August Derleth - The Solar Pons Omnibus Volume 1

by August Derleth

  "We have impounded the box of veronal, of course," explained the sergeant.

  "How many capsules did it contain?" inquired Pons.

  "Eight. It was made to contain twelve. He had just bought it at Henderson's in Slough the day before yesterday. He was evidently given four of them."

  "Sir John Watkins has been questioned in regard to these glasses?"

  "Certainly, Mr. Pons. He says that he had one drink with Jepson, while Jepson had three. His prints are on both glasses. He says that he handed Jepson's glass to him; he was closer to the tray and Jepson asked him to fill his glass a third time. It was then that the argument began, says Sir John."

  "And where were the servants all this time?"

  "There are only two —a cook and a man-servant. They are man and wife, and live in a cottage three miles away. They spend their nights there, traveling to and from the house by dog cart when Mr. Jepson is in residence. They were gone last night. Jepson had permitted them to go some time after ten o'clock, as usual."

  Pons nodded absently. Quite clearly he had no further interest in Jepson's house-guests. He displayed a marked disinterest in interrogating them, but instead walked back down the stairs and stood looking once more at the bizarre setting for Jepson's murder.

  "Do you remember Randolph Sutpen's melodrama, The Four Who Returned, Parker?" he asked suddenly.

  "Yes, a little."

  "Does not something about this situation remind you of the central situation in that drama? Was it not concerned with four men who 'executed' a fifth?"

  "By Jove!" I exclaimed. "So it was. And Sutpen is one of the guests."

  "And suspects," added Pons. "I believe, Sergeant, we shall now have to talk to them. I take it they are available."

  "Yes, sir. They are in the library, to the right, sir."

  The guests came to their feet as we entered the study. All four were between forty and sixty, and they shared one quality in common —all had what is known in the parlance of the theatre as "presence." They were distinguished in appearance, and at the moment of our entrance, as they rose and ranged themselves together, like a phalanx against us, they had a most formidable aspect.

  "Pray compose yourselves, gentlemen," said Pons. "I must trouble you with but a few questions."

  "We are at your service, Mr. Pons," said Lord Barick, a tall, broad-shouldered man with impressive eyes and mouth. "We trust that this problem can be solved with your usual ingenuity."

  "I thank your lordship. Please sit down."

  As they did so, Pons took his stand against the mantel at the fireplace, facing them. "First of all," he continued, "there is the question of the letter. Does any of you have his letter with him?"

  "I do, sir," said Sutpen, the youngest of the four, and, like all the others, a man of evident physical strength. He handed an envelope to Pons.

  While Pons opened it and removed the invitation from it, I could not but reflect upon the fact that men who looked less like actors and more like cricketers could not readily be conceived. Any one of them appeared fully capable of carrying the not inconsiderable body of Ahab Jepson up and down his stairs with ease.

  Pons read, interjecting comments. " 'I take the liberty of imploring you, for the sake of my dead father's memory' —a maudlin touch —'to give me the opportunity to make the amends that are due you' —He is not above being ambiguous! —'and be my house- guest for the last weekend in March. There are matters which sorely need adjustment'— How delicate he is! —'and I welcome the opportunity of adjusting them. I trust you will let bygones be bygones and do me the honour of being my guest.'

  He handed the letter back to Sutpen. "This role did not fit Ahab Jepson well —yet it is singularly in character—florid, pompous, vain, and wholly fraudulent. I take it, gentlemen, that Mr. Jepson's conduct was basically unchanged."

  "That is correct, Mr. Pons," replied Lord Barick.

  Pons turned to Sir John Watkins, the shortest of the four, though a sturdy, well-muscled man. "You, Sir John, were asked to examine a box of veronal capsules. How many were in the box at the time you looked into it?"

  "Eight," replied Sir John without hesitation, his dark eyes flashing.

  "When were you last previously a guest here, Sir John?"

  "This is the first time I've entered the house since Hesketh Jepson's death."

