by John Hall
‘The unknown assailant must have moved quietly, so as not to wake him? I do not believe it could be done! And again, it is less a question of whether it could be done, as of whether anyone would dare to do it, and risk detection.’
‘The objection disappears if it were Lane himself who did it,’ said Holmes.
‘And what reason would he have?’
‘Lane himself suggested that he was Morgan’s long-lost nephew. He spoke in jest – or what he considered a jest – but he might easily have had some prior connection with either Gregson or Morgan. As Lane himself said, we do not know just what the relations between the various guests may or may not have been.’
‘It is certainly a possibility,’ I said. ‘And yet another is that a man in the sitting room would similarly see what went on in the garden. It is a slightly longer walk from there, but not by much – far less dangerous than going across the lawn.’
‘True enough, and Tomlinson was in the sitting room, was he not?’
‘So Lane said. But I must point out – although it was my own suggestion – that if anyone went from the sitting room, he must pass the library.’
‘The sole occupant of which was asleep!’
‘He would not know that in advance,’ I pointed out.
‘True,’ said Holmes, ‘but it was no very great danger. It was a hot day, what were the chances of anyone being inside the library? He might legitimately think that they were all outside, enjoying the fresh air. And if anyone did see him, he could simply wave a greeting, make some remark about how hot the day was, or so on. All innocent enough.’
‘He would not be able to go through with his plan, though. He would only seem to be innocently enjoying a stroll in the grounds as long as no murder were discovered.’
‘He would not be able to go through with his plan,’ repeated Holmes thoughtfully. ‘That is quite true, but then he might have another opportunity later. He may well have thought that it was worth a try, worth the small risk involved.’
‘Granted. In either instance, the thing could easily be called off were he seen going to the porch. The real danger would be on the return trip, assuming the murder were carried out successfully – successfully from the murderer’s viewpoint, that is,’ I said.
‘You sum it up in your usual perceptive manner,’ said Holmes. ‘The real danger was indeed that he might be seen on the return trip.’
‘It must have been desperation indeed to cause him to run such a risk.’
‘Or suddenly seeing the opportunity, perhaps?’ said Holmes. He waved a hand at the first-floor windows. ‘Much the same argument applies to anyone looking out from one of the bedrooms,’ he went on. ‘In that instance, we must postulate their going downstairs and through the dining room. Again, some danger of detection, but surely not much? The gardeners were inside, as far as our man knew, at any rate, and he could not know that there had been some slight activity, comings and goings in the telephone cubicle.’
‘And if he were upstairs, that might account for Gregson’s letter opener – the murderer might have taken that on his way down, for, having seen Gregson enter the porch, the murderer would know that he could not be in his room!’
‘Well done, Watson! Pountney was upstairs, was he not?’
‘So I gather. And someone mentioned that Morrison had also to be brought from his room.’
‘Indeed. We must talk to them, I think.’
‘But first you had promised to do something about Gregson, and the possible danger he may still be in.’
‘H’mm.’ Holmes cautiously approached the outside door of the porch, but before he could touch the handle, the door swung open, and Gregson himself appeared.
‘Oh!’ Gregson stood to one side. ‘Were you wanting to use the telephone?’
‘If luncheon is quite finished,’ said Holmes. ‘But am I interrupting you?’
‘No, no. I have just spoken to – well, to Sarah, the gallery owner. I just wanted to confirm that everything has been satisfactorily resolved.’
‘And has it?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Gregson hesitated. ‘It might seem a touch – unfeeling, perhaps? To be concerned about relatively minor details, with poor Morgan lying in his coffin.’ He shrugged his shoulders, as if to shake off any possible criticism. ‘It would have worried me, though, had I not cleared the matter up, and, after all, it cannot hurt Ben now. Well, sir, I shall leave you to it,’ and he set off down the garden.
‘I shall not keep you a moment, Doctor,’ said Holmes, and he went into the little porch and closed the door after him.
