“I say!” Lion, round-eyed and flushed brightly with excitement, exclaimed. “Are you a detective, Mr. Christmas?”
“Not really. I’m just a humble admirer of the great Holmes, like yourself, Lion.”
The young generation raised an eyebrow and remarked that it preferred Dr. Thorndyke.
“More scientific. Everything he finds he puts under the microscope. I wish I had a microscope of my own. Dad’s got one, but he doesn’t much like me using it when he’s not there. I do like the sort of people that understand microscopes, and science and things.”
John laughed.
“Then you’ll like Rampson. He soaks in science and keeps one eye at the microscope even in his sleep.”
‘’I say!” Lion looked rather shyly at this embodiment of his ideal. “Do you really? I say! Are you staying long? Would you come over and have a look at Dad’s microscope, and my slides? All the slides I make look kind of blurred. Do you think—”
“Dirt,” said Rampson laconically. “Righto, of course I will.”
He did not by word or look reproach John for having thus deflected the stream of Lion’s young enthusiasm. He was happy in the company of schoolboys, and when they turned to go home walked contentedly off with his new satellite, who was assuring him earnestly that the possibility of foreign matter appearing in his slides had been carefully guarded against by an extensive use of soap and water. Isabel shut up her sketch-book and rose from her boulder and smiled at John, who waited to be her escort.
“We left our bicycles at Upper Ring Farm,” she explained. “Lion wouldn’t risk his priceless tyres along this track. Gorgeous day, isn’t it? Have you been up on Radnor Forest yet? I went yesterday. You can’t think how lovely it is. Just hills and hills and trees and trees, and a little waterfall that’s one of the loveliest things in the world. You must go, if you can find time from your detecting. Or is Lion wrong in supposing that you detect? Do you detect, or don’t you?”
They followed in the steps of the two earnest scientists. The track was only wide enough for two, and John was extremely glad that a happy thought of his had transferred Lion’s budding devotion from himself to Rampson, since it left him Isabel as a companion. Her light, clear voice which when she spoke of waterfalls itself suggested the sound of splashing water, her precise enunciation, her self-possessed and tranquil manner—all suggested a brain admirably clear behind that pretty white forehead. Pretty she was, too, in an elvish, sharp-pointed manner, with thin, humorous lips and heavy white lids that hid her thoughts.
“I do detect,” replied John airily, responding to her manner, “when circumstances allow me. Do you?”
“Not I. I accept, and make no attempt to pierce the veil, as the spiritualists put it. Poor Charles! All your detecting won’t bring him to life again.”
“No, it has another object.”
She gave him a long glance from the bright, hazel eyes under those heavy lids.
“What is your object? Do tell me.”
John hesitated.
“I might say, a passion for abstract justice,” he replied. “But it wouldn’t be true. My object is just the interest the problem has for me.”
She nodded.
“Some like algebra, some like chess, and some like detecting crimes. I don’t much like any of them.”
“What is your favourite amusement?
“Talking to intelligent young men,” she replied calmly. “And drawing. But I’m better at the former than the latter. I’m too lazy to study properly, and fall back on lightning-sketches and caricatures. There’s one of you in here. Like to see it?
She handed him her sketch-book, open at a page which showed a lively caricature of himself and Rampson examining imaginary clues among the blackberry bushes. John laughed appreciatively, admired and turned a few more pages.
“That’s Dr. Browning,” said Isabel, looking over his arm, “looking pleased at one of his own remarks. That’s Felix raising an eyebrow at Charles. That’s Charles slapping Felix on the back.”
“Oh, that’s Charles, is it?”
John looked attentively at the large-featured, genial face, portrayed wearing an exaggerated smile. A wide mouth, a long chin and numerous open-air wrinkles around the eyes seemed to be the chief features of a jovial, but not particularly pleasant, physiognomy.
“That’s Nora, but it’s not very good,” said Isabel, as he turned another page. “She’s too good-looking to caricature well. And that’s the lot,” she added rather hastily, as he turned over again, “except for some art-school ones, not interesting and all bad.”
