Trent's Own Case

by E. C. Bentley

  Trent took in hand the letter, which bore a date of three years earlier, and was written, as he saw at once, in Randolph’s clear but somewhat crabbed hand. It ran as follows:

  SIR,

  Your attention should be directed to my valet, Simon Raught.

  He is a man whom I have befriended by taking him into my service again after he had served a sentence of imprisonment. In addition to that, my silence has saved him from the consequences of a more serious crime. Attached to this letter is a confession, signed by him, of the part he played in the Maidstone bank-robbery in 19—, when a watchman and a policeman were seriously injured.

  How the facts came to my knowledge is my own affair. I threatened Raught with the disclosure of them unless he signed this confession, but it is not my intention to make use of it personally. I have always been in favour of reclaiming by personal influence rather than punishing the criminal, but I do not—though I have done my best with Raught—conceal from myself that with men like him some deterrent influence cannot wisely be neglected. He is, I am afraid, still a dangerous man when exposed to temptation. I have told him that his confession is a security for his good behaviour, and will not be brought up against him so long as he remains faithful to me.

  I have accordingly instructed my solicitors that this letter, with Raught’s confession enclosed, is to be destroyed unopened at my death, unless I should die by violence or in suspicious circumstances, in which case it is to be forwarded to you.

  Yours, etc.,

  JAMES M. RANDOLPH

  ‘And what,’ the inspector asked grimly, ‘do you think of that?’

  ‘To begin with,’ Trent said, ‘there seems to be rather an over-plus of letters to Scotland Yard, and an unusual amount of confessing, in this simple little case.’

  Mr Bligh snorted impatiently. ‘You can see for yourself,’ he snapped, ‘that Randolph’s letter was written long ago, and Raught’s confession has nothing on earth to do with this murder.’

  Trent sighed. ‘I stand rebuked. I was only wondering at the ways of coincidence. And this confession, as you say, can have nothing to do with a murder committed by Bryan Fairman. Where is Raught’s confession, by the way?’

  ‘They’re checking up on it at the Yard. It’s quite plain and circumstantial, signed by Raught, and with the signature properly witnessed. But you see, of course, that if his confession has no bearing on the murder, it has all the bearing in the world on my suggestion that he, and probably a pal of his, went through the documents in the safe after finding Randolph’s body. Raught hoped the confession would be found among them. Then when they realized it wasn’t there, the friend walked off with the papers, whatever they were, and Raught, instead of walking off too, rang up the police.’

  Trent frowned. ‘I think I see. He knew his confession was hanging over him somewhere, and that if he ran off that night, leaving the murder to be discovered and reported by somebody else, everything would point to his having shot Randolph himself. He couldn’t expect, of course, that the real murderer, after getting away, would proceed to inform against himself, as Fairman has done.’

  ‘Exactly. He had the sense to see that if his confession reached the police, and he was arrested here without any trouble, and got a long sentence for the Maidstone crime, that would be more comfortable than being tracked down and tried for his master’s murder, with an excellent chance of swinging for it. And then, you see, next day, he soon saw that no serious suspicion was attached to him; and he heard in the evening that an arrest had been made. That being so, it seemed to Raught that he had nothing to answer for but that old business at Maidstone, so he decided he might as well give us the slip if he could. A near thing it was, too.’

  ‘And what chance has he of keeping out of your clutches?’

  Mr Bligh laughed shortly. ‘Not a great deal. We’ve had his photo and fingerprints since that false-pretences job that he did time for. We know where his relatives live. He’ll be well looked out for everywhere. But never mind about him now. I wanted to show you over the ground here, and to have a little more talk with you about Randolph.’

  Showing Trent over the ground involved a close examination of all the clues already picked up by the inspector, and described by him in the evening before. Trent, who knew that his friend had no superior in this kind of skill, followed his explanation with close interest and keen questioning. Despite Mr Bligh’s conjectures, the razor-blade appeared to Trent as the strangest detail of the whole affair, with its fingermarks that were unmatched among all the numerous other prints brought out on the spot by the police expert. The champagne cork, too, he felt, had a mysterious fascination of its own, if it was true that Randolph had no taste for that beverage.

