Comes a Stranger

by E. R. Punshon

  But before he was half way through his meal Mr. Adams came into the room, established himself at another table, gave the girl in waiting his order, and then came across to Bobby. In his careful, precise tones he said:

  “I have just made a communication to Major Harley. I conceive that even in circumstances no doubt trying, a greater courtesy on his part would be by no means out of place. I refer to a manner and to language it would be no exaggeration to describe as menacing.”

  “Better look out then,” said Bobby unfeelingly. “Menaces from a chief constable probably mean something. What did you tell him? Your correct name and address? your real business here? I suppose you’ve not forgotten the inquest is to-morrow and that you will be examined on oath?”

  “The fact,” admitted Mr. Adams, “is clear in my mind.”

  “You’ll be asked a lot of questions,” Bobby reminded him.

  “I shall be prepared to answer them,” said Mr. Adams slowly, “and I have indeed received instructions to do so. But only as regards facts within my own knowledge, such as the one I imparted to-night to Major Harley, though I fear he lacks the training and cultivation necessary for the full appreciation of its meaning and significance.”

  “Any objection to telling me?” Bobby asked, “though I expect you think I lack the necessary cultivation, too.”

  Mr. Adams put the tips of his fingers together and perpended. Bobby devoted himself to apple pie and cream, the agreeable stage at which he had now arrived.

  “I confess,” pronounced Mr. Adams finally, “I am not highly impressed by such signs of intelligence as I have so far had an opportunity to observe in you. No doubt,” he added, evidently trying to be fair, “it is higher, and even considerably higher, than that of the average officer of police.”

  “Oh, indeed,” said Bobby crossly, “well, perhaps you’ll find the police have some intelligence before we’ve done with you.”

  “It would surprise me,” said Mr. Adams gravely. He added: “The information I gave Major Harley to-night was to the effect that Mr. Broast purchased yesterday in town, for the sum of one hundred pounds, paid on the spot, an early trial Tennyson.”

  “Oh,” said Bobby, obliged to admit that his intelligence had certainly failed to see anything significant in this fact he was already aware of. “Well, why shouldn’t he, if he wanted the thing? I must say I don’t see—”

  Mr. Adams raised a hand.

  “I have not finished,” he said. “Allow me to conclude. Mr. Broast is, beyond cavil, one of the two or three greatest bibliographical experts now alive. Others,” said Mr. Adams primly, “may be his equal, none is his superior. The Trial Tennyson in question is undoubtedly a forgery.”

  With that he rose, bowed, and returned to his own table, and Bobby thoughtfully consumed the last spoonful of apple pie and confessed to himself that that intelligence of his was unable to attach much importance to this piece of information.

  From what he knew of experts, it was only necessary for one of them to declare that X was X for another to start up with indignant proof that X was in fact Z. Anyhow, what had the disputes of experts to do with thus business of murder? Experts talk murderously enough, but fortunately they don’t act like that.

  He was not permitted, however, to indulge long in speculation, for one of the waitresses now brought him a note to say that Major Harley was still at the police station and before he returned home would be glad to see Sergeant Owen.

  Attended, therefore, by two or three vigilant journalists who had watched the receipt of the note and hoped that something was going to happen at last, Bobby went back to the police station. It was Mrs. Mills’s parlour Major Harley was using for his office, and to him Bobby repeated what Mr. Adams had been saying.

  “That’s what I wanted to see you about.” The Major explained. “I can’t see any significance in it. Why should Broast buy a faked article, and, if he did, well, why shouldn’t he? I’m rather looking forward to seeing Adams in the witness-box presently.”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Bobby, “only Adams strikes me as a very downy old bird. I’m a bit inclined to back him against the smartest cross-examiner at the bar.”

  The Major looked as if he agreed, little as he wished to.

