Thirteen Guests

by J. Jefferson Farjeon

  “But this is most shocking!” he exclaimed. “Yesterday evening, you say?”

  “Between half-past four and a quarter to seven,” answered Pratt.

  “Why did you not mention it before?”

  “I thought I might find the culprit more easily by not mentioning it.”

  “You had a suspicion?”

  “Quite definite.”

  “May I ask who?”

  “If you don’t mind, I will keep that to myself. You see, if the man in the quarry did it, I shall be wrong.”

  “But you don’t know the man?”

  “Never seen him before in my life.”

  “Then why should he have done it?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Perhaps he ran amok after you locked him in the studio?”

  “We have no proof yet that this is the person I locked in the studio.”

  “Quite so, but it seems obvious!” retorted Aveling. “It would be a coincidence if there were two men around. He got out of the studio, killed the dog, and then—ended down the quarry.”

  “You are forgetting one point,” said Pratt. “The picture was ruined before I locked the studio, so, if he did it, he did it before being locked in.”

  They entered the wood.

  “Perhaps he’s a lunatic?” suggested Aveling.

  “Anybody who spoils a picture by Leicester Pratt must be a lunatic,” came the dry response.

  Bultin rose from a tree-trunk and slipped his note-book away as they drew up.

  “Are you writing the account already, Bultin?” inquired Aveling, with a frown.

  “Provisionally,” answered the journalist.

  “Well, kindly keep it provisional till we know a little more,” said Aveling.

  “Publicity produces knowledge,” observed Bultin.

  “Also crowds,” added Pratt. “Have sympathy, Lionel. If there are any plums, you won’t have to work for them—they will drop right into your mouth.”

  They walked together to the edge of the great dip. The quarry was a relic of past activity. No longer in use, much of its bareness had been reclaimed by vegetation. Lord Aveling stared down into the tangled space.

  “See him?” inquired Pratt.

  Lord Aveling nodded.

  “What brought you up?” went on Pratt, turning to Bultin.

  “My feet,” answered Bultin.

  “Not really worthy. Try again?”

  “Well, I like writing about corpses, but I don’t like sitting by them. This one is a nasty sight. Even nastier than when I saw him alive—”

  “What! Saw him alive?” exclaimed Aveling. “When? Where?”

  Bultin produced his note-book again, turned to a page, and read:

  “‘Our train drew in at 5.56. We stepped out upon an ill-lit platform. The knowledge that we should shortly enjoy the greater cheer of Bragley Court—Lord Aveling’s cordial welcome is almost famous—’’’ He paused for an instant, and noted how, during that instant, the world grew a trifle brighter for Lord Aveling. “‘—modified to some extent the horror of a British platform in the British gloaming of a British October evening. But even so I had a strange sensation that unseen fingers were stretching through the dusk, and a curious incident accentuated the feeling. In reply to a famous actress’s question, I informed her that she undoubtedly was keeping us all waiting, and that no press photographers were about. With the famous laugh rendered even more famous by her imitators, she ran towards the waiting Rolls. And now the incident occurred.’’’

  He paused again.

  “No, not ‘occurred’—‘took place.’’’ He made the alteration. “No, after all, ‘occurred.’’’ He altered it back again. “‘And now the incident occurred. A man suddenly loomed before her. She stopped immediately. For a moment I thought she was going to faint. But she controlled herself with an effort, pushed by him, and entered the car. Of two other guests—a Mr. and Mrs. Chater, I being the fourth who completed the party—Mrs. Chater had already taken her seat, but Mr. Chater went up to the stranger and offered him a light. The offer was not accepted. “I’ll see you presently,” spat out the stranger. “I wouldn’t,” Mr. Chater spat back, and, in the words of Barrie, ‘joined the ladies.’ Delete, ‘in the words of Barrie.’ ‘But I did not immediately join the ladies. My business is news. You want it. I supply it. So I thought I would have a few words myself with this interesting stranger.

