by John Bude
“As the author of detective yarns you ought to know that we poor devils don’t have any leisure, sir. We’re like the members of the medical profession—always on tap. Well, Mr. Barnet, what is it? Something important, I reckon, to bring you over here for a personal interview.”
“It is important,” agreed Barnet in a grave voice. “Vital, in fact. It’s to do with the death of William Rother. I only got back to Lychpole at tea-time and found a note from Mrs. Rother. Suicide, eh? What makes you think that?”
Meredith ran briefly through their reasons for this assumption. At the conclusion of his story Barnet pulled a letter out of his pocket and slapped it down on Meredith’s knee.
“If, as you believe, William committed suicide because he felt he was under suspicion, how do you account for that? It arrived by post yesterday morning. Read it.”
Meredith slipped the single typewritten sheet out of the torn envelope.
Dear Barnet [he read],
I am in an awful predicament and don’t know which way to turn for help. As I value your judgment on matters I have decided to take you into my confidence and ask your advice. It concerns the murder of my brother. Terrible as the indictment may sound, I have strong reason to believe that my wife is in some way mixed up with this horrible affair. I was, in fact, the unseen witness of certain of her actions on the night of July 25th—actions which in the light of what came out at the inquest, appear to me both damning and incriminating.
Tell me, Barnet, what am I to do? I am faced with the awful duty of going to the police with this information about my wife. I have wrestled with my conscience, turned things over and over and over in my mind, and still I am incapable of coming to a decision. My wife knows nothing of what I saw that night. On you must rest the onerous task of deciding for me. I will accept your advice without reservation, but I feel I must have this second opinion.
I will make no move until I have heard from you.
Ever yours,
William Rother.
“Well, I’ll be—” began Meredith as he looked up from this extraordinary epistle. “What are we to make of that? What the devil does it mean?”
“It’s hardly the letter of a man who is contemplating suicide, is it?” asked Barnet. “I mean, why let me into this incriminating secret if he intended to kill himself a few hours later? The secret would have died with him. Death would have done away with the necessity of making a decision.”
“Quite.” He decided that it was imperative to take Barnet into his confidence over that confession. As luck would have it, Meredith had brought the document from his office, intending to re-examine it over the week-end. “Before we talk this over, perhaps you will read this, sir.” Meredith held up the confession by one corner. “Do you mind nodding, sir, when you want me to turn over. I’ve got to be careful of extraneous finger-prints.”
There was a long silence. Eventually Barnet looked up.
“Incredible! I can’t make head or tail of William’s state of mind. In this confession he actually draws attention to what he obviously wished to hide. Was he mad? Did he do it? Had the murder unhinged his mind?”
“Did he murder John Rother?” demanded Meredith forcibly. “That’s what we’re up against now. These two letters aren’t consistent.”
Almost unconsciously he spread them out side by side on a near-by table and stood gazing at them. Suddenly he let out a sharp exclamation, caught Barnet by the arm and dragged him over to the table.
“Here, take a close look! Do you notice anything? Anything peculiar?”
Barnet after a careful examination shook his head.
“Both the letters look in order to me.”
“Sure?”
“Well, the two signatures look identical anyway.”
“The signatures—yes. That’s possible even if one of them happens to be a careful fake. It’s the type that interests me.” Meredith went on with the enthusiasm of an expert. “I’ve made a study of typewriting—trained myself to notice little discrepancies in work from the same machine. These letters, for example—I should say that they’re both written by a portable Remington. The Remington, I take it, which I noticed in the farmhouse kitchen. But the ‘touch’ is different. Take the capitals. In one case they’re struck boldly with the full force of the keys. In the other they’re quite faint. In one letter—the confession—the full-stop almost punctures the paper. In the other it’s normal. Notice how in the letter to you the small a is always weak and the small e strongly defined. This doesn’t happen in the confession. Yet in each particular letter these eccentricities are consistent. They occur with the regularity of clockwork. You see what I’m getting at, Mr. Barnet?”
“That the letters were—”
“You’ve got it!” cut in Meredith. “Written by two entirely different people. Which tells us something at once. Something vitally connected with William Rother’s death. In short, one of these letters is faked!”
Aldous Barnet, now caught up in the same excitement, broke in emphatically.
“But which, man? Which? Don’t you see the crucial fact which must accrue from this answer?”
“Of course I do,” snapped Meredith. “That’s what I’ve been leading up to. If William’s note to you is genuine then it’s pretty well certain that he didn’t commit suicide. He couldn’t have written that confession.”
“And if the confession is genuine?”
“Then what, in the name of thunder, was that letter sent to you for, eh? It’s pointless. Ridiculous.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Barnet, obviously delighted at being able to follow the workings of an official mind at first hand. “How are you going to find out which is the real letter?”
“Easy,” smiled Meredith. “Get a sample of William Rother’s typewriting from the same machine and compare it. Have you got a car here?”
“A car!” Barnet laughed. “I’ve got something better than that. A super-charged Alvis sports with a cruising speed of eighty. Any good?”