  “We’ll get the truth out of him somehow,” he said with an air of great confidence. “Out of Virtue, too. I’m curious to see if he’ll repeat that yarn of his on oath. I’ve dropped him a hint what the penalty is for perjury over here, and he didn’t half like it. I suppose this story of the forged Trial Tennyson must be followed up. The story of Miss Kayne’s marriage, too. If it’s true, why was it kept secret? I’ve been looking through the will, we had a copy here, and there’s nothing to prevent her marrying anyone she likes. The only thing is that the trustees get greater powers of action if they suspect mal-administration. That’s all it comes to.”

  “Well, sir,” Bobby said, “do you think that links up with Adams’s story about the faked Tennyson? Suppose Mr. Broast couldn’t face an investigation that might show up other fakes? Suppose the whole library is full of fakes? Could that be why he refused to let Mr. Adams examine the Mandeville pages? Perhaps they aren’t Caxton’s work at all, just fakes?”

  Major Harley shook his head.

  “I’ve had that very much in mind,” he said, “but it won’t do. The Kayne library is a kind of Mecca for bibliographers from all over the world. The Mandeville leaves have been publicly exhibited in Paris. I know that because I had to provide an escort for the first part of their journey. All the experts in the world had a chance to see them. And there’s never been an expert yet since the world began who wouldn’t give the eyes out of his head for a chance to prove a brother expert wrong. Besides, the provenance of the things is well known, the whole story of their discovery. No, I think we must take it the Mandeville leaves are genuine. After all, there’s no doubt Broast is the expert in his own line.”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Bobby, “only does that quite fit with this new story of his having bought a fake? And if the Mandeville leaves are genuine, why did he refuse to let Adams photograph them?”

  “No, I know it doesn’t fit,” sighed the Major. “I’ve been telling myself that for the last hour. But then nothing fits. Everything contradicts everything else. But all the same I’m not satisfied about Broast. He’ll have to be asked some more questions. I don’t call his alibi for the Winders murder fully watertight. And he had none at all for the Nat Kayne murder. He says he came back last night by the eleven thirty-five and there’s no doubt he was seen coming off the platform somewhere before the train got in and then to mingle with the passengers alighting and walk off with them. No one would be likely to notice. There’s no proof that’s what he did, but also there’s no proof he was ever actually on that train. He can’t or won’t say where he was between the time he left the book shop in Piccadilly about six till the time he says he caught the late train for Mayfield. He says he met a friend to whom he gave the Trial Tennyson. He says he bought it for him. He won’t give the friend’s name because he is a dealer who hopes to sell for a much bigger price, and if it got about he had bought for a hundred he couldn’t ask so much more. I told him all information given us was confidential, He was—well, rude. He told me no policeman was intelligent enough to understand how necessary it was to regard that kind of information as confidential. He had the impudence,” said Major Harley darkly, “to ask me if I knew what a trial Tennyson was. I told him that was not relevant. Then he was good enough to say he didn’t mistrust our good faith, only our intelligence. I pressed him again to say where he was all that evening. All I could get out of him was that he met his friend and they had a walk together, and after his friend left him he had a walk by himself. He says, too, he had something to eat at a tea shop, but he doesn’t know whereabouts, or what firm it was, or anything. He says they are all much the same, and of course that’s true enough.”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Bobby. “Then there’s nothing to show where he actua
lly was last night between about six and eleven thirty?”

  “No,” agreed the Major. “I was talking to Killick. Killick suggests he could easily have come from town secretly, a car perhaps, and been at Highfields about ten thirty, attracted Winders’s attention in the way the earth on the study window sill suggests, made an appointment with him, returned on a bicycle maybe, to Mayfield, shown himself to the station staff, given up the return half of his ticket in the usual way, all as I suggested myself just now, got back to Highfields in time to keep the appointment with Winders and commit the murder, and then back to Wynton Lodge with what he would think looked like a complete alibi. The motive may be irregularities in the library Kayne had discovered and Winders begun to suspect. The pistol used to murder Kayne we know belonged to Broast, and Broast could have thrown it into the pond where you found it. Winders suspected as much, and that’s why he went to have a look and why his footsteps were there. There’s Miss Perkins’s evidence that a pistol of the calibre used to murder Winders was in Broast’s possession. You can’t think she knows enough, has sense enough, to invent that story, and then, too, you remember you saw something Broast was holding, once when we had been questioning him, that you thought looked like a small automatic, though afterwards he let you see an electric torch in his hand. It all counts. Many a man has been hanged on weaker evidence. What do you say, Owen?”

