The Rasp

by Philip MacDonald

  Yours optimistically,

  ANTHONY GETHRYN.

  P.S. I find that yesterday I omitted to return to you a bathing-sandal which I found. I ought to have sent it with this letter; but have decided to keep it.

  Lucia, after the first shock, obeyed orders. Fond as she was of her sister and her sister’s titanic lover, she found worry, for this morning at least, impossible. After the events of yesterday, she somehow discovered herself possessed of a childlike faith in the power of Anthony Gethryn to work necessary miracles.

  She told Dora; then spent the morning to such purpose that the girl’s fears were in some measure allayed.

  II

  At ten minutes to eleven Anthony left the Bear and Key and walked slowly in the direction of Abbotshall. He was tired and very tired. In spite of his fatigue he had barely slept. There had been so much to think about. And also so much which, though nothing to do with this work of his, had yet insisted on being thought about.

  He entered the house at five minutes past the hour. Proceedings were being opened. The coroner and his jury had just seated themselves round the long table set for them in the study.

  All about was an air of drama, heightened by the intensity of public feeling and the fact that the court was set on the actual scene of the crime. Marling felt the eyes and ears of the world bent in its direction. It rather enjoyed the feeling, but nevertheless went sternly, and with due solemnity, about its duty.

  Anthony nodded to Boyd, shook hands with Deacon, ignored Hastings and Margaret Warren, already at the press table, and ran an eye over the jury.

  The sight depressed him. ‘Mutton!’ he murmured.

  The coroner rapped the table, cleared his throat, and opened the court.

  Five minutes later Superintendent Boyd turned to address a remark to Colonel Gethryn. But Colonel Gethryn was no longer there. Nor, apparently, was he anywhere else in the room. Boyd shrugged his shoulders.

  Anthony was in the hall. In the far corner, by the front door, stood a knot of servants. They were clearly absorbed in their talk. On the steps were two policemen, their blue backs towards him. Slowly, Anthony mounted the wide, curving staircase. Once out of sight from below, his pace quckened to a run.

  On the first floor he found his hopes realised. It was depopulated. As he had calculated, the whole household was downstairs.

  III

  The court adjourned at fifteen minutes to two. Hastings and a different, softer, more charming than ever Margaret Warren were given lunch by Anthony in his sitting-room at the Bear and Key.

  The meal over, Margaret was given the one comfortable chair, Hastings sat on the table, and Anthony leaned against the mantelpiece.

  ‘Now, my children,’ he said, ‘I have congratulated you, I have filled your stomachs. To work. What of the crowner’s quest?’

  ‘Adjourned till three-thirty,’ said Hastings, ‘when, after a quarter of an hour’s cosy talk, they’ll bring in a red-hot verdict of wilful murder against the hulking private secretary. We needn’t go back, I think. There’s one of our men there. He’ll take the rest of the report; and it’s all over except the shouting.’

  Anthony nodded. ‘No, you needn’t stay.’

  ‘I,’ said Margaret, ‘don’t think the secretary had anything to do with it. Not with those sort of eyes—he couldn’t.’

  Hastings guffawed.

  ‘I agree with you, Miss Warren,’ Anthony said. ‘And it was the eyes which made me think that way.’

  Hastings exploded. ‘Oh! I say! But—’

  ‘Quiet, dog!’ Anthony waved him to silence. ‘I am Richard on the Spot. The case is mine, and I say that Archibald Deacon’s a non-starter. Children, I am about to question you. Make ready.’

  Hastings cast his smile. Margaret produced a note-book.

  Anthony said: ‘So far, the case against Deacon is, I assume: one, that in his possession were found banknotes for a hundred pounds proved as having been drawn by Hoode from his bank on the morning of the murder; two, that his explanation that this money was given to him by Hoode as a birthday present was neither regarded as at all probable nor supported by any witness; three, that his explanation as to his whereabouts during the time within which the murder was committed was both unsatisfactory and entirely uncorroborated; four, that he attempted to mislead the officers of the law by means of an alibi which he knew to be false; five, that in view of his size, strength, length of leg, and the fact that everyone else for miles round appears to be accounted for, he seems the most likely person; and six, that his fingerprints were found on the wood-rasp with which the deed was done.’

