by Lynn Brock
‘So I was actually getting somewhere near the bone when Stevens turned up. Though of course it was really Stevens who recovered those letters for me. If he hadn’t—’
But that hypothesis of Colonel Gore’s is clearly of no importance.
There is a sergeant of the Westmouth City Police who sometimes, in his spare moments, wonders a little about Colonel Gore. His name is Long, and he is an extremely intelligent and thoughtful officer. As, however, he has a wife and a large family, and has long ago learned the imprudence—in the Westmouth City Police Force at all events—of doing anything in a hurry, it is probable that he will continue to wonder for some time to come.
THE END
TOO MUCH IMAGINATION
CHAPTER I
INTO THE NET
‘I CANNOT understand, Gore,’ said the junior partner of Gore and Tolley, as the senior partner made a tranquil and unobtrusive entrance at five minutes past ten precisely, ‘how any intelligent human being can arrive at his office every morning exactly five minutes late.’
The senior partner lighted a pipe without resentment and turned the twinkle of a pair of kindly if exceedingly shrewd gray eyes upon his colleague.
‘System, my dear Tolley,’ he said blandly. ‘Highly specialized system. My existence is saturated with it. As to the particular point under discussion, I may say that in all human probability I was born five minutes late.’
‘Don’t be an ass,’ said Mr Tolley. ‘Guess what’s in the net this morning!’
‘I know,’ said Colonel Gore placidly. ‘Sir Maurice Gaul, I understand, desires to enlist our distinguished services. I had a note from Lady Pauncefield this morning telling me that she had recommended us. Very sweet of the dear old thing. I’m glad we got back that gold plate of hers for her. Well, let us hear what our friend Sir Maurice has to say for himself.’
Tolley picked up a crested sheet of delicate azure from his desk and read:
Tel. 33 Mortfield.
Telegrams. Oast. Surrey. The Oast House.
Stations. Guildford. Mr Mortfield.
Farnham. Surrey.
Milford. May 14.
Sir Maurice Gaul would feel obliged if Colonel Gore would arrange an interview here at any hour either tomorrow, Thursday, May 15, or next day—preferably tomorrow. Sir Maurice would feel obliged if Colonel Gore would arrange day and hour by telephone tomorrow, Thursday morning, by which time he trusts that his telephone will be in order—if not, by telegram.
‘Good,’ smiled Gore. ‘We’re getting on, Tolley—even if the great Sir Maurice Gaul can only address us in the third person.’ His hand went to the telephone. ‘It’s a lovely day for a run down into Surrey. And most fortunately I put on a very beautiful new suit this morning. Double-three Mortfield, isn’t it? This may be quite a good thing for us, old chap, with a bit of luck. Find a train for me, like a darling. I’m going to it right now.’
And, in point of fact, six minutes later the junior partner was once more alone. Colonel Gore’s system was sufficiently elastic to adjust itself to the emergencies of the Southern Railway Co. And the first train that could get him to Sir Maurice Gaul was the only train that interested him in the least.
For the fish that had strayed into Gore and Tolley’s net that morning was a very big and desirable fish indeed—a fish which had been celebrated for quite a long time and was something more than celebrated at the present moment.
CHAPTER II
TOO MUCH TO SWALLOW
THE career of Maurice Gaul had been an idyll of literary success. The son of a Christian police court solicitor, the grandson of a Jewish tailor, at a bound he had emerged—somewhere in the early nineteen hundreds—from the obscurity of reporterdom into the full blaze of fame.
A first novel, written in six weeks, had done that for him; a second, dramatized with brilliant success, had supplied him with food and clean collars for the rest of his life. For the following twenty years he had produced best seller after best seller—not all equal in quality to his early work, but all entirely satisfactory to the enormous public for whose literary palate he had never failed to supply just that soothing blend of sentiment and sensation it hoped for from him.
Good-looking, self-confident and suave, with no illusions save that of success, at thirty-six he had fashioned himself into a social personage of dignity if not of importance, had married a wife with ten thousand a year and hosts of influential friends, and had found a seat in Parliament.
The war had made him special correspondent to the Daily Mercury, and four years stay-at-home England, no less than England at the front, had largely depended upon him for its hopes and fears. Four times a week his picturesque pen, gifted with a talent for facile emotion, had brought its column of actuality from France or Salonica or Mesopotamia or Russia to the British breakfast table—authentic stuff, pointed with piquant detail, and beyond doubt turned out by a man who knew everything and every one worth knowing.
Other special correspondentships had followed with peace, and had subsequently supplied excellent copy for more novels, more articles, more Parliamentary Committee work. He had an excellent idea of the value of his wares and had inherited the business ability of his breed; his income from his literary work had probably exceeded that of his wife considerably.