  “Well, sir,” Bobby answered slowly, “it still seems to me there are a lot of things that don’t fit. That yarn of Virtue’s, for example, and then for another thing, where do I come in? I feel that’s important. And then there are those forget-me-nots someone sent me? What was that for?”

  CHAPTER XXII

  ASSEMBLING FACTS

  Major Harley looked faintly puzzled.

  “Where you come in?” he repeated. “Why? And what about forget-me-nots? Killick did say something about flowers some girl or other… they were laughing about it.”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Bobby. “Mr. Killick pretended to think it was someone trying to start a flirtation.” Bobby paused and spoke slowly. “It didn’t strike me that way. Not now, not with all this happening. Besides, everyone here knows Miss Farrar and I are engaged.”

  “It wasn’t Miss Farrar herself, I suppose?”

  “No, sir. I asked.”

  “You mean you think something was behind it; you think the forget-me-nots meant something?”

  “Yes, sir. At first, I thought it was to remind us of something—forget-me-not. Only I couldn’t think of anything we had forgotten.”

  “We’ll have to try to find who did send them,” remarked the Major. “Not too easy. You’ve kept the box or whatever they came in?”

  “Yes, it was a small cardboard box. It could have been posted in a pillar box. The address was in block letters. I’ll bring it across, if I may, for further examination.”

  “Doesn’t sound much to go on,” agreed the Major gloomily. “What did you mean about where you come in? I don’t follow that.”

  “Well, sir,” Bobby said slowly, “everyone in the village knows I am at Scotland Yard. They all seemed interested, seemed to look on a C.I.D. man as a sort of minor edition of a film star, instead of just what he is, an ordinary chap doing his job in the best way he can. There’s Miss Kayne, for instance, and her telling me about the perfect murder she said she had committed. I can’t get rid of the feeling that it was because a C.I.D. man happened to turn up here, that all this started. Putting a match to it.”

  Major Harley looked more puzzled than ever.

  “I don’t follow that,” he said again. “Surely knowing the police are about is more likely to stop things than to start them.”

  “Yes, sir, I know,” agreed Bobby, looking almost equally puzzled. “Only can it be mere coincidence, that as soon as I come here, these things happen?”

  Major Harley got up from his seat and went to stand by the mantelpiece. He looked very worried. He picked up a mug with a lurid view of Margate on it and the announcement that it was a present from that town. He examined it intently and then shook his head gravely, as if in final disapproval after careful thought, and put it back in its place. He said:

  “Owen, you mentioned Miss Kayne and that absurd statement of hers. You don’t want us to take it seriously, do you? Surely you haven’t got her in your mind?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Bobby.

  “Preposterous, ridiculous, impossible,” said the Major slowly and distinctly. He came back to the table and seated himself again. “So have I,” he said heavily. “It’s incredible, but so have I.”

  “Only,” Bobby added, “I’m not thinking of her more than of two or three others.”

  “She can hardly get out of her chair without help,” the Major said. “Certainly, her manner’s been very strange lately. But is she physically capable? I mean, could she get about?”

  “I’ve tried to go into that,” Bobby said. “I think she could if she wanted to.”

  “Well, even if we were able to prove it, no one would ever believe us,” observed the Major gloomily. “That fat old woman! Do you think she sent the forget-me-nots?”

