HE became aware that the hall door had opened behind him, and turned to find an elderly parlourmaid regarding him with tight-lipped sourness.
‘Good-afternoon. Has Mrs Barrington come in yet?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Dr Melhuish has asked me to find out, if possible, where Mrs Barrington is at all likely to be.’
‘No idea, sir.’
‘No idea at all?’
‘No, sir. For all we know, Mrs Barrington may not be coming back. Nothing would surprise us that happened in this house.’
Gore’s shrewd eyes took stock of the woman’s respectable aggrievedness.
‘It is exceedingly awkward,’ he explained. ‘No doubt Dr Melhuish told you over the telephone that Mr Barrington died this afternoon?’
She nodded silently. The fact appeared to possess no interest for her.
‘Mrs Barrington may not be coming back, you think? Have you any reason to think that she intended to remain for any length of time?’
She shrugged, looked first to right of her and then to left and then down her nose, after the manner of her class, plainly struggling between a desire to air her grievance, whatever it might be, and to give no information about anything to anyone.
‘She went away late last night, I understand? You realise that it is extremely urgent that we should ascertain where she is at once?’ His hand went into a pocket significantly.
‘May I ask your name, sir?’
‘I am Colonel Gore. I am a very, very old friend of Mrs Barrington’s.’
The maid’s hard features relaxed into a bleak smile.
‘I thought I recognised something about you, sir. You don’t remember me, I suppose. You wouldn’t, after so many years. But I was pantry-maid, sir, at Downs Lodge with Lady Harker, the time you and Mr Louis Harker and Mr Cecil Arndale blew up the harness-room, showing the coachman your experiments with your chemicals. I was watching the whole thing from my pantry, sir, that day. Flora was my name then, sir, though I had to change it to Florence afterwards, because of ladies I’ve been with not thinking Flora suitable to my station.’
Of Flora the pantry-maid of Lady Harker, Gore retained no faintest recollection whatever. But the blowing-up of the harness-room, and his share in the personal consequences of that exploit, he recalled very distinctly.
‘My goodness!’ he exclaimed, shaking this old acquaintance warmly by the hand, ‘I am a silly ass. I knew I’d seen you somewhere, but I couldn’t—Well, well, that was a good old bust-up, wasn’t it?’
She ushered him into a sitting-room off the hall, and there, when they had chattered for some moments of things and people of other and better days, she unburdened her soul readily enough of the trials of the present—trials so grievous that her box was packed and all her preparations made for departure from Mrs Barrington’s employment.
Stripped of her aggrieved comment, the facts were these:
Mrs Barrington had left the house about eleven o’clock on the preceding night, and had not since returned. Where she had gone Florence could not say. But why she had gone, Florence could, and did say very explicitly.
On the afternoon of the preceding day a gentleman had called to see Mrs Barrington. Florence did not know his name—he was not, it appeared, one of the gentlemen who visited the house regularly—but he was a big, tall, handsome young gentleman with very fair hair, and she had seen him often driving his motor-car ‘like mad’ about Clifton—always beautifully dressed. While this ornate caller had been with Mrs Barrington in her drawing-room, Mr Barrington had come in, and there had been a row for which Florence had no adjective but ‘shocking!’ The young gentleman—whom Gore had no difficulty in divining to have been Mr Bertie Challoner—had gone away; but the row had continued, upstairs in Mrs Barrington’s bedroom. When the housemaid had gone into the room some time later, Mrs Barrington had been crying on her bed, with her eye and all one side of her face bruised black and blue.
Naturally Mrs Barrington had not gone out to dinner at Dr Melhuish’s. But Mr Barrington had. He had come home about twelve o’clock—(Florence herself had been asleep then, but cook had heard him)—and had gone out again a little before one, not to return. He had made no inquiries of the servants as to Mrs Barrington’s whereabouts. Florence was of opinion that he must have expected that Mrs Barrington would have left the house before he got back from Dr Melhuish’s. What else could he expect after what had happened before he had gone out?