I stared at the garden, and then at the outside of the old house, trying to imagine what had occurred yesterday. Without success, I may add, for it all seemed most dark and puzzling to me. I heard the porch door open, and set off towards it, thinking that Holmes had finished his telephone call. He had not quite done, though, and I caught his last few words – ‘No, no! After dinner will be soon enough, I fancy! Goodbye!’ He replaced the instrument, and re-joined me. ‘That should do it, I think, Watson. And now, let us resume our investigations.’
Before I could ask what he had arranged, he led the way along the side of the house to the French windows in the sitting room, and went inside. The only occupant was Morrison, who sat disconsolate in an armchair. He looked up as we went in, and said, ‘Hullo! Discovered anything yet?’
‘Nothing of any significance,’ said Holmes. ‘But we are, I trust, building up a picture of what may have happened.’
‘Are you, though? So we may look for a speedy resolution of the matter?’
‘I am hopeful that we may.’
‘I shall be very glad of it,’ said Morrison frankly, ‘for I may say that the trustees are far from happy about it. At least, the chairman is, and I am sure that the others will not differ markedly in their views.’
‘You have spoken to your chairman, then?’
Morrison nodded. ‘He is a solicitor with an office in the village. I went along there this morning – I dare not let him hear the news first from someone else, and he would have been certain to do so.’
‘Well, I cannot honestly see that he can lay any blame at your door,’ said Holmes.
‘He takes the view – very properly – that I am in charge of the place, and thus responsible for what goes on here. Perhaps he is just a touch more rigid than he need be, but I have to abide by his decision. I tell you honestly, Mr Holmes, that if matters are not put right very soon, they will be looking for my resignation.’ And he sunk into a deeper gloom.
‘Have you held this post for long?’ asked Holmes.
‘Some three or four years.’
‘And before that?’
‘I worked in the City, a firm of shipping agents. It was more lucrative than this post, but far from congenial – I enjoy the countryside, and I am, moreover, a lazy devil – so when I heard of this post being vacant, I applied at once, and was lucky enough to secure it. The work is not arduous, the company has always been agreeable, and the life generally first-class. Until now, of course.’
‘Of course. I understand you did not usually attend your office on a Tuesday?’
‘No. The work, as I say, is not heavy, far from it. I can usually keep things running smoothly by looking in twice a week, Monday and Friday. But I had intended to take a couple of weeks off, and wanted to tidy up as many loose ends as possible. And now it is I who am at a loose end myself! Despite yesterday’s alarums and excursions, I cleared up the very few outstanding bits of business, and so I do not really know what to do. The holiday must be cancelled, naturally, but I feel perfectly useless here.’ He sighed. ‘I may not stay here after tonight – my cottage is quite close, so I can easily be reached if needs be, and I shall at least be able to potter in my own garden. In fact, I should have gone home this afternoon, were it not that it might smack of deserting my post.’
‘I hardly think that you need view it in that light,’ said Holmes with a smile.
‘No, but I assure you
that the chairman of the trustees would! On balance, I think I might go home now for an hour or so, reassure my wife and kiss my children, then return and spend the night here. Just in case.’
‘If I might just put one or two questions to you before you leave?’ asked Holmes.
‘Of course.’
‘You have, you say, been secretary here for only some three or four years. Did you know Morgan before you came here?’
Morrison shook his head. ‘I had never heard of the place, until I was told that the secretary’s post was vacant. The chap who told me was a regular guest here, but he is not staying here just at the moment. The ones who are here just now – no, I met all of them only within the last three or four years. Since I took the post, in fact.’
‘I see. Now, the outer door of the porch, where the telephone is situated. Is that usually locked, or not?’
‘Welsh makes a point of checking that it is locked last thing at night, of course, when he does his rounds. However, he does not unlock it in a morning, in the same way that he unlocks the front door. If a guest lets himself out that way into the garden, then the door remains unlocked, for the key is on the inside, as perhaps you noticed. Again, if a guest comes in that way, he may well turn the key and lock the door after him.’
