II
Bathed, shaved, freshly-clothed and full of breakfast, Anthony uncurled his thin length from the best chair in the inn’s parlour, lit his pipe, and sought the garden.
Outside the door he encountered the landlord, made inquiry as to the shortest way to Abbotshall, and, placidly puffing at his pipe, watched with enjoyment the effect of his question.
The eyes of Mr. Josiah Syme flashed with the fire of curiosity.
“ ’Scuse me, sir,” he wheezed, “but ’ave you come down along o’ this—along o’ these ’appenings up at the ’ouse?”
“Hardly,” said Anthony.
Mr. Syme tried again. “Be you a ’tective, sir?” he asked in a conspiratorial wheeze. “If so, Joe Syme might be able to ’elp ye.” He leant forward and added in yet a lower whisper: “My eldest gel, she’s an ’ousemaid up along at Abbotshall.”
“Is she indeed,” said Anthony. “Wait here till I get my hat; then we’ll walk along together. You can show me the way.”
“Then—then—you are a ’tective, sir.”
“What exactly I am,” said Anthony, “God Himself may know. I do not. But you can make five pounds if you want it.”
Mr. Syme understood enough.
As they walked, first along the white road, then through fields and finally along the bank of that rushing, fussy, barely twenty-yards wide little river, the Marle, Mr. Syme told what he knew.
Purged of repetitions, biographical meanderings, and excursions into rustic theorising, the story was this.
Soon after eleven on the night before, Miss Laura Hoode had entered her brother’s study and found him lying, dead and mutilated, on the hearth. Exactly what the wounds were, Mr. Syme could not say; but by common report they were sufficiently horrible.
Before she fainted, Miss Hoode screamed. When other members of the household arrived they found her lying across her brother’s body. A search-party was at once instituted for possible murderers, and the police and a doctor notified. People were saying—Mr. Syme became confidential—that Miss Hoode’s mind had been unhinged by the shock. Nothing was yet known as to the identity of the criminal, but (here Mr. Syme gave vent to many a dark suggestion, implicating in turn every member of the household save his daughter).
Anthony dammed the flow with a question. “Can you tell me,” he asked, “exactly who’s living in the house?”
Mr. Syme grew voluble at once. Oh, yes. He knew all right. At the present moment there were Miss Hoode, two friends of the late Mr. Hoode’s, and the servants and the young gent—Mr. Deacon—what had been the corpse’s secretary. The names? Oh, yes, he could give the names all right. Servants—his daughter Elsie, housemaid; Mabel Smith, another housemaid; Martha Forrest, the cook; Lily Ingram, kitchenmaid; Annie Holt, parlourmaid; old Mr. Poole, the butler; Bob Belford, the other manservant. Then there was Tom Diggle, the gardener, though he’d been in the cottage hospital for the last week and wasn’t out yet. And there was the chauffeur, Harry Wright. Of course, though, now he came to think of it, the gardener and the chauffeur didn’t rightly live in the house, they shared the lodge.
“And the two guests?” said Anthony. It is hard to believe, but he had assimilated that stream of names, had even correctly assigned to each the status and duties of its owner.
“One gent, and one lady, sir. Oh, and there’s the lady’s own maid, sir. Girl with some Frenchy name. Duboise, would it be?” Mr. Syme was patently proud of his infallibility. “Mrs. Mainwaring the lady’s called—she’s a tall, ’andsome lady with goldy-like sort of ’air, sir. And the gent’s Sir Arthur Digby-Coates—and a very pleasant gent he is, sir, so Elsie says.”
Anthony gave a start of pleasure. Digby-Coates was an acquaintance of his private-secretarial days. Digby-Coates might be useful. Hastings hadn’t told him.
“There be Habbotshall, sir,” said Mr. Syme.
Anthony looked up. On his left—they had been walking with the little Marle on their right—was a well-groomed, smiling garden, whose flowerbeds, paths, pergolas, and lawns stretched up to the feet of one of the strangest houses within his memory.
For it was low and rambling and shaped like a capital L pushed over on its side. Mainly, it was two stories high, but on the extreme end of the right arm of the recumbent L there had been built an additional floor. This gave it a gay, elfin humpiness that attracted Anthony strangely. Many-hued clouds of creeper spread in beautiful disorder from ground to half-hidden chimney-stacks. Through the leaves peeped leaded windows, as a wood-fairy might spy through her hair at the woodcutter’s son who was really a prince. A flagged walk bordered by a low yew hedge ran before the house; up to this led a flight of stone steps from the lower level of the lawns. Opposite the head of the steps was a verandah.