John handed back the sketch-book.
“You ought to see Nora’s books, if you’re interested in drawing,” observed Isabel. “She’s worth twenty of me as an artist. But then she works and I don’t. And Felix draws very well, though he goes in for photography instead.”
“You all go to the same art-school?”
“Nora and I do. Felix only works there occasionally, when he can get time off from photography. I don’t know whether I shall go back next term. It’s amusing, but I think I’ve had enough of it. Oh, that dog! What frightful animals these farmers keep! We’re told that the dog is the friend of man. Who would have thought it? Do you think we ought to give this woman something for looking after our bicycles, or not? I don’t quite understand the social distinctions in this part of the world.”
“Not,” said John decidedly. “This is her own farm, such as it is. And, anyway, these people aren’t so easily tipped as our southerners. They have a dour sort of pride quite their own.”
“‘Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief,’” murmured Isabel, as John wheeled her bicycle away from the yard. “By the way, has it occurred to anyone that the signet-ring you’re all so bothered about may have been pocketed by the gentleman who found poor Charles? Mr. Hufton, or whatever his name is, the proud lady’s lodger?”
“Rather risky,” commented John. “After all, this is a case of murder.”
“Hufton didn’t know that. He probably thought it was an accident. And he is a bit of a thief,” added Isabel meditatively.
John looked at her in some surprise.
“It seems to me,” he remarked, “that as a detective, Miss Donne, you leave me standing still. I understand this is your first visit to the district, and you haven’t been here forty-eight hours. Yet already you have detected a thief nine miles or so from where you are staying. Very good work, in my opinion.”
Miss Donne’s thick golden eyelashes quivered slightly. There was the fraction of a minute’s silence, while all sorts of strange, vague surmises rose in John’s mind, and his interest in this pale, pretty, self-possessed young woman suddenly became intensified. Then:
“Wild strawberries!” she cried in a sort of childish glee, and stooping to the hedge-bank began to collect the little scarlet globes in the palm of her hand.
“Look! Have one! Have several! I adore wild strawberries, don’t you? Garden ones quite lose in flavour what they gain in size. As for my detecting, it’s not really very brilliant. Somebody told me that young Hufton was lacking in respect for other people’s property. I forget who. One of the servants, it may have been. Possibly it’s not true. And here we are at the high road.”
“I say, Isabel!” There was a shout from Lion, who was sitting on the gate beside Rampson, awaiting their approach. “Where did you find those wild raspberries the day before yesterday? There ought to be some more ripe.”
“My dear boy, we haven’t time to go raspberry-hunting. We shall be late for lunch.”
“Rot! It’s only twelve o’clock. I could just do with a raspberry or so. Was it in this field? I don’t see any signs of them.”
A queer flash of ill-temper passed over Isabel’s intelligent little face. She looked for a moment as if she would gladly have consigned Lion and his gluttony to perdition. Then she said teasingly:
“Shan’t tell you. They’re my own private preserve. Have a wild strawberry instead, and don
’t be a pig. Isn’t that a sweet little cottage, Mr. Christmas? whenever I see a cottage like that I long to live in it and keep chickens and bees and wear a sun-bonnet and grow asters, which, I see, they do.”
“Yes, and they sell ginger-beer,” said Lion dreamily, with his eyes on a small notice-board over the door. “Now what I should like is a bottle of stone ginger. Not the fizzy kind, but—”
“Oh, come on, child! I can’t have you spoiling your lunch,” said Isabel, with a faint note of exasperation in her amused voice. “Besides, that notice looks a hundred years old. And if they do keep ginger-beer, it’s sure to be fizzy. It always is.”
“Let’s go and see, shall we?” suggested John.
