VII
The Vase That Wasn’t
“Very well, Sherlock,” said Alec. “And what’s the first move?”
“The library,” Roger replied promptly, and rose to his feet.
Alec followed suit and they turned towards the house.
“What do you expect to find?” asked the latter curiously.
“I’m blessed if I know,” Roger confessed. “In fact, I can’t really say that I actually expect to find anything. I’ve got hopes, of course, but in no definite direction.”
“Bit vague, isn’t it?”
“Thoroughly. That’s the interesting part. All we can do is to look around and try and notice anything at all, however slight, that seems to be just out of the ordinary. Ten to one it won’t mean anything at all; and even if it does, it’s another ten to one that we shan’t be able to see it. But as I said, there’s always hope.”
“But what are we going to look for? Things connected with the people you mentioned; or just—well, just things?”
“Anything! Anything and everything, and trust to luck. Now step quietly over this bit of gravel. We don’t want everyone to know that we’re nosing around in here.”
They stepped carefully over the path and entered the library. It was empty, but the door into the hall was slightly ajar. Roger crossed the room and closed it. Then he looked carefully round him.
“Where do we start operations?” Alec asked with interest.
“Well,” Roger said slowly, “I’m just trying to get a general sort of impression. This is really the first time we’ve been able to look round in peace, you know.”
“What sort of impression?”
Roger considered. “It’s rather hard to put into words exactly; but I’ve got a more or less retentive sort of mind. I mean, I can look at a thing or a place and carry the picture in my brain for quite a time. I’ve trained myself to it. It’s jolly useful for storing up ideas for descriptions of scenery and that sort of thing. Photographic, you might call it. Well, it struck me that if there had been any important alteration in this room during the last few hours—if the position of the safe had been altered, for instance, or anything like that—I should probably be able to spot it.”
“And you think that’s going to help now?”
“I don’t know in the least. But there’s no harm in trying, is there?”
He walked to the middle of the room and turned slowly about, letting the picture sink into his brain. When he had made the complete circuit, he sat on the edge of the table and shut his eyes.
Alec watched him interestedly. “Any luck?” he asked, after a couple of minutes’ silence.
Roger opened his eyes. “No,” he admitted, a little ruefully. It is always disappointing after such carefully staged preparations to find that one’s pet trick has failed to work. Roger felt not unlike a conjuror who had not succeeded in producing the rabbit from the top-hat.
“Ah!” observed Alec noncommittally.
“I can’t see anything different,” said Roger, almost apologetically.
“Ah!” Alec remarked again. “Then I suppose that means that nothing is different?” he suggested helpfully.
“I suppose so,” Roger admitted.
“Now are you going to tell me that this is really devilish significant?” Alec grinned. “Because if you do, I warn you that I shan’t believe you. It’s exactly what I expected. I told you you were making too much fuss about a lot of trifles.”
“Shut up!” Roger snapped from the edge of the table. “I’m thinking.”
“Oh, sorry!”
Roger took no notice of his fellow sleuth’s unprofessionally derisive grin. He was staring abstractedly at the big carved oak chimneypiece.
“There’s only one thing that strikes me,” he observed slowly after a little pause, “now I come to think of it. Doesn’t that chimneypiece look somehow a bit lopsided to you?”
Alec followed the other’s gaze. The chimneypiece looked ordinary enough. There were the usual pewter plates and mugs set out upon it, and on one side stood a large blue china vase. For a moment Alec stared at it in silence. Then:
“I’m blessed if I see anything lopsided about it,” he announced. “How do you mean?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Roger replied, still gazing at it curiously. “All I can say is that in some way it doesn’t look quite right to me. Side-heavy, if I may coin a phrase.”
“You may,” said Alec kindly. “That is, if you’ll tell me what it means.”
“Well, unsymmetrical, if you like that better.” He slapped his knee suddenly. “By Jove! Idiot! I see now. Of course!” He turned a triumphant smile upon the other. “Fancy not noticing that before?”
