Trent's Last Case

by E. C. Bentley

  CHAPTER V: Poking About

  There are moments in life, as one might think, when that which is withinus, busy about its secret affair, lets escape into consciousness somehint of a fortunate thing ordained. Who does not know what it is to feelat times a wave of unaccountable persuasion that it is about to go wellwith him?--not the feverish confidence of men in danger of a blow fromfate, not the persistent illusion of the optimist, but an unsoughtconviction, springing up like a bird from the heather, that success isat hand in some great or fine thing. The general suddenly knows at dawnthat the day will bring him victory; the man on the green suddenlyknows that he will put down the long putt. As Trent mounted thestairway outside the library door he seemed to rise into certaintyof achievement. A host of guesses and inferences swarmed apparentlyunsorted through his mind; a few secret observations that he had made,and which he felt must have significance, still stood unrelated toany plausible theory of the crime; yet as he went up he seemed to knowindubitably that light was going to appear.

  The bedrooms lay on either side of a broad carpeted passage, lighted bya tall end window. It went the length of the house until it ran at rightangles into a narrower passage, out of which the servants' rooms opened.Martin's room was the exception: it opened out of a small landinghalf-way to the upper floor. As Trent passed it he glanced within. Alittle square room, clean and commonplace. In going up the rest of thestairway he stepped with elaborate precaution against noise, huggingthe wall closely and placing each foot with care; but a series of veryaudible creaks marked his passage.

  He knew that Manderson's room was the first on the right hand when thebedroom floor was reached, and he went to it at once. He tried the latchand the lock, which worked normally, and examined the wards of the key.Then he turned to the room.

  It was a small apartment, strangely bare. The plutocrat's toiletappointments were of the simplest. All remained just as it had beenon the morning of the ghastly discovery in the grounds. The sheets andblankets of the unmade bed lay tumbled over a narrow wooden bedstead,and the sun shone brightly through the window upon them. It gleamed,too, upon the gold parts of the delicate work of dentistry that lay inwater in a shallow bowl of glass placed on a small, plain table by thebedside. On this also stood a wrought-iron candlestick. Some clothinglay untidily over one of the two rush-bottomed chairs. Variousobjects on the top of a chest of drawers, which had been used as adressing-table, lay in such disorder as a hurried man might make. Trentlooked them over with a questing eye. He noted also that the occupant ofthe room had neither washed nor shaved. With his finger he turned overthe dental plate in the bowl, and frowned again at its incomprehensiblepresence.

  The emptiness and disarray of the little room, flooded by the sunbeams,were producing in Trent a sense of gruesomeness. His fancy called upa picture of a haggard man dressing himself in careful silence by thefirst light of dawn, glancing constantly at the inner door behind whichhis wife slept, his eyes full of some terror.

  Trent shivered, and to fix his mind again on actualities, opened twotall cupboards in the wall on either side of the bed. They containedclothing, a large choice of which had evidently been one of the very fewconditions of comfort for the man who had slept there.

  In the matter of shoes, also, Manderson had allowed himself theadvantage of wealth. An extraordinary number of these, treed andcarefully kept, was ranged on two long low shelves against the wall. Noboots were among them. Trent, himself an amateur of good shoe-leather,now turned to these, and glanced over the collection with anappreciative eye. It was to be seen that Manderson had been inclined topride himself on a rather small and well-formed foot. The shoes were ofa distinctive shape, narrow and round-toed, beautifully made; all wereevidently from the same last.

  Suddenly his eyes narrowed themselves over a pair of patent-leathershoes on the upper shelf.

  These were the shoes of which the inspector had already described theposition to him; the shoes worn by Manderson the night before his death.They were a well-worn pair, he saw at once; he saw, too, that they hadbeen very recently polished. Something about the uppers of these shoeshad seized his attention. He bent lower and frowned over them, comparingwhat he saw with the appearance of the neighbouring shoes. Then he tookthem up and examined the line of junction of the uppers with the soles.

  As he did this, Trent began unconsciously to whistle faintly, and withgreat precision, an air which Inspector Murch, if he had been present,would have recognized.

  Most men who have the habit of self-control have also some involuntarytrick which tells those who know them that they are suppressingexcitement. The inspector had noted that when Trent had picked up astrong scent he whistled faintly a certain melodious passage; thoughthe inspector could not have told you that it was in fact the openingmovement of Mendelssohn's Lied ohne Worter in A Major.

