“Very good, sir,” said Rufford. “But will you please go on? You’re coming to the real business now.”
“We’ll take the Barratt side of things first, then,” Sir Clinton continued. “In the afternoon, Barratt went out to call on some of his congregation. Mrs. Barratt tells us that she went to a picture-house and did some shopping. She was home first, and he followed soon afterwards. They had supper at seven. Then, while Mrs. Barratt was washing up the dishes, Barratt went off to the meeting in the church hall, taking his black bag with him. Mrs. Barratt did not go to that meeting. Just before nine o’clock, she rang up Mrs. Stacey; so we know that she was at home then, because that call has been checked by Mrs. Stacey’s evidence. She was still at home at ten-fifteen, because Miss Legard rang her up then about the loss of the Jubilee double-florin. That was a thing which could not have been foreseen, so it seems clear that Mrs. Barratt really spent that evening at home.”
Sir Clinton took out his case and lighted a cigarette before continuing. Wendover followed his example; but the inspector, being a pipe-smoker, refused the cigarette which was offered to him.
“Now let’s turn to the doings of the Callis family,” the Chief Constable went on. “This is guesswork, very largely; but you’ll find it fits neatly enough into the definite evidence which we have in our hands. We know from the evidence of the maid that Callis came home for luncheon rather earlier than usual, in advance of his wife. That was to make sure that he could secure the faked Longnor wire before Mrs. Callis saw it. He pocketed it, and next morning he told the maid its contents and explained that Mrs. Callis was at Mrs. Longnor’s on a short visit. That accounted for the maid finding only one set of supper-dishes used, when she came to wash up, and it kept her from asking questions about her mistress’s absence. So you see that the Longnor telegram served more than one purpose.”
“A clever devil, evidently,” said Wendover, reluctantly.
“My impression is that Mrs. Callis stayed in the house that afternoon,” Sir Clinton continued. “She took a bath, probably just before supper-time.”
“How do you know that, sir?” interrupted the inspector.
“Because the maid noticed a second cube of bath-salts had disappeared, as she told the inspector. Also because when he found the body next morning he detected a fairly marked odour of the verbena bath-salts. That suggests that she’d had a bath within the last twenty-four hours.”
“We’ll pass that,” said Wendover. “I don’t suppose it’s important, anyhow.”
“It helps to suggest that Callis was lying when he said that his wife went off during the afternoon,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “The next probability is that he and his wife had supper together.”
“Why ‘probability’?” Wendover demanded. “You’ve no proof of that. No one saw them.”
“No,” admitted Sir Clinton, “but the maid gave us the supper menu: cold fowl, salad, and apple pie. And in Dr. Fanthorpe’s P.M. report he mentioned that Mrs. Callis’s last meal contained apples, fowl, potatoes, and bread. Say ‘potato salad’ and the two are identical. If Mrs. Callis had gone to a restaurant for that meal, is it likely that she’d have chosen precisely the same dishes as Callis was eating at home? It’s much more probable that she had supper with him.”
“I suppose so,” conceded Wendover. “Pass that also. Go on.”
“The next bit’s pure guesswork,” Sir Clinton admitted frankly. “I assume that Callis persuaded his wife to go out for a drive in their car after supper. He ran a certain risk there, if anyone had happened to notice them together in the car; but evidently he was lucky. He had taken the precaution to wear a darkish suit which could suggest a clerical garb, and he wore a dark felt hat to increase the likeness. In one pocket he had a loaded automatic with the barrel which he had extracted from Kerrison’s pistol. In the other pocket he had a second automatic with two cartridges less than the full load, one being in the breech and the rest in the magazine. This represented a pistol from which two shots had been fired. He had carefully cleaned every vestige of a fingerprint off its metal. And he took those love-letters with him also, as well as the railway tickets and the left-luggage receipt.
“I assume that he drove about a bit and then arrived at the bracken-patch. It would be easy enough to suggest that they should go up and look at the view. That was about nine. The two youngsters saw them arrive, coming up through the bracken in Indian file, and young Polly actually heard the murder of Mrs. Callis and her exclamation of dismay when Callis shot her.”
“Wait a bit!” said Wendover, holding up his hand sharply. “What that girl heard was: ‘Don’t, John, please don’t!’ John? John Barratt surely. How do you make that fit?”
“John Callis, not John Barratt,” Sir Clinton pointed out mildly. “You’ve forgotten that both men had the same Christian name.”
“Oh, so they had. I’d forgotten that,” mumbled Wendover, rather crestfallen. “But that girl Polly heard two shots at that time. Why the two shots?”
“Because Callis was faking a suicide pact, which implied a couple of shots close together,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “There was no great risk in that. The only danger would have been if the same person heard the first pair and then, an hour later, the second pair: the pair that Kerrison heard at ten o’clock. But no one did hear both pairs.”
“All right,” said Wendover. “Go on.”
“Callis shot his wife with the Kerrison barrel,” Sir Clinton went on, forbearing even to smile at his friend’s discomfiture. “That left the Kerrison barrel rifling-marks on the bullet, of course. Then he took the platinum wedding-ring from his dead wife’s finger and replaced it by the faked gold ring with the initials on it. After that, he went down to his car, following the track he had made in coming up. And he drove off towards town.”
