The Deductions of Colonel Gore

by Lynn Brock

  CHAPTER XIX

  AT odd moments since the morning his thoughts had recurred to Melhuish’s abrupt invitation. But if any other motive than the ordinary desire to be civil to a friend of his wife’s had impelled Melhuish to it, Gore was still at a loss to conjecture what that motive was, when he shook hands with his host at eight o’clock.

  He was now practically convinced, as has been already indicated, that his first suspicions with regard to Melhuish had been entirely unfounded. Melhuish, he believed now—practically—knew no more of Barrington’s death than he had stated he knew—that it had been due to a heart seizure and had occurred half an hour or three-quarters of an hour before the Barracombe women had called him out to the dead man’s assistance. Gore was now prepared—practically—to admit that his own impressions of Barrington’s appearance after death had been exaggerated and misled. He was satisfied—practically—that, having concluded his interview with Pickles on that Monday night, Barrington had driven off in his car with Frensham, who had been waiting for him outside, to some place where they had probably spent the night together. And, upon that hypothesis, he had dismissed from his mind—practically—not merely his baseless conjecture that Melhuish’s hand had caused or contributed to Barrington’s death, but also his suspicion, equally baseless, that Melhuish had, wilfully or through error, diagnosed the cause of death incorrectly.

  ‘I was dead sick,’ his narrative admits, ‘of that old theory of mine about Barrington. I had tried to fit it to five people, one after the other—Mrs Melhuish, Melhuish, Arndale, Challoner, and Mrs Barrington, and failed. And when I found myself trying to fit it to a sixth—Frensham—trying once more to screw the same old facts into the same old story with a new villain of the piece—I threw it overboard definitely. At all events I was so sure that Melhuish had no misgivings in the matter that I almost decided before I left the Riverside to go across to Aberdeen Place that evening, to take the little Masai knife-sheath with me, and tell Melhuish how and where I had found it, in the hope that he would then tell me how and where he had found the knife to which it belonged—a point which I wanted to clear up. At the last moment I didn’t do so, because on second thoughts I decided that it was better to avoid all reference to Barrington. I left the sheath on the writing-table in my sitting-room, simply because I was too lazy to lock it up again in the suit-case in my bedroom in which I kept it.’

  Melhuish, who looked tired and worried, had been very busy all day, he explained, and had feared until the last moment to have been compelled to plead a serious case as an excuse for postponing his dinner-hour. His wife was still running a temperature, still in bed, and unlikely to return from Surrey for another week or ten days. He intended to run up to see her on the following day. No, her temperature was not a serious one. There was a lot of influenza of a mild type about in that part of the world. She had sent her kindest regards to Gore.

  Their talk, as they waited for the gong, strayed to indifferent matters.

  As they went down the stairs they heard the clamour of a newsboy coming down Aberdeen Place, and caught his stereotyped cry:

  ‘Evenin’ Piper. ’Orrible Tregedy. Mile an’ Echo. Evenin’ Piper. Evenin’ Piper. ’Orrible Tregedy …’

  ‘Probably one of my cases,’ Melhuish said gravely. ‘A young fellow called Brook and his wife collided with a bus at the corner of Victoria Street this afternoon—motor-cycle and side-car—he was killed. His wife may live; but, even if she does, she’ll be a cripple for the rest of her life.’

  ‘Shockingly dangerous corner that.’

  ‘Shockingly dangerous.’

  The two men had reached the foot of the stairs now, and with a little gesture of a hand Melhuish offered his guest precedence. As he crossed the hall to the dining-room, Gore’s eyes fell upon the trophy on the wall beside it, and perceived that, where the two Masai knives had hung at its lower extremity, there was now a bare space. Concluding that, for prudence sake, and probably in remembrance of his own advice, Melhuish had removed both knives and put them away in some place where they could do no damage, he passed on into the dining-room without comment.

