THREE communications reached Gore on Thursday morning—a scrawl from Challoner, cancelling the golf arranged for that day, on the plea of a day amongst the partridges in Wiltshire; an intimation that the secretaryship of the London club had been filled; and the following reply to a note which he had despatched to Mrs Barrington before starting for Cleveport on the preceding morning:
‘27, HATFIELD PLACE,
Wed., Nov. 8.
‘DEAR WICK,—It is very good of you to have thought of me. I know nothing of my husband’s business affairs, nor have I the least curiosity with regard to them. However, I suppose someone ought to go through his papers and see how things stand. The funeral, as you perhaps know, is tomorrow morning at eleven. If you can spare an hour or so on Friday afternoon—I suggest three o’clock—I shall be very grateful if you will come and talk over things. At the moment I don’t know if he has left enough money to pay his servants the wages owing to them—or even his own funeral expenses. Fortunately, I have still a few pounds of the £100 a year which my most generous of parents allow me. Angela Heathman, too, has been very kind, and has offered repeatedly to tide me over any money difficulties that may arise. A rather unexpected charity—but I can’t afford to be proud. Forgive this long grouse.
‘Yours,
‘ETHEL BARRINGTON.’
‘P.S.—I take back anything stupid I said to you about Barbara Melhuish and her husband. No one could be more kind or more thoughtful than Dr Melhuish has been. And Barbara wrote me the sweetest little note before she went away to Surrey this morning. I have only just got it, and am still inclined to blubber. So please forget anything silly I said to you yesterday.—E.B.’
When, about three o’clock on the following afternoon, Gore arrived at Hatfield Place, his friend Florence ushered him out to a room at the end of the hall, where he found Mrs Barrington awaiting him with—somewhat to his discomfiture—Miss Heathman. On a table stood a large tin box, the contents of which had been emptied on to the tablecloth and arranged roughly in order.
By daylight Miss Heathman’s drawn, sallow pallor was still more noticeable. She departed almost immediately, having explained with her nervous, fleeting smile, that she had merely called in passing to cheer dear Ethel up a little, and to renew her offer of any assistance in her power.
‘Well,’ said Gore, when she had gone—slithering, as he described her mode of progression to himself, like a sick snake—‘I have a respect amounting to slavish adoration for anyone who is sixpence richer when she has ended shaking hands with you than she was when she began doing it. But, candidly, if I wanted a little cheering up—’
‘She does look rather dreadful, poor old thing,’ Mrs Barrington agreed. ‘But she has been awfully kind, really. In fact, almost overpoweringly kind. She has been here for an hour and a half this afternoon. I can’t think why, exactly. I’ve never really known her very well. Of course she’s years and years older than I am. However … she obviously means well … and I haven’t so many friends that I can afford to pick and choose exactly …’
For a little while they chatted desultorily over a cigarette. Then she turned to the table.
‘My husband kept all his private papers in that box, as far as I can make out. I couldn’t find the key. But Mr Frensham very kindly borrowed a file and filed the hasp of the padlock through for me. He has looked through all those things on the table. I really don’t know that there’s any necessity for you to bother about them, Wick.’
‘Who is Mr Frensham?’ he asked carelessly.
‘He was a friend of my husband’s. They used to go racing together, I think. He has stayed here once or twice.’
‘Then he doesn’t live here?’
‘No. He lives in London. But he happened to be in Westmouth … so he went to the funeral yesterday … the solitary mourner, by the way … And this morning he very kindly came along to know if he could help me in any way about my husband’s business affairs.’
‘That,’ said Gore thoughtfully, ‘was very kind of him. What sort of chap is he?’
‘Oh … well …’ said Mrs Barrington.
‘I see.’
‘I mean … he’s a funny little man, but quite a good business man, I should say. Very much on the spot.’
‘Oh, yes. And so he came along and volunteered to go through your husband’s papers and things, did he?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you said “Yes”?’
‘Well … I did. I thought it would save my having to bother you or anyone else.’
‘He has looked over all these things here?’
‘Yes. He went through them all most carefully.’
‘Alone … or with you?’
‘I was in and out of the room. You seem very suspicious of poor Mr Frensham, Wick. Why? You don’t know anything about him, do you?’
‘I? Nothing whatever. Do you?’
