‘COLONEL GORE, sir?’ inquired the elderly chauffeur to whom he opened the hall door.
‘Yes. That Dr Melhuish’s car? Oh, there is Dr Melhuish. I’ll go down.’
Melhuish was removing the rugs which had covered the occupant of the back seats of the car during the brief journey from Aberdeen Place. He turned his head as Gore came out through the gate.
‘Mrs Barrington has got back, I hear. Have you seen her?’
‘Yes,’ Gore answered, wondering a little who had given him this piece of information. ‘I’ve persuaded her to go to her room.’
‘Good. Which floor is he to be taken to?’
‘Second.’
Melhuish considered for a moment, his eyes fixed on the headlights of a car drawn up some thirty yards away before the gates of the next house. He turned to his chauffeur.
‘Go and tell Mr Harry Kinnaird’s man I want to speak to him for a moment, Rogers, will you. He’s there, beside that car.’
The elderly Rogers—a converted coachman, obviously—turned a dogged, dubious muzzle towards the blinding beam of the headlights at the next gate.
‘I don’t think that’s Mr Kinnaird’s car, sir. His is a Daimler. That’s a Sunbeam, by the look of her.’
‘Go and do what I’ve told you to do,’ said Melhuish curtly.
‘Fearful old humbug, that chap of mine,’ he explained coldly, when the man had gone upon his errand. ‘He is constitutionally incapable of tightening a nut until he has argued for twenty minutes that it can’t possibly be loose. I’ve been trying to get rid of him for twelve months, but he simply refuses to go. We shall want a third to help us up those stairs, I think. I’m afraid I shall have to enlist your services again, Colonel, if I may. Awfully sorry to give you so much bother. But old Rogers is absolutely useless except at meal-times.’
This sudden outburst of loquacity terminated as abruptly as it had begun, and the two men waited in silence by the car, concealing the back seats from the possible curiosity of the passers-by. No one, however, paid the slightest attention to that portion of the car, which lay in an obscurity rendered still more secure by lights in front. As they waited Gore puzzled his brains in the effort to imagine how his companion had learned so extraordinarily quickly that Mrs Barrington had returned. That problem was still, however, unsolved, when the argumentative Rogers returned, accompanied by a smart, youngish man in the breeches and leggings of his calling.
‘It weren’t Mr Harry Kinnaird’s car, sir,’ said Rogers in morose triumph. ‘It’s Judge Thornton’s car. I knew it were a Sunbeam. I could tell it weren’t a Daimler, anyways.’
Melhuish, ignoring his difficult retainer absolutely, addressed himself to his companion.
‘I wonder if you’d mind very much giving us a hand for a moment or two. We want to carry poor Mr Barrington in and get him upstairs. I’m sure Mr Kinnaird will not make the least difficulty. I’ll go in and explain to him presently.’
‘Mr and Mrs Kinnaird are away, sir,’ said the man civilly. ‘They went to the south of France the day before yesterday. But, of course, I shall be only too pleased to do anything, doctor.’
His glance weighed Gore’s figure quickly and approvingly.
‘I think this gentleman and I can manage all right.’
The parlourmaid, carrying a hot-water bottle in either hand, met the cortege in the hall, but retreated discreetly before it up the stairs at a gesture from Melhuish. She alone of the household witnessed the curious indignity of its master’s ascent of the stairs. She stood, a mute, accusing sentinel, before a closed door, and watched his passage unblinkingly, bestowing upon Mr Kinnaird’s chauffeur a bleak smile of recognition, her fingers assuring themselves of the propriety of the spruce cuffs which, together with cap and apron, she had assumed since her mistress’s return. Noting these additions to her attire abstractedly as he went by her, Gore concluded that she had probably thought better of her decision to depart. Vaguely, for Mrs Barrington’s sake, he hoped that she had, since she appeared a decent, sensible sort of woman despite her grumpiness. Little did he think then that those tight, straight lips of hers were to utter the one word that was to solve the riddle of her master’s death.