“What?” shouted Alec in exasperation.
“Why, that vase. Don’t you see?”
Alec looked at the vase. It seemed a very ordinary sort of affair.
“What’s the matter with it? It looks all right to me.”
“Oh, there’s nothing the matter with it,” said Roger airily. “It is all right.”
Alec approached the table and clenched a large fist, which he proceeded to hold two inches in front of Roger’s nose.
“If you don’t tell me within thirty seconds what you’re talking about, I shall smite you,” he said grimly. “Hard!”
“I’ll tell you,” said Roger quickly. “I’m not allowed to be smitten before lunch. Doctor’s orders. He’s very strict about it, indeed. Oh, yes; about that vase. Well, don’t you see? There’s only one of it!”
“Is that all?” asked Alec, turning away disgustedly. “I thought from the fuss you were making that you’d discovered something really exciting.”
“So I have,” returned Roger, unabashed. “You see, the exciting part is that yesterday, I am prepared to swear, there were two of it.”
“Oh? How do you know that?”
“Because now I come to realise it, I remember an impression of well-balanced orderliness about that chimneypiece. It was a typical man’s room chimneypiece. Women are the unsymmetrical sex, you know. The fact of there being only one vase alters its whole appearance.”
“Well?” Alec still did not appear to be very much impressed. “And what’s that got to do with anything?”
“Probably nothing. It’s just a fact that since yesterday afternoon the second vase has disappeared; that’s all. It may have been broken somehow by Stanworth himself; one of the servants may have knocked it over; Lady Stanworth may have taken it to put some flowers in—anything! But as it’s the only new fact that seems to emerge, let’s look into it.”
Roger left the table and strolled leisurely over to the fireplace.
“You’re wasting your time,” Alec growled, unconvinced. “What are you going to do? Ask the servants about it?”
“Not yet, at any rate,” Roger replied from the hearthrug. He stood on tiptoe to get a view of the surface of the chimneypiece. “Here you are!” he exclaimed excitedly. “What did I tell you? Look at this! The room hasn’t been dusted this morning, of course. Here’s a ring where the vase stood.”
He dragged a chair across and mounted it to obtain a better view. Alec’s inch or two of extra height enabled him to see well enough by standing on the shallow fender. There was very little dust on the chimneypiece, but enough to show a faint though well-defined ring upon the surface. Roger reached across for the other vase and fitted its base over the mark. It coincided exactly.
“That proves it,” Roger remarked with some satisfaction. “I knew I was right, of course; but it’s always pleasant to be able to prove it.” He bent forward and examined the surface closely. “I wonder what on earth all these other little marks are, though,” he went on thoughtfully. “I don’t seem able to account for them. What do you make of them?”
Dotted about both in the ring and outside it were a number of faint impressions in the shallow dust; some large and broad, others quite small. All were irregular in shape, and their edges merged so imperceptibly into the surrounding dust that it was impossible to say where one began or the other ended. A few inches to the left of the ring, however, the dust had been swept clean away across the whole depth of the surface for a width of nearly a foot.
“I don’t know,” Alec confessed. “They don’t convey anything to me, I’m afraid. I should say that somebody’s simply put something down here and taken it away again later. I don’t see that it’s particularly important in any case.”
“Probably it isn’t. But it’s interesting. I suppose you must be right. I can’t see any other explanation, I’m bound to say. But it must have been a very curiously shaped object, to leave those marks. Or could it have been a number of things? And why should the dust have been scraped away like that? Something must have been drawn across the surface; something flat and smooth and fairly heavy.” He meditated for a moment. “It’s funny.”
Alec stepped back from the fender. “Well, we don’t seem to be progressing much, do we?” he remarked. “Let’s try somewhere else, Sherlock.”
He wandered aimlessly over towards the French windows and stood looking out into the garden.
