the sitting-room.
Trent, who had listened in closely attentive silence, interposed at this point.
‘An engagement-block!’ he said. ‘And was that in a position where it could easily be seen?’
‘Anybody could see it. The cabinet it stood on was on top of the writing-table, just in front of the window. What about it?’
‘Only that I feel certain that it wasn’t there when I saw the old man in that room at six o’clock. I noticed that dwarf cabinet, too—it is a beautiful little thing.’
‘Hm! Yes.’ Mr Bligh again fingered his chin. ‘That does happen to be one of the funny points. Because Raught, the manservant, says positively that it never was left lying about, that Randolph was always most careful to keep it locked away. Still, of course, he may have had it out to refer to, some time before he was shot.’
‘So he may. And then, of course, the man who came to see him, and whose name was on the block as having an appointment with him, very cunningly tore off that leaf and took it away; thus destroying a piece of direct evidence that he had been there that evening.’
‘Yes.’
‘After which he rushed off and bunged in a confession of having been there, and having shot Randolph. Changeable sort of bloke!’
The inspector sighed wearily. ‘I know, I know. And Randolph may have torn off the leaf himself, for some reason. But look here! There’s one more thing I haven’t mentioned yet. When I saw it, it looked to me like a fatal blunder; and so it would have been, if the damfool hadn’t gone and—but never mind that just now, I am telling you things as they happened.’ He went on to describe the last of the morning’s finds, the luggage-label picked up in the hallway; and when he repeated the name written on the label, Trent made a movement of uncontrollable surprise.
‘Bryan Fairman!’ he exclaimed.
‘That’s what I said. He’s the man who did it,’ Mr Bligh added.
‘Do you mean to say he is the man whom you know to have been at Randolph’s place when he was shot, and who has confessed to the murder? Why, I know him!’
‘Is there anybody in this blasted case that you don’t know?’ the inspector asked plaintively. ‘Anyhow, if you know Bryan Fairman, you know a damned nuisance—him and his confession!’
‘I suppose you might call a murderer that,’ Trent admitted. ‘But really, Inspector, this is incredible. Fairman is one of my oldest friends. Do you remember when we were talking about Eunice Faviell some time ago, and the way so many men go crazy about her? I mentioned to you that a great friend of mine was one of those victims. I was speaking of this same Fairman. I have known him half my life, and of all the men that I should call sound citizens, he is about the most blameless. Why, I saw him only last night—’ and here Trent broke off, realizing suddenly the possible significance of that meeting.
The inspector’s eyelids narrowed. ‘Yes?’ he said gently.
‘He was catching the 8:20 at Victoria,’ Trent said slowly. ‘He very nearly missed it. And that’s the boat-train for Dieppe—I was seeing somebody off by it. But good Lord! Bryan Fairman! You know, it’s quite impossible to believe—’
‘Wait till you hear all there is to believe,’ Mr Bligh advised him. ‘There’s plenty. To begin with, “Passenger to Dieppe” was written on the label, as I was just going to tell you. Well, all that did for me was to give me someone to go after; which of course I did. If he was going to Dieppe by the night-boat, as seemed most likely, it was a thousand to one he was on his way to somewhere much further off, and had had a good many hours’ start on his journey, whatever it was—because the boat gets there in the small hours. But on the off-chance of Dieppe being his real destination, I had him looked for there; and sure enough I soon got news of him—and a lot of it. The first information was that Dr Bryan Fairman, complete with passport, had come by the boat and taken a room at the Hôtel Beau-Rivage. He left there about nine thirty this morning, after taking nothing but a cup of coffee. Then it came through that an Englishman carrying a kit-bag had been seen hanging about in a place called the Impasse de la Chimère, in the outskirts of the town, looking as if he had lost something. What on earth he can have wanted there the French police haven’t the least idea; they say they have made every possible inquiry—and they are pretty good at that, as you know—and they cannot imagine what he was after in that spot.’
‘That is remarkable, too,’ Trent said thoughtfully. ‘If the French police could not get any information they were looking for from local householders or concierges, it should mean that there wasn’t anything for them to get. And as for my friend Fairman being seen wandering about in the environs of Dieppe, it simply doesn’t make sense to me. He studied for a year at the Salpétrière in Paris, and as far as I know that is all the experience of France that he has. What else did you hear about him?’