  ‘Look here,’ said Hastings, ‘if you were at the inquest, what’s all the palaver about?’

  ‘I wasn’t, and you’ll see. Some of this I knew already, some guessed. Wonderful, isn’t it?’

  Margaret leaned forward. ‘But who do you think did do it, Mr Gethryn? Do you suspect anyone?’

  ‘Everyone in the world,’ said Anthony. ‘Except Deacon, you, James Masterson, and one other. But I look first at the household; just as a matter of interest like.’ He ticked off names on his fingers. ‘The butler Poole, the chauffeur Wright, Martha Forrest the cook, Robert Belford the other manservant; Elsie Syme, Mabel Smith, housemaids; Lily Ingram the kitchen maid, and one Thomas Diggle, gardener. Also the sister of the corpse, Sir Arthur Digby-Coates, and Mrs Mainwaring. And there we have “the ’ole ruddy issue, incloodin’ the ’eads”.’

  ‘Shades of Pelman!’ Hastings was moved to exclaim.

  ‘And,’ said Anthony benignantly, ‘what about ’em all? Their stories, their behaviour?’

  Margaret consulted the note-book. ‘The servants,’ she said, ‘were all right. Most obviously all right—except the man Belford. The girls no one could accuse of murder, they’re too timid and their stories were all connected enough. In most cases they fitted in with each other naturally enough. The cook was in bed before ten-thirty, and slept through the whole thing. The chauffeur was talking to friends outside the lodge. The butler was apparently in his little room all the evening. He can’t prove it by witness, but you couldn’t suspect an old man like that. He’s not strong enough for one thing; and he’s obviously dreadfully upset by the death of his master. Mrs Mainwaring seemed all right. She went to bed early, and was seen there by both Miss Hoode and the maid Smith—the one that was afterwards in the linen-room. After the murder was discovered she was found fast asleep. Sir Arthur Digby-Coates is quite all right. He was in his own sitting-room—it has his bedroom on one side of it and the secretary’s on the other, apparently—from ten-fifteen until the body was found by Miss Hoode and the old butler rushed up and fetched him. During that time he was seen by various people, including Deacon, at very short intervals. As for Miss Hoode, she deposed—that’s the word, isn’t it?—that she was in bed by half-past ten, reading. At about eleven she suddenly remembered something about an invitation to someone—she wasn’t very clear in her evidence—and went downstairs to use the telephone and to speak to her brother. After that, well, you know what happened. That’s all.’

  Anthony smiled. ‘And very good, too. I congratulate you, Miss Warren. “So there, in a manner of speaking, they all are.” Of course, it’s all very untidy, this evidence. Very untidy! Not at all neat!’

  ‘I know, Mr Gethryn. But then, you see, it wasn’t as if they were all on trial. I mean, all this about where they were and that sort of thing came out mixed up with other things. It wasn’t cross-examination with everything on the point and nowhere else. And if people don’t know there’s going to be a murder, they can’t very well all get up nice, smooth alibis, can they?’

  Anthony laughed. ‘Just what I said, Miss Warren. They can’t. Now, about ferret-face—Belford, I mean. You seem to think his evidence wasn’t as good as the others’. What did he do? Or say?’

  Hastings took up the tale. ‘Nothing very unusual in itself. But his manner was all wrong. Too wrong, I thought, to be merely natural nervousness. Margaret thinks th
e same. It wasn’t that he said anything one could catch hold of; he was just fishy. He made rather a bad impression on the court too. In fact, I think there’d have been a lot more of him later if the case against your limpid-eyed pet hadn’t come out so strong.

  ‘Damn it all!’ he went on, after a moment’s silence, ‘in any other circumstances I’d be quite willing to bow to your vastly greater experience, Gethryn. And to Margaret’s womanly intuition and all that sort of thing. But this is a bit too much. When you get such a lot of circumstantial and presumptive evidence as there is against this man Deacon and then add to it the fact that his fingerprints were the only ones on the weapon the other feller was killed with, it does seem insane to blither: “He couldn’t have done it! Just look at his sweet expression!” and things like that!’

  ‘I dare say,’ Anthony said. ‘But then Miss Warren and I are so psychic, you see.’

