by E.
“I still thought that I had killed him; but when I heard that he had been found drowned down by the gulley I knew that I had not done so, and that he must have recovered after I had left him and gone back into his own water. Because, you see, we were nowhere on the river-bank when I hit him, and he could not possibly have fallen in. So, knowing that I had not killed him, I kept silent. That is the story. I am sorry that I did not tell it to you the first time. I did not do so because I saw no reason why it should come out.” She finished and leaned back in her chair, glancing anxiously from one to other of the men.
The Chief Constable looked across at Doctor Manson, his eyes lifted in inquiry. The scientist nodded.
“There are one or two points I would like to take up with you, Mrs. Devereux,” he said. “Did you say that you unbuttoned the waterproof coat of the colonel?”
“Yes. When he didn’t move I did that to feel if the heart was beating.”
“Did you fasten it up again?”
“No, Doctor Manson. I left it just as I had unfastened it.” Manson pressed the point. “It is a matter of very great importance, Mrs. Devereux,” he insisted. “You are perfectly sure that you did not rebutton the coat?”
“I am absolutely sure, Doctor. I was terrified, thinking that he was dead, and did not dare go near him again.”
Doctor Manson turned to the Chief Constable. “The point is important, Sir William,” he said, “because when the colonel was taken out of the water the coat was tightly buttoned. It was, in fact, this which rendered the wading outfit waterproof, and kept the body floating in the Round Pool.” He turned again to Mrs. Devereux.
“There is one circumstance in your story which seems to me peculiar. You say that you arranged to meet the colonel on your beat that morning. Firstly, why meet him there? Why could you not have seen the colonel in the hotel and talked it over. Each of you had rooms.”
“I was too terrified. There was always the chance of someone coming into the room—a chambermaid, or Mrs. Baker. The colonel had some knowledge about me. I had hopes of being able to silence him. In my state of mind I saw danger everywhere, and did not dare run the risk of anything being overheard by someone who might themselves use the information.”
“Well, conceding you that point, why this journeying to Tavistock arranging an alibi? Why could you not have gone direct to the river from the hotel and had your private interview?”
“There was no idea in my mind of an alibi at that time. I was, as I have said, agitated and thought that it would calm my nerves to get right away and have lunch in Tavistock. I knew that there would be time to get back to the river, since I had fixed two o’clock as the time I was to see Colonel Donoughmore.”
“So you had no intention of going back to Tavistock afterwards?”
“None at all—not till afterwards. Then I realised that I had left my scarf in the tea-rooms where I had had lunch. I saw that, if I went there for tea and asked if the scarf had been found, it would look as though I had been in Tavistock all the time.”
“That is all I have to ask you, Mrs. Devereux. Is there anything you can think of, Sir William?”
The Chief Constable nodded. “There is just this, Mrs. Devereux,” he said. “You say that when you heard that Colonel Donoughmore had been drowned you realised that you had not killed him. Why then, did you not tell us this at the time we questioned you previously? We told you that we were seeking information of anyone who might have seen the colonel on the river-bank. You not only withheld this knowledge, but actually denied that you had even seen the man that day. Now, when you are found out to have been speaking an untruth, and are placed in a very serious position, you come forward with this very circumstantial story. It is, on the face of it, pretty suspicious, do you not think?”
“I know that it must seem that way to you,” was the answer. “But I have told you that the one thing above all others which I wanted was to keep all knowledge connecting myself with the colonel quiet. Then where the colonel fell in the river was nowhere near where we talked. So what did it matter?”
Doctor Manson broke into the questioning. “Where do you think the colonel went into the river, Mrs. Devereux?” he asked.
She looked up in surprise. “Where? Why, surely we have all seen the marks, Doctor Manson,” she said.
Manson bent his gaze upon her. “I have no doubt you have seen certain marks, like most of us, Mrs. Devereux,” he said, and his voice was grimly clear. “But you see, Colonel Donoughmore did not fall into the river at that point. He went into the water by the Pylons, in fact, within a few yards of where you were talking with him. And a woman with a rod was seen on the river-bank somewhere about that time.”
“Oh!” The woman’s ejaculation was almost a scream. “Oh!” Her hands flew to her mouth and she bit a finger until the blood came. Manson waited until she had composed herself. Then: “There are just two more questions, Mrs. Devereux. Did you go alone to the river?”
“Yes . . . yes. Quite alone.”
“And did you see anyone at all while you were going, while you were there, or while you were returning? I mean anybody—even at a distance.”
“I did not see a soul, Doctor.”
“That is all, Sir William, unless . . . ?”
“Burns?” The Chief Constable looked at his Superintendent. Burns shook his head.
“Well, Mrs. Devereux, that seems as far as we can get at present,” he said. “You will understand that we cannot make any promise that what you have told us can be kept confidential. And, in the meantime, we shall have to ask you not to leave the hotel without permission.”
He rose, walked to the door, and held it open for her to pass out. Closing the door after her, he returned to his chair.
“Now . . . what?” he asked.