  He turned the shoes over, made some measurements with a marked tape, andlooked minutely at the bottoms. On each, in the angle between the heeland the instep, he detected a faint trace of red gravel.

  Trent placed the shoes on the floor, and walked with his hands behindhim to the window, out of which, still faintly whistling, he gazed witheyes that saw nothing. Once his lips opened to emit mechanically theEnglishman's expletive of sudden enlightenment. At length he turned tothe shelves again, and swiftly but carefully examined every one of theshoes there.

  This done, he took up the garments from the chair, looked them overclosely and replaced them. He turned to the wardrobe cupboards again,and hunted through them carefully. The litter on the dressing-table nowengaged his attention for the second time. Then he sat down on theempty chair, took his head in his hands, and remained in that attitude,staring at the carpet, for some minutes. He rose at last and opened theinner door leading to Mrs. Manderson's room.

  It was evident at a glance that the big room had been hurriedly put downfrom its place as the lady's bower. All the array of objects that belongto a woman's dressing-table had been removed; on bed and chairs andsmaller tables there were no garments or hats, bags or boxes; no traceremained of the obstinate conspiracy of gloves and veils, handkerchiefsand ribbons, to break the captivity of the drawer. The room was likean unoccupied guest-chamber. Yet in every detail of furniture anddecoration it spoke of an unconventional but exacting taste. Trent,as his expert eye noted the various perfection of colour and form amidwhich the ill-mated lady dreamed her dreams and thought her loneliestthoughts, knew that she had at least the resources of an artisticnature. His interest in this unknown personality grew stronger; and hisbrows came down heavily as he thought of the burdens laid upon it, andof the deed of which the history was now shaping itself with more andmore of substance before his busy mind.

  He went first to the tall French window in the middle of the wall thatfaced the door, and opening it, stepped out upon a small balcony withan iron railing. He looked down on a broad stretch of lawn that beganimmediately beneath him, separated from the house-wall only by a narrowflower-bed, and stretched away, with an abrupt dip at the fartherend, toward the orchard. The other window opened with a sash above thegarden-entrance of the library. In the farther inside corner of the roomwas a second door giving upon the passage; the door by which the maidwas wont to come in, and her mistress to go out, in the morning.

  Trent, seated on the bed, quickly sketched in his notebook a plan ofthe room and its neighbour. The bed stood in the angle between thecommunicating-door and the sash-window, its head against the walldividing the room from Manderson's. Trent stared at the pillows; then helay down with deliberation on the bed and looked through the open doorinto the adjoining room.

  This observation taken, he rose again and proceeded to note on his planthat on either side of the bed was a small table with a cover. Upon thatfurthest from the door was a graceful electric-lamp standard of copperconnected by a free wire with the wall. Trent looked at it thoughtfully,then at the switches connected with the other lights in the room. Theywere, as usual, on the wall just within the door, and some way out ofhi
s reach as he sat on the bed. He rose, and satisfied himself that thelights were all in order. Then he turned on his heel, walked quicklyinto Manderson's room, and rang the bell.

  'I want your help again, Martin,' he said, as the butler presentedhimself, upright and impassive, in the doorway. 'I want you to prevailupon Mrs. Manderson's maid to grant me an interview.'

  'Certainly, sir,' said Martin.

  'What sort of a woman is she? Has she her wits about her?'

  'She's French, sir,' replied Martin succinctly; adding after a pause:'She has not been with us long, sir, but I have formed the impressionthat the young woman knows as much of the world as is good forher--since you ask me.'

  'You think butter might possibly melt in her mouth, do you?' said Trent.'Well, I am not afraid. I want to put some questions to her.'

  'I will send her up immediately, sir.' The butler withdrew, and Trentwandered round the little room with his hands at his back. Sooner thanhe had expected, a small neat figure in black appeared quietly beforehim.

  The lady's maid, with her large brown eyes, had taken favourable noticeof Trent from a window when he had crossed the lawn, and had been hopingdesperately that the resolver of mysteries (whose reputation was asgreat below-stairs as elsewhere) would send for her. For one thing,she felt the need to make a scene; her nerves were overwrought. But herscenes were at a discount with the other domestics, and as for Mr. Murch,he had chilled her into self-control with his official manner. Trent,her glimpse of him had told her, had not the air of a policeman, and ata distance he had appeared sympathique.