‘In the same place,’ the inspector proceeded, ‘there is an inn, and Fairman had some more coffee there before he went away. The man who keeps the place says that the Englishman looked sick, and a bit dotty.’
‘Did he really say that?’ Trent inquired with keen interest.
‘His words were, as reported to us,’ replied the inspector, who numbered a practical, working knowledge of French among his professional merits, ‘that the man seemed to be “souffrant” and “un peu toqué” and, if you can make that mean anything but what I said, you’re welcome. Well, as I was about to tell you when interrupted, the next thing seen of Fairman, he was booking a return passage by the afternoon boat back to Newhaven. One of our men on duty at the port recognized him by the description which we had phoned across; also by the initials on his kit-bag. So our chap took a passage too, to keep him under observation. And then, dammit! What do you suppose the crazy fool did? The boat hadn’t much more than cleared the harbour when he walked to the rail, climbed over it, and was in the act of jumping overboard when Sergeant Hewett grabbed him by the jacket and pants, and hung onto him until the crew came and dragged him inboard again. Quite a scrap they had of it, Hewett says—he’s got a lovely black eye, and a mouth like a pound of liver with a slit in it. Then Hewett took him in charge for attempting suicide; and that’s what we’re holding him for at the present moment.’
Trent looked his amazement. ‘Fairman tried to drown himself! And then you say—’
‘Wait a bit,’ the inspector said. ‘You must let me tell it my own way. Shortly after Fairman had been brought home and charged, a letter was received at the Yard which he had posted at Newhaven just before the boat left for Dieppe. It contained nothing but a confession of his having shot Randolph—short, but definite enough. I’ve got a copy of it here.’
Mr Bligh got to his feet, and opened a dispatch-case that lay on a side-table. He took from it a typewritten document.
‘Before you look at this I may tell you the result of our inquiries at Claypoole, which had already been received in London. Fairman bore an excellent character, though he was rather reserved; didn’t get on with people very easily I gather. He was said to be entirely devoted to his work at the mental hospital. He was carrying on some sort of research there in addition to his ordinary duties, and had been showing signs of overwork. Then a month ago he got influenza pretty badly; and he seems to have returned to his job when he was still rather the worse for wear.
‘The next thing was that he was suddenly sacked from the hospital staff, with six months’ salary in lieu of notice. He got a letter to that effect yesterday morning, which he showed to one of his colleagues. The letter gave no reason; and the writer of it, the medical superintendent, Dr Dallow, tells our people plainly that he is not obliged to explain his action, and will not do so, the hospital being a purely privately managed institution. That, of course, was this morning, when he had no idea of why the police were showing this sudden interest in Fairman—when we knew nothing ourselves, for the matter of that, except that Fairman’s label had been found on the scene of the crime.
‘We are informed that Fairman, after getting his notice, had an interview with Dallow, which didn’t last long, and that he came away from it looking haggard and desperate. He left the hospital about three o’clock, carrying his kit-bag, not having said a word to anyone. He was seen by a porter at the station, who knew him, to take the 3:10 up-train, which is due to arrive at St Pancras at 7:30. I may say here that among the things found upon him, after his arrest, was a crumpled sheet of paper with Randolph’s London address on it. Now then, how does all that look to you?’
‘Bad,’ Trent said, looking at the floor. ‘I don’t see how it could look very much worse.’
‘Not any worse at all,’ Mr Bligh rejoined, ‘when you know that Randolph had absolute control of the entire management of the hospital.’
‘Well, I did happen to know that, and that’s why I agree about the badness. Dallow, of course, may talk about refusing to give his reasons; but he would have to sing a different tune if he was subpœnaed as a witness.’