  ‘All right,’ said Mr Bligh, on hearing these comments. ‘You can have the prints to turn over in your mind if you like.’ He turned to his dispatch-case. ‘Here’s a duplicate enlargement of the photos of the finger and thumb that you can take, and if you make anything of them, I’ll be glad to hear of it. What we make of them is that they aren’t in the Criminal Record Office at Scotland Yard, and that the man who made them is probably not over ninety, and that he may not be an engineer’s fitter, and that if he had anyone of a number of nasty skin diseases, it hadn’t spread to that finger and thumb. Isn’t that useful? And here’s the cork. I can’t part with that, but you can take an eyeful of it, and make a note of what’s stamped on it; and if you find that Felix Poubelle 1884 made the marks on the razor-blade, we shall begin to know where we are, of course.’

  Unmoved by this ponderous pleasantry, Trent carefully examined the cork, found it to be in perfect condition, and made a note of the brand, which, he reflected privately, was of a certain interest in itself.

  ‘And now,’ the inspector said, ‘can we hit on any useful line by having a further talk about the old man, as you say you knew something about him? Suppose we go down to the sitting-room and make ourselves comfortable.’

  He led the way to the room downstairs, and took his seat in the corner of the sofa by the bookcase, producing a pipe and pouch as he did so.

  ‘There’s the engagement-block, with the leaf torn off, as I told you,’ he said with a wave of his pipe. Trent inspected the block with interest, carefully turning back the leaves with his fingertips; and he noted with surprise that the name of Wetherill was put down for an appointment at 4:30 on the day before that of the crime. There was, so far as he knew, only one Wetherill; and what he could have had to do with Randolph passed conjecture. But the fact seemed pointless; and he joined Mr Bligh on the sofa.

  ‘Let’s come back, to start with,’ the inspector said, ‘to this amazing letter of his about Raught.’ He held the document out to Trent, who took and glanced through it once more.

  ‘The character of Randolph seems to have been opening out like a flower in the sunbeams since his decease,’ he remarked. ‘Here’s a piece of benevolence that nobody ever suspected. For once in a way, he did good by stealth and would have blushed to find it fame.’

  ‘Blushing might have been one of the things that happened to him,’ Mr Bligh allowed. ‘But if this precious business had become known during his lifetime, he would have done his blushing in quod. “My silence has saved him,” you observe. Randolph didn’t mind compounding a felony.’

  ‘Not if he was going to be dead when it came out. But there were a lot of things Randolph didn’t mind, it seems. He didn’t mind keeping a man about him who dreaded and hated him. He didn’t intend to let him go—“so long as he remains faithful to me,” the letter says. Then again, he didn’t mind doing his best to smash a blameless young man of science merely because, as far as I can make out, he had taken a dislike to him. It may have been just that and nothing more. Fairman is one of those tight-lipped chaps—I mean that he has a physical habit of always keeping his mouth shut, unless he is using it for any purpose, and a moral habit of not talking unless he has got something to say. There are lots of people who don’t like that—you may have noti
ced it. Especially people who are rather by way of getting themselves looked up to as little tin gods. They expect an ingratiating expression, or at least one of awed respect. Fairman, I should say, is quite incapable of either.’

  ‘Well, so am I!’ the inspector said, not without complacency, as he completed the filling of his pipe. ‘I hope so, anyhow.’

  ‘Yes, but it is your business to be feared rather than loved, don’t you see? It isn’t Fairman’s. Still, perhaps I’m all wrong; it may be just my imagination extending itself. The point is that Fairman was fired, presumably by Randolph’s orders, without any reason given. And Randolph being dead, and Fairman out of his mind, as I agree he seems to be, it seems possible we shall never get at the whole inner history of the affair. But as regards Randolph’s personality, which you wish that we should talk about, there surely must be very different opinions about that. Most people seem to have thought of him as an altruistic saint in the baffling disguise of a North-country business man. That I could understand in people who knew nothing about him except his record as a public benefactor; but that secretary of his, Verney, who I suppose was as close as anyone to him, talks about him in just the same way. Yet I didn’t think he showed himself any more pleasant to Verney than to anyone else down at Brinton, during the times I was staying there to paint the old man’s portrait.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, to begin with,’ Trent said, ‘the first time I met Verney there, not realizing what his position in the establishment was, I asked him if I hadn’t seen him a few years before in the cercle privé at Monte Carlo, where I was having a mild flutter at the tables. I said this in Randolph’s hearing. Verney assured me that I was mistaken, that he had never been near Monaco in his life. All the same, it struck me Randolph was a little abrupt in his manner to Verney after that. Then again it struck me he probably always was like that—I’d never heard him speak to Verney before. And really he was unpleasant, more or less, to everyone about him. He wasn’t what I should call very agreeable in his dealings with me. I don’t believe he knew how to be.’

