HE knew the old quarry well—had known it all his life. From the narrow, stony path which coiled amongst the dense thorn-bushes at the edge of the cliffs and led to Prospect Rock, one could, if one leaned far out over the fragile railing protecting the path at the side next to the precipice, see the boulder-littered, cup-like recess far below, overhung by the sheer, bulging wall of rock. Between the quarry and the river lay a narrow cart-track. Figures moving along that track, he recalled, were no larger than a fly on the hand of a person looking down at them from Prospect Rock. Two hundred feet? More nearly two hundred and fifty at that point. He had a vision of that headlong fall—of the annihilating crash that had rushed up out of the darkness to meet the doomed man—
But that impression was instantaneous—a sensation that came and passed more swiftly than thought. The horror that remained, that defied his best efforts to refuse it admittance to his mind, obliterated for the moment all conceptions of circumstance, all capacity for pity, all facts connected with Frensham save one.
For the first time certainty, absolute and indubitable, stared him in the face. Even if he had not known that Frensham and Arndale had met that afternoon—even if Arndale had not been, to his knowledge, the last person in whose company Frensham had been that afternoon—that certainty would have trampled all possible doubt or question under foot. The hand that had dealt death to Barrington had found murder a safe and easy remedy. What Barrington had known, Frensham had known. For that knowledge the same hand had found the same remedy.
The folly—the desperate madness of it, staggered him. That fellow Stevens … He had seen them together, followed them. How many others had seen them together? A tall man and a small one walking together … how many people must have noticed them … The chances were that Arndale could not walk on any part of Linwood Down at any hour of the day without meeting someone who knew him at least by appearance …
‘Good God,’ he said again. ‘This is terrible.’
His eyes returned to the first words of the account. Seven o’clock. He made a rough calculation hurriedly. Descending from Fountain Hill, Prospect Rock had been to his right hand, a couple of hundred yards distant, separated from the road by a stretch of rocky ground thickly covered by thorn-trees and bramble-bushes. It must have been about a quarter to seven, he estimated, when he had passed so close to the scene of the tragedy—had passed, by the Fountain, the end of the narrow path twisting away towards Prospect Rock from the road. Yes, about a quarter to seven. He had called at the Lending Library in Linwood Park Road to get a couple of books, and had gone down afterwards to the post office in King Street for a book of stamps. Ten past seven when he had reached the Riverside—yes. He had been on Fountain Hill about a quarter to seven—about the very time at which the thing had happened. ‘Very shortly before’ seven o’clock, the Echo said.
He raised his eyes to find Melhuish regarding him curiously—so curiously that for a moment or two he returned the look silently across the table. The most grotesque of imaginations had flashed upon him. For an instant he had had the impression that while he had been staring at the Echo Melhuish had been watching him with a vigilant, hostile apprehension, as if waiting for the next movement of some dangerous, yet blundering animal. Was it possible, he asked himself incredulously, that the man’s fancy had somehow connected him with the tidings of those two smudged paragraphs? Could any man’s fancy leap so preposterously? Impossible.
And yet an impulse beyond his control constrained him to put the matter at once to the test.
‘I must have been coming down Fountain Hill,’ he said quietly, watching the impassive eyes that looked across at him through the slight haze of cigar-smoke, ‘at the very time the poor little beggar fell over.’
‘Indeed? You were on the Downs this afternoon?’
‘Yes. I walked across from Blackbrothers Hill.’
‘Oh, yes.’
No. He had been mistaken, he told himself—deceived momentarily by a slight narrowing of eyelids, a slight compression of nostrils and lips—that most ordinary change of expression which a man’s face assumes when the smoke of his cigar threatens to irritate his eyes and his nose a little. Melhuish’s face had resumed its rather tired, rather formal smile now. The tone in which he had said ‘Oh, yes,’ was merely one of polite concession to his guest’s interest in the discovery that he had been in the neighbourhood of catastrophe at the time of its happening.
‘There have been a good many accidents and suicides at that particular spot, I believe,’ he said, rising from the table and moving again to the sideboard. ‘I walked round that path along the cliffs once—shortly after I came here first. I remember thinking at the time that the railing was rather inadequate protection.’