Isabel, in whom he was becoming every moment more interested, threw him a flickering, not altogether friendly, glance, but offered no objection, and the four of them went in single file down the narrow brick path between the rows of purple and pink asters and the tall heads of phlox to the unobtrusive front door that stood open on the sitting-room. It was a typical cottager’s sitting-room, crowded with furniture and hung with prints, photographs and mirrors; but the woman who appeared in it in answer to John’s knock was not at all a typical cottager. John’s first impression was one of surprise at seeing her there, in her short cretonne frock, shingled grey hair and patent leather shoes; his second, that she was surprised to see them. Surprise, uncertainty, even, John thought, apprehension appeared for a moment in her face. Then she smiled a good morning, and waited for them to state their business.
“We saw the notice over the door, and thought we should like some ginger-beer,” explained John a little diffidently.
She laughed.
“Oh, I’m so sorry! I’m afraid I haven’t any! I ought to have taken the notice down. But I’ve only rented the cottage for a few weeks. If lemonade would do, I’ve heaps of that.”
The intelligent grey eyes in her long, rather plain face moved from one to another of her callers with a lively interest, dwelling especially, John thought, on Isabel.
“Oh, no, we shouldn’t dream of bothering you,” he said politely, but at Lion’s long, plaintive sigh the lady laughed and invited them in.
She sat in a high-backed chair and watched them as they drank the excellent lemonade she provided.
“You’ve been over to the quarry, haven’t you?” she asked. “What a dreadful thing this murder is! Poor young man! Have they found who did it, do you know?”
Without waiting for an answer, she went on, motioning to Lion to refill his glass:
“Really, it’s terribly depressing, such a thing happening so close to one! I feel quite inclined to pack up and go home to London. I came here to vegetate. But now one hears of nothing but this dreadful murder. It appears the poor young man was quite an important person hereabouts. Sure you won’t have any more? Are you staying in these parts, or do you live here?”
Isabel, to whom this question seemed more especially addressed, replied merely:
“Staying for a little while.” Her nonchalant composure seemed unaccountably to have left her. She fidgeted with her glass, looked out of the window and at the clock, and as soon as Lion had finished his drink, rose with almost discourteous abruptness.
The other woman rose too, came out with them into the sunny garden and bade them a friendly good-bye. She stood by the door among her asters and waved to them as they turned out of the gate. The bright sunlight showed her exquisitely neat and fresh, with hands white as cream and not a waved hair out of place on her smooth grey head. A very urban, elderly lady, charming and sophisticated, like many other urban, elderly ladies. She looked as if she spent a good deal of time with her hairdresser and masseuse. But there was a quite unusual amount of character in her creamed and powdered face, with its heavy, curved eyebrows and large, mobile mouth.
“Isabel,” said Lion severely, “I believe you pinched those raspberries the other day out of this garden, and that’s why you won’t tell me where you got them. I saw a lot of raspberry canes round the side of the house. And I thought those ones you had were too big for wild ones. You’ll come to a bad end, my girl, if you don’t mend your ways.”
“My dear Lion,” said Isabel with surprising asperity, “don’t be idiotic.” Then with a sudden change of mood she laughed and patted his tousled head. “Come on. I’ll race you into Penlow. Good-bye, Mr. Christmas. May heaven shower fingerprints on you! Do come on, young Lion! I never knew a youth so slow! What will you be at fifty, if Nature keeps you alive?”
“I shan’t be alive at fifty if I do much cycling with you, Isabel,” replied Lion sadly. “It would be too much to expect of Nature. Good-bye! Goodbye, Mr. Rampson, and don’t forget about coming to see the microscope!”
He mounted and rode off after Isabel, who was already some way down the road.
“You’re not very chatty, John,” remarked Rampson, as they overtook the cyclists and sped along the road dappled with the blotchy shadows of trees. “What are you thinking about?”
“About the kind lady who gave us all that lemonade. And about Miss Isabel Donne.”
“Are you falling in love again?” asked Rampson placidly.
“I think not. Not this time, my dear Sydenham. No, not this time.”
At the Feathers they found awaiting them Felix Price, white and heavy-eyed, smoking a cigarette and reading a paper in the lounge. He greeted them under the eyes of the porter with elaborate casualness, but there was that in his face which made John quickly suggest repairing to a more private spot.