“It seems a very risky affair,” Wendover criticised. “What if some adult had seen the murder, instead of those two children? He might have been interrupted, if there had been a man on the spot.”
“In that case, I’d be sorry for the man,” Sir Clinton declared. “Callis is not a gentleman who sticks at much, apparently. I imagine that he’d have shot any interrupter out of hand, and he was a crack shot, remember. In that case, the thing would have worn a different aspect, and no doubt we’d have been on the hunt for a homicidal maniac as the likeliest murderer. But, if you don’t mind, I’ve got my hands full in accounting for the real crime without dragging in imaginary ones as well.”
“Well, go on with your reconstruction, then,” said Wendover, tacitly admitting the justice of this.
“Just fit in here a bit of definite evidence to keep us in touch with reality,” Sir Clinton suggested. “Callis left his wife dead among the bracken a few minutes after nine. At nine-twenty-five, the railway-guard Judkins noticed a woman’s figure lying up there, with no one near her. Callis had gone, by that time. That fits, you see.”
“Yes, sir, it does—and neatly too,” said Rufford. “Your idea does seem to hang together, when it dovetails in with all these odd bits of evidence. Please go on.”
“The next bit is pure guesswork again,” admitted the Chief Constable frankly. “Callis knew roughly when that meeting in the church hall was likely to end; and he knew the route that Barratt would take in walking home from the hall. It’s some little distance. I’ve no doubt he picked up Barratt on the road. Again he was running the risk of someone noticing the two of them together; but it wasn’t a big risk, I think. Anyhow, he did pick up Barratt, I’m certain of that.”
“I see, sir,” interjected Rufford. “Because Barratt’s black bag was found in the car later on?”
“Obviously,” said the Chief Constable. “So Barratt was undoubtedly picked up somehow. Mrs. Callis couldn’t do it. She was dead by that time. And it was Callis’s car. Therefore Callis must have done it, if you want to square theory with facts. Assume that Barratt got into the car. Callis had to keep him there by talk until he could drive out to the bracken-patch again. If I had
been in Callis’s shoes, I’d have found one topic easily enough: the anonymous letter and the actual intrigue with Mrs. Barratt. Callis could make a fuss about the accusation in the letter; and say he had one of the same sort himself. All he wanted was a subject which would rivet Barratt’s attention temporarily, and that topic would do the trick better than any other.
“Callis must have made some excuse to hand Barratt the unfingered automatic, so as to get the Barratt prints on it. That would not be difficult. Then when they came to the lane below the bracken-patch, Callis evidently turned his car before they got out. That would give him an opportunity of having a look at the bracken to see if there was anyone about the spot where his wife’s body lay. Evidently he saw no one. It must have been darkish by that time, for they got there about ten o’clock. Callis had some excuse ready for going up into the bracken, obviously. When they got out of the car, Barratt left his black bag behind him, and they went into the bracken side by side, as the broad trail showed.”
“And when he had led him up to his wife’s body, Callis shot him with the pistol with the Kerrison barrel, I suppose?” said Wendover.
“Exactly,” agreed the Chief Constable. “He fired two shots as before, the two shots which Kerrison heard at about ten o’clock. Since his wife’s body was undisturbed, he probably reckoned that no one had heard the first pair of reports. After firing, he had several things to do. The first one was to transfer the Kerrison barrel from his own automatic to the pistol he had handed to Barratt.”
“What about his own finger-prints, then?” demanded Wendover.
“What are gloves for?” retorted Sir Clinton. “Then he had to scatter the fragments of those two love-letters on the ground near the bodies. I expect he’d brought them, ready torn up, in an envelope so as to avoid finger-marking them as he threw them about. He had to stuff the railway tickets and the left-luggage receipt into Barratt’s pocket. After that, he made his way, probably by a devious route, to the bus line, and so got home before his maid was likely to turn up. He had to leave his car, of course, since it was supposed to have been brought to the lovers’ nook by Mrs. Callis; and she was dead.”
“I don’t quite see my way through that love-letter business, sir,” objected Rufford, with a certain diffidence. “The one in Mrs. Callis’s writing had the Fern Bank address on it, printed; and yet it sounded as if it had been written by a woman who was terribly keen on the man she was writing to.”
“I thought I’d cleared that up already,” said the Chief Constable. “I can’t have been as lucid as I meant to be, evidently. The thing to remember is that Mrs. Callis was living at Fern Bank before she got engaged to Callis. When they married, he simply settled down in the same house.”
“Ah, of course!” said Wendover, enlightened by this.