He had picked up the second evening paper. ‘Let us see what the Mail says. The wording of the Echo report would almost lead one to believe—’
He paused abruptly and read the Mail’s somewhat longer account carefully to the end before he turned his face again towards the shaded lights of the table.
‘They have found a knife in the quarry,’ he said slowly—‘“a small, sharp-pointed knife of unusual design”, this report says, “fitted into a haft of leather or hide. The police authorities preserve a strict reticence as to this discovery, which seems to point to the conclusion that Mr Frensham’s death may not have been, as had been at first conjectured, due to an accidental fall from the cliffs above.
‘“It is understood that the letter signed with the initials A. H., which was found upon the dead man’s person, throws an important light upon this latest mystery of a spot already notorious for its tragic associations.”’
He handed the Mail to Gore and went back to his seat. Another little silence fell until, with the gesture of a man who had come to an at length inevitable decision, he abandoned his half-finished cigar and, dropping his elbows on the table, leaned forward gravely towards his guest.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘that this man Frensham was in some way associated with Barrington—at any rate, that he was on terms of intimacy with him?’
‘I believe,’ Gore replied cautiously, ‘that they were fairly intimate.’
‘I have known you for a very short time,’ Melhuish went on levelly, ‘and I can hardly expect you to indulge in confidences … even if I do so myself. However … I am going to risk a confidence—’
He paused as if arranging his ideas, and then, without warning, went on again tranquilly.
‘You are aware, of course, that Barrington’s death was not entirely due to natural causes. Indeed, I think it is perfectly safe to say that, but for the severe nervous and physical shock produced by certain extraneous causes, he would not have died … when he did die. You are aware of that?’
He spoke with the detached deliberation with which he might have addressed a clinical class across a hospital cot containing a mildly interesting case. Gore, for whom this formally-phrased revelation made a terrible certainty more terribly certain, stared at him in silence, wondering what was to come.
‘I thought it possible at the time,’ he decided to admit guardedly. ‘Though I am bound to say it surprises me now a great deal to realise that my very vague suspicions were correct.’
‘What were your suspicions?’ Melhuish asked. ‘What are your suspicions … now?’
Gore shrugged.
‘Do my suspicions matter in the least, doctor—if the fact is as you say—?’
Melhuish interrupted him with a cold little gesture of impatience.
‘I have been frank with you, Colonel Gore—frank, as you will admit, beyond discretion. What do you really believe to have been the cause of Barrington’s death—now—at this moment? What do you believe caused that physical and mental shock of which I spoke just now?’
Where was this questioning leading, Gore asked himself. If towards Arndale, he was most resolutely determined that no slightest word of his should guide it.
‘Suppose you tell me what your own idea about the matter is, doctor,’ he suggested, rather stiffly. ‘If your idea is … my idea … well, then, I’ll say so. If it isn’t, I’ll say so, too. Please remember that I’m only a layman.’
Melhuish smiled bleakly.
‘My idea,’ he said, reaching for the Mail and pausing until he had found the lines he wanted—‘my idea is a little sharp-pointed knife of unusual design, fitted into a haft of leather or hide.’ He raised his eyes.
‘Well?’
It seemed useless to fence about that point any longer.
‘Yes,’ Gore said, most unwillingly, ‘that, I own, was my idea too.’
‘Was?’
‘Is, then.’
Gore sat back in his chair.
‘I wish to God I had never sent your wife the infernal things,’ he said with sincerity. ‘I’m glad to see, at any rate, that you’ve taken them from your hall—’
‘One of them,’ Melhuish said gravely. ‘Someone else took the other from my hall … this afternoon. That is why I have ventured to make to you—whom I hardly know—a confidence which places my professional reputation in your hands. I am not going into my reasons—now—for making that confidence. I will say, simply, that I want to be prepared … and to prepare you … for a contingency the nature of which you realise, I have no doubt whatever, as clearly as I do.’
‘Someone else removed one of them,’ Gore repeated at length. ‘Who?’
