“You did.”
“You’re quite sure of that?”
“Of course I’m sure. Mr. Johnson, his name was. From Ottawa. His stuff’s still all over the place. Why? Does it make any difference?”
“Does it make any difference!” exclaimed Dr. Fell. “That fact and something which these bemused eyes of mine have just opened wide enough to notice, are the two most important things we have heard today. And I will tell you something else.”
What this other point was Fred Barlow did not hear, though he would probably have made nothing of it if he had. A waiter put his head out on the balcony to say that Mr. Barlow was wanted on the telephone.
Fred took the call in Dr. Fell’s bedroom.
“Is that you, Frederick?” said the judge’s voice.
(He was ‘Frederick’ in private and ‘Mr. Barlow’ in public.)
“Yes, sir.”
“I am given to understand,” said Mr. Justice Ireton, “that Inspector Graham is lunching there. Is that correct?”
“Yes, he’s here now.”
“Then be good enough to give him a message from me. I have a visitor here now. A Mr. Appleby.”
“Yes?”
“Mr. Appleby has just been telling me certain facts which lead him to believe that I killed the late lamented Anthony Morell. He has suggested that he and I keep this information to ourselves.”
“So! Blackmail?”
The clear, thin voice rasped.
“No, no. Nothing so raw. Mr. Appleby is at least a semi-respectable professional man. He merely suggested that he and I should be friends; and that a word or two of praise from me, dropped among my acquaintances, could do him much good. You perhaps hear him squawking in the background now?”
“Go on!”
“A most modest demand,” said the cold voice. “But he will get no such concessions from me. I do not succumb to anything remotely resembling intimidation. Kindly ask Inspector Graham to come over here. If I am able to hold my visitor here that long, the inspector will then be able to hear the evidence against me from Mr. Appleby’s own lips.”
XIII
They found Mr. Justice Ireton waiting for them, sitting in his familiar easy chair beside the chess table.
“I am sorry to tell you,” he said, “that Mr. Appleby has left us. In something of a hurry, too.”
No smile, malicious or otherwise, crossed the judge’s face. He wore carpet slippers, and his stout little body was buttoned up in an old-fashioned smoking jacket which had nevertheless the air of being cut by a good tailor. He had removed his spectacles, though one finger still marked the place in the pages of the book he was reading.
“I could hardly have prevented him, you understand, even if I had been so enamored of his company. Please sit down, gentlemen.”
Inspector Graham looked at Fred Barlow, and Fred looked back at him.
It was getting on toward four o’clock in the afternoon, and turning chilly. The furniture and bilious blue-flowered wallpaper of the living room had never seemed more dingy. Of last night’s occurrences, no trace now remained except the battered telephone. A small woolly rug had been tidily spread over the few traces of blood and sand in front of the desk.
Graham cleared his throat.
“Do you want to charge Mr. Appleby with attempted blackmail, sir?”
“Certainly not. I have nothing to charge him with in any case. He attempted no blackmail; he made no threats. He is a lawyer. So, unfortunately for him, am I.”
“But if he’s gone—?”
“That is all right,” said the judge, making a slight gesture with his spectacles. “He may come to you presently, and tell you what he told me. Or he may not. I can’t say. It depends on whatever it is he mistakes for his conscience: Meanwhile, it may save time if I tell you.”
Graham pushed back the uniform cap. Guileless as his reply sounded, Fred saw it for an attack in the one place where Graham knew it would work.
“Half a tick, sir, before you begin. Is Miss Ireton here, by any chance?”
The hand holding the spectacles stopped.
“No. Why should she be here?”
“Well, I took the liberty of sending Bert Weems over to Taunton to see her.”
“So,” said the judge. “It did not occur to you that the presence of a constable interrogating her in the midst of a house full of curious guests might be a trifle embarrassing for her?”
“Oh, that’s all right, sir.” Graham was reassuring. “This is Bert’s afternoon off. He’s in plain clothes. Smart-looking chap, too, when he’s dressed up.”
