Trent's Own Case

by E. C. Bentley

  ‘You aren’t one to give an unfortunate man away, sir, I’m sure.’

  ‘You’ll have to leave that to me,’ Trent said. ‘You have no business to be here, you know. Who are you, and what’s it all about?’

  There was a rustle from the hidden bushes, and a small man came hesitantly into the lighted space on the lawn. He was dressed in a chauffeur’s uniform. As he stepped forward he removed his peaked cap, and for a moment his furtive eye met Trent’s.

  There was a brief silence. ‘I know you, of course,’ Trent then said. ‘You are Raught, the late Mr Randolph’s manservant; you attended to me when I was staying at Brinton. I can’t think why you should want to have a word with me, but if it’s important I’ve no objection. The police haven’t brought any charge against you, I believe, but they are looking for you—I suppose you know that.’

  ‘I do indeed, sir,’ Raught said. ‘That’s the only reason for my calling on you in this—this irregular sort of way, sir, which I hope you’ll have the kindness to overlook it. I didn’t dare risk standing in the light at the door, nor being seen by anybody in the house except yourself. I dodged in by the passage beside the house, sir, when there was nobody about in the road, and tapped on the window where I could see you between the curtains. If you please, sir, might I ask you a question or two? It’s vital to me, or I wouldn’t have thought of troubling you.’ Raught, squeezing his cap in his hands, again turned his roving glance to Trent’s face.

  ‘Why should you suppose,’ Trent said, ‘that I am able to answer questions that are vital to you? That is what I don’t understand.’

  Raught nodded. ‘Course you wouldn’t, sir. Well, I made up my mind before I came here that I should have to tell you all about it. Here’s the first thing, sir—I know you have been visiting the house in Newbury Place, and I know the inspector in charge of the case was there at the same time. You were there for over an hour, sir. You must have been talking over the case; and if you did, you probably heard what I want to know about, sir. I’m not asking you to do anything wrong, sir; only to do a man a kindness who has had cruel bad luck, and has been treated hard for years on end, sir.’

  Trent, in his little personal experience of Raught, had found nothing likeable about the man, but what he had lately learned made him pretty sure that there was truth in these last words. The appeal was one of a sort hard for him to resist; moreover, the wish to find out what lay behind all this was insuppressible.

  ‘Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore,’ he said. ‘Do you know, Raught, it’s astonishing how you fit into the scheme of that fine poem that I was recalling just now, when you suddenly addressed me out of the shadows as “Guv’nor”—that one word, as if your soul in that one word you did outpour. You are even a little like a raven—more than you are like a bird of paradise, anyhow. And you thrill me, fill me with fantastic terrors never felt before. Come inside and explain them.’

  ‘Thank you kindly, sir.’ Raught stepped over the threshold and, glancing apprehensively at the door, took up a position by the table.

  ‘I can’t offer you a bust of Pallas to perch on,’ Trent said apologetically, ‘but there’s one on the shelf there of George Robey which I did myself, and my friends tell me it’s not a bad likeness. If you don’t care about it, sit anywhere you like. You need not worry about anyone coming in to interrupt us at this hour. My family is ninety miles away, roughly, and the housekeeper who is looking after me is probably asleep and dreaming of Paisley. If she should happen to look in on us, I shall tell her I am thinking of engaging you as a model for my picture of Apollo being cast out of Olympus.’

  Raught, who had seated himself uneasily on the edge of the model-throne, half rose at this suggestion.

  ‘No, no; stay where you are. I’ll make it Ulysses relating the story of his woes to Alcinous. I’ll be Alcinous; and to start with, I think, I should like to hear how you come to know so much about my recent movements.’

  Raught licked his lips and passed a hand over his cheeks and chin. ‘Well, sir, it’s a little bit awkward in a way. I mean, it isn’t only myself that is concerned in that part of the story. You would always act honourable, sir, I’m sure.’

  ‘I hope so, Raught.’