“I’ll risk it,” grinned Meredith.
Five minutes later the long, lean automobile was roaring toward the parish of Washington, impatient of 30 limits, pedestrians, and subordinate policemen. Barnet glanced at Meredith’s mufti.
“I wish the devil you were in uniform. I’ll have a whole string of summonses served on me for this.”
“All you need worry about, sir, if you don’t mind, is keeping both eyes on the road and both hands on the wheel. I’ve got a wife and child to think of and a murder case!”
In an incredibly short time, it seemed to Meredith, the car swung off the main road and shot up the rutted incline to Chalklands.
“We’ll park the car in the lane and sneak in the back way, if you don’t mind, Mr. Barnet. I don’t want to upset Mrs. Rother any more. Kate Abingworth will be able to give us what we want.”
As the two men entered the kitchen the housekeeper looked up from her solitary supper.
“Oh Lor’, sir, you did give me a turn. Don’t you be telling me that more trouble’s come to pass. My old ’eart couldn’t stand another shock an’ that’s a fact!”
Meredith reassured her and explained the reason for his visit.
“Well, that should be aisy enough, sir. There’s enough letters on poor Mr. Willum’s desk there to paper a ’ouse with. Dare say you’ll find what you want among ’em. Would I call Mrs. Rother?”
“Better not disturb her,” said Meredith. “In fact I should keep quiet about this visit of ours altogether. Understand, Mrs. Abingworth?”
“Ay, sir.”
Striding over to the large table which served as the farmhouse office, Meredith went carefully through one or two files until he found what he was looking for. Curiously enough it was a signed letter, dated the day before, written by William Rother accepting an invitation to attend a special meeting of the Flower
Show Committee in place of his brother. The meeting was arranged for the following Tuesday.
“Another point,” whispered Meredith to Barnet, who was reading the letter over his shoulder, “which suggests that William was not contemplating suicide.” Aloud he added: “Well, Mrs. Abingworth, I’ve found what I was after, thanks. I should just like to borrow this typewriter at the same time if I may. Return it in a few days.”
Once seated in the car, stirred by a growing interest and excitement, the three letters were compared.
“Well?” demanded Barnet with impatience, waiting on the expert’s verdict. “Which is the faked document?”
“Which do you think?”
“The letter to me,” said Barnet promptly.
“You’re wrong,” growled Meredith. “We’re all wrong. The whole case is wrong. I’ve got to start all over again. The confession’s false! Though how the devil all those corroborative details were collected and served up like that beats me. Who wrote that confession? Some of the details are proved facts in the case. How did the writer know that? What’s his big idea?”
“Sure you’re right?”
“Dead sure. Look at William’s capitals and full-stops. Look at his l’s and o’s. See how this letter to the Flower Show Committee matches up with that note to you. Point now is, did that confession come off the same machine? It came off a Remington all right, but was it the same Remington?”
“Can you find that out?”
“Yes—under a microscope.”
“In the meantime,” suggested Barnet, “what about coming along to my place for a drink before I drive you back?”
Seated in the long, beamed sitting-room at Lychpole over a couple of whiskies, Barnet inquired: “What exactly can you deduce from these new facts, Mr. Meredith?”
The Superintendent hesitated a moment before answering. The implications were so unexpected and inexplicable that he wondered if it would be politic to discuss them with a mere layman in crime. He had seen in a flash what that faked confession indicated. Other facts hinted. It only needed further facts to prove up to the hilt. But should he tell Barnet? Then, with the realization that in a few days the whole affair would be public knowledge, he asked: “Are you prepared for a shock, Mr. Barnet?”
“Why?”
“Because I can only deduce one terrible thing from these new clues.”
“And that?”
“Your friend, William Rother, was murdered!”
“Murdered? Impossible!”
“Not a bit of it, sir. I wish it were impossible. But just listen here for a moment. We have two good reasons to suppose that William did not do away with himself. First that letter to you, and secondly that letter we found just now up at the farm. A man contemplating suicide would hardly trouble to accept an invitation to a meeting which he knew he wouldn’t attend. Your own letter we discussed before. Apart from that faked confession there seems to be no proved reason why William should want to commit suicide. As we were driving down here in the car I was hard at it approaching his death from a new angle. I remembered, for instance, that the gash in the man’s temple had no chalk-scratches around it, although, according to Dr. Hendley, it was this wound which had caused his death. Now the impact of his head against a chalk boulder, softened as it would be by weather, seemed in my mind incompatible with this fact. Other parts of his person were thick with chalk-dust and scratches. Moreover, the body had not been moved. Why, therefore, should the wounded temple be uppermost? As the body struck the boulder with such terrific force Rother must have been rendered unconscious instantly. How had he managed to turn over? That’s another point in my non-suicide theory. Accident then? But I knew I could rule that theory out at once. The strands of wire were cut, not broken, and we found the pliers with which the job was done.
