“This meeting,” he announced, rapping on the table, “will now come to order. Minutes read and approved. Your chairman suggests that Inspector Graham open the proceedings by telling us why he thinks Mr. Justice Ireton is, or is not, guilty of murder.”
XII
Inspector Graham’s expression said, “I knew it!” He threw his napkin on the table. But Dr. Fell held up an admonitory hand.
“One moment!” he insisted, puffing out his cheeks. “I put the matter thus bluntly because here we have a different kind of problem from the usual one. The vital question, to us, is different. The vital question is not: Who might have committed this murder? The vital question is: Did Mr. Justice Ireton commit it?
“As for possible or potential murderers, they are all over the place. I can think of two or three offhand. I might even construct a case against them. But all this is swept away by a narrower, more vexing and tantalizing personal question: Did he, or didn’t he?
“It is vexing from its very simplicity. Did this much-feared gentleman himself go off the rails, as he thought he never could? Or is he just the victim of that ‘circumstantial evidence’ which he himself thinks can’t close round an innocent man? There you have it.”
Dr. Fell lit his cigar.
“Consequently,” he went on. “I thought it might be instructive if we had a discussion. With, say, Mr. Barlow acting as counsel for the defense—”
Barlow interrupted.
“I can’t do that,” he said sharply. “And I wouldn’t if I could. Is it suggested that the judge needs defending? Or that his position is, or ever could be, questionable? Nonsense!”
“H’mf. Well. Ask Inspector Graham what he thinks.”
Graham’s strawberry rash was conspicuous. He spoke with persuasiveness, and some dignity.
“And I say, sir, that I can’t discuss it either. In public, I mean. You ought to see that. I came here believing—”
“That you and I would have a private powwow? Hey?”
“If you like. I’m sure Mr. Barlow understands my position.” Graham smiled. “And I’m sure the young lady does too,” he added, with powerful gallantry. “I’ve got my duty to do. I can’t go about airing my opinions, even if I had any.”
Dr. Fell sighed.
“Quite,” he said. “I apologize. Then perhaps you won’t mind if I discuss it?”
Graham’s air was quiet and watchful, with a lurking expectancy in it.
“I can’t very well prevent that, can I?”
The thought which flashed through Fred Barlow’s mind was: I underestimated Graham. He thinks the old man’s guilty. And that’s a nasty bump to begin with.
“In arguing the case,” pursued Dr. Fell, “we have got to go only by the admissible, legal evidence. Motive is no good to us. No good at all. You can say, if you like: suppose Horace Ireton didn’t know Morell was the wealthy owner of an honest business, and thought he was only a penniless blackmailer? Suppose he killed Morell to prevent this marriage?.
“You can suppose that, but it will get you nowhere. You can’t prove he didn’t know that. You can’t prove a man didn’t know a thing, if he chooses to swear he did. If I announce that I know Columbus discovered America in 1492, and I have never before been questioned on the subject, you can’t prove I was ignorant of the fact until yesterday. You may infer it, from my conversation. But you can’t prove it.
“So let’s look at the concrete facts about this murder, by which we may be able to prove something. What are those facts? On the night of April twenty-eight, at half past eight in the evening, Anthony Morell was shot in the living room of Mr. Justice Ireton’s bungalow. The weapon employed was an Ives-Grant .32 revolver—”
Fred Barlow interposed.
“Is that established, by the way?” he asked swiftly.
Inspector Graham hesitated. “Yes, sir. I’m not giving much away if I say it is established.”
“An Ives-Grant .32 revolver,” continued Dr. Fell, “whose only distinguishing mark is a small cross cut into the steel under the magazine chamber.”
This was the point at which Jane Tennant upset her coffee.
It was a small cup, rocky on its saucer. We have all done the same thing with an incautious movement of the hand. And little coffee remained in it, so that there was no mess. Jane did not comment on it, and nobody else affected to notice. But Fred, now abnormally sensitive to atmospheres, felt from her an emotional wave he could not define.
