THE crested limousine which had met Gore at Guildford station swooped up a steep and sandy road through the sombre silence of a pine-wood, swooped over a crest and swooped down on the sunlit glory of the Surrey heaths in mid-May. Gore gazed with benignity upon the view thus suddenly revealed to him. Typical Surrey on a typical spring morning—what more agreeable?
The gorse was blazing gold, the tender green of the young bracken pointed the brown of the heather, the air was filled with balmy fragrances and the twitter of larks. Curve after curve, pine-clad or striped with the silvery slimness of the birches, fell away, mile upon mile, to the blue distance of Hindhead and Blackdown. To the left a sheet of swan-decked water sparkled among the trees. To the right, three miles away, the telegraph posts of the Hog’s Back marched in procession against the skyline.
Gore caught sight at that moment of the house which the fortunate man of his thoughts had builded for himself—a black, gutted skeleton, in silhouette against the southern sunlight that pierced it through and through mercilessly and showed it a mere empty, hollow husk. One small portion only—an annex built out toward the gardens to house the servants—had escaped.
Sixteen thousand pounds that house had cost Maurice Gaul to build, so the newspapers had said. Quite a good deal of money to burn. A fused wire, however, had apparently done the job promptly and thoroughly. The fire engines from Guildford and Farnham and Godalming had had between them just enough water to wet a fair-sized hay-rick fairly thorough.
The car passed an elaborate gate whose pillars bore the inscription ‘The Oast House’ in Old English lettering, and drew up before a pretty, hawthorn-embowered cottage, a hundred yards or so farther down the road. There Gore alighted and was received by a pale, prim little man who ushered him into a delightful little book-lined sitting room.
‘I am Sir Maurice Gaul’s secretary,’ he explained. ‘Sir Maurice asked me to say that he regretted that your interview must take place in these comparatively humble quarters of mine. But as a matter of fact, with the exception of the servants’ quarters, Sir Maurice, at the moment, has no other place to receive anyone.’
‘He had only built the house quite a short time ago?’
‘About twelve months ago.’
‘A curious name—The Oast House.’
‘He built it on the site of an old oast barn. There were extensive hop-fields along this slope forty or fifty years ago. Some of the old buildings have been left standing. You may have seen them as you came in. Lady Gaul had a taste for the picturesque. Here is Sir Maurice now.’
The secretary opened the door to admit a stoutish, still youngish man, with curling black hair, liquid eyes, curved spine and strongly-marked features. The adjective sleek, pervaded Gore’s first impression of him, despite the shadows beneath his eyes, and the almost lugubrious gravity of his air. He bowed solemnly, dismissed the secretary with a glance and consigned, with a rather fleshy white hand, the visitor to the chair from which he had risen.
‘I don’t know at all if you can do anything to help me, Colonel Gore. However, Lady Pauncefield—who is a very valued friend of mine, and to whom, I understand, you have recently been of very great service suggested that you might be able to do something for me. Perhaps I may also say that I recall very clearly the part which you played in that terrible business down in Wiltshire—the Powlet case.’
Gore bowed politely and waited.
He found Sir Maurice Gaul so far, frankly, a little disillusioning, and a little pompous. But, no doubt, under more than trying circumstances even a celebrity found it necessary to stress the fact that he was one.
‘You have, I assume, read the newspaper accounts of my wife’s death. I think, however, that I had better begin by giving you my own account at first-hand. I have asked Mr Arling to come up and see you personally also. He will be here very shortly. You will, also, if you wish, see every member of my household staff and ask them any questions you may think fit. They are all entirely loyal to me. I can at least promise that you will be supplied with all the available facts.’
His succinct narrative of his visit to Bristol supplied Gore with one new and significant detail. So far neither his own efforts nor those of the police had been able to discover a single person in Bristol who could testify to having seen him at any place there between May 2 and May 9, though plenty of witnesses could be found to vouch for the afternoon of the former date and the morning of the latter.
On arriving at Bristol on May 2 he had deposited his luggage and his money—with the exception of the sum of one shilling—at the Grand Hotel. On the morning of May 9 he had reclaimed them. In the interval he had wandered about, in shabby clothes purchased specially for his adventure, looking for casual employment in East Bristol. Day after day he had taken his place in one or another queue of applicants for work.
Once only had he reached a foreman—to be turned away promptly upon the discovery that he belonged to no union. He had rubbed elbows with scores of unfortunates engaged in the same quest as himself, but not one of these had it been possible to find. He had slept in the open every night—on Clifton Downs most often; no lodging house keeper could vouch for a single night of the seven.
He had begged in the streets of Clifton and had extracted pennies from sundry elderly ladies; but none of the elderly ladies could be discovered. He had revisited, in the make-up of his adventure, a dozen cheap restaurants and shops where he had purchased food; but at none of these places had the people undertaken to recognize him.
‘It seems incredible,’ he smiled forcedly. ‘But they were all, naturally, places frequented by seedy customers like myself. One seedy customer is very like another. And the people at these places are not violently interested in their customers, as you are no doubt aware.’
‘Then there is only your own statement to cover the interval from May 2 afternoon to May 9 morning.’
‘That is so.’ Gaul glanced at his watch. ‘Before Mr Arling comes, I think I had better go into a very painful matter which, naturally, I prefer to discuss with you alone—from my point of view. You are aware that a letter was found in my wife’s hand. This is a copy of it.’
The last words which Lady Gaul had read had been these:
I can only say again what I said last night. Almost certainly your husband suspects. I hope and believe that so far it is merely suspicion. But for both our sakes, we must run no further risks. As we have often agreed, we have been mad. But for the sake of the wonderful sweetness of the madness that has been ours, there must be no hideous and disastrous anticlimax.
This must be final. Burn this letter. Burn every scrap of mine you have kept, if you have kept any. Be careful of that sly-faced little secretary of your husband’s. I feel pretty sure that he has been spying on us for some time back. I managed to leave my undervest behind last night. I hope you discovered it before the maids did.
Snip off the name tab and any laundry marks at once. I can get it some time. But don’t send it back—don’t write—don’t telephone. This is the end.—C.
‘You were away on the night of May 4?’ Gore asked after a pause. ‘Was that undervest found?’
‘Yes. By the police, in one of my wife’s bureau drawers. The name-tab and the laundry marks had been cut out.’