SO the interview terminated. Arling left the room, and was succeeded by a defile of the servants, each of whom was solemnly ushered in and out by a dignified butler. Gore interviewed, first, eleven miscellaneous servants, none of whom could tell him more than that Sir Maurice and Lady Gaul had always appeared on excellent terms, that Mr Arling had been a frequent visitor at the Oast House, but a perfectly open one, both during Sir Maurice’s presence and his absence, and that he or she, as the case was, had gone to Farnham to witness the night attack on the night of May 5, and had reached home shortly after eleven o’clock in the small char-a-banc which had been hired for the purpose of their outing.
A housemaid gave it as her opinion that for the last weeks—two or three or so—Mr Arling had not come so much to the house. The butler explained that Mr Arling had been away a good deal during those weeks, and got the housemaid out of the room as soon as he could.
Then followed the housekeeper and the head gardener. They were both most respectable and intelligent servants, and they both told their story briefly and lucidly. The fact emerged that the head gardener was ‘courting’ the comely housekeeper—a detail which accounted, no doubt, for their lack of interest in night attacks, and their being found together at the end of the garden by Mr Arling.
Gore asked them both the two questions which he had asked Arling concerning the cigarette holder, and smiled upon learning that they had been asked the same questions by the police inspector.
‘That,’ he said, ‘proves how exactly alike great minds can think.’
The gardener stated that there had been a half-smoked cigarette in the holder, and that the police had found that it was one of the brand which Sir Maurice Gaul usually smoked—a Russian cigarette made by Torrance & Co. He could not say that he had noticed any loose ash in the tray.
The housekeeper, however, stated definitely that there had been no ash in the tray. By order of the police everything in the drawing-room had been left absolutely untouched for two whole days. On the third day she had been permitted to go into the room with a housemaid shortly before lunch time.
She had looked round the room then carefully to estimate what amount of cleaning up the housemaid should be instructed to perform after lunch. She remembered distinctly seeing the ash tray still on the small table and noticing that the holder had been taken away. She was perfectly clear in her mind that there was then no loose ash in it. She was almost certain that there had been none in it when she had first seen the cigarette holder lying in it, on the night of the murder.
‘Why, sir,’ she asked, ‘what has that to do with it? That’s what I can’t make out.’
‘Well, Mrs Colfin,’ Gore replied, ‘some people, you see, put their cigarette ash in the ash tray. Most people, however, put it on the carpet. Now, I suppose you would not have noticed if there had been any ash on the carpet that morning, would you?’
The housekeeper, bridling a little, supposed she would certainly have noticed. It was one of the things she was paid to notice. Lady Gaul had always been very particular about ash on the carpets, and she had to notice it, because Sir Maurice threw ash about everywhere.
‘I mentioned that to the police inspector, sir. But there was no ash on the drawing-room carpet that morning. I’m quite certain of that. The police inspector said just the same as you, sir. He wanted to make out that there might have been, without me seeing it. But it wouldn’t pay me not to have my eyes open, sir, in my position.’
‘You are probably quite right, Mrs Colfin,’ Gore said soothingly. ‘Now, you were in the garden that evening chatting with the head gardener, Robertson. How long?’
‘From about nine o’clock on, sir. I took my knitting out, as I often do. And when the light went Robertson and I went on chatting about things.’
‘So that from about nine until about twenty minutes past ten—when Mr Arling came in search of you—Lady Gaul was absolutely alone in the house?’
‘Well—alone—well, yes, sir. Except for whoever murdered her. The dogs were about, sir, of course.’
‘Quite. But you heard no sound from the house while you were down there in the garden?’
‘No, sir. Except the noise of the motors on the road, when any passed.’
As Mrs Colfin and the head gardener left the room, the butler appeared once more, followed by Spain.
‘That, sir, is all the staff. Shall you require any of them again?’
‘No, thank you, I think not.’
‘I suppose,’ Spain said, when the man had gone away, ‘that I ought to be included in the household staff. Though I’m afraid I’m unlikely to be of much assistance to you. I was out when the dreadful affair took place. I spent the evening in Guildford with some friends and didn’t get back until nearly eleven.
‘The police insisted on getting the names of my friends, and the hour I left the house to return here, and all that—I gave them a written statement. If you’d care for a copy, here is one.’
Gore smiled as he glanced at the neatly-typed sheet of foolscap.
‘I don’t think I want this, Mr Spain, thank you. Not being a police inspector, I am permitted to use such meagre intelligence as the Lord has given me. When Sir Maurice went away on May 2, did he give you any address in Bristol?’
‘No. I understand he gave Lady Gaul one.’
‘Curious that he should not have given you one—I suppose there were letters to forward?’
‘No. Sir Maurice detests any kind of interruption or disturbance when he is working on a book or a story. I have known him to leave most important letters unanswered—unlooked at—for weeks.’
‘You have never seen anything to indicate that Sir Maurice and Lady Gaul were not on the best of terms?’
‘No.’
‘And you have been in Sir Maurice’s employment for a considerable time?’
‘Nine months.’ The little, pale, dejected man flushed into a sudden vehemence. ‘I trust, Colonel Gore, that you are not one of the many who have allowed themselves to be misled by a few absolutely deceptive appearances. I admit that there are circumstances which, unfortunately, chance may render it absolutely impossible to explain by proved facts.
‘But for anyone who has known him intimately, even for the short period for which I have known him, the idea that he could have committed this terrible crime is ludicrous—absolutely and merely ludicrous. I do assure you of that. Forgive my speaking with such emotion. But I have just been speaking to that idiot of a police inspector who has practically lived on the premises for the past week.
‘He told me that some boys found some pieces of linen stained with blood this morning, on the heath, down near the pond. They brought them to the police sergeant, and he went to the spot and poked about and found, in a rabbit hole which had practically been filled in with packed heather, a bloodstained kitchen knife and some other pieces of bloodstained linen. The pieces, put together, he says, make a handkerchief.
‘When I left him he was about to go through the things which Sir Maurice saved from the fire—what he had in the suitcase which he took away to Bristol—hoping, of course, to be able to make out that the handkerchiefs are of the same kind of linen and pattern as the pieces he found in the rabbit hole.
‘“This will swing him,” he said to me, smacking his lips. I—well, I’m afraid I said more than I ought to have said. But isn’t it outrageous that a bumpkin of a village policeman should be allowed to say such a thing—in the hearing of Sir Maurice’s own servants?’
‘Rather unnecessary,’ Gore agreed. ‘What about the knife?’
‘The sort of knife they cut up meat with in the kitchen. The cook says it may have been one of his.’
‘Well,’ Gore sighed, ‘it is certainly a most difficult business, Mr Spain. Fortunately Sir Maurice remains perfectly cool and collected.’
‘Isn’t he wonderful?’ the little secretary exclaimed fervently. ‘Marvellous courage, marvellous self-control. He reminds me of the protagonist of a Greek tragedy—the favourite of Fortune, the man who had everything—struck down suddenly—robbed of everything—his wife, his honour, his house, his liberty—perhaps his life—humbled to the dust—and yet, undefeated.’
‘As you say, quite a tragic figure,’ agreed Gore, impressed by this view of his client.
‘Absolutely Sophoclean,’ said the secretary.