“Before we go any further, tell me, Sir William, have you any plain-clothes policewomen here?”
“We have a couple,” Burns broke in.
“Then I want them in the Tremarden Arms as chambermaids,” said Manson. “They can take turn and turn apiece. They must be on duty in the corridor into which Mrs. Devereux’s room opens. There is a vacant room at the end of the corridor; put them in there. Their job is to watch, report what she does and where she goes in the hotel when she leaves her room, and to whom she talks. It is vitally important. Impress this upon them, but impress, also, that it must be done without Mrs. Devereux seeing that she is being watched. Is that clear?”
“Quite clear, Doctor. You want that done at once, of course.” The superintendent turned to Penryn. “Will you see to that, Inspector?”
“And now, Doctor, what are we to make of her story?” asked the Chief Constable.
“I think we should have arrested her.” Superintendent Burns put in the suggestion hastily.
“On what grounds?” asked Manson.
Burns looked nonplussed. “Well, surely, Doctor, it has worked out just as you seemed to know. She did exactly what you said she had done. She was the only person there—she admitted so to us, didn’t she? She is the only person who could have killed the colonel at that spot . . .”
“Except one other.”
The words came in a slow drawl from the scientist. “Except one other, I think.”
“One other?” Burns echoed. “What other? We have no evidence of any other person there.”
“No identifying evidence, Burns, no. But we certainly have evidence.”
“What evidence, and what person?”
There was a pause while the scientist considered his answer. Then he gave it like a judgment. The effect on the other two present was much as would have been the effect if a Judge had given judgment acquitting a prisoner who had entered a plea of guilty.
“I believe what Mrs. Devereux has told us—to a certain extent,” he began. “It corresponds to my own theory of what happened. Mind you, I am perfectly sure she has not, even now, told us everything. I think she may tell us some more yet, unwittingly—and to your policewomen, Burns. But wha
t she has said happened on the bank I believe to be true, except for one thing.”
“And that?” The demand came simultaneously from the Chief Constable and Burns.
“When she said that there was nobody else near, she is wrong. She may not know she is wrong, or she may—I have not decided about that as yet. But you can take it from me that there was someone else there.”
“There . . . was . . . someone . . . else . . . there?” Burns repeated the scientist’s words parrot-wise. “Who?” he demanded.
“The person who stood in the copse watching the pair through the brambles. The person who made that footstep. How comes it that you have forgotten that very interesting and informative footprint?”
CHAPTER XXII
“MR. X”
Doctor Manson had one axiom which he never ceased to drill into such men at Scotland Yard as came into contact with him during the course of investigations. “There is no secret conceived in the mind of man,” he insisted, “which cannot be laid bare by the mind of man.” And time and again he had proved the truth of the axiom to doubters. All that was required, he maintained, was an ordered mind and a logically trained method of thinking, plus knowledge of the line of country through which the secret ran.
His own logical thinking consisted, mainly, in accepting no theory, in starting with no theory; but only with proved facts and then, commencing with the lowest common denominator, gradually cancelling out until the remainder would cancel no more. That remainder, however improbable it appeared, was, he insisted, the only possible answer. In plain language, it was the process of elimination. But not elimination by theory, supposition, or guesswork; but elimination by fact.
That had been the principle upon which he had worked in the investigation into the death of Colonel Donoughmore, and he had now, he felt, reduced the case to its lowest common denominator.
All that was left was for the remainder to be identified. He viewed it as something of an algebraical problem. He wrote it down on a pad on his table as such:
X =?
Who was “X”? That was the problem to which he now had to devote his reasoning. He began by writing underneath his symbol x—? the various quantities. The completed form read thusly:
a = the colonel’s body.
b = bootprint cast.
c = the artificial fly.
y = the colonel’s fishing-rod.
z = maker of marks on bank.
Pondering over this he wrote the equation:
a + (b + c + y) = z.
Next, he wrote the further quantities:
m = photographed newspaper cuttings.
n = Mrs. Devereux.
q = the date July 15.
r = the motive.
From this he set out his second and third equations:
m + n + q = r. Then:
z + r = z.
Satisfying himself that he had correctly set out the problem, the Doctor, with Sergeant Merry, settled down to its solution. “A” and “B” he decided, were easily disposed of. It was obvious, from the position of the footprint, that the owner had pressed forward on his left foot to peer through the brambles at something ahead. It was reasonable to suppose that the only thing that could have interested him was the scene between the colonel and Mrs. Devereux since, after Mrs. Devereux had left, the colonel—if her story was true, and he (Manson) believed it was—was lying on the ground, unconscious. The time which elapsed between the wound on the head and entry into the water had been shown, by pathological examination, to be at least half-an-hour. Therefore, Mrs. Devereux had left the colonel alive, which put “b” on the spot when the colonel became, pathologically, a body.