‘That I cannot say … with certainty. I can only tell you that at five o’clock this afternoon, Clegg—my man—pointed out to me that one of the knives had been taken from the wall … the second time that one of them has disappeared, as of course Clegg knows. A considerable number of patients passed in and out of the hall this afternoon. Various people called to inquire for my wife. My wife’s bedroom is being done up while she is away. The men were in and out all day up to four o’clock. I suppose about thirty people, besides my own servants, were in the hall between two o’clock and five.’
Deliberately, without the slightest doubt, Gore noticed at once, he had omitted to recall Arndale’s visit in reference to the engagement of the Kinnairds’ chauffeur. There was nothing to conceal from this cold-blooded, cold-brained Northerner. The fat was in the fire with a vengeance—
‘Which knife was taken?’ he asked. ‘The one with a sheath … or the one without?’
‘The one without a sheath.’
‘The one,’ Gore risked hardily, ‘which you found in Barrington’s pocket … or in Barrington’s car … that afternoon?’
‘No. I didn’t find it that afternoon,’ Melhuish said quickly and plainly in some surprise. ‘Nor did I find it in Barrington’s pocket … nor in his car. I found it close to the gates over there leading into the hotel grounds, the night before. Monday night wasn’t it … the 6th? Yes. I found it on Monday night—just before I met you by the letter-box in Selkirk Place. I looked about for the sheath but couldn’t—’
He checked himself as Clegg entered the room.
‘A cigarette, Colonel?’
‘Nurse Scott has rung up, sir, to say that Mrs Brook is very bad. She wants to know if you can go to Foster Place at once. I told her you were at dinner, sir—’
Melhuish looked at his watch, then at his guest.
‘Will you forgive me? It is the poor girl who—’
‘Yes, yes. Of course, doctor,’ Gore said hurriedly. ‘Please don’t delay a second on my account—’
Melhuish hastened away to the telephone, returned to find Clegg aiding Gore into his overcoat in the hall.
‘Most extraordinary thing I ever heard of, sir,’ the man was saying. ‘I saw them both there with my own two eyes at lunchtime, both of them—’
‘I go out the back way,’ Melhuish interrupted, holding out his hand. ‘It would take me too long to walk to Foster Place. Again a thousand apologies. May I run in and see you one evening?’
‘Do.’
As he returned to the Riverside, retracing step by step the route he had followed on that Monday night, Gore paused to look back through the laurels of the Green towards the lamp in Aberdeen Place beneath which he had seen Barrington for the last time alive. He was actually thinking that it was quite within the range of probability that he might find himself compelled to state, on oath, his belief as to the identity of the man whom he had seen standing there that night with Barrington in the light of the lamp, when that possibility was brought home to him with a rather startling unexpectedness. A policeman emerged from the gates of the Riverside’s grounds as he neared them, glanced at him sharply as he went by, and then, perceiving that he was about to enter the grounds, turned and followed him.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ he asked, civilly, ‘do you happen to be Colonel Gore?’
‘Yes, I am Colonel Gore.’
‘Sergeant Long and I are making some inquiries respecting a man called Richard Frensham, sir. They told us at the hotel that you were dining at Number 33 Aberdeen Place. I was just stepping across there to ask you if you’d see the sergeant. He’s waiting in your rooms, sir. Seeing you in evening dress, I thought you might be Colonel Gore, so I stopped you.’
The man accompanied Gore to his sitting-room, where his superior, who had been seated at the writing-table, rose at their entry.
‘Hope you’ll excuse me using your table, sir. I was just jotting down some notes. I am Sergeant Long of the Westmouth City Police. I have received instructions to obtain from you any information you can give us concerning a man named Richard Frensham. I don’t know if you are aware, sir, that a man of that name was found dead this evening in the quarry below Prospect Rock?’
‘Yes. I have just seen the account in the evening papers. I’m afraid, though, that I haven’t a great deal of information to give you about the poor man, sergeant. I met Mr Frensham on two occasions only—the first time at the house of a Mrs Barrington who lives here in Linwood—’
The sergeant had picked up a little notebook from the writing-table.
‘Address, sir, please, and date?’
‘27 Hatfield Place. The date—Friday, November the 10th.’