  “‘I told him who I was. To my chagrin, he did not swoon with joy. He looked more as if he could have bitten me. I told him where I was going. This information softened him slightly. I felt that now I might touch him without being mauled. I offered him a light. His unlit cigarette hung uncared-for from his moist lower lip. This time he accepted. As I struck a match I mentioned my duty to the public. He stared at me. People say I have some gift of expression, but I could never express the look that suddenly leapt into his eyes. “You’ll get something to write about!” he promised.

  “‘Did he mean to fulfil that promise? Shall we ever know? The next time I saw the man, between twenty-one and twenty-two hours later, he was lying at the bottom of a quarry, dead.’’’

  Bultin closed his note-book and returned it to his pocket. Then a voice hailed them, and they turned. It was Dr. Pudrow, followed by a gardener and two grooms. The gardener, with lugubrious forethought, was wheeling a barrow.

  “Where is he?” cried the doctor.

  The definite task before them came as a relief to Lord Aveling. Anxious thoughts, disturbing conjectures, policies to be pursued, all were necessarily shelved while the grim business of descending to the quarry was engaged in. They found the man lying, face upwards, in a crumpled heap, and the doctor did not have to examine him to confirm that life was extinct.

  “No doubt about it?” murmured Aveling.

  “After rigor mortis, my Lord?” replied the doctor. “He has been dead several hours.”

  “Can you say how many?”

  Dr. Pudrow was now bending over the body. He did not answer for a minute. Then he remarked cautiously that he did not want to commit himself at the moment.

  Pratt, who thought little of doctors, and particularly of this doctor, suggested the rigor mortis might give him some indication.

  “It may occur half an hour or thirty hours after death,” retorted the doctor, well aware of Pratt’s opinion, and particularly sensitive when the opinion was implied before Lord Aveling, “and the condition may last for from twenty-four to thirty-six hours. The time varies according to the subject and the cause of the death.”

  “The cause we know,” answered Pratt.

  “Perhaps you will handle this case?” exclaimed Dr. Pudrow.

  Lord Aveling interposed.

  “You mean, of course, Pratt, that he died from his fall,” he said. “Quite so. But I think we can safely leave these matters to Dr. Pudrow.”

  “If you want to know what time the man died,” observed Bultin, in a voice that suggested he was stifling a yawn, “it was at nineteen minutes past one last night.”

  “How do you know that?” demanded the doctor, astonished, while Lord Aveling stared.

  “By his wrist-watch. It is broken, and the hands mark the time it stopped. I am assuming,” Bultin added, “that your ‘several hours’ meant more than three—otherwise he could have died at nineteen past one to-day.”

  Against his will, Dr. Pudrow was impressed. So was Pratt. “Bultin did not waste his time while I went to the house to report,” he reflected. “I wonder what else he’s discovered?”

  “He has certainly been dead more than three hours,” the doctor replied, “so you are probably right. Can you also tell us who he is?”

  “No, I can’t tell you who he is,” answered Bultin. “There is nothing on him to suggest his identity. But there are three people up at the house who may be able t
o.”

  “Only two at the moment, I think,” murmured Aveling, as Bultin glanced at him.

  “Can you get them here?” requested the doctor. “Some one connected with him should be notified as soon as possible.”

  “Yes, yes, I agree—but both these guests are ladies,” objected Aveling. “It would not be reasonable to ask them to make this descent, especially as it is getting dark, and they are tired. In fact, I doubt whether they could do it. Why not let my men carry him up?”

  “To the house?” inquired the doctor.

  Aveling’s frown grew. The house was depressed enough, as it was.

  “Or the studio,” suggested Pratt.

  The frown vanished. Lord Aveling was living, emotionally, from instant to instant. Bultin’s account of the incident at the station had filled him with wretched forebodings, and he discovered that his main impulse, rightly or wrongly, was to protect Zena Wilding from unhappiness. His own happiness was being invaded from so many sides that it was almost a relief to have some one else’s to concentrate on. “Besides,” he argued with himself, with the self-deception of the would-be virtuous, “isn’t it my duty to protect my guests from annoyance? If I happen to be particularly interested in one of them, I must not remove that protection through self-consciousness.” His over-sensitive mind was once more developing situations in advance. “I have done nothing wrong!” He thanked God for that, though it was a sign of his anxiety that he had to produce the statement to himself.

