The Verdict of You All. Illustrated, page 3
Chapter 5 Some Questions
The scullery door showed no sign of having been tampered with. It had, in fact, been found unlocked in the morning, but as the scullery-maid confessed that, though her orders were to lock it at night, she frequently forgot to do so, there was nothing to show whether the intruder had gone beyond the scullery, even if he had actually entered it. The various passages between the scullery and the study were carefully searched, but yielded no evidence of interest.
“Well,” said Inspector Dobson, “I think that’s all we can do on this line at the moment. Now I’d like to ask a few questions: Let’s see: it was the head-housemaid who found the body, wasn’t it? Send her along to the study, Raffles; and I’ll see the butler after her. Funny thing none of the family showing up; generally, it takes one all one’s time to disentangle oneself from them.”
“That’s Inspector Smithers, sir,” said the constable, loyal to his own chief. “He saw them—Miss Smethurst, that is, and her young man—as soon as he got here, and told them you’d be coming and would let them know when you wanted them.”
“So much the better. I can’t complain of not having a clear run. Well, send Mary Ann, or whatever her name is, along.”
“Alice, sir. Yes, sir,” murmured the model lieutenant.
Alice at once disclosed herself to be a treasure—level-headed, methodical and intelligent—but none the less the detective was unable to glean any fresh information from her. She always tidied up the study at about seven in the morning—Sir John would allow none of the under-servants to touch the room. On this occasion she found the door unlocked as usual, but was surprised to find the electric light on. She was crossing the room to draw the curtains and open the French windows, when she saw Sir John’s body lying by the writing-table. She knelt down beside it and touched the shoulder, when the stiffness of the body, coupled with the coldness of the hand, at once assured her that her master was dead. She at once went to Mr Jackson’s room and told him the terrible news. The butler was not yet up—the family breakfasted at nine, and it was customary for the master to be called by James, the first-footman—he was sitting up in bed drinking his cup of chocolate. He had taken the news very hardly—seemed quite knocked off his balance—but, then, he had been with Sir John a great many years. That was all she had to tell. No, she had not touched anything in the study. She had noticed that the telephone had been knocked over, but nothing else unusual. No, as far as she knew, Sir John never locked the study door.
Alice was succeeded by Mr Jackson himself. The butler repeated the story of the morning’s discovery which he had already told to PC Raffles and to Inspector Smithers, not to mention Miss Smethurst, Mr Hastings, and his fellow-servants. At the end of the recital, Inspector Dobson, who had listened attentively without interrupting, said:
“Thank you, Mr Jackson; you’ve told your story very clearly. Now, I’m going to ask you a few questions, and I want you to take your time and think before you answer them and be quite sure that your answers are correct. A careless answer, which isn’t quite accurate, might put me right off the line. Now, in the first place, when did you last see your master alive?”
The butler paused before replying, but rather because he had been told to than because a pause was necessary.
“Last night, sir, at about two minutes past eleven. Mr Hastings, Sir John’s secretary, had been dining with him and they sat in the study after dinner. Sir John rang for me to let Mr Hastings out—it’s the custom, sir, to ring twice when the butler is only required to let a guest out of the front door—he rang for me at just about a minute before eleven, because I looked at the Room clock at the time. Mrs Phillips—that’s the cook—can confirm that, sir, because she was with me, and I think either she or I made some comment about its being earlier than usual. Mr Hastings was just coming out of the study when I got into the front hall, but he stopped in the door to talk to Sir John. He—Sir John, that is—was sitting in that armchair next the door, smoking, and he asked Mr Hastings if he’d be in the Row tomorrow morning—that is, of course, this morning (my master had intended to ride himself and had given orders to be called at seven)—but Mr Hastings said his mare was a bit lame and he didn’t think he’d better. Then they just said good night and I let Mr Hastings out and went to bed.”
“Then you didn’t return to the study after letting Mr Hastings out. What do you do about the next day’s orders?”
“I get them when I take the whisky in at ten. If there’s anything after that, Sir John rings for me. Yesterday, as a matter of fact, he sent me a message by Mr Hastings that he would ride in the morning and wanted to be called early.”
“Yes; I was coming to that,” said the detective. “I understand from the housemaid that it’s the footman’s job to call your master. How was it that he didn’t tell you that Sir John was not in his bed?”
“Sir John was to be called at seven, sir, and it was at seven that Alice found him in the study and gave the alarm. As a matter of fact, James must have been a few minutes late, because he was only just coming out of Sir John’s bedroom to tell me about his not being there when I came down after being enlightened by Alice.”
“I see. What about this chap James? Has he been with you long?”
“Not very, sir. About four months, I think. As a matter of fact, I don’t know much about him—I didn’t engage him myself. Sir John had a way of picking up people and just saying they were coming; he wasn’t a gentleman to argue with. He’s quite a good lad, is James. Rather older than the usual run, but there’s no harm in that.”
The detective made a mental note that it might be worthwhile to find out a little more about this elderly underling without a past, though there was nothing whatever to connect him with the crime.
“Now, Mr Jackson,” he continued, “about the study windows. Can you tell me whether they were open or shut last night?”
