Trent Intervenes

by E. C. Bentley

  ‘Presently George got talking to Mr Gifford in a corner, and I could see Mr Gifford screwing up his mouth and shaking his head; but George only stuck out his chin, and soon after, when the vicaress was showing off the garden, he got the vicar by himself and talked turkey.

  ‘Mr Verey didn’t like it at all, George told me; but George can be a very smooth worker when he likes, and at last the vicar had to allow that he was tempted, what with having his sons to start in the world, and the income tax being higher than a cat’s back, and the death duties and all. And finally he said yes. I won’t tell you or anybody what George offered him, Mr Trent, because George swore me to secrecy; but, as he says, it was no good acting like a piker in this kind of a deal, and he could sense that the vicar wouldn’t stand for any bargaining back and forth. And anyway, it was worth every cent of it to George, to have something that no other curio-hunter possessed. He said he would come for the tabard next day and bring the money in notes, and the vicar said very well, then we must all three come to lunch, and he would have a paper ready giving the history of the tabard over his signature. So that was what we did; and the tabard is in our suite at the Greville, locked in a wardrobe, and George has it out and gloats over it first thing in the morning and last thing at night.’

  Trent said with sincerity that no story of real life had ever interested him more. ‘I wonder,’ he said, ‘if your husband would let me have a look at his prize. I’m not much of an antiquary, but I am interested in heraldry, and the only tabards I have ever seen were quite modern ones.’

  ‘Why, of course,’ Mrs Langley said. ‘You make a date with him after dinner. He will be delighted. He has no idea of hiding it under a bushel, believe me!’

  The following afternoon, in the Langleys’ sitting-room at the Greville, the tabard was displayed on a coat-hanger before the thoughtful gaze of Trent, while its new owner looked on with a pride not untouched with anxiety.

  ‘Well, Mr Trent,’ he said. ‘How do you like it? You don’t doubt this is a genuine tabard, I suppose?’

  Trent rubbed his chin. ‘Oh yes; it’s a tabard. I have seen a few before, and I have painted one, with a man inside it, when Richmond Herald wanted his portrait done in the complete get-up. Everything about it is right. Such things are hard to come by. Until recent times, I believe, a herald’s tabard remained his property, and stayed in the family, and if they got hard up they might perhaps sell it privately, as this was sold to you. It’s different now—so Richmond Herald told me. When a herald dies, his tabard goes back to the College of Arms, where he got it from.’

  Langley drew a breath of relief. ‘I’m glad to hear you say my tabard is genuine. When you asked me if you could see it, I got the impression you thought there might be something phony about it.’

  Mrs Langley, her keen eyes on Trent’s face, shook her head. ‘He thinks so still, George, I believe. Isn’t that so, Mr Trent?’

  ‘Yes, I am sorry to say it is. You see, this was sold to you as a particular tabard, with an interesting history of its own; and when Mrs Langley described it to me, I felt pretty sure that you had been swindled. You see, she had noticed nothing odd about the Royal Arms. I wanted to see it just to make sure. It certainly did not belong to Garter King of Arms in the year 1783.’

  A very ugly look wiped all the benevolence from Langley’s face, and it grew several shades more pink. ‘If what you say is true, Mr Trent, and if that old fraud was playing me for a sucker, I will get him jailed if it’s my last act. But it certainly is hard to believe—a preacher—and belonging to one of your best families—settled in that lovely, peaceful old place, with his flock to look after and everything. Are you really sure of what you say?’

  ‘What I know is that the Royal Arms on this tabard are all wrong.’

  An exclamation came from the lady. ‘Why, Mr Trent, how you talk! We have seen the Royal Arms quite a few times, and they are just the same as this—and you have told us it is a genuine tabard, anyway. I don’t get this at all.’

  ‘I must apologize,’ Trent said unhappily, ‘for the Royal Arms. You see, they have a past. In the fourteenth century Edward III laid claim to the Kingdom of France, and it took a hundred years of war to convince his descendants that that claim wasn’t practical politics. All the same, they went on including the lilies of France in the Royal Arms, and they never dropped them until the beginning of the nineteenth century.’

  ‘Mercy!’ Mrs Langley’s voice was faint.

