The Rasp

by Philip MacDonald

  Walking down the passage which led to the great square hall, Anthony pondered. It seemed impossible that this gigantic imperturbability was a murderer. But how to explain the fingerprints? And Deacon did not know of those prints. What would he do when told of them?

  ‘The man’s in a mess,’ he said to himself. ‘This week’s problem: how to extricate him? The solution will be published in our next week’s issue—per-haps!’

  He came out into the hall. The utter silence of the house oppressed him. Any sound, he thought, would be welcome, would make things seem less like a nightmare.

  He turned to his left, making for the verandah door. His fingers on its handle, he paused. Behind him, to his right, was the door of the study. His ears had caught a sound, a rustling sound, from that direction. He looked about him. No one was near, in sight even. The two men Boyd had left on duty had disappeared.

  Quietly, he crossed to the study door. He laid his ear against it. He heard the click of a lock, a light lock, then a rustle of paper, then soft footsteps.

  He crossed the hall to the foot of the stairs in three jumps. A barometer and a clock hung on the wall. He studied them.

  He heard the study door open slowly, as if the one who opened were anxious not to be noisy. Then came a rustle of skirts. He stepped out from the shadow.

  Half-way between the study and where he stood by the foot of the stairs was a woman. Her hand, which had been at the bosom of her dress, fell to her side.

  Anthony moved towards her. Closer, he saw her more plainly—a tall, square-shouldered grenadier of a woman, with a sexless, high-cheekboned, long-nosed face. The features, the sand-coloured hair, were reminiscent of the dead minister.

  ‘Miss Hoode?’ Anthony bowed. ‘My name is Gethryn. I believe that Sir Arthur Digby-Coates has explained my presence.’

  ‘Yes.’ The woman’s tones were flat, lifeless as her face. She essayed cordiality. ‘Yes, indeed. I told him I was glad, very glad, to have your help. I need to apologise for not having spoken to you before, but—I—but—’

  Anthony raised a hand. ‘Believe me, madam, I quite understand. I would like, if it is not an impertinence, to express my condolence.’

  The woman bowed her head. ‘Thank you,’ she said, pressing a hand to her heart. ‘I—I must leave you. Give orders for anything you may want.’

  Anthony watched her mount the stairs and disappear. ‘My good woman—if you really are a woman—what’s your trouble? Sorrow? Or fear? Or both?’ he thought. ‘And why were you in the study? And why were you so secret about it? And above all, what did you hide in your flat bosom when you saw me? Two whats and two whys.’

  He stood filling his pipe. Assuredly this fresh mystery must be investigated. And so must that of the lady that swam rivers in the night and blinded her pursuer’s eyes and assaulted his heart in the morning. If it had not been for Her all this would have been great fun; but now—well, it was anything but amusing. She must know something, and since Boyd had seen fit to suspect the one obviously innocent person, it was Anthony Ruthven Gethryn’s business to find out what she knew. What was so disturbing was the unreasonableness of the affair. Nothing seemed to have motive behind it. Of course, there was reason for everything—the Lady of the Sandal’s swim over the river, the secret ravishing of the study by the bosomless, sexless sister of the corpse, even the appearance of an innocent man’s fingerprints on the murderer’s weapon—but were they sane reasons? At present it seemed as if they could not be, and what could be more hopeless than the search of a sane man for the motives of lunatics!

  Anthony shook himself, chided and took himself in hand. ‘Gethryn,’ he murmured, ‘do something, man! Don’t stand here saying how difficult everything is. Well, what shall I do? Have a look at the study? All right.’

  He still had the hall to himself. Quietly, he entered the study and closed the door behind him.

  He surveyed the room. He strove for memory of the sounds he had heard just now when Laura Hoode had been there and he outside.

  There had been a fumbling, a click, a pause and then the rustling of paper. The writing-table was the most likely place. The drawers, he knew, were all locked, but perhaps the gaunt sister had duplicate keys. The originals were in Boyd’s official possession.

  But it was unlikely that sister would have keys. He looked thoughtfully at the table. Something of a connoisseur, he judged it as belonging to the adolescence of the last century.