She regarded Dr. Fell with gray, steady, thoughtful eyes. Her cheeks were faintly stained with color. Dr. Fell did not look back at her.
“So that the gun may be difficult to trace. Very difficult to trace.” He paused, wheezing. “Next, where were the various people concerned when this occurred? Mr. Justice Ireton was in the kitchen. Morell was in the living room, at the telephone. Constance Ireton was down on the beach, under the slope of the bank, with her back to the bungalow. Mr. Barlow—”
Again he paused, this time abruptly, and ran a hand through his big gray-streaked mop of hair.
“One moment! Where was Mr. Barlow?” He looked at Fred. “The question, sir, has no sinister implication. It is simply that I have never heard.”
“That’s right,” Inspector Graham agreed suddenly; and after another inner struggle he pursued the matter. “It does seem a pity to spoil a good dinner like this talking business. But it reminds me. Mr. Barlow, Bert Weems tells me that when he was going out to the judge’s place on his bike last night, he ran into you.”
“That’s right.”
“He says your car was pulled up on the wrong side of the road, just about opposite the entrance to Lovers’ Lane. He says you stopped him, and started to tell him something about ‘a tramp,’ or ‘Dr. Fellows.’ I intended to ask you last night, but it slipped my mind. What was it all about?”
“It was Black Jeff,” replied Barlow. “He’s back again.”
Graham uttered an “Oh, ah!” of enlightenment, but Dr. Fell was merely bewildered.
“Black Jeff?” the doctor repeated. “Who or what is Black Jeff?”
Graham explained. “He’s a bit of a thorn in our side. A tramp; or a vagrant, if you want to make the distinction. Always comes popping up here after long absences.”
“Black Jeff. A Negro?”
“No; it’s his hair and whiskers, which are pretty striking. I’ve seen men get drunk,” said Graham, shaking his head reflectively, “but I never saw six men get as drunk, in a quiet way, as Jeff does. Where he gets the money for it nobody knows. We don’t even know who serves him, because most publicans wouldn’t. The trouble is that when he gets to saturation point he just flops down and sleeps wherever he happens to be in the street He’s harmless, and we don’t like to run him in, but—golly!”
Fred’s voice was grim. He saw again the black road, the distant-spaced street lamps, the huddled figure.
“Well,” Fred said, “he very nearly went to his eternal sleep last night.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I was driving in to Tawnish to get some cigarettes. I was nearly to Lovers’ Lane—” He turned to Dr. Fell. That’s a little side lane that joins the main road, at right angles, about three hundred yards away from the judge’s cottage in the direction of Tawnish. An estate agent company once tried to ‘develop’ the building sites it leads to. There’s a telephone box, and a couple of model houses up there; but the scheme fell through. I don’t know whether you’ve noticed the road?”
“No,” said Dr. Fell. “But go on.”
“I was almost to Lovers’ Lane when I saw Jeff lying almost slap in the middle of the main road. As a matter of fact, when I first saw him I thought he’d been hit and run over. I stopped the car and got out It was Jeff, all right. Drunk as Davy’s sow; but I couldn’t tell whether he’d been hurt. I dragged him across to the opposite side of the road—toward the sea—and put him down on the sand.
“Just then Dr. Fellows’ car came past and nearly walloped both of us. I told the doctor about it
, but he only said, ‘Rubbish; roll him down the bank; the tide’ll sober him up,’ and went on. Jeff didn’t seem to be hurt, I admit; but I went to my car and got an electric torch to make sure. When I got back to the place I thought I’d left him, he was gone.”
Both the inspector and Dr. Fell blinked at him out of the smoke of their cigars.
“Gone?” repeated the former.
“Believe it or not, gone.”
“But where?”
“I can’t tell you. I still haven’t got the remotest idea. At first I thought I must have mistaken the place where I left him. I walked all along there. Finally I backed my car, and pulled it over to the other side of the road so that the headlights could shine all along there. That’s why the car was on the wrong side. But I didn’t find him. Black whiskers and funny clothes and bandanna handkerchief and all—he was just gone.”
The inspector grunted.
