Ask a Policeman

“Helen, to you our minds we will unfold.”

“Stand, ho! Who is there?

—Friends to this ground

And liegemen to the Dane.”

“BUT people do not come to this theatre to see a play; they come to see Sir John Saumarez. I challenge you to disprove what I say.”

The silky, ecclesiastical voice, as exquisitely modulated as Sir John’s own, ceased suddenly. The whole company, at table on the stage of Sir John’s own theatre, drew in a deep breath, but before Sir John or anyone else could take up the gage the challenger continued, smoothly, easily, and with that air of quiet authority which was making Sir John’s magnificent shoulders twitch irritably, although his mouth retained its genial smile of host and layman.

“The Sir John walk; the Sir John voice; the Sir John manner; those are what your audiences come for, Nobody wants to see real acting nowadays. There is no real acting. You, Sir John, are not an actor; you are simply—and intelligently!—a set of unvarying mannerisms to which you have accustomed your public, and for which they are prepared to pay with applause, flattery, and money.”

“And what,” asked Sir John, smiling at the wine in his glass, while the company, who were wondering, half in awe, half in pleasurable excitement, what further heresy the white-haired prelate in their midst was prepared to utter, “do you mean by real acting, my dear Pettifer?”

The Archbishop of the Midlands refreshed himself with a sip of water, much as a public speaker will do when he feels he has made a point and wishes it to sink in.

“By real acting,” he replied, dabbing his full lips with a snowy napkin, and, this time, addressing the whole table—for, as an ex-schoolmaster, he always took for granted the attention, if not the interest, of his audience—“I mean character acting. And by character acting” —the Cathedral at Bournemouth, where he had been Bishop for a number of years, was extremely high, and he had accustomed himself to a very slow delivery, unctuous and ripely articulated, eminently suited to the acoustics of the Bournemouth Cathedral, but exceptionally trying to his hearers in ordinary conversation—“I mean an absolute alteration of the tones of the actor’s natural voice, and the adoption, by him, of a completely different personality. An actor should live his part—I have coached boys for Shakespearian productions at school, so I claim to know just a very little about the subject—he should live his part. Judged by this standard—this type of acting, if you will—judged, I say, thus, what I call real acting is as defunct as the Dodo. We have no actors nowadays.”

“The Dodo,” Sir John observed, his eloquent shoulders deploring while they acknowledged the fact, “is more than defunct. It is extinct. We now prefer our monsters, hide, fin, and feather, a little less—monstrous. ‘Legg’d like a man, and his fins like arms!’ Unfashionable, nowadays, I fear. So Mr. Crummies, of revered memory, if he returned to the English stage.”

Sir John, a little tired of being told that he could not act, that his mannerisms and not his art were what the public came to enjoy, drank, and replaced his glass; his slender hand toyed with its slender stem. The prelate, too much the pedagogue to make an ideal guest, returned to the assault.

“Ah, Crummles, yes.” His tolerant smile wiped Crummles out of the argument. “But, my dear fellow, I was referring to actors—to actors, not mountebanks. Now, I have seen you act several times—quite several times; and it seemed to me that with your gifts—your —shall we say?—very considerable gifts “—there was the hint of an unwifely grin about Martella’s mouth as she caught her husband’s eye—” you could break the tradition that an actor-manager is a kind of tailor’s dummy, due occasionally for a change of clothing, but, in all essentials, eternally the same.”

Sir John still smiled. His mannerisms might possibly be a matter for argument. His charm was not.

“One does not disappoint one’s public.” He had a momentary vision, vivid as it was fleeting, of his faithful gallery, waiting in the rain for a first night, applauding until the last instant, while the stalls collected wraps and furs; clapping when he appeared for less than an instant between car and stage-door. Sir John’s gallery queue was nearly always divided by his zealous commissionaire into two long tails, with the clear passage-way to the stage-door between them; and the stage-door was a good twenty yards from the gallery entrance.

“One panders to it,” said His Grace drily. “Self-indulgence, my dear Sir John.”

Sir John, who was hearing a longer sermon on a weekday in his own theatre than he was usually called upon to endure on a Sunday in church, looked resigned. Taking this for a sign of grace, the Archbishop continued: “I fear we live in a particularly self-indulgent age. One strolls where one should march; one idles the precious time away when the trumpet is calling to labour and to war.”

Sir John, who called himself a lazy man, and yet, even as he made the admission, experienced strange doubts as to the veracity of the description, shrugged negligently, while the company, his own company, who knew their Sir John and knew of his genius in escaping the conversation of moralists and bores, glanced at one another, marvelling. Their leader’s character-acquiring eye summed up the Archbishop; a pompous, self-opinionated man whose natural self was overlaid with the fatty tissue of schoolmaster and church dignitary combined. The original William Anselm Pettifer, Sir John decided, had been lost to history for some two dozen years at least. Replying to the Archbishop’s concluding remarks, he answered smoothly:

“Your tradition of the Christian soldier militates against mine of the strolling player. Yet our object is the same. We seek to entrap the unwary citizen. Make him listen to something that may make a better man of him.” He smiled. “For you, a trumpet call. For me, the still small voice—”

“Yes, of the prompter,” said the Archbishop, with unlooked-for felicity. Sir John led the laughter. Conversation became general following his Grace’s happy quip, but, with determination and tact so nicely mingled that none realized what he had done, Sir John caught back the Archbishop into their own conversational backwater, and, after banalities, was able to observe:

“By all means,” said the Archbishop, delighted with himself. “You find them interesting?”

“Absorbing,” said Sir John. He had looked up and caught Martella’s eye. His own was penitent. His wife interpreted his look; resignedly, she accepted his unspoken declaration that the conversation was important. “Sufficiently important,” said Sir John’s expressive glance, “to keep us out of bed a little longer.”

“Absorbing?” The Archbishop repeated, lusciously, the word. His full lips savoured it. “Indeed?”

Sir John’s own public wanted whatever it pleased Sir John to give it. He ignored this fact. His was not the small mind that fears to be inconsistent.

“You assume,” said the Archbishop, displaying an ability to grasp the point which caused Sir John a momentary surprise, “that you and I are actors. Both of us.”

“I do. You have your public. You have your exits and your entrances. You effect certain alterations in your costume during the course of the service. You have accustomed your congregation to a certain William Anselm Pettifer who, in point of fact, does not exist. You imagine him. You compel your vision upon people who ‘sit under’ you. This character that you enact has certain turns of speech. He has mannerisms, inflections of the voice, attitudes—with what rich unction,” Sir John continued lyrically, “does he make his genuflexions, chant responses, and deliver the magnificent ‘curtain lines’ of the Absolution!”

“With unction,” said the Archbishop, “but sincerely. That’s the difference.”

“I, also, am sincere,” Sir John declared. “But my point is this. Admit you have a public to whom you have given a certain definite impression of yourself. The picture is sincere. That I admit. But it is not a picture of the whole man, nor necessarily of the whole Archbishop. Give them a different view-point—only one. What would their reaction be, I wonder?”

“Apply the question to yourself,” his Grace said blandly. “I believe that you and I are more, not less, ourselves, when we are—acting. Oh, I admit your argument. I see the force of it. I take my little brief authority and use it towards what good I may. You in this theatre, I in my cathedral, hold sway over men’s hearts and minds. On our respective platforms we are more than human. In our appointed spheres we are a little lower than the angels. Outside them, you, at least, are a man as other men are.”

“True, true.” Thus Sir John, complacently convinced that this was only half the truth. He, at least, was not as other men. The Marxian doctrine of the essential equality of man would have been the last item of belief in the creed of Sir John Saumarez. This was not vanity, but the result of wide-eyed experience, both of his own powers and of his world.

“And outside the cathedral you regard yourself as something less than a man?” he said.

The Archbishop permitted himself to smile. He lingered lovingly upon a devastating reply, but lingered half a second too long, for young Peter Varley, Sir John’s juvenile lead, coming, as he fancied, to the rescue of his chief, to whom he owed something more than to relieve him of the conversation of a bore, boldly inquired his Grace’s views on greyhound racing. His Grace, who purposed giving them to the daily press in the immediate future, and had no objection whatever in trying them on the dog to find out how they sounded, surrendered gracefully to Peter’s crisp-haired youthful charm, and gave them at some length and with enviable assurance.

Sir John waited patiently, and then, having regained his principal guest’s attention, said, without warning:

“I mean, my dear Pettifer, suppose for instance that you had murdered Comstock this morning, what would be the reaction of your congregation? Would they regard you as the popular hero?—as the twentieth century champion of the Church?—as a neo-Georgian Crusader, ridding the world of an infidel dog?—or how?”