“Shut, sir, beyond a doubt. I shut them and shuttered them myself at ten last night when I took in the whisky. That was the rule. Sometimes Sir John would open one himself after that—he was fond of fresh air at times. Sometimes he’d smoke his last cigar in the garden before turning in. Then he’d shut it himself when he came in.”
“I see,” said the detective thoughtfully.
“That may explain how the murderer got in, or it may not. Anyhow, there is no doubt that the window was shut at ten last night?”
“None at all, sir.”
“Well, that’s that. Now, about the door. Alice tells me it was unlocked when she went in this morning and that, as far as she knew, Sir John never locked it. So there was no reason why any member of the household should not have gone in after you went to bed?”
The butler permitted himself a pitying smile.
“I beg your pardon, sir, but there was every reason. It was as much as anyone’s place was worth to disturb Sir John in his study of an evening, unless he rang for them. He used to do a lot of his work—his brain work, he used to call it—in there, and after I’d taken in his whisky, or, like last night, after his guest was gone, not even Miss Emily would go in. No, sir, there was no need for Sir John to lock his door.”
“I see,” said the detective thoughtfully. “But, of course, any outsider who got into the house wouldn’t know that he mustn’t go in there.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Nothing. I’d be glad if you’d tell me something about your master. I know, of course, that he was a big financier and all that—that everyone knows—but you can probably give me a look at him that the public doesn’t get. Would you say he was a hard man, or a mean man—a man who would be likely to have enemies?”
This time the butler paused for an appreciable time before answering. At last he said:
“My master was a hard man, sir, as the world sees it. To anyone that served him well he was kindness itself, but if he thought anyone wasn’t giving him full value, or was trying to take an advantage of him, he wouldn’t show him no mercy.”
“And that sort makes enemies—and fortunes? Yes, I suppose so. Now, would you say that Sir John had any particular enemy—anyone who had a special grudge against him?”
Again the butler thought before replying, but though he racked his brains he was unable to suggest any particular person who might fit this description. Having failed in that direction, the detective started on a fresh tack. He asked the butler whether he had noticed anything different about his master the previous night—any excitement or anxiety? Jackson replied that he had noticed nothing of the kind.
“Then you would say that there was nothing unusual about the evening?”
“Nothing, sir,” replied the butler. Then, after a pause: “Beg your pardon, sir. Sir John did tell me to get up a bottle of the ’96—port, that is, sir. He had done the same the previous Monday. I understood that he was expecting Mr Hastings might bring him some special news he might want to celebrate.”
“No idea what sort of news, I suppose?”
“Not unless it was about some business deal, sir.” Again the detective could get nothing more definite. Finally, he undid his despatch-case and laid on the table the articles which he had taken from Sir John’s pockets—money, watch, diary, note-case, etc.
“Is that what you’d expect to find in your master’s pockets, Jackson? You must be familiar with what he carries about him.”
The butler scrutinized the mournful collection.
“It’s all there, sir, that he’d be likely to carry at night. In the day-time he generally carried a memorandum-book as well. I fancy he used it a good deal in his business deals—he had a lot of irons in the fire, and I expect he couldn’t carry them all in his head. When he came home, though, he usually locked it up in his writing-table—it was a fairly bulky book.”
“Well, it wasn’t in his pockets this morning,” said the detective, “so it ought to be in the writing-table. Would it be one of these keys?”
He produced from his case the bunch taken from the safe. The butler indicated the appropriate key, and Inspector Dobson opened first one and then the other of the two locked drawers. They contained cheque-books, account-books, correspondence files, and other documents, but the memorandum-book was not there.
“Gone!” ejaculated Inspector Dobson.
Chapter 6 Emily & Rosamund
On receiving the butler’s telephone report of the tragic death of his employer, Geoffrey Hastings, who had been in bed when the call came through, at once hurried on the first clothes he could find, and, though it was only ten minutes’ walk, took a taxi round to St Margaret’s Lodge. He was met by Inspector Smithers, of N Division, who tactfully deflected his natural inclination to view the scene of the tragedy and the victim. The inspector told him briefly what had occurred, and repeated the butler’s appeal to him to break the news to the dead man’s daughter. Hastings, of course, consented, and with a heavy heart took himself upstairs to the first floor, where his fiancée’s room was situated. Realizing that the whole domestic staff must by now be throbbing with the news, he judged that to send her maid in with a message asking Emily to see him would inevitably mean the blurting out of the story, probably with gruesome details. He therefore went straight to her door, knocked on it, and in response to an inarticulate murmur, went in.
Emily Smethurst was a good-looking girl of some twenty-five years of age—she herself said that she was for ever and fatally dated by her essentially nineteenth-century name. Without any particularly beautiful features, she was blessed with the lovely complexion that, blooming so astonishingly in the grimy atmosphere of Lancashire, is the essence of all real beauty. Like all Lancashire girls, too, she had her head screwed on very definitely in the right way, and, though capable of passion and even of romance, was incapable of anything resembling hysteria. It was, therefore, no exaggeration on the part of Inspector Smithers when he told his colleague that she had taken the news very pluckily. She was deeply devoted to her father, proud of his success, still more proud of the humble origin from which he had made his way. It was, therefore, no indifference that enabled her to face the shattering blow with apparent calmness, but sheer pluck and self-control.