‘And if you ask me, sir, back to this house Mrs Barrington won’t come—unless hearing Mr Barrington’s dead brings her back. But I may say, sir—and it’s only fair to myself—that, come back or not come back, I’m leaving today, sir, with my wages or without them, and my box is packed and ready to go with me. Because I’ve always been in nice, well-behaved places, and in any case the hours that is kept here and the noise there is at night never suited me. Gentlemen coming in at one and two in the morning, three or four nights in a week, to play cards and drink more than’s good for them, and talking and laughing all night so’s a person couldn’t get a wink of sleep till four or five o’clock in the morning. More like a gambling-hell, it was, sir, than anything else, lately. And so me and cook’s said often to one another. I’ll be only too glad to get out of the house and have no more trouble on account of it. I’m sorry for Mrs Barrington, sir, because I know she’s a lady, and I know of her family and have been with friends of her family since I was in service first, sir, I may say. Every one hereabouts knows that Mrs Barrington’s family was a very good family, sir. She was a Miss Melville, sir, as, of course, you know. But she ought to have been able to manage her house as a lady’s house, and not allow gentlemen drinking and playing cards till all hours of the morning.’
She and cook and Emily were much perturbed by the possibility of being summoned as witnesses to a possible inquest. Cook and Emily had felt so depressed by their forebodings that they had gone off to the pictures to try to brighten themselves up.
‘I shouldn’t think that you need be in the least anxious about that sort of thing,’ Gore assured her. ‘Poor Mr Barrington’s heart has been in a very bad way for a long time back. Dr Melhuish tells me that he has been liable to die at any moment for some months past. Now, let me see. Mr Barrington got back about twelve, you say. And went out again?’
‘Yes, sir. He went out again a little before one, cook says. She’s got dreadful weak nerves, cook has, being a stout woman as always have weak nerves, if you’ve noticed, sir, and she was so upset by what happened in the evening that she never got a wink of sleep all night. She heard Mr Barrington going out again just before one o’clock, with whoever it was came in with him.’
‘Oh. Then someone came in with him at twelve o’clock?’
‘Yes, sir. Some man, cook says. She heard them talking here, and there were two glasses with the decanter and the siphon on that table this morning.’
‘And then—they both went out again just before one?’
‘Yes. Cook heard Mr Barrington going up to his room, and he must have changed his clothes, for Emily found his evening-clothes this morning in his dressing-room. And then they went out by the back way to the garage, cook says, about one, sir, or a little before, and went off in the car.’
‘How long did Mr Barrington stay out then?’
‘Well, he didn’t come back again, sir, after that.’
‘You mean—last night?’
‘I mean—at all, sir. The first any of us heard of him since that was when Dr Melhuish told me on the telephone he was dead. I can tell you, sir, that coming on top of mistress’s going away at eleven o’clock at night without a word to any of us, and not coming back—well, it was a bit too much for me, sir. I just sat down today and wrote out my notice, and then went and packed my box, and I’m going at eight o’clock, sir, soon as some of my things as were with the washerwoman come back, if you’ll excuse me mentioning them, sir. You can understand, sir—?’
‘Yes, yes. Naturally you must all find it very upsetting. Still, I hope you’ll stay at all events until Mrs Barrington returns. Er … the garage is at the back, then?’
‘Yes, sir. It’s only a small place. Mr Barrington had only a small car, sir, as I suppose you know.’
‘The car did not come back last night … or today?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Did not?’
‘No, sir. We were on the look-out for it, of course, all day, on and off. But it didn’t come.’
‘Mr Barrington’s chauffeur? He didn’t see it either … today … or last night after Mr Barrington took it out?’
‘Mr Barrington had no chauffeur, sir. Anything that was done to his car in the way of cleaning or suchlike, mending it or that, he used to get Mr Harry Kinnaird’s chauffeur to do it for him. Mr Harry Kinnaird used to allow his man to do it in his spare time. A very nice young man, sir, and very clever at that sort of work, I believe, and always willing to oblige anyone. So Mr Barrington used to make use of him that way. Mr Harry Kinnaird’s garage being the next to ours, sir, in the lane at the back.’
‘However … you’re sure the car didn’t come back?’
‘Quite sure, sir. There’s nothing new about that, sir, as far as that goes. I mean, Mr Barrington’s being away for the night. We’re used to that, sir.’
‘I see. He was frequently away for the night?’
‘Often, sir. Two or perhaps three nights in the week.’
‘With the car?’
‘Sometimes with, sir—sometimes without it.’
‘Any idea where he was in the habit of going?’