‘No, I can’t say that I do.’
‘Well,’ he asked, after a moment’s silence, ‘what is the result of Mr Frensham’s investigations?’
‘He says he can’t find any trace of my husband’s having made a will … so far. Not that that matters in the least … to me. I shan’t touch a penny of his money. I have just two pounds a week of my own to live on. Lots of people live on less. I can do it if other people can.’
‘Had your husband any relatives living? He must have had.’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea. I suppose that sounds incredible. But it’s the simple fact, none the less. He told me so many lies that finally I reached a stage at which I preferred him to tell me nothing about himself.’
‘How often has this Mr Frensham stayed here with you?’ he asked, after a moment.
‘Three times, I think.’
‘You’ve no idea what he is … what he does?’
‘None whatever. He seems to have travelled a lot. He has been to China, Japan, America, Africa, Russia, all over the Continent … everywhere. The sort of man who can tell you what time the trams start running on Sundays in Oklahoma—’
‘Very helpful … in Oklahoma … on Sunday morning,’ he said dryly. ‘But I should have thought an ordinary stay-at-home Westmouth solicitor would be quite competent to deal with your husband’s affairs. Sorry to seem so unenthusiastic about your friend Mr Frensham. I know nothing about him. Neither do you. But that’s a lot too little.’
She played for some moments with the filed-through padlock which lay on the table beside the tin box.
‘As a matter of fact,’ she said at length, ‘I have rather regretted that I allowed Mr Frensham to go through these things of my husband’s. You see, a rather awkward thing turned up. I found a cheque which I couldn’t understand. I think, now, that perhaps I ought not to have shown it to anyone else until I had found out something about it.’
He stared. But Pickles had said explicitly that she had always paid in cash—
‘A cheque?’
‘Yes. For quite a large sum … two hundred and fifty pounds. A cheque of Mr Arndale’s—that’s what I think so odd. I can’t think why Mr Arndale should have paid my husband a cheque for two hundred and fifty pounds.’
Gore pulled down his waistcoat.
‘Nice round little sum—two hundred and fifty pounds,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Cards, I suppose. Your husband had card-parties here fairly regularly, hadn’t he? …’
‘Yes. But Mr Arndale has never played cards here. I don’t think he has been to the house for over twelve months … longer. He and his wife used to dine here occasionally during the first year or so after my marriage. But … that stopped. Certainly Mr Arndale has never played cards here. I’m quite sure about that. Mr Frensham suggested that it might be in settlement of racing debts.’
‘Quite possibly,’ nodded Gore. ‘May I see the cheque?’
‘Mr Frensham took it away,’ Mrs Barrington said with some embarrassment.
‘Took it away? Why?’
‘He suggested that he should see Mr Arndale about it?’
‘Why?’
‘Why? Well … really I don’t know … now. Except that I told him I couldn’t understand it.’
‘The cheque was drawn by Arndale … and payable to your husband?’
‘No. It was drawn by Mr Arndale, payable to “self.”’
‘Endorsed?’
‘Yes. Mr Arndale had endorsed it, and written “Please pay cash to bearer.”’
‘An uncrossed cheque?’
‘It was not crossed.’
‘And … you allowed this Mr Frensham to take it away?’
She was plainly alarmed by his disapproval—by some misgivings of her own, too.
‘Yes, to make sure from Mr Arndale that it was all right.’
‘All right?’
‘Yes. All right that it should be amongst my husband’s papers.’
‘What was the date of the cheque?’
‘November 4th.’
‘That was last Saturday. When did Mr Frensham propose to see Arndale about it?’
‘Today. This afternoon. He has probably seen him already.’
Lest he should alarm her further—perhaps quite unnecessarily—he left the matter there for the moment.
‘Oh, well, I expect it’s all right. Very probably a racing debt, as Mr Frensham suggests. However, I think I’d like to run through these things for you. It won’t take me very long. May I smoke a pipe?’
‘Of course. You … you don’t think, really, Wick, that there could be anything … queer … about that cheque, do you?’
‘Not for a moment,’ he said brightly, seating himself at the table. ‘Now let us see what we’ve got here. You’ve looked through all other likely drawers and so forth, I presume?’
‘Those are all the papers I could find,’ she said, turning away a little impatiently.