  A desk more than a hundred years old! A mysterious, sinister woman searching in it! ‘A hundred to one on Secret Drawer!’ thought Anthony, and probed among the pigeon-holes. He met with no success, and felt cheated. His theory of the essential reality of story-books had played him false, it seemed.

  Loath to let it go, he tried again; this time pulling out from their sheaths the six small, shallow drawers which balanced the pigeon-holes on the other side of the alcove containing the ink-well. The top drawer, he noticed with joy, was shorter by over an inch than its five companions. He felt in its recess with long, sensitive fingers. He felt a thin rim of wood. He pressed, and nothing happened. He pulled, and it came easily away. The Great Story-book Theory was vindicated.

  He peered into the unveiled hollow. It was filled with papers, from their looks recently tossed and crumpled.

  ‘Naughty, naughty Laura!’ said Anthony happily, and pulled them out.

  There were letters, a small leather-covered memorandum-book, a larger note-book and a bunch of newspaper-cuttings.

  He pulled a chair up to the table and began to read. When he had finished, he replaced the two little books and the letters. They were, he judged, unimportant. The newspaper-cuttings he retained, slipping them into his wallet. The illegality of the proceeding did not apparently distress him.

  He replaced the little drawers, careful to leave things as he had found them. On his way to the door, he paused to examine the little polished rosewood table which stood beside the grandfather clock and was the fellow of that which supported the two tall vases he had spoken of to Boyd. A blemish upon its glossy surface had caught his eye.

  On close inspection he found a faint scar some twelve inches long and two wide. This scar was compounded of a series of tiny dents occurring at frequent and regular intervals along its length and breadth.

  Anthony became displeased with himself. He ought to have noticed this on his first visit to the room. Not that it seemed important—the wood-rasp had obviously been laid there, probably by the murderer, possibly by some one else—but, he ought, he considered, to have noticed it.

  He left the room, passed through the still empty hall and so into the garden. Here, pacing up and down the flagged walk outside the study, he became aware of fatigue. The lack of a night’s sleep and the energies of the day were having their effect.

  To keep himself awake, he walked. He also thought. Presently he halted and stood glaring at the wall above the windows of the study. As he glared, he muttered to himself: ‘That bit of dead creeper, now. It’s untidy. Very untidy! And it doesn’t fit!’

  Ten minutes later Sir Arthur found him, hands in pockets, still looking up at the wall, heavy-eyed, and swaying ever so little on his feet.

  ‘Hallo, Gethryn, hallo!’ Sir Arthur looked at him keenly. ‘You look fagged out, my boy. This won’t do. I prescribe a whisky and soda.’ He caught Anthony’s arm. ‘Come along.’

  Anthony rubbed his eyes. ‘Well, I grow old, I grow old,’ he said. ‘Did you say a drink? Forward!’

  CHAPTER VII

  THE PREJUDICED DETECTIVE

  THORNTON, Mrs Lemesurier’s parlour-maid, was enjoying her evening out. To Mrs Lemesurier and her sister, drinking their coffee after dinner, came Thornton’s second-in-command.

  ‘Please, ma’am,’ she said, ‘there is a gentleman.’

  ‘What? Who?’ Lucia pushed back her chair.

  ‘There is a gentleman, ma’am. In the drawing-room. He says might he see you? Very important, he said it was. Please, ma’am, he wouldn’t give n
o name.’ The girl twisted her apron-strings nervously.

  ‘Shall I go, dear?’ Dora asked placidly. Inwardly she was frightened. She had thought her sister recovered from her attack of the afternoon, but here she was getting ill again. White-faced! Nervy! Not at all like the usual Lucia.

  Mrs Lemesurier rose to her feet. ‘No, no. I’d better see him. Elsie, what name—oh, you said he wouldn’t give one. All right. The drawing-room, you said?’ She walked slowly from the room.

  Outside the drawing-room door she paused, fought for composure, gained it, and entered. Anthony came forward to meet her.

  Her hand went to her naked throat. ‘You!’ she whispered.

  Anthony bowed. ‘You are right, madam.’

  ‘What do you want? What have you come here for, again?’ So low was her voice that he could barely catch the words.

  ‘You know,’ said Anthony, ‘we’re growing melodramatic. Please sit down.’ He placed a chair.

  Mechanically she sank into it, one hand still at the white throat. The great eyes, wide with fear, never left his face.