  As she entered the room, however, instinct decided for her that anyapproach to coquetry would be a mistake, if she sought to make a goodimpression at the beginning. It was with an air of amiable candour,then, that she said, 'Monsieur desire to speak with me.' She addedhelpfully, 'I am called Celestine.'

  'Naturally,' said Trent with businesslike calm. 'Now what I want youto tell me, Celestine, is this. When you took tea to your mistressyesterday morning at seven o'clock, was the door between the twobedrooms--this door here--open?'

  Celestine became intensely animated in an instant. 'Oh yes!' shesaid, using her favourite English idiom. 'The door was open as always,monsieur, and I shut it as always. But it is necessary to explain.Listen! When I enter the room of madame from the other door inthere--ah! but if monsieur will give himself the pain to enter the otherroom, all explains itself.' She tripped across to the door, and urgedTrent before her into the larger bedroom with a hand on his arm. 'See! Ienter the room with the tea like this. I approach the bed. Before I comequite near the bed, here is the door to my right hand--open always--so!But monsieur can perceive that I see nothing in the room of MonsieurManderson. The door opens to the bed, not to me who approach from downthere. I shut it without seeing in. It is the order. Yesterday it wasas ordinary. I see nothing of the next room. Madame sleep like anangel--she see nothing. I shut the door. I place the plateau--I open thecurtains--I prepare the toilette--I retire--voila!' Celestine paused forbreath and spread her hands abroad.

  Trent, who had followed her movements and gesticulations with deepeninggravity, nodded his head. 'I see exactly how it was now,' he said.'Thank you, Celestine. So Mr. Manderson was supposed to be still inhis room while your mistress was getting up, and dressing, and havingbreakfast in her boudoir?'

  'Oui, monsieur.'

  'Nobody missed him, in fact,' remarked Trent. 'Well, Celestine, I amvery much obliged to you.' He reopened the door to the outer bedroom.

  'It is nothing, monsieur,' said Celestine, as she crossed the smallroom. 'I hope that monsieur will catch the assassin of MonsieurManderson. But I not regret him too much,' she added with sudden andamazing violence, turning round with her hand on the knob of the outerdoor. She set her teeth with an audible sound, and the colour rose inher small dark face. English departed from her. 'Je ne le regrette pasdu tout, du tout!' she cried with a flood of words. 'Madame--ah! je mejetterais au leu pour madame--une femme si charmante, si adorable! Maisun homme comme monsieur--maussade, boudeur, impassible! Ah, non!--dema vie! J'en avais par-dessus la tete, de monsieur! Ah! vrai! Est-ceinsupportable, tout de meme, qu'il existe des types comme ca? Je vousjure que--'

  'Finissez ce chahut, Celestine!' Trent broke in sharply. Celestine'stirade had brought back the memory of his student days with a rush.'En voila une scene! C'est rasant, vous savez. Faut rentret ca,mademoiselle. Du reste, c'est bien imprudent, croyez-moi. Hang it! Havesome common sense! If the inspector downstairs heard you saying thatkind of thing, you would get into trouble. And don't wave your fistsabout so much; you might hit something. You seem,' he went on morepleasantly, as Celestine grew calmer under his authoritative eye, 'to beeven more glad than other people that Mr. Manderson is out of the way. Icould almost suspect, Celestine, that Mr. Manderson did not take as muchnotice of you as you thought necessary and right.'

  'A peine s'il m'avait regarde!' Celestine answered simply.

  'Ca, c'est un comble!' observed Trent. 'You are a nice young woman for asmall tea-party, I don't think. A star upon your birthday burned,whose fierce, serene, red, pulseless planet never yearned in heaven,Celestine. Mademoiselle, I am busy. Bon jour. You certainly are abeauty!'

  Celestine took this as a scarcely expected compliment. The surpriserestored her balance. With a sudden flash of her eyes and teeth atTrent over her shoulder, the lady's maid opened the door and swiftlydisappeared.

  Trent, left alone in the little bedroom, relieved his mind with twoforcible descriptive terms in Celestine's language, and turned to hisproblem. He took the pair of shoes which he had already examined, andplaced them on one of the two chairs in the room, then seated himselfon the other opposite to this. With his hands in his pockets he satwith eyes fixed upon those two dumb witnesses. Now and then he whistled,almost inaudibly, a few bars. It was very still in the room. A subduedtwittering came from the trees through the open window. From time totime a breeze rustled in the leaves of the thick creeper about the sill.But the man in the room, his face grown hard and sombre now with histhoughts, never moved.