  ‘Besides that, the first four Georges and the fourth William were Kings of Hanover; so until Queen Victoria came along, and could not inherit Hanover because she was a female, the Arms of the House of Brunswick were jammed in along with our own. In fact, the tabard of the Garter King of Arms in the year when he proclaimed the peace with the United States of America was a horrible mess of the leopards of England, the lion of Scotland, the harp of Ireland, the lilies of France, together with a few more lions, and a white horse, and some hearts, as worn in Hanover. It was a fairly tight fit for one shield, but they managed it somehow—and you can see that the Arms on this tabard of yours are not nearly such a bad dream as that. It is a Victorian tabard—a nice, gentlemanly coat, such as no well-dressed herald should be without.’

  Langley thumped the table. ‘Well, I intend to be without it, anyway, if I can get my money back.’

  ‘We can but try,’ Trent said. ‘It may be possible. But the reason why I asked to be allowed to see this thing, Mr Langley, was that I thought I might be able to save you some unpleasantness. You see, if you went home with your treasure, and showed it to people, and talked about its history, and it was mentioned in the newspapers, and then somebody got inquiring into its authenticity, and found out what I have been telling you, and made it public—well, it wouldn’t be very nice for you.’

  Langley flushed again, and a significant glance passed between him and his wife.

  ‘You’re damn right, it wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘And I know the name of the buzzard who would do that to me, too, as soon as I had gone the limit in making a monkey of myself. Why, I would lose the money twenty times over, and then a bundle, rather than have that happen to me. I am grateful to you, Mr Trent—I am indeed. I’ll say frankly that at home we aim to be looked up to socially, and we judged that we could certainly figure if we brought this doggoned thing back and had it talked about. Gosh! When I think—but never mind that now. The thing is to go right back to that old crook and make him squeal. I’ll have my money out of him, if I have to use a can-opener.’

  Trent shook his head. ‘I don’t feel very sanguine about that, Mr Langley. But how would you like to run down to his place tomorrow with me and a friend of mine, who takes an interest in affairs of this kind, and who would be able to help you if anyone can?’

  Langley said, with emphasis, that that suited him.

  The car that called for Langley next morning did not look as if it belonged, but did belong, to Scotland Yard; and the same could be said of its dapper chauffeur. Inside was Trent, with a black-haired, round-faced man whom he introduced as Superintendent Owen. It was at his request that Langley, during the journey, told with as much detail as he could recall the story of his acquisition of the tabard, which he had hopefully brought with him in a suitcase.

  A few miles short of Abingdon the chauffeur was told to go slowly. ‘You tell me it was not very far this side of Abingdon, Mr Langley, that you turned off the main road,’ the superintendent said. ‘If you will keep a lookout now, you might be able to point out the spot.’

  Langley stared at him. ‘Why, doesn’t your man have a map?’

  ‘Yes; but there isn’t any place called Silcote Episcopi on his map.’

  ‘Nor,’ Trent added, ‘on any other map. No, I am not suggesting that you dreamed it all; but the fact is so.’

  Langley, remarking shortly that this beat him, glared out of the window eagerly; and soon he gave the word to stop. ‘I am pretty sure this is the turning,’ he said. ‘I recognize it by these two hay-st
acks in the meadow, and the pond with osiers over it. But there certainly was a signpost there, and now there isn’t one. If I was not dreaming then, I guess I must be now.’ And as the car ran swiftly down the side road he went on, ‘Yes; that certainly is the church on ahead—and the covered gate, and the graveyard—and there is the vicarage, with the yew trees and the garden and everything. Well, gentlemen, right now is when he gets what is coming to him. I don’t care what the name of the darn place is.’

  ‘The name of the darn place on the map,’ Trent said, ‘is Oakhanger.’

  The three men got out and passed through the lych-gate.

  ‘Where is the gravestone?’ Trent asked.

  Langley pointed. ‘Right there.’ They went across to the railed-in grave, and the American put a hand to his head. ‘I must be nuts!’ he groaned. ‘I know this is the grave—but it says that here is laid to rest the body of James Roderick Stevens, of this parish.’

  ‘Who seems to have died about thirty years after Sir Rowland Verey,’ Trent remarked, studying the inscription; while the superintendent gently smote his thigh in an ecstasy of silent admiration. ‘And now let us see if the vicar can throw any light on the subject.’