‘Good.’
There was a large—an extraordinarily large—collection of letters, neatly tied up in bundles of varying sizes, and docketed with the writers’ names. One of the bundles had been opened—by Mrs Barrington herself, it seemed—for, as he glanced at the uppermost letter, and read the words: ‘My Darling Boy,—What a topping day yesterday was. Today the world seems as flat and dull as—’ she laughed contemptuously.
‘Pleasant, isn’t it? I used to write him letters like that, too—once. But he hasn’t kept mine … thank goodness. I shouldn’t bother about those, Wick. I’m going to make a bonfire of them at the end of the garden presently. I expect they’re all from women. He was simply crazy about women, poor creature.’
Barrington had evidently been a person of orderly mind at any rate; for the letters were arranged alphabetically. And it had taken Gore something less than thirty seconds to discover, half-way through one of the larger bundles, a wad of some twenty-five or thirty letters, each docketed ‘Letchworth.’ He nodded prompt agreement to the bonfire suggestion.
‘Best thing to do with them.’
Bank-books, cheque-books, and cancelled cheques he put aside for more careful examination, restoring to the tin box a miscellaneous jumble of less interesting souvenirs—photographs of horses, an automatic pistol, a service revolver, some boxes of cartridges, five gold cigarette-cases, a small sketch in oils of a girl’s head, admirably fresh and living, a pair of field-glasses, a woman’s slipper, a dog’s collar engraved ‘Bill,’ and three small note-books containing names and addresses. In a little jeweller’s box, wrapped in tissue-paper, he found four unset diamonds—as far as he could judge, very fine stones—and a platinum and diamond ring. These also, in compliance with a silent gesture from Mrs Barrington, he restored to the tin box.
A large cardboard box next attracted his attention.
‘What’s in this?’ he asked. ‘Have you looked?’
‘Wigs and things,’ Mrs Barrington replied, and smiled at his surprise.
He opened the box and surveyed its contents for a moment or two curiously. There was, as a matter of fact, no wig amongst them. But there were a couple of beards, three moustaches, an extensive ‘make-up’ outfit, a pair of blue ‘goggles,’ a pince-nez, and two pairs of spectacles.
‘What the deuce—?’ he murmured in perplexity.
‘I didn’t know he had those things,’ Mrs Barrington smiled, ‘but I’ve always had an idea that at some time or other he had either been on the stage or had been very keen about it.’
‘Oh!’ Gore replaced the lid on the cardboard box. ‘Bonfire?’
‘Yes.’
Some unused packs of cards and a roulette apparatus were sentenced to the same fate. Four £10 Bank of England notes, discovered in an envelope, went back into the tin box. There remained a large tobacco-tin filled with some white crystalline powder, on top of which rested three little packets, each containing a small quantity of the same powder. Gore sniffed—sniffed again. A gentleman of many activities, Mr Barrington, it was evident.
Mrs Barrington had risen from her chair and stood beside him now at the table. She stopped him as he was about to replace the lid on the tin.
‘There were four of those little packets,’ she said. ‘Have you taken one out, Wick?’
‘No.’
‘Then where is the fourth?’
They made the brief search necessary to assure them that the missing packet was neither on the table, nor on the floor, nor in the tin box.
‘Oh, well, it doesn’t matter,’ said Mrs Barrington. ‘Only … it’s rather odd that it should have disappeared. What is that white stuff, Wick? Have you any idea?’
It seemed to Gore very much better that he should have no idea, and he said, promptly, that he had none.
‘Perhaps Mr Frensham borrowed the fourth packet for some reason or other,’ he suggested.
‘No. There were four in that tin when Miss Heathman was here. I know that—because I showed her that white stuff and asked her what she thought it was. Perhaps she may have taken one of the little packets. Though why on earth should she … without saying so?’
‘Heaven knows,’ smiled Gore. Though, in fact, it had just occurred to him that the explanation might not lie at an at all so inconvenient a distance. His speculations upon the matter were interrupted, however, at that point by the appearance of Florence.
‘Mr and Mrs Melville to see you, madam. I told them you were engaged, but they insisted on coming in.’
‘Very well,’ said Mrs Barrington frigidly.
She turned to Gore when the servant had gone out.