The elderly Florence compressed her thin lips primly.
‘Well, sir … we’ve had our ideas … but he’s dead now, and there’s only One has any right to judge him now.’
‘Yes, yes. Quite, quite. Er … perhaps Mrs Barrington has gone to stay with friends?’
‘Mrs Barrington has very few friends now, sir, that you’d call friends. However, I’ll bring you the card tray, sir. Perhaps that will help you. And then perhaps you’ll excuse me, sir. I think I heard my laundry coming back.’
Left alone with the card tray, he selected some dozen names with which he installed himself at the telephone. His inquiries were made with extreme caution and without revealing his own identity; it appeared to him under the circumstances neither necessary nor prudent to publish Mrs Barrington’s prolonged absence from her household nor the fact that he, personally, was in search of her. As a matter of fact, however, he found no difficulty in satisfying himself that none of the people whom he had selected had the faintest idea of her whereabouts. He was about to abandon his quest and ring up Melhuish to inform him of its fruitlessness, when another name—not amongst those which he had collected from the card tray—suggested itself.
Mr Challoner, as it happened, was at home, and answered the call with an extremely ungracious ‘Hallo.’
‘Oh. That you, Bertie? Gore at this end. I say, old chap, I wonder if you can help us. We’re trying to get hold of Mrs Barrington. I don’t suppose you’ve heard yet …’
‘Yes. I heard just five minutes ago. I met Miss Barracombe running round spreading the news.’
‘Oh. Well, I’ve been ringing up all sorts of people to try to find his wife. Melhuish asked me to. She’s not at her house, you see. I’m speaking from there. I thought perhaps you might be able to … er … help us.’
‘I?’ said Challoner’s voice stiffly. ‘I’ve no idea. Why the deuce should I?’
‘Oh, sorry. Right. Thanks.’
‘But … I say, Gore—just a moment. Why ring me up? Why should I know where Mrs Barrington is?’
‘I’ve been trying every one I could think of, my dear fellow. Sorry to have bothered you. I’ll have a go at someone else. It’s deuced awkward, you see, that she should be away, just now. Well, I’ll have a go at someone else … Good-bye, old chap.’
‘Good-bye.’
Gore smiled faintly at the angry truculence of that ‘Good-bye.’ A singularly ingenuous youth, Master Bertie Challoner.
‘Bet he’s telling her now we’re looking for her,’ he thought, as he rang up Linwood 7420.
‘That you, doctor? No luck so far. What? Oh … you’re bringing him here? Shall I wait? Yes … certainly. Very well. I’ll tell the servants. Yes. Right.’
Bringing him there … Well … why hadn’t Melhuish brought him there at once—instead of carrying him into the consulting-room at Aberdeen Place and carrying him out again—if the man had died as he had said he had expected him to die? In the blindest darkness he could have told that he was dead. What need to take him in, then, to examine him? To give him time to see those two waiting patients? Perhaps. But Gore thought not. He knew of a more urgent need than that—a need that had to see, before other skilled eyes saw it, perhaps, what it expected to see.
‘You’re mad,’ said Gore’s common sense. ‘You’ve worked yourself into such a state now that you can’t think straight. The man daren’t do it. He daren’t attempt such a bluff. Why, that servant of his twigged something fishy about Barrington’s look straight off—twigged that he’d fallen—twigged the scratch on his hand. If a servant could twig it, Melhuish must know that anyone may twig it. He’d never try on such a bluff. He daren’t. That scratch means nothing—that’s the fact of the matter. You’re simply allowing your imagination to twist things so as to make them fit into one another … just because you’re in a funk about a woman who doesn’t care a hang about you …’
He was quite unable, however, to decide which belief he really and honestly held at that moment. One seemed as convincing as the other. He abandoned his speculations with some irritation, and went in search of the parlourmaid, to consult with her as to such simple preparations as appeared necessary.
He had returned to the sitting-room, and was awaiting Melhuish’s arrival there, when the sound of a car stopping outside the house brought him to the window, the blind of which had not been drawn. A smartly-figured young woman, visible for a moment against the lights of the vehicle as she paid her fare, came hurriedly up the drive, and admitted herself with a latchkey. The mistress of the house had returned, then. So Challoner had known where she was to be found, and had told her. Well … that was their affair. She had got back in time—that was the important thing. The less talk there was about the Barrington ménage for the next three or four days, well … very much the better for every one concerned.