“Indeed.”
“Yes. I thought it would look better. Even told him he could take his girl, in the side car of the motor bike.”
“And why did you send this gentleman to see my daughter?’
“Plenty of time for that, sir! We can come to that later,” Graham declared briskly. “What was this story of Mr. Appleby’s, now?”
The spectacles began to swing.
“As you like, Inspector. You heard Mr. Appleby’s testimony last night.”
“Yes?”
“This afternoon he chose to change it. Last night he made vague mention of certain vague remarks which he attributed to Mr. Morell, notably about a mysterious ‘game’ Mr. Morell contemplated playing on me; and said he had no notion of their meaning. This afternoon Mr. Appleby filled in the gaps.
“His story, in brief, is this. That Mr. Morell approached me pretending to be an extortionist. That he did this because he did not like my ‘manner.’ That he asked for three thousand pounds as the price of giving up my daughter. That I agreed to this sum. That we arranged to meet last night for the sum to be handed over. That Mr. Morell’s purpose was to get me to name the largest amount I could conveniently pay, so that he could make a fool of me by handing over the same amount to me as a present to my daughter.”
Graham seemed taken aback by sheer flat candor.
“So we’ve come to it at last!” he said.
“I don’t follow you.”
“The idea was to sort of teach you a lesson. Eh?”
“That is Mr. Appleby’s story. Unfortunately, it seems to have been Mr. Morell who received a lesson. So did Mr. Appleby.”
“From the same person, sir?”
“No.”
“Is the story true?”
“No.”
“Not a word of it?”
“Not a word of it.”
“Which one do you accuse of lying: Mr. Morell or Mr. Appleby?”
“Come, Inspector. Whether Morell invented the story and told it to Appleby, or Appleby invented the story for his own purpose and told it to me, I don’t presume to say. That is for you to discover. All I can say is that no such conversation took place between Mr. Morell and me.”
“For the love of God, sir, do you realize what you’re letting yourself in for?”
“Let us have less melodrama, please. If you think I killed Mr. Morell, it’s your duty to arrest me.”
Gravely he folded up his spectacles, put them to mark the place in the book he had been reading, and laid down the book on the chess table.
“But I must warn you of the danger of accepting Mr. Appleby’s ‘testimony.’ Told in court, such a tale would be ridiculed into outer darkness. I doubt whether in all human experience any man who honestly wanted to marry a girl has ever gone to her father and opened proceedings by saying that he would accept three thousand pounds to give her up.”
“Mr. Morell was an Eyetalian.”
“Still, I presume that even in Italy such an approach is not common. Let me continue. In the event that this were tried, what would happen? The girl’s father would simply call in the girl and tell her about it. The suitor would then have to own up; and the matter would be over. Finally, let me remind you that you would have to prove this on the word of Mr. Appleby, a man already perjured, who only came forward with the story in an attempt to intimidate me in private. Can you be assured that a jury would swall
ow it?”
“You’re twisting it all up, sir!”
The pale eyebrows lifted.
“Oh? Where have I misstated any fact?”
“No, it’s the way you put it! Look here, now. Can you honestly say you wanted that chap for a son-in-law?”
“Mr. Morell’s manners were not Chesterfieldian. His clothes were regrettable. His mentality was negligible. But he had money, and he loved my daughter. I am a realist. Most jurymen, who usually have small incomes and marriageable daughters, will be realists too.”
For a short time Graham appeared to ruminate.
Then he sat down on the edge of an easy chair beyond the chess table. It was the same chair in which Morell had been sitting, about this time in the afternoon two days ago.
The afternoon was darker, full of leaden clouds edged with tarnished silver. Fred Barlow wished he had put on a sweater under his coat. As it was, he went across and closed the French window. It was not actually as cold as that: what they felt was the atmosphere of death.
“Do you know what I wish?” Graham asked suddenly. “I wish I could talk to you man to man.”
“Well, why don’t you?” The judge’s voice was sharp. “Why can’t you? Have I ever been accused of being a pompous fool or a stuffed shirt?”