  So he sat for the space of half an hour. Then he rose quickly to hisfeet. He replaced the shoes on their shelf with care, and stepped outupon the landing.

  Two bedroom doors faced him on the other side of the passage. He openedthat which was immediately opposite, and entered a bedroom by no meansausterely tidy. Some sticks and fishing-rods stood confusedly in onecorner, a pile of books in another. The housemaid's hand had failed togive a look of order to the jumble of heterogeneous objects left on thedressing-table and on the mantelshelf--pipes, penknives, pencils, keys,golf-balls, old letters, photographs, small boxes, tins, and bottles.Two fine etchings and some water-colour sketches hung on the walls;leaning against the end of the wardrobe, unhung, were a few framedengravings. A row of shoes and boots was ranged beneath the window.Trent crossed the room and studied them intently; then he measured someof them with his tape, whistling very softly. This done, he sat on theside of the bed, and his eyes roamed gloomily about the room.

  The photographs on the mantelshelf attracted him presently. He rose andexamined one representing Marlowe and Manderson on horseback. Two otherswere views of famous peaks in the Alps. There was a faded print of threeyouths--one of them unmistakably his acquaintance of the haggard blueeyes--clothed in tatterdemalion soldier's gear of the sixteenth century.Another was a portrait of a majestic old lady, slightly resemblingMarlowe. Trent, mechanically taking a cigarette from an open box on themantel-shelf, lit it and stared at the photographs. Next he turned hisattention to a flat leathern case that lay by the cigarette-box.

  It opened easily. A small and light revolver, of beautiful workmanship,was disclosed, with a score or so of loose cartridges. On the stock wereengraved the initials 'J. M.'

  A step was heard on the stairs, and as Trent opened the breech andpeered into the barrel of the weapon, Inspector Murch appeared at theopen door of the room. 'I was wondering--' he began; then stopped ashe saw what the other was about
. His intelligent eyes opened slightly.'Whose is the revolver, Mr. Trent?' he asked in a conversational tone.

  'Evidently it belongs to the occupant of the room, Mr. Marlowe,' repliedTrent with similar lightness, pointing to the initials. 'I found thislying about on the mantelpiece. It seems a handy little pistol to me,and it has been very carefully cleaned, I should say, since the lasttime it was used. But I know little about firearms.'

  'Well, I know a good deal,' rejoined the inspector quietly, taking therevolver from Trent's outstretched hand. 'It's a bit of a specialitywith me, is firearms, as I think you know, Mr. Trent. But it don'trequire an expert to tell one thing.' He replaced the revolver in itscase on the mantel-shelf, took out one of the cartridges, and laid iton the spacious palm of one hand; then, taking a small object fromhis waistcoat pocket, he laid it beside the cartridge. It was a littleleaden bullet, slightly battered about the nose, and having upon it somebright new scratches.

  'Is that the one?' Trent murmured as he bent over the inspector's hand.

  'That's him,' replied Mr. Murch. 'Lodged in the bone at the back of theskull. Dr Stock got it out within the last hour, and handed it to thelocal officer, who has just sent it on to me. These bright scratches yousee were made by the doctor's instruments. These other marks were madeby the rifling of the barrel--a barrel like this one.' He tapped therevolver. 'Same make, same calibre. There is no other that marks thebullet just like this.'

  With the pistol in its case between them, Trent and the inspector lookedinto each other's eyes for some moments. Trent was the first to speak.'This mystery is all wrong,' he observed. 'It is insanity. The symptomsof mania are very marked. Let us see how we stand. We were not in anydoubt, I believe, about Manderson having dispatched Marlowe in the carto Southampton, or about Marlowe having gone, returning late last night,many hours after the murder was committed.'

  'There is no doubt whatever about all that,' said Mr. Murch, with aslight emphasis on the verb.

  'And now,' pursued Trent, 'we are invited by this polished andinsinuating firearm to believe the following line of propositions: thatMarlowe never went to Southampton; that he returned to the house in thenight; that he somehow, without waking Mrs. Manderson or anybody else,got Manderson to get up, dress himself, and go out into the grounds;that he then and there shot the said Manderson with his incriminatingpistol; that he carefully cleaned the said pistol, returned to the houseand, again without disturbing any one, replaced it in its case in afavourable position to be found by the officers of the law; that he thenwithdrew and spent the rest of the day in hiding--with a large motorcar; and that he turned up, feigning ignorance of the whole affair,at--what time was it?'