“My dear Archbishop! You really must forgive me! I have no excuse! Positively no excuse!” Sir John’s distress was evident. No one would have guessed that, in addition to the information he had garnered from the evening papers with their staring headlines, the Home Secretary had sent him all the details of Lord Comstock’s death, Lord Comstock’s household, and Lord Comstock’s visitors which the police had been able to obtain.

The Archbishop, waving plump white hands, besought him not to distress himself, especially upon so interesting and happy an occasion.

The occasion was the “last-night” supper on the stage of Sir John’s own theatre—the Sheridan—at the end of a seventeen months’ run. Sir John, who had not taken a single day’s holiday during that time, had promised himself at least two months’ rest, except for the inevitable rehearsals of the new play which he was producing in the autumn. Meanwhile it was June, and the long run was over. The usual floral tributes for Martella and the ingénue, the laurel wreath for Sir John, the “last-night” enthusiasm of the loyal gallery, and the speeches of thanks, had preceded the supper. The supper itself was almost over, and the darkened auditorium on the other side of the curtain held only the ghosts of by-gone playgoers. The clock in Martella’s dressing-room, whither she repaired the moment the guests had been speeded on their way, showed ten minutes past one. The end of a long run always left her feeling stale, flat, and unprofitable, and on the morrow they were due, she and Johnny, at a vicarage garden party. Absurd, thought Martella, rebelliously. It was ridiculous of Johnny I And to have asked that insufferable old idiot of an archbishop to the supper!

“Of course.” She opened the door. Sir John assisted her with her wrap and walked with her to the stage-door. It took a little time to respond to the farewells, but at last they were left alone.

“Nothing. But—would you mind going home alone, Martella? I can’t come just yet. I won’t be very long.”

He knew how tired she was; how near to tears; realized, with tenderness, exactly how she felt at the end of the long run. His voice was very gentle.

When, hat in hand, Sir John had watched the tail-light of the car disappear at the first turning, he became aware that His Grace the Archbishop of the Midlands was standing just behind him on the pavement.

“Ah, Pettifer,” he said superbly. The Archbishop, as nearly as was possible to so self-possessed a man, seemed ill at ease.

“Ah, Saumarez,” he said. “A pleasant night, is it not? I was wondering—one does not sleep these hot nights unless one has one’s stroll after dinner—or, as in this case, supper. And I have not thanked you for your hospitality, my dear fellow. A charming occasion, charming; and, to me, of course, unique—quite. Yes, thank you a thousand times. Shall we—ah—walk a little of the way?”

“There is nothing,” Sir John said—sighing to himself, for he had supposed that they would sit and talk, in which case he could have handled the conversation so as to keep his promise to Martella; if they began to walk there was no telling how long they might be—“nothing I should enjoy better. The Comstock case, of course?”

There were, he realized, several more tactful openings leading up to the same point, but time was fleeting and very precious.

“The Comstock case.” The Archbishop fell into step, and they moved off down the deserted street. “Most tiresome and unpleasant; and dreadful, of course. Most dreadful. Such a promising fellow. An old pupil of mine, you know. A clever lad. A clever, promising lad. I was with him, as I told you, almost immediately before his death.”

There was silence, except for the echoing of their footsteps; a silence which Sir John was resolved not to break. His patience was rewarded in a few moments.

“And so—you won’t misunderstand me, my dear Saumarez—the whole thing is both upsetting and exceedingly embarrassing for me.”

“I have interviewed everybody who can possibly matter,” his Grace went on, “but the fact remains that while the time of death is so extraordinarily vague, my position in the matter is, to say the least, unsatisfactory in the extreme. So unsatisfactory is it, that, if I did not fully realize how utterly impossible it is that I should be implicated in the affair, I should be very seriously perturbed. Very seriously perturbed indeed, Saumarez.”

There was another long pause. Sir John, who apprehended perfectly whither these preliminary remarks were tending, wished that the Archbishop would come to the point and let him go home to bed. It took his Grace another five hundred yards to do so. Sir John took advantage of his companion’s preoccupation to lead the way towards his own flat in Berkeley Square, so that when the conversation terminated he would be within measurable distance of his beauty sleep.

“You have heard some of the details, I take it?” his Grace went on, at last.

“I have read the evening papers,” said Sir John cautiously. It was the truth, but not the whole truth. However, it sufficed.

“I was wondering—” His Grace coughed, uncertain how to proceed, and they traversed another two hundred yards. The great feature of a square, Sir John reflected, is that one can walk round and round it, exercising body and brain without appreciably increasing the distance between oneself and one’s front door. “I understand that on occasion you interest yourself in a little detective work.”

“The occasions are rare,” he said, “and my interest in them is always guided by my interest in, shall we say, the protagonists in the drama.”

“Surely. Sure—ly.” The Archbishop, delighted to have launched the subject so satisfactorily, began to purr. “And your interests, no doubt, my dear John—”

Sir John noted the nominative of address, and smiled wickedily into the darkness.

“Are with the right and against might, mob law, any kind of a frame-up, and so on.” Thus Johnny Simmonds on his own naïf beliefs in innocence and justice.

“Quite, quite. Well, my dear fellow, it is criminal, quite criminal, to keep you out of your bed any longer, but I am sure I can rely on you. Noblesse oblige, you know! Any information I can give you—you have only to ask. I would that I could shed upon the unhappy affair all the light it needs! Poor Comstock! Such a promising fellow. I am sad—sad.”

“My dear John!” The Archbishop’s tone was benign. It was almost princely. Sir John, recognizing a fellow artist, chuckled inwardly. The man was as much a poseur as he was himself; as vain; as great an egoist. “I place myself entirely in your hands. I do not dictate. I implore. Believe me, I am not thinking only of myself. I am a shepherd of souls, you know.” He smiled his bland, ecclesiastical smile. He was usually caricatured as a cherub. “I am a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord. For that very reason I went to see poor Comstock. You know, of course, how he received me.”

“You had no means of finding out beforehand what your reception would be?” Sir John inquired.

“My dear fellow, I did not risk attempting to make an appointment with him. I knew he would not see me.”

“Partly, I think. I used to teach him once. Blackminster Grammar School, you know.”

Sir John did know; had spent precious hours that very afternoon in finding out all he could about the school. It amounted to very little. The Archbishop seemed to have made a successful headmaster. Scholarships had been won. The O.T.C. flourished. The games record had been sound.

“What effect would Comstock’s policy have had, I wonder,” mused Sir John aloud, “upon the general public? Comstock the Apostate. … What influence would he acquire?”

“You realize,” Sir John said slowly, “that you are supposed to have had a motive for the murder?”

“Of course! Of course! How, otherwise, should I presume to encroach upon your time like this?”

“You know—” Sir John began. They were standing beneath the street lamp which was nearest to Sir John’s front door. He knew by the light at the front of the house that Martella was still waiting up for him. The Archbishop waved the plump white hand of the pontiff.

“I know the worst there is to know,” he said. Sir John recognized the curtain line. He was also annoyed at being interrupted. He let the curtain fall.

“Good-night,” he said, and went in to Martella. She had sent her maid to bed long since. Her husband took her by the elbow and conducted her into the bedroom.

She was about to protest, but, knowing the futility of doing so, gave in. Sir John, having prepared himself for bed, retired to the study.

Well-disciplined in her double capacity of wife and leading-lady to Sir John Saumarez, Martella shrugged one shapely shoulder, glanced sadly at the empty twin-bed beside her own, looked at the bedroom clock and then switched off the light.

In the study Sir John was frowning over the Home Secretary’s letter. A sheaf of newspapers lay on the floor beside his desk. The topmost of them displayed in thick black type the caption:

Sir John folded the Home Secretary’s letter and glanced with distaste at the pile of newspapers. He rose, gave an elaborate yawn, stretched his arms wide so that the magnificent Chinese dragon across his magnificent shoulders stretched also and was revealed in all its Oriental glory, let his arms fall to his sides, and went over to a gramophone cabinet in the corner. One of the biggest gramophone companies in the world had recently persuaded Sir John to make half a dozen records for them of famous speeches from Shakespeare. It was not one of his own records, however, that Sir John selected from the cabinet and placed upon the gramophone. A harsh, resonant, arresting voice said firmly:

“And I tell you this; I, Comstock. Our civilization is doomed. Doomed? It’s dead!”