  ‘Usually,’ Melhuish was saying behind him, ‘they have a man on point duty at that corner. But this afternoon, for some reason, there was none. The bus came round on its wrong side—as the buses usually do at that corner—’

  ‘Yes, I’ve noticed that,’ Gore agreed. ‘They usually put on a spurt, too, as they come round, to get up the hill. Reckless devils, some of those bus drivers. Oh, that reminds me. Have you succeeded in acquiring a new shover yet?’

  ‘Not permanently. I’ve got a chap temporarily … as a matter of fact, one of those rather reckless individuals of whom we’ve just been speaking. The Westmouth tramway people supplied him to me temporarily, until I find a good man to take on the job permanently.’

  ‘A chap called Thomson called to see me the other day, to ask for a recommendation. Rather a keen, useful-looking sort of fellow. I suppose he’s been along to see you—?’

  ‘Thomson? Oh, yes. Quite an excellent chap. I rather think of taking him on. Arndale, who had him for a year or so, before he went to the Kinnairds, spoke to me most highly of him this afternoon. I’m writing to the Kinnairds about him tonight. I hardly like to take him on, permanently at any rate, until the Kinnairds have agreed to let him go.’ He turned to Clegg. ‘By the way, Thomson left Mr Kinnaird’s address this afternoon, you said, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I left it in the morning-room.’

  ‘Get it for me, will you. I mustn’t forget to write to Mr Kinnaird tonight.’

  ‘Very well, sir.’

  Melhuish turned his head towards the windows. A second newsboy was hurrying down Selkirk Place now, crying in shrill rivalry with his hoarser-toned competitor in Aberdeen Place.

  ‘And get the evening papers, will you, Clegg.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You saw Arndale this afternoon?’ Gore asked casually, when the man had left the room. ‘Looking pretty cheap, isn’t he?’

  Melhuish nodded. ‘He doesn’t look well. Any golf lately, Colonel?’

  They were still discussing courses and holes when Clegg returned to the room with the evening papers, which he laid on the sideboard in passing, and an envelope which he deposited at his master’s elbow. While they waited for the coming of the fish Melhuish opened the envelope, glanced at the communication which it contained, and then passed the latter to Gore across the table.

  ‘Mr Alfred Thomson writes an excellent hand at any rate, doesn’t he?’ he smiled. ‘I sincerely wish mine were as legible.’ He rose, moved to the sideboard, picked up one of the two newspapers, and then returned to his seat.

  There was a little silence, disturbed only by the subdued rumble of the lift in which the fish was ascending to the expectant Clegg, and by the rustle of Melhuish’s paper as he opened it and turned to its last sheet. Gore glanced at the brief note which his host had passed to him and which contained the latest address which the Kinnairds’ chauffeur had been able to ascertain for his employers.

  ‘Writes quite a good fist,’ he agreed. ‘I suppose he has told you that he was assistant master at Tenbury Grammar School?’

  Melhuish, whose attention was fastened on his newspaper, made no reply for a moment. It was not until his sole had lain unheeded before him so long as to arouse Clegg’s visible concern that he laid aside the Evening Echo and apologised for his abstraction.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Colonel … I’m afraid I didn’t catch what you said—?’

  Their meal had reached the stage of coffee and privacy before Gore learned the explanation of that silence of frowning forgetfulness. Melhuish waited until the door had closed upon the servant’s final exit, and then passed the Echo across the table, indicating two smudged paragraphs at the foot of a stop-press column.

  ‘This is rather curious, Colonel, isn’t it?’ he said quietly.

  Before Gore had straightened the limp sheet between his hands, the n
ame ‘Frensham’ leaped out at him and warned him in some measure of what he was about to read. But as the actual truth found its way to his brain, phrase by phrase, horrified consternation fell upon him—a dismay so utter that even to his own ears his muttered ‘Good God’ sounded meaningless and inept.