‘This, I presume, means that my beloved parents mean to forgive me my sin, now that I have got rid of it,’ she said bitterly. ‘I suppose I must see them. Does this eye of mine look very awful?’
‘Personally I shouldn’t have noticed it,’ Gore assured her, ‘if you hadn’t directed my attention to it.’
‘Oh, mother will spot it the moment I go into the room. She’ll probably fall on my neck and burst into tears of triumph. However … they’ve made the first move. That’s something. I’m afraid we must interrupt our investigations here, Wick. There is nothing of any importance, is there?’
‘I’ll carry on here for a few minutes. I should like to see just how money matters stand. You run along now and see your father and mother. They’re the most important thing just at present. I’ll leave a little memo here for you, if there’s anything of interest.’
Left alone, his first proceeding was to extract Pickles’s letters from the bundle which contained them and to transfer them to the pockets of his overcoat; his next, to look through the bundle containing names beginning with H, and to detach from it a little wad of letters docketed ‘Heathman, A.’ A glance was sufficient to reveal to him their purport. All of them related to the supply by Barrington of something referred to under the disguise ‘Céleste’—some specifying an hour, presumably of convenient delivery—some protesting against delay or disappointment—some enclosing sums of money whose size opened Gore’s eyes considerably. He tore these communications into small pieces and consigned them to the fire by instalments, without any doubt as to the identity of ‘Céleste’ and the contents of the tobacco-tin, or as to the manner in which that fourth little packet had disappeared. The explanation of Angela Heathman’s sudden and unexpected devotion to Mrs Barrington was perfectly clear. The poor, silly creature, finding her supply cut off, had hoped that some chance would enable her to lay her itching fingers on one of those little packets.
He stood for some moments regarding the bundles of letters frowningly. Curious reading, no doubt, most of them. The sooner that bonfire happened the better, obviously. He picked up one of the bundles at hazard, and ran his eye over the names which slipped past his finger. The last two letters of that bundle were docketed ‘Wellmore, J.’
‘My aunt,’ he mused, ‘is old Jimmy Wellmore at that game, too?’
Whatever the game with which Wellmore had been amusing himself, it was clear from his letters that he had declined to pay Mr Barrington for it, and had refused altogether to understand why that gentleman should take any interest in it. Both communications were of recent date; that particular deal of Mr Barrington’s had been in its initial stage only when the Fates had interfered. It was no particular business of Gore’s; but since old Wellmore had given him an excellent dinner three days before, he tore up the letters and burnt them then and there.
He lighted another pipe and seated himself in a comfortable arm-chair with the bank-books. The deposit account showed on October 17th a balance of £923 11s. 4d., which had apparently varied very little during the eighteen months which the entries covered. The pocket in the cover of the book contained some slips, about a dozen in number, pinned together, each initialled at the head, recording sums received or paid—there was nothing to indicate which—on various dates. There was no ‘B.M.’ amongst the initials; though, by a curious coincidence, those on the second slip were ‘W.G.’
The current account book showed a credit balance on October 31st of £110 2s. 1d. It showed, however, upon a little examination, some details of greater interest than that.
The entries extended over the period from June, 1921, to October 31st, 1922. During that period the lodgments amounted to nearly four thousand pounds. From whatever source Barrington’s income had been derived, it had worked out at something pretty close to £3000 a year for the period shown.
The second point of interest was that all the lodgments—many of them for considerable sums—had been made by cash, and that all cheques drawn upon the account had been drawn payable to ‘self.’
The third point of interest did not intrude itself upon Gore’s attention until he had studied this curiously discreet account for some little while. There was a series of lodgments, made at regular intervals of two months, from the beginning of the period covered by the entries, all for the sum of £250. The last lodgment of this bi-monthly series had been made on September 2nd. No £250 had been lodged at the end of October.
Knowing, as Gore knew, of that cheque of Cecil Arndale’s for £250, dated November 4th, the discovery of which had perturbed Mrs Barrington, it required no great acumen upon his part to divine the source from which that regular revenue had flowed to Barrington’s banking account. The very obvious, but very amazing conclusion could only be that Arndale—for at all events eighteen months past—had been making payments to Barrington at the rate of fifteen hundred a year.
Why?