Mrs Barrington’s face was still concealed by a thick veil when he met her in the hall, but he recognised her voice at once. Although nine years had elapsed since their last meeting, she displayed neither surprise, pleasure, nor emotion of any kind upon seeing him.
‘Don’t expect a broken-hearted, tearful widow, Wick,’ were her first words, as their hands touched. ‘I’m no use at pretending. I don’t feel anything. I’m not going to try to pretend that I do. Where is he? Still at Dr Melhuish’s house … or have they brought him here?’
‘Melhuish is bringing him here … They are probably on the way now. Your maid knows.’
‘Oh.’
She stood for a moment looking at her hands in silence. Then with a sudden movement she raised her veil.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘He did that the last time he spoke to me.’ Her voice rose to sudden passion. ‘Now … can you understand?’
Gore made a little gesture of deprecation.
‘Hadn’t you better go straight up to your room?’ he urged gently. ‘Much the best thing. Look here—let me ring up your mother and your sister for you …’
‘If mother or Elsa come to this house,’ she cried angrily, ‘I shall walk straight out of it. You understand?’
‘Well, but you must have someone to look after you,’ he protested—‘some woman. If you won’t have your own folk … what about Mrs Melhuish? You and she used to be tremendous friends, I remember. I’m sure she’d—’
‘Mrs Melhuish?’ she laughed impatiently. ‘Why on earth should she come here? Of all the people in the world I don’t want to see— You don’t know how amusing that suggestion of yours is, my dear Wick.’
‘But you must have someone to look after you,’ he repeated. ‘You can’t be left to the mercy of servants.’
‘Oh, don’t talk nonsense,’ she said hardly. ‘I can look after myself. I don’t want anyone—anyone. I just want to go right away from here for ever and ever, and never see anyone or anything connected with Linwood again. That’s all I want. You don’t know, Wick—you’ve no idea what I’ve been through during these three years for which I’ve been that man’s wife. You think you know me, that I’m the Ethel Melville you remember nine years ago. I’m a very different sort of person, now, Wick, I assure you. I’ve learned a thing or two about life since those days. I can look after myself.’
She changed the subject with a gesture of the gloves which she had drawn off as she spoke. ‘Is it true that you were at Dr Melhuish’s house when he was found?’
‘Yes. I happened to have called—’
‘Those awful Barracombe girls found him sitting in the car, didn’t they?’
‘Yes.’
‘He was dead when they found him … or did he die in the house?’
‘He was dead when they found him. You … er … you knew, of course, that his heart was in a bad way? …’
‘I knew that he had been going to Dr Melhuish about it. I guessed that it must be something serious. But he never told me anything about himself.’ She smiled again bitterly. ‘I used to try to find out things for myself in the beginning. But it didn’t pay. How grey you’ve grown at the temples, Wick. But you’ve kept your grin—and your figure. Still a bachelor?’
‘Alas! Er—you’d like to see Melhuish when he comes? Or do you think you need?’
‘Well … do you think it’s necessary? I’ve no idea what I’m expected to do. I don’t want to see him if it’s not necessary. I don’t suppose he’ll want to see me either. He disapproves of me, I know. Indeed, I’ve no doubt that he and his wife have told you so already.’
‘Gracious, no,’ Gore assured her hastily. ‘What an absurd idea. On the contrary, they were both most awfully put out, I know, that your earache prevented your going to them last night. Mrs Melhuish—’
‘Oh, hang Mrs Melhuish!’ she cried out angrily. ‘Hang the whole lot of them. Cats. Treacherous, spiteful cats, that’s what all these Linwood women are. Wait until they find out about this black eye of mine. I suppose it will be all over the place tomorrow. Wait until they get hold of it. Then you’ll hear them howling and squalling. For two pins I’d just walk out of that door again into a taxi and drive to Broad Street and clear out by the first train I saw for anywhere, for good, and leave them to it.’
In a tolerably wide experience of his fellow-woman Gore had learned at least the wisdom of silence before her wrath. This most unconventional of widows was, he perceived, on the edge of that condition which privately he described as ‘jumps.’ He said, ‘Now, now,’ soothingly, pulled down her veil adroitly, took her by the arm, and led her to the foot of the stairs.