  ‘The fact is, sir, during our visits to London last year and since, I formed the acquaintance of the cook at No. 46, Bullingdon Street; Sir Hector Findhorn’s place, that is. She is a widow, Mrs Leather by name, and an attachment sprung up, as they say, between me and her. We used to go to the pictures and that, when I had my time off, and she had altered hers to be the same as mine. Besides that, we could see something of each other at odd times easy enough, the two houses being so close. You see, sir, No. 46 is just at the corner of Newbury Place, and the windows at the back—on the upper floors, that is—look right out over it; I mean, over Mr Randolph’s and the other four houses in the row. I am telling you this, sir, because you will see why when I come to it.’

  ‘I am beginning to see something already, I believe,’ Trent said. ‘The Randolph house was under observation when I went there—is that it?’

  ‘Yes, sir—asking your pardon for the liberty. I am telling you the whole thing, like I said. It was me that saw you, when I was watching from one of the top back rooms at No. 46.’

  Trent gazed at the man in delighted astonishment. ‘When you were watching? Do you mean to say that on the morning after you disappeared from Mr Randolph’s place, giving the police the slip, you were hiding in that house at the corner, almost under their noses?’

  ‘Yes, sir. You see, sir, Sir Hector Findhorn and his family have gone abroad for some months, and they left the house to be took care of by Mrs Leather, like they have done often before, her being a thoroughly reliable person and used to looking after herself. When we came down from Yorkshire this time, I asked Mrs Leather to go out with me on the Wednesday evening, but she was not feeling well enough for it, her digestion being out of order, which she suffers from at times. So I phoned up my sister, Mrs Livings, and arranged to have a bit of dinner with her and her husband, and see a show; and that was what we did, and so I told the police when they wanted to know about where I was on the evening of the murder. Only there was one thing I didn’t mention, sir.’

  Trent had a lively recollection of the reserve with which Mr Bligh had repeated Raught’s account of his doings. ‘Perhaps,’ he suggested, lighting a cigarette, ‘they wouldn’t be surprised to hear that.’

  ‘You’re right, sir,’ Raught declared with feeling. ‘Treating a man like dirt, and trying to make him give himself away, the way they do. The only thing I kept back was something that wasn’t of no consequence whatever, but they were certain to be nasty about it. What I mean is, after I left the house for the evening, a little before 6:30 it was, I went first to make a call on Mrs Leather, to see how she was getting on; and there I stayed with her till it was time for me to be on my way, in her room that’s on the top floor, looking out over Newbury Place, like I told you.’

  At this point Trent, who had been observing the man with close attention, caught a stealthy glance suddenly directed at his face. Raught, plainly disconcerted at catching his attentive eye, continued hurriedly.

  ‘After that I went on to meet the Livingses in Soho, stopping for a drink at a couple of places on the way; and I told the inspector that and everything else that happened, perfectly truthful, right up to the time of me coming home and finding the body and sending for the police. I am giving you all this perfectly straight, sir, which I hope you don’t doubt it.’

  ‘Well, I do rather,’ Trent said gently, ‘if you really insist on knowing. It is just an idea of mine and I may be wrong; but isn’t there some other little thing that you are, as you say, keeping back—something, perhaps, that happened during that short time you were with Mrs Leather. Your manner just now gave me that impression.’

  The colour came into Raught’s pale face, and he looked sulky. ‘You’re taking me up wrong, sir. There was something happen
ed then, like you say, and I was going to speak of it, I was truly. But it hadn’t anything to do with my own story, and the reason for me asking you to help me with a bit of information. I wanted you to get it straight, first of all, how I come to be keeping out of the way at No. 46.’

  ‘All right, tell it that way,’ Trent agreed. ‘It’s your constructive scheme, not mine. But you did give such an excellent imitation of a man wondering whether to come quite clean or not, that for a moment I was quite deceived.’

  Raught’s air of resentment was not completely banished by this ingratiating speech, but he took up his tale.

  ‘You see, sir, when I found Mr Randolph lying there dead it gave me such a shock as I never had before. I was too much flurried to think, and I took it for granted, like, that he had been murdered—it all looked that way, somehow. And I knew, sir, that if he had been murdered it might be very awkward for me. I don’t only mean that I should be one of the parties under suspicion from the start, before any inquiries being made. There was something besides that.’