Another careful examination of the bundles of letters on the table revealed none of Arndale’s amongst them. Gore was standing at the window, looking out into the narrow strip of winter-stricken garden, selecting a site for the bonfire which he had now resolved should be an accomplished fact before he left the house, when Florence ushered into the room a smiling, fresh-coloured, stoutish little man who advanced towards him with an outstretched hand of effusive geniality.
‘Mr Frensham, sir,’ the parlourmaid announced. ‘Mrs Barrington thought you would like to see him, as you are here, sir.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Colonel,’ beamed Mr Frensham. ‘Pleased to meet any friend of Mrs Barrington’s, I’m sure. There’s no lady I have a greater regard for, or would do more for, than Mrs Barrington. She’s mentioned my name to you, perhaps. Poor old Cyril was an old pal of mine. Dear old chap. One of the best. Absolutely one of the best. Yes. Rotten bad luck, him getting knocked out so sudden—as you might say, before he’d reached his prime. Rotten bad luck. Yes. You didn’t know him at all, did you?’
‘I had met him once,’ Gore replied pleasantly. ‘But, no, I can’t say that I knew him at all.’
‘Charming feller,’ said Mr Frensham. ‘Absolutely charming feller. Connected with the Brazenby family, you know, and all that lot. Lord Winshamcote’s mother—the Honourable Violet Brazenby, she was, you know, of course—she was a half-sister of poor old Cyril’s mother’s.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Gore politely. ‘Cigarette?’
‘Thanks, I will,’ said Mr Frensham.
He lighted his cigarette and blew a cloud and watched its progress towards the window.
‘Least … so he said,’ he added; and, after a little beaming glance at Gore’s amiable face, decided upon still greater frankness. ‘Said more than his prayers, of course, poor old Cyril, sometimes—between you and me.’
Gore smiled the indulgent smile of a man of the world, and maintained it while Frensham’s quick, bright little hazel eyes took minute stock of his person. Frensham’s own personal appearance afforded little clue to his avocation. His neat dark suit and bowler hat were absolutely inexpressive. His fresh, clean-shaven face, with its humorous, quickly-darting eyes, was the face of a music-hall comedian rather than that of an associate of blackmailers and drug-traffickers. Nor was there anything in the least furtive or dubious in his air or manner. His geniality was the ordinary well-intentioned familiarity of the class to which his voice and accent and vocabulary showed that he belonged. So Gore continued to smile at him amiably until, after quite a long pause, he began to talk again.
‘Funny me happening to be in Westmouth just when the poor old chap copped out,’ he said, shedding the ash of his cigarette into the grate and turning to take another birdlike view of Gore over his shoulder before he straightened his burly little figure again. ‘Glad I was able to roll up for his funeral. Can’t say his friends here in Linwood gave him much of a send-off, poor old chap. Wasn’t another soul at it except me and the undertaker’s men. Nasty for her, that, you know, Colonel. Nasty. Wimmen feel things like that, you know, don’t they? Sensitive. Yes.’
He turned and beamed at the table.
‘Been having a look over those things of his, have you?’
‘Yes. I’ve just been through them.’
‘Left no will, seemingly.’
‘No. So it appears.’
There was another silence, disturbed only by the slow crackle of the fire. Frensham jerked his head towards the door, coughed, and lowered his voice to mysteriousness.
‘She tell you anything about this cheque?’
‘Cheque? Oh, yes. Er—I believe you very kindly undertook to see Mr Arndale about a cheque—’
Again Frensham got rid of his cigarette-ash with elaborate carefulness.
‘I’ve seen him,’ he said, and nodded reassuringly. ‘It’s all right. That’s what I’ve come back to see her about. But I hear she’s got visitors with her now, eh?’
‘Mr and Mrs Melville are with her.’
‘Ow. Likely to stay long, are they?’
‘I’ve no idea. Some considerable time, I should say.’
‘Ow. Well, I’d better wait. She’s a bit anxious about that cheque, I know.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ smiled Gore. ‘I don’t think there’s any necessity whatever for you to wait and see her.’
‘Oh, yes, there is,’ said Frensham promptly. ‘I’m in no hurry. I got to explain to her, you see. I’m a chap, when I’ve undertaken to do a thing, I like to do it, see? I’m in no hurry.’