‘Florence,’ he called.
The parlourmaid’s head, as he had expected it would, came over the balusters.
‘Er … do you know what hot-water bottles are?’
‘Yes, sir,’ replied the woman in surprise.
‘Well, go and make two of ’em as hot as hell, and get them and your mistress into the same bed as quickly as possible. Got that?’
When the woman had descended to the lower regions he said peremptorily, ‘Up you go.’
Mrs Barrington burst into tears distressingly; but she went.
Gore returned to the sitting-room and stood there for a little while looking at a small pedestal writing-table which occupied one of the corners by the window. Possibly there—in one of those little drawers, those infernal letters had been kept. Well … they were not there now, nor anywhere in that house; so much appeared certain. At all events those which really mattered. Quite possibly the others were there still. Pleasant for Mrs Barrington when she found them … and for Pickles. Deuced awkward that they should be on such bad terms as they appeared to be. However, those other letters, it seemed, were not serious … or so serious.
But if Barrington had not returned to the house after that stormy interview in the hall at Aberdeen Place, what had become of the letters that did matter? He had had them with him there; Pickles had been quite definite upon that point at any rate. What had become of them afterwards?
There, at once, he came once more to a standstill. Had Barrington got into his car and driven himself away to some night-haunt of his? Or had someone else driven him away? Driven him away, hidden him and his car somewhere until darkness had fallen that afternoon, and then driven him back to Melhuish’s door and left him there, to be found, as in effect he had been found, by some curious person?
Looked at that way, side by side—considering the improbabilities and difficulties of the second supposition, the first appeared immensely the more likely. If it were the correct one, then the sole hope of recovering the letters lay in finding out where Barrington had spent the night and the greater part of that day—questioning. Heaven knew how many people as to how he had spent his time and where he might be expected to have left behind him a bundle of letters. A pretty job to undertake. One might as well start in to look for a flea in a crowded church. Not that that or any other job would trouble one much if one could only be sure that that scratch on Barrington’s hand had nothing to do with his death or with Pickles. That was the thing that mattered. Blow the letters. The fellow was dead—probably the letters would never be heard of again.
On the other hand—that someone else who might be supposed to have driven Barrington away and brought him back again so mysteriously—who was he?
Melhuish himself? Melhuish had certainly not brought him back. He had been in his consulting-room, there could be no doubt, from two to six that afternoon, as on all other afternoons of the week save Sundays. If it was not he who had brought Barrington back, almost certainly it was not he who had driven him away. It was impossible to suppose that he would have been mad enough to enlist a confederate to do half of so desperately dangerous a job for him.
Arndale? There was no getting away from the fact that Arndale did fit into that second supposition dismayingly. On the spot at the critical moment. Pickles could probably twist him round her little finger. Just the rather weak, good-natured sort of chap that would allow himself to be persuaded into helping a woman out of a fix.
Here followed an interval during which Gore debated with himself quite unprofitably as to the motives which had induced him to behave in that weak, foolish way also. But eventually he picked up the thread of his argument once more at a point a little farther on.
Someone—some man—had come in with Barrington at twelve o’clock … who was he? Barrington must have met him on his way to his house from the Melhuishs’. Instantly Gore’s memory flashed back to the tall figure in a light-coloured raincoat which he had seen for a moment through the laurels of the Green, halted beside Barrington’s in the light of a lamp in Aberdeen Place, just after their parting. He had thought at the time that the wearer of the raincoat was Arndale, he remembered. Arndale had certainly been wearing such a coat when he and Melhuish had seen him come out from Challoner’s flat. Was Arndale, then, the man whom the cook had heard come in with Barrington, who had talked over a whisky-and-soda with him for an hour or so, and gone out with him again just before one o’clock … in the car?
Blazes … it did fit.
Gore caught just then a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror over the fireplace, and made a rueful face at it. The second supposition looked altogether too like the correct one, after all—so like it that the thumb of one of his hands, which had been rubbing the pad of his second finger thoughtfully, flicked the chances of any other supposition’s being the right one into the ewigkeit.
Footsteps rasping on the gravel of the little drive distracted him from his reverie. He glanced out through the window and saw the headlights of a large car drawn up before the gate. Mr Barrington had come home.