A sharp exclamation from Roger caused him to wheel round suddenly. The latter had descended from his chair, and was now standing on the hearthrug and looking with interest at something he held in his hand.
“Here!” he said, holding out his palm, in which a small blue object was lying. “Come and look at this. I stepped on it just now as I got down from the chair. It was on the rug. What do you think of it?”
Alec took the object, which proved to be a small piece of broken blue china, and turned it over carefully.
“Why, this is a bit of that other vase!” he said sagely.
“Excellent, Alexander Watson. It is.”
Alec scrutinised the fragment more closely. “It must have got broken,” he announced profoundly.
“Brilliant! Your deductive powers are in wonderful form this morning, Alec,” Roger smiled. Then his face became more grave. “But seriously, this is really rather perplexing. You see what must have happened, of course. The vase got broken where it stood. In view of this bit, that’s the only possible explanation for those marks on the chimneypiece. They must have been caused by the broken pieces. And that broad patch was made by someone sweeping the pieces off the shelf—the same person, presumably, as picked up the larger bits round that ring.”
He paused and looked at Alec inquiringly.
“Well?” said that worthy.
“Well, don’t you see the difficulty? Vases don’t suddenly break where they stand. They fall and smash on the ground or something like that. This one calmly fell to pieces in its place, as far as I can see. Dash it all, it isn’t natural!—And that’s about the third unnatural thing we’ve had already,” he added in tones of mingled triumph and resentment.
Alec pressed the tobacco carefully down in his pipe and struck a match. “Aren’t you going the long way round again?” he asked slowly. “Surely there’s an obvious explanation. Someone knocked the vase over on its side and it broke on the shelf. I can’t see anything wrong with that.”
“I can,” said Roger quickly. “Two things. In the first place, those vases were far too thick to break like that simply through being knocked over on a wooden surface. In the second, even if it had been, you’d get a smooth, elliptical mark in the dust where it fell; and there isn’t one. No, there’s only one possible reason for it to break as it did, as far as I can make out.”
“And what’s that, Sherlock?”
“That it had been struck by something—and struck so hard and cleanly that it simply smashed where it stood and was not knocked into the hearth. What do you think of that?”
“It seems reasonable enough,” Alec conceded after consideration.
“You’re not very enthusiastic, are you? It’s so jolly eminently reasonable that it must be right. Now, then, the next question is—who or what hit it like that?”
“I say, do you think this is going to lead anywhere?” Alec asked suddenly. “Aren’t we wasting time over this rotten vase? I don’t see what it can have to do with what we’re looking for. Not that I have the least idea what that is, in any case,” he added candidly.
“You don’t seem to have taken to my vase, Alec. It’s a pity, because I’m getting more and more fond of it every minute. Anyhow, I’m going to put in one or two minutes’ really hard thinking about it; so if you’d like to wander out into the garden and have a chat with William, don’t let me keep you.”
Alec had strolled over to the windows again. For some reason he seemed somewhat anxious to keep the garden under observation as far as possible.
“Oh, I won’t interrupt you,” he was beginning carelessly, when at the same moment the reason appeared in sight, walking slowly on to the lawn from the direction of the rose garden. “Well, as a matter of fact, perhaps I will wander out for a bit,” he emended hurriedly. “Won’t stay away long, in case anything else crops up.” And he made a hasty exit.
Roger, following with his eyes the beeline his newly appointed assistant was taking, smiled slightly and resumed his labours.
Alec did not waste time. There was a question which had been worrying him horribly during the last couple of hours, and he wanted an answer to it, and wanted it quickly.
“Barbara,” he said abruptly, as soon as he came abreast of her, “you know what you told me this morning. Before breakfast. It hadn’t anything to do with what’s happened here, had it?”
Barbara blushed painfully. Then as suddenly she paled.
“You mean—about Mr. Stanworth’s death?” she asked steadily, looking him full in the eyes.
Alec nodded.