He had been knighted—he had been adorned with distinguished orders—English, French, Belgian and Italian—he had built himself a magnificent house in one of the most beautiful parts of Surrey—and, having thus achieved success at forty-seven, had sealed it by writing a book telling how he had done it.
And then, a few days before, upon this favourite of the gods, disaster, utter and devastating, had fallen like a thunderbolt.
On May 2, Maurice Gaul had left his Surrey residence, the Oast House, and for a week exactly had disappeared from the ken of his large household. According to the account which he had subsequently given to the police, he had spent those seven days in Bristol, collecting local colour for a projected novel, a portion of which was to deal with the experiences of a ‘down-and-outer’ in the capital of the west.
His story was that, for purposes of realism, he had begun his adventures in Bristol with the sum of one shilling, that by the fourth day he had been absolutely destitute and had remained practically so until the end of the week of his experiment. He had accounted thus for the fact that neither on May 6, 7, nor 8 had he seen a newspaper, being unable to afford to buy one.
He had thus remained until the morning of May 9 in absolute ignorance of the terrible tragedy which for three days had set all England agog.
About ten o’clock on the night of May 5, a Mr John Arling, who resided about a mile from the Gauls, and who had known Lady Gaul since her childhood, had received, upon his return to his house from the golf club at Mortfield, where he had been playing bridge, a telephone message which had arrived about half an hour before and had been taken by his butler, Robert Ellis. Lady Gaul had rung up, the butler had said, to ask that Mr Arling would go up to the Oast House as soon as possible, as she wished to consult him upon a matter of very great urgency and importance.
Mr Arling had put on his cap again and started at once for the Oast House, which he had reached about twenty minutes past ten. The drawing-room was on the ground floor, the house, though of wide frontage, being of two storeys only. Its blinds, as usual, had been up and, as he passed its windows, he had seen Lady Gaul, seated with her back to the windows, apparently reading. He had tapped at a window, but she had not turned at the sound.
He was a constant visitor at the Oast House at all hours of the day and, as was his habit, he had entered the house by the front door—which was always left open until eleven o’clock during the summer months—without knocking or ringing, and had gone into the drawing-room.
He had begun an apology for his delay in complying with Lady Gaul’s request, when his attention had been attracted by something odd in her attitude. At first he had believed her asleep. But upon approaching her chair he had discovered
to his horror that she had been stabbed between the shoulder-blades and that the back of her frock and the upholstery of the big armchair in which she sat were saturated with blood.
It had been only too evident that she was beyond all help. But he had rushed out of the room in search of the servants and, after some delay, had found the housekeeper at the end of the garden chatting with the head gardener. These two had been the only servants then on the premises, all the rest of the staff having been given permission to witness a night attack on Farnham by tanks and airplanes in connection with manoeuvres then in progress on the other side of the Hog’s Back.
From the garden Mr Arling had rushed to the telephone to summon the Mortfield doctor and to inform the Mortfield police. He had then gone back to the drawing-room where he had found the two servants standing gazing in stupefaction at their murdered mistress.
In the clench of the dead woman’s hand, rolled into a wisp, they had found a blood-flecked letter signed with the initial ‘C,’ but without other indication as to its writer. The contents of that letter had not been published in the newspapers, but the press had conveyed the impression that its purport lent a note of additional painfulness to the affair.
The medical evidence at the inquest had gone to show that Lady Gaul had probably been murdered about an hour before Mr Arling had found her, that two savage blows had been inflicted from behind with a heavy, wide-bladed knife and that her death had been instantaneous. No fingerprints had been found by the police, no footprints. The passing tramp theory had been, of course, suggested, but without conviction.
There had been several dogs about the house and the grounds that night as usual. But neither the gardener nor the housekeeper could recall having heard any unusual barking—though they had admitted that the dogs were all friendly dogs and made no fuss even about tramps.
The tragedy, owing to the social position of the victim and of her husband, had created an immense sensation—a sensation increased by the fact that not until nearly four days later could any trace of Sir Maurice Gaul’s whereabouts be discovered. On the morning of May 9 he had received from a newspaper purchased at Temple Meads terminus his first tidings of the terrible catastrophe which had befallen him. He had at once communicated with the police and had returned to Surrey by road in a hired car to avoid the delays of the cross-country railway journey.
When he had reached his house it had been to discover that a fire which had broken out in the small hours of the morning had reduced it to a blackened ruin. And, waiting for him among the reeking debris, had been a police inspector in whose pocket—though he had not actually produced it then—had been a warrant for his arrest. From that indignity his explanation of his movements during the preceding four days and the inspector’s caution had for the moment saved him.
But all England, reading its newspaper that evening, had shaken its head and, with a thrill, told itself that that ‘lost-in-Bristol’ story was altogether too much to swallow and that the solution of the four days’ mystery of the Oast House was, for any intelligent and fair-minded newspaper reader, as clear as daylight.