  They went on to the parsonage; and a dark-haired, bright-faced girl, opening the door at Mr Owen’s ring, smiled recognizingly at Langley. ‘Well, you’re genuine, anyway!’ he exclaimed. ‘Ellen is what they call you, isn’t it? And you remember me, I see. Now I feel better. We would like to see the vicar. Is he at home?’

  ‘The canon came home two days ago, sir,’ the girl said, with a perceptible stress on the term of rank. ‘He is down in the village now; but he may be back any minute. Would you like to wait for him?’

  ‘We surely would,’ Langley declared positively; and they were shown into the large room where the tabard had changed hands.

  ‘So he has been away from home?’ Trent asked. ‘And he is a canon, you say?’

  ‘Canon Maberley, sir; yes, sir, he was in Italy for a month. The lady and gentleman who were here till last week had taken the house furnished while he was away. Me and Cook stayed on to do for them.’

  ‘And did that gentleman—Mr Verey—do the canon’s duty during his absence?’ Trent inquired with a ghost of a smile.

  ‘No, sir; the canon had an arrangement with Mr Giles, the vicar of Cotmore, about that. The canon never knew that Mr Verey was a clergyman. He never saw him. You see, it was Mrs Verey who came to see over the place and settled everything; and it seems she never mentioned it. When we told the canon, after they had gone, he was quite took aback. “I can’t make it out at all,” he says. “Why should he conceal it?” he says. “Well, sir,” I says, “they was very nice people, anyhow, and the friends they had to see them here was very nice, and their chauffeur was a perfectly respectable man,” I says.’

  Trent nodded. ‘Ah! They had friends to see them.’

  The girl was thoroughly enjoying this gossip. ‘Oh yes, sir. The gentleman as brought you down, sir’—she turned to Langley—‘he brought down several others before that. They was Americans too, I think.’

  ‘You mean they didn’t have an English accent, I suppose,’ Langley suggested drily.

  ‘Yes, sir; and they had such nice manners, like yourself,’ the girl said, quite unconscious of Langley’s confusion, and of the grins covertly exchanged between Trent and the superintendent, who now took up the running.

  ‘This respectable chauffeur of theirs—was he a small, thin man with a long nose, partly bald, always smoking cigarettes?’

  ‘Oh yes, sir; just like that. You must know him.’

  ‘I do,’ Superintendent Owen said grimly.

  ‘So do I!’ Langley exclaimed. ‘He was the man we spoke to in the churchyard.’

  ‘Did Mr and Mrs Verey have any—er—ornaments of their own with them?’ the superintendent asked.

  Ellen’s eyes rounded with enthusiasm. ‘Oh yes, sir—some lovely things they had. But they was only put out when they had friends coming. Other times they was kept somewhere in Mr Verey’s bedroom, I think. Cook and me thought perhaps they was afraid of burglars.’

  The superintendent pressed a hand over his stubby moustache. ‘Yes, I expect that was it,’ he said gravely. ‘But what kind of lovely things do you mean? Silver—china—that sort of thing?’

  ‘No, sir; nothing ordinary, as you might say. One day they had out a beautiful goblet, like, all gold, with little figures and patterns worked on it in colours, and precious stones, blue and green and white, stuck all round it—regular dazzled me to look at, it did.’

  ‘The Debenham Chalice!’ exclaimed the superintendent.

  ‘Is it a well-known thing, then, sir?’ the girl asked.

  ‘No, not at all,’ Mr Owen said. ‘It is an heirloom—a private-family possession. Only we happen to have heard of it.’

  ‘Fancy taking such things about with them,’ Ellen remarked. ‘Then there was a big book they had out once, lying open on that table in the window. It was all done in funny gold letters on yellow paper, with lovely little pictures all round the edges, gold and silver and all colours.’

  ‘The Murrane Psalter!’ said Mr Owen. ‘Come, we’re getting on.’

  ‘And,’ the girl pursued, addressing herself to Langley, ‘there was that beautiful red coat with the arms on it, like you see on a half crown. You remember they got it out for you to look at, sir; and when I brought in the tea it was hanging up in front of the tallboy.’

  Langley grimaced. ‘I believe I do remember it,’ he said, ‘now you remind me.’