  “A good idea, Pratt,” he said aloud. “Yes, the studio. But what about you? Your work?”

  “My work?” Pratt smiled. “My work is obviously post-

  poned.”

  Aveling made a sign to his waiting men. As they commenced their task, under the doctor’s direction, Bultin looked on with vague disapproval. Pratt drew him aside.

  “Your expression is not heavenly, Lionel,” he said. “What’s the matter?”

  Bultin shrugged his shoulders.

  “That’s not good enough for me, you oyster!” insisted Pratt.

  “Bodies are not usually moved till the police arrive,” answered Bultin.

  “Nor, perhaps, are their pockets searched,” replied Pratt, “though I know journalists sometimes imagine they have special privileges.”

  “Did I search his pockets?” asked Bultin innocently.

  “You knew there was nothing on him to indicate his identity. It would not surprise me to learn that you so searched for laundry marks. You can’t have it both ways, my boy. If the police eventually arrive, the more you anticipate their work the bigger your scoop. At the moment, you can pretend you are helping. To the local inspector you may merely be a nuisance.”

  “If you were as clever as you thought you were, you’d be a gargantuan,” said Bultin.

  “If you were as clever as you thought you were, you’d be the size of a pea-nut. My picture of you will be called ‘The Splendid Spoof,’ and it will be of a drugged Inferiority Complex inside enormous bulges of inflated skin. We never really change, you know, but some of us are devils at make-up. Well, what else have you discovered?”

  Bultin turned his eyes towards the workers.

  “They’ve got him up,” he said. “We’d better be moving.”

  “The knife, for instance?”

  “What knife?”

  “The knife that killed the dog?”

  “Is that all the knife was intended to kill?” asked Bultin. “Come along.”

  But Pratt suddenly laid a detaining hand on Bultin’s sleeve.

  “Tell me something, Lionel,” he said. “A different sort of a question this time.”

  “Well?”

  “Are you interested in justice?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Perhaps, after all, only a word of seven letters. I’m not asking the question ethically. I’m just curious. If a man commits a murder, are you glad when he is hanged? If a man hasn’t committed a murder, do you rejoice when he’s acquitted? Or, provided you get a good story, don’t you care a damn?”

  Bultin thought for a moment.

  “Provided the public get a good story,” he replied, “do they care a damn?”

  “That’s a devilish good answer,” said Pratt. “Put it in your biography. By the way, have you heard about Chater’s horse? It’s come home without him.”

  Chapter XVI

  The Second Victim

  The yellow teacups were tinkling when Lord Aveling looked through the doorway of the pink-and-cream drawing-room. Six people were there, and the absence of the anticipated seventh caused him to withdraw quickly before he had been noticed. Retracing his way to the hall, he ascended the stairs and walked along a passage past his bedroom to another two doors beyond. Here he paused, hesitating.

  He started almost guiltily as the door suddenly opened, but he regained his composure as the maid Bessie came out.

  “Is Miss Wilding having her tea in her room?” he asked.

  “Yes, my Lord,” answered the maid. “I’ve just taken it in.”

  “Ask her if she could see me at the door for a moment,” he said. “Tell her it is important.” As the maid turned to obey, he added, to set himself right with her, “There’s been an unfortunate accident. You’ll hear about it presently.”

  The maid returned into the room, and was back almost at once.

  “Miss Wilding will come immediately, my Lord,” she said. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, plucked up courage to ask, “Is—is he badly hurt, sir?”

  Lord Aveling looked at her sharply.

  “Do you know who he is?” he demanded.

  Bessie turned red with confusion.