Holmes sighed wearily.
‘It is, I fear, somewhat of an informal arrangement,’ said Morrison, ‘but it has served us well enough until now. We like the guests to feel that this is their home, for the time being, and so we have as few rules and regulations as possible. If each guest had a separate key to that door, of course, then we might insist that it remain locked unless in actual use, but, as it is, it is not truly a door as such, merely a convenient short-cut of sorts. The guests ought to use the front door, by rights, but then they would be obliged to walk right round the house to reach the garden, so we make no difficulty if they use the French windows in the sitting room, or the outer door of the porch.’
‘So, the door might have been locked when Gregson first used the telephone? He would then unlock it to let himself out?’
‘That may well have been the case,’ said Morrison. ‘Naturally, I cannot say whether it was, or no. You could ask Gregson?’
‘That particular point is not important,’ said Holmes. ‘Now, Gregson used the outer door to go out to the garden, so he must have left the door unlocked.’
‘He could not have locked it,’ Morrison pointed out. ‘There is just the one key for the use of guests, and that is left on the inside. I have a key, of course, and so does Welsh, but the guests do not. In order to lock the door from the outside, a guest would have to take the key out with him and retain it in his possession, and – tolerant though we may be – I would take a dim view of that.’
‘Indeed. That is most clear. But, now, suppose a guest were to enter the house from the garden – would he lock the door after him?’
‘He might. I would,’ said Morrison. ‘In fact, I very often do. If there is nobody outside, and I come in by the porch door, I would usually lock it after me. As I say, we are fairly informal, but I believe in being as careful as may be.’
‘Very wise. And the other guests?’
‘Those who have been here before perhaps would, they know my little ways. But there is no hard and fast rule.’
‘And, supposing you had entered and locked the door after you, what of someone coming to that door after you had locked it?’
‘They could not get in that way, of course. And the French window in the dining room is usually locked, until dinner at least, when it might be opened if it were a warm evening. But the kitchen door is just round the side of the house here, and Mrs Welsh would make no difficulty about allowing you through there. But most guests would never think to go to the kitchen, they would simply walk along to the sitting room – the French window there is usually unlocked, and there is a handle on the outside. If that window were, by some chance, locked as well, they would have to go to the front door.’
‘And if that were locked to boot?’ I said.
Morrison laughed. ‘Well, they could always ring the bell!’
I laughed with him. ‘Never thought of that!’
‘We have at least a very comprehensive picture of the doors!’ said Holmes. ‘One or two other small points trouble me slightly. I gather that Gregson was in something of an hysterical state when he found the body?’
‘Yes. “Proper took”, as my old nurse used to put it.’
‘Yes. Welsh was disturbed by the fuss, and so were Tomlinson, in the sitting room, which is at the other end of the house, and Pountney – who was upstairs.’
‘I fear you have lost me, Mr Holmes. Peter was, as you say, making a considerable racket, so why should they not be alarmed?’
‘Why not, indeed?’ Holmes paused, then, almost casually, added, ‘How came you not to hear it, then? For I gather Tomlinson or one of the others had to summon you from your room?’
‘Oh, I see! The secretary’s office is little more than a box-room, Mr Holmes, as you saw. Tucked away right at the end of the upstairs corridor. And I had my door closed, for I do not care to be disturbed when I am working. Moreover, I have a typewriter for official correspondence, and the noise of that, and concentrating on hitting the right keys – I suppose that all those things together had some effect. Then, Pountney’s room is right at the head of the stairs, so that would account for his hearing anything in the dining room, whilst I could not. And Tomlinson – well, he was down here, not upstairs.’
‘Yes, I see. And when you realised that Morgan was dead, you summoned Inspector Forrester?’
‘Immediately.’
‘Did you send Welsh for him, or – ?’
‘No, I telephoned the local station – I knew they have the telephone, of course.’
‘What, you used the instrument in the porch?’
‘No, no! I have another telephone in my room.’