Abruptly Sir John curtailed the remainder of Lord Comstock’s speech at the Albert Hall on the subject of the Sunday Amusements (Greater Facilities) Bill, and replaced the record with great care. Then he closed down the gramophone and went into the bedroom. Martella, reclining against pillows banked like cumulus cloud, was reading her bed-book. In the soft light Sir John’s pyjamas, proudly-hued as the peacock, shimmered in all their silken glory as he removed his dressing-gown and climbed into bed. Martella laid aside the book.

“Tell me,” she said, interpreting his need. She switched out the light. Sir John’s bed creaked as he flung himself on to his side.

“Comstock,” he said. “A scoundrel. A wicked devil, if ever there was one.”

“And you’ve been asked to find out who killed him,” said Martella, into the darkness.

“And why should I? “said Sir John irritably. “It’s nothing to do with me.”

“Well, don’t bother then,” said his wife. “You’re tired. You want a holiday. It doesn’t matter in the least who did it. If they hang the wrong person, it’s still nothing to do with you.”

“You’re an irritating devil, Martella,” said her husband, not for the first time during their married life. “In addition, you possess the gift of second sight. How did you know?”

“Good-night, Johnny,” said Martella. “You’d better go and see him in the morning.”

There was a considerable interval of silence. Then Sir John coughed very gently.

“Look here, Martella,” said Sir John, “when we get to that garden party to-morrow you might collect our hostess and get her away from me, will you?”

“I’m not sure. It is a shot in the dark. I cast my bread upon the waters,” said Sir John magnificently.

“You realize, don’t you,” said Martella, speaking slowly, “that there must have been a cook? No, don’t jump up and down in bed, darling. It’s bad for the springs.”

“Oh, I could round up the cook,” said his wife. “There might also be a wife belonging to the gardener, mightn’t there? You know, the gardener who saw the mysterious lady.”

“Oh, they are in all the evening papers, darling,” said Martella innocently. “You must let me have the Rolls to-morrow morning. I think you had better have the cook brought to the garden party—it is certain to be admission by ticket—vicarage garden parties always are.”

“I could go over and see the gardener’s wife at Hursley Lodge. It is eight miles by road from Winborough Vicarage. But if Littleton did it—” began Sir John.

“Alan Littleton? He couldn’t!” Martella’s voice was confident. “I’ve known him for donkey’s years.”

“Don’t be beastly, Johnny. Sometimes I believe you’ve got a cynical outlook. Alan couldn’t have done it.”

“On temperament,” mused Sir John, his eyes beginning to close in spite of his efforts to remain alert and clear-headed, “Alan is by far the most likely person to have done it.

Sir John’s vapour bath fulfilled a double purpose, one-half of which was to allow him a period of seclusion in the early morning during which he could think over the occupations of the day and its problems. Accordingly, on the morning following that upon which Lord Comstock had met his death, the knight, enclosed to the neck, considered the day. It overflowed with things to be done and bristled with problems.

“… as a personal favour to me,” the Home Secretary’s letter had said. The sentence tickled Sir John’s sense of dramatic irony. The smile on his flushed handsome face appeared but for a moment, however, and then faded, and he frowned. By the early morning post—he had been downstairs in his dressing-gown to look over his correspondence—had come another letter, containing the same request as that made by Sir Philip Brackenthorpe, the Home Secretary, and by His Grace the Archbishop of the Midlands, but couched in somewhat different terms from those in which the Archbishop, verbally, and the Home Secretary, in writing, had seen fit to express themselves.

“For God’s sake, Johnny, find out who did it, or I can see myself in jug,” the impetuous Assistant Commissioner of Police (temporarily suspended) had inscribed on a sheet of notepaper; and the sheet upon which he had expressed his anguish of soul had been so hastily torn from a writing-pad that at least one-seventh of its total surface area had never got as far as the envelope, but remained adhering to the parent block, mute witness to the Assistant Commissioner’s state of mind.

A further sentence in the Home Secretary’s admirably-worded letter, as well as a portion of the police dossier of Comstock’s death, had revealed the damaging fact that the Assistant Commissioner, who looked like having to resign his office on the strength of it, was in the extremely delicate position of having been on the premises—actually inside the house, it appeared—when the murder of Lord Comstock was committed.

Martella was breakfasting in bed, so, the appointed time for slimming-cum-meditation being over, Sir John went into the pleasant morning-room and breakfasted in solitary state. After breakfast he went into the bedroom and acquainted his wife with the fact that he was going out, but added that he would return to a very early lunch.

“How early, darling?” asked Martella. Lady Saumarez, even more attractive at thirty than she had been during her early twenties, was beautiful at any hour of the twenty-four which constitute a day. She did not look the least so in bed, leaning back against the propped-up pillows.

“Say twelve,” he replied. “We can’t be late for that garden-party. I must be there. There’s certain to be gossip, and if we can lay hands on the cook you promised me—”

“Johnny,” said Martella, “you know you’ll hate it. And after all, why should you trouble? Alan is certain to be all right. You don’t know who did it, and you don’t care! Why should they use your brains? Let the police do their own work.”

“The trouble is,” Sir John said slowly,” that although in a sense I don’t care, I do know, Martella. But proof! Proof!” sighed Sir John. “I may do innocence an injustice unless I prove myself either right or wrong.”

He left her, and called for the car. Sir John leaving his London house was usually an impressive spectacle, but this morning, except for the butler, who opened the door of the house, and the chauffeur, who opened the door of the car, there was no one to see him off. His secretary had been given a holiday; his valet had been waved away and instructed to have suitable raiment in readiness, for Sir John proposed to attend a garden-party that afternoon. No last-minute commands had to be issued; no odds-and-ends were needed to be carried out to the car. A seventeen-months’ run was over. Sir John was not prepared to produce his new play before October at the earliest; and, masterful yet suave, had put off indefinitely the signing of a new film contract. He paused a moment at the top of the flight of stone steps which led from his front door to the street, unconsciously posing against the background of the house. Then gracefully, and enjoying to the full his own appreciation of his own grace, he descended the steps and entered the waiting car. In deference to Martella’s suggestion that she should use the Rolls, Sir John had commanded his second car to be brought. He dismissed the chauffeur and drove himself.

“And likely to be, until this hellish mess is cleared up!” he snorted. “I suppose you can’t see daylight yet, Johnny?”

“Case of can’t see the wood for trees, if you ask me,” said Littleton, scowling at the tip of his cigarette before he tapped off the ash. “Likewise, too many cooks spoil the broth. Likewise—oh, hell, what’s the good of talking! I suppose you know the police have been shoved right out of it?”

“Right out of it!” Littleton went on, without noticing his visitor’s remark. “My own department, mind you, not allowed to do me a ha’porth of good. ‘The Home Secretary takes charge!’ Tchah!”

There was a long silence. Sir John smoked placidly, supine in a long chair. His eyelids drooped. There were some of his most ardent admirers who declared that never had he appeared to greater advantage than in the part of Sir Percy Blakeney, the immortal Scarlet Pimpernel. It was a nice point. He was permitting his mind to dwell on it when the impetuous Littleton broke out again:

“Of course, any one of us could have done it. That’s as clear as mud. But the devil of it is that only one of us did. You’ve heard the evidence, I suppose? Lovely, isn’t it? The Assistant Commissioner of the C.I.D., the Archbishop of the Midlands, and the Chief Whip of the Central Party, all about equally involved! Oh, we’re sitting pretty, all of us!”

“‘Sweet are the uses of adversity.’ And the weight of the circumstantial evidence goes very slightly against the Archbishop,” murmured Sir John.

“Oh, you think that, do you?” Littleton sat bolt upright in his chair. “Do you know that the shot went in so clean that it drilled the neatest little hole in Comstock’s head you ever saw? And it wasn’t fired particularly close, you know. There was no powder blackening on the head, and no traces of burning in the neighbourhood of the wound. It was a perfect shot, man! Death instantaneous! Course of the bullet slightly upwards, and all that sort of thing. Are you telling me that an Archbishop fired a shot like that?”

“Queer, though,” said Sir John, “how nobody seems to have seen Comstock alive after the Archbishop left him.”

“Queer be damned! The murderer saw him alive! And that gets us back to where we started from! There simply isn’t another bally jumping-off place at all. I’m a policeman; therefore, to most of the bone-heads that make up the great mass of the British public, I’m hardly likely to be a murderer. The Archbishop is a churchman, and murder is a sin. That lets him out. As for Hope-Fairweather, he’ll be lucky if it doesn’t ruin his career, getting mixed up in a business like this. If he’s jugged, I expect he’ll pray to be hanged. Personally, I’d like to pin it on that secretary bird. A nasty growth, that one.”