“Secondly, the body in the case of accident would have half-slid down the cliff and come to rest at the foot of it. Actually the body lay some six feet away from the base of the cliff. So you see, Mr. Barnet, that I’m bound to suspect the other alternative—murder. The confession was faked, the wires were cut, and the pliers left on the ground to suggest that it was suicide. That’s my opinion for what it’s worth. What d’you think of it?”
Aldous Barnet did not quite know what to think. The very suggestion that William had been murdered had shocked him beyond measure. He could follow the Superintendent’s reasoning quite clearly, but somehow, at the back of his mind, he entertained a hope that this reasoning was wrong. Who could have murdered William? And why had he been murdered? He put these questions to Meredith, but the official was not going to air any more of his theories in front of the amateur. After a full discussion of the Rother family, during which Meredith learnt many interesting facts concerning both past and present Rothers, he tactfully suggested that it was time he got back to Lewes. The ins and outs of William’s death were analysed no further. Meredith had dropped the iron shutter of officialdom.
Driving the Superintendent back to Lewes through the moonlit countryside, Barnet asked: “As a police official and a reader of detective fiction, what exactly is your idea about that type of story? You know, I should value your opinion.”
“Well,” said Meredith, flattered to be asked, “I think every yarn should be based on a sense of reality. I mean, let the characters, situations, and the detection have a lifelike ring about ’em. Intuition is all very well, but the average detective relies more on common sense and the routine of police organizations for results. Take this case, for example. The clues have led me all over the place, and quite honestly I’m very little further after a month’s intensive investigation than I was a couple of days after the crime was discovered. That’s normal. Half the work of a detective is not to find out what is but what isn’t! You might remember that fact in your next yarn, sir. As for the crime itself, choose something neat but not gaudy. The gaudy type of murder is more easily found out. The neat, premeditated crime is by far the most difficult to solve and will provide your readers with a load of neat detection. This crime, for instance. There’s a story to be written round the death of John Rother if you only approach it from the right angle. At least that’s my humble opinion.
“I reckon, Mr. Barnet, that you should let your readers know just as much as the police know. That’s only fair. And one up to the reader who can outstrip the police and make an early arrest. Not guess-work, mark you, but a certainty based on proven facts. That’s only fair to us because we can’t arrest a chap just because we think he’s guilty. Of course a thriller’s a different type of story. But when it comes to a proper detective yarn give me something that’s possible, plausible, and not crammed with a lot of nice little coincidences and ‘flashes of intuition’. Things don’t work that way in real life. We don’t work that way. At least, sir, that’s how it seems to me anyway.”
Chapter Ten
Inquest
On Sunday Meredith took a well-earned rest. He did not feel easy in his mind about putting his feet up with the new problem of William Rother’s death confronting him, but he realized that detection is like sport—play the game too hard and you get stale. So Mrs. Meredith packed up a sandwich lunch and the family took a bus into Brighton, where Tony insisted on taking out a boat. That lazy day in the sun (for Meredith let Tony do all the rowing) was stimulating to both mind and body. He returned to his office on Monday morning, humming a little tune, full of new energy, in a mood not far removed from optimism. He went at once to the Chief Constable.
“Ah, Meredith! Just the man. What about this suicide? Any further details? What?”
Meredith grinned. He liked exploding bomb-shells in the Chief’s office.
“A whole lot, sir. An unexpected twist. I’m inclined now to think that it isn’t suicide but murder.”
“Have you got a touch of the sun? You look red round the neck, Meredith. All right, eh?”
“Perfectly, sir. Just listen h
ere for a moment.”
And for five minutes the Superintendent’s voice droned on in the close atmosphere of Major Forest’s office. As the new facts were set out the Chief became more and more fidgety. It was obvious that he was having the greatest difficulty in controlling his desire to interrupt. At length he could stand it no longer.
“But damn it, man, who the devil wanted to kill William? How was he killed? Where was he killed? Who killed him?”
“Which question do you want me to answer first, sir?” asked Meredith with overdone politeness.
The Chief guffawed.
“All right. You win. Unjustifiable excitement. Inexcusable, Meredith. But confound it, you can’t expect me to sit here like a monument. How was he killed? Let’s tackle that problem first. Any idea?”
“None, sir.”
“Very well. Why was he killed?”
“I have got an idea about that, sir,” said Meredith tentatively. “Just a suggestion. We know that the letter to Aldous Barnet was genuine. William knew something incriminating about his wife. Don’t you think it was possible he was murdered to prevent that incriminating fact coming to our notice?”
“Good heavens! By Janet Rother? That’s a bit thick.”
“Not necessarily, sir. She may not have actually committed the crime, but William was murdered to save her from suspicion with regard to John Rother’s death.”
“The brown-paper parcel evidence, eh?”
“That’s about it, sir. Do you think we can fix the murder on the Cloaked Man?”
“Oh, rather!” replied the Chief sarcastically. “Or Kate Abingworth, or Judy, the maid, or that old blunderbuss Dr. Hendley. As much cause to suspect one as the other. Where do you think he was killed?”
“On the path above the pit, I reckon. I thought of going out this morning and having another look round.”