“Probably came to life when you moved him. Then got up and staggered away. Drunks do that.”
“Yes, that’s what I thought.” Suddenly Fred Barlow found himself inwardly cold, so cold that it was difficult to control his muscles or his voice. He must not show this. He tightened every nerve in his body so that he should not show it.
“And yet,” he added, “I still don’t know whether he was hurt.”
“Shouldn’t trouble, if I were you,” the inspector said callously. “Jeff’s the least of my worries. We can probably find him asleep in one of those model houses, if we should ever happen to want him.”
“Yes. I hope so.”
The shadow passed. Fred breathed again.
“Which,” observed Dr. Fell, who had been obscurely musing while he sucked at his cigar like a peppermint stick, “which disposes of another character. Where were the others? Mr. Herman Appleby was presumably driving round and round country lanes, having lost his way—”
“Ah,” said Graham.
“And Miss Tennant was on her way to see me here—”
Jane regarded him dispassionately. “I hope you don’t think I’m mixed up in the murder?”
Dr. Fell merely chuckled and shook his head. It was Graham who answered her.
“Hardly, miss. Still, you might be able to help. I think it was you who came along to the bungalow last night, with Dr. Fell, and asked if you could come in?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Had you anything you wanted to tell me?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“You knew Mr. Morell, though? After all, you invited him to your house party.”
“Not exactly. I invited Connie Ireton and her boy friend. That’s how things are done nowadays. I hadn’t even heard his name until he got there.”
“And you don’t know anything more about Mr. Morell?”
Jane drew deeply at her cigarette, expelled smoke, and balanced the cigarette on the edge of the saucer.
“I know,” she replied, “no more than Dr. Fell knows.”
For some reason obscure to Fred Barlow, Dr. Fell was chuckling and rubbing his hands together with delight.
“Good girl!” he said. “Good girl!”
“Thank you,” said Jane, and added under her breath: “Damn you.”
“Now then,” said Graham, almost on the edge of losing his temper, “what’s all this? What’s going on here? All I can say is that I’d like to know what Dr. Fell knows. You’ve got a reputation for being on the exasperating side, sir. And I don’t mind telling you I can see how it works-—now. You started out by saying you were going to discuss evidence. All you’ve done is drag in a lot of unimportant stuff that’s got nothing to do with the case. What is this evidence you wanted to discuss?”
Dr. Fell’s tone changed.
“Very well,” he said sharply. “I can tell you short and sweet. The telephone.”
There was a silence.
“The telephone in the living room at the bungalow, you mean?”
“Yes. That curious instrument with a bad chip knocked out of the mouthpiece, and the sounding drum broken inside. Mark that. Inside.”
Graham’s shrewd eyes studied him.
“I’ve been thinking about that, sir. That inside bit is delicate, right enough. But I don’t see how it could have been broken when the telephone fell on the floor. It was too much protected.”
“It couldn’t have been,” said Dr. Fell. “It wasn’t. Then how was it broken?” He took a reflective puff at his cigar. “You may or may not remember that, when I unscrewed the mouthpiece of that phone, I gave it a sniff?”
“Yes. I remember.”
“Powder grains,” said Dr. Fell. “A distinct smell along the edge.”
“I See. You think the inside bit was cracked by the noise of the shot?”
“That, and the pressure of gases expelled when a pistol is fired. You remember, our invaluable Weems quotes the girl at the exchange as saying that the noise nearly broke her eardrums.”
Graham contemplated him as though with half-growing comprehension. He opened his mouth to speak; but, after glancing at Jane and Fred, he checked himself. He raised his cigar, which had long ago gone out, as though he were going to cast a spell with it.
“That,” pursued Dr. Fell, “that, I might meekly suggest, is a part of the truth. The inference which follows is obvious and will not escape you.”
“I’m afraid it escapes me,” said Jane. “The firing of a bullet can do that, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes. It can. It did.”
The sun was lower now, nor did the balcony feel quite so pleasant as at the beginning of lunch. False warmth had begun to drain from the day, as it was draining from the case.