Holmes sat up, alert. ‘Is it connected with the telephone downstairs in the porch?’
Morrison shook his head. ‘It is a quite separate line, with a different number at the exchange. You can see the two wires if you stand outside the house and look at the roof. The one downstairs is a sort of general one, mine is exclusively for the use of the secretary.’
‘That was all I wished to know, thank you. Oh,’ Holmes added, as Morrison got to his feet, ‘are the other guests about the place, do you know?’
‘I think Davenport is next door, in the library.’
‘Thank you.’
Morrison nodded a last farewell, and made his way out into the corridor.
‘We have indeed a comprehensive picture of the doors,’ I said. ‘But what exactly does it tell us?’
‘It tells us that Gregson might well have locked the outer door when he went in.’
‘We could always ask him! Anyway, we know he did not, for the door was open when the body was discovered.’
‘The murderer might have unlocked it,’ said Holmes. ‘But that is not the significant point. Any guest who had been here before would know that there was at least a possibility of Gregson’s locking that door after him.’
‘And that would tend to preclude an approach from outside? Of course! You cannot very well kill someone through a locked door.’
‘Well, there would be difficulties, would there not? The point is not whether the door were locked or no – which is why I shall not bother to ask Gregson if he locked it – but whether the murderer believed that it might be locked. It is another interesting point.’
‘And the point about Morrison’s telephone line?’
‘Well, if it were an extension, and connected with the telephone downstairs, he might have been able to tell if the instrument were in use.’
‘He would hardly listen to a private conversation, Holmes! And if he did, he would never admit it!’
‘I did not think that of him. No, I thought merely that there might be a bell upstairs, or something of the kind, which would have told
him that the downstairs instrument had been picked up or put down. As it is a separate line, then of course that is not the case, and so it cannot be a factor.’
Holmes got to his feet, and set off down the corridor. I followed as far as the door of the library, which Holmes opened. ‘Hullo!’ said he, to an occupant hidden from my view. There was a kind of mumbled greeting in response, and Holmes held the door open for me. I entered, to see James Davenport sitting morosely looking out of the window.
Holmes followed me in. ‘We are not disturbing you?’ he asked.
‘Lord, no. I should be glad of someone to talk to, for this business is preying on my mind.’ Davenport waved a large hand in a vague way at the chairs, and Holmes and I sat down.
‘It is a distressing business, is it not?’ said Holmes in his most soothing tones.
‘That is putting it very politely, Mr Holmes! I called it “damnable” yesterday, and I have seen no good reason to amend that opinion.’
‘You know me, then?’ asked Holmes.
‘I assumed you must be Mr Sherlock Holmes – there has been some talk among the guests, as you will imagine. I confess, Dr Watson, that I had not immediately associated you with the Dr Watson of Strand fame.’
‘You will know, then, that I am here at the request of the local police, and of Mr Morrison,’ said Holmes. ‘Would you have any objection to my asking you a few questions?’
‘Heavens, no! But I must warn you that I can tell you nothing about Ben’s sad death. I was not even in the house.’
‘And where were you?’
Davenport waved a hand in the general direction of the window. ‘Out there, somewhere. On the Downs, taking the air.’
‘Alone?’
‘I fear that I was. And by the same token, I fear that I did not stop at any wayside hostelry and invite the assembled throng to drink my health, nor did I dally with any buxom country wench who might later be relied upon to stand up in court and cry Alibi! in my defence.’
‘That is a pity, in some respects,’ said Holmes calmly. ‘You returned – when?’
‘About half past three. I had proposed to have a wash – which would have been most welcome – before tea, which would have been doubly so. In the event, I had neither wash nor tea. I was aware that something was amiss as I came through the door. Welsh came out of the library, muttered something about Morgan. I could not quite make him out, and at first I thought it was an accident, or something of the kind. I went into the library, and found a little crowd in there – Gregson, of course, Pountney, Tomlinson and Gordon Morrison.’