“It’s another case of substitution,” Sir Clinton explained to the inspector. “These were genuine love-letters: one written by Barratt to Helen Alvington during his courtship, and one written by Esther Prestage to Callis during their engagement. The Barratt one was on plain paper and he’d written no address on it. What was simpler than to put 35 Granville Road on it with the embossing press, thus bringing it neatly up to date? And the date on it, you remember, was on a missing fragment, which Callis destroyed before scattering the stuff about. That made it look quite genuine as a recent epistle from Barratt to Mrs. Callis. As to the one written by Mrs. Callis, there was a slip in the cogs from Callis’s point of view. The original love-letter had a Roman type heading. That was the kind of paper that Mrs. Callis used in the days of her engagement. Later, she took a fancy to a Gothic type heading, so that the only note-paper of this kind in her house had this later heading on it. That was awkward for Callis, if we asked to see samples of current note-paper. So he provided against that by ordering a box or two of the same tinted paper with the old Roman heading at the top; and he handed out a sample without a qualm when he was asked for it. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t notice that his new Roman type paper had a watermark different from the earlier stuff. The love-letter was on wove paper with the FINLANDIA watermark and a Roman heading. The sample he produced, purporting to come from the same batch, was tinted exactly like the other, but it was laid paper, ZEBRA CREST watermark, and a Roman heading. The FINLANDIA paper has been off the mark for a year and more, as I told you; and in recent times Mrs. Callis has favoured Gothic headings. Obviously, then, she hadn’t written that love-letter in these days. In fact, it dated back to the Callis-Prestage engagement period. And I’ve no doubt that Callis selected that particular letter from his collection because it had no date on it beyond ‘Tuesday,’ which gave nothing away. When I put all these points together, I was pretty certain that my substitution theory was correct.”
“And of course the ‘Dearest John’ on the love-letter was John Callis, wasn’t he?” asked Rufford.
“Of course. If Barratt’s name hadn’t been the same as his own, Callis would no doubt have picked out some letter starting with ‘Dearest’ or ‘Darling’; but the coincidence in the names made the thing look even more convincing.”
“He’s a clever brute,” commented the inspector, in no very admiring tone.
“Now we can finish his doings that night,” Sir Clinton went on. “He got home again unobserved and washed up the dishes which his wife had used at supper-time, leaving his own lot dirty. That was to make the maid believe that Mrs. Callis had not been there for supper, and so to furnish further evidence of the elopement idea. After that, all he had to do was to sit well in view with a book in his hand, to make sure that the maid noticed him when she came back at eleven-twenty. Mrs. Barratt was prepared to swear that he had been with her at Granville Road between nine and ten, which gave him an alibi for the times of both the murders.”
“She was a good deal older than he was, I think you said,” Wendover remarked after a pause. “And from your account she’s a strong character. I suppose that it was she who led him into the whole business. From what you say about her family characteristics where money is concerned, she had every incentive to avoid either a scandal or even a divorce, since either of them would have led old Mrs. Alvington to cut her out of her will. She must have been a regular Delilah.”
“I’m not sure I agree with you,” said Sir Clinton, thoughtfully. “Did you ever come across a letter of Benjamin Franklin, giving advice to a young friend on the choice of a mistress? It was printed by Tennyson Jesse in the introduction to a volume in the Notable British Trials series.”
“Is that the Franklin who flew a kite in a thunder-storm, sir?” inquired the inspector.
“The same,” Sir Clinton assured him. “But he knew a lot about other things than electricity. Human nature, for one. His advice was that his young friend should get married. But if the young man insisted on taking a mistress, Franklin advised him to choose a mature one rather than a young girl, and he gave no less than eight reasons for this. The eighth one was: ‘They are so grateful.’”
“Oh, indeed?” said the inspector in a sceptical tone. “Do you agree with Franklin, sir?”
“Well, let’s take Mrs. Barratt as an example,” Sir Clinton suggested. “She was married young, probably before she’d gained enough experience of the world to make a suitable choice. Barratt was no doubt a decent enough man, but he came from a lower class and he was hardly a type that’s capable of adapting itself to a fresh environment. Through no real fault on either side, those two could hardly run harmoniously in double harness, once the initial enthusiasm wore off. She said as much to you, didn’t she, inspector?”
“Pretty plainly, sir. What struck me was that she really seemed quite indifferent in the matter. I mean, she hadn’t any animus against Barratt for spoiling her life, or anything of that kind. I got the impression that he’d simply ceased to count, so far as she was concerned.”
“So I inferred,” Sir Clinton agreed. “But then Callis came along, and that must have roused a fresh interest in her. It’s quite on the cards that she laid h
erself out to capture him, and succeeded. But once she’d secured him, things would take on a different aspect if she really fell in love with him. She was eight years or so older than he was. And she was just the age when age may begin to tell on a woman. See her in the street and you might take Mrs. Barratt for twenty-seven or twenty-eight. See her close at hand, and you’d perhaps notice these tiny betraying wrinkles about the mouth which destroy the illusion of fresh youth. She must have seen them herself in her mirror and understood that they were the fore-runners of further ravages to come. That’s an awkward discovery for a woman who has captured a man younger than herself, and who means to keep him if she can. In the initiation of the affair, she may have been the dominant spirit; but once the intrigue started and she recognised that her physical charms were on the wane, the tables would be turned and it would be for her to go any length in order to retain Callis. She was ‘so grateful,’ I imagine. She wasn’t prepared to give him up: that’s plain. To keep him, she would have to marry him if possible. And I think one may assume that Callis was madly in love with her and wanted her for himself. Nothing else will fit the facts.”
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