  "That was fifteen years ago on the twentieth of May. Has any of you been here since that time prior to this visit?"

  None of them had. Sutpen volunteered the additional information that he alone among the four of them had never previously visited the house; he had known Sir Hesketh only in the last two years of the actor's life.

  "Will you think back to your last visit, Sir John?" suggested Pons.

  "Yes?"

  "Can you recall any signal differences in the appearance of the house?"

  Sir John smiled grimly. "Sir Hesketh would hardly have tolerated the gewgaws Ahab collected. I mean that though he came from a distinguished family, he had none but family heirlooms about; Ahab went in for all manner of chivalric paraphernalia, and added a line of Polynesian carvings. I am constrained to suggest that the former appealed to him as compensation for his own lack, and the latter to the essentially primitive aspects of his mind."

  "Let us not speak ill of the dead," said Sir Malcolm McVeigh quietly. He was the oldest of the group, with greying hair, and wore a monocle in his right eye. He had an impressively reassuring manner.

  Pons turned and looked at him, and without changing the direction of his glance, said, "Now I should like a detailed account of your movements between the time you entered the house yesterday and the discovery of Jepson's body." He spoke with a casual air which suggested that this was only a formality to be got over with.

  "I believe I can speak for all of us," offered Sir Malcolm, returning Pons's gaze with an attitude of easy confidence. "We arrived together, you see, and we remained pretty much together throughout the evening. We were shown into this study on our arrival, while our things were packed off upstairs to our rooms. Our host appeared, greeted us pleasantly enough, and himself showed us to our rooms. We were not left any longer than the time it took us to get ready for dinner. Then our host himself led us down to the dining-room. On the way he stopped on the stairs to deliver a lecture about the mask hung there; it purports to be a mask worn by witch-doctors in summoning up the dead —a macabre conceit which seemed to please him. Then we went in to dinner. I believe you have heard already of the disagreeable conversations which were carried on at the table; our host took the occasion to reveal his true colours; with each drink he took, he became more offensive. After dinner we sat for over an hour in the study. Let me see — dinner took until some time after eight; I believe we left the study for our own rooms at nine-forty-five or thereabouts. It was while we were on the way to our rooms that our host asked Sir John to his room.

  "As for the rest of us —we went to our own rooms but shortly foregathered in Lord Barick's quarters to discuss our host's aberrant conduct. We were joined there by Sir John, much agitated, in perhaps an hour's time. Lord Barick was preparing for bed by the time we left him. We went on to Mr. Sutpen's room, spoke about his play, and left him disrobing. Sir John sat for a while in my room, still angry at what he termed our host's insolence. I recalled an incident on one of my early visits to Sir Hesketh, when he was obliged to cane Ahab for his insolence, though Ahab was then but a boy. It was eleven o'clock when we parted. Sir John presumably retired. Only I failed to do so; I was myself so upset that I could not sleep. This was in part because at least two members of the party — Sir John and Lord Barick —had not wished to respond to our host's invitation, but I prevailed upon them to come, thinking that perhaps Ahab had had a change of heart or conscience. I walked about or sat in my room until midnight or thereabouts; then I gave up trying and went downstairs. I found Ahab."

  Pons had listened carefully during this recital. At its conclusion he glanced from one to another of the other three men
, but none volunteered additional information. "Did you hear any suspicious sounds during the hour you were awake before you went downstairs?" he asked then.

  "Mr. Pons, I heard nothing."

  "Not even, let me suggest, the closing of a door?"

  "I do not remember that I did."

  "Now, gentlemen, I want you to listen very carefully. Pray excuse me; I will return in a few moments."

  Pons left the room.

  He was gone only a short time. Just before he stepped back into the room, I heard the distant grinding of the winch; he had evidently set off the mechanism. It was remote even from this floor, which was directly above the cellar; from the second storey it would scarcely have been audible.

  "Did you hear anything now, Sir Malcolm?" asked Pons.

  "Something creaked?"

  "What would you say it was?"

  "A pump, perhaps?" ventured Sir Malcolm.