Thus, Manson argued, “c” and “y” became at once associated with “b”. Because, as he pointed out to Merry, before the colonel became a body, he had had his rod and his priest with him. The priest had vanished. But the rod was placed on the river bank near the scene of the supposed accident. Nobody but “b” would have taken the rod to the bank so far down the river. If “b” took the rod down, then he also attached the fly to the line. Therefore, it could reasonably be assumed that he also made the scratches on the bank. “Now,” he reflected, “is there any more to be got out of that?”
Merry regarded the equation with a critical eye. “Have you, Harry, sought any possible connection between ‘b’ and ‘z’?” he asked.
“No. I don’t see how we can. . . .” He stopped. “Of course,” he said, “the bootprint cast. How utterly careless of me.”
“We worked out that the marks on the bank were made by a right boot,” Merry hazarded. “You would hardly be likely to find a similar nail protruding from the heel of the left boot which made the footprint.”
“No. But if the measurements are the same it will be a strengthening of the equation quantity.” Manson produced from the cupboard the casts taken of the bank indentures and of the copse footprint.
He measured the heel breadths and lengths with a micro-gauge, checking over the measurements three times before he was finally satisfied. The two presented identical figures. “That then, seems to prove the equation,” he announced.
“Now we arrive at the second equation. And that is not going to be so easy, ‘m’ and ‘n’ we can add pretty easily and certainly. The newspaper cuttings and Mrs. Devereux are definitely connected. But where does ‘q’ come in? What led Colonel Donoughmore to write in haste on July 15 to the press-cutting agency for those cuttings, and go himself to London to collect them, when they could have been sent to the hotel by post?”
“Mrs. Devereux said that he knew something in her past, Harry.”
“Exactly! He knew something in her past. Then why did he want the cuttings? And why send for them? He knew Janice Devereux. He must have known who she was, because he described her to the agency and referred to the Indian newspapers. Her engagement to Sir John Shepstone had been announced six months previously. Why wait to send for the cuttings until she had been several days in the hotel? Why not have begun the blackmail weeks before, or even on the first day she appeared—or the second? He knew something in her past. Then the cuttings were not going to help him. The only credible explanation that I can think of is something in the hotel. But what?”
“I suppose you mean something between July 12 when Mrs. Devereux appeared and July 15 when he sent for the cuttings?”
Manson nodded. “It could only be something connected with those dates,” he said. “An idea did strike me on that.” The scientist sorted among his dossier and produced the copy he had taken of the hotel register. The two men bent over it. “Now, this is what I mean,” Manson explained. Taking a pencil he indicated the entries in the register. He spoke rapidly for a few minutes, emphasising his remarks with jabs of the pencil on the table-top.
Merry sat back and whistled softly. “That, Harry, would be a hell of a mess,” he said.
“It is the only satisfactory explanation I can see at the moment, and if we prove it, that is the end of the case,” Manson retorted.
For half an hour the two men discussed a plan of campaign to meet the new development. At the end, Merry suggested the first move. “I think, Harry, we ought to know more about the fly which Franky says is his,” he said.
The two proceeded downstairs. The hotelier was in his office when they entered. Manson explained the visit. “Sorry to keep harping on that fly, Franky,” he said. “But are you still certain that you didn’t lend it to anybody?”
“Certain sure, Doctor,” was the reply.
“Where do you keep these flies of yours?”
Baker pointed to the writing-desk in the lounge. “In there, Doctor,” he said. “I keep all my fishing bits and pieces in there. In case anybody wants anything, you know.”
“Locked?”
“Noa, Doctor. We don’t lock up things like that in Cornwall.”
“So that anybody coming in for a drink, or anybody staying in the hotel, could go off with a cast, or a fly, if they liked?”
“I suppose
they could, yes. That is, if they knew such things were kept there. But who would want to go stealing a fly, Doctor, when they know that they have only to ask for one?”
“That is what we want to know, Franky.”
“That certainly lends colour to the idea, Harry,” said Merry, as they walked back towards the staircase and up to their room.
“And may explain the phenomenon of the wet fly and the rod in the grass,” added Manson. The words, spoken aloud, awakened a thought in the mind of the scientist. He glanced at the rod on the wall, with, below it, the landing-net. Both were covered over with mutton cloth. “That reminds me, Merry,” he said suddenly, “we have not yet tried the rod for finger-prints.”
The scientist lifted it down from the hook and unwrapped the two lengths, laid them on the table. It was a split-cane, seven feet long, and the cane closely bound. The handle, to the extent of some 12 inches, was of the usual cork, which affords a better hold on the rod, and also prevents slipping of the hand when casting. Merry eyed the cork doubtfully. “Not likely to help us much, I’m afraid, Harry,” he suggested.
“I wonder,” was Manson’s retort. “We can try the cane sections first, and then there is a possibility that Aubert may help us.”
It was early apparent, however, that the cane was not going to produce any desired results. Though the sergeant covered the polished surface with a layer of Hydrang. c. Creta—the grey powder used for outlining unseen finger-prints on darkened surfaces—no trace of prints made an appearance. It was evident that the rod had been carefully wiped clean of any possible marks. If not, there should have been, at least, the marks of some fingers on it. The joints had had to be pieced together.