Mr Bligh rubbed his hands. ‘You’re right there. There’s another thing, too, that he would be asked to explain—what was the subject of the interview he had with Randolph at Brinton at 5 p.m. three days before the murder? I got that by looking back through the engagement-block. Well, we’re agreed, I take it, that Randolph was responsible for the sacking. As a matter of fact, he had a bit of a down on Fairman for some reason or other—Raught, the valet, gave me that point. Well, now, to get on—all this I’ve been telling you is the result of inquiries made at the Claypoole end this morning. It was dictated to the Yard over the phone, and most of it was in my hands by lunch-time. As for what followed his arrival in London, we’ve only his own account—a bit sketchy, but definite enough as far as it goes. Here you are.’
Trent took the typescript that the inspector now held out to him. ‘Pretty smart work,’ he observed glumly. ‘Activity on all fronts, London, Claypoole and Dieppe—with a naval engagement, so to speak, thrown in. You start on the job after an early breakfast, and it’s all done up in a parcel just when it’s getting to be time for a nice hot cup of tea.’
Mr Bligh emitted a depreciative grunt. ‘I don’t say the machine didn’t run smoothly. It did—and a bit too slick for my taste, though you may think it a funny thing for me to say, perhaps. I don’t care about it so much when things all come my way on the run, as if I was a bally magnet or something. Dammit! It’s like having the case handed to me on a plate with parsley round it; and the more I’ve thought of it the less I like it.’
Trent nodded. ‘I think I know what you mean. You feel that Destiny may have got a section of lead pipe concealed behind its back, ready to land you one unexpectedly on the cervical region.’
‘Something like that,’ the inspector grumbled. ‘It’s the sort of thing that’s happened before. And yet—but you run your eye over that paper, and let’s hear what you think of it.’
Trent turned his attention to the neatly-typed sheet in his hand, and read what follows:
In the train. London—Newhaven.
9:20 p.m.
This evening I shot and killed James Randolph. I went to his house in Newbury Place at about 7:45, as near as I can guess. There was no one else in the house. We had a violent quarrel, and it ended in my shooting him. I filled a glass with water from the carafe on the chest of drawers and drank the water. I then left the house and took a cab to Victoria, where I caught the 8:20 express to Newhaven, as I had intended. I am going to cross to Dieppe.
I prefer not to give my reasons for anything that I have done.
BRYAN FAIRMAN
After reading and re-reading this brief document Trent looked up with raised brows and met his host’s expectant eye.
‘Interesting, isn’t it?’ the inspector asked drily. ‘Prefers not to give his reasons for murdering a man, but doesn’t mind mentioning that he had a drink of water after doing him in. Tells us he had arranged to escape from the country after shooting his victim; then changes his mind, doubles back on his tracks, and tries to drown himself on the way home. What infernal sense can you make of it?’
Trent, thrusting his fingers through his hair, stared a few moments into vacancy. ‘I suppose it’s a silly suggestion,’ he said at length, ‘but have you considered the idea that he is trying to shield someone else?’
‘Yes, of course. The confession, and the leaf missing from the block, and the care he takes to fix the thing on himself, suggested that to me at once. But it really doesn’t hold water. To begin with, accusing yourself of a murder you didn’t do is a pretty large order, however anxious you may be to do anybody a good turn. On the other hand, genuine confessions of murder are common enough. Then again, he had a motive of his own—resentment at the way he had been treated. Many a man has been bumped off for less than what had been done to Fairman. And besides all that, how are you going to fit the shielding idea in with this unaccountable flying visit to Dieppe, and his returning home again immediately afterwards, and his attempting suicide? No: I say again, what sense can you make of it?’
Trent glanced again through the paper in his hand. ‘Certainly,’ he said, ‘it leaves a good deal to the imagination. But—’ he paused a moment—‘I haven’t had time to consider it, of course, but I don’t see how this confession, open to criticism as it may be, makes such a devil of a lot of difference.’
The cloud of chagrin on Mr Bligh’s features grew heavier. ‘In a way it makes very little difference. There’s a strong enough case against him already. We know he had a motive. And we know he was there about the time when Randolph was shot. His fingerprints have been taken, and they correspond with those on the glass that he is so careful to mention.’
‘And, of course, with those on the razor-blade too.’