Yet a sprinkling of determined Sunday pleasure seekers straggled along the promenade. Children and dogs shot among them like skittle balls, and with much the same effect. Small cars glistened, each a family pride. A beach photographer snapped pictures and hoped for the best. A lorry was parked near some steps leading down to the sands, where three men were filling sandbags. This last sight had not in those days, the grim and ugly significance it has acquired since; and at least three of the watchers on the balcony regarded it without curiosity.
Dr. Fell spoke after a long silence.
“That part of it is clear,” he said. “The rest is obscure. Or shall we say mixed? A patch of light, a patch of darkness.” He turned his head round somberly. “Tell me, Miss Tennant. You know Constance Ireton fairly well?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Should you call her a particularly truthful person?”
Danger! Fred Barlow sat up straight.
Jane hesitated, glancing sideways at him before she looked back to Dr. Fell.
“I don’t quite see how I can answer that,” Jane said. “We’re none of us ‘particularly’ truthful, if it comes to that. She’s certainly as truthful as most people, anyway.”
“I mean: she is not a romantic liar? She wouldn’t lie for the sheer pleasure of it?”
“Oh, no!”
“This is getting interesting,” said Inspector Graham, hitching his chair round. “Does that mean you’re not satisfied with the young lady’s story, sir?”
Again Dr. Fell was silent.
“H’mf,” he growled. “Well—! It sounds right. It’s so circumstantial. It’s convincing, particularly that detail about the lights going up. But—look here, Miss Tennant I’ll put at least one point up to you. Now, imagine that you’re Constance Ireton.”
“Yes.”
“Imagine that Horace Ireton is your father, and that the man who was in love with her is in love with you.”
At this point Jane turned round and tossed the stump of her cigarette over the balustrade. When she turned back, her face wore a patient attention.
“Yes?”
“Very well. You borrow a car, thinking your lover has gone to London, and drive over to see your father. The car breaks down. You do the rest of a short distance on foot. When you are nearly to the bungalow, you see Morell on his way there.
It occurs to you that these two are meeting to discuss you, and so you decide tactfully to keep out of the way for a little while. So far, so good!”
He put down the cigar and interlaced his fingers.
“But consider the next part of it. You go to the beach, sit down comfortably, and wait. Five minutes later you hear an unexpected noise. You can’t see the source of this noise. The tide is high and thundering. The noise must be at least twenty or thirty yards away behind you. Do you immediately think, (a) that’s a revolver shot; (b) it came from the bungalow; and (c) it means trouble for me? Do you? Would you? And so hurry up to see?”
Dr. Fell paused.
“I mention the point because that’s what she said she did. Also, it was damp and had been raining. Constance Ireton wore a white frock. But I noticed no sign of sand or damp on the—harrumph—area which would be employed in sitting down.”
Jane laughed. It was a brief laugh, more at his elephantine delicacy than because she saw anything funny in the matter. She grew grave.
“I don’t see anything wrong,” she said sharply.
“No?”
“No! Connie might have done just that, if she thought Morell was trying to … I mean—!”
It was a bad slip. Too late she tried desperately to recall or blot out the words. While a busting silence held the table, Inspector Graham’s eye was on her.
“Go on, miss,” he requested without emotion. “You were going to say, ‘If she thought Morell was trying to get money out of her father.’ Weren’t you?”
“Which, as we know,” Fred Barlow said distinctly, “Morell was not trying to do. So what?”
“Maybe we know it, sir, and maybe we don’t. That isn’t the point. It’s no good sitting there shaking your head and saying, ‘So what?’—like a film. Reminds me of the gentleman who used to own the judge’s bungalow. Canadian gentleman, he was. Always so-whatting you even if you said it was a fine day.”
Dr. Fell, who had been gazing absorbedly at something across the street turned his head round and regarded the inspector with instant attention.
“Do I understand you to say,” he demanded, like one who cannot believe the good news his ears hear, “that the late owner of ‘The Dunes’ was a Canadian?”
Death Turns the Tables_aka The Seat of the Scornful Page 11