  ‘Do you mean,’ Trent asked, ‘that you wouldn’t be able to account quite fully for the way you had spent your time unless you explained about your visit to Mrs Leather, and that that would put Mrs Leather in a very unpleasant position, and that even then Mrs Leather might not be very useful as an entirely unsupported witness to an alibi for you. In the circumstances, of course, she might not—one sees that. Very awkward, as you say. You two were falcons taken in a snare, condemned to do the flitting of the bat.’

  ‘No, sir, that wasn’t the awkwardness I meant. All the same, it is true I never told them about my having been at No. 46 that evening, nor anything about me and Mrs Leather. Where was the good, if my telling about it wasn’t going to put me in a safe position? And besides, sir—I don’t deceive you—I did have the idea that No. 46 would be a useful place for me—in case I should want to get away and lie low for a bit. I knew I could always go there, so long as the family was away.’

  ‘Yes, I see,’ Trent said. ‘You kept that card up your sleeve. And then, on the night after the night of the murder, you played it.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I only had to get out of my room-window and over the wall at the end of the yard, into the alley that runs behind there. Then I walked down to Bullingdon Street and round to No. 46, and there I went down the basement steps and pushed the bell at the servants’ entrance three times, like I always did. Mrs Leather got up and let me in, and there I have been ever since, sir, not having ventured out until tonight. She lent me their chauffeur’s second-best uniform, what he left behind in his room. It alters my appearance a bit, especially the cap.’

  Trent laughed. ‘It all seems so simple. Good generalship always does. But—forgive my curiosity—why did you decide to do that, after staying at home when you had found the body, and informing the police, like a good citizen?’

  Once more Raught smoothed his chin and cheeks with a nervous hand. ‘Why there, sir, we come to the point; I mean the reason for me calling on you tonight. You see, when I told you that Mr Randolph being murdered made it very awkward for me, I wasn’t thinking of Mrs Leather and her relations with me being brought into it. There was something much more serious, I am sorry to say.’

  Trent pitched his cigarette into the fire. ‘I know there was. Now you have come to it, Raught, I’ll tell you—I heard all about it from Inspector Bligh.’

  ‘You did, sir?’ Raught scrambled to his feet and stood trembling. ‘About the—the job at the Maidstone bank?’

  ‘They have got your signed statement. It was forwarded to the police by Mr Randolph’s solicitors. They received it on the morning after your disappearance.’

  With a weary sigh Raught sat down again, his head bowed and his hands clasped between his knees. So he remained for a few moments; then, raising his eyes and staring straight before him, he poured out upon the memory of his late employer a muttered stream of curses and foul language that surpassed everything in Trent’s fairly wide anathematical experience.

  At length Raught was silent, and Trent went to the sideboard at the far end of the studio. ‘Have a drink,’ he said. ‘It might do your mouth good. I won’t say I know how you feel, because I’ve never even wanted to be as eloquent as that, but if I ever had I couldn’t have done anything approaching it.’ He handed a tumbler to Raught, who accepted it thankfully. ‘Cigarette, too? That’s better. There’s a lot of nonsense talked about swearing by people who don’t really understand the subject, don’t you think? I mean, you may often read about some expert keeping it up for minutes on end without repeating himself. Now you certainly did wonders, but I should say it wasn’t more than thirty seconds before you ran dry, and even then you used the same word nine times.’

  Raught restored himself with a deep draught, and put down the tumbler beside him. ‘I’m very much obliged to you, sir, for this, and for not minding me forgetting myself. It is a good thing to know the worst, they say, but it did knock me out for the moment. Now you know, sir, the question I wanted to ask of you, and you have answered it before me asking it. I wanted to know if that bank job was hanging over me still; that and the confession I was forced to sign. If you could have told me nothing was known about it, I should have gone away from here a happier man than what I have been for many a day—or for years if it comes to that. I did hope it might have been mislaid or destroyed, or that it was among the missing papers took out of the safe. Well, I might have known the old … might have known Mr Randolph better.