  ‘But the fingerprints, man! They—’

  Anthony became sardonic. ‘Ah, yes! Those eternal fingerprints. Hastings, you’re an incorrigible journalist. Somebody says “fingerprint” to you, you shrug—and the case is over. The blunt instrument bears the thumb-mark of Jasper Standish ergo Jasper’s was the hand which struck down the old squire. It’s so simple! Why trouble any more? Hang Jasper! Hang him, damn him, hang him!’

  ‘But look here, that’s not—’

  Anthony lifted his hand. ‘Oh, yes, yes. I know what you’re going to say. And I know I’m talking like a fool. The fingerprint system is wonderful; but its chief use is tracing old-established criminals. If you consider the ingenuity exercised by this murderer in everything else, doesn’t it strike you as queer that he should leave the damning evidence of finger-marks on only one thing, and that the actual weapon? Why, he might as well have stuck his card on Hoode’s shirt-front!’

  Hastings looked doubtful. ‘I see what you’re driving at,’ he said, ‘but I’m not convinced. Not yet, anyhow. And we’ve rather got away from Belford. Not that there’s any more to say, really. He merely struck us as being rather too scared.’

  ‘What you really mean, I think,’ said Anthony, ‘is that in your opinion Belford was very likely in it with Deacon.’

  Margaret laughed. ‘That’s got you, Jack. You shouldn’t funk.’

  Anthony said: ‘Let us leave ferret-face for the moment. Was there no one else you thought behaved suspicious-like?’

  Margaret fingered the note-book in her lap. Hastings looked at her.

  ‘You shouldn’t funk, Maggie,’ he said.

  ‘Pig!’ said Margaret. ‘And don’t call me Maggie! It’s disgusting!’

  ‘What is all this, my children?’ Anthony asked.

  Margaret looked up at him. ‘It’s only that I told this person that Miss Hoode made me uncomfortable.’

  ‘You’ve watered it down a good bit,’ Hastings laughed.

  ‘Well, all I meant was that she seemed so contradictory. Not in what she said, you know, but in the way she looked and—behaved. It was funny, that feeling I had. At first I thought she wasn’t suffering over her brother’s death, but was just worn out with fear and with trying to—to hide something. And then after that I began to think she was sorry after all, and that all the queer things about her were due to grief. And then after that again I sort of half went back to my first ideas. That’s all. You must think I’m mad, Mr Gethryn.’

  ‘I think,’ said Anthony, ‘that you’re a remarkable young woman. You ought to set up in the street of Baker or Harley, or both.’ His tone was more serious than his words; Margaret blushed.

  ‘Did they,’ asked Anthony, after a pause, ‘exhibit the wood-rasp at the ’quest?’

  Hastings nodded. ‘And a nasty weapon it must have made, too.’

  ‘I must get a look at it somehow,’ Anthony said. Then added, half-aloud: ‘Now, why does that mark worry me?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing.’ Anthony stretched, himself.

  ‘Enough for today, children. Hastings, there is a lovely lady who wishes to visit your flat, and this tonight. She is the sister of our old friend J. Masterson. I promised she could see him if she went up to town this evening.’

  ‘Of course. J. Masterson, by the way, is all right. Temperature much lower; though he’s very weak still, of course. Does nothing but sleep. Doctor saw him again this morning and says his trouble is really nothing worse than ’flu, aggravated by inattention and complicated nervous thingumitights due probably to shell-shock.’

  ‘I see. It’ll be all right about his sister seeing him this evening?’

  ‘Of course.’ Hastings’s smile was replaced by a blank sort of look. ‘Er—by the way, if this lady lives down here, perhaps I had—could drive her up now, what?’

  ‘I was going to ask whether you would,’ Anthony said, after a pause, ‘but I’ve changed my mind. Don’t look too relieved.’ His reasons for this sudden change of plan were mixed; it is certain they were not purely philanthropic.

  ‘I gather, then,’ said Hastings, ‘that having left a competent subordinate to take down the dregs of the inquest, the lady Margaret and I may now get back to town.’

  They descended to the waiting car. Before it began to move, ‘Miss Warren,’ said Anthony, ‘would you be so kind as to have that report of this morning’s proceedings typed by some one and sent down to me here tomorrow; it’ll be so much better than the public ones.’