  The report was headed:

  ‘FATAL ACCIDENT ON LINWOOD DOWN’

  ‘At seven o’clock this evening the body of a middle-aged man named Richard Frensham was found by two quarrymen in the disused quarry immediately beneath the precipitous point of the cliffs overhanging the river gorge, known as Prospect Rock. From the fact that the body was still warm it is conjectured that the ill-fated man had met his death very shortly before its discovery. A letter signed “A. H.” and addressed to “Mr Richard Frensham, Excelsior Hotel, Purley Square, Westmouth,” which was found in one of the deceased’s pockets, has enabled the police to ascertain that he had been staying at that hotel for some weeks past. The ghastly injuries to the body leave no doubt that the deceased fell, under circumstances which, we understand, the authorities are already taking steps to investigate, from Prospect Rock to the quarry two hundred feet below.

  ‘By a curious coincidence, the corpse was found but a few feet distant from the spot where that of an unknown man was found on June 10th, 1920, and but a few yards distant from that where another unknown unfortunate was discovered on February 4th, 1919.’

  CHAPTER XX

  HE knew the old quarry well—had known it all his life. From the narrow, stony path which coiled amongst the dense thorn-bushes at the edge of the cliffs and led to Prospect Rock, one could, if one leaned far out over the fragile railing protecting the path at the side next to the precipice, see the boulder-littered, cup-like recess far below, overhung by the sheer, bulging wall of rock. Between the quarry and the river lay a narrow cart-track. Figures moving along that track, he recalled, were no larger than a fly on the hand of a person looking down at them from Prospect Rock. Two hundred feet? More nearly two hundred and fifty at that point. He had a vision of that headlong fall—of the annihilating crash that had rushed up out of the darkness to meet the doomed man—

  But that impression was instantaneous—a sensation that came and passed more swiftly than thought. The horror that remained, that defied his best efforts to refuse it admittance to his mind, obliterated for the moment all conceptions of circumstance, all capacity for pity, all facts connected with Frensham save one.

  For the first time certainty, absolute and indubitable, stared him in the face. Even if he had not known that Frensham and Arndale had met that afternoon—even if Arndale had not been, to his knowledge, the last person in whose company Frensham had been that afternoon—that certainty would have trampled all possible doubt or question under foot. The hand that had dealt death to Barrington had found murder a safe and easy remedy. What Barrington had known, Frensham had known. For that knowledge the same hand had found the same remedy.

  The folly—the desperate madness of it, staggered him. That fellow Stevens … He had seen them together, followed them. How many others had seen them together? A tall man and a small one walking together … how many people must have noticed them … The chances were that Arndale could not walk on any part of Linwood Down at any hour of the day without meeting someone who knew him at least by appearance …

  ‘Good God,’ he said again. ‘This is terrible.’

  His eyes returned to the first words of the account. Seven o’clock. He made a rough calculation hurriedly. Descending from Fountain Hill, Prospect Rock had been to his right hand, a couple of hundred yards distant, separated from the road by a stretch of rocky ground thickly covered by thorn-trees and bramble-bushes. It must have been about a quarter to seven, he estimated, when he had passed so close to the scene of the tragedy—had passed, by the Fountain, the end of the narrow path twisting away towards Prospect Rock from the road. Yes, about a quarter to seven. He had called at the Lending Library in Linwood Park Road to get a couple of books, and had gone down afterwards to the post office in King Street for a book of stamps. Ten past seven when he had reached the Riverside—yes. He had been on Fountain Hill about a quarter to seven—about the very time at which the thing had happened. ‘Very shortly before’ seven o’clock, the Echo said.

  He raised his eyes to find Melhuish regarding him curiously—so curiously that for a moment or two he returned the look silently across the table. The most grotesque of imaginations had flashed upon him. For an instant he had had the impression that while he had been staring at the Echo Melhuish had been watching him with a vigilant, hostile apprehension, as if waiting for the next movement of some dangerous, yet blundering animal. Was it possible, he asked himself incredulously, that the man’s fancy had somehow connected him with the tidings of those two smudged paragraphs? Could any man’s fancy leap so preposterously? Impossible.

  And yet an impulse beyond his control constrained him to put the matter at once to the test.

  ‘I must have been coming down Fountain Hill,’ he said quietly, watching the impassive eyes that looked across at him through the slight haze of cigar-smoke, ‘at the very time the poor little beggar fell over.’

