Trent's Own Case

by E. C. Bentley

  ‘Liar!’ another youth said. ‘The library committee’s tomorrow, like it always has been.’

  ‘My God!’ the spectacled one exclaimed. ‘I thought today was Friday.’ He swore fervently, and there was a burst of hearty merriment from his sympathizing friends.

  ‘You’ll forget your name’s Ginger next,’ one of them said.

  ‘You ain’t a professor yet, you know, Ginger,’ another said. ‘When you are, it will be all right to do that absent-minded stuff—like the old bloke who buttered his newspaper and read his toast.’

  ‘Ginger’s drunk, I believe,’ another said.

  ‘Drunk with the blood of poor dumb animals,’ amended the youth who had already raised this humanitarian point.

  ‘All right; you can laugh!’ the young man called Ginger grumbled. He grinned drily himself; and Trent, listening unobtrusively to the conversation, could realize something of the amiability in Ginger which his companions were recognizing in their peculiar way. ‘Talk about me being absent-minded!’ he pursued, scratching his nose with a large notebook, ‘A pithed frog has got more mind that you have among the lot of you. And look here! If this is Thursday, why isn’t young Peters out in the streets in his underwear, doing his seven and a half miles with the rest of the circus, instead of playing upsy-daisy all by himself?’

  ‘Hark at him!’ said young Peters, who, dressed in shorts and a sweater, and with one leg held out straight in front of him, was going repeatedly and rapidly through the motions of sitting on an imaginary stool and rising from it. ‘Wednesday’s the day for the grind now, you old fathead, and has been for the last month,’ he went on, without a pause in his invigorating exercise. ‘Getting out of touch—that’s what you are, Ginger. You ought to give the rabbits a rest oftener than what you do, and come here and give us something to laugh at.’ He changed to the other leg.

  ‘Your wind seems to be all right, that’s one thing,’ Ginger observed. ‘If you’re as good at sucking as you are at blowing, I might get you a job as an air-pump in the physics lab.’ Here the conversation was broken off as Verney appeared running down the stairway from the upper regions, and was greeted cordially by all the group.

  ‘I hope you haven’t been waiting long,’ he said to Trent. ‘Hullo, Ginger! We don’t often see you here nowadays. Trent, let me make you acquainted with Ginger Stimpson, the best goalkeeper we have ever had—now a man of science. Come along, we’ll go up to my office—it’s on the first floor.’ He led the way up the lino-covered stairs to a big reading-room, having at one end of it a bar-like counter presided over by an elderly woman engaged in darning a sock. Here a number of youths were sitting round the long table occupied with papers and magazines, and enjoying refreshments among which cocoa had a popular place. From overhead came faintly the noise of ping-pong, mingled with stampings and thuddings that told of some more robust forms of exercise—boxing and gymnastics, as Trent could guess.

  Verney opened a door half-way down the reading-room, disclosing a small room of strictly utilitarian aspect, with a roll-top desk, a plain table and a filing-cabinet of green-painted metal for its principal furniture. As they entered, a tall and lean old man with a neat white beard and gold-rimmed spectacles rose alertly from the table, where he had been busy with a ruler and a fountain pen.

  ‘This is Mr Bowes, who is kind enough to take a lot of the work of this place off my shoulders,’ Verney said. ‘This is the friend I told you about, Bowes—Mr Trent.’

  The expression of Mr Bowes’s pink face was open and generous. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he said, shaking hands vigorously. ‘It was you who were to have done a portrait of the governor for us, I believe. A terrible business that, sir—terrible. I was out of town when it happened, and heard nothing about it until I saw the headlines in the paper. I never had such a shock. I came back to London at once—not that I could do anything or be of any use; but you know how it is. I take a great interest in the Randolph Institute, and I wanted to hear what was likely to happen about that, and to talk the thing over with our friend Verney. I did hope that the inquest would throw some light on the mystery of the murder; but it was adjourned—I suppose you saw that—as soon as they had taken the doctor’s evidence, which didn’t tell you any more than was in the papers at first.’

  ‘It is what usually happens,’ Trent said, ‘when the police are still busy with their inquiries.’