  ‘There is the canon coming up the path now,’ Ellen said, with a glance through the window. ‘I will tell him you gentlemen are here.’

  She hurried from the room, and soon there entered a tall, stooping, old man with a gentle face and the indescribable air of a scholar.

  The superintendent went to meet him.

  ‘I am a police officer, Canon Maberley,’ he said. ‘I and my friends have called to see you in pursuit of an official inquiry in connection with the people to whom your house was let last month. I do not think I shall have to trouble you much, though, because your parlourmaid has given us already most of the information we are likely to get, I suspect.’

  ‘Ah! That girl,’ the canon said vaguely. ‘She has been talking to you, has she? She will go on talking for ever, if you let her. Please sit down, gentlemen. About the Vereys—ah yes! But surely there was nothing wrong about the Vereys? Mrs Verey was quite a nice, well-bred person, and they left the place in perfectly good order. They paid me in advance, too, because they live in New Zealand, as she explained, and know nobody in London. They were on a visit to England, and they wanted a temporary home in the heart of the country, because that is the real England, as she said. That was so sensible of them, I thought—instead of flying to the grime and turmoil of London, as most of our friends from overseas do. In a way, I was quite touched by it, and I was glad to let them have the vicarage.’

  The superintendent shook his head. ‘People as clever as they are make things very difficult for us, sir. And the lady never mentioned that her husband was a clergyman, I understand.

  ‘No, and that puzzled me when I heard of it,’ the canon said. ‘But it didn’t matter, and no doubt there was a reason.’

  ‘The reason was, I think,’ Mr Owen said, ‘that if she had mentioned it, you might have been too much interested, and asked questions which would have been all right for a genuine parson’s wife, but which she couldn’t answer without putting her foot in it. Her husband could do a vicar well enough to pass with laymen, especially if they were not English laymen. I am sorry to say, Canon, that your tenants were impostors. Their name was certainly not Verey, to begin with. I don’t know who they are—I wish I did—they are new to us and they have invented a new method. But I can tell you what they are. They are thieves and swindlers.’

  The canon fell back in his chair. ‘Thieves and swindlers!’ he gasped.

  ‘And very talented performers
too,’ Trent assured him. ‘Why, they have had in this house of yours part of the loot of several country-house burglaries which took place last year, and which puzzled the police because it seemed impossible that some of the things taken could ever be turned into cash. One of them was a herald’s tabard, which Superintendent Owen tells me had been worn by the father of Sir Andrew Ritchie. He was Maltravers Herald in his day. It was taken when Sir Andrew’s place in Lincolnshire was broken into, and a lot of very valuable jewellery was stolen. It was dangerous to try to sell the tabard in the open market, and it was worth little, anyhow, apart from any associations it might have. What they did was to fake up a story about the tabard which might appeal to an American purchaser, and, having found a victim, to induce him to buy it. I believe he parted with quite a large sum.’

  ‘The poor simp!’ growled Langley.

  Canon Maberley held up a shaking hand. ‘I fear I do not understand,’ he said. ‘What had their taking my house to do with all this?’

  ‘It was a vital part of the plan. We know exactly how they went to work about the tabard; and no doubt the other things were got rid of in very much the same way. There were four of them in the gang. Besides your tenants, there was an agreeable and cultured person—I should think a man with real knowledge of antiquities and objects of art—whose job was to make the acquaintance of wealthy people visiting London, gain their confidence, take them about to places of interest, exchange hospitality with them, and finally get them down to this vicarage. In this case it was made to appear as if the proposal to look over your church came from the visitors themselves. They could not suspect anything. They were attracted by the romantic name of the place on a signpost up there at the corner of the main road.’

  The canon shook his head helplessly. ‘But there is no signpost at that corner.’

  ‘No, but there was one at the time when they were due to be passing that corner in the confederate’s car. It was a false signpost, you see, with a false name on it—so that if anything went wrong, the place where the swindle was worked would be difficult to trace. Then, when they entered the churchyard their attention was attracted by a certain gravestone with an inscription that interested them. I won’t waste your time by giving the whole story—the point is that the gravestone, or rather the top layer which had been fitted onto it, was false too. The sham inscription on it was meant to lead up to the swindle, and so it did.’