“This here, sir,” explained Mr. Syme unnecessarily, “is rightly the back of the ’ouse.”
Anthony gave him his congé and a five-pound note, hinting that his own presence at Marling should not be used as a fount for barroom gossip. Mr. Syme walked away with a gait quaintly combining the stealth of a conspirator and the alertness of a great detective.
Anthony turned in at the little gate and made for the house. At the head of the steps before the verandah he paused. Voices came to his ear. The tone of the louder induced him to walk away from the verandah and along the house to his right. He halted by the first ground-floor window and listened, peering into the room.
Inside stood two men, one a little, round-shouldered, black-coated fellow with a dead-white face and hands that twisted nervously; the other tall, burly, crimson-faced, fierce-moustached, clad in police blue with the three stripes of a sergeant on his arm.
It was the policeman’s voice that had attracted Anthony’s attention. Now it was raised again, more loudly than before.
“You know a blasted sight more o’ this crime than you says,” it roared.
The other quivered, lifted a shaking hand to his mouth, and cast a hunted look round the room. He seemed, thought Anthony, remarkably like a ferret.
“I don’t, sergeant. Re-really I d-don’t,” he stammered.
The sergeant thrust his great face down into that of his victim. “I don’t believe you this mornin’ any more’n I did last night,” he bellowed. “Now, Belford, me lad, you confess! If you ’olds out against Jack ’Iggins you’ll be sorry.”
Anthony leaned his arms on the windowsill and thrust head and shoulders into the room.
“Now, sergeant,” he said, “this sort of thing’ll never do, you know.”
The effect of his intrusion tickled pleasantly his sense of the dramatic. Law and Order recovered first, advanced, big with rage, to the window and demanded what was the meaning of the unprintable intrusion.
“Why,” said Anthony, “shall we call it a wish to study at close quarters the methods of the County Constabulary.”
“Who the— ⸺ing ’ell are you?” The face of Sergeant Higgins was black with wrath.
“I,” said Anthony, “am Hawkshaw, the detective!”
Before another roar could break from outraged officialdom, the door of the room opened. A thickset, middle-aged man of a grocerish air inquired briskly what was the trouble here.
Sergeant Higgins became on the instant a meek subordinate. “I—I didn’t know you were—were about, sir.” He stood stiff at attention. “Just questioning of a few witnesses, I was, sir. This er—gentleman”—he nodded in the direction of Anthony—“just pushed his ’ead—”
But Superintendent Boyd of the C.I.D. was shaking the interloper by the hand. He had recognised the head and shoulders as those of Colonel Gethryn. In 1917 he had been “lent” to Colonel Gethryn in connection with a great and secret “roundup” in and about London. For Colonel Gethryn Superintendent Boyd had liking and a deep respect.
“Well, well, sir,” he said, beaming. “Fancy seeing you. They didn’t tell me you were staying here.”
“I’m not,” Anthony said. Then added, seeing the look of bewilderment: “I don’t quite know what I am, Boyd. You may have to turn me away. I think I’d better see Miss Hoode before I commit myself any further.”
He swung his long legs into the room, patted the doubtful Boyd on the shoulder, sauntered to the door, opened it and passed through. Turning to his right, he collided sharply with another man. A person this, of between forty and fifty, dressed tastefully in light gray; broad-shouldered, virile, with a kindly face marked with lines of fatigue and mental stress. Anthony recoiled from the shock of the collision. The other stared.
“Good God!” he exclaimed.
“You exaggerate, Sir Arthur,” said Anthony.
Sir Arthur Digby-Coates recovered himself. “The most amazing coincidence that ever happened, Gethryn,” he said. “I was just thinking of you.”
“Really?” Anthony was surprised.
“Yes, yes. I suppose you’ve heard? You must have. Poor Hoode!”
“Of course. That’s why I’m here.”
“But I thought you’d left—”
“Oh, yes,” said Anthony, “I’ve left the Service. Quite a time ago. I’m here because—look here, this’ll sound rot if I try to explain in a hurry. Can we go and sit somewhere where we can talk?”
“Certainly, my boy, certainly. I’m very glad indeed to see you, Gethryn. Very glad. This is a terrible, an awful affair—and, well, I think we could do with your help. You see, I feel responsible for seeing that everything’s done that can be. It may seem strange to you, Gethryn, the way I’m taking charge like this; but John and I were—well ever since we were children we’ve been more like brothers than most real ones. I don’t think a week’s passed, except once or twice, that we haven’t seen—This way: we can talk better in my room. I’ve got a sitting-room of my own here, you know. Dear old John—”