“Surely,” Sir John said mildly, “the secretary could have picked a better time. House full of people, all unexpected visitors; a possibility that others might arrive. It isn’t credible.”

“Well, but, isn’t it?” Major Alan Littleton stood astride the hearthrug, and looked down upon Sir John’s limp elegance reclining in the long and well-sprung chair. “Could he have picked a better time?” he asked. “Damn-all he could! There’s no more evidence against him at this moment than against the three of us! Less, in fact. Each one of us—Pettifer, Hope-Fairweather, and I—has a thundering great hefty motive that sticks out a mile. What motive has Mills? None, so far as anybody knows. If you ask me, that bird’s worked it jolly well if he did commit the murder.”

“He was under notice of dismissal,” said Sir John. He was not arguing with the vehement Assistant Commissioner so much as letting him talk and listening to what he had to say.

“Yes,” snorted Major Alan Littleton, “but would Comstock dare to dismiss a man who knew as much as Mills did? Of course he wouldn’t. No, no, Johnny! So far as anybody knows at present Mills had no motive for killing Comstock, and my view is that he took advantage of the presence of all three of us to get away with the murder. He would know we all had a grudge against Comstock, and he would know what the grudge was. He is a clever fellow, used to taking all sorts of risks, I should say, and having to be ready to act on the spur of the moment with nothing but his mother-wit to help him.”

“You are not suggesting that he arranged the time when you, Hope-Fairweather, and the Archbishop were to visit Hursley Lodge?” inquired Sir John. The Assistant Commissioner reluctantly shook his head.

“So far as I’m concerned that isn’t so,” he said. “I really did go down on the spur of the moment and without a word to anybody. I had got hold of some information which I hoped would give Comstock the hell of a jerk, and I rushed down to Hursley Lodge to put it across him and call him off his anti-police stunt. Honest, Johnny, what was your opinion of the swine?”

(III)

To say that Canon Pritchard had persuaded his wife to fix the Annual Garden Party for a date when he knew very well he would be attending Convocation would be an overstatement. The fact, as noted by the recording angel, was that after the date of the Annual Garden Party had been fixed, the Vicar discovered that it coincided with Convocation, a discovery which he kept strictly to himself until it was too late to do anything about it.

He was not sorry to have an excuse for absenting himself from the revels. Attendance at any garden party was not in itself his idea of spending a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon, and, even if it had been, he might have been forgiven for considering that a garden party given not for the benefit of the guests but for the benefit of the Church fund hardly came under the heading of an entertainment; for the Vicarage Garden Party held in June was like the Church Bazaar held in November; its raison d’êire, purely and simply, was to rook the wealthiest or most generous of the parishioners—the adjectives were not, of course, synonymous—of the greatest amount of money in the shortest possible time.

According to Mrs. Pritchard—but it was against the Canon’s better nature to agree with her in the matter—the parishioners were exceedingly fortunate in being invited to enjoy themselves in such charming surroundings as those of the garden attached to their vicar’s residence. The garden comprised a lawn, some shrubs, a pond, a paddock, and a small orchard, for the vicarage was situated almost on the outskirts of the sleepy old town. Beyond the orchard was a little stream, and on the other side of the stream flat water-meadows, broken by clumps of willow, led to the railway line whose steep green embankment cut short the view southwards. If enough stall-holders and side-show enthusiasts could be gathered together, it was the custom of Mrs. Pritchard to cause or permit her garden party to overflow into the water-meadows (which were nice and dry in the middle of the summer), by means of a small plank bridge. On this particular occasion—although it made no difference to anybody but Sir John Saumarez—she had arranged to have the greater tea tent there, and also one of the fortune-teller’s booths. There were always two fortune-tellers. One read hands and the other the cards. There was also Mrs. Band, who helped in the tea-tent and read tea-cups, but she was never allowed to charge more than twopence, owing to the fact that the tea was made in an urn and so hardly any tea-leaves were available. The Vicar’s wife liked people to have value for their money if it was at all possible. Usually it was not possible, and so her conscience was quite clear.

The sadness which the Vicar’s absence might have caused in any other year was entirely eclipsed on this occasion by the fact that the famous London actor-manager, Sir John Saumarez, and the famous London actress, his wife, had promised to be present; had asked if they might come, in fact; and were actually upon the scene of action just after two o’clock. It seemed as though the fame of the Vicarage Annual Garden Party—(tickets of admission one and sixpence before the day, two shillings on the day, right of admission strictly reserved)—had gone abroad even unto the uttermost ends of the earth. The rank and fashion of Winborough—for Winborough society still maintained most of the charming features of Cranford—spent a busy morning discussing what to wear, and a busy noon getting ready to wear it. There was not the slightest doubt in anybody’s mind as to whether it was desirable to meet an actor-manager and his wife. Happily, the vexed question of the social significance of stage celebrities has now been settled once and for all, at least as far as the present generation is concerned. To meet Sir John was becoming the life-ambition of all Canon Pritchard’s female parishioners, most of whom spent valuable time in inventing suitable phrases with which to describe the overwhelming occasion to all those of their acquaintance who had not met Sir John, were not likely to meet Sir John, and were going to pass the rest of their lives, if Canon Pritchard’s female parishioners were worth their salt and knew anything about themselves and their friends, in rueing the fact that not to them had been accorded the privilege of having met Sir John, and that therefore they must hide their diminished heads on all social occasions for years to come.

Sir John himself possessed to perfection the politeness of princes in that, being inwardly bored and irritated, he remained outwardly urbane and charming; and in that, wanting nothing so much as to get away from the great cloud of witnesses who were preparing to go home and brag to their nearest and dearest that they had actually conversed with Sir John, he yet found the exact quip, the perfect repartee, the unerring remark for each. Yet while smiling-eyed, gardenia in button-hole, he gave of his best, all the while he was watching and waiting for one whom he felt certain would appear. His hostess, scattering the throng of young and old maids as though she were shooing poultry, took him apart almost at the beginning of the proceedings, and besought him to sell autographs. She pressed fountain-pen and loose-leaved notebook upon him, set him upon a garden chair, dragged a wicker table towards him, and left him high and dry, like Matthew at the receipt of custom, with strict instructions to get what he could, but on no account to take less than a shilling a time. Sir John permitted his shoulders to indicate that he yielded to the situation. Martella’s grin, as Mrs. Pritchard carried her off to sell button-holes to the male portion of the parish, he ignored; he only hoped she would be able to produce the promised cook at a suitable moment, and that the cook herself might have something helpful to confide to him.

When his hostess and his wife were out of sight he rose, and with the assistance of a little girl who seemed disposed to spend the entire afternoon in leaning over his shoulder and breathing heavily intp his right ear, moved chair and table nearer the garden gate. Fortunately for his purpose, there was only one entrance into the vicarage grounds, and Sir John, salesman of autographs at not less than one shilling a time, was not as tremendously sought after as Sir John, private lion warranted to roar nicely and not to bite, had been; and so, as the crowd melted away, he was able to keep one eye on the autograph hunters and the other on the gate. He worked off a dozen or more autographs, and the little girl, coming, apparently, to the conclusion that the performance, although interesting, was not going to vary, removed herself from his vicinity. So did all the people who either could not or would not afford a shilling, and Sir John, caressing his ear with a silk handkerchief, began to feel that the Vicar’s wife, despite herself, had done him a good turn. The June day was warm. At the back of Sir John’s chair stood a tall tree, young, but clothed with all its dark green summer leaves. Sir John removed his hat and laid it, after a preliminary survey of the surface, on the little table; perceived at a little distance a deck-chair, inviting and untenanted. With a hunted glance, to make certain he was not detected in his lapse from duty, he drew it beneath the shade of the tree and in less than three minutes he was reclining in it with his eyes closed.

“Mrs. Pritchard said I was to make all the people come to you and buy an autograph. I don’t think any more want to come. Can I go and play now?”

The maiden accepted half a crown with some alacrity and darted off. In a few moments she was back again.

“Thanks. Here’s the change. Ice-cream fourpence. It was a brick. Lemonade threepence. I had the home-made. I’d rather have had fizzy, but it was fivepence.”

She pressed one and elevenpence, all in coppers, into the knight’s reluctant hand.

“And the pretty one—she’s your wife, isn’t she?—said where do you want the cook put, because she’s found her.”

Sir John dashed sleep aside, and, incidentally, one and elevenpence in coppers on the ground. They grovelled for them.