“I had to come,” he said, when the three of them were upstairs in John’s large, cool bedroom. “I didn’t know who else to go to. I feel you can advise me. But, after all, what’s the good of advice? Nothing, I suppose!”
Wandering about the room, looking with unseeing eyes at the texts and Landseer prints, he spoke in short, jerky sentences, like a man under some heavy strain. Turning suddenly on John, he said, stiff-lipped:
“Christmas, the police came to Rhyllan with a search-warrant last night. Does it mean—? What does it mean?”
“May mean anything or nothing,” said John quietly. “Were there—any results?”
“An extraordinary thing! A—a terrible thing! Lovell asked my father if he kept a revolver. And of course he does, in a drawer under some book-shelves in the library. They asked to see it. He was—oh, you’ve seen my father, you can guess how he fired up! But he took them to the library. It wasn’t there, Christmas, the revolver wasn’t there! The house was searched, it wasn’t anywhere! They found a revolver in Charles’s room, and I thought: Thank God! But my father said he’d never seen it before. It belonged to Charles. So you see—my father’s revolver has disappeared—and—and what can we do?”
He broke off abruptly and, suddenly calm, sat down in a creaking wicker chair and looked stonily at John.
“Can’t your father remember what he did with his revolver?”
“He just says it was in the drawer last time he saw it. He was amazed that it wasn’t there. He swears he hasn’t had it out for ages. And he won’t tell Lovell what he went to Hereford for on the day—it happened. It’s just obstinacy, of course. He resented being asked about his business at first, and he goes on refusing to talk about it just out of stubbornness. But it’s so—so damaging!”
“Can’t you persuade him to tell you?”
Felix gave a wry, painful grin.
“I? No. You don’t know my father. He’s entirely unpersuadable.”
He stared out on to the sunny street of the quiet little market town.
“But what can we do?” he cried suddenly, turning towards John with outflung hands. He jumped to his feet, as if the inaction of sitting still for more than a few moments were intolerable. “My God!” he cried. “My God! What a fool I was to burn that letter!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
TWELVE GOOD MEN AND TRUE
The Coroner’s inquest, held next morning at the Tram Inn, presented, apart from the uniforms of the police, a
queer aspect of homeliness and informality. A long table covered with an ink-stained red cloth had been placed in the centre of the large parlour, but otherwise the room with its pot-ferns, horsehair chairs, piano and crocheted mats was much the same as it had been at tea-time on the day of Charles’s disappearance. The blinds had been half-drawn at one window to shut out the cheerful sunlight, and the cold, clear light thus produced gave a look of pallor to every face, even to the dark, high-complexioned countenance of Morris Price, who, with the rest of his household, had arrived early.
The coroner, a Hereford solicitor, took the head of the table with his back to the window, the jurymen sat down one side, and a row of chairs at the opposite side of the room were occupied by the witnesses. Two or three newspaper reporters sat at the table and a dozen or so members of the public, including John and Rampson, occupied chairs behind the jurymen. At a small pedestal table near the foot of the long one sat a short, elderly man in gold-rimmed glasses whom John rightly guessed to be the dead man’s solicitor.
The jurymen filed solemnly out to view the body where it still lay in that melancholy out-house, and after the lapse of ten minutes or so filed back again and as solemnly took their seats.
The first witness to be sworn was James Hufton, a short and powerfully built but not very intelligent young labourer. His statement, uttered in the quick, clipped speech of the Welsh borderer, was patiently elicited from him by questions from the coroner. He deposed to having found the body of a young man lying on the rocks at the foot of Rodland Quarry at about half-past six on the morning of August the twenty-seventh. A much crumpled bicycle had been lying nearby. He had turned the body over and assured himself that life was extinct. Then he had walked back to Upper Ring Farm, where he lodged, and informed his landlord, Mr. Dolphin. Dolphin had started off on his bicycle to fetch the Penlow police, and Hufton had set out for his work on the railway once more. Passing the body a second time, he had seen it and the bicycle lying just as he had left them.
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