  ‘You see what I meant, sir, when I said the murder might make it very awkward for me. If that paper I signed was to fall into the hands of the police, it would fix suspicion on me quite definite as a dangerous character, with a grudge against the old man for making me sign it. And they would be sure to think I had gone to the safe hoping to find the confession there, and that I had somehow made away with the lot of them when I didn’t find it. And as you say yourself, sir, I hadn’t got an alibi that would hold water. So I made up my mind the one thing I could do to make things worse would be to run off and try to disappear after finding the body. And I thought if I informed the police at once and told them a straight story it would look best for me, and I should maybe get off with a prosecution for that old job at Maidstone.’

  Trent nodded appreciatively. ‘You put that very well. And you know, it’s remarkable what mind-readers the police are—that is exactly what Chief Inspector Bligh thought you thought.’

  ‘Blast him!’ Raught said savagely.

  ‘And he thought that when you found next day that you were not being seriously suspected, and that another person had been arrested, you decided to have a try at disappearing, and to risk whether your confession of the Maidstone job turned up or not, because your running off would make no difference in the case of a crime that you had confessed to.’

  Raught scowled bitterly. ‘Well, he got me right. And there’s just where it is, sir. You see what it means to me, their having got that statement of mine. It means that even if they don’t get their hands on me I shall have to go on hiding and dodging, and trying to change my appearance; and wherever I may get to, no chance of any sort of job but the lowest of the low, being without a character. That’s what I have got to face, sir. Well, there it is.’ He got to his feet slowly.

  ‘I am sorry for you,’ Trent said in all sincerity. ‘I am sorry for everyone who has put himself within reach of the criminal law; in fact, I have been sorry before now for men who had a good deal more against them than you seem to have, and who had had a more bearable time of it than you.’

  ‘Well, sir,’ Raught said, ‘you didn’t make the law—I know that; and me going wrong at the start wasn’t none of your doing. You have treated me decent, too, like I thought you would; more decent than many a man would have done. Now, sir, there’s one thing more.’

  ‘You mean the thing that happened while you were looking in on Mrs Leather. It must be something worth mentioning, I suppose.’

  ‘You can tell t
hat, sir, when you hear it. All I ask is, if you do anything about it, you won’t bring me in. I have put myself in your hands, sir, trusting to you to act honourable.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Well, sir, it was like this. When I went to see Mrs Leather, immediately after leaving Mr Randolph’s, I stayed a little over half an hour. We heard it strike seven at St Chad’s, and a few minutes after that I said to her I would have to go. We were in that top room, like I told you. It was dark outside, of course, and as I got up to leave I happened to glance down through the window, and I saw somebody at the door of No. 5. It was a gentleman just going in the door. I only saw him for a moment, sir, against the light coming from inside the passage; then the door shut, and that was all I saw. But that I did see, sir, as plain as what I see you now. I didn’t think nothing about it then, because I knew Mr Randolph would sometimes have people to see him when I was not on the premises. I just went downstairs and out by the basement entrance in Bullingdon Street. And that’s all about it, sir.’

  As he listened to this brief recital, Trent felt the excitement of his quest thrilling every nerve and muscle, and it was with an effort that he spoke now in his usual tone.

  ‘That was at a few minutes past seven. And you say it was a gentleman you saw. Why do you call him a gentleman? Because of the way he was dressed?’

  ‘Yes, sir; partly that, and partly the way he carried himself. He looked—well, I don’t know, sir. He looked class, as they say.’

  ‘I know what you mean; but damn it! you say you only saw him for a moment. And if he was just going in at the door, he would have had his back to you, I suppose. Could you see him by some light from the street as well as the light from inside?’

  ‘There’s the lamp at the entrance to Newbury Place, the far end of it, sir. But I couldn’t hardly have told what he looked like at all, not by that. I just saw the outline of him, quite plain, in the open doorway, as he stepped in. He was in evening dress, sir, with a top hat and dark overcoat, and I could see the top of a white muffler above his coat.’