“No, no. It’s not that, exactly. But—!”
“Then out with it. Yes, you may speak in front of Mr. Barlow. Like my daughter, he has grown up under my eye. We are old acquaintances.”
Graham brooded, his head lowered. He rubbed one hand heavily across the knuckles of the other, pressing them together. He shifted in his seat. Presently he lifted his head slightly, and peered up from under reddish eyebrows.
“I can’t believe your story, sir. And that’s a fact.”
“Good. That’s a beginning. Why can’t you believe it? One other point, before you tell me!” This time a malicious smile did cross the judge’s face. “Where is our friend Dr. Fell? I had hoped to see him here, when the attempt was made to put me in a corner.”
“He’ll be along presently. He couldn’t move as fast as Mr. Barlow and me. Miss Tennant’s driving him; and, anyway, he said he wanted to look at something on the way. And, so help me, I’m not trying to put you in a corner!”
“I beg your pardon. Go on.”
Again Graham’s right hand closed on the knuckles of the left.
“This Morell, now. I didn’t like his looks any better than I bet you did … ”
“Yes?”
“But let’s take what happened last night. He gets here at twenty-five minutes past eight. He walks up and comes in by that window there.” Graham nodded toward it. “Never mind why he was here. Never mind whether he was going to give you money, or expected to get it from you.
“Just suppose he comes in here, and finds the room empty. Now, what’d be the natural thing for him to do? Or for anybody to do? It’d be to call out, wouldn’t it? It’d be to sing out and say, ‘Hoy: is anybody at home?’ Or go and see if anybody was at home. But you say you didn’t see him come in, and didn’t hear a sound of any kind.”
“Correct.”
Graham spoke with toiling lucidity.
“All right. Now, suppose somebody’s following him. Suppose somebody follows him in through the window—to kill him. That could have happened. Maybe.
“But it’d be a pretty funny business. The murderer couldn’t have walked in, had a row with him, and shot him. You’d have been bound to hear them in the kitchen. These walls are very thin, as I can testify for myself. You can easily hear somebody talking in another room.”
(And as Fred Barlow could testify too.)
“Now, sir, Morell knew he was in danger. He was being threatened. Naturally, since he picked up the telephone and called for help. But even if he saw the murderer meant business—saw the gun, maybe—why did he go for the phone? Why didn’t he call out for you: call out for a witness?
“And that’s not all. Why did the murderer let him get as far as picking up the phone, ringing the exchange, getting a reply, and saying what he did, before the murderer went over and shot him from behind? Why didn’t the murderer say, ‘Keep your hands off that phone, or you’ll get plugged now?’ All of it hardly seems natural, like. The murderer couldn’t have known but what Morell’s first words might be, ‘A man named Jones is going to shoot me. Help!’ You see, sir?”
Graham held up his hand for silence, though Mr. Justice Ireton did not offer to speak.
“That’s one side of it. Now I’ll tell you, straight, how we could get round that if you killed him.”
“I am listening, Inspector.”
“Morell comes up to the bungalow. He comes by the window because he looks through and sees you sitting in here —reading, maybe. Open; and in.” Graham made a gesture. “You get up, and switch on the central lights. You ask him to sit down.”
It had, Barlow thought, a devilish vividness. He could almost see the judge going through these motions, and Morell flashing white teeth in the opening of the window.
Graham went on:
“Maybe Morell says, continuing his joke, ‘Well, have you raised the money? You say, ‘Yes. Just a minute, and I’ll get it.’ But you haven’t got the money. You’re all prepared to kill him instead. Somewhere, when you went to London that day, you got hold of an Ives-Grant .32: I don’t know where, but if we can trace it we’ll have you.
“You go out of the room, saying you’re going to get the money. Really to get the gun. Morell’s sitting where I am now, with his back to the door. All of a sudden he realizes he’s gone too far. He realizes you’re up the pole and out to kill him. Yes, I know you’ve got a poker face! But murder’s murder, in anybody’s face; nasty, and hard to hide.