‘Thank you, sir. And the second occasion?’
‘At the Excelsior Hotel, on Monday, November 13th.’
Sergeant Long required to make no note of that second meeting, for the reason that he already had one.
‘Yes, sir. I’ve got that. They told us at the Excelsior Hotel that a Colonel Gore had been there by appointment over the telephone to see Frensham on the afternoon of November 13th. Finding that a Colonel Gore was staying here at the Riverside, I concluded it was the same.’
‘Sounds very simple,’ thought Gore. ‘Pretty quick, all the same … for a provincial police-sergeant.’
Aloud he said: ‘Those are the only two occasions on which I met Mr Frensham.’
‘Might I ask, sir, what your relations were with him? Business dealings … or what?’
‘He was, I understand, a friend of Mr Barrington’s. After Mr Barrington’s death, which took place a couple of weeks ago, he offered to assist Mrs Barrington in arranging her husband’s affairs.’
‘What was Mr Barrington’s occupation?’
‘So far as I know, he had none. I myself only returned to England a few weeks ago—so that, naturally, my knowledge of the affairs of people living here in Linwood is rather limited … However, I believe I am right in saying that Mr Barrington had private means. Mrs Barrington is a very old friend of mine … I happened to be at her house one day when Mr Frensham called. That was how I made his acquaintance. I went down to see him at the Excelsior Hotel on November the 13th to get some information from him for Mrs Barrington about some business matters which he was looking into for her.’
‘Can you give us any information as to Frensham’s occupation or business, Colonel?’
‘I’m afraid not. I rather think Mrs Barrington told me he came from London. I gathered from his own conversation that he had travelled a great deal. But beyond that, as I say, I really know next to nothing about him.’
‘From what you saw of him, can you say if you know of any reason why he should have committed suicide?’
‘No. He seemed quite a cheerful little man.’
‘From what you saw of him, or from his conversation, did you form the conclusion that he went in fear of anyone—I mean, in fear of personal violence or molestation from any person?’
‘No. I shouldn’t have said so at all. I noticed that the report in the Mail suggested that his fall had not been accidental. It said something about a knife having been found—’
Sergeant Long compressed his lips beneath his heavy moustache.
‘It was no accident, Colonel. He was stabbed in three places. It’s an ugly business, this. I saw the knife myself, sir. A nasty little affair. I’d say it was a black man’s or a yellow man’s knife, myself. I saw a knife once something just like it with a stoker I had to take off a West African cargo boat down in St Paul’s Dock a bit before the war. A native knife of some sort that was—the chap had got it from a nigger, he told us. You been in Africa yourself, Colonel, I hear?’
‘Yes, I was there for a couple of years.’
The sergeant’s steady brown eyes surveyed his face exhaustively—rested, Gore felt pretty certain, on the now nearly-healed but still conspicuous cut on his chin.
‘Well, there’s nothing more you can tell us about Frensham, is there, sir?’
‘Nothing, I’m afraid.’
‘Then I needn’t take up any more of your time, Colonel. Sorry to have had to trouble you. People don’t like us coming bothering them with questions, of course. However, that’s our job, sir. We’ve got to leave no stone unturned in a serious case like this.’
‘I quite understand, sergeant. Only sorry I can’t be of more assistance to you.’
‘Good-night, sir.’
The two large, well-drilled men saluted smartly and departed. Gore listened until their heavy footsteps had died away towards the hall. Then he crossed to the writing-table, and, picking up the little beaded sheath which lay still where he had left it before going out, on some unanswered letters beside the blotting-pad, contemplated it with grim amusement. It had lain there under Sergeant Long’s no doubt observant eyes while he had jotted down those notes of his. Those no doubt observant eyes had seen … and remembered … a knife ‘something just like’ the knife that belonged to that sheath. Had they seen also … and remembered also … a sheath something just like that sheath? If they had, would Sergeant Long not have said so? Or would he—?
‘I wonder,’ said Gore.