  ‘So I am told,’ Mr Bowes said. ‘Well, we don’t know what it is going to mean for us here, if it is true that Randolph left no will, as Verney believes. But the Lord will provide; that is what I always say. Anyhow, we carry on, sir, even in the shadow of death. I am busy with the scheme for the boxing tournament, Verney; it ought to have been ready sooner. You were quite right about my needing a holiday, my dear boy; I am feeling twice the man I was; but it has got me a little behindhand with some of the jobs. I will get on with it in the library, and stick it up before I go. I know you two have something private to talk about.’

  ‘Thanks very much, Bowes,’ Verney said, as the old gentleman gathered his papers together and went out. ‘That is one of the Institute’s best friends,’ Verney went on. ‘A wealthy man, retired from business, and unmarried, who devotes himself to church work and practical philanthropy. He has been kindness itself to me personally, too. Bowes is a man with few friends, in spite of his having a heart of gold, and I think this is about the only social life he has. He spends half his time here, and I don’t know what I should do without him.’ He motioned Trent to the bentwood arm-chair just vacated by Mr Bowes, and, gently expelling a curled-up black kitten from the one which stood before the desk, took it himself.

  ‘You are a cat-lover?’ hazarded Trent as he seated himself.

  ‘Not in a general way,’ Verney said. ‘I haven’t got a horror of cats, as some people are said to have; but I would rather have their room than their company if I had any choice in the matter. It makes all the difference, though, when a black kitten walks into your room and makes itself at home, as this one did about a week ago. Some good luck is what I need just now, by way of a change.’ He handed over a box of cigarettes. ‘Please help yourself, and excuse me if I don’t join you. That one I had at your place was my only smoke in two years or thereabouts, and in any case I should never smoke here. It’s a habit that doesn’t do boys any good—they always overdo it. I know I used to.’

  ‘You are quite right.’ Trent took and lighted a cigarette. ‘If any of them see me at it, you can always tell them I am a broken-down debauchee with one foot in the grave, and that it all began with smoking.’

  Verney smiled grimly. ‘You don’t look the part, I’m afraid. Well, I suppose I need not worry about such things now—perhaps that is what you’re thinking too. I shall very likely not be here much longer. Just how long I don’t know. There are a few friends of the Institute, men of means, who have got together and guaranteed the expenses for some time ahead. Dear old Bowes was the leading spirit in that. It is generally believed that some person or persons will turn up claiming to be next-of-kin—may have turned up already, for all I know; and we hope that whoever does ultimately inherit Randolph’s money will decide to keep the place going. But the future is absolutely uncertain. We can but wait and see.

  ‘And now about your friend, Dr Fairman. The position really is amazing. To begin with, we know he was arrested on the day after the murder and charged with attempting suicide; and as the newspapers have published the fact that he had lost his job at the Randolph Hospital, it is generally assumed that he is suspected of the murder as well. Now that is simply incredible to me. I don’t know him intimately, and you do; but I have had a good deal to do with him when I was attending to the Randolph Hospital’s affairs, and I cannot believe this. I should put him down as a man of principle and rather unusually strong character, the last in the world to have any hand in such a crime. Why he was discharged from his position at the hospital I haven’t the least idea, but if the suggestion is that it made a murderer of a man lik
e Fairman, I should say it was absolute nonsense.’

  ‘I agree with you entirely,’ Trent said. ‘For my part, I am quite convinced that he is innocent. Perhaps you have heard, too, that he has had a bad break-down, and is in the prison infirmary.’

  ‘No, I hadn’t heard that. I am very sorry to hear it now. We shall learn a lot more, no doubt, when he is well enough to be taken into court.’ Verney paused, as if inviting more information from one evidently better posted than himself; but Trent decided to leave the subject of Fairman’s proceedings there. At all times he had been scrupulously careful to avoid the least breach of confidence in his friendly relations with Mr Bligh and other officers of the law. Fairman’s confession, he knew, was still a well-kept official secret, and that was equally true of other details of the crime beyond the bare statement which had been given out at the outset.