“Finding’s keepings,” Sir John exclaimed, managing to find twopence halfpenny by leaning over the side of the chair. And then, “I’ll come,” he said, preparing to rise from its depths.

Sir John, chuckling inwardly at Martella’s elliptically expressed warning, relaxed again.

“I’ll bring the cook. She’s fat. She’ll want a chair. Your wife said she’ll give you a quarter of an hour—and I think that’s all.”

“It would be,” said Sir John, but he said it to the empty air. He glanced at his watch. Twenty-five minutes to four. Experience told him that the refreshment tent would be comparatively empty for another quarter of an hour at least.

The cook appeared, a balloon of a woman, short of breath, perspiring, and obviously impressed by Sir John’s sartorial magnificence.

A nice cup o’ tea? Nothing she couldn’t do with better, thanking you kindly, sir. And she always did say that tea slaked the thirst better’n all these cooling drinks, so-called.

The big marquee, in charge of one of the daughters Pritchard, was dark and cool. Sir John chose a table, steered his companion to it, called for tea, fruit salad and cream, bread, butter, and cakes, mortified his shrinking interior for the sake of establishing an entente cordiale; and got his story.

“We all knowed he was a wrong one. But there! Nothing to do half the year or more, and me with a widowed sister and her two boys. Both at the County School and doing well. It wasn’t for me to say his P’s and Q’s for him. Too old to take any harm, what with not being his style, too, and all. So I stopped. Too quiet for some, but there! I likes a quiet life, I do, having buried two husbands and one at sea.”

“So that very morning, funny enough, two magpies flew acrost the kitchen garden. ‘Means something,’ I said to George Briggs, ‘though what,’ I said, ‘who can tell?’ Anyway, Mr. Farrant orders the lunch, same as usual, and him never to eat again, poor man, which I can’t help but shed a tear,” said the cook, producing, largely for Sir John’s benefit, a black-bordered handkerchief, and wiping her eyes, “wrong one though he was. But there! What are lords for, if not to do the things we’re all too poor to afford?”

“Farrant ordered the lunch,” Sir John reminded her, after a tactful interval of silence and the shuddering consumption of a small piece of tinned pineapple. Recalled, not so much to the thread of her narrative as to her duties as a guest, the cook scraped up the last vestiges of cream from her plate, stretched forth a be-ringed hand to the cakes, and then observed:

“Ah, Mr. Farrant. I never took to that man. Friendly as you please we was, but reely to say trust him, no, that I never couldn’t. But find out things! There’s nothing that man didn’t know. All the ladies, and their names, and where they come from. And that’s not all.

“‘’Is Grace is in there,’ Farrant says to me, ‘going for ’is lordship ’ammer and tongs. You come and listen to ’em,’ he says. So I did, under the stairs, there being a door there from the kitchen, and not having to put the cutlets on for another half an hour, and the vegetables done and covered up against cooking ’em. My word! You should ’ave ’eard it! Not words, mind you, I didn’t hear. At least,” the virtuous woman amended, pursing her lips, “I did hear one or two, from his lordship, has I should be very sorry to repeat, even on oath, which I suppose it’s got to come to.”

“One fears so. Yes.” He introduced a portion of tinned apricot into his mouth and swallowed it heroically.

“Have some more cream, sir,” said the cook. “Wholesome cream is, I always say.”

With inward misgivings and a sigh for the reactions of his waistline to this heresy, Sir John accepted the lavish spoonful which she dollopped onto his plate from her own teaspoon. His smile and his thanks, however, were minted from the finest gold of courtesy. The cook beamed.

“So you didn’t really hear anything of what was said?” Sir John suggested. The cook bridled.

“Who said I didn’t? I could have heard plenty, if I’d wished. But ladies don’t wish. Brought there to hear the row I was, and hear the row I did. And awful was his lordship’s fearful words,” said the cook, feeling, apparently, that nothing but blank verse could do justice to the subject of his lordship’s language. ‘Guts of a flea,’ he says. And ‘blasted hypocrisy.’ And ‘whited sepulchres. That’s out of your own book of clap-trap barley sugar,’ he says. And all like that. Abuse. Just vulgar. Though he was a lord, he’d raised hisself from dirt, as well we knew. And dirty does that dirty is,” said the cook, inspired. “No class. That’s what it come to. But the Archbishop, poor old man, I couldn’t hear a word of him except his voice, and then when his lordship knocked his swivel chair over, me hating violence, which my first husband used to throw the flat irons about in his rage—”

“As who shouldn’t? Who done the dusting in that room? Why, me. Can’t you see a butler doing dusting? It was the swivel chair at his lordship’s desk that went over, of that I’m certain.”

Sir John produced the police plan of Comstock’s study. On it was clearly marked an overturned chair. But it was the chair near the door. He showed it to the cook.

“That chair may or may not have been overturned when the police turned up,” said she, “but if I was on oath, which surely is what it’s got to come to, the chair I heard crash was his lordship’s swivel chair. A woman gets to know furniture, sir, you know. Besides, the sound wasn’t by the door.”

“A dream?” said the cook. “Ah, and in a dream I thought I was when no less than that police officer turned up all unexpected. It was Mr. Farrant told me, else never should I have guessed he was anything to do with the police. All spruced up as nice as ninepence and in a suit like everybody else, and looking quite the gentleman. ‘He’s in the drawing-room,’ says Mr. Farrant, ‘hoping to get into his lordship. Breach of promise at last, I’ll warrant you,’ says Mr. Farrant to me,’ and him with a warrant in his pocket, I shouldn’t wonder. Well, he’ll have to wait till Sir Charles has had his do, warrant or no warrant, I’ll bet,’ he says.”

“And the spit and image of his picture in the papers,” said the cook excitedly. “He was in the waiting-room while all the to-do was going on. The police officer gentleman came afterwards. Sir Charles I was not quite surprised to see. Some funny fish being fried in politics, Sir John.”

“Not having heard him so referred to, but always as Sir Charles,” the oracle replied. “However, there we was, and me nearly jumping out of my skin when they said his lordship was dead. ‘All of ’em seen him and nobody done it?’ I says to Mr. Mills, which is too much like something on the pictures to altogether take my fancy, present company accepted,” said the cook magnificently.

“No. Say those gals what they like of Adolphe Menjou,” the cook continued—“me taking no stock in Ronald Coleman as too tall and with that spoilt look—your sideface makes my ’eart go all of a leap, which is not,” she concluded archly, “as it ought to be. But there! we all go girlish at the films, you know, Sir John, and no harm done that I knows on.”

(IV)

“I had to come,” said the voice. “I inquired at your house. They said you were here. Dear Sir John—”

“Ah, Miss Hope-Fairweather,” he said. He glanced round cautiously. Their portion of the garden was deserted except for the small girl who had found a swing and was now engaged in seeing whether it was possible to kick the roof of the summer-house. Sir John smiled and beckoned. With a jolt that threatened to dislocate every limb, she dropped to earth.

“Would it be possible for you to find Mrs. Pritchard and give her these,” he said, handing her the loose-leaved notebook and the pen. The child considered him.

“Do I understand that you are questioning my good faith?” he asked. He gave the money he had made, having first considerably augmented it. The little girl counted it carefully, vouchsafed him an approving smile, said, “Thirteen pounds twelve. Righto,” and trotted off.

“Shall we walk?” Sir John suggested, steering Miss Hope-Fairweather across the lawn and past a meagre shrubbery.

“You don’t seem at all surprised to see me,” the lady said. She was young and charming and, it was obvious, a prey to considerable anxiety. Sir John considered her.

“I’m not easily surprised,” he said. As a matter of fact, he had expected her. “I hoped to pick up information here. Gossip. You know these county towns.”

“But there!” his rueful smile was eloquent. “Once I was coerced into collecting money, people fled from me. My shadow frightened them. The place wherein I was became a desert.”

“I don’t believe there is much information to pick up,” she said. “Poor Brother Charles is in despair. He feels—I don’t mean to be ungrateful, Sir John!—but he does rather feel that it is madness on the part of the Home Secretary to keep the police out of the case for two whole days. He says that every possible clue will be cold and dead by that time. I came to see whether I could be of any help. I know all that happened. I know” —she floundered, but recovered—” I know someone else went with him, and, as he can’t appear in the affair—Oh, it is unfortunate! He is so brilliant—his career—everything!”

Sir John, his eyes upon the unweeded gravel path, managed to convey by the expression on his flawless countenance, presented profile-wise to her, his entire agreement that the whole affair, from start to finish, had been one vast “misfortune.” Greek tragedy, this death of Comstock, invented by the gods who kill us for their sport, Sir John’s face said; his hands, with a gesture of helplessness, bore witness to it; while his shoulders, expressive always, deplored the sense of humour of the gods.