He seated himself by the fire to follow, step by step, the progress of an imaginary Sergeant Long, possessed … for the sake of argument … of intelligence, knowledge, and observation … well, say, equal to his own. This supposed Sergeant Long, having learned at the Excelsior Hotel that a Colonel Gore had called there on the afternoon of November the 13th to see Frensham, ascertained that Colonel Gore was staying at the Riverside Hotel in Linwood, went there, and made some inquiries about him. From the manager and the staff of the hotel he learned that on the evening of November 13th Colonel Gore had returned to the hotel with a badly cut chin. This supposed Sergeant Long then went into Colonel Gore’s sitting-room and saw there on a writing-table a sheath which was ‘something just like’ a sheath he had seen with a stoker off a West African cargo boat—the sheath of a native knife. He knew, did this observant Sergeant Long, that the knife with which Frensham had been stabbed, was a knife ‘something just like’ the knife which had belonged to that sheath which (supposedly) he had seen with that stoker. He had found out, also, had this clever Sergeant Long, that Colonel Gore had just returned from Africa. Now, supposing all that, what more would Sergeant Long have been likely to want to know?
His first question, surely, would have been … almost certainly, ‘When and where did you last see Richard Frensham?’
His next: ‘Where were you between the hours of six and seven o’clock this afternoon?’
His next: ‘Can you produce any evidence—any person who saw you, to prove exactly where on Linwood Down you were at a quarter to seven?’
His next, probably: ‘Did you have a quarrel with Frensham on the afternoon of November 13th, and’ (perhaps) ‘another quarrel with him on the evening of November 17th?’
His next: ‘Where is the knife belonging to this knife-sheath which I find here on the writing-table in your sitting-room?’
And his next, probably: ‘Will you accompany me to the Central Police Station?’
Surely no conceivable police-sergeant, knowing what that imaginary Sergeant Long was supposed to know, could find it in his heart to salute respectfully and go on his way with a benign ‘Good-evening.’
And yet … how easy it might have been for Sergeant Long to make his way to that blunder. And how deucedly awkward if he had made his way to it … or should make his way to it …
Suppose one were asked at the inquest to answer—on oath—the questions: ‘When you last saw Frensham, was he alone?’ and ‘Who was the tall man in a light-coloured raincoat with whom you say you last saw him in Old Cut Road about half-past five on the afternoon of November 18th?’
What could one do? One would have to tell the truth …
Not that Arndale didn’t deserve anything that was coming to him. But one didn’t want to be the person who, practically, put a rope about his neck …
Besides, Arndale was the sort of chap who’d go to pieces when he saw the game was up. Ten to one he’d own up to having done Barrington in also. If he did that … Pickles couldn’t be kept out of it …
Yes. A great deal depended upon Sergeant Long. A stolid, rather good-looking, ruddy-skinned big fellow—quiet, even gentle of manner … kindly of smile … But Gore had been too long a regimental officer to place any undue reliance upon the simplicity of those stolid, straightforward looking British façades.
He abandoned the strong temptation to consign the knife-sheath to his sitting-room fire and so get rid of it for good and all, and went into his bedroom to lock it up in the suit-case in which he kept possessions of special privacy and importance. Catching sight of his sheaf of graphs, as he was about to shut up the suit-case again, the thought occurred to him that one of them, at least, could now be brought to a full-stop at a final negative certainty. His suspicion of Arndale was a belief that was almost certainty, it was true; yet, after all, it was not certainty. But if he had ever been certain of anything in his life, he was certain now, he told himself, that Frensham had not had any hand in Barrington’s death.
He picked up the bundle of diagrams and glanced at the key-sheet, pinned to the front, on which the number of each graph was set opposite the initials of the person to whom the graph referred. Number 7 was F.’s graph, and Gore was about to turn it up and complete it when his eyes fell on the initials facing the number 15. A. H … Weren’t those the initials given in the newspaper reports—the initials signing that letter that threw an important light …?
There had been a run on the papers that evening, apparently, for it was nearly a quarter of an hour later when at length Percival succeeded in procuring a copy of the Evening Mail for him. His recollection, he found, however, had been quite accurate. The initials of the writer of that important and illuminating letter were A. H.
He returned to his chair by the fire and—not for the first time, as will be remembered—informed the hearth-rug that he was damned.