“I’ve got an idea he’d be pretty windy. Here he is, in the country half a mile from anybody, with a tough and unscrupulous old gent who won’t give him a chance to explain: who’ll just up and act, whatever he does. That’s what you’d do, too, if I know you.”
Twilight was deepening in the room.
“Wouldn’t it be better to stick to facts?” suggested Barlow, for whom these suggestions were coming too close to his own imagination. “These flights of fancy—”
“Be quiet, Frederick,” said the judge, shading his eyes with his hand. “Please go on, Inspector.”
Graham gave an apologetic cough.
“Well, you understand now. Morell sees that phone. What he can do is ring: up the exchange and say, ‘I am speaking from “The Dunes,” Ireton’s cottage. My name is Morell. I think there may be trouble here,’ or something like that. Nothing definite, you see. Just enough to prevent you doing anything to him, in case you’ve got a mind to. Just to stop you, until he can explain to you.
“So he slips across to the phone.”
Graham paused, and got to his feet. By way of illustration, he walked over to the desk. The desk lamp, with a immovable bronze-metal shade, stood at the back of the blotter. Graham pulled its chain and switched it on. It made a brilliant circle of light round the desk, leaving everything else in gloom.
Adjusting the desk chair, Graham sat down in it. His back was now toward them. The telephone was at his right hand.
“He comes over here quietly,” the inspector went on, “and he speaks quietly. Whispers, even. The door—” Graham, glanced over his right shoulder— “the door is behind him, in the wall on his right. He can’t see it without turning.
“He rings the exchange, and says, ‘ “The Dunes.” Ireton’s cottage.’ He gets just that far when he glances over his shoulder, like this. He sees the door opening. He sees what you’ve got in your hand. He whirls back to the phone and shouts, ‘Help.’ He’s got no time to say anything else before you’ve taken one—two—three—quick steps, and let him have it behind the right ear.”
There was a silence.
In imagination, Fred Barlow heard the shot.
But he heard nothing in actuality until Graham creaked round in the swivel chair, turning it to fa
ce them.
“That’s how it could have happened, sir. You’ll excuse me for all these goings on. Acting it out. But I wanted to see it. And damn me if I don’t see it.”
Graham’s face was lowering and dogged. Mr. Justice Ireton nodded, as though he saw the force of his reconstruction. But there was a wrinkle between his brows.
“Inspector,” he said, “you disappoint me.”
“Oh, I don’t claim to be any Sherlock Holmes, sir! I’m just a country copper with a lot of trouble on my hands. All the same—”
“That was not what I meant. I meant that I never thought you had such a low opinion of my intelligence.”
“Pardon?”
“If I were really going to commit a murder, do you in all honesty think I should ever go about it as clumsily as that? Do you?”
The judge seemed genuinely interested. He fished his spectacles out of the book, and put them on.
“By your analysis, this crime was not committed on the spur of the moment. It was planned. I had at least twenty-four hours in which to plan it.
“I invited this man to my house. I procured a revolver. I shot him there. I sat down, holding the weapon, and waited for you to come and take me. I constructed a story which, if it were a lie, a child of six could have made more convincing. Yet I am an old campaigner, wily in the ways of evidence.” He blinked his eyes, and blinked them again. “Do I really strike you as being so anxious to get myself hanged?”
A long shadow fell across the last light from the windows.
For what length of time that shadow had been there nobody could tell, for no one noticed it until it moved. Dr. Gideon Fell, who seemed to have been looking at something in the region of the ceiling, turned the handle of one window and blundered in. He breathed hard, and his air was one of powerful embarrassment.
“You are late,” said Mr. Justice Ireton.
“Yes. I—er—fear so.”
“We have just been reconstructing the crime. Would you care to join us?”
“No, thanks.” The doctor’s voice was hurried. “I have seen what I came to see. Er—Inspector. There’s a young constable down at the gate, in a great state of mysteriousness and agitation, who asks if he can have a word with you in private.”
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