He turned to the table again, and began to fidget with the contents of the tin box with the abstracted air of a man who beguiles a wait by the fiddling of his fingers. After a moment or two he took out the tobacco-tin.
‘What’s this stuff he had in this tin?’ he asked. ‘Had a look at it?’
As he spoke he removed the lid, and Gore saw his face change. It was the slightest thing—the effect of an instant—a scarcely perceptible flickering of the muscles at the corners of his lips and of his eyes. But for Gore, watching him from the hearth-rug, the warning was quite sufficient. The discovery that one of the four little packets had been removed had completely eclipsed Mr Frensham’s geniality for that tell-tale moment. The beggar knew what the stuff in the tin was …
Gore walked over to the table and possessed himself of the tobacco-tin good-humouredly but firmly.
‘If I were you, Mr Frensham,’ he said quietly, ‘I think I should mind my own business. I’m a very old friend of Mrs Barrington’s—and in that capacity I offer you that advice. Now, you have in your possession, I understand, a cheque of Mr Arndale’s for £250 which Mrs Barrington found amongst her husband’s papers. Will you kindly give it to me?’
Frensham’s eyes flickered swiftly up and down the tall figure that stood between him and the door. Obviously he was thinking hard. Equally obviously, however, he realised that the odds were all against him; and he fell back instantly upon an injured and surprised respectfulness.
‘I should give it to you with pleasure, Colonel, of course, if I had it. But I haven’t got it. I gave it to Mr Arndale.’
‘Mr Arndale asked you to give it to him?’
‘Yes, Colonel, he did. He said the cheque was his, and that he gave it to Cyril Barrington last Saturday morning to get it cashed for him. So, of course, I gave it to him, then, when he asked for it. Sorry if I haven’t done right, I’m sure, Colonel. Hope I haven’t dropped a brick, have I?’
‘Not at all,’ said Gore. ‘You acted quite rightly.’
‘I needn’t tell you, Colonel, it’s no concern of mine. I merely offered to see Mr Arndale about the cheque because Mrs Barrington was so uneasy in her mind, like, about it. I don’t know what she thought. But it seemed to me she thought there was something fishy about it somehow. However, what Mr Arndale told me was that poor old Cyril was out at his place early on Saturday morning, and as he wasn’t coming into Linwood himself on account of him going shooting, he asked Cyril to get it cashed for him. Seemed to me all right. Seems to you all right, Colonel, don’t it?’
Arndale’s explanation appeared a curiously lame one. But, on the other hand, it was just the kind of explanation which Arndale would have been likely to produce on the spur of the moment, confronted by an absolute stranger with the cheque and asked to account for Barrington’s possession of it.
‘Quite,’ said Gore. ‘Where did you see Mr Arndale this afternoon? At his house or at his office?’
‘At his house. Nice place he’s got, too, out there.’
‘You told him, of course, that Mrs Barrington had asked you to see him about the cheque?’
‘Well, Colonel, what do you think? Think I’d walk into a gentleman’s house on my own and say to him, “Here, what about this cheque of yours? What’s the meaning of it? What you been paying two hundred and fifty quid to my pal Cyril Barrington for?” Not hardly likely, is it, Colonel, now I ask you?’
Upon that point Gore offered no opinion. He stared at Mr Frensham’s rubicund countenance for some moments fixedly. Finally he opened the door of the room.
‘Thank you, Mr Frensham. In that case, then, I think we need not take up any more of your valuable time. I will tell Mrs Barrington what you have told me. Good-afternoon.’
Again Mr Frensham did some quick thinking. But again discretion gained the day.
‘Well, hang me,’ he said with good-humoured resentment, ‘you’d think I’d been trying to pinch the damn thing. Blow me if you wouldn’t. Catch me offering to do a good turn for anybody again in a hurry. I don’t think. Damme, I don’t know what you’d think you thought I was. Good-afternoon.’
Gore watched his aggrieved progress to the hall door with some misgivings. Even then, however, he was still quite unable to decide what to make of him. It was not until late that night that a note from Mrs Barrington, which he found awaiting him upon his return from a theatre-party, enabled him to form that decision.