Martella, beautifully gowned, exquisitely cool in spite of the warmth of the day and her efforts on behalf of the church fund, manifested herself apparently from the depths of the shrubbery. Sir John, who knew her inherent dislike of spiders and most of the forms of animal and insect life which haunt the shady places, realized that this could not actually be so. She came up to them, a hunted expression in her eyes.

“My dear, they’ve just begun the Country Dancing. Listen; you can hear the music.”

They all three listened. The strains of a solitary violin, wailing like a lost soul which had found its way into the vicarage garden and could not remember how to get out again, came to their ears on a rising cadence and then faded away.

“Mrs. Pritchard is singing the instructions and dancing, and pushing all those who don’t know how to do it, and calling out, ‘B music again, please,’ until I couldn’t bear it,” Lady Saumarez explained, exhibiting a distressing tendency to giggle. “It seemed a splendid chance to slip away. You could get over to Hursley Lodge now, Johnny, if you wanted to go. We shan’t be missed for an hour at least. Mrs. Pritchard is in her element. Oh, and she has changed into her Girl Guide uniform.”

In three seconds they had sneaked out at the vicarage gate and were in the car. Very gently Sir John let in the clutch.

A constable was on guard at the gates of Hursley Lodge, and another kept the door. Sir John, slowing the car to a decorous five miles an hour, produced the Home Secretary’s pass, received the official salute, passed on, took the left-hand bend of the drive, and pulled up exactly opposite the steps. The Home Secretary’s pass having been duly scrutinized and saluted again, Sir John followed Miss Hope-Fairweather and Martella into the house.

“What do you expect to find?” Martella whispered. The stillness—the queer hush of death which hung over the place—was unnerving.

He again produced the plan of the house which had been supplied to him, and copies of the police photographs of the room where the murder of Lord Comstock had occurred, and in they went. The big desk stood in the bay window, with the light entering to the right of any person who sat at it. The revolving chair backed the light, and anyone sitting in it was facing the concealed door in the bookcase. This concealed door Sir John opened, and through the opening entered the drawing-room. He soon returned to the study, however, sat at the desk, and, after telling the two women what he was going to do, he pushed over the revolving chair. Then he inspected the overturned chair near the hall door, entered the office through the double doors, and then rejoined Miss Hope-Fairweather and Martella in the hall. To his wife’s inquiring look he vouchsafed a most eloquent shrug of the shoulders.

“Come into the garden,” he said. But when they were out on the drive and had thrice circumnavigated the clump of trees, he was still silent and so obviously preoccupied that his companions did not interrupt the flow of his thoughts. At last he said to Miss Hope-Fairweather:

“I don’t believe Charles has seen him since. Mills is being detained at Winborough, isn’t he? Won’t you—could you find time to go and see Charles, Sir John? Or you could have him to see you, if you wished, I suppose, couldn’t you?”

“I can’t see that Mills would gain anything,” said Sir John, almost in a stage aside. “It would be killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.”

“But if you found that Mills would benefit by Lord Comstock’s death—” she said. She caught her breath, and added bravely, “But I can’t believe that Mills would have been able to seize his opportunity when all those people were in the house. Imagine it! The Archbishop, the Assistant Commissioner of Police, and my brother were all either in the study or in a room next-door to it. How could Mills have stood the slightest chance of committing the murder and remaining undetected?”

“But that,” Sir John said quietly, “would apply to everybody. Don’t worry about Sir Charles. It is a pity that he went at all. But it can’t be helped.”

“Oh, I know Charles behaved like a fool,” said Sir Charles’s next-of-kin. “But it was only his sense of duty! He’s so enthusiastic. He never has spared himself. Whether he did it or not—but, of course, he didn’t—it will ruin him!”

“Of course, Sir Charles has behaved recklessly. He was stupid. A hopeless blunder, this, which he will find it difficult to retrieve.” Sir John, pretending to be unaware of two indignant faces, halted, produced a cigarette, fitted it into a holder, lighted it, all with maddening elegance and precision. Miss Hope-Fairweather kicked the gravel with a pointed, patent toe-cap, the threatened tears averted. Sir John winked solemnly at Martella and resumed his stride. He could bear almost anything but tears.

“This gardener,” said Sir John, changing the tempo briskly. He went up to the front door and made discreet inquiry. The constable, who was a local man, indicated the way to the gardener’s cottage.

“Not in these shoes,” his wife said promptly, interpreting the unspoken request. “We’ll sit in the car until you come.”

So Sir John, clothed like the lily of the field, from beautiful hat to lavender gloves and the most perfect shoes in the world, set off alone. The cottage was not difficult to find. He passed between banks of blazing colour up to a rose-arched open door whereon he tapped.

“I know,” Sir John sighed profoundly, or appeared to, at the disturbance he was causing. “I know. It’s quite too bad. But important. Really important,” said Sir John. He was invited in. One chair was dusted to receive the knight; another to receive his hat and gloves.

“George! George! A gentleman to see you. Ay, and put your collar on. No, it isn’t one of they newspaper fellows, neither. ’Tis a gentleman, I tell ’ee. Brush your hair. Well, put on dickey, then, but do you hurry yourself, not to keep company waiting.”

“Well, George?” Sir John smiled, man to man. “Don’t throw me out. I know you’ve been vastly bothered. But murders, George, don’t happen every day.”

“Only badgered ain’t the word. Swarm of bees, more like. All day yesterday, and all this morning. ‘Tell you? ’I says. ‘Well, what can I tell you?’

“‘Who killed Comstock?’ says the silliest fool of the whole lot. Him I give a look to. ‘Not me,’ I says. ‘But not for want of wishing, neither,’ I says.”

Sir John produced his card; held it between two slender fingers. George wiped his large hands on his thighs and took the card by the smallest possible corner; gazed at it. Suddenly he called:

“Come you in here.” She came. “Take a read of that, my gal. We’ve been to your theayter. Ah, and seen you act, my lord,” he said, addressing the knight with awe, and conferring on him a title which had the merit of being æsthetically correct.

“Beautiful it was. Right beautiful,” sighed Emmie. “Lovely you looked, Sir John, you in your crown. A dook you was. And when you forgave her all, I could ha’ cried me eyes out.”

“Did, too, nearly,” said her husband, grinning. “Used up your own handkercher, ah, and mine as well.”

“But you must come again,” Sir John said cheerfully. He took the card and scribbled on the back. “Any date after the end of September. Send this to the box office and they’ll give you seats. Dress circle you would like, I think.”

After that, it seemed, they would tell him anything. George told the tale, which was earnestly edited by Emmie. It was no different, however, from the version which had been given to Sir John in the Home Secretary’s letter. Sir John forbore to cross-question, and, as soon as it was possible to do so, took his leave. Before he reached the garden gate, however, George came trotting after him.

“There was one thing,” he said. “Mebbe nout, but I’ll tell ’ee. Mr. Mills is a dead shot wi’ a rook rifle. Ah, a proper O.T.C. I calls him. All bombast and no belly, if you take me, sir.”

Sir John walked on. The most interesting point which had emerged, both during the interview in the Home Secretary’s private room at the Home Office and in the present instance, was George Briggs’ personal dislike of his late employer. Sir John had hoped to eliminate suspects. To find himself adding to their number was, to say the least of it, disheartening. But behind his disappointment another feeling struggled. Sir John racked his brain, for the feeling was one of enlightenment on a hitherto obscure point. Yet, for the moment, the point itself, no longer obscure, nevertheless had become elusive. It eluded him for seven miles out of the eight that lay between Hursley Lodge and the vicarage. As the outskirts of Winborough came into view, however—a church tower stood up out of a flat green field—he suddenly accelerated, and the car tore over the last few hundred yards. Sir John said urgently:

“We shall have to get away, Martella. How long do you think it will take you to find our hostess, and make our farewells?”

Martella was saved from the necessity of replying, for Mrs. Pritchard, perspiring and ready to overwhelm Sir John with thanks for the autograph money, was bearing down upon them. Sir John was graceful, charming, modest; his leave-taking was unexceptionable. His hostess, still in her Girl Guide uniform, a modern Boadicea surrounded by her daughters, stood in the gateway waving her valedictions until the car was out of sight. Miss Hope-Fairweather had driven away in her own car. Martella was taken home. Sir John sat back in the car and possessed his soul in patience during a traffic jam. Once he looked at his watch. The time was twenty minutes past six. At twenty-six minutes past six he was at the Home Secretary’s private house.