Inspector Smithers had headed off Geoffrey Hastings from the study because he did not want it disturbed by the coming and going of a countless host, but he naturally could not refuse to allow the dead man’s daughter to see her father’s body, nor her request that her lover should accompany her. He was a little apprehensive lest she should wish to disturb the position of the body—in his professional eyes a matter of vital importance—but after asking once whether it was quite certain that he was dead and receiving the sad assurance of the doctor’s testimony, she made no attempt to touch her father, but stood, hand in hand with Geoffrey Hastings, looking down at the silent form that for so many years had carried the whole of her young love. Her eyes were dim with unshed tears, but the thin line of her lips revealed the still unconscious instinct at the back of her mind—the instinct to pursue relentlessly and punish without remorse the perpetrator of this horrible crime.
She did not stay long in the study, but returned to her room to dress, telling Jackson, as she received his respectful sympathy, to see that Mr Hastings had some breakfast. Geoffrey was amazed at the calmness and unselfishness which enabled her to think of such a trifle at such a time, but he felt himself quite unable to take advantage of it. Instead, he retired to the morning-room, where smoking was allowed, to light a pipe and think over the bewildering catastrophe that had befallen this family with whose fortunes his own were now so closely welded. Although no less selfish than other men, he was at that moment less concerned with its effect upon his own future than with the problem of how best to help his fiancée to get through the bad time that must inevitably follow with the reaction from the shock. He had the sense to realize that, much as she loved him and loved to have him near her, he could not give her quite the sympathy that another woman could. Her mother, of course, was dead, and her father’s sister, apart from the fact that she could not arrive from Devonshire much before the evening, was a century, rather than a generation, older than her niece.
Fortunately there was no great difficulty in finding the right person for the occasion. Emily Smethurst, with countless girl acquaintances of her own age to choose from, had taken for her great friend a woman considerably older than herself, one to whom in this time of trouble she could turn, not only for love and sympathy, but also for the advice which the latter’s greater experience and knowledge of the world so well entitled her to give. Rosamund Barretta was at this time barely on the right side of forty, but she was in the full flower of her beauty. Her features and her figure were alike of a classical loveliness, while her complexion, if lacking the youthful freshness of Emily’s, yet needed little help from art to complete a radiant picture.
The daughter of a man of good birth but of little else that was good, Rosamund Henderson, when still only seventeen, had met, whilst travelling in Spain with her father, a young Spanish nobleman, who fell instantly in love with her and, to the secret relief of her parent, married her as soon as he could get her admitted to the Church of Rome and took her to live in the vast but uncomfortable family palace in Madrid. The marriage had been neither a great success nor a notable failure. Count Barretta was, like many men of his race, both romantic and inconstant. He loved his wife passionately at uncertain intervals, reawakening in her each time by his ardour the feelings which he had first inspired. But the intervals of neglect—and they were of increasing length and frequency—were extremely trying. Unfortunately, Barretta’s family was as poor as it was ancient. The ancestral palace of Madrid was run by a weird assortment of “retainers” who, probably from sheer laziness, were content to work for their board and lodging alone. But there was little surplus cash with which to provide the beautiful clothes, the entertainments, and the other little luxuries which mean so much in married life. And Rosamund loved beautiful things, beautiful clothes above all else, and it was small consolation to her to have them during the month or two in the year when her husband was making love to her, if for the remainder of the time she had to make them “do” whilst her husband scraped together money to spend on other women.
So, for ten or more years, the marriage had dragged on. Then came the war, and Paul Barretta, as soon as he saw that his country intended to remain neutral, had enlisted in the French Foreign Legion and had been killed. Rosamund returned to England, and in the wave of enthusiasm that passed over the women of the country—partly a desire to serve and partly a fashionable whim—took to nursing in one of the big South London hospitals. Here she met Emily Smethurst, at that time a very junior probationer, who quickly made of the beautiful widow an object for hero-worship. At first it was worship from a distance, but after a time she plucked up courage to invite the adored one to breakfast and a bath at St Margaret’s Lodge. After that the unostentatious luxury of the young probationer’s home made her quest of Rosamund’s friendship an easy one, and before long the girl’s own worth had turned the friendship into a real affection that had grown in the succeeding years into the mutual devotion that now bound them to one another.
Geoffrey’s telephone call found Rosamund already up, and within a quarter of an hour a taxi deposited her at the door. As shortly as possible Geoffrey explained to her what had happened, and while they were still talking, the door opened and Emily came into the room. Her face was white and set, but the sight of her friend seemed to break down suddenly the nervous control which her courage had built up to resist the clamouring forces of nature; her lips trembled, tears rushed into her eyes, and she broke into a fit of weeping so overwhelming that her whole body was shaken by the convulsive sobs. Rosamund ran to her and took her in her arms.
“My darling,” she cried. “Don’t, Em darling, don’t. I can’t bear to hear you cry.”