‘No, they don’t,’ the inspector said shortly. ‘That’s just one of those points that I was afraid, at the time, were going to give a lot of trouble. The fingerprint artist found a lot of Randolph’s and the valet’s marks, naturally, and he found some—not only on the water-bottle and glass—which have now been identified as Fairman’s. But he found marks on that razor-blade that don’t belong to any of the three; and he didn’t find those marks on any other article in the whole place. Raught says it was a new blade, only taken out of its envelope that morning. If so, somebody else had been handling that blade; had taken it out of the razor, as the appearances suggest, to cut open those packages.’
‘What does Fairman say about it?’
‘Nothing. He refused to answer any questions, or say a word of any sort, from the moment he was arrested. Soon after he was charged, he had a complete nervous collapse—I don’t think I told you that—and at present he is in the prison infirmary, quite unfit for interrogation or anything else. That’s the doctor’s report; and so the whole case is hung up until he is well enough for us to get on with it. We shall ask for an adjournment at the inquest, of course—we should have done in any case.’
Trent rose to his feet and began to pace the room. ‘You can understand,’ he said, ‘that all this is very painful to me. To hear of his being in that state, after all the rest that has happened—well, I won’t talk about it. Now look here. The case you’ve got against Fairman is a stiff one, even without his confession—I know that. But I could see from the start that you were not quite satisfied, and I suppose those unidentified fingerprints on the razor-blade are among the points that don’t seem to you to fit in. They don’t to me.’
‘That’s right,’ the inspector said. ‘They certainly don’t seem to fit in—not at the first glance, that is. Like those missing papers. All the same, I have got an idea about those prints, and the papers too. Tell me, how much have you seen of Raught, old Randolph’s servant?’
‘I have stayed as a guest at Brinton three times, when Randolph was sitting to me for his portrait. Raught used to look after me, as he did after his master.’
‘And how did he strike you?’
‘You mean in the role of a gentleman’s gentleman?’
Mr Bligh grinned assent.
‘Well, of course, it was comic,’ Trent said. ‘Raught is an intelligent, clear-headed sort of fellow, I suppose you’d agree—’ the inspector nodded assent—‘but he’s got the words “wrong ’un” written all over him in large capitals. There’s a sort of greasiness about the man—I don’t mean on the surface, but showing through from his soul.’
Mr Bligh grunted. ‘Well, whatever that may mean, I happened to spot him as a man who had done time; remembered his face the minute I set eyes on him. But without that, he’s obviously a good many notches below the class of a gentleman’s servant. I put him down as one of the old man’s reclamation cases. Anyway, my notion is that when Raught came home last night he had a pal with him. Perhaps they were going to have a spot or two of the old man’s brandy, if he’d gone to bed. Then Raught found him lying dead; and they may have decided to have a go at the safe before the police were sent for. Or perhaps it was his friend who insisted on doing it. I didn’t like the way Raught answered when I questioned him about that safe—pretending he wasn’t sure if there really was a safe. If that was what happened, or something like it, the strings on those packages may have been cut by the man who was with Raught, and the prints on that blade were his. Then he cleared off with all the papers, and anything else there may have been that looked useful, before Raught rang up the station.’
Trent leaned back and contemplated his friend with an admiring eye. ‘It’s no wonder that you’ve got on in your profession,’ he said. ‘All that might have happened, no doubt—or it mightn’t.’
The inspector knocked his pipe out into a large ashtray presided over by a spotted china dog of melancholy appearance. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it fits the facts, and it’s suggested by experience, that’s all; and it doesn’t really matter. As far as the murder goes, we had got Fairman nailed to a board. And then, when everything was going nicely, he pitches in this blasted confession.’
Trent rose, and made ready to take his leave. ‘But I still don’t see,’ he said slowly, ‘why Fairman’s confession should have cast such a shadow over the smiling prospect.’
‘You still don’t see!’ Mr Bligh’s tone expressed weary resignation. ‘Look at it again—look at the damfool thing again. And consider how the man has acted all through.’
Trent re-read the typescript in his hand, and then again met his friend’s exasperated eye. ‘You mean—?’
‘I mean unsound mind,’ the inspector rasped. ‘Not just nervous breakdown, but lunacy—and a silly end to what I thought looked like being a respectable bit of work.’