  ‘I’ll do it myself at once,’ said Margaret.

  The car moved forward. Anthony waved his thanks, turned on his heel and re-entered the inn.

  IV

  Within half an hour he was in Lucia’s drawing-room. Outside Lucia’s gate was his big red car.

  Lucia kept him waiting barely two minutes. When she came he noticed with irritation the schoolboyish unruliness of his heart. There was for him some new, subtle quality in her beauty today. Something dark and wonderful and rather wild.

  She gave him her hand. ‘I heard the car. I haven’t kept you waiting, have I?’ she asked.

  Anthony shook his head. She glanced curiously round the room.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Hastings hasn’t come. He had to get back. That’s my car outside. If you’ll allow me to, I’ll take you up to town now. If you’re ready, shall we start?’ He turned to the door.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said as he opened it, ‘that Mr Hastings couldn’t come. I wanted to have time to thank him properly.’

  Anthony, jarred, cheered himself with the thought that there had been a laugh in her voice. He glanced at her face. It told him nothing.

  Her travelling-bag was carried out and placed in the car.

  ‘I’m driving myself,’ said Anthony. ‘Will you sit in front?’

  She smiled at him and took the seat beside the driver’s. Annoyed with the disturbance aroused in his breast at that smile, Anthony drove out of the gate and down the narrow road to the bridge at a speed quite illegal. Then he slowed down, feeling not a little ashamed. Another new sensation for Anthony Ruthven Gethryn.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Pace frighten you?’

  She turned to him not the tense, white face he had expected, but a joyous one, vivid with life under the enchanting veil.

  ‘Not a little bit,’ she said; and laughter peeped through her words. ‘You see, after yesterday—and all that you did—I feel quite safe with you. As if you couldn’t make a mistake. Not possibly!’

  Anthony glowed.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Absolutely, safe, that’s what I feel.’ A pause. ‘Just as a tiny girl feels if her father takes her out, say, in a tandem.’

  Anthony fell from heaven with a crash. Good God! ‘Father!’ So he had aroused an emotion akin to filial, had he? Unfortunately for him, to drive a car a man must keep his eyes on the road: he had not seen the little half-smile of joyous mockery that had accompanied that last thrust.

  He drove on in silence, unbroken until Guildford was reached. Here he had to slow to a crawl.

  ‘Were you at Abbotsh
all this morning?’ came in a small meek voice from beside him.

  He nodded.

  ‘How did the inquest go? You see, I’ve heard nothing, nothing! Was it—was it as bad as you said it might be?’

  ‘I wasn’t there myself,’ said Anthony, keeping his eyes on the road ahead, ‘but from what I’ve been told, I’m afraid it was.’

  ‘But you said you were there.’

  ‘At the house, yes. At the inquest, no.’

  The small voice mocked him. ‘You do so love being mysterious, don’t you?’

  ‘Touché! I believe I do, you know. I’ve been discovering a lot of youthful traits lately very ill in accord with my age.’ Something in his tone made her look up at him from under the rakish brim of the little hat. His profile showed grim; it seemed leaner than ever.

  ‘I’m sorry if I was inquisitive.’ The small voice was smaller and very meek.

  Anthony stared. ‘Good God! No! I didn’t mean that. Look here, I’ll tell you. I went to Abbotshall because I wanted to play burglars on the first floor. And the best time to do it was when everybody was downstairs at the inquest. See?’

  ‘Of course. But how thrilling! Do go on. I won’t tell a soul!’

  ‘If I hadn’t known that,’ said Anthony, ‘I wouldn’t have said anything at all.’

  ‘Thank you. Did you find anything—that you expected to find?’

  ‘I found. Some of what I found I had expected to find; some not.’ His tone was final and silence fell again. The big car’s speed increased. Soon they were among London’s outskirts.

  ‘Where are you going to stay?’ Anthony asked.

  ‘Brown’s Hotel. May I go there first, please?’

  To Brown’s he took her, and waited with the car till she reappeared. During the journey to Hastings’s flat in Kensington there was little opportunity for conversation. Once, threading skilfully through a press of traffic, he began to whistle, under his breath, the dirge of Cock Robin.