  ‘Indeed? You were on the Downs this afternoon?’

  ‘Yes. I walked across from Blackbrothers Hill.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  No. He had been mistaken, he told himself—deceived momentarily by a slight narrowing of eyelids, a slight compression of nostrils and lips—that most ordinary change of expression which a man’s face assumes when the smoke of his cigar threatens to irritate his eyes and his nose a little. Melhuish’s face had resumed its rather tired, rather formal smile now. The tone in which he had said ‘Oh, yes,’ was merely one of polite concession to his guest’s interest in the discovery that he had been in the neighbourhood of catastrophe at the time of its happening.

  ‘There have been a good many accidents and suicides at that particular spot, I believe,’ he said, rising from the table and moving again to the sideboard. ‘I walked round that path along the cliffs once—shortly after I came here first. I remember thinking at the time that the railing was rather inadequate protection.’

  He had picked up the second evening paper. ‘Let us see what the Mail says. The wording of the Echo report would almost lead one to believe—’

  He paused abruptly and read the Mail’s somewhat longer account carefully to the end before he turned his face again towards the shaded lights of the table.

  ‘They have found a knife in the quarry,’ he said slowly—‘“a small, sharp-pointed knife of unusual design”, this report says, “fitted into a haft of leather or hide. The police authorities preserve a strict reticence as to this discovery, which seems to point to the conclusion that Mr Frensham’s death may not have been, as had been at first conjectured, due to an accidental fall from the cliffs above.

  ‘“It is understood that the letter signed with the initials A. H., which was found upon the dead man’s person, throws an important light upon this latest mystery of a spot already notorious for its tragic associations.”’

  He handed the Mail to Gore and went back to his seat. Another little silence fell until, with the gesture of a man who had come to an at length inevitable decision, he abandoned his half-finished cigar and, dropping his elbows on the table, leaned forward gravely towards his guest.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘that this man Frensham was in some way associated with Barrington—at any rate, that he was on terms of intimacy with him?’

  ‘I believe,’ Gore replied cautiously, ‘that they were fairly intimate.’

  ‘I have known you for a very short time,’ Melhuish went on levelly, ‘and I can hardly expect you to indulge in confidences … even if I do so myself. However … I am going to risk a confidence—’

  He paused as if arranging his ideas, and then, without warning, went on again tranquilly.

  ‘You are aware, of course, that Barrington’s death was not entirely due to natural causes. Indeed,
I think it is perfectly safe to say that, but for the severe nervous and physical shock produced by certain extraneous causes, he would not have died … when he did die. You are aware of that?’

  He spoke with the detached deliberation with which he might have addressed a clinical class across a hospital cot containing a mildly interesting case. Gore, for whom this formally-phrased revelation made a terrible certainty more terribly certain, stared at him in silence, wondering what was to come.

  ‘I thought it possible at the time,’ he decided to admit guardedly. ‘Though I am bound to say it surprises me now a great deal to realise that my very vague suspicions were correct.’

  ‘What were your suspicions?’ Melhuish asked. ‘What are your suspicions … now?’

  Gore shrugged.

  ‘Do my suspicions matter in the least, doctor—if the fact is as you say—?’

  Melhuish interrupted him with a cold little gesture of impatience.

  ‘I have been frank with you, Colonel Gore—frank, as you will admit, beyond discretion. What do you really believe to have been the cause of Barrington’s death—now—at this moment? What do you believe caused that physical and mental shock of which I spoke just now?’

  Where was this questioning leading, Gore asked himself. If towards Arndale, he was most resolutely determined that no slightest word of his should guide it.

  ‘Suppose you tell me what your own idea about the matter is, doctor,’ he suggested, rather stiffly. ‘If your idea is … my idea … well, then, I’ll say so. If it isn’t, I’ll say so, too. Please remember that I’m only a layman.’

  Melhuish smiled bleakly.

  ‘My idea,’ he said, reaching for the Mail and pausing until he had found the lines he wanted—‘my idea is a little sharp-pointed knife of unusual design, fitted into a haft of leather or hide.’ He raised his eyes.