“The pistol? Certainly you can borrow it. We’ve the two of them, you know,” Sir Philip said. “Want to see the bullet that came out of Comstock’s head? You don’t? Oh, all right. Any news?”

“Plenty,” replied Sir John, “but not for broadcasting.” He noted that Sir Philip looked harassed and pale.

Sir Charles was pleased to see Sir John; or said he was. He referred to the murder of Comstock as the devil of a mess, and invited Sir John to dine with him at his club. Sir John smiled; shook his head; said he had come to badger Sir Charles; deprecated the fact that he was a nuisance. But had Sir Charles really worn his gloves all the time he had been at Comstock’s house? Sir Charles, who gave his questioner a fleeting but none the less a distinct impression that he had expected to be asked a far more awkward question, flushed slightly and replied that really he was damned if he knew.

“I was impatient, you know, Saumarez, at being kept waiting. I particularly wished my interview with Comstock to be secret. It would have been most damaging to me in my public capacity if it had got about that I was visiting Comstock privately like that! In fact, it hasn’t done me a bit of good, apart from the fact that the silly ass got himself murdered like that. You take me? Devilish awkward. And when I’m impatient, I fidget with things. Gloves, for instance: Take ’em off, put ’em on—any old thing. Just fidgety, you know. But how much I had ’em on—or off—”

“Oh, shooting? Well, of course, when I get the chance. Oh, I take you! Forgotten for the moment that Comstock was—ah—shot. Oh yes, I’m pretty deadly on my day. Enjoy it, you know. Scotland. Don’t care for shooting over English moors. Tame. Devilish tame. And for fellahs who are going to hit a beater, Scotland is less expensive. Fellahs up there are so hardy. Scarcely notice a few pellets in the leg, or whatnot.”

He laughed. Sir John joined him. They drank whisky, and parted on the best of terms. For some reason—possibly, Sir John reflected, because he did not know of it—Sir Charles had made no mention of his sister’s visit to the vicarage garden.

The Archbishop of the Midlands was staying at the Neo-Hydro Hotel in Piccadilly. So handy, he explained, for Lambeth Palace. Sir John looked at the luxuriously appointed room and, rather cautiously, agreed.

“But you come on business!” the Archbishop exclaimed. “Tell me all, my dear fellow. You have solved our little problem?” He, too, seemed jauntier than the circumstances appeared to justify.

“Poor Comstock,” replied the prelate, without hesitation. He set his finger-tips together and nodded. “Comstock.”

“It would appear so. Yes. Striking, that. I spoke in metaphor. I was very much disturbed. But—prophecy, yes. Poor fellow. Poor misguided fellow.”

“But yesterday the word of Cæsar might

Have stood against the world,”

“Yes, yes. How true. Very true. A power in the land. Poor Comstock. Against the law, against the Church—and yet he had a soul to save. A brilliant boy, determined, brave, ambitious boy. Do you know, Saumarez, the boy that was Comstock—before he became Comstock, you know—had almost endless potentialities. A remarkable boy. And, to finish your own quotation—

‘now lies he there,

And none so poor to do him reverence.’”

“If you are interested in acting, come to my house to-morrow. Ten o’clock, say. An informal occasion, but not without interest, if you wish to prove your point.”

“That there are no actors nowadays,” Sir John said, with his charming smile.

“At ten to-morrow? But how very pleasant. I shall enjoy it above all things!”

(V)

“What, a play toward! I’ll be an auditor;

An actor too, perhaps, if I see cause.”

The most imposing piece of furniture in the room was a magnificent wireless receiving-set. It was at the side of the room between the door and the fireplace, and, on the opposite side to it, chairs were arranged as though for an audience to watch private theatricals. Beside the receiving-set was a revolving chair of the kind used in business offices.

“But what are you going to do, Johnny?” asked his wife, surveying the transformed drawing-room not with amazement, for she had learned the uselessness of ever being surprised at Sir John’s doings, but with a certain amount of resigned displeasure. “I thought, after that awful affair yesterday afternoon, that we might spend a quiet day.”

“That reminds me,” said her husband. “I wish you would go back to bed. You don’t mind, do you? This is a joke—of a kind. You wouldn’t be interested. It will last less than an hour.”

“You answered that yourself yesterday,” he reminded her. “I’d rather you went, Martella. Please. I shan’t be very long.” His eyes were smiling, but his chin was purposeful.

She gave in, knowing well enough that he anticipated danger; she was conscious, too, that she would be in his way; would take some part of his mind from his task if she insisted on remaining.

A quarter of an hour later the audience, consisting of Sir Charles Hope-Fairweather, the Assistant Commissioner, the Archbishop of the Midlands, the editor of the Daily Broadcast, the editors of Lord Comstock’s own Daily Bugle and Evening Clarion, a couple of dramatic critics, and a distinguished dramatist, had assembled and were seated. The chief protagonists in the drama looked profoundly uncomfortable. The other guests were agog.

“What’s Johnny up to now?” said one of the dramatic critics to the editor of the Daily Broadcast. The editor looked omniscient, but felt curious. The dramatist smiled slightly. He seemed less excited than the others. An unconscionably late session in this same room on the preceding night—Sir John had let his visitor out of the house at twelve-thirty and had gone to bed himself at five to four, word-perfect, but unutterably weary—had sapped his appetite for sensation.

A manservant entered and began to draw heavy curtains across the windows, excluding every vestige of light. An electric switch clicked somewhere, and a dull glow appeared on the ceiling high above the audience’s heads. Sir John remained invisible, but his voice came across the room, masterful, suave, and soothing:

“Gentlemen, an experiment. Something new in broadcast plays. Scene, the interior of the late Lord Comstock’s study at Hursley Lodge. Time 11.35 a.m. on the day before yesterday.”

There was a disconcerted rustling among the audience. The Archbishop of the Midlands was heard to make inarticulate sounds. There was a moment’s silence. Then, from the direction of the wireless receiving-set, an arresting voice, harsh and resonant, said angrily:

The editor of the Evening Clarion, cursed with the imagination of a film-fan, swore under his breath in a scared manner. His more experienced colleague grunted and half-laughed. But both were silenced by the second voice, smooth, ecclesiastical, and cool:

“Gentlemen, the conversation you are going to hear is not the conversation which did actually and indeed take place between the late Lord Comstock and his Grace the Archbishop of the Midlands on that fatal day.”

Sir John permitted the rubber stamp remark to emerge unchallenged by his critical faculty.

“What are we going to hear?” It was the voice of the dramatist asking a pre-arranged question. Sir John replied courteously:

There was a long pause, while the peculiar ticking of the wireless set, indicative of the fact that the broadcasting station was active but that the programme was held up for the moment, tautened the nerves of the susceptible and imaginative editor of the Evening Clarion. He was about to whisper a remark to his colleague of the Daily Bugle for the sake of breaking the tension when the ticking noise ceased abruptly, and the announcer’s voice said winningly:

“Hallo, everybody. This is the Daventry National Programme. We are going to broadcast an imaginary dialogue between the late Lord Comstock, who was murdered by an unknown assailant at his country residence, Hursley Lodge, probably between the hours of noon and one-fifteen p.m. on the day before yesterday, and the Most Reverend William Anselm Pettifer, D.D., Archbishop of the Midlands. This dialogue is the first of a series of talks between great men in differing walks of life, putting the points of view of each before the public. Our aim—the aim of the B.B.C.—is to give you an opportunity of hearing arguments in favour of and against such varying modes of living as those of an Archbishop of the English Church and a peer who made most of his fortune out of “stunt” attacks on that Church and, indeed, on all the forces of law and order, through the medium of privately owned but very widely circulated newspapers.”

There was another pause, of shorter duration this time, and then the two sentences which had preceded Sir John Saumarez’s last remark were repeated, and were followed straight away by the promised Imaginary Conversation.

“Ah, Comstock, forgive me if I interrupt your work. You received my letter, I think?”

“You received no letter? Then, my dear fellow, a thousand pardons for coming upon you so unceremoniously. You must forgive me, Comstock, but, believe me, it is for your own sake that I have come. May I sit down? Over here by the door? Admirable.” The silky voice faded. There was a slight pause before Lord Comstock’s harsh tones came over again.

“Say what you’ve come to say, sir, if you please. I really am extremely pushed for time.”

“Of course, of course, my dear fellow,” the Archbishop’s voice said soothingly. “I will come to the point at once. Comstock, for your own sake, stop printing your newspaper attacks on the Church.”