  "Would anyone care to make a guess?"

  No one did.

  "Very well. Let us say no more about it at the moment. Now, Sir Malcolm, since you have said you were instrumental in persuading two other members of this party to accept Ahab Jepson's invitation, will you tell us why you did so? We need not pretend that any degree of warmth existed between any of you and your late host. Why, then, accept his invitation?"

  "Mr. Pons, I must violate a confidence to tell you, but I will do so," answered Sir Malcolm graciously. "I had learned that our host was a sick man, and that he had prepared an announcement of his retirement from the stage, though only forty-seven. Frankly, I believed this only a bid for some popular sympathy. My own doctor, however, had been consulted by Ahab Jepson; I took the liberty of making an inquiry, and was informed that our host was actually suffering from a heart ailment which compelled his retirement from all activity whatsoever, and which in all likelihood would take him off at any time. I felt sorry for him; so I came and persuaded the others to come, too."

  "Thank you, gentlemen. That is all," said Pons.

  In the hall, Pons paused to look up once again at the ingenious device which had brought Ahab Jepson to his death. He wore a satisfied smile when he turned to Cobbett at last.

  "I take it you are quite settled in mind, Sergeant," he said. "Does anything remain to perplex you?"

  "Mr. Pons, I confess I cannot imagine which one of them or which two could have committed this crime. It is what has troubled me from the beginning."

  "My dear Cobbett, allow me to congratulate you," cried Pons, his eyes dancing. "You are quite right —none of them is guilty. Pray follow your instincts —permit these gentlemen to repair to London without further delay, and say nothing to the press about their presence here."

  Cobbett gaped at him, taken aback.

  "It was staged with some eye for drama, but the eye was unsure. Ask yourself, as I did, why a box of veronal capsules should be wrapped in wax paper if not to take fingerprints? And why should it be required of Sir John to fill Ahab's glass if not for a similar reason? And surely Lord Barick was provoked into striking his host so that it might be duly recorded! But unfortunately, Ahab forgot something, if you take the trouble, as you must, to look into the matter—you'll find no evidence of fingerprints save only Ahab's and my own on the machinery of the chain —winch-handle and attached mechanism —or on the cupboard concealing it. He overlooked a vital detail, just as he seems to have done in most of his undertakings. He forgot to take his guests into the cellar and reveal the mechanism. But the whisky and veronal were necessary: the veronal —such capsules as he took were removed from the box before Sir John saw it —to make it look as if he had been drugged into a stupor, the whisky to screw up his nerve to that point at which he could walk down the stairs and hang himself in order to implicate and throw the dark cloud of scandal shamefully over the good names of four sterling gentlemen he could harm in no other way."

  "An elementary matter," observed Pons, once we were seated in our compartment on the return trip to London that evening. "Cobbett himself gave us the initial suggestion of the truth on the way down. He said of Ahab, 'He had not been well.' But Cobbett thought himself confounded with four suspects, each with a motive to want Ahab Jepson out of the way. Nothing could have been further from the truth —it was not Cobbett's suspects who had motive to want Ahab out of the way —they had won the actions Ahab had brought —but Ahab who had motive to want them injured in such a way as to bring them some mental suffering. I proceeded, therefore, from the opposite basis —that the guests were innocent, and every discovery made at the house only verified it. Ahab's garish and slightly gauche touch was everywhere apparent. He was capable of killing them, but he wanted something more of them, and a scandal of such proportions as to involve them in suspicion of murder would have served his purpose very well. It is to Cobbett's credit that he proceeded with such caution. He is a young man who shows promise of some ability in the field."

  "But to kill himself!" I protested.

  "He lived on borrowed time, Parker; so much is obvious. And whatever his unlovely attributes, he had a sincere love of the stage; to have to leave it was like a sentence of death. Nor could he bear to leave his exit to chance; like every actor, he wanted to plan and execute it himself. He did. He conceived a dastardly plan, set it in motion, and made his flamboyant exit, wholly melodramatic. A poor thing, but certainly his own; it was beyond his guests to have conceived it. It had all the marks of his conception. Alas, poor Ahab! His exit was in keeping with his life —pompous, florid, somewhat ignominious, and in his customary bad taste."