  “There are forget-me-nots in the Lodge gardens,” Bobby said, “by the trees, where the seats have been put for the view. But then there are forget-me-nots in pretty nearly every garden. Also it would be very difficult for Miss Kayne to send anything like that without someone knowing. I suppose it’s possible.”

  “Well, why should she?” asked the Major. “The murders I mean? Two of them? What for? Of course, we haven’t to prove motive in a murder case. Still—”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Bobby.

  “You don’t suggest she’s mad?”

  “No sir, I can’t see any suggestion of insanity anywhere. It all seems to me to hang together only I can’t see how. It’s the governing idea that we can’t get hold of, it seems to me.”

  “There’s always what she said to you,” mused the Major, “about the perfect murder, I mean. What did she say that for, and what’s its significance? If any. Anyhow, why should it make her commit two more murders, young Kayne and Winders, too? Could they have found out something? Could they have known or suspected anything about this perfect murder she talks about? For that matter, who could she have murdered and what for?”

  “There’s one thing, sir,” Bobby pointed out, “there does seem to be a record in this case of someone who disappeared and has never been heard of since.”

  “You mean, Virtue’s story about his cousin, the one who vanished on a European trip. But he was traced to Paris, wasn’t he? He vanished there, not here. Besides, there seems no record that he and Miss Kayne ever met each other, except perhaps casually. So far as appears, he had none but business relations here. He bought books from the library and consulted them sometimes. But that’s all, as far as we know, and it would be almost impossible to find out anything different after all this time.”

  “Yes, sir,” agreed Bobby. “Very difficult indeed. At the time one could have tried to find out more; if there was really satisfactory proof he was going about with some unknown girl and if it was really he who was traced to Paris. A false trail might have been laid, but it would be pretty hard to prove that now.”

  “Well, then,” said the Major, “there you are, and where are you?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Bobby, quite agreeing with this somewhat involved remark. “Could we try to start from the beginning? I mean, go over what we do know for certain?”

  “Precious little we do know for certain,” grumbled the Major. “Well, go ahead.”

  “I thought,” explained Bobby, “if we got clear in our minds what we do actually know, some kind of pattern might begin to show. The first thing we do know is that a relative of Mr. Virtue’s disappeared on a European trip, and we also know he had some connection with the Kayne library and visited this village. It appears he was traced to Paris, but there’s no confirmation. We don’t know it’s true.”

  “You mean—” began the Major and pau
sed.

  “I’m trying to keep to the facts we can be certain of,” Bobby repeated. “If a murder were committed in one place and the body hidden there, it might be a good plan to lay a false track somewhere else.”

  “But his luggage? hotel registers? all that?”

  “His murderers might have secured possession of his luggage. A signature in an hotel register could be forged. In busy hotels guests are not always clearly remembered. I can’t agree that it is proved as actual fact that the missing man disappeared in Paris. It may be so. It may not. All we can be sure of is that he did disappear and there’s no explanation known. Also we know as fact that Miss Kayne has talked about a perfect murder in the past. Those are two facts. There may be no connection.”

  “Yes,” said the Major. “Yes.” Then he paused and said: “Yes” once more. Bobby continued:

  “Another fact we know and the next in the time order, is that Bertram Virtue visited the Kayne library on the occasion of the breaking of the glass case holding the Glastonbury Psalter. Afterwards he turned up again when for some reason Mr. Broast refused him admittance. Thereon Virtue told a story, almost certainly false, of having seen a dead man on the library floor. When challenged about that, he demanded that the library should be searched. He has pressed that point since. We know also that Miss Perkins has in her possession a photograph answering to the description Virtue gave of the dead body he said he saw. I think we may say also that Virtue had no knowledge of that, his surprise when he knew was certainly genuine.”

  “Yes, I think that, too,” agreed the Major. “What you are getting at is that Virtue thinks his lost cousin was murdered, believes that the body is concealed somewhere in the library, only he daren’t say so, but he thinks if he could fix up a search for a supposed other dead body, then some trace might be found of his lost cousin?”