  “I beg your pardon, my Lord, for asking—only I heard that his horse—”

  “That was Mr. Chater’s horse,” he interrupted. He wanted to get rid of her. “This is not Mr. Chater.”

  The bedroom door opened again. The maid vanished. Zena Wilding, in a blue silk dressing-gown, stood before him. No longer fortified by her complete rejuvenating make-up, she looked pale and fragile, and a wave of intense sympathy swept over him.

  “I am sorry to disturb you like this,” he began gently.

  “That’s all right,” she answered. “I’ve just got a slight headache, so I thought I wouldn’t come down till dinner.”

  “The day has tired you.”

  “Isn’t it stupid? But I haven’t ridden for some time, so I expect—” She broke off abruptly. “I hope nothing has—happened?” As he hesitated, an expression of deep anxiety shot into her face. “Nothing about last night?” she whispered.

  Her anxiety made him forget his own. His sympathy increased, and with it his desire to protect her, if protection were needed. Last night he had felt as though he were her contemporary; now, although she looked quite five years older than she had then, he felt almost paternal. It relieved as well as surprised him.

  “No, nothing about last night,” he reassured her quickly. “I would like to apologise to you about last night.”

  “Oh, please, don’t!” she murmured, and glanced along the empty passage. “I—don’t mind.” He tried to be sorry she had said that. It made the paternal feeling harder to maintain. “What do you want to speak to me about?”

  “Something not very happy, I am afraid,” he answered. “But remember while I tell you that if this means any trouble for you—it probably will not, but if it does—you may count on all the assistance I can give you.”

  She stared at him.

  “Please go on. You’re very good to me.”

  “Well, Miss Wilding, there has been an accident. A man has fallen down a quarry in a wood near here. We’ve brought him up, and he is now lying in the studio.”

  “Do you mean—?”

  He nodded. “Yes. He was dead when we found him. Unfortunately we do not know who he is, but Mr.
Bultin—” Damn Bultin! Of course, that account of his was just stupid, journalistic exaggeration! “Mr. Bultin has some idea that two or three of my guests know him. He mentioned Mr. and Mrs. Chater and you. I shall not be surprised to find that Mr. Bultin is wrong. The man was at the station when you arrived yesterday evening, and apparently he—”

  He caught her as she swayed. “My God!” he thought. “Bultin wasn’t wrong!”

  He held her for a few seconds that seemed like minutes; but the passage remained blessedly empty. During those seconds he struggled against many emotions, among which were concern for her, contempt for the hateful pleasure he was deriving from her dependence on him, and confusion as to the next step. He had no idea what to do. If she had fainted, of course he would have to carry her back to her room.…

  She gave a sudden shudder that was like a little breeze abruptly stirring stillness, and he loosened his grip as he felt her regaining control of herself.

  “Don’t hurry,” he said.

  “I really think—I’m not very well,” she stammered weakly.

  “I am quite sure you are not very well,” he replied. “You had better lie down.”

  “Yes, I will—in a moment. Imagine—feeling faint like that, just hearing about an accident!”

  He waited. In a second or two she went on, a little more steadily:

  “You remember, I came over the same way at the hunt, didn’t I? If I’d known this poor man it would have been different. No, I don’t know him. I remember seeing some one at the station—he looked rather odd, I thought he was going to snatch my bag or something—but I didn’t know him. Mr. Bultin was wrong. I’d never seen him before in my life.” All at once a look of stark terror entered her eyes. She gasped, “Dead? My God! You believe me, don’t you? You do believe me?”

  He patted her arm.

  “Of course I believe you,” he answered. “Why shouldn’t I? Mr. Bultin has identified him as the man at the station, but it will not now be necessary for you to come to the studio and identify him also, since you do not know him.” He was speaking to her and thinking aloud. “There will be nothing for you to worry about. Go back and lie down. And if I were you, Miss Wilding, I should not trouble to come down to dinner, unless you feel very much stronger. Your meal can be sent up to you, and you have had a very tiring day. Every one will understand.”