  'A little after 9 p.m.' The inspector still stared moodily at Trent. 'Asyou say, Mr. Trent, that is the first theory suggested by this find, andit seems wild enough--at least it would do if it didn't fall to piecesat the very start. When the murder was done Marlowe must have been fiftyto a hundred miles away. He did go to Southampton.'

  'How do you know?'

  'I questioned him last night, and took down his story. He arrived inSouthampton about 6.30 on the Monday morning.'

  'Come off' exclaimed Trent bitterly. 'What do I care about his story?What do you care about his story? I want to know how you know he went toSouthampton.'

  Mr. Murch chuckled. 'I thought I should take a rise out of you, MrTrent,' he said. 'Well, there's no harm in telling you. After I arrivedyesterday evening, as soon as I had got the outlines of the story fromMrs. Manderson and the servants, the first thing I did was to go to thetelegraph office and wire to our people in Southampton. Manderson hadtold his wife when he went to bed that he had changed his mind, and sentMarlowe to Southampton to get some important information from some onewho was crossing by the next day's boat. It seemed right enough, but,you see, Marlowe was the only one of the household who wasn't undermy hand, so to speak. He didn't return in the car until later in theevening; so before thinking the matter out any further, I wired toSouthampton making certain enquiries. Early this morning I got thisreply.' He handed a series of telegraph slips to Trent, who read:

  PERSON ANSWERING DESCRIPTION IN MOTOR ANSWERING DESCRIPTION ARRIVEDBEDFORD HOTEL HERE 6.30 THIS MORNING GAVE NAME MARLOWE LEFT CAR HOTELGARAGE TOLD ATTENDANT CAR BELONGED MANDERSON HAD BATH AND BREAKFAST WENTOUT HEARD OF LATER AT DOCKS ENQUIRING FOR PASSENGER NAME HARRIS ON HAVREBOAT ENQUIRED REPEATEDLY UNTIL BOAT LEFT AT NOON NEXT HEARD OF AT HOTELWHERE HE LUNCHED ABOUT 1.15 LEFT SOON AFTERWARDS IN CAR COMPANY'S AGENTSINFORM BERTH WAS BOOKED NAME HARRIS LAST WEEK BUT HARRIS DID NOT TRAVELBY BOAT BURKE INSPECTOR.

  'Simple and satisfactory,' observed Mr. Murch as Trent, after twicereading the message, returned it to him. 'His own story corroborated inevery particular. He told me he hung about the dock for half an hour orso on the chance of Harris turning up late, then strolled back, lunched,and decided to return at once. He sent a wire to Manderson--"Harris notturned up missed boat returning Marlowe," which was duly delivered herein the afternoon, and placed among the dead man's letters. He motoredback at a good rate, and arrived dog-tired. When he heard of Manderson'sdeath from Martin, he nearly fainted. What with that and the beingwithout sleep for so long, he was rather a wreck when I came tointerview him last night; but he was perfectly coherent.'

  Trent picked up the revolver and twirled the cylinder idly for a fewmoments. 'It was unlucky for Manderson that Marlowe left his pistol andcartridges about so carelessly,' he remarked at length, as he put itback in the case. 'It was throwing temptation in somebody's way, don'tyou think?'

  Mr. Murch shook his head. 'There isn't really much to lay hold of aboutthe revolver, when you come to think. That particular make of revolveris common enough in England. It was introduced from the States. Halfthe people who buy a revolver today for self-defence or mischief providethemselves with that make, of that calibre. It is very reliable, andeasily carried in the hip-pocket. There must be thousands of them inthe possession of crooks and honest men. For instance,' continued theinspector with an air of unconcern, 'Manderson himself had one, thedouble of this. I found it in one of the top drawers of the deskdownstairs, and it's in my overcoat pocket now.'

  'Aha! so you were going to keep that little detail to yourself.'

  'I was,' said the inspector; 'but as you've found one revolver, you mayas well know about the other. As I say, neither of them may do us anygood. The people in the house--'

  Both men started, and the inspector checked his speech abruptly, as thehalf-closed door of the bedroom was slowly pushed open, and a man stoodin the doorway. His eyes turned from the pistol in its open case to thefaces of Trent and the inspector. They, who had not heard a sound toherald this entrance, simultaneously looked at his long, narrow feet. Hewore rubber-soled tennis shoes.

  'You must be Mr. Bunner,' said Trent.