  ‘Now,’ said Anthony, ‘let us clear the atmosphere. First, please understand that I have no object here except to serve you. I wasn’t quite clear about that this morning, hence my clumsy methods. The next move’s up to you. Suppose you tell me all about it.’

  Her eyes fell from his. ‘All about what? Really, Mr—Mr Gethryn, do you always behave in this extraordinary way?’

  ‘Good! Quite good!’ Anthony approved. ‘But it won’t do, you know. It won’t do. I repeat, suppose you tell me all about it.’

  She essayed escape by another way. She looked up into his face, a light almost tender in her eyes.

  ‘Did you—do you—really mean that about—about serving? Is it true that you want to help me?’ she asked. And still her voice was soft; but with how different a softness!

  ‘Most certainly.’

  ‘Then I assure you, Mr Gethryn, most honestly and sincerely, that you will help me best by—by’—she hovered on the brink of admission—‘by not asking me anything, by not trying any more to—to—’ She broke down. Her voice died away.

  Anthony shook his head. ‘No. You’re wrong, quite wrong. I’ll show you why. Last night John Hoode was murdered. During the night you swam across the river, crept up to the house, and crouched outside the window of the room in which the murder was done. Why did you do all this? Certainly not for amusement or exercise. Then, unless a coincidence occurred greater than any ever invented by a novelist in difficulties, your visit was in some way connected with the murder. Or, at any rate, some of the circumstances of the murder are known to you.’

  ‘No! No!’ Lucia shrank back into her chair.

  ‘There you are, you see.’ Anthony made a gesture. ‘I was putting the point of view of the police and public—what they would say if they knew—not giving my own opinion.

  ‘The sleuth-hounds of fiction,’ he went on, ‘are divinely impartial. The minions of Scotland Yard are instructed to be. But I, madam, am that rarissima avis, a prejudiced detective. Ever since this case began I’ve been prejudiced. I’ve been picking up new prejudices at every corner. And the strongest, healthiest, and most unshakable prejudice of them all is the one in favour of you. Now, suppose you tell me all about it.’

  ‘I—I don’t understand,’ she murmured, and looked up at him wide-eyed. ‘You’re so—so bewildering!’

  ‘I’ll go further, then. If I say that, even if you killed Hoode and tell me so, I won’t move in any way except to help you, will—you—tell—me—all—about—it?’

  Those eyes blazed at him. ‘Do you dare to suggest that I—?’

  ‘Oh, woman, Illogicality should be thy name,’ Anthony groaned. ‘I was merely endeavouring, madam, to show how safe you’d be in telling me all that you know. Listen. I’m in this business privately. I oblige a friend. If I don’t like my own conclusions, I shall say nothing about them. I seek neither Fame nor Honorarium. I have, thank God, more money than is good for me.’ He was silent for a moment, and then added: ‘Now, suppose you tell me all about it.’

  She half rose, then sank back into her chair. Her eyes were full on his. For a moment that seemed an hour he lost consciousness of all else. He saw nothing, felt nothing, but those dark twin pools and the little golden lights that danced deep down in the darkness.

  ‘I believe you,’ she said at last. ‘I will tell you’—she laughed a little—‘all about it.’

  Anthony bowed. ‘May I sit?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh! Please, please forgive me!’ She sprang to her feet. ‘You look so tired—and I’ve kept you standing all this time. And while I’ve been so melodramatic, too. Is there anything you—?’

  ‘Only your story.’ Anthony had discovered a need to keep a hold upon himself. Contrition had made her, impossibly, yet more beautiful. He pulled up a chair and sat facing her.

  The white hands twisted in her lap. She began: ‘I—I hardly know where to begin. It’s all so—it doesn’t seem real, only it’s too dreadful to be anything else—’

  ‘Why did you go to Abbotshall last night? And why, in Heaven’s name, since you did go there, did you choose to swim?’ Anthony conceived that questions would help.

  ‘There wasn’t time to do anything else,’ she said, seeming to gather confidence. She went on, the words tumbling over each other: ‘We’d been out all day—Dora and I and some friends. I—when we got back, Dora and I—there was only just time to change for dinner. As I came in I saw some letters in the hall, and remembered I’d not read them in the morning—we’d been in such a hurry to start. Then I went and forgot them again till after dinner.