  ‘Preferred to love his fellow men at a distance,’ the inspector observed reflectively. ‘No doubt it’s easier. And you may say that, in a way, it flows a profit. Raught, the valet, told me the old man got a lot of satisfaction out of his reputation for benevolence all round. I’d heard that about him before; and after all, it’s not very surprising.’

  Trent smiled wryly. ‘The charity that doesn’t begin at home. Still, it was charity—what people call charity, anyhow; and a solid article enough, in Randolph’s case … You know, I suppose, that he had an only son, who ran away from home when he was a lad.’

  Mr Bligh gave a grunt of assent.

  ‘Why he ran away,’ Trent said, ‘I don’t know, and perhaps nobody does. But I heard that he had never turned up, though everything possible was done to find him.’

  ‘Everything possible!’ Mr Bligh exclaimed. ‘Well, I can tell you one thing possible that wasn’t done, because I happen to know. The police were never asked to take a hand in tracing him. They were never even informed that he was missing. Officially, they’ve never heard of it to this day. And that reminds me of a funny thing. About a year ago, I should say it was, we got to know, in a round-about sort of way—it doesn’t matter how—’

  ‘It came to your ears, say,’ Trent suggested.

  ‘Well, it did come to our ears,’ the inspector said defiantly, ‘that Randolph was employing a certain private inquiry agency—’

  ‘Not the one that is run by ex-Chief Inspector Targett, I suppose?’

  ‘Never you mind which it was. He was employing them to trace the whereabouts of any persons nearly related to him.’

  ‘Was he? That’s very interesting,’ Trent said. ‘It looks as if he really was thinking seriously about putting his affairs in order, as Verney believes. But I gather that they didn’t find the long-lost son.’

  ‘They did not. And no wonder, after more than twenty years. But they found another relative—however,’ Mr Bligh broke off, with an oblique glance at Trent, ‘all that is no business of mine or yours. We were talking of the disappearance of his son, which there never was any secret about. It caused a lot of talk, as you may suppose, because Randolph at that time was already getting to be a well-known man in the North, and when his servants began putting the story about, it soon became common knowledge. There wasn’t any doubt about the fact. The lad’s mother died when he was seventeen, working as an apprentice with an engineering firm; and soon after that he told his friends at the works that he had had enough of living at home, and was going to clear out. The next day he was gone; and Randolph would never say anything but that the boy had chosen to leave him, and no doubt would turn up again when he’d had enough of fending for himself. Well, he never did; and that’s all I know about it.’

  ‘It’s a queer story,’ Trent said thoughtfully. ‘One could imagine that that home, where charity didn’t begin, may have been a little difficult to endure; but the boy must have had hard stuff in him to go away like that and stay away, when he had a well-to-do parent who was bound to provide for him.’

  The inspector nodded. ‘Yes, a queer story, as you say. But all of Randolph’s life was a queer story. You’ve heard, perhaps, that he laid the foundations of his fortune as an owner of slum property in Humberstone—yes, and used to collect the rents himself, long after he was well enough off to pay other people to do his dirty work. House property, shrewd speculation in land values, here, there and everywhere—that’s how he became a wealthy man. He understood the business, and he had the reputation of never making a mistake. He was chairman of two big real estate companies. Then he took to laying out his money in other directions, and was always getting richer, they say—in spite of all his enormous outlay on charities and public objects. But we’ve got to remember, of course, that he spent precious little on his own comfort and tastes. Look at this little hutch for a London house, for instance. And though I suppose keeping up Brinton cost him something, it must have been a trifle out of an income like his.’