“No, it hadn’t. That was only a—a horrible coincidence.” She paused. “Why?” she asked suddenly.
Alec looked supremely uncomfortable. “Oh, I don’t know. You see, you said something about—well, about a horrible thing that had happened. And then half an hour later, when we knew that—I mean, I couldn’t help wondering just for the moment whether—” He floundered into silence.
“It’s all right, Alec,” said Barbara gently. “It was a perfectly reasonable mistake to make. As I said, that was only a dreadful coincidence.”
“And aren’t you going to change your mind about what you said this morning?” asked Alec humbly.
Barbara looked at him quickly. “Why should I?” she returned swiftly. “I mean—” She hesitated and corrected herself. “Why should you think I might?”
“I don’t know. You were very upset this morning, and it occurred to me that you might have had bad news and were acting on the spur of the moment; and perhaps when you had thought it over, you might—” He broke off meaningly.
Barbara seemed strangely ill at ease. She did not reply at once to Alec’s unspoken question, but twisted her wisp of a handkerchief between her fingers with nervous gestures that were curiously out of place in this usually uncommonly self-possessed young person.
“Oh, I don’t know what to say,” she replied at last, in low, hurried tones. “I can’t tell you anything at present, Alec. I may have acted too much on the spur of the moment. I don’t know. Come and see me when we get back from the Mertons’ next month. I shall have to think things over.”
“And you won’t tell me what the trouble was, dear?”
“No, I can’t. Please don’t ask me that, Alec. You see, that isn’t really my secret. No, I can’t possibly tell you!”
“All right. But—but you do love me, don’t you?”
Barbara laid her hand on his arm with a swift, caressing movement. “It wasn’t anything to do with that, old boy,” she said softly. “Come and see me next month. I think—I think I might have changed my mind again by then. No, Alec! You mustn’t! Anyhow, not here of all places. Perhaps I’ll let you once—just a tiny one!—before we go; but not unless you’re good. Besides, I’ve got to run in and pack now. We’re catching the two forty-one, and Mother will be waiting for me.”
She gave his hand a sudden squeeze and turned towards the house.
“That was a bit of luck, meeting her out here!” murmured Alec raptly to himself as he watched her go. Wherein he was not altogether correct in his statement of fact; for as the lady had come into the garden for that express purpose, the subsequent meeting might be said to be due rather to good generalship than good luck.
It was therefore a remarkably jubilant Watson who returned blithely to the library to find his Sherlock sitting solemnly in the chair before the big writing table and staring hard at the chimneypiece.
In spite of himself he shivered slightly. “Ugh, you ghoulish brute!” he exclaimed.
Roger looked at him abstractedly. “What’s up?”
“Well, I can’t say that I should like to sit in that particular chair just yet awhile.”
“I’m glad you’ve come back,” Roger said, rising slowly to his feet. “I’ve just had a pretty curious idea, and I’m going to test it. The chances are several million to one against it coming off, but if it does⸺! Well, I don’t know what the devil we’re going to do!”
He had spoken so seriously that Alec gaped at him in surprise. “Good Lord, what’s up now?” he asked.
“Well, I won’t say in so many words,” Roger replied slowly, “because it’s really too fantastic. But it’s to do with the breaking of that second vase. You remember I said that in order for it to have smashed like that it must have been struck extraordinarily hard by some mysterious object. It’s just occurred to me what that object might possibly have been.”
He walked across to where the chair was still standing in front of the fireplace and stepped up on to it. Then, with a glance towards the chair he had just left, he began to examine the woodwork at the back of the chimneypiece. Alec watched him in silence. Suddenly he bent forward with close attention and prodded a finger at the panel; and Alec noticed that his face had gone very pale.
He turned and descended, a little unsteadily, from the chair. “My hat, but I was right!” he exclaimed softly, staring at Alec with raised eyebrows. “That second vase was smashed by a bullet! You’ll find its mark just behind that little pillar on the left there.”