But at that moment his attention was absorbed by the discovery, revealed as soon as they had entered the lighted hall, that the mud-stains on Barrington’s clothes had disappeared. Melhuish, who had ascended the stairs in advance, carried the dead man’s hat. So that it was not until they reached the bedroom where he awaited them that Gore perceived that it, too, had been brushed clean. There another still more significant fact leaped to his eyes, as the body was laid on the bed. The wrist-watch had disappeared.
Not a flicker of an eyelid, however, betrayed the sharp alarm that stabbed him like a knife at this confirmation of his worst fears. Nerves and brain that had acted like lightning in all the tight places of forty-two years, acted like lightning in this one. Melhuish meant to put up a cold bluff. Very well. There was just one thing to do: sit tight and let him get on with it.
He straightened himself and looked at his watch.
‘Well, it seems rather a heartless sort of thing to think about, doctor, but I’m supposed to dine with the Wellmores at eight. By the time I get back and change—’
Melhuish nodded.
‘Thanks very much. I’ll look after things here.’ He nodded too, pleasantly, to the chauffeur, who stood by the door, awaiting his dismissal. ‘That’s all, thank you. Much obliged.’
‘Not at all, sir,’ said the man civilly. ‘Though it’s the last job I ever hoped to do for poor Mr Barrington. He died very suddenly, doctor?’
‘Yes. Very suddenly. But he had had a long warning.’
‘Heart-disease, sir, hadn’t he? He used to tell me that his heart kept him awake at night a lot.’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘Good-afternoon, doctor.’
He saluted smartly and left the room a little behind Gore, who had taken leave of Melhuish with a nod and a smile. Gore waited for him in the hall, under pretence of surveying himself in the mirror there.
‘Er … you used to look after Mr Barrington’s car for him, I think?’
The man, who had been about to pass on with a smiling ‘Good-afternoon, sir,’ stopped.
‘Yes, sir. I used to clean it for him and do small odd jobs. Mr Kinnaird allowed me to do it in my spare time.’
‘Yes. So I understand. Er … Mr Barrington used his car a good deal at night, didn’t he?’
‘Well, yes, sir, he did a good deal, I believe.’
‘Have you any idea where he used to put it up when he took it out at night?’
The chauffeur stared, obviously puzzled as to the purport of this interrogatory.
‘Well, no, sir. I can’t say that I have. I used to hear him taking it out late at night—our garage is the next to his, you see, sir, in the lane at the back. And sleeping there, of course I’ve heard him often going out at night in his car. But—no—I’ve no idea where he used to take it.’
‘I see.’
‘I shall be very sorry for my own sake that he’s gone, sir. It’ll mean a big loss to me. Especially now when I’ve been docked of half my wages for perhaps three or four months to come.’
‘How’s that?’ Gore inquired, as they went down the drive.
‘Oh, well—you see, sir—Mr Kinnaird may be a millionaire, and I believe he is, but he’s a precious tight ’un with the money—’
‘Only those that haven’t got it aren’t,’ smiled Gore.
‘I agree, sir. Still, it’s a bit thick cutting thirty shillings a week off your chauffeur’s wages when you’re spending perhaps a hundred a week or more in the south of France. Now, isn’t it, sir? Yes, I’ll miss poor Mr Barrington’s quid a week badly. I heard his car going out last night about one o’clock. I little thought it would be the last time I’d hear him going out with it.’
‘Well, well,’ said Gore, ‘it’s a difficult world. You never know what’s round the corner, do you?’
The chauffeur smiled.
‘Shouldn’t mind that so much, sir, if there weren’t such a lot of corners.’
The hall door of Number 27 opened, and the parlourmaid came out hurriedly on to the steps to peer towards the gates.
‘Is that you, Fred?’ she decided to call out. ‘The doctor wants to know if you’d leave a note for him at Coggan’s—the undertakers—you know? In Victoria Street. It’s in a hurry. He didn’t know that I was the only one in the house except the mistress—’
‘Certainly,’ said the man obligingly, and touched his cap to Gore as he turned away. ‘If you should happen to know of anyone who wants a man, sir, I’ve driven most kinds of cars. Had six months in shops. Perhaps you’d remember my name, sir—Thomson? …’
Gore promised to remember, and went off towards the Riverside hurriedly. He glanced at his watch. Just comfortable time. For the first time for two hours he realised that his shin was aching like the devil.