  ‘Don’t forget,’ Trent said, ‘his position as a donor to art collections and museums. That must have helped to keep the money moving, if you like. I know more about that than I do about his philanthropy, and I don’t believe there has ever been anything quite like it. I don’t know when he began to take an interest in pictures and art in general, but by the time I got the commission to paint his portrait he had come to know a lot more about the buying and selling end of it than I shall ever do. I don’t believe, though, that he really had the stuff of a connoisseur in him. He had collected very little on his own account. Although what he had got at Brinton was all absolutely first-class—and in this midget of a place too, for that matter—he didn’t give me the idea of being keen on it at all. What he certainly must have done was to get the best possible advice about his purchases.’

  ‘I’ve heard, of course,’ Mr Bligh said, ‘about his fad of giving things to foreign art galleries. Some of us have got a pretty good notion of what lay behind it. But I don’t know anything about how it was done—it isn’t my line of country.’

  ‘Well, I can tell you this much. There’s hardly a national collection in Europe that he hasn’t presented with something they were delighted to get hold of. Sometimes the gift would be cleverly selected for its particular interest to the nation concerned, like the Dante manuscript he gave to the Victor Emmanuel Library. Sometimes it would be a thing that any museum in the world would welcome, like that little Rembrandt, called The Alchemist, that he chose to present to the Pinakothek. He’s been doing it for many years now, and all the curators and librarians and blokes of that description—why, their ears used to go up with a click when his name was mentioned.’

  ‘Funny,’ the inspector commented, absorbedly probing the bowl of his pipe with a penknife. ‘Because of course he got nothing out of it.’

  Trent scowled at him thoughtfully. ‘What have you got in that pure mi
nd of yours?’ he demanded.

  Mr Bligh reached back to the bookshelf that skirted the wall at his right hand. ‘Did you ever take a look at his record in Who’s Who?’ he asked, turning the pages of that dropsical tome. ‘Here we are. There’s pretty near a column about him, consisting mainly of—what do you think?’

  Trent shook his head. ‘I give it up.’

  ‘Orders,’ the inspector said. ‘Decorations—all foreign ones. Legion of Honour, Red Eagle, Crown of Italy, ditto Sweden, Daneborg, Redeemer, Rising Sun, Star of Roumania, St Vladimir, and lots more. He must have had a truckload of them. The big swells, I’ve noticed, don’t put down all these things, as a rule; but Randolph was missing nothing.’

  Trent took the volume, and glanced over the impressive proofs of the regard in which James Mewburn Randolph had been held by foreign governments.

  ‘Rather like collecting stamps,’ he remarked.

  ‘But rather more costly,’ Mr Bligh rejoined. ‘You see the meaning of it, don’t you? Every one of those little tributes represents a jolly expensive contribution to the art galleries and museums of the civilized world—or those parts of it that have official jewelry to hand out as a slight token of their esteem. Also there had probably to be a little palm-oil, or a lot, distributed here and there—you know how it is. Randolph would have wanted to be sure of getting his quid before parting with the quo. He was fond of recognition, as we’ve heard already.’

  ‘And yet,’ Trent mused, ‘he never had an English handle to his name. He could have got it easily enough long ago. Perhaps he thought it was rather a distinction for a man in his position not to be a Sir Somebody Something.’

  Mr Bligh laughed shortly. ‘Not he! It was just his wanting it so badly that started the whole of this chasing after foreign distinctions. At least, that’s what I’ve been told. Anyhow, there’s no doubt that he wanted a knighthood many years ago. One of the assistant-commissioners knew all about it at the time, and I heard it from him. The first time Randolph let it be known that he thought a knighthood was about due, and that he was ready to stump up, there was a hitch somewhere—possibly the list was a bit too long already. Or possibly one of the Prime Minister’s private secretaries didn’t like Randolph. You never know. Anyhow, he was told he’d have to wait till next time. Randolph was furious; and it didn’t improve his temper when the list was made public, and he found in it two new knights that he’d had personal dealings with, and the best you could say of them was that they’d managed never to be caught with their hands in the till, so to speak.’