‘Dear Wick,’ Mrs Barrington wrote, ‘I’m awfully worried about that cheque. Mr Arndale rang me up after dinner this evening about it. He says the cheque is all right, and that he gave it to my husband last Saturday to cash for him. But he says Mr Frensham refused to give it to him this afternoon, and kept it, because he said I had instructed him not to part with it. I can’t understand it. What am I to do about it? Mother wants me to go away with her at once—probably to Vence—for a long rest and change. But it’s fearfully awkward about Mr Arndale, isn’t it?’
Further enlightenment as to the kind of person Mr Frensham was awaited Gore when he went round to Hatfield Place immediately after breakfast next morning. He discovered then that that genial gentleman had not only succeeded in retaining Arndale’s cheque, but had also contrived, in the simplest manner in the world, to obtain possession of Barrington’s bank-books, the three note-books containing names and addresses, and the tobacco-tin.
After getting rid of him on the previous afternoon, Gore had proceeded forthwith with the burning of the bundles of letters at the end of the garden, much to the mystification of the Kinnairds’ elderly housekeeper, who had watched his operations from an upper window until the dusk had hidden her from his view. Mrs Barrington’s father and mother had still been with her when he had gone back into the house, and he had left without seeing her again, leaving behind him a brief note informing her of the results of Frensham’s visit to Arndale. No doubt Frensham had watched the hall door. For, according to Florence’s account, Colonel Gore had hardly gone when Mr Frensham had returned. He had explained that he had forgotten some papers which Mrs Barrington wanted him to look into, had been shown by the unsuspecting Florence into the room at the end of the hall, where the tin box still lay on the table with Gore’s note on top, had opened the box, taken what he wanted, thanked Florence most politely, and departed. So little had the parlourmaid suspected anything amiss in these proceedings that she had not even mentioned them to her mistress until, late at night, Mrs Barrington had asked her to carry the tin box upstairs.
For Gore the most ominous feature of this raid was the fact that it had paid no attention to the negotiable valuables which the tin box contained. The banknotes and the diamonds had held no interest for Mr Frensham, clearly. The cool, adroit audacity of the thing was in itself significant, too—the trademark of the practised rogue. How many more such ‘pals’ of Barrington’s were there—hovering—waiting for their chance at the offal?
The devil of the thing was that one could do nothing, and that, of course, Frensham reckoned on that for impunity. Obviously one couldn’t go to the police and say: ‘A box containing half a pound or so of cocaine has been stolen from me by a man called Frensham, who was a friend of my husband’s.’ The police would want to know all about that cocaine—and all about a lot of other things, probably, once they got started on the job. It was quite likely that Frensham had been a partner in the pleasant and lucrative business of blackmail. Quite probably he knew all about Arndale’s cheque—knew enough about Arndale to let loose some filthy scandal if one drove him to it by having him arrested for purloining the cheque. It was an unpleasant conclusion to be forced to—but one was forced to the conclusion that there must be some very serious reason to explain the payment of fifteen hundred pounds a year to a man of Barrington’s character.
The situation was complicated, too, by Mrs Barrington’s ignorance of the means by which her husband had extracted a livelihood from the world. It was possible that she entertained some vague misgivings on the subject; her uneasiness with regard to the cheque had confessed as much. But it was clear enough that she had no actual knowledge of the sinister business in which Barrington had been engaged. Nor did Gore feel in any way called upon to enlighten her on the point. He contented himself with a strong warning against any further dealings either with Frensham or with any other person who might present himself as a friend of her husband’s, and an equally strong recommendation to shut up her house and get away with her mother to the south of France as quickly as possible.
‘Well … but what about Mr Arndale’s cheque?’ she asked. ‘I’m responsible for it.’
‘Nonsense,’ he said curtly, ‘Arndale is quite capable of looking after his own cheques. He can stop payment if he wants to. At any rate it’s no concern whatever of yours. If Frensham or anyone else gives you any bother about it, send him along to me to the Riverside. I’ll talk to him like a father—if he comes.’