  ‘Well, it will take a lot to persuade me that he did it,’ Verney said at length. ‘However, that is not the point I wanted to tell you about. It’s this. Two days after Randolph was murdered, and before anyone knew that Fairman was the man who had been arrested, I had a letter from Dr Dallow, who is the medical superintendent of the hospital. He knew me, of course, as the old man’s personal representative in dealing with the hospital’s business; and he began by saying how deeply shocked he and all the staff had been when they heard of the crime. Then he went on to say something that didn’t surprise me, because I knew it had been in the wind for some time. He said he had been given to understand that if the position of the hospital should ever become difficult for any reason—I suppose he meant Randolph’s dying, and some trouble arising about his estate—the West Riding County Council were prepared to take over the entire responsibility of the hospital just as it stood, including himself and the rest of the staff, and run it themselves as a part of their own mental service, if that could be arranged.’

  ‘I see,’ Trent said thoughtfully. ‘The county had been getting the advantage of a perfectly good institution for nothing, and the council had no objection to taking it over as a going concern. I dare say it is doing indispensable work.’

  ‘So it is, and of a very special kind—this is the point. Well, that is what Dallow had been told, and what I had heard unofficially myself. But what he went on to say did surprise me. He asked if I was in touch with Dr Fairman, or knew where he could be found. When he wrote this, remember, he didn’t know that Fairman had been arrested. He said that Fairman’s leaving the staff had been due to a most regrettable misunderstanding, which he was only too anxious to set right without delay if it was possible. Fairman had been doing invaluable work, he said, and if he could be prevailed upon to come back upon the old footing everybody would be delighted, and no one more so than mine very truly Maxwell Dallow. That was his letter. I must say I was astonished. Wouldn’t you have been?’

  ‘I should. I am,’ Trent said. ‘One can’t help wondering what lies behind it. You don’t deprive yourself of the services of a man like Bryan Fairman without having very good reasons indeed. If there had been a misunderstanding, I should say that yours very truly, Maxwell Dallow, ought to be bally well ashamed of himself.’

  He paused, reflecting that that probably was Dr Dallow’s own feeling, if the joint surmises of Mr Bligh and himself were at all well-founded. To have done an act of injustice in submission to a threat could not be agreeable to any man’s self-esteem. If Randolph’s sudden death had meant, for Dallow, liberation from a secret yoke, and if he had at once set about trying to undo what had been forced upon him, there was at least some merit in that; for to restore Fairman would be to humiliate himself.

  ‘If Dallow really means that—’ he began.

  ‘Oh, he means it,’ Verney said. ‘His letter could leave no one in any doubt about that. I have quoted it from memory, but I have got it at my rooms, and you can see it if you like; so can Fairman. And it is right enough, too, about the future position of the hospital. The council intend to save it, if it needs saving; the medical officer has told me that, privately but quite definitely, more than once, and Dallow probably got it from the chairman, Sir Norman Connors, who is an old friend of his. No; if Fairman gets out of this trouble he is in now, without any reflection on his character, it looks as if it will be open to him to go back to the job if he chooses. Dallow is evidently ready to eat humble pie if required. But I shouldn’t think Fairman is the sort of ass to demand written apologies and all the rest of it. The work he was doing on the invasion of the brain by toxins was all he seemed to care about, and if he is able to get back to it with all the honours, I should think he would.’

  ‘So should I,’ Trent said. ‘I will see that he hears all this as soon as may be. Getting him out of the hole he is in at present may not be so easy, but I have hopes of that too.’

  ‘How on earth he got into it is what puzzles me. The whole thing looks—’ Here Verney checked himself, and began playing with a pen on the desk.

  ‘You were going to say,’ Trent suggested.

  ‘Why, I was going to say’—Verney spoke reluctantly—‘it looked perfectly mad. That is just a phrase, of course; but it does happen to fit in with a possibility that has occurred to me. Isn’t it conceivable that Fairman may have gone out of his mind, and that he did, after all, murder Randolph when he was not responsible for his actions? Much as I hate the idea, I cannot help thinking there may be something in it; and what you told me just now about his having had some sort of a collapse seems rather to bear it out.’