CHAPTER III
THE NOTE IN HER HAND
THE crested limousine which had met Gore at Guildford station swooped up a steep and sandy road through the sombre silence of a pine-wood, swooped over a crest and swooped down on the sunlit glory of the Surrey heaths in mid-May. Gore gazed with benignity upon the view thus suddenly revealed to him. Typical Surrey on a typical spring morning—what more agreeable?
The gorse was blazing gold, the tender green of the young bracken pointed the brown of the heather, the air was filled with balmy fragrances and the twitter of larks. Curve after curve, pine-clad or striped with the silvery slimness of the birches, fell away, mile upon mile, to the blue distance of Hindhead and Blackdown. To the left a sheet of swan-decked water sparkled among the trees. To the right, three miles away, the telegraph posts of the Hog’s Back marched in procession against the skyline.
Gore caught sight at that moment of the house which the fortunate man of his thoughts had builded for himself—a black, gutted skeleton, in silhouette against the southern sunlight that pierced it through and through mercilessly and showed it a mere empty, hollow husk. One small portion only—an annex built out toward the gardens to house the servants—had escaped.
Sixteen thousand pounds that house had cost Maurice Gaul to build, so the newspapers had said. Quite a good deal of money to burn. A fused wire, however, had apparently done the job promptly and thoroughly. The fire engines from Guildford and Farnham and Godalming had had between them just enough water to wet a fair-sized hay-rick fairly thorough.
The car passed an elaborate gate whose pillars bore the inscription ‘The Oast House’ in Old English lettering, and drew up before a pretty, hawthorn-embowered cottage, a hundred yards or so farther down the road. There Gore alighted and was received by a pale, prim little man who ushered him into a delightful little book-lined sitting room.
‘I am Sir Maurice Gaul’s secretary,’ he explained. ‘Sir Maurice asked me to say that he regretted that your interview must take place in these comparatively humble quarters of mine. But as a matter of fact, with the exception of the servants’ quarters, Sir Maurice, at the moment, has no other place to receive anyone.’
‘He had only built the house quite a short time ago?’
‘About twelve months ago.’
‘A curious name—The Oast House.’
‘He built it on the site of an old oast barn. There were extensive hop-fields along this slope forty or fifty years ago. Some of the old buildings have been left standing. You may have seen them as you came in. Lady Gaul had a taste for the picturesque. Here is Sir Maurice now.’
The secretary opened the door to admit a stoutish, still youngish man, with curling black hair, liquid eyes, curved spine and strongly-marked features. The adjective sleek, pervaded Gore’s first impression of him, despite the shadows beneath his eyes, and the almost lugubrious gravity of his air. He bowed solemnly, dismissed the secretary with a glance and consigned, with a rather fleshy white hand, the visitor to the chair from which he had risen.
‘I don’t know at all if you can do anything to help me, Colonel Gore. However, Lady Pauncefield—who is a very valued friend of mine, and to whom, I understand, you have recently been of very great service suggested that you might be able to do something for me. Perhaps I may also say that I recall very clearly the part which you played in that terrible business down in Wiltshire—the Powlet case.’
Gore bowed politely and waited.
He found Sir Maurice Gaul so far, frankly, a little disillusioning, and a little pompous. But, no doubt, under more than trying circumstances even a celebrity found it necessary to stress the fact that he was one.
‘You have, I assume, read the newspaper accounts of my wife’s death. I think, however, that I had better begin by giving you my own account at first-hand. I have asked Mr Arling to come up and see you personally also. He will be here very shortly. You will, also, if you wish, see every member of my household staff and ask them any questions you may think fit. They are all entirely loyal to me. I can at least promise that you will be supplied with all the available facts.’
His succinct narrative of his visit to Bristol supplied Gore with one new and significant detail. So far neither his own efforts nor those of the police had been able to discover a single person in Bristol who could testify to having seen him at any place there between May 2 and May 9, though plenty of witnesses could be found to vouch for the afternoon of the former date and the morning of the latter.
On arriving at Bristol on May 2 he had deposited his luggage and his money—with the exception of the sum of one shilling—at the Grand Hotel. On the morning of May 9 he had reclaimed them. In the interval he had wandered about, in shabby clothes purchased specially for his adventure, looking for casual employment in East Bristol. Day after day he had taken his place in one or another queue of applicants for work.
> Once only had he reached a foreman—to be turned away promptly upon the discovery that he belonged to no union. He had rubbed elbows with scores of unfortunates engaged in the same quest as himself, but not one of these had it been possible to find. He had slept in the open every night—on Clifton Downs most often; no lodging house keeper could vouch for a single night of the seven.
He had begged in the streets of Clifton and had extracted pennies from sundry elderly ladies; but none of the elderly ladies could be discovered. He had revisited, in the make-up of his adventure, a dozen cheap restaurants and shops where he had purchased food; but at none of these places had the people undertaken to recognize him.