At heart, however, he was perfectly aware that his heroic attitude was the merest of bluff. Not since Mrs Melhuish had first told him her story on that Tuesday afternoon which appeared now separated from the present by weeks instead of a bare four days, had he felt so uneasy upon her account. By dint of endless repetition, endless retracing of the same ground, endless failure to convince himself absolutely of the correctness of any one theory as to the manner in which Barrington had died, he had reached now a stage of mental weariness in which, so far from knowing clearly what he thought about the matter, he found himself, whenever he attempted to think about it, incapable of following one line of speculation for sixty consecutive seconds without straying off along another, the very postulates of which refused credence to those of its predecessor. On that Saturday morning he was not merely equally prepared to believe that Arndale or Melhuish or Challoner or diseased arteries, or any combination of these, had been responsible for Barrington’s death. By some curious confusion of his mental apparatus he did actually half believe that each of these causes had been responsible for it. And it seemed to him, as he walked back from Hatfield Place towards the Riverside, just as likely that those letters of Mrs Melhuish’s which had been in Barrington’s possession when he had left her on Monday night were now in the possession of Frensham, as that they were in the possession of Arndale or Challoner or Melhuish himself.
For—for anything he knew to the contrary—Frensham might very well have been the man who had been at Barrington’s house with him from twelve to one on Monday night, talking with him over a whisky-and-soda—discussing, perhaps, the business that lay just before them. He might very well have accompanied Barrington to Aberdeen Place in the car, and have waited outside—eager to hear what was going on inside, impatient for Barrington’s reappearance with the plunder of which he was to have a share. That might very well account for the opening of the hall door. From Aberdeen Place he might very well have accompanied Barrington to some place at which they were in the habit of adjusting the accounts of their partnership—some discreet headquarters of their rascality. It was, evidently, entirely useless to indulge in vague surmise as to the habits and haunts and methods of such people. But if Barrington had had, somewhere, some place of safer keeping for his dangerous merchandise than his own house, it was only too easy to conceive that Frensham, and possibly several other ‘pals’ of ‘dear old Cyril’s,’ knew all about it. If those letters of Pickles’s had been left by Barrington in some such place—well, her troubles were only beginning.
There was, however, so far as he could see, nothing to be done except to wait and see what happened. He had succeeded, with unexpected ease, in recovering the other lot of letters for her, unobtrusively. With that achievement, he told himself, he could rest content for the present. The whole affair was at once so sordidly unpleasant, so difficult to get hold of, and so insidiously engrossing to the exclusion of ordinary, rational interests, that he almost succeeded in persuading himself that his one desire was to shake it off and have nothing more to do with it.
The manner in which he had discovered Cecil Arndale’s financial relations with Barrington embarrassed him a good deal.
‘Damn it all,’ was his last thought on Saturday night, ‘what should I say if I found some silly, meddlesome ass poking his nose into my business? I’m the remains of a soldier—not an apology for a private detective. I will have nothing more to do with it.’
And on Sunday he hired a motor-cycle of decayed constitution and rode a hundred miles to deliver Pickles’s letters into her own hands. Pickles, however, was in bed with a bad cold and a temperature, so that he failed to interview her personally, though she sent him down a hastily-scribbled little message of gratitude. In a valiant attempt to ride another hundred miles back to Westmouth in darkness and over roads coated with grease, he snapped a chain at midnight five miles from anywhere. He pushed his mount into Salisbury, slept in one of the George’s excellent beds until nine o’clock, and did not reach his quarters at the Riverside until its lunch-hour had passed.
He found awaiting him a communication informing him that the secretaryship of the golf club was no longer vacant. The next letter of the little heap on his mantelpiece was of greater interest.
‘DEAR WICK,’—Mrs Barrington wrote—‘We are off this morning. Paris—then Vence. The Frensham man rang me up yesterday, and coolly proposed that I should go and see him at some place called the Excelsior Hotel. I think it is somewhere near Broad Street Station. Of course I refused. He said that I should be wise to change my mind about that, and that I was to ring him up there when I did change it. I rang off then. Horrible little beast. I can’t think why I was foolish enough to give him Mr Arndale’s cheque. I thought I had better let you know that he had rung me up. This is written in great haste. My packing is not finished yet. Ever so many thanks for your kindness.—Yrs.—
‘ETHEL BARRINGTON.
‘P.S.—Will send address when we have one. Will you keep enclosed key, in case I should have to ask you to come here to the house while I am away. Sounds pretty cool. But I hope I shan’t have to trouble you.—E.B.’
Mr Frensham was preparing to get busy, then, already.