  ‘It wasn’t till after half-past ten that I thought of them. And then, when—when I read the one from Jimmy, I—I—oh, God!—’ She covered her face with her hands.

  ‘Who,’ said Anthony sharply, ‘is Jimmy?’

  With an effort so great that it hurt him to watch, she recovered. The hands dropped to her lap again. He saw the long fingers twist about each other.

  ‘Jimmy,’ she said, ‘is my brother. I’m most awfully fond of him, you know. He is such a darling! Only—only he’s not been quite the same since he got back from Germany. He—he’s ill—and he’s—he’s been d-drinking—and—he was a prisoner there for three years! When they got him he was wounded in the head and they never even—the beasts! The beasts! Oh, Jim, darling—’

  ‘That letter, madam,’ Anthony was firm.

  ‘Yes—yes, the letter.’ She choked back a sob. ‘I—I read it. I read it, and I thought I should go mad! He said he was going—going to sh-shoot Hoode—that night!’

  ‘Your brother? What had he to do with Hoode?’ Anthony was at once relieved and bewildered. He knew now why she had said, ‘Who shot him?’ But why should brother want to shoot?

  She seemed not to have heard his question. ‘I tried hard—ever so hard—to persuade myself that the letter was all nonsense, that it was a practical joke, or that Jimmy was ill or—or anything. But I couldn’t. He—he was so precise. The train he was coming by—and everything. The—’

  ‘What had your brother to do with Hoode?’ Anthony interrupted. He felt that unless she were kept severely to the point her self-control would vanish altogether.

  ‘He was his secretary until Archie took his place—about six months ago. I—I never knew why Jimmy left, he wouldn’t tell me. He wouldn’t tell me, I say!’

  Anthony shifted uneasily in his chair. There had been a note of hysteria in those last words.

  Suddenly she was on her feet. ‘He did it! He did it!’ she wailed, her hands flung above her head. ‘Oh, Christ! he’ll be—oh, Jimmy, Jimmy!’ And then she began to laugh.

  Anthony jumped at her, took her by the shoulders, and shook. The ivory-white flesh seemed at once to chill and burn his clutching fingers. With every movement of his arms her head lolled helplessly. Knowing himself right, he yet detested himself.

  The dreadful laughter changed to sobbing; the sobb
ing to silence.

  ‘I’m s-sorry, p-please,’ she said.

  Anthony’s hands fell to his sides. ‘I,’ he said, ‘am a brute. Please sit down again.’

  They sat. A silence fell.

  At last he broke it. ‘Then you were so impressed by the sincerity of your brother’s letter that you determined you must try to stop him. Is that right?’

  She nodded.

  ‘But why, in God’s name, didn’t you walk or run, or do anything rather than swim?’

  ‘There wasn’t time. You see, it was so late—as I explained—before I read the—the l-letter that I knew th-that Jimmy was probably almost there. There wasn’t time to—to—to—’

  ‘I see. Judging that you’d save at least ten minutes by crossing the river here, you pretended you were going to bed, probably removed the more clinging of your garments—if you didn’t put on a bathing-dress—put on a pair of bathing-sandals to make running easy without hindering swimming, slipped out of the house quietly, and beat all previous records to Abbotshall by at least ten minutes. That right?’

  ‘Yes.’ Beside other emotions there was wonder in her tones.

  ‘Good. Now, when you were kneeling outside the window of Hoode’s study, what did you see? You’ll understand that if I am to be allowed to help you I must find out all I can and as quickly as I can.’

  Their lids veiled her great eyes. A convulsive movement of the white throat told of the strain she was under. When she spoke it was without feeling, without emphasis, like a dull child repeating a lesson memorised but not understood.

  ‘I saw a man lying face-downwards by the fireplace. There was blood on his head. It was a bald head. I saw a clock half-fallen over; and chairs too. And I came away. I ran to the river.’

  ‘Do you know,’ Anthony asked slowly, ‘what time it was when you got back here?’

  ‘No,’ said the lifeless ghost of the voice that had thrilled him.

  He was disappointed, and fell silent. Nothing new here, except of course the brother. And of this business of Brother James he did not yet know what to think.