  Trent rose to his feet. ‘Yes; as you say, it is conceivable. In fact, I don’t mind saying that I conceived it myself at quite an early stage of the affair. Probably a lot of people have done the same. Still, it is not much use speculating about that, is it? We shall get at the facts in due course. And now, before I go, I must congratulate you on the work you are doing in this place. It must have simply changed the face of life for most of these young fellows, I should think.’

  A shade came over Verney’s face. ‘The man who deserves to be congratulated is the man who made it possible,’ he said, ‘and James Randolph is gone beyond the reach of our goodwill.’

  Trent drummed lightly with his fingers on the window-pane. ‘You know, Verney,’ he said, looking out on the dismal street below, ‘this business is telling on you too much. One can see it in your face. It must have been ghastly for you, of course, but you mustn’t let it get you down. Look here’—he turned to face the other—‘I have a suggestion to make. I remember you saying you enjoyed a round of golf from time to time; in fact, you spoke of it like a true devotee. If you really do feel that way about the game, I believe a little of it is just the treatment for you. How about a match with me at Molesworth one afternoon—next Monday, say? I could drive you down, and we could have lunch at the club.’

  Verney’s eyes had lighted up unmistakably at the proposal. ‘I can’t think,’ he said, ‘of anything I should like better. I know Molesworth of old, though it is long since I played there.’ He caught Trent’s inquiring eye, and added a little awkwardly, ‘I used to be a good deal better off than I am now, you see; I have played on a good many famous courses, and I know what good golf is. Molesworth! I should say the fifth at Molesworth is one of the finest holes I know. It is like a combination of the Gadger’s Hough at Strathinver with the seventeenth at Kempshill. There’s the double-twisted stream that you want to carry with your second, and then there’s the narrow green with the road bunker in the face of it, and all sorts of horrors behind it.’

  Trent laughed aloud. ‘I can see I have bitten off rather more than I can chew. What handicap do you confess to?’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘Then I shall want—let’s see—three strokes. And Monday afternoon will suit you?’

  ‘Yes; but,’ Verney said, ‘I can’t go down there to lunch, I’m sorry to say. The morning will be a pretty busy one, and I expect I shall not be able to get away before two o’clock. How would it do if I run down in my own ancient car, and join you there as early as
I can? I should get some food from the canteen here while I’m working—I often do.’

  ‘No, no,’ Trent said. ‘We will go together. I’ll have lunch early, and call for you here about two. That right? Very well then; I’ll be on my way.’

  Trent, as he descended the stairway to the now deserted lobby, was busy with thoughts. His glance fell on the green notice-board, and he went to inspect it more closely. There was a schedule of weekly committee meetings. There were intimations of articles lost and articles found. There was a list of the fixtures of the Institute’s Soccer team. There was a plan of the route of the Athletic Club’s weekly long-distance run—a beautifully neat piece of work, with the names of streets and landmarks done in red ink; the work, Trent felt sure, as he studied it, of the excellent Mr Bowes. There were some advertisements of Saturday motor-coach tours, with the football ground of a famous club as the objective in each case. There were two announcements from places of worship in the neighbourhood, giving the subjects with which their respective pastors proposed to deal in addressing their congregations during the present and the following months; and Trent noted with interest that while the one list led off sternly with the question ‘What Do We Mean by a Sacrament?’ the other began by asking, with tenderly reproachful irony, ‘Only a Bob Each Way?’ The draw for the boxing tournament had not yet made its appearance.

  When he left the building, Trent found another and a larger car standing at the roadside, and a pleasant-faced chauffeur, with hands behind him, closely examining his own.

  ‘Nice little car, sir,’ the man said, as Trent made to open the door.

  ‘You know this make?’ Trent asked. ‘You are a better judge than I am.’

  ‘I had one, an older model, to look after two years ago,’ the chauffeur said, evidently relieved at the prospect of a little conversation. ‘There’s no better value in the trade, to my way of thinking. If they have a fault—’ Here the chauffeur became immersed in technicalities, until Trent, expressing his substantial agreement on the points raised, offered him a cigarette.