  "It is simple enough, now you explain it," I agreed.

  A wry smile touched Pons's lips. He turned to look out at the dim lights of the scattered houses flying past. "Inevitable," he murmured. "As Tacitus puts it, Omne ignotum pro magnifico. "

  For years thereafter Pons was never without complimentary tickets to any London performance in which were displayed the histrionic abilities of the four gentlemen of the theatre who had been so ill-advised by sentiments of common humanity as to permit themselves to be the guests of Ahab Jepson on that fateful weekend at Stoke Poges.

  The Adventure of the Swedenborg Signatures

  "I HAVE OFTEN maintained that the science of deduction, if carried to its logical conclusion, is capable of informing the trained observer with the same uncertainty as any set of facts put down with concomitant proof in writing," said my friend Solar Pons from his position at the window of our quarters at 7B Praed Street.

  "All of which enables me to deduce that we may quite possibly be about to entertain a client," I said.

  "Capital, Parker! I am always happy to realize that these little exercises in ratiocination make somewhat of an impression on you and do indeed stimulate you to a similar observation —in degree. Come and have a look at the young lady below."

  I walked to Pons's side and looked down.

  Across the street, a young woman of perhaps twenty-five years pursued her way. She was dark, though not a brunette. She wore a little toque on her head, and was otherwise clad in a neat grey suit with a touch of red at the lapels and cuffs. On her feet she wore sensible sandals, which had the look of the country about them. She walked up a little way, shot a glance toward our quarters, turned, and walked back.

  "Now, then," said Pons, after a few moments, "what do you make of her?"

  "She is obviously intending to pay us a visit," I said.

  "Yes, yes. Go on."

  "But there is some reason for delaying her call."

  "Other than indecision?"

  "She might be waiting for someone."

  "I fancy not. I submit that if she were, her attention would be on the street, not on our quarters."

  "She may be from the country."

  "We make progress," said Pons dryly.

  "Very well, then," I said, taking the plunge, "she is a lady's maid, come here at the behest of her mistress, on a mission of some delicacy."

  Pons laughed heartily, his eyes twinkling. "Spoken like a true gentle
man!" he cried. "And, I daresay, not too wide of the mark.

  She is certainly in service of some kind, but I suggest a lady's companion rather than a maid. She may well be a less fortunate relative, for she dresses well, if modestly, and wears a definite, if subdued, air of independence. But she has not come at her companion's behest; she has come at her own discretion, and is nerving herself to take the final step. Moreover, she has a limited amount of time at her disposal, for she keeps glancing at her wrist-watch. Either she has another appointment, or she must catch a train. I submit it is the latter, for the hour is already late afternoon, too early for a dinner engagement, rather late for a business appointment. But she has made up her mind and is crossing the street. We shall soon hear what she has to say."

  The outer bell sounded, and in a few moments Mrs. Johnson tapped on the door and ushered into our quarters the young lady we had been watching. With that intuition which seldom betrayed a client stepping into our rooms, she unerringly picked Pons as the object of her call.

  "Mr. Solar Pons?"

  "At your service, Miss."

  "My name is Louise Graham, Mr. Pons."

  "Pray be seated."

  As she took the chair I propelled forward, Pons introduced me, and then went to lean against the mantel.

  "Now, my dear young lady, since it is obvious that you are in haste —perhaps to catch a train —and equally so that you've been impelled to come here on a matter of some concern to you by nothing more than your own decision, I suggest we lose no time hearing your story."

  A faint smile broke the tension of her face, but only momentarily. She grew grave again at once. "It's true," she began, "I don't know that I'm doing the right thing. But I wanted to come here and talk to you, because I cannot let my aunt continue as she has been doing, living in fear of events. Mr. Pons, do you know the Doctrine of Signatures?"