“I am not attacking the Church. Why the devil don’t you read intelligently?” The grating tones caused the rough words to sound positively belligerent.

“My good boy—” The silky tones took on the exasperated note of flouted authority.

“And I’m not your good boy! I was your good boy at school, but I’m nobody’s good boy now.” Lord Comstock’s voice was rising to a yell. “All this blasted clap-trap about good boys—I’m free of you, I tell you, free!” The word echoed through the room, a triumph of barbarianism. “And I tell you, too, I’ll have all your churches in ruins about your ears before I’ve finished with you! It’s not the Church that I’m attacking! It’s the whole foundation of the Church, Christianity itself—”

“Comstock, beware of what you say!” There was a cutting edge to the warning words. The schoolmaster was reaching for his cane. “There is such blasphemy as, even to-day, in this material age, God punishes. I am no prophet to bring fire from heaven! I am a weak old man, unworthy, even in mine own sight, but this I swear. The wages of sin is death! Death, Comstock! And you, boy, are unfit to die!” The headmaster had eclipsed the archbishop for the moment. Comstock, an angry boy, raged furiously. “I am not a boy! Clap-trap! Clap-trap! I’m not afraid of death! Death is nothing! That’s why I’m not afraid of it! Get out of here, you damned old hypocrite! You whited sepulchre! And that’s out of your own book of clap-trap barley sugar! When I was a kid I had to listen to all that sort of poppycock! But I’m damned if I’ll listen any longer!” There was a crash, as of a table being thumped.

“Yes, you will listen, Comstock. Shall I tell you something?” The voice was smooth again. It had regained its gentleness, like steel re-sheathed in velvet.

“Get farther away then!” Comstock was petulant. “I can’t breath with you standing over me like a blessed Solomon Eagle! Why the devil don’t you sit down! If you’ve got anything to say, say it, man! You don’t seem to have the guts of a flea!”

“What are you afraid of, Comstock?” the gentle voice, surcharged with tenderness, inquired.

“I’m not afraid! What the hell have I got to be afraid of? But I want air, man, air!” It was the voice of a man fighting Fate.

“There is little enough air in the grave, Comstock. But I will sit down if you wish it, my boy. Listen, Comstock!” Persuasion and irony were so nicely blent in the voice of the Archbishop as to be almost indistinguishable.

“I don’t want to listen, I tell you! Shut up and get out of here! I’ll ring the bell and have you chucked out, dammit!”

“Listen, Comstock.” The soft voice was inexorable. “‘When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man I put away childish things.’ You remember, Comstock? I know it was in your last term that I preached a sermon in the big school hall, with that as my text. You do remember, Comstock?”

“Oh, clap-trap! Twaddle! Poppycock!” It was the shout of a boy shouting down his own fears of the dark. The audience stirred uncomfortably.

“I think not, my boy. You see, my dear Comstock, you never have put away childish things. Have you ever watched a little tiny boy with a hammer, Comstock? No, you wouldn’t, because your adventures do not lead you into lovingly watching children at their play.”

“You old swine! Shut up! Mind your own business, and be damned!” The voice was hoarse now, rough with hate, indescribably coarsened.

“A little boy with a hammer wants to smash things, Comstock. You want to smash things, too. Poor little boy, Comstock! Poor destructive little boy! But a grown man, conscious of his manhood, also uses a hammer to subdue things to his will. It helps him, Comstock, to mend and make—”

“As you will, Comstock, as you will. The loveliest and most prolific plants require the stoutest canes, Comstock. Your gardener, I am sure, would bear me out in that.”

“The lazy hound! No flowers on show! Well, practically none! He got the rough side of my tongue, confound him!”

“Oh, to hell with you and your ‘boys.’ I am not a boy, I tell you! And I’ll smash you! You and your Church! You and your religion! And your twaddle! And your superstition! And your damned idol-worship! You shan’t lead the people by the nose! You shan’t promise them heaven! You shan’t threaten them with hell! I’ve got the tabs on you! You’re done for! Germany’s gone Nudist already! England—”

“What signifies the Nudist Movement, Comstock? Adam and Eve, the first Nudists, fell from grace by putting on clothing, not by taking it off.” The voice was amusedly tolerant, as of untutored wit.

“Oh, you can laugh! You can jest! Nero fiddled while Rome burned, didn’t he?”

“At any rate, ‘Back to Paganism’ is my slogan, Doctor. The thought of it makes me better-tempered already! Christianity is outworn! It’s dead! We want a creed with good red blood in it!”

“Blasphemer! Pause! Think!” The voice had changed. “I beseech you, Comstock, in the name of your own brilliant boyhood; in the name of the sacrifices your dear father made for you, so that you should become, as he said to me, a gentleman. Dear Comstock, pause and consider. With your gifts you could right wrongs, Comstock. With your wealth you could do great kindness, Comstock. With your personality, your grit, your magnetism, you could affect great numbers of your fellow-creatures, and for good, not evil. I beseech you, hear me—”

“I won’t hear you! Damn it, sit down, man! Don’t come hovering here! Get away from the table! Leave that gun alone! Don’t meddle with my things! And leave me alone! You needn’t think that poppycock gets anywhere with me! It doesn’t, I tell you; it doesn’t!”

“There is a story about schoolboys—you were a schoolboy once—and about a very brave headmaster. Once I was a headmaster. You remember, Comstock?”

“Oh, dry up with your ‘Comstock, Comstock’! I know my own name, don’t I?”

“I don’t know, Comstock, I’m sure. You see, we haven’t used your own name yet, have we?”

“Given me by my godfathers and my godmother and all that bunkum, I suppose?”

“No. I meant your father’s name. The name he kept respectable and respected, Comstock. Not a purchased name—for services rendered, Comstock.”

“This headmaster, Comstock, saved a boy’s life by sucking diphtheria infection out of his throat through a tube.”

“Nevertheless, you have one, and so have I. And I am going to risk mine to save yours, Comstock. Yes, I’m going farther off. … Yes, get up, Comstock. … Ah, the chair’s going over. … Now, Comstock. …”

There was the crash of a falling chair, and, at the same instant, the flash of a discharged revolver, but no sound of a shot. Several of the audience leapt to their feet. At the same time the lights went up, and Sir John Saumarez, smiling but jaded, blinked in the sudden glare, and said, deprecatingly:

“Good God, Johnny! That was never you imitating those two voices,” exclaimed the more important of the dramatic critics. Sir John, looking white and tired, bowed his acknowledgment of the compliment.

In the second row, the Archbishop of the Midlands blinked. Everybody elaborately avoided looking at him. He rose, and walked out to Sir John. The audience, conscious that the most dramatic moment was at hand and had not yet been staged, looked curious yet uncomfortable, as though the play was over and they were eavesdropping upon a dressing-room scene more tense than the play but no business of theirs.

The Archbishop linked his arm in that of Sir John. Magnificently master of himself, especially when his old eyes grew accustomed to the light, he said:

“Dear John, I am in your hands. I can only say, my dear fellow, that I wish to God I had conducted myself one-half as well. As a matter of fact, I lost my temper at the interview. Lost it completely. Poor Comstock! But you’ve proved your point magnificently.”

The audience was filing out. Nobody was speaking; but, decorously, as though in the presence of death, three editors, two dramatic critics, a Chief Whip (dazed), an Assistant Commissioner (temporarily suspended and softly swearing), and a famous dramatist (shaking his head as though over some dubious course of action), made irreproachable exeunt through the high door of Sir John’s drawing-room and were shown out into the street by an impeccable manservant. Once away from the precincts they broke into a conversation more excited by far than that which was going on in the room they had lately left.

“I found that you had started a branch of the O.T.C. at Blackminster,” Sir John was saying. “And, of course, the dramatic instinct is strongly implanted in you; fostered by your vocation.”

“Just coming,” Sir John replied. “Pardon me. I won’t be more than”—he was meticulous in such matters—“five minutes.”

He glanced at the open door and then at His Grace. It might be said by those who did not know him that he winked. Then he went out to his wife.

Sir John affected to consider the point. Then he said: “You’re a wonderful woman, Martella.”

“And you’re right. Utterly right.” He remained pensive for a moment. Then the front door slammed. “I appreciate your point.” He paused. The footlights glared. The curtain prepared to descend. “And I believe,” said Sir John, still pensive, “that the Archbishop has appreciated mine.”

CHAPTER II

SIR JOHN TAKES HIS CUE

BY GLADYS MITCHELL

I

II

(III)

(IV)

(V)